Chapter 75
Chapter 75
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Translator: Ryuma
Chapter: 75
Chapter Title: 43. Worries (2)
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“Ah, sunbae? What’s up?”
Woo Minhee seemed to be in quite a good mood.
“Good news?”
“Ah, someone funny posted on the internet.”
“Internet? How in this world? Aren’t all the cables cut?”
“There’s a way. There’s this site I run, and there’s a guy using the exact same personal ID and name as you, sunbae.”
“SKELTON?”
“Yeah. I thought the person was a bit weird, but what the hell. Feels fundamentally twisted?”
“Ah, I think I know who.”
It’s you. You.
Who’s qualified to call whom weird.
After appropriately flattering her, I got to the point.
“Anyway, any job openings in Incheon? Things are getting dangerous here bit by bit.”
“Coming to Incheon?”
Not decided for sure yet, but my bunker was no longer a safe zone. That much was certain.
It meant I had to consider other options.
The biggest motivator was probably the change in this person Woo Minhee.
My junior, who had exuded madness to the point I couldn’t even touch her, had turned somewhat human-like after hitting around thirty.
Really, just a year ago, I couldn’t have imagined us exchanging contacts this easily.
But conversely, other people had changed too.
Who would’ve thought Kim Daram would turn out like that?
My soul partner, who had matched me best hand and foot, was now casually selling out her former senior and team leader—me—without a second thought.
She hadn’t been entirely without a calculating side, but the fact that there was zero delay in her telling Kim Pilseong my location hit me like a massive shock.
“Thinking of checking it out first.”
Anyway, in the clash between the National Assembly faction and the military faction, I’d chosen the National Assembly side.
It meant joining hands with Woo Minhee.
“Well, I won’t try to stop you. Thanks to you, sunbae, I resolved a big issue. But that job might not be to your taste? It’s pretty saturated here to begin with.”
No matter how much people changed, their core nature didn’t shift easily.
Dealing with Woo Minhee would be exhausting in all sorts of ways.
“Do I have to come alone? Can I even make it here by myself?”
“Not sending an armored car?”
“Why bother when I don’t need you to?”
She was already showing her true colors.
Actually, maybe she’d reached out right now precisely because she was in a good mood.
“I’ll go alone.”
“Come to the lab when you get here. I’ll let them know. You know where I’m at, right?”
“Y-yeah.”
To be honest, dealing with Woo Minhee would mean seeing a lot of ugly sides.
But what could I do?
It was all for survival.
For now, I just wanted to see it with my own eyes.
What life in a crumbling city was really like.
Could I, who’d lived a luxurious bunker life until now, even adapt to it?
“Ah, and sunbae.”
Woo Minhee snorted as she added,
“Did you borrow money from me back in the day?”
“Uh, yeah. A little?”
Most importantly,
“Lost it gambling.”
My history as a gambler was a secret I’d take to the grave.
*
Since I’d be away from home for quite a while, I let the neighbors know.
“What? You’re staying in Incheon for a week?”
I contacted Defender first.
“Might be longer.”
“What for? That chaotic dump?”
“Well, thinking about moving. The situation’s not great.”
“Marked by the military?”
“Yeah, something like that. The spot was good, but now it’s soured.”
“Not sure you need to move. The military faction won’t send a million troops just to take out one guy, right? You’re not a VIP or anything.”
The VIP mention drew Defender’s little sister into the conversation.
“SKELTON, are you a VIP? Were you?!”
The sister got excited, and the brother followed suit—that was this sibling pair’s thing.
“S-S-sunbaenim?!”
“No, nothing that big. Just me being overly cautious. Call it an old man’s worry.”
“I get what you mean. But still.”
Defender hummed, trailing off.
A moment later, he asked in a serious tone,
“You... think you can hold out there?”
“Won’t be easy.”
I said it casually, but honestly, I had no idea.
I’d slept in crumbling cities before, but only as a traveler passing through briefly. I’d never actually tried living there.
Still, I vaguely knew city life was more miserable, destitute, and horrific than it appeared.
I’d just chosen not to look too closely.
The second senior had laid it bare without sugarcoating.
The fate of those cast aside.
Ordinary people’s lives, where a single cold snap could kill you.
Food was a concern too.
Even on our message board, posts about shortages popped up all the time. The cities had to be worse.
Dog food bars had been on the market for almost a full year now.
I had no clue how they were still feeding the millions holed up in the cities.
“Ah.”
I didn’t know.
I didn’t even want to think about it.
It felt like the kind of problem I shouldn’t dwell on.
After sharing my travel plans with Defender, I next reached out to the Mad Sniper mother-daughter duo.
“SKELTON? Can we use that house?”
Sure enough, the Mad Sniper pair was in a rough spot.
I had to factor in Rebecca’s brash personality, but even so, the idea of moving into someone else’s empty house didn’t spring from just a day or two of discomfort.
Of course, my answer was,
“Ah, no.”
A flat refusal.
“Why?”
“It’s dangerous here. You saw the helicopters and fighters, right?”
“Ah.”
“Things been tough lately?”
“Super tough.”
“Y-yeah. Let’s talk again when I get back.”
As I went to end the call, I heard Suu shoving Rebecca aside.
“SKELTON!”
“Yeah.”
“We’re fine. We can hold out longer.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. But bring juicy stuff when you come.”
“The juicy kind, huh?”
That Suu kid.
Did she know?
That playing it like this tugged at my heart even harder.
If she did it on purpose, unlike her dumb mom, she might be a natural-born vixen.
Probably not...
