Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 161



Only Krnovel

Episode 161

It was after a brief but intense second cold snap that the terrorist leader who attacked the Incheon government facility was captured.

On a bitterly cold night when the thermometer read minus 30 degrees Celsius, government troops raided Shelter No. 13, discovered crucial evidence including a number of mortars, and arrested the shelter’s director, Eom Nak-su, on charges of rebellion.

The uncommon name Eom Nak-su was an unfamiliar name to me, but his face, revealed at the arrest scene on Palenet, was strangely familiar.

Where have I seen it?

My network is neither wide nor deep.

At best, he has connections at school, but when I look back on my time at school – during my time dispatched to China – as an instructor and during my short time working at the front lines, he is someone I have never seen even once.

Then where did you see it?

You may have seen him at the John Nae-non meeting, but he was not an attendee of the shabby first meeting.

The face that probably existed in that scenery was that of a diligent m9 who was grilling meat diligently.

But even if I saw him at a gathering with a lot of people, I’m not sure.

Would you seriously remember a face you saw briefly in such a crowded place?

Given my personality, it’s impossible.

Following Jang Gi-yeong’s one of the few correct teachings that memory is our weapon and must always be sharpened, I do not do anything so wasteful as to remember each and every face of an unspecified number of people.

It’s like that now, but it must have been worse in the past.

Then, is this someone you met while working part-time to survive right before the war?

After the bunker was almost completed, he worked various day jobs until the war broke out.

They especially preferred places that gave cash, as creditors could seize their bank accounts.

No matter how much a person is, he or she needs to eat warm food.

Of course, there was food stored in the bunker, but eating it before the war even started seemed like an act of self-denial.

So I had to do the work.

But what should I do?

As a former hunter, what I can do is to use my experience as a hunter to get a job in a related field.

To be honest, with my level of experience, I could make more than most professionals.

But such jobs are inevitably taken away when war breaks out.

I had to find something else to do.

But the funny thing about this hunter career is that there is nothing you can do other than being a hunter.

In reality, his education level is considered to be that of a middle school graduate, and his military service is even treated as unfulfilled.

This may be due to the special nature of the school and the Hunters, but how many people would listen if I explained that to them?

Anyway, there were restrictions on what bank transactions, middle school graduates, and those who had not completed military service could do.

It’s a job where people are easily chosen and people leave easily.

I looked at all kinds of job advertisements, tried many different jobs, and was pursued.

If we look at the original text, Chuno refers to a series of actions or people involved in chasing runaway slaves, but in reality, it refers to the actions of people who run away while working part-time, in small and medium-sized businesses, or in factories.

The thing that caught my eye the fastest was the meat restaurant.

A so-called shooter, a woman younger than me, was demonstrating how to clean a griddle by scrubbing the greasy and soot-covered griddle with a steel scrubber with a blank expression on her face, looking more like a machine with no emotions than a person.

I was afraid that I would end up like that, so I made an excuse that I was smoking a cigarette and ran away without looking back.

The owner’s consideration of installing three CCTVs in the kitchen was also one of the causes of the incident.

I worked at a cafe for a while, and I was annoyed by the fact that there were guys much younger than me who would pretend to be my superiors and secretly ignore me. I wonder if those guys are dead by now?

The only place I worked for a long time was at a gas station.

I worked for two whole months.

Gas stations don’t care about age.

Rather than age, I prefer someone who will stick with me for a long time and work hard.

The gas station I worked at was one of the top 3 gas stations in South Korea.

It seems like about 1,000 cars came in every day.

The secret was lower gas prices than elsewhere and state-of-the-art automatic car washes, of which there were only two in Korea.

I heard that the CEO has a senior in the oil business among his connections, and he can keep the price of oil low by buying it in cash.

That wasn’t a place to make money with oil.

The low price of oil was merely an incentive, and the gas station’s business model was to make money by washing cars with the latest car wash equipment for those who came to fill up their tanks.

Of course, cash is preferred for car wash fees.

As a result, there were always dozens of cars lined up at the car wash, and my main job was to push those many cars into the car wash.

“Come straight in. Yes, stop! Put the gear in neutral, sir! Put the gear in neutral! Neutral! Neutral!”

Kindness wasn’t very important there.

People don’t go out of their way to seek out friendly places, because they want to go to places where the gas is cheaper even by 1 won.

One time, the owners of nearby gas stations cut off our gas station and lowered their prices.

That was the first time I realized that flies could also fly into our gas station.

The president had the typical black corporate CEO mindset.

Should we call it the behavior of selecting people and using them?

The people he prefers are not competent or honest people.

Of course, ability and sincerity are important factors in evaluating talent, but the talent that the CEO most preferred was someone who had nowhere else to go.

