Magic on the Dead Chapter 117

They had left the bookstore early in the morning, and it was not yet nine o’clock. To avoid the relentlessly swarming zombies, the group had no choice but to detour from their original path and take an outer road.

“Heok… heok!”

Hajin desperately fled from the zombie that was fiercely chasing him.

The zombie, with a horrific appearance—its nose tip cut off and its forehead melted away—was wearing a dazzling, bright blue sleeveless dress. It seemed to have just been chewing on human flesh, as bright red blood dripped from its exposed gums and teeth.

“Kiiieeeek—!”

Behind the hideous female zombie, several other zombies were running towards them, boasting visuals just as intense as hers. Just like the strange ones they had encountered near the reservoir last time, the momentum with which they charged was unusual.

‘I’m sure of it. Something has changed.’

And it was understandable, as recently, they had been choosing to flee more often rather than confronting zombies directly like this.

Hajin quickly took Byeol from Jeffrey, who was struggling to pick up speed, and ran until beads of sweat flew from him.

“Uncle! Run a little faster! You can do it!”

Whenever his thoughts became too much and his feet threatened to tangle, the child’s cheering voice rang piercingly in his ear, jolting him back to his senses.

“Go, go! Do Hajin!”

“Huuu…! Byeol, you little punk, who told you to, huh, call your uncle by his, huh, full name?”

“Don’t talk, just run!!”

Even as his heart pounded in fear that his neck would be torn out by a zombie at any moment, Byeol’s cute nagging continued, and a laugh escaped Hajin’s lips. It would not have been strange at all if someone had pointed a finger at him, calling him insane.

After a desperate sprint, they barely managed to shake off the monsters, but the group could not catch their breath for a while. Jeffrey, saying he felt nauseous from running on an empty stomach, collapsed limply on the ground. His back, which was much thinner than when he first came to Korea, heaved continuously.

【Huuu… isn’t that a church? Should we take refuge there for a bit?】

Jeffrey, after quenching his thirst with the drinking water they had brought from the bookstore, gestured with his eyes towards the right.

Following his suggestion, the group turned their bodies toward the church with its towering steeple. As they headed for their destination, the surroundings were eerily quiet.

‘What is this?’

A chilling sensation swept across the nape of Hajin’s neck. Just as he suspected, upon entering the church lobby, they immediately came face to face with a group of about six survivors sitting in a circle.

Men of various ages, appearing to be from their twenties to their forties, glared at the group with sharp eyes. Hajin was inwardly flustered by their eyes, which were clearly full of hostility, but he managed to compose his expression and opened his mouth.

“Excuse me. Is this place…”

Before he could even finish his sentence, one of the men suddenly lunged at him, baring his teeth like a starving wolf. There was no time to prepare a defense. Eden quickly stepped in front of the frozen and surprised Hajin. He fiercely grabbed the attacking man’s Adam’s apple.

“What the fuck?”

As he let out a low curse, another man, as if on cue, rolled on the floor and charged at them.

And 20 minutes later.

“I was wrong. I did it because I was hungry, okay? So please untie this.”

The man whimpered desperately, but Hajin, with a hardened expression, bound his hands and feet with a rope. Next to him, men covered in white powder were being relentlessly subdued by Eden.

“Please. We didn’t want to be scary either, sirs…. Please….”

The pleas did not stop even as the thick rope was being meticulously knotted. Hajin shook his head from side to side, flicking his sore wrists in the air.

“We’ve been through so much with other people that we had no choice but to strike first, you see? Of course, I’m not saying what we did was right but… hic, if you untie us, we’ll really not do anything and leave quietly!”

Hajin, his brow deeply furrowed for a moment, retorted fiercely at the man before him.

“You call that an excuse now? You attack and try to kill innocent people just because you’ve been wronged by others?”

Hajin recalled the events of a moment ago and clenched his fists tightly, as if in disbelief. The men kneeling before him all wore innocent expressions as if they were guiltless, but he clearly remembered how vile and despicable their faces had been just twenty minutes ago.

