Hiding a House in the Apocalypse-Chapter 155.2: Heavy Hitter (2)

Hiding a House in the Apocalypse-Chapter 155.2: Heavy Hitter (2)

A truly exceptional person needs no flashy titles.
The Heavy Hitter.
The simplest and most sincere nickname for Jo Yeong-chun.
He had been a spectacular player.
He set home run records, maintained a lifetime batting average of .300, and personally amassed both wealth and fame.
He had tangled with top stars of the time—romantic entanglements that seemed more like formalities—and eventually succeeded in marriage. Unlike many other professional athletes, he entered the war while still retaining his wealth and reputation from his glory days.
Even Minsik, a fan of Jo Yeong-chun, didn’t know whether he had any children.
“He probably does, don’t you think? He’s been married four times. You’d think he would’ve had at least one kid, right?”
The reason I followed Minsik wasn’t only to build trust with him—it was also curiosity.
Scavengers.
People who survive by scavenging through the ruins left behind after the war. I wanted to observe their lives up close.
And Minsik’s crew—among the countless scavengers—could be called the final evolutionary form of their kind. They were the most refined and robust variant.
Watching how they operated within erosion-prone and dangerously unstable ruins was, in itself, an invaluable textbook.
Structurally, they were very different from us Hunters.
While Hunters typically operated in four-person teams, these scavengers were a mixed group of over twenty men and women.
Among them were boys around middle school age and even middle-aged women.
When I asked about it, Minsik, hunched in the passenger seat of the rattling bus, scanned the surroundings with hawk-like eyes and answered:
“Kids can crawl into tight spaces, and those ladies—those ladies can spot value in things we’d miss. They’re meticulous. Better than us.”
Their vehicle was a makeshift bus clad in steel plates and powered by oil. Minsik emphasized the importance of internal combustion engines.
“I’ve used electric buses before. They’ve got advantages, sure—but not for combat. One hit and the whole thing turns into a grill. And if a minor fault occurs? Good luck fixing it. Not being able to turn on the heater in this kind of fuck-awful cold? That’s the least of your worries.”
It was around then that I began to understand why scavengers were so obsessed with territory.
They didn’t scavenge recklessly.
Anyone who’d watched them, even briefly, could tell. But in reality, their system of area division was even more methodical and deliberate than it appeared.
Let’s borrow Minsik’s words here:
“Our bus is a precious resource. It’s our lifeline. Whether we have it or not determines the amount and type of loot we can haul. The more people we have, the more we can gather.”
That’s why scavengers prioritized building a logistics route centered on buses and other vehicles, creating systems to make their transport most efficient.
“We build bus stops.”
Before initiating a scavenge at a specific point, scavengers would first secure the transport route.
They sent out the best combat scouts—likely including sensory Awakened—to ensure road safety and establish their own paths and routes through ruined cities.
When encountering threats, they calculated the cost of confronting the danger against the benefits of removing it. If the benefit was high enough, they willingly accepted the risk.
Their enemies were usually raiders, though according to Minsik, they had once cleared out everything except monsters.
They avoided monsters not just because they were dangerous, but because—so long as you didn’t intrude on their territory—they were, in fact, among the safest known elements. Experience had taught them that.
“Monsters are like noblemen. Stay out of their land and they won’t bother you.”
The legendary athlete had settled down next to such a nobleman’s estate.
Said nobleman? A necromancer-type infiltration-class monster.
A zombie field.
“Jo Yeong-chun is at the next stop.”
Like many from his generation, Minsik spoke half in informal language and half in polite speech—but I didn’t mind.
He was significantly older than me, and he didn’t seem to be using informal speech as a way to assert dominance.
“Alright, everyone off! Hee-min’s mom, you doing okay?”
“I’m fine, I’m fine.”
“Good. Hee-min’s mom is greenlit. How about Jeong-tae?”
“Ugh, it’s fucked, but what can you do? We’ve been off for two weeks.”
I guess he just preferred speaking casually.
He used informal speech with women of his age and even with teenage boys. It came naturally.
Because there was a monster nest near where Jo Yeong-chun lived, the bus stopped one stop away, and they released the scavengers.
