Chapter 1

Night Shift

2:14 a.m. Hanbit Logistics, Icheon Center 3, Building B.

Cha Jeongwoo stood in front of Rack 7 and sighed.

"Boram."

"Yes, boss!"

"Who put this here?"

Min Boram, the new part-timer, shuffled over. She was three weeks in, and some days she still held the scanner upside down. On the rack Jeongwoo was pointing at, a tray of eggs sat on top of a bundle of two-liter water bottles.

"...Me."

"You know you don't put water on top of eggs, right?"

"Yes."

"You also need to know you don't put eggs on top of water."

"Why? If the eggs are on top, they won't break."

"Eggs go in Zone B. Refrigerated. This is room temp."

"...Oh."

Jeongwoo lifted the egg tray and moved it onto a cart. His hands did it on their own. Seven years. Seven years of putting this center's things back where they belonged, every single night. Say a rack number and he knew what was in it. 7-3-B, water. 7-3-C, sparkling water. 7-4-A, cup noodles—except head office switched it to cereal last week and now everyone kept getting it wrong.

"Did you seriously memorize all of it?"

"I didn't memorize it. I just know."

"That's what memorizing is."

"...Anyway. Eggs. Zone B."

Boram pushed the cart away. Jeongwoo pulled the pen from behind his ear and ticked his work log. 02:16, Rack 7, one stacking error corrected.

Seeing things out of place made his skin itch. Call it a sickness if you want—it had gotten him the title of foreman, if not a permanent contract. Jeongwoo nudged the corner of an empty pallet poking into the aisle with the toe of his boot until it sat flush with the yellow line.

3 a.m. Break room.

"Jeongwoo. Eat."

Jo Mansik, the forklift driver, held out a cup of noodles. There was a second one in his other hand. Whenever Mansik went to the convenience store, he came back with two cups and pressed one into somebody else's hand.

"Thanks, hyung."

"Don't mention it."

At the next seat, Rajiv popped the lid off his lunch box. He'd come from Nepal six years ago, and his Korean was textbook-careful; he kept his honorifics far more consistent than Jeongwoo ever did. He looked at Mansik's noodles and frowned.

"Hyung, tomorrow is health checkup day. Ramen is not good."

"Fifty-eight years old, what's a checkup gonna tell me. Been eating this stuff and driving a forklift for twenty years."

"That is why we check."

Mansik didn't answer. He peeled the lid off. Rajiv slid his lunch box toward Jeongwoo.

"Boss, today kimchi fried rice I made. You want—ah, would you like some?"

"Rajiv, your kimchi fried rice is better than the restaurant's, so no. It's addictive."

"Haha. Boss's words are sweet. No—is sweet."

"...That's a compliment, right?"

"Compliment. Probably."

Mansik slurped down his noodles. Boram threw open the break-room door, waving her phone.

"Boss! Did you see this? There's an aurora in the sky!"

"In Icheon?"

"Everywhere! Social media is going crazy! Trending one through ten is all aurora! There are livestreams everywhere!"

Jeongwoo carried his cup noodles to the break-room window. Outside was the center's parking lot. Three trucks sat under the streetlights, and above them was the sky.

The sky was green.

It was too strange to be an aurora. Auroras were supposed to ripple like curtains. This one hung perfectly still, edges straight as if drawn with a ruler. Jeongwoo saw something like it every night.

A monitor screen.

A massive rectangle with rounded corners hung in the middle of the sky. A window.

"...That's..."

"You see it too, boss? Doesn't it look exactly like a game UI? Is this some kind of game launch event?"

Boram was talking a mile a minute. Mansik set his noodles down. Rajiv froze with his spoon in the air.

Letters appeared in the window in the sky.

【The System has descended.】

To Jeongwoo, it looked like Korean.

"...It is Nepali."

Rajiv murmured it. Boram said, "What? It's Korean." Rajiv didn't answer. He looked up at the window once more, and the spoon slid out of his hand and clattered to the floor.

The noodle cup tilted, and broth ran down the back of Jeongwoo's hand. He kept staring up at the window without feeling the heat, and only a long while later did he set the cup down on the windowsill.

A sound rang out across the whole center.

It wasn't the fire alarm's tone. From the speakers, the ceiling, the phones, the forklift dashboards—anything that could make a sound was making the same one.

