Humans Are Selfish

There were three Radio Repeaters in total. I intended to install one at roughly five-kilometer intervals, stretching our radio range as safely and as reliably as I could.

The important part was finding a tall building—and it absolutely had to be one with a Large UPS. Companies, hospitals, universities: those were the kinds of places I figured would make the best installation points.

I let out a long breath.

Near Sinmokdong Station I spotted a fairly massive hospital and went straight inside. I had no idea what the place was called. Trying to pick a name off a facade that had frozen over entirely was a task bordering on impossible.

The interior had already been stripped clean. Five months and change had passed; there was no chance a hospital this size would still be sitting untouched. Even the shabby villa complexes nearby had been emptied out by now. Only an idiot wouldn't have hit a gold mine like this.

What I wanted was the hospital's server room, and the Large UPS sitting inside it. Hook a Radio Repeater up to the unit, leave the power on, and move to the next location. That was the whole job.

There were a lot of corpses.

It must have been a fairly successful hospital; every neglected ward bed held someone who had frozen to death. Women in nurse uniforms lay collapsed in the hallways. Near the reception counter and in the shared lounge, elderly people who had simply come in for a checkup were dead where they sat.

By now, it was a landscape I knew far too well. If anything, I found myself wondering whether the corpses around me might someday vanish. And for some reason, I had the feeling that the moment they did, I would be left with nothing but an awkward, uneasy discomfort.

I picked up a snack that had fallen in one of the wards. Goraebap—those little whale-shaped crackers, a perennial bestseller from the illustrious House of Oh, better known as Orion—lay scattered beside a small child. Choco Songi, Choco Pies, Diget biscuits: more of Orion's greatest hits were tucked in a drawer. Looks like the kid had known how to eat.

"...I'll eat well."

I packed them into my backpack, left the ward, and started down the hallway again. Corpses everywhere. It felt as though they were all looking at me—a little unnerving, and a little reassuring.

I found the Large UPS without any trouble. Unfortunately the remaining charge was less than half—but it was still industrial-scale. Considering how long the compact UPS units I used could last, this thing would keep a single Radio Repeater running for a good long while.

I connected the repeater to the UPS, switched on the power, and picked up the radio. I figured I might as well check whether the repeater was actually doing its job, so I called Kim Min-seo.

It seemed to be working properly. Confirmed. Time to move on to the next location.

And just like that, a day went by.

Same as last time, when I'd come through with Harin, I spent the night in the station staff break room at National Assembly Station. Unlike when there had been two of us, taking turns on watch wasn't an option, so I tied fishing line to the grenades I was carrying, rigged them into tripwire traps, and set them on the passageway doors before I tried to sleep.

Anyway. This time the target was Yeouido Station. After that, Heukseok Station and Banpo Station were next on the list. Spacing the repeaters about five kilometers apart had landed me at exactly these locations, of all places.

Yeouido Station and Banpo Station were places where a lot of survivors had gathered. One careless mistake, one wrong choice, and I could catch a bullet without much trouble. That was the thought I carried as I climbed out of the subway station.

It was cold.

For the moment, I couldn't sense anyone nearby. So I moved fast. The target was the building sitting right in front of me.

The truth was, every building in Yeouido was a high-rise, and every building was the kind of place that would have a Large UPS. I didn't need to be picky. A financial firm here, another financial firm there, a broadcasting station off in the distance. Even the Korea Exchange, the electric power corporation—every institution you could name had clustered in this district.

I remembered feeling needlessly cowed whenever a meeting got scheduled and I had to come out here to bow and scrape. None of that meant anything anymore. The Large UPS, though—that still did.

I stepped into a high-rise. The interior being stripped to the bone was a given, and corpses scattered across the floor were just as much a given.

The voices drifting down from above, however, were not.

"No. This is mine."

"Ah, fuck! What the hell are you even saying?"

I ducked behind a wall at once. Their shouting had started quite a few floors up, but it carried all the way down to me on the first.

