Rush hour. A subway car that was only about half full.
"..."
Before his sweat could even cool, Junho was already breaking out in cold sweat again. Since leaving the government-designated temporary shelter, this was his first time being packed in with so many living people.
Everything felt unfamiliar and uncomfortable. His chest thudded hard. He kept darting his eyes around, clenching and unclenching his fists over and over.
The passengers, all wearing masks, did not really pay attention to him. Normal people who got up normally, got ready for work normally, and went to their normal jobs.
But Junho had seen exactly how normal people changed. He had watched those normal people turn into demon-faced murderers in an instant over a single cup of instant rice or one can of food.
A tiny movement, one cough, and he flinched without meaning to. In the end, he could not take it and had to jump off at a middle station.
"Haah... haah..."
He leaned against the end of the stairs, catching his breath and wiping the cold sweat off his forehead. Post-traumatic stress disorder. PTSD, probably.
Honestly, it had started building the moment he left the apartment and headed to the station. People walking with masks on, strangers brushing past him from the opposite direction. Every one of them had felt like a threat.
"Fuck..."
Junho let out a self-mocking laugh and covered his face with one hand. He had survived for over two years among monsters wearing human skin, and raiders even worse than monsters. If his head was still fine after that, that would be the weird part.
"Tch."
But he could not fall apart. A few years from now, the end would come. So his body and his mind... he had to prepare them, thoroughly, for that moment.
"Hoo."
Breathing deep and forcing himself steady, Junho called a taxi. He could not rush anything. Slow, but certain. He would get it done within the time he had left.
***
Quitting his job went smoother than he expected. After the COVID pandemic, the company was not doing great, and rumors of restructuring were already floating around. When Junho brought up resigning voluntarily, the company looked a little regretful, but they did not try hard to stop him.
"All right, Junho. Leave early today, and starting tomorrow, switch to remote. We will make your resignation date the end of next month."
Instead of a handshake, Junho lightly bumped fists with his supervising manager. With the pandemic, about half the staff was still working from home, so there were not many people around. At least compared to the subway, he did not feel tense. They were people he already knew, too.
In any case, the atmosphere was that the company was cutting him some slack. His performance and work attitude were good, and he had been pretty diligent.
"Yes. Thank you for everything. I will email you the handover documents, sir."
"Good. You worked hard, Junho."
After saying goodbye to his boss and a few coworkers, Junho quickly packed his personal items, hugged the box to his chest, and left the office.
He took a taxi home, tossed the box aside, then immediately called his main bank and a second-tier finance capital company to ask [N O V E L I G H T] about personal credit loans.
Maybe because his credit score was high and he was a third-year assistant manager at a decent ad agency, his main bank told him he could get up to 30 million won. He went straight into the app and started the loan process.
He also applied for additional loans with several capital companies. After bouncing between his phone and his PC for about thirty minutes, he succeeded in getting a total of 80 million won in credit loans.
When the loan work was done, he took photos of the apartment from every angle, opened a real estate app, and listed the place as a quick sale. He set the price at 350 million won, 30 million below market.
If he missed the Selene coin buying window, he would lose far more than that, so it did not feel like a waste at all.
"Han Pro said he sold when it hit 10,000, and then it blasted past 100,000 not even a few months later."
Right now, Selene coin was 7,100 won. It had already gone up a little more than 100 won since he bought it early this morning.
If Han Youngjung s story, the one he had heard until it bored a hole through his skull, was right, it would crawl up to 10,000 over the next month or two, then surge like a lunatic over the next three or four months and hit 100,000.
"And then it swings around and collapses nice and clean in the summer..."
If he shoved in the loan money and the money from selling the apartment, he could probably make close to 20 billion won by March or April, and at the latest, by June.
"But that still is not enough."
Han Youngjung had not just daydreamed, and neither had Junho. One fantasy stacked on another until it spread into a pretty realistic, concrete plan, like some normal person grinning to himself while planning what he would do after winning first prize in the lottery.
To Junho, the shelter fantasy that started with the dead Han Youngjung was a free painkiller that helped him endure reality. And if he wanted that painkiller to keep working, the fantasy had to become more and more precise.
So the conclusion was simple.
"The more the better, but I need at least 20 billion."
Which meant Selene coin alone was cutting it close. So Junho thought about ways to get more capital, and then, suddenly, something clicked.
"Ah. Right. That."
A name even Junho, who did not care much about coins or stocks, had heard.
NVIDIA.
Junho immediately searched the current price.
Right around thirty dollars.
"This is supposed to go over 100,000 won in early 2024, right?"
He remembered it going almost up to 200,000 won after that, but he had to sell before spring 2024. If he waited until June or July, it would be too late.
Anyway, he knew about it because everyone, coworkers and internet communities alike, would not shut up about NVIDIA. If he cashed out in February or March 2024, even rough math said three times the return, at least.
