The Stages Go from 1 to 7! #1
The siren wailed—Weeeeeng—.
The moment the clock struck six in the evening, the loud siren began to blare. It was the signal that the sun would soon set and civilian movement would be strictly controlled.
“Everyone, please return home immediately! Anyone still wandering the streets after seven p.m. will be fined!”
Yu Nami, an Awakened who had graduated from Youngsa High just this year and begun her career as a rookie explorer, shouted at the passing crowd.
Only Awakened like her could move freely through the streets after seven.
‘I hope my siblings made it home okay.’
Responsible for a high-school senior and a middle-school second-year, Yu Nami had been carrying a mountain of worries lately. The world had grown far too dangerous to let one’s guard down.
“Um, Miss Nami? Could we ask you to patrol the old factory district tonight? We received a report of suspicious individuals in the area yesterday.”
“Understood.”
At the police officers’ request, Yu Nami nodded while checking the glowing baton in her hand. Patrolling dark streets late at night was simply another duty an Awakened had to perform under martial law.
“Having an Awakened on the team is such a relief!”
The handsome officer’s bright smile made Yu Nami’s cheeks flush scarlet. She scratched the bridge of her nose, embarrassed.
“I’m still just a first-stage Awakened who hasn’t even manifested a Concept yet…”
“Even so, you’re several times stronger than I am. If real zombies actually appear, I’m sure you’d take them down without breaking a sweat.”
It was true—the gap between ordinary people and Awakened was as vast as the difference between children and adults. That was why Yu Nami had been assigned the dangerous back alleys and abandoned zones that regular patrols could not handle.
And that was exactly the problem.
While sweeping her flashlight through the narrow, decaying alleyways of a run-down neighborhood, Yu Nami spotted a group of shambling figures clustered together in the gloom.
“Z-zombies…!?”
The stench of rot rolling off them left no doubt. This was only the second day since martial law had been declared, and it was the first time Yu Nami had seen real zombies with her own eyes.
“Requesting backup! My location is—”
━GRAAAAAHHH—!
━KYAAAAAK—!
The zombies charged at her before she could finish speaking into the radio. The sight of those foul corpses sprinting toward her made every hair on Yu Nami’s body stand on end.
“S-stay back!!!”
She swung the baseball bat she had been gripping like a weapon with all her might.
Thwack—!Crack—!
Several zombies collapsed. But her hesitation to strike their heads proved fatal. The ones she had knocked down crawled desperately forward and sank their teeth into her ankle.
Crunch.
“Aaaagh! I’ve been bitten!”
Panic flooded her. If she died here, her two siblings would be left completely alone—no mother, no father, no older sister—in a cold, merciless world.
“You fucking bastards—!”
Though she was only a first-stage Awakened without a Concept, Yu Nami had still endured three years of brutal training at Youngsa High.
“Die! Die!”
Crack—!Thud—!
She smashed all five zombies into the ground, then stood panting, drunk on a strange sense of accomplishment and ecstasy.
“Haa… haaa… I… I can do it too.”
But the joy could not last. She had been bitten; there was no telling whether she would turn into one of those things herself.
She opened her bag with trembling hands and pulled out a beverage. It was the famous cure known as Zero Cola Fresh.
Yu Nami still could not understand why cola would cure a zombie infection. Yet right now she had no other option. She cracked open the can she had prepared in advance and gulped it down.
Gulp, gulp—
The moment the cola slid down her throat, the disgusting sensation in her ankle vanished as if it had never existed.
“…It actually worked…!?”
Her mind bubbled with joy like refreshing carbonation. She had fought off a horde of zombies and even cured her own infection with cola.
‘I really can do it if I try!’
That happiness lasted only a moment.
Step. Step.
Someone was walking out of the darkness toward her.
A zombie? No—the presence felt different. It was a man with both hands stuffed casually in his pockets.
“Civilian movement is prohibited after 19:00! Present your identification!”
