Chapter Text
Park Jisung gingerly steps over a ragged newspaper, grimacing at the faded photograph of white masked, blue-robed people waving bystanders away from a neon yellow tape. VIRUS OUTBREAK TRIGGERS CONCERN. ACTIVISTS BLAME GLOBAL WARMING. IS THIS THE END?
The newspaper flutters weakly in the faint breeze, falling limply against the leg of a lamp post broken in half, the shattered glass of its head bowing at Jisung’s feet. He carefully edges away from the glass, taking care not to cut himself through the worn soles of his shoes or make any unnecessary sounds. He spares a brief thought about what his mother would say if she saw him moving around uncharacteristically carefully before packaging away the thought quickly, shoving the tangle of emotions that rose up, unbidden and treacherous, into the back of his mind. Jisung squinted at his cracked phone screen and looked up, checking the street signs before making his way down the eerily silent street of Sinchon. The main street of Sinchon was wide, flanked on both sides with the colourful boards of cafes and cosmetic stores to lure tired students in. Further down the road, past a looming stone bridge, the campus of Yonsei university stretched out.
He never got a chance to go to university. The outbreak had wiped half the world clean, along with any and all thoughts about college entrance exams before Jisung reached his birthday in his final year of high school. Sometimes, like now as Jisung made his way swiftly past the gaping mouths of the darkened storefronts, he would wonder how it would be like to be a college student. He tries to imagine how it would be like to not have classes that stretch for 9 hours at a time, to be one of those students who spill out of the regal gates of Yonsei – tired, eager, stressed – towards the many bars that litter the neighbourhood of Sinchon or even to the café where he would be hired as a barista, trying to make ends meet like almost every other disillusioned college student buoyed down by debts and crippling self-worth that rested on thin shoulders barely coming into adulthood like the weight of Atlas’s world.
Maybe it was a morbid sort of blessing, because lord knows Jisung certainly wouldn’t be able to make it into the golden ticket of a university like Yonsei, but perhaps the gray smoke of hopelessness that trails his footsteps everyday wasn’t all that different from what could have been.
Dried leaves scraped the cement floor as they tumbled past Jisung, buffeted by the chilly February wind and breaking the oppressive silence that he still struggled to get used to. Sinchon, the central heart of the neighbouring universities of Hongik, Ehwa and Yonsei, was never quiet. Seoul was never quiet. It was a city that never slept, and now it was a city that was dead. Jisung makes his way toward the pharmacist located in the corner of the street, peering through the half-broken glass window to check for any unwanted presence. Inside the pharmacy, empty shelves lay askew but Jisung was undeterred, stepping over the metal frame of the broken glass door as he cautiously entered. The milky, anemic daylight filtered in, illuminating just enough for him to make out the outline of a sealed box of bandages shoved haphazardly beneath the counter. Bingo. Jisung ducked under the counter, grabbing the box and quickly making his way out. The last thing he needs is to be trapped in that small space without an escape route for him to run like hell if anything appears.
The winter sun had dipped down in the sky during the short time he was there, not that it mattered much to them. It was Jisung, the feeble human, who had to be careful of the darkness that now swallows up the world every evening. There was barely enough electricity left to run the world, much less light up streets like a damn beacon for those things when they could be used to keep the satellites and internet just working enough for half of humanity to struggle with creating a miracle, and the other half to keep their ears to the ground for any news, good or bad.
Despite the slowly darkening sky, Jisung found himself hesitating at the boardwalk that leads to Yonsei. The fading glow of the sun streaked shadows over the broad street like watercolour, no cars in sight to stop his way. Jisung knew that there’s always a convenience store or two on every campus and any food he could find is always welcome. The cowardly side of him argued that it could have been emptied out already, but he had a gut feeling that there was a treasure trove waiting for him. After all, it wasn’t like the world descended into chaos overnight. It was more a case of people starting to go out less and less – at first as a precaution, later as fear – until all that was left was a ghost town with its inhabitants in the shadows.
All in all it wasn’t a stretch to imagine that no student in their sound mind would make their way to school when degrees stop mattering.
