The Wanderers [1/6]
Title: The Wanderers
Pairing: Kris/Lay/Luhan
Genre: Friendship, Historical!AU
Rating: G
Word Count: 2,342 words
Summary: When the number of people you know only amount to fourteen in total, how difficult is it to leave them and start a new life for yourself with two others out of the fourteen?
A/N: I admit it, I write horribly. :/ THERE IS NO FILTER BETWEEN MY BRAIN AND MY MOUTH! (... or my fingers)
Chapter 1
Three boys were crouched together on the beach, scrabbling at the sand with their bare hands. Their heads were put together while they concentrated intently on whatever they were doing. Honey brown locks fell into the eyes of two of the boys, while the last had a deep chestnut brown mop of hair. Coconut shells were half buried in sand, and damp spots where the sticky sweet coconut water had spilt were obvious in the blindingly white ground.
“Run!” One of the boys yelled, dropping the stick in the white, powdery grains and leaping to his feet before taking off down the length of the beach.
Another boy scrambled quickly after the taller youth, leaving behind the one with chestnut brown hair staring after them with a panicky expression. Just as he made to stand up and dash off after the two, a large man came crashing out from the bushes near the shore and immediately grabbed the small boy by the collar of his shirt.
“Yixing!” The man bellowed, shaking the boy roughly with one hand. “You again? When I saw my stash of coconuts gone this morning I just knew that it had to be you and your friends who stole them! Where’re they? Hand them over right now!”
The boy named Yixing stayed silent, and tried not to look down at the coconuts that were half-hidden. However, his eyes betrayed him, and the man with the thick neck noticed the repeated glances at the hiding spot of the coconuts.
Turning back to Yixing, he began to shake the boy even more vigorously then ever. “What is wrong with you? Why can’t you people just stop stealing for once? Don’t you know better than that? That’s the problem with kids who don’t have responsible parents. The offspring are normally no better than stray dogs in their manners-” The man cut off mid-sentence with a strangled cry, roughly tossing Yixing the to the side.
He gripped his arm in pain and looked at the boy who he had just verbally and physically abused. Yixing stood up unsteadily on his feet, panting from the obvious anger that he felt. His piercing gaze burned into the man’s face and his stubborn set of jaw told him that he was prepared to fight back should the man try to manhandle him again. Or even worse, insult his parents.
“Why you little prick.” The fat man muttered and took a step towards Yixing, who stood his ground and wiped his mouth, trying to clean the salty taste of the man’s arm from his tongue.
At that moment, pebbles and rotten eggs were pelted at the large man from somewhere in the bushes.
“Kris! Luhan!” The man cried out in frustration and turned onto the duo that had hidden in the bushes. “Your parents will be hearing of this! I’ll see that all of you are shipped off the island!” He huffed and kicked a huge cloud of sand at Yixing, covering the boy with the small dry grains before lumbering off the beach.
“I bet we were the ones who scared him off.” Luhan commented, climbing out of the bushes and brushing himself off.
“Why’d you guys come back.” Yixing said, making it more of a statement than a question.
The taller of the two shrugged. “We were worried that old man Hanwen would have your head for stealing coconuts, and we didn’t want you to take the blame for it when we were the ones who were craving coconuts anyway.”
“Kris, you know that’s not how it was.” Yixing said, annoyed. There was no way that it was Kris and Luhan’s fault alone. The fact that Yixing himself had allowed himself to go astray and soil his family’s name once again is of no one’s fault but his own.
Luhan sighed and turned towards the partially concealed fruits still sticking out like a sore thumb in the flat surface of the beach. “Let’s get back to finishing this job before other people find it. Maybe if our parents can’t find evidence of our misbehavior we won’t get scolded.”
The three boys turned back to the offending fruit in the ground and resumed their first action of scrabbling at the ground with their bare hands.
--
The tall, strapping youth scrambled to pick up the fruits that had fallen out of his basket and onto the ground. Bruised apples rolled down the gentle slope and out of his sight. Cursing under his breath, he started down the hill after salvaging whatever he could.
