Chapter 13 — The Stories People Tell Themselves
The plaza was cleaned by morning.
That was the first miracle.
Not that the dead rose or the Gate rewound itself neatly back into sky-blue fabric — those would have been lesser wonders. The true miracle was that by sunrise, the city wore a face again.
Water cannons had washed the red away.
Cracked paving stones lay under neat orange cones.
Screens played advertisements on schedule, as if nothing had ever tried to crawl through them into a softer world.
The world was very good at cleaning.
Not just blood.
Meaning.
News vans stood in a loose semicircle at the designated safe perimeter. Reporters wore the solemn faces people practiced in mirrors the night before big funerals. They spoke into microphones as if delivering prayers.
"—unexpected gas main explosion—"
"—possible terrorist involvement still under investigation—"
"—authorities urge calm—"
"—unrelated animal attack reports—"
Every sentence curved carefully around the truth like water around stone.
No one said Gate.
Not yet.
A word, once spoken properly, cannot be recalled. It lives in people's mouths afterward. It finds resonance in those already afraid. Bureaucracies understood that much. They delayed words the way doctors delay diagnoses.
Kim Jae-hwan stood beyond the barrier and watched the broadcast play out in real time. A reporter's hair fluttered in the breeze, carefully styled to look like it wasn't. She stood with her back to the plaza, framing the shot so viewers could see cleaned concrete but not the memory of what it had held.
"…thanks to the rapid response of safety forces," she said, eyes bright with the adrenaline of proximity to disaster, "loss of life was minimized—"
He turned away before she finished the sentence.
Min-seok arrived five minutes later, moving with the clumsy energy of someone whose body had not yet accepted that it had survived.
He stopped beside Jae-hwan, hands buried deep in his pockets.
"They're calling it a gas event," he said.
"Yes."
"People were eaten."
"Yes."
Silence stretched between them.
Min-seok laughed once — a short, raw sound.
"Do they think we're stupid?"
"No," Jae-hwan said. "They hope you are tired."
Min-seok blinked.
"What?"
"Tiredness is more useful than stupidity," Jae-hwan continued. "Stupid people cause trouble. Tired people accept explanations."
Min-seok stared at the plaza again.
The wind picked up just enough to rattle police tape with a dry, plastic hiss.
"I keep… hearing it," he admitted quietly. "That sound it made inside my head. Like metal screaming through water."
"You will for a while."
"How long?" he whispered.
"Long enough."
They stood together, saying nothing, while workers in reflective vests pretended to measure neutral damage.
Students walked past on their way to cram school, eyes sliding over cordons, minds already learning to fold horror into routine. A boy snapped a picture, frowned at the lighting, deleted it, tried again, then left complaining about the filter.
The world practiced forgetting at industrial scale.
"Are you okay?" Min-seok asked suddenly.
It was a ridiculous question.
He asked it anyway.
Jae-hwan considered the truthful answer — not the one people usually gave out of courtesy.
"No," he said.
Min-seok nodded slowly, accepting that without flinching.
"Good," he said. "Because if you told me you were fine, I'd be more scared."
A small, honest smile flickered through Jae-hwan's mouth and disappeared before it could be named.
They left together.
---
School did not close.
Of course it didn't.
Schools were monuments to routine. Closing would have acknowledged catastrophe. Keeping it open implied control. Young people, administrators told each other in quiet meetings, needed stability.
Students sat at their desks like mismatched chess pieces after a careless game.
No one knew how to be normal.
They tried anyway.
The classroom buzzed with whispers that stopped abruptly whenever footsteps approached. Some students looked at Jae-hwan openly now, curiosity overpowering politeness. Others avoided his gaze like a light they weren't sure would burn.
Someone had already written his name on the bathroom wall.
HERO?
Someone else had added beneath it:
MONSTER?
Jae-hwan didn't care enough to feel insulted.
Labels were always assigned by people who arrived late to the story.
The teacher entered and began class.
His voice cracked on the first sentence.
He recovered, straightened his tie, and dove into lesson plans with the manic determination of someone building a shelter out of grammar rules. On the board, numbers made sense. Outside, the sky did not.
A rumor landed on Jae-hwan's desk in the form of a folded note.
He didn't open it immediately.
He could already guess its contents by the weight of eyes behind it.
When he unfolded it, the handwriting confirmed his prediction.
> Is it true?
Did you close it?
He refolded the paper neatly and placed it under his book without answering.
