Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dear Wooyoung,

How are you? I hope you’re doing great and I hope you are alive. I really do. It’s been so long, maybe you are not but if I think too much about it I will collapse and I can’t. I wrote so many letters for you, I need you to read them.

Things are… not so good around here. I fear Hongjoong is going down a path I don’t know I can follow, but I must. He’s spiralling and I think he believes I don’t notice how his leg is constantly shaking with anxiety or his lips are chapped with bites. I can see he tries to control himself when I’m around but he has never been a good liar. Even I who didn’t really know him well back then knows that.

His nightmares are getting worse again. He barely sleeps and is constantly obsessed about finding you all. It’s as if he breathes and eats that need and I don’t know how to help him. It was my idea after all to start looking for you, I can’t tell him to stop now that I’ve assured him time and time again that we will find you. I don’t want him to notice how I’m losing faith too because I fear what that might cause in him.

He doesn’t seek me anymore and I don’t know how to accept that. I know I can be the one initiating it but it never feels like the right time. He used to get closer to me when he felt lost, to try and touch me after a particularly hard day, but now… nothing. I wish I didn’t miss it as much as I do, that would make things easier, but I was very aware of what I was getting into when we agreed to have regular sex.

I can almost picture your face looking at me with disgust as I speak so I will stop it right there for your own good. I just wish I could hear your advice, even if it was the craziest one ever. 

I love you. I miss you.

Seonghwa

ⴵⴵⴵ

Yeosang is not lost, he never is, but somehow the path seems… different. He can feel Jongho’s presence next to him, looking at him from time to time as if questioning where they are headed. And Yeosang knows perfectly fine where they are going, he just needs to figure out exactly where they are to find out the right direction. But he never gets lost.

It’s because they have left his refuge, he’s sure of that. His mind is still clinging to his piece of heaven, his bones begging him to go back to safety, but he cannot. Not anymore, not for now. They had both decided to leave in hopes of finding something better. Once Jongho had started dreaming he hadn’t been able to stop and his memories had come back rushing, making him miss his past life even more than he ever thought possible. Yeosang had stopped missing a long time ago, he had had no hopes in finding anyone else anymore. He had truly believed he would be alone for the rest of his days until he found Jongho that day, but the youngest was so different to him. Besides how his life had been after the zombies came to be, how lost and afraid he had been, he still believed there was something better out there waiting for them.

For Yeosang this had been enough. Having Jongho had been enough. It felt good, it felt safe, it felt… It hadn’t felt like an apocalypse since they had met each other and that was more than he could have hoped for. So he had been content with it all until Jongho had proposed leaving their little island. Somehow his dreams had put this idea in his mind that they could find others just like them, that they could find their friends and family, and Yeosang hadn’t had the heart to take his mind out of it.

Jongho hadn’t even insisted that much, he had just proposed the idea, and the moment Yeosang had seen the sparkle in his eyes as he talked about the possibility of meeting their closest circle he had been doomed. So they had prepared the essentials, a bag each filled with everything they might need, and had ventured outside to look for something. Anything. Yeosang had given them a month, if after that time they couldn’t find anything they would go back to their safe place where he was certain they could survive for longer.

For now their attempts have been fruitless, no sign of life anywhere they go to, only zombies here and there that took Yeosang little to no effort to dispatch. They have been lucky, he knows that, but they cannot be risking it for much longer. There had been a reason why Yeosang had remained alone for all that time, he had made the decision to be like that to avoid himself the suffering of losing someone else. He knows now and knew back then that he would not be able to kill someone he loved if it got turned into a zombie, to see its familiar features torn up as they try to rip his skin out of his bones. Being alone made killing every monster on sight easier because he could dehumanize them. But he’s not alone anymore and even when being with Jongho makes him feel mostly at ease, he worries constantly about the possibility of one of them perishing in their little trip.

“I can hear you thinking from here,” Jongho mumbles to his right, adjusting the bag over his shoulders.

It’s the middle of the afternoon and the sun is falling onto them with no mercy even when they walk through the forest trying to stay as cool and shaded as possible. Even when they walk close enough to small cities and towns, he prefers moving along the vegetation where they can find easy refuge in the trees and water is mostly available. That way the possibilities of running into someone drops enough for him to have a sense of control.

“Just say it already,” the youngest continues with a sigh, a smirk evident in his voice.

“We should have never left our refuge,” Yeosang finally mumbles with a frown, feeling himself pouting in frustration. “We’ve found nothing so far and it’s too hot. We should have waited for the weather to cool down.”

The weather is not as hot anymore, they purposely waited for the summer days to get cooler not to need as much water in their endeavour, but it’s still too humid for him. Or maybe he’s just getting overwhelmed with everything. He has never been good at processing his surroundings, he always needed to see a clear path to whatever he needed to achieve, a clear objective to his goals. Something palpable. That’s why he had always been so good at archery. It gave him a clear purpose, a moment in which only him, his bow and the target existed. Just him and his steady breathing doing all the job, nothing else mattered.

But real life is not as straightforward and the noise, the brightness, the possibilities clouded his mind constantly. That’s why Jongho’s singing practice had been so special and important to him, they helped him unwind before entering his training, relaxing his mind and stopping the itching feeling all over his skin.

And now, outside of his comfort zone and with the fear that comes with having something to protect, he doesn’t know what to do with himself. So much so that he seems to have lost his sense of direction completely.

“Okay, let’s do one thing.” Jongho states as he stops walking, turning to face Yeosang maintaining the distance between them. “We will visit the next city and if we still find nothing, we can go back.”

“It hasn’t been a month yet.”

“I miss our magic island too.” He continues taking a step forward, looking Yeosang directly in the eyes trying to be as reassuring as possible. There’s something about Jongho’s demeanour, about his energy, that never fails to calm Yeosang down and he seems to have noticed that.

“But you said-”

“I still want to try,” he interrupts softly. “I’m not giving up, but I can see how this is affecting you and I don’t want you to feel like this.”

“I’m fine,” Yeosang assures, but he has always been a terrible liar. The slight shake in his right hand, the one he keeps pressed against his bow, betrays him.

“You have been looking for the right path for fifteen minutes,” Jongho smiles tenderly, knowingly. Not judging his lack of skill but simply exposing the reality they are facing. “You’re clearly not fine.”

Yeosang sighs at that because he is right, but he doesn’t like that he is. They have been living together for around seven months and it shouldn’t surprise him anymore how Jongho has learnt to read him like an open book, but still does. Of course they spend almost every second of every day together and, living in the middle of an apocalypse, there is not much to do except for talking, so they have told each other pretty much everything about themselves. And Yeosang doesn’t mind sharing, it was refreshing at the beginning to have someone to talk to, but sometimes he wishes Jongho didn’t know as much and he could remain a little bit mysterious to him.

“Are you sure you want to do that?” He asks, because even if he wants to go back he doesn’t want Jongho to stop hoping for something better. “We still have time.”

“I’m sure,” Jongho assures him, extending his left hand towards Yeosang for him to hold. “One more city and we will go back.”

Yeosang nods once, takes his hand and starts walking. The warmth of Jongho’s hand against his seems to calm him enough for his mind to go back to normal and be able to see the little marks on the ground and on the trees. In little to no time he is able to find his path again, relieve washing over him, and he squishes Jongho’s hand as a silent sign of gratitude.

It doesn’t take long before they start seeing the tops of the buildings in the distance. The line of skyscrapers make Yeosang’s skin prickle with the anticipation of entering the city and he has to steady his breathing at the sight. He hasn’t been in a big city for so long, even when he had to scout one for supplies he always remained in the outskirts, never daring to get too deep into it. Cities are a maze, one that can kill you in a blink of an eye, and even with his bow he has always feared being too late for the shot. 

He is aware Jongho used to live in an apartment building in the middle of a city and even if he tries to make it look like he is okay going back to one Yeosang knows better. Jongho might think he is good at hiding things, and he is not bad at it, but Yeosang is observant. Very observant. He notices the little flinches in his expression, how he bites his nails when he thinks Yeosang is not looking, how his eyes grow wider with every little sound he hears. But mostly Yeosang notices how he frowns at night when a nightmare attacks him, especially on those nights Jongho claims to be alright after a particularly bad dream. One of those that makes him almost scream in sleep, mumbling the same nonsense once and again.

Yeosang still doesn't know everything he had to go through in that apartment, only an overview of it all, and he never pushes him to say more because it is obvious Jongho is trying to forget. But he wishes he would share, maybe that would help him overcome his terror, especially now as he tenses next to Yeosang when they start walking on the concrete floor.

As a way to ask without asking, of maintaining the silence that surrounds them since both of them seem extremely aware of the danger, Yeosang squish Jongho’s hand on his and looks at him briefly. Once the youngest looks back at him he mouths his question without actually talking.

“Are you okay?”

Jongho smiles but doesn’t say anything. A smile that doesn’t really reach his eyes, that crosses his lips quickly before disappearing as if it had never existed. A smile that does nothing to soothe Yeosang’s worries but that he decides to believe for both of their sakes, mostly because Jongho is quick to pull from him so they can continue moving. He is so eager to keep going that the archer cannot fight him, his body moving unconsciously to follow him.

As they enter the city, the sky turning darker by the minute and thunder already rumbling in the distance, Yeosang lets go of his hand to hold an arrow, ready for shooting at the minimum sign of a threat. Pointing with his weapon in front of them both, checking every corner before they take the turns and being on constant alert over every opened building they pass by. The skin on the back of his neck prickles once in a while just at the thought of meeting someone, anybody, because he has never shot or killed a real human being before—he saves his arrows for undead creatures and animals he needs to feed from. But a part of him, a very big part of him, is sure he will kill anyone who crosses paths with them if that means protecting Jongho.

So when the youngest suddenly runs away from his side without warning, Yeosang panics. He panics so much he is about to shoot without actually intending to, the string of his bow slipping through his fingers as an automatic reaction to danger, and he is only able to redirect the shot thanks to his experience. The arrow flies a few centimetres away from Jongho’s left arm and Yeosang is about to scream at him for being so reckless, but he remembers where they are.

Instead he follows him with desperation, grabbing him by the arm to stop him in place. Yeosang can feel his eyes wide open, fear controlling his expression without control, and the moment Jongho seems to realize it his whole demeanour changes. He stares at Yeosang with an unsaid apology in his eyes, raising his hands as if surrendering a second before he lets them rest on Yeosang’s shoulders.

“What are you doing?” The archer whispers angrily, looking around desperately in case anyone or anything has heard them and it’s coming their way. They are too exposed, his heartbeat is rising at the mere thought of it.

“Look,” Jongho says with a smile. A real smile. A smile that lights his eyes and makes them smaller and fills his cheeks and shows his teeth and makes Yeosang’s heart melt. And just like that Yeosang’s anger and fear vanish.

Without saying anything else, the youngest turns to his right and lowers his body to pick something up from the floor. A paper, it seems, discoloured and torn on the edges with something written in it in big capital letters. Jongho holds it between the two of them, analysing it with his smile still in place. As if he had found what he had been looking for. Hope.

It’s a simple paper, really, similar to those pamphlets people used to hand out to promote their shops or performances every weekend at campus. But there’s something twisted in it, something that makes Yeosang’s stomach twist. It’s the mix of elements: the orange on the corner, like two triangles joined together by one of the angles, the capital letters saying “is anyone out there?” and the colour of the ink. Yeosang moves closer to it, unsure about it all, and as he touches the letter “a” he swallows hard at the discovery.

“It’s blood," he mumbles, lifting his eyes towards Jongho.

But still with that information out in the open, the youngest continues smiling and when their eyes meet again Yeosang feels so conflicted he doesn’t even know how to react. What is he missing? Jongho should be dropping that paper instead of clinging to it. None of this is good. They should head back. Now .

“It’s him,” is all Jongho says as an explanation before pointing at the orange symbol with his index finger. There’s hope all over him, it exudes from every pore of his skin, and Yeosang doesn’t know why but he doesn’t like it.

“We should leave,” it’s all he manages to answer, holding Jongho by the wrist in an attempt to make him drop the cursed pamphlet. But he does not.

“You said we would go back if we found nothing, but we did.” He seems so sure, certainty in his eyes and decision in his stance. Yeosang has never seen him so sure about anything before, he almost looks like the guy who used to pour his lungs and feelings out singing in room 108. And it’s either that or madness what makes Yeosang let him continue. Who is he to crush his hope anyway? No one. He is no one.

“It’s him, Yeosang,” Jongho continues after seeing the slight change in his partner, showing him the paper again as he points back to the orange symbol. And now that he looks at it again it seems familiar but Yeosang has tried so hard to forget everything his life used to be before the apocalypse that his mind refuses to even place it. “It’s Hongjoong.”

The sole mention of his name causes a chain reaction inside him, like a tsunami destroying everything he has built in one simple go. The walls he has built around him, the doors he has locked so carefully, the memories he has buried away like unnamed corpses… everything out in the open for him to see, for him to grasp. For him to feel.

And just like that the image of a guy with an amiable face, dyed hair with dark roots, a tired expression and a large coffee in hand invades him. Someone he hasn’t thought about in… a year? More? Someone who used to live across the hallway from Yeosang’s room. Someone who seemed to be constantly by the same coffee shop ready to order an iced americano. Someone one of his closest friends used to have a crush on. Someone Yeosang had barely talked to apart from short interviews and encounters in the hallway. Someone who attended almost all his in-house competitions in order to talk about them later in his campus radio show. 

A radio show whose main symbol was a simplified hourglass. An orange simplified hourglass. Just like the one in the paper Jongho is holding.

But still, even when his partner is glowing with hope and he wants to do the same, Yeosang feels his heart break into a million pieces once and again and again as the memories rush over him. He had tried so hard to forget, to ignore his previous life, and now that Hongjoong’s name has been brought back it has inevitably come with so many other things. Like his best friend with a camera in front of his face trying to take a picture of him, repeating once and again how pretty he looked. Like the words of his other friend comforting him after a particularly long and disastrous training. Like the smell of burnt food in the dorm because his room mate forgot again he was cooking in the middle of his game. Like the feeling of not really grasping how happy you are in a certain moment, but being aware of how much you will miss it the second it’s gone.

And the thoughts that he has been avoiding go through him without permission. Will I ever see them again? What if I don’t? Where are they? Are they okay? Are they alive? What if they are dead? What if they have been turned and I need to shoot them? His breath hitches for a moment and he shuts his eyes hard trying to get a hold on himself because this is not the time or the place, but as the tears cloud his eyes he knows he is doomed. He won’t be able to close those doors any time soon. He won’t be able to stop thinking about them. Their names echoing in his head, their voices calling him, their smiles almost crushing him against the ground.

Yeosang doesn’t register the look Jongho gives him until he is forced to look at him. He is worried, for the first time ever it feels as if their roles have reversed completely and now Yeosang, the protector, is the one who needs to be protected. The one who needs guidance because he never gets lost, but right now he feels so stray he is not even sure he knows how to use his bow anymore.

But of course this drenched world they live in doesn’t allow for a second of peace, a second to get a hold of yourself before something threatens your existence. Hopefully besides his state, Yeosang’s instincts take charge and work on mechanical memory alone when he hears something. The tearing of something. A piece of clothing being torn apart, maybe. A few strong stomps. As if someone, something , was following them.

Yeosang’s reaction is almost instant. He lets go of Jongho’s hand and pushes him behind him, already pointing with his bow in the direction of the noise praying that the tears piling up in his eyes don’t make him miss the shot.

Praying that whoever is coming their way doesn’t have ill intentions, he doesn’t want to kill someone today.

Praying that whatever is coming their way doesn’t have the features of his long forgotten friends. 

ⴵⴵⴵ

Dear Wooyoung,

Will you ever read my letters? Will I ever get to hear your laugh again? I dreamed about you last night. We were watching a movie, I don’t remember which one, and you started mimicking the characters and repeating the dialogues. You were bending forward with laughter, almost crying of happiness, but your laugh was all wrong. I think I’ve forgotten what it sounds like and I hate knowing I will keep forgetting more and more until one day only a vague memory of you will remain. I wish I could keep you in my mind forever.

I am doing okay, I guess. I heard that. “You look like shit,” you say seated next to me. Yes, I know, you’re right. I haven’t been sleeping much lately, Hongjoong spends about a couple hours in bed and once he is gone I can’t seem to go back to sleep anymore. I’m worried all the fucking time. I don’t know what to do about anything, I feel like I’m losing all my resources. Am I turning useless? I hope not, I need Hongjoong to lean on me more than ever.

I’m losing him, I know I am. He is losing himself, he’s barely even there when I look him in the eye. I can barely recognize him and it hurts me so much to know this is because of you all. He keeps blaming himself, as if anyone was to blame for this shitty world we are living in, and I can see how that’s crushing him.

His panic attacks happen more frequently now, some stronger than others, and most days he forces himself to go back to the studio even when he’s still gone and lost in the trauma. I’ve tried bringing him back but I fear he doesn’t want to. I won’t survive this without him, I know I won’t. I don’t think I even want to to begin with.

Please, find our signs and follow the crumbs. I need you.

Seonghwa

ⴵⴵⴵ

It is hot. Insufferably hot and the air is so humid that every step feels like a struggle. His clothes stick onto his skin in the most uncomfortable of ways, making it even harder to simply walk. The fact that he couldn’t properly clean himself after the last hunting makes him look even more wrecked, his shirt darker and stiffer than usual because of the blood. He needs new clothes.

Yunho had tried to remain calm right after finding Mingi, to try and not look as maniac as he had been feeling for the previous months so as not to scare him away. But eventually his needs had crawled out and, besides his fear of seeing the change in the way Mingi saw him, he had turned back to his trustworthy axe. The only thing he could blindly put all his faith and hopes into.

It hadn't been the first time Mingi saw him fighting, he had found him struggling not to be killed by some zombies after all, but it had been the first one he saw him pick a fight on his own. Not because he needed to fight to survive, but because he needed to fight in order to feel alive. Mingi’s presence had helped at the beginning, finally being able to talk to someone had somehow calmed the voices in his head. Sleeping next to him had made him rest better. Walking besides him had made him feel lighter. But at the end of the day there was always that itch. That feeling he couldn’t shake that, now that they were together, he needed to kill more than before as if to counterbalance their reunion. Because the more he killed, the more extra time he was buying for them to be alive and well and naively happy.

Mingi had tried to dissuade him, of course, afraid that something might happen to Yunho in the heat of the battle but he had quitted quickly. Maybe he had seen the determination in Yunho’s eyes, maybe it was the craziness in him reflected in his pupils. Whatever it had been, he had climbed to the top of a tree and had allowed Yunho to do his thing, calling the attention of a few undead just to kill them in the most savage and inhuman way possible. And once he was done, with the blood covering him, the unmoving bodies at his feet and the weight of the axe pulling from his hand he had finally taken a full breath in. Relieved. As if the tension that had been building inside of him during all those weeks had finally abandoned his body.

From that moment forward they had both agreed to do something like it whenever he felt like he needed it. Mingi indulges him, if it can be even called that, and has never asked why. He has never wondered or looked at him in the wrong way, as if he knew this was his way of coping. It is twisted as fuck that his way of staying human and sane is killing every creature that gets close enough to him, but that had been his way of adapting to the circumstances. Mingi’s is fear, Yunho had learnt shortly after their first meeting, a fear so deep he resorts to hiding himself in almost any place he is in and to run away at the slightest noise.

So when, by complete surprise, they had run into those zombies at the beginning of their day both their reactions had been automatic. Without exchanging a word Mingi had run to where Yunho couldn’t see him, and he had unshielded his axe with a smile crossing his features. It had been quick, as usual, a few moves and they were safe again but it had taken him a while to find Mingi afterwards. The fear of having truly lost him again choking him as he continued searching, until he had finally seen him under a group of bushes.

He had been laying over his left side, his face hidden between his arms as if he wanted to make himself disappear. He was quiet, not even his breathing was noticeable for Yunho as he approached, but he was shaking violently. Yunho had approached slowly, as if he was trying to earn the trust of a scared wild animal and any false step might make it run away. He had stepped on a branch and the cracking of it had made Mingi’s head sprung up with panic clouding his eyes even after eyeing Yunho.

“They are gone,” he had dared whisper, trying not to pay too much attention to his state. It probably wouldn’t help Mingi feel any better seeing all the blood, but there was not much he could have done about it. “We are okay.”

Mingi had nodded in place, covering his ears with his palms as a sob shook his whole body and the tears started streaming down his face. It hadn’t been Yunho’s first time seeing him cry, both before and after the apocalypse, but he didn't use to cry like that when… things were normal. Now it was as if his emotions were so shallow that they kept emerging without warning, as if he had lost control over everything in his life and he couldn’t get it back. And Yunho knew that feeling very well even if his coping mechanism was different to Mingi’s.

“I took care of them, you can come out now.”

And Mingi had done so reluctantly because, even when fear took the wheel and he seemed to want to run very very far away, he always listened to Yunho. He always did as Yunho asked because he trusted him blindly.

It had taken them a while to get back on their feet but once they had started moving, slowly at first since Mingi’s energy had seemed to die down, they had continued without complications. Not much has been said ever since, the singing of the cicadas filling their ears in an almost deafening way.

“We are too close,” Mingi finally says, voice covered in terror, and just following his gaze Yunho can guess what he means.

They are getting closer to the city, the buildings more and more visible with every step they take. He can only guess how Mingi sees them, probably like threatening shapes radiating death and danger, but  they have to keep going and they both know it.

“We’ve talked about this,” Yunho sighs, trying very hard not to snap at the heat alone. “We’re running out of food.”

“We can last for a few more days…”

“That would mean rationing even more than we are doing now. You are starting to look healthy again, I’m not letting you starve if I can avoid it.”

