Chapter 74. The Strange Old Man.
Chapter 74. The Strange Old Man.
When we carefully opened the door and stepped inside, no one was there. Only the crackling of a TV filled with static and the rich, savory smell of rice soup hanging in the air. We sat down at a convenient spot and looked around. Then Chaeyeon murmured in a low voice.
"What in the world is this place...?"
"...I wonder."
Just then, an old, shabbily dressed man in rubber boots and an apron—the typical kitchen worker's getup—emerged from the back. My hand moved to the hilt of my sword before I even realized it.
"Oh!"
"I-is that a person...?"
The old man looked at us without any particular reaction and spoke in a low, gravelly voice.
"You're here. You must be very hungry."
After saying that, the old man went back into the kitchen and soon returned with three bowls of rice soup, which he placed on the table. Then he sat down across from us and stared at us. Flustered by his sudden actions, the girls quietly asked me.
'What the hell is this...?'
"Sihu, is it okay to eat this...?"
"Is this safe...?"
"For now... it's just ordinary rice soup."
I spoke to the old man, who was still staring at us wordlessly.
"Who are you... how have you survived this long...?"
"You come home after so long and all you ask is strange things. It's well past mealtime, so hurry up and eat."
Looking more closely at the old man's face now, I saw that his pupils were clouded and unfocused. Most likely... he was mistaking us for someone else, which suggested he was suffering from dementia.
"You little rascal. You went and fell out of contact, and now you finally bring your wife to introduce her to me?"
"Grandpa, what on earth are you talking about..."
"Heh heh... so I'm a grandpa now, am I? I always get up at dawn to boil broth and go about my life as usual, but for some reason, the customers stopped coming entirely. I'd taste the food to see if maybe the flavor had gone bad, but it was the same as always... Still, knowing my one and only son has brought his new bride home to stay, I can't tell you how relieved I am."
The old man's mouth must have gotten dry from talking. He coughed a few times and drank some water. Then he fumbled in the front pocket of his apron, pulled out a laminated photo, and started gazing at it.
"It was lonely after your ma passed on, so this is a blessing."
'A situation like this is a first for me... Should we just leave him be? But that doesn't sit right with me at all...'
That was when the old man's muttering suddenly reached my ears.
"The Calamity... is the Calamity coming here...?"
He had said a word I absolutely could not ignore.
"S-Sihu..."
"Sihu... just now..."
"Grandpa, what did you just say? The Calamity?"
The old man didn't answer my question and simply kept murmuring to himself. It stung a little, but I pretended to be the son he was mistaking me for and asked again.
"Father, what does what you just said mean?"
"I don't know myself. One day, while the customers had stopped coming and I was sick in bed, a man holding a sword appeared in my dream. That man had accomplished everything. He isn't human... he's like 'the Calamity'... But strangely, I never got the sense he was a bad person..."
'The time when customers stopped coming... that was when the apocalypse started, wasn't it?'
Whether the old man didn't remember what he'd just said or not, he started acting oddly, bringing us more side dishes and slicing up meat to give us. Under the weight of his persistent, unnerving stare, we silently ate all of our rice soup.
Only when we had emptied our bowls did the old man smile, as if satisfied, and clear the table. Then, utterly unbothered, he lit a cigarette indoors and blew out a cloud of smoke.
"Son, before you head back, go upstairs and take the fruit with you. And next time you come, I'd love to see you bring my grandchild."
'Upstairs...?'
He exhaled with a hoarse, cracking sound, then spoke again with great effort.
"I'm feeling a little tired... and somehow today, I miss your ma so terribly..."
He ground his cigarette out in the ashtray, leaned back against his chair, and closed his eyes. We walked past the old man and up to the second floor of the building. Perhaps because the shop was already open, the door was not locked but simply ajar.
A basket of fruit he had set aside for his son was sitting on the table. And next to it was a notebook. There were no dates written inside, just a jumbled scrawl of its contents.
[As the world has gone to hell, my dementia symptoms are getting worse. This is terrible. I'm so worried about my boy...]
[At some point, I started having strange dreams. Is this another symptom brought on by the dementia...?]
[Strange people appear. Or does being close to death mean you start seeing messengers from the underworld?]
[Some short person and someone with long ears... and monsters appear, too...]
[A beautiful man and woman seem to be saying something to me... but I have no idea what it is.]
And then there was a line written in extremely messy handwriting.
[Even with dementia, maybe my body remembers. Every so often, when my mind would come back for a moment, I'd wake up sitting in the shop chair.]
That seemed to be the last sentence. There was nothing written after it.
