Chapter 8: Demian04 and 1 Other
Almost all of us doomsday preppers are men, and single men at that.
I never saw any female participants at John Lennon's offline meet-up, nor have I ever read a post in the community where the author implied they were a woman.
If you think about it for a moment, the reason is obvious.
To put it another way, we doomsday preppers are guys holding rituals and praying for the world to end.
If you were living gratefully in the present world, you would pray for the present to continue rather than preparing for the apocalypse.
What would have been our fate if monsters had suddenly disappeared and the war hadn't broken out?
In my case, Bak Gyu,
I'd be totally fucked...
Not just ruined, but sent straight into the abyss.
The evidence of that remains intact on my cell phone, which now has no signal.
[Web Sent] (Shinheon Bank) Notice of Scheduled Auction Execution for Customer Bak*Gyu's Collateral Loan
[Web Sent] (Sanwang Money) Notification of Debt Transfer Regarding Customer Bak Gyu's Overdue Ladies' Loan
[Web Sent] This is Silla Credit Information. http://sinramoneytaker.co.kr/....
As if pouring money into cement construction equipment on a piece of shit land wasn't enough, I ran out of money at the end and even took out loans with no intention of paying them back.
It was hard to imagine that there would be a female user, as bright as a flower, in a place gathered with such gloomy bastards.
But recently, a female user appeared without any warning.
It was one year and seven months after the war had started.
If you live in a bunker for over a year, there is a problem everyone experiences.
A lack of entertainment.
I don't drink or smoke.
I might have a light drink if I were in a safe place, but drinking alone leads to addiction, and addiction leads to death.
Smoking is a moderate amusement, but it is a valuable barter resource and has the power to attract people.
I know well from experience that the sense of smell of a human forced to quit smoking for a long time is no less than a dog's.
That said, finding entertainment elsewhere isn't easy either.
It's not like broadcasting stations play dramas on certain days of the week, and there's no place to meet a friend for a drink.
If I want to play a physical sport like soccer, there's no team.
I don't know about those who pursue group survivalism, but those like me who pursue solo survival can't even play table tennis.
I thought about taking up fishing as a hobby, but I gave up because the radiation levels at the nearby reservoir wouldn't go down.
As time passed and guests became more frequent, the time I spent inside the bunker increased, and my hobbies naturally changed to things I could do indoors.
Honestly, it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the most entertaining amusement at this point is our doomsday community, Viva! Apocalypse!
Since it's a place where people with the same thoughts gather and talk about their similar situations.
There are weird users like IAmJesus, DongtanMom, and Defender, but there are also plenty of exemplary users like me.
At this current point, over a year and a half after the war began, even I, who used to be a perpetual lurker, was actively writing posts in the community.
The reasons are complex.
I was bored, I could feel a sense of communication, and watching my comrades disappear one by one, the desire not to see our precious community vanish also played a part.
The results are below.
SKELTON: (Skelton Daily Life) Tonight's dinner haha
SKELTON: (Skelton Story) Hot news I heard on the military frequency yesterday
SKELTON: (Skelton Making) I tried making a wool felt doll!
SKELTON: (Skelton Video) Skelton's Beatbox (3)
For some reason, my persona in the community was resembling my mentor, John Lennon.
But I didn't completely imitate John Lennon.
John Lennon only added the header [John Lennon], but I considered the readers by adding specific topics after the header, like (Skelton Video).
However, unlike John Lennon, I had absolutely no popularity, so my view counts were always in the single digits, and I got no likes or comments.
You could say it's the limit of an ordinary guy with no manual dexterity, no writing skills, and no knowledge worth teaching others.
Looking at popular users like DragonC, a former webtoon artist who drew and posted his daily life with a stylish art style, or Anonymous118, who uploaded various crude but diverse self-made games, I felt like I understood why John Lennon was attacked so much.
Being active at the very bottom of the popularity caste, I naturally started noticing friends similar to me one by one.
The persistent writer who stubbornly posted his self-authored novels even though his view counts approached binary numbers, the eccentric who posted pictures of his hideous naked body with baseless confidence, Sea Monkey Papa who serialized a Sea Monkey diary, and so on.
Sea Monkey Papa might have been a bit more popular if he had raised something else...
Among this bottom group is a user named Demian04.
He habitually posted self-drawn pictures using a ballpoint pen, and speaking of talent, not even a sprout of talent was visible.