It’s the truth, his skin now looks warmer and healthier. The flesh in his body doesn’t stick to his bones like it had when they had met. The roundness of his face has come back as well as the blush in his cheeks and the normal coloring of the white of his eyes. It has taken a lot of effort on Yunho’s side to help him get back into shape, reminding him once and again that he could eat as much as he wanted whenever he wanted to. Even if that meant Yunho had to eat less one day or that he had to hunt more often, he didn’t care.

“We cannot carry dead animals with us, if that’s what you are thinking,” Yunho continues the moment Mingi opens his mouth to speak. A wince in his expression as he has totally read his mind.

Grabbing him by the wrist, Yunho makes them both stop their walk before they get any closer to the city and need to be more careful about the noise they make. He cannot let this sit between them, he cannot let Mingi’s mind be driven by fear once they cross the border. But he will not treat him as if he is anybody, a random person that is dragging him and his search because that’s the furthest from the truth.

“I promised I would protect you and that’s what I will keep on doing, Mings,” he says, looking for his averting eyes so Mingi can see the sincerity in his words. “But you need to trust me here.”

“I do trust you,” he is quick to add, afraid that Yunho might have misinterpreted his words. “It’s everything else I don’t trust. Cities, zombies, people…”

Yunho nods, agreeing with his words because he is right. They can’t trust nothing and nobody, but they need to continue. They cannot turn around now that they are so close.

“We talked about this,” he reasons, his voice softer now as he holds Mingi’s hands with care. “One hour. Just one hour, okay? And we will leave. We will be okay.”

Mingi shakes his head, not fully convinced with the situation. A pout in his lips and his eyes dropping to the floor to hide whatever it is on his mind. Yunho can feel the tension on his hands, the way his breath is a little bit irregular and how he swallows hard and uncomfortably. He doesn’t ask for permission or even makes clear what he is going to do before he leans forwards and kisses him. Barely a peck, enough to take him out of his head for a few seconds.

Mingi raises his eyes to look back at him, with a surprised expression as if it was the first time they were kissing and not something they do literally everyday of their lives now. After blinking a few times he surrounds Yunho’s neck with his arms and presses their bodies together, kissing him back in full force, almost desperate and hungry. His mouth moves against Yunho’s, demanding and pleading at the same time, and all he can do is comply.

One hand on the side of his neck while the other holds him by the waist, Yunho responds into the kiss with the same intensity as he finally realizes how much he has been needing exactly this. The contact, the proximity, the warmth, the understanding. Feeling Mingi’s tongue against his makes the memory of the morning killing die in his mind, completely forgotten. He feels Mingi’s fingers clawing into his shoulders as if he was afraid Yunho might disappear, a mirror of his exact worry. Every kiss, every hug, every touch always feels like a dream he will wake up from at any given time. But that never happens. Mingi is always there when he opens his eyes, when he turns around, when he comes back from hunting, when he wakes up from a nightmare.

Besides the hunger and the need that radiates from the kiss, as if they were clinging to each other for oxygen, the movements get slower and softer with every caress. Mingi’s body gets loose around his arms, melting into the touch as time goes by, but the grip of his hands doesn’t waver. He doesn’t need to say it for Yunho to understand so he holds him tighter and kisses him softly, reverently. Every kiss filled with meaning. “I won’t let you go, I won’t lose you again. You will never be alone again.” And it’s how Mingi responds that makes Yunho feel like he could cry right in this moment, because he can hear the unspoken words that his boyfriend is pouring into the kiss. “You’re stuck with me forever, whatever happens. I love you the same.”

In a perfect world where zombies don’t exist and they still live on campus he would stay at home all day, cuddling on the couch with Mingi watching a movie while making out occasionally. But they don’t have that privilege, they never will. Yunho breaks the kiss forced by the passage of time, aware that they still have a lot of things to do, and Mingi doesn’t even protest this time around. Instead he lets his forehead rest over Yunho’s for a few more seconds so they can breathe the same air, and moves away slowly after that looking much calmer than before. Yunho knows he has trouble believing words sometimes and, when that happens, he is quick to show him in order to dissipate the anxiety that grows in him. Mingi never doubts his actions, his kisses or hugs, they are actually all that seems to need to put his mind at ease.

Yunho smiles at him softly as he places a kiss on his forehead before intertwining their fingers to start walking again, brushing his thumb against the back of Mingi’s hand to soothe him. Mingi smiles back as they walk, the worry still shining in his eyes. He seems to be focusing on everything but the direction they are headed, whatever works for him.

They don’t say much for the rest of the trip, as if they had both mutually agreed on staying quiet and ignoring the inherent danger that awaits them. Mingi focuses on their steps, on the shapes of the clouds in the sky and how dark they keep turning, signalling to the sky when a bolt of lighting crosses it in the distance. Yunho, on the other hand, scatters the forest around them paying attention to the trees and the bushes searching for both enemies and any type of fruit that may hang from them.

He doesn’t say a word when he notices the carvings on some of the trees, a symbol that repeats once and again and sets his alarms in a havoc. He decides to keep it to himself not to scare Mingi basically because he doesn’t have proof they are something bad, but his mind goes immediately to those clans that watch over their territories and kill anyone who gets too close to their settlement. Hopefully this is not it since nothing has happened to them yet, but they don’t look withered enough to be pre-apocalypse. They look both old and recent at the same time, as if someone has been coming constantly to make sure they are visible, and that creeps him out. The cuts on the bark look borderline obsessive, rushed and desperate and the fact that they don’t disappear as they approach the city is making him restless. The fact that something seems to click in his head after a moment, screaming at him that he knows that symbol, only increases his concern. His brain only remembers the threats and the dangers, the things he has to move away from, but he tries to remain as cool headed as possible. He cannot waste his energy on that now.

It is not long until they finally reach the border of the city, the concrete floor appearing in front of them and the trees slowly disappearing in the distance. The air is heavy and humid, charged with the electricity and the prospect of a summer storm that doesn’t seem to want to load. It’s heavy over Yunho’s shoulders, his head beginning to feel the build up in the atmosphere. Thunder can be heard in the distance and he can only pray that, by the time the storm finally breaks loose they will be already leaving the city.

He turns to look at Mingi one last time before they head completely into it, making sure that he is as fine as he can be and that he will not run away. He cannot lose time looking for him today, they cannot be drifted away from each other for even a second. When Mingi looks back at him with a tense smile on his lips and squishes his hand, Yunho takes a deep breath in and nods in his direction. A signal that they are really doing this, one that Mingi is quick to catch up on as he lets go of his hand and takes a couple steps backwards. They have been training for this, Yunho has been making sure he learns a few basics in case they come across something dangerous and this is the ultimate scenario to test his knowledge.

“I want you a few feet behind me at all times,” he had instructed him during the first days. “That way I can shield you with my body and you will be safe from my blows.”

It had been a command, not something he could do sometimes and others ignore. Mingi couldn’t protect himself, not only did he not know how to fight but also he was unable to face the danger. Now he could look at them, he could remain in his ordered position for as long as Yunho could hold them until he got the signal to run and hide, but the first few times he had frozen in place. He was not used to Yunho’s way of living, careless and straightforward with the creatures, but he had learnt to control his fear.

Now he doesn’t need to be told, he just takes his position and watches how Yunho reaches for his axe with his right hand. However, this time is different and the place requires extra measures. Yunho moves his left hand to the waist of his trousers and takes a knife from the sheath he made himself for it. Without turning his back on the distant buildings, he offers the weapon to Mingi, who doubts a bit and takes it with shaky hands and a question in his face.

“Just in case,” Yunho mouths in silence with the shadow of a smile. He can only hope the weight of it doesn’t freak Mingi out. He doesn’t plan on letting him use it, but you never know inside a city. He won’t risk leaving him completely unarmed.

Mingi nods once and seems to process how the metallic weapon feels in his grip, uncertain on how he should hold it or even use it. But, in the end, there isn’t much more they can do. They have to be together, they need to protect each other even if it’s out of desperation and without real training. Mingi has killed undead creatures before, he saved Yunho from the grip of one when he was certain he was going to die, so if he did it once he can do it again. Hopefully it doesn’t come to that.

Yunho’s plan is simple and straightforward: go inside the first warehouses they encounter, avoid those that don’t let natural daylight in or that look too crowded for a quick exit, take all the food and supplies they can, run as far away as possible. Not very specific, especially since they don’t have a proper list with everything they need, but whatever. He is sure that the situation they are about to face will destroy his plans if he tries any harder.

The moment the sound of their steps changes as they touch the concrete, every muscle in Yunho’s body seems to tense into place ready to snap at the slightest noise. He feels Mingi’s presence behind him but he never looks back, scanning the perimeter as well as the buildings they pass by. The first warehouses are completely useless, cars and furniture piled on the entrance and making it impossible to even see what’s inside. Desperation settles under Yunho’s skin as they keep going inside the streets and further away from the safety of the forest, but they still have time.

Thunder echoes in the distance, closer than before, and he looks up towards the sky worried that the upcoming downpour is going to soak them. However, the noise from the storm could benefit them in a way, covering their own little rustling and stunning the zombies.

Yunho focuses back on their mission, looking around trying to control his despair so Mingi doesn’t sense it, but with every step they take further away from the forest his hopes sink down in his chest. They are only able  to enter one place and, unfortunately, the only thing they can take from it is a brown shirt that Yunho is quick to change into, shoving his dirty one inside his backpack. This is bad . He needs to find something, he would gladly take any expired food if it doesn’t look too bad. Anything would do. But it seems like their luck abandoned them both when they found each other.

When they exit yet another empty warehouse, except for the amount of garbage it had inside, Yunho’s survival instinct jolts and he tightens the grip on his axe. Voices. They are low enough not to disturb the creatures, but not so much as to keep humans away especially when they are so close by. They are two, he can easily figure that out, which is fine if a fight is to happen. He can find a hiding spot for Mingi and take them down on his own if needed be, although he would rather not kill anyone here. People scream when they are afraid and about to die, that’s not particularly good inside a city like this one. They could be just passing by like they are looking for supplies, which wouldn’t make them a threat. However, at this point, Yunho is willing to confront them if they carry something he needs. It wouldn’t be his first time.

Signalling to Mingi to be careful, he approaches a hole in the wall that leads outside, one that seems to have been made to avoid the main entrance. Without walking outside just yet, he takes a look around in search of the origin of the voices and steps carefully outside when he doesn’t see them. They cannot be far, he hears another short sentence coming from his right, but they might be covered by one of the vehicles that rests on the road. Reaching one hand for Mingi to take with the intention to help him out, the other’s trousers gets stuck on a nail that protrudes from the wall making him almost fall forward by the imbalance.

Fortunately nothing falls to the ground, no metallic sound or anything being broken crossing through the air, but Mingi’s steps are strong enough for them to be heard by the others. Yunho knows and, by the way everything goes silent on the other side of the truck they are hidden behind, they have noticed their presence. He cannot blame Mingi for it, it was not his fault, but he checks on his leg to confirm that only the trousers suffered damage and he didn’t cut his skin. Relief washes over him when he sees no blood on him, that would have been bad . But the feeling doesn’t last long.

There is a swish and, a second later, a thumb. When Yunho follows the line of Mingi’s scared eyes he sees an arrow stuck on the wooden wardrobe that partially covers the hole they just came through. 

ⴵⴵⴵ

Dear Wooyoung,

Remember when we first met? It was your first day on campus and you happened to be assigned the dorm room next to mine but you walked through the wrong door. You opened the one to my room, unlocked because my new roommate was a disaster, and we stood there looking at each other in confusion. I remember I asked you who you were and you just smiled at me and said something like “I’m Wooyoung, the new criminal in the building, expert in invading strangers rooms”.

Even at the time I thought it was funny besides the awkwardness of the moment. I remember thinking “that’s a weird guy”, while at the same time a voice in my head was glad that you had taken the intrusion too lightly. I would have died of embarrassment if it would have happened to me instead but, of course, you just laughed about it.

You bought me coffee the day after as an apology… but I’ve never liked coffee so I had to turn it down. I remember how bad I felt about it, in my mind it seemed as if I was rejecting your apology, but you shrugged it off and offered to buy me another drink. So I agreed and walked with you to the closest coffee truck, expecting to feel the awkwardness typical of the first moments with someone you don’t know. However, that never actually happened. I don’t know when you moved on from stranger to friend, it just happened so naturally I’ve never really stopped to think about it before.

I don’t really know where I’m going with this, I guess I just needed to think about something that made me smile for a bit even if it’s just over a long distant memory. It feels warm thinking about you, just as it always felt being next to you. I think that’s why I keep writing to you. It gives me hope even if just for the few moments I write this. It makes me want to keep going even when Hongjoong’s helplessness is beginning to settle inside of me.

I miss you everyday. Love,

Seonghwa.

P.S.: The coffee I didn’t take… you gave it to the first person you ran into who happened to be Hongjoong. I’m very sure you didn’t register that but I was waiting for him to show up that day. Funny how life works.

ⴵⴵⴵ

Seonghwa is writing his letters again. He is smiling as he does so and for a solid moment Hongjoong just wants to stand up and throw his papers to the other side of the room. Because how dares he? How can he fucking smile when everything is wrong? When everything is going to shit? When he feels at the edge of a precipice all the fucking time? Ready to cry, ready to scream, ready to explode, ready to give up. Absolutely nothing is working, everything is at the brink of collapsing like a house of cards, and Seonghwa is smiling.

Meanwhile, Hongjoong is here seated on the floor as he continues drawing on a pile of crumpled paper with the desperation of a man who can taste his death. Writing the same thing again and again and again. So many times the words stop making sense and the mechanics of the action starts driving him insane, because they only remind him how he is failing without being able to do anything about it. Just sit down and watch how everything fades into nothingness. Everything but him, he will remain as a tangible proof of his failure.

And Seonghwa is smiling .

However, he is quick to control his mind and dismisses the thought before he is even able to make a move. Because he doesn’t actually blame Seonghwa for finding solace in this tiny moment of his day, for finding comfort in writing his letters since they are his only way out of this hell hole. His coping mechanism, the only way he knows how to wind down and let the pressure out, let his mind rumble free of the shackles of the apocalypse. Hongjoong envies him, mostly because his own way of staying present and escape from the horrors has been his unwavering search. The same search that is consuming him, making him lose his mind with every passing day. A search that has turned into a curse. One that he will not and cannot abandon.

Instead, he continues with his never ending work, ignoring the pain in both his wrist and his neck, focusing on the fact that the paint they managed to get during their last outing is running dangerously low. He puts all his energy into whatever he is doing, one minute away from covering his ears with both his hands to stop the sound of the pen against the paper reaching him. Because he cannot continue listening to it, a constant reminder that he is forever stuck in this nightmare while Seonghwa can walk away from it. Still Hongjoong is glad that he can, he doesn’t deserve to be going through the same thing he is experiencing everyday.

No, Seonghwa deserves better. He deserves a place where he can sleep for hours on end. Where he can spend time under the sun out of pleasure and not walking to get supplies. Where he doesn’t need to carry a weapon with him at all times, just in case. A place where he can live without worrying about following a mad man’s utopia. A place where Hongjoong is not weighing him down.

Hongjoong doesn’t notice he has stopped moving his hands, his mission stalled for a moment, until he hears the steps next to him and Seonghwa sits next to him on the floor. He has missed the moment when he has stopped writing, when he has put his precious letters away and has stood up to keep him company. Hongjoong’s arms surround his now bended knees to keep him steady in place and he lets his head fall between his legs, his forehead resting over his forearms. His breathing is a mess again, but at least this time he doesn’t feel himself shaking like a leaf.

A hand drops on his bare right arm, warm and soothing, and he feels himself melt a bit with it. A thumb caresses his skin slowly and softly, a head rests against his shoulder. A long inhale.

“Are you okay?” Seonghwa asks in but a whisper, as if he was afraid to break the moment.

“Yeah,” Hongjoong answers while his whole body screams “no”.

“You should rest,” the eldest says more like a suggestion than an order, he knows better than that now. “You have done enough for today.”

Hongjoong snorts at the words because he finds the claim hilarious. Enough? Will it ever be enough? It never will be, not until he achieves his objective. Not until he finds them all and their bodies stop appearing in his nightmares. But Seonghwa must take it as his perfectionism speaking instead of his guilt.

“You did, you deserve to rest.” It sounds final, certain. A certainty Hongjoong stopped feeling a while ago, now constantly unsure about everything.

Well… almost everything, because the moment he turns his head, still resting over his arms, and looks at Seonghwa his heart is quick to remind him of that one thing he is completely sure about. Seonghwa has his eyes closed as he rests against his shoulder, his right hand still drawing patterns over his skin in a relaxed and distracted manner as if they were but a normal couple. His lips remain partially opened and his eyelashes flutter the tiniest bit with every inhale. Even with the lack of proper sleep and the emotional exhaustion that he has been very obviously feeling, he looks like the most beautiful person Hongjoong has ever seen. Still ethereal and out of a fantasy, instead of a real person sitting next to him, touching him, taking care of him.

Hongjoong still remembers the first time he had seen him, he doubts he will ever forget. One of his most dreaded classes was finally over and he felt like he would probably pass out sooner than later if he didn’t get his hands on a cup of coffee. There were a few coffee shops on campus, but his favourite was the furthest away from where he usually had to attend his lectures. They made the best coffee, just how he liked it, so he always walked there with the little breaks he had throughout his day.

It was a cold winter day, one of those days in which snow hasn’t fallen yet but you can feel it in the air. Students ran from one building to the next trying to escape the freezing temperatures and the soft breeze; everyone covered with hats, gloves, scarfs and thick coats. Everyone but him. Unfortunately he had forgotten his gloves… somewhere. He couldn’t remember where he had seen them last, so he had left his dorm with the idea of keeping his fingers inside his pockets at all times for them not to freeze. Luckily enough the sun was still shining up in the sky, so Hongjoong avoided every shade that appeared on his way to enjoy the warmth hugging him. Relishing the comforting shivers that run down his spine when his skin got warm enough for the cold to not matter as much.

The music coming from his headphones was quietly keeping him company, setting the mood and making the tiredness of the morning class wash over him. By the time he arrived at the small and wooden stall, hidden in a small alley that connected two buildings, the smell of coffee was tugging a smile on his lips. He could almost taste it. There were only a couple people there already, their faces almost completely covered with warm clothes, and Hongjoong took his place the last in line checking his phone for a few seconds. He didn’t need to check what they had, he always ordered the same.

However he seemed to get lost in his unread messages, someone reminding him about the archery competition happening later in the day, because he didn’t notice when the person in front of him disappeared. Someone tapped him on his shoulder and he looked back surprised, almost expecting to see the friend of one of his friends or even a classmate, but instead was met with the biggest dark eyes he had ever seen.

“It’s your turn,” the man said with a kind voice, his eyes curving slightly as he seemed to be smiling under the scarf that was covering half his face.

“Ah, yeah, sorry.” Hongjoong turned to order a bit disoriented, taking a step aside when he was done so the man behind him could order while his drink was being prepared..

Hongjoong laughed to himself when he heard him ask for a cup of hot chocolate, but hid his smile inside the neckline of his coat so as not to look rude. He was not laughing at it because he thought it was childish, a drink not suitable for a university student, but because it was the complete opposite of what he had ordered himself: a dense iced americano with no sugar.

Surprisingly enough both drinks came out at the same time and, as they both reached for their cups, their eyes met again. This time the chocolate guy had removed his scarf from his face, eager to take a sip of his drink, and Hongjoong had to force himself not to stare. It was hard though, especially because he was beginning to think that he was dreaming and this was not real life. Because how could someone look like that ? It was impossible, it was almost insulting to the rest of the human race. He was putting everyone else at shame. Marked features, perfect tanned skin, curved nose, thick eyebrows, big eyes, plump lips curved in a soft and shy smile… Who was he and where had he been all of Hongjoong’s miserable life?

“Iced?!” The stranger said in complete shock when his eyes moved from Hongjoong to the drink he was now holding, his eyes even bigger now. Hongjoong swallowed hard, trying his best not to look like the loser he was feeling.

“I like it like that,” he shrugged feeling self-conscious and a bit embarrassed. He was not the best at taking care of himself, he knew a warm drink would probably be better considering the weather, but he liked his coffee cold.

Holding his cup with his hand hidden under the sleeve of the jersey he was wearing, he took a sip through the straw and his eyes closed the second the moment the coffee landed on his tongue. So good . The stranger giggled in place but said nothing else, he walked away in the opposite direction Hongjoong had to take and disappeared from his sight.

After that, they had met regularly in the same stall. Hongjoong had taken that same break between classes to walk to the same place for his coffee, always with the hopes of seeing him there and confirm that he was real. The gorgeous man didn’t go every week, just occasionally, but it had been enough for him. Just a crush, an infatuation that he had no intentions on pursuing. Until one of his friends had showed up with him and Hongjoong had realized they had one class together. From that moment forward they had started talking, seeing each other more, but always with someone else there to act as a bridge.

Now, in this stupid treehouse that they share out of pure necessity, Hongjoong wonders what would have happened if the zombies hadn’t come to be in the first place. Would he have had the courage to finally ask Seonghwa out? Or would he have remained as a distant acquainted, someone to have coffee with and nothing more? Just as they were doing when everything started, when Hongjoong had taken his hand without second thoughts and had pulled from him to run away. To end up here, living with the person he had inevitably fallen in love with, tangled in a relationship Hongjoong neither wants or deserves. Because how could Seonghwa really want this? To deal with the mess that he is, the problems that he causes, the burdens that he puts on his shoulders. Hongjoong is sure he just puts up with him because he has no choice.

“Do you regret it?” The words leave his mouth before he even has time to realize they are there. Still looking at Seonghwa with a frown, trying to control the sadness that is starting to drown him, he observes how the other opens his eyes and looks back at him. He remains leaning against Hongjoong, a questioning expression asking him to explain. “Having run away with me?”

