Chapter 7

He had hoped to live his entire life without ever crossing paths with Do Muwon again.

“Move. It’s too cramped.”

“Trying to run away again?”

“…That’s not it.”

The denial came too late, but Yu-su opened his mouth again, determined to weave together some kind of lie.

“When have I ever run away from you…?”

“For the past two weeks.”

“…”

“Every time we were about to cross paths, you hid or pretended not to see me. The café on the first floor last week. The hallway on the fifteenth floor four days ago. The conference room this afternoon.”

Apparently, none of Yu-su’s attempts at avoidance had escaped Muwon’s notice.

“You think I’d go out of my way to meet you?”

“You could’ve at least said hello.”

“Me? To you? No, thanks.”

“…”

“Move.”

Yu-su shoved Muwon with his shoulder, but the man did not budge an inch. He might as well have been trying to move a mountain. Instead, Muwon leaned even closer. The unmistakable scent of his skin and the heat radiating from his bare body engulfed Yu-su completely.

Thud.

A lukewarm droplet slipped from the sharp edge of Do Muwon’s jaw and landed on Yu-su’s cheek, tracing a slow path down the pale, taut column of his throat before soaking into his shirt collar.

“…”

Goosebumps prickled across Yu-su’s back. His words lodged in his throat, and just as his temper flared, ready to strike back with something vicious, Do Muwon spoke again.

“Jeong Yu-su.”

“…Why?”

“How have you been?”

Ha.

Yu-su let out a sharp breath of disbelief, lifted his chin, and glared straight into Do Muwon’s eyes. “Is this really the time to ask me something like that?”

“The hell? When else am I supposed to ask? Right before I kick the bucket?”

The sheer audacity of the question finally drove Yu-su to plant a fist against Do Muwon’s bare chest and shove him away.

“Move. We have plenty of other things to discuss, so sit down.”

“Like what?”

“Do Muwon.”

Tch.

Making no effort to hide his reluctance, Do Muwon clicked his tongue and stepped back. Yu-su scrambled away at once, collapsing into the only remaining chair as he gasped and struggled to steady his breathing.

When he looked up, his eyes finally adjusted to the gloom, he was relieved to find that Do Muwon had at least kept a towel wrapped around his waist.

“…Impressive. You actually had the luxury of taking a shower in a situation like this.”

“I had to plow through a whole crowd to get to you. My underwear was soaked through with blood.”

“You’re the one who volunteered to take point.”

“True enough.”

The words came softly but clearly. As Do Muwon approached, he looked like some enormous beast stalking through the darkness.

He was huge in every conceivable sense.

Even as a child, Do Muwon had stood nearly two heads taller than the other boys, and by high school, he had already grown past 190 centimeters. Apparently, he had kept growing even after that. His speech might have been crude, but his posture remained perfectly upright, and the line running from his throat, where a prominent silver ID tag hung, down to his collarbone was dark and sharply defined.

His body was carved from dense, massive muscle, without an ounce of excess flesh. He was broad and powerfully built, yet the sheer width of his shoulders made his waist appear deceptively narrow. His legs were so long that it seemed downright unfair.

Paired with his handsome, perpetually ill-tempered face, Do Muwon had always been the kind of man who drew startled gasps and tightened the atmosphere of any room the moment he entered. That was precisely why watching him prowl around half-naked now felt even more irritating and uncomfortable.

Yu-su swallowed a sigh. “Put some clothes on.”

“You said we had other things to talk about. What are they? There are zombies outside, and we’re trapped in here. What else is there?” Do Muwon lowered himself onto the floor and stretched out his arms, his joints releasing a series of loud, grinding pops.

Seeing him look up from below soured Yu-su’s mood at once, though he made no effort to examine why. He simply began speaking, “Fine. Let’s leave the zombie problem alone for now. It’s giving me a headache too.” Yu-su pulled out his phone and held up the emergency alert still glowing on the home screen. “Look. The alert was issued nationwide.”

“We’re fucked.”

“I think it’s safe to assume we’ll be stuck here for at least a few more days.”

“Yeah. Got it.”

Yu-su disliked the fact that the person sitting across from him was Do Muwon, but simply speaking with another human being helped clear some of the fog from his mind. He drew a slow, steadying breath and began arranging his thoughts.

“First, we need to check how much food and how many supplies we have. We should also work out an escape route, just in case.”

“Everything we found is over there.”

“We might find more if we search properly. I have a flashlight.”

Yu-su pulled the flashlight from his pocket, but Do Muwon shook his head.

“We could make too much noise moving around. Why don’t we wait until sunrise?”

“…Hmm. Yeah. That would probably be better.” Yu-su considered the suggestion for a moment before nodding.

Do Muwon went on, “And what’s this about an escape route? There’s no way out of the division head’s office.”

