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“C.H.A.N., what’s the meaning of life?”
“According to my dictionary, the definition of life is the condition that distinguishes animals and plants−“
“No, the meaning, not the definition,” Minho interrupted.
The gears and mechanics that made up C.H.A.N.’s head clicked and whirred.
“I do not know,” the android finally responded.
“Hmm.”
Minho hummed quietly under his breath, looking out over the grasslands that awaited them once they came down from the mountain. The grasslands were a wide expanse that went from slightly forested to wide open plains if you went far enough, and even further it lead to the desert. Nomads tended to inhabit the grasslands and you had to be careful you weren’t attacked by some groups who were more prone to stealing and raiding.
It was a far cry from civilization and an even further cry from whatever life had been before the apocalypse had happened and the human world had collapsed in on itself. Civilization as how it had once been known no longer existed, people fighting to survive every day. Entire towns gone, cities left in crumbling ruins. Word was now passed from mouth to mouth, the occasional radio if you were lucky enough to know how to use one, cell towers and the internet completely gone outside of the rare but still useless access point. Minho didn’t even really remember much outside of the life he had been living now, memories fuzzy if he had them.
Mostly, he just remembered the day civilization died. Fire in the sky, blurry images of androids and robots tearing everything apart. Screaming, lots of screaming, his vision being obscured. The one searing moment in his brain that would probably be there until the day he died.
Then it was just black nothing for several years.
C.H.A.N. seemed to have similar issues, but it didn’t happen super often. The dent in the housing that made up his head spoke for itself. Whatever had hit him had done so hard enough to jar and damage his memory systems in a way that Minho couldn’t fix. Didn’t have the skills to fix. Even most mechanics and engineers they had met, though rare, had been unable to solve the issue.
A human and an android with the same issue.
Ironic.
“It’s almost like standing on the edge of the world,” C.H.A.N. suddenly said, interrupting Minho’s train of thought. The white and grey painted android came to stand next to Minho, gold-coloured optics survey the landscape eagerly.
“I suppose so,” Minho agreed. A shutter noise came from C.H.A.N. as the android took a picture, another one of the many that he had taken since he started travelling with Minho.
“Let’s go then,” C.H.A.N. said, taking a little hop before he slid down the side of the mountain until he reached the trail, Minho following much more slowly so he didn’t injure himself.
The idea was to get across the grasslands to see if there were any established towns or camps or anything to add to the map that Minho had slowly been building over the years. For who, he didn’t know, since he didn’t have a way to circulate it, so for now it was something just for himself, C.H.A.N. creating a digital copy of it somewhere in his memory in case they ever lost the paper one Minho kept in his pack.
The hope was that there would be more people, ones that were friendly, and that would take well to Minho travelling with a robot. Most people tended to keep their distance from them, few would outright attack him and C.H.A.N., since the android was currently one of the most advanced technological pieces left on the ruined planet and thus was very valuable if you could get over the fact that he might turn on you and kill you, like the others had.
Which he wouldn’t. C.H.A.N. was pretty harmless, unless you really got after Minho and tried to hurt him. Then the android would activate fight mode and take down whoever was trying to hurt Minho.
For a robot, the lack of self-preservation instincts was truly astonishing. The overprotective Killer Dad Mode, as Minho had taken to calling it, was also truly flabbergasting.
He was just glad that C.H.A.N. was there to make things feel a little less lonely.
~~~
No one dared to cross the desert. Not even if they had enough supplies to reach the other side (a seven-day trek, if you were lucky enough to not have any incidents), not even if they were desperate.
No one crossed the desert.
Yet, here Minho was, standing at the edge of it, C.H.A.N.’s metal upper body strapped across his back over the top of his pack, the android’s heels dragging against the ground. The raiders that had attacked him, if they could really be called that, considering it was just Minho and his pack of supplies, and C.H.A.N., not an entire camp with a dozen or so people or even a small family, catching him and C.H.A.N. off guard since they had been brazen enough to do it in broad daylight, when they would have been easily spotted.
One of them had been wielding an axe that he had hammered through C.H.A.N.’s chest and taken out several major wires and parts, and severed the connection to his power source, the robot dropping to the ground lifeless within seconds, oil and wires spilling out everywhere.
Minho had managed to fight them off, using his electric baton that had packed enough of a punch to completely knock one of the men out, the other two running for the hills when they saw their companion drop to the ground, though one had turned around and taken a pot-shot with a gun that Minho hadn’t even noticed he was holding, the bullet embedding itself in Minho’s shoulder. He hadn’t stuck around to see when (or if) the guy woke up, or if the men had decided to turn back around and take their chances again, getting C.H.A.N. gathered together as much as possible before strapping him to the pack so he would be easier to carry.
Heaven forbid he ever get attached to a robot, an android no less. While he was grateful for the companionship, he hadn’t meant to get attached. Yet somewhere along the line, he had.
Minho scoffed at the thought. Scuffed the toe of his boot against the line where grasslands turned to sand. Watched the winds stir up a dust devil and blow across the desert expanse.
There was a way to go around the desert. But it required at least two more weeks travel on foot. Between the oil C.H.A.N. had been leaking (oil that was probably starting to seep into Minho’s precious pack) and the blood slowly dripping down Minho’s back and chest from his poorly wrapped shoulder wound, currently numb thanks to whatever was in the medical supplies he had come across at the last camp he had raided in the grasslands on the way of trying to escape the trio of raiders coming after him and C.H.A.N., crossing the desert was the fastest option, even if it was the most dangerous.
On the other side of the desert was an oasis. Well, not so much an oasis as a simple base, built from the ruins of the town that had once surrounded it, only a few miles away from a sinkhole that had swallowed the town’s main electrical grid and half its residents. Minho had stumbled upon it and its one lone resident, two if you counted the annoyingly chipper medical droid that accompanied the lone resident, a self-taught medic, by accident long before he had ever met C.H.A.N.. The kid was friendly enough, if a little prickly, and Minho had made sure to add the location on his map in case he wasn’t able to find his way back with his flimsy memory.
So far as Minho knew, it was the closest place to him in general that would be able to provide medical care that wasn’t suspicious or leave him with a higher risk of infection and be able to repair C.H.A.N.. Plus he trusted the town’s lone resident more than he trusted anyone else currently (C.H.A.N. notwithstanding. He wasn’t human. It was different in Minho’s mind.)
Honestly, if he didn’t have the android, he would’ve risked some other base or taken care of his shoulder himself by raiding a few pharmacies or drug stores to get what he needed once he got out of the grasslands and further southeast where people were slowly building a sprawling settlement that was still almost as lawless as the rest of the world but still had the bigger supply of medical items that he couldn’t get unless he went really, really far north.
