The sky, streaked slick rainbow in angry neon lights, shuddered in its mechanically-greased heat. Colourful language painted the Cimmerian nights and silence was only a lack of sound in one’s mind, artificially constructed using noise-cancelling mechanisms and heavily padded rooms.

There was no such thing as silence in an industrialised age.

Jaejoong Kim, a man of twenty-three, shared space with a family of nine sisters in an overpopulated city, nieces and nephews underfoot and husbands home only a handful of hours a day. A tenement that should have been ripped down and replaced by sterile condos with the turn of the last century, sat like an anaemic cat - too old to fight, but stubborn enough to hiss.

Jaejoong liked its crotchety ways. He whispered his secrets to it, and it groaned and creaked its replies in return. The walls would curve in protectively when the world became overwhelming, too much for a single man barely out of adolescence. In return, he would fix leaks, patch up holes and keep his space tidy. The shabby building was not at the heart-throbbing centre of civilisation, but near enough for him to feel the deep pulsating beats of its overworked arteries as they churned.

He would fall asleep to the chaos of Seoul at first morning’s light and wake once the sun finally reached its zenith. The middle-most sister would bang her hip against the crooked hall table as she fussed with her children’s lunches - always packed early but forgotten in the morning rush - and curse a blue streak to add her own flavour to the clambering of the world outside.

Workers paving new roads, sanitation employees collecting as much refuse off the streets as the people of Seoul’s suburbs could produce. Vendor-bots promoting new products, business men clambering into taxis, school students chattering noisily while the elderly strolled amiably beside them.

And Jaejoong was at the fringe minding his own and playing his part to fit into a decade where people could care less for how you were, but how much you owned and what you wore. And Jaejoong had nothing, no control over what he looked like, what he ate or where he spent his dwindling paychecks.

Jaejoong's days were spent in varying masks of indifference.

Every day began by ignoring the overpowering smell of body odour and piss coming off the trams on the way into the city proper. The same ex-militant he shared his lunches with would nod in his direction, sat at a street corner with a paper-wrapped bottle between his knees and a sign above him reading 'May God Save Us All'.

Extra paperwork would greet him first thing, delegated from co-workers who outranked him and sneered down their noses at those who came to work in order to get work done. Jaejoong brushed his teeth with chemically-altered toothpaste to wash out the taste of burnt coffee in the men's room, locking the door to avoid more criticism and dabbed at a speckle of foam on his shirt collar.

Lunch breaks melted into unpaid overtime until his stomach begged for mercy and the end of a workday came like a morphine shot to a body overcome by withdrawal. Evenings were flirtatious grins and bashful smiles from preppy baristas that lead nowhere and a bounced check from Human Services for overdue payments. No lunch for another week.

Then came chaotically spiced dinners with eighteen family members crammed into a room sized for twelve. A bid goodnight and a trudge up a cramped stairwell building a nest of cigarette butts on each level.

An empty bed would greet him like a lover's embrace, muscles unwinding in divine repose. Cat's eyes blinked Mozart off their eyelashes in shadowed corners and Modern Rock back down their ducts as he fell under the spell of a suburban Seoul night.

Barely ten words were spoken all throughout beyond the formal greetings and mealtime enquiries to how his day was.

Jaejoong Kim, surrounded by 204 million people, knew he was destined to be alone.

Then, one day, he woke up to silence.

Not a peep came from his nieces and nephews clambering for their parents' attention, or a pipe from workers taking their daily rounds. The air smelled damp, empty almost, like an abandoned room left to disuse and tasted not of oil and spice, but of freshly cut grass and mouldering wood.

His body ached as if waking from a deep slumber after a week of insomniac nights. Long strands of hair fell past his shoulders, nose twitching with the sensation of stirred dust as he pushed blankets off himself and stood.

Then nearly toppled over, like a foal learning how to stand for the first time. His limbs were shaking with the effort of being upright, too thin by half. He could see bone shifting beneath his skin, translucent from sun deprivation and hunger.

Jaejoong remembered this from the early days of his youth when food could barely fill a baby's mouth. He wondered if this was a dreamscape and why his mind would conjure it now. Belated torture for past misdeeds? Forgetting to water the plants? Missing lunch and dinner the day before?

A pinch to his side and a bruise later disabused him of the assumption. A look in the bathroom mirror - after the belated realisation of his more human needs when seeing the toilet - told a more confusing story. His hair had grown out if its conservative buzz, shrouding his face in billowing curls of black and falling down his back to tickle his shoulder-blades.

Sunken cheeks and a prominent rib-cage, hip-bones jutting discomfitingly along the band of his slowly slipping pants. He looked like a famine survivor. Or an extra in a zombie movie. A zombie on a grass-and-liver diet. At the reminder of food, his stomach growled in discontent from having it filled with tap-water alone.

Whatever had caused him to lose weight and grow two feet of hair, had the water spluttering with pipe rust and the room covered in a thin layer of dust, would need to be benched for a later date. Food was next on the agenda.

The tenement creaked its hello, sunlight-warmed walls shifting and accommodating the return of an acquaintance after a long absence. Jaejoong patted a door frame absentmindedly, a mental thank-you for supporting his weight when he loses his footing.

Sprouts of green seemed to have cropped up between the cracks in the wooden panels, along the window frames, using the staircase banners as a trellis of verdancy. Sugar-sweet scents filled the air the further down he went, an assemblage of cape jasmines, shocking whites, blues and golds intertwined with the bannister and filling up what was previously a family room.

He tripped on an excitable poppy spread and knocked his hip against the hall table, key platter clanging to the ground. Stray marbles lodged under its edge roll off the side and into the new growth. Down here the floorboards were overrun by wild grass, marshy and gentle on sensitive soles.

“Anyone--”

Pause. A painful clearing of his throat, then, “Is anyone home?” Creaky-branched voice, unvarnished and beginning to rust.

Logically, he knew there would be no one to answer him. Not with the way the house looked, neglected and nurtured by nature to bring wilderness to the untended lands. An embrace of winter greens amidst springy juniper and loud pinks. Decrepit paisley wallpaper peeling off in strips, cat-scratched and yellowed and gnawed to the quick.

