Tying Loose Ends
What was school to me, really?
Even if I split it into before the world went to shit and after, I still couldn’t hammer out a clean, single sentence that covered both.
If I had to pin down the one thing they shared, it would be this:
A place where things never ended well.
Yeah. That felt right.
Back when I still went to class, I was just a kid, so the nicknames came free and easy and I didn’t mind them. When we took the graduation photo and they framed my missing arm as Shanks from One Piece, everyone crowded around me like I was the star of the show.
And after the world collapsed, school became…
This place might become the start of civilization’s reconstruction.
Someone’s words still circled in my ears—heavy words, tossed out with almost nothing behind them.
Even now, if I closed my eyes I could still see that blurry scene. People gathering, cobbling together rules, arguing through meetings where countermeasures and hope traded places in the same breath.
But then the expectations collapsed.
…What the hell did you even do? Talk! What did you do!!
Hope vanished.
It’s over. This is the end.
In the end, the place once called the starting point of civilization’s rebuild became just another one of this world’s common, vicious survivor gangs.
I hid in the alley and watched the school’s front gate.
Dozens of scrap tires and shipping containers had been hauled into a barricade. On top of the drums, flames popped and spat. Coils of barbed wire ran along the surrounding walls, and at regular intervals along the stakes hung rotten corpses—zombie or human, hard to tell anymore.
“….”
None of that had been there when I left. I had no idea when they’d put it up. It felt like the scrawny country mutt I’d seen a month ago had suddenly grown legs and come back as a bipedal metal-war hellhound.
“Only two up top?”
Two people stood on the containers, warming themselves by the fire. Luckily, neither face was one I knew. There probably weren’t many faces left inside that school that I still recognized, but still—hurting a stranger sat easier on the conscience than hurting someone I used to know. At least for me.
I hesitated. For all their brutality, they were still survivors. Not raiders who crossed every line, who took by force and killed for sport. And it wasn’t like I had a clean record either; I’d done my share of hard, ugly things just to stay alive.
My actual goal was getting the Rooftop Market people out. Revenge? That was someone else’s job after I was done. As far as I was concerned, keeping the raiders from stripping the market of its supplies was already me keeping my end of the bargain.
I slipped deeper into the alleys and turned away from the main gate, looking for another way in. I knew two other routes in and out of the school besides the front, but given what they’d done to the gate, I had to assume those were sealed too.
Luckily the moon was dim tonight, so melting into the dark was easy enough.
“There… that should work.”
I stopped at a tall stretch of wall halfway up the path to the rear gate. There were drainage holes cut into the middle of it, and it was high enough that they hadn’t bothered stringing barbed wire across the top. If I used the left arm properly, climbing it wouldn’t be hard.
They’d never expect anyone to come up this wall.
Kwaak—
I stretched the left arm as high as it would go and drove the fingers in. The ugly red muscle fibers bulged and flexed, hauling my body upward like I weighed nothing.
Right. I already crushed an asphalt pillar with this thing. A wall is nothing.
Using the drainage holes as footholds, I planted my right hand and feet, hauled with the left again, and climbed without much trouble. I grabbed the iron railing they’d installed to keep people from falling and swung over. Looking down, the drop was no joke. Finger-sized holes dotted the wall where I’d punched in—anyone who saw them later would probably think a zombie had climbed up.
Time to move.
Even at night, someone watching from a distance would still catch an outline. As a temporary fix I tucked the left arm inside my coat and wrapped it against my body like a length of cloth. Having no real joints made the contortion possible—a little party trick, if you wanted to call it that.
I was roughly midway near the rear gate. To get deeper into the school I had to cross the courtyard and go through the central entrance, so that was where I headed.
Where would they be holding the Rooftop Market people?
There were a fair number of them. Fighters were scarce; most of them just farmed little plots up on the roofs. To lock that many people up you’d need…
The gym. The auditorium.
This school had both, separate buildings. Back when I was here they were used for other things. Now? No idea what they’d been turned into.
I stepped through the central entrance. The night was deep, and somehow there wasn’t a single guard. No one in sight, yet a thin, crawling tension ran from my shoulders down my spine.
The moment my foot touched the floor, nostalgia hit. The first time I’d walked in after the world ended, my clothes had still been cleaner, I’d still been missing an arm, and somehow it had still felt almost fun. People who’d pulled me forward stood at my side; people who’d pushed me from behind walked at my back.
Now I was leaving bloody footprints as I walked. My once-clean clothes were stiff and dark with human and zombie blood. The missing left arm had a mutant’s limb jammed into the stump. And no one was left beside me.
…Still not completely alone, though.
I thought of Baeksooni waiting for me back at the hideout, let out a dry little laugh, and drew the axe from my belt, ready to swing the second I needed it.
Auditorium on the fifth floor. Gym in the annex farther out. If it was him making the decisions, he’d have stashed the captives as far from the front gate as possible.
