The Professor's Last Broadcast
We returned to our original spot like people who had seen nothing at all. I checked if my mask was on properly, then went into the bathroom by the entrance for no real reason and scrubbed my hands thoroughly with soap. That was when Professor Kim came back. He had finished washing the rice bowls and sat down, wiping the moisture onto his clothes. A faint laugh escaped him.
“Ah, I see….”
I had no idea what to say, so I let my words trail off awkwardly. That vague pause must have given Professor Kim room to unload his troubles. He continued.
“If you went outside, though….”
I didn’t suggest we take them with us. At my hesitant words, Professor Kim shook his head.
“Ah.”
Jeon Dohyeong let out a short sound of admiration. When I glanced at him, his eyes were filled with deep respect for the professor. Those same eyes turned toward me for a moment, and his brow furrowed strangely. It was the look of someone wondering if I was even the same species.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just…”
After a brief squabble, I turned back to Professor Kim. Even if I couldn’t recruit him as a colleague, I could still receive his teachings.
“Professor. I also believe the end is coming. So I made a survival plan. Could you evaluate it for me?”
“Ah, that’s a good idea, but…”
Professor Kim glanced at the clock embedded in the living room wall. It was past noon—the time when many people would be eating lunch. He bowed his head apologetically.
It was a polite way of telling us to leave. Well, we had arrived far too late anyway. The roads had been jammed.
“Can’t be helped.”
“Wait a moment. Let me give you something.”
We stood up, and Professor Kim hurried into one of the rooms. Through the open door, I could see a space packed with a computer, camera, and bookshelves full of books—it must have been where he did his broadcasts. I muttered under my breath.
“Is it okay to take it? What if it’s contaminated with the virus?”
He hadn’t even offered us water and had kept his distance the whole time for our sake, but I still felt uneasy. It was like having someone with corona cough right in front of me.
“Just take it. There’s no way the professor would do anything bad to us.”
Jeon Dohyeong, who had nudged me, looked completely moved by the professor he had only just met today. This was the same guy who had suspected him of being an attention-seeker. They had only talked for about ten minutes. Whatever. I quickly stepped back.
“Then you take it.”
“Wow. How can a person be like this…”
That was when Professor Kim returned. In his hands was a thick bundle of papers that he shook lightly. The pages sticking out looked like broadcast scripts or research documents.
“Thank you, Professor.”
Jeon Dohyeong took the bundle and quickly bowed. I lowered my head as well.
“We’ll make good use of them. If we survive, it will all be thanks to you, Professor.”
“Hmm…”
The usual polite response didn’t come. When I lifted my head, I saw Professor Kim’s face clouded with hesitation. It looked like he wanted to ask for something. I tried to stay silent as if I hadn’t noticed, but Jeon Dohyeong spoke up.
“If you have something to say, just say it comfortably!”
“It’s not really a request… but from what I can tell, you two seem like you’ll last a long time…”
Looking embarrassed, Professor Kim avoided our eyes and took out his phone. He showed us a photo of a young female college student.
“Ah, of course. After receiving all this help.”
I nodded immediately. It was an empty promise. We had already received the materials. Even if I forgot about it later or deliberately ignored it, now was the time for a white lie.
“This guy isn’t usually like this…”
Jeon Dohyeong muttered, but no one listened. Even Professor Kim seemed to have spoken without much expectation, as if he were simply giving a gift.
That was the end of our encounter. Professor Kim went into his room, saying he had to broadcast, and we began descending the stairs from the twelfth floor. When we finally reached the first floor after the exhausting descent, we found police officers and paramedics there.
The elevator doors were wide open. Thick blood pooled out from inside, and a baseball bat and kitchen knife lay on the floor. Two bodies had been placed into body bags.
“What is the world coming to…”
The old security guard muttered as he looked down at the corpses. I stopped walking for a moment too. Two bodies. One was probably a zombie and the other a human, but now that they were dead, they looked exactly the same. Pale faces drained of blood, joints stiff like wooden sticks, bodies completely still. Until now, the only corpses I had ever seen were my deceased parents. But in the past few days, I had seen far more.
So this is what they call an apocalypse…
It was a more dangerous disaster than I had thought. Maybe I needed more preparations?
“Hurry up. What if you get infected?”
At Jeon Dohyeong’s push from behind, I hurried my steps again. Before leaving the apartment complex, I took one last look at the tall building.
Infected apartment complex—confirmed.
From the looks of it, not just the professor and his wife, but the entire building seemed heavily infected. If a little more time passed, and if I could recruit a thief, this place would become a treasure trove. Or I could learn how to steal myself.
