[Jian's Attempt to Reconnect]
That evening, once she was back home,
Jian washed up in silence, forced down a late dinner, and lay down on her bed.
The pod's air circulation system hummed quietly in the background.
But no matter how tightly she closed her eyes, sleep refused to come.
Since last night's disaster alert, her breathing still felt constricted.
Like the sticky heat clinging to her skin all day, the unease in her chest hadn't cooled or faded.
After tossing and turning for a long while, Jian finally sat up, moving cautiously.
In the dim light of her room, she picked up her laptop.
'Just maybe.'
It was a fragile hope.
She knew it was almost pointless—but doing nothing felt far worse.
Holding her breath, Jian typed in the connection request.
Moments later, the cold mechanical reply returned.
"Current time-session unstable. Conflict with altered past variables detected."
"Connection will remain disabled for a limited period."
The screen flickered sharply, and Jian shut her eyes tight.
A swelling sphere of helplessness rose from deep inside her chest.
"…I ruined it."
Her small voice drifted through the pod.
She buried her face in her hands, then lowered her forehead slowly onto the desk.
Thud.
Stale air. Rigid silence.
And a quiet, suffocating despair.
Outside, the solar panels still shimmered, radiating waves of heat into the air.
Jian stayed there without moving, lost in stillness.
And so, the night dragged on without end.
By the time she opened her eyes, the world had only gotten worse.
[The Onset of a Compound Disaster]
The unease that had built up through the nightdidn't even survive the dawn.
Morning reports crashed in one after another,offering no pause to catch a breath.
"This morning, hailstones over six centimeters wide pounded the central region, shattering more than 4,200 windows."
"In coastal areas, high tide combined with storm surge has pushed seawater back into the streets, flooding roads and triggering a spike in waterborne illnesses."
"Downtown districts were struck overnight by a record-breaking cold snap, spreading frost damage across the city."
The anchor's voice was clipped and mechanical—like a machine reciting a casualty list.
Jian awoke in her pod without the alarm ever sounding,and drifted wordlessly to the sink.
In the mirror, her face was drained of color,the corners of her eyes still flushed with the raw fatigue of the night.
Outside, the city had already tipped into disaster.
She rushed to school.
But the gates were a frenzy—teachers gripped megaphones, their voices cracking as they shouted:
"Disaster alert! All students, move to the designated evacuation zones!"
In every corridor, students milled in tense knots,some clutching their backpacks like lifelines.
Jian pushed through the crowd, breath shallow and quick.
On the walls, the smart screens pulsed an unrelenting red—the color of urgency,the color of a day that had already gone wrong.
"Level 2 Compound Climate Disaster Alert Issued"
"Citywide Power Grid Instability"
"Water and Food Supply Restrictions Imminent"
"Transportation Recovery Delayed – No Emergency Transit Available"
Through the blare of overlapping alarms,Jian slipped past clusters of students.
On several wrists, personal temperature monitors flashed a harsh red.
"Warning: Rapid Temperature Rise"
"Danger: Respiratory Distress Detected"
Children gasping for air,huddles sharing sips from half-empty water bottles,students collapsed on the floor, fanning themselves with bare hands after tearing off their masks.
Jian swallowed against the churn in her stomach.
From somewhere down the corridor, a voice cracked through the din:
"Isn't this what climate collapse really looks like?"
"The planet's done for—there's nowhere left to run!"
She braced herself against the wall—even the surface beneath her palm was hot and slick with condensation.
In the middle of the hallway,a boy clutched his tablet, frantically searching for Evacuation Shelter Locations,but the map displayed only a blunt, unhelpful phrase:
"No Routes Available."
It was as if the entire city were slowly dissolving.
Catching her breath, Jian walked to the end of the corridor,fingers curling into a tight, deliberate fist.
Something was boiling in her chest now,and she could no longer hold it down.
"…This—"
Her voice was quiet,but it rang with steel.
"—has to be undone."
Beyond the glass,the sun still pressed its merciless weight onto the earth below.
[2050, Classroom]
After the chaos of the morning, the school somehow managed to resume classes.
Even the air inside the classroom felt heavy and sunken.
Weariness and quiet resignation had settled over the students' faces.
Even the light coming in from the windows was not as clear as it used to be.
Jian sat silently at her desk.
Her mind kept circling back to the warning screens in the hallway,and to the faces of her friends, trembling and close to tears.
Then, their homeroom teacher stood quietly at the lectern.
"Today's career guidance period… the teacher in charge couldn't make it in due to a personal matter, so we'll replace it with self-study.
If you haven't yet submitted your university preference list, please make sure to turn it in by the end of today."
At that moment, a short sigh escaped from somewhere in the back of the room.
"But, teacher… what's the point of turning that in?"
