Free Web NovelThere had been a little congestion near the Cheonan IC direction, but since he had left at dawn, Junho was able to head down toward Busan on the Gyeongbu Expressway with no real trouble overall.
Thanks to the semi-autonomous driving, the ride was comfortable, and the electric car, powered by its motor, glided down the road as smoothly as flowing water. Amid the faint vibration where the tires met the pavement, upbeat, groovy acid jazz filled the inside of the car.
As the eastern sky slowly turned bluish and sunlight finally began to touch the gray road, the fields and forests that had slept all winter seemed to lift their heads outside the window, and pale green spread here and there between the rows of trees lining the roadside.
“So spring really is here...”
Spring had come even during the apocalypse.
Even while the brutal winter passed, while despair swallowed the world and even the breathing of the survivors grew faint.
Flowers still bloomed in the cracks of alleyways and along abandoned roadsides, and the sunlight had poured down just as warmly.
If not for the wandering cannibal monsters and the grotesque cries they made, it would have looked like some spring day in a peaceful age.
“Once this spring ends, there’ll only be two more...”
There were only two springs left that humans could enjoy without zombies.
That made it all the more important to spend them meaningfully.
Not just for Junho himself, but for Baek Hail, the man he would be meeting today.
For him... the time left before the apocalypse might matter even more than it did for Junho.
***
After charging once at the Gimcheon rest stop, Junho got back on the highway and kept heading south.
The farther south he went, the more noticeable that slightly bleak atmosphere unique to regional areas hollowed out by population collapse became.
Come to think of it, one of Korean society’s most serious problems—the extinction of regional areas and the concentration of everything in the capital region—had ironically been solved by the zombie apocalypse.
Because so many people from the capital region had fled dangerous city centers and hidden themselves in the suburbs or the countryside.
Of course, plenty of people had died or turned into zombies in the process.
Still, the apocalypse had, in a truly shocking way, solved the problem of overcrowded major cities and population density that not just Korea but the entire world had failed to resolve for so long.
And yet... the major regional city with the giant sign reading Busan hanging over the tollgate entrance in the distance had instead met a tragic end, with its population drain only accelerating.
A little past eleven in the morning, Junho arrived in Hadan, Busan.
He parked at the business hotel he had reserved, checked in, went up to his room, and unpacked.
Before heading back out, Junho checked his appearance in the mirror one more time.
Black slacks of a moderate length, a light gray turtleneck, and a suit-style coat over it.
Overall, it was a clean outfit that gave off a trustworthy impression.
To be honest, what he was about to say to Baek Hail was the kind of thing that would not be strange for someone to call insane. freēwēbηovel.c૦m
So at the very least, he needed his appearance to inspire confidence.
Opening his map app, Junho set Suho Tool Center as the destination and headed there on foot.
After walking about twenty minutes along a main road, he turned onto a narrower street, and a residential neighborhood lined with villas and apartment buildings appeared.
A little farther in, between the self-run shops lined up along the narrow two-lane road, he spotted a three-story red-brick building.
An ordinary building, the kind you could find anywhere in Korea.
An old sign reading Suho Tool Center hung on the first floor, the second floor was a lamb skewer restaurant, and the third looked like a family home.
Junho went into a small café across from the building.
While a few neighborhood residents chatted away inside, he ordered an Americano and sat by the window facing the road.
Through the glass, he studied Suho Tool Center carefully.
All kinds of materials and goods were piled outside the store in complete disorder, and the entrance door was covered with so many stickers and flyers that he could not see inside.
A few minutes passed like that before the thick glass door opened.
“...!”
The one who came out was a young man who had clearly tried to dress himself up, but somehow still looked awkward and provincial.
He looked a bit young, but his features were strong and masculine.
It was a face Junho had never seen in his life.
But he knew at once who the young man was as he glanced both ways down the road and hurried across the crosswalk.
“So that’s Suho.”
Baek Suho, who had probably started college this year, looked a great deal like his father.
Soon the figure of Baek Suho, walking away with wireless earbuds in and bobbing his head, disappeared into the distance.
“Hoo...”
Leaving the café, Junho took a breath, then crossed the road.
Jingle.
“That little bastard Suho forget something again?”
A thick voice rang out, its Standard Korean strangely mixed with a regional accent, and then a man who looked to be in his late forties, with a buzz cut and fierce eyes, suddenly appeared.