The men had ignored Hajin’s words that they would just rest quietly and had tried to take their belongings by force. In the process, Byeol was pushed back hard, and when the child burst into a loud wail, a fistfight finally broke out.

Eden got on top of the man who had pushed the child and threw punches, while Jeffrey swung a hammer wildly in the air, stopping the men who tried to approach.

Hajin, unable to watch any longer, stepped forward to sort out the situation, and at that moment, someone fearlessly attacked Eden from behind with a sickle. It was truly a touch-and-go situation.

‘Mr. Jung Taegeon—!!’

In an instant, Hajin’s eyes flipped, and he used a small fire extinguisher placed nearby to strike the back of the man’s head with the sickle. With a thwack, the villain dropped the sickle and collapsed to the ground without even letting out a scream.

At the same time, someone raised a kitchen knife high and rushed towards Hajin, but the assailant’s attempt was in vain.

‘Gaaah! Aack! Somebody get this son of a bitch off me!!’

It was because Pie had pounced on him, baring his sharp teeth.

Due to the noisy commotion, an ominous energy could be felt from outside the church. Faintly, the howling of zombies could be heard from somewhere. To get the situation under control, Hajin pulled the safety pin from the fire extinguisher he was holding, and then,

‘Cough, cough!!’

‘Keuheup…! Keck, keck…!!’

he sprayed it directly at the group of survivors. He held the nozzle and brandished the fire extinguisher menacingly, panting heavily.

‘Everyone calm down before the zombies swarm in!!’

Faced with the continuously spraying white powder, the men finally declared their surrender, hastily protecting their faces. Once the chaos had somewhat subsided, Eden began to quickly tie the villains’ hands and feet with a rope he had brought, and the result was the current situation.

“We’re sorry! We must have been crazy for a moment!”

“We did it because we’ve been starving for a long time…! We’ve been eating nothing but dirt for three days now!”

The fierce momentum with which they had attacked like demons was gone, and the men, huddled in a corner of the restroom, trembled pathetically.

They wept and begged, and when this side paid them no mind, they abruptly started shouting and justifying their actions.

“You people know it too! If we don’t even resort to robbery, we’ll all die like this! We can’t even get on a plane, so we have to survive like this, what other choice do we have!”

The man, who had been rambling on his own about a plane out of the blue, eventually burst into a giddy laugh as if he had lost his mind. Hajin looked at the staggering black, slicked-back hair, then decided it was not worth his attention anymore and got up.

In the meantime, Eden had found a roll of black box tape in the group’s luggage and was meticulously taping their mouths shut.

He had no energy left in his body from needlessly exerting himself since the morning. To finally get some proper rest, Hajin and the group entered the nave where the congregation held their services.

The ceiling and windows of the central aisle were all ornately decorated with arches, and at the front stood a reddish-brown altar on which a painting of ‘The Last Supper’ was depicted. Hajin patted his lower back and sat down on one of the long wooden pews.

Eden naturally took a seat next to him.

“Are you hurt anywhere?”

“No, I’m fine. What about you, Mr. Jung Taegeon?”

“As you can see, I’m perfectly fine.”

Hajin roughly wiped the beads of sweat trickling down his temples with the back of his hand and let out a deep sigh.

“I’ve seen all sorts of crazy bastards. At least the guys we met at the ranch tried to have a conversation, but these guys just try to kill you right off the bat….”

The image of the assailant swinging a sickle at Eden’s back came to mind again, and he ground his teeth.

“Were you very surprised?”

“Yes, well… but I think there are quite a few survivors around here.”

The number of survivors they had encountered this morning felt far greater than the total number they had met during their entire journey so far. However, just like the ones they had just confronted in the lobby, most were filled with vigilance and hostility towards strangers.

One boy, when asked by Hajin where he could hide, spat ptui! at him and said to give him food first before asking such questions.

“And I don’t know if it’s just me, but the zombies.”

