When I encountered Cha Woodan’s thigh again today, it had already received maximum treatment. As if he’d changed clothes overnight, instead of the long winter pants I’d seen yesterday, bandages were neatly wrapped beneath his gym shorts. The fact that he’d obtained bandages meant he’d somehow succeeded in finding medical supplies, so the wound underneath had probably received some degree of treatment as well.
And among all that, the help I’d provided was merely clumsily tying my gym jacket—unwashed for two weeks—over his wound.
‘And yet I saved your life? You’ll repay this debt?’
I stared at Cha Woodan with skeptical eyes. But he just tilted his head as if he had no intention of correcting his exaggerated truth.
Well then, fine.
‘If the person involved says so, do I really need to go out of my way to deny it?’
What would normal people request as payment for a saved life? Since nothing appropriate came to mind immediately, it seemed best to first ask if they had what I desperately needed.
“Do you guys have drinking water?”
The fundamental purpose that had made me leave the classroom and come out to the hallway in the first place, intending to head to the art room. Drinking water and food.
I saw the twins exchange glances for a moment. It seemed like they weren’t without water, but perhaps it was too precious to give me, so I added more.
“You said you’d repay your debt to me. You wouldn’t leave your lifesaver to die of dehydration, would you?”
My confident attitude seemed to stimulate something in them. The arc of their already vivid smiles deepened another shade.
Soon they took the lead, guiding me.
***
Deep inside the art room, there was another door that led to a small storage room where art supplies and student works were kept. Since the storage room was a closed space with no windows or other doors, accessible only through the art room, I had no hesitation opening that door with my eyes open.
I glanced at Cha Jeoh, who opened the door first and even held it for me, then moved forward. As soon as I stepped into the storage room, the sight that met my eyes left me frozen, unable to find words. My wide-open eyes blinked incessantly, as if trying to confirm that what was before me wasn’t a fantasy.
The art room storage had never been a very spacious area to begin with. Moreover, with all sorts of tools piled up in disarray, it had always given off a cramped feeling. So with the apocalypse era having arrived and no one left to organize the storage, I hadn’t expected much, but…
‘Even so, this is…’
The already narrow space looked much narrower than what remained in my memory.
‘…It’s not an art supply storage, it’s an acorn storage.’
The number of paints, water containers and brushes, glue guns and styrofoam, or student works filled with their heart and soul that had existed since before the world ended hadn’t increased now. If the space looked more crowded because of those things, I would have called it an ‘art room storage’ as originally intended, not an ‘acorn storage.’
A dry breath escaped through my weakly parted lips. One of the twins who had stepped up close behind me asked proudly, like a squirrel showing off its large acorns.
“How is it? Amazing, right?”
“……”
“Cha Woodan, why are you acting so proud? I’m the one who ran myself ragged to bring all this here.”
Whether the other twin grumbled in protest or not, I didn’t hear it. The things spread before me were so surreal that their words didn’t register in my ears.
The art room storage… no, the acorn storage was an unprecedented paradise in the apocalypse era. At least within the school where food and water were scarce. And even more so on the third floor, which was cut off from the lower floors and unable to obtain anything more.
As if someone had gathered all the convenience store goods and moved them here, several bundled water bottles were placed in one corner of the storage. The bottles, which appeared to be 500ml each, looked like they’d already consumed a couple, but more than a dozen still remained.
And that wasn’t all. On another side were canned foods like peaches and tuna, and on yet another side were snacks like energy bars and salty crackers arranged with some system. While it wasn’t an objectively large amount, it certainly seemed more abundant than other survivors had. After all, even Kang Jekyung’s group that I knew of was in a situation where everyone clung to just two bottles of water to quench their thirst.
‘Is this even possible?’
If they’d made the art room their base since before the third floor overrun with monsters was sealed off, and thanks to that had been transporting food and water here to store it early on, then it wasn’t entirely impossible.
“What about food? Aren’t you hungry?”
I refocused my vision that had blurred from being lost in thought. One of the twins holding a bottle of water was looking at me while wandering near where the canned goods were piled.
I briefly met his jet-black pupils before opening my mouth.
“One chocolate bar is enough.”
“Really? You couldn’t drink water but you’ve been eating meals regularly all this time?”
“No, well…”
I hadn’t eaten much of what could be called meals either, just like with water, but I was the type who didn’t feel hunger very well, even if I felt thirst. It seemed my body didn’t require much nutrition physically either—even in the pre-apocalypse world, I’d skipped most meals but had never once collapsed from malnutrition.
