Among the things my mother once said, though now I can’t even remember her voice, one remains in memory.

A person who moves to a home they wanted gains a healthy soul, but a person forced to move to a home they didn’t want has their soul torn away.

Come to think of it, my mother too used to sing to my father of moving into Seoul, like a song.

Like any ordinary, average family.

The move I made was not one I wanted.

I had always thought I’d return to my territory someday, but leaving behind comrades who had become like one body was quite a difficult decision.

Above all, my bunker is the place where I will end my life — in some sense, Skelton’s grave.

The possibilities I had once spread out in imagination were broken one by one, and as real threats closed in, I came back here gambling with my life.

It was enough to crush my spirit.

Still, Woo Min-hee’s child is behaving quietly, as if she’s not even here.

She has a shallow cough, but that must be from being out in the cold too long.

What I must do here is complete SkeltonNet.

But first, there’s something else to do.

It’s time to open the bundle of gifts Ha Tae-hoon prepared.

 The bunker I’m in now is one Ha Tae-hoon built.

The bunker I used before has its entrance wide open and abandoned, ruined to the point it’s unusable.

The bunker Ha Tae-hoon built was made to almost the same specifications and design as mine.

I have to admit, Ha Tae-hoon is a skilled carpenter.

Not that he majored in it, but he learned the trade working under his father, who was in construction, and after leaving the battlefield, he lived practically on job sites, preparing to take over the family business.

I remember he also handled heavy equipment quite well.

Unlike me, though, he had no licenses issued by the state.

For reference, I have a license for excavators.

I even considered learning cranes, but since they weren’t tools needed for bunker construction, I didn’t.

Anyway, the basic build is sound.

No particular defects, all the plumbing and wiring are usable.

He even properly designed access ways leading to the generator room and storage beneath the bunker.

This is practically a perfect copy of my bunker.

But Ha Tae-hoon said he left behind a special gift.

It didn’t take long before it appeared before me.

[ To my wonderful junior, Park Gyu ]

The first gift was surveillance equipment.

Fiber optics, wiring, even telephone lines, connected to various monitoring devices, neatly stored in a space within the warehouse protected from cold and damp.

With a manual he’d drawn himself, even someone weak with machines like me could install and operate them.

True to someone always having lots of junk, there were devices I never had. Notably night-vision thermal equipment used by the U.S. military, said to detect any target with body heat within 500 meters with 100% reliability.

The second gift was tied to the first — unmanned robots.

What they called sentry guns, killing machines that appeared before drones came into their own.

If drones are the image of flying freely through the air, then sentry guns are mounted fixed turrets at key points. Less mobile than drones, but with more stable imaging equipment, and above all capable of mounting heavy machine guns. In terms of firepower, superior to drones.

Ha Tae-hoon had prepared three for me.

He must have handed me everything he had left before heading to Seoul.

These are truly useful.

In an emergency, they’ll help.

Like the surveillance gear, the manuals written by Ha Tae-hoon detail their operation step by step.

The third gift from Ha Tae-hoon, Mark Two and I already used on the first day without much thought.

The toilet.

He’d made a central toilet at my request, and my old bunker also had a small shower room in the corner, but Ha Tae-hoon went further, exercising a carpenter’s instinct to make a fine toilet and shower room.

Here, though, I felt our difference in thought.

To me, having a shower in the same room as a toilet is natural and familiar. But he separated them, making a so-called dry toilet and putting the shower separately beside it.

Personally I think dry toilets are unhygienic, but Ha Tae-hoon thought the opposite.

Maybe that’s why I could never get very close with him.

The fourth gift wasn’t visible on the surface, but it was one that made me reevaluate him as a person — an extraordinary gift requiring much labor and effort.

He had completely redone the ventilation and water systems.

Before, it just pulled water from a nearby stream into a tank with sterilizer chemicals for purification. Now it was changed to a dual system: groundwater and stream intake. The septic tank was rebuilt into a more precise and stable form.

Most impressive was the ventilation system.

When I built this bunker, I had designed the ventilation shafts with advice from Viva! Apocalypse! users, and though it was my own masterpiece, there were still clumsy parts.

