Day Zero
A height that barely cleared five-foot-three. A weight closing in on a hundred and eighty pounds.
A double chin. Acne scars blanketing the face. Short arms and short legs that only looked thin beside a body that had fattened past overweight and was starting to spill sideways. Cheeks so overstuffed they jiggled, and a face that was always leaking a little sweat — the number-one person other kids avoided.
Jung Seoha. A third-year at Euihan High School, the best in the nation in more senses than one.
That was me.
"...Get up."
Urgh...
"Seoha. Get up."
Just... let me sleep a little longer. The glare was already dragging me awake—
Ghk. Something cracked.
"Are you getting up or not?!"
"H-hrk! M-my back! Something just cracked in my back!!"
Pain that started without warning in my lower back climbed my spine, and my breath caught hard in my throat. Rage surged with it. I flung the blanket aside, shot upright, and roared at the damned demon hag.
"The hell did you hit me for!!"
"How long are you gonna sleep! It's almost seven-thirty! You trying to be late?!"
Whack, whack, whack. Now she'd even snatched my pillow and was hammering it down on my head.
God. This damned hag, I swear!!
"M-Mom!! Noona's hitting me!!!"
I couldn't beat my sister in raw strength or in technique, so I shielded my skull from the cotton pillow with both arms and called for Mom like my life depended on it.
And then, from beyond the door, came the voice of the mother who always took my side.
"Daughter!! Are you tormenting your brother again?!"
"Nooo! He keeps lazing around in bed and won't get up, that's why!!"
At the sound of Mom's voice my sister shrieked back, smacked my side with the pillow one more time — thump — and flung it onto the bed.
"You're awake now, right? You're up, so hurry and wash and come out. Eat fast. You've got school."
The sister who had woken me with violence swayed her long, straight hair — falling all the way down her back — and left the room. Her white frilled tunic and white cotton pants caught the morning sun spilling through the window and threw it back hard enough to hurt my eyes.
I watched her go with a thoroughly sour face, then buried my face in the pillow.
Seriously... ugh.
When I came out of the bathroom, Mom, who had neatly laid breakfast on the table, greeted me with a smile.
"Son, sleep well?"
"Good morning."
I offered my parents the morning greeting first and sat down, and Mom took the seat beside Dad, who was indifferently reading the paper. When he folded it and picked up his spoon, Mom and my sister picked up theirs as well, and the meal began.
"Thank you for the meal."
I bowed my head toward Mom, who had gone to the trouble of making breakfast, then lifted my spoon and started shoveling rice. My sister spoke up.
"How's it feel, being a third-year?"
How's it feel? Thanks to my oh-so-brilliant sister, my life under quiet ostracism has already stretched past two years. This is just tacking on one more.
"Nothing special."
I gave her a half-hearted answer, and she, apparently unsatisfied with that, asked again.
"The new semester started over two weeks ago. You still haven't made any friends?"
The very person responsible for my lack of friends asking me that made me oddly angry. But getting smart with her only ever earned me a beating, so I just had to swallow it.
"They'll turn up if I give it time, I guess."
Not that I'd care if they didn't.
Mom, having overheard the two of us, spoke with a slightly worried look.
"Didn't you say the same thing a year ago?"
"...Saying it one more time is fine, isn't it?"
"Oh, honestly. Dear, you say something too."
Just leave it alone. Mom couldn't be reassured by a reaction like mine. She jabbed the side of Dad, who was eating perfectly well, signaling him to say something — anything.
Dad, who folded the instant Mom or my sister opened their mouths, set his spoon down for a moment and looked at me steadily. Where I was concerned he was a thorough believer in hands-off parenting, and what he said, he said quietly.
"Are you lonely without friends?"
"No."
I answered with every ounce of sincerity I had. Dad picked his spoon back up and spoke to Mom.
"A man ought to know how to get by on his own. If he were lonely, or if he were struggling, we would have to find another way. He is that unconcerned. There is no need to worry. A man makes friends of ten years even after he is grown. He will manage well enough on his own."
Could I, though? Didn't seem like it.
Mom gave him a small glare, as if none of that had satisfied her. Dad dodged her eyes and went on eating in silence.
"Thanks for the meal. It was delicious again today."
"You think so? Hehe."
I had cleaned my plate again, and Mom looked thoroughly pleased. It wasn't empty flattery. It really was delicious, and I figured that was one of the reasons the weight never came off.
I checked that the clock pointed to eight, grabbed my empty leather bag and my phone, and headed for school.
