Humans Are Selfish
For me, daily life had always been the same thing.
Always miserable, always hard, always a complete shitshow, never getting even a fraction better — just grinding on like that, forever. And because I was someone with no one in my corner and nothing to my name, it was the kind of life where I had to keep repeating things I never wanted to do in the first place.
Even as the world ended and people died off all around me, I don't think there was anything you'd really call a change in my life. Snow just started falling from the sky, mixed with a little ash, turning everything dingy. Surviving had just gotten a little harder. Living had just gotten a little more inconvenient.
In that landscape, I was still miserable, still struggling, still fucked. And I still had nothing, so I was still repeating the same daily grind. In the end, regardless of whether the world rose or fell, my life was probably just destined to keep plunging endlessly downward and nothing else.
That's what I used to think.
"Oppa, are you crying?"
"...Dunno."
Yeah. If there was a single thing that had changed in a life that seemed like it would never change at all, it was definitely her. That was all it was. The change one person could make was, without a doubt, nothing more than that.
"I was late answering because I had to get somewhere without people around. I didn't delay on purpose."
"...Dunno."
Just one pretty woman. A girl with a frail, delicate look who didn't seem like she'd be much help when it came to staying alive.
"What don't you know this time. Are you sulking?"
"...I said I don't know."
If you really wanted to put a label on it, she was nothing more than a kind person who'd handed me a tuna mayo kimbap. And once the tuna mayo ran out, she was closer to a pawn who'd outlived her usefulness. I know that sounds insane now, but that was my assessment of her at the time.
"Oppa."
"What."
"I missed you. I mean it."
I figured that adding one more person to my side wouldn't change a thing. If anything, I wondered whether the hassle of having to scrape up supplies for one more mouth would actually help me survive.
"I can only hear your voice. What's there to miss."
"Oh my god. Your girlfriend is saying something affectionate and you're raining on it. Would it kill you to just say you missed me too? We've got plenty of red ointment here — want me to pack some for you to put on that wound?"
"..."
Well. I'd always been alone. The only people who'd ever tried to come near me in my entire life were the orphanage director and kids in the same situation I was. I was a bastard whose own mother and father had dumped him the moment he was born. A bastard even the new parents who'd chosen to adopt him had sent back within a week. So when someone stepped in close, what bloomed in me wasn't gratitude but distrust and suspicion, not comfort but unease and anxiety.
"You didn't miss me?"
"..."
"Really? Hm?"
I won't deny it. I'd buried my own self-assessment so deep I called myself the discarded waste of the lower class, so I'm not about to sit here now and pretend I didn't hate people and look at everything through the ugliest possible lens.
And.
"I missed you. I mean it. Being alone is... yeah. It's hard. I'm exhausted."
"I've been worrying this whole time, and now you're talking like that and I'm even more worried."
The fact that even a fuckup like me had changed a little was also true. Maybe — no, definitely — I had grown and shifted under her influence.
"I'm tired. Getting through each day is hard."
"Aww. You poor thing. You worked so hard, oppa. I'm sorry. You had it even harder because of me."
I'd become a little more human. I'd started wanting to be a slightly better person. And I was certain that was because someone had stood beside me for four months, unchanging, and been a good person. The reason I'd started wanting to become someone I wouldn't be ashamed to stand next to — that was because Harin had kept holding the place at my side, without fail.
"Hah... still. I think I can keep going now."
"Thank you. For coming back for me."
When I was little, if the reason I'd gritted my teeth and kept going without completely going off the rails was the orphanage director's love and care — then now that she was gone, the one holding up a proper compass for someone lacking in every possible way was Harin.
And so the small talk went on, a little useful and also pretty pointless.
"Wait. Oppa, you built the radio repeaters yourself to extend the range? You weren't just nearby this whole time?"
"Yeah. I set each repeater about five kilometers apart and hooked them up to Large UPS units. Right now I'm in a bank near Banpo Station."
"Wow, oppa, look at you picking it all up! I'm so proud of you! You're so cute!"
"That's me."
"I just wanna kiss you, seriously!"
"Never mind that. From now on, call me Debtor Lee — invincible Marine and disciple of Dr. Rin, foremost authority on generator construction."
"Yeah, no. I'm gonna pass on that."
Harin kept gasping in admiration at the news that I'd built the repeaters myself. I explained that I'd just used an existing one as a model and copied it exactly, but she still piled on the praise like I was incredible. Her compliments put me in a good mood for no good reason, so I dumped everything that had happened since we'd last spoken on her, like I was spinning a story.
"The cultists? Those lunatics from before?"
"Yeah. Looks like they've split into hardliners and moderates, and this time I somehow ended up at the moderates' hideout..."
That was a mistake.
"Are you insane? What could you possibly gain from getting mixed up with them?!"
"No, it's — I got asked by another survivor. They didn't even have guns."
"...Don't tell me it was a woman."
Maybe I'd gotten too carried away and spilled things I didn't even need to mention.
