"Good day sir." 

The blond soldier seemed surprised, his eyebrows darting up before he smiled back in false respect. 

"Heh..! Good day? Is it?" He drawled in a distinctly Northern accent, surprising Hajoon in return. He was a man of Nawia, the nation of true North. Unluckily for Hajoon, his language prowess didn't extend to the northern language, so charming his way out of the worst case scenario had suddenly become ten times harder. 

"It could be..! it's too early to say…ah– besides that point, the day is what we make of it right?" Hajoon felt a trickle of nervous sweat slide down his back as the blue eyed soldier laughed in response. 

"Ya! And you? Going to make it good?" The blue eyed soldier extended a hand, into which Hajoon placed his worker Identification card. 

"I'll try my darndest! Haha…" 

"You speak it better than me, his language." The Nawian soldier gestured mildly to his ash-haired partner, who had returned with a bloody fist, a spray of red on black fabric. It stayed red, that blood, even in the moments he watched it, expecting that to change. 

He wasn't infected. Ha. Haha. 

"Ah…do I?" Hajoon chuckled awkwardly. 

"For the slums? Ya. You sound posh, if that's the word. Heeh…what is this…oh?" The Nawian soldier huffed as he inspected Hajoon's ID card. 

Hajoon's lip twitched to say something, but nothing came out. He couldn't take his eyes away from those blood stained gloves. He wanted to, but he couldn't.

He's never coming home. Their father is never coming back.

He could hear his heartbeat in his ears, thundering as several images of choking that soldier, of stabbing him with the pen that he fiddled with in his pocket by habit, ran through his mind.

A static burned in his mind, a broken voice growling and seething to communicate. It told him to kill, to seek revenge, to do something, anything, before his father was taken away again.

Again?

That's not my father.

I don't know that man.

It's not my problem. 

I shouldn't care–

Hajoon inhaled sharply as that voice was drowned out, the clicking of his pen coming to a stop shortly after. He managed to look away before that ash-haired soldier turned his way. 

"That's one cushy job." A jeering voice came from behind the Nawian soldier, the card ending up pinched between two gloved fingers, the ash-haired Westerner holding it as if it was trash he had picked up off the street. 

"Oh, Fletcher…?" Blue eyes widened for a moment, then an awkward sound followed. 

"Can't read it can you, Volkov? Pfft– that's fine, we're here to pick up your side's slack either way…er…this says GenCure? That big place?" The shadowed eyes of a man named Fletcher shifted to Hajoon like a curse. 

"How did you get a job there?" He scoffed, pocketing the small card and staring at Hajoon, who had no choice but to wait to have it returned. The soldier thought the card to be fabricated on the basis that GenCure Pharmaceuticals, which had a choke hold on the lucrative medical field of the East, was too high class and influential of a company for him to be an employee of. 

But a scam company needs scammers to fill the roles. How else would they convince the masses to buy the same overpriced shit that killed their grandma? 
 
"Merit, sir." Hajoon responded, opting to make eye contact with the pale blues of the so-called Volkov instead of the dark eyes that were nothing but cruel. Blue was calming, so he could use it to calm himself before any of them decided that the look in his eyes was dangerous. 

Perceived danger meant death for someone like him. 

Volkov simply stared back, raising a singular eyebrow. 

"And a bit of luck of course, haha…" Hajoon chuckled to deprecate himself, which he knew the soldiers liked. They were the type to kick the doormat on the way in. 

He could act the part if a kick was all he got.

"Heh! Lucky guy?" Volkov suddenly laughed, overtaking whatever his colleague was about to say, before nudging him aside. Ignoring the complaints that brought, he glanced down at Hajoon's work bag. "You have something? For luck..?"

Hah…?

Do I look like I have money to bribe you, bastard? 

"Haha…if I kept a mystical talisman at the bottom of this for luck, I don't suppose you'd be interested?" Hajoon laughed awkwardly, unbuckling the cheap leather bag and staring at the contents; at the top of which were the coffee packs he'd hid before. 

"Talisman? Don't tell me you care for pagan fantasies, Volkov?" Fletcher snorted, his laugh making the others who sat nearby flinch.

"Mm? No?" 

"Ah, well you never know when you need a mystical tissue when it's this cold out..!" Hajoon joked, keeping the nervous smile plastered on his face as he watched the two exchange glances.

Ah. I'm royally screwed. That was too much, too forced.

Damn the moons…tell my mum I'm sorry…for committing tax fraud using her name. 

Haha. Yeah I'm not sorry. 

"Heh..! Heh heh– Funny Zver! Hm…I'm thirsty, from laughing!" Another laugh caught Hajoon off guard, watching with squinted eyes as Volkov covered his grin with a hand. Hajoon's head tilted to the side as he followed the man's gaze, landing on the coffee in his bag. 

Ah..? Stealing cheap shit from the poor..? Really? You're kidding.

"Please drink this, sir." Hajoon stood up and held the unopened packs of coffee out with both hands, bowing habitually. 

Hajoon didn't straighten up from the bow until the soldier walked off with the coffee he'd extorted, chattering with his ash haired counterpart. After a long pause, Fletcher tossed the ID over his shoulder as he walked out the door. 

He didn't manage to catch it midair, so he stared at the card that was left on the dirty floor. When the bus jostled to a start, missing more than a few passengers, the world was cast into shadow, darkness that caused his eyes to glimmer silver, then taint red. 

With a blink, both were gone, and the port city of Joekjo greeted them, shining through the haze.