세상의 끝: End of the World

Sacrifice Myself

The world had been coming to an end a long time ago.
But when Lee Minho watched the elevator doors close with Han Jisung on the other side, Lee Minho realized where his world had begun, and where it now ended:
The little boy from back then, consumed in shadow.

That morning.
"You're a goddamn idiot!"
Jennie watched Han Jisung gear up to go on the suicide mission with Lee Minho. She cursed, running her hands through her hair. Hidden in the bag behind her was the last scraps of her research.

The plan had been to escape the Gimpo City region and pray that Lisa wouldn't outright murder them.

No matter how Jennie and Han Jisung thought about the underground lab Ji Ling and Lee Minho were going to investigate, it could only be a trap. And that was why Jennie cursed and wanted to avoid it, and why Han Jisung, with enough determination to move mountains, insisted on going.

"You're going to die, you know that?"
Han Jisung didn't say anything. He just moved forward.

Rosé watched the trio leave the safehouse where the rest of the SKZ stragglers stayed. She thought of Han Jisung saving her, and how wary he seemed of that older sister. Tightening her fists, she left to go with him. She might not be powerful, but at least, she wanted to keep Jisung safe.

At first, everything went smoothly.
They entered the military complex, hidden from the hundreds of zombies by Lisa's power. The mass of bodies stood there in eerie stillness. The four of them didn't say a word, wary of disturbing the silence, and made their way deeper into the base until finally, they reached an elevator.

And as they descended, Lisa's expression changed, shock and horror on her face.
"Lee Know, the safe house-it's in danger. An enormous zombie wave is coming towards them. I can make sure none of the zombies accidentally break into the safe house where the rest of the SKZ members are, but I'll need to focus all of my ability there. That means that over here..."

The rest of the three looked to her with varying gazes-there was terror in Rosé's eyes, doubt and thought in Lee Minho's, and a dark, unreadable mire in Han Jisung's. Lee Minho asked her, "You really can't spare any of your ability?"

"No. If I slack on my concentration, then..."
Lee Minho closed his eyes for a moment. The elevator was reaching the bottom, the only sound in the air being that of the rickety metal and the buzz of the emergency power. "Then don't," he said. "Concentrate on keeping the safe house intact. We'll just have to do our best to make it through."

They couldn't take the elevator back up, not with that mass of zombies waiting on the surface.
The elevator landed at the bottom with a dull thud. The doors opened, revealing an empty liminal space. A single underground light flickered over the doorway in the distance.

After that, the plan had been to wait until the zombie wave passed. They didn't know what horrors would be waiting in the underground base, so it was safer to wait until Lisa could spare some of her power to shield them from detection again before they moved forward.
But then a shriek sounded from high, high above, up the elevator chute, along with the heavy impact of a body falling hundreds of meters and landing on metal. The terrifying screech beyond the closed elevator doors was the signal that they couldn't wait any longer.
Zombies were scrabbling down the elevator shaft to get to them.

They ran deeper into the underground complex, chased by the wave of zombies. By pure luck, the zombies here weren't too advanced, so even Lee Minho and Rosé with their low-level abilities could fight back and buy time. But their powers were running low.
It was Lisa who lead them further in.
They found the research Lee Minho had been looking for. They even discovered another way out, an elevator on the other side of the complex.