Normalization

The world pretended for about three seconds that nothing had happened after the voice fell silent. The student couldn't pick up the chopsticks he'd dropped.

His fingers hovered frozen in midair. His lips parted. Did you hear that just now too? He wanted to ask, but there was no one to ask. The convenience store held only Kim Jeongsang and the boy.

"...What was that just now?" the student finally managed to say. His voice trembled. The single sentence that had rung inside his head still hadn't faded. I can't stand watching this anymore. It clearly hadn't been anyone's voice, and yet at the same time it had been the clearest voice in the world.

Kim Jeongsang didn't answer. Instead, he walked slowly toward the convenience store door. Beyond the glass, the predawn street came into view. Streetlights, an empty crosswalk, a traffic signal blinking in the distance. It was an ordinary early morning.

He raised his hand. Just before his fingertips touched the glass, he stopped.

And the sky closed.

There was no sound. No lightning, no explosion. The sky simply closed, the way a single sheet of paper might settle over something. The stars hadn't disappeared. They remained exactly as they were. But between those stars and this street, something had appeared.

Something invisible yet undeniably present. A colossal membrane that seemed like it could be touched if you simply reached out. A single layer of wall had descended over South Korea.

Above the West Sea. The captain of a passenger plane descending toward Incheon watched his altimeter go completely insane. The aircraft had struck an invisible wall. It had struck, yet it hadn't shattered. It hadn't even bounced back. It simply could go no farther forward. Like a fly stuck to glass.

"Control tower, control tower, respond. This is—" The radio cut off. All the screens went dead. Yet the aircraft itself was perfectly fine. The passengers, still buckled in their seats, stared out the windows. The plane began to turn back the way it had come, as gently as if a giant palm had lifted it and was guiding it with perfect care.

No one was hurt. Not a single hair was out of place. The meal cart remained exactly where it had been, and even the flight attendant standing in the aisle didn't stagger. It was as if someone had picked up the entire plane in their hand and was holding it steady so it wouldn't shake.

That was the first rule, though no one knew it yet. Inside here, no one dies. No one gets hurt. It was the first promise the one delivering punishment had made to himself.

But it would be several more days of trembling before people learned of that promise.

At the same moment, screens across the entire world froze simultaneously. Satellites lost signal while observing the Korean Peninsula. Data flowing through undersea cables was severed at the border. Someone in Tokyo on the phone with Seoul, someone in Beijing, someone in Washington—they all heard the same thing.

Click.

South Korea had been torn away from the Earth. Physically.

The broadcasting stations descended into chaos. The director slammed his desk. Transmission had stopped. Satellites, internet, international flights—everything. Foreign media couldn't reach Korea, and Korean signals couldn't escape.

Yet the domestic networks remained perfectly functional. Electricity, water, even the first subway trains ran as usual. Cut off from the world, the inside remained intact.

"What the hell is..." The director couldn't finish his sentence. Every screen in the station went completely black. Not just the station monitors.

The electronic billboards in Gwanghwamun, the outdoor screens at Gangnam Station, the TVs in living rooms, the phones in people's hands. Every screen that had been on went dark at the same time.

Then they turned back on.

In the center of every screen, a single line of white text appeared.

It was 3:10 a.m. Fifty million people were looking at the same message. Those jolted awake, those working overtime, those staggering out of bars, even the mother clutching a settlement agreement while staring at the ceiling. The screen in their hands, the screen on the wall—every one displayed the same sentence.

The voice rang out again. Not in their ears, but from within.

The student nearly dropped his phone but caught it with both hands. He couldn't tear his eyes from the screen. Kim Jeongsang stood beside him, listening to words he had never spoken with his own mouth flowing out in his own voice. What he said from within didn't require his lips.

People began to emerge onto the streets one by one. In pajamas, dragging slippers. Some looked up at the sky. At the closed sky. They didn't know what it was, but they understood that something enormous now covered them.

An old man held his phone with both hands and muttered. He'd been deceived his whole life, he said. What if this was another deception? A young couple nearby held their sleeping child and stared at the screen. One young man spat curses at the screen, then fell silent when he heard the next sentence.

Inside fifty million heads, the same voice flowed at the same pace. Some believed it, some scoffed, some were afraid. But one thing was the same for everyone: no one could turn that voice off.

In a situation room in Washington, someone shouted that the Korean Peninsula had vanished from radar. More precisely, that nothing aimed at the peninsula could reach it anymore.