Only two came with us.
One of them wore sunglasses, and from the soft glow visible through the lenses, I figured he was likely a sensory-type Awakened.
“Here. Take this.”
Minsik handed me a baseball bat.
A reinforced bat, with its midsection plated in steel.
It was probably meant for use against the zombies lurking in the distance.
Thud! Thud!
The men in the lead smashed zombie skulls with practiced ease, clearing a path.
They showed no fear, and though their swings seemed light, the force behind them was clearly substantial.
They weren’t amateurs.
“You know what’s funny?”
Minsik swung his own bat and dropped a zombie, then spoke:
“There’s this guy, used to be a fuckin’ legend. Someone I never even dreamed of talking to. And now, he clings to me, depends on me. You know that feeling? Arousal? Nah. Comedy?”
The man in sunglasses cut in:
“You mean exhilaration?”
“Yeah, yeah! Exhilaration! Shit, Korean is such a bitch.”
After clubbing another few zombies, Minsik wiped sweat from his forehead and exhaled.
“It’s fun, isn’t it?”
“......”
“......Sir?”
“Oh, no need to be so formal. So, where’s the player now?”
“There. That apartment.”
He pointed at a low, old apartment building.
The layout was square, with units forming a box around a central courtyard—classic outdated construction.
Though now a ruin, the surrounding area didn’t resemble an affluent neighborhood.
It didn’t seem like the kind of place a man who had once enjoyed fame and wealth would choose to live in.
I was still thinking about that when a dull boom echoed nearby.
Boom!
Something had exploded.
I paused, trying to process the sound.
It was clearly the sound of something being beaten with a blunt object—but the acoustic resonance was nothing like our zombie kills.
It was as if the club itself was generating the blast.
Soon, we found the source of the satisfying, explosive noise.
Boom!
A massive man, radiating primal strength like a wild stallion, was swinging a bat at a crowd of zombies.
Boom! Boom!
The bat was just like the ones the scavengers used.
I looked at Minsik.
“Is that...?”
Minsik grinned and nodded.
“Yep. That’s him—”
Boom!
With a final swing, he sent a zombie’s head flying like a home run ball, then turned toward us.
Jo Yeong-chun.
The heavy hitter of days past.
*
He lived alone in the old apartment we’d spotted.
The inside was even more rundown than the exterior. Poverty clung to every corner.
It looked like the building was part of a failed redevelopment project. The front doors bore crusted-over flyers urging people to approve demolition—like an outbreak of pustules.
Some doors even had foreclosure notices posted on them. Familiar, chilling stuff.
“I lived in Incheon for a while.”
Despite his size and rough face, Jo Yeong-chun’s voice was thin, almost boyish.
“Stayed for a bit, but eventually came back.”
He looked at Minsik with tired eyes.
“If I hadn’t met Mr. Lee Do-won, I probably would’ve died.”
Minsik nodded slowly, a warm smile on his face, as he looked at the idol of his youth.
I looked around the home.
It was narrow, old, and grim.
A bit bigger than the one Jang Ki-young lived in during his final years, but much older.
The yellowing floorboards hadn’t been made in the 21st century.
It looked like a place that had always been poor—meant for people with nowhere else to go.
And yet, in the midst of that poverty, in a crumbling display case, faded trophies and plaques lingered like scars.
Was this really his home?
“Brother Yeong-chun.”
Minsik got down to business.
“As I said before, it’s time for you to leave. This man is the commander of Seoul’s Hunters, and he said they’re going to blow the bridge. Once that happens, we won’t be able to come here like before. This might be your last chance.”
Fan loyalty, it seemed, ran deep.
Despite his usual casual speech, he addressed this man with full honorifics.
I looked at Jo Yeong-chun’s face.
It was clear what he’d already decided.
He wouldn’t change his mind.
“I’m sorry, brother.”
Sure enough, Jo Yeong-chun chose to stay.
“I’m staying. Thanks for everything. Really. I mean it. I have nothing to say except thank you.”
For those who are old, tired, and have nowhere left to go, it’s common to choose to die in a familiar place rather than embark on a new adventure in a strange land.
