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After the funeral where he was supposed to say his last goodbyes but he didn’t because it hurts too much and he can’t even think anymore, he was left with a bag filled with his hyungs belongings hanging from his powerless grip, a blank face, and a lump on the middle of his throat that, no matter how much he tried to swallow down, kept squeezing his windpipe tightly.
After making his way to his now empty apartment…
(An apartment that used to be filled with snickers, and warm hugs, and family moments, and support, and love)
…Kim Rok Soo settled the stuff from the bag into his bed, carefully, so none of them got even a dent or accidentally fall and break. A very delicate touch, comparing it to his blasting push to the door seconds ago when he slammed it close, so he didn’t have to watch that cold and lonely living room, devoid of the beaming faces that used to decorate it just a couple of days ago, nor those two closed rooms that were still waiting for their owners to come back from work.
Between his hyungs belongings, there were things you would find on an average office: mugs, little photo frames for the desk, their preferred office supplies, and things of the sort. On the less average side, you would find things that turned normal after the apocalypse: weapons like swords or daggers (the latter ones from a very catastrophic attempt, on Jung Soo’s side, for making himself more versatile into handling other weapons besides his sword. Nobody talks about that incident anymore, it just got settled that Kim Rok Soo would be the one specializing on daggers and guns, and the other two would simply stick to their sword arts. And, in case anybody noticed the holes on the couch and the patched-up entrance door, nobody said a thing about it).
Between those items, he found one that caught his attention, even more than the engraved swords he would keep on the rooms across the corridor as a keepsake to their respective owners.
That item was team lider’s phone.
What was that doing there? Kim Rok Soo was almost sure that the thing got crushed when Lee Soo Hyuk was carrying it and was sent flying and crashing everywhere while fighting the unranked monster. He did not even think of the possibility of this being delivered together with everything else, honestly.
The screen was smashed, long cracks from the top corner of the phone to the bottom, and the lid of the back of it was gone. Nonetheless, it turned on the moment Rok Soo pressed the power button from the side of the device for a couple of seconds, trying to see if it was still working. And, for some kind of miracle, it did.
The top of the screen had some weird lines and a couple of black stains, indicating that the damn thing really got smashed by his hyung’s body while carrying it on that fateful day, but what counted was that it was usable. Even with a part of the screen being useless, Rok Soo still could navigate through the phone and find everything within it.
( Kim Rok Soo shoved to the back of his mind the memory of his hyung sent flying everywhere, blood covering his body and limbs twisting in different directions, heavy breathing while the monster toyed him after killing his other comrades .)
So, he decided to sit on the chair from his room’s desk and rummage a little inside the gallery, curiosity taking over on that grief he kept denying, a reason to stay disconnected from everything for a little longer.
Tapping on the camera icon, he found not so many files in it (quite weird, considering that he was the team leader and was handling grand part of the information they used, but whatever) and started to scroll to the bottom of the reel to watch them from old to new.
The first photo was one that he probably took while patrolling on top of the shelter, Rok Soo was familiar with the view from the building. It was a sunset sky, orange hues gracing the panorama while the huge ball of fire that kept them living, even after all the shit shows they’ve been through, fell behind the crumbling buildings from a civilization that almost perished less than a decade ago.
It was quite a beautiful sight, but Rok Soo couldn’t stop himself from asking in his mind what was team leader thinking when he took that picture? Was it the sky, was it the moment, something whispering at the back of his head to capture it?... not that those questions could be answered now, only the silence around him witnessing those questions come and go, fading into the air and hiding themselves, since the soul intended to reply to them was long gone.
Sliding further, there were more photos, and Rok Soo truly believed that this phone perfectly resembled his hyung’s personality. Food photos, bad memes made by hand (now that there weren’t social platforms to download them, everybody just using basic communication apps) and more breathtaking sceneries filled the reel, until Rok Soo abruptly stopped sliding when he reached a picture that took his breath away.