In a quiet roadside camping car, we read through the materials with a rustling sound while Professor Kim’s live broadcast played in the background.
— Everyone. I will guide you on how to survive even a little longer in this disaster.
Professor Kim’s subdued voice came from the phone. Even though his wife had been infected, he himself was likely infected, and he had no idea when he would turn into a zombie, he still spoke about ways to keep living. When I glanced at the screen, I could see his eyes. The determination of someone who acted even in the midst of despair.
…
Sometimes in life you meet people you simply cannot understand. For me, people like the professor—good people—were like that. I couldn’t empathize with why they acted that way at all. What benefit did they get from it?
But I couldn’t look down on Professor Kim. He was my mentor in my heart.
Professor who advocated for the massacre of a million citizens… You will live on inside our hearts.
Rustle— I turned the page. Neat handwriting on manuscript paper, notes written over printed documents, idea notebooks scribbled haphazardly with lines crossed out. Every single word written by the professor who had recognized the end and stayed up all night was helpful.
Fragmented and diversified modern society. Prediction that survivors in the early stages of the apocalypse would split into various groups. Simulations of nuclear plant explosions. Paths and ranges of radiation spread according to seasonal wind directions. Clothing and behavioral guidelines for infectious disease countermeasures. Methods of recycling PET bottles inside buildings to grow crops, and so on.
But all those memos and materials had red lines drawn through them. As the pages went on, instead of information, increasingly gloomy apocalyptic prophecies were written.
— Everyone dies… Insufficient drinking water, mutation of the virus, contamination of water and land, migratory zombie birds crossing borders and oceans, viruses evolving to break through vaccines…
The logic that humanity would ultimately be defeated by the virus resembled the professor himself, who was infected and would eventually turn into a zombie. But just as I remained fine even if the professor became a zombie, there was still hope. Even if the world ended, someone would survive.
Then suddenly, a low growl sounded.
“What the hell!”
“Ack!”
We jumped in surprise, grabbing our weapons and looking around, but there were no zombies near the car. It was the phone. The professor, who had been calmly laying out his materials and lecturing, had turned into a zombie.
Professor Kim drooled heavily, blinking his eyes, then slowly stood up and began shuffling around the closed room.
…
…
A heavy silence settled over us. Jeon Dohyeong seemed to feel genuine terror at the sight. He looked back and forth between the professor and the apocalyptic writings, then hung his head low.
“No. It’s just speculation. Simple doomsday talk. People will survive.”
I shook my head emotionally as well. The stress of believing it literally was too much. I searched for hope within the apocalypse. The hope that no matter how bad things got, we could still live.
I believe in the chairman. He can’t be that vicious. He must not be.
It couldn’t be a human who truly wished for the extinction of humanity. This virus couldn’t be such a horrific disaster. It would end at the level of a post-apocalyptic scenario. If we struggled desperately, we could survive.
“Even if the professor’s prediction is right, it’s okay. We can boil water, cook meat. There are canned goods and sealed foods. If we prepare masks, gas masks, gloves, and proper clothing, we won’t get infected.”
The more I spoke, the more I felt like I was convincing myself. Even in the worst situation, maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as I thought?
“But—”
Jeon Dohyeong seemed about to say something meaningless. I immediately picked up the hammer.
“Then should I kill you right now?”
Anyone without the will to live would be disqualified as a looter. Keeping them around would only harm our mental health.
“…No. We have to live. You’re right. We can’t die.”
It seemed physical therapy wasn’t necessary. Seeing the hammer, Jeon Dohyeong blinked as if his mind had returned to normal. I put the hammer down.
And then I fell into thought. What I needed to prepare now. What I needed to anticipate. What I needed to review and revise from the professor’s materials.
Supplies are secondary.
To obtain things that weren’t originally mine, I had to trade with money. But if looting entered the picture, that boundary would collapse. What’s mine is mine, and what’s yours is also mine. Everything in the world would become potentially mine.
Tapping my knee with my fingers, I muttered quietly.
“Base. People. Yeah, people.”
Experts like Professor Kim were the top priority. In a ruined world, what was most lacking was knowledge, and experts provided that—whether in medicine, electricity, mechanics, or any field.
But would it even matter? What if the expert I found was already infected?
I looked at the phone, from which loud banging sounds now came. The professor, who had been shuffling around the room, was now pounding violently on the wooden door. Swinging his fists, throwing his body, kicking with his feet. The man who had spoken of faint hope even in the midst of the apocalypse had now become part of the apocalypse itself.
It was a world where hope was hard to find.