🏆 THE AMBY AWARDS 2023 TOP PICK - DIVERSE LIT 🏆
It's Rin and Hye-jin against the world. Or so it should have been.
Nagara Rin and Joon Hye-jin, college sweethearts and passionate gamers, have lived a fairytale marriage. Not even a decade after did...
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Something splotched and splattered all over me, making me shriek all over again.
"Get a grip!" a familiar voice bled in my ear, killing whatever instinct I have telling me to keep screaming. "This isn't the place to throw a tantrum."
My eyes flew open, taking in a scrawny figure standing in front of me. What—How did he get here? Someone was shouting in exasperation above us. "Kora! What do you think you're doing? Get back here! How could you destroy the ceiling?"
True enough, there was a bigger hole with more light streaming from it apart from the one I fell through. And the person standing in front of me, with his blade drawn and dripping with purple goo, was Kora. He turned to me. "You alright?" he asked.
I opened my mouth but with my throat hoarse from screaming like a dying whale, no words came out. Without waiting for my answer, Kora turned westward, lowering himself into a stance. "Get ready," he said. "Here they come."
"Who's coming? What's happening?" I clawed at the wall for a handhold brace to haul myself upright. I got nothing but a smooth surface because jjangkai were meticulous in making sure their nest had pristine walls. "We need to get out of here. Help me up."
Kora shook his head and jerked his chin towards the veiled darkness beyond us. "Too late for that, I think," he said. "The others are on their way. We'll make our stand here. Your scent has been all over their network now."
It's the same as telling me I've logged in into my account on a public connection and now all the hackers have my details. "I don't care about that," I managed to stand even though my knees threatened to knock against each other every time I dared a step. "Bugs. This...thing has bugs. I don't like it. I don't."
"Jesus, I know, Hye-jin," Kora said, seemingly forgetting we're in an alternate game world just now. "We have no way of hoisting you up without dragging the rest of the colony into the surface, or worse, into town."
He turned to me, then. I could see the fear shining in his eyes but, unlike me, he was still standing. "We're got to fight them here until Cavya and the others get here."
I began to answer, but my words were drowned out by a murderous shriek coming out from the shadows. A strange warmth brimmed around Kora's body as he leveled his sword. Then, the demons emerged into the light.
My insides clammed up, tying themselves into a knot tightening with every second. The jjangkai were everything the pictures told me they were. The bravest one hissed and surged towards Kora who leaped out of the way of a stinger pumped up with poison. The ground cracked around the spot where the stinger landed.
"Hye-jin!" Kora yelled as he ducked and swung his sword against snapping mandibles and clicking pincers. "A little help here?"
I scrambled backwards on my wrists when one bug got past Kora's wild swing, turned to me, and with a glint in its dark, beady eyes, lunged towards me. "Draw your sword!" Kora's voice sounded far away now as my vision tunneled and my breaths turned rugged. I was going to die here. I just know it.
