A Suspicious Neighbor
A kind neighbor? No, a suspicious one had just moved in. Sa Gihyeok arrived carrying only a heavy bag, yet he worked as diligently as someone truly intending to settle down on Villa Street. Whenever there was manual labor, he was the first to step up and break a sweat. If anyone voiced a problem, he would roll up the sleeves of his suit and try to help in any way he could. He always greeted people with a friendly voice. But the residents of Villa Street didn't open their hearts easily.
“That guy has a way of making everything sound subtly annoying.”
“He works hard, sure, but he’s not very good at it. It’s a relief if he doesn’t just get in the way.”
His roundabout way of insulting people and the mediocre results despite all that sweating. Above all, the terrible experience of being thoroughly tricked by the Apartment Complex people left everyone watching him with eyes full of suspicion and surveillance. It was as if an invisible wall stood between Sa Gihyeok and the Villa Street residents.
Even so, after Sa Gihyeok persistently kept knocking on that wall, he was gradually accepted among us.
“I looked him up online. Apparently he used to run some big investment business. When would a guy like that have ever done physical labor?”
“He’s probably not a spy. Who would send someone like him as a spy anyway?”
After the wary residents investigated his background, they began to offer him the bare minimum of trust.
“Mr. Sa Gihyeok. You worked hard today, so take this. Instant rice and Spam.”
“Wow. This is my first time doing physical labor, but it feels rewarding! I never even went to the military, you know. Spam isn’t as good as beef, but in times like these, you can’t be picky. Gotta eat it.”
“…Then don’t eat the Spam! Go find some beef instead!”
In any case, Sa Gihyeok blended in as a slightly clumsy neighbor. Of course, our marauder members felt differently. Park Yanggun and Jeon Dohyeong, who were in charge of farming based on their experience at the Hope Church, looked at him with disapproval.
The members gathered at my place for the first time in a while. Park Yanggun, hands still covered in dirt, shook his head.
“How can you trust a guy who’s all smooth talk? The moment he opens his mouth, he’s busy bragging about how great he used to be. His face doesn’t look trustworthy either.”
Jeon Dohyeong frowned even more openly, grumbling with clear resentment in his voice.
“That guy’s a conman. The way he talks screams conman. The people who showed up after my parents died to claim the inheritance, the ones I met while trading stocks—every one of them had that same vibe.”
“Exactly. His name is literally Sa Gihyeok. He’s definitely a scammer.”
I had been wondering if Sa Gihyeok was genuinely simple-minded, but now I spoke with absolute confidence.
I was right after all. Judging people by the impression their name gives is the correct approach. But the two members stared at me in disbelief.
“Not even physiognomy, but judging someone by their name?”
“That’s a bit…”
What? Why were people who benefited so much from the value of their own names dismissing my judgment? Weren’t they doing the exact same thing—badmouthing people based on nothing but vague feelings and impressions? If anything, I was the rational one here. I opened my mouth to argue, but in the end I just let out a deep sigh. There was no point in fighting over something so childish. No benefit to it. I roughly changed the subject.
Even in this harsh world, Jeon Dohyeong still made regular trips to the Hope Church to see his girlfriend.
“Is the Hope Church doing okay? How’s the romance going?”
“Come on, why bring up the romance…”
Jeon Dohyeong blushed in embarrassment, but his expression darkened slightly as he talked about the community.
“The Hope Church is doing really well. They clashed with the police station last time, and the cops backed off.”
“…The police?”
Honestly, wasn’t the police station the strongest group in this area? They had firearms, body armor, and probably the numbers too. But Jeon Dohyeong described the clash as if he had seen it himself. Shields made from torn-off car doors and hoods. Molotov cocktails trailing smoke. Slingshots that could kill people. Long spears. Disciplined formations. They had even welded shields onto cars to make makeshift armored vehicles. It was truly apocalyptic…
I gaped in awe. While we were clumsily bickering, the real powers were waging actual wars…
But it wasn’t without problems.
“They couldn’t completely block the virus, so occasionally one or two people still turn into zombies. Yeji seems really stressed. She keeps crying, saying she’s scared, that she feels like she’s going to die…”
I had no interest in other people’s love lives. What caught my attention was the downside of communal living.
Like I thought, group living makes you vulnerable to the virus. They’re bound to collapse because of it someday. For real.
It wasn’t that I was cursing the group I left just because they were doing well. This was a rational, logical, and scientific prediction.
Around that point, we ran out of things to talk about.
“Well, get some sleep. We have work tomorrow too.”