So then.
"Sell the coin and park about 3 billion in NVIDIA. They were saying it went over 100,000 won before spring, so I just sell then."
After taxes and fees, that would add maybe 7 to 8 billion won, and possibly as much as 10 billion, before spring 2024.
"That money can go toward food and equipment, stuff I can secure later."
Food, especially, did not need to be secured early. The later you bought it, the longer the expiration dates. Of course, Junho did not give a shit about squeezing out a few extra months or years.
In his shelter, he planned to stock food that could last decades.
"Ah."
Right then, Junho paused. Maybe because he had been thinking about food, a vicious hunger hit him out of nowhere. Come to think of it, since he opened his eyes last night, he had not eaten a thing. He had only drank water.
Between the confusion, the tension, and making plans for everything he had to do, he probably had not even noticed how hungry he was.
Junho quickly opened a delivery app.
"Haah..."
There were a hundred things he wanted to eat. But the decision took no time.
Why not just eat everything he wanted?
He picked a Korean place and ordered three dishes: pork kimchi stew, japchae, and spicy stir-fried pork.
He had time to do other work before the food arrived, but once the hunger hit, all he could think about was food. He could not bring himself to focus on anything else.
As he swallowed again and again, just waiting, three different capital companies deposited the loan money. Junho did not hesitate. He poured all of it straight into buying more coin.
Ding dong.
The instant the doorbell rang, he sprinted to the door and took the food. He set the hot containers on the table and peeled back the plastic lids. The red broth of the kimchi stew showed itself, steam billowing up.
Without meaning to, Junho closed his eyes and took in the smell.
"Hmm."
The scent of well-fermented kimchi and the heavy, greasy richness from pork belly punched into his nose. Modern civilization, the thing he had forgotten and yet missed so badly it hurt, was in delivery food too.
Plop.
He sank the spoon he had prepared deep into the stew and pulled up thick chunks of pork and tofu. He took a big bite, and sour, spicy heat spread through his mouth.
In an instant, he shoveled down three spoonfuls of rice and stew, then attacked the japchae and the spicy pork like a starving ghost. Chopsticks and spoon never stopped moving. In under ten minutes, he had burned through two bowls of rice and eaten half the stew, half the japchae, half the pork.
After finishing a real, proper meal in a frenzy, Junho leaned his waist back against the chair.
Only then did the heat in his stomach, still too hot from eating too fast, finally settle.
"Haah... good."
He let out a long breath and sat there for a while, wrapped in air soaked with the smell of food.
A pleasant fullness.
And then, behind that fullness, an uneasy sense of wrongness slowly bloomed.
Boiling rotten grain into porridge, cutting open cans with no pull-tab that were five years past expiration using nippers, chewing raw potatoes after carving away the rotten parts... it all felt like something from a different lifetime.
His body felt satisfied and full, but his mind was starving. He felt relieved, and yet anxious. This warmth he was sitting in right now felt bizarrely unfamiliar.
In the end, the sharp, sour punch of the kimchi stew, the sweet-spicy fire of the stir-fried pork, the slick, nutty texture of the japchae all faded away like an afterimage that did not feel real.
"Hoo."
Junho pushed himself up.
If he wanted to keep this feeling, he had to build the shelter exactly as planned. And he had to make sure his body and his mind were in perfect condition for when the time came.
"Let s start right now."
After brushing his teeth quickly, he changed into comfortable workout clothes and left the apartment.
***
Since it was still morning before lunchtime, the neighborhood was quiet, with not many people around. The same tension he felt during the commute was a lot less.
Junho went to a nearby park that was also a small playground. It was calm overall, with five or six older neighborhood residents in hiking clothes chatting lazily or doing light exercise.
First, Junho walked slowly along the park path.
174 centimeters, 74 kilograms. A height and weight that was pure average for a man his age.
It was better than the skin-and-bones body he had in year three of the apocalypse, but he still had to turn this painfully ordinary office-worker body into a fighter s body.
Becoming some gym freak with too much muscle was not good. His muscles needed to be moderate, but his stamina and endurance had to be strong.
In other words, the ideal was a combat sports body. A boxer. An MMA fighter.
Since he needed to start with aerobic work like light running, he walked one lap around the park, then started jogging.
The loop looked like a little over two hundred meters.
"For a while, I ll do ten laps. Just two kilometers."
Too much is as bad as too little. He could not overdo it from the start. Turning a normal office worker s body into a fighter s body was something he had to do for a long time, patiently, with persistence.
So he ran in silence along the quiet park path.
And then, a few minutes later...
"Five laps already, so what is this?"
Jogging lightly, Junho frowned to himself.
"Was my stamina this good back then?"
He had probably run about a kilometer, but he was not short of breath at all. Strangely, his body felt so light it was like he had just been strolling slowly for a bit.
