NoveLight ™
The collapse of a major city is often compared to a plane running out of fuel and plummeting to the ground.
Even without power, it continues to glide for a while due to inertia, but eventually, the moment comes when its speed can no longer sustain lift, and it crashes to the earth with a deafening roar, ending in a dramatic explosion.
Seoul is following in the footsteps of Beijing, Mumbai, Jakarta, and Hong Kong.
The disappearance of a major metropolis like Seoul is a painful blow to my plans, but it’s not an unforeseen variable.
It only happened much sooner than I anticipated.
The South Korean government’s resolve to protect the "Seoul Republic" at all costs was steadfast.
But now that all hope has disappeared, my job is not to save Seoul.
That’s neither my task nor something I’m capable of.
Right now, I’m focused on quickly using cigarettes—the currency of the apocalypse.
Even if Seoul collapses, cigarettes will retain their value, but as the market shrinks, the quality and variety of goods available in exchange will inevitably decline.
What I need now is a new laptop.
The screen of my current one has developed a dark spot in an inconvenient area.
It’s not an issue when playing games or watching videos, but it’s incredibly annoying when browsing the community.
I do have a spare—a gaming laptop—but…
Regardless, I decided to sell some cigarettes and gauge the current atmosphere by making a trip to Seoul.
“This is SKELTON. What’s the status of Road 13?”
“Personal ID confirmed. Hello, SKELTON. The road is currently calm. The entire route is secure. However, if you plan to pass through, please do so within the next six hours, just in case.”
I pedaled slowly toward Seoul on my bicycle.
On the road, a few electric vehicles were moving, while people along the roadside were scavenging parts from abandoned cars and piling them up.
When I entered Seoul, the atmosphere was surprisingly lively.
Reconstruction projects under the banner of “national labor” were underway everywhere. Crowds of people were clearing rubble, swinging pickaxes, and cleaning the streets.
Posters promoting performances by formerly idle singers and idols were plastered along the streets. Electric buses and other public transportation roamed the near-empty roads.
While I hadn’t paid attention to it on the community, elementary and middle schools had reopened after a long hiatus. High schools and universities were expected to resume classes next year.
Perhaps that’s why.
Even though food rations had been reduced, power outages were becoming more frequent, and the blackouts were lasting longer, citizens interpreted these inconveniences as signs that Seoul was on the path to recovery.
However, up close, the reality of Seoul was starkly different from what it appeared on the surface.
Everyone was singing songs of hope, but lurking beneath was something chilling and grotesque—a shadow cast over the city.
This shadow isn’t an issue because people are deliberately choosing not to look too closely.
The “International Residence,” where I always spent a night whenever I came to Seoul, was a microcosm of this paradoxical atmosphere—teetering ambiguously on the border between hope and despair.
*
The International Residence is a converted guesthouse that used to be a study dormitory.
It’s old and shabby, but since it suffered almost no damage during the war, it’s a decent place for a one-night stay.
The owners of the residence are a middle-aged couple who live with both their respective parents—his mother and her father—and two children, who appear to be in middle school.
It was clear from my first visit that the couple didn’t get along.
“Oppa! For the love of god, make your mother stay inside! What is she doing out there? We’re losing customers because of her!”
Their ongoing conflict seemed to stem from their parents.
The wife had brought her father, and the husband had brought his mother, both of whom came with their own set of issues.
The wife’s father exhibited symptoms of dementia brought on by trauma, while the husband’s mother had a habit of sitting outside the dormitory entrance, staring uncomfortably at every passerby.
The wife was the one who usually complained.
But recently, things had started to change.
The husband, who had always silently endured his wife’s nagging, finally lost his patience and began fighting back.
“So, what? You want to send my mother to a nursing home in the provinces?”
“Why not? The government’s program will cover it.”
“Then why don’t you send your father first?”
“You know Dad has dementia!”
“Which is even more reason to send him!”
However, the argument ended with the wife’s victory.
“Whose house is this, huh? It’s not your house, is it? This house was bought with my dad’s money, right? You didn’t bring a single penny into this marriage, so how can you be so shameless?”
“…”
Hard to argue with that.
Even to an outsider, the husband seemed like a pitiful man with nothing going for him except his looks.
He spent most of his time slumped at the counter, listlessly chewing on a cigarette butt, or lying on the floor doing nothing.
I’d never seen him work since the war started, and from their arguments, it sounded like he hadn’t worked much before the war either.
