Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 13



Only Krnovel

12. Laptop

The destruction of a great city is often compared to the crash of an airplane that has run out of fuel.

It flies by inertia for quite a long time even after losing power, but when the speed cannot support lift, it crashes to the ground with a loud noise and ends with a spectacular explosion.

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

The disappearance of the hinterland metropolis is a painful but not unexpected change in my plans.

It’s just that that time came much sooner than expected.

Because the Korean government’s will to protect the Republic of Seoul was firm no matter what happened.

Now that all hope is gone, my job is not to save Seoul.

That’s not something I can do, nor is it something I can do.

I’m trying to use the currency of the doomsday called cigarettes in a hurry.

Even if Seoul is destroyed, cigarettes will still have power, but as the market itself shrinks, the quality and variety of products available will also deteriorate.

What I need now is a new laptop.

A black spot appeared in a not-so-good spot on the LCD of my old laptop.

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

I have an extra laptop, but it’s a gaming laptop······.

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

“This is Skeleton. What are the conditions on Route 13?”

“Your personal identification number has been confirmed. Hello, Mr. Skeleton. It is calm now. The entire road is safe. Just in case, if you plan to pass, please do so within 6 hours.”

I rode my bike slowly towards Seoul.

There were a few electric vehicles on the road, and on the side of the road, there was a long line of people removing and collecting parts from cars that had stopped running.

The atmosphere in Seoul, which we arrived in safely, was quite bright.

Reconstruction work called national labor took place in many places, with many people clearing stones, digging with pickaxes, and cleaning the streets.

Billboards advertising performances by singers and idols who had previously closed their stores were posted on the streets, and electric public transportation, including buses, roamed the empty streets.

Although the community didn’t pay attention, elementary and middle schools have reopened after a long break.

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

Maybe that’s why.

Food rations were reduced and power outages became more frequent and longer, but citizens took even this as a sign that Seoul was being rebuilt.

But the sight of Seoul up close was quite different from what was revealed outside.

Everyone was singing about hope, but behind it all, there was an eerie and terrible shadow.

The reason the shadow isn’t a problem is because people don’t want to look closely.

The atmosphere of the “International Residence” where I always stay for a night whenever I come to Seoul was vaguely on the border between hope and despair.

*

The International Residence is a former goshiwon that has been renovated into a lodging facility.

It was an old and shabby place, but it suffered little damage from the war, so it was a good place to stay for a day or so.

The owners of the residence were a middle-aged couple who each cared for their father and mother, and had two children who were of middle school age.

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

“Brother! Please tell Mom to stay inside! What are you trying to do? Because of Mom, no guests are coming.”

It seemed like their parents were the ones who brought up the feud between the two.

The wife’s side brought her father, and the husband’s side brought his mother, but both of the old people had problems.

The father-in-law showed symptoms of dementia due to shock, and the mother-in-law had a habit of sitting in front of the goshiwon all day long and staring at people passing by, to the point of being embarrassing.

It was mostly my wife who did the nagging.

But recently, there has been a change.

The husband, who had never said a word in response to his wife’s complaints, finally ran out of patience and broke his long silence to fight back.

“So, should we send her to a nursing home in her mother’s hometown?”

“Why? It’s a nationally guaranteed insurance program.”

“Then why don’t you send your father first?”

“You know that Dad has dementia, right?”

“That’s why I have to send you even more!”

But the fight ended in the wife’s victory.

“Whose house is this? Isn’t it your house? Isn’t it the house that my father bought with his money? How can someone be so shameless when he didn’t bring a single penny when he got married?”

“······.”

That seems likely.

Even to an outsider, the husband seemed like a pitiful person with nothing to show for him except his face.

He would always sit listlessly at the counter, smoking a cigarette in his mouth, or just lie on the floor and laze around.

I haven’t seen him work since the war started, but from what I’ve heard of his conversations, it seems like he wasn’t working even before the war started.

But I still left something for my children.

He has a handsome face.

If the parents of a couple were the rift that tore apart their relationship, their children were the glue that barely held together and sustained that fragile relationship.

Especially the eldest son was truly a wonderful child to be proud of.

