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Reaping day was never an easy day for anyone. You stood in the middle of a crowd watching people you know getting picked out of a glittery fishbowl and getting sent to their death. When you were old enough they would put your name in until that lucky day you were too old to be picked.
For boys like Shouyou reaping day was especially hard. The Capitol would separate you them by gender. Which would have been fine had they let Shouyou sit with his actual gender. No the Capitol in its own infinite wisdom would scoff at him. He would be banished to the girl’s section with Hinata Tsubasa emblazoned upon his chest, leaving the poor boy both terrified and dysphoric. Especially since his name was in extra in the hopes he could get a little extra something for Natsu to eat.
On the year of the fifty-second Hunger Games, a fifteen year old Shouyou found himself quaking in his nicest boots. The Capitol’s representative a bright young man that most people referred to as Take-chan took ahold of the stage just as Panem’s anthem rung through the whole district. One of the boys who had been tribute two years ago, Asahi had once called it musical dread. Hinata could still hear that year’s other tribute Daichi calling Azumane too morbid with a half forced laugh.
Shouyou tried not to think about his friends who had gone into the arena too much. There were not a lot of young people in his district. All of the teenagers seemed to know one another. Especially as their numbers dwindled with the double tributes two years earlier. Hinata’s fists clenched so hard his palms started to bleed. A couple of years ago, his district had been on top of it’s game. Winners all around that had been before Ukai retired as mentor. Now they had lost ten tributes in four years.
“Tradition says I have to pick ladies first.”
The word pick dragged Hinata’s attention back up to the stage while Take-chan stuck his hand in the name filled fish bowl.
“Hinata Tsubasa!”
Vomit rose in Hinata’s throat. His birth name, the wrong name echoed through the crowd. He felt a hand at the small of his back as someone pushed him out of the lines of a girls.
How could this happen? He was not a girl. He should not have been picked for the girl’s name.
Shouyou stumbled his way up the stairs, for the first time in a long time he did not run to his destination. The boy’s feet felt eight times too large for his body as he dragged himself up to the stage. The ground would not open up to swallow him whole like he had hoped it would. When he finally found himself looking out on the crowd of people Hinata felt sick all over again. He did not belong here.
“I-I’m not a girl, I’m a boy.”
Hinata barely got the words out of his dry terrified throat when he reached the platform.
“Would anyone volunteer to take his place then?”
Take-chan looked sympathetic, he really did but they both knew unless a girl raised her hand to replace him in the arena Shouyou was stuck there. Judging by all of the shifting faces in the crowd it did not look like anyone was going to come save him. Why would they?
“Sorry, Hinata but we need to pick the boy-other boy.”
Take-chan’s hands went straight into the other fishbowl with another sympathetic look toward Shouyou.
“Kageyama Tobio!”
Hinata had known of Kageyama, he was a tall boy with straight black hair and usually an even straighter face. Hinata had played Volleyball with him once, he was great at it. He was so skilled, Hinata knew what that meant his slim chances had finished dropping to zero. Tobio was bigger and better than him at almost everything.
Tobio pulled himself up the stairs with a nervous shake in his step that Hinata could not have imagined the boy he had played against having. Take-chan leaned up into the microphone to ask for a volunteer. No hands raised for him either.
“Here they are.” Take-chan grasped for Kageyama and Hinata’s hands. Both boys flinched before their arms were raised into the air. “Your tributes for the fifty second hunger games.”