“Smell…”
As I reached the fifth floor, the thick stench of blood rolled over me. A heavy door led into the auditorium. In front of the stairs, a man sat in a chair with his arms crossed.
“…What, shift change already?”
He’d mistaken me for the guy coming to relieve him.
“Hey, why aren’t you answering… who the hell are you?”
I stared at the vaguely familiar face. He realized I wasn’t his relief, reached for the crowbar leaning against the chair, and raised it, wary now.
“Sorry.”
Unlike when I dealt with raiders, I kept the force out of my hand. He wasn’t a raider. I had no real reason to attack the school group itself. Rescuing the market people was their business after this; the only personal grudge I carried was with one man in their ranks.
“There’s someone weird—!”
I took the stairs in a rush and shot the hidden left arm out toward him. The grotesque red limb stretched, clamped over the mouth that was about to scream, and lifted him clean off the floor.
“Hup…! Mmff!! Mmph!”
Shock—or something uglier—made him thrash and swing the crowbar, but that kind of force wasn’t enough to pry the mutant arm loose. One good squeeze and his skull would pulp. I’d done it to zombies plenty of times, and it worked fine on raiders too…
“Huu…”
I’d killed people, sure, but actually trying to just knock someone out left me with no sense of how much pressure to use. In movies and dramas they dropped people cold all the time. Then I remembered the choke-out pranks from school—someone grabbing you from behind until your head went fuzzy. I considered it, then dropped the idea. From experience, it never kept anyone out for long.
“If I just tighten my hand, you’re dead. You get that?”
Crrrk.
“Mmmmph!!”
In the end I circled back to threats. I gave a little extra pressure so he’d know I wasn’t joking; a nasty crack sounded and his thrashing got worse.
“You’ve got the Rooftop Market people locked up here. Is it this place? Two blinks for yes, one for no.”
First time I’d ever said that line from a movie out loud. Luckily he understood; he stopped fighting and blinked.
Blink. Blink.
Two. I eyed him, a little surprised he was cooperating so cleanly. If some blood-soaked guy came up the stairs, grabbed my face with a freak arm, and started threatening me… yeah, I could see it.
Fair enough.
Still holding him aloft, I walked him over to the auditorium door. A heavy chain was locked tight around the handles. I sheathed the axe again and tried to work the lock one-handed with my right; it wouldn’t give. To open it I’d need the left, which meant the man in my grip was a problem.
Just kill him?
A simple solution flickered through my head. At this point, one more body wouldn’t change much. My gaze went cold and sharp as it settled on him.
Clank—
The crowbar slipped from his struggling hands and hit the floor. Terror flooded his eyes; fear and a dozen other emotions tangled across his face.
“Shut up and unlock the chain.”
“Khh—kheck… Y-yes, sir. I under—stand.”
I decided to keep him alive. Maybe that was arrogance on my part, but holding someone else’s life in my palm and rolling it around still felt foul.
His hands shook with fear as he worked the chain. I stood behind him, arm still extended, ready.
Charrk.
“…I-it’s open.”
“Why did you bring the Rooftop Market people here?”
“I don’t really know about th—no, someone said… someone said they were taking them. A deal… they called it a deal.”
The second the chain came free I hit him with the questions. Afraid I’d kill him if the answers weren’t useful, he squeezed out everything he knew. It still didn’t clear anything up for me.
“Open it and go in.”
No time to waste arguing here. He’d mentioned a shift change when he first saw me; the next guy would notice the intrusion the moment he showed up. I hadn’t expected a perfect stealth run, but getting spotted early wouldn’t help either.
Creeeak—
The thick door swung open onto a dark auditorium. Adults sprawled on the floor, kids and elderly too. Every one of them held their breath and shot wary, frightened looks toward the suddenly open doorway.
Thud—
“Gah!”
I kicked the man in the back, shoved him inside, and followed.
“Market people, why are you all piled up in here? Come on out—aren’t you open for business?”
“…That voice. Axe-Hand?”
“Axe-Hand?”
Goddamn it. I’d tried to keep it light so they wouldn’t panic, and the nickname I hated came right back at me. How long had it even been since I took the axe off my arm? Two days? One day felt like a year in this world.
“…Is that really you, Cheon Siwoo?”
From the cluster of younger people, a man stepped forward. Suspenders hanging loose, glasses greasy with oil and dirt—Hocheol hyung, the Rooftop Market’s machinery guy.
“Yeah, it’s really me. Get everyone ready and move, Hocheol hyung. Where’s Baek-ajumma?”
“No—why… why did you come to save us?”
“….”
Of course he was thrown. Honestly, I’d have been thrown too. Even if we were on decent terms, who believes their regular customer just risked his neck to stage a rescue?
Still.
“The school and I have some bad history tangled up, and…”
“Saving these people might make me feel like a slightly better person.”
Hocheol hyung’s mouth fell open; he stared at me like I’d lost my mind. Fair. Even I thought it sounded ridiculous as it left my mouth.
