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Ji Hoon had been on the main gate duty all morning, so he was the first one to see a shape emerging between the morning haze and the trees that shielded their bunker compound. The moment he raised the alarm, Dong Sik had his rifle drawn and aimed at the approaching figure, while Yong Shin, who'd just been learning to shoot firearms with some accuracy, gasped out loud and stumbled around for his.
The only reason Dong Sik didn’t shoot first and ask questions later was because Ji Hwa, at the watchtower, yelled out to them, "Wait, wait! Hold your fire!"
Dong Sik looked through the vantage gap between the gate walls and saw the shape, a veritable mirage, coming to a halt outside the secondary fence that they had set up just a few weeks ago. There were no jerky, lurching motions in the shape that Dong Sik knew to expect from the things that needed to be shot down immediately, so this was, unfortunately, a person. A living, breathing person who was liable to be just as dangerous as the things that were not breathing nor living.
"Open the gate," Ji Hwa said, stepping down the ladder attached to the watchtower in a hurry, and Dong Sik briefly wondered if today, of all days, was finally the day his friend, the de facto leader of their rag-tag group, had snapped. It wouldn’t have been particularly a surprise, either way. That day was going to come; it was only the matter of when. But there was nothing but a clear, brisk focus on her face when she pressed the binoculars into Ji Hoon’s hands and started to run through the main gate, so Dong Sik followed, his rifle still carefully aimed at the shape behind the fence.
"Inspector Oh?" the shape said just as Ji Hwa reached the fence, and the wind carried over the oddly familiar cadence of the strikingly low voice, just barely loud enough to be caught.
Dong Sik staggered to a stop.
Then he, too, was taking unthinking steps forward until he broke into a run. A name, almost carelessly, dislodged itself from his throat:
"Han Joo Won."
The shape visibly jerked at the sound. The man took a step, and then another, until he was flush against the fence, his fingers tight around the wires. "Lee Dong Sik ssi."
And this was—this was Han Joo Won. Clearly lost weight and covered in weeks' worth of dust from what had to have been a long, dangerous road, but still Han Joo Won himself.
How, Dong Sik almost said, but his voice, his head, his entire body came to a standstill, lost among the many questions that surged to his lips.
"Inspector Han?" Ji Hoon, running up behind Dong Sik and Ji Hwa, asked in his stead, seemingly without the same conundrum. "How—how did you even get here?"
"We thought you'd be in Gangwon," said Ji Hwa, who had the presence of mind to start to unlock the fence gate and push it open to pull Joo Won inside, "or at least in one of the safe zones."
"No," Joo Won said at length, seemingly finding words difficult. His gaze paused at each face, as if he needed to be certain what he was seeing. "No, I wasn't."
"We—" Ji Hwa started, glancing at Dong Sik once before trying again, "we didn't think we'd ever see you again." Alive, she meant, but none of them needed to acknowledge that.
"Neither did I," Joo Won said. He lowered the heavy backpacks he’d carried inside with him, and his eyes flickered back to Dong Sik’s. "I’m," Joo Won paused, cleared his throat, and said, "I’m glad to see you all well."
For a long moment, Dong Sik’s throat worked without making any sound.
He remembered a single, errand thought that’d occurred to him just before the radio had stopped broadcasting how Gangwon was one of the few small cities where the military had successfully deployed and secured as the safe zones, and that some lucky folks—the rich and the elites—had been protected from all of this madness from the get-go, unlike the rest of them.
He clearly remembered thinking, At least, you are still alive somewhere—alive and safe.
And now Han Joo Won was here, alive but far from safe.
But still, it wasn’t a lie when Dong Sik eventually answered: "Likewise."
There had been all manners of speculations at first. A chemical warfare by North Korea, or a biological one from China. American science experiments gone awry. The Rapture. Aliens. Soon everyone got wise to the fact that what triggered the end of the world didn't matter—only that it happened. The power grid was the first to go, along with most of the telecommunication systems. The remaining infrastructures, anything remotely electronic, soon followed one after another. At that point any hope that this could be something temporary, some glitch in the matrix, became just that—an idle hope.
The last they heard anything from the radio was some floating rumour that the armies were going from town to town to evacuate the remaining survivors. People were told to dig in. And wait for relief.
Dig in. Wait for relief.
So wait, they did.
Even when the monsters came.
With the most of the adult men having at least some mandatory military experience under their belts, they had enough decent shots in their group, but none of them compared to the creme de la creme, the elite of the elites, the top graduate of the Police Academy at Dong Sik's side.
Joo Won lined up his shot, took one short breath, and pulled the trigger, and one of the dark shades that lingered between the trees outside the southern perimeter folded in half and dropped like a rock. When Dong Sik clocked another one, marked it and called it, Joo Won took in a quick, measured breath, and one click later, another mangled, gangrene body went down.
Joo Won wordlessly reloaded the rifle, and Dong Sik had a chance to study him, juxtaposed against the image of Han Joo Won from his memory of the before-times. It’d been—months. Almost a year, even, since they’d last seen one another. A few months before the end of the world, Jae Yi’s birthday meal, had been the last time Han Joo Won was down in Manyang, and then they exchanged a few urgent texts before the phones became nothing but fancy paperweights.
Dong Sik had only hoped that he was alive and well somewhere, and without ever expecting to have Han Joo Won standing next to him again. Like everyone else, Joo Won had also lost weight, though he still had the same solid, steady presence. His hair had been shorn short, and the column of his neck seemed entirely too exposed and vulnerable above the sweat-stained shirt that Dong Sik could’ve never imagined the young master would deign to wear. His eyes showed that time hadn’t been entirely kind to him—not that it had ever been to others. Dong Sik wagered that he himself wouldn’t fare much better in the younger man’s eyes, either.
Dong Sik checked the scope again. "All clear." For now, he didn’t add. He didn’t have to. Joo Won nodded once, and they packed the rifle and the rest of the gears in sync.
"So, the deer farm," Joo Won stated like a question, when they climbed down the watchtower and resumed the tour of their bunker.
"Beggars can't be choosers," Dong Sik said. Once things had begun to fall apart, the townsfolk couldn’t afford to be choosy. They had to find a place of refuge that was remote and relatively safe while not being too distant from the main roads of Manyang where the help could, conceivably, come from. The feelings that people associated with the place were the farthest from anyone’s mind.
Joo Won nodded, as if he’d heard everything unsaid. He took in the perimeters of the shelter and its current residents with sweeping, measured gazes, clearly filing away the information as needed, and asked all the right questions.
"How many do you have?"
"Eighty-seven." Close to a hundred when they’d had started out at first, Dong Sik didn’t add. It also went without saying the number was about to spiral even further downward.
"And food’s still sufficient?"
"There was a small farm here to begin with, so haven’t had to venture out farther to scrounge just yet, but we might need to, at some point soon."
Joo Won nodded, considering. "I’ve noted some of the towns with most supplies still intact on the way here. Do you have a doctor?"
"Dr. Kim. Was a pediatrician at Munju General." At Joo Won’s look, Dong Sik said, again, "Beggars can be choosers." At the end of the day, they were lucky even to have a doctor who knew more than just the basic first aid.
After he’d shown Joo Won one of the shelter rooms that he and Ji Hoon would have to share, Dong Sik stopped and turned.
"So, Han Joo Won, how have you been?" he asked with the kind of cheer that one came by naturally when the world was ending and you were holding its remains with your bare hands. "You never call, you never write. One would think you'd forgotten all about our little town here, and yet here you are again."
Joo Won gave him a side look full of wry eloquence. "I think everyone’s been pretty preoccupied for the same reason, all considered."