He cradled a small wicker basket in his arms, barely half-filled with rotting fruits.
“Did you manage to get much?” A boy, much shorter than him, asked.
Kris shook his head in reply just as a third with dark hair joined them.
“I didn’t find much on my side.” Yixing reported, looking at the two of them, hoping for good news.
Luhan shook his head to confirm a negative, and Yixing’s shoulders slumped in disappointment.
The three young men walked back to a medium-sized but slowly expanding village after fetching the fruit that had rolled down the hill. Setting down his basket of fruits, Kris turned to the rest and began to speak. “We found a lot less than usual today.”
“You say that every day, Kris. And today’s Yixing’s twenty-first birthday! Go on, say something different.” Luhan complained, setting to work and picking up a fruit knife.
Kris selected a knife of his own and began slicing off the rotting portions of an apple. “It can’t be helped. We really tried our best, but nothing much can be done about it if the trees refuse to bear more fruit. Besides, it’s the same amount of fruit that's being produced every year. It's just that, over time, more and more people are to be fed. And the food supply doesn’t get any bigger, so we just have less and less to eat.”
Yixing examined a pear quietly, patiently cutting off only the bad parts and salvaging whatever that could be eaten. After that, he heated up a pot of water atop a stove lit by firewood and dumped the fruits in it. The smell of boiling fruit soup could be smelt from blocks away, thanks to the mixture of pungent odours that came when the aging of the seasons meant older fruits.
A pair of grimy hands gripped the windowsill and a young boy peered into the small and dingy kitchen. “Fruit soup again?” He whined, eyebrows knitting in disgust. “It’s smells worse than before!”
Yixing merely told the boy to wash his hands and to tell the others at the soup kitchen that the food would be ready soon. The boy nodded, reached over and soaked his hands in the bucket of water and gagged at the thought of fruit soup once more before pulling back out from the window.
“They don’t even appreciate our help.” Luhan said bitterly. “Even old man Hanwen has to come to us for our help now, when he himself hated us so much when we were younger.”
“We were young, we were stupid.” Yixing retorted. “There was a good reason for Hanwen to dislike us. We stole his hard-earned goods, for goodness sakes.”
“He has a point there.” Kris chimed in, expertly slicing a mango into small, uniform cubes before tossing them into the pot.
Luhan stirred the steaming broth with a wooden ladle before tasting it and making a face. “Uck, it’s sour.”
Yixing leaned over and tasted the soup. “Yeah, must be the over-ripe guavas.”
Luhan shuddered. “Guavas are an evil fruit. Why’re we even eating them?”
“Because there’s nothing else to eat but whatever we pick off from the ground.” Kris reminded him.
“Must be nice to be able to eat whatever we want.” Luhan sighed with longing as he evenly distributed the fruit soup and brought it out of the kitchen to the waiting area where people young and old would be awaiting their free meal of the day.
Yixing remembered when there was no shortage of food. Of course, back then, there were a lot less people too. Everyone managed to live off the animals on the island and the fruits and plants provided by the trees and other vegetation when they were around five years old. Food difficulties began when they were around ten years old. The hunger crept up on them, as well as the realization that there simply wasn’t enough food to go around. The stealing and thieving started, when people would shamelessly eat food from their neighbour’s food storage, and guard their own stores with jealousy and suspicion.
Back then; when they were hungry, it wasn’t so bad yet. You could find plenty of food if you looked hard if enough. But now, the animals had died out, there were no more chickens-the last one ended up being illegally cooked by someone who was starving-and other animals were scarce and highly endangered on the island. Well, at least people believed that there were animals left to create the hope of being able to eat something other than fruits and vegetables in the future. But Yixing felt that it wasn't true, that the animals had all died out long ago.
