Chapter 90: The Old Man and the Sea (3)
The old man who appeared at the entrance of the mansion, shotgun in hand.
The Innate Entrepreneur trait listed there. With a bit of simple deduction, I could guess he was the owner of this mansion.
I never expected the mansion’s owner to still be alive. And an old man, at that.
A line from a novel I’d read long ago came to mind. In the martial world, they say to beware old men, children, and women.
Not to mention the skills he possessed. This was not someone I could let my guard down around.
But even if I killed him, there wouldn’t be any real benefit.
It was awkward.
He had a trait, yet it didn’t seem particularly helpful. If the world were still normal and corporations actually functioned properly, I might have considered it. But if not?
Well… why bother?
So if I were to kill him, it would have to be for a damn good reason. Like if he attacked first, or if he’d already been bitten by a zombie.
Right now, neither was the case, so pulling the trigger felt wrong. Especially since the old man had lowered his gun first.
I glanced at my sister. No words were needed. Thanks to Resonance, if he harbored any hostility toward us, she would know. And if she knew, that insane agility and perception of hers would put a bullet through his skull in an instant.
I closed the distance without obstructing her line of fire.
I didn’t pick up the shotgun. Instead, I kicked it toward her with my foot, then leveled my own gun at him. The seamless flow of our coordinated movements made the old man’s eyebrows twitch.
Even if he’d been waiting for an opening, we gave him none.
If he tried to snatch my gun, the distance was too great, and I still had a shield strapped to one arm.
“Get on your knees and lace your fingers behind your head. I’ll do the search. Move, and your head’s gone.”
There was no way I’d get taken down.
“…Hoo.”
Suddenly the old man let out a sigh of admiration.
The sound was so out of place that I frowned slightly. His eyes swept over me, then my sister.
“You two… no, just how old are you two….”
His voice carried clear bewilderment. I glanced at my sister; she shook her head.
“Don’t try any tricks.”
“You don’t even look thirty… why… you’re both still in the prime of your youth… what about your parents?”
Even as he obediently dropped to his knees and laced his fingers behind his head like I’d ordered, the old man kept talking.
It was a hard reaction to understand. His life was literally in our hands. We held the power of life and death over him.
Why say something like that? Was he buying time? Suspicious, I still patted him down for a search.
He wasn’t carrying any other weapons.
“What is the world coming to… aigoo… kids like you carrying guns….”
The old man muttered in a lamenting tone befitting his age. I felt strangely unsettled by his attitude.
This wasn’t normal behavior at all.
Normally, he should have been cursing us, calling us enemies, or begging for his life.
“How many people are here?”
“Just me. Who’d come visit an old fart like me… though I suppose I can’t call you guests now.”
“If you’re pulling any shit, I really will kill you.”
“Of course. What’s the point of living anyway? If the world has come to the point where blood-soaked children like you have to do this… then the world itself is wrong… of course it is….”
Something… felt uncomfortable. I wasn’t sure if it was my heart or my posture.
“…Oppa.”
My sister was also looking at me with an uneasy expression.
It wasn’t the unease of walking into a trap. It was the unease of feeling like we were doing something wrong.
“…Stand up.”
I glanced behind us. No zombies. Considering our original goal, even if we had to fight, we needed to change locations.
“Kang Ahyeon, bring the car and follow.”
“Okay~”
“Old man… guide us. To the house. Walk in front.”
The old man rose with a somewhat reluctant, complicated look and began walking.
I kept my gun trained on his back while scanning the surroundings.
It was a vast property.
An entire ecosystem existed inside the walls.
Countless trees, fountains, a gently flowing artificial stream.
Stairs leading to a cliffside observatory, signposts pointing toward a vegetable garden and guest house deeper in the woods.
The main driveway leading to the main building was as clean as freshly laid asphalt.
Even the lampposts planted at regular intervals along it.
At a glance, it was clearly a place that had cost a fortune.
There was even a private road sloping down between two cliffs to a sandy beach.
As we drove up the private road where several cars were already parked, we saw pine trees lining both sides of the steadily rising terrain.
There were restrooms along the path, and dirt trails between the dense trees opened up into what looked like hiking routes up the hill.
And here, this old man lived all alone.
To be honest, I had thought we’d slaughter every last zombie in this broken, fucked-up place and then relax.
But this was completely different from what I’d expected.
There was only one survivor, after all.
Why did everything feel so off?
While I walked with that awkward feeling.
“…How old are you?”
The old man asked. He didn’t turn around or do anything else. He simply asked.
I hesitated for a moment before answering.
“Twenty-six.”
“Twenty-six… hoo… and your sister?”
“Twenty-one.”
“Just babies… mere children….”
The feeling was strange.
It wasn’t hostile. It didn’t feel like he was trying to use us either.
Not calculation… but pity.
Kwon Sang-hyuk feels pity for you and your younger sister.
Even Gamilbokgeom was telling me the same thing.
Because nearly everyone I’d met so far had either tried to use me or showed open hostility, I had no idea what the correct response was anymore.
“This year I turned seventy-two. I’ve lived long enough.”
“So… you’re saying you’re not afraid to die or something?”
“Hardly. Anyone who says they’re not afraid of death is full of shit. Everyone hates dying. This old man included.”
An unexpectedly frank admission. When I frowned, the old man sighed as he continued walking ahead.
“I just… thought I’d lived long enough, that’s all.”
