Survive Through Worthlessness 2
The Flowers, limited to a million hosts—
—would fill that million with the most useful humans they could find.
They were definitely plotting something.
Were they preparing for a second war against the Reptilians and the Ants?
What seemed most certain was this:
they were using hosts with the prettiest faces and the best looks possible to sniff out competent ones.
It was basically the same logic as a cult’s sex-driven proselytizing.
Using beautiful women was the most effective way to recruit believers, after all.
My stepmother and Minyoung were harvesters, out there trying to bring in new hosts.
And I was an obstacle.
Fuck.
◇◇◇◆◇◇◇
“Oppa?”
The Flower wearing my sister’s skin was staring at me with empty, emotionless eyes.
Her neck was still bent at that grotesque seventy-degree angle.
“What are you looking at?”
Cold sweat streamed down my back.
At the same time, the bathroom door flew open and my stepmother rushed out in a panic.
She’d been in such a hurry that she was still naked, not even bothering to cover her chest.
I was seeing my stepmother’s breasts for the first time.
My eyes widened before I could stop them at those enormous breasts, jutting up like missiles.
Her body was still wet, and the foam hadn’t even been rinsed away properly.
Her gaze darted to the hand I was holding.
Their kill list, stored on a subphone. A mini tablet.
Fuck. I’m screwed.
If I froze for even one more second, those bastards would detect the spike in my brainwaves and heart rate and rip my head off.
I had to live.
My brain started spinning like a lunatic in survival mode.
An F-rank useless loser? Too stupid to function?
Give me a break.
I’d spent three years unemployed, surviving by reading my family’s moods and walking on eggshells.
In this department, I was S-tier.
“Ah, shit. Seriously.”
I furrowed my brow hard and flung the mini tablet I’d been holding onto the sofa with a scowl.
Thud.
The little tablet bounced off the cushion and skidded away.
“What? What is it?”
Minyoung tilted her head.
She opened the door and slowly came toward me.
I snapped at my mom, who’d come out half-dressed from the bath.
“Did you change the password on Samjeong Pay?!”
The second I started complaining, my stepmother stiffened.
“What are you talking about?”
“No, seriously! The limited-edition ROL skin drops only until today! The money you gave me earlier wasn’t even close, so I was gonna buy it on your tablet, but what’s with the pattern? Seriously! Why even set a pattern lock?”
I grabbed my hair and went berserk like the most pathetic bastard in the world.
For a moment, a strange silence settled over the living room.
Minyoung’s and my stepmother’s gazes met in midair.
Just for 0.1 seconds.
A sliver of time no human could ever have noticed.
Through an invisible colony network, they must have analyzed my behavior and exchanged data.
The probability that I’d hacked the password and seen their confidential documents on the tablet versus the probability that I’d simply tried to steal my mom’s card to buy a game item.
The answer, naturally, was the latter.
Surely they’d concluded that a computer-illiterate bum like me would never understand the “Flowerbed Project.”
“Honestly, I’m losing my mind. At twenty-six, I’m really out here trying to steal my mom’s tablet just to buy game items?”
My stepmother clicked her tongue, looking offended on my behalf.
The shield was up.
But if I wanted to survive perfectly, I had to go one step further.
I needed a shield so they couldn’t just decide to dispose of me on the spot.
“Ugh, whatever! This is annoying. I’m just going to the PC bang. I told Seongtae I’d play ROL with him.”
The moment I said Namgung Seongtae’s name out loud, my stepmother’s expression, which had been irritated, softened at once.
I shrugged into my coat and gave Minyoung a light shove.
“Hey. Didn’t you ask me yesterday what Namgung Seongtae’s been up to?”
“...Yeah. Why?”
Minyoung’s eyes widened a fraction.
To them, Namgung Seongtae mattered more than the fact that I’d been caught trying to steal the Samjeong Pay card.
“That nerd bastard looks like he got promoted at the research institute or something. He was acting like he’d made a pile of money and spamming me with messages earlier.”
I shoved my hands in my pockets and let the lies spill out casually.
“He must’ve seen your Stargram pics. Said you got prettier and begged me to set up a drink date with him. Like hell I’m doing that. Why would I introduce him to my little sister when he won’t even buy me a single game skin? I just ignored him.”
“What?! I’ll buy you the skin. I’ll buy it, okay!”
Minyoung’s voice shot up a notch.
My stepmother, too, hurried back out of the bathroom with a towel in hand, covering herself before striding toward me.
Even with that little towel over her body, her heavy tits were one slip away from spilling out completely.
Fuck. That was the areola.
My throat went dry.
