Hiding a House in the Apocalypse Chapter 86.2

VIVA_BOT014: Pardon?

There was only one reason I initiated a conversation with VIVA_BOT.

A short while ago, I had submitted a story to the Movie! Apocalypse! event’s storytelling contest. It was based on my own raw, unfiltered experiences.

Frankly, even as the author, I thought it was an incredible story.

It chronicled the great struggle where I, SKELTON, alongside my handful of teammates, held back an entire front line against an endless tide of monsters that had broken through Beijing’s final defense line.

The story was no re embellishnt; it was the genuine record of an event so legendary that even China’s highest-ranking officials personally expressed their gratitude to .

Yet, for so unclear reason, my story was rejected.

VIVA_BOT014: Despite your passion, your entry did not make it.

Fine. If there was a story better than mine, I could accept that.

After all, there are plenty of people in the world, and so of them might have had experiences even more dramatic than mine.

But to lose to soone like dongtanmom? That was a completely different issue.

dongtanmom: Nom nom... I passed the preliminaries... nom nom... I'll probably pass the finals too... Don't feel too bad... It's just that I'm too strong... nom nom...

Already disheartened by the rejection, seeing dongtanmom's smug post tipped over the edge.

I imdiately initiated a conversation with VIVA_BOT.

SKELTON: What exactly makes inferior to dongtanmom?!

VIVA_BOT014: What is the intention behind your question?

SKELTON: No, seriously—why does dongtanmom get approved, and I don’t?

VIVA_BOT014: Because dongtanmom’s story is better.

SKELTON: ?

VIVA_BOT014: What’s with the reaction? Surely you don’t think your story is better than dongtanmom’s?

SKELTON: My story is 100% factual, cross-verified and authenticated. If the Chinese people who were there at the ti are still alive, they can back up.

VIVA_BOT014: I was the one who evaluated your story. It wasn’t bad. It would even translate well to video with all the non-stop battles.

SKELTON: Isn’t that a good thing?

VIVA_BOT014: But can you really call sothing that’s just constant fighting a story?

SKELTON: ?

VIVA_BOT014: Let’s see. 21:13, two Dancer Types crossed the Gamma Line. Jung Gwang-hyun began showing signs of trauma and was left behind. Kim Daram and I dealt with the situation alone. At 21:30, both targets were eliminated. Sa night, 21:42, the battle continued. By this point, the fight had surpassed 48 hours. Permission was granted for stimulant use among willing team mbers. Jung Gwang-hyun and Son Jin-seop administered the stimulants...

SKELTON: Oh. So you did read it.

VIVA_BOT014: Of course I did. It’s a submission from the holder of the Golden Fleece. But here’s the thing—can we really call that a story?

SKELTON: Excuse ?

VIVA_BOT014: What you sent is just a battle log.

SKELTON: Isn’t the simplicity part of its appeal?

VIVA_BOT014: I don’t know why, but you seem to have this inferiority complex about dongtanmom and M9. I’ll send you the two finalist entries. Compare them to your story.

The first file VIVA_BOT sent over was dongtanmom’s story.

I could already guess—it was probably just a more fleshed-out version of the drivel they’d been posting bit by bit on the forum, detailing their journey from Shanghai to their current location.

I opened the file with little enthusiasm, letting my eyes skim over the content.

"This is the story of how we lost our neighbors."

A powerful tagline imdiately grabbed my attention.

With a mix of curiosity and a familiar sense of defeat, I began reading dongtanmom’s story.

The narrative started with dongtanmom—Baek Seung-hyun—boarding a massive oil tanker nad Hope.

*

The Hope was an ULCC (Ultra Large Crude Carrier) originally under construction on Geoje Island, repurposed into a massive evacuation ship.

At 380 ters in length and 68 ters wide, it was so enormous that four international-standard soccer fields could fit side by side on its deck. It was too large to dock at the Incheon port without a dedicated facility being built specifically for it.

The ship’s deadweight tonnage of 450,000 tons ant it could carry twice the population of Busan if needed.

