[exo] corroding hearts i/ii
title: corroding hearts
pairing: d.o./kai, past!kai/sehun (implied xiuhan lol)
word count: 12,822 words
rating: R
warning/s: [spoilers!]cussing, sex, mention of murder, suicide attempt/s, implied character death/s
summary: [apocalypse!au] The world is collapsing, but somehow Jongin falls in love within the chaos.
a/n:finally crossposted here after pondering for a few months if i should revise it. ;w; sad to say it remains as it is. waiting for comments and suggestions! ^w^ originally posted here
corroding hearts
“Sehun,” Quivering hands reach out towards the retreating back of a platinum haired man. Hair brushed from his broad shoulders by the wind, the man’s shirt tattered and worn. “Sehun, come back!”
His voice trails off into faint echoes as he keeps begging for him to come back, to come back into his arms, to the safety he thinks he can provide. His legs weigh heavy as lead, dragging him down and causing the space between them to distend into improbable lengths.
He topples forward on his knees. He tries to brush it off like it’s nothing, but it’s there, that infuriating load hindering him, obscuring him from running towards Sehun.
He looks up and despite the distance, he sees Sehun shatter like a mirror; his features contort into something unbecoming yet still recognizably Sehun.
He wants to touch him, to feel his fingertips pressing on Sehun’s pale and milky skin, to feel the emanating heat from Sehun’s body. But like every time someone touches broken glass-he bleeds.
The earth beneath him turns into a blinding crimson red, the sky is tinted into nothing but pitch black. There’s a piercing scream somewhere in the back of his head, and he desperately covers his ears because the scream is so familiar.
Help! Please help me!
He wants the shouting to stop. He wants him to be safe. He wants everything to just go back to normal, like how it used to be in his room playing video games and having a good laugh with friends. Or maybe go back to the night where he had him cuddled up under the same bed sheets as him, snoring away, perfectly serene. He wants so much and when a person doesn’t get what he desires the most, it makes him cruel.
He doesn’t want to go down that path, but in some point, he will have to.
He doesn’t have a choice.
Sehun doesn’t look back.
Everything started when a small number of people went haywire. Media reported them as people who had a few loose bolts while the church kept claiming them as possessed and therefore should be exorcised. However the general public shrugged them off like how most news and cover stories are taken.
Little did everyone know, it was the start of the end.
Weeks later, more and more people were sent to asylums, all of them from various places. Doctors and scientists tried to explain them with complex terminologies most people wouldn’t get. Kyungsoo caught the words suicidal and mad somewhere but it didn’t seem significant for him at that time, he was after all, a fresh college graduate.
Soon the asylums were full and the government got involved, “After the autopsy reports on several of the patients, scientists have discovered that the human brain is devolving. How this is happening, there are no further reports. Please tune in tomorrow for further de-“
Kyungsoo groans as the lack of mobility causes his entire right side to prickle and burn. He feels like he’s woken up from a hangover and slept on the same side for hours. But when he opens his eyes, disoriented, he sees his right hand handcuffed to a stairwell of an unfamiliar house.
What the fuck-Kyungsoo curses at the cold metal link, tugging at it as if it will fall apart that easily.
He keeps pulling helplessly, clanking metal ricocheting in the tattered house, and a fuzzy consciousness suddenly crawls at the farthest corner of his mind like a spider crawling on oversensitive skin. He feels panic kick him in the face and adrenaline pumping madly in his blood stream.
He needs to get out of there. Fast.
Kyungsoo pulls his hardest and fails all the same. The metal encasing his wrist does nothing but hold him in place, turning his wrist red with every forceful tug.
He is going to die.
There’s a soft sound other than his jagged breathing filling the silence and he turns his head toward its direction in panic. Kyungsoo sees a man, peering at him from the bottom of the staircase, brown eyes and chocolate hair wild like that of a stray dog. Or maybe he just didn’t care about personal hygiene at that point, well who would when practically everyone is crazy and out on a killing extravaganza.
Kyungsoo holds their gazes and thinks of different scenarios of how he’ll die. Before everything that happened to the world, he used to think he’d die surrounded by all those he loved. He mentally laughs; he shouldn’t have gotten out of the house that morning. He shouldn’t have thought that someone else other than himself is still sane.
His mind spins as he holds his breath. They break eye contact and Kyungsoo casts his eyes downward before he closes them, waiting for the man to attack him or probably gouge his eyes out, like how he saw that deranged man kill his own daughter a few days ago.
But the man never lunges at him; he doesn’t hear any footfalls or feel anyone hollowing his eyes out.
The man is still uncharacteristically standing underneath the flight of stairs, eyes solemn yet somehow placid nevertheless still sad, behind brown bangs, taking in air calmly.
“Hey,” he tries to call the man, but he’s surprised at his own hoarse voice. He stops and realizes he hasn’t talked in days and his throat is rusty like he had consumed a mouthful of cotton. “Please get me out of these cuffs.” He tries again, when he deems his voice dependable enough.
The man stares at him with an unreadable expression. “Why should I?”
“What?”
“You came from the outside. How could I possibly know whether you’re infected or not?”
“Of course I’m not. I’m talking to you aren’t I?” He scoffs a ‘shit’ between his teeth, spiteful and annoyed to the last letter. The man shrugs and turns to leave. He disappears into what seems to be the living room, Kyungsoo can’t tell well when the light from outside isn’t filtering through the second floor window anymore.
Kyungsoo’s eyes widened. How the fuck am I going to the bathroom?
“What’s your name?” the man nonchalantly walks towards him, with a sealed pack of noodle in hand. Kyungsoo reaches out instinctively, as his stomach rumbles in hunger. He stands there, watching him rip open the foil and consume the noodles dry. There seems to be not enough water to make soup anyway, Kyungsoo guesses. He could live with it. Dry noodles might not be the best, but he can’t afford to be picky now.
“I’m Jongin,” his captor hesitates but finally gives up with a shaky breath. Jongin stares down at the flickering candle he lighted up earlier in thought. “Okay. So, who are you? What’s your story in all of this havoc?”
Kyungsoo finishes half of the noodles before he answers. He needs to assess his moves wisely, one wrong move and he could die or something. He doesn’t want that, not yet. So, he looks up from the food and momentarily stopped chewing. “D.O.”