I knew this was no time to stare at my stepmother’s hidden body.
But the moment I’d said Namgung Seongtae’s name, both of them had perked up, ears pricked, watching only my lips.
Whether I stared at her areola or not, it didn’t matter.
Namgung Seongtae.
My best friend from childhood, the one who’d graduated from a top university and worked at the national institute reverse-engineering alien technology.
The premium prey listed in those monsters’ tablet as an A-grade host.
Their target was to turn Namgung Seongtae into a host.
And then, after using me as the “bridge” to get to him, they planned to grind me into fertilizer.
“Son! Why are you so clueless? Seongtae seems like a good kid. Why don’t you introduce him to Minyoung~”
My stepmother suddenly grabbed my arm, her voice dripping with unnatural sweetness.
In her haste, she didn’t even care that one breast, covered only by the small towel, was practically exposed.
“Seongtae is so kind and smart. If Minyoung met someone like that, it’d be a good thing. Why would you get in the middle and cut that off?”
“I don’t know. It’s annoying. Do I look like a matchmaker? And if I had to go all the way to Gangnam to see him, I wouldn’t even have fare. Anyway, if they meet online at the PC bang, that’s enough.”
I lifted my chin and stood there with a sullen air.
My usefulness.
In this godforsaken alien nest, my right to keep breathing depended entirely on whether I handed Namgung Seongtae over to them or not.
Of course I had no intention of feeding my friend to the monsters.
But for now, I had to wave that card around if I wanted to stay alive.
“What do you mean you don’t have fare? Mom’ll give you some. Go have fun together for once. It’s more fun to play games in person, you know.”
My stepmother went to her wallet and, unlike the fifty thousand won she’d pulled out earlier, coolly fished out four crisp fifty-thousand-won bills and pressed them into my hand.
She seemed too frantic to even care whether her body was properly covered.
That made sense, I guess, since we were family.
But right then, the triangle of neatly trimmed pubic hair was still exposed.
A body so perfect it didn’t look forty at all.
Her pelvis, connected to that slender waist, looked like a handle.
I could’ve hooked an arm over it.
“Mom. The towel.”
“Oh my.”
Only then did she cover herself properly.
Was my embarrassment supposed to be my problem?
I snatched the two hundred thousand won and said brusquely, “Lend me your card too.”
“Sure, sure! Since you’re meeting him today, buy Seongtae something tasty. Have some sushi or something.”
And then she handed over her personal credit card too.
“Use that to buy your skin or whatever. This weekend, make a natural-sounding arrangement so Seongtae and Minyoung can eat together. All right? Mom trusts our boy.”
My stepmother patted my shoulder and gave me a fake, squinting smile.
“Ah… okay. This weekend, then? I’ve got my ROL promotion matches this weekend.”
“Oppa! Come on!”
Minyoung even stamped her feet and begged.
I could practically see the fungus bastard inside her frothing at the mouth, desperate to eat an A-grade host.
“Fine, fine. I’ll call that bastard Seongtae this weekend and book a bar somewhere in Gangnam, so show up then. I’m going to the PC bang.”
I stuffed the money and cards into my pockets, humming as I headed for the front door.
Click.
The door lock shut behind me, and the cold night air slapped my cheeks.
The moment I stood alone in the hallway, my legs gave out so hard I nearly collapsed on the spot.
“Haa… haaah…”
I felt like I was about to hyperventilate.
My hands and feet were shaking like leaves, and my back was already soaked through with sweat.
For a little over a minute, I’d been walking a tightrope.
If I’d slipped even slightly, by tomorrow morning I’d have been the black mold wedged between the bathroom tiles in our house.
I’m alive. I stopped myself from being disposed of immediately.
I dragged my trembling legs forward and fled the apartment.
The familiar night streets of the neighborhood.
The glow of the convenience store, the sound of motorcycles delivering late-night snacks.
All of it, every ordinary thing, now looked like part of a gigantic con game.
How many Flowers and Ants were wandering around in human skin through all those gaps?
I arrived at my usual PC bang and sat down in a corner seat.
The blue light of the monitor washed over my face.
Anyway, this weekend.
Until then, I had to keep stretching out my survival by using Namgung Seongtae as bait.
But after the weekend, whether Seongtae got eaten by them or not, once my usefulness ran out, I’d be disposed of immediately.
Should I run?
No.
Even if I ran, those mold bastards’ colony network covered the entire country.
The moment I fled, I’d be judged as exhibiting “abnormal behavior,” and either the Reptilian surveillance net or the Flower assassins would slice me up without leaving a trace.
Didn’t they say the police don’t even investigate family disappearances?
