WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
Discord: https://dsc.gg/wetried
◈ Hiding a House in the Apocalypse ◈
Chapter 40: Golf (2)
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My bunker was chosen after scouting countless locations across the country.
The place where my main bunker sat was more of a hill than a mountain, but the rear, which bordered a valley, dropped off in a steep slope that was nearly a cliff. The gentler hill on the opposite side appeared to have a mild incline, but small rises actually disrupted the view.
It was not especially defensible terrain, but it was ideal for deceiving the eye.
The hill also made it easier to secure a view of the surroundings.
In short, I valued concealment and reconnaissance over defense.
It was only natural that the people Jo Seongyong had brought did not approach this way.
A glance showed there was nothing here, and nothing caught their interest.
They focused their search around the U.S. military base with the airport, spreading west and south.
A day passed.
The people put up tents and lit fires.
They did not have much to eat, but unlike Seoul, there was plenty nearby to burn, and they seemed pleased about that.
That night, however, the temperature fell to minus eighteen degrees Celsius.
The next day, they searched the villages.
Groups of two or three middle-aged women wandered through my territory, but they found nothing.
They lingered near the entrance to the dummy bunker, but it had been blocked with dirt and rocks.
To find the entrance, they would have needed to bring shovels and dig it out. Instead, the cold, blade-like wind that blew over the hills drove them out of my territory.
“Ugh. Is this place a graveyard? What is with this atmosphere? Why's the wind so damn strong?”
That was one woman's impression, heard through my listening device.
Another day passed.
This time, the people Jo Seongyong had brought went entirely in the wrong direction.
They began moving into the vast eastern rice fields and low mountains, nowhere near my territory.
Coincidentally, Jo Seongyong's truck returned to the golf course that day.
People began voicing complaints and dissatisfaction.
Their voices did not reach me, but it was not hard to guess what they wanted to say.
They seemed to be asking him to stop this meaningless mission.
The speaker attached to Jo Seongyong's truck boomed loudly.
“Please stay calm, citizens. We will bring buses soon. Please endure just a little longer. A warm home and food are waiting for you!”
The truck carrying Jo Seongyong left the site, and the light armored vehicle that had stood in the middle of the golf course the entire time roared away as well.
All that remained were around a hundred ordinary people he had brought with him.
Until then, I had not understood Jo Seongyong's intentions.
Why had he unleashed nearly a hundred people here?
Why was he putting so much effort into catching just one person, me?
Paranoid madness might have been one reason, but there had to be another.
Four days passed.
No buses came, and there was not even a single radio call.
Jo Seongyong's group had literally vanished.
The people, who had waited in miserable tents beside weak fires with the hope that buses would come, slowly but surely realized their fate.
They had been abandoned.
Jo Seongyong had brought them here on a whim, then thrown them away in the wilderness.
Unable to decide what to do on the frozen ground, they looked at one another.
Their first reaction was anger.
“Joooo Seoongyooong!!!!!!!”
Someone's furious cry echoed across the golf course.
The armed men gathered and stared north.
I could not hear what they were saying, but some seemed to be strongly arguing that they should go north and teach Jo Seongyong a lesson.
While the men vented their rage, the women gathered around the dying campfire to talk, or stood beside the men with their arms folded and listened.
By afternoon, the people had split into two groups.
One group apparently wanted to remain here and wait for Jo Seongyong.
Furious shouting broke out from both sides.
While they argued fiercely, I logged into the community.
There was something I had always wondered about.
Pioneers, Pioneer Units, Pioneer Corps.
At first, they had all seemed like the same thing, but there were ranks and differences in purpose among them.
SKELTON: What exactly is the Pioneer Corps? Does anyone know?
To be sure, I posted a question on the forum.
As an unpopular user who did not get many comments, I spent some time doing other things.
Beep---
The battery tester informed me that charging was complete.
After all kinds of trouble, I had finally succeeded in charging the Javelin's battery.
I would need to visit the sniper's hideout to confirm that it worked properly.
It was not enough that I could use it immediately. I needed to see whether it would hold its voltage without discharging while installed in the Javelin.
I put the charged battery into my bag and checked the laptop.
A few comments had appeared.
Roka_hun: Isn't that the organization that manages Pioneers?
keystone: Those bastards? They're the bastards who manage the Pioneers. Nothing but shitty people gathered there.
unicorn18: What about the SUNBI username, then?
“...I'm not SUNBI.”
The person who gave me accurate information was Mr. Journalist.
Whether they had seen my post or were planning to write one anyway, Mr. Journalist made a post about the Pioneer Corps not long after I asked my question.
gijayangban: About the Pioneer Corps.
txt
- I don't like writing long posts, and you probably wouldn't read one anyway, so here's a three-line summary.
