The scariest thing when it came to the night, was the lack of silence. Jaejoong could clearly listen, as he walked down a paved road, the sound of steps more eager than his own, or the sighs that came from his sides even if there wasn’t a soul in his view camp.

The first thing the boy did after the shelter’s gate had been locked was running with all the physical strength his lungs could manage and all the impact his feet could control over the asphalt, not giving enough time for any zombie to assimilate his presence and the smell of new blood in the air.

Jaejoong thought about entering one of the hundred abandoned houses, but he remembered the times that the inmates of the laboratory would share stories about the Changed’s hiding places, inside the dark, dry and forgotten walls. From old houses, to the small or the greater establishments, tunnels and dozens of the vehicles left on the avenues and streets. They could be anywhere.

Resembling of Yunho’s story, seemed like a lot of people tried to escape from the infection by leaving the city even though the danger was indeed in the middle of everyone. The hundreds of cars and motorcycles left behind, sometimes in a row that made it difficult for him to cross, brought resemblance of his childhood and the rare times he could watch a busy city working.

The predator who ended it all was a tiny little thing, Jaejoong had never seen it himself. Mr. H had showed him once though, inside a white liquid in a syringe, with no form or appearance. How could this invisible creature be able to transform a massive population into monsters? That was one of the reasons why medicine did not fascinate but scared him instead.

He grew up learning how to fear the effect of what the eyes couldn’t see, the nose couldn’t smell and fingers couldn’t touch.

But these weren’t the only danger in the world.

Even humans, just like him, threatened his life by simply offering something they had yet to see. Not even the zombies killed their own species, and he knew it even when he didn’t know exactly what zombies were. Mr. S’ words repeated themselves in Jaejoong’s head, the man couldn’t be more right.

He had much more experiences with other humans than Jaejoong did, but why hadn’t the boy trusted him by heart? Even if it was strange that one of the doctors tried to give him a life lesson -seen that he wouldn’t ever need one, surely have been for a reason.

Jaejoong stopped in the middle of the way, surrounded by old buildings and detonated stores. He the flashlight he had brought and noticed the place seemed to be downtown, the houses were fewer but pieces of logos and printed glasses were shown here and there. The boy wondered, while he tried to recover from the long walk, if there was a forgotten water bottle in the middle of a destructed grocery store and if searching for it was worth the risk.

He planned through the way to search for food in the morning, that was the better way to avoid an unwanted meeting. If it happened to have a flock inside one of the stores, he would try to use his one-day practice to shoot them all in the head and maybe have the luck not to go missing in ammunition.

For how long Jaejoong could survive like this? He didn’t know.

His thoughts were interrupted by a powerful sound, that reminded him of an X Ray machine, approaching him from a fair distance with a scary velocity. He knew it wasn’t time to lose the focus, but the strange sound made his head draw a hundred representations of what it could mean and all resulted the he thought was in his body forgotten on the pavement, while the pain of turning into a zombie consumed him.

In a hurry for a shelter, Jaejoong started to run along the sidewalk searching for any opening for him to hide. The first store had dangerous pieces of glasses in the entrance, as if it had been broken right in the middle. All that he didn’t need was to leave a blood trace.

He illuminated the next entrance, that seemed the kind of darkness so pure that your eyes couldn’t get used to. A perfect hiding for zombies too, he guessed. His timing was lacking, and he felt more than saw the thing that produced that noise arriving closer and closer.

With the flashlight in one hand, Jaejoong caught his pistol with the other and pushed inside his pockets the amount of ammunition that it was able to stock, tossing to the ground his no longer suitable package. He stepped inside the endless shadows where the sky’s radiance no longer had passage, suddenly feeling comforted by it.

The light was never his ally.

But he was thankful for being able to see one or two meters in front of him with his flashlight even though he guessed this thread of light wouldn’t ever win over a sea of darkness.

Jaejoong was starting to tame his heartbeats when a moan exploded from his side. The boy stumbled on his feet but gained his balance quickly as he focused his light on the creature in front of him.

It was a long-gone woman.

Jaejoong swallowed dry to prevent any scream of mercy to leave his throat because he knew it was going to be useless. The countable hair locks on the zombie head was inhabited by bugs, that slid through her half-decomposed face. Not even the bones had survived.

Her dress was dirty and smelled like an organic trash, forgotten for days.

Probably years.

As if analyzing him, she… no. It, definitely it, stared at him as if the boy was an old friend she didn’t quite remember the name.

“Stay...away.” Jaejoong half asked, half demanded.

It wasn’t as if the creature would understand his orders, but it gave him some kind of control over the situation. His hand needed maybe two seconds to unblock and hold the gun comfortably again, and then one more to pull the trigger.

But he didn’t think he had that amount of time.

The zombie didn’t move but Jaejoong could listen another titling sound coming from the entrance. Were they in a flock?

His instincts told him to run, but the only way out seemed to be blocked by the things he wanted to avoid. His panicking brain was trying to develop a plan that would lead him safely out while in the duration of an eye blink dark blood splattered over his clothes and neck.

The zombie still stood for some seconds even after beheaded, before its body fell lifelessly onto the ground.

Jaejoong’s flashlight entirely focused its light on Yunho’s face, covered in blood and an irate mask. Yunho raised one finger to his mouth while the other four held a knife dripping dark and thick blood.

“What the hell.” Jaejoong could help but let escape from his mouth.

“You thought you could escape from me?” Yunho whispered slowly, his breath unease.

Yunho’s face was drenched in blood at the right side, his clothes were dirty and he clearly wasn’t wearing an appropriate outfit for the season. He must have been freezing. Jaejoong walked towards Yunho’s direction, extending his hand to analyze better the injury on his head.

The man’s hand easily reached Jaejoong’s first, and stole from him his flashlight, throwing it to the ground.

“We don’t have time,” he was still whispering, and Jaejoong’s no longer could discern what his expression looked like. “They are coming for us.”

“They?” Jaejoong asked, uncertain.

“Don’t use your gun until a flock approaches, it will buy us time.”

Jaejoong couldn’t use his indifference against Yunho’s seriousness, but he didn’t know until what extent was it safe to prevent gunshots and light from reaching the zombies when they were their greatest weaknesses.

“Why the aren’t you following me?”

Jaejoong haven’t even heard Yunho’s steps, but the rage in his tone was loud and clear. The boy started walking without any sure of where he was stepping until he had his feet out on the street and the sky’s radiancy showering them slightly.

The completely silence was again what made Jaejoong uncomfortable.

“What happened?” the boy asked, not trying to hide the horror in his tone when Yunho turned around to stare at him.