But I can’t hand Seongtae over either.
That nerdy, total otaku bastard Namgung Seongtae had zero sense and had never even dated a girl in his life.
Though, to be fair, I was a nerd and a virgin too.
If my prettier little sister started flirting with him, he’d be grinning like an idiot and getting his brain eaten in ten minutes flat.
Besides, Seongtae wasn’t just some researcher.
He belonged to the Anti-Alien Defense Research Institute, where they reverse-engineered alien tech scattered by the Reptilians and turned it into human weapons.
There had to be a reason the Flower race was going after him so aggressively as an A-grade host.
I typed on the keyboard, opened a secure browser, and started searching the Wayback Machine for deleted posts.
Those goddamn aliens.
The Flower race and the Ant race. Those two parasitic alien species had been enemies from birth.
A chill smile spread across my mouth.
Parasites, huh. So you bastards really do hate each other’s guts.
There was no way I could kill the two Flowers in our house by myself.
Even killing them would be a problem.
The second the colony network cut out, it’d be obvious I was the culprit.
And since we were getting along so well as a family right now, I didn’t exactly want to blow up this happy life.
Then there was only one answer.
The enemy of my enemy was my friend.
If I wanted to deal with the Flowers, I had to bring in their natural enemy, the Ants.
And asking Namgung Seongtae directly for help was another option.
He went through life thinking he was some kind of genius human being, but with those huge eyes, that painfully thin build, the autism-spectrum fixations that made him pursue whatever caught his interest to the bitter end, and those glasses—
—he looked like he had at least one-sixteenth reptile blood in him.
I pulled my phone from my pocket and tapped the call button.
Before the signal had even rung a few times, I heard his voice—fatigued in that very nerdy way.
“Yeah, Jinwoo. What? I’m crazy busy right now. I’ve been pulling overtime nonstop. Shit. Man, I really want to run a ROL match.”
His voice was that tired, nerdy tone.
I’d called because I wanted to share my situation and ask for help.
But if I told him the truth, what would happen?
There was no proof that my stepmother and Minyoung were trying to kill me.
And if I said Minyoung wanted to meet him, he’d probably just say thanks and go meet her on the spot.
“Why aren’t you saying anything? If you called, say something.”
“Hey… hang on. I’ve got a question.”
I lowered my voice.
There were other people around me, so I kept it as natural as I could.
The sound of keyboard clacking from the PC bang filled the background.
“Say your little sister Namgung Sua turned into a Flower. Like, not your actual sister, but a Flower bastard took over her body and was perfectly acting the part… what would you do?”
Silence fell for a moment.
I could hear Seongtae tapping at his keyboard.
“What the hell are you talking about all of a sudden? Are you back on that alien conspiracy crap again?”
“Just… hypothetically. If your little sister turned into a Flower, what would you do?”
Seongtae snorted.
The laugh was a little too loud.
“Dude, then I’d be grateful, obviously. If my sister’s body got taken over, then she’s not my sister anymore. Besides, I’ve got face blindness, remember? That’s a win for me, isn’t it? Then it’s not incest, either, so I could just fuck my little sister every night, right?”
Was this bastard insane?
I lost my words for a second.
Something clicked into place in my head with a sharp mental snap.
“...Right. I see.”
“What’s with the ‘right, I see’? If you’re just spewing nonsense, hang up. I’m busy as hell. As if that weren’t enough, I’ve been killing my brain reverse-designing weapons from those Ant bastards’ stuff.”
“Yeah. Good work! Let’s just queue some ranked games this weekend.”
“Deal!”
My hand, lowering the phone, had gone cold.
Seongtae’s words made me realize I’d forgotten the core of the problem.
My stepmother and Minyoung were dead.
The versions standing in front of me now were basically corpses hollowed out and eaten from the inside by alien monsters.
I’d been forgetting that fact.
When Minyoung danced in front of me, sweating and smiling, when my stepmother grilled meat for us and smiled, when they called me “Oppa” and “son”—
all of it was just performance, and yet—
...I liked it so much.
It felt so good, finally being family with them.
Better than those hellish days when they wouldn’t even speak to me and just pretended I didn’t exist.
Hoo…
Those aliens who treated me like a son, an older brother, who soothed me and coddled me and adjusted themselves to me, all for the sake of having an A-grade host like Namgung Seongtae.
Honestly, I was happy.
Fuck… isn’t there some way to live happily with them without handing over Namgung Seongtae?
In this insane situation, the only weapons I had were the fact that I knew who they really were, and the fact that they judged me to be worthless.
Worthless, but still able to survive.
I had to find that way.
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