this is where it splits in half honey, love or death (grab an end, pull hard and make a wish) [8/12]
Jongdae feels like his organs are bursting one by one as he runs as fast as he can, eardrums shrilling and blood burning. When he reaches Yeri, the car is far gone, with a last peal of laughter from Luhan.
“No, no, no, no, no,” Jongdae begs into thin air as he lets himself fall on his knees next to Yeri. He barely glances at Kyungsoo who's getting on all fours with wide, so wide eyes.
Yeri's body is shaking with uncontrollable spasms, her legs, so pale, so thin, hitting the concrete, and her hair, her beautiful hair, spread out under her head, soaked by the puddle of blood escaping from the deep hole in her head. Jongdae bites back a sob as he brings his hand up to the wound, but he stops when he sees that it's even larger than his palm. Fingers shaking, he glances down at Yeri's closed eyes, at her eyebrows twitching, and the her lips partying on faint groans.
“Yeri,” he moans. Determined, he cups her face to stop it from shaking and moving every which way. He feels the burning taste of bile filling his mouth when his right fingers dig into something mushy and wet where there should only be Yeri's skin.
“Oh god,” he hears Kyungsoo whisper, as through a distant dream, and someone starts crying next to him, but Jongdae doesn't pay attention to them. Between his hands, Yeri's head slowly stops shaking, just like the rest of her body, but Jongdae's fingers keep holding her. He knows what it means, he can see the cinder block from the edge of his vision, and the spongy substance on it, just like he sees the small bits splattered all around Yeri's face. Pieces of bones scattered all around the place, and pieces of what made Yeri Yeri, what made her thoughts and her stubborn need to use formal Korean.
“Jongdae,” Seulgi says next to him, her voice shaking. She puts a hand on his shoulder, but Jongdae quickly pulls away. “Jondgae, we need to leave, now... There's too much blood...”
Jongdae looks up, glaring at Seulgi. He's pretty sure it's a chunk of skin with a few strands of hair attached to it next to Seulgi's feet.
“Go,” he tells her. His voice breaks.
Seulgi bites her lips, breathing in slowly to fight back the tears already running down her cheeks.
“Jongdae,” she pleads, but she quickly stops upon catching the look on Jongdae's face.
“Jongdae?” Soojung asks as well. She's the one crying, a strand of black and yellow hair sticking to her cheek, glued to her skin by the salty water escaping from her eyes. Jongdae watches her for a short second before looking down at Yeri. “Jongdae!” Soojung cries out.
“Are you going to wait until the Infect come?” Jongdae screams as well, so high that his voice breaks around some of the syllables. He draws his gun and aims at Soojung and Seulgi, who is helping Kyungsoo on his feet. “Go the fuck away! Go! Now!”
Soojung furiously shakes her head, but Seulgi grabs her arm and tries to drag her towards the forest.
“No!” she yells. “You're coming with us!”
She pushes Seulgi away and takes a first step towards Jongdae, but the latter shoots at the concrete. She startles, and stares at him, betrayal filling her eyes as she starts to sob. Junmyeon takes her hand and tries to drag her with him, but she keeps her feet firmly planted on the ground. Jongdae sniffles, glaring at her. He motions towards the forest with his head.
“Go,” he orders again, this time softer. “They're coming.”
And they are, indeed, coming. Jongdae seriously hopes Yeri's blood smells the best to them, because he won't let them have a drop of it. He hopes they're already licking their lips, stomachs growling at the fest they think they're going to enjoy, because he wants them to understand he's taking it away from them, he wants them to suffer, he wants them to be sad before he kills them.
“Soojung, please,” Junmyeon begs her, tugging at her hand repeatedly.
Soojung looks over her shoulder, at the ruckus going through the forest, her posture back at being on alert despite the tears still half blinding her. She's still not moving though, when even Kyungsoo is steping back, eyes irremediably attracted by Suhyun and Taehyung waiting for them by the forest. Jongdae shoots another time, this time above their head, and aims at Soojung when she looks at him. She furiously shakes her head, pleading, but Jongdae doesn't falter.
