"Haah... fuck."
Junho let out a dry laugh. The end was in sight. No, it was already over. He had hung on for a long time, stubbornly, like his life depended on it.
His last name was Lee, supposedly the most common surname in the world, and even his first name, Junho, was one of the most common male names in Korea. His height and weight were 174 centimeters and 74 kilograms, the textbook definition of an "average Korean adult man."
And that perfectly ordinary, nothing-special guy had survived in a ruined world for a full three years. It was a miracle, something he could brag about anywhere.
Not that there was anyone left to brag to. Or anyone left to listen.
Grrr, kwaaah...!
He heard their warped screams.
Zombie, NOBI, cannibal monster. Call them whatever. It did not matter. Listening to the noises those once-human things spat out, Junho leaned back against a collapsed wall and gulped down air.
"Hoo... ha..."
He looked down at his hand. Inside his old, worn leather glove, the back of his hand was visible. Teeth marks and torn flesh stood out sharp in the slick sheen of blood.
This was it. It was really over. Thirty ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) seconds? A minute, at most. Within that time, he would go crazy like them, turn into a corpse-like monster, and rot.
"Kkh... cough!"
The cough burst out, and Junho tore off the stifling mask and flung it away. He was a non-smoker, but for some reason, right now, he desperately wanted a cigarette.
A sharp, stabbing headache crashed over him. His skull throbbed, and his vision swayed.
"...Its here."
It felt like the virus, the one that only activated in humans and primates, had started rampaging in his body for real.
He could feel his heart beating faster and faster. Even though it was spring, his body burned like he was standing on sunbaked asphalt in the middle of summer. Ten seconds left, maybe.
Junho's vision began to blur.
Kwaaah!
The screams came closer. Then one of them appeared at the far end of the alley.
It still had traces of what it had been as a person. A suit turned to rags, a darkened face, eyes filmed over with a pale scum. But even though it was painfully skinny, its skin had not necrosed. That meant it had either eaten recently, or it was one of the early infected Alphas.
The moment it saw Junho, it split its mouth into a grin and laughed like it had lost its mind.
Kihih! Hiiiiiit!
The way it expressed emotion made it clear which one it was. Junho snorted. He opened his mouth wide like the thing, then screamed with everything he had left, squeezing out his last strength.
"Waaaaaaagh!!!"
The cannibal fiend and the human roared at the same time, but the meaning was different. Proving one last time that he was still a living human, Junho grabbed the pistol in his right hand the wrong way around and shoved the muzzle into his mouth.
He set his thumb on the trigger of the Glock 17, a gift from a mixed-blood Koryo-in Russian mafia guy he had run into by chance and looked after for a few days.
When Junho had asked, "Shouldnt a Russian mafia guy carry a Tokarev?", the man said his Tokarev was for executing traitors, then handed him this more expensive one instead.
Thinking that saving him back then really had been the right call, and thinking how damn lucky he was to be able to die as a human, Junho pulled the trigger.
Bang!
The instant he felt his mouth flare with heat, every sense vanished.
***
"Ah..."
With a groan, Junho opened his eyes. His eyes felt hot, and he instinctively lifted a hand and wiped at them. Damp tears smeared across the back of his hand.
After wiping away the tears that had run all the way to his temples, Junho looked around in a daze. It was a room. More precisely, it was his room in the old apartment where he had lived with his family for over ten years before the world ended.
He turned his head, scanning that space that felt unfamiliar and yet painfully familiar at the same time.
"Was it... a dream?"
He could not tell whether this was the dream, or whether that horrific moment just now, when he got infected and pulled the trigger on a Glock 17, had been the dream.
His tear-blurred vision sharpened. As he stared blankly around the room, his gaze stopped on the phone lying beside his pillow.
Sunday, November 21, 23:12.
Still floundering on the border between reality and dreams, Junho picked up the phone and unlocked it. Then, like he was possessed, he typed the word "date" into the search bar.
Sunday, November 21, 2021.
"Two... zero two one?"
Murmuring in a trance, Junho suddenly sprang up like a coiled spring. He searched the date again on the portal, and when he still could not believe it, he went into the community board he used to visit all the time and clicked the top post.
