Chapter 31: A Trade Partner
Chapter 31: A Trade Partner
7. Business Contact
"We're not zombies. We're people! We saw the two of you come in and came down. Could we talk?"
The elevator doors opened, and two men and a woman stepped out.
One of the men looked toward our hiding place and spoke quietly.
Both men wore dress shirts and slacks, while the woman wore what appeared to be a designer dress.
The men's clothes were torn in several places and spotted with blood.
One carried a long metal bar, while the other held a small fire axe.
The woman, by contrast, looked only slightly disheveled. Even her heels were clean.
The only thing she shared with the men was a slightly gaunt face.
"That's close enough. We can talk from there."
"Excuse me, but did you kill all the zombies in the store?"
The man who had first spoken swept an uneasy gaze around the area as he asked.
Judging by the state of the three, the two men had likely been fighting the zombies and keeping them alive until now.
"Yes. There are no zombies left on the first or second floor, so you can speak from there without worrying."
"Whew... First, thank you. We couldn't come down because of the zombies on the lower floors."
"Did you clear the upper floors, then?"
"No. We only killed the zombies on the fifth floor and have been holding out there. Since yesterday, we've seen the two of you moving around. When you entered the building today, we decided the situation must be safer and came down."
"Why did you take the elevator of all things? Elevators are dangerous."
Being startled by the elevator must have put a trace of irritation in my voice.
"The elevator or the stairs, what difference does it make? You seem to have cleared the zombies anyway."
"Zombies aside, what would you have done if the elevator suddenly broke down?"
"Why would a perfectly good elevator break down?"
"Now, now... both of you calm down. I'll explain."
The man who had taken the lead continued, apparently determined to clear up the misunderstanding.
They were, in effect, the last survivors in the building.
On the day the outbreak began, they had fled downstairs from the upper floors. Too many zombies were coming up to meet them, so they barricaded themselves on the fifth floor.
There had been quite a few zombies there as well. They fought alongside several other people, but everyone else died, leaving only the three of them.
A small stock of food had kept them alive until now, but it was gone, and they'd been trying to decide what to do.
Then they saw us entering and leaving the building and finally worked up the courage to come down.
With the stairs blocked, they had no choice but to use the elevator.
Seon-yeong still gripped her baseball bat and watched them warily.
I showed only part of myself and continued speaking with the man holding the metal bar, who had addressed us first.
Once he had explained the situation, the man with the metal bar introduced his companions.
They were Hana Trading employees. He introduced himself as Manager Lee Bong-nam, the man with the axe as Assistant Manager Jeon Hyeon-seung, and the woman merely as a director at their company.
It wasn't as though her name were Director...
She looked to be in her early forties—young for a director. Yet the two men still treated her as their superior and appeared to have been waiting on her hand and foot.
"My name is Kim Tae-sik, and this is my colleague, Choi Seon-yeong. I have one more question. Other people like you might still be alive elsewhere in the building. Why are you certain you're the last survivors?"
"Ah, that's..."
"Manager Lee, I'll explain. Mr. Kim, my name is Kim Seung-hee. You two have special abilities as well, don't you? I have one too, though I can't reveal exactly what it is. I used it to confirm that no one else is in the building. Is that enough of an explanation?"
"I see. That answers my question."
"Um... Excuse me? You don't need to be so wary. We have no intention of threatening you. We took the risk of coming down because we need your help."
Seon-yeong was still holding her bat and radiating hostility, so Manager Lee stepped forward again to explain their position.
They had no food left. Although they understood the situation to some extent, they hadn't been outside and lacked any accurate picture of what was happening, so they wanted our help.
I told them to wait in the store across the hall while I discussed it with Seon-yeong. After leaving the emergency rations we'd brought in front of the elevator, we went up to the second floor.
#
"Seon-yeong, what do you think of those people?"
"I'm not sure either. They do seem to have come down because they need help. What do you want to do? Are you going to help them?"
I could not answer Seon-yeong's question easily.
Seon-yeong had been with me since the first day, so of course I intended for us to stay together. I'd also come to rely on her so much that I was the one unwilling to part.
Ga-yeong had joined us almost by accident, and we'd drifted into living together. Still, there was no pressing reason to send her away, and she was helpful.
Beginning with Min-su, we were meeting other survivors, but I still did not know how to treat them in circumstances like these.
