“You motherfucking piece of shit!”
Thud! Thud-thud!
Climbing on top of the man sprawled on the floor, Park Deokcheol rained punches down on him.
“Agh! Ahh! Ugh!”
Instinctively, the man covered his head with both arms, but with his face still taking blow after blow, all he could do was scream and groan.
“Ah, fuck...!”
The employee who had guided Park Deokcheol there realized things had gone very, very wrong and rushed in like the wind to pull him off.
“Stop! Calm down!”
“Get off me! I’m gonna kill this bastard!”
Thud! Bam-bam-bam!
But Park Deokcheol was tall, broad, and already worked up beyond reason. He was not easy to restrain.
Then, after freezing in shock at what had happened so suddenly, the girl finally grasped the situation a beat late and hurried forward.
“O-oppa...? Ducky oppa!? Park Deokcheoool!”
The moment she shouted his name, Park Deokcheol’s fists stopped as if by magic.
His shoulders heaving with rough breaths, he slowly turned his head.
“Oppaa, Ducky oppaa. Stop. But why are you here? Hic—why are you really here? Hng... huuuh...”
“Ch-Cherry. Yujeong....”
Only then did Park Deokcheol finally seem to come back to himself. At a complete loss, he got up and took hold of her small shoulders.
“Haa....”
The employee, having finally managed to pull him away, stood up with a sigh and lowered his gaze.
“Ah, seriously. This is so fucked.”
At the sight of the man curled up on the floor, twitching like a bug, the employee let out another sigh and switched on his radio.
“Team Leader. I think you need to come over here. No, it’s not that. Whew, anyway, something happened. It’s, uh....”
***
“What the hell happened here, seriously....”
“.......”
After hearing that Park Deokcheol had caused an incident, Junho hurried over with Kang Baekho without saying a word.
Inside, Junho was boiling.
This idiot. I told him not to cause trouble.
If he had just stayed put and kept his head down, Junho might even have been able to bring that girl Cherry—or whatever her name was—back to the shelter.
Even after bringing Park Deokcheol and Park Sunhee, the siblings, along with Jo Yuna, into the group, their shelter was still short on hands.
The shelter greenhouse was almost fully automated, so one or two people could handle it just fine, but the vinyl greenhouse the three idols had built near the container housing was only semi-automated, which meant it needed at least three or four people keeping an eye on it and managing it constantly.
And that wasn’t all. No matter how automated the shelter facilities were, the AI could only monitor things through sensors and cameras. Actual maintenance still required manpower.
And most of that work fell to Park Sunhee, Jo Yuna, and Kim Hayoon.
But Kim Hayoon, hardworking as she was, was still just a kid. More importantly, she was essentially in charge of teaching and looking after her younger brother Kim Junseo and Choi Jeongwoo’s daughter Choi Jiwoo.
And Jo Yuna was already incredibly busy as it was, making and repairing clothes, tending the greenhouse, and helping Choi Haneul in the kitchen whenever she had a spare moment.
As for Park Sunhee—whose brother Park Deokcheol had effectively changed careers and thereby turned her into the shelter’s official beast of burden—there was no need to say anything at all.
Baek Suho, Kim Hayoon, and Jo Yuna rotated in to help her, but Park Sunhee was capable enough to do almost every kind of labor above average. Which meant she had to keep moving from the moment she woke up until the moment she fell asleep.
That was the reality.
Which was why Junho felt acutely that the shelter needed more labor.
And if possible, he wanted those candidates to be people the shelter members already knew and could trust.
Of course, the Gahyeon-ri residents were excluded for security reasons, which was why Cherry—Park Deokcheol’s crush, whom even Park Sunhee and Jo Yuna praised to the skies—and the other members of her girl group Blossom were at the top of his list.
That was assuming they wanted to come, of course.
“He didn’t look like the type, but I guess he’s got a temper?”
“...I’m not sure either.”
But unlike what he said aloud, Junho found it a little strange.
