The Second Coming (2)
The Second Coming (2) — Guro-gu Safe Zone, Seoul
Kim Jiho tossed and turned on the unfamiliar bed. Maybe it was the nap he'd taken earlier, or maybe it was what he'd witnessed, but sleep refused to come.
'Did you enjoy the safety I gave you?'
In his muddled, half-lucid state, only that man's words kept ringing in his ears. The man's eyes remained vivid in his memory — not the beam of a flashlight, but a radiance that glowed all on its own. He had uttered just that one meaningful remark, then turned his gaze back to the zombies beyond the glass window. He kept watching them, all the way until the two of them backed away and climbed back upstairs.
Du-du-du-du-du—
"Keeeeeeaaagh—!"
The endless pounding of feet and roaring cries seemed to testify that this situation was no dream. With the illusion that the whole building was shaking, Kim Jiho stared up at the pitch-black ceiling. Sinking into the darkness, his thoughts slowly settling, he gave up on trying to sleep.
No — he couldn't sleep. He was frightened right now, and he was lonely.
'...So this is what lonely feels like.'
Until just yesterday, romance and having a girlfriend hadn't seemed all that desperate to him. The occasional check-in calls from his parents had sometimes felt like a chore. A can of beer lightly enjoyed after work, and a movie replaying until the beer itself seemed to go flat. He'd been the kind of man who thought aging like that wouldn't be so bad, as long as he had those things.
Kim Jiho had prided himself on being a man with a high tolerance for loneliness. But that tolerance had only been possible inside the busy, breathing machinery of society. In a void where everything had truly vanished, an unbearable loneliness came flooding in. Not even a full day had passed, yet he could feel that sharpness binding him down. It was the moment he finally understood why the man in Cast Away had needed to believe a volleyball was named Wilson.
"I've got my own Wilson, huh... Though mine's a raving cult-leader Wilson..."
Chuckling softly and shaking his head, Kim Jiho gathered up his blanket and pillow. He needed someone to share his anxiety with right now. Leaving his unit, he walked down the darkness-soaked hallway more slowly than he had before. When he'd been racing to catch up with Jiwoo, he hadn't noticed, but now the candlelight pushing back some of the stairwell's gloom caught his eye. Had the man set this up too?
Creeeak—
Reaching the first floor, Kim Jiho swept his gaze around first. The man he was looking for sat on a bench, staring out past the glass window.
Tap... tap...
At the footsteps echoing through the lobby, the man turned his head and studied him. Neither of them said a word. Until Kim Jiho spread his blanket carelessly on the floor, laid his head on the pillow, and lay down, the only soundtrack in the lobby was the zombies' roars.
"Keeeeeeaaagh—!"
The shrieks hammered at his ears far more clearly than they had inside his apartment, but the fear felt smaller, and the loneliness smaller too. Because someone was here with him.
Grrrrrumble—
Only then did his body, having settled one critical matter, voice its next demand.
"Ah..."
W-what? He didn't even feel that hungry yet...
Rubbing his rumbling stomach as if puzzled by it, Kim Jiho pushed himself up on one elbow.
"Eat."
A small can came flying at him as he lay there with his head ducked in embarrassment. He caught it easily, like a casual game of catch, and read the label.
'Tuna...'
This is going to be awful without rice.
Swallowing the small flicker of complaint, he popped the lid and dug a finger in. And the moment he brought the big chunk he'd scooped up to his mouth, he realized he'd been far hungrier than he'd thought. A savoriness and saltiness that nothing else could compare to. Just like the old proverb said — hunger really was the best sauce. Only after he'd scraped the can clean and sucked the oil from his fingers did his mind return to him. A rush of embarrassment crashed over him, and he secretly wiped his hand on the blanket as he glanced toward the bench where the man sat.
The man was gazing out the window, unblinking. Floating above his head were the flashlights — something one could feel just by looking. Something that belonged neither to the realm of science nor, apparently, to the realm of magic.
Curiosity spilled out of his throat before he could stop it.
"Um... excuse me, sir...?"
