A woman of unknown identity who stirred a deeply suspicious sense of doubt—Seo Yura.
Even just looking at her appearance, there wasn’t only one or two things suspicious about her, starting with the way she kept glancing at me and grinning. And then there was that bizarre outfit, the likes of which I’d never seen before, making me wonder if she was even someone living in the same era as me.
Especially the compressed suit beneath that white gown, gleaming with a black lacquered sheen, and the faintly blinking blue circuit network across its surface—it made it impossible to guess what on earth she did.
At this point, I was starting to wonder if I’d wandered onto the set of a tokusatsu shoot.
It felt exactly like I’d stepped into some hero’s secret underground bunker base.
“Wow... This is my first time talking to a man this close...”
“...”
“You’re really handsome... slurp...”
When I stayed silent for a while, she sucked on her finger and observed me as if she’d lost her soul. Looking closely, this sort of thing was unmistakably proof she was from this world...
Because the male-to-female ratio was an extreme 1:9, women would often stare at me like this when they were nearby. As if they were looking at some curious creature.
“Um... Miss Yura?”
“Uh, hmm?!”
Yura, who had been staring holes through me for quite some time, flinched at my question. Like a startled cat curling up, her gaze fixed on me.
“M-Miss Yura, you’re the one who saved me, right?”
“Huh?! U-uh, yeah, th-that’s right! I saved you. With this antimatter particle beam, like this—pababang!”
It was a simple question, but perhaps because she was excited, her gestures were excessive. That... antimatter particle whatever? I didn’t know what it was, but I roughly understood what she meant.
“Heheh! A device this genius painstakingly created to exterminate the Aberrations. Ah, it still only works on ones that have flesh or a physical body, but... b-before long, I’ll be able to wipe out all the Aberrations. Ahem!”
“...Wipe out the Aberrations?”
“Ah... I guess you didn’t see because you were unconscious? It’s dangerous here, so I’ll show you later...”
Wait, she had a weapon that could defeat those Aberrations?
Was she serious?
...Well, if she didn’t, I’d have died long ago. Just from the level of technology I’d seen so far, it seemed credible enough.
And then someone flashed through my mind.
Right, Lee Seoyeon... What happened to the girl who’d been with me?
“Huh? Wait a moment. Miss Yura, did you happen to see anyone else nearby? She’s a little shorter than me, a girl... She should’ve been wearing a combat vest.”
“Uh, huh? A g-girl? I didn’t see anyone like that around... When I sent out the drones to scout, you were the only one I found...”
So she wasn’t here. Haa... If I was going to be rescued, we should’ve been rescued together. I’d shoved her out the window intending to die, yet in the end, I was the only one saved...
Still, she must have escaped well.
She was so quick on her feet. I had no doubt she’d somehow survived.
Grrrrrr—
Damn it, how long had I been starving? Just as I was about to sort through my complicated thoughts again, my stomach began to churn as if begging to be saved.
Well, of course. Forget a proper meal, it had been hard enough to drink even a sip of water. I couldn’t impose any more than I already had, but...
“You must be hungry?”
“Ah... It’s been quite a while since I last ate...”
“Hmm...”
At the risk of being rude, I sent her another look asking for help. Eating was a matter of life and death, after all. At the very least, I was hoping to get my hands on some preserved canned food.
She lived in such a large, nice place. Surely there had to be something to eat. It was pathetic, but in this situation, I’d even have to sell my gender if I had to.
“Is there anything you want to eat?”
“Pardon?”
“You must have been starving. I’m asking if there’s anything you want to eat.”
Wh-what I want to eat?
But the answer that came back was so unexpected that I was momentarily at a loss for words. I’d be grateful for anything she gave me, and now she was suddenly giving me a choice? This was an apocalypse world where you had to eat whatever was thrown at you. A question that completely shattered that framework turned my mind blank.
“Uh... um... Just one can of beans would be...”
“Hm? Canned beans? We don’t have anything like that here... You should say actual food.”
“F-food...”
She didn’t have canned food? Then what did this person live on? If she didn’t even have something like that, survival would be...
“Preserved rations?”
“???”
“Protein blocks? C-combat rations...”
This woman’s expression grew more and more lost in a maze. Did she really not have those either? What kind of answer did she want? She let out a deep sigh, then reluctantly opened her mouth.
“I’ll take care of it. Rest here.”
“Ah... Yes...”
Yura turned her back and left the hospital room. As she moved away, a sensor activated, and the glass door slid smoothly shut.
