Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 70



Only Krnovel

42. Paradise (3)

“What? A health checkup? What’s that?”

“Medical check.”

“Aha. But is that possible?”

Among my neighbors, the only ones with questionable health are the sniper mother and daughter.

I persuaded her to come for a health checkup with me.

“Camp Dutch Goose.”

Rebecca muttered, looking at the old US military base with gloomy eyes.

“What kind of place is it?”

An air force base storing tactical nuclear weapons.

This is the rough information I have.

As soon as the war began, the US military quickly evacuated its bases and recovered strategic assets.

“That’s where my husband was.”

“husband?”

“I was in Daegu. My husband is here.”

“Where did your husband go?”

“You must have gone to America.”

“That’s fortunate.”

“I’m looking it up on the internet.”

Her eyes were bloodshot from being on the internet all night, but she looked determined and determined.

She added quietly, holding her daughter’s hand.

“I don’t want to have a daughter without a father.”

I understand what you mean.

He looked at her and spoke sincerely.

“I hope you find your husband.”

I entered the US military base with Rebecca and her daughter.

Now it is not the US military that has occupied the base, but Park Cheol-ju’s people.

They seemed quite surprised when I brought along some unfamiliar strangers.

“What, what is it?”

“Foreigner? You’re wearing a US military uniform?”

“What about the child?”

Amid the commotion, a man approached me.

This is Park Cheol-jun’s son-in-law, Koo Seong-jun.

“What are these people?”

“He is my relative.”

“Are you a relative?”

Kim Pil-seong tilted his head and looked at Rebecca.

“Are you a relative······?”

“She’s my brother’s wife. So she’s my older sister.”

“Don’t you call me Sister-in-law?”

“Oh, I’m a bit international, so I don’t know much about family relations.”

Gu Seong-jun made a face as if to ask what that had to do with anything, but he didn’t say anything.

I left him to be thought of as an ignorant person.

“Come this way.”

Jun Koo guided us into an underground US military facility.

The inside of the facility was relatively neat and tidy, and one of the rooms was decorated as a pretty decent infirmary.

Inside the infirmary, there were medical beds, ringers, and medical equipment neatly arranged on silver trays.

Rebecca, who was secretly dissatisfied, held her daughter’s hand tightly when she saw the scene in the infirmary.

Seeing the neatly organized medical equipment seems to give a sense of trust.

“Where is the doctor?”

When I asked, Jun Koo suddenly put on a white gown, turned on the medical light, and put on a reflector and a stethoscope.

“I am a doctor.”

Gu Seong-jun smiled bitterly and held out his cell phone, showing his past self.

He was a doctor at a university hospital, that is, a professor.

“Okay, let’s begin.”

The examination has begun.

They performed tests such as drawing blood, opening my mouth and putting cold iron on my tongue, measuring my blood pressure and eyesight, and tapping my knees with a strange hammer.

Jun Koo looked at me with some surprise.

“I heard you live in a poor environment······.”

“I live a life in harmony with nature.”

“I see. But if you live in the wild, most people die.”

That’s a good point.

If he were just thrown into nature, even Park Gyu-do would die.

“What about me?”

“You are very healthy. You are as healthy as our chairman.”

My turn is over.

Next up is the mother and daughter snipers.

Although Rebecca whined, Jun Seong spoke fluent English and had a knack for soothing people.

I was worried that Rebecca would be talking nonsense, but at least she didn’t make any mistakes when it came to English.

Swoon reacted in an uncharacteristic way, not understanding some of the difficult terms that Jun Koo used.

Every time, Rebecca would stroke Suu’s head and whisper something in her ear.

The sight was quite pleasant.

I felt like I was brought to the right place.

After Rebecca and her daughter’s examination was over, Jun Koo approached me.

“Your sister-in-law and her daughter are in relatively good health. I would say they are average for this age. I am concerned that they are chronically malnourished and have vitamin deficiencies. I will have to wait for the blood test results to know the exact results.”