“Why would I?”

“I basically forced you to come with me, I didn’t even ask. I just grabbed your hand and-”

“No, you didn’t,” Seonghwa cuts him, lifting his head and turning his body to face him. His hand leaves his arm and the loss of the contact makes Hongjoong want to whine but he doesn’t. He doesn’t deserve the comforting touch anyway. “You didn’t force me. If I had wanted to do something else I would have done it. It was chaos, we did what we thought was right at the moment.”

“But now you’re here. Stuck with me,” he voices his fears because if not now, when? Seonghwa must know how ridiculous all of this is, how stupid it is for them to continue sticking together.

However, he raises his left hand and caresses Hongjoong’s hair, tucking a few strands behind his ear. Hongjoong unconsciously leans into the touch, his body asking for more, and Seonghwa seems to notice faster than he does since he rests his whole palm against his cheek tenderly. Before Hongjoong has time to process, time to do anything about it, Seonghwa leans forward and captures his lips in a tentative kiss as if he was afraid of doing the wrong thing. When Hongjoong answers he does so slowly, allowing his eyelids to drop and his head to lift enough to ease his movements into the touch, but keeping his hands to himself. Seonghwa kisses him softly, almost shyly, keeping his left hand over his face while the other travels to Hongjoong’s still crossed arms as if he was waiting, hoping, asking for Hongjoong to touch him too.

They used to do that, it was their deal: find each other when they needed to find themselves. But lately Hongjoong cannot force himself to do it anymore. Partly because he doesn’t want to fall into the illusion that Seonghwa loves him the same way he does, but mostly because he fears he cannot find himself anymore. He is too far gone to find his way back. Worst of all, he doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to keep on trying to stay afloat. Seonghwa doesn’t deserve it.

Digging his fingers into the skin of his own arms, Hongjoong’s exhale feels wobbly on its way out of his body as he moves away from the kiss. Seonghwa seems confused as he stares at him, brows drawn together and eyes completely lost. His breathing is faster than usual, his hands don’t leave Hongjoong’s body and the touch alone is now burning him. He doesn’t deserve to be treated so kindly, he doesn’t deserve the care and the love. He doesn’t want it anymore even when he needs it.

“You should go to sleep,” he finally says, looking away from Seonghwa and fixing his gaze in the pile of papers that still rest next to him. “It’s late.”

The hand on his cheek disappears slowly as the silence covers them like a dusty blanket. Seonghwa says nothing for a while, just remains there still looking at Hongjoong who is blatantly ignoring him.

“It’s late for you too,” he finally mumbles, a certain tone in his voice that makes it clear that he is hurt. Hongjoong hates that he is the one causing that, but at the same time he is glad he did. Maybe that way Seonghwa will finally understand that he doesn’t deserve the attention.

“I will go in a bit, just need a few more minutes.”

The warmth coming from Seonghwa’s body disappears in an instant as he stands up without saying anything else. He stays next to Hongjoong for a moment, watching him go back to work, dedicating himself to this self-imposed task that is consuming him. Eating him alive just like the zombies out there would if they were to catch him. After that he starts moving away, walking slowly towards the bedroom, and Hongjoong feels a weight lift from his shoulders. It’s better this way.

However, Seonghwa stops in the threshold holding the door open and takes a deep breath in before speaking again.

“I’m not stuck with you,” it sounds harsh, even angry, but Hongjoong cannot force himself to look at him. “I’m with you because I want to and because I care. But most of all…” he stops.  The words die, strangled in his throat. That manages to make Hongjoong look at him, worry sheltering in his stomach, and he is met with a conflicted expression filled with something he would only describe as disappointment. “Most of all, I’m here because I need you.”

You do not. Nobody does.

“I can't do this alone and, even if I could, I don't want to,” he continues. “I don't want to do this with anyone else, Hongjoong, just with you. So don't push me away, please .”

With that he walks into the room and leaves the door only slightly opened, just enough to not look like he doesn't want Hongjoong to join him in bed but make his anger clear.

Things would be so much easier if Seonghwa didn't care, if he gave up on him altogether. If he didn't give him hope, a hope he cannot hold and cannot nurture since everything is doomed to wither and die in his hands.

Chapter Text

Dear Wooyoung,

I hope you are not alone. You never liked being alone. I remember you saying once that it made it difficult to breathe sometimes. I really hope you’re not alone.

Love,

Seonghwa

ⴵⴵⴵ

“I've always loved you in a way.” 

The words repeated once and again in Wooyoung's mind as he continued walking, following a trail he prayed was the right one. He had never been good at orienting himself in the city, even worse in a forest. It hadn’t been one of his tasks, it had been… San's.

San.

It had been three days since he left, just as he said he would. They had slept together that night, holding each other as if nothing else mattered, because nothing really did, and the moment Wooyoung had opened his eyes he was gone. Not even a goodbye kiss, a moment to absorb his presence before disappearing from his life forever. Just his ring, the one San always wore and that his grandfather had gifted him, laying on their improvised table. The only proof that he had been real, that he had been there. That he would never come back.

But Wooyoung, as headstrong and determined as he has always been, had refused to believe that. Maybe he was being naive, an idiot in love, but he was not willing to give up on San. Not now that they were finally… whatever they were. Wooyoung loved him like he had never loved anyone before, he couldn't lose him now that he knew San loved him too. He wasn’t going to let him be alone while the sickness consumed him, he refused. So he had packed everything he needed in a haste and had abandoned their little refuge with hopes of coming back one day accompanied by San. If alone, he wouldn't come back at all.

Three days. It felt like an eternity. Wooyoung hated being alone, he always had, but it turned even worse at the time because he couldn’t just reach out to someone for company like he used to do. He couldn’t grab his phone and ask one of his friends to go out, or simply burge into one of their dorms. Now he just had to endure it. Or more like ignore it and focus only on his mission, on the trail that he thought was San’s. Because if he allowed himself to ponder on the loneliness his mind would inexorably remind him how San had told him he had thirty six hours until being turned into a zombie. It had been more than seventy two hours since Wooyoung had seen the bite mark on his arm and he couldn’t think about what that could mean for San, so he preferred to ignore it altogether. As far as he knew San had gotten lost in the forest, alive and well, and they would be eventually reunited.

Luckily enough—maybe all his bad luck had been put into seeing the love of his life being turned into a literal monster—he hadn’t encountered any zombies on his way, and the ones that he had heard he had managed to avoid. He was still recovering from his water poisoning, forcing himself to eat a bit more everyday and staying as hydrated as he was able to, because that’s what San would have committed to do and Wooyoung didn’t want to disappoint him. Therefore, an encounter with some of those things would have been fatal for him, unable to properly fight for his life and most definitely not able to run for long. His body still weak, his muscles not as strong as they used to be, he needed to be extra careful even when he had no time to dwell on that. He needed to find San.

Every day before the sun set in the horizon he looked for a place where he could spend the night, going through the list of safely enough places he had gone over with San before they found their refuge. Even with his haste he was too afraid to move around with no sunlight, so he committed himself to try and have nice and safe nights. Everyday the same routine: look for a sheltered and empty place if possible, if not take a high enough location so the zombies couldn’t get him, check the supplies he had left, eat something, try to sleep as warm as possible.

As days and weeks went by the cold and the weather started making it more and more difficult for him. He had gotten used to his life in the shelter with San, warm and safe and comfortable, and now his body protested the moment the temperatures dropped a bit or rain started falling. On lucky days, he could find partial shelter during storms worried about getting sick later on, others he simply climbed to a tree and prayed not to be found or freeze to death. But still, even with the pouring rain or the strong wind, he refused to stop for longer than necessary. He had packed more than it would have been wise to considering he needed to move fast, but he had been unable not to take as many things as possible. He would have felt bare and forsaken if he had not.

His plans to move as fast as possible were destroyed one morning after taking a detour to look for supplies. He had been alone for a month now and there was not much he could continue rationing, so he had gotten close enough to a small village in search of food. It had gone well, better than the last time he visited a city, that’s for sure, the problem had come on his way out of the civilized area. Out of nowhere heavy rain had started falling on him, so strong it was difficult to see the path in front of him, so with a heavy heart he had looked for shelter. Fortunately he had come across an abandoned building with the doors and lower windows completely fenced, probably from when things were normal and people liked to vandalize spaces like that. It was good, perfect even if all the fences were in place because that meant no zombies could have gotten inside or would disturb him once he entered.

He moved quickly, cursing at himself when the rain didn’t stop or got softer, and ran around the building looking for a way in. There were two rows of windows, the ones at eye level had a thick and strong fence on them since they were easy access, and the second ones were a couple meters from the ground. Those were completely opened, waiting for him to use them to get inside, so he examined all of them waiting for the easiest way to do climb without breaking a bone or two.

Wooyoung had always been athletic and he trusted in his body, but the rain was making everything slippery and his desperation for shelter was making him reckless. He had to try a few times, moving his feet from one place to the other until he found a good enough foothold to push himself upwards. The wall was pretty barren, only small openings between the bricks, but enough for him to continue trying even when his fingertips got scraped and a little bloody. By the time he managed to reach the windowsill he was breathless and completely soaked, his clothes were clinging to his skin and his trousers were falling down his hips. He allowed himself a moment to rest before facing the open space of the building, checking from the heights that it was safe to go down.

It looked good enough, safe enough to hide from the downpour, and with all the entrance points closed he could breathe for the first time since he had lost San. He even dared to start a fire in one corner, where it was hidden enough not to be seen from the outside, since the water falling and the slight mist in the air could hide the smoke perfectly. Wooyoung had been delighted to feel the warmth for the first time in such a long time, but his relief didn’t last long.

The rain didn’t stop after one day. It kept going for a whole week, trapping him in the building with the fear that the rivers would be flooding and the forest would be dangerous since the wind had gotten worse as days went by. He was stuck, unable to keep going, unable to even go outside for long periods of time because the rain was crazy. At least he could get proper sleep at night, without needing to worry about being caught or being too cold, but the waiting was killing him. He was feeling like a wild animal locked in a cage, constantly pacing from one wall to the other waiting for the rain to stop so he could run outside.

He hadn’t even been sure that he was following the right trail or if it was a trail at all, but he had been hopeful about it. Now, with all the water that was falling, the trail would be gone. Lost forever. Where was he going to head now? What was he going to do? How was he going to find San? It had been heartbreaking enough to never find anything palpable to give him even a bit of hope that he was getting closer. He never ran into anyone, never received an answer for the chirping that used to be their sign, never even saw carvings on the trees as a response to his own. Nothing but silence and cold and loneliness.

But Wooyoung’s stubbornness didn’t allow him to give up, didn’t even allow him to think about giving up. It was never an option. So the moment the rain stopped and the sky seemed to clear out enough for him to be sure that it was safe to go out he had done exactly that. He had packed all his things and started walking in a direction he prayed was the right one, picking without thinking too much into it because stopping to think promised to be fatal.

༄·❅❀☀︎

By the time the weather was even colder and snow started falling over him he was still alone and desperate, but somehow hope was still installed in every single one of his bones. It made no sense really that he was still hopeful to find San, he had found nothing so far and it looked like it would continue being like that, but a very strong part of himself didn’t know how to give up. Not even when he hated snow with all his might and it was covering him and his not-thick-enough clothes and his steps were slower than usual and all he wanted to do was find his way back home.

One night, sheltering in a partially broken pine tree with the snow constantly piling on the floor, he had been completely sure that he would freeze to death. Unable to set a bonfire, to find a closed space where he could hide and not having found a decent coat he could use, he had tucked into his sleeping bag and hoped for the best. Maybe he would lose a finger or two by the time the morning came, maybe he was lucky and he drifted into a sleep he would never wake up from. He would only regret not having been able to see San one more time, dead or alive. At that time he didn’t care anymore, it had stopped to matter to him, he just wanted to see him again.

However, the sound of an engine, something he hadn’t even thought he would hear again, woke him up in a second right after he had closed his eyes. When he came back and woke up enough to be conscious of his surroundings the snow kept on falling, he couldn’t feel his fingers or his nose and he was beginning to feel his eyelids extremely heavy. But the noise of the wheels against the forest floor woke him up all of a sudden, even more when he heard someone go down the car and start calling for him.

“Jung Wooyoung, I know you’re there,” a woman’s voice said very close by. How does she know my name? “We’ve been watching you, you will die tonight if you don’t come with me.”

Wooyoung remained quiet, careful even about his teeth chattering non-stop, and waited with the hope that she would go away and let him be. But that didn’t happen. Instead, a flashlight was pointed directly at him, blinding him and forcing him to turn his head away, covering his face with his heavy arm. Nothing was making any sense and, for a moment there, he thought he was dreaming, but his body ached and he was so cold that he dismissed that rather quickly.

“I recommend you come down and accompany me,” she insisted with a neutral and tired voice tone, as if she was done with the whole situation… whatever that was to begin with. “I know where your friend is.”

Friend? But he didn’t say anything, he just moved his hand slightly so he could see the figure standing next to the tree he had picked as tonight’s bed. She was covered with a thick coat, something that looked much better than anything Wooyoung was wearing, and the gloves covering her hands made him envious. If only he had some too…

“Choi San?” She added after a long pause, causing Wooyoung to jolt in place and almost fall from the branch if not for the rope he always used for safety reasons. She sighed then, lowering the flashlight and allowing her body weight to fall on her right leg. “I don’t have all night, you know?”

It could very much be a trap as far as he knew, but what if it was the truth? What if she knew where San was? If she knew his name that could only mean one thing: San had told her. And that only led to one final conclusion: San was alive and well. So Wooyoung didn’t think much into it, probably out of desperation and an unwavering desire not to die tonight, and got down from the tree risking being killed on sight or worse. However, the woman did nothing to him but simply walked towards the driver’s seat of the car and invited him to hop on.

“It’s fucking freezing tonight,” she said shivering in her seat as she removed her gloves and turned the engine back on, the heating system of the vehicle buzzing immediately. Wooyoung leaned forward, nearing his shaky hands to the fans and trying his best not to start crying in relief. The woman left the gloves she had been using over his lap and started driving. “You need them more than me.”

Putting them on without wasting a moment longer, Wooyoung turned his head to look at her for the first time, unable to even thank her since his teeth had begun chattering loudly and violently. She looked young, older than him but still young, probably around her thirties. Her hair, falling past her shoulders was dark brown except for the ends that had a slightly pink color, she had probably had it fully dyed before the apocalypse. She kept biting on her lower lip, eyes squinted behind her black and gold glasses.

“Wh-Who are you?” Wooyoung finally managed to whisper, the warmth of the vehicle far from being enough for him.

“There’s a thermos inside the bag behind your seat,” she answered instead as if she hadn’t heard him. “It’s filled with hot tea, feel free to drink it.”

Wooyoung’s body was stiffened with the cold and the shivers that shook him head to toe, but his survival instincts took control of the situation and forced him to turn around. He didn’t need to look to find it, the warmth that came from it was easily located by his numb fingers that clung to it as if it was a lifesaver. He resisted the urge to drink the moment he removed the lid, mindful not to burn his mouth besides how badly he wanted to chuck it down. He blew into it, trying to cool it down a bit, before taking a sip and a satisfied groan left him as the liquid traveled down his throat and warmed him inside out.

“W-why are you help-ping me?” Wooyoung tried asking again, looking at her driving with tears in his eyes. For the kindness, the cold or the sudden realization that he was not going to die just yet he wasn’t sure.

“I told you already. Choi San,” she said with a sigh as if it was abundantly clear already. As if it was obvious and Wooyoung had been a damn fool looking for him all this time. “You need to pay more attention, mate.”

“San t-told you abo-bout me?”

“Something like that,” she clicked her tongue looking at him for less than a second as she continued driving, avoiding the holes in the unpaved road. “Try and warm up, it won’t take us long.”

The moment his body felt warm enough sleep hugged him tight.

༄·❅❀☀︎

Wooyoung woke up abruptly when the vehicle stopped, disoriented and looking everywhere trying to remember where he was. The woman in the driver’s seat was putting her coat on and reaching back for her bag, the one that had contained the thermos that Wooyoung was still holding onto because it remained warm. The moment she noticed his eyes were opened she gave him a bread smile and jumped off the car without saying a word. He remained seated there for a moment more, not wanting to face the coldness of the exterior again, but then his brain clicked. San.

Rushing outside, his legs almost giving up on him when he stepped on the snow, he followed her steps with his breath hitched and his heart beating crazily inside his chest. He tried to reach her without falling face first into the snow, minding his every step while still feeling frantic.

“Where are we? Where is San? Is he alive? Is he okay?” He started rumbling, his jaw tense but not shivering anymore.

However, the woman didn’t answer his questions but continued walking towards what looked like an abandoned shelter. With the snow storm that was currently falling over them it was hard to discern what it was made of or what surrounded it, but Wooyoung was pretty sure he could see a couple of figures positioned on the roof. Where the fuck am I?

The woman opened the door and let him in before her, which he did ignoring the part of his mind that told him to get away. Since when did he trust strangers in this deadly world? San had taught him better, he never allowed anyone near them, and now he was willing to put his life on the line because a woman he knew nothing about had mentioned his name. Genius.

As the door closed behind them Wooyoung felt his breathing fail him, panic crawling beneath his skin, unstoppable. This is the moment I die a stupid death, isn’t it? he thought, hugging himself to maintain the warmth in his body besides the chills that were running down his spine. He was not necessarily cold anymore, his muscles still ached with the freezing temperatures they had been exposed to but he was recovering nicely. However, the fear that was installing in him threatened to make him shiver again. 

The building he was now in looked gloomy to say the least. The yellow lighting of the place mixed with the metallic and rusty looking walls made it look creepy, like one of those B-series movies he sometimes watched with his friends when he needed a distraction and that had a heavy filter on them. It smelt humid and clean at the same time, bleachy like a hospital and fresh like the forest outside. A mix that made no sense to his brain, that was starting to picture a torturing chamber at the end of a poorly illuminated corridor.

From the outside it had looked rather small, probably the blizzard and his tiredness hadn’t allowed him to properly seize it, but it was enormous even when he could only see a fraction of it. Standing in the entryway he could see a small room to his left that could very much be categorized as a security room, considering all the screens Wooyoung could see on one wall showing images of what he imagined were rooms of the place. There were people moving inside those black and white screens, lots of people. More people he had ever seen together since the apocalypse started. It felt odd, unsettling. 

The woman, who had basically rescued him from a terrible death to probably bring him into another, signaled him with her head and Wooyoung followed her. He figured running away at that point was useless and the need to figure out how they knew San was forcing him to continue no matter what. It had been his final wish after all, he had just wanted to see him one last time if he was to die that same night. If they were going to kill him he would at least risk seeing those features. When she opened one dark wooden door that creaked all the way, Wooyoung took a deep breath in and started walking trying not to laugh like a maniac at how stupid he was being. He could almost hear his former roommate telling him to think for once in his life.

Sure enough the place didn’t look any better once fully inside it. It felt like a maze with a thousand corridors and locked doors, cameras in every corner and some soldier looking people patrolling it from time to time. This feels like being inside one of those stupid horror videogames I used to play. The thought alone made him giggle, covering his mouth not to disturb or call more attention onto himself, but the woman a few feet ahead of him turned back with her eyebrows raised in confusion. He didn’t explain himself, but focused on the walk trying to appear unbothered, when the woman opened a new door and immediately started talking once they were on the other side.

“We found him a few days after the bite,” she said, not giving Wooyoung time to process the lab he had been led into. “We normally scatter the surroundings of the complex looking for newly bitten, so he was just another find for what we do here. But when he told us how long it had been since the bite…”

Wooyoung was looking around the room, whiter than the rest of the place and filled with equipment he didn’t even recognize. Only a few other people were there, completely ignoring them as they moved samples from one place to the other with masks over their faces and surgical gloves on. He was not following, not understanding where he was or why he was there, but he knew she was talking about San. His heartbeat started resonating against his ears as he approached the place where the woman had stopped, in front of a wide window, and a gasp got stuck on the back of his throat the moment he dared to look.

There he was. San. San . After all that time looking for him like a madman, after following what was beginning to feel like an illusion, he was there. 

However he didn’t look like San. It was him but… not really. Certainly not the image he would have liked to have of him before dying. He was wearing some hospital clothing, white shirt and trousers, and he was lying on a bed with both legs and arms tied to restrain his movements. He was shaking in place, trying to free himself with desperation as a bunch of growls and screeching sounds left his body making Wooyoung’s blood freeze as the images of the monsters chasing them clouded his mind. His eyes were bloodshot, the arm where he had been originally bitten was covered with thick and dark veins and he had bloody marks over his palms from digging his fingernails way too deep into the skin.

“We didn’t understand at the time why it was taking the virus so long to take possession of his body, but the first symptoms didn’t start showing until a week after the bite.” A week. They could have been together for a whole more week. “The process has been surprisingly slow, slower than we have seen before.”

“I-I don’t understand,” Wooyoung mumbled, realizing he had moved his right hand to rest against the glass at some point. The tears pooling in his eyes blurred his vision, but he couldn’t look away. “Is he… is he…?” Dead? Gone? Lost forever?

He couldn’t finish the sentence out loud, too scared to hear the answer because, even when he had known this outcome was unavoidable, he had spent all those days living in the illusion that San was okay. That they would be reunited again and they would be able to continue with their lives as if nothing had happened. But right at that moment, looking at San being unrecognizable, Wooyoung felt his world crumble right in front of his eyes.

“He is not,” the woman answered even when he hadn’t really said it. Wooyoung turned his head to stare at her and she looked back at him with pity in her eyes. “I know it doesn’t look like it but he is still him. He comes back from time to time, although the lucid moments get smaller every day.”