"Mm-hm, but you scarcely showed your face here even before the end times began."
"I've been well in Gangwon," Joo Won said, after a moment. "At least, until."
"Yes, well, until."
Until it happened, every invitation to Manyang had been carefully turned down, citing one work emergency or another, every text carefully and politely responded to until trailing off for one reason or another. And here at the end of the world, Dong Sik had a half a mind to prod and poke about it all, even though neither of them could truly afford something like honesty.
But before he could decide to pry open that particular locked box, Yong Shin came running, frantic and stepping over his own feet. "Ajusshi, it’s—"
"Mi Ja Ajumma?" Dong Sik asked, already pivoting to the barn at the far corner of their bunker compound.
Yong Shin nodded. "Jae Yi Noona says it’s gone far enough."
Dong Sik nodded and turned without looking. Some old habits did die hard, because he knew with absolutely certainty that Joo Won would follow, and it was unaccountably reassuring.
Ji Hoon met them at the barn door and said, somewhat absently, "You know, I always wonder, Didn't I see this in a movie once?"
The air inside the barn had been permanently etched with the smell of spoiled meat and putrefying flesh that Dong Sik was already well accustomed to. Mi Ja—or someone, something, that had been just three days ago Mi Ja Ajumma who used to live several streets down from Ji Hwa—growled and scrapped against the metal bars that kept her separated her from the rest.
"Well," Ji Hoon added weakly, "maybe several movies."
Jae Yi was busy consoling Mi Ja’s crying husband and daughter huddled at the side of the barn. Ji Hwa, near the cage, nodded when they joined her. She held up one of the few working flashlights and studied Mi Ja with a frown. Even after all this time, when watching one of them up close, the hair at the back of Dong Sik's neck still stood up. The thing wearing what remained of Mi Ja Ajumma’s face shook the cage with its fraying fingers, violent and vicious, and tried to reach them through the bars.
"She’s definitely turned," said Dong Sik, just to save Ji Hwa from having to confirm it out loud for the rest of them.
"It took only 18 hours or so this time," said Ji Hwa. "We've waited long enough."
"Did anyone in Gangwon ever find out what triggers the turning point?" Jae Yi asked Joo Won, as soon as she left behind the distraught family. "Why some turned and others don’t? Because here we haven’t been able to make heads or tails out of it ourselves."
"No," said Joo Won. "None of the remaining epidemiologists we had in Gangwon could figure out anything about how or why of it, before."
"Before?"
"Before the infection also spread among them," Joo Won said, after a pause.
The news wasn’t any more grim than what they had already been used to, but it was still sobering. "Even before the radio went silent," said Ji Hwa, "people were spewing nonsense about how they could tell who’d turn, but no one had any concrete proof to back up any of the claims. At this point, there’s no merit in guessing. We can only deal with what we know for certain."
"What was the direct contact infection rate in Gangwon?" Jae Yi asked, making notes in her notebook.
"About 65%," Joo Won said. "The last they figured."
"Sounds about right," said Ji Hwa. "Two out of three has been our cases, for the most part."
"And the average time it takes?" asked Jae Yi.
"16 to 28 hours, from a direct exposure."
"The same here," said Ji Hwa. "Though usually it doesn’t last a day."
Mi Ja Ajumma—it—coughed and spewed out a lump of wet, dark blood. Ji Hoon flinched noticeably, and Ji Hwa tugged him backward with a hand on his collar and pulled him away from the cage.
"Step back," said Ji Hwa, to everyone else. "It’s time."
"Wait, wait, wait," said the husband, who rushed toward the cage, just as Dong Sik pulled out his handgun. "We could wait, right? Just a few more days? You don't know that there's no solution here. Maybe we’ll find a cure at some point. Maybe—"
Ji Hwa shook her head. "Mr. Hwang, you know this is the only way we have."
"You don’t understand—you can’t!" The husband screamed, grabbing a handful of Ji Hwa’s jacket. "None of your family got bitten, they never turned. You don’t know what this is like."
Ji Hwa waved Dong Sik and Ji Hoon away when they made a move to pull the husband off from her. She held the husband by the arms and said, steadily, "I understand, Mr. Hwang. You know I do. But the longer we wait, the more threat she’d be to you, your daughter, and the rest of us. We all agreed that we would not wait more than two days." She righted him and let him go. "It’s been three days, Mr. Hwang."
Slowly, Mr. Hwang’s face broke; Ji Hwa held him until the sob subsided and led him out of the barn. Dong Sik nodded at Jae Yi, who took the daughter and ushered the rest of them out.
Everyone except Dong Sik, who turned and faced the cage again.
For a short moment, Dong Sik watched its red-rimmed eyes, though he no longer tried to read any thoughts, any sense of awareness, behind them. Mi Ja, what used to be her, let out a blood curdling scream at him. The first few times, he used to tell them, I’m sorry. The words had dried up soon after.
He waited until Mi Ja’s family would be well away from the barn and shot it through the head twice. He checked to make sure it was down and was not making any more movement before he left the barn.
Outside, Yong Shin and Ji Hoon were waiting with torches and shovels. Joo Won, who was leaning against the barn’s wall, pushed himself up and took one of the shovels from Ji Hoon. "I’ll help."
"Ah," said Ji Hoon, looking at Joo Won, and then Dong Sik. "You don’t need to, Inspector Han," Ji Hoon said the title carefully, as if it held any meaning at this point. "It’s like, your first day here."
"I can help," Joo Won said, quiet and sure.
Dong Sik nodded at Ji Hoon, and Ji Hoon said, with some relief, "Okay, then yeah. We can show you how we take care of the—well, y’know."
Dong Sik watched the three of them disappear into the barn and went to find Ji Hwa waiting at their usual spot near the southwestern wall where they could overlook what used to be Manyang.
Ji Hwa offered him a lit cigarette, which he took, and lit another one for herself. Sheathed in darkness, they watched the stars coming out in the night sky. Even in this very forest, the stars used to be hard to spot, with the light pollution from Manyang and Seoul tainting the sky. But now, even the cloud-covered moon and the stars offered more light than torches and flashlights.
"So," she said, after a moment. "Han Joo Won."
Dong Sik breathed in the smoke. "Yeah," he said, mostly to fill the silence.
"We could definitely use his help here," she said, which was completely true. They needed anyone who was able to hold their position without flinching, and Han Joo Won was as able as they came, and more. "But, Dong Sik ah," she said, "are you going to be all right with this?"
Oh Ji Hwa knew him as well as anyone alive ever could in this world. He wondered if she knew what she was asking. He knew he didn’t.
This blighted world, he thought. This fucking blighted world.
"Ji Hwa yah," he said, after watching the cigarette burn through the filters. "Go get some sleep."
Ji Hwa may have smiled, he thought. Could've been smiling, laughing or wailing. But in the dark, he would never know which.
"You first," she said.
"How’s sharing the room with Ji Hoon?" Jae Yi asked.
"He snores," said Joo Won, grabbing one of the last apples from the food table and placing it on his tray.
Jae Yi made a sound that might’ve been a laugh in another life and scooped some congee onto the tray for him, before pulling him aside and properly cornering him. "Okay, let me ask you something else, then. Why are you here?"
"For breakfast," Joo Won countered, almost expertly placid in tone. "Shouldn’t I be?"
Dong Sik, a few people behind Joo Won in the long line of people waiting for their turn for breakfast at their makeshift cafeteria, found himself watching the two. He didn’t think that non-answer would deter Jae Yi, and she wasn’t about to be.
