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The storm outside had finally tapered off into a hollow, rhythmic dripping against the iron gutters, but the quiet inside the archery hall felt heavier than the rain ever had.
Na-yeon sat on a rolled-up practice mat near the rear equipment lockers, her knees pulled tight against her chest. Across the dim expanse of polished floorboards, Mi-jin was leaning against a rack of fiberglass recurve bows, idly filing a chipped fingernail with the sharp edge of a spare arrow notch.
On paper, they shouldn't have been able to breathe the same air without a shouting match. Na-yeon had spent her entire high school existence looking at girls like Mi-jin—loud, crude, reeking of cheap tobacco, and completely unbothered by rules—with a mixture of disgust and envy. And Mi-jin, as she had made clear on more than one occasion, viewed Na-yeon as a spoiled, fragile trophy child who wouldn't last five minutes without her parents' credit cards.
Yet here they were, stranded in the dark while the rest of the group slept, separated from the rest of the world by a double-locked steel door and a field of restless corpses.
"You're staring," Mi-jin said without looking up from her arrow notch. Her voice was a low rasp that barely carried past the target stands. "Either say whatever insult you're cooking up or go to sleep, Princess."
Na-yeon flinched slightly, pulling her knees a little closer. "I wasn't going to insult you."
"Could've fooled me." Mi-jin set the arrow down with a dull wooden click and slouched back against the wall, crossing her arms. She looked at Na-yeon through the dark, her sharp eyes assessing every line of tension in the other girl's frame. "You look like you're about to jump out of your skin. It's safe in here for now. Ha-ri's got the front, and the doors are bolted."
"It's not the doors," Na-yeon muttered softly, her voice barely a whisper. She stared down at the scuffed leather of her uniform shoes, her fingers twisting the loose hem of her cardigan. "It's just... quiet."
Mi-jin let out a dry, breathy sound that was almost a laugh. "Quiet's a luxury these days."
"No," Na-yeon said, a sudden, sharp edge slipping into her tone before she could catch herself. "Quiet meant something was wrong. At home, if it was quiet, it just meant they were waiting for someone to make a mistake."
Mi-jin stilled, her casual posture subtly shifting as her eyes locked onto Na-yeon's face.
Na-yeon swallowed hard, instantly regretting letting the words slip out. She wasn't supposed to say things like that. Her mother had drilled it into her head since primary school: What happens behind our front gate stays behind our front gate. They had the polished hardwood floors, the pristine white furniture, the multi-million won private tutors, and the high-end SUV parked in the driveway. From the outside, the complex was a picture of refined, upper-class success.
Nobody needed to know about the glass breaking behind locked doors at two in the morning. Nobody needed to know about the cold, methodical screaming matches where her father would strip down her mother's dignity until she was weeping on the kitchen tile, or how her mother would turn right around the next morning and project all that bitter, suffocating rage straight onto Na-yeon.
Just having to hear them at it night after night was bad enough—listening through the thin wall of her bedroom, hands pressed hard over her ears while she tried to memorize English vocabulary lists to drown out the impact of heavy crystal vases shattering against the dining room wall.
It had been so agonizingly lonely being an only child in that giant, echoey house. There was no brother or sister to hide with in the closet, no sibling to pass secret looks with across the dinner table when the air turned lethal. She had carried the full, concentrated weight of their dysfunction all by herself.
"Money couldn't buy a damn thing in that house," Na-yeon whispered, her voice trembling so violently her jaw clicked. "They bought me everything I ever asked for. Every dress, every bag, every private lesson. But if I didn't score at the top of the class, my mother wouldn't speak to me for a month. She'd just look right through me, like I was a ghost sitting at her table."
She clamped her mouth shut, her chest heaving as tears burned the backs of her eyes. She hated herself for showing this to Mi-jin of all people.
Across the room, Mi-jin didn't laugh. She didn't roll her eyes or make a sarcastic remark. She simply slid down the wall until she was sitting flat on the floorboards, resting her elbows on her knees.
