Give a Doe, Take a Mal
"Huh... Wangu, you're going yourself? Do you really have to?"
"Why not just send a few of the other guys?"
"Fuck that. I'm going. There's not a single reliable bastard among them, so who the hell am I supposed to send? If they drop dead out of nowhere out there, I'm the one left holding the bag."
"That Do Wangu guy, I swear. No matter how you look at it, he's a total tsundere. He goes and twists his words all around just to say he's worried and wants to go himself."
"Ah, shit! It's not like that, you idiots!"
As he roared in denial and his friends snickered around him, I worked with Ju Minho on making the tiger easier to carry.
"...Tsk. If we pull the legs out a bit more, that should do it. Minho, hold that part tight for me."
"Y-yes, sir!"
Crunch— snap—
I bound each pair of the tiger's legs tightly with packing tape to lock them in place, then simply tore off the dangling, cumbersome head.
Chaeyeon, who had been watching the whole process with a deadly serious expression right beside me, whispered,
"Oppa really must be an alien after all. Like Man of Steel—taken in as a baby, never knowing it himself until the apocalypse brought out his powers."
"Don't spout nonsense with that serious face. If the school kids start believing it for real, that'll be a problem."
"Nonsense? That's so mean. Looking at Oppa's completely unrealistic abilities, isn't 'alien' actually the most plausible explanation? The more I think about it, the more it fits."
She clung tightly to my arm, tapping curiously at the neck that had been bitten clean through by the tiger and then regenerated without a trace, her eyes sparkling.
"Even when I do stuff like this, you don't react at all. Oppa's definitely a different species from us, right? That's why nothing phases you."
"...React to what? You're still in high school. Go drink some more milk or something."
I snorted, pulled my arm free from her embrace, grabbed the finished tiger carcass by the scruff, and hoisted it up in one motion.
I glanced once at the department store group still bickering among themselves, about to say something, then turned instead toward Soeun, who—unlike Chaeyeon—still couldn't bring herself to come near me.
When our eyes met she flinched. I settled the tiger across my back and spoke.
"I'm not gonna eat you, so come closer. If it starts to slip, you have to hold it. Im Chaeyeon's only fast—she's a weakling when it comes to strength."
"Compared to Kang Soeun, of course I am!"
I ignored Chaeyeon pouting and sniping from the side and waited. Eventually Soeun nodded and approached carefully.
"...I'm sorry. Oppa protected us, but what I saw back then was just too shocking..."
"I don't care. Just get it properly settled on my back. Once we're outside the department store, stick right next to me."
Then I shouted over at Do Wangu.
"I said just lend me one person! Now that I think about it, I can carry this alone just fine! I only need someone next to me to clean up the corpses!"
"Really? Then I guess I'll just go alone."
"What do you mean alone, you crazy gorilla! What about on the way back?! Just shut up and bring more people!"
"Ah, for fuck's sake! A bunch of guys who can't even fight, always butting in with advice! I'm enough on my own!"
In the end Do Wangu scanned the area with a thoroughly crumpled face, then pointed at the one person whose eyes happened to meet his.
"Fine. I'll take exactly one. Kwon Jitae! Get out here!"
"Y-yes? Me, sir?"
"Yeah, you bastard. You think I didn't know you were talking shit about Lee Sijun behind his back? Get over here right now before I yank your head off like that fucking cat!"
"...He was talking shit about me?"
"Yeah. Ju Minho told me. Said a small fry like you couldn't even take one punch from him."
"Is that so?"
My gaze and Do Wangu's locked onto the same man. Kwon Jitae's face went deathly pale as cold sweat poured down.
Since we'd already dropped the formal speech, I decided to just go all the way and treat him like a friend. In a ruined world, Confucian respect for elders wasn't worth a single damn.
The only standards left were the strength and skill to protect yourself and the people around you. In that sense, I'd already proven more than enough value for Do Wangu to accept me as a friend.
No—if anything, he was the one in a hurry. As we walked, Do Wangu spoke up.
"Before you came down from the roof, I saw an anaconda on the street. Hanging off a utility pole like a vine."
"Yeah? With tigers showing up, that's not even weird. You should've tried catching one like I did."
"I'm a glass cannon, not a hard tank like you. One hit and I'm done. Well, every human is the same that way except you."
You're the only one who's different from every other human.
Do Wangu looked down at me with a calm face, then turned his head again.
"Were you born like that? That body. Looking at how you took down a tiger without a single scratch, it's way beyond just having good durability."