But no. He just had to get attached to an android that was the last of its kind, a kind that had turned on humanity and accidentally caused the apocalypse that had Minho wandering around the world like a lost soul for the rest of his life.
With the pain starting to dig into his shoulder and make itself known, Minho hiked his pack and C.H.A.N., higher up on his back and crossed the border into the desert, dimly hopeful that he might make it to the other side without dying.
~~~
He figured out quickly that it was better to travel at night, even with all the wildlife that roamed around. Minho saw everything from coyotes to owls to weird tusked pigs that ran as fast as the wind when startled. The daytime was hot and spent hiding underneath any shade he could find to wait out the heat, sleep come in fits as he tried to nap the day away. He ran out of water a day and a half before he was at the other side, and in a forever hazy blur, found himself collapsing in heap at Seungmin’s doorstep from blood loss and dehydration.
The medic was not amused when Minho finally came to.
“You were that close to being dead,” Seungmin said, barely any space between the two fingers he was pinching together to emphasis his point.
“Sounds lovely,” Minho rasped out with a smirk.
Seungmin just rolled his eyes and huffed, stalking out of the med bay. “Next time you do that, I won’t save you! I’ll just leave you out in the front of my door to rot and turn into a skeleton and scare away any other potential visitors!” he called over his shoulder, voice getting quieter the further away he got.
“Love you, too!” Minho yelled back, regretting it when his throat protested at the volume.
There was no response and Minho took it as an opportunity to relax and take in his surroundings. The med bay wasn’t a new sight, Seungmin being the closest thing Minho had to a friend these days, and thus the only one who had managed to win his trust to deal with any major injuries Minho came to him with, since most others with medical knowledge that you came across out in the wild were more likely to poison you or just leave you for dead if you weren’t a part of their group.
Minho didn’t quite understand the cruelty of it, why people wouldn’t want to help others out, even if it was just something basic, but whatever. He wasn’t exactly in a place to pass any judgements, having left a few people for dead himself (though usually he made sure they were too far gone to be saved before he just tried to help them be as comfortable as possible before they passed).
Seungmin’s base was a safe haven, one he had built all by himself over the years, salvaging equipment and supplies from the surrounding area until he had become self-sufficient to the level that he wouldn’t have to ever leave if he didn’t want to. It was a marvel, truly genius, and even though Minho would never say it directly to Seungmin’s face, he was impressed and maybe a little bit awed at what the young man had accomplished by himself. He had even managed to piece together a J.I.S.U.N.G. helper medical droid that like to float around and try to scare Minho on occasion, the little spherical droid often using the little flying boosters he had to zip out of Minho’s reach if he poked a little too much fun at the human.
Minho’s out of the med bay with his arm in a sling by the end of the day and working on C.H.A.N., piecing him together since he was the only one capable of it, Seungmin offering his thoughts here and there. It takes a week but then C.H.A.N. is back online and functioning as close to what normal is for him.
Seungmin and Minho watched C.H.A.N. putter around the base, organizing this and that as he moved along, picking up objects and looking them over as he categorized them into his database, picking up and learning more new information with each object. Things he either didn’t know, hadn’t learned about, or had forgotten entirely.
“Once meant to be humanity’s helper,” Seungmin said, sounding like he was observing another scene and not the one in front of him. “And he’s the last one.”
“Yup.”
Minho adjusted the sling his arm was still in. He hated proper medical care under someone who had proper training because it meant rules but he hated the idea of getting an infection and dying from it more, so he dealt with the sling. Dealt with Seungmin. Dealt with the J.I.S.U.N.G. droid that Seungmin used to keep track of his patients while they were in the base.
C.H.A.N. dropped something. Let out an exclamation. Bent down and picked it back up and set it in its proper place.
“You know, I don’t remember how it happened,” Seungmin suddenly said. “I don’t know if I was too young or it was all just too traumatic so my mind shut it out and blocked the memories…”
Minho understood that. His own early memories were sketchy on his best days. He was pretty sure that his family had had a nanny droid that was all rounded edges and soft feminine features, designed to prevent the catching of children’s fingers in joints, unlike the clearly more worker-style build C.H.A.N. was.
What had those nanny droids been called…
“Fire rained from the sky,” Minho said, instead. “I think it might have just been the droids flying about but to a young child…well, you know how imagination is.”
“Yeah.” Seungmin rolled his shoulders as he stood, something in his back popping from the movement. “You sure he won’t turn on you?”
“Oh no.”
Minho watched C.H.A.N. drop something else, the stupid Australian accent they had accidentally got his voice modulator stuck on putting an emphasis on the drawn out ‘no’ that had been uttered. “I’m sure. He’s just as broken as the rest of us.”
~~~
Meeting Hyunjin was either a blessing or a curse. Minho hadn’t decided yet. He didn’t know if he ever would.
The young graffiti artist had been taking a can of spray paint to C.H.A.N.’s chest plate with careful precision, the android standing patiently right where Minho had left him before entering the grocery store to see if there was anything left he could stash away.
“What are you doing to my android?”
The boy let out a scream, limbs flailing as he tried to turn around fast enough, spray paint can flying through the air as he dropped it and somehow, amongst all his flailing, managed to pull out the knife on his belt and point it at Minho.
Minho blinked and stared down the young boy with flaming red hair that you probably could see a mile away at night.
“I have a knife,” the boy said. He wiggled it a little, probably meaning to be threatening but honestly coming off as…Not That.
“I can see that.” Minho looked at C.H.A.N.. “What are you doing letting a stranger paint you? What have I told you about stranger danger?”
C.H.A.N. lowered his head slightly, an action Minho had come to learn mean shame. “Sorry, Minho. He was just so friendly! And he offered to cover all of this white and grey.” The android gestured at the general white, grey, and black colour scheme he had, as per the specifications of his model of robot.
Minho flicked his eyes over to the boy. “You really have no idea, do you?”
“Uhh, no?” The boy shuffled back a bit, suddenly looking scared. “Are you guys bounty hunters or something? Cause I swear I’m not looking for trouble. Just wanted to help a guy, robot, thing out.”
Minho sighed and looked up to the sky, wondering why it seemed to be his lot in life to be taking care of wayward children and robots. This one couldn’t be any older than Seungmin, if not the same age.
Definitely with less preservation instincts, though.
“I’ll just, be taking my leave now.” The boy turned to leave and made as if he was about to run off when C.H.A.N. reached out and grabbed his arm with the hand holding the knife, pulling up so the boy had to stand on his tiptoes if he didn’t want to be hanging by his arm.
