Chapter Text
“WAKE THE FUCK UP!”
Joshua jumps so bad he almost falls out of bed. “WHAT?!” He screams back, unsure of who’s even making a fuss at—what time is it?—god’s hour of the morning.
The fuss-maker continues, “THERE’S SOME WEIRD SHIT GOING ON!”
Ah, it’s Mingyu. Joshua groans and yanks the blanket back over his head. Whatever it is can wait.
The door bangs open so hard it knocks against the wall and this time, Joshua does fall off the bed. “Dude, what the hell?!” He demands.
Mingyu is wide-eyed and actually looks terrified. “EVERYONE’S GONE!”
“Stop shouting!” Joshua yells.
Mingyu runs to the window and yanks up the shade. “LOOK OUTSIDE!”
Joshua gets up and looks. “What’s wrong?” It’s a beautiful morning, the sun is shining, but there’s some clouds approaching, and on the street—
On the street…
There’s no cars passing by, no people waiting at the bus stop, nobody manning the fruit stand at the corner. The street below is absolutely still. Joshua finally glances at his clock—it’s 9 AM. He feels the blood drain from his face, there should never be stillness in Seoul, especially not at 9 AM.
“Holy mother of god…” he gasps. It’s like he and Mingyu are the only people on the planet!
Mingyu grabs him and shakes him. “I KNOW! It’s like we’re the only two people on the planet!”
A sudden vibrating noise makes them both yelp—Joshua’s phone is buzzing on his bedside table. He grabs it and checks the screen—it’s Minghao.
Relief floods Joshua immediately; Minghao’s calling, so…so he’s around, it’s not like he and Mingyu are the only two people left in the world. He’s being silly, of course that wasn’t the case. There must be an explanation, maybe there was an incident of some kind.
“Hello?” Joshua answers the phone.
“OH THANK GOD!” Minghao screams in his ear, and Joshua yanks the phone away and puts it on speaker.
“Calm down, please,” Joshua says, but Minghao shouts over him.
“I woke up and…and…everyone’s gone! All my roommates, I walked down the hall, I banged on doors, I looked outside! Everyone’s gone!”
He sounds hysterical. Joshua’s heart starts racing. “I’m here, and so’s Mingyu,” he assures. Mingyu runs from the room and Joshua hears him barrel out of the apartment. “Come down here, we’ll figure this out,” Joshua tells Minghao. He hangs up and decides to start texting everyone he can think of, but first he gets another call.
“Hello?” He answers—the phone is still on speaker, and it’s Seokmin.
“Oh, hyung!” Seokmin sounds relieved, “I just woke up and all my roommates are gone, and I looked outside…”
“And no one’s there?” Joshua finishes. “Yeah, me, Mingyu, and Minghao are discovering the same thing.” The four of them all live in the same building, so Joshua knows exactly what Seokmin has been not seeing outside. “Mingyu just went to get Minghao, at least I think that’s where he went, they’re both kinda freaked out.”
“Oh, okay I’ll come to you guys then,” Seokmin says, and he hangs up.
Joshua stares at the phone. Well, he didn’t seem too perturbed.
The sound of pounding feet makes Joshua look up again—Mingyu is back and still looking white as a sheet.
“I just banged on all the doors,” Mingyu says. “No one yelled at me!”
Joshua pushes past Mingyu and goes to the living room. “Maybe the city’s been evacuated,” he says, though he doubts that’s the case…surely they would have heard an alarm, or someone would have come and woken them up? He turns on the TV and...
Nothing. Static dances across the screen.
Joshua changes the channel. Still nothing. He goes to check the wires, and that’s when Minghao comes careening into the room.
“I AM FREAKING THE FUCK OUT!” Minghao screams.
“SAME!” Mingyu screams back, and they cling to each other and start babbling about how this is just like such-and-such a movie or TV show, Joshua stops listening after a few seconds. The TV wires are sound, so he keeps changing the channels only to keep getting static.
“Hey!” Seokmin calls as he strolls through the open door, “So I got a text from Jihoon, he says he’s with Wonwoo and Seungkwan and they’ve gotten in touch with Vernon…oh, and Chan just texted me!” He laughs, “Oh, he says Soonyoung is flipping out.”
“I’m flipping out!” Mingyu shouts, “How can you be so calm?!”
Seokmin falls onto the sofa. “Well, I just named a bunch of people who also have no idea what’s going on. They also say they’re all alone, but it’s not like, we’re all totally alone.”
Joshua does a headcount. “That’s ten people in the whole world accounted for,” he says dryly. Then he hits himself in the head—duh, he should call his parents. He selects their number and takes the phone off speaker.
A sharp dial tone sounds in his ear.
