Chapter 574
[Drama/Movie Actor TALK / Seriously, Lee Jeongmin is so messed up in Seoul Metropolitan City]
Isn't he just planning to use On Jihwa as a meat shield and throw her away? LOL. So that's why he called her mother separately to the fifth floor and showed her that whole fire performance. He was trying way too hard to look suspicious.
-Anonymous 1: Exactly, is he crazy? She's just a kid T_T
-Anonymous 2: He should've just let her go to the Planning and Coordination Director's office with her mom... I feel so bad for her.
-Anonymous 5: Is Jihwa just going to die alone on the eighth floor waiting for her mom?
-Anonymous 9: I'm already crying, damn it... I can't watch things like this.
-Anonymous 12: Seriously so selfish LOL. I've lost all affection for him.
As always, understanding divided people into two camps and made them fight.
[Drama/Movie Actor TALK / Am I the only one who understands Lee Jeongmin? Then what else was he supposed to do in that situation?]
If everyone on the eighth floor—the patients, guardians, medical staff—started demanding seats on the medical helicopter right away, a huge horde of zombies would've swarmed them and everyone would've died together all over again; if Lee Jeongmin was really selfish, he'd have taken only the pilot, Hyeonmok, and Hyeonmok's father, blown up the rooftop door with oxygen tanks, alcohol, and a lighter, boarded the helicopter, and escaped LOL. But he can't give up on wanting to save the others too, that's why he's doing this.
Leaving behind one On Jihwa to increase everyone else's survival rate vs forcing themselves to take On Jihwa too? Obviously the first one.
-Anonymous 1: Yeah. It may be cold, but it's the right choice. For people in chaos, On Jihwa's symbolic value is too heavy...
-Anonymous 4: I feel sorry for Jihwa and it breaks my heart, but Lee Jeongmin doesn't really have any reason to protect her; one person's life isn't worth more than hundreds to me either.
-Anonymous 5: Exactly. "No reason to protect her" is the truth.
-Anonymous 9: Honestly, if Lee Jeongmin had been a straight-up villain, it'd have been better. He wouldn't get this much hate.
-Anonymous 12: No, it's not like he kept On Jihwa alive just to save everyone else because of her LOL. He also couldn't escape from the rooftop before because he lacked manpower. Stop making stuff up.
-Anonymous 14: What's with your tone? Why are you picking fights?
-Anonymous 12: I'm not... I just don't like people spreading headcanon like it's fact.
That eventually led to fiery over-immersion.
[Drama/Movie Actor TALK / People who understand Lee Jeongmin probably lack empathy in real life too]
[Drama/Movie Actor TALK / If you feel so bad for On Jihwa, then what about everyone else? LOL]
[Drama/Movie Actor TALK / I'm a Jihwa mom, but I can understand Jeongmin's choice T_T]
[Drama/Movie Actor TALK / Please save our Jihwa... Please save our Jihwa... She's still just a baby...]
January 1st.
From the very beginning of the new year, drama fans had turned it into an all-out war.
[Drama/Movie Actor TALK / Guys, live posting is fun, but please put spoiler warnings in the titles T_T]
Incidentally, that thread was swept away in just three seconds.
[Drama/Movie Actor TALK / If you were in Lee Jeongmin's position, would you leave On Jihwa alive too? LOL. This is an intelligence issue.]
[Drama/Movie Actor TALK / What did On Jihwa do wrong that she deserves to be abandoned as a symbol?]
Because they were still fighting.
Current time: 5 a.m.
Even after staying up all night, people didn't feel tired.
* * *
Manager Hong's house.
He had technically gotten off work, but not really.
With his computer, tablet, and phone all turned on at once, he watched the situation unfold.
Currently, was attracting attention from all directions.
0percent @0percentttt
The apocalypse boom is coming.
Retweets: 2,234 Likes: 2,265
↳ They say there are 13 apocalypse fans, 13 zombie fans, 13 dystopia fans, and when they all gather together there are still only 13 people.
↳ Shut up.
↳ The retweets and likes are suspiciously similar.
↳ Shut the hell up, please.
There were viewers who had been desperately starving for apocalypse and zombie content.
They were marveling at the CG quality of this K-zombie series, enjoying it immensely.
