Caw... caaaw....

“Suho, wipe with this.”

“Yeah, thanks. Those bastards... I’m gonna kill every last one of them.”

After scrubbing his forehead hard with the towel Jo Yuna handed him, Baek Suho looked up at the countless crows circling and cawing over the shelter and ground his teeth.

But then—

“Huh? Yuna, Yuna. Aren’t they fighting each other right now?”

At Ahn Yujeong’s words, Jo Yuna looked up at the sky, rounded her eyes, and nodded.

“They are. Crow fights are scary....”

Cawk! Caaaw...!

Making their distinctive hoarse cries without pause, flocks of magpies and crows were attacking one another with beaks and claws.

“Those bird bastards must be having a territory fight or something. Good. Yeah, peck each other to death.”

As dozens of birds circled through the sky and continued what was, to them, a fierce battle—

“Ah! One’s falling!”

A slightly smaller crow, attacked by several others, dropped helplessly.

Woof! Woof woof!

“N-no, Kkamsoonie! That’s not food!”

Jo Yuna tried to stop her, but Kkamsoonie dashed that way and soon came proudly back with the crow in her mouth.

“Now, now, good girl. Put that down. Dirty. It’s dirty. Huh?”

After coaxing Kkamsoonie into putting down the crow carcass, Jo Yuna narrowed her eyes slightly, then looked back at the group.

“It’s just hurt. It isn’t dead.”

“Good. Then we’ll throw it into the incinerator alive with the one that died earlier....”

Just as Baek Suho revealed his will to vent his accumulated resentment and anger in a cruel way—

“Bird! A bird, a bird! A black bird!”

Choi Jiwoo, who had finished studying, left Kim Junseo behind and came running over at full speed.

Then she simply grabbed the crow, which even adults would find repulsive, and hugged it to her chest.

“Uah...?”

“J-Jiwoo. No.”

The two idols were horrified, but Choi Jiwoo paid them no mind and was busy looking over the injured crow from every angle.

“Is the bird hurt? Does it hurt a lot?”

“Yeah. The crow got hurt a little while ago. But it’s dirty, so put it down first....”

“Then I’ll treat it! Dr. Choi said hurt people need emergency treatment quickly!”

“No, Jiwoo. First of all, that isn’t a person.”

“That’s right, Jiwoo. And birds like that have tons of bad germs. So....”

“It’s okay!”

Choi Jiwoo pulled up the mask she had been wearing under her chin.

Then she took a portable alcohol wipe from the Kuromi bag she always carried, tore the packet open with her teeth, and rubbed it over the crow’s wing.

“Get better quickly, bird. Dr. Choi and Nurse Kim said this disinfects it.”

“Ah....”

Because the world had become what it was, Choi Uisu and Kim Heeyoung had to teach even the children hygiene habits and simple treatment methods.

And Choi Jiwoo, who had happened to learn that recently, seemed to be practicing medicine on the crow.

“Um... Jiwoo? We’ll treat the crow, so how about you put it down for now?”

“That’s right, Jiwoo. If you do it wrong, the treatment might not work and the crow could hurt even more.”

“Mhm. Okay.”

Choi Jiwoo held out the crow, then immediately continued with sparkling eyes.

“Then are you taking it to Dr. Choi? Are Dr. Choi and Nurse Kim going to treat it?”

“Uh... mm-hm.”

“Good! Hurry! I’ll run ahead and get Dr. Choi and, um, the... surgery! I’ll get ready for surgery!”

As Choi Jiwoo dashed off again, Kkamsoonie hurried after her.

“...What do we do?”

Jo Yuna and Ahn Yujeong’s gazes turned toward Baek Suho.

With his plan to burn his enemy alive now thwarted, Baek Suho had no choice but to let out a long sigh.

“Whew... what else can we do? We take it to the medical room first. But can Dr. Choi treat animals too?”

“Uh... wouldn’t he be able to?”

“I don’t know. Let’s take it there first.”

And so, unable to betray the kind heart toward animals of Choi Jiwoo, the official “baby” of their shelter, the three of them carried the crow toward the shelter medical building.

While passing through the ultraviolet disinfection unit, the crow received one incomplete-disinfection judgment and one rejection as an unapproved entity from the AI Akina before they were finally able to enter the building.

***

“Pest bird extermination?”

“Yes, Junho.”

After Junho returned from finishing his business in Gahyeon-ri and Yeongho-ri, Baek Suho spoke to him with a face full of firm determination.

“Our shelter’s got, like, more than a hundred crows. And there are tons of those magpie bastards down below the mountain too, you know? Day after day, those bastards fly in trying to scrounge up something to eat, shit everywhere, threaten our chickens, and make a damn mess. Don’t we have to do something?”

“Hmm.”

“And you know how much those bastards shit and piss on the panels? The solar-panel cleaning robots wipe them off, sure. But people still have to clean the shit off the robots. That work’s tougher than you’d think. And they break down pretty often too.”

“That is definitely a problem. All right.”

Junho nodded slightly.

The problem of birds like magpies and crows was something he had also somewhat overlooked.

Their shelter had a wall and electrified barbed wire surrounding the entire site, so animals like rabbits, moles, and snakes almost never got inside.

As for bigger animals like wild boars and water deer, they could not pass through the double defensive barrier of concertina wire installed all along the shelter safe-zone line and the turrets at each guard post in the first place.

But birds were an exception.

The shelter did have several defensive turrets, but their original purpose was to eliminate enemies approaching on the ground, like zombies or looter groups.

The installation positions and firing angles themselves were not suited to aerial interception.

“The turrets do shoot and kill them sometimes. But the problem is, the turrets’ accuracy isn’t a hundred percent, right? If they fire wrong and miss, a person could get hit. They could also hit solar panels or greenhouse glass. Actually, they’ve already broken a few solar panels.”

