After a long, hollow sigh, Su Jin slid down and sat on the floor, his chest heaving with ragged breaths.
He had always considered himself braver and more optimistic than the average guy. And until today, he had been right!
Even after entering the corporate meat grinder and becoming a quintessential wage slave, his spine had never bent.
But right now? He was terrified. Shaking in his boots terrified…
Su Jin buried his fingers in his hair, filled with regret.
I was wrong. I was wrong from the very beginning.
If he hadn’t gone drinking with that client, he wouldn’t have offended the bastard. If he hadn’t offended him, he wouldn’t have had to job-hunt. And if he hadn’t job-hunted, he wouldn’t have been forced into a job by this company and dumped into this godforsaken place!!
“Is the company listening… can anyone hear me?” Su Jin swallowed hard, his voice wavering as he stared nervously into the empty air.
Disappointment quickly settled in. He was just talking to himself.
To a company, an employee’s value came down to a simple equation: market value minus the cost of jumping ship.
The harder someone flattered the boss and professed love for the company, the more dependent they looked. It meant their cost of changing jobs was too high, making them more likely to be laid off.
If layoffs came, mentioning car payments, a mortgage, a wife, or children would only give the company more leverage and likely shrink your payout.
Su Jin had held firmly to that theory since the day he graduated, mastering the dark art of “managing up.” He always projected an aura of absolute confidence, earning respect even from clients.
He had survived round after round of layoffs while keeping his job. If he hadn’t made such a serious mistake, Old Li would never have laid him off.
But this damned Heavenly Dao Infinite Liability Company had no one in sight! There was not even a boss he could try to manage!
He sat paralyzed on the floor until the sun dipped below the horizon.
The last sliver of twilight faded, plunging the apartment into pitch black.
In the gloom, Su Jin vigorously scrubbed his face, exhaling a long, weary breath.
Pushing himself up, he flicked on the light switch. After a solid session of wallowing in self-pity, the rigid panic in his face had finally softened.
Resolutely, he marched toward the bathroom.
Things had come to this.
He had to give up wishful thinking, prepare to fight, and complete the assignment!
The company ignoring him was at least one good sign. It likely meant no one was actively watching him.
Considering they could speak to him out of thin air, he’d spent the whole day feeling like a lab rat under a microscope.
The feeling was so unnerving he hadn’t even dared to take a shit. He’d been holding it for twenty-four hours!
He genuinely wondered how all those webnovel protagonists with systems or old souls talking to them managed to deal with this problem.
The next morning, harsh sunlight pierced the room, glaring directly onto Su Jin’s face.
He groaned, his eyelids twitching. After a long, internal struggle, he finally cracked his eyes open, clinging to a desperate sliver of hope.
He was still in the unfamiliar bedroom. Even though he expected it, a bitter wave of disappointment washed over him.
The only silver lining was that the leaves he had eaten last night had caused no ill effects.
Six days until the apocalypse.
He had slept fully clothed, tossing and turning in a state of high alert, managing only two or three hours of broken sleep.
Hauling himself out of bed, he went to the bathroom and washed up.
Su Jin paced into the living room, glanced at the two sheets of white paper already taped to the window, and dropped into a chair at the dining table.
Pulling out his notepad and a piece of bread, he began to eat and make notes.
He had an agreement with Fu Qingdai. He was renting the unit directly across from hers. The minute she was discharged, she would come find him.
He would wait three days. If she still had not returned, he’d have to go back to the psychiatric hospital.
Right now, the client was not his first priority. Preparing for the crisis came first.
Six days on the clock. He needed to stock plenty of water, food, and medicine.
Water was the problem. It would be contaminated, making it hard to replenish his supply later.
Daily consumption rates were high, the volume couldn’t be compressed, and water was much heavier than most other supplies.
Bottling it up meant concentrating a great deal of weight in one small area. Storing a sustainable quota would stress the apartment’s floor slabs heavily. Dispersing the barrels would devour crucial floor space.
He did not know this world’s building standards, and design standards did not guarantee construction standards.
Construction standards said nothing about the workers, or the workers about material quality, and he had no idea how the materials had aged.
That was why he had decided, at the last minute yesterday, to rent two apartments.
An adult needed about two liters of drinking water a day. A ton of water, strictly rationed for drinking, could keep one person alive for about eighteen months.
But stress, injury, or other circumstances could push that higher.
He also had to budget for Fu Qingdai and her parents… plus other people he might bring in to improve their chances of survival.
Two apartments. Four tons of water. Storing the water by the load-bearing walls should spread the weight while leaving more than enough water.
That required forty hundred-liter barrels… No, he needed to buy larger vats and place wooden boards underneath to spread the weight.
Su Jin wrote each item down. Then his pen paused and he turned to food storage.
He needed staple foods, but would have to buy grain farther away. He would get cardboard boxes for the grain shop to pack it in and arrange delivery at night.
Otherwise, if people saw him stockpiling grain, it could cause trouble. He would need to smooth things over with the guard at the gate, perhaps by saying he was moving in.
He also needed fats and protein. Bottled vegetable oil or animal fat would supply the former.
Protein powder was the most efficient source, but he suspected it might not be sold here. Judging by what he had seen, the fitness industry was practically at zero. He hadn’t spotted a single commercial gym from the cab window.
The backup option was powdered milk: nutritionally dense, highly accessible, easy to store compactly, and loaded with calories.
For micronutrients, he’d have to rely on supplements.
After twenty minutes of intense brainstorming and drafting, Su Jin flipped to a fresh page.
With food and water covered, weapons came next. This world was industrialized, so firearms had to be in widespread use.
But the difficulty of acquiring black-market hardware was an unquantifiable variable. He had asked Fu Qingdai about it; civilian firearm ownership was strictly prohibited.
He did not know how to get a firearm, and could not afford the legal risk or expense.
Combining his seven thousand with Fu Qingdai’s money, he had just over twenty-five thousand in all.
That was barely enough to stock up on supplies, so he had to give up on buying a gun. It would not be much use anyway.
Without practice, he would waste ammunition, and replacing it would be difficult.
And if gunshots drew zombies, using one would be worse than going without. For now, a gun was most useful for deterring living people; it was better not to fire.
The one gun he already had was enough.
Therefore, he would have to rely on melee weapons. Long weapons would be best. He could source steel pipes from a hardware store, then modify them with blades or axes.
Securing a bow and arrows would be even better. He would have time to practice while sheltering in the safe house.
Only…
Su Jin pulled out the city map, his finger tracing the grid for the local slaughterhouse.
If he were still a reckless teenager, the prospect of hacking into living flesh might actually excite him.
But life had taught him to respect the law and understand how fragile life was.
He didn’t shy away from a fistfight, but cutting a person down? Even if that person was a zombie… he would probably panic.
But if that moment came, his aim could not falter. His hands couldn’t shake!
One mistake could kill him.
A grown adult should know better than to overestimate himself.
The most critical item on his to-do list—after spending a day getting to know the area—was finding a chance to visit a slaughterhouse. He needed to try cutting up live animals. He needed to get used to the sight and feel of it.