Employee Welfare

Room 1 of the inn where we now stood.

It was the farthest room from the bathroom, and while it had less mold than the others, an inn that had been abandoned for years was still an inn that had been abandoned for years.

There was no way it would be in good shape.

Yu Jin pinched her nose shut.

"What is that smell?"

I answered flatly.

"Smells like a burst septic tank."

That's right. The whole point of this expedition was septic tank repair.

To fix it, I needed one assigned employee and a hygiene rating of [E].

So I'd farmed cleaning supplies and scooped up these two siblings. All in all, a pretty successful first outing.

She scowled and glanced around the room.

"All that's mold, isn't it...? Are you seriously sure this place is okay?"

"It's not."

"Excuse me...?"

How was anyone supposed to live in a place like this? Never mind the smell — the hygiene was a disaster.

Yu Hyeon especially was carrying open wounds. Left in an environment like this, complications were a given.

Just because it was the apocalypse didn't mean you could live anywhere.

If anything, in a world without medicine, getting sick meant game over — so we'd scoured the area for the cleanest spot we could find.

Or cleaned like absolute maniacs.

With that in mind, I decided to give the woman saddled with that weighty duty a little pep talk.

"You'll need to scrub hard. That's your job now. Get to it."

I pushed the status window over to Yu Jin.

"You can read, right? Hit Accept."

"Wh-what is this? Inn Cleaner...?!"

The Personnel tab had ten major positions, each subdivided into five tiers.

From the lowest, T1, up to the highest, T5.

As the base developed, the positions themselves upgraded — that was the structure.

"You really had to make cleaning an actual job?"

"'Had to'? That's the most important one."

Hygiene & Care looked trivial at a glance, but ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it was a busted, game-breaking position tied directly to survival.

Sanitation facility unlocks. Nothing matters more than shitting well and washing well.

Just having a proper toilet and one makeshift shower elevated your quality of life to a different dimension.

And it didn't stop there.

As the tier climbed, it unlocked not just basic sanitation but all kinds of buff-type facilities.

Even the passives reeked of pure cheese — and this was only T1.

Yu Jin wore an expression of deep displeasure about the job, but that wasn't my problem. When the boss says jump, you ask how high.

"Not hitting it yet? You want your brother's wounds to get infected? Dump him? Leave the place filthy?"

The moment I brought up Yu Hyeon, she scrambled to hit Accept.

"Hmph, fine, got it."

And just like that, Yu Jin became our inn's official cleaner. Condition one, complete.

We were one step closer to fixing the septic tank.

Ding—!

A cheerful notification chime.

Assigning lodging apparently reset the hygiene rating of the current room.

Its current rating was [F]. Even a base-issue room would clock in at [B].

A level with zero impact on daily life. In this day and age, that was practically doomsday-bunker-grade hygiene.

No reason not to. I hit the button immediately.

As long as it kept out the rain and the zombies, it was good enough. What was all this nonsense about interiors.

Still, looking was free, so let's have a browse.

A furniture list popped up in the status window shop, sorted by category like some housing-design game.

I was rummaging around for anything free when — no surprise — a starter package showed up under the Set tab.

No deliberation required.

Vwooom—

Light swirled once, and in the blink of an eye Room 1 got a full refresh.

This room had been horrific before.

Black mold bloomed across the rain-stained wallpaper, and the floor was nothing but yellow linoleum caked in stains of indeterminate origin.

A place where it felt ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠like you'd catch a disease just from breathing.

But all of that? Goodbye forever.

In its place, something new.

"Oppa, look at this!"

"What in the world..."

The siblings gaped, mouths hanging open in disbelief.

Cheap, flower-patterned wallpaper, snow white.

Glossy new linoleum, gleaming yellow and not the least bit sticky.

Even a plump orange comforter, aired out soft and dry in the corner.

It was a classic old-school inn, but without a speck of dust anywhere, it looked like a place that had just opened for business.

"From today, this is the staff lodging. You two stay here."

Think of it as home.

...That useless line almost slipped out of me.

Yu Jin stared blankly around the room, then slowly sank down onto the floor.

And then she hugged the orange comforter tightly to her chest.

"Th-this is... *hic*."

The rims of her eyes went red, and the tears that had been pooling there spilled over.

Yu Hyeon silently wrapped an arm around his sister's shoulders.

I found the sappy display hard to watch, so I discreetly turned my back — and left the room on the pretense of grabbing my bag before coming back.

"Done crying?"

"Yeah. Sorry."

The siblings were smiling. I couldn't allow myself to be as satisfied as they were.

"Don't get too happy about it. All of this is debt. You have any idea how many points this cost?"

A grand total of zero points.

The claim about points was a lie, but there was no way the siblings could know that. It was best to inflate debts as much as possible.

Yu Jin wiped away the last of her tears and smiled.

"Yeah, I'll really work hard! Thank you."

"..."

Something about not being able to spit on a smiling face, I think the saying goes.

That didn't fly in the apocalypse, but I decided to let it slide. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Just this once.

With a cheerful ring, a window popped open.

A countdown timer was already ticking the moment it appeared.

A special quest? Couldn't pass that up.

The point and loyalty rewards were nice, but the real prize was the pharmacy unlock.