It’s like a hybrid that was created by crossbreeding only the good points of the father’s character and the mother’s sincerity.

No, it might be a mutation, seeing as it shows a deep and gentle personality that neither of his parents had.

“Sir. You come here often these days?”

“How many times do I have to tell you I’m not you, sir?”

“If the age difference is more than ten years, you’re an old man.”

“I’m only eighteen?”

“Then I’ll live to see you. Hehe~.”

He’s a bit playful, but he’s a much better guy than his older sister who treats people like cows and chickens, whether he’s in the second year of middle school or the second year of high school.

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

They say his grades are pretty good.

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

He said that he has a long list of girlfriend candidates, but he is rejecting them all.

Best of all, this little guy has a pretty decent laptop.

*

Internet time is from 6 PM to 7 PM.

Is it a drug that the country permits?

Telecommunications equipment and Internet lines that were down due to electrical and facility problems will be reopened for one hour.

Powerful power support is a bonus.

So when it’s Internet time, Seoul becomes as quiet as a dead city.

Everyone is absorbed in the world of the Internet and is busy taking care of their own virtual world work that they have been putting off.

The Wi-Fi, which is a bit slow but not much different from before the war, is one of the biggest reasons I use the international residence, along with the full water supply system.

In the goshiwon restaurant, many residents were taking their seats and looking at their phones or laptops to receive the WiFi energy.

A man came in carrying a heavy desktop computer, struggling, and the landlady scolded him when she saw him.

“No, sir! That thing consumes too much electricity!”

“I removed the graphics card.”

“But you still eat a lot! Pay more! Or give me a lottery ticket!”

I sat next to the landlord’s son and accessed the public Internet with my cell phone.

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

I can feel the breath of countless objects and people.

Seeing thousands of accounts and posts, and dozens of new posts coming up in real time, I realized once again how small a world our community is within.

Yeah, this is the internet.

I found the laptop on Carrot Net.

There was more inventory than expected, mostly gaming laptops.

“I don’t need a gaming laptop.”

There are a lot of properties for sale, but I can’t find what I’m looking for, so I’m sighing. Then, the son of the owner looks at my LCD and asks.

“Sir, are you looking for a laptop?”

“huh.”

“Want to buy mine?”

“What? Really?”

At that moment, I was so happy that my mouth was hanging open, but I soon controlled my expression and asked.

“What about you?”

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

“A school in Jeju Island?”

The boy smiled and showed me his laptop screen.

A leaflet of image files made in the country appeared on the clean LCD screen without a single blemish.

-National Hunter Training Institute “Guard” 27th New Student Recruitment Guidelines

“What is this?”

This advertisement is aimed at boys and girls, both in terms of color and design.

But this recruitment notice is correct.

This is the recruitment notice for the ‘school’ I attended.

“Did you graduate from middle school?”

“No, I’m going up to the second grade now.”

“These days, it seems like they’re picking people who haven’t even graduated from middle school?”

“When are you talking about? These days, even elementary school students are being selected.”

“Really!?”

I read the outline carefully.

It was indeed so.

The age of admission has been drastically reduced.

Anyone over 10 years old and not a middle school graduate or higher.

Are there really that few people?

But what caught my eye before age was the overwhelming benefits.

There were more benefits for the students’ families than for the students themselves.

Living assistance, housing assistance, national job opportunities for parent families, etc.

It is a system where if you send one child to school, the entire family’s finances improve.

But on the back, there are small terms and conditions written in such small letters that it hurts the eyes, like bricks.

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

“Sir, would you like to talk on the rooftop?”

“story?”

“Let’s talk business!”

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

The boy asked me as the stars rose one by one on the border between day and night.

“I’ve been curious for a while now, sir. What do you do for a living?”

“What does that mean?”

“Every time you come here, you carry a lot of stuff. You even had a gun from the beginning. I thought you were a gangster, but you don’t seem to be. I’m curious because you look good and still carry a lot of stuff these days.”

“What do you think you’ll do?”

“Gangs? Looters?”

“How can you say that after looking into my kind eyes?”

“Are you a destructive person?”

The boy looked at a star and smiled faintly.

“I know right.”

“I wanted to be a doomsday person too.”

“okay?”

