“Grandpa…”
Han Seonah pressed her lips together tightly.
While Bitna slept, they had debated and discussed for a long time.
Should they tell her the truth, or should they tell her that Oh Beomgyu had gone to a faraway place?
But they reached a unanimous conclusion.
First grade.
Though she was a young child, Bitna had experienced too much for them to keep her grandfather’s death a secret.
Especially since she had lost her parents, she had matured too quickly.
“Bitna. Grandpa…”
Han Seonah began to speak with difficulty.
She told her that he had bravely fallen in battle, fighting to protect Bitna.
And that, to the very end, he had wished for Bitna to live happily.
He had said he was glad to have sacrificed himself for Bitna.
“……”
Without warning, tears, thick as chicken droppings, dripped from Bitna’s eyes.
If she had thrown a tantrum and sobbed, it would have been easier to comfort her.
“……I won’t see Grandpa anymore?”
“I don’t think so…”
“……”
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Tears streamed down her face endlessly, as if a faucet had been turned on.
She didn’t make a sound.
Only tears fell.
Even the American soldiers turned away, their eyes welling up.
The night deepened, and the darkness grew even more profound.
After a chaotic evening.
I finally woke up around noon.
When I came out to the kitchen, Han Seonah and a few American soldiers were already up, drinking tea.
“You’re awake?”
“Oh, everyone’s up early.”
“We’ve only been up for about ten minutes ourselves.”
I approached Han Seonah and asked.
“How’s Bitna?”
She had cried for a long time yesterday, then exhausted herself and fell asleep.
After Han Seonah took her to the bedroom, I had also fallen into a deep sleep.
“She seemed to have a nightmare for a bit while sleeping, but then she settled down.”
“She’ll have a hard time for a while. Let’s make sure we take good care of her.”
“Yes.”
Han Seonah nodded.
“Would you like a cup of tea, Assistant Manager Song?”
“Yes. That would be nice.”
I accepted the green tea and sat at the table.
“Aren’t you tired?”
I shook my head at Sergeant First Class Brian’s question.
“If you told me to sleep, I think I could easily sleep for another ten hours.”
“Hahahaha, same here.”
It was a bit surprising, but sleeping with the American soldiers and waking up to sit with them brought back old memories.
It hadn’t been that long ago, but it felt even more welcoming, somehow.
“How have you been?”
“We headed southwest. We stayed at a library there.”
A library, that would be near Seongdeok Women’s University.
“So you weren’t too far away.”
“That’s right. There were apartments nearby, so it was easy to find abandoned emergency rations in the houses.”
Grrr…
Private First Class Daniel’s stomach growled beside me.
He was the only Black man in the group and had been closest to the old man, Oh Beomgyu.
Considering his deep grief, he hadn’t eaten anything last night when everyone else hastily ate canned food, so it was understandable he was hungry.
“Daniel, would you like something?”
“No. I’m fine.”
He awkwardly rubbed his stomach.
“No, you’re not. You haven’t properly eaten since yesterday.”
I stood up.
“It’s almost lunchtime, so I’ll prepare some food. I’ll cook something delicious for you.”
“Oh, is there anything other than canned food?”
“Yes. I got some the day before yesterday.”
The three crucian carp that Assistant Manager Choi Jaeseung had caught were well-preserved.
“I’ll make you maeuntang.”
“Maeuntang……?”
Private First Class Daniel flinched.
“Oh, maeuntang…… No!”
“Why? Don’t you like maeuntang?”
“Spicy…… No! I can’t handle spicy food! Even hot sauce is difficult for me!”
“Ahahaha!”
I wondered what he was talking about.
“Maeuntang isn’t spicy. You can think of it as Korean fish soup.”
“Fish……?”
Daniel’s eyes widened at the word ‘fish’.
“You caught fish?”
“Yes. Assistant Manager Choi Jaeseung caught them while he was sleeping.”
I took out the crucian carp and showed them to him directly.
“Oh, awesome!”
Daniel’s mouth dropped open, and he waved his fingers.
It was his unique reaction when he was in a good mood, and it always made me smile.
“That looks really delicious!”
“I’ll make it for you right away. You just rest.”
“No. I’ll help you.”
Before I could stop him, he rolled up his sleeves and stood by my side.
“What should I do first?”
It seemed he was too hungry to wait and wanted to help.
“Well, first we need to clean the crucian carp… but they’re frozen, so they won’t cut. Thawing them is the priority…”
Thwack!
With one stroke of his knife, the carp’s head was severed.
“Doesn’t need thawing, though?”
“……”
This guy… he’s incredibly strong.
“Amazing!”
“So delicious!”
The American soldiers who tasted the Korean maeuntang buried their faces in their bowls and devoured it.
Of course, the Koreans were no different.
Including Assistant Manager Choi Jaeseung, Han Seonah, and myself, we all ate the maeuntang voraciously.
It would have been even tastier with water parsley, but since there wasn’t any, we added spinach we’d brought from the market, and it tasted surprisingly good.
More importantly, it was probably the first time any of them had tasted proper fish since the Ice Age.
“There are bones, so be careful when picking them out.”
No sooner had I said that than.
“Cough- cough-!”
Corporal Hans started coughing as if a bone had gotten stuck.
“Ugh, I told you to be careful.”
Assistant Manager Choi Jaeseung patted Corporal Hans’s back.
Fortunately, it didn’t seem to be deeply lodged, and the bone came out after a few coughs.
But as if such an obstacle was no barrier to him, he continued to slurp down the maeuntang.
About ten minutes later.
“Hmm…”
It took an hour to prepare, but it was devoured in an instant.
It couldn’t be helped.