The boss’s way of doing this was to give desperate people a mere 3 million won a month and fill his stomach by taking hundreds of millions of won a month.

Now that I look at it, that guy named Eom Nak-su looks similar to the owner of a gas station.

It’s hard to say for sure because the image quality is blurry, but if the president, who had a plump face at the time, had lost weight, wouldn’t he have looked like that?

In particular, the protruding chin and the face that looks young with a bad connotation are exactly the characteristics of the president I knew.

It’s quite interesting to imagine how a greedy, selfish, and violent evil CEO who only cared about himself becomes the leader of a resistance group against tyranny.

For someone like me who has an excessive amount of time to kill, this would be enough of a task to blow away the boredom of a day.

Unfortunately, in Palenet, the heroic side of Eom Nak-su – that he did not reveal anything about his comrades even under severe torture – was highlighted, but the motive and circumstances behind his rebellion were not revealed.

The information released on Naranet is that Eom Nak-su was the director of the 13th shelter and was arrested as the main culprit in leading the attack on the government area on Christmas Eve after receiving weapons from the Legion faction.

I searched every nook and cranny of PaleNet for information about Eom Nak-su, but I didn’t find much useful information.

However, the only information we know about Eom Nak-su is that he has a violent and hasty personality and speaks in a Gyeongsang dialect.

I heard that the owner of our gas station is from Ulsan or nearby.

It seems like the family had quite a bit of wealth.

If only he could open a gas station for a college dropout.

I heard that your wife’s family is also quite wealthy.

That was the first time I realized that market traders handled so much money.

Anyway, Eom Nak-su was very stubborn and was especially harsh towards his subordinates.

He had a peculiar way of dealing with his employees: he would call them by shouting at them in an incomprehensible manner before calling their names.

He treated me the same way, and as I was an expert on Chuno at the time, I immediately confronted the boss about it.

“I can’t eat this because it looks like shit. Fuck!”

After I took off my clothes and smashed the locker shut, I was smoking a cigarette in front of the gas pump when the manager, who had been treating me like a slave instead of the boss, approached me and advised me to work for a few more days.

It was a time when every penny counted, so I held on tight and tried to work one more day. Fortunately, Eom Nak-su at least treated me with some degree of courtesy after that.

He even called me Mr. Park Gyu.

Although he is a greedy, rude, and uglier person, we cannot help but acknowledge Eom Nak-su’s abilities as a self-employed person.

“·····I failed three times. Twice, my parents helped me, and once, my in-laws helped me, so I was barely able to get back on my feet. I tried to do it one more time, and it turned out to be a huge success. I can’t believe it either.”

Even if you have a lot of help from your family, it’s not easy to get back up after failing three times.

The financial burden is a burden, but when you fail to that extent, your spirit is bound to break.

Moreover, although he was harsh to his employees, he seemed to be very polite to at least those he called “brother.”

As soon as he heard the news of his brother’s death at 2 in the morning, he put on a suit and drove to Busan.

It wasn’t my mother’s funeral, but my grandmother’s funeral, who was in her nineties.

Moreover, although he treated his employees rudely, he was thorough in calculating money.

Unlike employers who delay payment day after day and try to cut down on the amount with all sorts of excuses whenever they get the chance, Eom Nak-su even gave a bonus of 200,000 won to those he thought were okay.

This Park Gyu-do is one of the few model employees who received the 200,000 won.

The food my wife makes, as well as the variety of side dishes and ingredients, are all excellent.

Regardless of anything else, it is an undeniable fact that Eom Nak-su is a successful CEO.

Could it be his experience as a businessman that made him the leader of the resistance?

But even if we assume that Eom Nak-su was the director of the shelter, it is difficult to explain why he attacked the government no matter how much we rack our brains.

Also, the heroic aspect of not opening his mouth even under severe torture is an attribute that the Eom Nak-su I know does not have.

Perhaps there was a trigger that moved him.

He had a son who was in high school.

I wasn’t very good at studying, I had no interest in my studies, and my boss had no intention of sending me to a prestigious university.

He was a moderately cheerful and moderately indifferent guy.

He knew that we would quit quickly and disappear quickly, but he was quick-witted enough to keep a proper distance and be polite without letting it show.

Could it be that the son was a victim of government policy?

Our boss, if nothing else, took incredible care of his son.

I still remember what he said with a slightly drunken look on his face when we were having a drink in the break room with snacks prepared by his wife.

“I won’t send my child to college. When I was young, there was a culture where you had to be a swindler to be treated like a human being, but now it’s all about money. It’s a world where rich kids are considered nobles and poor kids are considered inferiors. I’m going to open a gas station for you.