‘The number you are trying to reach has been disconnected.’
Okay, now he’s freaking out.
“Thirteen.” Seokmin says.
“Huh?” Joshua manages to ask.
“Jun and Seungcheol just texted me,” Seokmin clarifies, “And Jun is with Jeonghan.”
Joshua tries one of his study buddies. Same result as trying his parents. He tries his doctor. Same result. In a panic, he selects Vernon’s number. The phone rings twice, then…
“Hello?!”
“Vernon!” Joshua could almost cry, “You’re the first number I managed to get through to!”
“I haven’t had any luck either,” Vernon says. “I’m walking in the street, the middle of the fucking street! There’s no cars, I mean there are cars but they’re all parked…”
“What do we do?!” Minghao screams, tugging at his own hair. “This is crazy!”
Seokmin holds up his car keys. “Let’s go for a drive,” he suggests. “Maybe find more people?”
Joshua holds up his hand. “Where are you?” He asks Vernon.
“On my way to meet with Jihoon and them,” he answers. “We’re meeting on campus.”
“That sounds like a good idea,” Joshua says, trying to think. Surely a college campus will be a sensible place to get answers, right? Someone’s always there, smart people will go there, won’t they? He looks at the three people gathered in his dorm, two of whom are still panicking. “Guys, let’s go to the campus, Vernon says he’s headed that way, we can all meet there.”
Seokmin looks mildly pissed. “Really? You want to go to school? You massive nerd.”
Joshua ignores him. “I’m going to text the others…”
“Oh, who else have you talked to?” Vernon asks.
Joshua lists everyone he knows to still be around.
“Everyone in our club?!” Vernon gasps, “I’m gonna kill Soonyoung, he didn’t text me back!”
“Chan says he’s flipping out,” Joshua relays. “I’m hanging up, I’ll see you there.” He looks down at himself—he’s still in his pajamas. “I should get dressed,” he says.
“Why?” Seokmin asks. “Who’ll see you?”
Indeed, who will see him? A shudder runs down Joshua’s spine, and he marches himself to his room. This is all some kind of…well, it’s not happening. He’s dreaming, or hallucinating, or someone is playing a really, super elaborate prank. He has to get dressed and brush his teeth, he has to act like everything is normal, because then it will be normal.
Vernon considers himself a rational person; that being said, the situation he’s found himself in is pretty irrational.
He tries the door of a third coffee shop. Like the other two, it’s locked. He cups his hands around the glass and peers inside. No evidence that anyone has been inside at all. Whatever caused people to vanish, it happened before even the earliest risers could come and open their businesses. Vernon’s not sure if it would be creepier to find stores open and evidence that people left in the middle of transactions or making up orders.
He tries a 24 hour corner store that he’s gone to numerous times. The door is open, and his heart kicks into overdrive. Pulse pounding in his ears, he enters.
“Hello?” He calls. No answer. He glances at the cash machine—the TV is on, but shows static. A strange feeling goes through him, his hands are numb and he feels lightheaded.
“H-here kitty,” he calls, expecting the store’s cat to come running to him like she usually does. He listens closely, but there’s no pitter-patter of little feet, no answering meow. Vernon stumbles back and knocks into a shelf, bags go falling and he jumps.
“Sorry!” he yells, but of course there’s no answer.
He bolts for the door and runs the rest of the way to campus.
Chan tries to breathe the way his teacher suggested—in through his nose for five seconds, out through his mouth for six. Normally it keeps him from getting worked up, but honestly…
“They ain’t getting me,” Soonyoung growls, spinning in circles, holding a large knife aloft. “I don’t know how they got everyone else, but they’re not getting me! I refuse to be eaten alive, I refuse to be probed, I will not let them get their grubby tentacles on m—”
“SHUT THE FUCK UP!” Chan finally screams, unsure if he wants to puke or shove Soonyoung into oncoming traffic…except there is no traffic. He swallows, wishing that he would wake up back in his own bed with his alarm ringing in his ears instead of the deafening silence of this empty street.
Soonyoung holds out his second knife. “Want it now?” He asks, for about the twentieth time since the two of them left their dorm.
Chan finally takes it. “Just stop muttering to yourself,” he says through chattering teeth. “If there are aliens here, you’ll tip them off to our location.”
“Do it again,” Jeonghan encourages.
Junhui takes a deep breath and smacks himself across the face. He groans in pain and blinks rapidly. “We’re still here,” he says.
Jeonghan looks down at his own hand, thinking about the time he woke up unable to feel it and so, in his sleepy stupor, decided to bite it real hard. He inhales through his nose, then sinks his teeth into his palm.
“Harder!” Junhui eggs on.
