Chapter 3
A transparent glass pane lay between the man and me.
The man, who slammed his hand against the glass, let out a bizarre sound as if in a rage.
With his hand with broken fingers, the man pounded on the closed door.
Red bloodstains were left everywhere his hand touched.
The man's suit was dyed entirely red with the blood he vomited and the blood flowing from where the bone protruded.
He continued to pound on the door and slam his body against the glass.
The glass door shook with a heavy thud, but fortunately, it didn't look like it would break.
Because the man kept pounding on the door, the transparent glass was instantly covered in blood and became cloudy.
I stared blankly at that sight and then slid down to the floor, leaning my back against a nearby partition.
Thud.
The phone slipped and fell from my limp hand.
At that sound, I finally snapped to my senses as if waking from a dream.
“Right, 112. No, even 119...”
I lowered my head to pick up the fallen phone and swallowed a gasp in shock.
The floor where the phone had fallen,
was completely covered in dark red blood.
At first, I thought it was blood that had flowed from my wound.
But soon, I realized the pool of blood was a short distance from my hand, too far to have come from me.
Only then did my widened field of vision catch the blood pooling here and there on the office floor.
“Why is there blood...”
The pool of blood next to me was connected all the way behind the partition.
I picked up the blood-stained phone and stood up, my body trembling violently.
Prepared to run in the opposite direction at a moment's notice, I peeked over the partition.
An assistant manager I had rarely seen because he was busy with other projects was lying face down with his head turned sideways on the desk, staring at me with his eyes wide open.
And his nape, visible below that, was tattered with muscle exposed as if it had been bitten.
The neck bone revealed between the red flesh gleamed white.
Only then did I realize that the assistant manager's eyes were out of focus.
Seized with terror, I backed away quickly until my back hit the wall and screamed.
“Aaaaagh!!”
Bang!
As if responding to the scream, the man outside the glass door pounded on the door again and let out a shriek.
No, is that even a man?
I scrambled away from the vicinity of the glass door.
At that moment, two corpses lying on the floor caught my eye.
They were employees from another team whose names I didn't know yet.
Desperately averting my gaze from the corpses, I walked to the end of the office.
There was a conference room with opaque film pasted up to just slightly above normal eye level.
All the lights inside the conference room were off.
With trembling hands, I grabbed the handle of the conference room door.
Although it was merely a glass wall at best, I felt like I would feel even slightly safer if I were inside.
As I pulled the door, there was a clink—a sensation of it being caught.
“Ack!”
A suppressed scream followed.
It was a familiar voice.
“Hyeon-woo-nim?”
No answer came from inside the conference room.
Wondering if I had misheard the sound, I pulled the handle once more.
“...Wait a moment. Don't make a sound, Jihyeok-ssi. I'll open it for you.”
This time it was Deputy Head Jeong's voice.
Click-clack—the sound of the lock turning repeatedly was heard, and soon the door opened.
Deputy Head Jeong's face appeared through the slightly opened door gap.
Deputy Head Jeong scanned me, and seeing the blood flowing from my hand, she asked with a pale face.
“Are you hurt?”
“He’s hurt? No way. Don't you dare let him in!”
I heard Gu Hyeon-woo’s urgent shout.
However, Deputy Head Jeong Mi-gyeong opened the door wide and let me into the conference room.
Manager Kim, who was inside, approached and quickly locked the door again.
“Did you run into that strange person outside?”
Deputy Head Jeong asked in an anxious voice, looking me over.
“If you mean a strange person... a middle-aged man in a suit with a slightly chubby build, walking with a stagger...?”
Deputy Head Jeong replied, checking outside the conference room with an uneasy look.
“No, it was a tall person with short hair wearing a black t-shirt. He was a bit young for a middle-aged man.”
“Does that mean there's another strange person?”
Manager Kim, who had even engaged the top lock of the door, spoke as he stepped down from a chair.
“What kind of strange person are you talking about...?”
I didn't think there were two people who could sprint with their ribs sticking out.
I didn't even want to think that.
Kang Ye-ra, who had brought tissues and wet wipes from one side of the conference table, held them out and answered my question.
“Did that man try to bite people, too?”
Unlike the others, her voice was calm, but her face was also deathly pale.
I bowed my head slightly to express my thanks and took the tissues.
Hearing Kang Ye-ra’s question, the image of the man lunging at me was vividly revived before my eyes.
I nodded heavily.
“...Yes.”
“See! I told you!”
Gu Hyeon-woo, who was sitting in a chair on one side trembling, struck the desk and stood up as if he knew it, pointing at me.
“I told you that bastard was bitten! Shit, what if this is something like rabies? If there are two bastards doing the same thing, isn't it an epidemic?”
“Rabies isn't a disease that breaks out the moment you're bitten, so why are you making such a fuss?”
Kang Ye-ra snapped back coldly.
Gu Hyeon-woo glared at Kang Ye-ra with a huff, then swallowed his words while muttering something.
“This isn't a bite. I was just lightly scratched by fingernails.”
I hurriedly explained, sensing the atmosphere of the fight turning worse.
I quickly wiped the back of my hand with a wet wipe, revealing the wound that had been hidden by blood.
