9:00 AM.
Unit 1418.
The morning sun burned through the floor-to-ceiling glass and heated the leather couch until the surface was hot to the touch, 36°C pressing against the windows like a living thing trying to get in.
Jae-min stood in the center of the living room with his phone pressed hard against his ear, and the plastic biting into his palm and his jaw set with a coiled focus.
It rang three times.
[Mara]: "Shieldworks Security Solutions, this is Mara." Mara answered, a flat synthetic cadence scrolling out without inflection like a conveyor belt of corporate disclaimers.
"I need a renovation. Immediate." Jae-min declared, his voice steady and focused, cutting through static like a man who didn't have time for small talk.
[Mara]: "Sir, we handle commercial installations." Mara replied, the words rolling out mechanically. "Office buildings, malls, not residential."
"I'm not calling about a residential renovation." Jae-min corrected, the word dropping like a stone into still water. "I'm calling about a bunker."
Silence, the faint hum of a call center echoing through the speaker.
[Mara]: "Sir?" Mara asked, a flicker of something almost like confusion breaking through the monotone.
"My name is Jae-min Del Rosario. I have sixteen million pesos in liquid capital." Jae-min breathed, each word a loaded round chambered in sequence. "I need Unit 1418, Shore Residence 3, Building B, Pasay, converted into a thermal-reinforced, hermetically sealed survival installation."
[Mara]: "Sir, I think you have the wrong—" Mara started, the script breaking.
"Capable of maintaining internal temperature despite external conditions dropping to minus seventy degrees Celsius." Jae-min continued, deadpan, the voice of a man reading a weather forecast for the end of the world.
The line went quiet.
[Mara]: "Sir, did you say minus seventy?" Mara asked, the synthetic calm fracturing.
"I did. Can your company do it or not?" Jae-min pressed, not asking but testing.
A long pause with papers shuffling in the background and a muffled voice speaking to someone else.
[Mara]: "Sir, please hold." Mara said, the words rushed and almost human in their unease.
Jae-min waited with his black eyes drifting across the living room, the plush leather couch and the massive 75-inch Samsung LED on the wall and the glass coffee table, all of it already marked for removal in his mind.
'Twenty-four days of normal life left.' Jae-min reflected, a hollow weight pressing against his ribs as he stared at the couch he'd never sit on again.
[Anton]: "Sir? This is Anton Reyes, Chief Engineer at Shieldworks." Anton said, the voice shifting to something deeper and older and cautious. "Mr. Del Rosario, your request is unusual."
Each word was carefully selected, the tone of a man picking his way through a minefield of red flags.
"I know." Jae-min replied, his tone unnervingly calm.
[Anton]: "Minus seventy is extreme." Anton continued, a slight frown audible in his voice. "We've done cold storage facilities, pharmaceutical vaults, but those are industrial spaces, not fourteenth-floor condominiums."
"Then you know it's possible." Jae-min redirected, cutting to the chase.
[Anton]: "Possible, yes." Anton admitted, the professional mask slipping to reveal genuine engineering concern. "But the structural requirements are massive. We'd need to replace every window, reinforce the walls, install secondary bulkheads, independent air filtration, backup power, thermal insulation layers."
"How much?" Jae-min asked, cutting straight to the number.
A pause.
[Anton]: "For a standard commercial job? Two to three million." Anton measured, the number landing with careful, deliberate weight. "For what you're describing? Double that. Maybe more."
"Six million. Cash. Upfront." Jae-min said, dropping the number like a detonation.
Anton choked, and a sharp cough crackled through the phone speaker.
[Anton]: "Six million?" Anton repeated, the word ripping out of him raw and involuntary.
"You have three days to complete the assessment. I need a full blueprint by Thursday." Jae-min continued, giving the timeline with the focused authority of a logistics manager who had coordinated shipments across three time zones. "Construction begins Friday. Finished in ten days."
