Hiding the House in the Apocalypse

16. motivation (1)

The school was a cruel place.

The rankings of all grades were pasted together as a poster from first to last.

The weak were weeded out and left on their own feet.

It forced competition rather than cooperation, and demanded mechanical coldness rather than humanity.

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

It was a place where it had to be.

Our enemies are ruthless and will not tolerate any mistakes.

Boys and girls who had just graduated from middle school were reborn as machines in it.

To fight against the enemies of mankind, monsters.

The motives were different, but in my case, it was hatred.

My hatred for losing my parents and older sister to monsters and becoming an orphan was sharper than I could ever imagine.

Lee Sang-hoon was the complete opposite of me in many ways.

He grew up in a well-to-do home, his parents were alive, and he entered the school because of the honor and prospects.

In a way, it may have been difficult from the beginning for him who grew up in a greenhouse to win against me, who only had poison.

From admission to graduation, he was blocked by the wall of his country and only ranked second.

Even when he entered the school, he would not have thought that the number 2 would become his trauma.

However, our competition ended in a completely wrong way.

plate has been changed.

Comparable to music, performers are competing in classical music in a classical music venue, but suddenly, the venue has changed to rock and heavy metal.

I think there is no superiority or inferiority in the music genre.

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

Mozart and Salieri were something out of date and old-fashioned in them.

The guy in the corner who didn’t get any attention has emerged as a hero and put himself in the center of the spotlight.

We were pushed to the periphery of the stage and suffered the shady ridicule and contempt that always comes to such a person.

One left and one stayed.

Those who left became barbarians, and those who remained became bureaucrats.

The rivalry between the two is over.

The only string connecting them was broken.

I thought I would never see him again.

The guy found me himself.

What the hell is going on?

Old man Kim said that it is rare to hear from someone with good intentions, even though he hasn’t been in touch for a long time.

“Are you the one who left the capsule on Route 13?”

“How did know?”

admitted right away.

I know this guy’s personality well.

Lee Sang-hoon is a perfectionist.

I tried to do even the smallest things perfectly, so I always fell behind me.

“Why are you doing that? What if the capsule is torn in the middle and a monster is summoned?”

“It’s a summons. What do you mean?”

“Do you still know that as an egg?”

“Isn’t it Al?”

“The identity of the capsule turned out to be a simple portal. It’s a kind of simple rift used by infiltrators.”

“···is it.”

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

I knew from experience that capsules weren’t like eggs, but the fact that my knowledge was now outdated came as quite bitter.

“I think I know why you put it there.”

“Guess.”

“You don’t like seeing refugees come around your shelter, do you?”

“Yena and now, you are good at matching. What’s going on anyway? You must be busy, right?”

“Are you thinking of going to Jeju Island?”

Could it be Scout?

It’s not the flow you want.

“What do you want me to do there?”

I had been rejected before.

However, Lee Sang-hoon, who has become a high-ranking person, does not seem to be aware of this fact.

“The instructor’s seat is empty. Three days ago, an instructor candidate died in battle. I got other nominations, but none I liked. Then, in an instant, I saw you moving the capsule.”

“Instructor.”

“It’s a better life than rotting in the dungeon underground.”

“Are you under a lot of stress?”

“Isn’t it a more stressful life to be there? I know you live alone, but living alone for nearly two years without saying anything and without friends isn’t that itself a punishment?”

“Not at all?”

For the first time, I seriously questioned myself.

Not really.

For the past two years, I have had doggie moments at times, but mostly I have lived comfortably and leisurely.

Hey friend, I have a lot of Internet friends. It’s enough to keep a diary.

What if you’re not popular on the bulletin board?

I have neighbors to whom I can send Christmas greetings.

“Are you serious?”

Lee Sang-hoon’s voice trembled.

It’s unbelievable.

Once again, he answered clearly.

“I like it here.”

If you go to Jeju Island, it will be warmer than here.

But that’s all.

There are people and realities that I don’t want to see.

I didn’t like that, so I left, and the current unpopular user, Skeleton, was born.

“It must have been that I still couldn’t get out of my sense of entitlement and inferiority.”

