[2050, Downtown Seoul]
A small notification popped up on Ji-hyeok's calendar app.
"August 27. Mom's birthday."
He stared at the screen for a long moment before quietly putting his phone down.
"…Come to think of it…"
With his head resting on his arms, he gazed blankly out the window.
In the noisy classroom, still unsettled before lunch was even over, Ji-hyeok alone seemed frozen in place.
A single candle flickering on a birthday cake.
The sound of laughter drifting through an open window.
The last glimpse of his mother behind the glass of a quarantine ward.
He replayed that moment again and again, each time feeling his chest tighten slowly, unbearably.
Then it happened.
The sharp blare of an emergency alert ripped through the classroom.
[Weather Bureau Alert – Extreme Hail Warning for Seoul and the Greater Capital Area]
[Threat Level: Severe (Level 4) – Seek shelter immediately]
[Additional heavy precipitation and sudden temperature drop expected. Outdoor activity prohibited]
The air froze in an instant.
"…Hail?"
Someone whispered in disbelief.
And then—
BOOM!
A deafening crash shook the glass windows.
Chunks of ice, more than eight centimeters across, plummeted from the sky.
The sound of shattering glass spread like thunder. Students screamed. The ceiling beams groaned under the impact.
Instinctively, Ji-hyeok clutched his head. His vision blurred, his heart pounded.
But it wasn't just fear.
"…Mom…"
The word escaped his trembling lips.
At that moment, Ji-an rushed toward him.
"Ji-hyeok… are you okay? Are you…?"
He lowered his head, pretending not to hear, not to feel—but his hands shook violently.
"…That day… because I was with you…"
He muttered, voice cracking.
"…I keep thinking maybe I ruined everything. That maybe I… that's why I think of Mom."
His words were heavy with guilt, as if confessing a sin.
Ji-an's eyes widened in shock.
She had never seen him like this.
She had thought he was just a quiet boy. But now, he was breaking apart before her.
"No."
Ji-an covered his trembling hand with hers.
"It's not your fault. Not ever."
Her voice was soft, yet unwavering.
"This is bigger than anything we could carry alone. And you're not alone. Not ever."
Outside, the hail still battered the city like a relentless bombardment.
But in that moment, between the two of them,
there was a fragile silence—
as if, for a breath, the storm had stilled.
[2050, Seo Do-yoon's Home]
The sky over Seoul hung heavy, like an old pane of glass on the verge of shattering.
The stifling heat of the day had vanished without warning, and as night fell, hail began to pour down in sudden torrents.
Do-yoon's workspace—also his home—was a basement flat.
Above him, the pounding of hail against the metal roofing echoed like relentless hammer strikes.
From beyond the window came the distant sound of shattering car windows and muffled screams.
Do-yoon lowered the shutter with a quiet motion, shutting out the chaos.
What mattered now was not the world outside—but inside.
Three monitors on his desk flickered unsteadily, struggling on unstable power.
Do-yoon pressed his lips tightly together, head bent over his work.
Spread out before him was a web of tangled algorithms, and the recovery console of the LUKA system.
Bzzt—
On one screen, error logs cascaded endlessly.
『Error: Data Corruption』
『Warning: Timeline Sync Failure』
『Connection Stability: 43%』
Then, after a long moment, a single green notification flashed into view.
『LUKA Recovery Interface – Temporary Boot Successful』
Do-yoon drew in a sharp breath.
"…Not perfect, but… it means the link is possible."
He carefully tapped his smart ring.
A few seconds later, the screen inside a café flickered to life on Ji-an's laptop.
The faces of Ji-an, Si-a, and Ji-hyeok emerged faintly in the glow of a worn-out lamp.
They were huddled together on an old sofa on the café's second floor.
Outside, hail still battered the streets, but inside, the kids had stopped working on their homework, eyes fixed on the screen.
Ji-hyeok sat with both hands resting on his knees, silent, his face shadowed with the weight of the afternoon's trauma.
Do-yoon was the first to speak.
"There's just one problem… We can't be sure if we'll land on the right time—or the right person."
Si-a spoke up carefully.
"So… the connection works, but there's no telling where it'll jump?"
Do-yoon gave a small nod.
"Yeah. That's the limit of this structure right now."
He gestured toward the flood of logs on his screen.
"The timeline itself… it's unstable. What we tampered with wasn't just simple messaging. It was a framework that manipulates memory—and flow."
Ji-an stared down at the tablet, her face set in stone.
"Even so… we have to. If we don't, I think it'll collapse even further."
At that, Ji-hyeok finally spoke, breaking his silence.
"…If we try to connect now, we could end up ruining someone else's life."His voice was quiet, but sharp.
"Are you ready to carry that?"
For a moment, silence filled the room. Then Ji-an slowly lifted her head.
"Maybe we might. But right now… it's a responsibility we can't run from.
And if we don't do something, there won't be a 'next' for us to worry about."
Her words came steady, deliberate.
"We've already begun."
Do-yoon held her gaze for a long moment. Then, a faint smile tugged at his lips.
He nodded once, pressing a command onto the tablet.
"All right. Then let's open it again."
His voice was calm now—but with a weight that hadn't been there before.
And outside the café,
Ji-hyeok leaned against the pillar beside the entrance, quietly staring at his phone.