“We can go through the bathroom ceiling. I think it connects to the executive elevator shaft, the secretary’s office… or somewhere else nearby.”

Do Muwon had been listening quietly, but now he tilted his head, suspicion gradually sharpening his gaze.

“How do you know so much?”

“Ah.”

“Ah?”

“Well, you know. I studied the building because I wanted to get hired here. This is a construction company.”

The opportunity had come through Mr. Yong, a foreman at one of the construction sites. Yu-su had known him for years, and the man had mentioned that someone in upper management was looking for a person to fill a vacancy.

“You’re still young, so why are you wearing yourself down out here? Don’t you think you should try getting a decent job?”

For a dropout who had never even finished high school, it had felt like an opportunity dropped straight into his lap. Yu-su had worked himself to the bone preparing for the interview.

I hope Mr. Yong is safe.

Yu-su lowered his head briefly, suppressing the emotions threatening to rise, then parted his lips again.

“Anyway, that isn’t important.”

“Jeong Yu-su.”

“What?”

A bottle of water was placed in his palm.

“Drink some water before you keep talking.”

“…”

“And take this.”

A cream bun appeared directly beneath his nose. After everything they had been through, the wrapper was hopelessly crumpled, and most of the filling had burst from the bun and smeared itself across the inside of the packaging.

Even so, as Yu-su stared blankly at it, he finally understood why his mood had soured so abruptly.

The scene was far too similar to their school days. Back when they were high school students, sitting beside each other and fooling around over snacks, Do Muwon had always thrust bread at him in exactly the same way.

I fucking hate this. I never wanted to remember things like that.

After wallowing in self-loathing for a moment, Yu-su finally answered, “I can’t keep anything down right now. You eat it.”

“I already ate while you were showering. That one’s yours.”

“I said forget it.”

“Hey.”

Do Muwon’s expression might as well have had ‘I’m pissed off’ written across it. Yu-su had briefly wondered whether joining the company had helped him mature, but apparently, that vicious temper had remained completely unchanged.

“Jeong Yu-su. Just listen to me.”

“Don’t order me around.”

Ha.

The retort came out more sharply than Yu-su intended, but he quickly reined himself in.

What good would fighting with Do Muwon accomplish? The man had saved his life earlier, and whether Yu-su liked it or not, they would need to cooperate for the foreseeable future.

But I really don’t want to eat.

His stomach still felt as though its walls had been glued together. Even the smell of the bread stirred his nausea. Fighting down the urge to gag, Yu-su twisted his head away with a scowl.

Do Muwon all but hurled the bag of bread onto the desk, then spat out his next words in a savage tone. “I know you hate being around me, but don’t push your luck.”

“Push my luck?” Yu-su’s eyes, which had flashed with anger, suddenly turned cold. “Who was it that claimed being with me was disgusting?” His voice stayed calm and steady, as if he were reciting from a textbook.

A vein bulged across Do Muwon’s forehead as he surged to his feet, looming over Yu-su with a crooked and menacing posture. ‘The hell? Do you really have to bring that up?’ he exclaimed.

“Should I pretend it never happened? Do Muwon, don’t cross the line.”

“Jeong Yu-su.”

“Enough.”

A long silence stretched between them as neither man looked away. Under any other circumstances, Do Muwon would have been the last person Yu-su chose to speak to, let alone remain trapped beside. He was the one who had taught Yu-su to despise himself, the same man who had once shouted those words with naked revulsion.

— “I told you to stop fucking barking. Me and Jeong Yu-su are what? That’s fucking disgusting.”

“I told you never to see me again. Even if we happened to cross paths, we were supposed to pretend we didn’t know each other.”

“…”

“For now, we stick together and help each other survive. That’s as far as this goes. Do you understand?”

Do Muwon’s ragged breathing hardly qualified as an answer.

“Answer me. Do you understand?”

“…Yeah.”

The existence of zombies and the incomprehensible loop was already driving Yu-su closer to insanity with every passing second. He had no emotional strength left to drag their history into the open and tear through it all over again.

That long, unrequited love had ended during the summer of his third year of high school. Ten full years had passed since then. The feverish passion that had once consumed him had long since eroded beneath the relentless pressures of survival, and he had assumed the wounds Do Muwon inflicted had faded with it.

At least, that was what Yu-su had believed.

“I really am grateful for the bread. I just can’t stomach it right now, so I’ll eat it later.”

“Fine.”

Yu-su had regained his composure, but Muwon’s expression had grown even more forbidding. Still, their conversation had plainly reached its end.

Yu-su retreated to a corner where two walls met and curled himself into a tight ball. From there, he could keep both the window and the door within sight without turning his back on either. Muwon watched him settle in, released an openly irritated sigh, and stretched out across the floor.

This is for the best.

If they spent the sleepless hours before dawn whispering merely to keep their anxiety at bay, there was no telling what might eventually spill from their mouths.

