Chapter 2

“…”

The most sickening part was that Yu-su recognized them.

The closer they came, the longer he was forced to look at their faces, and the more memories surfaced. He remembered how those mouths had curved when they smiled. He remembered what those gurgling cries had sounded like when they were still human voices.

There was the Design Team manager who had always rushed around saying he needed to earn more money because his youngest child had been born late in his life.

There was the associate from the Personnel Team who had handed out wedding invitations only last week.

There was the assistant manager from Finance whom Yu-su had passed in the hallway for years, though he barely remembered the man’s name.

There was no time to mourn them.

“Get lost!”

Thwack!

Yu-su knocked aside a blood-smeared hand with his briefcase, but dozens more reached for him.

The swarm engulfed him.

Lukewarm fingers seized his hair and shirt collar, slipping loose only for other hands to take their place. Hunched over, Yu-su fought with everything he had against the bodies trying to drag him down.

“Let go!”

One zombie shoved its face toward him, its jaw hanging obscenely wide.

Yu-su caught it by the face and squeezed with all his strength.

Pop.

The eyeball beneath his thumb ruptured.

Crushed tissue and thick fluid seeped between his fingers, sliding across his palm and beneath his sleeve.

A violent shudder crawled over his skin, raising every hair on his body.

Did I just crush a human eye?

There was an immeasurable distance between fleeing to survive and striking with the intent to kill.

Yu-su had no time to swallow the guilt or horror. He could only keep fighting.

A harsh crack jolted through his injured hand as his fist shattered another creature’s cheekbone, bursting its remaining eye. When he seized the next arm and twisted, cartilage folded beneath his grip, and broken bone tore through the skin. The creature’s garbled death rattle drilled into his ears.

This is so fucked up…

For the first time, Yu-su understood what it truly meant to suffer a mental breakdown. His own hands were destroying human remains before his eyes. Blood and fragments of flesh covered his body, and he was the one inflicting the violence.

Even so, I have to survive.

Yu-su kept moving.

No opening appeared.

People were said to summon several times their ordinary strength when fighting for their lives. His body seemed to be drowning in adrenaline, his senses sharpening and blurring in unstable waves, but even that could not conceal the fact that he was approaching his limit.

Grrk! Kyaak!

“Let go!”

Kyaaak!

One man could not overpower so many bodies.

At some point, the strange instinct that had guided him until now had disappeared.

Death had already stepped onto his shadow.

Why is it so hard just to stay alive?

Why is this happening? Why do I have to endure it?

Keugh… ah… aaah!

“…!”

Yu-su twisted desperately beneath the grasping hands.

One zombie caught him by the shoulder and hauled itself close, opening its mouth toward his neck. The blood pooled inside its mouth spilled across Yu-su’s collarbone and soaked through the front of his shirt.

It’s going to bite me!

He seized the creature by the head and shoulders, straining to hold it back. More sticky hands clamped onto him from every direction and pulled, dragging him toward snapping teeth.

I don’t want to die.

“Please… just stop!”

Snap.

The zombie’s neck twisted beyond its natural limit.

Yu-su felt the bones shift beneath his hands. Flesh wound tighter and tighter before finally tearing apart, and warm blood sprayed across his face.

He lowered his trembling gaze.

A severed head hung from his hand by the hair.

Its eyes rolled aimlessly in their sockets, empty and unfocused. A long tongue dangled from its gaping mouth.

Yu-su recognized him.

He was the new hire from another team, a man four years younger than Yu-su who had been overwhelmed with work ever since joining the company that year.

Yu-su remembered seeing him in the break room, holding a canned coffee and quietly crying.

“…!”

A silent scream lodged in Yu-su’s throat.

The head slipped from his hand, struck the floor, and rolled away.

I’m dizzy…

He had struggled desperately to endure, but his body had finally reached its limit. It felt as though every drop of blood had drained from him. He could not even remember when his legs gave way or when he collapsed.

The zombies continued to reach for him.

His body refused to move. All Yu-su could do was look up at them.

He did not want to die like this.

He had wanted to live.

No matter how filthy or miserable his life became, he had endured because he wanted to keep living. The world darkened as the zombies crowded over him, sealing every gap.

