Why are you smiling?

"What are you making?"  Startling.  Sunye startled Sungmin so much he could have screamed.  It was bad enough that she popped out of nowhere so suddenly but to pounce on his back as well was just too dangerous.  He nearly grabbed his window breaker.  Now, embarassed by both the fact that he lost man points yelping like a lost animal and caught doing arts and crafts of all things, he responded with a low drawl,

"Paper cranes."

The fire table was dying out. A single flame dared to keep its existence in a small bundle of ash that was once pages from uninteresting books found in the library.  Even at its full potential, the fire table could not warm up the smallest dingy room the two resided in.  They struggled to keep warm and in all honesty it was just too ing cold those days, even if there was a working heater, those children would still feel frozen to the bone.
Who wasn't?

2012 was the era for the people without a purpose.  A never ending need to feast on flesh instilled in these people, driven by a disease that was known as the Z virus.  It was highly contagious and accumlated in the pacific areas of Asia but it spread like wild fire.  Soon it got to Korea and at that time 60% of the world's population had been terrorized by the new contamination.  Zombies, basically.  There was no other thing to label it had you seen the movies or played a really popular video game.  It was only a matter of time before some pyschotic bystander with a sick for those types of outbreaks created one on their own, and though the origin of the virus was unknown, everyone was paying for it now.

Sunye got up and laughed at Sungmin scurrying to pile the paper cranes he folded so they were less noticiable. With nimble fingers he began placing them in a sack which revealed that Sungmin made a great deal of them to the point where it gave the sack some weight.  Sunye looked over at the torn pages from the book the younger male used to make the oragami and smiled to herself.  The book was one she was familiar with; an old story written about kings during the Joseon era, and she remember sitting in class thinking she didn't want anything to do with history, literature or school.  Now that there weren't any classes, or any schools period, she missed it.  She missed it just a little.  Stretching her long body across the cold floor and letting a loud yawn escape , she peered through one eye toward the insit window in the middle of the room.  A dawning light was peeking through, and the mountain tips were bathing in a faint sun.  The snow was falling at a constant rate, but it seemed to have felt colder indoors than out.

"Don't be embarassed, oragami is a cool hobby."  She knudged the younger one with her foot and he couldn't help but grin at her effort to make him feel reassured about the project.

"It was supposed to be a surprise...but, Noona you're always in my business."

The knudge soon turned into a shove and Sunye began giving her little brother playful kicks.  "You brat. There's no such thing as privacy.  Yah, this place is big enough for you to be sneaky without me noticing or did you really want me to find out what your surprise was?"
Sungmin laughed and thought there was some truth in what Sunye was saying.  They resided in a house abandoned by its original owners.  The house was very convenient because it wasn't too big where they could not tell if something was intruding or not because they only stayed in one small bedroom. Sungmin was too afraid to be separated from Sunye and Sunye just didn't bother wandering around.  The house was also located in the mountains where it wasn't very populated to begin with.  The higher the elevation, the colder it was, and harder for those things to survive.  Sunye and Sungmin have only encountered danger maybe once or twice, and Sunye eliminated all threats with a quickness. Of the two, she was older, stronger, and braver.  Sungmin had always froze on spot running into a person with the virus.

For a soft approach, Sunye kneeled to her sitting brother and scruffed his hair.  "To be honest, Sungmin...we're pinching on food."  She smiled sheepishly while her brother could only come up with so many scenarios on what they would have to do based on the implied statement.

Why are you smiling?
 

"Who are you?"

The words kept repeating as the screaming kept ringing in his ears.  He never knew they could scream.  A person infected with the virus was not entirely a dead person, but someone with an infectious disease. Reacting to pain and screaming due to it was an acceptable explanation.  However, those dots weren't clicking for Sungmin at that time.

"Who are you?"  The words became frustated and soon Sungmin felt a force so hard across his face he came back to his sense.  "Who are you?" Sunye asked.

"S-s-s-sungmin...my name is Sungmin."


It was their first meet. How those two came together was on a late night during the first few months of the outbreak.  Sungmin was trailing the sidewalk of a town that looked as empty as it sounded.  The fear in him was so great that he cursed himself out for even treading the place at such an hour.  During those days his weapon was a golf club his dad had given to him right before he pushed him out of the window to get out of their house that was swarming with infected people. Those days Sungmin was so scared that he'd completely blackout, sometimes in the middle of an attack and wake up in more chaos.  The boy was 14 and already looked like a malnutritioned dope dealer with a sunken face and such a frail body he looked breakable at first glace.  

Someone up along the way was moving, and Sungmin froze every muscle in his body.  He couldn't tell if the person was infected or not, but his answer was answered soon enough when they looked at him.  No questions were asked, he just broke out into a sprint followed by the person with the virus.  There was another person in his view and he had the mind or two to jump kick them but surely he was not that brave so he came to a sudden halt with the running, causing himself to slide toward the figure.  He was only five meters away and thought he met his doom, since the initial infected had already been chasing him, he saw himself trapped in a zombie sandwich.  He completely shut down from that point and had no recognition of what was happening.

