Chapter 36: Routine
Chapter 36: Routine
#
We had finally finished clearing out Building 301, where we lived.
While working through the apartment cleanup, I learned something disheartening: there was only a single survivor in our building.
On the other hand, we had dealt with twenty-nine zombies.
Crunching the numbers in the simplest way possible, that meant twenty-nine out of thirty people had turned into zombies.
Of course, the margin of error on that was massive.
With two units per floor and twenty floors, each building held a total of forty households.
There was no way to calculate how many people originally lived there, how many had been out when it started, or how many had made it back.
We had not even included the zombies that had been in the hallways or stairwells.
And in some homes, we had found two zombies.
I had not kept a record, so I could not remember exactly how many units that was.
So even I, bad at math as I was, knew that assuming a thirty-to-one person-to-zombie conversion rate was a flawed calculation.
Even so, the reason I considered the situation bleak was this: the ratio of people who turned naturally on the first day might well be lower than that figure, but the odds that anyone was still alive at that point were probably worse than one in thirty.
I might not have been well educated, but I knew that humans were extremely vulnerable without society.
Click
"Oh, you're back already!"
"Yeah. There wasn't much left. Ah... you just showered. Sorry. I'll go inside."
"No, it's fine. I'm covered up anyway, so whatever."
I arrived home, opened the door, and walked in just as Ga-yeong was coming out of the living-room bathroom after washing up.
Normally, Seon-yeong and I went out while she showered in the morning, but she must not have had time that day and had washed up just then.
She said she was covered up so it was fine, but she was in her underwear with just a towel draped over herself, and I was not sure that really counted as fine.
Was that much exposure considered normal these days?
Anyway, I reflexively apologized and retreated into the study.
We called the clothes we wore when going outside our scavenging gear, and the outermost layer was always something waterproof.
We had brought a clothes rack into the space between the apartment's inner door and the front door and used it to put on and take off our gear and do maintenance.
Among those items, it was time to swap out my gloves, so I had gone into the study to check if any were there.
Asking Ga-yeong would have been fastest, but I could not exactly stop her and ask right then.
With time on my hands and nothing to do, I turned on the computer and went onto MeTube.
I had not been using MeTube much lately.
At some point, the uploads had become nothing but grim videos: suicides, pleas for rescue, and hordes of zombies.
It was hard to watch anyone suffer, even a stranger.
I still checked the thumbnails for information, and Survival Man had not uploaded anything for three days.
He had been posting videos, however short, to show he was alive, and I was hoping nothing had happened to him.
In the end, I soon turned off the computer and came back out to the living room.
"Ga-yeong?"
"One moment. Actually, would you like to come in?"
"Yeah, I wanted to ask you something."
It was the first time I had seen inside Ga-yeong's room since we began living there.
When I came in with her permission, Ga-yeong was sitting at the vanity with a hair dryer in one hand, apparently in the middle of drying her hair.
But had she really invited me in while wearing nothing but panties and a camisole?
And from what I knew, even the camisole Ga-yeong had on fell under the category of women's underwear.
"It's not urgent. Should I come back later?"
"No, really, it's fine. What did you need?"
"Ah... you know those black half-coated gloves? Could you check how many we have left? Just let me know later."
I stated what I needed and left without waiting for an answer.
Maybe I was simply too conservative, but sharing the room with her felt uncomfortable.
I did not even know where to put my eyes.
Perhaps Ga-yeong had grown too comfortable around me.
#
A little later, while I was packing emergency rations in the kitchen and getting ready for the afternoon outing, Ga-yeong and Seon-yeong emerged at the same time.
Seon-yeong had apparently rested a bit, then donned her scavenging gear and come out to prepare.
"You mean the waterproof-coated gloves, right?"
"Yeah. Not the cotton work gloves."
"Okay, one moment. Hmm... three pairs left. Want me to grab one for you?"
"Yeah, thanks."
Ga-yeong tapped at her tablet a few times, then headed straight for the living-room veranda.
It was a shame we only had three pairs of waterproof-coated gloves left.
They were hard to come by because you rarely saw them at convenience stores.
"Did you put points into your new ability?"
"Yeah, I put in ten for now."
"Yeah? How does it feel? When will I get one...?"
"Honestly, I have no idea with this one. When I first raised Body Enhancement, I felt my body improve right away, you know? This time, I genuinely can't tell."
"Ugh, nothing's ever easy, seriously."
"You all set?"
"Uh-huh. We can head out right now."
"Oh, right. Let's stop by our business contacts on the way. Manager Lee said he wanted to talk."
I took the new gloves from Ga-yeong, put them on, and we set off right away.
Manager Lee had shared every tiny detail by text until now, so why did he suddenly want to speak in person?
With that small question in mind, I headed at a quick pace to the officetel building.
#
Knock, knock, knock
I knocked on the door of Unit 201 in the officetel where our business contacts lived.
For a while, the hallways and parking lot had been a mess as they cleared out every apartment, but with the work apparently finished, the interior looked tidy.
Manager Lee and Assistant Manager Jeon had taken up residence in Units 201 and 202 respectively, and the two women were living on the fourth floor.
They said they had emptied out most of the rooms on the third floor to use as storage.
"You're here, sir."
"Manager Lee, please stop addressing me so formally. I’m not your teacher or anything, and I’ve told you to speak casually with me."