“Meal Request.”

Jaejoong jumped - then cursed a blue streak when his legs failed him yet again, dumping him on the floor in a tangle of limbs and decorative lace curtains tugged violently from their rods.

The robotic tone repeated, “Meal Request.”

Embarrassment, irritation, then hunger washed out the adrenaline and spiked blood pressure.

“Breakfast,” he said and the replicator complied. Oatmeal and berries and orange juice. Too much for a recovering stomach, too heavy, will probably come back up if pushed too hard, too fast, but for now, Jaejoong revelled in the sugar rush and the soothing sensation of a full stomach.

There he laid until morning dewdrops dried and the sun shone through the west-facing windows, burning the azure skies auburn in its sleep. Until the fires banked, turned periwinkle, then amethyst and guttered into navy gloom, shadowing heaven’s gardens into ghoulish chains and reaching arms.

Jaejoong goes to sleep knowing his first steps out the front door will lead him to a world where he truly was alone.

The day began bright and early with the screeching cries of predators catching their morning meals. The wind whistled through low-hanging trees, merrily twining with the leaves, dancing over deer hide and sending shivers along bare skin. Mischievous twinkles of hungry squirrels scurrying across sun-warmed roof tiles, scaly little things slipping through broken windows and feeding their young.

Yunho breathed in deeply, chest cavity filling with decomposed leaves, damp honeysuckle sweetness, and the underlying bitter smell of morning tea, leaves grown by hand for years in his own small nursery. Not so small in recent years. It had taken over most of the sprucely kept gardens, turning them wild with human neglect. Fairy circles and mushrooms perfect for thumb-sized people to take shelter in.

The earth was soft between his toes, under his nails, painting impish streaks under his nose and along the arch of a cheekbone. He had forgone the trowel for digging his palms into the soil, tugging out sturdy weeds, breaking down the dryer lumps and feeding the vegetable garden.

Organic, exhausting, and deliciously real.

Replicators had become more common than stoves and ovens in the passing century, a farewell to the age of bartering and trading for your meals and life’s necessities. Robots and machines were built to take care of isolated greenhouses, food processed and broken down to their molecular size and transported across the world to devices plugged into your home. Meals ready at the press of a button or a voiced request.

(‘Instantly!! More Than Before!’ In Yunho’s experience more was not always better.)

Yunho remembered his great grandmother’s stories of owning farms that were run by family hands, the help just as human as you, where they all shared in the morning work even before the sun peaked the eastern mountain caps and broke to feast at noon from their own produce.

Yunho used to help her in making meals out of overpriced potatoes, ripe tomatoes the colours of which stained your hands, leafy greens hid preciously in sunny alcoves away from prying eyes. Burning stubby fingers on too-hot pans, learning that food went bad if kept out at room temperature, if kept for longer than a week.

Plants potted, plots farmed and checked for pests of the destructive sort, Yunho hauled a pile of brushwood and returned home.

Medi greeted him at the door, rotating its head and orbiting Yunho to poke at scraped knees and thorn-pricked fingers. Motherly in its disgruntlement at the human hurting himself. Puppyish excitement at greeting its master. An infectious enthusiasm that made Yunho grin and shake his head wryly.

Or in-as-much emotion a faceless, oversized, overly-complex locomotive medical kit can possibly show.

The young gardener pushed the robot away while he washed, undressing at the door, unabashed at public . No one to flash and offend delicate sensibilities. Only himself, a medical robot, and his family house in the oldest historical town this side of the country. The rabbits didn’t seem to mind his lack of clothing, twitching their whiskers at him and nibbling at the pile of bitter lettuce leaves he’d thrown in their direction.

Finally, Yunho perched against a low supporting wall and lets Medi scan him and heal the not-so-fatal wounds. The bot buzzed against his side, a mechanical purr of self-satisfaction. Stew simmered on the stone stovetop, a banked fire in the hearth keeping the kettle warm, and a water tank gurgled further inside.

Later, he would go out to city hall, where the only functioning communication centre was to send out a distress signal. Take a walk through the town to check out old haunts, see if anything was disturbed, make sure the wild animals haven’t chewed through the electric cable again.

There will be no reply, just as there has not been a reply in all the times before. Not since the silent disappearances began twenty years ago. Not since the riots broke out and people began migrating to more secluded parts of the world. Not since hate-speeches fueled by fear of the unknown brought on political intervention and the World Council elected to bring in militant power to deal with civilian lives. Not since the news became static and humans stopped existing publically altogether.

Only Yunho to keep an empty village ready for cohabitation. To maintain and protect abandoned homes, pets and plants. Ex-police officer protecting an abandoned land.

He rotated his wrist, joints jamming against bits of grit and silt. Sighed. Brought out a cleaning kit and dislocated the hand for maintenance from the elbow down.

For now, all was silent, so he continued to run maintenance on his bionic limb and kept an eye over his small world.

Seoul, bustling with lights and music, the days and nights of which were one in the same. The city of constant life and rhythm and motion. Where unfriendly faces melt into the friendly, the neutral, the blindingly enthusiastic, the maddeningly elusive. Mechanical whirrs and disconcerting insults infusing the air with colour and overwhelming odours fight for dominance.

Seoul, the heart of technological advancements in the East and the soul of the entertainment industry East of the Pacific, continued to chug along without human interference.

Cleaning bots swept the streets at exact intervals, steadily swish-swishing away. Holographic posters lit up the walls in ghastly oranges and yellows and nauseating greens. People with rictus grins waved at Jaejoong from plasma screen storefronts as he hobbled along. The ATM machines beeped OUT OF SERVICE but the vending machines were fully stocked just waiting for their usefulness to be employed.

And Jaejoong stood at its centre terrified, lonely and alone.

He rushed through (and into) sliding doors, up rotating escalators, around sketchy alleyway bends. He slipped through the cracks of chain link fences and nearly tripped and fell to his doom from perilously high rooftops. Looked over grocery counters and in the gutters, across bridges and under.

Nothing.

