Chapter Text
Porsche was having a wonderful day, as far as possible. Actually, his days were mostly wonderful because he always did the same things.
He had a small bookshelf with 17 different stories. Paint to paint as much as he wanted, a guitar and a flute. He even had drawing pencils – though he was still trying to learn it because he was simply shit at it. He asked himself if it was normal; knowing how to paint but not to draw.
There was also a small place for working out, with a pull-up bar and some weights to work out his members – small equipments his father thought important for his health.
What he didn’t have was something new, a new experience. There wasn’t almost any free space to paint in his tower. Soon he would have to paint the walls in just one color and begin everything again. Sometimes he would sit in the window’s parapet and paint the paving stones around it.
All he wanted was to leave and see the sea. He wanted to see one of the drinks he had read in his favorite book, the one where there was fire in it. Drink it while he admired the sea. The ocean must be beautiful, he had only ever read descriptions of it, never saw an image.
Lying down on his belly on a hammock close to his room’s ceiling, Porsche used his foot to balance himself side to side.
He would never be able to leave this place, though. His father had made it clear; if he left, a group of dangerous people would kidnap him to use him as leverage. Porsche couldn’t be the reason for his father to get hurt. He had read everything about family abduction his father had bought. It was terrible.
“You can never leave this place, Porsche. It isn’t safe, you wouldn’t know how to defend yourself. Don’t ever ask me to leave the tower again, do you understand?”
To this day, even though five years had passed after hearing that, it still hurt. He has harbored the idea that he would be free at eighteen ever since his father commented he had left his house in this age. Porsche thought he could do the same thing, but apparently the world had changed in all these years. There were gangs everywhere and most people spent their lives inside their homes, not daring to leave.
He would die there, without seeing anything or anyone different.
His depressing daydreams were interrupted by a happy shout. Porsche quickly turned his body to look down. He got excited, it had been only two days since the last time he saw his father – he was ecstatic at not having to wait for another eight days before talking to another person again.
Only, what he saw wasn’t his father. It was an unknown man that was wearing a white shirt dirty with blood. The weirdo was putting his face inside the river.
Wait, it was an intruder!
Porsche jumped from his hammock, holding the tissue not to fall straight away and hurt his legs. He ran to the window, looking through a hole between the paving stones to see better.
A man, just like him. He couldn’t see well because his tower was meters above the soil, but he could see the man had huge eyebrows.
He almost jumped back in fear when the stranger looked at his direction, but remembered he was hidden by the wall.
“You wouldn’t know how to defend yourself…”
“That was it! He smiled, hitting his fist on his open palm. It the unknown man got inside his tower, Porsche only had to capture him and wait to show his father that yes, he could defend himself. That he wasn’t a child anymore.
He ran to the kitchen, looking for something to defend himself. A knife? No, he didn’t think he’d be able to kill the stranger. His head turned left and right while he tried to decide what to choose.
Oh, his eyes focused in the perfect object. Yes, that would be perfect indeed.
Getting back to his room, Porsche looked through the hole again and saw that the intruder was climbing his tower. He hid behind the widow shutter.
I’m really gonna do it, he thought, smiling to himself. Pa will be so impressed he will take me with him next time he goes out to hunt for food.
He watched with his hand above his head the intruder sit in the middle of his room. That was is best shot. As soon as the unknown man looked at the opposite direction, Porsche closed his eyes and brought down hard the frying pan.
Two sounds resonated successively: first came the noise from the impact of the metal against the man’s head and next the one of his unconscious body hitting the ground.
**
Kinn aimed the gun at one of the shooters and pulled the trigger. He shot two times, but the next one didn’t go off, he didn’t have any more bullets. He threw his pistol away, pissed. That was his last charged one.
“Go, Khun Kinn, we’ll hold them off!” Big shouted, his left shoulder had been hit and he held it with the hand that wasn’t holding the gun.
Kinn didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to abandon his people and run away, but the instincts instilled in his head went way back, back to the time he was a child and they were stronger than his wishes; he ran.
There were trees everywhere; he didn’t know where to go. He wasn’t raised to survive in forest, but had seen enough movies to know that finding the water course was the best option.
While he ran through the stony trail, holding his arms in front of his face to protect it, he felt the pain of the branches that hit his skin. He knew he had to get as far as possible; if the others weren’t able to kill the enemy he couldn’t allow for their sacrifice to be in vain by getting caught.
Kinn had the impression of having been running for hours. His feet hurt, every time he made a step a burst of pain spread through it.
He was sure the sole of his feet was full of callous by now, but everytime he tried to stop and rest for a bit, the sounds of the forest caused his anxiety to go through the roof.
Stopping wasn’t an option at the moment, not until he found a road or a safe place to hide and recover.
