Chapter 44: The Ones Left Behind

The hand gently rubbing his back as he struggled to catch his breath was warm.

The bright brown eyes reflecting the sunlight reminded him of the reed fields beyond the shelter buildings.

Afraid this might all be a dream brought on by unconsciousness, he reached out and touched Shinwoo’s neck, shoulders, and hands one after another.

Muscles hardened from years of surviving on the streets shifted vividly beneath the thick fabric.

“So… honestly, I don’t even know where to start explaining all this….”

“Don’t tell me something happened to everyone at the shelter. Nothing went wrong, right? They’re all safe, aren’t they? Right?”

“…Not all of them.”

“…W-What do you mean, not all? What do you mean not all of them?!”

As the barrage of questions continued, Lee Shinwoo’s expression darkened with discomfort.

Fear came second.

More than anything, he was desperate to know where the survivors were.

Unable to properly support his heavy body, he fidgeted anxiously, waiting for the man before him to say something.

“The truth is… for a while now, the looters have been getting more and more violent.”

After a long silence filled with tension, Shinwoo finally spoke in a heavily restrained voice.

“…Right. You probably don’t even know what looters are yet.”

“…No, I saw them. At dawn, around here. Men in military uniforms kidnapping children. Aren’t those the looters you’re talking about?”

“Yeah. You saw correctly.”

“…That makes no sense. Those people are rebels. They’re supposed to protect the lower districts from government oppression! Why would they hurt innocent people?”

“…That’s how they used to be. Not anymore.”

“What?”

Shinwoo helped him stand and guided him behind a cement pipe where fewer people could see them.

Leaning half his weight against Shinwoo’s solid shoulder, he sat atop a large brick and listened carefully.

“We don’t call them rebels anymore. We call them looters now. Everything around here becoming this ruined… it’s all because of them.”

“……”

“Damn it. Times like this really make me hate how bad I am with words.”

But he already knew the horrors Shinwoo struggled to describe.

He had witnessed enough before dawn.

Though Shinwoo carefully chose his words, clearly trying to lessen the shock, it was meaningless now.

He had already seen the devastation inside and outside the city with his own eyes.

“You know how, over the last six months, the National Security Bureau and the government kept increasing pressure on the rebels, right? Because of that, there were constant battles with the national army. The rebels were already outnumbered, so their forces gradually weakened.”

“……”

“I think that’s when it started. The moment they completely changed.”

“……”

“The rebels… no, the looters… once military supplies stopped reaching them properly and morale collapsed, they began stealing mercilessly from the very people living in the conflict zones.”

“And recently, they started forcibly conscripting children too. Training them as child soldiers because they were desperate to fill their ranks.”

“……”

“What you saw earlier was probably part of that process.”

One horrifying revelation after another poured from Shinwoo’s mouth.

He had assumed this chaos was simply caused by government pressure.

But this was something born entirely from within the rebels themselves.

And worst of all, they were conscripting children too young to even read properly and turning them into soldiers.

It was something no sane person could understand.

Nor should they ever try to.

“At first, those bastards probably thought the government would interfere if they went too far, so they approached people pretending to ask for help.”

“But once they realized the higher-ups didn’t care at all about what happened here, they started taking complete control of the area.”

“Right now, this place is basically their personal farm.”

“……”

“…Honestly, I feel ashamed saying this to you, but we couldn’t completely avoid the fallout either.”

Shinwoo looked up at the sun now hanging high overhead.

Then, gritting his teeth, he spoke slowly.

“…Up until six months ago, the shelter was doing alright. Between the subsidies you sent and the government support, we managed to protect the refugees gathering around us.”

“…That….”

“…But in the end, that became the problem.”

A single tear slowly slid down from his bloodshot eyes.

“Well, it was inevitable. The shelter was the only place left in this district that still had supplies.”

“……”

“We were grateful to you. And sorry too. You were struggling so desperately at the Center for our sake, so we tried to help the people around us even harder.”

