Hiding a House in the Apocalypse

Chapter 17: Colleague (1)

That school was a brutal place.

They ranked all the students from 1st to last based on their grades, and they displayed it prominently for everyone to see.

The weak were weeded out, and they were pushed to leave on their own.

It emphasized competition over cooperation and demanded mechanical coldness over humanity.

Creativity was not tolerated, and obedience and discipline were enforced.

It had to be that way.

Because our enemy was merciless and allowed no room for mistakes.

The boys and girls who had just graduated middle school became machines within those walls.

Machines, meant to stand against humanity's enemy: the monsters.

Our motivations were varied, and in my case, it was hatred.

After losing my parents and sister to the monsters and becoming an orphan, my hatred had grown to an unimaginable extent.

Lee Sanghoon, on the other hand, was the complete opposite of me.

He came from a well-off family, his parents were alive, and he entered that school with honour and prospects.

The boy who grew up with golden spoon, with nothing left but venom for me, might have considered defeating me an impossible task from the start.

From enrolment to graduation, he only managed to be second best, blocked by the wall called me.

Back when he entered, he probably never thought that the number "2" would become his trauma.

But our competition ended in an entirely unexpected way.

The game changed.

To put it in musical terms, it was as if musicians competing in a classical music competition suddenly had to switch to rock and heavy metal.

Musical genres are a matter of taste, and I believe there's no ranking.

However, the music that prevailed on the battlefield was rock and heavy metal.

Mozart and Salieri were left behind and became something boring and distasteful inside.

A guy who had been in the corner without any attention suddenly emerged as a hero and stood in the spotlight's centre.

We were pushed to the periphery of the stage, tormented by the secretive mockery and disdain that always came to such people.

One left, and one stayed.

The one who left became a savage, and the one who stayed became a bureaucrat.

Their competition was over.

The only thread connecting them was cut.

I thought I would never see him again.

But that guy found me himself.

What on earth could it be?

Elder Kim once said that it's rare for someone to contact you with good intentions after a long time.

"You placed the capsule on Road 13, right?"

"How did you know?"

I admitted right away.

I know this guy's personality well.

Lee Sanghoon is a perfectionist.

He tried to perfect even the smallest tasks, and that's why he always lagged behind me.

"Why would you do something like that? What are you going to do if you tear the capsule open and summon a monster in the middle of it?"

"Summoning? What do you mean?"

"You still don't know that?"

"I don't know?"

"The true nature of the capsule has been identified as a makeshift portal. It's a kind of makeshift rift used by infiltrators."

"...Is that so."

It's been quite a while since I retired from active duty.

I knew that the capsule wasn't like an egg, but the fact that my knowledge had become outdated was quite bitter.

"Why did you put it there?"

"Try to guess."

"Do you not want refugees to come near your bomb shelter?"

"Is that it?"

Scouting, perhaps?

This isn't the direction I want this to go.

"Is there something you want me to do there?"

I had refused in the past.

But it seems that Lee Sanghoon, who has become an influential figure, doesn't know that fact.

"There's a vacant instructor position. The instructor candidate died three days ago. We received recommendations for other candidates, but there wasn't anyone suitable. At that moment, I saw you moving the capsule."

"An instructor?"

"Isn't being an instructor better than rotting away underground? You've been living alone as far as I know, without saying a word or having any friends for almost two years. Isn't that punishment in itself?"

"Not at all, is it?"

First of all, I seriously questioned it.

Is it for real?

For the past two years, there have been occasional moments that were as irritating as hell, but most of the time, I lived comfortably and independently.

I have online friends, and writing in my diary is enough for me.

So what if my posts on the forums don't get many likes?

I even have neighbours I exchange Christmas greetings with.

"Are you serious?"

Lee Sanghoon's voice wavered.

It's an unbelievable situation.

I confirmed my answer once more, making it clear.

"I like it here."

Going to Jeju Island might be warmer than here.

But that's all.

There, I would have to deal with people I don't want to see and face reality.

I didn't like that, so I got out and became the unpopular user, Skeleton, who I am today.

"You still haven't escaped from your inferiority complex and feelings of inadequacy, have you?"