Only pigeons taking over window perches, cats giving chase to mice in the basements, dogs howling in the distance and spiders building monoliths of webs in empty spaces. Trees where there shouldn’t be, flowers blooming through the cracks of a neglected metropolis and a canvas of colour on an otherwise sleekly chrome backdrop.

Nothing.

No-one.

Not a single soul in the entire city (and Jaejoong would know. He checked every little cranny with increasingly desperate fervour over the span of a month, praying to whomever, any deities, all of them, all at once, to give him even a clue as to what and where and why--)

He laid down under a toddler-sized slide in a park-turned-undomesticated forest and had a silent panic attack while the bees quietly buzzed around from tulip to tulip and the swans gracefully skimmed the surface of the ponds.

The wind cosseted him, ruffling hair and sending ticklish warmth under loose shirt collars. Woke him up from an impending case of the sniffles as the sky’s edges darkened and grumbled moodily. A storm was on the rise and ready to accost the last human on Earth.

Or the last in Seoul. It made no difference to Jaejoong. It felt as if he were the last survivor of an inexplicable tragedy. Kim Jaejoong, the orphan boy taken in by a family unable to afford to feed the mouths already under that roof. One tragedy to the next. He was possibly exaggerating. Maybe not.

When Jaejoong was young, he fancied himself Harry Potter; magically-suppressed, shoved into a cupboard under the stairs with cobwebs and dust bunnies for roommates. A boy who one day meets a life-saving giant, coming to whisk him away from uncaring relatives and endless Cinderella-tasks and too little food.

Instead, Jaejoong woke up to a chasm in his chest that yawned wider with every overpassed glance and more deeply cut against indifferent jagged walls. Some days he wished for the world to disappear and leave him be, hidden under too-thin blankets and walls inlaid with ice. For himself to disappear into thin air and have people wonder where the boy who lived under the cupboard had gone, the too-lean boy with dull, wide eyes and a voice that fizzled out halfway through a sentence.

‘Congratulations,’ he thought half-hysterically, ‘the world was over and you’re alone. Satisfying, isn’t it?’

He smacked his head on the underside of the slide, momentary stars flashing before his eyes. He whimpered pathetically into his arms and let his emotions bleed out until the flooded chasm drained, forging new leylines into the ravine, until the rivers settle, dark and cool and bottomless. Until his trembling limbs, slowly filling in with regular meals, stop and settle into a comprehensive numbness that trailed him home.

Tripped behind him while he packed his worldly belongings and food and water and supplements and a medikit into a bag. Skittered across cobblestone and through the whooshing doors of the train station. Sat beside him as Jaejoong watched Seoul Central Station grow smaller and further away.

Ghosted away long enough for him to curl into himself and will his heart to slow, his stomach to uncramp, his tears to dry, the world to pause and rewind and answer his unworded questions. Returned with sundown to quiet the screaming winds at bay while he slept.

The numbness was his friend as a child and the only reliable source of release from the very real, very physical pains. This was not the time to spill tears over a world that cared very little for him. This was a reprieve from the monotony of his previous life.

It was time for him to find the little boy inside him and take the first step towards an adventure of his own making. Not a make-believe magical world, but a modern world still functioning despite being overrun by vegetation and a distinct lack of people. A necessary journey to find out happened to the world while he’d fallen into a coma. Or find a way to wake up from this nightmare.

One step out the train and he was overrun by a stampede of dogs. Then attacked by a flock of geese and disturbed a hornet’s nest after climbing into their tree to get away from the dogs. Then proceeded to get ushered out of a restaurant by a robot maitre d’ for not wearing the correct attire.

For not wearing a dress shirt and pleated pants to dinner in an abandoned restaurant. Because it was still a five-star establishment in spite of there being no patrons to keep its business. Obviously.

What the .

If this was truly the apocalypse, Jaejoong was going to sue the zombie industry for raising fear in the hearts of the youth and making it seem like the end of the world was a barren wasteland of doom and death and decay. If he ever found someone to give him answers to what was actually happening.

He fleetingly wondered if there was an epidemic that caused people to flee their homes, killing everyone stubborn enough to stay. But then, where would he fit into the equation? Was he genetically superior? Had a stronger immune system than 99% of the human populations? Was he a possible alien sent to Earth after a tragic parental death protecting the galaxy and it was now his responsibility to repopulate the planet with the first person he meets due to some sort of genetic mutation--?

A bark sent him climbing the nearest bench and nearly throwing his bag at the source. It was a dog. Tiny, scrappy little thing really. A mutt, mottled in browns and creams with a spot of black between its eyes. It wagged its tail at him and yipped again, twirling in circles and attempting to hop onto the bench beside him.

“For ’s sake…”

The daffodils mocked him, swaying in the morning breeze. The trees continued to stand in their aged glory, looking down at them with the long-suffering of a parent who'd seen everything. Jaejoong wilted, mildly embarrassed, though in his defence his days have been getting madder as he travelled further away from Seoul.

The dog followed him the rest of the way back to the train station despite his best efforts to outrun, outwit and evade the small fluff ball. However many corners he cut, steps he climbed or doors he shut in the dog’s face, the thing somehow always found its way back to nipping at his heels and playfully jerking his shoelaces to tatters.

Jaejoong’s last-ditch attempt at getting rid of it ended up with him in a heap on the floor of a bullet train with the dog triumphantly laying down on his chest, doggy breath huffing into his face. It looked absolutely satisfied with itself and its chosen perch. Jaejoong shoved flyaway hair out of his face from where it’d fallen out of the ponytail he’d adopted. He hesitantly pat the dog, then more deliberately as it melted into his hand.

“Guess we’re travel buddies now, huh.” The dog whuffed, back leg skittering along his ribs. Jaejoong, plus straggler, fell asleep to the sound of crashing waves as the train took them further away from the familiar and into uncharted grounds.

The coach’s rocking lulled them both to sleep that night.

Routine was the steady thrumming heartbeat of life, kept the chaotic reality of existence at bay and emotions regulated and footsteps steady in a turbulent sea. Yunho enjoyed the stability of routine, the bad and good of it.

