Having finished speaking, Hong Seok-hui pulled up one corner of his mouth and fixed his gaze on Cha Do-hyun. His entire attitude was that of someone who already held the winning cards in his hand.
And with good reason — Hong Seok-hui knew that Cha Do-hyun would be desperate to find Han Jae-i. And along with that, he knew exactly who was responsible for Han Jae-i becoming a zombie.
But that premonition of victory was short-lived, because Hong Seok-hui was forced to let out a scream that felt like it would tear him apart from the pain he hadn’t seen coming.
“Honestly, because of who Han Jae-i became a zom— Aaagh—!”
The reason he hadn’t even dreamed of anticipating Cha Do-hyun’s retaliation was that even through his provocation, Cha Do-hyun’s expression hadn’t shifted by so much as a fraction. The gaze looking back at him — blank, utterly devoid of irritation or even the slightest frown — was an eerily absolute stillness.
That was precisely why he could never have imagined, not even in his wildest dreams, that Cha Do-hyun’s fingernails would silently dig into the wound on his ankle and begin carving into it.
“—Hey, hey! Someone stop Cha Do-hyun. Now!”
The first to pick up on Cha Do-hyun’s quiet rampage was Kim Jae-yun. Kim Jae-yun urgently gestured to Han Chae-rim and Lee Min-jae, who were standing behind him.
Caught off guard by the sudden development, Han Chae-rim and Lee Min-jae each grabbed one of Cha Do-hyun’s arms. But even with two people latched onto him, he didn’t budge a single inch, his grip on Hong Seok-hui’s ankle unwavering.
“Did you touch him?”
Cha Do-hyun asked. Even as he watched Hong Seok-hui thrashing right in front of him.
“Did you touch Han Jae-i?”
His voice, utterly calm and unshaken even as he dug into another person’s flesh with his bare hand, sent a chill crawling down the spine of anyone who heard it.
Crack. Rip. The deeper Cha Do-hyun’s fingers sank into the open wound, the more the sound of tearing muscle filled the air. As he carved out the soft flesh along the exact shape Han Jae-i’s fingers had scratched open, thick, dark red blood began to soak the tips of Cha Do-hyun’s fingers.
“…Hgh.”
What finally separated Hong Seok-hui from Cha Do-hyun — who looked ready to pass out at any moment, clutching his own calf and gasping for breath — was when Kim Jae-yun joined in and physically hauled Hong Seok-hui’s upper body backward. It was the only method they could think of, since Cha Do-hyun himself refused to move.
Dragged backward with arms hooked under both sides of his torso, Hong Seok-hui finally seemed to come back to himself and exhaled roughly. And then, staring up at the ceiling, he let out a string of screams and curses.
“Ugh… that son of a bitch Cha Do-hyun!”
But that was all the fight Hong Seok-hui had left in him. His ankle, gouged so deeply that a glimpse of white bone could be seen, was an absolute wreck. A considerable amount of blood pooled thickly on the floor around it.
“…Serves you right. Should’ve known when to stop running your mouth.”
Kim Jae-yun looked down at Hong Seok-hui’s state and scratched the back of his head roughly, his expression making it clear he found all of this deeply inconvenient. Under normal circumstances he would’ve thrown a punch at Hong Seok-hui’s face too, but looking at his current condition, it seemed unnecessary to bother.
So instead of kicking Hong Seok-hui in the face, Kim Jae-yun shifted his gaze to Cha Do-hyun, who still had two people hanging off him.
“Cha Do-hyun, you good?”
At Kim Jae-yun’s offhand question, Lee Min-jae and Han Chae-rim answered.
“Yeah, he seems okay. Hey, Do-hyun. You alright?”
“The fact that that Hong bastard isn’t showing any weird symptoms yet means the wound probably wasn’t from a zombie bite. So it really was just a scratch?”
At Chae-rim’s words, Hong Seok-hui, lying there in obvious pain, muttered to himself like he couldn’t quite believe it: “Christ, that’s what I said… no one ever believes me.”
