Apocalypse’s Teacher

Chapter 95

It was an era where no one valued morality.

An era where living one more day was the sole purpose, and harming others for that goal was considered natural.

In such an era, there was only one reason I couldn't abandon this burden.

'Teacher...'

My teacher wouldn't have wanted that.

The bedroom was pitch black.

Lying still and looking at the ceiling, I could barely make out the silhouettes of the room.

In the quiet room, I reminisced about the past, hearing Hyesung's soft breathing beside me and Chunsik's breathing from under the bed.

- Acting like a human is what's important! Like a human!

When I was in middle school, I was such a delinquent that I was more familiar with the faculty room than the classroom.

My teacher was always the one scolding me, and I was always the one grumbling and ignoring him.

Live like a human.

Words that were hard to find someone to uphold, even when the world was intact.

My teacher was someone who followed those words as if they were the ultimate truth.

It couldn't even be said that he followed them because the law demanded it.

After all, my teacher was the one who resisted the cultists most fiercely on the day the world ended and they rose to power.

I asked again, what meaning does the value of morality have now?

'None.'

None at all.

I was the only one clinging to it.

Just like my teacher did, I wanted to be just like him, so I was simply following his example.

"Hmph...."

My mind was so tangled that I couldn't sleep.

Tossing and turning almost woke Hyesung, so I tried to stay still, but I felt too restless. I left the room.

Hugging a bottle of liquor tightly, I went up to the rooftop.

The dawn in winter was so cold it felt like all my senses had vanished.

But I also thought that this kind of cold was better.

Memories of the past kept coming back, and facing what I'd become now in comparison stirred too many emotions.

Pop—the lid of the bottle opened.

The smell of vodka, which I had stashed away thinking I'd drink it someday, jolted my frozen senses awake.

'Just one drink and I'll sleep.'

No, maybe if I had three drinks, I'd get drunk enough to pass out.

Thinking that, I poured the liquor into the prepared glass, but at that moment, the rooftop door burst open.

"What are you doing?"

It was Gihyun.

I looked at him, wondering what he was doing up at this hour, already past dawn. He sighed deeply and approached me.

"What's that liquor? Are you Mr. Park?"

Saying that, he snatched the bottle and glass from me.

I couldn't say anything until that moment.

The words I barely managed to spit out were these.

"What are you doing up?"

At my words, Gihyun glared at me.

"You didn't give me an answer. I told you to take me with you."

Gihyun's body was trembling.

Was this kid, who was so sensitive to the cold, trying to prove a point by coming all the way here?

I suddenly felt a bitter laugh escape me.

"Why do you want to follow me so badly? It's not even a good place."

"If it's not a good place, why are you always going there alone?"

Gihyun wrinkled his face at the smell wafting from the liquor bottle, then poured it all onto the ground.

If Mr. Park had seen this, he would've screamed.

"You shouldn't treat me like a kid anymore."

Complaining with dissatisfaction, he muttered, but from my perspective, he was still a kid. What could I do?

It was unbearable.

So, I asked Gihyun.

"Gihyun, do you even know?"

"Know what."

"What you'll have to do if you follow me."

Twitch-.

Gihyun's shoulders shook.

He was the kind of kid who couldn't hide his emotions, so when startled, his shoulders always quivered.

"If you follow me, you'll have to kill people. This is murder."

Gihyun clamped his lips shut.

Grinding his teeth in frustration, yet the fear in his expression was unmistakable.

"Learning something like that already, what's the point...."

"What if I don't learn it?"

Gihyun interrupted my words.

What gleamed in his eyes as he stared straight at me was something that could only be described as defiance.

"You can't not learn it, right? Are you going to keep doing things like that all by yourself? If something dangerous happens again, are you going to run off alone and make a mess? What if you end up dying unceremoniously? Then what?"

The tone of his unusually long-winded statement was clear.

Anger.

And somewhere buried within, worry.

"Two is less dangerous than one."

"That's not what I'm talking about...."

"It's strange that I'm still alive without ever having killed anyone. I was always going to have to learn this. In fact, it's already late for me. Not just me—Jinwoo, Juyeong, Dabin, Dayoon, and Hyesung all need to understand this someday."

Gihyun's argument was logical.

That's why it was cold-hearted.

"I know you're looking out for us. But still, this is something unavoidable. I'm not with you just to be a burden."

