Jonghyun woke slowly, going through several stages of consciousness before becoming aware of his surroundings. He was extremely disoriented for several minutes afterwards, not understanding where he was. He stumbled out of the small pod he'd been in and looked around. The first thing he noticed was that someone had set out water and crackers for him, but when he took a bite of the crackers, they were stale. He took a sip of the water and found it stagnant. He frowned.

He stumbled further into the building, wondering why he didn't see a single soul moving through the hallways. Had they all gone home for the day? He couldn't see why they would be going home so early, though. The clock on the wall to his left said it was only 10:40 in the morning, and it seemed to be working fine.

His first priority was finding out where he was. There were several offices he looked in, but none of them had informational documents. Mostly, it was numbers that Jonghyun couldn't begin to comprehend. He didn't try. The first official-looking office he saw, he rifled through. It was some kind of foreman's office with all kinds of information about the customers and company policies. Jackpot.

As it turns out, he was in a cryogenic freezing facility. When he saw SM Corp's logo at the top of the documents he was reading, memories flooded his brain. He sighed with relief. The facilities had started popping up about 5 years before Jonghyun finally managed to scrape together enough to afford being frozen. He'd hoped to wake up in a better time, away from war and famine. And it seems like he may have gotten his wish.

Jonghyun finally located his clothing in the immense warehouse next to the facility. There were so many people's possessions, boxes upon boxes of them. It was a wonder. How affordable had being cryogenically frozen really become after he was asleep? It had to be at least 5 years. But Jonghyun had a feeling it was much, much longer than that.

He walked outside and stood drinking in the warm sunlight. It felt good, since the chill in his bones hadn't disappeared after he woke up. He sighed and located his own car in the garage. Even though he was now outside, he still didn't see a single human being. There was an eerie silence over everything that made Jonghyun increasingly uneasy.

Of course, the battery in his car would be dead. He'd expected that much, but he hadn't expected the cars around him to be dead. Jonghyun was starting to suspect that any car he tried to start would be dead, and the rising panic in his brain was hard to ignore.

He walked for almost 4 hours before he reached the outskirts of town. The first thing he noticed was the utter chaos of the streets. He started walking faster, confused and wanting very badly to know what had happened.

He found a newspaper dispenser not far from a grocery store. He pulled a copy of the newspaper out and quickly scanned the headlines. His panic turned to dismay and hopelessness. The newspaper was dated 2246, which was well over 200 years after Jonghyun had been frozen. And judging from the yellowed paper, he guessed that the copy of the news he held was at least 50 years old. Maybe more.

The stories in the paper were all about how the planet named "Nova" (discovered in 2089) had slowly mutated the people who moved there because of Earth's overpopulation. The mutants were insanely violent. They were viciously territorial, and preyed upon normal humans who happened to wander in what they considered their territory. The end result had been a declaration of war against the mutant humans.

Some mutants managed to steal ships and returned to Earth to escape the war. And once they arrived, everything on Earth started spiraling out of control. They had carried diseases from Nova that caused the mutation and it had rapidly affected Earth's population. What part of the population wasn't affected by the mutations was affected by other diseases that the mutants had brought. Almost all of them caused death.

Jonghyun read the articles in the paper with shock and disbelief. He could very well be the last normal human alive, and it sent feelings of extreme loneliness through him. He threw the newspaper on the ground and walked towards the grocery, wondering if there was any edible food left.

He walked through rows of mostly empty shelves with growing despair. If there was no food left here, what's to say there's no food left anywhere else? He was over 200 years late waking up, and there was the definite possibility that easily obtainable food was gone. A thing of the past. And if that was the case, he was going to have to teach himself how to hunt. If animals on Earth were the same as he remembered, that is.

The first place he went after the grocery store was the library. There might be a few books on hunting and skinning an animal, which would be very useful to Jonghyun. Without the librarian to tell him where the books actually were, he searched for a good hour before he came across the perfect book. He took it with no intention of ever returning it.

He went to a sporting goods store next. They had lots of crossbows and plenty of arrows, but very few guns and boxes of ammo to fit the gun. He took a gun and a couple of boxes anyway, in addition to the crossbow and arrows he took. He grabbed a backpack and some clothing on his way out, but that didn't make him feel any better at all about the situation.

The reality of things sunk in, and he fell even further into despair.

