Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 371



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Hiding a House in the Apocalypse Chapter 377

152. Record (2)

They say that when a tiger dies, it leaves its skin behind, and when a person dies, it leaves its name behind. But when you look back on the history of mankind over half a millennium, how many people have left their names behind?

All that a person can leave behind are his descendants and a few records.

Diaries and memoirs are widely cited examples, but they may not resonate well with people living in the 21st century.

My mentor, Jang Gi-yeong, was probably the last realistic generation to write down their daily impressions and thoughts in a crumpled notebook.

This is probably not because the human desire to record things has decreased, but rather because the tools we primarily use have shifted from pen and paper to keyboard, mouse, and LCD screen.

Before I retired, I volunteered at an elementary school in Seoul to teach about monsters and mutations. When I went to the classroom, there was a machine I had never seen before.

It was a steel box, like something you would see in a large server room.

I still remember the teacher who was in charge of guiding us smiling and answering when I asked where it was used.

“It’s a tablet charger. Kids these days all study with tablets.”

“Are the tablets all paid for by parents?”

“No. The country buys them all at once and provides them free of charge. If some people use expensive ones and others use cheap ones, wouldn’t there be complaints?”

A child is a mirror of an adult.

In fact, we adults are more accustomed to leaving traces using computers than paper.

In particular, the Internet provides sufficient information about the life trajectory of a person in the IT era.

It’s not for nothing that the police conduct forensic examinations of cell phones when investigating criminals.

Just by looking at the list of search terms, you can infer what that person is interested in and what he or she might be thinking at the time.

Community sites like our bulletin board go one step further and provide in-depth information that can even penetrate a person’s thoughts, beliefs, and even ideologies.

Of course, for someone like me who strictly separates the internet and reality, this is an impossible story, but it is possible for me.

Most people unconsciously project their reality onto the Internet.

Then what about Kang Han-min?

Now, I have records of the past, even though they are records of the past, stored on the servers of the largest portal site in Korea and foreign search portals, and I have experts who can help me interpret those records.

My friend Valentine is also an excellent network expert, but the person Woo Min-hee gave him has experience running a server management office at a large company.

“Let’s take a look.”

And so the Internet world, where time had stopped four years ago, was revived.

It is said that the past buried in memories is more beautiful than the present actually experienced.

It was indeed so.

[ Popularity-rising fancy bags ♡ Check out the lowest prices~ ]

This is what I think when I see the colorful, flashy advertising banners that I used to get sick of.

Of course, clicking on that banner doesn’t make time go back to the past.

It’s just a vivid fragment of a good old time.

What’s important is the record left by a man named Kang Han-min in the Internet world.

“First, I’ve compiled the internet records of the person you mentioned. The evidence would be IP address, unique mobile phone ID, and accounts on sites tracked through these.”

He approached me with a bitter smile as he sent me a text file containing Kang Han-min’s whereabouts, which he had compiled separately.

“Are they people with the same name?”

The reason he immediately brought up the issue of namesakes is because the internet history of the user I pointed out, Kang Han-min, does not match that of the famous savior, Kang Han-min.

In reality, Kang Han-min’s internet life was not desirable, even to say the least.

You could call him a typical community addict.

Although there are extenuating circumstances where I had no choice but to rely on the community in the extreme situation of war, Kang Han-min showed symptoms of community addiction even before the war, when relations with China were good.

The strange article by Kang Han-min that I accidentally clicked on a while ago is probably in that context.

Gong Kyung-min and other team members who are now deceased have also reported that Kang Han-min writes strange things on the Internet.

“That guy. You know. What kind of writing is that? He’s a so-called hunter, but he’s not a shut-in.”

To sum it up in one word, it’s nonsense.

Just as we eat and poop, Kang Min-do also spit out nonsense in the world called the Internet.

However, the mud that is not much different from poop is now one of the few records that helps us understand the changed Kang Han-min.

Understanding Kang Han-min is as important as finding information about the general type.

Neither Woo Min-hee nor Na Hye-in showed a particularly friendly reaction to Kang Han-min.

In Na Hye-in’s case, she didn’t say anything directly, but Woo Min-hee openly criticized Kang Han-min at a drinking party the other day.

“Nobody knows what he’s thinking. He doesn’t tell anyone. Whether the Jeju Committee kids are messing around or a few people are accidentally swept away in the crack, he doesn’t express anything. He just keeps his mouth shut and goes in and out of the crack.”

