Redamancy (Minho | The Maze Runner)

三 : Her Name

During dinner, Newt gave her a brief explanation of what was what in the glade, as they called it. She now knew they were trapped in a gigantic maze, they all were brainwashed of their memories before being sent here, and a new person get sent in every month that's always a boy, until she came along. She had sat and listened without interrupting, although she had a fair amount of questions at the back of her head. The rest he said, she will either learn when their leader, Nick brought her on the tour tomorrow or as time goes by, and that was enough to stop her from asking.

"It's been roughly a year now, and we've managed to come this far as a working community," he said as he finished up his meal. "You'll get an assignment soon enough."

She groaned inwardly. First she gets sent here against her will, then gets mistaken for a boy even though she was 'clearly' a girl albeit rather flat for one, and now she has to work. Granted it's a community effort and all, but she couldn't imagine herself asking to be sent here in the first place.

"Anyway," Newt stood up with his plates, "there's been a call for a council meeting because of you, so I'll be taking my leave for the moment."

He glanced at her. "After you're done here, I want you to go and stay in the Homestead - The shelter where the hammocks are."

She nodded knowingly, she wasn't stupid.

"No really, stay there." He repeated as if he didn't trust her easy agreement.

"Even if I don't know my name, I'm not stupid enough to go wandering around dark areas I'm not familiar with," she replied dryly as she swirled the water in her glass. Especially when I'm the only girl around a bunch of boys, she added inwardly to herself.

"Good that," he said after a pause. "I'll see you later then."

By now she had already noticed that the boys here not only had a working community, but even a local slang. She deduced by the sounds of the phrase he had just used that he was agreeing with her. The blond passed his dishes to the sloppers, as they called those that weren't good at any other jobs and assigned to the least desirable tasks like cleaning up, and headed for Homestead first.

She gazed thoughtfully after him for a moment, watching as Minho joined him along the way towards the shabby wooden structure. Once they entered and the door shut, she quickly finished her glass and passed her dishes to the sloppers, who stared curiously at her.

Walking briskly to the Homestead, she noticed several gladers crowded near the main door, obviously trying to listen in on whatever that was going on. She rolled her eyes as she searched for a different opening. If they were going to talk about her, she wanted to hear it.

Noticing the small enclosed room had a small hole near the top, she glanced down to note the wooden ledges along the wall.

Slowly balancing herself against the wall as she tiptoed on the ledges, she was close enough to the hole to hear bits of what they were saying. If she stretched a bit more she would be able to see them, but she didn't want to take the chance of falling into the room. It would more or less ruin her image and form undesirable first impressions amongst the keepers, as they called the leaders of each job division, and she didn't want that.

"...decide what job she's going to take," someone was saying as she got close enough for the voices to become audible.

"She's adapting pretty fast for a Greenie, Nick," another inputted, his voice uneasy.

She considered the past few hours, and admitted that perhaps she did appear quite calm besides the first time she spoke out of the box. However it was probably mostly because she refrained from asking too many things and tried to come to her own conclusions for fear of sounding stupid. She decided to take it as a compliment smiled to herself at the praise, because either way appearing calm was good wasn't it?

"I know what you're trying to say, but she cannot be a runner." An unfamiliar voice, probably Nick's gauging from the authority in it. "At least, not for now."

She remembered something that Newt mentioned earlier, about the runners. They were the ones that mapped out the maze, looking for a way out. Minho, the Asian boy she met earlier was obviously a runner and since he was in the meeting now, he was probably the keeper of that job. It seemed like a curious job, one that sought answers, where she would be able to satisfy all her questions by herself.

"There's no lack of runners right now anyway." Minho's voice came right on cue.

"She definitely can't be a builder." A voice she didn't recognize.

"A slicer maybe?" There were murmurs of consideration. "I heard girls are good with animals."

That did not sound like a job that involved just taking care of animals.

"She could probably be a Med-Jack, girls are very meticulous aren't they?"

"Aren't girls the best at cooking?" another voice argued back.

"Enough!" She recognized Alby's voice when the room grew noisy. "We'll let her try out between the three, and whichever she's better at, she'll do. For now we'll take her as one of our own, since we can't make anything out of her sudden appearance."

There were sounds of agreements and she sighed in relief, at least she wasn't going to be a slopper. Although these boys were acting as if they had never interacted with another girl in their entire life, girls were obviously so much more than just cooks, animal caretakers and nurses. But of course, if this was really the first time they've ever encountered a girl, which was believable since their community was made out of boys only and they did have the memories wiped out, so she guessed she could be nice and forgive them for being dense idiots.

"Tomorrow I'll give her the tour, and then she can try being a slicer for the rest of the day." Alby decided. "The day after, you'll take her Clint, and then Fry."

There were sounds of the keepers getting ready to leave the room and she realized they were going to end. She turned, wanting to jump off the ledge but slipped in her hurry, falling sideways. There was a loud thump, and even though she had managed to curl up in time and roll to minimize damage, pain rushed to the side of her head.

Through the throbbing she heard Nick say one last thing.

"Meeting dismissed."

She groaned as she got up hurriedly, holding the side of her head. Ignoring the dull ache in her leg where it had taken some bruising too, she quickly made for her hammock. She would rather deal with her injuries later, than get caught listening into their meeting.

But then, halfway a bright light blinded her vision, and her surroundings changed. She was standing in a queue, in the middle of a large crowd. A boy that looked slightly younger was holding her hand. He looked up to her and smiled.

A memory. She realized.

And then she was being violently shaken. "Hey, HEY!"

"Woah what?" she yelped, tearing herself from whoever that was shaking her.

Blinking, she relaxed when she saw it was just Newt and Minho.

"You okay?" Newt asked, his voice concerned, "you were just standing ther-"

"Qiufeng," she suddenly said, cutting him off.

"What?" Newt frowned at the unfamiliar language.

"Her name." Minho explained with a shrug.

She looked up at them and smiled, creating a dimple at the corner of her mouth. "My name is Qiufeng."

--

Little bit of trivia, Qiu Feng's name is pronounced as Chyooh Fnng, or Chee-u Ferng.

Anyway, thank you all for reading this chapter! Do leave any comments if you feel there's areas I can improve on, and vote if you enjoyed the chapter :D