If I teach you and pull you along, you might earn more than me?

If the son died because of the government, it is possible that his passion for collecting money like a ghoul could have transformed into anger toward the government.

While my imagination was running wild, new information came up on PaleNet.

They say that the reason Eom Nak-su decided to rebel was because of his children.

“······.”

So he was the boss after all.

The evil boss who had been filling his stomach by replacing people like parts and exploiting people who had nowhere to go like rascals lost everything when the war broke out and barely managed to become the director of a shelter in Incheon.

He rose to a position of great virtuousness, but did he become a revolutionary after losing his child?

I remember that I parted ways with Eom Nak-su on good terms.

It must have been about a month before the war broke out.

I received information from a junior I wasn’t very close with.

That China will start a war soon.

At the time I couldn’t tell who moved that junior, but now I can say for sure.

Perhaps it was my classmate, Gong Gyeong-min, who moved that junior.

It must have been the last gift he gave me, with whom we had already lost touch.

Anyway, before I left, Eom Nak-su either felt attached to me or recognized my ability to handle regular customers, so he tried to stop me from leaving.

“Manager Park.”

It had become an exaggeration without me knowing.

Of course, the money I received was the same as my part-time colleagues.

He suddenly opened his mouth seriously, looking into space with wise eyes like an old man who had lived his whole life.

“If you want to make real money, you have to be in business. Doctors? They have to work until they’re old and worn out. And they have to deal with people. If you want to make real money, you shouldn’t be working.

Even if I don’t do anything, the kids below me earn money like they’re working in an auto workshop. That’s how you make real money. Don’t you want to make money like that? I’ll teach you. They don’t even teach you this kind of thing in school.

“How about a small one? I can give you up to 350 a month.”

In fact, the boss’s intention might have been my insignificant career history as shown on my resume.

I was a bank-unbanked person, a middle school graduate, and had not completed military service, so I was enough to be seen as the kind of person he liked and had no place to go.

Well, personally, I felt like he was secretly acknowledging my abilities.

I don’t think I told the former chief, who recommended Chuno, that I would teach him how to do the job.

I said to the boss with a little gratitude.

“There will be a war soon. And it will happen within this year.”

Although I spoke with sincerity, what appeared on the president’s lips was a clear sneer.

“Manager Park, were you by any chance a doomsday activist?”

He left me, laughing heartily.

That was our last conversation.

It failed three times and got back up each time, but it seems it was destined not to recover from its fourth default.

The news that that Eom Nak-su was executed behind a military court an hour ago was posted on Palenet.

The exact motive was also revealed at that time: it was because of his missing daughter who was on board the evacuation ship.

“Daughter..?”

Wasn’t he our boss?

I ran to the cabinet, unpacked the messy paperwork in the apple box, and found my old gas station employment contract.

The results came out soon.

“······It was Jang.”

It was a bit of a waste of time, but it wasn’t a bad game.

I was able to kill the day quite enjoyably.

Following the Defender siblings yesterday, mother and daughter Rebecca suddenly left my territory.

End

ⓒ Road Warrior #dp8g

(Main comments)

(cure****) -Recommendation63-

The author’s writing skills are amazing.

It is good to turn your attention to the memories and end the actual breakup in a simple one-line sentence, so the breakup situation can easily be dragged on for a long time.

It’s a one-time finish

(redra***) -Recommendation56-

After Rebecca and her daughter left, I was mentally exhausted and spent the day just sitting around blankly thinking about useless things…

(song***) -Recommendation 53-

Hmm… You’re giving 300 a month to a middle school graduate with no work experience, and then you’re telling him to quit after two months and give him a 50% raise to teach him how to do his job? No matter how I think about it, he’s a real boss.

By the way, the Defender siblings and mother and daughter Rebecca have left. I’m worried about Park Gyu’s mental state.

(plan**) -Recommendation 48-

Meanwhile, M9 has become a good friend who grills meat well again.

(circ**) -Recommendation39-

You’re really good at playing alone

(Antimatter**) -Recommendation 28-

Hey, you idiot. It’s not something that can be explained in two lines like that.

(Green bean**) -Recommendation 15-

What kind of story are you trying to tell with the Tang family by bringing up such a long and detailed old story, Mr. Skelton…

(word***) -Recommendation 10-

Wow, you keep mumbling about trivial things and then finally throw in a major story.

The author’s writing skills are really amazing.

(OneTwo***) -Recommendation8-

A fun day at Skeleton’s even if it doesn’t go round and round

(krav***) -Recommendation 7-

Wow, the ending was creepy…

So this is how you can create a breakup scene.

The author really writes well.

(Calfran***) -Recommendation-

A resting flower