An old music box still in the corner of the room, playing a cryptic melody. Nayoung quickly cleans the sweat that poured down her neck, and forehead. Her insides are twisting, and she can't help but wanting to puke, a horrid smell on the air. She actually has to hold the urge to gag, and clenches tightly her jaw to prevent it to happen.

A crack was heard, and Nayoung quickly put a defensive position. Her weapon, an axe, an bloodied axe weight a tons, so heavy that her arms want to give out. But she holds back that urge too.

Roa came back, with a tense nod.

"I believe this place is safe" She said in a whisper. Nayoung nodded back, and another crack was heard. The both wiped their heads towards Jieqiong's smiling face, but the smile seemed strange, not quite happy, but foreign, as everything the girl actually is. The tall girl glares at her companion, exhausted, wondering how the Chinese could be so careless.

Roa didn't seem to mind, nor care, quickly collapsing onto the ground of the abandoned house.

"Can we actually take a break?" She asked, wanting to sleep for a few hours, they have been wandering for days, without a decent break, and they were exhausted beyond human condition. "I actually marked the perimeter, and it's mostly deserted, not trace of humans nor monsters"

Nayoung yawned, and sighed. Actually worried, they left the safety of the city for some unknown reason. To this day, they still don't know what are they searching for, only a glimpse of something that lurks on the back of their minds, a strange pull towards the center of the nowhere. The tall girl lived a calm life in one of the last cities of Korea, a city that was conformed by mostly young people, by sane and healthy people, the people that survived the apocalypse that attacked the world. But Nayoung doesn't like to think about it, because it only brings heartache and pain. Seeing how devastated the world actually is, makes her want to curl into a ball and cry.

The sunlight burns, and the winters are so cold that it's like the ice covers the earth and eat the green.

"What are we doing?" She said to no one in particular, mostly talking to herself. Roa sighed, but didn't respond to it. Only Jieqiong seemed oddly cheerful, they encountered the girl on the second day of the expedition. But every single thing about the whole expedition seemed shady and strange.

Apparently, Jieqiong worked as a cop on the city where Nayoung lived, but the girl never, not once saw the Chinese on the streets, even if Roa seemed to think that they did, Nayoung can't recall an incident. It's like some parts of her memory were wiped, most of time she feels blank and lost.

Another crack.

"Do you want to get us killed?" She snapped at the girl, who held up her hands in surrender.

"I am sorry" Jieqiong said with a pitiful expression on her pale face.

Nayoung can feel it, another pull. Her heart twist but it isn't a nice feeling, more like a bad feeling, an eerie one. As if her heart wants to crawl towards safety, but nothing is safe anymore, not even her, not even her sanity.

"Are you even a cop?" Roa asks, with a suspicious tone. And Jieqiong only shrugs, with another smile.

"Of course" she says, and walks towards the window of the abandoned house they are in, her gaze seems faraway, and her hands ball into fists briefly. Then relaxes. "I worked hard to protect the city from the crime" she made a poor parody of the heroes that they often watch on tv.

"That's nice, I guess" Roa said, awkwardly. "Why was the reason you were on the expedition, though? If you liked to be a cop so much, this could be easily mistaken for suicide, you know?"

Jieqiong stared at Roa, twitching, almost as if she was holding back a chuckle.

"Suicide? This? If you think like that, then why did you accept to come here? Outside of the safety of the city, the famous wall and armored city of Busan!"

Roa stared at her hands for a long time, carefully choosing her words. Words that contain a truth that sometimes makes her feel cold.

"Maybe I do want to die"

Jieqiong put a solemn face, her sparkly eyes darkened, and her cheerful demeanor lost its shine. She looked like an almost different persona, no longer Jieqiong. And didn't speak after that.

Nayoung sat down on the corner of the room, and announced to her "team" that she was going to shut some eye, for a couple of minutes. Neither answered.

What she expected to be just a few minutes, became a couple of hours, but no one can blame her, she was exhausted, as her companions, in fact Roa was as dead as a log, and Jieqiong was curled up like a cat on the other side of the room, shivering madly. Nayoung woke with a start, her dreams plagued by memories, some contained the horror that she lived before joining the city, and others that were more like actual nightmares than dreams. She didn't have happy dreams, only the horrifying ones, the ones that make her wake up soaked in sweat.

She was feeling cold, and wanted to puke again. The cold hard floor make her back and ache, and the eerie feeling didn't go away with the nap. It was as if a person was breathing down her neck, as if she was being watched, but she knows it's only the paranoia, bothering her.

"Roa doesn't believe me, does she?" Jieqiong said, her eyes open and fixed on the ceiling, her hands were clenched again, but her demeanor didn't show any tenseness, only tiredness.

"To be fair, me neither" Nayoung explained, her back hurting, so she tried to stretch. "I didn't see you, never"

Jieqiong sighed, and mustered up another smile.

"But I was, and the city is a pr