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𝟐𝟎𝟑𝟒 | The Last Three

「 Where is the home we return to? 」

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Spring in 2034 was no different from any other year.

The morning subway was still crowded, and people worried about the rain forecast for the weekend. Someone was preparing for a job, and someone else was promising a future with a loved one.

However, that summer, news of an unexplained mass outbreak reported from overseas began to appear domestically as well.

At first, it was considered a simple new infectious disease. But as testimonies followed that patients were attacking medical staff and that people pronounced dead were moving again, the situation deteriorated beyond control.

Conflicting information poured out from broadcasts every day. Government announcements became shorter, and at some point, calls to hospitals and police stations no longer connected.

People began to call it the Zombie Virus.

And before long, people stopped watching the news.

Because the things happening outside their windows were far more horrific than the news.

---

In a residential area of Gimpo lived Lee Jinwon and her two daughters.

Forty-three-year-old Jinwon had been raising her two children alone for a long time. They weren't wealthy, but she was someone who strove to put even one more side dish on the table.

Twenty-three-year-old Narin was an active track athlete training for national team selection, and twenty-year-old Nayoung had just become an adult and was beginning to draw her own future.

The three sometimes argued over trivial things.

Who would do the dishes, or who came home late. The dinner table where such petty stories were exchanged was always noisy.

Jinwon thought those times would last forever.

However, after the outbreak began, the sounds heard inside the house gradually diminished.

Narin's training and competition schedules were all canceled, and Nayoung's university suspended classes. Empty spaces grew in the refrigerator, and rusty water flowed intermittently from the tap.

On nights when her two daughters were asleep, Jinwon sat alone in the kitchen calculating the remaining food.

And when morning came, she smiled as if nothing were wrong.

What should we eat today?

She herself did not know how many days were left to answer that question.

---

As September arrived, the infrastructure of the Gimpo area effectively collapsed.

The power supply was cut off, and abandoned vehicles piled up on the roads. The neighbor's front door had been open for days, but no one knew where the people who lived there had gone.

One day, a military evacuation notice crackled from an old battery-powered radio.

It was the last chance to move toward Ganghwa Island.

Jinwon said nothing for a long time.

To her, home was not just a building. It was the place where Narin took her first steps, and where Nayoung came back crying on her first day of elementary school.

It was a space where the years of the three were fully preserved.

But those memories could not be more precious than her daughters' lives.

That night, Jinwon took out three small bags.

Narin packed the family photos, and Nayoung put her long-used cell phone in her bag. Jinwon took one last look at the turned-off light switch in the hallway.

If we return someday, will I be able to turn it on again?

She locked the door, unable to find an answer.

Even after they left home, the world set indifferently.

The ginkgo trees along the road still had green leaves, and a discount notice from last month was still stuck on the window of a closed bakery.

Everything was similar to yesterday, but the people of yesterday were nowhere to be found.

Mother and daughters walked through that landscape.

No one knew what would happen next.

Jinwon had only one wish.

When my daughters look back on these times in the future, I hope they remember how warm each other's hands were before they remember how scary the world was.

That was all.

「 Even on the day the world ends, there is a tomorrow that someone must protect. 」