Day 3 as a Zombie
The place the survivors had left behind was desolate. Not even a trace of vitality remained, not a single living breath — the space had become nothing but a cradle of hell, saturated entirely in the smell of dead shadows.
And in the middle of that desolate scene, I stayed behind and stared for hours at the spot where Cha Do-hyun had stood.
The large shoe prints stamped into the floor — tangled with pale powder and bloodstains — grew more and more like fossils with each passing moment. Looking at them, I was suddenly reminded of the scene from when I’d first been bitten by a zombie in the classroom.
The moment Cha Do-hyun took a zombie bite to the shoulder in my place, he had frozen solid, unable to move. Even as he caught my body falling into him, Cha Do-hyun held firmly to the spot where he stood. The footprints before me now felt like the ones Cha Do-hyun had left in that classroom, transplanted here without change.
My legs gave out beneath me, and I sank to the floor, curling my body inward.
“…….”
This isn’t why I became a zombie.
That wasn’t the look I threw my body away to see on him.
All I wanted was for Cha Do-hyun to survive just a little longer.
Where exactly did it all go wrong.
Cha Do-hyun had always been someone with a lot of talent, a lot of popularity, a lot of friends — from as far back as childhood. The point when someone like that began spending time with me, someone so much weaker and lesser than him, was around the time I started being bullied by kids from other classes at school when we were young.
I’d had a weak body since childhood and could barely speak properly back then, which made me an easy target for ridicule among kids my age — and that ridicule gradually spread to children from other classes, until the teasing became something closer to what you’d call bullying for that era.
Orphan with no parents. Mute who can’t speak. Smelly idiot. Every word those children said to me in those early years flew like a blade, and the only one who stopped it in that moment was none other than first-grade Cha Do-hyun.
“What’s so great about your families that you think you can talk about a friend like that? Get out of here.”
Back then, Cha Do-hyun wasn’t as tall or built as he is now — but he had always had many friends in class and was well-liked by the teachers, which put him in a position even the so-called troublemakers didn’t dare take lightly.
After being called out by Cha Do-hyun in a way that silenced the entire class, the kid who’d been singled out fired back indignantly.
“You’re not even friends with him.”
“What do you mean I’m not friends with him? We are friends. Starting today.”
And then Cha Do-hyun walked over to the empty seat beside me and slung an arm around my hunched shoulders. Even in that moment I was rigid all over, but Cha Do-hyun pulled my shoulder in even more firmly, as if to say there was nothing to be scared of, and said:
“And you don’t even belong in our class. Don’t you know the teacher said not to go wandering into other people’s classrooms?”
“What does that have to do with you—”
“Wanna bet—”
“…….”
“I’ll tell on all of you.”
“…Waahhh.”
Under the weight of Cha Do-hyun’s bold threat, one of the three kids who had come together finally burst into tears, and the other two, flustered, grabbed the crying one and fled the classroom in a rush.
As calm returned to the room, the classmates who had been quietly facing forward began turning around one by one, and a string of impressed exclamations followed in Cha Do-hyun’s direction.
I was still bewildered by how quickly the mood of the room had shifted when Cha Do-hyun leaned his head close and met my eyes.
“Better now, right?”
And that face — smiling wide like warm sunlight — remains one of the moments still vivid in my memory.
After that, Cha Do-hyun and I grew close enough to walk to and from school together every day, and we went on to the same middle school and high school, all the way to where we are now.
So if anyone were to ask whether I regret even slightly having become a zombie in Cha Do-hyun’s place — I could say without any hesitation that I don’t.
No — if anything, it was the obvious thing to do. Cha Do-hyun was clearly a greater person than me, with more things left to do.
And I had always admired someone like that. Being with him had always been a joy, and simply being by his side had given me a steady, unwavering kind of happiness.
But then why do you have to make that face.
The expression on Cha Do-hyun’s face from a few hours ago, however — it was something that had shattered my sense of certainty without mercy. Even though my choice, my judgment, had been without a single flaw — Cha Do-hyun’s expression seemed to tell me that my choice had been deeply, terribly wrong.
