Shoot to Kill
The soldiers waited.
They waited until Jaeyeol and Suho went back and brought the rest of our people.
"Thank you."
"There's nothing to thank us for. We simply haven't made a judgment yet."
"A judgment?"
"Whether you're the enemy or not."
"I'll say it again — I'm not the enemy. I just chose the only way I could protect my people."
"Do you regret that choice?"
"No."
"Even knowing that Kang Juhan's choice obstructed a military operation and put over a thousand lives at risk — you still don't regret it?"
"Captain. Could you abandon your own people?"
"If it were a choice for the nation and its citizens, without hesitation. I would give the order to pull the trigger right now. If that was what the situation demanded."
Captain Son Gijun turned back to face me. The muzzle of a gun was leveled at his forehead, mere centimeters away — and still his eyes didn't waver an inch as they locked onto mine.
This man was serious.
He was the kind of person who could choose to throw away not just his comrades, but himself.
He was ready for that.
"Hey— hey!! What the hell are you doing!!!"
The moment I lowered the pistol I'd been holding, Gihun — who'd just jumped down from the tank — looked around in a panic, gauging the soldiers still aiming their weapons at us.
He'd gotten a rough rundown of the situation from Jaeyeol and Suho on the way over. That was why he was so rattled. In a standoff with guns drawn, I'd just released the hostage.
But calling this a standoff was a stretch from the start. If the soldiers had wanted to, I would've been a pincushion already. All those muzzles. The tank behind them. The mounted machine gun. And a hostage prepared to throw his own life away.
The fact that I was still breathing meant things weren't going to get any worse than this.
"If I keep this pistol, will that make things worse?"
"When the water's already spilled, pouring one more cup on the floor doesn't change much. But our attitude will. Next time we meet, we'd be facing an armed opponent."
"And if I give it back?"
"You might avoid getting shot in place of a greeting."
"What if I admit fault and go with you?"
"You'll be punished according to command's judgment."
"Could I die?"
"Depends on what decision is made."
"Moving freely would be out of the question, right?"
"Within a restricted space, perhaps."
If I took the pistol — which would clearly be a massive help — the soldiers would shoot me dead. If I admitted fault and went quietly, I'd end up locked away somewhere at minimum.
That left me with only one real choice. I couldn't afford to sit locked up somewhere, unable to complete quests.
That was when it happened.
A mechanical voice crackled from the radio clipped to his shoulder.
"Captain Son Gijun. Report the situation."
"May I?"
"Go ahead."
"This is Captain Son Gijun. The Seogang Bridge demolition operation has failed."
"Reason?"
"We discovered survivors crossing the bridge."
"We confirmed the sound of an explosion."
"I'll give a detailed report upon return."
"Did the survivors interfere?"
"Yes, sir. They did."
"And the survivors?"
"They're with us currently."
"Eliminate them and return."
"……"
"……"
It wasn't just me. Captain Son Gijun's pupils flickered with a hint of shock, and the rest of our group — climbing down from the tank one by one — went completely rigid.
"Why no response?"
"These are survivors who crossed the bridge. They're not hostiles."
"Irrelevant. Eliminate all risk factors. Kill them and return."
"Understood."
Hold on.
This wasn't right, was it?
Soldiers just casually killing civilians like this?!
Captain Son Gijun's hand drifted to his hip. He drew his pistol and leveled it at my forehead.
"Juhan!!!"
"Hyung!!"
"Oppa!!"
"No!!"
"Wait! This isn't right!!"
"Don't shoot!!"
"……"
"……"
The noise around us erupted, but Captain Son Gijun and I said nothing — just stared into each other's eyes.
Then the finger on the trigger squeezed.
BANG!!
That short gunshot was a signal flare. A storm of gunfire erupted across Seogang Bridge in its wake.
DADADADADANG!! DADANG!! DANG!! BANG BANG! DADADADANG!!!
A moment later, the bridge fell quiet.
Captain Son Gijun's low voice crackled into the radio.
"Elimination complete. Returning now."
BANG!!!
Ugh, so loud.
Were they growing bullets out there? They'd been shooting all damn day.
Dig, dig—
The gunfire was far enough away that it wasn't actually that loud, but whatever had happened on that bridge had left me with PTSD — it grated on my ears something fierce.
Anyway. I'd expected they wouldn't actually do it, but I'd still aged ten years in that moment. The quest reward had been "Conflict with the Military" — if you could even call that a reward — and the anxiety of it had been sitting on my chest the whole time.
Still, Captain Son Gijun and his soldiers had fired into the air, manufacturing their own false alibi, and let us pass safely into Yeouido.
