A Korean Office Worker Who Became a Nuisance Villainess in a Zombie Story - Chapter 19
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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“A moment ago, you were strutting about like some proper lady with your neck stiff, and now you’re looking for a man only when it’s convenient?”
“Ha….”
Did I seek out a man? I sought someone taller than myself.
If my mother (height 170 cm), my sister (height 173 cm), or the volleyball emperor (height 192 cm) had been here, I would’ve asked them instead, wouldn’t I?
Unable to decide where to begin my rebuttal, I simply pressed my forehead with my palm.
“Why aren’t you saying anything? Come back at me like you did before. Argue back!”
I had so much to say that words failed me, yet Troublemaker seemed to think he’d won, chirping away smugly.
‘If I’d asked a man who’s 2 meters 30 centimeters tall and been rejected, I wouldn’t even speak.’
To someone who at most differs from me and Yujein by just two fingers in height….
“Enough, enough. It’s disgusting—I’ll do it myself.”
“Right, good thinking. Keep solving things on your own from now on. Don’t rely on men.”
I ignored him and turned to Yujein.
“Yujein, could you help me hold the chair?”
“But my lady, this chair is missing one leg….”
“It should be fine for a moment.”
“Yes! Let’s do it together!”
Consomme stepped forward eagerly. Mascarpone, whose expression had been grim since earlier (clearly wanting to kill Troublemaker), approached without a word and grasped the chair’s backrest.
“You’ve got a good grip? I’ll count—one, two, three—and climb up. Three!”
“Eek! My lady!”
“You said you’d count one, two, three!”
“Ahhhhh!”
* * *
“I’m exhausted….”
I collapsed onto the floor, gasping for breath.
Turning my head even slightly no longer bothered me—corpses were everywhere now.
The three women sprawled beside me looked just as wretched as I did.
“I’m so thirsty….”
“I want chocolate milk.”
“Strawberry for me.”
I rolled my eyes to glance at the door.
The trap we’d painstakingly set was glowing faintly.
My back of the head felt cracked from being slammed into the floor, and my lower back and tailbone ached, but we’d managed to achieve our objective.
‘How long can that hold them? Twenty seconds? Thirty?’
Thirty seconds is nothing. That’s thirty more seconds of life, isn’t it?
Look at the Olympics. Medals are decided by 0.1 seconds, so thirty seconds is quite long.
“Outside… there’s still no sign of them, right?”
“No.”
Consomme and Yujein, who had been conversing quietly with each other, fell silent with dejected expressions.
“I told you that wouldn’t work.”
The only one continuing to prattle on was Troublemaker, who’d been wasting his energy flapping his mouth since earlier.
While we pooled our efforts to set up crude traps, Troublemaker never lifted a finger to help—not once.
‘It won’t work, I’m telling you. It’s useless. He never listens.’
He just stood there offering unsolicited commentary.
‘Fine, keep living like that. Thinking everything’s impossible.’
What a defeatist.
Time slipped away like that.
Troublemaker, who’d been pouting, suddenly spoke up.
“I’m hungry.”
What?
When no one responded, he whined again.
“Doesn’t anyone have food left?”
He directed the question at Yujein, the gentlest and most accommodating among us, and she shook her head uncomfortably.
“There isn’t any….”
“You saved one pastry earlier.”
“No, I ate it all. You told me to finish it.”
I nodded in confirmation.
“That’s right. I told you to eat it all.”
I’d deliberately made her finish everything, knowing exactly what Troublemaker was like.
‘I saw how he looked at Yujein eating earlier—like, you’re really going to eat all that? Something felt off about it, so I made her finish it.’
He was clearly scheming to steal it from her later.
In disaster situations like this, people like him always do the same thing. If they spot someone weaker they can overpower, they steal their food, their clothes, their blankets, their medicine—everything.
Haven’t you seen a disaster movie or two?