[Anton]: "Ten days?" Anton sputtered, the engineer in him rebelling against the impossibility. "Mr. Del Rosario, a job like this normally takes—"
"I don't care what it normally takes." Jae-min cut in, not harsh but immovable. "Ten days. Or I find someone who can do it in five."
Silence, Anton calculating, and Jae-min could hear it in the rhythm of his breathing through the speaker.
'He's an engineer. They love impossible problems.' Jae-min calculated, matching the silence on the line. 'They just need to be paid enough to stop asking questions.'
[Anton]: "I'll need full access to the unit." Anton said, his voice shifting as the doubt drained away and something sharper took its place. "Blueprints of the building, structural analysis of the load-bearing walls."
"You'll have it by noon." Jae-min confirmed, clipped certainty.
[Anton]: "And Mr. Del Rosario?" Anton added, a measured pause.
"Yes?" Jae-min answered, guarded.
[Anton]: "I won't ask why you need a bunker that survives minus seventy in the Philippines." Anton said, his voice careful and measured, the tone of a man drawing a boundary he hoped would never be tested. "But my team will need plausible deniability. We'll frame this as a private VIP panic room installation for a high-profile client."
"Fine." Jae-min accepted, flat.
[Anton]: "One more thing." Anton warned, a quiet concern threading through his professional calm. "The condo association, the building management, they'll notice construction on this scale."
"Handle them." Jae-min ordered, cold authority.
Another pause.
[Anton]: "That will cost extra." Anton said, a ghost of dry humor entering his voice, the kind of joke a man makes when he's already decided to say yes.
"Name it." Jae-min replied, open.
[Anton]: "Two hundred thousand." Anton stated, the vocabulary of a man who had built things in the Philippines long enough to know that honesty and construction permits were mutually exclusive concepts. "For permits, bribes, whatever it takes."
"Done." Jae-min confirmed, final.
[Anton]: "Then we have a deal, Mr. Del Rosario." Anton said, a finality settling into his voice. "My team will be there at 1 PM."
Click. The line went dead.
Jae-min lowered the phone with his fingers uncurling slowly from the device, and the ghost of the plastic still pressed into his palm.
Six point two million for the bunker plus six point eight for weapons plus three million for the restaurant food, twelve million gone with four point six remaining.
'Not enough. Nowhere near enough.' Jae-min admitted, a cold anxiety clawing at the walls of his stomach. 'And someone is still out there.'
But it was a start.
— • • • —
1:00 PM.
Unit 1418.
A sharp knock echoed through the apartment, and Jae-min opened the door with his hand steady on the handle.
Anton Reyes stood in the hallway with four people in black Shieldworks polo shirts carrying tablets and laser measures and heavy-duty tool cases that clinked softly as they shifted their weight.
Anton was in his fifties with gray hair cropped close to his skull and thick glasses that magnified his eyes behind smudged lenses, his hands calloused from decades of manual labor with thick, blunt fingers that looked like they had gripped a thousand tools and been burned by half of them.
He carried himself with the posture of a man who spent his life looking up at structures and judging them.
He shook Jae-min's hand with a grip that was firm and rough, the clasp of a man whose palms had earned every callus, then stepped inside with his magnified eyes immediately scanning the apartment and analyzing the geometry of the space with the hungry calculating gaze of a man who couldn't look at a room without mentally dismantling it.
"Four bedrooms?" Anton asked, his gaze sweeping the layout with a professional assessment.
"Master with bath, second with bath, two guest rooms without." Jae-min listed, rattling off the layout with the brisk efficiency of a warehouse inventory check. "Living room with balcony, common bath, kitchen, storage room."
Anton walked through the unit, tapping walls with his knuckles and checking corners and running his thick, calloused fingers along window frames, each knock producing a different sound, hollow and dense and dead, and Anton reading each one like a doctor reading a heartbeat.
Jae-min watched from the kitchen with his arms crossed and his back leaning against the cold granite countertop, silent vigilance.
