Sunset’s Wilting.

{ Word count: 1.4k }

By the gasoline station’s convenience store at the wide stretch of road somewhere in the desolate city called Seoul, Jongin can be found scanning a travel magazine idly, looking so detached and bored. The magazine looked like the kind that you can find stashed in airplane seats, with all sorts of most beautiful and paradisiac of places. He flipped through each page of pictures and words as he waited for the gasoline meter to stop chasing the numbers a few feet away. There’s a music playing in the background as he stood on the doorway of the abandoned convenience store. Jongin mouthed through the lyrics, nodding his head slowly with the beat as he neared the last three pages of the magazine. In there he sees pictures of abundant wildlife, lush rainforests, the blue ocean, tropical islands, and the sunset.

The sunset.

He tapped his foot along the beat, mouth syllabicating each word soundlessly. He’s not actually singing. Just strings of lyrics without a voice of harmonious melody, just like his soul. He stares at the picture of the sunset where the land kisses the sky and the sun's rays scatter all over the place. And then, by the gasoline kiosks, and through the soft jazz of Frank Sinatra singing I’ll Be Home for Christmas in the background, he has seen it.

No, actually he heard it first, and then he saw it as he lifted his gaze from the colorful glossy papers. The sound of gravel crunching against rubber and the loud and echoing whine of an engine. And for once, in days and weeks and months, his heartbeat accelerated in a way that he can never have fathomed. He stopped in the middle of the refrain, mouth hanging open, tongue forming a slur midway. His eyes raked the rusty old family van that just pulled to a stop on the spacious lot and by instinct, he felt for his gun at his back pocket and observed as a figure opened the car door and hopped out of the old pavement.

Jongin sees it before he heard of it.

The sunset.

It was an angry red, splayed all over chestnut locks and traumatized eyes. It was deteriorating, the ground swallowing it whole slowly right over the horizon where it splits in half and bleeds with pink from Jongin’s peripheral vision. Right then and there, Jongin had feared that the rapture failed. That God did not really eradicate the people so that he can make the world anew again. Jongin feared that maybe God saw through his flaws and now he’s really been left behind. Because he thinks he’s looking at a corpse, walking gingerly through the concrete as it would crack at any second. Maybe God wanted a rapture. And it was Jongin’s rapture.

Jongin thought about the now approaching man (or a corpse, perhaps?), thin, frail and deranged-looking. Maybe it’s not yet done, the seven months was just the starting wave, maybe this is the apocalypse of humankind and the genesis of the undead. Maybe this is God’s plan. As the figure locked eyes with him, Jongin mulls over whether he believes in God or not.

But believer or not, he hears it, just after he saw it. The sunset. The jazz music. The stale wind flipping through the magazine. The scene was somehow in contrast with the background of decay and rust.

Sinatra sings through the static and Jongin's stutter with a footfall's falter, "Christmas Eve will find me, where the love light beams. I'll be home for Christmas. If only in my dreams, if only in my dreams."

As the song ends, the silence ensues with its own song of the slight rustle of breeze. The figure’s face contorted into relief, like seeing an oasis in the middle of Sahara. And Jongin thought it looked so out of place when the figure smiled and opened his mouth and he hears the words like the Jazz Christmas Carol in the background, howling in the wind.

“Good evening.”

 

 

---

 

 

The pencil that Jongin had been tapping over the concrete was worn out and deformed. It barely surpassed the size of his pinky and the end where the eraser used to be was forged into a lumpy form from being bitten too much. Jongin had been staring at the blank paper for nearly thirty minutes, not really knowing what to write. The sound of rustling and teeth clenching onto bones, ripping off skin and chewing onto the juicy flesh was enough to rob him of his concentration.

After ten minutes of hopeless wracking, Jongin gives it up, throws the pencil and the paper somewhere inside his duffel bag and watched the man (or is it a corpse?) as  he is devouring the grilled meat with hunger and want in his eyes, like he hadn’t eaten meat ever since he was born. Jongin looked at his hollowed cheekbones down towards his collarbones and his elbows, digging through his skin like interconnected fleshy sticks, he almost feared that if he ever flicked it, the bones would give in and fall into a pile on the floor.

Jongin, for the past four hours, had been contemplating on pulling a gun and shooting the man without further ado. He could easily do that, just look for the firearm settled beneath his bag and engrave a large hole on the man’s forehead. After all, the man seemed no match for Jongin’s bulk figure and .357 Magnum. But he was gnawing through the meat like a starving child and Jongin just can’t look away. His mind is in a haze of thoughts as he observed every action with a frown. How long has it been ever since he saw real people?

“Slow down,” Jongin enunciates the words carefully as if talking to a child. “If you eat fast, you’ll get hungry fast. I have no more food for you.”

The man stopped from chewing and looked up at him with doe eyes and grease-stained cheeks.

"At least until morning," Jongin added awkwardly.

The man didn’t answer. Instead, he picked on another meat, raised it in eye-level and stared at it as if he’s examining it. He poked it several times, flipping it between his dusty hands before putting it in his lips, he on the juice before sinking his canines on it, slowly, Jongin didn’t realize that he was counting every chew the man makes.

“You said you live in Eunpyeong-gu?” Jongin tries, now settling to tangling the knot on his shoelaces. The man was silent for a moment before giving him a slight nod, eyes downcast as he handles the food in his hands carefully.

“Makes sense. Most of the roads there have not been obstructed yet. It’s the only open road in Seoul.”

“Y-you’ve been there?” the man asks, carefully putting down the meat in his hands. Jongin was surprised at how deep and hoarse the voice sounded. It somehow reminds him of Frank Sinatra that sings the carols on a Christmas Carol vinyl.

“Yes. Been through the whole city. Busan even. Walked from place to place. Food becomes scarce and you can’t be stationary.”

The man didn’t reply anymore, only nodded in understanding. The silence grew between them like a thick vine, nearly suffocating them. Jongin has learned to adapt to silence but this night, there’s something about it that makes him feel unsettled. They sit in front of the city hall, surrounded by abandoned cars and the thicking moss. Jongin played with his hands as he waited for the man to finish his meal, clasping it together, then unclasping it, rolling off his fingertips on his calloused palm, clasping it, then unclasping it, clasping-

“A-aren’t you going to eat more?” the man asked.

Jongin looked up to stare at him for a moment. He stared at the hopeless look in his eyes and his cheeks tainted with grease. Eventually, he shook his head, no.

"Do you have a place to crash?" Jongin asks.

"N-no. I ran out of supplies back home. I sort of got lost while looking for food..."

“Then we better hurry back, I expect they will be coming in a bit,” Jongin stood up, dusted his pants and arranged the duffle bag on his shoulder.

“W-who?” the man inquired.

“The carnivores. Wild animals and God-knows-what-else.”

“Oh," the man asked as he dropped the remnants of the meat and it thudded on the concrete floor. "A-and hurry back where?” 

The frail man used his knees for support as he stood up and Jongin observed that the man’s height barely passed his shoulders. He swiped the grease in his hands from his tattered mud-yellow shirt that says ‘DUM VIVIMUS VIVAMUS!’ in wide bold English alphabets. Jongin thinks its amusing and wonders if the man knows what it means.

Jongin looked down on him, the moonlight reflected on the man’s sagging face as he replied, “Home.”