HMT Chapter 1 (Part 2)

Only the two boys who had earlier been watching the gory video exchanged uneasy glances as their faces slowly went pale.

“Min-min, are you two scared? What’s with the faces?”

Haena called out to Kim Min and Han Min with an amused voice. Since both boys had one-syllable names, Min and Min, their classmates often grouped them together and called them Min-min. They didn’t seem to mind; by second semester, they had even started styling their hair similarly. Both had cute features, so even the second-years affectionately treated them like twins.

“No, just… watching it again, it looks too real. And the alert said ‘abnormal behavior.’ What if they were all high on something?”

“I think I saw this on YouTube. Zombie drugs? I think people who took it moved like that.”

“I saw that too. But in that one, they only moved like zombies. They didn’t actually attack people like these ones do.”

Maybe talking about it made him more scared, Kim Min’s eyes were starting to well up. Haena shook her head and placed her arms on the seat in front, resting her chin on top with a smirk.

“Zombies scare you? This noona will protect you.”

“You’re serious? No take-backs?”

“You scaredy little punks. Fine, I’ll tank them with my body if I have to. Happy now?”

“As expected of Haena noona!”

Hearing her words, Min and Min relaxed a little. But the strange things didn’t end there.

“Hey, isn’t the bus in front of us acting weird?”

“Yeah… why is it shaking like that?”

Dohun pushed up his thick-rimmed glasses with his index finger. He was sitting in the very front row with Yejin. Normally, Kim Yoon would be sitting with them, but since the only empty seat left earlier had been in the back, he was separated this time.

Both of them knew Kim Yoon had barely slept for several days while checking the MT plans, so when they saw him asleep, they didn’t bother waking him.

They were just as tired and had been dozing off themselves until the emergency alert woke them. As they rubbed their eyes and complained about the “abnormal behavior” people in the alert, they noticed something strange,the bus ahead of them was swerving. Like a drunk driver, it zigzagged wildly across the road.

“What the hell? Why is it doing that?”

Dohun unfastened his seatbelt and stood up. Just then, his phone vibrated. The name flashing on the screen belonged to a classmate riding the front bus.

“Oh, Sangjin. Good timing. I was just about to…”

A horrifying scream burst through the speaker.

―Aaaaaargh! Fuck! I said don’t come! Don’t come! What are you all doing? You’re supposed to stop it!

“Uh…”

Whatever he had been about to say stuck in his throat. The sound coming through the phone was so sharp it made his eardrums sting. Sangjin’s frantic screaming, someone else’s inhuman shriek, and the terrified cries of others all tangled together.

From the moment the call connected, it was obvious something terrible was happening on the bus ahead.

“Hey, what’s going on? Sangjin! Can you hear me?”

―Fuck! Lee Dohun! Call the police! Call the police, quick! Lee Yujin’s gone completely insane!

“Yujin?”

At Sangjin’s desperate shout, Dohun repeated the name in disbelief. It made no sense. The image of Yujin in his mind was galaxies away from the word “insane.”

Yujin, with her long straight hair down to her chest and thin-rimmed glasses, was extremely quiet. In fact, her lack of presence was so well-known that she was often mentioned as the least noticeable person in her year.

Her voice was so soft that talking to her had been frustrating more than a few times, but because she never bothered anyone, no one ever disliked her. She always helped when asked. People might call her slow, but never troublesome.

“That doesn’t make sense. Yujin, losing her mind…?”

―Aaaaah!

A blood-chilling scream tore through the call, and the line went dead. Dohun blinked, stunned. Sangjin’s voice had been so loud that now the entire bus had fallen into a dreadful silence.

The driver, too, was shaken. His eyes flicked nervously between the swerving bus in front of them and Dohun. He knew that along with the tall, handsome boy who had handed him snacks earlier, Dohun was one of the leaders of the students on this bus.

“Student… what should we do? At this rate, we might end up in an accident too…”

He slowed down as much as he could, widening the distance between them and the bus ahead. Miraculously, the front bus hadn’t veered off the road yet. Fortunately, they were the only two vehicles on this road.

