GHLL Ch 12

“Here, give it to me.”

I nudged Kim Daesik, who was tidying up the spot where we had made a fire. Kim Daesik turned to look at me as if to ask what I meant, then realized my gaze had fallen on the knife placed beside him.

He handed over the knife compliantly, and I took it, getting a firm grip. As I got into a stance, recalling what Kim Daesik had said yesterday, Kim Daesik examined it and began teaching me how to use the knife. Then, as I let out short grunts, “Hup, heup!” and swung the knife, he watched me and spoke.

“Yesterday you said you didn’t want to learn, so why the change of heart today?”

Having spent the night practically wide awake, hugging Kim Daesik as he grew colder and colder, the thought that I had to protect him no matter what grew stronger. I couldn’t protect him by simply turning a blind eye to the fact that he might become an agwi. Since I needed some kind of breakthrough, I thought it would be good to learn how to use a knife. I needed to know how to use a knife not only to protect myself from agwi, but also to hunt people for Kim Daesik’s sake. That was why, if nothing else, I thought I had to learn how to use a knife.

Without explaining all of this at length, I menacingly swung the knife toward the heedlessly smiling Kim Daesik. I had meant to scare him, but Kim Daesik didn’t even bat an eye. Instead, raising his eyebrows high and letting out a sound like “Oho?”, he balled his fists and threw a jab. The one holding the knife was clearly me, so my attack range was longer, yet I had no way to block Kim Daesik. His hand lightly tapped my shoulder or arm, taunting me. Later, he even pinched my cheek hard.

“Hey…!”

Feeling stubborn, I swung the knife toward him without regard for the sharpness of its tip. Startled for a moment, he said, “Whoa,” and jumped back, but the tip of the knife grazed his cheek. Surprised at the sight of his skin splitting open, I stopped my movement. I had only wanted to land a single blow, I had no intention of hurting him, so I dropped the knife in a panic and ran to him.

“Are you hurt badly? Let me see.”

“Ah, no. I’m fine.”

At his words, spoken while pressing his hand to his cheek, I forcefully pulled his arm away. His hand came away from the skin, and a clear knife mark, a single line, was visible on his left cheek. It was obvious at a glance that the wound was deep, but something was strange.

There was no blood.

Even though the skin was split and the flesh underneath was exposed, not a single drop of blood welled up. It should have been natural for red blood to form into droplets, pool, and then trickle down. It was just gaping open like a cut in paper or clay, unable to bleed.

Since it was obvious what this fact meant, I turned deathly pale. Seeing me frozen, unable to continue speaking, he chuckled and raised a hand to cover my wide eyes. Even that hand was as cold as ice.

He gently pushed my eyelids closed with his palm and spoke in a low voice.

“I’m okay.”

With my eyes covered by his hand, I bit my lip hard. He might be okay, but I was not. It was clear that he had already begun to manifest the symptoms and was becoming an agwi. Tick-tock, I had the illusion of hearing the second hand of a nonexistent clock, my mouth went dry, and my back stiffened.

I pushed his hand away and spun my body around. Then I slung my backpack on and stuck the knife between my back and the backpack, just as he often did. Seeing this, Kim Daesik sighed and turned me around.

“If you carry a knife like that, your back will get all torn up.”

Kim Daesik swapped his backpack for mine. It turned out his backpack had a separate fastening band that served as a sheath. He had me put on the backpack and, while teaching me how to insert the knife, said.

“Actually, the fastest way to learn how to use a knife is to fight as much as possible. No amount of training can beat real combat experience. If you keep fighting, you’ll soon develop your own know-how.”

Kim Daesik smiled faintly, patted my shoulder encouragingly, and let his hand go.

“The way I see it, you have a natural talent for it. You’ll be able to do well.”

It might have just been something he said, but those words gave me courage. It was because the way Kim Daesik said it seemed as gentle, relaxed, and steadfast as usual. He was no different from the Kim Daesik I knew, so I could believe that there was still time.

It’s not too late, I just have to hurry up and hunt so I can make him eat human flesh. Thinking that warm blood would flow through his body again then, I adjusted my backpack and hurried us on our way.

🖤

When we set off, Kim Daesik was leading the way, just as he always did. I followed him, stepping in his footprints left on the ash. As I walked, I realized that Kim Daesik’s stride, which used to be so wide that I struggled to keep up, had shortened. Before, I used to feel like my legs would split apart if I tried to step in the exact same spots he had, but now it was not like that. Nevertheless, I walked on, chewing over the thought that at least he was walking on his own two feet, that he was still okay.

However, as we walked between the monstrous high-rise buildings that were nothing but skeletons, the wind blew fiercely. The gusting wind constantly stirred up ash dust, making it gradually harder to walk. In the end, I was walking with a bandana covering my nose and mouth, my hat pulled down low, looking only at the heels of Kim Daesik who was walking ahead.

Whoooooosh— Woooooooong—

The wind sweeping past the buildings with all their windows shattered was noisy. Occasionally, there was the sound of glass that had held on until now shattering with a crash. There was also the creaking sound of rusted steel frames shaking as if they would snap, and the shhhk, shhhk sound of ash scraping across the surface of smooth stone.

Despite the noise, we could not speak. We just walked on in silence, our mouths shut tight as if we had been fighting. And then, at some point, Kim Daesik, who had been ahead, was gone. Realizing this belatedly, I raised my head in a panic and discovered that Kim Daesik was walking behind me.

I stood in place for a moment and waited for him to catch up. Then I followed him as he took the lead again, but before long, Kim Daesik’s walking speed gradually slowed, and he fell behind. I repeated the process of waiting for him and letting him go first, but doing so only slowed our walking speed.