"I hid this in the first place, so of course it's mine. If you guys had found it first, maybe we could talk—but you didn't, did you?"

"Ah, this asshole's at it again. We clearly said that even if an individual finds something, they're part of our group, so everything gets pooled and distributed communally. For fuck's sake."

A pretty gripping little drama. They sounded like members of the same group, and yet they were snarling at each other at the top of their lungs.

"Then you should've looked harder, yeah? I just took back something I'd hidden myself. Why the hell would I share that?"

"Wow... you don't remember the contract you signed when you joined the group? You're the one who read that clause and still signed, aren't you?"

This was getting interesting. These were things you wouldn't see in Kim Min-seo's group, or the airport group, or between me and Harin.

"I remember."

"But if you actually parse that clause, this isn't acquired property. It was mine from the start. Original property can't be acquired property, can it?"

"Haa... this guy's actually insane. Hey. You think contracts exist so you can exploit the loopholes? You really think you can pull this shit and walk away from it?"

Selfish. Shameless and sly. I'd heard that people like that existed, working every loophole they could find and wringing whatever they could out of it—but seeing it in person, I had to admit I was almost impressed.

"Oh, yeah? Then maybe you want my underwear too? Is that acquired property? I joined the group, so the underwear I've been wearing this whole time is yours now, right?"

He drawled it out, slow and mocking, like a man who was needling them on purpose. He seemed to think he'd won the argument. A laugh drifted down, and he started to press the point, voice dripping with contempt.

"See, that's what you get for not studying. A contract? You know how many loopholes there are in that scrap of paper? And you're gonna trust that and try to—"

But here's the thing. You can't afford to forget that the world has changed completely.

BANG—

"AAAAAGH!!! GAAAAAH!!"

"Well, look at that. I never got an education, so this is the only method I know."

The laws that used to protect us are gone. Things you thought were just an argument, just a little mockery, will turn around and threaten your ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠life.

"Y-you crazy bastard...! Nngh... fuck... fuck...!"

"Ah, right. Hold this asshole down for me. He said even stamping his mark on the contract was meaningless, yeah? Then the finger that stamped it is meaningless too, right? Can't be helped. I'll have to chop the fingers off joint by joint with an axe."

CRACK—

"DON'T!! Don't do it... AAAAGH!!! GAAAAH!!!"

"It's okay. It's okay. I'll only cut the fingers, just the fingers. If you move, it'll hurt. Stay still and hold out your fingers nicely."

That was the very contract he'd dismissed with his own mouth as utterly meaningless. Had he not realized that, just as he'd said, that scrap of paper was nothing more than a scrap of paper—and that it would not become a shield to protect him? If he'd survived five months, you'd think he'd have at least ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠that much of a brain.

"GAAAAH!! I'm sorryyyyy...!! I-I was wrong... GAAACK!!"

"No, no. What did you do wrong? The loophole in the contract? That was a really helpful observation. I'll revise that part."

"AAAAAGH!!! Please, please...! I'm sor— urk..."

CRACK—

"Hey now, I told you not to move. You thrashed around and got your head hit. I said I'd only cut the fingers, no idea why you'd do that. Tsk... dump the body and grab the stuff. Oh, and revise the contract."

The conversation between the two of them ended there.

That was the kind of world this was. In the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠end, this was what had become ordinary. If anything, it was possible the people around me were the ones who'd fallen behind common sense—the ones whose metacognition for surviving this world was running a little slow.

"If you've grabbed everything, let's move. It's freezing as it is, and we wasted time because of one dumbass."

I stayed hidden behind the wall until they left, and only after every trace of their presence had vanished did I start up the stairs.

There was a corpse. Unlike the hospital, there were no children; everyone dead here was an adult. Countless people in business suits, frozen where they stood. Women in neat uniforms, dead in their places.

And among those corpses, a lump with its head split down the middle, soaked in blood, had been tossed aside without a second thought. Left in nothing but his underwear. A thoroughly hideous, filthy sight.