That made the decision for him. He crossed the street quickly, barely resisting the urge to sprint at being so uncomfortably exposed. Once he got past the gates, he slowed his footsteps, deliberating his way. The main road of Yonsei wasn’t all that different from Sinchon; just one broad main street with elegant gray buildings on either side, exposing everything neatly yet packing away exactly what he needed to find. Jisung shivered at a gust of wind, promptly abandoning caution to hurry down the footpath, taking care to skulk in the shadows and keep himself close to structures that could conceal him. He was moving so fast that he almost missed the convenience store situated all the way to the back of the cafeteria. Jisung jerked in his movement and crouched down slowly to peer through glass doors into the shadows of the empty cafeteria, eyes peeled for any movement at all. It would be fine if it was a human but anything else spells danger for someone in unknown territory and rapidly approaching darkness.
Empty chairs and tables were haphazardly scattered around the room as though everyone left in a haste and no one bothered to push them back in. There didn’t seem to be anyone on the premises except for him, but he waited for a few precious moments anyway, straining his ears to hear for the slightest sound. When he detected none, he pushed the glass door open, wincing at the sound of the brush at the bottom of the door sliding across tile and stilling in his movements. When nothing out of the ordinary happened, he eased his body through the tiny gap and propped the door open with the box of bandages, saving the need to open it again and make more unnecessary sounds.
Once in, Jisung made a beeline to the convenience store, exhaling in relief at the well-stocked shelves of non-perishable items. Hefting his bag forward, he packed in cans of tuna, beans and kimchi, throwing in microwavable rice and ramen for good measure. Jisung was packing them in tightly so they wouldn’t rattle when the sound of a footfall made him freeze.
Heart in his mouth, not even daring to move his head, Jisung scanned the cafeteria. The footstep came again, a lethargic drag that kicked his heart to high and sent every muscle in his body tensing. A movement at the edge of his vision caught in his eye and he moved his head infinitesimally, blood running cold when he sees an Infected.
It was far enough from him that it probably wouldn’t see him just yet, not with the darkness of the place. He – it – wandered mindlessly past the tables, heading for the kitchen and away from him. Jisung’s arm was trembling from a combination of nerves and the weight of the food but he daren’t put it down yet, not when there was a risk of the tiniest rattle. It had its back to him as it shuffled further in and Jisung took the opportunity to edge out of the aisle and into the open space of the cafeteria, one hand gripping his bag steady and the other still holding the food aloft. That was when he saw the silhouette of someone crouched behind the counter of the ddeokbokki store.
Sensing his gaze with uncanny instinct, the person turned his head slowly and caught sight of Jisung. Even from this distance Jisung could see the barely concealed panic in his eyes. Several things registered in Jisung’s mind in quick succession. One; the Infected was just a few paces away from sighting the stranger and setting off chaos that could draw the attention of everyone and everything in the vicinity. Two; the stranger had no way of escaping unless he vaulted across the counter towards Jisung, catching its attention and drawing it to both of them, again setting off chaos that could draw the attention of everyone and everything in the vicinity. Three; in the same amount of time, Jisung could slip towards the open door and escape, leaving the stranger as bait while he escapes the chaos that would undoubtedly draw the attention of everyone and everything in the vicinity.
It wasn’t a difficult choice to make. Jisung is and always will be a coward.
He turned towards the door with renewed urgency, his chest tight with fearful anticipation as he slid through the gap and yanked the box out of the door and –
Shit.
The door swung shut, the sound of the brush piercingly loud in the dead silence as it dragged. The door squeaked mockingly as it falls into place beside its twin. A split-second pause, and Jisung lifted his eyes from where they were transfixed in horror on the door and makes eye contact with the Infected.
Damn. Karma sure got him good.
The Infected snarled, lurching towards him and starting to yowl, tipping Jisung into full-blown terror as he heard the answering cries. He tore down the street towards the gates of Yonsei, adrenaline pushing his strides longer and longer. Jisung stumbled over a step, just in time to miss colliding straight into an Infected that suddenly appeared from around the corner. He gasped, falling back clumsily as it noticed him and growled.