Jongin gives him an incredulous look, crossing his arms while pulling his threadbare jacket closer for warmth. “Is that supposed to be a stage name or something?” He parks himself opposite of Kyungsoo, the candle between them, and Kyungsoo notices the faultless features Jongin has underneath the eye bags and dirt and the mismatching clothes, like a perfectly shaped statue.
Kyungsoo swallows, the knot on his throat rising and falling accordingly. “I suppose. Used to be a singer, so yeah.”
“I used to dance,” Jongin says and it takes Kyungsoo quite a while to answer back. He didn’t really expect anyone to still be rational. He’d spent most of his days cooped up in a house basement he found, away from the raging world, that he had forgotten how to respond properly in a conversation.
“I did jazz and ballet, even if it doesn’t show.” Jongin laughs, the kind of laugh Kyungsoo hasn’t heard in a while, not even from his own lips. It’s short though, Jongin seems to be cautious of making too much noise.
It still makes Kyungsoo remember one of those ballet performances he had gone to before for a certain project. It was a play incorporated with ballet numbers, although he can’t say he understood much about what was going on then, he liked how the ballerinas moved and did pirouettes. They seemed to dance like flowing water, graceful and calm; sometimes it reminded him of silk waving in the wind.
“What about you, D.O.?”
Kyungsoo doesn’t answer. He crumples the empty foil and shoves it in his jeans pocket. “Could you please get me out of these cuffs?”
“I can’t,” Jongin says, shivering despite the heat. “I don’t know if you’d turn into something that’s not supposed to be. Into-a thing.”
“I can say the same thing to you,” Kyungsoo shoots back, ignoring the tingling sensation in his right hand from where the blood is being cut off by the cuffs.
Jongin is obviously frustrated at Kyungsoo’s refusal to engage in a proper conversation with him. He doesn’t answer anymore but he gives Kyungsoo a sad, disappointed smile before he stands up to leave.
“Good night.”
“When are you letting me out of these cuffs?” Kyungsoo asks. He’s not much of a conversationalist but he’s gone weeks without talking to anyone but himself and he’d rather not go down that road again. It’s an afternoon, he thinks. The light from outside is sufficient to light up the place that he doesn’t need to squint to see the mangy turquoise curtains fluttering with the occasional breeze.
Jongin is sitting a few steps away from him, his shotgun tucked between his crossed legs, humming something. He ignores Kyungsoo, and chooses to pick the lint on his frayed shirt.
“You look tired,” Kyungsoo says.
“Aren’t we all?” Jongin shots back, rubbing his temples.
Kyungsoo laughs but then groans when he moves his limbs. He continues on, “That’s why we rest, right? Let me keep watch so you could rest.”
Jongin stops his ministrations and stares at the boy, who is actually a man, handcuffed across him. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“Not really.” Kyungsoo looks at Jongin intently, swearing to god his fucking arm hurts. Jongin leaves him around sunset and comes back with two bottles of water and a few cans of tuna. Kyungsoo looks at the portion of food and at Jongin, he hasn’t been on wild camping trips in the forest but he’s pretty sure you’re supposed to ration food in a crisis. And since the whole world is in jeopardy, how the fuck could he just give Kyungsoo this amount of food?
“What’s with this? Why are you giving me so much food?”
“I’m going out,” Jongin says, not quite looking at Kyungsoo. He lights up the remaining candle before he loads his gun. “Don’t wait for me.”
Kyungsoo is a hard headed person. Four hours later, he’s still lying on the woody floor, his right hand hanging on the railing, wondering where Jongin could have gone to. Most likely to look for food like he said but, the probability of Jongin leaving him for good is high.
He tries to sleep with happy thoughts.
“How long have you been wandering around, Jongin?”
“I’ve been wandering my whole life.”
Kyungsoo hears the front door click but he doesn’t get up. The footsteps are recognizable, tap, tap, tap, the guestroom door opens, tap, tap, and it closes. Jongin’s back.
It’s particularly windy around sunset that day, and Jongin hears something slamming shut a few times. At first instinct, he thought something’s inside the house, but it was just a poorly barricaded window in the kitchen. The nails couldn’t hold them in place from the wind.
He wants to ask D.O. to shut it for him but then again he’s handcuffed him to a stairwell. Jongin sighs heavily, scouring the basement for a toolbox.
He enters the messy kitchen, messy, he thinks, is an understatement. There is a lot of debris scattered around, chunks of wood and metal lying about as if the entire kitchen had been hit with a tornado.
He sighs and makes his way to the barely open window. Jongin hears a noise coming outside from it. The grip he has on the toolbox tightens, he wonders if he could somehow make use of it as a weapon just in case. Of all the times to have the shotgun out of range, why now?
Breathing deeply, he carefully inches closer to the window, picking up a piece of wood in the process. But a strong breeze opens the window fully and Jongin bites his tongue. Despite the darkness brought about by the lack of moonlight, he sees a thing standing right outside the window. He tries to move again without getting noticed but then there’s a crash as he accidentally topples a plate over with the wood. The thing’s head snaps right into his direction and Jongin bolts.
“Shit,” Jongin cusses, running through the clutter of a kitchen to the stairs where he left his shotgun. The thing is on his heels after climbing into the room, but the loud thuds tell Jongin that it’s having a hard time maneuvering its way through the debris.
“D.O.!” He shouts just a few feet away from the shotgun below the staircase. However, he commits two mistakes. His first mistake is that he’s still got the toolbox in his hands and the second is that he looks back. His feet tangle with each other in his panicked state and he falls forward, hurling the toolbox in the air.
The thing is finally out of the kitchen and is frantically dashing towards Jongin. He tries to get up but it seems he’s injured his ankle. Blood is pumping in his ears, yet the adrenaline coursing through his blood stream isn’t enough to get him up and running. The thing lunges at him, its whole body weight pushing down on Jongin, hands forcing its way to Jongin’s neck.
While Jongin wrestles for his life, Kyungsoo desperately makes a grab for the saw, just an inch away from his outstretched hand. This isn’t working, he tells himself. Kyungsoo tries to even his breathing, maybe he’d think clearly that way. The second attempt, he uses his foot to drag the saw to him. Once he felt the cold metal in his hand he manhandles the saw and dislodges himself from the cuffs without accidentally cutting off his arm instead.
