“Three years? Five years? If that was all we were trying to last, there’d be no reason to go all-in on coin with everything we have. We’d be fine with the money we already have. But our goal is to build a place we can live for at least twenty to thirty years—maybe our whole lives. If that’s the goal, we have to eliminate as many variables as we can. That’s why we have to run experiments and practice here.”
“Yeah. I get it. I really do.”
“Good. Then let’s do everything we can while we’re in this house.”
“Okay!”
His brother raised a hand and shouted like a kid, and Junho snorted.
Then, like something suddenly occurred to him, Junhyeok spoke up.
“But, bro. So with this house—are we only living here for the contract period? The basement, everything... if we’re going to practice and run experiments here, we’re going to fix up a lot of stuff, right? Wouldn’t it be a waste to just leave it behind?”
“You think I’m going to leave it behind? I’ve already thought that th—”
His phone buzzed in his pocket. Junho pulled it out.
“Hello? Yes. You’ll be here soon? Got it. I’ll wait out front.”
“Who was that?”
“Someone who’s going to help with our experiments.”
“Huh?”
“Come on. Put these in the fridge on top.”
Junho went out to meet the driver of a small truck standing by the gate.
“You’re from Sky Security, right?”
“Yes, yes. Ah—this is the house?”
“Yeah. Where’s easiest for you to park? In the yard?”
“That’s probably best.”
When Junho swung the gate wide, the truck rolled into the yard.
Junhyeok had come out too, and he asked Junho quietly, “Where’s this guy from?”
“CCTV installation company.”
“...Huh?”
Junhyeok tilted his head.
Calling a professional company just to install CCTV at a house sounded excessive.
But less than ten minutes later, he understood why.
“Sir, I’ve been doing this job for over ten years. This is the first time I’ve ever installed this product in a regular house. It’s... kind of hard to say this to a customer, but are you sure this is the right camera?”
“Yes. It wasn’t eligible for same-day delivery, and it didn’t seem like something I could install alone.”
The installer made a face like he couldn’t believe it.
“Well, of course not. Just the camera alone costs over seven hundred.”
“What? One CCTV camera costs seven hundred—?!”
Junhyeok’s eyes went wide. The installer turned to look at him.
“It’s expensive, right? But this isn’t a normal home-security camera. It’s a high-performance forward surveillance camera. Thirty-times optical zoom, digital zoom, night IR out to four hundred meters. Full 360-degree surveillance, laser focus... and it comes with a bunch of additional components too—fiber optic modules, vibration absorption plates, things like that. So the installation has to be done carefully.”
“I... don’t really understand what you just said, but I get that it’s insane.”
Junhyeok could only gape.
Even just the size of the box and the photo printed on the outside made the thing look intimidating.
Ten of these in our shelter.
“...!”
At Junho’s whisper, Junhyeok’s eyes went even wider.
“Anyway, just do it properly. Handle the cost the way you told me yesterday. Today you’re just confirming placement, right?”
“Yes. That’s probably all we can do today. And the CCTV cameras you bought separately—ah, are those them?”
The installer looked over the boxes Junho had carried up from the basement.
They were the small, round CCTV cameras you saw everywhere.
Compared to the PTZ camera—its box was nearly the size of a desktop °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° tower or a microwave—these looked almost cute.
“Mm. These are decent. To be honest, normally we wouldn’t just install cameras the customer bought separately. There’s almost no margin in that. But since the PTZ camera you purchased is so expensive, I’ll do this for labor only.”
“Thank you. This way.”
Junho walked him around the yard and along the walls, pointing out the spots he’d already picked out.
The installer offered his own opinions, and Junho decided to follow them.
A veteran with over ten years in the field would know better than he did.
“Understood. Then when are you planning to install the solar panels?”
“As early as this Friday. At the latest, next week.”
“Then today we’ll do just the wiring first. After the solar installation is finished, we can do the main work right away. Does that work?”
“Let’s do that.”
Maybe because Junho was a customer giving him nearly eight million won in revenue between the expensive PTZ camera and the on-site labor fees, the installer finished the wiring meticulously.
Junhyeok watched the PTZ camera box get loaded back into the truck, smacking his lips.
“Man, that thing’s got insane presence. It’ll be even crazier in person, right?”
“Who knows. Anyway, I picked it because it seemed like the best fit for our shelter. It’s originally meant for military bases and high-security facilities. Supposedly it works fine in Alaska and the desert.”
“That’s sick. But even if it makes sense for the shelter, do we really need something like that here?”
Junho answered as he walked back inside.
“I was about to say this in the basement. I’m not planning to use this house only for rehearsal and experiments.”
“Huh? Then what?”
“Just in case... we ever end up needing to come back near here, I’m keeping it as a backup.”
“Seriously? But the wall’s low, and it feels like it’d be easy for people to get in...”
“That’s why I chose a house with a basement. We keep food and anything important in the basement, and we just have to secure the basement entrance properly. And starting about six months before we move into the shelter, we make the house look like an abandoned place nobody lives in.”
That matched what he’d learned from experience.
Not just survivors—raiders too usually didn’t bother with houses that clearly looked like nobody had lived there since before the apocalypse.
Looting food was what mattered, and a long-abandoned house obviously wouldn’t have anything edible.
“And there aren’t many people around here to begin with, right? It’s weird a house is even out here. Hardly anyone’s going to come this far.”
“Yeah, true. Even yesterday, coming here, I was like—there are houses people live in out here?”