Eventually, I took the lead, making myself a windbreak. I did not know how much of a windbreak I could be since I was shorter, but it would be better for Kim Daesik to walk than having nothing at all.

I walked slowly, occasionally looking back to check if Kim Daesik was following well. Kim Daesik was slow, but he followed me steadily without losing me. I walked with strength in my toes so that my footprints would not be easily swept away by the wind.

If I had my way, I would have wanted to wait until the wind died down, but this was no time for such leisure. Time was of the essence, so as I walked, I looked around for any intact cars or cars with gasoline left. Being a city center, there were cars strewn all over the roads, but every single one of them had flat tires or was empty inside like an agwi without its guts. It seemed that the larger the city, the longer people had stayed until the very end, so all resources had been exhausted. There was only an endless expanse of ruins, in reality an empty place with only trash remaining.

Could I really get out of a place like this and find food? As I was chasing away the sense of despair that kept creeping in, I felt a chill on my back. I had been paying attention to finding a usable car and had diverted my attention from Kim Daesik, so I abruptly lifted my head and looked around. But he, who should have been nearby, was nowhere to be seen. Did he fall behind while following me? I backtracked a few steps the way I came, but it was the same.

My heart sank and a cold sweat broke out. I pulled down my bandana and shouted, heedless of the stinging, ash-mixed wind.

“Kim Daesik! Kim Daesik!”

Since when exactly was he gone? He was right behind me just a moment ago. Did he lose me? Or, did he intentionally leave me behind? Was he afraid of eating me after turning into an agwi, so he ran away?

As all sorts of speculations swirled in my head, I ran in the direction I had come from, shouting. Then I misstepped on the cracked asphalt and staggered. My foot got stuck in a crack in the road, I almost broke my ankle, and after barely regaining my balance, I called him once more.

“Kim Daesik—!”

No matter how loud I raised my voice, there was no response. My eyes, frantically scanning the surroundings, grew confused. My eyes were restlessly searching for him, but conversely, my focus blurred and nothing registered. At the thought that I might have already lost Kim Daesik, my concentration scattered and my vision went dark.

“……”

I stopped shouting and stood still in place, squeezing my eyes shut. Then I took deep breaths, huk, huk, and gathered the ash filling my mouth to spit it out. After thus calming the fear welling up inside me, I pulled my bandana back up and opened my eyes wide. And instead of running around shouting indiscriminately, I calmly retraced my steps.

As I walked, the wind seemed to grow stronger. The incessantly blowing wind turned my entire field of vision hazy. I could not see a thing, but that wind blew away the ash piled thick on the ground. Thanks to that, I did not have to go far before I found Kim Daesik, collapsed face down on the ground.

I hurriedly crouched beside him, lifted his face, shook his shoulders, and slapped his cheeks. But with his eyes closed, he was unconscious. It was no use no matter how I tried to wake him, so I thought I first had to move him to a place where the wind was not blowing. But to take shelter, finding such a place was the priority.

I pulled the knife from my back and plunged it into the ground next to him with all my might. I set the knife as a marker so as not to lose Kim Daesik and ran into a nearby building to find shelter.

I had to look around several nearby buildings, since I could run into an agwi if I just entered anywhere to escape the wind. Then, by chance, I saw a shuttered parking garage at the edge of a certain building. A parking garage was usually underground, so there was a high chance of agwi, but I remembered Kim Daesik’s words that you cannot gain anything if you are not prepared to face danger.

There were no usable cars on the surface, but there might be some underground. With the thought of at least lifting the shutter to take a look, I took a hand axe out of my backpack. Then I struck the rusted-out lock holding the shutter in place.

Clang! Clang!

Despite the loud noise from breaking the metal, the other side of the shutter was quiet, so it seemed there were no agwi. I steeled myself, kicked away the broken lock, and pulled the shutter up in one go. The ash caked on the shutter came pouring down, creating a tremendous cloud of dust.

“Cough, cough……”

Coughing with a frown, I realized the parking garage was smaller than I thought. The garage, which I thought was connected to a basement, was a space just big enough to park a single car. Perhaps because there was no passage connecting to anywhere else, there were no agwi either. Instead, something was covered with a gray cover. When I lifted it, it was a car. And a sleek vehicle at that, with its glass intact, as if it had forgotten the passage of time.

Amidst a thrill that made the hair on my head stand on end, I roughly covered the car again. Then I lowered the shutter and turned to go get Kim Daesik. I thought Kim Daesik might have regained consciousness and gone somewhere else to look for me while I was gone, but that was not the case. He was lying in the same position as before, under the knife I had stuck in the ground as a marker.

I pulled out the knife again and tried to lift or carry him. It was no use. Covered in muscle, he was like a block of stone and would not budge. There was no choice but to use the power of a tool, so I stuck the knife I had just pulled out back into the ground and, after wandering around, found a car seat that had been pulled out whole. I dragged it over to Kim Daesik, got him onto it, and tied him up tightly with rope. With the weight of the car seat added to Kim Daesik’s, it was incredibly heavy, but it was manageable when I dragged it. In fact, it was more convenient because I could drag it without worrying about the uneven ground.

By the time I managed to drag Kim Daesik to the front of the parking garage, the sun was already setting. I hurriedly raised the shutter and untied Kim Daesik from the seat. Then I pushed him into the back seat of the car. By the time I managed to get him into the car and lower the shutter again, my whole body was drenched in a cold sweat. Wiping away the sticky sweat mixed with ash, I took off my ash-covered outer clothes. I shook them out thoroughly, put them back on, set down my backpack, and checked the car once.

