The Letter
Rider Zero didn't stop. She kept speeding away without a second glance. In an instant, the noisy motorcycle vanished beyond the street. All that remained was a single letter she'd tossed, lying abandoned on the porch.
I looked down at it from the rooftop. A letter? Who would send one? To whom? Was it even real?
“I don't have anyone who'd send me a letter.”
It was true. My parents were dead, and I didn't have any close friends. Especially not in this apocalyptic world, where no one would waste resources just to send a message.
Jeon Dohyeong and Sa Gihyeok stared blankly.
“I've got a younger sibling, but we're not close enough to stay in touch.”
“Haha. The only letters I'd get would be death threats from people I scammed... Ah. They'd probably come in person instead of bothering with a letter.”
Jeon Dohyeong gave the awkwardly smiling Sa Gihyeok a light smack. Some concerned words followed from my so-called comrades.
“Could be a razor blade or Botox? Fentanyl? Might be some kind of terror attack. Just in case, wear gloves when you open it.”
I looked at Jeon Dohyeong with fresh eyes. This guy was finally adapting to the apocalypse. To think he'd already consider a letter as a potential weapon. Still, a dry laugh escaped me.
What kind of thought process starts with reading a letter and ends with worrying about your life?
This was what a marauder's relationships looked like. Faced with something as warm as a letter, we were busy worrying about whether it might kill us. Something felt deeply wrong. Or was it? Was this just being true to our nature as marauders? In that case, if the letter turned out to be perfectly normal, wouldn't that be the real problem? Because it wouldn't be the kind of letter a marauder should receive?
I stood there in confusion for a while, lost in thought, until Sa Gihyeok suddenly clapped his hands.
“Park Yanggun! Isn't it a letter for that old man?”
“That guy... Right. He mentioned having family.”
I recalled the information too. Park Yanggun had said before that he had an ex-wife and a child. Had they sent him a letter?
For a moment, a nasty scenario flashed through my mind. Someone wealthy enough to send a letter. They were probably part of a decent survivor group. What if we used his connection to infiltrate them?
No. What the hell am I thinking? Stop.
We weren't short on resources right now. We could endure the blackout. There was no need to take unnecessary risks. I'd already set up some bait for the Scavengers, so I nodded.
“Let's head back. Grab the letter.”
“Ugh. It's too hot to stay out here any longer. Though it'll probably be just as bad inside. No air conditioning. Haha. Hell is right here.”
Sa Gihyeok kept spouting useless chatter, but it wasn't anything new after a day or two, so I just listened and ignored it. But he kept talking. He shook the little remaining rice and kimchi.
“But is this really effective? Doesn't the heat from cooking rice kill the virus? And we're not even sure if it's transmitted through blood.”
“No. I trust the Chairman.”
“What? What do you mean by that?”
The sweltering heat seemed to evaporate reason. I spoke whatever came to mind.
“Do you really think the Chairman would create a virus that could be stopped so easily?”
“...I guess not?”
It was a virus the Chairman had made himself. Whatever I imagined, it would be beyond the limits of my imagination. Of course it would.
Sa Gihyeok and Jeon Dohyeong frowned with uneasy expressions but still tilted their heads. They knew the Chairman's authority too well to deny it.
With that, we retrieved the letter and returned to the farm villa.
The door creaked open, and there was Park Yanggun, pretending to work in a hurry. Exaggerated gestures as he picked up batteries and such. He turned around with a shameless grin.
“Oh, you're back? Aigo. My body's aching so much my hands barely move.”
“Is that so?”
I scanned the floor. It didn't look much different from when we'd left. Well, it was my mistake for assigning productive work to a thief.
From behind, Sa Gihyeok poked his head out and said bluntly,
“A letter arrived. It had Park Yanggun's name on it.”
“A letter? For me?”
The white envelope Sa Gihyeok handed over had no proper format. Just Park Yanggun's name, some words that weren't quite an address for the Hope Church, and two women's names.
Park Yanggun frowned and took the envelope reluctantly. But when he saw the two senders' names, his mouth clamped shut. He must know them.
Sa Gihyeok stood pressed against the coolest part of the wall and added without reading the room,
“It might be a terror attack. Be careful. There could be poison or a razor blade hidden inside.”
“No, you idiot! Why would my wife and daughter do something like that!”
Park Yanggun's face flushed red as he exploded in anger. Jeon Dohyeong and I quickly scolded Sa Gihyeok. How could he suspect family? Even I wouldn't go that far. Not that I had any family left to suspect. Anyway, that was really low.
“That was Sa Gihyeok's fault. How could you say something like that?”
“Wow, that was really bad. I told you to watch your words.”
“No, no. That was something you guys said first.”
While we bickered noisily, Park Yanggun quietly put on gloves and carefully tore open the letter. Fortunately, there was no foreign substance inside. Just a single neatly folded A4 sheet.
We fell silent, our curiosity making us glance back and forth between the letter and Park Yanggun. Honestly, Jeon Dohyeong, Sa Gihyeok, and I had all revealed everything about how we'd lived. But Park Yanggun had never gone into detail. Just that he'd stolen in his youth, repented, and worked at the church. That was it.