You can’t read their thoughts and they don’t share the conversation.

It’s not a very desirable attitude, but it’s definitely not hunter-like.

For us Hunters, who were born as part of a team with a shared destiny, not communicating is no different than denying our own qualifications as Hunters.

Now, we will dig into Kang Han-min’s records.

The technicians say they found records from 10 years before the war to just before the war.

There are three sites that Kang Han-min mainly used.

The first is a portal site that everyone in Korea uses.

Aside from running a blog that is now closed and the record erased, and a brief history of working at a cafe that trades used goods, his only experience is trading online products ordered domestically.

Here, the only place where we can find some change in Kang Min is in his online shopping transaction records. While 10 years ago, he mainly purchased sneakers, casual clothes, and games, after he became aware of Awaken, he mainly purchased camping and fishing gear.

Search terms that were considered the most important clues were also mostly related to shopping.

The last one I searched was written a month before the war broke out, and its contents are as follows:

[ Single-person furnace performance ]

The second site is a Chinese shopping site.

This one is unrecoverable since there is no data left, but that doesn’t mean much.

The last site is what I’m most excited about.

That’s right, this is the community that Kang Han-min mainly used.

Kang Han-min’s nonsense, which was discovered on the dormitory computer a while ago, was also found on this community bulletin board.

Fortunately, the engineer reportedly succeeded in restoring all of the posts Kang Min had written in the community.

“I couldn’t retrieve all the image files or video files, but I was able to roughly restore them to some extent.”

But then one problem arose.

“······.”

There are a lot of articles written.

[ 52,352 posts / 152,421 comments ]

They say the more data the better, but having this much is just a burden.

Seriously, when will I ever finish reading this?

First of all, according to the conservative writing-to-comment ratio theory, Kang Han-min’s writing-to-comment ratio is 1:3, which is considered good.

The story is that he is the type of person who talks appropriately and also listens to other people’s stories.

I took a quick look at the extensive writings of Kang Hanmin.

Kang Han Nam: How much would a 4-year-old Gulka sell for if you put it on Carrot?

Kang Han Nam: Hey, what do you think of the Monsya SN panel monitor?

Strong Man: The Life of an Alpha Male.gif

Kang Han Nam: Is this a heart? A watermelon?

Kang Han Nam: Hey, Otchigin-ah~ Did you apply for the youth monthly rent support?

Kang Han Nam: Spoiler) Found at school with his clothes still on

Strong Man: White middle school student, candid shot.jpg

Kang Han Nam: I also want to get a French and Japanese certificate.

Kang Han Nam: Tonight.jpg

Kang Han Nam: I freed all four of the Usum Shinsoo!

…

…

“······.”

Click

I clicked on the photo of a white 3rd grader.

It was a photo of three Western monks taking a commemorative photo in front of a temple with a beautiful mountain view.

“······.”

It’s not easy, Kang Han-min.

After being struck by a sudden blow, I tried to organize Kang Han-min’s voluminous writings.

Kang Han-min was active on various bulletin boards within the vast community, but the one he mostly used was a small game bulletin board located in the outskirts.

Here, let’s hear from Internet expert Hong Da-jeong.

“Oh? That bulletin board?”

Indeed, Hong Da-jeong knew the history of the bulletin board where Kang Han-min was active.

“It was once prosperous, but due to poor management, all the people left and it became a ruin? That’s what it feels like.”

Kang Han-min has been active on that bulletin board for over 10 years.

In a sense, we lived in the same era.

The moment I learned that fact, my blood boiled slightly.

It seemed as if the true face of Kang Han-min, a human being who had been shrouded in mystery for so long and who had once tried to ignore it, would be revealed to me at any moment.

But the numbers of over 50,000 written posts and 150,000 comments are not just decoration.

I scrolled until my eyes were bloodshot, but I couldn’t find a single nutritious article.

However, one feature could be found.

That means Kang Han-min and I are similar.

Although it was hard to see because it was buried in a lot of nonsense, Kang Han-min seemed to be the type of person who, like me, thoroughly separates the internet from reality.

The writings he wrote were clearly frivolous, humorous, and demanded a certain kind of communication, but the individual called “Kang Han-min” was completely excluded from those numerous writings.

He wrote the article solely under the user name “Kang Han-nam,” and there were almost no clues found in it that could suggest that he was a human named Kang Han-min.

The only thing that revealed the suffering of the human being, Kang Hanmin, was his primitive grumbling.

