By Zephyria 
Could he have been attacked by a zombie and failed to return?
For whatever reason, the assumption that he might have left his side crashed down like a certainty, and his thoughts completely froze.
Ha-jin clutched his dizzy head and forced his heavy body up. Tick, tock…. He checked the time on the bedside table, relying on the dim moonlight filtering through the window. The hour hand was nearing 9 PM.
“……”
Never, for any reason, had Eden wandered the streets late at night.
Anxiety gnawed at his breath and reason, greedily inflating its belly. He hadn’t eaten anything all day, and his stomach was painfully empty, but he had no desire to put anything in his mouth.
A quiet yet destructive feeling persisted, as if he were in the eye of a storm.
“Shit….”
In the end, Ha-jin couldn’t bear it and got out of bed. If Eden was in a dangerous situation, he had no time to sit idly by.
He rummaged through the dark and found a battery-powered camping light. Relying on the reddish glow, he stepped out of the front door, and a pitch-black hallway greeted him.
His physical condition wasn’t good, so he planned to search only the immediate vicinity without overexerting himself.
He went down the stairs and roamed around the parking lot. However, he couldn’t find any trace of Eden or Pie anywhere. The heavy, humid night air made his body feel limp. At this rate, it wasn’t Jeong Tae-geon who would be in danger, but his own life.
After a while, Ha-jin returned to his room without any success and collapsed on the living room floor. He gulped down a bottle of water and roughly wiped the cold sweat flowing down his temples.
“Haa….”
Tick, tock….
He felt strange. Perhaps it was because he had never been separated from Eden since the zombie outbreak. He still couldn’t believe the current situation, that Eden wasn’t by his side.
Kkeueoeoeok—!
The faint howling of a zombie beyond the veranda window made his heart drop. Ha-jin muttered in a daze.
“Jeong Tae-geon… Jeong Tae-geon….”
In fact, it wouldn’t be strange at all if he never saw Eden again. Like Chun-beom’s sudden death, Eden could leave his side at any time.
Ha-jin bit his lip, at a loss for what to do in the face of the sudden emptiness and loneliness.
Just when he thought that if he waited patiently, Eden would return safely, the anxiety that he would lose him forever if he didn’t go looking for him tormented his mind.
In the end, he buried his face in his knees and sat still for another 30 minutes. As time passed, his whole body ached like a muscle pain.
Just as pain was seeping into his exhaled breath, thud! Something collided heavily with the front door.
“…Huh.”
Startled, Ha-jin reflexively stood up. Without even thinking, he hurriedly grabbed the doorknob of the front door.
“Kkeueo, kek, keeek!”
Unpleasant and bizarre groans grabbed at his ears just as he flung the door wide open.
❖ ❖ ❖
Savage curses burst from Eden’s mouth as he clutched the broken flashlight.
“Damn it, this backwater town.”
He couldn’t find a decent pharmacy all day. He diligently searched for even a nearby convenience store, but it seemed that the only retail store in this neighborhood was the small shop he had visited in the morning.
He wandered aimlessly for hours, not even realizing his wristwatch was broken, and before he knew it, pitch-black darkness had fallen. He really had to go back now, before it got any later.
Only after stopping by an old pub and getting a portable gas burner and a carton of orange juice did he reluctantly turn back.
“Hoo….”
Weariness was buried in his deep sigh. He, too, was utterly exhausted. He had been forced to march relentlessly, get drenched in the pouring rain while carrying Ha-jin, and not only nurse him, which was not in his nature, but also wander aimlessly for hours in search of medicine, and his physical strength had reached its limit.
“Let’s go, Pie.”
After dealing with two zombies that came running at Pie’s growling signal, he was finally at the entrance of the apartment. He climbed the stairs, dangling the Pickaxe that was worn to the bone.
As he was shaking the blood off his hands, he suddenly noticed a bloodstain that he hadn’t seen before in the light of the flashlight illuminating the hallway.
Abruptly. He stopped in his tracks and carefully illuminated the hallway with the flashlight. Bright red bloodstains were spread across the hallway like paint. Judging by the state of the blood, it wasn’t very old.
Pie’s reaction was calm, so there were clearly no Aberrants nearby. His gaze, calmly following the trail of unknown blood, stopped at one spot.
“……”
The starting point of the blood was right in front of the front door where Ha-jin was supposed to be sleeping. Eden’s face hardened as he realized the situation. Even the front door, which should have been closed quietly, was slightly open.
