A Catfight Between Wife and Concubine
"Oppa, all of these bottles have already been opened."
Minji, who rarely voiced her own opinions, was actually speaking up for once.
And yet this bitch is still calling me "Oppa" instead of "Master."
"Huh, you're right. What should we do? Do you think they filled these with tap water?"
Well, it wasn't a big deal, so I just gave her a half-hearted answer. It had been seventy-two hours since the blast. Even if the water from the rooftop tank was fine for washing, was it actually safe to drink? In times like this, I needed to summon Juho-emon!
"Jihye, deploy! Go bring me Juho-emon!"
Jihye looked at me like I was a complete idiot, but I didn't care. No matter how my fucktoy looked at me, it didn't change the fact that she was my fucktoy.
A moment later, Jihye dragged Juho in.
"The water bottles have indeed been opened."
I know that, you dumbass. Just hurry up and tell me if we can drink it.
"If it were me, I'd use it for showering or laundry, but I wouldn't drink it or use it for cooking. Ingesting it causes internal radiation exposure, which does far more severe damage. Plus, it lingers in the body long-term, making it even worse."
Damn it. Then why the hell did I kill those four people? No, that was just unavoidable collateral damage. In this apocalypse, as a descendant of Bak Hyeokgeose, I had a sacred duty to rebuild Saro-guk. It was only natural for a few minor casualties to occur in the pursuit of such a divine calling.
"What if we move our plans up by a day and raid the first-floor convenience store today?"
"If I were you, I'd hold out for one more day without water. Have you heard of the 'Rule of Threes' for survival? Three minutes without air, three days without water, three weeks without food. Since we drank water yesterday, we won't die even if we don't drink anything today and tomorrow."
Hold out for another day like this? Ha! Well, there was no helping it. I'd just have to lie in bed and do absolutely nothing until sunrise tomorrow.
I headed back to Minji's room with her. I sent Jihye off to lock Juho back up in his chains.
Minji's mother was lying on Minji's bed.
"Mother-in-law, move aside. I'm lying down."
Minji's mother scooted over to one side of the bed.
"No, I mean get off the bed. I'm lying down with Minji."
Minji's mother turned her face away so I couldn't see it and silently walked into the bathroom.
Sniff... sob... hic... She was crying again. Whew. How annoying. It wasn't even cute when an old hag did it, unlike a young girl like Minji. It made me want to smack her. Let's hold back. Whew.
I was just as mentally exhausted as I was annoyed, so I simply pulled Minji—who felt like a small pet—into my arms and lay on the bed, letting my mind go blank. As I mindlessly fondled her small breasts, which reminded me of my mother's, memories of my childhood began to drift back to me... or maybe they didn't.
When I was little, my mother taught me how to ride a bicycle, didn't she?
A four-wheeled bicycle—no, a two-wheeled bicycle with training wheels—that she bought me as a gift for my ninth birthday in November.
It was my birthday, but for my mother, it was also around the anniversary of the death of her mother, her only family.
My grandmother, who had struggled to raise my mother alone as a single parent, discovered that her precious, only daughter had been knocked up through rape. To make matters worse, the rapist was one of the school bullies who had tormented my mother throughout her entire senior year of high school.
My grandmother had gone to the rapist's house to demand justice, but his family belonged to the Seorabeol-pa, a gang syndicate that ruled Suwon and Yongin, and his father was the boss.
Kicked out after suffering nothing but humiliation, my grandmother couldn't bear the shame and committed suicide.
And then, after New Year's Day passed and I turned ten, on the very day I finally took the training wheels off my bike, my mother rejoiced, saying I could finally stand on my own. But that night, she must have lost her mind. She tried to strangle me to death, and in the end, she committed suicide alone.
I still don't understand it to this day.
Thinking about it only pissed me off, so I tried to empty my mind by continuing to squeeze Minji's tits.
Saturday, March 26th.
Perhaps because he had fallen asleep so late the night before, Park Doyoung was dead to the world even though morning had arrived. Minji's officetel was as peaceful as ever. Jihye was wearing a white dress, while Minji was dressed in shorts and a short-sleeved shirt. Yejeong looked completely out of it, staring blankly at the floor from a corner of the kitchen.
Bored, Jihye leaned down toward the petite Minji, intending to grope her breasts as she usually did. Minji remained perfectly still until Jihye was within thirty centimeters of her.
The moment Jihye's hand reached out and crossed that thirty-centimeter threshold, Minji's right elbow suddenly whipped upward in a sharp diagonal arc from bottom-right to top-left, aiming straight for Jihye's jaw.
Whether Minji had used her Presence Erasing (Stealth) skill or Jihye had simply let her guard down, Jihye reacted a split second too late as she tried to leap backward. Instinctively, Jihye tucked her chin and raised her shoulder to protect her neck. Minji's elbow chased Jihye's jaw, but unfortunately, it only grazed the tip of her nose.
A torrent of blood suddenly sprayed from Jihye's nose like a waterfall, instantly sending her into a rage.
"You fucking..."
