My bunker isn’t just a shelter.

    It’s a fortress, meticulously designed and built with enormous resources to preserve a semblance of my past life even if the world collapses.

    While it might not match the lavish citadels of certain billionaires, I’ve prepared everything I could possibly need—and then some.

    Food, fuel, daily necessities, medical supplies, all kinds of equipment, and even random items whose purposes I can’t fathom—I’ve stocked enough to last indefinitely.

    Now that I’ve even acquired firearms and ammunition, my fortress is complete.

    And this fortress is for me alone.

    From its inception, it was never designed to accommodate anyone else. Not even the slightest consideration was given to including others.

    Even the toilet, for instance, is an open design, situated at the very center of the bunker’s residential area.

    This placement was chosen for optimal plumbing and spatial efficiency, but it also means that if I were to share the bunker, every bathroom visit would turn into an unwelcome public performance.

    The same goes for my provisions.@@@@

    There’s more than enough for me to live comfortably, but if I were to share it with others, that balance would crumble.

    That’s right.

    This bunker is my paradise.

    “...I might have to come there.”

    But now, someone is trying to invade that paradise.

    Someone I know well.

    Someone I might even consider taking in, under exceptional circumstances.

    But they’re not alone.

    “...Three people?”

    It’s too many.

    Even one is a stretch, and now I’m supposed to take in two more people—complete strangers to me?

    I can already guess who they are: Kim Daram’s husband and her son.

    People who have no connection to me.

    Her husband is someone I’ve only ever shaken hands with at their wedding. And as for her son, all I know is that his name is Dongtak. I’ve never met him.

    “I’m sorry, senior. It’s sudden, I know.”

    Kim Daram was one of the few genuinely decent people I’ve met.

    I’ve always admired her positivity.

    No matter how dire or desperate the situation, she never lost her smile or her hope.

    While time has softened her a little—she’s now a wife, a mother, and a high-ranking official in the National Committee—she wasn’t like that when we first met.

    The awkward silence brought me back to the past.

    It was during my time as a team leader, leading a hunting squad.

    Back then, I wasn’t exactly well-liked.

    Far from it—I was avoided.

    And for good reason.

    The old me was sharp, uncompromising, and ruthlessly harsh on myself and others.

    My difficult personality drove my peers away, alienated my seniors, and made my juniors afraid to approach me.

    “You, get out of my team. I don’t need dead weight.”

    I was a terror to my teammates.

    “This isn’t a playground for talentless clowns to prance around. If you can’t keep up, quit. I won’t die because of you.”

    I was always harsh, driving anyone who didn’t meet my standards to their limits.

    As a result, I led my team to the top of the kill scores in my first year as a leader.

    But no one wanted anything to do with us.

    “I don’t want to curse you out on my way out, but I’m sick of you, senior.”

    “Why do you act like everyone should meet your standards? People are different.”

    “Let’s never meet again.”

    With team members leaving left and right, who would willingly join my team?

    No one—except for one persistent person.

    “Haha! Second place again! You’re always second, aren’t you?”

    That was the resigned laughter of Lee Sang-hoon, who came over to me, grinning.

    “Next year will be different, Professor.”

    Even back then, Sang-hoon was a womanizer. He brought some unfamiliar girl to the year-end party that night.

    “And how are you going to improve, with that arm in a cast?”

    I stared pointedly at the cast on his left arm.

    “Well, I’m not, but... can you even recruit anyone for your team?”

    “...”

    “Word’s out. Working under Professor Park is worse than dying to a monster—you’ll die of stress first.”

    “If they haven’t faced a monster, they wouldn’t understand.”

    “Let’s say you’re starving. There are two restaurants: one serves great food but has terrible service, and the other has decent food but excellent service. Which one would you choose?”

    “The latter.”

    “Exactly. You already know.”

    “And yet you’re comparing restaurants to a battlefield?”

    At the time, I didn’t take him seriously.

    I thought everyone else shared my hatred for monsters.

    I figured anyone would tolerate a harsh leader like me if it meant killing the monsters that had taken everything from them.

    But reality is impartial.

    Sang-hoon’s seemingly empty words turned out to be prophetic.