Even though he could have been bitten to death by me.
If I hadn’t been conscious the way I am now — if I had turned into a dead monster like any other zombie — Cha Do-hyun would have surely been bitten and turned inside my hands.
Of course, since I still had my consciousness unlike other zombies, that hadn’t actually come to pass — but the problem was that Cha Do-hyun hadn’t known that at the time, and had still walked toward me, and had grabbed on to me with force.
Is he out of his mind.
I raised both arms and buried my agonized head in them, utterly unable to comprehend what Cha Do-hyun had done. But even in the middle of it, the moment Cha Do-hyun had found me lodged itself firmly in my mind and sent a thrill through me somewhere. Was this what it felt like to have your insides completely turned upside down?
The sensation — something between indigestion and nausea, shot through with an indescribable thrill — made a small, unbidden laugh slip out of me before I knew it.
Ugh. I shouldn’t be doing this.
I hastily raised a hand to clamp over my mouth to hide the corners that had lifted without my permission. But the smell of blood rising from my hand made me grimace and fling it away.
I was still at a loss in the middle of that confused tangle of sensations when, from the mountain of zombie corpses piled up like a hill, the zombies that had been knocked out began to stir. It seemed they were starting to come back to consciousness one by one.
I finally came to my senses, straightened the legs I’d had folded under me, and got to my feet.
I have to get out of here. Cha Do-hyun now knew I had been here — there was no telling when he might come back.
I moved my legs as best I could, dragging along my limping ankle.
Get away. Get away.
I had to find somewhere to hide — deep enough that I would never cross paths with Cha Do-hyun again.
* * *
When I crossed the main staircase and stepped outside the school building, the gloomy atmosphere was unmistakably heavy. I had thought the rain that had been pouring might be done since it had stopped — but it seemed it hadn’t been a one-time shower. It was the beginning of monsoon season.
The sky looked as though a single drop of yellow paint had been dripped into a murky grey — and felt ready to pour again at any moment.
I pulled my gaze from the sky and looked out at the schoolyard, where zombies were shambling about.
The schoolyard, covered in sand rather than artificial turf, was nothing but a yellow wasteland. Zombies swarmed the path leading to the school gate, and the vast field was scattered evenly enough with them that there seemed to be no corner left for a survivor to hide in. Seeing up close a scene I had only ever witnessed from a distance made me feel, with bone-deep clarity, how completely trapped we were here.
If even I felt this suffocated, what must the survivors be going through.
“…….”
…No. I should worry about myself.
I shook off the stray thoughts drifting into my mind and carefully walked out through the school entrance. If I was going to find a suitable place to stay hidden quietly on my own, away from anyone’s eyes, I needed to move quickly before the rain came down.
I stepped onto the schoolyard, feeling the first few drops of rain fall here and there. It wasn’t just my imagination — the pale sand was gradually darkening as the drops soaked into it.
Is there somewhere I could hide… I was scanning the area around the schoolyard with one hand shading my eyes when something caught my attention.
It was the PE storage shed. A worn-down building I had never once set foot in, even during gym class. After a brief moment of deliberation, I ran toward the corner of the schoolyard where the shed sat.
Standing in front of it, the door looked far more rusted up close than it had from a distance. The storage room primarily used during gym class was inside the gymnasium itself — so this one out on the yard had long since been reduced to a dumping ground for things no one really needed.
What if it’s locked. The worry crossed my mind, but I worked up the nerve and reached for the rusted handle. I pulled the door toward me — and to my relief, contrary to my worry, it gave way easily with a noisy creak, revealing the inside.
Yes! It opened! I can hide here! I was rejoicing inwardly at that very thought.
“…….”
“…….”
Inside the dim storage room — which I had assumed without a single doubt would be empty — there were unfamiliar eyes staring back at me.
Not one pair. Two. And it took me a long while to realize they belonged to living people.
