The leaves matting the ground are slippery as Jeongguk hikes through the trees. Even with his flashlight, it's nearly impossible to see through the combination of pitch blackness and pouring rain. Zodiac's directions were vague at best—the lake. Jeongguk knows the route they usually take to get there like the back of his hand; something etched into his subconscious.
It's as he's beginning to think he's gotten lost that he sees it—a light in the distance. He makes a beeline towards it, distantly aware that Zodiac may not be the only thing in the woods tonight. But, from the way he sounded on the phone, Jeongguk isn't sure if running into something else would necessarily be worse.
"Hello?" he calls out as he approaches, hating the nervous pitch of his voice. "Zodiac, is that you?"
He doesn't get a response. As soon as he gets close enough, the white glow turns into an electric camping lantern, bathing a small break in the trees in a pale, ghostly light. There's Zodiac, soaked head to toe, digging.
When he looks up to meet Jeongguk's eyes, he's absolutely wild.
Zodiac skirts the hole he's dug, and Jeongguk can see that he's shaking hard enough that his teeth are chattering. "H-Here," he says, thrusting the shovel he's holding at Jeongguk's chest. "Help me dig."
Jeongguk doesn't ask questions. He follows Zodiac to the hole, absently taking note of something large wrapped in some kind of material. A bedsheet? A plastic tablecloth? A tarp?
It's big, and they're digging a hole. Presumably to put that thing into.
Fuck.
Fuckfuckfuck.
But Jeongguk can't bring himself to ask. He tells himself to just do as Zodiac says and dig. They silently heave shovel after shovel of wet earth out of the ground until Jeongguk's whole body is aching from strain and the hole is large enough to lie down in. The thing—the thing over there will undoubtedly fit, now. A wave of nausea washes over Jeongguk as he unsteadily steps back from the edge of the hole.
Zodiac tosses his shovel aside and goes over to the covered thing. "Help me with this," he barks, and Jeongguk is at his side again, being ordered to grab the other end. It is a tablecloth. Together, they drag it to the edge of the hole, and Zodiac yanks the hem of the tablecloth up to expose its contents.
A body.
Or, what's left of it.
It was a man, at one point. Jeongguk thinks it was. Devoid of clothes, it should be easy to tell, but the genitals are gone. Just a bloody mess between the legs. The torso is all hacked to pieces, so is the face, but the chest has been chopped so thoroughly it's like ground meat. As the body is shifted and catches the like, Jeongguk thinks he sees rib or breastbone.
Even though he's staring right at it, can smell the overpowering scent of blood now that the cloth is open, it doesn't seem real. Like he's dissociated, like he's seeing this through someone else's eyes. Like the memory of his mother crumpled at the bottom of the stairway through the bars of the upstairs railing.
Jeongguk is very far away right now—tucked away in some pleasant recess of his mind. Safe from looking at this, seeing this horror.
They dump the body into the hole. Zodiac folds the tablecloth up and sets it aside, and then they methodically begin tossing dirt on top of the corpse. Even though he's protected underneath the warmth of his raincoat, Jeongguk is totally numb. By the time they're finished, Jeongguk can't feel his fingers. He can't feel anything.
They pack the ground down as much as they can, spreading it so there isn't such a conspicuous lump. Jeongguk helps throw leaves back over the spot until it's difficult to tell they were there at all. Zodiac gathers his materials—the tarp, the shovels, the lantern, a backpack. Jeongguk hadn't noticed the backpack before. He doesn't know what's inside and he doesn't really want to know, either.
