Could It Be Me?
After finishing the construction of an entire vinyl greenhouse with the siblings Park Deok-cheol and Park Seon-hui, Jun-ho headed to the bathhouse built in the basement of the shelter's main building. It was a small facility, divided into men's and women's sections, equipped only with a cold bath, a hot bath, and a sauna, and could accommodate a maximum of about ten people at a time. Despite Baek Ha-il and Jun-hyeok's initial skepticism, Jun-ho had insisted on it, knowing that the difference between having just a shower and having a proper bathhouse was significant in terms of emotional satisfaction and fatigue recovery. And... in reality, those two were the ones who loved the bathhouse the most and visited it the most frequently after the apocalypse began. It was so popular that everyone else visited at least once or twice a week.
"Whew..." After sweating it out in the sauna, Jun-ho rinsed off under the shower and submerged himself back into the hot bath. The temperature, hovering between 40 and 41 degrees Celsius, seemed to melt away the fatigue that had accumulated over the past few days.
"Puh-ha!" Just then, Jun-hyeok, who had been diving in the cold bath, popped up and laughed when he saw Jun-ho in the hot bath.
"Geez! Hyung, do you really have to wear that towel like sheep horns? It really doesn't suit you."
"Back in my day, this was the golden rule, kid. Stop diving in the cold water like the other kids and get in here."
"Hehe. It's weird, but every time I get into the cold bath, I just want to dive. Ooh, it's nice and toasty."
As Jun-hyeok stepped into the hot bath, the water spilled over slightly. The brothers sat side by side and chatted.
"The greenhouse is fine, right?"
"Yeah. We're harvesting lettuce, spinach, and carrots from the first unit on a rotating basis almost every week. The cherry tomatoes, chili peppers, and bell peppers in the second unit are more than enough for us to eat—we'll probably have leftovers."
"And there's always plenty of potatoes and sweet potatoes..."
"We packed last year's harvest and put them in the low-temperature warehouse, too. Ha-neul noona said she's going to make curry often and prepare a massive amount of braised potatoes with meat. Enough to last us as a side dish for a couple of months."
"Good. We can make plenty and take some to the nursing home."
"That sounds great. Oh, they say we can harvest tomatoes and melons around next week. AI is really great. It takes care of the temperature and humidity all by itself. Plus, we should be able to pick blueberries soon. You said you were going to make jam with those, right?"
"Jam, eat them fresh, and make juice, too. Since we have a carbonated water maker, we can make fruit-flavored sodas to drink."
"Everything's good, but let's just not make raisins."
"I don't like those either."
After exchanging such trivial talk, the brothers left the hot bath and scrubbed each other's backs.
"Done. Now it's my turn."
"Alright."
Jun-ho, who was soaping up and meticulously scrubbing Jun-hyeok's broad back, spoke up suddenly.
"But... are you okay?"
"Huh? What?"
"Killing those people."
"......!"
Jun-ho didn't miss his brother's shoulder flinch. Jun-hyeok sat in silence for a moment before letting out a sigh.
"Whew... it would be a lie to say I'm completely fine, right? After eating earlier, my hands were shaking while I was in my room. Hehe. Funny, isn't it?"
"...No. I was the same."
"Really?"
"Yeah. I couldn't sleep properly for about two days. Every time I closed my eyes, the last face of the guy I killed would pop up."
Even though it was a raider who had tried to kill him first, it was like that. Jun-ho still clearly remembered the face of the first greenhorn he killed, a kid around twenty years old.
"Don't try to force yourself to hold it in. I know you're not okay. When it gets hard..."
"You told me to think of the people in our shelter. Yeah, I'm doing that. Because if you and I don't kill them, not only us, but everyone in the shelter will be in danger."
"......"
"And those Eoktens bastards we killed were all total trash, right? I was so furious when I heard that the high schoolers we saved were almost forced to do things with those guys. And then hearing that they had a pile of corpses in the mansion basement... Wow... those fucking assholes."
"Yeah. They were fucking assholes who deserved to die."
That was it. He had to find justification for the killing, even like this. It might be self-rationalization or a mental victory, but if he didn't do this, his mind might crumble. Jun-ho and his brother Jun-hyeok were guards and soldiers protecting the shelter. A soldier's duty is to defeat the enemy, and the shelter was currently crossing the middle of a horrific battlefield called the 'apocalypse'.
