Side Story · January 17
This was the longest day Seoul—and the people trapped within it—had endured since the end of the Korean War.
The city still blazed with light, dazzling in the darkness like Berlin in 1945. Yet the anti-air guns outside had finally fallen silent, and the battle had settled into a temporary deadlock.
The infected horde had encircled the city.
But for the moment, it had not taken another step forward.
Even in the dead of winter, the Korean troops on the line were still poorly clothed, their condition miserable. The front was piled high with ammunition, so open flames were forbidden.
No bonfires. No warmth.
Only soldiers crouched in freezing positions strewn with corpses and blood, exposed to the raw wind.
It was suffering beyond words.
Before them, bloody water had soaked the earth into mud. Wrecked vehicles and abandoned military equipment had been dragged into place as makeshift cover.
Rot, blood, char, gunpowder—the odors of war mixed with human refuse and the filth of exhausted men, forming a stench unique to the battlefield.
No doubt soldiers on front lines all over the world now knew that smell.
It was unbearable.
And these men, however armed, were still ordinary human beings. If their enemy had been human too, many would have surrendered long ago.
Snow hid part of the battlefield's cruelty beneath white cover.
But could snow smooth over the damage done to the heart?
Just a few streets away—only a few thousand meters behind the front—there were still scenes of drunken revelry, bright halls, music, and indulgence. Even now, luxury had not yet vanished from this doomed city.
The enemy's offer to accept surrender had already spread through the ranks.
Only an idiot would keep fighting for the parasites behind them now.
Before, they had fought because they had no choice.
But now? To go on defending a city with no hope of relief—wasn't that just absurd?
Those people behind the lines never shared their pleasures with the soldiers. When trouble came, though, they expected everyone to bear the burden together. Once the surrender happened, those same elites would still remain elites.
But what about the men in the trenches?
The dead had no dignity, soaking in bloody mud.
The living fared little better—bullied, rationed, treated like livestock.
Spent shell casings. Empty ammo crates. Drained fuel drums. Broken beer bottles. Crushed cans. Burned-out vehicles. The Korean army was at the end of its strength.
Thanks to the weakening of the magnetic storm, long-distance radio still remained unreliable, but short-range wireless communication had at least partially recovered, improving coordination among units and slightly strengthening what remained of their combat ability.
Some guided missiles could now lock onto targets better than before. Drones could function without losing signal after only a hundred meters.
And with officers and blocking detachments keeping a hard watch on the men, the city had barely held together this long.
Otherwise, who ruled Seoul now would already be a settled question.
In the freezing early hours of January 17, inside an office at the Blue House buried beneath snow, men could be heard shouting loudly enough that even the guards outside could hear them through the door.
The officers posted outside were of no low rank. Not a single one standing there wore insignia below lieutenant.
Beyond the green-painted corridor stood a reddish-brown solid wood door.
Inside, tempers were boiling over.
"Are we really supposed to compromise with those damned clowns?"
"Then what do you suggest? Send the army in and gun them all down? Don't be ridiculous. If we ignite internal conflict ourselves, are you going to take responsibility? The President has already fled. We might as well open the city and surrender!"
A fist slammed down on the table with a violent crack.
But this was not a street market where whoever shouted loudest won.
The answer came back even louder.
"If we don't use military force to restore order, our nation will disappear from history like the monkeys of Southeast Asia!"
"You just want to use this crisis to push yourself to the top!"
Voices overlapped. Insults flew.
These ministers and senior officials had turned the lavish conference room into a fish market. A dozen men had managed to create the racket of a hundred.
At the head of the table, Jang Hong-xuan, Army General and Supreme Commander of the National Defense Forces, sat silently and watched the chaos among his subordinates.
He was deeply troubled.
If he chose to defect now, the price the other side was offering him was too low. He was unwilling.
But if he continued resisting, things were no better. Quite apart from the fact that outside assistance was nearly nonexistent, the younger officers already leaning toward opening the city might tear him apart from within.
The moment of choice had truly arrived.
He finally withdrew his hand from the bodies of several girls in their early youth—girls who should have been enjoying the bloom of adolescence rather than serving as ornaments in a room like this.
"Enough," he snapped. "All of you, be quiet. Is this any way to behave?"
The atmosphere, which had been on the verge of turning violent, eased slightly.
"Commander Jang, how many in the army still truly support us? What happens if the troops turn on us? Let the remaining men in parliament make the decision and bear the blame."