After receiving the water and chocolate bar from him, I turned around. As I seemed about to leave the storage, the other twin moved quickly to hold the door.
I didn’t understand what meaning there was in holding a door that was already open. Since I’d stopped walking and was staring at him, he tilted his head.
“What?”
I hadn’t intended to make an issue of it, but since he was the one who asked first, I replied flatly.
“Just now and earlier too, I was wondering why you bother to hold the door.”
“Ah, did it bother you?”
“Not that.”
“It wasn’t an action with any particular thought behind it. And…”
He trailed off, then let out an awkward laugh.
“The one who held the door earlier was Cha Jeoh. The one in front of you now is Cha Woodan.”
“Ah.”
So they weren’t the same person.
“If it’s really that difficult, how about distinguishing us by the clothes we’re wearing? I’m in shorts with bandages wrapped around my leg, and he’s in full gym clothes with the jacket zipper pulled all the way up.”
“…I think that would be even harder.”
How many people could possibly turn their gaze elsewhere when faced with those faces? That wasn’t something like an irresistibly addictive thing that crumbles against one’s will—it wasn’t some crisis that could be overcome and conquered by one’s own willpower.
“Hm? What did you say?”
“Nothing.”
Instead of kindly responding to his question, I passed by him indifferently.
When I fidgeted with my left hand, the bottle gripped in my palm made a crinkling sound. Looking at the clean water rippling inside it, I stopped walking in front of the window I’d somehow reached.
I took in the desolate reality spread out beyond the window. Excluding the thick bloodstains abundant on the playground, the grotesquely crumpled corpses, and the beast-type monsters occasionally prowling about, it was an otherwise ordinary urban landscape. Just a bit too quiet and eerie.
I lowered my eyelids that felt heavy, closing my vision, then raised them again. Then my reflection in the glass appeared much clearer than the city spread distantly beyond the window.
Since it wasn’t a mirror, I couldn’t see my appearance or clothes in detail. Still, one thing was certain. My two haggard eyes barely maintaining focus, those pupils holding the despairing world outside, didn’t contain worthless things like despair or fear.
As expected, a topsy-turvy world suited me better.
I turned around and slumped down as if sliding, my back leaning against the wall. When the protruding windowsill scraped across my back, a stinging pain spread, but I didn’t care.
I set the chocolate bar down on the floor and opened the bottle cap. The twin on the right wearing gym shorts, who had been standing dumbly before me, sat down first. He crossed his legs and rested his arms on his knees, propping his chin.
“Why are you sitting here instead of at a perfectly good desk?”
“This is more comfortable.”
“How can squatting on the floor to eat be comfortable? Were you mistreated somewhere before coming here?”
This wasn’t a matter of whether I was mistreated or not. No matter how formidable a survivor group might be, even if they occupied the middle to upper ranks of the pyramid, there would be hardly any person with enough nerve to eat comfortably while monsters ran rampant beyond the walls.
Without answering, I put the bottle opening to my mouth and tilted it. Gulp—after taking a small mouthful of water, I removed my mouth from the bottle.
“Were we in the same class?”
The one on the left, who had sat down beside his twin at some point, placed his hands on the floor behind him. Then he leaned his body back, supporting himself with both arms.
“No? Why?”
“Because you knew my name.”
If we weren’t in the same class, had there been some point of contact somewhere else? Since I tended not to remember people’s names or appearances, no particular guess came to mind.
‘But even for me, faces like those wouldn’t have been easy to completely forget.’
That’s why I’d bothered to take off my gym jacket yesterday to stop the bleeding on his thigh.
Was that kid the older twin or the younger one? His name was Cha… what was it again?
“You probably don’t remember, but we ran into you quite often. Especially at the library.”
“The library?”
“Yeah. You sat at the far end inside the library every day looking out the window. Right?”
That was true. Back when the world was still intact, once I came to school, I spent most of my time at the library, regardless of breaks or lunch periods.
Indeed, if the same person sat in the same place, at the same time, in the same space every time, it would be memorable enough to be imprinted in one’s mind. But it wasn’t just remembering appearance or characteristics—our school didn’t even wear name tags, so how could they know my name too?
‘…Well.’
It’s not important anyway.
Thinking that, I took another gulp of water and then lowered the bottle.
“But the food you have seems excessively plentiful and varied. There seemed to be things that would be hard to obtain within the school too.”
“Well, that’s because we didn’t get it from the school.”
I raised my eyes, which had been fixed on the water sloshing in the bottle, to stare at the face on the right.
