The chirping of the birds never bothers me. Instead, it dances playfully in my ears—a rhythmic lullaby that both stirs me from sleep and tempts me back into its embrace. I lay tucked within the softness of my bed; the mattress was the kind designed for deep, heavy slumber, making my body feel as though it were floating weightlessly atop a sea of clouds.
I opened my eyes to the sight of the ceiling, where a fan spun with a slow, rhythmic hum. Outside, birds fluttered and settled upon the branches of the tree my parents had planted the day Rumi was born. Through the leaves, shards of golden sunlight filtered through my half-open window, dancing across the floor. A gentle spring breeze drifted in, carrying the scent of blooming life from the garden, mingling with the distant, rich aroma of ground coffee beans rising from the first floor.
It was the scent of home—a sign that my parents were awake and my mother was preparing breakfast. I had perhaps five or ten minutes of stolen peace before the performance began. These moments... this life... it was truly peaceful.
I stood up, pulled on my school uniform, and adjusted my tie in the mirror. My reflection was that of a typical, somewhat pale fifteen-year-old. I looked harmless. That was the point.
As I stepped out into the hallway, a small, cold hand tugged at my sleeve. Rumi was standing there, her school bag already on her shoulders, her long white socks pulled high. She looked different today—vibrant. The translucent, deathly pallor that usually crept into her skin when her hunger grew too sharp had vanished. Her eyes had a clarity that hadn't been there for weeks.
"Brother," she whispered, her voice barely a breath. She cast a quick, nervous glance toward the kitchen to ensure our parents weren't listening. "That... 'special juice' you found for me? It was the best thing I've ever had. I don't feel the 'itch' in my throat anymore. Thank you."
I looked down at her, my expression unreadable and stoic. "Don't mention it. And don't tell Mom or Dad. They think you're still doing fine on the 'vegetarian' supplements they buy."
She nodded frantically, a shy, relieved smile tugging at her lips before she turned and skipped toward the kitchen.
I watched her go, my thoughts drifting back to the rusted iron of the Old Station. I hadn't done it out of a desire for violence, but out of necessity. Rumi's thirst had been growing dangerously strong lately—strong enough that her "performance" as a human was beginning to crack. I couldn't risk her losing control in a classroom full of students.
Besides, what I had given her wasn't "real" blood—not the crude, metallic liquid humans carried. It was a refined essence, a distilled nectar of vitality processed through the alien plant. It was cleaner, more potent, and infinitely more satisfying. In my eyes, I wasn't feeding her a victim; I was providing her with the medicine she needed to stay "normal."
The scene in the kitchen was a masterpiece of suburban normalcy. The scent of frying eggs and sizzling bacon acted as a sensory veil, masking the reality of who we were.
"Bacon and eggs! Bacon and eggs! Heeeey!" Rumi chirped as she took her seat, her act as a hyperactive ten-year-old perfectly restored.
My father, Dae-Hyun, chuckled as he sipped his coffee, already scrolling through a news hologram. My mother moved gracefully between the stove and the table, her ponytail swaying against her apron.
"Jun," Mom said, glancing at me as I sat down. "Will you be picking Rumi up from the academy this afternoon? I have to stay late at the community center."
"I can't today, Mom," I replied, miming a bite of toast and swallowing the void. "Min-Ho has been pestering me. He picked up some weird signal on his array—he's been trying to decrypt it for days and he's convinced I can help him find a pattern in the noise."
Min-Ho was the resident geek of our circle—a boy whose brain was ninety percent code and ten percent caffeine. He was a useful shield; no one questioned why I spent my afternoons away when they thought I was just staring at a glowing screen with a tech-obsessed friend.
Mom sighed, her gaze drifting toward the window, toward the house next door. "I see. Well, try not to stay out too late. And... keep an eye on Jasmine if you see her. Poor girl. I saw her coming home late again yesterday. It's a shame what's happening to that family. It's just not right."
I kept my head down, focusing on my "meal." If only you knew, Mom.
Just then, the bulky, old-fashioned TV in the corner flickered to life.
"...Update on the missing student: Min-Seo has been found," the anchor announced. The screen showed the girl being loaded into an ambulance. She looked dazed, her eyes slightly out of focus, but otherwise she looked like any other student. "Her parents have clarified that she had simply run away due to exam stress."
"See?" Dad said, a triumphant edge to his voice. "I told you she was a runaway. There's no need to worry so much, dear. Alpha City is as safe as it's always been."
