“...Anyway! What kind of land do you think this is, that you can just use it however you want? I’ve lived here since 1988. More than forty years, forty years. And now you’re just gonna swallow up the land I’ve been farming all that time?”
“...People ought to have some shame, don’t you think? You’re saying you’ll just use a building worth over three billion won? I couldn’t do that.”
“...No, seriously. That machine was replaced just last year. It’s expensive as hell. How does it make sense to just use it for free?”
“......”
At first, they had watched Junho’s mood and been somewhat cautious, but the longer they talked, the more their shoulders straightened.
By the end, all three had their chins lifted high and were finishing off in casual speech.
Junho watched them without expression.
There had been people like this before regression too.
No, quite a lot of them.
How could people who knew perfectly well what had happened to the world—and had been a hair’s breadth from death just days earlier—turn into this so quickly?
They had not changed.
They had always been this kind of person.
Just as all those shameless things people did in the past had not happened because there was no law, no order, no state power.
And now that law, order, and state power were gone,
dealing with people like this was very simple.
Of course, the easiest method—direct violence—was not the one he meant.
Violence could become a kind of standard of order too, but in cases like this, there was something far more effective.
Junho slowly looked over the three men and the ten or so others standing behind them.
They were the survivors who agreed with them and had pushed the three forward as representatives.
Every last one of them was either a building owner, a landowner, or a factory owner.
“...All right.”
At Junho’s words, the three men and the people standing behind them brightened.
To be honest, they had been a little scared—no, very scared—but when Junho agreed so readily, their confidence only grew.
The owner of the vacant lot, the loudest and most talkative of them all, grinned and said,
“Ah, for a young guy, you’re pretty flexible. Anyway, what we—”
“We won’t use your land, your buildings, or your factory.”
“...What?”
“In other words, get out of here right now. Starting today, you can go live on your land, in your building, in your factory—wherever. There’s a stream, so fetch your own water from that. As for food and every other daily necessity, you can figure that out yourselves from now on. That’s all.”
“......!”
The more Junho spoke, the more their expressions changed.
And when he immediately started walking away, they hurriedly blocked his path.
“W-What are you talking about? Get out? You’re saying leave the school right now...?”
“Yes. I’m telling you to leave because you have no intention of joining the community. You can survive on your own and wait for that wonderful government and military of yours to show up.”
“What kind of—”
“No, come on now. Why are you so hasty? We’re not saying hand over actual money. We’re just asking for a little consideration, that’s all. What’s good for everybody is good for everybody. Young people these days, honestly...”
Junho let out a short laugh at the man in his late fifties, who was clicking his tongue while blocking the way.
“No....”
The middle-aged man seemed not to like that and was about to push back, when—
“Quit running your mouth like we’re equals. Go live on your own damn land and farm it yourself, you cocksucker.”
Shhk.
After openly cursing him out, Junho drew his machete.
“Ugh....”
The man instantly staggered backward, his face filling with fear.
The others all went pale too and started sweating.
Resting the machete on his shoulder, Junho looked over the middle-aged man and the rest before continuing.
“I’m giving you one last chance. If there’s anyone here who still thinks the same way these assholes do, leave with them right now. Even then, since your land, buildings, and factory are inside the community zone, I’ll still guarantee their safety. No zombies, no people getting in.”
“Ah...”
“......”
The vast majority of them—no, everyone except the landowner, who kept hesitating and backing up until his back hit the wall—avoided Junho’s gaze.
“No one? Think it over while I’m still giving you the chance. I’ll give you three days. And...”
Junho looked at the middle-aged man, whose face had gone chalk-white.
“You three, take your families and go right now. To your land, your factory, wherever. If you don’t want to die.”
***
“No, no! There’s no law like this!”
“Let go! I said let go! Aaagh...!”
The man in his fifties who had claimed ownership of the land, along with his wife, was dragged off by Song Gijun and the search-and-elimination team from The First Apartments.
They lived in the same Gahyeon-ri, but in practical terms they were from a different neighborhood, so the team felt no hesitation.
More than anything, Song Gijun believed the method Junho had ordered was the most rational one under the circumstances.
So in line with Junho’s suggestion, he had decided to handle the matter personally.
“I’m going to set the standard clearly, then step back a bit. After that, the rest is your part, Mr. Song Gijun, as someone from Gahyeon-ri just like these people.”
More than anything, Junho had been trying to keep the promise he made on the day they first met.
