WeTried Translations
Translator/Editor: Potter
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◈ Hiding a House in the Apocalypse ◈
Chapter 7: Cat Mom
──────
Most accidents are preventable.
The three cats I’m going to tell you about,
Gucci, Hermes, and Jackfield,
were, in a way, preventable disasters too.
“Ma’am. Don’t feed those cats.”
The woman was middle-aged and lived alone in the vast wasteland abandoned between Seoul and my territory.
She had likely been burned during the nuclear strikes. She always hid her face behind a mask, scarf, sunglasses, and the like. I first got to know her around the time I began making regular begging trips to Seoul.
When she spotted me, a fit man, she hurried away with her handcart. I could feel a chilling fear and deep loneliness from her back.
Whenever I passed by, she was in the same spot feeding stray cats. After observing her several times, I figured she had neither husband nor children.
That was hardly unusual in this world, so I ignored her and moved on. Before long, perhaps because she had grown used to me, she stopped leaving whenever she saw me.
We had progressed from a relationship where one of us ran away to one where we ignored each other.
Our parallel paths were thrown off balance by a single incident.
Her cats had grown far too large.
“Hey. Aren’t you listening to me?”
There was no doubt.
It was a warning sign of mutation.
It might be hard to imagine now, but back when the Chinese government was still intact, South Korea had sent Hunters to jointly deal with monster incursions.
After seeing India and Africa collapse and the fallout spread to neighboring countries, it was obvious that South Korea would be next if we did nothing.
I had seen similar things in China’s newly built cities, huge and glamorous but strangely lacking in people.
Humanity had been more ignorant back then. We could not distinguish mutations from monsters. Against my colleagues’ objections, I boldly captured an overgrown sewer rat, claiming it was a new species of hamster. That sample helped establish the new concept of mutations.
I’m not bragging, but I made no small contribution to the discovery of mutations.
Excessive growth beyond the limits set by genetics was the most representative warning sign of mutation.
The three cats fed by that nameless woman had already grown to the size of golden retrievers.
“Don’t you think those cats are too big, even by your standards?”
“They’re Ragdolls.”
That was her excuse.
Ragdolls were a cat breed known for their considerable size.
But the three cats I saw, including that calico, looked thoroughly Korean.
“What kind of Ragdolls are those? I’d believe you if you called them Raita, the desert man-eater.”
“Mind your own business. Who are you to order me around?”
She did not even look at me properly, but her voice was full of anger.
“I’m saying this because you’ll get hurt. Do you want to be eaten by a cat?”
“They wouldn’t do that. They’re angels. You have no idea how devoted they are to me.”
When she held out her hand, the three cats competed to rub their heads against it, like old Western nobles vying to kiss a king’s seal.
“...”
I said no more.
She was not a child. She was an adult. She would decide for herself.
My own selfish calculations also contributed to me leaving her alone.
At the time, I had been thinking it was about time to gradually cut contact with Seoul.
Now that I had a personal ID code, there was less need to go to Seoul myself. More importantly, the battlefield was short on people.
High-value personnel like me could be dragged in at any time under any excuse.
Having three mutations as new neighbors to defend my air-raid shelter alongside the mad sniper to the southeast and the Gold Pack to the southwest did not seem so bad.
Not that the woman would listen to anything I said anyway.
“What are those cats’ names?”
I threw the question at the woman as she left.
“Why?”
“They look cute.”
“Hermes, Gucci, and Jackfield.”
Oddly, she did not tell me which cat had which name.
Still, I felt as though I knew exactly which one was which.
* * *
“This is how you move the net, crossing it like you’re weaving with a dip net. It gives the piece a fuller texture.”
It was a peaceful afternoon.
I was making a wool-felt doll while watching videos by the late Anonymous337.
The creature I had made looked less like a sheep and more like one of Lovecraft’s goats, but I kept referring to an expert’s videos and correcting it until it at least resembled a sheep.
Like Anonymous337’s work on the shelf over there.
Just as I was concentrating, the K-Walkie-Talkie gave a buzzer signal.
Beep! Beep! Beep!
That pattern meant someone was calling me directly through my personal ID code.
In other words, it was important.
Sure enough.
Caller: Kim Daram
“Ah, fuck.”
I couldn’t simply refuse the call, so I pressed the receive button. A desolate voice flowed out as though it had been waiting.
“Senior. I need a favor.”
“What favor now? Didn’t you say you’d never make me work again?”
“I don’t want to do this either, but we need to help each other in these dark times. Besides, this isn’t somebody else’s problem. You know several people recently died around the golf course where you live, right?”