He seizes the crowbar not far away and runs down the flight of stairs to help Jongin. He whacks the thing right on the side of its head before it can bite Jongin’s fingers off. The thing yelps and falls to its side, cringing in pain.
Kyungsoo has no idea what’s driving him to keep pulverizing that thing’s head into pieces. Blood is splattering everywhere, onto his shirt, onto his shoes and onto his hands.
The final blow, Kyungsoo makes sure, is harder than the others to make sure it’s dead. The crowbar weighs heavily in his hands as the adrenaline in his bloodstream dies down. So he lets the crowbar slip from his fingers. Kyungsoo flinches at the sound it makes as it hits the floor.
He hears Jongin groan from behind him. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m good, just bleeding a bit. Maybe my ankle’s broken though,” Kyungsoo stares at him with his large eyes and Jongin sees the blood on him. They both laugh; Kyungsoo’s sounds tired while Jongin doesn’t know whether his is tired as well or just plain scared shitless.
“Does this mean I don’t need to wear those handcuffs anymore?” He tries to wear a lopsided smile which doesn’t suit him at all. He kind of reminds Jongin of some awkward kid who’s trying to play it cool when he’s been caught watching porn at school.
“No. We’re good.” Jongin sighs.
“They’re human just like us, Jonginnie.”
“Human? Are you fucking serious? Do you even know what human means anymore?”
“It certainly isn’t us,” Sehun takes another long look at his bloody hands. “We’re not human anymore.”
Days keep passing by, maybe two maybe nine, Jongin doesn’t mind. What he does mind is that food is running low again and he hasn’t left the house for so long that it scares him. Ever since everyone’s gone mad, he’s been living like a nomad. Occupying one house and leaving for another after just a short period of time in case someone might come across him there.
This time, he tries to make an exception. “One more day,” he says to himself, tucking the gun between his legs, as he leans on the front door below the staircase.
He’s not sure whether D.O. is sane or crazy. Jongin has been observing him for many hours between the days they’ve spent together and he supposes he’s sane, but after he saved Jongin from that thing, he’s back to not being sure again.
Yes, D.O did save him, but the way he mercilessly beat that thing’s brain to a pulp with a crowbar sends shivers down to his spine. The image of D.O. whacking him and bathing in Jongin’s blood is not a good thing to imagine before one sleeps.
“Do you remember when this all started?” Kyungsoo asks between spoonfuls of his canned tuna. Jongin promptly ignores him, preferring to clean the barrel of his gun.
It’s another muted, rainy day but Kyungsoo swears Jongin can hear the loud and haphazard thumping in his chest. He couldn’t stop himself from asking. “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”
Something is grunting outside the door and Jongin answers back after it leaves. “Why would you think that?” There’s a playful tone in his voice and Kyungsoo doesn’t know if he should be alarmed or not.
“You’re loading your gun,” his gaze follows Jongin’s slow and lazy movements as he breaks open the barrel on its hinge, shoving in a cartridge into the chamber and closes it. “At least let me finish this tuna if you’re going to.” Kyungsoo tries to joke, but it sounded like a pathetic plea for his life.
Jongin drowns everything out and when Kyungsoo’s words reached his ears, it just sounded sad and wrong. He should’ve killed him a long time ago if he originally planned to. He shouldn’t have shared his food if he just wanted to kill him off.
“No, I’m just going to snatch some food from a possible convenience store. We’re running low.”
“Then why don’t you kill me so you wouldn’t have to split the food and risk your life out there,” Kyungsoo says matter-of-factly.
“I kinda like your company, D.O.,” Jongin snickers and waves goodbye. “Who’s gonna drown out those dying shrieks when you’re dead? Don’t worry. I’ll be back.”
“Wait,” Kyungsoo shoves the tuna in his mouth, “Let me come with you.” But Jongin is already out of the house and out into the night.
A month with Jongin and Kyungsoo spent two weeks of it handcuffed to a stairwell. Things are looking up now, he thinks. Jongin found them a new safe haven a block away from the previous one and a good two blocks away from the nearest convenience store. The house isn’t the most luxurious in the neighborhood, just a two storey residence with a few windows, perfect for their fleeting accommodation and it’s easy to barricade.
At least Kyungsoo has his own room now; he doesn’t need to spend his nights on the dusty staircase. It’s not fancy or anything, just a simple room with a bed, probably a guestroom by the lack of personal belongings. He’s okay with it though. It’s not like they’re going to be there forever.
Jongin knocks on his door and announces he’ll be leaving. Kyungsoo does nothing but nod and goes back to covering the bed with the bedspread he found in the tall oak cabinet.
Tired, but unable to sleep, Kyungsoo goes around the house. He re-checks the windows and doors on the first floor to see if they’re well blocked before he proceeds to explore the second floor.
He opens the first room and finds a cream colored room, neat and untouched. He sees Jongin’s duffel bag settled on the bed and decides to carry on to the next room. The next room is the master’s bedroom, probably because there’s a king sized bed there and Kyungsoo thoughtlessly jumps face first on the bed.
A pungent smell fills his nostrils and he realizes there’s dried blood on the sheets, a trail leading towards the closet. He scrambles to get up, pinching his nose, and dashes for the door.
Kyungsoo makes a note to actually be careful where he sticks his nose in.
The last room other than his is the bathroom; he tries the sink and holy heavens! there’s water. Excited, somehow, he runs back to the guestroom down the hall and finds some clothes to wear. They’re all a size bigger than him yet he doesn’t complain. After a cold shower (which thank god the water didn’t turn into blood or anything disgusting), he goes back to the guest room and waits.
Jongin probably isn’t back yet. But he checks the lock on the front door just in case.
“Oh.”
“Shit.” Jongin pushes Kyungsoo inside, lines of sweat dripping from his forehead. He’s winded and twitchy as he locks the door, pushing a figurine cabinet against it.
Kyungsoo gapes at him, trying to put to and to together. “They chased you all the way here?”
Jongin slumps back on the cabinet, sliding downwards to the floor. He nods. “Maybe, I don’t know. Can’t risk looking.”
“Why didn’t you shoot?” He asks, uselessly hovering over Jongin, a worried frown on his face.
