Escape from the Planet of the Apes
A man needs a dream.
Not the empty line some drunk office worker tosses out without a soul behind it—I mean it for real.
If you’re going to set a goal, make it big. Make it absolute.
So being born male and aiming for the strongest on earth? Nothing shameful about that.
But look at people these days.
“Nobin, that’s just a bit, right?”
“What is this? The strongest in the world hiding his power? You into that kind of stuff?”
No clear dream. No effort to chase one. Just the safe, easy road everyone else is already on.
“Yo, yo. You know what this bastard wrote for his future career?”
Those fucking apes.
They settle for reality, then laugh at anyone with a different dream and treat them like idiots. Everyday life.
“…Ahh.”
Monkeys who lost their childhood wonder, pure and simple.
Satisfied with a single banana for breakfast, they can’t see ideals more important than the next meal.
A mere beast could never understand a human’s hunger and torment for a dream.
Once I realized the praise and applause of hominids meant nothing to a real human, I threw away society’s approval.
— My dream is…
Ninja.
A title granted only to the ultimate killing weapons.
They make murder their profession, endure the thirst for blood, and slaughter their targets from the shadows.
How solid the target’s body is, how skilled they are—none of it matters.
Whether there are witnesses doesn’t matter either.
With shuriken, smoke bombs, and one sharp blade, they eliminate the target in a flash and erase every witness from existence.
And among those invincible weapons, one kind stands above the rest.
Those who turned their backs on the ninja village.
Those who serve the people, not a lord.
That’s why they can become so strong.
Incarnations of martial might. Symbols of fear.
The true strongest in history—the Runaway Ninja.
“Nin-nin.”
I will become that. An almost impossible goal—but I don’t know the word impossible.
If you don’t know impossible, you don’t know limits.
If you don’t know limits, you can become a ninja.
With that resolve I honed my skills until even the gods would tremble.
“Wazabyot!”
With the sacred ninja battle cry I launched myself forward.
The mysterious ninja art of shrinking the earth.
Tadat!
The distance from bathroom to living room grew shorter by the day.
“Not enough.”
My mind and body know no limits. Literally limitless.
“It should have been more elegant.”
But what about technique?
Having failed to find the ninja villages that vanished from the face of the earth, I had learned ninjutsu entirely on my own until now.
…Today, more than usual, I felt the absence of professional technique.
“So fucking loud. So fucking annoying.”
A hominid grumbling on the sofa. Being born a beast wasn’t my little sister’s fault.
This, too, was humanity’s sin.
“No job, no friends? Why are you doing that alone at home? I don’t care. I’m telling Dad when he gets back.”
The inevitable side effect of rapid advances in cutting-edge science: the rise of capitalism and money-worship.
The collapse of justice and conscience that followed had, in the end, stripped humanity of its intellect and reduced it to hominids.
This pitiful monstrosity was nothing more than a victim of history. It was inevitable she couldn’t understand me.
On a planet of apes, a human with a dream was as unreal as some legendary species like a Gamyeong Gulgureong or an Odontotyrannus.
Honestly, I don’t even know what those things are either.
“Snitching. Problematic.”
“Bullshit.”
“Nin-nin.”
In that cruel reality the ninjas had closed the gates of their villages and given up protecting the world.
The vanished ninja villages proved it. They no longer believed in hope.
Anyway, with no ninja village left to run away from, becoming a Runaway Ninja was hard.
“Tch.”
I wouldn’t give up. That was the Road to Ninja—the ninja’s path.
Still, today I needed a little rest. A ninja must guard most carefully against a hollow heart.
To protect the heart, you first had to fill yourself solid from the inside.
Luckily a few bills still sat in my pocket.
“Fortune smiles.”
I alternated between the Ninja Undressing Technique and the Ninja Dressing Technique, then stood before the mirror.
For a ninja, the most important thing is disguise.
In deserted places or at home it didn’t matter, but a ninja must never show ninja vibes to ordinary people.
