Hiding a House in the Apocalypse-Chapter 136.3: Candle (3)

The tension didn’t last long.

The man with the deep voice lowered his weapon.

“You can ignore her.”

He glanced at the woman watching us and then turned away.

“She’s not human. She’s already dead. That’s why we call them candles.”

“Candles?”

I asked, staring blankly at the woman—undeniably alive—smiling at us from a distance.

He nodded.

“Like candles, just waiting to burn out.”

It wasn’t just her he was referring to. “Candles” clearly meant all the unmoving, zombie-like humans here.

They weren’t hostile. They weren’t talking.

Just standing there, still as death, like the monsters around them.

The woman stood silently beyond the snake-like spine of the barricades, never once speaking or making a threatening move.

“......”

This was the first time I’d seen a fanatic in such a narrow, pure sense.

It made sense. Back in China, we had still been defending major cities and outposts. The places we’d pulled back from—or failed to hold—had become erosion zones.

Seeing them up close left a bad taste in my mouth.

I hated them.

Not enough to shoot on sight, maybe. But I certainly didn’t want to count such weak and pathetic humans—those who’d surrendered to the enemy—as part of the same species as me.

If that woman so much as made a threatening move, I wouldn’t hesitate.

I don’t consider fanatics to be human. Therefore, they don’t deserve the same moral considerations I give to other people.

But just as the man said, the fanatic did nothing. Just stood there.

So we turned our focus back to the matter at hand.

“Instructor, what do you think?”

Song Yoo-jin asked, looking over the Rift and its surroundings below.

“It’s difficult.”

Not just “not easy.”

Difficult.

Among hunters, saying something is “difficult” is just a polite way of saying, Don’t even try it.

“To complete our objective, we’d have to get within immediate range of the Rift—but judging by the number and grade of the monsters stationed around it, it’s impossible.”

Only two solutions existed.

One: overwhelming firepower that could wipe them out from outside the repulsion field’s range—artillery, air support, or maybe naval bombardment from offshore.

Those were the reliable allies we used to count on, before the war. Now, they're all but gone.

Two: Woo Min-hee.

Only someone like her—an Awakened of that caliber—could rip through those monsters and carve a path.

But knowing her, she wouldn’t come just to help me.

“...Thanks for guiding us this far. At least I’ve updated my memories of what the Paju Rift looks like.”

To summarize: mission failed.

“Let’s pull out.”

Calling a retreat early is something both incompetent and competent leaders do.

The difference is whether the retreat saves everything—or slowly loses everything.

I usually don’t retreat.

Which means this situation was hopeless.

I looked at Ballantine.

“Ballantine. As unfortunate as it is, we can’t do anything against a force like that.”

“I—I see...”

He still hadn’t recovered from the shock.

The sweat, the trembling eyes, the heavy breathing—it all showed just how much stress he was under.

“Let’s go back. Our project matters, sure—but what matters more is staying alive. If we die, it’s over. All of it.”

“No, it’s not.”

It hit like a blade through my chest.

A vivid surge of killing intent.

I turned toward the fanatic—still standing near us, muttering nonsense.

“Can I kill her?”

I asked aloud.

The man with the deep voice responded immediately.

“Just ignore it. Didn’t I say? She’s a candle.”

Click.

I raised my handgun.

The motive was simple—and overwhelming.

You can’t let a fanatic speak.

You can’t let that filthy pale tongue spew its revolting dogma.

“The monsters might not react,” the man said, glancing at my gun, “but the otherworldly species could gather.”

“......”

Sometimes, I think back.

Should I have killed her back then?

I ask myself that question over and over.

“Wait.”

Ballantine stopped me.

I was surprised.

He’d always accepted my decisions without question, like an NPC. Even Song Yoo-jin flinched at the sheer killing intent I was emitting—yet he tried to stop me.

Maybe I’d been seeing him as someone lesser than us all along.

That I felt confused instead of angry told me everything.

“Maybe... we can use her.”

Ballantine looked at the woman.

“Use her?”

“These people... they’re walking around just fine even in places crawling with monsters, aren’t they?”

That idea would never occur to us.

At school, on the battlefield, we were taught—repeatedly—that fanatics aren’t people. They’re something to be killed.

In our eyes, they’re not human.

But Ballantine, who once lived an ordinary life, still seemed to see them as people.

As beings who could talk, who could cooperate.

It was strangely refreshing—and deeply shocking.

