Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 243



Only Krnovel

102. Gray Dystopia (2)

According to the manual, in order to live like a human in this strange society called Jeju, you need to register as a resident.

I headed to the community center with an empty stomach.

There, I filed various registration reports and received an identification card.

A female employee who looked to be in her early 20s looked back and forth between my face and the documents, then smiled and said.

“Mr. Park Gyu is a new adult immigrant, so you have a one-week adjustment period? So you are exempt from work for a week.”

“Work?”

“Yes. I don’t know how you did it on the mainland, but in Jeju, everyone has to get an education or work. It’s an island that lacks everything, so there’s no room for idle surplus workers.”

“What do you do?”

“Mr. Park Gyu doesn’t have any special qualifications or degrees, so I think he’ll go to a factory or a farm or something like that.”

“······I am a former hunter.”

“Are you a former military man?”

The employee asks, slightly surprised.

He shook his head.

“No. I’m a hunter. The old school hunter.”

“That’s not on the record? No, there’s no code at all. The code is Hunter.”

“Is that so?”

I guessed it.

How mistreated our old school hunters will be in Jeju Island.

Well, in a place where Awaken is mainstream, there’s no way that something like ours, an old-fashioned relic, would work.

“Take the card. This card is like a check card in the old days, and in your case, Mr. Park Gyu, there’s quite a bit of credit loaded on it. There are shops nearby, so if you need anything, buy it. If you have the money, you can give it to me as a gift.”

The female employee smiled brightly and handed me her card.

“······.”

Is this some kind of compensation?

Judging from the fact that the female employee is treating him well, it seems he’s not really that bad.

In addition to the card, I received a cell phone that only works on Jeju Island, a guidebook containing information necessary for daily life, and a bundle of tissues made from recycled paper.

Unlike before the war, vinyl itself was precious, so the rolls of toilet paper were shaped like coins with a hole in the center.

“As I said before, think of it as a one-week adjustment period. When the adjustment period is over, you will receive a phone call.”

After bowing to the female employee, I left the community center.

At the entrance to the center, there was a large poster hanging on the door.

[ ※Recruitment of forward base workers※ ]

– Excluding work, learning, and training

– Free work, abundant food provided

– Performance evaluation and rewards based on length of service

– Preference will be given to those with experience fighting monsters or mutations.

Forward base?

Judging by the nuance, it seems to be referring to a small base beyond a concrete wall.

I don’t know about anything else, but the risk of death seems pretty high.

This fact can be clearly seen by looking at the size of the poster.

I left the community center behind and headed toward the shopping district.

The shopping district was next to the community center and surprisingly had everything you could want.

There are supermarkets, hardware stores, electronics stores, banks, and even gold and silver shops, beauty salons, and nail shops.

It really feels like we’re back to before the war.

Of course, the store I was looking for was included in it.

[ Harubang PC room ]

PC rooms are not unfamiliar places to me.

I went there often during my middle school years, and when I was in China, I visited there a few times when my classmates like Gong Kyung-min and other juniors suggested we go when I was on vacation in Shanghai.

As I opened the door, a familiar sight unfolded.

Computer desks and monitors facing each other in an orderly manner, people sitting in front of them, wearing headphones, absorbed in games or using the Internet, and a clerk busily walking between them.

I’ve often felt this way during roll call and meal times, but it’s hard to find anyone in this PC room other than boys and girls in their 20s.

The clerk came up to me, checked my card, and gave me some pointers.

“It seems like you’re here for the first time. This PC room can only be used for 2 hours a day, regardless of the number of people. After 2 hours, the computer will be turned off, regardless of the amount of credits charged.”

As expected, a dwindling time window reading “1 hour 59 minutes” is proudly positioned in the upper left corner of the screen.

With the help of the staff, I logged into the PC room client and looked at the screen.

Familiar screens appear.

What stands out is the game.

Large game icons took up most of the screen.

Games that have gained worldwide popularity include League of Legends and Milecraft.

In fact, many people were enjoying such games in PC rooms.

It was not a lie that Jeju Island provided a gaming environment similar to that before the war.

Of course, I didn’t come here to play games.

With sharp eyes, I searched for non-game things on the desktop filled with dizzying game icons.

Soon my eyes were caught by a small icon hidden in the corner.

[ Intranet ]

“······.”

Here it is.

Jeju Island’s internet bulletin board.

When I straighten my back and look at the monitors in front of me beyond the partition, I see a friend reading something that looks like a webtoon.

Unicorn18.

That guy must be here.

I know it well.

