The Correlation Between Piss, Oaths, Feasts, and Incidents
About a month had passed since then. During that time the worthless scavenger bastards had caught our scent and come sniffing around a few times, but they never even managed to set foot in the gas station yard before we chased them off. The bear-like mercenaries were more competent than I’d expected. They were definitely earning their keep.
And today, the massive barrier wall surrounding the gas station perimeter was finally complete.
“There you have it. The exterior’s a bit crude, but we guarantee the durability,” Jin said, rolling up the blueprints and pointing at the finished wall.
It was a Frankenstein mess of rusted scrap metal and thick rebar welded together haphazardly, but the thickness and finishing were stupidly solid.
“Not bad. The firing ports are perfectly angled with zero blind spots,” Haze noted, rapping her knuckles against the barrier and nodding. Of course she’d check the sniper lines first.
“Wow! You really built this fast~ The bear uncles are incredibly skilled!” Eve exclaimed, poking her face through one of the gaps and clapping her hands with pure delight. It looked dangerous—could you at least pretend to be careful?
“Huh. I figured it’d all collapse since you just scavenged scrap and welded it, but it’s actually decent,” Yui said, arms crossed, wearing a surprisingly satisfied little smirk. The brat was acting cocky again.
I took a long drag from the cigarette between my lips and exhaled while scanning the barrier. Sure, a pretty rice cake might taste good, but in this fucked-up world the best kind is one that won’t let any teeth sink in.
“Good work, Jin. If it’s sturdy, that’s all that matters. This should hold even if a whole horde of Walkers shows up.”
At my approving words, relief and pride washed over Jin and the Blackhead members’ faces.
“All right! Construction’s finished, so tonight we’re throwing a completion party! Bring out all the meat and booze we bought last time! You bears are all here, right?”
The moment I made the declaration, a roar loud enough to shake the entire lot erupted.
“Waaaaah!”
“Long live the Super Lucky Solution Group!”
The mercenaries, who still hadn’t forgotten the insane beef party from a month ago, were already drooling and losing their minds. They even shouted “Long live the Super Lucky Solution Group!!” without a shred of shame.
And so the second large-scale feast began in the gas station lot.
Sizzle—! Meat grilled on the iron plates while the clink of beer cans filled the night sky. Unlike the first party, the mercenaries had grown familiar with the Solution Group girls. They traded silly jokes and enjoyed the festivities with genuine warmth.
When the alcohol had properly kicked in and the mood was at its peak, I slipped away toward the outer edge of the gas station to take a leak.
Shhhhhhh— shhh— Wow. How much beer had I even drunk? It was practically Niagara Falls.
I was relieving my bladder in a long, refreshing stream when Jin suddenly appeared and stood beside me.
“Ban. Let’s talk for a second.”
His voice was far more serious than usual. Standing right next to a guy pissing, the scarred face somehow radiated unnecessary resolve.
“Jesus, you scared me. I thought a bear had jumped out of the bushes. What the hell, man? Following me all the way to my piss spot? Manners! Are you some kind of perverted fan of mine?”
“No, you crazy bastard.”
Jin looked at me like I was insane, cut me off, then turned his gaze toward the sea and spoke.
“Take our Blackhead group as a subordinate force under the Super Lucky Solution Group.”
“…Huh?”
I paused mid-zip and stared at him blankly. Zip it all the way up, you filthy animal.
“The barrier’s finished and the contract period is almost over, but we want to keep living with you guys.”
Jin turned and looked straight into my dead-fish eyes. The rough hand gripping the beer can was clenched tight.
“It’s not about money. After spending a month with you, my mind changed. Forget conditions or capital—I’m just drawn to you as a person.”
The premium cigarette in my mouth dropped to the ground with a soft plop.
I jumped back in genuine horror, taking two full steps away before crossing both arms over my chest in an X.
“Whoa, whoa, fuck! Stop! Bear guy, have you lost your mind? You drunk?!”
My dead-fish eyes were flooded with pure panic.
“I don’t take men!! I like women! What the fuck is this disgusting bullshit about a hairy, bearded, muscle-bound old man being drawn to me?! Get the hell away!”