    Even though our results were the best, and even though I shouldered the most dangerous tasks, no one wanted to join my team.

    True to form, Kim Daram moved quickly.

    "Can I come check the place out first?"

    She wanted to visit before committing.

    Ignoring her wasn’t an option. Meeting her seemed inevitable from the moment she contacted me.

    After all, if it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t be here today.

    Kim Daram, with her boundless positivity, had been the glue that connected me with new team members, enabling me to continue my career as a hunter.

    Sure, she had occasionally paired me with psychos like Woo Min-hee or Gong Kyung-min, but without her, my team wouldn’t have survived.

    Had the world not changed so drastically, we’d probably still be fighting monsters side by side.

    That’s just the kind of person she was—someone who carried as much hatred for monsters as I did.

    My former junior showed up in a military jeep, trudging into my paradise with her muddy boots.

    I studied her face with mixed emotions, but her expression was nothing like what I had expected.

    "Wow..."

    She seemed visibly shocked.

    "So bleak."

    Sure, I could admit the place wasn’t exactly inviting.

    "But seriously, what is this? Trash everywhere? Are you sure this is a place where someone lives?"

    Was it really warranted for her to express such disgust?

    I hadn’t expected her to be impressed, but the outright dismissal of my paradise felt excessive.

    Fine. If she thought the surface was bad, let’s see what she thought of the real deal.

    Feeling a bit defiant, I decided to show her my sanctuary in its full glory.

    I swung open the heavy bunker doors, revealing the secretive main bunker to an outsider for the first time.

    "Welcome to the SKELTON Proud Palace...!!"

    Her eyes widened, clearly stunned.

    Now that was more like it.

    Who else could have built something so grand, so robust, and so refined on an individual scale?

    "Did you really make all this yourself?"

    "With pride."

    It could only have been me.

    But her astonishment quickly turned into disappointment—no, outright contempt.

    "What’s with the toilet?"

    And her earlier expression of "amazement"? Apparently, it had been sheer horror.

    Kim Daram turned away, muttering to herself.

    "No way I’m raising a kid in a place like this."

    For the first time, I noticed the subtle designer branding on her clothes, barely hidden under her more practical outerwear.

    Of course, she’d always dressed well. She’d worked in those plush, fragrant offices with beautiful views, where people respectfully called her Commissioner.

    While I’d been busy building this bunker, she’d climbed far too high.

    Somewhere I couldn’t reach, a place beyond the bounds of my limited imagination.

    "I really appreciate the effort, but I can’t live here. And now that I think about it, Dongtak seems to have a touch of claustrophobia, too."

    She showed me a photo of her son.

    "Wow, you really nailed it with his name," I said sarcastically.

    "What does it mean?"

    Caught somewhere between frustration and relief, I asked her, "So what’s your plan now?"

    "What else? I’ll figure something out, of course."

    Kim Daram flashed me a big, confident smile.

    "I’m Kim Daram, after all."

    "Daram..."

    "I’m the same person who survived under Professor."

    Her radiant grin overlapped with the image of the Kim Daram I remembered from the past.

    Yeah, she’d always been relentlessly optimistic.

    Almost stupidly so.

    "I’m not giving up on getting to Jeju, but I’ll start reaching out to the military. Even the warlords are an option at this point."

    She handed me a luxuriously branded paper bag.

    "Here, a gift."

    Inside was a box of high-end, fancy confections.

    As she climbed back into her car, she turned around to look at me again.

    "You know, you don’t look like you’ve aged much. But standing under the sun, I can see you’ve gotten a bit older."

    "R-really?"

    "Maybe it’s because your expression looks brighter now."

    She studied me for a moment.

    "Got yourself a girlfriend these days?"

    "No."

    "Well, anyway, I’ll let you know once I figure out where I’m going."

    And just like that, she disappeared as suddenly as she had arrived, leaving me to watch her drive off with a bittersweet smile.

    Everything is relative.

    What one person sees as a proud paradise can look like a pit of despair to someone else.

    The fancy pastries she left behind summed up that reality perfectly.

    "Wow. Holy shit."

    These cookies really were top-tier.