They had nothing to do in that hallway but wait.

CL, growing more restless by the minute, pointed to the surgical mask hanging around the neck of the ahjumma near her. “Why do you wear those?” she asked.

“Because of the smoke,” the ahjumma said. She looked off to the side, her expression blank. “You can smell the fire sometimes. A strong wind, you breathe it in. And then it is there, always there, clinging to your insides, reminding you of what’s coming.”

“What’s… coming?” Seungri asked, echoing her words.

The ahjumma glanced at Seungri. “The fires. The death. Coming this way.” She looked away again, her voice dropping. “It’s spreading. Just like that infection. It spreads without prejudice, without warning. We have been lucky, but we won’t be lucky for much longer.”

Minzy, who had been standing near Daesung down the hall, heard what the ahjumma said and was reminded of what she herself had said atop Mt. Eungbong, about their luck running out. Though she didn’t want to admit it, she felt somewhat of a kinship with the ahjumma at that moment, realizing that their two groups were the same, both always wondering how much longer they could possibly survive in this world.

Just then, the door at the end of the hallway finally opened for them, revealing what appeared to be a large auditorium, filled with tiers of red velvet-cushioned chairs, all of which were empty. The army, it seemed, was limited to the dozen ahjummas.

As the group cautiously entered the auditorium from that corner door and walked around the side of the stage area, they craned their necks to peer across that dusty wood platform, expecting to see the leader; however, what they saw instead were two fold-out chairs centered on an otherwise empty stage.

Some in the group wondered for a moment if there were two leaders, but no one really had much time to think about this, as they were all pushed forward then and forced to line up in front of the first row.

It was an odd experience to stand like that with the attackers, all in a line staring at the stage and waiting for whatever would come next. No one dared to speak or to even move, as there was no telling what sort of situation they were in.

Just a moment later, the curtains at the back of stage parted and a young petite female walked forward. She was wearing all black like the attackers, the clothes loose upon her thin frame. Her hair was jaggedly-shorn, as if she had cut it herself, but her bangs were overgrown, nearly covering her eyes. Because no stage lights were on, her face was partially hidden by shadows, deepening what appeared to be already sunken cheeks. She looked much worse off than the ahjumma army she appeared to be leading, so much worse that no one in the group recognized her at first, not until she sat down in one of those two chairs and glanced over the captives, eventually meeting eyes with Jessica.

Jessica stared intently back, opening slightly as she leaned forward to get a closer look at the leader. She couldn’t be certain, as she thrown off somewhat by the leader’s shorn hair and blank stare, but it appeared to be… “Taeyeon-ah?” Jessica asked. With her gaze still focused on the leader, she slowly stepped forward from the row.

The moment Jessica stepped out of line, the ahjummas, quick to defend their leader, all reached for their guns. Jessica glanced back at them and held up her hands, trying to show them that she meant the leader no harm. The ahjummas seemed somewhat pacified by Jessica’s gesture, but still kept a skeptical eye on her as she ascended the stage steps and walked across the platform.

A few tears streaked down the leader’s cheeks as she stood from the chair then and watched Jessica walk toward her. “Sica,” she whispered.

Jessica bit hard on her lip, trying to hold back her tears. “Yeah, it’s me,” she said, as she leaned in to embrace the SNSD leader.

Taeyeon didn’t hug back at first. The embrace had caught her off guard. She hadn’t been held in so long that she had almost forgotten what it felt like to have such human contact. When she eventually accepted the hug, a warm sensation coursed through her veins, making her feel almost like the person she used to be once. Charged by that feeling, she suddenly let out a loud open-mouthed laugh.

Jessica, hearing that laugh that could only belong to her old friend Taeyeon, now parted from the hug to look again at her sweet leader, but her smile disappeared when she then saw the expression on Taeyeon’s face.

Taeyeon, in the aftermath of that laugh, appeared crazed. Her eyes were wide, almost as if in alarm, and was frozen open in a twisted smile. “Say hello to Fany-ah, too,” Taeyeon said.

