Everyone's eyes turned to me.
The pillar I had slammed cracked, and the fracture spread all the way across the ceiling and floor.
"You motherfuckers left the food in our hands?"
"S-still, we all got it together!"
Someone with a bit of nerve tried to argue with me, but—
"Who said that?"
"Huh?"
"Which bastard lied and said we got it together? My sister and I got it with just the two of us."
Those assholes calling themselves the Cheoldupa hadn't secured even a scrap of food.
In other words, Cheon Inho had done absolutely nothing for us, then stirred people up to demand we hand over what we had.
"And even if we say everyone got it together, without the two of us, you'd have lost the food and the people too. You should've been so grateful you handed over all the food to us, and instead you pull this kind of bullshit?!"
As I shouted, people started edging backward.
If they were going to fold this easily, they shouldn't have mouthed off in the first place.
Of course, the fact that one punch from me had shaken the ground and cracked the station probably had something to do with it.
Even taking that into account, they were pathetically spineless.
"If you've got no strength and no brains... then you should be thinking about clinging to a bastard like me who does have strength if you want to survive. Do you still think the national system is working properly and rescue is going to show up any minute now?"
Everyone fell silent.
Even Cheon Inho seemed not to have expected me to come out this aggressively. He just stared at me with his mouth shut.
As for that guy Cheolsu, who'd already gotten badly burned by me once, he wouldn't even meet my eyes.
"Now get lost. You're noisy, so—"
"Wait a second."
[I'll handle it from here. This is enough.]
"...Fine. If that's what you want."
Dokja stopped me and spoke through a skill.
It should be carved into their heads by now.
They'd now see her as "the only woman who can control a man with that kind of power," and that would apply to Cheon Inho too.
In other words, touch Dokja, and I crush the one who touched her.
The problem was that there wasn't a single person here who could stop me.
Touch Dokja, and we die. That was the conclusion I'd forced into them.
That thought should be firmly planted now.
"Mr. Dokyun? Wasn't that a little too extreme?"
"When idiots get manipulated that easily, you need a shock strong enough to break the manipulation if you want them to face reality."
People who'd been worked over by agitation wouldn't listen no matter how logically you explained things.
Because they mistook themselves for righteous people, not manipulated fools.
Because they firmly believed anything that bastard said was just a lie meant to deceive them.
If you wanted to break that, it was easier to smother them with the fear that you had enough power to kill them all than to explain it logically.
It wasn't a good method in the long run, but we weren't going to stay at Geumho Station for long anyway.
"Of course, we will share the food. But it won't be free."
"What... what do you mean by that?"
"Not free...?"
"Don't tell me you're going to sell food?"
I didn't know what Dokja was planning, but if things were going the way she wanted and the Constellations liked it too, then I figured it was fine.
"That's right. I'm not a volunteer, and I don't trust those people."
At Dokja's words, Cheon Inho's expression, which had looked victorious, twisted in real time.
At the same time, confused voices rose from all over the place.
"If you don't want it, you don't have to buy it. But if you try to steal it..."
Grrrrrrr.
"Well, I think you already know what happens then."
"Th-then, h-how much..."
Even if they were dissatisfied, with me standing here they couldn't openly resist. The group members could only back off and ask the price.
If they'd cooperated this nicely from the start, the mood would've been a lot better than this.
"I only accept Coins."
"Um... Ms. Dokja, Mr. Dokyun, was that really the right choice? Isn't 50 Coins each too expensive...?"
"Just so you know, from next time on, I'll be charging all of you 10 Coins too."
I didn't think it was that bad.
It wasn't like we were exploiting necessity and charging 200 or 300 Coins apiece.
If you killed a single mosquito on the street, the system called it killing a living being and gave you 100 Coins right away.
Whatever happened after this, Dokja had to have thought it through.
"Dokja, give me one ramen."
"Do you want water too?"
"I'm eating it dry. Just give it to me."
"...I guess you don't charge Mr. Dokyun because he's family."
Heewon, who had recovered enough to move around by now, slowly pushed herself up.
Well, actually, it was a little different from that.
"The food was something the two of us brought back together anyway, and more importantly, Dokja gets all the profit from selling it, so isn't it fine to just give me two or three pieces of food?"
Put simply, you could say I gave up my share of the profits in exchange for food.
"I'm only a pushover when it comes to Dokja. You've all seen me do anything if it's to keep Dokja alive, so why are you acting surprised now?"
If you really wanted to get technical, since we'd secured it together, I could've taken food and split the profits too. But the food was basically just my excuse for not taking a share of the earnings.
"Of course. I'll start paying right now. I don't need anything for free. I'm Jung Heewon."
Heewon had woken up. Other than that, nothing major happened like before.
We just passed the time with idle chatter.
"Ms. Dokja, Mr. Dokyun, you should get some sleep too. I'll take watch."
"No, I have something I need to do. Besides, I don't really build up fatigue that easily."
"Don't comfort me over something like this."
"...Pardon?"
"Ah, not you, Hyunsung-ssi. I was talking to the Constellations."
