Alena knew that something was wrong. She had known that something was wrong when her brother kneeled down to kiss her. She had known that something was wrong when she was standing there, looking at him. She had known that something was wrong when she was being dragged away from him by a pale, fat volunteer. She knew that something was deeply, deeply twisted. Something was deeply, deeply horrible. 

This sense of wrongness, it sat like a black hole in her gut, twisting apart her insides and tearing and pulling at her flesh, her blood, her bones. Until she felt as though she was collapsing into something infinitely heavy, something infinitely dark. There was so much gravity within her, trying to pull her down into the very ground.

But she played with the other children. She played with the other children despite the slimy feeling in her mouth. And she played with the other children despite the heaviness in her core. Because she was a child. And that was what children did. Children played. Even through absolutely broken, crumbled hearts, children played. 

The other children also knew that something was wrong. They knew that something was very wrong. And their hearts ached for Alena, their hearts called out to Alena. Children always know when something is wrong. They were as kind to her as they could be. But they were children. They were children and they were poor people in a war zone. That meant that they didn't have power. They didn't have the power to fix the wrongness they were all feeling. 

One of the pale Allitian volunteers came up to Alena. He came up to Alena and he asked Alena to follow him. Alena knew that she did not have a choice. She was just a scrawny kid against his well-fed muscles. And so she obeyed, and she went with him, despite everything inside her protesting and pressing her to not follow him. 

He took her to a car. She had never been in a car before. She was terrified, terrified about everything that was going on. But despite all that, the seats were soft and the car was cool and comfortable. That didn't stop her from being supersaturated with fear though. It didn't stop the black hole in her gut from consuming her. 

She eventually was taken to a dusty makeshift military base. And she was lead to an airplane. She had seen airplanes before, roaring as they cut through the skies, dropping bombs on the land. This airplane was both very much like and nothing like those airplanes. She had seen airplanes that didn't drop bombs as well, and those airplanes were more like this one. But still, seeing it up close was both impressive and horrible. 

She climbed the staircase leading to the door of the plane. It was a rather steep, daunting staircase. 

"Why are we getting on the plane?" she asked in a quiet and confused voice. 

"We're just going on a little trip," the Allitian man stated, "we'll come right back when we're done."

"Are you telling the truth?" 

"Of course."

She didn't think he was telling the truth, but she didn't have the power to argue back with him. So she made her heavy, leaden feet climb up the stairs and into the plane. Though she wished beyond anything that she was back home where she belonged. 

Inside the plane, it was spacious. It was spacious and it was well-lit with a number of purple and blue coloured lights. The plane was filled with soldiers who were sitting in many seats. But there was a space in the back of the long, hollow tube where there were no seats, and a few children were playing there. They were all Allitian, but still, children were children, and so Alena went to play with them. 

This plane was by far the richest thing she had ever seen. It was so clean and polished and shining. And it was so large. She admired its beauty, she honestly did. But still she wished beyond wish that she wasn't here, that she was at her humble, tiny, shabby home instead, with her brother and her neighbours and everyone who she already missed beyond comprehension. 

As the plane thundered through the sky, Alena felt more and more suffocated, more and more panicked, more and more trapped. She felt as though she was in a locked room with no air, as though the walls were closing in around her, as if her whole body was slowly being put under more and more and more pressure. 

"Can I please go back?" she asked one of the soldiers. 

"Not yet. Don't worry. We'll land soon." His words sounded as if they were trying to be sympathetic words, they were trying to be kind words, but still they were words devoid of sympathy and kindness anyways. They were words that were cold, and cutting, and hollow. Alena wanted to scream. She wanted so very badly to scream. But she was afraid of what would happen if she did. 

When they finally landed, they were not in the dusty makeshift military base they had left. Instead, they were in a strange new world. Everything was so clean. Everything was so shining. Everything was so straight and square and most importantly everything was so big. It was pretty. Definitely, it was pretty. But it was wrong, all wrong, so very wrong. 

This time Alena did scream. She screamed and she ran back towards the plane and she tried to get back on. But the soldiers caught her and held her down and stopped her from getting on. She kicked and screamed and scratched and bit and flailed her arms and fought as hard as she could. But it was no use. There were just so so many of them and they were just so big. Still, she fought with all the energy she had, until all her energy left her and she was exhausted and too tired to fight back. 

"Where are we going?" she asked. 

A pale woman came up to her and crouched down beside her. She looked as if she was trying to look caring, trying to look kind. But in her eyes there was the same cold hard hollowness that there was in all the eyes and the voices of the Allitian people. 

"We're in Allitia. This is a nice place. A safe place. A free place. We're going to find a nice family to adopt you and take care of you, and you will have a good, safe life." 

This was by far the most devastating thing that Alena had heard in years. The only thing that could come close to this news was the news that her parents had died, many many years ago. It felt as though she had been shot through the heart. It felt as though everything inside her, everything in her soul, had become dark and dead and rotten all at once. She felt trapped, she felt trapped, she felt more trapped than she had ever felt in her life. She felt devastated, desecrated, and entirely destroyed. But she didn't have the energy to fight anymore. She didn't have the energy to fight back. 

"I want to go home," she pleaded with everything that she had, her voice sounding sad and lost and desperate. Her voice sounding oh so small. 

"This is your new home now," the woman replied, voice matter-of-fact. But this was not true. This strange land so far removed from everyone she loved was not her home. It would never be her home. Never ever. She was a prisoner here, and she was a ghost walking through the pale shadow of life. 

"I want to go home," she repeated. "Please."

But they did not listen to her. They did not listen to her and they packed her into another car and they drove off, not at all caring how she felt. 

