Hiding a House in the Apocalypse-Chapter 113: Worry

Bringing the Defender siblings here was a good decision.

The group was more lively, our combat strength had increased, and most importantly, I had safely rescued people I cared about.

I was genuinely looking forward to the stories we would create together from now on.

But my heart couldn’t fully embrace that joy.

Because now, I had something to worry about.

The question kept circling in my mind—should I have killed that girl back then?

Buuuuuuuuuaaaaaang—

Heavy machinery roared to life, beginning new construction.

As the sound rumbled in the distance, I sat alone, replaying that day in my head.

A lot of different judgments had come and gone.

Firing my gun in that moment would have most likely drawn the attention of the fanatics.

No matter how strong I was in close-quarters combat, I had my limits when faced with that many Awakened.

Some of them even had guns.

Since I had already sent my allies ahead, choosing to avoid combat had been the rational decision.

She must have been about eleven years old.

Thin, frail. Her emotions seemed numb, as if she had already suffered a great shock.

I had one chance.

I won’t deny that.

Should I have killed her then?

"What are you thinking about?"

Defender had found me.

"Nothing. Just..."

He sat down next to me.

He and his sister had agreed to stay in separate bunker units.

His main roles would be combat and scavenging. On top of that, he was good with vehicle maintenance.

Since he knew this area better than I did, he would be a valuable asset to our territory.

"You don’t look so good."

The fact that he could read me so well was both a strength and a weakness.

After some thought, I decided to be honest.

"What? You feel bad about leaving that bastard’s sister alive?"

I nodded.

"You had your reasons. Pulling the trigger back there would’ve put you in serious danger of getting surrounded. Even so, you can’t shake the feeling, huh? That it would have been the right call to shoot her?"

I mentioned how, as the vehicle drove away, {N•o•v•e•l•i•g•h•t} the girl had locked eyes with me.

Defender let out a sigh.

Then he looked at me.

"So... should we go kill her now?"

Pure Defender logic.

To him, every problem could be solved by killing someone.

I had always been wary of becoming like him.

Because I believed there was a bare minimum that a human should protect.

Maybe that was hypocrisy.

But hypocrisy was something everyone carried, like a personal totem.

And like most hypocrites, I had convinced myself that I was different.

Still, when the right conditions were met, hypocrisy was easily stripped away.

"I know that place well."

For a brief moment, Defender’s words made something inside me stir.

A flicker of agreement.

But that flicker quickly turned into a feverish anger.

A small, momentary resentment crept up—resentment that this had all happened because of the Defender siblings.

I crushed that thought before it could take root, but that’s just human nature.

When a problem arises, people instinctively want to blame the ones who brought it into their lives.

And yet, I had just blamed someone I valued.

Not a good sign.

Resentment, if left unchecked, would turn into regret.

A dangerous thought entered my mind—had I made a mistake bringing them here?

"..."

I should have killed her.

My old mentor, Jang Ki-young’s voice suddenly echoed in my head.

"Your first thought is often your best thought. That raw, unfiltered instinct is the clearest reflection of what you’re truly made of."

I had always tried to act the opposite of what Jang Ki-young would say.

It was a small act of rebellion, but now, he was nothing more than a zombie.

Rumors said he had been spotted somewhere near Incheon.

That aside.

"Defender."

I looked him straight in the eyes.

"Yeah?"

"Why did you kill people back then? I mean, before all this. When we were just messing around on the internet."

"You mean at the beginning?"

"Yeah."

Defender stroked his chin, lost in thought.

"I didn’t really think about it. Or rather, I tried not to think about it."

"Really?"

"I just focused on the danger they posed to us."

Defender stared blankly at the sky and concluded.

"Looking back, I still think it was the right decision."

"I see."

"I knew, even back then, that what we were doing wasn’t ‘right’ by peacetime standards."

Defender let out a bitter chuckle.

"But what does ‘right’ even mean?"

This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.

When I didn’t answer, he sighed, picked up a stick, and started drawing in the dirt.

He seemed to be drawing a human figure—a simple stickman.

Then, with one rough stroke, he slashed a line across its neck.

A clean decapitation.

"...I should have killed that girl."

"If I had, none of this would be happening."

Defender grinned.

"From now on, I’m going to kill every single one of them."