Ding-dong.

【Earth has been classified as [Subject to Tidying].】

【The evaluation period begins. Time remaining: 120 days.】

【During the evaluation period, survivors will be granted unique skills.】

"Evaluation? Subject to tidying? What is this..."

A minute ago Boram had been bubbling over about the aurora. Now her voice came out thin and shaky.

Something burst outside.

Jeongwoo turned from the window. In the middle of the parking lot, the asphalt had cracked. As the crack spread open, blue light leaked out, and out of that light, something crawled.

A dog. Except it was the size of a calf, its gray body without a single hair, and three eyes set in its face.

"...What the hell is that."

Mansik got to his feet, an empty noodle cup still in his fist, and glared out the window.

The three-eyed dog lifted its head. It looked toward the center. Directly at the break-room window.

Sniff. Sniff.

It was smelling them.

"Everyone, away from the window."

Jeongwoo's voice was the same as always. The same voice he used to tell Boram eggs go in Zone B in front of the racks. For seven years, people in this center had moved when they heard that voice, and they moved now.

"Boram, kill the lights. Rajiv, lock the door. Hyung—"

"I'll call the center manager."

"Okay."

Mansik picked up his phone. It rang. Once. Twice.

"...Yeah, Manager. There's something in the lot—what? What? ...Right."

Mansik hung up. His face looked strange.

"What'd he say?"

"Says he's driving out right now."

"Where?"

"Home."

"...His car's in the parking lot."

Jeongwoo and Mansik looked out the window at the same moment.

At the far end of the lot, in the manager's reserved spot, a gray sedan's headlights came on. The engine turned over. The sedan reversed, swung a wide arc around the three-eyed dog, and tore off toward the exit.

The dog turned its head. It looked at the sedan.

And it ran.

"...Manager."

Rajiv spoke quietly.

"There is a Korean proverb. The one who runs is caught first."

"That's not a proverb."

"It is not?"

"...It's not wrong, though."

The sedan shot out the exit. The dog followed. A horn faded into the distance.

Silence settled over the break room.

Ding-dong.

【Survivor confirmed. Granting unique skill.】

This time the window floated in the air right in front of Jeongwoo's face, like the sky window shrunk to the size of a palm.

Boram's phone made the first noise. She'd left a livestream running to watch the aurora. On some apartment rooftop, the camera that had been pointed at the sky suddenly swung around, and the streamer's palm filled the screen. Fire flickered above it.

"[Flame]! I got [Flame]! This is real! It's hot—it's actually hot!"

The chat scrolled like crazy.

got [Swordsmanship] lmao picked up a broom and my body just went into a stance

im [Healing] and the cut on my finger literally just closed

WTF me too [Flame] ending stream gotta go put out the fire

Boram looked from her phone to the window in front of her and back, then shrieked.

"Oh my god! Oh my god! I got [Analyze]! Boss, I got [Analyze]! That's an information-type, right? This is insane!"

Mansik scowled at the window in front of him. "...[Forklift]?"

Rajiv read his politely. "[Cooking]. It means I must cook? Now?"

Jeongwoo looked at his own window.

【Unique Skill: [Tidy Up] (Lv. 1)】

【Description: Sorts and stacks objects within your field of view.】

"..."

"Boss, what'd you get? What is it? Combat-type? Or—"

Boram leaned in. Read the window. Three seconds of silence. On the phone in her hand, flames were still leaping off somebody's palm.

"...Tidy Up?"

"Yep."

"That's it?"

"Yep."

"Boss."

"Yep."

"That's a trash skill."

Jeongwoo looked down at the window. Tidy Up. Sorts and stacks objects within your field of view.

He'd done that every night for seven years.

Something howled outside. It sounded like a dog, but deeper in the throat. Another crack in the parking lot was spreading open, and beside it, one more split apart.

Jeongwoo pulled the pen from behind his ear and gripped it.

Then he looked at the break-room floor. Between the spoon Rajiv had dropped and the bag Boram had tossed down, Mansik's noodle cup—knocked over when he set it down—was rolling around.

His skin itched.

"...Guess I'll try it."

Jeongwoo muttered.

【Using [Tidy Up].】

The things on the floor began to move.

☾