"You fool! If the old fossils are the ones who get credit for handing over the city, what place will that leave for us?"
The arguing threatened to rise again.
"Silence. Silence. We still have two days to discuss this matter. If all you do is quarrel, you'll get nowhere."
Jang Hong-xuan, usually known for his genial and accommodating demeanor, had finally shown a harder edge.
"From the standpoint of principle, I know this is not an easy decision to make. But if we do not act, the Republic of Korea may be dragged into an abyss from which it can never recover. The descendants of the sun will be reduced to ash."
What he meant was clear enough.
He supported opening the city.
He simply wanted more time to prepare.
If they surrendered, becoming a subordinate state would be unavoidable. For a country that had spent centuries in dependence and had only truly claimed a national identity in the last century, that would be a devastating humiliation.
History had already made clear what followed such things.
But for the people in that room, there was no real way back now.
Since the failure of the Eastern Counteroffensive, the war had deteriorated steadily, its decline impossible to reverse. With neighboring powers hostile or indifferent, the nation had already become like a rotten house, one strong wind away from collapse.
Once, support for surrender had been limited.
Now, that sentiment was swelling into a tide.
If mishandled, the consequences would be catastrophic.
"We do what we can and leave the rest to heaven," sighed one elderly officer. "At least surrender leaves a chance to go on breathing."
Deep lines covered his face. Something like tears seemed to flash briefly in the corners of his eyes.
In this court of factions and self-interest, while politicians schemed and profited, he had continued trying to do the job of a soldier—keeping the military logistics system running despite dwindling supplies.
But the nation's fate still slid toward ruin.
He was already past seventy. He was unwilling to accept it, but powerless to stop it.
He had done everything he could for this country, a country nearly as old as himself.
The meeting ended badly.
Many faces were dark with resentment; inwardly they seemed to boil.
Those who looked like soldiers but were in truth politicians departed in haste. The Blue House, witness to the nation's history, darkened once more and stood silent in the night.
And if anyone had watched the area from the rooftop of a distant building through binoculars, they might have noticed shadowy figures moving furtively around the Blue House grounds.
Outside the central district, whatever order had still remained finally collapsed under the weight of impending ruin.
In the low, crumbling buildings of the dark outer districts, hunger and death were taking possession of the living.
Only a few days earlier, the remaining authorities in Seoul had finally allowed these refugees from outside the city to enter and settle inside.
Not out of mercy.
Simply because the front line had already been pushed back to where the refugees had originally been gathered, and leaving them there was now more trouble than it was worth.
If the defenses broke, the infected might drive the refugees ahead of them as living shields.
Among the displaced, it no longer mattered whether one had once belonged to the middle class or the poor, whether one had once been wealthy or destitute.
Unless you had influence powerful enough to move the great men inside the city, everyone now lived in the same misery.
A perfect equality.
Even the richest outsider now had to scramble alongside the poorest slum refugees for the scraps of aid that remained.
A few weak bulbs cast murky light over the rooms, barely enough to see by.
In that dim yellow gloom, hollow bellies, dry tongues, bitter cold, itching skin, and gnawing fear had twisted people into shapes that once would have seemed monstrous.
Kindness and charity had become fairy tales.
Whatever noble souls still deserved praise had long since gone to the underworld.
In one dark corner, an old story repeated itself yet again, so often seen that the onlookers had already gone numb to it.
"Wake up. Wake up! Suilian—please, wake up. I found water. I've got water now. Don't do this…"
A man knelt beside a gaunt woman, shaking her gently, his voice so soft that no one else nearby could hear it.
He carefully drew out the cup of water from his coat, treating it like some priceless treasure.
They were sheltering beneath a staircase. It was cramped and humiliating, but at least it was hidden.
"No—please, don't… ugh—"
The woman jerked awake like someone dragged out of a nightmare. Her first words were not recognition, but a plea for mercy. She tried to retch, but her body produced only dry heaving and a trace of watery blood from a stomach already ruined by long starvation.
"It's… you, Eun-qin…"
She forced her swollen eyes into a narrow slit, saw that it was her husband and not the men she feared, and let them fall shut again.
Even that single sentence had cost her.
Her dry eyes held no tears left to shed.
Hair that had once been thick and glossy now hung in brittle, yellowed tangles, as lifeless as the body beneath it.
