Chapter 3:

Breathing Deep Buries Me

Plaid: The Glass Tower


KIAN

Nari wasn’t the sort of big brother who took no for an answer. Kian and Lely were always supposed to try new things; to get their hands wet and their feet dirty; to breathe deep, not shallow.

To live.

Kian had never been much of a ‘liver,’ for starters. Content with keeping to himself and staying out of the way, that’s who Kian was—but never who Nari wanted him to be.

“Get out there, man! Go play with Emi, or something. Don’t you loove her?” Nari would say at least twice a day, and Kian always hated how his voice mimicked a wrecked foghorn whenever he said the word love with two Os. He hated more that it made him laugh, every time.

“How stupid,” he’d say and try to hide the smile creeping up on his face. The truth was: Nari was a little preachy. But that was never a deal breaker for Kian. Nari was the coolest brother around.

Whenever the Kona siblings went through town on their way to grab groceries from the market, there was always a crowd that would form around Nari and neighbors’ voices shouting greetings from a distance away. What Kian despised were the voices calling for Nari to do them a favor.

“They only do that because we’re the governor’s kids and you’re the oldest of us.” Kian complained, using his eyes to show everyone how much disdain he had for them. “Why do you let them use you? Why don’t you tell them to shove their favors up their—”

“Hey.” Nari’s voice was stern. Kian zipped his lips but worked to keep the pierce in his eyes. “There’s a difference between being taken advantage of and being needed. Yes, they know who I am, and they think that I’m generally more capable of helping them than others are, but that doesn’t change the fact that I can actually help them. I can help them, Kian. That’s why I do it.”

Nari paused their walk a moment to smooth the tension between Kian’s eyebrows, loosening up the glare in his eyes. “Let it go, Ki, and help some people. Help as many people as you can, when and if you can. Be that kind of person, little brother.”

Kian kept to himself that he never wanted to be that kind of person. People who never paid him any attention but for when they needed him? People who talked bad about the “three spoiled brats of the privileged Kona family?” Help them despite all that? It didn’t make sense and it wasn’t fair. No, thank you, Kian thought.

But even so, Kian loved so much that Nari always did, always helped as many people as he could. His brother, ten years his senior, was never the strongest or toughest person in the room, but he always stood up for others and never backed down over something he believed in.

Nari was Kian’s hero, even in the times when he lost the fight.

“Stop howling, dude. You’re gonna make me cry if you keep that up! I’m fine, see?” With labored movements, Nari attempted to hold his left arm up and flex his bicep but ended up crying out and wincing instead.

“Ha!” Dr. Rallus exclaimed from the other side of the examiner’s room. Moving closer, he said, “Try raising your left arm again to see if you can make the three of us believe that.” When Nari tried and failed again, clearly hurting worse this time, Dr. Rallus huffed. “Thought so. What made your stupid, scrawny ass think you could take on four guys that big? Lucky you didn’t get yourself killed.”

Kian’s teary eyes met Nari’s from where he sat beside Emi on an adjacent hospital bed. “Had to protect my little brother and Emi, you see? Didn’t matter who I was up against.”

“Hm,” hummed Dr. Rallus, “Got into some trouble today, Kian?” The fatherly voice he often used to address Menaly Kona’s children always drew them in like a song, especially Kian who had taken their father’s disappearance the hardest.

When Kian’s response was nothing but a deeper, heavier frown, Emi spoke up for him. “Actually, it was me this time, doctor. Kian just followed me.”

That’s a lie, Kian wanted to say. Emi stepped up for some bullied dyslexic kid apparently because his eyes were asking for help. I stepped back to watch because that was the same kid whose dad said we were a good-for-nothing family who didn’t deserve our status and privileges. And after Emi finished roughing up the two bullies, they ran away and came back with four older guys who went at me just for being there.

“Is that right?” Dr. Rallus said slowly, working Nari’s shoulder into a tight upright position.

Silence filled the room for several seconds, in which time the entire scene replayed in Kian’s mind. Nari had the most wicked timing, to show up just in time to see his ten-year-old brother and his friend being manhandled by a group of young adults. The feeling of relief that had washed over him after realizing Nari was there was still palpable now.

“We’re just… lucky Nari showed up.” Kian whispered toward the floor, and chuckled when he heard Nari whisper back, “Damn straight.”

It was an adventure—they’d called it—that they had never told their mom or little sister, who was just seven at the time, in full detail. But it was a moment Nari would never let Kian forget.

“We don’t live alone, little brother. We live together with everyone in this glass tower, whether as friends or enemies. You gotta protect what and who you have, like Emi. If Emi jumps in, jump in with her. Better yet, be the first to jump in. If someone’s in trouble, jump in for them and hope to God that they’d jump in for you, too. The world we live in sucks, Ki. Let’s do what we can to make it better—for everyone, not just us.”

He reminded Kian every time they came across someone’s suffering. Kian would nod, disregarding the advice but admiring Nari for saying it each time. Nari was tireless in his search for and protection of people whose hardships outweighed his own.

And even when he was the one suffering, his eyes managed to say the words his mouth could no longer say. It happened when Lely was eight, Kian was eleven, and Nari was twenty-one.

Vidrio had its 15th Selection. The fifteenth cycle marked the second Selection Lely could remember. It was Kian’s third Selection.

