Chapter 74: I Miss Her

“What is all this? And who are these kids?”

“I rescued them from those punks down below in Sang-dong. I don’t know if it’ll be for a little while or for longer, but please let them stay here with you for now.”

At Junho’s words, Go Jeongnam waved both hands dismissively.

“Oh, come on now, you don’t even need to ask. Come in, all of you, hurry. Good grief, what happened to you? Are you hurt anywhere?”

“Thank you, sir...”

“W-we’re okay. But this guy got hurt some.”

“Oh no. Hey, sweetheart. Sua, come take a look at them.”

At Go Jeongnam’s call, Go Seokjin’s wife and the nursing home’s nurse’s aide, Kang Sua, hurried over and started tending to the students.

“Were you hurt from getting beaten? Come on, let’s get inside. Ma’am, please check on the girls.”

“Of course. Oh, these girls got scraped up here and there too. Come on over this way.”

Maybe they had already gotten close enough to call each other sister, because Go Seokjin’s wife, in her early thirties, and Kang Sua, in her late twenties, smoothly split the kids between them and led them away.

Looking over at the remaining adult woman, Junho said to father and son, Go Jeongnam and Go Seokjin,

“She was with those kids at the academy. They all know each other, and for now she’s basically their guardian.”

“Good. You did well coming here, miss. Are you all right?”

“Yes, sir. I’m all right. Thank you for taking us in.”

Compared to Junho, whose very face naturally brought to mind that blood-soaked massacre the instant she looked at him, the older man, Go Jeongnam, felt much easier to face, so Ms. Lee bowed right away.

But then—

“Haha, you don’t know much yet, miss. This nursing home and every person here—this young man Junho is the one who saved them all.”

“Ah...?”

“My son and I both owe him our lives too, same as you and those kids from earlier. Truth is, this place is basically running because of him. Isn’t that right, Seokjin?”

“Y-yes. That’s right, Father.”

Watching Junho nervously, still covered head to toe in blood, Go Seokjin bobbed his head in a hurry.

He had always thought he’d lived pretty rough himself before he went into the military, but every time he looked at Junho, his knees weakened on their own and his heart started pounding.

It wasn’t just because of that first meeting, either. It was just... like that. To be honest, Junho was way scarier than his father.

So to stay off Junho’s bad side, after coming to the nursing home he had gotten into the habit of asking his father’s permission first before doing anything.

He never made decisions on his own.

“Ms. Lee.”

“Yes, sir.”

At Junho’s voice, Ms. Lee instantly froze stiff like a soldier at attention.

“This isn’t a place that just takes people in and feeds them for free. Since one of the kids is hurt and all of you are exhausted, you can rest a few days. But once you recover a little, everybody works.”

“Yes, sir.”

Honestly, it might have been better when he ordered her around in plain speech like before.

The moment this terrifying man switched to polite speech, Ms. Lee felt her whole body tense up even more.

“Oh, and one more thing. That goes for you and for those kids too. If any of you are going to start talking nonsense about wanting to go home or having to go save your family, then leave right now. Out of basic decency, we’ll give you water and one day’s worth of food. After that, survive on your own and make it home if you can.”

“N-no. We’re not going. Yes, sir. W-we’ll stay here quietly.”

“Good. Make sure you pass that along clearly to the kids too. Now go get some rest.”

“Yes, sir.”

Still rigid, Ms. Lee answered and hurried off, then suddenly stopped like a robot.

“Th-thank you. Thank you so, so much for saving us! Thank you!”

She bent at the waist toward Junho over and over again.

“Well now, at least the young lady has manners. Anyway, Junho, you’ve been through a lot too. But I guess there’s nowhere you’re hurt... of course not.”

“No, I’m fine. More importantly, nothing happened here, right?”

He already knew there had not been any major incidents since he watched the place constantly through the PTZ camera and CCTV, and checked in by radio twice a day, morning and evening, but Junho asked out of courtesy.

“Something happened, all right.”

“What?”

At the way Junho’s eyes narrowed in an instant, Go Jeongnam chuckled and said,

“It’s good news, so you can relax your face. Come on, this way.”

Tilting his head, Junho followed Go Jeongnam and his son.

When they reached the nursing home parking lot, Junho could not help widening his eyes.

“Well? Not bad, right? We’re thinking of farming in here with the stuff your side gave us.”