There was no key in the car, so I could not try to start the engine. Kim Daesik knew how to start a car without a key, but I did not. I decided to ask him when he woke up and checked for gas first. I took out the tool I use for checking the remaining gasoline level, inserted it into the fuel filler neck, and stirred the bottom of the fuel tank. Then I pulled it out and looked; a certain amount of gasoline was smeared on the wire. I touched it with my fingertip and realized that while there was gasoline left, there was not a lot. It was clear that even if I started the car and set off, I would not be able to get far.

To get out of this massive ruin, I needed a lot of gasoline. It seemed that finding gasoline had to come first, even for the sake of finding food for Kim Daesik.

I got up and looked at Kim Daesik, who was collapsed in the back seat of the car. Then I pushed my body into the car, laid Kim Daesik down as comfortably as possible, and pulled down the bandana covering his nose and mouth. When his face was revealed, he looked as if he were merely sleeping. It was a huge relief that he did not seem to be in pain, even though he was unconscious.

I pulled my body out of the back seat and folded Kim Daesik’s long legs, which were sticking out, to push them inside. Then I closed the car door and covered it again with the car cover. After hiding Kim Daesik well like that, I emptied my backpack as much as possible and filled it with empty plastic bottles. Then I gripped my knife and pulled the shutter up again.

Karrrr.

With a loud noise, the shutter went up and down. Outside, I was exposed to the darkness that had already fallen completely. The wind was dying down as the sun set, but that was not a good thing for me. When the wind calmed, it became easier for agwi to be active, so I had to be careful.

I readjusted my grip on the knife and broke the ironclad rule of never moving around at night when the agwi are active. Normally, I should have stayed put and rested in a safe place until dawn, but I did not have the time for that. I had to somehow find gasoline and go look for prey, so I took the risk and started walking the night streets that would be teeming with agwi.

I could not use a fire because I had to avoid the attention of the agwi. It was extremely difficult to make my way on the uneven path full of all sorts of obstacles in the pitch-black darkness without a light.

The one saving grace was that my eyes were gradually getting used to the darkness, allowing me to vaguely distinguish objects. I held the knife out in front of me, using it as a cane to feel my way forward, and checked for gasoline whenever a car or motorcycle appeared.

But I could tell they were all empty without even needing to check the fuel tanks. Every single car had its fuel door open. It was certain that many people had already opened the fuel doors countless times to check if there was any gasoline inside.

Even in an apartment complex on the outskirts of the city, which was much more deserted than here, Kim Daesik had not been able to find gasoline and had gone down into a basement teeming with a horde of agwi. At that time, there were four other people, yet Kim Daesik had almost died. The probability of me finding gasoline by myself in a city that was nothing more than a giant trash can was extremely low. Just finding a safe shelter and an intact vehicle was close to a miracle, so I could not hope for such a stroke of luck again. But giving up was also impossible.

As I walked, thinking I had to find a way somehow, my caution disappeared. It was dark, so there was a limit to how much I could conceal my presence, and for some reason, I could not see any agwi. Perhaps because it was such an empty place, there were no agwi, and when the wind died down, only silence filled the surroundings. It was quiet all around, so I should have been able to hear the cries of agwi, but I felt an overwhelming silence, so much so that I suspected I might have gone deaf.

But the fact that no agwi were appearing was not much of a comfort. It meant there was nothing here, and it made me think that perhaps I had to go to a place teeming with agwi to get what I wanted. Then, as if someone were telling me that thought was correct, an entrance suddenly appeared before my eyes.

It was a staircase leading down to a basement. A roof-like structure covered the stairs. If it were daylight, I might have been able to read the signs or placards attached to it, but now I could not see anything. Below the stairs was also submerged in pitch-black darkness.

Standing there blankly, I was startled by my own thought. I had unknowingly been thinking that I had to go down here. Since it was a basement without a speck of light, it would be a paradise for a horde of agwi. To go down into such a place was a thought one could not have without putting one’s life on the line.

But no sooner had I denied the thought than a thought refuting it came to me. If I do not go down to the basement? Where am I supposed to find gasoline? How do I plan to save Kim Daesik?

I bit my lip and wondered if it would be better to be eaten by Kim Daesik than to be caught and eaten by a horde of agwi after going down into a basement like this. That was the surest way to save Kim Daesik. To knowingly throw myself into danger was an act that would put not only myself but also Kim Daesik in jeopardy.

I gave up on entering the basement and tried to turn around, but my feet would not budge from their spot. It was because I knew that even if I went back to Kim Daesik and told him to eat me, he would not do it. If Kim Daesik had really intended to eat me, he would not have dragged his feet this long. He would not have tried to teach me how to use a knife, preparing for a situation where I would have to survive alone.

“……”

At that thought, the corners of my eyes crumpled and my face grew hot. I had known ever since he could not bring himself to kill the woman and the baby. He was no longer the old Kim Daesik who used to live by eating people. Saying that he had come to resemble my palate after sticking around with me, there must have been something seriously wrong with him somewhere. I could not pinpoint where, how, or exactly what was wrong, but I had a strong feeling that it was because of me.

So I have to take responsibility for Kim Daesik. Since he will not listen even if I tell him to eat me, I have no choice but to be the one to save him.

I quickly blinked my dampening eyelids and looked at the stairs leading to a basement so dark I could not see an inch ahead. I hesitated for a moment, but not for long. Merely hoping that the act of trying to save him would not become an act that kills him, I walked down, step by step, into the darkness.

🖤

As I went down the stairs, feeling the wall, I realized that my own breathing sounded excessively loud. Hiss, hiss, the fast and short breaths I exhaled echoed resoundingly through the cave-like tunnel of the staircase. I closed my lips, which had been unconsciously parted, and breathed only through my nose, and then I smelled something I had not been aware of until now.

