“You always come back to life the moment Han Jae-i’s name comes up. So doesn’t that make it an unavoidable choice? What else would you call it?”
“Han Jae-i could have lived.”
“He could have lived?”
Kim Jae-yun openly twisted his mouth as if he’d just heard something utterly absurd. Then he bent at the waist and brought his face close to Cha Do-hyun’s.
“He could have lived.”
He echoed Cha Do-hyun’s words again with a self-deprecating laugh, then spoke in a voice that had dropped even lower.
“Get a grip. Han Jae-i got infected.”
“…….”
“For fuck’s sake, you want me to be more specific? That guy turned into a zombie.”
At that moment, Cha Do-hyun snapped his gaze up and met Kim Jae-yun’s eyes. He glared at him with enough heat to strike sparks, then grabbed the front of his shirt.
“This bastard and his big mouth…”
In an instant, his body was lifted off the floor and he stood upright in front of Kim Jae-yun. But Kim Jae-yun didn’t take a single step back.
With bodies of near-equal height locked against each other, the atmosphere turned vicious in an instant — it looked like a full-blown fight could break out at any second. Han Chae-rim, who had been watching, shot to her feet.
“Hey, would you two stop fighting.”
“Stay out of it, Han Chae-rim.”
“Okay.”
But she had no choice but to sit right back down when Kim Jae-yun’s sharp retort came flying back at her…. Han Chae-rim, now hunched again in the corner of the music room, turned her head and stared at the yellow dust rain pouring down outside.
In truth, before they’d come up to the music room, Chae-rim and the rest of their class had already been thrown into complete chaos, starting with Han Jae-i’s infection. Out in the hallway beyond the classroom, screams from the kids in the neighboring class had erupted endlessly, and along with all the crashing and banging, the sounds of creatures wailing had come drifting in.
What began as a single sound multiplied into dozens within minutes, and the class immediately fell into a panic. Even so — as if they’d all made a silent pact — their bodies moved in unison, and they worked in perfect coordination to push desks against the classroom door to barricade it.
It was a surprisingly solid, well-built barricade of desks — solid enough that you’d think, so this is what survival instinct looks like. But even after moving the desks, chairs, and teacher’s podium, the situation outside, where the infection had fully taken hold, was completely out of control.
The zombies, having lost all reason, convulsing and throwing themselves forward, eventually began smashing through the classroom door and windows with their bare bodies, and the once-solid barricade of desks shook mercilessly.
Is this what it feels like to face a natural disaster head-on. The kids who had been moving in such perfect coordination began to freeze up one by one, and some broke into helpless tears. Even in that razor’s-edge moment where the barricade was on the verge of collapsing, countless minds could no longer function.
And so everyone stood there helplessly, watching the door get destroyed. It was then that the first one to break the silence and raise his voice was none other than Kim Jae-yun.
Everyone snap out of it and open the windows!
Kim Jae-yun shouted, throwing his entire body against the collapsing barricade to hold it up. Without him even needing to issue another command, it was easy to understand what Kim Jae-yun wanted — what all of us there needed to do.
That much was obvious, because it was that cry that made the kids who had been frozen in place suddenly jolt back to their senses, fling open the windows, and start looking for a way to escape.
“…….”
If it hadn’t been for Kim Jae-yun, most of them probably would have ended up as zombie food without doing a single thing. That was exactly why Chae-rim didn’t want to do anything that went against what Kim Jae-yun said. He was, one way or another, the person who had saved her life.
And the same was true for Cha Do-hyun and Lee Min-jae, who had also stayed behind. Kim Jae-yun had been the one to forcibly pull Cha Do-hyun — who had been on his knees on the classroom floor, waiting to become zombie food — to his feet and bring him here.
After going through all that trouble to keep him alive, the fact that he’d been sitting around like that all day was reason enough for Kim Jae-yun to be thoroughly fed up with Cha Do-hyun.
Not that she could completely fail to understand Cha Do-hyun’s behavior, of course.
A classmate — one who had been his friend since elementary, middle, and high school, a decade-long companion — had sacrificed himself in his place, right before his eyes. The depth of that loss was something Chae-rim couldn’t even begin to imagine.
Of course, she too was in the same position of having been separated from her friends with no way of knowing if they were dead or alive, but she hadn’t seen a friend turn into a zombie with her own two eyes the way Cha Do-hyun had. At least she could take comfort in the hope that they were hiding somewhere in this school, alive just like her.
“Jae-i… it must have hurt so much.”
The one who broke the silence that had been hanging over the music room was Lee Min-jae, who had been looking out the window alongside Chae-rim. At his voice, Han Chae-rim, Cha Do-hyun, and Kim Jae-yun all turned their heads. Lee Min-jae continued speaking, undeterred by the gazes gathering on him.
“The moment Jae-i got bitten by the zombie, his skin started turning blue and blood was flowing from his mouth and all that. If we get bitten by zombies too, will we end up like Jae-i?”
