It all started with a deep thud, echoing throughout the corridors in the main building of SBS Radio FM back in Seoul. The world didn't end with a whimper, nor with a scream or a deafening thunder, sent by the almighty Zeus himself. Just a hollow thump, the sound of a child falling flat on his bum or a basketball hitting the ground in a schoolyard. Thump. And that's it.

Of course, that was only the beginning of the end. Because thing is, people don't give up that easily, hope dies with a slow burn, our continuous prosperity is built firmly on the notion that we never ever quit, and all that jazz. Yet if we have to go back and decide on the precise moment where the world has ended, it might as well be this one empty thud, cutting off the connection to the world for SBS Radio. Not believing it's all over doesn't necessarily mean it isn't. It just means you've wet your pants too much to notice or care.

It took some more time for everything humans have built to collapse, of course. It doesn't all go away in a blink. God, or whoever it was that send this plague to Earth, has to give us at least this one - we've constructed enough to take at least a few weeks to destroy. And it was, ironically of course, since God has always been such a big fan of irony and salty jokes, only possible for our own hands to put an end to our kind. Somewhere along the way, we ourselves have become the only way to rid the world of our existence.  Humanity was the only threat to its self-constructed heaven and hell. Along with the aliens of course but seems like they never really had the time to show up. We needed an infection to cure the world from the infection that the human kind has become. And seems like we were both the poison and the antidote, which doesn't come as much of a surprise since human nature has always been a big fat paradox more than anything else.

But a thud it was, the way things started to fall apart for Do Kyungsoo, and the simplicity of this frightened him less, since he was known for being able to keep himself together at any cost, during any circumstances. Leaning awkwardly on his black leather chair back at the recording live room, there was not much he could do but wait. The happy-go-lucky lady that announced his name earlier on the broadcast as well as the title of the song he was about to perform showed up at the door, more wrinkles and white panic screaming in her eyes than smiles now, constellations of glistening perspiration tracing patterns on her skin, and explained to him in a small voice that all lines of communication have been cut off and they're working on finding out what caused the disturbances. She sounded a bit like she was trying to make her voice sound small so it wouldn't come out as shrill. The lady left him once again in the small soundproof room, and Kyungsoo pulled out his phone from the pocket of his trousers, determined to call someone and find out what the was going on, but of course he was getting no network coverage. Disturbances was what the lady called this, right? He didn't have anything else to do than sit there until further notice and practice “Baby don’t cry”, the song he was supposed to perform. Kyungsoo has worked hard for this moment, the moment where he would be sitting in the main building of South Korea's most popular radio station and perform live a song he has written himself, an audience of millions would listen to him sing. He always knew that he would reach the top, he would climb the whole damned ladder, he always felt that he belongs up there somewhere, and he was determined to reach his throne of glory and prestige even if he had to crawl in the dust and scrape the ground with bloodied nails. After all, even his surname suggested it - Do could mean a capital, a metropolis. And that's where he was headed his whole life - the big city. A moth to the undying scorch of the city lights, more than willing to burn out so he could fly higher, higher than anyone else has ever been. A modern Icarus, burning with the anticipation of dissolving into thin air and turning into dust, molten wax, and a name that would taste like a juicy piece of perfection on people's lips.

He was still at the very beginning of the long road to fame and success, yet things were supposed to advance a lot faster from here on. He had a very nice flat in a good neighborhood, had signed a contract with SM, one of the most popular and stacked with cash entertainment companies in South Korea, in the last few weeks he had recorded better music than in the whole eleven years that he's been doing this, and now he was about to sing a song he's written and composed himself on air and be heard by so many people. Sure, that wasn't the last point of his journey, but it sure as heck was a very good start. 

Until the thud happened and it all went to hell.

Eventually Kyungsoo is tired of waiting. He is a patient man, but everything to an extent, so he gets up and leaves the quiet room and all his gold threaded hopes behind.

The minute he opens the door, he is embraced in a cacophony of screaming, breaking, and panic, panic in the color of blood. Sobbing is heard occasionally, and it's not the kind of whimpers that you let out when you're in pain, but the type to slip out of your throat when you're dying.

So he goes back into his room and leans his back against the wall and thinks, thinks hard, about what the is going on. All possible and impossible scenarios scramble through his head, grabbing and nonchalantly throwing on the floor the contents of the shelves of his thoughts, all tidied up and organized, but in the end he hasn't figured out anything, he's just sick of guessing and goes out again, armed with a fire distinguisher and a microphone. It doesn't take long for him to realize that the most unthinkable of all scenarios is happening all around him, as real as it gets.

The hallways are all empty, that if you don't take into account the few chewed up, literally chewed up bodies, splattered across the floor near the walls. Kyungsoo is trying to recognize some of them, but their faces are mutilated beyond recognition. The only thing left of the face of some woman is her nose gristle and her teeth and Kyungsoo feels sick, he has to lean on a wall for awhile and take deep breaths just like they always do in the movies, breathe in, breathe out, inhale, exhale, slow and methodic. It doesn't do him much good. He keeps his hand plastered over his mouth to keep himself for throwing up the croissant and the infinite amount of coffee he engulfed for breakfast. 

What kind of a monster would do a thing like that, he wonders. What kind of freak could be physically capable of doing this, he's thinking, and his imagination is painting with a brush dipped in swamp green and mud brown the distorted ten feet tall silhouette of some genetic experiment with dogjaws growing on his hands and a total lack of reason and emotions. Just an empty void in his chest where the hearts should be that could only be filled with pain, suffering, and human flesh.

When Kyungsoo reaches the lobby of the building, all classy and glossy before but now painted in deep red and dead bodies, he finds out the truth and he's not sure if it's better or worse than what he thought.

There is his answer, limping around in the corner next to the receptionist's desk. At first Kyungsoo is thinking that this is some poor guy who lost his wits after witnessing all of this slaughter, but when he snoops closer, he makes out the narrow piece of iron, sticking up like a stake in a vampire's chest from his back, and the pool of his own blood in which the man’s legs are persistenly quacking. Quack quock quick, and it's a really unnerving sound, submerging the quiet terror of the otherwise empty building.

It seems like he doesn't notice Kyungsoo, doesn't suspect his presence. Then the singer puts his hand on his shoulder and this drags out a violent reaction, the stabbed guy who looks just like a human from behind turns around his head at approximately 360 degrees and it's freaking scary, Kyungsoo suddenly feels like he's watching “The exorcist” in slow motion. The stabbed guy doesn't look so much like a guy when you're staring at his face. He's got no lips, his teeth are all on display, all thirty-two of them, splattered in blood and between some of them you can see pieces of fresh meat. It's not hard to figure out what kind of meat it is.

Kyungsoo stumbles back a few steps before he can help it, then he loses his balance and almost drops on the floor, but manages to keep his trembling feet straight somehow. This place doesn't look like somewhere where you can just lie down and take a quick nap.

The thing in the corner was a human alright. Kyungsoo thinks it's ironic, because it doesn't make such a big difference after all; humans were always hungry to devour each other and it was finally happening, quite ing literally.

For now, he decides it would be wiser to leave the building using the emergency exit.

Three days later and the world is a mess. A flame colored sky, drowning in pinches of purple and smoke, grows heavy above the world's dying body. At least it's not a rotting body just yet.

The government is trying to fight the disaster. A military attack on biological level, they're calling it, still assuming it's a war between nations, still believing miraculously there would be life after this, that there would be a winning and a losing side here. Kyungsoo knows better than to believe in miracles. He's never had a miracle in his life, not even when he begged for it like someone's life depended on that. And it did depend, for all that he bloody knew. But the miracle didn't come. It never did. 

Wasn't gonna come now either, he knows that very well. This is not a war between humans, this is a war against humanity and the enemy is already on the inside. It's just a matter of time, it's always been a matter of time. And not a lot of time now; perhaps a few weeks, no more than that. Kyungsoo would give it ten days at most and that much only because that's how nature works, it needs its peak, an intense, flourishing moment where whatever it is creating is at its finest, and then it takes a few more moments to cool off and let it slide down the hill until it's finally dead.

And what nature is creating right now is destruction. After all, isn't nature itself the best example for being self-destructive, Kyungsoo speculates. Because he has nothing better left to do with his time.

Truth is, there's nothing much to do when you know the world as we know it is about to just cease to exist soon. You always think how if you know you're going to live for only a certain short period of time, you would live differently, with more passion and excitement, do more things and never fall asleep again. But it turns out he's got nowhere to rush for and just wants this to be over with. It's a lot harder to pull off a smile when you're waiting for the end to come.

Kyungsoo just stays at a comfy flat he broke in near the SBS building, because he can't move around that much when the capital is a living breathing zombie apocalypse. Well, not that much in the living breathing department. 

He naps a lot, eats up everything he finds in the fridge and tries to reach someone on the internet or on his phone occasionally but he doesn't put a lot of effort into it. Might be a little heartless, but he doesn't really care who of his friends and relatives is still alive and who isn't. They're all gonna die anyway, he thinks, and somewhere in the back of his mind asks himself if he's being depressed or just realistic. 

He finds this book called “Eat, Pray, Love” on the night shelf next to the bed in the apartment and he thinks that's sort of amusing, since that is exactly what he's planning to do. Eat everything there is to eat, because he's always been a big fan of cooking and never had much time to indulge into this passion, pray to God to save his soul and let him die a painless death, and love himself as long as he can, since he's the only person he's ever loved anyway. 

He usually wakes up to the sunlight softly patting his hair through the blinders, stretches a little, takes a warm self-indulgent bath, and makes himself pancakes with homemade strawberry jam and cream. Kyungsoo is finally free of all his dreams about a worldwide career, about being a successful singer and becoming the best performer there is. It feels like a mountain dropped off his chest and he must admit he's actually a little glad things turned out the way they did.

There is a certain amount of quiet, unconditioned happiness about this kind of life, a tired liquid glow radiating in his chest. Kyungsoo would like to stay like this forever, or at least a little longer. 

But God has a different plan for him and he finds out about it early in the morning of the fourth day, when it's not the soothing touch of the sun rays that wakes him up but the violent thug of a ringing, grabbing his ears and pulling them like an angry parent. His phone is ringing.

The coverage shuts down before he could reach the device, his legs suddenly turning into noodles, and the phone is silent when he finally fishes it out of the pocket of his vest. The caller ID was unfamiliar, yet he has one unread message. Kyungsoo fails three times before he finally manages to open it and reads it out loud with teary eyes. He didn't realize he was lonely these last few days and how much relief he could feel out of such a simple human contact.

“Back in the old flat Suncheon. Stuck send help Suho” that's all the message says but it's enough for Kyungsoo to understand. He can already picture the whole thing. His brother Junmyeon, three years his senior, had a small pharmaceutical business going on, and he opened two new drugstores in Suncheon where they used to live for a few years back in their early adolescence. He was probably there when this whole zombie virus thing exploded and found refuge in their old flat but got stuck there, surrounded by zombies or whatever these creatures are. He's got no one to reach to and probably has tried calling everyone on his speed dial but then his battery eventually went off and he tried using another phone that he got God knows how, and since he was always that good in making schedules and planning ahead, he probably wrote down somewhere some of the numbers he could call before his phone went dead. He even used the endearing nickname Kyungsoo gave him when they were kids in his text. Now the two brothers haven't been exactly in the best relations recently but he knew he could trust his dongsaeng with his life. And that's precisely what he was doing.

Kyungsoo has a thought or two about pretending he didn't read the message, that he no longer had his phone with him, that he was already dead. Because who would call him out for lying and being a ty brother? God obviously wasn't around anymore or he was too busy playing a video game or something to look upon his beloved humans.

But there is one thing people have always needed in their lives and Kyungsoo makes no difference. He's only human after all. He needs a purpose, somewhere to be headed, a direction, a point of disembarkation. Staying in one place and being satisfied with what we got sounds like a lot of fun, but it's not how humans roll and probably that's the reason of our downfall. We need to move, be it progress or regress, or else we end up feeling dead.

So Kyungsoo decides to go. He tries calling his brother, texting him, emailing him even, but it's pointless. He'll just have to leave the city and travel about 300 ing miles to get to that old apartment and save his big bro. Images of himself, carrying his broad shouldered hyung in his arms like a bride, busting zombies' heads with a 99 sniper riffle like the ones they used in WW2 with one hand and patting him comfortingly on the shoulder with the other are flooding his head and even though he's not entirely pleased, he lets a small amused sound escape from his lips.

Kyungsoo is not confident there is much he can do to help and if he'll even get there in time, but it's time to get moving and just the thought of that sends a sharp vibration of adrenaline racing down his back.

He spends the whole night planning his little trip. Assuming public transportation was off, there was no other way around it but driving a car. Luckily, he got his driving license a few months ago – not that there would be traffic officers pulling him off and asking for his papers and writing him a speeding ticket.

Bummer was he didn't have a car but being in a zombie apocalypse had its perks after all – the dead won't be needing much of their stuff, would they? He can't afford to be picky, he'll just have to take whatever he can get to and get going, but luck is on his side – from the balcony he can spot a small grey RV, parked right in front of the building he's in. Perfect vehicle for a zombie apocalypse. He wonders if it was designed with that purpose in mind. Being a big fan of all kinds of ridiculous conspiracy theories, Kyungsoo even speculates a little on the possibility of the government foreseeing this whole apocalypse thingy and creating these cars so the people they informed earlier could buy them and when the virus breaks out, flee to safety without being suspicious. He blames the USA, because this has been kinda popular lately.

