Hope for Sale
The next morning — day five of the apocalypse.
I headed to the gym, set down the light barbell, and swept a look around the place.
I hadn't come hunting for a new weapon after only a few days. There was something I needed to check before heading out.
Yesterday, while Im Chaeyeon and I had been clearing the main building, the bar had held up without a hitch no matter how relentlessly I smashed skulls. I couldn't just swap out this reliable thing already.
I picked up the twenty-kilo weight bar and gave it a full swing.
Whoooosh—
A heavy, ripping whoosh that the light bar couldn't begin to match.
Hmm....
I gripped the distinctive rough knurling and considered it for a moment, but the answer came quickly. It was still too early to use as a weapon.
After getting the new tattoo yesterday, I'd thoroughly wrecked every corpse except the handful Chaeyeon had taken down, and by the time we finished I could clearly feel my body growing stronger.
Exactly forty-eight of them, was it? The ones I'd killed.
Whether they'd been hiding or massacred by the orangutan, they'd been clustered thick through the classrooms, and when I'd swept them all alone she'd told me with sparkling eyes.
Oppa, you're more amazing the more I watch you. I've never once seen your stamina drop. What kind of training makes that possible?
Remembering Chaeyeon looking up at me, soaked in corpse blood, I set the weight bar down.
I'd definitely gotten stronger. Forty-eight kills meant roughly a twenty-four percent average increase. I wanted to test whether that number was exact, but the problem was that before the apocalypse I'd been a pure bodyweight guy.
I didn't know my exact lifting capacity, so I couldn't properly measure the change either.
So what else could I do but roughly check with deadlifts.
I loaded plates onto the bar and set my stance. Starting light — a hundred kilos.
I drove up and the bar rose effortlessly. Putting more force into my arms, it came all the way to my chest.
As I tilted my head at the oddly ambiguous weight, a clear voice floated down from the stairs.
"Oppa. I'm here."
"Yeah, wait there a sec. No corpses on the way?"
"No. I saw a few shadows inside the annex, but nothing out on the grounds."
She must have been exhausted from following me cleaning corpses late into the night, yet she spoke clearly without showing it.
I recalled her back at the end of it — gasping and spent, fighting corpses in the dark by the light of a few bulbs the crow had lit.
"You worked hard last night. Did you rest well after?"
"Huh? Um... you did all the hard work, Oppa. I was really shocked when you said you'd handle those dozens alone in the classroom."
"There were too many then — no choice. If they spilled outside and scattered elsewhere, it'd be more of a hassle."
"That's true, but I almost went in several times hearing those brutal sounds from outside. If you hadn't told me to just handle the ones coming out..."
"Don't worry about me — just take care of your own life. You were the one in the most danger on the fifth floor at the end."
"...Heh. That's true. If you hadn't helped me then, Oppa, I'd have been bitten and died for sure."
Obviously, Im Chaeyeon wasn't an inhuman like me. No matter how talented and gifted she was, if she got ambushed and her weakness exploited, it was over. She'd just become another flesh-torn corpse moaning on the floor.
Anyway, after acting so confidently, she seemed thoroughly embarrassed about owing another life debt — twirling her long hair around a finger and avoiding my eyes.
"Oppa, but you know what was really amazing? When you came out of that classroom without a single wound. Your clothes were all torn with bite marks, but your body was fine. How did you dodge by such a paper-thin margin?"
No — does it even make sense that there were marks like that and I still "dodged"?
I turned away from her tilting head and grabbed the weight bar again.
"Um... Chaeyeon. Can you help me load some plates?"
"...??"
She looked as if my suddenly kinder tone and demeanor had thrown her into confusion.
I still hadn't decided whether to tell the kids about my special circumstances. So I roughly changed the subject and kept measuring my body.
Until we left for the apartment expedition we'd promised.
A short while later, leaving the gym and passing the school entrance, I reached a conclusion.
The heavy weapon I so desperately wanted — the weight bar. To truly swing it like Guan Yu, I still needed a few dozen more zombies. At minimum.
With my current arm strength, I was nowhere near able to freely control the centrifugal force and overwhelming mass when swinging that long iron chunk.
If I were just a bit taller, it would have been easier. But wishing for that was greed.
Thinking that, I looked back at Chaeyeon, who was watching me brightly with her bag hiked up like an ordinary high school girl.
"Just the apartment like we said yesterday? Or somewhere else too?"
"Well. That depends on the situation, right? But if I see anything useful, I'm taking it all."
At my answer she smiled brightly with joy even without saying a word.