Posted: 2021-11-21 23:11
"Fuck..."
His voice came out trembling, and memories from that long stretch of time flooded his mind like a panorama.
Was all of that really just a dream? No way.
Dreams were usually blurry. You were left with a hazy last scene, and the rest did not even feel like it stuck.
But the memories rising up now were far too vivid.
What he had done on the morning the world collapsed. How he had survived after that. Who he had met, and who he had lost.
Each moment surfaced clearly, like a movie he had just finished watching.
"Huh?"
His hand suddenly came into view. Between his thumb and palm, a reddish scar remained.
"...A bite mark?"
It was the exact spot where he had been bitten through his old leather glove in the last moment.
He would swear on anything that scar had not been there before.
"Ha... this is driving me insane."
His heart started hammering. Junho sucked in air, rubbing his face with dry hands.
He had definitely died. On a spring day in 2027, three years after the world fell apart.
But now, when he opened his eyes, it was November 2021. Six years earlier.
Even in the middle of that crushing confusion, Junho shot to his feet. Everything still felt like a dream, but what he had to do was obvious.
"Ugh."
The moment he stood up from the bed, a sudden wave of dizziness made him stumble. His body felt different from before. Steadying himself, Junho slowly opened his door and walked into the familiar kitchen.
Whirr.
Even that low, soft hum from the refrigerator had been something he missed. He opened the fridge like he was taking a breath, and bright light poured out from inside.
The flood of light made him go lightheaded. This was not just light. At least to Junho, it was civilization itself, the light that symbolized modern human life.
He snatched up a half-full bottle of water, hurriedly twisted the cap, and drank. He did not care that water ran down his chin. He just chugged, gulping and gulping.
His throat bobbed nonstop, and the water left in the plastic bottle vanished in an instant.
"Kuh-hah!"
Eyes half-closed, savoring the lingering relief of quenched thirst for a brief moment, Junho muttered without meaning to.
"This isnt a dream..."
Junho was sure of it. Everything he had lived through, and this moment right now, none of it was a dream.
"Hyung? What are you doing out here?"
"...!?"
The voice made him flinch. Junho snapped his head around on reflex.
"Didnt sleep? What, you came out to drink water?"
A solidly built man, a little taller than him, his frame visible even through a tracksuit, walked over with a yawn.
"Jun...hyeok?"
"What? Still half-asleep? Hey, why are you dripping water everywhere again?"
Junho stared blankly as Junhyeok, his only little brother, the last blood family he had left in the world, rolled up tissues and wiped the floor.
"Huh? What is it? Why are you looking at me like that?"
Grumbling as he wiped up the water, Junhyeok recoiled a step, like he had the chills. It was weird seeing his older brother staring at him with watery eyes like he was watching something precious.
"Wh-what? Hyung, are you crying? Whats wrong?"
At Junhyeok's face, twisted like he had just seen something he should not have, Junho let out a weak laugh.
"No. Its nothing. You little shit..."
He reached out and ruffled the hair of his younger brother, who was even bigger than him.
"Ah, fuck. Whats with you all of a sudden? Seriously."
Junho looked at him with eyes full of mixed emotions. Junhyeok was just about to speak, realizing something was off about his brother, when Junho spoke first.
"Sit down for a second. I need to talk."
"...?"
Junhyeok frowned, but he obediently sat on the sofa. Junho was six years older, and the only family he had left. Even if he was acting weird, he had to listen.
***
"..."
Junhyeok sat there with his mouth half open, staring at Junho with a blank look.
Did he suddenly go crazy? Or was he still not fully awake?
Of course, he did not say it out loud. No matter how strange and curious he felt, Junho had practically ordered him to stay quiet until he finished talking.
"I'm not crazy, so stop looking at me like that."
"Uh..."
Junhyeok flinched and smacked his lips awkwardly. Junho let out a small sigh and stood up.
"Wait here a second."
"Okay."
Leaving his younger brother there, looking like he had a lot he wanted to say but was forcing it down, Junho headed toward the kitchen.