He hadn’t checked his phone while driving, but from the students’ voices earlier, the term “abnormal individuals” stuck in his mind. Maybe because of that, the complete absence of people or cars around them made his neck prickle with unease.

“Just a second.”

Dohun took out his phone again, intending to contact the students on the front bus.

“Yejin, wake up Kim Yoon.”

“O-okay…!”

Realizing something serious was happening, Dohun gestured urgently toward the back. There was no way he could handle this alone. In moments like this, they needed Kim Yoon’s leadership. The bus was already devolving into chaos with terrified students whispering and crying.

Some students had broken into tears. Others were calling their families in a panic. Dohun, too, worried about his parents back home, but right now the front bus was the priority.

“Why isn’t he picking up…”

He tried calling Sangjin again, but all he got was a long, empty ring. He went through his contacts, calling anyone he could think of.

“Oh no…”

Cold sweat gathered on his palms. Just then, the bus driver let out a sharp gasp. The bus ahead had tilted sharply, and then rolled over onto its side.

Through the windshield, Dohun saw the impossible happen. The driver slammed the brakes immediately. Even though they had kept plenty of distance, he hadn’t expected the bus to flip so suddenly.

Screeeech…

As their bus came to a sudden stop, the students were thrown forward. Dohun barely grabbed a pole in time to keep from falling. Pain shot through his arm, but he had no time to focus on it. Seeing the overturned bus with gray smoke rising from it made his heart plummet to his feet.

“…This can’t be real.”

His thoughts broke apart. Just ten minutes earlier, he’d been happily half-asleep, dreaming. He couldn’t remember the dream, only that it had been pleasant.

And now… he’d received an alert warning about “abnormal individuals,” a friend on the bus ahead had screamed that Yujin had gone insane, and…

He was only twenty-one. Even though he was in charge of the first-years, he was just a student himself. Frozen, staring out the window with a blank expression, he saw something he couldn’t ignore.

A blood-soaked arm shot out through a broken window. Then, movements, other students who had survived. Countless hands banged on the windows from inside the overturned bus, their blurry silhouettes clawing at the glass.

“Driver, open the door!”

“Ah, y-yes…”

The moment the front door opened, Dohun jumped out of the bus. His heart hammered violently. His injured arm throbbed from the sudden movement, but now wasn’t the time to worry about himself.

“Someone call 119!”

“I’m calling right now!”

“Let’s go help! The students in the front bus must be seriously hurt!”

Once Dohun began moving, the others, who had been frozen in shock, started acting one by one.

---

“Kim Yoon, hurry up and get up. Something big happened!”

Ji-woo looked back and forth between Kim Yoon and Yejin, completely at a loss. Even with the emergency alert ringing loudly enough to wake everyone else, Kim Yoon didn’t move an inch.

At that point, Ji-woo grew worried that perhaps Kim Yoon was sick. His chest rose faintly, so he was definitely breathing, but his tightly shut eyes showed no sign of opening.

When calling him repeatedly didn’t work, Yejin put her hands on his shoulders and shook him roughly. Kim Yoon’s solid body swayed forward and back, and Ji-woo watched with a pang of sympathy.

‘Sunbae really hates people touching him…’

Kim Yoon rarely showed it, so almost no one knew how sensitive he was to physical contact. But Ji-woo had spent so long observing him from afar that he could catch even the smallest reactions.

That was why every time Kim Yoon touched his head, Ji-woo felt like his heart would stop. Light taps on the shoulder or grabbing someone’s arm happened occasionally, but Kim Yoon stroking someone’s head was something Ji-woo could count on one hand.

‘And he hates being touched while sleeping even more…’

Yet right now, Yejin was doing both at once. But Ji-woo couldn’t bring himself to stop her.

The situation had become chaotic in an instant. The bus ahead had flipped. The student council president, Kim Yoon, was needed now more than ever. If Yejin hadn’t stepped forward, Ji-woo might have gathered the courage to wake him himself.