Though judging by the person torn in halves in the driving seat of the RV, the vehicle didn't do him much good anyway.

Kyungsoo has no more time for theories and gloating. This could wait. Until never. He has to pack up his luggage, no more than a knapsack and a pack of cigarettes stuffed in the back pocket of his pants, and get ing going.

So he does.

It's not until two more days that he is able to actually go. Turns out planning was as good as he could do, and things always look easier on “The walking dead” than they are in real life. He has no gun on him or any decent weapon of sorts, so leaving the building was a big pain in the , and finding two fire distinguishers, a huge blanket, soaked in gasoline, matches, and a load of luck were the only reason he made it out of there alive and in one piece. He lost his luggage, since two zombies bit simultaneously into his backpack and he had to throw it off in his panic. He reached the car but his stomach couldn't handle removing the mess of bones and stinking flesh that was decomposing in the driver's seat. Most of the cars he tried couldn't start and the noise of their engines drew in zombies when he tried them for longer than approximately thirty seconds. So he kinda just kept trying and looking but things didn't seem all that promising and he was just about to let despair settle in, when he met the guy.

He didn't really know him much, met him a couple of times back at SM's office. Name is Oh Sehun and he looks every bit as the “Oh” because he's tall and handsome and dazzling and has the broadest shoulders this side of the Equator. Kyungsoo recalls he's some kind of rapper at SM, but also was in the same dancing group as a buddy of his, good ol' Yixing, who was having a crush on Sehun. Kyungsoo remembers as if it's a trail off from another world how he was telling Yixing he has to ask the guy out and that no one in his right mind would say “no” to this offer, no matter if he's gay or nah, because Yixing is the sweetest eye candy around and also a literal angel, but Yixing explained the boy has a crush on some other SM employee, Luhan, who had a solo career that was going on really well. Kyungsoo tried to prove him wrong but saw them making out in the hallways once. Never told Yixing about it though.

So Oh Sehun turns out to be a rapper, a singer, a dancer, and a (sort of popular) runway model, and also Do Kyungsoo's saviour.

“Hey there, small one,” he calls out to the shorter male once he's noticed him trying to break into a mobile toilet. It was locked from within which was kinda scary, Kyungsoo isn't quite sure what he expects to see inside, yet he doesn't feel right about pissing on the street so he has to get in. Even if he risks having a zombie jump on his .

Kyungsoo winces at the informal way in which the younger boy is addressing him and just keeps trashing the door recklessly. Then the brat Sehun is suddenly behind him, breathing hotly on his neck, and with a single flick of his wrist pries the door open. Just like that.

Kyungsoo wants to turn around and stare at him in disbelief but doesn't wanna see the cocky smirk he could feel has found its way on the boy's pretty lips, and is scared that his hips would brush against the other male's in the nonexistent space between them.

“Thanks,” he mouths.

“You're supposed to thank me,” they speak up simultaneously and it's enough to break the uncomfortable tension between them. Or perhaps it's just making it worse.

Kyungsoo mutters something under his breath, something about how es are gonna around, but a bit more euphemistic, and storms inside the small cubicle. Turns out there's no zombie inside, the door was probably stuck or something. He takes a long piss, leaning his head back and groaning as if he was getting the of his life, and is a bit embarrassed to find Sehun still outside the toilet when he gets out.

Though, of course, where could he possibly go?

The guy is all haughty smirks and overly self-conscious hair ruffling and narrowed eyes glares as he hands Kyungsoo a pack of wet wipes. Kyungsoo swears he could snap his neck in a heartbeat and not feel even as much as a tinge of guilt but he doesn't do it. Instead he takes a wet wipe and gives Sehun a grateful nod while cleaning up his hands. He loves being clean.

“You're supposed to thank me,” Sehun repeats the line he said before and Kyungsoo suddenly remembers Yixing commenting on how the boy was so reticent that his parents considered him to be autistic when he was a kid and that his friends often make fun of him for this.

“Was my nod not sufficient?”

“Nope,” is all that Sehun says in return. But Kyungsoo feels alright with people who don't talk much, always have.

Sehun is driving a flashy sports car, one of the last models ragtops out there – a 2016 Ford Mustang or something, and doesn't seem to care much about the small inconvenience that a crazed out for human flesh zombie can cause by jumping on his head while he's driving and eating him alive. He says Kyungsoo is more than welcome to join him and when the older male tells him he needs to leave the city and go south, it turns out they're headed in the same direction.

So they travel together. It all seems so easy with Sehun that Kyungsoo actually forgets they're in the middle of a phenomenal disaster. He has trouble believing he couldn't get out of his building for days and finding a car was so difficult when Sehun's just driving around town, using shortcuts, beeping at zombies to move out of the way like they would be scared that he would crash into them and totally not attracted to the sound and to the smell of his flesh (“A&F” cologne, powdered milk, and what boys smell like after they splash water on their faces), blasting ty american r&b on the stereo and jamming as if he's never heard Justin Bieber in his entire life. At first Kyungsoo is gripping his seat tight, clutching his fingers in every crack in the fabric he could feel, too scared to even put his seat belt on but then he kinda loosens up. I mean, who cares if they're being reckless, living in a world like this one is already crazy enough, so what's the matter if you play your music a little louder or scream instead of talking?

Plus, it turns out Sehun isn't nearly as clueless as he appears to be, and also not as quiet. He actually loves blabbering and it's hard to make him shut up once he really gets into it, it's just that he feels a bit uncomfortable around people he doesn't know well, especially if they look as intimidating as Kyungsoo at first glance. Sehun has a weird way of using words and forming his sentences.

“So they are kinds of zombies, how should I put this….they are different zombies,”  Kyungsoo wonders for a moment if the boy is actually speaking in his native language or if he's just too scared of what's going on to mind his proper speech, “and it mostly depends on how much time has passed before they were .”

Great. The zombies. At least this scenario makes Kyungsoo understand that things could always be worse than they are.

Sehun seems to know a lot about the current situation. He has no idea when and how the infection started, but it seems that no one does. It's spreading simultaneously worldwide, so there is not much time for scientists to figure out how it all happened and try to find an antidote or some like that. It's all crumbling down, science, structure, the government, and all connections are limited or entirely shut down. Sehun has no idea how the virus is spreading but it seems it's not just with a bite (he leans into Kyungsoo as he explains that, clacking his teeth together near his neck as if the older one needs a demonstration to understand what “biting” means. It sends an ice cold shiver down his spine and legs.). He thinks even breathing the same air as a walker (that's what Sehun calls the zombies, or as Kyungsoo refers to them, the things) might get you infected. Thing is, this way the disease would develop its symptoms a low slower than if it gets directly in your bloodstream. Touching the walker or being in contact with its body fluids is next on the line of “Best ways to get infected with a zombie virus”. Sehun thinks it's still slower than being bitten or swallowing some part of a walker. Kyungsoo's dismay is written all over his face and Sehun feels the need to explain the swallowing part.

“Luhan,” is all the explanation he provides and it's more than enough for Kyungsoo to get it. He wishes he didn't, though.

“In other words, the quicker it gets inside your system and reaches your brain, the faster it affects you. Eating something infected or putting something infected in your body are possibly the things you should avoid the most.” putting something infected in your body, Kyungsoo repeats in his head and cringes, literally cringes at the thought. “I think by now we're all infected, except for the farmers with the cows who live in the woods, so I didn't feel the need to put a mask on my face, but in case you want one, reach in the glovebox”
Kyungsoo would probably like to put one on his face because one can never be too precautious but he's too busy laughing at the image of healthy farmers, running carelessly in the woods with their happy cows.

He learns a lot from the younger boy. Depending on how you were infected and on which stage of the disease was the walker that infected you, the infection may last from four to fourteen days. It starts with a bad headache and a fever, then you suddenly start feeling very cold and can't control your body properly as if your brain has trouble maintaining its functions. Which is exactly what's happening. Once the virus gets to your brain, it's starting to take control. There is also a difference between the walkers depending on how long it was before they turned into mindless cannibals. Except some of them were like that their whole lives, Kyungsoo thinks.

Sehun says that the longer they've been turned, the more aware of human presence and more able to spot their victims they become. It's almost as if they develop some wacked out kind of intelligence with age. With age comes wisdom, or so they say.

When they're freshly turned, they can't even tell apart a walker from a human and it's often that they feast on the flesh of their dead brothers by kind.

When they enter some other part of the capital, a neighborhood where Kyungsoo has never been before, Sehun puts on the soft top on the car and stops the music, starts driving faster but with more caution. This is where the old walkers are, infection hit here faster than in your neighborhood, the younger boy explains, and Kyungsoo can't help but think how long has this boy been driving 'round the Seoul streets, taking in the gore and glory of the monstrous disaster.

He also can't help but notice how purplish and visible are the veins on his neck and arms and how strained he looks even though he still manages to keep a straight face somehow, how much he's sweating despite the A/C spitting cool breeze on their necks. Suddenly Kyungsoo feels claustrophobic, he's scared Sehun will jump on him in the small space of the car and eat his heart while it's still beating. But he needs to get to his brother and he's going to die anyway, so it doesn't really matter.

There are still people on the streets here and there, Kyungsoo notices. Probably more than it seems because it's really hard to tell them apart from the zombies. They're all covered in blood and dirt, all seem miserable and hopeless and hungry. Only difference is some of them are on the winning side. They're all going to die anyway and some of them already did and strange as it is, this thought sounds comforting in his head.

Seoul looks like it's been chewed up and spit out a few times and Kyungsoo finds out he's a lot more pleased to leave this city than he was to come here in the first place, even though that used to be the happiest time of his life. He doesn't feel like turning back and waving at the rotting monopolis, fading in a shade of smoke and sunset and whatever it is you can find beyond desperation.

Peace, it takes some time for Kyungsoo to put a finger on the precise word that describes the feeling beyond despair, but eventually he does, and it brings him both comfort and frustration.

It's already dusk when they leave Seoul behind but somehow Kyungsoo feels as if the sky is getting brighter rather than dark.

Sehun never tells Kyungsoo about his reasons to leave the city. Kyungsoo is also curious about what happened to Luhan, weird as it is he keeps asking about him because he feels like it's his duty to find out if Yixing's lane is already clear. As if it would matter anymore. Kyungsoo thinks it's some kind of defense mechanism against all of this going around, the last straw of normality that he's reaching to grab. Perhaps he should even try texting his friend for the s and giggles, bring him some good news. “This Luhan boy turned out to be a complete psycho, probably watched too much “Hannibal” 'cause Sehun's scared less of putting his into his mouth. You go boy!” or something like that.

But Sehun never tells him what happened to Luhan and he doesn't look like he's holding back a secret, he looks like he's holding back his tears, so Kyungsoo decides against pushing him any further. He's the one getting a free ride anyway.

Sehun drives for about an hour, and Kyungsoo is surprised to be the noisy one for once. He tries to break the silence that makes the air in the car feel like molten lead down their lungs by talking about random things, his mother's accident when he was seven years old, how he stopped talking for two years after that, his favorite subject in school, his infinite love for Pororo and spaghetti, and stuff like that. It feels kinda good, he finds out, sharing things you barely told anyone to some almost-stranger who doesn't even look like he's hearing what you say. Nevertheless it makes Kyungsoo feel light and airy like he hasn't felt in a long while and he's really taken by surprise when all of a sudden Sehun cuts him off in the middle of a sentence with a brisk “stop” and the articulate gesture of abruptly pulling over the car. They're on the highway to Cheonan and were supposed to enter the town in less than ten minutes so Kyungsoo starts to wonder whether Sehun somehow found out they can't go there because there are too much zombies or something like that. He wouldn't be surprised if the boy just picked up that piece of information seemingly out of thin air. This sounds exactly like something he could do.

“Did you forget your tooth brush or what?” Kyungsoo laughs and he's surprised at how young and easy his laughter sounds, this is something he's not used to.

Sehun is rummaging wildly through a big purse he had propped on his feet, searching for something, throwing out of the window some random stuff, and Kyungsoo is suddenly afraid, the boy who had been so calm and collected while driving a sports car across the plagued streets of the capital city had seemingly lost his nerve, he's really pale and Kyungsoo notices a thin thread of saliva trailing down his chin, Sehun doesn't even know it's there, it's just leaking like it does when a dog goes mad.

“I have a spare one, if you need it,” the older male continues teasing the younger, still trying to lighten up the mood, and Sehun finally spares him a glance through bloodshot eyes.

“Thanks but i'd rather have you knock out my teeth than help me brush them, unless you want me to eat your sweet pretty soon,” Sehun's voice is grave and hoarse, it's what unpolished wood would sound like if it was a voice, but there's still something light about it, a small tinge of amusement, something desperately human and childish, and Kyungsoo is suddenly scared no longer of Sehun turning into a zombie and devouring him, but of Sehun leaving him here all alone.

“And I don't mean eating it in the good way,” Sehun adds and despite his best effort, Kyungsoo laughs again, a genuine heart-shaped laughter that doesn't sound even the tiniest bit strained.

But like all genuine things in life, it doesn't last long. His smile fades away as soon as it came because Sehun is really leaving. He pulled over here because there was an abandoned Audi A3 that looks like a good car for getting Kyungsoo through a zombie apocalypse because he needs to go back, he needs to get east of Seoul, he explains, and search for someone. Someone important, he says.