"My old man didn't use silent treatment," Mi-jin said softly, staring out toward the dark windows. "He preferred his fists. When he was sober, he barely knew my name. When he was drunk, he thought I was his punching bag."
Na-yeon looked up, her eyes wide with shock.
"Surprised?" Mi-jin sneered weakly, though there was no real malice behind it. "Thought a delinquent like me just grew up in a gutter? Nah. He was a shift manager at a factory. Paid the rent on time, bought all the groceries, kept up appearances for the neighbors. Faithfully, every single month. But behind closed doors? Total nightmare."
Mi-jin reached up, running a thumb over a faint, pale scar near her hairline.
"He took a turn too fast on the highway five years ago next month," Mi-jin continued, her voice dropping into a flat, detached monotone. "Hit-and-run. Cops said he was going ninety in a sixty zone, loaded to the brim with cheap liquor. The loss... well, my mom cried at the funeral, but I couldn't bring myself to squeeze out a single tear. It’ll be five years next month, and the funny thing is, the loss still hurts—not because I miss him, but because I spent my whole life waiting for him to turn into a real father, and then he just died and ruined my chances forever."
The silence returned to the archery range, but it felt different now. It was no longer the sharp, hostile quiet of strangers trapped together, but a heavy, shared grief that filled the dark space between them.
"My mom tried after that," Mi-jin added, a faint, rare softness touching her face. "She worked double shifts at a diner to pay off his debts. Sacrificed her back, her wrists, her sanity just to keep a roof over my head. That's why I act out. That's why I smoke and throw punches at anyone who looks at me wrong. Because I learned real quick that if you don't hit first, the world will grind you down until there's nothing left."
Na-yeon stared at her, seeing for the very first time the bruised, exhausted girl hiding behind the vulgar threats and the wooden bat. They had come from completely opposite ends of the world—one drowning in wealthy expectations, the other starving in neglect—yet they were both standing in the exact same wreckage.
"I thought..." Na-yeon began softly, her voice small. "I thought you had everything figured out. You never look scared."
"I'm terrified all the time, Princess," Mi-jin admitted, offering a small, crooked smirk that didn't reach her eyes. "I just know how to hide it better. All the tricks of the trade, you know?"
Na-yeon let out a tiny, breathless sound—halfway between a sob and a laugh. She wiped her face with the sleeve of her uniform sweater and shifted her weight on the mat, looking across the floor at Mi-jin.
"If we get out of here..." Na-yeon hesitated, swallowing her pride. "You can borrow my notes for the college entrance exams. If you want."
Mi-jin let out a genuine laugh this time, loud enough that Ha-ri glanced back from the front doors with a sharp, warning glare before returning to her watch.
"Deal," Mi-jin whispered, leaning her head back against the wall with a faint, tired smile. "Just don't expect me to actually read them."
Min-jae hovered outside the frosted glass door of the archery equipment office, his hand paralyzed an inch above the brass handle.
A cold sweat pricked at the back of his neck. Inside that cramped, dimly lit back room, Ha-ri and Mi-jin had been sequestered for over twenty minutes under the pretense of hunting through the athletic lockers for spare medical supplies and spare clothes. But Min-jae’s exhausted, paranoid mind couldn't help but run through every absurd, chaotic scenario imaginable.
Although it was just as possible that the two girls had already had sex in there and there was every possible risk that they were in the middle of some afterglow, and they might not have put their clothes back on yet. Or they just might have been having a normal conversation and were still fully clothed. Or maybe the space was simply too cramped and filthy to have sex in at all.
Opening that door would be like the box that Schrödinger’s cat had been trapped in. Equal possibility of walking in there to find something completely normal or walking in and seeing something horrifying.
Min-jae squeezed his eyes shut, took a deep breath, and shoved the door open.
They had their clothes on. Thank God. No, they were both sitting on a bench in the middle of the room in the middle of a conversation, looking up at him with matching expressions of mild annoyance.
