Crystal Memorial
An artifact.
By definition, it refers to any man-made object imbued with magical processing. They range from priceless ancient relics to mundane everyday knickknacks, and the cheaper varieties can easily be picked up in any ordinary market. Among them, the one I desperately needed to get my hands on was the Crystal Memorial.
It was an artifact capable of unearthing buried memories.
While the name made it sound grand and imposing, in reality it was nowhere near that impressive. It functioned essentially as a playback device, reproducing a user's past experiences in the form of a 'dream.' Rather than offering a complete restoration of memory, it merely granted the subject a fleeting taste of fragmented sensory recollections. If you tried to call back the memory of eating spicy rice cakes yesterday, for instance, the event itself wouldn't replay before your eyes. Instead, you would only catch lingering impressions of the taste and the aroma.
Despite its lackluster performance, the sentiment of reviving treasured memories made it widely popular as a romantic novelty gift, keeping its commercial sales remarkably steady. In the end, it was nothing more and nothing less than an everyday crystal shard, readily available to anyone willing to buy one. Because of its common nature, the general public believed that the recall fidelity was purely dictated by how much money you paid for it.
In truth, price had nothing to do with how vividly a Crystal Memorial reproduced a memory.
The true key lay elsewhere.
A user's desire. Their longing. Their hunger.
In short, it all depended on how desperately they wanted it.
It was a damnably abstract concept, to put it mildly. Then again, attempting to explain anything related to magic through science had always been a fool's errand. Mana is refined through spell formulas to manifest phenomena into the physical world—that is the very definition of magic. The uninitiated assumed that the manifestation rate of a spell was determined solely by the pool of mana within one's body and their proficiency in controlling it, but the factor that truly mattered was entirely separate: Willpower, born directly from the user's raw emotion.
An unshakable conviction that one can achieve their deepest desire—that absolute belief is the essence of willpower. As long as that willpower burned brightly enough, even an infant's frail vessel without a single drop of mana could seize upon the faint traces drifting through the atmosphere, cast the mid-tier spell Pulse Blade, and work a miracle capable of felling a monster—just as I had done a month ago.
Yet even after decades of relentless research by leading scholars, the precise activation mechanics of willpower remained shrouded in mystery. Whether that was because mana had originated as a sliver of the Chief Deity's divine authority, nobody could say. In any case, willpower remained an unexplained force, and the Crystal Memorial happened to be the artifact most sensitive to its sway.
So, how did I go about acquiring one? Simple. I threw a tantrum and begged my mother to buy it for me.
What else could I do? A kindergartener has no money, nor any means of earning it. The only real question was whether she would actually indulge such a request, but that worry proved entirely groundless. The very next day, a package was delivered right to our front door. In my original childhood, I had been timid to a fault, rarely ever speaking up to ask for anything, so my mother must have leapt at the chance the moment I expressed interest.
Getting it into my hands had been easy enough.
The problem was that every single one she ordered was a fake.
Forget whether they lacked magical treatment entirely; even the few that did carry enchantments were woven with completely different, useless formulas. If you asked why counterfeit junk ran so rampant without anyone noticing, the answer was simple: hardly anyone in the general public had ever experienced the authentic effects of a Crystal Memorial. Nobody bought them expecting genuine results anyway. They were manufactured almost entirely as token sentimental gifts, meaning calling them 'knockoffs' was almost an insult to the intended market.
So what was the solution? The answer was painfully obvious: buy an expensive one. A higher price tag didn't guarantee superior craftsmanship, but it dramatically raised the odds that the seller wouldn't risk peddling fraudulent goods. Nobody was crazy enough to drag a vendor into court over a cheap novelty trinket, especially when legal fees would dwarf the item's cost hundreds of times over.
Unable to bear watching my mother go through a relentless cycle of refunds and reorders for an entire week, I finally snatched her phone to inspect her purchase history. Unsurprisingly, every single listing she had chosen hovered safely under thirty thousand won. I couldn't blame her; she was an ordinary civilian who knew nothing about the occult.
Taking matters into my own hands, I scoured the internet myself and presented her with the one I needed. The price was a staggering one and a half million won. Even that had been settled on after considerable compromise and deliberation.
Her reaction was entirely predictable.
"Sihyeok, absolutely not. This is way too expensive. Do you even know what this is?"
I had anticipated her refusal, so I had an answer prepared.
"Could you just buy it and count it as my birthday presents for the next five years?"
Stunned by the sheer absurdity of the proposal, my mother's lips curled into a smirk before she brought her knuckles down onto the crown of my head.
"Ow..."
"Listen to this little rascal. Where on earth did you learn to bargain like that?"
