Bracing for the Fallout
Now, we had to go door-to-door to warn everyone to seal their windows and ventilation shafts. I grabbed a notepad and a pen just in case I needed to write anything down. I decided to bring Jihye along—she was the most reliable, and her police uniform would make people trust us. I also took Minji, whose small, cute appearance would keep people from letting their guard down. Even though Minji hadn't awakened a special ability like Jihye yet, she was still an Awakener. Once she raised her stats, she'd become a monster in no time.
We started with Room 201. Jihye pressed the intercom, but the power was out, so it didn't work. Left with no choice, I knocked on the door with my fist.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
"Police! Open up!"
Perhaps because it was a woman's voice, the door cracked open without much hesitation. A petite, middle-aged woman about Minji's height stepped out. Our officetel didn't have peepholes, so with the power out, residents had to rely entirely on voices to judge who was outside. Judging by her messy clothes and smudged makeup, she looked like she'd just been caught cheating and kicked out by her husband.
"What is it?" the woman asked, her tone laced with irritation.
For a split second, I thought, Should I just kill her? But I didn't have time to waste on a woman like this. I had thirty-seven more apartments to visit before the fallout hit!
"You saw the nuclear explosion earlier today, right?" I said. "If you don't take precautions now, the fallout will sweep in, and the radiation will kill everyone. We're here to tell you to seal the window frames in your boiler room and bedrooms, as well as the vents in your kitchen and bathroom. For the window frames, it's best to use thick, sturdy duct tape or heavy-duty cloth tape rather than regular box tape. If you don't have anything else, layer the box tape several times to seal it."
"I don't even have box tape," she grumbled.
The woman replied petulantly. So what? Am I supposed to care?
"We have to go around and notify every household first. Once we've finished checking up to Room 510, we'll lend you some. Jihye, write that down in the notepad."
Thanks to Jihye wearing her police uniform, people were still relatively cooperative. At least they were opening their doors!
No one answered when we knocked on Room 202, so I noted it down as vacant. It was probably empty, or maybe the tenant had gone up to Seoul to meet some guy for the weekend and got vaporized by the nuke. Good riddance!
Room 203 was also unresponsive.
We tried Room 204, but there was no answer there either. There couldn't possibly be this many empty apartments. I'd have to do another sweep after we finished up to Room 510.
The tenant of Room 205 was a heavily built woman. She was about Jihye's height, but her build made her look like a textbook radical feminist. Maybe because she was a woman who had never served in the military, she couldn't comprehend basic instructions and kept babbling nonsense. This is exactly why people say you need to go to the military to act like a proper human being. I was technically exempt from service as an orphan, but I volunteered for the non-commissioned officer track anyway! Though I ended up dropping out halfway through because of a trash instructor and useless peers.
Actually, I wasn't really an orphan—only on paper. My mother committed suicide when I was ten. My grandmother, who had raised my mother alone as a single parent, also killed herself after finding out her precious daughter had been knocked up by a subhuman piece of trash. My biological father was a thug who used to torment my mother. My grandfather was the president of a private security firm called Seorabeol Security, and my great-grandfather was a mobster in the Seorabeol-pa, a gang based in Suwon and Yongin. That's why I was so surprised that Minji was still a virgin despite being bullied, though I suppose it was only possible because she went to an all-girls high school.
When I was a kid, my mother seemed so big, but looking back now that I'm grown, she was probably about Minji's size. I only ever saw my grandmother in photos, so I couldn't really tell. Looking at Juho, I felt a strange sense of familiarity. I also had to pay my own way through college, which is why I only completed my freshman year. Coincidentally, we even went to the same school, Suah University. I majored in the useless humanities, which completely ruined my job prospects. Well, is business administration really considered humanities? The tuition was expensive, and it didn't guarantee a job like engineering did, so I just dropped out. If I had gone to engineering school instead, maybe I would have actually graduated.
Maybe I'll go pay my biological father a visit sometime in the future.
Room 206 was empty.
A well-built man stepped out of Room 207. His frame was massive. He had naturally broad shoulders, packed with dense muscles that looked like they were forged from years of day labor. If we got into a fight, even as an Awakener, subduing him wouldn't be easy. Fortunately, since I was with Jihye in her police uniform, even a guy like him cooperated without a fuss.
Room 208 was empty.
We went through the third and fourth floors in the exact same manner.
On the fifth floor, we checked Rooms 501 through 503. Room 502 seemed empty. Then, we knocked on the door of Room 504.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
"Police."
"What's going on?" a voice called out.
It was the Cat Mom Grandmother, whom I often ran into back when I used to feed stray cats.
"You know a nuclear war broke out, right?" I asked. "Earlier, when the light flashed, the ground shook, and the windows rattled like they were going to shatter."
"Of course I know. Is our young man here helping out the police lady? I always knew you were a good lad, seeing how you'd feed the stray kitties and doggies."
The grandmother must have picked up some bizarre internet slang from her online cat forums. But strangely, she looked younger than usual. She used to look like she was in her seventies, but now she looked like she was in her sixties.
"Make sure to seal your windows with cloth tape," I instructed. "Cover the vents with plastic wrap first, then tape them shut."
