yukimura sokatoa || district three || cb || fin

It's not easy being a ghost.

Yeah, you've heard it all before - it was your brother who died in the Hunger Games last year, not you, your brother was the ghost and you were still alive - but for all the acknowledgement you get nowadays, you might as well be one yourself. There's a certain stigma around kids like you, those that were the siblings of those unlucky enough to find themselves in a deathtrap of the Capitol's creation.

Other kids avoided you like the plague. Adults seemed awkward, unsure of what to do, as if they'd never seen a kid unlucky enough to have gone through your shoes in their lives. Even your own family is sad, withdrawn. And you don't blame them - Akira's absence is like a hole in your chest that will never again be filled.

You sometimes wonder if it should have been you to take his place. Akira had gotten close, so very close, and yet he'd lost hope at the last possible second, had his life taken from him by a boy inches away from the same fate. But he'd still died, which left his fate the same as twenty two others who had stepped in the arena. And if you had gone, well, at least he'd still be alive.

But that's not what Akira would have wanted, you know that all too well. So you live, one foot plodding forth in front of the other.

It's not easy, but if he could do it, then so will you.