The Last Of Us | tk ✓

two | meet-up with a friend

Under the starless and crude night, Jeongguk and Areum crawl out of the building, in a flash ducking behind heaps of discarded cardboard boxes as tankers and trucks groan lively, full of soldiers with flashlights scanning the surroundings for citizens out of bed or just their arch-enemies, Fireflies, in disguise.

The flashing lights swept dangerously around where the two were hidden, brick still, grunts of soldiers and the rev of tyres followed by when they decided no one was there.

The pair mindfully trekked their way up the bombarded ditches and wreckage of the old city, near the outskirts of their Zone where the real things, though dead sometimes, happened.

Also, The Black Market was situated there.

The Black Market was where their Tony guy was supposed to be, and while the gunky roadway opened into a street leading to a netted area preserved for illegal trades illuminated by yellow bulbs hanging lamely from wires, Areum and Jeongguk's steps become more confident, for they were among people like their own— not friends, but survivors.

Areum didn't try to indulge Jeongguk in a conversation, because she knew too well he was way too mistrustful towards these people, his eyes taking in every bit of the marketplace that covered the open area led in by the street they walked in from, the net wall guarded by a single man clutching a modern rifle, throwing a smile at Areum's way in greeting, "How are you doing, Areum?"

"Just fine, Chan," she muttered back with a grin. She knew her way around here more than Jeongguk, since she had made contact with several and dealt, too.

As they sauntered deeper in the small colony, another street opened into a less occupied space, walls stood at three sides to show it as a dead-end. Only, it wasn't one, since a confined, guarded gateway to a much smaller, congested alley led from the corner of the wide place.

The guard was buffy, unarmed, leaning against the wall and smoking a cigarette. Areum quietly shoved out a packet of cigarettes and handed it to him, leaning closer to the guy as he stared at her with watchful, nicotine-fuelled eyes. She whispered, "Where's Tony?"

The dude gestured to the alley, pushing the new box in his hoodie's pocket. And so Areum and Jeongguk continue their walk, smirking.

"It's like we are on a date," said Areum jokingly, hands swinging slightly by her sides.

Taking his chance, Jeongguk replies coyly, "Well, I do consider myself as the romantic type." Areum's laugh echoed in the night, the dim lights throwing shadows at her shining face.

They journeyed another kilometre, the skyscrapers closing in, wreckage of buildings that used to be the city's beating heart. On the boundary of the Quarantine Zone, the soldiers still patrolled, their distant chatter reaching Areum and Jungkook as they walk, looking for Tony's man in the abandoned houses littering the bank of Han River that separated the Quarantine Zones and The Outskirts.

"Where does Tony lives?" Jeongguk breathed in annoyance, when they were jogging down a dark road, his hair sticking to his forehead and bring out his already sharp jawline.

"There," pointed out Areum, her eyes affixed on an apartment building sliced cleanly off its base, which appeared to be unoccupied, but Tony and his gangster acquaintances were too dumb to conceal the Harley bike whose handles glistened in the moonlight. It was Tony's prized possession.

"Let's make it quick and quiet, 'kay?" Muttered Areum to Jeongguk, a meaningful sideway glance shot at him for his lack of response.

Jeongguk retorts, "You know I don't like that mode," Areum opened her mouth to argue but Jeongguk presses, "But I know the military will come and I don't want that to happen." If they would get caught (and not killed at the spot) by the military, they'll be in deep trouble after the soldiers will figure out they were one of the citizens, even if uninfected.  There won't be a safe haven for Areum and Jungkook anymore.

They step up to the entrance, stealthily they crouched next to an open window, peeking in to see a room with an armed guy standing motionlessly near the door frame that leads to other rooms. Swiftly and without noise, the two slide through the window and conceal themselves behind a desk.

Areum crept at the guy from behind, breaking his neck at one go with minimum grunts and ruffles, pulling up three fingers at Jeongguk after craning her neck and peering down the hallways. Three more men.

One by one, skilfully and in a flow too smooth, the two take down the other men silently, the night unaware. They pull out their pistols and barge in the windowless room where Tony, forty, sat, eyes wide as he takes in Areum and Jeongguk, his clothes grimy and eyes fazed behind the polished desk he nestled in.

"Where is our stock, Tony?" Areum asks straightly, her tone low and authoritative, hands on her waist.

"What stock— n-no!" Jeongguk advances at him, taking his arm and twisting it behind his back, slamming the head on the wooden table. A painful groan left Tony. "O-okay, okay! I'll tell you."

Areum cries out demandingly, "Then spill!"

"The Fireflies... I gave them to the Fireflies— ngh!" As Tony's cheek pressed against the hardwood, his teeth clenched as Jeongguk's pushed the arm further up the latter's back to increase the ache. "I am telling the truth," his mouth was bleeding since Jeongguk hit his front tooth with the table before, so he gurgles through the blood, helpless, "I owed 'em—"

"No," said Areum finally, "You owed us!" Jeongguk backs away, only to fish out his silencer-fitted pistol and shooting straight at Tony's head, who's blood swamped the furniture.

"You shouldn't have done that," says someone from behind, and both Areum and Jeongguk aim their pistols at the voice, their jaw tightening after realizing whom it belonged to. "He was a nice guy."

The leader of Fireflies stood on the doorway, her T-Shirt wet and dark with fresh blood, her figure limp and one hand holding a gun by her side while the other holding a patch of ice below her clothing that was resisting the blood to spurt out from the injury. She eyes the two, knowing them from all the talk she got from commoners around here.

"Let's get to a safer place," she, known as Sam, glances down to her wound, "and I'll give you back the weapons."

Jeongguk knew her. Oh, he knew her too well.

"No, thanks." He forced out, still aiming at her.

The sound of gunfires was much closer and a voice in a loudspeaker roared, "Get outta the building and put your hands behind your head! You are surrounded! Get outta the building and put your hands behind your head!" Areum stifled a groan.

"See," says Sam urgently, "I know an escape route, if you follow me we can still sort out our deal."

The soldiers were here, and Areum and Jeongguk needed the armoury. Staring at one another for a second, they shared a silent conversation, nodding in unison at Sam and following her to a room that went underground.

They wouldn't be hesitant to kill Sam, but she may have the guns, and those were what mattered; along with the whole escape situation.

—

hi. guys.
i just wanna
say... that
there might
be ppl —
whoever they
are to you —
in ur life that
ruin stuff for
u, make u angry
and are unfair.
but they'll go
away one day.
so hang in
there ok?

ok.