Jae Yi poked Joo Won, visibly hard, with the handle end of her scoop. "We all heard that Gangwon was supposed to be okay—isolated in the mountains, right next to the ocean, protected as much as one can be. There should’ve been a safe area somewhere that you could get yourself into. Why are you here?"
"I don't understand how any of you could be led to believe in these mythic safe zones. The military hasn’t successfully secured any location, let alone Gangwon."
"—and even if these safe zones did not exist," Jae Yi said, steamrolling over his objection, "it would’ve been well with your considerable abilities to find a safe shelter somewhere without needing to walk a hundred, thousand miles of difficult, if not impossible, roads to come to Manyang, of all places."
"You overestimate me."
"Or you underestimate us." She met his gaze, clear and direct. "Why are you here, Han Joo Won, really?"
He said, after a short pause, "Because I want to be."
Whatever she’d seen in his face softened her a little. "Right," she said, cracking a tired smile, "for what it’s worth, it's still good to have you here."
Joo Won’s shoulders relaxed, then. "Not just because I brought MREs and spare M-4s?"
"Right, about that," said Jae Yi, her eyes turning saucer-wide, "did you really raid some army barracks on your way here?"
"And if I did?"
"Audacious. I approve completely. And on the record, I do appreciate the antibiotics and the textbooks, especially on the shortwave communications." She sighed, running a hand through her hair. "Internet was supposed to be meant for situations like this. Nuclear war, or something along that line, right? Why wouldn’t anything work?"
"All the servers I’ve come cross, between Gangwon and here, were properly fried."
"Someone out there would’ve figured out by now how to rebuild whatever microchips needed for these things from scratch. How hard could it possibly be?" At Joo Won’s look, Jae Yi said, hastily, "Don’t answer that. Come help me with the radio when you have a second, will you?"
Joo Won had enough grace not to point out the fact all radios had emitted nothing but static for months, and that Jae Yi knew it better than anyone else at the shelter. "Will do."
Jae Yi waved him away and scooped the congee for the next person in line, and Joo Won waited at the sidelines until Dong Sik filled his tray and caught up with him.
"You're an expert on shortwave radios now?" Dong Sik asked, eyebrow raised, when they sat down across each other with their trays.
"I'm decent at it."
"And on irrigation? Min Ho mentioned you're helping him with the water pump in the vegetable garden? Also decent?"
"Yes, I am."
"Anything that you're not 'decent' at?" Dong Sik asked, with air quotes.
Joo Won paused over his congee. "Can't really think of any," he said, in an evenly imperious tone that brought to Dong Ski’s mind the young master he'd first met at Manyang Substation. "I've told you; I'm a quick learner."
"Ah, right, of course you are.” Dong Sik snorted. “Forgive my momentary lapse in memory."
“Well, you are getting on with years.”
Dong Sik briefly considered flinging a piece of kimchi at Joo Won’s face, but he figured he’d get an earful from Jae Yi for wasting perfectly good food. And because, while watching Joo Won clean out the bowl of congee without any hint of grievance, a fleeting thought clicked reflexively, like a finger on the trigger:
You don't—shouldn't—belong here.
Joo Won may be covered in dirt and stained clothes like the rest of them here, eating congee instead of some beatiful cut of lamb chop, but the young master still hadn’t completely shed the aloof air, back straight and every step exacting, with his very presence an anomaly among the sea of people with sinking shoulders and hunched backs. A universal proof that some things could, in fact, remain the same.
Why are you here?
Jae Yi's question persisted, thrumming just underneath his skin, but when Joo Won caught his gaze and looked up, Dong Sik only said, "Perimeter patrol later."
"Right," Joo Won said with a nod, and placed the apple on Dong Sik’s plate without another word.
At first Joo Won took the patrol shifts with Dong Sik, but soon enough Joo Won was taking the lead, training the less experienced people during breaks and pulling extra shifts checking the perimeters. After varied and continuous efforts to make the radio work only led to absolutely no result except for occasional garbles, Jae Yi declared it a lost cause and learned to shoot with an alarming accuracy.
"Don't overdo it," Dong Sik warned him, when Joo Won took a third shift in two days going around the perimeters and showing the older teenagers the ropes on how to detect the gaps and patching them on spot.
Joo Won pointed out mildly, "I’m still young, unlike someone else we can name here."
"Oh, so we're still not respecting the elders, is that it?" Dong Sik said, only making an half aborted attempt at a glare—because it was difficult to pull out a real one, at the sight of the corner of Joo Won's mouth turning up a little.
The young master had always been so miserly about his smile, Dong Sik remembered. Even when the kid couldn't quite manage to feign indifference to all things as he’d seemingly wished, a real smile from Han Joo Won had been a truly guarded thing. There had been times when Dong Sik wanted nothing more than to wheedle and goad him into an exasperated huff, the closest approximation of a smile he’d ever manage to extract from him.
So now, seeing it again, even in passing, made him feel oddly buoyant. Even now. Maybe especially now.
"He’s scary," Yong Shin admitted, when Dong Sik asked how the lessons were going.
Min Hae rolled her eyes. "Only because you tried to shoot without reloading. Twice."
"You weren’t paying attention because you think he’s dreamy," Yong Shin accused Min Hae, whose eyes were rolling even more dramatically that Dong Sik briefly worried they’d fall off. "Always going on and on about his dreamy face."
"Only because I actually have working eyes, you ass," said Min Hae, heatedly.
"Putting the older teenagers through an actual, regimented training might be what we need," said Ji Hwa, after Dong Sik reported the progress. "Get them out of trouble and help with extending the backup patrol groups. Things are pretty tight as they are."
"Separating those two kids as much as possible would be a good idea, though," Dong Sik advised. At Ji Hwa’s look, he added, "They're very much liable to make some trouble together."
"Right, because that's just another thing we need." Ji Hwa ran a hand down her face before she straightened up. "Okay, let’s get Su Yang and Jin Seo trained as well. Maybe Ji Sun, too. In two separate groups, and get Yong Shin and Min Hae to lead each."
Those other kids were the youngest teenagers around, about fourteen and fifteen years old. Too young, Dong Sik thought, very briefly, before he dismissed the thought.
"Next up, food," said Ji Hwa. "How long, do you think?"
"Il Sun said maybe three weeks or so until the potatoes are ready for picking. Still enough to get us through a couple of months. May have to supplement some from another outing, soon, just in case."
Ji Hwa nodded, reaching for the roster. She ran her finger down the list and said, with only a bare hint of hesitation, "You need Ji Hoon yi for this?"
He knew exactly how she felt about taking her brother on supply runs and how exactly she’d never say any of them out loud. "Tae Min Ajusshi and Young Hun would do it, I think. And Han Joo Won. Should be okay with us four. We won’t go far."
"Inspector Han again? He’s on every single roster."
"He’ll come either way," Dong Sik pointed out, "even if you leave him out of the list." That pattern of behaviours were already well established, and there would be no point in trying to convince Joo Won otherwise. That much, they both knew.
"Dong Sik ah," she said, without giving voice to what troubled her.
"It’s fine," he said, though he wasn’t quite sure who was lying to whom. Or about what. "It's all fine."
The Manyang Supermarket, what remained of it, was a smouldering heap of cinders and smoke.
For a long moment that they couldn’t afford, Dong Sik stared at the the black ashes and the charred remains within the burned-out shell of the accursed building. Tae Min and Young Hun were some distances away, watching the perimeters.
But Joo Won was standing behind him, wordless, and it felt familiar enough, of another moment on this almost exact spot, from what was at least two lifetimes ago.
Min Jung ah, he thought. I left you here to die.