Lee Sang-hoon was coldly sarcastic.

In an instant, my face hardened.

“…”

I don’t know if I’m looking in the mirror, but my eyes must be quite sharp.

Not as much as when I was in school.

“Can’t you help it? I have no talent. talent. You or me.”

Lee Sang-hoon’s sarcasm turned into a sigh.

“Do you know how hard I am?”

Didn’t reply.

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

Being in a high position means taking on a lot of responsibility.

Seoul is perishing, but will that make you feel at ease?

However, we had too many fights and misunderstandings to sympathize with Lee Sang-hoon’s suffering.

We were competitors, we had never been friends.

“Let’s have a drink or something. We have good wine.”

“I want to go, but because of the capsules.”

My answers became more and more insensitive and insensitive.

Lee Sang-hoon is not so insensitive that he doesn’t know that.

“okay.”

his voice faded

“Have a good day. Park Gyu.”

I thought the communication was cut off, but I heard a small murmur from the other side of the speaker.

“The back of your head.”

“what?”

That was the end.

What Lee Sang-hoon was trying to say has stirred my imagination for quite some time.

I hurriedly touched it to see if there was a lump, but it was fine.

*

There is a saying that if you want to hide a tree, hide it in the forest.

In the community, there were also users who set up a base in Seoul.

They didn’t sell an air-raid shelter, but they set up a base in a corner of a common structure called an apartment building and converted it into a hideout.

Reporter Yangban, who frequently informs us of fresh news from Seoul, was one of those people.

He blocked the iron door of his apartment with a welder and drilled a hole in the house below to use it as an entrance.

That journalist man has been living up to his name recently.

Gijayangban : Current situation in Seoul.jpg

In the photo, there was a scene where hundreds of thousands of angry citizens gathered in front of the government building.

Not only there.

Citizens showed up and protested almost everywhere there were government offices.

The whole of Seoul turned upside down.

It was foretold.

There is a limit to covering reality with the candy coating of hope.

The protests became wilder and more violent.

In proportion to that, the slogans have also been simplified.

please save me

That was their only request.

The crash of a plane called Seoul has begun.

The reaction of community users was cold.

Anonymous848: That looks good. He mocked us like that.

Kyle_Dos : I still remember doing some cooking on the airwaves. How did you define us on that show?

Anonymous 458: A group of social misfits who fell into delusions of grandeur and chose to be weeded out.

I can understand how these friends feel.

In this country, there is a culture that sets a model rail for life and mercilessly punishes those who deviate from it.

We perishers are people who have gone off the rails.

He suffered considerable social persecution and ridicule.

I also heard that I was a schizophrenic person from a public official because of the construction problem.

The procession of refugees accelerated.

Those who had the will to escape tried to leave Seoul.

In Seoul, the refugees who were nicely packaged as pioneers belonged to the military.

If you apply for a pioneer and form a group, weapons, equipment, and some food are distributed, and if the pioneer is successful, additional equipment, food, and support for settlement are given.

It is questionable how many people will succeed in pioneering, but our community users are dying as the pioneers invade all the places where they can live.

Defender: Authentication

Headhunters are also very busy.

The reason I haven’t been able to post on the community lately is because I’m busy killing and burying people.

However, a little trouble arose over one of the headhunter’s authentication photos.

It was said that the thin shadow in one authentication photo was like a woman.

From my point of view, even that was a cross-section of the gloominess of the times.

In the past, if I had seen a picture of a corpse, I would have pressed back in a hurry or would have swallowed saliva at the sight of a terrifyingly hardened corpse.

One of them not only enlarged the shadow part of the defender, but also drew the silhouette directly on the drawing board, publicizing the theory that the defender is a woman.

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

The wind wave caused by Unicorn 18 briefly heated up the bulletin board, but it did not last long.

Defender : Going to find it?

Defender himself put out the fire himself.

The headhunter is a woman.

I’m skeptical.

I saw the marks on his shoes.

It was men’s size.

There are other reasons.

It would be easy for a woman to kill a man with a gun, but moving and disposing of a dead man is not an easy task.