I didn't judge everything solely by profit and loss. I neither wanted to reject everyone nor believed we should join forces with everyone.
I'd shown Min-su a measure of goodwill, yet I remained wary of him.
In a way, I had been making decisions according to instinct and gut feeling.
Since the world changed, I had begun to feel almost animalistic—not only in how I dealt with people, but in many areas. More and more of my decisions and actions came from instinct rather than reason.
Put simply, I had no guiding principle. I was doing whatever the hell I felt like.
The strange part was how natural that felt.
Jumping from the fourth floor earlier because I felt I would be fine had been another instinctive act.
When I first met Min-su, reason told me that he was a former coworker and that another man would be useful, so letting him join us might be sensible. But something felt wrong, and I discarded all of that reasoning and responded sharply.
That was my current state: some indescribable thing—feeling, instinct, intuition—took precedence over rational thought and logical judgment.
When the two conflicted, ignoring my instincts felt as though it would leave me deeply uneasy. I didn't want that, so I'd followed whichever choice felt right.
I had never known much or considered myself particularly intelligent, but I hadn't been the type to live entirely on impulse either.
Perhaps gaining an ability after the outbreak was changing my mind as well as my body.
"Then how do you feel now? Do you want to help them?"
After I rambled about the changes in myself, Seon-yeong told me there was nothing wrong with them.
They might even be beneficial, she said.
Then she asked how I felt about those people right now.
"Honestly, I don't know. I don't feel any clear unease or anything like that."
"Then it mustn't be like when you met Min-su. Why don't you just keep doing what you've been doing?"
"What I've been doing? What have I done? This is the first time we've been in this situation. Heh heh."
Her casual tone made me laugh.
Maybe I'd been taking it too seriously. Seon-yeong didn't seem worried about what I chose, which made me feel that she trusted me.
"From what I've seen, you're a kind person, but not a pushover. Remember helping the old woman who sold garaetteok outside your office? I was on my way to work and saw you."
"How was that helping her? I had skipped breakfast, saw her selling rice cakes, and bought some."
"The old woman and the security guard were standing there in an awkward spot, so you bought everything she had. Who buys fifty thousand won's worth of garaetteok at a thousand won a stick? Then you handed it out around the office with milk and yogurt. I ate two sticks myself."
This was the problem with smart people...
They remembered the most pointless details.
It was nothing remarkable. I had simply solved the problem in a way that worked for everyone.
The security guard looked uncomfortable driving the old woman away. She could finish selling in the cold and go home, I happened to be hungry, and I got to make myself look generous to the staff. It had been an ordinary little incident.
"That isn't easy. I know you're not coldly calculating, but from watching you, I also know you don't do things that will meaningfully harm you. So don't make this more complicated than it has to be."
"All right. As long as I consult the brilliant Assistant Manager Choi Seon-yeong, I should be fine, right?"
"Huh? You're not making fun of me, are you?"
"No, I mean it. You're smart."
"Hmm... I don't believe you. It feels like you're teasing me!"
Seon-yeong looked cute with her lips pursed, so I teased her for a while before we headed back down to the first floor.
I decided to hear them out, help where I could, and try to establish a good relationship.
They could become useful contacts.
"But what do you think the director's ability is? You noticed that they came straight down to the first floor, right?"
"Yeah. It doesn't seem as though they stopped anywhere else, and once they arrived, they headed straight toward our hiding place."
"Ugh. We're hiding our abilities too, so we can't just ask, but I want to know..."
"Should I demand that they tell us all their abilities in exchange for our help?"
"They still probably wouldn't tell us everything. Hiding your ability is practically a rule in situations like this! Though you do seem to ask people outright."
"I haven't been asking everyone outright... Then why did you tell me everything in such detail from the beginning?"
"We were different. Besides, writing it all in that notebook benefited me at the time."
"Ah, so you only did it because it benefited you. All right, I understand."
"..."
Seon-yeong began glaring at me in silence again.
I should stop teasing her.
At this rate, I might become addicted to it.
Just one more time.
"I'm kidding."
I squeezed both of Seon-yeong's cheeks until her lips puckered like a fish, kissed her once, and stood.
Her eyes widened in surprise.
Why did everything suddenly feel so embarrassingly sweet?