“So he is not… Lucid moments? What does that mean?” He was so lost, so incredibly lost in all the words he had just heard that his mind was slowly collapsing and before he knew it there was a weight over his chest that didn’t allow him to breathe properly.

His vision, already blurred with tears, got even fuzzier. Now everything was covered in tiny white spots that not only didn’t disappear with blinking but got worse the more he tried to get rid of them. His hand still resting on the glass started shaking visibly and he looked at it in confusion because he was not feeling cold anymore. Actually, the more he thought about it making no sense at all the more his lungs refused to inhale deeply, the more his hands shook, the more his vision got cloudy. As he tried to say something, ask for help since he was clearly drowning, his legs gave up on him and he slipped to the floor.

The woman that had been talking to him dropped down next to him, cursing multiple times as she took a close look at him. Wooyoung’s back against the wall felt heavy to hold, so he just folded forward with the legs bent in front of him and held himself with both hands over his chest, his fists tightening around his clothes with desperation. He was dying, he was fucking dying. Of course he was. The moment he finds San his body gives up on him. He tried to stand up, just enough to look at San one more time before his body completely collapsed, but a second later he was being pulled down again.

Someone took both his hands besides his protests to be released, and next thing he knew his hands got wet and cold and his skin was protesting loudly. It was freezing, similar to how he had felt outside before being found. It was so intense that his brain focused only on that, allowing him to go back to a deeper breathing. His vision cleared just enough to focus on the woman in front of him, holding both his hands inside a bowl filled with water and ice.

“You need to breathe, Wooyoung,” she said softly, softer than he had ever heard her since they had met. It still sounded somehow commanding, just like she had ordered him to leave the tree if he didn’t want to freeze to death, but her expression looked worried. “Breathe.”

So Wooyoung had done just that, following the instructions to inhale and exhale at the rhythm he was instructed. He filled his lungs, kept everything in for a few seconds and then let it all out to repeat it all over again. Bit by bit, without even realizing, his breathing started normalizing and his heartbeat was not as loud against his ears.

“Can you tell me one thing you can feel, one you can see, one you can smell and one you can taste?” She said in the same calming but decisive tone and Wooyoung nodded once while swallowing.

“Cold.”

“Where? I need you to be specific.”

“I feel…” he began, feeling watched under a microscope as her gaze never left him. “I feel cold in my hands.”

She nodded, pleased, and encouraged him to continue as she released him from her grip allowing him to remove his hands from the water. But he left them there, afraid to be caught into the whirlwind of emotions if the cold disappeared.

“I see you. You have pink hair?” He asked as if he hadn’t already paid attention to it before, as if his senses were playing tricks on him, but she nodded with a smile to confirm that he was right. “It smells like bleach.”

“We need to keep the laboratory clean.”

“Makes sense,” Wooyoung nodded with a snort. “And I taste… I don’t know, something salty.”

The woman shrugged, reaching inside one pocket of his jacket and took out a tissue that she handed Wooyoung.

“You are crying,” she said when he didn’t understand why she was giving him that. But now that she had mentioned it Wooyoung could feel the wetness on his cheeks, the thickness of his eyelashes and the puffiness in his eyelids. 

Wooyoung took his hands out of the bowl slowly, letting the water drip onto the floor and his clothes as he prayed for the asphyxiating feeling not to come back. The woman allowed herself to sit down completely on the floor in front of him. She looked calmer now, but still her eyes didn’t waver from Wooyoung as if she was ready to act at the smallest sign of distress. Exactly like he was feeling, waiting for the moment his body would start misbehaving again. It didn’t feel like he was going to die anymore and the relief alone made his back fall against the wall.

He finally took the tissue that she was still offering and cleaned his tears with heavy movements, noticing how his hands were still shaking a little bit. After the coldness of the night and the attack his body wanted to give in, his eyelids suddenly became heavier than before and his muscles felt weak and aching.

“Thank you,” Wooyoung managed to say, his head falling forwards with the tiredness and his eyes slightly droopy. It was getting harder to stay awake, but he didn’t want to fall asleep just yet.

“You should rest,” she said then as she stood up, taking the bowl with her to put it on an empty surface near them.

“No, I can’t,” Wooyoung tried to sound convincing, angry even, but his energy level was so low that his voice was barely a whisper. “I need to know what’s wrong with San.”

“We can explain everything tomorrow,” she extended a hand in front of Wooyoung for him to catch so she could help him stand but he didn’t move. Stubborn. “You were clearly not ready for this, but I feared you wouldn’t want to stay if you didn’t know about him.”

He wanted to ask so many questions that were crowding his head that he couldn’t pick just one. There were so many things he couldn’t understand like why was he there, who were these people, why had they allowed him to see San, what was that building all about… But the only thing that left his mouth was:

“I have nowhere to go.”

Somehow that seemed to be more important, the only thing he could actually focus on, because it was the truth. After being out in the forest for so long, alone and suffering from the inclement weather, he had almost forgotten what it felt like to have a roof over his head. Now, locked in a place he had been sure he would die in and knowing San was literally right behind him, Wooyoung’s mind kept on drifting to the possibility of sleeping in a warm bed and eating real food.

“You do,” she said with determination, shaking her hand to make him react and finally grab it. “You’ll stay here.”

Wooyoung grabbed it with a groan as every part of his body protested with the movement and stood up with a hard effort, consciously avoiding turning around. He didn’t want to see San again, not for now. He needed to process the information he had gained in order not to panic again at the sight alone, so he kept his eyes looking forward to the woman with partial pink hair.

“I’ll walk you to your room.”

And just like that she started walking outside of the lab basically forcing Wooyoung to follow her since he didn’t want to stay there for a moment longer hearing San’s guttural screams.

༄·❅❀☀︎

“We all sleep in this area of the complex,” she said as they entered a new set of corridors that looked slightly more homey. The walls were light green, the lighting was dimmer and warmer and there was not as much security around. “You will need to share a bathroom with about four other people, but we’ve given you a single room.”

Wooyoung was still lost, not understanding why they were giving him shelter but he couldn’t complain. It felt strange, though, to know he was not alone anymore, that so many people were still alive and safe and he was now apparently part of that. Even with the knowledge that he was only there because something he didn’t understand was up with San, he felt grateful about it. He was safe, at least for now, and he didn’t need to look for food or worry about the weather anymore.

“This is you,” she stopped in front of a wooden door with the number 117 written on it by hand. “I’m on 120, a couple doors in that direction, if you need anything.”

When she opened the door Wooyoung was expecting a barren room, something cold and even impersonal, but was surprised to be met with a rather cozy place. The bed had colourful sheets instead of simple white ones, the walls were painted a light shade of blue that reminded him of the clear sky and there was a window on the wall opposite the door. After climbing up some stairs Wooyoung had doubted how high they were until that moment. It must have been a third or even fourth floor, he couldn’t be sure, and from the glass he could see the tops of the trees and an open space, like a garden, below him.

“I figured you would appreciate having a window. This place can play with your head if you don’t look outside from time to time,” she explained as Wooyoung walked inside looking around him with surprise. “You have more blankets on the wardrobe to your left in case you need them.”

“Why am I here? This doesn’t make any sense,” he finally said, frowning in both disbelief and distrust.

“I will explain everything tomorrow,” she simply answered. “I will come looking for you in the morning and I will give you a tour of the place, how does that sound?”

“I want to know what’s going on with San.”

“Yeah…” she rolled her eyes, but it didn’t look as if she was doing that because of him. Not because she was tired of his questions, but more like she couldn’t really say much at the moment. “I fear you will need to be patient for that, but I’ll try to move everything faster.”

Wooyoung nodded slowly, not satisfied but aware that there was not much he could do about it. He didn’t even know how to go back to the lab to begin with and the bed was practically screaming at him to lay down on it. The woman grabbed the handle of the door with her right hand, ready to close it and give him some privacy.

“I’m Sehee, by the way,” she said, still in place. “Let me know if you need anything, okay?”

“Thank you, Sehee,” Wooyoung said, a mix of exhilaration and a heartwarming feeling boiling in his chest at the discovery of her name. It had been a while since he had met someone knew and, as social as he had always been, it felt like a small victory.

The woman closed the door after smiling at him and Wooyoung was left alone inside his new room, his heart still beating hard against his chest at the realization that he was safe and sound and San was alive and he could sleep in a real bed and San was alive and he wouldn’t freeze to death and San was alive .

He dropped his backpack onto the floor, removed his shoes and lied in bed without thinking about anything else. He was dirty and hungry, a shower would have been the right choice for his aching muscles, but he couldn’t force himself to move anymore. So he just covered himself with the blankets and the moment his head fell onto the pillow his eyes closed shut and he drifted into sleep.

Peaceful sleep, the type that surrounds you when you are so tired your brain cannot even be bothered to dream.

༄·❅❀☀︎

The knocking on the door woke him up, surprised and scared, as he literally jumped out of bed ready to fight whatever was nearing him. It took him a while to remember where he was, that he was not in the forest and that no threat was coming his way, and once he did he sighed deeply.

“Rise and shine!” A voice said from the other side of the closed door and Wooyoung’s mind was quick to link it to the woman he had met last night.

Unsure of what he was supposed to do, he opened the door and was met with Sehee dressed with white loose trousers, a black shirt and a light brown cardigan on top of it. She looked more casual, nothing like the image Wooyoung had first had of her in the forest as she was pointing at him with the flashlight. It felt almost like a normal meeting on a normal day, something he would have had during his life on campus.

The moment her eyes fell on him they traveled through his body, still in the same worn-out clothes with dirt all over them. 

“You look like shit,” she was quick to say, which made Wooyoung snort as he was not expecting that. “I will give you an hour to shower and look like a normal person again. Meet me in my room when you’re done.”

She was gone after that, not looking back or waiting for an answer, and Wooyoung liked that. He suddenly felt eager to start his day, to know more about the place he had been taken into, to know more about the lab and about San’s condition.

He walked towards the window to admire the view and get a feeling of the time. It had stopped snowing and the outside was completely covered in white. It was still slightly cloudy and a shiver went down his spine as he thought about how warm he was inside, how sure he was now that he would have died outside if he hadn’t been found. It was a humbling feeling to be honest, knowing you have bought yourself—more like Sehee bought them for him—a few extra minutes on this earth.

Feeling rested and somehow refreshed he was quick to head to the bathroom and take the first warm shower he had taken in such a long time. He had forgotten how good it felt to have the water fall down on him, relaxing your muscles on its way down his skin, since had been washing himself in rivers, withstanding the cold and taking care of one body part at a time not to freeze. He could have moaned the moment the fresh soap touched his skin and the flowery smell reached his nostrils, even more when he dug his fingers into his hair and massaged his scalp to get rid of the dirt. Even when he was in need of a very deep shower he didn’t want to take too long knowing he was sharing with more people, and not knowing how much warm water they had available made him rush everything.

He had no real clean clothes but he picked the ones that looked the best. Not ripped or extremely dirty, just slightly messy from being at the bottom of the backpack. They were far from being winter appropriate clothes, but he figured he would be okay considering the inside of the building remained warm. After taking a quick look in the mirror, trying not to focus too much on his extremely chapped lips, his cold-dry skin and the dark circles under his eyes, he combed his already long hair with his fingers and walked towards Sehee’s bedroom.

The door was opened and she was seated on the floor with a book between her hands, but the moment she heard him approach she left it over one of the three beds and stood up. Before uttering a word she grabbed a coat that was lying on one bed and handed it to Wooyoung.

“For you, you will need it.”

As usual she didn’t wait for a response, she just grabbed her own from behind the door and walked outside. Wooyoung had to rush after her, wondering why she had given him a coat but thankful about it because he really needed one. Sehee walked through the corridors like a person who had been living there for a while—which she probably had, considering everyone greeted her as they walked—and took Wooyoung to a different place in the complex that smelled like food from a distance.

“We can’t sit down to eat, so just grab whatever you want,” she said, turning her head back as they passed through a door and a big dining room greeted them.

It smelt so good Wooyoung could feel his stomach start to groan like crazy. He had been eating badly and in very small portions, afraid to run out of food and not be able to look for more for a long time, and he had learnt to ignore hunger at some point. However, now that he was there and the smell was almost dizzying his body came back to life in full force. But he was not alone, that food was not only his. In fact he had arrived just a few hours ago, he was literally the least important person there and he didn’t want to take even more advantage of the situation, so he grabbed a banana and an apple—he had missed eating fruit so much—that he put in the pockets of his new coat, one toast with ham on it and a glass of juice.

As he munched on the toast and drank his juice slowly, Sehee had insisted that he could take the glass with him as long as he put it back when he was back, they walked around the complex with ease as everything was explained to him. The whole area was heavily fenced, covered with thick vegetation to avoid being seen by outsiders or zombies that passed by and there were patrols around the area at all times. They had a garden, now bare and covered in snow, and a small greenhouse filled with different types of plants and vegetables that a bunch of people were taking care of at the moment.

The main building held the bedrooms in the upper levels and the common areas in the lower ones, the kitchen and the pantry separated and locked away from the rest to avoid unwanted problems. Connected by an improvised corridor made of wood and with strong security and locked doors was the laboratory Wooyoung had visited the night before, with the main entrance directly connected to it for safety reasons. As they walked through it again, the bleach smell already burning Wooyoung’s nostrils, Seheed looked at him with concern, probably thinking of his panic attack from last night.

“What do you need to know?” she finally asked, slowing down the pace as they finally entered the building and she signaled him to hang his coat in a coat rack by the door.

Wooyoung’s brain rushed through all of his thoughts, his mind going crazy at the permission to ask whatever he needed to know. He had so many questions he didn’t know where to start, what he needed the most, so he started with the easiest to hear.

“How did you find me?”

“We’ve been keeping an eye on you,” she sighed, maybe that was not the easiest for her to answer. “We made a deal with San.”

“What type of deal?”

“He stayed here willingly if we took care of you.”

The word “willingly” resonated in his mind like an echo, carrying more meaning than the rest of the sentence. For Wooyoung it could only mean one thing: they probably had more people in similar conditions to San and they were not there out of their own volition. So they had talked to San, of course they did if they had figured out his name, and he had agreed on staying there for… what?

“I still don’t… Why is he here?”

It was definitely not an answer he was ready to hear, definitely not a topic he was ready to deal with, afraid as he was about panicking again, but he couldn’t ignore it when it was right in front of him. He was there because of San after all, because he had made a deal he still couldn’t understand, so the least he could do was figure out what the deal was all about. He was not willing to sacrifice San and his integrity just for a bed and some food, he knew that perfectly well.

“As I told you last night he is not completely gone, the disease hasn’t consumed him yet,” Sehee explained walking side by side with him as they moved through a corridor different to where they had been the previous night. “He seems to be holding onto his humanity, he comes back from the daze sometimes and he talks about you.”

“About me?”

“That’s pretty much everything he talks about,” she shrugged with a chocked laugh. “Wooyoung this, Wooyoung that. Sometimes it’s obvious he is completely back, others he just mumbles nonsense.”

“I still…” Wooyoung shut his eyes for a moment, shaking his head in an attempt to focus on the conversation and not the image of San mumbling his name while still being tied up to that bed. “You still haven’t told me why he is here, what was the deal he made? You’ve said you’ve been keeping an eye on me, why take me here now?”

“Okay,” she sighed deeply and stopped walking, scanning the area for a moment looking for something. Wooyoung only understood when her eyes stopped on a couple of empty chairs on one corner of the room, and when she moved towards them and took a seat he simply followed. “We all knew about last night’s storm coming and we knew where you were, we’ve been tracking you as I have already said.”

Wooyoung nodded slowly even when that still sounded so strange in his ears. How had they been tracking him without him knowing? And why had they never done anything to help him?

“I wasn’t going to let you die in that storm, I didn’t care what anyone else thought, so I went out to get you. But San had talked about your stubbornness before so I knew you would need to see him in order to stay here. You looked about to run away.”

“But why? I mean, why did you care?”

“Does that matter?” she asked with a tired smile, her eyes locked on her hands over her lap as she pinched the skin in her fingers. “Sorry about the panic attack, by the way, it was a possibility but I hoped it wouldn’t happen.”

Wooyoung shook his head no to dismiss the apology. Could he blame her considering she had saved his life? Considering he was now there warm and with a full belly? Considering she had taken him to San? He couldn’t even with the knowledge that she had known where he was all this time and had done nothing for him before. All of that lacked importance.

“What deal did he make?” He repeated after a long pause, swallowing hard right after saying the words. His stomach clenched and his hands sweaty with anticipation. He couldn’t wait any longer, he needed to know.

“He understood pretty quickly, you know? That it was taking longer than normal for him to turn, why he was here, what we needed from him.”

“What do you need him for?”

“A cure,” a different voice, deep and low, said right behind Wooyoung, making him jump in his seat.

Sehee seemed to freeze in place at the interruption, but her tension dissolved slightly when her eyes found the origin of it. The door right next to Wooyoung’s chair had opened and the figure of a man was now standing there looking at them both. He had a medical rope over a boring looking grey sweater and was holding a folder filled with papers against his chest, but what made Wooyoung stare for longer than necessary was the eye-patch. His right socket was covered with a black leather looking cloth like the pirates from the stories Wooyoung had liked to read about when he was young.

“I didn’t know you were here already, sir,” Sehee said immediately in an apologetic tone. And it was the formality of it all that made Wooyoung tense. He was someone important.

“Don’t worry about it, I can take care of it from here,” he said, shaking his left hand to play it down and focused all his attention on Wooyoung. He extended his hand in front of him as a greeting and waited for him to hold it back. “I’m Left Eye.”

How original .

“Wooyoung,” he introduced himself, nothing of the glee he had felt last night meeting Sehee. “Nice to meet you.”

“I think you have questions about your friend, am I right?” he said with the shadow of a smile on his lips. With only a movement of his head he dismissed Sehee, who stood up in a blink and left them alone besides Wooyoung’s plea in his eyes. “I can answer them for you, come with me.”

༄·❅❀☀︎

Left Eye took Wooyoung to another room, one with a huge table on one side filled with papers and books, a blackboard hanging on a wall with notes and lots of numbers and symbols Wooyoung didn’t understand, and a freezer with samples inside. Nobody else was there when they entered although the lights had been on when the man had opened the door.

Wooyoung had come to trust, even a tiny bit, in Sehee. She had given him reasons enough to do so, even when the whole complex situation was still ringing some of his alarms, but this man had an aura to him that made his skin crawl. Not only did he not trust him but he found it difficult to believe that he would one day. Therefore, without waiting for a cue or even a proper moment to say something, Wooyoung stood next to the door refusing to take a seat and started asking away.

“What cure? What does San have to do with that? Who are you?”

The man laughed loudly and deep, his whole body shaking with the action and his head falling back a little. Now that they were alone and Wooyoung’s initial surprise had subsided he analyzed him carefully trying to get a general impression of him.

He was slightly taller than Wooyoung, just by a few centimeters, and his shoulders were broad making it clear that besides his age he had been strong and athletic back in the time. The jersey he had on looked wonky and was filled with little balls of cotton probably for having been used way too many times. The garment hugged his middle tightly as if he had gotten bigger since he had first acquired it, his belly protruded enough for the fabric to look tense in the area. He didn’t look fat, just the typical roundness of his age, but even with that he still looked able to put up a fight somehow. Maybe it was the little wounds on the knuckles of his right hand or how the shape of the biceps under the sleeve made it obvious that he was strong.

The short whitened beard that covered his face should have made him look more amiable, less threatening, but it did nothing of the sort. The way he caressed it slowly and almost methodically with his right hand as his laughter died down made Wooyoung’s insides tighten. He would have liked to blame it all on the eye patch, on the fact that having just one of his small and dark brown eyes staring at him made him uncomfortable, but it was not just that. It was also the curve of his eyebrows, the pinkish scar on his left cheek, the way his teeth were tinted yellow probably from smoking. The whole man smelled like the lab but stronger, with a tint of something metallic that Wooyoung didn’t want to think about for too long.

“I thought you would take it easier seeing how you’ve been behaving with Sehee,” he finally said, his low voice resonating in Wooyoung’s lungs. “I guess I don’t look as… trustworthy as her.”

“You’re right, you do not,” Wooyoung almost spitted out. It had been a while since he had been like this, since the last time he had felt like hissing at a person, but all his instincts told him to. Every cell in his body wanted a confrontation, every thought revolved around the fact that this man was doing something bad to San. He had no proof, he didn’t even know much about San’s current situation, but he couldn’t stop thinking about it. “Now answer my questions.”

“Savage, I like it,” he smiled, his eye glistening with delight, and took a seat in the chair in front of the table. He left his pile of documents on the surface and waited until Wooyoung accompanied on the other chair, but he didn’t move. He just crossed his arms over his chest and raised an eyebrow in his direction, demanding him to start talking. “What do you think we do here?”

“I already know what I think, I don’t need to hear that. Just answer my questions.”

“Alright,” he said, still smiling, lifting his hands on both sides of his face, surrendering. “We have been looking for a cure since everything started, with no success obviously. That’s the reason why we bring newly bitten people here, to examine them and their blood looking for something different.”

“But people turn in a very short period of time,” Left Eye nodded once. “Sehee told me it took San a lot to show the first symptoms, that he is still not a monster. Why is that? How is that possible?”

Wooyoung tried to remain serene, hiding the nausea that threatened to control his body just by the memory of San in that bed growling. He didn’t want to think about that for too long, the memory alone made his chest ache deeply, but he was determined to get his answers and not let the man see his weakness at the same time.

“Your friend is an exceptional case, really interesting,” he said, dragging the words and allowing his gaze to wander to the whiteboard. “I knew he was different the moment I saw him, but he confirmed my suspicions when he told us how long it had been since the bite. It’s been around three months since then and he is still not fully gone.”