I waited to see what he’d do next.

“Um... excuse me? Hello!”

This translation is the intellectual property of Novelight.

Wiping sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief, Ballantine called out to the pale woman still watching us in a daze.

“This is awkward...”

The man with the deep voice muttered.

Song Yoo-jin’s expression didn’t look any more hopeful.

The other silent man, now wearing a full gas mask, said nothing—but clearly didn’t like what was happening.

“......”

Still, none of us stopped him outright.

Maybe out of respect for Ballantine’s feelings. Or maybe because it’d be too pathetic to retreat empty-handed after coming all this way and even cashing in a favor from Woo Min-hee.

And yeah—maybe we all had a tiny sliver of hope.

“So... um, could you go down to the Rift for us? From what we saw, the monsters don’t seem to attack people like you. Could you take this with you and just stay near that creepy floating lake-thing for, like, five minutes? Then come right back? We’ve got sugar. Dried jerky. Even a little flour...”

Ballantine used every gesture and trick he could to communicate.

I looked at the woman again.

She looked to be in her early to mid-20s.

Her hair was wild, unwashed, her condition far from healthy. She looked more like a dried-up twig than a person. But with a bath and proper food, she might be passable.

Judging by her height—around 165 cm—she probably wasn’t from the North.

Then she opened her mouth.

A faint sound drifted out.

But even with my sharp hearing, trained for sound detection, I could barely make it out. Her voice was either that weak—or that far gone.

Ballantine interpreted for us.

“She says she’ll do it.”

“...She will?”

“Yeah. Something about ‘union’ or whatever. Looks like she can go to that horrible floating Rift-thing without getting attacked.”

“......”

If I’m honest, I don’t like it.

We shouldn’t do this.

Hunters like me—especially those with deployment history in China—are firm believers that it’s always fine to kill a fanatic on sight.

But if I think it through... it’s just a tool.

“...Alright.”

“Can I borrow a communicator? I’ll need to show her how to use it.”

I handed one over.

Ballantine took the device and walked toward the fanatic woman.

I looked at his face.

A completely different face than the one he showed to me or Song Yoo-jin's group.

Sincere, passionate, and diligent—just an ordinary man giving his all.

It made me wonder, once again, about Ballantine’s past.

At first, I didn’t suspect much.

When I first heard about his background, Ballantine said he had been a small business owner.

But every time he brought it up, the details changed a little.

Sometimes he ran an internet café. Other times, he was an engineer at a major corporation.

Even his real name is ambiguous.

He once said, in his own words, that the name he used back in the swamp was an alias.

And I only just learned now that he was once married.

I’ve never bothered to dig deeper—but it’s clear he’s full of mysteries.

Still, I never questioned him because Ballantine’s personality has always been /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ steady, sincere, and kind.

He follows someone like me. Shares my beliefs. That’s a bonus.

In this age of collapse, someone like that is close enough to be called a friend, isn’t he? So I never brought up his past.

“Yes. She says she’s heading in now.”

The fanatic began to move.

Barefoot.

Her tattered robes flapped in the wind, revealing her bare backside—no underwear. But she didn’t care. That alone told me she had long since crossed the threshold of what we’d call “normal” humanity.

But her voice was sweet.

“You know what?”

She spoke through the communicator.

Soft Seoul dialect.

She wasn’t from the North.

I noticed Song Yoo-jin and the others taking off their communicators.

It’s muscle memory, old training, ingrained dogma.

We don’t converse with fanatics.

Part of that doctrine means we don’t listen to them, either.

“There was a kangaroo at the hospital where I stayed. A tall one. It stood on its hind legs and tail, always staring at the horizon in front of the hospital. I don’t think it was that old. Maybe two or three years? Actually, I never knew its exact age.”

I considered turning off my communicator too.

That pleasant voice, the measured breath, the dreamy pace—it all felt like the insidious evangelism of the cult that led to humanity’s fall.

“Wow. A kangaroo? What was it doing at a hospital?”

Ballantine’s voice stopped me from turning it off.

“......”

Let’s hear her out.

After all, I’m complicit in this incident too.

Not because I’m curious about the fanatic.

I never feel curiosity toward them.

What I want to understand is Ballantine. A man I consider close—but never truly connected with.

Through the brief silence, we saw her appear—stepping barefoot onto the pale plain.

Monsters were nearby.

Small-types. Snail variants.

A sub-species of early-stage insect-like monsters classified as primitive forms.

