Hiding the House in the Apocalypse

12. laptop

The destruction of a large city is often compared to the crash of a plane that runs out of fuel.

Even after losing power, it flies by inertia for quite a long time, but when the moment comes when the speed cannot support the lift, it makes a loud noise and plummets to the ground, ending with a fierce explosion.

Seoul will also follow in the footsteps of Beijing, Mumbai, Jakarta and Hong Kong.

The disappearance of the big city behind it is a painful thing in my plan, but it is not an unexpected variable.

It’s just that the time has come much sooner than expected.

The Korean government’s will to defend the Republic of Seoul was firm no matter what.

Now that all hope is gone, what I have to do is not to save Seoul.

That’s something I can’t do and can’t do.

I am in a hurry to use the currency of the perishing age of cigarettes.

Even if Seoul perishes, cigarettes will still have power, but if the market itself shrinks, the quality and type of goods available will deteriorate.

All I need now is a new laptop.

A black dot appeared on the screen of an existing laptop in a not-so-good part.

There is no problem when playing games or watching videos, but it was quite annoying when playing in the community.

I have one spare laptop, but it’s a gaming laptop…

Anyway, I got rid of my cigarettes and prepared to go to Seoul to see the atmosphere.

“This is Skelton. How is the condition of Route 13?”

“Personal identification number verified. Hello Skeleton, how are you? It’s calm now. Safety is ensured all over the road. If you are going to pass, please pass within 6 hours.”

I slowly rode my bicycle and headed to Seoul.

A handful of electric vehicles were going on and off the road, but on the roadside, people who removed and took care of parts of cars that had stopped running were lined up one after another.

The atmosphere of Seoul, which I entered safely, was quite bright.

Reconstruction projects in the name of national labor took place in many places, and countless people removed stones, pickedaxes, and cleaned the streets.

Billboards advertising singers and idols performing, which had been closed, were posted along the roadside, and buses and other electric-powered public transportation roamed the empty streets.

Although the community did not pay attention, elementary and middle schools reopened after a long closure.

High schools and universities are also planning to reopen next year.

Is that why?

Food rations were reduced and electricity cut off more frequently and for longer periods of time, but the citizens took even that as a sign that Seoul was about to be rebuilt.

However, the appearance of Seoul seen up close was quite different from what was revealed from the outside.

Everyone is singing of hope, but behind it is an eerie and terrible shadow.

The shade doesn’t matter because people don’t want to look closely.

The atmosphere of the “International Residence,” where people stay for one night whenever they come to Seoul, also vaguely straddles the boundary between hope and despair.

*

Kukje Residence is a place that was used as a gosiwon in the past and has been renovated for accommodation.

It’s an old and dilapidated place, but it was a good place to stay for a day or so because it hardly suffered damage from the war.

The owners of the residence were a middle-aged couple, each taking care of each other’s father and mother, and they had two children in middle school.

It was evident from the first visit that the couple was not on good terms.

“brother! Please tell me to go inside my mother! What are you going to do? You don’t even have guests because of your mother?”

It seemed that it was their parents who brought their discord.

The wife brought her father and the husband brought her mother, but both old men had problems.

The father-in-law’s side showed symptoms of dementia due to shock, and the mother-in-law’s side had a habit of staring embarrassingly at passers-by sitting in front of the gosiwon on fictitious days.

It was the wife who was mainly nagging.

But recently there has been a change.

The husband, who did not respond to his wife’s complaints, broke his long silence and started fighting, as if his patience had run out.

“So, let’s send them to a welfare center for the elderly in the mother region?”

“why? It is a guarantee program guaranteed by the state.”

“Then why not send your father first?”

“Your brother knows that your father has dementia, right?”

“So I have to send more!”

However, the fight ended with the wife’s victory.

“Whose house is this? Isn’t it your brother’s house? Isn’t that the house I bought with my dad’s money? How can a person be so shameless when he didn’t bring a single penny into his marriage?”

“…”

It seems likely.

Even to an outsider, her husband was a pitiful person with nothing to look at except for his face.

He always sat helplessly at the counter, idly biting his butt in his mouth, or lying around on the floor.

I haven’t seen him work since the war started, but from conversations I don’t think he did even before the war started.

Still, there are things left to the children.

it’s a handsome face

If the couple’s parents are the cracks that divide the couple’s relationship, their children are the glue that barely connects and sustains the precarious relationship.