Jisung shoved patio chairs into its way as he struggled to find his footing and for an escape route. It was too close, there wouldn’t be enough time for him to retrieve the knife he had stupidly stashed at the bottom of the bag when he was doing his bloody grocery shopping. A sharp whistle cut through the air and both he and the Infected turned to the source of the sound. The stranger from earlier was standing on an elevated step next to them, high enough that someone with a reasonable amount of athleticism would be able to scale quickly. Jisung seized its momentary distraction to dash towards the stranger, long limbs scrambling as he scaled the wall, hearing and feeling the Infected swiping at him from below, just barely missing his foot. This one looked like it was once a college student and even without meeting an Infected like this before he knew that it would be almost as strong as Jisung, rotting or not. The stranger grabbed his arm, hauling him up the rest of the way one-handed and dragging him along as they ran down the slope in the direction of the main building of Severence hospital located just beside the gates of Yonsei.
No, Jisung wanted to say, that’s the wrong way. I need to get back to Chenle by sundown or he’ll beat my ass. As it was there was hardly any time to breathe, much less form a full sentence while they were running. The stranger led them through a maze of footpaths that wove through the hospital. He came to a stop in front of a gray door, scanning his card and yanking Jisung in the moment the green light lit up. The door closed with a heavy thump and they both pause, breathing shallowly as they listened to the tell-tale groaning of the Infected passing by outside.
The stranger motioned to him and they soundlessly went down the corridor and up several flights of stairs, scanning another gray door open and emerging into the harsh fluorescent light of an empty corridor.
“I need to go,” Jisung said breathlessly as soon as the stranger opened his mouth, “I can’t stay here, my friend is waiting for me and we only have one phone.”
The stranger snapped his mouth shut to shoot him an exasperated look. “I don’t need to explain to you how impossible that it right now.”
Jisung struggled with himself for a moment before he conceded to the logic. “Fine, then I’ll leave in a couple of hours.”
If possible, the stranger looked even more exasperated. “How are you going to do that? Walk through Sinchon blind? I might as well have just left you there. Like you were planning to do with me.” He added as an afterthought pettily. Jisung shifted in place guiltily but refused to look away. Up close, he could see that the stranger was not much older than him. His face was unlined despite being drawn and weary, lips chapped and dyed brown hair flopping messily over his forehead. Despite being slightly shorter than Jisung, his body was sinewy and clearly strong enough to manhandle a 180-centimetre adult up a slope one-handed. Jisung briefly weighed the possibility of death by mauling against Chenle’s wrath when Jisung disappears without a word for the whole night.
The tension was broken when he sighed again, pinching the bridge of his nose as he turned away, a clear indication for Jisung to follow. He complied cautiously, hand tightening its grip on the food packets he forgot he was still holding. They went through another door that the stranger opened with his card again and Jisung allowed himself to entertain the wild possibility that Yonsei was involved in illegal activity like the conspiracy theories on the web often speculated. The stranger walked quickly down the long corridor punctuated by entranceways at regular intervals on the left, through which Jisung could see cubicles arranged like a regular office. Instead of going in, the stranger makes a sharp turn to the right and enters a laboratory space.
“Jeno!” the stranger called out, still moving at the same rapid pace that had even Jisung struggling to catch up. The layout of the laboratory looked like what Jisung had glimpsed in the office space earlier, but instead of cubicles there were row after row of benches, above which were racks that stretched to the ceiling and crammed with glass bottles of clear liquid. “Jeno!” he yelled again, not looking the slightest bit winded as though this was a regular walking speed for him. His voice echoed in the open space, bouncing off the hundreds of glass bottles and machinery that had Jisung wincing out of habit. Another guy, black-haired, bespectacled and looking equally exhausted, emerged from where he was concealed behind a computer perched precariously on a tiny space of the bench. His eyes lit up a little from their dull gaze when he saw Jisung, “Who’s this?”
The stranger paused, looking like he was suddenly remembering that they hadn’t done any introductions yet. Jisung quickly stepped in, “I’m Jisung,” he offered and bowed in greeting.
The bespectacled boy smiled wanly but sincerely, eyes crinkling into crescents as he bowed back. “I’m Jeno,” he introduced himself in a low, steady voice that matched the quiet strength of his overall demeanour. “Lee Jeno. And this is Na Jaemin.” Jeno gestured to the stranger. “We’re…well you can think of us as junior scientists trying to figure out a solution to this mess.”
