Hiding a House in the Apocalypse-Chapter 94.2: Influencer (2)

It was hard to believe, but Dolsingman was supposedly a wealthy entrepreneur who had made a fortune before the war.

I didn’t know what kind of business he was in, but the AI-generated image he posted depicted a shadowed man in a luxury high-rise office, dressed in a sharp suit, gazing down at the city below.

"Hah."

I let out a short laugh.

The background music was a sleek jazz tune—one I vaguely recognized.

Anyway, the self-proclaimed successful businessman Dolsingman had fallen in love with a mysterious woman, married her, and lived a glamorous life that anyone would envy.

But, as his nickname suggested (Dolsingman—divorced man), that happy marriage had been doomed from the start.

The cracks in their relationship began when China’s hardliners started making waves within their government.

For the first time in decades, artillery shells rained down on Taiwan’s Kinmen Island.

As China’s aggression escalated, the global stock markets wavered, and fears of war spread across both real life and the internet.

I remembered it well.

At the time, I was still gathering funds for my bunker construction, watching with concern as the apocalypse seemed to be arriving sooner than I had anticipated.

But people tend to prefer optimism over despair.

When China temporarily backed down in response to warnings from the U.S. and other Western nations, optimists dismissed the whole incident as mere political posturing—a way for China to rally internal unity.

And just like that, the world returned to business as usual.

But Dolsingman never recovered from the shock.

He became a doomsday prepper.

Preppers generally fell into two categories—active and passive.

Active preppers were those who were absolutely convinced that the apocalypse was imminent.

They were the ones who abandoned social status, wealth, and relationships in favor of extreme survival preparations—stockpiling years’ worth of food, buying remote properties, or even building bunkers.

People like me, who threw every last cent into bunkers, were considered the radicals of the active prepper community.

Passive preppers, on the other hand, believed in the apocalypse but weren’t willing to sacrifice their current lives for it.

Instead, they prepared in subtler ways—accumulating assets like gold or foreign currency, gathering survival knowledge, and making contingency plans without drawing too much attention.

Dolsingman was one of the passive preppers.

He believed the end was coming but didn’t want to give up his social status or wealth.

He was a man torn between two realities—his mind convinced of doom, but his heart clinging to normalcy.

And where there’s a divide, there’s conflict.

His wife was an optimist.

And while Dolsingman was a passive prepper in action, his mouth was anything but.

He frequently talked about the coming apocalypse to his wife.

Maybe he had hoped to convince her.

One of the AI-generated images depicted a shadowy man and woman arguing inside a luxurious American-style mansion overlooking the ocean.

"She told me I was insane. That I was a lunatic, obsessed with some doomsday fantasy that would never come true."

There were no dramatic screaming matches. No thrown objects. No stereotypical divorce theatrics.

Just quiet contempt and growing distance.

Their marriage unraveled quickly.

And once he lost the woman he loved, Dolsingman had nothing left to hold him back.

He went from a passive prepper to a radical one.

And it was then that I realized—he really did have money.

Unlike me, who had built my bunker from scratch, ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) Dolsingman took a different route.

He looked into the VIP communal bunker services that had been popular among Western elites.

Cold War-Era Bunkers for the Ultra-Rich

Because of its Cold War history, the West had developed a much more advanced bunker infrastructure than Korea.

Countries like Switzerland had enough shelters for their entire population.

And in North America, where money could buy anything, wealthy elites had long been investing in underground luxury shelters.

These weren’t just bunkers—they were underground mansions.

Some had swimming pools, theaters, restaurants, fitness clubs, even social halls.

They were marketed as high-end survival solutions for the ultra-wealthy.

I knew about them.

If I had thrown my entire fortune at it, I could have joined one.

They weren’t even that outrageously expensive—for an insurance policy, at least.

But I had ruled it out for two reasons.

First, the danger of communal living.

Second, the risk of betrayal.

In these shelters, every aspect of survival—food, security, daily operations—was managed by hired staff.

And if those staff ever decided to turn on the residents?

There was nothing the rich could do to stop them.

If the security team wanted to take over the bunker, they would.

That was a nightmare scenario I refused to risk.

A Hidden VIP Bunker in Korea

Apparently, Korea had a similar service.

Even I, a seasoned doomsday prepper, hadn’t known about it.