No one left the island much, it was a foreign world out there and although it was hard to get by, at least people could survive here. No one wanted to risk death like how Yixing’s parents did, even though there were fishing boats that could function well enough. They took off one day after much deliberation, and there has been no news of them since. No one knew whether they had lived or died, and no one wanted to face the same uncertainty if they chose to leave the island.
The island became a small, untouched bubble of slow starvation and false happiness. But it was quite clear that if the population didn’t stop growing, there wouldn’t be enough food for everyone for long. There were now fifteen people on the island. Fifteen! It started off with five people, and now it’s triple the size. An island this small isn’t enough to provide sustenance for so many hungry individuals.
Yixing had always dreamed of leaving the island to look for a better place to live in, maybe another small island where things would be pretty much the same, but with enough food.
The once healthily muscular juvenile now looked a little thin for his age. He was still lean from all the trekking around the island that he did with Kris and Luhan, but he was a lot thinner than he would have liked. Fat is needed for survival, and if he were to be trapped somewhere in a disaster or without food, Yixing would be one of the first to die.
All three boys looked leaner, but Luhan was the one who looked the healthiest. Although he was the oldest among the three, Kris and Yixing had a tendency to ensure that their childish elder would be well fed before eating their own shares.
Yixing had just completed the task of washing up the cutting equipment when a loud crash was heard from outside. Kris darted out the door when yells began.
“Clumsy oaf!” Hanwen yelled at Luhan, putting his arms on his once thick waist that now looking considerably slimmer.
Luhan had finished distributing most of the fruit soup bowls to the other tables, but when it came to Hanwen’s table, he had tripped over Hanwen’s small son who had suddenly dashed from the table to examine an insect on the ground.
Although Luhan managed to avoid landing on the terrified youngster, he had spilt fruit soup all over Hanwen and broken a bowl. The other had clattered harmlessly against the table. Piles of mushy fruits and thick liquid dripped from the table and onto the muddy ground.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Why don’t you watch where you’re going? You almost tripped over my son!” Hanwen roared, gesticulating wildly at Luhan.
Luhan had helped Hanwen’s son back on his feet, but his face grew considerably darker as Hanwen hurled insults at him. Kris sensed Luhan’s oncoming temper tantrum, and hurried forward to stop any further arguments from erupting. However, Luhan snapped before Kris could stop him. Wordlessly, Luhan ripped off the apron that he was wearing and balled it up before flinging it at Hanwen’s face. Kris stared open-mouthed at Luhan as the latter stalked off towards the kitchen.
“I’m so sorry.” Yixing apologised, placing a new bowl of fruit soup down in front of Hanwen and using Luhan’s discarded apron to wipe off the spilt soup.
That night, Luhan sat with folded arms, refusing the bowl of fruit soup that Yixing and Kris passed over to him.
“I’m not hungry.” He muttered.
“You will be.” Kris warned, settling down to eat his own bowl of fruit soup.
Luhan shook his head obstinately, but stared curiously at Yixing when he realized that Yixing had assumed a position much like his own. “Aren’t you eating?” Luhan asked. Then, realizing that there were only two bowls on the table, his eyes widened. “Where’s your bowl? You didn’t give it to Hanwen, did you?”
Yixing stayed silent, his eyes fixed on the plant in the opposite corner of the room.
“Oh my god, you gave it to that jerk?” Luhan took a deep breath, calming himself and pushed his bowl of fruit soup over to Yixing. “Here, you eat.”
“I can’t possibly… It’s yours.” Yixing replied.
“It’s my fault that the food got wasted.” Luhan retorted, pushing the bowl towards Yixing once more. “There’s no point in trying to make it seem like your fault this time, Yixing.”
“But…”
“No buts! I’m your elder! Eat it if you respect me! Besides, you’re the birthday boy, not me.”
At this, Kris snorted into his bowl of soup and tried in vain to hide a grin that spread across his face.
Yixing tentatively picked up the bowl and nodded his thanks to Luhan. He then began to shovel down the food quickly.
“We can’t go on like this forever.” Luhan whispered.
