Survival Of The Fittest

Chen spent the second week of June entirely indoors.

The outside distorted itself in horrifying ways, but not by any method visible to the physical eyes- even though Chen admired the organ's intricacies, he had to admit the human eyeball had limits. To boot, the responses of his friends- or was that too generous a word?- classmates, seemed tailor designed to make him want to bar himself up in his room.

"Oi Chen let's play [insert generic console FPS] at my place!"
"Hey Chen, wanna come over to my family's barbeque (that you'd have no place at and were just invited there for pity's sake)?"
"I got coupons for a movie Chen! You care about [samey blockbuster franchise] right?"

They were treating bullet wounds with a band-aid, and he couldn't even chalk it up to ignorance. Survival of the Fittest, being the hot-button issue that it was, afforded nobody in the information(?) age ignorance. Had they somehow distanced themselves from just how fucked up this whole thing was, even if they didn't have any personal involvement in it? Fuck them.

And yeah, maybe Chen fed himself too much fearmongering news- but this was real. Somewhere, a terrorist organization of unknown number was snatching up entire classes of teenagers and forcing them to fight to the death in the remote wilderness. Anyone with a mediocrum of empathy should feel horrible that such a thing existed.

Perhaps that was rarer than he thought. Or Chen was just a weirdo for getting so worked up about the plights of strangers.

Of course, this wasn't the plight of strangers anymore.

It was just after breakfast, after he had helped Mom wash the dishes, and Chen paused in the hall. He was in front of his bedroom door, but his back was turned to it. Instead, he stared at the door to Meilin's room. It still had the sporadic glittery sticker attached to it. It still hung slightly ajar.

He peeked through the crack. The bed was made by Mom after Meilin left, she'd been in such a hurry. Everything else though was just as she left it. The desk in particular was stacked high with notebooks and loose papers, as well as a red laptop that had its screen flipped open.

Touching the doorknob seemed like blasphemy. Instead, he turned around and went into his own room, where he'd spend the rest of the day.

At least, that was the plan.

His mother opened the door bringing some lunch, and he went to greet her like any other day. She even brought a bit of cash from chores. Except...

"Mom? This is five extra."

"Oh! I didn't even notice!" Mom exclaimed, unconvincingly. "It's enough to go get yourself something nice from the store, isn't it?"

After she left, Chen pondered her words. An idea formed- half baked, yes. But it would make a few people happy, he imagined.

But to do that, he had to enter Meilin's room.

When he was absolutely sure Mom wasn't looking, he darted across the hallway and pushed the door open enough for him to wriggle through. He didn't even need to touch the Forbidden Doorknob or move the door too much from its original position. Lo and behold, exactly where he'd found it last time, in the first drawer of Mei's bedside table thingy, the list that contained all the important numbers she needed to remember. Mostly passwords. Chen could underrate Mei and call her one of his very good friends, but even then he had to admit she was terrible with cybersecurity. Anyway, the other important list of numbers and letters Meilin had written down here was a very important address.

For the next part of the plan, he needed a bit of extra money he'd saved up from previous days, but that was fine. In the afternoon, he set off for the grocery store. He found a box of brand chocolates, generic and nothing particularly "artisanal" as they would call it, but it was in his budget and useful. With the awkward square of chocolates with odd fillings in his arms, he set it down on a nearby counter, brought out a sticky note he kept in his pocket and put it against the same counter. He began to write. C-h-

Why did he have to be Chen? Why wouldn't he have a normal name, like Mom had? Violet, that was a good name. Before he knew it, the sticky note read "Charlie".

Oh well. He stuck it on the chocolate box anyway, and continued on his journey.


The house was small, but he supposed it has a cozy air inside or some shit like that. Unless he was insanely lucky, he wouldn't find out.

Perhaps the actual house was irrelevant though- the important part was its inhabitants, past and present. Chen went up to the door and raised his hand to ring the bell.

That hand trembled. What did he think he was doing? He wasn't even doing anything special, these people were probably getting sympathy gifts up the wazoo these days.

He did suppose that visiting a house for the first time always had its share of nervousness though. Was this what Meilin felt, visiting her boyfriend-for-a-week Ace's house for the first time? Or was she too blinded by l- okay geez, he really should give his in all likelihood dead sister a bit more respect in his thoughts.

Maybe if he wasn't awkwardly carrying a chocolate box things would be better. Setting it on the floor by the door, he raised his hand again. Still it shook. This wasn't supposed to happen- the thought allowed him to will through it and ring the bell.

Oh god what was he doing.

Oh god there were footsteps.

Oh god what did he get himself into?!

He ran. He didn't know why. He was sure Ace's parents were perfectly good people but they were mourning people, no? He couldn't deal with mourning people.

Especially not his own.