Kim Jae-yun leaned down over Hong Seok-hui and whispered to him.
“Your mouth still working?”
“Anyway, what are we actually going to do? Can we even get out of here?”
Once the commotion settled, an even deeper exhaustion than before washed over them. Lee Min-jae dropped down beside Cha Do-hyun, who had calmed considerably, and spoke.
No matter how much they fought among themselves here, the reality was that it would ultimately come down to survivors versus zombies. The more chaos they stirred up and the louder they got, the more trapped they’d be in the music room — and they’d only be burning through their own energy.
So what they needed right now wasn’t pointless fighting among survivors, but to pool their strength and find a way out. That much was clear — and yet Kim Jae-yun, apparently still full of energy, opened his mouth again.
“We escape. Let’s dump this one first and figure it out after.”
“Hey, hey! Wait, wait. Fine, I’ll tell you, I’ll fucking tell you. I’ll talk.”
Still catching his breath from the lingering pain, Hong Seok-hui yelped in alarm as Kim Jae-yun grabbed him by the collar again. Along with it came something between a threat and not quite a threat — that if they dumped him, getting out of here would be a lot harder. He claimed there wasn’t a single other survivor who had a better grasp of where the zombies were concentrated and where they weren’t.
Having barely managed to stop Kim Jae-yun’s rampage, Hong Seok-hui let out a slow breath of relief. His upper body was still dangling in mid-air in Kim Jae-yun’s grip, but he was grateful not to have been thrown out by those brutish hands right then and there.
Hong Seok-hui looked at Kim Jae-yun, then at Cha Do-hyun in turn, and said the words that amounted to his lifeline.
“Han Jae-i. He’s somewhere a lot closer than you’d think.”
That already-familiar name snapped Cha Do-hyun’s gaze — half-wild — straight onto him. Hong Seok-hui swore to himself that he would take to his grave the fact that he had kicked Han Jae-i, and pressed on.
“That guy is going to be seriously pissed at me.”
“…….”
Somehow I’d made it to the music room door, but it was shut far more firmly than I expected. Hong Seok-hui’s blood scent was definitely drifting from somewhere in this area, but with not even a hair of him visible, I couldn’t be sure whether he’d fled inside the music room and locked the door, or if he was hiding somewhere else entirely.
More than anything, Hong Seok-hui had been someone who climbed up from a window to get to an upper floor from the very first time I encountered him — so whether this was the fifth or sixth floor, if he made up his mind, he had more than enough ability to leap through a window.
I leaned my upper body out past the window frame to look up at the rooftop, then scanned the area around the central staircase, then went back to wandering around the music room. The science room was wide open and quiet, and so was everywhere else.
In that case… he must be inside the music room.
I finally came to stand in front of the music room door. Carefully, I pressed both hands against it and leaned one cheek against the surface. I was hoping to catch even the faintest sound of Hong Seok-hui’s voice from inside.
But no matter how hard I strained my ears, all I could pick up was the shuffling of the zombies that had been trailing behind me, staring at me in vague puzzlement.
The more I pressed myself against the door, the more the zombies behind me gurgled and crept closer. When I waved my hand at them to shoo them away, they stopped their approach and took a step back.
“You’re making it even harder to hear anything…”
Having pushed the zombies back, I pressed my ear even closer to the door and tried harder to catch whatever sounds were inside. But whether it was because of the heavy soundproofing on the door, it was proving more difficult than I’d expected.
What if he already slipped out through the music room window? That was what I was thinking, when —
Thud.
“……!”
From inside the music room, which had been completely silent until just a moment ago, came a sound that seemed to shake the very floor.
I startled so badly that I jerked my ear away from the door. It was unmistakably a sound from inside the music room, but what exactly it was remained unclear. What was certain, though, was this:
It’s not just one person.
It was a sound that absolutely could not be made by a single person alone. Crash. Bang. Thud. Noises like a full-on brawl was breaking out inside reverberated through the floor. When I focused and listened carefully, it sounded like voices could be heard too.
