The Apocalypse Regressor's All-Purpose Shelter

Whirr...

Blindfolded and loaded into the cargo bed of an electric cart with no cover over it, Ducky, Sunny, and Yuna could do nothing but cling to each other and tremble.

Jolt!

“Ugh! Kkh!”

“Eek!”

The cart lurched once, probably from hitting a rock, and Ducky and Yuna yelped in shock.

Even though the blindfold kept her from seeing anything, Sunny—who was always told she was quick on the uptake and had good instincts—hard-pinched her brother’s hand while lying crouched at an angle in the bed.

“Can you shut up for a sec? I don’t think these guys are gonna kill us.”

“Alright, alright. Chill, sis.”

The moment her brother Ducky whispered back—

“Keep talking. I might change my mind.”

“......!”

The siblings froze at the voice, as hard and cold as the words themselves.

So he was not just good at killing people. He spoke English, too.

Terrified even more, the two grabbed each other’s shaking hands tighter.

Whirrr...!

Eventually, the dirt road must have ended, because the electric cart started moving fast across level ground.

Since they could not see anything, the three of them had a hard time even telling how much time had passed.

So for several dozen minutes, they were hauled somewhere like actual cargo, baking under the still-hot September sun.

Screech. Clank! Vrrrr...

Then a low, heavy mechanical sound rang out, and all three thought they had finally arrived.

But the electric cart kept climbing uphill for a few more minutes.

Giiiiing...

Even after the machinery sounded again, it kept moving for several more minutes, and only after that same mechanical noise rang out one last time did it finally come to a complete stop.

Thunk.

“Aah!”

“Eeeek!”

Ducky and Yuna screamed when hands touched them without warning.

But it was only the man in the black helmet removing their blindfolds.

“Ugh.”

The siblings instinctively squinted and turned away from the sudden blast of sunlight.

Yuna, though, looked like she was about to cry—no, tears had already welled up, and in the end she broke down sobbing.

“Sniff... hhk... sniff!”

“...?”

At the sudden tears, the man in the black helmet—or rather, once he took it off, just an ordinary-looking killing specialist—tilted his head.

Then his gaze dropped to Yuna’s short shorts.

Seeing that they were soaked through, he figured out what had happened and let out a sigh.

“Here. Wipe off with this for now and cover yourself.”

“Y-yes. Thank you. I-I was just so scared... I’m sorry... sniff.”

Even while crying, Yuna accepted the towel with both hands and bowed politely.

To her, Junho—the man all three had mistaken for some kind of killing specialist—asked,

“Japanese?”

“I-I’m Korean too. I grew up in Japan, but my dad’s Korean.”

“I see. Anyway, follow me.”

Yuna covered herself with the towel, and she and the siblings climbed awkwardly out of the cargo bed.

The three followed Junho while stealing glances at Junhyeok, who had just stepped down from the passenger seat holding an air rifle and standing there silently.

“What is this place...? This is insane. Are we in a secret base or something?”

“Shh. Zip it.”

Ducky whispered while looking [N O V E L I G H T] all around, and Sunny immediately frowned.

At that moment, Junho suddenly stopped walking.

Startled, the siblings and Yuna stopped short too.

Junho slowly turned toward them and looked at the siblings with cold eyes.

“First off, this isn’t a secret base. That’s somewhere else. And if you two start talking in English to each other one more time, I’ll really kill you. Got it?”

“......!”

The siblings were stunned.

He had said it so quietly. How had he heard that?

“Ye—ah, okay.”

“Yes.”

Feeling like the sweat from the heat had turned cold on their skin in an instant, Ducky and Sunny bowed their heads at once.

Junho opened the door to one of the container housing units.

“You three seem like friends, so you can stay together, right?”

“Yes.”

“There’s a bathroom in there, and some clothes over there to change into. I didn’t know your sizes, so I just picked them by eye. Don’t complain. There’s water and food in the fridge too, so eat if you’re hungry.”

“Oh! Th-thank you.”

“Thank you, thank you.”

The moment he mentioned water and food, all three of their expressions changed instantly.

Confirming that his guess had been right, Junho sent the three into the container housing unit and shut the door.

***

“Laborers? We already need that?”

When Junhyeok tilted his head, Junho looked around at everyone else.

“You all really think we don’t?”

“I dunno. For me, it wouldn’t matter either way...”