Lee Sanghoon's taunting turned chilly.

For a moment, my face must have become rigid.

"..."

I might not be looking in a mirror, but my gaze would have been quite intense.

Not as intense as when I was in school, though.

"There's nothing we can do, right? We don't have talent. Neither you nor I."

Lee Sanghoon's teasing gradually turned into a sigh.

"Do you know how difficult it is for me?"

I didn't respond.

It's not that I don't understand it in my head.

Being in a high position means taking on a great responsibility.

Is it easy to have peace of mind when Seoul is on the brink of destruction?

However, I couldn't empathize with Lee Sanghoon's suffering, as we had too many conflicts and misunderstandings.

We were rivals, not friends, and there had never been even one moment when we were friends.

"Let's have a drink for once. I have good wine."

"I'd like to go, but because of the capsule..."

My response became increasingly insincere and numb.

Lee Sanghoon, who was sensitive enough to notice it, had given up.

"Alright."

His voice faded.

"Take care, Park Gyura."

Just when I thought the communication was cut, a faint muttering suddenly came from the speaker.

"Stabbed in the back."

"What?"

And that was it.

I was left to ponder for quite a while what Lee Sanghoon might have wanted to say.

I even worried that something might be wrong and hurriedly checked it, but everything seemed fine.

***

There's a saying that if you want to hide a tree, hide it in a forest.

In the community, there were users who had established bases within Seoul.

They hadn't built bunkers, but instead, they had prepared hiding places in the corners of ordinary apartment buildings and turned those places into their hideouts.

One of them had even managed to make a name for himself by continuously providing fresh news about Seoul.

gijayangban: Current situation in Seoul.jpg

The picture showed a scene where tens of thousands of enraged citizens had gathered in front of government buildings.

But that wasn't all.

Citizens appeared and staged protests at almost every government institution.

The entire city of Seoul had been turned upside down.

It was an expected event.

Because using the candy of hope to cover up reality has its limits.

As the protests became increasingly fierce and violent, the slogans became simpler.

"Save us."

That was their only demand.

Seoul, the crashing airplane, had started to descend.

The response from community users was cold.

Anonymous848: It's funny. They used to ridicule us like that.

Kyle_Dos: I still remember the talk show on national television. What did they call us back then?

Anonymous458: A group of social misfits who chose to indulge in delusions of grandeur and self-destruction.

I can understand how these guys feel.

In this country, there's a culture of mercilessly mocking and persecuting those who deviate from the prescribed path of life.

Our doomsday pessimists are people who have strayed from that path.

They have faced significant social persecution and ridicule.

I, too, have heard remarks like "Are you a schizophrenic?" from government officials due to architectural issues.

The procession of refugees was accelerating.

Those with the will to escape were trying to leave Seoul.

In Seoul, those who gloriously portrayed themselves as pioneers were under the jurisdiction of the military.

If you applied to be a pioneer and formed a group, you would be provided with weapons, equipment, a little food, and, if the pioneering was successful, additional equipment, food, and support for settlement.

It's unclear how many will succeed in pioneering, but due to the fact that pioneers were scoping out every place worth living, our community users were in a dire situation.

Defender: Verified

It seems like even the human hunter is extremely busy.

Recently, the reason I couldn't post on the community was because I was too busy killing people and burying them.

However, there was some controversy over one of the verification photos of a human hunter.

It was about the thin shadow captured in one of the verification photos looking somewhat like a woman.

In my opinion, even that was a reflection of the melancholy of the times.

In the past, if I saw a picture of a corpse, I would have quickly pressed the back button or swallowed hard at the sight of the stiff body.

Now, I've seen so many corpses that I have the luxury of having interests other than corpses.

Among them, one guy even enlarged the shadow part in Defender's verification photo, and he even used a paint program to draw the silhouette himself, sparking public debate about Defender being a woman.

Unicorn18: Look at this line. Is Defender really a woman?

Unicorn18 caused a stir in the forum for a short while, but it didn't last long.

Defender: Should I pay you a visit?

Defender himself turned off the fire.

Human hunter is a women.

I'm sceptical.

I've seen his footprints.

