Manners and Respect Injector
"I told you not to move."
The words came out cold and sharp, and a muzzle was shoved toward my face. This was no taser. It was a jet-black, angular handgun—a Glock.
I never thought I'd see one of those outside of movies and TV.
But the hand holding it, and the slender finger curled around the trigger, were nothing like the crude weapon itself. Delicate. Fragile.
One look told me everything: a classic greenhouse flower, a desk-bound bookworm who'd never so much as touched rough work in her life.
"Drop the weapon and kick it over here."
My appearance alone was enough to make anyone nervous, and I couldn't blame her. We still didn't know if I was a zombie or not, yet she'd already barked the freeze order. I had to give her credit for the guts.
"Haa… Fine. Let's talk this out."
Clank.
I followed her order, set the axe down, and nudged it away with my foot. Then I raised my one good right hand, doing my best to advertise that I meant no harm.
"…You came from outside. How did you get in, and what the hell is that arm?"
"I found an employee ID outside and used it to get through. As for the arm… it's a long story."
She was trying hard to stay calm, but she couldn't hide the tremor in her voice.
Still, a gun was a gun. The threat was real. I'd thought firearms were already a thing of the past, so the whole scene still felt faintly unreal.
"S-slowly… go into the room straight ahead. Do—do as I say."
"…"
Well, well.
I hadn't even done anything yet and she was already starting to tear up on her own. She was the one pointing the gun—what was the plan if she started crying?
Even so, I quietly walked into the room ahead of me, just as ordered.
It absolutely was not because, at a glance, she was a stunning beauty with the most aggressive figure I'd ever seen.
Ah, right. The gun. If it weren't for the gun…
"This needs a card to open. Can I lower my right hand?"
"D-do it. Don't try anything stupid."
The distance between us was considerable. Even if I spun around and lunged with my left arm, I couldn't be sure I'd make it.
Fail, and a lead slug would punch straight through my head or chest.
Mutant arm or not, stopping a bullet was probably still a stretch.
I had no choice. I did exactly as she said and stepped into the room in front of me. It looked like an ordinary lab, but a huge pane of glass ran across the far wall so the two rooms could see each other.
"Good. Now let's talk."
She entered the opposite room, pistol still trained on me, and spoke into a microphone.
The tearful voice from earlier was gone. She must have steadied herself already; a cold tone came through the speaker.
"…How did you find this place? And where did you get that card?"
"Finding this place was pure chance. I was climbing the mountain when I spotted zombies stuck to the barbed wire…"
Then I hesitated, wondering whether I should actually say the next part.
The door was locked, so I killed the zombie who looked like your coworker and took the employee ID?
Yeah. That would make me sound completely insane.
"Talk. One button from me and this room fills with toxic gas. Don't try anything funny."
"Ah, shit."
The curse almost slipped out at her threat, but antagonizing the person holding my life in her hands wouldn't help.
So I told her the truth, clean and simple.
"I took down a zombie that looked like staff and got this off him. That's all."
"…Where's the rest of your group? How many, and where did you come from?"
She almost certainly didn't believe me. The simple version in her head was probably: I captured a staff member, tortured the location out of them, then came here.
"I'm alone. Really. Just a survivor who's been managing outside on his own."
"Don't lie. There's no way you crossed this mountain by yourself."
"Well… that part actually does make sense. This arm is the only reason I made it relatively easily."
"Right. That arm is suspicious too. What is it?"
Technically I wasn't completely alone—I had a pet zombie with me—but she didn't need to know that. The one-sided interrogation was starting to rankle, but I took a slow breath, settled myself, and played along with her tempo.
"You know them, right? Those weirdly mutated zombies people call Variants. I killed one and it latched onto my arm."
"…You killed a Stage 3?"
"Stage 3, Stage whatever—now I get to ask some questions. What is this place, and who are you?"
"…That's impossible. Wait, is that even possible…?"
"Hey."
She didn't answer. She just sank into her own thoughts, muttering with a grim expression, brows drawn tight. The face was fierce, but the original canvas was so good that even scrunched up it still looked painted.
That was beside the point. She still owed me an answer.
"Hey! You!"
"…Huh?! Wh-who said you could yell!"
"You were ignoring me. I asked where this is and who you are."
"You… you really don't know?"
"I already told you I don't. I got here by chance."