“I’m fine.”

After Baek Hail and Baek Sua, Choi Haneul shrugged under Junho’s gaze and spoke.

“I’m fine too. I prep the ingredients separately in the fridge every evening, and in the morning I just bustle around with Sua for about thirty minutes. I can handle lunch by myself, and in the evening Sua and Suho help me.”

“We’re fine as well. Mr. Baek’s children help out often too. The dispensary and medical room are right next to each other, so it’s not especially difficult.”

“M-me too. I’m a little busy, but I’m learning more skills from Master too. I’m completely satisfied.”

After the doctor couple, Choi Jeongwoo also said he was fine.

Then Junho’s gaze shifted to the two people left: Baek Suho and Kim Hayoon.

“Ah, I’m not having any trouble either—”

“I’m having a hell of a time over here.”

Baek Suho cut Kim Hayoon off.

“...?”

Everyone’s eyes turned to him.

But Baek Suho looked only at Junho, and then his face crumpled.

“I’m not even kidding. I’m dying here. I’m seriously having the worst time... ngh!”

Sniffling, Baek Suho looked around at everyone and spoke in a voice thick with aggrieved misery.

“I seriously follow my dad and the other guys around, learning work, doing assistant stuff, all of it, okay? But I’m telling you, I’m not exaggerating. The work never ends. No matter how much I do, it never ends. Why the hell is there so much of it?”

He pointed at the sleeves and shins of his work clothes as he went on.

“See this? Just going around all the buildings and cutting weeds or pulling them out eats up two or three hours, easy. But these little bastard weeds are all grown back by the next day. I’m seriously losing my mind here.”

Sure enough, the sleeves of his work clothes were filthy with grass stains and dust.

“On top of that, I gotta keep tidying up outside the incinerator and the greenhouse, and I have to go up the back trail every day to check the drainage ditches and clear off branches and rocks. I also make a full round once a day checking the wall and barbed wire around the shelter. But if that was all, I wouldn’t even be complaining.”

Baek Suho whipped his head around.

Baek Hail and Baek Sua, who caught the look, flinched.

“Every time either of you has some errand or random chore, you call me. I’m seriously going crazy.”

“Ah...”

Only then did people start to look like they were realizing something.

That was right.

Unlike the other shelter members, who each had a specialty only they could handle, Baek Suho was basically the shelter’s errand boy.

He was still young and did not have any standout skill yet, so he kept getting called everywhere to take care of miscellaneous work.

And anyone who had ever worked a real job knew exactly how exhausting it was to be the kind of person who ran around unseen corners nonstop, constantly doing one thing after another, like Baek Suho was now.

“You all heard that, right?”

Junho, who already knew this through the CCTV, looked around with a meaningful expression.

“Ahem, ahem.”

“Y-yeah, that must’ve been rough. Sorry, kid.”

“Man, I’m sorry too.”

While Baek Hail, Baek Sua, and Choi Haneul looked awkward—

“Ah, I had no idea, and I kept calling you every time I needed muscle work done. I’m really sorry, Suho.”

“I-I’m sorry too. I had no idea you were that busy...”

“Suho, I’m sorry.”

After Kim Heeyoung, Choi Jeongwoo and Kim Hayoon apologized too.

“You’re fine, Hayoon. You’re still the only one who helps me cut and pull weeds.”

Baek Suho turned his face away again, then pleaded with Junho.

“Uncle Junho, I’m seriously begging you. Just think of it as saving your nephew and please, please find me someone to be my helper. Please save me.”

There was no exaggeration in Baek Suho’s plea. It was completely sincere. fɾeewebnoveℓ.co๓

And when everyone noticed that his once-pale skin had turned brown from sun exposure in just a month, the mood turned solemn.

***

“So, we use the kids you saved today as hired hands?”

“But there are two girls, so... what, Dol-soon? Jeom-rye?”

“Why are all your names old-lady names, Youngsu?”

“Then Hyangdan? Boksoon? Malsook? Booni? Sooni?”

“Why don’t you shut up.”

“Yes, sir.”

When Baek Hail snapped at him, Yoon Youngsu—who had been rattling off a bunch of old-fashioned women’s names with a playful grin—promptly closed his mouth.

“Anyway, you get why I brought them here, right? You too, sir?”