“Shouldn’t I ask you that?”

“Are you hurt?” Jaejoong ignored the other’s statement. “Who did that to you?”

“No one!” Yunho shout, finally holding the attention he wanted from Jaejoong. “I fell from my motorcycle when a flock showed up out of nowhere and I got ing scared that I would see you in the middle of them that I lost my damn balance. Do you know when I lose my ing balance? Never, Jaejoong, never.”

“Why is that my fault?!” Jaejoong shout back. “Why didn’t you kept you and your balance safe at the shelter instead of riding around?”

Yunho snorted, and looked up at the sky, trying to regain his composure.

“We don’t have time to discuss your stupidity.”

“Can’t you see that you’re the stupid one here?”

“We gotta go.” Yunho looked behind and around, calculating where they should head to first.

“What if I don’t want to go with you?”

“Can’t you stop acting stubborn, please?” the tiredness got some space in Yunho’s voice, and the fact that he was ceding actually worrying.

“Just if you do too.” Jaejoong dropped his own tone. “You have an ugly cut there, it doesn’t stop bleeding. Let’s take care of it.”

“B-bleeding?”

It was the first time Jaejoong heard Yunho stutter.

“Yes,” the boy sounded hesitant, not sure if Yunho wanted to hear that. “A lot.”

In one single second extension, Yunho seemed to assimilate the seriousness of the situation. With one free hand he ripped a piece of his sleeveless shirt and started rubbing it with rage around his face. Jaejoong helped him out, pulling off his hoodie and carefully pressing it against the other’s face, where the blood wouldn’t stop coming out.

“There was a contact with… zombie’s blood?” even hesitantly, the boy asked.

“No!” Yunho stepped behind, angry and irreducible “I killed them and not otherwise.”

“I’m just trying to help.” Jaejoong sighed, trying to convey his sincerity with a calm tone.

A shout startled both of them, and inside Jaejoong’s mind, its humanity and what it referred to made the boy start running in the direction of it. It was as if there was someone out there who needed him.

His feet hit the ground with lightness, his arms back and forth increased his speed to the point where Yunho’s voice seemed to be way too far to be heard.

The scream repeated, louder this time, that meant Jaejoong was almost reaching it, turning around one corner and jumping over the wreckage of an old construction.

He remembered when 0721’s voice broke through the corridors, when Jaejoong had just intertwined the little’s boy hand with Mr. K’s. He thought the boy was going to be safe, or at least safe enough to be able to open his eyes to life once again, but that horrific and painful scream cut Jaejoong’s ears until it reached his heart in a bleeding strike. He could watch in his memories his crazy desperation of crossing the corridor to reach the surgery room before its doors would close, it was almost impossible. He was way too far and the hand on the door way too strong.

His feet started touching and leaving the ground too fast, his lungs started to follow the rhythm and send vibrations to his heart, calming it down on the run. His body was completely wrong but it came to be completely right in the cruelest situation he had gone through so far. He wasn’t able to hold the door open, but he had reached it in time to still be able to take a look on the room by the gap. 0721’s horrified eyes stared at his while his body was unmoving in and trapped to the very same bed Jaejoong lied so many times on. The mouth was open in another scream, poor boy, just a baby. Baby weren’t supposed to scream so loud with so much fear.

“Can’t it be you to kill me instead?” was what Jaejoong wanted to say, but he suddenly imagined it coming from the boy’s mouth.

Wasn’t it better being killed by loving hands than soulless ones? Death was something they all were going to face sooner or later.

When Jaejoong arrived at the venue, where no houses surrounded the pavement he couldn’t see any child, and much less 0721. Instead, there was a row of dozens and maybe hundreds of zombies walking on a parade. The amount of bodies made it impossible to differentiate expressions and physical appearances when they all seemed a mass of undead hungry to keep that status.

There was a skeleton covered in pink skin that seemed to lead them, the head and eyes were absent and replaced by skin tissue, but the huge nostrils and mouth that emitted an ear-wrecking scream were enough to delimitate what was his face. There were no arms but the shaking legs would walk fragile ahead and the chest would contract with needy effort.

Jaejoong didn’t know what it was, but surely it wasn’t a friend.

The crowd moved slow and clumsy, just like the zombie Jaejoong have seen in behind the glass of the shelter’s secret room. Even though their pace wasn’t an advantage, the amount of them was surely dangerous enough.

The weight of the pistol in his hand, made Jaejoong realize that he couldn’t simply wait for them to win over him.

Can’t it be you to kill me instead?No one was really going to ask for that.

The first shot he gave hit no one, but instead yanked another scream from the creature now no more than 5 meters in distance. The second shot hit one of the front’s zombies neck, and it fell back. Jaejoong shot the third time in the same direction at the bullet went through two zombie’s bellies, making them fall.

A smile of victory started to raise on the boy’s face, just to be quickly stolen by the audacity of the zombies raising up. As if nothing had happened.

A pressure on his arm startled him, and a sweating, pale and out of breath Yunho tried to tell him something that got forgotten on his mouth when he noticed the flock coming for them.

“R-run,” was a command that was understood even over a trembled and panicked tone.

Jaejoong could practically taste the fear on Yunho’s tone, and he asked himself why wasn’t he feeling the same. He glanced one last time to the moving parade that was almost close enough to the touch when Yunho pulled him to run.

They made the way back to the street where they have met, Yunho visibly more tired and desperate. They were already one block of distance from the flock, when Jaejoong noticed the backpack the other had been carrying for the first time, and the points of guns much larger than the package making their way out, over the pressure of the zipper.

Jaejoong imagined that their power would be much greater than his own pistol but he didn’t want to waste ammunition just like he had just done.

Taking a look back, Jaejoong choked in surprise at the velocity the crowd had taken to reach them. Their slow walking turned to mislead steps of hurry that could be characterized as jogging. It was probably instigated by the smell of blood from Yunho’s injury.

At each few steps Yunho would pant harder, and slow down their earlier pace, and now only one street separated the dead from the living.

“C’mon!” Jaejoong pushed Yunho from his back, pressuring him to keep moving forward.

Suddenly, Yunho turned into an open door that Jaejoong couldn’t quite recognize. He sat on the floor and started to pant hard and deep. Jaejoong was barely out of breath and wished he could share some of his oxygen.

“How can you…” Yunho pulled from the backpack one of the guns Jaejoong had been aiming to get “run…. five damn quarters…. so fast?”

Jaejoong took the gun from Yunho’s hand.

