Free Web NovelThe schoolyard that had once been overgrown with weeds had been cleaned up neatly and divided into two sections, with a five-meter-wide road laid through it—wide enough for two vehicles to pass each other.
“Even trucks like a Porter can move through at the same time. Drainage won’t be a problem during monsoon season either, and we laid heating lines under the ground, so unless it’s really bad, snow won’t pile up in winter.”
“Looks good.”
“The greenhouses were built with a mix of tempered glass and polycarbonate sheets.”
Baek Hail kept explaining.
“Like you said, we decided to fully equip and run just one building first. We’ll see if it operates without problems through next year, then fill out the rest after that.”
The greenhouses had been built clustered together on the right side of the schoolyard with the main building at the center—five units, each six meters wide and thirty meters long. They were enclosed by reinforced concrete walls over two meters high, strong enough to stop rifle rounds.
“That was the right call. For now, let’s test-grow potatoes and a few vegetables we can use as side dishes.”
“Wouldn’t lettuce, perilla leaves, and carrots do the trick? I heard garlic and onions can be grown outside too.”
“Yes. We should test that too. It’s not like we’re short on land.”
It was foolish to think crops should be grown only in the shelter greenhouses.
For now, only this lot belonged to them, but no one would have anything to say if they scattered seeds for various crops across the nearby land, including the mountain behind them, and let them grow wild for later harvesting.
No government officials were going to come all the way out here to crack down on that.
“Then for the part of the yard we left open, let’s use it later depending on how things go, just like you said.”
“We should. We still don’t know yet whether food will become the bigger problem or whether we’ll end up short on power.”
The other half of the yard, facing the greenhouses across the road, had been left cleared of weeds and covered with soil.
The plan was to use it later depending on the food situation—either to build vinyl greenhouses or, if power became an issue, install additional «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» solar panels.
“Come on, let’s head to the main building.”
The stairs connecting the schoolyard to the main building had also been newly built, made extremely sturdy, and designed not to get slippery even in the rain.
“Want to test the sterilization unit?”
“Didn’t you already try it, brother?”
“I did. Works great.”
Baek Hail grinned as he tapped the stainless-steel walk-through sterilizer.
The pandemic still had not fully ended, and once the apocalypse began, something like this would be indispensable no matter what, so Junho had installed a custom-made stainless-steel walk-through sterilizer at the entrance to the main building using ultraviolet, ozone, and infrared methods.
Originally, he had considered installing a chemical-spray model, but Baek Hail had argued strongly against it, and Junho had dropped the idea immediately and gone with this instead.
That was because this model, which used no chemical agents and could be used almost indefinitely as long as the lamps and fans were replaced, was far better.
At five million won apiece, it had been somewhat expensive, but since he ordered four, the manufacturer gave him a discount.
So two had been installed right away, and the other two were stored in the warehouse as backups.
“All right, let’s go in.”
“Wow...”
The moment he stepped into the main building, Junho let his mouth fall open without realizing it.
Naturally, he had come by often during construction too, but the completed main building was more than enough to inspire awe.
“Pretty damn nice, right? It’s a little bare since we haven’t decorated it, but it kind of feels like some sort of research lab. I like it.”
“Me too. It’s the best.”
The modern, minimalist feel of it suited Junho perfectly.
The main building, about thirteen meters wide and a little over fifty meters long for a total of around two hundred pyeong, was the most important building of all, serving as both residence and headquarters.
So naturally, the outer walls were made of high-strength reinforced concrete capable of stopping bullets, and the inner walls had been fitted with fire-resistant composite panels.
“The dining hall’s spacious enough for more than thirty people to eat at once. The materials are high quality too, so it’s ridiculously easy to clean and maintain.”
Walking to the middle of the neat dining hall, where eight tables had been set up, Baek Hail continued.
“And just like you said, we installed both a charcoal briquette stove and a wood-burning stove. The flues and ventilation are perfect, and in actual use there’ll barely be any smoke at all. Victory of modern technology.”
Unlike in the past, modern stoves produced almost no smoke except when first being lit.
The main building used a cutting-edge climate-control system that could maintain roughly eighteen to twenty-two degrees year-round without consuming much power, but the reason they had installed stoves in the dining hall anyway was because there was always the chance of a worst-case scenario.
If the absolute worst happened and the power went out completely in the middle of winter, the best option would be heating with charcoal briquettes—which were easy to manage and did not spoil—or with wood that could be gathered in endless supply around the shelter.
With Baek Hail guiding him, Junho went through the dining hall, then the conference room, a lounge-style break room, the laundry room, and the computer room designed like a PC café.
Everything was exactly as he had wanted.
No, better than that.
“Let’s go up to the second floor.”
“Let’s do it. The second floor’s even better.”
Baek Hail sounded supremely confident.
And that confidence was backed by more than enough reason.
“You can put in one queen-size bed, or two super singles. Put in two bunk beds and four people could live here easy, dorm-style.”
The room, about eight pyeong in size, did not yet have beds, but each one already had two built-in sliding closets about a meter wide and two desks large enough for laptops.
There was no special decoration, and the structure was simple, but the high-end materials made everything extremely sturdy and easy to wipe clean.
All the toilets in the bathrooms had been standardized as integrated bidet toilets.
It was not as though they would not stock toilet paper, but since that took up so much volume, bidets were a much better option.
And the shower booths had been made pedal-operated to save water—step once, and water would run for ten seconds.
Groundwater was plentiful, but even so, conserving it from the start was better.
“As for the AI room, I’ve got no idea how any of it works. Youngsu handled all that himself, but he said it’s still unfinished and told me you shouldn’t look at it either.”
At the far end of the second floor were the AI computing system room, the servers, and the power equipment room. Since it was located at the outer edge, it used both the first and second floors in that section.