Creeeak—
As the man turned his head toward the question, both their eyes shifted at once toward the emergency exit. Startled to find guests already waiting, Jiwoo slowly joined them in the lobby.
"Eat."
A tuna can sailed just the same toward Jiwoo, who had spread her blanket a little apart from theirs. Fidgeting with the can, she seemed to be working up the nerve to say something to the man, a question rising and rising until it lodged in her throat — but he, utterly unmoved, had turned back to the window.
Click.
Finally, Jiwoo let out a small sigh, cracked the can open, and slid a finger in. One taste of the tuna and she was greedily going in for the next finger. Had he eaten that wretchedly too? Enduring this secondhand embarrassment, Kim Jiho turned his head to the window as well.
He thought he understood now why the man kept watching it.
Du-du-du-du-du-du—
It was the long migration of a herd, the kind you'd only see in a nature documentary. That procession felt so grand and mystifying that from a distance it might have been a herd of African buffalo on the move. But the man called those things zombies. And Kim Jiho wasn't ignorant of zombies either. No — the problem was that he knew them far too well. Zombies that had existed only in idle fantasies like those were now their predators, nightmares made undeniably real.
"Kgh—! Kgh—!"
Jiwoo must have swallowed too fast, because the tuna caught in her throat and she thumped her chest. The oil glistening on her lips made Kim Jiho instinctively furrow his brow. Unlike him, the man pulled two bottles of water out of thin air with practiced ease, and one sailed to each of them.
"......"
The bottles bobbed gently in the air before him — water out of nowhere was magic of an entirely different order from the flashlights. While he stood there gaping in silent shock, Jiwoo hurriedly twisted her cap off and gulped the water down. He picked up his own bottle too, but that only made the unease worse. Safety, food, and now even water. This unexplained, endless kindness had become terrifying.
"...Are you going to assault us?"
He wasn't the only one trembling at this kindness. At the question ringing desolately through the lobby, the man turned to look at Jiwoo.
"Shelter, food, even water... Why are you being this good to us?"
Her question was his own. Jiwoo's eyes, without a flicker of hesitation, were demanding an answer from the man. But he could see the arm she'd hidden under her blanket trembling violently. Kim Jiho understood: she was asking with some kind of resolve in place. The kind of resolve that meant offering yourself up like a lamb to the slaughter.
The raving pseudo-cult leader who'd been inexplicably kind to them spoke.
"Nothing."
He declared it solemnly.
"I ask nothing of you."
The question Jiwoo had asked with courage squeezed to its very limit sank straight back into the labyrinth. To the two of them, still tangled in confusion, he spoke again.
"A parent does not love a child on special conditions."
Here we go again.
Kim Jiho clutched his aching head and slowly lowered it onto his pillow. The exchange between Jiwoo and the man drifted to him on the edge of sleep.
"...If we don't believe in that religion of yours, do we get thrown out?"
"Not at all."
"I merely prove it. The fact that I am your parent."
"......"
Sleep that hadn't come even with all his struggling upstairs now washed over him like the tide. Through his flickering consciousness, the man's voice reached him, low and quiet.
"Sleep well. Today I fed your hunger. Tomorrow, I shall tend to your loneliness."
"Uuuuuugh—!"
Kim Jiho stretched his arms up high with a groan. His whole body ached, probably from sleeping on the hard floor. Along with brilliant morning sunlight, the second day since his rescue had dawned. Outside the window, not a single zombie shadow was to be seen, as if yesterday's horde had been nothing but a nightmare.
Looking around, he saw Jiwoo still asleep with her back turned, and the man watching the window in exactly the same posture as yesterday. 'At this point, isn't he basically a statue?' Clicking his tongue quietly, Kim Jiho tiptoed toward the bench where the man sat. On the empty spot beside him, two tuna cans and two bottles of water sat neatly in a row — presumably their breakfast.
"Th-thank you."
Clutching the cans and water to his chest with extreme care, Kim Jiho looked at him. Just as he'd declared yesterday, the man truly demanded nothing and sought no credit for any of it. And so Kim Jiho, like Jiwoo the day before, found the courage to speak. The question he'd buried deep in his chest slipped out of his mouth on its own.