“It’s not advised to shoot in the dark, D.O.” Jongin has his eyes closed now, still breathing unevenly. “Plus reloading ain’t easy as you think it is. I only have a few bullets on me.”
Kyungsoo says nothing anymore but tells him to take a shower. Jongin’s eyes fly open at the word shower, like it’s a once in a million phenomena he’s always itching to witness.
“Second floor, second room on the left. And don’t go into the other room. It smells like someone died in there.” It was meant like as a joke however Jongin looks at him intently and nods.
“I know, I moved the body in the closet.”
Days and nights turn into weeks, after that close run-in with the things Jongin decides not to leave the house at all. He tries to monitor the ones who are in the near perimeter and there’s always too much of them to handle.
Staying and waiting in the house, holding up endless conversations with D.O. has somehow made an eerie tranquility hang in the air of the house. It makes Jongin’s skin crawl with every bump and scratch he hears.
“Hey, Jongin, how old are you?”
“Turned twenty a few months ago, I think.”
Two weeks in that house with no clue of what’s going to happen, it’s driving Jongin to the brink of paranoia.
“Don’t you think ‘I love you’s are overrated? You can say it casually like there’s no meaning to it. Jongin, I’m scared of it.”
Kyungsoo sits up from the awful moldy bed, head aching from the sudden jolt. He hears Jongin screaming from the other room and he clambers down the hall with a flashlight in hand.
“Jongin!” He shouts as well, he feels his guts constricting so tight in alarm that he almost couldn’t run down the narrow hall.
“What’s going on Jongin?” Kyungsoo unlocks the door with much strength, mind envisioning blood and unnecessary organs spilling around. But what his flashlight illuminates is Jongin curled into a ball on the floor, eyes shut and hands covering his ears as if to block out any noise. Kyungsoo could see the light trail of tears cascading down his cheeks.
Jongin looks like a total wreck.
“Make it stop.” Jongin is saying something, and it takes Kyungsoo a few steps forward to hear him. He kneels down, prying Jongin’s fingers from his ears. He drags Jongin back onto the bed with all his strength. “Make it stop.”
Kyungsoo places Jongin’s head on his lap, patting his head to ease him. “Make it stop.” Jongin’s hands are now balled into a fist, tears showing no signs of ceasing.
“I can’t make it stop if I don’t know what’s going on with you,” Kyungsoo croaks, voice laced with sleep and lethargy. His heart is thumping loudly like a bass drum and it’s not helping in any way. “Okay?”
Jongin still has his eyes and fist closed and doesn’t answer him. Kyungsoo patiently waits, his heart slowing down with every passing minute.
“Sometimes,” Jongin says. He doesn’t finish and Kyungsoo thinks he might have fallen asleep again. He doesn’t though, with his trembling hands and shaky breaths, Kyungsoo asks.
“Sometimes what?”
“Sometimes I wonder what would have been when I didn’t leave the house, if I stayed with him instead, even for another day. Or we should have left together.” The heels of Jongin’s hands are now against his swollen eyes in a futile attempt to stop himself from crying. “Sehun-Sehun. I’m sorry. I should have listened to you. I didn’t mean to…”
Kyungsoo has no idea who Sehun is or how important he was, probably still is, to Jongin but the words escaped from his lips before he could stop himself. “It wasn’t your fault, Jongin.”
Jongin lies still. Kyungsoo feels a wave of remorse bubbling in his stomach when Jongin screams at him. “It wasn’t my fault? How would you know? Good fucking lord, D.O.. You don’t fucking know anything.”
“Then why is it your fault?” Kyungsoo tries so hard not to shout at Jongin. He tries not to let out his frustrations by screaming back at him.
“I left him.”
“Why did you?”
“I thought,” he pauses in concentration. “I thought he was sick. Like a cold or something. He wasn’t getting out of bed, so I went to get some meds. And when I got back-”
Jongin is trembling again, much worse than before. Kyungsoo pulls him up into a sitting position, making direct eye contact with him. He notices Jongin’s unseeing eyes and how they’re filled with yet to be spoken horrors. They turn glassy again and Kyungsoo fears what Jongin would say. “I killed him.”
Kyungsoo’s muscles go lax and he feels himself go sloppy. He let’s go of Jongin, and gapes at the latter in utter disbelief.
“What? What do you mean you killed him?”
“Shot a bullet right through him, whacked him aside with the shotgun. How detailed do you want it? Do you want to know how sickly pale he looked? Or how his eyes looked unmistakably dead?” He spat, every little civility oozing out of his body in a single second.
“Why the hell would you do that, Jongin?” He was gasping now, almost screaming.
“Like I said, I went out to get medicine for him. When I came back I shot him, it wasn’t on purpose, but well maybe it was. He came at me like those things. I was panicking. I pulled the trigger and shoved him aside.” Jongin was carding his hand through his hair now; the frustration is getting to him.
“But what if he was bitten or something? Maybe it was the virus that made him do it.” Kyungsoo tries to find logic in all this madness, there is no one to tell him if he was right or wrong. No one to inform him what the hell is happening anyway.
“He was never bitten. If he was, I should have known.” Jongin doesn’t look at him directly anymore, choosing to stare at the picture frame on the bedside table.
It was a picture of the previous tenants, two guys wearing identical smiles on their faces, the taller one with blond hair has his hand draped on the other guy with a gummy smile. Jongin wonders how they died. “Me on the other hand,” he starts.
Kyungsoo isn’t listening anymore, thoughts on a journey to find rationality in the chaos of the new world. Everyone isn’t dead, just mindless and a like that of a hungry animal. Why? Because Mother Nature is a bitch and is just taking back what’s hers? Is this divine punishment or just a stroke of misfortune? Some scientists might have created the perfect virus to kill of a country. Maybe not.
“I didn’t kill him because I wanted to.” Jongin says, pulling the covers over his head. “I just didn’t know.”
Kyungsoo wants to argue with him, to rile him up, part of him thinks Jongin deserves the guilt but his heart tells him Jongin doesn’t.
The sun is almost peeking through the windows and Jongin’s probably already asleep, curled into a ball again, like an insecure child without his teddy bear. Kyungsoo falls asleep on the foot of the bed.