Anton paused at the balcony and slid the glass door open, and a wave of oppressive Manila heat rolled into the room thick and wet and suffocating, 36°C with blazing sun and yellow haze smothering the skyline.
Beyond the glass, the Makati skyline stretched to every horizon, towers of glass and steel standing as the monuments of a civilization at its peak.
Jae-min didn't look.
'In twenty-four days, ten meters of snow will bury every building below four stories.' Jae-min grieved, a vast crushing weight pressing against his ribs. 'Only rooftops breaking the white plain.'
"Beautiful day." Anton murmured, almost to himself, a quiet private appreciation of the sun on his face.
"It won't last." Jae-min whispered, a raw grief bleeding through the words before he could stop them.
Anton turned and looked at Jae-min with something flickering behind his thick glasses, not suspicion but something closer to pity, the look a man gives when he realizes the person across from him isn't exaggerating.
"You really believe it's coming, don't you?" Anton asked, the professional edge dissolving into something gentler and almost fatherly.
"Believe is the wrong word." Jae-min replied, quiet conviction.
"Then what?" Anton pressed, not to challenge but to understand.
"I know." Jae-min said, the single syllable carrying absolute grounded certainty.
Anton held his gaze for a long moment, then nodded slowly, not agreement but acceptance, the nod of a man who had decided to stop questioning and start building as his shoulders squared with professional resolve.
"The balcony is your weakest point, full glass exposure." Anton diagnosed, shifting back into his professional skin. "We'll need to replace it with a triple-layered polycarbonate panel, bulletproof, thermally sealed, won't shatter below minus eighty."
"Good." Jae-min approved, nodding once.
"Walls." Anton continued, knocking on the living room partition with a hollow sound echoing back. "Standard condo concrete, maybe four inches, not enough. We'll add a secondary layer, two inches of aerogel insulation, then a thermal reflective barrier, then drywall."
"How thick?" Jae-min asked, sharp pragmatism.
"Eight inches total." Anton warned, the caution of a man who knew clients always underestimated what they were giving up. "You'll lose about a foot of floor space in every room."
"I don't care." Jae-min dismissed, flat.
"Windows." Anton continued, pointing to the master bedroom. "Same treatment as the balcony, polycarbonate triple layer, motorized shutters on the inside, steel blast plates on the outside."
"Can I still see out?" Jae-min asked, a raw edge slipping through.
"Through the polycarbonate, yes." Anton confirmed, stating it flat with no softening. "But when the blast plates close, you're blind, completely sealed."
"Good." Jae-min approved, quiet.
"Door." Anton said, walking to the front entrance and staring at the standard wooden condo door like it was a personal insult. "This is a joke. We'll replace it with a steel bulkhead, hydraulic locks from the inside, a three-point deadbolt, and a peephole camera with night vision."
"Weight?" Jae-min asked, his mind already running the numbers.
"Two hundred kilos." Anton calculated, his fingers moving in the air as he traced invisible brackets. "We'll need to reinforce the doorframe, steel plates, and anchor bolts into the load-bearing walls."
"Done." Jae-min agreed, immediately.
"Air." Anton said, looking up at the ceiling. "Your current AC system won't survive minus seventy. We'll install an independent HVAC unit powered by a diesel generator; the generator goes in your storage room, soundproofed, vibration-dampened."
"Fuel?" Jae-min asked, logistical precision.
"Diesel tank, two hundred liters, installed also in the storage room, hidden, with a direct line to the generator." Anton detailed, pulling specifications from memory like a surgeon listing instruments.
"How long will it run?" Jae-min pressed, his knuckles whitening against the granite.
"At full power? Three days." Anton answered, frank. "At minimum, just heating and air filtration? Ten to twelve days."
'Not enough. But it buys time.' Jae-min calculated, a grim arithmetic running behind his eyes.
"Water." Jae-min demanded, clipped.
