Nayoung climbs out of bed and puts on clothing as quietly as she could. She tiptoes towards the door, careful not to let the floorboards creak as she slips out of the room without even giving a second glance to the other body sleeping on her bed.

Grabbing her baseball bat by the door, she pauses at the bottom of the steps when she sees light from the kitchen. Nayoung listens to the sound of running water and quiet clattering of plates.

On the count of three, she jumps out from the corner and holds her bat cautiously towards the possible intruder.

Instead, she finds Jieqiong gasping in surprise at the noise. The younger girl sighs once she sees Nayoung. Turning off the tap, she clutches her chest and leans against the counter. “You scared me.”

“What are you doing?” Nayoung asks her curiously as she sets her bat down.

“Washing the dishes,” Jieqiong answers sheepishly.

Nayoung narrows her eyes. “Why?”

Jieqiong shrugs. “Dirty dishes irk me. Besides, I thought I should empty Sidao’s sink as a little thank you gesture for his generosity today.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“I couldn’t sleep,” replies Jieqiong defensively. “Speaking of Sidao…is he in your room? I was about to knock on your door earlier today, but uh…I thought I shouldn’t…interrupt.”

Nayoung averts her eyes in embarrassment. She had not expected to face the consequences of her actions and realize the gravity of her situation this soon.

“It’s okay,” Jieqiong says with a lighthearted chuckle, noticing Nayoung’s sudden sheepishness. She smirks. “You’ve held it in long enough.”

Nayoung rolls her eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing,” Jieqiong teases. She raises a mischievous eyebrow. “So tell me, how was it?”

 “…I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Fine, if you don’t want to. I assume it didn’t go well then?” A tsk escapes from Jieqiong’s lips. “Well, not that I’m surprised. He is a guy, after all. Girls are better. But I won’t judge.” She winks at Nayoung before returning to her dishes with a light chuckle.

Nayoung clenches her jaw and bites her tongue. Why is Jieqiong so laid-back about this? Nayoung’s actions tonight are a huge deal to her, but here’s Jieqiong appearing so insouciant and unaffected. Nayoung isn’t even sure which reaction she wanted. Anger? Disappointment? Either one would’ve been a lot better than the unconcerned reaction she got instead.

With a huff, she grabs a plastic bag from the counter and begins opening the cupboards, filling the bag with canned goods and water bottles.

Jieqiong notices this just as she finishes the last of the dirty dishes. “What are you doing?”

“What does it look like?” Nayoung answers as she checks the expiration date on a can of beans before stuffing it in the plastic bag.

“Nayoung, we are not stealing from Sidao.”

“Not we, it’s I,” Nayoung corrects her. “It’s not you doing it, it’s me.”

“So you sleep with him and then steal his food? Was he that bad in bed?” Jieqiong jokes from the sink, but Nayoung curtly ignores her as she roughly opens a drawer.

Noticing that Nayoung is in a bad mood, Jieqiong walks towards her and grabs her wrist. “Seriously Nayoung, this isn’t the way to repay someone’s kindness.”

“Let go, Jieqiong.”

“He saved us from horde earlier, cooked for us, and offered us a place to sleep for the night. And this is what you do in return? Steal his food? Do you not have any semblance of gratitude and respect?”

“Drop the righteous act already,” Nayoung blurts out, her tone laced with venom. “Open your eyes, Jieqiong. Living is about surviving now. No one cares about morals or ethics. Not my fault Sidao takes in strangers and leaves his food unlocked. Being too trusting of people he doesn’t know is his downfall. This place seems too good to be true anyways. Aren’t you suspicious of the sketchiness at all?”

“Is it wrong to be hopeful? Not all things could be bad,” Jieqiong frowns as she lets go of Nayoung’s wrist. “This world has turned you awfully cynical.”

“Call me cynical all you want. It’s about time you face reality for the disillusionment that it is. But it seems your head is still so far up in the ing clouds, all starry-eyed for Eunwoo. Both of you need to snap out of it…” She huffs.

Nayoung is envious; she doesn’t want to admit it, but she burns with jealousy. Not at Eunwoo for winning over what Nayoung yearns for the most, but at both Eunwoo and Jieqiong together for seemingly finding a balance between their escape and reality; for turning what is supposed to be temporary – this state of happiness, hope, and solace – into something ongoing, present, and real.