“...Ruppert Fucking Palace, was it?”
“See? You know about it.”
The incident where the three stray angels[1] raised by that nameless woman became monsters and turned the apartment residents into real angels was good news to me, but the central government apparently saw it as serious.
The state had issued kill orders for Hermes, Gucci, and Jackfield.
“Sorry, but I can’t hunt mutations anymore. I’m not capable of it, and I don’t want to. More than anything, I don’t have the equipment.”
“You won’t be doing it. I’m sending someone.”
“Someone?”
“A freelance Hunter.”
That freelance Hunter appeared before me on a vintage motorcycle that had been hard to find even before the war.
“Hello.”
He was not especially large, but his tight leather coat and leather pants gave him the solid impression of a lump of granite. His face looked both youthful and weathered.
“I’m Baek Seunghyeon.”
From our first meeting, he scanned me from head to toe as if assessing me. Then, as though he had figured something out, he wore an oddly knowing smile and hummed through his nose.
He was not the type I wanted to get close to, so I said as little as possible and only what needed saying.
I had three conditions.
“I will not take part in the fighting, nor will I help. And I will only accompany you until sunset today.”
Baek Seunghyeon smirked.
When I stayed silent, he suddenly spoke.
“You’re Park Gyu from that school, right? The legendary Class 13.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I went to the same school. Class 12.”
“...”
“Fortress of trials, shining tall. We hone ourselves like dazzling jade. Blessed by Samgaksan’s spirit, we are reborn as guides of the age~”
This man suddenly started singing.
I recognized the melody.
It was the school anthem.
They had only used it for about half a year before complaints that it was old-fashioned got it removed. Since he knew it, he probably was not talking complete nonsense.
Looking at him more closely, his face was faintly familiar.
We might have passed each other on campus at least a few times.
Of course, back then, both of us had been more immature and less stained by life.
“To think Park Gyu is living in a place like this. Well, I’ll be damned.”
“Let’s not talk about the old days.”
“I always knew a failure like me would end up ruined, but someone as accomplished as you...”
I made it very clear that I did not want to hear any more.
Baek Seunghyeon looked slightly startled by my sharp glare, then apologized.
“Sorry. No comment.”
He rode his motorcycle, and I rode my bicycle toward the operation site.
But even before we got close, the smell of blood was heavy in the air. When we arrived, torn-off chunks of flesh, fur, blood, and confused footprints were all mixed together.
“What happened here?”
Baek Seunghyeon grinned.
“Truth is, I had a little round with them before I came to meet you.”
He tapped the heavy weapon mounted on his bike.
A Type 21 Large-Caliber Hunter Rifle.
As the name suggested, it was Hunter equipment for hunting monsters and mutations.
“They were eager to rush me after getting a taste of human blood, but they were real drama queens. I only gave them a few scratches.”
Honestly, I had underestimated him because he was a freelance Hunter.
I would correct that assessment.
Baek Seunghyeon was strong.
To face three mutations in open country with nothing but a slow, cumbersome bolt-action rifle and defeat them without scouting or analysis required no small amount of courage and skill.
At minimum, he was A-rank.
That was the rating I would give him.
“I don’t like meeting other people either. I only contacted you because I had no choice. What can I do when animals wipe away their blood and relocate to a ditch?”
He had sought me out for one reason.
He wanted help finding the wounded cats.
But how would I know?
I was not a cat detective.
Still, one face did come to mind.
The nameless woman who had fed Gucci, Hermes, and Jackfield passed through my thoughts like an old unfinished assignment.
* * *
The abandoned standalone apartment building was buried under garbage and fallen leaves, giving it a bleak atmosphere.
Every window had been shattered. Red water flowing from the old balconies adorned the building in a gruesome way, like tears of blood.
“Cheap apartment. It’s got to be over forty years old.”
Baek Seunghyeon looked around with sharp eyes.
“There are no marts or shops nearby. Nothing but rice fields. The surrounding farmland does not look large enough for everyone living here to farm.”
He loudly shared his unsolicited observations, then looked up at the apartment with narrowed eyes.
“Still, this is the only place around here where people could live.”
Sure enough, the face-covered woman was hiding in that apartment.
Baek Seunghyeon was good with people.
More precisely, he had a talent for herding people like livestock.
“Ma’am.”
Baek Seunghyeon held out his phone screen.
“You know these things, right?”
“...”
“Ma’am. Stop keeping your mouth shut and say something. You know how many people they killed, don’t you?”
“That can’t be true.”
“What do you mean, it can’t?”
“My babies would never do that!”
Baek Seunghyeon sniffed the air.
