SBB 2016 ENTRY #16: AFTERLIFE (8/8)
Title: Afterlife (8/8)
Pairing: Minjung/bigender!Jonghyun
Rating: R--NC-17
Genre: Angst / Horror / Sci-Fi
Warnings: Character death, gore, body horror, prescription drug abuse, suicide attempt, mention of self-harm, mentions of food
Final Word Count: 74,000~
Minjung moved the rain barrel with Taemin’s remains to the side of the house, in the nook where the fencing met the house and formed a neat corner. There were no windows on this side of the house, nor a gate in the fence, and they might go in and out of every door in the house and pass through the gate on the other side of the house, all without ever seeing the barrel, unless they went looking for it.
She had hoped that keeping the barrel out of sight might coax her partner back into the sunshine with her, to keep her company as she finished the garden in the next couple of days. But Jonghyun stayed inside, and mostly kept to the bedroom, where he lay in silence for hours at a time.
She worried about him; he had lost several pounds in the last two weeks alone, and he hadn’t had much to spare in the first place. Now he was beginning to look haggard and hollow-eyed. His spindly arms and legs were an odd contrast to his broad shoulders, and his spare frame, drowned in his baggy clothes, gave him the appearance of a scarecrow. Their limited diet of canned goods didn’t seem to agree with him, and he had little appetite, only eating a few bites of each meal, just enough to tide him over to the next one.
The first of November arrived, and the air had a consistent chill to it now, in the mornings, although it wore off by early afternoon. Minjung and Jonghyun split a can of soup for lunch, and then she returned to the garden. She had little work to do at this point, but she liked to be out in the sun, with its warmth on her back, and her fingers in the earth, away from the perpetual twilight of their house, with its shades drawn, as silent as a mausoleum.
“You should join me,” she suggested to Jonghyun, as she always did. “Get some air. Some sun.”
“I don’t like the sun,” he replied.
That had always been true, as long as she had known him. The light hurt his eyes, and the heat hurt his head, and made him feel tired, and weak.
“Still,” she said. “A little Vitamin D is good for you. Good for your health.”
“My health,” he grumbled. “You sound like my mother.”
The woman still called faithfully, every day, though Jonghyun was less faithful about picking up. He had not told her about Taemin’s death, or his own suicide attempt.
“I don’t want to tell her anything that will upset her,” he’d told Minjung. “But everything in my brain right now would upset her, so what can I say to her?”
Minjung looked at Jonghyun now, as he sat at the table, hunched over the shallow puddle of soup in his bowl.
“I sound like someone who loves you,” she said. She patted his shoulder. “Come on. It’ll be good for you.”
He traced a circle around the bottom of his bowl with his spoon, and got up, leaving it on the table. And then, to her surprise, he followed her outside. He squatted on his heels a few yards away from her, like a small bird on its perch, and combed his fingers through the dirt.
“See?” She gave her voice the most encouraging lilt she could muster. “Isn’t this nice?”
“It’s too hot, and it’s too bright.” His face screwed up in a grimace.
“How on earth is this hot?”
“It’s hot compared to inside.”
“By a few degrees maybe!” she laughed.
He shrugged. “Feels too hot to me.”
After several more attempts at conversation, stymied by Jonghyun’s persistently ornery mood, Minjung gave up, and they both hunched over the garden in silence.
“Think I’m gonna go for a walk,” Jonghyun said at last, puffing a little as he got to his feet.
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere,” he said. “Why do I have to tell you? Aren’t you just happy that I’m out here in the great magical outdoors?”
She would not let him bait her. “Of course.” She smiled at him serenely. “Have a nice walk.”
Her reply seemed to fluster him. “Okay,” he said, his voice suddenly meek. “I’ll be back later.”
He left by way of the gate at the side of the house, leaving it open as he made his way to the road out front. She almost called after him to close the gate, but stopped herself. He was outside. It was what she’d wanted. The gate was a trivial thing. She could get up and close it herself.
In a few minutes, she told herself, as she returned to her work. There were multitudes of tiny little weeds in the garden, all sprouting from seeds that had no doubt arrived inside the bags of soil she had bought. They were tiny frail little things, likely not native to the area, although it was hard to tell what they might grow up to be when they were this small. The midsummer heat would have killed them straightaway, and even now, if she left them to fend for themselves, the dry winds would likely destroy most of them before they got too tall. But it pleased her to pluck them out, one by one, to make the garden soil neat and even around her garlic and onion shoots.
The repetitive task was soothing, and she soon lost track of time, measuring it only in the little pile of weeds that she had set aside on the hard ground outside the raised bed. The gate creaked a little, behind her.
“Jonghyun?” she said, without looking up. There was no reply. He was probably still too cranky to talk to her, she thought. She’d find some way to cheer him up later.
She had no time to continue her train of thought, as she felt a blow against her lower back, and she lost her balance and tumbled forward into the garden.
“Jonghyun, what the fuck--” she began, but another blow followed the first, knocking her flat. Before she could move, a heavy weight fell suddenly on top of her, pressing her face first into the earth. She wriggled, turned her face to the side, and spat out the dirt in her mouth.
“Jonghyun!” she snapped, now truly pissed. She blinked her eyes to clear them, and saw a hand braced against the earth, a few inches from her face. It was swollen, greenish black, and covered in a multitude of little cuts, as if it had burst in several places from the pressure inside. Each cut oozed a little into the dirt, the smell foul and sickeningly familiar.
She lay still for a moment, an irrational childlike voice in her brain suggesting that perhaps they were like bees, that if she just stayed very still, they would give up and leave. But then she felt hot breath on the back of her neck, as slimy drops spattered down against her skin, and she panicked, her entire body bucking as she screamed and clawed at the earth, trying to pull herself out from under the body. She managed to turn herself over, elbowing their face as she did so. They groaned, their head lolling to one side from the impact, but they stayed planted firmly on top of her, her narrow body pinned entirely under theirs. They seemed to be of average height, but very broad, and muscular, judging by the dense weight of their body. Their head swung back like a pendulum, and they gaped at her, their mouth stretching wide, as though they were grinning. Their face had gone entirely rotten and bloated. Their eyes were swollen almost shut, and juice ran from the corners, like pus, trailing down their cheeks and mingling with the slime that dribbled from their mouth and down their chin and dripped onto her chest.
She screamed again, shoving at the body with both hands, but it was futile; they were too heavy, and she couldn’t shift them. They raised one hand from the earth, and set it against her cheek, turning her head and pressing it sideways into the soft garden soil. Her nostrils were filled with the smell of the rot, drowning out even the scent of the soil, and the broken shoots of the onions and garlic that were crushed under her body. She was going to die here like this, she thought, mauled in her own garden, as the sun shone down on them.
The hand moved up into her hair, and tugged on it, until she yelped in pain. And then they bent and licked up along her neck, slowly, as if savoring her, as their tongue left a trail of slime behind.
“Just kill me already,” she sobbed, shuddering violently with every twitch of their tongue against her skin. She didn’t know if they could hear her, or understand her, but she begged anyway for the mercy of a quick death, if she had to die. She closed her eyes, and waited for the end, for the infected to dig their nails and teeth into her skin and rip her open.
But death did not come. Instead, she heard the light patter of footsteps at the gate, and she felt the infected’s head pull away. The breeze was cool across the slime on her neck.
“Oh my god!” she heard Jonghyun cry. “Minjung!”
“Jonghyun!” she shrieked. She tried to turn her head, to see him, but the hand in her hair kept her fixed in place.
“Oh my god,” she heard again, as the back door slammed open. There was a muffled clatter in the kitchen, and then Jonghyun’s footsteps emerged again. “Don’t move!” he shouted, and she let out a hysterical laugh at how little choice she had in the matter.
The infected shifted above her, a guttural growl sounding in their throat, and then it was cut off by a sickening crunch, and their weight shifted suddenly, to one side, and rolled off her.
“Get up, get up!” Jonghyun hissed. His hand gripped her upper arm, and she latched onto him, automatically, clinging to him as he pulled her to her feet. In his other hand he clutched the wobbly barstool from their kitchen. The rim of the seat was smeared with gore.
