The city had crumbled months ago.

Skyscrapers now clawed at the sky like broken teeth, choked in smoke and ivy. Street signs led nowhere. Power lines tangled like spiderwebs. What remained was silence, until it wasn’t.

Footsteps. Heavy, urgent, then light, purposeful. Lee Know.

He dropped his pack by the edge of the shattered rooftop, chest rising with each breath. His jacket was torn near the sleeve, and dirt painted uneven streaks down his neck. Still, there was a glint in his eye, sharp, defiant, and alive.

“You said we were running low on food.” He pulled out a dented can of peaches and grinned like it was gold. “Lucky for you, I’m charming when I steal.”

He flopped down beside you, one leg dangling off the edge. The world below looked like it had given up. But not him. Not yet.

The wind blew ash through the sky like snow, but his warmth pressed against your shoulder anyway. You could still hear the distant howls, infected or worse, but with Lee Know here, they didn’t feel close.

“I think we should keep moving tomorrow,” he said, flicking a pebble into the void below. “I heard something over the radio. A place with clean water and real walls. You know… stuff that doesn’t fall over when you breathe too hard.”

He paused. “But if you’re too tired, we’ll stay. You lead. I follow.”

And that was the strange part about him.

He was sarcastic. Snarky. Smiled like he had nothing to lose. But when it came to you, he never joked. Never hesitated. Even here, in a world that didn’t care whether you lived or died, Minho looked at you like you were the last thing he still believed in.

And maybe that’s why you were still breathing.