Chapter 48
Stay-at-home Wifey
Safe Zone username: Stay-at-home Wifey.
Born to business-owner parents, he had never lacked anything materially.
However, he had been sickly from a young age and repeatedly hospitalized and discharged, leaving him unable to attend school properly.
By the time he was old enough to attend regularly, his personality had already become too twisted for him to form normal friendships.
His parents, doctors, nurses, and even his ill-tempered older sister had always yielded everything to him because of his poor health.
As a result, he had never learned consideration for others.
He had belatedly tried to fix his personality, only to become the victim of a kind of school bullying in which the other children took advantage of his wealthy background.
When his parents learned what had happened, they immediately had him withdraw from school and brought him home.
—Yeobom, it’s all right if you don’t go to school. You don’t have to attend university or get a job either. You can spend your life doing whatever you want.
Stay-at-home Wifey knew that his parents had not said that because living that way was truly fine.
His illness had never been completely cured.
The fact that he was still alive was already considered a miracle, and his doctor had advised them to let him spend whatever remained of his life in comfort.
‘What I want to do...’
He wanted to go to school.
He wanted friends his own age.
His parents had asked why he had never told them that he was being bullied.
But Stay-at-home Wifey had not even realized it was bullying.
The rare moments when the other children condescendingly shared their snacks with him, or turned around and waited whenever he fell behind while walking, had been far too precious to him.
‘But if I’m going to die soon anyway, I don’t want to make my parents worry...’
And so Stay-at-home Wifey stopped leaving the house.
He became a hikikomori gaming addict who vented online the anger he could never direct at his parents or peers.
‘Dopamine Addict uploaded another guide!’
Dopamine Addict.
Stay-at-home Wifey’s older sister had forced him to play a dating simulation about romancing handsome middle-aged men.
And Apocalypse: Safe Zone had clearly been created as an homage to that game.
Among its players, Dopamine Addict was one of the people Stay-at-home Wifey admired.
He thought it was impressive how Dopamine Addict stubbornly continued sharing his guides with the community, even when people called them utterly deranged.
And despite not seeming to make any effort to get along with others, he had still accumulated a huge following through those very same deranged guides.
Stay-at-home Wifey envied that too.
‘I want to become close to him.’
To get closer to Dopamine Addict, Stay-at-home Wifey put into practice the seduction strategies he had learned from the dating simulation.
‘Everyone else calls him “Boss” and sucks up to him. I need to approach him differently.’
He needed to give Dopamine Addict the impression that he was unlike everyone else.
Only then would Dopamine Addict take an interest in him.
The kind of person Dopamine Addict would like was obvious.
After all, Dopamine Addict enjoyed attention by uploading guides that practically made him look like a sociopath.
Stay-at-home Wifey confidently left a comment.
Stay-at-home Wifey: Are you fucking insane? How is anyone supposed to copy this, you psychopath?
It was a technique that naturally praised the other person beneath a rough and aggressive tone.
The top three things someone uploading such morally bankrupt guides most wanted to hear were:
The author seems like a psychopath.
Isn’t this completely insane?
You’re the only person who could do this.
Stay-at-home Wifey had blended all three into one sophisticated comment.
He was certain Dopamine Addict would soon take an interest in him.
Unaware that Dopamine Addict was deleting every insulting comment he left, Stay-at-home Wifey diligently liked and commented on each new guide.
‘He blocked me...?!’
It was only after being blocked shortly after the knife guide was uploaded that he realized something had gone wrong.
“Why?! Why the hell?!”
Stay-at-home Wifey cried more bitterly than he had on the day he had been forcibly separated from his classmates because of the bullying.
He became depressed and avoided logging into the game for several days.
When he eventually created an alternate account and entered the community, he found an unexpected rumor circulating.
‘The heavy users disappeared?’
He hurriedly checked Dopamine Addict’s account.
Dopamine Addict had not logged in for several days either.
‘He does disappear for a few days at a time sometimes...’
