Chapter 103. Seongnam City.
Chapter 103. Seongnam City.
The first places we needed to check were Jia's house and her father's workplace. According to their last contact, her father had been at the office while her mother had been at home. It had now been a month since the zombie outbreak began. The power had gone out almost everywhere, the electricity supply cut off entirely. And a week since the cell towers went down.
'So they only managed to stay in touch for exactly one week...'
The one small mercy in all this misfortune was that neither of them had turned. But honestly, the odds of them being alive were incredibly slim. Too much time had already passed. And given her father's personality, Jia had said there was a good chance he would have gone looking for her mother after communication was lost.
"In that case, whether he went or not, we should check the company first."
We laid out a rough plan and then went to sleep. We woke early in the morning and meticulously packed our things. As previously arranged, we headed to where the helicopter was stationed. The President and a few others were there as well.
"We didn't know when you'd be back, so we packed plenty of supplies. We just finished cooking a meal, too. If you put it in your subspace, Representative, you can take it out and eat it warm whenever you need."
Then he whispered in my ear.
"Since your parents-in-law might be suffering from malnutrition if you find them, I also packed some thin rice gruel and porridge, which are easy for patients to eat."
He'd whispered it so Jia wouldn't overhear and worry, and I felt genuinely grateful for his consideration in preparing for that situation.
Before we boarded the helicopter, Mr. Chu slapped the side of it heartily with his palm and declared in his gruff, cheerful voice.
"Get on, now. I'll take you there myself."
"Thank you."
With our people's encouragement, the three of us boarded the helicopter. We took off, headed for Seongnam. Since Seongnam wasn't far, we arrived in no time. Just as we'd discussed beforehand, the helicopter door was opened while we were still in the air.
"Have a safe trip."
"Yes, we'll be back."
I wrapped my arms around Chaeyeon's and Jia's waists, holding them close, and jumped straight out of the helicopter. The girls probably didn't hear it, but Mr. Chu's mutter reached my ears.
"May the blessings of God be with you..."
* * * * * * * *
"Kyaaaaak!!!"
"Sihuuuuu!!!"
I landed us gently, careful not to jolt them at all.
"Sihu, I think my stomach is doing flips..."
"Sihu, *hurgh*..."
"Heh, it's fine. Let's head to your father's company first."
The spot where we'd jumped out was near Pangyo Station. The area was packed with enormous buildings, and fortunately, the company where Jia's father worked was right here, and his house wasn't far either.
We hadn't walked long before we arrived in front of the office building where Jia's father worked. As expected, the place had seen considerable damage; there were quite a lot of zombies around.
"Do you know exactly which department he was in?"
"I don't know the specifics... but when he was on the phone with his colleagues, I heard him talk about something related to communications or servers."
Making a scene by killing zombies in the street wasn't a good idea. If her father was somewhere inside, the commotion could cause irreversible damage. First, we checked the directory on the first floor and then went up to the floors used as office space.
As we ascended, the grim reality set in: quite a few people had died right at their desks.
Since the building was so large, it was more difficult to search than I'd thought.
'Based on what Jia said, this department is the most likely...'
If he had safely hidden himself somewhere, I had to seriously consider where that might be. Just then, I heard Chaeyeon calling out quietly, and Jia and I headed toward her. When we got there, Chaeyeon was pointing at an organizational chart posted on the wall.
"Kim Myung-gil. Isn't this Jia's father?"
"Yes, that's him. He's my dad..."
"If he hid somewhere when the outbreak happened, he couldn't have gone far. Let's split up and look."
Fortunately, the cell towers in the Gyeonggi-do area had been restored, so we could use text messaging without any problems.
'Wait... we fixed the cell towers and the power supply, so why didn't they contact us...?'
This was the worst-case scenario. The girls didn't seem to have realized this fact yet. We'd been periodically distributing flyers throughout Gyeonggi-do by helicopter, announcing the restoration of power and communications.
'Then there must be a reason they didn't see the flyers...'
— Bzzt...
Just then, I felt the phone in my pocket vibrate. I pulled it out and checked; Chaeyeon had sent a photo she'd taken of Jia's father's employee ID card. Jia must have checked hers too, because the notification badge vanished. We regrouped immediately. The place wasn't an office area — it was the server room.
"You found it here?"
"Yeah, you said you overheard something about a server, so I came in here just in case."
Looking around inside, there were no signs of a struggle, and the server room door was made of very solid reinforced steel. No traces of attempted forced entry from the outside, either.
