Jong Kook suggested that they head up to the fifth floor. “We cleared it already,” he said. “No zombies.”

Everyone followed him, all feeling safe under his leadership. But when they arrived at the fifth floor landing, Jong Kook suddenly remembered that he had left Suk Jin’s body lying in the management office. He told the group to stay in the stairwell. He said that he wanted to take a quick look down the hall just to be sure the floor was still clear. They didn’t question him, and he soon closed the stairwell door behind him and went to retrieve Suk Jin’s body.

Jong Kook carried the body out of the office and walked into the gym where the music executive’s body was still lying on the floor near the treadmill. He opened the door to the side room in which Kwang Soo had found the executive and dumped both bodies inside.

Afterward, he called for the group and like a natural leader, gathered them together in the hall and began delegating work. “We need to keep this floor secure,” he said. “And we need some space to regroup.” He gestured toward the management office door behind him. “Let’s take down those cubicles in the offices and move the desks out. We’ll stack those partitions and desks up against the stairwell doors to block them. And then we’ll use the space in the office to get settled and figure out our next move.” He tried to force a smile as encouragement.

His role on Running Man was that of a leader, a coach. While this situation was somewhat comparable to the show in that they needed to carry out certain missions and do so efficiently, the stakes in this situation were, of course, much higher. One mistake on Running Man might result in someone’s elimination, where the punishment is merely a lack of airtime. But here in this building, that elimination was much more literal – one mistake could cost someone their life. And as the leader, if he made the wrong decision on behalf of the group, that mistake could mean the loss of many lives. Jong Kook had never been in a situation like this before. And he was scared.

But he tried not to show it. He moved those desks out of the offices with the others, all the while trying to cheer everyone up. He complimented the 2ne1 girls on their ingenuity with the cardboard armor, he told T.O.P. that his hair still looked perfect despite everything that had happened, and he thanked Jae Suk for taking care of the two kids, Haha and Gary. He had yet to tell Jae Suk about Suk Jin. He was waiting until the barricade was complete.

When that time finally came, when they had blocked both entrances to the floor and now lounged in that empty management office, Jong Kook sat down beside Jae Suk, readying himself to break the news. He looked around at the others in the office, all of whom had also broken off into small groups to talk. They were all smiling, laughing, happy to be together again. Only Jong Kook and Jae Suk sat there solemnly.

“You don’t have to say it,” Jae Suk said. He patted Jong Kook’s leg. “He’s gone. I know.”

Jong Kook nodded. “He was unconscious until the end, hyung,” he said. “I don’t think he was in any pain, not when… not when he was still… him.”

Jae Suk looked up at Jong Kook then. “So, he turned into one of them. And you put him down?”

Jong Kook nodded again. “I don’t know if those things feel pain,” he said. “But I made it quick anyway. I tried…”

“Shh,” Jae Suk said, using the end of his shirt to wipe his glasses, which had fogged up from his tears. “Forget I asked. I don’t want to think about that. I just want to remember him from before, who he was before all of this.”

“I will look after his son,” Jong Kook said. “I will take care of his tuition and guide him and make sure that he succeeds in his life.”

Jae Suk nodded. “You’re a good man, Jong Kook-ah,” he said, wiping his tears once more. When he cleared his eyes, he looked up at Jong Kook. “If something happens to me…” he began to say.

“Hyung, don’t…”

“Jong Kook-ah, I’ve been trying not to think about my family. Right now, I just need to think about surviving. I’m no good to them dead. But if I… if I die…”

Jong Kook put his arm around his old friend. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll come up with a plan.”

They both sat quietly then, looking at the others.

Jong Kook listened as CL, Dara, and Minzy, sitting in the center of the room with G-Dragon and Daesung, told them about the cafeteria madness and how the PSY zombie was still roaming about. Jong Kook wished he hadn’t listened. He didn’t want to learn about any more threats to the group.

