Iris had been wondering ever since she saw the collapsed ceiling on the fifteenth-floor cafeteria. Every move Thomas and Bryan made felt deliberate, like they had mapped it all out ahead of time. As impossible as it sounded, she could not come up with any explanation except one, they had known the world would end before it happened. After one revelation after another, and with neither of them even trying to hide it, she could not hold her question back any longer.
"How did you know the world would end?"
She did not expect a real answer. They barely knew each other, thrown together only because of circumstance. But Thomas surprised her.
"I'll tell you. Just… don't be too shocked," he said.
"Thomas?!" Bryan cut in immediately. He was not against Thomas sharing, but he knew what always followed. People never believed him. Worse, they avoided him afterward, treating him like he was strange or unstable, no matter how much he had helped them.
"It's fine, Bryan," Thomas said firmly. "They can decide whether to believe me or not. Anyway, we're stuck together. Better they know now, so they don't expect me to have all the answers."
In his mind, silence would only build false hope. If the others thought he had every solution, they would lean on him for everything. That was dangerous.
"Short story? I had a vision," Thomas said.
Nevin blinked. "A vision?"
"Yes. A vision from my dream. We call it bangungot."
"Bangungot?" Iris echoed, her brow furrowed.
"It's a kind of dream where the dreamer might die while experiencing it," Thomas explained, his tone calm, as if rehearsed from years of saying it. "It's always connected to food somehow."
Nevin and Iris exchanged looks, unsure if he was joking. But Thomas kept going.
"Three days ago, I ate in the cafeteria. There was a new menu item, so of course I tried it. While I was napping after lunch, I had the dream."
"Wait… new menu?" Iris leaned forward. "I prepared that!"
Thomas gave a small nod, then continued.
"In that vision, I saw the meteors falling. I knew what was coming, so Bryan and I made plans."
Nevin's eyes narrowed. "So, you knew we'd need to survive here in this building?"
Thomas shook his head. "No. I didn't see that."
"What?" Nevin leaned closer, confused. Iris also waited for him to explain.
"I only saw the three of you die in the cafeteria. And me… dying outside the building," Thomas said quietly.
The air went still.
"Then why are we here?" Iris asked.
"Because in the dream, the world was chaos after the meteors. I saw the cafeteria explode. I saw myself killed by a flying ambulance outside. With the little time we had, Bryan and I discussed how to protect as many lives as we could while keeping ourselves alive. This was the solution we came up with."
His words lingered in the silence. Iris and Nevin exchanged uneasy glances. They could not bring themselves to fully believe in Thomas's so-called vision, yet at the same time there was no other explanation for how he and Bryan had prepared so precisely. In the end, whether they liked it or not, they had to accept it.
A few seconds of silence passed before Iris spoke again.
"So… the free lunch was part of it? Now I get it. That was your way of saving everyone, right? By keeping people out of the cafeteria. You stayed in the building because it wasn't safe outside." She could already picture it. If most of the employees had eaten in the cafeteria yesterday, they would all be dead by now.
Then another thought hit her, something she had just seen with her own eyes.
"What about the monsters? Did you see them in your vision?" Iris asked, her eyes fixed on Thomas, waiting for his answer.
Somewhere across the sea…
In North Chollima, the mood was heavy as the fog creeping over the hills. The war room reeked of cigarette smoke and sweat, with dozens of generals packed around a long table covered in old maps and crackling radios that barely worked. At the head sat the Supreme Leader, his fingers tapping slowly on the armrest while one of his top commanders stood to give the latest update.
"Report," the Leader ordered, his voice sharp.
The general cleared his throat and gestured to the map of South Tiger Country. Red circles marked their military bases, but most had already been crossed out in thick black ink.
"Seongdae Capital is in complete disarray. The initial meteor impact hit the outer districts, but secondary damage has crippled the city. We've confirmed that a commercial airliner was clipped mid-air by falling debris and crashed directly onto their southern military base, wiping out most of their active command."
The room erupted with murmurs.
He pressed on. "Their military response is scattered. They're not guarding borders. They're stretched thin, digging survivors out of rubble, keeping riots in check, and protecting emergency shelters. Medical teams are overwhelmed, and food is running low, civil unrest is spreading. They are in no shape for war."
