Chapter 3 Part 8

“Yoo Min-ho. Hey, Yoo Min-ho! Ah… Cha Min-jae, stop. Stop. Come here. They might leave if they can’t see us.”

I took off my goggles and pulled him towards the counter. Yoo Min-ho, for someone who had been frantically piling up equipment like a madman, followed me surprisingly easily. He was completely terrified. Well, how could he not be shocked to see so many zombies rushing in at once? It was unbelievable that this guy, who was so scared, had held onto the glass door and told me to run away first. At this point, I thought that playing with the severed wrist was an act to hide his fear. My heart ached.

“First… try to calm down.”

I patted his back slowly to calm him down as I took off the goggles that were on his face. Finally, Yoo Min-ho, who had been in a state of panic, gradually started to regain his senses. Then what he said was quite something.

“…You know I wasn’t scared, right?”

“…..”

“It’s just… I was a little surprised.”

“…Yeah.”

I couldn’t help but let out a small laugh. To be able to make someone laugh even in this hopeless situation, he was quite something in a way. Yoo Min-ho tried to restore his image belatedly, but his true colors had already been revealed. He was a coward. Well, it would be more unusual for someone not to be afraid in this crazy situation.

“So, I told you to just stay in the management office…”

“Haa, f*ck, they’re really banging on it fiercely.”

I set up two fallen plastic chairs to face outside the building, and made Yoo Min-ho sit on one of them. I thought it would be much better for his mental health to look outside the building than to watch the glass wall break. I was still afraid of dying, but maybe it was because there was someone next to me who was more terrified than I was? I felt a little more composed. Maybe it was because I remembered all the repeated deaths, so I had become more composed than Yoo Min-ho.

***

I sat next to him and looked out at the night sky visible through the gap in the shutter. It was incongruously beautiful, considering the situation. Yoo Min-ho, who had been huffing and puffing next to me all this time, spoke in a trembling voice.

“…I never thought I’d end my life like this. It’s ridiculous to die from being bitten by a zombie out of the blue.”

“Do you want to live?”

“Isn’t that obvious? Then do you… want to die? Did you really come out here to commit suicide?”

“…No, I want to live. That’s why I’m struggling like this, isn’t it?”

“F*ck, can’t something be done about the sound of them banging on the glass? It would be better if it just broke quickly.”

“If you’re scared, do you want me to hold your hand?”

The moment I said that and grabbed Yoo Min-ho’s hand, I heard someone shouting from the hallway where the management office was, mixed with the sound of the zombies banging on the glass wall.

“Are you okay! Seo Ki-hyeon! Cha Min-jae! Yes! Over here! Come this way!”

…It was Do Ji-hyuk. Fortunately, at the sound of his voice, I heard the zombies that were behind us running away. There were still five or six zombies left outside the door, but it seemed like they wouldn’t be enough to break down the door and come inside. Thanks to Do Ji-hyuk, we had survived by the skin of our teeth. Of course, it seemed impossible to go to the convenience store as originally planned, but the thought that we had survived for now brought a deep sigh of relief.

I checked the time. It was 21:04.

The firefighters would arrive soon. Should I try to shout through the gap in the door when I hear the siren? That was the only thing I could try at the moment. I leaned back in my chair, feeling drained, when Yoo Min-ho, who had finally calmed down, asked in a small voice.

“…But why do you keep calling me Yoo Min-ho?”

“When did I-“

“Just now, and you called me Yoo Min-ho several times at the real estate office, too.”

His question made me feel very uneasy. Because this time, I had only called him Yoo Min-ho once, just a moment ago. But ‘kept calling’?

It seemed like Yoo Min-ho’s memories were getting jumbled up because of me.

When I didn’t answer, Yoo Min-ho asked another question.

“Why does Do Ji-hyuk call you Seo Ki-hyeon? Did you change your name? But to a man’s name… Ah, right. You are a man…”

Yoo Min-ho, who was talking to himself, eventually shut his mouth, leaving only unanswerable questions. In the hallway, the remaining zombies were intermittently hitting the glass wall, and the outside of the building was as peaceful as another world. Instead of making him accept a truth that would be forgotten at 19:21, I asked another question. There was nothing else to do until the firefighters arrived anyway.