Eden roughly swept back Hajin’s sweat-soaked bangs and nodded as if to say he was listening.

“I think they’re evolving. Before, if their decay was severe, they couldn’t even move. Now, it seems like that doesn’t matter at all. You’ve felt it for a while too, haven’t you, Mr. Jung Taegeon?”

“……”

Hajin took his silence as affirmation and spoke as if making a vow.

“We don’t have much time. If we delay here even a little, it will get harder, so let’s push ourselves and make sure to get to the maintenance depot this afternoon.”

“Understood. Even if we’re late, let’s go to the maintenance depot today.”

Contrary to his indifferent reply, his eyes looking at Hajin were filled with affection.

“Uncle, I want to look around here. Can I try playing that piano?”

Just then, Byeol, who had been lying on the floor with Pie, grabbed Eden’s arm and shook it. At the child’s continuous whining, Eden reluctantly stood up.

“I’ll be back after looking around for a bit.”

“See you later.”

As he led the child and Pie away and disappeared from view, Jeffrey, who had been stretched out on the opposite pew, called out to Hajin.

【Hajin.】

As soon as he turned his head at the call, a palm-sized paper box flew into his chest.

“Oh.”

【I don’t need it anymore, so you use the rest.】

The item that had fallen onto Hajin’s thigh was a small box of waterproof bandages. Rolling the crumpled square box in his hand, he stared at Jeffrey with a bewildered face. Jeffrey looked awkward, scratching his chin before turning his gaze away.

“Thank you.”

He replied belatedly, but there was no answer back. Hajin realized that the few awkward words they had just exchanged were the entirety of the conversation he had had with Jeffrey in days and likewise scratched his forehead. He waited for Jeffrey’s emerald eyes to turn towards him again, but there was no particular reaction despite his persistent gaze.

If they were to arrive at the maintenance depot today, this might be the last chance to have a conversation with him. Hajin hesitated for a moment, then rose from his seated position. As he quickly took a seat next to Jeffrey, Jeffrey, with a noticeably flustered face, sat up from his half-reclining position.

【What?】

Jeffrey narrowed his eyes as if wary of Hajin who had approached him. Hajin glanced at Eden and Byeol sitting far away on the piano and whispered softly.

“Can we talk for a bit?”

【About what.】

Despite the colder-than-expected reply, he paid it no mind and placed a hand on Jeffrey’s shoulder.

“I think you and Mr. Jung Taegeon have been fighting a lot lately, is it because of me by any chance?”

【…….】

“What was it about? Did Mr. Jung Taegeon perhaps say he would stay in Korea to follow me?”

Jeffrey glanced at the white hand on his shoulder before turning his gaze to a distant point again. After hesitating with his lips for a while, he let out a sigh and answered.

【Yes. He was spouting nonsense about following you to Neverland. But that’s not the only reason I’m angry.】

Jeffrey’s face, always innocent and playful, was terrifyingly stiff. He continued in a dry voice.

【The worst part is that you two decided on such an important matter by yourselves and then notified me. At the very least, if such a topic came up, shouldn’t you, Hajin, have come to me to ask for my understanding?】

It was an unexpected criticism. Hajin was momentarily at a loss for words, his mouth agape.

【I am not your sidekick. I am a friend, a family, and a comrade who has survived together with all my might in this goddamned reality.】

“Jeffrey.”

Hajin called his name but was too bewildered to rashly continue his words. The whites of Jeffrey’s eyes had already turned slightly red.

【Well, if you have a mouth, why don’t you say something.】

“……”

【Damn it, do I really have to be the one to say things like this? Let’s say it’s fine for me. What about Byeol then? What are you going to do about Byeol, who’s suddenly going to be separated from his uncle.】

Jeffrey seemed to be barely holding back a curse, but he could not hide the nape of his neck where veins bulged with agitation. While he roughly pushed back his fallen curly hair to cool off, Hajin quietly swallowed dryly.