It wasn’t a cruel smile.

It was innocent.

And I still found myself resisting that innocence.

What he said made sense. It even brought me a strange sense of relief.

But deep down, I was still clinging to the remnants of the old world.

To morals. To hypocrisy.

To values that had long since faded into irrelevance.

Foxgames: A Pathetic Excuse

Foxgames: I’m really sorry. I bow my head in apology. I won’t even ask you to wait anymore. I have no excuses.

Foxgames was still crawling around the forums like the hypocritical parasite he was.

His insides were rotten to the core, but at least his public image was intact.

If anything—

Anonymous1723: Stay strong, Foxgames!

Anonymous1833: I installed a satellite internet system just for your game. It was a pain without a manual, but I don’t regret it one bit.

Anonymous1873: A lot of us are here because of you. Me included.

People were still cheering him on.

Mostly the newer users.

I messaged Dies_Irae.

He was online, browsing as usual, and responded instantly.

Dies_Irae69: Foxgames? Yeah, he’s still whining. Keeps begging me to convince his old subordinates to come back.

Dies_Irae69: Honestly, it’s disgusting. The guy who tried to kill them to take all the credit now suddenly wants them back?

Dies_Irae69: And the worst part? He actually asked me to talk to them for him. I may not be a saint, but even I have more self-respect than that.

Classic Dies_Irae. He always had a way of cutting to the core of a person’s nature.

He shredded Foxgames apart but left one final thought.

Dies_Irae69: Still, at least Foxgames bothers to keep up appearances.

Dies_Irae69: These days, even that bare minimum is becoming rare.

And he was right.

Lately, the influx of new users had brought in some real freaks.

As a hidden mod, I had been banning the same three accounts over and over again.

MORUS: ♥ Leather Crafting for Beginners—Part 3 ♥

A lunatic making crafts out of human skin.Anonymous1941: Untitled - 13

Kept uploading photos of a raped and murdered woman’s corpse.KIM_DONG_HUNG: Handsome Guy’s Day Out~

A delusional old man spamming hundreds of selfies every day.Even the English boards were infested.

Live-streamed "human safaris," grotesque experiments—things had spiraled beyond mere anarchy.

Even Melon Mask, who had always championed absolute freedom of expression, had changed his stance and ordered the deletion and moderation of extreme hate posts.

The world had been going insane for a long time.

But now, it felt like we had finally reached the point of no return.

This was the fourth year of the war.

If the collapse of the past had been the breakdown of systems, then now, it felt like the very values we once held as absolute were crumbling away.

That was probably what Dies_Irae meant—however disgusting Foxgames was, at least he still pretended to have standards.

Some people weren’t even bothering anymore.

It seemed my troubled expression hadn’t gone unnoticed by my comrades.

"Park Gyu. What’s wrong?"

Ha Tae-hoon asked with a serious look.

There was no point in hiding it. Keeping things secret only led to misunderstandings.

So I laid out my concerns.

"So... what you’re saying is..."

Cheon Young-jae spoke up, looking unimpressed.

"You’re worried that the girl might be a Cognition-type?"

"Something like that."

"Cognition-type abilities are incredibly rare. Nine times out of ten, it's just a sensory or clairvoyant ability."

Cheon Young-jae looked at me with a grin and added:

"Even if it were me, I wouldn’t have killed her. Killing a child just because of a possibility? That’s an even worse burden to carry."

Ha Tae-hoon nodded and joined in.

"If you get too numb to killing, you’ll end up no different from the raiders out there. No matter how fucked up this world is, there are still some lines we need to keep."

The hunters from Incheon sided with my decision.

But the Defender siblings didn’t.

"Even if there was a risk, eliminating her was the right call. In the end, whether it’s a kid or an adult, they’re all Homo sapiens—thinking beings. There’s no reason to treat them differently. They’re just smaller and weaker."

"...I do like that about Skelton, but this time, I think the premise itself was wrong. Even if he let the girl live, that doesn’t change the fact that he killed her brother."

Defender nodded in agreement with his sister.

"She’ll show up here eventually."

That was when I became keenly aware of the fundamental issue within our group.

Not everyone thinks the same way.

We all grew up in different environments, shaped by different worlds.

The hunters from Incheon still wore a thin veil of morality.