Waking to the pain of a ghost limb spasming, clenching sweat-soaked covers in alloy and flesh fists, before the sun rises. Buzzing off the hair atop his head, his cheeks, his chin then washing off the haze of sleep to start on the farming. Plants stretching out their thin stems and wide leaves towards his gentle fingers, the frenzied clucking of wild chicken dragging him to the next task and the one after that until all is done and he ended up dressed for another day of patrol.

It is as he checked the perimeter of the forest slowly encroaching on the tracks running the borders of the town that he noticed things a-miss. Guang-Ju Station was overrun with poison ivy and creeping phlox hemming in the entrance. The giant trees surrounding the entrance have collapsed in through the skylights, blocking the train’s exit and leaning heavily against the support pillars. The metal creaked under the excess weight and the glass clinked dangerously.

There was a path of tread purple blooms leading out of the blocked train towards the main building towards the bamboo forest. Whoever, or whatever, was in his town had not attempt to hide their tracks. Yunho shifted onto one knee. There were animal tracks following the boot scuffs on the tiles. Gouges larger than his hands widespread, cut deep into the earth outside.

The smell of decay grew stronger the closer he was to the forest. Sick, nauseatingly sweet and overwhelming. It sent a jolt of adrenaline shaking down his spine. There were intruders in his territory and they may not all be of the quadrupedal sort.

Medi beeped at him further ahead, circling a dark spot of earth that stretched along the stone wall, oil-slick and wet. Then the scent of blood hit him. He tightened his hand on the rifle strap digging into his chest and grimly thought, ‘Something came here to die.’

Yunho clicked his tongue at the ‘bot, striding forward with more caution than he’d needed in years.

“Time to go hunting, boy.”

The jarring stop of the train shoved Jaejoong out of his seat and sprawling in the middle of the aisle, Rag yipping and shaking his head from three seats ahead. There were bits of cotton from where he had chewed through a seat cushion hanging from his jaw.

Disoriented from both sleep and sleeping too little, it took him awhile to find purchase on the handles around him and realising why they’d stopped. A giant canopy of trees seemed to have collapsed on top of the first train carriage, lashing it in place to keep from automatically reversing onto a clear track. Thankfully the doors had an override code built in case of emergencies and popped open without further complications. Jaejoong snapped his fingers at his newly acquired travel buddy.

The dog had grown on him, like lichen to water-smoothed stone, keeping him warm during long nights of stargazing and keeping him distracted when his thoughts grew bleak and travel-weary. Straggler -Rag for short- enjoyed sniffing at, chewing on and urinating on everything. He loved dry meats and dead branches, chased rabbits and mice when they walked through the small towns they stopped at, but always tripped his way back to Jaejoong’s side, keeping the young man in his sights.

He’d grown from the palm-sized runt to one that reached Jaejoong’s knees and nipped at his fingers when he was distracted, saving him from walking right over a cliff when his nose was buried in a map or backpack or had his head in clouds. He was a mild animal, all things considered.

So when Rag started growling instead of following him out the door, Jaejoong knew something was wrong. The feeling intensified when he heard a subvocal growl amplified multiple times by the sonorous inside of the train depot, bouncing off tiled walls. He inched closer to the wall to try to close the doors when he saw them:

Six hulking beasts, frothing at the mouth, eyes frenzied and hungrily watching his movements for a twitch to betray him. They were slowly circling the carriage and blocking their way out. The middlemost one lurched towards Jaejoong when he took an unconscious step back, nearly stepping onto his own pet.

Apparently, the wolves were done waiting and leapt at him with their jaws gaping wide. Jaejoong nearly wet himself when the door jammed onto one of the animals’ heads, clipping its muzzle and sending it crashing out the door. Then the door on the other side of the carriage opened and Jaejoong cursed the automatic commands and rushed through the nearest door, somehow avoiding another wolf’s claws and accidentally clipping another with his backpack. Rag was fast on his heels, biting and tugging at his pants to hurry his human along.

They ran through the station, skidding across the linoleum and slamming stomach first into the safety guard rails before hopping over them and into the bamboo forest stretching beyond the perimeters of the town they’d been lucky enough to have stopped by. Lucky in comparison to being out in the wilderness at least.

Not that being chased by a pack of wolves in a modernised rural town was better than starving in a forest, but-- Yeah, no. Jaejoong would have prefered living with plants than hunger-mad beasts with fangs and claws that looked like they’d been sharpened on tree bark and rabbit bones.

They raced through the forest, climbing over a stone wall and into a small hunting hut at the end of the wavering path. Jaejoong slammed the door on Rag’s tail and slumped to the floor, feeling the door rattle behind him as the wolves pawed and scratched at it to get to the intruders inside. His heart was clambering for space in his trachea, his vision blurring around the edges and suddenly he could smell the sharp scent of iron filling up the small hut.

Rag whined and his fingers, glossy in the dim light. There was a wet patch on his trouser-leg and for a moment he thought he’d really wet himself. Then the pain registered in his upper thigh. The wolf hadn’t missed him on his way out the train.

“Oh.”

He thought he’d heard the sound of gunfire outside, but the lack of sleep and blood loss coupled to send him to a dreamless sleep. And the world went blessedly grey.

Snapshots and scents filtered in through his subconscious. Glimpses of broad shoulder and tanned neck, sharp eyes softened with concern, the smell of mulch and clean sweat. The warmth of a larger body and mechanical whirrs, the brightness of a pen-light searing into his eyes and a shuddering pain running up his leg and into his abdomen. Then, there was a passage of time, the press of a small body against his side, a wet nose nudging his fingers willing them to move.

Silence.

He came to with a juddering breath, panic clawing at his chest. Pressure released from his index finger when he moved to get off the bed, leaving a deep-seated welt in its place. He was momentarily mesmerised by the pale skin filling in rapidly with blood, turning a violent shade of red. A heart monitor beeped its protests somewhere in the room. Jaejoong’s back protested its movement after a long stasis, head sympathetic to the rest of his body, spinning with vertigo.

Jaejoong blinked at his surroundings - medical facility, not his own square room, no cracks in the ceiling panels or mold setting in the wood window frames, no children’s toys spread out like stuffed carnage - then blinked against the stars flashing in his eyes from a medical-bot’s light and a prick to his upper arm.

