[2050, Jian's Living Room]
That late evening, Jian's living room was filled with the warm aroma of stew.
It was the end of September, the air outside unusually cool for the season, but indoors the air carried a gentle warmth.
After dinner, the dining table—now cleared of dishes—felt strangely more spacious with only the two of them left.
Jian stacked the empty bowls, then sat down beside her mother on the sofa.
The TV played softly in the background.
Outside, the world seemed calm, but the screen showed the opposite.
"Breaking news."
The anchor's firm voice cut through the air.
Jian picked up the remote and turned up the volume.
"Seoul's central districts and surrounding metropolitan areas are currently being hit by extreme winds and localized torrential rain.
Winds exceeding 120 kilometers per hour, and rainfall surpassing 100 millimeters per hour, have been recorded."
The screen shifted rapidly to scenes of chaos in the city—shattered glass, broken signboards rolling across the road, uprooted trees, people screaming in panic.
Jian pressed her lips together, her eyes fixed on the screen.
"Forecasts don't mean anything anymore,"
her mother murmured, her voice tinged with fatigue and quiet resignation.
"This morning was so clear… and now, just like that.
It's no longer even strange when this happens."
The TV showed an entrance to a subway station shaking in the wind,
underground passageways crowded with people seeking shelter,
bicycles swept away by rushing water.
Jian lowered her head in silence.
The night outside her window was still calm,
yet the unease lingered like a breath—uncertain when that calm would break.
"Mom."
"Yes?"
"…If Dad were alive, what do you think he would have said?"
Her mother stared at the screen for a long moment before answering slowly.
"He would have said,
'Don't be afraid. I'm right here. Just be yourself.'
That was always his way—no matter what choice you made,
he was on your side.
And now… you still have me."
Jian gave a small, silent nod.
On the side table, her father's smile beamed gently from a photo frame,
warm as ever, but unable to speak to her anymore.
The scrolling red banner beneath the news continued to flash:
"Mass power outages expected due to severe weather.
Citizens are urged to stay indoors."
The living room was quiet.
But the quiet felt less like peace, and more like the stillness before a storm.
Jian closed her eyes, then exhaled slowly.
Her fingers trembled faintly, but the way she set the remote down was steady.
'Dad, I'll be brave again.
I'm still scared, still so unsure… but if I don't act now,
I'll never forgive myself.'
She rose from the sofa.
The night outside was still calm, but her footsteps carried the quiet weight of a new resolve.
[2050, Suyeon's Home]
The room remained calm.
Soft, energy-saving lights spread a faint glow across the walls,
while the air purifier hummed quietly, holding the chill of autumn air.
By the window, the red warning light for fine dust still blinked steadily.
Beyond the tinted film, the distant city lights flickered, swaying in the wind.
Seated at her desk, Suyeon turned the tablet screen with cold fingertips.
On the wall-mounted TV, the news continued to run.
"Strong winds and localized downpours persist across most districts of central Seoul.
Property damage is still being assessed, with further casualties feared."
The anchor's urgent voice echoed faintly through the room.
Suyeon lifted her eyes briefly to the screen, then lowered them again to the tablet.
Across the display were headlines steeped in manipulation:
"Climate Crisis Claims in Question—Is It All a Hoax?"
"Youth Climate Forum Devolves into Political Stunt"
"Environmental Populism: Children as Pawns of Hypocrisy?"
She stared at them for a moment, then drew in a slow breath.
"So… they've finally begun to show their true face."
On her desk lay notes from recent meetings with Jian, Shia, Jihyuk, and Doyoon:
LUKA connection logs, traces of past links, signs of time distortion, strategies after the bill's failure.
Suyeon brushed the corner of one memo with her fingertip.
On the small sheet of paper lingered not defeat, but the imprint of resolve.
The room remained calm, but within her, a spark was quietly waking.
She lifted her head, her gaze fixed forward, unwavering.
"If there's nothing left to hide,"
she whispered, her voice low and steady,
"then it's time to prove it head-on."
