The Hunt Begins
The first to clearly speak the word "hunt" was Haneul. She had been listening to Eunjae and Chaewon discuss the distribution of supplies and the new rules when she glanced once toward the gym entrance and spoke in a low but steady voice.
"In the end, we'll have no choice but to keep going outside. One trip won't be enough for food or water, hygiene supplies will run out, and we'll need medicine too. We can't survive long by simply locking the doors and hiding. If we go out once, hide again, go out and hide again, the smells and traces will pile up until the zombies come flooding in. Instead, let's take the initiative. Let's clear the area around us—starting with the corridors near the gym, the connecting passages, one staircase at a time. Ambush and kill the quiet ones. If they're clustered, lure them apart and scatter them. Then we claim the spaces they've taken."
Haneul's words left the gym in silence. Some students wore frightened expressions; others stared at her in confusion. For many, the mere idea of stepping outside still felt like pure terror. But Haneul didn't stop.
"If we only hide, we'll keep losing what little ground we have. Those things may look motionless, but any sound or scent sets them moving again. Eventually they'll find this gym too. We need to clear the outside first. Once we do, scouting becomes easier, gathering supplies becomes simpler, and if someone gets hurt or we need to work together, we'll actually have room to handle it."
Euna listened quietly, then nodded. Chaewon remained silent but did not refute the idea. Instead, she built on Haneul's words.
"Going on the offensive doesn't mean charging into fights. We move as quietly as possible. We deal with the stationary zombies first. Only use sound to lure them when it's absolutely necessary—otherwise we risk pulling in zombies from directions we can't control."
For instance, instead of drawing them away, the noise might drag every nearby zombie straight to that spot. If the numbers grew too large, even Haneul would be overwhelmed.
"So we pick targets, secure them one by one, and expand. The corridors around the gym, the connecting passages, the stair entrances, and a few classrooms with clear sightlines. That will be our first range."
Eunjae immediately pictured the school layout in her mind as she listened to Chaewon's summary.
"Then the gym becomes our central stronghold, and the surrounding corridors become a buffer zone. We conduct scouting and supply runs from there, and the cleared spaces can serve as routes and emergency exits. It's far more stable than staking everything on a single door. What we need isn't just a temporary shelter to hide in—we need to expand the territory we actually control."
From that moment, the atmosphere inside the gym changed, if only slightly. Fear and tension remained, but the group was no longer frozen by vague dread.
Expand the territory. Create space they could control. To do that, they had to hunt the zombies.
The conditions were brutal, yet they had no choice. Survival meant shrinking the dead's domain and widening their own.
After that day, Haneul threw herself into the offensive—into the hunt.
Her first target was the corridor directly outside the gym. It was a path they had already walked, but passing through once did not make it safe. Zombies could have drifted in from other sections overnight, and new threats could appear at any moment in open classrooms or beneath stairwells.
She studied the corridor carefully—checking which doors were barricaded from inside, which classrooms were empty, whether bloodstains on the floor were fresh or old, whether a motionless zombie was truly dead or merely dormant. With each step, her movements grew quieter and more aggressive. Where she once cut down zombies that blocked her path and moved on, she now sought them out first. A staff zombie slumped against the wall beneath the stairs had its neck severed before it could react. A student zombie sprawled across a doorway had a blade driven through the back of its skull before it could even lift its head.
While Haneul cleared the front, Chaewon watched the rear and blind spots. Eunjae memorized the secured spaces, marking them as reference points for their next movements. They also made use of improvised lures. When three or more zombies clustered at the end of a corridor or when charging straight through would create too much noise, Haneul would halt and scan for others nearby. Then Chaewon or Eunjae would pick up an eraser, a shard of a flowerpot, or a torn book and toss it in the opposite direction—into a classroom or down the stairs. The sharp sound of impact would draw every nearby zombie's head toward it, and in that brief opening the three would slip past or quickly dispatch any isolated stragglers.
Uncontrolled noise was dangerous. Controlled noise became a weapon.
As the corridors around the gym emptied, Haneul began to feel something close to pleasure. The sword had always been a tool for cutting people; swordsmanship had always been the art of killing. Until now, simply realizing that long-suppressed desire had been enough to thrill her. But now there was something more—the sensation of expanding territory. The corridors she cleared with her blade became safe passages for others. The classrooms she emptied could be turned into temporary storehouses or shelters. It gave her a different kind of satisfaction than the simple rush of spilling blood. She was spreading death, yet upon that death she was building order. She was carving new rules into the ruins of the school.
Above all, her craving for private space grew sharper. The gym remained the central stronghold, crowded with students, the injured, and the constant traces of daily life. But after clearing two corridors, several classrooms, and the area in front of the stairs, Haneul's mind was already sketching the next step: a single empty classroom that could be locked from inside, a space where sound could be controlled, close enough to return to the gym at a moment's notice. Even one such room would change everything. She and Chaewon could catch their breath without an audience. When desire suddenly flared—as it sometimes did with Euna—they could slip away from watching eyes.
After the world collapsed, wanting a space of their own purely for such raw desire felt almost absurd. Yet she felt no urge to deny it. They couldn't afford to let meaningful glances, brushing hands, or tangled breaths and moans become public knowledge inside the gym. A private space was necessary—one hidden from both zombies and survivors alike.
For Haneul, that desire had become another reason to fight and survive.
Within a few days, the area around the gym looked noticeably different. It was still only a narrow zone compared to the entire school, but the survivors could feel the difference. When they opened the gym door, no zombie stood waiting. The connecting corridor offered a clearer line of sight around the corner. One stairwell had been completely cleared, allowing them to check both up and down. Two empty classrooms had been shut and repurposed as reserve space, and one now held a small stockpile of recovered supplies.
Euna muttered, "It finally feels like people actually live here," while Juha sighed in relief at the thought of moving the injured to quieter rooms. Even the students who had recoiled at the mere mention of going outside began to sense, after seeing the cleared corridors with their own eyes, that they no longer had to remain trapped inside the gym.
From now on, the area around the gym belonged to them. No one had declared it aloud, yet everyone was beginning to accept it as truth. They were no longer mere survivors in hiding. They had become a group carving out a small sphere of influence inside the ruined school—and at its center stood Haneul with her sword.
When she saw a zombie at the end of a corridor, she no longer looked for a way around it. She began calculating how to approach in silence and cut it down. Her eyes already belonged to a hunter.
The school was still mostly the domain of corpses. The stench of blood lingered, dried stains still marked the floors, and low moans echoed from distant hallways. Yet the footprints being pressed into that blood no longer belonged only to those in flight. They were the footprints of the living—survivors pushing back against the wandering dead, steadily widening the space that was theirs.
And Haneul found that feeling far more satisfying than she had expected.