“I need to get Minseok for him because that's what he asked me to do,” it's all he explains about this person, and there's a shade of blue in his eyes that keeps Kyungsoo from asking more questions. He's lost him already, he can tell by the slumber in his beautiful broad shoulders and the way he refuses to meet his eyes for more than a second and a half. Sehun walks out of the car with his “Michael Kors” bag slung over his shoulder and checks the Audi for any technical isssues, how much fuel it has left, are the car keys there, stuff like that. He wants to make sure Kyungsoo won't have any trouble continuing his journey.

When all's been set and good to go, he waves him goodbye and leaves just like that, gets inside his car without even a glance at the small man who's shooting daggers at his face.

“It's the last thing he asked me to do,” Sehun mutters incoherently under his breath and starts the car. The grainy noise of the engine swamps his words and it's not long before he's gone, the only proof he was ever here was the “Michael Kors” bag he forgot in the Audi when he was testing it and the small thug in Kyungsoo's chest that whispers in his ear this is the last time, this is the last time, this is the end. He shakes it off, not quite understanding his own thoughts, and leaves in the opposite direction.

Almost like in a Shakespeare play. Character number one dramatically leaves the stage, headed towards his painful death, character number two leaves the stage in the opposite direction, slamming the door behind himself and heading towards his own tragic demise. Everybody dies and no one is happy. But honestly, what do you expect to happen during a zombie apocalypse?

Cheonan turns out to be a lot more peaceful and quiet than Seoul. Kyunsgoo doesn’t know if the reason is because the infection came from the south and devastated the town earlier than it did the capital or because people were hoping for some kind of salvation from the authorities in the metropolis, after all they don’t pay all these taxes for , and everyone left trying to get there before the virus could take them down. Or maybe it was for a completely different reason. Kyungsoo had no idea.

And he also doesn’t care much. It’s fine like this. He likes driving down the city streets, narrow, hushed, and etched with the shadows of the trembling leaves, dancing in the gentle breeze. There is a sort of suburban poetry about the abandoned market stalls and the burnt out hot dog stands, a hidden verse between the coral hue of the streetlamps that seemed to be immortal and everlasting and the shop windows splattered with blood. The nonchalant bald heads of the mannequins are digging holes in his skin with their empty white stares, and it looks as if they’re blaming him for leaving them there to witness the terrible crimes that took place in the stores they were supposed to guard.

Kyungsoo decides to roll down the car window and a coarse wave of scents and noise slaps him in the face. The worn out cries for help of department stores’ security systems, the buzzing of a thousand flies that got the whiff of free treats, the croaking of their loyal colleagues – the ravens, hopping in a funny manner on the sidewalk as if they were proper citizens. And the chirp of the cicadas above it all. Kyungsoo is stunned because he’d never heard cicadas in a city before, not even in those hot summer nights when the sheets on your bed are more sweat than fabric. He was never good in biology so he has no idea if it’s because they don’t go to the cities – Kyungsoo finds that to be a bit ironic since he is the exact opposite, he went to the city so he could sing, or it was just that he couldn’t overhear them over the street noise, all he knows for a fact is he’s never heard them there before. And now they were almost screaming, chirping so loud that for a moment he ponders on whether this could be just some noise that exists only in his head, a sign that he’s finally going bonkers.

The town smelled like the air after a storm, cleansed, light, a new beginning on the way; and at the same time you could still sniff the stink of the ending, a stench of rotting food, garbage lying around on the streets, a rushed escape and all the abandoned houses. A heavy scent. There’s just something so human about it, and in all of this town, in its rounded corners behind which you never see a random stranger who went out to buy the evening newspaper and take some pleasure in the nice weather, or a child running late for dinner, something mortal about the air laying above it like an old lady would lay on her deathbed, and about its ugly black silence. Kyungsoo feels like he’s suffocating, it’s as if tentacles are invading his lungs and filling their alveoli with thick sticky mucus. He doesn’t want to feel this perishable humanity around him because it’s sad and it reminds him of shattered glass and the things he lost when he was a little boy. He needs to remember that the world exists beyond people and their stupid never-ending tragedy.

Kyungsoo stops the car in front of the tall building he was headed to. Some business corporation jutting high up above the surrounding expensive lawyer offices and storeys with shiny plates with “Private banking” written down on them in tasteful cursive. The street is absolutely empty, there’s not even one lost walker trailing around. No big surprise since this is a rich neighborhood of people with class and enough cold cash to stuff a small house full and everyone probably moved out with their expensive fast cars as soon as the news of the infection broke out to a hypothetical world where everything was still fine and they could still make money. Zombies got nothing to do here. Apparently even the dead acknowledge the distinction between rich and poor, Kyungsoo notes with a fair amount of bitterness.

He’s surprised himself with how much he’s not afraid as he waltzes out of the car and enters the building through the big glass door. He expects it to be locked but it isn’t. The lobby is vast, speck clean, and totally empty. The only curious detail is a small leather briefcase spread out in the middle of the Terrazzo floor. It’s full with paperwork, some of which lays scattered messily on the floor, but most of it is still stacked up neatly inside. Probably someone was running with his luggage in his hands and dropped the briefcase but was way too scared to come back and get it. Or maybe too panicked to even notice he dropped it.

Kyungsoo walks down to the elevator and presses the button. The elevator is already on his floor and the doors open immediately. Of course it’s in the lobby. There’s nobody up there to call it anymore. It looks like it’s functioning just fine but Kyungsoo decides to use the stairs anyway. He doesn’t want to get stuck inside and have no one to call to fix the emergency. Dying out of thirst or lack of oxygen in a stuck elevator is a pretty dumb way to die, especially during a zombie apocalypse.

Eleven floors later, all sweaty and heavily breathing, Kyungsoo is on top of the ladder, right where he always dreamed to be. All the time as he’s going up he keeps thinking about how his whole life, all of his dreams and ambitions were build up exactly on this same thing, climbing. Go up, go higher, walk, crawl with blood on your knees, or drag your whacked limbs behind you, just get to the top, reach the place where you can finally give up and die in peace. Or maybe it’s endless, he hears a small voice whisper in the back of his mind, maybe there’s no such place, where you can just lay down and rest, it’s an infinite climb and the only finish is when you shut your eyes and die.

Everything seems so pointless and petty to him right now. So human. And that’s kinda sad since he’s climbing this seemingly endless ladder precisely because he wanted to get away from everything human.

He wants to feel like a God.

Kyungsoo walks out on the rooftop – the door isn’t locked here either. It’s just an ordinary concrete square with a few barrels in one corner and some piled up cardboard boxes in the other. There’s not a soul to be seen and even though the lights are down you can see everything quite clearly. Kyungsoo takes a few big steps to reach the end of the roof, leans over the safety rail and fearlessly looks down. It’s high. He feels more or less like the king of the whole ing world. The city lights are blinding him, the streetlamps are blinking lazily, the advertising billboards are enticingly crooking their fingers at you, inviting you to buy some of the new “Tofurky” sausages on half-price or to renew your wardrobe with some Gap jeans, born to fit. The streets look like black veins among the sidewalks that are bathing in lights, because the traffic is down and the cars’ headlights are long dead. No one’s moving anywhere. Only the flickering lights are alive, their flame is burning out somewhere deep in their fluorescent insides.

The young man wonders for a minute, curious what it would be like to fly from here, ponders on whether he should let his wings carry him home, just relax here over the concrete barrier and smash his skull on the asphalt. There will be no crowd of excited wankers, no black cop worriedly waving his baton in people’s faces, no people in suits yelling at him through megaphones that he should cut the crap and that there’s still hope. There will be a few seconds of flight, then half a moment of dull blind pain, and a whole ing eternity of peace. Doesn’t sound like such a poor deal after all.

But that was not the reason he came here.

Kyungsoo takes a few steps back and crouches down, then leanes backwards and lays down on the hard concrete. It dug into his skin uncomfortably but with his hands under his head and a left ankle propped on his right knee he could live.

Kyungsoo sighs and looks up and the world suddenly ceases to exist.

Was it actually possible to feel your heartbeat slowing down? The blood is pumping in waves so sedate that you feel its ebbs and flows outside of yourself, it’s as if you’re lying on the ocean beach covered in wet sand and tiny clam shells and the warm water is constantly flooding over your lax body and then rushing back leaving you for the chilling palms of the sea breeze. Blood in slow motion. Life in slow motion.

Kyungsoo is laying on the concrete rooftop of a tall business corporation in the middle of an abandoned city that even the dead men have left, looking up at the sky with teary eyes, and his full lips are stretched in contradiction to his tears in the most genuine smile that has touched them in quite a long while. The man is beautiful when he smiles, raw and open in the soft glow of the stars.

He looks peaceful, peaceful in the vulnerable way people look when they’re asleep. The sky is still up there, hovering above him in all its might and calming disconcern. It’s dark. It’s as if the rooftop is made of crumpled paper and someone poured a bottle of ink over it, painting it in a deep shade of indigo. Kyungsoo feels like letting go, dissolving into the ink, turning into a washed up story where words are melting into the spaces between letters and the sentences start with punctuation and end with a capital letter. With a scream.

It looks really three-dimensional tonight, the sky. It’s like a lid, with clouds swimming underneath at a quick pace, illuminated by the full moon. A story suddenly pops up in Kyungsoo’s head, something about zombies being some sort of wolverines, waking up on the full moon every 300 000 years or something, and in such an AU there is still a chance that humanity will live on, that things will be normal once again just like they were the previous times when the same horror happened.

Kyungsoo is quick to get rid of his ill-founded fantasies because he remembers he’s no longer afraid to die.

How can someone fear death when he’s looking at the stars?

And tonight there are lots of them, Kyungsoo discovers. Dozens, hundreds even, sprinkled above the city as if he was staring up from the top of a high peak thousands of miles away from any kind of civilization. Blink-blink, blink-blink, they’re fluttering in their serene soothing light. The sight of the stars has always carried a specific air of tranquility for Kyungsoo, and oh how he loved to drown in it. There, on top of the roof of the abandoned city, all alone and on a rendevouz with the stars, he felt as if the nighttime was almost his. As if he owned the night sky and the stars and even the cold air in his lungs. The light breath of wind, the world, all of this belonged to him just like he always dreamed it would be. He was finally on top of everything and everyone. And one thing he knew for sure about being on top of the world – you’re not afraid of anything anymore.

Or at least that’s what Kyungsoo felt before he noticed that the stars are moving. He had to prop himself on his elbows and to squint his eyes uncomfortably a few times to make sure this is not some sort of optical illusion, probably caused by his astigmatism. Kyungsoo slaps himself in the face once, twice, just to make sure he wasn’t too peaceful a minute ago and that this didn’t cause him to doze off and dream weird stuff. He looks up and the stars keep moving, at least some of them do. Slowly, a bit tired even, somewhere up there. Kyungsoo rubs his eyes. There was only one sensible explanation of what he was observing – he didn’t fear dying so much that he accidentally did without noticing, and now he was in an alternate universe where it was totally usual for the celestial bodies to move around. I mean, do you even know you’re dying when you’re dying? Probably not.

But Kyungsoo felt pretty much alive, his pulse still hushedly pumping in his veins, his own thoughts still ringing soundly in his head, his body warm and under his control, at least partially since he was still pretty shocked and confused. What the hell?

And then a star started falling. Down, down, down it goes, until it burst midair in a beautiful explosion he couldn’t really hear but almost felt all over the air, vibrating, pulsating, shuddering and breathing masses of hot air inside his very bones. And all of a sudden he figures it out, though he probably knew all along, just didn’t care enough to admit it.

It wasn’t the aliens who came to rescue their experiment from the big fat zombies. It was people again. Just humans in their tiny little airplanes, figuring out zombies can’t fly and that air is the only safe haven where they can take refuge. But there’s something they didn’t remember and it’s that humans can’t fly either, especially not forever, and that they were always so much better at falling than at rising.

Was it the lack of a dispatcher in the dark hours of the night or did they simply run out of jet fuel? Or was it that the people on board were infected and finally went nuts or were they just tired and ready to die, Kyungsoo could never know. All he knows is that the airplanes in the night sky were shooting stars, just like it said in this old B.o.B. ft. Hayley song he used to listen to all the time when he was a kid, and he didn’t have to pretend it’s so because it was real, people were up there in the air, falling down, burning out, then bang! and their light goes off.

Kyungsoo thinks it’s the saddest celestial event he’s ever observed, and for the first time ever he doesn’t wish on a shooting star because the only thing he wants is for this to stop and he knows this ain’t gonna happen.

He doesn’t want to close his eyes though; he feels like he needs to watch these people burn out. He truly feels like God up there, staring at their lives being all wasted out, their fire burning away pointlessly. God doesn’t really feel good or happy, he thinks, he’s probably miserable all the time.

Kyungsoo keeps staring until his eyelids grow heavy and eventually he drifts off to sleep.

Kyungsoo wakes up to a gun shoved in his face and the dim light of the breaking dawn gently caressing his cold cheeks. The hand that holds the gun – big, veiny, doesn’t give out such gentle vibes as the morning light and before Kyungsoo could open his mouth and say something, a low voice cuts him sharp.

“I would keep that pretty mouth shut if I were you, unless I wanted to have that 44 magnum filling it up,” the voice is impossibly deep, husky, and as Kyungsoo is surprised to find out, so damn hot. But also intimidating enough to make him shut up before he even started talking.

