do or die | yang jungwon

stage 9: one way of doing things

FOR ALL OF HER COURAGE, NARI WAS SERIOUSLY LOSING HER NERVE. jungwon and the others had left a little under half an hour ago, and none of them had attempted to climb up the hose yet. on one hand, she hadn't heard any screaming or any sounds of struggle and from what one of the second years (who couldn't be separated from the window) had reported, the nurse's window was open and not a single zombie had fallen out of it - which definitely would've been haruto's attack pattern.

and on the other, nari cannot even begin to imagine why it would take so long to grab a lock box, keys, nurse a wound, and get back up here. the only explanation was that the key was taking longer to find than they had expected but nari didn't want to think about what the more obvious factor keeping her friends down there.

"nari?" hiyyih's trembling voice says, dragging her out of her thoughts. nari turns to her worried best friend, following her line of sight before gasping, rushing over to where hyewon was sitting and shivering in a pool of liquid.

"my water broke," hyewon whispers, and nari can tell that hyewon is fighting to keep herself lucid as the pain messes with her mind. 

"i've got you, don't worry," nari says, and she glances around the room to see what she could do to ensure that neither hyewon nor the baby got hurt in the process of labor. the first thing she could tell was that this room was definitely not equipped to be safe. there was nothing to shield hyewon and there was nothing help her with the pain or anything. the best option was to have jungwon bring back supplies and they all relocated to the broadcasting room, where she could at least convert the soundproof room into a delivery room.

even better would be to get to the nurse's office but one look at hyewon was enough to tell nari that she couldn't summon the strength to climb down. and if nari's friends hadn't returned, there was no telling what they would walk into.

"someone needs to go tail them and tell them that we're relocating to the broadcasting room," nari says, getting up from her position, hiyyih replacing her. she soothes hyewon by giving her a side hug as she watches nari pace across the empty classroom.

"the broadcasting room?" riki says from where he's crouched down next to a curled up dani. nari winces, knowing that dani clearly hasn't been able to move past the horrors of the past day - if there was anything they could do, really - to recover from haerin's death. haruto had pulled her over before they had left, telling nari to look after dani and filling her in but nari hadn't been able to spend much time with her, entrusting her to riki instead.

she had a feeling riki was doing a much better job than she would've done anyway.

"the broadcasting room," nari affirms, cocking her head subtly toward hyewon. "it'll be the best place to stay for the time being anyway. and tomorrow morning, we can see who's still in the school. or whatever. i don't know. i just know that that's where we have to go."

"but nari," hiyyih protests, stroking hyewon's hair comfortingly. "how are we going to get up there? that's two floors up and quite frankly, i don't know if we can make it. especially without jeong - with the rest of them."

riki narrows his eyes at her slip-up but his attention is quickly drawn by dani, who takes her head out of her hands as she looks up, her eyes red-rimmed and her throat hoarse.

"i know a short-cut so that we only have to go up one flight of stairs; they're steeper than the other set of stairs but it's one flight of steep stairs or two flights of shallow stairs," dani says, her voice growing smaller and smaller as she talks.

"you think you can do it hyewon?" nari asks, turning to the younger girl in concern. hyewon presses a protective hand over her stomach and takes a deep breath as she nods.