Pseudo-Cult Leader in the Apocalypse — Prologue: Hanmaum Apartment, Juan 8-dong, Incheon, South Korea

The world is unfair.

Unfair from a distance, sure…

But up close, it's an even better joke.

Once again the front pages were stuffed with the dirty laundry of the "people above," and I clicked the topmost headline of the day.

Since it was already ranked number one, no matter how far I scrolled the comments just kept coming.

Not a single one mourning the death of social justice — only envy and spite. Selfish borders carved by the winners. A promised land no amount of struggle would ever let you enter.

Those of us who never got an invitation had nothing to do but bark at them through keyboards that cost them absolutely nothing.

Part of me honestly wished the world would just end.

Granted, in a profoundly selfish way — not a Fallout-style extinction-event apocalypse, but ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a soft one, like a zombie apocalypse, where the infrastructure and the bones of society lingered just enough.

'Fuck, at least let the fantasy make sense,' I thought.

It was a thought that made me laugh hollowly at myself.

But so what? Thinking's free, isn't it?

My eyes, long since adjusted to the dark, winced. The morning sunlight kept interfering with my screen-gazing.

It was already time to sleep.

I'd grinded out every daily quest in the RPG I was funneling my money and my life into, and somehow that had swallowed the whole night. As if I'd actually accomplished anything.

'…Not that any other day would've been different.'

Scratching my head, I switched off the computer and collapsed into bed.

I picked up my fully charged phone and binged the web novels updated that day, feeling sleep gradually pull my eyelids down.

After double-checking the alarms set on my phone, I laid it beside my pillow and shut my eyes.

My brain, still tangled in the words I'd been so eagerly reading, went on filling the black behind my eyelids with every color of imagination.

Academy settings. Apocalypses. Fantasy. Murim.

The rise-and-fall sagas of protagonists whose tomorrows brimmed with excitement.

What would be waiting for me when I woke up?

'Waiting for me? Nothing but the scowling face of that orc-looking hag chewing me out for showing up ten minutes before my shift.'

Convenience store shift, home, gaming.

Convenience store shift again, home, gaming again.

Tomorrow held absolutely nothing to look forward to.

Maybe, all jokes aside, the end of the world really was the only salvation I had left.

Looked at a certain way, it was the classic melodrama villain's creed: if I can't have it, I'll destroy it.

Of course, naturally, I had neither the strength nor the ability to destroy anything.

In the middle of that pointless fantasy about smashing things to pieces, for no particular reason, I remembered an army senior of mine who used to grin and declare that civil engineering gets its renaissance twice.

Once around the Korean War.

And once more after whatever next war eventually came.

Whether Seoul lay in rubble, or Pyongyang crumbled — for civil engineering, wouldn't that be a boom? So went the joke.

His booming voice rang in my ears again: wild extrapolation, sure, but tell me it's wrong.

The me of back then had sneered inwardly — leave it to some no-name degree mill guy to spout nonsense like that.

But the truth is, I know.

I know he was a better human being than I am.

While I did absolutely nothing after my discharge except game, he studied. Graduated. Got a job.

The proud shot of his employee ID on his KakaoTalk profile proved it, the one I'd glance at from time to time.

And even after seeing it, I'd calmly gone right back to my mouse.

There's a misconception people like to hold onto.

The common wisdom says so-called losers simply lack a proper "grasp of their own station in life."

But me?

Nobody on earth understood me better than I did.

Twenty-seven years old.

Gaming all day, every day.

And still, a perfectly ordinary loser wishing his perfectly ordinary days were anything but.

"Ah, so seriously, when's the apocalypse actually coming…"

I knew full well it was a twisted wish.

I knew perfectly well that even if the disaster I longed for arrived, my odds of surviving it weren't exactly stellar.

That even in a world like that, hierarchy would absolutely exist — and that I'd be branded even more unmistakably than I was now.

That the ones occupying the top of that new pyramid would climb it on the foundations they'd already built.

But so what?

Even in the crudest sense, chanting prayers for that world to come wouldn't make it come.

I was just thinking it, silently, in my own head. Just thinking.

'Secure weapons first. Then food and water. And above all, secure women.'

Just my daily cycle.

A little gloomy. A little dark.

Maybe it was because I was the type who had to stack alarms five deep just to crawl out of sleep once I went under — or maybe it was someone's payback for all my sordid imaginings — but the fact remains:

I never heard the emergency alerts that began shrieking from my phone, endlessly, one after another.

Thud— thud— thud—

"Ugh… fuck. …What the hell?"

I scrubbed furiously at my sleep-glued eyes at the sound of the dull impacts.

The room was still bright, so it had to be afternoon at the latest.

Wait, I barely slept at all, didn't I?

Fuck. What is it this time?

A delivery?

Except it could never be a delivery for me.

For someone who'd gone all-in on in-game data shards, real-world items were pure luxury. Whatever daily necessities I needed, I scrounged from the convenience store I worked at.

But then, it couldn't be the next-door neighbor's delivery either.

'Obviously. That unit's been empty for a year. Forget deliveries — what the hell is that?'

