Minus
It was heavy.
Chaeyeon felt the solid weight of the sword in her hands. She'd overheard that for all its ornamental appearance, the gold plating was just a surface finish — the core was forged from some specially engineered metal. Even so, she hadn't expected it to feel quite like this.
Or maybe it was just her nerves talking.
She set her hand on the gymnasium door handle, started to push — then froze.
Is this really the right thing to do?
She'd made the decision herself, but that didn't stop the doubt from clawing at her again and again. Volunteering to walk out alone with a single sword to face corpses that ate people — as if she were some kind of hero — was about as far from normal as you could get.
...A few years of fencing. That's all I've got. And I'm supposed to go save two lives with that?
Her reason was still screaming that it was impossible, that she was out of her depth. But Chaeyeon was human, and humans had instincts as well as reason.
She squeezed her eyes shut and committed.
Even if it ran dead against every survival instinct she had.
Clunk—
She pushed the door open. Bright sunlight, the crunch of packed dirt underfoot, and the bite of winter air greeted her all at once — and drove the truth home. This was reality. One wrong move and she was dead.
She drew a slow breath in. Let it out.
Then she clenched the sword hilt until her knuckles whitened and walked straight toward the direction the two middle-school girls were running from.
"Hah— hah... Unnie. That person up ahead... who is that?"
"...I don't know. Is that a sword she's holding?"
Yujin's face hardened and she almost slowed — then decided whoever it was probably wasn't coming to hurt them, and pushed her pace instead.
"Doesn't matter who it is — we have to ask for help! We join up with her group and—"
At the same moment, a familiar groan drifted out of the side alley.
They both stopped breathing and turned. A high-school boy's corpse was doing something grotesque against the wall.
Thud— Thud—
"Grrraaahhh..."
It was methodically slamming its head into the brick, self-mutilating — and all the while its eyes alone had swivelled toward the sisters, staring. The moment they drew level, their gazes locked.
A rivulet of blood ran down from its forehead, streaking across its face and pouring into its gaping mouth.
"GRAAAAAAAAH!"
It came at them in a mad sprint — and from the opposite alley, more footsteps closed in. The color drained from both Yujin's and Sujin's faces.
The high-school girl up ahead heard it too. She turned — not to run, but to accelerate straight toward them.
For a split second Yujin almost mistook her for another zombie. That misunderstanding lasted all of a few seconds.
A fencing blade, glittering gold, flashed into the girl's hand and swept toward the sisters in the blink of an eye.
No — not toward them. Toward the zombie lunging at their backs.
Shhhk—
Thuck—!
In a single strike, Chaeyeon drove the point through one zombie's pupil and punched clean through the brain behind it. If her coach had seen that thrust, he would have been on his feet applauding.
Chaeyeon herself had no time to feel proud. More zombies were already closing from the side.
One at a time. If I miss, I die.
She wrenched her focus to its absolute limit. Walking a tightrope with her life on the line sent tension flooding every muscle — but it was familiar. Growing familiar. The same edge she'd felt in competition.
Tension can lock your body up. But your mind can't afford that. You have to turn the nerves into a high — only then can you handle anything that comes. Understood?
She repeated her mother's words from the day of the finals, just a few months ago, over and over.
Fencing is hit-and-withdraw. Thrust, recover, thrust again. Repeat it forever.
That seamless cycle of offense and defense — that's fencing, Chaeyeon. That's all you need to know.
Her coach's words from the day they'd first met, back in middle school, rose up alongside them.
She converted the tension into a rising high, and reset her stance in the same motion as the attack.
Nothing fancy. Just those two things.
She thrust through the zombie's skull and pulled the blade free in the same beat.
Thock—!
Then drove it through the eye of a female zombie lunging from the side. Recovered.
Thuuuck—!
Punched through the milky-white pupil of the next one. Recovered again.
Three zombies dropped in seconds — and the ones still pouring in didn't care. They only wanted the soft white flesh right in front of them.
Yujin, watching that clean, almost beautiful technique from a few steps away, found her eyes locked on it despite herself. Then the mass of zombies surging in all at once snapped her free. She clenched her teeth and shouted.
"Kim Sujin! Run as hard as you can!"
She let go of her sister's hand and spun, ready to help this unknown unnie — only for that same unnie to grab her arm, whip her back around, and shove her forward with a single line.
"You run to the gym with her. Don't worry about me."
Then she flicked her wrist, snapped the blood and brain matter off the blade in a single crack, and walked straight into the four or five zombies charging her in a frenzy.
Yujin couldn't tear her eyes from that retreating back — until Sujin seized her hand and started running hard. Only then did she turn and pour everything into her legs.
Chaeyeon cut the two of them from her mind and faced the death coming at her head-on.
Every screaming instinct, every hammering beat of her heart, wanted her to spin and sprint for the gym the way they had. She couldn't. Distance, their speed — if she turned her back and ran, she might make it, but one of those two middle-schoolers would not.
So there was only one path left.
Kill or be killed.
And the outcome rested entirely on Chaeyeon herself.
Hit and withdraw. Four of them. Closest first!
A single wasted motion meant death — so she would end it in four strikes. No more.
She drew a breath. Held it.
Every muscle in her body went taut as she poured her entire mind into the single blade in her hand.
The first reaching claw came for the girl who had set her stance and leveled her point. The juicy prey filling that zombie's vision was suddenly replaced by a point of light.
Thock—!
The golden tip punched mercilessly through the livid white pupil and tore through the brain behind it. Chaeyeon's arm bent, the blade recovered — and in the same continuous motion drove through the next one's eye.
Two down almost simultaneously. Then the collapsing corpses blocked her line of sight.
She didn't panic. A light step back, and the third zombie's pupil came clear — she launched a linked thrust straight into it.
Thwack—!
An eyeball, nerve cords, blood and brain matter sprayed into the air off the recovering blade. Chaeyeon didn't flinch. The extreme tension of a life on the line was lifting her instead — a thin smile even touched the corner of her mouth.
The last one came with its jaws wide. She dropped her upper body deep under its reaching hands and murmured under her breath.
"I told you I could do it."
Shhhk—
Thuuuck—!
The thing that had so badly wanted a taste of Chaeyeon's soft throat got, instead, the raw iron tang of metal punching up through its lower jaw and tongue. Before it could even savor that, the hole in its brain turned it back into a proper corpse.
"Hoo..."
She'd done it. In the end, she had.
The smile at Chaeyeon's mouth deepened. She wiped the blood and brain matter spattered through her hair, then finished with one clean snap of the blade. Liquid scattered across the dirt. She watched it for a beat — then remembered she didn't have time for this and hurried toward the gym. Linger, and more zombies drawn by the noise might show up.
She approached the entrance with careful eyes on her surroundings. Hyeonmin, who had opened the door for her, gave her a thumbs-up of genuine, heartfelt respect.
"Chaeyeon. The way I see it, you could be on the fifty-thousand-won bill right next to Shin Saimdang."
"...What are you even talking about, sunbae."
She laughed once at the absurd compliment and stepped through the door he held open.
"How are those two looking? I only caught a glimpse earlier, but their color was terrible."
"Yeah — one of them looked ready to drop any second. The other one was watching us carefully, managing her face. Seemed pretty tough."
"I like that. Whatever their situation was, they're with us now."
As Chaeyeon talked with Hyeonmin and closed the entrance, a silhouette began to surface on the back of her hand — a skull, its color darkening steadily toward black, growing sharper and more distinct with every second.