Kingmaker (1)
Hyenas.
Vile scavengers that thrash and claw for a share of what stronger predators have already brought down.
Among people, the name gets thrown around for anyone who tries to spoon their way into someone else's hard-won success—or snatch a fat slice of the credit for themselves.
Kim Seyeon, Park Seeun, Han Sora, myself, and countless other survivors had poured every last ounce of our strength into bringing even a temporary peace to this district.
And then—as human nature never fails to prove—
the ones who had done nothing at all showed up, not content merely to enjoy the fruits of our labor, but determined to take them for their own.
April 13th. Morning.
"Hoo... You've drawn up a truly ruthless plan, Jeong Hoon."
For the first time, Seo Hyejin tossed a barbed remark my way. I offered neither a bitter smile nor any protest. I simply sat there, expressionless, listening to the woman settled in my computer chair while I stared out the window at the view beyond the glass.
"That woman—how dare she talk to Oppa like that when we're right here...!"
"Sora. Watch your mouth."
"Sora unnie, even if you're crazy about him, that kind of jealousy is a little..."
"W-wha—? N-no, I was just...!"
Having an audience was a minor blemish on the moment, but not enough to ruin the atmosphere. Besides, Kim Seyeon, Han Sora, and Park Seeun were hardly mere spectators. If I was going to bare everything and make an honest case to the woman who would lead this group going forward, I needed their help. Their presence in the room was what let me be completely candid without hesitation—which meant I could leave Lawful Good free to run its mouth however it pleased.
"There was no other way. For these people to survive a future in which we are absent, this is the only method that remains."
"Jeong Hoon, the odds of you dying—of losing your life—before any of us seem vanishingly small. I think you're underestimating your own strength far too much."
She's got the wrong idea, and it's running deep.
I turned to look at Seo Hyejin's face. I could read it plain as day. She had cast me as someone excessively anxious, excessively humble. That illusion needed shattering.
"That is not it. Eight days from now, Kim Seyeon and I—and most likely Han Sora and Park Seeun as well—will leave this place. We intend to head for Seoul."
"...Ah—what? S-Seoul...?"
The answer she had never seen coming cracked straight through her composure. Until a moment ago she had managed to keep up a cheerful front, but my words had clearly landed hard.
"Hyejin, it's true. I'm leaving for Seoul in eight days. I'm going to G District, where my baby's father is... and Dayeon. Honestly, I wanted to go the moment this whole nightmare started, but—you know how it was. Just stepping outside was hard enough."
"Se-Seyeon unnie..."
As Kim Seyeon laid out her circumstances in that calm, matter-of-fact way of hers, a faint sheen of moisture gathered in Seo Hyejin's eyes. The two of them had known each other even before the zombie apocalypse. Seo Hyejin had been a college student working part-time at a nearby café; Kim Seyeon had been a regular who stopped in for coffee, and the two had been nodding acquaintances. Once the catastrophe hit and they ended up sheltering together at Daengdaeng Elementary School, their friendship had deepened rapidly—or so Seyeon had explained to me beforehand.
"B-but then... why is Jeong Hoon going to Seoul...?"
Having fully accepted Seyeon's reasons, a different question settled across Seo Hyejin's face. Fair enough. Without any explanation, anyone watching would probably write me off as some guy tagging along after a married woman. Of course, I had my own reasons—and from where I stood, they went well beyond excuses or pretexts. They were a clear, unshakable justification.
"A friend sent me a message. He asked for help."
"Ah—a message...?"
"Indeed. You heard it as well. Our Administrator, in a rare fit of kindness, opened a three-minute window allowing others to send me messages. I looked through them. I hoped, perhaps, that family or someone close might have written. Unfortunately, nothing came from my family... but one message from a friend came through clear as day."
Finding that message had been pure chance. The night before, while scrolling through my inbox before sleep—sending was completely locked down, but received messages could still be opened anytime—a title that felt off had caught my eye.
Son Minsu.
How could I ever forget that name? He was the friend who had kept sending me encouraging texts right up to the end. More than that—forgetting a guy whose girlfriend got NTR'd would mean there was something seriously wrong with your brain.
After reading through the contents carefully, I felt a surge of gratitude. Minsu, thank you. For being alive... and for sending me that message.