“Here is the plan.” Yunho took one second to breathe at every word, and it made Jaejoong insecure. At each second, those things were closer. “This is… a machine gun. Let’ say...30 shots at once… around 20 seconds before you gotta reload.”

Jaejoong gazed down at the monster in his hand at the dim light coming from the shadowy moon.

“You have to shoot the leader first… so the flock will disperse.”

“The leader is the ugly skin and bones thing?”

“In summary… yeah.” Yunho coughed and stood up. “I will be shooting the front line. It will give us…” he shrugged “2 minutes of advantage or so.”

Jaejoong heard the scream coming from the same street they had been hidden and jumped in surprise. They were practically running behind them now.

“And then?!” Jaejoong adjusted the gun the more comfortably as he could in his arms and stepped outside.

“If we survive… we’ll see.”

It was what Jaejoong heard before the sound of a million bombs exploded against his ears and made him hide back in the darkness in pure shock.

The vulnerable scream from the zombie leader made Jaejoong remember his task, and the importance his action had to save both of them.

Differently from before, he was scared now. With closed eyes, he jerked away from the darkness almost as if being spelled from it, and stepped beside Yunho. He opened his eyes and looked at the other, who were finally recovering his lung’s activity and how he barely blinked while shooting at those things.

Jaejoong watched his will to maintain himself alive. Jaejoong’s alive.

With a deep breath, Jaejoong closed one eye and focused the other on the screaming thing. It was just two meters from them. He raised his gun at his eyes’ level and controlled his index finger on the trigger.

As he let the air go, Jaejoong held the trigger and kept his heels planted on the floor while the sounds reached his ears first than the image of the skeleton being pulled behind by the hits of bullets.

When the shots seemed to be over in a question of a heartbeat, Yunho and Jaejoong exchanged a glance and a nod.

No words were necessary, the rage of lost zombies made its own mess. Jaejoong could count at least thirty of them, now that a dozen of them were on the floor. While ones entered the old houses, others turned the other way around and…. the scream that followed came undoubtedly from Jaejoong’s mouth.

At the other corner, another flock, almost the same size of the first - hurried and hungry zombies started to made its way to meet them, completely blocking any chance to escape from them.

“Drugstore!”

Yunho’s scream was like a sunray of relief, and with not a single doubt Jaejoong ran behind the other man, entering the three story building across the street.

Jaejoong guessed Yunho had a magic wand in hand at first, when the whole room illuminated on a green fluorescent light. The boy shrugged and covered his eyes with the strong luminosity it caused and how it made his eyes burn.

A hurt moan came from somewhere inside the place, but it was soon quieted down by Yunho’s gunshot.

Jaejoong felt an arm around his wrist, and before he could scream in despair, lips were on his ears.

“Ten more steps, turn right.”

Yunho’s voice was never as comforting as now. Jaejoong wanted him to keep on repeat, saying anything, just to keep his heartbeats normal.

“It’s a ladder, c’mon.”

The boy kept his eyes closed but slid his arms around Yunho’s torso, just allowing the other to lead him completely, anywhere, anyway, he would follow him without complain.

He would be saved just by being beside that man, he knew it.

Another gun shot, and another three in a row. Jaejoong was glad he wasn’t seeing anything.

“One more ladder.”

They kept the fastest rhythm as they could, holding into each other while Yunho was their eyes and hands. Jaejoong could hear the moans and the sounds of things being broken and the floor underneath them. The zombies were hungry for them.

“The last.” Yunho referred to one more ladder, and it was when Jaejoong decided to speak.

“Where are we heading?”

“Rooftop.” Another gun was shot. “We can shoot better from there.”

The surprise made Jaejoong open his eyes, and he gasped with the piercing pain with the light entering them. The boy heard a titling sound just as Yunho threw the lightstick down the ladders.

The run until the door at the end of a corridor, that lead to an extensive rooftop under the moonlight.

“Listen to me,” Yunho held Jaejoong’s face between his hand. “We are getting out of here, OK?”

“OK,” Jaejoong tried to smile, but what really was coming was a will to cry. “What’s the plan?”

“I shoot the entrance, they will be here in seconds. You prevent them from coming shooting at the street. Got it?”

Jaejoong nodded again when words weren’t necessary any longer.

From his backpack, Yunho got one last gun machine, and handed Jaejoong one pistol.

“Your other pistol?”

“I don’t know.” Jaejoong looked behind Yunho’s shoulder in despair “I tossed it somewhere.”

“OK baby, rule number one,” Yunho dared to smile. “No wasting guns when we are in the middle of a zombie invasion.”

“Got it,” Jaejoong pointed his machine gun above Yunho’s shoulder and shot. “Now you better watch you back, baby.”

Yunho suddenly stopped moving, and Jaejoong’s heart almost made a reverse way through his mouth. The boy pulled Yunho aside and started shooting at the unguided and ravishing zombies eager for new blood and flesh.

“You can’t distract me like this,” Yunho took his place beside Jaejoong and for that instant it didn’t seem impossible for them to kill all of those monsters.

Jaejoong secretly turned around and walked to the edge of the rooftop and all his hopes went downhill.

There weren’t any chances.

The pavement, the abandoned cars, the blood bathed benches were once details of a forgotten street that was now the habitat of sick and disturbed creatures that couldn’t think but follow their instinct to swallow any humanity left on Earth. A zombie would climb another trying to reach for the two humans only three floors above them. They would suffocate each other trying to enter a building that would lead to two humans above them. The street had been dominated.

There wasn’t ammunition enough for the infinite number of the sons of the night.

“Let’s go.” Jaejoong whispered, even though he knew he couldn’t be heard over the gunshots and the moans of the voiceless ones. “We can’t win this.”

Slowly, Jaejoong stepped back and crossed the extent of the space, taking a look at the parallel street. The calmness over there didn’t even seem real.

The zombies weren’t an army, after all. They didn’t plan strategies to arrive at their objective, they just followed what they saw.

Jaejoong caught up to Yunho, who were focused but couldn’t hide the worry in his expression. Of course, they wouldn’t stop coming.

“New plan!” Jaejoong screamed, putting his machine gun to work until the end of the ammunition.

“Which would be?”

“You have to trust me.” Jaejoong alternated to his pistol.

Yunho’s frown of worry deepened.

“Or we die, which do you prefer?” Jaejoong offered.

“ok,” Yunho changed his gun as well “tell me what to do.”

“I will cover you up while you jump.”

“Jump?” Yunho stopped to stare at Jaejoong for a while. “Off the rooftop?”

“Three floors only.” Jaejoong shrugged “I’ve jumped from a five-floor building once, nothing happened. Abilities testing.”

