I was somewhere in the middle of thoughts that couldn’t decide if they were excuses or self-consolation — when at some point, everything around me went quiet. Is it over now? Can I open my eyes? It feels like barely three minutes have passed — is that right? I was hesitating, eyelids trembling, when an unidentifiable sound reached me — click, click, click.
What on earth is that sound now — it sounds like something walking…… no, crawling? I can’t tell. Whatever it was, I was the kind of person who would panic at a dog walking past with my eyes shut. Alright — on one, two, three, I’ll open my eyes.
One, two……
Before I could count to three, the arms wrapped tight around my body slowly loosened. I flinched, trembled slightly, and gripped the fabric of his clothes tighter — and a large hand, warmer than usual, slowly swept down my cheek and gave it a light, soothing pat.
“It’s okay. You can open your eyes now.”
My ears were still ringing, but Baek Hyunwoo’s voice came through faintly, and it sounded no different from usual. Is he really okay? What if I open my eyes and Baek Hyunwoo is covered in blood? What if an arm or a leg is gone? What if he has severe burns?
“You have to look at hyung.”
As though he’d read my thoughts, he coaxed me with a hint of laughter in his voice.
“Now that I think about it — you’re not a baby, you’re a coward.”
……He just wants to tease me, doesn’t he? I knew I was easily frightened, but honestly, right now, I felt wronged. Anyone would be scared in a situation like this. The ones who aren’t are the remarkable ones.
Anyway — I scraped together what little courage I had left and lifted my eyelids.
The first thing I saw was a pair of eyes so deeply black that the pupils were nearly invisible even in direct sunlight. The second thing I registered was a face smiling at me with warmth.
“……Hyung, are you okay?”
“Of course.”
Baek Hyunwoo gave my cheek a light pinch and released it, then straightened his upper body. Because he had wrapped himself entirely around me, it was only now that I could look around — and the city that had been perfectly intact just moments ago was gone.
“……Huh?”
Not as a metaphor or a turn of phrase — the city had literally, in the most literal sense of the word, disappeared. I felt the blood drain from my entire body as I stepped forward in a daze.
All that remained was an enormous crater, so deep its bottom couldn’t be seen.
“What on earth……”
How is this possible? There was no soot, no debris — nothing that suggested something had fallen. Did the ground cave in? No — if that were it, there was no reason for that scorching blast of air. The ground had rumbled, but I hadn’t felt it shaking.
“I don’t really know either.”
Baek Hyunwoo came to my side, wrapped an arm around my shoulders, and gently turned my body — then lifted me clean off the ground. My vision flipped in an instant, but I didn’t have the presence of mind to say put me down or this is embarrassing. It was just so shocking that all I could do was open and close my lips uselessly.
“Even so, we need to keep moving.”
“Hyung……”
“You look like you’ve had a terrible shock…… Let’s close our eyes and slowly count to fifty.”
At those words, I shut my eyes as if in a trance and began counting from one in my head. If I didn’t, I genuinely felt like something in my mind was going to break.
1, 2, 3……
“Given what just happened, we’d better avoid most cities going forward.”
……10, 11, 12……
“Setting aside getting caught up in it — seeing things like that over and over will just wear you down.”
……19, 20……
“So our Sihyeon doesn’t need to worry about the world, or any of that nonsense……”
……
“……right. Sleep well.”
And when I next regained consciousness, I was lying on an exceptionally comfortable hospital bed.
✽
The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was a humidifier sending up wisps of steam. Not only that — on the nightstand beside the bed sat a vase of flowers in full bloom, and for a moment I genuinely wondered if I’d been having an incredibly vivid dream.
But as I pushed myself upright and glanced almost absent-mindedly through the window, I spotted what could only be described as a ruined town — and I pressed my lips together in silence. The warmth drifting through the room felt so out of place it was almost jarring; beyond the glass, the world was dead and dark.
If anything, I found myself wondering how a place like this could still be standing. Had someone turned this hospital into a shelter? Or had they simply been lucky enough that not a single zombie got in? Either way — please, let this place be genuinely safe.
I replayed the sight I’d seen before falling asleep and climbed out of bed. That an entire city that size could vanish in an instant — I still couldn’t believe it.
First zombies appear, then a city evaporates. What on earth is happening in this world? I couldn’t even begin to imagine, let alone make sense of it — so all I was left with was sigh after sigh.
Speaking of which — where had Baek Hyunwoo gone? I folded up the hospital gown bottoms that were slightly too big and slipping down, and opened the ward door.
