Chapter 97

52. Boiler (2)

Frankly, the possibility of me taking in the children is almost non-existent.

It’s a matter of survival before morality.

Even I hesitate to take in the sniper and her daughter, with whom I’ve built a long friendship, so accepting these children out of pity would be a betrayal of my past actions.

"Stop."

I have no intention of letting my guard down just because they’re children.

I’ve seen the ways of plunderers who use children, and I can’t view these children as purely innocent as in the past.

Click

Aiming my gun, the children stopped in their tracks.

"Turn around. Hands up."

Even a child can kill a person with a gun.

The children in front of me range from early to late elementary school age.

If they know the method, killing a careless adult would be no trouble at all.

The children who revealed themselves to me were unarmed.

"Over there."

I warned, aiming at the railing leading to the second floor.

"I know you’re all hiding. I’ll give you ten seconds."

I aimed my gun and observed the children’s reactions.

The youngest one looks unsure of what to do, but the two bigger ones exchange glances.

Bang!

I fired a warning shot at the children.

The children screamed and crouched or lay down on the ground.

"Eight."

I moved my gaze to the railing and spoke the number I was counting in my head.

"Seven."

A white handkerchief fluttered from the railing.

"I’m coming out. I’m coming out, okay?"

An adult’s voice.

It’s a middle-aged man’s voice, hoarse and raspy.

Soon, the owner of the voice appeared on the railing.

A man with long, unkempt hair and a dirty face limped onto the railing.

"Come down. Hands up."

He slowly descended the spiral staircase to the first floor.

But he’s not alone.

Behind him, small children followed like ducklings following their mother.

I could tell at a glance that these children are not his.

"Whose children are these?"

The man shook his head with a bitter smile.

"They’re kids I picked up. Bait kids."

"Bait kids?"

"I brought them out."

The man spread his arms.

"I brought them out of that hell!"

*

The man didn’t reveal his name, but the children called him Jang Sangsa.

Although I had no intention of talking, he strongly desired a conversation, so we briefly met in front of the house with the children watching.

He immediately made a proposal to me.

"Do you need any children?"

"No."

"If you need them, pick them. A little food is all it takes."

"I don’t need them."

Since he was being overly persistent, I had no choice but to aim my pistol at his rough, bearded chin.

Between his beard, small white worms were wriggling.

Seeing this, I stepped back and said coldly.

"Is that all you have to say?"

"Do you need a boiler?"

Jang Sangsa grinned.

"I saw you trying to dismantle the wood-burning boiler next door. Are you going to take it?"

I had planned to take it.

Until I met these people.

"No. I was going to take it, but I didn’t know you were here. I’ll just go."

If wood-burning boilers are so common, I can find one elsewhere.

Maybe I can get some help from the Defender.

"We can help. Just put it on the motorcycle, right?"

"..."

"Just close your eyes and give us a little. See the state of the children? They’ll starve to death if this goes on."

I didn’t look at the children.

It’s a deliberate act.

I don’t want to feel unnecessary compassion.

I’m not going to raise them.

Jang Sangsa, staring at me intently, continued.

"You don’t have to do anything. Just give us some food. We don’t need much. We’ll load the boiler. See the children? They’re not just kids. They can work. They’re very capable."

Before I could answer, Jang Sangsa shouted at the children who were watching with hollow eyes.

"What are you doing! Get ready to dismantle that boiler! Gather the tools! Get the cart!"

He groveled before me but roared like a tiger at the children.

"Over there."

I pointed my gun at the house.

"What about the children inside?"

At my question, Jang Sangsa’s lips curled awkwardly.

"What are you talking about?"

"There are two more."

"......You have a good sense, don’t you?"

Click

I aimed my gun.

Usually, I prefer to resolve things through conversation, but this space, the many unfamiliar children, the sleazy and dirty Jang Sangsa, and the eerie atmosphere of the abandoned complex made me anxious.

"Who are they?"

I asked, annoyed.

Jang Sangsa rolled his eyes.

"That’s......"

"The conversation is over. Go back inside. Take the children."

"No, no! Listen. They were children. Children who grew up. They became big. What? Oh! Adolescents! They came as adolescents. They don’t listen to me."

From Jang Sangsa’s rambling, I discovered two facts.

One, Jang Sangsa is a man cornered both physically and mentally, and two, he fears the other children watching from the darkness.

"Make them come out! They don’t listen to me."

He whispered so I could hear, probably a last resort to save face in front of the watching children.

I sighed and calmly addressed the other children watching from the shadows of the house.

"Come out."

When I spoke, the children in the shadows appeared.

One boy and one girl.

A teenage girl and a boy.

The girl was particularly tall, almost as tall as Jang Sangsa.