Once a woman of pleasant looks and graceful figure, she was now pale, sallow, emaciated. Her skin was loose and dry. Her eye sockets had sunk deep into her skull. Her lips were split. Her body had wasted so badly that her bones now pressed sharply against the skin, as though they might tear through.
Seeing his wife reduced to this, the man felt pain so acute it bordered on madness.
He had lost almost everything already. Only the two before him had still given his life meaning.
If he lost his wife and child too, he no longer knew how he could keep going.
"Suilian, it's me. Eun-qin. I found some water. Hurry—drink."
He unscrewed the cap and brought the cup to her lips in panic.
"No… give it… to the child. I… I don't think I can…"
Her breath was faint. Her abdomen still rose and fell slightly. Even at the edge of death, the instinct to live still lingered inside her—but as a wife and mother, she still refused the precious water held to her mouth.
Her husband and child had been the faith keeping her alive.
Now her husband had come back.
After enduring seventeen days of hell, she looked at him one last time, unwilling but exhausted beyond recovery, and let her arm fall across the child lying beside her.
At last, her body gave out.
The strain left her face all at once.
Yet her eyes, once only half-open, were now wide.
Through the bloodshot whites it seemed as if one could still see her hatred for the world.
The collapsed cage of her chest seemed to hold some final, trapped fury that could never be released.
The man dropped to his knees beside the body that still held a trace of warmth. He clasped her hand, and the tears forced from his aching eyes left only pale, brief tracks down his face before falling to the ground.
"No. Wake up. Wake up! Wake up! Ah… Suilian, you… mm… mmhh…"
Even now, with his wife dead, he did not dare howl aloud.
He still had a child.
A few tears fell soundlessly.
He pressed himself against her abdomen, thin cloth between them hiding strips of old rags bound around wounds that still had not healed.
If some undertaker had come to prepare her body, they would have found bruises and marks everywhere. Humiliating words carved or written onto her skin. Special cruelties inflicted in places no one should have touched.
The descent from order into chaos could happen quickly—hours, if things were bad enough. A few weeks, at most. In some places, if they were lucky, there might remain a kind of restrained disorder still bounded by rules.
But this was Seoul.
The capital of a nation.
The man reached trembling fingers up and closed his wife's unseeing eyes.
She had survived the virus.
She had survived hunger and cold.
She had avoided the infected.
Only to die under the gaze of those meant to preserve order—soldiers, authorities, and the structures of power themselves. The abusers had not been outside the system.
They were the system.
Then the man threw back his head and laughed inwardly, a soundless, broken madness.
After kissing his wife's forehead, he turned toward their child.
Children were even less able than adults to survive this sort of world.
He reached out and touched the small body hidden under layers of cloth.
The instant his fingers made contact, he froze.
Then he snatched his hand back as if burned.
He did not want to believe it.
Frantically, he pulled open the wrappings.
The child's body was already stiff.
Cold.
Even wrapped in all the cloth they had left, the child too had failed to endure this cursed world.
"There's nothing left now. It's over…"
The bottle of water in his hand no longer meant much.
He had taken it at great risk from the wealthier district inside the city, where the rich—too proud to drink it—had tossed bottled water carelessly to the roadside. What had been a treasure meant to save three people would now serve only one.
He had avoided every pair of eyes on his way back to obtain it.
Now he unscrewed the cap with shaking hands, raised it to his cracked lips, and drank.
One drop.
Two drops.
He let each drop linger on his tongue for several seconds before swallowing it, slowly, reverently, like the last rite of a dying man.
When the bottle was empty, he tossed it aside without concern.
Now there was only himself.
The others around him did not react. They had long since grown numb to death. The frozen Han River had become the disposal ground of choice. Each day, fresh corpses were only half-burned before being shoved into holes cut through the ice.
Ignoring the cold indifference of those around him, the man—still relatively strong by the standards of the camp—lifted the bodies of his wife and child.
Once he had taken care of them, there was something else he needed to do.
All this time he had endured in silence.
During the days when he had been separated from his wife and child, the refugee zones had been overcrowded, lawless, chaotic. It did not take much imagination to guess what had happened to a lone woman and her child in a city like this.
The devils responsible would pay.
On the road back with the water, he had seen it clearly.
The rich in the villas inside the city had far more water than they needed. They could not even be bothered to drink what the refugees below would have called salvation. The spectacle of the desperate fighting over discarded bottles had become entertainment to them.