Jun Koo stood up from his seat.

“The blood test will take about a day.”

Harura.

I think it’ll feel quite long.

He asked in passing, pretending to buckle up his belt.

“Are you going to Jeju Island together?”

“yes?”

He looked at me.

“Are you going to Jeju Island with the chairman?”

“No, I’m not going.”

“The plane was nice, wasn’t it?”

“Gulfstream. A toy for the world’s rich.”

“Who is controlling it?”

“We have a pilot. Our chairman also had a pilot’s license when he was young. Oh, I have a license too. It’s an American light aircraft license.”

A smile appeared on Guseongjun’s face as he talked about airplanes.

“Is your wife with you?”

Jun Koo shook his head, wiping the smile from his lips.

“He died in the last bombardment. Together with his child.”

With a face devoid of any emotion, he told the terrible truth.

He spoke so thoughtlessly that it sounded like he was talking about someone else.

“sorry.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry about. It’s just the reality. There are countless people who have suffered much worse than me, so I guess that’s just how it is.”

Jun Koo sighed.

“If you have no place to go, ask Mr. Kim Pil-seong. He will help you find a good place.”

“Is this a good seat?”

“You know the Legion Faction, right?”

“Of course I know”

“They’re always recruiting capable hunters. I heard that the person in charge is someone who is a junior of Mr. Kim Pil-seong. Maybe you know each other?”

“Are you my junior?”

“Yes. She is a woman.”

“What’s your name?”

“Well, that’s fine. I think he was short. He looks about the same age as you. He looks a little younger, but he’s definitely not in his early to mid twenties.”

Then a woman came into the examination room.

“Professor, Mr. Kim Pil-seong is looking for you.”

“Oh, yes. Just a moment.”

Jun Koo apologized to me and left.

Before leaving, he looked back at me and said something.

“Oh, the blood test results will come out tomorrow. Come back again. It’s close.”

After he left, he joined Rebecca and her daughter.

The two looked quite satisfied.

Sue was holding an ice cream cone in her hand, and Rebecca was bending down to take a big bite of her daughter’s.

Suu tried to nag her in English, but Rebecca couldn’t respond properly because her mouth was full of something cold. She also grabbed her head, perhaps because she suddenly had a headache from eating so much cold food.

“Mom. You’re going too far.”

After the commotion died down, the mother and daughter looked at me simultaneously.

“Thank you, Skeleton.”

“thank you.”

I sent the two back first.

The two of them rode their bikes together leisurely toward the green meadow.

I was lost in thought for a moment as I watched them disappear.

“······Phew.”

Who is the person in charge of the legion faction that Gungjun Koo talked about earlier?

Could it be Kim Da-ram?

Is this the Kim Da-ram who has now lost contact, has no news of him, and even had his radio stolen by another guy?

Kim Da-ram is a nice guy.

We get along well, he’s quick-witted, and he’s good at dealing with people.

Of course, there are also downsides.

He has a personality that is overly demanding of favors.

Especially, if you hold a grudge, you will never forgive.

The reason why people keep calling Lee Sang-hoon “Mr. Lee Sang-hoon” until the end is because they have been treated badly by him.

It seems that the emotional rift was not resolved even when treated the same way in the same workplace.

There is a good chance that she will join the Legion.

If she were alive,

That would be a good thing.

But why is that?

This cool feeling.

The object that I saw yesterday, presumed to be a nuclear bomb, is bothering me.

Above all, in the investigative report just now, Jun Koo confessed the truth in a flustered manner.

When I asked him if he was going to Jeju Island, he said yes.

It’s completely different from what Ji Young-hee said.

Ji Young-hee said the plane’s destination was Japan.

Japan, Jeju Island, airplanes, nuclear bombs, conglomerate chairman, and Kim Da-ram.

“······.”

I have a bad feeling about this.

The air around me felt so stuffy.

As I was about to get up to get some fresh air, there was someone standing at the door.