Nayoung is envious that she doesn’t feel like she’s a part of it. She wonders if she’ll ever find a way to truly be happy and stay happy again.

She moves on to the next cupboard, tossing away unopened expired boxes of cereal aside.

Jieqiong scoffs. “I’m not some idealistic fool, Nayoung, and I will not let you paint me as one. I’m fully aware of the hole of a world that we live in,” Jieqiong fires back. “You say I’m the one who needs to get it together? It’s not my problem that you can’t look past the negativity and see the bright side of things.”

“Still optimistic as ever, aren’t you?” Nayoung mumbles under her breath. “I don’t understand.”

“You can’t or you don’t want to?”

“I can’t,” Nayoung says, setting down the can in her hand and turning to glare at Jieqiong. But even Jieqiong, with the fire in her eyes, still looks forgiving as ever and Nayoung really can’t understand how someone like Jieqiong hasn’t stomped out and given up on her yet. She averts her eyes when she feels her heart prickle. “I’m doing this to feed us. We need food. We’re leaving first thing in the morning as soon as the sun rises.”

Jieqiong only shakes her head in response. “I can’t believe you.”

“It’s just ing canned food, Jieqiong, it’s not like I’m taking his entire stock–“

“I’m not talking about the food, Nayoung. I can’t believe you’ve turned into this.”

The bitterness and disappointment dripping in her voice makes Nayoung wince. It stings. She has never disappointed Jieqiong before. The younger girl makes it sound like Nayoung has turned into a monster and perhaps she believes there may be some truth behind it.

“Berate me all you want, but don’t you dare speak to Eunwoo like this. She doesn’t need your pessimism and she’s the last person on this earth who I’d want to feel hurt and hopeless because of your words,” Jieqiong warns before promptly walking away from her without a word.

Nayoung is left alone in the kitchen with a flickering lantern and a dripping tap. She blinks her eyes when she feels them well up before moving on to the next cupboard. Jieqiong is the last person on this earth who she wanted to feel hurt and hopeless because of her words.

viii.

I loved you, Atthis, long ago
even when you seemed to me
a small graceless child.

ix.

But you hate the very thought of me, Atthis,
And you flutter after Andromeda.

/

Jieqiong stands by the open front door, her back to the inside of the house.

“Where’s Eunwoo?” Nayoung asks as she emerges from the kitchen while putting on her backpack.

“Waiting outside.”

The flat displeasure in Jieqiong’s voice is evident and Nayoung can tell she is still visibly upset with the decisions that have been made. Sighing, Nayoung retreats upstairs. She has more important things to worry about at the moment; Nayoung had prioritized leaving the farmhouse quietly at dawn. Even if Jieqiong were to hate her with every fibre of her being, she and Eunwoo are still Nayoung’s prime concern.  

Now the sun rises, painfully slow like it doesn’t want to emerge from the horizon. Nayoung tiptoes up the stairs and reaches the door to the second floor bedroom, intending to pocket anything she could get her hands on before they finally leave the place and never come back.

She opens the door with the slightest creak, careful not to wake up Sidao, but something is off.

Nayoung swings the door wide open and knits her eyebrows upon seeing the bed empty except for a tangle of unmade sheets and blankets.

She glances around the room, wondering where Sidao had gone. The last time she left the room just a few hours prior, he was still sleeping soundly in the bed with a and tousled hair.

A noise from up the hallway catches her attention. Nayoung emerges from the bedroom and turns towards the door at the end of the corridor. Nayoung had noticed this room before; the door was locked and Sidao never said anything about it.

But now it’s open, just slightly ajar, and an unlocked padlock hangs on the door. Gripping her bat with two hands, Nayoung approaches slowly.

With every step she takes, the floorboards creak beneath the soles of her shoes and the clatter from the other side of the door only grows increasingly louder.

“…who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come…”

Nayoung’s ears perk up when she hears Sidao’s hushed whispers from within the room. Upon reaching the door, she pushes it open with caution.

And once Nayoung gets a full view of the room, she cannot help the loud gasp from escaping her lips.

She finds Sidao kneeling by the bed, palms together in prayer, as a figure thrashes in bed.

A zombie with its wrists and ankles bounded by chain to the bed jerks and twitches, its feral snarling growing noisier at the intruder.

