Apocalypse N-Student - Chapter 62



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Episode 62: Siblings

“Just one more, really last!”

“Ugh!”

As I repeated ‘the real last’ three times, Yeonhee’s face, which was straining against the large mirror covering one wall, became distorted into a sinister expression.

He had an expression on his face that could have spit out curses, but he couldn’t even open his mouth because of the weight pressing down on his upper body.

Yeonhee worked hard and finally achieved 100kg squats 5 times while carrying the barbell.

No matter how good her physique and strength were, it was not an easy record for an average woman with no weight training experience to achieve.

Yeonhee put the barbell down on the rack, took a deep breath, and wiped the sweat off her body.

“are you okay?”

“no.”

Yeonhee shook her head with a disgusted expression.

“Why on earth do you do this? It’s not fun, and if you get sick of it, you’ll probably spend the rest of your life in a wheelchair making pottery.”

“Weight training is the foundation of all sports.”

“For some reason I didn’t want to do it.”

Since joining us, Yeonhee has often used the home gym.

When he saw the sandbag, he was delighted and came over to hit it whenever he had time. Jong-seok’s words that he would wake up from his sleep and go learn the technique of beating people since he was little were not a lie.

Not only were the punches that pierced deeply, but the low kicks and high kicks were as fierce as in a real fight.

I focused on weight training and aerobic exercise as usual.

While watching, Yeonhee became curious and asked me to teach her, so I taught her the three major exercises.

Yeonhee’s first three highest weights were 270kg.

I thought that with just a few months of diligent training he would surpass me, but seeing him shiver, I figured he probably wouldn’t do it again.

“Didn’t you do weight training in the military?”

“I don’t do it. I did push-ups and sit-ups for the physical fitness test, but I don’t need such heavy weights. And they were all manipulated from behind, so the tadpole executives with protruding bellies ended up with higher grades than me.”

With Yeonhee’s level of physical strength and fighting prowess, she is at the top of the military.

Why was this soldier not promoted and was forced to be discharged?

“Oh, that?”

Yeonhee smiled proudly as she emptied half a bottle of Pocari Sweat in one gulp.

“The company commander blew a fuse.”

“oh my.”

This time I shook my head.

“At the end of the dinner, I just went to the second two and touched my butt. In the fifth grade of elementary school, a sixth -year male cub called me to the bathroom and threatened to show my heart. It must be … ”

“Since when have you been beating up people like that?”

“From the moment we first met.”

Yeonhee recalled the past indifferently.

“School is a jungle. Even the little shits won’t leave easy prey alone if they see one. If you just take whatever hits you get, you’ll become a punching bag. When I was in elementary school, there was a boy in my class who came from an orphanage. He was our class’s punching bag. I was next. My older brother was the same, even though we were in different grades.”

Although they are not orphans, Yeonhee and Jongseok have been raised by their grandmother since they were young.

My mom and dad, either dead or alive, divorced and left me and my siblings at my grandmother’s house, and I haven’t been back to see them since.

“My father failed in business. When I was young, I didn’t think that was the case, but when I grew up, I realized that it was the case. Even if it hadn’t failed, the family would have somehow managed to survive. After all, heaven and hell are all about money.”

Yeonhee said it nonchalantly, but being betrayed by a colleague or friend you trusted is shocking enough to make you disillusioned with humanity.

I also lost my parents, but it was in a car accident.

I couldn’t even imagine the pain of being abandoned by my parents, the source of my birth, at a young age.

“By the way······ Do you want to spar some time?”

Yeonhee’s eyes sparkled with fighting spirit, as if she wanted to get revenge on me for pushing her to the limit and persistently shouting “one more time.”

I turned around with a big smile.

“Okay. If you get hurt, there’s no medicine. There is medicine. But the best thing is not to get hurt. There are no doctors or hospitals.”

I returned to the living room and took a shower in the bathroom.

I soaped up and turned on the shower, but suddenly the water stopped coming out.

“Ah, again?”

*

There was one water tank on the rooftop and a whopping four in the yard, but they would run out of water quickly.

That’s because it uses a lot of water.

Showering, doing laundry, growing potatoes.

In the past, I had no place to get water, so I used it sparingly, but after securing groundwater from Lee Seon-ae’s house, I used it with peace of mind.

Transporting water from the house to the shelter was impossible with a water jug.

Nine hoses were connected and stretched along the alley, and an electric pump was used to suck water from the rubber tubs into the water tank in the hideout.

The pump in the house was manual.

Yeonhee and I took turns shaking the handle of a kettle-shaped hand pump up and down to pump water from underground.

As I watched the water gushing into the May sunlight, I realized once again how lucky I was to have met Lee Seon-ae.

