T.O.P. stirred in his sleep. He could feel the heat from the blazing sun ade the pension suite, the light burning against his closed eyes. Not wanting to wake up yet, he rolled over, his back to the window, and then wriggled across the big bed to be closer to Bom. Her back was bare and lit up by the morning light. T.O.P. ran his hand gently down her back, always in awe over how smooth her skin was, and then put his arm around her waist as he cuddled up behind her, squeezing her tight.

He heard her moan, a soft moan that he thought was just a natural, loving reaction to his touch, but her moan soon turned into a light whimper. He propped himself up on his elbow to watch over her, but when he heard her breaths quicken and realized that she was having a nightmare, he promptly sat up and tried to wake her.

“Bommie,” he said, nudging her gently.

She moaned again, more plaintively this time. Her bangs were matted to her forehead, her face covered in sweat.

“Bommie, wake up,” he said, shaking her somewhat.

She gasped, wide awake now, and turned her head to see him looking over her.

“You were dreaming,” he said.

Bom rolled over to face him and rubbed her eyes.

The two lay on their sides, staring at each other for a moment.

T.O.P. sighed. “Same dream again?”

Bom pouted her lower lip a little and silently nodded.

“I told you before, you’re stuck with me,” he said. “I’m never going to leave, Bommie, I promise. If you stop worrying about this, the dreams should stop, too.”

“I know,” she quietly said.

He leaned forward and closed his eyes as he kissed her, his lips lightly sweeping across hers. “I love you,” he said. “I love you so much.”

Bom stared into his dark eyes, smiling, and then pulled his mouth toward hers again, their kiss deepening as their desire for each other grew, their hands almost desperately reaching around each other’s bodies, clutching onto each other’s hair, gripping onto each other’s backs, moving down to each other’s…

“Yo, wassup?” G-Dragon stood in the bedroom doorway of that large suite, dressed only in his boxer shorts. “Which one of you stole my toothbrush?”

T.O.P. quickly rolled off Bom and pulled the sheet up over him to cover his hardness. “Jiyong-ah! I told you to stop barging in here like this! Aish.” He rolled his eyes and sat up now, pulling the sheet even higher to hide his chest.

G-Dragon shrugged. “Not like I haven’t seen you before.”

“How’d you get in this time?” T.O.P. asked. This was now the third time this week that G-Dragon had broken into their suite. The first time, he had used the spare room key that Bom had accidentally left behind in G-Dragon and Dara’s suite. The second time, he had used a credit card and had shimmied the door open.

G-Dragon smiled and held up that same credit card again.

“Aish, I swear,” T.O.P. said.

Bom, who was holding the sheet all the way up to her chin, looked over at T.O.P. “We really have to get our own place,” she muttered.

“Yah, so neither of you took my toothbrush?” G-Dragon asked.

T.O.P. clenched his lips closed and grabbed the first thing he saw – the clock radio on the nightstand – and then threw it in G-Dragon’s direction.

G-Dragon dodged the attack. “Ai! Okay, okay,” he said, as he turned and walked away from the bedroom and made his way through the living room space of the suite to the front door. “No reason to get all testy!” he yelled before opening the door and slamming it closed behind him.

Once outside the door, G-Dragon smiled mischievously and then ran down the hall toward the stairwell, his footsteps heavy as he skipped down the stairs. When he returned to the suite he shared with Dara and saw her inside, he smiled. “I win,” he said.

Last week, G-Dragon and Dara had been casually speculating as to whether T.O.P. and Bom were having yet. Their curiosity, encouraged somewhat from too much soju, soon turned into a bet.

“Did you actually see them do it?” Dara asked. She stared at herself in the mirror, trying to adjust the straps of her bathing suit.

G-Dragon in his lips and looked up, thinking. “Erm…” With anyone else, he would’ve lied, but he couldn’t lie to Dara. “I think?”

Dara glanced over at him and then tied her long hair up in a loose bun. “Doesn’t sound like you won then, does it?”

