Even as he let out a breath of relief, Junho had to admit it.
His body wasn’t just “a little” strange. It was seriously strange.
But it was strange in a good way, so it didn’t feel like a problem. And the fact that he wasn’t going to turn into a zombie mattered more than anything.
Still, there was one unexpected “problem.”
“...My height grew.”
He’d always been 174-point-something—so he’d just rounded up and told people he was 175 centimeters.
Now he was 178.
He’d thought all his clothes suddenly felt tight for some other reason.
Turns out it was because he’d gotten taller.
Starting with his name, everything about him had been as ordinary as it got. Now, at the very least, his height had drifted past “average.”
Of course, his physical condition couldn’t be called “ordinary” either.
Junho forced himself not to dig deeper.
Regression itself was already unreal. He didn’t have the time—or the mental bandwidth—to spiral over why this was happening.
All that mattered was that he wasn’t going to turn into a zombie.
***
While he was getting the full exam and waiting on the results, the basement work was finished.
The space wasn’t that big to begin with, and he’d hired multiple workers, so it was done in two days.
The house had been built solid from the start, and the owner had taken great care of it over the years.
Junho couldn’t help thinking again that getting this place had been lucky.
The contractor said moisture wouldn’t be an issue, but “probably” didn’t exist in Junho’s world anymore. Just in case, he rented a heavy-duty air conditioner with automatic drying and strong dehumidifying functions and decided to install it in the basement.
Buying the same model outright would’ve cost over two million won with installation.
Renting it was only forty-something thousand won a month.
And once the apocalypse hit, it would basically become his anyway. Until then, they’d come out regularly to clean and maintain it.
There was no reason to buy.
After Junhyeok left for his part-time job and the basement air conditioner installation was finished, the CCTV installer came by.
It was the same guy from a few days ago. He installed the regular cameras Junho had bought ahead of time—above the gate, beside the parking area, and along the walls.
Then he installed the main unit—the high-performance PTZ camera—on the satellite antenna pole on the roof.
Junho eyeballed the height and asked, “If it’s up that high, it’ll see past the alley and all the way to the main road, right?”
“Yes. It rotates 360, so you can check basically everything around this house. And since most places around here are one-story or two-story, there won’t be anything blocking the view.”
Because the PTZ camera carried both data and power through a single cable, the installation went quickly.
About an hour after they started, four surveillance feeds appeared across two 30-inch monitors Junho had bought separately.
“Monitor one is split into four, so you can watch all four cameras at once. Monitor two is for selecting a specific camera like this. I set the PTZ as number one, so normally you’ll just leave the PTZ feed up—”
Maybe because he’d sold a high-ticket PTZ unit, the installer was in a great mood. He explained the camera’s features, the dedicated software, and even the precautions in detail before leaving.
Junho followed the instructions and played with the PTZ controls while watching the monitors.
The alley that led into the property connected to a six-lane road about 120 meters away, straight-line distance.
The PTZ camera showed not only that road but even the apartment complex across from it in crisp detail.
And when he used the zoom, he could clearly make out living rooms and master bedrooms in apartments more than 200 meters away.
He had zero interest in spying on people, so he turned the camera back toward the roadway.
“Jesus.”
He could even see the curved corner section of the six-lane road more than 600 meters away.
And that wasn’t even the end of it.
The installer had said that in night mode, even in pitch-black darkness with no lights at all, it could still identify targets more than 300 meters out.
There was a reason one CCTV camera cost over seven million won.
“If we put several of these around the shelter...”
If he divided the area efficiently and set them up in a ring around the shelter, they could maintain perfect surveillance day and night.
Right then, a truck entered the alley leading toward the house on the PTZ feed.
Sangdong Solar Tech.
Junho was impressed again—the camera made the company name and license plate clear, and he could even see the driver’s face.
He turned off the monitors and headed out of the basement immediately.
The solar crew’s truck had arrived.
“Oh—you were already outside. Hello. We’re here to install the solar system.”
Two men in work clothes got out of the truck.
“Yes, hello.”
Junho walked up naturally, greeted them, and said, “Would it be okay if I watch while you work? I’m pretty interested in solar power.”
The technician, who looked to be in his thirties, nodded.
“Sure. You can watch. If you have questions, feel free to ask.”
Maybe because they were a contractor connected through the city office, they were extremely polite.
Junho followed them around, listening and learning.
He could find information online, sure—but watching a working technician do it in real time while explaining everything made it stick in a completely different way.
There were only five panels, so the installation didn’t take long.
Per Junho’s request, they installed the 10-kilowatt lithium iron phosphate battery and the hybrid inverter in the basement.
The technician checked the basement vent, anchored the inverter firmly to a suitable interior wall, then connected the wiring step by step.
Junho filmed everything on his phone, asking questions here and there and getting answers as he went.
After finishing the installation—including the ATS box and a small low-noise household diesel generator—the technician connected the generator to the inverter’s AC input port and explained:
“This handles it automatically if your main power cuts out. It waits five seconds, starts by itself. When the grid comes back, it shuts off automatically. You don’t have to touch anything. It detects generator input, charges the system, and sends power to your house.”
When the physical installation was complete, the technician pulled out a laptop.
