Chapter 105
Junwoo's group decided to wait outside the safe zone.
They were the ones who said that would be better.
Since Ha-seon was also a little uncomfortable around Junwoo's group, I told them to do that.
Ulsan Upsquare was closer than I had expected, and since it was near the safe zone, we didn't see a single monster the entire way.
Since we were in the city, there were more stores to look around, which made the trip somewhat enjoyable.
"This time, things might unfold a little differently."
"How so?"
Ha-seon said to me.
"If all they did was steal the generator, they must have had a reason of their own. If we ask them about it first, perhaps we can resolve this through conversation."
"That's true."
I nodded and answered calmly, but a thought arose in a corner of my mind.
'Come to think of it, have I ever solved anything through conversation?'
Thinking back, I had almost no memory of ever resolving a problem through dialogue.
At most, I had overpowered cowardly rat beastkin or the snake boss's gang, then forced them to surrender.
'...No, really, have I ever?'
For a moment, I wondered whether I should be doing some serious self-reflection by now.
While I was lost in thought, we soon arrived at the entrance to our destination, Upsquare.
But something felt strange.
For a base supposedly guarded by the people who had stolen the generator, it was far too flimsy.
There wasn't even a barricade, let alone a single trap.
We cautiously stepped through the empty doorway.
"It's dark."
The inside of the building was even darker than outside.
Apparently, the generator they had stolen wasn't powerful enough to light the entire building.
Then again, a generator small enough to steal probably wouldn't have been very large.
Yeouido seemed impressive all over again.
What kind of abilities and effort had combined to maintain enough power to illuminate the entire Seoul metropolitan area?
I would have to ask about it casually later.
We passed through the doors and descended to the bookstore section in the basement, our destination.
Just then, Sua tugged firmly at my sleeve and whispered.
"Unnie... Over there, a light..."
When I looked in the direction the siblings were pointing, a warm orange glow was leaking out from the depths of the bookstore.
It was proof that someone was definitely here.
We quieted our footsteps and carefully made our way between the bookshelves.
A strange air mixed with the smell of books and dust.
The bookstore was larger than I had expected.
Perhaps this entire basement level was dedicated to the bookstore, because books were displayed throughout the underground area beyond the store itself.
As we passed through the maze-like bookshelves and approached the computer section in the most secluded corner, we heard the murmuring voices of people.
I cautiously stuck my head out and peeked inside.
"...What's that?"
People were huddled together in the most secluded space.
They were concentrating on something.
In the dark corner of the bookstore, beneath a few makeshift lights.
The people sat in a circle on the floor, whispering among themselves.
'...No weapons, and no one standing guard.'
I slowly hid the spear I was holding behind my back.
The scene was so completely different from what I had expected that Ha-seon and I could only stare blankly at it for a moment.
Whirrr—
At the mechanical sound of the combat drone, the people gathered in the corner jumped in fright and raised their heads.
The moment they spotted our group, they turned pale and frantically waved their hands.
"D-don't come any closer! You mustn't come near!"
Though they were warning us away, they sounded strangely desperate.
Looking more closely, I saw that everyone gathered there, men and women alike, was wearing a white mask over their face.
And at the center of the group, people lay beneath thick padded coats and blankets, making sick groaning noises.
After a while, a woman who looked to be in her mid-thirties, with hollow, sunken eyes, slowly walked out from the group.
She cautiously held out several new masks to us and spoke in a low voice.
"Let's talk outside. Follow me."
It wasn't until we reached the escalators near another entrance to the bookstore that she let out a heavy sigh behind her mask.
"...You're here because of the generator, aren't you?"
She spoke in a calm yet exhausted voice, as though she had already expected this moment to come.
She revealed that she had been a pharmacist before the apocalypse, then explained how the situation had unfolded this way.
"At first, there was only one person. A mild cough and fever, along with chills. We all thought it was an ordinary cold or flu caused by our weakened immune systems in the changed environment. But the very next day, a friend who had been caring for the patient right beside them came down with the exact same symptoms."
"..."
"We thought it might still just be a cold, but on the third day, one of them collapsed after complaining of severe anemia, while the other said that they couldn't taste their food at all... That's when I became certain. This wasn't an ordinary cold."
The moment I heard those symptoms, the name of a disease that had once been an object of fear flashed through my mind.
"Is it COVID?"
"...I don't know for certain. But I thought it was highly likely."
In a world where hospitals and doctors had disappeared, an infectious disease was a fatal matter.
The pharmacist had recognized how serious the situation was and decided to leave the safe zone on her own with the patients showing symptoms and several companions.
"Why didn't you explain the truth to everyone?"
At my question, the pharmacist let out a bitter, hollow laugh.
"We hadn't been in that safe zone for very long. On top of that, we'd been sick in bed for several days, so there were already many people badmouthing us behind our backs. If we told them we had a disease that might spread to them under those circumstances, we thought they'd throw us out immediately... So we quietly stole a small generator and fled here. We planned to somehow finish the treatment here, then return the generator and apologize once everyone recovered, but..."