G-Dragon rolled his head, cracking his neck. “Ai, whatever. We should just ask them and get this over with.”

“I don’t want to pry,” Dara said.

G-Dragon’s mouth fell open. “Seriously, Dara-yah? You don’t want to pry? You sent me up there now three times to do just that! Pry my way into their suite to try to catch them in the act!”

Dara smiled and covered to hide her laugh. “Well, it’s okay if you pry,” she said. She walked over to him, kissed him on the cheek, and then reached into the bathroom to grab a towel from the rack. “I’m going for a swim.”

“Don’t you have fishing duties this morning?” he asked.

“Ai, Jiyong-ah, I do the fishing on Friday mornings, not Thursday mornings. I think Jong Kook has the morning shift today.” She waved goodbye and headed downstairs.

As she walked through the lobby, she swept her fingers across the dusty surface of the front desk and felt a slight chill in the air when she heard her footsteps echoing throughout that empty space. Even though it had been a couple of months since the two couples claimed this large Victorian-style pension as theirs, she had still not gotten used to the quiet and emptiness of it. Thinking about this now, she understood why the others had all chosen small houses rather than stay in this hotel with them. The others could fill a small house with things they liked, things that would make the house feel like a home. G-Dragon, Dara, T.O.P., and Bom couldn’t do that with the pension. It was too big, too empty, too impersonal. It wasn’t a home.

For a moment, she thought about broaching the topic of moving to G-Dragon, but then she stepped outside, the heat of the summer morning against her skin, and stared at the luxurious swimming pool with its built-in round spa. Living in a pension had its perks, though, she thought.

As she dipped her toes into the warm water, she heard rumbling coming from down the way. Using her hand as a visor, she turned and stared down the road that led out to the main street, seeing Gary and Jessica’s pickup truck kicking up dirt as it headed her way. She flung the towel over her shoulder and walked around the southern side of the building to the parking lot to meet them.

Gary and Jessica had been on scavenger duty that morning. For some, scavenger duty was the most exciting and interesting chore. For others, it was the most dreaded. When everyone had first settled into their new life on Sido, Jong Kook had the idea to use a map of the island and go out on explorations, noting on the map where each house and store was located so that they could cross each off the list after having scavenged those locations. Mapping the houses and stores took about a week, with the scavenging beginning thereafter. Even though Hyun Suk had gunned down that massive zombie herd from his yacht two months earlier, it was not uncommon to still find a few zombies lurking around the island, which made the scavenging duty somewhat dangerous.

Those out on scavenger duty were also tasked with checking both bridges to the island – the bridge on the eastern end connecting Sido to the larger island of Sindo, and the bridge on the western end connecting Sido to the smaller island of Modo. They had built blockades on those bridges to protect Sido from the zombies on the other islands, and those blockades have thus far held, but there were always more and more zombies behind those barriers each time they checked.

“You two are early,” Dara said, as she walked around to the back of the idling truck where Gary and Jessica had just begun sorting through the boxes.

“Yeah, we couldn’t sleep,” Jessica said. “We thought that since we were up, we might as well go out and finish our chores early.” She found G-Dragon and Dara’s box and climbed down from the back of the truck. “We got everything on your list except for ramen,” she said, as she passed Dara the box. “The two houses we were assigned to check didn’t have any.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” Dara said, accepting the heavy box in her arms. “Still zombies at the blockades?”

“More than last time,” Gary said, as he pulled another box out. “Can you get this to T.O.P. and Bom?” he asked, setting it down on the ground.

Dara nodded and glanced down at Gary’s pit bull, Caesar, who was wagging his tail and looking up at Dara, panting. “Is he thirsty or something? I can get him water before you head back out on the road.”

“Nah, we just gave him water,” Gary said. “He’s just happy. We found a ton of dog food in the first house and so he had quite a treat.” He ushered Caesar back into the pickup and waved goodbye to Dara.

Jessica climbed into the passenger seat and readjusted the vents on the dashboard, trying to direct the air-conditioning her way to cool her face, which was red from the summer heat. As Gary steered the truck around, Jessica also waved goodbye to Dara. “See you for dinner later,” she said.