Somehow Wooyoung had never really stopped thinking about how long it had been since that drenched day. He hadn’t even tried counting the days because it had felt useless to do so. In fact, he had consciously avoided thinking about it so as to not go mad, so hearing him say it had felt like a punch in the stomach. Three months. He had been alone for three months. He had been following a ghost for three months. He had been hopeful and hopeless at the same time for three months.

“I believe he is the key for a cure. I know it is there, in his system, but I haven’t found it yet.” Wooyoung didn’t need to hear more. That had been enough for his mind to complete the rest of the picture, to know why Sad had decided to stay there, but Left Eye kept on talking. “He agreed to stay and help us find it if we took care of you.”

Of course San had been willing to sacrifice himself and his integrity for a cure, to do something greater than himself. He had always been selfish like that, always willing to give without getting anything in return, without even expecting to get payback. Wooyoung had always loved that about him even when it infuriated him sometimes, seeing how he let people use him out of the kindness of his heart. This was one of those times. Anger boiled inside of him since he could perfectly picture San agreeing to the search, whatever that implied, without even blinking just because that meant protection for Wooyoung and the possibility of saving humanity.

On one hand, Wooyoung wanted to run away from that room and go find San. Take him out of there in whatever state he was in and walk outside, to the freezing forest. But on the other hand Wooyoung knew that the only way he would be able to walk out there with San and have his “happy ending” was if that damn cure came to be. He needed the cure San had been sacrificing himself for if he wanted to get him back.

“How close are you from finding it?” He dared to ask, hiding his hands with the sleeves of his hoodie.

“Science doesn’t work like that,” the man sighed, turning back to look at Wooyoung with his eyebrows slightly frowned. “With these things you just have to try a thousand possibilities and pray that one of them ends up being what you need. It requires patience. It takes time.”

Time. If there was something they didn’t have, something San didn’t have, was time. Wooyoung didn’t know much about the disease, he hadn’t seen someone turn before, but he knew San would eventually disappear to become a simple host. His identity whipped from the planet just for his body to hold something lethal and dangerous. They didn’t have time.

“He is still holding on, still able to regain consciousness,” he continued. “Every time he comes back to himself we hope for his body to have finally defeated the virus, but it never lasts. The lucid moments grow smaller everyday.”

“So you’re just waiting for him to be… completely gone?” Wooyoung asked in a reproachful tone, his words strangling him as they came out because the thought alone was suffocating.

“No, of course not,” Left Eye was quick to answer, shaking his head violently one side and the other as he stood up and walked to the freeze. He was clearly not working on anything at the moment, he had nothing to do except for answering Wooyoung’s questions, but he kept his hands busy. “We try different variations of a vaccine on him from time to time, hoping one of them works.”

A lab rat. That’s what San had been reduced to being.

Choi San, the man who had been studying sports science because he enjoyed training and physical exercise. The man who had a side job in a gym just to be able to pay for his expenses without asking his parents for help. The man who had dreamed about being the owner of a flower shop besides his hard looks. The boy Wooyoung had met out of pure chance and that had almost instantly felt like a soulmate. The man who had been in Wooyoung’s life for a little bit more than six years. The man Wooyoung had fallen in love with progressively, not even noticing it until it was too late. Now all of that, everything that had made him him , was gone. Erased and taken away from him just to make him a fucking lab rat.

Wooyoung couldn’t take it anymore. The words, the indifference from the man in front of him, the pressure on his chest, the knowledge that San was suffering somewhere in that same building, the certainty that time was running out… It was too much.

So without saying anything else, without even being able to hear any of the rest of the words that Left Eye was saying, he opened the door and left in a hurry not even remembering to take his coat on his way out of the lab.

༄·❅❀☀︎

Days passed by one after the other and Wooyoung found himself falling into a routine. Every morning he woke up and walked alone to the dinning room for breakfast. He had already gotten close enough to some of the people living there, but still he didn’t allow himself to care. He couldn’t handle more pain or loss, so he distanced himself when things got too personal.

With his stomach full he always accompanied Sehee to the greenhouse that she was in charge of managing. She had been the only one Wooyoung dared to care a tiny bit about, probably because he felt like he owed her, but still none of them ever asked about the past as if they had an unspoken mutual agreement. Wooyoung followed her instructions, taking care of different sections everyday and controlling that all their small crops were healthy enough to keep on growing. With his hand in the dirt and the smell of green surrounding him, he discovered how calming the whole process was for him. It quieted his mind, it made it possible to fully breathe, and for the few moments he spent there it almost felt like his life was normal and the world was not complete chaos.

The cold remained and the snow kept on falling, but nothing promising seemed to be happening regarding the cure or San. Wooyoung avoided Left Eye whenever he could, refused to even talk about him or his search, and he never walked back to the lab after that conversation. His heart ached to see San again but his brain begged him not to try, and that constant inner battle was exhausting especially when he recluded himself in his room with nothing to do but look outside the window.

Sehee, the only one who knew about the whole situation and who spent the most time around him, seemed aware of his struggle by the way she looked at Wooyoung but she never said anything. Until the day she appeared in his room deep into the night without even knocking first.

Wooyoung woke up scared for his life the moment she had touched him, but the vision in front of him calmed him down a second later. She didn’t look worried or scared, they weren’t in danger, she just looked rushed.

“What are you doing here?” Wooyoung asked right after yawning.

“He is back. Do you want to see him?” She said and Wooyoung understood immediately. 

Without even answering he jumped out of the bed and put on a jersey over his pajama shirt, not even bothering to change his trousers because he knew they didn’t have a lot of time. With his boots untied and already reaching for his coat, Wooyoung walked outside where Sehee was nervously waiting for him.

Everybody was sleeping and the lights in the corridor were off, so she carried a small flashlight to illuminate their way. They moved quickly, Wooyoung feared that their heavy breathings would wake everyone up, but no doors opened as they basically ran towards the lab building. Even there the silence was deafening as they moved through some parts Wooyoung had never been to before. It was not the place he had first been to when he had arrived, nor the one where he had met Left Eye. There were no scientists on sight, although the lights were on and some slight noise could be heard coming from the closed doors from time to time.

She didn’t even stop to warn Wooyoung about where they were headed, opening a locked door without even doubting, and he had to hold in a breath when he was met with a corridor filled with those windows that led to other rooms. Every single one of them was occupied this time around with people in different stages of the disease. The glasses must have been soundproof since some of them seemed to be screaming but Wooyoung couldn’t hear anything, but seeing them was enough to prickle his skin with fear.

However there was no time to panic now, no time to ask for explanations either. So he ran after her leaving aside his moment of shock as she crossed a side door that beeped multiple times as it was being held open for too long. This corridor seemed to connect to the rooms they had seen before, but there were doors on the other side too, some of them transparent and leading to smaller labs while others looked thick and heavy.

“Pray that he is still him,” she said then, almost running and only turning her head slightly for Wooyoung to hear. She stopped a few meters after, in front of a small lab door with only a table and a few papers on it. It looked barren and inhabited from the outside but the amount of papers and notes hanging from one of the walls made it obvious that someone spent a lot of time there. 

Once inside Wooyoung noticed the glass on one of the walls. It looked similar to the room he had been brought to that first day to show him that San was alive but also completely different. However, this one looked more like an observatory, like a zoo. On the other side there was a small bathroom, a bed and even a table with papers on it. It was like a whole little apartment built inside that confined space so they could analyse and study the behaviour of the inhabitant, like those social experiments Wooyoung had seen with children and candy. But this time around the person inside was not a kid crying for its mother, but San seated on the edge of the bed with his face hidden in his palms.

He was not tied to the bed, he was not being held into place, he was not growling or fighting to get out. He seemed normal. His San.

“It’s a normal glass so he can see us from in there, but he won’t hear us unless you press that blue button,” Sehee explained pointing at a control system on the wall next to the glass. “I can’t let you in, but you can talk for as long as....” For as long as he is back .

Wooyoung nodded to her in understanding, hoping she could feel his gratitude with the movement, and turned to look at the blue button with the breath hitched and his heart going crazy inside his chest. What was he supposed to say? He had never stopped thinking about that, especially not in a scenario where they couldn’t touch each other. He heard the door of the lab close as Sehee let him alone in the room. Wooyoung took a deep breath in before pressing the button and did the only thing that came to mind. He chirped, the same rhythmical chirp they had used to find each other in the forest.

San tilted his head slightly first and Wooyoung could almost imagine how he was thinking it was all in his head, so he repeated it again and this time San lifted his head from his hands looking around him. He looked lost, his eyes scanning the roof and the walls, until he turned his head towards the glass and all his movements froze. Wooyoung’s breath got stuck on his throat when their eyes finally met and he could feel his hands shake over the button, but he forced himself to do something else to make it clear to San that he was not hallucinating.

“I found you,” he said with a forced smile on his lips, trying to make himself look more composed than he was actually feeling. 

“Wo-Wooyoung?” San mumbled, his voice hoarse and broken. He even winced when the word left his mouth although it was hard for Wooyoung to know if it was due to the pain or to hearing himself speak again. “Is this… ?”

“I am here, this is real,” he said the moment he noticed San doubting about it. He was aware they didn’t have much time and he didn’t want to waste it, not after two months of waiting for that moment. “I know you told me to let you go, but I couldn’t so I’ve been tracking you down.”

“You’re a terrible tracker,” San answered as he stood up from the bed, walking towards the bed with heavy and slow movements. He seemed to be limping a bit on his right leg and he had a bandage on the left arm where the bite was located, the black veins coming from it and extending all around the skin were still visible. However, that simple comment made Wooyoung smile for real because suddenly everything was feeling normal again.

“I know, that’s why it took me so long to find you,” he laughed a bit although his smile stilled in his lips when he saw San bend forward a bit holding in a groan. “I’m not gonna leave you again, San. You hear me?”

Stretching himself again as if nothing had happened, San continued walking until he was directly in front of the glass. If the window wasn’t there Wooyoung would have been able to smell him, that smell that always calmed him down, but since they were not able to be physically together all he could do was press his free palm against the surface. San put his hand on the other side right where Wooyoung’s hand was and for a moment it almost felt like his warmth was penetrating the glass and reaching Wooyoung.

“I thought I would never see you again,” San finally said, his eyes never leaving Wooyoung’s face as if he was soaking in every little detail. “I’ve missed you.”

“You won’t have to miss me ever again.”

San took a deep breath that shook his entire body on its way out and closed his eyes for a brief second while biting his lower lip. He looked tired and so sad all Wooyoung wanted to do was kiss him all over until he felt okay again. Until he was cured. The moment he opened up his eyes the tears were already pooling in his sockets.

“I’m sorry, Wooyoung. I’m so sorry,” he said, voice broken and tears falling down his cheeks and leaving a trail after them. He let his head fall forwards until his forehead was resting against the cold glass and Wooyoung was feeling so helpless for not being able to help that he felt the need to scream at Sehee to let him in, but he knew that was a terrible idea. “You don’t deserve this, I should have been more careful, I-”

“No, it’s fine,” Wooyoung cut him softly, wanting nothing more than to lift his head by the chin so he could look him in the eye. “Can you please look at me?” He almost pleaded and the need in his voice seemed to be enough for San, who opened his eyes to do as he was told without moving any other muscles. “I will be fine, I have been fine for these three months and I will continue to be.”

“Th-three months?” he seemed scared for a moment but Wooyoung didn’t let him dwell on that for long.

“Remember how Hongjoong used to eat all your groceries thinking you were sharing and you had to face him? You were so angry but didn’t want to confront him because maybe that would make things weird between you,” he said instead, trying to make him smile. He missed his smile. San nodded.

“You told me you could kick his ass for me,” San finished the story with the shadow of a smile on his lips. Not enough to satisfy Wooyoung but he took the win anyway.

“Exactly. I would kick the disease for you if I could, but I can’t. So you need to handle this on your own, like you did with Hongjoong.” San started shaking his head, obviously ready to let him know that the situation right now was very different, but Wooyoung didn’t let him. “I will be here every step of the way, just like I was back then.”

“Wooyoung…”

“I won’t leave without you, so you need to fight this,” he didn’t want to hear it. The tears were beginning to cover his eyes but he didn’t want San to see him cry again so he just took a deep breath in and swallowed the pain. He closed his eyes for a second to compose himself but he kept on talking. “I don’t care how much it takes, you will be fine and we will be together again.”

“Wooyoung,” San repeated, this time more commanding, his voice slightly deeper, a heavier groan than before reaching Wooyoung’s ears. It sounded full of pain and that was enough to make him look back at San, in fear that he was hurting somewhere.

However, what he saw was not what he was expecting. It was not San bended forward like before, pain all over his expression as he tried to look okay just for him. No, he was met with his pupils completely dilated, the little veins on the white of his eyes redder than normal and his breath getting rougher and heavier. The shock and the fear told Wooyoung what was happening before he could even process it, his panic induced brain already begging him to run away but his feet were glued to the floor because a very strong part of him kept telling him that this was San. San would never hurt him.

The growl that left his body made Wooyoung’s skin crawl and his breathing got so fast he was afraid of fainting. San’s fingers on the glass tensed as if he wanted to claw his nails on the surface, while his other hand turned into a fist hit the surface strongly. Wooyoung jumped in place detaching himself from the window, but his eyes remained on the figure of San contorting in place as he still looked in Wooyoung’s direction. He was still there, Wooyoung could see it, he was still conscious and aware of what was happening but unable to control it. The apology in his eyes was unmistakable, the frown was his as it was the way he turned his head to one side as if he didn’t want Wooyoung to see him like this. When his head turned back towards him it was very obvious to him that he was gone once again.

The screech San let out penetrated his ear drums and shook his body to the core. Next thing he knew the zombie—that was not San anymore—was hitting the window with all its strength, clawing at the surface and leaving small traces of blood on it as it continued screaming. Wooyoung let himself fall to the ground, both to hide himself and to get out of its sight.

Sehee came inside a second later to take him out of there in the middle of his panic attack.

༄·❅❀☀︎

A normal person might have stopped visiting, might have stopped even wanting to visit, too scared to face the reality of the situation. but Wooyoung was not like that. After that first conversation, besides the fear and the panic he had experienced when San got lost to the disease once again, Wooyoung couldn’t just stay away. It hadn’t taken much convincing for them to let him go back, Left Eye had been swayed after seeing an interaction—one that had made Wooyoung feel very uncomfortable for being constantly watched—claiming that having this incentive might help San heal faster.

It was illusory to think like that since, in the end, it was not the will of San but his immune system that had to do the work in order to be healed. However, when Wooyoung was called in to speak with San for the third time a few weeks later, Sehee claimed that he had never come back to his senses so fast.

“It was getting more and more unusual for him to be that lucid,” she had said. “That’s why I came for you, because I was sure it might not happen again in a long time. I think seeing you again helped him want to keep on fighting.”

Both Wooyoung and Sehee knew holding onto that idea was foolish, but Wooyoung needed something to keep him going and was willing to put all his faith on that. And it seemed to be working for a while since San’s moments back to himself were getting longer every time and happened more frequently than before.

Wooyoung was even given permission inside the room eventually. San had to remain tied to the bed on both hands and legs for both their sakes, but just the fact that they could share the same space had given hope to everybody around. Wooyoung could touch him then for the first time, combing San’s hair delicately and tracing the black veins in his arm with his fingertips, until San himself had asked him to leave. He had learnt to identify when the disease was claiming his body again and every time he felt himself get lost in the fog of his mind he warned Wooyoung for him to go. None of them wanted another encounter in which San was completely lost again, so they both stood by their deal.

They fell into the routine of spending time with each other everytime San could go back to him and, even with Left Eye and a few doctors constantly watching over every encounter, it had felt normal. Sometimes they just talked about Wooyoung’s routine, he explained to him how the snow was beginning to melt and the days were getting longer. Others San told him about how he had been found by Left Eye and how he had wished he had stayed for longer in their shelter. Occasionally Wooyoung was allowed to feed San something that was not raw meat, those were the most special for him because they made him feel useful.

Everything seemed to be heading into the right direction until one day San stopped coming back.

༄·❅❀☀︎

The weather is already pretty hot when Wooyoung leaves the complex for good. He didn’t have a lot of things before but his stay there has increased the amount of clothes he owns, so it takes him a bit longer to pack everything. Sehee insists on giving him a few bags filled with seeds from different plants from the garden with hopes that he will find a place to settle and grow them. Wooyoung doubts that will ever happen considering the circumstances but he takes them happily. He has worked on that garden for almost five months and the fact that she has decided to give him something is enough for Wooyoung to hold onto that little treasure.

As it is expected, Left Eye is nowhere to be seen when he finally stands by the main door of the complex and he prefers it that way, he doesn’t want to see that face ever again if he can avoid it. He accepts the hug Sehee offers him, nods when she asks him to be careful out there and takes a big inhale before finally facing the way that awaits in front of him. A path that he is not sure where will take him since he doesn’t even know where he is headed, but just the possibilities make him feel lighter.

A hand holds his, tight and warm, and Wooyoung looks down to the intertwined fingers. He caresses the bandage over the bite, the veins still darker than should be normal, and then raises his head to look into San’s eyes standing next to him with a big and bright smile crossing his expression. He is glowing, the sun making his skin glisten and giving his eyes an extra brightness. He looks paler than he used to after not being exposed to sunlight for so long, but the bags under his eyes are almost gone, his weight has come back and his eyes have no left of the disease in them.

“Ready?” Wooyoung asks him, squishing his hand, smiling back with all the relief and the happiness of a person who has seen his hopes and dreams come true after being sure they would be crushed.

“Ready,” San answers with a nod, taking the first step away from what has been both their home and their prison and into their uncertain future.

Chapter Text

The morning breeze comes through the window when he opens his eyes. He is alone. Again. Of course he is, Hongjoong has been shutting him down for almost a month now and them sharing a bed starts to feel barely anecdotic. But still every morning he wakes up hoping for things to change, for them to be back to how they used to be. It never happens.

Seonghwa knows where Hongjoong is going to be even before he gets up, even before he is fully back in consciousness, but he wishes he didn’t. Before letting reality fully trap him he can pretend Hongjoong is in the kitchen eating breakfast, or even enjoying the morning view from the small balcony. He even fantasizes about them both being cuddled up in bed together, refusing to move for a few more minutes. Kissing each other good morning slowly and lazily until one of them forces the other to stop and get out of bed.

But reality is very different and the moment the sound of a paper falling on the ground reaches him, Seonghwa sighs. A curse follows the noise, quiet and contained but enough to make him get out of bed. At least the weather is beginning to chill a bit, Hongjoong being in his studio with the door closed during the terribly hot summer days has been weighing on Seonghwa more than he would like to admit. At least now he has the certainty that he will not be sweating to dehydration since he has not been able to walk in there again to bring him water. Not because he is not allowed access but because he can’t see him destroy himself like this anymore. At least outside that room he can pretend he doesn’t know, he can shut his eyes to it all and keep his worries at bay.

So today, even when his palms itch to open that damn door and peek inside, to check on him, to ask him—beg him—to take a break… he doesn’t. Instead, he locks himself in the bathroom to freshen up with the water they keep stored there for washing themselves. The plumbing system gave up on them a few months after arriving in the tree house, and since none of them had any idea how to fix it they had given up on it all completely. They bathe themselves in the river during the warm months and heat the water with the fire on cold days.

The mirror above the useless sink reflects his image back at him and he has to force himself to stare at what feels like a stranger sometimes. The dark circles under his eyes get worse with every day that passes, just like his tiredness shows in his features clearer every time he looks. It’s part of who he is by now, an indivisible part of his identity. Just like his desire to stay hopeful but being unable to anymore, or his wish to hear his friend’s laugh again. Like his love for Hongjoong. So rooted inside him that he couldn’t rip it out even if he wanted to.

Trying not to think too much about the pressure in his chest, about the way his lungs don’t seem to want to expand as they should, about how his body aches when he walks away from Hongjoong, he heads out. He grabs something quick to eat and takes it outside, where he can’t hear or see or even have the possibility of lurking. Somewhere he can be far away from it all, enough not to have every single one of his thoughts completely consumed by Hongjoong.

As he walks out, the memory of Hongjoong timidly admitting how he believed Seonghwa was stuck with him suddenly accompanies him. He thinks about that moment a lot, actually. Not even willingly, since he is trying with every ounce of himself to remain away from the vortex that Hongjoong and everything he represents are at the moment, but his mind keeps popping it up. Never letting him forget, like a punishment that is beginning to consume him at this point. Because the problem for Seonghwa hadn’t even been the sentence in itself, he had known by then how Hongjoong was certain he was burdening Seonghwa when that was the furthest from the truth. The biggest issue had been how he had said it. As if he had surrendered to it a long time ago, a statement that had broken him the moment he had believed it to be true and that kept tearing him open with every passing day. It had hit Seonghwa like a train wreck, harder than when his mind had finally processed the end of life as he knew it.

His brain seems to need to dwell on it all today, and he allows it for the time being since he knows that fighting it is useless in a place like this. Silence is too dense, too heavy to run away from his thoughts. He used to hide from memories in the company of Hongjoong, but now that the possibility of running to his side to avoid that is completely gone, he finds himself going down memory lane more often than not. And it hurts, but at least it’s a distraction from the reality obsessively trapped inside the tree house.

His brain makes him remember how, following the apparition of the first cursed creature in their lives, he had collapsed after days constantly moving and never stopping to think. Once his mind had finally been able to realize how everything would never be the same, how he hadn’t been able to say goodbye to his family, how he would never see any of the people he loved, he had broken at a level he didn’t think possible. As he walks down the stairs of the tree house, he thinks about how he had bawled his eyes out that night. How he had woken up from a nightmare, tears choking him and not allowing him to breathe or even see. How it had taken Hongjoong just a few seconds to reach for him and sooth him until his crying had calmed down enough for him to go back to sleep.