“We’re students,” Jaemin cut in, looking ten times more stressed at the reply. “We were doing our PhD when this whole thing started so we have barely enough training to even be considered – ”
“Jaemin’s an overachiever who had been interning at Yonsei pharmaceuticals in the day and researching infectious diseases throughout the night.” Jeno continued serenely as though Jaemin hadn’t spoken. “He has been in the research field for at least 6 years – not even counting his undergraduate stuff – and he’s pretty good.” Jeno smiled at Jaemin fondly, pointedly oblivious to the misery apparent on his face.
“So you guys are here. Alone. Researching. Without a team,” Jisung asked slowly. He didn’t know much about research, but he had enough sense and background knowledge from movies to know that finding the cure to the worldwide epidemic couldn’t be done by a two-man team of kids not much older than him. Even thinking about it sounded laughable.
Jeno glanced at Jaemin as though asking for help, looking a bit uncomfortable. “Most drug companies have stopped their research,” Jaemin answered tiredly. “They generate massive amounts of data and if this damn virus didn’t spread so fast they could have gotten together and figured it out. Unfortunately,” Jaemin ran a hand through his dishevelled hair, “When at least half the team is put out of commission within a week – this virus is crazy infectious, it spread before we even figured out how – and the funds ran dry thanks to the economic crash, not to mention the government’s cutback on electricity usage, it becomes a lot harder to put out data when the resource input is barely a fraction of what it used to be.”
Jisung was silent as he absorbed the information, remembering how his favourite hole-in-the-wall restaurants had closed down at the early stages when no one was particularly worried yet. He, and everyone else, had dismissed them as a usual phenomenon of South Korea’s rapid market changes. It was only when it continued, spread across the world and up the chain of businesses, infecting everything in its path and leaving behind dead streets that had everyone frantically stocking up on supplies and locking themselves indoors that they realised it was a burgeoning problem.
The Infected had a hand in killing most of the world, but there was no denying that it was the economic crash and the ensuing panic and chaos that hit the nail in the coffin.
Catching Jisung’s gaze around the lab space with the ostentatiously bright lights and elaborate machinery, Jaemin cracked his first genuine smile. “Yonsei is – was – pretty big on environmental conservation. A huge part of the campus has been running solar panels for years now and shutting down all the other unnecessary electricity usage gave us enough to get by.”
“What even is this place?” Jisung asked, too curious to hold back any longer.
“Severance Biomedical Science Institute.” Jeno answered with a wry smile. “You can consider it as the research branch of Severance hospital, considering that we do get a lot of our samples there. What about you, Jisung?” Jeno asked. “Are you alone?”
“No, I…” Now it was Jisung’s turn to run his hands through his hair, shifting restlessly as the worry rose to the forefront of his mind. “I’m with a friend and I don’t have a way to contact him. I promised to get back by sundown but…” He chewed his lips nervously, “I hope he doesn’t get worried enough to come looking for me.”
Jaemin’s sharp gaze softened somewhat from where they had been trained on him like a disciplining teacher. “Well, it would take a while for those things to settle down and disperse. By then it would probably be too dark for you to wander around anyway.”
Jisung sighed, leaning against the edge of the counter and crossing his arms. He couldn’t deny the logic, but he wasn’t happy with it either. When he left their hideaway this morning the last thing he had expected was to end up in some stranger’s lair, even if they seemed to be alright.
“If I may…where do you live?” Jeno asked after a moment of consideration. “You don’t have to answer in specifics,” he hurried to clarify when he saw Jisung tensing, “I was just wondering if there could be a way for me – ” Jaemin made a sound of protest, “ – to escort you back. We know the area well, you see.” He finished with a small smile.
“Absolutely not,” Jaemin thundered even before Jisung could voice his opposition, glaring at Jeno. “Wait for morning and we’ll go together.”
Jeno shook his head. “If our positions were reversed you would come looking for me too.”
“You wouldn’t be going anywhere without me in the first place.”
“Jaemin, I’m stronger than you.”