“Get the fuck out of here,” he snaps at her.
Junmyeon glances at Yeri's body one last time, but the sadness and the pain on his face disappear, leaving room for a harsh determination. He wraps an arm around Soojung's waist, urging, and drags her towards the trees. Upon seeing them finally moving, Kyungsoo starts to run towards Taehyung and Suhyun. Soojung pulls Junmyeon's arm away, taking his hand instead, and she looks at Jongdae over her shoulder, pleading, begging, but Jongdae doesn't move. Seulgi is also walking away, her back still turned on the forest, and when Jongdae looks at her, she blinks away her tears, gives him a short nod, and turns on her heels. Jongdae watches them run into the woods, and then disappear between the trees. He thinks he hears Soojung scream his name again, but he doesn't dwell on it. It's not his business anymore.
He looks down at Yeri, and closes his eyes, the tears burning the back of his eyelids. He doesn't pay attention to the blood staining his hands as he leans down and presses his forehead against Yeri's for a short second.
“Jongin's dead,” he whispers, not wanting to open his eyes. Yeri's blood is filling his nose, stronger than the smell of lavender always sticking to her skin. “He loved you so much, you know...”
A ear-splitting scream startles him, and Jongdae looks up only to see that the first Infected has come out of the forest. It's a woman, whose jaws keep clicking as if she was already tearing apart pieces of Yeri, but Jondgae would like to see her try. He shifts on his knees, taking his time to aim at her, and shoots, emptying the chamber on her. The bullets hit her body with muffled sounds, green foam immediately escaping from the wounds, but she doesn't stop. The only way to kill an Infected is to go for the heart or the head, since the green pus filling their bodies keeps them from bleeding to death. So Jongdae keeps his last bullet for the dirty skin on the woman's forehead, waiting for the very last moment, for that specific second she thinks she won the game, to shoot. She falls without a groan, her eyes still opened.
Jongdae checks the chamber, and upon seeing it empty, he curses and throws the gun away. Two more Infected just left the woods, and there are probably a lot more to come, but there's no way Jongdae will leave Yeri alone. He takes her hand and drags her closer, taking his machete with his free hand, determined eyes waiting for the Infected.
The first one of the two reaching him throws himself forward, mouth already open on the first bite he's so eager to have, and the hunger driving him makes it so easier for Jongdae to kill him. A single flick of the wrist, and his blade splits his head in two. Jongdae's machete is buried too deep for him to pull it back though, and he lets go of it before the Infected falls to the ground, so that it doesn't twist his wrist. Now weaponless, and with the second Infected way too close, fear takes him by surprise, and Jongdae recoils. He trips over Yeri's legs and falls on his butt with a scared whimper.
The second Infected screams, delighted at the idea of having two bodies to eat instead of one. Jongdae sees his leg muscles tense in slow motion as he gets ready to jump on his prey. Jongdae gasps and throws himself forward to shield Yeri's body with his own. The fear burning white in the edge of his vision isn't enough to block the curiosity though, and Jongdae looks up, expecting to see Death in the shape of what used to be a human flying towards him. Instead, though, he sees Death in the shape of an arrow flying towards the Infected. It passes smoothly through the skull of the Infected, and finally stops when half of the arrow pops out of the creature's left eye. The Infected drops dead with a thud.
Adrenaline is flooding Jongdae's veins. He hastily gets back on his feet and rushes to the dead Infected. He grabs the handle of his machete, and presses his foot on the Infected's chest. He pulls hard on his weapon, groaning with the effort, until his machete finally comes out with a gurgling sound and a geyser of green pus and bits of black and dried brain. Jongdae winces at the smell, so acrid it burns his eyes. It's a short duration disgust though, because a new choir of groans and shrieks draws back his attention to the forest. A pack of five Infected is now running towards him, and Jongdae whimpers. He steps back, and finally turns towards the arrow still buried deep in the Infected skull. Considering that his gun is useless, one more weapong wouldn't be bad, even if it's just an arrow without a bow, so Jongdae curls his fingers around the arrow's tail and pulls as hard as he can. The arrow barely moves, but Jongdae can't take it with both hands, since his other fingers are currently tightly secured around his machete. He glances at the Infected, only two meters away now, and curses.