He hadn’t known Park Deokcheol for that long, but over the past six months, the man he had seen—slightly oblivious at times, yes—was not someone who acted emotionally at the drop of a hat.
If he had been, Junho would never have brought him along on this Gwangju mission in the first place.
And naturally, even on the way here, Park Deokcheol had not disappointed him a single time.
So he got here, and then immediately caused trouble?
“If Deokcheol’s in the wrong, I’ll take responsibility, Brother.”
“Hm? Hey, why are you going that far already? And listen.”
Glancing at the employees following behind them, Kang Baekho sidled closer to Junho and lowered his voice.
“I think there’s a ninety percent chance the guys Deokcheol beat the hell out of are the ones at fault. So, Juno, Juno—do your big brother one favor.”
“Yes?”
“It’s about this guy called LD....”
As they walked toward the place where the entertainers lived, Junho listened while Kang Baekho filled him in.
“...What do you think? Can you do that for me?”
“I don’t mind. But are you really sure you’re okay with it?”
“I am. If anything, because it’s you, you’re perfect for it. At the end of the day, I’m still the representative here, right? And I’ll keep being the representative.”
“...I understand what you mean.”
Truly, he thought, that was Kang Baekho for you.
Once again, Junho found himself understanding exactly why this man had been able to become the leader of such a large survivor group—one that would go on to lead thousands.
***
Junho arrived at the scene with Kang Baekho.
Several people had gathered outside the door, murmuring among themselves.
“What happened?”
“I heard someone beat up Senior LD and Senior Kelvin.”
“Seriously? Why?”
“No idea.”
“But isn’t this the room where Blossom and Mimmy’s Garden are staying? Why here... Ah, Representative Kang.”
“R-Representative, you’re here.”
The people lingering outside the door all shuffled hurriedly back when they saw Kang Baekho.
All of them ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) were young men and women in their twenties and thirties, and even in a world like this—where no one could properly dress themselves up anymore—they all still had that unmistakable entertainer look.
“Everyone eat alright?”
“Yes. Did you, Representative?”
“Not yet. Haven’t had the time, no time at all. Alright, alright, move aside a little, please.”
As the mostly singer-idols stepped back, Kang Baekho opened the door and went in, with Junho following behind him.
But the dormitory door did not close again.
The KW Cops employees simply blocked the doorway, which meant the entertainers gathered outside could clearly see and hear everything happening inside.
“You little fucker. Even if the world turned into this, do you still have no respect for your seniors? Huh? You just beat somebody out of nowhere like this? Aren’t you basically a thug bastard?”
“...I’m sorry.”
“And that’s it? ‘I’m sorry’? You little runt. Where does some failed nobody idol punk get off throwing punches at a senior you should be looking up to? You little— Ah! R-Representative, you’re here.”
LD, who had been tapping Park Deokcheol on the cheek while the latter stood there with his head bowed, instantly snatched his hand back the moment he saw Kang Baekho.
“Yes. I’m here. But Mr. LD—what exactly is going on here?”
At Kang Baekho’s question, LD put on a face overflowing with indignation and wounded innocence.
“Representative, sir, it’s like this. That rude washed-up idol bastard suddenly charged Kelvin and beat him into this sta—”
“No. Not that.”
“......?”
“I asked you, Mr. LD. What is this situation? Why are you here?”
“...Excuse me?”
“I never gave permission. Did you get permission from Youngmi, maybe?”
“Ah, no, well, Representative, you see—”
“Did you or didn’t you? Just answer that.”
“.......”
When LD’s gaze slid away, Kang Baekho turned and addressed Park Deokcheol, Cherry—Ahn Yujeong—clinging tightly to his side, and the other girl group members.
“Someone explain what happened today from beginning to end. No personal feelings. Just the facts.”
“Ah....”
The girls, who looked to be anywhere from their late teens to early twenties, exchanged uneasy glances before one of them stepped forward. Her face still showed traces of tears.
“We came back after the afternoon work, washed up, and were resting. And then Senior LD suddenly....”
