The World Is Like This?
“No way, how did that actually hit…?” Choi Hyun-woo looked down at the air rifle with a bewildered expression. He had calibrated the scope long ago. The house where the Jun-ho brothers had lived was surrounded by mountains, vacant lots, and an abandoned junkyard, and the nearest neighbors were over 50 meters away, so no one would notice the sound of an air rifle. However, calibrating a scope and firing in a real-world situation were two completely different things, especially when it was a “live combat” scenario.
Yet, in his very first real engagement, he had put a hole in the back of an Alpha’s head from over 100 meters away.
“Oppa! Look at that!” At Han Ah-reum’s startled voice, Choi Hyun-woo hurriedly turned his head. The zombies that had been under the control of the Alpha he just killed were contorting their bodies in a bizarre fashion, like squid drying on a hot grill.
“Ugh, seriously, what are they doing? They need to run! It’s so frustrating!” Han Ah-reum said, her voice a mix of frustration and pity. As she said, the man and woman who had been seconds away from being eaten alive or turning into zombies themselves were just standing there, panicking and not knowing what to do.
And that was, perhaps, to be expected. Even Choi Hyun-woo, who knew a fair amount about zombie characteristics and ecology thanks to the Golden Rule Note left behind by Jun-ho, was seeing an Alpha die and its slave zombies go into a defenseless state for the first time. It was obvious that the two of them, who had clearly just ventured outside for the first time today, had never seen an Alpha die or witnessed how slave zombies changed afterward.
“Oppa, what do we do about them?” Han Ah-reum didn't know what to do, as they couldn't exactly shout to help them.
“Just wait.” Choi Hyun-woo pressed his eye back against the scope.
Pew! Click. Pew! Click.
Like a sniper in the movie Saving Private Ryan, Choi Hyun-woo repeated the process of firing and reloading his bolt-action air rifle.
Pew! Click. Pew!
The slave zombies were moving so erratically that he missed quite a few, but in just over ten seconds, Choi Hyun-woo managed the incredible feat of landing headshots on four zombies. The two people, who weren't stupid enough to miss the fact that someone was shooting to help them despite the lack of sound, scrambled away in that brief window.
Gwaaaargh…!
Just as the regular zombies began to pour out from various parts of the apartment complex at the sound of their screams, the two people barely managed to duck into Building 101, where their home was. Only then did Choi Hyun-woo pull his face away from the scope and let out a long sigh.
“Huuu….”
“We survived! We actually survived, Oppa! Waaaaah!” Han Ah-reum, who had been a sports major and possessed great strength and stamina from eating well even after the apocalypse began, grabbed Choi Hyun-woo’s arm and shook it violently.
“Whoa, hey. Stop shaking me. What kind of girl has this much strength… Ugh!” Just then, Han Ah-reum hugged Choi Hyun-woo tightly from behind. He felt a heavy, soft sensation against his back. Choi Hyun-woo, still somewhat excited from his first successful kill of an Alpha and zombies using a firearm, felt his heart racing even faster.
However, he soon realized that he hadn't been able to wash for nearly three days while staying at the Integrated Control Center, and he hurriedly pulled away.
“Ugh, it’s hot. Get off.”
“Hehe, look at you being all shy. Choi Hyun-woo is so cute. Aigoo, you did so well, our Hyun-woo Hyun-woo.” Han Ah-reum chuckled and playfully patted his butt.
“Seriously! Do you want to die?”
“So cute. Heh.” Han Ah-reum gave a playful eye-smile to the horrified Choi Hyun-woo, then looked down at the apartment complex where the zombies were wandering back to their original spots, and said, “But Oppa, don’t you think it won’t be that hard to deal with zombies if there are no Alphas?”
“Yeah. I think so too.” Choi Hyun-woo kept his air rifle upright and continued looking at the same spot. “First of all, unlike in movies or dramas, there aren’t that many zombies wandering outside, right? Most of them are inside buildings, so if we move quietly, they won’t be able to hear us well.”
“True. Plus, their eyesight is bad.”