That had been the first night they had slept together. Cuddling each other, holding onto the other like a lifesaver during the night. Pretending like darkness wasn’t as scary and life wasn’t as meaningless, like everything and anything that really mattered was that moment and not that they had been unable to find any food for two days.

Seonghwa sighs at the memory, wanting to go back to it badly even when they had been forsaken and without a proper place to spend the night. Even when things were so uncertain back then, it seems easier looking back. Nothing was as twisted, as complicated and confusing as it is now. Back then Hongjoong was still Hongjoong, not a broken memory of himself. Back then Seonghwa was not heartbroken to see the person he loved the most destroy himself in front of his eyes.

He takes a bite of the peach in his hand the moment he lands on the floor, feeling grateful for the fresh fruit that grows in the area, and starts walking towards their small garden to check that everything is okay. Hongjoong rarely visited that part of their “home”, now he is never seen around it. Whenever he leaves the house is for a quick wash by the river or a maniac escapade to continue spreading breadcrumbs for the others to find and follow. He doesn’t insist on Seonghwa accompanying him anymore and the older has grown tired of them going together but never feeling like they are. Constantly quiet, Hongjoong doesn’t even look in his direction anymore when they are outside, and Seonghwa is not sure he can take it anymore so he stays behind even when fear of never seeing him again is paralyzing sometimes.

Today he doubts Hongjoong will venture outside, he has a routine when he does that he is not following and has not been producing posters to take outside. He seems stuck by the radio lately, trying to send a message in different frequencies with hopes of reaching more people. Seonghwa has seen the list of numbers he keeps on the desk, all the frequencies he has tried already to continue where he previously left it, and has refrained himself from saying anything. What can he tell him anyway? That normal people don’t have functional radios anymore? That the chances of one of their friends being lucky enough to have one is near zero? Besides, he is sure Hongjoong knows anyway but refuses to give up.

Seonghwa opens the fence to the garden, they had to build it after noticing a group of deers approaching and eating their vegetables, and walks around the plants making sure that everything is as it should. Fetching the small basket that hangs from the fence, he lowers himself on the floor to pick a few strawberries and cut some lettuce leaves for the day, when a small rustling between the plants startles him. The big yellow eyes that look at him from a few steps away make him smile before the animal has time to greet him. The black fur shines under the sun and the long legs step carefully around the plants as it approaches Seonghwa. A soft meow leaves its mouth when he is close enough to be petted. 

“You startled me,” he says as he scratches the cat behind its ears.

It’s not the first time he encounters the animal, it seems to be always around in one way or another, but still Seonghwa gets surprised by how gentle and affectionate it is. He still has a collar around its neck, no name on it though, so he imagines it must have belonged to someone not so long ago. It was malnourished a few months ago, but Seonghwa had started leaving fish a few trees away for it to feed on and now it looks healthier and chubby.

He has thought about bringing it into the house more often than not, especially now that he feels so lonely. But the idea of the animal trapped inside those walls with no way of getting out on his own is enough to discourage him. So he settles on spending time with it when he is outside, the animal following him as he does his daily chores around the area.

Today, however, the cat seems to feel unwilling to move and starts crawling on Seonghwa’s lap with determination. He is squatted in front of the soil so it’s not the most comfortable position for keeping it on him, but he doesn’t have the heart to kick it away. Instead, he lets his body weight fall backwards until his bump is resting on the floor and makes himself comfortable. The cat is quick to start purring when he begins to pet him consistently.

It’s almost immediate, it always is, the thought crossing through his mind at such a speed he cannot even stop it.

“I know someone who would keep you gladly,” he says before he can even stop himself and the knife through his heart is instant. However, speaking to the animal makes him feel somehow better so he continues. “I don’t even know if he is alive, you know, but I hope he is. He has always been very skilled, so maybe he made it? At least he can use a bow, he can protect himself. Not like…”

His hand stills in place at the memory of Wooyoung and he has to close his eyes shut, hardly, not to think about him now. He never allows himself to dwell on that loss until night falls, when he dives into it and lets it all out with his letters. Sometimes falling asleep with tears running down his cheeks. But never during the daylight. He prefers to face it in darkness, so he can later pretend that it’s not real. Seonghwa swallows hard at the memory the moment the cat hits his hand with its head urging him to continue petting him.

“We’ve talked about this, you know I can’t keep you. You’re better off out here,” he continues talking, trying to move past the pain and the cat meows back as if he understands. Seonghwa smiles at it again as he sighs deeply, feeling the weight of being still for too long. “You need to let me go, I have a lot of things to do.”

The cat protests a bit when he lifts it to set it aside, but doesn’t crawl back into his lap. It stays sat next to him as Seonghwa continues working in the garden, a silent companion that he truly appreciates. It almost feels peaceful and normal to be walking around the garden with the cat rubbing itself against his legs from time to time or even purring next to him. So peaceful that for a solid moment Seonghwa is tempted to give it a name, something he has refused to do for too long. He is already attached to the animal anyway so giving a name wouldn’t actually make a big difference, but he feels like not giving this fucked up world that power would spare him the pain of losing it one day. Everything dies so easily these days.

Dragging the moment to come back as much as possible, Seonghwa moves to the river once he is done picking everything they need. He checks the nets first in case there is any fish there, and is greatly surprised to find two of decent sizes. He doesn’t waste much time and sits down next to the river bed to kill and clean the catch.The cat waits patiently over a rock, looking at the water with his paw in the air splashing the surface from time to time when something calls its attention, until Seonghwa leaves the insides of both fish to his left for the animal to eat. That’s how the life cycle works: you receive something so you give something back.

With the two fish completely cleaned, he secures the food in a high place the cat cannot reach and decides to take a quick dive in the river. It’s not as hot anymore, but enough for the water to look very enticing. Removing his clothes hastily, he is inside the water in less than a minute. One thing he “appreciates” about the apocalypse is not having to worry about prying eyes. Who would see him anyway? A deer? A rabbit? Hongjoong? He has seen everything there is to see anyway.

The river is not deep at all, the water level is up until his thighs at the moment although it used to have more water during the spring months. It’s enough for them to wash comfortably, even able to sit down on the rocky floor on hot summer days and stay there until their skin is wrinkled. Today he just needs a quick wash, more like a reset than a need to actually clean himself. They have gotten used to not washing everyday, it feels like a luxury to be able to do it sometimes, so even when they have unlimited access to the river they don’t abuse it.

Seonghwa dives inside the water, laying on his back and getting his head into the water to muffle every sound and every thought. Even when there is not a lot of noise in the area but just the steps of some wild animals, the ruffling of the leaves and the chirping of the birds, Seonghwa feels like his ears are always ready to pick up on something else. The growling of zombies or their irregular steps. The sound of people talking, of his friend finally approaching the area. It’s extremely exhausting having your body constantly alert, so making everything disappear in the water feels great even if just for a moment.

He stays in even when he starts feeling the need to come out for air, just a few more seconds as he closes his eyes and tries to calm down his body to reduce the need of oxygen. He holds and holds and holds until it hurts and his chest threatens with making him cough the water in. And only then he emerges taking a profound and loud inhale, fingers crippling around the rocks in the bottom. The cat meows from its place on a rock as if asking if he is okay and Seonghwa smiles a little towards it.

He relishes on the moment for a bit longer, feeling more awake and lucid than before. Wishing he could remain inside the water for eternity. Life would be so much different if he didn’t constantly feel like he was drowning.

ⴵⴵⴵ

Seonghwa completely refuses going back to the tree house, going back to feeling like he is constantly rejected, so instead he only passes by. Without really saying anything, Hongjoong still hiding in his studio, he grabs a few cleaning supplies and one of the keys from near the door and heads to one of the other houses.

They only use one of them, they need nothing else after all, but they—mostly Seonghwa—check on the others regularly. They made the proper adjustments to all of them at the time, changing the stairs, taking care of the electricity and checking that everything was functional. Hongjoong had been invested in it all, but of course that was way before he started losing himself. Now the keys wait by the door for Seonghwa to grab them and put them to use, for him alone to visit the other houses and keep them clean. Hongjoong seems to ignore they exist completely, not even looking in their direction when he walks outside.

But Seonghwa cannot really blame him. Sometimes it feels like he keeps coming back to the other buildings just out of pity for himself. Not looking for a moment alone, but as if something deep inside him was searching for a punishment. Something greater than the indifference and the hurt he feels with Hongjoong around. Something even more raw, more suffocating, more real. Sometimes it feels like he keeps coming back just to remind himself that they are still alone and they probabl y will always be.

And today is no different. He seeks a way to bring himself back to reality even when he is always present in it. It’s a midpoint between giving himself hope and crushing it all at once. Cleaning everything makes him feel like he is getting ready for visitors, but the silence and quietness work as a reminder that there is nobody there. 

Today something is a little bit different, the cat keeps following him everywhere he goes to and by the time he reaches the closest tree house he doesn’t have the heart to leave it behind. 

“You want to come with me?” He asks in a whisper staring at the animal that looks back and meows as an answer. “Okay, then, we can try.”

Seonghwa is not entirely sure this will work, the cat is not his after all and they have never really tried getting it into one of the houses, but he seems to need its company. For some reason he cannot bear the silence of the building today, he cannot walk through the door and find it empty and intact as he always does. He cannot face the loneliness of the place and the knowledge that it will always stay like that.

“Here goes nothing,” he says as he tilts his head, unsure of what he is about to do but willing to try anyway because of pure despair.

This could go terribly wrong, but it’s worth a try. He lowers himself and places his hands below the cat, lifting it from the ground. The animal doesn’t even move in his hold, letting Seonghwa move igt around as he meows quietly and looks at him as if wondering what they are doing. Okay, maybe it can work. Letting all the air in his lungs out, he allows the cat to stand on his shoulders since he needs both hands empty to climb to the house.

The cat seems to be fine up there, making itself comfortable and rubbing his head against Seonghwa’s, making him smile in disbelief. This cat was really domestic before, he wouldn’t like being treated like this if it wasn’t. Now he just needs to start climbing the hanging stairs without the cat falling. He is more worried about the animal digging his nails on his shoulders than the animal hurting itself since he is pretty sure the cat is more capable than him when it comes to heights.

When he holds onto the wooden planks and the cat lowers its body weight against his body, adjusting itself to the change, Seonghwa lets out a snort. The animal looks even more chill than he was on the ground, looking around fully enjoying the feeling of being higher than usual. However, they don’t make it long because Hongjoong’s voice stops him midway.

“Seonghwa,” he says, startling him in place as he holds tighter to the ropes. He turns his face towards the floor just to find Hongjoong standing a couple metres away from the tree as he approaches slowly. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“Something happened?” He asks, not moving from where he is but simply furrowing his brows at the sight of the man outside. Hoongjoong feels out of place now that he is not surrounded by his papers and his radio, even when his hair is a mess and the bags under his eyes can be seen even from where Seonghwa stands.

“I need your help, the radio is doing weird things and I can’t go up there on my own.”

Of course, the only moment he asks for help is because one of his essentials is not working as it should. Not because he feels like shit and needs comfort, or because he simply misses Seonghwa. But because a radio that has never worked properly is doing ‘weird things’. Seonghwa wants to curse at him for a brief moment, but the way Hongjoong turns his gaze away in embarrassment stops him.

With a deep sigh Seonghwa faces the trunk of the tree again and starts coming down, a meow coming from the cat as he does so that almost sounds like “why are we not going up anymore?”. He is wondering the same thing, feeling like going out of his way to help Hongjoong will only reward his shitty behavior, but what else can he really do? It’s not like not helping him would be a real punishment when he seems to have put himself in purgatory already. So he hops from the tree, allows the cat to go back to the ground and starts following Hongjoong.

He expects a walk in silence, they don’t really talk anymore, so he is startled when Hongjoong speaks.

“Why were you taking the cat with you?” The strangeness is palpable in his voice, but his expression remains blank.

“I needed the company,” he answers shrugging and he doesn’t intend for it to come out as an accusation but he sees how it might sound from the other’s ears. Hongjoong just hums in response, getting his hands inside the pockets of his shorts, never looking at Seonghwa. “What’s the problem with the radio?”

“I’m not sure,” he says in a whisper, eyes glued to the floor. “The static is not… doing its thing. At first I thought that it might be picking up on something, but it does the same on every station so…”

For a second there Seonghwa’s hopes rise involuntarily. His brain had immediately gone to the idea that maybe someone was trying to contact them after trying for so long, but the possibility gets quickly crushed by Hongjoong’s explanation. They are still alone.

“How can we fix that? Maybe the radio is just broken,” he says even when just putting the thought out from his head feels like a hand clutching at his heart. Without the radio their possibilities of finding other survivors get significantly smaller, something their mental stability cannot really handle right now.

“I want to check on the electrical system and the antenna before making any assumptions.”

Seonghwa nods but refrains from saying anything else. One look at Hongjoong is enough to discourage him from even attempting to give him an attention call. Seonghwa tries to ignore him on a regular basis, tries to stay out of his way and out of his sight mainly because he cannot bear seeing him like this. And now that he is being forced to, he can feel his chest tighten.

Hongjoong looks like shit. Even worse than last time he actually saw him. His skin is paler than it should be considering it’s summer, the bones on his face are more prominent than they used to from the lack of proper eating, his eyes look swollen and have dark circles all around them. His posture is bent, as if the muscles on his back had lost the strength to keep him in place and by the slow walk Seonghwa fears he might collapse any moment now.

He wants to say something. Anything. He is not even sure what to say, nothing he could ever say would make things better. Nothing he could ever say would make Hongjoong care about himself the way he cares about those he so desperately looks for. But he doesn’t even get the chance to figure out if he really wants to say something, because the cat suddenly stops in alert in front of them as it hisses to something they cannot see.

A few step noises coming from where the entrance to the complex is located makes them both freeze in place. They have no weapons on hand, but they can surely climb to one of the trees before whatever is there sees them. It seems to be moving slowly and silently, unusual for a zombie, but they have seen them do that before. They wander in silence, lost in their undead status, until they see something and chaos is unleashed.

Hongjoong immediately pushes Seonghwa back towards the tree he was climbing to before, since it’s the closest one to where they are right now, but something in the motion makes his body reject it completely. It’s the way Hongjoong pushes him behind him, sheltering Seonghwa with his body. It’s in the way he then lowers himself to grab a rock from the floor, as if that is a weapon good enough to fight whatever is coming. Everything in him screams ‘sacrifice’ and Seonghwa is not going to let him.

He holds Hongjoong by the shirt, forcing him to look at him and trying to communicate with him without speaking. Like they used to do.

What are you doing?

I will handle this.

I’m not leaving.

Please, let me do this.

No. Seonghwa reaches forward with an angry expression and grabs Hongjoong’s left hand. The first time they touch in God knows how long. The simple contact makes Seonghwa shiver in relief, or maybe it is Hongjoong’s shaking traveling through him. If we fall, we fall together.

Reaching for a decent size branch, Seonghwa stands tall next to Hongjoong as they hold hands and look frantically around them. There is only one real entrance, only one door that could be opened relatively easily, the rest of the perimeter was already fenced when they arrived and they check daily that everything is in order, but the possibility of one of the zombies breaking through a random place of their land lingers in the air. Seonghwa wants to believe the cat’s reaction, wants to think that whatever is coming is only doing so from one direction and that they are not being surrounded because that leaves them an escape route, but one cannot be sure. 

His breath hitches and his heartbeat goes crazy as the seconds pass, dragging slowly as they wait completely frozen in place. For a sound to come their way, for a shadow to project on the floor, for a shift in the air. For anything to happen, and the more they wait the more Seonghwa panics and the tighter he holds onto Hongjoong’s hand.

For a moment there, waiting as they hold hands and the younger caresses the back of his hand with his thumb in a soothing way, Seonghwa’s mind starts screaming that they are going to die. That the day has come, that this is finally the end. That they will die without finding their friends. That he will die and Wooyoung will never get his letters. That he will die without telling Hongjoong that he has loved him since way before the apocalypse. And suddenly that seems to be the only thing that matters.

“H-Hongjoong,” he mutters, the other’s expression twisting in terror at the breaking of the silence. “I-”

“Seonghwa- hyung ?” A voice across the trees in front of them cuts him as he is about to continue and they both freeze with their eyes opened widely.

Seonghwa turns his head towards the direction of the voice, his heart almost in his throat and his stomach threatening with nausea at the panic that runs through his body. His mind cannot place the voice, cannot even process that someone is there calling his name because it is simply impossible. No one was gonna find them, they were going to die alone in that forest. They were hopeless.

Hongjoong grips Seonghwa’s hand and they look at each other quickly, the panic in Hongjoong’s eyes mimicking the one he feels inside because this is impossible. Hongjoong is not talking but he can see it clearly, it’s there, the certainty that he must be dreaming. And then a figure surges from between the shadows of the forest followed by another and two more and Seonghwa can feel how he stops breathing altogether because he recognizes them all.

One of them holds an axe in his right hand, the one right behind him has a kitchen knife that looks about to fall to the ground, the third one holds a small knife in his left hand and the last one… The last one has a bow with an arrow loaded and pointing right at them that lowers slowly when their eyes meet across the space.

“Yeosang?” Seonghwa breathes out, sure that no one except Hongjoong can hear.

“No fucking way,” Hongjoong says at the same time, letting go of his hand as the shock covers them both.

Seonghwa doesn’t even have time to really process anything, his body taking full control of the situation and forcing his legs to walk forward steadily. The bow and the arrow fall to the ground as Seonghwa approaches, he can see Yeosang’s heavy breathing and his eyes opening widely at the realization that this is really happening. The person right next to him, someone Seonghwa recognizes almost immediately but to whom he refuses to give a proper identity for now, looks at Yeosang with concern in his eyes as he lightly touches his arm. That simple brush seems to make it for him, lunching forward to Seonghwa and holding him close in a tight hug Seonghwa had given up on so long ago.

Yeosang has never been big on physical touch, it had always been hard for him to navigate through it in certain situations, so the way he clings onto Seonghwa, wrinkling his shirt and hiding his face in the crook of his neck, breaks something inside the older. He only notices the crying when he feels the wetness fall down his neck and the shaking of the strong shoulder he is holding, and that is the only thing that Seonghwa needed to break into tears of his own. He holds his friend close, although it never feels enough, and tries to tell himself once and again that this is real.

His mind doesn’t seem to believe it, telling him that this is but a dream, that he will wake up soon enough, but he refuses to let that thought sink in. He holds Yeosang by the shoulders and pushes him apart with tears in his eyes that he cleans clumsily with the short sleeve of his shirt. Yeosang keeps his gaze down as he sobs but Seonghwa needs to look at him, so he holds his face with both hands and forces him to look up. He can feel the punch against his chest as he studies him, so deeply he is sure it can be seen in his face.

His hair is way longer than it used to be, held in a high ponytail and with a few strands sticking into his damp skin. He has a few scars that weren’t there before, especially on the skin that is showing in his arms. He looks stronger, but thinner at the same time. He must have been eating relatively well considering the circumstances and that fills Seonghwa with pride, because he should have known. If someone was going to be able to survive an apocalypse without major issues that would have been Yeosang without a shadow of a doubt.

It’s him, it’s really him. Yeosang. But at the same time… Something in him seems different in the same way that his own reflection looks back at him in the mirror of the bathroom. His friend is standing in front of him but this version of him is so strange to Seonghwa that he doesn’t really know how to react. He looks just as handsome as he remembered, almost impossibly so, but the softness he used to carry on him is nowhere to be seen. The innocence he used to have in his features is gone, probably forgotten months ago, killed by the horrible world they are forced to live in. The look in his eyes, always so light and cheerful, now seems darker. Broken.

But it is him. His friend, the one he met thanks to Wooyoung on a random rainy day. The one who always had nice words to give to everyone he met. The one who had quickly become rather famous on campus for his incredible talent in archery. The one who liked the quietness of the library and the company of the trees. Yeosang. His Yeosang. His to protect so nothing would ever break him again.

“I’m sorry,” Seonghwa breaks as he looks at him, his hands falling to Yeosang’s shoulders as he is unable to keep them on his face any longer. “I-I tried finding you. We looked for you, but you were- you-”

Yeosang doesn’t let him continue as he engulfs him in a tight hug while shaking his head no, whispering in between sobs that everything is okay. That he never expected Seonghwa to actually find him. That he doesn’t blame him for not doing exactly that. That he has been okay. That he has not been alone all the time. And only that seems to make Seonghwa react, lifting his head with a thousand questions in his mind fighting to get out.

“We didn’t know you would be here too,” another voice he would recognize anywhere reaches him and he has to hold onto Yeosang’s arm to check that this is still the real world. Mingi, who used to be his roommate in what now seems a different life, looks back at him with tears streaming down his cheeks. “We thought… We were expecting only Hongjoong- hyung to be here.”

“We followed the symbol in the posters,” says the person with the axe, now put away, that holds Mingi closer to him by the waist. Seonghwa is quick to recognize him as Yunho, they had never talked much but he used to pass by their dorm regularly to spend time with Mingi. “It was Hongjoong’s logo for his radio show so w-”

“You did?” Hongjoong’s broken voice reaches Seonghwa’s ears in the distance and he can feel his heart fall to the ground at the sound.

He has been so engrossed in his encounter with Yeosang that he has somehow forgotten about Hongjoong. He searches him only to find him exactly where he left him, standing in the same place they have occupied together with his eyes locked on the figures in front of him as his chest moves up and down faster than it should. He looks lost, his eyes moving quickly from one person to the next, his fists closing and opening on both sides of his body, his eyelids blinking faster than normal.

