↳ hotel。

@▸ lalisa manoban。 [ !!! trigger warning: gore, vomit !!! ]

jihoon wishes ― no, he /begs/ to be woken up from this nightmare.

he sees more red spilling on the ground, adding onto the pool of blood underneath the pile of bodies. his grip around the handle loosens ever so slightly as the stench hits his nose. there is a gradual buildup of acid rising up to his throat. jihoon doesn't know how much longer he can handle it. the white breath of air that escapes his mouth is ragged and heavy, and his hands are shaking too much for the blade to pierce through her in one clean cut should he decide to kill her. he starts counting down, as if he had three more seconds to make his move.

3... 2... 1...

what greets him next is the stranger's watery hazel brown eyes meeting his. the tip of his blade is a mere few inches away from touching her skin, and all jihoon has to do is to plunge it into her. it hasn't been too long since the outbreak (the zombie-like behavior is caused by an unknown mutation according to scientists, the local news had said) started in the city, and perhaps ― no, he's certain that he'd be doing the world a favor if he were to kill her right here and now.

so why can't he?

the smear of crimson around her lips is evidence to the crime she had just committed, yet the blame has somehow been shifted on him. jihoon shakes his head furiously. "no! it's―" then his gaze trails to the stained blade of his weapon, and back to the horrendous sight behind the girl ― and then the realization hits him. jihoon opens his mouth to return the blame, but the words fail to escape his mouth. the girl ― no, the /monster/ deserves to know the truth, but somehow he can't bring himself to say it. perhaps he too, feels responsible for the massacre. he might have saved them had it not been for his hesitation. "no! i swear it wasn't me!"

the next thing he knows, his knees hit the ground with a thud. in front of him is his own vomit, its stench adding onto the mixture of blood and fresh corpse in the air.

@▹ kim yonghee。 hiding inside of the next best building from a group of really ed up infected had been the only possibility for minho to get out of harm's way. tit had started to rain as well but minho never really minded the rain. in fact nowadays he enjoyed the loud dripping sound of the rain on the cement, it felt like everything was normal. a fragment of what had been before and would now probably never be again. he sighed, walking through the hotel he had been in a few months prior. a sigh lef this lips, looking around and touching the dusty surface. he wondered how long this place would still be up, he had seen a few areas that had already crashed in for the lack of maintenace. he shrugged and then moved around, about to find himself a room where he could watch what was going on - but then he heard a sound. the piano. just one tune, one key, but it made minho tense up. what if they had come inside?

quietly minho made his way down to the old auditorium but he did not find a group of disaster people but instead a person he still remembered. his eyes got wide and he looked at the other.

"yonghee?" he asked, remembering him but barely. he knew the name, he knew they had spoken but the longer this situation lasted the more minho was forgetting, especially acquaintances.

@▸ lee minho。 here he was, standing at the edge of autumn. memories unfurling before his eyes as debris and dust falls to the sole of his tattered sneakers. the high ceilings of the auditorium were all but collapsed, and everywhere he looked he saw splintered wood in place of seats. yonghee in the - possibly carcinogenic, perhaps infested with asbestos - air of the abandoned hotel. he was just trying to find shelter from the rain, so he swooped into the first building he found. he didn't expect this place to invoke so many memories in him. it reminded him of the countless times he snuck out at night - nights where he couldn't sleep (he blames his condition).

a sigh fogs up the air in front of him as he strides towards the tattered steinway piano, he sits down and his fingers run along the newly formed grooves of the piano keys. who could have done this? a part of him doesn't want to know - because animosity blurs infected and non-infected alike.

he plays a note and winces, it had been months since the piano had been tuned. so he closes the lid and covers the keys, sighing against the surface as memories blur his eyes.

@▹ lee jihoon。 [] tw: graphic descriptions of cannibalism, gore, and puking.

her happy story had ended before it started.

the arctic wind had been quick to nip their skin that morning, lalisa and that of her family. it wasn’t as if they hadn’t expected to be met with snow and that of a glacial world that untimely january, coming from the warm country of thailand, vastly different at that. but given the state of the world and the crisis it had suffered to, finding a suitable habitat for their entire family was proving even more difficult than it would have been prior to the disaster. but despite the tribulations, lalisa was willing to suffer for her family. she was willing to work harder than before to guarantee her loved ones’ safety and security.

so why did things turn out like this?

she’s on her knees now, and the air feels chillier than before. had it always been this frigid in the hotel? she’s cold, empty, and yet her hands are warm. there, upon the girl’s pale hands tainted white by the winter’s boreal temperatures lays yet another color.

red.

how vividly it stains lalisa’s hands, marks her very being. the hues of her clothing are dampened by that of bright vermilion. and before her eyes, a grisly sight. strewn bodies across the poorly maintained floor of their makeshift shelter. they’re lifeless now, the unidentifiable bodies of her loved ones. there’s no doubt that those who lay before her were and still are her family, for the sight of her father’s coat, her mother’s dark tresses, the small frame of her little sister, and the tattered sneakers of her little brother—it’s all familiar. and all at once, it becomes too much.

lips glossed with scarlet tremble in their wake, ’s closing up on her and she can hardly breathe, hardly register the sight before her. instantaneously, the damsel is purging her stomach’s contents. and oh, how red it all is. the ascension of her stomach acid burns , but the scene of what she’s done is onerous to tear her eyes away from. the lucid tincture of what she has regurgitated just now is a simple reminder of what she has consumed against her will.

she did this. she did this to her family.

but it quickly becomes a repressed memory. thus the woman turns toward the stranger at the doorway with tears burning her eyes, blighting her vision that has already become fragmented due to the reality of the world and its cruelties. “you—did you do this...?” her voice is weak, eyebrows furrowed. that of the unfamiliar person’s knife only raises her suspicions of having committed such an atrocity, for the bloodied blade is pointed directly at lalisa herself.

@▸ lalisa manoban。 [ !!! trigger warning: graphic descriptions of cannibalism, gore !!! ]

― january 15th, 2120

a blood curling scream pierces through the silence outside the lobby.

jihoon lifts his head up from the scarf wrapped around his neck, the cold midwinter air biting at his face almost immediately. his eyes dart around, looking for the source of the continuous screams ringing in his ears, hands digging into the pocket of his padded jacket. he draws out the small pocket knife he always carries with him ever since the new year's incident, its blade dyed in a dark brownish red shade. he presses his lips into a thin line as he tries to ignore the way it made his stomach churn.

the absence of his little finger is still a foreign feeling to him ― he notices how weak his grasp on the knife is, so he wraps another set of fingers around it, holding it close to his chest as he makes careful steps towards the source. his soles crunch into the thin layer of ice coating the pavement as the screams grow louder. he hears at least two different voices, yet both of them are undecipherable, as if they're speaking (or pleading? begging? crying?) in a foreign language―

―only to come to an abrupt halt.

when he makes a turn at an alley behind the hotel, he is greeted by a horrendous sight ― he sees two bodies of a man and a woman, a pool of vivid red underneath them and gradually seeping through the whiteness of the snow. he sees guts and intestines spilling out of their abdomens and sprawled around the ground, and a large chunk of their faces are gone, as if something had bitten them off. before he could register the sight in front of him, his attention shifts to the figure of another woman kneeling on top of their bodies, head leaning downwards and face covered with thick locks of hair. he barely manages to hold the urge to gag and points his knife at her with trembling hands, taking advantage of the fact that she didn't seem to notice his presence to make his first move.

[] sorry for the length ahfjdfhks pls don't feel pressured to mirror > <