Red Dot - 4

Chapter 4

“Aaaargh!”

“What the hell is that?”

Junseong cringed at the sounds coming from outside. Along with agonizing screams, there were sounds of someone falling and crashing. Amidst this cacophony, terrifying roars echoed, as if beasts were on the loose.

The raucous noise from outside gradually subsided. The frantic screams seemed to have been silenced as if everyone had their mouths sealed shut. All that remained were the eerie growls of something inhuman. Even those sounds became nearly inaudible after a few minutes.

“Ugh, ugh…”

A male student, crouching on top of a closed toilet seat, began to cry with a despairing expression. To hide three people inside this cramped bathroom, one of them had to climb onto the toilet. This unusual arrangement had slightly relieved the tension in his body.

“Why… Why is all this happening…?”

In no time, the male student, now drenched in tears, was handed a white tissue. This tissue was the last one inside the bathroom where they were hiding.

The short-haired girl with an expressionless face who handed the tissue spoke in a hushed voice, “Yang Jiwoo, wipe your tears and quietly get yourself together. We need to think about how to get out of here more than crying.”

Upon hearing the cold tone, Jiwoo stared at her in shock, his eyes filled with tears.

“How could all of this happen to you…!”

However, the bespectacled girl in the same cubicle quickly covered Jiwoo’s trembling lips.

“Shh! Are you insane? What are you going to do if those zombie bastards find out?”

The bespectacled girl also started crying without making a sound. She wiped her damp eyes with the back of her hand, looking at the indifferent short-haired girl who stood facing her.

“Chaeyi, what should we do now? We can’t stay here forever. We should call the police or something.”

“I’ve tried calling three times already.”

Chaeyi showed her phone. The screen displayed ‘Emergency number’ and ‘112’.

“And now, I can’t make any calls. The internet is down too.”

Chaeyi’s voice, tinged with frustration, made her darker complexion more apparent. The other two girls had expressions of despair several times worse.

“So, what do we do now?”

Jiwoo, who had thrown the single-sheet tissue into the trash, raised his voice.

“We reported it a while ago, but the police aren’t even showing up, and now the phones aren’t working!”

“Is that my fault?”

“Who said it’s your fault?! I mean, what do we do now?”

“Why are you blaming me? You’re being so overdramatic.”

Jiwoo seemed incredibly annoyed as he confronted Chaeyi, who questioned him with a nonchalant expression. He was about to shout in frustration but was silenced again.

“Hey, are you going to fight now? Can’t you lower your voice too?”

When Jiwoo tried to shake off her grip angrily, Chaeyi let go and glared back at him. Ignoring his gaze, Chaeyi spoke to Chaeyi, “For now, let’s go out and hide in a classroom or somewhere. It’s too dangerous here.”

“Are you insane? How can we go out with zombies everywhere?”

Chaeyi’s face displayed a perplexed look as Jiwoo protested.

“Wait, Soyeon is right. We need to get out of here.”

“Are you crazy too?”

As Jiwoo yelled, Chaeyi leaned against the bathroom door, placing her hand on the handle to listen to the sounds outside. At the moment, there were no sounds at all.

“The bathroom entrance has only one small glass door, and it’s broken, so we can’t lock it. The space inside is too cramped.”

They had successfully hidden in the women’s bathroom to avoid the suddenly appearing zombies. However, the narrow space only had four stalls, and even the entrance was damaged. They couldn’t remain crouched in this small space forever, and, most importantly, if even one zombie got in, there would be no escape.

“At the very least, we need to sit properly to rest.”

This place was an extremely unsafe area, with no guarantee of when the zombies might break in. Just like the zombies, they had no idea when the police would arrive. They needed to wait for rescue in a somewhat safer location.

Thud.

The sound of the bathroom stall door opening seemed louder than expected. Jiwoo swallowed his breath and hunched his shoulders, while Soyeon focused her tense face on the sound.

Fortunately, it seemed that the noise hadn’t reached outside. Perhaps the zombies that had filled the corridor had moved elsewhere.

Chaeyi pushed the door to open it, but Soyeon grabbed her wrist.