“Tiffany’s here?” Jessica asked. She ignored Taeyeon’s wild expression as her thoughts soon turned to the possibility of other SNSD members having survived. “Where?” Jessica asked.

“What do you mean?” Taeyeon asked, her eyes still wide. She pointed toward the second chair on the stage. “She’s sitting right there.”

Jessica turned to look at the empty chair, confused.

Taeyeon sat back down and turned to talk at the chair beside her. “Fany, look. We’re not alone anymore. Sica’s here.”

Not knowing if she, herself, had gone crazy, or if it was Taeyeon who was crazy, Jessica looked off the stage to where the group was standing to gauge their reaction. When she saw that her friends looked just as bewildered and dismayed by the scene, she gulped down her tears and slowly backed away from Taeyeon.

After that scene on stage, Taeyeon suddenly left with some cryptic explanation as to where she was going and whispers then abounded between Jong Kook and the others, all speculating as to what they had just witnessed.

One of the ahjummas stepped forward from the line and turned to the group, feeling the need to defend Taeyeon’s behavior. “Kid Leader is not crazy,” she said. “She is grieving.”

Jessica raised her hand to then. “So, Fany… she’s dead?”

The ahjumma lowered her head, visibly upset as she nodded.

“Was it… was it at least a… a peaceful death?” Jessica asked. She didn’t know how else to phrase her question. She just needed to know that Tiffany hadn’t suffered.

“No death is peaceful,” the ahjumma quietly said. Her somber, crestfallen expression at that moment was the first real outward sense of humanity amongst the otherwise emotionless ahjumma army, and everyone felt something then – what could only be described as a release of some tension in the air between the attackers and the captives, as if they were no longer at odds.

The ahjumma looked over at the rest of the army and told them to take off the confiscated backpacks. Turning back toward Jessica and the others, she said, “If you want to go, you can go.” She gestured toward their packs, now on the floor.

“Why did you take us in the first place?” G-Dragon asked.

The ahjumma looked down. “We haven’t seen anyone… real people… in a long time,” she said. “We took you here to see what Kid Leader wanted to do with you.”

Ji Hyo, trying to understand how Taeyeon and Tiffany ended up with these rural ahjummas, stepped forward, bowing slightly as she did, and asked, “How did you all come together?” She was sure that these ahjummas were from the country and didn’t understand why they would willingly come to what was apparently ground zero of the outbreak. “Were you in the city already when it happened?”

The ahjumma breathed in deeply and then urged them all to sit. Everyone obliged with some relief, having not sat for some time. She explained then how they were all participants in a music outreach program designed to connect the city with the country and to spread a love for modern music amongst rural women. They had come to the university for the first in a series of voice instructional workshops, each of which would be guest-mentored by different idols. Taeyeon and Tiffany were scheduled as the mentors for the first workshop day.

“Even though we did not know the girls that first day, we loved them instantly,” the ahjumma said.

Another ahjumma, sitting in that front row with the others, then said, “They sang to us. Such sweet voices. They said they would help bring out sweetness in our voices, too.”

Jong Kook looked over, realizing that she was the same ahjumma who had made him sing during their trek up the shore.

“It had only been an hour before we started hearing the screaming,” the other ahjumma said, continuing the story. She told the group that they had all run to the windows upon hearing the screaming and saw the young college students on the grounds below being attacked. In a panic, they barricaded the practice room door and stayed inside that small room for the rest of that day and the next, surviving on small nibbles of some yang geng snacks that Taeyeon had in her bag. “All that time, we kept watching at the windows, seeing such horrors outside,” the ahjumma said. “When the food ran out, we didn’t know what to do. We knew we had to leave to find more food but we were too scared.”

According to the ahjumma, that was the moment that Taeyeon had first taken charge. She had constructed body armor for her and Tiffany to wear with the covers of music textbooks and some gaffer tape that she had found in a supply closet by the stage. With only steel guitars as weapons, the two idols left to brave the dangers outside and find food for the rest of the group.

