Chapter 100: Turns Out I'm Ringing in the New Year with the Idols
The Christmas mood died instantly the moment the swarm of rats lured in from all over the house ruined any chance of a peaceful break.
Still, time passed in a blur, and the bandages he'd grown sick of finally started coming off one by one.
“The glass shard wounds have all healed. Now we just need to cover this area, right?”
The stitched wounds across his shoulder and forearm were closing up nicely too. Once the stitches came out, there would be some scarring, but nothing that would hinder movement.
“Maybe I should get a tattoo later?”
“That’s dangerous.”
Mari wrinkled her nose in clear distaste and immediately shut the idea down.
After finishing the dressing, she leaned softly against Kim Jun as he stood up.
“Why are you like this from the morning?”
“What day is it today?”
“Hmm…”
December 31st.
After living through the end of the world, zombies flooding the streets, running around like outlaws with guns, rescuing eight idols, he was now ringing in the new year.
As Mari quietly slipped her arm around his right one, he scratched his cheek awkwardly.
By the time breakfast rolled around, Emily was unusually excited.
“There’s not much of this year left! Tomorrow it’s Happy New Year~!”
“Oh, the new year really is coming, huh?”
“Yes… we’re spending it here…”
Gaya, Nanika, and the others nodded in agreement with Emily.
It had already been several months since they started living together in this house after Kim Jun saved them from the brink of death.
If things kept going like this, they might even make it to Lunar New Year and hit the six-month mark.
“Mister Jun~ Did you know?”
“Know what?”
“Miss Mari’s birthday is January 30th!”
“Huh?”
“She said it’s her fast birthday~”
Emily snapped her fingers and winked, reminding him not to forget Mari’s birthday that was only a month away.
“Oh… you’re right?”
Thanks to someone else reminding her of her own birthday, Mari began counting down from D-30.
If nothing happened by then, it looked like they would throw a second top star birthday party in the house after Eun Ji’s.
“How has time passed like this…”
Some of the girls took it cheerfully, but others grew melancholic.
In Ah especially seemed to sink back into that gloom after her last breakdown where she dropped all the housework and only barely recovered.
“I wonder how Seoul is doing right now?”
“…”
Clink!
The moment Do Kyung muttered that, the sound of a spoon dropping rang out again.
Suddenly thinking about what Seoul must be like now and whether the people they knew were safe made everyone sad.
The melancholy virus was about to spread again as they thought about their loved ones.
But then Eun Ji quietly pointed at Kim Jun.
“Oppa…”
“What?”
“…Tomorrow you turn thirty.”
“…?”
When Eun Ji pointed at herself and smiled faintly, he was about to ask what age she was talking about.
“…Pfft!”
“The person laughing right now is twenty-eight too.”
In the middle of the gloom, Eun Ji’s single age comment made even Gaya burst out laughing.
And just like that, the melancholy virus began to fade.
“Why tomorrow? You turn thirty after your birthday passes!”
“This is Korean style!”
When Eun Ji added that, Emily shrugged and said,
“Well? Birthday is birthday, but age calculation follows the rules, right? Don’t you think, Nanika?”
“Y-yes?!”
“Tell us. In Japan, you age after your birthday too, right?”
“W-well… we use the traditional age system after New Year’s, but birthdays… yes, that’s right. After that, the age…”
“Traditional age? Oh right, you guys had an emperor, didn’t you? I wonder if that guy is doing okay in the zombie world?”
Emily dropped a line that would make any Japanese person faint on the spot.
As the girls gradually started laughing thanks to the age talk, Emily switched targets.
“Miss Mari! By that logic, we’re the same age at twenty-five, right?”
“Sure~ Whatever’s comfortable~”
“You debuted late though…”
“Shut up, volleyball girl!”
Even Do Kyung jumped in, and soon In Ah was smiling too. Laughter bloomed across the breakfast table from the very start.
In that atmosphere, Kim Jun threw in his own comment.
“Now that I think about it, we call Gaya, Eun Ji, and Mari the three older sisters. But Emily is the same age as them, isn’t she?”
“I don’t really get called ‘unnie’ though~”
“No, you do. Emily unnie!”
Thankfully, breakfast ended on a wave of laughter.
And since he couldn’t just sit around in this situation, Kim Jun grabbed a pair of rubber gloves.
“Alright~ Today I’ll do the dishes too.”
