Chapter 27: Encounter
Chapter 27: Encounter
#
The atmosphere went cold after what Seon-yeong said.
After the silence stretched for a moment, Min-su spoke to me again.
"What should I do? If I go out there now, I'll die. I mean it."
Seon-yeong clearly wasn't happy about Min-su staying in this building.
But we couldn't force him out, nor was it practical to strip the place of supplies immediately.
We weren't desperate enough yet to be that heartless.
"Min-su, is there a reason you piled the zombie corpses here?"
"They were rotting inside, so I thought I should move them. Team Leader, if you plan to pass through here regularly, I'll keep the place organized so you can rest whenever you need to. Please let me stay and manage it as a kind of waypoint."
"Could you tell us about your ability? And how many Available Points do you have?"
"Whew... My ability isn't useful in combat. It's called Observation. It lets me examine a place I choose in greater detail, rather like a telescope. To be honest, I watched you enter this building from the street stall yesterday, and I saw you come out unharmed. I have zero Available Points. Is your ability combat-oriented?"
"I see. Thank you for telling me. My ability is Enhancement; it increases my strength. We won't remove all the supplies immediately, so please manage the place for now. Eat the perishables first and conserve anything that will keep. And while you're observing the area from here, let us know if you notice anything unusual."
"Thank you, truly. If there's ever anything else you need me to do, please tell me."
After parting from Min-su, who bowed repeatedly, we turned into an alley.
Even at the end, he addressed only me.
He kept sneaking sidelong glances at Seon-yeong, but he never faced her directly or spoke to her.
Something about him felt off, but having no immediate alternative was frustrating.
I took the printed map from my sling bag, marked the four-story building with 'MS,' and resumed walking.
"I've got a bad feeling about this."
"Whew... But we can't throw him out. We don't own the place, so what can we do?"
"That's true, but... he only talked to you until the very end. He's been sneaking glances at me since yesterday, which is creepy, yet he ignored everything I said."
"There's that, and we don't really know his ability for sure, so let's be careful around him for a while. If what he said was honest, he's not much of a threat, but it did seem like he was hiding something."
"Yeah... Should we just hit the pharmacy and avoid the place altogether?"
It was hard to know what to do.
He hadn't done anything to threaten us, yet we couldn't lower our guard and live alongside him either.
Maybe we were overreacting, but I felt strangely uneasy.
In the end, we reached the intersection by the Hana Trading Building without reaching any real conclusion.
I stopped for a moment and looked around.
"Seon-yeong, watch the surroundings for a second. I'm just going to mark the zombie in that car."
I took out the zombie map and wrote "red compact Z" at the intersection location.
While I had it out, I also wrote "Z:50 minimum" at the broadcasting station building.
"We're hitting the pharmacy first, right?"
"Yeah. Let's pass it by for now and come back to scavenge it later."
I pulled my gaze away from the Hana Trading Building and started walking.
For an instant, I thought a shadow passed a window around the middle of the building, but when I looked again, nothing moved.
#
Rather than cutting through the alleys, we took the long way around along the roads and reached the pharmacy.
Along the way, a zombie burst out of a side alley and let out a shriek.
Its shriek drew the attention of zombies along the nearby streets, and we ended up fighting eight in one place.
While I dealt with one, two more charged from the front; while I fought those, another came running from somewhere else.
After fending off several waves like a tower-defense game, we faced no more attacks on the way to the pharmacy.
"That thing is moving, right?"
The pharmacy was a wreck.
A 1.5-ton truck had crashed straight through the storefront, shattering every pane of glass.
A zombie sat in the driver's seat, visibly twitching.
"Yeah, definitely a zombie. Let's go."
Seon-yeong casually took care of the zombie in the truck, and we went into the pharmacy.
With the entire glass frontage destroyed, there was barely an entrance to speak of; we simply walked inside.
The few chairs had apparently been flung by the impact and now lay scattered everywhere.
There were display shelves along the walls, and straight ahead we could see the reception desk and counter.
Behind the counter was a curtained doorway that appeared to lead into the dispensary.
Even if several zombies were packed inside the dispensary, there couldn't be many, so I called out.
"Excuse me, do you have a zombie vaccine here?"
Kwaaaahk
Apparently, they didn't carry a zombie vaccine.
Two zombies in white coats smeared with blood charged out from inside.
One was missing an eye and half its face had collapsed. Judging by the wounds, it had been attacked and infected by another zombie.
Seeing its horrific state, I couldn't help but feel a pang of pity for how much pain it must have endured, zombie or not.
The only thing I could give it was a swift end.
I granted that end to both creatures as they flailed, caught on the waist-high counter in their rush toward us.
"What now? Start scavenging?"
"Let's. We'll grab some medicine first and move it aside, then take our time sorting through it."
"Got it~ But I don't even know where to start."
"You know the meds they sell without a prescription? The ones on the display shelves out here. Those, and the supplements. Start packing that kind of stuff first. I'll go check out the compounding room and be right back."
When I entered the compounding room in the back, there were bloodstains but no more zombies in sight.