“We watched them from the window,” the ahjumma said. “They were swinging those guitars around them, smashing in the heads of those things outside. We kept watching until they made it to the building across the way and then we couldn’t see them anymore. We just prayed and prayed that they would be okay.” She looked down for a moment. “Hours went by. We thought, ‘Oh, those poor girls have… have died.’ But they eventually came back. We were so happy. All of us, we just cried and cried.”

The other ahjumma chimed in again. “They had found a small faculty cafeteria on the seventh floor of that building. They brought back so much food, as much as they could carry.”

“We rationed it,” another ahjumma said. “For weeks, we ate such little bites. And we drank the water from the fountain down the hall. We lived here in peace all that time. The girls, they would sing to us to calm us down. They would sing every night.”

The ahjumma standing before them smiled then. “Kid Leader sang trot to make us happy. She would sing ‘The World is a Kaleidoscope.’” She looked off in the distance, as if reflecting back on those nights, but then her smile faded. “She doesn’t sing anymore. Not since…” Her voice trailed off, leaving everyone in a ghostly silence for a moment. Leaving that train of thought behind, she continued then with the story, telling the group how soldiers eventually came blasting their way onto the campus grounds, trying to take down as many zombies as they could. “But there were too many of those things,” she quietly said. “The tank was overrun. Those soldiers… they were just… eaten alive. We saw it happen. It was…”

Everyone who had seen Leeteuk’s tank overrun on their way to the stadium thought about that now, imagining the same scene happening here at the campus. They knew how horrific it must have been for these women to see that chance at rescue destroyed in such a vicious way.

“It was… painful to watch. We all turned away. But not Kid Leader. Her eyes were glued to that window. We told her to come away, to not look, but she just stood there. She said we needed those guns. We told her no. We said we would die just like the soldiers if we tried to go out there. But she reminded us how she and Tiffany had gone out for food that day and had come back okay. She said it could be done again. She said it needed to be done. She said we needed to learn how to be strong, that we couldn’t survive much longer the way we were… weak and helpless. We knew she was right but…” She breathed in deeply and nodded, as if just now understanding how they had transformed from the people they used to be to the people they were now. “I… I’m sorry. I can’t talk about this anymore.”

“Please,” Jessica said, her eyes filled with tears. “I need to know what happened next.”

Gary put his arm around Jessica and pulled her in close. “Maybe it’s best not to know,” he whispered, kissing her forehead.

As much as Jessica wanted to keep her emotions at bay, to keep them hidden like she always did, she couldn’t at that moment. She had always prided herself on being somewhat stoic. She and Krystal were alike in that regard, always somewhat standoffish. But that was just how they appeared on the surface. Inside, they were as emotional as anyone else.

She let those emotions out now as she enclosed herself in Gary’s embrace and thought about the rest of SNSD and what must have become of them. She could only imagine that the others had suffered the same fate that Tiffany had. And if not, if they were still alive somewhere in this hellish city, then she had to assume that they were as drained of their former selves as Taeyeon was.

Trying to regain her composure, she breathed in deeply and looked at the ahjumma again. “You said she’s not crazy, that she’s only grieving, but I saw her… we all saw her… just talk to that chair as if Fany-ah was sitting there.” She stared at the ahjumma, hoping for answers. She couldn’t understand how anyone could consider Taeyeon’s behavior as anything other than crazy.

As she waited for the ahjumma’s reply, she – and everyone else at that moment – suddenly saw Taeyeon standing in the doorway, her frail body just a sliver of life in the shadowed corner of that auditorium.

“Do you think I’m crazy, Sica?” Taeyeon asked, stepping forward out of the shadows.

Everyone stood from their seats then and turned their attention to Taeyeon. No one said anything.

“You think I have become Crazy Jummataeng?” Taeyeon asked. “Is that what you think?”

“No,” Jessica quietly said, lowering her head.

Taeyeon looked at Jessica for a moment, as if studying her face, and then turned to one of the ahjummas. “Take them upstairs. They’re probably tired and need some rest.” She looked once more at the group and then retreated back into the shadows and out the door.