“No! We’ll do it!”
“Just give them here~ It’s been a while.”
Ever since the girls first arrived, doing the dishes had become their job.
Come to think of it, he had made them thin soup that first day, and after that they had started doing things on their own.
As Kim Jun took the bowls from In Ah and washed them one by one, he said casually,
“You guys are all doing so well.”
“Huh?”
“The food, I mean. If it weren’t for you, I probably would’ve just been chewing on raw vegetables alone.”
“Ah…”
In Ah and Eun Ji.
Thanks to these two girls cooking, growing vegetables themselves after the original food ran out, and constantly making meals, they were able to eat abundantly even in the apocalypse.
“You even made kimchi yourself, right?”
“It’s just something I learned when I was young…”
Watching In Ah grow nostalgic as he occasionally brought up childhood stories, Kim Jun made a mental note that she especially needed mental care.
After finishing the dishes, Kim Jun moved around preparing for the last day of the year.
Creak— creeeak—
“That’s it! That’s how you use a pipe wrench.”
“Ugh, something gross keeps coming out?”
After the meal, the third-floor sink wasn’t draining, so he took the chance to teach Do Kyung how to clear a clogged pipe.
Kim Jun opened the cover himself, used the pipe wrench to loosen the joint under the sink, and as Do Kyung handled the tool more, thick black sticky water poured out.
“When this many people use the same sink, it’s bound to get clogged.”
“Ugh… I don’t even wash my hair in the sink…”
She grumbled about why she had to clean it, but when it came to handling tools or electricity, there was no one better than Do Kyung.
She was strong enough to drive a nail in one swing that others needed two or three hits for, and she handled wrenches and spanners perfectly too.
Creeeeak— pop!
With a rush of air, foul-smelling black clumps fell out.
When Kim Jun turned on the water, everything that came out under the pressure was tangled hair.
“Ugh… what the hell is all this? We really need to ban washing hair in the sink!”
“There’s all kinds of stuff mixed in. The curly ones must be Gaya’s, the yellowish ones are probably Emily’s, and whose is this long hair?”
“It’s not mine!”
Do Kyung always kept her hair short. Even now that she was growing it out, it barely reached her neck and shoulders. Once the sink was cleared, they cleaned up and came out.
Still, when he gave her a cola from the fridge for her hard work, the girl brightened up immediately.
“We’re having a New Year’s dinner party tonight.”
“Then we should eat lots of delicious food.”
Do Kyung had done all sorts of work while staying here, but eating good food was what made her happiest. She smiled brightly.
“The kids are all so good. They do everything that needs to be done on their own…”
When Kim Jun said that and glanced into the next room, Rana and Nanika were making clothes.
“Oppa! We want cola too!”
At Rana’s request, Kim Jun poured two glasses and headed to their room.
The two girls were cutting up clothes Kim Jun said he wouldn’t wear anymore, adjusting sizes and mending them.
Rana in particular had taken the trunk shorts he once used as swimwear, shortened them to fit an idol’s waist, then cut them even shorter to turn them into hot pants.
“You really like hot pants, huh.”
“They’re comfortable♥”
After learning knitting from Eun Ji, the two girls had also picked up sewing and were now making their own clothes.
Rana especially showed off her pale, smooth legs beneath the hot pants she was wearing, and on her small, neat feet she had even painted her toenails with manicure.
“You said it looked tacky before.”
“It turned out surprisingly good. Can we use these cosmetics later?”
Tints, manicures, lipsticks, powders—she seemed to claim all the makeup for herself.
“Um… Oppa.”
“Hm? What is it, Nanika?”
“When I finish this, I’ll give it to you.”
Nanika was cutting up old clothes to make a handkerchief and said she would give it to him when it was done.
Kim Jun chuckled and patted both girls on the head.
“We’re all gathering for dinner tonight, you know that, right?”
“Yes~ Eun Ji unnie said she’ll make pasta.”
While Rana and Nanika focused on their tasks, Kim Jun slowly left the rooftop room.
Outside, he saw Emily working out in leggings and a training jacket despite it being December.
Anyone else would have called her crazy, but thanks to the abnormal weather after the zombie outbreak, the temperature was a cool 2–3 degrees Celsius. She was sweating it out anyway.
Every time she did squats, her huge ass stood out, and even through the loose jacket, her dynamite body made her chest pop forward dramatically.
