Block A 「Nishimura Riki」

17

"Eiko, you okay? You got here safe, right?" Jihoon asked quizzically, looking around on Eiko's clothes for something unusual.

Eiko's eyebrows visibly sunk in confusion, she too looked around at his clothes to see if there was something wrong as well. She knew that nothing happened to her but due to Jihoon's concern she checked, even more confused as to why she asked this.

"Yeah?" She responded but the curiosity on her face didn't go missed by Jihoon since it was so clear. Jihoon quirked her eyebrow up before she narrowed her eyes at Eiko. Eiko only matched her gaze with perplexity noticeable in her eyes. "What are you talking about?"

"Did you see the news earlier?" A colleague inquired as he turned his attention to the two. He briefly fixed some of his hair into a ponytail to get it from blocking the sides of his face before approaching Eiko.

"Nope. I just woke up and got ready to come to work before driving here," Eiko answered casually and Hira, the colleague mentioned, scoffed at her words.

"With a job like yours, you'd think you'd be more attentive to the news and what's going around you," He quipped and slipped one hand in his pocket with the other firmly gripping his clipboard.

Eiko narrowed her eyes towards him. "So am I going to be told about what happened or not?" She questioned while hinting at her indignance.

Jihoon took a step back and sighed, throwing her hands in the air and walking towards her desk. "Not to take sides, but you should really be looking at the news, Eiko. It has to do with your report topic."

Eiko scoffed bitterly and fixed her clothes from the way Jihoon messed with it. "So...what is it?" She asked though aggrieved. Eiko took steps towards her desk as well and set her bag on the surface of the table.

"The condition in Cheonan has gotten worse, way worse. It can't be connected to air pollution even if we wanted it to. There's people trying to find the root of it by going to the place where the situation first arose but so far there's nothing about the reporters who have gone. Instead of anything helpful happening it's been quite the contrary," Jihoon started the explanation.

"Before things get redundant," Roeun spoke up from her spot and also stood out of her chair but stayed in the place of her desk. "The sky essentially 'spread' and got darker over the day. It seems like a direct correlation to the feral behavior of many people around here. Crime rates are extremely likely to go up soon, and eventually it can reach this area as well."

Eiko blanked for a moment and blinked the bewilderment away. "Huh? What?"

"If you're wanting confirmation, go ahead and look at the internet," Hira said. "At this point you may be assigned a new topic since this one is growing controversial."

Roeun cleared her throat. "Just stay safe. It can get here sooner than we think."

"Yeah. Knowing our boss who knows if we'll get time off," Hira murmured.

They weren't lying.

In the span of a night the condition of South Korea changed for the worse. It's the trending topic now, and under the topic lies a lot of information about wild behavior increasing and slowly making its way to a center of South Korea's pride, Seoul.

"And also, we haven't received any matches for the book. Nobody has come in to claim it yet," Jihoon informed, taking into consideration the peculiarity.

An email appeared on her screen just after Eiko clicked out of the page. It's from her boss, reading that she drops the topic in exchange for a new that he has prepared for her.

What the hell happened?

"Did you get an email about it yet?" Jihoon questioned, leaning over to view her screen.