Soon after our encounter with Korin, I remember meeting up with Dad after he just finished up with Ernesto and Bob. He walked toward the gate outside, and I followed right behind him.
"Why did you let Korin in here? Nobody seems to like him very much," I quickly asked Dad. I knew he had his own opinions on the matter, but hearing them straight from the man himself would provide me guidance, I felt.
Dad sighed, looking over the gate while stretching his legs out. I knew it was a stressful question for him to answer, but I just wanted to hear that my opinions were right.
"You should know, Leon, that not everybody has worth just based on how likable they are. Korin might be a little prick sometimes, but he has use, I know he does. We just have to hold out until he's comfortable here to not put on a façade of who he truly is," Dad replied. A truly wise answer, but I wasn't satisfied... Korin would ruin everything, I already had that feeling deep within.
"He just always talks about how this world 'changed' him. He doesn't talk about anything else, and that's annoying. I don't want to hear about the outside world, or how it affected him. Am I unreasonable for thinking that?" I asked Dad again. He started to stretch his other leg out and took some time to find the right answer.
"Maybe, it depends on your reason. Are you hopeful? Is Korin tattering that hope? I don't want you to think if it's unreasonable, I want you to figure out what paths of thinking are reasonable and unreasonable. Remember, Korin is a person just like us. We can't throw him out. You know, if I were you, I would make a really big effort to be his friend. He could need that," Dad suggested. I was absolutely abhorrent at that thought and groaned in anticipation of Korin joining our group.
However... Dad was right. We had an outburst earlier, that couldn't be ignored. Korin was a person who deserved patience, just like everybody else. I should apologize to him, it would be the right thing to do. I started to notice that sometimes, the right thing to do was the hardest thing to do. It was easy to be mean to Korin, to stoop to his level, but I didn't want to be like him by any means. Then, it was settled. I had to go make amends.
"I'll apologize to him, and I'll try to be his friend from now on. I don't like how he waved around that knife, and how he tried to put on that show in front of everybody. When he reached for the gun, that freaks me out," I told Dad. He nodded, understanding it completely, and handed me his gun without the bullets in it, emptying it six times before placing it in my hand, and turning on the safety.
"This is my gun. The name isn't important, but this is it in the flesh. See, here? This is the iron sights. You look down at these when you want to shoot a target. Under no circumstance should you pull this trigger unprompted? Your life should be in danger if you resort to this, do you understand that?" Dad asked me. He taught me a little bit about guns before, but he never let me hold one.
He took a wide stance, positioning himself behind me to help me use the gun properly, and held it up to my eye line. It was a pitch-black gun with small protrusions all over it, for what I assumed to be for grip purposes.
"Before you pull the trigger, if you ever do, the safety right here is so it doesn't fire without you saying so. It's not perfectly reliable, but it can save your life if somebody inexperienced is trying to use a gun. You click it off, but only when you've decided to shoot. That's why you can reach it with your thumb," Dad told me. I nodded and peered my head over to the left side, observing the small switch.
"The very top of the gun is called the hammer, it slides back when you put bullets in it, and is another very important thing to remember when you need to use this. You always put the magazine in, and slide the hammer back. It takes a lot of force, but again, it's so kids can't get to it. When you're ready to fire, you take a deep breath, let it go, and pull the trigger," Dad told me.
I never turned the safety off and always kept my finger off of the trigger while he was explaining everything to me. With this lesson and the previous ones before it, I knew better than to absent-mindedly leave my finger on the trigger if I didn't want to use it. I knew Dad wanted to check if I had retained that information, and remained reliable.
"Why are you teaching me this stuff now? Will I have to use one of these?" I nervously asked him. Yes, I knew how to use a gun, but I never wanted to. This was for dire emergencies only in my mind.
"I won't lie to you and tell you no. There will come a time you need to use one... now, Leon, I'm going to get really dark with you here for a moment, and I just need you to listen," Dad told me. He pushed us both away from the fence, and over to the nearest playset I was often on with Connie and Cody.
"In the case that Korin threatens you with a weapon, or even makes a move on Cody or Connie, or even me, you use this," Dad said. He tapped the gun with his fingers and then handed it back to me.
"Use it... to kill him?" I asked Dad. He waited for a moment before answering, sitting down on the playset's nearby platform.
"If that's what you think should be done, then yes. I will be there to control what he does, but if I'm not, I leave that to you, okay? Don't be scared over it, just know that he's not friendly like the rest of us, not yet. If he does one of those things, you can't be afraid to use this," Dad told me.
Naturally, this was one of the most terrifying things I've ever had to do before. I was more than worried about having to pull the trigger on an actual person, but the thought that I couldn't befriend Korin and had to resort to this was absolutely terrible for me. I didn't want to use this... but being told that I'm responsible from Dad and trusted enough to use this, I couldn't turn it down.
I wanted to be a guard as well. One day, my experience might save me from the zombies as well. Being courageous was very hard, especially now, but I wanted to show my dad that I was prepared.
"Okay. I'll keep everybody safe if that happens. For now, I'll try to be his friend, right?" I reiterated, and Dad got up, rubbed my head, and nodded.
"We aren't strong separated, we're strong together. Try to keep that bond," He told me. He and I walked back through the playground doors to the school in silence. He still had the gun in his hands after I handed it back, and we were going to put it somewhere hidden in case I needed it. When we entered the room, Korin was there, looking around at everything in the room opposite.
"Hey, Korin!" I called out. He annoyingly turned his head up from a book he had his eyes on and looked at me.
"What do you want, kid?" He asked me. The tone was a little rude, but I could work with it,
"I wanted to apologize for earlier. It was rude of me to insult you," I shortly said. Unlike Connie, I looked him in the eyes the whole time, waiting for his response.
"I guess it's fine. I'm a forgiving person after all that happened, after all," He said. There it was again... his vague past he exaggerated to make himself sound cooler.
"If you don't mind me asking, what did happen to you, Korin?" I said to him. I honestly didn't care at this point, but being nice could get me a new friend.
"You... you want to know what happened to me?" He asked again. I nodded with a smile, and he sat up, putting the book down, and walking over in my direction. Dad left the room through the left entrance, hiding away so Korin couldn't see him, and leaving just the two of us in the same room.