29 | CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
FOUR MONTHS
" eternity "

IT HAD BEEN nearly four months since the outbreak first devastated the city of Hyosan, taking away and destroying the lives of many innocent people, including that of the small group of young high school students who experienced the brunt of it. 

It had been nearly four months since the surviving students were rescued at a military checkpoint shortly after they fought for their lives in the abandoned neighborhood. They went willingly despite having lost three people: Wu-jin, Yu-ri and Nam-ra.

It had been nearly four months since they were shoved into a quarantine camp where they were finally given the food, water, clothes and sanctuary they had longed for throughout all of the sleepless nights they spent inside of their school and on rooftops.

It had been nearly four months since Moon Yu-ri spoke to her friends after she'd woken up in the middle of the evacuated neighborhood with nothing but an excruciating headache and her Bucket List journal in her tired hands.

The stench of ashy smoke enveloped the air as Yu-ri shot up from the dirty cement where her body was resting. Instantly, she began coughing, clutching at her chest as she choked up whatever of the debris had made its way into her lungs.

It was like waking up from a sick nightmare. As she recaught her breath, she inhaled deeply before glancing down at her Bucket List journal in her lap. At the mere sight of it, the memory of her last hours came flashing back to her.

She remembered losing her balance, falling and hitting her head, and the pain that made her succumb to what she thought was her death. Glancing around at the cold floor where her body sat and the bodies of the dead all around her, she realized that she was completely by herself.

Her friends had left, really thinking that she was gone and, honestly, in her last moments, she thought she was gone too. She couldn't understand how she was awake and breathing. Maybe this was the afterlife. Maybe this was what her heaven looked like and there was truly no way she'd ever be able to escape the horrors of the apocalypse and being alone.

However, the Bucket List in her hands told her otherwise. She clutched it tightly, feeling the chill leather on her sore fingertips. It felt too real, there was no way that she wasn't awake.

But how?

Lifting her hand up, she brought it to the back of her head, feeling for the place where she had hit it. Her fingers brushed over what seemed to be a scab. It barely hurt when she touched it and there was no sign of anymore bleeding. It was almost as if it was beginning to heal.

She glanced down at the scratch on her arm and for some reason, it looked as if it were healing too. Not an open scratch anymore, but rather a scar; a fresh scar.

But she'd died. She knew she died; she literally felt it as her body and her thoughts slowed down and she drifted off into an empty abyss. So, there was no reasonable explanation for how she was sitting up and, evidently, alive.

Pushing herself off of the cold ground, not even her legs felt wobbly anymore. Her body once felt like gelatin but now, felt completely normal. She cracked her back and stretched out her sore muscles, rolling her neck around and wincing at the tightness.

She stepped out into the middle of the street and looked around for any sign of zombies or her friends. Yet, there was nothing besides the already fallen bodies around her. She was afraid to call out for them, worried that she'd just draw any remaining zombies to her instead.

She was confused and quite frankly terrified, but more so, she was utterly exhausted. She needed to get off of the streets. She needed to be anywhere else. So, she began walking in the direction her and her friends were originally headed.

It didn't hurt her to walk either, which was weird. Everything felt so normal but was far from it.

She didn't know how long she walked for, but it seemed like ages, searching around every corner for a sign of her friends and coming up with nothing. Until the sound of voices made her halt in her steps.

It was distant but she could hear it and moved closer to the sound. Approaching a set of train tracks, her eyes focused on a group of soldiers, with weapons raised, headed in her direction.

"Freeze!" They exclaimed upon seeing her.

Almost instinctively, she raised both of her hands in the air. Fear coursed through her at the worry of what they were going to do to her. More so of what they weren't going to do.

"It's a girl," One of the soldiers spoke to the others as he approached her. "She's alive."

She wanted to back away, she wanted to run. What if they thought she was a half-bie and refused to save her?  Worse, what if she was a half-bie? That'd be the only explanation to why she woke up from her own death.

"Are you okay, ma'am?" He asked carefully.

She nodded without hesitating.

"Are you alone?"

She thought for a second, before nodding her head again as her arms drooped down to her sides.

"You're going to be okay." He assured her. "We're not going to hurt you."

"Are you going to leave me?" Her voice was scratchy as it was the first time she spoke after having been dead.

"No." His voice remained gentle. "We have a quarantine camp. There's food, water, clothes, and shelter. Anything you need, we'll have it. We're going to take you there."

