Liftoff at 11:55
About an hour earlier, a Transit Tube that had departed Midland Seoul arrived on Old Earth — the old Earth itself. From the tube emerged Shinseung Group's HR Team Leader with his horn-rimmed glasses, along with a blonde woman from his team.
The instant the woman set foot on the ground, she rubbed her nostrils briskly with her index finger and grumbled.
"Why, Old Earth only grows more wretched by the year, I dare say. Even the stink's gone to rot. Hmph."
A boyish suit. A narrow tie. The Shinseung Group badge glinting brightly on the swell of her chest. And a bob of golden hair swaying about her jaw.
Such were her features — and yet, baby face notwithstanding, the woman spoke like somebody's grandmother.
Her name was Lee Luin. Her post: the HR Team of Shinseung Group. Her age: twenty-five as of this year.
In this day and age, twenty-five carried a special meaning. Twenty-five years ago — the very year the Great Cataclysm tore the world apart — Lee Luin had been born in an obstetrics clinic in Gangnam, Seoul. In other words, she was no daughter of Old Earth Seoul; she was NG, born in Midland Seoul itself.
Here, NG stood for New Generation — young people who had belonged to Midland rather than Earth from the day they were born; natives of the orbital cities aged twenty-five and under.
Of course, not everyone under twenty-five got to be called NG. The title belonged exclusively to young people who had Awakened an ability. And thanks to that, most NGs the world over took immense pride in being the "new generation" — and looked down on Old Earth natives every bit as hard.
Just as Lee Luin was rubbing her nose in dissatisfaction, it happened: thwack! Sparks burst before her eyes.
"Ow! Big bro, why'd you smack me?"
Lee Luin flared up.
Whereupon a hand whipped out from beside her like a bolt of lightning, seized her cheek, and stretched it long.
"Uuurgh, le'go of meee—"
What Lee Luin had meant to say, of course, was "Let go." Her stretched-out cheek had simply mangled the words.
The culprit who had smacked the back of her head a moment ago and was now tugging her cheek was none other than Lee Jaein, HR Team Leader of Shinseung Group.
"Employee Lee Luin. Have you lost your mind? Not content to fuss about smells in the middle of an important assignment — now you're talking down to your own team leader?"
Still gripping and stretching her cheek with his right hand, Lee Jaein spread his left thumb and middle finger wide and pushed his glasses up.
This gesture was a longstanding habit of the man who had risen, young — remarkably so — to head the HR Team of the great Shinseung Group.
At his stony expression, Lee Luin retracted her neck like a startled turtle.
"S-sowwy, thir."
Her pronunciation had slipped again.
"Sorry? Is that supposed to settle things? You shouldn't be giving anyone a reason to demand an apology in the first place."
Lee Jaein rebuked her sternly. Even so, he swallowed a laugh inside and released her cheek.
As the youngest of the HR Team, Lee Luin's flaw was her total inability to read a room — but he couldn't exactly bring himself to hate her for it. Personally speaking, she was the little sister he had raised with his own two hands, diapers and all; and she was every bit as capable as that history implied.
"Right. Time to focus on the job."
"Yeees, sir."
While Lee Luin hung her head and rubbed her stinging cheek with her palm, Lee Jaein had already seen to their ride.
Before long, the two siblings appeared at the outskirts of Daejeon. Lee Jaein raised a flashlight and swept its beam across the city's lonely edge. Along the tall chain-link fence ringing the outskirts hung a sign, bent halfway down, that read MEGACITY DAEJEON.
Whoosh. Lee Jaein and Lee Luin sailed over the four-meter fence without so much as a hop in their step and entered Yuseong District, Daejeon.
Once upon a time, this city had nearly become the heart of South Korea. Way back in 2027 — three years before the Great Cataclysm — the Korean government had launched three megacities across the nation in a sweeping redrawing of its administrative map. In the Chungcheong region, Daejeon became the anchor, with Sejong, Gongju, Cheongju, Nonsan, even little Gyeryong bundled together and folded into the megacity. Afterward, targeting the year 2031, the National Assembly passed a capital-relocation bill designating Megacity Daejeon — not Seoul — as the administrative capital of South Korea. Not that any of it mattered: the Great Cataclysm struck one year before the bill could take effect, and everything became meaningless.
