리틀팍스

 Air in the sealed shelter became stifling. The space felt much smaller. Despite there truly was hardly enough space for two people, they felt as if they were been crammed into a narrow space which only afforded for a space hardly for one people.

 Time became unmeasurable again. An hour that seemed like a second, a second that seemed like an hour passed, til they could hear footsteps.

 It seemed like two or more people, definitly not one. It also sounded like the people were searching the house, moving closer and further from the spot where they were hiding. One of the hiders let out a short, but horrified gasp as the other one's eyes widened, as the footstep moved frightingly closer and more.

 They started to hear voices, though muffled through the thick door and wall of the shelter, which blocked out the details of the ruckus which was made early in the house. They could only guess it, but they didn't seemed like bad guys, as their voices was normal, not particularly agressive.

 A silence.

 Than, happening through a swift of second, the shelter door was wrenched off from the hinges, as bright light and fresh air poured through the open entrance. They blinked at the sudden light, and stared up at it.

 While I was staring back at them.

 "They told us where the secret shelter is. They also made sure that the information would not reach the pollutees-severely polluted, I daresay."

  Mr. Choi kept saying to our two new companions-definitly trying to convince them that we were not bad guys. One of them a boy who looked in my age, the other a girl who seemed to be six or seven years old.

 "Don't you think this place's familiar?"

 My father suddenly asked me. Before I could even recall, my father answered his own question as if he was talking about something very important which I couldn't understand.

 "There had been one more murder here. Your mother was seen in this village, and was never sighted again. She was announced dead, like their (in this phrase, he turned his gaze upon the two children, than upon quickly me again) parents. Mineral D caused all these things, and must be destroyed."

 I turned to see a boy who was in my age-probably the other one's brother. He didn't say anything.

 "Here is where we'll store the severely polluted masks. You don't have to know, but we thought it was better for you to know this."

 Mr. Choi was pointing at a deep-looking, rather small-in-length hole, punchered at a rocky flatland, not far away from the village (two orphans rescued by my father and Mr. Choi, were resting in our resthouse) . We could still see clouds of dusts behind us, and were still wearing gas masks.

 First I thought after seeing the hole was waste burying. I didn't think it was a good idea. But some more words our father said, while a gigantic dumper truck came, dumped the masks that completely filled the container, and drove off, changed my idea.

 "We had to think of a way to conceal the minerals completely and properly. It must not be released. It must not be uncealed in any ways. What we could only think of was compressing it in a gigantic pressure, and covering a thick-kilometers thick-layer of solid material on it. And we found how to do that in the nature."

 He said these words, watching the mineral-stained masks falling into the deep, and never escapable pit-

 "Mantle. It is neither solid nor liquid, but also both of them. It can let the materials sink under its surface like liquid, and conceal it forever like solid material."

 I could see the proud smile slightly flickering through his face. 

-to be continued-