"..."
Watching his brother, who had been spouting complete nonsense for over five minutes, suddenly open and close the cabinet under the sink while searching for something, Junhyeok furrowed his brow even deeper.
But then his eyes went wide and he jumped up from the sofa.
"Hyung? Wh-what are you doing?"
Seeing the palm-length kitchen knife in Junho's hand, Junhyeok moved slowly, trying to calm him down.
"Hyung, just put that down. Put it down and lets talk, okay?"
"Fuck off. Its not like that."
Junho spat it out and strode toward the TV, setting the apple he had in his other hand on top of the cabinet.
"...?"
Leaving Junhyeok standing there, baffled, Junho lightly gripped the knife in his right hand and flicked his wrist, swinging it through the air a few times. Junhyeok's eyes gradually widened as he watched.
"Hyung, dont tell me youre about to..."
"Hold on. I need to get the feel for it."
The knife, and his body, were not the same as in that prophetic dream, no, in the future, so Junho carefully set his stance and swung his right hand a few more times. Then, at some point, he took a breath and went still.
His arm snapped out.
Thud!
The knife flew cleanly, slicing through the air and skewering the center of the apple on top of the cabinet. Unable to handle the impact, the apple, still stuck on the blade, hit the wall and dropped.
"...!!!"
Junhyeok's mouth fell open. He sprinted over like he could not believe it and picked up the apple.
"Holy fuck. Are you serious? This is insane."
As Junhyeok kept repeating that he was insane, looking back and forth between the apple and his brother, Junho said,
"I learned it to survive."
"In that apocalypse dream?"
"It wasnt a dream... ah, forget it."
"No, but hyung. Didnt you mess around throwing bayonets when you were in the army? You didnt learn it there?"
It was a fair point, but Junho frowned.
"Ive been discharged for over five years. You think my body still remembers something I did a few times as a joke? And are a military bayonet and a kitchen knife the same thing?"
"Yeah, fair. But still, what the hell. Thats crazy."
Junhyeok pulled the knife out and examined it, fascinated.
Junho had been in an army reconnaissance unit, but Junhyeok, even though he was still just a rank-and-file soldier, was special forces. Practically the hardest unit a regular conscript could get into.
Even for Junhyeok, throwing a kitchen knife and skewering an apple in one shot was not something you could do without practice.
That meant the "prophetic dream of the future" Junho talked about might actually be real.
Still, no normal person could just believe something like that at face value. Even if it came from his own brother.
"But still, its so random. This isnt some movie or drama. It doesnt make sense."
"..."
Junho did not answer. Instead, he picked up the remote.
The TV turned on, and the channels flipped rapidly.
"Hyung?"
Junhyeok stared at him with wide eyes, confused. He had no idea what weird thing his brother was about to do next.
A moment later, the screen stopped on a sports channel.
"The Istanbul derby is on in a bit."
"Huh? Oh."
Junho was a soccer fan. He made a point of watching games whenever Korean players were in European leagues.
But he wakes up, says a bunch of insane shit, throws a kitchen knife through an apple like a trick shot, and now he is going to watch soccer?
"Hyung..."
Junhyeok, genuinely worried, was about to say something when Junho spoke first, flat as ever.
"In the first half, Galatasaray scores first. In the second half, someone on Fenerbahce gets sent off."
"What...?"
"In this match, Kim Injae stops two situations that should have been goals. In the second half, he cuts the ball out, dribbles all the way up to midfield, and feeds a perfect chance to a forward. Even with the red card, Fenerbahce still wins, two to one."
He remembered it clearly. He had watched it live, it had stuck with him, and it was the kind of legendary match that had clips and highlights of Kim Injae circulating in soccer communities for a long time.
"Holy..."
Still unable to believe it, Junhyeok stared, and Junho said like he was laying down a verdict.
"Just watch. Then we talk."
"...Okay."
Junhyeok nodded like he had no choice. After that, the brothers did not say another word. They just focused on the TV.
And two hours later, Junhyeok looked at his brother with a completely stiff face and asked,
"When does the world end?"
