Chapter 1017 – #100. Utopia (2)
“Kyahahaha!”
I can hear children laughing.
All the adults working had happy smiles upon hearing the child’s laughter.
It was because they did not know how precious it was for children to be able to spend the day smiling.
Utopia did not hesitate to use any means to help children grow.
‘Children are the future.’
So, even if I ate one less meal, I made sure to feed my child three meals, and even when I was having a hard time, I stayed up all night with my eyes wide open, never neglecting my surroundings, and constantly went outside to kill zombies and clean up.
No matter how many zombies you kill, a new zombie appears at some point.
‘If we keep killing and killing like this, won’t zombies someday disappear from this world?’
What are zombies?
A human being is infected with an unknown virus, dies, and then becomes a zombie and begins to move again.
Then think about it.
What happens when there are no more ‘humans’ to become new zombies?
‘One day, this damn zombie virus will disappear when there are no more hosts to transfer to.’
This is what most people were looking forward to.
However, in order to do so, it is necessary to assume that the ‘human’ as the host must disappear.
Almost all the 7 billion people died, and only a few people survived.
Just as God created Noah’s ark so that a few humans could survive, all people currently living in Utopia thought of themselves as ‘Noah’ whom God saved for humanity’s survival.
‘At the center of it all, there is someone who uses unbelievable abilities.’
The founder of utopia is now referred to as ‘him’ rather than by name.
A messenger from God who came down for mankind.
Hero of humanity.
There were many qualifiers for that person.
Everyone had respect and faith in him.
Looking at the miracles he shows, there is no human being who dares not respect him, and we do not know that we survived thanks to his mercy.
‘You’ve really improved a lot.’
Seonju Lee climbed the watchtower and looked at the walls surrounding Utopia.
This was a secret place she went to when she wanted to organize her thoughts alone.
Of course, it does not mean that other people cannot enter the watchtower at all.
However, it was implicitly said that she would not arrive at the time she wanted.
It made no sense that she, who had dedicated her life to her utopia, should not receive this level of consideration.
Seonju Lee.
I had received grace from him in the past, but now I live with that relationship buried in his heart.
‘If I tell him, he will hug me again, why won’t he?’
‘I don’t want to forcefully bring out perfect memories from the past and replace them with something else.’
‘Don’t you like him?’
‘I like it. I respect you. But just because you like it doesn’t mean it has to continue, right?’
How strange.
She tried to act cool when she broke up with him, but she had a hard time forgetting.
There were many times when her heart ached when she saw him with her lover, and her feelings of jealousy flared up, and she was in trouble.
However, the longer she spent with him as her ‘colleague’, the more easily she sorted out her feelings.
‘It hurt a lot, but it didn’t hurt for long.’
Normally, if you’re in a lot of pain, you’re bound to be in pain for a long time. Isn’t it amazing?
My feelings for him were sorted out more easily than I thought, and from then on I stopped seeing him as a man rather than a colleague.
As time passed, the burning love with her lover died down, and even when she began a romantic relationship with a new woman, her heart did not waver.
‘Everyone has changed a lot. That person has also changed a lot.’
There is no trace of his past, when he showed great aversion to sleeping with women.
He no longer refused to sleep with women.
On the contrary, sometimes for entertainment, he even hugged women who had contributed to utopia like in the past.
Although the children who inherited his bloodline were not born with special abilities, they grew up enjoying many things.
‘If his ability had been inherited, he would have been more troubled.’
How fortunate is it that abilities are not inherited?
Otherwise, people would have done anything to sleep with him and have children.
“Haa~”
Unlike the past, when living from day to day was difficult and one could not be sure of tomorrow, today there is no one who has trouble sleeping worrying about the future.
There is a hunting team that constantly goes out hunting to prevent zombies from accumulating, and there is a farming team that works hard to keep people from starving. The efforts of the ‘Central’, which does various administrative tasks, and the people in charge of various other tasks made it possible. .
‘Is this a slump?’
Now Utopia runs just fine without her.
My body was a mess from trying to create a utopia like this, and as I got older, it was difficult to find a place on my body that didn’t hurt.