Jongdae raises his arm, gathering all the strength he can to finally throw his machete at the first Infected. The blade disappears in his chest, right where the rotten heart is, and the Infected trips and falls. There are still four of them though, and even if Jongdae could pull out the arrow in the last couple of seconds left before the collision, an arrow wouldn't save his life.
He gasps when he catches the leading Infected jumping towards him, and immediately crouches down. Nails graze his hair, but the Infected was running too fast, and at such speed, he can't react fast enough to grab Jongdae's hair. He lands on the concrete a couple of meters behind Jongdae with a furious yell. Jongdae lets go of the arrow's tail and breaks the shaft in half to pull out the part with the broadhead, his heart beating erratically in his chest. Just when he's about to get back on his feet though, something hits him at full speed, and sends him flying backwards. Adrenaline blocks the pain, and Jongdae raises both his feet, kicking the Infected who crashed against him and is now jumping on him. The creature stumbles backwards, earning Jongdae a precious few seconds that he uses to shift on all fours and finally get back on his feet.
He lets out a furious scream when he catches the three other Infected gathered around Yeri, one of them licking straight into the hole of her head. Without thinking, Jongdae jumps on his back, raises the arrow's broadhead above him, and buries it as deep as he can in the top of the Infected's head. He feels the resistance of the skull as the Infected throws back his head with a mad scream of pain. Jongdae forces on the arrow with clenched jaws while he tries to secure his position by locking his thighs around the Infected's neck. A violent swerve almost destabilizes him and makes him let go of the arrow, still sticking out of the Infected's head. Jongdae groans, arms swaying on his sides to try and regain his balance, but two strong hands suddenly grip him. Fingers dig into the cuts on his cheeks, tearing the skin further apart, and clench his arm with so much strength that they pierce the skin and make the veins under burst. Jongdae moans with pain as he lands on his back and gets dragged on the ground by the fourth Infected. He's weaponless, and alone against too many Infected, there's no way he'll make out of this alive, and he knows it very well. Bracing himself for his upcoming death, Jongdae looks down at his feet, at Yeri's body drawing away as the Infected keeps luging him farther away. He feels tears prickle in his eyes when the three other Infected all swoop down on her in a mess of delighted groans that soon turns into a cacophony of flesh teared apart and bones cracking.
There's a slicing sound above his head, and the Infected stops dead in his tracks. Blinking away the tears, Jongdae looks up, confused, just in time to see the Infected's head roll off his shoulders and fall to the ground with a loud thug. The rest of his body follows suit, his neck now spilling green foam on the concrete. Jongdae squints his eyes at the silhouette now towering over him against the light.
“Need a hand?” the man says, putting down the tip of his bow on the concrete, next to Jongdae's face. The latter notices the thin, but sharp, blade, continuing the lower limb of the bow. It's covered with green pus.
Jongdae looks up at the man, and immediately recognises the sun-induced freckles and the thin eyebrows. The man isn't smiling, like he was back in the warehouse, but he still wears a thick layer of indifference and nonchalance that clashes with their surroundings. He offers a hand to Jongdae, but Jongdae pushes it away. He hastily gets back up on his feet, and turns towards Yeri, whose body is now totally disappearing under a mountain of Infected. Jongdae spots the one he attacked with the arrow, the latter still sticking out of the top of his head.
Just when Jongdae is about to dart off towards the morbid gathering, the man on his side grabs his arm to stop him.
“She's dead,” he tells Jongdae, his voice low and sorry. “She's dead, and you're bleeding. We need to get out of here before they smell you, and right now she's the best distraction we have.”