"Your building's water supply will freeze." Anton explained. "We'll install a three-hundred-liter storage tank, also in the storage room, connected to a filtration system, UV sterilization, carbon filters."
"How long?" Jae-min asked, urgent.
"Three months for one person." Anton stated, sobering. "Six weeks for six."
'Six people. Me, Ji-yoo, Uncle, Alessia, Mom, Dad.' Jae-min counted, the names landing like weights on a scale. 'Six weeks. We'll starve before we freeze.'
"Communication." Jae-min pivoted, strategic.
"Radio tower on the roof, encrypted, long range." Anton replied, technical candor. "But if the grid goes down, you're limited to shortwave."
"Install it." Jae-min ordered, immovable.
Anton finished his walkthrough and sat at the dining table with his thick frame settling into the chair with the weariness of a man who had just climbed through an entire building's worth of problems.
He opened his tablet and started sketching with a stylus, quick, precise strokes transforming the empty screen into a blueprint with his brow furrowed in deep concentration.
"Total cost breakdown." Anton announced, reading off the glowing screen. "Materials, labor, permits, bribes, custom fabrication. Six point two million, as discussed."
"Transfer today." Jae-min confirmed, financial certainty.
Anton nodded with a slow professional dip of his chin.
"Construction starts Friday." Anton declared, the surety of a man who had just been handed enough capital to stop asking questions. "My team works in shifts, twenty-four hours a day, no breaks."
"How long?" Jae-min asked, needing to hear it confirmed.
"Ten days." Anton answered, a quiet pride threading through the words. "You'll have a fortress."
Jae-min stood up and extended his hand, and Anton shook it with his calloused palm rough against Jae-min's skin, the grip of a man who built things for a living and was proud of it.
"One more thing, Mr. Del Rosario." Anton said, a heavier note entering his voice as he paused at the door.
"Yes?" Jae-min asked, cautious.
Anton tapped his tablet and pulled up a 3D model of the unit, rotating it and zooming in on the storage room with his stylus flicking across the screen.
"The generator, the water tanks, the diesel supply, all of it goes here." Anton said, pinpointing the vulnerability. "Your storage room."
"Yes." Jae-min confirmed, not yet seeing the implication.
"This room connects to the hallway." Anton continued, pointing at the screen. "And the hallway connects to the rest of the building."
"So?" Jae-min asked, a spike of tension knitting his brow.
Anton looked up with his magnified eyes, dead serious behind his smudged glasses.
"If the temperature really drops to minus seventy, the rest of this building becomes a tomb." Anton said, each word landing like a fist on a coffin lid. "Frozen bodies, fractured pipes, structural collapse."
He paused.
"Your storage room wall is the only thing separating you from that." Anton finished, the weight of the statement settling between them.
"Reinforce it." Jae-min ordered, without hesitation, the command instant.
"Already planned, steel plates, concrete backfill." Anton confirmed, nodding slowly before leaning forward and resting his thick elbows on the table. "But Mr. Del Rosario, no wall is perfect. If someone outside realizes you have heat, if they're cold enough, desperate enough."
"They'll try to get in." Jae-min finished, not guessing but knowing, the memory of frozen hands beating against frozen doors surging through his mind like a phantom.
Anton's eyes met his and held.
"Yes." Anton said, the single syllable carrying the weight of every locked door that had ever been broken by desperation.
Jae-min stared at the glowing 3D model on the tablet, the storage room and the wall and the dark hallway beyond it, a corridor that would become a freezer.
"Then make the wall bulletproof." Jae-min commanded, cold and absolute.
"Bulletproof?" Anton repeated slowly, genuine shock breaking through the professional veneer.
"You heard me." Jae-min confirmed, unflinching.
Anton slowly nodded and made a note on his tablet, his stylus tapping the screen twice with the deliberate, careful strokes of a man recalibrating his understanding of the project.
"Bulletproof wall, added to the estimate, no extra charge." Anton said, a ghost of something passing through his voice, not humor and not pity but respect, the kind a builder gives a client who understands what the building is really for.