Irritation was climbing fast. Life or death or not, I was done being a one-way information dump. Looks didn't excuse a total lack of basic manners. If they weren't installed, I'd install them myself.
Her eyes had been glued to the axe and the arm, but I still had a machete hidden inside my coat.
"…Ahem. This place is classified. I can't tell you."
"What?"
"And I have no obligation to reveal my personal information to some unidentified trespasser like—what are you doing?"
I was done playing nice.
I gave her a faint smile and nodded.
The nod meant I understood her. Everything that followed meant she had zero respect.
Crack…!
Shatter!
"Kyaaaaah!"
I clenched my left fist tighter than ever and drove the mutant arm straight through the thick-looking glass.
It wasn't ordinary glass either—it held for a split second—then exploded all at once, raining shards across the floor.
"Th-this is…!"
She must have been shocked, yet she recovered fast, still sitting, and swung the pistol back toward me.
I was faster. I closed the gap and kicked the gun flying out of her hand.
"Shh."
I spread the fingers of my left hand wide and brought them to her throat—close enough to threaten without quite closing—then raised the machete I'd drawn and pressed the flat of the blade to my own lips, the universal signal for silence.
"…Hic… nngh."
"Feeling like talking now?"
"Hup… Y-yes… I'll talk…"
Now that manners and respect had finally been installed, I gave a satisfied nod.
"So this is a DNA virus research facility that used to be run by the government…"
"Mm-hmm…"
"And you're Han Seohee, the chief researcher left here alone."
"That's right…"
After the chaos, our positions had been more or less renegotiated.
I sat at the table. Across from me, in a chair, she sniffled. Chief Researcher Han Seohee said she hadn't set foot outside the lab even once since the zombie outbreak began.
"It's terrifying… Everyone else left one by one—to check on family, or because they just couldn't stand being cooped up anymore. But I… I couldn't do that."
"Haa…"
I let out a dry, incredulous sigh. She wasn't the only person who'd ever thought that way.
The usual pattern was to hole up in some bunker, stretch the supplies until they ran out and starve, or finally crack, walk outside, and become zombie food—or end up as meat for scavengers.
"…Haa."
This wasn't a shelter.
The familiar disappointment settled in. Hearing my sigh, Han Seohee flinched and clearly started wrestling with something she wanted to say.
"Um… m-may I ask why you came here?"
"Ah. Right."
Maybe the manners-and-respect injector really was that effective. She spoke to me with a careful, cautious tone that hadn't been there before.
"I want this arm removed. Ever since it fused on, weird changes keep happening to my body."
"…Changes? Can you describe them in more detail?"
The moment an interesting research topic appeared, the cautious attitude vanished. Her eyes lit up and she leaned in. Professional instinct, I supposed.
Fine. It wasn't a shelter, but it was a research facility. Maybe there was a way to separate the arm. Even if not, she could at least tell me what was happening inside my body.
I explained everything that had changed since the arm attached.
"So the serious wounds you took that same day healed almost immediately… and even now the internal injuries are still healing?"
"Probably. Look—the bruises are fading even as we speak."
I lifted my shirt and showed her my stomach so she could see how urgent this was. The deep blue-black bruising from the Variant's body slam had faded to the faintest traces.
"…Y-yeah. That is… um. That looks pretty serious."
She seemed briefly flustered by my condition, then pretended nothing was wrong and reached out to feel my abdomen.
"Mmm, hmm, I see… You said your organs were damaged…"
The way her hands moved felt a little off, but she clearly knew more than an untrained guy like me. Putting up with it for a minute wasn't hard.
"Mm, mm. Okay. Anything else?"
"I want to know whether the infection is progressing right now."
At that, she folded her arms and simply stared at me.
The crossed arms pressed her chest together so hard it spilled out in a way that was impossible to ignore.
Holy shit. So that's how that works.
Embarrassment, shame, and the need to quiet a certain other self all hit at once. I silently recited the national anthem in my head.
"We won't know for sure without a full examination, and I need more data from you anyway. This is a chance to study the genetic traits of a Stage 3 infectee. Let's cooperate."
She looked me dead in the eye as she said it.
Honestly, I didn't have options. I knew nothing about zombies or DNA. She was the expert who did.
I held out my hand—my right one, of course.
"Deal. We'll cooperate."
What she said next was nothing like what I'd expected.
"…Could you go wash up first? The smell."
"Ah."
Fair enough. It had been days since I'd last bathed.
It stung a little, but I understood.