Park Yanggun seemed uncomfortable with our stares and used the letter to cover his face.
“What are you looking at? Never seen someone receive a letter before?”
“Yes. This is the first time I've seen someone get a handwritten letter instead of an official government document.”
It was exactly as I'd said. A handwritten letter. Something written by hand, one character at a time, with a price paid and someone physically delivering it—the ultimate expression of sincerity. If I received something like this, suspicion would come first. Who would go through all that trouble just to send a letter? What was the intention?
Park Yanggun lowered the letter and scowled deeply.
“I got letters when I was in the military!”
“Haha. The generation gap shows right here. Didn't you see the news about soldiers using cell phones? You really are getting up there in age.”
Sa Gihyeok, who had never even served, was the one saying this. Park Yanggun sighed and gripped the letter weakly. His serious eyes slowly scanned the characters.
We waited quietly the whole time. Soon, Park Yanggun neatly folded the letter and put it back in the envelope.
“Why contact me and make me feel uneasy like this...”
“...Is there something problematic in the contents?”
I asked in a low voice. Letters were dangerous. If the danger was obvious, at least that was straightforward. But letters that pretended to be harmless were even more dangerous. Several risky scenarios had already come to mind.
Park Yanggun sullenly smacked the floor with the envelope.
“Are you going to start saying weird stuff like that guy?”
“Just in case. Even I can think of plenty of ways to use a letter. For example.”
Cult-like tactics. Brainwashing seemingly normal people and drawing in those around them. Or more directly, using threats to lure in associates. Maybe the sender was the one orchestrating the plan. Using people as bait. There were many methods. Brainwashing, violence, drugs, traps, bribes. If you put in the effort to harbor malice, it wasn't difficult.
The world really had become too harsh. There were so many dangerous people. As I spoke, I found myself shivering. Park Yanggun gave me a suspicious look before pulling the letter out again and starting to read. Then he let out a heavy sigh.
“I don't know. I guess I wasn't a good husband or father. Even after reading it, I can't picture their faces. I have no idea what they were thinking when they wrote this.”
I quietly observed his face. It looked suddenly aged. I could see white hairs, and his wrinkles seemed to have deepened overnight. Had his mind been shaken? Was this the chance to truly make him one of us marauders? Or was it time to cut him loose? Did the value of his thieving skills still remain?
Come to think of it, is stealing even that impressive a skill? If you steal equipment from someone painting apartment walls, you could break into any window you wanted.
Maybe because I'd already crossed the line once. My thoughts kept rolling down the cliff into the abyss. This wasn't good. No matter how much of a betrayal expert Park Yanggun was, he was still a comrade. If you couldn't keep comrades close, you'd end up dying at their hands like that paranoid old man.
As I forcibly twisted my thoughts around, Jeon Dohyeong's questioning voice broke through.
“Are you going to go see them? You look like you want to see their faces.”
“No need. My body's already hurting—why would I do something like that? ...I'll just send a letter back. Um, do we have a ballpoint pen? Sa Gihyeok, help me out. You're good with words, right?”
“Of course! That's exactly my specialty.”
And so Park Yanggun began writing the letter. For every few words he said, the excited Sa Gihyeok would smoothly rephrase them, and Park Yanggun would scribble it down in his crooked handwriting.
When the letter was finally complete, Park Yanggun hesitated before speaking with difficulty.
“It's a bit awkward saying this to the people who helped, but... is this right? It sounds like something a scammer would write to drum up business.”
“It's not 'like' anything...”
Jeon Dohyeong, who had been listening from the side, muttered in a small voice. I'd heard the whole conversation. I agreed with his assessment.
It's not a letter—it's spam.
The part about living well had become an advertisement for dreams and hope. The question about how they were doing had turned into something that stimulated greed. And the closing remark felt like a sales pitch. It even had the vibe of a loan shark.
Sa Gihyeok shook his finger side to side with confidence and tapped the letter.
“I'm a conman. Just trust me. Whether it's truth or lies, manipulating people's psychology is my specialty.”
We looked at him with unease, but in the end, Park Yanggun folded the letter and put it back in the envelope. His gesture said he didn't care what happened to it.
“Anyway, thanks. So, how do I contact the delivery person?”
The Delivery Vigilantes only accepted requests during the hours when the blackout was in effect, apparently. The villa street was already pitch dark after sunset since the power went out, but their rules were their rules, so we couldn't change the timing.
Park Yanggun and I sat on the porch, waiting for the rider to arrive. Even the zombies didn't come to the dark street. In the silence, we only occasionally sensed the presence of some unknown animal moving about.
How long had the silence lasted? Park Yanggun asked casually, as if the thought had just occurred to him.
“Kim Dain. What happened to your family?”
“I guess I never mentioned it. I don't have any.”
“Oh no. Were you an orphan?”
I turned my head to look at Park Yanggun. The moonlight was bright enough that I could make out his face.
“No. They passed away around the time I graduated from university.”
“Ah. I misspoke. Sorry about that.”
“It's fine.”