"Um... sir?"
The man quietly met his eyes, as if to show he was listening. Gulp. Wetting his dry throat, Kim Jiho asked carefully.
"Did you, by any chance, become one of those superheroes from the movies? Because if so, everything that happened yesterday would make sense..."
The man tilted his head slightly and smiled at him. Taking that as a signal to keep talking, Kim Jiho raised his voice with confidence.
"If so, how did you become a hero? If you taught me, I could lend a hand too—"
"Kim Jiho."
The man cut him off and opened his mouth. His eyes, examining Kim Jiho from head to toe, flashed the way they had yesterday.
"You insist on taking the long way around, don't you. Kim Jiho of Fresian Apartment, who longs for the world he used to live in more than anything."
To Kim Jiho, who dared not answer in the face of that radiance he'd met once more, the man spoke again.
"Do you believe in God?"
"Excuse me? Ah — no."
"Why not?"
"B-because there obviously isn't one. Scientifically speaking..."
"So you demand proof."
"W-well, yes. Facts matter, in everything."
A debate had broken out out of nowhere. Kim Jiho's mind naturally began recalling all the rebuttals the man might fire back.
'Then what scientific phenomenon caused the zombies?'
'The city is sealed inside a dome, and you can move objects with a thought — what law covers that?'
...He had nothing to say to either. But the man didn't ask. Smiling gently, he offered an answer Kim Jiho never saw coming.
"I think so too, actually."
"...Sorry?"
Pointing a finger at himself with an expression of the deepest benevolence, the man said:
"Then let me toss you a parable, my friend. The story of a devout man and God."
And with the unhurried tone of a grandfather telling an old tale, he began.
A devout man fell into a swamp. When the water was already up to his waist, he saw a rescuer arrive, and the man called out: 'I'm fine! My faith is strong — God will save me!'
When he had sunk to his shoulders, the rescuer came again and offered to throw him a rope. And again the man declared: 'No need, sir! My faith is deep — God will save me!'
Before long, only the man's head remained above the mud. The rescuer came running once more, and the man shouted, brimming with confidence: 'I told you I'm fine! My faith is strong — God will save me!'
The rescuer pressed him no further and withdrew. The man died, and stood before God.
The man asked Him: 'Lord, why did You abandon a man of such faith?'
And what do you suppose God answered?
God —
Kim Jiho could find no answer. The man, seemingly expecting none, calmly waved three fingers in the air. Kim Jiho's pupils swayed, following them.
"One will shout in triumph: 'Behold! God does not exist!' But he is wrong."
The man folded down one finger. Waving the remaining two, he spoke again.
"Another will pray, moved to tears: 'Ah— so this is how God works through men!' But he is wrong as well."
He folded the second finger too. One finger remained — a single one, standing alone.
"Only one truth can be drawn from this, Kim Jiho. Salvation is not all that special."
Light descending from the heavens and seas parting — that is not salvation. The man in the swamp had been given three salvations, in the form of rescuers. And the same held true for Kim Jiho.
"You insist on taking the long way around. What do you hope to seize with power? A comfortable home? Food to fill your empty belly?"
The man pointed at him and smiled.
"You already have all of those."
And that, precisely, was salvation.
The man brushed lightly past Kim Jiho, frozen stiff as he was, opened the door, and abruptly vanished somewhere. Hours later, he returned bringing people much like themselves. They repeated, word for word, what Jiwoo and Kim Jiho had done — staggering upstairs, screaming at the horde of zombies that appeared without warning, bedding down together in the lobby. And filling their empty stomachs with the food the man provided.
The people kept growing in number. Watching them fill half the lobby, Kim Jiho looked at the man as if waking from a dream. Just then, the man — who had been watching him all along — met his eyes. He smiled at him, bright and warm.
In that radiant smile, his heart, churning without pause, found the shape of one single word.
Salvation.
What the man was doing right now brought down no light from heaven and parted no seas. And yet—
It wasn't special. But it was unmistakably, undeniably,
salvation.