SHOUT OUT TO "miraaaai" AND "honeysuckleboba" FOR THE UPVOTE! THANKS A BUNCH! :)

Da-in's POV

After I check in, I spin on my heels towards the door to my left. Before my hand reaches the knob, I hear Daniel's voice behind me.

Before I can hear him finish his question, I open the door and slide through. It's not that I don't want him to see me. But I can't risk anything.

I look around the room I had entered.

It was pretty small. There is a counter that stretches from one wall to the other. Behind the counter is a woman, probably in her early twenties, reading a magazine.

I couldn't take much in before I hear the knob from the door I came from twist open. I jump the counter and duck behind it. The lady looks at me in the corner of her eye before turning her attention to Daniel.

"Do I need to get something here?" Daniel asks.

I just hope the answer is no so he can leave.

"No, you can go on right ahead," the lady replies, pointing to a door.

Daniel doesn't think too much of it and carries on. As soon as I hear the door close, I pop up.

"Thanks for helping me out."

She just shrugs and turns a page. "Hey, I've had ex-boyfriends that I've wanted to avoid before."

"He's not my ex-boyfriend. We've never even dated... what is this place?"

The lady walks into a doorway with an infinite curtain of beads. I stand outside awkwardly, not sure if I was supposed to follow. Not a moment later, she pokes her head out of the curtains.

"You coming?"

"Ahh, yes," I say, hurrying after her. 

I push through the beads, some of them slapping me in the face. I retaliate by swatting them away. Finally, we reach a room that has a pair of chairs, the ones you see at barber shops. The lady puts an apron on with a nametag that reads "Sujin". 

Sujin shuffles through a bag and pulls out some scissors.

"What kind of haircut would you like?"

I blink and point to myself in confusion. "Me?"

"Who else? There's no one else here," Sujin notes.

"Why a haircut?"

She shrugs and replies, "Well, I guess it's the best thing the government will give to these poor souls. Plus who wouldn't like a new haircut? It might be the last time you would groom yourself."

I nod and walk to the chair. As I sit, Sujin whips out an apron that covers the whole front of my body.

"What would you like?"

"A haircut that's chic and doesn't need much maintaining." If I was going to fight out there, might as well look badass while doing it.

"Got it."

After I get my haircut, which is the shortest I've seen my hair, I thank Sujin and go on my way.

Through the doors is a loading bay. But instead of packages, they were loading people onto the trucks. It seemed as if I was the last one because everyone was on that last truck.

I don't have much time to panic, so I start running. The truck doesn't seem to be on my side and goes faster. Great.

Soon, I'm right on the truck's tail. But as I keep running, I feel myself getting tired. As I'm about to give up, a hand pops out from on the truck. I grab the hand and get pulled into the truck.

As I'm on the truck, I collapse onto the floor and try to catch my breath. Meanwhile, I feel someone patting my back as I do so. I look up to see a guy with a bowl haircut.

When I finally calm down, I sit in an empty spot right next to him.

"That was close. Are you alright?"

"Yeah, I'm good. Were you the one who pulled me up?" I ask.

He nods and puts his hand out to me.

"My name is Jonghyun."

I smile awkwardly and shake his hand. "Da-in."

The whole way there, I talk to Jonghyun. He's a really nice guy. But he's really awkward but very caring. I learned that he's twenty-three, so he's four years older than me. He also has a sister.

I also learn that this wasn't his first rodeo. Jonghyun apparently was in the first batch of people sent to fight. But he had to come back because his squad didn't make it and he was the only one who had survived. He warned the government of the decreasing number of humans and increasing number of undead. Although he did this, Jonghyun didn't mean for things to turn out like this.

After that, Jonghyun and I are talking about our siblings when all of a sudden, the truck jerks to a sudden stop. I get caught off-guard and knock heads with a guy on my right.

"Jesus, that hurt," I groan, rubbing my head.

"How do you think I feel?"

The agitated voice makes me realize that I wasn't the only one hurt in the process.

I look over to see a guy who looks to be around Jonghyun's age. But man, even though the guy is mad, he still looks hot as , Jesus Christ. I couldn't do anything but giggle like an idiot.

"Huh, sorry about that. I'm just a total clutz." I'm not even clumsy. I would say I'm rather stable.

"Just... watch where you're going next time," he mumbled, scratching his head.

"Haha, okay," I say. Still laughing. Still smiling.

Jonghyun stares at me and raises his eyebrow at me.

"What?" I ask.

'Nothing, nothing," Jonghyun says.

As soon as we get off, the guards awaiting our arrival waste no time and push us into two separate lines.

After the guards shove me into a line, I realize that Jonghyun isn't here with me. I don't see him because we're sectioned off by gender. Great.

For a while, the line of women keeps walking and walking. I feel like a prisoner without the handcuffs. But there's not much of a difference when you have the guards breathing down your neck and are constantly pushing you back into the line.

As if they haven't been forceful enough, the guards shove us into a room. Some of the weaker links fall onto the ground. No offense but the pansies will be the first to go if they can't even handle a simple push.

I sit on one of the chairs that are scattered the room and choose the one secluded off. I didn't come here to make friends, especially not with these weaklings.

A woman who's probably in her early 30's, comes in walking fast to the center of the room. She smacks a table abruptly, which makes some of the girls scream.

"Listen up! I'm here today to train you, women. Teach you a little about what has been going on for the past few months on the outside," she barks out.

Has it really been months since this started?

The lady rummages through her coat and takes out a small device, which turns out to be a projector. She sets it on the table and presses a button.

The device projects an image of our city, which wasn't much of a looker even before all this had started.

"Take a look at our beautiful city before the problem started."

She pauses then presses the button again.

"Here's what it looks now."

I can't say it looks horrible... but it looks completely awful. Buildings crumbling down, cars tipped over, broken glass everywhere, and the immense amount of pools of blood on the street accompanied by decaying bodies and zombies.

"This can be prevented from getting worse if we stop the issue altogether."

At this point, I think more than half of the women would rather die instead.

"We can do this by learning how to deal with these zombies. Let's talk about the most common type: the runners."

The woman turns off the projector and flips the whiteboard, showing us three pictures of zombies.

"The runners are the most common zombies. They're in fact, the fastest zombie we've seen. If you encounter a runner, they run insanely fast if they see your face. Don't even think about outrunning them. Your only way of escaping safely is to hide from