Some truths spread on their own; responding only accelerated them.
During the break between periods, someone finally spoke aloud.
A boy from another class, face pale with the earnest righteousness of recent terror, stood beside Jae-hwan's desk.
"You should… teach us," he said.
The room fell into immediate listening.
"Teach you what?" Jae-hwan asked calmly.
"How to not panic," the boy said. "How to… move. How you did."
Under different circumstances, that request would have been absurd.
Today, it felt rational.
Jae-hwan regarded him steadily.
"You don't learn not to panic," he said gently. "You learn what to do while panicking."
The boy nodded rapidly, relief flooding his expression as if simply hearing an answer had stitched a small seam back into place in the world.
"Will you?" he asked.
Min-seok watched from the next desk.
Ji-ah watched from across the room.
Silence weighed on the air.
He could lie.
He could agree and then never follow through.
He could refuse and let fear do what fear does best.
Instead, he said:
"After school. Gym storage. Don't tell everyone."
The boy bowed awkwardly.
"Thank you."
"Don't thank me," Jae-hwan replied. "Survival is your responsibility."
The boy didn't understand.
He would.
---
The Bureau came back that afternoon.
They didn't bother with subtlety this time.
Black vans.
Visible insignia.
Uniforms that announced authority without apology.
A murmur rippled through the school like wind through brittle grass. Students drifted to windows. Teachers tried to corral them with soft scolding and failed.
The announcement came over the intercom.
"Kim Jae-hwan. Yoo Ji-ah. Please report to the main office."
Min-seok made a strangled sound.
"Why Ji-ah?" he whispered.
"Because she didn't run," Jae-hwan said.
The hallway outside felt longer than usual.
They walked side by side, their footsteps echoing lightly on tile. Ji-ah didn't speak until they were almost at the office.
"They're going to ask what we felt," she said.
"Yes."
"And then what?"
"Decide who we belong to."
She looked at him sidelong.
"And who do we?"
He didn't answer immediately.
Ownership was a concept that had haunted every iteration — guilds, governments, corporations, movements, all trying to domesticate power as if leashes worked on storms.
"No one," he said at last.
She nodded once.
They entered the office.
The S-rank woman sat there again.
No pretense this time.
No softened posture.
Power occupied the room through her presence the way water fills the shape of its container. The principal hovered behind his desk like a man who had discovered a bomb politely drinking tea in his office and was too afraid to ask it to leave.
The woman gestured.
"Sit."
They sat.
She studied them both in silence for several heartbeats.
Then:
"You stayed," she said simply.
Ji-ah didn't look away. "Someone had to."
The woman's lips tightened — not a smile, but something adjacent to respect.
"You two will be placed on our 'provisional list,'" she continued. "This does not conscript you. It means we will monitor your development closely, provide training opportunities when legally appropriate, and expect situational compliance during national emergencies."
"Meaning," Jae-hwan said gently, "you'd like us to answer the phone when the world breaks."
"Yes."
"That's reasonable."
The principal looked relieved that someone had said so.
The woman turned back to him fully.
"You closed two anomalies now," she said. "Once by accident. Once by intention."
"Both by necessity," he replied.
She nodded.
"Your affinity profile is… unusual."
He waited.
She continued:
"Direct interface. Boundary stabilization through conceptual anchoring rather than brute force. You're not pushing the Gate closed, you're convincing reality it prefers its previous state."
"That sounds arrogant," he said.
"It sounds accurate," she replied.
Ji-ah watched the exchange with growing realization.
"What does that mean?" she asked.
The woman answered without hesitation.
"It means," she said, "that if Gates multiply faster than we can respond, people like him become the difference between managed disaster and uninhabitable city."
The room absorbed that quietly.
The principal swallowed.
Paperwork rustled somewhere as if bureaucracy needed to remind itself it existed.
The woman leaned forward slightly.
"There will be pressure," she said calmly. "From guilds. From us. From people who will treat you as savior. From people who will treat you as hazard. Decide now what you will accept. It is easier than deciding later."
He appreciated how she spoke to them.
Not to children.
Not to conscripts.
To pieces on the board old enough to understand the weight of movement.
"I have one condition," he said.
Her eyebrows rose a fraction.
"Name it."
"No lies."
She regarded him for a moment.
"About what?"
"About what is happening," he replied. "To the public. To the cities. To everyone."
The principal blanched.
The woman didn't.
"You are asking for transparency," she said.