Yu Nami shouted at the stranger. The man ignored her, clicking his tongue as he looked at the fallen zombies.
“Fuck. I went through all that trouble turning a graveyard because of these bastards, and now it’s blocked this easily? And cola is the cure? Don’t make me laugh, you pathetic—”
“Hey! I said show me your ID! …Huh?”
The reason Yu Nami let out a dazed sound was simple. Under the beam of her flashlight, the man’s face was covered by a plain, chalk-white mask.
“Where have I seen…”
The terrorist who had caused the Zombie Outbreak.
By the time she realized it, it was already too late. The man snapped his fingers, and zombies poured out from behind him.
“Eh…?”
These two were nothing like ordinary zombies. They looked more like grotesque amalgamations of human bodies twisted and fused together. One was massively muscular, swollen like an overinflated balloon and wielding a giant hammer. The other was disturbingly thin and agile, like a mantis. Razor-sharp blades extended from its fingertips like claws.
Slice. Slice.
“Bring her back alive. Awakened make excellent material as they are.”
Yu Nami tried to run, but it was futile. When she regained her senses, she was already locked inside a cramped, foul-smelling iron cage.
Countless other cages surrounded her, each one holding people just like her.
“W-where am I?! Let me out!”
The panicked Yu Nami watched as the white-masked man approached, pulled her wallet from her pocket, and examined her ID.
“Awakened Yu Nami. First-stage, graduated this year. You’re quite pretty. Lucky you. I tend to keep beautiful women in their original form whenever possible.”
Stab—!Squelch—.
He injected something into her arm.
“Wait just one week and you’ll become one of my special masterpieces. Aren’t you thrilled?”
“Aaaagh!”
The pain in her arm snapped her mind back to clarity. She shuddered at the thought of what would happen if time continued to pass.
“Please, save me! Somebody save me!”
“I don’t know how you people discovered the infection cure, but there’s no way you’ll figure out the existence of my masterpieces and my legion! Absolutely impossible!”
Hehehehehe—.
The man began to laugh in a sinister, obscene manner.
“You’ll never find where I am! This place is my kingdom! Mine alone! And the same goes for Seo Gaeul. She must be mine alone! Only mine!”
Yu Nami fell into despair. She finally understood that no one would ever come to rescue her.
Because this place was….
The zombie Main is probably hiding inside the Dae-migung.
I ran through every possible location the zombie Main might be using, then finally reached that conclusion. A place Awakened could easily access, yet one where they could not move about completely freely. In a world covered in CCTV, the only location where someone could completely erase their presence was the Great Labyrinth.
After all, that was exactly why I had hidden Seo Gaeul and Yu Yeoleum inside the Dae-migung.
“As far as I know, the Dae-migung has multiple entrances.”
One beneath Youngsa High. Another beneath the headquarters of the Seonam Group. And several more. The internal coordinates apparently shifted depending on which entrance you used.
I suspected the zombie Main had seized an unknown entrance and built his own base somewhere deep within the labyrinth. He had probably stockpiled a large number of zombies there as well.
“In the worst-case scenario, I have to assume there may be special zombies.”
「Kyuuiing…?」
“Yeah, special ones. Mutated bastards. They’re tricky to deal with. That’s what happens when an Awakened becomes a zombie, apparently. If you encounter one, running away gives you the highest survival rate.”
How many of those disgusting special zombies were lurking inside his repulsive kingdom? Storming the place head-on would be quite the headache even for me.
But?
I didn’t need to go to his territory. All I had to do was drag him outside. If he really was Nam Sanho, he wouldn’t be able to resist the bait I was about to dangle.
With that in mind, I paid a visit to the Flower Room where Seo Gaeul and Yu Yeoleum were staying.
The moment I entered, the two girls—who had been whispering together—clamped their mouths shut.
“……”
“……”
Seo Gaeul and Yu Yeoleum began exchanging nervous glances. They were clearly hiding something.
This did not bode well.
