Five Chances 6
When we returned, it was not relief that greeted us. Instead, a far greater weight — the crushing pressure of the final gate — settled over all four of our shoulders.
In our hands we now held the sure coordinates of hope, but the chance to turn that hope into reality had dwindled to a single shot. Failure meant the end of everything. There would be no more test firings. No next opportunity.
Yang Jin-ju carefully packed a precisely calculated measure of gunpowder into the last remaining cylinder, not a grain out of place. Nam Jin-ju meticulously polished the steel hook — Uncle Park’s one-of-a-kind legacy — and checked its connection to the rope again and again.
When the preparations were finished, Yang Jin-ju handed us slightly worn but sturdy climbing harnesses and short secondary cords tipped with small hooks.
“Strap these on tight.”
Yang Jin-ju explained.
“Once the rope connects to that rooftop, clip this hook onto the line and pull yourself across. The hook keeps you from sliding backward, so even if your strength gives out halfway, you won’t fall. You’ll be able to make it all the way to the roof. It’s a method Uncle Park designed.”
It was a simple but effective safety measure. Still, the fact remained that we would have to cross seventy meters of empty air, trusting our lives to a single slender rope.
“Hooo…”
Yang Jin-ju took her position at the harpoon gun. Drawing on the data from yesterday’s and today’s two test firings, she finished her aim. Beside her, Nam Jin-ju held her breath, finger resting on the trigger. Everything was perfect. The moment that button was pressed, our fate would be sealed.
But Yang Jin-ju did not move.
Time seemed to freeze as a long, heavy silence stretched out. Yang Jin-ju could not tear her eyes from the sights. Nam Jin-ju’s finger trembled faintly on the trigger.
“…What’s wrong? Aren’t you going to fire?”
I asked quietly. Yang Jin-ju lifted her gaze from the scope and turned to look at us. On her face was a depth of anxiety and fear I had never seen before.
“…I know it’s stupid to say this now, but…”
Her voice was shaking.
“I’m scared. What if… what if we fail? If this hook flies off somewhere wrong… then we’re just… finished here. Everything is.”
She had carried everything on her shoulders and led this reckless plan forward, but in the end she was still just an ordinary twenty-year-old girl who feared death and dreaded failure — and she could not bring herself to decide.
“Maybe take a deep breath—”
Yeong-ju started to say, trying to calm her. At that exact moment—
Nam Jin-ju, as if she had lost her reason — or as if she had resigned herself to everything — slammed her trembling finger down on the trigger with all her strength.
THOOM.
Regardless of how loud the actual sound was, it felt to me as though a noise incomparable to anything before had swallowed the entire rooftop. All of us spun around on pure reflex. The massive steel hook, carrying every scrap of our hope and despair, carved a parabola through the red evening sky toward Apartment Building 108.
“Hey, Nam Jin-ju! Have you lost your mind?!”
Yang Jin-ju shouted in horror. I held my breath and tracked the hook’s flight through the binoculars. Please. Please…!
THUNK.
At last the hook buried itself with a spray of sparks into the concrete wall beside the fifteenth-floor window we had aimed for. The rope attached to it snapped taut, stretching a precarious lifeline between the two buildings.
It had worked.
“…It worked.”
I murmured, dazed.
Yang Jin-ju tugged on the rope with stiff, creaking movements and confirmed that the hook was securely fixed. Then she turned to Nam Jin-ju with an expression of pure disbelief.
“You… why did you do that? Why on your own…!”
Her voice held more bewilderment than anger. Nam Jin-ju’s eyes brimmed with tears as she smiled apologetically.
“Because I didn’t think you could fire it… I couldn’t watch you hesitate any longer… so I just… I just pressed it myself. Even if it had failed, it would’ve been me who did it… so it wouldn’t have been your fault. Then you wouldn’t have to carry as much guilt…”
At those words, tears finally broke free from Yang Jin-ju’s eyes. She threw her arms around her friend.
“You idiot… you absolute fool…!”
The two of them clung to each other and cried for a long time. Watching them, Yeong-ju murmured beside me.
“Wow… Nam Jin-ju. That kid’s got more guts than she looks.”
I couldn’t help smiling at that.
Soon we began preparing to cross the rope one by one. The order would be Yang Jin-ju, Yeong-ju, Nam Jin-ju, and finally me. Yang Jin-ju would go first to secure the far side, Yeong-ju would control the situation from the middle, Nam Jin-ju would cross next, and I would take rear guard last — the most rational sequence.
“Th-then… I’ll go first.”
