How to Make a God (2)
I had no choice but to go down to the first floor without gaining anything from the girl I was talking to.
It was because we couldn’t have a normal conversation.
She remained silent for most of my questions, and showed a negative attitude towards any attempt to call someone else.
She acted as if I didn’t exist.
I couldn’t force her to come with me if she hated it, so I just checked the shops on the second floor and left.
As I finished searching and went downstairs, I saw Donghyun with a box of ramen and some miscellaneous utensils.
“Yuseong, what did you find on the second floor?”
Donghyun asked me nervously about the upstairs information.
By principle, I should have told him about the girl hiding on the second floor, but it seemed better not to mention it for now.
Given the leader’s personality in front of me, he wouldn’t just ignore a lone survivor.
There was a high chance that he would only resent me if I pushed him too hard.
Maybe it would be better for me to persuade her and take her to the company later.
It would be troublesome if the survivor I brought caused trouble in the group.
So I calmly lied to him.
“No, there was nothing much.”
“Really? Well, we’ve searched around here a lot, so it’s not surprising that there’s nothing left.”
“They took everything away. There was nothing left.”
When I told him casually that there was nothing, Donghyun nodded his head and agreed.
He didn’t doubt my words much.
It was probably thanks to the trust we had built between us.
He trusted me more than the other members of the group.
I felt the same way.
I felt sorry for hiding the truth, but I had no bad intentions.
I believed he would understand me later.
“Well, don’t worry too much. I found something good on the first floor.”
Thump. Thump.
Donghyun tapped on the box of ramen with a slightly excited voice.
Ramen was a big harvest for us.
If we ate sparingly, we could survive for a few days with this amount.
As I looked at the ramen that Donghyun was holding, I remembered the girl I met on the second floor.
I asked Donghyun, who was satisfied with the box of ramen, about the harvest we found last time.
“Ramen is good. But do you have any chocolate left, hyung?”
“Chocolate? Why? Do you want some?”
“I’m craving some sugar.”
A while ago, we found a large amount of chocolate nearby and distributed it among the group members.
Donghyun’s personality would have made him save the chocolate instead of eating it.
As if to prove my guess, he opened his fanny pack and took out some chocolate.
The chocolate that had been piled up with dust came out of Donghyun’s bag.
He handed it to me right away and said,
“······This is really what I saved, but I’m giving it to you because you’re my brother.”
Swoosh.
I nodded my head as I took the chocolate without hesitation.
This kind of delicacy was not easy to find in the ruined world.
I wondered if I could talk to the quiet guy on the second floor with this.
Of course, thanking Donghyun for giving me the chocolate was a bonus.
“Hyung. No, boss. I’ll die for the company.”
“Yeah, yeah. Trust me and follow me, Director Cheon.”
Donghyun received my gratitude with dignity.
Looking at Donghyun, who was leading the group, I felt like he would have taken good care of his subordinates even if he had run a business.
Whether his business would have succeeded or not was another story.
I put the chocolate in my pocket while acting out a sudden scenario.
The self-proclaimed boss looked at me curiously and asked me as he packed up the harvest he found on the first floor.
“Weren’t you going to eat it now?”
“I realized how precious chocolate is. I’m going to save it and eat it slowly.”
“Is that so? Next time I find some more, I’ll give you my share too.”
“That would be nice for me.”
I also shared the harvest that Donghyun had prepared and talked to him.
Maybe it was because he had been busy searching by himself while I was spending time on the second floor.
He was getting ready to leave this building soon.
“We searched pretty hard and got some decent harvest… Shall we look for another place?”
It wasn’t strange that he had finished searching the first floor since I had wasted a lot of time on the second floor.
Besides, we had a huge harvest of ramen boxes.
It seemed okay to move on to the next building as it was.
I wanted to get out of this building as soon as possible, thinking of the huge burden hiding on the second floor.
“They’ll love this today.”
“Yeah. Even those who complained about ramen before are now waiting for the day we find some more.”
“Here, I’ll carry this. Let’s go outside.”
I lifted the box with the utensils and headed out of the building with a shovel.
The musty smell of the old box tickled my nose.
I felt a pang of regret that I couldn’t smell the new boxes anymore.
Donghyun, who followed me with the dusty box of ramen, looked at the cracked exterior of the building and said,
“It’s a good thing we finished searching before it collapsed.”
“Didn’t I tell you it was dangerous from the start?”
“But it’s good to look around when we have a chance. We’re in a situation where we can’t afford to waste a single box of ramen.”
I nodded slightly, remembering the girl who was left in the building.
It seemed risky to leave her alone in there.
It would be better to go back and advise her to move when I had a chance.
As I was lost in thought, fiddling with the box, Donghyun nudged my shoulder and said,
“Yuseong, let’s check out a few more places and then go check on the barricade.”
“Yes.”
We still had plenty of time.
Those who were lazy during the day would suffer at night.
It was time to continue searching other buildings.
***
“You’re back.”
After finishing the search work, I sneaked out of the group under the pretext of taking a walk and was greeted by the girl’s cold answer.
She still didn’t show any emotion in her reply.
I guess it was strange to have a friendly conversation with a stranger.
I would have just left like before, but now I had a secret weapon.
I sat down next to the girl who was reading a book.
“Ah. It’s a nice day for chocolate.”
And then I took out the chocolate I had kept in my pocket.
Crack.
As I tore off the paper wrapper, the chocolate wrapped in foil appeared.
Even without peeling off the foil, I could already smell the sweetness of the chocolate.
As I started to unwrap the chocolate, the girl next to me looked at it and asked me.
“What are you doing?”
“Redistributing wealth.”
I tore off half of the unwrapped chocolate and handed it to the girl.