"Kid...the hell are you doing? Give me that."

The person that had been standing there was not infected but in fact Sunye, and she was out that night trying to get the hell out of that town since there were too many of those things walking around.  She bumped into Sungmin who looked like he'd seen his own death, and felt sorry for the child.  He looked to be an elementary schooler.  Before she got into helping him out, she grabbed the golf club from his still hand, and arranged herself for her first contact. Up to the point she had been running. She was good at that.  Those things were fast, but Sunye took judo in school, she was quicker.  She wasted no time clobbering the infected until its screams told her, her work was done, now she needed to get out of there and take the boy. And even though she smacked the piss out of him to make him come back to his senses, she threw his whole body over her shoulder and fireman carried him out.

Their next conversation, when Sungmin was able to walk on his own, made him find something very profound in Sunye, meeting a person like her.

"Alone?" She asked.
"Yes."
"Parents...family?"
"Dead."
"Mine too!"

At that response, he stopped in his tracks because it seemed a little twisted.

"But...why are you smiling?"

She shrugged and responded with her infamous sheepish grin, "Smiling puts me in a good mood."






Sungmin stared at his sister, and she put her finger between his eyes to make him stop.

"It's making me uncomfortable."
"When do we leave?"

He was just being stubborn now.  She already told him that she was going to leave on her own to gather food, just so no one or nothing would get into the house while she was absent.  She moved the hair on his forehead and flicked it.  As he yelled out in pain she began to explain her plan.  Sunye knew it was going to be difficult getting him to understand the dire situation.  He was clingy afterall, and easily afraid.  She didn't want to leave him alone, but it was only going to be for a day or two.  Three tops.

"That's too long."  He whined. He even teared.  He was really hating everything about this idea.

"Truthfully, we've been up here for a whole month now.  I highly doubt anything or anyone out there has survived in this cold."  Sunye played her comfortable game, where she did her best to make the situation convenient for Sungmin. She was good at reassuring him.  She pulled him into a hug, where he buried his face in her shoulder and let out a tear or two where she couldn't see, but she felt them and giggled to herself.  "Don't worry.  You know me, I'm the coolest girl ever.  I'm not going to allow any zombies get me."

"Noonayouhavetomakeapromise."
"What?"

The sound was muffled, and Sunye released her grasp for a moment.  Sungmin repeated himself, and his voice was a bit shaky, tensed from holding back tears.

"Sungmin...Sungminah. I will see you again. I promise."

With a loud sigh and embracing her scardey cat of a brother again, she held back her own tears of discomfort and smiled.  "Remember that window breaker I gave you?  Don't be hesitant to use it if anyone tries to come in here.  You have to be brave. If I don't come back--"

"WHEN YOU DO COME BACK."

"...when I do come back, in the meantime, protect yourself."

He gave her his paper cranes, and walked away.

Why are you smiling?


"Where are you..."

He sat in the attic and stared out the window.  He stared until his eyes hurt. This was the first night.

"Where are you?"

He lied down in a open area on the first floor of the house, waiting for her to walk through the front door.

"Where are you."

Sungmin snatched the books from the bookshelf in the library, going down the row he just pushed them until they hit the floor.  One by one.  He hated each and every one of them.  This was the second night.

"WHERE ARE YOU?"  He screamed at the top of his lungs on the rooftop.  He didn't care if someone who wasn't supposed to hear, heard him. This was the third day.

"Where are you?"  He cried in a bathtub with no water system working. He couldn't manage to go anyplace else because the space wasn't tight enough.  He didn't feel safe nor comfortable anywhere.  There was no sign of Sunye.  Six days had passed.

Void and silence.

He pulled the front door back and a gust of chilling wind stung his face.  He was going hungry so everything felt heavy, even holding the door open felt like he had to use all his strength.  He had his window breaker tightly in his grasps.  He wouldn't have been able to let go of it even if he wanted to in all honesty.  There were a few steps he took toward the entrance gate when he noticed a pool of dried blood covering the snow barely outlining the entrance. He took a few more steps, too weary to be afraid, however still cautious.  He stopped just enough where he could see when he leaned over and peered over at the area where the blood may have came from.  There was nothing. However, he took note of the paper cranes buried in that dry snow of blood... and the window breaker in his hand fell.

Truthfully, Sunye...

"Noona...where are you?"

He collapsed into the snow, tears flooding his face and dismissing the fact that anything extremely horrible could have happened to Sunye other than the fact that she went missing and she wasn't there now.

"WHERE ARE YOU?"

He sobbed and panicked, crying out that same question until his throat became hoarse.  His face was sunken in the snow when the gate's hinges squealed from being opened.  Sungmin was too busy sobbing.