"Is he a doll or something?"
One of the three students waiting in the alley sneered, planting his palm against the weathered wall beside Seonghyeon, casually blocking the only path out.
Another jabbed a finger into Seonghyeon's shoulder, watching for a reaction before scoffing when none came.
"I've never seen him fight back. You could punch him all day, and he'd still keep that stupid expression."
Seonghyeon remained silent.
His school bag hung loosely from one shoulder, his gaze fixed on the cracked pavement where fading afternoon light stretched between the seams.
The bruises across his knuckles had already begun to darken—old evidence of encounters he had learned to endure.
The tallest student seized Seonghyeon by the collar, yanked him upright, and drove a punch into his face, followed by a sharp headbutt that sent him sprawling against the pavement.
His bag struck the ground beside him.
Even then, Seonghyeon's expression remained unchanged. Neither anger nor fear surfaced.
"Well, this is fun," the tallest boy said, grinning and flexing his fingers.
Clatter.
A short distance away, a precariously balanced stack of books hit the pavement in a scattered cascade.
A girl stood at the alley entrance, her grip empty, her eyes wide as she stared at Seonghyeon on the ground. For one suspended moment, Seonghyeon lifted his eyes and met hers.
His gaze was strangely vacant beneath the swelling on his cheek.
"Hey! What are you doing to him?" she shouted, breaking into a run before her two friends could stop her.
The tallest student turned, his amused expression fading. "This doesn't concern you; mind your own business."
"You're supposed to be classmates, not animals cornering someone!" she shot back, stepping directly between them.
"Anya, wait up!" Two more girls rushed into the alley behind her, one of them carrying the scattered books. Seeing the growing crowd of witnesses, the tallest bully clicked his tongue in annoyance.
"Let's go," he muttered, giving Seonghyeon one final glance before shoving past the girls into the main street. "This isn't finished."
Silence settled over the alley.
"You're bleeding," Anya murmured, stepping closer.
Seonghyeon wiped his lip with the back of his hand, his tone entirely flat. "I'll pick up your books."
"You just got beaten up, and that's what you're worried about?"
Seonghyeon paused.
In truth, he knew who she was.
He remembered the small moments he had never spoken of—the extra bottle of water quietly left on his desk when his lunch disappeared, the spare physical education shirt placed before him when his went missing.
She had been helping him for months, always in ways small enough to escape everyone else's attention.
"Why do you always help me?" Seonghyeon asked quietly, stripping the question of any gratitude or anger.
Anya blinked, caught off guard. Behind her, one of her friends muffled a sudden giggle.
"Because she likes you!" her friend blurted out.
"Be quiet!" Anya's head snapped around, the tips of her ears turning crimson instantly. She turned back to Seonghyeon, struggling to maintain her composure under his unreadable gaze. "I... I just can't help it."
"I don't need your help," Seonghyeon said, adjusting his bag strap. "You're annoying."
Anya stared at him for a second before a soft, helpless laugh escaped her. "Then what version of me would you like?"
Seonghyeon opened his mouth, but the question caught somewhere beyond the simple logic he usually relied on.
He looked at her flushed face, the books clutched against her chest, and found no immediate answer.
"I don't know," he admitted quietly.
Anya's expression softened, a small smile tugging at her lips. "Then I guess I'll stay annoying until you figure it out."
Seonghyeon didn't avert his eyes this time.
He just stood there with his bag in hand, watching her.
It was subtle, but Anya caught it—the way his usual blank stare lingered on her face a second longer than it ever had before.
A tiny smile tugged at the corner of her lips before she could stop it.
"Oh, yeah," her friend muttered under her breath, catching the look instantly.
"She is so cooked."
Anya's face flushed red instantly. "I will literally walk away and leave you behind."
"Try it," her friend said, giggling, ducking out of reach, and jogging a few paces ahead. "You're going the same way anyway!"
"I'm serious!" Anya called out, though her voice lacked any real bite.
She cast one last glance back at Seonghyeon, adjusted the heavy books in her arms, and hurried after her friends down the crowded pavement.
Seonghyeon stayed where he was for a few seconds.
The distant chatter of students leaving school slowly filled the space where the quiet tension had been.
He looked down at his hand, feeling the rough canvas strap of his school bag, then adjusted it over his shoulder.
The sting on his cheek was still there, sharp and throbbing, but for once, it wasn't the only thing he was thinking about.
He stepped out of the alley and fell into step several yards behind them, blending back into the crowd.
Seonghyeon stepped out of the alley and fell into step several yards behind them.
Then the earth violently heaved.
The asphalt beneath his shoes didn't just shake—it split with a deafening crack that tore straight down the center of the road.
The shockwave threw Seonghyeon off his feet, slamming his already-bruised shoulder hard into the pavement.
Screams erupted instantly.
Concrete pulverized into a thick dust that blinded the street, and glass showered down from upper-floor shop windows.
Through the haze of dust, Seonghyeon saw Anya tumble sideways into the shattered display of a storefront, her books crushed under a falling sign.
Her friends were shrieking, scrambling backward on their hands and knees into the road.
Before anyone could stand, the sky turned a bruised, unnatural purple.