"We don’t have guns. We just didn’t want to come out and were just watching."

The girl looked at me directly.

She didn’t seem particularly afraid of me.

On the other hand, the boy’s hollow eyes held a faint resentment, directed not at me but at Jang Sangsa.

"Send the children back."

I said to Jang Sangsa.

Jang Sangsa gestured to the children, following my words.

"Did you hear that, from this nice uncle? Go inside. Right now! Hurry up!"

The smaller children obediently followed his orders, but the larger ones, especially the reluctant teenagers, grumbled and entered the house with visible annoyance.

The boy even kicked a stone on the ground in frustration.

Jang Sangsa glared at them and muttered.

"That disrespectful brat?"

"What happened?"

I asked casually, offering him a piece of ramen.

I was a bit interested.

In this strange man and the children.

*

"Originally, I was a soldier. Guarding the front lines."

Crunch!

Jang Sangsa bit into the ramen and began his story.

He was one of the soldiers guarding the front lines.

He experienced the final assault by the North Korean army and was stationed in a key position on Ganghwa Island when the war with China began.

Later, he was deployed to the front to block monsters and mutations, but when the front collapsed, his unit became a warlord’s army, and he became a plunderer following a battalion commander who rebelled against the warlord.

"Before I knew it, I was killing our own people, not the enemy. It happened in an instant. But when I came to my senses, I was in hell. Especially, I couldn’t bear to see the bait kids."

Amidst the collapse of everything around him, Jang Sangsa discovered the children called bait kids.

"......It was a wrong choice. I should have escaped alone. But my weak nature and indecisiveness got the better of me."

Jang Sangsa looked up at me.

"You should have acted like me."

"Like me?"

"You didn’t even look at the children. Like our battalion commander."

"......"

In the end, we’re all the same.

Even though this man is shabby, suspicious, and unlikable, he sees me.

He observes my actions and guesses my intentions.

In fact, he read my mind accurately.

I was embarrassed to have my thoughts read but didn’t show it.

"So, you took the bait kids with you?"

"Yes."

"What about the battalion commander and your former comrades?"

"They’re probably dead. Dead. I set fire to the barracks."

Jang Sangsa’s hands and eyelids trembled simultaneously.

"......Boiler."

He didn’t look well.

His already dark face was turning even darker, as if he was having a seizure.

Fortunately, the seizure didn’t last long.

He took a deep breath and asked as if nothing had happened.

"Can I move the boiler?"

"Sure. Go ahead. But will it fit on my motorcycle?"

"We have a cart. Just connect it. It’s no problem."

"I don’t have that much food."

"Even a little will do. See the state of the children? They can’t last much longer. The youngest will die soon."

I don’t fully trust him, but at this point, doubting him would be an excessive personal insult.

The boiler is something I need, and if he moves it for free, it’s a great deal for me.

"Sure. Go ahead."

That’s how I made a deal with Jang Sangsa.

Jang Sangsa’s condition wasn’t good.

He limped, coughed frequently, and sometimes stood still like a statue for a long time.

But he was very capable in his work, as befitting a soldier.

Even I, with some carpentry experience, couldn’t figure out how to dismantle the boiler, but he easily removed it, disassembled it, and loaded it onto the cart.

However, he occasionally lost his temper with the children and scolded the slow ones so harshly that they almost cried.

Once, he even pretended to whip them with his belt.

The children seemed to follow him out of fear rather than affection.

The boy and girl I saw earlier didn’t help with the work.

They stood at the back of the building, watching Jang Sangsa’s back with a cold smile.

Soon, the work was done.

A rough but sturdy cart was securely tied to the back of my motorcycle, and the heavy wood-burning boiler was loaded on top.

"Here, I’ve loaded the boiler as promised! Nice guy."

I was honestly surprised.

I thought it would be a big job, but it was done so easily.

The payment was just some brick-dried food and a few packets of ramen.

I got what I wanted at an excessively cheap price.

"......"

I still don’t like this place.

Especially, I don’t want to stay a second longer next to the dirty, unlikable Jang Sangsa and the hollow-eyed, skeletal children.

But I believe in giving fair payment for fair work.

"I think it’s a bit short, so I’ll bring some more food."

It would be a lie to say I have no compassion for the children.

"Really? You’ll give more?!"

"......I’ll come back tomorrow afternoon."

"Sorry, but do you have some alcohol? Just a little, please! Just a little!"

I got on my motorcycle, glancing at Jang Sangsa’s trembling hands as he pleaded.

"See you tomorrow."

Baek Seung-hyun’s motorcycle, a bit heavy, soon roared and started off briskly.

*

"Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I really didn’t believe you would come back. Really."

