The Little Guest and the Innkeeper

Before long, the door swung open and Yu Jin stumbled in, drenched in sweat and gasping for air.

"Hah, hah……! Boss, I brought him back!"

"Good work."

Yu Hyeon came in supporting the man, and bounding along behind them appeared a tiny girl.

Ten years old, give or take. There was something uncannily striking about her face — brown eyes, sharply defined features. She looked like she might be mixed-race.

The kid gave a polite little bow.

"Hello, Boss!"

"Uh, yeah. Hello."

"Wow, so this is the inn!"

The girl craned her neck around the inn's lobby, taking everything in.

It was a ramshackle old boarding house on its last legs, but thanks to having the siblings scrub it down every day, the interior was reasonably presentable.

No mold, no bloodstains. No rot stench? That alone put it at five-star level, as far as I was concerned.

Out in the world beyond the shelter, this standard would have earned a tearful bow of reverence.

The kid's eyes were sparkling.

"So this is our home now? Is it true zombies can't get in?"

"Half right, half wrong."

I looked down at the little brat, the corner of my mouth curling up.

"It's true zombies can't get in. But this isn't a place you live for free. You know what an inn is, right?"

"Oh, um…… not really."

The way she slid her eyes away told me she knew perfectly well. Sly little thing, wasn't she.

The girl promptly switched targets and scurried over to Yu Jin, clinging to her leg like a cicada.

"Wow, you're so pretty, miss! Thank you for rescuing me. Can I look around?"

The approach itself was flawless. Men are weak to women, and women are weak to children — that's just how it works.

Sure enough, one compliment about being pretty and Yu Jin was grinning ear to ear, taking the kid's side.

"You bet! I'll show you around! Boss, aren't you being way too harsh? She's just a kid."

"I know she's a kid. And this isn't an orphanage."

A child's cuteness only goes so far — and only in a shelter where three rice meals a day appear on schedule.

It's not like I was going to stuff her into some narrow gap between machines, Industrial Revolution style, but in an apocalypse, a brat with no productivity was nothing more than a deadweight burden draining the food supply.

If I had to find a use for her… bait, maybe? Something to lull other survivors into letting their guard down?

Yu Jin, thoroughly delighted, took the girl's hand and kicked off a grand tour of the inn.

"Wow! Miss, is this your room? I love it!"

"Wow! A bathroom! The water actually works? Oh — no showers though?"

"Wow! The walls are so tall! Is this whole thing for keeping fires out?"

And then, the finale — in front of the guest room.

"Wow……. So this is where I sleep……."

When the door opened, a cold, bare concrete floor stared back.

No furniture, not even a blanket — the kid froze for about a second in front of the empty room.

But she ground her brains into gear and somehow managed to squeeze an advantage out of the hollow space, letting out a gasp of admiration.

"Th-there's no mold! And the floor's really flat and…… i-it's awesome!"

A heartbreaking display of social survival skills.

The room had been cleaned, sure, but it was empty as a cave. What could you do.

Before the fall, an app rating of one star and a wall of hate reviews would have buried this place. But this was hell-hole Korea, post-collapse.

What are you gonna do? If it bothers you, go sleep outside with the zombies.

Not that I planned to leave it like this, of course. The first guest had simply barged in far earlier than expected, that was all.

The to-do list was still a mountain.

First, restore the plumbing properly. Then scavenge decent wallpaper and flooring to redo every room with a clean finish.

Scrounge up a few mattresses, nightstands, whatever furniture was lying around to fill the space.

And once electricity came online, the grand big picture already sketched out in my head called for stocking every room with appliances to boot.

After all, the higher a room's environment grade climbed, the more points I could rake in for lodging. The system scaled both ways.

It wasn't that I loved interior decorating — this was a matter of survival, thank you very much.

I walked over to where they stood, in front of that bare little room.

"It's the latest trend — exposed concrete finish. SNS hot-spot café vibes, you know."

Yu Jin snorted with contempt.