“Oh I don’t think so,” Minho said with a smirk, prying the knife out of the boy’s grip and tucking it away on his own person. The boy kicked out at Minho, an action easily dodged.
C.H.A.N. tilted his head as he watched Minho look over the rather scrawny kid. “Do you think he has a bounty?”
“I dunno. Do you have a bounty, kid?”
The boy kept his lips closed together tightly, not saying a word.
“Now you refuse to talk? Interesting. C.H.A.N., can you run a scan of his face?”
“Already done.” C.H.A.N.’s head clicked and whirred mechanically as he gathered the information to then relay it to Minho. “Hwang Hyunjin, wanted for theft, vandalism, and two cases of arson.”
Minho snorted. “Arson?”
“Alleged,” The kid, Hyunjin, mumbled.
“What’s the bounty, C.H.A.N.?”
The number C.H.A.N. rattled off was enough to make Minho let out a low whistle. “Wow, you must have ticked off some pretty powerful people to have a bounty that high on your head.”
“The Pirate Kings, in fact,” C.H.A.N. stated with a vague tone of excitement. “One of the worst gangs known to this post-apocalyptic world.”
“You ticked off the Pirate Kings?!” Minho exclaimed, eyebrows shooting into the air.
Hyunjin shrugged. “In my defense, I didn’t know it was them at the time. The camp didn’t exactly scream ‘Lair of the largest and fiercest gang currently known to mankind’ when I went to raid it.”
“That’s impossible, the Pirate Kings always make sure people know that they’re there. It’s impossible to miss their banners.”
Minho narrowed his eyes, looking over Hyunjin again differently than he had before. “C.H.A.N., is there anything else on him?”
“I am right here, you know,” Hyunjin grumbled.
“Well I figured if I did ask you, you wouldn’t talk, and I’m not a huge fan of the whole ‘torture to get information’ play, so I’ll just ask my android here to give me what he knows and then fill in the blanks myself,” Minho said, jabbing his thumb in C.H.A.N.’s direction.
“One photo of Hwang Hyunjin remains on the internet. Dated June…” C.H.A.N. trailed off suddenly.
“C.H.A.N.?” Minho looked at the android, tapping his head lightly to get his attention when there was no response. “You in there?”
Suddenly, C.H.A.N.’s hand opened and released Hyunjin, the boy taking off instantly down through the narrow alleyway they had been standing in front of, his red hair flashing around the corner as he disappeared.
But Minho could care less about a boy wanted by one of the biggest criminal empires in the world. All he cared about was the vacant look in C.H.A.N.’s eyes.
Well, more vacant than usual.
“C.H.A.N.?”
C.H.A.N. shuddered as the sound of gears clicking and whirring into place moved him stiffly so that he was facing west, his walk jerky and uncoordinated.
“Must…return…to…home...” he stuttered out, the words near garbled as his voice modular crackled and groaned.
A section of the plating on his arm slid back and a small firearm, standard issue to what had once been a great multitude of C.H.A.N. androids, rose from the housing.
“Must…help…” C.H.A.N. stumbled over a piece of broken asphalt that jutted out from the ground, Minho carefully following from behind, still plowing forward towards his destination.
This was when Minho got scared. When C.H.A.N.’s circuits went haywire and the android tried to return to home, wherever that was, when he went from harmless robot companion to a machine that could potentially kill Minho with little effort.
It was why Minho kept the electric baton hidden in an outside pocket of his pack, easily within reach incase C.H.A.N. did decide he needed to take out Minho.
Finish what the other androids had started.
Minho forgot about Hyunjin, not remembering the fire-haired boy existed until long after he got C.H.A.N. to stop walking to wherever it was he was headed, got the android to reset and remember who Minho was.
He could care less about the bounty, about the boy, about the Pirate Kings, about any of it.
He just didn’t want to be alone.
He didn’t want to be left behind.
~~~
“Remember you asked me about the meaning of life?”
Minho lowered his binoculars from where he had been observing the camp to look at C.H.A.N. with a raised eyebrow. “You really want to discuss philosophy, right now? Right now?”
C.H.A.N. shrugged. “Seemed like a good time.”
“I’m trying to plan a raid, C.H.A.N.. Now is not a good time for philosophy.”
Undeterred by Minho’s hissed scolding, C.H.A.N. continued.
“I asked the J.I.S.U.N.G. helper robot what he thought, since he helps out Seungmin with living things, and he said he didn’t know either, which I thought was odd since he works with living things, so I asked−“
By this point, Minho had tuned out C.H.A.N.’s rambling, focused on surveying the camp below. It looked well stocked and decently armed, but if Minho played his cards right he could just waltz right on in, steal a few supplies, and waltz right on out once night fell without anyone noticing until they woke up in the morning or took stock of their supplies.
He was well into plotting his route through camp when a little girl burst out of one of the tents, running at full speed across the camp to attack one of the men in a hug, a smaller boy emerging slower from the tent, small fist rubbing away the sleep in his eyes, the other hand tucked into that of a young woman.
Minho dropped his binoculars back into the case and shoved them back into his pack, scooting back from the edge until he was sure he wouldn’t be seen before standing up.
“Come on, we’re going to go find another camp.”
C.H.A.N. stopped mid-sentence on his rambling about circuits and biology and things that Minho would never understand. “Oh. Okay. Why? Don’t we need to the supplies?”
“They have kids.” Minho stumbled as he tripped over a rock, nearly twisting his ankle. “I’m not raiding a camp that has kids. We’ll find someone else.”
~~~
“Minho?”
“Hmm.”
“How come most of my memories, the few that I have, before meeting you are all fire and yelling and screaming?”
Minho poked at the small fire he had built to try and cook the fish he had caught in the pond nearby.
“Cause, C.H.A.N., before you met me, the world was different.”
“Oh.”
A pause.
“Do you have memories of fire and yelling and screaming?”
Minho did and didn’t. Most of his memories of life before the apocalypse were fleeting and few, broken into fragments that slipped through his fingers before he could grasp them. The yellowing photos he kept in between the inner and outer linings of his pack, safe from the world in case anyone ever decided to take him out, where no one would know that sometimes Minho would take them out and peer through them through the plastic of the bag he had put them in to help preserve them.
He was in a few of the photos, but he was never sure who the other people were, his memories of names and faces long gone by now. His parents, he supposed. Perhaps the cats were pets he had had once as a child. An aunt or uncle, maybe. If he let himself get too far in his thoughts, he could easily create an entire backstory for himself, a childhood, an idea of what his brief pre-teen years had been like.
