12 minutes, 8 seconds.
If he subtracted the time it took to climb the apartment stairs and actually get inside, it wasn’t even a full twelve minutes.
Could an ordinary office worker in his late twenties really run three kilometers in under twelve minutes?
Back in the military, he vaguely remembered the “top-tier soldier” benchmark being twelve minutes or something like that.
And even now—his chest pounding, his breathing a little rough—he didn’t actually feel tired.
“Hah. Seriously.”
Tilting his head in disbelief, Junho grabbed water from the fridge, drank, then lay down in the living room.
After they moved and he got things roughly organized—before he really started executing the plan—he intended to at least do some basic bodyweight training at home.
He started with push-ups.
“Hoo...”
After steadying his breath, Junho bent his elbows.
And a little later—
“Hup.”
After straightening his arms all the way one last time, Junho stood up.
Wiping away the sweat, he muttered with a dumbfounded look on his face.
“One hundred... Are you kidding me?”
He didn’t remember the exact number, but even in the military he couldn’t do fifty in a minute. Forty, maybe?
Either way, he definitely remembered this: even push-ups had only been around company average for him.
But now—what felt like maybe two minutes later—he’d done a hundred without stopping.
Planning to shower anyway, Junho stripped off his sweat-soaked workout clothes and went into the bathroom in his underwear, staring at himself in the mirror.
His build did look better. Clearly.
But still—doing a hundred push-ups like it was nothing right after running three kilometers?
No matter how he looked at it, that wasn’t normal.
“What the hell is this...? This makes no sense...”
Junho felt a flicker of fear.
His eyes drifted to his right hand on instinct, and the scar stood out sharply.
“No way...”
Was it because he’d been bitten—by what he assumed had been an Alpha—in the moment right before he regressed?
His heart started hammering.
Clenching his teeth, Junho snatched up his phone and searched for the nearest general hospital.
Then he called and booked the earliest full medical exam he could get.
“Calm down. Calm down. Hoo... hoo...”
After hanging up, he forced his breathing steady.
It was probably nothing.
No— it had to be nothing.
For whatever reason, he’d gotten one more chance to survive. He couldn’t end up with a zombie ending before he’d even properly started.
***
After showering, spending about thirty minutes searching various things, and sorting his thoughts out, Junho woke his brother.
“Sorry, hyung. I usually fall asleep after midnight, so I couldn’t crash early.”
“It’s fine. Take it slow. But listen...”
Keeping his tone calm, Junho told Junhyeok honestly about his condition.
“...So if, even just in case, I start acting weird, I’m going into my room and locking the door. You do not open it. Call the police immediately. You absolutely can’t get bitten. Tell them I’m extremely dangerous, and insist only a fully armed unit—SWAT, whatever—will be able to restrain me.”
It was mid-November. Everyone wore long sleeves and heavier clothes.
That alone lowered the odds of getting bitten by a lot, but Junho still said it—because you never knew.
“No, are you insane...? How does that even make sense?”
Junhyeok got heated.
“Hyung! That was a prophetic dream! You just had a dream! You’re saying you get bitten in a dream and turn into a zombie? Are you out of your mind?”
Junho understood exactly why his brother was reacting like this, so he kept quiet at first.
Both their parents were gone. The only family left was the two of them.
Their grandparents had all passed away too, and both their father and mother had been only children, so there weren’t even any relatives.
Just the two brothers. Completely.
“N-no, hyung...”
“Look.”
Cutting Junhyeok off, Junho held out his right hand.
“...!”
Junhyeok’s eyes widened at the scar on the back of Junho’s hand.
“You know I didn’t have this scar before. I’m not worrying for no reason. So for now... do what I’m saying. And we still don’t even know if I’ll change or not. I booked a full exam. I’m saying we should be careful until we get the results.”
“...I get what you mean, but...”
“Idiot.”
Junho let out a short laugh and ruffled the hair of his brother, who was taller than him.
“Hey—cut it out! I’m worried sick, seriously.”
“It’s fine. I’m only saying it as a ‘just in case’ precaution, so don’t freak out too much.”
Only he needed to worry.
Junho didn’t want to drag Junhyeok into that, so he forced a bright smile on purpose.
“Okay. I get it. Sorry I blew up, hyung.”
“Good. Let’s eat.”
As Junhyeok smoothed his hair and apologized, Junho told him it was fine—then reheated the leftover Chinese food from yesterday, pulled out some side dishes, and threw together a rough breakfast.
“But hyung, you really can eat. Yesterday you even mixed rice into a huge black-bean noodles order. Even if you worked out at dawn, you still finished all that.”
Junhyeok sounded impressed watching Junho heat up two instant rice bowls and shovel food down efficiently.
“Yeah. Guess starving that long brought my appetite back. Oh, right. Honestly, this kind of makes me think I won’t turn into a zombie.”
“Huh?”
“Zombies usually don’t eat for days once they’ve filled up once. They just attack—they don’t keep eating.”
“Ah... o-okay. Got it.”
Junhyeok could guess what zombies ate, so he didn’t ask. He just nodded.
“Once you’re done, shower and do a rough cleanup of your room first. When it’s time for people to head to work, we’ll use it as an excuse to pack and do a deep clean.”
“Okay. But...”
“I’ll handle Dad’s room.”
“...Yeah.”
After their father died, they’d only cleaned the master bedroom once a week, leaving everything else exactly the same.
They’d never said it out loud, but keeping their father’s room untouched had been a silent agreement between the two of them.
But if they were moving, they had to clear it out.
“The living have to keep living. Dad would want us to live hard.”
“...Yeah.”
Junho gave his brother’s shoulder a light tap.