“You’re crazy.”

“We don’t have time!” Jaejoong started to step back when the amount of shots wasn’t hitting all the zombies anymore. “Go to the parallel street! Now!”

Jaejoong expected more rejection, but with a nod, Yunho run to the edge and jumped.

He probably had hurt himself, Jaejoong knew it.

Yunho was completely human.

Jaejoong took a deep breath and run to jump as well, position his body to lead on the floor properly. He would have around three seconds to reach Yunho and it would be when the zombies would jump after them.

As soon as he landed, on one knee and his two hands, Jaejoong started to run toward Yunho who had a painful expression on and held his knee with one hand.

“C’mon” Jaejoong held Yunho by his waist, and the other used his arm around Jaejoong’s neck for support. “Let’s enter that house!” He pointed ahead.

They were trotting slowly toward the house, Jaejoong barely could see what he was shooting while he looked behind to kill those who followed him.

They entered the house, and at the moment Jaejoong felt a cold touch on his neck, he pushed Yunho roughly to the floor, just in time to hit the zombie who almost caught them, on the head.

“The knife!” Jaejoong screamed.

Yunho slipped it on the floor just in time another zombie came over to them, and fearlessly, Jaejoong stabbed it twice on the belly before stabbing its head.

His breath wasn’t controlled, neither was his thoughts, but even if he had to slice very zombie head existent in that country he would, before it could touch Yunho.

“C’mon!” He heard Yunho shout, while he stabbed another clumsy zombie that apparently had survived to a leg shot. “There’s a room here!”

Jaejoong didn’t reply. Most of the zombies who followed them had injured from jumping too, losing legs and arms that were already on a thread of decomposition. But the boy didn’t want them to find a way in while he and Yunho had only four walls to protect themselves.

An idea went through his head just at the moment a cloud covered the moon up in the sky. At the space of time it took a zombie to come to him, Jaejoong pulled off his shirt, not even feeling the vigorous wind of September at the heat of the moment. Next, with no further thoughts the boy stabbed his on arm with one single movement, with only one moan of pain.

He could see the knife crossing the amount of skin and dripping fresh blood right on the shirt he had been holding. As he pulled the knife off, with a doubled pain, the blood bathed the shirt painting the gray in vivid head.

Jaejoong kicked one last zombie before throwing the shirt meters ahead, with all the strength he could gather in his stronger arm.

The boy turned around to enter the room Yunho had been waiting for him, and as soon as the door closed him them, Jaejoong allowed himself to laugh.

It was the most unfunny joke Yunho had led him into.

.

“Did you cut yourself?” Yunho’s rough whispered words demonstrated his will to scream.

“My blood-soaked shirt will attract them and maybe hold them until sunrise.” Jaejoong searched around the room for a window, pretending not to care about the piercing burning of dilacerated skin.

“You are insane!” Yunho dragged himself closer to Jaejoong on the door. “It’s a room under the stairs, there is no light in here.”

Jaejoong let himself crash on the floor, he could feel things falling over him that were probably being hang beside his head. Yunho’s hand started to search for Jaejoong in the darkness, but the boy pressed himself against the door desperate for one minute of solitude to endure his pain.

“We need to close the door slot. The smell will guide them.” Yunho kept his tone low, but now hesitant.

Jaejoong wanted to ask him to handle that for him, but he had slightly forgotten he wasn’t the only one hurt.

Jaejoong felt a fabric falling over his torso, and he knew it was Yunho’s shirt leftovers. He thanked silently for the other being so tall and muscular, for having a shirt big enough to cover the only air entrance left in the tiny space they both barely fit.

“I only have my pants now.” Yunho half suggested, half hoped Jaejoong’s denial.

The boy laughed at the other’s insecure words. It was good having some humor back.

“Don’t laugh.” Yunho sighed. “You’re bleeding to death.”

“Don’t worry,” Jaejoong finally spoke, his good hand pressing his hurt arm trying to stanch the bleeding. “It will stop soon.”

The silence lasted longer than Jaejoong guessed it would, but still, the boy decided to preserve it.

“What is wrong with you?” Yunho’s words hit Jaejoong in the darkness.

“Nothing.” Jaejoong tried to keep his breathing still as he could already feel the blood flow decreasing. “Nothing serious. You should keep your leg straight and unmoving, it will be better by morning.”

“I am not talking about what happened today.” Yunho’s words gained some impatience. “The day we met, your skin was… ugly.”

Jaejoong closed his eyes even though the darkness was everywhere. He didn’t want to talk about it now.

For all those years he had lived with the imagination of what the Changed really meant or what they could really do. Imagination never really reached the small and definite details of reality.

But now that he had gone through the experience of facing not only one, but two flocks, and had been close enough to touch the death, he had finally understood that living alone wasn’t going to make him survive for long.

If he revealed the truth about himself, maybe Yunho would no longer want to stay by his side.

If Jaejoong, for one moment, had not been scared of those creatures, was a complete credit of his ignorance…

“I don’t mean ugly in the literal way.” Yunho’s voice suddenly seemed more comfortable, as he took his time to expose his thoughts. “It doesn’t really fit you. What I mean is, you were hurt. Badly. Even the Doc commented that we did not have the right medicines to treat you. But in the morning, you were just fine. Brand new.”

Yunho continued after the silence as his answer. “Somi told me you had left around thirty minutes after you did. I searched you with my motorcycle and it still took me almost two hours. I almost thought you had gotten a vehicle yourself, but when I saw you running after that scream… I couldn’t barely see your feet touching the ground, you were getting faster by the seconds and reaching you was… humanly impossible.”

“Probably,” Yunho guessed, “You don’t feel any pain anymore.”

“Yes,” Jaejoong tone was recomposed but not confident. “I don’t.”

The silence had started to become uncomfortable once again, but it was more of a question of courage to Jaejoong.

His situation was very clear, so much different from the blindness they were facing. As soon as Jaejoong was honest with Yunho, quicker the other could start to understand what made both of them so different.

“I am not… completely… human.” Jaejoong bit his lips, scared of being choosing the words uncarefully. “I am still a human but not purely.”

“What do you mean by pure?”

Yunho’s tone was unrecognizable. Jaejoong feared the other had prepared a gun pointed at him behind the black curtain over them.

“I mean you,” the boy tried to keep it simple and true. “A person who had ever been injected with substances are not qualified to have the human body that we know. Viruses, inserted stem cells, are kind of things that can influence someone’s structure. I was injected with them and tested most of my life. They had decreased my melanin production and strengthened the power of regeneration of my cells. My muscle fibers had also been worked on, that’s why I can run better than others.”

