At present, D is single.

He once had a family, but in the chaos of the apocalypse, they left him one by one.

“Truth is, I’m the kind of person who wouldn’t have any regrets if I died tomorrow.”

On top of that, he limps on one leg.

Judging by the occasional tremor in his hands, his internal organs also seem riddled with issues.

A middle-aged man standing on shaky ground, never knowing when it will give way beneath him.

Quite literally, a man in crisis.

Before the war, D had been entirely different.

Back then, he was a mid-level engineer at one of Korea’s biggest IT conglomerates, a job and life that most would envy.

He had a wife from his church, a daughter in middle school, and two sons in elementary school.

The family wasn’t exactly warm and harmonious, but neither were they dysfunctional enough to collapse.

Rather, they were the sort of loosely bound yet resilient family that would hold together no matter what—at least, that’s how D remembers it.

The marriage was the same.

Not so much romantic as it was a partnership—two people complementing each other’s strengths and weaknesses.

Although D’s job and salary were superior, it was his wife who had the financial instincts.

It was thanks to her that D, who had been clueless about real estate and stocks, was badgered into buying a decent Seoul apartment just before the big surge in housing prices.

That purchase let him share in what became a nationwide—well, for some—explosion of wealth.

He even earned a modest profit off digital currency, which was widely distrusted at the time, again thanks to his wife’s advice.

But when it came to the looming war, not even his wise wife could make the right call.

“In this day and age, do you really think a war could break out? That’s just fantasy. Something that happens in movies.”

And yet, the things that “only happen in movies” were already unfolding in reality. But as with most so-called “practical people,” they only saw what they wanted to see in their immediate surroundings.

Such people never notice the ground itself shaking beneath their feet.

And so, when that foundation finally collapses, they are utterly powerless.

As a Viva! Apocalypse! user, D believed the possibility of war was higher than ever.

Behind his wife’s back, he scouted land near his uncle’s village as a site for a bunker and even got construction cost estimates.

The land price itself wasn’t an issue for a man who had built some wealth, but the construction itself was no small expense.

With supply chains around the world half-collapsed—India, Africa in ruins, civil war in China—prices for everything had skyrocketed.

If he had gone for a bachelor-type bunker design, like many on Viva! Apocalypse! favored, he could have funded it with his slush money alone. But if he wanted something more—something with a septic system as John Nae-non recommended, a bunker not fully self-sufficient but livable long-term, with privacy and mental stability intact—then he’d have to mortgage his greatest asset: the apartment.

“This was the first turning point.”

D stirred alcohol into iced water, smiling faintly with some private meaning.

The historic choice he made was to not build the bunker.

It didn’t even lead to a marital fight.

Before it could come to that, D simply gave up his stubbornness and scrapped the plan. He even quit Viva! Apocalypse!

He didn’t cancel the membership though—just like a leased car contract, early termination meant paying a massive penalty.

As for the fact that he stored a satellite unit at home—that’s one of the “minor turning points” D listed, but not important to the story here, so let’s skip it.

“What if I had gone ahead and built the bunker, even at the cost of a fight with my wife?”

That sort of hypothetical is what D filled his mind with throughout the apocalypse.

In those scenarios, he imagines another version of himself living each path to its conclusion. That was how he killed the endless hours of collapse.

Sometimes it was just a fleeting daydream, but sometimes he got so lost in it that he went days without eating.

What became of the other D—the one who, before the collapse, had prepared the perfect survival set as a doomsday believer?

D gave a self-mocking laugh and offered a premature conclusion.

“He probably died.”

C, who had been listening, protested.

“Wait, after painting it all so rosy, why end it like that?”

Yu Jeong-min, who had grown close to D, felt the same.

“Wouldn’t it have been better if he had survived like that?”

D shook his head with a sly smile.

“Living in a bunker isn’t as easy as it sounds. It could have been even more dangerous.”

I agreed.

Yes, bunkers offered stability and safety in the early stages of war.

But in this world, there are always those who have and those who don’t.

The more desperate the have-nots become, the more precarious the haves’ position becomes.

Before the war, the haves wielded the whip and carrot with artistry, subduing the have-nots’ resentment by branding it as ignorance and lack of refinement.

But “bunker hunting” didn’t start at the outbreak of war.

It began when people started losing hope, when it became clear the government had no real countermeasures left. Those who could hurt others for their own survival did it first, and soon even ordinary people joined the hunts.

“There was a whole bunker town near my uncle’s village. A town. You understand what that means, right?”

I nodded.

True to Koreans’ fondness for clustering together, there were even apartment-style bunker complexes, complete with model homes for sales pitches.

“Then it’s better you never moved there.”

I said my piece quietly.

D nodded.

“If I had, I wouldn’t be sitting here now.”

That was the end of his first scenario.

The second scenario was a more familiar kind of tragedy.

“Our eldest. My son. He was introverted, like me, happy to spend his time at home with computers. In my day, kids played with toy science kits, but now? All they do is watch shorts on phones and tablets, killing time meaninglessly.”

That son died.

When the government issued the emergency evacuation order, he stubbornly refused to leave the house.

D, who had never once raised a hand to him, didn’t know how to deal with his obstinacy in that extreme moment. He fled with the rest of the family to the shelter, leaving the boy behind.

Mushroom clouds rose across Seoul.