“Are you hurt?” he panted. He shook her when she did not respond right away. “Babe, talk to me!”
“I’m--I’m okay,” she stammered, dazed.
The infected lay on the other size of the raised garden bed, their body a twitching, groaning heap.
Jonghyun let go of her. “Don’t look,” he said. “I gotta--gotta finish the job.” He took two steps and straddled the body. “Don’t look,” he said again, but Minjung could not turn away, her eyes riveted on him as he brought the stool up and bashed it down against their head, again, and again, until it was entirely shapeless and ruined, a puddle of dark fluid spreading underneath.
Jonghyun stood back, breathing heavily, and dropped the stool. “Killing’s easier than I thought it would be,” he muttered.
He returned to her side. “Come on,” he said gently. “Let’s get you inside.”
---
The attack had left Minjung covered in dark bruises along her ribs and back and arms, from where she had been slammed against the wooden perimeter of the garden. But nothing was broken, and she had no cuts that Jonghyun could find, as he sponged her clean, and then took her into the shower.
His hands were tender as they moved over her skin, cleaning her, pausing every time she shivered. “Are you okay?” he said.
“Yeah, yeah,” she hastened to assure him every time.
But her shivering grew more and more frequent and violent with every minute she stood in the shower, and at last he turned off the water, and guided her out into the bathroom, where he sat her on the closed toilet, and wrapped a towel around her, and used another to dry her hair.
“It’s my fault,” he whispered later, as they lay together in bed, Minjung still shivering.
“It’s--it’s nobody’s fault,” she said.
“But if I hadn’t left you to go on a walk, if I hadn’t left the gate open…”
“It’s not your fault,” she repeated. “Nothing about this is your fault.”
Though she still shivered at the remembered touch of the infected’s hands and tongue, and the weight of their body, she felt light and weightless inside. Her bruises and her lingering terror felt like a kind of penance for what she had done to Taemin. Her guilt eased a little.
“You got there just in time,” she said.
He cupped her cheek with his hand, and she felt his fingers tremble. “I tricked myself into thinking that I was immune,” he whispered. “That I’d been hurt so badly that nothing could really hurt me anymore. But then I saw you just--” he exhaled, his breath shaking. “Just lying there, under them. And I thought for a second that you were dead.” He closed his eyes. “It was the worst moment of my life.”
Minjung clung to him, feeling tears sting her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
His eyes searched hers. “Losing you wouldn’t just be losing someone I loved. It’d be like losing myself. The last shred of me that exists. You’re so much a part of me now that I don’t know who I am without you. I don’t even know if I exist without you.”
“I’ll never leave you,” she whispered.
He smiled sadly. “I wish it worked like that. But we can’t make promises about ‘never,’ or ‘forever.’” He stroked her arm. “Death breaks all those promises, and we’re dying, Minjung. Every day. The person you were yesterday is dead. Today you will die too, and tomorrow, and the day after that.”
He kissed her fiercely, his mouth lingering against hers. “I don’t want to think about the past, or the future. The dead can bury themselves. The only people I care about are the people we are right now, here, together. Fuck everybody else. Fuck every day except today. Fuck it all.”
Her blood stirred at his words, and she kissed him in return, curling her hand around the back of his neck, and twining her long fingers in his hair. They went slowly at first, each needy, but timid, until Jonghyun whimpered hungrily, his fingers playing with the hem of her shirt.
“I’ll do all the work,” he promised, as she peeled off her clothes and he fastened the harness around her hips. He fucked himself slowly on the toy, his eyes never leaving her, not even as he began to fall apart, his breathing coming out in little stuttered moans. Only at the end did he break eye contact, his eyes rolling back in his head as his eyelids fluttered shut, and he came.
He collapsed on top of her, wordless, and nuzzled into her. It had all been worth it, Minjung thought, every second of pain and fear. Just to be in his arms again, and know that she was loved.
They held each other for a long time, and Minjung could feel his heartbeat as it slowed into a peaceful rhythm, and beat on steadily through his chest.
---
The power went out the next day. They didn’t notice it for a few minutes--it was midday, they had no lights on in the house, and the temperature had been mild enough that they’d been using neither heat nor air conditioning. The day was clear, and the winds were low, so they had the windows open, to let in the cool air. They were both occupied with other things when it died. Minjung was scrubbing diligently at a stubborn sticky spot on the floor next to the dishwasher, and Junghee, who had been loath to leave her side since the day before, was sitting by the stove reading an article on her phone.
It was quiet, Minjung thought, as she sat back on her heels. Utterly quiet. Not just in the house, but outdoors, throughout the entire neighborhood. No motors humming, no birds singing, no children playing. Nothing but silence, broken by the sound of a car passing on the highway every so often. She frowned. Something was off, but she couldn’t determine what. She bent to scrub at the spot again, scraping at the most resistant bits of residue with her thumbnail.
“I can’t get internet,” Junghee said suddenly. “Is it working for you?”
“I don’t have my phone with me,” Minjung grunted as she scrubbed. She sat up and pointed up over the counter. “It’s on the table if you want to check.”
Junghee hopped up and disappeared around the other side of the counter. “Yeah, you’re not getting a signal either. I guess our router’s down.”
Minjung turned to look up at the microwave clock, but instead of the familiar bright green digits, the tiny rectangular screen was blank. “I think everything’s down.”
“Shit.” Junghee reappeared and squatted next to Minjung. “Maybe it’ll come back on.”
“That would be nice,” Minjung agreed.
But a few hours later, the power was still off. Minjung filled the bath.
“If the power is off, that means our clean water goes next,” she explained when Junghee raised an eyebrow at the depth of the bath. “This gives us a little extra.”
The outage wasn’t too troublesome at first. They had everything they needed for a little while, and they had each other’s company in the silence. They went to bed early that night, since they had no light to stay up late.
“What are we gonna do if the power stays out?” Junghee said. She nestled close to Minjung, clinging to her with both arms. She was cold, she’d said, when Minjung had asked her why she held her so tightly.
“I don’t know,” Minjung said. “Let’s hope it comes back on.”
It did not.
By the third day with no power, Jonghyun was a fretful bundle of nerves. The house felt too small, he complained. He was suffocating. He paced back and forth until Minjung threatened to banish him outside, at which point he sat down on the floor and stared sullenly at the opposite wall.
The outage had been getting to Minjung as well, although she was more discreet about it. But the near total silence, combined with their relative isolation, was unnerving. They had no way to contact anyone, or get news about the outside world. They had not spotted one of their neighbors in days. Who had survived, and where? Had the disease abated at all, or was it still rampaging with the same relentless fervor? There was no way to know, certainly not as long as they stayed in their house, cut off from the rest of the world.
“Fuck it,” she said that evening at dinner, startling Jonghyun with her outburst. “I’m sick of this. I’m sick of being cooped up in this house, waiting for everything to fix itself. I’m tired of being stuck in this goddamn city. Let’s go. Let’s get out of here. Just pack up our car and leave tomorrow.”
Jonghyun set down his spoon. “Go where, exactly?”
“Anywhere,” she shrugged. “We just need clean water, and power. We could visit your mom, maybe.”
“Maybe,” he said noncommittally. “How long would we be gone?”
“As long as we need,” she said.
“Come on,” she said, when Jonghyun didn’t respond. “Aren’t you tired of being afraid to even leave your own house?”
“Yeah,” he said at last. “Okay. Let’s go tomorrow.”
His face showed none of the relief or happiness that Minjung had hoped he might feel, just an exhausted resignation. He clung to Minjung again that night, his grasp not loosening even when he fell asleep, and Minjung held him in return, and stroked his hair, listening to his intermittent whimpers as he dreamed.
The next morning, Minjung woke with a buoyant lightness in her chest and a spring in her step. This departure was long overdue, she thought. There was nothing for them here any longer, except a tedious wait for death. But out there--who knew what they might find? The Minjung of a few weeks ago would have been petrified by that uncertainty, but now she delighted in it. The only certainty was death. Uncertainty meant hope. A chance, however slim, at a new life. She was ready for it.