Another general scoffed. "They're wide open. We could walk right into Seongdae."
The first general nodded. "Exactly. Intelligence says their entire focus is disaster relief. They won't be ready for an offensive."
A grin spread across the Supreme Leader's face. He leaned back, steepling his fingers. "So, while they are weak and blind… we take it all."
Heads around the table nodded. One general even clapped his hands. "We strike under the guise of humanitarian aid. The world will think we're helping, while we help ourselves." Quiet laughter followed.
Orders were given. Troops mobilized. Engines roared to life.
The Leader tapped the table, his smirk never fading. "Announce our aid to the world. But send everything we have, tanks, choppers, artillery. Seongdae will be ours before nightfall."
And with that, North Chollima's army marched south.
Rows of tanks rolled across broken roads while troop carriers rumbled over cracked bridges. Helicopters swarmed the skies, their missile racks primed to finish whatever resistance the South still had. Behind them, thousands of soldiers marched in formation, confident and heavily armed, believing they were pushing toward an easy victory. What they did not realize was that they were no longer invading a country. They were marching straight into the pink fog.
It began as static across the radios, a faint pulse that made operators tap the sides of their headsets. Then the lead tank coughed, its engine sputtered, and it rolled to a stop. One by one, the rest slowed and died where they stood.
"Commander, we're losing power!" voices crackled through half-dead comms.
Helicopters drifted into the fog, their rotors faltering until they dropped from the sky. The first slammed into the convoy below, erupting in a fireball that tore through half a column of troops. Another clipped a tank, knocking it sideways into a ditch. Missile trucks froze, their systems blinking out like toys with dead batteries.
Panic spread quickly.
"Restore the systems!"
"Reboot the engines!"
"We're sitting ducks out here!"
But nothing came back. Guns jammed. Radios cut out. Night vision goggles flickered once and went dark. Every machine shut down, leaving thousands of soldiers stranded in silence.
Then came the screams.
At first it was scattered, a few men clutching their heads and falling to the ground, but soon the shouting spread. Soldiers writhed, bones snapping in unnatural angles, skin tearing as claws forced their way through gloves. Eyes glowed faintly in the mist. Tails lashed. Horns split through helmets. The men who had marched together only minutes ago turned on one another, slashing, biting, tearing through their own ranks. Commanders barked orders, but their voices were drowned by the chaos as sanity bled away into madness.
On the southern side of the border, South Tiger forces stood frozen at their last outpost. They had prepared for a desperate battle, ready to make their last stand. Instead, through binoculars, the commander watched northern tanks grind to a halt, helicopters spiral out of the sky, and soldiers screaming as the fog twisted them into something inhuman.
"They're finished," the commander muttered.
Another officer lowered his scope, his face pale. "What do we do, sir?"
The commander's jaw tightened. The fog was moving toward them, slow but certain. "We retreat. Tell the men. Fall back to the Safe Zone."
The order spread quickly. Southern troops abandoned the outpost without hesitation, leaving it behind as the fog swallowed the horizon. They had already seen enough to understand.
You could not fight the fog.
Back in the building, the question finally came out. Iris wanted to know if Thomas had seen the monsters in his dream. His answer froze the room.
"I didn't," Thomas said, his tone steady. "But at the end of my dream, I saw something else… a scene of me turning into one of them."
"What?!" Nevin and Iris shouted together, while Bryan's eyes widened. Even he had never heard this before.
Thomas leaned back, looking almost tired as he explained. "I really don't know what it means. When my vision is about to end, I sometimes see flashes of scenes that feel like pieces of the future. If I try to stay too long and watch them clearly, I'll die in the dream. That's why we call it bangungot."
It became clear that Thomas and Bryan did not know everything. Thomas only saw fragments, glimpses that left more questions than answers, and in the end, it would still be up to them to act on what little they knew.
Looking around at the stockpiled supplies, Iris understood something important. Thomas and Bryan had not prepared because they knew every detail of the future. They had only done the best they could with what they had, stocking up on whatever might help them survive. Still, supplies would not last forever. At some point they would need to step outside, and judging by how much they had gathered, the two must have already planned for that too.