“Why? Isn’t it fun? Creating your own hideout and bringing in things to your liking. Didn’t you have fun, sir?”

“It was hard, but it was also fun. It was hard later on, though, when I ran out of money.”

The boy held out his notebook.

“I’ll trade you some cigarettes. Do you have a lot?”

“If I sell it to kids, I’ll go to jail?”

“These are the times, aren’t they? I’ll give a little to my pitiful dad who always walks around with a cigarette butt in his mouth, and I’ll sell the rest and buy my mom a present. Before I go to school!”

I sold cigarettes to the boy.

Although I bought it for a lot more than the market price, it was a pleasant deal in many ways.

When the deal was made, an old man with dementia who had been standing there like a still life turned his head this way and muttered something, but I couldn’t hear him clearly.

“If you go to that school, you won’t have to hear your mom and dad fighting anymore, right? You’ll also be able to send your grandparents to a good place.”

Even if I had heard it, I would have quickly forgotten it.

As we came down together, the boy’s joyful words made a much stronger impression.

He was a child with deep soul.

It’s so much that I wonder how a child like this can grow up in such a corner of the house.

The next day, when I was about to leave the international residence, the restaurant area had a festive atmosphere.

The restaurant was filled not with guests or residents, but with the landlady’s friends.

The landlady sat haughtily in the middle of the restaurant table between other women.

“I’m jealous. My kids hang out with all these bullies.”

“That test? I heard it was not easy to pass, but you managed to pass it?”

“I heard that the families of students admitted to Hunter School will be given a ticket to The Hope. Is that true?”

The landlady smiled brightly as she received countless compliments, envy, and jealousy.

“Oh my, our Youngmin’s dad. He’s a bit of a nemesis, but I’m a little grateful to him. For giving birth to such a great child. Well, Youngmin’s dad, even if people are lazy, they’re all good by nature, right?”

I left the residence after seeing a family on the verge of collapse come together more closely than any other family thanks to the boy’s determination.

The boy was very satisfied with his laptop.

SKELTON: (Skeleton Newcomb) It’s a new laptop haha

Although there were no comments, the number of views was quite high for my post.

This is a part where you can feel the envy and jealousy of your community colleagues.

The landlady’s proud smile was copied onto my face.

It was two months later that I re-read the Hunter School recruitment notice saved on my laptop.

By chance, I discovered the boy’s hidden personal folder.

The recruitment notice included a daily schedule, photos of friends from elementary school, photos of families overseas, etc., but there were a lot of photos of girls of the same age whose names I couldn’t remember.

I read the latter part of the recruitment notice, which I had not had time to read, with a hint of anxiety.

A warning notice written in the corner soon caught my eye as if by fate.

-The final successful candidate will undergo three high-level mental arousal tests and may be exposed to some accidents during the process.

“······It was a bit of an accident.”

That’s bullshit.

The test is linked to death.

I, as someone with more experience than anyone else, know this better.

It is a trial of death.

Filtering out those who are not chosen by God.

When I went back to Seoul, I stopped by the International Residence first.

It was unusual from the start.

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

I entered the store with a growing sense of anxiety.

As expected, the owner had changed.

“What’s going on? Is there anything you’re curious about?”

“That’s it. The previous owner······.”

Just then an old man passed by on the street outside the store.

The old man, with his tattered clothes and unwashed body, and the stragglers of a dying dog, resembled the old man who used to live in this house, despite the thick darkness.

“Don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t go···.”

The old man muttered and walked unsteadily, as if he were walking down an unfamiliar street.

Beyond, in the darkness of the street, a slender girl was smoking a cigarette while hanging out with a group of delinquents.

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

Our eyes met for a very brief moment, but the girl looked away, clearly showing her displeasure.

The moment I saw that sight, I stopped asking the question I was about to ask.

“No, it’s nothing.”

On the bright side of the street, vendors were soliciting customers by exchanging lottery tickets for cash.

He joined the group, asked the price of a lottery ticket, and exchanged one ticket for two cigarettes.

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

I don’t even know anything about that family.

Therefore, their fate is still hopeful.

It’s like my lottery ticket, which has already been drawn but I haven’t confirmed the results yet.