Chapter 3 Part 9

…Maybe the starting point of all this was Yoo Min-ho. When I realized that, it felt like a piece of the scattered puzzle had found its place. Why I was so bothered by Yoo Min-ho, why I didn’t want to see him die, I finally understood. But I never wanted to complete the jumbled puzzle. I instinctively sensed that the completed puzzle… my life… would be utterly terrible.

As I struggled desperately to scatter the memories that were trying to surface, I heard a faint siren sound beyond my consciousness. The sound of the rain that had been fiercely ringing in my ears subsided, and I quickly began to regain my sense of reality.

“…Hey, …eun! Lee Chae-eun! What’s wrong with you? Lee Chae, Seo Ki-hyeon!”

I was startled by the sound of someone calling my name. It was Yoo Min-ho. Not the pale Yoo Min-ho lying on the white bed, but the twenty-one-year-old top actor who had everything, Yoo Min-ho. The moment I thought that I might cry for some reason, thick tears actually flowed down my cheeks.

“Did you get bitten somewhere? Why are you suddenly out of it?”

“…L-Let’s deal with the fire truck first.”

As soon as my senses returned, I jumped up from my seat and pushed open the entrance door. But the glass door only opened about half a hand’s breadth because of the closed shutter. Even so, hot tears kept flowing as if my tear ducts were broken. Of course, not a single drop of rain was falling from the dry sky. It was ridiculous. Now, on top of auditory hallucinations, I was having visual hallucinations as well.

“Excuse me! Look over here!”

Thump, thump, thump– I banged on the glass door and shouted, but my voice was drowned out by the loud siren. Moreover, the zombies that had been banging on the glass door from the hallway also reacted to the siren and started moving towards the front door of the building. Amidst the chaos outside the building due to the flashing lights and siren, I could see firefighters getting out of a fire truck in the distance. My heart started to race. I looked out into the hallway, thinking that I should try to move to the convenience store now that the zombies were heading towards the front door, but dozens of zombies had already come and filled the hallway.

At that moment, I heard a loud crash. Startled, I turned around and saw that Yoo Min-ho was breaking all the glass in the front of the store with a pipe wrench. Finally, when all the glass had fallen out, Yoo Min-ho reached out, grabbed the shutter, and shook it violently. The loud noise of metal clashing echoed through the dark night streets.

“F*ck! Look over here! There are people here!”

“Hey! Please look this way!”

Yoo Min-ho and I put our hands through the broken glass, shook the shutter, and made a fuss, but the firefighters, who couldn’t hear us, were taking out tools from the truck to cut the shutter. The sound of the machinery added to the already loud siren made me feel resentful.

Shouldn’t they turn off the siren when they’ve arrived? The thought of having to start over from scratch made me feel dizzy and like I was about to lose it. But unlike me, who had half given up, Yoo Min-ho was truly a remarkable guy. He tapped the wall near the convenience store a couple of times with the back of his hand, then suddenly took the ax from my hand and struck the wall without hesitation.

The poorly made wall, made of plasterboard, surprisingly started to split, raising white dust from his ax blows. It seemed that the two stores had been used together in the past and were blocked off with a prefabricated wall. Was Yoo Min-ho always such a reliable character? I felt my heart pounding as I watched Yoo Min-ho, who was half-crazed and in a trance, breaking down the wall.

Every time he axed, the plasterboard broke, making a loud noise, but it wasn’t very noticeable because it was drowned out by the siren. The zombies also seemed to be more focused on the front door of the building than on us. It was a relief. As I picked up the pipe wrench to help him even a little, Yoo Min-ho reached out his arm to stop me.

“Stay back, plaster fragments will fly into your face. I’m almost done.”

Saying that, Yoo Min-ho handed me the ax and started kicking the plywood to break it. Maybe it was because he was young, or maybe he was born with it, but he was very strong. While I was thinking that he wouldn’t starve to death even if he became a martial arts fighter instead of an actor, he muttered something in an exasperated voice while kicking.

“Ugh, f*ck! It’s so hard! Hey, if the firefighters get eaten!”

“…What?”

“If the shutter breaks and the firefighters get eaten and the world ends! F*ck! Let’s go to the… 49th floor with me.”

“…..”