While checking the login records of the other heavy users, Stay-at-home Wifey noticed that Home Protector—the person who always acted pointlessly close to Dopamine Addict—had not logged in either.
He was startled.
‘Even this guy isn’t logging into the game? Did they really disappear?’
Stay-at-home Wifey began investigating the disappearance of the heavy users.
Before long, another player sent him the address of a convenience store.
It was the Safe Zone collaboration store mentioned in the post Dopamine Addict had uploaded shortly after blocking him.
Stay-at-home Wifey went there immediately.
The store was far less impressive than he had expected, and just as he was leaving after buying a bottle of cola, he was transported into the game.
He was forced to enlist by T-Bastard and spent his days being worked to the bone in training.
But in truth, life was not that bad.
The body he had been transported into was not merely healthy.
It even possessed a self-healing ability.
On top of that, the player he had believed was T-Bastard turned out to be the real Dopamine Addict.
‘As long as Dopamine Addict is on my side, the apocalypse won’t be a problem.’
And because that bastard had truly succeeded in the illegitimate-child route and become Young Master Haydam, military life had grown much easier too.
“The fur crocodile’s tail came flying straight at me, and at that exact moment Haydam jumped in front of me—Bam!”
“Gasp! Don’t tell me!”
“That’s right. Haydam took the hit from the tail in my place.”
One of the senior soldiers listening excitedly to Stay-at-home Wifey’s tale of adventure—if it could even be called that—shouted,
“Holy shit! Then the injury he supposedly suffered during that desperate battle with the fur crocodile... he got it while protecting you?!”
“Exactly.”
“Whoa. That’s incredible!”
Another senior soldier could not hide his suspicion.
“That makes no sense. Why would he protect a useless bastard like you?”
“I already told you. Haydam promised long ago that he would place me in an important position.”
“No, that’s what I’m asking. Why would he put you in an important position when he already has someone as incredible as Major General Meursault by his side?”
Stay-at-home Wifey glared at him.
“I can’t explain the details, but I possess an extraordinary talent.”
“What talent? Annoying people?”
“It does piss me off hearing someone who still talks like a civilian bragging about talent.”
“Are you questioning Haydam’s judgment?”
“N-no, not exactly.”
Stay-at-home Wifey had already been summoned privately by Haydam several times.
The suspicious senior soldier therefore gave a vague answer and backed down.
The other senior soldiers also knew that Haydam and Stay-at-home Wifey were fairly close.
Ever since the first pork-belly party, they still treated him as useless, but they no longer bullied him.
Just then, a soldier emerged from the barracks, spotted Stay-at-home Wifey, and approached while shouting,
“Hey, loner. You’ve got permission to go out.”
Stay-at-home Wifey put on an arrogant expression.
“Well, speak of the tiger and it appears. Haydam must be calling for me again.”
“You say weird things sometimes. What’s a tiger? Do you mean a butterfly tiger?”
“Why would a butterfly tiger appear when someone talks about it?”
Stay-at-home Wifey lightly ignored the ignorant game NPCs who did not even know a Korean proverb and asked the approaching soldier,
“Am I going to the Commander’s residence again?”
The soldier handed him a leave pass.
“This time it’s an errand. You’re from the slums, right?”
“Ah, yes.”
Remembering that Haydam had written on his enlistment form that he was an orphan from the slums, Stay-at-home Wifey nodded.
The soldier continued.
“They want you to go to the slums and bring something back.”
“Bring... what?”
“They said you’d know once you arrived.”
He would know after reaching the slums?
‘Did Dopamine Addict order this?’
At this point, Dopamine Addict was the only person who might deliberately send him on an errand to the slums.
But if it had been him, he probably would have spoken to Stay-at-home Wifey directly instead of going through some random soldier.
Even though he knew a soldier should not question an order, Stay-at-home Wifey asked,
“Whose order is it?”
As expected, the soldier’s face immediately hardened as he stared at him.
“Why are you curious? Are you going to refuse depending on who gave the order?”
