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Hong could smell the food, he was hungry, lately, he is always hungry, when his daddy was here he and his sister could eat as much as they wanted, but now Hong could see On getting thinner every day, he didn't like that, he also didn't like the other clan members they were mean.
They were always playing hide and seek, but he and his sister were the only ones who had to hide, and when they were found it always hurt, and he cried, but his sister never cried, he knew it hurt her too, why didn't she ever cry?
He didn't like to cry, nor to play hide and seek, he didn't like to starve, and he didn't like to see his sister getting thinner and thinner, but he couldn't do anything, he was too small and weak, he was only 4 years old, but when he is bigger and stronger he will leave this place with his sister until then he would do what he could.
Hong smelled food, the bad guys don't usually give them much food, but this time they gave much more than usual, his nonna looked at them suspiciously, and he wondered if they were going to play hide and seek again.
But before he could even begin to hide, the bad guys turned their backs and left. The food smelled good, it smelled very good, but it wasn't like the smell of food when Daddy was still here, it smelled better, On also seemed to have noticed the smell but she didn't seem to think the smell was good. Hong was hungry, he was always hungry, so he started to eat the food, and he was right, this food was different, it was like it had some different spice, why did the bad guys give them this good food out of the blue? He offered the food to his sister but she didn't want to eat, she was angry and threw all the food away.
"Nya doesn't eat that, it's poison!"
Ah so that's what was different, how could poison taste so good? He said this to his sister but she didn't seem to understand and was looking for medicine to cure Hong of the poison.
"But I'm fine! I even feel stronger."
Hong protested, the food didn't hurt him, but On kept looking for some medicine, she didn't find it, they didn't have any medicine, instead sh,e looked for books, anything that could help heal Hong, she looked worried, Hong hadn't seen her like this since Papa was gone, at the end sh,e didn't find anything, they didn't have anything that would help her cure Hong's poisoning, they had some books on how to make antidotes but they weren't useful if they didn't know what poison was used. In the end, On cried, the red-haired man came in panicking he had only seen her cry once before, when daddy died, he wasn't dying, so he hugged his nonna with his arms, she seemed to calm down, and with Hong's insistence that he was fine she decided to observe if he was going to stay fine, there was nothing else she could do.
The hours passed, the days passed, and Hong remained fine, On checking the food, it had enough poison in it to kill a grown man, but Hong was alive and better than ever.
As the days passed so did the need to feed, and the bad guys came back with another delicious dish of poison, On was reluctant to let Hong eat the poison but eventually gave up and the red-headed kitten gorged himself on the poisoned food. On didn't eat the food, and Hong didn't know what his grandmother was eating to survive.
They lived like this for a few weeks until Hong sneezed one day, On who was reading a book turned her attention to her brother immediately, and she realized that this was no ordinary sneeze, her little brother had just sneezed acid, and everything that had touched the droplets of the sneeze was melting. This is how they discovered that unlike everyone else in the village who could control mist, Hong could control poison.
Hong did not like to see his sister getting thinner and thinner, she was too thin, you could practically see her bones. Hong felt guilty, he was eating all the food and leaving nothing for his sister, he knew that the food had poison in it and that's why she couldn't eat, so he decided to find a way to solve the problem, he had turned 5 last week and was getting better and better at controlling poisons, he might not be very big or strong, but he would find a solution. With a new determination Ho, ng started looking through the books they had anything that might be useful.
He found some books on how to make antidotes, many antidotes are made from poison, he can make poison, so if he creates an antidote for poisoned food his nonna will stop starving!
After a few more weeks of working on creating an antidote, and testing the antidote on some rats, Hong finally managed to create the cure, and when the bad guys gave them poisoned food again, instead of eating it all himself as usual he showed the bottle with the liquid that was the antidote to On.
"Nonna, I created an antidote for the poisoned food! Now you can eat it too nya!"
Hong stewed his chest proud of himself, and his sister looked shocked.
"...Is that what you were busy doing?"
"Yes, nya, now drink the antidote and eat the food!"
On, still surprised, took the vial and drank all the liquid, it tasted like strawberry, did Hong make the antidote taste like that because he knew she liked strawberry? She felt her smile growing and started to eat, On couldn't remember when was the last time she had eaten, she was so hungry that she ate all the food without leaving anything for her brother after she finished eating she immediately felt ashamed that she had eaten all the food by herself. But when she looked at Hong he was still looking at her with a proud expression.
"Nya thank you so much, dongsaeng."
On was happy until she felt a pain in her stomach, Hong seemed to notice that she was in pain because her expression became desperate.
"Nonna! Nya are you okay?"
But the pain in her stomach had nothing to do with the poison, she was just full, she had eaten too much.
"I'm fine, I just ate too much..."
She spoke in an embarrassed tone, her brother started laughing and she laughed too. The room was lit up by the laughter of the two children who even if only for a moment allowed themselves to forget all their troubles and laugh.
━━───── 「✦」 ──────━━
On thought, his younger brother was too strong. He had the poison attribute. But On knew:
Fog Cats cannot have any attribute other than fog.
On knew why her little brother had a different attribute. She remembered overhearing a conversation between her parents a few days before Hong was born. During Hong's pregnancy, his mother was poisoned by the rebels of the tribe.
His mother died a few days after she gave birth. Hong should have died, but instead, he grew stronger.
On knew that his brother was very strong. He overcame all the difficulties and grew stronger from them. The first time he ate poisoned food On felt useless. She could not keep the promise she had made to her father. The promise to protect her younger brother. But in truth the poison hadn't even hurt him, the poison had made him stronger.
She didn't want her little brother to have to go through all this, she didn't want the only food available to her to be poisonous, she didn't want to have to hide every time those traitors decided to "play" with them, she wanted to be free with her brother.
She hated that she couldn't do anything to celebrate Hong's 5th birthday, he deserved a party celebrating his existence, but now she could only be grateful that he had survived another year.
On was very excited when her brother created an antidote so that she could eat the poisoned food. She felt that once the hunger had passed she could finally gather enough strength to properly think of an escape plan.
And so began the escape planning, thinking about how she and her brother were going to escape from this tribe without all these sneaky experts noticing. And so the moment they had been waiting for arrived.
The dawn after the party of one of the most influential members of the tribe, a time when everyone was either drunk or asleep, On created a mist covering everyone and Hong used sleeping poison so that everyone who was still awake would fall asleep.
And so, with everyone in the tribe asleep they left, with nothing but the clothes on their bodies and some gold coins they had stolen, they didn't know what their destination was, but anything would be better than here.