A Survival Guide for a Counselor in the Apocalypse Chapter 65

Chapter 65

 

Johanna let out a small sigh and looked around as she spoke.

“Move him to the medics.”

Just as the other soldiers were about to move, Lee Hoin straightened up and spoke.

“There’s a friend of mine among the missing.”

At those words, Johanna paused for a moment. But soon, she gave the order again, more firmly, to move him to the medics.

“Then all the more reason for you to rest. Rest, and recover.”

Those consumed by emotion always, without exception, ended up ruining things.

Ruining things didn’t simply mean causing failure in the task at hand.

Right now, the task was merely recovering remains and cleaning the walls.

What Johanna meant was something on an entirely different level.

Losing something. Those who saw the remains of someone dear to them with their own eyes, raw and unfiltered, collapsed mentally in the overwhelming majority of cases.

‘Because they volunteer, thinking the person might still be alive.’

Hardly even one in ten thought the person was already dead. But even that one person would break upon seeing the mutilated remains.

The other nine, of course, collapsed even more violently.

Common sense dictated this: would the remains of someone who fell from dozens of meters up be ‘normal’? Most fell headfirst, which meant severe damage to the face.

The body itself would be twisted, deformed, trampled, and torn apart by something.

Even a stranger seeing that would not find it strange to vomit on the spot and suffer trauma.

That was why the recovery teams were always composed of seasoned veterans who had long endured the battlefield.

Which was why that rookie…

There was absolutely no intention of taking him along.

Soldiers approached Lee Hoin and reached out to support him, but he stood his ground.

“I need to confirm it.”

“Don’t be stubborn. I understand how you feel, but there are not many things in this world that can be solved by feelings alone. You are young. You lack experience. But I know that all of this has forced you to become an adult at a young age.”

Johanna sighed.

This kind of situation was always the hardest.

They always believed they had become adults, but the world didn’t suddenly become manageable just because one became an “adult.”

So…

“Protect yourself first. That’s the proper way to cope. We will recover the remains. We will compile the list. I know the names of every soldier. So I know your friend’s name as well. Nam Muyeong, correct?”

This was what someone who had been forced to become an “adult” first could say.

“If his name appears on the missing list, we will find him somehow. Hermadion does not lose its soldiers.”

Johanna tried to calm Lee Hoin and guide him inside.

But after listening quietly to everything she said, Lee Hoin replied:

“He’s not dead.”

“……”

With that, the reason not to take him along became certain.

Johanna lowered her gaze slightly.

“…I see.”

It was neither denial nor agreement, just acknowledgment.

She couldn’t bring herself to deny it and crack his already fragile mind, nor could she affirm it and let the eventual loss hit him twice as hard.

Even after a lifetime of dealing with this, it was always difficult.

Every time.

Because she wanted to protect them.

Because she wanted to guide them.

Maybe that was why it was so hard.

It was the very thing Leon constantly nagged her about, being too soft.

“You keep throwing yourself into hell every moment just to protect those whelps! You damned unfilial brat! As long as I live, you should live too… why must you make me this miserable! As the daughter of the Wolf, I should have raised you like a flower in a greenhouse. I shouldn’t have let you hold a sword… and now you’ve become just another Wolf.”

Her head throbbed.

There was too much to think about.

Johanna lightly tapped Lee Hoin’s shoulder, signaling him to go.

But he didn’t step back.

“If he’s not dead, he would have gone to a bunker. And if he went to a bunker, with his personality, he would have reported immediately.”

Something about his words was logically sound.

Johanna’s hand stopped.

That was something even she could agree with.

Nam Muyeong.

That soldier had been surprisingly by-the-book.

He never omitted a single report. He always followed protocol from beginning to end and responded accordingly.

“But if he hasn’t reported, that means his injuries are severe. Then he needs to be rescued quickly.”

Hearing that, Johanna instinctively sensed Nam Muyeong’s death.

Given his behavioral patterns, the likelihood was that he was already dead.

And yet, faced with such absolute certainty in his words that he was alive…

Johanna was momentarily speechless.

Because Lee Hoin sounded too certain.

And it didn’t feel like childish bravado.

That was what left her at a loss.

There had been a time when she was like that, too.

When her eyes had not yet tasted failure.

When she had never experienced a firm “no.”

Looking at him, Johanna felt a kind of desolation.

The kind born from experience, knowing that certainty would eventually break.

She pressed down on his shoulder.

It wasn’t intimidation; it was meant to calm him.

“…Go inside. We’ll check the bunkers first. That’s an order.”

Lee Hoin stood his ground.

Even this much was already Johanna being lenient.

A mere sentry defying a commander?

The surrounding gazes gathered.

But instead of shock, there was a bitter sense of shared understanding.

Everyone there had gone through something similar.

Family, friends, lovers…

There had been a time when they fought desperately to retrieve those they had defined by such names.

So no one could easily stop Lee Hoin.

Because they all understood.

That desperation.

That stubborn insistence on seeing it with their own eyes.

“I’ll go.”

“Enough! There will be no more argument. Go inside.”

Johanna ordered, clearly frustrated.

She wanted to protect him.

Hermadion was already overflowing with despair.

Young, suffocating despair.

She didn’t want to add one more to it.

It was the softness her uncle always pointed out.

Johanna hated this suffocating place of despair.

It was exhausting.

And yet she couldn’t leave.

For one reason.

Because hundreds of thousands of lives rested on her shoulders.

At first, it had been simple.

She wanted revenge against the battlefield that devoured her father.

Against the wall that took her mother.

She wanted to wipe everything out… to not die until they were all dead.

But she had survived too long.

Looking back, she realized she was no longer someone who could cling to personal revenge.

Her body had already been offered to Hermadion.

From the moment she took the knight’s oath.

From the countless frontlines where she swung her sword and survived.

Now, it wasn’t her revenge…

She carried Hermadion’s sorrow and drew her blade.

She wished there were no more despair and grief left to bear.

She wished no one would break.

“I’ll go. I’ll do it. If he’s dead, I’ll bury him with my own hands in my world.”

“That’s not the problem….”

“If I need to grieve, I’ll grieve. If I need to be shocked, I’ll be shocked.”

This reckless fledgling…

Was saying he would bear it himself.

Even seasoned veterans who had survived countless battles collapsed before the remains of their children.

Even iron-willed generals wept before the remains of their wives.

Johanna, too…

When she lost a friend dearer than life, she had abandoned everything and fled into the forest.

But what truly broke a person was this:

Even after losing everything, one still had to go on living.

“…Stop.”

“But he’s not dead.”

“I said stop!”

“I know.”

Silence fell.

Lee Hoin’s eyes were fixed on Johanna.

So unwavering…

That Johanna…

Hated Hermadion once more.

The place she had both loved and despised for decades.

This world.

This homeland turned into a plaything.

These ashes.

“I know. Nam Muyeong is not dead.”

After a brief silence, Lee Hoin added:

“He’s dying.”

Not dead. Dying.

Those were clearly different.

But “dying” still meant he was alive.

Lee Hoin believed in that survival unconditionally.

Johanna suddenly grew curious.

How could he be so certain, without a single crack?

So she asked:

“…What’s your basis?”

She looked down at him intently.

What made him think that?

All eyes turned to Lee Hoin.

A twenty-year-old, newly an adult, battered all over.

His youthful face contrasted strangely with his heavy armor, making some people avert their gaze.

An uncomfortable silence followed.

And at the end of that silence, Lee Hoin spoke.

“…A feeling.”

In the end, he uttered the most twenty-year-old answer possible.