This car went through many strange streets. Streets that Alena did not understand at all. Streets that were wide, so very incredibly wide. Streets that had so many incredibly fast cars and even trucks driving through them. The cars were so whole, so clean, so shiny. And there was grass lining the roads. Green grass and many, many buildings. The buildings were so very straight, so very shiny, so very perfect and big. There were no broken windows. No broken houses. No rubble anywhere. It was so strange. She admired it, but more than anything she wanted to go home. 

They turned in to a street filled with houses. And the houses were all so big, were all so immaculate, were all so clean and pretty. They all had pretty yards full of grass and flowers and trees. There were no soldiers anywhere. There were barely any people anywhere. And all the people that there were were perfectly well-fed and whole. 

They turned in to a large building. And there she was shown to a large, clean room with a soft, cushioney bed. She went immediately to the bed and she wrapped herself in blankets. The blankets offered a tiny bit of security, a tiny bit of comfort. But they didn't offer even a fraction of the comfort that her brother offered, that her people offered. They didn't offer even a fraction of the comfort that her family offered. 

She lay in bed and she missed her family. She missed her family with all that she had. And she felt so heavy, so tired, so weighed down by their absence. She felt lost, absolutely lost. And she felt like everything all around her was poison, was blood. She felt as though she was breathing poisoned blood instead of air. And she felt as though she would never taste the sweet freshness of air again. There was nothing left of her. For she was nothing without her family. 

Many families came to see her. Strange, clean families with pretty, elegant clothes. The clothes were so elegant and the shoes were so new and the eyes were so completely, absolutely hollow. But perhaps they simply reflected the hollowness she felt in her soul. Many families tried to talk to her. They tried to see if she would be a good match for their family or not. But Alena did not talk to them. She was holding on to the hope that if she didn't get adopted by a family, then she would be sent home. 

But get adopted she did. A family found her and they liked her. She did not know why they liked her. She did not like them back. And she tried to make it apparent that she had no interest in being adopted by them. But still, they insisted on taking her home with them.

"She's so sweet," the mother cooed. 

"Yes, she is," the father agreed. 

And just like that the papers were signed and she was dragged out of the building and into yet another car. And just like that her fate was sealed. 

The house that the family lived in was nicer than any house she had ever imagined. It was big. It was clean. It was ornately decorated. But it wasn't home. It wasn't home and it wasn't even a prison. It was a hell, a place of torture. And she felt as if she was being sliced into with knives of ice every second that she was in there. It felt as if her soul was being frozen in ice and tied down with iron. 

The family tried to be nice to her. But they had that same hollow coldness that everyone from this strange country always had. They never seemed to see her, to truly see her. They never seemed to see her sadness, her misery, her aching inside. They never seemed to see her truth or the constant horrors she faced in her every waking moment. And they never seemed to care, either. They never seemed to care that she was broken inside, that she wasn't the perfect, grateful little girl who they rescued from horror. 

There was a mother. And she was not anything at all like Alena's mother who had died. There was a father. And he was nothing like Alena's father either. There were two children, a boy and a girl, both older than her. And they were nothing like her brother. They were so carefree and careless and thoughtless. They did not understand that any emotions beside positive ones actually existed. And they did not understand why Alena was so wistful and withdrawn. This family was a family. They loved each other. But they were not her family. And they didn't love her. 

It sank deep into her like a thousand jagged pieces of broken glass, the fact that the people in the house were a family, one that she wasn't part of. They loved each other. And they cared about each other. But they did not care about her. Not truly. Not while they kept her there, away from her brother and her people, and that cut into her so very deeply. It made her feel small, faded, ghost-like. She felt as though she was banished from life, banished from personhood, and trapped behind a thick glass separating her from the world. And everyone else around her was part of life, and part of each other. She hated it. It was unfair. It was so deeply, incredibly, intrinsically and fundamentally unfair. And it absolutely suffocated her. 

She wanted, more than anything, to be away from this horrible family that stole her personhood from her in the same breath that they claimed to save her. She wanted, more than anything, to be back with her people, where she belonged. Her loneliness, her homesickness, her grief, her alienation, it all sank down through all parts of her, poisoned and freezing and oh so deeply wrong. Her soul was being boiled in crude, thick, poisoned oil. Her soul was having the breath squeezed out of it. Every single part of her felt ragged.

She had always had a baseline desire to die. It had haunted her for her entire life. And it had been especially strong, especially destructive and overwhelming when her parents had died. When they had died, her heart was screaming at herself to end it. To stop this horrible, aching existence of hers. Her grief had been devastating. And it had, after many many years, not diminished even a bit. She had always had to live with the heavy weight of her parents' deaths. A weight that had never gotten lighter. 

But now, now that she was all alone, without any family, the weight of grief was far more crushing that she could have ever even imagined it possible to be. There was no part of her that wanted to continue living. To continue living with this family she wasn't truly a part of. Without any of the people who made her who she was. She was ready to just give up. 

Meanwhile, Kumiko wanted to kill himself too. He thought that he had betrayed his sister. He thought that he had betrayed her in the worst way imaginable. In a way he did, but it was truly not his fault. But he hated himself. He hated himself so very much, in the very base of his heart and then out of his gut and in every other part that existed in him. He thought about Alena every single second of his existence, no matter what he was doing. He thought that her pain must be overwhelming. And he was right. His own pain was overwhelming too. Alena's absence weighed heavy on him, colouring everything he experienced with desolation. Her absence clawed and scratched at him. But there was nothing he could do. The deed was done. 

One day Alena was lying in her soft bed, trying to melt into it and get as many of the meagre, faded threads of comfort that it offered. There, she made up her mind to finally go end herself. And so she stepped out of her bed, as softly as a feather, and she snuck her way to the bathroom, under cover of night, while all the others were sleeping. She meant to pick up a razor and slit her wrists. She felt like she was finally embracing the arms of freedoms.