Let the Games Begin

The Beginning of the End

"Seokmin, wake up. It's the reaping" The reaping. The worst words anyone could wake up to. I rolled onto the side of my bed and started putting on my work boots, making sure I took as long as I could to lace them up. After pulling on a worn down, brown work jacket I folded up my thread bare blanket and left my room.

The kitchen was no better. While my Mother swept the dirt caked wooden floor, my older brother SungYeol finished cooking the pork over the open fire on the far side of the kitchen. Although Mother was only 41, her black hair was streaked with grey and worry had creased her face. SungYeol wasn't any better off. Ever since Father left, he has been taking over the role as "The Man" in the family. 19, bone thin, and working his tail off. That's how I saw SungYeol.

"Oh good, you're up." Mother leaned the handmade straw broom against the wall and handed me a stale roll while kissing the top of my head. "After doing your chores you might want to start getting ready for... this afternoon." She paused for a moment and looked down at the floor while composing herself.

I enveloped Mother in my arms while whispering "I will be okay Mom. I have been okay all of these years. It's my last year, I'll make it."

She wiped her tears that fell off her face and lifted her head smiling. "I know you will be honey. Now go get started on your chores." She pushed me away towards the door and picked the broom back up and continued sweeping.

I took my roll and walked over towards the door. SungYeol must have started already. Upon opening the door I ran into a waiting SungYeol sitting on the steps. "You finally ready?" He asked.

"Yeah, I'm ready." Before I finished walking down the rotting steps and before my brother could get up I quickly added "Race you there." I pushed SungYeol down and sprinted towards the garden. While running I risked a glance backwards and noticed SungYeol was laughing while trying to catch up.

"Watch out!" By the time I could turn around and see who warned me, I ran straight into the garden fence. The rusting wire of the fence caught onto my pants and vaulted me over. I was about to tumble away from the fence, but the wire ripped my pants and sent me sprawling across the garden.

I started to sit up and inspect the damage to my pants when I heard someone dying hysterically behind me. "This isn't very funny Jinyoung. This was one of my nicer pairs of pants and now I ruined them. Mother is going to kill me before the reaping has a chance." I showed Jinyoung the rip from the top of the left side of my knee to right before my ankle. Luckily I wasn't cut.

"Sorry. Your face when you vaulted over the fence was priceless though." Jinyoung said while trying to stop laughing and look sincere.

"Oh my, are you okay?" SungYeol had finally caught up and was now helping me up from the ground. After inspecting the rip in my pants and making sure I was not hurt, SungYeol picked up one of the buckets in the far corner of the garden and started working. I threw a still laughing Jinyoung a dirty look and picked up the other metal bucket.

"Are you going to help us Jinyoung?" SungYeol asked.

"Yeah, sure. I'll just go find Chanyeol." As Jinyoung left to go find his brother, SungYeol and I started to water the straggly plants. The garden wasn't that big, so by the time Jinyoung came back with Chanyeol most the work was done.

"Thank you so much for helping us Jinyoung." I said sarcastically while flicking water towards him. While we had a mini water war, Chanyeol walked over to SungYeol and stared to weed the rows. Not that there was much to weed anyways.

After a few minutes of weeding, Chanyeol and SungYeol had finished the garden work and took the water buckets from us.

"Come on, we have to go look nice for the reaping." SungYeol and I started walking home while Jinyoung and Chanyeol walked in the opposite direction to their house on the slightly nicer side of town. If you even considered part of the run-down town to be nice.