I Am a Drone Bee
“I’m a drone bee…”
Minhyuk muttered it the way he always did, out of habit.
“Drone bee… drone bee…”
Why a drone bee?
Because he was tired. That was the whole of it.
I’m tired now… drone bee… drone bee.
He had dreamed of a life as sweet as honey, the kind a worker bee might earn if it never once stopped flying. What he got, regrettably, was the barren life of a drone.
God… I just want ten more minutes.
Up before dawn, then a full two hours one way on public transit just to reach the office. Live in Gyeonggi and that much was simply the baseline. He was already so exhausted he could have screamed, and two hours sealed inside a subway car packed until the air itself had elbows was enough to feel his love of humanity being pulverized in real time.
And the commute was only the start. At the company, people ground him down just as thoroughly—a boomer boss who treated abuse like a management philosophy, the endless nausea of office politics, the chokehold of performance quotas, and, at the slightest excuse, the overtime rush that never quite ended.
When he finally dragged his ruined body off the clock, it was back onto another subway seething with bodies, a few stolen hours of sleep, and then the early train all over again. A day that turned like a hamster wheel. After more than five years of it, deep dark circles had settled under Minhyuk’s eyes.
If there had been even a scrap of hope, he might have found a way to hold on. There wasn’t.
His paycheck wasn’t rising by so much as a few hundred dollars, while home prices vaulted by the hundreds of thousands.
And the bar for what counted as success only climbed higher.
Good news never came. All he ever heard were stories that lodged in the throat and refused to go down—the kind that left you furious just for listening.
The truly terrifying reports came as a bonus.
Is every story about somebody dying? I’m dying too…
Minhyuk was sick to death of it. Sick of being crushed by people, sick of a world growing colder by the day. More precisely, he was weary of it. He had simply come to hate everything.
Is this burnout?
Body and mind, both wrung completely dry.
The Gyeonggi drones are going on strike.
He committed the greatest act of rebellion in his life.
“I’ll be using my annual leave.”
And he used it. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday—three days in a row, jammed tight against each other. A five-day vacation of his own manufacture, weekend included. Normally he wouldn’t have dared, not with the company’s eyes on the back of his neck, but that sort of thing was officially out of mind. If he kept living like this, he really was going to die.
This week, at least—escape!
Minhyuk left for the sea with no plan at all. He didn’t even bring his phone. He simply boarded a rattling old boat and headed out over open water.
Vroooom—!
How many hours passed like that?
At last he reached it: an empty expanse of ocean ringed by nothing but the horizon. The people who had tormented him, the bleak gray buildings, the news of the world that tired him out just to hear it—all of it cut away.
“Haa… I can finally breathe.”
Minhyuk lay back on the deck and looked up at the blue sky. Only then did it feel as if his lungs had opened. Even the worries that had been rotting his brain seemed to let him go.
“Yeah. People are supposed to live looking at nature.”
Ah. How good it was. The peace of the air. The wide-open view. Brilliant sunlight, and the quiet scent of the sea. Just lying still felt like healing.
And the breeze off the water, brushing past so gently—
Whoooooosh—!
…Hm?
The wind was a little too murderous.
I don’t remember any forecast about a typhoon. Or rain…?
Minhyuk sat up on reflex. Then he let out a low, stunned breath at the impossible sight spread before his eyes.
“Whoa…”
A waterspout. A waterspout touching the clouds. And it was enormous—stupidly, monstrously enormous.
Whoooooooosh—!
The column spun with the force of a hurricane, drinking the sea, and Minhyuk’s boat was being dragged into it without a fight.
“Ha… haha…”
He had come out onto the water because he was sick of the world. He had not, however, meant to say a permanent goodbye to it.
“…Oh, shit!”
He made straight for the wheelhouse. But the tired old engine of an outdated boat could not pull free of a waterspout that strong.
“Aaaaaagh!”
CRUNCH—!
Minhyuk’s boat was wrecked where it floated.
Entering Eternal Island.
Kree— kree—
The cry of gulls, peaceful to the point of feeling like a bad omen.
Shaaaaa—
Waves, softly soaking his body.
“Nngh…”
Minhyuk let out a groan.
“I-I’m alive…”
When the great whirl of water swallowed him, he had been certain he was dead. By some outrageous mercy, he wasn’t. Tears of pure, shaking relief ran down his face.
Roll through a field of dog shit if you must. So long as you’re still on this side of the grave…
He patted himself down afterward, corner to corner, and found—fortunately—that nothing was hurt. Two arms, two legs, ten fingers, ten toes, and a full head of hair besides. All of it still attached exactly where it belonged.
Body’s in one piece. Still breathing.
Which raised the obvious question.
“Where… is this?”
Minhyuk carefully pushed himself up and looked around. An emerald sea without end, and inland growth packed as thick as a tropical rainforest, with a bone-white beach dividing the two. It looked like some foreign resort.
“This is definitely not Korea… how far did I get swept?”
He was still staring blankly at his surroundings when it appeared.
You have been stranded on an uninhabited island.
A message window, floating up over his head.
“An… uninhabited island?”
Minhyuk turned in a slow circle, eyes gone round.
This is an island? This enormous hunk of land?
It was so vast he had taken it for a continent. If not for the message window, he might have gone his whole life without knowing.
“And speaking of message windows.”
He had seen it on Nutube. Message windows were the exclusive property of the Awakened, and they appeared only inside the Tower. On Earth you could scream yourself hoarse and nothing would pop up.
Which meant…
“This is inside the Tower?”