“…I’m awake, Yejin.”

The low, rough voice scraped against Ji-woo’s ears. Yejin couldn’t see it from her angle, but seated right beside him, Ji-woo saw the slight twitch around Kim Yoon’s eyes.

As he expected, Kim Yoon was in a foul mood. He hadn’t slept properly in days, and his condition was a mess. Even someone with his stamina couldn’t handle four days with barely five hours of sleep total.

A sharp pain pulsed at his temple, and irritation flared. When he grabbed the hand on his shoulder, he almost squeezed too hard. For a second, an image flickered through his mind, Yejin’s fingers twisting at unnatural angles.

Acting on that impulse would’ve been easy, but cleaning up afterward would be a hassle. Kim Yoon tucked all that irritation behind the smooth curve of his smile, just like always.

“What happened?”

“There are abnormal people, no, that’s not important right now. Earlier, Dohun was talking to Han Sangjin, Sangjin was on the front bus, and when they talked he suddenly started screaming that Lee Yujin went crazy and we needed to call the police!”

At his question, Yejin rambled breathlessly. She was famous for speaking neatly and confidently during presentations, but even she couldn’t stay calm in a situation like this.

“Mm. So Yujin went crazy. And then?”

Unlike the frantic Yejin, Kim Yoon responded smoothly and stood up from his seat. The atmosphere was clearly strange, some kids were crying, some were frantically calling someone on their phones, and some kept glancing at him like he was their savior.

As he walked forward while listening to Yejin, the disaster scene outside the wide bus window came into view. Blood-soaked students were crawling out of the bus that had flipped onto its side.

To Kim Yoon’s eyes, it looked like a broken slushie machine vomiting bright red syrup. Interesting, perhaps, but not urgent. Not to him.

“The front bus suddenly overturned, and Dohun told me to wake you up…”

Trying her best to explain what had happened while he slept, Yejin fell silent as soon as the sight outside entered her view. Like a scene from a disaster film, the overturned bus and the injured students were spread out chaotically. The moment Kim Yoon stepped off the bus, Yejin hurried after him.

“Oh my god… Jisoo, are you okay?”

“Hhic… it hurts…”

Yejin rushed to Jisoo, who was sitting on the ground nearby, her forehead covered in blood. She fumbled through her pocket and pulled out a handkerchief. The thin fabric was quickly soaked in red when she pressed it against the wound.

While Yejin tended to Jisoo, Kim Yoon surveyed the scene. Since the bus had fallen on its side, perhaps the braking system failed. Despite the chaos, the door remained tightly shut.

The students who escaped had all crawled through the windows. Tour bus windows weren’t designed to open for safety reasons. Whether someone had smashed it from inside or the accident had broken it, one of the windows was shattered open.

Nearly forty students had been on board, yet fewer than five had escaped. Spotting Kim Yoon standing tall, Dohun shouted toward him.

“Kim Yoon! What are you doing? Come help us get the others out!”

Every student who crawled out was barely conscious. Some were bleeding heavily, some muttered nonsense as if they’d seen something horrifying. Jisoo was no exception, she was panicked beyond reason.

“W-we have to run… we have to run… hhic… I want my mom… I’m so scared…”

Supporting the crying Jisoo, Yejin pulled her up, intending to bring her back into the bus and sit her down. Other students were doing the same, each helping someone injured, trying to move them to safety.

Kim Yoon glanced briefly at Yejin and Jisoo, then walked toward the shouting Dohun.

Since the bus was lying on its side, climbing up was difficult, but Kim Yoon took a light step and easily lifted himself onto the overturned bus.

The height that others had barely reached even with help, Kim Yoon cleared it effortlessly. Dohun, who had paused in awe, shook his head hard to regain focus.

“There are still a lot of kids inside, and most of them are collapsed without moving. And over there… do you see?”

When Kim Yoon crouched beside him, Dohun lowered his voice, whispering like he was sharing a secret.