Every Thursday evening, Hyun Suk had everyone over his house for dinner. As Gary drove off now, Jessica wondered if she and Gary should have gone through town after searching their two assigned houses to look for something special to bring to the dinner. But then she was reminded of something she had done while they were out – something she shouldn’t have done – feeling at that moment an immense sense of guilt.

“What are you thinking about?” Gary asked. He had noticed something bothering her from just one quick glance her way.

“I… I have to tell you something, Gary-ah,” she said, looking down at her lap while she plucked at her nails. “I did something… and I’m ashamed.”

Gary scrunched up his face in confusion but continued looking ahead at the road while petting Caesar, who had just fallen asleep between them. “What are you talking about?” he asked.

She bit her lip a bit and looked over at him. “Remember when we were in that first house and I was searching the kitchen while you were down the hall, checking the bedrooms?”

Gary nodded.

“I… I found a small bag of cookies in one of the cabinets,” she said. “And I… I ate the whole thing.”

Gary stared at her for a moment and then broke out laughing. “What? Is that what you’re worried about?”

“Gary-ah! Don’t laugh. I should’ve shared it with everyone. I mean, we have plenty of vegetables from the farming, but the canned goods and stuff like cookies and things are limited. Eventually, after we scavenge every house, there’ll be none left at all!”

“Sica, honestly, everyone who goes out scavenging takes a little something for themselves. Don’t worry about it.”

“Really?” she asked.

“Let’s just say that a certain singer whose, erm, name rhymes with… pop, was out last week and said that he found a box of chocolates and ate it all right there on the spot, even though it was all old and melted. In fact, he used that as his excuse for why he didn’t bring it back to share.”

“Well, at least he had some sort of excuse.” She shook her head, still feeling guilty. “I just wish I had saved it. We could’ve brought it over to the dinner tonight.”

Gary shrugged. “Don’t worry about it,” he said. He slowed down the truck now, veering left for the side road that led to Jong Kook and Ji Hyo’s home.

Most of the island’s residents had been fishermen and farmers, the island full of fields and the houses quite quaint and country-like. Jong Kook and Ji Hyo’s house was one of the nicest of those old farmhouses, with large windows and a strong white fence encircling it. Their house was the last on that narrow side road, set against the backdrop of large, green trees, but even though there was the possibility of a zombie emerging from those trees, the couple felt safe knowing that they had that fence as a first line of defense.

Ji Hyo was sitting outside on the front porch cradling the baby, Dream, when Gary and Jessica pulled up. Ji Hyo smiled and waved, anxious to see if they had found what she had asked for. She stood up, bouncing the baby against her chest as she walked over to them.

She bowed briefly to Jessica and then yanked Gary by the shoulder. “Please tell me you found disposable diapers. I’m so tired of washing his cloth ones. I can’t tell you how many times…” but her voice trailed off when she saw Gary shake his head.

“Sorry, Ji Hyo-yah,” Gary said, as he began carrying the box over to her front porch. “Neither house we checked had anything at all related to babies, no toys, nothing.”

“Aish, I don’t need toys. I need diapers! You wouldn’t believe how many times this little one goes a day. I can’t keep up!”

Jong Kook stepped out of the house at that moment. “You two are early,” he said. “Either that or I’m late.”

“Fishing duty?” Gary asked.

“Yah, last two Thursday mornings, I caught nothing.” Pointing to Ji Hyo beside him, he said, “But then Ji Hyo-yah goes out both afternoons and catches every fish in the sea!” He shook his head. “Ai, the fish just don’t like me.”

“I told you I’d show you my technique,” Ji Hyo said, smiling. “But you’re too proud to take lessons.”

“If you’re leaving now, we can give you a ride to whatever spot you want to fish at,” Jessica said.