Gone were the young, precious, brilliant lives that should've lived, and here he was, still. But it might’ve been a blessing, that some of them didn’t remain long enough in the world to see it reduced to this—this heap of ashes, and to live in fear for their lives during every single breathing moment. He rubbed the grit away from his eyes.
"There's nothing here," he said, turning around. "Let's go."
Dong Sik could no longer recall the exact shade of the summer sun that used to rise over the reed fields they passed: the familiar landscape of Manyang had long ago turned foreign, within this new world that was perpetually submerged in gray. Still, this outing itself hadn’t been entirely without its success. The group had secured a few bags of supplies much needed back at the base by the time they set out to return to the shelter, just as the pale sun was teetering limply over the horizon.
"I don't know whether I should ask," said Joo Won, looking oddly ethereal in the ashen light of the dying sun. At times, it was difficult to look away from Han Joo Won—the way he moved, the way he didn't, haunting the edge of Dong Sik's periphery like he belonged there.
Dong Sik figured out the question that Joo Won didn't actually ask when he followed Joo Won’s gaze to a hilltop facility they could see from their path on the road.
"She’s gone," Dong Sik answered. There was no need to elaborate any further, because that was enough for Joo Won to hear what was unsaid. The hospice had been one of the first places to be overrun, as had been most of the hospitals and care facilities that housed those most vulnerable.
Dong Sik ah—
She’d smiled at him, then. That last time. His mother had smelled of tangerines and spring daisies.
It had been over, finally. He’d found Yoo Yeon yi and her killers. Those responsible had paid the price, and he'd paid his own price in getting his answers. All that had been left was for his mom to grow old, in peace, for the first time in decades, and for him to watch her in quiet happiness until her passing.
He’d believed it, then. That he’d been left with at least that much grace from this blighted, cursed world. That the world would grant his family at least that much—that it owed them at least that much.
He hadn’t believed it was too much to ask for.
Not then.
It happened this time because some loose wires at the western edge of the fences had been pulled apart, and a few of the things got through just as an unlucky patrol unit went by.
It shouldn’t have been easier that it was someone Dong Sik didn’t know well this time, but it was.
"Why you?" Joo Won asked, afterwards.
"Why not me?" Dong Sik said, lighting a cigarette. The man didn't have a family, so there was no sobbing family waiting for him outside the barn, which was a blessing; only a few friends of his at the shelter went back in to give the man a proper burial.
"Ji Hwa took it on, the first few times," Dong Sik added, after a moment. "But it was hard, for her to lead and shoulder this at the same time."
"So, it naturally fell on you," said Joo Won. "And you never asked anyone else." If there was anger there, he didn’t show it. He came a long way, Dong Sik mused, since his first week at Manyang, way back in their other lives, when the young master’s every thought was displayed so transparently on his marble-sculpture of a face.
"I could take it on," said Joo Won. "It’d be easier. I’m an outsider."
"Nope," Dong Sik said, immediate and dismissive.
"I could."
"Sure. Still no."
Before Joo Won said another word, Dong Sik left him to find Ji Hwa, who was waiting at the usual spot. She handed him a cup full of soju, and poured herself more in a broken mug, filling it to the brim.
"You do have only one liver," Dong Sik reminded her. "Just in case you’re confusing it with kidneys."
"Oh, I’m very well aware," she said, as she brought the mug to her lips. "That’s why I’m very carefully preserving it in alcohol."
They sat on the plastic lawn chairs and watched the night sky. When he closed his eyes, he could've imagined that this was like any other summer evening, with its cool evening air and the familiar sounds of insects.
"Eighty-six," she said. After a pause, she corrected, "No, eighty-five now."
It was surprisingly easy enough, to learn to resign themselves to the loss at all times. He’d already learned the way of it, this way of loss, a long time ago. A truly long time ago before all this madness, and yet.
And yet.
Sometimes, just sometimes, he still saw the red-rimmed eyes staring across the metal bars just before opening his eyes.
Dong Sik picked up his soju cup, drank it in one shot, and waited for the threads to snap.
Joo Won was curled into a small ball in his bed, twisted up in his sheet so tightly that he barely seemed to be able to move while asleep.
At the doorway, Dong Sik stood still and thought how sleep made him look almost human. Awake, Han Joo Won moved like whatever drove him could never reach its limit. As if he was beyond such things as need and want, like thirst and hunger. Like anguish.
"Yah, Han Joo Won," said Dong Sik, bending over to kick the bed with his foot, not quite gently.
Joo Won blinked himself awake and sat up, hair in a wild disarray and making him look all of sixteen.
Something sharp tightened across Dong Sik's chest. "Congratulations, Inspector Han. You broke the record, one that I didn’t know we were even keeping. Seven shifts in three days." He sank on Ji Hoon’s empty bed and lit a cigarette. "You overdid it."
"I’m fine," said Joo Won, rubbing sleep away from his face.
"Of course you are."
"I know my limits."
"Of course you do."
"I’m not clear why I should be hearing this from the previous record holder," said Joo Won, "who doesn't exactly demonstrate the merit of knowing his own limits."
"Meh, limits are overrated."
Joo Won got up, completely ignoring Dong Sik's flippant and contradictory quip. "As far as limits go, you might want to consider soju will run out one of these days," Joo Won said, mildly and without rebuke. "Jae Yi ssi makes a point of counting empty bottles every morning."
Dong Sik took a mental note to make at least a halfway decent attempt at hiding the evidence in the future. "Ji Hwa and I are just doing our part contributing materials for Molotov cocktails." He waved him off. "Always be prepared, they say."
Joo Won watched at him for a moment, then reached over and plucked the cigarette from between Dong Sik’s fingers before putting it out on the ground.
"It’s not good for you," he informed Dong Sik succinctly before Dong Sik could even think to react with outrage, and grabbed his patrol gears. "We're digging another well over at the southwest field. Will you be contributing to that particular effort today or actively dwindling the soju supply instead?"
Dong Sik caught the offered hand and let Joo Won pull him up to his feet. Wondered how easy it was, just for a moment, to let himself be pulled up by a pair of steadfast hands. To be able to imagine for a moment that there was no weight, this interminable weight.
"Well, hell," he said, trying to not to feel the loss when Joo Won let him go, "why not both?"
"Are you all right?"
Joo Won lowered his gun, grabbed Dong Sik’s shoulder and shook it, hard, before he asked again with renewed urgency.
"Lee Dong Sik ssi, answer me. Are you all right?"
It took a little while for the words to register, but Dong Sik managed to tear his eyes away from the carnage and turned his focus on Joo Won. Not a moment too soon, because Dong Sik could see a hint of panic about to slip into the normally composed face.
Dong Sik loosened his grip around his handgun, pressed a hand over his eyes, and let Joo Won pull him up to his feet. "Yes. Yes, I’m fine."
Joo Won took another moment to check him from head to toe, and let go only when he was seemingly satisfied that Dong Sik was in one piece and unhurt. "There was a collapse at the southwest corner of the wall," Joo Won said. "And they slipped through a hole. I’ll take Jae Yi ssi and Yong Shin and get it fixed. Think you manage here?"
Dong Sik nodded and reloaded his gun. "Take Ji Hoon, too, and get him to watch your backs."
Joo Won paused, telegraphing his thoughts—he didn’t want to, didn’t think he’d need another backup when he thought more people might still be needed here. But when Dong Sik looked up sharply, Joo Won gave him a nod and left.
Just a hole, Dong Sik thought, as he counted the bodies in the compound. Altogether six, one of them of their own. Just a fucking hole, he thought, once again, when Dr. Kim came out, grim-faced, after examining people’s various cuts and injuries for bite marks.