“The potatoes and sweet potatoes?”

Go Seokjin answered with eager little bows.

“Yes, yes. One greenhouse for potatoes and sweet potatoes, and one for things that can serve as side dishes.”

Two plastic greenhouses had been built in what used to be the parking lot.

From the look of it, Go Seokjin and Lee Jaeseok, one of the nursing home staff members, had built them under instructions from elderly Mr. Go, who had farmed for years back in his hometown.

“Well done. Greenhouses this size should be enough to grow plenty to feed everyone here.”

“That’s right. We’ve got rice and side dishes stocked up now, but at least one meal a day ought to be potatoes or sweet potatoes. It’s healthier that way too. Oh, and speaking of that. Seokjin.”

“Yes, Father.”

At a glance from Go Jeongnam, Go Seokjin immediately opened the greenhouse door.

Then, while sneaking a look at Junho, he said with a somewhat proud expression,

“We’re planning to raise these too.”

“Oh?”

Inside the greenhouse, which had only just been completed and did not have any crops growing yet, were several rabbits.

Pointing at them, Go Jeongnam said proudly,

“They’re hard if you’ve never raised them before, but for me, no problem. I raised plenty back in my hometown. If you cut grass and dry it well, feeding them through the winter won’t be an issue. They’ll eat lettuce and things like that just fine too, so it should work out.”

“I see.”

He had actually considered raising rabbits at their shelter too, but had been told they were difficult for beginners, so they had stuck with chickens.

But if someone experienced like elderly Mr. Go was going to raise them here, then it sounded fine.

No, better than fine. Considering how fast rabbits reproduced, this could turn into an unexpected source of fresh meat on a regular basis.

“Anyway, once we get them going, I’ll send some your way now and then too. Rabbit meat’s real good.”

“I’ll look forward to it. Oh, and on the way here I caught a water deer. I should drain the blood right away, right?”

“Oh, that was a water deer? I thought maybe it was a bo—”

He hurriedly swallowed the words he had almost said—that he had figured Junho had killed somebody on the way over and brought the body here to dispose of it—then gave an awkward laugh and urged his son on.

“Seokjin, go bring that water deer over. You’ve got to bleed a water deer right away. If you don’t, it stinks so bad you can’t eat it.”

Privately relieved that his son’s name started with an S, making the stumble easier to cover, Go Jeongnam pressed him along.

***

They told him it was late and insisted he stay the night and leave early in the morning, but Junho flatly refused and left Hanaareum Nursing Home.

“...If this kind of thing keeps happening, I’ll have to bring them here first.”

Park Deokcheol, Park Sunhee, and Jo Yuna had gotten lucky and arrived at exactly the right moment, so he had selected them as possible worker candidates and brought them to the container housing.

At this rate, there was a good chance they would become shelter members within a month, as part of the manpower the shelter needed.

But Ms. Lee and the three high-school students had shown up at the wrong time, and he had already secured the worker candidates the shelter needed, so there was nothing he could do.

Of course, from their perspective, they might say what kind of twisted lottery luck was that, but that was just reality.

So Junho decided that if he ended up rescuing survivors he had not planned for in the future, he would send them to Hanaareum Nursing Home first.

“...They probably can’t even see me from there, so what are they doing?”

Seeing the people from Hanaareum Nursing Home still waving toward him from far away, Junho felt oddly self-conscious and raised a hand slightly in return.

“But seriously, why did this place have to be called Hanaareum of all things? Every time I come here it makes me think of her... tch.”

One of the reasons Junho had quit the Bucheon fitness center was because of someone who had the exact same name as the nursing home.

“My eyes weren’t broken or anything. So why someone like me...?”

Thinking of the part-time worker at the gym who had been almost ten years younger than him, Junho muttered bitterly.

She had been incredibly bright and upbeat, and like somebody of Gen Z, she was all directness, all the time.

The girl’s name was Han Areum, and she had done track and field through high school before quitting because of an injury and choosing a path in recreational athletics instead.

She was young, pretty, and had a great body too, and she had made it painfully obvious she was interested, but all Junho had felt was burdened.

More than anything, he did not even have enough time as it was just preparing for the apocalypse and building the shelter.

He could not afford to waste time on something like dating, and he absolutely could not go carelessly creating a “new connection.”

So he had quit the gym and cut things off with Han Areum before anything between them could even begin.

