Even if I hadn’t known the original work, I would have figured out quickly that Moon Seyoung was the center of the world. I was absentmindedly waving back at her in a daze, and Baek Hyunwoo said something — but none of it reached my ears. All I could think was that I wished this moment could last forever.
Those light, cloud-walking steps, cheeks faintly flushed with color, a neck as straight and pale as a doe’s, and the merciless way she was caving in zombie skulls——
“……Huh?”
Did I see that wrong? I must have seen it wrong. Something weird seemed to have slipped in just now.
I shook my head frantically and looked back down, but nothing had changed. The female lead — said to be the most lovable person in the world, so tenderhearted she couldn’t even kill a bug — was holding a hammer and smashing zombie heads without the slightest hesitation.
“Let’s go.”
“W — wait, wait a second.”
Baek Hyunwoo turned away as if he’d seen something he could have done without, and I hastily stretched my legs out to climb down from his arms and grabbed the railing. I rubbed my eyes and looked again — and yes, what Moon Seyoung was holding was definitely a hammer.
“…….”
Crack! Thwack!
Every time Moon Seyoung swung her arm, the heads of the nearby zombies burst like water balloons. What I’d mistaken for flower petals was the blood spraying out of zombie skulls. She moved with light, unhurried steps and cut down every zombie that came rushing at her without a shred of mercy.
If she’d looked anguished, or trembling with fear, I might have thought she was just thrashing around trying to survive — but there wasn’t a trace of that. She was simply too calm and too precise, like someone carefully picking out flowers to arrange in a vase.
What made it even more extraordinary was that in the midst of all this, she had one hand bunching up the hem of her dress to keep blood from splattering on it. She stepped elegantly, as though dodging the blood bursting from in front of her mattered more than the zombie charging from behind — and the sheer lack of realism made me involuntarily think, is this a dream?
The classical music playing throughout the department store grew increasingly majestic. And the bigger the music got, the bigger her movements became. Everything she did looked like dancing — especially the moment she knocked down a small sculpture installed over the fountain to crush the zombies beneath it, which was almost a shame to only watch with your eyes.
The music, which had been building toward a crescendo, finally came to rest with a sweeping, resonant finish — and Moon Seyoung’s slaughter concluded at the exact same moment, in perfect time.
The noise and motion that had been tangled together in chaos settled as if it had never been, and she stood alone at the highest point of the toppled sculpture.
Then, in that space stained with flesh and debris, she lightly gathered her skirt, gently bent one leg and extended it back out again — and took a bow, like an actress wrapping up the final scene on stage.
Clap, clap, clap.
The moment I saw it, I started clapping before I even realized what I was doing. Of course, the moment Baek Hyunwoo called out “Sihyeon” from behind me, I dropped my hands immediately — but the sound had already reached Moon Seyoung long before that.
“Thank you!”
She beamed and waved both hands above her head. I stumbled over my words and gave the idiotic response of “Oh, n-no. You were incredible,” and Moon Seyoung said she’d come up to us — then hopped lightly off the sculpture.
“……I could do that too.”
Baek Hyunwoo grumbled, but it went in one ear and out the other as I kept rubbing my goosebump-covered arms. What did I just watch?
“Let’s go.”
“Where?”
“We can’t just stay here.”
Moon Seyoung was on her way up, and yet Baek Hyunwoo grabbed my wrist and tugged as if to pull me outside. I glanced back at the ruined central hall — slick with zombie blood and debris — and planted my feet.
“She said she was coming up, let’s wait just a moment.”
“She could be dangerous.”
Baek Hyunwoo wasn’t wrong. A person who could cave in the skulls of dozens of zombies with nothing but a single hammer — objectively, wasn’t that suspicious and dangerous no matter how you looked at it? If it had been anyone else, I would have agreed with him. Maybe I’d have even suggested running during the head-caving.
“No, she’ll be fine. She seems like a good person.”
“How can you be sure of that.”
Because she’s the female lead.
Everything had changed, but some things hadn’t. Just like my hyungs, who cherished and doted on me — her fundamental nature and personality would be the same.
“……I just. She just seems that way.”
I couldn’t exactly say that out loud, so I gave the kind of baseless, stubborn answer a small child would give — but fortunately, Baek Hyunwoo only frowned slightly and didn’t force me to leave or say anything more.
He released the wrist he’d been holding — his way of giving permission — and I let out a quiet sigh of relief inside and turned toward the direction of her approaching footsteps.
“Hello!”
Moon Seyoung rode the escalator up and greeted us with a bright smile and a wave. The protagonist I had wanted so badly to meet was walking toward me. I wiped my clammy palms on my pants and laughed awkwardly.