Jaejoong sighed when there wasn’t any commentary.

“Maybe I was lucky” Jaejoong rubbed his arm lightly on his bare torso, making sure it was no longer bleeding. “I knew people who got paralyzed. Or died from hemorrhage with poor cell development.” The boy shrugged to show his ignorance, even if the other couldn’t see. “It was not like they explained us how the procedures would happen, you did not have any saying in their plans. That just made us grow older, feeling less and less human.”

“I’m sorry.” Yunho pronounce slowly, taking Jaejoong by surprise. “It has never been easy for you. I thought the actual hell was what we are living in, but I guess this world is completely ed up. There will be a good side when it is over.”

“I don’t want it to be over yet.” Jaejoong admitted, feeling more comfortable to talk. “I haven’t enjoyed anything.”

Yunho’s laugh was low and draggy, almost as if he were sleepy.

“What is there to enjoy?”

“Killing zombies,” Jaejoong started to list using his fingers, “listening to music, meeting other humans...”

“I am happy that’s exciting to you.” Yunho’s words were now a whisper.

“Thanks to you, I can enjoy them.” Jaejoong declared, satisfied that there was no light to illuminate his embarrassment. “Thank you for saving me.” Jaejoong laughed off the strangeness that settle in the space. “You can thank me too if you want.”

No word came from Yunho’s mouth.

He had probably fallen asleep.

.

Jaejoong jump in awareness when a fabric covered up his face.

“It’s past twelve.” Yunho sounded grumpy. “The sun is getting softer outside. We better go.”

Jaejoong, who still on the ground, watched Yunho above him and outside the cubicle they had to share. In the daylight he could have a sight of the messy, dusty and half destroyed house they had used as shelter in the middle of the night.

“The sun is never soft.” Jaejoong was still half asleep, but as soon as he tried to get up, his muscles complained from all the running and fighting from last night.

“Well, I really need a bath and there is no running water around here.”

Jaejoong looked up at his own arm, with enough dry blood to make him feel nauseous. He looked up to see if Yunho thought he also needed a bath and worry drawn over him.

“Your head looks… ugly.” Jaejoong decided to use the same adjective as Yunho had used last night.

It seemed like Yunho understood what he meant and took his hand to the cut above his right eyebrow.

“It keeps on running blood once in a while,” he complained and turned around so Jaejoong couldn’t see it anymore.

“We need to clean it.” Jaejoong got up, a hand on his own back as if it would make him handle the pain better. “You might get an infection. Also, blood exposure is not a good choice.”

“What part of there is no water you didn’t get?” Yunho sighed, throwing a cap at Jaejoong’s direction. “Grab the shirt I gave you, also the cap. I think they will fit you.”

Jaejoong did as said, not willing to start a discussion because of Yunho’s always changing mood.

“I will go to the drugstore. They might have something to clean that up and-”

Yunho, in less than a second, was in front of Jaejoong impeding him to move.

“You’re not.” His tone was demanding. “There are a lot of themthere.”

“We can clean the place up.” Jaejoong suggested, with an obvious raise of eyebrows.

“Or,” Yunho defyingly raised his own eyebrows, “we can find first aid kit in this house. Where there are people, there is medicine. Plus, I don’t think they had time to pack before they left.”

Without giving Jaejoong time to think, Yunho started looking around, turning in to the kitchen entrance and breaking through the cabinets.

Jaejoong sighed and started dressing up. The long-sleeved t-shirt was maybe two sizes lower than his, and whenever he tried to raise his arms up, his belly would come to sight.

Yunho passed by him, without commenting on his new outfit, and started going up the stairs. On the second floor, it seemed like Yunho were fighting with zombies himself, as he threw things on the ground without minimal care.

Surely, the owners of that place would feel offended with their presence.

More analytically, Jaejoong payed attention on the smaller details, like the old and childish decoration in the entrance cabinet, or the dusty carpet with holes on the corners. What divided the rooms were only entrances, the kitchen’s door laid dead on the side.

Most of the cabinets were of many years used wood, it could be told by their dark color and the many scratches.

“Do you think an old couple lived in this house?” Jaejoong asked, when he heard Yunho’s hurried steps on the ladders.

“Not that I care” was his answer, as he shoved in Jaejoong’s hand a small white bag.

“I mean,” Jaejoong shrugged, “the decoration is quite simple but I still think it has some female touch. Also, we have gotten clothes so it’s a proof that there was also a man in here.”

Without receiving any answer, Jaejoong checked into the bag’s content.Saline solution, medicinal gases, band aids, an almost empty antibiotic ointment that barely would cover half of the scar.

“We will have to deal with what we have,” Jaejoong concluded, guiding Yunho to sit on the sofa, at the opposite side of the tiny room they had hidden at night.

As soon as Yunho tiredly sat, he winced in pain, slightly. Jaejoong couldn’t really blame his bad mood after all the other had went through just to find him.

“Your feet?” Jaejoong curved his body over Yunho’s, trying to take a better look at his cut.

Yunho cleared his throat.

“Fine enough to walk.”

“Try not to put much pressure over it.” Jaejoong warned and bit his lips right after, in worry. “I’m sorry, but you better hope my expectations were right. We are going to need a needle and a thread.”

“” Yunho hissed, and Jaejoong felt as if he was close to giving up.

“If we don’t take care of it, you may get an infection. Also, any careless contact with zombies can infect you. We don’t have another choice.”

The search for the new items were much easier than they have thought. In the larger room upstairs, a rusty sewing machine kept inside lined up a sequence of degrade threads and a box of needles.

They returned to their place in the sofa, and almost instantly, Yunho opened his legs so Jaejoong could fit in the middle of them. Jaejoong didn’t get bothered with the proximity, but he could sense Yunho’s tension. He was probably worried about the procedures, so Jaejoong tried to keep his voice soft and confident.

“I have done this before.” He washed his hands with the saline water, soaking a bunch of gauzes in his palm. “Don’t worry.”

“May I ask when?”

Jaejoong smiled at Yunho’s sudden formality, and delicately applied the gauzeson the injury, absorbing dry and new blood.

“At the laboratory.” Jaejoong only spoke while he dealt with the items, he didn’t want any more particles to enter Yunho’s open cut. After he cleaned up for the second time, he could see the divided skin and a layer of fat. “Aside from us, there were the doctors. At the beginning, uncountable of them. Later, the numbers dropped to a minimum. My mom has disappeared just like the others of them, and well, now I can guess why.”

“Do you think she died?”