Then a voice thundered through the lobby.

“Jeong Yu-su!”

The emergency stairwell door flew open.

A startlingly large hand seized Yu-su’s arm. Its palm was broad enough to feel oppressive as it hauled him upright with tremendous force.

Scorching heat engulfed him.

He was dragged against a solid body and locked inside a tight embrace.

A painfully familiar scent flooded his senses. Intense heat radiated through the man’s thin dress shirt, wrapping around Yu-su until goosebumps swept upward from his lower back, where one powerful arm held him tightly, all the way to the nape of his neck. The sudden chill shocked him awake, melting the frozen stillness that had gripped him only seconds earlier.

The emergency door slammed shut with a heavy metallic crash, but Yu-su remained dazed and limp within the embrace.

The man caught him by the shoulders and shook him.

“Jeong Yu-su, get a grip. Hey! Jeong Yu-su!”

“Ah…”

Did I survive?

With agonizing effort, Yu-su forced his gaze into focus and tilted his head back.

A towering man stood over him, his imposing physique made even more severe by hair buzzed close to the scalp. Beneath thick, dark brows, his eyes burned with the savagery of a wild animal. The face that ordinarily regarded others with cold indifference was now twisted with raw, unmistakable distress. Four buttons of his expensive dress shirt hung open. Sweat drenched the hard planes of his chest, making his skin glisten beneath the dim stairwell lights.

The man was at once deeply familiar and strangely alien.

Do Muwon.

“You…”

The flash of shock and fleeting relief in Muwon’s eyes vanished as though it had never existed. He glared down at Yu-su and roared, “Jeong Yu-su, answer me! Are you hurt?”

“I’m… I’m fine. Let go of me for a second.”

“Hey, damn it. Stay still.”

Despite Muwon’s attempt to hold him upright, Yu-su wrenched himself free. His legs immediately collapsed beneath him, and he struck the floor with a dull thud.

“…”

“…”

His strength was completely gone.

Gritting his teeth, Yu-su clawed at the floor and tried to rise, but his hands kept slipping. Frantic, blood-smeared prints appeared wherever he touched.

Muwon watched him struggle for precisely three seconds. “If you can’t stand, I’ll carry you.”

“Get lost…”

Yu-su trembled so violently that the sight would have been pathetic under any other circumstances. He caught hold of the handrail and dragged himself upright, gripping it with such force that the veins stood out across his bruised and injured hand. After several jagged, shallow breaths, he looked at Muwon.

“Do Muwon… do you have any idea what’s happening?”

“No clue, but it’s a complete shitshow downstairs, too. We need to keep moving up.”

As if to confirm his words, savage cries and the sickening stench of decay drifted upward from the lower floors.

Muwon glanced down the stairwell. “We’re heading for the roof. Follow me.”

“Fine.”

Yu-su nodded and struck the toe of his shoe against the floor, signaling that they should move.

Muwon took the lead, bounding up the stairs. Driven perhaps by nothing more than the desperate need to survive, Yu-su followed, climbing two steps at a time as though he had not collapsed moments earlier. His right hand, which he had swung so recklessly during the fight, was likely fractured, perhaps broken outright. For now, it throbbed with a dull, persistent ache, but Yu-su knew the pain would become unbearable as soon as the adrenaline faded.

His entire body felt slick and clammy.

He was probably covered in blood.

Yu-su wiped his forehead with the back of his hand, unable to tell whether the moisture was sweat or blood.

“What happened downstairs?” he asked between ragged breaths. “Explain.”

“I was at the café on the first floor when a bunch of blood-soaked lunatics swarmed in and started tearing people apart.” Muwon’s expression twisted into a vicious scowl. “Then the people they tore apart got back up and started attacking everyone who was still healthy. What about you?”

“I was working overtime. By the time I came out, the elevators and hallway were already a mess.”

“Ha. What the fuck is this, some kind of zombie movie?”

Yu-su struggled to form an answer.

A shrill, piercing screech echoed from below.

Kreeeeaaach!

Both men looked back at the same instant.

“We need to move faster,” Muwon said. “Tell me if you can’t walk.”

“I’m still fine.”