And on top of that, to reach the shelter’s heart, you had to pass through Junho’s room first. The thick fire door there required both a password and facial recognition, making it impossible to enter unless either Junho or Yoon Youngsu was present.
“Well, I’m curious, but if he said that, then that’s that. Still, there won’t be any issues with the cooling system for the servers and power room, right?”
Baek Hail nodded firmly.
“Of course not. It’s water-cooled, so it doesn’t draw much power, and it’s triple-waterproofed too, so there’s absolutely no chance of leaks.”
If the man who was basically a mechanic incarnate said so, then that was that. Junho had no reason to doubt him.
“The first floor got even more attention in terms of protection and interior environment since that’s where the power equipment is. But man, can Youngsu really live in a computer room like that?”
“Yes. That’ll probably be more comfortable for him. He’s got his own room too anyway, right?”
“Yeah. We made it about as nice as a top-end studio apartment. Hell, if that’s what makes him comfortable, then fine.”
Just as Junho had planned, Yoon Youngsu had agreed to come work on assignment at Our Pension.
At first, Dawoo Computing CEO Hwang Sejun had shown reluctance, but in the end he had no choice except to wave the white flag in the face of an SI contract worth 200 million won a year.
On top of that, they were even preparing a separate workstation with the same specs as the technical lab in Songpa so he could continue doing Dawoo Computing work here. There was financial gain in it, of course, but more than that, there was no real basis for refusing.
“He’s still got things to wrap up over there, so he’ll probably move in around December. For a while he’ll head back to Dawoo two or three times a month, but if you ask me, by next spring he’ll probably just plant himself here and live full-time.”
“Yeah, that kid really is something else. Hates moving around, and whether construction was going on beside him or not, he’d just sit there with headphones on staring at the computer. Someone could’ve carried him off and he wouldn’t have noticed.”
“As long as he’s kind and hardworking, that’s enough.” ƒгeeweɓn૦vel.com
“Exactly. He’s a little clueless, sure, but he’s a genuinely good kid.”
A hardcore otaku and a hardware-store owner.
Naturally, the two of them were not exactly cut from the same cloth, but during construction, Baek Hail and Yoon Youngsu had come to respect each other.
Experts recognized experts. In the few areas where their skill sets overlapped, each of them had immediately seen just how capable the other was.
“Anyway, aside from your room, let’s take our time bringing in the rest of the furniture and whatnot.”
“Yes, that’s the right move.”
“All right then, let’s go make the rounds through the storage buildings.”
Junho and Baek Hail first went to the cold-storage warehouse, which had been built with a passage directly connected to the dining hall of the main building.
“It’s not running yet, but the temperature’ll be kept at five degrees and humidity under thirty percent. You can only enter it through the dining hall, and we installed an air curtain, so even if people are going in and out, the temperature won’t change much.”
The cold-storage warehouse, about twenty pyeong in size, had a two-story structure. The first and second levels were divided using metal flooring perforated all over with coin-sized holes, making it highly efficient for airflow and temperature maintenance.
The long-awaited ultra-low-temperature freezer warehouse was almost the same inside.
The difference was that this place had to withstand temperatures as low as minus forty degrees Celsius, so the internal materials were specialized.
“For now it’s fine since it’s not running, but once it is, you’ll have to wear cold-weather work gear to go in there. You know the kind they use in freezer warehouses? That’s what you wear.”
“If you put that on, working inside for twenty or thirty minutes won’t be a problem, right?”
“Yeah, no problem at all. And even if something does happen, you just hit the emergency button and come out. But damn, Hoya, if we build storage on this scale, can it really hold enough food for over twenty years?”
“Yes, it can. If the shelter population is around twenty people, then thirty years is possible too. And brother, it’s not like we’ll only be eating from what we’ve stockpiled.”
“Really?”
“Yes. Maybe not in the very beginning of the apocalypse, but after about a year, people start raising livestock and farming. Rural areas with lower population density take less damage.”
On top of that, not too far from Namyangju were the famous Hongcheon and Hoengseong.
That meant there would be survivors raising cattle.
Of course, compared to peacetime, the scale would be tiny and the conditions miserable, but even so, there would definitely be people half-giving up and letting dozens, maybe hundreds, of cattle graze in rough conditions.
It would be entirely possible to make contact with those survivors, give them food and daily necessities they needed, and receive butchered beef in return.
A single cow alone could feed the shelter population for two or three months.
“And brother, no matter what, it’s not like we’re going to spend our whole lives just chewing through stockpiled rations.”
“That’s true enough. Hell, if we put up a few more greenhouses down on that empty land below, we’d have more than enough rice and side crops for ourselves. We’d have leftovers.”
“Exactly. So we won’t come up short on food to stock in the cold warehouse and the ultra-low freezer. If anything, depending on how things go, we might even be able to barter with other survivors.”
“Hm... Hoya, everything you’re saying is right, but... wouldn’t that be dangerous? You know better than anybody that people aren’t purely good. Especially in an apocalyptic shitshow like that, going out of your way to make contact with other people... no matter how I think about it, that makes me uneasy.”
It was an extremely coolheaded and accurate point.
Junho agreed with Baek Hail completely.
No, the people in the apocalypse were even more selfish, cunning, and cruel than Baek Hail had just described.
He knew that better than anyone, because he had seen that hellscape with his own eyes.
But still.
“You’re right, brother. Contacting other survivors is genuinely dangerous. And yes, we should avoid it whenever possible. But, brother.”
Thinking back on the apocalypse he had lived through, Junho spoke in a calm but unwavering voice.
“It’s impossible for us to live safely by ourselves forever. There’s a very high chance... no, it’s guaranteed that someday other people will discover our shelter too.”
