warm like a gun | ot23 nct; ot5 red velvet

Chapter 21

It's how he knows they're not overreacting, Mark supposes. The atmosphere at the greenhouses is thick with tension. Mark is well-liked; he's not saying it to be conceited or whatever. He is. But these days, he can rarely get anybody to hold a conversation. It's not just him; nobody's talking to anybody, too worried about their work to do anything else.

Mark tries to keep his head down, mostly. At least on the surface. He doesn't need to give anybody a reason to come after him and his friends. He's sure they're on thin ice as it is.

Thing is, Mark is smart, as much as he often doesn't act like it. And being smart means he's curious about everything. He was too bold at the beginning of his education, asking too many questions and being too open with his confusion. He figured it out pretty quick—to just keep underreporting his yields and to shut up about the rest—but sometimes he's worried his early comments will come back to bite him in the ass.

It's okay for now, though. Mark's supervisors are happy with his work, and for all intents and purposes, he's the perfect student. No one needs to know that he's been doing research on the side. No one needs to know that he spends his nights testing the soil around the city, bringing it back to his house and purifying it.

Taeil's been helping, mostly because he's a caretaker for the park. They've tested the purification methods Mark uses in the greenhouses, and it's been working on the soil outside. It's not really even that difficult—which makes Mark wonder why they don't just spend the time and labor to do it across the whole city to put an end to the food shortages.

He knows why, of course. It's about power.

He got the idea to test the soil a few weeks ago, and he and Taeil have been monitoring it ever since. While their friends have been working with all of Jungwoo's high-power tech, Mark and Taeil have been working in Taeil's basement, running tests on different soil samples. It's been going as predicted for the most part. The soil stays pure for a few days and then slowly the nutrients disappear, even though the rest of the ecosystem should be functional. It's just the damage left from the war, Mark supposes. It's similar in the greenhouse, though the process isn't as bad because that system is isolated.

The curious thing, though, is that the soil that he and Taeil have isolated and stored in individual containers does not need re-purification. While soil in the park and even in Taeil's backyard needs constant upkeep, the stuff that they dug up weeks ago has remained fertile and nutrient-rich.

"Maybe it's just that the poison is like, way too deep in the Earth," Taeil suggested. "Like, the stuff in the ground keeps getting contaminated because the purification is mostly surface level. We can't get in deep enough to solve the root of the problem."

"Maybe," Mark agreed.

That was a week ago now. They'd gotten a little distracted by Tern's death and Ten's discovery. Unfortunately, when Jisung asked his father about his mother's death, his father had kind of just shut down. Mark couldn't exactly blame him—who wants to relive the worst days of their life?—but it was frustrating. They were certain Jisung's father knew something, but for now it would be information that they'd have to live without.

The good news is that they're finding new allies everywhere. They still don't have contact with anyone outside the city, but there are other people now—real adults, not people Mark's age—working with them. They're trying to work on an escape plan, and they're very happy to have intel from Yerim, as well as a helping hand or two from Seulgi, Jungwoo, and a few others. At least they're not alone.

Other things are good, too. Mark's been hanging out with Yuta a lot. He knows now's not really the time for disruptions in his relationships, so he just contents himself with thinking about it. It's okay to think about it, right?