And it was precisely that Daejeon on which the siblings now set foot.
There were two reasons why a big shot (?) of this caliber — the HR Team Leader of the great Shinseung Group, no less — had come down to Old Earth in person with only a single junior staffer in tow. One: to find the young master who, for certain reasons, must never be exposed to the world — the bloodline of Strategic Planning Head Lee Myungwoo — and spirit him secretly up to Midland. Two: to slip that young master quietly into the Shinseung Group open recruitment currently running across Gyeonggi and Gangwon Provinces and the Pyongan and Hwanghae regions.
Lee Jaein had come down to Old Earth himself to handle both missions without a seam showing.
"As it happens, the group-wide hiring drive is in full swing — perfect timing. I'll pose as an inspector checking up on the recruitment, watch for my opening, and quietly tuck the young master in among the accepted candidates. That's all it takes."
Such was Lee Jaein's plan. And indeed, at that very moment, Shinseung Group's recruitment of full-time candidates was in full swing across central and northern Korea.
To be more precise, the group's HR Team was making the rounds through Gyeonggi, Pyongan, Hwanghae, and Gangwon Provinces, along with parts of North Chungcheong, selecting full-time candidates — interns, in plain terms. Everything south of Daejeon, however, was off the list. The reason that region was excluded was simple: it was a buffer zone. North of here — down to southern Hamgyong, even — lay Shinseung's sphere of influence, no questions asked. But Megacity Daejeon remained an unstable stretch of neutral ground. Shinseung Group of Midland Seoul. Geosan Group of Midland Busan. Daejeon was the city wedged between those two heavyweights, and if Shinseung's HR Team went trawling through Daejeon without cause, the odds of a collision with Geosan were far from trivial.
Not that anyone in Shinseung feared Geosan. They simply held themselves in check — because a clash with Geosan would mean butting heads with the blood-sworn ally at its back: Midland Osaka.
Chapter 5
What had been Shinseung Group's foremost challenge for the past twenty-odd years? The answer: raising elite talent capable of seizing Highland's resources and knowledge before anyone else could.
People who have Awakened an ability do not simply fall out of the sky. A candidate must first be sent into Highland and exposed to its merciless environment; only then does the DNA mutation — the Awakening — take place. And in that process, two out of three fail their mutation and are reduced to beasts. Of the remaining third who Awaken successfully, seventy percent once more end up with abilities fit for nothing. In the end, when Shinseung Group sends a hundred candidates into Highland, it salvages barely ten ability-users.
The bigger problem was the survival rate after Awakening. The new hires who had beaten ten-percent odds and Awakened something worthwhile — Shinseung's ability-users — died in Highland in under a year so routinely it was practically the norm.
According to recent statistics compiled by the group's HR Team, the one-year survival rate of Shinseung's full-time new employees in Highland was forty percent; the three-year rate, a mere ten percent. In other words, out of every hundred candidates, exactly one would survive safely into the third year after Awakening a usable ability — and finally shed the "Rookie" tag (new blood, greenhorn) for good.
With ability-user survival rates this abysmal, pioneering Highland with Midland-born manpower alone was impossible. That was why the major powers of Midland — Shinseung Group included — replenished their ranks from Old Earth on a regular cycle.
And Lee Jaein, HR Team Leader of Shinseung Group, meant to use precisely that fact to carry the deceptively naive orphan boy before him — Haneul — up to Midland.
One day later.
Haneul was brought up to Pangyo under the wing of the sibling pair.
For all his ten-plus years at the Daejeon orphanage, there was next to nothing for him to take along. A single pendant stamped with the letter "R," hung at his neck. One backpack holding a worn set of clothes, two changes of underwear, and two pairs of socks. That was the whole of Haneul's worldly estate.
He couldn't have cared less. Scrunched into the back seat of the sleek car Lee Luin was driving, Haneul offered up a silent cheer.
"Finally. I'm going up to Midland. I knew I'd get picked. Yehahaha!"
