There's someone in the basement. It's unsettling (after all, it could be a thief, a murderer, or worse - a defect, for all he knows), but at the same time, Jaeseop's heart skips a little at the hope of a companion. He squints for another minute at the monitor to discern the figure before going downstairs to check it out for himself.

The basement reeks of old paint, and the humidity outside intensifies the acridity that he doesn't notice. It's funny what isolation does to one's senses. He becomes sharper to sights, sounds, smells that are foreign, then duller to the familiar things - the vacant streets, the silence, the musky decay of the storehouse walls.

"Who's there?" he demands. Maybe it's hearing his own voice in such a long time, or the question itself, but Jaeseop feels strange as he scans a flashlight around the basement. From a corner, there's a muffled footstep, a screech of rubber sneakers. Jaeseop spots a plaid blanket behind the piles of cardboard boxes, and when he approaches it, it rustles and retreats into the shadow.

It's not a blanket, it turns out, but a poncho, and Jaeseop thinks the boy wearing it might be too thin for it. The boy looks up with wide eyes and Jaeseop sighs - he looks harmless.

"Jesus Christ," Jaeseop swears in small relief, running a hand through his hair. "Who are-- What are you doing in here?"

"I was looking for shelter from the w-weather," the boy mumbles through chattering teeth. Jaeseop assumes the boy must be cold, which is good, because then at least he knows the boy isn't a defect. But Jaeseop still casts his flashlight up and down the squatted figure, just in case.

The boy's name is Sunghyun, from two districts over, and a survivor, like Jaeseop.

"I didn't know you would--I mean, I thought the place was aband--"

"Yeah, I get it," Jaeseop says, waving his hand. "Don't worry about it. What'd you do for a living before the pandemic?"

"Thanks-- sorry, what?"

"You know, like a job? Or were you in school?"

"I--actually I--awhile back, dropped out of college. And worked a couple of part-times..."

"Okay," Jaeseop frowns. He is frustrated by the boy's stutter, and wonders if he had always been an impatient person, or it was just another effect of living alone for so long. "So what were you majoring in before you dropped out?"

Sunghyun hesitates.

"V-vocal performance..."

And Sunghyun must understand how ridiculous that sounds in the current context, because he doesn't look Jaeseop in the eyes. Singing is a pleasant thing, and if it were just 2010, introducing oneself as a music major might have been met with some admiration. But today, there's an incurable disease that killed two-thirds of the world population, an army of crazy defects murdering the other third, and a giant storm expected to rip the town apart in a couple of hours.

Jaeseop tries not to snap.

Kim Jaeseop is a genius, and it's only a slight overstatement. There were a lot of rich kids in his school that he went to for free, and in the middle of his sophomore year, he was invited to attend a college abroad in New York as a mechanical engineering major.

The plan was to then finish his degree by maintaining top marks, accept the offer from the big- manufacturing company, and earn big bucks for the rest of life until an easy retirement. His family falling ill with the pandemic (then dying, followed by the rest of the planet) was not part of that grand scheme.

Kim Jaeseop is a genius, and even if he hadn't been born with his golden immunity, he thinks (knows) he probably would have made it out alive.

Sometimes, it's hard to understand that not all survivors are as smart as he is.

The storm is obnoxious, roaring and screaming. Since the neighbors have perished, so has their grass, and the lawn areas vomit the mud onto the pavement. Jaeseop doesn't worry because he's prepared for this since last week, building window shields and roof covers. He monitors any damage in camera room, where Sunghyun is huddled on the dusty cot and observes Jaeseop in the faint glow of the computer. 

"That's crazy," he whispers. "You installed all this?"

"Huh? Oh. Yeah."

"How long have you been here?"

"Well," Jaeseop stretches, leaning back on the swivel chair. "We moved in two weeks before I went to New York, came back when the pandemic hit, and have been here since then so...?" He an eyebrow. "One and a half years?"

"Hey, you lived in the States?" Sunghyun shuffles excitedly in his seat. "Me, too--from the Bay area. San Francisco."

"Haven't been there," Jaeseop hums, and focuses on a water droplet on a camera glass that's eating up half the screen.

"It's okay," Sunghyun says. "I haven't been to New York either, so we're even."

Jaeseop turns around and glances at Sunghyun. He's wearing a small but needlessly brilliant grin, curving his eyes, and it catches Jaeseop off guard because there are dozens of monitors capturing a violent storm outside, yet this boy isn't paying attention to anything beside what's here inside the room in front of him - the bluish halo radiating from the screens, the stranger who found him in a basement, the small bit of their conversation about the commonality they share (but isn't much of a commonality at all). His engrossment in the present and the details is something that Jaeseop doesn't know how to react to, so he stares dumbly at Sunghyun and his small smiling face.

"Say," Sunghyun speaks up, voice getting higher. "Do you have a name for this place?"

"Um. No? Not really. The house? My house?"

"But it's more than that," Sunghyun says, scrunching his eyebrows in contemplation. "It's like a...like a sanctuary."

Jaeseop scoffs. "Sanctuary" might be too generous for a two-story house that looks more like a post-apocalyptic fortress than a haven, but Sunghyun is already absorbing the sight of the place with a smile.

(and though he won't admit it, Jaeseop finds it a little endearing, the new boy's naive, childish enthusiasm).

god this fandom is me in like a vacuum. i've only started looking into them this week and here i am, already writing my first fic about these three flawless english speaking babies. sorry for the cliche setting and boring dialogues sigh. i just dumped this here to let my fangirl feels out.