세상의 끝: End of the World

Family Visit

The private plane landed in the Icelandic airport of Egilsstaðir at noon. Lee Minho shook Han Jisung awake, and Jisung groggily took off his eye mask and ear muffs.

The air outside had a biting chill to it, mainly because of the strong winds that whipped their clothes when the two descended from the plane. But once they got inside and away from the wind, it was a fine temperature, the kind that made one want to bundle into sweaters and jackets or sit by a fire.

The town of Egilsstaðir had a charming peace to it, with simple and colorful houses spaced out along wide and winding asphalt roads. It was one of the relatively newer towns built in the sparsely-populated region of eastern Iceland. There had only been over two thousand people living here before the apocalypse, and it was hard to say how many lived now.

Lee Minho and Han Jisung only briefly stopped through the town before they headed north. Father and Mother Lee's vacation home had been built a ways away from the larger settlements. It took about an hour to get there, from the highway roads to the rocky dirt roads to finally, hiking up the uneven and grassy hillsides that led up to the house.
But once they arrived at the front door, Ma was already waiting for them outside, beaming brightly.

"Little Sung, Little Min!" She squeezed Jisung's cheeks, and gave each of them a hug. "Oh, it's been so long since I've seen you. You've grown so thin!"
"Ma, we missed you." A hit of emotion overtook Lee Minho at the sight of his mother. Her hair had grown much more gray over the years. He'd never seen her grow old. He had been eighteen when his mother and father had died. They had still been young, with many years of life still left in them.

Ma ushered them in, where they saw Pa waiting to greet them. Although he had turned into a zombie, he had regained his sentience through the zombie virus cure. He looked similar to how he had looked before, except his eyes were pale, and his skin a bit waxy. But he was happy, healthy, and alive.

Through the windows pointing to the back of the house, Minho saw some of the bodyguards he had hired in the distance, herding some sheep. The other bodyguards had chosen to go home. They had packed up, and were going to take the private plane that had carried Lee Minho and Han Jisung here to return to Korea.
The family of four caught up over the dining table. Ma prepared some coffee and hot milk for them to drink, and put some snacks on the table-bread and sweet pastries for Jisung, and a local specialty for Lee Minho.

Han Jisung glanced at the basket of dried and torn-up fish meat with morbid curiosity, while Minho himself was absolutely delighted. He was like an old man and loved the kinds of dried seafood snacks that would usually be eaten by bar-goers padding their stomachs while they drank. This, however, was a proper Icelandic snack. Ma had gotten it as a gift from their neighbor, who recommended spreading butter over the fish as one ate it.

Lee Minho had a great time trying out this buttery dried fish, to the bemusement of his family and partner beside him.
The family of four spoke casually about their experiences over the past eight years, and glossed over the hardships. Minho, Han Jisung, and Ma had checked in with each other through the satellite phone over the years, so it was mainly Pa who was hearing things for the first time.

Pa was amazed to hear what Lee Minho and Jisung had helped achieve. A small part of Minho was fulfilled to see it. His entire adult life had been without his parents, and now, he could finally share his accomplishments with them. He'd been quite arrogant as a child, always believing he'd change the world and do great things, and part of that had come from his parents' unwavering confidence in him.
Now he could let them know that they had reason to be proud of him and Han Jisung.
It was after they'd gone through the new events in their lives that Ma suddenly looked at Lee Minho with a smile. It was an unfamiliar kind of smile, with an intention that Minho had never seen before-after all, he'd always had a girlfriend in the past.