It was a smell that was damp and strangely pungent, musty yet fishy, pooled in the basement. I did not want to smell that scent, which hinted at something ominous, but I had no choice. I walked on, wishing instead that my nose would get used to the smell so I could not smell anything.

But I could not tell where the end of the stairs leading to the basement was. It just continued downward, downward, endlessly, and I stopped in my place several times to look back. And I stared at the entrance, which looked relatively bright compared to the pitch-black basement.

I felt like I had come down a great deal, but the entrance was not that far away. Suppressing the thought that I could turn back and go out there right now, I turned my head forward again. And facing the darkness, I continued to walk down the stairs along the wall. Even so, I wanted to look back several times, but I did not. Instead, I quickened my pace.

As I walked like that, the wall my palm had been touching came to an end. To be precise, it turned to the side. I carefully set my foot on the ground and felt around with the tip of my foot. The stairs had ended; the floor was flat. It seemed a passageway leading somewhere was connected, but if I turned the corner, it was clear I would no longer be able to see the entrance. Would only the entrance be out of sight? I could completely lose my sense of direction and be trapped in the basement.

No matter how afraid of agwi I was, I could not walk through the darkness without a light forever. I decided I had to light a fire, even if it meant luring the agwi, and I rummaged through the front pocket of my backpack and took out the Zippo lighter I had brought.

Click, click, as I turned the wheel, a spark flew. Soon, with a phrr-reuk sound, a small flame was lit. As the surroundings brightened with that light, I was utterly startled.

For a moment, I thought it was an agwi. A mannequin from a shop display was standing unexpectedly close. Shuffling backward away from the mannequin, which, like an agwi, had no facial features to speak of, I recognized that the shop sold simple clothing and miscellaneous goods. Seeing bags made of vinyl, plastic, or leather, scarves, handkerchiefs, headbands, and small stuffed dolls or cushions scattered about, I made a torch on the spot.

I filled the inside of a bag that was made of leather, which did not seem like it would burn easily, and had a long strap, with scraps of cloth and clumps of cotton. When I brought the flame of the Zippo lighter to it, the fire quickly caught. It did not seem like it would last long, but it seemed not bad for carrying around like a lantern.

Holding the improvised light source, I walked along the passage that stretched into the darkness. A shopping arcade lined the path, which had signs with subway line and station names written on them. The types of stores were varied, and there were many places that had been restaurants, so I might have found something for me to eat if I had searched, but I did not get distracted. I just kept walking, searching only for a place that might have gasoline.

The underground shopping arcade seemed to have been looted and empty for a long time, but strangely, I could not find any agwi. By now, agwi that had sensed the light should have jumped out, causing a commotion and gathering a crowd, but it was as quiet as a mouse. This was the same even when I passed the shopping arcade and reached the ticket gates leading down to the platform. The machinery, covered in gray dust and stopped, remained just as it was, like unexcavated relics.

Not wanting to go down to a deeper place, I wandered around places with signs that read “Staff Room” or “Authorized Personnel Only.” I searched for something like a machine room, similar to the one Kim Daesik had found last time, but I could not see one. In the end, it seemed there was no other way but to cross the ticket gates and go down to the platform. I had no choice but to jump over the barrier and go down along the stopped escalator.

Around that time, the light that had managed to hold on began to fade. I took out a pair of socks from the bundle of socks I had brought as substitute fuel and put it in, but perhaps because the air did not circulate well, the light was feeble. Even when I blew on it, hoo hoo, to make the flame bigger, it did not last long. Only the fire that was nibbling away at the sock remained.

As the surroundings quickly darkened and my field of vision narrowed, I reached the platform. The glass of the screen doors that blocked people from going onto the tracks was all shattered. I walked from one end of that place to the other, but I could not find anything special.

“……”

I could not just leave with no gains after coming all the way down here. I stuck my head out through the broken glass of the screen door. I did not know how far the tracks, similarly engulfed in darkness, stretched, but the distance was considerable. A mass of air with a cold texture rushed from there and hit my face. I smelled a faint scent of oil from it. I did not know if it smelled like that because it was where the electric trains used to run, but anyway, I had nowhere else to go. Having lost all fear, I went down onto the tracks and started walking.

Thud… thud…

There was ash piled on the tracks, but perhaps because it was underground, it was not as thick as on the surface. Because of that, my footsteps as I walked on the tracks were clearly audible. I listened again and again for another sound, not my own footsteps, but I could not hear anything. In the midst of a huge and overwhelming silence pressing down on me, I, who was walking while relying on the faint light as the sock was consumed, discovered what I thought was an agwi and stopped in my tracks.

I should have run or hidden, but I did not. It was because it was lying on the ground, not moving at all.

Mustering my courage, I approached it and saw that it was an agwi that had already died. A skeleton was lying on its side, draped in what had become rags. As I passed it and walked on, another agwi corpse appeared.

The more I walked, the more agwi corpses appeared. But every single one was just bones, so I could not distinguish well whether it was an agwi or a person. I did not think people would gather in this deep basement, on an empty track, so I naturally thought it must be an agwi, but it seemed that was not the case. As I walked, I saw a skeleton in a military uniform, dead while holding a gun.

Seeing the gun, which looked threatening with its long muzzle, I pried the skeleton’s hand off it. The finger bones crumbled away, and I examined the gun from all sides. It would be very useful if I took it, but it was heavy and, as expected, seemed to have no bullets. I could just end up with more baggage if I got greedy for no reason, so I just gave up.