They secrete an acid that dissolves flesh—but as the fanatic walked past one, it didn’t react at all.

“I guess it was the hospital director’s decision.”

Even as she rambled on through the communicator.

“See, Skelton? The monsters really aren’t doing anything.”

Ballantine turned to me, excited. His voice carried a faint warmth.

“...I see.”

The woman walked straight toward the Rift under our wary gaze.

Despite the chaos around her—monsters, otherworldly species—not a single one paid her any mind.

“Amazing,” Ballantine whispered in awe.

But the deep-voiced man countered with a murmur.

“She’s just a burned-out candle.”

He turned away as he spoke.

“They ignore her because she’s already burned out.”

I exchanged a glance with Song Yoo-jin.

She and her team quietly retreated a few steps, widening the distance between us.

Meanwhile, the fanatic kept speaking in that soft, lulling tone.

“I always wondered why that kangaroo stood there staring out like that. At first, I was curious about how it even ended up in such a place. But over time, my question changed. I started wondering: What does the kangaroo think about, living inside this closed space?”

That was enough for me.

I called Song Yoo-jin over.

Though bright and usually cheerful, she’d grown more perceptive after getting chewed out by Woo Min-hee recently.

“Yes, sir?”

She came close and answered softly.

“You’re listening too, right?”

She glanced around and gave a small nod.

“That story she’s telling. Is it in the manuals?”

I figured it might be some sort of “parable.”

Fanatics spread their dogma through repeated, formulaic stories. Like parrots.

This kangaroo-at-the-hospital tale—I'd never heard it.

I’ve been away from the front for a while, so it wasn’t surprising.

But that’s why I asked her.

She’s still active duty. She’d know the current mental warfare narratives better than I would.

“I don’t know that one,” Song Yoo-jin replied, frowning slightly with her arms crossed. “There’s the subway pigeon pattern, but the hospital kangaroo? That’s new to me.”

“Yeah?”

The reason I asked was simple: to interrupt this madness mid-speech.

When a fanatic’s story reaches a crescendo, you can shut them down by jumping ahead to the ending. A clumsy tactic—but effective.

And the reason I even have to consider that is because Ballantine’s face right now doesn’t look right.

He likes her.

More than he’s ever liked someone like me, who’s known him for years.

Well, I guess it makes sense. She’s young. If you cleaned her up, she’d be pretty.

Disappointed, I turned back to the story.

“There was a room just off the lobby hallway. The kangaroo’s room. It’s true—really. The ceiling was pretty high, so it had to step on two stacked beer crates to get up into its room. But every evening, the kangaroo would climb up by itself and go in.”

Song Yoo-jin snorted quietly.

It was just that ridiculous.

I didn’t bother commenting.

My eyes never left the fanatic.

She had reached about 100 meters from the Rift.

A hellish place guarded by mid-sized monsters like celestial kings, with all manner of insect-like horrors swarming below them.

Yet she walked barefoot, unbothered.

She even stepped on something that looked like a millipede-type otherworldly creature—and nothing happened.

The farther she went, the brighter Ballantine’s face became.

“Wow...”

He was keeping his voice down, but I could tell he was seeing it as some kind of miracle.

And yeah, maybe it was.

If someone walks fearlessly in front of monsters we’re told are absolute enemies, it’s understandable that your faith might waver.

She crossed the last cluster of monsters and finally reached the calm lake-like surface beneath the Rift—the origin of all this disaster.

“A candle, huh... almost burned out.”

The deep-voiced man murmured.

I asked Song Yoo-jin for his name.

“Hyung-taek. Shin Hyung-taek. He’s a year younger than me. The one with the gas mask is Kang Ji-soo.”

While everyone’s thoughts collided in silence, Ballantine got back to work, face serious again, and resumed measurement.

“Alright. That’s good. Just like that.”

I watched without comment.

Sometimes process matters. Sometimes outcome matters more.

And in a situation like this—where there’s no next time—results take priority.

I kept one eye on the monsters and one on Ballantine, who scanned the tablet with wide, unblinking eyes.

Soon, Ballantine nodded.

“Yes. That’s enough. This should be sufficient!”

Success?

But then the fanatic broke the silence from beneath the Rift.

“I know now what the kangaroo was thinking. Why it did what it did.”

She tossed the communicator and spoke directly to Ballantine.

“It’s bullshit.”

She said it again, louder.

“Don’t listen to it.”