Chapter 12: Laptop
The ruin of a major city is often compared to the crash of an airplane that has run out of fuel.
Even after losing power, it flies on inertia for quite a long time, but when the moment comes that its speed can no longer support its lift, it plummets to the ground with a deafening noise, meeting its end in a spectacular explosion.
Seoul, too, will follow in the footsteps of Beijing, Mumbai, Jakarta, and Hong Kong.
The disappearance of the major city backing me is a painful blow to my plans, but it is not an unexpected variable.
It’s just that the time came much sooner than anticipated.
Because the South Korean government’s resolve to defend the “Republic of Seoul” no matter what was firm.
Now that all that hope has vanished, what I must do is not save Seoul.
That is neither my job, nor is it something I can do.
I hurriedly plan to use my cigarettes, the currency of the apocalyptic era.
Even if Seoul falls, cigarettes will still hold power, but if the market itself shrinks, the quality and variety of goods obtainable will also become poor.
What I need right now is a new laptop.
A black spot appeared in a very unfortunate area on my current laptop’s screen.
It’s not much of a problem when playing games or watching videos, but it’s quite bothersome when using the community.
I do have a spare laptop, but it’s a gaming laptop…
Anyway, I prepared for a trip to Seoul to dispose of some cigarettes and check the atmosphere.
“This is Skelton. What’s the condition of Route 13?”
“Personal identification number confirmed. Hello, Skelton. It’s peaceful right now. Safety is secured across the entire road. Just in case, if you plan to pass through, please do so within 6 hours.”
I pedaled my bicycle leisurely toward Seoul.
A small number of electric vehicles were traveling on the road, and along the roadside, people dismantling and scavenging parts from stalled cars stretched out in a continuous line.
The atmosphere in Seoul, which I entered safely, was quite bright.
Reconstruction projects under the name of “state labor” were taking place everywhere, with countless people clearing rubble, swinging pickaxes, and cleaning the streets.
Billboards advertising concerts by singers and idols who had been out of work were proudly displayed on the streets, and electric public transportation, including buses, roamed the empty streets.
It wasn’t noticed in the community, but elementary and middle schools reopened after a long closure.
They say high schools and universities are also scheduled to reopen next year.
Perhaps because of that.
Even though food rations were shrinking, the frequency of power outages was increasing, and their duration was lengthening, the citizens took even that as a sign that Seoul was going to be rebuilt.
However, the sight of Seoul seen up close was quite different from what was shown on the outside.
Everyone is singing of hope, but beneath that, an eerie and gruesome shadow was cast.
The reason that shadow doesn’t become a problem is because people try not to look too closely at it.
The atmosphere of the “International Residence,” where I always stay for one night whenever I come to Seoul, was also vaguely straddling the boundary between hope and despair.
The International Residence is a place that converted a former goshiwon into lodging.
It’s a worn-out and shabby place, but it suffered almost no damage from the war, making it a decent place to stay for a day or so.
The owners of the residence were a middle-aged couple, each looking after their respective father and mother, with two children around middle school age below them.
I could tell the couple didn’t have a good relationship from my very first visit.
“Oppa! Please tell your mother to go inside! What on earth is she doing? Guests aren’t coming because of your mother!”
What brought discord between the two seemed to be their parents.
The wife brought in her father, and the husband brought in his mother, but both elderly individuals had problems.
The father-in-law showed symptoms of dementia due to shock, and the mother-in-law had a habit of sitting in front of the goshiwon every single day, staring so intently at passersby that it was embarrassing.
It was mostly the wife who did the nagging.
But recently, a change occurred.
The husband, who hadn’t replied a single word to his wife’s various complaints, seemed to have run out of patience, breaking his long silence and starting to fight back.
“So, you’re saying we should send my mother to an elderly welfare center in the provinces?”
“Why not? It’s a guarantee program guaranteed by the state.”
“Then try sending your father first.”
“You know my dad has dementia, Oppa!”
“That’s exactly why we should send him!”
However, that fight ended in the wife’s victory.
“Whose house is this? It’s not your house, Oppa, is it? It’s a house bought with my dad’s money, isn’t it? How can a person be so shameless when you didn’t bring a single penny when we got married?”
“…”
It seemed plausible.
Even to an outsider, the husband was a pathetic person with nothing going for him except his face.
He always sat powerlessly at the counter, blankly holding a cigarette butt in his mouth, or just lay on the floor idling away.
I’ve never seen him work since the war started, but listening to their conversations, it seems he didn’t work even before the war started.
Still, there is one thing he left for his children.
A handsome face.
If the couple’s parents were the rift tearing the marital relationship apart, their children were the glue barely connecting and supporting that precarious marital relationship.