Soon after, Ji Hwa, lips pressed into a thin line, escorted the crying families to the barn.
After a moment, Dong Sik followed.
"One of these days," Dong Sik remarked, "apparently soju might run out."
"Mm," said Ji Hwa, who was making a sizable headway into her second bottle, "Mr. Hwang has been making makkoli. It’s not half bad. You’d be better off worrying about cigarettes. One of these days there might not be enough left to scrounge in the vicinity."
"I’m sure I won’t be alive long enough to experience that particular pleasure."
Ji Hwa nodded slowly. Then she placed the bottle on the ground, reached over to him, and pulled him to her by the front of his shirt. "Shut up," she said, angry and ferocious. "Shut up. You’re going to live a long and healthy life, and outlive all of us, got that?" She shook him once. "You got that?"
Dong Sik met her eyes and waited until the some of the wildness in them dissipated. When it did, he saluted her with his soju cup and said, with all the honesty he could afford, "Got it."
After a moment, she let go and sank back in her lawn chair. At the very least, he was thankful that she didn’t reach for her bottle again.
Eighty-two, thought Dong Sik.
Eighty-five.
And now, eighty-two.
"They both turned within less than a day this time," said Dong Sik. "Five out of five, now, for the last five times."
"The infection rate could be changing. Maybe there’s a new variant."
"Maybe," he said, though there was no way to know, either way. You either turned, or didn’t.
"Dong Sik ah," she said later, her eyes halfway closed. "If I ever end up in the barn. If, when it happens—"
"Yeah," he promised her, even though she never did finish her sentence, "I will."
Min Hae and Yong Shin, who had been seen sneaking around together for some time now, were going to have a baby, said Dr. Kim, with no little amount of trepidation.
"You did warn me," Ji Hwa told Dong Sik, holding her head between her two hands to stop herself from shaking it in dismay one too many times. Dong Sik gave her shoulder a pat—there, there—and poured her a cup of coffee from their emergency stash of espresso beans, and she took a grateful sip. "So, options?"
"Hye Won Hospital," said Joo Won, pointing at a spot on the unfolded map.
Jae Yi frowned, tracing her finger across the streets leading to the hospital. "That’s about seven days out, if you’re lucky. Wouldn’t it be better sticking with Munju?"
Joo Won was already shaking his head. "Munju General was picked clean, the last we checked. Dr. Kim really needs the equipment, and Min Hae needs more than what we have here for the next nine months. We’ll have to risk it."
Ji Hwa exchanged a look with Dong Sik, who nodded. "All right, when?"
"Tomorrow," Joo Won said immediately. "The earlier the better. I’ll get Dr. Kim to put together a list of things he needs."
"All right, then," Dong Sik said brightly, rubbing his hands together. "A road trip it is."
Joo Won looked up sharply. "I can move faster alone. And I’ve made this exact trip coming here on my own."
Dong Sik said, keeping his voice eminently pleasant with some effort on his part, "You’re not going alone, and that’s that."
Joo Won turned to Ji Hwa, clearly and rightly thinking that trying to convince Dong Sik otherwise would get him nowhere. "You can’t afford to lose two of us for the patrol here. There isn’t enough coverage as it is."
"You do have a point," Ji Hwa said to Joo Won, "but just a point. Even if you successfully make it that far, how much supply do you think you can carry back by yourself?" Joo Won didn’t have any good counter, and Ji Hwa said, conclusively, "Dong Sik is going with you. You both get ready."
After spending not inconsiderable time consoling Min Hae and Yong Shin over their respective horrors of the impending parenthood, Dong Sik leaned against the doorframe of Joo Won's room and watched him methodically packing his gears.
"I suppose if we don’t actually want the entire human race to just die right out, there’s got to be some sort of repopulation efforts," Dong Sik speculated, somewhat idly. "Though if someone really has to have children, I would've voted for you and Jae Yi."
Joo Won continued to pack his patrol gear without a fraction of a pause. "Would Jae Yi ssi or I get any say in the matter?"
"But you two will make such pretty babies."
"Because that’s the most important quality at this juncture?"
"They’ll be also whip-smart as well as pretty," Dong Sik allowed, rather frivolously, but it’d be amusing, he thought, even entertaining, to see something like a flush gracing that irritatingly good-looking face for once. "Let’s face it. Your kids will definitely have a better chance at survival than Yong Shin and Min Hae’s kids, no offence to those two."
"My parents were an alcoholic who committed a suicide when her son was eight and a megalomaniac who killed and destroyed people's lives for decades without experiencing a single second of remorse." Joo Won stood and picked up his bag without once looking up at Dong Sik. "So, no, even if the world wasn’t what it is now—I wouldn’t ever have children."
"Joo Won ah."
That stopped Joo Won, who was walking past Dong Sik through the doorway, just as effectively as Dong Sik’s hand on his wrist did.
"I’ve never seen Han Ki Han’s face in yours," Dong Sik said. He didn't look at Joo Won's face; instead, he studied the hand in his grasp. It was faintly bruised, rough with calluses, and he thought of the long delicate fingers that used to clean the mud-stained shoes with wet Kleenexes until they were gleaming and spotless. "Not that night, and not once since then."
A lie. A transparent one at that, but he thought it should be allowed, at least this time. Either way, it wasn’t his first lie, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be his last.
So, don’t do this, he didn't say. There should be no obligation tying you to this, to any of this. It shouldn't be keeping you here. I shouldn't.
So, you could just—leave, if you wanted.
Dong Sik let his hand go, not knowing whether he wanted Joo Won to hear what was unsaid, as Joo Won often did. Or whether he should be grateful, that Joo Won didn’t, not this time. It was a constant trial, trying to marshal his own errand thoughts when it came to one Han Joo Won.
Joo Won unfurled his hand. Once. Twice. Before he looked up and met Dong Sik's eyes again. "We’re leaving at six tomorrow morning," he said, quiet but no longer quite as brittle. "Not a minute later."
Dong Sik smiled, just a little. "Aye aye, sir," he said.
On their third day on the road, they came across a small mound of soil, with gleaming peaks of crows pecking at the dead flesh underneath.
They had avoided all signs of the living and the dead on the road, walking by day and finding a shelter every night, without ever stopping otherwise. This time Dong Sik stopped, only because Joo Won remained there, unmoving.
The charcoal clouds blotted out the sun, and against its dim light, Joo Won looked like a shadow made of all angles, edges of his face sharp as whiplash.
"There was this grandmother," Joo Won said, after a moment of disquiet. "I met her on my way. She buried her entire family here. She couldn’t bear to burn them. Her granddaughter just turned five." He looked up at Dong Sik, then. "I helped, because I didn’t know the way to persuade her."
Dong Sik didn’t have to ask where the grandma was now, as much as he didn’t need to try to imagine the horrors that Joo Won would’ve seen on the road to know what it’d been like, to find his way to Manyang.
There was no time for them to spare; any unnecessary second spent outside only increased the risk of this trip. But Dong Sik looked for a shovel, found one, and started digging.
After a moment, Joo Won followed.
By the time they finished digging fresh graves, there was a smell of a brewing storm spreading under the darkening sky. They found a momentary shelter under a large sycamore tree. Dong Sik watched the gray rain, while Joo Won studied the map again under the stained light—unnecessarily, since they’d both memorized the paths to take well before leaving the bunker, but Joo Won’s fingers, smudged in soil and dirt from digging, carefully and faithfully wove whorls and curves on the tattered paper everyday. It felt oddly like a prayer.
