[2050, Another Lawmaker's Office]
Beyond the gray hallway, the heavy, deliberate sound of leather soles struck the floor in steady rhythm.
The door swung open with force.
Assemblyman Jung Jae-yoon tossed his briefcase onto the table as if discarding it, then strode across the office, his face set in stone.
"…What the hell is this?"
He yanked a stack of papers from the folder, the edge of a bill draft jutting out.
"Special Act on Strengthening Climate Crisis Response (Draft)"
"Sustainable City Transition Provisions"
"Redefinition of Development-Restricted Zones"
Harsh red lines slashed across the text.
Jung clenched the papers in his fist, his gaze sweeping over the aides in the room.
"If this passes," he said, voice low and cold,
"every single development project we've been pushing will be blocked."
The air in the room thickened to the point of suffocation.
"Hundreds of billions—no, trillions—are on the line,"
he stepped closer, eyes locking on each aide in turn.
"And you're just going to sit there and watch?"
The aides bowed their heads, their faces frozen.
One opened a laptop, another began scribbling notes in haste.But none dared look up.
Jung exhaled slowly.
"Find me a way."
He enunciated each word with precision.
"Attack it, stall it, bend the rules—I don't care."
A faint, cutting smile flickered at the corner of his lips.
"It's not policy that moves the world. It's power."
His voice was smooth, but the chill in it was unmistakable.
Turning away, Jung swept the papers off the table.
White sheets scattered through the air and landed across the floor.
"Move. Before it's too late."
The short command left the room in heavy silence.
The tension wound so tight, it was unclear who would dare breathe first.
[2050, A University Common Study Room]
The study room buzzed with the noise of a late afternoon.
The mechanical hiss of an espresso machine, the chimes of assignment deadline alerts popping up on tablet screens,and a low "focus" playlist someone had put on loop drifted through the air.
In the middle of it all, Seo Do-yoon sat quietly with his head lowered.
Messy hair, a stretched-out hoodie, a modified-looking laptop tangled with wires at his side,and a half-finished can of energy drink lying nearby.
Seo Do-yoon, twenty-one, a sophomore in computer engineering.
Among his classmates, he was known as the "AI geek,"
but even that label seemed to pass over him like a breeze he didn't bother to notice.
He carried the air of someone living half a beat out of sync with the world.
Once, he had been the boy in the spotlight.
As a child, he was a math prodigy who graced news headlines,
received early admission offers from prestigious overseas universities,
and was even introduced on TV as "the future Korean genius."
But too much expectation can be far crueler than praise.
The gaze of others grew from curiosity into something more relentless,
and admiration began to feel like surveillance.
Not long after a televised appearance,
he found himself unable to breathe—spiraling into a full-blown panic attack that landed him in the hospital.
After that, Do-yoon rejected having his name in anyone's mouth.
He withdrew, returned quietly to school, and immersed himself in the only thing that still sparked his interest—
the world of AI.
'No emotions, no rudeness, no impatience.'
That's what he liked about it.
Now, in a nameless university lab in the heart of Seoul,
he chose a life of writing his own code, invisible to everyone else.
In that way, he began to observe the world again—silently.
As he sat there, a classmate walked past, holding a tablet and grinning at another friend.
"Hey, did you see this? Some high schooler posted something weird on SNS.Said, 'The AI I used to chat with the past broke down,' hahaha."
Another friend snickered and added,
"What, did she hallucinate from exam stress? The comments are full of stuff like 'college entrance delusion' and 'kids these days.'"
A few shallow laughs rippled through the study room.
But Do-yoon said nothing—just tapped his smart ring with his right hand in a slow, steady rhythm.
His gaze had already shifted toward his tablet screen.
A quick search. The post in question.
Username: @jia._.log
I need help.Past Connection AI LUKA bug. System error occurred.Looking for a way to reverse it.Please, sincerely. I'm looking for someone to work with me.#seriousaboutAI #nojokes #helpme
Do-yoon's brow furrowed slightly.
"AI LUKA…?"
He murmured it to himself as he flipped open his laptop.
The console window popped up almost instantly.
His fingers began to type commands with a practiced speed.
Moments later, a small stream of data flickered past.
"This isn't… local access," he muttered, eyes narrowing.
"And there's… live external traffic?"
In the corner of the screen,
a single unfamiliar signal blinked.
It was far outside a normal routing path.
The corner of Do-yoon's lips curved upward.
"…It's real."
Then he sank into complete, silent focus—shutting out every noise in the room.
Finally, his fingers pressed the last command.
'Send.'
A short vibration hummed through the device,carrying a single line of text toward Ji-an.
In that moment,
unseen by anyone,
and in a way no one could have predicted,
fate had begun to connect.