Jong Kook shook his head. “No, I think I’ll jog there. If I have to sit all morning staring off into the water while the fish avoid me, then I’m going to use what time I have now to get some exercise in.” He waved Gary and Jessica off, watching as they backed out of the dirt driveway and continued on their way, and then turned to Ji Hyo. He leaned down to kiss Dream’s forehead and then stared at Ji Hyo somewhat dreamily. “I wish I didn’t have to go,” he said. “Wish I could just stay here with you and the baby.”

“You just don’t want to go because you know you won’t catch anything again,” Ji Hyo teased. Her tone a bit more serious now, she asked, “You have your gun on you, right?”

“Of course,” Jong Kook said.

No one on the island traveled anywhere without a gun. Even though the zombie sightings had slowed down somewhat, there was always that chance of one appearing at any moment.

While holding Dream over her shoulder with her right hand, Ji Hyo lightly smacked Jong Kook’s with the other. “Well, hurry and go,” she said. “Your fish are waiting!”

Jong Kook, blushing from her slap against his , quickly walked over to the front porch to grab his fishing gear and then began jogging away backwards, not wanting to look away from his beautiful family.

When he made it to the main road, he could still see the dirt clouds lingering in the air from Gary’s truck. Once things get more settled, he thought, we’re going to have to do something about these roads. The greenery on the left was overgrown and slowly seeping out between the cracks in the pavement, and the dirt from the fields on the right had been swept up by the wind and now covered everything.

Their group of survivors consisted of twenty adults, four children, and a dog. So far, all had managed okay with basic needs met, but the maintenance of the island required much more than the mere twenty adults they had, especially when everyone was busy with more important chores – food procurement, weapons training, and other duties related to blunt survival.

Jong Kook had jogged for only a few minutes up that main road when he heard CL and Seungri bickering like cats and dogs up ahead in the field. The couple was kneeling in the soil and seemed to be pulling up rotten cabbages.

“Ai, there’s another one, Seungri-yah!” CL yelled, pointing to the broken head of cabbage she had just yanked out of the ground.

Seungri wiped the soil from his hands off on his pants and then stood up, seemingly despondent by their useless task.

“What’s wrong?” Jong Kook asked, jogging over.

“We should’ve harvested all the cabbage on the island earlier, apparently,” CL said, as she pulled up yet another broken head. She stopped and then noticed Seungri standing behind her. “Yah, Seungri-yah, don’t just stand there, come over here and help me!”

Seungri wiped the sweat from his brow and shrugged. “What’s the point? They’re all ruined.”

Jong Kook knelt down to examine the cabbage. Two months earlier, at the end of spring, the survivors had harvested as much cabbage as they could find and made batches of kimchi with it. There was so much cabbage on the island that it seemed as if they had an endless supply. They had been too busy with other things to consider how long the cabbage could stay in the ground.

“Aish, all this wasted cabbage,” Jong Kook said, as he tossed the heads aside. “You’re right, we should’ve harvested everything when we had the chance–” He stood up now and looked at them curiously. “Wait, don’t you two have weapons training today?”

“Ai, Seungri-yah!” CL stood up now too and then lightly slapped Seungri across his arm. “I told you today was weapons training!” She looked at him, standing there in the denim farmer overalls he had found in one of the houses. “You and those stupid clothes!”

Seungri’s mouth fell open. “These clothes aren’t stupid! If anything, your clothes are stupid!”

CL was wearing ahjumma pants – big, shapeless, flower-printed ahjumma pants. “I just put these on because we always get dirty farming!”

“Why do you think I’m wearing these overalls?” Seungri yelled.

“Aish, I’m going crazy,” CL said. “Let’s just go. We’re already late.”

Jong Kook smiled at the couple. “See you at dinner,” he said, before continuing on his run.

CL grabbed Seungri’s hand and the two ran across the field, away from Jong Kook, to the dirt clearing far off in the distance where Se7en and Rina had the target practice set up.

Daesung and Minzy were already there. Having arrived early, they were just finishing their training. Minzy was holding the K2 assault rifle, her left hand holding up the barrel while her right was positioned at the trigger, the of that rifle resting against her shoulder.

