Moments 2.0 | Sweet Home | Cha Hyun Soo

Chapter 3: The Radio

Yeonha drops heavily to the carpeted floor, done for a while.

Her adrenaline had spiked and then dipped, spiked and then dipped. She'd exerted more strength than she'd had the capacity for and sustained several injuries, and now she needed this moment to pull herself together.

She rolls onto her back, staring at the ceiling above her. The light bulb flickers, and flickers and flickers fading until there is no light left for it to give. Yeonha breathes out once more, rolls onto her side and startles.

She comes face to face with the first person she's seen in this building.

Only this person is dead.

"Ah!" She scrambles away from the corpse till her back hits a cupboard, clamping her hands over her mouth.

It was only half of a person.

She coughs, staggers to her feet runs to the sink and vomits. Once she's gotten over the sudden shock of it, and emptied everything from her stomach until it feels hollow and her throat burns; Yeonha turns back to the body. The person's cold, dead, fear-stricken stare looks back at her, wide-eyed and forever frozen in a scream of silent terror. "What kind of monster did this to you?"

She starts to run her hair through her curls but stops, remembering their grubby state. Her hair is a matted mess too mind you but still, there was no point in making it worse.

Her first move was to shut the apartment door, just in case whatever monster had taken this man's lower half decided it wanted to come back for the rest of the body. She winces as the door makes a beeping sound as it closes. Too much noise.

Then she decides to give what was left of the deceased some remaining dignity, closing their eyes and covering the man in a blanket that had been left on the bed.

It was partly for her own sake too, because every time she caught sight of the body and those frightened features, it brought a cold chill down her spine.

Yeonha's stomach grumbles and she grimaces.

'Really now?' She thinks to herself. 'You can be hungry after all of this?'

Even though she had come from money, Yeonha's father had seen to it that she was not spoiled. He had not let her live in excess, her allowance was no more than the average teenager's,  his presents had been life lessons and experiences, not designer purses, but even still she had come from money so she had never been lacking, she'd never spent a night cold or hungry, she'd never had to steal.

Until now.

Money didn't matter anymore. The only thing that did was survival.

To survive she needed her strength, and to stay strong she needed to eat.

And the only thing she could think about right now was the hopeful thought that the owner of this apartment had stocked his cupboards.

It was not even 24 hours into this monster apocalypse, and Yeonha was hungry, and needing to steal. She felt awful.

"Sorry." She mutters to the deceased, ducking her head apologetically before moving to raid his cupboards and fridge for food. She takes two bottles of water, unzips her backpack full of supplies she'd grabbed from the hospital and puts one in, drinking the other. In goes a few protein bars, packets of ramen, dried seaweed, a can of kimchi and salmon and chips. She zips it back up, slings it over one shoulder then bites into an apple.

Once her hunger is satiated, she decides to clean herself up. Yeonha avoids the bathroom since its door and walls are sprayed with blood, instead opting to use the kitchen sink to scrub all the grime and filth from her face, arms and hair. With the gauze in her bag, she wraps up her wounded palms and fingers.

She apologises again to the dead man, as she takes a clean shirt and a jacket from his closet, putting a spare shirt in her backpack just in case. "What kind of man were you?" She wonders, picking up a photo of him with a younger woman from the bedside table. Whilst changing her clothing the photograph had caught her eye. Was that his wife? Mistress? Sister? Daughter?