Part Two
pairing: d.o./kai, past!kai/sehun (implied xiuhan lol)
word count: 12,822 words
rating: R
warning/s: [spoilers!]cussing, sex, mention of murder, suicide attempt/s, implied character death/s
summary: [apocalypse!au] The world is collapsing, but somehow Jongin falls in love within the chaos.
a/n:finally crossposted here after pondering for a few months if i should revise it. ;w; sad to say it remains as it is. waiting for comments and suggestions! ^w^ originally posted here
corroding hearts
“Sehun,” Quivering hands reach out towards the retreating back of a platinum haired man. Hair brushed from his broad shoulders by the wind, the man’s shirt tattered and worn. “Sehun, come back!”
His voice trails off into faint echoes as he keeps begging for him to come back, to come back into his arms, to the safety he thinks he can provide. His legs weigh heavy as lead, dragging him down and causing the space between them to distend into improbable lengths.
He topples forward on his knees. He tries to brush it off like it’s nothing, but it’s there, that infuriating load hindering him, obscuring him from running towards Sehun.
He looks up and despite the distance, he sees Sehun shatter like a mirror; his features contort into something unbecoming yet still recognizably Sehun.
He wants to touch him, to feel his fingertips pressing on Sehun’s pale and milky skin, to feel the emanating heat from Sehun’s body. But like every time someone touches broken glass-he bleeds.
The earth beneath him turns into a blinding crimson red, the sky is tinted into nothing but pitch black. There’s a piercing scream somewhere in the back of his head, and he desperately covers his ears because the scream is so familiar.
Help! Please help me!
He wants the shouting to stop. He wants him to be safe. He wants everything to just go back to normal, like how it used to be in his room playing video games and having a good laugh with friends. Or maybe go back to the night where he had him cuddled up under the same bed sheets as him, snoring away, perfectly serene. He wants so much and when a person doesn’t get what he desires the most, it makes him cruel.
He doesn’t want to go down that path, but in some point, he will have to.
He doesn’t have a choice.
Sehun doesn’t look back.
Everything started when a small number of people went haywire. Media reported them as people who had a few loose bolts while the church kept claiming them as possessed and therefore should be exorcised. However the general public shrugged them off like how most news and cover stories are taken.
Little did everyone know, it was the start of the end.
Weeks later, more and more people were sent to asylums, all of them from various places. Doctors and scientists tried to explain them with complex terminologies most people wouldn’t get. Kyungsoo caught the words suicidal and mad somewhere but it didn’t seem significant for him at that time, he was after all, a fresh college graduate.
Soon the asylums were full and the government got involved, “After the autopsy reports on several of the patients, scientists have discovered that the human brain is devolving. How this is happening, there are no further reports. Please tune in tomorrow for further de-“
Kyungsoo groans as the lack of mobility causes his entire right side to prickle and burn. He feels like he’s woken up from a hangover and slept on the same side for hours. But when he opens his eyes, disoriented, he sees his right hand handcuffed to a stairwell of an unfamiliar house.
What the fuck-Kyungsoo curses at the cold metal link, tugging at it as if it will fall apart that easily.
He keeps pulling helplessly, clanking metal ricocheting in the tattered house, and a fuzzy consciousness suddenly crawls at the farthest corner of his mind like a spider crawling on oversensitive skin. He feels panic kick him in the face and adrenaline pumping madly in his blood stream.
He needs to get out of there. Fast.
Kyungsoo pulls his hardest and fails all the same. The metal encasing his wrist does nothing but hold him in place, turning his wrist red with every forceful tug.
He is going to die.
There’s a soft sound other than his jagged breathing filling the silence and he turns his head toward its direction in panic. Kyungsoo sees a man, peering at him from the bottom of the staircase, brown eyes and chocolate hair wild like that of a stray dog. Or maybe he just didn’t care about personal hygiene at that point, well who would when practically everyone is crazy and out on a killing extravaganza.
Kyungsoo holds their gazes and thinks of different scenarios of how he’ll die. Before everything that happened to the world, he used to think he’d die surrounded by all those he loved. He mentally laughs; he shouldn’t have gotten out of the house that morning. He shouldn’t have thought that someone else other than himself is still sane.
His mind spins as he holds his breath. They break eye contact and Kyungsoo casts his eyes downward before he closes them, waiting for the man to attack him or probably gouge his eyes out, like how he saw that deranged man kill his own daughter a few days ago.
But the man never lunges at him; he doesn’t hear any footfalls or feel anyone hollowing his eyes out.
The man is still uncharacteristically standing underneath the flight of stairs, eyes solemn yet somehow placid nevertheless still sad, behind brown bangs, taking in air calmly.
“Hey,” he tries to call the man, but he’s surprised at his own hoarse voice. He stops and realizes he hasn’t talked in days and his throat is rusty like he had consumed a mouthful of cotton. “Please get me out of these cuffs.” He tries again, when he deems his voice dependable enough.
The man stares at him with an unreadable expression. “Why should I?”
“What?”
“You came from the outside. How could I possibly know whether you’re infected or not?”
“Of course I’m not. I’m talking to you aren’t I?” He scoffs a ‘shit’ between his teeth, spiteful and annoyed to the last letter. The man shrugs and turns to leave. He disappears into what seems to be the living room, Kyungsoo can’t tell well when the light from outside isn’t filtering through the second floor window anymore.
Kyungsoo’s eyes widened. How the fuck am I going to the bathroom?
“What’s your name?” the man nonchalantly walks towards him, with a sealed pack of noodle in hand. Kyungsoo reaches out instinctively, as his stomach rumbles in hunger. He stands there, watching him rip open the foil and consume the noodles dry. There seems to be not enough water to make soup anyway, Kyungsoo guesses. He could live with it. Dry noodles might not be the best, but he can’t afford to be picky now.
“I’m Jongin,” his captor hesitates but finally gives up with a shaky breath. Jongin stares down at the flickering candle he lighted up earlier in thought. “Okay. So, who are you? What’s your story in all of this havoc?”
Kyungsoo finishes half of the noodles before he answers. He needs to assess his moves wisely, one wrong move and he could die or something. He doesn’t want that, not yet. So, he looks up from the food and momentarily stopped chewing. “D.O.”
