Episode 19
Every time I regressed, she was always the same as when we first met. However, she was very different from the first woman I met. But I didn’t want to lose her. Every time she died, I died with her. There was no point in surviving by myself anyway. I repeated this cycle over and over again, so many times that I couldn’t even remember the count.
One day, I wondered what would happen if I didn’t kill the survivors from the beginning and just tried to meet her first. Every time, on the first day, I would meet the survivors, follow them to where the noise was coming from, and kill them there. After that, I would go to meet her, but today I didn’t feel like doing that. I wanted to meet her right away. So I decided to deal with these things later and go find her. It was just a simple whim I wanted to try. But then…
“Hey, what are you doing here? I’ve been looking for you. Follow me, quick. Let’s go.”
She approached me first. I stared blankly at her as she engaged in a standoff with them, her arm around mine. My heart was pounding for some unknown reason. Usually, around this time, I would be following the survivors upstairs and wouldn’t be here. So I didn’t know, but she had come from the beginning. She had come for me.
***
Looking down at her as she slept, I gently raised my hand and stroked her hair. As I softly caressed her hair, my hand that brushed her cheek and continued down to her neck stopped there. No matter how hard I tried not to be conscious of it, every time I saw her, I saw the image of that time overlapping. Especially when I looked at her neck that had been bitten before, I felt depressed.
“I’m sorry. I was too weak to protect you. I’m really sorry…. If only I had been a little stronger.”
I soon withdrew my hand and turned my body slightly, watching her sleep soundly. I went to the desk, sat down in a chair, and turned on the internet to check the situation outside. As always, there were no changes. With a small sigh, I turned off the internet, and looked around the desk for a moment. That was when a book caught my eye.
“… ”
Come to think of it, how did Noona know how to treat injuries so well?
Except for the first woman I met, everyone else seemed awkward at treating wounds. The results always looked clumsy, as if they were doing it for the first time. So how was the first woman I met so skilled? Why was there a difference? As I pondered these thoughts, I slowly opened the book. She didn’t have to be skilled. If she couldn’t do it, I would. Thinking back to when she first treated me, I slowly began to read the book.
***
The scenery that greeted me when I opened my eyes was unfamiliar. The last place I remembered seeing was the infirmary, yet… where was this? I quickly scanned the room, but more importantly, I looked for her. She wasn’t there. Just like that day. She had disappeared while I was asleep.
When I forced myself to sit up and try to move, blood rose from my throat. Damn it. This won’t do. I needed to find her quickly. That was when I noticed the painkillers under the sofa. I immediately tore them open, poured them into my mouth, and swallowed them with the blood.
Although they didn’t take effect immediately, as moving still caused me pain, it didn’t matter. I hurriedly went into the corridor and saw the infirmary in a mess. I looked around, hoping against hope, and fortunately, she wasn’t there.
Then, where did she go? That’s when I saw a familiar face huffing down from the upper floor.
“Isn’t this enough? It’s probably too busy eating that woman to chase after us.”
“Now that we’ve come this far, it won’t chase us anymore.”
When I heard them mention ‘that woman’, I urgently grabbed them and asked them what they were talking about. They hesitated, glancing at each other, and I felt an ominous uneasy feeling.
“No. It can’t be my noona that you mentioned just now. Is it?”
But this ominous feeling had hit the nail. After hearing the truth from them, I heard the sound of my sanity snapping. How dare they use my noona as bait? I picked up a shard of glass from the floor and slashed their necks. I couldn’t forgive them. If I had known it would come to this, I would have killed them from the start like always. Regretting, I stabbed them with the glass shards one last time and stood up from my spot.
I headed upstairs, believing she was still alive by the thumping sounds coming from the upper floor. The woman I met there was in such a pitiful state that it reminded me of our first separation.
“You…”
“Noona…”
But this time, she didn’t push me away. I felt terribly relieved when she hugged me instead of pushing me away like before.
***
It was finally over.
[Congratulations. You’ve cleared Stage 1: The School.]
