Humans Yearn

Humans yearn.

That is, more or less, what the species does. Rather than look the present in the eye, people tend to pine for a past they loved — to gaze back at it, to want it. They recall the brightest stretch of their lives, the years that shone the hardest, and think: I wish I could go back.

Take me, for instance. The truth is I had never had a brilliantly shining era of my own, and I still found myself drifting into the past. The near past: those few months with Harin. The far past: the orphanage director's hand stroking my hair when I was small.

Sit down and think about it honestly and those times probably hadn't been all that happy. And yet the past always came back gilded, glittering, beautiful. Yeah. Those were the good days.

That ridiculous habit of denying the present, of looking away from it — that was a big, unfixable chunk of what it meant to be human.

Every dawn, or every morning, a racket of an alarm went off in a nest that used to pride itself on the quiet.

"Ah, you little—"

I was pretty sure the alarm hadn't even been set a few days ago. The spiteful thing refused to shut off. It ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠just kept screaming.

"Ah…"

Loud. After more than two weeks of nothing but calm, this was an unholy amount of noise to inflict on a man and his home.

And it would not stop until I answered. After several days of this torture I knew the drill, so I let out a breath and gave it what it wanted.

"Hey. Stop. Fucking alarm. Don't do that."

"Have you actually lost your mind. Why are you doing this to me."

The decibels only dropped once I talked back. Then that same voice slid into something gentle and conversational, and the whole performance was close enough to clinical insanity that I was willing to call it that.

"…Tone it down. I will turn this radio off."

A girlfriend's morning call. The phrase sounded nice. The voice sounded nice, too.

"…"

The phrase was the only part that sounded nice. The voice, to be fair, did sound nice.

"Do it normally. Please."

The problem wasn't the morning call. The problem was that she wasn't doing it soft and low. She was belting it like someone going full send at a karaoke machine. Whatever first-relationship flutter I was supposed to be feeling had been completely wrung out of the experience. A little disappointing, honestly.

Well. Thanks to her, I did get up on time.

"The usual."

Harin's radio chatter poured on from the morning call without a seam. She seemed determined to wring every last drop of I missed you out of the connection, and she had not shut up for days.

"If I've got time."

"…Shut up."

The start of the day was always the same. I checked and serviced everything in the nest. Bicycle generator: good. Stove: no problems. Snow and ash dust cleared off the wind turbine. Firearms cleaned and oiled. Only after I'd put every precious piece of gear in proper order did my day actually begin.

"Well, yeah. I'm on my own, so it runs a little long. Took even longer at the start."

Compared to those early days, when the whole circuit had taken more than twice as long, I was moving pretty fast now.

"I did, until you wouldn't stop talking. Now I'm having second thoughts."

"Kidding. Kidding."

I said it into the radio, then stuck yesterday's sandwich in my mouth and packed the bag. Tools I'd need. A reasonable amount of wolf jerky. Warm coffee.

Today's work was already decided.

"In a bit, walk me through how to fix a generator."

Since we were already on the radio, I figured I'd finish the generator repair I'd asked her about before.

"Now that's a take worthy of Auntie-Slayer Twenty-Two. But Dr. Rin, foremost authority on generator construction, would surely help a few poor souls out."

"Got it. I'll think of a new one."

"Don't wanna."

I mean. That would be embarrassing.

Anyway.

And so I arrived at the officetel.

"Open up. Repairman."

"You feeling okay?"

"What, lady. I came to fix a generator, so how about you show me the way."

"…Is this a drug side effect?"

I ignored the look that said he's started up again. I'd been listening to Harin's radio like a hypnosis track; her energy had just rubbed off on me. That was my story and I was sticking to it.

Assistant Manager Kim Min-seo led me to the generator room. The rest of the group was already sitting there, pedaling. She pointed at the one bicycle generator nobody was on.

"That one won't charge. I swapped the UPS unit for a different one and it still doesn't work. No idea why."

"Mm. Give me a second."

I walked over to the unit she'd indicated. From the outside, nothing looked wrong. I also couldn't deny that I wasn't an expert, and looking at it told me exactly nothing.

"Hey, Dr. Rin. Help me."

"Harin. I like you."

"…"

People were simple. Easy. That was what I liked about them.

I kept the radio going while I stared at the generator.

"AI Rin. Walk me through how to fix a broken generator."

"Yeah. Turns fine."

"Copy."

I did as Harin said, turning the pedals and putting the multimeter on the output terminals.

"Uh. I can keep pedaling and it's still coming out at 0V."

Harin sang it out like she'd nailed the answer on the first try. If she'd been standing next to me, I was sure her eyes would have gone round and her mouth would have tipped up at the corners. That was the kind of voice it was.

"Oh. What is it?"

"…Excuse me?"

Truly the era's foremost authority on generator construction, Dr. Rin. With astonishing speed, she had pronounced the thing dead.

I glanced up at Kim Min-seo, who was standing beside me, and passed the news along.

"She says it can't be fixed."

"So you're not a repairman. You're a funeral director."

It wasn't on purpose. I had packed the tools ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠and walked in here fully intending to fix the thing, confidence and all. And you obviously couldn't pin a failure on someone who'd shown up meaning well.

Right. Not my fault. Not even a little.

The truth was, "generator repair" had only ever been an excuse to come to the officetel.

"How's he doing?"

"Yeah. A lot better."

