Simulation Swarm ? Kang Dae-ho ╱ 388

SIMULATION SWARM

          She was no longer dressed in her white t-shirt and baby pink maxi skirt, her old beaten converse stained with markers from school now replaced with clean white plimsoles that caved in too tightly on her small feet. Minseo didn't want to know how she got changed, and she couldn't dwell to much on the fact when she soon noticed the large bold numbers patched over her jacket.

          004. In big, white, bold letters. 004. The unlucky number of not only the entirety of South Korea, but Hyeon Minseo especially. Panic set in━if Minseo wasn't entirely fucked before, then she most definitely knew the Gods weren't helping her any more so from here, so she was entirely, and utterly, fucked.

          "Young girl," the voice of an elderly woman called out meekly from behind her. Minseo turned suddenly, her actions quick enough to shock the elder. "Do you know where we are?"

          Minseo tried to speak, yet no words were able to form from the rasp of her throat. She instead shook her head hesitantly.

          The elder woman made her way over. Her frail hands held onto Minseo's crossed arms, an immediate warmth vibrating through her shivering body. "Well how about we stick together? Nobody likes being alone in a new place."

          "Okay," Minseo muttered eventually, her voice nothing but a mere whisper. "That sounds nice."

          The elder woman smiled softly. "It does, doesn't it? I'm Jang Geum-ja. By the seems of it, my name is now 149. What's your name?"

           "Hyeon Minseo," Minseo replied, mimicking her gentle smile. It felt foreign, the trace of a smile of her porcelain face, but it felt nice. "Thank you."

          "Don't thank me for anything," Geum-ja wrapped her arm around Minseo's. The two ladies stood at similar heights, and Geum-ja looked over at Minseo with determination in her wrinkled eyes. "Let's go out there."

          The two soon found themselves amongst a crowd, the echoes of questions growing louder and more aggressive by the second. Every man was for themselves, each shouting with a new question with a harsher tone, each fist curling roughly by the minute.

       Hyeon Minseo was never the architect of events, never the one who set things in motion. She was the quiet observer, the silent witness to the world around her. That was her role, that was her essence. She watched, always from the edges, her eyes tracing every detail━the way people held themselves, the cadence of their words, the subtle language of their bodies. She kept meticulous notes, not in ink but in the quiet corners of her mind, cataloging the world in all its messy, intricate patterns.

          Hyeon Minseo never sought to insert herself, never needed to prove her value or worth. She had learned long ago that she was invisible━always on the periphery, never the focus, always drifting in the space where the spotlight never quite touched. To be unnoticed, to remain in the shadows, was her quiet comfort.

          But that moment, that instant, unraveled everything.

          In the thickening hum of rising voices, each one clamoring to be heard, one voice broke through the cacophony—a soft, almost fragile whisper that seemed to still the very air around it.

          "Mimi?"

          Minseo's heart skipped a beat too many. She turned slowly, cautiously, as though afraid to disturb the fragile quiet of the moment. Through the writhing, fevered bodie━those reaching for their own fleeting freedoms━she saw him.

          Her absent uncle, Seong Gi-hun, standing there, as though he had always been just a breath away from her, waiting.

          For once, the world shifted. For once, she was seen.