Dong Sik thought again of the long delicate fingers, a scene from Manyang Substation, in another life. It made him feel as if he was as falling even while he was standing still. Held aloft over the promontory. Drowning on dry land.
Why are you here?
The question still lingered, thrumming under his fingertips like the beats of an old, familiar song.
"There was a safe zone. Back in Gangwon," said Joo Won.
Dong Sik, who was about to drift into sleep, lifted his head. Tried, with little effect, to will himself to understand so the words would start to make some sense. "So, all this time—"
"I lied."
It was easy to forget that the young master had always been a decent liar. There was no light inside a shed in the outskirt of Munju they’d taken as a shelter for the night, no light with which Dong Sik could glean the expression on Joo Won’s face except for a sliver of the moonlight through the gaps of the wooden panels.
Dong Sik asked the only question he could really ask. "Why."
After a moment, Joo Won spoke up again. "How would you want them to die," he said, each word stacked carefully on one another.
"They."
"Ji Hwa ssi, Jae Yi ssi, everyone at the bunker. How do you want them to die?"
"I don’t," said Dong Sik, flatly.
"Right," said Joo Won, as if the argument that Dong Sik didn’t even think they were having had already been won. "We can’t bridge the distance to the safe zone. Not all eighty of us. Not seventy. Not even twenty. And that’s even assuming that the safe zone would accept us even if we did make it."
People would not be able to make the journey, not everyone. And the alternative was to dwindle and die. One by one. As they had. The question was, once again:
How do you want them to die?
On the road or at the bunker? A few of them might make it, but which few?
And even if they chanced it all, there was another matter altogether. Not that Dong Sik had been counting on any rescue, but— "There's no military left, is there?"
"No."
"And if anyone resembling military showed up at our doorstep, it'd be to take whatever we have."
"Yes," said Joo Won, thickly. "I'm sorry. For not telling you sooner."
"You’re not," said Dong Sik, not unkindly. "You didn’t think we needed to be presented with an impossible choice that we can’t make."
But Joo Won was sharing it now, because—
"But now," said Dong Sik, even as despair was beginning to take hold, "you think the choice might have to be made."
Joo Won didn’t deny it, and he didn’t have to. It only took one misstep, one slip, into a loss so big that they may never recover from, and they all knew it.
Eighty-two, thought Dong Sik.
How do you want them to die?
The trouble was, no matter how many times he asked, the answer was, always, I don’t. I don't want them to die. Not one of them. Not any single one of them.
"Don’t you fucking move," the last man standing screamed while his knife nicked into the skin just below Joo Won's throat.
The midday sunlight was pin-sharp in Dong Sik’s eyes. Dong Sik blinked once to clear his sight, shot the man three times, and caught Joo Won before his knees started to fold under him.
When the haze receded from his eyes and from his head, Dong Sik saw a few heads at his feet, cracked open like busted ripe watermelons under the sizzling midsummer heat. Joo Won was saying, "You can let go," low and slow, like he’d been saying the words for some time. "Lee Dong Sik ssi. You can let go, now. You can."
Dong Sik stared at his own hand clamped on Joo Won’s arm. He unlocked his fingers, consciously, one by one, until they were splayed open and Joo Won could free his arm.
"Are you hurt?" Dong Sik asked, belatedly and abruptly awake. Joo Won shook his head, but Dong Sik could see a bruise forming just under his jawline, along with a small cut with trailing blood. He needed to resist the urge to feel for the pulse beneath the reddened skin and let himself trust what he was seeing: Joo Won was fine.
"Later," said Joo Won, when Dong Sik made a move to stop the bleeding. "We’d better be on our way. There could be more of them."
They weaved between the bodies, picking up ammunition and supplies as they went, and cleared out of the hospital courtyard.
"You were right," Joo Won admitted afterwards, in a small, cramped gas station they found for the night after putting a good distance between them and the remains of the attackers. "It was a risky move. But it was worth it."
Dong Sik patched up Joo Won, washing off the trail of blood around Joo Won's neck and cleaning the cut. His right hand, one that had been rock-steady around the grip of his gun, badly shook as he did.
It was worth it, in that they had found most of what they needed. It wouldn’t have been, Dong Sik knew, if the knife had stabbed Joo Won’s neck about two inches left where it'd ended up. Hye Won Hospital, when they’d reached it, was already well occupied, with several camps set up inside and out. They couldn’t barter without anything to offer in return, but Joo Won wasn’t about to go back empty-handed, and had convinced Dong Sik that breaking in might be the only way.
They had been more than just prepared for trouble. Still, Dong Sik hadn’t seen it coming until it was well upon them, and that knife had—
"Fuck."
Dong Sik dropped the remaining bandage and sat back, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes. His hands didn’t stop trembling.
It had been finally—over. Over. Yoo Yeon Yi. Her killers. The prices he’d made them pay. The prices he’d paid.
This blighted world.
A life without loss shouldn’t have been too much to ask for. It hadn’t been too much to ask for.
"Easy," said Joo Won, on his knees, and carefully lifted Dong Sik’s hands from his eyes. "Just. Let me."
Joo Won ran a wet cloth over Dong Sik’s hands and washed away blood and grime, slow and steady, until Dong Sik felt the tremors from his hands subside, little by little.
He opened his eyes. Joo Won was looking up at him, ghostly white in his bloodstained shirt, and something caught in Dong Sik's throat, like a long burn in his chest, with the air around him hot and suffocating. It was wrong—just. Wrong.
"Get that off." Dong Sik twisted his fist in Joo Won’s bloodied shirt, and yanked. "Just—get it off." His grip was slippery and unwinding, and his breath came up to choke him. "It's not, you're not—you shouldn't be—"
Joo Won pulled off his shirt in one swift motion, surged on his knees, and closed his mouth over Dong Sik's, chaste and featherlight.
Dong Sik inhaled, sharp, and it hurt somewhere deep in his chest. "Breathe," Joo Won said, cradling Dong Sik’s face with two firm hands. "Just that. Just breathe."
Joo Won leaned in close, as if there were no barrier of skin between them. When he breathed out, Dong Sik felt a rumbled pressure in the air. A breath. A sign of life. It came like a relief. A consolation. His own breath slowed to match, in increments.
"It's fine," Joo Won said, in a quiet mantra, his face lingering another breath away. "You're going to be fine. It'll all be fine."
I've surely gone mad, thought Dong Sik, finally, and he tightened his grasp around Joo Won's arm, where he'd already left an imprint, and caught Joo Won's lips roughly with his own. An imitation of Joo Won's kiss, but neither light nor gentle. With something terrible underneath. Something dismal and treacherous. Like want. Like greed, neither sane nor right. But only Joo Won could let him breathe, and he wasn't about to let go.
"It’s fine—you can, whatever you need," Joo Won said faintly, even as Dong Sik began to steal shivering breaths from Joo Won’s lips and pressed down urgent kisses along his bare shoulder. "All of this, and we can forget. After. Just, let me."
Slowly, ever slowly, Dong Sik unraveled. And held on.
They returned to their bunker a day late and missed the funeral.
Dong Sik stared until he couldn’t at the hole on the ground where Yong Shin’s body had been turned into ashes. On Yong Shin’s bed, Min Hae sat with a bottle of prenatal vitamins in her hand; her eyes were red and dry from all the tears already shed.
"I should’ve—I should’ve stopped him," said Ji Hoon, swallowing a sob. "He thought he’d be quick enough. Quick in and out, just squeeze through that backdoor of the old pharmacy in the town square, 'cause he thought he saw some supplies still in the back, but—"
"By the time the kid made it back, he was already beginning to turn," Dr. Kim, who seemed to have aged years in the span of two weeks, told Dong Sik, when he brought over the medical equipment scrounged from the hospital. "He didn’t stand a chance."
