I've Been Through Too Much
I've been through too much.
If someone wrote a novel about me, that would probably be the title.
I Became an Apocalypse Survivor Obsessed Over by Mutants.
Just think about it. The muscular, towering heroine whose muscles tear right through her skin—Jompari. The white-haired, low-intelligence pure-hearted Baeksooni. And even a headless muscle-bound giantess for a heroine on top of that.
It had only been two days since I killed the mutant that became the original for my Jompari.
You might think mutants are hard to come by, but surprisingly, that isn't the case. Wander this city long enough and you'll find plenty of zones where a mutant has claimed territory. You can see them if you go there—though the admission price is, of course, your life. So no, they aren't common enough that you just run into them this often.
"GRAAAAAH!!"
THUD—!!
True to that booming roar, the thing that leaped skyward slammed down hard enough to send a thick cloud of dirt rolling across the schoolyard.
I barely yanked my arm free before that massive body could crush me flat, rolling across the dirt and escaping by a hair.
"…You've got to be fucking kidding me."
I dropped the question of why a mutant had suddenly shown up. Hyoseong had clearly pulled some string. What mattered was why Jompari had stopped me.
This mutant arm bastard—are you taking sides just because it's one of your own?
I never asked for the thing. It came and jammed itself into my arm on its own, so why the hell was it getting picky now?
"I'm branding you with fire later. Guaranteed."
I adjusted my grip on the axe, spitting the self-harm threat out of pure injustice and rage.
Could I run?
That was one of the big reasons people died fighting mutants. Outside of special cases, a human simply couldn't match a mutant's physical ability. No matter how hard a person ran, most mutants were faster.
"Kkrrrk-gurrrk…!!"
Looking at that thing's jump power, bolting was out of the question.
The headless giant raised both arms with that grotesque cry and brought them down. Reddish, hard-looking keratinous skin. I twisted my body free just in time.
THUD—!!
I barely cleared it and took a look at the mutant. Most of them had drifted pretty far from human form. This one, head aside, looked like a giant bodybuilder. A massive frame, but the muscle was balanced—nothing like the mutants I knew. Almost like someone had packed artificial muscle to the absolute limit and then turned it into a zombie… fucking hell.
BANG—! BANG—! BANG—!
While I was still observing, it started stomping indiscriminately. Simple footfalls cracked the dirt and sent tremors rolling through me. The power was mutant-grade, sure, but…
"Alright, let's see how tough you actually are!"
Whether it was the dust it kicked up or something else, even after I'd circled behind it the thing still couldn't find me. Wait—how the hell does it even see with its head sucked into its body?
THWACK—!
"Is hard zombies the meta these days or what."
I put everything I had into an axe swing at its knee joint. The keratin only let the blade bite shallowly. No blood.
"Gueh… krrraaaaaagh!"
KA-BOOM—!!
It felt the impact on its leg, twisted that grotesque… body around, and hammered both hands down again.
"Hhk—!"
I threw myself backward on pure survival instinct, putting distance between us. I was playing it cool, but that muscle bastard—
My whole body is ringing from the shock. I might actually throw up.
I didn't know how it worked, but the closer I got to those impacts, the more my insides vibrated right along with them.
"My body already went to shit not that long ago, and now this fucking nonsense again."
Aside from the shockwaves and the toughness, it wasn't a hard fight. Dumber than the mutant arm bastard, and slower too.
I can do this.
As long as I held down the nausea, I could manage.
"Come on then, you son of a bitch."
"KRAAAAAAH—!"
I shifted the axe into my left hand. The right had only managed shallow cuts; the left's power should be enough to actually hurt it.
The schoolyard was growing brighter. A pale, bluish sky was pushing in, and at the far edge of it the orange sun was kindling its first embers, getting ready to rise.
"Nice weather."
The sky kept lightening, but my eyes never left the zombie. The words just came out on reflex.
THUD—!!
A fist of writhing muscle and black, bulging veins smashed into the spot where I'd been standing. It looked like a boulder had been dropped. Getting hit by that wouldn't end at "boulder" damage.
CRACK—SPLIT—!
I drove in close and swung the axe two, three times into the spot I'd already cut.
"Grrraaaaaah—!"
