Chapter 81: How Brats Survive
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 81: How Brats Survive
Honestly, it's a realm that's hard for me to understand.
Because I don't care about other people.
I think I judge myself pretty objectively.
I don't have a good personality, and my social skills are terrible.
I just do whatever the hell I want. In the real world, doing that could easily land me in a police station or prison for the rest of my life, which is why I've just been living my life in the zombie apocalypse.
I got lucky and the world changed to suit me perfectly, so you could call me a lucky guy.
In any case, helping others out of sheer sentimentality...
...is something no amount of persuasion could ever make me understand.
That's exactly why I asked Oh Se-i at first if she was a pedophile.
If there had been some logical, understandable reason, I wouldn't have said anything, nor would I have held her accountable.
It's hard to draw a clear line of right and wrong, but in the first place, my offer to give free food to the families of "Residents" (even if they weren't Residents themselves) was meant as bait to make the Residents work harder in Paradise.
So whether they only eat one meal a day out of a guilty conscience, or stuff themselves with several meals' worth at once like they're doing a mukbang, calling them out on it is actually a bit petty.
And it's not like Oh Se-i hasn't worked at all.
If you ask whether she did enough work to justify giving away twenty or thirty portions of food on her own whim, then by my standards, the answer is obviously no.
But she wasn't just a freeloading parasite, and considering she's the family of a "Resident," it's something I could easily let slide.
But in the end, it comes down to whether I can accept it.
She's doing the stupidest thing in the world. If she were someone outside my faction, I wouldn't care, but when a bitch connected to two of my "Residents" is acting like this, I have to choose one of two options.
One is to just kill her.
That's the easiest.
Nip the source of the problem in the bud, and this will never happen again.
But there's a slight risk.
Oh Yoon-seop and Lee Mi-sook, who abandoned the Multiplex and came all this way for their family, might leave.
Their abilities are good enough to pull their own weight anywhere, so they wouldn't want to stay under someone who killed their daughter.
Of course, I couldn't just let them go, and if it came to that, I'd have no choice but to kill them too.
Then the conclusion would be an ending where two of my Residents die.
I might easily clear Event Quest 4 and get points, but throwing away a Level 7 cooking skill and a Level 6 combat skill just to gain 2 points?
Extremely inefficient.
The other method is a bit of a hassle, and honestly, it's not very efficient either.
Because getting Oh Se-i to actually listen is the real problem.
I'm not great at reading people's minds.
I've always preferred doing things alone, and I never had any need to care about what others were thinking.
However, I know most of the details related to the events.
So, rather than killing her, guiding her to change like this is a kind of entertainment. It sparks my interest to see if I can steer things exactly how I want.
"That food you gave them. Do you think these kids went home and ate it with their parents?"
"...Probably. From what I saw, they didn't look like kids being forced to beg by adults."
"I agree. There are no signs of abuse on them."
In a zombie apocalypse, kids are truly dangerous.
To be honest, the elderly are a case-by-case basis, so opinions on them vary wildly. In reality, because advanced age often comes with stat penalties, they aren't usually that dangerous.
The same goes for women.
In the first place, if a woman offers her body as bait, people would be suspicious even in the real world. In an apocalyptic world like this, not many guys would blindly take the bait.
They'd vet them in their own way.
But kids are different.
If they look even remotely pitiful, almost everyone lets their guard down.
Innocence.
Because kids possess an innocence that adults lack.
That's the problem.
Because it's incredibly difficult to distinguish the pure evil hidden beneath that innocence.
After we walked for a bit, the brats suddenly scattered and ran.
They dispersed in all directions, clearly familiar with the streets.
"Huh?"
Oh Se-i panicked, but I didn't chase after them.
After all, the one with his arm bent at a bizarre angle was still walking right beside me, my arm slung tightly over his shoulder.
"Looks like we're here."
"...Yes."
It was a private academy building, about seven stories high.
Crudely piled barricades were visible nearby, and quite a few children could be seen.
And adults were slipping in and out as well.
"As expected, my guess was spot on."
The kids who had run away slipped into the building through various entrances.
I headed toward the building, dragging the 17-Year-Old along.
The eyes of the guys blocking the barricade—who looked to be about high school age—gleamed with murderous intent.
Those weren't the eyes of people who had only killed a person or two.
Well, zombies might have been human once, but this was a different feeling entirely.
"What's this? Seon-yeol. Who is that?"
"H-He... came to sell... a woman..."
The 17-Year-Old turned his head to look at Oh Se-i behind me.