"Did you find any clean bandages in the back?" Ha-ri asked, breaking the silence first as she tossed a heavy ring of locker keys between her hands. "Or are we going to have to rip up another pair of spare track pants?"
"I promised I'd find something usable," Min-jae mumbled, stepping inside and hastily sliding the door shut behind him to keep the draft out. "The first-aid box in the main hall was completely cleaned out, though."
"Did you check the bottom shelves of the varsity lockers?" Mi-jin asked, leaning back against the metal mesh with her ankles crossed.
"I tried, but the lock mechanism on the end cabinet is completely rusted shut—"
"—So you just gave up?"
"—No, I tried forcing it with a screwdriver—"
"—And broke the tip off, I'm guessing?" Mi-jin shrugged, letting out a dry snort as she pushed herself off the bench and snatched a heavy crowbar from the floor. "Step aside, rookie. Let a professional handle the vandalism."
"Be careful with the glass panels," Ha-ri spoke up as Mi-jin got to work on opening the first locker, her voice dropping into that familiar, authoritative tone. "If you shatter one, the noise will echo straight down the ventilation shaft."
Mi-jin jammed the pry bar into the seam of the locker frame, her muscles straining under her uniform jacket. She yanked hard, generating a screech of twisting metal.
No cardigan or jumper, that was obvious, damn it. Just stacks of moldy towels, a forgotten pair of muddy cleats, and a crushed box of energy bars.
"Well, aren't we just swimming in luxury?" Mi-jin drawled, kicking a stray cleat out of her way. "Nothing says survival like three-year-old gym socks. Maybe if we're lucky, the next locker holds a five-course meal and a pack of menthols. Or maybe just a single intact band-aid for Jun-seong's side. Honestly, at this point, I'd take a dry pair of socks over a winning lottery ticket."
Oh wait, what’s that?
"Look at the bottom shelf under the gym bags!" Na-yeon called out before Ha-ri could reply, poking her head through the doorway and pointing toward a plastic zipper pouch tucked into the dark corner.
"What, you want me to pull out a dusty vanity kit for you, Princess?" Mi-jin challenged, though she reached down and dragged the pouch out anyway.
She unzipped it, pulled out a thick, unopened box of feminine hygiene pads, and held it up like a trophy. "Jackpot."
Na-yeon let out a sudden, high-pitched snort that sounded like a dying kettle, clapping both hands over her mouth in sheer shock.
That did it for all of them.
Ha-ri tried to keep her face stoic, but a sharp, uncontrollable burst of laughter escaped her nose. Mi-jin dropped the box onto the bench and doubled over, clutching her stomach as tears of ridiculous relief leaked from the corners of her eyes. Min-jae just slumped against the wall, his shoulders shaking violently as he buried his face in his elbow.
It took a few minutes for any of them to get their composure back, especially as once one of them made eye contact with another, it set them all off again. But after a few minutes of constant laughing, they were able to wield their composure back simply due to the fact that they had run out of air.
But maybe it was the exhaustion and fear that was creeping in and sending them into hysterics like that.
But it felt so good to laugh.
"All right, all right," Mi-jin conceded, wiping her eyes with the back of her grimy sleeve as her laughter finally subsided into ragged gasps. "We take the supplies and we shut up about it. No need to throw a parade over cotton."
"It's better than nothing," she admitted, tossing the pouch into Na-yeon's waiting hands.
So not good. Not ever. Now, location didn’t really matter, although a smaller and wide-open classroom, like say their homeroom, would have meant that none of the girls would have had any real privacy to deal with their period.
Now some of the boys might be more mature over the issue than others would have been, but having to navigate that while hiding from flesh-eating monsters was a special kind of nightmare none of them had prepped for.
Oh.
"We share whatever's in that kit," Ha-ri stated, her tone shifting back to practical leadership as she inspected the rest of the locker's contents. "We don't know how long we'll be stuck in this facility before the rain stops."