After finishing up to Room 510, we circled back to the second floor to recheck the apartments marked as vacant. This time, a scrawny guy who looked like a college student stepped out of Room 204. I'd seen him around before and had wondered where he was.
"You didn't answer when we knocked earlier. What were you doing?" I asked.
"Things were so chaotic outside, I didn't know if it was a robber or something. But when I saw you going around to the neighboring units and the upper floors, I figured you weren't robbers."
He was a cautious bastard, just like Minji's father. I needed to keep an eye on him.
For the apartments confirmed to be vacant, we sealed all four edges of their front doors with duct tape and cloth tape to prevent any fallout from leaking through the gaps.
By the time we finally finished everything and returned to Minji's room, it was around 4:00 PM. Gathered in the room were myself, Minji's family—Kim Yejeong, Jeong Juho, and Jeong Hyeonguk—and Jihye's parents. Yejeong, Juho, and Hyeonguk were still handcuffed, chained, and padlocked to the iron frame of Minji's bed.
"Juho, what should we do next? Any other precautions we need to take?"
"First of all, Hyung... you're older than me, right?"
"I'm twenty-five."
"Right. Well, Hyung, how much food and drinking water do you have at your place?"
"I hate going out to buy things individually, so I usually order in bulk and stockpile it. For long-term storage, I have instant ramen, retort pouches, and bottled water."
"Could you unlock me first? I think I need to check the quantities myself."
I unchained Juho, and we headed over to my apartment. Juho inspected the boxes of ramen, bottled water, and retort pouches stacked in the corner of my room, then opened the refrigerator to check the groceries.
"It's a decent amount for one person, but with our current head count, we'll burn through it in no time. Check if your gas stove works. Minji's place has an electric cooktop."
I tried turning on my gas stove, but nothing came out.
"The city gas is cut off."
"As expected," Juho said. "The electric cooktop won't work either since the power is out. At least we have the portable gas burner and butane canisters we salvaged from the camper van, so we can boil ramen. But water is a much bigger issue than food right now. There's barely anything to eat in Minji's apartment, and we have eight people here. The camper van couldn't carry too much water and food either, since overloading it would have killed the fuel efficiency."
My brother-in-law was sounding surprisingly like an expert. We headed back to Minji's apartment next door.
Juho addressed the group.
"We taped up the water tank room, but because of the pressure valves, there are small gaps, so it's not completely airtight. That means for the next seventy-two hours—until the radiation levels drop significantly—we can't use tap water at all. Any washing or cooking has to be done strictly with bottled water. Since our supply is limited, no one is allowed to wash for the next seventy-two hours, and we must ration our drinking water to the absolute minimum. Remember, there are eight of us."
Once my brother-in-law finished his spiel, I turned to Jihye.
"Jihye, don't you think it's about time you introduced your parents?"
"Ah, right."
Jihye gestured toward her mother.
"This is my mother, Mrs. Lee Jeonga. She's forty. And over there is my dad, Choi Jihun. He's forty-three. My mom is a housewife, and my dad is just an ordinary office worker."
"Are your parents college classmates by any chance?"
"Yes! How did you know?"
My hunch was spot on. Since Jihye was twenty-one, her dad must have been a returning student fresh out of the military who knocked up a freshman. Classic.
"Was it Suah University?"
"Not Suah University, but Sudo University's Suwon Campus."
So they weren't my alumni like Juho.
Excluding Minji's father—who was completely untrustworthy due to the burning hatred he harbored for me after I took his women—I mobilized both families to move all the food, water, and refrigerated ingredients from my apartment to Minji's room. I personally carried the heavy items: the sledgehammer, crowbar, fire axe, Hwando, traditional bow, and twenty arrows. I kept my tactical dagger—which looked almost identical to a military bayonet but had its blade shortened to 14cm to bypass weapon laws as a "camping knife"—tucked securely on my person. The crossbow and bolts we had looted from the camper van had already been moved to Minji's place earlier.
Juho and Yejeong were forced to carry the supplies while still handcuffed.
I also made sure to move any tools that could potentially be used to pick or cut handcuffs and padlocks over to Minji's apartment, keeping them under my direct supervision.
By the time we finished moving everything, it was around 5:00 PM. Looking out the window, the air outside had turned a hazy, murky gray.
"Is that the fallout?"
I asked Juho.
"Yes, that's it. From now on, we have to stay as quiet as mice until the radiation levels drop. We can't use the water tank at all for the next seventy-two hours. Use bottled water for drinking and cooking, and only use the tank water to flush the toilet."
He was repeating himself, but I supposed that only emphasized how critical it was.
"Also, we need to ration and eat seaweed. Seaweed is rich in iodine, which prevents radioactive iodine from accumulating in our thyroids."
I actually had a decent stash of dried seaweed—a staple for any bachelor. It was great for quick meals and had a long shelf life.
"How do you know more about this than me? I'm the one who actually reads nuclear apocalypse novels."
"It's just my personality. I can't rest until I research and understand things myself. That's why I became an engineering student."
I guess that's the difference between an engineering major and a humanities dropout like me, who can't apply anything in real life even with the same interests...
"Why is there a metallic, bloody taste in my mouth? Like I'm licking a coin. And I've been smelling something burning since this afternoon."
"That's because gamma rays are converting the oxygen in the air into ozone, and the radiation is ionizing the moisture inside your mouth."