Chapter 1

A New Year's Greeting from an Unemployed Youth

Just as I was about to throw away my military uniform in my eighth year as a reservist, the Republic of Korea's final emergency reserve mobilization text message arrived.

January 1, 2028.

A new year had dawned.

Two months earlier, the company I worked for had gone under, and I had been forcibly transformed into an unemployed youth. This was the new beginning of Baek Jemin.

On the morning of the new year, I threw open the windows that I normally never even bothered to ventilate through and dusted every corner of my apartment with a feather duster.

"Huuaaagh—! Cough, hack!"

A clump of dust floated through the air and flew straight into my mouth, causing quite a bit of suffering, but since I'd resolved to clean diligently in the new year, I refused to back down.

Next came mopping.

Usually, I'd only give visible surfaces a quick wipe with a wet tissue, but today was New Year's Day. I even moved the furniture out of the way so I could clean every nook and cranny.

The only unfortunate thing was that I didn't actually own a rag for mopping.

In the end, because Daiso wasn't open, the grimiest-looking towel I could find was promoted to mop duty.

After finishing the cleaning, enjoying a leisurely cup of coffee, and taking a short break, it was finally time to sort through the clothes piled up in the corner of my closet.

A plaid button-up shirt?

I'd worn it because my mother bought it for me, but after six years the collar was so frayed and tattered that even she would've told me to throw it away immediately.

Old-fashioned jeans that required a belt?

In 2025, I had discovered the marvel of elastic-waist jeans. You just slipped your legs in and tightened the waistband like tying a taekwondo belt. Why would I voluntarily go back to the hassle of clanking around with an actual belt?

Ankle socks?

I'd bought those when they were trendy, only to discover that my Achilles tendon kept rubbing painfully against my shoes. They'd been buried away ever since.

There was far more useless stuff than I'd expected.

Just as a maple tree sheds its leaves to prepare for renewal, I stuffed my old clothes into plastic bags by the armful.

Then I found something that naturally filled me with nostalgia and regret.

It was something I'd carefully kept despite constantly grumbling about it.

"Ugh. I'm finally throwing this damned thing away."

My combat uniform and combat boots.

I'd gotten them when I was discharged from the military, and only now—eight years later—was I getting rid of them. Since I'd been discharged in January, it felt like I'd served an extra year of reserve duty.

Of course, when I'd first walked out wearing them after discharge, I'd felt incredibly secure.

But after years of drinking in the bitterness of civilian life, the uniform and boots had become nothing more than cumbersome baggage I had to drag around every time I moved.

My friends said I could've thrown them away after my seventh year as a reservist, but between cowardice and laziness, I'd put it off until now.

I deliberately fetched a large plastic bag, stuffed the boots inside, and looked down at them with a mixture of affection and resentment.

Then I blinked.

"Come to think of it, this is technically military gear. Can I really just throw it away?"

I'd originally planned to stuff it into a clothing donation bin, but I changed my mind.

I pulled out my phone and looked it up.

Sure enough, I was supposed to remove the shoulder patches, name tags, and other insignia, cut the uniform in half, and dispose of it in a standard trash bag—or return it to the local reserve unit.

The problem was that I had just run out of garbage bags.

Apparently the boots could simply be thrown away, but seeing the uniform left behind all by itself felt strangely depressing.

Besides, even straw sandals come in pairs. Combat uniforms and combat boots were obviously a matched set. If I couldn't send them off together, I didn't want to separate them into different garbage bags.

Such was the rich sensitivity of Baek Jemin.

"Ah, screw it. Whatever."

I'd already fussed over it enough.

Forget New Year's resolutions.

How was I supposed to deal with this annoying nonsense on January 1st—my birthday and a precious national holiday?

Since my birthday was January 1st, I was now twenty-eight years old by international age. Sure, every day was basically a holiday for an unemployed man like me, but a person's pride was another matter.

I could feel someone looking at me.

I answered that gaze with a bright smile and a cheerful greeting.

"Happy New Year!"

Sleeping while others worked and playing while others played—that was unemployment.

But working while others played and sleeping while others slept? That wasn't unemployment. That was just being a diligent young man.

I shoved the bag containing the uniform and boots back into the corner of the closet and resumed cleaning.

Even after separating out only the clothes that could be immediately dropped into the donation bin, the bags were heavy enough that I had to make several trips.