He went around the back of the apartment and returned with a bloodstained piece of clothing.
“My wife was among the dead.”
For some reason, the clothes in his hand were men’s clothes. But the woman burst into tears then, and the conversation stopped.
What came over me?
By the time I came to my senses, I was standing beside her.
“Are you all right?”
I even held out the canned coffee I had brought to drink myself.
Apparently, gifts were the key to opening a woman’s heart in any era.
After doing nothing but sob, she clasped the coffee in both hands and began to speak.
“...That day, the apartment residents went into the air-raid shelter by themselves and left only me out. The one built during the Saemaeul Movement[2].”
She pointed toward the shelter.
“By the time I got there, the door was shut. I banged and screamed, but they wouldn’t open it. They were telling me to die outside. They did not like me because I fed the cats. But then Jackfield appeared and went Meow!”
She took off her sunglasses and wiped away her tears.
“He went ahead as though he were leading me to the basement.”
Even her eyebrows had melted away. The area around her eyes was too terrible to look at properly, but those eyes held a warmth that made animals follow her.
“The children saved my life. And I saved theirs.”
“What happened to the people in the shelter?”
I could guess without looking.
Black soot was marked around the ventilation shaft like a ghostly stain.
“I think there was a fire inside. Smoke came out, and I could hear screaming. All day.”
The secret to this woman’s survival had been revealed.
Every resident in the small apartment building had died.
Small or not, it had sixty households.
That meant sixty households’ worth of supplies now belonged to one person.
As Baek Seunghyeon said, it was a crumbling apartment in an isolated location, so even raiders had apparently ignored it.
“You are not feeding them anymore, right?”
“No. They have gotten too... big...”
“Do you think you know where they are? Next time, someone more reckless than that man might come.”
At my urging, she tried to open the can of coffee in her hands, as if reaching some decision.
Perhaps because of alcohol-induced tremors, she could not even open the can. I opened it for her, and she lowered her head before accepting it.
As she drank the coffee warmed by my body heat, she looked into the distance. She was probably making some kind of resolution.
“I have an idea.”
She led us toward a ditch running through abandoned rice paddies.
As she guided us, she briefly explained the significance of the place.
“This is where I found them. Their mother had abandoned them, so I raised them.”
Her instincts were right.
There were bloodstains.
“Hermes! Gucci! Jackfield!”
She desperately called to her animals.
Baek Seunghyeon and I stood some distance behind her.
I did not want to look at him if I could help it, so I kept my gaze fixed on the woman and asked coldly.
“Do we really have to do this?”
Baek Seunghyeon had put a vest on the woman.
A bomb vest.
I agreed that this would hurt less than being torn apart alive by mutations, but this was just fucked up.
“That’s probably what the dead would want to ask that woman.”
Huge beasts, blood pouring from their wounds, emerged from the ditch.
Mutations.
Baek Seunghyeon placed his finger on the detonator switch.
I did not have anything to say.
Setting aside my feelings, his judgment was sound.
Scholars said mutations could not be tamed because they were too intelligent.
They attacked humans because they knew what humans thought of them and how humans treated them.
Just as humanity, once God’s gentlest sheep, had become God’s fiercest critic, mutations chose to hate humanity of their own will.
That was the accepted theory of mutation aggression.
And yet.
Meow.
An unbelievable sight unfolded.
The mutations were following her.
Just as they had before changing, like the cats of old who fought to rub against her hand, they competitively pressed their lion-sized heads against the body of the woman wearing the bomb vest.
“See? Look how good my babies are. Even after becoming like this...”
“...”
The nameless woman and her cats had directly disproven the supposedly unassailable accepted theory.
But that brief miracle was erased in an instant by the fingertips of a man rooted in reality.
Click.
The monotonous click of the switch was followed by an explosion. Light and thunder swallowed everything.
“You really do work like shit.”
That was probably the first time I had seriously looked at Baek Seunghyeon.
Baek Seunghyeon had watched me openly from the beginning, but at that moment, he avoided my gaze.
“...It’s a fucked-up world.”
After murmuring those words, he fled the scene as if running away.
Not a trace of the woman’s body remained.
Only one mutation remained, its lower body blown away as it took its final breaths.
I looked down at the cat.
It weakly looked up at me with cooling eyes.
“So you’re Jackfield.”
The ugliest of the three nodded like a person, then stopped breathing.
Footnotes:
[1] Stray angels: Korean cat-care slang calls stray cats “street angels,” setting up the joke that the victims became real angels.
[2] The Saemaeul Movement was a South Korean rural modernization campaign begun in 1970.
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