“Where are we going?”

In response, Chaeyi hesitated for a moment.

Every classroom they had passed to get here had its doors wide open. Inside each classroom, zombies were mercilessly tearing into students. The situation in the corridor wasn’t any different. The only difference was the bloodstains on their clothes, a testament to the unfortunate encounter with the zombies.

“We don’t know how long it takes to turn into a zombie, but it’s clear that the infection spreads through bites.”

Among the zombies they encountered in the corridor were students who had left the classroom as soon as class was over. The three of them had seen their classmates’ gruesome fates up close, just a few steps away. They were all bitten by the zombies.

“It’s certain that there are still zombies outside. So, where do we go? The second floor, first floor… or should we go outside?”

The stairs would be difficult to navigate when the zombies had taken over. It was a space where they could easily get injured. If there were no hiding places on this floor, they would eventually have to pass through the stairs quickly. However, they didn’t know the situation on the floor below, so they couldn’t move recklessly.

At that moment, Chaeyi, who hadn’t made a decision on where to go, suddenly turned to Jiwoo with a gleam in her eyes. Jiwoo was taken aback by her sudden intense gaze.

“Do you know the professor’s office passcode?”

“What?”

Jiwoo, who had been staring blankly for a moment, suddenly widened his eyes with an “Ah.”

Fortunately, he remembered. This afternoon, just after the professor’s lecture, the professor had left the classroom briefly due to a personal matter and told Jiwoo to leave the report in the professor’s office, mentioning the passcode. The passcode was relatively new, and aside from the professor, hardly anyone knew it.

Jiwoo nodded quickly. “Yeah, I know it.”

Thank goodness.

If the professor’s office had been locked the whole time, it should still be empty now. Given that the new digital door lock had been recently installed, very few people would know the passcode. Therefore, they could assume that it was in a safe condition.

Furthermore, the professor’s office was close to the stairs leading to the second floor. If the situation became somewhat quieter, they would have to descend via the stairs, and from there, they might hear the rescue team approaching from below. The office had some snacks and drinks meant for visitors, making it an ideal waiting place for rescue.

Their current hiding place in the middle of the corridor was not far from the professor’s office. The distance to the office was not too great.

Soyeon and Jiwoo seemed to realize this fact as well, and their pale faces brightened a bit.

“For now, let’s head to the professor’s office…”

While Chaeyi was about to continue her sentence, she suddenly looked at her phone, which she had lowered her eyes to.

She recalled a message her brother had sent her about two hours ago, right when the lecture had just started.

[Hide in the professor’s office when the lecture ends.]

Normally, she would be too busy with gaming, battling against those in the game, and perhaps confronting some world boss, with no time to communicate. But suddenly receiving a message instructing her to “hide” in the professor’s office was different.

It was almost as if someone had foreseen the zombie situation here and wanted to let them know that the professor’s office was a safe place in advance.

Earlier, she had missed her chance to inquire further due to the lecture already starting and had left her phone untouched. If the internet had still been functional, she could have asked what the message meant. However, now all communication, including the internet, had been cut off.

Thinking of her brother’s face, her calm heart began to tremble anxiously. Despite the distance, it was still the same time zone. There was a possibility that her brother’s one-room apartment might not be safe either.

“It’ll be okay. He’ll be fine.”

Her brother was the type to spend the entire day at home, glued to his PC. He probably hadn’t gone outside. Maybe he didn’t even know what was happening outside and was deeply engrossed in his game.

She reassured herself with this thought.

“He’ll be okay, so I should focus on my own worries.”

If she thought about it, her situation, hiding with two friends in a single bathroom stall, was far more dangerous than her brother at home with his computer. It was a ridiculous situation.

Chaeyi suppressed her anxious heart as she concentrated on the sounds outside and motioned to her friends.

With her full attention on the outside noises, Chaeyi slowly opened the bathroom stall door.

At the same time.

“Looks like it’s chaos, as expected.”

Junseong crouched between the parked cars in the parking lot and observed the dense crowd of zombies in front of the university building where his sister Chaeyi was located.