Over the next few years, Jonghyun learned how to hunt and skin animals well. He knew which animals had mutated and which hadn't (through an unfortunate process of trial and error), he knew what greens were safe to eat. He knew which cities had easily obtainable food. The days when he came across a grocery store that had still-edible cans of food, he almost cried with sheer joy.

With no electricity, the winters he faced were long and cold. The summers were long and hot. He went through shoes frequently, because any car he'd come across was as dead as the human race. He wondered why he was still trying to make a living in such an unforgiving environment.

He drifted through towns, taking what he wanted or needed, and left. He had become almost as merciless as the environment around him. He could still remember the first time he killed a deer. He cried and repeated "I'm sorry" the whole time he ate and the deer meat tasted salty with tears of regret. He scoffed at the memory, sitting in the present time in front of a pile of embers, eating bear meat without batting an eyelash.

After almost six years, he grew tired of wandering his home country. He'd seen almost all there was to see, it was time to see other parts of the world now. He traveled northwest until he reached the border between Korea and China. He crossed the faded line on the cracking asphalt and didn't look back.

He quickly realized it was harder to discern what type of stores were in China. He couldn't read Chinese, and the storefronts were bare of products. Jonghyun figured it was because the displays were easier to reach. It didn't really matter either way. He found something useful most of the time.

The first time Jonghyun ran into another human being, he made a mistake that almost got him killed. He was overcome with disbelief, running to the other person at full speed. As he got closer, he saw that the other person was.. distorted. The head was grossly misshapen, looking more like a balloon than an actual head. The torso looked far too large to be on a human body, but the other person moved as quickly as Jonghyun did.

Where Jonghyun started to slow down, the other person started to speed up. They collided with enough force to throw Jonghyun back several yards. He struggled to get up, and the other being smashed into him again, making threatening guttral growls.

Jonghyun began to suspect that the mutant humans' (as this being obviously was) ability to speak had been phased out. They had devolved so far that they couldn't speak anymore. If the growling was anything to go by, that is. They were nothing more than animals. He was brought out of his shock-induced haze by a kick to the face. He groaned in pain, and the mutant seemed pleased with the noises he was making.

He was taking a pounding (because there was no way he'd be able to take on that much raw strength at one time) when he finally remembered the gun in his belt. He grabbed frantically for it,  switched the safety off and squeezed multiple rounds into the mutant. He waited with bated breath when the mutant finally slumped on the ground. He sighed with relief, but when he tried to get up, he had to bite his lip to keep from screaming in pain.

He was pretty sure at least 3 of his ribs were broken, maybe 4 of them. And when he tried to move his face, he winced from the pain in his jaw. So he figured his jaw was broken as well. He was going to have to get up somehow and get to a place where he could rest. He wasn't in any condition to travel or hunt. It was lucky that he still had some jerky and canned food left from the last city.

He found an apartment that suited his needs perfectly, and as an added bonus, it still had canned food in the pantry. He rested until his food ran out. He'd learned his lesson.

He only ran into mutants occasionally after that. It was mostly in the old metropolitan areas that they existed now. They were more animal than human, so Jonghyun tended to stay far away from those areas. He had no desire to win any more battle scars.

Nearly fifteen years pass that way. He wanders the European countryside restlessly, moving on once the food supply has been used up. He never saw a single human. By that point, he'd stopped thinking of the mutants as human. The hope in his heart had completely died, but still he went on exploring. He had no idea as to why he was even alive. There was no point to his life anymore.

He had found a little bit more of the story of the end of the world after traveling so much. As he'd suspected, the mutants had devolved once they were introduced to nature. The disease that caused the mutation continued to spread until one day, the mutants outnumbered the humans. It spread so quickly and evolved so fast that no scientist had had time to discover what kept people safe from being affected by the disease. There was no antidote. No cure. So the rest of the human race simply... gave up. There was no stopping the disease. Why even try?

But Jonghyun didn't despair anymore. It wasn't worth the effort. He was the last human. It was time to man up and accept it. He focused his energy on trying to live his life. He didn't waste time trying to figure out why he wasn't affected. What did it matter? There wasn't a logical answer that he could come up with.