“…Have you ever thought that you wanted the world to end?”

“What? What kind of bullsh*t is that?”

“…It’s the current situation. Zombies, does it make sense? I was thinking that maybe someone who wished the world would end… maliciously spread the zombie virus…”

“…..”

“So what I mean is… whether you’re successful or not. Whether you have a lot or not… everyone becomes equal when they become a zombie.”

“Are you writing a novel or something? Isn’t your imagination a bit too much?”

Yoo Min-ho looked at me as if he was dumbfounded and sneered. But the words that came out of his mouth without much thought were so on point that I couldn’t even laugh. I swallowed hard once and asked another meaningless question.

“…If… if it’s true that someone wanted the world to end and that’s why it’s like this now… Why would that person have such a bad thought? Did they have too many complaints about the world? Were they poor, or did things not go their way… Did they feel that the world was unfair because they didn’t have much?”

The reason I wrote this scenario was obvious. It was from a sense of victimhood and deprivation that I wanted the world to end. I resented myself for writing down the thoughts of a loser. Why did the god, or whatever it was, take root in a story written with such victimhood and cause this mess? The very fact that a god existed was shocking. But Yoo Min-ho, who had been listening to me quietly, started the story from a completely different perspective than I did.

“Isn’t the reason you want the world to end obvious? It must be that there’s nothing important left in this world.”

“…..”

For a moment, I stared at Yoo Min-ho blankly, not understanding what he was saying. He scratched the nape of his neck and continued. As he spoke calmly, his clean-cut face made my heart flutter to an incomprehensible degree.

“Maybe a loved one betrayed you, or… they died. There’s nothing else, is there? So you lost your reason for living, you got angry, and you thought it was so unfair that you were the only one who was unhappy… so you wished that everything would just end, wouldn’t you?”

“…..”

“Of course, as you said, it could be because they thought the world was unfair. But that’s too obvious. It’s strange to suddenly despair over something that’s been obvious since birth… I don’t know why you’re suddenly using your imagination, but I think it’s more about people than money. Because you can’t get people back.”

The more words that came out of Yoo Min-ho’s mouth, the more it felt like my heart would jump out of my mouth. I felt my breathing become increasingly difficult. His words were poking at a wound full of pus and a foul smell. But I didn’t even know why that wound existed. It was just terrible and painful. I wanted to pretend it never happened. I didn’t want to remember. Anymore…

At that moment, I heard a faint sound of rain from somewhere. It was an auditory hallucination. Startled, I looked out at the world beyond the shutter, and this time it was really raining. It was hard to tell if it was an illusion or if it was actually raining. My heart was pounding, my back was covered in goosebumps, and my vision turned completely white. I was so disoriented by the sudden change that I felt lost and looked to the side, but Yoo Min-ho was gone. …No, I was no longer in the building full of zombies.

It was then that I heard someone’s voice.

‘He was brought to the hospital in an ambulance last night after the accident, but he passed away without any special measures being taken. I am very sorry to contact you about this. The direct cause of death was a cerebral hemorrhage due to a traffic accident, time of death 19:21-.’

‘…Why?’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Why did you contact me?’

‘Well, we need you to confirm his identity and make funeral arrangements. Aren’t you family? You were saved as ‘hyung’ on speed dial number 1 on his cell phone…’

‘…Who the hell is lying here?’

My own voice, out of my mind, echoed in my head. I stared at the outline of the white sheet, but whoever was inside didn’t even budge. It couldn’t be. He wasn’t someone who would die like this. No, he wasn’t someone who should die like this. Yeah, it must be a mistake. There’s no way he would die so meaninglessly, right? Something must be wrong. With that thought, I slowly pulled down the pure white sheet. I could feel my own hand, which was holding the sheet, trembling terribly. My head kept getting fuzzy, and I felt nauseous.

Then, under the slowly pulled down sheet… Yoo Min-ho was lying quietly with his eyes closed.

In a world where even death couldn’t reset, he had met an irreversible, eternal death. The despair I felt at that time opened its jaws again and swallowed me.

Time of death: 19:21.

The death of a loved one.