As I continued to walk like that, more and more soldiers appeared. The area was scattered with firearms, bullets, and shell casings, and I also saw several large weapons whose purpose I did not know. I also saw barricades wrapped in barbed wire and collapsed sandbags. It seemed that a major battle had taken place here a very long time ago, back when there was still such a thing as an army.

Sure enough, before long, I saw a large pile of unidentifiable skeletons. Skeletons in military uniforms were entangled in it. I did not know which side had the upper hand, but what happened in the distant past was not my concern. I looked around for any gasoline, and then I saw a sight of thick electrical wires and cable bundles tangled together. I traced them back and came across a large piece of machinery. A strong smell of petroleum emanated from it.

After searching for a short while, I found the fuel tank of that machine. Thinking there might be gasoline left in it, I hurriedly opened my backpack and took out an empty plastic bottle and a hose. I stuck the end of the hose into the fuel tank and sucked with my mouth, and a pungent smell shot up into my nose as gasoline was drawn out. I spat out the gasoline collected on my lips, ptooey ptooey, and hurriedly collected the flowing gasoline into the plastic bottle.

I filled one 1.5-liter plastic bottle completely, but I could only fill the other plastic bottle halfway. I searched the vicinity with the thought that there might be more gasoline nearby, but it was full of only skeletons.

As I moved among the skeletons, I felt my vision growing darker. It was because I had not brought the fire with me, so I went back to my original spot. Then I took off my clothes and carefully wiped my gasoline-smeared hands, then pushed the oily clothes into the leather bag I was using as a lantern.

Fwoosh!

Empowered by the gasoline, the flame came back to life. Because of that, the leather was burning black. It seemed the strap would break before long, so I thought I had to make a new torch. For now, I continued my search holding that, but something felt strange.

If the soldiers had died fighting agwi, their skeletons would not have remained in such a complete state. Agwi devoured everything, leaving not a single piece of flesh or a drop of blood, so they did not leave anything that could be called a corpse. If so, then these many soldiers did not die fighting agwi. Then who on earth did they die fighting against…?

Realizing that the corpses I had believed to be agwi looked different, I hastily stopped my thoughts. Whatever happened here was none of my business, so I focused on searching the area. I thoroughly searched the surroundings to see if there was another machine similar to the one I had just drawn oil from, or if there was any gasoline brought to refuel that machine.

There were no more gains, and instead, the strap of the leather bag I was holding snapped. Ash and embers spilled onto the floor, and I hastily made a torch. Not finding anything suitable to use as a torch handle, I picked up a shinbone, of which there were plenty rolling around. I rolled up a bundle of cloth between the bones, wrapped it tightly, and lit it on fire.

Having hastily made a torch, I returned to where the machinery was and put the plastic bottles I had left there into my backpack. Shouldering the now quite heavy backpack, I went back exactly the way I had come along the tracks. Following the path that felt much farther than when I had entered, I once again arrived at the platform.

I tried going to the opposite side, but there seemed to be nothing special over there. After walking for a while without anything particular catching my eye, I just returned to the platform. And as I was about to go out through the ticket gates, I saw something that had been invisible to me before.

I saw that the dust piled on the floor had been wiped away by my footprints. When I rubbed it with the tip of my foot, an arrow and a number marked in yellow appeared. Finding it unfamiliar, I looked around and rubbed the wall, and a band painted in green came into view. As I thought about what it meant, I followed the yellow arrow, not the green one that marked this platform.

At the end of following the yellow markings up and down stairs, the place I arrived at was another platform. The screen doors there were also all broken, so it was not difficult to go down to the tracks. Since I had come this far anyway, I moved my feet, deciding to at least take a look around.

The tracks did not look much different from the place I had entered before, but perhaps it was my imagination, this place seemed deeper. The air was heavy, pressing down on me as if it had mass. It felt difficult even to breathe, so I thought about just turning back, but I could not go far with the gasoline in a 1.5-liter plastic bottle. With the thought that I needed a bit more gasoline, I moved my feet, and something kept bumping against the tips of my toes.

This time, too, it was a skeleton, but its form and shape were not as orderly as the ones I had seen before. As if shattered, the skull, shoulder blades, spine, and shinbones were scattered here and there. Some were even broken or seemed to have rotted and snapped. I unthinkingly picked one of them up to examine it and felt a chill. The end of the bone was worn and blunt, as if it had been gnawed on by teeth.

Dropping it as if throwing it away, I realized that the number of bones I was treading on underfoot was increasing. More than just increasing, everything I stepped on was bone fragments.

I had a feeling that was ominous beyond compare, but I could not stop walking because I thought I might be able to get something from the wreckage if something had happened here. Expecting an unexpected harvest like at the place where that battle had occurred, I continued to walk down the path that looked like a valley made of bones.

How far did I go like that?

No matter how much I walked, all I could see were bones, and the amount seemed to be increasing. Seeing the path of bones begin to form a gentle slope, I stopped walking. And I lifted my head, which had been constantly lowered as I watched the ground due to the unstable footing. As I raised the torch along with it, a vast space, seemingly a point where passages met, came into view.

There, was a mountain of bones.

The space was filled to the brim with bones. Most of them were jumbled together like gravel, like the bone fragments I had been treading on until now, but upon closer inspection, I could also see bones that had maintained their original form. Pale white skeletons were tangled chaotically as if in an orgy, and every single one was eating another. A skeleton whose limbs were being eaten was chewing on another skeleton’s shoulder. That skeleton, in turn, was sinking its teeth into yet another skeleton’s skeleton. Such a union that was not a union continued endlessly. It was a grotesque scene of entangled skeletons, like looking at an unbreakable chain, like looking at an infinitely connecting puzzle.

