Destruction — Chapter 30

The scene of Woobeom dragging home the deer he’d killed because it would attract wild animals flashed through Saejin’s mind. And he also remembered what Woobeom had once said at the convenience store when they talked about the villa.

– If some bastard keeps acting up after I retire, I’ll just take care of him. I can deal with the body in the mountains.

He had thought it was a joke, but maybe it wasn’t complete nonsense after all. Panting hard as he climbed the hill, Saejin clutched his lower belly and rushed into the villa. How long had it been since his stab wound healed, and here he was sprinting again. Throwing open the storage room door, he searched frantically for the shovel Woobeom asked for.

Found it.

Grabbing the shovel from where it leaned in the corner, Saejin paused to steady the breath rising all the way to his chin. Despite the winter weather, his whole body had long been soaked in sweat. His legs were trembling, and his ankle throbbed, but he didn’t waste a second. His heart was pounding out of control, so loud he could hear it in his ears.

He had no idea when the monsters scattered across the area would come swarming. With every step he ran downhill, worry piled up until his eyes stung. His tight throat made it hard to breathe. His abdomen ached, but it was his lungs that felt like they were going to burst. Even so, he didn’t stop.

“Hyung!”

Almost collapsing as he sprinted downhill, he stumbled to a stop against the fence. Thankfully, no monsters were around, and aside from the bullet wound he’d taken earlier, Woobeom seemed unhurt. Pressing himself flat against the fence with a distressed face, Saejin panted while Woobeom looked at him with an odd expression. Saejin looked like he’d burst into tears any second.

“Crybaby.”

“Crybaby? Damn it… I was seriously scared something happened to you. Is your shoulder okay? No, you got shot, of course it’s not okay…”

The infected man lay at Woobeom’s feet with his neck swollen and twisted where Woobeom’s fingers had dug in, apparently he’d strangled him to avoid splattering blood. Woobeom took off his rain poncho, wrapped the corpse with it, then used the sleeves to make a handle. Slinging it over his uninjured shoulder, he told Saejin to move aside and climbed the fence. Even so, it was clear one of his arms wasn’t functioning properly.

“Should I help you carry it?”

Seeing how heavy the body looked, Saejin reached out. It looked exactly like the gesture Woobeom used when he helped Saejin down. After a brief glance at him, Woobeom declined, then tossed the dead man over the fence. Something must have bent wrong on the way down, because a dull cracking sound came from the body.

“You’re bleeding a lot right now. Leave it here and let’s treat your wound first, okay?”

Saejin paced anxiously, checking Woobeom’s complexion, regretting not bringing bandages. Seeing him dart around so frantically, Woobeom decided to calm Saejin down first and headed toward the villa. The corpse wasn’t bleeding anyway, so leaving it for a moment wouldn’t be a problem.

“Hold this.”

Not even looking at what Woobeom handed him, Saejin took it, then yelped when he realized it was the gun. The weight of it made chills run down his spine.

“That’s the gun the infected guy had, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Was there any ammo left?”

“No.”

There had only been one bullet from the start, and that was the one embedded in Woobeom’s shoulder. With just one shot, the infected man had bluffed hard, creating fear, taking a hostage, making it seem like he had more. And he had aimed at Woobeom instead of Saejin, probably to neutralize the stronger one first.

Hearing that the gun was empty, Saejin finally relaxed and shoved it into the rain poncho pocket. Then he ducked under Woobeom’s arm.

“I’ll help you walk.”

Being held up by someone so much smaller probably wouldn’t help much. But something about Saejin’s determined face made it hard to refuse. Woobeom leaned slightly toward him, pretending to accept the support, and Saejin instantly let out a strained wheeze. If this was all it took to overwhelm him, relying on him as a support beam was guaranteed to end with them both on the ground.

Before entering the villa, Woobeom carefully tested his injured arm. He didn’t know exactly where the bullet was lodged and needed to make sure the joint was intact. Thankfully it wasn’t stuck in the joint; aside from pain, it moved.

“Go inside first. I’ll grab the first-aid kit!”

