WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
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◈ Hiding a House in the Apocalypse ◈
Chapter 4: Good Fortune[1]
──────
There were stages even to the apocalypse.
People disagreed on the details, but the main measure was the state of the country.
Every serious stage required the collapse of the state.
After Chinese warlords launched their suicidal war, nuclear missiles fell on South Korea's major cities, and the country's collapse began.
Many people died, and countless cities became ruins, but even then South Korea's system still held together.
There was no need to go outside.
All I had to do was receive shortwave radio or television broadcasts, and the national emergency broadcasts kept me informed.
The EMP had destroyed the TV I usually used, but I installed the emergency backup and watched the situation unfold.
Millions were dead, and about half the cities had stopped functioning, but Seoul and its surrounding regions were quickly regaining stability. The military, civil servants, and volunteers were handling the situation.
I left my air-raid shelter only after communications had been restored and some order established in the area where I had settled.
I pulled out the old cargo bike I had prepared for this day and headed toward Seoul.
It would have been an extremely dangerous thing to do in America, where every idiot and their dog was armed with guns, but this was Korea.
The risk of sniping or gunfire was nothing compared to America.
Even if this had been America, I would have made the same choice.
If you started out terrified, you wouldn't get anything done.
Of course, even in Korea, basic etiquette was necessary.
Cheap brands, shabby clothes worn thin and torn, meager belongings. That was the dress code of the apocalypse.
Other than three days' worth of food and water, I brought a little cash in dollars and cigarettes for bartering. For self-defense, I packed an American-made pistol and a sharp, freshly sharpened hand axe.
There were no major threats on the way to Seoul, but the sights and atmosphere of the apocalypse gave me a complicated mix of relief, satisfaction, and a depression that seemed to soak up through the soles of my feet.
I had a good reason for leaving my well-prepared hideout and coming all the way to Seoul.
“I'm looking for Hunter Lee Sanghun.”
I picked out one of the busy soldiers who looked reasonably approachable and asked.
“Hunter Lee Sanghun?”
“Yes. The person currently in charge of disaster relief.”
“Can't you see we're busy?”
He was prickly despite his face, but when I offered him a few packs of cigarettes, he became kind as if by magic.
“Ah, you're looking for Director Lee Sanghun. It's such a common name.”
“Oh. He got promoted. I knew he was promising from the start.”
“Please wait a moment. I'll try to contact him. Who should I say is asking?”
“Tell him it's Park Gyu, someone he went to school with. If he doesn't remember, tell him it's the classmate who graduated top of our year. He'll understand right away.”
The soldier returned shortly afterward.
“Director Lee Sanghun is in a meeting right now, so he says he can't be contacted.”
“Is that so?”
“What is this about? If there's anything I can help with, I will.”
I hadn't come here specifically to meet Lee Sanghun.
I'd known from the moment I left the shelter that he wouldn't agree to see me.
Honestly, I didn't want to see him either.
There was another reason I had invoked Lee Sanghun's name.
“I'd like a military walkie-talkie and a Personal Identification Number.”
Cell phones still worked in some areas, but not in many others.
The farther you got from a city, the more useless a cell phone became.
In this situation, the most useful means of communication was a high-performance shortwave radio, a K-Walkie-Talkie.
It was heavier than a cell phone and harder to use, but it was reliable. As long as you tuned into a public frequency, you could communicate with every person nearby without even knowing their number.
That alone made it useful, but military walkie-talkies were a tier above civilian models. They could access encrypted military frequencies.
Which meant I could obtain information directly from the military, the most trustworthy armed force and source of information at the moment.
“Since you seem to know Director Lee Sanghun, we can give you a walkie-talkie for free. But I don't think we can issue you a Personal Identification Number. Those are only assigned to military and police personnel or people tasked with dealing with monsters.”
Just as expected.
I hadn't thought the Personal Identification Number would work out in the first place.
The soldier handed me a brand-new unit, still sealed in its packaging.
I carefully checked it for defects on the spot and tested it.
The result was perfect. A good unit.
Nine-tenths of the reason I'd come to Seoul had just been accomplished.