Only after seeing that did I realize that I had entered an agwi’s tomb, and a massive one at that. I shuddered, realizing that a horde of agwi, having gathered in this deep basement for some reason, had been unable to find anything to eat and had ended up eating each other over and over again until they became skeletons. It felt as if I had seen a preview of how this world would end.

I wanted to scream, so I opened my mouth, but I could not make any sound. It suddenly hit me with stark clarity that I was in the deepest part of the city, which bore skyscrapers on its back, that an enormous ruin was layered upon me. I felt that if I made a loud noise, it would all come crashing down on me at once. Then I would be trapped here forever, unable to return to Kim Daesik.

I panted silently and took careful steps backward, lest I cause the mountain of bones to collapse. Then I slowly turned my body and began to exit that place. But I must have come in too deep in my greed to find gasoline. No matter how much I walked, the bones I was treading on underfoot did not disappear. It was endless, as if all the people in the world had turned into skeletons.

🖤

By the time I finally escaped the basement, the day was faintly dawning. As I walked out of the stairs and stood with difficulty on the surface, the cold air hit me. I had never once felt that air, mixed with ash, was clean, but now it was utterly refreshing.

I opened wide my airway, which had been heaving with short, shallow breaths, and took a deep breath. Only then did I realize my whole body was drenched in sweat. It was because I had not rested once while walking away from the tomb of the agwi horde. There was no reason to be afraid of agwi that were all dead, and yet. I was seized by an inexplicable fear and had fled in a hurry as if something was chasing me. It felt exactly as if I had stepped into hell and escaped, so I was completely drained.

If I had my way, I would have wanted to hide in any place that seemed safe and get some sleep. But I had left the unconscious Kim Daesik alone all night, so I had to return to his side. I dragged my feet and walked, leading my head, which was dazed with fatigue, and my heavy body. As the darkness lifted, the way I had come became confusing, and I wandered for a moment, lost.

After walking like that, I reached the parking garage that felt like I had left it a very long time ago. When I lifted the closed shutter, the same scene as before I left came into view. Seeing that the cover on the car was not disheveled or had not slipped off, it seemed Kim Daesik had not yet regained consciousness. There was a high probability that he was still inside the car, unconscious.

Lifting the cover, I unconsciously grabbed the car door and then paused. It would be a relief if he were simply unconscious, but another consciousness might have emerged while I was away. The thought that he, having turned into an agwi, might attack me the moment I opened the door made me take out the knife I had stuck in my backpack. Holding that knife in my hand, I carefully opened the car door.

Click.

As soon as I opened the door, my eyes met Kim Daesik’s, who was sitting at length, using the opposite door as a backrest. Seeing the strange light swirling in his eyes, the glistening sweat beading on his skin, and his complexion as pale as a dead person’s, I flinched without realizing it.

His face, completely drained of color, was turning as white as plaster, as agwi’s skin usually did. After that, it would become transparent enough for the veins to show through, then soften. And then, the hair on the body would start to fall out, and it would rot very slowly, cruelly so. In a state of being neither dead nor alive, becoming a monster that craved only human blood and flesh, it would wander the surface for a long time, starving.

There were not many humans left, so the agwi suffered from terrible hunger. Unable to bear the hunger, they would eat their own intestines, eyeballs, or tongues, and even tear at each other, but a rotting body could not solve starvation. That was why agwi could not use their own kind as a source of food. Eating each other was nothing more than a struggle to appease hunger, or a way to vent their frustration.

I had thought so until now. But recalling the scene I saw on the underground tracks, it did not seem to be entirely like that. It seemed that when a hunger close to madness swept through a horde of agwi, that was what happened.

With the thought that I could not leave Kim Daesik to end up like that, I gripped the knife in my hand tightly.

“……”

In the flowing silence, I opened my mouth in a low voice.

“……Kim Daesik?”

At that voice, Kim Daesik’s eyelashes, his eyes wide open, trembled. Soon, his eyes softened, and Kim Daesik spoke weakly, with a tone mixed with endless relief.

“Where on earth have you been.”

I could not hide the sigh that burst out. Haaaa, letting out a long-tailed breath, I let go of the knife that was drooping downwards along with my slumping shoulders. As I dropped the knife, the despair that had been binding my whole body subsided at once, and I had to take a moment to compose my body and mind. Then, Kim Daesik bent his legs, which were stretched out on the seat, to make room. Taking off my backpack, I plopped down on the back seat and leaned my body against the seat back. And I replied in a tone thick with exhaustion.

“Where have I been. I went to get gas.”

“There wouldn’t be any gasoline left in a place like this.”

“Just as you said, there was some left in the basement.”

“In the basement?”

“Yeah.”

Hearing that I had gone into the subway station, Kim Daesik frowned. “You’re just determined to die, aren’t you,” he grumbled, and I could see his focus subtly slipping, as if sliding away. I did not know if he was still in his right mind, but the symptoms were certainly accelerating. I could see with my own eyes that he was becoming an agwi, but I did not bother to mention that fact.

“I managed to find some gasoline, but there’s not a lot. But this car has some gas too, so it should be enough to get out of here.”

I asked him to tell me how to start the car, but Kim Daesik smiled weakly.

“It won’t start.”

“What? Why won’t it start when there’s gas?”

“The battery is probably dead. Cars that have been abandoned for a long time usually don’t start unless you charge the battery, even if they look fine on the outside.”

“But when you were trapped in the apartment parking garage and escaped, you even drove a really beat-up car, right?”

“I had a jump starter back then.”