The broken window was only wide enough for one person to squeeze out. Even though the sun was still high, the inside of the bus was unusually dark. Every window was smeared thickly with a dark-red liquid.

The rear windows had been hidden by curtains, so they hadn’t noticed earlier. Now it was clear, each side window was drenched in blood.

“Ghhhk…”

A strange sound came from deeper inside. A rasping groan, like someone’s vocal cords scraped against sandpaper.

Catching a faint movement in the darkness, Dohun swallowed hard. When they’d pulled students out through the broken window, each one had muttered like someone possessed.

‘Monster… it was a monster…’

‘It suddenly lunged and bit… the neck… so much blood… hhic… Dohun, do something… please…’

‘Everyone was too shocked… we couldn’t do anything…’

He had no time to question them properly. After handing each rescued student to others, Dohun had gone back repeatedly to pull out more. With the bus completely on its side, helping each student out had drenched him in sweat.

His injured shoulder from the sudden stop ached viciously, but he didn’t stop.

“Everyone! Come on, get a grip!”

But most of them had lost consciousness from the shock of the overturn. The ones awake had already escaped. He called out the names of those who’d been in the front bus, checking for movement, but none appeared.

Then he witnessed something unbelievable.

Loose, tangled long hair could be seen through the darkness. Even though the face was mostly hidden beneath it, goosebumps prickled along Ji-woo’s arms.

“Looks like Yujin.”

“Yujin? Yujin! Can you hear me?”

At Kim Yoon’s words, the chill running down Dohun’s spine vanished, replaced by panic as he shouted her name. The frantic flailing inside the bus froze the moment he called out. Dohun reached his left arm inside the broken window. His right shoulder was swollen and painful, making it nearly impossible to move.

“Yujin, grab my hand! I’ll pull you out!”

At his shouting, Yujin slowly lifted herself up. She was a little far from the shattered window. As the dark figure limped closer, Dohun gritted his teeth and stretched his arm out even further

“Kyaaaah!”

With a piercing shriek, Yujin charged toward the window like a madwoman. Just moments ago she had moved sluggishly, but now she moved with frightening speed, so fast that Dohun could only blink in disbelief.

“Move back.”

Kim Yoon grabbed the back of Dohun’s neck and yanked him hard. His solid body slid backward like a stuffed doll. Dohun nearly fell off the bus but caught himself, clutching his injured shoulder with a groan.

What… did he just see?

Even in the darkness, her eyes had glowed a vivid, violent red. She wasn’t wearing contacts. How could human eyes turn red like they were filled with blood?

“Krrrk, kyaaa…!”

Drawn by the sound spilling from the window, Dohun crawled closer on his knees. Kim Yoon was already kneeling, peering into the bus. Unlike Dohun, who was trembling, Kim Yoon looked strangely calm, as if he were watching a movie.

“Yujin… her face…”

Seeing her up close, Dohun’s voice came out strangled. The glasses she always wore were cracked, barely hanging onto the tip of her nose. As if to prove his sight wasn’t mistaken, Yujin’s blood-red eyes were overflowing with murderous intent…

Her teeth, visible between her wide-open lips as she shrieked, were just as red as her pupils. Her ghastly pale skin made her look less like someone alive and more like a corpse laid out in a morgue. The black veins crawling across her face writhed every time she screamed.

“Ugh…”

The chunks of raw flesh stuck between her teeth made his stomach churn violently. She reeked of blood so thick and rotten it was unbearable. Only now did the nonsensical rambling of the students who escaped make sense.

A monster… Yujin, chewing flesh between her teeth, could only be described as a monster. The grotesque sight, straight out of a horror film, made Dohun instinctively scoot backward on his rear.

He knew there were still many students left inside, but faced with this kind of terror, his sense of responsibility faded rapidly.

‘What is this? Interesting.’

Kim Yoon, on the other hand, stared at Yujin with bright, gleaming eyes, childlike, intrigued. He watched her scream and reach toward him, fascinated.