He tried to turn his phone up once again. It was completely dead.
Night time was coming and any chance he had of locating himself would be gone with the dark. He was thirsty, hungry and his mind didn’t stop screaming that he was going to get eaten by a wild animal.
His only option was to climb a tree and get ready for a night spent on the cold. Careful not to choose a tree that had an animal, he strained his eyes to see and make sure there weren’t any snakes or a hive on the trunk.
“Shit.” Sitting down after six hours of walk was a huge relief. He didn’t feel his legs and his feet screamed with pain. He carefully took of his shoes, inspecting the members. They seemed to be swollen, but he wasn’t sure because the trees’ leafs were obscuring the moonlight.
Chay and his dad must be two nervous wrecks by now. Shit, Tankhun is probably having a breakdown. Kim would start a party to commemorate his disappearance, the little shit. Maybe Vegas would decide to participate and ruin his fun. Kinn sure hoped so.
He smiled, yeah. They were probably doing that.
Adjusting himself on the hard trunk, Kinn stretched his legs. Honestly, this couldn’t be worse.
His stomach growled, reminding him he hadn’t eaten since lunch. Oh, yeah. There was also that.
Now he could say for sure: things couldn’t be worse.
**
Kinn woke up with his drops of water hitting his body. A hailstorm fell into his face right after, making him put his hands in his face and sit. “Ow, shit! Fuck! He tried to cover his head and run for shelter, forgetting that he was in a trunk, three meters above ground.
The fall was fast, he barely had time to feel the panic of being in plain air before his back hit the floor. He lost his breath, making a face. Trying to sit, he didn’t know if his body was this hurt because of the fall or because he was getting a cold.
Kinn rolled to his side, feeling the pain spread from his nape to the small of his back. Tomorrow he would be purple everywhere. That is, if he even survives this night.
He was soaked wet by now, his whole body shaking every few seconds. He could feel his willpower slowly fade away, the feeling of helplessness getting a grip on his chest. What was he going to do?
He crawled until the beginning of a mountain. It was covered in vegetation and vines and he tried to hid behind it, pulling his legs close to his body and covering his face on them. To his horror, his eyes started to prickle. Kinn threw his face back against the makeshift wall, hoping the pain of the hit would stop the desperation he was feeling, but what he felt was empty air.
This time the fall made him go down a hill, tumbling, until he found himself face-planted down a river bank.
Suddenly the pain wasn’t that important. He had found water!
Kinn got up in a rush, almost losing his ground once or twice until he reached the river. He threw his face in, filling his mouth with water a couple of times and only getting back to the surface when his stomach was full. A small pain flared on his belly, but he knew it was caused by dehydration.
He lied down on his back breathless and looked to the open sky above him, all the trees surrounding the small valley and the immensity blue of the sky went on and on until the walls of the mountains surrounding it covered his line of sight.
It was dawning. He couldn’t stop himself, he laughed. He laughed and laughed until he felt like a crazy person. He couldn’t believe his luck. That whole place seems like an oasis, how lucky could he be to find a place like that?
Sitting up, he looked back to where he had fallen and understood what happened: the vines that covered the side of the mountain worked as some sort of curtain that hid the entry of the valley. He looked around, trying to see what else he could find and when he saw a rock structure he had to do a double take. His shin fell. Was that a tower? A tower in the middle of the forest? Could it be that after hitting his head so many times he developed a concussion and was now hallucinating?
Kinn got up, incredulous. He had to see from close. It was a 100 meters walk, at most. It could serve as a shelter, maybe it even had some clothes he could wear so he could get out of his wet ones. If it was a smuggler’s place he could even find some food, maybe even guns, but for that he would have to climb.
Scouring through his pockets, Kinn found a knife. He knew he had another one on the cross belt he wore around his torso. He tested his strength by stabbing between the paving stones that were used to build the tower. Yeah, he could to that.
Looking up once more, he gave himself a quick pep talk to try and climb at least ten meters of wall without any protections.
**
By the middle of the way his muscles already trembled with the effort of carrying his whole body. His foot searched for a bit of support on a bulge caused by a paving stone that was a bit out of place, barely finding any.
Kinn was drenched in sweat. His hair gel dripped down his forehead and got in his eyes, forcing him to blink several times in a row to try to decrease the burning.
Finally, after what he thought was eight minutes of climb, he grabbed the wooden jamb of the window and, with a groan, he propelled his body up.
As soon as his body was halfway inside the tower, Kinn rolled his legs inside and lied down on the floor, breathing heavily.
After getting a hold of his breath, he sat on his thighs, trying to get used to the unknown environment, but he didn’t have time to see much because seconds later a blow on his nape caused him to black out.