I wasn't foolish enough to try carrying everything at once.

What did unemployed Baek Jemin have in abundance?

Time.

If I could spend time to reduce my suffering, that was simply rational.

After making three or four trips between my studio apartment and the clothing donation bin, the building caretaker, who'd been smoking nearby, looked at me with a pitiful expression.

"Sheesh. Well, Happy New Year. Hope everything works out for you."

Once I put the furniture back in place and looked around at my freshly cleaned apartment, I felt oddly proud.

In reality, all I'd done was clean.

Yet it felt as though I'd accomplished something remarkable.

Enjoying that strange sense of fulfillment, I sat down at my computer.

"I've lived properly and responsibly from the very first day of the year. This is a great start."

It was time to reward myself for faithfully carrying out my New Year's resolution.

I'd only been unemployed for two months.

I wasn't some veteran bum who'd been unemployed for years. At only two months in, I was still a fresh-faced rookie.

Smiling in satisfaction at my achievement, I logged into Discord, where the veteran unemployed men were already waiting and turned on their microphones.

[Happy New Year.]

[Happy New Year, hyung.]

"Yeah. Happy New Year, everyone."

But among all the people glued to Discord, there were none more knowledgeable about politics and current affairs than our band of long-term unemployed experts.

The casual small talk quickly shifted to the hottest topic of recent days.

[More importantly, they say the fog around Seoul is getting thicker and thicker. Visibility has already dropped to around thirty meters in some places. People are even saying traffic restriction zones should be declared.]

"Hey, this isn't Seoul. Why are you so obsessed with Seoul when you live in Gyeonggi Province?"

[Hyung, you still need to keep up with current events. Besides, nobody knows what's causing the fog, and some people say it could spread into Gyeonggi too. And restriction zones have already been established in some areas.]

"No, what's the point of talking about something when the conclusion is so vague? So what? Did they figure out the cause?"

The cause was the strange fog that had begun creeping into parts of Seoul around late November 2027.

It really was fog.

Not frost, but damp, clammy fog that had been spreading throughout Seoul's urban districts, pushing people's anxiety to the breaking point.

Naturally, from that point on, meteorologists and various experts appeared in the media, offering calm and plausible explanations.

According to them, the fog was a localized phenomenon caused by climate change on the Korean Peninsula, with actual temperatures becoming milder and humidity rising despite what people perceived.

Of course, this seemingly reasonable explanation failed to stitch together the common sense of a public that had already been torn apart.

Even the differences between us veteran unemployed youths and me, a fresh unemployed rookie, couldn't easily be reconciled. At least we could still have a conversation.

[Remember those trucks that used to drive around spraying white mist everywhere? What if it's something like that? Maybe some deadly invasive insect got into the country and they're conducting extermination operations.]

[Then they should tell us what the insect is first. This is one hundred percent some kind of experiment. What if they're mixing tiny amounts of psychoactive drugs into the fog and gradually addicting everyone? You know what comes next.]

[Hey, why do you only talk down to me?]

[Because we're friends. Jemin-hyung isn't there yet.]

Watching the guy who was clearly waiting for any excuse to drop the honorifics and start calling me "hey" and "you," I vowed never to become any closer to him.

Still, he was relatively normal.

Whenever I looked around to see if there was any new information or incident involving the fog, the comment sections were almost always filled with people fighting.

The Deep State has finally started population control.

North Korea or China is conducting biochemical warfare, and the government has already been infiltrated and is covering it up.

It's a scheme to lower Seoul housing prices.

Climate change itself is a lie, so how do you explain the fog?

This is proof of climate change, so we need even stronger environmental policies.

In the end, everyone had already decided on their own conclusions.

And the conclusion reached by Baek Jemin was this:

"So why are people in Gyeonggi worrying about Seoul residents? Hey, boot up the game."

Of course, that wasn't my real conclusion.

My actual conclusion was more fundamental.

After spending the last two months as a freshly unemployed man, rolling around doing nothing, I'd realized one thing:

At this rate, I'd end up becoming one of those veteran unemployed guys and spend years lazing around.

I didn't have time to worry about fog.

At least, not until I stayed up gaming all night and reached dawn.

Bzzzzzz—

A loud vibration echoed through my headset.