“Ah, Jun!”
“Why aren’t you running?”
“I already ran for an hour earlier.”
Emily sat down on the stairs to rest now that Kim Jun had come over. When he sat beside her, he caught a faint whiff of sweat.
“Hah, it’s hot.”
She unzipped her jacket, revealing nothing underneath but a bra.
“Hey, in this weather…”
“It’s not cold.”
“Zip it back up. You smell like sweat.”
“No I don’t~”
There was no way she didn’t. The sour smell of an idol’s sweat kept hitting Kim Jun’s nose, but she only fanned the jacket open even more.
“Ah~ I’ve set a clear goal for next year.”
“What is it?”
“Kill 100 zombies.”
“…Not returning to normal life after the world ends?”
“Well, if we keep killing zombies, eventually there will be more people again, right?”
He had known for a while that her mentality was from another world, but instead of saying she wanted to go home or see her family, her goal was ‘I need to kill more zombies!’
With a slightly flushed face, she clung to him and asked,
“Do you think one round of sex for every zombie I kill would be fair?”
“…You’re not even trying to be serious.”
Kim Jun sighed and shook his head.
“Still, with the new year ending like this, I’ve experienced so many things I never would have otherwise, right?”
“Hm?”
“I’ve shot a crossbow, killed zombies! I’ve used a grinder, even built machines.”
Even though she had done countless things as an idol—dancing, singing, acting—falling into the apocalypse as a woman had let her experience so much more.
“You’ve done everything so well.”
“It was my first threesome, and my first time doing anal too…”
“Pfft—cough! Cough!”
When Kim Jun choked on her example, Emily slyly slid her hand downward.
“Training?”
“Ah, Oppa!”
Kim Jun greeted Gaya and Mari who were doing combat training on the first floor with slingshots and canes.
They held their stances like active soldiers doing PRI with rifles and moved quickly to hit the targets.
“You’re doing well. Did you hit it yourself?”
“Yes!”
Gaya and Mari were getting more and more skilled at hitting the targets.
He recalled the time they helped Hwang Yeosa’s group and fought the First faction thugs.
“Gaya was amazing. That taser gun.”
“Ah…”
When the First faction thug charged at him and they were locked in a power struggle, Gaya had shot the taser through the window and saved him.
“You really fired the taser…”
When Mari looked at Gaya with admiration, she hesitated and nodded.
She seemed to think it wasn’t something to brag about since her single shot had killed a person right in front of her.
“The ones who should live, must live.”
Kim Jun patted both Gaya and Mari on the shoulder and quietly continued his rounds around the house.
11:00 PM — The final countdown begins.
“Cheers everyone!”
“Cheers!”
They had timed it for 11 PM and begun the New Year countdown.
Today they had specially charged the girls’ smartphones just enough to set alarms.
“This year is finally over…”
“Let’s all do well next year too.”
“Mmm~ This pizza is so good!”
The girls each said something or enjoyed the food prepared for the year-end party.
Kim Jun was about to give some encouraging words but, reading the mood, simply said,
“Fuck! Next year I turn thirty!”
“Honestly it probably won’t feel any different, right?”
At Emily’s words, Kim Jun waved his hands. The girls who aged one year at a time chatted among themselves until the countdown drew near and they began counting.
“Ten…”
At Emily’s cue, Gaya quickly followed.
“Nine! Eight!”
“Seven!”
“Five!”
“Four!”
“…San~”
It sounded like something other than English came out for a second, but they let it slide.
“Two!”
And Kim Jun immediately stood up.
“One! Happy New Year!!!”
“Happy New Year!”
“Whew~ Let’s all have a good new year!”
“Kyaa!”
Emily pulled Rana and Nanika who were beside her into a tight hug. Gaya comforted the other girls and patted them.
Eun Ji clapped quietly with a smile, and In Ah said to look forward to the first food of the new year as she brought out the pie baking in the oven and sliced a piece for everyone.
In the middle of that atmosphere, Mari quickly slipped into Kim Jun’s arms and whispered,
“Happy New Year to you too, Oppa.”
“Ah, yeah. Happy New Year to you too.”
“Then the New Year celebration… later?”
“…”
And so they spent the new year living together with the top stars in the apocalypse.
Since they had all aged another year, they would need to move forward with even more hope in this world whose end no one could predict.
And the first thing to do in the new year was… commemorative sex, as announced.