I’m exhausted from dealing with a few corpses, but I kill and dispose of intruders on a fictitious day like a human hunter?

It is not easy even for a strong man.

Even more so, if it was a woman, it would be even more powerful.

SKELTON: (Skeleton belief) Defender. looks like a man?

I also added a word, but it didn’t even get a like.

No, if it’s going to be like this, why did you send me a friend request?

Anyway, I am still far away from the issue of refugees that is heating up the bulletin board.

thanks to the capsules.

A handful of military police and hunters remained around the capsule and blocked the road while standing guard.

Hunters are newcomers who have just graduated from school.

Thanks to that, I haven’t heard any gunshots lately.

“hey. Are you alive?”

It’s so quiet that I even contact the sniper’s mother and daughter.

“approximately.”

Every time the sniper asks for medicine.

“Morphine. Is this?”

especially painkillers.

Maybe what she wants is drugs.

How hard it must be to live in a high building without being able to wash or eat properly and block access to everyone who comes and goes.

I think about it sometimes.

The idea of giving them one of my dummy shelters.

It won’t be easy.

She wouldn’t come just because she said come, but I don’t trust her either.

It is said that a close two-year relationship may end due to a sudden shooting.

It has already been a year and eleven months since the war began.

It is the time when the heat is over and the rice fields that grow wild are drenched in golden color and bow their heads.

The Seoul side is getting more and more scolding, but I calmly walked in the field and harvested the few rice myself, put it in a sack, and prepared it for milling.

I’ve never done it in my life, but there’s a video so it’s okay.

Even though he is from the city, he learned some things from old man Kim, and wouldn’t he be able to get at least a bowl of rice?

Anyway, even this kind of trial and error is fun for me anyway.

For people like us, in a life that has already been decided, time is an obligation to spend rather than a resource.

It was time to return to the realm with a gun and a sack of rice.

The K-Walkie-Talkie made a distinctive sound.

It is contact by personal identification number.

Could it be Lee Sang-hoon again?

Now it’s on my mind other than getting in touch.

Seoul is turning into a source of disaster rather than a meaningful hinterland.

I checked the walkie-talkie.

Personal identification number: DARAM

It’s Da-ram Kim, not Lee Sang-hoon.

This guy is now as hateful as Lee Sang-hoon, but he was still a guy who went through a lot of hardships under me, so he contacted me with old affection.

“long time no see. Commissioner Kim.”

Any request or request will be rejected.

There is also a cause.

I mean the capsule.

I’d say he’s a very versatile friend.

The first thing that came out of the radio was a sigh.

I waited for the next words, wiping my sweaty forehead with my sleeve, wondering what to say.

“Lee Sang-hoon is dead.”

“what?”

For a moment I doubted my ears.

“Lee Sang-hoon? My classmate Lee Sang-hoon died?”

“huh. My senior colleague, Lee Sang-hoon.”

I never once liked him.

Even if he died, it didn’t seem like it would make much sense.

However, it seems that there is a corner that is surprisingly persistent.

Lee Sang-hoon’s death came as an unexpected shock.

Well, since I was sixteen, I spent the same time in the same field for 10 years.

We fought together and even saved each other’s lives.

Ironically, the darkest memory was the period when we had the worst relationship.

It’s just a memory from my school days.

The memories of those days, which had now turned gray, entwined my brain so thickly that it was excessive.

The guy who always sat at the front of the classroom, waving his long shaved head here and there, raising his hand and asking questions.

Even though I knew everything about it, the back of that nerd-like guy who shamelessly asked questions to win the instructor’s favor filled my eyes without any context.

Feeling a bit confused, he hurriedly asked the radio.

“Why did you die? Warrior? Or was it swept away by the protests?”

“Suicide.”

The moment I heard that, Lee Sang-hoon, who had been fluttering in front of me, looked back at me.

Its face was too blurry to make out.

what the heck did it look like

Lee Sang-hoon, that guy.

He spoke in unanswered questions.

“······why?”

For some reason, my voice trembled so violently that even I was startled.

Daram Kim continued with a sigh and a limp voice.

“You need one or two people in charge, right?”