1. The government considers people assets, so it packed them into large cities.
2. Now it no longer needs those people.
3. The Pioneer Corps is the organization that sends away people it does not need.
Something I had vaguely suspected had now been made clear.
The Pioneer Corps was not an enterprising group reclaiming barren land, as its name suggested.
It was a disposal organization that selected people from cities, took them outside, and dumped them there.
Lieutenant Colonel Choi, who had come to my territory, the Pioneers I had dealt with alongside Defender, and Jo Seongyong, who had come here this time, all made sense in that context.
They dumped useless people on useless land and made them devour one another.
Jo Seongyong probably had not thrown people away like this from the beginning.
A needle thief becomes a cow thief.[1] He had gradually begun tossing people aside, and now he boldly dumped them in the wilderness without a care.
The abandoned people were still over there.
They were still debating whether to go north or remain here and wait for the buses.
The man insisting they should stay was especially loud, and every one of his actions was excessively violent.
The others seemed intimidated by him. Unable to reach an agreement, they returned to their tents.
Another day passed.
It seemed someone had frozen to death.
People carried a corpse, stiff as a dead tree, out of a tent and over the ridge.
Someone's death could be a powerful source of persuasion for someone else.
Those who wanted to leave gained the upper hand, and most people took their side.
About ten remained, but their number kept dwindling. In the end, when the others left north, only one person remained.
He was the man who had shouted loudly enough to fill the entire golf course the day before.
Was he around fifty? He was gaunt, but his broad face still looked fleshy, and every movement he made was filled with excessive force.
After screaming curses at the departing people, he sat beside his tent and warmed himself by the fire.
Was he truly waiting for Jo Seongyong even in this situation?
That was remarkable faith.
I had suddenly gained another neighbor, but I did not contact him.
I could not rule out the possibility that he was a trap planted by Jo Seongyong.
If he was, this was an opportunity in its own way.
How would that man react if I ran my generator at this distance?
Lieutenant Colonel Choi's group had been too close to provide a useful comparison, and during the last cold wave, I had sent smoke up in broad daylight, so there had been extenuating circumstances.
The thing I worried about most was noise.
When I listened from that position myself, it was barely audible, but there were surely people in this world with sharper ears than mine.
To be cautious, I waited for bad weather.
The weather gradually grew warmer, but the thermometer still pointed below zero.
The man stubbornly endured alone in his tent.
How much food did he have left?
It did not seem like much.
He mixed nutritional bars that tasted like dog food with unknown grass that had begun sprouting in a pot he had found, then boiled it all together.
That evening, thick rain clouds gathered in the north.
At night, rain mixed with sleet poured down.
The bad weather I had been waiting for had come.
I tried running the generator.
How would he react?
The man did not react.
Even though SKELTON's heart was pounding powerfully enough to make my entire bunker tremble, the man did not move at all.
I went outside to observe his reaction.
Shhhhh---
As the rain grew heavier, the sound of my generator was clearly quieter.
But that was not all.
Bang! Tatat! Bang!
Distant gunfire rang out from the north.
The man was listening to the gunfire.
The shots coming from the north, where he had come from and where the people who had been with him had returned.
The storm passed, and a clear morning arrived.
The temperature had risen noticeably.
The mercury stood at ten degrees above zero.
Amid the birdsong, the man slowly emerged from his tent.
He looked around for a long time, especially toward the north, then suddenly began to sing.
It was not an ordinary popular song, but something more like an art song.
He did not seem to sing well. It simply seemed that he liked that kind of song.
After belting out a tune, the man snapped off a stick like a boy, climbed the ridge, and quietly looked around the golf course.
A moment later, he placed a stone on the ground and took a golfing stance.
He held his fingers near his eyes to judge the distance, then struck the stone with a smooth swing.
The swing was flashy, but the stone flew only a few meters.
The man snapped the branch himself and said, “Damn it!”
He disappeared over the ridge and did not show himself for a while.
The man emerged beyond the ridge about an hour later.
He held a golf club and golf ball in his hands, and he was even wearing a golf cap he had somehow found.
What was he trying to do?
Was he trying to get into the mood because this was a golf course?
A moment later, he stopped at one spot, bent over, and pulled away the grass.
What was he trying to do?
I looked through my binoculars at the spot where he had pulled the weeds.
“Huh?”
An exclamation slipped out.
There was a hole hidden beneath the weeds.
I had not known.
I had not known there was a hole there.
And that was not the only one.
As if the golf course were his own living room, he found hole after hole and restored them to their prewar state.
The nameless man began his own round.
Thwack!
The golf ball soared into the sky with a crisp swing.
I did not know much about golf, but even I, a complete outsider, could tell that he was not an ordinary player.
However, the golf course, now full of weeds, seemed incapable of accommodating such an excellent golfer.