He’d kept his mouth shut until now, but with the Crown Prince and Grand Duke not here to restrain him, opening his mouth was pure pathetic behavior.
‘My vocabulary’s gotten worse since I started working. I can’t even speak without words like that.’
I asked him.
“Even if there was food left, that doesn’t mean you get to demand it. Why should Yujein give you anything?”
“Because it’s the rational choice.”
“Why is that rational?”
“I’m bigger than her. I’ll need more strength.”
“How much strength have you actually used getting here?”
‘We have time anyway. Might as well argue.’
“Did you exert yourself screaming ‘Open it!’ so loudly?”
He had a good set of lungs. I laughed mockingly.
Troublemaker’s cheekbones flushed red as he warned me.
“I told you to watch your tone with me.”
“What’ll you do if I don’t?”
“Listen… Princess, can you really treat me like this right now? Think carefully. If a corpse comes in later, I might just decide not to save you.”
“Right. You need to actually demonstrate some usefulness first before anyone would believe threats like that.”
How could I possibly trust someone who hasn’t lifted a finger this whole time, spouting empty promises about ‘saving you later’?
“Even at a supermarket, they give you samples before you buy dumplings. If you want to get something from us, you need to show us a taste of what you can do first.”
Is there no convenience store in this world? Who knows.
“Even just looking at what’s happened so far, it’s been us women—me and Yujein—who’ve done all the hard work. So what were you doing while we were struggling?”
“….”
“All I’ve ever seen from you is crying your eyes out because you couldn’t even handle a single corpse even when I put a blade in your hands. If we’re supposed to eat according to who worked hardest, then you need to vomit up everything that’s gone into your stomach right now.”
“Fine, enough! Shut up!”
Troublemaker’s head whipped around toward Consomme and Mascarpone, having gained nothing from the exchange.
“You two don’t have any? Food?”
“No. We’ve eaten everything too.”
“If anything happens later, I won’t ask Papri for help, so don’t worry.”
Mascarpone’s tone as she responded was glacial.
All the gathered women wore expressions of displeasure. Sensing their lack of goodwill toward him, Troublemaker opened his mouth, then closed it again.
He crouched down on his knees and began muttering.
“In a crisis like this, they don’t even know how to ration food. Women, I tell you.”
“And you’ve devoured everything yourself, then have the audacity to ask us for more. Men, I tell you.”
“What did you just say?”
“What. You started it first anyway.”
I flashed a rotten smile at Troublemaker, who was glaring at me.
“Aren’t you tired of bickering with me like this? I’m tired of it.”
So let’s end this now.
“Papri, watch your mouth. I’m a woman too—the one who saved your life back in the Kitchen. And Dazling, who’s out there right now risking her life to carve a path through instead of sitting here in this cabin searching for snacks like you, is also a woman.”
And if the string trap we rigged on the door works properly and buys us time.
Then for every moment of that extra time, you owe your life to every single woman here.
“We told you to use your own head and think. Maybe you should do some thinking yourself.”
“What do you….”
“Don’t you see? There are four of us women and you in this cabin. What happens if we all decide we hate you so much that we kill you and stack your corpse on top of that pile over there?”
I gestured with my chin toward the bodies. I added with deliberate cruelty.
“Will you just cry while hugging a blade then too?”
“Hey!”
Troublemaker shot to his feet, raising his hand.
“You think you can act like this because your brothers saved you from getting beaten by me earlier? Take this!”
As he spoke, his anger mounting, he brought his hand down. His palm descended with force.
I was about to be hit.
Then.
“Stop!”
Consomme rose with a severed chair leg in her hands, pointing it at Troublemaker.
“Stop it! Try hitting her and see what happens!”
Consomme’s arm trembled violently as she gripped what was perhaps the first weapon she’d ever held.
“You said you were saving her. Is this how you save Papri? Hitting her because she won’t listen?”
Troublemaker laughed hollowly, running a hand over his head.
“Now even the dead weight is acting up….”