“Ow?” he muttered bewildered, rubbing at the already-plaster covered arm. It chirped at him happily, then proceeded to hover out the door and into a wall. Jaejoong looked down with the sudden realization that his leg wasn’t actually caught in a blanket but wrapped in a solid cast, flexible but heavy enough to make moving around less than comfortable without a crutch.

Jaejoong pushed himself out of bed, confused as to why he was in said bed to begin with, then proceeded to slip over the edge into a heap of bedsheets and Bambi limbs. His cast banged against the cabinet, the bedpost, and tangled unhelpfully in the sheets until all that showed was an incensed raven’s nest of hair.

During the chaos, a man had appeared to stand in the doorway the medical ‘bot disappeared out of. He cut an intimidating figure with his broad shoulders, above average height, hair shorn and clothing scuffed and speckled with flecks of dried blood or paint. Jaejoong was hoping it was paint, but knew that it wasn’t. The man seemed unsure whether to be amused or concerned, generous mouth fighting a battle against a wry grin.

He caught sight of the rifle and audio-memory filtered in. The sound of gunshots, animalistic whimpers, Rag barking at a closed door. Right. Wolf attack, leaving Seoul City, possibly post-apocalyptic road trip.

Jaejoong shuffled into a seated position on the floor. Intimidating or not, this was the first human being he’d met since he’d started his travels. There was no way he was letting his eyes off him. It wasn’t as if that was much of a chore, really. Despite his severe features, his edges were soft, kinder than anyone’s had any right to be in an apocalyptic nightmare. Especially one with rapid, man-eating beasts and transportation-attacking plants.

“Hello,” the man said in a surprisingly boyish voice. “How are you feeling?”

“Like I’ve been chased and mauled by a pack of wolves,” Jaejoong replied bluntly, voice cracking halfway.

The man grimaced. “That’s fair. Mind if I helped you back into bed?” He took a step inside the room, then another until he was crouching beside Jaejoong.

“Shouldn’t you at least tell me your name before trying to get me into bed?” Jaejoong flushed so hard his scalp tingled with pins and needles. The man raised an eyebrow, generous lips tugging into a small, amused smile. “I’m Jaejoong, and you are?”

“Yunho. Nice to meet a human face.” Ignoring the outreached arm, Yunho tugged his arms over a shoulder and lifted him in a bridal carry as if he’d weighed nothing. Jaejoong would feel indignant, but he knew he was on the thinner side and couldn’t argue that Yunho’s way was faster than what he’d attempted to do. Less dignity lost, though one would argue he had none left to lose.

Settled into bed with the returned medical ‘bot rotating around the room chasing Rag around in circles and Yunho in the chair beside him, he asked, “So what happened?” Yunho gave him a once-over, a worried look washing over him. Jaejoong fiddled with a loose thread in the sheets.

“You don’t remember the wolves?”

Jaejoong shook his head, “Not, um, not them. I meant,” making a vague, all-encompassing gesture that nearly maimed the man, “The whole ‘no-humans-left-on-Earth’ bit. What,” he cleared his throat, too loud in the quiet room. “What happened to everyone?”

And Yunho told him about everything he’d missed, voice tinged in scepticism at not knowing what had happened. The technological madness, the slow fall of humanity as it ate away the last of their resources. The fight of the world back against human pollutants, the migrations, the disappearances.

The change to solar powered bullet trains had come as a too-late attempt at green energy. Though the true reason money was spent on the project at all was to sustain the countries while the oil mills- run dry by the constant need for more -replenished themselves. Six months before the project was completed Indigenous Chieftains came to send a final warning to city dwellers that their attempts to restore balance were for nought. They warned of the spirits returning to take what was rightfully theirs from the children of Man after much negligence.

That was twenty years ago. Twenty years of Jaejoong being unaware of the world around him, somehow having slept through an apocalypse, slipping into a well-timed coma only to wake up when the world had decided it was as stable as it was going to get.

Jaejoong slumped back in bed, Rag’s head in his lap whuffing in content as he absentmindedly rubbed his ears. He was forty-three years old and as naive as he was when he was a child with a dream. Maybe he was a less super version of Captain America. Less with the strength and more with the waking up in a different decade with everyone he knew dead.

“Oh.”

“What now?”

“Now, we wait for you to fully recover. After,” Yunho said, looking out the window unseeing, “I find out who is starving wild animals and unleashing them onto the survivors.”

Jaejoong froze beside him. “You mean, the animal attacks were premeditated? Why…”

Yunho shook his head and turned back to the young man. “They shouldn’t have been starving at all. The forests have been replenishing themselves, animals hunted into hiding are returning to their natural habitats and reproducing in large numbers to populate the lands. There should be nothing stopping them from hunting freely. Animals aren’t humans, they don’t hunt for the sake of hunting- at least, not all of them.

“Someone must have kept the beasts in captivity then turned them out on unsuspecting travellers. They were collared. Probably had some a set-up to detect intruders and direct the pack in their direction. Free meal and no human interference.”

Jaejoong shivered and curled into himself, rubbing the skin above the cast. Yunho caught himself wanting to tuck a strand of the man’s dark hair behind his ear. He stopped himself from leaning in and breathed slowly through his nose before gathering his rifle and whistling for Medi to follow.

“This is all speculation,’ he continued apologetically. “Get some sleep, Jaejoong.”

That night Yunho dreamt of long black hair framing a pale face, red-bitten lips open on a silent moan. A lithe body above him squirming in his lap, hot and wanting and beautiful. He dreamt of his fingers shaping wide shoulder down narrow hips, slipping lower and lower still until all he could taste were Jaejoong’s wet gasps against his mouth. They were enveloped in heat, hands caressing and petting everywhere, lingering at his groin, shifting down his spine, filling him to overflowing.

He woke up to soiled pants and wet sheets wrapped around his torso. Yunho wiped a shaking hand over his face, hiding his eyes under an elbow.

“.” Precisely.