Especially the son, the eldest, was a truly exemplary child worth boasting about.
You could call him an improved breed, seemingly bred by selecting only the good traits of both: the dad’s looks and the mom’s diligence.
Or perhaps he’s a mutant, seeing as he manifested a deep and benevolent personality that neither parent possessed.
“Mister. You come here often lately?”
“How many times do I have to tell you I’m not a mister.”
“If there’s more than a ten-year age difference, you’re a mister.”
“I’m still eighteen, you know?”
“Then I’ll be one year old. Waaah~.”
He’s a bit mischievous, but he’s much better than his older sister, who treats people like invisible objects, whether she has middle school or high school syndrome.
He’s fourteen years old and currently attending middle school, he said.
His grades are quite good, apparently.
He’s popular, has many friends, and is the quintessential “mom’s friend’s son.”
They say there’s a line of girlfriend candidates, but he’s rejecting them all on his end.
Above all, this young friend has a pretty decent laptop.
From 6 PM to 7 PM is internet time.
You could call it the drug permitted by the country.
Communication equipment and internet lines, which had suspended operation due to electricity and facility issues, are opened for one hour.
Solid power support is a bonus.
So when internet time comes, the city of Seoul becomes as quiet as a dead city.
Everyone is so engrossed in the world of the internet, busy taking care of their respective virtual world affairs that they had put off.
Although the speed is a bit slow, the Wi-Fi, which is largely unchanged from before the war, along with intact water facilities, is one of the biggest reasons I use the International Residence.
In the goshiwon cafeteria, numerous residents had taken their respective seats to receive this Wi-Fi energy, staring into their cell phones or laptop screens.
One man even hauled in a heavy desktop PC while groaning, and seeing that, the landlady nagged him.
“Hey, mister! That uses too much electricity!”
“I took out the graphics card.”
“It still uses a lot! Pay more money! Or give me a lottery ticket at least!”
I sat next to the landlord’s son and connected to the public internet with my cell phone.
<Karrot Net>
A neighborhood-based secondhand trading site that maintains operation even after the war.
I can feel the breath of countless items and countless people.
Seeing thousands of accounts and posts, and dozens of new posts coming up in real-time, I felt anew what a narrow, well-frog world our community was.
Yeah, this is the internet.
I looked for a laptop on Karrot Net.
There were more listings than expected, but most were gaming laptops.
“I don’t need a gaming laptop.”
There were many listings, but none that I actually wanted, so as I let out a sigh, the landlord’s son stared blankly at my screen and asked.
“Mister. Are you looking for a laptop?”
“Yeah.”
“Wanna buy mine?”
“What? Really?”
For a moment, I was so happy my mouth almost stretched to my ears, but I quickly managed my expression and asked.
“What about you?”
“I’m fine. I’m going to a school in Jeju Island.”
“A school in Jeju Island?”
The boy smiled and showed me his laptop screen.
A government-made image file flyer popped up on the spotless, clean screen.
<“Won’t you become a hero?”>
-
Recruitment Guidelines for the 27th Class of the National Sole Hunter Training Institution “Guard”
“This is?”
Both the color scheme and the design looked like an advertisement made for boys and girls.
But these recruitment guidelines, there’s no mistake.
They are the recruitment guidelines for the ‘School’ I attended.
“Did you graduate middle school yet?”
“No, I’m just going into my 2nd year?”
“I guess they’re recruiting even those who haven’t graduated middle school these days?”
“What era are you talking about? They recruit elementary schoolers these days.”
“R-really!?”
I read through the guidelines carefully.
It was truly so.
The admission age had been drastically reduced.
10 years old or older, not middle school graduate or older.
Are they that short on people?
However, what caught my eye before the age was the overwhelming benefits.
There were more benefits going to the family than to the student themselves.
Living support, housing support, providing state jobs for the parents’ family, and so on.
It’s a structure where sending one child to school improves the livelihood of the entire family.
But on the back, small terms and conditions were embedded like a brick in numerous, painfully tiny letters.
As I tried to read it, the boy closed the laptop.
“Mister, should we talk on the rooftop for a bit?”
“Talk?”
“Business talk!”
On the rooftop, laundry fluttered in the wind, and an old man with dementia stood like a still life; beyond them, the low-hanging sunset created a mystical and primitive feeling against the backdrop of the ruins flattened by the nuclear attack.
As stars appeared one by one at the boundary of day and night, the boy asked me.
“I’ve been curious for a while, what do you do, mister?”
“What do you mean?”
“Every time you come, you carry a lot of stuff. You had a gun from the beginning too. I thought you might be a gangster, but you don’t seem like that either. I’m curious because in these times, your complexion is good and you still carry a lot of stuff around.”
