Give a Doe, Take a Mal
"Please, please. I didn't recognize you, sir—I dared to offend you. From now on, I'll never..."
Thud—!
"Gyaaaaaaah!"
Having been dragged up ten flights of stairs by the collar, it would have been nice if his mind had ended up as shredded as his body. Whatever else about him, though, his mouth had been working overtime without rest from the first-floor lobby all the way up here—which was ultimately why he was now screaming under Chaeyeon's beating. Naturally, he'd brought it on himself.
She seemed more bothered that I'd nearly taken a bullet than that he'd leered at her with filthy eyes, and she was hammering one particular spot with obsessive focus.
"Who the hell do you think you are, trying to kill Oppa? Huh? Ogling my chest with those filthy eyes and aiming to kill him too?"
"Aaaagh! Aagh! Stop! Stoooop!"
Thud— smack—
It wasn't like she was swinging a sword. How much could those fern-like little hands really hurt? But when the target was an eyeball, that was a different story entirely.
Damn, why is she so vicious? I'm the one who almost died here.
Once the discharge was flowing freely and blood started to join it, I had no choice but to stop her.
"Im Chaeyeon. That's enough. I'm the one who almost got shot—why are you the one making a scene?"
"Hoo. You're right. I lost my cool for a second."
She finally pulled back, cradling her red, swollen fist—then suddenly latched onto my side and linked her arm through mine.
"...What. Why are you doing this?"
"I really thought I was going to lose ten years off my life. Whether it's me or Oppa, a hole in the head kills you just the same. Watching you charge in from behind, and then hearing another gunshot..."
She said all that, but her expression as she looked up at me was perfectly calm—and something about the sly curve of her eyes made me half-see a fox's tail swishing behind her. The soft volume pressing against my arm made me try to pull free, but Chaeyeon grabbed hold instead and turned my arm this way and that.
"Is the arm you blocked with okay? Ah, Oppa's left-handed, so maybe this side?"
Half-embracing me, she grunted and tugged at my other arm, which only made her chest press more prominently against me—and that was definitely stimulating. In that moment my heart started racing, and I felt the same surge of exaltation I'd felt fighting that orangutan a few days ago.
As time passed I'd been losing my emotions somehow, joy growing fainter and fainter—so the sudden rush felt almost like a drug. My hand rose unconsciously to grab that soft flesh—then I stopped at the sight of Chaeyeon frowning.
"...Oppa, why is there blood on your clothes but no wound?"
I forced my heart to settle under her questioning gaze and opened my mouth to brush it off—when I saw the man sprawled on the floor, glaring at Chaeyeon with murderous intent through his remaining eye, the other one burst.
In that instant, the emotions boiling up with my racing heart swung completely over into the irritation and killing intent I'd been holding down. The mood that had been improving thanks to Chaeyeon twisted in an instant—my expression warping into something inhuman.
Startled, Chaeyeon—who hadn't understood what was happening—looked up at my profile and instinctively stepped back. At the same moment—
BOOOOM!
A thunderous crash that seemed to shake the entire apartment building rang out. The cause: a front kick I'd thrown without restraint, stomping his head into paste like tofu and still having enough force left to smash into the wall.
Faced with a wall painted in blood like a burst tomato and a headless corpse toppling over, Chaeyeon stared at me, speechless.
"....Uh, uh."
Jeonghwan, who'd for some reason kept his door shut until after the whole thing went down, also appeared in the hallway with his mouth hanging open, looking back and forth between me and the corpse.
I waited for the cracked bones in my foot to heal, feeling as clear and refreshed as if I'd downed a whole bottle of cider in one go.
"Who the hell do you think you are, glaring like that. Looking to die."
I muttered it at the man who was already dead.
Ironically, that little murder of mine turned out to be something close to a divine stroke of genius.
Apparently being completely owned by a single person had been so humiliating that the goons who'd been tailing me at just the right moment picked up the air rifle rolling around on the first floor and fled with their tails between their legs, pissing themselves. What's more, the traces of the killing served as a talisman that sealed the mouths of the apartment survivors who'd come to check what the hell was going on.
"...The building manager's dead? By who? Don't tell me it was that outsider?"
"I don't know the details either. No matter how much I ask, he just breaks out in a cold sweat and won't say a word."