It was a photo taken secretly, considering the fact that those who were portrayed in it didn’t seem to notice the camera phone directed to them. Firsthand were two women. On the right side, Kah Yun-Hee, the oldest from the team (also, the one who was always joining Soo Hyuk to pester him about being the youngest, but kind enough to stop the bickering and punch Soo Hyuk’s arm whenever he was stepping out with the jokes) and, talking to her, was Chae Jung-Hwa (she also had a nice personality, reserved like him but with enough social skills to read the mood and adapt to it, all of it while being surrounded by her ‘educate and literate girl’ aura).
A little bit further, behind the two women chatting, was Seo Young, the guy was trying to sip on his coffee to stay out of the zombie state he seemed to be under, but the image that was captured quite reminded Rok Soo of a scene where Jung Soo tried to scare him and got drenched with the hot beverage, Seo-ssi not having any of it and Jung Soo earning a smack on the head by Jung-Hwa for being so childish and frolicsome.
Yeah, the photo seems to be from that time. His team, the people whom he entrusted his life to, all gone now, but forever captured here and inside his head.
Scrolling further, after taking some more seconds looking at that picture, he found some videos.
The first one was one he remembered. Not the video per se, but the moment it was taken. They were inside the apartment, on a day off they got after some stressful couple of missions, and Soo Hyuk decided to make it a cleaning day. The house was filthy, with the sink vomiting dirty dishes, a layer of dust covering the floors and the laundry basket filled to the brim with clothes waiting to be washed.
Jung Soo took the kitchen duties, Rok Soo did the laundry and Soo Hyuk would sweep the floors while the others were doing their respective tasks. On the video, Soo Hyuk was approaching him with his camera up, and apparently, he had started recording right on the middle of his rant.
“-FUCK JUNG SOO, I told you to turn your DAMN underwear on the right side! I’m not grabbing it from the side that was in contact with your dick just to get it into the washing machine!” he yelled, face contorted with disgust and a grimace that could be translated as if him and all of his ancestors were being insulted by the dirty boxers.
“I’m sorry, I forgot, Imsorryimsorryimsorryimsorry I’m sor- uk!” Jung Soo was running from the kitchen, his voice growing louder with every step to appease Rok Soo and fix his part of the laundry (because, yes, most likely, the entire basket had several pairs of underwear that did not fulfilled the agreement made for the sake of who would do the laundry that week), until he got hit by his own boxers, turned into a ball and launched by the hand of a very angry Kim Rok Soo right into the middle of his face, prompting him to lose balance by the surprise of his action and falling butt-first.
It seemed like he still wasn’t satisfied with the pitiful tumble from Jung Soo, because you could still hear the rambling on the background and the curses that he kept spilling, camera now facing Soo Hyuk and capturing his face that grew into a full grin, cackles leaving his lips before evolving into a noisy laugh that got cut right in the middle, hand reaching to the screen to stop recording and, most likely, step up to mollify him.
It was nice to see that day from outside, getting to watch his interaction with the other two while also retracing his own record of the scene.
The video lasted just a couple of seconds, but he kept reminiscing that day and replaying it on his head.
The next one was, another moment he could easily recall. But, in contrast with the scene he remembered, there was something he did not got to see, and that was the little chat Jung Soo and Soo Hyuk had before it.
“I swear to you, he is like an old man” said Jung Soo when the camera was pointing at his face. He was wearing his combat suit, probably preparing to go out on a mission with the team, and his face seemed calm enough to joke around with the team leader.
“He is our dongsaeng, it can’t be that bad” replied Soo Hyuk.
“It took him almost ten minutes to find the settings from his phone to change the wallpaper, hyung” said Jung Soo, deadpan face, and got a muffled laughter from the latter in return.
“Then, wanna bet?” said, a mischievous playful grin crawling up as a gesture of an idea popping to his head, a promise to get more fun with the subject involving Rok Soo and his difficulties with technology (he swears he does not have such problem, but everybody has seen him getting startled after accidentally programming alarms every ten minutes because he doesn’t know how he did it or how to stop them. It got better after a couple of teachings and the help of his record ability, tho).