A tall, slender man wearing a neat suit.

It’s Park Cheol-ju.

He is staring at me.

Do you have anything to say?

As I was watching, he approached me with slow steps.

“Do you have a gun?”

He glanced back.

I thought they were looking at the man with the gun, but they actually didn’t pay much attention to Park Cheol-ju.

I wonder if the bodyguards are too indifferent to the people they are protecting.

I asked with that thought in mind.

“A pistol?”

“Can you sell me just one? Tama. I have Tama.”

“Where are you going to use it?”

“It’s for leisure.”

“Mr. Chairman, don’t you have a gun?”

Park Cheol-ju put his hand into his pocket and put something cold and heavy in my hand.

It’s gold.

“ESFP.”

He said

“Actually, I’m an ESFP.”

I don’t know what he’s talking about.

But those eyes were desperately longing for my gun.

He handed him the gun he had.

“You know how to use it, right?”

“I don’t know.”

“If you put it like this, the safety is released. If you hold this part and press it, the magazine will come out. I’m sure you know that pulling the trigger will cause the bullet to come out, so I’ll skip that.”

Park Cheol-ju listened to my explanation seriously throughout.

The madness I felt when I first saw it was nowhere to be found.

Is this the real face of this man?

It was a thought that suddenly occurred to me.

He glared at the plane with wrinkled eyes as he put the gun inside.

“Ogasawara Islands. Do you know them?”

“I’ve heard the name.”

“It’s a good place. It’s not the most beautiful place, but it’s the place I like the most. So it’s like paradise.”

“It’s paradise······.”

“Is there paradise for you too?”

“well.”

I thought of my bunker.

It does not mean paradise in the literal sense.

I just thought of my bunker because in a practical sense, there is no place like my bunker.

“I like it here.”

“Then that is paradise.”

“Is that so?”

It’s a paradise with a toilet in the middle.

What kind of paradise would that be?

“I haven’t found paradise yet. I thought I had created one, but they destroyed it. Well, even if they hadn’t destroyed it, the conclusion would have been the same.”

“why?”

“Even places that you think are paradise eventually show their flaws one by one. You wouldn’t call a place you don’t like paradise, right?”

At that point, I noticed someone walking towards me from the other side.

This is Ji Young-hee.

“Paradise is no longer paradise.”

“That may be true. Then wouldn’t paradise be meaningless? If you keep seeing its flaws?”

“I tend to look for new paradises. So it’s an endless journey. I look for one paradise, get disappointed there, and then go to the next paradise. And get disappointed there too.”

“It’s like Zeno’s paradox.”

“Yeah. It’s like Zeno’s tortoise. It seems like you can catch it, but you can’t. But you know.”

Ji Young-hee, who was approaching us, called Park Cheol-ju.

“Mr. Chairman.”

Park Cheol-ju turned his head, glanced at Ji Young-hee, and continued speaking.

“Isn’t the process of finding paradise itself fun?”

He looked back at his plane with pleased eyes.

“Ogasawara. Ogasawara.”

Park Cheol-ju turned around, repeating the paradise he was currently drawing as if reciting a spell.

After he left, he asked Ji Young-hee.

“Are you going to the Ogasawara Islands?”

Ji Young-hee nodded.

“Yes. Didn’t I tell you this before?”

“When are you leaving?”

“I don’t think it will take long. Maybe a day or two?”

“okay.”

As soon as I returned to the bunker, I contacted Woo Min-hee.

*

It had to be that way.

I think the destination of that plane is Jeju Island.

They pack a nuclear bomb full of malice into a pretty packaging case of a fallen conglomerate chairman and deal a crushing blow to the Jeju government that betrayed them.

This is a possible scenario.

But before we talk, there’s something I wanted to ask.

“Jeju Island is important, right?”

“huh.”

Woo Min-hee answered dryly.

“Why? It wouldn’t matter.”

“Can you tell me a little bit about what you do?”

“suddenly?”

Woo Min-hee’s voice became sharp.