Junghee, by contrast, looked entirely morose as she packed for the trip.
“We don’t have room for all that,” Minjung said, as she entered the bedroom and saw Junghee arranging several piles of items on the bed, including her childhood photo albums and scrapbooks.
“I know, I’m trying to narrow it down,” Junghee said.
“We’re just taking the one suitcase,” Minjung reminded her. “Only bring what you need.”
“I know!” Junghee snapped.
Minjung sat down next to her. “It’s okay, babe. We can always come back later for whatever we don’t take now.”
“You don’t know that,” her girlfriend said, twisting one sock between her fingers. She looked as though she was about to cry.
“Babe,” Minjung said. “What’s wrong? I thought you’d be happy about this trip, and getting away from the house for a bit.”
“I am, I am,” Junghee whispered. “I’m just scared, I guess. As awful as the last several weeks have been, this home is still our home, and my brain keeps telling me that we aren’t gonna be safe anywhere else.”
“Babe, we aren’t even safe here,” Minjung said.
“I know,” Junghee said. “But at least it’s familiar, you know? Once we leave, everything’s gonna change. Even if we come back, everything will be different. That’s assuming we come back at all.”
“Of course things will change!” Minjung said. “We need them to change! We need a safe home, with plenty of food and water. We don’t have that here, not anymore. We haven’t had it for weeks.”
Junghee said nothing, and Minjung seized her hand and looked into her eyes. “Just a few days ago, you were talking about how you didn’t care about the future or the past or anything besides what the two of us need right now in this moment. Maybe you just need to focus on that feeling, on listening to that voice inside of you.”
Junghee gave her a watery smile. “I can’t,” she said. “I’m not that person anymore.”
Minjung squeezed her hand. “You can bring your photo albums,” she said finally. “We’ll make room for them somehow. Just don’t pack the entire house.”
---
It was early afternoon when they finally finished packing, locked up the house, and set off down the road. Junghee kept her eyes fixed on the house as long as she could, turning around in the passenger’s seat to look out the back window as their house shrank in the distance, and then vanished from view as they turned the corner.
Without GPS, Minjung had to rely on the fat book of dogeared maps that she kept in the pocket on the back of the driver’s seat. She reached back and fished it out, and plopped it in Junghee’s lap.
“I just need to know which way we’re heading into California,” she said.
Junghee flipped obediently through the book until she found the page showing the Nevada-California border. “Looks like we should go up 95,” she said, one finger tracing the route.
“So we’ll get on 215 first,” Minjung said to herself. “Thanks,” she said to Junghee, with a smile. She patted her girlfriend’s knee. “This is why we’re such a good team.”
Junghee smiled faintly. “Yeah.”
The highway was almost entirely deserted, with the exception of a few abandoned cars on the side of the road. It had been cool that morning, but now the sun was bright and hot, still high in the vast blue sky, which was streaked with thin wisps of cirrus clouds. Its warmth shone down pleasantly on Minjung, the light seeping in through her bare arms as she drove with one hand. It was a good day, she thought, the first really good day they’d had in weeks. They were together. They were both still healthy. And they were getting out of the city.
She rested her other hand near the gearshift. Her girlfriend’s hand was only a few inches away, and she wanted to reach for it, to share the happiness that pumped like warm blood through her veins. But she held back, and simply left her hand outstretched, within Junghee’s field of vision.
Junghee did not take it.
The same hands that had clung to Minjung last night were now curled into fists in Junghee’s lap, and the same small body that Minjung had held close was now turned away from her, hunched in a ball in the passenger’s seat. The car was tiny, but Junghee seemed very far away. Minjung’s day dimmed a little. The sun above shone on with the same warmth and brightness, but it no longer warmed her as fully.
The exit for 95 drew near, and Junghee stirred. “Don’t take the exit,” she said. “Let’s go to Red Rock instead.”
“What? Why?” Minjung’s turn signal clicked as she hovered halfway between the highway and the exit lane.
“We haven’t been there together in years, and I wanna see it again before we leave.” Junghee’s words tumbled out in an urgent rush. “Just go!” she added, when Minjung still hesitated.
“O-okay,” Minjung said, bewildered by her girlfriend’s whim. She swerved back onto the highway and continued on toward the mountains, skirting the northeast corner of the city before turning onto Route 159 to go towards Red Rock Canyon. From there it was a long gradually winding drive along a narrow two-lane road, past acres of desert scrub dotted with wild shrubs in muted pastel shades of green and greyish-blue and brown that stretched away for miles until they sloped up to meet the first worn foothills of the mountains. Here too, the rock painted a deceptively gentle palette: streaks of dusty rose, mauve, and a light taupe, as soft as a comfortably worn-in shoe. As they drew closer, they saw the red rock for which the canyon was named. It looked as warm as a hearth, cradled as it was among the other mountains.
They parked at the visitor center. They had passed no rangers on the way in, and the center also looked empty. Junghee hopped out of the car as soon as they parked, her face turned eagerly towards the rocks that loomed ahead of them. She was drowning in a large black T-shirt that came down almost to her knees, her two slender legs looking even tinier in skinny black jeans, her feet tucked into sturdy black boots. The only splash of color she had allowed herself was a little faded red beanie, which covered most of the dark roots of her hair. Wisps of pink escaped the hat and ran across her forehead, and she tucked them absently behind her ear.
“Where do you want to go?” Minjung asked, as she popped the trunk and got out a bottle of water for each one of them. They’d have to carry them by hand; she hadn’t planned on hiking, so they had no backpacks.
Junghee turned to her, her eyes wide and soft. “Can we just...wander?” she said, biting her lip. She accepted the water bottle, and reached for Minjung’s hand, clutching it tightly in her own. “When was the last time we were even here together? Like four years ago?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“We hiked that one trail that gets really cold.”
“Ice Box Canyon,” Minjung said, smiling at the vague description.
Junghee squeezed her hand. “Yeah.”
They made their way up the road that looped around the canyon, their pace unhurried as they passed various trailheads, until Junghee stopped and pointed. “There!” she said. “Isn’t that it? Isn’t that the one?”
Minjung couldn’t see anything at first, but Junghee kept pointing, and at last Minjung spotted it: a slender gap in the rock wall, the base almost entirely hidden behind a tall clump of yucca that had sprouted up at its entrance.
“That’s it,” she replied softly.
They made their way down the slight slope, picking their way around cacti, and wildflowers that had lost their blooms weeks ago. Minjung led the way, holding Junghee’s hand as she helped her step up into the narrow crevasse.
It looked much the same as it had eight years ago: a remote little pocket hidden away from the world, its recesses only visible to the sky. It looked almost untouched. Even the tiniest boulders looked familiar. Here, life continued as it always had. Spiders would build their webs, and snakes would rest, full-bellied, in a patch of sun, with no regard for what might happen in the city below.
Minjung found the rock ledge and boosted Junghee onto it, following her up as they sidled along the wall until they found the gnarled old tree that had shaded them last time. It was the only thing that showed the passage of time, its limbs fallen into greater disarray, though it still stood, stubbornly, taking up space in the living world despite having long since died.
Junghee sat down and swung her legs over the edge of the ledge, like a small child. “This is so nice.”
Minjung sat beside her. “Yeah.”
Junghee reached for her hand and laced their fingers together as she scooted closer to Minjung. “Do you remember the first time we came here?”
“It’s the strongest memory I have,” Minjung said honestly.
Junghee smiled. “You were so cute,” she said. “So skittish, and shy, like a deer. Like you might bolt if I moved too fast.” She stroked the back of Minjung’s hand. “I thought you were the most beautiful person I had ever seen.”
A lump rose in Minjung’s throat. “You too,” she whispered.
“I still think that.” Junghee looked up at Minjung through her lashes. “You’re the most beautiful girl in the world.”
“I don’t know if I believe in magic, or fate, or any of that,” she continued. “But I still sometimes can’t believe how lucky I was, to meet you here. I’d barely talked about my gender stuff with anyone, and then there you were. Like you had dropped right out of the sky just when I needed you.”