"I first heard about it through an exclusive social circle. Someone recommended it, said it was ultra-secure—invitation only."

"The secrecy appealed to me. And the unique policies of this bunker sealed the deal. I signed the contract immediately."

The AI-generated image that followed looked like something out of a sci-fi film.

A massive underground complex, hidden deep in the Korean mountains.

But unlike the luxurious Western bunkers, this one was pure concrete.

No flashy amenities.

Just cold, functional walls.

"This was a relic of Korea’s military dictatorship—built during the Cold War. It’s nothing like the American ones. No frills. Just pure survival."

"The climate control is decent, but nowhere near VIP standards. No pools, no theaters—just bare essentials. But the security and absolute isolation made it worth it."

The bunker had eight contracted tenants.

Only four made it inside before the war broke out.

That was the fatal flaw of communal bunkers—getting to them in time was nearly impossible.

But those who did make it found themselves living under an extraordinary set of rules.

The Isolation Protocol

Take breakfast, for example.

Meals were served in a communal dining hall by the bunker’s caretakers.

But here’s where things got unusual.

Each tenant had a strictly assigned time slot for eating.

The schedule was as follows:

6:30–6:40 – First resident6:45–6:55 – Second resident7:00–7:10 – Third resident7:15–7:25 – Fourth residentThere were no exceptions.

If someone arrived late, they lost their meal.

If they overstayed their time, the caretakers intervened.

This wasn’t just a rule—it was the foundation of the bunker’s entire system.

Complete isolation was not just encouraged; it was enforced.

To make sure no one ever crossed paths, the facility was designed with separate hallways for each resident.

Each private bunker had its own isolated entrance, ensuring that residents could live side by side for years without ever seeing each other’s faces.

This was the defining feature of the bunker—a stark contrast to the communal luxury shelters popular in the West.

The caretakers, a pair of siblings, were the only people allowed to move freely between sections.

The woman, lean and always masked, was a former special forces operative—a name that had once carried weight in military circles.

The man, broad-shouldered and silent, had an unknown background but carried himself like someone used to authority.

The two occupied three private bunkers, which seemed excessive for just the two of them.

But there was a reason for that.

Their mother lived in the third unit.

An indulgence, perhaps—but it reassured the residents.

If the caretakers had family inside, it meant they had stakes in the bunker’s survival.

It meant they were less likely to betray their clients.

"At first, I didn’t understand why the people we hired had more space than we did," Dolsingman admitted.

"But think about it. They held all the power. If they ever decided to turn on us, we’d be dead. Giving them extra living quarters? That was a small price to pay."

It was a mutually beneficial arrangement.

The caretakers provided security.

The residents provided money.

The caretakers upheld the rules.

The residents followed them.

Everything functioned smoothly.

But to an outsider, their way of living would have seemed insane.

Four people.

Living underground for over a year.

Never seeing one another.

Never speaking.

Never knowing each other’s names.

To anyone else, it would have been unbearable.

To these former elites, it was just an extension of their previous lives.

They had always lived alone, even when surrounded by crowds.

They had been secluded in their mansions, their high-rise offices, their private clubs.

Isolation wasn’t new—it was comfortable.

But then—

Dolsingman saw a woman.

It happened by chance.

He had just entered the narrow PVC-lined hallway leading to the dining area when she stepped out of the room across from him.

She had just finished her meal and was returning to her private quarters.

The woman had long hair and long eyelashes.

Though he had only caught a glimpse, he noticed the fine wrinkles etched around her eyes, signs of time’s passage. Yet, he thought, she must have been a beauty in her youth.

Dolsingman didn’t care.

He wasn’t young himself.

Perhaps they were around the same age?

Returning to his private bunker, Dolsingman indulged in one of his few remaining hobbies—his only form of permitted communication. He logged onto Viva! Apocalypse!’s Korean-language board, browsing through the latest posts and feeling a familiar sense of energy return to him.

After checking the forums for a while, he was overcome with a strange sense of nostalgia. He reached for his prized possession—a record player—and played a North American jazz record from 1972, letting the music take him into deep thought.

His ex-wife had been ten years younger than him.

She was lively, beautiful.

Yes, he had been drawn to her youth and looks. That was true.

