Certainty
I returned to reality a total of two times.
Once while Lee Soyeon was cleaning, and a second time again at dawn.
Why? Because I needed to completely resolve that sense of dissonance.
The first time, I deliberately set a stopwatch on my phone and left it behind before I went through.
The second time, I went back at dawn to check the time. That would reveal something extremely important—the work of turning a hypothesis built on speculation into certainty.
I stepped through the door again and arrived back in the past—which was also the present.
The phone I had tossed onto the mattress was still hard at work.
My heart was pounding. Had my hypothesis been right after all? Each step I took toward the mattress sent a delicious tension crawling through me.
The time?
Watching the stopwatch tick away, I swallowed hard.
If my hypothesis was correct, this was an enormous discovery.
I closed in on the phone and checked the numbers.
Ten… eleven… twelve…
Incredibly, it had only just passed twelve seconds—even though I had spent nearly a full day on the other side.
Those twelve seconds were nothing more than the time it had taken me to turn the stopwatch on and step through, plus the time it took me to come back out.
For all practical purposes, there had been no time shift at all.
What did that mean? The two worlds were connected. But their time axes were different.
No matter how many days you spent on one world's timeline, the moment you crossed into the other, everything simply resumed from the point at which you had crossed over.
I was pretty sure I had heard something similar in quantum mechanics.
Which also explained why Lee Soyeon had still been such a mess back then, and why the place hadn't been cleaned—because literally less than ten minutes had passed.
"That settles it. I could hold out here for a week or even a month right now, and it wouldn't matter."
Conversely, I could go enjoy myself in the future world for as long as I wanted.
Of course, food and survival conditions were far harsher over there.
Now that I had confirmed it, I could head back right away… but with time to spare on this side, I might as well get some work done before I went.
I turned off the stopwatch and glanced at the clock. It still wasn't even lunchtime.
Should I eat first?
I ordered delivery and shoved the food straight into my mouth. Thinking about it, being able to order delivery this casually and just eat was genuine happiness.
There was no delivery in the future world, after all. At best, whatever I brought over myself…
The portions were small, and the contents sparse.
"Hmm…"
I thought about the stockpiles I had waiting, and realized the variety was lacking.
What counted as luxury in the future world was nothing of the sort here.
And I could restock as much as I wanted.
To fully subjugate Lee Soyeon, raw violation alone wouldn't be enough. There was a reason for the old saying about using both the carrot and the stick.
Sometimes you had to treat them sweetly.
I had information as a weapon.
Especially information about the celebrity Lee Soyeon—things I could verify with absolute certainty in the present world.
I thought about the foods and clothes she liked.
I just needed to check the interviews and variety shows she had appeared in online.
That she was quiet and not exactly the outgoing type was already obvious from the way she spoke—soft, gentle, almost demure.
"Oh-ho. So she likes sweet things?"
A fair number of the foods she favored turned out to be ones that boasted a sweet flavor.
Bringing actual fresh food over would be difficult.
I would have to look for something similar among preserved goods.
It was easier to find than I expected. Combat rations, in particular, sometimes sold cake or similar snack types.
What else did I need to prepare? Things that would let me hunt and enjoy myself comfortably over there.
As for weapons, I couldn't get a gun in the present, so this would have to do.
And what about cases where it wasn't just one or two zombies staggered by time lag, but a full-scale horde?
I could escape on a bicycle, but the problem was when I actually needed to go into those places.
Digging around online turned up no clear answers. Maces and blunt weapons seemed best, but everyone recommended ranged attacks.
"I really need to get a gun…"
The problem was that the difficulty of obtaining one was far too high. What lunatic would openly sell firearms on the internet?
At best you might find incomplete homemade guns.
If I was going to hunt zombies with junk like that, I was better off acquiring one through darker channels.
"This is going to take more work."
I would have to check private investigation agencies and illegal weapons routes.
"The cops sure as hell won't help."
That meant finding investigation agencies that weren't the police.
I soon contacted three agencies and asked whether they could arrange a weapons route.
Well, most of the reactions were negative, as expected.
Only one place said they would look into it. I would have to pin my hopes on them.
I kept researching anti-zombie weapons.
"Traps?"
The suggestion that came up was that since zombies had no intelligence, traps might work.
That was definitely effective—against small numbers of enemies, at least.
"All good points, but large groups are the problem."
Nets, traps… or, unrealistically, armored vehicles kept coming up.
Who was going to sell an armored vehicle? Unlike firearms, they were bulky and not something you could casually get your hands on.
It would be better to loot one from a ruined military base in the future world.
"Nets… or traps. Those should still be useful if I use them right. Traps at least have fewer limitations."
I would do whatever it took to deal with zombies easily.
Nets and traps could both be bought cheap online.
"Hell, they don't even cost a hundred thousand won."
Given a zombie's frenzied nature, I would need something large and powerful—on the level of a wild boar trap.
I placed the order in one go and moved on to the next item.
Weapons were settled. Time to shift to another topic.
While I was fiddling with my phone, a condom ad caught my eye.
Condoms?
Come to think of it, I did have a mild concern about pregnancy.
When I had been with Lee Soyeon, there had been no condoms, and the situation hadn't exactly allowed for them.