I'd deliberately made noise outside because drawing them out seemed safer than being ambushed while pushing through the curtain. It had worked without incident.
One side of the dispensary held a huge blue machine that reached the ceiling and another, slightly smaller machine. Cabinets and shelves covered nearly every inch of wall.
The larger machine was covered in drawer-like compartments, while the smaller one resembled an industrial printer.
I wouldn't know how to use either machine, so checking the shelves and cabinets seemed more worthwhile.
A slow inspection revealed enormous quantities of medicine bottles, syrup bottles, and packets.
Most were neatly arranged in alphabetical order, though one section was in complete disarray and its shelves had collapsed.
There was a refrigerator too. I opened it up and found it was also packed full of pill bottles.
I had no idea what to take first.
We couldn't simply grab things at random. We wouldn't know what they were or how to take them, and the wrong medicine could make matters worse...
"Figure anything out?"
"Nope, absolutely nothing. They have labels, but... there's no dosage or usage instructions or anything."
"Ah, you're right. Kind of a shame. We've got all this medicine..."
"There are antibiotics here. Everything from this point to here—the powders and the solid forms—is labeled as an antibiotic. Let's take all of it."
"Okay. Let's pack them up and look them up or something later."
After discussing each choice, we packed medicine until every backpack we'd brought was full.
We also crammed in as many supplements as possible, but we couldn't get everything in one trip. It looked like we'd have to make a few round trips.
"Look at this. I guess it's for dogs. You think we can eat it too? Tee-hee."
"I doubt it would hurt us, but let's use the ones made for people first."
Seon-yeong quietly set down the box with a picture of a dog on it.
I opened a bottle of vitamins, gave us one each to suck on, and slung my backpack over my shoulders.
I wished we could find a car and drive around as I headed out again, wondering whether there was any way to make it happen.
#
When we returned around noon, Ga-yeong was delighted that we'd come home so early.
She appeared to have been busy organizing things. Perhaps she'd felt lonely by herself.
The more I watched her, the more she resembled a dog wagging its tail when its owners returned home.
First, we laid out all the scavenged supplies in the living room.
"This one's an anti-inflammatory painkiller, these are fever-reducing painkillers, and here are cold medicines, digestive aids, antidiarrheals..."
Ga-yeong talked to herself quite often. Her mouth never stopped.
"Wow, we could open a pharmacy!"
"Heh. Last time you opened a convenience store, and now it's a pharmacy? Ga-yeong, we're bringing back more this afternoon."
Seon-yeong and Ga-yeong chattered together as they sorted the medicine and supplements.
Seeing the compression bandages they were sorting reminded me that we needed emergency medicine in our survival packs.
The streets were rough enough to injure us even without a zombie bite.
"Do we have any spare pouches or stuff like that at home?"
"Huh? Pouches? Why? Do you want me to find them now?"
"That'd be great, thanks. I want to carry some emergency medicine in both my backpack and Seon-yeong's."
"Ah, well then, go ahead and eat. I'll take care of packing them."
"No, let's eat together. And with the medicine, just sort them for now. We can organize it together once we get back."
Ga-yeong seemed increasingly anxious to please us.
It felt as though she were trying to prove her usefulness.
Seon-yeong seemed to notice it too and treated her with extra warmth.
Staying behind alone, just waiting for us, it was only natural she'd be having a lot of anxious thoughts.
There was little I could do to soothe her. Ultimately, she would have to reassure herself.
"Let's stop for now and eat. Ga-yeong, don't try to do everything yourself, either. We need to know what's where, too. Just leave it for now."
As we ate together, I considered another problem.
It wasn't about Ga-yeong, but the practical issue of all the supplies we were bringing home.
The apartment was running out of space.
We could still walk through the apartment, but it was already so packed that it felt oppressive.
We were living around our possessions, as though serving them. It was more stressful than it sounded.
I'd heard somewhere that when people were placed in extreme circumstances, their ability to manage stress had a major effect on their health.
In the long term, it could either help or harm their chances of survival.
Our daily lives certainly qualified as extreme circumstances.
Home needed to be a place where we could release stress and rest comfortably, which made the problem difficult to ignore.
No wonder there used to be TV shows about professional organizers helping people declutter.
"What are you thinking about? Just enjoy your lunch for now."
"Ah, just mulling some stuff over."
"We won't have many chances to sit and eat together like this. Worry about it with me later, and enjoy the food while we're eating."
I looked across the table and saw that Ga-yeong was now staring at me with a worried face too.
Had I let too much show on my face?
"Haha, you're right. Seon-yeong, you're much better at this than I am."
"Hee-hee, right? The soybean sprout salad is good. Ga-yeong, should we try growing our own soybean sprouts?"
Not wanting the two of them to worry because of me, I laughed and let the problem go.
Besides carrying an ever-growing pile of supplies, I'd nearly burdened myself with my worries too.
The irony was that thinking about stress management was stressing me out.
I decided we would discuss the troubling matters together later and picked up some of the soybean sprout salad Seon-yeong had mentioned.
It really was good.
That left my mind feeling somewhat clearer.