Yu-su rubbed his aching eyelids and gave his head a faint shake. He had already stayed awake for two consecutive nights preparing for the team project. Since then, he had survived a desperate brawl and several life-or-death sprints. His body, driven to the brink of collapse, pleaded for sleep, yet unease held every muscle rigid. How could he possibly close his eyes? Worse, his mind refused to stop turning. His thoughts spun in tightening circles while the zombies outside occasionally wailed, their guttural cries scraping against his already frayed nerves.

Eventually, his thoughts returned to the zombies and inevitably spiraled toward the loop. Whenever he tried to force them aside, the faces of his younger siblings and the few other people he cared about rose in their place.

Where were they?

Were they safe?

When could he leave this place and find them?

Thinking about it accomplished nothing, but he could not stop. He even tried to deny everything that had happened, wondering whether the entire day had been nothing more than a nightmare. No matter how many times he pursued that hope to its conclusion, however, he always arrived at the same truth.

I killed someone.

It had been a day steeped in death. He had watched people die one after another, and he had personally killed zombies that still wore human faces, crushing their bodies and tearing them apart.

Every sensation remained unbearably vivid.

Some of those faces had even belonged to people he recognized.

Their final screams. The sickening way their faces had burst and shattered. The gruesome texture of exposed bone and entrails beneath his hands.

When Yu-su looked down, his hands were visibly clean, yet he could still feel hot, sticky blood congealing across them. The phantom weight spread from his palms to his shoulders, then down his back and legs until it seemed to envelop his entire body.

Yu-su hunched forward, feeling as though an unbearable burden were crushing him into the floor, when a sudden noise reverberated through the room.

Thud!

“…!”

His heart seemed to plunge with the sound. Yu-su’s slender body jerked violently, and his breath caught in his throat.

The guttural shrieks of zombies flared inside and outside the building before gradually subsiding again. Yu-su’s trembling must have been impossible to miss because Muwon, who had been lying silently on the floor, pushed himself upright.

“Since when did you become such a coward?”

The remark did not particularly anger Yu-su. He drew a long, steadying breath before raising his head. Their faintly gleaming eyes met in the darkness and held.

“I think you’re just too fearless…”

“You used to have nerves of steel, no matter what happened, Yu-su.”

“That was… a long time ago.”

Muwon fell silent at the sound of Yu-su’s weak, lifeless voice. After a moment, he clicked his tongue without attempting to hide his irritation, rummaged through something in the darkness, and tossed a small object into Yu-su’s lap.

It was a pair of wireless earbuds.

“I’ll put on some music. Just listen.”

“…”

Yu-su shook his head, his uneasy gaze drifting toward the door.

A moment later, Muwon’s footsteps approached in rapid succession. His enormous shadow crouched directly beside Yu-su, opened the charging case, and began fitting the earbuds into Yu-su’s ears himself.

Finding the proper angle in the darkness was not easy.

“Stay still.”

“Wait a second…”

Muwon’s hot fingers repeatedly brushed Yu-su’s ears as he pressed the smooth earpieces into place. Yu-su flinched despite himself, his shoulders drawing upward as his eyes squeezed shut. By the time he regained his composure, both earbuds were seated securely in his ears.

Yu-su parted his lips. His throat felt strangely constricted, and it took him a moment to force the words out.

“It makes me nervous when I can’t hear what’s happening outside.”

“I’m not going to sleep. If anything happens, I’ll wake you.”

“…What about your battery?”

“I have plenty. I’ve got a backup phone, too.”

As Muwon tapped at his phone, a series of soft electronic clicks sounded in Yu-su’s ears. Unable to untangle the complicated emotions rising within him, Yu-su stared blankly at the silhouette crouched before him.

Does he remember that I used to fall asleep listening to music?

He could not bring himself to ask. Instead, he swallowed the question, but the unspoken words left an uncomfortable tightness in his chest.

“…Thank you.”

“You said we were sticking together, so we have to help each other.”

“…”

When Yu-su remained silent, Muwon gave a slight shrug.

“I also figured I’d already be dead if it weren’t for you.”

“That goes for me, too.”

The answer was sincere.

From the emergency stairwell door to the division head’s office, Yu-su would never have survived alone. That did not mean he was glad to have encountered Do Muwon again.

Unaware of Yu-su’s thoughts, Muwon appeared satisfied with the answer. He released a breath that might have been a laugh, or perhaps a sigh.

“Get some rest.”

“You should rest, too.”

Muwon lowered himself onto the floor again, and a familiar song began flowing into Yu-su’s ears. With the sounds outside muted, his breathing finally eased.

Yu-su’s eyelids fluttered as he silently followed the lyrics in his mind. His body grew heavier, sinking as though a dark marsh had opened beneath him and was slowly drawing him under.

***