Kang Han-nam: I have to go to work today too······.

The date of writing of the article, written with a Chinese IP, is when he was active in China.

That was also the time before he joined the same team as me, when he was suffering all kinds of persecution and discrimination from Jang Gi-yeong’s faction.

During that period, which could be called a truly dark period in his life in a sense, Kang Han-min expressed his feelings only once, through a very short sentence.

Kang Han Nam: Sigh······ This is really fucking hard······.

Judging by the date, it was probably written around the time when he had made a mistake that resulted in deaths among the Chinese military and Jang Gi-yeong had personally called him and threatened to hand him over to a Chinese military court if he did not return to Korea immediately.

After this brief expression of feelings, a procession of mud-like words continues, flowing steadily and powerfully like the Han River.

While I was scrolling through Kang Han-min’s nonsense with a blank face, I realized that Kang Han-min seemed to like “fishing.”

On the internet or in real life.

He certainly has a knack for catching people.

It’s been 10 hours since we analyzed Kang Hanmin’s internet history.

All the engineers who were there have left work.

I turned on the electric heater, drank my precious canned coffee, and recharged my energy for a moment before reading the remaining posts.

There are still 30,000 left.

“······.”

There is no answer like this.

You can’t read everything.

You have to do it wisely.

Rather than foolishly reading the entire text, wouldn’t it be easier to reach the conclusion I want if I categorized it by the time period when changes occurred in Kang Han-min’s life and focused on that part?

I immediately reconstructed Kang Hanmin’s extensive writings by period.

The most important time would be after Kang Hanmin’s awakening, also known as alpha awakening.

Even after becoming Awaken, Kang Han-min continued to post on game bulletin boards in his hometown.

Beep– beep– beep–

As I was sorting Kang Han-min’s writings by period, feeling ambitious again, my phone rang.

[ 01410 ]

Woo Min-hee’s number.

In the new Seoul, cell phone signals work, so people carry cell phones instead of the heavy K-walkie-talkies.

“Senior. How are things going?”

A voice that has become much brighter.

It wasn’t always bright, but I feel like there’s a subtle difference from the past.

Perhaps, as she talked about that day, she was able to let go of some of the burden on her mind.

“······So-so.”

“I see.”

“But what happened? All of a sudden?”

“Oh, it’s nothing. Someone I know asked me for help.”

“who?”

“Mr. Ha Tae-hoon? I’ve heard that name somewhere. Anyway.”

“Hey, senior?”

“It’s not urgent, but they say they’re waging a war of nerves with the remnants of the Legion. I told Mr. Kim Byeong-cheol to send artillery support if needed.”

It is very unfortunate, but I think we will have to postpone the analysis of the human Kang Han-min.

Well, judging by the pattern so far, it doesn’t seem like you’d get the information you want by reading the entire article.

But there is something like this.

Whenever I try to end something halfway, there’s always an opportunity that’s hard to pass up.

It’s still like that now.

Kang Han Nam: Spoiler) There is one thing I have kept hidden from my friends on the bulletin board······.

“······.”

There’s a very good chance this is a clickbait, but timing is important.

This article was written a month before the war broke out.

This was written at a time when anyone in a high-ranking position like Kang Min knew that war was coming.

This is certain.

This will be the first time that Kang Han-min takes off his mask as a strong man and honestly reveals himself to his friends on the bulletin board with whom he has been with for 10 years.

“······.”

Click

– I thought there would be a Sparcraft Lip Version 1.16.1 download. It was truly an overwhelming feeling. Thank you, Bond. Thanks to you, I feel so much better. You don’t have to thank me. Kim smiled and held out her hand. Nicola shook hands with a happy face.

…

…

“What the hell?”

I was just about to give up and leave.

One post title that was literally a piece of crap caught my eye as if it were fate.

Strong Man: No

At first glance, it may seem like a meaningless piece of writing like any other.

But I remember.

That word, Aniki, was the title that Kang Min often used to call me before he became Awaken.

Because I was in a precarious position where I was always being harassed and had to be careful, I only used it by surprise when we were alone, and only when I let my guard down.

I guess it might have been a show of friendliness, but I always turned away when he reached out.

“······.”

I am now finally holding the cold hand that was extended to me 10 years ago.

The content of the post was short, like most of his other posts.

– Now there really is no one but me.

This is what Kang Hanmin said to me directly.

This is the first time he has expressed his true feelings to me since becoming Awaken.

At least I feel that way.