Humans Are Selfish
I'd finished installing the radio repeaters at Yeouido Station and Heukseok Station, and now I was on my way to Banpo. About six hundred meters left, give or take.
If I'd been able to radio in, Kim Min-seo would've marveled at how fast I was moving. But I'd switched over to Harin's frequency, so that wasn't an option. If anything, I was running pretty late. There were more people out than last time, and I had the repeaters to install on top of it.
Which put me somewhere between Express Bus Terminal Station and Banpo Station — not on the tracks, but picking my way through the forest of buildings outside. Survivors were out in force now. I probably needed to start preparing for the possibility they'd push all the way into our territory.
It was cold. And the tension ran thick. One slip in concentration and I'd walk right into someone, so I kept my nerves wound tight, scanning every angle as I advanced, slow and careful.
People who'd spent months huddled in hiding from the cold and the terror were all poking their heads out now, wandering the streets with weapons they'd scrounged from God knows where. The subway stations were as good as occupied, so I'd had to surface starting from Sinbanpo Station.
And then there was the other problem.
"These crazy bastards built nothing but fucking apartments..."
I studied the map. I scanned the streets with my own two eyes. Everything I saw was apartments. The real problem was that I could barely find a single building that might house a Large UPS.
Given the distance between repeaters, installing one near Banpo Station made the most sense. But these lunatics had packed the entire neighborhood with nothing but apartment complexes. No wonder there were a disgusting number of survivors. This place had been densely populated to begin with, so even after most of them died, plenty were still left.
So I ducked into a suitable building and started scouting the surrounding area. No large police stations or firehouses to speak of. There were some if I went down as far as Seocho, but the radio range from there back to PH129 would be stretching it. No military bases, obviously. And no decent-sized supermarkets or department stores either — which, what the fuck, was that even possible? Maybe these people had just lived in expensive apartments and nothing else.
After a long search, I did manage to find a bank building. It was the kind of location where I was almost guaranteed to run into someone — but then, this whole neighborhood was crawling with people anyway.
I closed the map and stuffed it back in my pack. Dug out a strip of soybean-paste wolf jerky, clamped it between my teeth, and swapped out the spent, cold heat pack for a fresh one. Salty. And warm.
"...Hah."
I wanted to get this repeater installed already. I wanted to hear her voice. A little. Or, honestly, a lot.
Come to think of it, there was an old saying. When a tiger dies, it leaves its pelt; when a person dies, they leave their name. A pretty famous proverb, and the kind of thing a teacher would trot out in class from time to time.
And I was a pretty crooked person, so I always rejected it. Always refused it. The number of people who actually get to leave a name behind when they die is vanishingly small. Kings, in the old days. Presidents, now. Famous chaebol, maybe a celebrity or two. Me — and the teacher who used to say that kind of thing — we'd die and it wouldn't even be a name. Just a one-line death. A Mr. Kim has passed away. Nobody asks who you were. You're just fatality number one. In a life that gets filed down to that no matter how hard you thrash, there's no name left to leave.
So.
Click. Bang.
In the end, my crooked conclusion hadn't been wrong at all. A nameless person crumpled to the floor in a spray of blood.
Someone I'd run into on the way. People, actually. A survivor group from around Banpo Station, by the look of it. They were armed. Shotguns, from what I could tell at a glance.
"The hell are you."
That was the first thing out of their mouths the second we crossed paths.
"Yeah, no. This is our street, so drop everything you're carrying and walk. That's the Transit Tax."
That was what they said even after I told them I just wanted to pass through — shaking their heads, shoving a barrel in my face, grinning while they said it.
Five of them. Four men, one woman. Looking me over like fishermen who'd just landed a trophy catch, practically smacking their lips as they inventoried my pack, my puffer, my guns. Faces and voices that had already decided killing people and taking their things was just how the world worked now.
If I said I had no choice — would that make their deaths justified?
"P-please, spare me...! I was wrong...!"
"..."
Four of them died like that. I'd rummaged out my pack and set the K2 on the ground in a show of surrender, and that was their mistake — they let the tension go. I still had the M60 revolver. I put rounds through the heads of the two who weren't reaching for my pack or the K2 first. Then, before the remaining pair could even get their barrels up, I finished them clean with the last two shots.
And so, without leaving so much as a name behind, four men died with holes in their heads from a trigger I'd barely had to pull. The woman left standing dropped to her knees on the ice and begged for her life.
"I-if you spare me, I'll do anything! I'm good...!! I'm really, really good at it...! Th-these guys said I was a, a legendary lay!"
"..."
Even while she was begging to live, what she left behind wasn't a name. Just something filthy and cheap, stuttered out through the shaking.
"I-if you want, right here... i-it's too cold here, but in the building next door, even...! Please? I'm begging you..."
"Drop the gun and get lost."
"Th-thank you...!"
That was all I said to her, and she flung the gun away and bolted. I don't make a hobby of killing people who've already lost the will to fight. She'd been holding a gun, sure, but she couldn't actually shoot. The second I dropped two of them, she froze solid and just stood there shaking. A miracle she'd lasted five months. People like that don't last much longer anyway.
I stepped into the bank building. Combat had happened here at some point too — frozen blood and torn-apart corpses were there to greet me. Maybe the more people who'd survived, the more conflict and death had just kept repeating itself. I passed the bodies without a second glance. What I wanted was the server room, the kind of place that would have a Large UPS. I ignored the smashed, looted counters and the vaults and started up the stairs.
No sign of anyone. I never forgot that letting your guard down meant dying, so I kept my footsteps careful and kept listening. This place was empty. I checked every corner. Nothing left to scavenge. Even the corpses had been stripped of their puffers and thick knits, and it looked like every last office supply and scrap of paper had been carried off too. I kept climbing. The floors I passed looked like they'd been looted a long time ago — dust had even settled over everything.
That was how I found the server room. I reached for the door, and there was blood on my glove.
"..."
Not mine. Must have spattered on me from the nameless people I'd shot at point-blank range. I didn't know how it had come to this. I'd been so stubborn about not wanting to kill anyone, and here I was, seven people dead in the middle of a trip to install some repeaters. I really didn't understand it. It was hard. I think I was exhausted. If I could hear Harin's voice, maybe — even just a little — I'd feel better.
Holding onto that thought, I opened the door. Inside, a Large UPS stood right where it should. I checked the remaining charge: more than half still left.
"Haa..."
I pulled the repeater from my pack right away, lifted it with bloodstained gloves, and connected it. Powered it on. Matched my radio's frequency to the repeater's.
"..."
My heart was hammering. What if Harin was in a situation where she couldn't radio. What if she hadn't charged the battery. What if her feelings had already turned, and someone like me didn't matter to her anymore. What if this whole thing ended as nothing but my own private suffering.
"Hhk. Hoo..."
All those anxieties, all those ill omens, and my breathing started to tremble. I was scared. I was a little afraid that this transmission of mine would end up meaning nothing. And even so, I lifted the radio and carefully let the words out.
"...This is 303. Agent H, come in, over."
The same playful callsign I'd used the first time I ever got a radio in my hands. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. That much time crawled by, and still there was no answer. I keyed the radio again.
"This is 303. If you can hear me, please respond."
Again. Five seconds. Ten. Fifteen. Time kept leaking away, and it seemed like no answer was coming back at all — and then.
Fortunately, an answer came through.
"...It's been a while."
A familiar voice. The hands that had been shaking with anxiety went still. Every what-if I'd been nursing scattered in a rush, and a breath of relief slipped out of me. I exhaled and sank down onto the floor.