I watched the screen, watching the girl the Gardener had finally finished with. There was no smugness in my chest, just a quiet sense of closure. She would forget everything. The memory-fogging Qi I had used would ensure that the Old Station remained a blank space in her mind. She'd feel weak for a couple of weeks—a lingering lethargy her doctors would blame on malnutrition and stress—and then she'd go back to her life.
Poor girl. She had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Dad's confidence was a comfort to him, a shield against a reality he couldn't comprehend. I let him have his peace. It was the least I could do while I maintained the silence that allowed him to drink his coffee.
The door clicked shut behind us, sealing away the quiet safety of the house. Rumi and I stepped out into the crisp morning air of Alpha City. She was dressed in her crisp Blossom Academy uniform, her long white socks pulled tight. Mom must have spent extra time on her today; her hair was styled into two neat space buns secured with silk ribbons that matched the school's colors. A few silvery wisps framed her face, giving her the appearance of a delicate porcelain doll.
She reached for the heavy, rectangular Walkman clipped to her belt. This was the Mama Corp 'Apex' Edition, a masterpiece of high-end retro-engineering. The chassis was a solid block of matte-carbon and obsidian glass, housing a spinning plasma-core spool that glowed with a low, neon-violet hum.
In a world of wireless neural-feeds, the physical thud of the play button was a loud, tactile luxury. She snapped her high-density foam headphones over her ears, sealing herself off. I couldn't hear the music—it was a private broadcast of high-fidelity synth—but I felt the faint, rhythmic vibration through the floor tiles as she hit play. A pressurized hiss of cooling gas escaped the device's vents, and she was gone, drifting into the sound while I stood in the silence.
"Brother," she said, skipping a step to match my pace. She looked toward the house nervously. "Do I look... normal? Like, really normal?"
I looked down at her. With the tidy buns and the star-shaped clips Mom had tucked into the ribbons, she looked like a perfect student from a bygone era. "You look fine, Rumi. Just keep your heart rate down. Don't let the nectar go to your head."
"I know, I know," she chirped, the mechanical click of the Walkman's buttons echoing as she flipped the tape. "Deep breaths. Eyes on the teacher. Don't stare at the janitor's neck. I've got it."
We reached the main intersection. A sleek, chrome-plated traffic android stood there, its optical sensor flashing red. As we approached, it emitted a soft pulse, scanning our student IDs remotely. The sensor turned a steady, glowing green. With a mechanical whir, the android extended its long, metallic arm, halting the flow of silent electric vehicles and hovering delivery drones to let us pass.
"Have a productive day, citizens," the android's synthesized voice droned as we stepped onto the crosswalk.
"You too, Mr. Robot!" Rumi called out, waving with a burst of energy that made me slightly uneasy. Her performance was almost too convincing.
At the gates of Blossom Academy, she stopped and looked up at me. "See you at home, Jun. Don't be too boring today."
"I'll try," I replied, watching her white socks disappear into a sea of other children before I turned toward the sprawling, metallic complex of Alpha High.
I moved with my usual slumped shoulders, a pale, unremarkable boy lost in the morning rush. I didn't have to look far to find her. Jasmine was leaning against a concrete pillar near the entrance. She was wearing her usual oversized hoodie and combat boots, but today, her sleeves were pushed back, revealing a fresh map of yellow-and-purple bruises on her forearms. She looked like she had spent the night fighting the world and lost.
She didn't offer a greeting as I approached. She just pushed off the wall and fell into step beside me, her eyes bloodshot.
"Hey, pale boy," she muttered. "You do that history homework? The stuff about the pre-Continental wars?"
"I did," I replied, keeping my voice steady. "It wasn't that difficult."
Jasmine scoffed, kicking a loose pebble with a heavy boot. "Must be nice to have a brain that works. I'll probably just sleep through the lecture. Not like it matters—we've got time to cram before the quiz on the nineteenth."
I stopped walking and looked at her. "Jasmine. Did you study at all?"
"I just told you," she groaned, rolling her eyes with an air of annoyance. "The quiz is on the nineteenth. That's practically a week away. I've got things to do tonight; I don't need to be staring at old maps of dead cities right now."
I didn't argue. Instead, I raised my left hand and opened my palm toward her. With a soft chirp, a sleek holographic interface projected from my wrist-link. The blue light shimmered in the morning shadows, displaying my unread messages, the current time, and—in bold, unavoidable digits—the date.