"Ah...."
Normally, talking to yourself or speaking into empty air would've made you look strange, like a lunatic. But now that Constellations had appeared, not doing it made you the strange one.
"Anyway, what do you mean? Ms. Dokja. Something you need to do?"
Kim Hyunsung looked at me, but...
'I don't know either.'
Even though Dokja had a skill that let only the two of us hear each other, she hadn't told me her plan.
Not even what was going to happen next.
I didn't know whether she was still working out the details or trying to ease my worries even a little, but from my side, I couldn't help feeling like she didn't fully trust me.
"Um..."
Dokja had lived with me long enough that she was always quick to notice what I was troubled over.
This time too, she looked at me with those deep eyes, as if to say it was the same as always.
With a sly smile on her lips.
"...Why?"
"I'm never doing business with you again."
"Good grief. You sold all of that overnight? Ha, that's ridiculous. They were all just watching each other.... And why is Mr. Dokyun collapsed over there?"
"He's mentally exhausted."
For once, I agreed with the Constellations.
Dokja got the Coins, and I did all the labor of finding the goods and selling them.
If family could be used, she used them first.
That woman knew I was bad at refusing her requests, so she worked me all night under the excuse of "asking a favor."
'Who can I blame? I should blame this pathetic mental fortitude that can't say no.'
They'd only known me for two days, but seeing how obviously worn out I looked compared to normal, everyone started saying a word or two.
"...Mr. Dokyun looks really pitiful."
Lee Hyunsung.
"Seriously. The way he looks exhausted makes it hard to even poke at him...."
Jung Heewon.
"Hmm...."
Yoo Sangah.
"What's wrong, Sangah-ssi?"
"Ah, it's just... somehow, the way he looks tired reminds me of Ms. Dokja."
"Yeah, maybe because they're family, they have a similar feel...? Something like that?"
"Is that what I look like when I'm tired?"
Even Dokja was muttering to herself now.
Now even the Constellations were doing this.
Still, seeing Dokja smile didn't make me feel bad.
It had been so long since I'd seen her smile in front of people other than me.
"But don't you need to tell them that part?"
"Ah. Yeah, it'd be better to say it."
"You two, what are you..."
""It wasn't only the marginalized group that bought from us.""
We sold to anyone who came, whether they were marginalized or mainstream.
Naturally, the mainstream group had more Coins, so in practice they bought almost everything up.
"Starting today, we'll be limiting food rations. Distribution will be three biscuits per person."
"Ugh, that stingy bastard. They practically bought everything out themselves, and they still could've loosened up a little more."
"Well, we sold it, so that's that."
"Ah, then sponsor us the amount of Coins we made from selling it. If you do that, we'll give the Coins back."
Hypocritical bastards. Their own Coins were precious, but they still had plenty to say to us for earning ours fairly.
If they were going to shut up over something like that, why bother picking a fight in the first place?
"Oppa, aren't you getting more and more blunt with the Constellations?"
"They're bastards who snicker while we're suffering. I can curse at them if I want. People talk shit about kings behind their backs too."
Though now, you couldn't even do it behind their backs.
With the channel, they could watch from anywhere, so no matter what you did, it just became openly cursing them out.
"Anyway, where's the [Goddess of Love and Beauty]? Haven't seen her lately."
"You showed up every day, and then you didn't. That's all."
As always, I enjoyed my usual WWE with the Constellations who'd come around since the world ended.
"Yesterday, Ms. Kim Dokja over there told us something useful."
Again, again, again with this bullshit.
I'm standing right here, and just because I look a little tired, do they think this is the right moment to try something?
"Thank you for telling us something useful, Ms. Kim Dokja."
"Because of that bastard...."
"Want me to gouge every last one of your eyes out before you move away?"
"...."
"If one word from me is enough to make this place go quiet like a library, then you shouldn't even try it."
Watching the killing intent aimed at Dokja vanish at a single word from me, I felt it in my bones once again that this world preyed on the weak and bowed to the strong.
The old world had been like that too, but after the apocalypse, it stood out even more sharply.
"In the end, doesn't this just mean the mainstream group monopolized the food again? Weren't you trying to weaken the mainstream group's power by encouraging trade between people?"
"That's right. I was hoping people would rise up on their own."
Dokja was really good at lying.
Even though she'd never believed from the start that people would rise up on their own.
"Still, you left enough food for yourselves to eat, right?"
"No, we sold all of it."
"What?! Th-that, that really happened...? And you, as her brother, what were you doing instead of stopping her?!"
"Because I trust Dokja completely."
"You still have to do what you need to do yourself! It's not like you'll only breathe when Ms. Dokja tells you to breathe!!"
It wasn't unreasonable for Jung Heewon to react like that.
From the outside, I probably looked like nothing more than Dokja's puppet, but the truth was a little different.
Dokja knew the future, and last night she told me what was about to happen.
That's why I didn't stop her.
It wasn't that I blindly followed whatever Dokja planned. I was making my own judgments too.
Whatever the case, the number one priority most important to me was Dokja's safety.