Jongdae glares at him as he pulls away his arm.
“Fuck off,” he snaps. “I didn't ask for your opinion.”
“Sure you didn't, but it won't stop me from sharing it.”
Jongdae frowns at the faint amusement spreading over the young man's face, anger burning in his veins. He turns to face him, and throws him a dirty look.
“Do you think it's funny?” he hisses. The man raises an eyebrow at him. “I don't need any weapons to kill you, you know.”
The stranger eyes him for a short second, but Jongdae's threatening voice hardly seems to impress him. His eyes become softer though, and he slowly shakes his head.
“I don't think the death of your friend is a laughing matter,” he apologies. “But we need to leave.”
Jongdae glances at the Infected now fighting each other to have a chance to reach Yeri's body, and his breath dies in the back of his throat. More Infected keep spilling out of the woods, their attention fortunately immediately drawn to the blood bath, but Bow Man's right. Sooner or later, one of them will glance around and see them. The cuts on Jongdae's cheek are bleeding again, and more blood is running down his forearm, dripping onto the ground when it reaches the bone of his wrist. Leaving now would be his only chance.
He sniffles, wiping away the tears with the back of his hand, and looks at the stranger.
“Okay,” he says.
The man doesn't waste any second. He puts the bow on his shoulder, the long and tense string crossing his torso, and grabs Jongdae's hand with slender and bony fingers. They fit easily, and close around Jongdae's hand shamelessly, his leather mitten pressing against Jongdae's palm. The man's fingers suddenly tense when their owner starts running, forcing Jongdae to follow suit. His clothes, so close to his skin, follow each roll of muscles and Jongdae only realises how much taller the guy is when he has to speed up to follow his pace. He glances at the man's legs, their length emphasized by the high horse-riding boots he's wearing, and Jongdae grumbles, making even longer strides.
The man drags him straight into the forest, but they penetrate it higher on the road, avoiding the now almost continuous flow of Infected rushing to Yeri's body. Jongdae pulls on his hand to make him slow down as he jumps over a few roots, and the man casts him a surprised glance over his shoulder before softening. He slows down, mimicking Jongdae's pace, but even like that, it doesn't take long for Jongdae to realise that the guy knows the forest by heart. He gracefully jumps over roots and even large branches that could reveal their presences, and doesn't hesitate once as he drags Jongdae deeper into the woods and zigzags through the trees.
He finally stops abruptly in front of a thick tree, whose height has Jongdae gasping in surprise as he throws back his head to try and see its top. The man lets go of his hand, and draws a sling-shot from his belt, his other hand rummaging through a small and handmade purse hanging on his hips. Jongdae watches him, taken aback, as he pulls a rock out of it, places it inside the sling-shot, and aims at the thick branches over their heads. He glances at Jongdae, the shadow of a smile perched on his lips, and focuses on the branches above their heads again. Jongdae steps forwards, curiously looking up, but aside from the dense branches, he doesn't see anying remotely worth being shot at, especially when they're trying to escape dozens of Infected.
The man finally shoots, and Jongdae tries to follow the rock as it flies up and up, but it soon disappears between the green leaves. He does hear the slight ping though, as if it touched a piece of metal, but even more surprising is the long rope ladder falling from between the branches. Jongdae steps back, the ladder dangling just before him, astonished.
“The tree's about forty meters high, but the ladder only goes up to twenty,” the man tells him as he grabs the ladder with a strong hand. He checks that the rungs aren't tangled, and hands the ladder to Jongdae. “Are you afraid of heights?”
Jongdae stares at the man before looking up at the branches above their heads. He's never been that sensitive to heights, but it's one thing to jump from roof to roof, and another to climb a rope ladder on twenty meters. He considers the rungs, made of very tight knots in the rope, and look back at the man.
“No,” Jongdae finally says. “I'm not.”