Nayoung widens her eyes as Sidao sees her and gets up immediately, returning Nayoung’s mortified gaze with one that is equally fearful.

An ugly guttural sound and the rattling of chains from the other side of the room makes Nayoung jump and she notices another zombie tethered to iron bars on the window.

“What the hell...” Nayoung mutters in horror and confusion as her eyes switch from the shackled zombies to the visibly alarmed Sidao standing by the bed.

“L-Let me explain–!”

Before Sidao could utter out any more words, Nayoung escapes from the room and shuts it close with a slam, hurriedly locking the padlock and trapping Sidao inside the room with his two imprisoned zombies.

Nayoung darts down the hallway and descends the stairs without ever turning back. 

She finds Jieqiong standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking at her expectantly as if she was waiting.

“Nayoung, there are pe–“

“We have to go now,” Nayoung says as she grabs Jieqiong’s wrist. She rushes them out the door before Jieqiong could even question her about why she is in such a rush.

But once they exit the house, Nayoung comes to a halt on the porch when she spots a pickup truck parked on the dirt driveway. She sees four women in and around the truck – one of them is Eunwoo, the other three are unfamiliar faces.

“Who are they?” Nayoung asks Jieqiong.

“I don’t know, they just came–“

“You three should leave this house as soon as possible,” the first unfamiliar face shouts. She stands by the open passenger door, clutching a rifle in her hand.

“We were just about to,” Nayoung answers as she cautiously approaches the truck.

“Good,” the stranger says. “Now scram. And don’t return here.”

She gets in the truck and the engine roars to a sputtering start as she slams the passenger door close.

“Wait!” Eunwoo exclaims and the woman rolls the window down. “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere–”

 “Take us with you.”

The stranger looks at Eunwoo amusingly, but sensing that she was being serious, the stranger sighs. “We can’t, sorry.”

Nayoung takes the opportunity to interject. “Are you heading west?” She doesn’t get an answer and Nayoung takes the silence for a yes as she approaches the truck hastily. “You’re from the gated community.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The lie slips through the stranger’s lips too unconvincingly.

“Take us with you,” Nayoung echoes Eunwoo’s earlier plea. “Please.”

Before the woman could shoot her request down again, the buzz of a radio from within the truck interrupts the conversation.

“X-ray to Delta, do you copy? I repeat, do you copy? Over.”

Nayoung knits her eyebrows at the voice coming from the radio. It sounds strangely familiar…or perhaps her mind is just playing tricks on her.

The short-haired woman sitting in the driver’s seat lets out a sigh, grumbling to herself as she reaches for the radio and brings it up to .

“I swear to god, can you please stop playing with the radio already?” she says.

“Negative. Tango is a killjoy, I repeat, Tango is a killjoy. Over.”

“For the fifth time today, my name is not Tango. Stop calling me that and put the walkie-talkie down, Yebin. The radio is supposed to be for important messages.”

Nayoung startles at the mention of the name. Before she could dismiss her own hopeful thoughts, Jieqiong frantically runs up to the truck and speaks up immediately.

“Yebin? Kang Yebin?” Jieqiong questions. It’s a thin thread of hope to hold on to, but she does so anyways. Nayoung marvels; Zhou Jieqiong, always the optimist. What could be chance that it’s their Yebin?

The driver looks at her with narrowed eyes before bringing the radio up to . “Yebin, is your last name ‘Kang’?”

Within a second, a reply arrives. “Negative. My name is X-ray.” A short pause accompanied by the driver rolling her eyes, and then the radio buzzes to life again, “Yes, it’s ‘Kang’.”

“Yebin!” Jieqiong shouts. “We know her! She’s our friend, oh my god, she’s alive. She’s our friend!”

Jieqiong is close to tearing up and Nayoung can’t help an astonished smile from spreading across her face at the thought of Yebin alive and well.

“Yebin, there’s people here who claim they know you,” the driver reports to the radio, still clearly skeptical.

“Yebin, it’s me, Eunwoo! Tell her it’s Eunwoo, Jieqiong, and Nayoung!”

The driver reports with her lips pressed to the radio. She receives a surprised squeal in reply from the other line, followed by the blabbering of words, a lot of “oh my god!”s uttered at the radio-communicated reunion, and soon Yebin is demanding them to take in Nayoung, Jieqiong, and Eunwoo.