But still—

“I hope she made it.”

She had never missed a shift, never even shown up late once, always came in before dawn, and worked hard cleaning the place top to bottom.

Hoping that Han Areum, with all that bright energy, was safe, Junho climbed the mountain path.

***

September 21, 2024, 10:30 p.m., Bucheon, Gyeonggi-do.

“Hey. What kind of girl cleans out her ear with her finger? Christ, that’s disgusting.”

“What was I supposed to do? It got itchy all of a sudden. Oh, nice one.”

“Ah, damn it, seriously.”

Watching Han Areum wiggle her pinky finger, Choi Hyunwoo made a face, then turned to MMA gym coach Kim Taeyoung, whose full name he had finally learned for sure.

“So that means Brother Junho sent you a text and a bunch of supplies the day before everything went down too?”

“Yeah. Yuchan got them too. Our gym owner. Back then we were all like, what the hell is this even about? Then the very next day...”

Kim Taeyoung trailed off for a moment, then let out a long breath like he was shaking off the feeling and continued.

“Hoo... anyway, because of what Junho told him last year, Yuchan said he was staying home no matter what, holiday or not. But like an idiot, I went to the gym that morning and got trapped there.”

If he had stayed home like Choi Yuchan, the MMA gym owner, he probably could have lived pretty comfortably for at least a year on the supplies Junho had sent.

But Kim Taeyoung lived alone, and since he had nothing to do at home, he had gone to the gym early in the morning and wound up stuck there.

“And Coach and Areum already knew each other.”

“Yeah. The owner and I once went to her department as one-day self-defense instructors. She showed a lot of interest in mixed martial arts then, so she came by our gym a few times after that.”

“Damn... you really never know how people’s lives are gonna connect. But why didn’t you do MMA?”

“It costs too much. And if you want to go pro, the training’s brutal.”

“Yeah, that part can’t be helped.”

Hyunwoo nodded, knowing full well what Han Areum’s situation had been like—living under her aunt’s roof and constantly watching herself through high school, then taking out a loan and moving out on her own the moment she graduated.

“But what about the other people at the fitness center and the gym...”

As Hyunwoo let the end of the sentence fade, Kim Taeyoung’s expression darkened immediately.

But Han Areum, bright by nature and used to every kind of part-time job since she was young—she had even done specialty cleanup at unattended-death scenes—just shrugged without much change in expression.

“At our fitness center, luckily, because of the holiday there wasn’t a single person there at that hour. The second it all started, I locked the doors and blocked the entrance with exercise machines. And then...”

Because she had worked out for so long, she was strong enough that even alone, Han Areum had been able to block the entrance pretty effectively with furniture and gym equipment.

And since it was a place for exercising, there had also been vending machines stocked with bottled water and sports drinks.

There were protein drinks, protein bars, even frozen chicken breast and diet convenience meals in the refrigerator, so she had been able to hold out by herself.

But eventually people realized there was a fitness center in the same building, and that there was food there to keep up their “protein.”

“I had the same idea, actually. Because there were way too many zombies near convenience stores, and every restaurant was on the first or second floor, so if you made noise you were dead. But this place was on the sixth floor, right? And since it’s a workout place, the soundproofing would be good. So...”

Kim Taeyoung had moved a building or two each night, creeping along the flowerbeds and walls of the back alleys, sleeping hidden in bathrooms—

and after three full days, he finally reached the fitness-center building and made it up through the emergency stairwell.

“And those motherfuckers were pinning her down, trying to do that to her. I saw it and just snapped on the spot...”

They had weapons, sure, but ordinary men were no match for a surprise attack from a former pro MMA fighter whose walking-around weight was well over eighty kilos.

And on top of that, because they had been trying to do that to Han Areum, their pants were halfway off and the knives and tools they had been using as weapons had been tossed aside at random.

“The bastard on top of me died from one low kick from Coach. Broke his neck.”

“......!”

“And the other two got their noses smashed flat and all their teeth knocked out. Arms and legs too. Oh, and their junk doesn’t work anymore either. I stomped the hell out of it. Anyway, this stuff is ridiculously good. Junho really has insane taste.”

Talking as casually as if she were discussing the weather, despite the horrifying and brutal thing she had gone through, Han Areum scraped up every last drop of syrup from the can of tropical fruit Junho had left stocked in the basement.