Jaejoong’s arrival had brought many changes to his sleepy town. What had once been a stable schedule of gardening, farming, animal care and city searchings had been diverted to spending more time with someone who could reply in more than automated beeps and flashing lights and had more needs than bi-weekly maintenance. The serenity of the town never really broke, though.

Late mornings first spent assisting Jaejoong in learning how to walk around with crutches before they’d found a functioning wheelchair were later relegated to teaching him how to tell weeds from a budding tomato plant. There were cooking lessons set in place and hours of time spent in the library looking over news clipping dictating life from when Jaejoong fell into a coma up to recent years.

The young man was reticent, spending more of his time with his dog and reading up in the loft or library, unobtrusive in his questions and needs. Yunho felt his heart melt a bit at his hesitancy as if questions were intolerable, expecting to be met with scorn over not knowing a history that spoke for itself in the lack of sentient life and scorch marks flaring up the sides of buildings now hidden beneath a lush veneer of greenery. And so, Yunho took care to answer him patiently and with as much honesty as he could prescribe his words.

The first few days were awkward, made more humiliating for the leaner man due to his dependency on a stranger for basic human functions. There was a moment of near miss where Jaejoong miscalculated and unbalanced into Yunho’s waiting arms. That would not have been an issue had the man not been . And wet. So very wet and plastered from chest to thigh to Yunho.

That set the tone for the whole of their interaction: Jaejoong’s clumsiness counteracting Yunho’s steadfastness and causing them to fall into heaps in all manners of suggestive poses. Yunho would have thought them deliberate had Jaejoong not flushed an alarming shade of red every time.

His libido enjoyed them as much as his bruised body despised them.

Having a dog living underfoot did not help matters. Especially when it spent most of its time growling at any sudden movements Yunho made. At least at first. Bribing Rag with bits of rabbit meat helped brush out ruffled hairs in the long run and now spent the time he wasn’t circling his owner tailing Yunho on his scavenger hunts around town, making sure the borders were untouched after the wolves.

Then there was new the vegetation cropping up in places they shouldn’t be able to grow: on hospital sickbeds, under kitchen tiles, dangling from light fixtures along the walls and ceilings in the library. The only common denominator was Jaejoong consistently being in that space and Yunho wasn’t sure whether to believe it a coincidence and move on or wonder about Jaejoong’s arrival and the timely appearance and disappearance of wild beasts.

Medi at least was having a blast shooting them up with hypos and regenerating skinned knees and elbows.

The issue with being attracted to Jaejoong was not a matter of requited feelings, but the issue of Yunho’s conscience allowing him to take advantage of an injured person under his protection. Yunho would not dishonour his vow to protect the unable. There was also the matter of figuring out who collared a pack of wolves and sent them to attack travellers. And to figure out why they hadn’t sent them out earlier to attack Yunho if they were attempting to finish off all the humans. This conviction did not help his nightly wet visits but centred his thoughts on something other than his libido.

Apparently, no one sent Jaejoong the memo as he found himself nose to nose with the man. The very much masculine man straddling his thighs, arms caught in the mess of his shirt over his head. The cast, the culprit in the crime, caught in the wheel of the wheelchair was twisted at an uncomfortable angle forcing Jaejoong to turn into Yunho’s body to relieve the pressure.

By causing more pressure between Yunho legs. Deliciously hot friction that really should have no place in such a situation.

“Um,” Jaejoong breathlessly whispered, flushed pink up to his ears. Lower lip bitten-red caught in an unsure pout under distressed dark eyes. His chest flared with quickened breath when Yunho steadies him with an arm wrapping around his lower back. Hitches even as he pressed closer to the warmth of his core. He could feel the man quivering in gooseflesh skin where his hands brushed Jaejoong’s torso. Pale despite the sun and bruised in purpling green blooms along his ribs, racing down his arms, Yunho’s mind offering up alternative ways to adding to the collection.

“Okay?” Yunho asked, equally hushed and morbidly away of every part of their bodies touching. Of how easy it would be to push Jaejoong down, down, down into the bed and press bruises into his stomach, his collarbones, his neck, taste the tang of skin under his jaw, inside his mouth. To take and take and take, giving back only to take more--

Jaejoong nodded then winced as his cast was jostled in its cradle.

“.” Yunho untangled them from the wheelchair in record time, deposited the man in bed and beat a hasty retreat, unaware of Jaejoong’s lingering look of disappointment. Bluebells had grown where the men were tangled. Yunho nearly tripped over them and into Jaejoong’s lap the next morning.

Maybe they did need to address the floral issue sooner rather than later…

It was only a matter of time, Jaejoong thought. Like a pressurized pot, everything would soon froth over and leave a mess.

The days were growing longer and, to Jaejoong’s city boy sensitivity and mounting horror, more humid and heat heavy. The shrubbery cropping up at his feet and dogging his steps everywhere he went, curling over his toes if he stood long enough, towering overhead to shade him from unwelcome beams of sunlight escaping their nimbus prison was suffocating, alarming and disconcertingly comforting in equal measures.

The air was heavy with summer heat, making his shirt stick in uncomfortable places and giving him rashes where it rubbed the skin raw. The scent of pine wafted from the forest breaking through the putrid scent of decaying underbrush. Jaejoong’s boots -switching out the cast for a flexible boot only hours ago- slid through the mulch, nearly gouging an eye out by a low hanging branch in the process. Surviving the disappearance of 99% of South Korea’s population was a walk in the park, but physically walking in a park seemed to be the more strenuous of the two.

He needed to get away from Yunho’s presence for a while.

Even when the man was unobtrusive he took up most of Jaejoong’s concentration and obliviated it into incoherency. Of course, Yunho was stalwart in his self-given position of warrior and protector, either oblivious or turning a blind eye to Jaejoong’s embarrassingly obvious attraction to him. And this drove Jaejoong up the wall with frustration.

The plants seemed to reflect that agitation, growing thicker and thornier the harsher his steps grew, clumsier and clumsier the further he stumbled into the forest.

Self-preservation, while keeping him alive in a modern world, did not extend to life out in the wilderness without the assistance of a mechanical device warning him away from construction sites or potholes. The wilderness did not have picket fences dividing properties and territories into cleanly defined places Jaejoong ‘should never trespass in’.

