The Last Of Us | tk ✓

twelve | a friend in need

DAEGU, S.KOREA
12:03 PM, September 15th.

As tender breeze swept the wildly thriving grass of the countryside, the sky above shone the brightest of blues, cloudless and bare. The sun's heat sought to be warming, comforting.

Taehyung and Jeongguk stood atop a low, box-like, brick room, the stubby gravel beneath their boots crunching satisfyingly at their every movement of feet.

Outstretching before them was an open field, growing unstoppably of weed-like plants that reached one's knees. A circle of barbed wire largely claimed the land inside, in the middle a humongous warehouse appearing maroon in the shadow of a broken, rusty control tower.

Scattered around the warehouse were empty cement houses, darken alleyways and a dreadful intone of swarming beasts resting for now.

"There's no way inside," pointed out Taehyung, raising his index finder and running it in the air along the coils that twisted above the ongoing boundary, questioning defeatedly, "How'd we go in?" Indeed, he was not wrong.

Jeongguk had already considered this, wrapping his hand around Taehyung's finger and dragging it over to the wooden plank that made a bridge to inside between two aligned buildings (one which they had obvious access to), letting go once Taehyung murmured a gentle, "Oh," his cheeks flushing with embarrassment.

Jeongguk chuckles, hopping down to march to the makeshift bridge, Taehyung timidly on the older's heels.

‗

The narrow, cemented alleyways they strolled appeared unwanted and lonely, a surreal shadow of haunting gists of memories imprinted the grimy, blood-splattered walls, decomposed bodies in piles seemingly used for fire fuel at few corners.

Taehyung wanted to retch, but couldn't, since these sites were no where near disgusting than the ones throughout his time spent with dear Jeongguk, who, upon spectating, was familiar with this mess all too much.

Inside the maze of the grimy walls, lurked beasts with their low growls emitting, crawling spiders up Taehyung's spine, making him shudder tremendously. Around half a month outside and he was still not used to the creeps.

They advance to a corner with a metal-net gate, the door wide open, another thin street opening up through it. Taehyung stepped forward confidently to pass on, only for Jeongguk to give a loud grunt of warning and pull him back, their bodies crashing hard with one another.

"What was that for?!" Demands Taehyung hotly, scrambling away from Jeongguk's seducing cologne, his eyes fluttering and face red, tense altogether.

Jeongguk's face slacked, imposing plainly, "You were gonna blow your brains out, kid." He ambled to the gate and crouches to run a smart finger over a thin thread tied across to the bottom of the poles, that was connected to an IED bomb to the inner side, well-hidden.

A booby trap.

Taehyung moist his bottom lip, uttering dimly, "Oh, sorry." He shouldn't have bashed out like that, but Jeongguk's tough muscles most definitely gave him bruises. To cover his outburst, he inquired enthusiastically, "How'd you know about that? Did your guy set this up?" The guy being some dude in debt of Jeongguk who ought to help them out now.

"Mm, yeah," Jeongguk responds, avoiding the thread as he stepped inside the alley, squinting his brown eyes in the daylight, the sun directly above them, avoiding his eyes from Taehyung. "Min Yoongi is a terrific game. He can craft stuff like mad. Come along, we're almost there." That cool, huh?