Gihyun stood up.

He sniffled as snot dripped from his nose.

I couldn't tell if that was because of the cold or because he was crying.

The air was so biting that even Gihyun's eyelashes were frozen.

"I'll take care of my own part. You don't have to coddle me so much."

That was the end of his words.

As I sat there dumbfounded, Gihyun, as if having nothing more to say, drove his point home.

"Get ready and understand that. I'll prepare myself too. If you try to go alone, I'll tell Hyesung that you're never coming back. And I'll make sure you're never allowed back in the hotel."

Gihyun spun around with a sharp motion and walked briskly back indoors.

All I could do was let out a hollow laugh.

'Coddling.'

So hesitating to teach a child how to kill is considered coddling now.

Has the world really turned into something like this?

Was I the one refusing to acknowledge it?

That thought occurred to me far too late.

*

It wasn't that I had ended my dilemma.

But that didn't mean I was agonizing over it anymore.

Ironically, I was able to make a decision because of Gihyun's words, even though he was twice as young as me.

'I can't avoid teaching this.'

Refusing to teach the kids just to preserve my faint conscience was an irresponsible act.

If I truly wanted to be a teacher, I had to admit it.

I had to look beyond my morality and toward the children's future.

"Gihyun, come with me."

I led Gihyun to a room I had never opened to anyone until now.

It was the room where I had stored all the weapons, explosives, and their manufacturing methods that I had collected.

Gihyun took a sharp breath at the sight unfolding before him.

"Five days."

"Huh...?"

"Five days. That's the number of days left until the war."

Gihyun stared at me blankly.

I added more words to Gihyun, who looked like that.

"I'm not going to teach you something like how to stab someone to death with a knife right away. No, maybe I'll never teach you that for the rest of my life. That's the one thing I feel I absolutely shouldn't teach."

A time where morality no longer mattered had come.

An era where you had to become as ruthless as the others just to barely survive had arrived.

The unfair apocalypse was placing this heavy burden directly on the child.

"However."

So, I had to teach the child the tricks to make the burden feel less heavy.

"Other than that, I'll teach you everything."

A resolute light appeared on Gihyun's face.

I spoke to Gihyun, who looked like that.

"There's only one thing you need to completely master in these five days."

My fingertip pointed toward a heinous launcher hanging in the middle of the wall.

"How to fire that."

Shelling.

A weapon far more brutal and efficient than mere blades, the most dangerous in Seoul.

I would teach that to Gihyun.

*

Five days later, we arrived at the rooftop of a tall building.

Together with Gihyun, I watched the distant scene.

The Han River, shining so coldly that it wouldn't be an exaggeration to call it frozen.

The bridge standing gloomily with its paint peeled off over it.

And soldiers holding weapons at both ends, glaring at each other.

It was about to begin.

"Watch closely."

After saying that to Gihyun, I read the gradually intensifying atmosphere.

There was no special signal.

Just the sound of gunfire coming from somewhere on that bridge.

Bang-.

That marked the beginning, and a monstrous roar echoed.

-Aaaaah!!!

Human figures, small as ants, charged forward.

I pointed out each of them as I explained to Gihyun.

"The ones in the front line are assault troops. Do you see the planks they're holding? All of those are bulletproof. They're clearing the way so the rear troops can advance."

"Behind them are riflemen."

"Right, once the shield-bearers clear the path, the riflemen take positions using the cars on the bridge as cover. Once they've secured enough ground, the artillery will follow."

My fingertip now pointed at those climbing onto the bridge.

"They'll position themselves in the safest locations and bombard the enemy's assault troops and riflemen."

Even from a distance, people being shredded by bullets were visible.

Tension rose on Gihyun's face as he witnessed it with his own eyes.

But what I truly wanted to show him was something even more profound than that.

"Gihyun."

"...Yeah."

"Always remember this. We are the minority. We are individuals, and we are weak. And we are in a position where we have to face things like that."

I pulled out a switch from my jacket.

A remote control device, painstakingly created in a world where almost all electronics had become useless.

The moment Gihyun's gaze fixed on the switch, I pressed it without hesitation.

Click-.

"That's why we must operate more thoroughly and ruthlessly than they do."

With those words, a tremendous explosion resounded, loud enough to be heard from this distant building.

Boom-!

The bridge began to collapse.