His stomach grumbled along with him as he clutched at it queasily and decided this was as good time as any to turn back around. All he had thought to grab was a compass, lost to the underbrush by now, and a flare gun pressed into his hand by Yunho the first week he left bedrest in case of emergencies.

Of course, Jaejoong being Jaejoong, and him having the luck of a broken mirror, first realised that he was, one) hopelessly turned around, and, two) the growling did not stop and was coming from the cave mouth up ahead.

A pair of eyes were glaring at him from a shadowed outcrop and Jaejoong’s last thought before he brought the hand holding a flare gun shakily skyward was, ‘Yunho, I think I found your mad scientist.’ Then all he could feel was electrifying agony and his vision whited out. His scream cut off abruptly as his head hit a rock going down.

Yunho had been picking strawberries, unseasonal crops, and trying to not think about strawberry red lips and an identically warm blush colouring sharp cheekbones and elegant neck, the gentle curve of his a--

Rag’s yips and howls pull him out of inappropriate daydreams, catching sight of the tail end of a flare going up. Yunho saw red and urgency flooded his legs as his body automatically took over, dropping the basket of picked fruit, grabbing for his shirt and shotgun.

“Lead the way, boy.”

And off they went into a ragged circle around the forest, hopping over a low ledge and ducking under heavy branches, catching the flash of a cracked compass face in the dim sunlight filtering through the canopy. Yunho felt his lungs contract in fear of the unknown, a long-forgotten feeling of protectiveness and blind devotion to a man whose history was a blank slate and who he had known for less than two weeks.

It was as though he were Alice and Rag were the White Rabbit, racing past time and hopping into a hole, a foolish dash towards a world mad with discrepancies and colourful characters. His mind jumped from one conclusion to next: Jaejoong, fallen into a pit too deep to climb out of; Jaejoong, bitten by a venomous snake, dying alone; Jaejoong attacked by another pack of wolves; Jaejoong, caught by poachers encroaching on his territory--

The grove suddenly opened out to a clearing taken up mostly by a giant boulder, slanted widely towards the sea. Rag was growling at the mouth of a cave, circling around to Yunho then back to the cave where they could hear muffled whimpers. Cautiously, they loped steadily towards the entrance. Yunho froze, dumbstruck.

Vines were slowly wrapping around a wild-eyed man, moving sinuously around his limbs and trapping them away from his sides and any pockets that may have hidden defensive objects. Jaejoong sat on the other side of the cave bleeding sluggishly from a head wound

“What the fu--?”

Jaejoong chose that moment to groan just as the stranger’s cocoon was finalised with the man fully entrapped. The steady whimpering cut off abruptly. Yunho did not want to think about that when he could overthink it later, once Jaejoong was safely tucked into a bed with Medi hovering over him with a hypo and an MRI.

“Jaejoong,” he kept his voice low and steady. “Stay calm and slowly, slowly, sit up. There is no need to panic, alright?”

“Why would I panic?” mumbled Jaejoong dazedly.

He tried to sit up, only to be stopped by the belt tied around his wrists and bolted to the makeshift table he was laid on. Yunho saw that it was superficial, possibly an injury sustained from the forest and not from the human or animal inside. Hopefully. Jaejoong tugged at his bindings, eyes slowly focussing on his surroundings.

“Oh.”

Rag yipped at his owner and his fingers. Yunho noticed he kept himself between Jaejoong and the cocoon. Careful not to make any sudden movements and keeping the rest small, Jaejoong pointed towards the far corners of the cave. “There’s a whole set-up back there, some sort of device running interference or something. The mad scientist we were looking for. This was the last of the pack, his collar is somewhere over there. ”

Yunho took a wary step to the side then further in when no traps sprung out at him. The wet moss overhead dripped threateningly at him, ferns rustling where they were wedged in the corners along the table’s legs. Apparently, everything seemed to sense that Jaejoong was different, had something others lacked, something wholly good, to be envied and treasured and sheltered.

He shook his head and looked at the computer banks, sifting through backlogs and experimental entries. He found his own distress signals and messages, personal logs of years, documented and highlighted. That bastard had him under his thumb the entire time he’d been trapped -willingly though it may have been- in the quaint village and Yunho was unaware of it all. The data was being transferred to an external location and try as he might, Yunho couldn’t figure out where that was or who would be on the other end of it.

“Damn it…”

“What.”

“The ’s been jamming all the distress signals in the area, including my own.”

“Oh. That’s bad.”

“Quite.” Yunho sighed.

For now, the immediate threat had been subdued, they were both alive and moving, and Yunho had a lead. Maybe it was time to leave his shelter and start his own journey. Gwangju wasn’t as safe as he’d thought it was and, despite his emotional attachment, there were places outside that might still have survivors out there, settlements trying to repopulate the world. There was hope for humanity still.

Yunho looked back at the young man fending off canine affection without the use of his arms, watching as a wreath of silver bells and pale carnations braided themselves into Jaejoong’s hair, his laugh understated and infectious. The rare display of joy stole his breath, an expanding bloom caught in his chest and fanning the flames just below.

“Home?” he stumbled out, belatedly reaching out to untie the man from the table. Cheeks ruddy from unexpected tickles, chest falling rapidly and the utter image of sinful lust. Yunho barely held back a pitiful whine of his own as he watched Jaejoong clamber ungainly from the top, falling over himself in a wild attempt at balancing on weak knees.

“Yes.”

Jaejoong caught his eye and quirked an inquisitive eyebrow, joy dulled by a pang of pain from the recent bout of clumsiness. He hauled the man into his arms, a mimicry of their first meeting, knocking their noses sharply against one another’s. Jaejoong’s eyes were impossibly wide and smelled sharply of the outdoors, the breath against his mouth sweet and warm and oh so tempting.

“Please.”

And on they went.

Jaejoong spent the rest of the week recuperating in bed once more, with the taste of Yunho’s breath fanning against his mouth and his pained groan echoing in his mind. Memories twisted in his dreams turning groans into more pleasurable moans, teasing breaths in his ear warming and churning his gut, turning his thoughts into a blubbering mess of sensations.