“Well, in a neighborhood like Bucheon where people are usually tripping over each other, that doesn’t mean much. But in the countryside where houses are sparse, the situation will be much better. Anyway, if it weren’t for those Alpha bastards, I don’t think the military would be so helpless against them… Huh?”
Just then, Choi Hyun-woo’s eyes widened as he looked at a spot in the sky, then he narrowed his gaze.
“Why? Why? What is it?”
“Over there, isn’t that an airplane?”
“An airplane?” Han Ah-reum looked in the direction he was pointing and immediately narrowed her eyes as well.
Vrooooom….
“Whoa? It really is.” Two large aircraft, which looked like transport planes rather than fighter jets, had flown in from the southwest and were just about to enter Bucheon airspace.
“Oh!?”
Soon, black dots began to rain down from the two planes. And at a certain point, they deployed parachutes and began to descend slowly.
“Pa, parachutes? It’s the military! Are they special forces?” Choi Hyun-woo was excited. As a former Marine, he had only done fast-roping from helicopters, but he knew enough to recognize that what he was seeing was a HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) jump. And he was well aware that soldiers performing HALO jumps were usually South Korea’s Tier 1 special forces.
“Special forces? Like the Black Berets?”
“I don’t know. But it’s certain they’re trained special forces. Oh? That….”
The parachutes landed in the areas around Gwanghak Mountain and Geoma Mountain, which divided Bucheon and Gwangmyeong. Some of them seemed to have miscalculated their direction or were pushed by high-altitude winds, heading toward the heart of Bucheon—the Jung-dong and Sang-dong areas, where the population density was highest. Seven or eight of the parachutes couldn't correct their course toward the mountains and eventually disappeared behind the apartments and high-rise buildings of Jung-dong and Sang-dong.
“Oh, what do we do. Those soldiers….” Choi Hyun-woo, who had been watching the city center where the parachutes had fallen with the same pitying eyes as Han Ah-reum, shook his head.
“No. They’ll be fine. They’re Tier 1 special forces. And Jun-ho Hyung-nim said something.”
“What did he say?”
“If those soldiers land on the rooftops of buildings, they’ll be safe. He said they wouldn’t just be safe, but they could actually take out a lot of the zombies in the vicinity.”
“Ehh? How?”
To Han Ah-reum, who was surprised and skeptical, Choi Hyun-woo replied with a look of firm conviction.
“The military must know by now that they have to use silencers if they want to take out zombies with guns. And they must also know the fact that they can manage if they just kill the Alphas.”
“Oh!”
“But there’s still a problem.”
“What is it…?”
Choi Hyun-woo turned his gaze to the spot where the corpse of the Alpha he had just killed lay and let out a deep sigh. “The problem is that there are hundreds of Alphas like that just in the city of Bucheon.”
Even though a large number of Tier 1 special forces had entered the area, hope was still not very high.
***
Snip, snip. As the scissors danced, long strands of hair fell to the floor. But Park Seon-hui was smiling as she looked at her reflection in the mirror, and the same went for Lee Chae-rin, who was cutting her hair.
“Wow, because your face is so small, it really suits you.”
“That’s just because you’re good at what you do.”
“Oh, stop. The pros at the salon would curse if they heard you.”
“No, they wouldn’t? I think your skills are better, Chae-rin.”
“Hehe. Thanks for saying that, even if you don’t mean it.” Lee Chae-rin, who smiled brightly, went back to cutting diligently. Park Seon-hui marveled as her hair, which had reached her back, was shortened to shoulder-length in real-time.
“Are you sure you only learned for half a year? And you even know how to do a bob cut?”
“Yup. I was a trainee for a really long time. Plus, I debuted a bit later than my peers. So, I studied hard at an academy just in case I didn’t make it as an idol. That’s why I can do simple cuts for both men and women.”
Among the Blossom members, who were all kind and easygoing, Lee Chae-rin, who was the same age and quite close to her, had a knack for “beauty.” It might seem like a useless skill in the apocalypse, but that was only for other survivors whose goal was survival hour by hour, day by day. As Jun-ho, the master of this place, had said, the goal of our shelter was to be able to do “everything.” In a situation where hair care was necessary once every month or two but was far from easy, Lee Chae-rin was an essential asset to the shelter.