School was a thirty-minute walk, so leaving at eight got me there right on time for morning homeroom. Showing up early just meant nobody would talk to me anyway. Going early for no reason only made me miserable. Better to spend that time walking as if I were out for a stroll, lost in daydreams and full-blown delusions.
...Honestly, someone talking to me would be more uncomfortable.
A girl from my school hurried past as I walked slow, pretty from behind, and the scent drifting off her struck me as sweet. My eyes slid to the nice legs showing under a uniform skirt that fell just above the knee. Smooth, straight as a ruler — but the kneecaps jutted a little. Seven out of ten, maybe?
Stealing glances at her back, I got the odd feeling that today's uniform — cut thick and sturdy and practical, made to brace for the Phase World — was clinging to me, and I tugged at the hem.
I think the word all-rounder exists for no one but my sister. Explaining that part in any detail would only make me miserable, so I'll leave it.
Anyway, I had fallen for a mix of her threats and her coaxing, and from the moment I became a third-year in middle school I had studied myself half to death under her private tutoring. To get into the high school she attended.
The result of that Spartan, force-fed cramming — imposed by my sister, student council president of the private high school said to be the finest in Korea — was that I scraped in by the skin of my teeth. Nothing about my gloomy life, pessimistic about building any kind of relationship, actually changed.
The one upside was that the school had nobody who took real, thrilled pleasure in tormenting other people. You could fairly call the place a gathering of children from the most distinguished families in the country, and I figured the reason those types still didn't exist was the chairman's policy. The chairman hated school violence. If an incident broke out on campus, it was investigated down to the root and the instigator was given a warning; if anything similar followed, expulsion came down with no room for argument. So if you didn't want to be expelled, you dropped the hobby.
Even so, the quiet, covert kind of ostracism was something you couldn't do much about. I had only ever nominated myself for it. I had never once been shoved into that unreasonable position — because of my sister, absurdly pretty, good at everything, and respected by every student in the school.
Ironically, the reason I had chosen that isolation was that same outstanding sister.
Early on after I enrolled, I went around with lines stuck to my ears. "That's Senior Jung Siha's actual little brother......?! I can't believe it!" By second semester I was even hearing, "That kid isn't really Senior Siha's brother, is he?"
Being held up against a sister like that felt like the worst thing in the world. Rather than getting chummy with people who weren't friends at all — people only there for the glow she cast — it was easier on me to stay alone.
Classmates and upperclassmen did approach me, angling for her attention. I was so unsociable that, as time passed, the ones who came around naturally disappeared. And so, around the time she graduated and I moved up to second year, the quiet ostracism began in earnest.
Avoided, and isolated by my own choosing, I had no friends. My only real pleasure was the vague fantasy of being forcibly summoned to the Phase World, turning into an ability user, and standing over everyone else. Day after day of that. I didn't join a club. When class ended at three-thirty I went straight home, played online games, or walked the trail spinning delusions. That was the routine.
Even calling it ostracism, there was no physical bullying, and in its own way it was fun to read ability users' accounts of what they had been through, or the first-wave ability users' memoirs printed in the textbooks. The school library was packed with new novels of every kind, so borrowing those was a pleasure too, and logging into a game meant a crowd of pathetic losers just like me. Picking keyboard fights with them was entertaining in its own right. Above all, it was fun to imagine flirting with the pretty girls from school as they passed by. That one, of course, ended at imagination...
"Haa..."
Walking the route to school, I broke a light sweat. It was only bearable because March was still chilly and I was taking it slow. Come May, I would be dripping like boiled-down broth. Even so, I wasn't sweating much yet, and true to a school full of model students, at this razor-thin arrival time there weren't many kids openly avoiding me. I made it in with an easy mind.
I found my classroom, opened the back door, and went in. Only a few kids glanced my way before looking off again. No disgust, no look of having seen something unfit to see — just the look you give an inanimate object. An eraser. A blackboard. A desk.
It was the start of third year, so everyone was busy building connections, but not a single one of them tried to get close to me. Well, obvious. Even I would avoid a guy like me. No social skills, not good-looking... I had no intention of speaking first either.
I sat at my desk, took out the twelve-inch educational tablet, and was getting ready for class when the girls' talk drifted back from a few seats up front.
"Did you hear? They say a kid from Daehan Middle next door, the one who got sucked into the Phase World, came back out."
"Yeah. I heard two have already come out of there?"
"My friend's little sibling goes there. The first kid never made it back, and the droplet just vanished as it was."
