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Sojung can feel the cold wisps of the outdoors leading towards the rooftop of their headquarters rifling through her skin with each step she takes.
The deliberation rattling her mind invokes restless dispositions of how she’ll deliver the news.
There was no way around the truth. Or what judgment has been made to tell.
Though honestly, it was more of how Sojung cannot lie through her teeth or without as much flinching if she were to fall back on speaking about the resolution.
If it weren't for the fact that whoever she's about to face is beyond just knowing her name. Beyond knowing Sojung. And beyond Sojung knowing her. It wouldn't have been this difficult.
Sojung reaches the gate separating the stairs and rooftop within. Splattered across the dying red-colored door were stickers providing direct messages of dangers and warnings to ward off any member proximate to the outside.
She crouches down, hands on the bolstering items of furniture barring the door, and slowly pushes off the enacting blockers in place that keep it shut.
After clearing the path, she whips out a spanner and posits the tool on the bolts. The makeshift barricade unravels from Sojung's maneuvered rhythm, fasteners unwinding with a twist, until each affix is disjoined.
The groans of the door were not soundless.
Her boots meet the concrete floor, presence beheld. Crisp air bites through her windbreaker as she pulls the door at a momentary close. Her eyes surveyed the impromptu isolation ward, where varying mended fabrics and banners were stitched and passed as a roof swaying with the gust of winter. Bringing a howling reminder of the world’s crippling population depression with its multiplying decay.
It’s more of a camping site than a ward if anything. Laid out in the expanse of the rooftop of their two-story hideout. Yet, with unforeseen circumstances and the debates arising to arrive at a unanimous and democratic decision, Sojung figured it was better than nothing.
After all, she couldn’t handle the guilt that might have killed her rather than of a bullet penetrating her skull, or the deliberate and searing pain of turning into those .
She isn't one, yet it's still uneasy to think about the protocols dug into their instincts of survival.
A verdict too heartless need not be a reminder of the severity when losing your own humanity.
While that is a truth among those who remain living, what Sujong has not yet considered a possibility yet, is for one to resist losing to it – to win against the fate of fatal putrefaction and be immune to the decay.
A residuum. An anomaly.
What’s supposed to kill you becomes a part of what makes you live.
Sojung isn’t one to entertain extremes, especially on decisions that dictate one’s life. They weren’t gods. And even if they were, they wouldn’t have turned or even allowed the world to fall into what it had become. Yet wagering their odds with something rare – one might even dare say, an impossibility – Sojung can't help but blur all their abiding concords.
It might have been unfair to most of the survivors settling in their camp who have lost themselves a piece of their lives and will. Their cherished ones that perished in the harshness of the environment ever since the occurrence of the Cordyceps outbreak a decade and a half ago. Who had to bear the grief of carrying the final farewell before they were put out of their suffering.
Sojung had seen bereavement consuming the sentients of the afflicted. Had seen the extent people wishing to join their dearly departed the instance they are left behind.
Sojung never feared death should it befall unto herself. But to see it nearly happening to someone deeply close to her, the terror that gripped humanity has enclosed itself around her. Choking and plaguing every inch of her discretion.
A manducating blight until it has spread whole.
Her heart clenches at the sight of a small back facing a drum where a fire sways, barely illuminating the ward’s area.
Sojung sears into her brain the relief splicing with the guilt, which has kept her up all night ever since the incident.
Losing sleep didn’t come from the duty she had set for herself to ensure safety among their folks but from the dread gnawing in the crevices of her mind where regret and contrition continue to strangle her entire being.
It should’ve been me. Not you.
“Until when are you going to stand there and let the cold bite you?” Comes the voice, snapping Sojung out of her spiraling misery.
“I – “ Sojung’s jaw clenches – or rather tries screwing it tight to refute the ceaseless chatter of her teeth. Sights began swimming, her ears straining at the voice she longed for with the nights spent in isolation and dispute among friends.
The ache in her heart rose nearly upheaving the dams that could never hold her tears. Sojung could never possess the shrewdness she wished to have at crucial moments just like the woman before her, wrapped up in the coat Sojung used to own but has already been worn accustomed to the other.
There was a look of understanding, close to the presence of someone little yet cunning, and also impeccably Sojung’s susceptible tenderness which slowly pulled her toward the center of everything she had and will lose.
A hand stretches out, waiting for Sojung.
"Luda…" Sojung utters the name she prays to the gods when she's alone— if they even do exist, clinging onto the boring hollowness harrowing her desperation.
In this nothingness the world has fallen into, she had nothing else to lose and to do than to foolishly hope .
It sounds ridiculous now, echoing like a mantra— almost mocking her that she ever did try, ever even let the thought of it to happen. God, if she ever is one, wouldn't have not even allowed a virus, a fungus, a mushroom mutation of the sort, to have occurred in the very beginning.
Sojung would rather avoid dwelling on the ruinous events of the past. What happened already did. But even she herself is not exempted from the urge to loathe what she can when nothing is perceptibly even possible now.
"I'm sorry." Sojung mumbles, eyes focusing on the line of sight that holds her in place.
“Don't be.”
Luda's palm was soon wrapped with another. Sojung occupies the remaining vacant space beside Luda as they huddle near the drum for warmth.
“With how you are behaving yourself right now, it doesn’t take anyone else to guess what decision everyone has arrived at.” Luda bares a small smile, aware of the unmoving hostility the survivors had shown towards her ever since learning about the fluke operation.