She looked across the crevasse at the opposite wall. “It’s hard to believe it’s been eight years, but it also seems like we’ve known each other for an entire lifetime. With everything that we’ve done, everything that we’ve been through…”
She turned and caught Minjung’s face in both her hands, cupping it gently as she searched her eyes. “You’ve been very good to me, Minjung. For eight years, you’ve been very good to me. I want you to know that I’m grateful.” Her eyes shone with sudden tears.
Minjung frowned. “Babe, are you okay?”
Junghee blinked the tears back and smiled at her. “Can I kiss you, baby?” she whispered, her smile faltering only a little. “If I could go back and relive that afternoon, that’s the one thing I would change. I would have let you kiss me. I would have kissed you back. I fucked up the beginning, but I don’t want to fuck it up this time.”
She leaned in and Minjung kissed her, automatically, the touch of her soft lips overriding the distant alarm that rang in the back of Minjung’s head. She closed her eyes, and for just a moment, she was her younger self, kissing the strange beautiful boy that she had loved almost immediately. But it was just for a moment, and then Junghee broke the kiss with a sob.
“Babe, what is wrong?” Minjung asked.
Junghee tried to pull her hand away, but Minjung held onto it, and Junghee covered her face with her other hand as she cried. “I hate myself so much for doing this,” she whispered, as if to herself. She took a deep breath and her entire face screwed up as she tried to restrain her sobs. “I think we need to break up.”
Minjung heard the words, but couldn’t seem to make herself understand them. “What?”
“I want to break up with you,” Junghee said.
Minjung looked around the tiny crevasse, and thought of the car half a mile away, filled with their shared possessions. “Right here?” It was the most trivial question, but the only one she could articulate. “Right now?”
“I know I have shit timing,” her girlfriend said. “I didn’t mean for it to come out like this. I was gonna wait until wherever we got to where we were going, but it just. Didn’t seem right. Me traveling with you and secretly planning to break up with you the entire time. I felt like I should tell you before we got too far.”
Minjung blinked, still unable to process. She felt nothing, just profound confusion. They were together. In the canyon. The sun was shining. Junghee had held her hand, and kissed her. It didn’t make sense. “But...why?”
Junghee was silent for a long time, as she twisted her hands together.
“I don’t know how to say this to you,” she said finally. “I don’t know how to explain. I don’t know who I am anymore. The past six weeks have killed every part of me except the part that clings to you. I’m only alive because you’re alive. I only want to be alive for you. That’s the only thing that gets me through each day. Knowing that in an entire world where everything has gone wrong, you’re still there, and you love me, and I love you. That’s all I have left.” She swallowed, rocking back and forth. “And I want to just focus on that, and block out everything else, but I just keep wondering, what happens next?”
“What do you mean?” Minjung felt numb.
“What happens when this is over?” Junghee asked. “What happens to us? Even if the world goes back to some kind of normal, we’ll never be able to go back. Right now, we keep each other going. I live because of you. You live because of me. We’re like trench buddies. But what happens when the war is over, and we’re no longer living in the trenches? When our strongest bond is every horrific nightmare we lived through together?” She shook her head. “We’ll never be able to look at each other without remembering the worst days of our lives. It’ll destroy us.”
Every word Junghee said ripped Minjung apart, until she felt like a collection of disconnected parts, floating together, still feeling nothing. “No,” she whispered. “No, that’s not true. You could never be a nightmare to me. You’re good. You’re so good.” She reached for Junghee’s other hand. “You’re the best thing in the world.”
Junghee tore her hands away. “But don’t you see?” she sobbed. “That’s exactly what I’m not. I’m not good. I’m selfish and petty and ugly and messy and fucked up. You shouldn’t think of me as good. That just makes it easier for me to hurt you, later.”
“None of those things make you any less good to me,” Minjung said stubbornly. “I’m all of those things too. If you’re no good, then I’m no good. But we still love each other. We still make it work.”
But Junghee shook her head. “After this is over--if it ever ends--we’ll be each other’s biggest triggers. Maybe you’re strong enough to survive that. But I’m not. It’ll break me. You have to let me go.”
“Don’t say that,” Minjung said. “Don’t ask me to let you go, when you know I can’t, when you know that you’re the only person in this entire world who matters to me. If you want to break up with me, just do it.”
“I am breaking up with you,” her girlfriend said softly, as her lips trembled. “I don’t want to, but I am. I’m asking you to let go for your sake.”
“If you don’t want to, then why?” Minjung pressed. “Why would you do this when neither of us want it?”
“Because I love you!” Junghee cried. “Because I don’t think we’re going to make it! Because I want us to part ways while we still love each other, instead of waiting until we’re both bitter and shriveled and hateful. Because I don’t want anything to poison the good memories of what we had together.”
Minjung took a deep breath to quell the panic inside her, and then tried another tack. “Look, baby,” she said. “I get it. You’re traumatized. You’re on edge. You’re exhausted. Of course things seem hopeless. But we can make it through this. Together. I know it.”
“No,” Junghee whispered. “You’re not listening to me.”
“I am listening!” Minjung said. “I just don’t think it makes sense.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense to you!”
“I just don’t think we should throw away eight years just because we’ve had a few bad weeks--”
“Oh my god.” Junghee took her beanie off and ran her hands up and into her hair. “Stop talking about it like that. Stop talking like we aren’t living through the literal end of the world.” She grabbed Minjung by the shoulders. “You can’t fix everything through sheer willpower, babe. You can’t fix this with some romantic notion about how our love can conquer all. Stop living in that dream world and listen to me.”
Minjung bit her lip as she began to cry. “I just don’t want it to be over. I want us to have another chance.”
“And I don’t want to be living through actual hell, but here we are,” Junghee said, with a shrug. She looked exhausted, and old, her tiny frame made tinier by the emotional weight she was carrying. Minjung ached to carry that burden for her, to take it all on, as she always had, but she realized suddenly that it was not hers to take, and she would only add to it, if she kept fighting.
She swallowed everything else she’d wanted to say, and dropped her gaze to the ground. “So I guess I’ll just drop you off at your mom’s?”
“If you want,” Junghee said. “Or you could take me back home, and I’ll just. Hang out there until I figure something else out. I don’t know.”
Minjung nodded. “Okay.” She got up. “Take your time, but I’m gonna wait in the car, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure.” Junghee gave her the polite smile she always gave acquaintances. “I’ll be down soon.”
Minjung nodded again, and turned to go. But then she turned back. “Junghee.”
Junghee looked up at her. “Yes?”
“We were good though, right?”
Junghee’s smile this time was warm and tender. “The best,” she said.
Minjung knew she should leave then, while she still had some shred of self-respect. But instead, she dropped to her knees and scrambled over to Junghee. “You said we would go bad when it’s over,” she said earnestly, as she grabbed one of Junghee’s hands. “But it’s not over yet. The end of the world, I mean. We could still be good now, for a little longer. I know it wouldn’t be permanent,” she said hastily, as Junghee opened her mouth to speak. “I know that. But we get each other, better than anyone else does, and no one should have to be alone when the world is ending.” She leaned in and kissed Junghee gently on the cheek. “I don’t want you to be alone.”
She clambered back to her feet before Junghee could respond. “Just think about it!” she said, not wanting Junghee to say no just yet. And then she made her way out of the crevasse, and set off down the road, and did not look back.
She was halfway back to the car when she heard footsteps running behind her, and then Junghee’s small hand slipped into hers.
“You’re right,” Junghee said, when Minjung looked down at her. “No one should be alone at the end of the world. Let me go with you a little farther.”
Before the world ended, Minjung had always dreamed that she and Junghee would be together forever. A vague dream that she had never really fleshed out, built on the imagined security of a future she had not yet lived. She knew now that she didn’t have forever. She’d never had forever. But she had this moment, with Junghee’s hand in hers, as the sun set over the canyon. And it was enough. Nothing else mattered.