"Ugh, seriously... Don't start the morning with creepy stories."
The class president — a demure, pretty girl with a neat bob — made a tearful face and shuddered. She must have been thoroughly creeped out. But Han Go-eun, who seemed to be her friend and was the prettiest girl in our class, grinned and poked those plump cheeks with a finger.
"So what~? It's one person out of a thousand every hundred days, right? They say it's no different from the odds of getting struck by lightning while you're walking down the street. So it's not gonna happen to us, riiight?"
"What kind of logic is that. You're putting a forced Phase World summon on the same level as a natural disaster?"
"Yep, that's it! A natural disaster!"
"But I feel like the odds of getting dragged into the Phase World are higher than getting hit by lightning on the street... Ugh, I seriously don't want this!"
The class president made a tearful face and smacked Han Go-eun's shoulder, tap-tap-tap.
...Fair enough to think that way.
With a natural disaster, being careful with yourself raised your odds of avoiding it. A forced Phase World summon targeted everyone without exception, from twelve to thirty-six, so of course it felt higher. One-in-a-thousand every hundred days, from twelve to thirty-six — that was, what, eighty-seven times in all...? Not a high probability. Not a low one either.
The state was running policies to raise the survival rate of the forcibly summoned, but even so, how many people could actually put knowledge their bodies weren't used to into practice in a crisis? Of course they ran training every year, every semester, in preparation for a summon. Even so, they said a minor's chance of making it back alive was only thirty percent of an adult's. It had climbed a great deal compared to two hundred years ago, since far more was known now, but a minor's Phase World survival rate was still low, or so they said. Ten go in, seven come out dead. So, barring a miracle, you die.
But if you survived and made it back, you became an Anomalous Ability User — an ability user, for short. Your fortunes turned. You got popular. So the words Phase World and ability user carried fear, curiosity, and excitement all at once.
If I got sucked into the Phase World, could I survive and make it back?
Through class I let the lesson go in one ear and out the other, running a simulation of what I would do if I were pulled in. And so today, too, I stared out the window and carried on with delusion wearing the mask of a simulation.
Time passed with nothing of note. The instant the bell clanged at three-thirty, I shoved the tablet under the desk, grabbed my empty leather bag, and walked out of the classroom.
It occurred to me that I hadn't said a single word at school today either. So what. Forcing myself to keep pace with kids I didn't even click with, or dragging myself somewhere boring like a coin-op karaoke booth, was a hundred times harder on my peace of mind than being alone.
When I got home, my sister had beaten me back from school again. She was sprawled on the living-room carpet, forking up a fruit salad while reading an introductory business textbook. Barring a chest so flat it was basically a cliff, too trim by half, that narrow waist, those well-set hips, those long straight legs threw my own disastrous figure into fresh relief.
My arms and legs are this stubby. How are hers that long? Are we even the same genes?
"Hm? You're home?"
"Yeah. I'm home."
I answered without any real effort and went straight to my room. I tossed the leather bag beside the bed, changed out of the uniform into regular clothes, booted up the computer, and was about to log into Legend of League when she called from outside.
"Seohaa~. Noona's going grocery shopping. Want to come?"
Mmm. I really don't want to.
"Come with me and I'll make you kimchi pancakes."
"I'll go!"
I was a little hungry anyway, and too lazy to cook anything myself. If she was going to feed me, of course I'd tag along!
...I just hadn't expected her to buy this much.
"Why are you buying so much? This weight's gonna kill me!"
"It's groceries for dinner tonight. Mom said she'd be a little late."
Dinner tonight? Let's see — beef, all kinds of vegetables, mushrooms... and this was broth? So tonight was beef hot pot?
I was roughly guessing the menu from the ingredients in sight when some soft-looking bastard stepped in front of my sister and asked for her number. She refused, of course, with a faint smile, threaded her arm through mine, and walked right past him. She had heels on, so she was already a full head taller than me, and she twisted at the waist to forcibly cling to my arm. A truly unfortunate sight.
We got home. I set the bags on the kitchen counter, rolled my arms where the weight had left them stiff, and switched on the TV. A news broadcast poured out.
"Four million... That's a terrifying number."
One person in a thousand sucked in once every hundred days, and it was March, so — two-thirds of six million dead? They had said the survival rate had climbed as high as fifty percent for adults, but lately it only seemed to be falling.
"The kimchi pancakes are done. Come eat."
Her voice came from the kitchen along with the savory, spicy smell of kimchi pancakes. I set the remote down and bolted for the kitchen.