They were in men's sizes.

There's another reason.

If you have firearms, it might be easy for a woman to kill a man, but it's not easy to move and deal with a dead man.

Even if I do it myself, it's quite an ordeal to handle several body parts, but does the human hunter, like in fiction, kill intruders with ease?

It's not an easy task,even if the intruder is a strong man.

And if it's a woman, it would be even more physically demanding.

SKELTON: (Skeleton's opinion) Defender-nim, looks like a man, right?

I added a word, but not a single like was received.

No, then why did you send a friend request in the first place?

Anyway, I'm still far away from the refugee issue that's posted on the forum.

Thanks to the capsule.

Around the capsule, military personnel and a few hunters remain on guard, blocking the road.

Even if they're just rookies who graduated from school, they're probably hunters.

Thanks to them, I haven't heard any gunshots recently.

"Hey, are you alive?"

It's so quiet that I'm calling the sniper mother-daughter duo every now and then.

"Yes."

They ask for medicine every time.

Especially painkillers.

Perhaps what she really wants is narcotics.

Living in a high place without properly washing or eating, and blocking the approach of anyone who comes and goes, must be incredibly tough.

I sometimes think about it.

The thought of giving them my underground shelter.

It won't be easy.

Even if they promise to come, I can't trust them, just like she can't trust me.

There's always the possibility that our relationship of nearly two years could end with a sudden gunshot.

It's been one year and eleven months since the war started.

The time when the scorching heat subsides, and the self-sown rice fields sporadically turn golden and bow their heads.

Seoul may be getting worse, but I calmly walked through the fields, harvested a small amount of rice, and prepared for threshing.

I've never threshed rice in my life, but there are instructional videos, so it should be fine.

I wonder if at least one bowl of rice will come out.

Anyway, even such trial and error is enjoyable for people like us, whose lives are already determined, because time is more of an obligation to consume than a foundation.

With a bag containing a gun and the harvested rice, I was heading back to my territory.

K-Walkie-talkie emitted a unique signal tone.

It was a contact based on personal identification number.

Could it be Sanghoon again?

Now, whether to answer the call or not is up to me.

Seoul is gradually becoming a source of disaster rather than a meaningful base.

I checked the walkie-talkie.

Personal Identification Number: DARAM

It's not Sanghoon; it's Kim Daram.

I hate this girl almost as much as Sanghoon, but she's been through a lot under me, so I answered her old request for contact.

"It's been a while, Kim Daram-nim."

Requests or appeals will all be rejected.

There's a reason for that.

The capsule.

Should I call her a very versatile friend?

First, a sigh came through the walkie-talkie.

Wiping the sweaty forehead with the sleeve while wondering what he was going to say next, I waited for his next words.

"Sanghoon is dead."

"What?"

For a moment, I doubted my ears.

"Sanghoon? Sanghoonis dead?"

"Yes senior Sanghoon-nim."

I've never liked him.

I probably wouldn't even feel bad if he died.

But surprisingly, it seems that there's a stubborn part of fate.

Sanghoon's death came as an unexpected shock.

Well, I spent ten years in the same area, same time, and fought together and saved each other's lives.

The strongest memories were ironically from the time when our relationship was at its worst.

Those memories from our school days.

The image of that guy who always sat in the front row of the classroom, shaking a large skull with a crew cut back and forth while raising his hand and asking questions, even though the content was obvious.

Without context, the back of that cheeky kid, who blatantly asked questions just to gain favour with the instructor, suddenly filled my vision.

Feeling a slight confusion, I asked, pointing the walkie-talkie as if poking it.

"Why did he die? Killed in action? Or swept up in the protests?"

"Suicide."

The moment I heard those words, the image of Sanghoon from my student days turned and looked back at me.

His face was so blurry that I couldn't recognize it.

What did he look like, anyway?

Sanghoon, that guy.

In the midst of unsolved questions, I asked in a trembling voice, rougher than I could have imagined.

"...Why?"

For some reason, my voice was trembling so harshly that even I was surprised.

Kim Daram replied with a sigh and a tired voice.

"We need one or two people to take responsibility, don't we?"

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