Black blood poured out. The left arm's strength was carving a real wound into the leg. Ideally I'd have focused only on that one cut, but the thing was thrashing and swinging at me so wildly that concentration was impossible. All I could do was dodge like an idiot and chop—pure desperate flailing toward survival.
THWACK—!!
"Kraaagh!"
THUD—!
At last the leg I'd been obsessively targeting gave way, spraying black blood as the muscle mutant toppled. In the same instant the axe finished its job—the handle snapped clean and the whole thing clattered to the dirt.
Yeah. I should've sharpened the edge or swapped the handle. I'd been overworking it for too long. All the killing the past few days, probably.
"Hoo… hah…"
Problem was, I was wrecked too. Out of the lab, carving through zombies, robbing scavengers, then all the way to the school for this shit—getting tired wasn't strange, but fuck, it still felt unfair.
CRACKLE—
"Hoooo…"
My head, my back, my left arm—everything burned hot. The same way it had when the mutant arm first attached. My vision blurred and my skull felt like it was on fire.
"Graaaah…! Graaaaaagh!"
Something was wrong. Was my condition even normal right now?
The muscle mutant was crawling. Driving those muscle-slab arms into the ground, dragging itself toward me somehow, still trying to kill me. It wasn't right either. The severed leg was one thing, but the longer time passed the worse its condition got, and fast.
"Gueeeek—! Kweh—!!"
Every time it crawled, black blood streamed—not from the legs, but from the sunken hollow where its head should have been—soaking the dirt.
SLASH—!
As the distance closed, my left arm sensed the threat and moved on its own, shearing through one of the muscle mutant's arms.
"Kweh—! Kahak!"
Blood filling its throat turned that heavy mutant roar into something wet and drowning, almost plaintive.
CRACKLE—
My head was burning. Thoughts kept cutting out. This didn't feel like simple exhaustion.
I think I'm fu—
SQUELCH—! CRUNCH—!
GRIND—!!
A horrific sound snapped me awake.
Had I just blacked out? Or fainted?
As my hazy, fogged vision cleared enough, I found myself already standing on top of the muscle mutant's back. No pain, so I must not have gotten hurt while I was out.
CRACK—
Uh.
The same sound that had woken me came again. I looked down and a mad scene unfolded.
CRUNCH—CRACK—!
My left hand was somehow splitting the hard-looking keratin on the muscle mutant's back, tearing into the spine. Completely free of control while I was unconscious, the left arm was ripping the thing's body wide open. Tearing muscle, yanking out vertebrae—like a starving beast gorging itself, recreated entirely with an arm and a hand. A nightmare to watch.
"…I really am going to throw up."
Spine severed, the muscle mutant was already dead. I had no idea what the arm had done in the short time I'd been out, but I tried to haul the left arm free with my exhausted body.
SQUEEZE—
"Fuck, this bastard again."
The moment I tried to pull it out, the thing jammed its fingers deeper into the body and braced. Not the first time. I hammered my left arm with my fist as hard as I could.
THUD!
THUD-THUD—!
"Cut the—shit—and let—go, you piece of—"
I couldn't put real power behind the blows, but the left arm slowly gave up its stubborn grip. Fingers started coming free. At this rate I was going to get it out clean.
That was when it happened.
BANG—!
"…!"
A gunshot cracked past my ear. The left arm jerked free and a white-hot pain bloomed; I lost my balance and tumbled off the muscle mutant's corpse.
"Lee… Hyoseong…!"
I didn't need to see who fired. Clutching my bleeding stomach, I lifted my head as he walked toward me.
Step. Step.
"You have no idea how shocked I am right now, Siwoo-ya. You killed that thing? Seriously… haaah… yeah. You really do need to die right here."
That easy smile. He ran a hand through his hair, striking a pose that didn't suit him at all, and stopped in front of my fallen body with the muzzle aimed at my head.
"You fucking bastard… where the hell did you even get—"
"That? The soldiers I mentioned gave it to me as a 'gift.' Basically dumping their leftovers… but it killed you, so I'll call that enough."
"And you—you came back with that ridiculous arm. Without it you'd be nothing."
He was smiling, but he wasn't smiling. A twisted, warped human smile was this ugly, then.
He hadn't been like this at the start. Why had he become this?