He let his attention wander and noticed T.O.P. and Bom sitting close together at the far corner of the room. Jong Kook couldn’t hear their conversation, but he could sense from their body language that there was something between them. Bom had reached into her bag and was applying some sort of cream to a scrape T.O.P. had on his face, showing how much she cared for him. Jong Kook could tell that T.O.P. was trying hard not to smile. The corners of T.O.P.’s lips kept creeping up and it seemed as if he was doing his best to not look directly into Bom’s big eyes.

Jong Kook smiled at this, thinking then about how he and Ji Hyo had shared those same playful moments with each other. He assumed that every relationship had that phase, that dreamy phase before either person’s true feelings were made known, when each did their best to both show and hide their emotions at the same time, resulting in these playful gestures that he was observing now between T.O.P. and Bom, these small moments that would eventually lead to one or the other finally admitting that there was something there. Not that his and Ji Hyo’s moments ever led anywhere. In fact, they had led precisely nowhere. To his knowledge, she was still dating Baek Chang Joo.

He looked at Ji Hyo now, sitting with Kwang Soo, Haha, and Gary. They were sitting close enough where he could hear their conversation, but he wasn’t listening. He just stared at her, mindlessly observing her beauty. It seemed as if every gentle movement of her face was captured in slow-motion, like in a drama, revealing every sparkle of her eyes, every subtle parting of her lips…

“Jong Kook-ah! You dreaming or what?” Jae Suk asked.

Jong Kook looked over at him. “What?”

“I was just trying to tell you that we should try to gather supplies,” he said. “We need an inventory.”

Jong Kook nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay, let’s do that.” He stood up then and tried to get everyone’s attention. When the group eventually quieted down and looked up at him, Jong Kook suddenly felt shy. “Yah, I don’t…” He was about to say that he didn’t really know what he was doing, but he quickly changed his mind, realizing that the last thing this group needed to hear was that the one man serving as leader was not cut out for the job. He needed to get it together. “… I don’t know how to ask this,” he said, trying to cover his earlier stumble, “but I need everyone to empty their pockets. We need to see what resources we have.”

Everyone had their phones, some had chapstick, but not much else. Jong Kook was disappointed at the lack of supplies. But then he noticed Bom in the back. She had emptied her bag all over the floor.

“What do you need?” Bom asked. “I have medicine, all sorts of herbs, some healthy food like deer bellybutton…”

“Deer bellybutton?” Kwang Soo asked, his mouth agape.

“Yeah,” Bom said. “It’s good for you. Good for the energy.” She smiled with her pouty lips and continued sorting through the items scattered on the floor in front of her. “I don’t usually like people touching my stuff, but…” She looked around at the group. “But you are all free to take what you need.”

“Deer bellybutton?” Kwang Soo asked again.

“Yah!” T.O.P. called out. “What’s so weird about deer belly button?” He was surprised by his own words, by the way he had reacted just then. After all, deer belly button was weird to him, too. But he felt that he needed to come to Bom’s defense.

Kwang Soo smiled and shrugged.

“You have anything better to offer, Kwang Soo-yah?” Jong Kook asked.

Kwang Soo looked around and then reached into his pockets. He pulled out a handkerchief with a giraffe printed on it and then began waving it in the air at Jong Kook.

Jong Kook put his hand to his forehead, closed his eyes, and shook his head. “Aish,” he said. “Well, if anyone needs to blow their nose, go see Kwang Soo-yah.”

A few people chuckled and Jong Kook was suddenly happy to have Kwang Soo with them. If anything, his close friend provided some much needed laughter.

Jong Kook thanked Bom for sharing her things. “It’s good that we have medicine,” he said. “And a little food. But we need more food. Enough to last us for… however long we have to stay here.”

The others were quiet, all thinking about what Jong Kook had said, about how this floor was now their place of survival. But before they could really ponder that reality, their attention then turned to what Jong Kook said next.

“I propose a food mission,” Jong Kook said. “A small group of us. Whoever wants to volunteer. We need to go out and get supplies.”