"What about the third-floor supply closet?" Na-yeon asked, carefully tucking the plastic pouch under her arm. "Didn't the health teacher keep extra medical supplies near the nurse's station?"
"The nurse's station was overrun during the first twenty minutes," Ha-ri began, her gaze darkening as the memory surfaced. "The glass windows were smashed outward, and the entire hallway was choked with infected. If anyone went up there now, they'd be trapped in a dead-end corridor with zero visibility."
"Are you completely sure?" Na-yeon asked, her voice faltering.
"I saw it with my own eyes," she answered plainly.
Mi-jin laughed, a short, barking sound. "Leave it to the school board to put the emergency medical kits in the most lethal corner of the campus!"
"That's literally where the nurse works!" Na-yeon managed to get out eventually, her indignation flaring up through her lingering giggle.
"Doesn't make it smart," Ha-ri shrugged, resting her hand back on her bow riser. "Designers don't plan for zombies. They plan for flu season."
"Well, flu season didn't involve people biting each other's throats out," Na-yeon said like it was completely obvious.
Mi-jin snorted, leaning her shoulder against the locker frame. "Give it time. With the way Mr. Lee graded our midterms, I'm surprised half the senior class didn't turn feral months ago."
"Focus on what we actually have," Ha-ri interjected, cutting through the banter. "We pack the dry clothes, we check Jun-seong's bandages, and we prepare for guard rotation."
"Always business, Captain," Mi-jin drawled, though there was a flick of genuine respect in her eyes as she tossed the crowbar back onto the equipment table.
She continued poking around the back of the shelf, her fingers brushing against an old, dust-covered framed photo left behind by one of the varsity seniors.
Seeing the pristine, perfect family portraits sitting on the desks in the main office always made Ha-ri's skin crawl. It brought back the phantom echo of her own home—the heavy, suffocating silence of the dining room before her father spoke.
“A second-place ribbon is just a formal document proving you were the first person to lose,” her father’s voice rang in her memory, sharp as glass. “If you bring shame to this family's name, don't bother setting your shoes in my foyer.”
Ha-ri blinked, forcing the memory back down into the dark, locked compartment of her mind where it belonged. Her parents weren't here. Their suffocating expectations had no power in a world where the rules of civilization had completely collapsed.
And anyway, their previous owners were either dead or zombies now anyway, so they as the living would get more use out of anything that might be in there anyway.
Ha-ri picked up the remaining canvas bag, zipped it tight, and looked toward the heavy door leading back to the main range—wondering silently just how much longer their thin streak of luck would hold, and simply to see just what would have happened next.
"Is this actually going to hold together, or am I going to walk out there and have it fall apart instantly?" Na-yeon asked, reaching up to tentatively brush her fingers against the edge of the spare gym trousers she had just pulled on.
"Relax, Princess," Mi-jin assured her, tossing the empty plastic tag over her shoulder. "It’s high-grade sports gear from the varsity locker. It’s built to survive a sprint, not just you sitting around sulking."
Na-yeon didn't answer right away, adjusting the drawstring with tight, meticulous movements.
She’s just trying to act like she’s in control, Na-yeon thought critically, watching the way Mi-jin balanced the weight of her wooden bat against the bench. Just like the rest of them always did.
Memories of her old classmates flashed through her mind—the quiet, bitter comments whispered in the back row during self-study hours.
“Must be nice having your mom pay off the teachers for extra credit,” Ji-min had muttered under her breath three weeks ago when the mock exam scores were posted on the bulletin board.
“She doesn't even talk to anyone unless they're on the student council,” another voice joined in from across the row.
“She thinks she’s untouchable just because her family owns half the block.”
Ji-min’s sharp glare from that afternoon burned in Na-yeon’s memory—cold, distant, and full of assumptions. “You don't know what it's like to actually earn anything, Na-yeon.”
"You going to keep staring at the floorboards, or are you gonna help me sort the rest of these straps?" Mi-jin asked, breaking through the fog of memories.
