The Narrow Gap
Yujin sat perched on the windowsill like that, pausing just short of the drop with Sujin watching her.
"…Wait. Before that—let's shut that door all the way first."
She picked her way carefully over to the bathroom door, which hung slightly ajar in a way that set her teeth on edge, and eased it closed so slowly it didn't make a sound. Then she came back and explained.
"We can't let the monsters see us. Better to cut them off beforehand."
Muttering something about useless death flags and how they could go to hell, Yujin squeezed Sujin's hand once and said one more thing.
"Remember what I told you. I'll go down first."
"…Be careful, Unnie."
Even without Sujin adding that, Yujin gripped the windowsill with extreme care and swung herself out over the drop.
Uselessly bright morning sun struck her forehead as she drew one last deep breath—the same breath she'd already taken a dozen times—and jumped.
Hhk—
For all her bracing, the rush of air tearing over her body and the sudden weightlessness locked her brain solid.
Even so, her landing spot was dead-on. By pure luck she came down in the first-floor flower bed with nothing worse than a spectacularly sprained ankle.
"Aaagh…"
Clutching the throbbing joint, she looked up and found her little sister staring down at her with the same worried face. When Sujin's eyes asked if she was all right, Yujin waved her hand hard—jump, now.
With the two of them separated, any monster that showed up would be a disaster, and the urgency kept tightening across Yujin's face.
But even Yujin, who had talked big and gone first, had barely managed the drop. There was no way timid Sujin was going to fling herself out a window on the spot.
"Hey… Kim Sujin…! Don't close your eyes! Don't close them—jump! You idiot, you'll definitely get hurt if you do that…!"
"Ugh…"
At that small, furious whisper, Sujin finally cracked her eyes open a slit and kept clinging to the sill, still hesitating.
"That little idiot, I swear…"
The rising panic finally drove Yujin into the deep brush of the flower bed. She prayed that any monster wandering past wouldn't spot her.
Watching her sister hide, Sujin stamped her feet in place, steeled herself, and swung over the rail.
Unlike Yujin, bad luck found her.
Urgent footsteps hammered beyond the bathroom entrance. Mid-jump she flinched, twisted around, and looked back.
Yujin's quick thinking had sealed the door tight, but those footsteps lit Yujin's imagination on fire all the same.
The image of something smashing the door open and seizing her any second flooded Sujin with a terror she couldn't name—and that terror, in the end, launched her out the window with startling speed.
Yujin, who had no idea about any of that, watched her sister hesitate for a beat and then leap, and let out a quiet sound of admiration.
Wait—what's gotten into her?
Whatever the reason, Sujin landed properly in the brush the same way Yujin had. Her body was so light that she came through the landing in better shape than her sister. Not unhurt—both wrists ached from a bad catch—but that was practically nothing.
Yujin took one look at Sujin's arms and legs, scraped red by branches and leaves and already starting to pout, felt a rush of fond pride, and crushed her in a hug before letting go again.
"You did great, Sujin! You're not hurt anywhere? Let's go."
"Wait, Unnie. Are you okay?"
"Ankle's pretty bad, but I can still run, so it doesn't matter. Get up."
Yujin took Sujin's hand to pull her up and flinched at a spike of pain. She ignored it completely, stayed bent over, and kept talking.
"I already checked the area. No monsters wandering around at all. We walk straight out along the flower beds. Got it?"
"Yeah. Okay."
The beds, thick with trees and brush, ran all the way toward the athletic field. The sisters crept along them toward the school entrance as safely as they could manage.
Of course, every fresh horror they passed, every distant lurching figure, set both their legs shaking whether they were the older sister or the younger. But hope was still visible, so they kept putting one foot in front of the other.
Only for a little while.
The moment the main gate finally came into view, both of them dropped onto the dirt of the flower bed with hollow faces.
"Grrraaah…"
"Kkrrk… kkrk…"
Corpses in every kind of uniform—students, teachers, staff—staggered back and forth across the entrance. The asphalt by the gate was soaked in blood and body parts so thick it told the whole story without words.