Yixing and Kris looked at each other before looking back to Luhan.
“Sooner or later, and it’s most likely going to be sooner, we’re going to run out of food. And what then? Everyone will be scrambling to leave the island. It’s going to be every man for himself. And what of us, then? No one will think of helping us.”
Kris stayed quiet, but Yixing surprised the both of them by speaking up. “Actually, I’ve thought of that too. And I’ve been meaning to propose this plan to you guys, but I’ve never really had the guts to. It’s… a crazy, dangerous plan but it’s the only thing that we can do. Let’s leave the island. We can gather food, as much as we can for days, and then we set off with it. We can either choose to do this, or die slowly here.”
His two friends sat in silence as they digested what had just been presented to them.
“You’re right. It’s crazy, it’s dangerous, and I like it.” Luhan said, a slow smile spreading across his face.
Kris, on the other hand, was more doubtful. “What about the people back here on the island? We’re just going to abandon them to help themselves? What if we don’t make it to wherever we’re going?”
“It’s a huge risk, so we won’t know where we’re going.” Yixing explained. “As for the people here… they’ve relied on us for years since we started the soup kitchen. But if we stay here, it’s not going to help them; we’re only a short-term solution. At least if we leave for good, they’ll have more food to go around. We can bring some of them along with us too.”
“Bring them along?” Luhan screwed his nose and furrowed his eyebrows. “Doesn’t sound good to me. I definitely don’t want Hanwen on the same boat as me. Ugh.”
Yixing ignored Luhan and continued. “So… it’s a plan?”
“Definitely. Just no Hanwen please.” Luhan confirmed.
Kris nodded reluctantly, looking as if he still had some questions he wanted to clarify.
“Then from today onwards, we’ll collect fruit for five days, and then we’ll notify everyone of our departure, so it won’t be too sudden. That okay with you all?” Yixing questioned.
The other two boys nodded. Lost in each of their own thoughts, the three were silent for the rest of the night and it was only at the crack of dawn when they slowly dozed off one by one.
Pairing: Kris/Lay/Luhan
Genre: Friendship, Historical!AU
Rating: G
Word Count: 2,342 words
Summary: When the number of people you know only amount to fourteen in total, how difficult is it to leave them and start a new life for yourself with two others out of the fourteen?
A/N: I admit it, I write horribly. :/ THERE IS NO FILTER BETWEEN MY BRAIN AND MY MOUTH! (... or my fingers)
Chapter 1
Three boys were crouched together on the beach, scrabbling at the sand with their bare hands. Their heads were put together while they concentrated intently on whatever they were doing. Honey brown locks fell into the eyes of two of the boys, while the last had a deep chestnut brown mop of hair. Coconut shells were half buried in sand, and damp spots where the sticky sweet coconut water had spilt were obvious in the blindingly white ground.
“Run!” One of the boys yelled, dropping the stick in the white, powdery grains and leaping to his feet before taking off down the length of the beach.
Another boy scrambled quickly after the taller youth, leaving behind the one with chestnut brown hair staring after them with a panicky expression. Just as he made to stand up and dash off after the two, a large man came crashing out from the bushes near the shore and immediately grabbed the small boy by the collar of his shirt.
“Yixing!” The man bellowed, shaking the boy roughly with one hand. “You again? When I saw my stash of coconuts gone this morning I just knew that it had to be you and your friends who stole them! Where’re they? Hand them over right now!”
The boy named Yixing stayed silent, and tried not to look down at the coconuts that were half-hidden. However, his eyes betrayed him, and the man with the thick neck noticed the repeated glances at the hiding spot of the coconuts.
Turning back to Yixing, he began to shake the boy even more vigorously then ever. “What is wrong with you? Why can’t you people just stop stealing for once? Don’t you know better than that? That’s the problem with kids who don’t have responsible parents. The offspring are normally no better than stray dogs in their manners-” The man cut off mid-sentence with a strangled cry, roughly tossing Yixing the to the side.