Still, there was one thing he had given to his children: a good-looking face.
If the couple’s parents were the cracks that fractured their relationship, their children were the glue tenuously holding it together.
The eldest son, in particular, was a remarkable child.
It was as if he had inherited only the best traits of his parents—his father’s looks and his mother’s diligence.
No, perhaps he was a genetic anomaly, considering he also displayed a depth of character neither of his parents possessed.
“Mister, you’ve been coming here often lately.”
“How many times do I have to tell you I’m not a ‘mister’?”
“If you’re over ten years older than me, you’re a mister.”
“I’m only eighteen.”
“Then I’m one year old. Goo-goo, ga-ga~.”
Though playful, the boy was far more tolerable than his sister, who, whether due to middle school angst or high school rebellion, treated everyone with a cold indifference.
At fourteen, he was currently in middle school.
His grades were excellent.
He was popular, had many friends, and was the textbook example of the “mom’s friend’s son.”
Apparently, there was a line of girls hoping to be his girlfriend, but he turned them all down.
Most importantly, this young boy happened to own a pretty decent laptop.
*
From 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. was “internet time.”
A kind of government-sanctioned drug.
For one hour, dormant communication lines and internet connections were restored, accompanied by stable power.
Because of this, Seoul fell into a strange silence during internet time. Everyone was absorbed in their virtual worlds, catching up on tasks they’d been putting off.
The connection wasn’t particularly fast, but it was stable enough to resemble pre-war Wi-Fi. This, along with functional plumbing, was one of the main reasons I stayed at the International Residence.
In the dormitory’s dining hall, residents had gathered to take advantage of the Wi-Fi, each absorbed in their phones or laptops.
One man had even dragged in a heavy desktop, wheezing as he set it down, prompting the landlady to scold him.
“Mister! That thing uses too much power!”
“I unplugged the graphics card.”
“It still uses a lot of power! Pay more! Or give me a lottery ticket!”
I sat next to the landlord’s son and accessed the public internet on my phone.
<Danggeunnet>
A local secondhand trading site that had survived even after the war.
It was bustling with items and people, alive with thousands of accounts, posts, and dozens of new listings being uploaded in real time. It made me realize just how small and insular our community really was.
This—this was the internet.
Searching on Danggeunnet, I found several laptops for sale.
Most were gaming laptops.
“I don’t need a gaming laptop.”
Although there were plenty of listings, none were what I was looking for. I sighed in frustration, catching the landlord’s son staring at my laptop screen.
“Mister, are you looking for a laptop?”
“Yeah.”
“Wanna buy mine?”
“What? Are you serious?”
For a moment, I couldn’t contain my excitement, but I quickly composed myself.
“What about you? What’ll you use?”
“It’s fine. I’m going to a school in Jeju.”
“A school in Jeju?”
The boy smiled and showed me his laptop screen.
On the spotless, clear display was a government-issued flyer.
“Would you like to become a hero?”
“What’s this?”
The design and color scheme screamed “targeted at children,” but there was no mistaking it. This recruitment flyer belonged to the same “school” I had attended.
“Did you graduate middle school?”
“No, I’m just starting my second year.”
“They’re recruiting kids who haven’t even graduated middle school these days?”
“Seriously, old man, how outdated are you? They’ve even started recruiting elementary school kids.”
“What!?”
I read through the flyer carefully.
It was true.
The admission age had been drastically lowered.
It was no longer restricted to middle school graduates—applicants only had to be ten years old.
Are they that desperate for people?
What caught my attention even more than the age requirement, though, were the overwhelming benefits offered.
Most of the perks were directed at the student’s family: living support, housing subsidies, and government jobs for parents and relatives.
Sending one child to this school seemed to guarantee financial stability for the entire family.
But in the fine print at the bottom, crammed with eye-straining text, something caught my eye.
The boy abruptly closed the laptop.
“Mister, let’s talk on the roof.”
“Talk? About what?”
“Business!”
The rooftop was a serene tableau. Laundry fluttered in the breeze, a dementia-stricken elderly man stood like a statue, and beyond them, the sunset cast a primitive yet mystical glow over the flattened ruins from the nuclear strike.
As stars began to dot the twilight sky, the boy asked me a question.
“I’ve been curious for a while now. What exactly do you do, mister?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, every time you come here, you’re loaded with supplies. You had a gun from the start. I thought you were some gangster, but you’re not. And you’re still carrying all these goods, even in times like this. So, what do you do?”
“What do you think?”