The voice of a seventy-two-year-old man filled with regret. He walked on, reminiscing.
“In this world, people who should be dead are running around like mad dogs, biting and killing others. Monsters with inhuman strength appear… and now children are walking around with guns… it truly feels like the world has become unbearably cruel.”
The world had ended.
Not just ended, but ended properly.
All because some cult leader had been given power he should never have possessed.
And in that ruined world, this old man had remained alone in his grand mansion.
The village was overflowing with zombies, the police had deserted and set up checkpoints to rob people, and there were variants inside, they said.
So how the hell had he survived?
Well, considering the location, just hiding well would probably let him live a long time….
Or maybe… was this old man raising that variant?
I forced myself to stay alert while attaching ridiculous reasons in my head.
When the car stopped, we were already in front of the mansion.
Even at a glance, the mansion was luxurious enough to rival the cult leader’s penthouse.
No, in some ways it was even more impressive.
A modern building nestled among the forest on a cliffside.
Numerous rooms, aesthetically arranged paths, intricate sculptures and pine trees along every walking trail.
There were certainly art pieces here and there like the cult leader’s place… but it didn’t feel like it was screaming “Look how rich I am.”
Rather, it felt like they had been placed here simply because they were truly beautiful.
“You have a good eye. This old man carved all of them himself. It was my hobby after retirement.”
“…Who asked?”
“Hah, your eyes asked. Of course they did.”
The old man laughed. I chewed my lip, feeling uncomfortable in my chest.
The three-story building, the sheer cliffs visible behind it, the wooden fence running along the cliff edge.
The sound of the sea crashing against the rocks, mingling with the wind rustling through the dense pines.
Even though my gun muzzle was pressed against his back, the old man showed no sign of fear.
“Come inside.”
“Who said you could—”
“It’s fine.”
I couldn’t pull the trigger. When my sister got out of the car, we followed him inside.
The living room was spacious. But it wasn’t particularly flashy or ostentatious.
Rather… it felt cozy.
The wooden floor that didn’t creak, the faint scent of pine gently filling the nose.
The neatly arranged shoes, and the equally neat slippers the old man had taken out for us.
My sister and I unconsciously met eyes, then carefully removed our shoes and slipped on the slippers.
As we stepped further inside, the old man stood with his hands clasped behind his back as if it were the most natural thing.
“It’s cold out. Go sit down. There are blankets, so wrap yourselves up.”
“…It’s not that cold.”
“Don’t act tough. Catching a cold would be a big problem. Finding a doctor these days is like picking stars from the sky.”
That was true. It made sense. I sat down on the living room sofa.
Sitting while wearing the exoskeleton was familiar by now. As I sat down in it, my sister pulled out a neatly folded blanket from the corner.
“Oppa.”
“Yeah…?”
“This is really soft.”
“It is.”
If things went wrong and we had to kill him, we should take this too.
While I was deliberately thinking that, I looked around the living room.
It didn’t really feel like the home of a rich man.
Of course, it was wide, comfortable, and had expensive flooring, expensive lights, and expensive walls….
But it didn’t have that flashy feeling like the cult leader’s penthouse.
Rather, there were wooden sculptures like the ones I’d seen outside scattered throughout.
And among them, almost hidden on a bookshelf, was a single photograph.
An old man and a pair of young man and woman were in the picture.
They were small. They resembled the old man.
Why had Kwon Sang-hyuk invited us inside? He could have just given us whatever he could spare and told us to leave.
Looking at the worn fairy tale books and the furniture that seemed to have guarded this place since long ago, just like the sofa we sat on, I fell into thought.
“Is there anything you can’t eat?”
“…Pardon?”
The sudden question made me unconsciously use polite speech.
My sister looked at me, then leaned her head on my shoulder and took my hand.
Then came the voice again.
“Like cinnamon, for example.”
“No, well, I’ve never tried…”
“Cinnamon? Hoo…”
The voice coming from the hallway beside the living room cut off there.
What was this?
The old man returned shortly after.
Carrying a tray, the seventy-two-year-old approached without a single tremor in his hands and set it down.
There were five cups on the tray.
“…This is.”
“Hot chocolate. If cinnamon doesn’t agree with you, drink the one without it.”
When my sister and I exchanged glances and didn’t touch the cups, the old man sat down across from us as if nothing was wrong.
“This old man doesn’t know anything about poison. If you’re really worried, I’ll take a sip from each one myself.”
A self-served poison taster offer. I hesitated for a moment, then looked away.
“No, it’s not that…”
How did he know? While I was conflicted, I looked at my sister. She blinked a few times, then picked up a cup of hot chocolate, blew on it gently, and drank.
Slurp. My sister wore a soft smile.
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“It’s delish.”
“…A grown woman using such babyish speech…”
The old man said that, but a gentle smile remained on his face. I looked back and forth between him and my sister, then finally picked up a cup.
A cinnamon stick was stuck in it like a straw, and the surface was dusted with cocoa powder. When I took a sip—
The warmth traveled down my throat, heating my chest, then spread from my chest to my stomach in a gentle wave.
A warmth that made me unconsciously let out a long sigh. The bitter yet mysterious aroma of cinnamon, the sweetness of chocolate, and the subtle bitterness that tied it all together.
“Hoo…”
At the sigh that slipped out without me realizing, the old man smiled.
“We can talk after you finish drinking. It’s fine even after your body warms up.”
The only sound in the living room was the quiet crackling of the firewood.