Jeonghan closes his eyes and bites down so hard he yelps and stops biting himself automatically. “Am I awake yet?”
“No,” Junhui says sadly.
So he’s bitten himself or no good reason. “This is absolutely nuts,” he says.
“Maybe we should like, run into each other?” Junhui suggests.
“How about you go run into that wall over there instead?”
“Why do I have to run into the wall?!”
“The pain thing was your idea!”
Junhui’s eyes light up. “Wait, I have a better idea! We should streak!”
Jeonghan feels his face heat up. “No way!”
“C’mon, it’s the oldest nightmare in the book, you walk outside naked!”
Jeonghan shakes his head. “Hell no, I draw the line at taking my clothes off.”
“What if I kick you real hard in the nuts?”
“OKAY, NOW YOU’RE PUSHING IT!” Jeonghan yells, and he shoves Junhui away as he continues to look thoughtfully at Jeonghan’s crotch.
“Pervert,” Jeonghan accuses.
The squeaking of the door makes them both lose their minds. They scream and fall out of their chairs, and a familiar scream answers them.
“Fucking hell!” Seungcheol cries from the doorway, hands over his heart, “You guys scared the crap out of me!”
“You’re one to talk,” Junhui says weakly.
“What happened to your face?!” Seungcheol cries, running down the stairs towards them.
Junhui touches his cheek. “Oh, I tried hitting myself to wake up.”
“And I bit myself,” Jeonghan says, showing Seungcheol the teeth marks in his palm.
“What on earth for?!”
Junhui looks sheepish. “Ah, well, pain is one of those things you’re not supposed to be able to feel in your dreams.”
Seungcheol looks at them like he’s torn between pity and exasperation. “So you thought you were dreaming but decided to come to class anyway?”
At that they both blush. “Well acting like it was a normal day seemed the logical thing to do.”
Seungcheol sighs. “Yeah, I get it. Well, come on, Jihoon just texted me that we’re all meeting by the fountain.”
Jihoon could never find the words to describe the collective tension that surrounds their little group of…what could he even call them? Are they survivors of some kind of alien attack, as Soonyoung seems to think? Are they rejects, the left-behinds of the rapture? Are they victims of some kind of vicious prank? Have they been kidnapped by scientists and forced into some kind of computer simulation…
Wait, what?
“Hand to god,” Seungkwan says, one hand over his heart and the other in the air, “That is exactly what is going on here.”
“Why would they pick us for that?” Joshua asks.
“I don’t pretend to know what evil scientists do to rationalize their deeds,” Seungkwan says.
Vernon rubs his temples. “I’d believe the alien thing before I believed that.”
“How do we know it is just us?” Wonwoo asks. “We’ve only explored a small part of Seoul, we have no idea what’s going on in the rest of Korea or the world.”
It’s true, they can access the internet in certain ways, but they can’t make new posts on any of their social media accounts and the latest new articles they can find are only dated up to the previous day. It’s as if at midnight, everything stopped and everyone disappeared. They can only call each other, they can’t call their parents, other family and friends, doctors, psychic hotlines, lawyers, store phone numbers, or news stations—and they’ve tried each of those options.
“We can’t possibly check out all of South Korea,” Joshua says.
“I have an idea,” Seungcheol says, “Let’s scream.”
“Scream?” Soonyoung echoes.
Seungcheol nods, “If we all, the thirteen of us, scream as loud as we can, it’s so quiet that anyone around would hear us.”
“Including the aliens!” Soonyoung shouts.
Junhui rolls his eyes. “If the aliens haven’t found our loud-ass selves by now then I think we’re safe.”
“It sounds cathartic to me,” Mingyu says. And then he takes a deep breath and shrieks at the top of his lungs.
The sound echoes slightly. Mingyu does it again, and this time Joshua joins in.
It’s enough to make them all join in. They scream wordlessly, some of them in short, high bursts and some as if they’re trying to break a record for longest scream. Some have their eyes shut, some tip their heads back to the sky. How long it lasts Jihoon can’t say, but at some point they all stop and listen for any kind of response.
One of them breaks the silence with another scream, Jihoon can’t say who, but a few more join in. This time they sound panicked. Some of them remain silent, staring at nothing, some stare at each other.
Soonyoung starts screaming “HELP” over and over. Chan starts to cry and scream. Vernon is crying. Joshua starts to hyperventilate. Minghao covers his ears and screams so loud that they can almost hear how much it hurts his throat, to the point that Junhui grabs him and shakes him until he stops. Jihoon kneels next to Joshua and hugs him, but finds he can’t say anything.
Finally everyone stops screaming, and the only sound is Chan, Minghao, and Vernon sobbing. Even then, the silence remains, and it’s crushing.