Thud— thud— thud—

The impacts kept coming at metronome intervals, as if to drag me back out of my wandering thoughts.

A dull sound, but with a metallic ring to it — someone had to be knocking on my iron door.

"You've got to be kidding. Who knocks on the door when there's an intercom? What a weirdo."

I reached for the phone beside my pillow to check the exact time.

"…Huh?"

It wouldn't turn on.

Nothing but a dead black screen. I held down the power button, then smacked it a little harder, but the translucent black surface kept doing nothing except mirror my own face back at me.

Only then did a strange chill race down my spine.

It was quiet.

No — quiet didn't cover it, seeing as I'd been woken by noise, but truly, it was silent.

Thud— thud— thud—

Apart from that steady, rhythmic pounding, there wasn't a single sound to be heard.

Thanks to the garbage soundproofing, I used to hear the neighborhood aunties' chatter every afternoon. The engines and horns of cars pulling into the parking lot. All the countless sounds of society churning on, filling the world — none of it was there.

My body felt wrong too. I hadn't noticed right after waking, but I was heavy and sluggish, aching all over.

And I knew exactly when this feeling happened.

"Don't tell me… I slept a full twenty-four hours?"

Thud— thud— thud—

Whatever the case, deal with the person first.

Delivery guy or postal worker, whoever it was had patience and persistence to the point of absurdity.

"Hello! I didn't order anything! There's nothing for me to sign for!"

BANG— BANG— BANG—

The moment I shouted, the knocking on the iron door grew harder in answer.

"…Huh?"

At this point, not noticing something was off would've been stranger.

Three translucent sentences, floating right before my eyes.

The instant I understood them, I sprinted for the kitchen.

This development. This situation.

It was impossibly alien — and yet, above all else, familiar.

In the cramped kitchen I grabbed the only kitchen knife, then hurriedly hunted down the handle of the mop I'd left standing carelessly in the bathroom.

BANG— BANG— BANG— BANG—

Shrieeeeeek!

Only after registering the situation did the voice-scraping wail lurking behind the pounding come through, sharp and clear.

There was no time to freeze up.

I dug the green tape out of the shoe cabinet drawer and began binding the kitchen knife to the mop handle with all my strength so they wouldn't come apart.

Zzip— zzip—

BANG— BANG— BANG—

Amid that disharmonic medley, I tore the tape off with my teeth, hefted the hastily improvised "spear" in the most comfortable grip I could manage, yanked on my sneakers, and undid the lock on the front door.

Despite having heard it only a few times, I was already used to the rhythm of the impacts. I waited for the moment I wanted —

Head, hand, whatever it was, striking the iron door and pulling back—

Thud— thud—

Now.

Thud—

The exact same sound someone had been making over and over.

Except the crucial difference was — this one was mine.

I kicked the barely-opened door wide open and burst out into the hallway.

Whump—

The sound of flesh getting crushed, and a figure collapsing in a flailing heap.

"Shrieeeeeek!"

Not a person. A zombie.

A complete stranger — a middle-aged man in a business suit.

A situation where someone had just been kicked down by a door because I'd knocked on it ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠a little too hard.

If not for the chewed-away right cheek and the rotten blood ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠streaming down his forehead from all his endless knocking on the iron door, this would obviously have been a moment for me to apologize, right here and now.

That was the unspoken foundation of the society I'd grown up in.

"Fuck! What are you looking at!"

With a curse equal parts terror and exhilaration, I stomped down on the chest of the groaning old man whose head was lolling toward me.

I still had no idea how strong I was now, whether I could run, or how the infection even spread — but one thing mattered.

After the knockdown, the initiative was mine.

Pinning his chest under my left foot just as he tried to writhe free, I drove the spear straight into that skull that had been struggling so hard to shrink its range of resistance.

Clang—

The kitchen knife passed through his skull like it was slicing tofu, and rang off the cement.

I stared down at the zombie — whose fish-like thrashing had stopped in an instant — then hurriedly summoned the translucent screen.

Why this was suddenly happening. Whether the first thing I'd ever killed was a person, or a zombie.

None of it mattered.

There was exactly one thing this development, and my actions within it, were meant ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠to produce:

"First achievement! I got the first achievement, didn't I?!"

Ding!

"YESSS! YESSS! YESSS! Fuck! Let's go!"

A shout of triumph burst out of me along with a clenched fist.

"Status window!"

Shrieeeeek—

Another howl, rising even as I scanned the status window.

Looking down over the railing, I saw zombies crowding toward my building, drawn to the racket I'd made.

Well, fair enough. I'd screamed my head off and raised all sorts of hell — it would've been weirder if things stayed quiet.

This was a zombie apocalypse, after all.

Zombies packed shoulder to shoulder at the entrance, and more sprinting in at full speed to join the horde.

And among them, naturally, not a single living human being.

High noon, the sun hanging dead center in the sky.

Was the sunlight that every human being was once entitled to now a reward that had to be wrung from a struggle against some other kind of existence?

"Fuck, how many points is all of that?"

A world in which humanity was no longer the ruler of the earth, the crown of all creation.

It was the end of the world.

And the beginning of my salvation.