Compared to the cheap-looking CG of the past, the quality was incomparable, which only made them more enthusiastic.
szq @mimimiiii
(exhausted frog meme.jpg)
I only meant to watch episode 1 of Seoul Metropolitan City and now I'm screwed.
Retweets: 4,451 Likes: 11,000
Drama fans who always sampled at least the first episode of a new series.
Episode 1 hooked them with the stranger entering the changing room.
Episode 2 with On Jihwa's unexpected death and the vaccine-treatment bait.
Episode 3 revealed it was a loop story.
Episode 4 revealed that Tak Jeongyun was the center of it all.
They had been repeatedly stabbed in the back by Seomun Ihwa and became hopelessly trapped.
Dark Second Male Lead Association @s2ndlover
(Yujin-ah, do you love oppa or not.mp4)
This bad-boy type isn't usually my thing, but what about a rough bastard who just smashes through everything?
Retweets: 12,000 Likes: 58,000
There were also people going wild over Myeong Jeha's overwhelming character, unlike anything they had seen before.
ScreenDaze (British TV) @ScreenDaze
(Tak Jeongyun stuffing cafeteria food into her mouth.mp4)
Those NetHolics bastards are insane. Where the hell did they find someone who acts like this?
Retweets: 1,234 Likes: 2,256
People who had been shaken twice—once by the story twist and again by Tak Jeongyun's acting.
Heart, Please Pull Yourself Together (My Woman Archive) @yeomisae
(side profile of On Jihwa sweating coldly.jpg)
Tears just keep falling.
I just become endlessly sad.
Retweets: 17,000 Likes: 21,000
And people who pitied the On Jihwa destined for sacrifice.
Han Yeoreum's cold-sweat acting had already appeared in the trailers.
But now it had been given a story—the moment she ran holding her mother's hand, only for a shutter to suddenly descend and force her to watch her mother's death right in front of her eyes.
Viewers no longer merely pitied On Jihwa.
They empathized with her.
Of course, Han Yeoreum's performance played a huge role in drawing people into over-immersion.
On Jihwa barely had any lines.
Naturally, the focus fell on her expressions.
The face that gritted its teeth while trying to raise the shutter.
The eyes that watched her mother die beyond it.
The profile drenched in cold sweat.
She had been given the most tragic backstory in the early episodes, and Han Yeoreum's acting only strengthened it.
On Jihwa was bound to become everyone's sore spot.
Different viewers focused on different things.
Everyone was staying up all night together.
Manager Hong stared at the continuing screen.
"Jihwa's with the soldiers on the eighth floor right now, so I'm going."
"Ma'am, please don't do this. Just wait for them to come up—"
"No. I can't wait! My child is still so young!"
The Planning and Coordination Director looked at On Jihwa's mother and sighed.
"Very well. Then... I suppose it can't be helped."
An uneasy melody settled over the Planning and Coordination Director as he obediently followed her.
A trembling guitar.
The sound stabbed sharply into the ears, as if the strings might snap at any moment.
* * *
Then the screen changed.
"Hic... Ah... Somebody..."
First-floor emergency room.
It was the person Tak Jeongyun had brushed past before starting the fire.
There were bloodstains on her forearm.
The wound was small, so she had apparently held out without transforming until now.
This was a restroom.
The camera slowly moved away.
The floor number written on the wall came into view.
14F
-Holy crap
-No way
-They were above them TT_TT
-What do we do
-Damn, nothing ever works
-TT____TT AAAAAAH PLEASE
Small groans began coming from inside the restroom.
They weren't human.
* * *
-Why did the two-star general send his men out without contacting other units?
Tak Jeongyun sat in the auditorium, exhausted.
But she still hadn't stopped thinking.
-Because he knows the capacity of a medical helicopter.
Those remaining now were one resident. Two nurses. Five guards including the head of security. One child. One guardian. One delivery worker. One former archer. One two-star general.
-Ten soldiers.
There was absolutely no way everyone could board at once.
And if the soldiers escaped after abandoning hundreds of civilians, the criticism and condemnation would fall entirely on the two-star general.
So he was painting a picture.
That he had "tried his best to protect civilians," and had "sacrificed" his men, but unfortunate "circumstances" had forced him to escape.
-And there would even be testimony that one patriotic former archer had volunteered to stay behind.