“Ah! Aaaagh!”
“You little bastards! Aaaah...!”
After shoving the screaming couple into the old house attached to the vacant lot they owned,
Song Gijun tossed in their belongings along with a few days’ worth of food and water, shut the door, and coldly turned away.
“Start.”
Whiiine! Beep! Beep! Beep! Beep!
Six vehicles that had been standing by in advance—a tractor and forklifts—started moving as if they had been waiting for the order.
Two of the forklifts had originally been in Gahyeon-ri.
The tractor and the other four electric forklifts were ones Junho had brought from the shelter.
The tractors and forklifts began stacking walls around the house and empty lot the middle-aged couple had just been put into, using ownerless vehicles and shipping containers gathered from around Gahyeon-ri.
Since barbed wire and sharpened pipes had already been fixed onto the vehicle bodies and container walls in advance for defense against zombies and looters,
all the tractor had to do was push, and all the forklifts had to do was lift and move them, so the work finished faster than expected.
The scrapped cars and shipping containers completely enclosed the single-story house and the vacant lot—about two-thirds the size of the schoolyard—
leaving only a single passage fitted with a door that could be opened from the outside only.
Once the work was done, Song Gijun opened the house door, and the couple came stumbling out in a panic.
“Huh!?”
“W-What is this...?”
The two of them were horrified to see that their house and land had been completely cut off from the outside.
Song Gijun said flatly,
“We’ll open that passage once a day. You’re free to walk the road as you please, but every building belonging to our Gahyeon-ri community is off-limits to you. You may draw water from the stream freely, but no other supplies or food will be provided.”
“What!?”
“No, how can the world work like this!?”
The couple shouted, and Song Gijun answered coldly.
“You’re right. There’s no law like that. So what? What exactly are you planning to do about it?”
“Wh-What?”
“Do you really not understand yet that there is no law and no state power left to protect you?”
“......!”
“Whether zombies tear you apart in the street, or gangsters beat you to death and take everything you have—there’s nobody coming to help you now. Mr. Lee Junho and the rest of us said we would do that in their place. The only price was that you join our Gahyeon-ri community. But you treated that as something you were entitled to and insisted only on your own rights. So now we’re going to exercise the rights of our community. And everyone in the community agreed. What’s wrong with that?”
“N-No...”
“Then I wish you both the best of luck. Oh, and one more thing.”
Song Gijun, who had turned away, glanced back and gave them a warning.
“If you deliberately start shouting or making a scene, we’ll reduce how often we open that passage to once every three days. Do it again and it becomes once a week. Keep it up and it becomes two weeks. Then a month... I trust you understand what that means.”
“Ah...”
“W-Wait! I made a mistake. I was wrong. Th-this land—use it however you want! Please, just—”
Ignoring their desperate pleas now that it was too late, Song Gijun forcefully shook them off and left the sealed-off lot.
The same measures were taken with the building and factory owned by the other two people who had insisted only on their own rights.
And then—
***
They spent the first day crying and raging in protest, but they did not last even a full week.
The day Junho came to Gahyeon Elementary, all of them came running with their families in tow and dropped to their knees in front of him.
Food was a problem, yes, but in the dead of winter, they simply could not endure without fuel or electricity.
Worse, even when they went outside, people acted as if they had all made a pact to pretend they did not exist.
Even when spoken to, they were blatantly ignored.
They were treated like invisible people.
In the end, the sanctions were lifted only after they signed a written pledge—before a lawyer and a certified judicial scrivener who were both survivors from The First Apartments—transferring free and indefinite rights over all their land, buildings, and factories to the Gahyeon-ri community.
Needless to say, after that, not a single person in the Gahyeon-ri community ever again tried to insist only on their own rights.
In a world where law and order had vanished, the one holding the blade was king.
And Junho controlled not just blades, but food, energy, even medicine and medical services.
In the end, with Song Gijun and Kim Seokhwan out front, Junho succeeded in absorbing the Gahyeon-ri community into an apocalypse-style order and forcing it to conform—
all without resorting to the simplest form of direct violence, despite holding the power to decide absolutely everything.
***
January 3, 2025, 09:40, near the Russky Bridge, Vladivostok, Russia.
Bang! Bang...! Kwoooom...!
More than ten motorboats tore through the winter sea wind and sped beneath the Russky Bridge.
The people on board were dressed in thick clothing, every one of them armed with firearms.