“…Just take it that way.”
“Then… that arm? What the hell happened to you?”
“Everyone kept yelling ‘Axe-Hand, Axe-Hand,’ so I stuck one on. You know the underground mall mutant? I took that bastard’s.”
“What…? Wait, hold on—”
If Hocheol hyung had a status window right then, it probably would have stacked a second layer of “what the actual fuck.” I knew exactly how insane it sounded. But this wasn’t the time to stand around chatting, so I was about to push him when—
“Siwoo oppa!”
“What.”
A girl shoved past Hocheol hyung and ran straight at me. Brown hair in a high ponytail, a soft-looking face—Jiyu, Baek-ajumma’s daughter. Eyes wet.
“You never even called me oppa no matter what happened, so why now?”
“Mom… Mom and Oppa—”
My head started to hurt. I hadn’t heard the whole thing, but it already smelled like a headache.
“Hyung, what’s going on?”
“….”
“Just spit it out. I came to take the ajumma with us anyway.”
Hocheol hyung’s story was simple. After they were dragged here, Baek-ajumma had reunited with her long-missing son. That son had cut a deal with this group, trying to buy freedom for at least his mother and little sister.
“And on top of that, the ajumma went downstairs to negotiate again.”
Total mess.
“…Haa.”
I pulled the machete—sheath and all—from my belt and held it out to Jiyu.
“Why are you giving me—”
“You come with me. Everyone else, get the people out through the rear gate.”
Now that I was here, I had to finish things with that man one way or another. Jiyu might not look like much, but she’d been on the Rooftop Market’s combat team, and her family was on the line—she wouldn’t run.
Hocheol hyung looked ready to hit a third stack of “what the fuck.” He glanced from my arm to my face, then finally gave up and nodded.
“Hey, mister. Up.”
“Hiiik…”
The man I’d kicked inside had been staying quiet, trying to avoid a beating from the crowd. I hauled him up by the left arm.
There were enough Rooftop Market people, and I’d already come this far to get them. My part was done. I didn’t need to spoon-feed them the entire exit route.
While Hocheol hyung woke people and got them ready, I dragged the man out of the auditorium with Jiyu. I kicked the crowbar lying outside back into the hall, then fixed my eyes on the man.
“Mister.”
“Y-yes…”
I took a breath, then finally spoke the name I needed to settle.
“Exactly how long do we have to drag this negotiation out before you’re satisfied, ma’am?”
The man smiled a twisted little smile. He sat in a leather chair that was already torn to shreds, and his voice, if you only listened casually, almost sounded gentle.
“Minwoo already settled things with us. Honestly, even if we took your body as part of the deal, it doesn’t give us that much of an edge.”
The room had been a faculty office once, before the world ended. Not long after everything fell apart, it had been the place where everyone gathered to talk about hope. Now it was just another useless space, blood and ash mixed into a rusty stink.
“What are we even short on? We already agreed to Minwoo’s terms—send the three of you off hand-in-hand, nice and quiet. You, your daughter, him.”
The man—Lee Hyoseong—kept that soft, smiling look. Across from him sat a scar-covered woman who still hadn’t answered, meeting his gaze with a stone face.
“Or at least cut the number down.”
The words themselves were abject, but her voice and expression weren’t. Something about it reminded Hyoseong of the man he used to be, before he broke, and the corner of his mouth twisted a little further.
“We already made a concession. Minwoo only has to fight ten times in that gym over there and walk out alive, and we let you go.”
There was no one left to protect anyone. The second you brought up human rights, it became a joke. Strong groups dismantled weak ones and took what they wanted—that was just how things worked now.
Hyoseong had drawn lines at first. He’d tried to stay restrained, to keep from turning crude, and he’d written rules for it. Then slack appeared, crime followed, selfishness took the lead, and everyone started blaming the people who’d once tried to lift them up. The man who’d wanted to live like a human being finally adapted to the age.
“In that case…”
In the end he was just another man who lost to his own appetites.
“Do it with me once. Every time we finish, I’ll knock the count down. How many left right now?”
At Hyoseong’s question, the muscular man standing beside him lifted a radio. Static crackled, then he answered.
“Eight left. They say his jaw’s dislocated.”
“There you go.”
“…Fine.”
“Then let’s do it right here.”
Hyoseong stood and, with the ease of practice, pulled off his upper clothes. A body mapped with old stab wounds came into view. The woman across from him rose as well and started to undress—
“What the fuck is that—”
“Someone’s on f—!”
Crack!!
Noise erupted outside. An axe blade punched straight through the solidly shut faculty-office door. Blood sprayed across the window glass as the axe was wrenched free.
Drrrk—
Then a massive red hand forced its way into the gap the impact had opened and slowly, steadily pried the door wide.
A low voice slipped out, thick with swallowed curses.
But there was no real reason to hold back, so I didn’t.
“You fucking bastard.”