“Gangster? Raider?”
“Do my innocent eyes look like they belong to a criminal?”
“You’re a doomsday prepper, aren’t you?”
The boy gazed at a lone star with a faint smile.
“You’ve got me.”
“I always wanted to be a doomsday prepper.”
“Really?”
“Why not? It looks fun. Building your own hideout, gathering stuff you like. Didn’t you have fun?”
“It was tough, but yeah, I enjoyed it. Until I ran out of money, anyway.”
The boy handed me his laptop.
“Trade it for cigarettes. You’ve got a lot, right?”
“Selling cigarettes to kids can get me locked up, you know.”
“These are different times. I’ll give a few to my pitiful dad who’s always chewing on cigarette butts, sell the rest, and buy a gift for my mom. Before I leave for school!”
I sold him the cigarettes.
He paid an exorbitant price, but it was a satisfying transaction for both of us.
While we finalized the deal, the dementia-stricken elderly man who had been standing like a statue turned his head toward us and muttered something unintelligible. I couldn’t make out the words.
“If I go to that school, I won’t have to hear Mom and Dad fighting anymore, right? And I can send Grandma and Grandpa to better places.”
Even if I had understood the old man’s words, I would’ve forgotten them quickly.
The boy’s hopeful words as we descended together left a far stronger impression.
He was a deep-thinking kid.
It was hard to believe someone like him came from such a family.
The following day, as I prepared to leave the International Residence, the dining hall was alive with a celebratory atmosphere.
The guests and residents had been replaced by the landlady’s friends, who filled the space with chatter.
The landlady sat proudly at the center of the table, basking in their admiration.
“I’m so jealous. My kids hang out with gangsters.”
“I heard the exam isn’t easy to pass. How did he manage it?”
“They say families of Hunter School students get The Hope apartments. Is that true?”
Surrounded by praise, envy, and admiration, the landlady beamed.
“Oh, my Young-min’s dad. He’s a pain in the neck, but I have to thank him for giving me such a great kid. I mean, sure, he’s lazy, but he’s got a good heart, don’t you think?”
I left the residence, watching as a family on the brink of collapse became tighter than ever thanks to the boy’s decision.
The boy’s laptop was excellent.
SKELTON: (New Laptop) “Got a new laptop, haha.”
There were no comments on my post, but it received an unusually high number of views.
Perhaps it was the envy and curiosity of my community peers.
The landlady’s triumphant smile seemed to copy itself onto my face.
Two months passed before I revisited the Hunter School flyer saved on the laptop.
By chance, I stumbled upon a hidden personal folder the boy had left behind.
Inside were the recruitment flyer, photos of daily schedules, snapshots with childhood friends, family vacation pictures, and countless images of a girl his age whose name I didn’t recognize.
With a growing sense of unease, I finally read the part of the flyer I’d missed earlier—the dense warning buried in the fine print.
“Final admissions candidates will undergo three rounds of high-intensity psychic resonance tests, during which exposure to certain accidents may occur.”
“...Certain accidents?”
Bullshit.
I knew what that test was.
As someone who’d been through it, I understood better than anyone.
It was a trial by death—a way to cull those unworthy of being chosen by the gods.
When I returned to Seoul, I headed straight for the International Residence.
From the start, something felt off.
The old woman who usually guarded the entrance was nowhere to be seen.
With a growing sense of dread, I entered the building.
As I feared, the ownership had changed.
“Can I help you? Are you looking for something?”
“The previous owners… what happened to them?”
At that moment, I caught sight of an old man shuffling past the shop outside.
Dressed in tattered clothes and unwashed, he looked like a dying dog. Despite the darkness, he resembled the elderly man who had lived there.
“Don’t go… Don’t go… Don’t go…”
The old man mumbled as he staggered along the unfamiliar street.
In the distance, a slender girl smoked a cigarette while hanging out with a delinquent crowd.
She, too, bore a striking resemblance to the boy’s sister.
Our eyes met briefly, and she looked away with an expression of irritation and contempt.
Seeing that, I stopped myself from asking any more questions.
“No, it’s nothing.”
On the brighter side of the street, lottery hawkers were enticing passersby, exchanging tickets for goods.
I joined the crowd and asked about the price of a lottery ticket, trading two cigarettes for one.
I never returned to the International Residence after that.
Nor did I hear any news about that family.
As far as I’m concerned, their fate remains hopeful.
Much like my own lottery ticket, still unscanned for the results of its draw.