The sound came next—not an earthquake, but the sickening noise of grinding stone deep beneath the crust, so loud it rattled Seonghyeon's teeth and made his ears bleed.
"Seonghyeon!"
Anya was shouting his name, her voice terrified, barely cutting through the roaring earth.
She tried to reach for him, struggling against the shifting ground as the street began to incline at an impossible angle.
A massive, obsidian structure surged out of the split asphalt fifty yards away, punching upward through three levels of a retail building like paper.
Thick, black stone rolled out from the fissure, expanding instantly, swallowing cars, pavement, and fleeing students in a matter of seconds.
The air pressure slammed down so hard Seonghyeon couldn't breathe.
[CRITICAL DISTORTION!]
The words didn't float nicely in the air. They burned directly into his retinas, flickering violently red, pulsing like a ruptured artery.
[LOCAL ZONE SANCTUARY: ERASED]
The screaming around them cut off abruptly—not because people stopped shouting, but because the sound of something heavy, multi-legged, and wet started crawling out of the black stone fissure.
Anya scrambled back toward Seonghyeon, her fingers digging desperately into his uniform jacket as she collapsed beside him, hyperventilating, her eyes fixed on the shadow looming through the dust.
Seonghyeon didn't panic.
He slowly pushed himself up on one arm, wiping the blood running down his lip from the shockwave impact, his eyes dead set on the monstrosity rising out of the cracked asphalt.
His pulse didn't even spike.
"Stay behind me," Seonghyeon muttered, his voice flat in the middle of the apocalypse.
Seonghyeon reached toward her hand, his fingers barely closing around hers before something cold swept across his skin, and in the span of a single blink, the familiar warmth of the alley vanished without leaving him enough time to understand what had happened.
He opened his eyes and immediately sat upright, his body reacting before his thoughts could catch up with what his senses were telling him.
Grass stretched endlessly in every direction beneath a moonlit sky, its silvered surface rippling in broad waves whenever the cold wind passed through the field, while the damp scent of earth and rain filled his lungs with such sudden intensity that his breathing faltered.
"What the hell...?"
His voice disappeared beneath a sudden eruption of shouting that spread through the darkness as dozens of unfamiliar voices collided with one another.
"Where are we?!"
"Mom?!"
"Who brought us here?!"
Seonghyeon slowly turned toward the nearest voices, finding people scattered across the enormous field with no obvious road, building, or landmark visible anywhere beyond the grass.
Some were still dressed in pajamas, while others stood barefoot against the damp ground, clutching bags, jackets, or whatever they had been holding when they disappeared.
A man several meters away repeatedly tapped the screen of his phone, his expression tightening when the display refused to show anything beyond a field of shifting static.
"What happened to the signal?"
"My phone isn't working either!"
"Is this some kind of event?"
"No, look around you!"
The shouting continued to spread as more people began moving through the grass, searching for familiar faces and finding only strangers beneath the pale light of the moon.
Seonghyeon remained where he was, his attention moving steadily across the field rather than joining the growing panic.
There were too many people.
Far too many.
He could hear crying somewhere behind him, a child calling repeatedly for her mother, while several adults argued about whether they had somehow been drugged or transported somewhere without realizing it.
Seonghyeon lowered his gaze toward his own hands, checking them as though expecting to find some explanation there.
Nothing had changed.
His school uniform was still intact, his bag remained over one shoulder, and the faint ache from the earlier beating still lingered beneath his skin.
Then he remembered her.
His head turned sharply toward the place where he had been standing only moments ago.
There was no alley.
There was no school.
There were no buildings, streets, or scattered books beneath the moonlight.
Only grass stretched beneath the open sky.
Seonghyeon stared into the darkness for several seconds before his expression tightened by the smallest degree.
"Anya...?"
His voice was nearly swallowed by the surrounding commotion, yet he kept searching through the crowd, moving his eyes from one unfamiliar face to another.
He found no sign of her.
Then something appeared above the field.
A pale rectangle of light materialized several meters in front of him without producing a sound, hovering at eye level despite having nothing beneath it to support its weight.
Seonghyeon's gaze settled upon the unfamiliar screen.
Around him, the shouting gradually faltered as people began noticing the same phenomenon appearing before them.
Hundreds of translucent panels emerged across the field, each one displaying the same lines of unfamiliar text.
For several seconds, nobody understood what they were seeing.
Then the first message appeared.
[The Tower has acknowledged the world designated: Earth.]
A murmur moved through the crowd, spreading faster than the wind across the grass.
Seonghyeon continued reading.
[Beginning Preliminary Qualification.]
The next line appeared beneath it.
[All humans have been registered as provisional participants.]
The field fell strangely quiet as people stared at the words, their earlier confusion slowly giving way to something far more difficult to name.
Then another line appeared.
[Failure Condition: Extinction.]
A final message emerged beneath it.
[Warning: Death is permanent.]
Seonghyeon's eyes remained fixed upon the screen while the wind continued moving through the grass around him.
For once, he had no answer to give himself.
And somewhere among thousands of frightened strangers, Anya was looking at the same impossible words.