"Yes."
"That is impossible."
"Yes."
They held each other's gaze.
"Why ask for what cannot be given?" she asked.
"So that when you fail to give it," he said quietly, "you know you are failing."
The room seemed to cool.
The woman sat back slowly.
"That," she said, "is extremely dangerous thinking."
"For whom?" he asked mildly.
She didn't answer.
She dismissed them with a nod.
"Go back to class," she said. "Pretend a little longer. It helps regulate the nervous system."
They left.
In the hallway, Ji-ah stopped him with a light touch on his sleeve.
"That was reckless," she said.
"Yes," he agreed.
"It was also right."
He didn't answer.
He didn't need to.
---
After school, the gym storage room smelled of dust and forgotten leather.
A dozen students had already gathered.
They tried very hard not to look like they were waiting for instruction. They leaned on walls. They tied shoelaces they had already tied. They scrolled through phones that had nothing new to say.
Their eyes betrayed them.
Ji-ah stood by the door, arms folded.
Min-seok distributed water bottles like they were ritual objects.
Jae-hwan stepped inside.
The room stilled.
He didn't raise his voice.
"Sit."
They did.
He looked at them.
Not as recruits.
Not as soldiers.
As people who had finally understood that tomorrow was not guaranteed and were still here anyway.
"What do you think I'm going to teach you?" he asked.
A boy answered immediately.
"How to fight."
"No," he said.
A girl tried again.
"How to be brave."
"No."
Silence.
He let it stretch.
"I'm going to teach you how to run," he said at last. "How to fall without breaking your neck. How to look at a crowd and know which direction won't kill you. How to breathe when your body is convinced you cannot."
They stared at him.
He continued:
"Bravery is not refusing to run. Bravery is choosing when to run and surviving long enough to regret it properly."
A few of them laughed weakly despite themselves.
He demonstrated simple things first.
How to keep low while moving.
How to avoid being trampled in a panic wave.
How to use corners to break line of sight.
How to break a grip without strength.
They followed awkwardly at first.
Bodies learned.
Minds resisted.
He saw something else happen, though — not in muscles, but in eyes.
Fear shifted.
Not gone.
No longer shapeless.
Fear that has shape can be carried.
Min-seok tripped twice and got back up three times.
Ji-ah moved like someone who had always known she would need to.
When they finished, they sat again, sweating and breathless.
He said one more thing.
"You are not responsible for saving strangers," he said quietly. "You are responsible for not becoming a corpse strangers have to step over to escape."
No one thanked him.
They didn't need to.
They left changed, not in ways visible to teachers who would see them again tomorrow, but in the subtle adjustment of how they inhabited their own bodies.
He remained alone with Ji-ah and Min-seok after the others filed out.
Min-seok spoke first.
"So… this is our life now?"
"No," Jae-hwan said. "This is the preface."
Ji-ah looked at him.
Something in her gaze had settled — like a coin finally lying flat after endless spinning.
"What are you planning?" she asked.
He considered lying.
He didn't.
"Contingency," he said. "For when institutions fail. For when information fails. For when people like us are asked to die politely so others may feel safe."
Min-seok swallowed.
"Do they really… expect that?"
"Yes."
Ji-ah didn't look angry.
She looked unsurprised.
The room darkened by degrees as the sun drifted down behind gym windows, shadows lengthening in calm increments across the floor.
The presence arrived again.
Close enough that his skin prickled, not from cold, but from pressure—air trying to make room where there was not supposed to be anything.
He didn't speak aloud.
What do you want? he asked silently.
The answer did not come in words.
It came in weight.
Expectation without demand.
Observation without mercy.
He understood then something new and unpleasant:
It didn't want to hurt him.
It wanted to see what he would do without being stopped.
He laughed softly, the sound barely audible.
"Of course," he murmured.
Ji-ah glanced at him.
"What?"
"Nothing," he said.
He lied again, this time gently.
They left the gym.
Night had fallen fully by the time he reached home.
The apartment felt smaller than usual, not because it had changed, but because he no longer fit its boundaries as neatly as before. He ate dinner. He listened to small sounds. He watched his sister pretend not to watch him.
He went to his room.
He closed the door.
He didn't turn on the light.
Outside, the sky lay dark and unbroken.
Inside, the world was already cracking in ways only a few could hear.
He whispered — not to the listener, not to fate, not to anyone in particular:
"Then let us both see how far this goes."
The darkness listened.