He gripped his arm in pain and looked at the boy who he had just verbally and physically abused. Yixing stood up unsteadily on his feet, panting from the obvious anger that he felt. His piercing gaze burned into the man’s face and his stubborn set of jaw told him that he was prepared to fight back should the man try to manhandle him again. Or even worse, insult his parents.
“Why you little prick.” The fat man muttered and took a step towards Yixing, who stood his ground and wiped his mouth, trying to clean the salty taste of the man’s arm from his tongue.
At that moment, pebbles and rotten eggs were pelted at the large man from somewhere in the bushes.
“Kris! Luhan!” The man cried out in frustration and turned onto the duo that had hidden in the bushes. “Your parents will be hearing of this! I’ll see that all of you are shipped off the island!” He huffed and kicked a huge cloud of sand at Yixing, covering the boy with the small dry grains before lumbering off the beach.
“I bet we were the ones who scared him off.” Luhan commented, climbing out of the bushes and brushing himself off.
“Why’d you guys come back.” Yixing said, making it more of a statement than a question.
The taller of the two shrugged. “We were worried that old man Hanwen would have your head for stealing coconuts, and we didn’t want you to take the blame for it when we were the ones who were craving coconuts anyway.”
“Kris, you know that’s not how it was.” Yixing said, annoyed. There was no way that it was Kris and Luhan’s fault alone. The fact that Yixing himself had allowed himself to go astray and soil his family’s name once again is of no one’s fault but his own.
Luhan sighed and turned towards the partially concealed fruits still sticking out like a sore thumb in the flat surface of the beach. “Let’s get back to finishing this job before other people find it. Maybe if our parents can’t find evidence of our misbehavior we won’t get scolded.”
The three boys turned back to the offending fruit in the ground and resumed their first action of scrabbling at the ground with their bare hands.
--
The tall, strapping youth scrambled to pick up the fruits that had fallen out of his basket and onto the ground. Bruised apples rolled down the gentle slope and out of his sight. Cursing under his breath, he started down the hill after salvaging whatever he could.
He cradled a small wicker basket in his arms, barely half-filled with rotting fruits.
“Did you manage to get much?” A boy, much shorter than him, asked.
Kris shook his head in reply just as a third with dark hair joined them.
“I didn’t find much on my side.” Yixing reported, looking at the two of them, hoping for good news.
Luhan shook his head to confirm a negative, and Yixing’s shoulders slumped in disappointment.
The three young men walked back to a medium-sized but slowly expanding village after fetching the fruit that had rolled down the hill. Setting down his basket of fruits, Kris turned to the rest and began to speak. “We found a lot less than usual today.”
“You say that every day, Kris. And today’s Yixing’s twenty-first birthday! Go on, say something different.” Luhan complained, setting to work and picking up a fruit knife.
Kris selected a knife of his own and began slicing off the rotting portions of an apple. “It can’t be helped. We really tried our best, but nothing much can be done about it if the trees refuse to bear more fruit. Besides, it’s the same amount of fruit that's being produced every year. It's just that, over time, more and more people are to be fed. And the food supply doesn’t get any bigger, so we just have less and less to eat.”
Yixing examined a pear quietly, patiently cutting off only the bad parts and salvaging whatever that could be eaten. After that, he heated up a pot of water atop a stove lit by firewood and dumped the fruits in it. The smell of boiling fruit soup could be smelt from blocks away, thanks to the mixture of pungent odours that came when the aging of the seasons meant older fruits.
A pair of grimy hands gripped the windowsill and a young boy peered into the small and dingy kitchen. “Fruit soup again?” He whined, eyebrows knitting in disgust. “It’s smells worse than before!”
Yixing merely told the boy to wash his hands and to tell the others at the soup kitchen that the food would be ready soon. The boy nodded, reached over and soaked his hands in the bucket of water and gagged at the thought of fruit soup once more before pulling back out from the window.