[ THURSDAY | FEBRUARY 19 | 08:12 AM ]
Jasmine froze. Her eyes darted from the hologram to my face, then back to the glowing blue numbers. The silence stretched as the reality hit her like a physical blow.
"Today is the nineteenth, Jasmine," I said softly.
The color drained from her face, making her bruises look even more prominent. "No... no way. That's... I thought I had a week. How is it the nineteenth already?"
I closed the hologram, the light vanishing into my skin. I knew why she was confused. When you spend your nights in the dark corners of the city, losing yourself in the adrenaline of a fight or the sheer exhaustion of survival, days tend to bleed into one another. To her, time was a luxury she couldn't afford to track.
"You can borrow my notes during the break," I offered, beginning to walk again. "But you'll have to read fast."
"Jun, I'm dead," she whispered, following me with a look of pure panic. "I am literally a dead woman."
I've adjusted the internal monologue to keep the secrets safe. In Jun's mind, his past isn't a "royal" title to be flaunted—it's a burden of knowledge that makes the world around him look like a playground of children playing with matches.
The bell for the end of fourth period rang like a funeral knell for Jasmine.
During the break, the courtyard was a chaotic blend of hovering cleaning drones and shouting students. At our table, however, the atmosphere was split between a funeral and a frantic science fair. Jasmine sat next to me, her forehead pressed against the cold metal of the table. She looked like a soldier who had survived a war only to be taken down by a papercut.
"I'm done, Jun," she groaned, her voice vibrating against the table. "I didn't even answer the last three questions. My brain just... it turned into static. And the teacher? He gave me that look. The 'see me after seventh period' look. I'm a dead woman walking. My mom is going to kill me before these bruises even fade."
"I told you to read the notes faster," I said tonelessly, staring at a nutrient bar that had the texture of compressed sand.
"Jun! Jasmine! You are not going to believe this!"
Min-Ho slammed his tablet onto the table, nearly vibrating out of his seat. His glasses were lopsided, and he looked like he hadn't blinked since yesterday.
"I caught it again. The signal!" he hissed, leaning in so close I could smell the synthetic caffeine on his breath. "I was messing around with that old-school Mama Corp radio receiver—the one with the analog override? Well, I tapped into a frequency that shouldn't exist. It's an encrypted pulse, but the logic... it's not human, Jun."
I took a slow, unenthusiastic bite of my bar.
"Think about it," Min-Ho continued, his eyes wide. "The pattern is too intentional. What if it's aliens? Or better yet—people from a parallel universe trying to bridge the gap? Maybe they're trapped and this is a distress call from another world!"
I looked at the glowing waveform on his screen, my mind drifting to things far beyond the comprehension of a high school tech-geek.
Aliens? I thought. If there are 'aliens' out there, Min-Ho, they aren't going to waste time sending radio songs. They're parasites. They'll land, find a host, and turn your nervous system into a highway before you can even hit 'record'.
"Parallel universes, Min-Ho?" I said aloud, my voice flat. "That's a bit of a leap from a bit of radio interference."
And as for people from other worlds... I looked at my own pale reflection in the tablet's screen. They aren't sending signals. They're transmigrators—souls drifting through the void, looking for a quiet life in a fifteen-year-old's body. And in all my time, I've never met another one like me. I'm the only ghost in this machine.
"You don't get it! The encryption is non-linear!" Min-Ho was practically shouting now, his fingers dancing across the screen. "It's like a heartbeat made of data. It's a message, I know it!"
"My heart is the one that's stopping," Jasmine muttered from the table, not even lifting her head. "Seventh period. Room 402. Death by detention."
"Maybe the aliens will abduct you before seventh period," I offered, glancing at Min-Ho. "Save you the trouble of explaining your grades to your mother."
"Exactly!" Min-Ho shouted, missing the sarcasm entirely. "See? Jun gets it! If this signal is a gateway, the implications are—"
"The only implication right now," I interrupted, pointing at the clock tower, "is that you have four minutes to get to your next lab before the 'interdimensional travelers' give you a tardy slip."
As Min-Ho scrambled to gather his gear, still muttering about frequencies, I looked at Jasmine. She looked truly defeated. In a world full of hidden predators and cosmic anomalies, a history quiz was a blink of an eye—but for her, this was the end of the world.