“……Do you like pretty people that much?”
“Hm?”
“Isn’t hyung prettier? You said before that hyung was so pretty.”
“……That’s true, but hyung is a man. What are you talking about? And that’s not why I want to meet her.”
Baek Hyunwoo and Moon Seyoung were both beautiful in similar yet completely different ways. He gave me a skeptical look, but I meant it. Fan feelings? Sure, obviously — but what mattered was that she was the protagonist.
Right. The protagonist.
My hyungs were male leads too, but in the end this was a romance novel, and it progressed from Moon Seyoung’s point of view. The genre just divided it that way — but the center of the story was still Moon Seyoung.
Thinking about it like that, her caving in zombie heads without mercy wasn’t so strange either. If a romance novel had been twisted all at once into a zombie apocalypse, wouldn’t it be only natural for the people inside it to change to match that world?
And most protagonists carried one key to resolving the situation. Whether it was immunity, a cure…… whatever it turned out to be, as long as I stayed right by her side, there was no reason to worry.
“I didn’t expect there to be anyone still in the department store — in this city at all, actually. You must have been so startled. I’m sorry.”
Moon Seyoung tucked her fallen hair behind her ear as she approached and gave a light bow, an attractive smile reaching her eyes. Wow……. But she really is beautiful. How does someone like this exist in the world?
I just barely managed to keep my mouth from hanging open and asked carefully:
“Not at all. Were you hurt?”
“Of course not. I’m Moon Seyoung.”
Right! She really was Moon Seyoung.
Against every possible odd — and it would never have happened, but — I’d had this tiny thread of anxiety that she might not be the female lead after all, but she was! I swallowed the urge to cheer and pointed to Baek Hyunwoo, who was standing right beside me with a blank expression.
“I’m Baek Sihyeon, and this is Baek Hyunwoo. My hyung.”
“Why were you here?”
The moment I finished speaking, Baek Hyunwoo asked in a cool, flat voice. His tone was only barely on the polite side — he had his arms crossed, eyes lowered, and made it quite clear that he was not at all pleased with Moon Seyoung standing in front of him.
“Ah……. I came to get supplies.”
“And the reason you were still here in a city with no one left? Don’t try to brush past it — you’ll need to explain it in a way that actually makes sense.”
The interrogation-like questioning left Moon Seyoung visibly flustered, and she opened and closed her mouth. She glanced around as if she didn’t know what to say, and shrank her shoulders as if a little frightened — and the more she did, the narrower Baek Hyunwoo’s eyes became.
“Hyung.”
I jabbed him in the side to signal him to stop. The atmosphere was uncomfortable for me, but I wasn’t all that surprised. Of course not — their relationship in the original had been exactly like this.
Baek Hyunwoo had a one-sided dislike of Moon Seyoung. Always known as the warm, easygoing one — in front of Moon Seyoung, he didn’t bother hiding his true feelings. Of course, as with most romance novels of this kind, he would later fall deeper for her than anyone — but that was later.
“It’s just that this is the first time we’ve met anyone else since the zombies appeared.”
“I see. That makes sense, then. I understand why you’d be on guard.”
Even in response to such a feeble explanation, Moon Seyoung nodded as if it was perfectly reasonable and gave a small smile. An angel? I felt something warm and soft blooming in my chest and looked up at my oldest hyung. See? She’s a good person. I conveyed that with a look — but Baek Hyunwoo turned his head sharply away, as if he refused to acknowledge it.
“I arrived here two days ago. I was going around looking for survivors, but no matter how much I looked, I couldn’t find anyone. So I figured everyone had already left.”
“We only just arrived today.”
“Oh! No wonder. That’s why I didn’t know. Well, instead of standing around here like this — would you like to come to where I’m staying? It’s safe and clean, and there’s still hot water.”
Obviously I wanted to go — but this still needed Baek Hyunwoo’s approval. I tugged on hyung’s arm, and after thinking it over for a moment, he asked:
“Would there happen to be a bathtub?”
“There’s a bathtub! An enormous one.”
Moon Seyoung spread both arms wide and flapped them up and down. How could every single thing she did be so adorable and endearing? The image of her bursting zombie heads had long since faded. I was busy watching the original male and female leads interact in a daze, when Baek Hyunwoo raised a finger and pointed upward.
“In that case, let’s just grab some bath salts on the way.”
“Sounds good!”
I wonder if the brothers and the fl had already been acquainted before. No, what am I saying, obviously they already had met eachother. 🤭 probs why Hyunwoo was like, “I recognize this scent”