Images from reconnaissance satellites were erased in white at the border. Military channels went dead. The most expensive toys the great powers possessed had become useless in an instant. For the first time, they faced something they could do nothing about.

In Tokyo, an emergency cabinet meeting was convened. Beijing recalled the squadron of reconnaissance planes heading toward the peninsula. They couldn't reach it. Moscow and Washington did the same.

The hands that had manipulated the Korean Peninsula like a piece on a palm for decades closed around empty air for the first time that night.

No one knew what was happening inside. Not satellites, not intelligence networks, not the people they'd bought off. Everything was either trapped inside the wall or powerless outside it. There was only one thing the world could do toward Korea now.

Watch.

And even that, only dimly.

Kim Jeongsang stepped outside the convenience store. Beneath the closed sky, the street was strangely quiet. People were terrified, yet at the same time they were waiting for something. Something they had waited for, without ever speaking it aloud, for a very long time.

He began his final words.

The voice paused for a beat.

Someone on the street drew in a ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠sharp breath.

At the same moment, in a room salon in Gangnam, the son of the chairman of Daeun Construction stared blankly at the screen, his glass dropped from his hand. A few hours earlier, he had walked out of the courthouse smiling. Not guilty. His father had taken care of it once again. As always.

But the voice on the screen spoke as if it knew exactly what he had done.

They kill people and receive no charges. They steal from others and receive applause.

With a trembling hand, he picked up his phone. He tried calling his father. There was no signal. He tried again. Nothing. The people around him began quietly slipping away.

These were the same faces that had been fawning over him just moments before. Only then did he realize it. The reassurance that his father would fix everything had, for the first time, failed to work.

The screen turned off. The voice stopped. The sky remained closed. Silence settled over the streets.

Then, somewhere, one person began to cry. Even that person probably didn't know why. Whether from fear, from relief, or because something waited for far too long had finally arrived.

The crying spread. When one person cried, the person beside ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠them cried, and then the next. None of them knew one another. They were simply people who had happened to step out onto the same street at the same early hour and heard the same voice.

Yet they cried for the same reasons, as if they had known each other for years. They were people who had received extra danmuji from the grandmother at the snack shop. People who had counted out seven hundred won. People who had felt sorry over a single envelope. People who had endured for far too long on the bottom level of this street.

They had just heard, for the first time, that someone had taken their side.

The student stepped out of the convenience store and stood beside Kim Jeongsang. Looking up at the closed sky, he asked in a trembling voice.

"Mister... is that... really happening?"

Kim Jeongsang looked at the sky. At the wall he himself had created. Then he answered indifferently.

"Who knows."

"I hope it's real. Don't you?"

The student's voice cracked slightly. Kim Jeongsang glanced at the boy for a moment. At the hands that had counted seven hundred won, at the ears that had turned red, at the profile that had looked as if it were eating a late dinner for the first time.

This child didn't need to know what a not-guilty verdict meant. He didn't need to know about accounts under false names or how much money was piled onto settlement agreements.

He just needed to live in a world where he didn't have to worry about seven hundred won for a cup of ramen. That was the normal that Kim Jeongsang wanted.

"...Yeah."

He returned to the convenience store. He took his place behind the counter again. On the shelves, the triangle kimbap he had stocked earlier remained exactly as it was. Five tuna mayo, three Jeonju bibim. The world had been turned upside down, yet the triangle kimbap stayed the same.

Kim Jeongsang liked that. Normalization was ultimately that kind of thing. Nothing grandiose—just triangle kimbap selling at the proper price, and no longer needing to feel sorry over a single envelope.

He opened another can of coffee. For the first time in five years, the sweetness tasted sweet.

At that same moment, in the underground bunker beneath the Blue House, people who had been urgently summoned were gathered in front of monitors. With all communication cut off, they were trapped with only one another. Someone asked in a trembling voice.

"Was that... directed at us?"

No one could answer. A few among them already knew. What was on their own hands. What kind of lies they were sitting on top of. And that the voice had just said there were no holes left to escape through.

Someone was already trying to contact their lawyer. The call wouldn't go through. Someone thought of their overseas accounts, then stopped when they remembered the word Barrier. If they couldn't leave, neither could the money. The escape routes they had built over a lifetime had been blocked in an instant.

One person shouted at the screen—at a screen with no one on it.

"Who are you! Reveal yourself! By what right—"

At that moment, the screen in front of that person turned on by itself. A single line appeared that only that person could see.

The person's face turned deathly pale. Before he could say anything more, the screen turned off again. Silence descended over the bunker. And within that silence, everyone present had the same thought.

Who's next?