Moooo... moo....

The cattle that had literally crossed mountains and rivers entered the barn one by one.

The barn built for the cattle stood in one of the reserve farming lots below the container housing area.

Go Jeongnam, Baek Hail, and Yoon Youngsu had all put their heads together on the design, so it came fully equipped with cattle sheds, a manure-processing zone, insulation and ventilation systems, partitions, and even isolation rooms.

And since the facilities were basically managed by AI, it was extremely efficient.

In other words, not just Junho, but everyone had been completely serious about raising cattle.

“They’re soooo cute....”

“Seriously, seriously. Were cows always this cute? Ah! Look at the calf! It’s adorable. Oh my god....”

At Jo Yuna’s admiration, Ahn Yujeong even bounced on the balls of her feet.

But then—

“Korean beef... must taste amazing, huh?”

“......!?”

At the sound of someone swallowing hard and muttering that, the two idols whipped their heads around in shock.

“Uh... why? Why are you looking at me like that?”

The person who had been waiting for the cows the most in the shelter was neither Junho nor old man Go Jeongnam, who would actually raise them.

Having grown up in Texas, the homeland of cowboys and barbecue, Park Sunhee’s favorite thing after marinated pork ribs was T-bone steak.

“S-Sunhee. I mean, sure, you like beef, but how can you look at them and say they look delicious? Hidoi... oni!”

“Hido... oni? What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means ‘That’s awful, demon!’ And I agree too. Seriously, unni....”

“Uh... but when we butcher them someday, you two are gonna eat them too. And aren’t we having a meat party today? Don’t tell me you won’t eat any? Yujeong, when you first came here, you said the beef melted in your mouth.”

“Ah.”

“Mmm.”

The two idols quietly avoided Park Sunhee’s gaze, then soon giggled and clung to her arm.

“We’re just saying that. You know we love beef.”

“Hehe. Unni, I’ll make wraps for you. The pumpkin leaves from the greenhouse are ready for harvest next month, so I picked a ton of them.”

“Pumpkin leaves?”

“Yep, yep. Even with just rice and soybean paste on pumpkin leaves, it’s insanely good, okay? But with beef too? Ah, there’s no resisting that.”

“Good grief....”

Faced with the aegyo of her closest friend and the younger girl she adored, who was currently flirting with her brother, Park Sunhee could not help but laugh too.

“But where did Juno-Juno oppa go? He looked like he’d been waiting for the cows since yesterday.”

“Junho oppa went to Gahyeon-ri with some of the other cattle. Looks like they’re going to raise cows there too. And he had other things to give them.”

“Oh really? Makes sense, there are a lot of people there too. But unni, you know a lot, huh? What are you, Oppa’s secretary?”

“T-that’s not it. I heard it too. From Sua unni.”

“Riiight? Well, maybe I’ll believe you?”

When Park Sunhee started stammering, Ahn Yujeong gave her a meaningful look.

“What do you mean maybe? It’s true.”

“Y-yeah. It’s really true.”

“No, I mean....”

Just as the flustered Park Sunhee was about to explain herself, Jo Yuna asked,

“Then who did he go to Gahyeon-ri with?”

“I dunno...?”

Park Sunhee tilted her head.

The answer came from Ahn Yujeong, who currently had one of her hands shoved inside Park Sunhee’s work hoodie.

“Manager Yoon and Assistant Manager Gu!”

“Ohhh. Wait, how do you know that? You just asked where Junho oppa was a second ago.”

“Ah.”

The moment Jo Yuna spoke, Park Sunhee whipped her head around.

Ahn Yujeong, who had been glued tightly to her side, instantly pulled her hand free, jumped away, and shrugged.

“Me? When? Dunno.”

“Hey, you—”

“Ah! I gotta go wash the trucks. Since they’re military trucks, they’re huge, so all our members have to help. Sunhee unni, I’ll make the trucks spotless, so you better learn driving properly from Juno oppa, okay? Byeee!”

“Hey, Ahn Yujeong! You seriously...!”

Park Sunhee swung a fist toward the scampering girl, but she was already gone like a flying squirrel.

“But Sunhee, are you really learning to drive from Junho oppa?”

“Huh? Y-yeah.”

At Park Sunhee’s awkward reply, Jo Yuna tilted her head.

“Really? But why trucks specifically? Military trucks, too? There are other cars.”