Blood welled up from the torn spot and covered the wound again, but it was enough time to confirm that it wasn't a bite mark.
Gu Hyeon-woo snorted and jerked his head away.
“How do we know if even a scratch is okay?”
“Is this a light scratch? Oh no... We don't even have any medicine in the conference room.”
Deputy Head Jeong looked at the back of my hand with a worried expression.
Manager Kim looked at Gu Hyeon-woo with a sour look and muttered softly in disapproval.
“Young people these days only think of themselves...”
The small voice seemed to be heard only by me, Kang Ye-ra, and Deputy Head Jeong; Gu Hyeon-woo didn't show any particular reaction.
A cold silence settled for a moment.
Gu Hyeon-woo ignored us and fiddled with his phone.
“Um, I've been trapped in the restroom until now, so what happened out there? From what I saw, the people...”
I couldn't bring myself to say the rest and trailed off, and everyone's faces darkened.
It wasn't an atmosphere where they would easily answer.
“...Did you call the police?”
I asked in a low voice to Kang Ye-ra, who was the most approachable person there.
Kang Ye-ra shook her head with a gloomy expression.
“Neither the police nor 119 are answering. I don't know what on earth is going on.”
“Could they be escapees from a nearby mental hospital? Everyone got that disaster alert.”
Manager Kim said, raising his phone as if to show the message he received.
“Then they would have written it that way. I'm telling you, something is weird. Everyone on the internet is talking about this.”
Suddenly interjecting, Gu Hyeon-woo turned his phone screen to show us.
[CRAZY is my jerk of a friend pranking me? –
A friend sent me a video saying he saw a crazy guy on the streets of Gangnam Station, and some lunatic is attacking and biting people on the street and doing all kinds of sh*t.
But when I search for ‘Gangnam’ on the news, nothing pops up?
A little while after this jerk sent this, the KakaoTalk server crashed, and I can't contact him.
Is he pranking me? But the video really looks like Gangnam Station and doesn't look fake. I can hear my friend's voice too]
[Anonymous: You dumbass, that's just Tran to Busan. You're such a gullible bastard lolololol
└Anonymous: lol so cute, must be fun to tease him.
└Anonymous: These bastards really haven't seen any movies, why would Gangnam Station appear there. Acting like you know sht, fck lolololol]
[Anonymous: I'm someone who's seen quite a few zombie movies myself, but this is the first time seeing a video like that. If they made it, the makeup is really high quality; is your friend the type to do that kind of stuff?
└Author: No, he's just a jerk who only plays games on his computer....]
[Anonymous: HeyI'matGangnamStationrightnowandthevideoisrealfckthepolicearen'tansweringandtherearesofuckingmanyofthosecrazybastardsroamingaround
└Anonymous: lolololol doing sht on the internet in an urgent situation?
└Anonymous: 'Hey I'm at Gangnam Station right now....' Moron, go eat your dinner~ Oh Mom, don't come into my room! lolololol]
“Play the video too, Hyeon-woo-ssi.”
At Deputy Head Jeong’s words, Gu Hyeon-woo took out the earphone he had in one ear, put it in its case, and pressed the play button on the video.
The familiar sight of Gangnam Station Exit 2 appeared, and an ear-splitting scream was heard.
People were screaming and shouting, pushing each other and falling down in a scramble to get down the stairs.
—Hey, f*ck, do you see that?
A man's trembling voice, presumably the person filming the video, was heard.
The screen shook, and the camera briefly passed over people lying on the ground.
The figure of a man standing in a slanted posture among the fallen people was visible.
He was a young man who looked to be in his thirties, wearing a black short-sleeved t-shirt with hair cut short like a soldier's.
The man, his mouth covered in blood, jerked his head back and forth, following the people running around him.
The moment he let out a shriek and lunged at a person passing by, the screen froze.
The screen, which stopped on the image of the man attacking the person, soon turned completely black.
[This video has been deleted.]
After staring blankly at the short phrase on the black screen for a while, Gu Hyeon-woo pressed the refresh button at the bottom of the window.
[Please check your network connection and try again.]
Seeing the sentence on Gu Hyeon-woo’s phone, I hurriedly pulled out my own phone.
The office Wi-Fi was still connected, but the internet wasn't working.
The others also hurriedly checked their phones.
“Why is the signal suddenly not catching?”
Manager Kim, with a flustered expression, held his phone up high and began walking around the conference room.
“It's not like we're in the mountains; we're in the middle of Gangnam, so do you think it'll work just by doing that?”
Gu Hyeon-woo glared at Manager Kim with a dissatisfied expression and muttered as if talking to himself.
Fortunately, Manager Kim, who was preoccupied with his phone, didn't seem to hear Gu Hyeon-woo’s words.
Holding my dead phone, I sat blankly looking at the people in the conference room before asking hesitantly.
“...Could it be that a war broke out?”
Deputy Head Jeong let out a stifled exclamation of "Oh my," and covered her mouth with both hands.
Her wide eyes, as if in shock, were filled with terror.
“...Of all things, in this situation?”
Gu Hyeon-woo asked sarcastically, as if looking for a fight.
However, perhaps because he couldn't think of any other plausible reason, his face was also deathly pale.