The girl who started speaking in a timid, shriveled voice was Lee Chaerin, one of the members of Blossom.
She was Blossom’s visual member. Her face still looked young enough to be mistaken for a high schooler, but her body definitely did not, which made her the most popular.
“...Even though I said I didn’t want to, sniff, Senior Kelvin kept trying to drag me into his room by force. Hic... so Yujeong tried to stop him. And then Senior Kelvin was about to hit Yujeong. That’s when Ducky oppa came in and helped us.”
“Hey! ‘Helped us’? Fuck, is that what you call helping? Beating somebody half to death is just ‘helping’? That washed-up nobody idol bastard earlier—”
Worked up, LD jabbed a finger toward Park Deokcheol’s face.
Tap.
“......!?”
But suddenly, his finger was caught by someone’s hand.
“W-what, what the hell? You—”
Startled, LD whipped his head around.
Then his eyes widened.
The face was ordinary enough, but the man holding his finger—at least twice his size, unlike his own anchovy-thin frame—was looking down at him with a flat, detached gaze.
“Me?”
Holding LD’s finger lightly between thumb and forefinger, Junho turned his head toward Park Deokcheol.
The younger man, standing there cowed with a face dark enough to match a funeral, flinched at Junho’s indifferent look and then lowered his head again.
The skin around his eyes was swollen, and there was dried blood at the corner of his mouth.
Someone had obviously hit him.
And it was obvious who.
Junho turned his gaze back to LD and tightened his grip with thumb and forefinger.
“I’m Deokcheol’s older brother.”
“......!”
Park Deokcheol jerked his head up.
LD’s mouth fell open.
The finger caught in Junho’s grip was bending, little by little.
“Ah! Aaaah...! Let go, let go of this! Ugh! Aaaah!”
He tried yanking it free with his other hand too, but it was useless.
Crack.
“Aaaagh!”
The moment the sickening pop and jolt ran through his body, LD screamed.
But after snapping LD’s finger, Junho didn’t so much as blink. He simply grabbed the man by the collar.
“Gah... urk!”
“Hey. Are you a fucking idiot?”
“Ugh...?”
“You’ve been living here easy, eating, sleeping, and taking a piss thanks to Brother Baekho. So does the world still look like the old one to you?”
“......!”
Not only LD, whose collar was clenched in Junho’s fist, but the girl group members inside the dormitory—and all the entertainers outside the door listening in—flinched.
“You know what my younger brother Park Deokcheol was out doing today? He was fighting gangsters who were targeting this resort where pieces of shit like you get to loaf around in comfort. He personally put down three or four of them. And now what? Seniority in the music industry?”
“Uuh...”
Even before the regression, there had often been people like this.
Airheaded morons who either failed to realize—or refused to accept—that the world they knew was gone, completely changed.
Idiots who still couldn’t tell shit from soybean paste and kept trying to live like it was before.
And the thing those people always had in common was that they made life harder for everyone around them.
“Ugh...”
Junho’s mockery made LD’s body tremble even through the pain of his broken finger.
His face was thoroughly ordinary, yet somehow that only made the smile on it—one so empty it seemed almost devoid of emotion—more terrifying.
Without realizing it, LD lost control of his lower body and pissed himself.
“So what if you’re a senior singer? What? Want to crawl outside and ask the zombies waiting to eat you to go easy on you because you’re a celebrity? Because you’re a senior in the industry? You fucking moron.”
“Khh!”
Still gripping LD by the collar and holding him upright, Junho went on in a voice dripping murderous intent.
“What, a worthless idiot like you loafing around in here like a leech, trying to force yourself on girls too weak to fight back—that’s none of my business. But laying a hand on my younger brother? That is my business. Got it?”
Smack!
Junho raised his hand and slapped LD square across the face hard enough to send it sideways.
After taking that hit to the face, the bastard couldn’t even scream. His body just shook once before going limp.
“.......”
Shaking his hand once to fling off the blood and bits of tooth stuck to it, Junho tossed LD aside like garbage and turned around.