“Neither of you have to come,” Jisung put an end to the bickering swiftly. He was growing more on edge as the conversation progressed. Zhong Chenle is many things but cautious he was not. He could imagine Chenle sitting at the edge of the tiny bed they shared, tapping his foot and swinging the metal bat more and more agitatedly the further the sun sank. It was only a matter of time before he decides that he had had enough and sets out to systematically scour the shortcut Jisung took to cut through the park from Hongik to Sinchon. Jisung’s panic rises ten-fold as he imagines Chenle meeting the horde of creatures wandering around Sinchon, no doubt restless from the alarm their brethren had raised. “You know what, I’m just going to leave now. Hongik isn’t all that far from here anyway.” Even as he spoke he felt a tendril of worry; it was his first time venturing out of Hongik towards Sinchon and he wasn’t all that confident that he could remember the shortcut back, especially in complete darkness.
Jeno and Jaemin paused in their bickering to gape at him. Predictably, Jaemin spoke first, disbelieving and indignant, “No the hell you’re not.”
“You can’t stop me,” Jisung replied, too taken aback to register how ridiculously childish he sounded. Who does this guy think he is? They barely met an hour ago.
“Watch me,” he hissed, eyes narrowing and beginning to close in on Jisung, who tensed and prepared to throw the packets of ramen he was still clutching in his face. Jeno grabbed the collar of Jaemin’s shirt and pulled him back, effectively ending the standoff. “Jaemin’s right. It’s too dangerous for you to go alone. We’ll go with you.” Sensing the rising mutiny of both Jaemin and Jisung – united for the first time since they met – Jeno elaborated, “The full moon should give us enough light that we won’t be walking completely blind and we know the route to Hongik like the back of our hand. And if you don’t want us following you all the way back we can drop you off at the main street of Hongik and you can find the way back.”
“It’s dangerous,” Jaemin said tightly. “If something appears we would end up literally running blind.” He glanced at Jisung before exhaling angrily and moving towards the massive glass windows concealed by blinds that Jisung hadn’t noticed earlier. “But I don’t think we can stop him anyway.”
Jeno and Jaemin followed him, craning their necks and peering down at the streets. In the fading twilight Jisung could make out the skeletal outline of Sinchon cathedral and the buildings of the main street rising up like twisted trees, an inky black mass of shadows cloaked in dim blue light. There didn’t seem to be any Infected on the streets, but lord knows where they could be hiding. Jaemin let the blinds fall back into place and pushed past them to retrieve knives from a drawer. “No bats?” Jisung asked, puzzled.
“They make too much noise.” Jeno answered, fitting out himself with thick gloves and wrapping a bomber jacket around himself, accepting the knives from Jaemin with a nod of thanks. “Easier to drive the knife into the eye and kill both them and that damn virus living in their brain, so long as you can avoid spurting blood into your face.” Jeno ran his finger along the long, narrow blade, checking its sharpness before he slid it back into its sheath. Properly outfitted, they started towards the exit when they realised that Jisung wasn’t following them.
Jisung fidgeted in place, feeling unreasonably guilty. “You don’t have to escort me,” he muttered, not meeting their eyes. “It’s my choice and you shouldn’t risk yourselves for it.”
“Oh yeah, for sure.” Jaemin wasted no time to agree wholeheartedly. “It’s on you when your dumbass eventually gets killed but Jeno’s bleeding heart isn’t going to let you go alone. I’m going for him, not for you.”
Ouch. Jisung shrugged, every ounce of remorse rapidly draining away as he followed the duo out and back to the door they first entered. “Check the CCTV,” Jeno instructed Jaemin, eyes fixed on the door several steps away. Gone was the tired, nerdy looking boy from earlier. Something in Jeno had shifted, any lingering tiredness settled into a single point of laser focus. Similarly, Jaemin’s irritation seem to have melted away as his gaze sharpened, all the agitation stilling into the suspended tension of a hunter. The CCTV feed on Jaemin’s iPhone showed that the coast was clear and they eased the door open carefully, ready to slam it shut back again at a moment’s notice.
Jisung almost wanted to regret his decision as they left the safety of the building. Whatever lingering sunlight had vanished in that short period of time, leaving the area basically pitch dark, cold and unnervingly empty like winter nights usually are. Jaemin went ahead of them, motioning for them to follow. They moved silently through the coiling maze of footpaths out into the boardwalk that Jisung had crossed mere hours ago. The full moon cast its pearly glow on the world, illuminating their path just enough that they could make out outlines but not details.