Having to give Sergeant Kim San's pistol back was a real shame, though. Nothing to be done about it. You couldn't report that you'd eliminated everyone and then claim a firearm had been stolen or lost.
But I hadn't even gotten a single word in with the protagonist's party — people I'd only just run into. First impressions were probably rock bottom, too. Still, they had to know they'd only made it across that bridge because of me, right?
"Ah, right. Gihun."
"What?!"
"When did those people go past?"
"Who?!"
"The ones who were with the soldiers."
"What are you talking about?! Weren't they already with the soldiers?! Ugh—!!"
"No. They arrived later than us. Didn't you see them go past the bus?"
"I didn't!!"
"What the hell were you even looking at…!"
"I'm telling you, nobody went past! If people had walked by, I would've seen them!!"
"He's right, oppa. Nobody went past."
"That's correct! I didn't see anyone either!"
"……"
What? Had the protagonist's party actually teleported or something?
We'd been there since last night, so they absolutely had to have arrived at Seogang Bridge later than us. That meant they would have had no choice but to pass the bus — and not a single person had seen them?
"Hyung, I'm not sure about this, but…"
"What?"
"When I went with Suho-hyung to get the others, I saw it. The door of the coach bus in the far lane was open."
"……"
The bus we'd spent the night in was a city bus. The coach buses had been way farther ahead.
So while we'd naturally become the bait, the protagonist's party had been hiding in a coach bus and made their move?
I'd never seen anything like that in the webtoon. The protagonist's party arrived at Seogang Bridge sometime during the day — morning or afternoon, I wasn't sure — rescued Cha Suho from danger, and entered Yeouido. There was nothing about spending the night on the bridge or hiding inside a bus.
And come to think of it — there had been six of them. It was supposed to be five. Six.
Was the story changing even in places I wasn't present? Some kind of butterfly effect?
"Still, damn, that guy was ridiculously good-looking…"
I'd been so focused on Captain Son Gijun as a hostage that I hadn't gotten a proper look at anyone except the protagonist, Baek Sihyeon. Even after they'd finished firing into the air and sent us on our way, he'd been hidden behind the soldiers. All I'd gotten was a brief glance when I looked back.
And even that was enough for the handsomeness to hit me like a truck. Silver-white hair that no ordinary person could pull off. A face where beauty and handsomeness were so perfectly balanced that the hair color actually worked. And then, as if that weren't enough — as if some pervert god had drawn out his own wish list — the guy was 180 cm tall.
Three centimeters shorter than me, sure. But still.
Wait a second.
If Baek Sihyeon looked like that, how gorgeous was the heroine supposed to be? And I hadn't even seen her?
Had the webtoon inverted itself somehow when it became reality? That didn't track, though — just looking at Nari and Jihye, the female characters' looks were already in a whole different league…
"GRAAAAH!!!"
"Augh—!! Hey, you bastard! Help me out already! Why are you just standing there looking cool?!!"
"……"
Gihun's shout shattered my thoughts. I dusted off my ass, got up, and grabbed a field shovel. Then I swung it at Gihun — who had a gauntleted hand clamped over each of a zombie's jaws.
THWACK!!!
"You crazy bastard! That almost hit me!!!"
"I help and you still bitch about it."
"Ugh, this is just…!!"
"GRAAAAH!!"
"You shut up!!!!"
"……"
Dumb brute.
Once I'd killed one for him and freed up a hand, Gihun jammed his fingers into a zombie's mouth, gripped the upper and lower jaws, and ripped them clean apart. Literally tore the thing's mouth open, then slammed its head into the floor until the back of its skull cracked — then immediately charged off looking for the next one.
That was when Nari came back. She'd been working with the women who'd arrived with Suho, hauling zombie corpses out the windows. She took one look at the mangled corpse, squeezed her eyes shut, and grabbed my arm.
"I'll dump this one."
"N-no, I can do it…! But… can I ask why we came here…?"
Nari seemed curious herself, but she was probably asking on behalf of the others. The women who'd been tossing corpses out the windows with her — and even the ones still dragging dead zombies toward the windows — all turned their heads to stare at me.
"We came here because, for one thing, it's close."
"Ah…"
About two hundred meters from the intersection right after you cross Seogang Bridge. But proximity alone wasn't why I'd chosen this place. There were several spots closer than this that would have been far more comfortable to stay in. The tall building rising right behind us was a hotel, for one.
The reason we'd come to this two-story commercial building — a type you rarely saw in Yeouido — was because it had real advantages.