Someone spoke flatly, almost carelessly.
"At this rate, the planet's going to end anyway…"
A few students let out quiet laughs.
Others simply nodded.
That helpless agreement spread through the classroom like a slow, invisible tide.
The teacher took a quiet breath before speaking again.
"…When I was in school, there were plenty of kids who said the same thing.
Back then, wearing masks for fine dust was just starting, and heatwaves were an occasional oddity.
We had super typhoons, sure, and torrential rains like now—but not like this."
He glanced out the window before continuing slowly.
"Decades have passed since then… and the future didn't change as suddenly as I'd imagined.
Some parts of daily life shifted—energy systems, water supply, tech devices.
But society still runs under the same authorities, and people still live much as they did before.
Little by little, they adapt… almost without realizing it."
He turned his gaze back to the students.
"We're living like frogs in slowly boiling water.
Some people still think it feels warm, but one day you might find you can't breathe."
A brief silence followed before he spoke again.
"Revolutions and wars only break out when survival itself is at stake—
when water, food, and breathable air start to collapse.
But until then… someone's choice might still be able to nudge the future."
Resting a hand lightly on his desk, he said quietly,
"You might think it's too late.
But that's often the moment when it's actually the earliest you can start.
Right now, the best thing you can do is give your all to what you can do—
and that means thinking seriously about your path, even just a little.
So no excuses. Turn in your university preference list before the deadline."
Even after the homeroom teacher's words ended, the classroom stayed silent.
Only the wind drifting in through the windows seemed to carry his voice into someone's heart—slowly, quietly, as if it knew where to go.
"If you don't want to be left with nothing when you're grown,
then even if it's hard now… think about what you want, what you love.
That's the only way to carry on life beyond mere survival."
When he stopped speaking, the silence lingered.
It wasn't the weight of a scolding, nor the warmth of encouragement—
just something heavy, settling in the chest of everyone present.
Jian kept her head slightly lowered, staring at the back of her hand.
A single bead of sweat slid down her skin.
She inhaled, then let the breath out slowly.
'What I was trying to change… was that kind of possibility for life.'
Outside, solar panels still reflected the heat, their glare quivering against the classroom windows like threads of light.
Yet his words remained clear, even through the brightness—
a weight that was not light, lodged somewhere in her chest.
She didn't lift her head.
If anything, she lowered it further, as if to hold on to that echo.
The teacher's final words circled in her mind like a whisper:
'If you want to carry on living, you have to think about what you love…'
And then, last night's scenes returned—
The vanished connection logs.
The red warning screens that had flashed.
The words that had never reached her from the other side.
The sincerity she had sent out, and the something that still hadn't been delivered.
'After everything that's happened… I still don't know what I truly want.'
She closed her eyes, then opened them again.
The world outside was still sweltering, the light spreading like midsummer—
but somewhere in that heat, a faint, definite breeze brushed past her heart.
It was neither regret nor certainty, only the quiet signal of a possibility… still alive.
[2050, Office of the Parliamentary Aide]
The meeting room door clicked shut.
She didn't head back to her desk. Not yet.
The corridor ahead felt weighted, the air thick enough to slow a breath.
She moved through it quickly, quietly.
The day's agenda was already erased from her mind.
This was no longer about data. This was about a person.
At the far end, she stopped, pulled out her tablet, and tapped into the off-record government network.
One name.
'Lee Hanna.'
Just a few years ago, she had been a front-line architect of future transit policy—visionary, dangerous. And then… gone.
The search results appeared fast:
Former Director of Climate Technology, Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport. Resigned 2030. Joined private sector.Since 2046: JH Future Science Research Center.Special Researcher, Climate-Energy Integrated Circuit Optimization, external appointment.
Her fingers tightened on the tablet.
'JH Group… Jeong Jae-yoon's backer.'
Once, Lee Hanna had been unshakable.
Leaving the public post, she'd claimed, was to work closer to the field.
Now her name was stamped on the enemy's side.
"Why… there?"
The aide typed a short, careful message.
One the recipient would understand, if they still could. She sent it, knowing the reply wouldn't come soon.
No rush.
What she needed now was cold patience.
She switched screens, pulled up Association Chairman Choi Jae-hoon's profile, and sent a brief greeting with an informal meeting request.
Read receipts disabled.
She couldn't afford even a shadow of exposure.
Two messages sent. No reads. No replies.
Setting the tablet down, she opened a small paper notebook.
Scribbles in pencil filled the page:
Altered records have a different structure.Memory's flow leaves no trace—but intent does.Who, when, and how rewrote the frame?
She added one more line, pressing the graphite deep into the paper:
And now… I stand at that boundary.
Outside, the city lights shimmered faintly in the dark.
But her eyes burned sharper than any of them.