“They don’t even appreciate our help.” Luhan said bitterly. “Even old man Hanwen has to come to us for our help now, when he himself hated us so much when we were younger.”
“We were young, we were stupid.” Yixing retorted. “There was a good reason for Hanwen to dislike us. We stole his hard-earned goods, for goodness sakes.”
“He has a point there.” Kris chimed in, expertly slicing a mango into small, uniform cubes before tossing them into the pot.
Luhan stirred the steaming broth with a wooden ladle before tasting it and making a face. “Uck, it’s sour.”
Yixing leaned over and tasted the soup. “Yeah, must be the over-ripe guavas.”
Luhan shuddered. “Guavas are an evil fruit. Why’re we even eating them?”
“Because there’s nothing else to eat but whatever we pick off from the ground.” Kris reminded him.
“Must be nice to be able to eat whatever we want.” Luhan sighed with longing as he evenly distributed the fruit soup and brought it out of the kitchen to the waiting area where people young and old would be awaiting their free meal of the day.
Yixing remembered when there was no shortage of food. Of course, back then, there were a lot less people too. Everyone managed to live off the animals on the island and the fruits and plants provided by the trees and other vegetation when they were around five years old. Food difficulties began when they were around ten years old. The hunger crept up on them, as well as the realization that there simply wasn’t enough food to go around. The stealing and thieving started, when people would shamelessly eat food from their neighbour’s food storage, and guard their own stores with jealousy and suspicion.
Back then; when they were hungry, it wasn’t so bad yet. You could find plenty of food if you looked hard if enough. But now, the animals had died out, there were no more chickens-the last one ended up being illegally cooked by someone who was starving-and other animals were scarce and highly endangered on the island. Well, at least people believed that there were animals left to create the hope of being able to eat something other than fruits and vegetables in the future. But Yixing felt that it wasn't true, that the animals had all died out long ago.
No one left the island much, it was a foreign world out there and although it was hard to get by, at least people could survive here. No one wanted to risk death like how Yixing’s parents did, even though there were fishing boats that could function well enough. They took off one day after much deliberation, and there has been no news of them since. No one knew whether they had lived or died, and no one wanted to face the same uncertainty if they chose to leave the island.
The island became a small, untouched bubble of slow starvation and false happiness. But it was quite clear that if the population didn’t stop growing, there wouldn’t be enough food for everyone for long. There were now fifteen people on the island. Fifteen! It started off with five people, and now it’s triple the size. An island this small isn’t enough to provide sustenance for so many hungry individuals.
Yixing had always dreamed of leaving the island to look for a better place to live in, maybe another small island where things would be pretty much the same, but with enough food.
The once healthily muscular juvenile now looked a little thin for his age. He was still lean from all the trekking around the island that he did with Kris and Luhan, but he was a lot thinner than he would have liked. Fat is needed for survival, and if he were to be trapped somewhere in a disaster or without food, Yixing would be one of the first to die.
All three boys looked leaner, but Luhan was the one who looked the healthiest. Although he was the oldest among the three, Kris and Yixing had a tendency to ensure that their childish elder would be well fed before eating their own shares.
Yixing had just completed the task of washing up the cutting equipment when a loud crash was heard from outside. Kris darted out the door when yells began.
“Clumsy oaf!” Hanwen yelled at Luhan, putting his arms on his once thick waist that now looking considerably slimmer.
Luhan had finished distributing most of the fruit soup bowls to the other tables, but when it came to Hanwen’s table, he had tripped over Hanwen’s small son who had suddenly dashed from the table to examine an insect on the ground.
Although Luhan managed to avoid landing on the terrified youngster, he had spilt fruit soup all over Hanwen and broken a bowl. The other had clattered harmlessly against the table. Piles of mushy fruits and thick liquid dripped from the table and onto the muddy ground.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Why don’t you watch where you’re going? You almost tripped over my son!” Hanwen roared, gesticulating wildly at Luhan.