— • • • —
Jae-min walked him to the door with his footsteps measured and steady.
Anton paused in the hallway and looked back, his thick glasses catching the fluorescent light and turning his eyes into pale, unreadable discs.
"Mr. Del Rosario, I've built panic rooms for politicians and bunkers for billionaires." Anton murmured, his voice quiet and heavy. "But I've never built anything like this."
"Why not?" Jae-min asked, genuine curiosity breaking through.
"Because those clients were afraid of other people." Anton said, the words landing soft and almost tender. "You're afraid of the weather itself."
'No.' Jae-min denied, a fierce protective fire burning beneath the silence as his jaw tightened. 'What the weather will do to the people I love.'
Anton left, and the sound of his team's boots faded down the hall, a steady professional rhythm that grew quieter with each step until it was swallowed entirely by the building's silence.
Jae-min closed the door and locked it, the deadbolt clicking with a sound that echoed through the empty apartment like a bone snapping.
He walked to the living room window and looked out at Manila with his palms pressed flat against the hot glass, the blinding sun and the sweltering heat and the dense traffic choking EDSA in the distance.
'That highway will be invisible beneath a frozen ridge of snow.' Jae-min mourned, a vast crushing grief opening inside his chest.
The tiny specks of people walking on the streets below were completely oblivious, laughing and arguing and scrolling through their phones and living.
'Every single one of them dead in twenty-four days.' Jae-min grieved, a hollow suffocating weight pressing against his ribs. 'And they don't even know it.'
His phone buzzed against his palm.
[Ji-yoo]: Oppa. Landing in 4 days. Can't wait to see you. ❤️
[Ji-yoo]: Also, I better get my room back. If you gave it to someone else, I WILL throw a fit. And I'm sleeping in your bed if I'm tired; don't argue with me. That's the RULES. I've been sleeping in your bed since we were six; I'm not stopping now.
[Ji-yoo]: Did you eat today? Be honest. I swear to God, oppa, if you skipped meals again I'm going to fly there early just to force-feed you.
Jae-min stared at the messages, the bright red heart emoji so casual and so painfully and brutally normal, a tiny red symbol of warmth from a world that was about to freeze solid.
'She doesn't know what I know.' Jae-min ached, a fragile, desperate relief cutting through the grief as his thumb hovered over the screen. 'But she's alive. And she's coming home.'
[Jae-min]: I'll pick you up at the airport.
[Jae-min]: Yes, I ate. Stop worrying.
He could almost hear her pout through the phone screen, a faint warmth cracking through the ice in his chest.
Then he opened his notes and his thumb moved rapidly across the glass.
[Jae-min]: DAY 4 COMPLETE.
[Jae-min]: CASH REMAINING: ₱4.6M
[Jae-min]: WEAPONS: 3 DAYS
[Jae-min]: BUNKER: 10 DAYS
[Jae-min]: JI-YOO: 4 DAYS
[Jae-min]: MOM & DAD: LESS THAN 24 DAYS LEFT TO CONVINCE THEM
He stared at the last line with the glowing numbers burning into his retinas, twenty-four days and he still hadn't figured out how to save them.
'Twenty-four days to convince two of the most stubborn people on earth that the sky is about to fall.' Jae-min fretted, a hollow frustration gnawing at his insides as he locked the phone.
His phone buzzed again. Unknown number.
[Unknown]: Interesting renovation, Mr. Del Rosario. A bunker? In a condo? Whatever for? - K
Jae-min's blood went cold, and the heat of the Manila sun vanished from his skin while the apartment felt suddenly and impossibly freezing, a phantom chill creeping through the walls like the first whisper of the apocalypse arriving early.
'Kiara.' Jae-min realized, a cold detached fury crystallizing in his chest as his grip tightened on the phone. 'She wasn't just watching anymore. She was inside his unit.'