“I’m going into the inverter settings. Priority will be solar first, then battery, then generator. And you can set a timer so at night it runs only on battery, too.”
He clicked through the UI and finished the configuration in order.
Then he flipped the breaker to run a blackout test.
The power went out for a few seconds.
The diesel generator kicked on automatically with a low hum, the inverter screen changed to ‘Generator Input Detected’, and the lights came back on.
“Success. You won’t have to worry even if the power goes out. Oh—one more thing. Change the generator engine oil in a month. After that, change it once every six months.”
After he finished setting up the monitoring system on Junho’s computer, he pointed at the display.
“Here—you can see today’s output and cumulative output. You can check it on your phone too.”
“Is there a way to make it viewable offline only?”
In the apocalypse, the internet would go down.
Junho planned to run a local network with his own server, so he wanted to confirm it now.
“It’ll take some additional setup, but yeah, it’s possible. If you connect only through a local server instead of Wi-Fi.”
“I see. Then with this much, we should be fine even if the power goes out completely, right?”
The technician had been gathering his tools and heading toward the yard. He smiled at the question.
“Of course. For a house like yours, on a good-weather day you can easily produce around twelve kilowatts. Even when it’s cloudy and raining, you’ll still get about five kilowatts. And you know how people unplug stuff they don’t use much, and keep the computer off? Most households only use around four or five kilowatts a day. So even if the power goes out on a rainy day, you’ll be fine.”
“And we’ve got the ESS battery too.”
“Right. The battery’s always holding seven or eight kilowatts, so even if the power goes out during monsoon season, you’ll be fine as long as you conserve a bit. And you even installed a diesel generator, so... as long as you keep a jerrycan of fuel around, you’re basically invincible. Ha.”
“I worry a lot, that’s all. Anyway, thanks for your hard work. I really appreciate you explaining everything.”
“Oh, it’s nothing. We’ll get going, then!”
“Yes. Take care.”
The truck drove off.
With the solar installation finished, Junho stared at the app UI on his phone and muttered through what he’d learned today.
“If I use bifacial reflective panels, lay aluminum base plating, and add an automatic cleaning robot, the efficiency goes up a lot...”
Of course, he’d also said costs would rise exponentially.
That was why even people who installed solar at scale and registered as electricity sellers usually didn’t go that far.
“But I’m different.”
For powering the shelter—and all the equipment and systems it needed—he couldn’t afford to think in terms of “bang for your buck.”
He had to choose the best performance and efficiency, every time.
In the truest sense, for Junho, money wasn’t the goal. It was just a tool.
***
Bzzz!
The moment his phone vibrated, Junho’s eyes snapped open.
5 a.m.
His brother had come home late after meeting friends yesterday, so he was probably still dead asleep, totally unaware of the world.
Still, since moving into this house, he’d been waking up every morning between six and seven, so today would probably be the same.
After a quick face wash and brushing his teeth, Junho changed into workout clothes, packed a backpack with spare underwear and an extra set of gym clothes, and left the house.
Tap, tap.
He did a couple light hops in front of the gate, then sprinted into the alley.
His destination was Sangdong—the area with the gym he’d signed up for yesterday that opened early in the morning.
If he didn’t go straight down the road and instead looped around Chunui Mountain once, it was about eight kilometers.
From the day after they moved until yesterday, he’d only run a loop around the mountain—about four kilometers.
It hadn’t been that hard, and it left him feeling like something was missing, so he’d deliberately registered at a gym in Sangdong.
Junhyeok’s MMA gym was also in Sangdong, so starting next month, Junho planned to work out at the gym first, then go straight to the MMA gym to learn fighting.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud—
Junho wasn’t jogging lightly the way he used to when he ran along Simgok Stream.
People online said marathon runners averaged about twenty seconds per hundred meters.
So Junho ran at roughly that pace too.
That was the speed he’d been looping the mountain at since moving.
He circled the mountain through nearly empty alleys, then ran toward Sangdong along the early-morning road where only a few cars passed.
A handful of early pedestrians stared at him with wide eyes, but he didn’t care.
“Hoo... hoo... hoo...”
He simply regulated his breathing and kept running.
About five kilometers in, when he entered the area toward Sinjungdong Station, he felt himself start to tire a little.
But it wasn’t at a level he couldn’t handle.
Just then, far ahead, he saw the crosswalk signal at the Sinjungdong Station intersection flip green.
The distance was around a hundred meters.
Junho decided to sprint all-out.
Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud!
He ran into the sharp, cold wind of a late-autumn dawn and reached the crosswalk right as the green light started blinking—barely making it across before it changed.
Feeling oddly pleased, he returned to his original pace.
After another ten or so minutes, he arrived at the gym building.
He stopped the timer on his smartwatch.
30 minutes, 28 seconds.
Satisfied that he’d broken into the thirty-minute range, Junho climbed the stairs, thinking that at this point he was probably around amateur marathoner level.
Junho was ignorant.
He didn’t know the information he’d found online wasn’t the amateur average, but the professional marathoner average.
He didn’t know most amateur marathoners bragged about—or aimed for—sub-four, meaning finishing under four hours.
And he didn’t even imagine that at his current level, he might be able to run a full marathon in under three hours—maybe even in the two-thirty range.
In more ways than one, Junho was already completely different from everyone else.
