█ Chapter 10: A Spark

The trip out of the garage and towards their new destination in Busan was an awkward one, to say the very least. Kyungsoo won three rounds of rock-paper-scissors in a row and claimed the passenger seat for himself while Jongin drove and the remaining four (plus Coco) were crammed like clowns in the backseat.

Their gas depleted after twenty miles so the six traveled on foot the rest of the way, although nightfall kept them off the main road and closer to the residential areas where shelter was bountiful.

They chose a quiet neighborhood to stay the night. Whereas most buildings in Seoul were apartments, the "houses" the group came across were rustic and poorly built like they were put together with sticks and mud. There were traces of traditional architecture woven into their design with the plated roofs and paper-maché screen doors, but the iron gates that stood guard in front of every house appealed to Jongin's group the most. A promising shelter needed to have the most security.

Both Chanyeol and Baekhyun hadn't said more than a couple of words since leaving the garage (surprisingly enough) but Jongin couldn't care less as long as they answered to their questions and posed no threat to his friends.

Jongin and Minseok scavenged the run-down house for any stray biters before setting up camp in what looked like the living room. It barely had anything but a calendar hanging on the wall, an old TV, a gnarled coffee table, and a blanket rolled out on the ground. It looked like the residents hadn't led much of an extravagant lifestyle even before the apocalypse and the biters had driven them out of their humble home still kept intact.

"It looks a lot like my grandparents' house," Jongin commented offhandedly as he rested against a wall.

Everyone was unwinding, even though Jongin couldn't let his guard down with two strangers in their group. Two strangers who had had no trouble pointing a gun at them just a day ago. He volunteered to stay awake while the others caught some sleep and his friends obliged too gladly, much to Jongin's bittersweet dismay.

He kept a fire going in the hearth which, in turn, heated the floors. It wasn't until he headed out to the rickety porch that Kyungsoo accompanied him with Coco at his side. Kyungsoo had always been somewhat of a mystery to him, even now, but the other male had proven his loyalty time after time for no legitimate reason at all. Jongin sometimes wondered but couldn't ask what Kyungsoo's motive(s) was or were for saving him. Them.

Trusting him didn't change the fact that he still felt uneasy whenever the two were alone for prolonged periods of time.

"Can't sleep?" Jongin asked, loathing awkward silences.

"Never really slept much, not since then," Kyungsoo answered, a lot more relaxed now.

Jongin scrunched up his nose and stared at the stars, the sound of crickets chirping and frogs croaking no longer as sentimentally pleasing to his senses as the sky once was. He once looked to the stars with wonder and amazement, but now he couldn't think of the space beyond them as anything but an escape from this hellhole. Surely, whatever was out there couldn't be as terrible as their predicament on Earth. "You know," he spoke, swinging one leg off the porch. "I never really understood why you stuck with us, even after we... I burned down your treehouse."

"It wasn't mine," Kyungsoo answered. "Even if you hadn't, I would have gone somewhere else. I don't stay in one place too long... and... you looked like a good guy."

The darker-skinned male chuckled in amusement and ruffled his shaggy hair. "Me? A good guy? I was always the troublemaker, the bully that took everyone's lunch money or beat them up for no good reason." he snorted.

"Yet, you took care of Sehun, despite him being... Sehun," Kyungsoo noted. "If I was you, I would have left him for dead because I see everyone as an asset. What puzzles me is why you kept him around after all this time."

"Sehun... he's my best friend. Nothing changes that." But as soon as he said so, Tao haunted his thoughts, and Jongin shook his head as if to literally free himself from that miserable memory.

Kyungsoo shrugged and lowered his bow beside him, just barely closing the gap between them. "Like I said, you're a good guy," he leaned in and pecked Jongin's cheek before anything else could be said, the naivety of the gesture concealed beneath a nonchalant smile. Kyungsoo was confusing despite being so transparent. "We need more honest, loyal people like you," Kyungsoo spoke and Jongin swore that the other male's voice sounded more like honey the deeper the night waned and it was obvious a spark had been lit between them, no matter how miniscule.

It was enough of a spark for Jongin to topple Kyungsoo over and the latter to tangle his legs around Jongin's waist as their lips and teeth mashed and clicked passionately. There was no love. No affection. Nothing special that set his affair with Kyungsoo apart from the times he had ed a female classmate in a public bathroom stall and had nothing to do with her after that. A part of Jongin knew Kyungsoo wasn't into that sentimental, lovey-dovey bull either, but both of them had gone too long without feeling alive.

Jongin grabbed Kyungsoo's good hand and pinned it above his head, forcing his tongue down the other male's throat hard enough to elicit a low groan from Kyungsoo's lips.

There was no shame in the way their bodies rutted against each other, passionately wanting, that he hardly even noticed he was top- when Sehun "walked in" on them ing each other on the porch. The three simmered in awkward silence for a while before Kyungsoo sighed and lowered his head to the hardwood porch with a gentle thud.

"Sehun," Jongin swallowed thickly, somehow feeling the overwhelming urge to explain himself despite the fact that he didn't need to. It was as if he believed Sehun deserved an explanation. "I-It's not... ... it's not what it looks like." He flung his shirt on haphazardly.

The expression on Sehun's face was an enigma, a puzzle Jongin found more difficult to solve than the usual poker faces Kyungsoo had on. He had never seen that kind of expression on Sehun before.

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to," Sehun apologized quickly. "I just thought you might have gone somewhere." He glanced at Kyungsoo, then back at Jongin. "There's a draft in the back. I think someone might have left the door open or something... just thought you might want to check it out."

"Sehun—"

"Good night, Jongin."

Jongin sighed in exasperation when the screen door slid shut and glared at Kyungsoo when he heard the other male snort.

"Hey, you," Jongin adjusted the uncomfortable bulge pressing against the slacks of his uniform and picked himself up. "I'm going to go check out that draft. You keep an eye out for the others if you're just going to lie there with that -eating smirk on your face."

He decided not to talk to Sehun after all that happened (mostly due to his own conflicted feelings on what had transpired) and headed straight to the back where the kitchen was. There definitely was a chilling breeze drifting through the short hallway but Jongin honestly couldn't be any less surprised that such an ancient house would have some maintenance issues here and there. He was just thankful that they didn't have to piss and take a in a dirt hole and use leaves as toilet paper, for the time being.

Jongin yawned and peered at the problematic screen door, noticing that there was a rather giant tear through like some wild animal had torn it. 'Probably a boar. Maybe a bear,' he thought as he collected pages from the calendar to tape over the holes. It would at least keep them sufficiently warm overnight.

He squinted as he mended the door, thankful that the moonlight outside was casting enough light to make his task that much easier.

Then, he saw it.

It was agile enough for Jongin to have missed it if he hadn't been paying attention, but he swore he had seen the shadow of a human fly across the screen door.

"Who's there?" he opened the door, grabbed a kitchen knife from the drying rack, and stepped a couple of feet past the threshhold of safety. There was nothing out there to greet him but the howling wind and rustling weeds that had overtaken the plot of crops that had been tended to there. No human, not even a field mouse.

He stayed absolutely still to be able to hear even the slightest sound of a branch snapping or a leaf crunching, but nothing. Only when Jongin was sure that the hallucinations were only conjured in his head due to sleep deprivation did he turn around. With the moonlight shining directly on the screen door, he was then able to see the dried blood spelling out the words 'GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING' on the paper.

When he stepped back in horror, he saw the other warnings scribbled in blood all over the white of the house's walls.

'THEY ARE COMING'

'RUN! RUN! RUN! HIDE!'

'NOBODY IS SAFE'

"Sehun! Get everyone up, we need to get out of here, now."