"Nah, nothing congenital about it. I'm the same human as the rest of you. Not some alien like someone keeps saying."
I glanced at Chaeyeon as I said it. She gave a soft eye-smile and turned her head away, pretending to scan the surroundings.
Fox through and through. Looks and behavior both.
It wasn't exactly a secret anyway, so I bounced my upper body to resettle the tiger and continued.
"I died on the first day of the apocalypse and came back. That's how I ended up like this. Thanks to that, I lived—and so did other people."
"...Huh. If what you're saying is true, your very existence is a miracle. Died, revived, and now you can't die. Wouldn't it be fair to call you a god?"
"God, my ass. I have zero interest in that kind of bad taste. I respectfully decline from my end."
"...?? You an atheist or something?"
"I wish it were that simple."
I shook my head and looked up at the sky like a crow.
Maybe it was just my imagination, but it felt like my eyes met something indescribable up there. Probably just my imagination.
The sour mood made me whip around to look behind us. At the very rear, Kwon Jitae—who had been sneaking constant glances at the girls under the pretense of keeping watch—flinched and froze.
"What's your name again?"
"...Kwon Jitae, hyung."
"Get up front and keep watch. And if I catch you running those eyes over the kids one more time, I'll rip your pupils out nerve bundle and all. Careful."
I wasn't joking. I'd tried it a few times out of boredom while dealing with corpses.
After that he couldn't say a word and shuffled forward. Do Wangu put a hand on his shoulder and tilted his head.
"Kwon Jitae. You really that kind of bastard? The kind of scum who waves his dick at kids who still look like teenagers from the face alone?"
"N-n-no, hyung. I was just surprised how calm the girls looked in a situation like this. Really."
"Right. Of course. I believed in you. Haha. Our number two. Action leader through and through!"
He clapped the man's shoulder with a laugh like he was encouraging him—then the second a corpse crawled out of an alley, Do Wangu flung a lump of something that looked like toy clay.
In the winter cold it had frozen hard as stone, about the size of a baby's fist. The moment it smashed into the skull, both the clay and the head shattered into pieces.
Chaeyeon's eyes went round as she started forward with her sword raised; Do Wangu left her behind and glared at Kwon Jitae.
"Do your job properly. I'll be watching you the whole time. Take one step over the line just because you think you're close, and your head ends up like that."
"...Yes, hyung."
Leaving the thoroughly cowed man behind, Do Wangu walked over to me with a sly grin.
"How was that? Not bad at threatening, right?"
"Decent, but a little lacking. Threats last longer when the lines are specific and fresh. You gotta drive it straight into the brain."
"That so. Honestly I already do half the work with just this face, so my tongue's not that sharp."
"Next time you threaten someone, try swapping out a few words."
"For example?"
"Hmm... instead of just saying 'head,' say you'll knead his head like clay, compress it, then throw it. That wouldn't be bad."
"Oh..."
Soeun, who had been listening to the conversation between me and Do Wangu, shook her head without realizing it.
How much farther did we walk after that?
Crushing the never-ending street corpses was routine by now, and we even spotted a few of those fucking beasts.
Not quite the birds staring down at us from the power lines or the anaconda Do Wangu had mentioned, but still one snake that looked anything but ordinary.
I ignored it and walked past—if it was venomous we were fucked—when I spotted a familiar bastard.
"...What the hell is that mutt doing here."
"Huh? Oppa. That dog is definitely..."
Right. The same one we'd run into that morning. There couldn't be another Kangal around with eyes that full of crazy.
But unlike the first time, it was just sitting blankly at a building entrance, staring our way. Even when our eyes met, it didn't growl.
Did it notice I'd taken down the tiger? Was a zombie seriously pulling the strong-prey-on-the-weak routine?
"Whoa. That thing's huge. It wouldn't lose much even compared to the tiger you caught, Sijun."
"Come on, no way a dog compares to a tiger."
"No, seriously, it's almost the same size. What the hell? Is it just the distance messing with the perspective?"
Do Wangu stared at the Kangal with a baffled expression.
I met the thing's unblinking stare and frowned at the uneasy feeling crawling up my spine.
...The longer I look, the more it really does seem that way. What the hell. Why does it look twice as big as it did this morning?
It had to be the distance. I told myself that and kept walking, but the back of my head itched under its gaze the whole way.
The way it sat there suppressing pure madness, like it was guarding the building entrance, left a thoroughly unpleasant aftertaste.
Is there something inside the building?
I glanced at the nursing home with its strangely gloomy atmosphere, then looked away.