“Hey, hey. This is why I don’t tell just anybody. You don’t buy it either, do you, Junho? Right now you’re probably thinking, Did this asshole lose his mind after drinking expensive liquor, or is he messing with me?”
Kang Baekho clicked his tongue, dropping the serious look.
“It’s not like that...”
He’d been hit pretty close to the mark, but Junho denied it anyway.
Kang Baekho shrugged as if he knew exactly what Junho was thinking.
“Think whatever you want. But it’s true. I got a feeling. This guy’s got something. At the very least, I need to make sure we know each other.”
“......”
“My instincts are really good, you know? And they’ve never been wrong. You still don’t look convinced, so want me to give you better proof?”
Without giving Junho a chance to answer, Kang Baekho poured another drink and went on.
“I went to almost all of our gym guys’ debut matches whenever I could. And weirdly enough, right before the first round started, I’d get a feeling. Whether they were gonna win or lose. So I’d tell Yuchan. And every single time, I was right. Sounds like bullshit, doesn’t it? Ask Yuchan tomorrow. He’s the witness.”
“Yes.”
“You’re actually gonna ask him. Hah! But it’s true, so go ahead. And this might sound like bragging, but don’t I seem pretty solid to you too? For a third-generation chaebol, I’ve got decent manners, I seem pretty capable, I take care of myself, I seem good with people. Ah, maybe that last part’s hard to tell since we only met today?”
“No. I got a similar impression.”
“Right? I’m not joking, either. If I’d wanted to, I couldn’t have swallowed the whole group, but I definitely could’ve torn off a bigger piece. You know why I quietly took Food and Resort and stepped back? I could’ve taken the hotel easily if I’d just pushed out my older sister. She was the easy one.”
Kang Baekho’s face hardened in an instant as he continued.
“I had a really bad feeling. Just a sudden certainty that if I took it, it would blow up in my face. A hundred percent. So I let go. That was a little over two years ago. And what happened after that?”
After thinking for a second, Junho answered.
“The COVID pandemic...”
Bang!
Kang Baekho slammed the table and raised his voice.
“That’s exactly it! Look at you, answering right away. If I’d pushed my sister out and taken the hotel back then? I’d be ruined right now. The resort’s barely on life support as it is... Jesus. Still gives me chills thinking about it.”
“Then your older sister is...?”
“What do you think? She and her husband are over at my parents’ house every other day, dropping to their knees in front of my father and sobbing their eyes out. But it doesn’t matter. She’s already out. Before long, the hotel’s either going to my oldest brother or to me. Ah, pretend you didn’t hear that. Family business. Anyway.”
Kang Baekho’s face turned serious again as he looked straight at Junho.
“But then, today of all days! For the first time in a long while, my instincts started talking again. I have to get to know that guy no matter what. It’d be good to befriend him first. It’d be even better to see him often... that’s what they said. Okay?”
Faced with Kang Baekho’s attitude of total certainty, Junho gave a quiet nod.
In the apocalypse, that Kang Baekho from Gwangju had definitely not been an ordinary man in more ways than one.
And Junho still didn’t know how much of what he had shown today was completely genuine.
But one thing was clear.
‘His instincts are the real deal.’
Getting close to a regressor who was the only person preparing for the coming apocalypse was never going to be a losing deal.
***
“Man, I’m getting kinda buzzed. Hey, Junho, today was seriously fun.”
“I had a great time too, brother.”
Despite saying he’d switch to casual speech next time they met, Kang Baekho had naturally started speaking more casually once they were halfway through the whiskey.
Junho liked him too, so he willingly called him brother, and they had already exchanged numbers.
“All right, get home safe. But seriously, you sure you don’t want a ride?”
“Yes, brother. I’m going to walk it off a little. You head out first.”
“All right, then. Make sure you call me. Doesn’t have to be often, but let me at least see your face once in a while. I’ll call too, so don’t ignore me.”
“Yes, yes. Go on in.”
“Okay. I’m off.”
With one loose wave of his hand, Kang Baekho climbed into the back seat of a midsize SUV marked with a three-pointed star.
Yoon Seolhee was halfway into the front passenger seat when her eyes met Junho’s. She gave him a light nod, and Junho dipped his head slightly in return.
‘Yoon Seolhee. Park Cheolwoo. That’s probably how he built his power up that far.’
For a third-generation chaebol, those two were probably nowhere near the whole picture.
With people around him who had special forces backgrounds and real field experience, it made sense that he had survived that chaos and built a force numbering in the thousands.
Of course, there was no guarantee that the two attendant-bodyguards Junho had seen today were still by Kang Baekho’s side by the time of the timeline he had regressed from.
But for some reason, Junho had a strong feeling they had survived until then and continued helping him.
Vroom.
As the vehicle carrying Kang Baekho drove away, Junho headed into a public restroom in a nearby building.
A little later, when he came back out, a weighted belt was strapped tightly beneath his tracksuit—around his arms, legs, and stomach.
“Let’s jog home nice and easy.”
The total weight on his body was eighteen kilograms. There was nothing light about it.
But Junho had already been running with that weighted belt for over two weeks.
His younger brother Junhyeok had been dumbfounded and asked why the hell he was adding weight when running sixteen kilometers round trip nearly every day was already excessive enough.
Junho had brushed it off, saying he’d explain later, but there was a clear reason for it.
“Once you’ve got a plate carrier, ballistic panels, gear setup, and a rifle, twenty kilos is the bare minimum.”
And if he added an operational backpack on top of that, there was another five to ten kilograms.