“I’ll do the talking here. Are you infected? Who the are you? What are you even doing here? Are you alo—“

“Jesus , you need to shut up, Yeol. I love you to the world and back, but I swear to God sometimes you just need to shut the up, you talk t—“

“Have you ever even heard yourself? I mean, who are you to talk, I d—“

“How can I even hear myself over the sound of your constant blahblah”

Kyungsoo suddenly feels like screaming out. No one likes to be scared and threatened with a gun and Kyungsoo didn’t make no difference here, but somehow he felt like he would prefer that over having to listen to this annoying couple’s fight. The guy with the hot voice wasn’t pointing the gun at his face anymore, he was waving it around carelessly to emphasize on his agitation with the other dude, so Kyungsoo could prop himself up and finally take a good look at the men he’s dealing with.

Funny thing was that both of them kinda looked like elves. The one with the gun was like a head taller than Kyungsoo, awkwardly lean and with kind of bow shaped legs as if he suffered a severe case of rickets when he was little. Kyungsoo couldn’t really make out what his face looked like from this angle but he could still muse himself on his sticking out ears. They made him look a bit like Yoda, he thought. The other guy apparently had a lot of nerve for keeping himself from pulling them while they were yelling in each other’s faces. Kyungsoo would totally go for it if he was in his place.

Speaking of the other, he was short, with really wide hipbones and …yes, that was pink hair. What a punk. He was a bit away from Kyungsoo so he had to squint his eyes at him in order to see him properly and that’s when the guy noticed Kyungsoo was staring.

“Why are you glaring at me like this?” he hissed, and the tall guy turned around to look at him too, finally recalling he was actually in the middle of interrogating him just a few minutes ago, “Yeolie, can you believe this guy? He’s seriously creeping me out. What did I do wrong?”

The short guy narrowed his eyes at his friend as if he was trying to focus on him and furrowed his eyebrows in an intimidating manner. The tall one just burst out in manic fits of laughter, barely managing to keep himself from falling on the ground and doubling over as he was watching his buddy imitate Kyungsoo and shamelessly make fun of his poor eyesight. Kyungsoo couldn’t believe his eyes.

A few more choked ripples of laughter and bogus death glares later, the shorter guy tried to explain his erratic behaviour in between giggles and snorts though Kyungsoo wasn’t entirely sure if he was directing his words at him or at his taller friend or at an imaginary companion or something. The kid seemed pretty confused.

“You see, he was pointing the gun at you because he thought you might be infected. I mean, no Sherlock… look at all this mess,” the boy made a vague gesture with his hand, obviously pointing out the mess he was speaking of, yet somehow it appeared a lot less expressive than it should since the rooftop they were currently on was impeccably neat and there wasn’t even a chicken poop to be seen, “and after all, we don’t know if zombies do sleep lmao.”

The guy actually spelled out “lmao”. Letter by letter. And his face didn’t even flinch once. Kyungsoo was suddenly scared for his life.

“Or you said he might be pretending, I think,” now he was nodding at his friend who, oddly enough, didn’t seem the slightest bit confused by his erratic manner of speech, “And right now when you were looking at me like this,” insert another bogus death glare here, “even though you woke up and seemed reasonable and human enough to recognize the gun, I still thought you might be a zombie because of your look and—“

The tall guy burst out in hiccups of laugher once more and started slapping himself frantically on the knees.

“Yeol, we’re still not sure if he’s a zombie or not, right?”

“He looks like he can’t understand what you’re saying,” the tall one joined the aggravating symphony of laughter and screaming. Why were these guys even yelling, it’s not like there was any background noise to drown their words, Kyungsoo wondered.

“Maybe he just doesn’t speak the language or the shock—“

“Or he might be deaf or mute or both—“

“—because of my staggering beauty, I mean, who could blame the guy, look at—“

“Baekhyunnie, did you learn sign language at the medical—“

And here they go again. Because why not make some redundant noise when you’re perfectly capable of doing so?

Sign language though? There was only one thing Kyungsoo knew how to express in this language and it involved a certain middle finger being stuck out and he really felt like demonstrating his knowledge right now but he was too busy covering his ears with his palms.

This had to stop and it had to stop now.

“Shut the up; I’m alive, I think I’m pretty much alive yet but it won’t be for long if you don’t shut your ugly mouths; just shut the up or I’ll be dead in a while,” he wasn’t sure if he was screaming or mumbling under his nose or actually just thinking about saying these words but when he finally dared to remove his hands from his ears, Kyungsoo was surprised to find out the cacophony has come to an end. A very peaceful and pleasant to the ears ending.

And in just about two seconds and a half he was going to regret his bold decision because both of the guys were screaming ecstatically “he IS STILL ALIVE” louder than Kyungsoo thought was physically possible and his ears were violently ringing and he’s pretty sure that when they shut up he will be completely deaf and even in the face of this frightening prospect he couldn’t help but be shocked at how wide the tall one’s grin was.

Soon after the cries of unreasonable happiness died out, Kyungsoo got to meet the guys. Tall one was Chanyeol (“I call him Yeollie but only I can do that. It sounds a bit like Eeyore and he looks a bit like him, doesn’t he” “I do not look like an old cartoon emo donkey, thank you very much”) and the short, obnoxious one was Baekhyun.

The two of them met a few days ago when this all started, Baekhyun started telling Kyungsoo, waving excitedly at the “this all” part as if he was referring to some awesome annual party and not the complete and utter wreckage of the world. He was at the medical university he attended, searching the underground storage for some stuff he needed to pick up for a test, when the first zombie he had ever seen came out at him from nowhere and he started screaming and throwing beakers at him.

“I got that motherer in the eye and it just popped, like POP! and fell on the floor and he didn’t even, like, notice? I mean, I guess he couldn’t …see it,” apparently Baekhyun was the type of guy to find something amusing in everything, including rotting zombie eyes falling on the floor.

“It didn’t help much though and I was probably going to die trying some cheap hapkido joint locks on him if it wasn’t for my baby Chanyeol here who happened to be working part-time as a janitor or something. So he cracked the er’s skull wide open with a – can you imagine – with a pipe he just tore off the wall,” Kyungsoo could totally imagine, “and he saved my life and then he took me in his big arms and I’m telling you, I was never one to believe in love at first sight but I swear to God that’s what it was, there were sparkles and butterflies and moths even, I’m not kidding, there were some moths circling around the lamp, and he told me he never knew he likes dudes before he met me—“

So now they traveled together, driving around towns, enjoying the free stuff they didn’t have enough time and money to try out before, gleeful and blessed, barely managing to keep their bright grins off their faces.

“I got wounded pretty badly though, some lunatic thought I was a zombie or something and shot at me with some Half Life 2 rocket launcher, I swear it was probably designed after a game or I don’t know. Next thing I know half my arm is gone,” Chanyeol replied to Kyungsoo’s questioning stare at his heavily bandaged arm, “Good thing my Baekhyunnie here goes to medical school and knew exactly what to do to stop the bleeding and any possible infection. I’m so lucky to have him.” Obviously Chanyeol and Baekhyun were one of those couples who don’t mind indulging in PDA so they share a sloppy open mouthed kiss, much to Kyungsoo’s absolute horror.

He’s really trying to come up with an excuse to abandon the two loud obnoxious bastards but it’s not working out since among the other terrible things it caused, the zombie apocalypse also ruined most of the scenarios one can use to excuse himself from somewhere he doesn’t want to be. I mean, you can’t really be late for work or have to pick up your kids from school, right?

So Kyungsoo decides to try with the only excuse he could come up with, which was unfortunately also the truth.

“I’m driving south so I can rescue my big brother. I gotta go,” he tries, but it only makes things worse.

Turns out they were headed south too. Because it’s warmer and it rains a lot and they love kissing in the rain and they wanted to go the beach in Seogwipo, as Baekhyun explains, oblivious to Kyungsoo’s unbelieving stare. They wanted to go to the beach in Seogwipo? These kids are uningbelievable. It was like the zombie apocalypse was their long awaited summer break.

So since Chanyeol can’t drive with his hand out of the game and Baekhyun doesn’t know how to (apparently the reason they stopped in this town was because Chanyeol was trying to teach him how to drive), they think it’s the best of fortune that they met Kyungsoo and were really happy he’s going to “give them a ride”. Best of fortunes indeed, Kyungsoo thinks bitterly.

What’s in it for me, he ponders, but he doesn’t dare speaking up because they might start answering and he’s already having a headache from their constant jabbering.

After two cups of black coffee and a few ginger nut biscuits Baekhyung snoops out for them from some office on the sixth floor, they go to the parking lot which is all empty except for their very own vehicle. Kyungsoo is not even surprised it’s an ice cream truck in bright pink and baby blue. In fact, he was almost expecting it on some subconscious level.

The letters “Canbek” on the “Canbek Ice Cream” sign written with silver letters on the side of the van had an “h” and “a” added with red ink and now the sign read “Chanbaek”.

“It would be the name of our couple if we were in, you know, a movie or a comic book, and the fans were writing fictions about us. Like The Joker and Harley Quinn are JoQuinn,” Baekhyun excitedly rambles.

Kyungsoo is curious where they found this red “paint” for the two letters and is also pretty much sure no one really calls the Joker and Harley Quinn “JoQuinn” but decides to stick to his smart plan of speaking as little as possible and avoiding all sorts of questions when he’s with the duo. He thinks they look a lot like the Joker and Harley though, Chanyeol with his excessive psycho grin and pretty faced Baekhyun with that pastel pink hair.

The town is as empty and quiet as ever but it’s not that peaceful in the van. Chanyeol is rapping some made up verse about rolling like a buffalo and playing an imaginary guitar on his bandaged arm in the back and Baekhyun is telling no one in particular all kinds of personal stories about himself while Kyungsoo feels more like a prisoner tied up in his seatbelt than like someone who’s going places. He learned how Baek’s hair was actually bleached blond since the medical school he attended had a strict policy about unnatural hair colors such as pink, and he usually spray colored his hair like this when he was having ty gigs with his crappy rock band. Kyungsoo could totally imagine ChanBaek stopping at some luxurious hair salon full of zombies which Chanyeol casually shoots off so he can proceed with dying his boyfriend’s hair pink in the quartz sink and carefully washing it afterwards.

What he couldn’t comprehend was how they made it this far.

“Do you want some?” Kyungsoo was sort of lost in his own imagination running wild, detached from Baekhyun’s constant rant when these particular words caught his attention.

“What???” he threw a spontaneous look back at Chanyeol to see if he was still present. He was, beatboxing and rapping excitedly about some wolf and how he was gonna put someone in his mouth like cheese, oblivious to his boyfriend’s advances on Kyungsoo.

“I said the van was obviously sent to us by Jesus Christ himself because it’s a miracle and there is actual ice cream in the trunk and that I’m hungry so can we go grab some?” Baek patiently repeated himself. It appears this guy just enjoyed the act of talking.

Kyungsoo is hungry so he pulls over and Baekhyun immediately walks out of the car. What Kyungsoo couldn’t quite comprehend was how the did Chanyeol get out before him so he could open the door on Baekhyun’s side like a real gentleman. Did he jump out as they were going or what?

The lust filled look the two shared was more than he wanted to see but at least it answered his suppressed question about why the did the two of them go together to pick up a little ice cream as if only one couldn’t handle the task by himself.

The pounding against the wall behind him and the shameless moans and grunts pretty much confirmed his assumption. Soon enough (they lasted no longer than three minutes) they were back, all flushed, sweaty, and with even more disheveled appearances, only to announce they forgot to take the ice cream.

“But we can go back and pick some now, right?” Chanyeol offered with a sly grin directed at Baekhyun and before they could disappear again Kyungsoo slumped out of his seat and walked to the back of the van himself.

He wasn’t surprised to spot the melted ice outlining a small human form being held up against the freezer wall in the back of the van. Not surprised at all.

When he came back with a few ice cream cones in a small cardboard box, he found the front seats empty and a heavily breathing Baekhyun grinding on top of a smirking Chanyeol in the back.

“What the do you guys think you’re doing—“ Kyungsoo dropped the ice cream box on the floor and had to listen to Baekhyun actually answering him what they were doing in a very detailed manner.

“I was asking for an explanation, not a description, you erted freak,” Kyungsoo yelled and stuffed his mouth with some cheap replica of “Very berry strawberry” by Baskin & Robbins to prevent himself from saying anything else.

After all, it wasn’t their fault that they tried to feel each other as much as they could in this dangerous world, it was only natural that their desires were burning brighter now that everything around them was falling apart at a faster pace than it usually does.

“We want to be together for as long as we can and to be as close as possible all the time,” Baekhyun says, and there’s a pale blush creeping up the high of his cheekbones, “because we don’t know when things are about to get bitter. We’ll try to keep each other safe though, so we can be together forever. Or something.”

Forever or something. This breaks Kyungsoo heart a little and he just doesn’t find it in himself to tell Baekhyun that they are probably already infected, that the virus probably entered their bodies at the same time he and Chanyeol first met, breathing the same air as that walker. It doesn’t really matter if he tells them or not, because he knows that a forever or something is ironically shorter than a simple forever and that Baekhyun already knows that.

So he decides to keep up with his plan of saying as little as possible and concentrates on driving instead of talking.

They have places to go after all.