They hurried along, tension rising in each of them at the complete absence of movement and sound. Just as they turned down the street that would lead them through the park to Hongik, the faintest sound of a footstep had them all freezing in place, not even needing to be prompted by Jaemin’s hand which rose protectively in front of Jeno. Cloaked in the darkness, they turned their head slowly, surveying the surroundings.
Jisung almost jumped when Jeno’s hand landed softly on his forearm. Looking over, Jeno jerked his chin to his left, eyes fixed on the figure dragging its feet along several feet away from them. Jaemin had caught sight of it too, his hand resting on the waistband of his jeans where he had strapped his knife too. They watched as the figure got further away from them before making a move again. The shared tension between them rose even further if that was even possible.
Under the light of the full moon, they made their way through park and to the main street of Hongik. Jaemin turned to Jisung, motioning his intention to leave now that he had completed his mission. Jisung hesitated, watching them as Jeno waved and presumably smiled, turning away.
His hand shot out, clasping Jeno’s wrist. At Jeno’s questioning tilt of his head, Jisung shook his head, resolve strengthening. He would freely acknowledge his cowardice but he wasn’t a jerk. Regardless of everything that happened, the fact was that wandering in the darkness is a risk. A risk that they took for a stranger. It wouldn’t be right for him to send them away, even if he didn’t trust them yet. Jisung tugged Jeno closer, murmuring into his ear. “Stay over at my place until daybreak. It’s too dangerous,” he added more firmly when Jeno made to shake his head. “Think about Jaemin.” He insisted when Jeno continued to hesitate, unashamedly exploiting his weakness.
That did it. Jeno gave in, pulling a confused and mildly irritated Jaemin to whisper in his ear. Even with the lack of visibility Jisung could see Jaemin’s face twist into a scowl, clearly unhappy with the choice but no doubt understanding the logic, albeit grudgingly. How Jaemin could maintain his perpetual annoyance in the face of something as terrifying as zombies in hearing distance was something Jisung completely failed to understand. Jisung shrugged it off, dismissing it as another of his peculiarity and taking the lead to bring them to the backstreets where the building he and Chenle lived was located.
They reached the building with no incident. The building itself was nondescript, indistinguishable from every other building on the street. He unlocked the door, wincing at the clanging sound as the key turned in the lock. Simultaneously, all three of them paused to listen for a sound. When they heard none, they slipped in through the door and Jisung locked it soundly before they ascended the stairs to the highest floor.
“This seems like a prime location,” Jaemin commented. Jisung’s eyebrows rose at the unexpected approval, “Prime location to be cornered like rats.”
Jisung huffed, not really able to find it in himself to be surprised. Barely three hours in and he can already foresee himself and Jaemin grating on each other’s nerves for as long as they are within ten feet of each other. He was starting to regret bringing them to Chenle, who was the significantly more explosive dynamite between the two of them. “We’re not exactly at the highest floor…” he mumbled as he fiddled with the bolt lock on the only door in the highest floor. At first sight people would easily mistake it to be a storage room, likely to be prehistoric and locked for ages. To an extent it was, but that was exactly what Chenle had intended when he designed this hideout. The door swung open with a metallic creak and both Jeno and Jaemin cringed at the sound but Jisung was unfazed, knowing that sound didn’t escape from the dingy, tightly enclosed stairwell unless one was in the building. He led the way inside to a room not that much bigger than the usual one-room studio apartments rented out to university students. A solitary bed with a dirty, naked mattress had been shoved to a corner next to a tiny fridge sitting sadly on the floor. Aside from a rickety chair and the stacks of canned and packaged food messily arranged in empty cardboard boxes, the room was empty of any furniture and anyone.
From behind him, he heard Jeno suck in a breath. “Shit, Jisung, did he…?”
Jisung ignored him, dumping the food he had pilfered earlier into a random box and heading straight for the solitary window. He pushed it open and it swung open soundlessly, its hinges painstakingly greased every morning. Jisung leaned out of the window dangerously, drawing a rope back into the room before Jaemin got a chance to yell something unnecessary. He turned back to the duo who were staring at him in bafflement (Jeno) and annoyed confusion (Jaemin). “Well, c’mon.” Jisung shook the rope at them. “We live on the rooftop.”