Nevertheless, she did not leave the hunting team.
She played the role of a teacher, teaching know-how to those who didn’t know how to catch zombies even though she couldn’t run in real life.
But was it a problem that I taught too passionately?
‘I never thought my legs wouldn’t listen.’
Meanwhile, she was being treated for swelling in her knee cartilage, which reportedly cracked and suffered major damage.
She needs surgery, but unfortunately there is no way in Utopia there is a doctor who can perform knee surgery.
In this state, it is impossible to move the body too aggressively.
Of course, showing examples is essential when teaching students.
Once that became impossible, I could no longer teach as a teacher.
‘Retirement.’
Eventually she decided to retire.
She couldn’t force herself to take that position and cause trouble to her children when she could no longer teach them properly.
‘What do we do now?’
And when she retired from her teacher, she wondered what she should do now.
Doing nothing was clearly an option, but it didn’t cross her mind.
She eventually found something she could do again, and that was administrative work.
The founders of Utopia had already been doing administrative work while occupying a position in the ‘center’ for a long time, so they were able to secure a position without much difficulty.
‘Administrative work is not my style.’
But did the aging of her body affect her mind?
Since starting her administrative job, she has noticed that she feels particularly low whenever she is alone.
There wasn’t much change when she was working, but when she was alone, she felt so depressed that she couldn’t even feel it.
‘Should I say that I feel like the world has abandoned me and told me that I am no longer of any use to you.’
Since she was feeling this way, she thought it might be better to just quit work altogether and retire.
She sacrificed her youth for utopia. No one would say anything to her for not working.
Although most of Utopia’s founders are working in administrative work, there are some who have announced their retirement and are spending the rest of their lives leisurely.
‘I don’t want to die after wrestling with zombies for the rest of my life. I want to feel comfortable now. Did you say that?’
She had to lose many people, and her struggle with death was brutal.
I completely understand why they want to no longer work and retire.
Especially these days.
“It would have been easier if I had just died fighting. How did this happen?”
She didn’t know she would survive this long.
It’s not that there was no danger of death.
There were many times when I almost died but was lucky enough to survive.
At the time, I thought it was good that I survived, but these days, I feel regretful that it would have been much cleaner than it is now if I had just died then.
Because she wasn’t stupid, she knew that her condition wasn’t normal.
“I guess this is depression, right? Who knew I could get this disease.”
No matter how much Utopia became a better place for people to live, it was not a situation where one could calmly take care of one’s mental health.
What if I get depressed?
Consulting with a psychiatrist and getting prescribed medication is a thing of the past.
‘You have to overcome it on your own. If you tell others that you have depression, they will only criticize you. So, they look at you like, ‘Why can’t you hold on?’
In Utopia, being weak was a sin.
What if I commit suicide because I can’t bear it?
Some people thought that if they couldn’t endure even that much, it would be good manners to commit suicide early before causing trouble.
She, who had to fight against her own death every day to survive, also clicked her tongue when she saw people committing suicide due to depression, calling them weak people.
‘They say they’re doing that because they haven’t gone through much hardship yet. I couldn’t believe I was suffering from depression. Was not working really fatal?’
The reason why the mental illness called depression was able to invade her head was probably because her situation became more manageable.
Even though the person suffers from depression, there is no excuse for this.
Plus, she knew why she was depressed.
‘The fact that there is no place that needs me anymore is what made me like this.’
The memories of her fierce survival are putting her search for peace in jeopardy.
Because the body still remembers that memory, it cannot accept peace as it is.
She eventually couldn’t bear it anymore and decided to retire early and went to visit Lee, who was taking a break.
“Sister, didn’t you say that you are retiring from active duty and working in administrative work? Why is her face so disfigured? Is the administrative work hard?”
She gladly accepted Seonju Lee’s visit.
And as soon as she saw her, she seemed to have noticed Lee Seon-ju’s unusual condition and expressed concern.
“You noticed my condition as soon as you saw me. This didn’t happen because I was busy with administrative work.”
“Then, do you really have depression?”
“… Yeah. I guess so.”