"...Anyway, so whose orders are we supposed to follow now?"
According to what I heard from Jeonghwan later, the only reason that guy had been able to run the apartment was his status as building manager and the air rifle—he hadn't actually earned any real trust from people. The goons who'd followed him had only cooperated for the food. There wasn't a single suicide-wannabe among them willing to show me hostility just to avenge a guy who'd died screaming.
Yeah, it was literally a screaming, sudden death. Not a murder case of one person killing another—just a hollow death from disaster or accident. He'd shot at me first, so there was no grounds to complain, and they'd even experienced my power indirectly. What could they do? Just pray for the deceased's soul and move on.
Anyway, after successfully acquiring the coffee pot, I also grabbed a bag of expensive coffee beans from the room of the woman who seemed to be Jeonghwan's older sister, then zipped up my bag.
Jeonghwan just stood there like the others, cold sweat pouring down, unable to say a word, avoiding my eyes. Having heard the full story, I could guess how he was feeling right about now. Like a rabbit who'd fled a gun-toting raccoon looking for a way to survive, only to discover that the prize Korean beef cow he'd found was actually a mad bull that tore into meat whenever the mood struck. Which was why he couldn't even bring himself to ask for the food we'd agreed on, and the awkward silence just kept stretching.
Of course I knew that, but I kept my mouth shut for a bit as a joke and looked around the house—until a voice spoke up in Jeonghwan's place.
"The one pack of ramen and two bags of snacks you promised. May I check them now?"
"Yes, of course."
I took another bag from Chaeyeon, unzipped it, and dumped the contents onto the table—food tumbled out in a cascade. When it matched the list she'd known exactly, the woman let out a small sigh of relief.
"This should last about two days. But what are you planning to do after that?"
I asked while spinning a ramen packet on the table, and the woman pulled Jeonghwan behind her entirely, stepped forward, and continued the conversation.
"...We'll have to become self-sufficient. I'll never forget what you've done for us, Sijun-ssi."
"It wasn't help—it was a trade."
"No matter how you put it, swapping a useless machine for a pile of food can't be called a fair trade."
A trade, by definition, only works when both sides benefit. So the woman calmly lit up her eyes and looked straight into mine.
"But since you called it a trade, Sijun-ssi, I suppose we should try to match that. Is there anything else you want besides the coffee pot?"
"Yeah. Well, obviously, one hunk of metal for six packs of ramen plus extras doesn't exactly balance out. Still, I was planning to take your situation into account and make my demands slowly."
I rolled my eyes around, scanning every corner of the house. One item I'd already thought of did catch my eye, but looking at this woman maintaining her poker face, it seemed I could push one step further.
Somehow this woman was in a similar situation to Im Chaeyeon—a tough woman taking charge in place of a man who couldn't live up to his size. As a joke, I put my hand on Chaeyeon's shoulder beside me.
Instead of jumping like someone from school would, Chaeyeon just widened her eyes and looked up at me. Then she made fox-eyes of her own and started shifting the atmosphere in a weird direction, so I had no choice but to speak up quickly.
"Will you really give me everything I want?"
"...What exactly do you mean by that?"
Jeonga narrowed her eyes, and Jeonghwan—who'd been pressed down this whole time—shot to his feet and stared at me. At that point I took my hand off Chaeyeon's shoulder and brought out the real reason I'd come to this apartment.
"Well, that was a joke. No impure intentions or anything. The real reason is that I want to establish proper cooperation with the people of this Apartment Complex."
"Cooperation?"
She hadn't expected that—Jeonga's eyes went round just like Chaeyeon's.
"What kind of cooperation exactly are you talking about?"
"In a situation like this, cooperation is pretty obvious. Call it survival cooperation, I guess. Help out where you can help. Receive help where you need it. That kind of thing."
Of course, that process would go through the thorough form of trade. And through that, what I ultimately wanted was just one thing.
I stood up from the chair, walked to the window, and looked out over the Apartment Complex clearly visible outside.
Absorbing this teeming mass of people.
Obvious, if you think about it. That was the only factor worth me actively moving for.
I stared hard at the school building visible far beyond the complex.
The distance is a bit awkward, but it's definitely not impossible.
What good was letting that ridiculously huge school main building sit empty? The sooner I gathered people, the easier things would be for me later.