Awls That Pierce the Bag
What Yejin had told the kids while I was gone wasn't anything special.
Just a rough account of how she and I had gotten by since the apocalypse started, with a little creative embellishment of the things I'd been through along the way.
"You call that rough? Do you have any idea how much Oppa has suffered—"
"Eh. I wouldn't really call it suffering."
"...Anyway, I told the students and Jonghun-ssi too. That they should always be grateful to you."
Well. It was nice enough that she appreciated my usual hard work, I supposed—
I stopped mid-step on the stairs and looked down at her.
"You ever consider that if the gratitude gets too thick, it might start weighing on the person receiving it?"
"...Is that how you're feeling right now?"
"No, not exactly a burden. But honestly, it does feel a little off."
At that, Yejin's already drooping expression sank even further into gloom.
"Then what am I supposed to do..."
"What are you talking about. Do about what?"
She hesitated at my baffled question, then parted her slightly cracked apricot-colored lips.
"Th-there's that girl Chaeyeon, right?"
"Yeah."
"I'd love nothing more than to stand right beside you and actually help out somehow. But of course that's impossible."
From the moment she'd first met me, she'd sworn she would never become dead weight.
And yet at some point—or maybe all along—she'd done nothing but talk a good game. Contributed next to nothing. Like an idiot.
As she whispered those words, the corners of her eyes slowly reddened.
"Ever since Oppa saved my little sisters, I've been thinking about it constantly. How do I repay this kindness? And do you know what conclusion I reached?"
It's impossible.
"I can't fight even a fraction as well as you. I don't have any special abilities like that body of yours. The only things I can do are a little cooking and my music major."
"So that's why I was like that. Wondering if there was any way at all. Telling people about you, trying to make myself as useful to you as I could..."
She offered a dry little smile.
"But I guess even that is off-limits now. If it burdens you."
"......"
Everything went quiet.
Yejin stood with her head bowed after those last words, and I looked down at her.
Then I took her by the wrist and started climbing the stairs again.
She trailed after me like a worn-out rabbit doll with its seams all frayed, and I spoke to her over my shoulder.
"I'll explain it properly once we get to the broadcast room, but I caught a glimpse of something while I was in there."
"...?"
"I'm still half-skeptical, honestly, but apparently there are these things called gods living in a higher dimension than the world we live in."
"...??"
What the hell was this out of nowhere.
For Yejin's sake—looking up at me with teary, glistening eyes—I pressed on, however awkwardly.
Well, it was abrupt, but what could I do. Comforting and encouraging people was about a million light-years outside my personality.
"Anyway, those so-called gods have been writing all kinds of commentary while watching this world go to hell. And one of the things they said was pretty shocking."
You know what they call it when a human saves another human in danger and helps them keep living?
"...Usually people call it noble. Remarkable."
"Nope. They called it sucker behavior."
"....."
"Said it was pathetic. Why have power and not just go all out, and so on. Honestly, reading it, the sheer frustration in that post was so thick I almost started wondering if they had a point."
"...So?"
"I mostly just moved on. Then I heard what you just said and that post came back to me. So since you're this torn up about it, I'll be straight with you. I'm not that kind of guy."
I let go of her wrist and took hold of her thin shoulders.
"Saving you? That was because you're a girl. Feeding you and giving you a place to sleep this whole time? That was because you're pretty enough to be worth it."
"...Wh-what?"
Yejin's pupils started trembling beyond any control.
"I'm not saying I want to do anything to you. It's just instinct. Kim Yejin—if you were walking down the street and found a baby rabbit shivering in the rain, what would you do?"
"I'd pick it up and take care of it, of course."
"Right. Same thing with me. Get it now?"
"...And I was under the impression that people who do that kind of thing are called kind."
"....."
That one actually stopped me for a second. I collected myself and opened my mouth again.
"Not the way I see it. A genuinely kind person would take care of a toad the same way they'd take care of a cute little rabbit. Someone like that doesn't have a shred of self-interest."
"...Meaning Oppa isn't like that?"
Obviously.
And besides, toads like getting rained on. Why would you need to take care of one?
"Anyway, the point is this. I'm not some volunteer saint the way you seem to think, so you don't need to feel guilty about it."
"...I understand."
Honestly, Yejin probably had a mountain of things she wanted to say, but the pure laziness written all over my face must have shut her down. She just nodded and murmured,
"If that's what Oppa wants, then I..."
Crack—
"...?"
She broke off at the sudden sound of joints snapping from above.
She looked up—and found herself staring straight into the eyes of a corpse plummeting from the upper floor, jaws stretched wide open.
Ah.
It happened so fast that all she could do was stand there with her eyes round, staring blankly at the teeth rushing toward her—
Until I yanked her into my arms and delivered a steel-bar-weighted fist to that ridiculous bastard of a corpse who'd decided to go skydiving.
CRAAACK—!
She watched the thing go flying like a kicked cushion, face caved in, then looked up at me from where she was still held against my chest.
"This was also because you're worth saving."
"...Because I'm... pr...etty?"
"Yeah."
Just because she was one attractive human being.