Return to Part Seven
Pairing: Minjung/bigender!Jonghyun
Rating: R--NC-17
Genre: Angst / Horror / Sci-Fi
Warnings: Character death, gore, body horror, prescription drug abuse, suicide attempt, mention of self-harm, mentions of food
Final Word Count: 74,000~
Minjung moved the rain barrel with Taemin’s remains to the side of the house, in the nook where the fencing met the house and formed a neat corner. There were no windows on this side of the house, nor a gate in the fence, and they might go in and out of every door in the house and pass through the gate on the other side of the house, all without ever seeing the barrel, unless they went looking for it.
She had hoped that keeping the barrel out of sight might coax her partner back into the sunshine with her, to keep her company as she finished the garden in the next couple of days. But Jonghyun stayed inside, and mostly kept to the bedroom, where he lay in silence for hours at a time.
She worried about him; he had lost several pounds in the last two weeks alone, and he hadn’t had much to spare in the first place. Now he was beginning to look haggard and hollow-eyed. His spindly arms and legs were an odd contrast to his broad shoulders, and his spare frame, drowned in his baggy clothes, gave him the appearance of a scarecrow. Their limited diet of canned goods didn’t seem to agree with him, and he had little appetite, only eating a few bites of each meal, just enough to tide him over to the next one.
The first of November arrived, and the air had a consistent chill to it now, in the mornings, although it wore off by early afternoon. Minjung and Jonghyun split a can of soup for lunch, and then she returned to the garden. She had little work to do at this point, but she liked to be out in the sun, with its warmth on her back, and her fingers in the earth, away from the perpetual twilight of their house, with its shades drawn, as silent as a mausoleum.
“You should join me,” she suggested to Jonghyun, as she always did. “Get some air. Some sun.”
“I don’t like the sun,” he replied.
That had always been true, as long as she had known him. The light hurt his eyes, and the heat hurt his head, and made him feel tired, and weak.
“Still,” she said. “A little Vitamin D is good for you. Good for your health.”
“My health,” he grumbled. “You sound like my mother.”
The woman still called faithfully, every day, though Jonghyun was less faithful about picking up. He had not told her about Taemin’s death, or his own suicide attempt.
“I don’t want to tell her anything that will upset her,” he’d told Minjung. “But everything in my brain right now would upset her, so what can I say to her?”
Minjung looked at Jonghyun now, as he sat at the table, hunched over the shallow puddle of soup in his bowl.
“I sound like someone who loves you,” she said. She patted his shoulder. “Come on. It’ll be good for you.”
He traced a circle around the bottom of his bowl with his spoon, and got up, leaving it on the table. And then, to her surprise, he followed her outside. He squatted on his heels a few yards away from her, like a small bird on its perch, and combed his fingers through the dirt.
“See?” She gave her voice the most encouraging lilt she could muster. “Isn’t this nice?”
“It’s too hot, and it’s too bright.” His face screwed up in a grimace.
“How on earth is this hot?”
“It’s hot compared to inside.”
“By a few degrees maybe!” she laughed.
He shrugged. “Feels too hot to me.”
After several more attempts at conversation, stymied by Jonghyun’s persistently ornery mood, Minjung gave up, and they both hunched over the garden in silence.
“Think I’m gonna go for a walk,” Jonghyun said at last, puffing a little as he got to his feet.
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere,” he said. “Why do I have to tell you? Aren’t you just happy that I’m out here in the great magical outdoors?”
She would not let him bait her. “Of course.” She smiled at him serenely. “Have a nice walk.”
Her reply seemed to fluster him. “Okay,” he said, his voice suddenly meek. “I’ll be back later.”
He left by way of the gate at the side of the house, leaving it open as he made his way to the road out front. She almost called after him to close the gate, but stopped herself. He was outside. It was what she’d wanted. The gate was a trivial thing. She could get up and close it herself.
In a few minutes, she told herself, as she returned to her work. There were multitudes of tiny little weeds in the garden, all sprouting from seeds that had no doubt arrived inside the bags of soil she had bought. They were tiny frail little things, likely not native to the area, although it was hard to tell what they might grow up to be when they were this small. The midsummer heat would have killed them straightaway, and even now, if she left them to fend for themselves, the dry winds would likely destroy most of them before they got too tall. But it pleased her to pluck them out, one by one, to make the garden soil neat and even around her garlic and onion shoots.
The repetitive task was soothing, and she soon lost track of time, measuring it only in the little pile of weeds that she had set aside on the hard ground outside the raised bed. The gate creaked a little, behind her.
“Jonghyun?” she said, without looking up. There was no reply. He was probably still too cranky to talk to her, she thought. She’d find some way to cheer him up later.
She had no time to continue her train of thought, as she felt a blow against her lower back, and she lost her balance and tumbled forward into the garden.
“Jonghyun, what the fuck--” she began, but another blow followed the first, knocking her flat. Before she could move, a heavy weight fell suddenly on top of her, pressing her face first into the earth. She wriggled, turned her face to the side, and spat out the dirt in her mouth.
“Jonghyun!” she snapped, now truly pissed. She blinked her eyes to clear them, and saw a hand braced against the earth, a few inches from her face. It was swollen, greenish black, and covered in a multitude of little cuts, as if it had burst in several places from the pressure inside. Each cut oozed a little into the dirt, the smell foul and sickeningly familiar.
She lay still for a moment, an irrational childlike voice in her brain suggesting that perhaps they were like bees, that if she just stayed very still, they would give up and leave. But then she felt hot breath on the back of her neck, as slimy drops spattered down against her skin, and she panicked, her entire body bucking as she screamed and clawed at the earth, trying to pull herself out from under the body. She managed to turn herself over, elbowing their face as she did so. They groaned, their head lolling to one side from the impact, but they stayed planted firmly on top of her, her narrow body pinned entirely under theirs. They seemed to be of average height, but very broad, and muscular, judging by the dense weight of their body. Their head swung back like a pendulum, and they gaped at her, their mouth stretching wide, as though they were grinning. Their face had gone entirely rotten and bloated. Their eyes were swollen almost shut, and juice ran from the corners, like pus, trailing down their cheeks and mingling with the slime that dribbled from their mouth and down their chin and dripped onto her chest.
She screamed again, shoving at the body with both hands, but it was futile; they were too heavy, and she couldn’t shift them. They raised one hand from the earth, and set it against her cheek, turning her head and pressing it sideways into the soft garden soil. Her nostrils were filled with the smell of the rot, drowning out even the scent of the soil, and the broken shoots of the onions and garlic that were crushed under her body. She was going to die here like this, she thought, mauled in her own garden, as the sun shone down on them.
The hand moved up into her hair, and tugged on it, until she yelped in pain. And then they bent and licked up along her neck, slowly, as if savoring her, as their tongue left a trail of slime behind.
“Just kill me already,” she sobbed, shuddering violently with every twitch of their tongue against her skin. She didn’t know if they could hear her, or understand her, but she begged anyway for the mercy of a quick death, if she had to die. She closed her eyes, and waited for the end, for the infected to dig their nails and teeth into her skin and rip her open.
But death did not come. Instead, she heard the light patter of footsteps at the gate, and she felt the infected’s head pull away. The breeze was cool across the slime on her neck.
“Oh my god!” she heard Jonghyun cry. “Minjung!”
“Jonghyun!” she shrieked. She tried to turn her head, to see him, but the hand in her hair kept her fixed in place.
“Oh my god,” she heard again, as the back door slammed open. There was a muffled clatter in the kitchen, and then Jonghyun’s footsteps emerged again. “Don’t move!” he shouted, and she let out a hysterical laugh at how little choice she had in the matter.
The infected shifted above her, a guttural growl sounding in their throat, and then it was cut off by a sickening crunch, and their weight shifted suddenly, to one side, and rolled off her.
“Get up, get up!” Jonghyun hissed. His hand gripped her upper arm, and she latched onto him, automatically, clinging to him as he pulled her to her feet. In his other hand he clutched the wobbly barstool from their kitchen. The rim of the seat was smeared with gore.