For the rest of the day, I rode around Seoul on my bike.
According to what I'd heard, five nuclear missiles had been fired at Seoul. Four had been intercepted in the air, while one had landed inside the Four Great Gates[1].
The casualties were still being counted, but they had easily surpassed one million.
The roads had become parking lots, clogged with vehicles that could neither move forward nor back. Ruins stood throughout the city.
Entry had been prohibited inside the Four Great Gates, where the nuclear strike had hit directly.
People who had lost their homes wandered everywhere. Hospitals were packed with irradiated people and wounded people sprawled on the streets, unable to find beds.
Public safety didn't seem especially bad.
Whether that was because security was strong or because the citizens had no energy left to commit crimes yet remained to be seen.
The EMP's effects had been weaker than expected. Many vehicles and cell towers had stopped working, but quite a few cell towers and phones still operated normally. Electricity was also being restored in a limited capacity, with priority given to urgent places.
What people feared was the next air raid.
The government had announced that it had launched a nuclear retaliation and reduced the source of the provocation to ashes, but hardly anyone believed that completely.
Sure enough, an air-raid alert sounded while I was traveling around Seoul, and I took shelter in a subway station.
There were many refugees inside.
The station must have been in a neighborhood with several large apartment complexes, because it was packed to the point of overflowing.
“?”
For a moment, I doubted my eyes.
<Samjeon “Best Louis Bill-Herrington” Residents' Area>
<Label “Chief Head Stone” Residents' Area>
<Brandia “Proud Noble Hill” Residents' Area>
<Lotu “Ruppert Reich Palace” Residents' Area>
...
The subway station had been divided into sections by apartment complex.
Middle-aged men and women moved around irritably, guarding their own sections thoroughly. They wore no armbands, but invisible armbands might as well have been wrapped around their arms.
A man in a red cap who looked over sixty suddenly appeared in front of me and asked bluntly.
“Sir. Where are you from?”
“I'm still in my twenties. I'm twenty-nine.”
“I mean, where are you from? Are you from this neighborhood?”
“Please refrain from speaking informally. You're not my superior.”
“Are you from this neighborhood?”
“No.”
“Nonresidents should go over there.”
At the end, he didn't even look at me as he waved his hand dismissively.
The nonresident section was tucked away in the farthest corner of the subway station.
<Rentals and Other>
It was an area where even the light barely reached.
A few people wandered around with gloomy expressions, and faint radio broadcasts could be heard here and there.
“...This air raid is a cruise missile attack, not a nuclear strike. The Republic of Korea Armed Forces' interception units will stop it with the spirit of Admiral Yi Sun-sin[2], but citizens should prepare for any unforeseen circumstances...”
Soon, the ground trembled faintly, and distant explosions echoed eerily through the subway station, probably carried along the walls.
Boom.
Boom.
Experiencing an air raid in an unfamiliar shelter with people whose names I didn't even know wasn't pleasant.
More than anything, there was no privacy at all.
Rustle.
When I took out a chocolate bar because I was hungry and began unwrapping it, bright eyes turned toward it as though a pack of rats had appeared.
That alone was uncomfortable, but then an unfamiliar boy approached and stared up at me.
Grrrowl.
Had he not been eating properly?
Judging by his build, he had enough fat to survive a month without food.
Someone who seemed to be the child's parent came over late and took the child away.
“Excuse me.”
I held out another chocolate bar and asked a few questions.
“Rations? They gave us a pittance. But even that...”
The child's parent glared resentfully at the people controlling the entrance.
I asked on their behalf.
“Did the apartment-complex residents monopolize them?”
The parent silently nodded.
“I see.”
It was a fresh discovery.
It was only natural for people to band together and form interest groups in a crisis, but Koreans had their own particular center of gravity.
If the Joseon era had clan villages, modern times had apartment-complex villages.
The bigger the complex and the greater its influence, the stronger the power of its apartment-complex village.
That power balance was laid bare in this cramped underground shelter.
Strong complexes took the good spots and monopolized supplies. Those without strength got the lousy sections and a pittance of resources.
A thoroughly Korean sight, I supposed.