I couldn't exactly hit him with a hammer. Especially when he was already complaining about being in pain. One good smack and he might actually die. Instead, I slowly opened my mouth to dig for more information.
“How old is your daughter?”
“I don't know. I really don't. How old would she be now? I've forgotten while living like this. But as her father, I still worry. I wonder if she's doing well.”
Park Yanggun muttered in a voice mixed with regret.
“She'll be doing well. If they're able to send a letter, they must be well-off. They clearly have resources to spare.”
“...You're not planning something, are you?”
“Planning what? There's no reason for that. More importantly, why did you get divorced?”
I was curious about his life story. He was a comrade, after all. Knowing his past would make it easier to understand his psychology, spot signs of potential betrayal, and even use it for control.
My sincere tone made Park Yanggun hunch his shoulders.
“It's because I couldn't break my old habits. What was I thinking, stealing? It was all my fault.”
I looked at him in disbelief. He kept stealing even though he had a child? Wasn't that a sickness? Kleptomania? ...Impressive. This was exactly how a marauder should be. If I just kept providing him with opportunities to steal, maybe I wouldn't have to worry about betrayal.
As I was thinking that, noise and a beam of light approached from afar. The motorcycle's bright headlight grew increasingly intense. The rider had finally arrived.
Park Yanggun and I quickly grabbed our weapons and scanned the surroundings. We were worried that zombies or marauders might be drawn by the noise. But perhaps because the villa street was so dark, there were no signs of life other than the rider.
With a squeak, the rider stopped in front of us and removed her helmet. Familiar short hair. It was Rider Zero.
“Hello! It's been a while!”
“Yes, it has been a while.”
I quietly observed the motorcycle. Was there still fuel left? Gasoline had a shelf life of about six months. It could probably last until the end of summer, just barely.
Once the gasoline runs out...
No, maybe there was a way to use it before then? The activity range of riders crossing through the city center was incredibly wide. Could we contaminate them with the virus or something? Would that be difficult?
Park Yanggun stepped forward boldly.
“I want to send a reply letter. How much will it cost?”
“Ah, a letter. In that case...”
Rider Zero's eyes curved into a smile. Her voice took on the tone of a bargaining merchant.
“There's the cost of fuel, plus the risk involved, so it's more expensive than you might think. Is that okay?”
“Stop testing me and just tell me the price.”
“Well then...”
Rider Zero whispered softly. When he heard the amount, Park Yanggun jumped up in shock. Then he hurled the letter straight to the ground.
“Forget it! Go away!”
“Come on. This is actually pretty cheap, you know? Who else is traveling around the city these days?”
“We're poor too! Can't you see the blackout and how empty it is? We don't have resources to waste.”
It was a natural lie. We had enough resources to send a letter, but there was no need to show that we were doing well.
I nodded and chimed in.
“Everything's fallen apart. There was infighting and people died. Others left because of the blackout. Nasty marauders and Scavengers swept through.”
Even a quick glance showed this place was a ruin. No signs of life. All the lights were out, and there weren't even any candle-like illuminations. No smell of evening meals either.
Rider Zero looked around the street anew, then bent down to pick up the letter.
“Aigoo. In that case, I'll do this one as a service. If you have any deliveries in the future, just call us. Oh, and this is one of the restaurants we operate. If you want proper food, place an order.”
She pulled an A4 sheet from her pocket. It was like a restaurant menu, listing dishes and prices. She must have recruited a few cooks, like that boss who used to feed people pufferfish poison. A list of dishes that somehow elevated simple seasonings and preserved foods. Or fresh side dishes like wild greens, or dishes made from dog or pigeon meat.
But Park Yanggun shook his head vigorously and moved his hand naturally. With a motion close to pickpocketing, he retrieved the letter.
“No news is good news. The letter's fine. Instead, tell me about their location and the atmosphere there.”
“I can't do that. If we start selling information, our business is finished.”
I quietly watched Park Yanggun. Was he thinking of going himself? He'd said he wouldn't.
“It's my wife and daughter. I'm not asking anything I shouldn't.”
Park Yanggun held out a plastic bag containing a lighter and cigarettes. Rider Zero hesitated before accepting it with a small sigh.
“They're living together near the mountain, people who used to enjoy hiking. They set up tents, gather wild greens, hunt animals, sell those to us, and use the water from public restrooms.”
They'd planned their strategy quite well. Instead of simply focusing on wilderness living, they supplemented their needs by selling rare resources like greens and meat to the Delivery Vigilantes.
Park Yanggun smiled faintly in relief. But Rider Zero mentioned their problem.
“But it seems like the rain is making it hard for them to hold out, and they're thinking of coming down to the city. That's why they've been contacting people around them. Looking for somewhere to join.”
People coming down from the mountains to avoid the rainy season and typhoons. Suddenly, a map drew itself in my mind, along with scenes of zombies and people colliding. Zombies wandering in search of food and water. People moving from infrastructure-less areas to intact zones. Conflicts arising over scarce resources.
The letter Park Yanggun received was a declaration of war. A declaration that they would take the recipients' territory and resources for themselves. The season of war had arrived.