“Yeah. I didn’t come to this neighborhood after things went to hell, but I’m pretty sure there wouldn’t have been many people or zombies here. Come on. Let’s go in. We’ve got to finish organizing.”
“Yeah.”
The brothers finished unpacking completely around five.
They decided to handle dinner at a restaurant not too far from the house.
He didn’t know why there was a boiled poultry place out in the middle of nowhere, but either way, even in the middle of the pandemic, it was already past five—and there wasn’t a single car in the lot. It probably wasn’t doing well.
“Welcome!”
A middle-aged woman who’d been watching TV from her seat greeted them warmly and led them to a table.
“Wow, how’d you young guys end up all the way out here? You found us online?”
“Uh, we—”
Junho cut Junhyeok off and stepped in.
“Yes. We saw you online. We heard it’s good. One whole boiled duck, and an extra bowl of rice.”
“Okay, okay—just wait a bit. I’ll make it nice and tasty.”
Once the woman bustled into the kitchen, Junhyeok lowered his voice.
“Why’d you say that? They’re barely getting customers. If we said we just moved in nearby, they’d probably give us better service.”
“We’re scouting.”
“...What?”
Junhyeok looked thrown off.
“We said we have to do apocalypse rehearsal. There’s no upside to letting people know we live in that house.”
“Ah... right.”
While Junhyeok set down his utensils, Junho poured water and continued.
“On the way in, I saw this isn’t part of a residential block—it’s just a standalone restaurant. They’re only open until nine, so we probably don’t need to be that paranoid.”
“Damn. You thought about that too?”
“Of course. Anyway, between the location and COVID, it doesn’t look like business is good. They might even shut down next year. Honestly, that’s best-case.”
“Jesus...”
It was cold as hell—but Junhyeok accepted it quickly.
If they were preparing for an apocalypse where seventy to eighty percent of people would die or turn into zombies, worrying about a restaurant they’d found today was a luxury.
“Anyway, what do we do next, bro? Like—specifically. What am I supposed to do?”
“For now, you focus on what I said yesterday: the drone certification and the hunting license. It’s not that hard. You can get them both by next spring.”
Junho held out his phone, and Junhyeok checked the screen and nodded.
“Hunting license is in April. Then I apply for the gun possession permit after that.”
“Yeah. And the drone certificate is Class 3, so it won’t be hard. You can get it anytime. They just make you log flight hours through a training center. Simple. I already applied.”
“Okay. But I should practice at home too, right?”
“Yeah. That’s why we moved here. You can fly it comfortably.”
There were no tall buildings around at all—just a junkyard and a few two-story homes.
It was a perfect environment for drone flight practice.
“So I just keep training and prep for the tests?”
“Yeah, for now. But that doesn’t mean—”
A bowl of rice and side dishes arrived, so their conversation paused. After the woman went back into the kitchen, Junho continued.
“You don’t have to live like a robot. See Hyunwoo. See your friends. Keep doing that.”
“Uh... okay, but why? Didn’t you say we have a little over two years? Shouldn’t we be grinding?”
Junho took a sip of water, set the cup down, and stared at his brother.
There was something strange in his eyes—something that made Junhyeok look even more confused.
Then Junho spoke.
“Being able to live a normal life like this... we only have two years left.”
“...!”
“So enjoy it while you can. Just don’t go completely off the rails. Do what you need to do, too. You get what I mean?”
“...Yeah.”
Junhyeok lowered his head.
Having a deadline.
He felt like he understood, at least a little, what that meant.
A little later, the boiled duck arrived, and the brothers stopped talking and focused on eating.
And just like that, one more peaceful day before the apocalypse passed.
***
From the day after the move through the weekend, time flew.
Once Junho got the owner’s consent form faxed over and submitted the application, the rest of the solar process and installation schedule moved at lightning speed through the contractor the city office connected him with.
It went so smoothly it almost felt unreal—but apparently residential solar was a program the city was aggressively pushing as part of an eco-friendly energy initiative.
Junho applied for five 600-watt panels—three kilowatts total.
And he spent extra money to choose a hybrid inverter and a 10-kilowatt ESS battery.
That way, he wouldn’t be relying on solar alone—he could connect a diesel generator for emergencies.
It was the basic power system he had in mind for the shelter, and he wanted hands-on experience with it early.
In the middle of all that, Junho finally got his full medical exam.
Tense as hell, he went through everything: body measurements, vision test, hearing test, blood pressure, EKG, chest X-ray, internal medicine consult, blood draw, endoscopy, brain CT—nothing skipped.
Because he’d paid a lot and insisted he wanted the results fast, they came back a few days later.
Junho returned to the hospital even more nervous than he’d been the day of the exam.
And the result was—thankfully—nothing abnormal.
Most importantly, his brain’s limbic system was normal.
And if you got infected with a virus, your immune system would go haywire and your bloodwork would change—so the fact that his blood test came back normal was the biggest relief of all.
Instead, something else came out—something surprising in a different way.
“Are you sure you’re a normal office worker?”
Even the doctor looked stunned.
Junho’s basal metabolic rate was an absurd 2,800 calories. His blood vessels looked like someone in their early twenties. His lung capacity was at a competitive swimmer’s level.
His muscle mass also didn’t match “a guy who just started jogging,” and his fatigue markers were extremely low.
The doctor seriously asked if he’d been an athlete.
Junho gave vague answers to the doctor’s stream of amazed questions and left the hospital. His head felt a little blank, but at least he could be sure of one thing.
He wasn’t going to turn into a zombie.
“Hah... thank God...”
Seriously.
Thank God.