"Anyway, you know the shelter people are all trying not to bring up the killing because they're thinking of us, right? They must be feeling incredibly grateful and sorry inside."
"Not really? They were being very open about being grateful and sorry."
"What? Who?"
"Baek Su-ah."
"Huh?"
Jun-ho's scrubbing motion stopped for a second.
"Su-ah, her first impression was just okay, but like you said, she's really kind. Every time she sees me, she says thank you and that I've worked so hard. Lately, she doesn't even give Su-ho many errands, thinking about how hard he works."
However, Jun-hyeok, seemingly unaware of the implication, continued as he scrubbed his hair vigorously with a bar of solid shampoo.
"Oh, right. Hyung, did you know? Baek Su-ah made anti-inflammatory painkillers and sulfa drugs in the pharmacy lab using API or something? They said the effectiveness is over 90 percent compared to what's sold on the market! Isn't that amazing? As expected of a pharmacy student from a top university in Seoul... Ouch!"
Splat! Jun-ho, who had struck his brother's back hard, scooped up a bucket of cold water instead of hot and doused him with it.
"I'm worried about whether you've lost your mind, and you've been flirting with a girl? Is it good? Was it good?"
"Ack! Cold! Oh, seriously, Hyung! It's not flirting..."
"Forget it. It's all good, but if you can't take responsibility, don't mess around. Just promise me that."
"I got it, I got it. I'm not that kind of guy, so don't worry."
"That's not it, kid. I'm worried that my only brother might get beaten to death by her father if he messes with someone else's precious daughter."
"......"
Perhaps imagining Baek Ha-il's face, Jun-hyeok froze like a statue, still in the posture of rinsing the foam from his hair. Leaving him be, Jun-ho walked toward the door and continued.
"Think carefully before you act. If anything happens and Ha-il hyung explodes, I don't think I'll be able to stop him. Ugh, scary."
"Hy, Hyung...? But you'll help me, right? You'll protect me from Mr. Baek, right? Ri, right?"
"No."
"Hyung? Hyung-nim? My one and only King God Emperor..."
Clack. Jun-ho cut off Jun-hyeok's nonsense by closing the bathhouse door, then took a cold pine needle drink can from the refrigerator and downed it in one go.
"Jun-hyeok and Baek Su-ah..."
They were the same age, and if they really became a couple, it wouldn't be a bad thing. After all, the goal of 'Our Shelter' was to be a place where they could 'do anything', and that included dating. Furthermore, would it be so bad if the first couple were his own brother, the owner of the shelter, and the daughter of Baek Ha-il, the second-in-command? Of course.
"No matter how I think about it, Ha-il hyung won't just sit still..."
Imagining the scene of Baek Ha-il greeting Jun-hyeok with a shotgun—no, a modified air rifle—Jun-ho shook his head vigorously.
"Dating? Whether they do it or not is their business, so why are you asking me that?"
"...Excuse me?"
Baek Ha-il chuckled and said to Jun-ho.
"It's not the Joseon Dynasty, so if my daughter likes someone, she likes them. What's the big deal? Anyway, I thought I was done raising her the moment I sent her to college and got her a studio apartment. She has to live the rest of her life on her own. It's not like she's sick or doing something wrong. You shouldn't interfere with every little thing just because you're a parent."
"I, I see."
Jun-ho was surprised once again by Baek Ha-il, who had an unusually open mind, unlike his appearance.
"Anyway, whatever your brother and our Su-ah do, you should stop worrying about it, too. Both of them aren't kids anymore, and they're over twenty-five, so they'll figure it out. By the way."
Baek Ha-il pulled something up on his tablet screen and continued with a somewhat serious expression.
"As you know, the performance of the turrets installed at the guard posts is solid. But the problem is..."
The carcasses of wild animals like wild boars and roe deer appeared on the tablet.
"Six animals have already been shot and killed by the turrets on the mountain behind us. If we just leave this as is, more beasts will be attracted. Shouldn't we do something about it?"
"Hmm..."
Jun-ho's eyes darkened. The shelter's grounds and the 'safe zone' were almost perfectly safe from zombies or raiders. However, the animals that originally roamed the mountains were a different story. Above all, considering the experience before the regression where wild animals increased explosively six months after the apocalypse broke out, he had to come up with some countermeasures for the shelter's safe zone.