“I try not to think about her.” Jaejoong confessed, thankful he didn’t have to look at Yunho’s eyes to keep the conversation going. “I still can’t quite define what she did for me was good or bad.”

“She wanted to save you” were Yunho’s hesitant words, as if he wasn’t sure himself.

Jaejoong used the last pieces of gauze.

“The nurses were gone.” Jaejoong turned back to his first topic. “Some of them were also turned into experiments. Human had become rare, really.”

Yunho sighed and relieved when Jaejoong threw to his side the blood bathed pieces of gauze, and the boy imagined the pain he was holding in. It was okay to hiss, moan or shout. Jaejoong wasn’t going to judge. The boy had gone into kinds of pain that only silence made it feel better but at times he also had to cry and beg for mercy of his own body.

“It’s gonna hurt. I have to sew up.”

“Go ahead.” Jaejoong withdrew a little to watch Yunho’s closed eyes and blank expression. “I had gone through worse.”

“I know.” Jaejoong nodded and moved his attention to choose for a needle when Yunho’s eyes opened up in curiosity.

Jaejoong wasn’t the one with the biggest luggage on his back. Yunho’s history of when he left military service was still something that repeated on Jaejoong’s head. Even with his indelicate and something rude jokes, the man had this huge sense of protectiveness that made people around him feel secure.

Even if he had been obligated to shoot his family in order to save them from becoming monsters, Yunho chose into transforming his image into a monstrous one. But not in Jaejoong’s eyes. Yunho was clearly a fighter and not someone to be fought with.

“You still haven’t told me how you have learned to sew skin.”

Jaejoong smiled once again when he heard the mocking tone of Yunho back and discarded his distractive thoughts.

“When I was old enough not to cry over small pains, they introduced me to the corpses.” Jaejoong pressured slightly his hands on the cut skin, trying to paste the two layers into one. The needle perforated the skin easily, still Jaejoong waited for Yunho to get used to the pain, even if the other didn’t complain with a single muscle.

“After surgeries were done and the patients hadn’t survived,” Jaejoong continued, believing his telling was a good distraction from the pain, “me and others used to close up the bodies and clean them. Prepare them to be discarded properly. I never understood what that actually meant but now I think that maybe they tried to avoid corpses from being infected.”

“Actually,” Yunho’s voice was stable and conscious, “if the virus infects a dead body, it can’t reproduce inside the cells. The brain is no longer working, neither are the organs. The blood is not running anymore to take the infected cells around the body.”

Jaejoong nodded, understanding that his knowledge over the matter has never been great.

“Where did they discard the bodies?” Yunho asked when Jaejoong was close to finish.

“I don’t have any idea.” Jaejoong tied the last knot on the thread. “Maybe they had a special room for that. I don’t know. They hardly left the laboratory, only for specific tests.”

“Like jumping from buildings?” Yunho guessed, remembering when Jaejoong had attested to have jumped from the fifth floor before.

Jaejoong spread ointment the most that he could get over Yunho’s closed injury.

“Yeah.” Jaejoong looked down at Yunho’s face, who had his eyes fixated on him.

“Thanks,” he whispered.

Jaejoong felt a heat coming up his cheeks, and he tried to hide it as he gathered up the utensils and put them back into the bag.

“We should put it back,” he suggested.

Yunho’s hands suddenly reached Jaejoong’s waist, and the boy looked down again unable to hide the surprise in his eyes.

“They are dead Jaejoong.” Yunho’s expression was soft, much different than his words. “They are not coming back.”

“How do you know?” Jaejoong retorted.

“Look around you”.

Jaejoong refused to.

“This is abandonment.”

.

After one hour of walk, Jaejoong’s itchy skin became to burn. The cap maintained his eyes, nose and lips in a shadow. But his hands no longer could be hidden inside his pockets without scratching the skin. Jaejoong had been walking with the rest of their ammunition and two guns left on the backpack, that suddenly turned into more weight with the tiring walk.

“Is this the real life, is this just fantasy?” Yunho sing sang as he knotted his shirt on the belt spaces of his jeans, sweat fell from his back in tiny drops, what made Jaejoong wonder if the other’s skin was as hot as his own temperature.

Jaejoong even extended his hands to try to feel Yunho’s heat, but his fingers started to tremble when they were closer to Yunho’s tanned and broad back, the muscles moving at the pace of his steps.

“How far is it?” Jaejoong turned down his thoughts by talking and hid his eager hand behind his back.

Yunho turned to look at him, to make sure he was walking under the tree’s shadows. Around thirty minutes ago, the paved street ceded to a long earthy path and the few houses left were replaced by small brick’s constructions and tents.

“Some few kilometers.” Yunho assured. “You will feel better after a shower.”

It wasn’t even a doubt. His last shower was still in the laboratory, he didn’t have time to figure out how they dealt with water issued back in the shelter.

Jaejoong was close to ask for a time to rest when he heard the sound of running water. He believed Yunho’s feet was also hurting but neither of them lowered their rhythm or tried to stop when the sound came up.

Yunho entered in between the trees, with Jaejoong right behind him. It felt like Yunho knew the path by the back of his hand. He pointed out the muddy spaces and possible corners of snakes. The smell of wet earth made Jaejoong’s heart pump and he felt his feet working harder to reach faster the water.

The river channel was long yet narrow on the sides. It was possible to jump from a bank to the other. The stones were visible from inside the water, meaning the depth was reasonable low.

“You can do it first, if you want.” Yunho was looking at the ground, his chest moving fast with the speed of his breathing.

Jaejoong wanted to take advantage of the moment to , but it seemed like Yunho was actually uncomfortable. The shower room of the laboratory was an open space to be divided with dozens of other inmates as he grew up understanding the body was just the same to everyone.

At that place, a body had not a single value or individuality.

“You’re not going to offend me,” Jaejoong took off his cap and released the backpack on the ground, following with his shirt, “if you look at me.”

Yunho raised his gaze, watching Jaejoong taking off his shoes and socks.

“Do you want me to look at you?”

Yunho’s words were fast like a shot and as serious as the injury it could cause. Jaejoong stopped his movements, taking the question it consideration.

“It’s just a body.” Jaejoong concluded, returning to drop his pants on the grass. “It’s not as if you haven’t seen it before.”

“I had,” Yunho nodded, his eyes unmoving. “And I wouldn’t classify it as just a body.”

Jaejoong smiled, hands gripping at his briefs. “What would you classify it as, then?”

“Jaejoong’s body.” Yunho pointed at him with a finger. “If it was just another body, I wouldn’t catch myself thinking so much about it.”