Kim Daesik explained that he had not been able to retrieve the jump starter battery he had connected to that car because he was escaping in the midst of the chaos. He said that you originally need a charged lithium-ion battery, but I could not understand a single word of what he was saying. I just could not comprehend why I could not use the car when I had risked my life and gone through hell to get gasoline.

“Why, why won’t it work even though there’s gas.”

“Even if we could start the car, it won’t be easy to get out of the city with it. Most of the main roads are probably blocked by abandoned cars from escape attempts or have been cut off to block agwi.”

At his words that we would have to abandon the car before long, I clenched my teeth. I was so angry at the thought that it was all for nothing that I could not stand it, but this was no time to be throwing a fit.

I shut my mouth tight, slung my backpack on again, and went outside. Then I spoke to Kim Daesik.

“Then you wait here, I’ll go again and get some food.”

“Gyeol-ah.”

“There’s no rule that says we’re the only ones in this big city. There must be people somewhere here.”

“Han Gyeol.”

“There has to be prey.”

“Don’t go.”

“I’ll go and catch it, I……”

“Don’t go, let’s stay together.”

At some point, Kim Daesik had reached his hand out of the car and was holding onto the hem of my clothes. I tried to shake off his hand, almost coldly, but he would not let go. He pulled me back strongly, pulling my hesitating waist into an embrace. And he buried his face in my body.

“There’s no time left now. There isn’t much time left for us to be together. So……”

At his words, spoken while rubbing his face against me, I shoved his shoulder hard. He fell away from me, and I took a step back. The garage was small, so I could not go far, and my back, with the backpack on, soon hit the wall. Because of that, I could not hide my crumpled expression. I could not hold back the resentment and anger that burst out either.

“Why did you do that in the first place?”

“……”

“Why did you just let that woman and baby go?”

“……”

“If you had killed and eaten them, this wouldn’t have happened. Why did you let them live, why!”

I screamed my head off, but I could not shout for long. Tears welled up and streamed down, and sobs blocked my throat. I wanted to swallow them and blame Kim Daesik for making such a weak and pathetic choice, but I could not.

“You should have eaten them for my sake at least……”

The problem was not the woman and the child. It was me. It was the fact that Kim Daesik had become unable to kill me. Uh-eong, I burst into tears and collapsed in place. I sat there, crying with my face buried in my raised knees, when Kim Daesik pulled my forearm to help me up. Then he embraced my body, which had become as hot as a bonfire from crying, and said.

“Don’t cry.”

“Heeu-euu……”

“You’ll lose weight if you cry.”

“Heueuk……!”

I could not speak because I was crying, but I wanted to snap back, what does it matter if I lose weight or not when you’re not even going to eat me. But as if he had heard the words I could not even say, Kim Daesik attached another reason why I should not lose weight.

“I found you pretty when you were chubby.”

It was a ridiculous thing to say. In the first place, I had never been chubby. The weight I thought I was gaining from eating well for a while had all been lost recently. It was because I was plagued by worries and walked long distances, and the canned food I had was dwindling and there was not much left. I was consuming the minimum amount of food and water, so I was as skinny as when I first met him.

At this rate, there would not be much to eat even if Kim Daesik pounced on me, intending to eat me. When you think about it, Kim Daesik had gone through all that trouble for nothing. He had only wasted precious food, trying to eat a delicacy that did not involve touching human flesh.

But Kim Daesik did not seem as angry as I was. Nothing was going his way and he was about to starve and become an agwi, yet he looked composed. No, he looked comfortable. He even looked happy as he hummed a carol, trying to soothe me who could not seem to stop crying.

I could not understand how he could be like that, but as I listened to the low singing, my tears gradually subsided. Instead, an unbearable fatigue washed over me.

My head grew hazy, and I felt like I did not care what happened anymore. It was different from resignation, a peacefulness that resembled Kim Daesik’s placidity, and I could not resist it.

🖤

Lying on Kim Daesik’s body as a bed in the cramped back seat of the car, I felt extremely languid. I had dozed off, but it was a catnap, so I was so tired I did not want to lift a single finger. I did not want to leave Kim Daesik’s embrace either, so I lay still without moving even after waking up. As I was doing that, a loud growling sound, gorrreureuk, echoed from my stomach.

The sound, which I could not ignore even if I wanted to, kept ringing out, and I suddenly opened my mouth.

“I want to eat a chocolate cupcake.”

I thought he was asleep, but I guess he was not. As soon as Kim Daesik heard what I said, his chest heaved as he let out a chuckle.

“You want to eat that when you’ve never even tried it?”

“I’ve eaten chocolate, so it’s basically the same as having tried it.”

After saying that, I raised my hand and fumbled inside my shirt. But the page I had torn from the cookbook and kept with me had disappeared somewhere during the various things that had happened. It seemed I had lost it unknowingly while changing clothes.

For a fleeting moment, the thought that I would now never be able to eat a chocolate cupcake since I had lost the recipe crossed my mind. To tell the truth, I had not thought I would ever be able to try it, so I was not particularly sad. But Kim Daesik began to list off unexpected words.

“All you need is flour, sugar, cocoa powder, butter, baking soda, and baking powder.”

“Huh?”

“Of course, you need chocolate too. It’s even better if you have vanilla extract.”

After saying that, Kim Daesik began to recite the recipe for a chocolate cupcake. Surprised by his words, I sat up, looked at him, and my mouth fell open.

“You memorized all of that?”

Kim Daesik smiled gently and nodded his head.

“I promised I would make it for you someday. To do that, I had to know the recipe.”

“Wasn’t that just something you said?”

“If we just have the ingredients, there’s no reason I can’t make it for you, is there?”

There was no way we could have all those different kinds of ingredients. He had not even kept the promise to let me eat chocolate again. But I did not say things like I would not even get to try chocolate, let alone a chocolate cupcake. I just leaned my head on his shoulder again and murmured.