“Well, uh... because I want to be able to drive every vehicle in the shelter....”

“Ehh? Why?”

At Jo Yuna’s wide-eyed reaction, Park Sunhee answered in a slightly quieter voice.

“Well... because I’m basically the workhorse around here, and a workhorse should know how to do everything?”

With more and more people in the shelter who felt like rivals and not-rivals appearing around her, Park Sunhee had begun to feel a slight sense of crisis.

And the method she chose to overcome that crisis was to become the shelter’s indispensable “ultimate workhorse.”

***

“We took around thirty for ourselves, so you can raise the rest here. There are plenty of old folks in Gahyeon-ri who’ve raised cattle before, so it shouldn’t be difficult.”

Out of the herd of more than eighty cattle that had crossed over from Yangpyeong, Junho decided to hand fifty over to Gahyeon-ri.

Even though they had gained more workers, Go Jeongnam would still be the one primarily responsible for raising the cattle, and there was no way a man nearing eighty years old could personally care for that many cows by himself.

More than anything, even if they raised them freely inside a safe zone, cattle were animals that ate a lot, defecated a lot, and required a tremendous amount of care.

“R-really? Are you sure?”

Even Song Gijun, normally calm and composed, looked genuinely excited at the thought of being able to eat fresh beef in the future.

“It’s fine. But don’t butcher more than one a month. It takes at least two years to raise a calf before slaughter. If we want to keep eating beef long-term, the important thing right now is growing the herd.”

“Of course. These days we’ve got a decent amount of chicken and rabbit meat too. Everyone gets to eat meat at least once a week.”

The chickens had now multiplied into the thousands, and the rabbit population had stabilized as well.

Of course, the old days of one whole chicken per person existed only in dreams now, but every survivor in Gahyeon-ri could eat at least one egg a day.

And once or twice a week, they could taste chicken or rabbit, whether in soup or grilled form—or at worst, wild boar or water deer meat.

But beef was on a completely different level.

No matter how much people said chicken, duck, and pork were healthier, beef—especially Korean beef—had been something people could barely afford even during peaceful times.

“But we’ll need to build a barn....”

“Ah! There’s already a place for that. There’s a stable a little away from the country-house village.”

“A stable? For horses?”

Junho was surprised.

Nobody in Gahyeon-ri raised cattle or pigs, yet someone had raised horses there?

“Yes. There’s a riding club. It shut down in 2022, I think, and went into auction, but who was going to buy it? Anyway, the land and buildings are all still there. A little over ten thousand pyeong, maybe? There are fences and pasture areas too, so it should be more than enough for fifty cattle.”

“That’s good news. Still, now that livestock numbers are growing, it’d be good to have a veterinarian....”

No matter how experienced someone was with livestock, they still needed a vet.

Especially in the apocalypse, where wild animals were rapidly increasing, livestock were extremely vulnerable to infectious disease.

There was a reason the shelter paid such close attention to hygiene with the chickens and strictly prevented contact with birds like magpies and crows.

“A veterinarian? We have one.”

“...What?”

Seeing Junho visibly flustered—a rare sight indeed—made Song Gijun strangely excited.

“Oh, so you didn’t know. One of our apartment residents is a veterinarian. His daughter was a veterinary student too. Elder Go Jeongnam used to get help from him often.”

“Ah....”

That explained it.

No matter how experienced a livestock professional someone was, it had seemed odd that a man who had stopped farming long ago could raise rabbits that well.

“Then when the livestock increases further, we can just leave it to him.”

“That’s already the plan. By the way... I feel bad saying this after you gave us so many valuable cattle....”

Song Gijun trailed off with a deeply apologetic expression.

But Junho already knew what he wanted to say.

“If this is about the Moku-ri D-Mart, I’m already planning the operation.”

“Ah, I see. I’m ashamed to ask, but we’re seriously running low on daily necessities. Even what was left in our apartment supermarket will probably be gone in another month or two.”

That was how daily necessities worked.

Things that had once piled up around people’s homes like garbage vanished within only a few months once the world became like this.

Especially hygiene, sanitation, and health-related products—those were critically important in the apocalypse, so places like Gahyeon-ri, where people still lived relatively stable and human lives, burned through them very quickly.

“We’ll probably be able to move within ten days or so. The location is what it is, so there’s a lot to prepare.”