“Huh? No, guess not.”
The startled man tilted his head, then nodded.
“Come on in. You’re a customer.”
At the sight of the man with the distinctive accent—Baek Hail—Junho’s eyes trembled faintly.
Before the regression, the Baek Hail Junho had seen had a face old enough to believe he was in his sixties.
Back then, he had just assumed the man looked older than his age, but now he understood.
The things he had gone through in just those few years right before the apocalypse had aged him completely.
“Looking for something?”
As if finding it odd that Junho was just standing there in silence, Baek Hail asked again.
“Ah.”
Snapping back to himself, Junho walked toward him with a slightly stiff expression.
“You’re Mr. Baek Hail, right?”
“Huh? You know me? What are you here for?”
A wary, puzzled look rose on Baek Hail’s face.
Junho chose one of the approaches he had considered and simulated over and over from dawn until now.
“You’ve been having strange dreams a lot lately, haven’t you? So you’ve been wondering whether some kind of spiritual gift came to you, like it did to your late mother.”
It was shock therapy, and also the direct approach.
“...!!!”
Baek Hail’s already fierce eyes widened all the way.
A moment later, his expression turned sharp and hostile, his wariness at its peak, and he snapped harshly,
“Who are you? What the hell are you?”
The complete, unbroken Standard Korean he only used when he was flustered or angry.
“Could we sit down and talk? I think this is going to be a pretty long conversation.”
“What? No, what kind of—”
As the man strode toward him like he might grab him by the collar, Junho hurriedly added,
“The dreams have been coming more often this year, right? At first you had no idea why you were having them. But now you’ve got a rough guess.”
“...!”
Baek Hail stopped short.
Certain now that his approach had worked, Junho decided to drive in the nail.
“The asteroid coming toward Earth, AX07. You saw it on the news and realized it then, didn’t you? Brother—Mr. Baek Hail. You think the time you first started having those dreams lines up pretty closely with when NASA first observed that asteroid, don’t you?”
Baek Hail’s expression changed dramatically.
His eyes still wide, his lips moved soundlessly a few times before he finally forced out a voice.
“...What the hell are you, really? What do you do?”
“The chair.”
“...What?”
“I told you. This is going to be a long conversation.”
“Hah...!”
Thunk.
An old metal chair was dropped roughly onto the floor.
“Wouldn’t it be better to lock the store for a little while too?”
“No, what the— haaah. Jesus.”
He scowled as if the whole thing was absurd, but in the end, Baek Hail did as Junho said.
After locking the shop door, Baek Hail sat down too and glared at Junho.
“Start talking. Who the hell are you, and how do you know all that? No bullshit. Make it clear.”
***
Baek Hail’s mother had been a shaman with no family at all.
He did not know whether she had been an orphan from the start or had cut ties because she became a shaman.
Baek Hail did not even know who his father was.
There was only one thing he remembered: when he was seven, his mother had suddenly coughed up blood and died in the middle of a ritual.
Strangely, he had no memories from before that at all.
After that, Baek Hail was raised in an orphanage run by a priest.
Without going astray, he graduated from a technical high school with excellent grades, then entered a two-year vocational college in Busan on scholarship.
While juggling school and all kinds of part-time jobs, he happened to run into a girl one year younger than him, someone he had grown up with in the same orphanage, at one of the places where he worked.
The two started dating, and after Baek Hail graduated, they moved in together. Not long after, their daughter Baek Sua was born.
Baek Hail’s grades in college had been good too, so he found work at an automobile manufacturing plant without much difficulty, but the company was sold to foreign capital and he lost his job overnight.
After that, to support his family, he bounced from one construction site and subcontractor to another, taking any kind of work he could get.
He slept only five or six hours a day and did every job he could that made money.
With the money he scraped together like that, he won this building at auction a little over ten years ago.
He made the third floor into a home for his family and opened a hardware store on the first floor.
He had a home of his own, rent coming in from the second floor, and between that and the connections he had built at construction sites and subcontracting companies, there was no real difficulty making a living running the hardware store.
But the following year, his wife suddenly died in an accident.
He became a widower far too young, and after that, he raised his two children alone and lived quietly here.
His older daughter had gone on to a university in Seoul, while his son, who was weaker academically, had entered a polytechnic college in Busan this year.
