Hiding a House in the Apocalypse - Chapter 447



Only Noblemtl

447 178. Travel (1)

“What? Travel?”

Traveling today is not much different from traveling in the Middle Ages.

You have to risk your life.

Unlike the Middle Ages, we know most of the world, and we also know that most of that world has been destroyed.

It is no longer possible to make pilgrimages to holy sites or tour famous places like in the past.

Partners are also important.

Woo Min-hee is never a good partner.

Although she has become much more toxic, she is still uncontrollable, impulsive, and cynical about everything. Rather than being a pleasant person to be around, she is a person who “sucks your energy.”

Cheon Yeong-jae is causing a stir, but to be honest, I also don’t feel comfortable with Woo Min-hee keeping coming to our office.

But despite all the odds, there is a magic word that moves me.

That’s right, curiosity.

“Don’t you want to go see my daughter?”

An offer I couldn’t refuse came from my junior’s mouth.

“Daughter? So your daughter? The girl you gave birth to?”

“huh.”

Woo Min-hee answered without hesitation, with an expression that showed not a single lie.

“okay?”

Five years have passed since the war began.

The world has changed a lot.

Most of the changes are bad, but those who survived are proving in many ways why they survived so far.

Of course, I have also made great strides in the meantime.

I am especially proud of the great growth I have made internally.

“Can you give me some time to think about it?”

This means that no one is willing to bite the fishing rod baited with curiosity anymore.

First of all, of course, it would be exploration.

“Yes? A child from the chief······? This is the first time I’ve heard of it.”

Song Yu-jin, who had worked with Woo Min-hee since the Incheon Research Institute days, went beyond responding that she had no idea and actively tried to doubt the truth of the matter.

“No, if you had a child, you know, like, a picture or something. At the very least, you should have asked about their well-being periodically, right? There was nothing like that. Seriously.”

I asked Kim Da-ram, with whom I had a one-sided enemy relationship, about this fact in a more conciliatory manner.

Something like this.

“I’m just saying this just in case. Do you think Woo Min-hee has a child?”

“no.”

Ms. Kim Da-ram, a strong candidate, flatly denied the claim.

“Just look at his personality. Do you think he’s the type of person who would want to have someone else’s child?”

“······I guess so?”

“You might think I keep badmouthing him, but that’s the truth. Woo Min-hee loves herself too much to have another person’s child. How could someone like that have any love for a child?”

“Can I have some candy?”

“ah!”

After being kicked out by Kim Da-ram, he went to find Gong Gyeong-min.

Although we are still awkward, we have fought together and risked our lives.

“what?”

Even Gong Kyung-min, whom I trusted the most, reacted strangely.

“What are you talking about? I thought you were going to discuss an important matter when you suddenly called me, but you’re not knocking on my door while I’m sleeping.”

“Isn’t there really one?”

“Does she make a child alone? Woo Min-hee has always been alone since she came to Jeju Island and has never made a man. If she had a man, there would have been rumors. After all, if she was a man, she met him so many times when she was young, right?”

“I see.”

“What? Did you hear something strange?”

“No. It’s nothing.”

“By the way, since we’re talking about this now, Woo Min-hee. There’s talk that he recently made contact with Kang Han-min.”

“With Kang Hanmin?”

“I thought the two of you were separated forever. Well, you never know what happens in life. I think things will change in some way or another sooner or later, so be careful. Everything seems fine right now, but the world is one where you never know when something will happen.”

People say that Gong Gyeong-min is a man with less power than he looks.

Even while I was in Jeju, I was subjected to all kinds of restraints from the committee made up of my juniors, and I lost all my people.

Therefore, the information he can obtain will be limited.

However, it seems to be a clear fact that Woo Min-hee, who boasted such a splendid love history, lost interest in dating in her mid-twenties.

It can’t be helped.

Whispering about tomorrow’s love after seeing that hell is something that only someone with a numb heart or someone with a truly upright heart can do.

Anyway, after asking people around Woo Min-hee and people who know the Jeju situation, I was unable to obtain a satisfactory answer.

In the midst of all this, the promised day came.

“Senior. Are you ready?”

Woo Min-hee appeared.

I was a little surprised.

It is not the usual office look with a white coat added on, but a combat uniform.