An opaque screen popped up in front of me, and I hurriedly turned my head to look at her. She was lying on the ground with her eyes closed as if she was exhausted.
“Are you okay, noona?”
“No… I think I’m going to die.”
I called out to her in a trembling voice just in case. Then, my nervousness melted away as the voice that I’d been waiting to hear came. It was over. It was really over. I smiled with joy at the fact that I had survived to the end with her for the first time.
“Let’s… just rest here for a bit. I… can’t move.”
“But we’re outside…”
“It’s okay. There won’t be any zombies today anyway.”
With that, she became silent as if she had really fallen asleep. I quietly watched her. Every time it reached the third day, I had to lose her. There were times when I managed to hold on, but in the end, I was the only one who survived. It reminded me of the day when an odd screen indicating I had cleared the stage appeared before my eyes with her dead body in my arms. I had been unable to do anything. I felt only empty, and had just hugged her, who had died in front of me.
But I didn’t have to do that anymore. Because she was alive and breathing next to me like this. I approached her as she slept and carefully lifted her.
“Noona, It’s not good for your health to sleep outside. It’s winter. What if you catch a cold?”
Whispering so as not to wake her, I slowly walked into the building. Ideally, I wanted to go to the counseling room and let her sleep there, but it was too far from here. I was pretending to be okay, but in truth, I was quite exhausted too. Nevertheless, I used what little strength I had left to take her to a relatively clean place and lay her down. Then I lay down next to her and hugged her.
***
I was curious. I felt it everytime — She knew a lot. The first time we met was when I felt that way the strongest. I wanted to ask her about it, but I couldn’t. I was too foolish, too caught up in the moment, and I missed my chance to ask. So I thought that if we met again, I would definitely ask her properly.
But after that, the next time we met, it was as if she were a completely different person from the one I first met. Because of that, I didn’t feel like asking her anything. And now, somehow she looked the most similar to the first time we met, so I finally asked her.
She seemed very embarrassed by my question and froze, unable to say anything. Did I ask a difficult question? But I didn’t intend to back down. What I realized through several regressions was that if an opportunity arose, I had to seize it. If I missed that moment, the opportunity wouldn’t come back. And that opportunity was now.
Perhaps she realized I wasn’t going to back down, she thought hard and eventually revealed her secret. But I couldn’t believe it. Was that really all? Knowing the future? Certainly, based on her actions, she did seem to act like she knew the future. But it wasn’t enough to explain all her actions with just the fact that she knew the future. I was sure there was something more to it…
I wanted to ask more about it, but she seemed to no longer want to talk about it and changed the subject. Knowing this, I let it go for the time being. When I brought up the conversation again, it was after everything was over.
“By the way, Noona… isn’t this situation a bit strange?”
“Hmm? What?”
Now that the zombies were gone and we had some time to spare, I thought it might be okay to test the waters a bit. In fact, I had been suspicious since the zombies first appeared, but the situation was so chaotic that I had forgotten about it until now.
Yes, zombies have been talked about for a long time in conspiracy theories, and I wasn’t unfamiliar with them because I’d been exposed to them through movies and books. But this? A weird screen appeared in front of me, and a broadcast controlling the zombies… and beyond the school gate, there was an invisible barrier blocking us from leaving. How on earth could this be explained?
So I asked her those questions. I had a feeling she would know something. After listening to me, she seemed to realize something and then awkwardly agreed with a smile.
“Huh? Oh, yeah… I got it too… Yeah, now that I think about it, it is strange.”
“…Yeah, it’s strange.”
She didn’t seem like she was going to talk this time either. I’d felt it before, but she tended to smile awkwardly and look for my reaction whenever she was lying or trying to hide something. I guessed she was trying to act naturally, but… Still, that behavior was cute. In the end, I decided to give up on finding out more and let it go. There must be a reason for it… I decided to wait, believing that she would tell me herself one day.
I loved this touch of giving us do-yoon’s pov. It helps the story going froward. Next chapter, we’re back to Jia’s pov.