They had expended an insane amount of energy last night, and three crucian carp were far too little for nine hungry adults who had been starving for a while.
“The broth is delicious. Can I have more?”
Assistant Manager Choi Jaeseung shook his head.
“It’s also delicious if you mix rice into the broth.”
“Oh, really?”
But I stopped their ladles.
“Wait.”
“Huh? Why?”
“There’s an even tastier way to eat it.”
“……?!”
I placed the maeuntang on the gas burner.
I added a bit more water and turned up the heat.
Bubble-bubble-bubble.
The cooled broth began to boil again.
Just as bubbles started to rise.
I took ‘that’ out of the cupboard.
“Crazy.”
“Sht the fck…!”
Korean and English expletives simultaneously hit my ears.
But I knew without explanation that these were exclamations of awe.
Because, after all.
“Korean ramen…?!”
What I had pulled out was ramen.
Tap-tap-!
I tapped the seasoning packets, ensuring not a single grain of powder remained, and cleanly added them to the maeuntang.
Since I had added water, this should balance the seasoning.
Next, I put in four packs of ramen noodles.
They were our last remaining ramen packs, but there would be no regrets if we ate them in maeuntang.
Sizzle-sizzle-sizzle.
The frozen ramen noodles began to thaw.
I could see the maeuntang broth, now infused with the ramen seasoning, soaking into the noodles.
Gulp.
Guluuulp.
The sound of people swallowing their saliva came incessantly from beside me.
And so, four minutes passed.
Four minutes was enough to cook all the ramen noodles.
“Let’s eat.”
Simultaneously, a dozen chopsticks plunged into the pot.
However, no one tried to stop them.
Because when it came to ramen, there were no masters.
I took a large mouthful of noodles with my chopsticks and put them in my mouth.
The refreshing taste of maeuntang mingled with the intense MSG flavor of the ramen seasoning, tantalizing my tongue.
Maeuntang ramen eaten in the minus 40-degree cold!
Despite the extreme chill, sweat began to pour from my forehead.
“Whoa-!”
Beside me, hot breaths were exhaled into the air.
But the eating didn’t stop.
‘This is happiness!’
Everyone began to eat deliciously.
But Private First Class Daniel ate the most deliciously of all.
He devoured the ramen noodles in an instant.
After scraping the bottom and chugging down the broth in one go.
“Kyaa!”
He exclaimed, entranced.
“Not staying in California, but coming to US Forces Korea, is the greatest stroke of luck in my entire life!”
It seems Daniel won’t be returning to America after the Ice Age ends.
After the meal, we took a short break and then immediately left the Logistics Warehouse.
Our destination was the Abandoned Military Base.
Last night had been so noisy that all the nearby zombies must have gathered there, as we didn’t encounter any other zombies until we arrived.
The entrance was no joke.
“It looks even worse in the daytime than it did at night.”
“Indeed.”
We knew there were many zombie corpses when we saw them last night.
But now, seeing them, they were truly piled up like mountains.
“Roughly, it looks like there are close to a hundred.”
“There are quite a few Variant Zombies too.”
As time passed, the increasing proportion of Variant Zombies was becoming palpable.
“Kieeeek-!”
There was even one that was alive but buried under zombie corpses, unable to move, just screaming.
Crunch-!
I easily smashed its head.
-Ding!
-You have acquired 1 Coin.
The creature became very good nourishment.
“Still, it’s a relief the fire didn’t spread.”
The building behind the firing range yesterday was completely reduced to ash.
It was a miracle that it hadn’t spread to the surrounding forest or other buildings.
“It would be better not to go over there.”
With the framework completely collapsed, it was clear there would be no value in investigating it.
There was also the risk of getting hurt if the debris collapsed for no reason.
“We’ll start by recovering the firearms.”
The American soldiers decided to collect the ammunition and weapons of those who had died here.
“Then we’ll…”
We headed for the warehouse building.
As we entered through the broken iron door, a coldly frozen corpse came into view.
“Old man…”
It was Oh Beomgyu’s body.
Assistant Manager Choi Jaeseung bit his lip, as if choked with emotion.
Han Seonah finally burst into tears.
My eyes red-rimmed, I approached the old man.
His blood was splattered across the floor.
I carefully picked him up.
His body, torn to shreds by shotgun blasts, was like a rag.
It was heartbreaking.
“Should we bury him?”
I shook my head at Han Seonah’s question.
“No, I think it would be better to cremate him.”
“…Burn him?”
Assistant Manager Choi Jaeseung asked, seemingly flustered.
“That would be better.”
“Ah…”
He soon acquiesced.
Considering the bullet holes embedded in him, cremating him rather than burying him as he was would likely bring him more peace.
We gathered nearby wood blocks and stacked them.
We placed old man Oh Beomgyu on top and lit the fire.
The wood, soaked with snow, didn’t catch fire easily.
Thick black smoke billowed upwards.
How much time had passed?
As the wood began to properly catch fire, Private First Class Daniel, who had been close to Oh Beomgyu, approached.
“The old man liked cigarettes too, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“……”
He pulled two cigarettes from his inner pocket.
They were invaluable cigarettes.
But Daniel placed a cigarette in old man Oh Beomgyu’s mouth.
The flames intensified.
The fire on the wood grew stronger and stronger.
The warmth became intense heat, beginning to consume everything.
The fiercely burning flames swallowed old man Oh Beomgyu.
The fire, having consumed everything around it, lost its intensity and gradually began to die down.
The flames went out.
Where Oh Beomgyu had lain, only white bone fragments and the black remnants of burnt wood remained.
We sifted through them, carefully gathered them, and buried them in a corner outside the military base.
His death was not in vain.
We would continue to live, proving that.
May he find happiness there.