"Maybe we're all already dead," Ji Hwa said, later that night, sinking in her lawn chair. She had to switch to Makkoli and was drinking more to make up for it. "We’re in a purgatory, and this whole thing is a big joke someone’s enjoying at our expense."
"Whoever it is, seems a bit slow on the delivery of the actual punch line," said Dong Sik, nursing his cup of Makkoli for far longer than he should have.
Ji Hwa snorted. "Well, you can’t expect it to be a good joke, can you."
After helping Jae Yi with settling Ji Hwa in bed for the night, Dong Sik found Joo Won on patrol, reinforcing a section of the southwestern fence where there’d once been a breach that cost them lives.
Dong Sik lit a cigarette to chase the aftertaste of homemade Makkoli. Joo Won paused his work, leaned over and put out the cigarette between Dong Sik’s fingertips, without a single word.
"Seriously?" Dong Sik asked, aggrieved.
"It’s not good for you," Joo Won shot back, crisply.
The night sky was clear and there was enough of the moonlight to let Dong Sik glimpse Joo Won’s face. He thought there might be an elusive smile to be found in the face somewhere, if he had time to dig around hard enough. Instead of following through the internal debate on lighting another cigarette and earning Joo Won's ire or calling it a day, he contemplated the sharp planes of Joo Won's back, the steady lull in the way his fingers moved across the wires. The way that the light seemed to spill away from him.
When Dong Sik pulled Joo Won to his feet, Joo Won came up without resistance, without questions. When Dong Sik pushed him against the tree behind him and kissed his mouth open, harsh and blunt, Joo Won followed without resistance, without hesitation.
All of this, we can forget. After.
And he could have. And maybe they had. Because there was no mercy in remembering. And one time could've been easily chalked up to desperation. Temporary insanity. Reaction to traumatic injuries. He could plead their case with a million different reasons and come up with something that made sense that wasn't quite just pure madness.
Joo Won was broad and solid under his palms, every frame of him familiar and unknown, and he tasted like the wintry cold in the hot, sweltering summer. And Dong Sik still wanted.
"Another day, another case of acute existential failure," Dong Sik said, one hand twisted in Joo Won’s hair and tilted his head with his other hand, pulling him closer until Joo Won arched against him. "I could do with some life-affirming sex."
Joo Won made a low noise in the back of his throat that sent a shiver down Dong Sik's spine. "By all means, then."
Just this, then, Dong Sik thought. Just a little while longer.
And all of this, we can forget.
There was an alarm. And then a scream.
Ji Hwa started running. Dong Sik grabbed his rifle and followed, his breath coming up to his throat. The scream was coming from outside the main gate, which was left halfway open.
Ji Hoon and Min Hae were ahead, Joo Won not far behind. Dong Sik clocked four, five of the things coming through the secondary fence gate that they’d battered open, and Gwang Su, who’d been on the gate duty, firing off shots as quickly as he could.
Too close, Dong Sik thought, heart hammering, just as Gwang Su staggered forward and cried out.
Min Hae and Ji Hoon were just in time to pull Gwang Su back, and they tried to retreat back inside the gate to the relative safety. Dong Sik came up to a firing position and started to lay down covering fire.
But not fast enough, because three of the monsters were still standing and rushing toward the the group on the ground.
Joo Won reached them first, and slammed shoulder-first into the shape that was descending on Min Hae. She ducked and rolled out of its reach, but backed up against another one of the monsters that came up behind her. Ji Hoon took a shot at it; it went wide, glazing its arm, and it sharply turned toward him. Ji Hoon took several steps back, only to trip and land on his back. His gun fell out of his grip and slid away from his feet, just as the thing stepped over the gun and reached for him.
"Ji Hoon ah," Ji Hwa said, in a strangled shout.
Joo Won wrapped his arm around its neck and pulled it off of Ji Hoon, and shot straight into the chest of the third monster staggering toward him. When it went down, he shoved off the monster clawing at his arm and shot it once in the chest, and the second time through its head for good measure.
Shots around them ceased. Joo Won, for a moment, didn't move, and then lifted his arm and watched it come up bloody.
The world lurched. Swayed sideways. Or maybe he did. Dong Sik wasn’t so sure. There was a sudden pressure in his lungs, choking off all possible words like a hot knife to the throat. So he moved, instead. Tried to take a step with his feet that were rooted in place.
Tried to.
"Don’t," said Joo Won, looking up at Dong Sik, and took several steps back. "You don’t want to touch me." He shrugged off this jacket and revealed a torn sleeve along with a long red gash and a dotted crescent. A bite mark. He clamped his hand around it, and blood welled between his fingers.
"Joo Won hyung," said Ji Hoon, in widening horror.
"It’s fine," said Joo Won.
"But, I—I shouldn’t have—"
"Ji Hoon ah, listen to me," Joo Won said, urgent and insistent, to Ji Hoon, who was trembling on his feet. "This isn’t on you. It isn’t."
He looked around at everyone, frozen in their spot and unable to move. His gaze caught on Dong Sik's, briefly, before it found Ji Hwa, who’d lost all her blood from her face.
"I should go see Dr. Kim," he told Ji Hwa, voice even. "Get this checked out."
She swallowed once and nodded at Joo Won. "Right, go ahead," she said. Her voice cracked at the edges, but just a little. "Everyone else, get moving and start patching up the gate."
Joo Won stopped a few steps away from Dong Sik.
"It’s fine," Joo Won told him—slow and certain, like he meant every word, and he could will all of them to come true with sheer force. "It'll be fine."
Dong Sik reminded himself once again, perhaps a little too late: the young master had always been a good liar.
It's fine. You're going to be fine.
It will all be fine.
The cigarette between Dong Sik's fingers had burnt through the filter and turned his fingertips red and raw. He didn't notice until Ji Hwa snatched it from his fingers and put it out.
"He could be okay, Ajusshi," Jae Yi said, each word strained with forced certainty. "Just because the infection rate’s been high lately, it doesn’t mean—it doesn’t mean there’s no chance. It just doesn’t."
Dong Sik’s fingers flexed uselessly at his sides, now only grasping at empty air. Silence drowned out the noises ricocheting in his head. Thoughts, pointless thoughts, latched onto places that remained relentlessly bare.
"There’s a safe zone in Gangwon," he told them, without thinking.
Ji Hwa stopped pacing in front of the barn and turned to him. "What?"
"There was a safe zone in Gangwon. He told me."
"But," Jae Yi started, "then why—"
Jae Yi stopped, already beginning to work out the implications.
"They would’ve taken him in. A young hotshot like him. Wouldn’t they?" Dong Sik asked, nonsensically. His hand, his useless hand, gradually curled into a fist, and anger, hideous and scalding, sharpened and spread. "Then why did he, why didn't he—why did he even come here?" Why would he risk his neck every single day here in Manyang when he could’ve been off in that safe zone for the rich elites? Why didn’t he just stay safe—
"But you know why," said Jae Yi, like that shouldn’t even be a question that ever needed to be posed out loud.
When Dong Sik looked up at her, Jae Yi’s face began to crumble, little by little, like a stuttering slow-moving picture of the old times.
"Oh, Ajusshi," her voice broke, along with her expression. "You didn’t—you really didn’t know."
Her hand covered her face. Not quickly enough to hide the tears brimming in her eyes from him, but she tried.
"Jae Yi ya," he said, and watched her turn away, her shoulders sinking.