It wasn't as though I hadn't worried about my family and friends. The reason I hadn't gone looking sooner was simple: I didn't even know if they were still breathing. What was the point of fighting through swarms of zombies and monsters only to arrive and find no one left—nothing but grief and a hollow emptiness waiting for me? And if I died on the way, the whole thing would have been for nothing.
"Son Minsu has been a close friend since our high school days. Now that he has sent a survival message, I wish to go to his aid without a moment's delay. But I also wish to reduce, as much as possible, the chance that anything befalls the people here in the meantime."
"Because of your friend, then..."
Seo Hyejin let the end of her sentence trail off. Was she disappointed that I was charging off to save a friend? No—that couldn't be it. If anything, she might have recognized a certain consistency in a man willing to run toward danger on the strength of a single message alone.
"...All right. But that leaves only one problem. Whether I have what it takes to lead these people—or not. Personally, I don't think I do."
"That will not be a problem. You will manage it well."
"Y-you're saying that with an awful lot of certainty, Jeong Hoon..."
Color rose in Seo Hyejin's cheeks as she ducked my gaze, and being a beauty, the effect carried a faintly alluring air.
Grit...
I thought I heard someone grinding their teeth behind me, but I must have imagined it.
At any rate, Kim Seyeon stepped in again to flesh out my terse reply.
"Hyejin, I've watched you beat yourself up so many times, thinking you weren't doing enough for everyone. And I've watched you volunteer to help people over and over again. Every time, I felt so frustrated for you. If only the right environment were there for you to grow, you could help people as much as you've always wanted."
"Seyeon unnie..."
"That's why Jeong Hoon decided to choose you as the leader. Even if you don't have confidence yet, he believes you're the only one who can guide these people, protect them, and help them grow. And I feel the same way. You can do this. Even without Jeong Hoon and me, you can be the one who protects and leads them. Who knows—you might even feel proud watching how much everyone else has grown."
"..."
Seyeon's sincere persuasion seemed to have nearly won Seo Hyejin over. Still, a sliver of unease lingered; she fidgeted, rubbing her left arm with her right hand.
Good. Time for the finishing blow.
She was clearly anxious about parting ways with reliable people like Seyeon and me. I had no choice but to say something that would dilute that fear, at least a little.
"This is not a farewell forever. On the contrary—I hope that you will join us again someday."
"...What?"
"Jeong Hoon, you don't really need to go that far—"
"Kim Seyeon. She is to become their leader. It is better that she know this information."
I laid out the core of the plan Seyeon and I had sketched on the rooftop in the small hours of the previous morning—adding a firm request that she not breathe a word of it to anyone else. The moment Seo Hyejin heard it, her expression lit up. Admiration spilled out of her unbidden.
"Th-that's genuinely brilliant! If you establish a base there...!"
"We think so as well. Needless to say, once the stronghold is firmly established, you will be the first we call to join us and build our power together. So—for your own survival, and for the future ahead—I hope you will accept this proposal."
A trace of hesitation still clung to her, but most of the anxiety had drained from her face. I slowly extended my right hand. Seo Hyejin stared at it for a long moment, then slowly reached out. Our hands met and clasped.
"...All right. I'll try. And I truly hope your plan succeeds, Jeong Hoon."
"I will make certain that it does."
When she whispered those words, though, Seo Hyejin leaned in close enough to my ear that her breath brushed against it without the slightest hesitation.
"Okay, but that bitch is seriously—!"
"Sora unnie, that's ugly..."
"W-what...!"
I gently ignored the local broadcast coming from behind me...
The plan became reality starting at midday on April 13th.
The three women and I led the band of survivors out beyond the villa. I had expected people to be out walking the streets of XX District, but there were far fewer than I'd thought. A handful of figures caught our eye, only to panic the moment they spotted us and scramble away. They must have taken us for a pack of monsters.
"Their faces were seriously something to—ah, I mean, they looked terrified."
Han Sora could see farther than the rest of us, so her testimony was reliable enough. Ignoring the runaways, we walked the main avenue of XX District. A landscape completely empty of zombies and monsters would have looked ordinary enough back in March—but after the hell we had endured since April, it felt almost unnatural.
That unnatural calm shattered about twenty minutes later.
They were swarming. Monsters and zombies, packed tight. Where? At the boundary line. Which boundary? The one separating the purified zone of XX City's XX District from everywhere else, of course. Monsters and zombies thronged there in staggering density—like a living carpet of cockroaches on the move.