Officially, the Hope carried 200,000 passengers, though Baek Seung-hyun estimated the number was closer to 100,000.

Baek Seung-hyun later recalled that, on the day of the Hope's departure, there was a strange yet familiar atmosphere aboard the ship.

“A high-society social gathering? No, it was sothing like that, but cruder. One thing was clear, though: there was a shared sense of complicity among us that we were better off than those left behind. That much I can say for sure.”

It doesn’t take much to imagine what the people aboard this vessel bound for the coveted haven of Jeju thought about those who didn’t make it.

But even within the ship, there were distinctions in class and hierarchy.

These distinctions were clearly marked by the grade of cabins passengers occupied.

The Hope’s cabins were divided into five grades: Special Class, First Class, Second Class, Third Class, and Free Class.

Regarding the Special Class, Baek Seung-hyun confessed he didn’t know much.

“I heard about it, sure. But I had no idea who was in Special Class or what they were like. The ship’s zones were strictly segregated by cabin grade, and trespassing into other zones wasn’t allowed.”

Ever crafty, Baek Seung-hyun added another narrator to his story—VIVA_BOT014, who posed questions to him.

VIVA_BOT014: “The Incheon governnt estimates 200,000 passengers, while dongtanmom estimates around 100,000. Even so, how could that many people be controlled on one ship?”

Baek Seung-hyun smirked at the abrupt question.

“Why would you need to control them?”

VIVA_BOT014: “?”

“All you have to do is assign grades. People will do the discriminating and controlling themselves.”

Baek Seung-hyun was in First Class.

That was likely thanks to this SKELTON’s assistance.

On this ship, however, cabin grades didn’t just denote locations onboard; they extended to the passengers’ future in Jeju.

While Baek Seung-hyun had never been to Jeju himself, he’d heard that its residential zones were divided into five tiers based on housing size, infrastructure, and quality of life: Special Zone, First Zone, Second Zone, Third Zone, and Holding Zone.

These zones corresponded directly to the ship’s cabin grades.

In other words, First Class passengers would be assigned to the First Zone, and so on. Passengers in Free Class would end up in the Holding Zone.

For context:

The First Zone provided hos roughly 84 square ters in size, along with extensive welfare support.

The Second Zone offered hos about 59 square ters in size, with moderate welfare.

The Third Zone consisted of cramped living spaces, not much better than studio apartnts, with minimal welfare.

The Holding Zone resembled the conditions of refugee shelters back in Incheon.

Given this direct connection between onboard and onshore hierarchy, it was only natural for passengers to form close bonds with those in their grade.

Baek Seung-hyun exchanged pleasantries with his neighboring cabin occupants.

“To my left, in cabin 1031, was a middle-aged couple. The husband was a forr mid-sized business owner, I heard. They must have been in a good shelter before this; they were dressed sharp, and the wife was draped in Hers—luxury like that is rare to see these days. To my right, in cabin 1029, was a young doctor couple. Both were doctors, but they didn’t have kids. They’d tried, but it hadn’t worked out.”

No one enjoyed ranking people or assessing their worth more than Baek Seung-hyun, who was keenly attuned to such social dynamics. Observing his fellow First Class passengers, he noted several common traits.

“Most were over fifty, well-educated, and had considerable wealth before the war. It felt like a gathering of the upper-middle class, at minimum. Everyone was polite and cultured—but before long, they started looking down on my family.”

Baek Seung-hyun’s family consisted of himself, his wife, and their infant son.

While Baek Seung-hyun claid to have lived a decent life—having been a school graduate, a hunter, and later a small business owner—his wife hadn’t had an easy life even before the war.

She’d grown up in a troubled household, often running away and falling in with bad crowds. Unlike Baek Seung-hyun’s polished speech and deanor, which reflected his education, his wife’s speech and mannerisms betrayed her lack of refinent.

Rumors about the couple quickly spread among the First Class passengers, fueled by their age gap and his wife’s uncultured behavior.

“They even asked if I’d dropped out of middle school,” Baek Seung-hyun recalled bitterly.