They lounged on soft chairs on open terraces behind high walls, watching the misery of their fellow humans like a circus show.
Fresh food. Chilled drinks. Warm fires. Beautiful maids.
Heaven inside the walls.
Hell outside them.
"Look at those black, stinking things fighting over that disgusting liquid! Hahaha!"
"As if that stuff is even fit to drink. They're animals."
"You still think those people are the same kind as us? Commander Jang should've thrown every one of them out of Seoul."
"A crate of water could buy you dozens of people out there. But they came through infected areas—what if they're carrying something? Better to toss out a few bottles and let them tear each other apart. What a show."
One of the men casually splashed liquor onto the floor. Several maids immediately dropped to their knees and began licking it from the polished surface like trained animals.
He slapped one of them on the backside. Instead of shrinking away, she wagged as though she truly had a tail.
Their laughter rang endlessly.
And beyond the walls, people were beating each other bloody over water.
The contrast was obscene.
Magnificent halls. Supplies piled high. Pleasures fit for heaven. In the apocalypse, their extravagance had only grown more shameless. Women with beauty still left in them fell into their hands with frightening ease.
If persuasion failed, they simply used force.
Of course, for all their arrogance, these people were not the greatest tycoons. Otherwise they would already have escaped and found other routes to safety. Nor did they possess the influence needed to follow the President to Jeju.
They too were trapped in a cage.
Their conditions were merely far better than most.
Autumn grasshoppers never jumped for long.
When the city finally fell, everyone inside would be passengers tied to the same rope.
But men soaked in wine and lust rarely thought that far ahead.
Their minds had already been dissolved by indulgence.
Eun-qin draped his coat over his wife's body and lifted both her and the child into his arms.
He needed a quiet place now.
He moved carefully through side alleys, afraid of stirring trouble too soon and ruining what still had to be done.
Even then, trouble found him.
"Move aside. Hear me? Get out of the way before I beat the shit out of you."
A blond-haired thug swaggered over and deliberately blocked his path.
"...Fine. You go first."
Endure.
For the moment, endure.
Let this sort of filth strut while it still could. Soon enough, he would take its life.
Eun-qin stepped aside, carrying his wife and child, but the thug followed him anyway.
"Don't think I didn't see it. That slut—she was your wife, wasn't she? Hahaha! Pretty nice, wasn't she?"
He had recognized them at once. He had watched what happened to that woman before.
He was one of the local street punks, part of the crowd that had thrown in with the men managing the refugee areas. Wearing a badge and standing beside armed men, he had enjoyed all sorts of things he could never have dreamed of before.
"What, nothing to say? Ignoring me?"
He mistook Eun-qin's silence for fear.
Then everything changed.
Eun-qin set the bodies down.
And before the thug even understood what was happening, Eun-qin's leg swept out, taking him off his feet in one brutal motion.
When I set my loved ones down, what exactly did you think I was preparing for?
"Die, you piece of filth! Die!"
Starving though he was, Eun-qin threw himself on top of the man with explosive violence, locking down his head and choking him with all the strength left in his body.
The blond thug's face turned red. He struggled wildly, but Eun-qin pinned him flat.
Fists hammered down.
Crack.
Blood burst from his nose. Bone gave way.
Eun-qin seized the thug's head and smashed it against the concrete.
The man was dizzy, bleeding, nearly senseless—but at the last moment, survival instinct flared. He managed to roll and reverse them, pinning the weakened Eun-qin beneath him.
The surrounding refugees, who had been watching in silence, surged forward all at once.
They beat the thug back down.
Everyone here had suffered at the hands of men like him. Now that someone had finally struck first, no one was willing to stay back.
The thug, battered and barely conscious, saw soldiers in green uniforms approaching.
His last hope.
The Korean army.
He gathered all the breath he had left and shouted:
"Help—!"
A gunshot cut him off.
The bullet hit him in the face. Blood flowered. His skull burst like a smashed melon.
"Well done, Eun-qin," said the officer who had fired. "Take this and come with us."
Eun-qin stared.
He recognized the officer immediately. It was the same man he had met earlier that day near the wealthy district—the one who had quietly let a few refugees inside to scavenge.
The officer pressed a rifle into his hands.
Eun-qin gently laid down the bodies of his wife and child.
Now it was time to do something much bigger.
The officer stepped into the middle of the refugees, soldiers gathered close around him. All eyes turned toward him.
Then he began to speak.