Her shoulders shrugged and for a singular second, she felt herself relax.

"We'll have to run some tests first, okay?"

This made her flinch as she took a step backwards. They were going to do tests on her and discover what she was and then kill her for the second time. Except, as she thought about it, it didn't even make sense to her. Not even she knew what she was. Honestly, the tests might benefit her more than harm her.

"Don't worry," He quickly responded. "It won't be anything crazy. We just want to make sure you don't have the virus and that you're safe to be placed into quarantine."

The way he spoke felt so cautious and truthful, Yu-ri had no choice but to believe him. If she didn't have hope, what else would she have in that moment?

She nodded her head and allowed the soldier's gloved hand to envelop her own and gently lead her to the miliary vehicle at the very end of the train tracks.

It had been nearly four months since Yu-ri tested negative for the virus as the doctors at the quarantine camp determined that she was merely just a girl who'd been through some things.

They treated to the scab on the back of her head by giving her proper pain medication and they tended to the scar of the scratch on her arm by giving her ointment. They didn't say it was infected nor did they question where she received it from.

However, she wondered how that was even possible. Being shoved into quarantine for four months really allowed her time to think; to rack her brain with every possibility of what she could be and with every day that passed, she learned more and more about herself.

There was one instance, during quarantine, where the camp rescued this boy from outside the walls and brought him in for testing. Quickly, they learned that he had the virus in his system despite appearing as human. He was a half-bie and Yu-ri would always recall the moment they walked the boy past her quarantine block, and he halted in his steps. 

The half-bie sniffed the air, smelling nothing but a sweet citrusy scent; the one that Nam-ra had explained in detail to Yu-ri so many times before. He inhaled deeply, taking in every last bit of Yu-ri's scent as it visibly calmed his scenes, before the guards dragged him off without any word.

She still had it, Yu-ri learned. That infamous "half-bie calming" scent.

There was another time, where Yu-ri had accidentally sliced her finger with a piece of paper from the novel that she was reading. The paper cut was long and deep, and she had no choice but to ask for a band aid. Yet, before she even had the chance to, the paper cut healed itself right before her eyes.

Thinking she was going insane, she proceeded to slice her hand up several more times with the paper, covering her palm in paper cuts. She then watched as, seconds later, the cuts began to heal one by one until there was no trace of them at all.

Her body could heal itself at abnormal rates, Yu-ri learned. Which would explain why she had woken up from her own death with injuries and scars completely healed.

She spent those four months trying to connect the dots and make sense of her own existence; however, it was hard when she couldn't speak to anyone about it, nor could she run tests that would properly give her the answers.

She determined that her body must've carried something different; rather than the virus, it was an antibiotic. It made complete sense to her. She was able to heal herself, having survived even after she thought she succumbed to her own injuries, and she was able to calm the urges of those half humans who carried the opposing biotic.

The doctors who ran tests on her when she first entered camp didn't discover anything of the sort because they were only testing for the zombie virus. It never crossed their minds to check for those who were resistant.

It was a logical possibility, one that Yu-ri held onto because it made her feel better about herself; knowing that she wasn't a half-bie but maybe something opposite.

Yu-ri so wished that she could tell her friends about her discovery; to tell them that she was completely healed and had some sense as to how. But that was the problem: Her friends believed that she had died out there four months ago because, well, what other choice did they have?

Yu-ri knew that her friends were at that camp. When she first arrived there, she heard one of the guards mention On-jo's name and referred to those with her as, "the surviving students." She almost begged the guards to let her see them or at least to tell them that she was okay, yet something inside of her refused.

A part of her didn't want her friends to know. It was the survivor's guilt she felt, knowing that she should've died outside of those walls just as Cheong-san did, just as Gyeong-su did, just like Wu-jin, Joon-yeong, and her entire volleyball team. Just like her mother and father.

None of those people deserved to die so why did she deserve to live? Sometimes, in those four months of nothing but thought, she wished she hadn't lived. She'd survived to, what? Live with the harrowing and heavy grief that all those she loved around her had already left?  It was too much for her.

In those four months, she had fallen into a saddened state, where she dwelled too much on her horrible past that she feared the inevitable future. She had grown so accustomed to being lonely her whole life that she figured, maybe being alone was all she was made for.