In particular, the eldest son was a wonderful child to be proud of.

It is an improved breed that seems to have been bred by selecting only the good points of the father’s personality and the mother’s sincerity.

No, it might be a mutation because the deep and benevolent personality that neither of the parents had was expressed.

“mister. Do you come often these days?”

“How many times do I have to say no, mister?”

“If you’re more than ten years older, you’re a man.”

“Am I still eighteen?”

“Then I will be one year old. Aye~.”

He’s playful, but he’s a much better guy than his older sister, who treats people like cows and chickens.

He is fourteen years old and is currently attending middle school.

Grades are pretty good.

He’s popular, has a lot of friends, and is a typical mother’s friend’s son.

There is a line for girlfriend candidates, but he is rejecting all of them.

Above all, this young fellow has a very nice laptop.

*

Internet time is from 6:00 PM to 7:00 PM.

It’s a drug that the country has allowed.

Communication equipment and Internet lines that have been suspended due to electricity and facility problems will be opened for one hour.

The generous power support is a bonus.

So when Internet time comes, Seoul becomes quiet like a dead city.

Everyone is immersed in the world of the Internet and is busy handling the tasks of their respective virtual worlds that have been delayed.

The speed is a bit slow, but the Wi-Fi, which is not much different from before the war, is one of the biggest reasons for me to use Kukje Residence, along with intact water facilities.

In the cafeteria of the gosiwon, countless residents took up their seats to receive this Wi-Fi energy and were looking at their cell phones or laptop screens.

One man whimpered and brought a heavy desktop, but the owner saw it and nagged him.

“No, mister! That eats too much electricity!”

“I took out the graphics card.”

“I still eat a lot! pay more! Give me a lottery ticket!”

I sat next to the owner’s son and connected to the public Internet on my cell phone.

＜Carrot Net＞

A neighborhood-based second-hand trading site that continues to operate after the war.

I can feel the breath of many things and many people.

Thousands of accounts and posts, and dozens of new posts posted in real time, reminded me of how narrow our community is in a world within a well.

yes this is the internet

I found a laptop on carrot net.

There were more sales than expected, but most of them were gaming laptops.

“I don’t need a gaming laptop.”

There are many things for sale, but I don’t really want anything, so I’m sighing when the owner’s son looks at my screen and asks.

“mister. Need a laptop?”

“huh.”

“Do you want to buy mine?”

“what? Really?”

I liked it enough to catch my ears for a moment, but I soon asked while managing my expression.

“What about you?”

“I’m fine. I go to school in Jeju Island.”

“A school in Jeju Island?”

The boy smiled and showed the laptop screen.

An image file leaflet made in Nara floated on the clean screen without any blemishes.

＜“Won’t you become a warrior?”＞

-Guidelines for recruiting new students for the 27th class of “Guard”, the only hunter training institution in the country

“This?”

The color and the design are like that, and it’s an advertisement made for boys and girls.

By the way, this recruitment guideline, no doubt.

This is the application guideline of the ‘school’ I attended.

“Did you graduate from middle school?”

“No, are you going up to second grade now?”

“These days, I haven’t even graduated from middle school, but they seem to be recruited, right?”

“When are you talking? These days, elementary school students are also selected.”

“Yes!?”

I read the outline carefully.

Indeed it was.

The age of admission has been drastically reduced.

To say that you are over 10 years old, not over graduating from middle school.

Aren’t people like that?

However, it was an overwhelming benefit that caught my eye before age.

There were more benefits to the family than to the students themselves.

Livelihood support, housing support, state job provision for parents’ families, and so on.

Sending one child to school improves the family’s livelihood.

However, on the back side, there is a small agreement like a brick with so many small letters that it hurts the eyes.

When I tried to read it, the boy covered the laptop.

“Shall we talk on the rooftop, Mister?”

“story?”

“Business talk!”

On the rooftop, laundry fluttering in the wind and an old man with dementia stood like a still life, and the low sunset beyond them created a mysterious and primitive feeling against the backdrop of ruins flattened by a nuclear attack.

The boy asked me as the stars rose one by one at the boundary between day and night.

“I’ve been curious about it before, but what are you doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“Every time you come, you carry a lot of stuff. I had a gun from the beginning. I thought he was a thug, but I don’t think he’s anything like that. I was curious because you have a good face in the current situation and you still carry a lot of stuff.”