To Saejin, Woobeom looked like a patient in urgent need of treatment. While Woobeom went into the room, Saejin rushed around the living room cabinet, gathering medical supplies, then hurried back. Woobeom saw all this flustered movement through the large mirror as he sat in front of it. He handed Saejin the small hand mirror.

“Hold it.”

“This…? Me?”

Receiving it without thinking, Saejin set the first-aid kit on the floor. Woobeom cut open his shirt and winced at the unpleasant sensation of the wound. Even a slight movement made blood spill out, the risk of heavy bleeding obvious.

“The hemostatic powder.”

Trying to bend down to get it made the wound open wider, blood pulsing hot and fresh. Unable to move, Woobeom asked Saejin for help. Saejin quickly found the powder and sprinkled it over the wound.

Once the bleeding slowed, Woobeom told him to hold the mirror steady and began rummaging through the kit. Sitting in front of the big mirror again, he now held a blunt-tipped pair of tweezers. Saejin realized why he’d been given the hand mirror, to help Woobeom see the wound clearly.

Digging out a bullet with no anesthesia was a brutal task. Saejin flinched just imagining the pain, but Woobeom silently did what he had to do. His half-lowered eyes stared calmly through the mirror. Focusing all his senses on the tweezers, he felt around inside the muscle and pulled out the bullet.

Even with the powder on, touching the wound over and over made bleeding unavoidable. Saejin watched the bright red blood spill down in a straight line and felt his stomach twist. Woobeom tossed the bullet aside and handed Saejin the skin stapler.

They exchanged a look instead of words. Saejin swallowed hard, then pulled the skin edges together as best he could and pressed the stapler.

Click. Click.

Each click made Woobeom’s skin heat under Saejin’s fingers. He hid it well, but he must have been in pain. Even so, he didn’t show a hint of doubt in Saejin’s clumsy technique. Thankfully, the area to staple wasn’t large.

As soon as Saejin finished, Woobeom cleaned the bloodied skin with disinfectant, then looked up at Saejin, who was wiping the floor.

“…Doesn’t it hurt?”

Woobeom shook his head. Even if it did, they weren’t in any position to visit a hospital. Complaining about pain was a waste of energy. He stood to go deal with the corpse before dark, and Saejin hurried after him, insisting he’d help since Woobeom’s injured arm would make it difficult.

Telling Woobeom to wait a moment, Saejin grabbed another shovel from the storage. After climbing the mountain all day, he should have been exhausted. And judging by his face, he definitely was. Woobeom looked him over, intending to tell him to stay inside, but only sighed quietly. Someone like Saejin wouldn’t stay put even if told to.

So he let him do what he wanted.

The sun had fully set, and he could no longer see the ground beneath his feet. It hadn’t been this dark when they first left the villa, but the mountain was always full of surprises. Thankfully, he’d brought a flashlight just in case. Saejin aimed the light as far as it would reach and adjusted the angle so the ground was clearly visible, then wedged the flashlight between the gaps in the fence.

They’d have to dig pretty deep so wild animals wouldn’t smell the corpse. Even in the middle of winter, doing manual labor like shoveling would warm them up quickly. Saejin pushed his sleeves up, preparing to sweat.

“If we dig it like this, it should be fine. Right?”

He scored the ground with the sharp edge of the shovel. The earth was frozen solid, and with nothing like equipment to break it up, it was impossible to make a neat, flat grave. So he marked out just enough space to cram the body in as-is. Woobeom nodded, seeming to have had the same thought.

Digging into rock-hard frozen soil was no easy task. With the sun long gone, everything around them was quiet. Thunk, thunk, thunk. The uneven sound of shovels striking the ground echoed as they worked, but they’d only dug about half the depth they needed. Woobeom’s side was even shallower since he was digging with just one hand.

At least I’m actually being useful for once.

He was always the one relying on Woobeom. For the first time, he felt like he was doing his share. Not that he wanted praise, but he did sneak a glance at Woobeom and cleared his throat twice, tapping the edge of the pit he had dug. This made Woobeom, who’d been digging with his head lowered, look his way.

“If you’re cold, go inside.”