It might have been different in the old days when there were so many sites to visit, but now that most sites have disappeared and the number of Internet users has decreased by less than 10%, Internet travelers like us visit every site we can.

I did the same.

Although he is a named user of Viva! Apocalypse!, he spent more time inside PaleNet during its heyday.

It’s not like only interesting posts are posted on our bulletin board, and the number of quality posts is limited.

There is definitely a unicorn in here.

With that confidence, I double-clicked on the icon called Intranet.

Click click

[ Loading ]

A screen resembling a portal site I had seen somewhere appeared.

“Naver?”

Before I knew it, I ended up reciting the name of a portal site I used in the past.

Although the details are somewhat reduced, the site design itself is eerily similar to the portal I used to use.

It was to the point where it seemed like the company employees had deliberately modified it for use as an intranet.

It provided a variety of services, including news, movies, dramas, webtoons, calculators, calendars, and internet civil affairs services.

I clicked on the webtoon page.

“······.”

He nodded and smiled.

Philcrum.

This guy. He was alive.

I was drawing cartoons while alive on this land.

The reason we couldn’t contact you was probably because the government had seized the satellite internet equipment.

By the way, isn’t there something like a bulletin board?

there is.

[ Intranet public bulletin board ]

Here it is.

When I clicked on the bulletin board, another window popped up.

[ Please enter your user name . ]

As always, I entered the nickname Skeleton.

But that’s it.

It didn’t ask for my password or any annoying requests to click opt-in to receive optional advertising messages.

You can log in just by entering your nickname.

In a way, it has a more free spirit than Viva! Apocalypse!

But I don’t think it will be a big problem for the government.

Even in this PC room, there are surveillance cameras everywhere.

Even in front of me, there is a camera called a cam that is shining on my face.

The story is that if you set your mind to it, you can monitor everything.

Maybe it’s recording the records I wrote, the conversations I had, and even my facial expressions at the time.

Like the numerous closed-circuit cameras installed throughout the city.

Anyway, as soon as I entered my nickname, a bulletin board with different topics appeared in front of me.

League of Ready Mix

Milecraft

Lost Oak

Red Archive

Horse Musume

Webtoon

High Baduk

Tolerance is for children

Basketmans

…

…

There are quite a lot of numbers.

The topics are also diverse.

I clicked on the “Tolerance is for Children” bulletin board.

Bbampappapappa: That kid from U15 is fucking incompetent.

Puddingding: What is the name of the Dongducheon Messi team?

Spider-Man: Recruiting a Sub Goalkeeper for Team Nalsendol (Inexperienced is welcome)

Bismuth: Anyone have spare 280mm football boots? I can exchange them for 275mm (mine are brand new)

U15 Youth: Former national team reserve looking for a team, only teams that I think are good enough to respond

Dongducheon Messi: Looking for a team to play a friendly match on Sunday morning

…

….

I was a little surprised.

This is a surprisingly topic-focused bulletin board.

There are some criticisms and conflicts, but all the users on the bulletin board are talking about nothing but soccer.

Users who frequently post fishing posts, diaries, or strange photos on our bulletin board are nowhere to be found.

To summarize in one word, it is a bulletin board where only posts that fit the bulletin board topic are uploaded.

This could be said to be a landscape that truly embodies the ideal Internet culture.

But if you think about the fact that this ideal itself is a result of oppression, it wouldn’t be such a pleasant thing.

The people on this board know this.

That we should only talk about soccer here.

I feel once again that this is an “intranet” and not the “Internet.”

Anyway, now I have something I have to do.

You have to find a place among the many bulletin boards built in this oppressive virtual world called the intranet where the unicorn might be.

It’s not an easy task.

There are 42 bulletin boards here.

There is a way to search for them all one by one, but I only have one week.

After a week, I too will have to work here as a Jeju resident.

I don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s not going to be easy or comfortable.

Maybe the mutation farm the pilot was talking about is my new job?

Besides, a week is a short period of time.

Especially in a PC room like this where the time limit is 2 hours a day.

So, we need to find it quickly.

Most efficiently, as if our hunters were avoiding the monsters’ force fields and striking them with devastating blows.

I stared at the 42 bulletin boards without blinking.

A place where unicorns might be.

A place where he can settle down and take turns with our Viva! Apocalypse!

I need to find a bulletin board like that.

“······.”

My gaze soon settled on a bulletin board.

[ Red Archive Bulletin Board ]

Red Archive.

Was it a phone game with a lot of so-called 2D pretty girls?

The reason why I, a person who is light years removed from playing phone games, do not know about this game is because one of our message board users “proselytized” the game to us in a way that was not very appropriate.

