Three Days Was Enough
There wasn't much to be surprised about.
If anything was surprising, it was the zombies leaping straight out of the movies into reality. A couple of guys in prison jumpsuits loitering around the villa out front? Easy enough to write off as some escaped convicts looking to pull a common crime.
But when that villa happened to be mine, and a van I'd never seen before was parked in a way that screamed blocking the exit, things got a little different.
And when, on top of that, a whole swarm of zombies had gathered in front of the house in the short time I'd been out grocery shopping—whatever the hell kind of racket they'd kicked up—my expression had no choice but to sour at high speed.
"Is that outfit cosplay, or what? Don't tell me you're connected to that bandage guy or something."
"No, no! Sir. How could humans like us have anything to do with a monster like that? Absolutely not."
The man was on his knees, half-lifted by the collar I had him by, shaking his head vigorously.
I glanced down at the sashimi knife stuck in my side, and in a surge of irritation, slapped the man I was holding across the face a few more times.
"I sit in the driver's seat for a second and you just jam a knife into me? Huh? Huh?"
"I-I'm sor—khk. I'm soooorry!"
"Don't yell. Before I start chopping off limbs and tossing them to the zombies first-come-first-served."
...Ah. Come to think of it, I can't cut them off.
Having said that, I remembered that the axe blade I'd been using so usefully had just broken, and let out a sigh. Then I looked at the other guy next to him, dripping cold sweat.
"Come to think of it, I can just ask this one."
"...Y-yes?"
"I don't feel like talking any more with the bastard who stuck a knife in me."
I drove an elbow into his jaw, dropped him onto the asphalt, then stomped hard once on his heaving chest.
"Guhhh...!"
"If so much as one of those fucking moans comes out of you, I'll stick a knife in you the same way. Shut your mouth."
As I spun the sashimi knife still thick with my blood, the guy desperately swallowed his groans and whimpered inwardly. Even so, he stared at my completely healed side with trembling eyes. Obvious enough. He was panicking, thinking monster this, monster that.
I turned to the man beside him, who was equally failing to keep his expression under control as he looked back and forth between my face and my side.
"So. Why'd you come to this villa?"
"...Th-that's..."
I had a rough idea, but I still ought to hear it once. Maybe I'd misunderstood somehow. Of course, looking at the way he was sweating cold bullets, that was a long shot.
The man kept staring at my unnatural body, one part of him fretting over what to say while the other was busy secretly tucking the sashimi knife he'd pulled out behind his back into his clothes. With a human who couldn't be hurt by a knife right in front of him, it was only natural.
Meanwhile, the group had no time to catch their breath after the attackers withdrew—they were busy cleaning up the wrecked house without a moment's rest.
At first, not only Soeun but even Chaeyeon had planned to rest a bit from the mental exhaustion before tackling this goddamn mess, but with everyone hesitating, the sight of Yejin alone grunting as she dragged corpses outside forced them all to step up.
"Chaeyeon and Soeun, you rest. You worked hard, so I'll handle the cleanup."
"...No. I'm fine. I just got a little dizzy for a second."
Chaeyeon had been so piled with stress since morning that her brain had nearly gone on strike, but she barely held herself together and dragged corpses alongside Yejin.
"So you really are human after all. Looking at how you're struggling."
"...What kind of obvious nonsense is that."
Chaeyeon shot Soeun a look for the nonsense, closed her eyes briefly to collect herself again, then reached for a corpse's arm—only to be stopped by Haejun.
"Unnie's right. You two worked hard, so rest. Hyeonmin hyung and I will handle it."
Soeun had already plopped down on the floor and was fiddling with a kitchen knife when she spoke up.
"Take it easy. It's not just me and Im Chaeyeon—everyone's been through mental hell."
"No. All of you rest. I'll clean everything up right now."
"No, unnie. What are you talking about."
Haejun looked at Yejin in disbelief, and after hesitating, she opened her mouth.
"...It's just, I feel like we need to have everything cleaned up before Sijun oppa gets back."
Then she glanced once at the blown-open front door, and everyone fell silent without a word. Even Chaeyeon.
"When oppa gets here, what kind of reaction is he even going to have..."
He'd brought them in to look after the place while he was gone, after all. As Yejin muttered that in deep gloom, Soeun stammered a little as she spoke.
"W-well, we did drive off those crazy rapists pretty well. He'd praise us if anything, not yell at us..."
"...Kang Soeun. Didn't you spit on the floorboards earlier?"
"...?!"
Soeun flinched, scanned the floor, and hastily wiped away some clear liquid sitting between the bloodstains with her palm.
"Ahem."
"Uh, let's clean up quick."
