Chapter Text
Wooyoung
The world ended before Wooyoung ever figured out what he wanted to do. Who did he want to be.
The thought came to him sometimes, sharp and uninvited. Just when you start to forget, usually when the nights were too quiet and the dark pressed in like it expected something from him. He had been young- too young really- to be carrying this much loss in his chest. Too young to know how to bury people by instinct. Too young to understand how quickly hope could turn into something so fragile and dangerous at the same time.
The world didn’t end all at once. Not really.
People liked to pretend it did, later on. That there had been a moment, a sudden change in our lives, in the world. A single day that could be circled and pointed out like an x on the map.
But Wooyoung remembered it as a series of interruptions.
Classes were canceled temporarily.
Shifts extended just for this week.
Empty seats that never got to be filled again.
He was twenty-two when the alerts started lighting up his phone. He’d been sprawled across his dorm bed, textbooks open and untouched, uniform folded at the foot neatly. EMT training had been a side thing at first- something practical, something his parents approved of while he tried to figure out the rest.
He never figured it out.
The alerts came faster after that, more frequently. Campus shut down. Hospitals overflowed. Professors sent emails that ended with stay safe like that meant something concrete. Wooyoung stopped attending online lectures and starting picking up extra shifts instead, because people were getting sick or hurt and someone had to show up.
He didn’t remember choosing to drop out.
He just... never went back.
The hospitals were where the illusion finally cracked.
He learned how thin the line really was between order and chaos. How quickly rules bent when there were too many bodies and not enough hands. How gloves became like gold, how clean water mattered more than theory, how sleep was something you borrowed from the next day to come.
He learned that panic sounded different from pain. Pain screamed. Panic didn’t. It begged.
When the power finally failed, it wasn’t anything dramatic. Lights flickered. Machines stuttered. Emergency generators groaned like they were already tired and used up. Wooyoung stood in a hallway washed red by back up lighting, hands trembling, realizing that adulthood had arrived all at once and brought the end of the world with it.
After thatr, things stopped pretending.
People fled. Some clung together. Some turned mean in ways Wooyoung still tried not to think about. He stayed as long as he could, helping where help still mattered. When it didn’t, he stayed anyways. Held hands. Said names. Refused to let people disappear without a witness. Because that’s what they deserved. He was twenty-four when the last hospital he worked in went dark for good.
Now, at twenty-five, the world was smaller that it ever had been. Reduced to movement and memory. To what you could carry and couldn’t afford to lose.
Wooyoung limped through the remains of it, rain soaking his jacket, the cut on his leg burning with every step. He’d gotten careless. Too tired. Too trusting, and clumsy. A slip of rusted metal during a scavenging run, a tumble to the ground painfully, and suddenly infection was a real possibility again- one of the quiet killers these days.
He cleaned the wound the best he could. Boiled water. Torn fabric. Hands that still remembered how to be steady even when his heart wasn’t. He’d always been like that. Wooyoung didn’t think of himself as brave. He just hated the idea of doing nothing. Silence felt worse than fear. Standing still felt like letting the world win.
The highway rest stop loomed ahead, half-swallowed by weeds and plants and time. The sign had collapsed years ago, letters scattered like broken shards of glass. Nature didn’t mourn. It just kept going. It had to. Wooyoung leaned against the guardrail, breath hitching, leg stinging.
“In for four,” he whispered to himself. “Out for six.”
The words steadied him, even now. Even alone.
He missed the stupid things. Music that played too loud. Friends piled into cars without thinking about fuel. Planning a future that felt guaranteed. He’d never even decided wo he was supposed to become- only who he needed to be in emergencies.
The rain worsened, cold seeping into his bones. His legs buckled without warning, and this time he went down hard. Pain flashed bright, then dulled into something achey and heavy. Water dripping from his dark black hair down his fair skin.
For a moment, he didn’t move.
He thought about how unfair it was to be this young, this hurt, this tired. About all the lives he’d touched briefly and never again. About how hope had followed him anyway, stubborn and unkillable.
“Not yet,” he murmured voice small. “I’m not done.”
He dragged himself up ignoring the pain, dragged himself into the ruined rest stop, collapsing against the old flakey wall. The smell of mildew and rot filled the air. His bandage was soaked through, pinking from the wound. Fever creapt in, softening the edges of the world around him. Wooyoung laughed weakly. “I always thought,” he said to the empty area, “I’d have more time.” But this is how he was gonna go, till the bacteria ate at his skin alive.
Outside, the rain hid the other sounds, muffled them.
Footsteps...
Measured, careful.
The click of a rifle being raised sliced through the quiet.
Wooyoung opened his eyes looking up.
A man stood in the doorway-young, though the world had clearly already tried to carve it out of him. Broad-shouldered, tense, build, shorter dark hair than his own, eyes sharp and focused. Rain slid down his hair, his jacket darkened with the water. The gun in his hands was steady. Like he’d killed plenty with it.
Wooyoung lifted his own hands slowly.
“Hey,” he said, keeping his voice steady. “i’’m not armed.”
The gun didn’t lower.
“I’m hurt,” Wooyoung added after a beat. “I’m not a threat.”
The man’s gaze dropped, just for a second, to the blood on Wooyoung’s leg. His jaw clenched like he hated what he saw.
Wooyoung recognized that look.
The choice.
Leave, or stay.
“I’m Wooyoung,” he said softly. “I used to be a medic.”
Rain pattered between them. The world held it’s breath. And so did Wooyoung.
Finally, the man lowered the rifle just enough to speak.
“San,” he said.
And something shifted.
Not the world.'
Just Wooyoung’s.