“let’s go?”

A gun with an overly colorful patch is a bonus.

A character doll known as the so-called “Menhera” was hanging from the end of a gun.

“······.”

That’s right.

This is the gun I used during my active duty.

*

It was more of a mission, specifically reconnaissance, than a journey.

There were no vehicles or the usual support.

2 people per group.

I walked through the ruined city center on foot.

There were no people, monsters, or even zombies on the streets.

It is a truly abandoned street from which everyone has left.

“Over there. That apartment is the first checkpoint.”

When I first heard Woo Min-hee’s briefing, I had the thought that Woo Min-hee might have left her child in the care of a third party.

Regardless of whether or not she has a child, if she really does have a child, it is not difficult to conclude that Woo Min-hee would have entrusted her child to someone else to raise.

Although she is in the same situation as me now, during her prime, Woo Min-hee displayed overwhelming presence and influence as the queen behind the scenes.

If someone were to be guaranteed safety and a future in exchange for raising their child, there probably wouldn’t be many people who would turn that down.

Of course, the big shot named Woo Min-hee would have provided a well-hidden Class A bunker in Seoul or its suburbs.

But there are so many places that Woo Min-hee wants to visit today.

There are as many as six places.

I’ve heard from foreign media that she gave birth to quintuplets, but I’m not sure about sextuplet babies.

If Woo Min-hee were a cat or a rodent, it might be different, but she is a human being just like us.

It is impossible to have six children at once.

Even if you make a concession and have triplets, you still have to have them twice.

Considering Woo Min-hee’s consistent testimony that she did not have children during her time in Jeju, the period during which she could have secretly had a child is limited.

Therefore, there is a high possibility that Woo Min-hee’s child will not be present at the checkpoint that Woo Min-hee is trying to go to.

Indeed, the place that Woo Min-hee found was an apartment that had once been labeled as luxurious, but was now abandoned.

And there is no trace of life whatsoever.

What on earth could there be to do in a place like this?

“It was Building 101, Room 1902, right? I think?”

She had the specific lake number on her phone.

Thump- thump-

There are no traces of people, but you must always be careful when walking through the ruins.

Because you never know when or where a surprise attack might come.

Not just humans.

Mutations and zombies are also targets of caution in small indoor spaces.

Srrrrung-

He climbed the narrow, dark emergency stairs, holding an axe in one hand and a pistol in the other.

Not speaking while on a mission is a habit that has remained the same since then.

I opened my mouth after arriving at my destination, the 19th floor.

“What do we have here?”

It won’t be a child.

Even if you are a strong-hearted person, it would be difficult to raise a child in a place where there are no people around, and therefore where there is a high chance of exposure.

Woo Min-hee, who was asked my question, blew her bangs with her breath and spoke lightly.

“Hobby?”

It wasn’t a child after all.

The door was open.

To be exact, someone had forced open the door, and traces of the other person’s actions remained clearly visible in the dust of time.

As the door opened, the faint smell of a corpse reached my nose.

It’s the kind of stench you’d expect from a corpse that’s been left unattended for at least a year.

I walked carefully into the room, holding my weapon, recalling all the various corpses I had seen during my time in China.

“There’s no need to be alarmed. There won’t be anyone there.”

Woo Min-hee said with confidence.

Indeed, it was so.

Inside, in the living room, a dried-out skeleton lay against a backdrop of black marks left by the flesh before it dried.

One, two, three, and four.

“What is this?”

It wasn’t a victim of looting.

The neat arrangement of the corpses, the bottles of alcohol rolling around, the glass windows and plastic that probably sealed the entire room, which would have amplified the stench, and the traces of a flash grenade.

It’s suicide.

Two of them appear to be children.

“As you can see.”

Woo Min-hee slowly looks around the scene with eyes that are both indifferent and interested, her mouth covered by a mask.

“These are the people who died about a year after the war. To be exact, when we were going back to the shelter system and pushing everyone into the shelters.”

Woo Min-hee bent down and lifted something.

Lego toy. A knight on horseback.

It appears to be a small human skeleton placed between the skeletons, presumably those of the parents.

“Not everyone went to the shelter willingly. Some people had a premonition.”

She put the words down.

