CHAPTER 61: NEVER GIVE UP

Leaves spun outside the walls of the dormitory, blasting on the slightly dotted stones and sliding on them until landing on the ground calmly. Shadows moved on the ground as soldiers began moving from one door to the other, joining in the queue at the assembly ground as they welcomed the new recruits for the fourth year.

At the large assembly ground, five hundred men and women, dressed in outfits of various kinds, stood there, holding sheets in their arms as they focused on the tall man standing at the podium, wrapping his arms tightly around the black microphone.

On the white-colored pulpit, Lieutenant Gray stood there, dressed in a black robe that stretched long like a bride’s veil, falling on the ground on which his black boot with a tiny red line at its base stood.

"Welcome, people from different areas, cities, and villages. We welcome you to the twentieth recruitment. You’re here in Bion City for one thing and one thing only: to train, fight, help, save, and protect others no matter the state you’d find yourself in," he said, pulling the microphone from its stand and tightening his grip around it as he moved two steps away from the pulpit.

"Here, there is only one rule: never give up. However, you may face trials that can end your life even before it begins; strive and survive to the end. You are many, but not all of you will be out of this year’s training alive!"

Gray moved toward the pulpit, placed the microphone down, and stepped down into the queue of young men and young women, scanning them with wild eyes. Though he hadn’t seen them taking part in any trial or training yet, he saw some strange spirit in almost fifty percent of both the young men and women.

After thirty minutes of walking through and carefully scanning them, he moved a hundred people out and told them to go back to where they came from.

Though it wasn’t an easy thing to do—to go back to the same parents or family and tell them you’ve been sacked on the first day of recruitment, not even the time the first trial had started.

Overall, Gray knew those hundred people would’ve just been a nuisance to both those ready and eager to enter with all their hearts and those who already seemed prepared for the job ahead.

The moment Lieutenant Gray walked out of the assembly, he saw Kinji holding Kai’s hands as they walked out of Kai’s room. Peculiar joy surged in him so hard it tore a smile on his lips, and when they stopped beside him, he looked at Kinji first, then tilted his gaze to Kai, who was already looking at Gray with a confused face.

...

"Sir," Kinji said, turning and pointing toward Kai, then left Kai and Gray in the hallway and joined all the soldiers walking toward the assembly door, going to welcome the new recruits and give them all the necessary information they thought would be best for them to survive.

Gray looked at Kai, smiled, then pulled a smart device from his pocket and dialed a number with the name Clara written boldly on it. When the person on the other end answered the call, he gestured toward Kai, walked to the window’s angle, and stood there for minutes talking and laughing.

Although Kai wasn’t hearing what the man was saying, judging by the man’s movements, Kai somehow knew the man was happy seeing him, yet he couldn’t understand why.

’Where are these people all going?’ Kai thought as he walked toward the door that all the other men dressed in military uniforms had walked in, opened it, and scanned through the four hundred people greeting each other with a handshake from a distance. When he spotted someone staring back at him, smiling, Kai jolted his head back, closed the door, leaned on the wall, and waited for the man making a call.

After ten minutes, Gray walked toward Kai, smiled, and gestured as he began walking out of the large building and stepping outside the building. The sun shone brightly on his forehead, causing Gray to cover his face slightly, yet tiny rays seeped through the lines in his fingers and still scorched him.

For Kai, he simply followed the man, using the man’s height as a shade as he continuously followed him, letting his form vanish and remain behind the man.

And when they reached the entrance of the hospital that had been crossed with tapes, Gray moved them slightly, letting Kai enter after he’d entered and already opened the door.

The moment they entered, people taking and taking samples from the walls dressed with cloths that kept on bleeding smoke welcomed them. All eyes fell on them as they kept on moving forward toward a door with the same tape crossed on it.

’Why are they looking at me like that?’ Kai thought, tilting his gaze and watching all the young men staring at him as if they were seeing a ghost or something much more horrific than that.

"Kai, come," Gray said, turning and pointing at the boy, who was now totally confused hearing the name he’d heard and seen in his recent dream.

He tilted his gaze sideways, checking to see if he would find someone moving, but saw no one, and in that manner, he knew nothing of the name but knew he was the one being called. Though he had remembered Kinji, he hadn’t remembered everything fully, not even his own name.

All that he remembered being referred to him was "the monster."

Gray stretched his hand, raised the emergency tapes, and on the second time allowed the boy to enter the room he’d just opened its door.

Kai, who remembered nothing of the room, walked in calmly, stopped, and began turning around, scanning the claws on the wall.

For ten minutes, he and the man who’d brought him there stood in the room without saying a word or hearing a word from him, yet Kai didn’t complain of being fed up or wanting to go back.

"Do you remember being at this place?" Gray said, stepping forward and screeching his fingers slightly above the claws on the wall.

Kai, who still couldn’t remember, stood there confused, stared at the man, and then shook his head. And when he saw the man sighing in disapproval and brushing his left hand on his face, he started to force his mind to remember something.

And for an extra twenty minutes, he couldn’t, though within the last five minutes of the twenty minutes, he began to remember somewhere that looked the same as the room, but it wasn’t the same.

...

Gray and Kai walked out of the room and out of the hospital the same way they had entered, and even as they left, the stares continuously followed them like arrows pinned at enemies.

The moment Kai tilted his gaze from the men still staring at him, reaching the entrance and exiting, he spotted the nurse who had been with him for days standing at the entrance, her arms crossed at her chest.

She quickly walked toward Gray, leaned in, and he saw her lips moving. Though he wasn’t close, he strangely began to hear all that she said to the man and knew how to answer her when she moved from the man and began walking toward him.

"Kai," she said, spreading her arms as she closed in on the boy, who then stood there confused.

’Why are they referring to me with the name I saw?’ he thought, frowning slightly and allowing himself to be hugged by the lady. Though he was a bit confused and angry at the same time, he didn’t let them see, since the man kept on staring at him and smiling.