“Okay,” Se7en said. “Now tilt your head and peer down the barrel, just past the rear sight.”

Minzy did as instructed as she aimed for the zombie corpse nailed to the tree ahead.

“Align with your target,” Se7en said.

Minzy slowly adjusted the angle of the gun as she centered the zombie in her sights.

“Now squeeze the trigger slowly…” Se7en said.

A loud pop pop pop was heard.

Daesung had been covering his ears in preparation for the noise, but when he saw the zombie head repeatedly recoil from the attack, his hands fell from his ears and he smiled at Minzy, his mouth somewhat agape at her talent.

“Perfect!” Se7en said.

Rina patted Minzy on the shoulder. “You’re becoming quite good at this!”

Minzy lowered her weapon and smiled.

“Now, Daesung-ah on the other hand…” Rina said, smiling in Daesung’s direction.

“Yah, I’m trying,” Daesung said. “I’ll get it down soon.

Se7en waved to CL and Seungri. “You’re late,” he said.

“Sorry,” CL said. “Someone, who I will not name, thought we had farming duties today.”

Seungri crinkled his nose at her. “Yeah, well someone, who I will not name, should have written down our schedule like I asked.”

CL smiled and shook her head, and then reached for the K2.

Minzy passed it off to her and then grabbed Daesung’s hand. “Wanna stay here and watch or go back home?” she asked.

Daesung, who hated weapons training, had no interest in staying to watch CL and Seungri. Both of them were better with guns than he was. In fact, nearly everyone on the island seemed better with guns than Daesung. “Nah, let’s go home,” he said.

The two began walking away from the clearing and through the fields that CL and Seungri had just run across. They made it back out to the main road and took the side road that led out to their house, passing Jae Suk’s house along the way.

Jae Suk was outside on his front lawn, chasing his son, Ji Ho, across the grass. When he saw Daesung and Minzy, he stopped and blocked the sun from his eyes as he called out to them. “You two on fishing duties this morning?” he asked.

“No, weapons training,” Minzy called out.

“Know who’s on fishing duty?”

Minzy shrugged. “Jong Kook, maybe?”

“Aish, that Jong Kook. He can never catch anything.”

Daesung and Minzy smiled and continued walking up the street.

Jae Suk, meanwhile, called for his wife, Kyung Eun, to come out and look after Ji Ho. “I’m going to go fishing,” he said.

“But this is your morning off,” Kyung Eun said, peeking out the front door.

“I know, but Jong Kook’s not going to catch anything. He’s not the king of fishing like I am. I want to go catch a big rockfish to bring to the dinner tonight.”

Kyung Eun shook her head. “King of fishing?” she sarcastically repeated.

Jae Suk adjusted his glasses. “Just wait and see! I’m going to catch the biggest rockfish you’ve ever encountered.”

Kyung Eun stepped inside the house for a moment to grab Jae Suk’s fishing gear and then returned to see her husband off. As she leaned forward to kiss Jae Suk goodbye, she told him to be careful.

Jae Suk could have followed the main stretch up to the side road that led toward the Full House house on the shoreline, where Hyun Suk was staying, but it was much quicker to cut through the woods. He waited until Kyung Eun was back inside and then darted behind their house to take the wooded path, which he and Hyun Suk had cleared themselves, using Hyun Suk’s katana as a machete.

The trees blocked the sun, the path dark. Before Hyun Suk had slaughtered that undead herd from his yacht, the zombies on the island had taken to the woods and had eaten most of the animals. The only animals that seemed to be left were a few chickens that Thunder and Krystal took care of, and the occasional squirrel or rabbit. Because of that, the woods were eerily quiet.

Suddenly, Jae Suk heard a twig snap behind him. He reached into his holster for his gun, keeping his hand on it just in case, and turned to peer back the way he had come in search of the sound. Another twig snapped. Jae Suk now pulled the gun from its holster and slowly raised it as he adjusted his glasses and aimed at whatever was coming.