And yes, as a successful businessman, he had also seen having such a young and stunning wife as a sort of trophy.

Their marriage had ended in disaster the moment he committed himself to the survivalist cause.

But as he reflected on it, he realized that wasn’t the only reason for their divorce.

His wife had just been looking for an excuse.

Even before they got married, something had felt off.

Even when they talked about the same things, looked at the same things, their thoughts had never aligned.

It was as if they were running along parallel tracks, never truly meeting.

And if he had felt that way, she must have felt it too.

Over time, those small, unspoken differences had piled up until there was only one conclusion left—separation.

Dolsingman felt nothing as he reached this realization.

Thoughtlessly, his mind drifted even further back, to his childhood.

He had attended an all-boys middle school and an all-boys high school.

For most of his life, he had lived in a world without women.

But there had been one time, a long time ago, when a girl had been close to him.

And that was when Dolsingman did something unexpected—he turned to his audience, the readers of his post, and asked them directly:

"Out of nowhere, I started thinking about my old deskmate from elementary school. Isn't that strange? I'm almost fifty years old, and yet I find myself thinking about a version of me from decades ago—and the girl who sat beside him."

That was where Dolsingman’s post, A New Love, Part 1, ended.

I stopped reading.

And I turned off that goddamn jazz music blaring from my speakers.

"..."

Something felt off.

I had seen and experienced more than most people. That was a fact.

Updat𝒆d fr𝑜m freewebnøvel.com.

But my writing skills had always been weaker than my other abilities.

And that wasn't entirely my fault.

Back in school, we were trained to write in a certain way—simple, direct, purely factual.

No embellishments. No exaggerations. Just the barest, most efficient version of the truth.

That was the writing style drilled into those of us who lived by results alone.

And that kind of writing?

Absolutely useless in this situation.

And this bastard Dolsingman...

I had never liked his name.

I had never seen him write much, not even comments.

I had never expected anything from him.

But it turned out he wasn't some nobody.

This guy had been hiding his skills all this time.

I didn’t want to admit it, but...

he knew how to evoke emotions.

Did he learn that from his divorce?

Well.

If that’s the case, at least he got something out of it.

But still—

There is no way in hell I’m losing to a divorced man.

I opened the draft of my visual novel.

The first image I had attached was a ridiculously shiny, overly handsome man holding dual axes, grinning with an exaggeratedly bright smile.

Beneath it, in a formal serif font, was a caption:

"Author’s note: This is me, preparing for battle."

I had even included background music.

The first movement of Strauss’s Thus Spoke Zarathustra—that iconic orchestral fanfare symbolizing the arrival of a legendary hero.

And then, in bold, dramatic font, the first line of my visual novel:

"Skelton is one of the most battle-hardened, highly trained, and efficient hunters on Earth."

Not bad.

Simple. Classic.

But compared to Dolsingman’s post...

It felt a little weak.

I didn’t want to admit it, but...

It felt kind of childish.

Like the opening text of some RPG game.

"..."

My instincts, honed over years of winning and losing, were screaming at me.

If I publish this as it is, I will lose.

I needed something.

Something extra.

Should I bring back the romance subplot I had scrapped before?

The one with Lightning?

But...

Would that really be enough?

I had a feeling one romance wasn’t enough.

If Dolsingman was my competition, I needed at least two.

But that was a problem.

I wasn’t the kind of person who could just make up characters out of nowhere.

As I sank deeper into this creative pit, trying to figure out how to counterattack, I noticed something.

"Hmm."

Dolsingman’s popular post...

It wasn’t that popular.

It had barely scraped past the minimum threshold for popularity.

There were different tiers of popular posts.

Some were universally recognized, posts so compelling that people instinctively hit the recommend button.

And then there were the ones that just barely made it—the so-called "honorary popular posts."

Dolsingman’s post had 16 recommendations.

The minimum threshold for popularity?

15.

He had barely made it.

And even more importantly—

His post had very few comments.

Which meant...

People had probably recommended it out of habit, not because they were actually invested.

I opened the comment section.

ㅇㅇ: Hmm.

Berkut_break: Loneliness in a crowd, huh. It’s a cliché, but at this point in time, it actually feels fresh again.

tntn_Orthopedics: Yeah, I relate.

Dull.

"..."

This is doable.