Honestly, Seoul and Incheon were about the same distance for me.
For transport, I picked the bicycle after a long time.
Weapons were simple travel gear: a Chinese-made rifle, one pistol, and an axe. Plus some food, roe deer meat sausages for bartering, booze, and cigarettes for trades.
No cigs in stock, so I split the ones from Kim Pilseong’s gang with Defender.
For armor, I considered the bulletproof vest but left it given the season.
Defense was one thing, but I figured keeping my daily stamina and condition optimal was better for me personally.
As always, I waited for sunset and slipped upstream along the familiar path under cover of night.
My territory had been vacant for a long time.
With Chinese troops roaming and a nuke dropping, rumors said even the country had abandoned it, so people steered clear.
The nation had actually left the vulnerable west side to fester on purpose.
But now, two and a half years into the war, people occasionally settled in my territory.
Pioneers.
Some who’d survived last winter had formed their own communities in the hills, low mountains, or abandoned apartments.
Their behavior sat on the borderline between raiders and civilians.
They acted friendly in general, but if the other side seemed weaker and they needed something, they’d turn raider without fail and snatch it up.
So the safest bet was avoiding humans as much as possible until you reached policed areas.
Along the familiar route, I spotted at least three pioneer camps.
One was a small group of four or so; the others were bands of twenty-plus.
All armed with guns, and they predictably had sentries on night watch.
Their camps hugged the road too closely, forcing me to cross a stream.
Luckily, the season made wading through no big deal.
Once across the river, the half-collapsed city once called Siheung appeared.
This was Incheon city government territory from here on.
On the nuked, shelled wasteland, refugee camps had sprung up under military oversight, running systematic farming and minimal industry for essentials.
Sure enough, as I approached, guarding soldiers came into view.
As Woo Minhee had instructed, I name-dropped her and gave my own.
“Please wait a moment.”
There was one perk to entering a government-controlled zone like this.
The soldiers were on cellphones, making calls.
Signals actually worked.
Out of curiosity, I pulled out my own phone.
Sure enough, the antenna bars were up.
While the soldiers waited for higher-ups, I sidled up to one and offered a cigarette, casually asking,
“Cell service good here?”
“Decent enough.”
“Feels stronger than back in Seoul.”
“Yeah. Fewer people, smaller turf. Expanded the network accordingly.”
“I see.”
“These days, weird stuff pops up everywhere, right?”
“True.”
“Everyone’s got a phone. Long as there’s signal, every single person in Incheon’s an info source. Plus, the government set up Failnet as a rec spot—two birds with one stone.”
This soldier thought Failnet was government-made, apparently.
Who’d believe a masterpiece like that came from one guy’s obsession?
Orders came through soon enough.
“Leave the bike here. They say jeep escort.”
The soldier grinned.
One worry down.
No need to endure the jealous, greedy stares that came with biking everywhere.
From there, it was smooth sailing to the lab.
By the time I reached the pier with its sea air, it was still late night.
A duty staffer assigned me a room attached to the lab.
Inside was a bunk bed, but no one else.
I caught a quick nap and waited for morning.
The workday kicked off at sunrise.
I took a shower at someone else’s place for the first time in ages.
Pretty decent facilities let me wash up comfortably.
Oddly, there was baby powder stocked—I dusted myself thoroughly.
I didn’t have any of that stuff.
Fluffy and fresh, as I lounged in the room, one of Woo Minhee’s underlings came looking for me.
Different guy from the one who’d guided me before.
“Sorry, but Director Woo’s out.”
Dressed plainly in a white coat, he seemed to have a condition that kept him from making eye contact, staring off elsewhere as he relayed her message.
“Director Woo said you’re an ex-hunter, right?”
“Yes.”
“She recommends freelance hunter work. I’m here to guide you to the freelance hunter dorms.”
“Freelance hunter dorms?”
“Ah, yes... well...”
He finally met my eyes as he began explaining.
“Originally, freelancers didn’t get much in the way of welfare. But lately, the military faction’s been poaching them hard—old-school hunters, as they call ‘em. So they scrambled some support measures.”
“I see. What do freelance hunters do?”
I knew it all already, but asked out of courtesy.
Freelance hunters were basically fixers.
For remote spots too costly or inefficient for the government to handle directly, they shipped out cheap surplus hunter manpower to clean up the messes.
What freelancers mainly dealt with weren’t monsters, but mutations.
Before the civil war, they’d gotten by decently in the shadows, from what I heard.
Mutations popped up out of nowhere everywhere, and having the army handle every one would’ve been prohibitively expensive.
But their treatment hadn’t been great.
Just look at Baek Seung-hyeon.
An A-rank by old standards, yet he was chumming it up with pioneer trash.
Their digs were behind the lab.
A narrow alley between the red-brick research building and the dense pack of port warehouses beyond.
That was freelance hunter turf.
Hunter Street
A wooden plank painted white, scrawled with marker, told you all you needed to know about the place.
“B-23. Head there.”
The lab staffer clearly had no intention of stepping into the alley.
I told him I’d go alone and started down it.
Beyond the shadowed alley, roadside sat people.
Old men playing go, a grandma washing laundry, kids fiddling with phones.
Ordinary folks.
Unexpected.
I’d figured it’d be crawling with nothing but old-era hunters.
Might even run into one or two who recognized me.
“Huh?”
It was in front of a prefab marked A-13.
A guy spotted me and acted familiar.
“You came here?”
Baek Seung-hyeon.
His shocked face held a newborn baby that looked just like him cradled in his arms.