“No, you fucking lunatic!!!! Who said anything about offering my ass?!!! I’m saying I’ll serve you as the boss, you idiot!!!”
Jin’s face flushed bright red as he roared at the top of his lungs. The hard-earned mercenary romance and serious manly atmosphere shattered in 0.1 seconds flat.
He crushed the beer can in his grip, blood pressure clearly skyrocketing.
“Ah… Boss? You want to be my underling?”
“Yes, you crazy bastard!! Whether you cut our daily canned food pay in half or don’t pay us at all, we’ll earn our own keep! Just let us work under you!”
Only then did I let out a sigh of relief and lower the arms protecting my chest.
“Ahaha! If that’s what you meant, you should’ve said it clearly from the start. You really startled me.”
I picked the fallen cigarette off the ground, stuck it back between my lips, and chuckled.
“Oh… but unpaid labor? Passion pay? You literally just said it’s fine even if we don’t pay, right? Hold on.”
I turned on the recorder in my terminal.
“All right! Say it again. What did you just say, bear uncle?”
“Sigh… You really are a materialistic bastard with zero romance.”
Jin shook his head like he was fed up. But strangely, even this ridiculous reaction wasn’t bad. My gut told me the ability hidden behind all the light nonsense was anything but ordinary.
Watching the rough but sincere loyalty oath from the mercenary leader, I thought to myself: What the hell. I just gave them some food and put them to work, and now they’re pledging loyalty? Was the apocalypse always this easy to live in? No—wait, is this the power of capital?!
I grinned at Jin and opened my mouth to seal the deal—
“Ughhh… Boss Jin!!! Mister Solver!!!!!”
A dying man’s voice suddenly tore through the darkness and shattered the gas station’s peace. The approaching silhouette was staggering violently, like a Walker.
Somehow the man made it all the way to the barrier on those faltering steps before collapsing. Jin and I, standing near the cliff overlooking the sea right beside the wall, approached cautiously. Even if he was still human, he could turn at any moment.
The people feasting inside the barrier stopped eating and drinking. Jin, who got close enough to see the face, went deathly pale.
It was Azet, the uncle who had opened the door for us the first time we visited Ann’s survivor camp. But his condition was horrific—torn and ruptured from head to toe, drenched in blood.
“Azet?! Hey!! What happened to you?! What the hell is going on?!”
Jin threw aside the beer he’d been drinking and supported him. The metallic stench of blood was overpowering—strong enough to completely kill the smell of the expensive meat. Looking closer, there were holes in his shoulder and abdomen. Not Walker bite marks. Gunshot wounds. Embedded bullets. Human work.
The barrier gate opened.
“Move! Everyone move out of the way!!”
Eve burst out of the Humvee carrying the entire emergency medical kit, as if she hadn’t been chewing meat seconds ago. The ditzy cow with flowers in her hair had instantly switched into third-year medical professor mode.
“Blood loss is critical! Sister Haze, shine the light over here! Mister Jin, keep the patient’s legs elevated and hold them steady!”
There wasn’t a trace of her usual cute, whiny tone in those commands.
Eve roughly cut away Azet’s blood-soaked clothes with scissors, immediately applied a tourniquet, and packed gauze into the wounds.
“Blood pressure’s dropping. Shock is setting in. Mister! Don’t close your eyes! Can you hear my voice?!”
A doctor’s desperate, frantic struggle to cling to a fading life. She skillfully drew a syringe, administered hemostatic drugs, and pressed both hands hard over the wounds, but dark red blood kept seeping relentlessly between her fingers.
It was fatal. Anyone could see it was already too late. This uncle had dragged himself all the way here on nothing but sheer willpower, clinging to a thread of life just to deliver the news.
Azet opened his blood-filled mouth and weakly grabbed Jin’s collar.
“Scavengers… those bastards… the camp…”
“Don’t talk! Eve is treating you, so shut up!”
Jin shouted with bulging veins, but Azet’s focus was already scattering into empty air.
