WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
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◈ Hiding a House in the Apocalypse ◈
Chapter 2: Gangster
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Firearms were probably the most efficient weapons humanity had ever made.
They were especially effective against other people.
It wasn't just that they could kill or injure someone.
Whenever I had to deal with people or reveal myself, simply carrying a gun restricted the other person's actions.
You could call it a manners injector that humbled people just by being there.
Its anti-personnel power went without saying.
Guns had been made to kill people in the first place.
Some said their effectiveness was halved against monsters or zombies. I agreed to an extent, but not completely. It all depended on how you used something.
Anyway, firearms were necessary to survive after the collapse.
As I'd said time and again, humanity's greatest enemy was humanity.
But this was Korea.
Unlike America, firearms were difficult to obtain here, and even obtaining them was illegal.
I could've gone to America to prepare for the end, but that had its own pros and cons.
There had to be a world of difference in early-game difficulty between a country where every Tom, Dick, and Harry was armed and a country where gun ownership was banned.
Think of those battle royale games that had been popular once.
What fun would it be to start shooting the moment you landed from the plane?
There needed to be a time for scavenging, throwing punches, and squabbling your way through fights.
Of course, it would've been more fun for me if I had a gun from the start.
This happened while Old Man Kim was still alive.
He owned a hunting shotgun.
He kept it at the police station during peacetime, but whenever harmful-animal culling season came around, he would take it out and show off his terrible marksmanship.
“When I was in the military, you see, those communist infiltrator bastards came in. I hid without breathing behind an acacia bush, then when one showed his face from behind a tree, I went Bang! and planted a bullet for destroying communism right between his eyes!”
Later, I checked through personal connections and learned that Old Man Kim had only been a local defense serviceman[1]. He had never taken part in any operation against infiltrators.
Still, his shotgun itself was a fairly useful weapon.
As a shotgun, it had strong stopping power and could be handled reasonably well even by someone who wasn't a skilled shooter.
But a weapon like that wasn't enough to prepare for the future.
I always kept an eye on the nearby air force base.
It was jointly used with the U.S. military, so it had American equipment. According to rumors, several Hunters, troops specialized in fighting monsters, were stationed there as well.
Getting Hunter equipment would have been the ideal outcome, but what I wanted were large quantities of ammunition and several combat rifles.
The problem was that it wouldn't be easy.
How was I supposed to infiltrate an air force base guarded by both Korean and American troops and steal weapons and ammunition?
My original plan had been a little rough.
If China went to war, that air force base would be a first-priority target.
A U.S. Forces Korea base stood right beside it.
According to the Chinese war plans I had looked into, the American base next door was a target for a preemptive nuclear strike.
Once the nukes hit and the base was in chaos, I would calmly put on protective gear and collect guns and anything else useful.
That had been my first rough plan.
It sounded absurd, but I thought it was still the most realistic way to acquire quality weapons.
There might have been ways to get weapons through Southeast Asian gangs or Russian sailors, but at best, they only dealt in handguns.
But when reality proved harsher than expected and the world began moving in a direction different from what I'd predicted, even I, Park Gyu, gradually became impatient.
SKELTON : How can someone get serious weapons like assault rifles in countries with stable public safety and gun bans, such as Korea or Japan?
This was an age when people formed group chats and online communities for everything.
An online community also existed for people preparing for the coming collapse.
It was Viva! Apocalypse!, a doomer community where oddballs like me gathered.
Not just anyone could join.
You needed Galaxy Link, the satellite internet equipment developed by the world-famous entrepreneur Melon Mask[2], and you also had to pay the hefty monthly fee of one hundred dollars.
The prerequisites were extravagant and the cost was considerable, but it had quite a few users. It was popular enough to have its own Korean-language board.
I posted my question there.
Several replies soon appeared, but none were useful.
Most irresponsibly suggested raiding a police substation or a small military unit alongside comrades who shared my beliefs and emptying the armory.
Even the opinion of my spiritual mentor, John_nenon, was no help.
Korea's public safety wasn't so lax.
I might have been able to steal weapons, but there was no guarantee I'd be safe after doing something like that in a country plastered with high-resolution CCTV cameras at every turn.
Just when the community I'd paid a hundred dollars a month to join couldn't provide a clear answer, an offer came from an unexpected place.
“This is a bomb shelter, right? The kind doomer people have been building lately.”
The person making the offer was Kim Wangsu, an employee of the construction company I'd hired to build my first bomb shelter.
He was Chinese, a Korean-Chinese man.
Until Kim Wangsu revealed his background, I'd thought he had been born and raised in Korea.
He looked younger than me, dressed better, seemed more polished, and spoke in a trendy way.
