French Cup: A Neighborhood Story

Chapter 36: -Gyeong-Wan- Family Gathering

The street looked like a war zone, and I crouched a little lower than I would have due to the bright lights of my hotel in the distance. Every other light was off in the late night. All around us, about a hundred people were picking up debris and putting them into garbage bags. Rolls of toilet paper that were still good were being gathered and put into grocery bags for people to take home. Kazuya had told me that this clean up after Zombie Walk was also tradition, and usually most people stayed around for it. It was to show respect for the neighborhood after the fun. I found that to be the most amazing part of it. 

The stores' tables had been given back to their owners. Some people had gone into the shops, buying things. The day wasn't totally lost. They were still getting many more customers than usual, and a variety of them. However, they could have done so much more business.

As I cleaned, I was thinking about what I'd heard during the day. Someone, in the chaos, had said that Zombie Walk had a permit to be here. So, what did that mean? It meant that the hotel hadn't had permission from the city. If they'd pursued a permit for their event, they'd have been blocked due to Zombie Walk being held the same day. They would have known Zombie Walk was happening. 

It enraged me. Something else that had resonated with me were the guests saying there were children at our event. I'd played with some of those children. While I didn't agree with the message of the guests about protecting them from Zombie Walk, I did place myself in the eyes of a child in this. Would they have been scared of the zombies? Surely they'd had to walk through the chaos of our guests and the zombies fighting. If I were a child, I'd have been scared of the yelling guests much more than the zombies, who I'd seen were nothing but calm and desperate to explain their side. 

I'd learned from Kazuya and Nikki that throwing toilet paper was a tradition in Zombie Walk just like this clean up. They'd been throwing toilet paper and glitter at each other before the runners showed up. So, the zombies definitely hadn't been purposefully attacking them. When Chidori showed us footage on her phone of the start of the toilet paper war, it was concrete evidence. The runners had shown up and immediately started fighting them. You could even hear Nikki reacting to seeing the girl being pushed. The start of the video had been merriment and fun, everyone smiling and having a really good time. But, as soon as the runners showed up, the mood had turned and it was the runners' negativity that ruined it. 

As we'd watched the video, about twenty minutes of it, Kazuya and Nikki had gasped together at a particular moment. Someone had shouted a word and then others started shouting a word. I didn't know this word, and afterwards, I wished they hadn't told me.

"It's a gay slur," Kazuya explained gently to me. "If you hear it, it's the worst thing that can be said. Do you understand?"

I did. It made me know that our guests had recognized that a lot of the zombies were wearing rainbow colors. They were targeting their being LGBTQ people, the mood shifting again. I'd gotten closer to the screen, unsure what to do. The police were there, pulling a lot of our guests away. The zombies weren't putting their hands on anybody. Someone ripped a Pride flag off of someone's shoulders and ran away with it, the zombie looking around in shock and their friend pointing and they started running. 

It took the police a long time to sort out. Many of the zombies had left by the ten minute point, and many were cleared out by the twenty minute point. The ones who were left were wandering about, shock on their faces. I saw a zombie girl crying. It made me want to cry, too. By the end, I recognized the scene that my boss and I had come upon. 

It was one hundred percent our guests' fault. There was no excuse. They'd gotten angry, thinking their day was ruined. They could have just walked past all of this, ignoring it. They could have still finished the race. But, instead, they'd very much felt like these people had to be removed. That they owned the street, when quite literally the zombies were permitted by the city to be there, and the store owners were residents here. They were putting their hands on them, getting their anger out. And the most unforgiveable thing, which made absolutely no sense to me: when they'd figured out it was a LGBTQ event, they'd started targeting them.