He grabs the ladder and puts his foot on the first rung, internally wincing at the way it waves under his weight. The forest is plagued with Infected, and that's the only reason he's agreeing to this, that and the fact that he's pretty sure the man with the bow would have already killed him if it had been his plan in the first place. Jongdae doesn't really care where the ladder leads actually, or if the guy wants to kill him or not, he just wants to move, to do, because he's pretty sure that he wouldn't be able to get back on his feet if he'd stopped now. He feels so numb, so distant from the inhuman screams echoing all around them, that even the ladder waving closer to the trunk with every rungs he puts his feet on leaves him quite indifferent. A sudden swerve of the ladder tells him that the boy beneath has started to climb as well, and Jongdae vaguely wonders if the rope can support both their weights.
He finally reaches the lower branches, most of them larger than his own thighs. Leaves stroke his face as Jongdae follows the ladder through the foliage, and a sweet smell of sap fills his nose. It's a strange feeling, leaving the ground to rise towards the sky. Everything feels so peaceful there, even with the apocalypse still raging on through the forest under his feet. Light is going through the leaves, pleasantly warm because of the early hours, and Jongdae pauses when it lands on his face. He glances at the forest around him, at the shorter trees, the higher ones, and the broken fragment of the horizon line he catches through the foliage. He thinks about Soojung screaming his name, and Seulgi nodding at him, as if to say thank you for everything you've done for us, and Yeri, Yeri running and then falling.
“You okay?” Bow Man asks, a few rungs under him.
Jongdae blinks away, and continues his climbing without bothering to answer.
He finally reaches a wooden platform a few meters higher, fixed on the trunk and going all around it. It's not very large, probably built in a rush, but it makes a safe place. Jongdae guesses Bow Man was the one who built it, and from the look of it, it has held through thick and thin. Jongdae hauls himself on the boards, not daring to get back on his feet, despite how solid it feels under him. He shifts on his hands and knees and walks on all fours towards the trunk to sit against it. The boy pulls himself on the structure with way more grace than Jongdae did, using the strength in his arms to end up immediately crouched down, instead of on his hands and knees, just like Jongdae.
They exchange a look, Jongdae absent and the young man scrutinizing for what feels like hours. The boy makes the fact that they're perched on a wooden platform twenty meters up a tree easier to swallow with his posture, and attire. Still crouched down, he has both his palm flat on the boards to help him keep his balance, and the bow still on his back paired up with his boots and brownish clothes makes him look like an elf. Even in that position, his long and slender body isn't easy to miss, just like the grace that is obvious even in the slightest twitch of his eyebrows. With the long and somehow shiny strand of pitched black hair falling over his forehead , the boy looks like he belongs up there.
“My name's Sehun,” he finally says.
His voice is deep, but kind of soft at the same time, and it makes Jongdae wonders about his age. He doesn't ask though, and silence draws out again. Bow Man--Sehun's eyes slide over Jongdae's face, following the cuts on his cheek before falling to his forearm, where the Infected gripped him so hard he teared the skin apart. Sehun sizes Jongdae up, and finally gets back on his feet, obviously not disturbed by the deadly void behind him. He bends down to grab the upper rung of the rope ladder and pulls it all up, careful not to let it get tangled. Jongdae watches him wordlessly, still kind of dumbstruck by how unreal it all looks. He feels like he's somehow teleported into a fantasy book, but it's only when he catches the tiny metal ring stuck into the very last knot of the ladder that he realises that he's still in plain, ugly reality. Sehun puts the ring in a hook hammered on the underside of a branch. The hook's curve is partly broken, which means that to remove the iron ring and free the rope ladder, a single stone, hitting a specific point, would be enough. Jongdae remembers the rope dangling off the hole in the warehouse's roof. It's nothing magic or fantastical, Sehun is just very smart and creative. Jongdae wonders if he was one of those fanatics who had bunkers in their gardens, plenty of food and guide books on how to survive the apocalypse.