“See you tomorrow.”
“Yeah. Boil some water and be careful of the virus.”
The members left. Alone again, I prepared for bed. I hid a hammer, pistol, water gun, and taser in various spots around my sleeping area, hung small bells on the windows, propped a chair against the door, and finally fell asleep.
Once the apocalypse had progressed to a certain point, the world became divided by territory. It was the concept of domains. Many people established territories centered around residences with solid steel entrance doors, while many zombies gathered in commercial buildings or public facilities. PC cafes, coffee shops, subway stations, restaurants, convenience stores, and shopping malls were designed for easy foot traffic, so naturally they became zombie strongholds. Glass doors broke easily, after all. Staircases were a must too.
In any case, Villa Street was safer than expected. Safe enough for us to work openly in the streets.
“Let’s make Villa Street a safe zone!”
We would barricade our territory, Villa Street, so that neither zombies nor people would want to approach.
“One, two, three!”
People shouted in unison as they pushed parked cars. They were using the vehicles like barriers to block the roads. Some cars had the handbrake engaged, but those could be dealt with by smashing a window and releasing it. If the steering wheel lock made the direction awkward, we left them and used keys we had collected to move cars that would start. The street filled with the sounds of cars slowly moving, people straining, and sluggish driving.
On the sidewalks, other people worked hard.
“Tie everything from here to there.”
People holding red string tied knots around street trees, lampposts, first-floor villa windows, window frames of parked cars, and covered the sidewalks with string. Straight lines, diagonals, crisscrossing, overlapping. Making it difficult to even walk down the street. From above or in front, it looked like a spider web.
I worked among them too. I grimly strung up the POLICE LINE tape I had received from my police friend across the street. The outer entrances of Villa Street, broken first-floor windows, the corpse of the spy. Then, from somewhere, a sheepish voice called out.
“Uh, um. Excuse me, neighbors. Could you please untie me from this?”
I turned my head. It was Sa Gihyeok. He must have been working with the police line tape I had distributed, but somehow he had managed to get his arms and legs tangled in it. He had simply, single-handedly, gotten himself tied up while trying to stick tape.
“Everyone?”
As Sa Gihyeok hopped over, the people around him let out familiar, heavy sighs and started scolding him.
“You klutz. How do you even manage to get stuck in tape…”
“You’d be better off going to farm, or no, cutting plastic bottles and slicing your own finger. Sigh. Can’t you do the job properly?”
Even as they complained, they went over to untie him. Thanks to Sa Gihyeok’s persistent efforts, he had blended in quite well.
But I narrowed my eyes and glared at him.
A spy?
A spy who lowered the group’s work efficiency and wasted resources? The resources this guy had just wasted were the precious tape I had obtained from my police friend. Several meters of it. A serious loss of resources. An elderly farm worker would be more useful. I idly swung my hammer as I fell into thought. Should I deal with him? His impression was also somewhat ambiguous.
But then I turned at the mutter of an uncle who had approached from behind.
“I must be crazy. Suspecting a guy like that of being a spy.”
“…Couldn’t he be one?”
“That guy?”
The uncle weakly pointed a finger. At the end of it, Sa Gihyeok was smiling and thanking people, then tripped over a string while heading back to work.
“Ack! My glasses!”
The way he groped around the ground searching for his fallen glasses did look rather pathetic.
“No one would listen to him even if he said something. They wouldn’t even include him in important meetings. If he were a spy, they’d send someone who could actually exert influence.”
I pondered for a moment before nodding. This seemed to be the uncle’s area of expertise, so I should trust the expert. Just as I was trying to hide my unease and leave only a sliver of suspicion, the workers began turning their heads one by one toward the far end of the street. A person was approaching from beyond the street, carefully avoiding the strings. And when Sa Gihyeok saw him, his face turned deathly pale.
He was filthy. His disheveled hair was matted from not being washed for who knows how long, and his ragged clothes were covered in blood and dust. In one hand he held a gasoline can, and in the other a phone that was turned on, displaying what looked like someone’s photo.
“Sorry to interrupt while you’re working. Have any of you seen this person? Ah, here.”
He politely held out his phone to one of the workers as if asking something, then suddenly shook his body and laughed.
“Haha. So you were hiding here. Ah, there you are. Sa Gihyeok, you conman bastard!”
His roar echoed through the street. The workers looked at each other in confusion, then turned their gazes to Sa Gihyeok. Sa Gihyeok was trembling violently. So much that I wondered if his cracked glasses might fall off. He unconsciously stepped backward, tripped over a string, and fell flat on his back. Even then, he crawled backward using his hands to push against the ground.