After that, Haejun's throat went dry for no reason and he gave a dry cough, so Hyeonmin shot him an urgent look. But a man who looked to weigh well into the hundreds of pounds, now a corpse with all the strength gone from his body, was never going to be easy to move.
So the two men were struggling to drag the corpse when Chaeyeon, who'd been staring blankly, suddenly spoke up.
"Hyeonmin sunbae. By the way, what mechanism makes corpses get up?"
"...Huh?"
Hyeonmin looked at her in an awkward half-crouch as Chaeyeon pointed at the corpse and said something unnecessary.
"Zombies have actually appeared in reality, so thinking that just not getting bitten like on Netflix is enough is a bit naive, don't you think? Shouldn't we figure out the proper principles?"
"Uh, well, I mean..."
Hyeonmin kept pushing up his glasses that kept sliding down and blinked hard.
"There she goes again with the headache topics. Can't we just rest when things are hard?"
Soeun grumbled, and Chaeyeon tilted her head. Her long black hair spilled with the motion, framing the pale nape of her neck in contrast.
"Honestly, aren't you curious? Even if there's no way to know the operating principles, we should at least start inferring the trigger conditions. And more than anything..."
That corpse could turn into a zombie any second, right?
The two men carrying the corpse stopped in their tracks at the same time. Right after, Yejin also muttered with a faintly stiffened expression.
"Come to think of it, I heard this from oppa too... that for these zombie entities, the birth conditions are extremely random..."
"Random? What do you mean, unnie?"
"I overheard it while we were eating together, so I'm not totally sure. But thinking about what it means..."
Yejin recalled what she'd heard the evening Sijun had hauled a ton of meat back from the department store, while they were eating together.
"These things have zero consistency. Some corpses don't move, some do. Some even start moving after not moving at all—I just can't get used to it."
"Huh? You mean the zombies? Don't zombies just turn when they get bitten?"
"Look at me. How could that be? Think about the first day. Corpses that died in accidents just got up on their own. Honestly, if it were up to me, I'd smash the skulls of every single one whether they move or not. I just don't because it's a hassle."
Hearing that, Haejun gulped and asked.
"Th... unnie. So that means..."
"That every corpse has the potential to rise as a zombie. And of course, that one too."
She answered with the confidence of someone presenting research findings. From Haejun's perspective, this was hardly a situation for that. In other words, this massive bulk he was holding could spring up and jump him at any moment.
"Kh-h-h-hmm... ahem. Hyung."
"R-right. Let's dump it and get back quick."
So they desperately worked both upper and lower body, hauling the corpse in a frantic rush, and had just barely made it to the corridor outside the house when—
Twitch—
"...Haha."
"Hyung. That just moved, right? It's just my imagination, right?"
Hyeonmin could only give a hollow, dry laugh. Haejun muttered in denial to himself.
Suddenly a shout echoed up from the stairwell below, and both men whipped their heads around in shock.
"Um... hey."
Then a voice came from the stairs above, and they snapped their heads the other way to look up. There, a skinny man stood hesitating, mop in hand, looking down at them.
"What happened? There kept being sounds like the villa was being demolished... then it suddenly went quiet..."
"Uh, well."
Twitch-twitch—
Just as Hyeonmin was about to say something, he felt movement at his fingertips again.
Downstairs was filthy loud with whatever was going on. Upstairs, some unknown person had come down with a mop after everything was over, asking for an explanation. And most of all, in his hands was the heavy calf of a corpse—no, a pre-zombie—that was currently trying to open its eyes.
Faced with this total clusterfuck, Hyeonmin looked at Haejun once, then shook his head hard.
"Hey you fucking bastards!!! Whose house door did you smash in?!"
Then a voice exploded up from downstairs. Using that rage as an alarm clock, the brand-new zombie snapped its eyes open and locked gazes with Haejun, who was holding its arms.
Faced with white pupils that couldn't possibly belong to a human, Haejun resorted to the only danger-response method available to him.
"AAAAAAAHHH!!!"
"KYAAAAAAH!!!"
Screams erupted at a volume that didn't lose to whoever was downstairs, but packed with the exact opposite emotion—and Hyeonmin also freaked out and flung the legs away.
"Hwaaagh! Wh-what? A zombie?!"
And Jonghun, who'd just been standing upstairs until the sudden scream-bomb hit him, also gaped in horror at the corpse rising in the middle of the corridor.
"Sijun hyuuuung!!!"
Finally, I was shaking the convict by the collar with eyes blazing with extreme rage when, at the rough screams coming from above, I had no choice but to scrunch my brow even harder and look up that way.
"This fucking— What the hell kind of chaos did you cause in my house?!!"
And it's not even under my name, for fuck's sake.
Goddamn it all.