Chapter 5

March 4, 2029

Somewhere North of Seoul, Korea

The ride was long and silent. Even the children were quiet.

The bus rumbled down wide roads that narrowed into hills and open land. I watched the scenery blur: smooth highways, flickering signs in Korean, the spread of the city falling away behind us. The further we went, the more the world seemed to unwind. Space opened up. The air felt different. When we finally slowed, the sky was beginning to shift into the smooth orange of evening. We turned onto a gravel road, and a cluster of white tents came into view. A camp, large, orderly, and temporary. The kind of place built to hold people like us. As the bus doors opened and people began to step out, I stayed frozen for a second. Then I followed. My feet touched the gravel, and I was here, wherever here was. The camp buzzed with life: voices, rustling tarps, the low hum of generators. It smelled like dust and plastic. We were told to line up and wait for registration. I stood near the front, looking around, trying not to feel lost. When my turn came, a young Korean woman with kind eyes asked my name. "Shimizu Yuki," I said. She typed it into a tablet and asked a few more questions: age, place of origin, any relatives with me. I gave quiet, simple answers. She handed me a wristband and a slip of paper with a tent number scribbled on it. "You're in C-17. Someone will show you where it is." I nodded and stepped aside, clutching the paper like it might explain everything. That's when I saw him. He stood a few meters away, near one of the larger tents, half-hidden behind a row of crates. He couldn't have been much older than me, maybe seventeen. His hair was dark, cropped short, and he wore a faded jacket that didn't quite fit. He looked tired. Worn down. But not in the same way the others did. There was something different about him. His eyes met mine for just a second, barely long enough to mean anything. But it did. I didn't know his name or where he was from. I didn't know that he spoke a different language, or that he was supposed to be someone I should never have met. All I knew was that in a place full of strangers, he felt like the first familiar thing.