They reach Suncheon at about six pm. It hasn’t been an easy ride. The highways are all blocked by abandoned cars, decaying corpses, and also walking decaying corpses. Most of the zombies are at such an advanced stage of decomposition that they are more of a skeleton than an actual body. They don’t bite humans and turn them into zombies anymore, they’re so blinded by hunger that they just eat people alive. The reek is unbearable and Kyungsoo has to drive with the windows up all the time. The broiling sun isn’t helping it much either, practically melting down the zombie’s dead flesh. Kyungsoo literally sees their flesh drip down their bones in muddy discolored drops. It’s not a pleasant sight.

Kyungsoo has to drive through the field for most of the time. He’s always hated jammed up traffic but jammed up traffic with dead cannibals strolling around is the ing worst and a bit more than he can deal with. So he drives safely in the field besides the highway even though twenty minutes on the road take up to two hours down here. Better slow and safe than becoming a zombie lunch box.

Besides, they also stop here and there so he can explain some things about driving to Baekhyun and let him practice a little. Eventually they’ll have to go separate ways and Chanyeol’s arm is still...well, half of it is still missing.

Kyungsoo doesn’t even remember entering the city. He’s tired as , the A/C isn’t functioning so he’s also sweating like a pig, and his head is buzzing from Baekhyun’s voice and Chanyeol’s laughter. His palms feel numb, his right leg is stiff, and he’s not entirely sure he has a anymore. He needs to get the out and walk on his feet, feel the coarse pinch of the asphalt through the soles of his shoes, even if it’s about to be the last thing he’s going to do.

He stops the van a few blocks away from Eunhasu Square on a small shadowy street with pretty old houses and a lot of small antique shops and Kyungsoo thinks he recalls playing hide & seek around here when he was a kid.

It wasn’t far from his old address, about twenty minutes on foot and that if your legs are as small as his.

“Are we there yet?” Baekhyun sounds so genuinely caring that it almost makes Kyungsoo feel bad for bailing out on them. Almost.

“No, guys, thing is… I want to go alone from here on. It’s really close anyway and I don’t want to get you involved in that too. I mean, you already did so much and this would be…it would be dangerous. I’m sorry.” Kyungsoo is surprised at the warmth and sentiment he feels in his own words. That’s something he’s not quite used to showing. Guess dorky Chanyeol and puppy faced Baekhyun made him a little bit sappy.

They’re almost disappointingly understanding and Kyungsoo finds himself wishing they would at least try to convince him to take them along. Chanyeol fishes out of somewhere a bottle of expensive champagne and pours some in three plastic coffee cups.

It feels warm like piss in Kyungsoo’s hand but it’s still something.

“I want to raise a toast to…this…infection…or whatever it is,” Baekhyun probably wasn’t an straight A student back in that med school, Kyungsoo notes, “I know it ed up our entire lives and we’re all gonna die now, but hey, my life was pretty much ed up anyway and no one was ever immortal except for Elvis and Jesus Christ.”

“You don’t know that,” Kyungsoo mutters under his breath and thinks about all of his old, dusted dreams of his face staring wide eyed from front pages and covers and of sold out Carnegie Hall shows, stacked up in an empty cupboard and no longer valid or useful. They make no sense to him right now and he can’t help but wonder if they ever did in the first place.

“What was that?” Kyungsoo just shakes his head and gives Baekhyun a disturbing comforting smile, encouraging him to go on with his little speech, “Alright, so as I was saying…if it wasn’t for this thing with the zombies, I probably would’ve never met Chanyeol, even though we both spent a lot of time in the same place. We were so close yet lived in different worlds, do you feel me? I know we would never get to know each other if it wasn’t for this virus and all. So here we are and I’m kinda really happy about the way things turned out to be, and I can’t imagine a place where I would rather be than right here right now.”

Chanyeol’s bigger-than-life grin evolves in a high pitched squeal and he grabbs Baekhyun’s arm and pulls him in his arms, making him spill some of his champagne on his shirt and kissing him senseless.

“Oh what is this now you guys…some wedding ceremony speech or what?” Kyungsoo says that with a disgruntled tone of voice but he doesn’t really mind them because he knows this is probably the closest thing to a wedding that they will ever get.

“By the rights given to me by our only God almighty and also all of his saints and angels and staff, I pronounce you, i-don’t-ing-remember-your-surname Chanyeol and Byun Baekhyun, for lawfully wedded husband and husband. Since you are already kissing each other like you’re about to eat each other’s faces out, I suggest you seal the marriage with a sip of the champagne that’s pouring out of your cups because of your intense making out session. Amen!” Kyungsoo raises his cup suggestively in a very unpriestly manner and the newlywed couple follows obediently his proposition.

“Happy Virus!” Baekhyun cheerfully announces and steals a glance at his beloved, making Kyungsoo wonder if this is some sort of private joke they have. It probably is.

The champagne tastes like piss too.

Kyungsoo watches as the gaudy van drives away, a bit dizzy with the alcohol and the sense of being on his own again. The silence around him outstretches a bit further than he finds comfortable. But he’ll eventually get used to it again.

“And we would’ve never met you either, Satansoo,” Baekhyun has rolled down the window of the van and is yelling back at him, using the ridiculous nickname Chanyeol gave him earlier. But still it makes Kyungsoo feel a little warmer inside.

Or maybe it’s just the champagne.

Suncheon is in a lot deeper than Cheonan was, Kyungsoo soon finds out first-hand. The place is basically a zombie breeding den and as much as he needed to feel his body move after the eight hours spent driving he can’t really enjoy it with that much danger blowing up his .

Soon enough he finds out he can’t just walk casually down the main streets, following the safe route he took at his parents’ insistence when he was a kid. It was too crowded and while this used to be a good thing back in the days and meant he probably won’t get kidnapped by some dirty old pedo, it meant “quick death” today. Kyungsoo would contemplate if that’s not a good thing too but he’s got no time for this.

The crowd was mostly walkers and thankfully a lot of them couldn’t walk very fast because of their advanced stage of decomposition. Kyungsoo isn’t sure if there are any humans out there at all. It’s hard to tell them apart at this point.

He assumes he can’t be the only survivor though, probably at least some other people hid the same way he did and lucked out enough to keep out of danger.

Circling around, dead ends, jumping over fences, taking on shortcuts that didn’t exist any longer, going back the same street a dozen times – when he sent away ChanBaek under the pretext that the road to his house would be too dangerous, he didn’t really know how right he would be. He has to be extremely cautious and even though he usually was, even under ordinary circumstances, it doesn’t seem like such a piece of cake now, especially not after sleeping on a cement rooftop with the stars as your only blanket and driving for eight hours with no rest through a zombie invaded field in the blessed company of two annoying freaks who couldn’t shut their mouths if their lives depended on it.

It’s pretty much the same as with the field drive earlier – he takes up the twenty minutes to his old family flat in more than two hours.

The building in which is their apartment was located between two central avenues that are placed at different altitude because of the slope of the land there. Kyungsoo can see the familiar blue silhouette of the building from where he is, but has to go further away in the opposite direction because both of the streets are swarming with zombies. He can see now why Junmyeon couldn’t get out of there on his own and he knows things were probably a lot worse back when he got stuck in the building than they are now. With a herd of zombies wearing motorcycle jackets decorated with all sorts of insignias and safety pins at his heels, Kyungsoo could barely make it out of the main street alive, climbing over two metal fences and running like crazy to end up on some small alley between two tall buildings.

It takes him a few panting minutes to realize he’s safe there and it’s completely empty. Just a desolate narrow alley with steep stairs leading somewhere. Or nowhere. Kyungsoo could never quite make out the difference.

There is light coming out of somewhere, adorning the dim corners with a tinge of bottle green, an almost neon color. Dark neon, if such a thing even exists.

Steps take a lot longer to make here, Kyungsoo discovers, heartbeats sound like an Irish warpipe, and silence is nothing but a military deception constructed by the invisible enemy. He can hear his own breathing, rapid and tangled. He can taste the mess he is on his dry lips. Kyungsoo them and it feels like an obscene thing to do in this holy temple of an alley.

Kyungsoo can tell there’s something that’s just not right about this place but can’t quite make out what is it. His heart feels as if it’s underneath his eyeballs and is going to jump out any moment now. He brainstorms that this ‘not-right’ thingy could be nothing but a zombie about to fall on his head and eat his brain but still, he feels absolutely unaffected by this possibility and that frightens him beyond any reasonable extent.

“I don’t wanna die. But what if I wanna die?” he’s thinking, then suddenly realizes what’s wrong. What’s been bothering him.

Time doesn’t exist here. Time has stopped mid-sentence and all existence has ceased and the world is nothing but a lucid dream he never had.

Kyungsoo abruptly stops in his steps, takes a moment – or two, or four, or a whole eternity of moments, to rest his back against the wall, it’s rugged and damp and cold starts slipping into his bloodstream but he feels it’s okay, it’s alright.

No clocks are ticking, the moon or its artificial substitute is showering him in neon green and time has burned out or faded away and it doesn’t matter which one has happened. Kyungsoo feels as if he’s in a Haruki Murakami novel. Like he’s Mr. Wind-up Bird down in the dark well of his own subconscious. He can even hear a bird chirping with a very unusual, somewhat mechanical tune.

Kyungsoo tries to listen but all he can hear is the muffled roar of the world beyond, its chaotic grumbling is engulfing any bird song that can be heard over here. The hectic life, the hectic death, the hectic world outside of his small alley – he feels like he’s observing all of this and not participating and this makes him feel intact; and it’s like outside there is a raging storm and it will only take him a few steps to find himself back in the middle of it yet he feels a billion years away. And he understands why now.

He’s not in a safe house of sorts, there is no magic spell here that’s protecting him. He’s in the middle of the storm, the eye of the tornado, right inside the vortex. He’s in the center of a storm and it’s peaceful and quite in there and if he closes his eyes he could feel the Earth spinning in slow motion and the clouds moving swiftly and the gentleness of the wind and he just wants to stay there and listen for awhile.

Kyungsoo feels blissfully young and ancient at the same time. The green glow is strangely soothing, and so is the chilling humid air invading his lungs. A smile is awkwardly stretching his lips.

When he finally walks out of the alley, it’s pitch dark and the world is as hectic as he remembers, but he feels as if the eye of the storm has moved inside his chest and he just doesn’t care anymore, he doesn’t care.

There’s something surreal about the world ever since he walked out of the alley. The bloodied frenzy, the lack of car noise, some 80’s tune playing softly somewhere in the background, probably from an abandoned cafeteria, the rotting hands which still wear traces of French manicure on their nails reaching out to grab at his shirt - there’s something subtly grotesque about the way a horrendous massacre and the ordinary city life mash up to create a real life David Lynch movie.

Kyungsoo steps on the skull of a fallen cop who ate away his own arms because his leg got stuck in a broken drain grate and he couldn’t control his hunger – an officer down while performing his duties, a minute of silence for his bravery and courage, his service to this country will never be forgotten. His skull cracks as easy as an egg for omelette. Now Kyungsoo’s got a gun and ammo and even a truncheon and he’s all but ready to kick some and bring some action in Lynch’s absurdly surreal and ambient masterpiece.

Turns out he doesn’t need to. Some family inadvertently creates a much needed diversion for him while trying to leave the neighborhood in a car loaded with their profusely bleeding teenage son and the zombies ignore Kyungsoo in their quest for the more enticing smell. He only uses the gun once to shoot open the locked back door of the tall blue building he was headed to.

It’s cold inside and the lights are dead. Kyungsoo is surprised to find out his phone battery was still charged and uses the flashlight to make his way alive to the sixth floor. He has no love for surprises so he doesn’t take the elevator. Instead he climbs the stairs slowly, carefully, and pops out behind every corner in a ridiculous stance shamelessly borrowed from some third-rate special agent movie. He can almost hear “Agent Smith, it’s clear” or “I got you covered” buzzing over a portable.

The sixth floor is pretty much alright, Kyungsoo finds out. There are, of course, a dozen dead bodies lying in pools of blood on the floor, and your average dead cannibal casually walking down the hallway here and there, but things seem relatively calm. Perhaps the orbitofrontal part of the brain started decaying on the zombies here and they couldn’t smell Kyungsoo very well so they weren’t that interested in him right now. Strangely enough, he felt offended.

It’s weird how a few days in hell can change your entire outlook on things, Kyungsoo ponders. Without a second thought he kicks the corpses on the floor to remove them out of his way. He feels no remorse for the dead any longer, it’s all just blunt fear and contempt. He doesn’t want to become one of them.

It doesn’t take him long to find the old apartment. The number on the door still reads “604” even if the name on the plate is unfamiliar. Kyungsoo is about to ring the doorbell but he remembers how shrill it used to sound and how the neighbors used to complain about it echoing down the entire floor so he decides it’s best not to attract any zombies over here. And what if there’s no one home anymore? Junmyeon could’ve made it out of there by now and Kyungsoo would be totally ed if he couldn’t come in.

After a while, Kyungsoo decides to turn to his already tested strategy of shooting the door and busting it open, trying to keep it down as much as possible and failing miserably at this. He uses the door bolt he finds by touch on the familiar spot to keep the door shut and drags over a shoe cabinet for extra security. He’s in the vestibule. The faint light of his phone reveals some piled up shoe boxes, hanging coats, and a small stand with grotesquely sticking out umbrellas.  They look like distorted hands stretching out to grab you and drag you to hell.

Kyungsoo doesn’t dare to call his brother’s name as he goes further in the apartment. All he hears is silence and the quiet squeaking of the steps down the hallway, both sounding morbid and ghastly.

