“We are one. We cannot be shaken. We cannot be broken down. Because we are the Republic, and the Republic will never be defeated.”

    Yoongi listens to the staticy voice on his television that speaks in perfect harmony with the fire alarm in his apartment building. He knows there is no fire, this is the second time it has gone off today, the second time someone tried to run. He also knows that if there really was a fire, no one would come because he can see the neverending pillars of smoke outside of his living room window on the fourth floor.

    He scoffs at the recorded voice coming from the television. The same one that has been running on loop for four days, since it started.

    It started on a Saturday. Yoongi had been walking home from the studio after saying goodbye to Namjoon at the bus stop. As he was walking home, he heard struggling in an alleyway off to his left. Out of curiosity, he peeked his head around the corner and witnessed two men wrestling on the dirty concrete floor, one a little more haggard looking than the other. The haggard one eventually won over the other man and Yoongi watched in shock as he used his teeth to bite into the other man's throat, effectively stopping his struggling. Yoongi gasped, not believing what he was seeing, and the man that was still alive snapped his head up and looked Yoongi in the eyes. At the sight of sunken eyes and a torn up face, leaving the inside of his mouth on display for onlookers, Yoongi ran. He ran as fast as he could to his dingy apartment on the fourth floor of his ty apartment building and he never looked back.

    As soon as Yoongi got home he called Namjoon, he didn’t answer. Yoongi stopped trying after the fifth time he listened through Namjoon’s prerecorded voicemail. The news started describing it as terrorist attacks an hour after that. They said it was a group of a few people attempting to scare the Republic into agreeing to their political demands, which were unknown to the public. After another six hours the recording started playing on his TV, and a picture of the Korean flag was burned onto his screen in the same way the scene in the alleyway was the only thing he saw when he closed his eyes.

    It had been four days since then. At this point Yoongi knew it wasn’t terrorists, he probably knew that from the beginning. And he knew that they were no longer trying to fight, they didn’t even attempt to get people out of the city or even put them on lockdown because it spread too fast. He knew he had enough cup ramen to last him about eight more days. He knew his faucet was still running and he had bottled water in the fridge. Yoongi liked to focus on the things that he knew.

    Now, there were more people dead than alive, but he could still hear screaming in the streets and struggling in the halls of his apartment building. He heard the grunts of the monsters outside his door and the sound that come from their teeth biting into his neighbor’s flesh. He knew there was no point in trying to escape.

    He could see Namjoon’s apartment building from his window, just a few blocks away from where he was, he could always see it standing tall. But now there was smoke coming from the windows and fire at its foundations. He tried not to think about what that meant for Namjoon.

    Yoongi tried to sleep but the images that appeared as soon as his eyelids closed wouldn’t let him. He could only see what he saw in the alleyway and imagine what could have happened to Namjoon that night. He shouldn’t have run home, he should have turned around and run straight to Namjoon, but what could he do?

    He heard it in the hallway, the slice of a knife on dead skin and the hit of a bat against a rotten skull - it never slowed them down. The result was always the same - blood splattered walls and a mangled, unmoving body that Yoongi would later hear get up and deliver the same fate unto others.

    So what could he do? If none of these defenses worked, there's no way he could have helped. This is what he tells himself.

    Instead, he thinks about the lingering smell of vanilla that the burned out candle on his coffee table left. He briefly entertains the idea of calling work to let them know that he probably won’t make it to his overnight shifts this weekend, but he figures they already know that. He thinks about the beauty of the sunrise he sees every morning, and the fear of the sunset that only leaves darkness behind.

    Too caught up in his thoughts and the crumbling of Namjoon’s apartment building, Yoongi doesn’t notice the offbeat steps that recede from his door until he sees the shudder of the fire escape outside of his window, and hears the unmistakable noise of gunshots. He turns his head towards the door, knees drawing up just a little bit closer to his chest.