Unlike the other workers, who tilted their heads at my request to build a bomb shelter on an empty plot of land, Kim Wangsu showed great interest in it.
“There are lots of people like that in China too. Party cadres and capitalists with Party connections are racing to build bomb shelters in rural areas. Much bigger and more serious ones than yours, Boss.”
It was more than just interest.
Kim Wangsu had considerable knowledge and insight, as well as information about China that I didn't know.
“War? Well, whether sooner or later, won't it happen eventually? It isn't in Western news, but every province around Inner Mongolia has been swallowed by monsters. At least several hundred million people must've died. The Party is trying desperately to stop it, but honestly, it's already over. It's only a matter of time.”
He seemed envious of both my bomb shelter and my ability to have one built.
“You don't seem much older than me, Boss. You must've made a lot of money, buying all this land and bringing in all that equipment.”
“I hit the jackpot with crypto.”
In truth, I was an extremely risk-averse investor who had never touched crypto, or even stocks.
Though I had taken on some debt.
“Crypto. Wow.”
Kim Wangsu looked around, then leaned close.
“Have you gotten yourself a gun or anything?”
“A gun?”
“Yes. If the world really ends, shouldn't you at least have a reliable firearm? You can build a shelter this fine and stockpile supplies, but if a robber takes it all, then it's all for nothing, isn't it?”
Kim Wangsu deliberately used a Yanbian dialect[3].
An awkwardly excessive one, at that.
It seemed he wanted to show off his connections over there.
Within the company, Kim Wangsu was considered diligent, personable, and clever. He was trusted even more than Manager Hong, an outsider with ten years of experience.
He certainly was clever and sharp.
Thinking I had nothing to lose, I began the deal.
The results were surprising.
“Three Type 56 rifles. Three hundred rounds. Three magazines thrown in.”
He was offering three rifles and the fairly respectable amount of three hundred rounds.
He named a high price, but I had no reason to refuse.
Decent firearms were indispensable if I wanted to prepare for the future ahead.
As construction on the bomb shelter neared completion, Kim Wangsu called me out.
“Boss. Everything's ready. Shall we set a date?”
By then, I had become somewhat wary of Kim Wangsu.
A private investigator had found that he was not a Yanbian Korean gangster. He was a member of a Triad organization centered on mainland Han Chinese.
Prepared for any possibility, I met with Kim Wangsu.
“Let's wait a moment. My associates will bring the goods.”
We waited without speaking for quite a while in a secluded spot screened by industrial waste.
The weather was chilly.
The air itself wasn't cold, but the sky was heavily overcast and the wind was strong.
Perhaps Kim Wangsu's gloomy background also contributed to the cold.
While we waited, Kim Wangsu kept checking his phone.
When I stole a glance at the screen, I saw a cute little girl who looked like him, smiling brightly.
“Your daughter?”
“Yes. She's my daughter.”
A faint smile and a flush came to Kim Wangsu's face, which had been expressionless the entire time.
“She must be about seven. She's cute.”
“Ha ha, she is cute, but she's so unusual. She gives me a lot of trouble.”
Kim Wangsu appeared to be messaging with his daughter.
A sticker that she had probably sent was displayed on the familiar messenger screen.
A penguin character tilted its head slightly and asked when he was coming home.
Kim Wangsu replied in simplified Chinese that I couldn't read.
Perhaps he'd said he would return soon.
Before long, a dump truck crossed Old Man Kim's land with a rattle-rattle.
“Hey! Hey!”
Old Man Kim came rushing from his house, ready to throw a fit. But when I showed myself, he grumbled and went back inside.
Only one man was in the dump truck, and there were no signs of an ambush or betrayal.
“Let's get started.”
As arranged beforehand, we loaded the industrial waste scattered across my land into the truck.
While I diligently operated the excavator, Kim Wangsu's colleague unloaded the real goods from the passenger seat.
The merchandise was genuine.
Three Type 56 rifles and three hundred 7.62 mm rounds.
They were well preserved and worked without issue.
Kim Wangsu's group did not betray me, as I had feared.
Still, there was a small surprise at the end.
As Kim Wangsu was about to get into the dump truck, he suddenly climbed down and approached me with movement swift enough to be threatening.
“!”
For an instant, I expected an ambush and even gripped the weapon hidden in my pocket, but it ended anticlimactically.
“Do you live alone?”
For a brief moment, he gave me a chill, but I didn't show it.
“No. My companions will be here soon.”
“Oh, is that so?”
“Is there a problem?”
“No. I just thought that bomb shelter was too large for one person.”
“I like spacious homes.”
“I could make do with one tiny room.”