Before long, the all-clear sounded from everywhere.
“All clear! All clear! Citizens, please return outside and resume your livelihoods.”
After saying goodbye to the family I'd briefly shared the shelter with, I left the subway station.
As I headed outside, my eyes fell on the signs dividing the station by apartment complex and the residents of those apartment-complex villages.
“...”
Well, they wouldn't cause trouble.
A people who could tolerate theft but not bicycle theft, apparently. As I pushed my bike through them, I could feel countless damp stares inspecting it, but nothing escalated into an actual threat.
Of course not. Life was still bearable, and the country was still standing.
I unintentionally overheard their conversation.
“This bombing hit the New City area. Apparently those Chinese bastards even put chemical weapons in the missiles, so the damage is terrible.”
Up to that point, it was a perfectly ordinary conversation.
Then one blunt remark from a woman stopped me in my tracks.
“This is good news.[3]”
For a moment, I doubted my ears.
“?”
Good news? In this situation?
“It is good news. There aren't many decent apartment-complex villages left in Seoul. If every one except ours gets wiped out, won't our neighborhood become the most luxurious residential area in the end?”
If only one or two people had said such things, I might have let it go.
But human behavior always exceeded imagination.
“Now that you mention it, this is amazing news.”
“Our apartment complex will become Seoul's finest luxury complex.”
“My friend was always bragging about their neighborhood. Serves them right.”
“I can't wait for the war to end and see the neighborhood rankings get sorted out.”
“I guess a crisis really does bring opportunity.”
Ever since the war began, I had tried not to look at other people's faces.
They were people who would all die soon anyway.
But this time, I couldn't help looking.
They had the ordinary faces of people you could see anywhere.
That made my anger deeper.
“Isn't that a bit much to say?”
Since I would never see them again, I asked.
The answer was a cold glare.
One middle-aged woman snickered, exchanged looks with the other residents, and tossed out a remark.
“Go on your way.”
* * *
I had no way of knowing, and no desire to know, what happened to that entire apartment-complex village I saw that day.
I wasn't free enough to take an interest in people who called the end of the world good news.
But I knew very well what became of the residents of one of those complexes, Ruppert Reich Palace.
I remember it being a year and a half after my first visit to Seoul.
A group of refugees passed near my hideout.
Crackle! Crackle! “This is... dong! Ruppert Reich Palace Residents' Association! If anyone can hear us, please respond! I repeat! This is...”
They kept trying to contact the surrounding area on a public frequency.
I listened instead of responding.
I had enough food and water to support hundreds of people, but I had nothing to give them.
Not a single grain of rice. Not even a flake of dead skin from my body.
Then again, arriving in my territory was unlikely to be good news for them.
Crackle! “Aaaagh! Monster! This is the Ruppert Reich Palace Residents' Association! We're under attack by monsters! I repeat! This is the Ruppert Fucking Palace Residents' Association!”
About a month earlier, several man-killing creatures had appeared near my base.
What attacked them wasn't a monster.
They were beings contaminated and altered by a plague brought by monsters.
Mutations.
A few stray cats cared for by a nearby cat mom had been infected with the mutation factor. They grew as large as tigers, and with the same talents that had driven mandarin ducks and protected species to extinction, they were now trying to drive humans extinct.
They were weaker than the Gold Pack, the pack of mutated killer dogs active in the south, but against ordinary people, they were a match for Lü Bu[4].
Rat-a-tat!
As gunshots rang out, the walkie-talkie poured out desperate screams.
Crackle! “This is the Ruppert Reich Palace Residents' Association... I repeat! We're under attack by monsters!”
After listening quietly, I spoke into the radio.
“Good news.”
Footnotes:
[1] Seoul's old walled core, named for the four principal gates of the Joseon capital.
[2] A Joseon naval commander celebrated for victories against Japanese invasions. Invoking his spirit is patriotic military rhetoric.
[3] The Korean word here, hoje, means a favorable development, especially one expected to raise market or property value. The residents use it to treat others' destruction as a benefit to their complex.
[4] A famed warrior of China's Three Kingdoms era, proverbial for overwhelming individual martial power.
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