By Zephyria 
“Kuh-uh.”
Beyond his furrowed vision, he met the gaze of a zombie with gray eyeballs sliding down its face. The zombie, with a flashlight stuck in its mouth, had long, straggling hair and was spitting out blood.
A bizarre sight unfolded as white light scattered within the decayed oral cavity.
“Kee-eck!”
Eden flipped himself over and climbed on top of the zombie. He grabbed its slimy hair and slammed its head against the floor. Thwack! The sound of a hard fruit cracking echoed in the dark storage room.
“Huff, huff…”
He kicked the limp zombie’s face with a twitch and straightened his body unsteadily.
As expected, Ha-jin was standing where he turned to at the sound of a presence. He must have been trying to ambush the zombie from behind, as he was holding a Pickaxe high with trembling hands.
Crimson light obliquely illuminated the faces of the two in the darkness.
Drip… drip…. The place where the zombie had passed was filled only with rain-soaked wood chips.
Eden scanned Ha-jin’s trembling body. He looked like he had been rolling around in a pigsty, his appearance a mess despite having been cleaned up. Soaked in rain and blood, he looked like the protagonist of a B-grade gore movie.
Instead of staying obediently in the house as he was told, where had he been wandering? Eden had been planning to scold him if they met, but when he actually faced Ha-jin, his mouth clamped shut like a clam.
It was because all the worries and anxieties that had been swirling in his head evaporated at the sight of the gaze glaring at him as if he was about to burst into tears.
After catching his breath roughly for a while, Ha-jin took a step closer. At that moment, Eden frowned as he felt a liquid flowing down the back of his neck.
“Stop there.”
Ignoring the order to stop, Ha-jin quickly closed the distance.
“Don’t come any closer. You might have been bitten.”
He didn’t know what he was thinking, but despite the serious warning, he strode forward and trapped Eden between himself and the wall. Eden’s eyes widened sharply as his slimy back pressed against the hard cement wall.
“I told you not to come closer.”
“I wasn’t bitten.”
Unable to bear it any longer, he roughly pushed Ha-jin’s shoulder, who looked somewhat dazed.
“It’s not about you, it’s about me possibly being bitten. So, stay away.”
He was taking the possibility of Ha-jin being endangered by him as a bigger problem than the possibility of himself being bitten by a zombie. But for some reason, Ha-jin’s pale lips continued to stubbornly resist.
“No.”
Eden finally clenched his fist at the returning retort. Seeing Ha-jin, who was chattering his teeth like a hypothermia patient, right in front of him, the forgotten annoyance and worry finally began to surge.
Even at a glance, his current condition was very poor. Hot breaths escaped between his breaths, while a cold chill emanated from his closely touching body.
His lips, which looked more like a zombie than the fallen zombie, were already turning blue. He must have lost heat after being drenched in the rain. If the muscle tremors, which are an early symptom of hypothermia, stopped, a more serious condition could be triggered.
He had lowered his body temperature to the fullest, and now he had to work hard to raise it.
Eden once again grabbed the reins of his reason and gently coaxed the sick Ha-jin like a child.
“Hoo… Do Ha-jin. Go inside the house first. I’ll follow you in 30 minutes if there are no problems.”
“I said no.”
Shit, damn it. Worry and resentment burst out at once. Eventually, unable to hold back, he grabbed Ha-jin’s arm and began to push him away. The arm caught in his hand was so cold that he couldn’t tell if he was holding the body of a dead person.
“Are you really out of your mind? I said I might have been bitten. Do you not know how dangerous the situation is right now?”
Ha-jin’s resistance was unexpectedly severe. He shook off the grabbed arm roughly and struggled with his whole body. Clang—! As the Pickaxe he was holding fell to the floor, Ha-jin glared fiercely at Eden with bloodshot eyes.
Rough and panting breaths were exchanged in the unexpected power struggle. Just as gazes mixed with reproach stabbed at each other as if they couldn’t understand, Ha-jin suddenly bent down. Soon, a light buried in the bushes was lifted into his hand.
The light shone directly on the back of Eden’s neck, where blood was flowing. Ha-jin said in a voice that clearly suppressed something.
“Take your hand off your neck.”
“Do Ha-jin.”
“If you’ve been bitten, I’ll kill you right away, so take your hand off. Do you only worry about Jeong Tae-geon?”
The voice of his harshly speaking vocal cords was trembling. At this rate, the argument would not end. Eventually, Eden let out a tired sigh and removed the palm covering his neck.
As if he had been waiting, Ha-jin’s cold back of his hand roughly rubbed the wound where blood was seeping out. Eden had to grit his teeth and endure the stinging pain from the somewhat emotional touch.
Ha-jin, who had been carefully examining the wound, couldn’t continue speaking for a long time and wheezed.