Yang Jin-ju said, clipping the harness hook onto the rope. Her face was still pale and her legs shook, but she stepped forward as the first runner of her own accord.
She deliberately refused to look down at the sea of zombies stained red below her feet, hung from the rope, and began hauling herself across one desperate handspan at a time.
Time crawled like hell. Twenty minutes felt like twenty years. Through the binoculars we watched every tiny movement of her ant-sized figure, hearts in our throats.
“She made it! Jin-ju made it!”
Nam Jin-ju finally cheered. Through the binoculars I saw Yang Jin-ju climb over the railing of Apartment Building 108’s rooftop and disappear inside. The first runner had crossed safely.
After a radio call came through on the military walkie-talkie she had taken from the surplus store, confirming Yang Jin-ju’s safety—
“Alright, then I’ll hurry over too. You come quick.”
Yeong-ju said, tapping my shoulder. Without a hint of hesitation she hung from the rope and began crossing with strangely practiced-looking movements, even though it was her first time.
Now only Nam Jin-ju and I remained on the rooftop. In the awkward silence, she carefully asked me something.
“Um… is it okay if I call you Oppa from now on?”
Huh? She’d just been calling Yeong-ju Unni. I snorted a laugh and answered.
“Once we’re across that rooftop, call me whatever you want. Alright — your turn. Go.”
As if the words had given her courage, she beamed and hung onto the rope.
And then I was alone. I waited until I saw Nam Jin-ju nearly reach the far rooftop, then clipped my own hook onto the line. Once I crossed, it would be goodbye to this building for good.
But then—
KREEEEEAAAAA—
From far away, yet unmistakably clear, came the rending roar of that Mutant Zombie. The sound was coming from the large supermarket to the southeast — the place where we had detonated the second lure grenade.
I raised the binoculars on pure reflex. My heart nearly stopped.
The mutant was on the supermarket rooftop, charging madly toward our hideout building. It hadn’t been completely fooled by the decoy. It had pinpointed our location exactly, and it was coming to hunt us.
The rope could only support one person at a time because of the weight. The instant I saw Nam Jin-ju fully climb onto the far rooftop, I flung myself onto the line like a madman.
“Hurry! Seo Yeong-chan!”
Yeong-ju’s urgent voice carried from far ahead.
I hauled on the rope with everything I had. My arm muscles screamed, but I could not stop. The rooftop of Building 108 drew closer and closer. About ten meters left. Just a little more—
!
The very moment the tension began to ease, a violent tremor shot through the rope as if an earthquake had struck it.
I whipped my head around toward the rooftop of our hideout. And I saw it.
That ugly bastard of a mutant was already on the roof, and it had started chewing through my only lifeline with those shark-like teeth.
“Seo Yeong-chan, hurry! It’s chewing the rope! Move!!”
Yeong-ju’s scream tore through the radio.
The rope shrieked like a plucked string and swung wildly. I pulled with every ounce of strength I had left, like a man possessed. Five meters. Three meters. One meter… almost there!
But the rope snapped completely, and I felt my body begin to fall—
“Catch!”
Yeong-ju shouted. Instead of reaching out a hand that could never have reached me, she had the lightning-quick presence of mind to rip the sling off her K-2 rifle in an instant.
She lashed one end of the nylon sling tight around the rooftop railing and hurled the other end toward me with all her strength. The tip of the sling whipped past my face.
I grabbed it on pure reflex. My palm tore open and bled, but I could not let go. It was my last tether.
“Got it!”
“Hold on tight!”
Yeong-ju gripped the railing. Yang Jin-ju and Nam Jin-ju seized her around the waist, and the three of them hauled me up with every bit of strength they had.
Dragged by the three women’s desperate effort, I finally tumbled onto the rooftop floor of Building 108. Behind me came the sound of the severed rope slicing through the wind as it fell, and from far away, the enraged roar of the mutant that had lost its prey.
“Ugh… thank you. Yeong-ju.”
I gasped out between ragged breaths.
“Fuck…!”
Then Yang Jin-ju came over to us. For the first time since we had met her, she spat out a curse that carried real feeling.
“Fuck… we… all of us… made it here… alive…!”
Her face was a mess of tears and sweat, but she was smiling brighter than anyone. Seeing that, Nam Jin-ju, Yeong-ju, and I finally broke into smiles of pure relief.
Our bodies collapsed under the extreme exhaustion. Arriving on the rooftop of Apartment Building 108, we sat or lay on the floor for a long while without a word, simply breathing hard beneath the blazing red sunset. Behind us the mutant’s furious roar still drifted faintly — the rage of a predator that had lost its meal — but it was no longer a direct threat.