"I could never do that to the person who saved my life. And you know how it is—if you speak casually, your attitude becomes casual too. I must continue using polite speech, if only for my own sake."
He did not seem like the type to cross the line or slack off just because he eased his speech a little.
Yet he continued speaking so formally...
He was so stubborn that I had half given up by that point.
"Would you care for some tea? Though all I have are convenience-store tea bags."
"I had some before I came."
"I'm fine too."
"In that case, since you two are busy, I'll get straight to the point."
Following his lead, Seon-yeong and I sat side by side on the living-room sofa. Manager Lee pulled over a chair from the kitchen and sat down across from us.
As I glanced around the apartment, which I was entering for the first time, I saw that the man had tidied everything up with incredible neatness.
All kinds of appliances and other goods were visible, apparently collected from several apartments.
"You mentioned a man named Min-su last time, right?"
"Yes. I told you he was living in that four-story building."
"I figured we should scout the terrain in that direction and learn the routes, so the day before yesterday we ventured out as far as the four-lane road. We were on our way back after taking a wide loop around."
I had told them about Min-su both as a warning and because there was nothing left to loot at the convenience store in the building where Min-su was staying, so I did not want them wasting their time.
I had not said anything about having a bad feeling—I simply relayed the facts of how we met and the circumstances under which he came to live in that building.
"Director Kim often uses her ability on the way home in the evening, both for practice and whenever she gets the chance. But did you not say Min-su lived alone?"
"Yes. He survived on his own from the start and has been living alone off the supplies in the convenience store. As far as I know, he doesn't seem to leave the place either."
"The Director scanned that four-story building and counted three survivors. Up to now, the Director's scans have never been wrong about people, even when the zombie count was way off."
"I see. Hmm... perhaps two people wandered in from somewhere. We haven't paid much attention to that area lately, so we didn't know."
"The reason I asked to speak in person is that something seems strange. Of course, we can't be the only survivors, and their number could have increased, but..."
"That's true. Even moving through the same area, people probably miss each other fairly often. We do have to move so quietly, after all."
"Yes. But after that, the Director kept scanning the building. She's grown stronger, so she can now scan a certain range from quite a distance. And as of yesterday, she said the number of people dropped to two. She scanned again around lunchtime before the two of you arrived, and the building is still showing two human signals."
"So the day before yesterday it was three, and since yesterday it's been two... You only confirmed that through scans—you hadn't actually laid eyes on anyone, right?"
"No. It is close, but we weren't monitoring it around the clock or anything like that. The entrance isn't visible from our side either. And the Director's ability could have misidentified something. She insists she's certain, but she doesn't have that much experience."
"That's possible too. Anyway, thank you for letting us know. If anything else unusual comes up next time, please tell us. We'll let you know if we learn anything as well."
It was unexpected, but not implausible, so I answered without making much of it.
"Yes, I'll keep checking whenever I get the chance. By the way, where are you headed today?"
"You know the hospital building behind the trading building?"
"Of course. I knew the clinic director personally."
"I see. We're going to clear those buildings. We also finished clearing the Hana Trading building recently, so you may go in if there is anything you need to retrieve."
"Thank you... Our employees can finally rest easy too. It had weighed on me ever since we left. You truly are remarkable."
"It was nothing. Do you have any emergency medicine?"
"Yes. We found small amounts of medicine in several apartments, so we have some. We don't have antibiotics or skin ointments, though..."
"Then we'll collect some medicine while clearing the area and stop by again on our way back. If you aren't here, we'll leave it in the boiler room, so don't wait for us."
"Thank you. And Seon-yeong, thank you as always."
His eyes welled up as he bowed repeatedly, making me so uncomfortable that I fled the building.
Out of his suit and in a tracksuit, he looked fit and macho for his age, but he was apparently rather sentimental.
Seon-yeong had bowed and demurred along with me, and once we were outside, she looked much more relieved.
"Wow... I find Manager Lee a little intimidating. He's extremely polite, but he feels like a seasoned old politician."
"Really? He probably was good at office politics. He may even have belonged to Director Kim's faction. I've always been hopeless at that kind of thing, so I can't tell. His excessive formality is what makes me uncomfortable."
"You never needed office politics. The story about the president drunkenly calling you his son spread across the company."
"That became a rumor? Only Manager Kim and Jin-su were there. He has quite a loose tongue..."
"Yeah. Anyway, I think Manager Lee is a good person, but he's not the kind of guy you can push around."
On the way to the building with the pharmacy, Seon-yeong and I naturally discussed our business contacts.
I had not spoken much with Assistant Manager Jeon, Director Kim, or the woman from the officetel, so I did not have a firm read on them, but first impressions still mattered.
Our impressions overlapped in some ways and differed considerably in others.
I had been in sales once, back in the day, but Seon-yeong seemed far better than me at reading people.
I had basically been a nepotism hire, after all.
"How about an ice cream break? Let's rest before we continue."
"Sure. But I wonder whether the ice cream is still safe to eat."
Near our destination, we came across an ice-cream shop and naturally went inside.
Even though midday had passed, a short walk outside was enough to make us sweat.
Seon-yeong had beads of sweat on her forehead too.
We entered the cool shop and wiped away our sweat with handkerchiefs...
Wait. Why had I barely sweated?
Was it a little cooler than usual that day?