But the group of motorboats racing across the sea at high speed soon had no choice but to stop.
“Shit. The sea’s frozen. Everybody disembark.”
“Let’s get off.”
“Everybody off!”
The men, all wearing black masks to keep the sea wind from flaying the skin off their faces, carefully climbed out of the boats and stepped onto the ice.
“Hey, Brother Volk, you really not coming?”
“If all of us go, who’s guarding the boats? You go on and win yourselves the glory you want so badly.”
“Трус Баба.” (Cowardly bitch.)
Even after being cursed like that, Viktor Volk Choi did not react at all.
The big man who had pushed his mask up and spat once on the ice headed off with the others across the drifting sea ice.
Soon the subordinates who had followed from the Busan branch began driving stakes and tying down the boats securely.
Watching them silently, Viktor Volk Choi pulled something from inside his coat.
It was an old phone with a cracked screen that still worked.
Viktor Volk Choi clicked the message icon and selected the name Брат Джуно (Brother Junho), and a long series of texts came up.
- Volk. You’re probably still in Vladivostok. You’ve likely been wondering why I haven’t contacted you for so long. I’ll explain that later. That’s not what matters right now. Three days from now, when the sun rises in the morning...
- Whatever firearms you prepare, make sure they all have suppressors and use subsonic ammo. The more fuel, food, and medicine you have, the better. And...
- If we ever meet again, I’m sure we’ll have a lot to talk about. Until then, survive no matter what, brat.
“Volk.”
Viktor Volk Choi raised his head after once again carefully rereading the ten messages Junho had sent all at once a few days before the world went to hell—messages he had already read hundreds of times.
A subordinate who had finished his work spoke cautiously.
“You really sure you don’t need to go? If those bastards pull it off, the boss is gonna be pissed as hell.”
“Pissed? Sure, he’ll be pissed. But what can the boss actually do?”
“Huh?”
The subordinates tilted their heads.
Viktor Volk Choi pulled up his mask and put a cigarette in his mouth.
One of the men immediately flicked a Zippo and lit it for him, and after Viktor took a few drags, he handed the remaining cigarettes out to the others.
“Heh-heh. Thanks.”
“I’ll enjoy it.”
As several streams of cigarette smoke rose over the sea ice, Viktor drew in a deep breath and blew it out before speaking.
“You know how many tourists there are on Russky Island in August?”
“......?”
“Jolla man ah.”
At Viktor’s Korean, the men’s eyes widened.
All of them had spent a long time in Busan, so they understood at least that much.
“Those idiots are just going there to die. We’ve been sending messages to the brothers on Russky Island every day for the past two months, and not once has anybody answered. Yani, Barinov. Men with guts, men second to none in loyalty. All of them. Those guys aren’t enough.”
“Ah....”
At that, the subordinates looked on with pity at the men tirelessly making their way across the frozen Ajax Bay toward the shoreline where Far Eastern Federal University stood.
“Volk, then what are we gonna do? Even if those guys die, if we just go back on our own like this, the boss is definitely gonna say something.”
“What are we gonna do...?”
Viktor Volk Choi ground out his finished cigarette under his boot, checked his rifle, and smiled coldly.
“We cut the throat of that son of a bitch who keeps pushing brothers into death because of his own greed, whether they live or die. Anybody who wants out can leave.”
“......!”
The men flinched, then answered like they had been waiting to hear exactly that.
“Took you long enough to say it. Weren’t Koreans and Koryo-saram all about pally pally?”
“Ssuka! I’ve been dying to know when we were gonna deal with that motherless bastard!”
Though he had already known, Viktor Volk Choi was pleased to have it confirmed once more that they were all thinking the same thing.
Climbing back onto the motorboat, he said,
“Let’s go. We kill that mongrel bastard, then we take the port and the cogeneration plant for ourselves. Russky Island and Far Eastern Federal University—we scout them thoroughly once the weather warms up, then occupy them step by step. And after that.”
Viktor bared his teeth in a grin as he stared out at the southern sea beyond Russky Island.
“You know what I want? I want to load up oil and guns and head to Korea. Feels like we owe our brat for saving our lives.”
“Да!” (Yes!)
“Именно!” (Exactly!)
The Russian Far East mobsters all shouted their agreement, knowing that the decisive reason they had managed to survive safely was because of Viktor Volk Choi’s Korean brat, Lee Junho.