Thud.
The cross-section of the chocolate was revealed beyond the torn foil.
She stared blankly at the chocolate I gave her, then took it with one hand.
Maybe she couldn’t resist chocolate even if it was from a stranger.
She peeled off the foil slightly and nibbled on the chocolate.
“It’s sweet and nice. I haven’t had this kind of snack for a long time.”
I also peeled off the foil and bit into the chocolate, feeling the melting sweetness and talking to her.
When did I stop eating chocolate?
I think it was since I started preferring beer over soda.
When I was young, I loved these simple treats.
But after society collapsed, I don’t even have to go to work, and I cheer for these simple snacks.
The ruined world was turning me into a child.
“This reminds me of the old days. By the way, how old are you?”
“······.”
Maybe it was because of the sugar in her stomach.
I asked her lightly.
But she still focused on her book, chewing on the chocolate.
She seemed reluctant to answer my question.
I took another bite of the chocolate and muttered in a half-annoyed voice.
“I don’t know if you’re shy or just don’t want to answer.”
“······.”
I often talked to myself, but I didn’t like talking to myself in front of someone else.
That wasn’t why I came here.
If I couldn’t get an easy answer, I had to try a hard way.
If I left her here and the building collapsed, I would have nightmares for a while.
I decided to get up and look around.
I saw board games scattered around the comic cafe.
“They have board games here too.”
There were various kinds of games on the shelves, from famous ones to ones with unfamiliar names.
I picked up the one that I thought was the most popular.
Dust rose from the chessboard as I lifted it up.
Cough, cough.
Dust from the chessboard made me cough repeatedly.
“Ah, the dust… cough, it’s too bad.”
The chessboard was covered with dust from being neglected for a long time.
I took out a handkerchief and wiped it all off, then shook the handkerchief in the air to clean up the dust again.
Chess was a game that I thought she would know the rules of.
Of course, if she didn’t know how to play chess, I could teach her myself.
Chess rules were simple among board games.
“Whew… this should do.”
I took the dust-free chessboard and went back to her.
Then I held out the chessboard to her and tapped it with my finger.
Tok. Tok.
A light thud echoed from the tip of my finger.
Maybe it was because I suddenly pushed a chessboard in front of her.
The girl looked at me with a puzzled face and tilted her head.
“Let’s play a game.”
“A game…?”
“You have to pay for the precious chocolate you ate in these times.”
Achoo.
I sneezed again, maybe there was still some dust left.
I sneezed in the direction where no one was and continued the conversation with the girl.
“Just playing a game is boring… How about the loser answers the winner’s question?”
There was nothing better than entertainment to form a relationship with a stranger.
Playing a game could make you enemies or friends, depending on how it went.
Especially in this world where most of the entertainment was gone.
As I pushed the chessboard hard and said that, the girl who pushed it away with one hand seemed to hesitate a bit.
“A bet?”
“One question per game. The winner of the game asks the loser a question. As long as it’s not a question you have to avoid, you have to answer it.”
“What do you gain from doing that?”
She was surprisingly responsive.
It seemed easier than I thought to drag her into the game.
I refused to answer her question and pointed at the chessboard with my finger instead.
“The rules have to be fair for everyone, so why don’t you try to win the game if you’re curious?”
“Hmm…”
“Well, if you’re not confident, don’t do it.”
“If that’s the condition… Maybe I can play along a little.”
The cheap provocation worked well, and the duel was quickly settled.
I brought a table from nearby and made a space between me and the girl.
And I put our pieces on the chessboard.
“Do you know how to play chess?”
“…”
She didn’t ask me about the rules of the game, so I guessed she knew them.
She just picked up a piece and started the game first.
She didn’t move her pieces out of the rules.
And the outcome of the chess game was decided faster than I thought.
“I won.”
“Ah…”
I lost.
She crushed me in the first game.
I didn’t think she would be that good, but she surprised me with her skills.
She wiped out my pieces without breaking a sweat.
“Can I ask you a question now?”
“What do you want to know? The thing you asked before?”
“No. Something else.”
She threw me a simple question after winning the game.
It was something anyone could answer.
“Your name.”
“Cheon Yuseong.”
“That’s a dull name.”
That was all she said about my name.
She was better at chess than I expected.
She outmatched me in every move.
But I couldn’t just accept defeat.
I had to win at least one game, for my pride as a man.
“One more game.”
“Do you have to?”
“Are you trying to run away now?”
“Fine…”
The second game was also tough.
She had the upper hand from start to finish.
Maybe it helped that I had some experience playing board games with my group members.
I barely managed to beat her and claim the first place.
“Whew… That was close.”
It was half luck that I won.
If she hadn’t made a mistake at the crucial moment, I would have never won.
The last move she made with a loss of concentration changed the course of the game.
Now that I had won one game, it was my turn to ask her a question.
Name and age.
Which one should I ask?
As I was weighing the priorities in my head, she watched me and asked.
“What do you want to ask?”
“Just a sec.”
For someone who didn’t know their name or age, asking about their identity was very important.
But right now, there was something else I needed to ask her more urgently.
My top priority was to get her out of this place.
So I decided to ask her a different kind of question.
A question about why she was here.
“Why are you staying in this place? It’s falling apart already.”
“I need this place for my plan.”
“Plan? What kind of plan do you need this place for?”
“World domination.”
“What…?”
“I’m creating a god. Everything else is just a necessary step for that.”
World domination.
Creating a god.
I stared blankly at her eyes as I heard that.
Her dark eyes were still looking at me with a clear gaze.
She was serious about what she said.
That’s when I realized who she really was.
The girl I was facing was actually–.
“Ah…”
My head hurt for sure.