He couldn’t believe it. The Tower was a system you entered only by an administrator’s invitation. Minhyuk hadn’t even met the basic requirement—Awakening.
Something had gone badly, seriously wrong—
You have Awakened.
Come again?
“A-Awakened?”
Minhyuk, who had been blinking in a daze, carefully opened his mouth.
“Sta… tus window?”
There was a faint hope in it. Awakening—the thing people called a windfall, a once-in-a-lifetime lottery ticket. If he came out A-rank or higher? That wasn’t the Korean lottery. That was Super Bowl money.
And Minhyuk’s Awakening rank was…
Class 》 Survivor (F)
Trait 》 Versatile (S)
Skills 》 None
Huh? F-rank?
And what was that?
“…Survivor?”
A class he had never heard of in his life. Could Survivor even be a class?
As a privilege of the class Survivor, a Safe Zone has been formed.
Safe Zone: 3 pyeong(about 100 sq ft)
A square of green aurora closed around the stretch of beach where Minhyuk stood. Inside it, at least, he seemed to be safe.
“This is… not bad.”
Ahem. Minhyuk nodded and kept thinking.
So this was inside the Tower, and it was an uninhabited island. That much he understood. It was unsettling, but he humbly accepted that he had been shipwrecked here. Then how was he supposed to survive? How did he hold out, at least until he could find a way off?
“Clothing, food, shelter. Those three matter most.”
Shelter, for a start, was secured.
A sanctuary in which the user’s safety is guaranteed.
Absolute safety is assured not only against physical attack, but against chemical and biological attack as well.
Other beings may approach the interior of the Safe Zone only when the user permits it.
Status 》 LV.1
Area 》 3 pyeong
Effect 》 None
The three-pyeong Safe Zone he was standing in now.
This is plenty.
Judging by the description alone, it sounded safer than the Pentagon. Clothing was no problem either. The weather was clear and mild to begin with. Which left food.
“That’s the urgent one…”
He needed something to eat. His pockets, however, didn’t hold so much as an emergency chocolate bar.
I didn’t even bring my phone. What did I expect.
Still, it didn’t seem like something to panic over. An enormous jungle lay right in front of the beach, and there had to be plenty of nature’s groceries in there. He could probably find drinking water at a pond or a waterfall, too.
“I’ll head that way for now.”
And take a look at whatever else was around while he was at it.
He had just taken a single step outside the Safe Zone when it came.
GRAAAAAAAAH!
A bone-chilling shriek that shook the world.
THUD—! THUD—!
Enormous footsteps followed, and the ground rocked under them. Far off in the forest, birds burst into the air as if fleeing.
Flutter-flutter—!
Minhyuk froze where he stood and swallowed dry.
What was that just now?
A dinosaur? King Kong? Some colossal predator? He didn’t know what it was. He knew only that it was terrifying enough to chill the length of his spine.
“W-wait a second… now that I think about it…”
He had definitely heard that the Tower worked in stages. Quests were issued the way stages were in a game, monsters poured out in droves, and once you killed every last one of them, that floor was cleared. And the inside of the Tower—the play floors, where the magic beasts appeared—was supposed to be a narrow, limited space. Not a vast open field like the island he was standing on.
His shallow knowledge was being contradicted on the spot. That didn’t matter.
This is still the Tower. Which means there are monsters here that tear people apart while they’re still alive.
What mattered was that the jungle was crawling with things that horrible. Just like whatever he had just heard.
Mm. Perfect.
Perfect for walking in to look for food and ending up as food himself.
“…I’ll wait.”
Minhyuk stepped back into the Safe Zone and crouched on the sand.
“Well… a ship’s bound to pass eventually.”
He had ended up here; maybe someone else would too. Cooperate with them, and maybe he could get off this place. That sort of thought. It was absolutely not because he was afraid to walk into a jungle seething with monsters.
Anyway. It wasn’t.
“Still. Where even is this.”
Minhyuk sat quietly and watched the emerald sea. A landscape of wild nature, genuinely beautiful, and a faint cool breeze coming off it.
“…I might actually be healing a little?”
Day one, adrift on an uninhabited island.
This might, somehow, be better.
The second day came.
He had slept deeply for the first time in ages and woke refreshed, but he looked far more wretched than he had on the first day.
“…I want to wash.”
His face had gone dry and lifeless. His hair stuck out in every direction.
Growl—
He was hungry. The thirst was worse. He had stared at the sea all day, and not only had no ship passed—not a single dolphin had leapt. He was starting to get bored.
At a time like this…
With his index finger, Minhyuk drew a small picture in the sand.
Poke— poke— skrrrr—
Two eyes, dotted in, and the lifted corners of a smiling mouth.
[:)]
“From now on, you’re Wilson. Wilson.”
Minhyuk said it while looking at his new friend.
“All right, Wilson. Want to go into the jungle with me and find some food? If you agree, say you agree.”
Wilson maintained his silence, and his smile.
“See? You think so too. Same here. Yep—the jungle’s dangerous. Let’s wait a little longer.”
Minhyuk crouched beside Wilson and looked out at the sea again. Even so, it beat being trapped on the subway from hell.
The third day.
“…Wilson. What am I supposed to do now.”
No answer came.
Shaaaaa—
Instead a wave, white as foam, rolled in and took Wilson away.
“Wilson… you’re gone…”
Minhyuk stared blankly at the empty place where Wilson had been, then stood, brushing the sand from his seat.
“…Right. I should go too.”
Day three, adrift on an uninhabited island.
Minhyuk stepped beyond the Safe Zone.