Jaejoong smile faded into a thin line, and soon his lip was being chewed inside his mouth. The boy retracted his hands extending one into Yunho’s direction.

“I have thought about your body too.” Jaejoong admitted and couldn’t help but smile at Yunho’s shocked expression. “Your large back, and the contractions of your muscle when you walk. They almost turn into wings,” he explained.

“I am not an angel,” Yunho clarified and stepped back to create some distance between them. “You better go first, I will watch in case something appears.”

Jaejoong stepped ahead the space Yunho created between them as soon as he spotted the scar on his belly, a small circle of green and red skin. It was close to a rib, and Jaejoong wondered if that was where Yunho’s father had shoot him.

Yunho followed Jaejoong’s eyes to the same spot but didn’t say anything.

The boy slowly reached the scar, at first just touching it with his fingertips. He felt Yunho’s muscles contracting and unclasped his whole hand on to the other’s abdomen, gasping at the sensation.

“You’re so hot.” Jaejoong declared.

“Thanks?” Yunho’s voice failed, creating a question instead of an answer.

“You’re too hot!” Jaejoong exclaimed, touching Yunho’s cheek with his free hand. “You’re burning in fever, I think you got an infection.”

“I am fine.” Yunho assured, trying to withdraw Jaejoong’s hand from his body.

“When is the sun setting?” Jaejoong started looking around. “We have to make our way back. Let’s enter in that drugstore and find you some antibiotics.”

Jaejoong suggestion was a great option but it didn’t seem like Yunho agreed.

“Actually,” Yunho shrugged, “the shelter is less than an hour by feet. The doctor will take care of it.”

Jaejoong frowned, “is the shelter near here?”

Yunho nodded with a smile, “here is where we get water for cooking, bathing and to water the bosk.”

Jaejoong started to feel a different kind of heat increasing to the direction of his face, it wasn’t out of pain or embarrassment.

“You are trying to take me back?” he asked the question behind clenched teeth.

“Of course,” Yunho’s smile widened, as if mocking Jaejoong’s reaction. “Or did you expect us to start living in the street and fighting with zombies without a single kind of protection? Ammunition is countable, baby, and you saw how fast it can end.”

“Don’t call me baby. I didn’t expect anything from us” Jaejoong punched Yunho’s torso with the hand that was still there, making the other’s expression darken. “Neither should you expect you could think in my behalf.”

Stepping away hard and irately, Jaejoong started gathering up his clothes from the ground.

“What the are you talking about?” Yunho’s tone now wasn’t different from Jaejoong’s angry one. “Where do you expect to keep living but not in the shelter? I thought you liked it there!”

“I likedit.” Jaejoong emphasized the sentence in the past tense while he tried to keep his balance and putting his jeans back on. “Until I found out they don’t like me.”

“Who doesn’t?” Yunho held at his arm, impending Jaejoong to put on his shirt.

“Everybody!” Jaejoong stated, obvious. “Everybody but you, maybe.”

“They are just being cautious.” Yunho started to explain with a more moderated voice, as if he could manipulate Jaejoong into thinking like him. “They don’t know you well enough yet.”

“They want to kill me!” Jaejoong shout, releasing himself from Yunho’s grip. His unexpected reaction made Yunho step back. “I heard everything, they wanted to keep me alive just until they reach the ship, then they would try to test on me, on how strange I am, well… if I wasn’t dead until then.”

Yunho shook his head, “They wouldn’t do that. Ever. I wouldn’t allow them to.”

“You wouldn’t be there if they tried to suffocate me in my sleep, and I don’t think your only vote would count on the “dissect me or not” matter.” Jaejoong put his cap on after he was dressed again. “Who knows they don’t have plans to discard you in your back as well?”

“I am someone needed!” Yunho stated, not allowing Jaejoong to mess with his certainty.

But the truth was that Jaejoong wasn’t the type to play with words.

“Or you think you are.” Jaejoong sighed, expecting Yunho would listen to the truth behind his rude and frustrated tone. “Why haven’t anyone come along with you to find me? Why haven’t anyone come to search for us, if you are important to them?”

“Because they know I will come back.” Yunho didn’t have a doubt about it. “You won’t ever be able to put them against me, Jaejoong. They are my family. You are no one.”

Jaejoong nodded, offering the backpack back to Yunho.

“It is not as if I didn’t know that from the start.” Jaejoong embraced himself when Yunho took his belonging back. “It’s on you if you are going back or not. But I certainly won’t.”

“You won’t survive in this world.” Yunho was convinced of that.

“What’s the difference between dying here and there?” Jaejoong sighed off the lasts strings of his disappointment. “No matter where I go, it becomes a minefield to me.”

“If you trust me,” Yunho sighed too, extending his hand so Jaejoong could grab at it, “I would take care of you.”

“You think you are invincible.” Jaejoong shook his head at Yunho’s offer. “You think people need you but they need your abilities. You can’t accept you needed to be helped out by the hands of someone who had never seen a zombie before, you are not even able to admit you feel pain! You think you are a strong person because you see yourself as one. Maybe you are the one who needs to be taken care of.”

Yunho hanged his backpack in one arm and gave Jaejoong a long and deep shrug.

“I give up on you.”

Jaejoong’s hand clenched in fits just like he felt his heart doing. He didn’t ever stop to measure how much of Yunho’s actions meant that the other really cared about him, but at that moment it felt like he had lost part of his oxygen.

He wouldn’t even be alive if it wasn’t for Yunho, yet he wouldn’t blindly believe the people in the shelter would from one time to the other start to accept him.

“I am used to it.” Jaejoong answered and turned around to leave, half expecting Yunho would try to stop him.

As farther as he got, he would step harder on the grass, and stare angrily at the flowers timidly enduring the season. Jaejoong lowered his head not to hit on high wood trunks, but not even once glanced behind.

He believed to be far enough from the stream when a growl startled him to a halt. From behind him, Jaejoong started to listen the leaves being stepped on, and the grass being dragged at a rhythmic pace.

Jaejoong cursed some of the words he had learnt with Miss A in silence. Something about the situation warned him not to turn around and just keep following his way.

He didn’t have a knife, a gun, or any courage to call out for the only person who could reach him. Jaejoong held his breath while his head slowly started to turn to the side, his eyes first reaching the blades.

There were four blades, two where it was supposed to be the feet, embedded into the earth. The other two extended themselves as long arms, with very sharp points. The body was only skin and bones, the eyes, unexisting.

