Chapter 28: Encounter
Chapter 28: Encounter
#
I walked under the midday sun.
By the time we went back outside after lunch, it already felt like midsummer.
The distinct four seasons we were taught in school as a feature of our country had vanished before I knew it.
If it was already this hot, how would we survive actual midsummer?
I shook my head, dismissing the worry before it could take hold.
I wasn't naturally prone to brooding or anxiety, but a collapsing world could apparently change even that.
"Seon-yeong, let's take a quick break over there. I can't handle this heat."
After walking to the pharmacy without a break, my head felt ready to steam.
An ice cream shop stood directly beside the pharmacy, so I called Seon-yeong over and headed inside to cool off.
The silent interior was full of chilled air.
The air conditioner seemed to be running continuously.
When we'd passed in the morning, no zombies had been immediately visible, so I hadn't checked inside. The clean interior was reassuring.
"Hello~ Can we get this to-go?"
After entering the ice cream shop and shutting the door, Seon-yeong called out toward the back.
I was relieved. Until now, I'd always been embarrassed to be the only one shouting nonsense beside Seon-yeong.
Was Seon-yeong embarrassed too?
"I don't think anyone's here. We can just check that door over there, right?"
"Yeah, I'll go check. Think about what you want."
I passed the display counter holding tubs of different flavors and headed toward the small door.
After knocking and entering, I found a narrow space with a sink, a freezer, and supplies piled on one side.
When I came back out, Seon-yeong was scooping ice cream from a family-sized container.
"Hey, do you eat mint choco?"
"I've never tried it, so I wouldn't know. When I come here, I only get the Almond Bung-bung-bung and the Space Alien."
"Oh yeah? Then try it this time!"
"..."
"Hehe, I'm kidding. Don't look so serious."
We sat side by side, sharing ice cream from a single container to cool off.
Seon-yeong had chosen strawberry and a blue ice cream with chunks in it.
She kept eating while watching the street, but her body gradually relaxed and some of the tension left her.
The sugar lifted my mood, and I laughed along with Seon-yeong's chatter.
"If we could just open the door to the apartment next door, we wouldn't have had to worry like this, right?"
"Huh?! Of course—brilliant Assistant Manager Choi! Why didn't I think of that?"
"Huh? Think of what?"
While we rested, she asked why I'd looked so serious over lunch, and I explained that I'd been worrying about how to organize our scavenged supplies.
Seon-yeong mulled it over for a moment, then brought up the apartment next door.
I'd only considered finding more containers and shelving, like the display rack we'd taken from the convenience store.
When space ran short, you either used it more efficiently or created more of it.
I hadn't even considered expanding.
"Let's finish looting the pharmacy, then go home and break into the neighboring apartment. Seon-yeong, I won't worry alone anymore. Why waste time when Assistant Manager Choi can give me the answer?"
"I was just saying... Hehe. I'm glad you liked it. But how do we break into it?"
"We go in through the veranda window. We don't have a way to open the door right now, do we?"
"Whoa... But we're on the fifth floor. Won't that be dangerous?"
"It's fine, as long as I don't fall. Let's go to the pharmacy, grab the rest, then break into the next apartment in the evening and clean it up. Haven't we gotten almost everything?"
"Yeah, if we just make one more good sweep, I think we won't have to come back."
"Then let's finish looting and go claim our natural expansion."
Channeling a worker gathering minerals, I headed back to the pharmacy.
Seon-yeong said expanding to the natural sounded risky, so I assured her it was fine since we weren't attempting a naked fast expansion. Then I mined minerals... no, steadily stripped the pharmacy.
I reassured Seon-yeong, who still looked worried and asked whether the heat had gotten to me, and we headed straight home.
Again, while passing the Hana Trading building, I saw a flickering shadow at a window, but I ignored it.
I'd handle one problem at a time instead of embracing them all at once and worrying myself sick.
#
"Mister, should I bring more rope?"
"It's okay, this is enough. Another line wouldn't make a difference."
Back home, I told Ga-yeong about our plan to claim the neighboring apartment as our natural expansion.
At first she worried, but when I explained that endless scavenging without more storage was hopeless, she eventually fetched the rope.
The fact that Ga-yeong's parents' hobby was hiking had been a huge help from the very first day.
I tied one end of the rope to the veranda railing and a fire hose hook, then leaned my weight into it and pulled.
We had plenty of D-shaped carabiners, so I clipped one to the safety rope around my body, allowing me to disconnect it easily after crossing.