“What do you think I am?”
“A gang member? A raider?”
“Can you say that even after looking at my good-natured eyes?”
“You’re a doomsday prepper, right?”
The boy smiled faintly while looking at a star.
“You know well.”
“I wanted to be a doomsday prepper too.”
“Really?”
“Why not? It’s fun, isn’t it? Making your own hideout, bringing in things to your taste. Wasn’t it fun for you too, mister?”
“It was hard work, but it was fun too. Though it got tough later when I ran out of money.”
The boy held out his laptop.
“Trade it for cigarettes. You have a lot, right?”
“I’ll go to jail if I sell them to a kid, though?”
“It’s the times we live in, right? I’ll give a little to my pathetic dad who always has a cigarette butt in his mouth, and sell the rest to buy a present for my mom. Before I go to school!”
I sold the cigarettes to the boy.
He bought them ridiculously above market price, but it was a transaction that felt good in many ways.
When the transaction was concluded, the old man with dementia, who had been standing like a still life, turned his head this way and babbled something, but I couldn’t hear it well.
“If I go to that school, I won’t have to hear mom and dad fighting anymore, right? And I can send grandma and grandpa to a good place too.”
Even if I had heard it, I would have quickly forgotten it.
Because the words the boy joyfully said as we came down together left a much stronger impression.
He was a deep-thinking child.
To the point where I wondered how such a child could be born in a household like that.
The next day, as I was about to leave the International Residence, the cafeteria was in a festive mood.
It wasn’t the guests or residents who filled the cafeteria, but the landlady’s friends.
The landlady sat arrogantly among the other women in the center of the cafeteria tables.
“I’m so jealous. My kids hang out with thug-like kids.”
“That test? I heard it’s not easy to pass, but you managed to pass it?”
“I heard they give ‘The Hope’ move-in rights to the families of Hunter School entrants, is that true?”
Receiving numerous praises, envy, and jealousy all at once, the landlady smiled brightly.
“Oh my, Yeong-min’s dad. He’s like an enemy, but I’m a little thankful. For letting me give birth to such a wonderful child. Well, Yeong-min’s dad might be lazy, but his nature is good, right?”
Seeing the family on the verge of collapse bond more tightly than any other family due to the boy’s decision, I left the residence.
The boy’s laptop was extremely satisfactory.
SKELTON: (Skelton New Com) It’s a new laptop haha
Not a single comment was posted, but for my posts, the view count was quite high.
You could say it’s a part where I can feel the jealousy and envy of my community comrades.
The landlady’s triumphant smile copied itself onto my face.
It was two months later that I reread the Hunter School recruitment guidelines saved on the laptop.
By chance, I discovered a personal folder the boy had hidden.
The recruitment guidelines were there along with a daily schedule, photos taken with friends during elementary school, photos taken overseas with his family, etc., and there were unusually many photos of an unnamed girl his age.
With a sliver of anxiety, I read the back part of the recruitment guidelines that I hadn’t finished reading before.
A warning clause written in the corner soon caught my eye like destiny.
-Final successful applicants will undergo 3 high-level mental resonance tests, and may be exposed to minor accidents during the process.
“…Minor accidents?”
Bullshit.
That test leads to death.
I, an experienced person, know better than anyone.
It is a trial of death.
To filter out those who were not chosen by God.
The next time I went to Seoul, I stopped by the International Residence first.
It was unusual from the start.
I couldn’t see the face of the old woman who always guarded the front of the store.
With growing anxiety, I entered the store.
Sure enough, the owner had changed.
“What’s the matter? Is there something you’re curious about?”
“Well. The previous owner…”
At that moment, an old man brushed past the street outside the store.
In tattered clothes, unwashed properly, looking like a dying dog, the old man resembled the old man who used to live in this house despite the deep darkness.
“Don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t gooo…”
The old man mumbled and staggered awkwardly as if walking down an unfamiliar street.
In the darkness of the street beyond that, a slender girl was smoking a cigarette while hanging out with a delinquent group.
That girl also resembled the older sister of the boy who lived in that house.
Our eyes met for a very short time, and the girl blatantly showed displeasure and turned her gaze away.
The moment I saw that sight, I stopped the question I was about to ask.
“No, it’s nothing.”
On the bright side of the street, a merchant exchanging lotteries for goods was soliciting customers among the people.
I joined that group, asked the price of a lottery ticket, and exchanged one lottery ticket for two cigarettes.
I never visited the International Residence after that.
I don’t know the news of that family either.
Therefore, their fate remains hopeful.
Just like my lottery ticket, which has already been drawn, but whose results I haven’t checked yet.