“It must be incredibly delicious.”

“Yes, it will be sweet and fragrant.”

“When you make it, make a lot. I’m going to eat until I’m sick of it. I’m going to eat so much that I’ll think I never want to eat it again, so much that I’ll shudder just at the mention of the word chocolate.”

As I rambled on with such idle talk, not only was I hungry, but I was also thirsty. Realizing that even talking consumes energy, I shut my mouth. Kim Daesik fell quiet along with me, and we let the silence flow for a while.

It was Kim Daesik who broke that silence. He lifted my hand, which was clutching my hungry stomach, and brought it to the nape of his own neck. Then he made my palm touch the spot where a very faint pulse was beating and said.

“It’s here, you have to stab this exact spot.”

I flinched and my body stiffened. Since we were pressed against each other, he must have felt it, but Kim Daesik continued speaking, unconcerned.

“You saw me kill Wang Yiseob, right?”

I pushed him away and sat up abruptly. The car was small, so sitting up meant I was between his legs, but I put as much distance between us as possible and glared at him. Even while meeting my horrified and furious eyes, he let the corners of his drooping eyes fall and gave a gentle smile, one he had never shown before. And in a tone not much different from when he was reciting the recipe for a chocolate cupcake, he continued.

“You have to drain enough blood. To preserve the meat for a long time, it’s good to smoke or dry it. The method is tricky, but it’s worth the effort. I’ll tell you how to do it, so……”

I cut his words off short and spat out.

“I don’t eat people.”

“I know, I know, but……”

Grabbing onto the tail end of his words as he tried to easily dismiss what I said, I clenched my fists tight and ground my teeth.

“I don’t want to live to the point of eating people.”

“……”

“You’re not eating me, so why should I have to?”

“……”

“Why do I have to live to that extent? A world where you’re dead and gone, why should I……!”

As I shouted while staring at Kim Daesik, who was gazing at me in silence, my voice came out cracked and a shudder ran through me. It was not just because I had been screaming and sobbing earlier. It was because I had come to clearly recognize what the fear I had not been consciously aware of was.

I could no longer live in a world without Kim Daesik.

I did not want to.

At first, I might have seen him as a substitute for my hyung, but not anymore. Both when my hyung was alive and when he was dead, I did not know the reason why I had to live in this dying world. Even when my hyung died and was gone, I only thought that I had lost my means to live.

But after meeting Kim Daesik and waiting for the day I would be eaten by him, I instead found a reason to live. Since he would kill me anyway when the time came, whether I liked it or not, it had become a matter of course to live until then. It was a truly strange thing, but I wanted to live in order to be killed by him.

Now, Kim Daesik was the very purpose of my life and death. And it seemed it was the same for him as well.

He reached out his hand and grabbed my shoulder. My shoulder, so skinny there was no flesh on it, my body that seemed like it would crumble at any moment, he held onto it and spoke as if pleading.

“Because I want you to.”

Kim Daesik’s firm forehead clouded over, and his always cynical gaze wavered.

“I want you to live. Even if I’m dead and gone, even if you have to eat people, even if this world will be destroyed before long, I want you to survive somehow.”

I thought he was crying, but he was actually smiling. He looked sad, but he looked happy. He looked as if he had given up on everything, yet at the same time, he looked as satisfied as if he had the whole world. So I did not know what he was feeling. But because I wanted to know what it was, I unknowingly opened my mouth and asked, barely audibly.

“……Why?”

The smile lingering on Kim Daesik’s lips faded, and he moved his lips with difficulty.

“Because, I……”

Kim Daesik could not say it easily, as if that one phrase was the root of all evil, as if it were an unforgivable original sin.

“I…… you.”

In the end, he could not finish his words. Instead, he reached out his hand and pulled my chin. Our lips met, but those lips were terribly cold. As I kissed him, who was growing colder, I thought of a snow globe. I thought of the snow fluttering in the world inside the small glass sphere.

I had never seen snow, but I felt that if I were to hold it on my lips and taste it in my mouth, it would be just as cold as this. It was as if Kim Daesik in my arms was made of snow, something that would just melt if touched and ultimately fade away into nothingness. Because of that, I could not embrace him with all my might.

I just held him.

That alone made my heart ache endlessly.

🖤

When I woke up after repeating a cycle of light and deep sleep, Kim Daesik was no longer moving. I, who had called him several times every time I woke from sleep, knew that he would never answer again.

The body I was lying on was now going beyond cold and becoming hard. I was held in his arms like that for a long time, listening for his faint breathing, but now, even with my ear pressed right against him, I could not hear that sound well.

I felt that there was not much time left until Kim Daesik turned into an agwi. Since I could not hesitate any longer, I got up from my spot and left his embrace. Then I picked up the large knife that had been lying on the car floor and went outside the car.

Holding the knife in my hand, I pulled up the shutter and could feel that the long, long night had passed and dawn was breaking. The ash powder, blended with the dampness of dawn, hung all around like fog. Cutting through the dust that felt like it had a rough texture, I circled the building where the parking garage was. As I searched for a suitable spot, I found a large stone marker that had fallen over at the edge of a flowerbed.

The surface of the processed stone was flat, so it looked good for working on. I crouched in front of it and wiped off the ash caked on the surface with my sleeve. The characters engraved on the stone marker were revealed, but they were all Chinese characters, so I could not read them. I wiped it clean until the hem of my clothes turned black, and took off my outer shirt. Then I turned it inside out and spread it on the stone marker like a tablecloth. After that, with the knife in my right hand, I measured the angles this way and that.