"She was a girl, yeah, but a kid. A minor."
"Oppa. Just because I'm not there, you're already messing around with some other woman..."
"I said she's a minor. A tiny little kid was crying and begging me, so..."
"You even got seduced by a minor and left me behind...? Oppa, have you finally lost it? As long as she's a girl, even if she's flat-chested and underage, that's fine with you?"
Oh, for fuck's sake. I was just trying to whine a little about how hard it was over there, so why the hell was she latching onto the weirdest part and going full unhinged, the same way she did when she was eating.
Anyway. That was about how it went. I brought up the cultists and got chewed out within an inch of my life for not keeping my eyes off other women. I brought up the drug addiction and got absolutely destroyed for exposing myself to narcotics because some other woman asked me to.
"Radio's out of battery."
"Don't make up stupid excuses. Tell me you were wrong."
"I was wrong to me."
"Oh, fuck off. Unbelievable."
We went back and forth like that until we both cracked, snickering into the receiver, and only after the laughter died down did I bring it up.
"Well... you're sharp, so you probably already know, but I didn't set up radio repeaters just to hear your voice."
"I know. But it's not possible right now. There's a lot of security inside, and Mom and Dad are watching me, so I don't have an opening to escape."
I'd figured as much. It felt like a lot had happened, but it had only been a little over two weeks — not even a full month.
"If you want, I can kick up a fuss from the outside. I've got a proper rifle, grenades, even smoke grenades."
"I want to avoid anything that puts you in danger as much as possible. And besides... I don't want to watch you hurt anyone, either."
"But there's no other way, is there?"
That was about all that came to mind. Honestly, even a high-end homemade shotgun wasn't going to beat a K2 in power or rate of fire, and I had grenades and smoke on top of that. I wasn't some cultist bastard with numbers and no skill. I was Debtor Lee, a master of marksmanship reborn through the professional instruction and correction of the great Marine and eternal senior, Motherless Cha. That wasn't something you forgot.
I was thinking that when Harin's voice picked up again.
"Mm. There is one thing. I've been getting close with the security guard who showed us around back then."
"And?"
"She's a soft-hearted person, so if I sweet-talk her and persuade her, I think an opening might present itself. I've been playing the pitiful card this whole time. I keep telling her how sad and hard everything is."
In other words: manufacture a turncoat on the inside and walk out the easy way.
"And what happens to her if you do?"
"...She'd get thrown out. Dereliction of duty, something like that."
It was a pretty un-Harin-like method. Considering how she'd always hated causing trouble for other people, it really wasn't like her at all.
"And you'd rather not do it that way, if you can help it."
"Yes. But... I just can't think of anything else."
So I decided to put some meat on the bones of that plan.
"Any chance you could kick up a commotion on the level of briefly cutting the internal power?"
"I don't know. I'll check once we get off the radio."
"For now, you keep working on her. The second you get a solid yes that she'll help, you radio me."
"And then...?"
"I'll raise hell on B3 at the right moment. You cut the power, and before they get the situation under control, you come up to B3."
The bunker had maybe ten guards when I saw it last. Of course, if they reported a problem at the gate, more people from inside would come up — but for now, that was the count.
"Mm... will that even work?"
"Dunno."
I didn't know. Honestly, I couldn't give her a sure answer that it was possible. The numbers were pretty lopsided, and I didn't think I was going to pull off anything spectacular all by myself in a place that had a bunker.
"What do you mean, you don't know."
"If I was going to give up just because the odds looked slim, I never would've decided to come back for you in the first place."
But I was going to do it anyway. My gear was better. And honestly, I was confident my shooting was better too. Korean private security contractors weren't exactly professional marksmen. I was Debtor Lee, reborn through the professional instruction and correction of the great Marine and eternal senior, Motherless Cha. This was the kind of job that needed baseless confidence, so I kept repeating it to myself.
And then I said it to her.
"What about you? Are you really okay defying your parents, leaving that nice place, and coming back to a dump like this?"
"Yes. I'm okay."
She answered without a shred of hesitation.
"Then does oppa want to watch me live here and marry some other man my mom picked out? Do you really?"
"No."
I answered without a shred of hesitation either. I pushed myself up from where I'd been slumped against the UPS unit.
"It's just like that."
"..."
It was cold. And it was warm. I stretched out my slumped body, let out a long breath, and slapped my cheeks a few times to snap myself awake.
"Good."
I slung the pack back on, shouldered the K2, and left the server room.
"Oppa, this is random, but what did you do with that fish from back then?"
"I still have it. When you get back, we'll thaw it and eat it as sashimi."
"Pff... I'd like that."
A little — no, quite a lot — of selfish choices had stacked up on top of each other. Both of us had made decisions that weren't like us at all.
"See you later."
"I like you."
"Yeah. Me too."
I take a step. Past the frozen corpses, toward the home we'll soon return to together.
Humans are selfish.
But I think, sometimes, that's exactly what's needed.