Especially the multiple vents to handle the exhaust and pressure from a large generator — they were my pride, but also showed my limits.

Ha Tae-hoon had integrated them perfectly into a single, camouflaged vent leading to the top of the hill.

“...Oh.”

Even someone like me, who rarely admires others’ work, was astonished. His construction ability and ideas surpassed mine.

Unfortunately, apart from manuals, Ha Tae-hoon left no message.

He couldn’t have anyway.

After this project we met again in less than friendly circumstances.

He became a subordinate of the ambitious Jeju Committee, and I a rebel against them.

In the end, Ha Tae-hoon remained on Jeong Dae-kyung’s land, but as we both felt, we had crossed a river we could never return across.

And yet here I was, missing that severed tie.

Ha Tae-hoon’s final gift was small, yet one I never would have expected.

A private room.

There was a message, not a manual, from him.

For now you’re alone, but who knows? Someday you might have someone to live with. So I made a small extra room. Even an apartment just over 20 pyeong has three ~Nоvеl𝕚ght~ rooms, right? Why three? Even if it’s just a narrow space divided by thin walls, a private space is important.

Think of this as a small piece of advice for that day.

Toward the passage leading to the dummy bunker, Ha Tae-hoon had built two one-room style chambers.

They were just leftover space left for future expansion, but with his fine skill he turned them into splendid personal rooms.

Each room shared ventilation, electricity, plumbing with the main bunker, and even had provision for a boiler and air conditioning.

One room even had its own toilet.

Thanks to that, there wasn’t a single spare toilet left, but now that I had a roommate, his gift was both unexpected and truly precious.

“I like it. This is good.”

Even Mark Two, who hardly ever showed emotion, lit up upon seeing her room.

Kim Daram’s advice had been right: a child old enough longs for privacy more than anyone.

“...”

Honestly, I wanted to send her somewhere else.

The bunker is mine alone.

Someone else’s child, not my own, coughing inside my bunker — it doesn’t feel good.

I guess I too become territorial in my bunker.

But seeing Ha Tae-hoon’s amazing gifts, I found myself wondering how he was doing.

He had stayed in Shangri-La near Gyeongju.

His doom, like mine, must be nearly certain, but maybe for now he lives in peace.

Unlike me, who only brought back a kid like baggage, he had a beautiful partner.

[ Necropolis Transmission Sync Rate – 3% ]

Unfortunately SkeltonNet couldn’t be opened due to the Necropolis issue, but there was a way to learn of Ha Tae-hoon’s status.

The radio.

I knew his personal ID number.

I hadn’t said I’d contact him, but I knew his character.

He’s the type who, if hailed, would always answer.

But in a situation like now, letting him know I’m alive is risky.

There are other ways to learn if he’s alive.

Before the North American board was drowned in despair, a user there hacked a Chinese military satellite and posted instructions through Viva! Apocalypse!

All we could do was look at orbital images, but some satellites allowed zoom in and out.

Back then, North American users got excited touring the ashen gray Chinese mainland through those satellites.

China, always spreading its reach, of course had satellites over Korea too.

There should be one monitoring Gyeongju.

I dug up a post I’d saved a year ago, used auto-translate to read the comments, and tried accessing the Chinese satellite network.

“...”

All in Chinese.

I couldn’t make sense of it.

With the rough English translations from the North American post I fumbled, but soon hit a wall.

Searching.

You had to input Chinese characters directly to search satellites.

Normally even foreign systems allow English or abbreviations, but being Chinese military, they had locked it to Chinese only.

“...”

Tap tap tap

I tried.

Didn’t work well.

Supposedly typing English pronunciation and pressing convert would give the right characters, but I still didn’t understand simplified Chinese.

Time passed.

Mark Two was standing behind me, watching.

“Hungry?”

Must be time to eat.

I’d cook some of the survival rations I’d brought.

As I thought that, Mark Two suddenly spoke.

“What are you doing?”

Seems she’s interested in the internet.

“A Chinese satellite site.”

I tried brushing it off, but—

“I know.”

She said it with confidence I couldn’t dismiss.