"So he was alive at that time. Judging by the traces around here, he ate some simple snacks and food. Then he must have gone outside."
"Outside..."
"He probably went to rescue your mother..."
From what we'd confirmed so far, there were no bloodstains and no corpse of someone who'd starved to death. Which meant he had, in fact, walked out on his own.
"Jia, I think we need to go to your house."
"Okay..."
I glanced at Jia's expression. It was half anxiety over what she'd do if she learned they were dead, and half hope that they might actually be alive.
There was nothing more for us to do here, so we quickly bypassed the zombies and went up to the rooftop, shutting the door behind us to keep the zombies out. Once again, I wrapped my arms around their waists, securing them tightly, and spoke.
"You said the apartment is that way, right?"
"O-Oppa... don't tell me!?"
"Sihu, you're joking, right??"
I grinned and turned my body in the direction Jia had indicated. Then I put power into my toes, calves, and thighs, and kicked the floor with immense force.
— Boom!!!
"Kyaaaaak!!!"
"Eeeeeeek!!!"
I'd only asked for the direction, not the building or apartment number, so I just aimed for a random apartment rooftop. As luck would have it, the place we landed was the exact apartment complex where Jia's parents lived.
'Their reaction was fun... tch...'
The rooftop door was locked for safety, but I crushed the handle with grip strength and forced it open. Maybe because there were only two or three units per floor, the stairwell was quiet and empty of zombies. Jia led the way toward her parents' home.
"Hoo..."
At the thought of what horrible sight she might see, Jia took a deep breath in front of the door and pressed the digital lock. I could see her hand trembling badly.
— Beep!
"M-Mom..! Dad...!"
Again, mercifully, there were no signs of intrusion, not even the smallest bloodstain. The misfortune was that no one was home.
Scanning inside the house, the pantry and wardrobe were open, and there were signs of hurried packing. Jia seemed to have gone into a small panic at finding her parents gone and hadn't noticed any of it.
"Jia, snap out of it!"
I grabbed Jia by the shoulders and shook her to bring her back to her senses. Then I carefully explained everything we'd confirmed by coming here.
"So... my mom and dad are together right now...?"
"Yes. If your mother had evacuated alone, there'd be no reason for her to pack men's clothing. Look here, the section with men's clothes is empty."
"*Hic*... Sihu, where do we have to find my mom and dad now...?"
Jia had been under such immense, continuous mental strain that her eyes suddenly lost focus, and she collapsed forward as if she'd fainted. Of course, I carefully caught her before she hit the ground.
"Sihu, Jia's been having a really hard time, hasn't she?"
"Mm..."
"Let's spend the rest of the day here and then go."
* * * * * * * *
I laid the collapsed Jia down on the bed and stepped out onto the veranda to look at the scenery outside. Looking up at the sky, it was the same ordinary sky as before the apocalypse, but glancing down, you could see corpses, shambling zombies, and wrecked cars.
'Do I have to ask Paura for another favor...'
Paura and I had a strictly contractual relationship. Of course, if I had a sure guarantee of delivering a person to her, I could command the Witch of the Black Altar, who wouldn't even bow to a divinity. It had been possible before because there was always some scum I could definitively throw to Paura, but now...
'Still, I can't just hand over an ordinary person who's done nothing wrong...'
Besides, she wasn't some convenient tool like Doraemon where you just say a name and she pops up. She needed at least a slight connection to me, or a medium of some sort.
'No. They're Jia's parents, so I can use a drop of Jia's blood to check the DNA compatibility rate...'
DNA? That sparked a good idea. I took out Leiral's Magic Book from my subspace. Leiral had been constantly researching ways to turn people into undead. An undead doesn't just pop into existence because you chant a spell at a living human. So, given that this was the magic book of a figure who could be considered an authority on medical research by Earth standards, wouldn't it have some useful information?
I stayed up all night poring over the magic book. The good news was that I found some very useful information inside Leiral's Magic Book. Specifically, for a subject with a compatibility rate exceeding 95%, you couldn't determine the exact location, but you could ascertain the general direction.
'Of course, since they're her parents, the compatibility rate would be over 95%...'
Apparently, this madman had devised this method specifically to hunt down and annihilate the families of his vengeance targets.
'No matter how far away they are, they'll definitely be somewhere within Korea.'
And even though I had no professional medical knowledge, I remembered reading a news article about how police had identified a criminal by extracting DNA from remains. Even if, gods forbid, they had passed away, considering it takes a very, very long time for bones to decay...
'Whether they're dead or alive, I can definitely find them...!'