The pointless question circled my head and I threw it away. That wasn't what mattered right now.
CRACKLE—
Jompari.
The left arm's muscle twisted. Hotter than it had ever been. Fibers knotted and tore in a way that hurt worse than the bullet through my gut.
"Alright. Time to go, Siwoo-ya."
SQUELCH—
BANG—!
The wet sound of flesh came a half-step before the gunshot. A bullet scar punched into the dirt right beside my head.
I looked up in confusion. A blade was buried in Hyoseong's left hand—the sample-collection knife from Seohui-noona's lab, the one that had broken and been swallowed into my arm.
Blood sprayed. The gun slipped from his grip and hit the ground.
"Aaaagh!! Fuck! Enough already!!"
STAB—!
"Gyaaah!"
Another knife forced its way out of my left palm and shot forward, burying itself in Hyoseong's left shoulder. His arm went limp. Looking closer, it was the same knife a scavenger at the Rooftop Market had tried to jam into my arm while resisting.
"…You cut it out first."
I braced my left arm against the ground and staggered upright into a ready stance.
The smile was gone. Shock and rage twisted his face. If I said it looked pretty good, would that be too much?
I kicked the fallen pistol far away and lifted the right hand that had been holding my stomach.
"Without… the left arm… hah… let's… do this, Hyoseong."
"Bullshit…!"
THWACK—!
His fist came at my face. I forced the left arm down when it tried to react and drove my own fist into his face instead, crushing it.
THUD—!
THWACK—!
One each. We threw punches and took them in turn.
Even when I got bullied at school, even when I always said what I needed to say—strangely, I'd never really thought about fighting someone head-on. Now it was unavoidable if you wanted to live in this fucked world. Back then I'd been too timid to even consider a real brawl.
WHAM—!!
"Ghk!"
Didn't feel half bad, honestly.
My head still burned, my left arm still screamed, blood still ran from my stomach—and even so I smiled right back at Hyoseong.
Did you really think you could go even with someone who's used only his right arm his whole life?
Twenty-three years of one-armed experience. Not as good as two arms, but I'd lived just fine handling everything with one hand. The fact that you only had to hammer the unguarded left side was information only I knew… and I hadn't wanted to know it either.
"Haa… this… is what a veteran looks like, you piece of shit…"
I stomped the fallen Hyoseong. Exhaustion had spit running from my mouth so I was teabagging him without meaning to, but I could feel it—time to finish this.
"Cough, cough…!"
"…What I should have… done back then… cough…! I'm doing it… now."
SQUEEZE—
I thrust out the left arm that had been trying to move on its own this whole time and clamped it around Hyoseong's face.
CRUSH—!
"Ghk… ugh…"
His head caved. The man who had killed the people with us, turned them into zombies, threatened us when we tried to leave, tormented us—he was dying.
CRACK—!!
Something shattered under my left hand. I slowly pulled it free and looked down at the dead Lee Hyoseong.
"…"
What a shitty last word.
I should've at least let him leave a proper will.
"O-Oppa!!"
I was still staring at him, dredging up the past, when Jiyu's familiar voice yanked me back to the present.
She approached carefully. I glanced behind her, half-expecting her to be gone, and saw Baek-ajumma and Minwoo waiting by the front gate.
"…I told you to leave."
"The front gate was locked… we just got it open and came back for you. More importantly—are you okay?"
"I… cough! I've been through… too much. I'm really tired."
I had no idea what I looked like right now, but it felt like the perfect moment for a line I'd always wanted to try. I dropped the heartfelt drip with full confidence.
"…Yeah. Come here, Oppa. Let's go rest."
Jiyu either completely missed my masterpiece or chose to ignore it. She just gave me this soft, faraway look like I was some tragic figure with a long, hard story and gently supported me.
Ah, fuck. That's not it.
Leaning on her, I kept subtly putting more weight that way. I'd never been helped like this before. I didn't even know how to lean on someone properly. For someone who'd always stood alone, the whole thing felt completely foreign.
"It's okay to relax and lean on me."
"…"
Was human body heat always this warm, or was it the morning sun finally rising? Either way, a gentle warmth seeped in.
I buried a mountain of memories at the school.
And leaning on another person, I headed back to the Rooftop Market.