I still remember.

unicorn18 : Red Archive Hotaru-chan.jpg

There was a scene where a picture of a pretty girl who wasn’t even 18 years old was uploaded and criticized by numerous users.

think.

There is no other place like here.

I immediately clicked on the bulletin board and went in.

“······.”

I kept my mouth shut.

It had to be that way.

The atmosphere of the bulletin board I had finally managed to enter had a completely different feeling of alienation from the places I had used before.

If I had to sum up the atmosphere of this unfamiliar bulletin board in one word, it would be “emoticons.”

The user here did not speak.

Emoticons featuring various 2D characters were their only means of expressing their emotions.

To briefly describe the bulletin board scene, it is as follows.

Kyaru: (crocodile-human emoticon giving a thumbs up)

Breadcrumbs: (cute girl swinging a jab emoji)

Hotaru Husband: (A cute girl comically shedding tears while having a lump in her throat)

Yabawi Desu-ne: (An emoticon of a character swinging a hammer that looks familiar)

Stir-fried Black Rice: (Emoticon of a cat character sleeping)

…

…

“······Speak human language.”

I muttered without realizing it.

At that moment, my eyes met with another user playing the game next to me.

A woman who appears to be in her late teens.

Although he had an ordinary appearance, his eyes had an eerie, bright light.

It’s away.

That too has quite a strong ability.

Shouldn’t it be at least level 5?

I turned my head and thought to myself,

I thought, “It’s Jeju Island.”

By the way, how can you find a unicorn in such a bizarre place where you can’t find one?

I proudly use the Skeleton nickname, but would I ever find a unicorn in a place like this?

I took a deep breath and stared at the monitor.

There will be a way.

I scrolled down and explored every nook and cranny of the site, with posts filled with emojis.

“······.”

There is no answer in sight.

No matter how much I scroll down, there is only a feast of emoticons.

What are they trying to say in a place like this?

Maybe there’s an encrypted message that I don’t know about and I’m replying with an emoticon?

So, isn’t this just a trick to fool the Jeju government officials?

But even if there is such a gimmick, there is no way for me to participate in it.

I’m not as good with computers as Valentine or John Nae-non, nor am I as good with mechanical devices as Ha Tae-hoon.

There is only one thing I can do.

SKELTON: Is there a unicorn here?

He speaks human language alone in a place where human language is not used.

There is no answer.

Users just randomly attach their own emoticons.

I took a deep breath and looked at the time.

1 hour and 10 minutes left.

If it’s long, it’s a long time.

But even such time would be meaningless in this strange realm.

I took a deep breath and collected my thoughts.

And then I tap on the keyboard.

Knock knock

A sentence was completed and the Enter key was pressed.

SKELTON: Is Na Hye-in here?

For some reason, I excluded Kang Han-min, one of the suspects of the Unicorn.

I’m not quite sure why.

Whether it is because of the aversion to Kang Han-min, the sense of indebtedness towards him, or the resentment.

Maybe it’s because I want the unicorn to be Na Hye-in.

Anyway, the answer to that question was not found, at least not within the bulletin board.

Bam!

The door to the PC room opened and police officers with guns appeared and surrounded me.

“Is that you?”

I was arrested by them without any problem.

Since he didn’t put up any resistance, he wasn’t treated that harshly.

The police officer who was checking my identity in the interrogation room sighed and said.

“The Guard. 13th class. Park Gyu. Former Hunter. Now known as the Old School Hunter. And I think my old classmate Na Hye-in is there, so I made that chat, right?”

He nodded.

What I say is true.

He nodded to his subordinate.

The police took off the handcuffs.

“This is just this one time.”

The police officer said, smoking a cigarette.

“I am releasing you because you have contributed to the government. If not, you would have had a hard time.”

“······.”

“Please refrain from making useless comments on the intranet. This is not the Republic of Korea you know.”

He gestured.

The men took me out.

But my story isn’t over yet.

“excuse me.”

He looked back and called a police officer.

He looked at me with tired eyes.

“Where is Kang Han-min and Na Hye-in?”

The police tried to drag me out by force.

I held on by force.

When the two men couldn’t budge, one of the policemen raised his baton.

“Stop. This guy deserves to be heard. He’s his comrade.”

A police officer stopped the police.

He came toward me, blowing smoke from his cigarette.

“Kang Han-min is in the cracks. He is still our hope. And Na Hye-in······.”

The police officer finished the rest of his speech feebly, exhaling thick smoke from his cigarette.

“The person was broken.”

“?”

“You’re saying you don’t come out of the house?”