She was about to spit out a curse, but she stopped herself. Instead, she rushed over to the sleeping Park Doyoung and clung to him.
"Waaah! Husband! Minji hit me!"
Doyoung, jolted awake, was utterly bewildered.
"Huh? What? Let me see. Are you hurt anywhere?"
"I think my nose is broken! It's gushing blood!"
"That won't do! Your face is your most important asset! Let me look!"
Doyoung carefully examined and felt Jihye's nose.
"Thank goodness. It's not broken. We don't have a doctor, so that would've been a disaster. Pinch your nose and the bleeding should stop soon. Just wait."
"Hmph... Husband, aren't you going to punish Minji?"
"Minji, why did you hit Jihye?"
"You never helped me when Jihye bullied me before! I only fought back once, and now it's my fault?"
"Minji, I asked you a question. All you have to do is answer. Why did you hit her?"
"I told you. She torments me every single day, so I finally fought back."
"And who said you could speak casually to Husband? Your tone is getting pretty insolent, isn't it?"
"Who's my husband? You're just a rapist."
"Didn't I tell you yesterday that you're only allowed to wear knee-length skirts or shorter from now on? Do my words mean nothing to you?"
"Why should I?" Minji took a combat stance.
"Ha, seriously. Treat people nicely and they immediately try to climb all over you. This is why I hate humans and only like animals. Ajumma Yejeong, what do you think? Should I kill this bitch, or should I demote her to a slave?"
"Son-in-law Park, wait a moment. Let me talk to Minji. As you know, Minji was bullied a lot by Jihye back in school, so she's just angry right now. Once she cools down, she'll go back to normal."
Yejeong took Minji by the hand and led her out of the room.
Sigh, what a mess first thing in the morning.
I woke up to find Jihye's white dress covered in blood, and Minji suddenly losing her mind, speaking casually to me, and trying to pick a fight. Did Minji not understand why Jihye, who was stronger than me, chose to remain my woman instead of fighting me? Once the Brand was engraved, what could she possibly do about it anyway?
"Waaah..."
As I was thinking, the soft female body squirming in my arms kept crying, so I couldn't just ignore her.
"Jihye, stop crying! Didn't I just scold Minji? And honestly, you were in the wrong too. Minji is the primary wife, but you kept calling her a 'camping beggar' and a 'cafeteria lady,' constantly looking down on her and her mother. If someone looked at your mother and said, 'Man, that sexy Jeonga is so hot, I want to fuck her brains out,' would you be able to take that?"
Jihye, perhaps because she had just heard something utterly absurd, suddenly stopped crying.
"Oh? Jihye stopped crying. You know they say if you laugh while crying, hair grows on your asshole?"
At my words, Jihye stopped crying completely and just buried her face in my chest so I couldn't see it. By the way, why did she wear a white dress when we couldn't even use the washing machine? I had never even seen her wear a dress before.
"Jihye, that blood is going to stain. Let's wash it quickly. We brought back plenty of tap water yesterday, so we can do laundry!"
I had to make sure the lives of the four people who died yesterday weren't in vain by putting that water to good use. Jihye seemed happy as we washed her dress together. Was she in a better mood now that her clothes were getting clean? I also felt good watching the blood-stained fabric turn white again. It was hard to get the stain out completely, but in an apocalypse, even this much was something to be grateful for.
While I was doing the laundry with Jihye, Minji's mother brought Jeong Minji back in. Minji frowned slightly when she saw Jihye with me, but her expression quickly softened.
"I'm sorry about earlier. I was bullied for a whole year, and when she kept ignoring and tormenting my mother and me here too, I just snapped."
"I understand completely, Minji. Actually, my mother was victimized by bullies when she was in high school, so I hate those kinds of people too. I wasn't angry because you fought Jihye; I was angry because you disrespected me. You're a woman, and shouldn't a woman respect her husband like the heavens?"
"Yes, I understand, Oppa. I'll be careful from now on."
Minji returned to being a demure, dutiful wife. Beside her, Yejeong also smiled brightly, looking beautiful and relieved.
"Yejeong—I mean, Mother-in-law. Come over here."
Curious about how Yejeong had managed to convince Minji, I called her over.
"What is it, Son-in-law Park?" Yejeong asked, walking over to my side with a puzzled look.
"What on earth did you say to convince her so easily? Just a moment ago, she looked ready to throw a punch at me too."
"Oh, it was nothing special. I just told her that a woman's fate depends entirely on how much she is loved by her man. Besides, the world isn't what it used to be, is it? In the past, a woman could get a divorce and live perfectly fine on her own, but..."
She was absolutely right. The world was different now. Of course, Awakened individuals like Minji and Jihye could probably survive on their own, but they were bound by my Brand trait and couldn't leave me. As for ordinary people like Yejeong, this was an era where they couldn't even guarantee their survival or basic human dignity unless they leaned on a strong man. Otherwise, they'd be raped and murdered by bandits, have all their belongings looted, or be captured by men to spend the rest of their days as sex slaves.