While the sisters had been trapped in that bathroom, every one of those people had tried to escape through the front gate. And every one of them had been eaten.
Staring at the gate in blank despair, Yujin scanned the surroundings out of empty habit.
And the second her eyes met the face and gaze peeking around the wall of the path leading deeper into the school, her whole body locked up.
Its skull was cracked dry and split as if hair itself had been a luxury. Both cheeks had been torn away, muscle and nerve laid bare, a few rotten teeth showing through the gaps.
Worst of all were those alien pupils and irises staring straight back at her. Nothing human lived in them.
Then it split its mouth in a crooked grin—and the instant she saw that, Yujin seized Sujin's hand and bolted out of the flower bed.
"U-Unnie?! Why are you—"
Sujin started to ask, then caught the side of Yujin's face and felt pure terror and raw survival instinct pouring off her. The words died.
The thing watched the two prey animals flee at a dead sprint without a word, then threw its jaws wide and screamed.
KRAAAAAAAAAAAAH—!
As if answering the call, hideous howls rose from every corner of the school.
Kkrk-kkrk-kkrk—
Kkrk-kkrk-kkrk—
Running footsteps erupted from the first floor, the second floor, every building, every direction. The sisters' faces went paper-white as they simply ran.
In truth, there was only one answer left.
Charging the main gate head-on was suicide. Ducking back into the buildings was suicide.
Yujin fought the terror hammering her brain and forced herself to think.
I don't want to die! I can't die here! I'm going to live! I'm going to live!!!
Survival instinct owned every inch of her body. The pain in her ankle vanished. She clamped Sujin's hand like a lifeline and veered toward the spot that had just flashed into her mind.
"Kim Sujin! We're going over to the high school next door!"
The words dragged Sujin's reason back from wherever terror had flung it. She gasped out a question between ragged breaths.
"B-but… the wall's too high…! Even the boys can't climb it…!"
"There's a gap in the right-hand corner over here! That's where we're going!"
Escaping this nightmare of a school only to head for another school—but there was no other option.
Two middle-school girls trying to manage alone would be worse off than finding some high-school seniors and asking for help.
They ran with everything they had and reached the gap Yujin had mentioned.
Yujin jammed her little sister into a crack so narrow even a skinny person would have thought twice.
"Aaagh! Unnie, wait, wait—!"
"Hurting beats dying! Get in!"
The second Sujin scraped through by a hair, Yujin let out a shuddering breath of relief.
Then her face hardened and she took a small step back.
"…U-Unnie? Where are you going?"
No. Sujin denied it in her head, but she already knew.
The gap was far too narrow for Yujin to follow, and as far as Sujin could see there was no other way left.
Looking at her sister's unfocused eyes—terror and despair had already cracked her—Yujin snapped in a voice that was small and somehow huge at once.
"Idiot, go where? I'm jumping the wall, so keep watch properly!"
"Uh—uh? O… okay."
The words snapped Sujin back. She watched Yujin set herself for a running start—then her eyes went wide.
"Unnie! Behind you!"
At that terrified cry Yujin bit down hard on her lip, didn't look back, and launched herself at the wall.
She twisted just clear of the bald monster's reaching claws and cleared the top.
"KRAAAAAAAH!"
The thing twisted its grinning mouth into a snarl at the prey that had slipped past by a finger's width and thrust an arm through the gap. Yujin grabbed Sujin's arm, yanked her back, and raised a shaking middle finger.
"Pervert bastard. Go eat shit."
After that, as the sisters scanned their surroundings in a hurry and put distance between them, the thing stared after them without blinking. Slowly it pulled its arm back through the gap.
It checked the other corpses that came running late, drawn by the noise it had made. Then it ground its rotten teeth together, seized one of the bodies, and shoved it up against the wall.
It stepped onto the corpse's shoulder and began to climb. Its eyes had gone pure white with madness and obsession.