But what was coming was not a zombie. It was Thunder and Krystal. And when they saw Jae Suk, they immediately held up the biggest rockfish that Jae Suk had ever encountered.

“Check out this fish I caught!” Thunder said.

Jae Suk’s mouth fell open as he lowered his weapon and stared at the fish. “Aish,” Jae Suk said. “Why’d you have to go and catch that?”

Thunder continued to hold up the fish, somewhat perplexed by what Jae Suk had just said but still smiling and excited about his find. “If you were on your way to fish up by Hyun Suk-ssi’s house, don’t bother. All the good fishing is on the eastern end. That’s where I caught this big guy.”

Jae Suk resigned himself to the fact that Thunder, apparently, was the fishing king, and began heading back the way he had come, seeing no point in trying to compete with Thunder’s catch.

Thunder and Krystal continued on their way, excited about bringing the fish over to Hyun Suk’s house.

“What do you want to do after we drop off the fish?” Krystal asked.

“We can go see my sister,” he said. “Maybe go swimming.”

“That sounds like fun,” she said. “But if Jiyong throws me in the pool again, I’m definitely going to retaliate.”

“Retaliate?” Thunder asked, laughing.

“He threw me in with all my clothes on! And he ruined my gun! It took forever for it to dry out enough to use it again.”

“I’m not saying that what he did wasn’t stupid, I was just curious about what you meant by retaliate.”

Krystal smiled and shrugged. “I haven’t thought about that. Maybe pull down his pants?”

“Aish, no one wants to see that,” Thunder said.

They soon emerged out of the woods in front of Hyun Suk’s house, opened the gate of the fence, and knocked at the front door. They could hear the two toddlers, Yoo Jin and Seung Hyun, playing inside. Eun Ju answered the door, looking quite flustered.

“Ai, these kids,” she said, wiping her brow as she let Thunder and Krystal in. The children were running in circles in the living room.

Thunder held up his catch. “We caught this giant rockfish for you! Think you could use it for the dinner tonight?”

Eun Ju smiled and graciously accepted the fish. “Thank you! This is great.”

Upstairs, Hyun Suk sat alone in his study, editing the survivor chore schedule. He heard Thunder downstairs mention the rockfish and realized then, as he looked over the schedule, that fishing wasn’t one of Thunder’s chores – he fished on his off-duty days, seemingly for fun.

Hyun Suk saw that Jong Kook was on fishing duty that morning and sighed. Aish, he thought, that Jong Kook can’t fish for his life. He crossed out Jong Kook’s name and replaced it with Thunder’s.

Hyun Suk edited the schedule each Thursday afternoon, changing it not only to pair survivors with the chores they seemed to do best in, but also to keep the survivors from growing bored. Life on Sido was nothing but routine – wake, eat, complete chores, eat, sleep – and Hyun Suk feared that after some time in this routine, people might start to wonder what the purpose of it all was. The last thing they needed was hopelessness. They’d had enough of that back when they were fighting their way out of Seoul.

This was, in a way, the reason he had begun this traditional Thursday evening dinner – it served not only as a time for everyone to meet, talk about their week, and discuss the new schedule, but it also served to remind them all that they were not alone, that they were all in this together. It was a way to instill hope when there didn’t seem to be any reason to have any. In the two months they’d been on that island, they had received no hint as to life existing outside of it. No planes flew overhead. No boats sailed ashore. They were isolated with no idea if the rest of the world still existed.

Thinking about this now, Hyun Suk took off his black cap and propped his elbows up on his desk to rest his face in his hands. He rubbed his eyes and looked over at the satellite phone sitting atop the bookshelf in the corner. All of his calls to his contact in the government, Prime Minister Jung Hong Won, had gone unanswered. As he stared at the phone now, he thought about trying again. But just as he was thinking this, he saw the screen light up blue, and then, a second later, it began ringing, the blaring siren-like sudden ring of that phone startling Hyun Suk so much that he trembled for a moment and then froze, just watching the blue screen and listening to that ring, ring, ring resound in his dusty study, knowing that once he answered that call, life on Sido would be forever changed.