It was a cloudy day. It was raining, too, and it was fairly cold outside. It was one of the sorts of days that Jonghyun hated with everything in him. It was the kind of day that was too depressing even for him. He wasn't aware of what was behind him, though he should've been. He was too focused on what he could see. The mutants had become stupid enough to just charge at him, and he was scanning the horizon for them. He wasn't that far from a city...

Someone (or something) grabbed him in a headlock. He automatically struggled to get free and kicked behind him in the general area of the s. He heard a groan and inwardly cheered for victory. He grabbed the gun from his belt and turned, prepared to shoot. He froze in shock when he saw another human being on his knees, clutching his crotch. His mouth refused to move, though, even when the human looked at him angrily.

    "What the was that?" Jonghyun opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. He panicked and started feeling of his throat. He tried screaming as loud as he could, but all that came out was a deep rasp. "Hey. I'm talkin' to you." The other guy picked him up and looked him in the eyes. "You ain't a mutant. Mutants run on all fours. So you gotta be human. ...If you're human, why can't you talk?" Jonghyun had a pretty good guess as to what the guy was asking. He shrugged. He didn't have an answer either.

    "Whatever. I'm Minho. You?" Jonghyun blinked in surprise. As luck would have it, his fellow human was Korean. Just like he was. He looked around for a nearby stick and carved his name in the dirt. Minho looked surprised.

    "Jonghyun? So you're Korean?" Jonghyun nodded, and Minho looked relieved. "Good. I had almost exhausted my English."

Without either of them having said a word, they both knew that from now on, they would be traveling together. It had been a long lonely road, and Jonghyun knew it would probably be a little rough at first, trying to live with someone else after years and years of solitude. But at least he wasn't alone anymore. Which was more of a relief than he thought it would be.

Traveling with Minho, Jonghyun regained his voice with a little bit of practice. He never quite sounded the same. His voice became gravelly when he talked, and he could only say so much before his throat started hurting. Though, even the pain faded after a while. Minho and he became fast friends. They made a competition out of seeing who could kill the most mutants in one week. More often than not, Jonghyun won because he had a gun. He would revel in Minho's sour loser routine before heading off to hunt.

Still, there were plenty of areas they disagreed on. Jonghyun seemed to think that they were the last humans. Since he'd met Jonghyun, Minho seemed to think there were more humans out there. Jonghyun was older, and cynical enough for the both of them. Minho wasn't so young anymore either, but he was still, in Jonghyun's opinion, far too naive. He hadn't grown up at all since he started wandering.

Despite his better judgement, and knowing that before he was frozen his preference had been for women, Jonghyun grew attached to his younger companion. He would even go so far as to say he was in love with Minho. He couldn't say why, but he figured that Minho's personality had something to do with it. They complimented each other.

Minho was still too hopeful of finding other human beings to notice Jonghyun's feelings. And that was okay with Jonghyun. He preferred it that way. It made him feel too... exposed. Like he had a weak spot, and that was an extremely uncomfortable feeling for Jonghyun. Not to mention how guilty he felt for thinking of Minho like that. It dehumanized Minho.

Well, at least.. Jonghyun thought he was okay with Minho not knowing. After a few months, it agonized him to keep silent.

Especially when time only deepened Jonghyun's feelings. The way Minho sighed with frustration. His sour attitude after losing a competition. The way Minho's hair felt in his hands. The way Minho had never learned to chew with his mouth closed. It all scared Jonghyun. Because he knew Minho would never feel the same way and it killed him inside.

    "Hey Jonghyun?" he heard Minho call out softly. They had already bedded down for the night in a nice, warm house.

    "Yeah?" he answered. There was a pause of several seconds.

    "Thanks," he only barely heard it. He wanted to cry.

    "For what?" he asked quietly. Minho sighed, but Jonghyun was pretty sure it wasn't from frustration.

    "Putting up with my bull theory that we're not the only humans left. For taking care of me. For everything," Jonghyun tried to collect himself before answering.

    "No problem, Minho. Anything for a friend."
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Oh God. This.. is kind of horrible, actually. OTL Originally, this was going to be a Jongkey, since it was in my head. But.. Idk. Realistically, I can't see Key being able to survive in a world like that for very long. Minho, though.. That's a yes for sure. I can easily see Minho living in a world like that.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this depressing oneshot. :D Have a nice day.

~~

Til next time, loves. ^o~ ☺ ♥ ♫