A fair amount of time had passed, and the two weeks we'd agreed on were coming up, so I'd figured I might as well check on the siblings while I was here with a generator as cover.

Kim Min-seo and I sat with teacups and snacks on the table, looking off to one side.

"Oppa, five more. Just five more."

"I— I already said five more last time, I definitely said…"

"You're not sweating enough yet. You have to work out, sweat it out, and drink water. That's what they said, remember? Hm?"

Over there, Yoon In-seok was grinding through squats with Yoon Seo-hee's hand locked around his, whimpering as he went. He dropped and lifted on thighs that shook like they were about to give, wearing the face of a boy on the verge of tears, and the whole picture was just — pitiful, honestly.

"F-five…. I-it's over, I mean ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠it…"

"Oppa, three more. This is really the last time. You have to work hard while people are being nice to you."

And the fact that his workout showed no sign of actually ending was the most pitiful part of all.

"Please… I'm t-tired, Seo-hee…"

"No. I had it worse while you were gone. Just three more."

"Ah…"

Every time it looked like the set might finally be over, she hit him with a cheap-shot line, clamped down harder on his hand, and put him through another round of squats. You could have made a serious case that the girl had a professional trainer's instincts.

"Is that… allowed?"

"Well… working him like that, making him sweat — his condition's definitely improved. The fact that keeping the place warm and dealing with the showers has been a headache for the rest of us is a separate problem."

Now that she mentioned it, the interior was pretty warm. Things were putting out heat all over the room. Heaters, every one of them. The same person who used to hoard power like it was gold had them running without a second thought.

I said as much.

"You don't have to go this far for them. Feels like you might be pushing it."

"I just thought… if someone's clawing that hard to stay alive, maybe this much is something I can do."

Huh. Not the answer I expected.

"What's this. Why are you being nice?"

"Hate to break it to you, Kiddo, but I was always nice. The world was the problem."

Kim Min-seo looked at me with a blank face and delivered a line that belonged in a middle-schooler's diary. It wasn't even that wrong, though. In the whole company, she was the only person I'd ever thought of as kind, and the reason my old self had a crush on her had started from exactly that.

So I nodded.

"Yeah. Fair. I'd completely forgotten what you used to be like."

"You're the one who looked awful back then, Kiddo. Face like you were about to kill yourself. Eyes open like you'd stab anyone who so much as touched you."

She said it like she couldn't believe I needed reminding. I'd completely forgotten that about myself too, lately — but hearing it, yeah. Back then I'd been a hedgehog with every quill standing on end. After the jeonse fraud, there'd been about three months where I hadn't given a damn about anything that crossed my path.

"I mean… I did tell you I'd gotten hit with a jeonse fraud. I didn't have a lot of choice."

"You only told me that recently. At the time I just thought a person had suddenly gone insane."

She closed her eyes like she was looking backward and took a sip of tea. Off to the side, a boy who sounded like he was about to die was still breathing hard, and a deranged trainer was still yelling one more. At some point the Imaginary KATUSA Warrior, Lim Ju-cheol, had sidled up, restocked the snacks, executed a knife-sharp about-face, and marched away.

It was a pretty peaceful scene. A good moment, if you wanted to let yourself sink for a little while into the gilded version of the past.

"The Kiddo from our office days, huh…"

"…"

Office life. Yeah. It had been fucking miserable. Biyeon Systems, a garbage small-time company stuffed to the rafters with garbage people.

Looking back now, though, there had been good things in there too. No question. The company dinners, almost every Monday and Thursday, had been all right. We usually went for grilled pork belly, but in winter there was yellowtail sashimi, and the lamb skewers with Tsingtao had been excellent. The crab meat soup at that Chinese place the managing director had dragged us to after "finding a hidden gem nearby." The pho shop we'd gone to for lunch because it was supposed to be famous — the kind of food that made you want to clap. All of it, every dish I'd eaten in places I could never have afforded if I'd had to open my own wallet, was a pretty good memory.

Things I would never eat again shimmered at the edge of my mind. A kind of souvenir. Things I might even miss. Even if the world started turning normally again, little things like that would never come back the way they were.

So I let out a small, regretful breath and reached for a snack — and Kim Min-seo quietly opened her eyes, looked at me, and huffed a little laugh.

"What."

"Yeah. You look a lot better now."

I liked now better too. Back then, I was the only one being pessimistic. Now everything had gone pessimistic, and the best part was that I no longer felt like some lone stray standing off to the side of the world.

I thought that, watching her, the corner of her mouth still tipped up.

"You, though…"

"Me?"

She'd been smiling then and she was smiling now, but they were completely different kinds of smiles. Not that I could have given you a clean answer as to which one I liked more.

"I don't know."

"Boring."

Saying I'd liked how she used to look would have meant calling that past a good one, and it hadn't been. Saying I liked how she looked now would have meant ignoring that she seemed mentally one hard shove from the edge. And anyway, that wasn't the important part.

"…"

"…"

The actually important part was that there was a second lunatic on the line, and she had been repeating the words old lady without rest for some time now.

"That is genuinely exhausting. Did she finally lose it too?"

"…She might have."

I'd turned the volume down to have a conversation, and Auntie-Slayer Twenty-Two's voice still punched through and kept ringing off the tabletop.

"I'm starting to get actually mad. And I don't have wrinkles yet, for the record? Give me the radio for a second. I'm only going to say one thing."

"Just let it go. I can't build you a generator, so."

No.

Why is she like this. Seriously.