“Oh, you slept well?”
Slide — along with the sound of the door opening, Baek Hyunwoo’s gentle voice slipped into my ears. He was cleaning something in the thoroughly wrecked corridor — something that looked like a red mass — and for a moment I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. Or that this was a dream.
“It’s still messy out here, so don’t come out — close the door again.”
“Oh — right.”
It was said in almost exactly the same tone as when he’d vacuum around the house, so I found myself nodding without thinking and closing the door. Click. Only then did my mind, which had been blanking out like a screw had come loose, snap sharply back.
Wait, hold on…… what hyung was just cleaning — that wasn’t dust. That was a person.
Slide — I opened the door again, and Baek Hyunwoo, who had just dropped whatever he’d been holding into a trash bin, asked in a puzzled voice: “What’s wrong?” The entrails that hadn’t quite made it into the bin were spilling over the edge — and he calmly pressed the lid down on top of them and asked:
“Hungry?”
“……Oh, no, it’s not that.”
“Then?”
“Um…… I was just wondering what you were cleaning just now……”
“Ah, that — zombie.”
Baek Hyunwoo shrugged and gave the lid a light tap — and the trash bin rocked slightly. What — why is it moving? I instinctively stumbled back and drew my chin in, and he smiled reassuringly and said:
“The upper half is still alive. Seems like as long as the head isn’t destroyed, they keep going somehow.”
“……I see. You’re not hurt?”
“Of course not — are you worried about hyung?”
The look he gave me was fond, as if I’d done something endearing, and I felt oddly flustered for no good reason. Isn’t it only natural to worry in a situation like this? I thought that — and yet, looking at my perfectly clean oldest hyung against the corridor absolutely wrecked with zombie remains, I also wondered if worrying was even the right response. How does he manage to stay that immaculate?
“Go back inside for now, okay? I’ll bring food and your medicine shortly. I’ll fill you in on the situation then too.”
At the renewed nudging, I nodded reluctantly and closed the door. Unlike the corridor, which reeked of blood, a faint floral scent drifted through the air of the hospital room.
Perhaps because the contrast was so extreme, it felt less strange than outright surreal. Like being a participant in a very well-made film set, or a stage play.
I scratched my head a few times, and instead of sitting nicely on the bed waiting for my hyung, I made my way to the window.
Outside, the town was still grim. The roads were packed with half-demolished cars, the streets were in such disarray that finding an undamaged spot was harder than finding a ruined one — and it was eerily, unnervingly quiet.
It wasn’t a city, but it was too large to call a very small town either. It seemed about the size of a township — could it really be this quiet? But stranger than that was the sheer number of things resembling spider webs strung throughout.
The reason I said resembling spider webs rather than simply spider webs was because of the scale. The hospital I was in wasn’t particularly large, but it appeared to be about three stories tall — and the webs draped in a pale haze between the ground and the gaps in the buildings were visible clearly enough from up here.
Even an abandoned building left to rot for years wouldn’t end up like that. Something like that would take at least several years. And furthermore——
“……”
What are those cocoons?
I pressed my fingers into the corners of my eyes and then let go. No matter how much I tried to deny it, the white masses clinging to the building walls wouldn’t disappear. They were fixed firmly in place and thick enough that whatever was inside couldn’t be seen — but a feeling kept nagging at me that the things inside them were people. Or zombies.
It seems there are other monsters here, not just zombies. That thought made me reflexively think of the monsters that had been with me — and something tightened at the back of my throat. Looking at this now, a thought crept in: that perhaps it was partly my fault the world had ended up like this.
But I hadn’t known and come here deliberately — I’d simply died and woken up reborn as the younger brother of the male leads in a novel. Feeling guilty about that seemed a little unfair.
That aside — how had Baek Hyunwoo even made it here? Had he seen the monsters that had done this to the town? Even from a distance would be fine — I’d at least like to know what they looked like. That way, I could figure out whether they were really the same ones that had appeared where I lived.
Or they might be the monsters that had been living alongside me.
……That probably wouldn’t be the case, though.
Whatever they were — I let myself hope that what was inside those cocoons was zombies. That would make sense of why none were visible on the streets, and why Baek Hyunwoo was inside the building cleaning up a zombie that had been split in two. A natural predator for zombies — just imagining it is almost satisfying. Though of course, if it was a monster that ate anything and everything indiscriminately, that would be a whole different kind of problem.
