Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 1



Only Krnovel

1. Mr. Kim

The story of how the world came to ruin and became a mess is long, boring, and complicated, but there are plenty of interesting episodes in it.

Let’s call it, for example, Park Gyu’s wise preparation for the future.

The idea that humanity is facing a crisis has been talked about by everyone from intellectuals to YouTuber Rekka, but among civilians, only two groups have actually prepared for the crisis.

Either you are a nouveau riche with money rotten to the core and the luxury of building a bunker on your own property, or you are a bold activist who can deny reality and invest everything in vague possibilities.

I am the latter.

As soon as he sensed the crisis, he boldly disposed of his assets and prepared for the coming destruction.

Although he did not inherit much, he did accumulate some wealth.

I worked in a job where I had no choice but to save money, and towards the end, I worked like crazy, increasing my workload while only sleeping about four hours a day.

However, since I didn’t have as much money as the nouveau riche, I learned skills in my spare time while struggling with my hard work.

Simple electrical work, construction, operating heavy equipment, drug and chemical synthesis, basic medicine, etc. For things I didn’t understand, I bought books or video tutorials and saved them.

The most important thing was where to set up shop.

It was a difficult decision to make.

We consulted survival experts, civilians who survived war zones, wilderness explorers, and the doomsday community we’ll introduce later, Viva! Apocalypse!

After much deliberation and deliberation, the site was selected based on four key requirements.

First, a place where no one lives nearby and where no one would visit even in times of emergency.

Second, we will still maintain an appropriate distance from large cities.

Third, the terrain of the hideout.

Fourth, price.

The first requirement is the most basic of the basics.

For those who wish to build their own fortress in preparation for destruction, the greatest danger is not monsters or zombies, but humanity itself.

In fact, humans have always been the main threat to my apocalyptic life.

However, humans are a species that finds it difficult to live alone.

The second condition may seem to contradict the first, but it is a very important requirement.

If we can establish contact with the city, we can obtain not only necessary supplies in times of emergency, but also valuable information.

Leaving the safety of your shelter and venturing into the dangerous world outside is extremely dangerous, but staying cooped up in a bunker and not seeing the massive storm coming is tantamount to certain death.

The third condition is the foundation for an eternal struggle that will continue until I die.

The hideout must be able to be observed from all sides and must not be easily discovered from the outside.

Defense is the next issue to consider.

No matter how easy it is to defend the terrain, once my hiding place is discovered, it won’t be easy for me to defend it alone.

Humans are the most numerous animal species, excluding insects.

Oh, soil and groundwater are also important.

The ground has to be soft so I can dig deep and the groundwater is my life-giving water after the water runs out.

Of course, all these conditions must be considered within the limits of my wallet.

They say that money will become worthless if the world collapses, but if you want to prepare before the world collapses, you need money.

The site chosen was a forested area on a mountain between an air force base and a golf course.

Although it was sparsely populated, easy to observe, and maintained an appropriate distance from major cities, it had a fatal flaw.

That land was a so-called blind spot, with no roads.

It was an inevitable choice.

Because the price of land that is not occupied is several times or even dozens of times cheaper than that of land that is not occupied.

The fact that unscrupulous waste disposal contractors were using the area as an illegal dumping ground for construction waste, leaving piles of industrial waste behind, also contributed to the low prices.

Thanks to that, we were able to secure a fairly large site.

It was a large piece of land that was not lacking in anything compared to the golf course next door.

The problem of lack of roads was solved by requiring adjacent landowners to pay a fee and provide free labor when harvesting crops, but it was not an easy task.

“You’re from Seoul? Okay, let’s do our best.”

I don’t remember the old man’s name now, but his last name was definitely Kim.

He was around seventy years old, had a thin and short build, spoke a Chungcheong dialect, and gave off a not-so-good first impression.

As expected, Mr. Kim’s temper was so bad that even I, who was relatively free, felt murderous at times.

Whenever he got a chance, he would throw tantrums and demand restoration, block the only road with obstacles, and he would come by frequently to ask for help with chores.

When they came to my container house at 3am, knocked on the door and asked me to help them, I really felt like throwing them into the ridge of the rice paddy.

Well, what can I do? Cheap things are expensive.

The money saved from buying cheap land was used to buy heavy equipment, construction materials, and other items necessary for survival.