Sehun checks the hook, standing on his tiptoes at the edge of the platform, and finally turns towards Jongdae. He joins him in a few light leaps, and kneels next to him. Jongdae follows his every gesture, and throws him a wary glance, but Sehun doesn't seem to mind. Instead, he opens the larger leather bag fixed on his belt, and pulls out a bottle of honey, and a few tissues. Intrigued, Jongdae finds himself quitting the deathly glare play as curiosity takes over when Sehun presses the bottle above the tissues. Thick and golden coloured honey drips immediately, and when Sehun is satisfied with how much is now slowly spreading on the tissues, he closes the bottle, and pulls it back into his bag.
He grabs the tissues, and shows them to Jongdae, his eyes scanning Jongdae's face.
“It'll stop the bleeding,” he tells Jongdae. “Will you let me apply it?”
Jongdae narrows his eyes at the honey-covered tissues, than back at Sehun. He's never heard about honey helping with bleeding, but why not? After all, he is bleeding, and putting both he and Sehun in jeopardy, so he knows he doesn't really have a choice, but it's Sehun's soft voice that takes him by surprise. The way Jongdae remembers his smile through the shelf back in the warehouse, or how Sehun managed to crash a car in pitched-black darkness with only two arrows, he wasn't really expecting someone that careful around people. The thought somehow bothers Jongdae, and he snatches the tissues out of Sehun's hand.
“I can do it myself, thank you,” he grumbles.
He glances at the tissues, swallowing down his hesitation as he feels Sehun's black eyes on him, and raises the tissues to his face. It can't be worse than the lavender oil anyway, and he's had his fair share of the latter in the past few hours, so at this point, it shouldn't even matter. Still expecting quite an unpleasant sting, Jongdae presses the tissues against his cheeks as he scrunches up his nose. He feels the honey on his skin, sticky and thick, but the peak of pain he was expecting never comes. When he opens his eyes, surprised, he meets Sehun's gaze. The latter keeps his straight face, his eyebrows giving him a look of anger, but Jongdae he's pretty sure he catches a glance of mischief behind the dark irises. He glares at the young man, and pats his cheek with the honey-covered tissue, making sure not to let out the slightest hint over the throbbing pain burning in the cuts.
Sehun watches him wordlessly as Jongdae covers the wounds on his cheek with a thick layer of honey. With every minute passing by and dragging them further into daylight, the heat is rising, and soon enough, the sensation of honey slowly dripping from Jongdae's jawline drives him crazy. The skin itches under it, and Jongdae can feel a few strands of hair caught in the sweet substance. He doesn't dare to pull them out though, and draws his attention to the cut on his arm instead. It has bled a lot, but Jongdae just has to tap with the tissues once to see that the wound isn't that deep. The Infected's fingers just dug right where the thicker vein was, and teared it apart with long and sharp nails. Jongdae cleans it thoroughly until it's just purplish-blue skin with a red dot.
When he looks up, he meets Sehun's eyes as though they were waiting for him, and Jongdae isn't sure what to think of the faint smile perched on the young man's lips.
“You can throw the tissues away,” Sehun tells him.
“And that's it?” Jongdae asks. “Do you have some lavender oil?”
Sehun frowns. “Why would I?”
“It covers the smell of blood pretty well, when the wounds aren't too serious.”
Sehun snorts.
“Don't worry about that, I've never met an Infected able to jump twenty meter high.”
Jongdae glares at Sehun's amused smile.
“For now,” he grumbles.
Sehun catches his whisper easily in the morning silence, but once again, he hardly seems affected by it. He even allows himself a short chuckle before taking the tissues from Jongdae's hand. He gets back on his feet, and walks to the edge of the platform to let go of them. They whirl around in the light breeze, following it lightly down, and down again, until they finally drop.
Sehun kneels down, barely a few inches between him and the void, and starts rummaging through the leather bag on his belt again. Jongdae watches him, how at ease he looks perched twenty meters up above the ground, and how it somehow shows in his posture, or how graceful he is. Jongdae doesn't really know him, but he seriously doubts that someone that would choose to enter an abandonned warehouse with a rope just in case something would be waiting for him down there, could be that reckless and mocking of the risks. He understands that Sehun really feels safe on this platform, and it helps Jongdae breathe a little easier.