“Are you hurt?” he panted. He shook her when she did not respond right away. “Babe, talk to me!”
“I’m--I’m okay,” she stammered, dazed.
The infected lay on the other size of the raised garden bed, their body a twitching, groaning heap.
Jonghyun let go of her. “Don’t look,” he said. “I gotta--gotta finish the job.” He took two steps and straddled the body. “Don’t look,” he said again, but Minjung could not turn away, her eyes riveted on him as he brought the stool up and bashed it down against their head, again, and again, until it was entirely shapeless and ruined, a puddle of dark fluid spreading underneath.
Jonghyun stood back, breathing heavily, and dropped the stool. “Killing’s easier than I thought it would be,” he muttered.
He returned to her side. “Come on,” he said gently. “Let’s get you inside.”
---
The attack had left Minjung covered in dark bruises along her ribs and back and arms, from where she had been slammed against the wooden perimeter of the garden. But nothing was broken, and she had no cuts that Jonghyun could find, as he sponged her clean, and then took her into the shower.
His hands were tender as they moved over her skin, cleaning her, pausing every time she shivered. “Are you okay?” he said.
“Yeah, yeah,” she hastened to assure him every time.
But her shivering grew more and more frequent and violent with every minute she stood in the shower, and at last he turned off the water, and guided her out into the bathroom, where he sat her on the closed toilet, and wrapped a towel around her, and used another to dry her hair.
“It’s my fault,” he whispered later, as they lay together in bed, Minjung still shivering.
“It’s--it’s nobody’s fault,” she said.
“But if I hadn’t left you to go on a walk, if I hadn’t left the gate open…”
“It’s not your fault,” she repeated. “Nothing about this is your fault.”
Though she still shivered at the remembered touch of the infected’s hands and tongue, and the weight of their body, she felt light and weightless inside. Her bruises and her lingering terror felt like a kind of penance for what she had done to Taemin. Her guilt eased a little.
“You got there just in time,” she said.
He cupped her cheek with his hand, and she felt his fingers tremble. “I tricked myself into thinking that I was immune,” he whispered. “That I’d been hurt so badly that nothing could really hurt me anymore. But then I saw you just--” he exhaled, his breath shaking. “Just lying there, under them. And I thought for a second that you were dead.” He closed his eyes. “It was the worst moment of my life.”
Minjung clung to him, feeling tears sting her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
His eyes searched hers. “Losing you wouldn’t just be losing someone I loved. It’d be like losing myself. The last shred of me that exists. You’re so much a part of me now that I don’t know who I am without you. I don’t even know if I exist without you.”
“I’ll never leave you,” she whispered.
He smiled sadly. “I wish it worked like that. But we can’t make promises about ‘never,’ or ‘forever.’” He stroked her arm. “Death breaks all those promises, and we’re dying, Minjung. Every day. The person you were yesterday is dead. Today you will die too, and tomorrow, and the day after that.”
He kissed her fiercely, his mouth lingering against hers. “I don’t want to think about the past, or the future. The dead can bury themselves. The only people I care about are the people we are right now, here, together. Fuck everybody else. Fuck every day except today. Fuck it all.”
Her blood stirred at his words, and she kissed him in return, curling her hand around the back of his neck, and twining her long fingers in his hair. They went slowly at first, each needy, but timid, until Jonghyun whimpered hungrily, his fingers playing with the hem of her shirt.
“I’ll do all the work,” he promised, as she peeled off her clothes and he fastened the harness around her hips. He fucked himself slowly on the toy, his eyes never leaving her, not even as he began to fall apart, his breathing coming out in little stuttered moans. Only at the end did he break eye contact, his eyes rolling back in his head as his eyelids fluttered shut, and he came.
He collapsed on top of her, wordless, and nuzzled into her. It had all been worth it, Minjung thought, every second of pain and fear. Just to be in his arms again, and know that she was loved.
They held each other for a long time, and Minjung could feel his heartbeat as it slowed into a peaceful rhythm, and beat on steadily through his chest.
---
The power went out the next day. They didn’t notice it for a few minutes--it was midday, they had no lights on in the house, and the temperature had been mild enough that they’d been using neither heat nor air conditioning. The day was clear, and the winds were low, so they had the windows open, to let in the cool air. They were both occupied with other things when it died. Minjung was scrubbing diligently at a stubborn sticky spot on the floor next to the dishwasher, and Junghee, who had been loath to leave her side since the day before, was sitting by the stove reading an article on her phone.
It was quiet, Minjung thought, as she sat back on her heels. Utterly quiet. Not just in the house, but outdoors, throughout the entire neighborhood. No motors humming, no birds singing, no children playing. Nothing but silence, broken by the sound of a car passing on the highway every so often. She frowned. Something was off, but she couldn’t determine what. She bent to scrub at the spot again, scraping at the most resistant bits of residue with her thumbnail.
“I can’t get internet,” Junghee said suddenly. “Is it working for you?”
“I don’t have my phone with me,” Minjung grunted as she scrubbed. She sat up and pointed up over the counter. “It’s on the table if you want to check.”
Junghee hopped up and disappeared around the other side of the counter. “Yeah, you’re not getting a signal either. I guess our router’s down.”
Minjung turned to look up at the microwave clock, but instead of the familiar bright green digits, the tiny rectangular screen was blank. “I think everything’s down.”
“Shit.” Junghee reappeared and squatted next to Minjung. “Maybe it’ll come back on.”
“That would be nice,” Minjung agreed.
But a few hours later, the power was still off. Minjung filled the bath.
“If the power is off, that means our clean water goes next,” she explained when Junghee raised an eyebrow at the depth of the bath. “This gives us a little extra.”
The outage wasn’t too troublesome at first. They had everything they needed for a little while, and they had each other’s company in the silence. They went to bed early that night, since they had no light to stay up late.
“What are we gonna do if the power stays out?” Junghee said. She nestled close to Minjung, clinging to her with both arms. She was cold, she’d said, when Minjung had asked her why she held her so tightly.
“I don’t know,” Minjung said. “Let’s hope it comes back on.”
It did not.
By the third day with no power, Jonghyun was a fretful bundle of nerves. The house felt too small, he complained. He was suffocating. He paced back and forth until Minjung threatened to banish him outside, at which point he sat down on the floor and stared sullenly at the opposite wall.
The outage had been getting to Minjung as well, although she was more discreet about it. But the near total silence, combined with their relative isolation, was unnerving. They had no way to contact anyone, or get news about the outside world. They had not spotted one of their neighbors in days. Who had survived, and where? Had the disease abated at all, or was it still rampaging with the same relentless fervor? There was no way to know, certainly not as long as they stayed in their house, cut off from the rest of the world.
“Fuck it,” she said that evening at dinner, startling Jonghyun with her outburst. “I’m sick of this. I’m sick of being cooped up in this house, waiting for everything to fix itself. I’m tired of being stuck in this goddamn city. Let’s go. Let’s get out of here. Just pack up our car and leave tomorrow.”
Jonghyun set down his spoon. “Go where, exactly?”
“Anywhere,” she shrugged. “We just need clean water, and power. We could visit your mom, maybe.”
“Maybe,” he said noncommittally. “How long would we be gone?”
“As long as we need,” she said.
“Come on,” she said, when Jonghyun didn’t respond. “Aren’t you tired of being afraid to even leave your own house?”
“Yeah,” he said at last. “Okay. Let’s go tomorrow.”
His face showed none of the relief or happiness that Minjung had hoped he might feel, just an exhausted resignation. He clung to Minjung again that night, his grasp not loosening even when he fell asleep, and Minjung held him in return, and stroked his hair, listening to his intermittent whimpers as he dreamed.
The next morning, Minjung woke with a buoyant lightness in her chest and a spring in her step. This departure was long overdue, she thought. There was nothing for them here any longer, except a tedious wait for death. But out there--who knew what they might find? The Minjung of a few weeks ago would have been petrified by that uncertainty, but now she delighted in it. The only certainty was death. Uncertainty meant hope. A chance, however slim, at a new life. She was ready for it.
