Awls That Pierce the Pocket

It didn't take long for the situation inside the club to settle down.

The numbers had been lopsided from the start, and more than anything, there was the old man — the one who'd carved through more than half the gangsters from the front of the prisoners' ranks.

While the women huddled in the corner, trembling as they stared at the groaning gangsters, one of the prisoners shuffled awkwardly toward the old man sitting on the sofa.

"Uh, sir. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠What do we do with the bodies and the women?"

"Strip anything useful off the corpses and take it. Anyone still breathing, and the women, come with us. Casualties on our side?"

"One guy laid out with a knife in his gut. But when you say 'anyone still breathing,' what exactly do you mean by…?"

The man was still voicing his confusion when the gang boss — who'd looked completely out cold — twitched with a rattling, dying gasp.

The old man looked down at him without a flicker of interest and spoke a single line.

"We'll pick out a few useful ones. The rest, we take the thigh meat before it spoils. I've already sorted them for you, so there shouldn't be any confusion."

"…Gulp."

The man swallowed dryly as understanding hit him.

So this insane old bastard had, in the middle of that absolute slaughterhouse, selected the ones worth recruiting to their side and merely knocked them unconscious.

What kind of bullshit is that… How many of those bastards were coming at him from every direction, and he pulled that off?

But denying it was impossible — the results were sitting right there in front of his eyes.

Every other body had its throat slit open and was pouring blood, yet a handful of men were staggering to their feet with nothing but bruises around the neck, not a single cut on them, looking like they still had no idea what had just happened.

"Call me when you're finished. I'll be resting until then."

"…Yes, sir."

And the man responsible for all of it — not a drop of blood on him — simply wiped his blood-soaked old knife clean with a tablecloth.

The prisoner had always prided himself on having seen every grotesque, twisted type the underworld had to offer.

But this old man was a breed he'd never encountered before.

And precisely because of that, he was certain.

This wasn't one of those half-assed thugs who swaggered around flexing their fists. This was one of the rare few genuine articles.

Those eyes — so accustomed to killing they were utterly indifferent — burned themselves into the man's mind with a clarity he wouldn't forget.

"I'll need to swap out this knife before we head back."

With the old man's words, the hilt that had endured the earlier carnage snapped clean in two with a dry crack.

A few hours later — whether from the thick stench of blood or the noise of the earlier chaos — a man stood staring at the zombies swarming the club entrance, his face twisted in disgust as he twirled a finger in the air.

"Hyung. Have you lost your mind? I know our food situation is bad, but you're seriously going to hit that place?"

"Idiot. Of course we're going to lure them away first."

The man looked him over as he said it, and his companion recoiled, stumbling backward.

"Are you crazy?! There's at least ten of them just looking at it. I'm not going near that even if it kills me!"

"When did I ever say you were doing the luring? We grabbed something from the fourth or fifth floor yesterday, remember? You brought it, right?"

"…Ah. That thing?"

He scratched his blood-matted hair, dug through his pocket, and pulled something out. Then he stared at the little packet of pellets in his hand with a dubious look.

"Well, you made such a big deal about it when we left that I packed them, but… are we actually using these?"

"Why wouldn't we?"

"Because one wrong move and we're all dead. We don't even know how many zombies are out there or where they are."

"What do you mean we don't know? We checked the whole intersection with the telescope before we left."

"…When did we do that?"

"Well, technically it was our noona who did it, not me."

As he spoke, Jeonghwan rummaged in his jacket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper. Rough, hastily drawn lines mapped out the commercial district they were in with surprising accuracy, X marks for zombies scattered across every street.

"Wait, what? How is that even possible? I know your place is high up, but still…"

"No idea. I don't know either. Noona said to just use it as a rough reference."

Reference or not — from everything Jeonghwan had confirmed on the way here, the zombie positions were accurate to a degree that was genuinely unnerving.

Those monsters stay put in one spot unless something sets them off. So there's a decent chance the map lines up.

…Yeah, okay, Noona.

He'd taken her word for it with more than a little skepticism at the time. Now, glancing around in every direction, Jeonghwan could only shake his head in awe.

That eye for detail really was something else.

"Hyung, so I'm actually throwing this bean-bomb?"

"…Ah, hold on a second. You trying to get someone killed? Like you said, one slip and we're completely fucked."

He had a point — enough to make anyone freeze up. Jeonghwan checked the map against their surroundings over and over, trying to steady his nerves.

Fuck. If the refrigerators had just held out, we wouldn't be doing this shit.

The entire apartment complex had run so critically low on food that they'd been forced to pick volunteers to go out scavenging. Barely four days since everything started.

But what choice did they have? The power was out. The gas wouldn't light. They'd been arguing over whether to eat raw pork like some kind of tartare they never asked for — and now even that had all gone bad. They had no choice but to take the risk.

Without luring those goddamn zombies away, nothing was getting done.

He'd watched those gangster bastards sweep up every scrap of food near this commercial strip. Better to hit this place than waste the trip on empty shelves.

Before signaling his companion, Jeonghwan thought back one last time to what his noona, Jeong-a, had told him.

Something definitely went down inside that club.

Noona. What were you spying on first thing in the morning this time?

I'm not joking, so listen carefully. Men I've never seen before went in, then came back out. After that, nobody else emerged. It was a fight — I'm sure of it.

If they were going to try for food at all, now was the best shot they had.