That again?

He wasn’t clueless, yet when it came to moments like this, Woobeom was stingy with praise.

Anyone could tell it was a fake cough.

It sounded nothing like someone coughing from the cold. Saejin pouted but was relieved the darkness hid his expression. If it were daytime, Woobeom would’ve teased him like a kid for sulking over something so small. They dug for quite a while, and eventually the pit was deep enough to cram a grown man into it.

Woobeom nudged the corpse with his foot, rolling it into the hole. The width and length weren’t enough to lay the body straight, so Woobeom bent the man’s arms and legs toward his torso, like someone curled up asleep.

Never thought I’d end up doing something like this in my life.

Covering the curled-up corpse with dirt made him feel strangely unsettled. Saejin reminded himself not to feel guilty. In a world this chaotic, softness would get you killed. If they wanted to survive, they had to harden their hearts, brutally so.

* * *

The two of them returned to the villa and immediately sat in front of the wood stove to warm themselves up. After sweating buckets in thin clothes in the middle of winter, their fingernails and toenails had gone blue, and their faces looked half dead. The boiler alone wasn’t going to raise their body temperature fast enough, so they lit the stove they usually didn’t use to heat the room.

“Here, you should take some too.”

Saejin came out of the room with two cold medicine tablets. He swallowed one himself and handed the other to Woobeom. He could feel the early signs of a cold creeping in, and if he didn’t deal with it now, he’d probably be miserable the next day. Woobeom was about to refuse, but then he remembered cold medicine had painkillers in it, so he accepted it.

The pain in his shoulder grew stronger with time. He thought he could endure most things, but a gunshot wound ripped muscle on the inside and caused burns, so it hurt more than he expected. He suddenly found himself relieved the infected man had aimed for him from the beginning. If Saejin had been the one shot, there was a real chance he would have gone into shock and died on the spot.

If that tiny brat ended up bedridden for a month, taking care of him would be a whole ordeal.

While quietly sipping his hot tea, Woobeom let his mind drift, but eventually his expression hardened. He wasn’t the type to take care of someone. If someone was sick, they stayed sick; if they died, they died. That was the kind of man he was. From low ranks all the way to the higher positions, he’d lived inside the organization long enough to lose whatever softness he might have once had. Even now, in a situation where survival was all that mattered, it unnerved him that he was taking care of Saejin at all.

He’s not even my little brother.

They were the same age his brother had been, but it wasn’t as if Saejin was the only twenty-five-year-old in the world. Still, for some strange reason, he felt attached. Woobeom pressed hard on his temples, trying to empty his head. He needed to get a grip.

Because of their size difference, even sitting down, Woobeom naturally looked down at Saejin. And when Saejin lowered his eyes to sip his tea, the thick fringe of his lashes caught Woobeom’s attention. When Woobeom kept staring, Saejin noticed and asked what was wrong. Woobeom didn’t know how to answer.

“Uh… should I put on the news?”

Trying to break the odd, unexplained awkwardness between them, Saejin sprang up. Maybe it was because the TV was off. He dug out the remote from between the sofa cushions and turned on the power. The news was no longer live, maybe there were no anchors left, or maybe there simply weren’t any new updates to give. After listening to the same repetitive reports, Saejin checked that the color had returned to his nails before getting up to prepare dinner.

“I’ll take care of dinner today.”

Letting the man who’d just taken a bullet in the shoulder serve him a meal would be shameless. When Saejin moved toward the kitchen, Woobeom’s eyes quietly followed him. Something about it felt like their roles had been reversed.

Dinner wasn’t anything elaborate. It was mostly canned or packaged food with long shelf lives, they just had to avoid repeating the same thing too often. They’d had tuna yesterday, so grilled ham seemed fine for today. Saejin sliced the ham with a spoon and browned it in a pan with some oil.

They still had rice left over from the batch Woobeom had made yesterday, so setting the table was quick. When the dishes were ready, Woobeom walked over and sat down. The painkiller in the cold medicine had taken the edge off, but his mobility was still limited. His injured arm had to rest on his thigh the whole time he ate.