Chapter 1: Old man Kim

TL: RuinsTranslator

How the world went to ruin and became a mess is a long, boring, and complicated story, but there are plenty of interesting episodes within it.

For instance, let's talk about the wise future preparations of me, Park Kyu.

The notion that a crisis is looming over humanity is a tale incessantly told by everyone from intellectual nobodies to YouTube Cyber ​​Wreckers, but among civilians, only two types really prepared for the crisis.

Either the filthy rich who could afford to build air-raid shelters on their private property, or bold action-takers who could invest everything in the vague possibility of such a disaster, denying reality.

I belong to the latter.

As soon as I sensed the crisis, I boldly disposed of my assets and prepared for the impending doom.

I didn't inherit much wealth, but I had accumulated some.

I worked in a profession where I had no choice but to save money, and in the final stages, I crazily increased my workload while sleeping only about four hours a day.

Still, not having as much money as the filthy rich, I learned various skills in my spare time while enduring the heavy workload.

Basic electrical work, construction, operating heavy machinery, drug and chemical synthesis, basic medical skills, etc. I bought books and video materials for things I didn’t understand and stored them.

The most important thing was deciding where to settle.

It was not an easy decision to make.

I sought advice from survival experts, civilians who survived in war zones, wilderness explorers, and, as I will introduce later, the Doomsday Prepper Community 'Viva! Apocalypse!'.

After lengthy consideration and deliberation, I selected the site based on four key criteria.

First, a place where people do not live and are unlikely to seek refuge in an emergency.

Second, despite that, it should be at an appropriate distance from a major city.

Third, the terrain of the hideout.

Fourth, the price.

The first criterion is the most basic of basics.

The most dangerous thing for someone building their own fortress in preparation for doomsday is not monsters or hordes of zombies, but humans themselves.

Indeed, humans have always been the primary threat to my apocalyptic life.

However, it is difficult for humans to live alone.

The second condition may seem contradictory to the first, but it is critically important.

If one can maintain contact with a city, in an emergency, one can obtain not only necessary supplies but also precious information.

Leaving the safety of the hideout for the dangerous outside world is extremely risky, but staying holed up in an air-raid shelter, unaware of the approaching storm, is tantamount to certain death.

The third criterion is the foundation for the struggle that will last until my death.

The hideout must be surveillable from all sides and not easily detectable from the outside.

Defense is the next issue to consider.

No matter how defensible the terrain, once the hideout is discovered, it won't be easy to defend it alone.

Humans, excluding insects, are the animal species with the highest population.

Ah, soil quality and groundwater are also important.

The soil must be soft enough to dig deep into, and groundwater will become my lifeline after the water supply is cut off.

Of course, all these conditions had to be considered within the limits of my budget.

Currency becomes worthless scraps of paper once the world collapses, but to prepare before the collapse, one ultimately needs money.

The site I chose was a forested area nestled against a mountain, located between an air force base and a golf course.

It was secluded, easy to observe, and maintained an appropriate distance from the city, but there was a fatal flaw.

The land was a landlocked land, with no roads.

It was an unavoidable choice.

Landlocked land is much cheaper than other lands, costing several times to dozens of times less.

The shameless waste disposal crooks using it as an illegal dumping ground for construction waste and industrial garbage contributed to the low price.

Still, thanks to that, I secured a fairly large site.

It was a vast land, not much inferior in size compared to the neighboring golf course.

The issue of there being no road was resolved by negotiating with the adjacent landowner to use the land in exchange for providing free labor during harvest season and a usage fee, but it was not an easy task.

"Did you say you're from Seoul? Well, let's do our best."

I don't remember the old man's first name, but his surname was definitely Kim.

He was a lean and short man with a Chungcheong-do accent, about seventy years old, and his first impression was not very good.

Sure enough, Old man Kim's temperament was so irksome that even I, who am somewhat enlightened, occasionally felt murderous.

He was always annoyed, demanding restoration to the original state, routinely blocking the only road with obstacles, and frequently coming over to ask for help with odd jobs.

When he came knocking on my container house at 3 a.m., asking for help with work, I really felt the urge to throw him into a rice paddy.