It apparently wasn’t just my imagination — the zombies behind me, who had been quietly watching up until then, were raising their heads and baring their teeth. Low, guttural animal sounds along with it.
The fact that this level of sound was leaking out from inside the music room — which was practically a soundproof booth — meant it would carry not just through the fifth floor, but to the floors below as well. Floors were more vulnerable to noise than walls, so down below where I was standing, the sound might be carrying even louder.
I stumbled back a step at the unexpected sounds of a fight. And in that spot, before I could blink, zombies had already moved in to fill it.
This is bad. I had come here thinking Hong Seok-hui had fled alone, but it seemed there were other survivors inside with him.
I did bear ill will toward Hong Seok-hui — that was true. But I had no intention of threatening innocent other survivors just to get to Hong Seok-hui.
That was why I stepped back. But the problem wasn’t me — it was the other zombies.
The noise from inside the music room died down faster than I expected, but it hadn’t been short enough to go unnoticed by the zombies.
Sure enough, before long, zombies from the floors below that had heard the commotion were climbing up the stairs one by one. A zombie dragging a snapped shin bone up each step, a zombie with a twisted cervical spine staring sideways — each one more grotesque than the last.
I looked at the staircase as the zombies swarmed up it, then shifted my gaze back to the music room.
Do I… have to stop them? I held my breath for a moment, listening to the approaching footsteps of the zombies. I could feel my heart beating in time with their steps. Thud, thud, thud. The drumming that reverberated through my eardrums soon triggered a headache. Eeee— a thin, faint ringing in my ears, and cold sweat broke out on my skin.
If there were survivors, I would need to hold the zombies back — but the numbers pouring in were far too many for me to handle alone.
While I stood there in a daze, the zombies that had climbed up to the fifth floor began filing past me one by one. The occasional bump against my shoulder or arm jolted my sunken consciousness back to the surface.
I moved belatedly, trying to push through the cluster of zombies piling up in front of the music room door, but the force of them pressing together completely shoved me out to the periphery. I stared helplessly at the music room door growing farther and farther away, and swallowed a hollow breath.
Ah, the powerlessness of the powerless.
Bang — Bang —
The monstrous zombies slammed into the thick music room door with their whole bodies. Heads. Shoulders. The firmly shut door began rattling loudly, and the gathered zombies grew more frenzied at the vibration.
I raised both arms and covered both ears with my hands at the noise. My arms were mottled blue-purple, and my hands were caked with dried, crumbling blood — but none of that mattered to me. I want to escape from the tinnitus. I wanted to escape from these horrible sounds.
I shuffled backward, watching the chaotic scene swaying before me. Even as my vision blurred until only the silhouettes of the zombies remained, I found myself imagining Cha Do-hyun being devoured by them somewhere in there.
I imagined the music room door shattering and breaking open, zombies flooding inside, the terrified expressions of the survivors within, the room turning into a bloodbath in an instant as the zombies sank their teeth in.
If things continued like this, someone would be eaten alive right in front of my eyes again. But there was nothing I could do now that I had already become a zombie. I felt a sudden wave of nausea rise in my throat and I bent forward, clamping a hand over my mouth.
I had thought it would be okay to become a zombie. I didn’t care if people looked at me with contempt. But if, even by a small chance, the people who had been by my side — the people I had given my heart to and loved — were hurt because of me.
That was something too horrifying to even imagine.
Crack — I look up at the sound of something giving way. Through the mass of writhing zombies, I can see the red soundproofed door. The long wooden door handle is torn away, and through the gap, the inside of the music room comes into view.
More sounds of the solid soundproofed door giving way again under the zombies’ assault. At last the lock crumples and shatters, and through the door losing its shape, the interior becomes clearly visible.
And there — I fix my gaze on one person only.
“Let’s all die together today, you swarming zombie bastards—!”
Only on Cha Do-hyun, revealed behind the familiar faces.
Oh, baby…