Outside, the autumn wind still carried its long, unbroken cry.
[Doyoon's Workspace]
Late at night, Doyoon's room was as dark as ever.
A cramped one-room space, where his bed and desk were pressed against each other.
It was both his workshop and his home—the only place where most of his days unfolded.
On the wall, sheets of insulation film he had stuck on by hand hung crookedly, while an old air purifier hummed in a low register.
The air was cool, dim with haze, but to him, it was a familiar landscape.
On the desk, the monitor glowed with lines of tangled code.
AI LUKA.
For days, he had been trying to restore backup logs from the broken system.
Shattered timelines, endless error messages, fragments of corrupted data.
He paused over one section of code.
Between fractured data blocks, faint traces of something remained.
He drew in a slow breath and whispered under his breath:
"…This was left here on purpose."
The screen flickered softly, and a message surfaced:
"Rewritable Sector Detected – Residual Loop Code"
"Time Bridge Seed / Responsive Memory Access Attempt Available"
A spark lit in Doyoon's eyes.
Carefully, he bookmarked the line of code and left a note in the error logs.
"Someone… knew it would fail, and left a way back."
The monitor responded faintly, but undeniably, as if stirring again.
He entered the execution command.
For a moment, silence.
Then the reply appeared, cold and unyielding:
"System Error: Connection Failed."
"Time Bridge Seed – Activation Impossible."
Doyoon closed his eyes briefly, then lifted them to the screen again.
Another failure.
But this time, something was different.
A trace remained—a clue left behind.
Like finding an emergency exit in the ruins.
The autumn wind howled outside his window, but inside, the room was still.
One small clue, born atop failure.
To Doyoon, it was enough to call it hope.
"Don't give up, LUKA. I won't stop either."
His voice was quiet, barely above a whisper, yet it felt as though it carried outward.
Somewhere in the broken stream of time, a fragile thread of hope quivered, waiting to reconnect.
[2050, High School Rooftop]
The next morning, in the heart of autumn.
The sunlight poured down, yet traces of yesterday lingered in the chill of the wind.
Jian and Shia leaned against the metal railing of the rooftop,
with Ji-hyuk standing nearby, hands shoved into his pockets.
He tilted his head up toward the sky and spoke slowly.
"Today looks calm… but the quieter it is, the more uneasy I feel."
Shia nodded in agreement.
"Our neighborhood was fine, but the next one over was a mess.
Broken subway windows, signs ripped off, trees down…
Someone said this is the new season now—an unstable season."
Jian gazed quietly out over the city beyond the railing.
The sky was clear, unlike the day before, but on distant rooftops, temporary tarps still flapped in the breeze.
Laundry lines hung twisted, and a traffic light flickered weakly as if broken.
"…Do you think we should really keep doing this?"
Jian's voice was soft.
"At first, it just felt like an accident—like homework that went too far.
Then it was… almost like an adventure."
Ji-hyuk turned slightly toward her.
"But now… it feels like responsibility."
He leaned against the railing, his voice steady.
"Those people back then… they trusted what we said.
And when I saw that sea, I knew—we really changed something."
Shia smiled faintly.
"Yeah. Se-a, Candidate Choi Jae-hoon, even Su-yeon the aide,
and all those others whose names we barely remembered…
Every word we spoke, it changed someone's life."
Jian nodded slowly.
"That's what scares me. What if whatever we say becomes too big of a change for someone?
I don't think we're ready to carry that kind of weight yet."
Ji-hyuk answered quietly.
"That's why there are three of us.
Because with three, we can lean on each other."
Jian turned her head toward him.
His eyes still carried a trace of loneliness, but beneath it was a steady, unshaken resolve.
Shia added softly, almost as if to herself:
"And… there are still people we haven't met yet.
Maybe they're waiting for us too—for us to speak to them again."
At her words, the three of them nodded in silence.
The city before them lay quiet,
but the quiet felt less like stillness and more like a breath drawn in—
the moment just before everything begins to move again.
The crimson morning sunlight stretched long across the rooftop railing.