Heavy equipment included excavators, loaders, drills, and forklifts.

It would be cheaper and more professional to hire someone to build a bunker, but my plan is to constantly expand and modify my hideout.

My 220,000 pyeong of land is my foundation and ground for living in a world that is perishing, and it is the fortress of life that will be identified with me.

Naturally, I called someone first.

It is impossible to keep up with the skills and know-how of people working in the field with only knowledge learned through the internet and lectures.

“No, sir. Are all these your things? What on earth are you planning to do?”

All the contractors who saw my collection of heavy equipment were surprised.

“Well, somehow I developed an interest in this area.”

I tried to win their favor by making excuses.

At first, the client seemed reluctant to jump into the work, but after buying them a few drinks and a few drinks, they eventually started to act as if they were a team.

From them, I was able to learn essential knowledge that I could never learn from lectures or textbooks, such as how to dig into the ground, how to support the dug ground, the ideal mixing ratio of cement, and the pouring method.

But it’s not luxurious.

As construction began in earnest, Mr. Kim started throwing tantrums.

“No, what on earth are you doing there, gathering people and making a fuss? Did you get a development permit?”

After putting up with his temper for about a month, I thought I understood why Mr. Kim was acting like that.

It seems like he just needed something to relieve his stress.

Aging body, work that doesn’t go well, tiresome loneliness, imminent death.

It was the despair that I still vaguely understand that made him such an annoying old man.

Well, judging from the reputation of the town, it seems like he wasn’t a very good person to begin with.

His nickname is ‘the world’s biggest jerk.’ A total jerk.

Because of that bastard’s troubles, my first bunker construction was constantly interrupted and eventually became a source of discontent among the workers.

As I am not a nobleman myself, I was feeling the limit of my patience when I noticed a car I had never seen before parked at Mr. Kim’s remote house.

It was a fairly shiny new Benz.

I noticed a man who looked like Mr. Kim but was much larger and younger, standing with a middle-aged woman with a pouty mouth.

“Are you a bastard···.”

Those were the words that just came out of my mouth.

Mr. Kim never once talked about his family.

I could tell he had a family because he would often fiddle with his phone and occasionally try to make a call while helping out, but that was the first time I actually saw them.

But that day, I discovered the real stain on Mr. Kim’s heart.

“No, sell this land. We’ll take care of it. We’ll take care of it, so why are you complaining! Hey!”

A man who resembled Mr. Kim grabbed Mr. Kim by the collar and shook him like a toy.

The woman with her mouth stuck out just watched and didn’t seem to have any intention of stopping him.

Rather, she has a bitter cynicism as if she is calling her a fool, and she silently supports the man who appears to be her husband.

“Fuck. I gave you all those fucking injections when I was little, but you gave my older sister a piece of gold and my eldest son a piece of trash. Do you know how much Mr. Park ignores me these days?”

The man’s voice grew louder and louder.

There must have been a lot of things piling up.

Even I, a relatively free-spirited person, felt murderous toward Mr. Kim because his temper was so vicious.

But it seems like things are getting more and more out of hand.

“That fucking asshole is living in a much nicer apartment than mine and is acting all good, but your son, who inherited your last name, is struggling because he can’t even afford to pay for his grandson’s English kindergarten!”

It seems that he is constantly reproducing and expanding his anger inside him, increasing the amplitude of his emotions.

“Are you going to sell the land? Or not?”

I coughed loudly when the man raised his fist.

The man stared at me with an angry face.

What do you want to do?

As I stare at him intently, he slowly lowers his fist and mutters something incomprehensible.

Meanwhile, Mr. Kim, who had been grabbed by the collar, was shaking his head weakly with an unusually droopy face.

His gaze was fixed on his collapsing house.

“Fuck!!!”

The man put Mr. Kim down, swearing, and headed to the Benz with his wife.

As he opened the door of the Benz, he let out a sharp remark.

“I won’t be bringing Youngjin with me for this Chuseok!”

After the car drove off, I thought about it for a moment.

Should I pretend not to see Mr. Kim sitting there in a daze or should I say a word of comfort?

His son does not dislike Mr. Kim as much as he does, but he still needs Mr. Kim’s cooperation right now.

I approached Mr. Kim, trying to control my anger.