"Listen to me. The President would never want the people to suffer like this. It is the rich, the generals, and the men in power who have hidden the truth from him—hidden the people's misery, hidden the country's true condition."
His voice carried through the room, echoing against the walls and striking deep into the hearts of the desperate.
"Right now, no one knows where the President is. His will has been twisted by Jang Hong-xuan and other opportunists. Only we in the army can save Seoul!"
The refugees trembled with recognition.
"We are starving. You all know it. The men at the front are driven to their deaths at gunpoint by blocking detachments and officers. Their mothers, sisters, wives—forced to sell themselves for a bowl of food. Warehouses full of grain and water, and yet none of it reaches us. We have no work. We are hungry, freezing, exhausted."
Every person there felt the truth of it.
The resentment that had been suppressed for days was now looking for a single spark.
"We fight for the future of the people! They mean to open the city. They mean to trade your flesh and blood for the continuation of their own wealth and power. Only force can protect our right to live! Direct your fury at the traitors, the vermin, the lapdogs!"
At the height of his speech, the officer drew his blade, hacked off the dead thug's head, and smeared the blood across his own face.
Then he roared:
"Let today's blood wash away the filth of this world! Long live humanity! Long live resistance!"
The crowd snapped.
Someone shouted first:
"Follow the officer!"
Another voice rose:
"Let's kill those bastards! I want revenge!"
Then more. And more.
At last, the hatred of the oppressed boiled over.
In a country with universal military service, most of the men among the refugees knew how to use a gun.
Now, with weapons in hand, they would cleanse the evil around them with blood.
Before long, one of the mansions in the wealthy district had been stormed. Several fat rich men lay dead in their own blood. Fire spread through the rooms.
The same thing happened again and again across the refugee quarters of Seoul.
Gunfire erupted everywhere.
Flames rose into the night.
The city bloomed with fire and violence like grotesque fireworks.
"Who told me the security was airtight? Even the internal guard has mutinied! Nearly a third of the Second Division inside the city has gone silent!"
Commander Jang had intended to open the city the next day.
Now every plan had been destroyed by the uprising of soldiers and civilians.
"In fact, the insurgents include rebel troops from the outer city and members of the Apostles. Most of the outer defense line we were relying on has already fallen into enemy hands…"
"That bastard planned this in advance. How many troops can we still mobilize?"
Inside the Capital Defense Command headquarters, staff officers rushed frantically about. Senior officers crowded around a large screen, trying to build a response out of chaos.
"I… I don't know."
"Idiot! Did they teach you nothing at the academy but how to hold a fork and knife? Drag this fool out and shoot him!"
"Mercy, Commander! Mercy!"
The terrified officer fell to his knees and begged, but he was dragged outside all the same.
A single gunshot rang out.
Jang Hong-xuan, now stripped of all pretense of geniality, roared in fury at the incompetence of his staff.
On the large tactical screen, both friend and foe were displayed mostly as unknowns. Fires had broken out on all sides, and no one knew where to begin.
Yet for the sake of survival, they acted anyway.
There were several points that had to be reinforced immediately: main transport routes, the airport, the Blue House and central administrative zone, and critical infrastructure.
"Transmit my orders. At once."
"Yes, sir!"
"Order the remaining loyal units of the Capital Security Second Division and the Quick Reaction Mechanized Infantry Brigade under direct headquarters control to enter full combat status and move to all designated positions. The incomplete First Division is to seal every route in and out of the inner city. Rescue operations for government officials will begin at once. The remaining army aviation assets and police forces are to cooperate in evacuating senior officers and politicians."
He hesitated only once.
Then he made the final decision.
"The special guard units remain in reserve and hold this headquarters at all costs. We cannot allow the mob to take it. You—take an armored battalion and go bring in the Apostles."
Borrow foreign strength to crush domestic revolt.
His life came first.
Outside, amid gunfire, screams, sirens, and the wind carrying dust and mourning, the infected once more began advancing on the city that was about to become theirs.
The Apostles arrived in armored vehicles guided by collaborating Korean troops and came to claim their loyal Seoul.
Jang Hong-xuan led what remained of his forces out to welcome them in formation.
Seoul opened its gates.
The movement Eun-qin and the refugees had joined collapsed completely, leaving only scattered survivors hidden among the crowd, waiting for another chance.
The southern half of the peninsula was lost.
Humanity had lost yet another city-region of tens of millions.
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