Greed filled his eyes.
A woman this good-looking was hard to come by.
Honestly, about 30% of the reason I didn't kill Oh Se-i was probably because of this.
Oh Se-i's face stiffened, having clearly overheard.
I had told the 17-Year-Old on the way here, but this was probably the first Oh Se-i was hearing of it.
"What on earth is..."
"Just follow me."
Instead of explaining, I gestured for her to follow.
Oh Se-i hesitated, but seeing the high-school-aged kids already surrounding her, she followed.
She must have realized it was already too late.
Once inside, there were even more kids.
Most of them looked to be middle or high schoolers, with some being much younger, around elementary school age.
Everywhere, kids could be seen bringing back small amounts of food.
"So this is the stray cats' nest."
I spoke sarcastically to Oh Se-i.
"..."
Did she feel anything?
Honestly, I hadn't brought her here hoping she'd learn a lesson.
This was just another setup.
We climbed the stairs to the seventh floor.
There, we found a luxurious-looking director's office and several other rooms.
Stepping into the director's office, I saw five or six guys—probably high schoolers, or maybe just barely adults—hanging out and smoking cigarettes.
"What's this?"
The kid from the barricade, who had come up with us and the 17-Year-Old, reported.
"He came to sell a woman."
"Oh, shit. She's fucking gorgeous."
"Her tits are fucking huge, too."
Oh Se-i's face contorted in disgust.
"Heh, fucking bitch. It's hot when she scowls like that."
"Whoa, mister. Are you the one selling her? Where'd you find something like this?"
An age where they don't know how terrifying the world can be.
I know kids like this.
The types who ruled as school bullies, and when the apocalypse hit, got lucky with good skills and immediately started doing the exact same shit here.
Not that I'd actually seen them in school; they were just one of the many types of survivors in the zombie apocalypse.
There are all kinds of events involving kids. In some cases, parents actually send their children out to beg on a small scale.
In others, adults gather homeless, wandering children, abuse them, and set begging quotas for them.
But among them, the most troublesome to deal with is when the brats form their own faction.
In the first case, you just take the clueless kids back to their parents.
If the parents had any capability, they wouldn't be hiding in a relatively safe place while sending their kids out to beg, so that gets resolved quickly.
In the second case, once you find where the adults are, the kids aren't really a threat.
But in the last case, every single one of the brats is exactly the same.
These clueless brats realize, Oh, this is how we get food, and desperately try to show their vulnerability to others.
Then, the moment they think their livelihood is threatened, they won't hesitate to attack, aiming for your life with pure malice.
Middle and high schoolers? These punks have absolutely no restraint.
To me, these punks and adults are all the same, but for someone emotionally vulnerable like Oh Se-i, the moment they think, But they're just kids... they're dead.
You can tell just by looking at how they puff away on their cigarettes and act so cocky, even after seeing me.
They know they hold all the cards here.
In the real world, the law protected them, but in the zombie apocalypse, power protects them.
"How much can you give me?"
"For someone like her? Maybe 300?"
"300 Coins?"
"That's a fucking generous offer."
"Go buy yourself something nice to eat, mister."
"Heh. You're not throwing away used goods, are you?"
"Are you crazy? No way you'd throw away someone like her. Looks untouched to me."
"Puhahaha! Hey, mister. Can you not get it up anymore?"
They spoke with the sheer confidence of having absolutely no filter.
Seeing me frown, the guy who had stepped closer offered a grinning apology.
"Sorry, mister. My boys are a bit rough around the edges. You came to sell us something good, and they're being so rude."
"They certainly are rude."
And really, the thing I hate most is rude people.
Especially rude people who don't even have the power to back it up.
As he apologized, he blew cigarette smoke right into my face. I grabbed him by the throat and threw him.
"...?"
Perhaps because it was the director's office, there was a large plate-glass window offering a clear view outside. One of the glass panes shattered completely as the smoking punk crashed through it and fell.
"..."
"I don't smoke. Fucking bastard, making me breathe in secondhand smoke. So rude."
The laughing, chatting punks froze, awkwardly drawing their weapons.
"What are you doing? Aren't you going to buy her?"
Thud!
The sound of a person hitting the ground is far more sickening than you'd think.
Even more so when you didn't actually see it, but heard the sound echo a few seconds after the window shattered.
"If you're not buying, let's move on to the next topic. Your little brats came to my establishment and caused a scene. You know what business disruption is, right? They ran off without paying, so who's going to compensate me?"