“─You can eat anything you want here!”
“…Wow.”
“This is amazing. How much is all this?”
After crying my heart out and putting on quite the show in front of the child, I followed Heea, who said she had something to show me, into a place that looked like a storeroom packed with food.
In this crazy world, there must be a reason why a child could survive alone without a guardian.
There were vegetables and fruits, still intact and not rotten or discolored, as well as dry ingredients like curry powder, and even various types of foods like chunks of smoked and salted meat.
Perhaps due to a power outage, most facilities for temperature control or air circulation were sadly not operational. But thanks to the shaded underground location, a chill lingered in the storeroom without any special devices.
Thanks to the early spring season and the still low temperatures, food that would usually spoil at room temperature managed to survive without rotting.
Of course, there were a few things showing signs of moisture and being squished from prolonged storage, but that much wouldn’t kill us.
Thanks to that, we were staring blankly, mouths wide open, at the mountain of food piled before us.
A big supermarket was right here.
“….Heea, is it really okay to eat those things?”
“Yep, Unnie! I can’t eat it all by myself anyway… Hehe. I hate some of it.”
Yeon cautiously asked Heea.
If guilt or remorse didn’t come to mind, that would be a lie.
No, it wouldn’t be just us; anyone with a normal set of values would have to feel that way.
Even if the amount was too much for little Heea to eat alone, it didn’t change the fact that we, as high school students, were taking food from a child.
We had nothing but tasteless canned food, and we didn’t even have the ability to repay any kind of reward.
That’s why Yeon kept asking Heea if it was really okay to take it…
“If the unnie’s eat it, I’d be happy too!”
“……..”
The child was saying it was fine, even asking for us to do it.
Well, what could we do?
“…I’ll eat well, Heea.”
“Thank you… really, thank you.”
In the end, we were the ones tired of the endless canned food and instant meals.
Thinking it would be rude to keep rejecting, we moved forward with a bittersweet smile, thankful to the child for the long-awaited fresh food.
So, we took in the fresh smell of the vegetables.
Excitedly, we thought about using a lot of veggies for dinner curry today──
Oh.
“──Hey. By the way, does anyone here know how to cook?”
“”…….Ah.””
─Tap.
It was as if we’d pressed the pause button on a video.
Seeing the two people frozen in their walking positions, I thought.
It seemed like the crisis wasn’t over yet.
“……..”
…What do we do?
I’ve never cooked either.
Whoosh, the slightly chilly underground wind brushed between us.
─Tap.
“Unnie! Enjoy your meal!”
“””………..”””
Mother.
Today, I committed an ugly sin.
What on earth should we do about the massive sin we’ve committed that cannot be forgiven?
Does salvation really exist?
I really don’t know.
“Jeong-eun. I guess I was just trash…”
“….Right? Humans could fall this low after all.”
“Hwa-min, wake up! Jeong-eun, get up! It’s okay! Even though you cried and snot was running from your nose in front of a child, and you asked her to cook for you because you can’t… still, isn’t there a meaning to live, right…? No, is there?”
Even Yeon, who was trying to look for hope, fell one by one.
The three of us, in front of the beautiful golden curry that the child cooked, bowed our heads respectfully at the table.
The actual person who made the curry, Heea, looked at us with confusion, her head full of question marks as if she didn’t understand what was going on.
It’s nothing, Heea.
We’re just feeling existential dread.
By the way.
I never thought there wouldn’t be anyone who knew how to cook among three high school girls.
Maybe it was a flaw of modern education, where only specialized knowledge is taught, while other knowledge is neglected.
All schools might want to reduce the weight of core curriculum classes and increase the weight of home economics classes that teach cooking.
I know people aren’t defined by their usefulness…
But not being useful at all makes me question if I’m disqualified as a human.
“….But, I can boil ramen, Hwa-min.”
“Your puppy at home could do that too, Yeon.”
Yeon, making a comparison with something ridiculous, was lightly ignored.
To cook, you need scales and measuring tools? What kind of nonsense is that?
That’s just a chemistry experiment, I wonder if that can even be called cooking.
It seems Yeon’s poor mind has been consumed by studying down to the roots.
Still, at least knowing how to boil ramen, she was like a fairy.
The real problem was right next to her.
“…..What are you looking at, Hwa-min.”
“Just curious.”
How can a person have thoughts like that?
Jeong-eun, who spat absurd cooking knowledge so wrong it felt deliberate, said things like the ‘wrap doesn’t melt when it touches fire’ and ‘the soup gets bland the more you boil it.’
Looks like I was praying it was a joke, but her serious face was more serious than ever.
I realized she was for real.
Of course, it was so ridiculous that I had to ask Jeong-eun when was the last time she touched cooking utensils.
The answer was a legendary “I touched it while playing a dumpling-making game on a flash game site.”
With a sigh, I held my head.
I guess today, I got to see how twisted humanity can get when it does get twisted.
So well. Given the situation.
I suppose my victory lies in my ability to make rice with soy sauce and egg.
“─Ah. That’s kind of not right, is it, senpai.”
“Hey, stop talking nonsense and move the side dishes over.”
“…..Okay.”
Clank, clank.
The sound of plates clattering filled the table.
This is too much.
This is off-topic, but the curry the child made was to die for.
If it had tasted bad, it would have been better, but the flavor screamed ‘this has my heart in it!’ just from the aroma, it made everyone at the table reflect on their cooking skills.
Later, there was a debate over who would take possession of the few ladles of leftover curry, but let’s skip that.
“Hehe. Thank you for eating it! There’s more ingredients left; should I make more?”
“…No. We’re sorry. Really sorry. So please, just stop saying that, Heea….”
“?? Okay? Hwa-min unnie!”
Only wounds remained in everyone’s hearts.
It was truly a horrendous war.
“Good night~! Unnies!”
“Okay. Heea, you sleep well too~”
“Heea, dream of me──*Gag!?”
Warm and delicious food has a peculiar magic of its own.
It makes you laugh and talk, allowing you to forget the sorrow and pain deep in your heart.
With a small thud, the flashlight that lit the darkness lost its light.
We all lay in a line in the dark room, smiling and drifting off to sleep to soothe our fatigue.
I thought about the mountain of food we had, probably enough to last us a few more weeks if the four of us shared.
Now instead of a space filled with the cries of zombies, there was a room with soft, fluffy mats on the floor.
And.
“……..”
While waiting for the sun to rise tomorrow, the three of us drifted to sleep.
In the pitch darkness, we found a glimmer of light.
In a future where nothing could be seen, we slowly found hope to move forward.
Thanks to one child who reached out her hand to us.
At first, we surely wouldn’t have known what lay below us.
Sometimes we’d stumble over things on the ground, and sometimes we’d bump into walls we couldn’t see and hold our forehead.
No, it certainly was like that.
“…….”
But still, if we didn’t give up.
If we kept our eyes open and tried to look at the world.
In the dark room that felt pitch black, in fact, a thin ray of light was sneaking in through the window from outside.
And, our eyes used to darkness would start to distinguish the contours of the items in the room.
“….I’m getting sleepy.”
I yawned softly and closed my eyes.
Sleep came more easily than I thought.
Nineteen days since the zombie outbreak.
The day I met the child who introduced herself as Heea.
The first day worth commemorating.