“Looks like you’ve seen it all.”

Mr. Kim spoke without even looking at me.

His gaze was still fixed on the collapsing house.

I took out a lollipop and put it in my mouth, squatted down next to the old man, and we looked at the old house he was looking at.

“Are you a son?”

“······Do you have parents?”

I shook my head.

“He passed away in an accident.”

“Oh, like that.”

“It was a long time ago. By the way, is it a big deal?”

“I didn’t give you cheap land.”

Mr. Kim let out a sigh as if the ground was sinking as he watched the Benz drive away.

“When it was donated, the land was much more expensive······.”

“You’re talking about the land you gave to your son.”

Mr. Kim nodded, took out a cigarette, and put it in his mouth.

He began to tell his story with a hollow smile on his face as he helped light the fire.

“The land I gave my daughter was just as bad as yours. It was a piece of shit with dirt hills that didn’t even make any money. But who knew that a ten-lane road would be built in front of it? Who knew that a tunnel would be dug and a new city would be built on that piece of land?”

His life was as expected.

He wasn’t a good dad, nor was he a great dad.

He was a worthless father who frequently injected drugs and was violent towards his family.

It was a boring life, living as a bastard all his life, but in his later years, he leveled up to become a rich father by having his land expropriated and making a lot of money.

If not, his children might have cut off Kim a long time ago.

I blurted out a question to end the conversation quickly.

“Why don’t you sell that house? Wouldn’t that problem be solved if you sold it and moved somewhere else?”

“That can’t be. That can’t be.”

The old man looked up at the sky, blowing out white smoke.

“The ghost of my dead wife is over there. She’s been putting up with the temper of a punk like me my whole life…”

Even now, I can’t figure out what I did right to Mr. Kim.

One thing is certain: that short conversation created a ten-lane highway in Mr. Kim’s mind.

From that day on, he never again blocked construction vehicles or complained.

Since we had nothing to clash with, our relationship naturally improved, and I even approached Mr. Kim and volunteered to help him with some work.

Since we live in the same neighborhood as our neighbors, there’s nothing wrong with being friendly with each other.

There was also soybean paste.

I learned agricultural knowledge, which is difficult for city people to learn, from Mr. Kim.

“Farming is a matter of words. The lunar calendar. The solar calendar is useless. You have to look at the lunar calendar. The seasons. The seasons are important.”

He vaguely noticed what I was trying to do.

“You’re one of those survivalists that are trendy these days? Or some kind of doomsday person?”

“Well, I guess that’s what it is.”

“Wouldn’t you need something like seedlings to do something like that? Even if the world were to end, wouldn’t you still have to eat vegetables?”

“Is there anything I can grow underground?”

“You can grow anything as long as you have sunlight, water, and fertilizer. These days, the seedlings are growing so well. The important thing is sincerity.”

Several seasons passed since then, but his children never came looking for him.

On New Year’s Day and Chuseok, I watched him from afar, standing alone in the yard of his dilapidated house, blankly staring at the road.

Later, when China started the war, a missile launched from China hit the metropolitan area.

Mr. Kim came running into my bunker, out of breath.

It was the first time since I met him that I had seen him so flustered.

“My son, find out what has become of my son.”

Communications were restored and the list of dead was confirmed.

I had to deliver some sad news.

Mr. Kim just lowered his head without saying a word.

I didn’t cry or sob.

What kind of wind was blowing?

“The world is about to end. If you don’t mind, wouldn’t you like to come to my bunker?”

I made a recommendation that did not fit my criteria.

Mr. Kim raised his head and looked at me.

He smiled at me.

“Please wait a moment. I have something to prepare.”

“Is there anything I need to prepare?”

“I have something to give you.”

He was a man who knew how to smile warmly, more than I had thought.

When they found Mr. Kim again, he was hanging from the ridge beam of the collapsing house he had been trying to protect, swaying like a blade of grass.

Beneath the cooling feet, seedlings were neatly packaged with the utmost care.

His body could not be recovered.

Nuclear bomb warnings were blaring everywhere, signaling the end of the world.

We quickly gathered up the seedlings and took refuge in a bunker.

In the end, it was a wise choice.

Because the ensuing fission conflagration incinerated the collapsing houses and bodies without a trace.