“Our orders did not include scouting people,” the first stranger in the passenger seat says to the radio.

“Well, now it’s part of your orders. Bring them.”

“Yebin–“

“There is no point in arguing about this when I get the last say anyways. Take them in,” Yebin’s tone is relatively light, in contrast to her authoritative words. 

The first stranger sighs. “…Roger that,” she grumbles into the radio before turning her attention to glare at the three girls standing outside the truck. “Get in the back.”

“Great!” comes Yebin’s cheery voice from the radio. “Over and out.”

Nayoung, Jieqiong, and Eunwoo climb into the back of the truck where a third armed woman stands.

The driver backs the pickup truck out of the driveway and soon, they are driving down the countryside, away from the house, as the sun fully rises to its place in the sky.

/

“Sidao is a little…” the woman pauses and scrunches her face in search for the correct words, “…screwed up in the head.”

Jieqiong snorts and Nayoung swallows the lump in .

“Just before I left the house, I saw him…” Nayoung starts as she fiddles with her fingers. “In the bedroom. He had zombies shackled up. And he was praying…”

“That is messed up,” Eunwoo interjects, her face contorted in disgust. “You guys know him?”

The woman nods. “He used to be a member of the community. Religious dude; he carried around a bible and gave sermons and stuff with his mother and girlfriend. First it was fine, and then their preaching took a freaky turn.”

“How so?”

“Something about the last judgement and how this is all God’s doing,” she explains. “He said that the infected all go to heaven and that everyone’s time will come. Or something like that, I don’t know, I never listened to their bull. It got out of hand when they started protesting the killing of zombies. Sidao even snuck one in and was feeding it like it was some pet.” She shudders.

They fall into a silence as the truck speeds down the deserted road.

“They were kicked out from the community. We took them to that farmhouse and left them there to fend for themselves. It’s good that you guys left that sketchy place. He may seem nice at first, but I don’t trust him and I never did. We were just passing by on the road when we saw you.”

Nayoung spares a glance at Jieqiong. She had not spoken ever since they left the farmhouse and has been sitting silently beside Eunwoo, avoiding Nayoung’s gaze as she plays with the other girl’s fingers instead. Nayoung lets out a tired sigh. She wonders if they’ll ever be okay again.

“My name is Siyeon, by the way,” the woman says. “The one driving is Kyungwon and the other is Mi–“

“Minky!” comes a voice from the passenger seat through the open rear window.

“Her name is Minkyung,” Kyungwon drawls from the driver’s seat.

“It’s Minky.”

“I’m not calling you ‘Minky’.”

“Why not? Everyone does except you.”

“Yebin does not equal everyone,” says the driver, “And because ‘Minky’ sounds ing stupid, Minkyung.”

Siyeon sighs and shakes her head. “They’re both older than me and yet they bicker like a pair of 10 year olds.”

“I think you’re being a little too rude considering I saved you three Oreo cookies when I could’ve easily eaten it all by myself,” Minkyung argues.

“Please, you weren’t even the one who found it when we raided the grocery store.”

“Well, I was there when Kyla found it. I even convinced her not to hide it from you guys because my generous soul wanted to share it with you!”

“Oh, bless your mighty kind soul, I’m so touched,” Kyungwon counters sarcastically.

Their squabble is cut short when Siyeon promptly slides the window close with a roll of her eyes, consequently preventing Nayoung from hearing the rest of their argument. She marvels at how they can bicker about such trivial things and wonders if she’s been far too absorbed in her own thoughts to lighten up as they did. Perhaps Jieqiong is right about her changing.

She glances at the other side of the cargo bed where Jieqiong and Eunwoo sit close, still entangled in each other’s arms in breath-held silence. Nayoung gazes with such sentiment and her heart jolts, the throbbing of her beats becoming too unbearable as she averts her eyes to the sky.

There are only mere centimeters between Jieqiong and Nayoung as they sit opposite each other and yet the distance feels far too great. Jieqiong is less than a foot away, but Nayoung feels like they are miles apart.

Nayoung lets the sun’s rays engulf her wholly as her ears buzz with the steady rumble of the truck. She seems near broken as she feels her exhaustion catching up to her.

But all must be endured. They are on their way to the community. A finish line, one of many, is nearing. All must be endured.

x.

Eros
Giver of pain...

//