Jeong-a had said as much and tried to go into the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠club herself with Jeonghwan in tow — but of course that plan got shut down.

How much do I already owe you, Noona?! I'll go instead!

No. You don't have to. I'm the one who brought it up…

Come on, seriously! You've got a perfectly healthy guy right here — what's a woman like you doing going in? Just sit tight!

Faced with that ridiculous stubbornness, she'd fallen silent for a moment, then looked at him.

Fine. But be careful. Of the monsters, obviously — and especially of people.

That calm, steady look in Jeong-a's eyes was still vivid in his mind.

Monster or human — avoid them both. Don't engage. Just get out of the way.

In a situation like this, both were equally dangerous.

Jeonghwan clenched his jaw and gave the signal. The hesitant hand finally flung the toy bean-bomb far down the alley.

Pop—

"?"

I turned, scanning the area at the strange noise that had come from somewhere nearby.

"What was that?"

"What's wrong, Hyung-nim?"

"Sounded like someone beating laundry out somewhere."

"…Sorry? Laundry? Is there someone nearby?"

Haejun made a show of checking the surroundings while watching my face carefully, but it was painfully obvious he was too scared to actually look properly.

I gave him a cold stare, then crooked a finger to call him over. He crept closer even more cautiously than before.

"Kang Haejun."

"Yes, Hyung-nim."

"You know I saved your life once, right?"

"Yes, yessir. Of course."

"And you know I'm the one still keeping that life going, right?"

"…Yes."

"So when you just stand there cowering with zero drive, what do you think that makes me feel, watching you?"

"…"

He avoided my eyes without a word. I added one more line.

"One day of freeloading next to me was enough. You need to find something useful to do if you want me to keep looking out for you."

"R-right, Hyung-nim."

Great at agreeing. Terrible at actually doing anything — worse than a girl his own age.

That was exactly why I'd brought him to this commercial strip next to the apartment complex, about ten minutes from the school. Call it experience grinding.

This wasn't some RPG, and I wasn't a high-level character busing a lowbie through actual level-ups — but as far as the expression went, it wasn't wrong.

Turning this delinquent school punk Kang Haejun into a man who could pull his own weight required shock therapy through real experience. Nothing else would cut it.

Same as when I'd first met Yejin — giving him a safe, spoon-fed taste of killing zombies.

Of course, personally, the circumstances were completely different from back then.

Yejin had been an adult, but she was a woman with a delicate build. This kid, even if he was an eighteen-year-old minor, was a guy like me — and he was even a few centimeters taller.

I was 178. A few centimeters taller meant he cleared 180 at minimum. Physically, he was fully grown and then some.

In other words, there wasn't a shred of reason to go easy on him.

Whoosh—

I swung the iron pipe resting on my shoulder once, hard enough to make a vicious sound. Haejun flinched and looked at me.

"Kang Haejun. Just one person's worth of work. Nothing more. Do that and at least I won't throw you away. Got it?"

"…Yes, Hyung-nim."

"If you can gather food in my place and smash zombie skulls without me holding your hand, I'll treat you the same way I treat Im Chaeyeon. So put some effort in."

Easy to say. Actually being told to do it made Haejun — a perfectly ordinary high school guy, not some reincarnated Valkyrie — go pale. But in the end he had no choice but to nod, eyes wet.

"Then take the lead. If it looks dangerous, I'll step in."

I said it to Haejun, who was gripping a thin bicycle ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠frame about the size of a baseball bat, and pointed toward the roadside reeking of rotting corpses. He started walking — slowly, very slowly — with the heaviest steps I'd ever seen.

Watching his back, I thought one thing to myself.

The spoon-feeding ends with yesterday.

Why had I taken these guys in? Sympathy? Don't make me laugh.

I'd taken them in so that food runs and combat — the things I had to handle — would be even slightly less of a hassle.

And it wasn't just the men. The women served the same purpose.

Expecting them to handle major combat was a stretch, sure — but at the very least, they could boil instant noodles for me, couldn't they?

And Chaeyeon, who'd shattered those expectations in the best possible way, was that much more likable because of it.

A sucker? People say I'm a sucker for bringing people along?

Ridiculous. The conversation I'd had with Yejin yesterday had been heavily sanitized. The real thought underneath was a lot rawer.

After the end of the world, after grinding against corpses day after day, as emotions wore thinner and the things worth enjoying disappeared —

You needed some kind of goal, or what was the point of staying alive?

Especially when your body couldn't even die anymore.

Save people. Feed them. House them. Turn them into someone who can pull their own weight — then put them to work.

And in the middle of all those people, I alone coast on pure easy mode.

A perfect ending where nobody has any grounds to complain — a genuine win-win.

I pictured the kids tending the school's unnecessarily large vegetable garden and digging up potatoes, the men guarding the front gate and cracking zombie skulls, and the women waking me from my nap on the principal's office sofa with a carefully cooked bowl of ramen — and I smiled a dirty little smile.

"…Yeah. Of course."

"Nah. People have to help each other out, right?"

I had zero interest in the tastes of perverts who watched other people's apocalypses with a bag ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠of popcorn.

If there was any hardship involved, it was just me front-loading the work that would eventually be someone else's job.

So that in the future, I could coast on pure easy mode.

"By the way, does this telepathy thing have no range limit at all? It's getting pretty noisy."

I could practically picture the crow drooping its beak at what was, honestly, not entirely empty words.