Min-Seo looked back at her bowl.
The whisk had stopped.
The heat from the double-boiler was rising too fast.
The butter was beginning to separate, the golden oil pooling at the edges of the yellow cream.
Her perfect sauce was breaking.
Then the screaming began.
It didn't come from the people who had stopped.
It came from the ones who hadn't.
A man burst out of a coffee shop across the street, his face a mask of primal terror.
He tripped over the frozen woman in the business suit.
As he hit the pavement, the "statues" moved.
The transition was sickening.
The grey-skinned woman didn't help him up.
She lunged.
Her movements were jerky, like a film missing half its frames, but she was fast. She made a sound—a wet, clicking rattle in the back of her throat—and tore into the man's shoulder.
Min-Seo watched the woman on the sidewalk.
The veterinary surgeon in Min-Seo's brain flickered to life.
Her brain, conditioned by years of trauma-room triage, tried to categorize the symptoms.
'Encephalitis?..A neurotoxin? But none of the boxes fit. People didn't just stop mid-stride like a paused film.' She thought.
She knew Biology had rules, and the world was breaking every single one of them.
A loud thud came from the door.
She didn't freeze like the other students. She didn't scream.
Her mind, conditioned by years of triage, shifted into a cold, analytical gear. Her body trying to prepare the next steps to take.
"Lock the doors!" Chef Park screamed, but he was too late.
The atrium glass shattered as a delivery drone lost altitude and slammed into the pane.
The sound was like a dinner bell. The "Sleepwalkers" turned toward the noise with terrifying synchronization.
The massacre that followed was a blur of silver and crimson.
The students, paralyzed by the suddenness of the shift, were easy targets for the jagged, mechanical lunges of the Grey People.
Min-Seo watched through the kitchen pass as Chef Park was dragged down by three of his own patrons;
she saw a classmate's phone skitter across the floor,stained with blood, its screen still blinking with emergency alerts, as they were silenced mid-scream.
In less than a minute, the bustling, aromatic kitchen had been reduced to a slaughterhouse of clicking rattles and wet, tearing sounds.
The veterinary surgeon in her noted the efficiency of the kill—the way the Sleepwalkers didn't just attack, but dismantled.
'Stupid! This is not NatGeo, watching predators eat their prey in the wild. They are people eating people. You have to move, Hun'
she thought to herself, the mental slap enough to jar her from the encroaching shock.
Fear rose from her heart,a cold, oily tide that threatened to drown her, but she knew this was no time to freeze.The academy was no longer a place of learning; it was a feeding trough.
Between the rhythmic thuds of bodies hitting the tile, she realized with a chilling, physiological clarity: she was the only one left with a pulse that hadn't been found yet.
Min-Seo didn't run for the exit.
She knew the geography of this building.
She knew that the front exit was a glass trap.
She reached down and grabbed her knife roll—the heavy leather wrap containing her carbon-steel French knife and her paring blade.
She also grabbed a heavy, industrial-sized first aid kit from the wall.
She didn't look back at the bodies.
She couldn't.
Instead, she threw herself into the walk-in dry storage, pulling the heavy steel handle shut just as a wet, heavy weight slammed against the other side.