“My house is on the 49th floor here. There’s a lot of emergency food. The door is also strong, so those zombie bastards won’t be able to get in… Haa, let’s go there and talk.”

“…Move aside now, I’ll do it. You’re all tired out.”

This building was a 20th birthday present from Yoo Min-ho’s grandmother. It was a gift, not an inheritance. I wonder how much tax he paid. The setting, which was merely a device to show his affluent family background, suddenly seemed excessive. I looked at Yoo Min-ho silently. I couldn’t bring myself to tell him, who was kicking with all his might, that if the shutter broke, there would be no next time. I also didn’t ask what he wanted to talk about when we got to the 49th floor.

“I’m not tired at all, okay? Who do you think I, haagh, am!”

At the same time, the plywood completely fell off, and I could see the convenience store through the gap. I became impatient and put my body through the broken wall first. This was because the sound of the grinder whirring became louder as the wall was broken. But the moment I stepped into the convenience store, I bumped into something strongly and fell to the floor.

It was a zombie. A young girl who looked like an elementary school student and a grown man who seemed to be the child’s father. Horrifyingly, the man’s side was deeply gouged, and his intestines were spilling out. I felt nauseous.

I thought I had been helplessly attacked by a zombie and was about to be bitten, but when I looked closely, the zombie’s teeth were just scraping the duct tape. The tape that Yoo Min-ho had wrapped around me was working. However, the zombie in the form of a girl was twisting her head and trying to bite my arm. Seeing even such a young child turned into a zombie made me feel complicated. But I didn’t have time to be caught up in guilt or compassion. I took off my belt and tried to gag the zombie that was on top of me.

“Get away!”

As soon as I heard the fierce voice and raised my head, a beverage refrigerator fell right in front of my eyes, crushing the zombie’s body underneath. It was Yoo Min-ho’s doing. The still immature zombie was thrashing wildly under the refrigerator but couldn’t get out. It didn’t even seem necessary to gag it. Yoo Min-ho grabbed the waist of the remaining zombie and shouted at me.

“Do something about the firefighters!”

…Wow, at this rate, we might actually succeed on the first try? Yoo Min-ho was truly worth a hundred men. He was such a scaredy-cat, but he was really amazing. I quickly went to the front door and started hitting the glass of the store with the pipe wrench. Not many fragments flew, but one or two pieces grazed my cheek, and I felt warm blood flowing. But I didn’t have time to worry about that. As soon as the web-like cracked glass fell forward, I frantically hit the shutter with the pipe wrench and shouted.

“Stop! Don’t cut the shutter! Hey! Stop it, f*ck! Stop it!”

Bang, bang, bang-.

“Hey! Look over here!”

I frantically hit the shutter, kicked it, and shouted at the top of my lungs. At some point, the grinder and siren stopped. Then, a figure started to approach. It was a firefighter. He was a man in his 40s, and judging by the plastic helmet on his head, he seemed to be the man who had been cutting the shutter with the grinder until just now. As soon as he came within a certain distance, I grabbed his arm and asked, “Did you cut the shutter?”

“…Ah, you still have to wait a little longer. We’ll remove it soon and rescue you, so please calm down-“

“No. Absolutely, absolutely do not open the shutter. Can’t you see the crazy people inside?”

“…What? Are you talking about the injured people?”

Could it be that the tint on the glass door at the entrance was too dark to see inside the building? I took a moment to catch my breath and organize my thoughts. I was anxious about what kind of lie I should tell to make the firefighter believe me. If I just blurted out the word ‘zombie’, he would surely think I was crazy.

“Firefighter, look at the condition of the man behind me. Does that just look like an injury… F*ck!”

Thinking that showing him the zombie with its intestines spilling out would be the fastest way, I pointed behind me and was startled. Yoo Min-ho had fallen to the floor and was entangled with the zombie. My heart literally dropped.

“Wait, just wait here for a moment. Don’t go anywhere!”

I rushed to Yoo Min-ho and pulled the zombie off him. Fortunately, it didn’t seem like he had been bitten yet. The zombie, whose waist was held by me, was still reaching out to Yoo Min-ho and gnashing its teeth in the empty air. It was really tiresome. I desperately wanted to rest now. I could feel the firefighter shouting something behind me, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. The hissing sound of the zombie’s breath was incredibly irritating. The slimy feeling of the intestines touching my arm was creepy.