Because of her small height, even though she thrashed wildly, her hands couldn’t reach even the hem of his clothes. She looked as if she didn’t know how to maneuver inside the overturned bus. If she climbed onto the armrest of a seat, she could probably reach higher.

‘She bit someone. I’ve seen something similar in movies.’

Yujin’s face, neck, and chest were drenched in blood. Beneath her, an unmoving body lay pinned, completely still. Squinting, Kim Yoon could see the fallen student’s neck drenched entirely in red.

“Ki-Kim Yoon! What are you doing! Move away!”

Having climbed down to the wheel area, Dohun yelled up at him. From what he’d seen, Yujin was no longer human.

Even if she were alive… it would have been better if she weren’t, looking like that.

Recalling the blood-red eyes that glared at him like they wanted to kill, Dohun trembled uncontrollably. His instincts screamed for him to get as far away from that monster as possible. Even while worrying for Kim Yoon, survival instincts told him he needed to escape first.

“Someone help me down!”

But with one arm injured, it was nearly impossible to climb down safely. He had needed help climbing up earlier too.

If he tried to move with just one hand, he might injure the other as well. He waved desperately at the students approaching with rescued classmates. Their faces turned pale the moment they heard the monstrous screams from inside the bus, but seeing Dohun’s desperation, two came running.

“Sunbae, step on my shoulder!”

“I’ll hold you from this side!”

The two boys, Kim Min and Han Min, took position below him. Dohun stepped onto Kim Min’s shoulder and bent his legs. Han Min grabbed his waist and lowered him safely to the ground.

“Huff… huff…”

While Dohun gasped like he’d sprinted a hundred meters, Kim Min rubbed his sore shoulder and looked up at the bus.

“Why isn’t Kim Yoon-sunbae coming down? That monster-like sound… it came from inside the bus…”

His round eyes were filled with fear. The image of crazed people charging at others in the video he watched earlier flashed in his mind. If something like that was happening inside the bus, they needed to run far, far away.

---

“Mm…”

While everyone worried over him, Kim Yoon swallowed a low breath at what he saw behind Yujin. When he and Dohun had checked earlier, no one inside the bus had been moving except for Yujin. They could have simply been unconscious, but since they couldn’t examine them closely, all of them had looked dead.

Even now, the student being crushed beneath Yujin wasn’t moving at all.

But something wriggled on the left side of the bus. Kim Yoon held his breath, watching carefully to determine whether the movement belonged to a person, or another monster like Yujin.

“S-save me…!”

A person.

Yujin only shrieked in those terrible, inhuman cries. The voice from deeper inside was weak, flickering like a candle in the wind, but unmistakably human.

‘Who is that?’

Kim Yoon narrowed his eyes. The bus interior was still so dark that he couldn’t clearly see the identity of the person who had spoken.

“Kim Yoon… help me out!”

The person recognized him before he recognized the voice. Kim Yoon identified him immediately, a sturdy, tan-skinned guy. The one everyone joked should be in the physical education department instead of law. Sangjin.

“Kiaaaah!”

Even though he kept his voice as quiet as possible, Yujin reacted instantly to Sangjin’s sound. She whipped her head toward the direction of the voice and lunged forward with outstretched hands.

Thud!

“Gghh…”

If Kim Yoon hadn’t kicked Yujin’s head at exactly that moment, she would have sunk her teeth into Sangjin’s neck. With a single kick, her face crumpled grotesquely. Rotten blood splattered everywhere as her body collapsed like a broken doll.

“Sangjin, what are you doing? Hurry and get up here.”

“O-okay…”

The kick was so brutal that for a moment Sangjin almost felt sorry for her. He slapped his cheeks with both hands to focus and hurried toward the faint light.

As long as he reached where Kim Yoon stood, he could escape. A normal person would have been knocked out cold from that kick, but Yujin only writhed like a worm, refusing to lose consciousness.