“What do we do?” Joshua whimpers.
What indeed?
This is so familiar, everything about this from the tears, to the physical pressure that panic exerts, to the metallic taste in the back of Jihoon’s mouth.
He remembers them all huddled in a dorm, the dorm that had been their home for years, their phones turned off against the barrage of text message from their friends and relatives, asking just what was going on, because none of them had any answers.
They had been younger then, full of dreams and optimism, all of it taken away with one headline. Their CEO and other higher-ups had been arrested on charges of fraud, tax evasion, and embezzlement. The people who were supposed to make their dreams come true had been liars all along and were now criminals. Their managers were gone, off to find companies that could actually pay them, and now the thirteen of them were left with zero answers and thousands of questions.
They had wanted to be stars, singers, dancers, and actors. They were supposed to be competing against each other, but they had become friends instead. After the dismantling of their company, that friendship was all they had left. Half of them were broke, all of them were bitter, and none of them wanted to be apart from each other after all they’d been through. They all enrolled in the same college and vowed to encourage each other in the face of all they’d lost and hopefully try to do something with their lives.
And now they’re really, truly alone.
“Maybe this isn’t a bad thing?” Jeonghan whispers.
They all look at him. He’s staring out at the campus, pale and shaking, but he continues with a firm voice. “Maybe…maybe this is karma.”
“Karma?!” Joshua explodes, “How can this be karma?! We didn’t deserve this!”
“No,” Jeonghan says, sounding excited or nervous, Jihoon can’t decide which. “Think about it, we’re alone in…in maybe the world! We can do anything we want!”
That makes them all pause.
“We can do anything we want!” Jeonghan repeats, and he starts to smile. “We’re alone! Nobody can tell us what to do!” he laughs, “We can do anything we want!” he raises his arms and let out a whoop that echoes. He runs a short distance, then starts jumping up and down. “WE CAN DO ANYTHING WE WANT!”
They continue to stare at him. Jeonghan twirls in a circle, arms outstretched, staring at the sky and laughing.
“He’s cracked,” Vernon says.
“No I haven’t,” Jeonghan says with a wide smile. “There’s no one here! No teachers, no cops, no CEOs,” he gets a positively manic look in his eye. “We can go wherever we want! We can break into fancy stores and try on—we can take designer clothes! We can drive—drag race down the highway!” He runs a hand through his hair. “We can do anything we want,” he says again, this time sounding awestruck.
“Anything we want,” Soonyoung says. His eyes widen. “Anything…”
Suddenly it’s like all of them are seeing the possibilities. Anything they want at all…
“We can set off fireworks!”
“We can spray paint buildings!”
“We can set off the sprinklers in the science lab!”
“We can run naked in the streets!”
“Will you stop with the naked already?”
“We can break into pastry shops and eat all the cupcakes!”
“We can do the same in candy stores! We can take all the candy in the corner stores!”
“WE CAN STEAL THE WHALE!”
Everybody stops and stares at Seokmin.
“The what?” Jihoon and a few others ask.
“The whale!” Seokmin repeats, “The one in the big grocery store! I fucking love that whale, man!”
“Oh god,” Joshua says, rolling his eyes. “That whale,” and then he starts laughing.
They all start to laugh, and it’s amazing. They’re hugging, crying again, but the fear isn’t there anymore. It’s nice to be excited about something.
“You know what?” Vernon says, “I’ve always wanted to have a food fight.”
“Sounds messy,” Seungkwan says.
“You want messy?” Minghao says, “I’ve always wanted to do color run—you know where you get pelted with those colorful powders?”
Wonwoo gasps, “Hey, I know where we can get some of those!”
“I know where we can get fireworks,” Seungcheol says.
“I know where we can get spray paint!” Jeonghan says, “It’s right here on campus, in the art building!”
“I have the best idea!” Mingyu says, “We should have an absolutely crazy party!”
“It’d just be the thirteen of us though,” Junhui says, “How much of a crazy party could that be?”
“Hey,” Junhui says with a teasing smile, “We can get pretty crazy, especially if you throw color powder, a whale, and a food fight into the mix.”
“Let’s do it!” Jihoon says, “We can have it in the old warehouse by our dorm—mine, Wonwoo and Seungkwan’s.”
“Can I get my whale first?” Seokmin asks.
“We can split up,” Vernon says, “We can go off and get like, snacks and decorations and cool stuff like that.”
“But we should stay in big groups,” Soonyoung says, “I’m still not totally convinced there’s zero aliens around.”
“And there should be a driver in each group,” Chan says.
They all nod and split themselves up into three groups, making sure each of them know what it is they’re doing. They part ways in much better moods than when they first met up.