She lowered her head miserably.
The dark circles beneath her eyes and her hollow expression showed how hard she had worked to treat the patients during that time.
"I couldn't treat them. Despite being a pharmacist, all I could do in this ruined world was prescribe Tylenol or cold medicine that had been lying around on pharmacy shelves. None of it helped. Worse, the healthy people who had followed us out of pity for the patients became infected as well... We've reached our limit now."
The atmosphere at the bookstore entrance sank into deep gloom.
Facing her, broken before a wall that seemed utterly impossible to overcome, I casually rested the shaft of my spear on my shoulder and spoke.
"...Maybe I can solve it."
"...What?"
The pharmacist momentarily wondered if she had heard me correctly, then her voice turned sharp, tinged with slight irritation.
"I appreciate that you're trying to comfort me... But there are people inside who can barely breathe. Just how do you plan to solve—"
"Ms. Ha-seon."
I brushed aside her sharp reaction and turned toward Ha-seon, who was standing behind me.
"Yes? Me?"
"That herb you got from the elf in the otherworldly town. The one you've been growing in the cultivation machine on the train—how much has it grown?"
Startled by the sudden question, Ha-seon was briefly flustered, then nodded as she searched her memory.
"Oh, that? It's growing well. When I checked yesterday, it was already longer than my finger."
"Good. Then we can use it."
I nodded in relief.
The herb the elf had given us.
Even the crude, makeshift potion the elf had once made by roughly chewing an immature herb together with a mana stone had displayed remarkable healing power.
If I made a potion using a properly grown herb and an intermediate mana stone, there was a chance it could cure that disease as well.
I spoke to the pharmacist.
"Take your time packing and prepare to move. It'll take about ten minutes to get there. I have medicine on my train."
"...Really? You really have medicine that can cure us?"
"I can't be certain, but there's a chance. I have potions on the train."
"Potions...?"
When I said that, she stared at me with a dumbfounded expression.
A potion was difficult to understand from a common-sense perspective, but just looking at the golem and drones standing behind me, not to mention Nero with cat ears, showed that the world around her was already full of impossibilities.
In the end, she accepted it.
"...I understand. We don't have any other options anyway, so we'll trust you."
She drew a shaky breath, then hurriedly ran back into the bookstore.
Then she shouted to the others.
"Everyone, please listen. I know it's hard, but we're going to pack our things and prepare to move."
"Pack our things?"
"Why...?"
Leaving behind the commotion of the people in the corner beginning to prepare for evacuation, I turned my gaze toward the other side of the bookstore.
We leisurely wandered between the shelves and began our serious book shopping.
The first place we reached was the children's book section.
"What about this?"
"Wow! It's cute!"
Rather than books packed with text, we mainly chose easy-to-understand comics and picture books filled with colorful illustrations.
Sua also seemed to like them because the pictures were cute.
While casually accepting the cookbooks with pictures of bread and snacks that Nabi kept pushing into the pile, I searched for the music section.
Most of the albums on the shelves belonged to famous idols who had swept across South Korea until just before the apocalypse.
For Jiwoo and Sua, who were staring in wonder at the glamorous idols on the covers, I picked up popular children's songs in a variety of genres.
I also grabbed some pop songs to suit my own tastes. This was more than enough music on CD.
I was just about to pick up a few movie soundtracks displayed right beside them.
"Over there..."
Just then, Ha-seon, who had been quietly exploring the opposite side of the bookstore, approached us.
She was holding a heavy basket in her hands.
When I discreetly looked inside, I saw it was packed to the brim with famous web novels in book form and stacks of manga.
When I gave her a knowing look, Ha-seon turned her head away at the fastest speed I had seen since meeting her and blushed.
"My eyes were getting so tired from using only my laptop on the swaying train."
"Ah, yes. I see. I wholeheartedly recommend reading."
When I answered with a smile, she cleared her throat and walked ahead.
Despite what she said, she seemed to like manga and novels.
After roughly finishing our shopping, we returned to the computer section where the patients had gathered earlier.
The survivors who had already heard a rough explanation of the situation from the pharmacist stood up all at once, luggage in hand, and waited for us.
"Those people..."
"So those are the people who said they'd give us potions... It was you."
"We can trust them, right...?"
The people looked toward me with eyes filled with hope and desperation.
I hoped the potions would be effective enough to live up to those expectations.
Clatter, click.
But that look lasted only a moment; once our entire group came into full view, the atmosphere inside the bookstore changed strangely.
'Huh? Why are they reacting like that? Is there something strange about us?'
Thinking that, I checked our appearance again.
The drones were precariously suspending baskets filled with manga and CDs from their pincers, while children's picture books had been placed on the sturdy golem's back.
At the center of them, I held baskets filled with colorful CDs and novels in both hands.
"S-so you like reading..."
"It looks like you have more manga and CDs..."
"...We can trust you, right?"
In the eyes of the survivors who had been looking at me like a savior, small signs of suspicion and distrust began to creep in.