And she returned like that less than ten minutes later.
She brought a wheelchair and seated me in it.
Seriously, was there anything this place didn’t have?
“After making everything, I figured it’d be hard to bring it all here. You’re sitting properly, right?”
“Yes.”
“Your feet will drag, so put them up properly.”
“...”
We went outside. As soon as we crossed the threshold, what came into view was a long, stretched-out corridor. I couldn’t even see where it ended.
Holy shit... What the hell was this place?
If there was such a thing as a secret underground research wing, wouldn’t it look like this? It was an insane facility, the kind where they looked like they might be experimenting on aliens somewhere.
Where was the electricity even coming from, and who was managing a facility this size? There were so many things to question that I couldn’t even decide what to ask first.
As we continued straight ahead and I turned my gaze to the left, I saw purple artificial light beyond translucent reinforced glass. Had she even built cultivation facilities? Freshly grown vegetables that couldn’t possibly be obtained outside were lined up as if to show off.
And those round things... what were they?
Things floating through the air, scanning leaves with light coming from their eyes. With pincer-like arms extending from either side, they were personally tending the vegetables.
D-drones? Wasn’t this technology way too far ahead of its time? I’d never seen anything like that in my life.
“Amazing, right? What do you think? Those are all my creations! New seeds improved to survive even in this vulgar environment. I’ve increased their growth speed to nearly double what it was before.”
“...”
“Now, now. Anyway, let’s go eat.”
At this point, I didn’t even know where or how to react. It made me feel like an idiot for having struggled so desperately to survive until now.
A survivor camp? Was there any need to go? This place was heaven, paradise. Just being able to sleep comfortably without my life being threatened was reason enough to stay here.
Of course, that would be up to the owner of this place to decide...
Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen a single person since earlier...
It was an absurdly vast space, yet for some reason, most of what moved through the corridors were only robots or drones.
There wasn’t even the faintest trace of a person.
“By the way, Miss Yura. Are there no people here?”
“People? I live here alone...”
“Pardon? In this huge place?”
“Yeah, that’s right. You’re the first one who’s ever come here.”
No, she was handling a facility with this level of technology and equipment all by herself?
Was she someone far more incredible than I’d imagined? At the very least, managing a space this large should require multiple people. No matter how much they said these days that AI could solve everything, seriously, what kind of person was she?! Questions continued to breed one after another.
With only the confusion from every question I asked piled up inside me, Yura and I arrived at our destination.
The ironclad, firmly closed door slid open by sensor, and soon an overwhelming aroma brushed past the tip of my nose.
Th-the smell of meat?!
A sweet, meaty fragrance that stimulated my primal appetite. The smell I thought I would never taste again burrowed deep into my nasal cavity and stimulated every nerve in my brain.
It was so savory it seeped deep into my lungs, robbing me of human reason. When we reached our destination, I couldn’t believe my eyes.
A feast of delicacies from land and sea.
Meat if it was meat, seafood if it was seafood. Everything was on the table. It was a spread beyond a twelve-dish table setting, beyond even a royal banquet—more than enough to make the table legs collapse.
Saliva didn’t just gather in my mouth, it nearly spilled out, and it was more shocking than anything I’d seen so far.
Steak, whole roasted pig, caviar, pollack roe pasta, pork belly, bulgogi...
There was too much. So much I couldn’t count it on my fingers... Was it really okay for me to eat this? Normally, I would’ve first wondered where she’d gotten all of it, but...
My thoughts had gone numb.
The hunger of all that time...
My instincts, which felt like they were about to burst...
Shut up and shove this into your mouth first. Every single cell in my body was screaming.
I whipped my head around. Looking back and forth between the food and Yura again and again, I panted endlessly like a dog waiting for its master’s command.
F-food... Food...
If I had a tail, wouldn’t it have been wagging like mad?
That was how unable I was to hide my excitement.
“Uhmm... Since you kept asking for strange things, I prepared everything I could for now... Is it okay?”
Could this really be expressed with something as mild as okay? This was a banquet. If she would just let me bury my nose in a plate and lick it clean, there was nothing I couldn’t do...
“Hurry and eat before it gets cold.”
Permission had been granted. After that, nothing else reached my ears. She tried to stop me from behind, saying things like eat slowly and calm down, but that much wasn’t enough to stop me.
And so, pushing the spoon and chopsticks aside, I frantically ate with my hands.
By the time I finally came back to my senses, I had only barely cleared about a quarter of the food.