HMT Chapter 4 (Part 1)

Escape (2)

Jiwoo came out of the bathroom with a towel draped over his head and looked toward the room he and Yoon were supposed to use. The door was half-closed. The room was quiet. Yoon must have already lain down to sleep.

After pulling himself together, Jiwoo washed at the fastest speed of his life, thinking the others were waiting outside for him.

Even at home, he always showered faster in the dead of winter. The rooftop room barely had hot water, so he had to boil it in a pot, and when the weather was cold, even water brought to a full boil cooled quickly.

Luckily, he already had the habit of washing quickly. He wiped down the water dripping from his body with a towel and changed into clean clothes.

He only pressed the towel against his hair a few times to get the moisture out. He came out holding the clothes he’d taken off, but the hallway outside the bathroom was quiet. The door to the big room was completely shut.

Hearing the loud snoring from inside, Jiwoo realized they must have waited until they were too tired and fallen asleep. He felt guilty for washing late because he’d been too distracted by Yoon. But he couldn’t wake people who were already asleep, so he tiptoed toward the small room.

In front of the door, a bundle of what looked like Yoon’s clothes lay on the floor. Jiwoo knelt and began folding them one by one. When he saw the bloodstains scattered across the knit fabric, his eyes grew slightly red.

After folding Yoon’s clothes and placing his own beside them, Jiwoo stepped into the room. Two bedding sets were already laid out. Yoon was lying on his blanket in a neat position with his eyes closed.

Moonlight drifting in through the window left a soft shimmer on his sharply defined features. Jiwoo found himself staring, almost dazed. When Yoon smiled with his eyes open, he always looked gentle, but now his face seemed cold, like a sculpture carved from marble.

It was a long while before Jiwoo moved again. He closed the door quietly and walked toward his bedding, guided only by the moonlight.

He didn’t know what his sleeping habits were like. He always woke up in the same position he fell asleep in, but still, he couldn’t be sure. Worried he might accidentally kick Yoon in his sleep, he dragged his bedding, which had been a handspan away, all the way to the wall.

But the room was so small that even then, the distance between them was close enough for an outstretched arm to reach. Even after lying down, sleep didn’t come easily. He’d changed out of his bloodstained clothes, he’d showered cleanly.

Yet he still smelled blood stinging at his nose. He lifted his hand just in case, but it was clean. Staring at his pale hand in the darkness brought back the moment he threw the vitamin drink bottle.

When the classmate who had turned into a monster had lunged at Yoon, Jiwoo had felt his heart plummet. Even now, thinking back on it left him dizzy. He clenched his fist without meaning to, sweat making his palm slippery.

‘Why did something like this happen.’

The lack of answers left him feeling suffocated. It had all started with one person. One person who reduced nearly eighty people to barely ten survivors. If Yujin sunbae hadn’t transformed on the front bus, they might have arrived safely at the pension.

Thinking of the videos uploaded online and the monsters they’d seen on their way here, he knew they would’ve encountered them eventually, but even so, they could’ve used the pension as a base and held out until the police or military arrived.

All it took was one person turning, and the effect was enormous. Then why had Yujin sunbae transformed in the first place?

Jiwoo thought through the day step by step. He didn’t know what to call this phenomenon, but it felt like some kind of virus. At least it didn’t seem to spread through the air.

If it did, none of them would still be alive.

It was possible the survivors were immune to the virus. But that didn’t seem right either, since none of them had been bitten. That meant the monsters he’d seen today fit the pension owner’s description, zombies like the ones in movies.

It was likely a virus that turned people zombie-like when they were bitten or when infected blood entered a wound. Then another question formed.

‘Then when did Yujin sunbae get infected?’

It had taken a long time to get from campus to Gapyeong, especially since traffic was bad on the weekend. Even when the bus overturned, there had been a time gap before monsters spilled out of the front bus.

Yujin had been the first to transform, and she bit the others. Those bitten by her took at least ten to twenty minutes before transforming the same way.

He hadn’t checked the exact time on his phone, but thinking back, it had been about that long. If people transformed instantly after being bitten, the students in the second bus would’ve had a much harder time going outside to help.