For one thing, he was overjoyed to have been the one chosen out of all those orphans. The instant Lee Jaein selected him, every delinquent older boy at the orphanage had glared at him like they wanted to eat him alive. The boys his own age had scrunched their faces up, too.
"Hahaha. Just how jealous were you all, huh? Ahahahaha!"
Last night, in Haneul's eyes, the souls of those older boys had been painted half violet — the color of envy — and half blood-red, the color of spite. Having witnessed that scene up close and personal, Haneul felt, if anything, even better.
But what truly had him floating was something else entirely.
"So I wasn't the only one in the world with a Mental Image."
Haneul lifted his head a little and studied the man in the front seat. In the soul of that horn-rimmed-glasses mister — Haneul did not yet know his name or position — a small knife with a blunt tip had settled in, radiating a soft, steady glow. In the blonde woman's soul, by contrast, something was in the middle of condensing; its shape had yet to set, and he couldn't quite make it out. Either way, one thing was certain: the blonde woman had a Mental Image too.
"Those two are definitely ability-users, right?"
Haneul's eyes gleamed. No ability-user had ever existed anywhere near him. Maybe that was why? None of the souls around Haneul had ever carried so much as a wisp of a Mental Image. Meanwhile, this mister and miss dispatched by Shinseung Group were very likely ability-users — and on top of that, Mental Images existed in their souls. What that implied seemed obvious enough.
"Wasn't my guess right, then? A Mental Image means you can Awaken. And if that's true, then I can Awaken too — as much as I want. Ahahahaha!"
This was the discovery that had Haneul soaring.
"I'm sure I'm right. That's exactly why these two didn't spare a single glance for all those tough delinquent boys and pointed at me, and me alone. Aaah. This is the best."
Haneul was so happy he could cry. The thought of leaving this dangerous Old Earth behind and rising up to Midland Seoul — a veritable heaven — made his whole body tremble.
Before long, a shudder rolled over every inch of Haneul's body like a tsunami.
"Uwaaaaaaaaah—"
Shaking from head to toe, Haneul clenched his teeth. He was shooting violently upward against gravity — launched at nearly rocket-launch speed, hurled toward an unfathomable height. To put it a shade more precisely, the single-passenger capsule carrying Haneul had fired off, spewing blue-white flame from its tail.
At the boundary between Pangyo and the Seoul Sinkhole (the spot where Seoul had stood before the Great Cataclysm) stood the transport known as the Transit Tube. A long, hollow pipe, the Tube was the vital artery linking Old Earth and Midland. Mounted inside it were hundreds of single-passenger capsules, which came and went between Earth and Midland as if riding an elevator. Naturally, more than one Tube existed — around the Seoul Sinkhole alone, a full four stood in service.
Using the Pangyo Tube among them, Shinseung's HR Team had sent this year's crop of full-time candidates — the interns — up to Midland Seoul. And HR Team Leader Lee Jaein had quietly wedged Haneul in among those interns. Though "quietly" was the polite word for it: not a flicker of hesitation showed in anything Lee Jaein did. Within the HR Team, the team leader's authority was absolute; the structure left no room whatsoever for anyone to contest the team leader's bolt-from-the-blue whims. This case was doubly special besides — none of the HR staff even knew Haneul existed.
Which was only fair. The candidates the HR Team had scouted this year alone numbered more than three thousand. Moreover, they had been gathered broadly from the old Republic's central provinces and the former North alike, so most had never so much as laid eyes on one another. Who was going to notice one more dark-haired boy slipped into the pile?
"Come on, come on, keep it moving! On the tube, double time!"
While the HR staff screamed themselves hoarse, Haneul was shoved along from behind, boarded a capsule inside the Tube, and went flying off into that faraway sea of space.
The time was 11:55 p.m. The date: April 28, 2025.
HR Team Leader Lee Jaein had made it — just barely — within the deadline of the day of silence: the very time limit designated by Shinseung Group's shamaness.
As it happened, that day was also Haneul's birthday. It meant that Haneul had officially turned fifteen years old.
The Soul-Harvesting Puppeteer
Author | Junon
Publisher | Samyang C&C Co., Ltd.
Managing Editor | Editorial Department
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