Jongin gives him an incredulous look, crossing his arms while pulling his threadbare jacket closer for warmth. “Is that supposed to be a stage name or something?” He parks himself opposite of Kyungsoo, the candle between them, and Kyungsoo notices the faultless features Jongin has underneath the eye bags and dirt and the mismatching clothes, like a perfectly shaped statue.
Kyungsoo swallows, the knot on his throat rising and falling accordingly. “I suppose. Used to be a singer, so yeah.”
“I used to dance,” Jongin says and it takes Kyungsoo quite a while to answer back. He didn’t really expect anyone to still be rational. He’d spent most of his days cooped up in a house basement he found, away from the raging world, that he had forgotten how to respond properly in a conversation.
“I did jazz and ballet, even if it doesn’t show.” Jongin laughs, the kind of laugh Kyungsoo hasn’t heard in a while, not even from his own lips. It’s short though, Jongin seems to be cautious of making too much noise.
It still makes Kyungsoo remember one of those ballet performances he had gone to before for a certain project. It was a play incorporated with ballet numbers, although he can’t say he understood much about what was going on then, he liked how the ballerinas moved and did pirouettes. They seemed to dance like flowing water, graceful and calm; sometimes it reminded him of silk waving in the wind.
“What about you, D.O.?”
Kyungsoo doesn’t answer. He crumples the empty foil and shoves it in his jeans pocket. “Could you please get me out of these cuffs?”
“I can’t,” Jongin says, shivering despite the heat. “I don’t know if you’d turn into something that’s not supposed to be. Into-a thing.”
“I can say the same thing to you,” Kyungsoo shoots back, ignoring the tingling sensation in his right hand from where the blood is being cut off by the cuffs.
Jongin is obviously frustrated at Kyungsoo’s refusal to engage in a proper conversation with him. He doesn’t answer anymore but he gives Kyungsoo a sad, disappointed smile before he stands up to leave.
“Good night.”
“When are you letting me out of these cuffs?” Kyungsoo asks. He’s not much of a conversationalist but he’s gone weeks without talking to anyone but himself and he’d rather not go down that road again. It’s an afternoon, he thinks. The light from outside is sufficient to light up the place that he doesn’t need to squint to see the mangy turquoise curtains fluttering with the occasional breeze.
Jongin is sitting a few steps away from him, his shotgun tucked between his crossed legs, humming something. He ignores Kyungsoo, and chooses to pick the lint on his frayed shirt.
“You look tired,” Kyungsoo says.
“Aren’t we all?” Jongin shots back, rubbing his temples.
Kyungsoo laughs but then groans when he moves his limbs. He continues on, “That’s why we rest, right? Let me keep watch so you could rest.”
Jongin stops his ministrations and stares at the boy, who is actually a man, handcuffed across him. “You’re kidding me, right?”
“Not really.” Kyungsoo looks at Jongin intently, swearing to god his fucking arm hurts. Jongin leaves him around sunset and comes back with two bottles of water and a few cans of tuna. Kyungsoo looks at the portion of food and at Jongin, he hasn’t been on wild camping trips in the forest but he’s pretty sure you’re supposed to ration food in a crisis. And since the whole world is in jeopardy, how the fuck could he just give Kyungsoo this amount of food?
“What’s with this? Why are you giving me so much food?”
“I’m going out,” Jongin says, not quite looking at Kyungsoo. He lights up the remaining candle before he loads his gun. “Don’t wait for me.”
Kyungsoo is a hard headed person. Four hours later, he’s still lying on the woody floor, his right hand hanging on the railing, wondering where Jongin could have gone to. Most likely to look for food like he said but, the probability of Jongin leaving him for good is high.
He tries to sleep with happy thoughts.
“How long have you been wandering around, Jongin?”
“I’ve been wandering my whole life.”
Kyungsoo hears the front door click but he doesn’t get up. The footsteps are recognizable, tap, tap, tap, the guestroom door opens, tap, tap, and it closes. Jongin’s back.
It’s particularly windy around sunset that day, and Jongin hears something slamming shut a few times. At first instinct, he thought something’s inside the house, but it was just a poorly barricaded window in the kitchen. The nails couldn’t hold them in place from the wind.
He wants to ask D.O. to shut it for him but then again he’s handcuffed him to a stairwell. Jongin sighs heavily, scouring the basement for a toolbox.
He enters the messy kitchen, messy, he thinks, is an understatement. There is a lot of debris scattered around, chunks of wood and metal lying about as if the entire kitchen had been hit with a tornado.
He sighs and makes his way to the barely open window. Jongin hears a noise coming outside from it. The grip he has on the toolbox tightens, he wonders if he could somehow make use of it as a weapon just in case. Of all the times to have the shotgun out of range, why now?
Breathing deeply, he carefully inches closer to the window, picking up a piece of wood in the process. But a strong breeze opens the window fully and Jongin bites his tongue. Despite the darkness brought about by the lack of moonlight, he sees a thing standing right outside the window. He tries to move again without getting noticed but then there’s a crash as he accidentally topples a plate over with the wood. The thing’s head snaps right into his direction and Jongin bolts.
“Shit,” Jongin cusses, running through the clutter of a kitchen to the stairs where he left his shotgun. The thing is on his heels after climbing into the room, but the loud thuds tell Jongin that it’s having a hard time maneuvering its way through the debris.
“D.O.!” He shouts just a few feet away from the shotgun below the staircase. However, he commits two mistakes. His first mistake is that he’s still got the toolbox in his hands and the second is that he looks back. His feet tangle with each other in his panicked state and he falls forward, hurling the toolbox in the air.
The thing is finally out of the kitchen and is frantically dashing towards Jongin. He tries to get up but it seems he’s injured his ankle. Blood is pumping in his ears, yet the adrenaline coursing through his blood stream isn’t enough to get him up and running. The thing lunges at him, its whole body weight pushing down on Jongin, hands forcing its way to Jongin’s neck.
While Jongin wrestles for his life, Kyungsoo desperately makes a grab for the saw, just an inch away from his outstretched hand. This isn’t working, he tells himself. Kyungsoo tries to even his breathing, maybe he’d think clearly that way. The second attempt, he uses his foot to drag the saw to him. Once he felt the cold metal in his hand he manhandles the saw and dislodges himself from the cuffs without accidentally cutting off his arm instead.