[2050, in Front of Yoonseul's Café]
Under the gray sky, muddy water still pooled along the road.
The air was hot yet damp, and the sun pierced sharply through the clouds.
Ji-an kept her hood pulled low, Si-a clutched her laptop tightly, and Ji-hyeok stood beside them in silence.
As always, his hand held a warm tumbler, filled with the ginger tea he'd boiled the night before.
"This is strange," Ji-hyeok murmured.
"Lately… even breathing feels like something you have to be careful about."
No one found an easy answer to that.
Then, right on time, a young man appeared at the end of the alley.
Loose hoodie, a laptop bag slung over his shoulder, and an almost unreal air about him—Seo Do-yoon.
He stopped in front of the three.
After glancing between them, his eyes settled on Ji-an.
"Jung Ji-an?"
"Yes… Did you come because of the post?"
Do-yoon scratched the back of his head.
"That post… it was too strange to just scroll past. So I came. Out of curiosity.And…
I've been waiting for something like this—something that makes no sense."
Ji-hyeok stared at him, then muttered almost to himself,
"…But why do you actually believe it? Nobody else did."
Do-yoon smiled faintly.
"I don't believe you. I believe the system."
His gaze was steady with certainty.
"Errors like this… they only happen when something is really real."
Inside the café, it was calm.
From outside came the occasional wail of sirens and public announcements, but here, it felt as though time had stopped.
Si-a opened her laptop and pulled up the incident log. Do-yoon scanned through it quickly.
"This isn't just a simulation."
His voice was quiet, but clear.
Ji-hyeok leaned back in his chair, head lowered.
The drink in his hand was still warm, but his eyes were growing colder.
"…Even if kids like us mess with something like this, nothing's going to change."
He muttered, "If fate is real… it's probably already decided."
Ji-an turned toward him.
"No," she said firmly.
"I don't believe that."
"Me neither," Si-a added.
"That's why we've made it this far."
Do-yoon listened silently, then turned his gaze to Ji-hyeok.
"But if you don't move at all, then you really can't change anything," he said gently.
"This might be the only moment you can move."
Ji-hyeok closed his eyes briefly, then nodded.
"…I'm still not sure. But…"
He set his tumbler down quietly.
"At least for now, I want to stay with you."
Do-yoon gave a short laugh.
"That's enough. Leave the rest to me."
[That Night, in Seo Do-yoon's Room]
The city's night was still uneasy.
With the power grid in collapse, nine out of ten streetlights were dark, and the few still alive flickered in the wind.
Outside Do-yoon's window, the faint blink of an evacuation shelter sign ran on emergency power far in the distance.
His room was small and dim.
The air circulator barely functioned on energy-saving mode,and in one corner of the floor, a low-power cooling fan pushed out a sluggish stream of lukewarm air.
The windows had been sealed with tape against the fine dust, and a single crumpled filter mask lay abandoned on the desk.
In that darkness, only the glow of three monitors spilled a pale blue light.
Do-yoon sat on the floor instead of his bed,
a worn rug under him, laptop and notebook spread open, wiping the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand as he worked.
On the laptop screen, LUKA's intricate code stream rushed past at a relentless pace.
On one side, a data log scrolled without pause; on the other, a heavy interface-link simulation churned.
He erased and rewrote the notebook crammed with equations again and again.
"…You're telling me this is a simple connection structure?"
His low breath filled the room.
The deeper the analysis went, the more LUKA's architecture felt like something beyond human design—
physical time records, non-linear interactions, layered structures where decision-making and memory flow intertwined.
On the third monitor, the console window flickered.
[Spacetime Memory Flow Simulation – Active]
[Data Sync Rate: Exceeding Non-Standard Threshold]
[Original Timeline Consistency: Compromised]
Do-yoon closed his eyes for a moment and murmured quietly,
"…This isn't something our current tech could have built."
He ran his fingertips over the notebook's edge.
Outside the window, a low rumble echoed like a distant explosion.
Somewhere out there, someone was still fighting to protect the city—
while others had already given up and fled.
Then, a small notification blinked at the top of the console log:
[External User Access Detected – Monitoring in Progress]
But Do-yoon hadn't noticed it yet.
Inside the room,
only the hum of the machines
and a taut, hushed tension filled the air.
In that silence, a scene from earlier came to him—
kids clutching their tablets, avoiding his gaze.
And the name they'd spoken so carefully.
Luka…
He idly scribbled it in the corner of his notebook.
L.U.K.A.
'Who built this system?'
It wasn't the trace of mere technology.
It felt… like a memory structure carrying someone's emotions—
delicate, unfamiliar, and unsettlingly alive.
He rested his hand over the tablet screen.
Outside, the city lights receded,
but the questions inside were drawing closer.