In a way, Lee Min-jae might have been the most grounded thinker among everyone left in this space. Watching Han Jae-i, bitten by a zombie, undergo moment-by-moment changes in his physical state was a bizarre sight that no ordinary person could handle with their sanity intact.
It was, again, Kim Jae-yun who spoke first in response to Lee Min-jae’s words.
“Who knows. That Han Jae-i — he’s always been a bit slow and oblivious and soft-hearted, so maybe he really is alive somewhere, just like Do-hyun says.”
“Is that an insult or a compliment?”
“Both.”
Kim Jae-yun threw out his words carelessly, then struck Cha Do-hyun’s shoulder hard. Not that it did much beyond pushing his shoulder back slightly — the rest of his body didn’t budge — but it was enough to put some distance between the two, who had been pressed up against each other.
Kim Jae-yun opened his mouth again, directed at Cha Do-hyun who was still standing there stone-faced.
“So — if you’re going to recover Han Jae-i’s body, you have to stay alive until the end. If you want to die, at least find Han Jae-i first and then die. He saved your life so you could live it.”
Raw and rough as a wild animal, but never wrong — Cha Do-hyun said nothing in response to Kim Jae-yun, only narrowing his eyes slightly, without the hostility he’d shown before.
The brief peace that came with the slightly eased atmosphere didn’t last long. Kim Jae-yun, turning away from Cha Do-hyun, kicked the back of the chair Lee Min-jae was sitting in and said:
“Shit, let’s go look for something to eat.”
As crude as ever.
* * *
Someone must be talking crap about me.
My ear canal was itching — probably some dust or something that got in. So I stuck my pinky in to scratch it, and what came out was a thick smear of dark reddish-black blood.
Gasp — I swallowed a sharp breath and quietly wiped my finger off on my school uniform shirt.
In front of me, the bodies of unidentified people still lay scattered and strewn across the floor. And right beside them, the evidence of me having just thrown up was clearly visible.
I stared at that evidence for a moment, then gathered the bitter blood pooling in my mouth, spat it out, and pushed myself up off the floor. My stomach had been churning nonstop ever since I’d curiously dabbed a bit of blood with my tongue when I was hungry. The taste — raw and reeking, like a mop that had been wrung out dozens of times — was so shockingly foul I knew I’d never forget it for as long as I lived.
“Ugh….”
Why did I even want to eat this blood. No matter how hungry I was.
I’d always been scared of blood, so in any normal situation, this would have been a scene I’d have immediately turned around and fled from. But the impulse just moments ago had felt as if something had seized control of my brain. As a result, I’d tasted the blood against my own will — and this was where that had gotten me.
Other zombies actually eat this disgusting stuff? Why on earth would anyone eat something like this?
I pictured the zombies hurling themselves at full speed to tear into people.
Every zombie here loved blood. No — it wasn’t just love, they were absolutely ravenous for it. They’d throw themselves forward without a second thought at the mere scent of a living person’s blood.
Of course, I was different from those zombies — but having become one myself, I could sort of understand it. Not completely, but not entirely not, either.
It seemed like being drawn to the scent of blood was simply a zombie’s instinct. I absolutely did not want to end up like the other zombies… but reality had never been kind enough to bend to my wishes. The fact that I’d found myself inexplicably curious at the sight of a freshly dead body’s blood was proof enough of that.
The blood I’d curiously tasted today had been the absolute worst thing I’d ever put in my mouth — but I thought maybe it was time to start adapting to life as a zombie. I couldn’t go on denying that I’d become one forever, even if my reason was still intact.
Still, there were some upsides to being a zombie. My hearing had gotten dramatically better than when I was human. The downsides, on the other hand? Everything else.
“…….”
Coming to that realization, I had a feeling I might never fully adapt to zombie life, not for the rest of my existence. The one and only advantage was that, already being a zombie, I didn’t have to worry about getting bitten again — but who in the world would actually want that.
In the end, I got up from the floor in low spirits. I was brushing the dust off my backside and about to leave the classroom when, suddenly, a familiar zombie sound drifted in from near the door.
“Grrk, grrrrk…!”
Standing at the hallway door — where there had been no one just a short while ago — was a zombie I recognized. It was the same zombie I’d thought I’d completely lost track of when I’d gone sprinting off to the broadcasting room in a frenzy.
How did it even find where I was, again? I stared at the name tag attached to the zombie’s chest that read Kim Gwang-deok. The fact that it kept showing up exactly wherever I was suggested this zombie was just as bored as anything.
I was idly thinking that when the zombie, who had been making those rattling sounds in its throat, suddenly limped over toward the window on the hallway side. I found it strange. Its gaze was fixed on something outside.
What is it looking at?
I ended up following it and going to stand at the window. And when I peeked my head out past the window frame — I couldn’t help but witness a sight I could barely believe.
“Aaaaaah, someone help me—!”
It was a survivor. Someone I had thought would no longer be left in this school.
