⚛️

Rumour has it that Kang Younghyun is a bad boy.

Rumour has it that he owns several illegal weapons, including guns, knives and bombs.

Rumour has it that he has taken innocent lives.

He’s a murderer. A threat. A ticking bomb. A merciless monster. An unstoppable disease. A criminal who has escaped from prison after the virus. And he happens to live next door.

The first time I heard the news, I merely shrugged it off. It’s not like we didn’t have criminals in the neighbourhood, bad guys were everywhere. I wasn’t innocent either. Since the fatal virus spread through the world, everyone was trying to survive one way or another. Everyone tried to stay away from infected people and in case of emergency, it could mean that we had to get rid of them ourselves. Although the virus was still a mystery to even the best scientists in the world, no one wanted to risk their lives. Especially since there wasn’t any cure for the time being. One thing was for sure; even one touch could kill anyone.

Everything changed 4 months ago. The news of the first infected people who were found dead immediately changed our average, boring lives and our mind-set, too. Neighbours who used to be our friends turned into enemies. Teachers whom we had been seeing every day for years had disappeared. We didn’t even attend school anymore. In fact, schools didn’t even function as they should. Only hospitals could function properly. Even the remaining grocery shops were robbed or destroyed. Our daily goal wasn’t to survive the boring Physics classes and avoid failing a test but it was surviving a day without a fight, without getting infected and without starving to death.

For my family, everything changed 3 months ago when our parents caught the virus. Before we could even realise what it was going to mean for me and my sister, they wrote us a letter and killed themselves. I was left with my 15-year-old little sister who were just as terrified as I was. My mom asked me to take care of her as much as possible but how could I do that when I was only 23 years old and the whole world was going crazy around us? I had no choice but to do the opposite of what I had been learning for years; be kind, be gentle and don’t be greedy. People will pay you back for your kindness. Oh yes. Definitely not in a world like ours.

I have killed people. People who were threatening my little sister or me. People who were infected and wanted to use our house as a shelter. People who wanted to steal food from our basement. I managed to secure the house since our parents were wealthy and we had a fancy security system with the latest technological devices but people were trying to find a hole in the system. I couldn’t blame them though. I would do the same if I were them. However, they couldn’t blame me either. I was trying to survive, if not for myself, then for my sister.

So when Kang Younghyun appeared at the porch of our house, I had no intention of letting him in. Not until he managed to convince me otherwise.

“Look, I know you don’t trust me. However, we live very dangerous days and I need to find allies. I moved in with my brother – Dowoon − because we are the only ones who weren’t infected at the orphanage. We have weapons, that’s true, but we are starting to run out of food. So I thought we could share what we have and work out the rest,” he confessed from the other side of the door, not even knowing if I was still listening to him or preparing my g