At the very beginning, there had been no monsters in sight, which was why, even terrified, they ran out of the bus to rescue their classmates and seniors.

‘And then someone transformed inside the bus. That time the infection spread faster.’

Thinking of the number of monsters that burst out after the first scream inside the bus, it was clear the mutation speed had increased.

‘Does the mutation speed up each time an infected person bites someone, and that person bites someone else?’

It was all just a hypothesis, yet Jiwoo felt a chill run down his spine. If he was right, the faster the mutation speed, the stronger the virus became. If someone next to them transformed immediately after being bitten, their chances of survival would drop drastically.

Everything felt hopeless. They were supposedly in a safe place now, but no one knew how long that peace would last.

‘But is this place really safe?’

That thought slipped into his mind, and Jiwoo froze and slowly sat up. He reached for the glasses he’d taken off earlier and put them back on. Any hint of sleepiness vanished under a fog of unease spreading across his face.

His body, exhausted from an entire day of tension, cold, and unfamiliar strain, begged him to rest, but he couldn’t stay still. The only sound reaching his ears was the snoring from the other room.

Being careful not to wake Yoon, Jiwoo walked to the window. He pushed aside the fluttering curtains and looked outside. The empty swimming pool and the cars lined up in the parking lot faintly reflected the moonlight.

Since everyone was asleep, the pension’s front yard was silent. Even beyond the fence, there was no noticeable movement. Far in the distance, scattered lights flickered like lighthouses over the dark sea.

No matter how hard he strained his eyes, he saw nothing suspicious.

The relief lasted only a moment. Jiwoo spotted someone sneaking toward the parking lot. Narrowing his eyes, he realized it wasn’t one person, it was two.

One of them was tall, and the other had a noticeably smaller head compared to the person beside him. Both of them had the hoods of their hoodies sticking out over thick padded jackets.

They were also wearing black baseball caps pulled so low it was impossible to see their faces. But Jiwoo realized something familiar about them.

‘They look like the people who were on the first floor of the pension…’

He couldn’t be certain. When Dohoon led the introductions, they had only greeted the people inside briefly, not enough for everyone to exchange names.

As soon as the greetings were over, Hyeja had guided them straight to the small room. And when they came back out after eating, everyone who had been in the living room had already gone up to their rooms, except for the pension owners.

‘What are they trying to do?’

The two moved toward the parking lot as if they were thieves, scanning every direction. Jiwoo pressed his face closer to the window. His palms, dry just moments ago, grew damp again. The taller one approached a black SUV.

He pulled something from his pocket, and the car’s tail lights blinked once. The door had unlocked. The two got into the car. A moment later, white smoke drifted out of the exhaust, he’d turned the engine on.

The car backed out and circled half the parking lot. Then it headed straight for the front gate, coming to a stop before the tightly closed doors.

Jiwoo wondered whether he should run to the pension owners right now and tell them what he’d seen.

This wasn’t a prison, anyone was free to leave. What bothered him was that these two were sneaking out quietly in the middle of the night, when everyone else was asleep. He couldn’t understand why they were moving like people running away after committing a crime.

Could there be some secret about this pension that the Korea University students didn’t know? Could the kind-looking pension couple have a hidden agenda?

‘No, don’t jump to extremes.’

Jiwoo shook his head, cutting off his imagination before it spiraled further. While he hesitated, the two men got out of the car and tried to open the front gate. It wasn’t just closed, it was bound tightly with chains at the center.

Maybe they were struggling to undo the chains, because they kept checking over their shoulders and glancing around. Jiwoo could almost hear the metallic clatter of the chains in his ears. He paced nervously, then finally made up his mind to go down and check the situation himself.

If those two were trying to escape the pension, he needed to know why so he could prepare.

The key to this room was with Yoon, but since Sangpil was the owner of the pension, he might have a master key that opened every room.

Everyone except Jiwoo was asleep. The exhausting day had knocked them out completely. If someone were to come in and attack them in this state, they wouldn’t stand a chance. And the girls were staying in another room, which worried him even more.

“Junior, what are you doing?”