His subject was always a woman with long straight hair (or so it seemed), and even if it couldn't be helped that he drew it at the level of a spirit photograph, he drew the breasts excessively large.
If it were just excessive, I wouldn't have said much, but in Demian04's case, he attached two sacks of rice.
Did he grow up malnourished as a baby?
Demian04 mostly just uploaded his modern art-esque drawings and rarely wrote posts revealing his thoughts or opinions.
His persistence in endlessly uploading those terribly drawn, ugly chest monsters might have been the reason I remembered him.
But this man, from a certain point on, suddenly became very talkative.
(Search Results: demian04 – 4,553 items)
...
Demian04: Yuri, you are so pretty~
Demian04: I picked a flower for Yuri today and took a picture.
Demian04: The current state of Demian's food pantry.jpg
Demian04: (Demian04 Food) Tonight's dinner, it's a shame to eat alone~ haha
Demian04: (Demian04 Art) Fan art for Yuri!!
Demian04: (Demian04 Story) Just chased away some refugees
...
...
"...Hmm?"
No, why is this person suddenly imitating me?
Actually, that bizarre header was John Lennon's trademark, but I'm the one who inherited it and nicely improved it.
Demian is imitating me, not John Lennon.
I think I roughly know the reason.
I'm not bragging, but I've gained some minor popularity recently.
SKELTON: (Skelton Story) Memories with Chairman Je Pung-ho (1)
The serialized story recounting my experiences with a chaebol in an folksy narrative struck a chord with the picky users of the Viva! Apocalypse! Korean board.
Part 3, which could be called the climax of this series, even achieved the feat of getting onto the trending posts list.
Demian must have read that post too.
But why did this friend suddenly become so talkative?
In an apocalyptic period like now, it's not that rare for a person to go crazy overnight or act out of character.
Accumulated stress, truths turned away from, external threats, disease and radiation, drugs, anxiety about the future, and so on—there are plenty of things to make us go crazy.
In Demian's case, it was certain that he went crazy through a route different from the usual causes of madness.
Demian04: (Demian04) Fan art for Yuri!!
I clicked on one of Demian's posts to check the contents.
As always, he drew his nymph, the woman with long straight hair.
It was still terribly drawn as before, but to the eyes of this Bak Gyu, who had appreciated all his drawings, one difference stood out.
He put effort into it.
A lot of it.
Suddenly, I felt a question.
Who is this person named Yuri?
A real person? Or an imaginary girlfriend? I've never seen such a person in the community.
It's a world where women don't exist in the first place.
I couldn't resolve the question at all, so I asked the community for advice.
SKELTON: (Skelton Question) Who on earth is Yuri?
The person who helped me was an unexpected figure.
Message from Defender: Looks like you blocked her. Turn on the "View posts from blocked users" feature.
It was none other than Defender, the human hunter.
This friend was a psychopath who committed random murders in reality, but within the community, he was an excellent user who, although a bit prickly, only spoke the truth.
So, a real-life son of a bitch and an internet sage, you could say.
Isn't it usually the other way around?
Anyway, accepting the human hunter's advice, I turned on the 'View posts from blocked users' feature, and the hidden truth was revealed.
Yuri_need_man: Yuri is here~
Yuri_need_man: Put on makeup for the first time in a while, took a pic
Yuri_need_man: Depressed
Yuri_need_man: Wanna go to Starfucks
...
...
"What is this."
It's a woman.
And a young, pretty woman at that.
She attached a photo of herself to every post, and although she didn't reveal her entire face, the vaguely visible face was the undeniable image of a beauty in her early 20s.
Her body oozed sex appeal, and knowing this, she enjoyed wearing highly revealing outfits.
I remember she had quite a lot of tattoos.
The location was inside a bunker, and they weren't old photos but current ones.
However.
"Huh?"
For the first time in a while, my good-natured expression hardened stiffly.
This is a trap.
Why would I have blocked that ID "Yuri_need_man"?
I didn't block Yuri.
I blocked the bastard using the account Yuri was using.
I checked.
Yuri_need_man's Account Information
Account ID: viva103472
Nickname: Yuri_need_man
Number of Posts: 10,323
"As expected."
On the Viva! Apocalypse! board, you can change your nickname anytime like in a group chat, but the Account ID has a unique value, so it cannot be changed.