"I’m sorry," Jae Yi said, stricken and inconsolable, "I just—I’m really sorry, Ajusshi."
Ji Hwa didn't tell him she was sorry, though it was written plainly in the way her hand on his shoulder faintly shook. In the way that her face held the same look as when she'd asked, Are you going to be all right with this?
In the way she'd said, Dong Sik ah, without ever giving voice to her fears.
She'd also known the moment Joo Won had arrived in Manyang. They all had.
And he hadn't.
There had been a question.
Inside the barn, Joo Won was lying on a blue blanket, one arm over his eyes and by all indications soundly asleep. But when Dong Sik’s feet stopped at the metal bars separating them, Joo Won’s arm fell away, and the eyes that met Dong Sik’s were only too clear.
"This feels familiar," Joo Won said, offhanded, as he pushed up on his elbows.
And it did. It required only a little stretch of imagination to picture themselves back at the holding cell of Munju Station, which, disregarding hays and pitchforks, hadn’t been too dissimilar from the tight space they were now using as a makeshift prison; only, it’d been Dong Sik greeting Joo Won from behind the bars, then. Another lifetime ago.
What took you so long? You’re my partner—you should’ve visited me sooner.
Dong Sik could bring to the mind the curving smile he’d put on his own face when he uttered the words solely calculated to infuriate one Han Joo Won, who’d unwittingly played the part that Dong Sik had assigned to him to perfection. It would’ve been unthinkable then the prim and proper young master could ever end up being the one behind the bars, let alone the one lying on this tattered, soiled blanket with a half-finished bowl of something that looked remarkably like oxtail soup at his feet.
Joo Won followed Dong Sik’s gaze and answered his wordless question. "Ji Hwa ssi was here before. She was," Joo Won paused before he eventually settled on, "grateful."
Grateful for saving her brother, for now she was saddled with the kind of debt that you couldn’t possibly repay except with your own life, though perhaps these days a good oxtail soup could come pretty close.
The moonlight from the small window behind Joo Won spilled over his shoulders and framed him in the darkened light. He looked gaunt in the tatty shirt, worn soft at the elbows, one shoulder wrapped in the white bandages that’d already turned halfway black from the blood.
Looking into the eyes in the colour of fresh bruise, and Dong Sik remembered, again: there’s always been a question.
Dong Sik’s right hand tightly wrapped itself around the metal bar in front of him. "Why are you here?"
He’d asked the question that everyone else seemed to know the answer to, but Joo Won only said, "We’ll still have to wait until morning. 12 hours or so left to go, give or take." He added, a little after, as if it might help, "It won’t be for long, one way or another."
A loud clang rattled the cage. Dong Sik stared at his own hand that shook it, and at his nails digging into the still-ratting metal bar hard enough to chip the peeling paints. "You would’ve been safe elsewhere," he said. "You could've been."
"Your hand." Joo Won, alarmed, shot to his feet.
The blood trickling down from his fingertips made his grip all the more slippery, but Dong Sik hardly cared. "Tell me why you’re here risking your neck, you life, every single day when you could’ve been off in that safe zone for some rich elites. Tell me."
Joo Won, pale and muted, offered only silence.
Dong Sik hit the metal bars with his both fists until the floor shook.
"Why." His voice cracked. "Why are you here?"
"—because you are," Joo Won snapped.
A numbness, frigid and paralyzing, reached the edges of his fingertips. Dong Sik let his hands slip.
Joo Won screwed his eyes shut, but in a moment, he opened them. And spoke again, quieter. Surer. "Because you are."
Slowly, Joo Won sank back on the tattered blanket without looking at Dong Sik. "During the first wave, there was a swarm of monsters that attacked the substation in Gangwon. I tried—" His low and steady voice started to crack, just a little, before it found itself again. "I tried then, and afterward. I tried my best. Many died. I may have saved a few, but none of them was you."
Dong Sik remembers thinking of Han Joo Won in odd, passing moments:
At least the young master might be safe, after all, away from all this madness.
"I would’ve given everything I had to ensure that you could have a long, happy life. Before the end of the world, that life shouldn't have included me," Joo Won said, with a faint but untroubled smile, the kind that Dong Sik had always wished to find on this particular face. "At least this, I could do now. The world ended. Now, at least, I get to give you and people you love another day to live."
No.
Dong Sik thought, No.
"It’s okay," said Joo Won, quiet and sure and certain. With all the convictions in the world. "Ji Hwa ssi needs her brother. Everyone here needs her. And you need them."
His hand, his fucking useless hand, trembled, and Dong Sik asked, "And you?"
"And I love you," said Joo Won, simple and matter-of-fact, like that was all there was to it. "I never meant for you to—" Find out, Joo Won didn’t say, but continued, voice still low and clear, "But I need to ask one thing. Just one."
Joo Won glanced at his arm for a moment and looked up.
"Ask someone else," said Joo Won. "This time."
There was a howling maelstrom in Dong Sik’s head.
His hand, of its own volition, went inside his jacket; it no longer shook when it found the key to the cage and opened the lock in front of him.
"Don’t," said Joo Won, when he broke out of his frozen stupor, just as Dong Sik entered the cage and locked it firmly behind him. "Stop."
Joo Won staggered backward just as Dong Sik took steps forward.
"Don’t," said Joo Won, again. Plaintive. Desperate. His face was parchment white as he pushed himself as far away he could from Dong Sik’s reach as possible, until he hit the wall behind him. "Why are you—you can’t. You need to—just get out. Right now."
"No," said Dong Sik, calm and still.
"You can’t do this. You can’t do this to them," Joo Won said. Glancing at the barn’s door, and back at Dong Sik. "I shouldn’t have said—I shouldn’t have told you, I'm sorry, but the point was for you—" Live, he didn’t finish, though the shape of the word was lingering on his lips.
Because Dong Sik was sinking, falling, collapsing on his knees.
Live, thought Dong Sik.
"This world. This blighted world," he said. He slammed the wooden floor with his fists. Again. And again. "Before this, even before all this, it took everything I had. And you returned everything it took from me. You gave it back to me, and I thought, maybe it could be—that it might be—better."
"Stop—please, please stop."
Joo Won was behind him, wrapping his arms around Dong Sik's chest and pulling him back by the arms, but Dong Sik pummelled the ground until his fists were all but blooded with cuts and wood splinters, until his fingers felt like nothing but cinders and dust.
"And you. I never thought even once I could have—that I could ever have. But now, now that I do, it's taking—" There was a heavy pressure in the back of Dong Sik's throat, in the backs of his eyes, and every word was mangled and punctuated with vehemence. "This fucking world. I won’t let it. I won’t. It’s not going to. It’s not taking you. It is not."
Joo Won gasped, quiet and hurt, like he was cracked open and laid bare. Dong Sik turned, held Joo Won’s face that was already slick with tears, and kissed him to the ragged edges of their breaths.
"Joo Won ah," Dong Sik said, found Joo Won's hands, and held them. It was easy, and inevitable, to rest his forehead there. To feel their warmth. A sign of life. He shook. "It's not taking you. It won't."
"It won't," Joo Won said, trembling over him, and promised him. "I won't leave you again. I can’t."
The moonlight coruscated over them, cold and comforting.
Dong Sik breathed.
And waited until the night dissolved into the dawn.
Lee Dong Sik woke up with the sunlight over his face.
For a moment, he stared at the brightness above. There was a familiar warmth curved at his side. A familiar hand, its long delicate fingers, was splayed over Dong Sik's chest, and he could feel it through the thin cloth of his own shirt. He reached for the hand. Held it.
And he breathed.
END