Fortunately, the wound was not from a zombie bite, but a deep scratch from sharp fingernails. He checked other places just in case, but he couldn’t see anything that looked like bite marks. As tension turned into relief, Ha-jin felt like he was about to burst into tears.
Not only did he make him anxious by not returning for a long time, but he almost gave his neck to a zombie. He didn’t know how far he was going to make people worry. And what was he so good at that he was even yelling at him?
Sadness and relief swirled around his body like a tornado. Ha-jin couldn’t stand Jeong Tae-geon’s actions.
Eventually, Eden spoke first at his silent reaction even after time had passed.
“Why? Was I bitten?”
“Yes, Jeong Tae-geon is going to die soon.”
A nervous answer came back as if he had been waiting. Eden stared intently at his profile, unable to tell whether it was a joke or the truth.
Ha-jin asked in a tearful, sulky voice.
“What should I do for you, should I hit you on the top of the head with a Pickaxe right now?”
“……”
“Or should I wait until you become a zombie and then kill you? Just tell me. You don’t know how precious your life is, and you’re wandering around at night without fear, so it looks like you’re crazy about dying.”
Around that time, Eden realized that Ha-jin was venting his anger on him and lost his words for a moment. What, the guilty party is angry, the person who should be angry is himself, but rather the other person was angry.
“Isn’t Do Ha-jin the one who’s crazy about dying? What are you going to do if you wander around like this with a sick body?”
“Yeah. Jeong Tae-geon is the only one who’s good until the end.”
Ha-jin roughly placed the portable light he was holding in Eden’s arms and turned around. Eden, who received the light, let out a bewildered breath at Ha-jin’s back disappearing into the darkness.
Ha-jin struggled to take off his shirt, which was wet with blood and rain, and lay down on the bathtub floor, panting. As the tension that had been constricting his body was released, he felt like his brain was swelling up.
The area below his neck was too cold. He had been rained on all the time in poor condition, so he seemed to have caught a cold. His fingertips and toes were as cold as meat in a freezer, as if he was losing body temperature in real time.
How did this happen? Every time he closed and opened his eyes, intense scenes flashed through his mind like pressing a camera shutter, sprouting up like mushrooms after rain.
While anxiously waiting for Jeong Tae-geon, something hit the front door, and the moment he turned the doorknob without hesitation, he came face to face with a zombie with blue blood. He still vividly remembered hitting the zombie’s dangling arm, which was stuck between the front door, with a Pickaxe relentlessly.
After that, he was fighting a bloody battle in the narrow hallway, and when he came to his senses, he was already up to the 5th floor stairs. The zombie was huge, and it was increasingly difficult to kill him. Huff, huff…! As he reached the limit of his physical strength, his breathing became so rough that a bitter taste rose in his throat.
‘Kkeueueooo!’
He looked at the zombie rushing at him with a terrifying force and barely dodged. The zombie eventually fell through the open window on the 5th floor stairs. But that wasn’t the end. The huge zombie dragged its crushed pelvis and searched for Ha-jin in a bizarre shape.
If he left it alone, Jeong Tae-geon and Pie, who were trying to return home, could be in danger. Eventually, with the determination to end that damn zombie with his own hands, Ha-jin ran down the stairs.
He didn’t even have time to recognize what condition his body was in. He didn’t even remember whether it had rained after that or how many zombies had rushed at him.
Now it was really over. Just when he wanted to give up everything, he heard Jeong Tae-geon’s cry from somewhere.
‘Do Ha-jin…!’
It was a voice that clearly pierced his ears, so much so that he couldn’t dismiss it as a hallucination. Ha-jin dragged his heavy body and ran frantically in the direction of the sound. But unlike his heart, his speed was slow and his vision kept turning white.
When he noticed the abnormality in his body, the heavy rain was subsiding. The zombie that suddenly popped out had attacked Eden, whom he had barely found.
Ha-jin really thought his heart would stop beating.
“Haa….”
Unbelievably, at that moment, the thought of letting go of everything dominated his mind intensely.
If Eden becomes a zombie.
If he dies.
With just a momentary assumption, he felt that everything became meaningless.
The goal of going to see his younger brother Jun-seok was as if it had never existed from the beginning, and all these struggles felt completely powerless.
He could be sure even with his fading mind.
If the moment of losing Eden really came, a pain that was on a different level from when Chun-beom died would unfold.
Because, because….
Then, Pie, who was standing in front of the wide-open bathroom door, let out a worried groan. The moment he barely raised his body, which was half-lying on the floor, he heard the sound of the front door opening.
At the same time, a soft light spread throughout the pitch-black house. Eden, holding a portable light, stopped in front of the bathroom after discovering Ha-jin in a semi-nude state.