He seizes the crowbar not far away and runs down the flight of stairs to help Jongin. He whacks the thing right on the side of its head before it can bite Jongin’s fingers off. The thing yelps and falls to its side, cringing in pain.
Kyungsoo has no idea what’s driving him to keep pulverizing that thing’s head into pieces. Blood is splattering everywhere, onto his shirt, onto his shoes and onto his hands.
The final blow, Kyungsoo makes sure, is harder than the others to make sure it’s dead. The crowbar weighs heavily in his hands as the adrenaline in his bloodstream dies down. So he lets the crowbar slip from his fingers. Kyungsoo flinches at the sound it makes as it hits the floor.
He hears Jongin groan from behind him. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah. I’m good, just bleeding a bit. Maybe my ankle’s broken though,” Kyungsoo stares at him with his large eyes and Jongin sees the blood on him. They both laugh; Kyungsoo’s sounds tired while Jongin doesn’t know whether his is tired as well or just plain scared shitless.
“Does this mean I don’t need to wear those handcuffs anymore?” He tries to wear a lopsided smile which doesn’t suit him at all. He kind of reminds Jongin of some awkward kid who’s trying to play it cool when he’s been caught watching porn at school.
“No. We’re good.” Jongin sighs.
“They’re human just like us, Jonginnie.”
“Human? Are you fucking serious? Do you even know what human means anymore?”
“It certainly isn’t us,” Sehun takes another long look at his bloody hands. “We’re not human anymore.”
Days keep passing by, maybe two maybe nine, Jongin doesn’t mind. What he does mind is that food is running low again and he hasn’t left the house for so long that it scares him. Ever since everyone’s gone mad, he’s been living like a nomad. Occupying one house and leaving for another after just a short period of time in case someone might come across him there.
This time, he tries to make an exception. “One more day,” he says to himself, tucking the gun between his legs, as he leans on the front door below the staircase.
He’s not sure whether D.O. is sane or crazy. Jongin has been observing him for many hours between the days they’ve spent together and he supposes he’s sane, but after he saved Jongin from that thing, he’s back to not being sure again.
Yes, D.O did save him, but the way he mercilessly beat that thing’s brain to a pulp with a crowbar sends shivers down to his spine. The image of D.O. whacking him and bathing in Jongin’s blood is not a good thing to imagine before one sleeps.
“Do you remember when this all started?” Kyungsoo asks between spoonfuls of his canned tuna. Jongin promptly ignores him, preferring to clean the barrel of his gun.
It’s another muted, rainy day but Kyungsoo swears Jongin can hear the loud and haphazard thumping in his chest. He couldn’t stop himself from asking. “You’re going to kill me, aren’t you?”
Something is grunting outside the door and Jongin answers back after it leaves. “Why would you think that?” There’s a playful tone in his voice and Kyungsoo doesn’t know if he should be alarmed or not.
“You’re loading your gun,” his gaze follows Jongin’s slow and lazy movements as he breaks open the barrel on its hinge, shoving in a cartridge into the chamber and closes it. “At least let me finish this tuna if you’re going to.” Kyungsoo tries to joke, but it sounded like a pathetic plea for his life.
Jongin drowns everything out and when Kyungsoo’s words reached his ears, it just sounded sad and wrong. He should’ve killed him a long time ago if he originally planned to. He shouldn’t have shared his food if he just wanted to kill him off.
“No, I’m just going to snatch some food from a possible convenience store. We’re running low.”
“Then why don’t you kill me so you wouldn’t have to split the food and risk your life out there,” Kyungsoo says matter-of-factly.
“I kinda like your company, D.O.,” Jongin snickers and waves goodbye. “Who’s gonna drown out those dying shrieks when you’re dead? Don’t worry. I’ll be back.”
“Wait,” Kyungsoo shoves the tuna in his mouth, “Let me come with you.” But Jongin is already out of the house and out into the night.
A month with Jongin and Kyungsoo spent two weeks of it handcuffed to a stairwell. Things are looking up now, he thinks. Jongin found them a new safe haven a block away from the previous one and a good two blocks away from the nearest convenience store. The house isn’t the most luxurious in the neighborhood, just a two storey residence with a few windows, perfect for their fleeting accommodation and it’s easy to barricade.
At least Kyungsoo has his own room now; he doesn’t need to spend his nights on the dusty staircase. It’s not fancy or anything, just a simple room with a bed, probably a guestroom by the lack of personal belongings. He’s okay with it though. It’s not like they’re going to be there forever.
Jongin knocks on his door and announces he’ll be leaving. Kyungsoo does nothing but nod and goes back to covering the bed with the bedspread he found in the tall oak cabinet.
Tired, but unable to sleep, Kyungsoo goes around the house. He re-checks the windows and doors on the first floor to see if they’re well blocked before he proceeds to explore the second floor.
He opens the first room and finds a cream colored room, neat and untouched. He sees Jongin’s duffel bag settled on the bed and decides to carry on to the next room. The next room is the master’s bedroom, probably because there’s a king sized bed there and Kyungsoo thoughtlessly jumps face first on the bed.
A pungent smell fills his nostrils and he realizes there’s dried blood on the sheets, a trail leading towards the closet. He scrambles to get up, pinching his nose, and dashes for the door.
Kyungsoo makes a note to actually be careful where he sticks his nose in.
The last room other than his is the bathroom; he tries the sink and holy heavens! there’s water. Excited, somehow, he runs back to the guestroom down the hall and finds some clothes to wear. They’re all a size bigger than him yet he doesn’t complain. After a cold shower (which thank god the water didn’t turn into blood or anything disgusting), he goes back to the guest room and waits.
Jongin probably isn’t back yet. But he checks the lock on the front door just in case.
“Oh.”
“Shit.” Jongin pushes Kyungsoo inside, lines of sweat dripping from his forehead. He’s winded and twitchy as he locks the door, pushing a figurine cabinet against it.
Kyungsoo gapes at him, trying to put to and to together. “They chased you all the way here?”
Jongin slumps back on the cabinet, sliding downwards to the floor. He nods. “Maybe, I don’t know. Can’t risk looking.”
“Why didn’t you shoot?” He asks, uselessly hovering over Jongin, a worried frown on his face.