“Everyone’s… dead… fuck… those bastards took… Ann… they dragged Ann away…”
A grating metallic voice mixed with wet, bubbling breaths.
“Huk… An… kuh! Ann! Sa… save… her! Benefactor… mister… Ban… Jin…”
After forcing out those final words, strength left Azet’s hand. His head lolled sideways, unfocused eyes freezing in the void.
“Mister? Mister!! No!”
Eve frantically stacked both hands on Azet’s chest and began CPR. Her blood-covered palms slammed down on his sternum like a machine.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
“Please…! It’s not too late yet…! Open your eyes! Kk, heuk…”
She pressed so hard it sounded like ribs would snap, even attempting rescue breaths, but the corpse whose breathing had already stopped gave no response.
Only Eve’s tearful, snot-filled, sobbing compressions echoed miserably through the now-silent lot.
“Wake up…! I can save you, I know I can save you…! Please…!”
His heart had stopped long ago. Still, Eve couldn’t stop. Her blood-drenched hands kept pounding on Azet’s chest. It was the bone-deep helplessness of a doctor refusing to accept reality.
Haze, who had been standing silently with her rifle, quietly approached. She gently wrapped her hands around Eve’s bloodstained ones, stopping the compressions. Then she sat on the ground behind the sobbing girl and pulled her into a tight, wordless embrace.
“Sister… heuk, sister… I could have… I could have fixed him…”
“It’s all right, Eve. You did everything you possibly could.”
Haze slowly stroked Eve’s blood-matted hair and whispered. Even the ever-cold Ice Witch’s voice carried thick sorrow.
“Aaaaaagh!! Fuck!! Motherfucking bastards!!!”
Jin slammed his fist into the ground like a crazed bear, howling.
“While we… while we were stuffing our faces with meat and chugging booze, fuck… we didn’t see what was right in front of us…! Fuck!!”
The mercenary leader’s desperate self-reproach scraped against the dirt. The fucking guilt that maybe, if they had been standing proper guard and patrolling like usual—if they hadn’t been fucking around with this stupid party—they might have prevented it.
Jin and the Blackhead members gritted their teeth and hung their heads.
In the middle of that hellish scene, I took a long drag from the cigarette in my mouth and slowly exhaled. I didn’t say a word.
I simply stared down quietly at Azet’s cold, blood-soaked corpse.
No one could tell what schemes were spinning behind my usual hazy dead-fish eyes right now.
I silently finished the cigarette, spat out the filter, crushed it under my heel, then pulled out a fresh one, lit it, and gently placed the burning cigarette at the head of Azet’s bloody body. Thin smoke rose like incense into the night air.
I bent down, ripped the old necklace from around the dead man’s neck, roughly wiped the blood off on my pants, and stuffed it into my pocket.
“The request fee has been received.”
I staggered over to the parked bike and swung my leg over it.
Vroom—! The rough engine roar tore through the silence.
“I will complete the received request. Yui, get inside the main building right now.”
My chin jerked toward her. These weren’t my usual prankish dead-fish eyes.
“Hack everything—network, satellite, whatever you can get into. Scrape up every last movement of the scavenger fucks operating around here, their hideout coordinates, everything. Send it all to my terminal.”
“…Got it.”
“Haze. Take the forty Blackhead men and lock this gas station down. Don’t let a single ant inside.”
“Confirmed. Leave it to me.”
“Jin. Load the ten toughest bears into the jeep and follow right behind me.”
Jin, still sitting on the ground, clenched his fist and nodded fiercely.
Finally I looked at Eve, who was still collapsed on the ground sobbing.
“Eve. Stop sniffling and pack up every last emergency drug we have left, then get on behind me. I never heard that the kid Ann died.”
At those words Eve snapped her head up, wiped her tears, grabbed the medical kit, and climbed onto the back of the bike.
The eyes of Jin—who had been losing his mind to rage—and every other person standing there locked onto me at once.
The lazy, good-for-nothing NEET who usually rolled around cracking jokes was gone. Only a real mad dog remained—one that had caught the scent of blood and broken its leash.
And that mad dog twisted the bike’s throttle hard.