The apartment looks pretty much the same as it did ten years ago. The new owners had put in some more furniture that his family couldn’t afford at the time, and obviously took a liking in darker colors when it came to interior design but that was the only difference between now and then. Kyungsoo held the gun firmly in front of himself, all senses acute, ready to detect any trace of life, be it hostile or not.

There was still no sign from Junmyeon.

Kyungsoo already checked all the rooms except for his own. He was curious about what did the new family make out of it.

Knock-knock. No one’s there. Kyungsoo is polite enough to knock, smiling softly at the memory of his parents never entering his room without asking him for a permission first.

He presses down the handle and opens the door as quiet as possible. It’s not very quiet though, he’s amused to find out. Some things never change, like pencils and beer and the abundance of idiots in the world and the way the door to his room squeaked, apparently. It’s always been like that and no amount of lubricating oil was able to fix that.

The room is dark like the rest of the house. Some orange tinted light was faintly trying to seep through the window but the curtain was pulled down so it didn’t do much to illuminate the room. It probably belonged to a teenager just like before, perhaps a boy if the few posters of “Alice in chains” and “Van halen” Kyungsoo could spot on the wall were any gender indicator, and was empty as far as he could tell. His brother either made it out of here somehow or lost all sense and reason and really just wanted to play a game of hide & seek.

Kyungsoo spots a night light by the bed and decides to turn it on since a lot of these things worked on batteries but as he moves closer to the bed he notices a small bulge under the covers – barely there yet distinctive enough to make out its human shape.

The lamp did indeed work on batteries and it bathed the covered silhouette in a calming shade of blue.

“Junmyeon,” Kyungsoo whispers a few times, then finally says it out loud. No reaction comes from the concealed body. Kyungsoo was suddenly frightened that whoever – whatever he found was dead.

“It’s me, Kyungsoo,” he’s almost yelling now. No sign he was heard by anyone follows.

Kyungsoo freezes perfectly still, not even breathing, his eyes narrowed and glued on the small shape on the bed. He used to do this with his parents when he was a child, quietly slipping into their bedroom and observing them while they were sleeping to make sure their chests are heaving and they’re still alive. He is trying to trace any movement now, no matter how faint and miniscule it might be, because he’s scared that the body would be stiff and ice cold if he touches it.

At first there was nothing but after a while Kyungsoo’s eyes got accustomed to the darkness and he could see, he could really see now. Whatever it was in the bed, it wasn’t dead, it was breathing. Shallow, barely existent breaths, but obviously still breathing.

Kyungsoo grabs the blanket and pulls it off, exposing the tiny frame beneath. He is no longer frightened but rather excited.

And there he is, curled up in a small ball to his side like a fetus, his beautiful brother, his Junmyeon. He was clutching his hands to his heart, his knees were pulled up to his chest, and his eyes were closed. For a second all Kyungsoo could do was smile, happy that he wasn’t too late, but then recognition left him as quick as it was to dawn upon him.

The person on the bed looked a bit like his brother at first glance but he was obviously more of a boy than an adult, nothing like the stout strong man he knew to be his hyung. More of a shadow now really. No wonder Kyungsoo couldn’t notice him under the sheets at first, his frame was so tiny and he looked malnourished. There was a sickening jaundice hue to his skin that even the blue light couldn’t quite wipe off his face and his wrists looked so frail and his bones were so obviously protruding it almost made Kyungsoo ache inside. The kid looked no older than twenty and by the looks of it was probably infected.

“Hey kid,” Kyungsoo heard his voice saying, coming out all coarse and rusty, saw his own hand move and grab the boy’s shoulder. He was surprised to find out he didn’t really want to do these things, he just wanted to stay still and stare at the boy’s sleeping form for a bit longer. But he was also curious about what his voice sounds like.

The boy was awake, he felt somehow. He doesn’t know how but he felt it. There was some sort of wakefulness in the stillness beneath his eyelids, something about his tense shoulders. The boy was awake but he was probably pretending to be still asleep because he was scared.  His breath came out in raspy sighs.

“Listen, I’m not going to hurt you,” Kyungsoo almost whispers, “Promise I won’t hurt you kid” he finds himself quoting Lana del Rey’s songs and softly patting his shoulder in his attempt to soothe the boy. He felt warm, hot even, and Kyungsoo shudders a bit when he feels a bit of the kid’s skin under his cold fingertips, soft, delicate, and sticky with sweat.

He feels the boy shuddering under his touch too.

Kyungsoo is so mesmerized by the stark contrast in their body temperatures he doesn’t even notice when the kid has opened his eyes. He finds him staring drowsily at him, eyes hazy and dark. Dangerous.

A moment outstretches between them, languid, fluid, thick. It feels like being stuck inside of a succulent mango fruit or like blowing a bubble gum and watching the balloon expand further and further until it’s just not possible to grow more but it still does somehow, or maybe like this wet string of saliva connecting two lovers after they kiss. It’s everlasting and brief.

The cerulean glow highlights the boy’s sickness written all over his features, deepening the dark circles under his eyes and contouring the tiny anxious lines around his mouth. His eyes are red and puffy. The boy looks as if he’s been spending his free time crying. Or maybe he just really needs to get some sleep.

“Hold me really tight until the stars look big,” the hushed tune catches Kyungsoo by surprise and it takes him a lot longer than it should to figure out it slipped past the sick boy’s sinfully chapped lips. He only realizes that because he’s been staring at them intently for a while and the image of them parting and closing and moving has been replaying in his mind ferociously.

The boy’s voice is low and deep. Kyungsoo expected it would be something a bit more feminine, perhaps.

“Never let me go,” they sing the last line together and it comes out a bit uneven and raspy but they still sound good. Their voices complement each other.

It’s an awkward way to meet someone – Kyungsoo was more used to, I don’t know, shaking people’s hands and saying his name and getting theirs in return rather than singing Lana del Rey duets with them, but he doesn’t really mind. Not a tad bit, actually.

Besides, finding a handsome guy in the bed of your old teenage room and mistaking him for your brother while you’re in the middle of a zombie apocalypse is a situation which calls for extreme ways of acquaintance.

Kyungsoo learns a lot about the boy before he actually gets his name. He obviously looks a little out of it at first, not really knowing where he is and whose bed it is he’s lying on (he thinks it belongs to some guy named Taemin), not really bothered by the presence of this stranger who keeps asking him questions, not worried he’s sick and dying. There’s a small smile that never leaves his face and a shade of adoration in his eyes whenever he looks at Kyungsoo. He asks him if he can hold his hand without any explanation provided which Kyungsoo declines, remembering Sehun’s words. If this zombie infection was some sort of cancer, the kid looked like he was at stage four. He better avoid any physical contact with him, even breathing the same air as him was probably going to make things for Kyungsoo worse. He doesn’t want to stop breathing and leave, though. He keeps telling himself the reason he’s staying is he needs to find out where Junmyeon is and this boy here is probably the only person who can help him do that.

Jongin tries shyly to take Kyungsoo’s hand anyway but Kyungsoo slaps it away. Perhaps a bit too harsh. Jongin looks hurts but keeps talking.

“I didn’t know what to do, I was so confused when this whole thing started, ” the kid was telling him how he got here as Kyungsoo insisted, “so I went to the place where I always go. First I went off to the dancing studio, found out it was empty, and came here. My friend lives here,” Kyungsoo was wondering why wouldn’t the boy go to his parents’ house or something but perhaps that’s way too personal to ask when you’ve just met someone, “and we were supposed to have dance practice today, I’m a dancer,” there’s a proud note to his voice, a glint of passion flickering in his dazed eyes, “and Taemin, he just never misses practice, so I was worried sick but things were crazy and I hid at some place, at the convenience store, I think, then in a busted car and there was, there was a body on the back seat and I was so—“

Kyungsoo has to cut him off here because his voice breaks in so many pieces it’s impossible to gather up. The kid is trembling and Kyungsoo has to pull up all of his self-composure to stop himself from wrapping a consoling arm around his shaking shoulders.

Instead, he urges him to continue his story when he looks like he’s calmed down a bit. Kyungsoo is being selfish, he knows, but for some reason he just wants to hear the boy talk.

“It took me some time to get here, I don’t know, a few days maybe. I don’t even know how I made it,” the boy sniffed and it was only then that Kyungsoo realized he’s been sobbing the whole time, “but when I got on my friend’s floor and rang the doorbell, some guy jumped out on me, it was so sudden, I was so frightened… I think he was infected.” The kid says that as if it’s something dirty and unusual, like an old woman gossiping with her friends about someone’s grandson being gay, and Kyungsoo suddenly feels the urge to kiss him right on the lips, kiss him sweet and gentle.

He doesn’t.

The boy’s name is Kim Jongin and he’s one year younger than Kyungsoo and apparently Kyungsoo’s brother jumped out on him from his friend Taemin’s flat (of course it was his bed after all, not Kyungsoo’s) and tried to eat him alive but Jongin pushed him off and somehow managed to crack his skull on the infamous umbrella stand that greeted Kyungsoo in the vestibule. He immediately sensed there was something vile about it.

“Did he die?” Kyungsoo is surprised at how calm his voice comes out, it’s not like he’s talking to the man who murdered his older brother here.

Jongin shakes his head “no” and continues about how the other dude just looked up at him with blood flooding his eyes from the crack on his head and apologized, literally apologized, then left with a polite bow and a smile that somehow didn’t even come out as creepy. Kyungsoo is wondering if he’s lying because this sounds like a creepypasta story but then again, his brother has always been a quirky one. He couldn’t learn how to flush a toilet until the age of fifteen and when he was a kid, he had an imaginary husband named Kris and ten imaginary children even though he was straight as a pole.

So Kyungsoo believes Jongin.

He would probably pretend he did even if he didn’t because he really liked hearing him talk. And as much as Jongin looked like he needed a rest, he obviously liked talking to Kyungsoo too.

Kyungsoo learns a lot of things about him. He hears about Jongin’s passion for dancing, about his love for dogs (“Zombies don’t eat dogs, do they?”), how he wishes he could dance like Michael Jackson and more, and more. The boy admits his passionate love for fried chicken and Kyungsoo isn’t sure whether he should laugh or cry when Jongin tells him how he is in the state he is because of his affection.

Apparently Junmyeon was more of Jongin’s martyr than Jongin was his because when the boy was left alone in the apartment and found out his friend isn’t there, he saw a box of fried chicken wings in the kitchen and couldn’t help but eat some.

“Well, all of it actually.”

Then he got sick. Almost immediately. He fainted on the kitchen floor and woke up when it was already dark, then stumbled somehow to the sink and puked until there was nothing more than yellowish bile coming out of his mouth.

Kyungsoo thinks about Junmyeon’s old habit of biting on his food and leaving it back where it was so he could eat it later without having to worry about someone else taking it. Poor hungry Jongin probably didn’t even notice the marking.

“Taemin always told me that chicken would be the death of me. I guess he has a flair for telling the future.” Jongin’s laugh comes out easy, as if he isn’t talking about his painful transition into a walking cannibalistic corpse.

He always finds a way to mention this Taemin guy, his name comes so easily on his lips as if it has always been there, and Kyungsoo feels a sudden tug of jealousy in his chest.

“So is this Taemin your best friend or what?”

“Yes, I mean… Uhm no, I think not…he’s more like—“ a pang, a violent pang in Kyungsoo’s heart, “he’s my second best friend, I guess.” Jongin еxplains and Kyungsoo unintentionally lets out a deep breath he didn’t even realize he was holding.

“So who is your best friend then?” his own stupid questions almost make him feel like he’s back in high school, having crushes that barely lasted a week and cheating on tests and smoking pot on the rooftop.

Jongin remains quiet for a moment and Kyungsoo is worried he asked something he shouldn’t have. But then a bright smile pulls on Jongin’s lips and Kyungsoo doesn’t even remember what being worried felt like.

“His name is Kai. He’s always been there for me. I think… I think I want to be just like him.” And there is a certain soft light that appears in his eyes, a distinctive warmth, barely noticeable but there, definitely there. Like the reflection of a candle flame in a smudged mirror.

“Now you got me all curious. I wish I could meet this guy.”

“Perhaps you will.”

It’s been probably five hours since they met and started talking and it’s obvious Kyungsoo is not going to find his brother here. And that there isn’t any point in finding him wherever he is.

He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do now that his goal has expired. And this is a very odd thing he doesn’t know how to deal with because he’s always been a person who knows what he wants and what he should do in order to get it.

Jongin seems to have read his thoughts. He seems to do that quite often.

“So what are you going to do now? You can get infected if you stay, you know.”

Kyungsoo knows.

“I think you should leave.”

Kyungsoo doesn’t.

When Kyungsoo opens his eyes it’s already breaking dawn outside. The morning glow gently paints the room in a soft shade of blue, making the faint light from the night lamp look even weaker than it is.

Kyungsoo always hated when the lights were still on in the morning.

He doesn’t remember falling asleep. Just a minute ago he was talking to Jongin, more like listening to his stories about ballet school and how he used to wear tights there and they made him feel embarrassed with himself, and now he woke up as if none of this has ever happened.

Kyungsoo looks around bewildered, can’t quite make out where he is in the dim morning light.

Maybe this has all been a dream. Maybe he just watched too much horror movies before he went to bed and his imagination has gone a little frisky.

But he feels heat, the scorching heat oppressing the small room, suffocating, toxic.