On a chance, I asked:

“Can you read Chinese?”

“Yes.”

Calmly she nodded.

“I learned in the facility.”

“Really?”

“Yes. They said even if we fight China, once outside we might have to cooperate with Chinese, so they taught us.”

Plausible enough.

Jeon Si-hoon’s gang does have many Chinese.

So I asked more:

“Can you type Chinese too?”

She nodded.

“Try typing Korea.”

Tap tap tap

Slowly, hesitantly, her hands moved.

Still clumsy, but her ability to find the right characters among what I couldn’t read was real.

Soon a list appeared.

Korea-1

Korea-2

Korea-4

Korea-7

Korea-11

Korea-13

“...Quite a lot.”

Even now, six working satellites.

If some fell during the war, before it they must have had dozens.

Humiliating, but a boon to me.

I checked them one by one.

Soon, images of the Korean peninsula from orbit came up, zones marked.

Before getting into work, I cooked some of the U.S. rations Defender had given me and fed Mark Two.

She, bored, stood behind me watching me use the internet.

Normally I’d chase her off, but this much was fine.

She even looked a little professional.

And she could read Chinese, which was useful.

As I listened to her chew with that unappetizing sound, I checked satellite after satellite.

They covered Seoul, Busan, and even the area around my bunker.

They seemed focused on strategic points and U.S. bases.

After much trial and error, I found a satellite over Gyeongju.

“You know Gyeongju?”

At last I could maybe see how Ha Tae-hoon was living.

I asked Mark Two, filled with expectation.

“Isn’t that where Silla was?”

“That’s right.”

“I want to go there. I like Silla.”

“Not easy, but maybe someday.”

“Why are you looking there? Wasn’t it all eroded?”

“Oh, someone I know is there.”

“Someone you know?”

“A person with a clear world, who lowers himself so much it’s hard to get close. But if you really know him, he’s a good person.”

“In what way?”

“In that he expresses gratitude clearly.”

At some point this world lost gratitude.

Ha Tae-hoon’s gifts made me remember what gratitude felt like.

In times of collapse, that’s a precious thing.

Now Ha Tae-hoon’s territory spread before me.

“...”

I zoomed out, then in again.

I felt the heavy silence and the forgotten darkness of the bunker seep around me.

The one who broke the silence was the little guest in the bunker, munching.

“What is it? Do you see something?”

Mark Two.

I only exhaled a shallow but deep sigh.

“There’s nothing.”

It was a double meaning.

Where Shangri-La had been, where Ha Tae-hoon settled with his lover and soldiers, was turned to ash gray.

No sign of living people.

Still, his life wasn’t yet confirmed.

Some do live in erosion zones.

Like Tunnel City.

“...”

I picked up the radio.

Personal ID: ARAMIS_103

I called Ha Tae-hoon’s ID.

Beep—beep—beep—

I couldn’t help it.

I knew it was dangerous, but I couldn’t not.

I wanted to.

Even now, I wanted to convey my thanks.

To the comrade, the senior who was once beside me.

The man who made my new bunker better than my own.

I wanted to thank him.

Beep—beep—beep—

The merciless tone didn’t change.

I knew it.

Maybe I had expected this, holding the radio anyway.

I wanted to express gratitude, but if there’s no one left to receive it, then what?

Maybe the best I can do is pray for their repose.

“That was good.”

Mark Two got up.

I said to her:

“Ha Tae-hoon.”

“Hm?”

She turned, eyes wide.

If an adult suddenly blurts something random, of course it’s surprising.

Still, I wanted to tell her.

“That’s the name of the person who made your room.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. A person I’m grateful to.”

I smiled faintly and searched my pocket.

There was a piece of candy.

I’d saved it for myself, but I gave it to Mark Two without hesitation.

Woo Min-hee’s child blinked, puzzled, then bowed, not at me but into the air.

“Thank you.”

I looked at the same place.

I pictured the face of the man who always turned his back, awkwardly refusing to be called senior, but who deserved the title.

And beside him, the face of the woman I can’t even remember anymore.

I bowed my head.

“Thank you, senior.”

That, I think, is the form of gratitude I can give now.