It was almost the same as the leader of the flock they had fought, and Jaejoong knew that it meant that this creature was one of the oldest, turned at the beginning of the infection spread. Nevertheless, the blades were a clear new standard of abomination.

Jaejoong started to run as soon as another growl came from a mouth full of metallic teeth, his head hit a trunk, and he stumbled in a mud corner that had him falling over his knees. Jaejoong could hear the sound of the blades cutting its way inside the forest, as his breath got controlled by the panic and he couldn’t even speak.

He got back on his feet, taking a hard time to return to his faster pace, there was blood running from one of his legs and as he tried to clean it off he ended up stumbling one more time several meters ahead. He started listening to the rushing of running water, what meant he had made all the way back to where he and Yunho were supposed to be if they had not fought.

Should he scream for the other? Would Yunho come to him now even when he had given up on him?

The leaves behind wasn’t being cut apart for some seconds, Jaejoong had noticed. The boy glanced behind but nothing beyond the calmness of a green setting greeted him.

He gasped, feeling the knot of fear and despair being released from his throat. Tears started to wet his eyes, and he began to drink all over again Yunho’s statements from before. He really couldn’t live in this world alone.

It wasn’t a place of infected human beings, but a whole new planet dominated by monsters that had as only objective kill anything that wasn’t horrendous as they were.

It wasn’t a free place, as he had few memories about. It was now owned by death.

Jaejoong’s breath stuck in his lungs when he heard a shot, coming from his right.

Yunho.

The boy was on his feet before he could even notice, the strength of his steps crumbling the stones under his shoes, breaking dry twigs with the back of his hand. He needed to reach Yunho, fast, like lightning.

He wasn’t going to wait for Yunho to call him. Maybe the two of them could fight, or better, find another way to run.

Jaejoong was just five meters from the river when his feet betrayed him and got him rolling in the grass. With aware eyes, he started looking around -still in the ground. The silence was a trick, and in a blink of an eye the tree that worked as a sun hindrance started to swayed and fell into Jaejoong’s direction.

In a heartbeat, he rolled to the other side, gasping and fighting against the leaves on his face.

He couldn’t feel any weight over him. Any pain. Anything but horror at the image of two blades being led by an eyeless creature towards him.

Another shot grabbed a scream from both mouths, Jaejoong’s and the thing’s.

“No!” Was what Jaejoong said, or maybe “run.” Or maybe “please.” He wasn’t sure of the sounds coming out of his own mouth.

Words hadn’t a meaning beyond dread.

His hand started clawing between the dry leaves, trying to stand up. A thick log of wood locked his legs on place, and his two week, trembling and bloody hands couldn’t work on it.

The zombie was slower, counting with the blades he has to drag and the time it took to plant each step of his sharp two feet.

But it’s attention had a new flame, Yunho. Only the river divided the monster from where Yunho stood, wet, shirtless and with mobilized eyes.

Jaejoong shout, feeling the sound more than hearing it, as his throat burned as if those blades themselves had cut their way through.

Not Yunho, please, not Yunho.

Jaejoong wanted to tear himself in blood, cut in pieces and feed himself to the monster if it meant time for Yunho to run away.

“Look at me!” Jaejoong shout again, his hands battling against the unmoving log. “Look at me, your bastard!”

As if its ears worked, the monster turned to stare at Jaejoong, his mouth with knife-like teeth releasing a growl. In time, Jaejoong made the log roll and heard Yunho shouting from the other side of the river for him to run.

And that was what he did.

As never before.

Jaejoong’s complaining bones and cut open skin didn’t even bothered him as he closed the distance between him and the zombie, his hands touching the extreme rough bare skin of the thing, dragging it and its screams under the river.

The first thing Jaejoong felt was the water blocking all his senses, following by metal against his back.

A shot, and another one.

When he emerged from the water, he could listen to Yunho’s voice above him but did not quite get what they meant.

He only had time to push the zombie back to the water when its blades emerged, painting the crystal blue in red.

“What the hell are you doing? Jaejoong! It’s an Evoluted!”

Jaejoong was holding the zombie’s back, having its belly pressed against the stones. One of its hand’s blade broke in two with the impact of with the riverside rocks.

One hand punched the thing as if Jaejoong’s strength was worth superhuman but it stopped halfway in the second attempt.

On the skin that joined the torso to the zombie’ head, could be seen four numbers in black tint.

0209.

Jaejoong’s view turned blurred, and the second of divert attention, the zombie turned itself around, it’s full blade crossing Jaejoong’s arm skin. Trying to defend himself, still dizzy, Jaejoong blocked his face with the other arm and it was when the knives pierced through the bone.

Jaejoong shout in pure shock, and the next thing he felt was dark thick blood spreading to his own face as the head of the monster rolled to the water taking the weight of his arm with it.

In panic, Jaejoong pulled the head away, watching a tip of his forearm transform into flesh.

“No.” Yunho was above him, in the water, holding the half-broken blade through a rolled-up shirt in order not to enter in contact with the sharp surface.

“No.” Yunho repeated, completely expressionless.

“What was it?” was the only thing Jaejoong could whisper.

“No.” Again.

“Yunho.” Jaejoong tried to get up, but his commands wouldn’t be understood by s. “Listen to me.”

Yunho crouched by his side, kicking the dead body aside. Throwing the blade in the water, Yunho delicately held Jaejoong’s face between his hands.

“Baby,” he whispered, and maybe water had gleaned on his eyes as he tried to blink the off.

“Me.” Jaejoong answered louder, trying to win his voice against the pain.

“I’m sorry,” he said, now allowing the drops to fall from his eyes. “Oh my god, I’m sorry.”

“Listen to me,” Jaejoong tried to gain his whole attention, “I knew him. I knew him.”

“Who?” Yunho shook his head, confused.

“The… monster,” Jaejoong sighed out.

“Who cares?” Yunho hissed, his hands pressing strongly between Jaejoong’s porcelain cheeks. “Who cares about it now?”

0209. Jaejoong wanted to say. He was 0209.

He wanted to explain how 0209 once hugged him to sleep when he had a nightmare of his mom killing him. He wanted to detail how was having his eyes on 0209 was the first thing he did when he discovered the light had become his enemy. Jaejoong wanted to whisper 0209 name he had intended but had never been able to tell him.

His pressure might have come, because colors had become blurs and Yunho’s voice started to sound dragged. Maybe it was because of the injuries from the fight. Maybe he had reached his limit.

“Help me,” he whispered, trying to hold any part of Yunho to bring him to equilibrium.

“I can’t,” he heard the slow, low and broken tone of Yunho with difficulty. “You’ve been bitten, baby.”