It’s not just body warmth, he could tell. Body heat is soft and mellow and feels like cotton candy and a dog your hand, and the heat in the room is nothing like this. It’s sickening and unnatural.

Jongin is shifting in his sleep. His shirt is drenched in sweat and as Kyungsoo notices with disgust, blood and tiny bits of something that looks an awful lot like the beef mince he used to buy from the butcher when he was a kid. Despite the heat he emanates, Jongin appears to feel cold, lips a little too blue, hands clutching desperately at the blanket, holding on to it as if it’s the most important thing in his life. Maybe he just wants to hold someone.

Kyungsoo instinctively reaches out to wipe the drops of perspiration formed on his forehead and abruptly withdraws his hand, remembering he’s not supposed to touch him. Jongin’s sweat feels ice cold on his fingertips and Kyungsoo spends about half an hour washing it off in the bathroom.

When he goes back in the room, he can smell Jongin’s suffering in the air. Thyme, a warm compress pressed on children’s skin, and milk. Add a little bit of death and that’s what Jongin smells like when he’s in pain. It’s a sweet smell, there’s something fundamentally innocent about it.

Kyungsoo spends the next few hours watching the boy sleep. He doesn’t shift in his sleep, doesn’t move. Sometimes it looks as if he’s not even breathing. Kyungsoo has to check if his chest is still heaving from time to time, scared that he might’ve passed away.

He has the chance to take a better look at him in the daylight. It’s harsh on people’s faces, bringing out to the light all of their flaws and glitches, no matter how insignificant they are in the darkness of the night. The night is kind with the human flaws. The light is looking at them accusingly and waves a stern finger in their faces.

But Jongin doesn’t seem to have any of them. His face is pure and gentle in the rebuking light. His lashes are casting a dim shadow on his delicate cheekbones, the angle of his jaw can cut glass and make a geometry professor believe in God, his skin is liquid honey. It’s damp and Kyungsoo wants to run a finger down its moist surface more than anything in the world. Well, almost anything. Apparently the only thing he desires stronger is to keep living and that’s what’s keeping him from granting himself his wish. Why, he asks himself. Ironically enough, the only answer he has is that he wants to keep feeling the same temptation to touch Jongin. It’s his only reason to live. Ah, just another one of the countless paradoxes of human nature. We condemn temptation and just want to live in peace, but when we’re left to ourselves, we feel desolate without our beloved struggles.

Kyungsoo looks back at Jongin and thinks, maybe death is not as bad as everyone makes it out to be.

Then there were Jongin’s lips.

The boy is suddenly smiling softly in his sleep as if he can feel Kyungsoo’s eyes on him. Kyungsoo gulps.

If Jongin’s lips were sin, then his smile was the redemption for it.

Kyungsoo’s stare keeps sliding down, needing to explore more of the boy’s tiny frame, though he can’t reach further than his collarbones, sharply cut, taut bronze skin over prominent bones.

Kyungsoo feels a little uncomfortable, like he’s some stalker studying his unsuspecting victim but can’t bring himself to move his eyes. There’s something so fascinating about this boy that keeps drawing him in. Tragedy looks so well on him.

He remembers the old saying, “Some people are born with tragedy in their blood”, keeps it in his mouth for a while, swirls his tongue around it, tries to find out what these foreign words taste like. Savors the taste. Kyungsoo thinks that’s what Jongin would taste like.

But that’s a silly thought and he doesn’t put much faith into it because he knows the sick boy must taste like salt and dried sweat and something bitter and the way dirty things taste because when you’re sick you taste like and because people can’t have the same flavor as words do.

Jongin doesn’t look like he’s sick though; he looks like he’s dying. Or dead, if not for the silent raise and fall of his small ribcage, bones sticking out like a 3D model in a geography book. Rise and fall. Up and down. Breathe in, breathe out. Fly and fall. Live, then die.

Just as unexpected as Jongin’s little smile, there comes a violent shake, a febrile convulsion of his entire body. Before Kyungsoo can even register what’s happening let alone act on it, Jongin has an iron strong grip on his arm and his eyes jerk wide open. His stare looks bewildered, completely insane. It’s as if his soul is trapped inside a cage and he wants to set it free, he wants to let it go but he can’t and –

Then Kyungsoo regains his composure and snaps out of his poetic metaphors, noticing the boy’s wild gestures with his free hand, hearing the retching sounds that are vibrating throughout his entire body. He frantically looks around, searching for a washbasin or something, but all he could grab is an old book left open by the bedside and put it in front of Jongin. The boy is looking at him with pleading eyes and weakly pushing away the hand he uses to hold the book. Kyungsoo can tell he’s barely containing himself now. He removes his hand and looks away and it’s almost as if he’s pressed an invisible button because Jongin finally starts puking all over the open pages. Kyungsoo can’t help but look at him again. Turns out ruining the book was completely pointless since Jongin’s vomit leaks all around it, the yellow bile soaking into the sheets, pieces of food and God knows what scrambled like a modern work of art on the blanket. Write “Inside my mind” or “You give me butterflies and here they are, dead” under it and put it in a museum.

Jongin simply can’t stop barfing. He looks like he’s in pain and can’t even take a proper breath but the urge to vomit is unbearable, he keeps retching and retching and Kyungsoo feels like the terrifying sound is etched in his brain forever, setting the rhythm of his pulse.

Tears are streaming down Jongin’s cheeks and he’s choking on the vomit he simply can’t stop producing.

Kyungsoo smooths an alleviating hand down his strained back, then runs his fingers soothingly through the boy’s hair. He hears himself mumble softly things like “clarification” and “notion” and “fluorescent” just because they sound calming and sweet. Kyungsoo has never been good with comforting speeches, in fact he never felt the need to make one until this very moment. And that’s a pity because he has the soothing voice of an angel.

It seems to be working though. The pauses between Jongin’s compulsive retching grow longer and longer and the gagging has lost its force. Until it eventually stops. His body isn’t shaking anymore. Only the tears keep running down his paled cheeks.

“I got you baby shhh”. If they were in a movie that’s what Kyungsoo would be whispering to Jongin. But they’re not and he’s just repeating over and over again “clarity peaceful solution” like a ing idiot.

At some point Jongin tries to remove his hand from his back and Kyungsoo sees a concerned look in his eyes. Or maybe he’s just strained because of the effort he put into puking out his intestines.

“You shouldn’t touch me,” he mouths.

“I know I shouldn’t,” Kyungsoo thinks, yet he keeps touching him anyway.

It’s just like with Jongin and the retching. He wants to stop but he simply can’t.

Kyungsoo looks at the ruined book and manages to read a sentence somewhere in the clear.

“And poor Mr. Darcy! Dear Lizzy, only consider what he must have suffered!”

So Jongin had his vomit all over “Pride and prejudice”. How fitting.

They’re lying on the floor since Kyungsoo has to change the sheets Jongin puked all over and the kid needs to take a bath. Kyungsoo has to constantly remind himself Jongin is barely a kid since he’s only a year younger than him. He can’t help but think of him like he’s someone small and helpless, someone who needs to be taken care of.

Jongin can’t go to the bathroom because his knees buckle beneath him and he fell on the floor the moment he got up from the bed.

Now they’re both lying on it – Kyungsoo out of solidarity, backs propped up against the bedstead, listening to the monotonous ticking of a clock that’s filling the stiff air in the room while Jongin is desperately trying to catch his breath. It takes him about fifteen minutes. The veins on his sallow arms look sickeningly purple and his jaundice skin is almost transparent.

When Jongin can breathe easily enough to speak, they start talking. And instead of Kyungsoo helping him get to the bathroom they spend a few hours immersed in a conversation.

Jongin is telling him about his life in Suncheon.

“What I love the most are Sunday mornings. Lazy and sluggish, just like me. I like to sleep in late but on Sunday mornings I always get up bright and early. I brush my teeth, splash some water on my face, and go out. It’s usually warm, there’s a light breeze ruffling my hair and the sun is shy and tender. There’s a specific morning humidity in the air, something fresh and good and young. Something, I don’t know, untainted. There’s no one on the streets, not a single soul. Everybody is busy resting. Only the cats and the birds are up. Sunday mornings are cats’ time. They’re all out and about, snooping around their usual spots for food leftovers, graciously stretching in the sun, or just having their morning walk. Strolling around, unbothered by a single thing. They look so chill, it’s as if a bomb can explode next to them and they wouldn’t even blink. I mean, cats are always chill. But on Sunday mornings they look even lazier than usual. Slower. Even less interested in you.” Jongin crawls a bit closer towards Kyungsoo, casting him a subtle side glance. The boy is as subtle as a knockout punch but Kyungsoo doesn’t mind being taken down. Some hits are meant to be taken.

“All shops are closed and it’s not in that rushed way they are closed on workday mornings, it’s not like they’re expecting to be opened any minute now, waiting for their owners. Their rolled down shutters are like the closed eyes of a sleeping child. Everything seems washed up in this golden glow of sunlight and it looks so quiet and magical. Like, honestly, if there’s a dog on the ground, it would look as if it’s magic.” Jongin laughs, embarrassed. Kyungsoo thinks the sound of his laugh is magic.

“See, Suncheon isn’t a very big town. It’s usually quiet here, there’s not much going around, but on Sunday mornings it’s like the world has really stopped moving and time is over and like that. You don’t have anywhere to be, no deadlines hanging over your head like a storm cloud, no rush, no traffic, nothing. You don’t have any expectations and you’re not worried about anything. You’re just sort of…there. And it’s really beautiful. I love them, I love Sunday mornings. “

There’s something really touching about the expression twirling on Jongin’s face as he’s speaking. It makes Kyungsoo sad and he decides he shouldn’t tell him it’s Sunday morning now because he won’t be able to go outside.

Maybe he already knows and that’s why he looks so broken.

For a moment, Kyungsoo feels as if he wants to stay there, in this piece of reminiscence Jongin is courteously offering. He wants to feel the golden glow all over his skin, to breathe in the still air, to look at the lazy cats and try to pet them. Then watch them walk away offended when they sniff he’s got no food to treat them. He wants to feel like time has stopped.

But it has, he realizes now. There will be no deadlines ever again, except for the one that will always remain a constant – the moment of death. No more loans and tuitions and bills and traffic jams and disappointed parents. Nuh-uh. Not anymore. Not ever.

And that’s alright with him, Kyungsoo is surprised to find out. He wants to live in Sunday mornings with Jongin now. It’s weird because he always hated Sunday mornings and slow things and wasted time and small towns and sleepy people and laziness and stagnation. He’d rather have regression than stagnation. Kyungsoo just isn’t the sort of person that stops to smell the flowers. He’d rather stomp on them than let them take some of his precious time. He doesn’t like the golden glow, in fact he’s never paid any attention to it before because he never had the time to and when he sees a lazy cat he thinks about chasing after it so it would start moving faster. Kyungsoo dreams of places where he’s famous but no one really knows his name, he wants to be an anonymous legend, just another shooting star on the horizon of existence. A faceless moment of immortality would be the highlight of his life. And then, luckily, death would take him away.

Kyungsoo likes to choke on city lights and busy people, he likes to drown himself in upbeat music in high-end bars and touch skin that feels artificial and did you know the skyscrapers are so tall in the big city that they look transparent early in the morning? But today, listening to this dying boy talking about something he would never see again, Kyungsoo finds himself dreaming about drowning in golden glow and lazy Sunday morning cats.

Today, Kyungsoo loves Sunday mornings.

Kyungsoo likes to put labels on people. It’s not something he’s particularly proud of because labeling and judging are like a brother and sister and Kyungsoo never considered himself to be a judgmental person. However, he found at a very early age that people are not that different from each other and it makes it that much easier to understand them when you’re able to sort them into similar drawers. And much faster. Kyungsoo doesn’t enjoy wasting time.

Each human being is a simple sum of his initial desires and urges. That’s what Kyungsoo always tells himself. Find out what a person wants and you got about ninety-five percents of him figured out. The remaining five percents are the things he wants that you haven’t discovered yet.

Aside from the cynical truth that all human desires are based on either greed or lust, Kyungsoo has made his own system for figuring out what people really want. A system that made it that much easier to sort people in convenient folders.

Kyungsoo likes to define people not by who they are in the present but by who they want to become in the future. If grown-ups were kids and had to answer with all the simplicity and honesty of a child what do they want to become when they grow up, the answer of the majority would probably be “the best”. And here comes his first type. That’s what people usually want to achieve in their lifetime. Work hard, give everything your best, try to become the best in your field, whatever it might be. Perhaps most of us are somewhat American in their core. Earn the highest salary, buy the biggest house, own the best stuff, have the best job, be the best. That’s what satisfies most people. It could also be interpreted as “being rich”. Material goods. Be the best, make the best money. Woohoo. Life’s a rollercoaster and you’ve earned the spot from where the view is most astounding. There’s no higher place to go, you’re good right where you are. So in another sense, people who wish they were the best dreamed of earning the right to remain in stagnation. Live in their own self designed puddle.

And that has never been Kyungsoo.

Then there were the people who want to be special. They dream of being different from anybody else either because they’re disappointed with everyone they see or because their parents didn’t pay them enough attention when they were kids and they seemed to love their sibling better. You’d be surprised how many of your personality traits can be explained with a childhood trauma. Or like therapists prefer to call it, an influence from your youth.