Seventy meters of empty air had become an uncrossable river between us and them.
“Ha… fuck… we really… made it.”
Yang Jin-ju said. Gone was her usual composure; she was simply a drained, ordinary twenty-year-old who had poured out everything she had.
We barricaded the rooftop access door with heavy scrap materials scattered around, securing ourselves against any zombies that might still be lurking inside the building. Then, in the middle of the rooftop, we unpacked the gear we had hauled across with such difficulty. Inside were our entire worldly possessions — the bare minimum of survival supplies that would carry us through the journey ahead.
“Getting to the Buk-gu District Office Sports Ground… let’s start that tomorrow.”
Yang Jin-ju said, barely managing to push herself upright.
“We need to rest here today. Moving any farther is impossible.”
No one disagreed. We spread out the old picnic mats we had brought onto the rooftop floor and claimed our spots. One by one, the city’s night lights sank into darkness as we stared blankly at the view.
“Come here.”
I had been staring vacantly at the sky when Yeong-ju called me. She was pulling a small first-aid kit from her backpack.
I sat down beside her, and she took my hand. She wanted to look at my palm — the one that had been shredded raw against the rope earlier.
“You idiot… you held on until it got this bad?”
She spoke gruffly, but the way she cleaned the wound was gentler and more careful than anyone’s. When the disinfectant touched the torn flesh, I flinched and yanked my hand back with a yelp I couldn’t suppress.
“Hold still, you little shit! You want it to get infected?!”
She clamped my hand tight and carefully applied the disinfectant again. Then she laid clean gauze over it and began wrapping the bandage with practiced skill.
Yang Jin-ju and Nam Jin-ju had drifted over at some point and were watching with open fascination.
“Wow… you’re amazing at treating wounds too. Did you actually go through special forces training or something? Is there anything you can’t do?”
Nam Jin-ju said with genuine admiration.
“Shut up.”
Yeong-ju snapped shortly, as if the praise embarrassed her, then finished by tying the bandage knot firmly. Looking at my neatly treated hand, I felt genuine gratitude.
“Thanks, Yeong-ju. What would I have done without you.”
“Whatever. Next time wear some gloves at least.”
She said it while packing away the first-aid kit, but I didn’t miss the way the tips of her ears had gone faintly red.
Once my hand was treated, we each settled onto our mats and lay down. It was hard concrete, but just being able to stretch out on our backs felt like heaven. A peaceful moment when all we had to do was fall asleep. Right then, Nam Jin-ju suddenly sat bolt upright.
“Ah, right!”
She rummaged through her backpack and pulled something out.
“Everyone worked so hard today. We’re really almost there now, so as a little boost — let’s each have a piece of candy!”
In her hand were the candies she had been saving as emergency rations. She handed one each to Yang Jin-ju and Yeong-ju first, then came over to me last.
“Oppa worked the hardest today, so you get the biggest one specially!”
She beamed as she pressed an unusually large peppermint candy into my palm — bigger than any of the others.
“Ah… thanks, Jin-ju.”
I took the candy in a daze. But in that same moment, I felt a chilly gaze from Yeong-ju, who was lying right beside me.
Without a word, she stared back and forth between me, Nam Jin-ju, and the oversized candy in my hand. That look seemed to ask, What exactly are you two doing right now?
Feeling oddly guilty, I rushed to explain.
“No, Yeong-ju. This is just… earlier downstairs she asked if she could call me Oppa, and I told her she could once we made it safely onto this rooftop. That’s all. There’s really nothing else to it.”
At my pathetic excuse, Yeong-ju snorted as if she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
“What the fuck. Who said anything?”
She sat up, snatched the large peppermint candy from my hand, and tossed the small grape-flavored one from her own palm into mine.
“I just wanted the big candy. Trade.”
She said it with complete shameless confidence. Then, for all to see, she peeled the wrapper off the big peppermint and popped it into her mouth. The loud crunch of her biting down on it rang out especially clearly across the quiet rooftop.
I stared blankly back and forth between the tiny grape candy left in my hand and Yeong-ju, who was calmly returning to her spot to lie down. The sheer absurdity of the situation was so funny that I finally burst out laughing.
“Pfft—”
At the sound of my laugh, Yang Jin-ju and Nam Jin-ju, already lying down, started giggling too. They pulled their blankets all the way over their heads, trying and failing to hold it in. Watching them, Yeong-ju and I both ended up laughing along with everyone else.
I put the small grape candy into my mouth. Sweet grape flavor spread through my whole mouth. Savoring that sweetness, I looked over at Yeong-ju, who was already beginning to drift off beside me.