"Sihu, the person with long ears is an elf, right?"
"Unni, so would the short person be a goblin? And who on earth are the beautiful man and woman...?"
I had the feeling something important was missing. The old man wasn't an Awakened, unlike Im Ji-hye, the blind woman in our group. How could someone like this just happen to exist in the exact place I'd gone to, and why had I felt such an intense curiosity about this rice soup shop?
We picked up the notebook and a family photo that had been placed on the table and went back down to the shop. There at the table, just as the notebook had described, the old man lay in peaceful slumber. We tried to shake him awake, but the old man, his face still serene, had already passed away.
"Sihu... he..."
"Yeah. He's already gone."
I gently lifted the old man and laid him on the bed in the inner room. I placed the photo on top of his body and cast a preservation spell on him.
'This is better than letting him rot away.'
"Sihu, don't you think something about this is strange?"
"Hm?"
"It's like the moment you came, he told us those stories, and the second we found the notebook, the old man passed away."
It definitely wasn't a normal situation. Right after I arrived, he mentioned 'the Calamity,' and we found a notebook detailing dreams about beings that don't exist on Earth. The timing fit together uncannily well.
'Is this something the System orchestrated as well?'
If this were Titan, I might have a way to investigate, but being on Earth makes that nearly impossible.
"There's nothing we can do about it right now. Let's head back to the others. They'll be waiting for us."
* * * * * * * *
The Special Forces Commander, who had spotted us from a distance, walked over and spoke up.
"Representative, you're back. We've already eaten—have you had a meal?"
"Yes, we grabbed a bite. Oh, and..."
I called everyone together, opened my subspace, and handed out sneakers and comfortable clothes I had roughly grabbed.
"Oh... aren't these brand-name goods?"
"Heh heh, where's the owner now? I just picked them up off the ground."
"Really... when I was a soldier, I never even dreamed of buying stuff like this..."
"We've got time to spare. Why don't we all head into the department store and grab whatever we need?"
The department store was right next door, so we all entered it together. And just before we split up, I handed out walkie-talkies to each team.
"Also, there are still survivors in this building. If you run into them, don't try anything rash—just report it over the radio."
Since we'd set aside two months for the operation, people were mostly stuffing all sorts of things into their bags at the clothing stores. We had enough food, but clothes and underwear were in short supply, so they were picking up a variety of items.
And then, as if the words I'd just spoken had willed it into being, a radio call came in from a squad member who'd encountered survivors.
"Survivors found. Head count is roughly ten. Currently on the second floor."
The group members who had been checking their radios frequently quickly gathered on the second floor. There, the survivors stood clutching weapons, watching us warily.
'A group made up of people who worked here and customers who came to shop?'
As the standoff continued, a middle-aged man shouted at us.
"Drop everything you're holding and get out!!! This place is ours now...!"
I couldn't tell if he was just not seeing the guns we were holding or if he was simply ignorant enough to say something like that. The Special Forces Commander explained to them in a reasonably gentle tone.
"We only came because we needed clothing. We were about to leave anyway."
While the Special Forces Commander said this, he ordered our troops to withdraw. Everyone was turning around to leave when several men came charging at us to attack.
— Scraaatch!!!
I used my sword to carve a long line into the floor between us and them.
"I was going to do as you said and leave quietly. So why are you trying to attack us?"
In a goddamn apocalypse, seeing an opponent heavily armed yet failing to assess their strength and lunging in like that—the fact that we were quietly agreeing to their demands must have made us look laughably weak to them.
Just then, a middle-aged woman who was part of their group asked us something.
"A-are you people... by any chance from the government?"
I stopped the Special Forces Commander before he could answer, and spoke myself.
"No. We're just a survivor group."
Her eyes showed she didn't believe it, given that we were so heavily armed. But if she didn't believe what I told her, what of it?
"Th-then would you consider joining our group and living together with us...?"
"Heh heh..."
"...?"
"You must really think we're idiots. You tried to attack us and failed, and now that we look a little strong, you're asking us to join your group?"
But then something unexpected happened. The middle-aged man who had been shouting earlier slapped the woman across the face.
"Shut your mouth and stay out of this before I shut it for you!!!"
Looking at them again now, I saw that a number of them had a look of terror in their eyes. Something about this was wrong.
The snake-like middle-aged man put on a disgusting, crinkly-eyed smile and asked me.
"Young man, you seem to be the one in charge here. How about we have a little chat?"
'There it is. I was starting to wonder why scum like this hadn't shown up yet.'
Maybe it was because I'd been so bored lately, but whenever a situation like this unfolded, I couldn't help but laugh.