“Of course. I understand. Honestly, if I were you, Lee Junho... I probably wouldn’t even consider going there.”

As Song Gijun said that, his face stiffened slightly.

Naturally so.

The D-Mart in Moku-ri was on a completely different level from the places Junho had visited so far. It sat in the true middle of an urban district.

Simply put, the area near Jaeseong Building—which had contained the largest number of zombies Junho had ever dealt with up until now—was merely the outer edge of the old downtown district where D-Mart and Moku-ri Station stood.

If Jaeseong Building had been only another two hundred meters deeper toward Moku-ri Station, Junho would never even have considered gathering zombies through noise and aggro back then.

The number of zombies converging there would not merely have changed the first digit.

It might have added another zero entirely.

“Still, since I made a promise, I’ll go. Besides....”

“......?”

“No, it’s nothing. Anyway, wait just a little longer. I’ll see you again soon.”

“Ah, right.”

Leaving behind the still-apologetic Song Gijun, Junho stepped outside.

'They really don’t need to feel that guilty.'

Honestly, Junho was no saint. There was no reason for him to secure the D-Mart in the middle of Moku-ri purely for the sake of getting daily necessities for the people of Gahyeon-ri.

Song Gijun knew that too, which was why he felt so apologetic.

But Junho intended to plan and execute the Moku-ri D-Mart operation for his own purposes, not theirs.

Because that operation was—

“I need a proper rehearsal. Before entering a real city... somewhere like Bucheon.”

For Junho, the operation to secure the Moku-ri D-Mart was essentially a tutorial.

***

Sssizzle!

Bright red beef crackled appetizingly across several grills.

In the small open area between the shelter’s main building and workshop stood six round grill tables like the kind commonly found at Korean barbecue restaurants.

The shelter members sat around them in small groups, grilling and eating everything from ordinary cuts like sirloin and tenderloin to specialty cuts like top blade and hanger steak.

On top of that, there were various vegetables grown in the greenhouse, plus pumpkin leaves that Ahn Yujeong had praised so highly, along with fatsia shoots, gomchwi, mugwort, wild chives, and oyster mushrooms gathered throughout the safe zone.

The table spread out before them was luxurious enough to make it hard to believe this was the apocalypse.

“All right, all right! Beef soup and boiled beef are ready. There’s assorted jeon and japchae too—our Dr. Choi and Heeyoung unni’s favorites.”

And with Choi Haneul properly showing off her cooking skills for the first time in ages, everyone was grinning from ear to ear.

“Yuna, Hayoon! Scoop out the rice. And Junho’s rice... just bring the whole rice cooker over. Put one entire cooker next to him.”

“Okaaay!”

“Hahaha...!”

When Kim Hayoon actually placed an entire ten-person electric rice cooker in front of Junho, everyone burst out laughing.

Even Junho snorted and said to Kim Hayoon,

“Hey. No matter how much I eat, there’s no way I can finish all this....” 𝑓𝓇𝘦ℯ𝘸𝘦𝑏𝓃𝑜𝘷ℯ𝑙.𝑐𝑜𝓂

Then after a short pause—

“...Actually, I probably can.”

“Right? Hehe. Eat a lot, mister.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

The girl who once seemed to contain enough tears to fill an ocean—the same girl who had been forced to choose the end of her zombie grandmother with her own hands—now smiled brightly every single day.

“Junseo, chew properly. Want some cola?”

“...Yes. Thank you, teacher.”

“You can call me auntie. Or big aunt.”

“...Yes, big aunt.”

The elementary-school boy who had always been quiet and mature beyond his years had not changed much from then to now, but now that he had adults who cherished him, he occasionally showed shy smiles like this.

The adults were the same.

Whether they were founding members or newly joined members, everyone mingled together, eating, talking, and enjoying themselves.

There were actual fathers and children, biological siblings, and married couples among them.

But more than that, they all looked like one family—one household.

“.......”

As Junho slowly looked over every shelter member, a thought suddenly crossed his mind.

Maybe this scene right now was exactly the kind of shelter he had wanted all along.

A shelter capable of “doing everything” in the middle of the apocalypse.

And yet—

the reason it still somehow felt incomplete was probably because “that guy,” the one Junho considered the shelter’s final missing piece, still was not here.

'Just wait a little longer... just a little longer, Hyunwoo. There are only a few months left now.'