“I have memories of fire raining down from the sky,” Minho finally said, sounding weary, even to his own ears. “Of broken glass and hot, dry wind.”
At the bottom of the stack of photos Minho carried with him was one of himself as a child, no more than five or six, a mischievous smile decorating his face as he stood on a couch, small hands holding onto the back of it so that he wouldn’t fall.
He looked happy. Carefree. Innocent. Ignorant of the future that would await him. There were no droids or robots in sight. Minho was fairly certain they had been pretty common back then but his family hadn’t had one until just before something went wrong that caused a worldwide catastrophe.
He tucked the thoughts of the photos away as the tail of his fish caught on fire and he had to blow it out before the flames engulfed his dinner entirely.
“Why aren’t my memories complete?” If C.H.A.N. could frown, he would’ve. Instead, his head was tilted to the side and down, not unlike a human would, yet…
“I don’t know,” Minho responded. “That’s what I’ve been trying to figure out. But I don’t think there’s an answer.”
~~~
They landed themselves again in Seungmin’s base nearly a year or so later. The Pirate Kings had decided to go to war with the world and Minho had had the misfortune of an incorrect map he had been given that lead him straight into the borders of one of their territories and the middle of a fight between the Pirate Kings and another gang.
C.H.A.N. had gone on the fritz again, when he saw the bodies lying around. Though this time he tried to save them instead of going home.
It had nearly cost Minho his life trying to pull the android out of there, wanting to be nowhere near a fight he had no interest or business in.
He’d seen the Hyunjin kid on the other side as he and C.H.A.N. ran through the battlefield, trying to figure out how to work a gun and shoot it at the Pirate Kings. Minho had cursed his inability to let others deal with the consequences of their foolishness and dragged C.H.A.N. over to Hyunjin before he got himself killed.
It had cost Minho a cheek grazed by a bullet and a slash to the side with a knife to get all three of them out of there.
“Come on, kid,” Minho said, wrapping a wide swath of bandages around his torso to help stop the sluggish bleeding, gesturing for Hyunjin to come closer from where he had been standing off to the side, looking slightly squeamish at the sight of blood. C.H.A.N. had collapsed into a heap of what he truly was once they had gotten a semi-safe distance away, nothing more than the spare parts and metal gears he was, too low on charge because him and Minho had been too busy trying to escape the Pirate Kings before the fight to take the time to get him properly charged. “Grab the robot and start walking.”
Hyunjin had slung C.H.A.N.’s arms over his shoulders and started dragging him, Minho carrying their two packs right behind the fire-haired boy who had a bounty on his head.
Seungmin had welcomed them with his usual snarky grace, the J.I.S.U.N.G. medical droid he used as chipper as ever, much to Hyunjin’s annoyance.
It did Minho good to sit around and do nothing for a few days, to heal up and rest, to watch Felix, a new mechanic in the area who was staying with Seungmin until further notice, tinker away at the many, many gears, wires, and mechanics that made up C.H.A.N., the back of the android opened up like a dissection as Felix worked on him. He worked much thoroughly than Minho did, much quicker.
“Where did you find him?” Felix swapped out a wrench for a tool Minho didn’t know the name of.
Minho peered over the edge of the paneling that made up C.H.A.N.’s back, trying to make sense of what Felix was working on. It was weird to see C.H.A.N. pulled apart like this. He seemed more…inhuman. Mechanical. Like an empty hermit crab shell.
“In an old concert hall,” Minho said. “He was just standing in the center of the stage, totally deactivated and in pieces.”
It had almost been like a scene out of a movie, the way Minho had come into the concert hall, the structure crumbling around him in abandoned ruin. C.H.A.N. had been standing on the remains of the stage, sunlight shining on him like a spotlight from a hole in the ceiling, the shredded remains of the old red curtain that had once been a part of the stage draped over his figure, head and shoulders bowed underneath the weight. Pieces of his armour and exterior casing had been cast down on the ground, as if someone had been trying to unassembled him but had gotten interrupted while doing so.
Minho had been wary at first, understandably so. He was still young at the time, the remaining robots that roamed the earth still murderous and intent on destroying humankind as it remained. This was a big robot, nothing to sneeze at since he stood a good several heads above Minho, who had had yet to hit his growth spurt.
The electric baton that he had stolen from an old army base flickered to life as he turned it on, cautiously approaching the android, face meant to be molded to a human likeness of someone Minho didn’t know. Moving stealthily through the seats in the auditorium towards the stage had been easy, Minho cautious, the android not moving, even when he finally reached the base of the stage, surveying the powered down robot and pieces strewn about. C.H.A.N. was painted across the robot’s chest plate that was lying on the floor closest to the android’s feet, the paint faded. He didn’t know what it meant.
Hoisting himself up on the stage hadn’t been an easy feat. Against his better judgement, Minho had plugged in the power source that activated C.H.A.N., something about the android being pulled apart and discarded like a broken toy resonating with the young teen, making things seem as harmless as they could get.
C.H.A.N. had been slow to boot up. Minho had kept an eye on him as he gathered up the pieces of the android and put them together. The android hadn’t said anything for a long time, not until the sunlight had faded from the ceiling and a dark, starlit night had replaced the view above.
His voice modular had been broken. Nothing but garbled noises, screeches and whines, static that made Minho’s ears hurt. He had quickly covered his ears and shouted for the android to stop talking and to his surprise, it had.
It had just snowballed from there.
A repair here, a repair there.
C.H.A.N., as he had introduced himself once Minho had fixed the voice modular (and accidentally gotten it stuck on “Australian”, leading to a very accented voice coming from C.H.A.N.), started walking again.
Then they went down the stairs. Out the concert hall. And into the wild world.
It had taken Minho a long time to get used to having a companion, much less an android companion. But after awhile…he had welcomed the odd camaraderie they had. Especially as he continued to grow from a small teen into a young man, fighting tooth and nail to live, to survive.
“He just stayed around,” Minho said to Felix. “I don’t know what I would do without him.”
~~~
Minho’s head hurt. His body hurt. Everything hurt.
The steady rhythm of something moving underneath him without him actually doing anything was what gave him enough willpower to peel open his eyes and then promptly shut them again when the sunlight beaming off the desert sand blinded him, making his eyes hurt and sending it piercing through his skull.
“You’re awake?”
The moving didn’t stop but it slowed down. The voice was accented, slightly mechanical, and Minho found he didn’t fear it.
Not even when he finally registered the feeling of metal and wires underneath his aching fingers, an inhuman skin for someone more human than Minho had ever known.
“Where…” Minho’s voice cracked and disappeared, along with the little energy that had summoned him into painful awareness.