Having stayed awake all night on a single can of Monster, I slowly blinked my exhausted eyes.

"What is it?"

[You have a phone too, idiot.]

"I don't want to take my eyes off the monitor."

[Nothing major. Just another disaster alert about the traffic restriction zones caused by the Seoul fog.]

"God damn it."

Seoul was over two hours away. Why were disaster alerts making every smartphone in Gyeonggi Province vibrate?

I checked the time.

4:53 a.m.

January 2nd.

Thinking about all the Gyeonggi residents who were probably asleep, preparing for work while still basking in the sweetness of the holiday, filled me with righteous indignation.

Then a comment hit my ears and instantly wiped away my drowsiness.

[Hyung. I think this one's serious.]

"What?"

[Apparently they've confirmed murder cases inside the fog restriction zones. The bodies were already somewhat decomposed, and there have been over two hundred missing-person reports filed during the last two months. People are saying the Seoul police can't handle it alone anymore.]

Gulp.

Someone swallowed nervously through their headset.

Without realizing it, I turned my head and glanced out the window.

[There was apparently a debate in the National Assembly about deploying military personnel to maintain public order. The opposing side accused them of creating a sense of crisis or preparing for a coup. The revelation came out recently, but apparently the argument happened a month ago. They're already pulling soldiers under the name of civilian volunteer support and using them to assist the police, yet they're still talking about manpower shortages.]

[What a load of crap.]

Outside, dawn was only beginning to break.

I lived in a relatively remote area rather than a busy part of Gyeonggi, so aside from the streetlights there were barely any cars around. There was a small town about ten minutes away, but at this hour it was always quiet.

The only light still on belonged to my room.

[And now they're saying the National Assembly even discussed mobilizing reservists. This part is still just an unverified rumor, though...]

"What reservists? No way."

[Yeah. It's not like there's a war. Who mobilizes reservists for something like this? Have they lost their minds?]

"Exactly. Since when do you mobilize reservists because there's a little fog in Seoul? That's complete nonsense."

[Hyungs, I said it's just a rumor. It just shows how serious the fog problem has become. Some areas already have travel restrictions because the fog is so thick that even CCTV cameras can't see through it.]

It was around then.

From the dim world outside the window, amid the occasional passing vehicles, a heavy rumbling noise reached my ears.

A convoy of military trucks had appeared on the road.

Three two-and-a-half-ton trucks rolled down the road in formation through the predawn darkness.

Even from my second-floor studio apartment, I could clearly see soldiers wearing helmets, full combat gear, and carrying rifles, packed into the truck beds like sardines as they bounced helplessly with every bump.

Clunk. Clunk.

The uniquely unpleasant sound of military trucks settled into the air and seemed to penetrate even through my headset.

It wasn't loud like a horn or sharp like an alarm.

Yet it pressed heavily against the back of my mind.

At the same time, I felt both an inexplicable unease and a sense of relief.

Turning back to my monitor, I said,

"Right. We've got our brave young active-duty soldiers. Why would reservists ever need to get involved? Reservist old-timers like us shouldn't even be riding two-and-a-half-ton trucks anymore. We'd feel guilty taking up the space, so we'll just walk ourselves to the rear."

Reflexively, I checked the time.

5:03 a.m.

Before going to sleep, despite not believing in any particular god, I decided to pray to whoever might be listening.

Please, if you're going to mobilize reservists, do it next year.

***

Nothing happened.

Our group disbanded amid an awkward silence, and I no longer felt like touching my computer. I threw myself onto my soft mattress instead.

And then came January 6th.

Baek Jemin found himself heading to his reserve unit wearing the very combat uniform and boots he'd been planning to throw away.

As I stood blankly at a crosswalk, a man across from me swayed lazily in a sloppily worn uniform, looking as though he couldn't be bothered with anything in life.

Judging by his direction, he was probably heading to the convenience store behind me to buy cigarettes.

I understood exactly how he felt.

I raised the smartphone in my hand and stared at it in disbelief.

[Due to the disturbances occurring throughout Seoul as a result of the fog, the Executive Branch has requested approval from the National Assembly for a mobilization order despite strong opposition... The National Assembly has attached a temporary condition limiting the order until Seoul's economic paralysis is resolved...]

Eighth year reservist.

My final reserve duty of my life had arrived.