And Nari’s last.

This time felt different from the moment the foghorn began its one-minute warning. Blaring down from the topmost Plate of the tower, Cerulean, the foghorn counted down one minute in ten-second intervals. The noise settled deep into the bones, rocking the calm in one’s soul until all that was left was a panic lasting the two-and-a half days it’d be until the end of Selection.

Ten minutes before that, at 4:50 a.m. on the morning of Selection, Nari shook Kian awake, hurrying him out of bed. “Time to go, little brother,” he said, speaking quietly as if the walls were listening.

Kian popped up, having hardly slept, and hurried behind him into the barren living room. The family had packed early the day before, shrinking and storing valuable items using magnetized compression ringlets which could be worn on the wrist or around the neck as little more than a piece of jewelry. It was a leading staple throughout all levels of The Glass Tower, necessary when owners’ homes changed every three years.

Menaly had Lely up and dressed, the young girl looking tired as she munched on a dry-looking breakfast bar. Without a word, Menaly rushed over to Kian, handed him the same unappetizing meal substitute with a kiss to his forehead, and ensured that they all had their compression ringlets on. She then ushered her children toward the back of the kitchen where the three of them wordlessly turned around, their backs facing her.

Menaly took a small pouch from her pocket and clipped a small mechanical insect the governors called “Chameleon” onto the nape of her neck first. Kian heard her hiss against the pain of its steel points sticking into her skin before she pressed another into the back of Nari’s neck and then into his own. Before she could get to Lely, Kian grabbed his little sister’s hand and squeezed, willing her to be brave and keep quiet.

Once the Chameleons were in place, Menaly reached around to squeeze the tip of the one on her neck, activating the invisibility feature that would cloak them, allowing them to be undetectable to the naked eye for ninety seconds. They had to hurry.

When they left home that night, it was out the back door. The family formed a train with their arms, careful not to break formation when they cut corners. Footsteps light and quick, the Kona family dashed through the deserted streets that were tense with uncertainty and fear. They knew no one was asleep in their homes despite the general lack of presence, and they needed not a soul to catch a whiff of them as they undoubtedly kicked up rocks and other debris in their unseen hurry.

Thirty seconds into their excursion, Menaly turned toward her children and stepped aside. They stood before a narrow chasm, about five feet wide. Kian figured he could clear the jump to the other side with a running start. He was worried about Lely, though.

“Jump.” Menaly commanded, “Not across, down.” Shocked, Kian peeked. That was nearly a six-foot drop. “Hurry, Nari,” Menaly urged when even Nari hesitated.

Nari nodded, sucked in a deep breath, and jumped down into the narrow space. He grunted at the pain Kian was certain had shot up his legs and, seconds later, had his arms held up for Lely to fall into. Kian lowered himself down, unconfident in a clean jump, and helped Nari get their mother down safely. Though aware it probably wasn’t the best time to speak, even in a whisper, Kian couldn’t help voicing his curiosities. “I’ve never seen this place before.” He said.

I come by this way almost every day and there’s never been a huge ditch right here. They were walled in by the Vermillion Plate on all four sides, fluorescent red tinting the skin of their bodies. The only way out was back up the way they came.

“Because it wasn’t here last night, love.” Menaly answered, speaking softly and quickly. From within her pocket, she withdrew a triangular capsule which she pressed tight between thumb and forefinger until a click sounded. She threw it against the wall towards the right of the ditch. A burst of yellow-white light flashed to life like electricity. The triangle started out small and became big enough to fill the six-foot wall. Beyond the electric triangular space appeared to be a colorless void.

“The entranceway to the safehouse changes with each Selection to keep its location secure and its existence hidden. Follow me.” Menaly stepped inside the triangular space, which shot alarm through Kian’s core thinking that his mom was going to plummet into an endless nothing the way Vermillion Plate did at the end of Selection. But when she appeared to be walking on blackness and he stepped in behind the others, Kian recognized that they weren’t walking into a void. Instead, he was seeing a sight he’d seen twice before.

There were two clear glass columns in this dark space, each illuminated inside by a white light that seemingly came from nowhere. The columns were impressive as always. Pure glass, infinitely long, and the color of the fairest blue sky. The columns were home to nothing but cloudy-white solid glass panels settled at the bottom as a sort of flooring. In this way, the columns acted as elevators had in the old world.

The column on the right had a white trim around the unseen door, while the left-hand column’s doorframe was forest green. White led to the Governors’ Summit. Green led to the safehouse for the governors’ families.

In silence, the group of four walked into the median of the columns and froze there when the tower’s foghorn started its scream down from Cerulean Plate. It was 4:59 a.m. Selection would begin in one minute.

“You know what to do,” Menaly told Nari and accepted the hug he threw at her with open arms. “It’s just two days and a pinch more. Then, we meet up together here at the end, just like usual.”

Instead of letting go, Nari tightened his grip on Menaly for several seconds more—like he always did. The moment should have passed, and they should have gone, unbothered, on their way; but ironically, Kian was the one left feeling vulnerable after watching his brother breathe in their mother’s scent, a tank of fear burying him like never before.

He was shaken.

When it was his turn to bid his mother a temporary farewell, he, too, hugged her like he would never get to again. 

Gokusgirl
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