“But who could’ve known it would all collapse overnight?”

“……”

For a brief moment, Shinwoo’s face turned utterly lost.

His clenched fist trembled with tension.

Staring at the horrifying reality that had unfolded without his knowledge, he forgot even to close his mouth as his own shaking hands grasped Shinwoo’s tightly.

“We tried everything to protect it.”

“The director always told us never to give up easily.”

“And when the looters infiltrated the shelter, we worked together and drove them out over and over again.”

“……”

“But against guns… there’s only so much people can do.”

‘This whole year, the lower districts have basically been a war zone. Absolute hell. Things were already unstable, and then the food shortages got so bad people started spreading rumors about cannibalism.’

War zone.

Hell.

Food shortages.

The words broker Hwang Yunggu had spat out in disgust now fit together perfectly like pieces of a puzzle.

Without realizing it, he had already been warning him about the devastated reality of the conflict zones ruined by the looters.

“I know I shouldn’t say this in front of you… but eventually I started wondering…”

“If we had just abandoned the shelter earlier and escaped, would so many people still have died?”

“If we’d done that… would the director, Seowoo, and Dano all still be alive?”

“N-No… ah….”

“…You finally came back after seven years, and this is all I can tell you. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry.”

“Even if I wanted to contact you, those bastards stole all the money, supplies, even the informants.”

“And everything happened so suddenly.”

“I was so busy trying to collect the bodies that my mind completely went blank, so….”

The tears trembling precariously at the edges of Shinwoo’s sharp eyes finally fell.

The director who had dedicated an entire lifetime to keeping the shelter running smoothly.

The younger kids who had forced bright smiles and told him to bring back souvenirs and food whenever he visited.

Shinwoo had buried them all with his own hands.

And now he broke down sobbing.

“I’m sorry. I’m really sorry….”

“…Ugh… hic….”

The grief of longing for people he would never see again crushed him.

He wondered why their lives never seemed to contain even a single moment free from suffering.

But the god who ignored them and cared only for his blessed people had long since abandoned them.

The joyful faces of the upper district citizens gathered around the department store plaza to celebrate Christmas scratched painfully against his nerves.

He admitted it.

They were blessed.

And people like them were cursed.

That was why they could celebrate the birth of their god with such innocent happiness.

“Hic… then what about the others? Are the others safe?”

“Yeah. They escaped somewhere secure. We’re heading there too.”

“Where? Where are they? I need to see for myself that they’re really okay….”

“First calm down. See that mountain over there?”

Shinwoo wiped away his tears and pointed toward the massive mountain beyond the reed fields.

But even halfway up, the mountain was mostly made of hard stone, unsuitable for people to live on.

When he continued glancing over suspiciously, Shinwoo patted his shoulder reassuringly.

“The shelter residents, and the people who survived while avoiding the looters’ surveillance, all gathered there and built a small village together.”

“Well, village might be an exaggeration. It’s basically just a tiny shantytown.”

“But it’s livable.”

“…Really? Everyone’s there?”

“Yeah.”

“I only came down here briefly to check the situation around the area.”

“Once my shift changes, I have to head back up anyway, so depending on the situation, we’ll return together.”

If there was any blessing left amidst this misery, it was that some of the shelter residents had survived the nightmare and escaped somewhere safe.

After pulling binoculars from his bag and carefully scanning the surrounding area, Shinwoo suggested they hide inside the forest once the sun began setting westward.

“Oh, right. Shinwoo.”

“Do you know anywhere nearby to get supplies besides the marketplace? Even if it’s far away….”

“There are places, but you’d need to travel at least half a day from here.”

“But why?”

“…Well… I quit yesterday.”

“So I received a pretty huge amount of money between my severance pay and incentives.”

“And after hearing everything… if everyone barely escaped alive, then food and supplies are probably desperately lacking….”

“…Jaeyoon.”

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