“But did the others get their hair done?”
“Yeah. Ha-neul Unni was the first one. She’d been busy cutting everyone else’s hair that she hadn’t been able to do her own.”
Until now, Choi Ha-neul had been the one cutting hair with a single pair of clippers. Since she grew up in an orphanage, she had experience “trimming” her younger siblings’ hair since she was young. But because she couldn't do delicate work like styling, the men all ended up with buzz cuts or uneven hair, and the women either tied their hair in buns or just got short cuts like men. But Choi Ha-neul, who had been cutting everyone else’s hair like that, had just let her own hair grow for over half a year, and Lee Chae-rin had finally cut it into a decent style.
“She practically lives in the kitchen, you know. She was really worried about hair falling into the food, so she was so happy.”
“But hehe….”
“Why?” As Park Seon-hui blinked her large eyes, Lee Chae-rin curved her equally large eyes like half-moons and said, “Mr. Baek likes it even more than Ha-neul Unni! He was all like, ‘Why are you so pretty? You’re killing me!’”
“Hahaha… what is that? Ah, kuku!” Lee Chae-rin’s talent wasn’t just in beauty. She was very good at impressions, which had made her quite popular on variety shows, and Park Seon-hui, who was seeing her skill for the first time in a while, burst into laughter.
“The two of them look good together, right?”
“Yeah. So good. Oh, right. Sunny-Sunny, is it true that Su-a Unni and Jun-hyeok Oppa are dating…?” To Lee Chae-rin, who whispered as if it were a great secret, Park Seon-hui nodded slightly.
“Yeah. It’s been a few months. And you know what? They aren’t just dating.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“They’re going to get married.”
“Whaaat!? *Gasp.*” Lee Chae-rin, who had shouted without realizing it, hurriedly covered her mouth. She then checked the empty room and chattered like a machine gun. “Really? Really, really? They’re getting married? Aren’t Unni and Oppa only about twenty-five or twenty-six? But marriage? Besides… the world is like this?”
Lee Chae-rin’s last words contained many emotions. Park Seon-hui understood them well. She had thought the same thing when she first heard they were getting married. However.
“They say it’s more meaningful because it’s a world like this. And here… this is a place where you can do anything.”
“A place where you can do anything….” Park Seon-hui, who had relayed to Lee Chae-rin what Jun-ho had told the shelter family after hearing the news, nodded and continued.
“Yeah. This place was built so we can do almost anything we used to do and enjoy before the world became like this. And you know, you got a health checkup from Dr. Choi and Mr. Kim, right?”
“Yeah! It felt like a real hospital! It was amazing.”
“Right. So they said even if a baby is born in the next two or three years, they can get all the essential vaccinations. I don’t know the details, but they said it won’t be exactly like the old days, but babies won’t have to worry about missing vaccinations or catching serious illnesses.”
“Wow… that’s insane. But was all of that prepared by Jun-ho Oppa too?”
“Juno-Juno… uh, yeah, that’s right. Our Jun-ho Oppa prepared everything.”
Park Seon-hui was quite bothered by the nickname(?) or moniker “Juno-Juno,” but she acted as if it were nothing, while emphasizing the words “our” and “Oppa.” Lee Chae-rin—no, not just her, but all the Blossom members were as pretty as she was, and above all, they were one of the most famous girl groups in South Korea. One rival(?) was enough.
“But Chae-rin.”
“Yeah?”
“Did… the Manager get her hair done too?”
“The Manager? Oh, Manager Yoon Seol-hee. She got hers done at the resort. And since she always has a bob, she just needs a quick trim twice a month. It takes less than 10 minutes, so it’s convenient.”
“Oh, I see. What kind of person is she?”
“She’s really cool.”
“Co…ol?”
“Yeah. She’s so cool that even a woman would fall for her. Of course, second only to Jun-ho Oppa.”
As she finished Park Seon-hui’s cut, Lee Chae-rin smiled. But she had no idea that her innocent words, completely devoid of any ulterior motives, would prick her friend’s heart.