    After he continues to hear the gunshots, he turns his head toward the ground outside of his building and sees a boy who looks about 5 years younger than him standing at the bottom of the fire escape. The boy is shooting at the few monsters who are trying to climb up the ladder. In the distance, Yoongi can see a horde of the same things that were previously outside of his apartment door running towards the fire escape. Watching as the boy fights off the last few and begins to pull the ladder back up, Yoongi knows that the group of them is moving faster than the boy can pull it up.

    Yoongi looks away and uses his hands to cover his ears. He doesn’t want to see another death and he wants to block out the same sounds he has been hearing the last four days. But he can still hear the now familiar groans outside the window and he flinches when the fire escape begins to shake again. He hears the clatter of metal on pavement, presumably the gun, and knows that it’s all over.

    He can hear the steps that climb up the fire escape’s stairs and he doesn’t realize that the steps are too calculated to be anything other than human. Yoongi immediately assumes that the boy had been won over and now every sin he’d ever committed was catching up to him. He didn’t know how he had survived this long anyway - he didn’t know why he tried.

    As the steps grew closer, Yoongi prepared himself for the inevitable. He let out a whimper when a loud knock sounded against his window. He tightened his arms around himself and couldn’t help but think about how Namjoon would laugh at him if he ever heard Yoongi whimper.

    He hears another knock, this one louder and with more force. Yoongi ignores it. He tries to ignore what he knows is going to happen, just like he has been doing for the last four days, but then he hears a voice. And he never heard of the monsters having a voice other than groaning.

    “Hey! Open up, please.” And Yoongi snaps his head up to meet the big brown eyes of the boy from the bottom of the fire escape. He was alive. Yoongi was so shocked that he didn’t notice the urgency in the boy’s tone.

    Yoongi blinked at him as the boy shuffled his feet and shifted his face from Yoongi to the ground and back to Yoongi. He looked at Yoongi with pleading eyes and yelled, “Let me in!” and Yoongi was forced into action.

    With shaking hands, he grabbed at the lock on the window, turning it until he heard a click and hurriedly slid up the glass. Before the window was even open, the boy jumped through and moved Yoongi out of the way, closing the window and turning the lock until it wouldn't budge. He threw the curtains across it so the sunlight was no longer streaming into Yoongi’s gloomy apartment.

    “What? You’re-” Yoongi tried to speak but as soon as the words left his mouth the boy put his hand on his mouth and whispered for him to stay quiet. Together, they watched as shadows in the shape of men ran past Yoongi’s window. At the sound of the groaning and the shuffled footsteps there was no question as to what was outside. Yoongi struggled a little, wanting to run and hide wherever he could find, but he was restrained by the boy who put an arm around his stomach, pulling Yoongi so they were standing as close as they possibly could, “Be quiet, and don’t move.” He once again whispered.

    Yoongi complied and stood still until the last of them drug themselves past his window. They both let out a breath as the last of the group passed, and the boy finally released his grip on Yoongi. In fear of attracting unwanted attention, they stayed silent, observing each other.

    Yoongi looked a little closer at the boy who was now in his dimly lit apartment. His hair was black, or maybe dark brown, the lighting made it hard to tell. His lips were in a straight line, showing the freckle below his lip that Yoongi knew would disappear if he pouted. The look in the stranger’s eyes made him seem a lot older than the remaining baby fat on his cheeks indicated. The boy was a couple inches taller than Yoongi despite his age, which would normally irritate him, but in this situation Yoongi couldn’t bring himself to care.

    After a few minutes of silent contemplation, Yoongi decided it was probably safe enough for him to talk. “You’re alive.” Was all Yoongi could force his vocal cords into saying.

    The boy looked him up and down, making Yoongi slightly self conscious of the ratty crewneck and sweatpants he had been wearing for the last four days. “Yeah, so are you.” He retorted, continuing to look around the room. Yoongi’s apartment was only a studio apartment with one big room that held his bed, a couch, the television, and a small area designated for the kitchen. There was a door that led to the bathroom, and another one that contained a small closet. “You should probably stay quiet though,” the boy continued, walking towards the couch, “they’re still out there, and their ears are sensitive.”