Junghee, by contrast, looked entirely morose as she packed for the trip.
“We don’t have room for all that,” Minjung said, as she entered the bedroom and saw Junghee arranging several piles of items on the bed, including her childhood photo albums and scrapbooks.
“I know, I’m trying to narrow it down,” Junghee said.
“We’re just taking the one suitcase,” Minjung reminded her. “Only bring what you need.”
“I know!” Junghee snapped.
Minjung sat down next to her. “It’s okay, babe. We can always come back later for whatever we don’t take now.”
“You don’t know that,” her girlfriend said, twisting one sock between her fingers. She looked as though she was about to cry.
“Babe,” Minjung said. “What’s wrong? I thought you’d be happy about this trip, and getting away from the house for a bit.”
“I am, I am,” Junghee whispered. “I’m just scared, I guess. As awful as the last several weeks have been, this home is still our home, and my brain keeps telling me that we aren’t gonna be safe anywhere else.”
“Babe, we aren’t even safe here,” Minjung said.
“I know,” Junghee said. “But at least it’s familiar, you know? Once we leave, everything’s gonna change. Even if we come back, everything will be different. That’s assuming we come back at all.”
“Of course things will change!” Minjung said. “We need them to change! We need a safe home, with plenty of food and water. We don’t have that here, not anymore. We haven’t had it for weeks.”
Junghee said nothing, and Minjung seized her hand and looked into her eyes. “Just a few days ago, you were talking about how you didn’t care about the future or the past or anything besides what the two of us need right now in this moment. Maybe you just need to focus on that feeling, on listening to that voice inside of you.”
Junghee gave her a watery smile. “I can’t,” she said. “I’m not that person anymore.”
Minjung squeezed her hand. “You can bring your photo albums,” she said finally. “We’ll make room for them somehow. Just don’t pack the entire house.”
---
It was early afternoon when they finally finished packing, locked up the house, and set off down the road. Junghee kept her eyes fixed on the house as long as she could, turning around in the passenger’s seat to look out the back window as their house shrank in the distance, and then vanished from view as they turned the corner.
Without GPS, Minjung had to rely on the fat book of dogeared maps that she kept in the pocket on the back of the driver’s seat. She reached back and fished it out, and plopped it in Junghee’s lap.
“I just need to know which way we’re heading into California,” she said.
Junghee flipped obediently through the book until she found the page showing the Nevada-California border. “Looks like we should go up 95,” she said, one finger tracing the route.
“So we’ll get on 215 first,” Minjung said to herself. “Thanks,” she said to Junghee, with a smile. She patted her girlfriend’s knee. “This is why we’re such a good team.”
Junghee smiled faintly. “Yeah.”
The highway was almost entirely deserted, with the exception of a few abandoned cars on the side of the road. It had been cool that morning, but now the sun was bright and hot, still high in the vast blue sky, which was streaked with thin wisps of cirrus clouds. Its warmth shone down pleasantly on Minjung, the light seeping in through her bare arms as she drove with one hand. It was a good day, she thought, the first really good day they’d had in weeks. They were together. They were both still healthy. And they were getting out of the city.
She rested her other hand near the gearshift. Her girlfriend’s hand was only a few inches away, and she wanted to reach for it, to share the happiness that pumped like warm blood through her veins. But she held back, and simply left her hand outstretched, within Junghee’s field of vision.
Junghee did not take it.
The same hands that had clung to Minjung last night were now curled into fists in Junghee’s lap, and the same small body that Minjung had held close was now turned away from her, hunched in a ball in the passenger’s seat. The car was tiny, but Junghee seemed very far away. Minjung’s day dimmed a little. The sun above shone on with the same warmth and brightness, but it no longer warmed her as fully.
The exit for 95 drew near, and Junghee stirred. “Don’t take the exit,” she said. “Let’s go to Red Rock instead.”
“What? Why?” Minjung’s turn signal clicked as she hovered halfway between the highway and the exit lane.
“We haven’t been there together in years, and I wanna see it again before we leave.” Junghee’s words tumbled out in an urgent rush. “Just go!” she added, when Minjung still hesitated.
“O-okay,” Minjung said, bewildered by her girlfriend’s whim. She swerved back onto the highway and continued on toward the mountains, skirting the northeast corner of the city before turning onto Route 159 to go towards Red Rock Canyon. From there it was a long gradually winding drive along a narrow two-lane road, past acres of desert scrub dotted with wild shrubs in muted pastel shades of green and greyish-blue and brown that stretched away for miles until they sloped up to meet the first worn foothills of the mountains. Here too, the rock painted a deceptively gentle palette: streaks of dusty rose, mauve, and a light taupe, as soft as a comfortably worn-in shoe. As they drew closer, they saw the red rock for which the canyon was named. It looked as warm as a hearth, cradled as it was among the other mountains.
They parked at the visitor center. They had passed no rangers on the way in, and the center also looked empty. Junghee hopped out of the car as soon as they parked, her face turned eagerly towards the rocks that loomed ahead of them. She was drowning in a large black T-shirt that came down almost to her knees, her two slender legs looking even tinier in skinny black jeans, her feet tucked into sturdy black boots. The only splash of color she had allowed herself was a little faded red beanie, which covered most of the dark roots of her hair. Wisps of pink escaped the hat and ran across her forehead, and she tucked them absently behind her ear.
“Where do you want to go?” Minjung asked, as she popped the trunk and got out a bottle of water for each one of them. They’d have to carry them by hand; she hadn’t planned on hiking, so they had no backpacks.
Junghee turned to her, her eyes wide and soft. “Can we just...wander?” she said, biting her lip. She accepted the water bottle, and reached for Minjung’s hand, clutching it tightly in her own. “When was the last time we were even here together? Like four years ago?”
“I think so, yeah.”
“We hiked that one trail that gets really cold.”
“Ice Box Canyon,” Minjung said, smiling at the vague description.
Junghee squeezed her hand. “Yeah.”
They made their way up the road that looped around the canyon, their pace unhurried as they passed various trailheads, until Junghee stopped and pointed. “There!” she said. “Isn’t that it? Isn’t that the one?”
Minjung couldn’t see anything at first, but Junghee kept pointing, and at last Minjung spotted it: a slender gap in the rock wall, the base almost entirely hidden behind a tall clump of yucca that had sprouted up at its entrance.
“That’s it,” she replied softly.
They made their way down the slight slope, picking their way around cacti, and wildflowers that had lost their blooms weeks ago. Minjung led the way, holding Junghee’s hand as she helped her step up into the narrow crevasse.
It looked much the same as it had eight years ago: a remote little pocket hidden away from the world, its recesses only visible to the sky. It looked almost untouched. Even the tiniest boulders looked familiar. Here, life continued as it always had. Spiders would build their webs, and snakes would rest, full-bellied, in a patch of sun, with no regard for what might happen in the city below.
Minjung found the rock ledge and boosted Junghee onto it, following her up as they sidled along the wall until they found the gnarled old tree that had shaded them last time. It was the only thing that showed the passage of time, its limbs fallen into greater disarray, though it still stood, stubbornly, taking up space in the living world despite having long since died.
Junghee sat down and swung her legs over the edge of the ledge, like a small child. “This is so nice.”
Minjung sat beside her. “Yeah.”
Junghee reached for her hand and laced their fingers together as she scooted closer to Minjung. “Do you remember the first time we came here?”
“It’s the strongest memory I have,” Minjung said honestly.
Junghee smiled. “You were so cute,” she said. “So skittish, and shy, like a deer. Like you might bolt if I moved too fast.” She stroked the back of Minjung’s hand. “I thought you were the most beautiful person I had ever seen.”
A lump rose in Minjung’s throat. “You too,” she whispered.
“I still think that.” Junghee looked up at Minjung through her lashes. “You’re the most beautiful girl in the world.”
“I don’t know if I believe in magic, or fate, or any of that,” she continued. “But I still sometimes can’t believe how lucky I was, to meet you here. I’d barely talked about my gender stuff with anyone, and then there you were. Like you had dropped right out of the sky just when I needed you.”