I gave them a significant amount of food I didn’t need.

Of course, I also brought a bottle of soju.

Not just for Jang Sangsa, but as a token of appreciation for the soldiers who protected this country and sacrificed themselves.

Jang Sangsa, like many people in this era, was an alcoholic.

You could tell from how he gulped down the soju without any side dishes.

"Ah~! This is it. This is it!"

Drunk or not, his behavior and expression didn’t change much.

He was still unstable, cowed, and afraid of the teenagers standing behind him.

I knew from the beginning what his shadow was.

Drinking, he revealed his inner thoughts more seriously.

"......I didn’t want to take in the children. I should have just left them."

The children.

"Couldn’t you have left them halfway?"

"It wasn’t that easy."

"But you hate them so much?"

"If I left them, they would all die. Last winter, only two died because I was there. If not, they would all have frozen to death. Yeah, that’s right!"

I couldn’t understand his feelings towards the children.

It was a bundle of irrationality.

He pitied them but also despised them, and he feared them while also being feared by them.

I soon identified the source of the tension.

There was no clear purpose.

What led him to this contradictory life?

So I asked.

"Why are you doing this?"

Jang Sangsa licked the empty soju bottle and murmured with a strange smile.

"I don’t know. But when I came to my senses, I was burdened with this miserable task."

Jang Sangsa’s eyes sparkled.

"No, I think I know."

He said with a confident voice.

"To avoid hell."

"Hell?"

"I’ve done so many bad things, so I need to do at least one good thing to avoid hell, right? I know there’s no hell. But I can’t die as a bastard, can I?"

"......"

I still don’t understand.

Is it like atonement?

That’s as far as I can understand.

Maybe the world he sees and the world I see are very different.

I shifted my focus to more practical issues.

"What will you do with those big kids?"

The boy and the girl.

Jang Sangsa isn’t just being paranoid.

It’s dangerous.

If left as is, either Jang Sangsa will die or they will.

"Will you kill them?"

In a similar situation, I would kill them.

"No."

Jang Sangsa is a different breed from me.

"Otherwise, you’ll be in danger."

"If so, there’s nothing I can do."

"Is that part of your atonement?"

"Atonement? No, I don’t think of it that way. Anyway! If I kill them, the other children will all die. You can see that I don’t have much time left, right?"

"......"

"I taught those ungrateful brats how to survive. They’re bastards, but the children follow them more than me, and they like the children more than me."

Jang Sangsa, who had been talking about his miserable reality with a serious expression, suddenly grinned like a boy.

"Do you have a K-walkie-talkie?"

"Yes."

"Do you know CQ?"

"Of course."

CQ.

A signal used to call multiple random recipients when communicating via radio.

Most of the time, it’s omitted, but if you follow FM, you should start with a CQ signal when calling random recipients on a public frequency.

"I told them C8. If they get a radio, they’ll call C8 C8, right?"

Jang Sangsa laughed, his face flushed red.

I didn’t listen to his drunken rambling just to hear his life story.

I offered him another gift I had prepared along with the food.

A sheet of plastic from U Min-hee.

I showed him how to use it.

"If you see a white or white-like color, call on the radio. I can’t take all of them, but I can help that child live well."

That was the end of our conversation.

With a sullen face, Jang Sangsa saw me off with his children.

"Shit!"

He sent a signal only we knew, but I didn’t respond.

*

After that, Jang Sangsa never contacted me again.

I forgot about him, and even the wood-burning boiler.

It was a scorching summer, and another monster eruption in the north was causing chaos, while an unprecedented situation in Incheon was turning the city upside down.

I only thought of Jang Sangsa again when the early chill began to cool the earth in late August.

While the bulletin board was rejoicing over the cool autumn-like weather, I hurriedly took out the wood-burning boiler and tried lighting it.

Whoosh-

The boiler’s performance was satisfactory.

There were no malfunctions, and it needed no further adjustments.

Until then, I had completely forgotten about Jang Sangsa.

Until my K-walkie-talkie suddenly picked up a signal on the public frequency.

"Shit."

A young girl’s voice echoed over the radio.

Why the sudden cursing?

As I wondered, the same curse continued to echo over the radio.

"Shit, shit."

Then I remembered Jang Sangsa.

One of his children.

The one who particularly disliked him.

"Is anyone there? Please answer."

Hearing this voice probably means Jang Sangsa is no longer in this world.

A sudden question came to mind.

Did the children kill Jang Sangsa?

Or did he die of a chronic illness?

"Hey? Is anyone there? Shit, shit."

There’s no way to know the reason.

I won’t respond to that signal.

"Hey! Is anyone there?!"

At least, that innocent voice was full of hope.