So, she didn't attempt to reach out to her friends, nor did she tell the guards anything, besides her name, that would allow them to connect the dots between her and the other surviving students. She didn't want to be asked questions about how she survived, she didn't want to be interrogated or perceived by others in the camp. She just wanted to be left alone.

☾

The Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency was unable to identify, in those four months since it started, the virus. Meaning, they didn't deem it safe enough to release the Hyosan residents completely. However, they lifted martial law for the first time since the outbreak, granting the survivors a little bit more freedom.

Yu-ri didn't want to leave her quarantine block, she never liked to in case there were a chance she'd run into her friends. But she needed to get out. She needed to breathe fresh air and remind herself that, as much as she hated it, she was still grounded on Earth.

She stepped outside with her puffer jacket on, one that she acquired from the donation box, and pulled its big hood over her head. Once she lifted her black face mask over her nose, she was completely unrecognizable which is exactly the way she preferred it.

The wind and sun felt nice on her skin as she glanced around her, watching friends and families reunite for the first time in months. Children laughed, parents cried, and despite how horribly sad it made her, she couldn't help but smile to herself.

Until her eyes landed on the wired fences all around the camp. They were covered, top to bottom, with different colored ribbon and attached to each were notes. Yu-ri approached a ribbon wall and scanned each and every note that was written. There were letters from children grieving the loss of their parents, and notes left by parents asking their children to "come home already."

It made Yu-ri's stomach turn in an incomprehensible guilt. It was so unfair that people were still left wondering where their loved ones were, and she had the audacity to feel sorry for herself for being alive.

She couldn't bare anymore of staring down at the ribbons in front of her, so she turned around to leave just as a person approached the fence. She kept her eyes trained on the wire, not bothering to acknowledge the person next to her.

It wasn't until they spoke that her body stiffened.

"Missing someone?"

Yu-ri would recognize that voice anywhere. It had been four months since she heard Su-hyeok speak and the mere sound of him made her want to crumple to her knees in sadness.

She couldn't find it in her to look at him or even walk away, so she simply nodded her head. She kept her gaze down so he wouldn't be able to see her face but watched out of the corner of her eye as he tied a ribbon of his own to the fence.

"Me too." He sounded so sad, so empty for the first time in his life. Yu-ri didn't even want to question how much her absence had taken a toll on him.

She wanted to reach out and grab him; to show him that she was alive and breathing but she couldn't. She could barely even move.

When he finished attaching his ribbon, he stayed for a few seconds, just staring at it. She wondered what he was thinking about, what had been going through his head for the last months of his life. She could feel it, as he stood beside her, when his shoulders tensed and he hurried to wipe his face free of any tears that fell. He sniffled and inhaled deeply, before straightening his shoulders and walking away.

Yu-ri let out a deep breath she didn't even know she'd been holding. She glanced behind her to find that the boy was nowhere in sight anymore, so she twisted around and scooted over to stand directly in front of the ribbon he just tied.

With a shaky hand, she reached for the note.

Moon Yu-ri,

I'm sick of speaking to the moon every night and

having to pretend that it's you and I'm afraid

of feeling this sadness for the rest of my life when

four months without you has already felt like an eternity.

Yu-ri's heart shattered in her chest. She began sobbing before she could even control it and she had to squeeze her eyes tightly to stop herself from falling to the floor in anguish. She clutched the ribbon in her hand and wanted to tear it off of the fence and rip it to shreds.

How incredibly selfish she'd been, to hide herself away and pretend that she didn't exist out of hope that it'd make her friends grieve her less. She didn't know how much they'd been hurting-- how much he'd been hurting. She wished she could go back in time, to the second she got rescued and find her friends sooner if only to save them from that sickening grief.  

☾

Nighttime came quickly and Yu-ri found herself sitting outside, tucked in a secluded corner of the courtyard as she stared up at the evening sky. The moon shone brightly tonight and despite the cold chill that racked the air, sitting beneath the moonlight, she felt incredibly warm.

The journal in the pocket of her puffer coat was itching to be pulled out and when she could no longer resist, she reached into the pocket and grabbed it. She began flipping through the pages and scanned every one, ignoring the ones that hurt too bad to think about. She turned to the very last page she'd written in, and her eyes locked on the most recent checkmark she'd made.