“……!”
Thump, it felt like his heart was falling downwards. He quickly ran to 301 and flung the front door wide open.
“Do Ha-jin…!”
Ha-jin, who should have been lying on the bed, was nowhere to be seen. Only a cold silence lingered in the house.
“…….”
Eden gripped the flashlight tightly and scanned the floor. He searched for any possible bloodstains or footprints, but there was no sign that anyone had broken into the house.
In that case, Do Ha-jin had walked out on his own. But why? And what about all those bloodstains…?
“Shit, seriously.”
A curse burst out of him in bewilderment. He dropped his luggage as if throwing it and left the house again.
The trail of blood stopped at the stairwell on the 5th floor. He shone the flashlight down, looking for signs of a fall, but couldn’t find anything.
An unpleasantly anxious feeling consumed his reason. Before he knew it, cold sweat was streaming down his back.
Do Ha-jin is not weak. He was a person who knew how to be sensible even while cowering in fear, and he was more agile than anyone else. Whether an intruder had broken in or he had encountered a zombie, the chances were much higher that nothing he should worry about had happened.
That’s how it was when he rationally considered the situation. But far from being relieved, his heart was drawing an even more unpleasant curve and throbbing as time went by.
“Kking! Kkiing…!”
Pie, noticing Eden’s unstable state, lifted his front paws and jumped onto his body.
Eden closed his eyes for a moment, took a deep breath, and then took out a handkerchief from his pants pocket. It was the half-handkerchief Ha-jin had given him at the mart.
“Pie.”
He placed the handkerchief in front of Pie and asked in a choked voice.
“Can you find him?”
Sniff, sniff, Pie calmly smelled the handkerchief, tapped Eden’s knee with his nose, and then barked briefly, “Woof!”
Pie led Eden to the entrance on the first floor. No sooner had they passed the security guard’s booth than another rain cloud gathered. Pitter-patter…. The raindrops pouring down on his crown were ominous.
Pie’s steps, which had been diligently searching for traces, gradually slowed down in the face of the fiercely pouring rain. Eden’s jaw muscles bulged thickly as the situation worsened.
“Wait here.”
If he kept letting the dog get rained on, even the dog would fall ill. In the end, he put Pie back inside the stairs and plunged into the downpour.
“Do Ha-jin!”
He shouted Ha-jin’s name, relying on the faint flashlight in the darkness where he couldn’t see an inch ahead. Every time he shouted, a chilling howl echoed faintly from somewhere.
Kururung— Ha-jin’s name echoed once more with the thunder.
“Do Ha-jin…!”
Eden swept back his soaked bangs. His whole body was drenched in the rain that was crashing down like waves. He didn’t care and crawled along the ground, scanning under the parked cars.
“Damn it, seriously… where did he go.”
He ran to the back of the apartment, his expression more ferocious than ever.
Perhaps it was a shower, as the rain that had been pouring down fiercely subsided quickly in less than 5 minutes.
Without even having time to pay attention to the capricious sky, Eden stared intently at something beyond the parked cars. A reddish glow was flickering in the pitch-black darkness.
He clenched his jaw tightly again and jumped behind the dump truck where the light was spreading. But the only things that greeted him when he arrived were a lit portable light and red bloodstains scattered on top of it.
There was a lot of bloodshed, but no corpse or zombie. Could Do Ha-jin really have been bitten by a zombie?
Once again, Eden’s eyes sank coldly.
Drip… drip….
His heart pounded in time with the sound of raindrops falling on the asphalt from the tip of his chin.
Just then, the blade of the Pickaxe, which had been dangling precariously, separated from the wooden handle. Clang—! He glared fiercely at the worn blade that had fallen to the ground and chewed on his curse again.
“Damn it, nothing’s going right….”
Tadak, tadadak!
At that moment, he heard wet, soggy footsteps behind him. Irregular rhythm, stench mixed with the smell of rain, panting breath….
Almost as soon as he turned his body halfway, a scream that tore at his ears echoed from somewhere.
“Jeong Tae-geon!”
“Kyaaaaaak—!”
Peoeok! A sharp sensation struck his nape along with the impact of a blow to the back of his head. He turned his body and vertically thrust the flashlight he was holding upwards.
“Kiieek!”
At the same time as he fell onto the bushes, a sticky liquid poured down his chest.