“What ya thinking?” responded the man holding the camera, audible amusement in his voice.
“… do you think he’ll notice if we ask him for a selfie, but… we don’t take it…?” asked the younger, head pondering on the idea, chin resting on his palm while thinking about it.
“… let’s go”
And with that, the camera falls a little, not focusing on Jung Soo anymore but being handled like a cellphone that it is not recording, shuffling its gaze to the floor while the two idiots trying to pull a childish prank enter a room where their dongsaeng was.
You could hear a muffled conversation, probably Jung Soo pestering Rok Soo with a puppy-like demeanor to convince him to take a selfie together. He still remembers this, Jung Soo clinging onto him and pulling onto his shirt, eyes pleading with the almost teasing request, assuring him that it was a surprise birthday gift for one of their teammates and everybody had to be in it, until he gave up, saying that ‘he’ll be in the photo, but he won’t smile’.
As on cue, Soo Hyuk turned the cellphone to the frontal camera, raising his arm and stretching it to fit the three of them onto the picture frame. Jung Soo was standing behind Rok Soo, the latter with a stoic face (if you squinted your eyes enough, you could see the ends of his lips quirking up a little) with Soo Hyuk’s arm over his shoulders. The recording kept rolling, nobody moving but Jung Soo starting to turn a little red, face tensing while biting his lips, holding a laugh.
Almost 10 second later (an eternity for the almost bursting Jung Soo and Soo Hyuk’s trembling arm holding the camera still), Rok Soo asked “Aren’t you taking the photo?”, to which the other two took as a signal to finally bend over and cackle. Rok Soo, being as dense as he is, didn’t get what was suddenly happening.
‘Why are they laughing? Just… what?’, the surprise and bewilderment written on his face, until he got illuminated by the truth, face turning an angry and flustered pinkish color, and hand starting to slap the two immature clowns who dared to make fun on him. Then, deciding as it was not worth it, his face turned blank and he showed his back to them, retreating to the other side of the office, not giving a living damn about their absurd shenanigans.
“Oh, he mad” said Soo Hyuk, serious and nervous voice stopping the cackles of the other while putting down the phone before ending the recording.
Seeing the video, Rok Soo scoffed a little, not wanting to add any thoughts at that.
Lastly, there was a video at the end of the reel. It was from a week ago, according to the date of the file, and it was only 9 seconds long. Rok Soo opened the file, just to see another hidden camera moment.
But this one was a little different from the other ones. On this one, Soo Hyuk was, apparently, hiding behind an almost closed door, camera set on the slit of the door, recording him and Jung Soo while alone on the office. Jung Soo was wielding his sword, swinging it up and down on a very bothering way to distract himself from all the paperwork awaiting him on his desk (they tried to talk him out of that little practice, but he never listened, not even when he got his sword embedded onto the office ceiling after a very powerful swing once).
On the other side, on his own desk, was Rok Soo, top buttons of his shirt opened and documents on his hand, writing with the other hand something (probably strategies, or reports about monster records he got lately). Everything is silent for the first seconds, camera taking on the scene, until a raspy loud whisper was heard near the phone.
“They are my whole world”, said. Hand reaching for the door to open it, and suddenly, the video ended.
A little voiced, filled with despair, pain and sorrow at the back of Rok Soo’s head can’t help but yell ‘YOU WERE MINE. WHY DID YOU LEAVE? WHY did you… leave me… behind’. The voice was getting smaller, quieter, repeating the word ‘behind’ over and over, seemingly talking to those who he cannot talk with anymore. Or ever again.
Pushing his growing feelings and ignoring the pang on his chest, Rok Soo lifted himself from the desk chair and walked to the bed, finger pressing on the cellphone’s button to turn off the phone’s screen and put it on the bed, next to the other objects displayed there. Turning his back to the memories and everything else, he decided to take a deep breath and walk towards the board hanging on the room, papers filled with information about the unranked monster that took them away, ripping them down with anger.
Harsh breathing replaced the silence of the room, soon followed by the sound of a pencil scratching on a paper.