So a lot of people dream they’re different. Be it that they’re too distant and withdrawn to fit into human society or that they have an uniquely addictive personality that makes others latch onto them like leeches or that they have a deadly disease that makes them oh so afraid of commitment and life itself. They all have something up their sleeve. Kyungsoo knew a guy in Seoul who faked having lung cancer to get some sympathy and a pity here and there. He thought cancer could make him some sort of special snowflake and in one way or another, he was right. Of course not many people would go such lengths in their desire to be different from the masses. Most would just paint their hair in a crazy color or have an emo phase when they’re fifteen or say they don’t like Justin Bieber because he’s too mainstream and a baby. Nothing too wild. Just your average everyday rebel.

Kyungsoo always took pride in openly admitting to like Bieber’s music.

Then comes the type of people Kyungsoo used to think he belongs to. The frenetic mathematicians, suffocating on numbers and Goedel’s incompleteness theorems. The walking skeletons on a runway, making a glamorous show out of their starvation. The poets who kill themselves for their art. The architects who bleed coal and flatten their brains until they turn into transparent drafting paper. The singers who went deaf because they were singing too loud. The people who struggle fighting or embracing their own perception of perfect. Kyungsoo just wanted to be perfect. Now some may say being perfect is actually the same as being the best. But that could only be the words of a person who never tried grasping at the wavering skirts of an ideal. Someone who never tasted the lethal venom of failure or the bile of success turned into an impossible virtue and how your incapability of achieving it condemns you to an eternity in your personal hell of not-being-good-enoughs and what-if-i-only-dids.

But those people would be right. Because being the best and being perfect are pretty much one and the same thing. Only difference is that one of them is impossible to achieve.

Then there were the ones who dream of immortality. When Kyungsoo gave up on his idea of perfection, he thought what he really wanted was an eternal life. To be one of the lucky few who live in the spotlight and can have their names written in a history book. Or in a popular magazine. What’s the big difference anyway? Kyungsoo wanted to have his name etched in the history of humanity for years and years to come. To be a writer. A singer. A composer. A Hollywood star from the 50’s. A serial killer. Whatever makes people remember you.

But he sat in his room late one night, reading notes, when there was a sudden power cut – nothing to be surprised of really, he still lived in a ty neighborhood back then and power cuts were just a part of the everyday life, so he had to light a candle to continue with his work. He wanted to keep reading on its miserable light but found himself too mesmerized by the flame to do so. There was something beyond fascinating in the way that candle was burning bright, brighter than he could remember the sun, and slowly approaching its inevitable ending. Kyungsoo couldn’t take this eyes off until it burned out and the light faded away, first to a tiny flame flickering blue, then into a warm pool of molten wax. Truly inspirational.

And he knew that’s what he wanted for himself. Burn out, fade away, and never live forever. Immortality turned out to be a stupid ing joke and a century or two never meant eternity. “Forever” turned out to be just another pretty word in a dictionary, made up by people who had too much free time on their hands.

Then comes the last type of people. The people who simply don’t want to be human. The people who want to be God.

Kyungsoo counted himself to be one of them and just in the nature of his self-diagnosed God complex, he believed this kind of people to be the rarest one.

Perhaps the people who wanted to be unhuman wanted the same thing as the ones who wanted to be different, Kyungsoo contemplated.

Perhaps being unhuman and being different are the same thing. Only one of them is more impossible than the other.

And now Kyungsoo found another type of human. A new one. Undiscovered land.

“I just want to be human,” Jongin has a smile plastered on his face and tears leaking from his eyes, smiling and crying at the same time. Not tears of happiness. Sad tears. Tears of doom.

The bathtub is filled with warm water and pink soap foam and something that smells like lavender and Kyungsoo is giving Jongin a bath. He’s rubbing his body with a prime sea wool sponge and putting 30 bucks “Alveda” shampoo on his hair. He’s smearing it thoroughly on his scalp, eliciting small moans of appreciation from the younger. Everybody likes a good scalp massage. It helps with blood circulation and stuff.

It’s a simple request. Jongin wants to be human. But he can’t be, not for much longer anyway. It’s not a simple request. It’s a sad love story and somehow it’s Kyungsoo’s heart that’s breaking. Jongin’s still beating heart is rotting in his chest.

Kyungsoo feels stupid now with all of his made-up drawers where he neatly folds color coded people. All of his pretentious I’m-better-than-you bull. He would gladly set fire to all of his ideologies and everything just to grant this sick boy his one desire.

Kyungsoo bites his lip in frustration because all he can really do is help Jongin with his bath and wait for him to die.

It’s the first time he’s giving a bath to somebody else. It’s almost absurd how comfortable he feels about touching another human being in such an intimate manner. A human being. Someone he met less than twenty-four hours ago.

Kyungsoo shampoos his hair first, lathering the shampoo while rubbing it in circular motions on his scalp. He slicks back his hair. It looks pitch black because it’s wet and the lighting is in the small bathroom that has only one window.

Then his hands slip down to Jongin’s neck. He can feel his Adam’s apple bobbing under them as Jongin is gulping. Bulb bulb.

Kyungsoo gulps too and repeats to himself this is a reaction based on pure empathy.

His palm is possessively spread over the boy’s throat and Kyungsoo feels this tempting urge to squeeze, to clutch at Jongin’s neck, to make his breathing hitch in his throat and his eyes jerk open. To feel him squirm in his hands. But Jongin is lying there so guileless and trusting that Kyungsoo couldn’t help but shake off his sinful thoughts and keep going down the boy’s body.

His thumbs take on the opposite directions, sliding over his glistening collarbones. His fingertips paint invisible lines on them. Kyungsoo writes words in languages that were never invented and with meaning beyond any form of invention known to humanity.

Jongin’s collarbones are so sharp that Kyungsoo is afraid he might cut himself. Sliding his fingers over them feels like checking if the blades of your ice skates are sharpened.

His shoulders are broad and manly, the kind of shoulders Kyungsoo has always dreamed of having. His own frame is so small and his torso as narrow as a girl’s. It was his biggest body issue along with being short. He wants to have a body like Jongin’s. Tall and graceful.

Jongin’s hands are warm and limply resting. Kyungsoo runs his fingers between each and every one of Jongin’s so he can wash the space between them but it feels like they’re actually holding hands.

When Kyungsoo pulls his hands away, the foam looks like tiny rose buds between Jongin’s fingers.

The descent down the boy’s chest is long, endless. Kyungsoo is careful not to touch his s, but can’t help but notice how they harden when his fingers ghost near them. Jongin is sensitive.

The muscles on his upper body aren’t very well developed. The boy is so skinny he looks almost ethereal. Kyungsoo wonders if this could possibly be a side effect of the virus. If it was, pity that the fashion industry couldn’t cultivate it for their own usage. It would’ve worked them ing wonders.

Kyungsoo doesn’t even know he has placed firmly both of his hands on the boy’s bony hips until he realizes he’s shamelessly clutching them. He can feel his own fingers digging deep into Jongin’s flesh and wonders what bruises would look like on such dark skin. And if Jongin would live long enough to show him.

He shoots a quick glance at Jongin’s face. The boy’s eyes remain shut, his lips slightly parted, a tiny flush seems to be dusted on his cheekbones but it might be just a play of dim light and persistent shadows.

Kyungsoo feels nervous, knowing what’s coming next.

“Should I —“ he trails off.

It takes Jongin about five seconds to process what he means. He doesn’t open his eyes, just smiles a little smile and slowly lifts up his hand, then dives it in the water again. Kyungsoo can feel his entire body flinch when he grabs his own . He can hear his breath hitch in the silence of the room. Splash splash splash, the water in the bathtub is swashing in tempo with the movements of his hand. Hitch hitch hitch, someone’s fractured breathing is echoing raggedly in his head. Kyungsoo thinks it might be his own.

He slides his palms down Jongin’s thighs while the boy is practically pumping his . Much unlike his torso, his legs are all firm well-defined muscles. The boy did say he was a dancer, after all. Is a dancer. Still is.

Kyungsoo could tell he still was. He could feel it all there, in the shape of his calves, by the firmness of his adductor muscles. All the magic of dancing, the heavy training, the boy’s love for movement and the art of performance. All of this cut into his beautifully shaped thews. His passion was written all over his body and he couldn’t hide if even if he wanted to. It wasn’t something you can just lose.

Kyungsoo wondered if anyone could tell his passion for singing just by looking at him. Then again, he wasn’t so sure he was passionate about singing. Not anymore.

The older man found himself following the younger hand’s movements. The water which had already started cooling was swaying around the boy’s body in measured, even splashes.

He thinks he can make out his reflection, staring back at him from the rose colored water but there’s no way he can possibly do that. The light is too faint. He’s probably seeing things.

His reflection is staring at him scoldingly. His eyes look like dark vacant pits.

Jongin stops moving his hand but Kyungsoo doesn’t want to stop. He wants to keep sliding his hand up and down the boy’s smooth skin, spreading foam all over it and then gently rinsing it with water he scoops in his handful. But he stops and just sits there for a while, awkwardly holding Jongin’s leg in his hand.

“Should we—“

Yes, yes, we absolutely should, Kyungsoo is thinking frantically. No, no, we really shouldn’t, he’s screaming in his mind. But he just smiles and nods anyway, then carefully, as if it might break, lays down Jongin’s leg and helps him up, trying not to stare at his semi-hard member. Getting to the shower cubicle turns out to be a difficult task because Jongin’s skin is so wet and slippery and they almost fall on the tiles a few times but somehow they manage getting to the shower in one piece. Jongin stands up in the cubicle on his own, his balance seems to have improved after the relaxing bath. Kyungsoo doesn’t even know if he’s needed anymore but Jongin looks over his shoulder ( shoulder) and there’s something pleading about his eyes, something that’s afraid to ask for help. Kyungsoo doesn’t need to be asked twice and gets in the shower just like he is, shirt and pants and everything.

In the white noise of running water, he helps Jongin put soap on his slumped down back and on his bare . It feels just as firm and fit as his legs and Kyungsoo feels flustered when he kneels down to run his hands over it and down the back of his legs. To do a better job of applying the soap, of course. Jongin’s skin glows soft and wet in the dim lighting. Even now Kyungsoo can tell this is not a healthy glow.

There’s a second thought in Kyungsoo’s mind, something about how he’s not supposed to be touching Jongin and bad decisions and gotta-get-out-of-here, and these thoughts were probably similar to the ones people think when they meet a siren luring them to their deaths or the Gorgon Medusa herself, but Kyungsoo pushes them to the back of his mind like some kind of useless garbage.

They finish the rest of the shower in silence. Only the water keeps running and Kyungsoo’s heart keeps thumping louder than his thoughts. Thump thump thump.

“So you’re a singer?” Jongin smiles curiously, cuddled up in Taemin’s “Guns n’ roses” t-shirt and grey sweatpants. “I want to hear you sing.”

Kyungsoo, also dressed in some Taemin’s shirt and sweatpants, smiles back, only it comes out more nervous than curious. It’s weird because he always loved performing for someone. Well, maybe not “loved”, but he never had any of this stage fright rookies usually complain from. He always felt like he belongs in the spotlight.

And now, on this most miserable and untidy stage of all the stages he’s ever been on, he’s sweating like a pig and his hands are shaking. His voice seems to be stuck somewhere deep down his throat.

“Why should I sing for you when I still haven’t seen you dance? You seem to be more passionate about your dancing than I am about my job.” Kyungsoo feels petty but takes some comfort in the thought that it’s his anxiety talking. His new found anxiety.

But Jongin, sick as he is, won’t have any of this bull.

“I’ll dance for you if you sing for me, hyung.” He looks more than eager to keep his word, already getting up from the armchair where he’s resting. “I’ll dance while you’re singing. I’ll dance to your song.”

“Don’t be silly, you don’t even know my song—“

“I don’t, but my body knows yours voice.”

And there’s nothing Kyungsoo can say to that. So he starts fumbling through the pockets of his old jacket and his bag, looking for the CD with the backing track for “Baby don’t cry” he didn’t forget to pick up from the radio station in Seoul. Kyungsoo was a man of habit and punctuality, after all. He would never leave his work behind. A true professional.

Finding the music player also takes some time but then everything is set and ready and Kyungsoo finds himself itching to bite his nails like he did in elementary school. It was also the reason his mother taught him to cut them so deep.

“You sure you can do this? I can—“

“I’m alright.” Jongin flashes him a smile and for an instance he doesn’t look like he’s dying at all, he looks like he’s going to live forever. Blissfully young.

“Fine.” Kyungsoo presses the play button and moves to a place where he can take a proper look at Jongin dancing. The boy looks shy now, maybe even anxious.

But then he smirks and it’s an unusual kind of grin, something Kyungsoo didn’t expect from Jongin.

“I told you I want you to meet Kai anyway.”

Kyungsoo wonders briefly what the is he talking about but then the music starts playing and Jongin starts dancing.

A/N:

So i've got part two of this written down already and i guess i'm going to post it in a few days if anyone actually bothers to read this fiction?(especially in this crazy time for the EXO fandom)

Also, and am i the only one who thinks Jongin and Junmyeon look sort of alike? I used to constantly mistake them when i was still relatively new to EXO and called Suho "The second Kai" lmao, especially with the blond hair. 

Oh, and something else - the part where it's written how Kyungsoo puts people into color coded folders for his own convenience, i don't mean he divides them by their skin color or something, it's more about the color of ...their personality or soul or something. Idk. 

Enjoy and let me know what you think!