"What the hell are you even saying."

"Tsk. No romance in your soul. Anyway, the room tour ends here."

I cleared my throat once, then looked down at the man huddled in the corner of the room, watching us warily.

"You understand this isn't a charity group or a government shelter. You'll pay for the room, or you'll pay with labor. One way or another, it has to be settled."

"Ah…… Yes, yes! Of course. Naturally."

The man steadied himself and set down the backpack he'd been carrying. It had to be everything he owned, scraped together in desperation.

The zipper opened to reveal a few cans teetering on the edge of their expiration dates, a flashlight with dead batteries, a folding knife, odds and ends like that.

Honestly, nothing here was worth big money in its current state.

But I had something else I was counting on — this line, sitting right there in the status window.

Not two times, not three times — a whopping thirty times! One-point junk instantly transfigured into thirty points. Straight-up magic.

When I exchanged every dusty trinket that came out of the man's backpack, the total came to 600 points.

The inn's lodging system worked like a pawnshop.

Whatever a guest deposited got converted into points and held on account with the system; then my set daily rate was deducted from that balance and funneled straight into my pocket.

I could set the daily rate according to the room's grade, and for a raw concrete room like this one — nothing in it — the cap was 100 points a day.

I could have set it lower, sure. But I wasn't a philanthropist, so why would I?

I set it to the ceiling: 100 points, flat.

"Welcome to Nakwon Inn."

I activated the Manager skill.

Ding—

With a cheerful chime, two 500ml bottles of water and two packs of hardtack biscuits materialized out of thin air.

Credit where it was due — the status window had some manners. Two guests, one room, so it doled out two of each.

"……?!"

The man's eyes went huge at the supplies that had popped into existence like magic.

"Wh-what on earth…… how did that come out of nowhere……?!"

"Wow! Water! Snacks!"

While the man gaped, the girl's eyes lit up and she snatched a fallen water bottle and a pack of biscuits off the floor in one smooth grab.

Trembling, the man picked up his water bottle and bit his lip hard — whether to hold back tears, I couldn't tell.

"Th-thank you…… thank you so much, Boss……!"

"Wow! A superpower Boss! That's so cool!"

The kid spun circles around my legs, laughing.

"Boss, can I drink this now?"

"That's what it's for. I'll give you one every day from now on."

"Every single day?"

"For as long as you stay as a guest."

"How do I keep being a guest?"

"Bring back lots of useful stuff from outside."

Watching anyone pay 100 points a day just to squat in a room was something I'd die before allowing.

Even with the system providing basic hardtack and water, that was strictly the bare-minimum, keep-breathing tier. Something more was needed.

Sick, young, none of it mattered to me. In this world, anyone who couldn't prove their usefulness would eventually be weeded out — that was all there was to it.

Maybe the kid understood that brutal law of survival too, because she nodded.

"I-I can do it! I'm really good at finding stuff!"

Behind that bright, beaming smile, I could see the hardships she must have been through, and something in my chest stung a little.

I reached out and ruffled her tangled hair.

"Good. I'll be counting on you."

Ugh, shouldn't have touched her. The grease on her hair was no joke.

I handed water and hardtack to the Yu siblings as well.

"Good work. And since you're already worked hard, how about a little more of it."

Translation: eat up quick, then get back out there and start scavenging.

Yu Jin whined.

"Ugh, I keep telling you, you're an evil ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠slumlord."

"If you hate it, quit."

"No thanks?"

Yu Jin stuck her tongue out and tore into her hardtack with impressive speed.

While the siblings filled their stomachs, I examined the legs of the man sitting slumped on the floor.

"How's the leg?"

"I fell while running and twisted my ankle badly. I don't think it's broken, but I can't walk on it……"

Looking it over, it was a simple sprain — the bone around his ankle swollen an angry purple. A minor injury that would heal right up with a splint and a few days of rest.

Of course, that standard only applied when the world was still intact.

Unable to run on two legs in an apocalypse crawling with zombies and raiders?