Her limbs twisted in different directions, and the sound of bones grinding out of place echoed in the cramped space. It was the kind of noise that made you want to tear your own eardrums out. Thinking about what must have happened before they arrived made Sangjin’s stomach twist. His panic grew, but fear slowed his body.

“Haa… please, move… please…”

His vision blurred. His legs stiffened as if seized by a cramp.

He had only three steps left when Yujin’s upper body suddenly snapped upright. Her bright-red eyes rolled and locked onto him. A suffocating bloodlust surged from her twitching gaze.

“Kyaaaak!”

“Han Sangjin!”

This idiot.

Watching Yujin rise like a punching toy and hurl herself at Sangjin again, Kim Yoon clicked his tongue lightly. Bracing his arms against the window frame, he lowered his legs and slammed Yujin’s head once more. Rotten blood splattered across his shoes and pant legs, and he barely managed to keep his expression neutral.

Just as Sangjin finally reached the broken window with Kim Yoon’s help, another figure, who had been lying still like a corpse, suddenly sat up. It was Kim Kyungtae, with messy bleached hair.

Both Sangjin and Kyungtae reached Kim Yoon’s position at nearly the same time. After stomping Yujin’s head once more, Kim Yoon pulled himself upward. He reached out toward Sangjin first, but at that exact moment, Kyungtae shoved Sangjin aside with his shoulder.

“I-I’m getting out first!”

“Ugh…”

Already weak in the legs, Sangjin toppled onto an armrest. His palm sank into something soft. When he lifted his head, he saw the half-eaten face of a fellow student.

When his own reflection appeared faintly in the dead, unfocused eyes, Sangjin couldn’t even try to stand. His arms flailed weakly, and thin hissing breaths leaked from his pale lips.

“Hiek… hihk…”

Leaving the panicking Sangjin behind, Kyungtae crawled out first. Even without Kim Yoon’s help, he grabbed the window frame and pulled himself up in one motion. His hair was drenched in blood, evidence of the carnage inside.

“D-damn it…”

Kyungtae cursed under his breath and crawled across the bus roof on his stomach. Every movement left a dark smear of blood behind him. He just wanted to get away as fast as possible. Any guilt about shoving Sangjin didn’t show on his face. As Kyungtae passed him, Kim Yoon glanced down inside.

‘Looks like we’re screwed.’

Because he’d stomped her face hard enough to bury her nose into her skull, Yujin still couldn’t get up properly. But the students who had been sprawled motionless moments ago were now beginning to writhe. Their movements were unmistakably ominous, heralds of disaster.

“Y-Yoon, please… please help…”

Sangjin felt it even closer than Kim Yoon did. The student whose body he had touched when he fell, his eyes were changing.

His irises, which had been the usual dark brown, began to glow red from the edges as if catching fire. His head twisted sideways with sickening cracks.

Then the sounds started, joints snapping, bones grinding, coming from all directions. They were all students who had been bitten by Yujin. Some were still down from the crash impact, but most inside the bus had been bitten.

Scenes from movies flashed through Sangjin’s mind. People who suddenly turned and bit human flesh, and the horrible fate of those bitten.

Sangjin staggered to his feet. A sharp pain pulsed from his wrist, but staying here meant only one end for him: death.

‘What a dilemma.’

Watching Sangjin teeter between life and death, Kim Yoon hesitated for a moment. Whether Sangjin lived or died didn’t matter to him in the slightest.

When Kyungtae pushed Sangjin aside and crawled out first, Kim Yoon found Sangjin even more pathetic. If he wanted to survive, he should’ve moved before Kyungtae did.

If Sangjin had simply gotten close to where Kim Yoon stood, he would’ve pulled him out immediately. But now, if he turned his back and walked away, the other students would start asking why he didn’t help Sangjin. He’d spent years maintaining a mask for the sake of convenience, and the idea of having it ripped off because of this annoyed him deeply.

“Gghh…”

“Grrr…”

“Krrhk…”

The groaning sounds filled the bus and spilled outward, like the opening of a horror movie. Even Kim Yoon couldn’t stay safe if monsters swarmed from all directions.