☐ survive a zombie apocalypse

Yu-ri shook her head as she brought her pen up to add a checkmark to the box. She'd done it, much to her surprise. She should've been proud of herself, and she was, but that reminder of everything she'd endured just to get where she was, made her question; She'd survived the zombie apocalypse but at what cost?

The sound of gentle footsteps crunching on gravel made her shoot her head up from her journal. From the spot where she sat, she had the perfect view to catch her friend, On-jo, as she walked cautiously to the side of a building. On-jo, too determined to not get caught outside past curfew, hadn't seen Yu-ri sitting there.

With furrowed eyebrows, Yu-ri shoved her journal back into the pocket of her jacket and carefully stood up as quietly as she could. Where was On-jo going at this time of night? By herself too?

Yu-ri lifted her face mask over her nose and pulled up her fluffy hood before slowly walking towards the direction where On-jo was headed. She peaked around the corner and swallowed at the sight of all of her friends, grouped together as they attempted to jump the gate.

Gulping, she pressed her back up against a wall. She had only seen six of them which meant that someone was missing; Nam-ra. Where was Namra? Where were they going? She was unable to come up with any logical explanation as to why all of them were sneaking out together at this hour, nothing that made sense to her, but she wouldn't let herself walk away without finding out.

Once their hushed chatter disappeared, Yu-ri emerged from the corner and walked over to the back corner. Stepping on boxes for assistance, she lifted herself up and pushed herself over. She cleared the wall with ease, hissing when her feet stung from the drop.

She could see the shadows of the group far in front of her and she made a mental note to stay as far behind as she could without losing them.

The walk was silent, she couldn't even hear her friends speaking to each other. She wondered if this was the first time they had all seen each other since getting rescued. She didn't even want to imagine the suffering they had all done in silence, simply because it was an even harder reminder of everything they endured when all of them were together.

The group paused as they approached a hill and Yu-ri slowed to a stop until all of her friends continued walking. As she made her way up the path, she halted at what they had all been looking at; a tree, filled with ribbon and notes for all the students that had passed away. There were treats and offerings at the bottom of the trunk that fellow surviving students left in order to feel closer to those they lost.

It made Yu-ri gulp and when she could feel the tears building up inside her eyes, she knew it was time to turn away. When she twisted her body to continue walking down the hill, her eyes caught sight of a distant orange light, illuminating the darkness around her.

It was coming from down the hill and when her eyes adjusted to the darkness, they focused in on what appeared to be the remnants of her school. A realization sunk into her head; Her friends were going back to school, most likely to determine what the source of the light was.

As much as she didn't want to, she would go too.

The trek to her school was short as she was stuck in her head for most of it, trying to stay grounded on Earth and not let herself slip back into those horrible thoughts that consumed her for most of quarantine. 

Faster than she had expected, she had made it to the ruined building: The Corpse of Hyosan High. The government really had destroyed it completely. Just the mere sight of it in front of her made her stomach churn. Never would she have ever imagined herself to miss going to school as much as she did in that moment but looking around, it filled her with a deep sadness and longing for what once was.

Yu-ri hesitated before walking inside and towards the stairs. It seemed like it'd been forever since she was last there, but she remembered the layout like the back of her hand, even if everything was demolished. Being back in there, looking around at the bloodied walls and dusty floors, made her worried that in any second, zombies would come and chase after her again. Yet that wasn't the case, not anymore.

The sound of a door opening and closing above her made her halt. Her friends had made it to the rooftop so she hurried, running up the remainder of the steps until she made it to the top of the stairs and to the rooftop entrance.

She carefully walked up the last steps until she made it directly to the door. She was fighting every single bone in her body that urged her to reach for the handle and swing the door open.

She was so close; to the last place in her school that she had ever seen, and to the unknown light source that was shining so brightly, and to reuniting with the only people she had left in this world.

But she couldn't bring herself to open the door, so she merely put her ear up to it and listened.

━━━━━━ ☾ ━━━━━━

NOTES.
PRANKED!
oh i'm so sorry i did that to y'all
but she's alive!!!! i couldn't actually do that
to my baby Yu-ri. she deserves to live.

she's not a half-bie, though! our girl is
quite literally built different and is immune. someone once commented "what if she's the ellie williams of aouad" and i hope they know they were right this entire time.

also, exciting news. this won't be
the last chapter! i've got one more for y'all!
chapter thirty (the final chapter) out soon!
PUBLISHED. may 29, 2024