Regrets
11:01 AM
Chewbacca: [Are you alive?]
Chewbacca: [Are you alive?]
Chewbacca: [Are you alive?]
11:23 AM
You: [Debatable]
11:25 AM
Chewbacca: [Text me when you arrive at the airport tomo. I'll pick you up.]
Chewbacca: [Manager-hyung said our group have no schedule for an entire day! Should we eat out with Mom?]
You: [K]
-
3:14 PM
Chewbacca: [I need relationship advice]
3:26 PM
You: [Break up.]
3:27 PM
Chewbacca: [At least listen to me first!]
3:30 PM
Chewbacca: [During the music show, this singer gave me her number when Manager-hyung's not looking. You know the singer of 'Eternal' OST? She's cute but…See more]
-
If Ryujin had known that would be his last contact with his younger twin brother, he would have at least attempted to read his wall-of-text response.
It was too late to regret.
Ninety-three days have passed since his phone battery died. With electricity scarce in the city, there was no way to recharge personal gadgets. The soldiers would beat him up for wasting precious resource.
Let alone chats, Ryujin couldn't even look at his family's pictures.
Still, Ryujin held onto his phone like a lifeline. With everything he owned lost or destroyed, this was the last connection he had with his family. With home.
Even now, with veins popping out his hand, cold sweat running down his nape, Ryujin was still clutching onto his dead phone.
Eugh.
Here comes nausea.
Using his free hand, Ryujin tried to remove the standard military-issued helmet off his head, intending to hurl what little he ate for breakfast.
Before he could do so, he heard his squad letting out a collective gasp.
In half a second, he was forced to swallow back what was supposed to come out.
Was it a monster? An ambush?
Were they being attacked upon entry?
Ryujin steadied himself as he hid his phone. He then tightened his grip around the dagger attached to his hip.
Experience had cruelly taught the survivors that guns didn't work against these monsters, so they were forced to go back to using cold weapons—not just any weapon, but ones that took countless trial and error to create, harnessed from the corpses of the monsters killed by the very first batch of the Awakened.
Gritting his teeth, Ryujin lowered his stance in preparation to defend.
Inside his head, he was cursing.
Fucking mad scientists!
Why would they send living people as guinea pigs when they have absolutely no idea what's on the other side of the Rift?
This was the den of those white-scaled monsters!
What, the remote-controlled robots lost connection upon entry? None of the existing technology was able to scout and retrieve information back to base?
Well, yeah, those precious robots and machines were probably crushed to bits by those monsters the size of houses.
How intelligent, peak human civilization, for the higher ups to think sending people to their deaths was the solution.
To highlight how well-planned this mission was, take note his squad was armed with nothing but metal rods and daggers that look like a slightly longer bread knife.
Was human life so cheap nowadays?
I guess it is.
It all started more than three months ago.
Ryujin was at the airport, idly waiting for his flight back to Seoul, when the world suddenly went on mute. It was like someone had hit pause on the world and forgotten to hit play again.
One second, two seconds, half a minute…
The airport that was supposed to buzz with life became deafeningly silent.
Just as people started to panic, sounds exploded back.
It was the sound of the sky shattering like a mirror. Fragments of the broken sky began falling, turning into strange rifts. Two appeared above the airport.
Hungry carnivorous creatures with white scales stepped out of them, indiscriminately killing everyone on their line of sight.
The Rifts were portals bringing death.
Of course, the airport crowd ran.
The airport was a major hub that connects passengers to numerous destinations across Asia and beyond, with millions of passengers every single day.
When the monsters rampaged, destroying structures and swallowing people, a stampede occurred.
But how fast could could humans run? Could they outrun monsters the size of houses?
Only a few lucky ones survived and escaped.
Not long after, people discovered it was not just the airport. The entire city became a scene of terror.
Worse, an invisible wall-like barrier isolated the city from the rest of the world, trapping the terrified people. There was no way to escape from the monsters that hunted them.
Was the city the only victim of the apocalypse, or was the rest of the world suffering from the same plight?
No one knew. People were dying left and right.
All people could do was try, try, try to survive from beings that ate humans but could not be killed by guns.
With the Wall in existence, there was no way to communicate with other cities or nations. The Rift continuously spewed out monsters, and human had no means to combat the them. All kinds of weapons, from blades to artillery, do not work on them.
Humans were forced to run and hide and hide and run.
Law and order, society in general, collapsed.
With more people losing lives every day, and scarce resources dwindling as we speak, the city was on the brink of extinction.
Fortunately, a few days after hell descended, it was discovered that several humans gained powers to kill the monsters.
Three months.
That's how long it took for society to barely function again.
But no matter how strong nor powerful nor strange they were, the blessed people—the Awakened—could not make food appear out of thin air. They could not heal the sick and injured, nor feed the hundreds of thousands who survived.
The Awakened defied science, but they were not omnipotent.
Hence, this mission.
To enter the Rift, the source of the monsters.
To find food. To study the unknown. To gather resources. Something. Anything.
To further humanity's survival.