“It’s not advised to shoot in the dark, D.O.” Jongin has his eyes closed now, still breathing unevenly. “Plus reloading ain’t easy as you think it is. I only have a few bullets on me.”
Kyungsoo says nothing anymore but tells him to take a shower. Jongin’s eyes fly open at the word shower, like it’s a once in a million phenomena he’s always itching to witness.
“Second floor, second room on the left. And don’t go into the other room. It smells like someone died in there.” It was meant like as a joke however Jongin looks at him intently and nods.
“I know, I moved the body in the closet.”
Days and nights turn into weeks, after that close run-in with the things Jongin decides not to leave the house at all. He tries to monitor the ones who are in the near perimeter and there’s always too much of them to handle.
Staying and waiting in the house, holding up endless conversations with D.O. has somehow made an eerie tranquility hang in the air of the house. It makes Jongin’s skin crawl with every bump and scratch he hears.
“Hey, Jongin, how old are you?”
“Turned twenty a few months ago, I think.”
Two weeks in that house with no clue of what’s going to happen, it’s driving Jongin to the brink of paranoia.
“Don’t you think ‘I love you’s are overrated? You can say it casually like there’s no meaning to it. Jongin, I’m scared of it.”
Kyungsoo sits up from the awful moldy bed, head aching from the sudden jolt. He hears Jongin screaming from the other room and he clambers down the hall with a flashlight in hand.
“Jongin!” He shouts as well, he feels his guts constricting so tight in alarm that he almost couldn’t run down the narrow hall.
“What’s going on Jongin?” Kyungsoo unlocks the door with much strength, mind envisioning blood and unnecessary organs spilling around. But what his flashlight illuminates is Jongin curled into a ball on the floor, eyes shut and hands covering his ears as if to block out any noise. Kyungsoo could see the light trail of tears cascading down his cheeks.
Jongin looks like a total wreck.
“Make it stop.” Jongin is saying something, and it takes Kyungsoo a few steps forward to hear him. He kneels down, prying Jongin’s fingers from his ears. He drags Jongin back onto the bed with all his strength. “Make it stop.”
Kyungsoo places Jongin’s head on his lap, patting his head to ease him. “Make it stop.” Jongin’s hands are now balled into a fist, tears showing no signs of ceasing.
“I can’t make it stop if I don’t know what’s going on with you,” Kyungsoo croaks, voice laced with sleep and lethargy. His heart is thumping loudly like a bass drum and it’s not helping in any way. “Okay?”
Jongin still has his eyes and fist closed and doesn’t answer him. Kyungsoo patiently waits, his heart slowing down with every passing minute.
“Sometimes,” Jongin says. He doesn’t finish and Kyungsoo thinks he might have fallen asleep again. He doesn’t though, with his trembling hands and shaky breaths, Kyungsoo asks.
“Sometimes what?”
“Sometimes I wonder what would have been when I didn’t leave the house, if I stayed with him instead, even for another day. Or we should have left together.” The heels of Jongin’s hands are now against his swollen eyes in a futile attempt to stop himself from crying. “Sehun-Sehun. I’m sorry. I should have listened to you. I didn’t mean to…”
Kyungsoo has no idea who Sehun is or how important he was, probably still is, to Jongin but the words escaped from his lips before he could stop himself. “It wasn’t your fault, Jongin.”
Jongin lies still. Kyungsoo feels a wave of remorse bubbling in his stomach when Jongin screams at him. “It wasn’t my fault? How would you know? Good fucking lord, D.O.. You don’t fucking know anything.”
“Then why is it your fault?” Kyungsoo tries so hard not to shout at Jongin. He tries not to let out his frustrations by screaming back at him.
“I left him.”
“Why did you?”
“I thought,” he pauses in concentration. “I thought he was sick. Like a cold or something. He wasn’t getting out of bed, so I went to get some meds. And when I got back-”
Jongin is trembling again, much worse than before. Kyungsoo pulls him up into a sitting position, making direct eye contact with him. He notices Jongin’s unseeing eyes and how they’re filled with yet to be spoken horrors. They turn glassy again and Kyungsoo fears what Jongin would say. “I killed him.”
Kyungsoo’s muscles go lax and he feels himself go sloppy. He let’s go of Jongin, and gapes at the latter in utter disbelief.
“What? What do you mean you killed him?”
“Shot a bullet right through him, whacked him aside with the shotgun. How detailed do you want it? Do you want to know how sickly pale he looked? Or how his eyes looked unmistakably dead?” He spat, every little civility oozing out of his body in a single second.
“Why the hell would you do that, Jongin?” He was gasping now, almost screaming.
“Like I said, I went out to get medicine for him. When I came back I shot him, it wasn’t on purpose, but well maybe it was. He came at me like those things. I was panicking. I pulled the trigger and shoved him aside.” Jongin was carding his hand through his hair now; the frustration is getting to him.
“But what if he was bitten or something? Maybe it was the virus that made him do it.” Kyungsoo tries to find logic in all this madness, there is no one to tell him if he was right or wrong. No one to inform him what the hell is happening anyway.
“He was never bitten. If he was, I should have known.” Jongin doesn’t look at him directly anymore, choosing to stare at the picture frame on the bedside table.
It was a picture of the previous tenants, two guys wearing identical smiles on their faces, the taller one with blond hair has his hand draped on the other guy with a gummy smile. Jongin wonders how they died. “Me on the other hand,” he starts.
Kyungsoo isn’t listening anymore, thoughts on a journey to find rationality in the chaos of the new world. Everyone isn’t dead, just mindless and a like that of a hungry animal. Why? Because Mother Nature is a bitch and is just taking back what’s hers? Is this divine punishment or just a stroke of misfortune? Some scientists might have created the perfect virus to kill of a country. Maybe not.
“I didn’t kill him because I wanted to.” Jongin says, pulling the covers over his head. “I just didn’t know.”
Kyungsoo wants to argue with him, to rile him up, part of him thinks Jongin deserves the guilt but his heart tells him Jongin doesn’t.
The sun is almost peeking through the windows and Jongin’s probably already asleep, curled into a ball again, like an insecure child without his teddy bear. Kyungsoo falls asleep on the foot of the bed.
Part Two