The Lv.1 pharmacy stocked nothing worth looking at, but one single level up unlocked genuinely useful items.

Ordinarily the unlock conditions were pretty demanding, so getting it knocked out with a single quest was a massive benefit.

Medical supplies were hard to farm. What good would it do to have points rotting in my account later if I couldn't buy the things when I needed them?

You unlocked what you could, when you could.

I'd planned on patching his wounds up properly anyway. Getting a quest bonus on top? Pure profit.

I walked straight over to him.

"Yu Hyeon, let's get that shirt off."

"...I'm sorry, what?"

Yu Hyeon's lips were cracked and dry, cold sweat beading on his forehead.

He seemed to be getting worse by the minute.

I propped him up at a slight angle against the wall.

He panted for breath and murmured,

"If I just... rest a little, I'll be fine."

I wished. But ill omens are never wrong.

Dark blood was seeping through the bandage.

I cut the bandage away.

Peeling off the crusted, blood-caked wrapping revealed macerated skin — and something worse than I'd feared.

Office staples, embedded in the wound. He'd improvised, pinching it shut with whatever was on hand.

The wound was deeper than I'd expected, too.

Wow. This guy's insane. He was running around like this?

His mental fortitude was honestly admirable.

"Why didn't you tell me it was this bad?"

"I'm... sorry."

I chewed him out, but I'd have done exactly the same thing.

Revealing your weaknesses in front of a stranger is the dumbest move there is.

You hide it as long as you can hide it. That maximized your odds of survival in this world.

My eyes met Yu Jin's beside me. She jumped to her brother's defense in a rush.

"Th-this wasn't a bite, okay? It was those guys from earlier..."

Even if it really was a blade wound, that was no reason to relax.

Plenty of people hid bite and scratch marks from zombies by carving the flesh right out of themselves.

And if you were really unlucky, rumor had it the wound site could even become an airborne infection vector.

But thankfully, Yu Hyeon fell into neither category. I'd already confirmed it through the status window.

The system says not infected, so not infected it is. Question not the words of the status window.

Worst case, he might die of sepsis — but he wasn't turning into a zombie in front of me.

Just then, Yu Jin suddenly grabbed my hand.

"I'm telling you the truth, please believe me. He really did just get hurt."

The distance between us shrank in an instant, and before I knew it my eyes had drifted to her enormous chest.

So that's why, historically speaking, they say nations fell because of women.

I gently shook off her hand and activated my skill.

"Okay, okay, I believe you. So calm down and take this."

Bottles of water and hardtack biscuits materialized in front of them.

"...?"

"That's your daily ration."

Yu Hyeon stared blankly for a moment, then picked up a water bottle.

"Whoa, it's cold. Seriously, so many cheat skills. Can we... actually drink this?"

"Yeah, it's yours to eat."

Because it's your ration.

Yu Jin's eyes went round with disbelief.

"Y-you just give this away, every day?"

"You get it if you work hard. Nothing in this world is free. You know that, right?"

Because that's what a ration is.

"Th-thank you."

Yu Jin immediately twisted the cap off the bottle and moved to help her brother drink.

I blocked her wrist and looked at Yu Hyeon.

"Don't drink that yet."

The siblings froze and flinched, glancing nervously at my face.

I opened my bag and pulled out a bottle of whiskey and a makeshift surgical kit.

"He could go into shock, so just wet his lips. Let's deal with this wound first."

The surgical kit was a single-use disposable set, but of course this wasn't the first time I'd used it.

Well, in a world like this, who cares about that. Still, I couldn't just use it raw.

As I cracked open the whiskey, Yu Jin asked,

"What are you doing?"

"Disinfecting."

She startled and looked at her brother's wound.

"Ah, cleaning with alcohol.... I've heard of that. So we just wash it with this?"

"No."

If you have clean water, there's no reason to pour booze into a wound.

Alcohol was a stopgap for when things were desperate. In anything less, it just helped the bacteria breed.

I tossed the water bottle to Yu Jin.

"You — once I pull out the staples, irrigate the wound with that. Get it all the way inside."

I prepared to sterilize the instruments for the surgery.

Most whiskeys sit at an awkward proof, too weak to work as a disinfectant. But this one was different.

It was so strong it would be confiscated at airport security.

Among the drinking crowd, they called it a Hazmat whiskey.

Not that the name means anything anymore. In a world where planes no longer exist.

Anyway — the point is, it more than sufficed as a substitute for rubbing alcohol.

I never cared much for liquor myself, but live in a world like this long enough and you learn things whether you want to or not.

That bit of bar trivia about this particular whiskey, I'd picked up from the old man at the barter post, too.

When I told him to just hand over any bottle of harsh liquor,

the old coot went off about 'this one being a spirit of great historical importance' and 'airline regulations' and whatnot.

Which, of course, was just a ploy to squeeze a better price out of me.

I wonder if he's still alive.

Glug, glug, glug.

I poured that oh-so-historic whiskey straight into the tray and dunked the shabby surgical tools in it.

"Put this between your brother's teeth."

I pulled out a handkerchief and tossed it to Yu Jin.

"Th-this...? Why?"

Because, kid — this is going to hurt. A lot.