One: the exterior walls made up an overwhelming majority of the structure. Korean buildings typically turned almost every wall on the ground floor into display windows, leaving only the support columns, to maximize street-level use. This building, though — aside from two entrances, one on the front and one on the side — was solid exterior wall all the way around. Block the doors properly and it was safer from external threats than just about any other building.
Two: it was easy to control. Roughly sixty pyeong per floor, so clearing the zombies inside wasn't hard. If anything happened inside the building, you could spot it immediately and respond fast. And because it was secure against outside intrusion, stationing just two people on the second floor meant you could monitor the entire perimeter through windows facing every direction.
Three: the location was perfect. This was the real core reason. I knew this building existed because it appeared in the webtoon. Beyond Yang Jaeyeol's group after his darkening, Yeouido had other survivor factions that clashed with the military. One of them called themselves the Resistance — and this was the place where they secured additional weapons and ammunition, building themselves into a much stronger force.
They slaughtered every soldier who passed in front of this building and took all their guns and ammo. And the reason soldiers had no choice but to pass this building? Because the first shop appeared at the three-way intersection at roughly the ten o'clock position relative to this place.
I just hadn't expected this many other advantages to be hidden here on top of that.
"What the hell?! You've been coming to places like this?!"
"Would a guy who rides the subway be hanging out somewhere like this?"
"Th-then how did you even know about this place?!"
"We came here and it happened to be here. That's all."
"Ha! Coincidence?!"
Jihye was glaring at me with eyes full of suspicion, raising her voice — because the basement level housed what was clearly a very expensive high-end bar. The kind of place where women with celebrity-tier looks would walk out of.
Of course, that wasn't the advantage. The unexpected kitchen and shower facilities were. And, as a bonus, a whole lot of luxury sofas that could stand in for beds.
"Aah… this is nice…"
While the women cleaned up the zombie corpses and scrubbed down the building, the men took turns washing up. Gihun and I, first out of the shower, collapsed straight onto the plush sofas in one of the private rooms.
"Nice, my ass…! You had all the fun by yourself…!!"
"I had fun? I threw the bomb, almost got into a shootout with the military — I did everything myself."
"Tch… But did you come here to link up with the protagonist's party? Those people behind the soldiers earlier — that was them, right?"
"Yeah."
"So what now? You almost shot it out with the military, and they went with the soldiers."
"I'll meet them and make a good impression."
"How? You gonna walk into the National Assembly Building or something?"
"As if. Throwing that bomb on the bridge was actually a quest. The reward was 'Conflict with the Military.' There's no way I'm going near that place."
"A quest??"
I was starting to feel human again. The situation was still a mess, but being able to talk about it with Gihun at least — it felt like a weight lifting off my chest.
"What kind of garbage reward is that…"
"Tell me about it."
"So what are you gonna do now?"
"They'll come out. They'll get drafted into military operations."
"Civilians??"
"Look at the state of things — you think they're screening civilians from soldiers? Martial law's in effect. They'll grab anyone and everyone. Not just the men — the women too."
"Women too??"
"We've got status windows. You can tell who's strong and who's weak at a glance."
"Ah~ But how do you know what kind of operation they'll get pulled into? You didn't even know they'd show up today."
"I didn't know — and they still showed up, didn't they?"
"Huh??"
The protagonist's party arrives in Yeouido. Whether they'd been hiding in a coach bus, or a bridge demolition that never existed in the original story nearly went off — the process was different, but the result was the same. They'd come to Yeouido and joined up with the military.
That meant whatever quests were supposed to happen in Yeouido would happen one way or another. Because that was the fixed story.
"……"
"……"
"What? Why'd you both go quiet the second I walked in?"
Suho came in fresh from washing up, and not just me — even Gihun's lips were moving without any sound coming out. As long as I didn't spill the future contents of the webtoon, it was fine… but still.
"It's not like that."
"Sure it isn't. Well, trust builds slowly. Still feels a little left out, though."
"I'm telling you it's not."
"Yeah! It's really not, man!"
"Then what were you talking about?"
"……"
Gihun's lips flapped open and shut again. You can't say it anyway, you idiot.
Before Suho could get any more hurt, I quickly laid out the plan going forward.
"We're going to get something."
"Get what?"
"Guns."
"Guns?"
"Guns?!"
Gihun was hearing this for the first time too — he whipped around to stare at me in shock.
Yeah. We were going to get guns. It was dangerous, sure. But me, Suho, Gihun, plus Jaeyeol and Min-gu…
"Guns??"
"Whoa, no way! From where??"
With this lineup, it was doable. Honestly, I felt like we could take the protagonist's party in a fight right now. So picking up guns that had fallen where armed soldiers got wiped out? That much should be possible.