"Ugh..."
"Oh my god...!"
"Kyaah...!"
The survivors who had come with us screamed. Naturally, we hadn't brought any children or the elderly. More accurately, we couldn't have brought them even if we'd wanted to. During the full census we'd conducted to confirm everyone's classes, we had stumbled onto a shocking truth.
...You have never seen anything like a system window?
That's right. I've never had any weird letters floating in front of my eyes. Aside from those enormous characters up in the sky... and that voice loud enough to scare the soul out of a body, I don't know a thing about it~
Grandma Yeon Boksoon. As the oldest member of our survivor group, she had once made me think, If even a grandmother this age can play it, this game really must be a masterpiece. Her testimony shattered that illusion on the spot. She had never played any such game—and yet she was still alive.
Her phone was a flip phone. Not one of those app-capable flip phones, either—a genuine pre-smartphone model. Installing Brave Saga Online would have been impossible. As for the children, they were simply too young. Brave Saga Online was rated for ages twelve and up, and the game required a birthdate at character creation that locked out anyone under twelve. Of the children who had survived among us, there were two—ages eight and ten.
Fully three people in our villa had survived this long without ever receiving a system.
Kim Seyeon had already known, but she said she'd been too busy staying alive at the time to dwell on it. I was shocked when I first heard the news myself... but honestly, I couldn't be bothered to think about it any deeper. Some kind of bug, right? That Administrator bastard claimed he was basically the game operator. Probably just shrugged and left the glitch alone. Typical asshole personality.
Anyway...
"So the monsters never truly vanished."
"Right. I've thought something was off ever since Sora first reported the anomalies at the boundary. The only explanation that makes sense is that the Administrator used some unnatural method to shove every zombie and monster in the purified zone out past the border."
"I agree."
Kim Seyeon offered a reasonably logical hypothesis. No—it was almost certainly the correct answer. Discovering this early was nothing short of a blessing. If we had spent the next eight days blissfully enjoying the peace inside the zone without knowing a thing, we would have been wiped out without a fight the moment that enormous tide of zombies and monsters came flooding back in.
Of course, the zombies and monsters massed along this boundary also meant our survivors' leveling plan had just become considerably easier. That was the reality of the present moment.
"Han Sora. Are the arrows sufficiently prepared?"
"..."
"Han Sora?"
"Y-yes?"
Han Sora had been distracted for a moment and scrambled to answer. Distracted was one thing, but—her expression was deadly serious. Pale enough that every trace of color seemed to have drained from her face.
What's wrong with her? Shocked by how many monsters are packed in?
"Steady yourself. I am here."
I said only that, and rested my hand on her shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. The anxious light in Han Sora's eyes seemed to settle, just a little. It hadn't vanished completely, but it was something.
"Okay..."
Once I had her answer, I turned to address the survivors who had followed the three women and me.
"We will divide into Group One and Group Two. Group One is myself alone. Group Two will be led by Han Sora and Park Seeun. Each group will form parties of three. Group One will hunt for a minimum of one hour; Group Two for a minimum of thirty minutes, rotating in shifts. Group assignments will proceed in alphabetical order."
"Th-then what should the rest of us do?"
The gentlest-looking woman among the survivors raised her hand cautiously. She was one of the married women who had asked questions the day before. I answered simply.
"Watch. Do not look away."
"W-what?"
My excessively brief reply left the married woman thoroughly flustered. Another survivor beside her, equally baffled, spoke up.
"Uh, that seems a little... just standing around watching like it's someone else's problem... doesn't feel right, does it?"
I let out a sigh. Even after everything these people had been through, how could they still be this naive about the way the world worked?
"For now, watching is enough. The party system distributes experience evenly regardless of who participates in the hunt."
"N-no... that's not what I meant... Doesn't that make us freeloaders even more? We need to build up monster-hunting experience ourselves. Just standing here watching feels a little..."
An admirable answer—but my position remained firm.
"Watch for now. Once you do... you will understand immediately."
Better to see once than hear a hundred times.
Exactly ten minutes later, when I began the hunt, most of the survivors went deathly pale. Worse than pale, actually. Someone finally couldn't hold it in and started vomiting.
"Urgh... bleeeegh...!"
"H-hiiiieeek...!"
"O-oh my god...!"
I had known this was coming, so I felt no particular disappointment.