“Oh, they did? I didn’t know that.”

“Yes. But you brought back a lot of panels while cleaning up Gahyeon-ri, so it’s fine. Anyway, seriously, we need to do something about the magpies and crows.”

After listening to Baek Suho’s impassioned speech, Junho sank into thought for a moment and said,

“Their habitat is mostly the mountain behind the shelter, right?”

“Yes. That’s why the turrets can’t shoot them well. Apparently they don’t have the angle.”

Apparently, the magpie and crow flocks had cunningly built their nests somewhere in the broad forest between the shelter and the guard posts, in a perfect blind spot, and made it their habitat.

“Still, you’re a master shooter, Junho, so couldn’t something work?”

At Baek Suho’s expectant gaze, Junho chuckled.

“I appreciate you thinking that, but even I’m not confident I can shoot down every bird flying through the sky.”

“Ah.”

“Think about it. Say I hit the first shot. Then the rest of them will scatter all at once, right? How am I supposed to catch them all? Even if everyone in the shelter who knows how to shoot came out, we’d only get a little over ten at most. And we can’t use 5.56 or 9mm just to catch crows.”

“Ah... then there’s no way?”

“No? Of course there is.”

“Huh? Th-there is?”

“Yeah. After today, I don’t know about other birds, but crows and magpies probably won’t even come near us.”

“Really? Hell yeah!”

While Baek Suho cheered, Junho contacted the control room.

“Youngsu, tell everyone working outside right now to go inside the buildings. It’ll take about an hour.”

After giving the order to prevent any shelter family member from being hit by a stray round, he took an air rifle and headed out with Baek Suho.

***

“Is everyone ready?”

“Yes!”

“We’re ready.”

“Then commence firing.”

Papang! Pang! Papang!

The sounds of the air rifles fired by Junho, Junhyeok, Baek Suho, and Kim Jaemun erupted at once.

Five or six birds that had been loitering in front of the greenhouse, looking for a way to get inside, had their bodies burst apart on the spot in an instant.

After settling on the mountain behind the shelter, the crows and magpies had never once been shot by humans, much less with serious coordinated fire. When their friends were killed horribly, they panicked and all took flight at once.

Pang! Papang!

“Ah, shit. Missed again.”

Baek Suho, who had fired several shots at the flying birds but failed to hit them, was disappointed.

“It’s hard enough to hit birds on the ground. Flying ones are obviously harder.”

“But they can do it, right?”

“Probably?”

Baek Suho and Kim Jaemun’s gazes turned to one place.

The direction in which dozens of magpies and crows were flying all at once was, as expected, toward the mountain behind the shelter, where their nests were.

And that was also the direction where the shelter’s main building stood.

“They’re coming now. Do you have an angle?”

— Target acquired. Commencing fire.

Immediately after Akina’s businesslike voice sounded—

Papapapang...! Papapang...!

The G1 drones that had been placed in advance on the rooftops of the main building and the workshop building opened fire all at once.

The turrets had trouble because they lacked the angle, and humans had difficulty hitting birds flying at high speed?

“But when the dra... no, when the drones deploy?”

“Drones!”

At Kim Jaemun’s words, Baek Suho, who belonged to the MZ generation yet was also well-versed in old memes, excitedly provided the call-and-response.

As if responding to Baek Suho—

Papang...! Papapang...!

More than twenty G1 drones, unable to fire at targets on the ground from the rooftop but perfectly capable of firing into the air, poured out literally mechanical gunfire under Akina’s computing control.

More than half the magpies and crows flying toward the mountain behind the shelter were not so much shot down as burst apart in midair.

“Serves them right! Ah, I feel so much better!”

At the sight of countless feathers scattering down to the ground like black snow, Baek Suho, having succeeded in his revenge and relieved his grudge, clenched his fist and shook it.

“You said a lot of the others are near the incinerator and the walking trail?”

“Yes, Junho. Should we go right now?”

At Baek Suho’s excited words, Junho shook his head.

“No. You don’t need to go.”

“Huh? Why?”

“You have to clean all that up. Take a few of the kids and clean it up spotless, so no traces are left.”

“Ah....”

Seeing the feathers and remains that had fallen not only around the main building but all over the shelter, Baek Suho’s face went pale.

It was a victory that left only wounds and extra work behind.

***

“...Why aren’t they here?”

“That’s what I’m wondering too. I saw them here a lot when I did guard-post rounds....”

After arriving at the incinerator near the path that looped broadly around the mountain behind the shelter, Junho and Kim Jaemun tilted their heads.

There was definitely another flock of crows that loitered around here day in and day out, yet for some reason, not a single bird was visible.

“Do you think they saw the other ones being killed earlier and ran away?”

“Then we would’ve seen those ones take flight too.”

“Ah, true.”

While Kim Jaemun looked embarrassed, Junho examined the area around the incinerator and soon saw something that made his expression turn incredulous.

“Have those things lost their minds...?”

“What is it? Huh? Whoa....”

Kim Jaemun, who turned his face toward where Junho was looking, ended up with a similar expression.

Though there were fewer of them than the flock exterminated a little earlier, still more than thirty crows were perched in a row along the roof and windowsills of a certain building, staring at one particular spot.

“Uh, that place is probably....”

“The medical room. Looks like the crow Jiwoo picked up and sent for treatment is part of their family.”

The sight of the crows lined up along the windowsills, like gangsters dressed in black suits visiting their boss in the hospital, left Junho dumbfounded.

But suddenly—

He remembered that crows were among the smartest birds, no, among the smartest of almost all animals.

“...Ah.”

And that soon led to a brilliant idea that might seem absurd at first glance, but depending on how he handled it, had more than enough realism.

Using crows as aerial surveillance and alarm assets for their shelter.