He might as well have handed a buffet voucher to the first passing zombie. Effectively a death sentence.

But this was where he'd landed, wasn't it.

An absolute safe zone where neither zombies nor raving maniacs could lift a single finger against him.

"Get inside and lie down for now. Yu Hyeon, help him into his room."

"Yes, Boss."

Yu Hyeon supported the man into the bare room of 102.

He made do with a few rolls of paper towels bunched up as a pillow. Wearing the expression of a man who owned the world, the guest let out a sigh of relief and closed his eyes.

The reason I hadn't laid him down in the staff quarters was that his condition was… beyond unspeakable.

If I let something that filthy in there, the lodging's hygiene grade was guaranteed to tank.

Yu Hyeon had only operated on emergency instinct back then — laid the body down first and dealt with it later — and ended up suffering like a dog afterward, scrubbing the place and wiping everything down with wet wipes.

The stench of blood and sweat simply would not come out.

Until the plumbing was up and running, I supposed the guest would just have to make do with wet wipes too.

I closed the door and stepped into the hallway, where the little girl — glued to Yu Jin's side — raised her hand.

"I wanna come too! I'm really good at finding stuff out there!"

Yu Jin balked, shooting me a worried look.

"No way, right, Boss? Tell me you're not taking a kid that young outside?"

"Relax, I'm not sending her far this time. Just a quick loop around the shantytown, right at our doorstep."

And more than anything, there was something I needed to verify.

When I'd looted the man's backpack earlier and exchanged it for points, a strange little modifier I'd never seen before had popped up in the status window.

There it was, stamped in bold: Existing Inventory.

So the question was — now that check-in was done, would newly scavenged loot from outside get the same 30x boost?

If yes, jackpot. If no, things just got complicated.

"So — be careful out there, all of you. Work hard and there's a reward in it."

"Wow, really?"

"In exchange, you listen to your miss and mister, got it?"

"Yes! Understood, Boss!"

The kid nodded with all the bravado she could muster.

I turned to Yu Jin.

"Focus on bedding. Blankets, bedding, that sort of thing."

"Huh? And here I thought you were being a hardass — turns out you do look after people. But is there even anything decent left to find?"

Granted, in an abandoned shantytown, any blanket lying on a floor would have long since rotted through with the rain.

But dig properly, and I was certain something intact would turn up.

"Look under wardrobes and storage cabinets. There'll be stuff sealed in compression packs. Volunteers usually packed things away like that."

"Oh, really? How do you know all this stuff?"

"Common sense. Which you happen to be a little short on…… never mind."

"Say what?"

Yu Jin puffed out her cheeks in outrage.

The kid, watching from the sidelines, whipped her face away and shook with her shoulders. One hundred percent trying not to laugh.

Back before the fall, I'd once done volunteer work in the goshiwon slums to pad out my résumé.

Those cramped one-room cells barely had space for two thick winter blankets, so the volunteer groups would store them, stuffed tight into compression packs with desiccant packets thrown in.

The elderly couldn't haul those heavy cotton quilts around, so odds were good that dry, sealed blankets were still sitting inside closed wardrobes.

Wandering survivors might grab a camping sleeping bag at best, but rain-rotted cotton quilts? They wouldn't give those a second glance.

"Anyway, there'll be a decent haul if you dig around. Search thoroughly."

"Okay, Boss!"

The three of them stood in a line at the front door.

I gave the departing group a casual wave.

"Stay safe out there."

"We'll be back, Boss."

"Heading ouuuut—!"

The kid's bright voice rang out as she skipped through the door.

In an instant, the grim, dead-quiet inn turned as rowdy as a grade-schooler's ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠walk to school. Who knew one kid could flip the whole atmosphere like this.

A perfect absolute safe zone that no zombie in existence could set a single foot inside.

A safe room to keep out the wind and rain, the warm bustle of people, and hearty eaters to boot.

For the first time, it felt like I finally had a home of my own.