14. Faction Tensions (3)

The halmeoni swayed with guilt, her slumped shoulders telegraphing remorse. I exhaled smoke through my nose. “Not my job to play therapist.”

When she finally spoke – a mumbled question about the injured skaters – I nearly laughed. “Want to apologize? Go ahead.” Her passive misery irritated me like indigestion. “If you’re suicidal, leave. This place is for people who want to live.”

Slamming the rooftop door, I spotted salvation across the district – a ten-story megamart looming over smaller buildings. Fully stocked floors. Untouched supplies. And crucially, completely inaccessible to normal humans swarmed by infected.

Except me.

“…Not bad,” I murmured, already calculating supply routes.

The halmeoni reappeared, now wanting to tend the wounded. Eunseo’s glare could melt steel when the old woman mentioned being a retired nurse. “After what your people did?”

I pushed the halmeoni forward. “She didn’t swing the fists. And your boys need stitches before their eyeballs fall out.”

The tension in that room could power a generator. Beautiful.

* * *

Fourteen mouths devoured the black bean noodles Suhyun and Ye-eun cooked. My accidental faction – grandmothers, injured skaters, a baby, and my maybe-girlfriend – chattered on the rooftop during our first council.

“We’re moving,” I announced, pointing at the distant megamart. “Everything we need is there. Food. Tools. Roof for farming.”

Halmeoni protested abandoning her home until I mentioned gardening space. The nursing home administrator’s eyes lit up at having purpose again. Even our shell-shocked nurse perked up.

Hope, fragile as a soap bubble, glimmered in their faces.

I wondered how other survivor groups fared. Probably eating each other alive by now.

Idiots.