"Why do you care if I help?" she asked, pulling her arms tight against her chest. "You've been calling me useless since we locked the door."
"I lied," she lied, barely pausing as she untangled a knot in a nylon band. "You're annoying, not useless. Big difference. It's a complete waste of time trying to organize these now," Mi-jin argued as she sat down on the bench and examined the bundle of spare athletic tape and ties. "If we don't fix the straps on these bags, the gear spills the second we have to run. And I am not going back out there empty-handed."
"I can do it myself," she tried, reaching out for the tape.
Even though the person was different, the whole look and demeanor was still the same—the defensive slant of the shoulders, the quick, sharp edge in the voice whenever someone came too close.
"I know how to tie a proper knot, Mi-jin," Na-yeon flared, her voice rising slightly. "I took outdoor survival prep in middle school. My parents made sure I had private instruction for every single extracurricular on the syllabus. I don't need you acting like I'm a child who can't handle a piece of nylon!"
“You don't know what it's like to actually earn anything, Na-yeon.” Ji-min’s voice echoed again, lingering like an uninvited ghost.
"Did I ask for your résumé?" Mi-jin asked, rolling her eyes.
"I was never an outcast," she hesitated, pulling a loose thread on her sleeve. Maybe outcast wasn’t the right word. "I just... didn't see the point in wasting time with people who were only going to talk behind my back anyway. They already decided who I was before I even opened my mouth. So why bother trying to correct them?"
"Who gives a damn what a bunch of sixteen-year-olds think?" Mi-jin said fiercely. "They're dead or turning into red mush out on the field right now. You think their opinions on your family's bank account matter now? You're alive. They aren't. End of story."
"Is that supposed to make me feel better?" she asked, looking up.
"It's supposed to make you snap out of it," Mi-jin said, leaning in. "You spend half your time waiting for someone to attack you, and the other half giving them a reason to do it. Stop making yourself an easy target. It's embarrassing to watch."
That was kind of nice, in a twisted, abrasive sort of way.
"Fine," she said, dropping her hands into her lap.
It was a perfect fit too, in both leg length and waist size—the spare trousers didn't drag against the dusty floorboards for once.
Some luck.
"Agh—dammit!" Mi-jin shrieked, jumping up as her foot clipped the edge of a stray metal weight plate tucked under the bench.
She kicked the heavy iron disc hard enough that it clanged violently against the bottom shelf of the locker rack.
"Are you insane?" she asked, her eyes widening in horror. "Ha-ri is going to kill us if she hears that!"
"The door is thick enough to drown out a bomb," she complained, rubbing her big toe through her worn sock.
"It's still reckless," she replied seriously, stepping over the weight. "We have to be quiet. Every sound travels in this building."
"You got a hairpin or something?" Mi-jin asked as Na-yeon tried to tie her hair back in a bun, her long bangs falling continuously into her face.
"Why, so you can pick another lock?"
"No, so you stop shedding hair all over the emergency kit," she asked, gesturing toward the messy strands. "Sit down. You look like a drown rat."
"I do not," she asked surprised and then winced at the tone of voice the question came out in.
"You really do," she shrugged, stepping around the back of the bench. It wasn't meant as an insult. "Your hair’s a rat’s nest from the rain earlier. If an infected grabs you by the ponytail because you couldn't be bothered to fix it, I am not turning around to cut you loose. Hold still."
Yeah, that made a little more sense.
"Fine," she noted, sitting rigid on the wooden seat.
Mi-jin laughed, a low rumble in her chest. "Don't look so terrified, Princess. I'm tying your hair, not taking an arrow to your throat."
"Just don't pull too hard," Na-yeon explained as she felt Mi-jin dividing her hair into sections muttering to herself as she did. "My scalp is already sore from running through the courtyard. And don't make it look ridiculous."
"You want it out of your face or not?"