Silence reclaimed the stairwell, broken only by their labored breathing and the distant wails and dying gasps leaking through each emergency door they passed. The fluorescent floor signs gave off the only light, bathing the dim stairwell in a faint, ghostly glow.

Hyeonmyeong Construction’s headquarters, an architectural monument erected after years of relentless lobbying, stood forty stories high.

Yu-su’s office was on the fifteenth floor.

They still had twenty-five floors to climb.

Seventeen.

Eighteen.

Twenty-one.

The illuminated numbers passed one after another.

“…”

Yu-su continued upward directly behind Muwon.

A large, towering shadow seemed to hang over him at all times. Muwon wore only a dress shirt and gray slacks, without either his suit jacket or vest. Somehow, the stripped-down outfit made him resemble a student in uniform. His shoulders remained exceptionally broad, the unmistakable build of someone who had spent years swimming competitively. Even now, the way his powerful frame narrowed toward his waist was exactly as Yu-su remembered.

One thing, however, stood out more than anything else.

The plastic bag.

It swung from Muwon’s hand with a persistent crinkling sound, keeping time with every step.

Yu-su needed something mundane to focus on, anything that might distract him from the exhaustion and terror, so he fixed his eyes on the bag. By the time the noises of the zombies pursuing them from below had grown noticeably fainter, Muwon spoke again.

“You should’ve answered your phone. Did you block me?”

“I was busy. That’s why I didn’t answer. I didn’t block you.”

“And you deleted my number?”

Yu-su gave no reply.

Their brief conversation died at once.

My phone.

With shaking hands, Yu-su forced himself to pull the device from his pocket.

Yu-su desperately wanted to call his brother, but the signal was already gone. He did not believe emergency services could rescue him. He doubted a call would connect in the first place.

Please be safe…

They had just passed the twenty-third floor when the emergency door beside Yu-su burst open with a violent crash.

Bang!

A survivor stumbled out in blind panic.

“Help! Please help me! Aaaaaaaah!”

The man’s relief lasted less than a second. The zombies pursuing him seized his body and dragged him backward. Wet crunching, tearing flesh, and visceral screams filled the stairwell.

Startled by the sudden eruption of violence, Muwon spun around. The color drained from his face.

“Jeong Yu-su!”

Yu-su was tumbling down the stairs.

He did not understand what had happened. Something had struck him with tremendous force. The stairwell flipped upside down, and bone-deep pain tore through his body before he landed with one final, crushing impact.

“Ah… ngh…”

His vision dissolved into a gray haze.

His battered body refused to respond.

The world remained tilted at a sickening angle, telling him that he had collapsed across the steps. Looking upward, Yu-su saw zombies closing in. Beyond them, Do Muwon came leaping down the stairs as though he were flying. More zombies were already surging upward from below.

Yu-su shouted in panic, “Don’t… ngh… don’t come down! Just go! Do Muwon, go!”

“Fuck that! Stop talking bullshit!”

The arm reaching for Yu-su this time did not belong to Muwon. A cluster of hands seized him at once, their fingernails bent backward or torn away entirely. The sensation of his flesh being ripped apart was impossibly vivid. Agony erupted wherever teeth and nails tore into him, each burst sharper and more searing than the last. The pain was so overwhelming that he could no longer tell which part of him hurt the most.

It felt endless.

It felt as though it would continue for all eternity.

“Urgh… ah!”

Yu-su wanted to curl into a ball, but the bodies gripping him would not even allow that.

I’m really dying.

I didn’t fight this hard to survive just to end up like this…

“Jeong Yu-su! Get a grip! Fuck, let go of him!”

A tremendous impact shook the stairwell as Muwon’s massive body crashed into the swarm. Then he vanished from Yu-su’s field of vision. There was almost nothing left for Yu-su to see.

Almost nothing except the plastic bag Muwon had been carrying.

It had fallen open.

The bread and milk inside, each wrapped in packaging printed with a convenience-store logo, spilled across the stairs. They were immediately trampled beneath blood-soaked shoes and bare, mutilated feet. Among them lay a familiar cream bun, slowly being crushed beneath the chaos.

The sight brought one final thought to Yu-su’s fading mind.

So the last thing I’m going to see before I die is that cream bun.

I really hate that.

***