Luhan had helped Hanwen’s son back on his feet, but his face grew considerably darker as Hanwen hurled insults at him. Kris sensed Luhan’s oncoming temper tantrum, and hurried forward to stop any further arguments from erupting. However, Luhan snapped before Kris could stop him. Wordlessly, Luhan ripped off the apron that he was wearing and balled it up before flinging it at Hanwen’s face. Kris stared open-mouthed at Luhan as the latter stalked off towards the kitchen.
“I’m so sorry.” Yixing apologised, placing a new bowl of fruit soup down in front of Hanwen and using Luhan’s discarded apron to wipe off the spilt soup.
That night, Luhan sat with folded arms, refusing the bowl of fruit soup that Yixing and Kris passed over to him.
“I’m not hungry.” He muttered.
“You will be.” Kris warned, settling down to eat his own bowl of fruit soup.
Luhan shook his head obstinately, but stared curiously at Yixing when he realized that Yixing had assumed a position much like his own. “Aren’t you eating?” Luhan asked. Then, realizing that there were only two bowls on the table, his eyes widened. “Where’s your bowl? You didn’t give it to Hanwen, did you?”
Yixing stayed silent, his eyes fixed on the plant in the opposite corner of the room.
“Oh my god, you gave it to that jerk?” Luhan took a deep breath, calming himself and pushed his bowl of fruit soup over to Yixing. “Here, you eat.”
“I can’t possibly… It’s yours.” Yixing replied.
“It’s my fault that the food got wasted.” Luhan retorted, pushing the bowl towards Yixing once more. “There’s no point in trying to make it seem like your fault this time, Yixing.”
“But…”
“No buts! I’m your elder! Eat it if you respect me! Besides, you’re the birthday boy, not me.”
At this, Kris snorted into his bowl of soup and tried in vain to hide a grin that spread across his face.
Yixing tentatively picked up the bowl and nodded his thanks to Luhan. He then began to shovel down the food quickly.
“We can’t go on like this forever.” Luhan whispered.
Yixing and Kris looked at each other before looking back to Luhan.
“Sooner or later, and it’s most likely going to be sooner, we’re going to run out of food. And what then? Everyone will be scrambling to leave the island. It’s going to be every man for himself. And what of us, then? No one will think of helping us.”
Kris stayed quiet, but Yixing surprised the both of them by speaking up. “Actually, I’ve thought of that too. And I’ve been meaning to propose this plan to you guys, but I’ve never really had the guts to. It’s… a crazy, dangerous plan but it’s the only thing that we can do. Let’s leave the island. We can gather food, as much as we can for days, and then we set off with it. We can either choose to do this, or die slowly here.”
His two friends sat in silence as they digested what had just been presented to them.
“You’re right. It’s crazy, it’s dangerous, and I like it.” Luhan said, a slow smile spreading across his face.
Kris, on the other hand, was more doubtful. “What about the people back here on the island? We’re just going to abandon them to help themselves? What if we don’t make it to wherever we’re going?”
“It’s a huge risk, so we won’t know where we’re going.” Yixing explained. “As for the people here… they’ve relied on us for years since we started the soup kitchen. But if we stay here, it’s not going to help them; we’re only a short-term solution. At least if we leave for good, they’ll have more food to go around. We can bring some of them along with us too.”
“Bring them along?” Luhan screwed his nose and furrowed his eyebrows. “Doesn’t sound good to me. I definitely don’t want Hanwen on the same boat as me. Ugh.”
Yixing ignored Luhan and continued. “So… it’s a plan?”
“Definitely. Just no Hanwen please.” Luhan confirmed.
Kris nodded reluctantly, looking as if he still had some questions he wanted to clarify.
“Then from today onwards, we’ll collect fruit for five days, and then we’ll notify everyone of our departure, so it won’t be too sudden. That okay with you all?” Yixing questioned.
The other two boys nodded. Lost in each of their own thoughts, the three were silent for the rest of the night and it was only at the crack of dawn when they slowly dozed off one by one.