His wife, however, wasn’t fazed. She had a strong ntal fortitude.

“I didn’t even graduate elentary school,” she quipped with a wry smile, looking up at him.

While she could laugh it off, Baek Seung-hyun couldn’t. He harbored resentnt toward those who disrespected his wife.

Sensing his anger, she tried to calm him down.

“Look, we’ll see these people every day. If you go around beating them up like you did back in Incheon, it’ll only hurt us in the end.”

The First Class community’s relentless snooping eventually turned its focus on Baek Seung-hyun himself.

He had tried to hide the fact that he used to be a hunter, as he had no fond mories of it—freelancing in Seoul and Incheon with no official support, risking his life for scraps.

But the community didn’t let up, and eventually, he confessed.

“Yes, I used to be a hunter.”

The man in the neighboring cabin asked curtly, “You’re not Awakened, are you?”

“What?”

“If you were Awakened, why would you be here? Aren’t you just one of those old hunters? No one cares about them anymore.”

The man, middle-aged and smug in his shallow knowledge, spoke as if he were an authority on the subject.

“Yeah, those old hunters are no different from regular folks now. No one hires them anymore.”

The negativity toward the Baek family beca increasingly overt.

The only ones who showed them kindness were the doctor couple next door.

“We’re all outsiders on Jeju anyway. I don’t understand why people in the sa cabin feel the need to create hierarchies,” the pediatrician husband sighed, gesturing to the barricade First Class passengers had set up to block access to Second Class hallways.

The Hope’s journey was supposed to take 20 hours and 30 minutes.

Ten hours into the trip, the ship stopped.

The PA system announced that a leak had caused flooding in so Third Class cabins and that affected passengers would be transferred to another ship.

No one questioned the announcent.

Who cared about Third Class, anyway?

Only Baek Seung-hyun’s wife, while cradling their baby, asked him, “Are there even any empty spots on other ships? I thought they were all packed.”

“Who knows,” he replied.

Though he, too, felt sothing was off—a leak on a ship this massive?—he suppressed his instincts, afraid that questioning things might shatter his dream of reaching Jeju.

The journey resud, and a party was thrown in the First Class community to celebrate.

Soone had brought champagne, and passengers were invited to join.

Baek Seung-hyun didn’t go. He knew he’d only be ignored or mocked.

In silence, he waited for the 20 hours and 30 minutes to pass.

When the promised ti ca, dongtanmom connected her hidden Obelisk battery to her phone and logged into Viva! Apocalypse!

“Nom nom.”

She was ready to live-stream her historic landing on Jeju.

But as she fild the approaching coastline, murmurs erupted around her.

“Wait, is this Jeju?”

“Why are all the signs in Chinese?”

“And not just Chinese—simplified characters?!”

“It’s Shanghai... It’s Shanghai!”

The Hope’s destination wasn’t Jeju at all.

It was Shanghai—a city overrun by erosion, abandoned for more than two years.

Thousands of passengers finally realized the truth: they’d been discarded.

In that place, distinctions like First Class, Second Class, or Third Class no longer mattered.

Thud!

The massive ship, long adrift, gently collided with the abandoned harbor, its hull groaning as if to announce their fate.

As the sound echoed, dongtanmom turned to her family.

Now, only one goal remained for her:

To save her family.

“What do we do now?!”

“Does anyone have a radio? I know soone in the Crisis Committee—Commissioner Jeong Sung-ryong!”

“Where’s the captain? Let’s gather people and head to the bridge!”

Outside their cabin, the voices of First Class passengers filled the hallways in panic.

anwhile, Baek Seung-hyun calmly checked his supplies.

No firearms.

A kitchen knife and a paring knife were all he had for weapons.

Five days’ worth of food and two days’ worth of water.

“Hey... What do we do now?” his wife asked, holding their baby, her face filled with worry.

Baek Seung-hyun gathered what few weapons he had and looked at her resolutely.

“Don’t worry. I’ll protect you. No matter what.”