Without waiting for an answer, he swung out of the window and scaled the wall swiftly, still unused to the stomach-dropping sensation of dangling in mid-air. “That’s…impressive,” Jaemin said slowly when he emerged over the lip of the wall where Jisung stood waiting. “A storage room below and the actual living quarters in a place physically inaccessible to non-humans and hidden to humans who wouldn’t otherwise know about the place.”
“It wasn’t my idea, Chenle thought of it,” Jisung said proudly, pleased with the compliment from the prickly other.
“Clearly,” Jaemin replied dryly without missing a beat. “That never even crossed my mind.”
Jisung scowled at him but let it go, instead turning away to shove the key in the lock and push the door open. He didn’t know what he expected, maybe the room would be Chenle-free and in a mess from the weapons he outfitted himself with in a haste in his rush to hunt for Jisung when sundown passed and he had to grab that precious few minutes of twilight before it turned to the dark zone. Perhaps the room wouldn’t even be locked – it wouldn’t be the first time it happened. Jisung swallowed the nervous bile rising in his throat, he honestly had no clue what to do if Chenle was really gone, out to hunt for his stupid, stupid, ass.
He did not expect to see Chenle sitting on their shared bed, staring at him with wide, guilty eyes as a lump of chewed ramen fell out of his mouth, landing in the paper bowl with a soggy splat.
Behind him, Jaemin snorted.
“Why are you here?” Jisung demanded, half-angry and drawing a complete blank on why, and utterly confused on where to direct it towards. He had always had shitty emotional intelligence.
“Why the hell are you here?” Chenle hurled back. “It’s past sundown, were you walking around in the dark? That’s so stupid!” he yelled before Jisung even got a chance to reply.
“That’s exactly what we told him,” Jaemin interrupted, obnoxiously loud. “Your friend here got into some trouble and instead of staying the night at our place, he insisted on coming back alone, and in pitch darkness, because he was worried that you might go around looking for him.”
“As though I would ever be that stupid?” Chenle sounded a mix of disbelief and amazement, probably at Jisung’s idiocy. “I figured that you made a mess – because you’re dumb and we both know it – and was probably hiding out till daybreak but you actually came back? In the dark?” He fell backwards against the wall, the hand holding the bowl of ramen falling limply to the side, splattering even more sauce. “Wow, you exceeded my expectations, Park Jisung.”
“You’re not any better!” Jisung finally recovered enough to start yelling back. “You said that we were out of ramen!” He stopped short, clogged up with betrayal and furious embarrassment. “And we promised not to eat on the bed!” he tacked on as an afterthought, betrayal and horror renewing in him afresh when he registered the red stains of the spicy chicken noodles Chenle had traitorously eaten without him.
“Perhaps we shouldn’t be yelling…?” Jeno tried to intervene, somehow managing to sound apologetic even though telling them to shut up was a pretty valid reason.
“Shut up guys,” Jaemin did it for him. “Talk about this tomorrow. I’m exhausted and I want to sleep.” Upon catching the look on Jeno’s face, he sighed and tried again, marginally more polite, “Could we have some blankets to sleep on? We’ll be out of your hair soon.”
“Who are you guys anyway?” Chenle demanded, finally letting go of his childish argument with Jisung to deal with the more pressing question. Chenle surprisingly took the new developments well as Jeno explained, pulling the blankets off the bed and handing it to the two, all the while with a look on his face that put Jisung on his guard, because nothing good ever comes out of Chenle looking thoughtful. “Shut up and sleep, Park Jisung.” Chenle mumbled, huddling closer to Jisung as they crammed onto the bed. “I can hear you thinking.”
“That’s because I can hear you thinking,” he retorted without missing a beat, wrapping an arm around Chenle and pulling his human heater closer. Damn, he should have thought of the logistics before inviting two full-grown males to a room that was barely meant for one. He would be lucky to wake up with all his toes intact considering how freezing the rooftop apartment is, and it was bloody winter of all things.
“And we can hear you two talking,” Jaemin sniped, ignoring Jeno’s hushing and quiet reprimanding. Shivering, blanket-less, limbs cramped as he fought to manoeuvre around Chenle on the single bed and hungry from all the running around, Jisung should be feeling worse. But there was a little glow of relief and something else unidentifiable as he lay there in the darkness, surrounded by people who reminded him a little of something familiar and long-lost.