On the screen, the name saved as Noona was flashing.
He hesitated for a moment, just looking at it, before finally picking up the call.
"Ji-hyeok. Today… it's Mom's birthday."
His sister's voice was soft, careful.
"This time, I thought maybe just the two of us could at least have dinner together."
Ji-hyeok exhaled without a word. A still silence flowed between them over the line.
After a long pause, his sister added:
"Then at least… come for the memorial. Mom would want to eat with you too. So much."
Ji-hyeok pressed his lips together, answering in a voice barely above a whisper.
"…Okay."
When the call ended, he slowly lowered his phone, staring out at the street.
The sky had already turned ashen, and far beyond the clouds, flashes of unstable lightning blinked in the distance.
After a steadying breath, Ji-hyeok masked his heavy expression and quietly pushed open the study room door.
Inside, Ji-an's laptop screen flickered faintly as LUKA's restored interface came alive again.
Hail still hammered against the roof, the city shook, yet within that chaos the children's resolve only grew sharper.
In the dim light, the LUKA system screen glowed faintly.
A short chat log hovered on the monitor:
[Connection Year: 2029]
『I'm so tired of eating vegan school lunches every day.
If it weren't for my allergies, I'd really want to eat meat.』
Beneath it, Ji-an's reply blinked softly.
『Vegan menus are getting tastier all the time.Maybe you'll be the one to make them delicious someday.』
Si-a peered at the tablet and murmured.
"…2029."
She tapped lightly at the top of the screen with her finger.
"Closer to our time than before."
Ji-an gave a small nod, but her face carried something heavier, pressed down beyond hope.
"Even if it's closer… an unreachable time is still unreachable."
Ji-hyeok silently glanced between the screen and Ji-an.
It was a record he had never seen before, but the emotions within it didn't feel unfamiliar.
Si-a quietly typed a note:
'No causal link detected. Connection failed.'
The monitor held nothing but a short exchange, and a hollow silence that lingered after.
Ji-an let out a small sigh as she stared at the AI screen.
Her fingers tapped unconsciously against the desk as she spoke, her voice low.
"…At first, I thought we could do something extraordinary."
"A system that could rewrite time, shift someone's future… and in the end, it's just a few trivial words."
Ji-hyeok lowered his head slightly, listening.
Her voice grew fainter, carrying the weight of disillusionment—
that what was left amounted to nothing more than fleeting words.
He brushed his fingers over the notebook on his lap.
He didn't say it aloud, but deep down he knew—
even those fleeting words could ripple into someone's life.
"…And yet, I don't even know if those words are truly reaching anyone at all."
After a short silence, Si-a spoke softly.
"…Ji-an, there's no proof that the words we said just disappeared."
"Maybe… they're only taking the long way around."
Do-yoon added his voice.
"Change often moves deepest when it's invisible."
He set the tablet down on the table.
"For now, it may look like nothing's happening… but maybe the ripple we touched has already begun somewhere."
Ji-hyeok slowly nodded at those words.
He glanced at Ji-an's profile, then spoke carefully.
"…A single small word can stay in someone's memory for a long time."
"Like with me… sometimes it makes you realize something only much later."
Ji-an turned her head slightly, looking at him.
Ji-hyeok held her gaze and gave a small smile.
In it was comfort, empathy, and a quiet encouragement.
Ji-an slowly lifted her head toward the window.
The late-summer city lay dark.
The streets were stained with broken light.
Far away, unstable lightning split the sky, revealing for a moment the cracks of the world—
desolate alleys, frozen traffic lights, toppled streetlamps.
She whispered under her breath:
"…The world keeps collapsing even while I hesitate."
"Hail, blackouts, chaos… our small failures keep feeding into bigger ones.
And here I am… just standing still."
Ji-hyeok stood in silence, watching the same view, as if he were echoing the same thought in his mind.
Cautiously, Ji-an pulled out her phone.
She reopened the past connection log.
But the data on the screen remained indifferent, still.
As if nothing—and no one—had changed at all.
Ji-an clenched her hand tightly.
"…I need to do something. Fast."
Her voice grew quieter and quieter.
"And the more I say that… the smaller I feel."
She exhaled softly toward the darkness outside.
Yet at the edge of that sigh, there was a fragile spark of will.
Carefully, Ji-an turned her gaze back to the AI screen.
The monitor remained unresponsive.
Slowly, she reached out and pressed the power button.
The screen faded away, and the room sank into deep silence.Ji-an rose to her feet.
Her body felt heavy, but her steps moved, little by little, forward.
Stopping at the door, she whispered very quietly:
"…I don't want to say it's over. Not yet."
Then she pushed open the café door and stepped outside.
Inside, only the afterheat of the darkened screen lingered on the table.
In front of it, Si-a sat with her hands clenched tight, staring at the door where Ji-an's figure had vanished.
Her face was composed, but in her eyes the same resolve quietly spread.
Do-yoon, too, lifted his gaze without a word.
His hand still rested on the tablet, now dark.
In that hushed space, the feelings of the four were bound together in silence.
Outside, lightning once again tore across the sky, illuminating the fractures of the world.
Ji-hyeok stared at that brief glow, then slowly closed his eyes.
And in a voice barely above a breath, he murmured:
"…Yeah. It's not over. Not yet."