Like a song that hits your taste perfectly when you hear it by chance one day. Or like looking up on an exhausted walk home and finding the sky flooded with an astonishing red.
Because I wanted to hear her voice for a long time.
Because I wanted to look at her face for a long time.
"I did it for me."
Got it?
Whoosh—
The moment those words left my mouth, Yejin's face went red enough to burst.
I was still puzzling over the way she dropped her head and couldn't even meet my eyes when—
Hey, Master! Why aren't you here yet?! I've gone over my chatter portfolio so many times already!
"Yeah, I'm coming."
Ah, damn it. That ate up a disgusting amount of time.
Meanwhile, at that same hour.
While someone was climbing free of a deep melancholy that was, in its own way, a luxury amid the apocalypse—and being swept up in a new emotion entirely—
Someone else was locked in an absolute despair so complete that even feeling something like that was beyond dreaming.
"...Uweh—gag—"
Unable to endure the extreme revulsion and terror, the man's stomach pushed past dry heaving into actual reverse flow.
But since the end of the world, he hadn't managed to eat anything—barely even drink—so all that came up from his gut was thin, dry bile.
"Ah, for fuck's sake."
Thud—
Even that much he couldn't fully spit out before a boot caught him in the face and sent him sprawling, the stuff still gurgling in his throat against the floor.
"Hey."
"Hey, buddy."
Crrrk—
"AAAAAAAGH!!!"
"Not gonna answer me, buddy? Hm? Budddy~"
The massive foot lifted off the man's face and settled gently onto his pinky finger instead, and began to press.
"GAAAAAH!!! AAAAAH!!!"
It went beyond simple crushing—twisting slowly, the way you'd grind out a cigarette, adding weight by degrees. The pain defied imagination.
Watching the man thrash on the ground like a fish dumped on dry land, still refusing to give the answer he'd been asked for, the giant of a man looked over at one particular spot with open disgust.
"At this point, isn't that just a no? Wouldn't you say so, old man?"
An elderly man ignored the question entirely, staring fixedly at the writhing figure on the floor.
Snow-white hair and a dense web of wrinkles made it clear he was every bit as old as the title suggested—and yet neither the giant nor anyone else present dared treat him lightly.
The prisoners of Suwon Detention Center, miraculously freed after the apocalypse.
With the firearms all completely shot to hell, they'd slit every last thrashing guard's throat and, within a single day, secured themselves a suitable hideout.
They'd forced open the locked factory doors, occupied the place, and what came next was obvious. Stress relief—and the hierarchy that came with it.
Everyone was supposed to participate, forcibly, with the sole exception of Kim Hyeonggu, the former top dog of the detention center.
The disruption happened in the blink of an eye.
The sole woman in this abandoned factory—someone who'd come to visit a wheezing old man whose charges no one even knew, only to get swept up in the end of the world.
Naturally, Kim Hyeonggu—a former high-ranking gangster—had licked his lips and approached her.
And in the literal span of a single blink, his carotid artery was severed. He crossed the river of death with his eyes still open.
After that, the chaos of the factory reorganized itself around that old man.
On the third day, the old man—Gu Sunchang—emphasized two priorities the prisoners were to secure above all else.
Food. And numbers.
But neither of those things was ever going to come easy.
They'd scoured every inch of the factory's surroundings only to find everything already stripped bare, and so the old man and the prisoners were forced to choose.
Throw away their lives. Or throw away their humanity entirely.
And inside a factory where most of them had already half-abandoned being human long ago, the outcome was a foregone conclusion.
"P-please just... please... spare me..."
"Hey, I already asked you, didn't I? Are you gonna work with us or not? You're the one who answered by just puking everywhere."
"Please... please..."
The man clung to the giant's leg, begging for his life, ignoring the pain screaming through his finger and the rest of his body.
His friend, who'd rejected their offer outright, had had his throat cut on the spot—and was currently being butchered like a hog right beside them in real time.
"Ah... shit, old man. This thing is not cutting for shit."
"Begin with the tendons beneath the armpit and cut slowly. It will go more easily."
"...Oh. Ohhh. Holy shit. You're right."
"As expected of a former human butcher..."
CRAAACK—!
The prisoner who'd muttered that took a kick that sent him tumbling and crashing across the floor.
"Watch your mouth."
A man in prison clothes and glasses, standing at the old man's side like an aide, murmured the words.
Gu Sunchang glanced at the scene without interest, then spoke to the woman kneading his shoulder.
"You need not keep watching. If it is hard on you, go inside."
"No, I'm fine. This is work you assigned, Uncle. I shouldn't get to dislike it."
"...Jimin. You alone need not eat that. I will take responsibility and find other food."
"Uncle."
The woman called Jimin turned a bright smile on the old man.
The age gap made "Uncle" sound awkward enough that it should have felt strange—but neither of them, nor even the man with glasses standing nearby, thought of it that way.
"Honestly, I've been curious for a while. What human meat actually tastes like."
"...Jimin. You need not force a joke like that—"
"I'm not joking?"
Was three days too short a time for a person to discard their humanity?
No. For them, it had been more than long enough.