“Home,” the mechanical voice said again, understanding Minho’s incomplete question.
There was a lurch in the gait of the android carrying Minho across the desert, as if it has stumbled on something. Minho felt the sand kick up and hit the back of his leg, stinging the lacerations covering the limb.
“Did you forget already, Minho?”
The android sounded amused, oblivious to Minho’s loosening grip on consciousness.
“I don’t want to be forgotten,” Minho mumbled out before he went limp and his head fell against the metal shoulder of the android.
~~~
Minho woke up slowly.
Painfully slow.
He was getting impatient but clearly his body would not be rushed or bent to his will, so he was forced to lay in the inky black and let things take their time, the noise around him slowly filtering in. He wasn’t sure what he was laying on, but it was comfortable enough that he wouldn’t complain first thing about it when he finally rose to consciousness enough to snap whoever was talking non-stop on his left.
“I told you he would be fine. He’s already woken up once, he’ll be fine in a few days.”
“I’m still worried.”
“How can an android be worried?”
Minho finally opened his eyes, blinking against the bright lights beaming overhead.
“Hey, look, he opened his eyes!”
“Turn the lights down, will you?”
The lights dimmed, much to Minho’s relief. He slowly turned his head so he could see who had been talking.
Seungmin, Felix, and…
C.H.A.N.?
C.H.A.N..
Minho looked at the android closer. The paint that that rascal Hyunjin had once sprayed over the android’s chest plate was still there, albeit faded from wear and tear, the bright orange streak forming something incomplete that Minho and C.H.A.N. had never been able to decipher what the artist had been envisioning before Minho had interrupted him. A crown, maybe. Or a really weirdly decorated ‘W’.
“How do you feel?”
Seungmin had asked the question, scrolling through a datapad that held all of Minho’s known medical history, every injury he had ever come to Seungmin with.
Minho switched mental gears to how he felt physically.
He felt…nothing.
No pain.
Just like he was floating in a great abyss of nothing yet was wide awake.
“Minho?”
Something started rapidly beeping in Minho’s ear and he realized his heart was pounding, as if it was trying to beat right out of his chest.
“Minho?”
Felix’s voice sounded like it was far underwater, distant to Minho’s ears as he struggled to breath.
He didn’t even notice the prick of a needle in his neck, everything going black.
~~~
C.H.A.N.G.B.I.N. was a heavy lifter droid. Short, sturdy, bulky, and capable of lifting dozens of tons and holding it for long periods of time. Minho couldn’t remember if the droid had been common place or used only for special occupations.
Said droid was currently perched on C.H.A.N.’s shoulders, chattering away with the other android like he hadn’t been able to hold a conversation with anyone since he had been built.
Actually, C.H.A.N.G.B.I.N. probably hadn’t talked to anyone for any great length before until now.
The forest they were going through was dense, forcing Minho to use the machete he had found in the junkyard where they had also picked up C.H.A.N.G.B.I.N. to clear the vines and branches out of the way so they could make it through. He hadn’t been through here before and had heard about an abandoned town being somewhere in the middle of the forest.
Jungle, he amended mentally. There was no way that this was a real forest, like the ones further north. This one had almost entirely different foliage, unlike the simple barks and branches that the forests north offered.
He didn’t like it. Minho was fairly certain he had seen a snake as long as the tree was tall wrapped around its trunk, beady eyes gleaming as it watched the human and two droids trudge their way through the forest, tongue slithering in thought.
Minho wasn’t sure how tasty of a meal he would make but being eaten alive by a snake was not how he wanted to go out, so he was going to be sleeping with one eye open tonight if they didn’t find the town by nightfall.
“Hey, C.H.A.N.G.B.I.N., what do you think the meaning of life is?”
The silver and black droid tilted his triangle-shaped face to the side, thinking. It reminded Minho of the slices of watermelon he used to eat in the summer as a kid, ice cold, juice dripping down his hands and face, leaving him a sticky mess requiring a bath before bed.
“The meaning of life?”
“Yeah.”
“Droids and robots don’t have a meaning to life,” C.H.A.N.G.B.I.N. said bluntly. “We have a job and until we break beyond repair and get used for scrap metal, we fulfill that job.”
“That’s a depressing outlook on life,” Minho said, finally joining the conversation. C.H.A.N. nodded in agreement.
“It’s what life is for those made of metal,” C.H.A.N.G.B.I.N. said. “We’re not made of flesh and bone. There’s really no purpose to our existence other than making the lives of humans easier.”
“Until you decided to destroy humanity,” Minho muttered under his breath, knowing full well that the robot probably had audio receptors capable of picking up the quiet words.
“I do not remember being a part of the event that caused this wasteland.”
Yup, C.H.A.N.G.B.I.N. had heard it.
Minho tripped over a piece of concrete jutting out of the ground before he could respond. Gaining his balance, he found himself face to face with a metal sign too melted around the edges and shot through with bullets to make out what it said. Beyond it was the remains of the outskirts of a town slowly being swallowed by the vegetation it was resting in.
“Found it.”
There wasn’t much to the crumbled remains of the town. Minho had been able to salvage a few supplies from some of the more intact building, but otherwise it was a true ghost town, totally devoid of any life or remains.
They spent two nights there, Minho and C.H.A.N. taking notes and working on adding to the map, this having been the furthest into the jungle they had gone before. Minho had no intention of ever coming back to this place, though. He had woken up to one of the giant snakes coming slowly through the broken window in the building they had been sleeping in, its body as wide as the width of Minho’s hand as it slithered down the wall and across the floor towards the frantically packing human and two androids guarding him until they had escaped through the door and into the jungle.
Such a shame, the snake might have thought.
C.H.A.N.G.B.I.N. stayed with them until they went back around to Seungmin’s base for a rest. He had just…tagged along the remainder of the trip through the jungle until Minho had offered that he come with them to Seungmin’s base. The lifter droid had agreed and so he stayed.
They seemed to have been doing a lot of that lately; circling around to Seungmin’s base. Hyunjin seemed to have taken a permanent residence, a little corner tucked away beside a big window scattered with mismatched shelves, paints and brushes and canvases resting easily when Hyunjin wasn’t using them.
J.I.S.U.N.G. was a bit grumpy about having a newcomer, as he always was, but warmed up quickly to C.H.A.N.G.B.I.N. without fail. Soon, him, C.H.A.N., and C.H.A.N.G.B.I.N. were roaming around inside and outside the base doing their own little things when they weren’t required for other activities or small jobs.