To an onlooker, it probably sounded like the senseless babble of a bratty toddler, but I had put genuine thought into the arithmetic. Tallying up the estimated cost of all the toys scattered across our apartment easily reached past a million won anyway. If five years wasn't enough, I simply had to increase the term. I was the one desperate for leverage here.
"Then make it ten years—"
Thwack!
"Oof..."
It took a second lifetime for me to realize just how stinging my mother's knuckles could be.
I was quickly running out of ideas. Without knowing the exact date and details of the invasion, I couldn't prepare anything. Securing this artifact was non-negotiable, yet short of begging, no viable alternatives came to mind. As my thoughts tangled into a knot and my expression visibly clouded over, my mother glanced down at me, her amusement giving way to a gentle smile.
"All right, Sihyeok. I'll buy it for you. But on one condition."
"What is it?"
What kind of condition could she possibly impose? There wasn't much a parent could demand of a kindergartener. At most, it would be finishing my vegetables, washing my hands, obeying my parents, or not wandering off alone.
Nothing I can't handle...
Yet my confidence was neatly shattered a second later.
"Take this chance to make up with Chaeyi and go on the field trip to Job Kingdom together."
"...What?"
Why on earth did I have to get tangled up with that infuriating brat again?
"I'm not even close with her."
"Goodness, what are you talking about? Up until a month ago, you were following her around like a lost puppy."
Before the calamity struck... was the younger version of me really that social?
"Whenever you sat alone at kindergarten, Chaeyi was the only one who ever came over to talk to you and ask you to play. She's your only friend, Sihyeok. You two need to get along."
I understood where she was coming from. She was terrified that a petty argument would cost me my sole companion, leaving me isolated all over again. Besides, could a grown man who had survived a bloody apocalypse really not stomach humoring a little girl? Compared to the horrors waiting in the future, playing nice with a child was trivial.
"Haa... fine. I'll go." Still, the destination nagged at me. "Wait, what's Job Kingdom anyway?"
"Oh, you've never heard of it? Job Kingdom is a place where children can try out any career they want—police officers, firefighters, chefs, you name it! Sounds fun, doesn't it?"
"Where is it?"
"Hmm? Oh, it's in Seoul! Come to think of it, this will be your very first time stepping foot outside Incheon."
Seoul? Had I ever left Incheon when I was young? No, never. Even if my childhood memories were fragmented, traveling to an entirely different city for the first time was the kind of vivid milestone that would have lingered in my mind.
The future... has changed.
Which of my actions had altered the timeline? Context pointed toward my strained relationship with Kang Chaeyi, but there was no telling what kind of ripple effect this might trigger down the road. Then again, the moment that monster had ambushed us, history had already diverged wildly from the past I remembered. Everything was turning into a riddle—
"Sihyeok. Sihyeok!"
"Ah..."
"What's the matter? Are you all right? You suddenly went quiet..."
I had spaced out too deeply. To let my composure slip like this in front of my mother was embarrassing.
"Haha... I'm fine, Mom."
I forced a meek, innocent smile, though concern still lingered thick in her eyes.
"I'll go. I'll make up with Chaeyi and have a lot of fun."
Only then did a warm, relieved smile return to her face.
"Good boy. That's a good choice."
A few days later, the Incheon Bus Terminal.
In the early hours of the morning, before the crisp dawn chill had even dispersed, the terminal was already teeming with people. While it was always a bustling transit hub, today carried an unusually vibrant hum of excitement, largely fueled by the high-pitched laughter of children echoing from every corner.
Job Kingdom Incheon Children's Expedition
Beneath a large promotional banner, chaperones clad in bright yellow vests were frantically cross-checking rosters and fastening color-coded identification bands around the children's wrists. Perhaps it was because the Great Calamity had not yet shattered the world, but even though Seoul was less than an hour's drive from Incheon, the sight of young children departing for another metropolis without their parents felt strikingly foreign to me.
"We're heading out!"
Chaeyi's clear, energetic voice rang out over the crowd. Up until we boarded, she had refused to spare me a single glance, utterly sour, but the imminent departure seemed to have swept all her bad temper away in a flash of giddy anticipation.
Standing behind us among the gathered parents seeing their children off, my mother caught my eye and gave me a pointed, meaningful nod. It was an unmistakable command to patch things up with Chaeyi.
I know, I know, I grumbled inwardly.
A moment later, the coach's heavy engine rumbled to life with a low vibration.
"Yay! We're finally moving!"
As the bus pulled away from the curb, Chaeyi bounced up and down in her seat with unrestrained glee. Then, her eyes met mine.
"What're you looking at?"
She shot me a sharp, venomous glare, huffed, and snapped her head toward the window, pointedly ignoring my existence.
She is sulking big time.
I had assumed the excitement of the trip would make smoothing things over a breeze.
Evidently, it was going to be an uphill battle.