Most ninjas disguise themselves as merchants to carry out assassinations while pretending to be normal.
Merchants are everywhere, after all.
Naturalness that fits any environment—that is a ninja’s virtue.
“Perfectly satisfied.”
Red checkered shirt and overalls. An utterly unremarkable, flawless combination.
Pleased with the choice, I stepped out the front door.
Dark clouds hung heavy; the sky looked ready to pour any second. On a day like this, nothing beat steaming hot ramen.
“Nin-nin.”
I wanted to shout “Wazabyot!” and sprint off, but I held back. A ninja must know how to hide his power.
True Ninja Power Concealment.
But this was an alley. A space no human eyes reached?
That was already a ninja’s stage. I’d run at least until I cleared the alley.
That was the plan when I took off.
“Waza—huh? Ack!”
Bang!
A sedan suddenly shot out from the side and sent my body flying.
“Huh? Huh? Student! Are you okay!?”
A flustered middle-aged woman’s voice reached me.
I’d been flung against a utility pole, but luckily I still had my consciousness.
If I’d moved just a little faster I would have taken it head-on.
“How can you just pop out like that—1, 119, first call 119—”
The soul-crushed reckless driver fumbled with her phone, hands shaking.
“Hah… hah…”
I wanted to say something, but no words came. With my still-working right arm I flailed until I grabbed the pole.
Rumble, crack!
“Ugyaaaak~!”
In that instant lightning lanced down from the dark clouds and struck the utility pole.
The overwhelming, unbearable agony of current flooding my body.
I blacked out.
An unfamiliar ceiling.
“Rise. Rise. Make your bedding and change into activity uniforms.”
A clipped voice slammed into my eardrums.
What the fuck? I died and got drafted into the army?
Pain still lingered; my mind was hazy. Yet my body was, impossibly, fine.
I shot upright and scanned the surroundings at speed.
Regressed into an SSS-rank military grunt? Re-enlisting from hell?
No distinctive Korean military uniforms in sight, so it wasn’t the ROK army.
Unless the King of Hell was a vintage maniac or a street performer, these shoddily stitched rags weren’t even fit for hell’s army.
A damp space enclosed on all sides by massive rock. Blue-glowing light fixtures replaced sunlight.
On either side, boys and girls who looked about their teens were already up and changing clothes.
Underground base.
The moment that thought formed, a massive flood of alien memories shook my brain.
This was the Iregal Kingdom. The orphan had been sold for a handful of seeds by a village that could no longer endure a long famine.
The organization that bought the orphan taught him the arts of murder.
Called the Tail of Sagal, this group purchased children with the physical aptitude for assassination and raised them as killers inside an abandoned mine.
I was Candidate 567. A provisional murderer who had undergone training so murderous it dulled the emotions.
But my name is Shin Nobin. The candidate for strongest man on earth who once wandered looking for ninja villages back on Earth.
“Hoo.”
I resisted the forcibly injected memories with the Ninja Breathing Technique and recalled myself.
My body, adapting faster than my mind, was already performing the Ninja Undressing Technique on its own.
Thanks to 567’s trained physique, the speed was faster than usual.
“Nin-nin.”
I thought I’d said it quietly, but everyone around stared, so it was fucking embarrassing. I ignored them and executed the Ninja Dressing Technique.
Every puzzle piece locked into place.
Unable to become a Runaway Ninja, I had been hit by a reckless driver’s car, struck by thunder and lightning, died, and come to another world.
A once-in-a-lifetime new chance—yet it also meant my life on Earth had been a failure.
In the end I could never become a ninja on the planet of the apes.
Because the good people a Runaway Ninja must protect no longer existed there.
A despairing truth.
But here was different. In this pure world overflowing with unrefined savagery and violence, a world that had never surrendered to science, my arrival as its guardian was inevitable.
Above all, I had finally arrived. The first button of my grand plan. This place was, without a doubt—
a ninja village.