“We found a few posters in the closest big city, that’s how we found each other,” the fourth figure that Seonghwa refuses to look at says. “We saw one of the big sheets hanging from a building and started following the symbol. For a moment we thought we were following a ghost.”

“You found us,” Hongjoong stutters, his breath quickening even more and his mouth shaking as he seems to want to say much more. But nothing leaves his lips until he finds Seonghwa’s eyes. “They found us.”

Seonghwa can feel the looks from everyone around them, the four of them moving uncomfortably in their places not really knowing what to do or how to react. Yeosang stares at Seonghwa with his face marked by tears and a worried frown, still holding onto him for dear life, but the older lets go of him quickly when he makes eye contact with Hongjoong because suddenly nothing else matters. Nothing of the pain he has been feeling lately, the rejection and the closed doors. Nothing of his forced willingness to stay away not to be burnt by Hongjoong’s obsession. Nothing of the carefully taken steps around him not to stir new issues between them.

Because the moment their eyes meet, all of that instantly disappears from Seonghwa’s mind and the only thing that matters is getting to Hongjoong. He almost runs towards him at the same time that the younger falls to the ground, knees bending and palms digging into the earth right before Seonghwa can drop himself in front of him and hold him.

Hongjoong’s hand are quick finding his body, moving with a primal need as they clung onto every piece of fabric they find until they rest around Seonghwa’s upper back. Once there, he pulls him closer as Seonghwa tries closing his arms even tighter around him aware that the pressure has helped him before during an attack. This one feel different, though. He is not screaming or fighting something that is not there, he is not hurting himself like he has before. He simply shakes violently in place as every muscles in his body seems to be completely tense, his breath is shallow and almost like a soft whistle, and all he seems to know how to do is repeat the same thing once and again and again.

“They found us.”

Seonghwa holds him close, caressing his hair and rocking both their bodies trying to calm him down. He lets Hongjoong use him like a squishy toy even when the nails against his back are beginning to hurt, but he doesn’t pay any attention to that because none of that matters. The only thing that matters is that Hongjoong is breaking in his arms and he needs to hold the pieces together because, even with the others there, he cannot do any of this without him. So he stays there, whispering back like a never ending lullaby:

“You did it, you brought them back.”

For a moment, Seonghwa is not sure how long, they stay like that, holding on the ground as Hongjoong slowly relaxes in his arms and stops obsessively repeating the same sentence. His voice breaks at some point, tears falling from his eyes and dumping the already messy shirt Seonghwa is wearing today. But he doesn’t care, all he can focus on is the fact that the crying seems to make things better since the tension is his body relaxes around his arms and the shaking slowly decreases.

As he comforts him, Seonghwa thinks about all those times he thought about how Hongjoong was getting dangerously closer to the edge of a cliff. About all the times he couldn’t sleep at night thinking that Hongjoong could snap at any moment and that he didn’t know if he would be able to handle it. All the days they didn’t even look in each other’s directions, helpless and hopeless, afraid to face the reality that awaited in front of them. 

But more than that, Seonghwa thinks about all the other times when they had been okay. All the days they had spent together looking for a way to survive, looking after each other. All the nights together in bed, hugging each other closer than possible because that was the only way they could fall asleep. All the times they touched each other casually, all the unspoken conversations, all the shared looks. But mostly he thinks about how he wouldn't have made it this far if it hadn’t been for Hongjoong, how he had been his lifeline for almost a year, how he would have never found any of their friends if it wasn’t for him. 

He thinks about how heavy all of this must have been for Hongjoong because he knew, he could see it all this time, but he hadn’t really known until now. Not until he has him crumbling in his arms, holding him as if he was afraid Seonghwa would disappear any moment now. And he feels guilty, so guilty it almost takes his breath away, but he hides it as best as he can because right now the only thing that matters is Hongjoong.

Seonghwa doesn’t let go until Hongjoong moves in his arms, releasing the wrinkled and stretched shirt to clean the tears from his face. His eyes remain low for longer than Seonghwa would like, but eventually he looks at him and Seonghwa wants to kiss him all over to make the pain go away but he doesn’t move.

“You okay?” He says softly, barely a whisper, and when Hongjoong nods once he insists. “Are you sure? Because I ca-”

“I’m fine, I… I will be fine.” And that’s enough for now because, for once, he is being honest so Seonghwa nods and gives him a smile that he hopes is filled with the love and understanding that he is feeling. “We need to take care of them first.”

Only then Seonghwa remembers that they are not alone, that they haven’t been alone for the whole duration of Hongjoong’s breakdown, and when he turns his face to stare at his friends he can feel the pinch of embarrassment in the back of his neck. They all look so lost, even with the weapons they carry and the scars in their skins and the darkness in their expressions. They wait with worry all over their features, not knowing what to do or how, almost waiting for instructions for the first time in what must feel like an eternity.

“I don’t know if we have food for everybody,” Seonghwa says then, worried about their little garden not being enough, taking a quick look at Hongjoong before standing up and offering a helping hand. 

“We have some food in our bags,” Yunho is the one who finds his voice the fastest. He certainly looks like the most fearless of them all. “Found some cans on our way here.”

“Yeosang shot down a few rabbits this morning,” Mingi adds with a side proud smile on his lips. “We ate well today anyway.”

With Hongjoong standing by his side, holding hands because he doesn’t feel like letting go ever again, Seonghwa looks at his friend and smiles at him. Yeosang looks shy all of a sudden, and the way he looks down trying to dodge the attention warms his heart because it makes him look more like him . The air seems lighter, the reunion making everything better suddenly as they look at each other with relief and bright smiles.

Until suddenly something seems to snap and, as if they were having a wordless conversation, Yeosang turns to look at the figure Seonghwa has been blatantly ignoring all the time. The other reaches forward, holding Yeosang’s hand softly while looking at him, and Seonghwa has to avert their gaze completely. He stares at the floor, waiting for the blow.

“Is any-” the man starts and Seonghwa’s expression flinches at the voice. “Are you here alone or…?”

“Only you found us,” Hongjoong answers for him, his voice more stern and firm than he had expected. It’s comforting, knowing he is here. “We were alone until now.”

“So, he is not…” Yeosang mutters, his voice breaks before he can finish the sentence so he clears his throat a bit before talking again. “He didn’t…”

He never gets to end what he wants to say, unable to do so, and Seonghwa cannot blame him because he has been unable to say his name out loud for months now knowing he was somewhere out there potentially alone. But for Yeosang it must be even worse right now, they must have felt hope seeing both Hongjoong and him there after searching for the place. By the look they have had in their faces they expected the rest to be there already, only to find the two of them there. Alone.

It’s only then that Seonghwa gathers the courage to look up, eyes looking for the figure he has been ignoring and pretending not to see. Because looking at Jongho, who used to be Wooyoung’s roommate, feels like too much. A huge and undeniable reminder that Wooyoung is not there with them, that Seonghwa didn’t try hard enough to find him on that first day, that he could be very much dead right now and none of them would ever know if that was the case. Looking at Jongho makes his brain flood with flashes of Yeosang, Wooyoung and him in the small dorm watching a movie or trying to study. Of Wooyoung trying to make Jongho stay with them just to see the other leave without saying much. Of Jongho opening the door and just letting him in, knowing exactly what he was looking for.

Having Jongho here, a real reminder that Wooyoung is not with them, makes something inside Seonghwa stir. Because if Jonho is here now, if he made it out alive, then maybe Wooyoung did too. Jongho’s sole existence in his same space makes him hopeful, something he cannot afford to feel. Not anymore.

“Wooyoung’s not here,” Hongjoong explains after a moment in which they all seem to wait for Seonghwa to say something , but he is too caught up in his head to even speak. He focuses on the tight grip of Hongjoong’s against his as he continues talking, voice shaky and pained. “Neither is San.”

Seonghwa feels how Hongjoong falters as the words leave his mouth and, in a very twisted way, that makes him feel better. The fact that they are both missing someone important, someone who had been a constant in their lives before, makes him feel less alone in all of this fucking mess. Yes, Seonghwa is still missing his best friend. But Hongjoong is missing his roommate, the only person who took care of him when he lost track of time as he studied, the only one who visited him at the radio station to bring him coffee and force him to go to sleep.

Seonghwa’s body is lighter and his heart somehow amended at the reunion but, as he looks at each one of them standing in front of him, he feels the same satisfaction as with Hongjoong’s hurting. Because they are all missing a piece of the puzzle. Even when they have managed to find each other, they are all tired, broken, hopeless and incomplete. And that thought alone makes Seonghwa feel less lonely and more at home.

ⴵⴵⴵ

Shyly and dragging their feet, they guide the newcomers towards their tree house promising to give them a full tour and the option to choose where to live and sleep tomorrow. For today they all agree to stick together, even if the space of their tree house will feel crowded with all six of them there. None of them seems to care.

It takes them but a few minutes to prepare the small living room for all of them to sleep comfortably, Yunho laughs at the prospect of not having to tie himself to a branch or not leaving someone on watch. Mingi jokes about the two older men living in luxury with a bathroom and a kitchen, and when Seonghwa lets them know that they will be able to properly wash in the river in the morning he even hugs him dramatically. It feels nice to have so many voices talking at the same time, to see how they all relax slowly as they take in the place. To see Yeosang leave his weapon on the side and allow himself to sit down as he rests his head on Jongho’s head. Seonghwa promises himself to ask him about all that whenever he can.

Sharing the fish Seonghwa caught in the morning with a few of the fresh vegetables he picked up from the garden, everyone takes a place to eat as the sun slowly disappears from the sky. Yunho and Jongho explain how the four of them met a few weeks ago by chance and how they have managed ever since. They don’t give too many details, which everyone seems to appreciate, but Seonghwa feels glad that they have had each other’s back during that time. None of them talks about how things were before, when they had presumably been alone, and neither Seonghwa nor Hongjoong ask any questions about it.

In fact, Hongjoong doesn’t seem very present in the conversation at all. Eating in one corner of the room with his eyes traveling from one person to the next randomly, as if he was absorbing all the details. He looks tired, even more than he has ever looked with all those sleepless nights on his back, and his moves seem slow as he raises his hand to eat. He is the first to finish his dinner, taking his plate back to the kitchen and entering the studio shortly after, making Seonghwa fear he will lock in again. However, he remains inside for barely a few minutes before he drags himself towards the bedroom closing the door behind him.

Seonghwa looks at his plate, still half full, and he knows he won’t be able to finish it tonight. They haven’t starved in quite a long time, not like the other four who try to eat slowly not to get sick as they wide their eyes and make content sounds, so he knows he will be just fine if he doesn’t have a proper dinner tonight. Without uttering a word, he stands up and hands his plate towards Yeosang to do with it as he pleases and before his friend has time to ask anything he turns on his heels and heads to the bedroom. Even if he can feel the cold embrace of the anxiety stalking from behind his back, he needs to face Hongjoong. He needs to check if he is okay.

For some reason, probably because of how long it has been since he has even been in that room, Seonghwa doesn’t expect to find him seated at the edge of the bed with the head hidden in his hands. He has a knee-jerk reaction, closing the door and rushing in front of Hongjoong on the floor to check on him. Even when his breathing seems normal and he doesn’t seem to be crying, Seonghwa worries.

“Joongie, are you okay?” He tries to move past the nickname, maybe Hongjoong will not notice if he doesn’t pay much attention to it. Seonghwa tries very hard not to use it, sure that it will show more than he wants, that the way it rolls against his tongue shows very clearly that he loves him.

Hongjoong raises his head slowly, as if it took him a great effort to do so, and Seonghwa’s hands travel without his permission to hold his and take them away from his face so he can properly see him. Only like that can he know if he is lying, if he is hiding something, if he is hurting. But Hongjoong looks rather empty when his eyes find Seonghwa’s.

“What is it?” Seonghwa asks softly, tenderly, no trace of the resentment he has woken up with in the morning. He can’t even find that feeling anywhere inside him when all he holds inside is an overwhelming need to protect and love Hongjoong until he is drowning in affection.

“I never expected…” The sentence dies before it’s even fully out, and Hongjoong takes a big breath in as he closes his eyes with his face facing towards the ceiling. “I had given up all hope.”

“I know,” Seonghwa whispers, caressing Hongjoong’s fingers in his hands. “Me too.”

“And I know this is good and I’m happy about it even when I can’t-” he is mumbling so fast it’s hard to follow, but Seonghwa doesn’t interrupt him because he is finally talking to him and that feels even more significant than the encounter with their friends. "It doesn’t feel real.”

“I know, I feel the same,” he tries to console him, keeping his hands where they are instead of reaching forward and pressing a palm against one of Hongjoong’s cheeks. That would be too much. Hongjoong is barely even looking at him anyway. “I can’t fully believe that’s Yeosang and Mingi out there. But it is real.”

“I don’t- I-” he stutters, his words stepping into each other as he shakes his head trying to get them in order until he sighs with frustration. His eyes fall onto their locked hands and he frowns deeply. “Why can’t I feel relief or happiness about it? Why do I feel like it’s still not enough?” He murmurs so softly Seonghwa can only hear it because their foreheads are almost touching. And then Hongjoong snaps, letting go of Seonghwa’s hands so they are not touching anymore. “Why are you still here? I’ve been treating you like shit. Everyday,” he suddenly stands up and walks to the furthest corner of the room. “And you’re still here.”

Seonghwa stands up slowly, not looking at him for a moment, trying not to fidget with his nails as he feels the loss of the contact in every cell of his body. Hongjoong’s back leans against the wall, his hands inside the pockets of his trousers with the visible muscles in his arms tensing again.

“You just miss San, that’s all,” Seonghwa tries to reason, because he knows how it feels.

“I don’t just miss him,” Hongjoong almost spits out, wrinkling his face in what almost looks like disgust. But Seonghwa lets him finish, because only like that he can understand. “I should have gone to our dorm first. Check if he was there, look for him in the gym even, but all I could think about was you. Taking you to safety and-” he chokes with his own words and he needs to stop to swallow and take a breath before continuing, his voice soaking in guilt and pain and something else Seonghwa cannot pinpoint just yet. “I should have done more .”

It hurts seeing Hongjoong like this, but it hurts even more hearing himself in his words. A mirror of exactly what boils inside of Seonghwa too, eating him from the inside out like worms in a corpse. If he pays attention, Seonghwa can see the worms crawling under his skin slowly just as he can spot them on Hongjoong’s arms.

“We did what we could,” he tries to say not only for Hongjoong but for himself too. They have never really talked about any of this, it was almost taboo, but they should have a long time ago. “I miss them too, you know.”

“I know you do,” Hongjoong sighs, his eyes watery as he tries blinking the tears away. “I just… I don’t know how to handle it anymore. It’s… It’s too much.”

When Hongjoong bends forwards, his head falling so his tears can remain unseen, Seonghwa stops caring about appearances, about what his actions may look like, and he almost runs towards him. Hongjoong doesn’t move as he hugs him and hides his head in the crook of his neck. They have seen each other cry so many times already, so one more shouldn’t matter, but Seonghwa feels ashamed as the tears stream down his face.

“I’m sorry,” Hongjoong whispers against his ear as he finally hugs him back tightly against him. “I shouldn’t have said anything, I know how much you miss him.”

“I can’t even say his name,” Seonghwa sobs, everything coming out as if the door had been opened without a previous warning and his emotions were flooding his lungs. “He doesn’t deserve that, if he is d-”

“He is not,” Hongjoong cuts him immediately. “He is not and I will find him. I promise.”

Seonghwa starts shaking his head against Hongjoong’d body, slowly at first but more insistently the more Hongjoong’s words settle inside him. No, he doesn’t want that. He doesn’t need that. No promises. None of that. Not anymore. And when Hongjoong doesn’t react to his movements, he breaks the hug and stares down at him.

“No, don’t,” he says, cleaning his tears with the back of his hands because he needs to look stern and confident with this. He cannot allow Hongjoong to misinterpret it. “I don’t want that.”

“You don’t want me to find him?” He asks with a tender frown, confused by it but not judging him. Just trying to understand how he is feeling.

“No, I do want him back,” Seonghwa says, shaking his head again. “But I don’t- I can’t lose you again.”

“You’ll never lose me, Hwa. I’m here.”

“You were not these past weeks and I can’t go through that again,” his voice is starting to raise but he doesn’t care. He has been silent for far too long and now his heart can’t take it anymore. “I can’t keep seeing how you waste away. It’s already painful enough not to have… him, but losing you too is like breathing underwater.”

Hongjoong frowns and shakes his head softly, cupping Seonghwa’s face tenderly as if he was going to break if he put too much pressure on his touch. He stares at him for longer than necessary, looking for something that would tell him what’s really going on but Seonghwa must have gotten too good at hiding it because his confusion doesn’t disappear. But he doesn’t want to hide it anymore.

“I thought we were going to die today,” he says instead, taking Hongjoong by surprise. But besides all the questions that he clearly has, he lets him keep going. “When we heard the rustling in the woods, I thought we were dying. You did too."

“I… I did, yes. I told you to run, you should have run,” his eyes soften even more if that is even possible, his thumbs moving up and down Seonghwa’s cheeks as he observes every detail on his face.

“Remember that day on campus,” Seonghwa starts remembering, almost daydreaming as his mind takes him back to those late winter days, “when we met in the library? The first time, I mean, and you helped me find the book I was looking for.”

“Yeah, why?”

“It was late in the afternoon and the sun was setting on the windows right behind you. I remember how the light framed your silhouette in oranges and pinks and for a moment there everything felt like a dream.”

“I don’t-” Hongjoong shakes his head in utter confusion.

“It popped up in my head today, when I thought we were dying,” Seonghwa continues, daring to raise his right hand to tuck a strand of hair behind Hongjoong’s ear. “And I suddenly realized that was the first time I really noticed that I was falling in love with you.”

Hongjoong’s eyes open wide, his thumbs stalling on Seonghwa’s skin as if the words had hit him straight on the stomach. He blinks a few times, his eyes moving frantically as he looks everywhere around Seonghwa, looking for something that would tell him that this is a joke or that he doesn’t mean it. And the tallest waits, tilting his head ever so slightly to the right, leaning towards the touch of his hand with his brows curved.

“Wha-” Hongjoong finally says, opening and closing his mouth a few times as his expression wrinkles in confusion. A year ago Seonghwa wouldn’t have been able to fully read what was going on inside his head, but today after everything they have been through he knows exactly what’s going on up there. He doesn’t understand Seonghwa’s confession, because he believes he doesn’t deserve to be loved.

Taking a shaky breath in, trying very hard not to get pissed at Hongjoong’s mind for treating himself like that, Seonghwa places his right hand on the left side of his face, letting his palm rest warm against his jaw. They have kissed before, so many times already, so it doesn’t really make any sense how nervous he is feeling at the thought of doing so this time around but the butterflies in his stomach are going crazy and he can feel the buzzing in his ears. What if this is the only thing their relationship needs to fully shatter into pieces? What if Hongjoong doesn’t love him the same and they have to continually look at each other with the rejection in the air between them?

But what if… what if it works?

Seonghwa gets closer to him, their noses brushing against each other while they continue looking into each other’s eyes and he doesn’t even question himself when he pecks Hongjoong’s nose once. The other, trapped between his body and the wall, lets out the air in his lungs and his hands shake against Seonghwa’s cheeks but he doesn’t move them. When Hongjoong’s eyes travel down from his eyes, staring at his lips for barely a second before staring into his soul, Seonghwa leans in fully and captures his mouth in a tender and slow kiss.

The moment their lips touch, tentatively and trembling with nerves, Seonghwa feels the tension leave his body and every part of him melts to the touch. Hongjoong stays still for a second, processing, until his lips respond to the kiss softly and carefully. His hands move from Seonghwa’s cheeks slowly, almost fearful, as their lips brush together, and they don’t stop on their way until he is fully surrounding Seonghwa with his arms while pressing him against his body. It’s desperate and rough, his fingers clutching on the shirt and digging slightly on Seonghwa’s sides as if he was afraid this was a dream, but it doesn’t translate in the way in which he kisses Seonghwa back almost reverently. Before Seonghwa has even time to think about deepening the kiss, Hongjoong moves away enough to talk against his lips.

“I’ve had the biggest crush on you since we first met,” he says, his sad eyes looking up in a heartbreaking manner. “I wanted to tell you, but… I should have told you when the world was normal, but then this shit happened and it all stopped to matter because you looked broken and I was… not far behind,” he snorts, Seonghwa caressing his jaw for comfort. “And we started having sex and I thought that was the closest I was allowed to have, because I was already lucky enough to be with you and it felt wrong wanting more when-”

When our friends and family were out there lost and probably dead . He doesn’t say it but it’s there, and Seonghwa would be lying if he said the same exact thing hadn’t crossed his mind more than once. But if there’s one thing that Seonghwa has learnt after almost a year stranded in this forsaken world is that no matter how they live their days something is always there lurking and ready to jump at their necks. So why is it supposed to matter what they do with their times anyway? Who is even there to destroy the only bit of happiness they can manage to gather? Who is gonna judge them and accuse them of trying not to be miserable while the world is breaking around them?

“I’m pretty sure Yeosang has a… thing going on with Jongho, he used to like him back then,” Seonghwa says then, earning himself a frown from Hongjoong who seems a bit lost in his trail of thought. “Mingi and Yunho had been tiptoeing around each other for the longest time and, by the looks of it, it seems like they finally managed to face their feelings."

“Yeah, but…” Hongjoong pretty much bites his tongue before he can say whatever it’s in his mind, but the accusatory look he receives must be enough to force him to continue. “We are not them .”

“No. We are us , and we deserve it the same.” But Hongjoong shakes his head before letting it rest against the wall behind him in a tired manner. Seonghwa knows he is battling himself inside his mind, fighting that voice that tells him that he doesn’t deserve any of this because he hasn’t done enough, and he has no intention on letting it win. He takes a deep breath in, holding Hongjoong’s face and forcing him to look at him, voicing his own worries and fears. “We shouldn’t… we cannot allow the fact that Wooyoung and San are still missing to stop us from living.”