That was how nearly forty years passed after his shaman mother dropped dead right in front of him.
In all that time, Baek Hail had never once felt anything like a spiritual gift, and he had never told anyone that his mother had been a shaman.
Not even his late wife.
And then, starting last fall, strange things began to happen.
At first it was about once every two weeks, but more recently it had become about once a week: he started dreaming of red rain pouring from the sky.
As the ominous dream kept repeating, Baek Hail grew more and more anxious.
What if a spiritual gift had come to him this late in life?
What if he too was becoming a shaman, like his dead mother?
A news story he happened to see on YouTube about the asteroid AX07 only poured fuel on those worries.
The time he had begun dreaming and the time the asteroid had been discovered were almost the same, and on top of that, his mother’s patron spirit had been the Seven-Star Celestial Maiden.
Seven-Star Celestial Maiden, asteroid, 07.
His anxiety only grew worse.
And now, this absurdly young punk sitting in front of him.
The young punk had a very solid build, but his face, to put it kindly, was just neat enough, and to put it badly, plain as could be.
And yet he knew every one of the secrets Baek Hail had never told anyone.
Baek Hail was too shocked and flustered to make sense of it.
But the “long conversation” this young punk had started telling him, just as promised, was even more ridiculous than that.
“...You’re insane, right? A lunatic? Prophetic dreams? Zombie apocalypse? Are you out of your fucking mind?”
“......”
Junho had expected this kind of reaction to some extent, but he still could not help a bitter smile inwardly.
“What? I worked under some cult? You got dragged there and worked under me, and that’s when I told you all this?”
“Yes.”
“Hey, you crazy little—”
“That place is in Guro, Oryu-dong, Mr. Baek. That’s the neighborhood where your daughter’s studio apartment is.”
“...!”
The expression on Baek Hail’s face turned cold at once.
“You little bastard, you watch your mouth from now on. Mention my Sua one more time and—”
“Your daughter stays safe until then, without anything major happening.”
No. Something had happened.
But if he told Baek Hail the truth right now, it was obvious the man would only go even more berserk, so Junho decided to keep quiet about the daughter.
“She wasn’t harmed, and I lived there with you, Mr. Baek Hail. Your {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} daughter isn’t the problem. Your son, Baek Suho, is.”
From here on, it was the complete truth.
“...What?”
“No matter what I say, it’ll be hard for you to believe me. I understand that completely. But please, just hear me out. If nothing else, for your son’s sake.”
“Ha... this little bastard’s really pushing it...”
“Your son has pancreatic cancer right now.” ƒгeewёbnovel.com
“...!!!”
Baek Hail went rigid, like a stone statue.
“In 2024, while he’s in the military, his stomach keeps hurting all the time and he keeps losing weight. So while he’s home on leave, he gets a checkup, and that’s when they find it by accident.”
“...What kind of bullshit are you spouting right now? My Suho has cancer? You son of a bitch, who the hell are you? Some kind of con artist? You trying to shake me down for money right now—”
“He’s waiting for the surgery date when everything happens. You end up staying under that cult because of your son. Because there was nowhere else where your son could receive life-prolonging treatment.”
As he said that, Junho worked his phone and opened his banking app, then held out the screen.
Baek Hail’s eyes widened the moment he saw it.
There were so many zeroes it was hard to count them.
“My assets are fifteen billion won. If you include the stocks, it’s around eighteen billion. I have more money than I know what to do with.”
“You...”
Baek Hail swallowed hard, looking back and forth between the phone and Junho’s face.
“So, Mr. Baek Hail. Take your son to a general hospital tomorrow and have him screened for cancer. If he has surgery now, he can be cured. And I’ll be staying in Room 801 at the Raymond Hotel in Hadan all week, so if you want to come find me, come. This is my business card.”
Junho set down the card, rose from his seat, turned, and walked out.
Click. Jingle.
“Ah.”
As he opened the hardware store door, something occurred to him, and he turned his head back inside.
“In tomorrow’s presidential election, Yang Jincheol will win by 0.5 percent. Too bad. Mr. Baek Hail, you’re voting for Choi Hosoo, aren’t you? Hosoo. Suho. Because of your son’s name.”
Leaving behind Baek Hail, who stared at him blankly and then flinched, Junho walked out just like that.