Having confirmed firsthand that my new tattoo and its ability were real, Chaeyeon was determined to sweep up that Tar currency or whatever it was called.
Having gotten my permission before we left, she was improving by the day — cleanly finishing off every walking corpse that appeared by driving her blade into their mouths.
Having just skewered a middle-aged woman corpse crawling out of another wrecked clothing store entrance like a kebab, she elegantly flicked her blade clean as usual, then asked me in that cheerful voice that utterly didn't match the apocalyptic atmosphere.
"That makes fifteen total! Oppa, how much did you say that tattoo costs?"
"Exactly one hundred. No more, no less."
"......"
Chaeyeon's proud shoulders drooped. She sighed once and sheathed her sword.
"I couldn't handle one of those Beta Types, right?"
Obviously. If she met one, she'd be slaughtered whether she held a sword or not. I'd died and come back several times to that bastard myself.
I'd roughly told the kids about the orangutan last night before bed, spinning it like a story, so saying more would just tire my mouth.
"If you run into one, running is best no matter how many of you there are. Frontal combat is hopeless. I know from fighting it myself."
Chaeyeon trotted up beside me and muttered quietly as she matched my pace.
"How did you take down a monster like that alone, Oppa?"
"I got lucky."
"...Tch, always just luck."
Looking deflated, she pouted her lips slightly, adjusted her bag, and walked ahead of me before stopping abruptly and slowly lifting her head.
No matter how long you live looking at apartment buildings, you never quite get used to that height alone.
That uneasy feeling when looking up from the first floor — like it might topple and crush you any second.
Of course, I'd still regenerate fine and survive.
"We've arrived, right?"
"Yeah. We've arrived, but..."
Passing Chaeyeon, who blinked up at me, I slowly looked around the Apartment Complex.
Yoo Jeong-hwan, was it?
After witnessing that scene at the club yesterday, he still planned to make me wait.
I hadn't thought he had that much guts.
Or maybe just sorting the list is taking long?
In the middle of the complex ringed by three apartment buildings, I fiddled with the light bar and waited for him.
Meanwhile, at that same time.
Contrary to someone's speculation, Yoo Jeong-hwan was going out of his mind.
"No — so if you're that suspicious, just do a quiet barter exchange and be done with it. What's the big problem?!"
A man looking pitifully at Jeong-hwan, who was fretting and ruffling his hair wildly, spoke.
"What's the problem? The problem is your IQ for still not grasping the situation."
"Explain properly before I start talking rough. I'm barely holding back right now."
"Tsk. Kid, we're the ones barely holding back from talking rough. Who the hell gave you the right to propose a deal to some complete stranger of unknown identity?"
Looking rather incredulous, he let out a hollow laugh, then glared alternately at Jeong-hwan — who was clenching his eyes shut and huffing — and Jeong-a, who just watched quietly from the side.
"The way you believe those bastards just obediently brought food, and before that, how you blabbed about this apartment complex's info on your own. I want to throw you right out the window, but I'm holding back."
"Oh, is that so? Telling apartment stuff to people who helped is not okay, but collecting food without consent as the building head is fine?"
"You were the ones who didn't cooperate at first."
"Cooperate my ass. You freely distributed the food you collected first and then shut your mouths."
"...That was just..."
"And then when that food ran out, who was it that told everyone to fend for themselves and pushed them out of the complex? Huh? You know if you have a conscience."
Jeong-hwan felt the urge to strangle the middle-aged man glaring at him, but he couldn't.
That man had the most influence in this damn Building 108, and people crawling before the supreme value of food were overflowing.
The one who claimed all that food forcibly collected from each unit after the apocalypse had run out in just a few days was ironically the one with the most abundant resources — everyone in the complex knew that.
But he still couldn't rebel. Honestly, Jeong-hwan was confident he could put the man on the floor and roll him like a bowling ball in under ten seconds bare-handed, but looking at the long hunting air rifle in the man's hands, he couldn't dare make a move.
Fuck, no matter how you look at it, that thing's illegal. Does it make sense they permitted that in Korea? This isn't America.
While Jeong-hwan was spewing curses inwardly, the man leaning against the front door reacted to someone whispering from behind.
"Everyone's here? Then let's go. I want to see just how great this person is to be carrying around that much food."
"Sir. Just asking in case..."
"...Well, if it comes to it, we could take it."
Only if it was confirmed they had impure intentions, of course.
Saying that, the man stared hard at the two outsiders visible below the hallway window.
He was dying of curiosity about how they'd avoided all those surrounding monsters and thought to come here with just the two of them.