If he wanted to move freely while carrying gear that heavy, he had to get used to the weight starting now.
Tap tap tap tap—
Since he had drunk a little more than usual, Junho deliberately ran a bit slower than normal through the night streets.
Normally, exercising after drinking was a terrible idea.
But Junho was sure it wouldn’t affect him much.
Because he didn’t really feel drunk at all, and neither his vision nor his physical condition felt much different from usual.
“Hoo... ha... hoo... ha...”
So after downing a bottle of soju and half a bottle of whiskey, and with an eighteen-kilogram weighted belt strapped to his body, Junho still tore through the night streets of Bucheon with light, springy steps.
***
“Because of my instincts~ because of my instincts~ everything’s because of my instincts~”
Sitting in the back seat and humming an old liver-tonic commercial jingle out of habit, Kang Baekho was interrupted by Park Cheolwoo from behind the wheel.
“Sounds like you really took a liking to Mr. Lee Junho, sir.”
“Junho? Ah, yeah, I like him. At first it was just that my instincts were going off so hard I figured I should at least talk to him a bit.”
Sucking down a five-pack yogurt drink through a straw, Kang Baekho continued.
“The kid’s solid. Earlier, he actually asked me why I’d want to drink alone with an unemployed guy like him. Said he really couldn’t figure it out no matter how he thought about it. Man, some people get all giddy just because I buy them a drink, but Junho’s different. He’s definitely got substance.”
“He’s unusual, but he seems like a good kid. Even so, it’s not easy for someone his age to carry himself like that.”
“Right? And on top of that, the kid didn’t waste a single word. I seriously almost tried to recruit him into the company. But he turned me down. ‘I’m truly grateful for the offer, but there’s something I absolutely have to do, brother. Thank you so much for thinking well of me.’ Damn! Cool, cool.”
Seeing Kang Baekho mimic Junho’s speech, Park Cheolwoo glanced at him in the rearview mirror, smiled faintly, and agreed.
“He definitely didn’t seem ordinary. Do you know what the first thing he did was when he entered that bar earlier?”
“Hm? What’d he do?”
“He checked the hallway, the restroom, and the emergency exit. That’s why I thought he was one of us. But then he says he was just regular Army reconnaissance... that was strange.”
“Ohh. Maybe he studies that stuff separately? Or maybe he’s just really interested in that kind of thing? Anyway, I like Junho. I do, I do.”
After sucking down the last of the yogurt drink, Kang Baekho fell quiet.
When soft snoring started coming from the back seat, Park Cheolwoo glanced at him in the rearview mirror and spoke quietly.
“Seolhee, look into that guy a bit. How he was at work, what kind of reputation he had.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I think he seems like a good kid too, but you never know. And it’s been a really long time since the boss liked someone this much.”
“As far as I know, it’s the first time with a man. Understood.”
Answering firmly, Yoon Seolhee turned her gaze out the window.
The face of that young man around her age—with his solid, sturdy build and those detached, occasionally sharpened knife-like eyes—floated over the scenery of Olympic Boulevard rushing past outside.
***
Heavy snow fell, melted, then fell again.
As brutal cold dragged on day after day, time passed quickly.
As if to remind everyone that the presidential election was coming soon, politicians’ faces were on TV every single day.
Meanwhile, a new mutant virus spreading across the world became a major ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ issue.
Its infection rate was high, but the fatality rate had dropped sharply, so the number of deaths did not rise as much as expected.
People went on living their everyday lives more or less normally, buoyed by hopes that an endemic would be declared within the year.
In that time, after keeping up with his routine, Junho’s fighting skills improved so much that he could now spar evenly with the coach for three three-minute rounds.
The coach and the gym owner had started subtly encouraging Junho to go beyond just entering tournaments and consider going pro, while in the meantime his younger brother Junhyeok entered an amateur competition and won by TKO in thirty-two seconds of the first round.
He saw Kang Baekho again that day too.
The competition had been held without spectators because of pandemic restrictions, but after Junhyeok won wearing shorts stamped with the Kangho Resort logo, Kang Baekho paid out a special bonus.
After that, Kang Baekho invited the brothers to his residence for drinks, and there Junho exchanged contact information not only with him, but with Junhyeok as well.
Meanwhile, Purdy graduated from training with excellent marks, almost as if to prove Junhyeok right for calling him a genius dog.
The trainer, a former military dog-handling sergeant, even said Purdy would have been good enough to apply as a reconnaissance dog for a front-line unit.
The dog ran the sixteen-kilometer round trip with Junho almost every day, and when Junho was working out, Purdy spent time either at doggy daycare or at the training center.
As a bonus, it naturally took over the leader position of the pack there too.
The brothers also became quite skilled at flying drones.
They were not pulling off expert-level acrobatic maneuvers, of course, but they had developed more than enough skill to operate them effectively in real apocalypse conditions.
Now the only things left were the hunting license and the firearms permit, so the two of them focused on those.
And so, on a day in early March, with the cold having eased somewhat and the presidential election right around the corner—
“This is craaazy...!!!”
Junhyeok’s scream thundered through the house.
Purdy jolted upright in surprise, ears perked, while Junhyeok burst out of his room, grabbed Purdy by the front legs, and shouted in uncontrollable excitement,
“Purdy! We’re filthy rich now! We’re coin tycoons, you little punk! Eighteen billion won! Eighteen billion, you little bastard! I’ll buy you every snack you could ever want!”
Purdy had no idea what was going on, but hearing the smaller master excitedly mention snacks, he started leaping around and whipping his tail everywhere.
Selene coin had finally broken through 100,000 won.