Bzzz.
Another vibration sounded.
[Actually... I've wanted to ask this for a while.]
[How did you know all this?]
Even if communications were down, devices made by the same company could still share photos and notes at close range.
Tak Jeongyun chuckled and sent a note.
[I heard a few things from the Planning and Coordination Director.]
-He's probably never coming here.
The higher a person's status, the higher up they stay.
-The hospital director's office is on the twentieth floor. The rooftop is the twenty-first. The Planning and Coordination Director's office is on the nineteenth.
[Really? Were you close with him? Please tell only me T_T I don't understand any of this.]
After looking once at the innocent and kind junior, Tak Jeongyun fixed her gaze on the former archer sitting upright.
Her side profile was visible diagonally.
Her ponytail had become slightly disheveled.
-Nobody in their right mind would willingly risk going all the way down to the eighth floor.
Tak Jeongyun alternated between the dead communications and the unusually active Wi-Fi.
[Someone's in room 603 please save us]
[Help me-507]
[The shutter closed on the fourth floor please help]
[SOS women's restroom fifth floor]
[There's a child room 406]
[SOS SOS SOS SOS]
-Until the Planning and Coordination Director arrives, all my justification will come from borrowing his name.
Urgent voices from the soldiers came over the walkie-talkie borrowed from security.
-This is Team A. We attempted to eliminate the infected, but...
Beyond the static—
-Failure.
"Reason?"
-...They come back to life.
Despair arrived.
* * *
Fourteenth floor.
The infected poured downward.
Thirteenth floor.
Hell itself.
Back to the fourteenth floor.
Or perhaps they were going up.
Fifteenth floor.
Blood exploded across the words "Don't give up" written on the white wall.
As the camera moved up and down, it showed different levels of hell.
On Jihwa's mother, descending without knowing anything, froze after hearing a scream.
"...Did you hear that?"
"Hear what?"
"You didn't hear it? You can't hear it?"
"No. I didn't hear anything."
At the Planning and Coordination Director's answer, she stopped again, trying to listen.
"What do I do...? It must've spread upward. My Jihwa, my Jihwa, what do I do?!"
And precisely then—
Her eyes met those of the first infected person climbing the stairs.
Thud.
Her body was shoved.
She lost her balance.
The infected opened its mouth wide.
As she crashed to the floor, her blurry vision caught sight of the Planning and Coordination Director.
"Tsk."
He simply turned around.
Infected piled onto Jihwa's mother as she lay screaming.
The creatures drawn by the noise buried her beneath them.
She disappeared.
-Ah, shit TT_TT
-What about Jihwa
-Knew it... I knew he'd use her once as a shield and dump her
-Three people you should never trust in an apocalypse: soldiers, police, doctors
-Facts
-Mother... Mother!!!!!!!!
Clunk.
The Planning and Coordination Director entered the men's restroom, stepped onto a toilet, and opened the vent.
He stretched his arm and climbed inside.
This was the eighteenth floor.
The perfect floor to reach the rooftop alone and wait for the military.
The camera descended again.
Twelfth floor.
Eleventh floor.
Tenth floor.
Ninth floor.
And finally, the eighth floor.
Team C, returning to the auditorium, ran into the infected.
"Ugh... Ugh..."
One of the Team C soldiers, who had just witnessed Team B's annihilation—
"AAAAAAAH—!!!"
—let out a scream filled with unbearable terror.
* * *
Inside the auditorium, the survivors stiffened.
"No way..."
"Ah..."
Hyeonmok's father hurriedly covered his son's ears.
Myeong Jeha put his helmet back on.
On Jihwa gripped the shoulder strap of the hard case she carried.
Do Gyeoul grabbed Tak Jeongyun's hand.
Tak Jeongyun looked at the two-star general.
Bang!
The door opened.
"Haa... Ah..."
Three Team C soldiers entered.
They hurriedly locked the door, but they couldn't block the pounding noises from outside.
"The situation?"
"...Since we didn't hear the sound of shutters breaking, it appears the infected came down from above."
Tak Jeongyun's face stiffened.
Because On Jihwa had jumped to her feet.
Bzzz.
A message arrived from the Planning and Coordination Director.
[You may come up to the rooftop. I have the helicopter key.]