This was favourable to the nightmares plaguing him.

Men in lab coats standing over him wielding scalpels and holographic clipboards, marking notes as they cut him open. Watching as his injuries bloomed spider lilies, spindly and long, so red that the world around it lost its colour.

Wolves howling just outside his vision, racing through a dark forest wrapped in smothering fog so heavy one could barely see their hand in front of their face. He could feel teeth snapping at his heels and claws cruelly cutting through skin and sinew, bones snapping under the pressure of unyielding jaws.

Those Jaejoong woke up to in a sweat with Yunho at his door looking helplessly at him, arms extended as if beckoning him into their safety. But they never did reach him. Of course, they didn’t. Who would look at him and see a man, someone desirable, an equal? He was still the clueless boy he was before, shoved into a cupboard, overlooked and silenced. He withdrew into himself.

Yunho watched from the sidelines as Jaejoong spiralled in a downward slide, wringing his hands in worry, but wanting to give the man some space to cope with the traumas. If he were in Jaejoong’s place, he would have wanted some space to deal with waking up in the future, losing his family, his friends and everything familiar in one swoop. Being attacked by a wolf pack, then being held hostage by a madman who’d apparently been stalking them since Jaejoong’s arrival and noticed the flora’s invested interest in Jaejoong’s well-being and survival.

It was a lot to take in so Yunho gave him the space he needed.

And didn’t realise that Jaejoong looked back at him with hope every time he appeared at his doorway offering him physical comfort only to redact the offer after chickening out, dashing his hopes. Pushing him further away and back towards his mask of indifference. After all, they barely knew one another. Strangers pushed into extreme circumstances to lean on one another, one more dependent than the other.

The train tracks cleared on their own the more time Jaejoong spent idling away his hours there, staring at the gashes in the side of the carriage. He took long walks away from his usual haunts, watching the waves lap at the shore, wandering towards the sharp fall of cliffs and wondering what a dip into the salt water would feel like.

A world of silence, different from the one he’d survived, but familiar in its quiet. A sudden rush of wind in his ears and a heart that would plummet into his stomach then jump into his throat just before the free fall stops with a jarring splash. The water would probably be cold, sharp and stinging against bare skin, open eyes, burning his nostrils when in his shock he forgets to hold his breath.

He avoided the path Yunho took around town, returning to the train carriage and coaxing the vines to pull away from the tracks, loving whispers and warm promises that have them nuzzling his knees as they pull away to twine around nearby pillars instead. The trees that spent months leaning over the carriage protectively were more stubborn, fearing for the safety of the travelling young man whose touch seemed to give them life, whose breath showered them and whose gaze warmed their bark and softened their unbending cores.

“It’s okay,” he would tell them, large eyes dark, exhausted but warm. “I will stay for a while more.” He would lay his head against their trunks, long hair woven with lamb’s ear garlands and gladioli, and let his thoughts flow out of him and into the earth itself. The night would become day and the world would soften with morning dew and the shivers of a new and the birth of late blooms.

He watched as Yunho left him meals in the train innocuously placed in the seat he’d take to sleeping in on his way to Gwangju, lingering for daring moments before looping back into the city proper with Rag following with his tail between his legs. Jaejoong was too tired these days to deal with any of them. Too exhausted for words and a discussion that could turn physical. Humans were too complicated, creatures meant for socializing and interacting, something Jaejoong was never truly a part of, aware of it in his peripheral but otherwise disengaged from the ordeal.

So what if he dreamt of strong arms wrapping around him securely, a warm voice pleading for him to not jump, to pause and think of a future that wasn’t a bleak expanse of unquantifiable unknowns. So what if he dreamt of a gentle murmur that grew into a love song, soothing his hurts and brushing away scalding tears. So what if Yunho was all he had ever wanted, was so close he could touch if he took the first step--

Something clicked in place. The first step.

For his entire life, Jaejoong wanted to be the hero of his own story, the protagonist who took control of a bad situation and won over royalty, who conquered his fears and slain the hypothetical beast. Then why was he running away from this now? When he was faced with his biggest fear and knew, suddenly, jarringly, with the clarity of an icy slap to the face, that he was cared for and for no other reason than that he was Kim Jaejoong.

He was Kim Jaejoong and Kim Jaejoong was a man in love.

“Jung Yunho!” And Jaejoong knew he shouldn’t startle a man whose first reaction was to punch first, ask questions later, but his lungs burned from skip-jumping his way lumberingly to Yunho’s home. The man jumped down from where he was hanging upside-down on a fence cleaning out the gazebo and mending holes. He was sweating in the afternoon heat, the slope of bare shoulders glistened gold in the late sun, highlighted and godlike, but oh so fragile and human.

There must’ve been something lingering in his eyes that had Yunho crowding him in against the fence. A question remained unvoiced between them, lingering in the earthy scent of sweat and iron of warmed metal.

“Kiss me,” his voice quivered. And Yunho did.

He kissed like a force of nature; pressure releasing after a day suffocated in thunderous clouds, a popping of ears and the perforating scent of rainwater to wash away the stench of an overheated city. He kissed him and with it came clarity like a chill up the spine. With the sweep of his hands came a sandstorm’s heatwave chasing it down to his tailbone.

Jaejoong’s blood thrummed with the world’s lost sounds, a deep bass that made his whole body vibrate with the need to crawl out of his skin and into Yunho’s. Fingers turned claws dig into heavy set shoulders desperately when their gentle kisses turn biting, hard enough to leave lasting bruises to bloom down his neck. Heat swiftly flooded Jaejoong, a tingling in his scalp and a tightening in his lower abdomen, locking his knees in place.

Yunho pushed him none-too-gently against the wall, chains rattling with the sudden force, legs framing one another’s, pressing insistently forward until they end up rocking against one another in mimicry of what they could be doing inside. Jaejoong refused to stop long enough to think of more. For now, this was enough, the man holding him up, supporting his weight and pressing his forehead to his, was enough.

The world could keep silent for a moment longer.

Kim Jaejoong’s adventure was just beginning.

end.