“I used to call you Bow-Man in my head,” he tells Sehun.
The latter looks over his shoulder, intrigued, but his face immediately breaks into an amused grin.
“Really?” he chuckles. “That's not very original though. I would have gone with something like Robin Hood.”
“Everybody would have,” Jongdae retorts. “Bow-Man's the real originality here.”
Sehun slightly shakes his head, rolling his eyes, and turns over again. Jongdae watches the straight line of his back, and his large shoulders, eyes finally settling on Sehun's nape. The hair is cut short there (does he cut his own hair alone?), and the bare skin has obviously suffered from a few sunburns. It's brownish now, but the tan lines sometimes appearing along the hem of Sehun's large shirt when the latter slightly shifts are pretty revealing. Jongdae remembers his surprised at the sun-induced freckles on Sehun's nose, and he now understands how Sehun got them. He's not playing with the devil and wandering around in broad daylight, from the look of it, he probably lives up in the trees.
Sehun has pulled out a pair of binoculars from his bag, and he is now taking a look through it, scanning the woods spread out at their feet. Jongdae guesses that he's trying to glance at the road, and it has him looking away.
“So what now?” he asks.
He shields his eyes with one of his palms, blinded by a particularly fierce ray of sunshine reaching him through the foliage. He has no other choice than to look back at Sehun as flowers made of light bloom in his field of vision. Sehun has just lowered the pair of binoculars, and his natural blank face leaves no room for whatever feelings that could have hinted Jongdae about what he saw on the main road. He really doesn't want to know.
“We wait,” Sehun answers. “We can't go anywhere for now.”
Jongdae nods. He slightly shifts, wincing, as the trunk's irregularities start to be painful against his back. Sehun's right, they can't go anywhere while the sun is out, and considering that it just came out, they have several long hours ahead of them. Jongdae hasn't slept for two nights and one day, and he could use those hours, but sleeping couldn't be farther away from his mind. He folds his legs up against his chest, and puts his chin on his knees. Sehun may have saved him two times, Jongdae doesn't fully trust him. He's lost both his gun and machete in the fight, but Sehun still has his bow and a few other weapons, which doesn't really help to feel safe enough to fall asleep. Jongdae doesn't even feel tired anyway.
“Hey,” Sehun calls him out, his voice soft.
Jongdae looks up, and meets Sehun's dark eyes on him. The latter is still on his knees, but his butt is now resting against his heels. He's looking at Jongdae over his shoulder, both his hands spread out on his thighs. Jongdae raises a questioning eyebrow at him, and Sehun's eyes go even softer.
“I'm sorry about your friends,” Sehun finally says.
More than the sudden empathy he wasn't expecting from a stranger, it's the plural form that takes Jongdae by surprise. He stares at Sehun longer than he should, but Sehun doesn't take any offense, and he wordlessly turns around to go back at watching the woods. Jongdae feels his throat tightening, clenching around desperate sobs he tries hard to swallow down. Sehun was there in the warehouse, he probably knows Jongdae had Jongin with him, and the latter's absence doesn't need to be voiced out. What could have happened with how the world is working now other than Jongin being dead?
It wasn't meant to end like this, the world, Jongdeok, himself... Things weren't supposed to crash and burn like they did, Jongin should have been somewhere in Korea, running randomly into Yeri for the very first time, and they should have had all the time to fall in love, to get to know each other. It wasn't supposed to end in a puddle of blood and brain, with jaws clicking and fingers like claws all ready to tear skin and flesh apart.
Jongdae bites his knee to muffle the sobs he's so desperate to let out. He feels tears prickling his eyelids, and Sehun's silhouette, all long and straight lines, finally turns fuzzy, blurred on the edges, as though Jongdae was watching him from beneath the water. He might be after all, because he really feels like he's drowning.
Sehun doesn't turn around again.
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