Impregnating a woman was a clear symbol of conquest for a man—proof that he had entrusted her with his child.
From my perspective, I wanted to see it. But was the present situation that forgiving?
The process of giving birth was dangerous to begin with. Not that I had any right to say that after ravaging her for two days straight.
The important point was that I would be taking and violating other women going forward as well, and pregnancy would tangle things up in its own way.
Right. Condoms could double as emergency water containers anyway. Call it one more survival item.
I ordered those too… and then—
My phone sent a low-battery warning.
"Already out of battery. It's such a pain that I can't charge over there."
Thinking about it, the battery usually died in about a day and a half when I used it heavily—and this was one of those cases.
The power was out on that side. If I could generate electricity myself, that would be ideal.
But running generators across all of Seoul was impossible.
Seoul maintains backup generators for emergency situations.
Right. Seoul definitely had backup generators—but how did they supply the fuel?
There were limits, so the power had gone out. Generators came in the charger-style units people knew, and also ones that ran on fuel.
There were manual ones too, but those were for true extreme situations.
A generator, or maybe…
Wait a second. Couldn't I do it now? Bring a generator over—at least enough for Lee Soyeon and me?
Generators weren't some massive thing bigger than a car. There were portable ones you could carry around.
"Oh, that's good. Really good. So I can use electricity this way too."
Bringing a generator would make a certain amount of power possible.
A diesel generator. Camping-grade units were too small; a 5,000W German model caught my eye.
The price was three million won? Cheap.
Objectively it wasn't cheap, but my sense of money was, as always, completely numb.
Six hundred billion won didn't just vanish into thin air. On top of that, I was still investing in crypto based on future information.
In practical terms, I didn't need to worry about money at all.
I finished the order and stared up at the empty ceiling. Even so, after thoroughly enjoying myself with Lee Soyeon and then coming back at dawn, I was exhausted.
Time to sleep. Sleep was the best medicine.
In the safe present world, I replenished my stamina with the sweetest rest imaginable.
The next day, a KakaoTalk message was waiting for me.
It was a call from the construction site where I always worked. Day labor, sure—but plenty of people made their living off it, and I had shared drinks with them more than a few times.
Lately I hadn't been showing up, so they were curious enough to send this.
Of course. I had taken that nest egg and grown it massively.
When it came to money, I couldn't help the smile that spread across my face.
Anyway, after finishing the call, I loosened up my body. I still felt a bit stiff, but the aches seemed to have eased a little.
All that was left was to head straight for Lee Soyeon's place.
I needed to top off what my body was lacking and go in peak condition.
Naturally, a signal stirred in my lower abdomen. Healthy enough, at least.
In the past I would have just jerked off. Now I didn't even need to.
I had Lee Soyeon, and if I ran into someone while out and about, I could do whatever I wanted.
Well—would anyone measure up to Lee Soyeon? I wanted to cross over as soon as possible, but for now I held myself back as much as I could.
"No. Instant food won't cut it."
I had money to burn. I headed straight for an eel restaurant.
Time to spend some cash and properly replenish my stamina.
"Just you?"
The ajumma asked without any tact, the way they did at meat places. As if I had come to order a single serving.
"Three servings of eel, please. As long as it's more than one, it's fine, right?"
"By yourself? Putting in some hard work today?"
"A man should always be solid, no matter what."
Then the salty aroma of eel and the distinctive smell of iron-plate grilling hit my nose.
Coming here and eating like this as if it were nothing… I really was something else.
It hit me all over again how much money I had.
I bit into a well-grilled piece of eel. The heat, the flavor, and… the flesh.
It was almost too delicious.
Being able to eat something like this so naturally. I was far too happy.
When I came back to myself, I found my stomach comfortably full and myself already working on a palate cleanser.
"Hoo."
Three bowls of rice plus an extra serving. It had been so good I had eaten past capacity.
"I should walk this off a bit."
To aid digestion and kill time on the way, I wandered the neighborhood at random. Or rather—not entirely at random.
I was going to take a look at the new villa where Lee Soyeon lived, from the "present" point in time.
I passed shops, a playground, a corner store, bought a pack of gum, and blew bubbles as I went.
At the point I was visiting, the old houses were still standing.
They would tear those down and put up the new villa, supposedly.
"So it was built at least six months before the outbreak."
The old houses already looked like the residents had moved out—discarded furniture was scattered here and there.
I chewed the gum I had bought on the walk over, working hard to blow the biggest bubble I could.
If you asked why, it was just because I was bored. I needed my stomach to settle a little so I could move vigorously later.
But right then, the bubble I had inflated to its absolute limit burst. The residue of the gum smeared sticky around my lips.
"Damn it."
I hurriedly wiped my mouth with the gum wrapper and looked around for a trash can, but there wasn't one.
I had no choice but to crumple it roughly and stuff it away—when someone smacked me hard on the shoulder.
And right in front of me, a girl in a school uniform went tumbling.
"Watch it!"
She snapped at me on the spot and walked off. Her face was pretty enough, in its own way.
Nowhere near Lee Soyeon, but there was something about her being a student, something fresh—why was that?
Well, if this had been that kind of situation… a shame. This was still a world with public authority.
Wasn't there a high school around here?
In that moment, a devilish thought rose in my mind.