“Yeah, I can see we definitely need people for odds and ends. Damn, I had no idea our boy was working that hard. That idiot, if it was that rough, he should’ve said something...”

“He probably didn’t want to disappoint you. Suho’s got a lot more patience than he looks like he does. Today was just the day he finally snapped.”

“Tch. I’m his father, and I’ve got nothing to say.”

“But, hyung.”

Junhyeok spoke carefully.

“If this was how it was gonna be, wouldn’t it have been better to bring in people we already knew from earlier? Better than bringing in strangers now, I mean. Though I guess it’s already too late.”

It was a fair point.

It was hard to deny that bringing in people they already knew, rather than strangers they had never met and knew nothing about, would have been better for the shelter in all kinds of ways, starting with security.

But—

“Normally, sure. But this isn’t a normal situation, is it?”

“Huh?”

Junho turned to Baek Hail and Yoon Youngsu.

“Let me ask you one thing. If the two of you weren’t here right now, and instead you got into this shelter only after suffering like hell outside—almost dying, or actually coming close to it—how do you think you’d feel?”

“I’d still have been completely loyal either way. Boss, loyalty, loyalty!”

“...You don’t count. What about you, sir?”

“Ow. Harsh.”

Whether Yoon Youngsu looked wounded or not, Junho kept his eyes on Baek Hail.

After thinking it over for a moment, Baek Hail slowly nodded.

“Even now, I’m truly grateful to you, kid. But yeah, if I’d gotten into this shelter after being under those cult bastards or whatever it was you talked about before, I’d probably be even more grateful than I am now. To make sure my kids and I never got thrown out of here, I’d have done whatever it took.”

“That’s exactly it. But you and Youngsu are handling truly important roles here, right? You had to be with us from the shelter construction phase onward. For people like that, voluntary participation and a sense of belonging matter more than fear or desperation. That’s different from people who just handle miscellaneous work.”

“......”

“So even though I knew we needed people to help with odd jobs, I deliberately didn’t bring anyone in until now. Now that the apocalypse has started and the shelter is actually operating for real, with every member doing their actual job, concrete problems and bottlenecks are finally showing up.”

“Ahhh...”

Even an ordinary company or organization begins with the founder who made the plan and a few key people.

Then once the structure and framework are in place, it starts filling the positions it needs.

For Junho, Our Shelter was no different.

“The kids I brought in today? If they’d gotten here right after the apocalypse started—or while electricity and running water were still up—they’d have felt kind of grateful, sure. About that much.”

Junho said it with certainty.

Because he had seen it himself. Lived it himself.

The difference between people who barely crawled into a safe refuge after one or two months of hell—

and people who got in from the beginning, or not long after everything started.

And while not all of them were like that, Junho had seen plenty from the second group act shameless and complain constantly.

Again and again.

“They say if kindness keeps going, people start thinking it’s a right. There’s no saying that fits the apocalypse better than that. So for now, we keep those kids as candidates and let them stay in the container housing. We watch them, and if they don’t seem right, we send them to the nursing home. That place is going to need quite a bit of labor starting next year anyway.”

Judging by how they had looked like half-homeless drifters, and by how their eyes had kept sliding toward the fridge the moment he mentioned water and food, the siblings who looked Korean but spoke native-level English, and the half-Korean, half-Japanese girl, had obviously suffered like hell to get here. freewёbnoνel.com

They had probably been hiding somewhere all this time, then, once the food ran out and even the electricity and water got cut off, finally risked their lives to escape.

Then those EoktenZ punk bastards had chased them down, and they had almost been killed—or worse, almost suffered something so terrible that death might have been preferable.

In other words, the intensity of their desperation to survive was different.

And above all—

“They saw me take care of those EoktenZ punks. Right there in front of them. Saw me knife seven people to death, men and women alike.”

“......!”

Junhyeok, who had backed Junho up with the air rifle, and Yoon Youngsu, who had watched the whole thing from above through the drone camera, both flinched and swallowed hard.

Junhyeok was his flesh-and-blood brother from the start, and Yoon Youngsu had known him for quite a while by now too.

But the Junho they had seen earlier had been terrifying enough that he hardly seemed like the person they knew.

And if even they felt that way, then what about those three, who had met Junho for the first time today?

“Nobody outsmarts a hawk, huh.”

“They might end up more loyal than I am...”

The two of them muttered it without even realizing.