If it weren’t for the wellhead in my house, I’d probably shower once a week and do my laundry once a month.

When hygiene conditions deteriorate, not only does it cause odor, but your physical condition deteriorates and the chances of getting sick also increase.

There was still a lot of drinking water left, but when we ran out of drinking water, we had no choice but to walk to the spring we had seen before.

– It’s full.

The water tank filling operation was completed with a short radio transmission.

“Whew.”

I put down the pump handle and washed my face with cold water.

“Thank you for your hard work. Have a drink.”

“thank you.”

I looked around the vegetable garden with green leaves sprouting while drinking the cold cider that Lee Seon-ae handed me.

“Potatoes are still far behind, but lettuce is growing so fast?”

The other crops had grown quite a bit after transplanting seedlings, but the lettuce, which is eaten for its leaves, was already more than half a span in size.

Lee Seon-ae nodded with a pleased expression.

“You’ve grown a lot, haven’t you? You’ll be able to eat lettuce next week.”

“That quickly?”

“It was really terribly cold in the winter, but May is truly May. The weather is nice, so the lettuce is growing well.”

Yeonhee interrupted, licking her lips while drinking cider.

“After picking lettuce, let’s eat some meat. Do you still have pork left?”

“There’s pork belly, pork neck, chicken, and beef left.”

“Wow, really? How did you manage to build a hideout and stockpile all that supplies in the middle of all that chaos?”

“It was just a fucking mess, so I pulled out the loan pool and made a killing.”

After drinking all the cider, I headed to the hideout with Yeonhee, rolling up the hose.

In the distance, I noticed two small wild dogs wandering around at the end of the alley.

Yeonhee asked, staring blankly at the dog.

“They must have had owners too, right?”

“I guess so.”

Judging by the way it hovered around while keeping a close eye on things, it seemed like it had been handled by humans for a long time.

“There were a lot of dogs wandering around the neighborhood where I used to live. There were a variety of breeds. The Sigorjab breed was the norm, but there were also Jindo dogs, Shih Tzus, Chihuahuas, and Malamutes.”

“It looks like the residents let them loose and raised them.”

It was a common thing in the countryside, but Yeonhee shook her head.

“No. They were dogs abandoned by people who came to play at a nearby beach. They were really helpless dogs, so they would just wait for their owners in the abandoned place. Sometimes, my brother would sit next to them, and I really hated seeing them. That must have been when, I think. My brother started getting beaten by me.”

I had no intention of interfering in my siblings’ problems, but I hesitated and opened my mouth, feeling that I had to say something.

“When the zombie outbreak broke out, Jong-seok was really worried about you. When he saw the dead soldier hanging from the apartment arch in Sasong New Town, he was completely shocked and trembling.”

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I still vividly remember Jong-seok lying on the rooftop with a pale face, unable to raise his head.

“I was worried too. I thought that a weak-hearted person like that would get eaten up by the idiots in the community center welfare department. The best way to deal with idiots who act like idiots is to slap them in the face. If rumors spread that there was a crazy person in the community center, all the idiots would disappear. I couldn’t do that, so I ended up in prison.”

It was a remark that seemed indifferent, but felt like Yeonhee’s consideration.

As I was winding the hose again, there was noise from the radio on my waist.

– Hey, I found a zombie horde. Come quickly.

“How many marins?”

– There are a lot. I think there are about 50.

I quickly returned to my hiding place and checked the footage sent by the drone.

When I saw the zombies gathered in the wide alley near Jangjeon Station, a red light went on in my head.

Where did it all come from?

At the height of the zombie outbreak, soldiers lured all the zombies on the streets into writing.

A wave burst south from the written trap that held the zombies.

So, since the snow melted, I haven’t seen any zombies swarming around the area.

The zombies you occasionally encounter are those who were trapped inside the building and came out through doors left open by intruders.

Come to think of it, it was also a bit strange that Sim Ju-hee was surrounded by dozens of zombies the other day.

I wonder if someone is going to take the zombies out of the building and release them.

Even if there were 50 of them, it was still not enough to form a colony.

But I couldn’t just leave it alone.

“Should I clean it up?”

“Yeah, it’ll keep growing.”

“Isn’t it too much for the three of us, or even the four of us including the lady, to take care of them? If there’s a commotion, more zombies might gather.”

“That’s the problem.”

“At that level, removing the body would be a job······ How about using a drone? You could attach a smartphone to it, play some music, and lure it far away.”

“It’s not bad······”

“Is there something bothering you?”

“I feel a bit uneasy about the drone being exposed.”

I’m trying to be as careful as possible when flying my drone, but I almost got caught by a wheelchair girl the other day.