“If something happens, come here.”
“Would that be all right?”
“We have to help each other survive.”
He might have been a gangster, but he seemed decent at heart.
He was a skilled carpenter, and if he had the nerve to become a gangster, I thought there would be no harm in having him on my side.
More than anything, he was a caring father to his child.
The warmth in his smile as he read his daughter's messages was enough to make me see him differently, no matter what sort of person he was.
“I appreciate the offer, but I'll decline.”
“Why?”
“Ah, I'm planning to return to my homeland soon.”
“China?”
“Shanghai.”
I still didn't know what kind of person Kim Wangsu was, but when he deliberately stressed the place called Shanghai, I felt I understood, just a little, who he was and what sort of thoughts he lived with.
Kim Wangsu contacted me three years later.
War had become imminent, and the world's destruction had become almost certain.
The call came to my first phone.
It was an unknown number.
I had only used that phone up until three years earlier. Since then, I had maintained the contract without using it.
After the first call ended, the same number called again.
I had a bad feeling.
I checked the closed-circuit camera screens throughout the bomb shelter and found an unfamiliar vehicle inside my territory.
In front of it stood a man with an anxious expression, one hand in his pocket, smoking a cigarette that was burning down.
The moment I saw his face, I hesitated.
Should I meet him, or ignore him?
Kim Wangsu made his choice faster than I did.
He opened the vehicle's door, said something toward its unseen interior, then ran toward the bomb shelter with terrifying speed.
He held an axe wrapped in a leather case.
And of all things, an axe.
“...”
I picked up my first phone and called the number that had rung twice.
“Oh. Boss?”
Kim Wangsu answered warmly.
Even while sprinting at full speed, his breathing didn't falter.
“Is this Mr. Kim Wangsu? What's going on all of a sudden?”
“I wanted to stop by and say goodbye before leaving Korea.”
“Goodbye?”
“Where are you?”
I stepped into view before him.
From a distance, I saw Kim Wangsu's familiar open, easygoing face brighten into a smile.
He closed the distance quickly.
Ten paces.
Then he suddenly kicked off and charged.
An axe he had hidden up his sleeve, like mine, appeared as he flung off the leather case covering its blade.
Watching the axe arc toward me, I let out a quiet sigh.
Thunk!
The axe sank deeply between a person's shoulder and neck.
Not Kim Wangsu's.
Mine.
Kim Wangsu, his face aghast, was barely trying to turn his head toward me, the one who had buried the axe blade in his body.
But his neck no longer obeyed him.
Whenever his muscles twitched, fresh blood gushed from between the torn flesh and chunks of meat the axe had gouged open.
I released the axe and stepped to the side so he could see me.
Kim Wangsu convulsed and swung his axe wildly.
But it only sliced through the air in front of me, missing by a hair.
“A soldier...?”
I shook my head.
“A mobster? No...!”
“Why are you doing this?”
I sighed quietly and glared at the dying man.
“I could've made room for you, if you'd wanted.”
Kim Wangsu's lips curled upward.
“Sya, ssangdimei...”
Those were his last words.
When he collapsed, his phone bounced from his pocket.
I used his face, not yet cold, to unlock it. The messenger screen I had seen before appeared.
I couldn't read the conversation filled with simplified Chinese, but the sticker released in Korea gave me a sense of déjà vu.
A penguin character with its head cocked, asking, When are you coming?
“...Hah.”
There was no time to dwell on it.
The sirens warning of a nuclear strike were howling hard enough to tear my eardrums apart.
At that point in time, Old Man Kim was still alive.
* * *
How long had it been since the storm passed?
The Geiger counter beeped out readings that said it was safe to go outside.
I drove the old four-wheeler I had carefully hidden in the bomb shelter toward the air force base.
Just in case.
But then.
“This is... fucking ridiculous.”
The curse came out on its own.
Beyond the collapsed buildings were weapons and firearms piled high.
There was none of the Hunter equipment I'd hoped for, but this was still an enormous windfall. There was enough to build a one-man army.
My rough plan to steal weapons from a military base after the world ended had turned out to be correct after all.
I looked toward where Kim Wangsu's vehicle had been.
The blackened vehicle lay there in an ugly heap.
Even now, I sometimes wondered.
If he had not made that deal with me, could he and his family have survived?
I did not think so.
Footnotes:
[1] Local defense serviceman: South Korea's former local-defense alternative military service, generally performed near home rather than as active-duty combat service.
[2] Melon Mask and Galaxy Link parody Elon Musk and Starlink.
[3] Yanbian: A Chinese border region with a large ethnic Korean population. Its Korean dialect signals the identity Wangsu is claiming.
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