“What do you think you are going to do?”

“A gang? harrier?”

“Can you say that even when you look at my kind eyes?”

“Are you a doomsdayist?”

The boy looked up at a star and smiled faintly.

“I know.”

“I also wanted to be a doomsdayist.”

“okay?”

“why? It’s fun, right? Make your own hideout and bring in things you like. Wasn’t it fun, too?”

“It was hard work, but it was also fun. Although it was difficult because I ran out of money later.”

The boy held out his laptop.

“Swap it for a cigarette. Do you have many?”

“If you sell it to children, you will go to jail?”

“The era is the era, right? I will give a little to my pitiful dad who always has butts in his mouth and sell the rest to buy a present for my mother. Before I go to school!”

sold cigarettes to the boy;

I bought it at an exorbitantly higher price than the market price, but it was a good deal in many ways.

When the deal was concluded, the old man with dementia, who was standing like a still life, turned his head this way and said something, but I couldn’t hear it very well.

“If you go to that school, you won’t hear your mom and dad fighting anymore, right? We can also send grandparents and grandparents to good places.”

Even if I heard it, I would have forgotten it soon.

As we descended together, the boy’s words of joy made a much stronger impression.

He was a deep-seated child.

It made me wonder how a child like this could be born in such a corner of the house.

The next day, when I was about to leave the International Residence, the restaurant was in a festive mood.

It was not the guests and residents who filled the restaurant, but the friends of the hostess.

The hostess was sitting proudly in the middle of the dining room table, among the other women.

“I envy you. My kids hang out with gangsters.”

“That inspector? They said it was tough to pass, but did you manage to pass?”

“I heard that the families of the Hunter School students are given the right to move into The Hope, is that true?”

Receiving countless compliments, envy, and envy, the owner lady smiled brightly.

“Ugh, our Youngmin is the father. I’m a kind of person, but I’m a little thankful. for giving birth to great children. Well, Young-min’s father, people are lazy, but they are kind by nature, right?”

Watching a family on the verge of disintegration come together more tightly than any other family thanks to the boy’s decision, I left the residence.

The boy’s laptop was very satisfactory.

SKELTON : (Skelton Newcom) It’s a new laptop hahahaha

There were no comments, but the number of views was quite high for my post.

It’s a part where you can feel the envy and envy of your community colleagues.

The hostess’ triumphant smile was copied on my face.

It was two months later that I read the Hunter School recruitment guidelines stored on my laptop again.

Accidentally found the boy’s hidden personal folder.

The application guidelines were accompanied by a daily schedule, photos taken with friends in elementary school, photos taken with family abroad, etc. There were exceptionally many photos of a girl the same age whose name was unknown.

I read the latter part of the recruitment guideline, which I had not read yet, with some anxiety.

The warning written in the corner soon caught my sight like fate.

-The final successful applicants will undergo 3 high-level mental response tests, and may be exposed to some accidents during the process.

“…a bit of an accident.”

it’s bullsh*t

The test leads to death.

As an experienced person, I know better.

it is the ordeal of death

Filtering out those not chosen by God.

When I went back to Seoul, I stopped by Kukje Residence.

It wasn’t serious from the start.

The face of the old woman who always guarded the shop was nowhere to be seen.

I entered the store with growing anxiety.

As expected, the owner had changed.

“What is it? Do you have any questions?”

“that is. The previous owner…”

Then an old man passed by on the street outside the store.

The old man of Koraksoni, a dying dog with worn-out clothes and not washed properly, resembled the old man who lived in this house despite the thick darkness.

“don’t go. don’t go. Don’t go…”

As if an old man was walking down an unfamiliar street, muttering, he staggered his steps.

Beyond, in the darkness of the street, a slender girl smoked a cigarette with a group of rogues.

The girl also resembled the older sister of the boy who lived in the house.

Their eyes met for a very short time, but the girl turned her gaze away, clearly expressing her feelings of displeasure.

The moment I saw that, I stopped asking questions.

“No, nothing.”

On the bright side of the street, a merchant who exchanged lottery tickets for goods was soliciting customers among the people.

I joined the crowd and asked for the price of a lottery ticket, exchanging a ticket for two cigarettes.

I haven’t looked for an international residency since then.

I don’t even know the news of the family.

Therefore, their fate remains hopeful.

Like my lottery ticket, which I’ve already drawn but haven’t checked the draw yet.