Minus
...Please be careful out there, Oppa.
The look on Yejin's face as she saw me off was a tangle of gratitude, guilt, and helplessness so raw no words could have done it justice. It was enough to stop me cold — enough to change the mind of a man who'd been about to give her nothing more than a half-hearted wave and walk away.
I told her not to worry, to just hold down the fort, and headed straight out of the residential neighborhood toward the schools.
The corpses littering the streets multiplied with every passing day, and the fire axe in my hand grew a deeper, richer shade of blood-red to match.
I'd set out early that morning. After about an hour of walking, three schools finally came into view, lined up side by side at the foot of the mountain that rose from the heart of the city.
"Haa..."
Middle schoolers, she'd said. According to Yejin, the biggest building — the one sandwiched between the two high schools — was where her little sisters went.
The thought of combing through that sprawling complex looking for a couple of kids dragged a long, heavy sigh out of me.
How the hell is a middle school bigger than the high schools next to it? And three annexes? Seriously?
Just how much money had they poured into this place?
I scowled, irritation written all over my face, and trudged toward the front gate. Sure, I'd brought this on myself — and I was checking the rooftops while I was at it — but no amount of rationalizing could bury the sheer annoyance of the whole thing.
And that sour mood only got worse the moment I grabbed the half-open front gate, hinges screeching, and a new thought hit me.
Come to think of it, I only know something fell on a school rooftop. I have no idea which school.
I stood there with my hand on the cold metal gate, blinking for a few seconds, then let out another deep sigh.
"You've got to be kidding me."
Maybe I should just scrap the whole thing, go home, and tear into some meat. I'd knocked out three thousand pull-ups the night before and still put away a massive breakfast, and my appetite was still roaring.
I mulled it over, then shook my head. I'd come all this way. Turning around empty-handed just didn't sit right.
So I sorted the situation in my head and laid out a plan. First priority: find the kids and secure them. After that, depending on how things looked, I could check the rooftops — or dump the kids at home and come back later.
I shoved the gate open, and the moment I stepped onto the middle school grounds, a few corpses lunged out to greet me with enthusiasm. I split their skulls with the axe and flicked the brain matter off my hair with a scowl of pure disgust.
I'd taken a few steps toward the absurdly oversized middle school building when a faint explosion reached my ears. I turned my head.
...What was that? Did a zombie bite into a gas canister or something?
I watched the neighboring school erupt into chaos. A zombie that had been playing dead sprang at me mid-thought; I drove the axe blade straight into its neck and kept thinking.
Today's day three of this nightmare, right? Pretty much the absolute limit for surviving without water.
People who'd been holed up and holding out had finally hit their breaking point and come pouring out — that much was obvious. But that wasn't what mattered. What mattered was whether the kids I was looking for were somewhere in that high school mess, running from the dead.
I glared at the chaos next door with eyes thick with irritation, then turned back toward the middle school and started to walk — and stopped.
What if? What if, by some remote chance, I ignored that situation and those kids died because of it?
It wouldn't have made any difference to me personally. But the thought of going home and telling Yejin... I didn't even want to imagine how foul that conversation would feel.
In the end, there was only one choice.
I gave my hair a hard shake — I'd rinsed it with a whole jug of water that morning, for all the good it had done — and trudged back the way I'd come, toward the school next door.
...Corpse or human, the second I lay eyes on you...
I was already hunting for something to take my frustration out on.
And now, back to the present.
I looked back and forth between the pretty high school girl staring straight at me without the slightest attempt to cover the half-shredded top that left her underwear exposed, and the absolute disaster of a creature standing next to her, and said one thing.
"Just looking at you is pissing me off. This isn't even about blowing off steam anymore — my eyesight's fighting for its life here."
"Gggeuk? Ggeuk. Ggeurreuk."
It locked eyes with me and started babbling, which of course I understood exactly none of. It wasn't even trying to form words — just forcing air through its throat in wet, phlegmy gurgles. Understanding that would have been the weird part.
I didn't bother saying anything else. I simply felt the sacred duty to erase this visual war crime from existence as fast as humanly possible. Every scrap of reason and instinct I had, every cell in my brain and heart, every shred of whatever passed for a soul — all of it was screaming at me to get rid of that bald head and that stick. I gripped the fire axe with genuine conviction.
I started closing in on it. Then the high school girl shouted, face gone rigid.
"Wait — be careful!"
The instant she cried out, the thing charged. I forced down the wave of pure revulsion surging up from my gut and swung the axe one-handed on pure reflex.
It twisted its mouth into something like a sneer, snatched the fire axe clean out of the air, and lunged in with its jaws wide open, going straight for my throat.
The girl behind it bit down hard on her lip, bracing for what she was sure came next.
What came out of my mouth was not the scream she'd expected.
"Ah, fuck."
Just a single curse. Nothing more.
I wore an expression of sincere, undiluted disgust as I caught its gaping maw in one hand and held it at bay, muttering under my breath.
"You filthy corpse bastard. You really think you're putting that disgusting spit on me?"
".....!!"
Its face and jaw locked up under a grip it had never imagined possible. White eyes went wide. It frantically dropped the axe and grabbed both of my arms instead.
I stared it down with a look that writhed with irritation and loathing, and before it could make another move, I drove the left fist still holding the axe straight into its face.
Crack—!
The sound of a nose shattering. The thing went flying, tumbling across the asphalt. I walked right up to it as it lay there twitching and limp.
"Tiny-dicked piece of shit. Were you some kind of flasher when you were alive? Doing that in front of girls — you've got a record, don't you?"
"Keh. Keureureuk... kakak!"
It had gotten so thoroughly wrecked it didn't know what to do with itself. The stick hanging off that body had gone just as limp — not that I so much as glanced in that direction. Instead I planted my foot on its exposed skull, pinning it hard, and raised the axe into position.
Part of me wanted to carve the thing into pieces and hang the parts on the school gate for daring to go after a high school girl who looked like that. My mental health simply would not have survived the process.
"Do me a favor and get the hell out of this world. Looking at you any longer makes me sick."
"Ggeu— ggeuaaaaaaagh!!!"
The axe blade rose into the sunlight, gleaming a vicious blood-red. Whatever it had been babbling turned into a familiar scream — except this one carried something the others hadn't. A raw, desperate will to live.
I did not give a single shit.
Whooosh—
CRUNCH—!
The head came clean off the body, vocal cords split right down the middle, mouth still working soundlessly. Watching it, I felt the irritation I'd been nursing finally start to drain away.
With a much lighter expression, I let out a long, refreshing breath and turned to the minors staring at me in a daze.
"If any of you want a turn, come on over. It's still twitching — looks like there's some consciousness left."
"...N-no. We're fine."
A girl with a bob cut and catlike upturned eyes met my gaze, stumbled over her words, and declined. I shrugged and shifted my attention to the one with the torn uniform. She noticed, carefully raised a hand to cover her underwear, and spoke.
"Thank you for saving us. Um... if you don't mind my asking, where did you come from?"
I found it a little impressive that she could go through something like that and still ask about my identity this calmly. I answered without hesitation.
"I've got some personal business at the middle school next door. Heard the noise and figured I'd swing by to check it out."
On the off chance, I glanced over the mature faces and name tags of the girls in matching uniforms. Just as I thought — nothing. I started to look away, then froze.
Wedged between the high school uniforms, two different ones peeked through. Two girls I'd completely missed, tucked tightly behind the others. I stared at them, dropped my eyes to their name tags, blinked, and asked.
"...Do you two happen to know someone named Kim Yejin?"
"...Th-that's our unnie's name."
"....."
I had absolutely nothing to say to that.