“I’m not a burden!”
At the shout, Troublemaker flinched. Consomme cried out.
“We at least did something with our own hands, crude as it may be! But you’ve been calling us burdens this whole time, and now that we’ve actually accomplished something, you say it’s pointless, it’s useless!”
“….”
“Isn’t the truth that you wanted us to remain burdens? Because you didn’t want anyone to discover that you’re the most useless of all?!”
Consomme’s trembling arms gradually steadied. Her grip on the chair leg tightened with newfound strength. She spoke.
“You would have called whatever we did useless anyway. Am I wrong?”
“….”
“Sit back down quietly. Otherwise, I’m going to hit you.”
Troublemaker couldn’t utter a single word against Consomme’s fury—someone he’d underestimated so thoroughly.
His raised hand slowly descended.
Troublemaker obediently did as told, crumpling further into the corner than before, his teeth clenched.
‘If I say this feels satisfying… am I a terrible person?’
But it feels so good!
This is a moment to celebrate.
I left Troublemaker to his own bitter grumbling and retrieved the bread I’d hidden in my chest earlier.
“Ugh!”
Ignoring Mascarpone’s look of disgust, I broke it in half and distributed a piece to each of the women.
“Bread born from my chest.”
Even Mascarpone, despite her revulsion, accepted her share.
The moment bread emerged from my chest, Troublemaker’s eyes snapped toward me. Deliberately, I broke off a piece, popped it into my mouth, swallowed, and spoke.
“I could give you some.”
“…But?”
“Your tone annoys me, so I won’t.”
“….”
“Earlier you were all stiff-necked about being a man, acting tough, and now you’re only looking for a princess when it suits you?”
“….”
Delicious. Hehe.
Even the legendary Yujein found herself watching Troublemaker’s expression and ultimately shoved all her bread into her own mouth.
Wow. If even Yujein is like this, just how much public favor have you lost?
Consomme, chewing her bread, burst into laughter.
“And here I am eating with the hand I was just using to massage feet.”
“Same here. My fingernails are this dirty… Crunch crunch. How disgusting I am.”
I offered comfort to the three despondent people.
“Cleanliness and elegance are luxuries for when you have strength and composure. Right now, survival—even if it means being filthy—is what matters.”
With those words, I naturally switched seats with Yujein, taking the position facing the entrance.
So I could react first if anyone came in.
Whether it was a corpse or a person would determine how I responded.
“When we get out of here, let’s keep the part about eating bread with feet-touching hands a secret.”
Everyone nodded enthusiastically at my words.
Yujein, having switched seats, sat down beside me with our shoulders touching. She glanced at Consomme and Mascarpone, who were focused on their bread, then whispered.
“My lady, I have something I’m curious about.”
“Go ahead.”
“…It might be a rude question. If I’ve overstepped, please punish me.”
“Hm? What is it?”
Why was she being so cautious about it?
Yujein, hesitating, asked her question.
“Didn’t you love the Crown Prince?”
“…I did?”
“Then how could you… say such things….”
“You mean, how could I speak so calmly about it?”
She must have been bothered by what I’d said earlier—that the male leads would come back to rescue Yujein.
How kind of her.
I turned to look at Yujein and answered lightly.
“I did like him, but I don’t anymore. More precisely, as of today.”
“May I ask why?”
“Well.”
The person inside this body now isn’t the lady you knew.
“My feelings simply cooled.”
“Simply…cooled.”
“I’m selfish, so I want to meet a man who always puts me first.”
“….”
“From now on, I want to love a man who will drop everything and pick me up the moment I fall.”
At that moment, an arm drenched in blood smashed through the window.
[Imperial Villa Exterior Hunting Lodge Cabin]
– Yusara, Yujein, Mascarpone, Consomme, Troublemaker (Alive)
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This chapter was translated by Lunox Novels. To support us and help keep this series going, visit our website: LunoxScans.com
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