Well, what can you do? You get what you pay for.

With the money saved by buying cheap land, I invested everything in heavy machinery, construction materials, and items necessary for survival.

I acquired excavators, loaders, drilling machines, forklifts, etc.

Hiring people would have been cheaper and more professional for building a single air-raid shelter, but my plan was to continuously expand and modify my hideout.

My 220,000 pyeong (727272 Squre meter) of land is the foundation and fortress of my life in this crumbling world, and it is synonymous with me.

Naturally, I initially brought in people.

The knowledge gained from the internet and lectures was not enough to match the skills and know-how of professionals.

"Sir, is all this equipment yours? What exactly are you planning to do?"

The contractors who saw my collection of heavy machinery were all surprised.

"Well, I just developed a hobby in this area."

I vaguely brushed it off, trying to win their favor by buying them drinks and snacks.

At first, they were reluctant to have a client join in the work, but after a few drinks and meals, we eventually moved as one team.

From them, I learned invaluable lessons that lectures and textbooks could never teach: how to dig into the ground, how to support excavated land, the ideal mixture ratio of cement, pouring methods, and more.

But as they say, luxury leads to disaster.

Once the real construction started, Old man Kim threw a fit.

"What the heck are you building there, gathering all those people and making all that noise? Did you get development permission?"

After putting up with his temper for about a month, I started to understand why Old man Kim was behaving this way.

It seemed he just needed a target to vent his stress.

His aging body, unfulfilling work, unbearable loneliness, the impending death.

A despair that I can only vaguely comprehend turned him into this irritable old man.

Well, judging from his reputation in the village, it seems his temperament wasn't great to begin with.

His nickname is 'Wretched Old Man.'

Thanks to that Wretched Old Man's shenanigans, the construction of my first air-raid shelter was frequently interrupted, eventually leading to complaints from the workers.

I, too, am no saint, and feeling the limits of my patience, I noticed an unfamiliar vehicle parked outside Old man Kim's isolated house.

It was a shiny new Benz.

A man, resembling Old man Kim but much bigger and younger, was standing with a middle-aged woman whose lips were puckered.

"The damn bastard..."

Those words slipped out of my mouth unintentionally.

Old man Kim had never talked about his family.

I was sure he had a family, as he often fiddled with his phone and occasionally made calls while helping with work, but this was the first time I actually saw them.

But that day, I discovered the true stain on Old man Kim's heart.

"No, sell this land. We will take care of you. We're offering to take you in, why are you making a fuss! Ah!"

The man resembling Old man Kim grabbed his collar and shook him like a toy.

The woman with puckered lips just watched, not even trying to stop him.

Rather, she seemed to be silently supporting her husband with a bitter sneer of schadenfreude.

"Fucking hell. After taking all that crap from you when I was young, you give the precious land to my sister and the garbage land to your eldest son. Do you have any idea how much Park Seobang looks down on me now?"

The man's voice grew louder.

He must have had a lot of pent-up frustration.

Considering that even I, who have somewhat attained enlightenment, occasionally feel murderous due to Old man Kim's temper, it must have been really aggravating.

But it seemed to be crossing the line more and more.

"That bastard working at that fancy company is living in a much better apartment, living the high life, while your son, who carries your family name, struggles to pay for his grandson's English kindergarten fees!"

His emotions were visibly escalating, endlessly amplifying and reproducing anger from within.

"Are you going to sell the land or not?"

When the man raised his fist, I coughed loudly.

He turned to me with an angry face.

What was he trying to do?

As I stared back, he slowly lowered his fist and mumbled something inaudible.

Meanwhile, Old man Kim, whose collar was grabbed, had an unusually defeated expression and shook his head weakly.

His gaze was fixed on his collapsing house.

"F*ck!!!"

The man cursed, let go of Old man Kim, and headed to the Benz with his wife.

As he opened the door of the Benz, he threw a merciless remark.

"From this Chuseok, we're not bringing Youngjin anymore!"

After the car left, I pondered for a moment.

