WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Hiding a House in the Apocalypse ◈
Chapter 28: Magic Medicine (1)
──────
I had a dream for the first time in a while.
For someone like me, who aimed for short but perfect sleep, dreaming was humiliating. Still, the dream itself was interesting.
Park Gyu was preparing for the future in America instead of Korea.
He easily acquired guns and built a vast fortress in the wilderness, one that could rival a chaebol chairman’s estate.
From the highest tower, he shot dead invading Yankees, cowboys, superheroes, and mad mice. He ran over Monsters with an eighteen-wheeled trailer, then somehow had dinner with the President of the United States.
At the height of the dream, I tried to say something to the president.
But no words came out.
I knew what I wanted to say, but I wasn’t used to the language there. I wondered whether the expression I was trying to use was even correct, and that blocked my voice.
In that instant, I realized I was a stranger in that land. Then I woke up feeling oddly deflated.
There was nothing more or less to it.
It was a nonsense dream. A fun nonsense dream.
Still, its setting and circumstances seemed to vaguely foreshadow the future that would soon unfold before me.
That was how it felt when I thought about the people I would soon meet.
There had been noticeably more gunfire lately.
It didn’t seem like a battle, given how one-sided the shooting was, but it was happening far too often.
Was something wrong?
It didn’t seem serious enough to call in, so I had been waiting and watching. Still, I was worried.
Maybe the frequent gunfire wasn’t simply because there were intruders.
Maybe it was a sign of madness.
It had already been two years since the war began.
Long enough for someone to go insane.
The sniper had always asked me for drugs.
But what kind of drug could soothe her empty heart?
Maybe magic medicine[1] could.
But where would I find magic medicine?
* * *
It paid to have a good reputation.
There were still people on the board looking for Kyle_Dos.
Anonymous848: Kyle_Dos! Are you alive? Where are you?
anon458: Kyle_Dos! Sorry. I talked shit when I heard you were becoming a webtoon protagonist. I’m begging for forgiveness, so please come back!
Today, DragonC uploaded the latest episode of The Remnant.
The new episode depicted the final story of Kyle_Dos desperately fighting to protect his wife from invading deserters.
In his final moments, he realized he was hopelessly outnumbered. He held hands with his wife, shared one last kiss, stared at the enemies forcing their way into the air-raid shelter, and pulled the grenade pin.
Boom!
Explosion ending.
The response was incredibly heated.
anon458: T_T
roka3218: T_T
keystone: T_T
THE_LAST_MAN: T_T
Anonymous848: T_T
kimcic: T_T
gijayangban: T_T
Defender: T_T
James_Catterer: TT
James_Catterer: Can somebody translate this to English? :)
.....
Everyone wept through their keyboards.
Even Defender.
But not me and one other person.
SKELTON: Hmm....
unicorn18: Was she a virgin?
Objectively, we made an easy pair to gang up on.
One of us was boring and Defender’s friend. The other had started losing it after his first year and had become a genuine unicorn, just like his username.
Anonymous848: SKELTON. Isn’t that too much?
anon458: I think you picked the wrong concept this time.
DragonC: SKELTON?
roka3218:
kimcic: Dude.
keystone: The guy who only ever says “Hmm” is always going hmm hmm....
.....
Sure enough, we were bundled together and thoroughly beaten down. Somehow, it felt like I was the only one taking hits.
Even Defender seemed to be giving me disapproving looks.
Message from Defender: (Defender, aghast) SKELTON, you... Are you one of those? A psychopath...?
I had been falsely accused, but my conscience was clear.
It was my honest impression after personally visiting Kyle_Dos’s air-raid shelter and trying to uncover the truth.
To be blunt, it hadn’t been an explosion ending.
I didn’t tell the board what had happened to Kyle_Dos.
I didn’t think there was any need to.
Rather than leave room for all sorts of interpretations, I thought it was better to let Kyle_Dos remain the protagonist of an explosion ending.
Still, when bad things happened, good things occasionally followed.