No matter what happened to his body, no matter what happened to the world—he and Junhyeok were going to keep living.
No matter what.
***
Once it was time for office workers to head out and students to go to school, the brothers started cleaning.
They weren’t packing for the move yet—just doing a rough sort—so it wasn’t too hard.
Even their late father’s room, Junho cleared quickly without much hesitation.
They could just pack it all up and take it with them.
A couple hours later, the local realtor called.
Thirty minutes after that, the realtor—a middle-aged woman—and a young couple who looked like newlyweds came to the apartment.
It was strangers coming into his home, but all three were small-built and ordinary-looking, so Junho didn’t feel particularly tense.
“Oh my gosh! This place is sooo nice. Right, honey?”
“Yeah. It’s good.”
It hadn’t even been that many years since the last full renovation, and for a place where three men lived, it was extremely clean. The couple liked it.
More than anything, they seemed thrilled it was thirty million won under market, because they immediately said they wanted to sign.
When Junho told them he could move out within two weeks, the couple’s faces lit up even more. They signed right away and transferred the contract deposit.
“Normally it takes about a month, but since you listed it so cheap, it went fast. Hoho.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
After transferring the broker fee to the realtor, Junho ate an early lunch, then took his brother and went to the real estate office he’d called yesterday.
“You look a lot alike—so you must be brothers? Planning to live together?”
The realtor here was an older man, and even with his mask on, you could tell he had a friendly face.
“Yes. The two of us.”
“Man, this is a first. Usually young guys want apartments, not houses. But the place is really nice. Big yard—you can raise a dog, grow a little garden. Alright, let’s get in the car.”
After about five minutes in the realtor’s car past the Chunui Station intersection, they reached a stretch of plastic greenhouses with signs that read things like “farm” and “nursery.”
Junho hadn’t known Bucheon even had places like this.
A little farther, the car turned into a one-way alley that looked barely wide enough for a truck.
Soon, it stopped in front of a house with fields and an empty lot on either side.
“Here we are. Hop out.”
As soon as he got out, Junho scanned the area.
It didn’t look much different from what he’d seen on satellite and street view.
'No foot traffic. Perfect.'
As a realtor unlocked the gate, he spoke to Junho—who’d already decided, internally, that he was taking this place.
“The owners are staying at their son’s place in Suwon right now. They’re saying once the COVID restrictions lift early next year, they’re going to do an investment immigration thing—Thailand or Vietnam, something like that. They might come back someday, so for now they’re just renting it out.”
“I see. But in the listing, it said the tenant can remodel to a certain extent.”
“Oh, yes. I guess if they ever come back to Korea, they’re thinking of tearing this down and building a new house—or putting up a whole building. Even if they keep living here, same idea. Like you saw on the way in, this whole area’s going into redevelopment. And this house is getting a little old.”
That was definitely true.
The one-story house, with a yard that looked twenty meters deep, seemed at a glance like it had been built more than twenty years ago.
“Let’s see... if they moved in before the IMF crisis hit, it’s probably been around thirty years.”
Maybe he was worried the brothers might change their minds because the house was old. In the middle of showing them the master bedroom, the realtor immediately put on a salesman smile.
“But as you can see, it’s built very solid, and it’s extremely clean. The owners really treasured this place. And you can tell just from those garden trees and that little vegetable patch. When spring comes, it’s going to look great, I’m telling you.”
The realtor made a fuss, pointing at the tree visible through the master bedroom window, but Junho—who’d already decided—only ✧ NоvеIight ✧ (Original source) nodded along absentmindedly.
“Alright. Then I’d like to remodel the basement into a workout room and workshop. Would that be okay? And like I said, I’m planning to install solar panels too, and the city office told me I’d need a consent form from the owner.”
“Oh, that kind of thing is totally fine—do whatever you want. I’ll get the consent form by fax right away. As long as you’re not collapsing the house, it’s fine. Just don’t fall behind on the rent. Hahaha.”
“Understood. You said we could move in as soon as tomorrow, right?”
“Of course!”
Junho decided to sign immediately.
Then he asked if they could change the terms—from a 30 million won deposit with 1 million won monthly rent, to a 10 million won deposit with 1.2 million won monthly rent.
Normally, dropping the deposit by twenty million would mean raising rent by only a hundred thousand. But he offered two hundred thousand more, just in case the owner hesitated and refused.
If he saved twenty million on the deposit, he could make tens of billions more within months. Paying an extra two hundred thousand a month was nothing.
When they called the owner, the owner agreed readily.
So Junho signed the contract on the spot and transferred not just the contract deposit, but the full security deposit.
After parting with the realtor—who laughed and said Junho’s personality matched his looks, straightforward and decisive—the brothers went home and started packing for real.
“Since we’re hiring movers and we’ll unpack over there, just grab the important stuff.”
“Got it.”
Junho called the husband from the couple who’d signed for the apartment and told him it was fine if they wanted to move in as soon as this weekend.
The husband sounded happy, but said they still had things to sort out, so this weekend would be hard. He promised they’d move within two weeks and send the remaining payment that day.
After hanging up, Junho immediately opened an online shopping mall and started ordering what he needed.
Everything he bought was something he’d already thought about during those imagination spirals that had infected him from Han Youngjung.
An hour later.
Junho let out a long breath and finished checking out.
“For now, it’s just a rehearsal—so this is enough.”
Even though he’d only bought what he needed for the rehearsal, it still came out to well over three million won.
But Junho didn’t regret it at all.
Using these things in the new house—learning from the experience and the inevitable trial and error—would help immensely.
So that no matter what happened, he and Junhyeok would keep living.