“You could just stay,” Seungmin finally said to Minho one evening “Instead of doing all these back and forth trips or only coming to see me when you’ve almost gotten killed by whatever dangerous and idiotic thing you and C.H.A.N. have decided to get up to.”
The seven of them were sitting out on the top of the roof of the main building that housed most of the life Seungmin had built for himself at the edge of a town that had been dead since the beginning of the apocalypse, ever since the other half the town’s residents had decided to move elsewhere. The giant sinkhole loomed in the distance behind their backs, a vast expanse of a drop that went who knew how far. Seungmin refused to go anywhere near it, something about whatever lurked in the dark depths terrifying him enough to give him nightmares if he got to close too it. The flip side of that was that the young man was also too terrified to leave, something Minho didn’t even pretend to understand.
“Why stay?” Minho asked. The sun was setting in a glorious blaze of oranges and reds. Once it got a little lower, the sky would also start to add purple and maybe a bit of gold if they got lucky.
The others were around them, holding their own little conversations. Minho was pretty sure Felix and J.I.S.U.N.G. were trying to mess with the voice modular on C.H.A.N. and see what other accents the android could do.
“Why not stay?” Seungmin shot back. “It could become a home for you, like the others, like it did for me. There’s nothing wrong with settling down and keeping to one space.”
Something in Minho whispered not quite yet.
“Maybe,” he finally said. Shoving his bangs out of his face, his hair in desperate need of a haircut or else he would be tying it up like Felix did, in a short ponytail. “But not yet.”
~~~
Jeongin’s camp had been attacked by the Pirate Kings, everything decimated and burned to the ground, the thin boy clinging to the hands of his dead mother and brother, their bodies twisted and broken in such a manner that Minho wasn’t sure even Seungmin would’ve been able to put them back together if they had gotten to him in time.
Jeongin hadn’t said a word when C.H.A.N. and Minho had buried them, buried the others that hadn’t survived, in graves marked only by the overturned and mounded dirt. Hadn’t said a word the entire time they travelled through the plains to the grasslands to the desert to Seungmin’s base, except for his name when Minho asked him for the dozenth time, a word whispered so quietly he had almost missed it.
Jeongin had screamed, once. In the darkest part of night, where the only thing that would light up the world around them was C.H.A.N.’s optics. Muted cries continued through the rest of the night until dawn, Jeongin tucked in Minho’s arms as the wanderer did his best to soothe what he didn’t know scared the boy.
It had terrified Minho so badly he hadn’t slept for the next two nights. He felt so ill-prepared to deal with whatever it was that Jeongin was silently going through, silently bearing on his shoulders. It made him mad that humans were continuing to go around and fight and kill others in the name of some twisted sense of glory Minho wanted no part of.
They made it to Seungmin’s base in record time, Felix and Seungmin working together to pry Jeongin out of Minho’s arms and into the med bay so that he could be looked over.
Minho had turned on his heel the minute the boy was safe, packed a few goods into his pack for the trip back over the desert, and walked right back out the door, his steps purposeful.
“Where are you going?” Hyunjin stood in the doorway, arms crossed.
Minho stopped, pack dangling from one hand.
Hyunjin had cut his hair since Minho had been last there, dyed the remaining fire red it had been back to black. He looked younger, his face more filled out than when he had first come to live permanently with Seungmin, leaving his cheeks full and healthy.
It was a stark contrast to Jeongin, to the other children Minho had seen in other camps, so small and thin, trying to survive against a world that was bigger than them, trying to kill them at every chance it got.
“I−” Minho started, very seriously. “−am going to go find whoever is the leader of these Pirate Kings, and kill him and end his reign of terror. Slowly and painfully, like how him and his thugs have killed Jeongin’s parents and so many others.”
Hyunjin very visibly took a step back, fear flickering across his face at Minho’s face and words.
While Minho had always been a little scary to him, in the sense of respect more than actual fear, the older more of an older brother figure than anything, the Minho in front of Hyunjin now was not his Minho. Not the Minho that had dragged him out of a firefight, not the one that had scolded him while carefully bandaging his hand when he had done a stupid trick with his knife and sliced his palm open, not the Minho that had crossed the desert more times than anyone to bring him to Seungmin’s base so he could have a place to stay.
The Minho in front of Hyunjin was the one that had fought to survive all of these years, the one that had and would kill to get what he needed, the one that had clawed tooth and nail to stay alive in the worst circumstances known to mankind.
C.H.A.N. appeared next to Minho, looking between the two, optics remaining for a second longer on Minho as he carefully evaluated the situation at hand. Hyunjin watched the android vaguely nod to himself before standing just behind Minho, as if he was watching his back.
Hyunjin didn’t understand it, didn’t understand the vengeance Minho was after, why the hatred burned so deep in his eyes, but he did understand wanting to protect, even if all he had every done his entire life was watch out for himself until he had met the others. Met Felix’s unselfish and pure heart, got past Seungmin’s prickles.
“At least−” Hyunjin almost choked on his words as Minho focused on him fully, his gaze fiery and daring Hyunjin to try and stop him. “At least let me fix C.H.A.N.’s paint job before you go?”
Try and get you to calm down a bit before you go out to kill people. Think about it before you do something stupid.
“I’d like that,” C.H.A.N. said softly, putting a careful hand on Minho’s shoulder. It had been a couple years since they had met Hyunjin and they had never fixed the orange streak that had been painted across C.H.A.N.’s chest.
Minho didn’t deflate but he did give a short nod before turning on his heel and disappearing back into the warehouse.
“Right.” Hyunjin stared after Minho before turning his attention to C.H.A.N.. “Let’s see what paint I have.”
~~~
“Did you hear about the man going after the Pirate Kings?”
“I thought it was an android?”
“They’re going through the camps and bases like bats out of hell.”
“The human and the android are on the warpath, captain. Our people are dropping like flies.”
“Well stop them!”
“We can’t, sir.”
“Well figure out how to! I won’t have my empire destroyed by a puny human and his robot sidekick.”
~~~
Minho was up in a tree, watching the camp carefully as he tried to figure out a strategy to attack it.
C.H.A.N. slowly climbed up into the tree, sitting a few boughs below Minho, afraid that the branches higher up that Minho was sitting on would be too flimsy to hold his weight. The now black and gold android settled as comfortably as he could, thankful he didn’t have to deal with his limbs falling asleep like a human’s would.
The last several months had been spent methodically taking out every and any camp that they had been able to find tied to the Pirate Kings, a two-man mission that was considered impossible and almost suicidal. But Minho, and by proxy, C.H.A.N., were nothing if not determined, fueled by their desires for vengeance and peace.
“You know I would never leave you behind, right?”