A familiar face appeared in the latest The Remnant episode’s comments after a long absence.
It was none other than gijayangban.
Everyone had thought he was dead after the civil war began, but there he was, alive and well, casually leaving his thoughts on the webtoon.
Naturally, the return of a prominent user everyone had thought dead caused an uproar on the board.
gijayangban: I got lucky. The National Assembly Faction gave up on the area around our apartment and pulled their main line of resistance way back.
gijayangban: The reason I couldn’t get online was because the anti-drone jammer downstairs was running. There’s also a command post right below us. If I started up something like a generator, a few Panzerfaust rounds would’ve come straight through the balcony.
gijayangban definitely deserved his reputation.
His survival report alone easily filled the popular-post list. As if making up for his absence, he unloaded a whole bundle of the latest information he had brought over from PaleNet.
gijayangban: Destroyed tank.
jpg
gijayangban: Large Monster reportedly spotted in Dongducheon.
jpg
gijayangban: (Sad news) The Hope still hasn’t fallen.
jpg
gijayangban: Current situation in Gangdong District.
jpg
gijayangban: Cargo ship recently being prepared for Jeju Island.
jpg
.....
For those of us trapped in stuffy air-raid shelters, it felt as if another world had opened before us.
Every story was fascinating, but one in particular caught my eye.
gijayangban: Current situation at the Seokju Group chairman’s residence.
jpg
Even chaebols were helpless before an extreme variable like war.
The chaebol families that had built private castles in the suburbs and prepared for the future had now become targets.
Chairman Park Cheol-ju’s fortress, a representative example, was one of them.
The helicopter that had stood gracefully on the helipad, the beautiful greenhouse that called the Louvre Museum to mind, and the miniature golf course that looked like a transplanted luxury country club had all failed to escape destruction.
As reactions to the chaebol residence photos heated up, gijayangban explained in the comments himself.
gijayangban: Looks like a Corps Faction unit marked the coordinates and shelled it. Just for fun, without any major reason.
I agreed with gijayangban’s opinion.
Those shell craters were clearly the work of 155 mm-class field artillery.
Corps-level artillery shelling a chaebol residence in Chuncheon, not Seoul, with no strategic value whatsoever? What reason could there be besides fun?
The chaebol family was still holding out in the ruined fortress, but with the walls breached and the foundations destroyed, they would not last long.
Maybe Chairman Je Pung-ho had been wise.
In any case, gijayangban’s return breathed enormous life into the board, which had been stagnant for a while.
You could say it was a moment that showed the strength of a prominent user.
But it seemed I was more jealous than I expected.
“...”
The urge to write about Kyle_Dos spread all the way to the nerves in my fingertips.
SKELTON: (SKELTON Report) Visiting Kyle_Dos’s Air-Raid Shelter (1)
I had already come up with a plausible title in my head.
A handsome title born with the destiny of becoming a popular post.
But I shouldn’t write it.
I didn’t want to ruin the board users’ emotional experience.
The reality I had witnessed left room for interpretation from many angles.
For the people on our board, it would be best if Kyle_Dos’s story ended with an explosion ending.
“...”
But the more I thought about it, the more my opinion changed.
Was saving such excellent material really the best choice?
A dramatic ending was good, but wasn’t conveying the facts just as important?
Honestly, I might have been inferior to gijayangban as an informant, but my on-site reporting skills were far better.
My fierce inner conflict abruptly ended when I heard a sudden noise.
Crackle!
My walkie-talkie picked up a transmission.
“SKELTON.”
It was a familiar voice.
The sniper’s voice.
“I need backup.”
Before the words had even finished, sharp gunfire rang out from the south.
* * *
I still thought humans were the greatest threat in the age of ruin.
Erosion was an unavoidable disaster, but Kyle_Dos had been unlucky.
He had settled too close to a Rift.
The speed of Erosion itself was not particularly fast.
Its radius expanded by barely a centimeter a day.
But exceptions occasionally occurred.
The exact conditions were unknown, but sometimes a wide area underwent Erosion overnight.