"We should lay down barbed wire. The spots where wild animals frequently pass through must all be recorded on video. Then, we can just lay down razor wire at the points the AI analyzes and tells us."
"Well, that's the best way. The problem is that it's pure manual labor."
If you connect the five guard posts created along the back of the shelter, the length reaches almost 4 kilometers. Even if you only lay barbed wire where animals frequently pass, it was a job that had to be done over hundreds of meters, in a mountain with no paths, steep slopes, and full of trees. Considering the difficulty and the fact that one bundle of 10-meter razor wire with a diameter of 60 centimeters weighs over 10 kilograms, it was a task that clearly opened up a path of hardship.
"Since the Eoktens punks are gone, I don't have to go out to Gahyeon-ri for a while. I think I can do it with two or three other people."
"Let's do that. In the meantime, I'll install turrets in the shelter, lay some razor wire, and finish the electric fence work. Oh, but to do that, we need Su-ho and Jeong-woo. Ha-yoon should also do some errands."
Baek Ha-il looked troubled by the lack of manpower. But Jun-ho grinned.
"Hyung-nim, we have a 'Dolsoe' (all-purpose worker) now."
"Aha!"
"Yes? Barbed wire? Oh, you mean barbed wire?"
"No, what we're trying to install is razor wire."
"Oh, Razor. I understand. We did that at our hometown farm, too. Sunny—no, Seon-hui and I helped with the work for ten dollars an hour."
Park Deok-cheol said confidently. He had done various jobs at his family's farm in the suburbs, and among them was the installation of barbed wire to exterminate wild boars.
"I know. That's why one of your sister's nicknames is 'Farm-dol', right?"
"Ah... ye, yes. But my nickname when I was young was Wire Park, too. Haha."
"That's reassuring. Then Park Seon-hui, what about you? You must have tried installing barbed wire on the farm, right?"
"Yes? Ah, yes. I, I've tried it a little bit..."
Jun-ho was a bit puzzled by Park Seon-hui's appearance, as her voice grew smaller while she avoided his gaze for some reason. But, 'Maybe she's still scared of me.' Jun-ho nodded to himself. Yun Yeong-su, who was monitoring the three, said that Park Seon-hui and Jo Yu-na were still very afraid of him. Well, he had hacked and slashed people right in front of them, so it would be stranger if the 20-year-old girls had already shaken off that shock and fear. However.
'You even know the nickname Farm-dol? A, are you really our fan? Is that so? Who is your bias? Could it be... me?'
Park Seon-hui not only gained certainty about the question she had been unsure about until now, but she also expanded the scope from there. Yun Yeong-su's intention, who didn't convey all the information to Jun-ho just because he thought it would be fun, was a huge success in a sense.
"Huff... huff..."
Park Deok-cheol wanted to kill his self from 30 minutes ago. The barbed wire was almost the same as the one installed at the family farm in the suburbs of Dallas, and the tools were no different. But the problem was. This was Korea, where there is a mountain in every neighborhood, not Texas, where everything is wide open.
'Holy crap! No, why is a mountain that doesn't even look that high so hard? I'm going to die, I'm going to die.'
However, Park Deok-cheol only followed while breathing heavily, unable to show any complaints or dissatisfaction. Not only was the person climbing in front of him a professional killer, but unlike himself, who had put two 22-pound bundles of barbed wire on a strange device called an A-frame carrier, he was carrying five.
'Are you really the same human as me?'
While clicking his tongue inside, Park Deok-cheol went down the slope, exhaling rough breaths repeatedly.
"Ducky, are you okay?"
"No okay. Still..."
Just as Park Deok-cheol was answering the worried words of Park Seon-hui, who was carrying a bag containing the necessary tools, including the forearm,
"What? People? Five of them?"
The intelligent professional killer, who didn't seem like the same person, had a serious conversation over the radio, then took off the A-frame carrier and turned his body.
"Wait here for a moment. Don't move at all. There are people with guns about 300 meters below."
"Ye, yes!"
Born in the United States and having received thorough teaching from his grandfather, the siblings, who knew the danger of firearms all too well, quickly lowered their bodies.