“Even if you go to a shelter, there will never be a good future.”

“······.”

“That’s why he took his own life first. At the time, there were many complaints from neighbors about the stench. But there was no administrative power to put in the effort to clean up the apartment that was about to be vacated, when even the elevator wasn’t working properly. We left it as is, and this is how it ended up.”

“Still, the scavenger came and went.”

The door had already been forced open.

Only nail marks remained where the wall-mounted TV had been, and all the drawers were open and most of their contents were empty.

Woo Min-hee smiled coldly.

“Other people would avoid a corpse if they smelled it, but they’re like real scavengers. They’ll look around first if they smell a corpse.”

He looked at her and asked.

“Are all the other places you’re planning to go like this?”

I felt that way.

Woo Min-hee raised her head slightly and stared at me, moving only her eyes.

With her elegant, Western appearance, she is definitely more attractive from the side than from the front.

“huh.”

She nodded, sending me a sidelong glance.

“Why are you looking for a place like this?”

At this point, I’m starting to wonder about the purpose.

Kim Da-ram was being called all sorts of names, but not one of them was calling him a necrophiliac.

There must be a reason.

“······Just because I wanted to see it. What would it look like for a family to take their own lives? I’ve seen it in pictures, but seeing it in person is different from seeing it in pictures, right?”

Since she clearly showed that she didn’t want to talk anymore, I didn’t ask any more questions and headed to the next location.

This time too, when the shelter system was being transitioned, it was a place where the remains of a family that refused to go to the shelter and took their own lives were strewn about.

As expected, a scavenger had visited, but perhaps because the intrusive nest was nearby – now removed – he had scavenged less than before.

The second family appeared to be a fairly wealthy family.

There were all kinds of musical instruments, and inside the broken picture frames were pictures of happy families from all over the world.

Woo Min-hee looked at the photo of a family that did not know her and did not know herself for a while without saying anything.

The long silence was broken first by her.

“In the past, you know. There was a time when I thought these people’s judgment was right. Why, someone who was living so well would be living in that shelter. Huh? It’s not easy living among low-level people who don’t even know where they came from, is it? It’s less so in neighborhoods where people who are well off live, but in places where various classes are mixed, there have been reports of mob lynchings quite often. Well, let’s not forget about rape and kidnapping.”

She touched one of the picture frames.

It was a family photo taken with the Leaning Tower of Pisa in the background, leaning like Emgu’s house.

When I touched it with the sharpened finger of my prosthetic hand, the part where it was hung on the nail seemed to have aged, so the picture frame fell to the floor.

Naturally, neither Woo Min-hee nor I had any intention of hanging the picture frame back up as it was.

She turned around.

“But you know, senior.”

Woo Min-hee saw the corpses gathered in a small room.

“······It seems a little different now.”

I felt like I had some idea what she was trying to say.

“I don’t know what will happen in the future, and most of it will be bad. But people can live and laugh there too, right? That’s what I think when I look outside these days. It’s what I think now, five years after the war started.”

Is this the trend?

“Being alive is another expression of possibility.”

I nodded and agreed with her opinion.

This was proven by Park Gyu himself.

I imprisoned myself in the abyss of despair, but I finally defeated the enemy I longed for with my own hands.

If I had collapsed in a state of self-abandonment, my body would have been found by future humans or aliens without my soul being saved.

“I think it’s better to live.”

Woo Min-hee looked at me.

She smiled.

“right?”

She left the house.

“Let’s go back here. I’m sorry. I made you see something strange.”

“No, it’s okay.”

Woo Min-hee muttered in passing.

“······If only our family resembled our seniors even half as much.”

Woo Min-hee’s family was reported to have died during the war.

What I do know is that he ignored evacuation warnings, stayed inside his home, and was caught in the aftermath of a nuclear attack, obliterated without a trace.

It seems that it was different from the truth.

But there can be no long conversation between us.

Because both she and I still feel a distance between us that can’t be narrowed down.

Maybe they’re both being careful.

It could be that the scars and pain engraved on the body remain as scars of caution.

One very important question remains.

“I mean my child.”

Woo Min-hee said as she went down the dark stairs.

“I’m in Jeju.”

The steps have become quite cheerful.

The journey has only just begun.

That’s what I thought.