I searched by Account ID and found this account's original nickname.
kurogod: My dad's assets are about 120 billion won
kurogod: I miss caviar~ American prime steak can't satisfy my taste buds~
kurogod: The Bentley I used to ride before the war~
kurogod: Honestly, if I went all in, I could've built a much better bunker than you guys~
...
..
kurogod. This friend is one of the four people I blocked along with the human hunter.
He was a friend who wrote in his diary every single day and constantly spouted pathological lies.
Judging by his words and actions, he seemed young, but I remember the skin texture of the hand in his verification photo looked older than mine.
The problem is that it has been a year since this friend disappeared.
There is only one reason why a friend who wrote in his diary every single day without missing a beat would suddenly disappear.
His bunker was taken, and he was murdered.
And the bastards who killed this kurogod are playing a very fun prank.
Having stripped all of the few assets kurogod had, they must have discovered our community and put forward a young, pretty woman as a figurehead to target my cheerful comrades.
The human hunter said a word.
Defender: There wouldn't be any retarded bastard falling for this kind of trolling, right?
There is.
Demian04: (Demian04) Yuri~ You are truly pretty again today~ (Heart-eyes emoji)
It's Demian04.
He followed every post Yuri uploaded, clicked 'like', and passionately praised her.
Meddlesome users tried to stop him.
In particular, a user with the nickname SUNBI most actively tried to stop Demian04.
SUNBI: Ahem, a young friend shouldn't act like this. Control yourself. I'll send you a porn video via DM, so go rub one out and have some post-nut clarity~
Up to that point is fine. Obsessing over a pretty woman is proof of being healthy as a man.
Besides, the photos of Yuri in leggings, taken in real-time, had enough destructive power that even I saved them.
But everything comes to an end.
The raiders soon revealed their true colors.
Yuri_need_man: I'm lonely, and I need protection. Is there any man who can let me sleep over for just one night?
The raider cast the fishing line of death.
Along with their secret weapon, a seductive photo of her wearing lingerie.
A single outcome flowed past me like a prophecy.
Demian04: I'm ehre!
The prophecy was fulfilled.
Demian bit the bait in less than a second.
"Wow... fuck."
Currently, a year and a half after the war broke out, our community users, although not to the extent of the Rupert Reich Palace, had a rather strong sense of solidarity, so everyone tried to stop him with one mind.
Defender: Don't do it. I warned you.
Even the psychopathic human hunter.
Of course, this Bak Gyu also added a word.
SKELTON: (Skelton Advice) Demian. It's fine to copy me, but please look at reality.
The one who most fiercely criticized this situation was SUNBI.
SUNBI: Yuri. I am warning you. If you lay a hand on any of our community members, I will absolutely not stand by!
As the community's backlash grew fierce, the raiders changed their strategy.
Yuri_need_man: Since there are many jealous people, I'll talk via DM~
Direct Message, meaning they would talk through private notes visible only to themselves.
It was only natural, but no one ever saw Demian04 again after that.
Even SUNBI, who tried to correct Demian04, must have been disappointed by the incident, as he vanished without a trace.
The most mysterious outcome of this incident was Yuri's evaporation.
Whether they only planned to pull off a one-time score and be done with it, the wolves wearing the shell of a community user never appeared on the board again.
A week passed since then.
Whatever possessed me, I suddenly became curious about Demian04's past.
What kind of person was he, really, before the war and right after it?
The first time he started being active was right after the war.
Even then, he only uploaded drawings without saying much.
The subject he liked back then wasn't a woman with ignorantly large breasts, but landscapes.
Unlike his crude portraits, his landscapes were quite excellent.
In particular, a landscape painting named Untitled04, depicting a sunset sea and a lone lighthouse island, was exceedingly beautiful.
Beautiful enough that I printed a copy and hung it in my bunker.
The Demian episode, which I thought had come to a close with that, had a sequel.
Defender: It feels a bit late, but here's the verification for Yuri.
Demian04 wasn't the only one who attended Yuri's murder meet-up.
Our human hunter also attended, mercilessly killed both the raiders and the figurehead, and now posted the verification photo on the board.
What he posted wasn't just the raiders.
He also verified our former brother with more courtesy than the raiders (by covering his face).
Their bodies, stripped naked and beaten to death, had a distinctly different feel from the raiders killed by the human killer.
But it wasn't one; there were two.
Why two?
Demian04 wasn't the only bastard who went to his death.
Defender: Asking who the other one is?
Who could it be?
Defender: 10
10?
Defender: SUNBI.
"Ah."
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