Some said Settled Type Monsters were responsible, but Settled Type Monsters merely created their own territories. They did not act as catalysts that accelerated Erosion itself.
There was probably another cause we did not know about, but Erosion generally spread more quickly where Monsters lived.
That was likely why so many Hunters had been trained in the old days.
Do not leave Settled Type Monsters alive. Do not wait for them to disappear. Pursue and kill even a single one the military misses until the very end.
That was what I had learned in school.
Anyway, some cause had overtaken Kyle_Dos and forced him to leave the board.
In my case, I still had time.
There was a considerable distance between us.
The fact that Seoul lay in between was also important.
Even if Seoul fell, there would be plenty of people willing to settle there.
Seoul’s value would only rise, never fall.
Even if it became ruins, everything necessary would be beneath those ruins.
If my area became affected by Erosion, giving up my air-raid shelter might be an option.
There probably would not be many people left wandering Korea by then.
That meant the most deadly enemy would be gone.
Bang!
Why were humans the most terrifying enemy?
You only had to look at the raiders who had entered the sniper’s territory to understand.
Bang!
A group of raiders had taken up position on a ridge about 1.2 kilometers from the sniper’s building.
Two naked men ran about, appearing and disappearing over the ridge like moles in a whack-a-mole game.
There was a reason they were doing something so insane in the middle of winter.
They were mocking the sniper.
Bang!
No matter how skilled the sniper was, hitting a rapidly moving target from 1.2 kilometers away was not easy.
Whenever a futile gunshot rang out, the naked men flashed the fig sign or middle fingers at the sniper. Each time, laughter rose from several people below the ridge behind them.
Bang!
Another irritated bullet tore through the air, only to be swallowed by empty space.
“...”
It might have looked like comedy from a distance, but for the person involved, it would have been extreme stress.
The people who clearly intended to kill me and take everything from me were mocking me from just beyond my reach.
In nature, it was no different from a predator discovering a hedgehog. Instead of giving up, it observed the hedgehog from every angle, considering how to kill and eat it.
They would test the waters, wear down their target’s nerves, and torment them until they collapsed.
“Kyaa-hat!”
One of them ran all the way onto the ridge, spread his body wide, and let out a bizarre scream.
Bang!
An irritated gunshot rang out, but before the sound had even finished echoing, the naked raider rushed for cover.
Bang!
Another bullet struck his body.
“Kiya-hoo!”
Even bleeding from the gunshot, the man screamed wildly as he ran into cover. Even louder laughter came from behind him.
Only humans could do something like this.
Only humans tried to kill their own kind with a clear purpose.
Monsters had no such purpose.
Despite their lethal strength, that was why I ranked Monsters below humans.
I took a wide route around and reached the sniper’s territory.
Three stiff corpses lay at my feet.
The armbands on their arms identified them as Pioneers. They appeared to have died around autumn, when the group had been active.
“...”
Did she not even have time to remove the bodies?
I remembered the sniper constantly whining about drugs.
Maybe she had reached her limit.
I braced myself and waved.
Soon, light flashed from the top of the building, reflected by a mirror.
Morse code.
It told me to wait.
I waited grimly for my contact to arrive.
But the one who appeared before me was not the sniper.
It was her daughter.
Children really did grow fast. She was another head taller than the last time I had seen her.
Still, the U.S. Army helmet on her head looked bigger than her, and the gun slung over her shoulder did not suit her small body.
“SKELTON.”
The sniper’s daughter looked at me with an anxious face.
I could tell just by looking.
She was under considerable stress.
Her nutrition was not at a dangerous level yet, but she was certainly not well-fed.
“Let’s go.”
I did not offer comforting words.
What they needed was a solution.
I had come to solve this problem.
But under no circumstances would I give them drugs.
Drugs were not short for magic medicine, after all.
Footnotes:
[1] Magic medicine: In Korean, mayak means “drugs” but can be jokingly parsed as “magic medicine,” which is why the narrator treats them as if they were related.
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