STAY ALIVE [AOUAD]

04 The Classroom

The fire alarm had set off and the cafeteria was being rained in. It was harder for students to circumvent as they were incapable to run freely. Cheong-San pulled On-Jo onto a table and I-Sak followed suit. They began to get cornered while a few more students climbed up the table. "The window!" One of the students shouted before being devoured by a zombie. Cheong-San muttered a thank you and rushed to the window, sliding it open. He pushed On-Jo out first and turned back to kick off a few zombies. I-sak climbed out next with the help of On-Jo.

"Cheong-San hurry up!" The said boy soon came out and the three whisked back inside the school, avoiding as many as zombies possible. Reaching the second floor, they were yet again cornered. Zombies appeared from either side and On-Jo hurried to grab a fire extinguisher and sprayed it to blind the infected. "Come on!"

Su-Hyeok and Nam-ra were at the front of the school still running, hand-in-hand. They unexpectedly stopped, watching a group of student zombies attacking their gardener. "Stay away, stay away from me son of a bitch!" He screamed but only got more attention to himself as he was eventually consumed. Su-Hyeok was quick to take the gardeners' ladder and moved it closer to their classroom window.

On-Jo and Cheong-san were slammed against the classroom door watching the familiar faces of their friends inside. "Don't open it! Don't open it!" Screamed Na-Yeon, but the others could not care less and unlocked the door. As the two fell inside, another male student rushes behind them, with some kind of white shade all over his face. "Open it Joon-Yeong!" He yelled as the boy looked perplexed at him. "What happened to your face?!" Gyeong-su asked. "I don't know, some crazy jerk sprayed me with a fire extinguisher" On-Jo looked up at that, feeling sorry for her actions.

"Brother-in-law!" Dae-Su dramatically called out, taking Wu-Jin in a hug. Dae-Su is a simp for Wu-Jin's older sister, Hari, and proclaimed himself as his brother-in-law. "Stop calling me that! You idiot" Suddenly a pair of hands were seen in the open window, making the group of teenagers scream. "Wait! Its Bare-Su! Bare-su get in!" Gyeong-su yells and pulls the boy in. "Nam-ra? Hurry up!" Soon enough, the classroom held more than ten students. Su-Hyeok lay on the floor gasping for air. "It's that right? Zombies"

"You obtained Ph.D. in cell biology in the US, returned to Korea. You were a pharmaceutical researcher and quit, then teaching. You should be a college professor with this résumé. Not some lousy high school teacher" Jae-Ik enquires, eyeing the oddly calm man in front of him. Both males were inside a questioning room, sitting across a table while Byeong Chan was cuffed to it. "The hospital needs to put Hyeon-Ju in quarantine, nothing less" Byeong Chan repeats, but Jae-Ik does not shift in the slightest and resumes his questions.

"Why would a teacher decide to chain a student?" Byeong Chan is still unmoving as he stared at the detective with blank eyes. "If I were a college professor... I was a prosecutor or a reporter, would you have listened?" Jae-Ik nods in amusement, clamping his palms together. "Ah, that's why you did it. Because no one listened to you or understood how you felt? You were lonely, maybe saddened. Is that it?" Jae-Ik feels the rising anger in himself as Byeong Chan lets out a grunt. "Fine. Let's do nothing. Everyone will die. This world and all those damned imbeciles"

That was the last straw for Jae-Ik as he slams his hand on the metal table. "I hate you assholes. You're a sick kind. You commit the crime, but you blame others, society, everything" Byeong Chan looks at the detective with bored eyes, yet they screamed his anger, at the loss of his son. No one could deny his resentment. It was pure hatred towards the world, the place where everything goes wrong.

"When you reported your son missing, you said, 'The world swallowed my son' What the hell's that supposed to mean? What, is the world an anaconda?"

"It didn't swallow him. Tell me what happened to him. You killed your son. But you reported him missing to avoid being a suspect. Am I right? Your son isn't missing, is he? What happened to him, huh?" The furious detective questions further and Byeong Chan finally looks up. Locking his eyes with Jae-Ik's he states. "Jin-su is dead"