I felt a deep sense of discomfort.

Normally, I would have ended the conversation there.

But that can’t be done.

“It’s important.”

“Senior. Do you know what your situation is like?”

“I know.”

“You’re a civilian. That’s because I didn’t say anything. Depending on your perspective, you could be labeled a legionnaire.”

“······Woo Min-hee. Please.”

She lowered her head, even though she couldn’t see it.

For a while, only the sound of breathing could be heard over the radio.

After a moment of silence, her hollow laughter could be heard.

“Senior Park. You’re a person who knows how to ask for a favor.”

“······.”

“Why didn’t you ask me earlier?”

She asked mockingly.

There is no answer to the ridicule.

There is only silence disguised as reflection.

After a heavy silence, Woo Min-hee opened her mouth again.

“At that time. If you had asked Kang Han-min back then, you wouldn’t be stuck in a strange place like this. Honestly, wasn’t it obvious to everyone that Senior Lee Sang-hoon was in a higher position than Senior Lee Sang-hoon? And now······.”

A sharp metallic sound suddenly scraped my eardrums from beyond the speaker.

I wonder if he’s scratching somewhere with his prosthetic hand.

It was probably a bad behavior, but I thought it was more like Woo Min-hee and waited for a response.

“······I will close the crack.”

The wait was truly worth it.

I asked, feeling my heart pounding.

“···Is this possible?”

“We have succeeded in closing the lowest-strength crack in India, even though we have already lost 99.8% of our population.”

“······!!”

I clenched my fist without realizing it.

If there was flammable material in my eye, my pupils might have burned.

Lee Sang-hoon was standing in front of me.

That annoying guy was smiling at me.

Is this guy finally going to hit me in the back of the head?

That rich young master who had been behind me for years.

I had to hold back a laugh.

Because Woo Min-hee really hates hearing any noise other than words.

Instead, I felt the blood rushing through my heart and waited for her next words.

“Kang Han-min and Na Hye-in are closing the rift now. At great sacrifice.”

She told the truth.

“Don’t put it on the internet. If you do, I’ll come looking for it.”

“What is the Internet?”

“If I tell you not to do it, then don’t do it. Then I’ll hang up?”

Then I should respond with the same truth.

“We discovered the nuke.”

I told what I saw.

Park Cheol-ju, private airplanes, Chinese people, Kim Pil-sung, the Ogasawara Islands, and stories about nuclear weapons.

Woo Min-hee’s impressions were short and heavy.

“Jeju Island, I guess.”

She snorted.

“The goal would be to drop a nuclear bomb on Jeju Island.”

I’ve never liked Woo Min-hee, but her thoughts generally matched mine.

She chuckled.

“Kim Da-ram, maybe it’s his thoughts?”

“Kim Da-ram? Are you in the Legion Faction?”

“Isn’t that so?”

“Don’t you know?”

“Senior, don’t you smell?”

The image of Woo Min-hee smiling cruelly appeared before my eyes.

Perhaps right now she is smiling in a dark laboratory, moving the fingers of her prosthetic arm that can draw wave patterns.

“That guy. He sang the Jeju Island, Jeju Island song, right?”

“······That’s true.”

“If it’s a paradise I can’t have, I’d rather destroy it. Isn’t that a thought that suits a woman like Janus?”

I think so.

If it’s Kim Da-ram.

If she were alive and had relied on the Legion, wouldn’t she want to kill all the people who abandoned her and refused to accept her, all the traitors on Jeju Island?

Wouldn’t you want to burn down the paradise you once dreamed of?

“Thanks for the information. It was a good idea to contact me. If you hadn’t told me, I would have never known.”

“······This is it.”

“There’s going to be a huge battle. Senior, stay out of the way. You might die.”

There will soon be a war in my territory.

This is the disaster I called.

But it can’t be helped.

I can’t lose Jeju Island.

There is a paradise left behind by my comrade Lee Sang-hoon.

In the name of hope.