Radius (Jeongmi)

Jeongyeon

There was thunder and it was dark. A muffled song was playing in the background. Her eyes twitched to the left and right as she remembered a fragment of the car crash which effectively woke her up. She sat up almost instantly. There was blood on the left side of her head but that was not important right now. Her eyes roamed the unfamiliar surroundings. She tucked a lock of blonde hair behind her right ear. She looked behind her and saw the flipped pickup truck. The signal light was still blinking.

Soon it was getting brighter as the sun peeked through the cloudy sky. She had walked tirelessly away from the crash site wondering where she should go. She was simply walking somewhere with no sense of direction. She was walking slowly by the side of the road when she suddenly heard a sound from behind her. The sound of a car coming in her direction. She quickly took action as she turned back and waved both of her arms over her head. The driver understood what her gestures meant when a signal light was blinking to indicate that the driver would stop to help her.

She walked to the side of the road in relief to wait for the car to stop. However, the car didn't reduce it's speed and almost ran over her. Luckily, she managed to avoid the car but her expression quickly changed to a worried one as she ran towards the driver's side of the car. She knew the driver saw her so why did the car suddenly lose control? She knocked on the window but received no response.

"Are you all right in there?" She asked but only received an empty response again. Therefore she moved her hand to the door handle and swiftly opened it without waiting any longer. "Hey. Can you hear me?" She asked again while looking inside the car only to be surprised that the driver looked dead.

"What the..." She instinctively backed away. Her fingers went through her blonde locks. The driver was a male. His head was tilted to the side rather uncomfortably. His eyes had this white layer covering them.

She moved forward again to check for any pulse and was disappointed when she can't feel one. She stood there in confusion as she thought on what she should do. She didn't have her own smart phone with her so she took the driver's smart phone that was placed on the passenger seat.

She immediately dialed 119 and walked away from the car.

"119. What's the emergency?"

"There is a guy here involved in some kind of accident? I don't know. I think he's dead." She spoke in a hurry. She occasionally glanced back towards the car while waiting for the response.

"Alright, Miss. Calm down. Where are you right now?"

She quickly glanced around and saw a wooden sign. "I just passed a sign that said umm, Damyang county?"

"I'm sorry but you're breaking up. Can you repeat that again?"

She sighed before repeating the same answer. "It's Damyang county. I-I don't know what the name of the road is."

"Miss, calm down." The line occasionally sounded distorted. "Can I have your name please?"

"Yeah, it's..." She suddenly realised that she didn't know her name. She looked blank as she tried to remember her name. The phone no longer stayed at her ear.

A distant, "Miss?" was heard through the phone while she hurriedly rummaged her jeans pocket for her purse. She fished out the first identification card that she could get her hand on which was her driving license. She stared at the name for a bit before softly mumbling, "Jeongyeon." The name came out of her mouth with a foreign feeling as if the name doesn't belong to her. She stared at her license for a little bit more until suddenly a bird fell on top of the driver's car's roof. This prompted her to walk back towards the car only to find out that the bird had died in a similar manner to the driver.

Jeongyeon bolted out from the place and stumbled upon a small restaurant on her way. She confidently walked inside and the first thing she saw was the waitress laying on her front against the cold floor. A plate that had food was broken next to her. She glanced to the kitchen and saw another pair of legs laying unmoved. She turned her head towards the dining area which was filled with many motionless customers. Most of their heads were on the table. One table had coffee spilling to the floor. Her forehead creased even more each moment she took a glance of her surroundings. She felt baffled by the situation.

Then suddenly a van crashed just outside of the restaurant. The driver's head remained unmoved on the horn which triggered it to remain honking. Each one of these dead bodies shared the same detail as the first death she had witnessed. Their eyes all had a white layer.

She ran outside the restaurant as fast as she could and ripped the sleeves of her t-shirt. She used the ripped sleeve as a makeshift mask to cover her mouth thinking that there might be a virus in the air. She ran back inside the restaurant momentarily to grab a map that was plastered on the wall.

With one hand diligently covering her mouth, Jeongyeon used the other hand to hold the map. She followed the map as her direction to return home as per the address printed on her driving license. Not long after that, she finally arrived at a house that seemingly belonged to her. A car was parked neatly in front and she went to the front door to knock it. After receiving no response, she saw a garden gnome and decided to break the glass near the corner so she could open the door lock.

After successfully doing so, she went inside with no hesitation as she finally let her hand down. Finally feeling that it was safe to breathe freely.

"Hello there. You've reached Yoo Jeongyeon. If you are calling concerning a landscaping job, please reach me on my cell at 82 21 1101 0037. Leave a message at the beep." Her voice boomed through as she pressed the voicemail button.

She bent her body forward and placed her palms on the table as she sighed deeply. She was still feeling bewildered after everything that had happened to her today. Her finger was quick to tap on a spinning architecture that was placed on the table. She was dazzled by it. She kept staring at it until it started to slowly lose its speed. The slow spinning imagery triggered a memory of her laying backwards in a small boat in the middle of the river. She breathed heavily while remembering the fragment of the memory. Her hand went up to rub her throbbing temple and that was when she remembered her bleeding head.

Jeongyeon was just done bathing and was wiping her hair dry when the news about the mystery death appeared on the news. One of the questions that the reporters were asking was, "Are you ruling out the possibility of biological warfare?"

She reached forward for the remote to increase the volume. The police simply answered, "Like I said before, until proper autopsies can be performed with..."

However, he was cut off by more incoming questions from the reporters. The police paid no mind to the flurry of questions as he continued calmly, "We have to wait for the coroner's report before we can stipulate what is actually happening here. Now whether the air is safe to breathe or not, I can't say at this time."