Jo Yeong-chun made that choice too.
Minsik’s crew began unloading food and fuel.
Inside the cupboard, however, there was little—barely a month’s worth, even with strict rationing.
If the temperature dropped suddenly, his remaining time would shrink even further.
“......”
I stood up.
A great athlete, perhaps, but he had no ties to me.
While Minsik and his crew said their goodbyes, I wandered the small home.
My steps halted at the display case holding the faded trophies.
Most of the certificates and awards were too damaged to identify.
I saw Jo Yeong-chun’s gaze flick toward me through the glass.
“......Was this one yours?”
It felt improper to leave without saying a word.
Offering a few kind words /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ felt like the least I could do.
But—
“It’s not mine.”
He said it plainly.
I felt disoriented for a moment.
It was like my mental framework—the assumptions I’d built—had been upended.
I stared at him, puzzled.
“They belonged to a friend.”
“A friend?”
He nodded.
“We went to middle and high school together.”
“I see...”
One question answered—another arose.
“Why here, then?”
If this were a safe place, I could understand.
But this was a place close to death.
Did he come here to die?
But he’d shown such a strong will to live.
That swing—sending a zombie’s head flying like a baseball—was something even I, a Hunter, could barely imitate.
“There’s something bothering me.”
He smiled faintly, eyes fixed on the air—as if watching a past that would never return.
I waited.
“He was really good. Great pitcher, great batter. As an ace and even better than me, his catcher.”
“Were you close?”
Still staring into the past, Jo Yeong-chun slowly shook his head.
“No. After high school, we didn’t even share a drink. He was insufferably arrogant when he was successful. A real prick. I actually felt pretty satisfied when he got caught in a draft-dodging scandal and got sent to the army.”
A twisted smile crossed his face as he let out a shallow sigh.
“But you know how it is. Some guys—even if you haven’t seen them in ten years—it still feels like you just saw them yesterday.”
“......”
“He was one of those. I realized it too late.”
Jo Yeong-chun stood.
He was well over 190cm tall, and even hunched, he radiated presence.
He looked down at the trophy with eyes still lost in the past.
He picked one up in his large hand, brushed off the dust, and spoke:
“Back when I was famous, he asked me a favor.”
Another hand joined to wipe the glass clean.
“He wanted me to bat against his pitch. Said it was his last call-up to the majors. Wanted to test himself and get some pointers.”
Clink.
The trophy was set back in place.
“I refused. He got demoted to the minors. Eventually, his name stopped appearing in the sports pages. Heard he tried to convert to a batter, but he couldn’t make it.”
Woooooo...
The distant moan of zombies echoed.
Another horde must’ve wandered nearby.
Jo Yeong-chun sighed and stood again.
“I thought about killing myself in Incheon.”
The massive hand that once struck fear into countless pitchers now gripped a bat.
“I’ve never regretted anything in my life. So I thought dying would be easy.”
He turned his head.
A bitter smile stretched across the visible side of his face.
“But when it came time... I couldn’t stop thinking about him.”
Later, I heard that Jo Yeong-chun had indeed married four times and divorced four times.
He had several children but relinquished all custody.
He even attended a fraudulent investment seminar.
“Mr. Do-won. Thank you for everything.”
The old star walked out, bat in hand.
“Brother Yeong-chun!”
Minsik chased after him.
But Jo Yeong-chun coldly ignored him.
Minsik, puzzled, looked at me, then scratched his head and gathered his crew.
“......What the hell? Why’s he ignoring me?”
Thud! Boom!
Amid resounding, explosive thuds, we left.
Minsik glanced back at Jo Yeong-chun, but the man never looked his way.
He simply swung his bat.
Again and again.
Boom!
Using the zombies’ heads as baseballs.
Whether it was penance, regret, or a form of madness—I couldn’t say.
Maybe, in his own way, he was granting that old friend’s final request.
At the very least, every swing he took was worthy of the title:
The Heavy Hitter.
Boom!
Another zombie’s head flew cleanly through the air.
Without dispute, the A Bridge was demolished.

Chapter 155.2: Heavy Hitter (2)