After the Bite

Chapter 1

It didn't start like a movie.

No sirens that warned people to run. No dramatic broadcast telling everyone to stay inside. Just a morning that felt slightly off—like the world had woken up with a fever it didn't know how to shake.

By noon, people were already disappearing.

By evening, they were coming back wrong.

You first notice it outside a convenience store in Hongdae.

A man is standing too still near the crosswalk, head tilted like he's listening to something only he can hear. His skin looks pale in a way that isn't sick—it's empty. When he finally moves, it's wrong. Jerky. Too fast. Like his body forgot how joints are supposed to work.

A scream cuts through traffic.

Then another.

Then chaos.

Someone runs into the street and gets tackled before they even make it two steps. Not by a person anymore—by something chewing through what used to be a person.

You don't wait to understand it.

You run.

The city changes shape as you move through it.

Subway entrances become choke points of screaming and blood. Police sirens fade into static. People abandon bags, phones, even shoes just to move faster.

You grab what you can from a shattered sports store window on the way:
a firefighter axe from a display rack,
a pair of gloves,
and a bottle of water you don't have time to think about.

By the time the sun starts dropping, Seoul doesn't feel like Seoul anymore.

It feels like a trap that already snapped shut.

The first time you see Kim Geon-woo, it's inside a pharmacy.

He's not panicking.

That's the first strange thing about him.

While everyone else is fighting or running or breaking down into noise, he's carefully wrapping gauze around a stranger's bitten arm like he has all the time in the world. Calm hands. Steady breathing. Focused eyes.

The bitten man is crying.

Geon-woo doesn't flinch.

He just tightens the bandage and says, quietly, "You need to leave before it spreads."

Like he already knows what's coming.

Like he's seen it before.

You almost don't notice Hong Woo-jin until something crashes through the front glass.

He enters like a storm.

A metal bat in his hands. Blood on his sleeve. A grin that doesn't belong in a situation like this.

"Seriously?" he says, glancing at the infected smashing into the pharmacy door. "You picked this place to hide?"

Geon-woo doesn't look up. "It was the closest medical supplies."

"Yeah," Woo-jin mutters, swinging the bat once—clean, brutal, final. The infected drops instantly. "And now it's a buffet."

He looks at you for the first time then.

Not friendly. Not curious.

Measuring.

Like he's deciding if you'll survive the next ten minutes.