"I want it secure," Na-yeon said firmly, closing her eyes as the warm, rough fingers worked quickly through her locks. "If we have to run toward the main building tomorrow, I can't have my vision blocked. Cheong-san and the others... if they're still in the classroom, they won't be looking out the window for us."
"They're alive," Mi-jin said simply.
"How can you be so sure? You didn't see the stairwells. You didn't see what happened to—"
"Because people like them are too stubborn to die easily," Mi-jin cut in.
Huh.
Mi-jin’s voice was quieter when she spoke next, her hands moving with surprising, practiced dexterity.
"They're stupid, they're loud, and they stick together," Na-yeon said softly, staring at her own hands. "Gyeong-su... he was always trying to hand out those stupid snacks. Even when I was awful to him. Even when I told him to stay away from me because his uniform smelled like cheap grease. He didn't deserve it," she said, her voice dropping into a barely audible murmur.
It was a silent again for a minute as Mi-jin worked on her hair, the rhythmic movement of her fingers the only constant in the dark room.
"Why do you even know how to braid like this?" Na-yeon asked, tilting her head slightly before Mi-jin's hand firmly held her chin straight.
Mi-jin snorted, pulling a strand tight. "My cousin used to make me do her hair every morning before school. Said if I didn't make it look like the girls in the magazines, she'd tell my aunt I was smoking behind the shed. I spent three years learning every French braid, fishtail, and topknot in existence just to keep my mouth shut."
"That sounds awful," Na-yeon said quietly.
"It was annoying," Mi-jin corrected. "But she was ten. Kids are ruthless when they have leverage."
"Do you miss her?"
"She's in Daegu," she agreed bitterly. "Safe, hopefully. Unless the whole country went up in flames while we were stuck in fifth period."
"It probably did," Na-yeon murmured. "My parents..." she said, stopping herself before the word could leave her lips again.
“You don't know what it's like to actually earn anything, Na-yeon.”
"Stop letting them live in your head. They aren't here to grade you. You survive tonight, you survive tomorrow, and you make your own calls."
"Is it really that simple for you?"
"No," Mi-jin said as she sat down beside her on the bench, resting her elbows on her knees and looking at the finished braid. "It's terrifying. But it's better than sitting around waiting for someone else to grant you permission to breathe."
"You really think we can make it to the gym?"
"I think if Ha-ri doesn't shoot us first, we can make it anywhere," Mi-jin said, her eyes flicking toward the closed door. "She’s crazy, but she knows how to hit a target. And you... you’re stubborn enough to keep up if you stop feeling sorry for yourself."
"That's almost a compliment."
"Don't get used to it," she said sincerely.
"Gyeong-su..." Na-yeon began, her fingers curling tightly into the fabric of her new gym trousers. "I... I think I owe him an apology. A real one. Not the fake kind my mother taught me to write when I was rude to the board members' daughters. A real one."
Mi-jin smirked, leaning back against the metal lockers with a long, exhausted sigh. "Good luck with that. The kid’s probably going to faint if you say something nice to him."
"Is he really that fragile?" she asked, a faint, genuine trace of amusement touching her lips.
"He's an idiot," Mi-jin warned, though there was no malice in her tone.
"He's the kind of guy who gets himself bitten because he was trying to save a stray cat," Mi-jin muttered, shaking her head. "Stupidly brave. Like the rest of that class."
"I suppose," she agreed softly.
"We move at dawn," she continued on, checking the straps on the canvas bag one last time.
Mi-jin smiled, a small, genuine thing that made her look entirely different from the girl who had burst into the archery hall with a bloodied wooden bat hours ago.
"Thank you. For the hair."
If they survive this... maybe the world on the other side of those steel doors wouldn't be completely cold.
"Hey, Na-yeon," Mi-jin spoke up again, pushing herself up from the wooden bench.
The braid was so pretty—neat, tight, and completely out of her eyes, tucked securely against the nape of her neck.
"It looks good," she breathed, running a hand over the smooth weave. "Really good."
Mi-jin preened, tossing her chin up with a smug grin. "Told you. Professional work."