The name feels strange in Seonghwa’s tongue though, alien even after not allowing himself to say it for all these months. As if just the whisper of his name would make him drop dead wherever he was, as if not voicing it could keep the pain trapped in a box inside Seonghwa’s heart. But life doesn’t work like that and letting his name slip out doesn’t change anything, the world doesn’t stop and Seonghwa doesn’t feel more burdened after.

However, it seems to make Hongjoong snap out of his misery since he is very aware of their silent agreement not to say names, not to be specific talking about everyone they had left behind. It seems to bring him clarity somehow, that Seonghwa is being so open about it knowing very well how much the situation pains him.

They are not so different after all, not in what really matters anyway. Both of them have lived trying to ignore the loss and the grief, focusing on their self-imposed task to find their people and ignoring the rest. As if that way the rest of the emotions and worries boiling inside of them could completely disappear, when the only thing they have achieved is making everything way worse. Turning them into a time bomb ready to explode at the slightest movement, keeping them away from each other when, after all, they have been the only thing keeping the other sane.

“I can’t stay still, Seonghwa,” he sighs after a moment, his shoulders falling forward as if he was carrying the heaviest of weights. “Especially not now that we know our methods can work.”

“I’m not asking you to stop,” Seonghwa whispers, feeling the ache in his chest at Hongjoong’s desperate expression. Unable to stop himself, he lifts his right hand and caresses his forehead with his fingertips, trying to make the worried wrinkles disappear. “I’m asking you not to let it consume you. Not again. Can you do that?”

Hongjoong stutters, gripping Seonghwa’s shirt and the fight happening inside his mind is evident for the tallest as he looks inside his eyes. But he doesn’t pressure him, he just waits with hopes that he will make the right decision. They can make it work. He really thinks they can. They can be happy if only they allow themselves to be.

“But I…” Hongjoong tries again, biting his lips right after with embarrassment, but Seonghwa encourages him to continue with an almost imperceptible nod. “I need to at least try, Hwa, I have to find them.”

“You don’t have to do it alone, Joongie,” Seonghwa tries to reason. “We have more hands now, we can cover more ground. You just need to let us help you, don’t carry this burden on your own.”

“Okay,” Hongjoong exhales deeply, his forehead falling forwards until it meets Seonghwa’s chest. “Help me. Please .”

Hongjoong’s body shivers against his, the unmistaken shake of a sob that has been held in for way too long. Seonghwa hugs him tight, caressing his hair and kissing him by the ear he has closest to his lips but allowing him to let it all out. He needs it more than anyone and now that he has started he doesn’t seem able to stop as Seonghwa repeats the same soothing words to him:

“We will find them. Together.”

Maybe they will never find Wooyoung and San. Maybe they will never see each other again. Maybe they are dead to begin with and there’s nothing to find. But even if they don’t, even with the pain that it would cause, they will be okay because they have each other. And that alone, Seonghwa thinks, is a privilege in the world they have come to live in.

ⴵⴵⴵ

The arrival of the four of them together with the support they give each other has transformed their routine entirely. Life doesn’t seem as hard anymore, even with the hurt and trauma they all carry on themselves. They find ways to survive but, what sometimes feels more important, they find ways to be happy. Even if just for the shortest amount of time. Moments to laugh and joke and play around. Moments of quietness, of comfortable conversation. Moment of healing, both physically and emotionally.

Their arrival has also meant more “free” time for both Seonghwa and Hongjoong, which had been difficult to navigate at first especially for the latter who was still struggling with his need to protect and put himself on the line for the rest. Slowly but steadily they have all found their way, though. Hongjoong has allowed the rest to enter his studio, especially Yunho and Yeosang who seems always ready to be put to use outside the perimeters.

Seonghwa, on the other hand, has taken refuge in the garden showing the rest what he has self-taught himself during all this time. Mingi seems the most receptive, the one who spends most time there with him. Seonghwa had known him well back in the day and, even though they all seem like completely different people now, he can recognize the way he hides in between the plants. He hasn’t explained what happened to him yet, or even how he managed to find Yunho, but he has made it clear time and again how calming and soothing he finds being in the garden.

“It feels good knowing they grow thanks to my care,” he said once when Seonghwa told him he had a way with plants. "But also that this will help us all, keeping us well fed.”

Seonghwa knew exactly what he meant since it was one of the main reasons why he had taken shelter in it when things had been… not so great.

Differently to Mingi, keeping it simple and quiet, Yeosang seems almost incapable of coming back to “normal”. Not like anyone expects him to be his old self, but he never leaves his small tree house without his bow and arrows, tensing at the smallest sound inside the forest. He hasn’t told much to Seonghwa yet, just a general explanation of how he had found an abandoned wagon and transformed it into a shelter where he had spent the winter.

He was always an independent person, someone who craved solitude more often than not, but now it is even clearer. Sometimes he is nowhere to be found and, after looking for him around the area, Jongho simply shrugs it off as if he was used to it.

“He must have gone hunting,” he always says and he is always right. Yeosang returned a few hours later with a prey or bloody hands and no explanation whatsoever.

At least he has Jongho, who seems to know and understand more than Seonghwa ever will. It comforts him witnessing it, that even if Yeosang cannot confide in him just yet he has a shoulder to lean on. Having him back is more than enough for Seonghwa anyway.

Not having properly known Yunho before makes it hard for Seonghwa to discern if he has changed much although, by the way Hongjoong moves around him, it seems pretty obvious that he has. Just like Yeosang, he carries his axe almost everywhere he goes and even offers himself to go looking for supplies on his own.

“Yunho struggles more than he lets everyone see,” Mingi explains the second time he disappears, axe in hand and jaw tensed without explaining much. “He is the opposite of me. I need silence, but Yunho needs chaos. It grounds him, I think.”

No one seconds guesses his escapades, not even Hongjoong who seems restless at night thinking about ways to help his friend. After listening to Seonghwa’s advice he finally agrees on letting him take part in the search in a more active way. Maybe giving him a clear purpose will give him peace, so they start working hand in hand with the sole purpose of finding the two missing pieces in their collective puzzle.

Yeosang joins them shortly after, unable to stay away when Wooyoung is still out there, and the three of them start creating an elaborate plan with regular outings and new ways of calling the attention to possible survivors in the area. That’s how they end up leaving their little utopia, carrying food for a few days and some basic supplies to survive in the wild. With the nights getting chillier, none of them say it’s their last opportunity to find them before the rain and the cold reaches them fully, but the certainty that it is hovers above them all.

Seonghwa has been sleeping alone for two nights now, Hongjoong’s absence starting to feel suffocating sometimes, but luckily he is never fully alone anymore. So even if nights can get a little more complicated to him, when the sun rises he is welcomed with smiles and comforting words. Life is not so bad anymore, even when the three of them that stay back share the same worried expressions on their faces as they wait for their return.

Jongho and Mingi are currently building a new garden bed with the instructions Seonghwa has given them while he takes care of organizing and storing the seeds carefully. It’s a calm day, like most of the ones they have inside their safe enclosure. The sun is already lowering in the sky, but they still have a few hours to spare before heading into the buildings for the night.

The cat, which Yeosang named Bobo after a few days of taking it to his tree house at night, is lying around next to Seonghwa as he works. He is trying to organize the seeds according to the season, already planning on the ones they will need to plant in the next few days to grow during fall, when a metallic noise reaches the three of them. Seonghwa tenses in place, hands sttopping mid-movement, and looks at the other two for confirmation that he didn’t imagine it.

Mingi seems ready to run away, eyes big and filled with fear, while Jongho stands up quickly with his knife already in hand. The youngest, who Seonghwa knew before mostly for what Wooyoung told him, has been helping everyone with literally anything since he arrived. He is always willing to learn, one step behind everyone to intervene in whatever is necessary without being asked to. And now, even when he has said more than once that his fighting skills are not the best, he is the first one to react.

“Could that be them?” He asks, taking a few steps away from Mingi, looking at Seonghwa briefly.

“Maybe,” Seonghwa says, but he isn’t very sure about that. It has been barely two days and a half since the group left and their journey is supposed to last for a week at most. It is too early for them to be back, but again the sound that has reached them seemed to have been the main door being pushed out of the way.

“I will go check,” Jongho says and starts walking with determination before anyone has an opportunity to stop him.

Seonghwa rises from his place the moment he is out of sight, signalling Mingi to come closer and stay near the escape route towards the tree houses. If something goes wrong he will need Mingi to put himself to safety before he can go help Jongho. He is not the best fighter among the group, he needs more practice, but it wouldn’t be his first time facing and killing one of those things. He is willing to do whatever he must to protect his found family.

Rushed steps approach them shortly after, setting them both on alert, and Bobo rises from his place on the ground meowing softly in the direction of the noise.

“ Hyung !” Jongho’s voice reaches them, breathless and rushing but not too loud. “ Hyung !”

Bobo shakes and stretches leisurely, something that puzzles Seonghwa. The cat has always sensed danger before them, it has always run in the opposite direction when things were about to get dirty. He even hissed at the newcomers when they first arrived, but seeing it groom right before running in the direction of Jongho’s voice while meowing happily confuses him.

When the youngest appears a few meters away from them and Bobo passes by him as if he didn’t matter at all, Seonghwa understands. Not even turning around to look at Mingi, he lets the few plastic bags filled with seeds fall to his feet and runs after the cat with his heart beating like crazy in his chest.

It’s them. It has to be them. But the fact that they are back so early can only mean one thing. Right?

He runs, unable to stay in the dark for much longer, and only stops when he registers a figure moving hastily in his same direction. Hongjoong stops a few steps away from him when he spots him, chest rising and lowering quickly. However, he doesn’t look troubled or worried. On the contrary, there is a soft and relieved smile on his lips and his eyes look way softer than they have in a long time. More like he used to be like before, when they had met in that long forgotten coffee truck in the middle of winter.

Seonghwa shakes his head ‘no’ ever so slightly as he feels the tears prickle at the back of his eyes. Hongjoong looks back then and Seonghwa follows the direction of his eyes with his breath getting stuck in his chest. Yeosang is the first to appear with Bobo in his arms and a bright smile that could light the whole place on its own, and a few steps behind him…

“Wo-Wooyoung,” Seonghwa hears himself, choking on the name as if it burned him from the inside out.

His dark hair is way longer than it used to be, although not as much as it should considering the past of time but, apart from that, he seems exactly like the same Wooyoung he remembers. The clothes he is wearing look odd on him, not his style, and his naturally tanned skin is dirty on hands and upper arms, but Seonghwa can perfectly picture him walking around campus with a coffee in hand.

He carries a big bag on his back and is laughing at something one of them must have said, making Seonghwa’s skin prickle as his memories are slowly awakened. His right fingers are intertwined around San’s, Seonghwa recognizes him immediately after having heard of him everyday since he became friends with Wooyoung. However, opposite to how he had imagined their reunion, Seonghwa's blood freezes when the sunlight illuminates San’s forearm. There is a clear and visible bite mark on it.

“Hongjoong,” he says, rushing towards him with fear controlling him. Fear of the disease, but mostly fear of losing everything he has finally recovered. “Hongjoong, he can’t be here. Why did you-?”

“Don’t worry, hyung . He is healthy,” a different voice stops him mid-sentence. A voice he has dreamed of night after night. A voice his memories had distorted and almost forgotten. A voice he had, deep down, thought he would never hear again. It’s sweet and lighthearted, just like him. “He got treated at a facility for several months. I promise he is fine, can you trust me?”

Trust him? Trust him? Seonghwa has not seen him in over a year, he has told himself to give up on this moment completely so many times he lost count. He has convinced himself that they would never see each other again, that Wooyoung was dead and all that was left of him was dust and ashes.

Trust him.

They used to joke around, before things had gone to shit, about how the three of them—Seonghwa, Wooyoung and Yeosang—would trust each other with their lives. It had always been metaphorical, a simple saying. Until now. How can Wooyoung ask if he trusts him? Seonghwa’s heart has been in his hands to hold for a fucking year, waiting for him to return it. He trusts him with his soul, a soul that has been aching and crying about being away from its equal for far too long.

Seonghwa doesn’t even answer, he is certain all words have abandoned him completely, and simply rushes towards Wooyoung keeping the tears at bay for a moment longer. They stare at each other for a few seconds, taking in the fact that this is really happening. But then Wooyoung smiles, eyes growing small, dimples appearing and teeth showing and Seonghwa crumbles.

Holding him in the tightest of hugs, he surrounds his body with his arms as if he was a lifesaver and he was drowning in the middle of the ocean. It certainly has felt like that. He keeps him close to his body, tears pooling from his eyes as he is enveloped by a smell that feels inherently Wooyoung and foreign simultaneously. When his friend hugs him back, tight and squishing him just like he always did with a soft giggle shaking his body, Seonghwa can feel the warmth that melts the ice that had installed in his chest.

“I’ve missed you too,” Wooyoung says casually as if they were meeting after a few days apart and not a year.

Moving away and wiping his tears away, Seonghwa looks at him for another moment before acknowledging San who stares at them with emotion in his expression. He smiles at Seonghwa softly with a polite nod of his head, a big apologetic expression on his face that the older ignores completely.

“We found them this morning coming this way,” Hongjoong says behind them, still where Seonghwa has left him. “We rushed our way back home.”

Breathing shallow and hitched, his tears never stopping, Seonghwa turns over his steps and faces Hongjoong. He is smiling at him with the relief of a person who has finally fixed something they broke, a person who waits for his apologies to be accepted. Only problem being that Hongjoong never broke anything and he has nothing to apologize for.

Seonghwa walks towards him decisively, ignoring the looks from the others, and hugs Hongjoong tightly when he reaches him. Almost crushing him in his arms, trying very hard not to sob, he cries:

“You found them.”

“No,” Hongjoong says, moving him away so he can cup Seonghwa’s head with both his hands. “We did. Together.”

Seonghwa sobs right before lunging forwards and capturing Hongjoong’s lips in his. He can feel his smile against the kiss as he is pulled impossibly closer, as if this was a long awaited price to all their pain and suffering and sleepless nights.

Together.

Chapter Text

Almost two months have already passed by since they all reunited and it still feels like a fever dream sometimes. Some nights Hongjoong still wakes up sweaty and panting for air, gripping the sheets and blankets as if he was being chased, but the moment he is hugged by the person next to him in bed everything calms down.

It has been a process, slow and like a rollercoaster, but he is getting there. He doesn’t feel like he is choking all the time, or like death is breathing down his shoulder, or like he holds the whole world in his hands. And in the moments when he does feel any of those things he knows he can turn to any of the seven people he shares a life with now. He is not alone, he doesn’t have to fight everything on his own. Not anymore.

The arrival of Wooyoung and San had healed something in everyone, but it had been even more obvious in Seonghwa who had suddenly started beaming with the light Hongjoong had fallen for during their previous lives. It had been entertaining to say the least seeing them catch up, witnessing how Wooyoung got along with everyone and told his story as if it was a movie. As if he had been unable to properly speak for a year, he had talked non-stop explaining how San had gotten bitten, how he was taking into the strange facility and how Wooyoung had lived there for a few months waiting for San to get better.

None of them had asked all the questions that were reflected on their faces, probably for fear of intruding or saying the wrong thing, but it had been obvious back then that Wooyoung was sharing not to get drowned by the memories. Hongjoong didn’t know him as well as Seonghwa did, but it felt fitting for his character. Needing to say things out loud to heal, differently to how the rest had kept almost everything for themselves. And, just as if his presence and eagerness to speak had ignited something in the group, the rest also started sharing about their own hardships. Slowly but steadily they all opened up about what they had lived to get there, about their near death experiences and the hunger and the grief.

“That’s Wooyoung’s superpower,” Seonghwa explained one night as they were getting ready for bed. “He makes you want to share, he makes you feel safe doing it.”

Now Hongjoong finally understands why Seonghwa has been writing him letters all this time, why he had picked Wooyoung as the recipient and nobody else. Wooyoung listened, really listened, and made you feel cared for. He didn’t need to say anything at all, not even hum to let you know he was following, because you could see it in his eyes. He never judged, not even when Hongjoong talked about his obsession over finding them and how Seonghwa had thought he was killing himself to exhaustion. 

Although, he had joked around when Seonghwa finally gathered the courage to hand him his letters, opening the box and rummaging around at the insane amount of broken paper that filled it.

“Wow, you really are obsessed with me,” Wooyoung said back then with a laugh right before hugging Seonghwa and promising he would read each and every one of them.

Getting Wooyoung back had been soothing and like a much needed ray of sunlight in the middle of a winter storm for everybody.

Things haven’t been as easy for San, though, who seems to struggle still with all those months he spent in between life and death. He is fine physically, they can all see that, but it had been very obvious for Hongjoong how much he was struggling internally. He knew San very well, they had lived together after all, and the man had always been quite transparent for him. Things hadn’t changed that, for good or bad.

Luckily for San and his newfound insomnia, Hongjoong and his trouble sleeping had kept him company more often than not. It had been casual at first, Hongjoong getting up from bed not to wake Seonghwa and walking to their balcony to catch some air. He had seen San walk around the property in the dark and had immediately gone down with him.

“Sometimes when I close my eyes my brain tells me I will not come back, you know?” He explained calmly, with a soft smile on his lips as if he was not talking about almost being turned into an undead creature. “I always knew when I was drifting away, I could feel the sickness trying to kick me away from my own body. Everytime my consciousness slipped from my fingers I feared it would be the last. Sleeping is too similar to that, so it gets hard.”

Hongjoong had tried time and time again to comfort him the best way he knew, sharing everything he tried when he couldn’t sleep hoping to find something that might help his friend. Surprisingly for the older, what had seemed to work the best was their conversations. As simple as that. Unburdening with Hongjoong, hearing him talk about his own struggles and inner battles, reduced San’s insomnia and fears a tiny bit everyday.

“It’s easier talking to you,” San said one especially bad night after managing to stay in bed all night long for a few days in a row. “I can’t be fully honest with Wooyoung about all this, he’s been through enough because of me and I don’t want him to worry.”

“He will worry no matter what, no one can tell Wooyoung what to do,” Hongjoong joked, making them both laugh softly.

“Yeah, you’re right,” San admitted, the tension on his shoulders softening. “But still I don’t want to burden him with this too. I’m very sure he pretty much knows what’s going on, because I can see him trying to make it better and has mentioned our chats sometimes, but I just… can’t. He doesn’t pressure me to talk about it, though, which I appreciate more than I can say.”

Still with all the issues they both have, with how much time they have been apart, it still feels the same being next to San. As if their relationship had frozen in time and they were picking up right where they left off. They are still the same in a way, and spending time together heals a part of Hongjoong that he has neglected for far too long.

Life begins feeling normal for Hongjoong slowly, not having to lock himself in the studio for hours on end and able to give himself time to spend with the rest. Slowly he starts craving more company, more moments of just casually sitting next to them all, of playing in the river instead of going there for a quick bath.

Yeosang starts moving around without his bow, only picking it up for practice and for teaching those who show interest. Yunho’s outings reduce significantly and he refocuses his energy explaining the rest how to better defend themselves in case of an attack. Jongho comes back to singing, although he always keeps his tone low enough not to call unnecessary attention onto him. Mingi gets more comfortable with his gardening skills, hiding less and less when an unexpected wave of irrational fear controls him. Wooyoung spends most of his time playing with Bobo and accompanying Seonghwa in what he does. The bags under San’s eyes start disappearing day after day and he starts recovering his physical form.

The feeling of home and belonging is especially strong in Hongjoong’s chest today as everyone busies themselves with one specific task from the list Seonghwa created the day before. Hongjoong, holding a plate with a few fish that wait to be cooked by Yunho over the fire, stops a few metres away from them all just to take in the view.

Wooyoung laughs loudly as San holds him by the waist, Yeosang pouts at them with an embarrassed blush on his neck. Jongho stretches over the table trying to reach Wooyoung with a napkin, wanting to hit him playfully. Yunho observes the scene from a few steps away while shaking his head, asking them to stop being childish a moment before Mingi splashes water on his face.

“I thought I told you to give the fish to Yunho,” a voice startles him from behind very close to his left ear. He can hear the smile on Seonghwa’s words without turning to look at him.

“Yeah, sorry,” he apologizes, tilting his head hoping it will spare him from a complaint from the tallest who has been bossing everyone around all day.

“I told you you didn’t need to do anything and you insisted,” Seonghwa pouts, moving to his side, a bowl with smoking baked potatoes on his hands. “We can’t actually go out and buy you a birthday present, that’s why we’re doing all of this.”

“And I told you I don’t need a present or for you to do any of this. Besides,” he continues after earning a tired sigh from Seonghwa, turning his head to look at them all again with a tender smile on his face, “I already have everything I want.”

Seonghwa’s slender fingers hold him softly by the chin and force him to turn his head back towards him. A soft kiss is placed on Hongjoong’s lips, so short he has to follow the touch and demand a few more. It’s his birthday after all, he is allowed to ask for anything he wants.

“Happy birthday, Joongie,” Seonghwa mumbles against his lips for probably the eleventh time today. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he answers, stealing another kiss before Yunho starts calling for him impatiently.

And as they sit together to have lunch, laughing and not having to worry too much about their lives being threatened, Hongjoong thinks that maybe life is not as bad besides everything going on in the world. Even when the danger is still out there and they could literally die tomorrow, today things are as good as they can ever be. Today they are fine and healthy and together, and that’s far more than Hongjoong would have imagined barely three months ago.

Because time, as San likes to say, is fleeting. And Hongjoong has grown tired of letting it pass him by without making the best of it.