Chapter Two - Matrix Open ||

They looked around for a while and Jihyeok felt his stomach churn uncomfortably at the sickening thought that they were the only ones who survived the stampede; he wondered where the stampede went to and how other people are going to react to it.

He snapped himself out of it and looked at Nakyung who stood in place, clearly he was flabbergasted. He cleared his throat and looked around, raising his head slightly to clear the tears that were forming in his eyes and looked towards Nakyung again "Thank you" he muttered. Nakyung blinked and looked at him, giving him a fairly welcome gaze and a little smile which made Jihyeok feel very much more indebted to Nakyung, after all without nakyung, would he be standing here right now?

Nakyung walked over to him and placed his hand on Jihyeok's shoulder, "Let's go and look for help first before we start celebrating survival, hmm?" Jihyeok hummed in agreement.

They were about to leave when Jihyeok remembered the bright blue-red light he had seen before from one of the stars before the figures made their arrival known; he looked up to see if it'd still be there and to his amazement, it was still there, in all it's eye-catching glory. But by his second blink, he realizes that many other stars were shining the blue-red colour. Fear gripped him and paralyzed his whole body, and again he fell into a trance; seeing things much akin to what he had seen before but a little more vivid.

The earlier things he had seen were blurry snippets of unimaginable catastrophes. He saw them when the earthquake happened and everyone was running while he alone stood still, staring up as though he had no care with what was happening around him and he was sure of his survival, which infact he was not. What he saw simply amazed him and so he had temporarily forgotten his surroundings like an oblivious child.

Now that Jihyeok saw similar things, he started overthinking. Is this a message of sorts? What exactly is going on in those pictures? Am I meant to be concerned? Should I tell someone about it? Can they see it too?...Or am I the only one? --questions like that ran through his head, but of course they had no one to answer them so they remained as passing thoughts.

Jihyeok who had entered another trance, stood in a spot without moving for a while which naturally gained Nakyung's attention. Nakyung carried a bag in which he had packed some varied kinds of food items that he scavenged which had managed to survive too. He looked at Jihyeok who stood and thought, 'Why is he like that?' he remembered how Jihyeok stood still when people were busy running for their lives; to be brutally honest, in his opinion, Jihyeok looked very abstract and conceptual which is abnormal.

Nakyung looked up but he only saw the shining stars amidst the clear opening, nothing else that seemed special. 'Maybe the stars are what is entrancing him...yeah, he's probably too occupied with work normally to stargaze plus the stars dont shine much in the city' He thought, normalizing Jihyeok's abnormal behaviour.

He stood up and went to tap Jihyeok's shoulder, "Let's go?" Jihyeok looked at him with wide eyes and released a breath he didn't know he was holding, "Yeah..." they turned then Jihyeok asked, "...To where?". Nakyung pointed with his right index finger, "Let's go west, towards Jeongdae" Jihyeok hummed and made to take one of the bags hanging by the sides of Nakyung's waist but his wrist got held by Nakyung effectively stopping him. "Don't worry, I'll carry them" and so Jihyeok started walking ahead quietly.

The pair made their way carefully and quietly towards Jeongdae then immediately went back to Sangchurae, from which they were running from. The reason was because they saw two of those distorted figures with their two sets of pointed teeth exposed from eating. This ones had a set of teeth around the curvature of the mouth and another on the inside etched onto a disgusting piece of blue-black flesh. It's round-like unshaped body lay, without care, on the bodies of some unfortunate humans and it's teeth were stained with red as it ate the insides of the human in it's pincers; basically it was very unsightly.

Four eyes of four different colours suddenly looked to the right where the duo were spying at it from. Jihyeok grabbed Nakyung's, now untamed, hair roughly and pulled him down behind a cluster of large rocks; Nakyung grunted under his breath and glared in silence at Jihyeok who only looked away with a sweatdrop.

Jihyeok looked at him again when he felt the intensity of the glare had reduced and showed the sign he particularly liked whenever he saw it in action movies. He folded all fingers and let his index and middle finger stay unfolded, like a hand gun, then pointed it up and raised it a little above his head before waving it downward; a sign to go forward. Nakyung who has also watched a lot of action movies in his spare time, knew what it meant, so he nodded.

Nakyung slowly lifted his bodyweight from the ground followed by Jihyeok, still crouching, they both sneaked from one boulder to another before finally getting into the previous street and making a run for it.

Okay, so I know that's 'Jeongdae' and 'Sangchurae' are not real places in Seoul but I don't know anything about their streets except for a few districts and states so for the sake of the story, let's just pretend they are real places in Yeondeungpo. Besides, their real names will become unfamiliar later on...