    “Okay.” Yoongi replied in a much quieter voice, stepping away from his window and watching as the stranger took a seat on his couch. “Who are you?” Yoongi quietly asked, almost afraid to talk to someone who was able to escape that many of the monsters when he couldn’t even save a person from one.

    Paying more attention to the TV that was still playing the recorded voice of a woman over and over again, the guy glanced over at Yoongi and replied, “Jungkook. 18. Where’s your remote? We should turn this off before they pick up the noise.” Jungkook watched as Yoongi hurriedly scrambled to reach between his couch cushions in search of his TV remote. Yoongi’s fear of attracting attention was obvious on his face, and Jungkook’s eyes swept the apartment until they landed on the black remote that was sitting on the window ledge. He realized that it was gripped in Yoongi’s hand when Jungkook appeared by his window. “It’s over there by the window.” He pointed out, and Yoongi froze. He looked at the remote, and then back at Jungkook, and to the remote again.

    Before a word could even leave Yoongi’s mouth, Jungkook got up and said, “I’ll get it.” before walking towards the window and swiping the remote from where it was sitting. As he walked back to the couch, fiddling with the remote, he asked, “How long has that been playing, anyway? What a load of .” Yoongi watched as Jungkook finally found the power button and turned off the television, enveloping them in a silence that Yoongi found strangely unfamiliar after all of this time.

    “It’s been four days without interruption, I think. I drifted off a few times.” Yoongi replied, eyes glued to the Korean flag that he knew would be burned into the screen of his TV once it was turned off. He shifted his gaze to Jungkook, who was staring at him with a look in his eyes that Yoongi couldn’t place. Jungkook hummed in response, looking down and fiddling with the remote in his hand, and Yoongi took a seat on the other side of the couch.

    The silence was deafening. It’s the only reason Yoongi left the TV on. It distracted him from the shuffling outside of his door and sometimes even the thoughts in his head. The woman’s voice was like a lullaby to him whenever he started to drift into unconsciousness and song lyrics to repeat after he hadn’t talked in a day or two.

    From the corner of his eye, Yoongi saw Jungkook tear his eyes away from the remote to look over at Yoongi. “What’s your name?” He asked, and Yoongi realized that he never bothered to give him one.

    “Yoongi. Min Yoongi.” He replied, his eyes glued to the floor. Yoongi could feel Jungkook’s eyes burning into the side of his head.

    “Yoongi.” Jungkook said, and Yoongi wasn’t sure if he was calling for his attention or just testing the taste that Yoongi’s name left on his lips. He snapped his head up anyway. All of Yoongi’s movements - his steps, the tap of his fingers, the shifting of his eyes, the snap of his neck - they were all too fast lately, like he was jerking himself back and forth between imagination and reality. “How long have you been sitting there?” Jungkook asked, and Yoongi tilted his head to the side in confusion, “On the window’s ledge.”

    Yoongi let out a small, breathless, “Oh,” in realization. How long had he sat there? He knows that he drifted in and out a few times, he remembers thinking a lot, but he couldn’t recall what he thought about. He doesn’t remember eating, and the times he did drift off he doesn’t remember waking up with the refreshing feeling that even a few minutes of rest usually gives him. “A few days, I guess.” Yoongi replies, confusion still apparent on his face, “I don’t remember it very well.” Jungkook hums again, and Yoongi realizes that even though Jungkook talks more than he does, neither of them are very talkative. They converse due to their need to survive, he guesses, it’s a convenience, and Yoongi supposes that a little bit of companionship couldn't hurt either of them.

    “Have you eaten?” Jungkooks voice snaps Yoongi out of his thoughts, which he seems to be getting too lost in lately, “Do you have food?” Jungkook asks, eyes wide, and Yoongi can hear his stomach growl in the same way it does when he forgets to eat because he was in the studio for too long.

    “There should be enough ramen to last me a week. I guess a few days since you’re here now.” Yoongi says, gesturing towards the kitchen cupboards, and Jungkook lets out another hum of acknowledgement, getting up to prepare their food. Yoongi realizes he doesn’t really mind the silence if someone else is here with him.