Minho lowered the binoculars at the sudden confession from C.H.A.N.. He looked down to see the android looking up at him, optics glowing gold in the dimming sunlight.
“You have retrograde amnesia,” Seungmin said, sitting down in the ancient rolling office chair someone had brought in at some point to sit beside Minho while he was still on bedrest. “Whether it’s from some kind of head injury or trauma, I’m not sure.”
Minho nodded, mulling over the words carefully. “It makes sense.”
“You don’t seem surprised.”
Minho shrugged. “Why would I be? We both know I don’t remember growing up or hardly anything following the first couple years after the apocalypse. Even now I forget things some.”
Seungmin fiddled with the corner of the case of the datapad he was holding. He looked like he wanted to say something but was refraining from doing so, for a reason Minho couldn’t decipher from his body language.
“Seungmin, just spit it out.”
“I’m not so sure you would survive another hit to the head like last time,” the young man blurted out. “Like not a loss of memory, just…another knock out hit like that might actually kill you. I don’t have the equipment to deal with traumatic brain injuries. If you get hit…”
“That’s it,” Minho finished.
Seungmin nodded.
“Do the others know?”
“Just C.H.A.N.. I thought you would want to tell the rest of them yourself, if you felt they needed to know.”
“Okay. Thank you, Seungmin.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“What makes you say that?” Minho asked, delaying having to actually answer C.H.A.N.’s question.
The android fiddled with a twig, accidentally snapping it in half before he let it drop to the ground. “Last time you…got seriously injured, you said you didn’t want to be forgotten. So, I just wanted to tell you that, even if everyone else did forget you, I won’t forget you. Or leave you behind. I’ll always come after you, until I can’t, until I’ve broken down beyond repair. I know you’ve done the same for me, I wanted you to know it’s the same for you.”
Maybe that was the meaning of life, Minho thought. An unanswerable question, really, but maybe there was more than one answer to it. More than one way of viewing the meaning of what life meant to a person.
“Thank you,” Minho said, turning to look back through the binoculars, ignoring how misty his eyes had gotten.
He didn’t think he would ever be able to put into words the gratitude and thanks that he had for C.H.A.N. sticking with him through all of these years.
“So, what’s the plan?”
~~~
Seungmin looked up from the book he was reading when the door to the warehouse creaked open, letting in a cloud of dust from the dust storm that had been blowing through like a herald announcing the oncoming thunderstorm looming darkly in the distance.
Two figures holding each other up came stumbling through the door, one with a more mechanical gait, the other limping as his leg dragged against the floor. They were laughing, despite being covered in dust and grime and blood, a heart-warming sight if it weren’t for where Seungmin had known where they had been in the last year.
The medic shot up from the chair, calling for J.I.S.U.N.G. and Felix, helping C.H.A.N. get Minho into the med bay so he could take care of whatever wounds Minho had.
“We did it,” Minho said giddily, somehow managing to hoist himself up onto the medical examination table before he could be helped. His eyes were shining, a certain life in them that Seungmin hadn’t ever seen before in the older, too used to the hard glare that made up most of Minho’s facial expressions.
“The Pirate Kings are gone,” C.H.A.N. said joyfully, a happy whistle and chirp emitting from his voice modulator following the words. “But I am going to fall over here.”
And indeed, the android, low on charge after doing only heaven knew whatever it was that him and Minho had done to eradicate the Pirate Kings, fell over in a heap of metal limbs and wires, eyes dimming as he shut down.
Felix and J.I.S.U.N.G. came in right as it happened, Seungmin and Minho staring at the android that had collapsed in a heap not unlike a puppet whose strings had been cut.
Minho burst into laughter, bending over at the waist as he wrapped an arm around his aching stomach. He sounded slightly hysterical, concerning everyone in the room a bit, until he started calming down, only to start hiccupping as he started crying, tears creating tracks in the dirt and grime covering his face. He opened his mouth as if he was trying to speak, but no words came out and eventually he buried his face in his hands, trying to muffle his sobs.
Felix stepped over C.H.A.N., Minho of more importance at the moment, and stood in front of Minho, gently running his hands through the older’s hair, uncaring of the dirt and dried blood clinging to the strands.
Minho slumped forward until his forehead hit Felix’s shoulder, taking comfort in the younger’s embrace as the mechanic wrapped him up in a tight hug. Seungmin, though not one much for affection, came from the other side and joined the hug, patting Minho’s shoulder.
Hyunjin and Jeongin materialized at some point, joining the group hug without question, Jeongin weaseling his way up onto the table Minho was sitting on so he could wrap entirely around the older from behind, clinging to his back like a koala, head resting against the base of Minho’s neck.
It was late in the night when they finally got Minho cleaned and patched up, the young man passing out as soon as his head hit the pillow, Jeongin close behind, snuggled up to the older. He hadn’t hardly left Minho’s side, remaining quiet but offering silent support as best he was able.
Seungmin left the door cracked open so he could hear anything if he was needed, but also because he knew that Minho hated sleeping with any doors shut completely. Going downstairs, he went back into the med bay to clean up the mess, the methodical work slowly helping him unwind until he found himself wandering to see what Felix was up to in his workroom.
The mechanic was bent over C.H.A.N.’s still form, the android opened up and parts strewn everywhere. Felix looked up briefly when he heard Seungmin enter the room, looking back down at his work when Seungmin flopped into the old armchair in the corner of the room.
It was quiet for awhile before Felix started talking.
“You know, Minho and C.H.A.N….” he trailed off, frowning as he considered his words. “I don’t…I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone quite like them.”
“Me neither,” Seungmin agreed. It was weird seeing C.H.A.N.’s black and gold frame torn apart to the mere wires and spare parts he was. Disconcerting, truly. The android had so much life in him, despite not being made of flesh and bone or possessing a soul or human mind. It was weird in the way that J.I.S.U.N.G. and C.H.A.N.G.B.I.N. were also similar, a little more human than their robot counterparts, somehow a little more emotional past the metal and gears and wires.
Minho filled the space around him in a way that commanded a quiet presence, gave a reassurance and confidence that sometimes was lacking in others. He lived and breathed a certain kind of loss that none of them would be able to understand, yet he hadn’t let it drown him completely like others Seungmin had seen coming through his base. It seemed to only fuel a fire underneath Minho that had kept him going and alive all of these years.
Seungmin was glad that Minho had crashed into his life, almost literally. He was glad that Minho and C.H.A.N. had dragged Hyunjin and C.H.A.N.G.B.I.N. into the base and convinced him to let them to stay. Cause truly, Seungmin had needed the company after so many years of being mostly isolated and alone, dealing with the fallout of the apocalypse and the ruin of his hometown.