Stay-at-home Wifey felt a surge of anger.
He wanted to throw himself onto the ground and scream, Do you know who I am?! I’ve eaten with the Commander’s son and even gone hunting with him, you bastard!
But the soldier before him belonged to the faction of the officer who had recently been promoted to lieutenant general.
In other words, he served a pro-Daphne officer, so Haydam’s name probably would not carry much weight with him.
“N-no. I’ll go.”
Stay-at-home Wifey barely suppressed his urge to act like an asshole and answered obediently.
After all, he knew the Cola Zone’s slums better than anyone else in this world.
He did not expect any problems.
***
While preparing to attend the military academy’s graduation ceremony, I heard something absurd from Meursault.
“Darling Outsider isn’t in the barracks?”
“Yes.”
“Looks like he finally deserted.”
I had meant it as a joke, but Meursault’s expression did not change.
“...Huh? Seriously?”
“It is somewhat ambiguous.”
“What do you mean, ambiguous?”
“According to the other soldiers, he went to the slums on an errand.”
“An errand?”
I frowned.
“Who besides me would send him on an errand?”
“They said they did not know who issued the order.”
“Did you check the slums?”
“Yes. But by the time I arrived, he had already been moved somewhere else.”
“Moved somewhere else? A soldier went missing and they’re just leaving it alone?”
“His leave pass says he must return before midnight today. They told me to wait until then.”
“A child disappeared, and they... Never mind.”
Come to think of it, this was an apocalyptic world.
A single child soldier disappearing was hardly unusual.
Stay-at-home Wifey was not actually a child either.
He was a player, so he probably was not in serious danger.
‘He said he was twenty, didn’t he...?’
From my perspective, twenty still counted as a child.
‘Once the graduation ceremony ends, I’ll go look for him.’
As I thought that, Meursault read my mind with almost supernatural accuracy.
“I will have a vehicle prepared once the ceremony is over.”
“...All right. Please do, Meursault.”
I stopped midway through putting on my jacket and asked him,
“Are you really going to participate in the subjugation?”
“I do not understand why everyone is so concerned. I am a soldier too.”
“Because you’re suddenly doing something you never did before.”
“I have participated in subjugations in the past. Although I remained in the rearmost position.”
“This time you’re moving with me, aren’t you? At the very front.”
“I made my own calculations.”
“What calculations?”
“I calculated that being beside Lord Haydam would be safer than remaining in the rear.”
“......”
It was not an incorrect calculation.
Still, if he was openly attaching himself to me because he thought I was safe, I would have nothing to say to Daphne if something happened to him later.
Well, nothing was likely to happen anyway...
“By the way, what are you plotting with Cadet Plato?”
“Plotting? Anyone overhearing you would think I was scheming something at a children’s graduation ceremony.”
“You are.”
After replying without hesitation, Meursault tilted his head and muttered,
“A children’s graduation ceremony? He is even younger than they are...”
“Meursault, are you going to keep muttering? We’ll be late.”
“Are you truly not going to tell me what you planned?”
“You’ll hear it when we get there.”
After refusing, I gave Meursault a playful smile.
“Come to think of it, Meursault, you didn’t graduate from the military academy, did you?”
“No. As you know, parental connections matter greatly at the academy.”
More than eighty percent of the people in this zone were orphans.
And yet, even here, there existed a bourgeois class that had accumulated wealth.
Children of high-ranking officers, like Plato.
Or adopted children under an officer’s patronage, like Bones.
Only children like them could enter the military academy.
Meursault had enlisted as a child soldier and clawed his way all the way up to major general.
His obsession with having a family probably stemmed from that same unfair system.
“Parental connections... I really hate things like that.”
“Pardon? Isn’t it rather hypocritical for someone who exploits his parental connections more than anyone else to say that?”
“That may be true.”
“Wait. You couldn’t possibly...”
Meursault seemed to realize something.
I grinned at him.
“Look forward to Plato’s speech.”