His ball frequently disappeared into the dry weeds, bounced off scrub trees, or fell into pits covered in garbage from the U.S. military base.
He shouted every time, but none of it could wipe away the joy fixed firmly on his face.
Watching that utterly delighted expression, I came to one conclusion.
This man was not one of Jo Seongyong's lackeys.
He had simply stayed behind.
But why?
To wait for a bus?
No. He did not seem to think a bus would come either.
The only times he looked north were when the people left and when the gunfire rang out.
A bold hypothesis began to take root in my mind, gaining surprising plausibility as it joined with the man's happy face.
Perhaps he did not care about the buses at all.
Perhaps he had lied about waiting for a bus and forced himself to remain.
If he had insisted on staying behind to play golf, the others would have dragged him away.
As a result, the man was now using a luxurious country club with memberships worth 1.8 billion won all by himself, to his heart's content.
It was an indulgence even a chaebol could not enjoy.
After several false starts, the last ball went into the last hole.
The man's long yet short round had ended.
“All right!”
His spirited cry carried all the way here.
The man looked around, a relieved smile still on his face.
There was nobody.
No caddie by his side. No gallery. No other members he could not stand looking at.
His smile gradually faded.
It was not a particularly pleasant sight.
He seemed to think so too.
Before the smile vanished from his lips, the man suddenly pulled a pistol from his coat and, still smiling, pulled the trigger.
Bang!
The last golfer fell.
The golf course sank into a long silence once more.
A few innocent sparrows gathered like a gallery, then quickly flew away.
They say nothing in this world is completely useless.
Even human garbage like Jo Seongyong could occasionally be helpful.
chouchou: Someone, please help. The Pioneer Corps are outside!
Chouchou.
I had heard bad things about this person.
After I left, chouchou had apparently tried to take a girl's corpse away and fought with Dies Irae.
If another companion had not stopped them, chouchou might have been burned alongside the other bodies.
I might have been an unpopular, low-ranking user in the community, but I was still undeniably a member.
Chouchou was no longer even treated as a companion.
The post had enough views to become popular, yet nobody had left a comment.
“...”
People said I was bad at the internet.
That might actually be true.
But this time, I had a feeling.
SKELTON: Who is it? Who are the people attacking your bunker?
I left the first comment on chouchou's post, which everyone had been collectively ignoring through an unspoken agreement.
chouchou: It's a man named Jo Seongyong!
Chouchou replied immediately.
SKELTON: The commander of the 22nd Pioneer Corps?
chouchou: How did you know? I think that's right. This is really urgent. I'm near Gimpo. Can you come?
SKELTON: That's close. Yeah, how did he find you?
chouchou: Sewer pipes! He kept talking about the smell of shit and found me through that!
SKELTON: Did you touch any of the bodies around there?
chouchou: Hey, this is urgent. We don't have time to talk. Where are you? SKELTON? Are you close? Can you help me?
I deliberately took my time.
Just as expected, chouchou sent me a private message first.
Message from chouchou: I touched a woman's body a little.
SKELTON: No, not a woman's corpse. I meant, did you touch any of their belongings?
Chouchou tried to speak privately through messages, but I replied on the public forum where everyone could see.
chouchou: Guns! I took the guns. But what do you mean, a woman's body? When did I ever do that? Are you kidding me? Right now?
SKELTON: That's what he says~
I had shown everyone what I wanted to show them.
Now our users would know Jo Seongyong's name and method.
And that he had a fetish for the smell of shit.
Of course, one person cursed at me.
chouchou: SKELTON, you fucking bastard! I'm one step away from dying! Are you playing with people? You fucking asshole, I know your face. If I get out of here alive, you're the first one I'm coming for! You look like such a goddamn loser!
In the past, getting cursed at online would have made my blood boil, but they say even a schoolhouse dog can recite poems after three months.[2] Now I only found it funny.
Was that why?
SKELTON: Yup, yup~
I had even reached the level where I could act this relaxed.
But that lofty state drew an unexpected response.
Message from Defender: Ooh~
“?”
And that was only the beginning.
anonymous848: Wow, SKELTON, you bastard actually knows when to do it?
anonymous458: You should've messed with people like this from the start.
DragonC: Oh, so you know how to have fun?
Dies_irea69: I told you. SKELTON is a decent, solid guy in real life.
keystone: Good thing I unblocked you.......
Thunderous applause poured in.
But amid the cheers I was receiving for the first time, a message arrived that I could not simply ignore.
Message from 183cm88kg18cm: John_nenon
“Huh?”
Footnotes:
[1] “A needle thief becomes a cow thief”: A Korean proverb meaning that someone who begins with petty theft will grow into a major criminal.
[2] The proverb says even a schoolhouse dog learns to recite poetry after three years. Park Gyu shortens that to three months: repeated online abuse has trained him quickly.
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