Proper knowledge would have let me tie safer, sturdier knots, but this wasn't serious climbing. I only needed to avoid falling, so I fashioned a crude harness around my waist and thighs.
"Tae-sik, when you go over, Ga-yeong and I will wait by the front door. Be careful."
I climbed over the balcony railing and poised there like someone preparing to jump to his death, studying the neighboring balcony.
The stairwell between the units prevented me from jumping straight across.
I hadn't thought of this...
It was too much trouble to climb back inside, so I jumped down toward a stairwell window half a floor below.
My fingertips alone caught my full body weight.
I'd only tried because I had the safety rope, yet it actually worked.
Hanging on with one hand, I reached out with the other, opened the window, and climbed up.
I wondered if monkeys felt like this.
Despite my weight, one hand and shoulder held my entire body, making me feel strangely light.
After bracing myself on the windowsill, I jumped diagonally upward toward the neighboring unit's balcony.
Once again, my body sailed with surprising ease, and I landed comfortably on the neighboring balcony railing.
I'd originally planned to reach out and hang, but my feet even landed on the railing.
It made me want to measure my standing vertical jump.
Fortunately, the balcony window wasn't locked.
Although I'd knocked and checked the apartment when we first arrived, I made noise and searched every room again just in case.
The apartment layout was completely identical.
Ding-dong
When I opened the front door, Seon-yeong and Ga-yeong slipped in quickly.
Ga-yeong immediately changed the door code, and Seon-yeong looked around inside.
"I already checked everything. Ga-yeong, do you know the people who lived here?"
"No, I don't know them well. I only said hello if I happened to run into them. My father would know."
"Well, that's not what matters."
I asked because a family photo hung in the living room. Ga-yeong said the children had all moved out and only the married couple remained.
Since we had no way to know whether they were alive, I silently asked their forgiveness and began clearing the apartment.
"Just in case, let's gather the owners' belongings we don't need in the smaller bedroom."
Ga-yeong and Seon-yeong carried the lighter items, while I moved the heavy furniture into the hallway alone.
I lined everything along one wall of the hallway and stairs, leaving enough room to pass.
I could move sofas and beds alone without much effort. If I ever worked as a mover, I'd make a fortune.
"Wow, we really cleaned it up fast. Tae-sik, you okay? Not tired?"
"Nope, I'm not tired. Even I'm amazed right now."
In just two hours, we'd cleared out the apartment and even given it a rough cleaning.
After returning to Unit 502 for dinner, I found that I had no muscle soreness and still felt full of energy.
If anything, the two women were groaning with exhaustion.
"Mister, should we move everything to Unit 501 then? What should we leave in our place?"
"They have a refrigerator and kimchi refrigerator too, so let's move everything we can and keep only about a week's food here. We'll also move the excess medicine and any clothes we're not using."
"So we only keep what we need for daily life here and move all our stockpiles?"
"Exactly. That's what I'm saying. Let's stash the reserves in Unit 501. After dinner, I'll start with the display rack. Let's bring the sofa back into the living room, too."
"Okay. Guess we're closing down the convenience store..."
Ga-yeong pretended to cry as she said it, but her eyes were laughing.
She seemed happy that the apartment would return to normal.
After dinner, the three of us teamed up, went back and forth between the two units, and finished organizing.
Ga-yeong had already organized everything well, so building the stockpile was easy.
She even showed us the inventory on her tablet—what we had, where it was, and how much remained. She was sharp enough that she would have excelled at any job.
With the work done, I washed up first, came out, and turned on MeTube.
Wearing the loose shorts we'd found and a sleeveless undershirt that actually fit greatly improved my quality of life.
To think I could be this happy just from wearing clothes that fit.
- Miha-miha! Hello, subscribers. I hope you've survived another day safely. This is Survival Man, checking in on Day Five.
It seemed Survival Man was still alive and well.
I skimmed the videos for Days Three and Four. They showed him making various tools for his base camp.
Cleverly, he piped in stream water with a rubber hose and even built a shower stall.
No wonder his face looked much cleaner.
I could only marvel.
- Today I went to the neighborhood supermarket. I call it local, but reaching it on foot took more than thirty minutes, so it was quite an expedition! I also discovered something strange. Two cars are parked near our base camp, and neither one will start. What do you think is happening? Subscribers, if your circumstances allow it, please try starting a car and report the result—but don't take any risks. I think we need to gather information about this.
Listening to Survival Man reminded me that the fat man's car had also failed to start on the first day.
What was going on?
Could all three vehicles failing have been a coincidence?
I got the feeling that maybe the danger we faced wasn't just zombies.