G-Dragon suddenly stood up. “Hyung, I know that’s important. But…” He looked down at Daesung beside him and at T.O.P. behind him. “But I propose we form a group to go look for Taeyang and Seungri. To me, finding them is more important than finding food.”

The room was instantly silent, everyone thinking their own thoughts, wondering about Taeyang and Seungri. Some thought they might be alive, some thought they were probably dead.

Jong Kook didn’t know what to think as far as whether they were alive or dead. But he knew that they needed to figure out, one way or the other, what had happened to the two other Big Bang members. “Okay,” he said. “Does anyone have any idea where they could be?”

Everyone shook their heads.

“When was the last time anyone saw them?” Jong Kook asked.

G-Dragon said that the five of them were together in the lobby until they had received the call from the PD to go hide for the Find the Guests mission. And he repeated then what Daesung had said earlier, how G-Dragon, T.O.P., and Daesung had run to the stairs without seeing where the other two had run off to.

Jae Suk stood up then. “No one is going back to that lobby, no matter what. I… I saw dozens of zombies there, and just as many bodies that, by now, have probably become zombies, too.”

“Did you recognize any of them?” Ji Hyo asked. “Anyone we know?”

Jae Suk shook his head. “Some of the crew. I don’t know. I couldn’t look at their faces.”

“Okay,” Jong Kook said. “Because we don’t know where Taeyang and Seungri are, let’s combine our efforts. We’ll search each floor for them, and if along the way we find supplies like food or better weapons, we’ll grab those, too.” Jong Kook breathed in deeply and stood tall. “I’m thinking maybe five volunteers. That should be a small enough number to travel quietly but big enough to fight off any attackers.”

G-Dragon nodded and stood up, knowing that as the leader of his boys, he needed to show the initiative, no matter how scared he was. CL had the same thought in regard to her girls, and she then also stood up.

When Ji Hyo and Gary volunteered, too, Jong Kook realized that, including himself, the volunteers now numbered five. But he didn’t want Ji Hyo to go. She was just as strong as any man, which is why he had asked her, rather than Kwang Soo or Daesung, to take the lead with the zombie situation in the recording studio earlier. But there had been only two zombies then. This situation, this search and rescue mission, would be much more dangerous. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself if something happened to her. Still, he knew that he couldn’t tell her not to come. She was stubborn and would have protested. And so he tried to find another way to include her. “Ji Hyo-yah,” he said. “We’ll need a backup group if things go bad. Can you lead that instead?”

“A backup group?” she asked.

“Yeah, we should have a backup group ready to help just in case. We’ll take one radio and leave the other with your group, that way we can call for help if we need it.”

Ji Hyo nodded. “Okay,” she said.

Jong Kook then asked Haha to take Ji Hyo’s spot in the search and rescue group, and when Haha accepted, Jong Kook, G-Dragon, Haha, Gary, and CL began preparing for their journey. The latter three still had their aprons and cardboard armor on, and they now put the pots back on their heads, too. The costumed trio soon bullied Jong Kook and G-Dragon into borrowing Jae Suk and Dara’s armor and aprons and pots, and after the two men acquiesced, the five of them, each with barbells in their hands and knives in their apron pockets, set out down the hall to the barricade.

G-Dragon stared at the silver duct tape-covered cardboard wrapped around his arms, which matched the steel pot on his head and the barbell in his hand. And he then looked down at his apron, listening as the knives clanked against each other in the apron pockets while he walked. “This is… this is some serious fashion,” he said

CL smiled at him. “The pots were Dara’s idea,” she said.

G-Dragon smiled as he thought about Dara, but when he saw that Jong Kook, Haha, and Gary were already at the barricade ahead, he shook off his thoughts and quickened his pace.

When the search and rescue group cleared the barricade and were ready to enter the stairwell, Jong Kook took one last look back at Ji Hyo. He handed her the second radio. “If we need you…” he began to say.

“I’ll be there,” she said, finishing his sentence.

Jong Kook’s group then opened the door to the stairs and started making their way down, not knowing what fate awaited them.