“No, that’s not… it’s not that.”
“What? A development investment for a quarantine safe zone? You had insider information from a government official? Priority residency for investors? All that bullshit!”
The phone the filthy man threw flew between the strings and landed at Sa Gihyeok’s feet. On the screen was a photo from some investment seminar. A well-dressed Sa Gihyeok confidently giving a presentation. The situation became clear. Sa Gihyeok was the criminal. The filthy man was the victim.
At that moment, I clenched my fist.
He really is a conman!
No wonder his name gave off that vibe from the start. The subtly uncomfortable impression Sa Gihyeok gave me instantly flipped to favorable. A merchant who sold people’s hopes and greed. A conman who skillfully manipulated people’s hearts. A marauder who had been stealing others’ money since before the world fell apart and even exploited the apocalypse. This, I had to acknowledge.
“You, stay right there!”
As the victim ducked under the strings and approached, the Villa Street residents tried to stop him first. After all, he was technically a neighbor on Villa Street, and more importantly, the victim’s armament was dangerous.
“First, put down that gasoline can—”
“Get lost!”
There was no time to stop him. The victim instantly poured out the gasoline. A beautiful liquid that momentarily shimmered like a rainbow spread across the street with a splash. The victim had also doused himself in the oil. As if he had practiced this action dozens of times, he swiftly pulled out a lighter. Madness burned in the victim’s eyes.
“I just need to kill that bastard. So get out of the way.”
“Wait…”
The Villa Street people were frozen, unable to act. Even the uncle looked shocked.
“A conman? That guy? Did I really misjudge him that badly? If he was a spy… I should have suspected him. I should have suspected him no matter what.”
Sa Gihyeok, who had been hanging his head, slowly stood up. A bitter voice flowed out.
“Everyone, please step aside. This is my fault, so I will take responsibility.”
“Yeah, you damn well better take responsibility! I believed your words and did nothing but wait, and my daughter, my wife—they turned into zombies! If I had bought a villa on an island instead of investing in you—”
There seemed to be a story here. I turned him into the protagonist of a scenario in my head. In a world where the zombie virus had spread, this man desperately searching for a way to survive. Sa Gihyeok approaches him, offering the hope of a quarantine safe zone. But it was a scam, and in the meantime his family turned into zombies and everything collapsed. Who could he direct that rage toward? The chairman? He was overseas across the sea, and even if he used a voodoo doll, the chairman wasn’t the type to fall for such things. In the end, it was Sa Gihyeok. Since he had sold fake hope, the entire responsibility for that hope’s collapse fell on him. So the victim must have wandered dangerous streets with Sa Gihyeok’s photo and a gasoline can, tracking him down. Fighting zombies, fighting robbers, fighting vicious groups.
If he set himself on fire here and burned to death together with Sa Gihyeok, that would be a decent ending.
Unfortunately, this was reality. Fire was far too dangerous, and Sa Gihyeok was a useful talent. I held my breath and moved stealthily. Paying attention to the position of shadows, I quietly approached from the victim’s blind spot. People had already gathered around the victim and Sa Gihyeok, so the victim didn’t notice my presence.
“You felt pretty relaxed when you ran away, huh? You thought I wouldn’t be able to chase you?”
The victim grabbed Sa Gihyeok’s collar with an oil-soaked hand. As the rough shaking continued, Sa Gihyeok, eyes tightly shut, was jerked back and forth. I stood in the right position and quickly scanned the surroundings. Jeon Dohyeong, who met my eyes, wore an expression that said there he goes again. Park Yanggun had a look that said physiognomy is science after all. The uncle gave a slight nod, as if he understood what I was about to do.
“Say something, you dog bastard!”
I twisted my upper body. I pulled the hammer far back. My target was the crown of the head. In martial arts terms, the heavenly spirit point. I had to knock him out in one blow. I couldn’t give him time to flick the lighter. If the fire spread wrongly, the entire Villa Street would burn. It would spread in all directions along the tied strings. All my resources would disappear.
“I was wrong—”
At that moment, Sa Gihyeok opened his eyes, saw me, and shouted in horror.
“No, behind you—”
CRACK!
It landed perfectly. It was the most satisfying hammer strike I had ever delivered. The arsonist threatening us collapsed with a thud. I quickly snatched the lighter from his hand, crouched down, struck his head a few more times, then stood up.
“Shall we clear all the strings? This place is way too vulnerable to fire.”
Looking at them again, those weren’t obstacles. They were fuses.