The Defender siblings believed in preemptive murder as a means of prevention.

Their perspectives were completely different, yet both groups were important to me.

I excused myself and wandered through the territory.

I had walked through this place thousands of times, but it had changed.

Not just the outer walls.

Signs of life were everywhere.

Footprints, scattered belongings, personal decorations, scents lingering in the air.

Without thinking, I found myself in front of Ballantine’s bunker.

He hadn’t attended the meeting.

Instead, he had locked himself inside, tirelessly working on something, absorbed in his world of symbols and coded language.

He had grown gaunt from standing guard the past few days, but his energy was undiminished.

When I stepped into his bunker, he simply stared at me.

"Something on your mind?"

I briefly explained everything that had happened.

My hesitation, my regret, the worry that had grown from it.

Ballantine fanned himself as he listened, then wiped his sweaty forehead with a towel and said bluntly:

"Well... does it really matter?"

"You think so?"

Resignation.

That’s how I interpreted it.

"Nothing in this world is clean. Not even this war. Everyone wished it wouldn’t happen, and yet..."

"..."

Not me.

"Things happen whether we want them to or not. That’s what I’ve learned surviving in this ruined world. There are forces beyond our control—call it a flow, if you will. People like me? We just get swept along."

Ballantine, looking exhausted but strangely proud, gestured at his monitor.

With a keystroke, a familiar screen appeared.

[Welcome to the Red Archive Forum.]

"This is—?!"

"Hah... hah... almost done!"

Ballantine let out a breathless chuckle.

"The Jeju admin wasn’t a complete idiot. He noticed the intrusion attempts and put up some kind of firewall. But what can he do? From his perspective, I am an unstoppable force."

It sounded so casual.

But I looked at Ballantine differently now.

I never expected his words to hit me so hard.

Ballantine—he was someone who wouldn’t exist without John Nae-non.

Among our group, he was the most out of place.

The weakest link, arguably.

And yet, to someone else, he was an inevitable, unrelenting force.

"H-Hold on. That line... is that from John Nae-non’s quotes?"

"Nope. I said it myself."

"I see."

Ballantine lifted a Ballantine whiskey bottle and took a long swig.

Not alcohol—he had filled the glass bottle with purified water.

"I like Skelton because he still feels human."

"On the internet?"

"Even online, you’re human enough. But I think you’re even more human in reality."

"You think so?"

"I can’t explain it. Take the newcomers, for example."

Ballantine peeked outside, making sure no one was around.

Then he leaned in and whispered.

"They make me uneasy."

"In what way?"

"You’re not going to tell them what I said, right?"

"I’m as tight-lipped as a hundred-kilo steel door."

"Hmm... well, since it’s you, I’ll be honest."

Ballantine gave his personal impression of the Defender siblings.

"They just... give me the creeps. Both of them."

He was probably right.

I had felt something similar when I first met them.

"Well, they’re here now. We just have to get along."

Ballantine smiled brightly.

"And you—don’t stress yourself out too much, Skelton. Life isn’t that complicated. If a wave is too strong, just let it carry you. Getting swept up isn’t always a bad thing. After all, it brought us here, didn’t it?"

Unexpected News

My worries ended as suddenly as they began.

"Hey, Skelton. Did you check the forum?"

I was listening to John Nae-non’s quotes, trying to clear my mind, when Defender came looking for me.

"What is it?"

"She’s dead."

"...?"

"The girl. The one who glared at you."

Defender smirked.

"What?"

"It’s on the forum."

gijayangban: Wonju Status Update 3.jpg

The post was by Gijayangban.

Woo Min-hee.

Why was she posting about Wonju?

And not just one update—she had practically flooded the board with them.

Feeling an ominous weight settle in my stomach, I clicked the image Defender pointed to.

A corpse.

The girl who had haunted my thoughts lay cold and lifeless on the ground.

Just like her brother, flies swarmed over her unseeing eyes, rubbing their forelegs together.

Defender watched me with a quiet but persistent gaze.

He was trying to read my reaction.

To see if I was like them.

"..."

No matter how I framed it, I had felt a sense of relief at her death.

For a brief moment, I had even felt something close to exhilaration.

And yet.

"...Pity."

I didn’t take off my mask of hypocrisy.

At the very least, I didn’t bare my teeth.