She looked across the crevasse at the opposite wall. “It’s hard to believe it’s been eight years, but it also seems like we’ve known each other for an entire lifetime. With everything that we’ve done, everything that we’ve been through…”
She turned and caught Minjung’s face in both her hands, cupping it gently as she searched her eyes. “You’ve been very good to me, Minjung. For eight years, you’ve been very good to me. I want you to know that I’m grateful.” Her eyes shone with sudden tears.
Minjung frowned. “Babe, are you okay?”
Junghee blinked the tears back and smiled at her. “Can I kiss you, baby?” she whispered, her smile faltering only a little. “If I could go back and relive that afternoon, that’s the one thing I would change. I would have let you kiss me. I would have kissed you back. I fucked up the beginning, but I don’t want to fuck it up this time.”
She leaned in and Minjung kissed her, automatically, the touch of her soft lips overriding the distant alarm that rang in the back of Minjung’s head. She closed her eyes, and for just a moment, she was her younger self, kissing the strange beautiful boy that she had loved almost immediately. But it was just for a moment, and then Junghee broke the kiss with a sob.
“Babe, what is wrong?” Minjung asked.
Junghee tried to pull her hand away, but Minjung held onto it, and Junghee covered her face with her other hand as she cried. “I hate myself so much for doing this,” she whispered, as if to herself. She took a deep breath and her entire face screwed up as she tried to restrain her sobs. “I think we need to break up.”
Minjung heard the words, but couldn’t seem to make herself understand them. “What?”
“I want to break up with you,” Junghee said.
Minjung looked around the tiny crevasse, and thought of the car half a mile away, filled with their shared possessions. “Right here?” It was the most trivial question, but the only one she could articulate. “Right now?”
“I know I have shit timing,” her girlfriend said. “I didn’t mean for it to come out like this. I was gonna wait until wherever we got to where we were going, but it just. Didn’t seem right. Me traveling with you and secretly planning to break up with you the entire time. I felt like I should tell you before we got too far.”
Minjung blinked, still unable to process. She felt nothing, just profound confusion. They were together. In the canyon. The sun was shining. Junghee had held her hand, and kissed her. It didn’t make sense. “But...why?”
Junghee was silent for a long time, as she twisted her hands together.
“I don’t know how to say this to you,” she said finally. “I don’t know how to explain. I don’t know who I am anymore. The past six weeks have killed every part of me except the part that clings to you. I’m only alive because you’re alive. I only want to be alive for you. That’s the only thing that gets me through each day. Knowing that in an entire world where everything has gone wrong, you’re still there, and you love me, and I love you. That’s all I have left.” She swallowed, rocking back and forth. “And I want to just focus on that, and block out everything else, but I just keep wondering, what happens next?”
“What do you mean?” Minjung felt numb.
“What happens when this is over?” Junghee asked. “What happens to us? Even if the world goes back to some kind of normal, we’ll never be able to go back. Right now, we keep each other going. I live because of you. You live because of me. We’re like trench buddies. But what happens when the war is over, and we’re no longer living in the trenches? When our strongest bond is every horrific nightmare we lived through together?” She shook her head. “We’ll never be able to look at each other without remembering the worst days of our lives. It’ll destroy us.”
Every word Junghee said ripped Minjung apart, until she felt like a collection of disconnected parts, floating together, still feeling nothing. “No,” she whispered. “No, that’s not true. You could never be a nightmare to me. You’re good. You’re so good.” She reached for Junghee’s other hand. “You’re the best thing in the world.”
Junghee tore her hands away. “But don’t you see?” she sobbed. “That’s exactly what I’m not. I’m not good. I’m selfish and petty and ugly and messy and fucked up. You shouldn’t think of me as good. That just makes it easier for me to hurt you, later.”
“None of those things make you any less good to me,” Minjung said stubbornly. “I’m all of those things too. If you’re no good, then I’m no good. But we still love each other. We still make it work.”
But Junghee shook her head. “After this is over--if it ever ends--we’ll be each other’s biggest triggers. Maybe you’re strong enough to survive that. But I’m not. It’ll break me. You have to let me go.”
“Don’t say that,” Minjung said. “Don’t ask me to let you go, when you know I can’t, when you know that you’re the only person in this entire world who matters to me. If you want to break up with me, just do it.”
“I am breaking up with you,” her girlfriend said softly, as her lips trembled. “I don’t want to, but I am. I’m asking you to let go for your sake.”
“If you don’t want to, then why?” Minjung pressed. “Why would you do this when neither of us want it?”
“Because I love you!” Junghee cried. “Because I don’t think we’re going to make it! Because I want us to part ways while we still love each other, instead of waiting until we’re both bitter and shriveled and hateful. Because I don’t want anything to poison the good memories of what we had together.”
Minjung took a deep breath to quell the panic inside her, and then tried another tack. “Look, baby,” she said. “I get it. You’re traumatized. You’re on edge. You’re exhausted. Of course things seem hopeless. But we can make it through this. Together. I know it.”
“No,” Junghee whispered. “You’re not listening to me.”
“I am listening!” Minjung said. “I just don’t think it makes sense.”
“It doesn’t have to make sense to you!”
“I just don’t think we should throw away eight years just because we’ve had a few bad weeks--”
“Oh my god.” Junghee took her beanie off and ran her hands up and into her hair. “Stop talking about it like that. Stop talking like we aren’t living through the literal end of the world.” She grabbed Minjung by the shoulders. “You can’t fix everything through sheer willpower, babe. You can’t fix this with some romantic notion about how our love can conquer all. Stop living in that dream world and listen to me.”
Minjung bit her lip as she began to cry. “I just don’t want it to be over. I want us to have another chance.”
“And I don’t want to be living through actual hell, but here we are,” Junghee said, with a shrug. She looked exhausted, and old, her tiny frame made tinier by the emotional weight she was carrying. Minjung ached to carry that burden for her, to take it all on, as she always had, but she realized suddenly that it was not hers to take, and she would only add to it, if she kept fighting.
She swallowed everything else she’d wanted to say, and dropped her gaze to the ground. “So I guess I’ll just drop you off at your mom’s?”
“If you want,” Junghee said. “Or you could take me back home, and I’ll just. Hang out there until I figure something else out. I don’t know.”
Minjung nodded. “Okay.” She got up. “Take your time, but I’m gonna wait in the car, if you don’t mind.”
“Sure.” Junghee gave her the polite smile she always gave acquaintances. “I’ll be down soon.”
Minjung nodded again, and turned to go. But then she turned back. “Junghee.”
Junghee looked up at her. “Yes?”
“We were good though, right?”
Junghee’s smile this time was warm and tender. “The best,” she said.
Minjung knew she should leave then, while she still had some shred of self-respect. But instead, she dropped to her knees and scrambled over to Junghee. “You said we would go bad when it’s over,” she said earnestly, as she grabbed one of Junghee’s hands. “But it’s not over yet. The end of the world, I mean. We could still be good now, for a little longer. I know it wouldn’t be permanent,” she said hastily, as Junghee opened her mouth to speak. “I know that. But we get each other, better than anyone else does, and no one should have to be alone when the world is ending.” She leaned in and kissed Junghee gently on the cheek. “I don’t want you to be alone.”
She clambered back to her feet before Junghee could respond. “Just think about it!” she said, not wanting Junghee to say no just yet. And then she made her way out of the crevasse, and set off down the road, and did not look back.
She was halfway back to the car when she heard footsteps running behind her, and then Junghee’s small hand slipped into hers.
“You’re right,” Junghee said, when Minjung looked down at her. “No one should be alone at the end of the world. Let me go with you a little farther.”
Before the world ended, Minjung had always dreamed that she and Junghee would be together forever. A vague dream that she had never really fleshed out, built on the imagined security of a future she had not yet lived. She knew now that she didn’t have forever. She’d never had forever. But she had this moment, with Junghee’s hand in hers, as the sun set over the canyon. And it was enough. Nothing else mattered.
Return to Part Seven