“What exactly have you two been doing until now?”
“What’s it to you, dumbass? Why do you care what we’re doing?”
Seo Gaeul shot back in her usual prickly tone. The way she scrunched up her face was rather adorable in a tsundere sort of way.
What about Yu Yeoleum?
“Yu Yeoleum, you’re definitely hiding something from me.”
“No.”
She shook her head vigorously, but Yu Yeoleum had always been terrible at lying.
I pounced on her immediately.
“Get over here—!”
“Ah, I told you to stop ittt!!!!”
I licked the nape of Yu Yeoleum’s neck! Lick—!
It tasted sweet. But it was a tense, nervous kind of sweetness.
“As expected, the flavor of someone telling a lie.”
“…W-what did I do!”
These two had definitely been hiding something from me. After scanning the room for a while, I noticed Seo Gaeul’s blanket bunched up in a suspiciously round lump on the bed.
When I yanked it back, what appeared was a doll. A crudely made thing stitched together from cloth and cotton stuffing.
“A doll?”
Both Seo Gaeul’s and Yu Yeoleum’s faces turned ashen.
“Where did this come from?”
I had thought I maintained perfect control over the Flower Room, but apparently that wasn’t the case. A doll I had never seen before had suddenly appeared. There were many things I wanted to ask, but unfortunately I didn’t have much time.
“Seo Gaeul, I think I’ll need to use you as bait to lure out Nam Sanho.”
“Use me as bait?”
“Yeah. That bastard threatened to increase the number of infected by ten thousand per day if I didn’t turn myself in, right? We’re just flipping the script. If he doesn’t show up, we’ll proceed from 1 to 7.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Stage 1 is holding hands.”
I grabbed Seo Gaeul’s hand. Naturally, she thrashed wildly in obvious disgust.
“Let go, you perverted bastard!”
Perfect expression. The more Seo Gaeul hated it, the better the photo would turn out.
Click—.
“I’m going to release this photo to the media. If he still doesn’t surrender, we move to Stage 2—hugging. We’ll escalate one stage per day, pressuring him to turn himself in.”
“…If Stage 1 is holding hands and Stage 2 is hugging, what’s Stage 3?”
Yu Yeoleum asked. She seemed genuinely curious.
“Kissing.”
During my long years of solitude in that tiny shack, I had run countless romance simulations inside my head. I had decided that if I ever got a girlfriend, I would progress through seven stages of skinship. Each stage carried profound meaning.
“In other words, 1 through 7 represents the seven stages of skinship belonging to the real man Ha Namjin. If Nam Sanho truly loves Seo Gaeul, he won’t be able to endure watching her do skinship with another man. He’ll jump like a loach sprinkled with salt.”
Yu Yeoleum looked impressed.
“Seems like an appropriate pace. It also looks like suitable punishment for Seo Gaeul.”
Yu Yeoleum really gets it. Ten points to Gryffindor!
At that moment, Seo Gaeul, whose face had gone deathly pale, asked in a trembling voice.
“Hey… then what about Stage 7—!?”
“Don’t worry. It won’t go that far. If Nam Sanho really likes you, he’ll bite the bait by Stage 2. Even if he holds out, Stage 4 should be the limit.”
“No! Tell me what Stage 7 is!”
She had gotten curious about my skinship progression. Understandable.
“Stage 7 is ‘giving your grandson and granddaughter piggyback rides.’”
“What? Fuck? You called it skinship progression and suddenly grandchildren pop out? Wait, then what about Stage 4?! What the hell is Stage 4?!”
“Ehehehe.”
“…Ehehehe?”
My laugh left Seo Gaeul completely stunned for a second. Then her face twisted strangely before exploding like a bomb.
“Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!! You fucking perverted bastard!!!! Why did it suddenly go from kissing to ehehehe—?! You insane son of a bitch!!!”
Seo Gaeul’s scream of despair echoed beautifully. I made sure to record it clearly.