If you lure zombies with a drone, you’re sure to have some unpleasant witnesses.

“There are firecrackers in the warehouse. Use those.”

“Firecrackers? Is there something like that?”

Jongseok looked at me with a puzzled look at Yeonhee’s suggestion.

“There is, of course.”

In the apocalypse, firecrackers were more useful than you might think.

It was also suitable for diverting the attention of zombies in an emergency situation or sending a signal to distant colleagues.

Even when we would surprise a group of looters by shooting firecrackers from the opposite direction, everyone would just watch and then collapse in vain.

The firecrackers taken out of the warehouse were on a different level from the small, crude ones sold at resorts.

It was a proper lump of gunpowder, contained in a cylinder the size of a Pringles can.

“Were you planning on having some kind of fireworks festival?”

“Firecrackers should be like this.”

I spread out a map and looked for a suitable location considering the drone’s maximum flight distance.

“I like it here.”

The place I took the picture was the E-Mart in Guseo-dong, 1.7km away in a straight line from the hideout.

*

They tied firecrackers to a drone and sent it flying onto the roof of E-Mart.

Fortunately, it was a clear day with no wind, so I was able to place the firecrackers, bundled in groups of 10, in the appropriate location without dropping them.

After finishing the setup, I waited until the sun went down to maximize the visual effect.

When the dusk turned black and the night became pitch black, we all went up to the rooftop after dinner.

“Let’s get started.”

Yeonhee and Jongseok operated the remote control attached to the drone while looking at Lee Seon-ae with anticipation.

Pee-pee!

pop!

A single firecracker shot sharply through the air, lighting up the dark night sky with a red flame.

The flames disappeared into the darkness with a crackling sound, and a moment later another shot was fired.

Pee-pee!

pop!

Since it can be seen and heard so clearly from a distance, the zombies will definitely react.

“It works. The zombies are moving.”

“It’ll take a long time to get there at that pace, right?”

“I set it to fire one shot every 30 seconds, so it should last 10 minutes. Even if the flames disappear, it will keep going because of inertia.”

“All the zombies in the neighborhood will gather there.”

Yeonhee was blankly watching the fireworks when Jongseok approached her.

“Eat candy.”

“uh.”

Jongseok, who received the candy, opened the package absentmindedly and put it in his mouth.

“Do you remember? Our last family trip to Gangneung.”

Jong-seok looked at Yeon-hee with a startled and trembling face, then turned his eyes to the sky again.

“uh.”

“Back then, Mom, Dad, and I were all walking side by side on the beach in the dark of the night. I was complaining that I was sleepy, and my brother just kept looking around. As we were walking, fireworks started from a cruise ship floating far out in the sea. It was really amazing. It was like receiving an unexpected birthday present. After the fireworks, I stood there for a while, drunk on the afterglow, and then Dad bought me a bag of candy at a convenience store, right?”

“······It was the most expensive one.”

Jong-seok muttered in a hazy voice as if he was lost in memories.

“Did you know that there was Vita 500 in Dad’s bag back then?”

At that moment, Jong-seok’s face hardened.

Pee-pee!

pop!

The yellow and blue flames turned the faces of Jong-seok and Yeon-hee pale as they stared at each other in silence.

“You know······ Do you even know what’s in Vita 500?”

Jong-seok came out and glanced at Lee Seon-ae, then let out a deep sigh.

“When did you know?”

“I saw it. My dad was riding it. I didn’t know what it was at the time. When I grew up, I found out. It was a sleeping pill.”

Pee-pee!

pop!

“I think Dad was going to feed us that and end our lives as a family of four in a car in the parking lot. But why didn’t he just kill us and buy us candy? Was it because of the fireworks?”

Jongseok didn’t even make a sound of breathing and just looked at the sky as if he was examining the constellations.

“At that time, I kept carrying around a few candies without eating them. Even when I made the noses of the guys who were picking a fight at school saying that they didn’t have a father or mother, and even when I beat my brother who was waiting for his owner with the abandoned dogs, I always had a candy in my pocket. Even when I wanted to eat it, I held back and saved it. This is the candy from back then. The last one left.”

“······really?”

When Jong-seok opened his eyes wide in surprise, Yeon-hee smiled mischievously.

“Just kidding. There must be some left. I ate it all a long time ago.”

Yeonhee muttered absentmindedly, rolling the candy in her mouth.

“Mom, Dad… Are they still alive somewhere? Or did they turn into flames and disappear?”

With those words, the siblings closed their mouths and watched the fireworks that splendidly illuminated the darkness with their entire bodies exploding.

At the bottom of the city, zombies were gathering towards the flames.

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