Chapter Text
Nayoung has been sitting in her room in Lightbreak Inn for about twenty-seven minutes when there’s a long string of staccato knocks on her door. She opens the door to see Yewon and Chan standing in the hallway, Yewon’s fist raised midair to keep knocking on the door. Chan holds up a bag of donut holes he got from the lobby.
“Is there something I can do for you two?” Nayoung asks.
“Didn’t Yebin call you?” Yewon says, bouncing from foot to foot. “She’s got news, she wants us all to meet in the alley behind Brewport.”
“It’s always the alley behind Brewport,” Nayoung sighs. She holds out a hand and Chan gives her a donut hole. “I need to get changed, you guys can head down without me.”
“Oh, you’re actually our ride,” Yewon tells her as she closes the door. Nayoung turns around and moves to root through her luggage. “We’ll wait for you by your car.”
Nayoung pulls on a clean shirt and shorts and shoves her sneakers on before heading into the bathroom. She doesn’t really wear makeup but her roommate at Penn State had convinced her to start wearing minimal foundation and concealer during their first year, so that’s what she does. She isn’t exactly sure how one is supposed to apply makeup, so she sort of just rubs it all over her face, squints at herself in the mirror, and calls it a day.
Yewon and Chan are just outside the lobby poking at a muskrat with a stick when she gets to them.
“Hey, um, you shouldn’t mess with those things,” Nayoung says, grabbing their attention. “It could really hurt you if it gets upset.”
“We were just looking at it,” Chan says, dropping the stick. “Ready to go?”
The drive to Brewport is short and quiet and Nayoung finds a space in the public parking area before they go around to the alley in the back. Yebin, Kyungwon, and Minkyung are already there, lounging on the beach chairs set up for the employees of Brewport when they take their breaks.
“Hey, girl, you look good this morning,” Yewon says awkwardly to Kyungwon, who just stares back at her. “Uh, we brought donut holes.”
Minkyung snaps and holds her hand out and Chan gives her a donut hole. “Alright, gang. We got a lot going on for us today. You’re not going to believe what happened this morning.”
“Okay, you do this thing where you’re super dramatic and tell us some long ass, really hard to believe story, and I love it, but it would be nice if you could cut to the chase because we’re short on time,” Yebin says. “I still don’t understand why you couldn’t have told us before they got here.”
“Bodies of the missing kids have been popping up all over town,” Minkyung says. She pulls a newspaper out of her backpack and holds it out. “There are, like, twenty-six or something, they had to reprint the paper this morning.”
“Are you serious?” Nayoung snatches the paper from Minkyung. “No way. No fucking way, I saw these kids yesterday.”
“What are you talking about? They’ve all been dead for years,” Yewon says.
“Okay, so we all remember Yebin’s melt down where her mom died? I had something like that happen to me yesterday,” Nayoung says and Yebin sticks her tongue out at her. “I was just driving around, having a good time, and right before Lightbreak Bridge, there was just a mass of undead kids. Seungcheol, Vernon, the Massie kids, I saw them climbing over the railing.”
“Zombies,” Yebin blurts. “ Night of the Living Dead . Stephen King has yet to write a book about zombies yet, but I mean, I don’t have time to wait for him to have a horrible car crash outside my house so I can hold him hostage and force him to write one.”
“Dude, please shut up,” Yewon begs, looking at Yebin. “Please.”
“Why would she bring all these bodies back?” Chan asks. “Isn’t the point that the families don’t get closure?”
“She’s trying to get her power back, so bringing up the dead bodies will bring up a lot of bad energy from the past,” Minkyung says. “And it’s a lot, obviously.”
“Where - how are people finding them?” Yebin asks. “Like, is it meaningful or just random? Do they know where the bodies are coming from”
Minkyung shrugs. “All it says is that they’ve found bodies, there’s no other information, but we can’t go back to the woods, it’s crawling with police.”
“What about Eunwoo?” Nayoung asks.
“I hid her in the library,” Minkyung says. “She’s having a bad day.”
“We’re all having a fucking bad day,” Yebin points out. She looks over her shoulder at Kyungwon, who has been silently watching the conversation the whole time. “Look, we should go before someone comes out here. We can hang out at my house.”
“I’ll get Eunwoo and meet you there,” Minkyung says, and she jogs away down the alley.
Yebin nods and gives Nayoung a look before grabbing Kyungwon’s arm and tugging her in the other direction.
“I guess we should go then?” Chan says.
Yewon loops her arm through his and they walk back around Brewport. “God, what are we supposed to do?”
“I don’t think there’s anything we can do, to be honest,” Nayoung says. “This forest thing, it’s been here for centuries, we can’t just make it go away.”
Yewon is about to respond when someone calls her name and they all turn around to see a police officer walking towards them with a big smile on his face.
“I didn’t know you were in town,” he says.
“Tony, hi,” Yewon replies. “We just came back for Kyungwon.”
“Oh, yeah, I heard you found her,” Tony says. “Did she say where she’s been for the past few weeks?”
“No, she’s still a little shaken, I think,” Yewon says shortly. They all stand there staring at each other for a while before Yewon clears her throat and pats Chan’s arm. “Tony, this is my boyfriend, Chan.”
“Hey, nice to meet you,” Tony says, holding a hand out, and Chan shakes it. “Tony Prokopenko. Yewon and I were friends in high school.”
Nayoung remembers Tony but very vaguely. He’s a sweet, soft kid, a cookie cutter small town boy who grew up to be a cop just like his dad.
“We heard about all the bodies popping up,” Yewon says conversationally. “Are you working on that?”
“Yep, it’s all hands on deck, they are everywhere,” Tony replies. “We just got a call from Grayson, he found a body in his pigpen, that’s our thirty-second this morning.”
“Sounds horrible,” Chan deadpans.
Tony looks at him and nods. “Yeah, it is.”
“Where do you think they’re coming from?” Yewon asks.
“No idea,” Tony admits. “We’re trying to piece together how all of them were connected, if they were at all.”
“They all went missing in the fucking woods, that’s how they’re connected,” Nayoung says.
“Well, yeah, but why?” Tony says. “Kids go into the woods everyday, but these ones didn’t come out.”
“Serial killer?” Chan suggests.
“Nah, these kids go back longer than anyone should be alive,” Tony says. “Hey, you know, we actually found Vernon and Eunwoo.”
Yewon and Nayoung look at each other and Nayoung can see Yewon’s face pale.
“Where?” she asks.
“Up at the drop off, a couple teenagers found them,” Tony tells her. “It’s insane, none of the bodies have decomposed, it’s like they’ve only been dead for days.”
“That’s wacky, we should go,” Nayoung says, tugging on Yewon’s sleeve. “It was nice seeing you.”
“Yeah, we should meet up before you guys leave, catch up over dinner or something,” Tony says.
Yewon nods but doesn’t mean it. “Okay. Bye, Tony.”
Nayoung pulls Chan and Yewon to her car, leaving Tony in front of Brewport by himself.
“Who the fuck is Tony?” Chan says as soon as they’re in the car.
“I never told you about the girls I spent my entire life with, why the heck would I tell you about some random guy I hung out with because I was afraid to hurt his feelings?” Yewon scoffs. Chan buffs and crosses his arms and she rolls her eyes. “What, are you going to get pissed every time we run into someone I knew in high school?”
“I’m not pissed!” Chan says.
Nayoung sighs and turns on the car radio to tune them out.