“I tried reasoning with them. Dawon did as well. I managed to convince Dayoung,” Sojung chews the thin edge of her lip, recalling the three-hour discussion. “But for the others… it was difficult. They weren’t keen to listen.”
“And Juyeon?”
Sojung turned a deaf ear to the wavering voice at the mention of Juyeon. She casts down a look at Luda’s knuckles clasped firmly against each other.
“She abstained.”
Luda releases a breath. Sojung was unsure whether out of relief or out of a panging ache cradling her lungs in an attempt to ease it, “I see.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I can’t really blame her.” Luda continues, her boots crunching under her shifting weight. “Saving me had already been a risk. Keeping me is a threat that potentially repeats the risk of losing more.”
Sojung frowns, “Don’t treat yourself any less human. You are still one, Luda. Don’t let this incident take that fact away. So please, don’t compare yourself—”
“ I am a threat to humans. Latent as it may seem on the surface, but we can never be too sure, Sojung. It was right of Juyeon to remain neutral.”
“But she was there with us, Luda. You, me, Dawon, and Juyeon.” Sojung turns her head to Luda, eyes prickling with pent-up distress. Her fists were clenched, unyielding, with nails digging within the thick cloth of her gloves. Arms were taut to keep them grounded on her lap.
“She of all people also knew that the moment we realized the mission was a bait made, we didn’t have the time to strategize out a contingency on the spot. The relief transport plan was done so we could forfeit our brought goods to them so they can deliver it to the neighboring group out in the west fence.” Sojung resists the rising frustration spilling from her words, from hurting themselves all over again. “If we were just more skeptical in the beginning, we would never have undertaken that trap.”
Pain overrules all anger, “And you would have never needed to try and save me, Luda.”
It was no one’s fault other than the one who schemed the ploy.
She knows that and yet…
And yet.
“Sojung.”
A hand cups her cheek, and then a thumb swiping across it.
“While it is true that they need you alive more than me,” Luda brings another hand to caress the anguished, urging her to focus her attention on her. “The choice I took upon saving you is simple.”
The world is unfair. Just like that.
Unfair to Dawon who had to sacrifice her medicinal loot, costing four months' worth of stocks for their camp. Unfair to Juyeon who had to shoulder decisions polar to her principles. Unfair to Luda who had to settle by reason along with her irrational and reckless actions instead of caring about her own life when she prioritized Sojung. Unfair to Sojung who chose to believe and help those survivors when she should have been more incredulous about the entire operation. Then maybe Luda would not have thought she needed to jump right in front of Sojung to thwart those damned clickers away.
Luda's forehead touches Sojung’s. “It's because I love you.”
Then maybe she would not have to hear Luda speak with words she doesn’t normally say.
Sojung sobs and chokes on her tears as they stream down her cheeks.
“You’re so… now look at who's acting ridiculously sappier than me.”
“It’s the least I can do before I depart.” Luda chuckles, tears blurring her sight as well, but it does not make her gaze falter to memorize Sojung’s features while she still can. Perhaps for the last time.
“Don’t say that.”
Luda feels the clenches of Sojung’s fingers around her becoming stiff. Her limbs tensed in the embrace they shared.
“How much time have they given me?”
A head buries itself soon on Luda’s shoulder, breathing in her existence.
“You have until morning to pack.”
“Not so much then.”
Sojung respires a distance between them, “It was the most I could do. I’m sorry—”
Lips cease the apologies and laments they had suffered and bore. Sojung reaches for Luda’s jaw, a palm gentle in pulling her closer again, chasing the warmth where the fire can never emit. Until their breaths no longer exhaled the shivering air that added to the growing premonition of saying goodbye.
Sojung traces the feeling of bandages swathed around Luda’s forearm. Benign with the mark of a miracle that had Luda still here beside her; breathing. Warm and alive.
Dawn creeps into the broken blinds of the shed, signaling Sojung that time is slipping faster from her clasps.
A kiss on the crown rouses Luda awake. She blinks the stars from her eyes in a momentary bliss, before reality settles in her gut.
“It’s time, Luda.”
They stand at the gates’ entrance of the area. Luda faces Sojung and the other members of the camp, witnessing their faces after days of being confined and restricted contact with anyone.
They were extremely cautious, and Luda understood their intentions. Yet she cannot ignore the feeling of hurt when regarded with such taciturn.
“Thank you. For everything.” She bows.
There were others who sighed in guilt, while the rest remained stoic.
Luda walked to Sojung, ignoring the onlookers distancing themselves from her. They quickly jumped into each other's arms, enveloping themselves in their own bubble.
“Is it selfish of me to ask that you look for me when you get out of here?” Luda mumbles. her face lost in Sojung’s suddenly damp shirt.
“Not so much. Especially coming from you.” Sojung smiles. As if Luda cannot feel the muscles of her cheeks in a swollen fit and the reverberations of her short chuckles that hum momentary comfort in Luda’s ears.
Her hearing perked up when several steps from familiar winter boots and the shuffle of gears and baggage came nearing them.
Luda releases herself from the hug. Surprised.
“Juyeon?” Luda then turns to the other taller beside Juyeon, “Dawon?”
She swivels quickly on her heels, eyes wide and on the verge of tears again. Not because of grief. Nor of any despair. “What’s this, Sojung?”
Sojung can only place a small peck on Luda’s very confused and pouty lips with a slight grin. It is now her hand that stretches out for Luda to seize and hold tight.
“Let’s go, Luda. Together.”