The Group Chat
Breakfast was ramen.
"Ugh..."
An Ga-hee's disappointment was plain to see, but So-hye had to be exhausted too. Knowing that, Ga-hee didn't voice any complaints.
"Well then, let's dig in."
The moment An Ga-hee lifted her chopsticks to eat, So-hye tapped the back of her hand. Ga-hee looked up at her, flustered.
"What? What is it?"
"Seong-won hasn't eaten yet."
"So? What does that have to do with anything?"
So-hye simply stared at her without answering. An Ga-hee finally let out a heavy sigh and set her chopsticks down.
"Hey. Hurry up and eat."
"Alright."
I smirked and put some ramen in my mouth, and only then did the meal begin.
Slurp—
We ate in silence for a while. About halfway through, So-hye spoke up.
"What are you planning to do from here?"
"Not sure. For now, that Park Chang-ho bastard who came looking for us — I figure we need to deal with him somehow."
One way or another, he was going to become a problem. Leaving loose ends wasn't in my nature.
"It might be better if we go settle things ourselves. It's not like we don't know where he came from."
"That'd be a lot better than just sitting around waiting."
Slurp—
Throughout the conversation, An Ga-hee didn't interject a single word. She was focused entirely on her ramen.
"Hey. What's the rush? Someone chasing you?"
Even my scolding didn't faze her. I almost doubted she was the same person who'd been disappointed about the ramen earlier.
In the end, I turned back to So-hye. Ga-hee wasn't going to talk until she'd finished every last bit.
"The real question is what to do about Park Chang-ho. Killing him would be best, right?"
"I think contacting him first and then deciding would be best. Though we should keep the option of killing him on the table."
"Mmmph."
An Ga-hee spoke up mid-ramen. When I told her to swallow first before talking, she gulped everything down and opened her mouth.
"You said you had his number, right?"
"Yeah."
"Then there's no need to go risk contact in person. Just call him on the phone and decide from there."
"And what if he doesn't pick up?"
"Then we rethink it. Isn't that better anyway?"
So-hye nodded.
"That does seem like the best approach. Or did you have a group chat or something? If you look at how people talk in there, you might get a sense of their dispositions."
"There's a department group chat. I haven't checked it recently, though."
In the first few days after the world went to hell, I'd browsed it for fun. But after meeting So-hye, I hadn't looked at it once.
Well, looking at her face was far more enjoyable.
"I'll check it after we eat."
"Okay."
"But you got a ton of messages from other guys too, huh? Right? That's what made you think of it?"
At An Ga-hee's question, So-hye confirmed it.
"Mind if I take a look?"
Curious about what kind of messages they'd received, I took their phones and opened the messaging app. There they were.
Messages from countless men. I didn't count them one by one, but there had to be well over fifty. And An Ga-hee's inbox wasn't much different.
"What a spectacle."
"It's fucking ridiculous, right? Guys who couldn't even talk to me normally, and the second things go to hell they start spamming messages like this, trying anything they can. Ugh, it gives me the creeps."
"I didn't feel great about it either. I already have Seong-won."
Something about that answer carried a hint of mania, so I quickly changed the subject.
"Let's just finish eating."
I handed their phones back and returned to my ramen. Even as we ate, a thought crossed my mind.
Used right, couldn't these work as bait?
Whether it was empty boasting or an attempt to impress and seduce the girls, the messages they'd received were packed with information.
Where they lived, what supplies they had — that kind of thing came up a lot.
Some of them had even taken photos as proof, and more than a few had gone so far as to send pictures of their junk.
I don't get it, and yet I totally get it.
So-hye and An Ga-hee's looks put them in the top one percent in all of Korea. Used properly, they could make stripping people of their supplies almost trivial.
Of course, I considered that a last resort. I didn't want to use my women that way either.
"Still, An Ga-hee, you're full of surprises."
"Whuh?"
She asked through a mouth stuffed full of ramen.
"With a personality that nasty, you still had plenty of guys after you?"
"Hey. What are you talking about? I was a total demure lady over there, okay? I'd give them a shy little smile and the guys would just melt!"
"Uh-huh. Sure."
"And even if I'd shown my real personality, the guys probably still would've liked me. At the end of the day, being pretty is all that matters."
"Yeah, yeah."
"I'm serious, you bastard!"
We finished the meal bickering. So-hye headed into the kitchen to wash the dishes while An Ga-hee and I sat on the couch.
Alright, let's check the group chat first.
I opened the messaging app for the first time in ages and found a mountain of messages waiting. I'd gotten personal messages too — every last one of them begging.
"Wow. I got messages offering me food, and you got messages asking for food?"
An Ga-hee covered her mouth and snickered. Annoyed by the attitude, I shoved her head, and she shrieked.
After clearing through all the personal messages, I opened the group chat. With more than two weeks of messages piled up, the volume was enormous — and most of it was useless.
Still, it was oddly compelling to watch. You could see the atmosphere of the chat shift little by little as the days went by.
"Seriously. Instead of begging like that, wouldn't it be way better to just go outside and find food? There should still have been plenty left out there at that point."
"They can't go outside, so they're begging like that."
"That so?"
"You couldn't go out alone either. And now you're looking down on them?"
"Not true. When that psycho Kang Tae-ik was harassing me, I made it as far as the nearest convenience store. Everything was already cleaned out, though. So I gave up."
That had been me cleaning it out. No need to mention that now.
"Really? Unexpected."
"I may not look it, but I've got some guts. Of course, if I'd really had courage, I would've left the building entirely to get away from Kang Tae-ik — but I couldn't bring myself to go that far."
She grinned and linked her arm through mine.
"But thanks to not leaving, I met you. So not having courage actually worked out!"
"You freeloader."
"What? How am I a freeloader!"
"You glutton."
I ignored her complaints and kept scrolling through the chat. But Park Chang-ho, who usually showed up constantly, was nowhere to be seen.
I wondered if maybe he'd found a woman or something — then I scrolled down and got my answer immediately.
The second Im Na-eun said her food was gone, Park Chang-ho made his move. Under normal circumstances she never would have given a proposal like that a second glance — but maybe she was already at her mental limit.
"Ooh~ look at him go~"
An Ga-hee, reading the chat beside me, snickered.
The conversation cut off there for a while. Kim Woo-hyun kept begging, but it was pure noise.
Two more days passed, and Park Chang-ho uploaded a photo — him with his arm around Im Na-eun's shoulders, groping her chest.
"Ugh. Disgusting."
Park Chang-ho was grinning like an idiot, and Im Na-eun's forced smile was something else.
After that, instead of messages, the chat filled up with nothing but Park Chang-ho's photos.
Him kissing Im Na-eun while looking at the camera. Her chest fully exposed. Even photos of them having sex.
Like he was working through every last bit of resentment from a lifetime of never getting laid.
He even uploaded a video.
The funny part was that the number of people reading the messages steadily dropped. Someone was probably using them as jack-off material.
I kept scrolling through the photos. And the moment I finally reached the end of the chat, I couldn't help but be a little shocked.
"Holy shit, this psycho..."
An Ga-hee muttered under her breath too. So-hye, just finishing the dishes, came over to us.
"What is it? What's going on?"
Instead of answering, I turned the phone so she could see the screen. She clapped a hand over her mouth.
"Urgh..."
So-hye was already used to corpses, but that reaction still made sense. After all, what Park Chang-ho had posted was a photo of a person hacked to pieces.
lol Kim Woo-hyun, cut~
That was the last message he'd left.