Whether to ignore Old man Kim, sitting there in a daze, or to offer him a word of comfort.

I disliked Old man Kim as much as his son did, but I needed his cooperation for now.

Suppressing my irritation, I approached Old man Kim.

"It looks like you saw everything."

Old man Kim spoke without looking at me.

His gaze was still fixed on his crumbling house.

I pulled out a lollipop, sat down next to him, and looked at the old house he was staring at.

"Is that your son?"

"…Do you have parents?"

I shook my head.

"They passed away in an accident."

"Oh dear."

"It's a long time ago. But this must be tough for you?"

"I didn't give him worthless land."

Old man Kim sighed deeply, watching the departing Benz.

"When I gifted it, that land was much more expensive…"

"You're talking about the land you gifted to your son."

Old man Kim nodded and took out a cigarette.

As I helped him light it, he started to talk with a hollow laugh.

"The land I gave to my daughter was like yours, landlocked. It was even a worthless hill of dirt. But who knew that a 10-lane road would be built in front of it? Who could have known that a tunnel would be dug through that corner land and a new city would emerge?"

His life was just as he had anticipated.

He was neither a good nor a great father.

He was an insignificant father who often bullied and was violent towards his family.

He lived his whole life as a despicable person, then in his later years, he 'leveled up' to a wealthy father after his land was appropriated and he made a fortune – an uninteresting life.

Otherwise, his children might have cut ties with Old man Kim long ago.

I blurted out to end the conversation quickly.

"Why don't you sell that house? If you sell it and move somewhere else, wouldn't that solve the problem?"

"I can't do that. I just can't."

The old man exhaled white smoke and looked up at the sky.

"The spirit of my dead wife is there. She put up with someone like me all her life..."

I still don't know what I did right by Old man Kim.

One thing for sure is that our short conversation opened a 10-lane road in his heart.

After that day, he no longer blocked the construction vehicles coming and going, nor did he complain.

Since there were no conflicts, our relationship naturally improved, and I even took the initiative to offer help to Old man Kim.

There's nothing wrong with being friendly with a neighbor.

There were benefits, too.

I learned about agriculture from Old man Kim, knowledge hard to come by for someone from the city.

"Farming, you see, it's all about the lunar calendar, not the solar one. The solar calendar is useless. You need to look at the lunar one. The seasonal divisions. Those are important."

He seemed to have a hunch about what I was up to.

"You're one of those survivalists, doomsday preppers, aren't you?"

"Well, something like that."

"If you're into that, wouldn't you need seedlings? Even if the world ends, you still need to eat vegetables, right?"

"Is there anything that can be grown underground?"

"With sunlight, water, and fertilizer, you can grow anything. Nowadays, the quality of seedlings is so good. The important thing is dedication."

Despite the passing of several seasonal divisions, his children never visited him.

On Lunar New Year and Chuseok, I would see him standing alone in the yard of his crumbling house, staring blankly towards the road.

Later, when China started a war and missiles launched from there hit the capital region, Old man Kim came rushing to my air-raid shelter.

It was the first time I'd seen him so panicked since I knew him.

"My son, find out what happened to my son."

After communication was restored and the list of casualties checked, I had to deliver the unfortunate news.

Old man Kim just hung his head in silence.

He neither cried nor sobbed.

Maybe it was a stroke of fate.

"The world is going to end soon. Would you like to come to my air-raid shelter?"

I made an offer against my usual principles.

Old man Kim looked up at me.

He smiled at me.

"Just wait a moment. I have something to prepare."

"Something to prepare?"

"I have something for you."

He turned out to be a man who knew how to smile warmly, more than I had thought.

When I went back to find Old man Kim, he was hanging from the main beam of the collapsing house he had tried to protect, swaying like a straw mat.

At his cooling feet, seedling seeds were neatly packaged with a caring touch.

I couldn't recover his body.

Nuclear attack alarms blared all around, announcing the end of the world.

I quickly gathered only the seedlings and took shelter in the air-raid shelter.

In hindsight, it was a wise decision.

The raging flames of nuclear fission that followed incinerated the collapsing house and the body, leaving no trace behind.