Felix was right. There really wasn’t anyone quite like Minho and C.H.A.N..
~~~
Minho stepped outside of the base, holding a chipped mug with a smiling cat face on it, hot tea brewing inside it. It was early in the morning, at least for the others, the sun barely peeking over the horizon. With some careful maneuvering and a little difficulty, given the limited mobility he had with his limp, he got himself up onto the balcony and then up onto the roof to watch the sunrise.
It was warm, almost a little too warm for hot tea, with summer beginning to start, but Minho didn’t mind. He’d spent years crossing the landscape in a variety of imperfect and uncomfortable conditions, so being a little too warm from the inside in the early morning of summer wasn’t going to bother him.
As he watched the sunrise, his mind turned over to the plans the group had slowly been working on to move out from the warehouse and surrounding area and to some place better. It had taken a lot of convincing and a lot of heart-to-hearts with Seungmin to get him to finally relent and be willing to move away from the town he had grown up in, from the sinkhole that had survived as a bottomless cemetery for many of the people he had once knew, once grown up with, where those that had remained after the apocalypse and had died had been disposed of. They still had no idea what lay at the bottom of the pit, but sometimes groaning and moaning of something else could be heard late at night, when the wind got a little restless and the sky went dark from a particularly bad storm rolling in.
Minho didn’t want to know. He was fine with leaving that a mystery. His mind already conjured up more than enough nightmares from memories and things imagined. There was no reason to add more fuel to the fire.
C.H.A.N. had recovered just fine. They both had. It had been a couple years since him and Minho had single-handedly brought down the Pirate Kings and from the word they got through passing travelers, it had made all the difference to the outside world. Roads were safer, outside of the usual smaller groups of raiders and gangs, people were travelling more, settling more. Minho was beginning to believe that it looked like the world was starting to rebuild itself after so many years.
Communication was still limited, though there was talking of building a radio station to help with that. Governments didn’t exist anymore so far as they knew, but if people were willing to help each other out, that might just be enough to get things good again.
Today was the day that they were going to finish packing everything up. Tomorrow, Minho was going to lead them across what had once been considered an impassable desert into the grasslands. From there, who knew where they would go. Eventually they would have to settle. Seungmin needed a proper place to be able to set up his equipment and facilities, a situation Minho was hoping to be able to provide for him. They had all discussed as a group whether or not they should head for the city that was starting to grow in leaps and bounds to the southeast, but after living so long by themselves and with each other, with no governance dictating what they should and shouldn’t do, it wasn’t as appealing. So for now, they planned on staying away from any major established areas, unless they had to go in for supplies or an emergency beyond Seungmin’s capabilities.
Minho found himself looking forward to travelling again. Ever since him and C.H.A.N. had come back from their last journey, he hadn’t gone further than a few hours hike, easily capable of going and coming back home within a day. Something in him once he had found Jeongin had whispered to stay put. On particularly sentimental days, he would go so far to even say he had found his family, a home.
The door below the balcony creaked open, a problem none of them had ever bother to fix, Jeongin peeking out with ruffled hair, squinting at the bright sunlight now pouring over the horizon. Hyunjin had recently convinced the younger to bleach it blonde, turning Jeongin into an adorable, fluffy mess of a young lad, especially when he woke up from sleep. Minho adored it, a secret he wouldn’t divulge publicly. Jeongin had grown into a gangly teen from the boy he had been when Minho had first brought him home, all arms and legs, though he carried himself with more grace than Hyunjin did, much to everyone’s amusement. He also had a hollow leg, Felix would tease, with the amount that he ate, though thankfully it had yet to be an issue, even with five of them eating from the cellars and garden Seungmin took careful care of, Felix aiding him here and there.
Jeongin slowly emerged the entire way from the warehouse, making a poor attempt to tame his hair, looking around the landscape as he woke up. Minho watched for a minute before turning back to witness the last few minutes of the sunrise. If Jeongin wanted to make the trek up here, he could.
Eventually the others woke up and Minho climbed back down from the balcony. Seungmin scolded him (again) for climbing up there with his leg, but once reassured that Minho had been careful and wasn’t in any pain did he back down. Breakfast was made and eaten in various states of wakefulness, J.I.S.U.N.G. and Felix conspiring and somehow managing to swap out the ketchup Hyunjin was dipping his potato chunks for siracha, the older slower to recognize it until his mouth and tongue were on fire.
They had tried it once on Minho. Never again when the older didn’t even flinch at the spice, his tolerance way higher than anything J.I.S.U.N.G. and Felix could concoct with the current ingredients they had, thank goodness. They probably would concoct some kind of radioactive spicy sauce just to get Minho to sweat and end up killing everyone else, themselves included (and robots not withstanding) from the fumes.
Then, the rest of the day was spent packing away the last of anything not necessary for their last night in the base, until Seungmin was left standing by himself in the empty room that had once been the med bay he had worked so hard to build. There was a slight echo to his footsteps in the room that had been stripped bare as he walked further to the middle and slowly turned around, nibbling on his thumbnail as he swam through his thoughts.
“Quite a lot of memories in here.”
Seungmin started, whipping around to see Minho leaning on the doorframe.
“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” he hissed.
Minho just smirked and moved into the room, coming next to Seungmin and draping an arm over his shoulders, leaning some of his weight on the younger boy.
“Everything will be fine, Seungmin.”
“I know, I just…it’s hard to leave it all behind. We’re leaving with the intention of never coming back. It’s a little hard to wrap my head around that.”
“And your emotions?”
“…Yeah.”
Minho patted Seungmin’s shoulder. “It’ll all work itself out. Trust me.”
Seungmin scoffed, leaning closer to Minho, but didn’t say anything back.
The next morning started bright and early, all eight of them running through the warehouse and double-checking to make sure everything was taken care of and gathered together.
“Alright, everyone ready?” Minho asked once they were all gathered outside.
Seungmin made sure the door was shut but unlocked, having decided to leave it open in case someone else would have use for the building, before joining the group.
There were various noises and vocalizations of agreement, J.I.S.U.N.G. firing up his boosters and C.H.A.N.G.B.I.N. climbing up onto C.H.A.N.’s shoulders for the ride through the desert. Felix and Jeongin hiked their packs higher up on their shoulders, Hyunjin fired up the hover mechanisms Seungmin had built into the underside of the train of wheelless wagon beds that contained all of the carefully packed equipment and belongings, a steady humming filling the air.
Minho looked at Seungmin, who took a deep breath, then nodded. “Ready.”
“Alright, let’s go, boys!”