.despite this cruel world .jongkook .flashback
[Despite this cruel world and all my best efforts, you surprise me with just how perfect you are.]
The world underneath Jihyo’s feet gives way, there and then not, and she goes crashing down in a heap of shrieking metal, snapping cables clanging against the wall, her mother’s voice screeching, her father reaching out for her, a split-second touch, like being suspended in the air and then the fall.
She falls and falls and falls, into the dark, into the depth, until the darkness underneath her swallows her whole. There was an old lady, Jihyo remembers, Old Lady Lee, and she told her once that heaven was above and hell was beneath. But hell was made of flame, and this darkness was water, filling her lungs and her eyes and her ears, burning just the same. Above her, the metal still shrieks, but underneath her is nothing but an icy cold, all the air in her lungs gone.
Around her, gurgling and footsteps.
She doesn’t want to die. She wants to go upstairs and see Joongki again, and mom and dad. She doesn’t want to die alone in the cold. So she grabs around her, more flailing than swimming, kicking her legs to keep her head above water frantically. She finds a cable and hoists herself out of the water, gasping, as if there isn’t enough oxygen in the world to ever fill her lungs. It hurts, sharp stabs in her chest, her ribcage contracting around her heart, trying to keep it safe.
Around her, gurgling and footsteps.
She doesn’t want to die. She wants mom to tell it’ll be fine, dad to keep her safe. She’s small and hurt and fragile and she can’t -- she can’t.
She has to get back to the upper floors. She crawls over the floor, petting the ground in front of her to see where she can stand, biting her lip raw trying not to scream.
Around her, gurgling. Footsteps coming closer, the distinct wheezing of an Infected’s breathing.
Tears join the wet droplets on her face, but she crawls on, until she bumps her head into a door. She opens it, blindly, and when she’s inside the gurgling stops. She crawls under a desk, hugging herself against the shivering.
She has to be strong. She has to be brave. She has to get back to the upper floor.
But all she can think of is the gurgling, that somewhere outside there are Infected, that they’re waiting for her, with their distorted breathing and their mutilated face, the fungus crawling over their eyes and into their brain and their lungs, the way their skulls split open with it, the way they’ll hold her down and bite her throat out. Do you see it, she wonders, will there be a split second where she’ll see her own throat in its mouth before she dies?
She’s too weak, she can’t breath, she can’t walk, she can’t think, she can’t, she can’t, she can’t.