Their apartment—his pride and over 90% of his assets—was far enough from the epicenter to withstand the blast itself, standing solid as rock. But its glass windows could not.

The shockwave shattered every pane, and every fragile life behind them turned to dust.

“The only thing left was his tablet. The one we gave him for his 11th birthday.”

The second turning point was right before the nuke.

Should he have forced his son out, even if it meant dragging him by force?

“It’s frustrating to hear. If it were me, I’d have hauled him out by the hair if I had to.”

That was C’s opinion.

He still had his family intact.

“I dragged Dongtak out by force too.”

That was Kim Daram, who had joined the conversation naturally at some point.

Most nodded in agreement.

Kim Daram simply looked strong, regardless of gender. Some even described her as “hard as nails.”

“Maybe so.”

As everyone expressed regret about the choice, D looked around with that faint smile of his.

“But the outcome wouldn’t have changed much.”

He shook his head.

“In fact, it might have doomed the entire family even faster.”

Children are often said to be a gift to their parents, but some children can just as easily destroy a family that has endured for years.

Whether true or not, D believed his son had not been a positive child.

“He never fit in at school. He wasn’t a bully, not the type to lash out at others, but you know the kind—mumbling, shoulders hunched, always muttering, selfish?”

Kim Daram interjected.

“But strong toward his family?”

D gave a bitter smile and pointed at her.

“Exactly. That’s it.”

A weak child.

Weak, yet harsh and domineering toward his own family, especially his mother.

D was certain the boy would never have survived the scarcity and discomfort of shelter life. His whining might have spread like fire, dragging the whole family down.

“Because truth is, none of us were that strong either.”

The third turning point was also about family.

His daughter.

“My daughter didn’t like me. Never talked to me, only to her mother. And of course, she never spoke to Dong-hyeon at all.”

When shelter life dragged on, the daughter vanished like the wind.

She ran off with the delinquent friends she’d always hung around with.

“...She looked like she wanted to say something to me before she left. I knew it. But I ignored it. My own problems were piling up, and I was as tired of her as she was of me.”

D stared into empty air with a faint smile.

“But I replay that moment over and over. What if I had talked to her then? Cleared up some petty misunderstanding, become father and daughter again, the family pulling together to survive? Sometimes I dream of that ending.”

By now, the listeners could guess the next turning point.

The point that mattered most.

The one about the person he might have loved more than himself.

“This one, I’ll keep to myself.”

The talk, which had started as light entertainment, had turned heavy and ended awkwardly.

“I lost a lot. My son, who resembled me but never fit in. My daughter, who kept her distance but loved deeply inside. My wife, my partner of a lifetime. And though I didn’t mention it earlier, even our dog, whom the government ordered us to release outside to be culled.”

And yet D’s expression was calm.

“They all left me, but I don’t regret it. The more I replay the scenarios, the clearer it becomes: it wouldn’t have turned out any better.”

Now I understood what his “scenario” really was.

If the subjunctive is the grammar of regret, D used it in the exact opposite way.

He endlessly simulated the past until his regrets disappeared.

Every time, convincing himself the choices had been right—or at least that the outcomes wouldn’t have been any better.

I wasn’t the only one who understood.

“That scenario of yours...”

Cheon Young-jae spoke up suddenly.

“Did you make it just to forget or justify your mistakes?”

It wasn’t just him.

Everyone was looking at D the same way.

D lifted his glass with a smile.

“Isn’t that better than regret?”

Then he downed it.

I saw it too—as just another way of surviving the hard times.

There’s no ◆ Nоvеlіgһt ◆ (Only on Nоvеlіgһt) universal formula for enduring the apocalypse. Everyone finds their own.

“Of course, I sometimes imagine the version where everything works out, where my whole family’s still alive by my side. But really, isn’t the subjunctive just another name for regret? And I don’t want to regret anymore. Besides...”

D smiled warmly.

“...here I am, alive, telling you my story.”

Cheon Young-jae still looked dissatisfied, but when he caught Yu Jeong-min’s eyes, he gave a bitter smile and shut his mouth.

Even a guy like him—who learned about the world through the internet—had to admit the truth.

That being alive is what matters.

In this apocalypse, what could matter more?

If running these simulations erases regret and helps extend one’s life, isn’t that a kind of apocalyptic romance too?

Most of all, the fate of D’s missing daughter was still unknown.

Maybe she was alive nearby, creating her own scenarios and branching points to erase her regrets, just like her father.

After all, children resemble their parents.

And me? My task now was to reconnect the fallen threads of the living.

With the engineers’ help, including D, the groundwork for a “second PaleNet” (tentative name) was smoothly completed.

What remained was the connection to Necropolis.

For that, I sent a message to a long-estranged friend.

SKELTON: Still alive?

A greeting for the end times.

While waiting for a reply, I heard the voice of my old mentor, my role model, the sage who once shone light into my life.

“Even dogshit is better rolling in this world than in the next. Life has to exist for it to mean anything.”

“If I had lived just a little longer, maybe the world would have turned out a little better.”

“Remember our first meet-up? At that dodgy raw meat joint? I’ll never forget it. Clumsy, but it glittered brighter than any time in my life. But memories only shine because we’re alive. If memories are jewels, life is the light that makes them sparkle.”

John Nae-non’s words carried everything.

Drunk on both alcohol and his voice, I drifted for a while.

Dding~

A notification popped up.

Message from deadman_working: Still, for now.