My name is Kyong. (Kyong = brightness)

I introduced myself to people like this.

With such a positive name, my initial appearance can seem a little daunting to some.

My life was extremely boring.

In a nutshell, it was like this. I was Namgung Kyong, aged 25, and extremely single. I had no aspirations for the future nor did I have any hobbies or activities I liked doing. All I enjoyed was being isolated. An ordinary person with a much lower sense of sociality.

"Tch, what on earth is he even doing?" The woman next to me muttered under her breath, her frustration evident in her alluring eyes as she glared at her smartphone. Her pale fingers tapped impatiently as she tried to dial the number yet again. "This is just typical. He never answers when I need him."

She sighed inwardly, rubbing her temples with both hands. "I swear, if he's out doing something useless again, I'm going to lose it. I need to talk to him about this, and he's just not there."

Her eyes flicked back to the screen, hoping for some sign of a missed call or a message. Instead, the voicemail greeting played once more, adding to her mounting exasperation. She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself, but it was clear that her patience was wearing thin.

"Oh, it's you."

Gu Eun-Kyung. As her name would suggest, she was practically a gem — dynamic and charming, with a magnetic presence that drew people in without effort. She had a natural confidence and social ease that made her the unofficial face of the marketing department, always ready with a quick laugh or a comforting word for colleagues. Practically, she was a welcome contrast to my introverted, detached demeanor.

She ignored me. Her vibrancy yet again shone through every action, even in her current irritation. "There's no way he's ghosting me again!" she mumbled, still fixated on the bright screen of her smartphone, while I barely suppressed a sigh. Though we worked in the same company, our personalities couldn't have been more different.

While I preferred to keep a low profile, Eun-Kyung seemed to thrive in the spotlight. She was the type of person who could juggle half a dozen tasks, maintain a social life, and still find time to catch up with everyone at work. Exactly, what?

Yet despite her lively demeanor, she somehow never failed to catch me off-guard with her occasional sharpness. "Why can't you just relax?" I suggested softly, though I already knew it was a futile attempt.

Eun-Kyung shot me a glance, her lips tightening, but there was no venom. "Relax?" she echoed. "I wish! You know how it is, Kyong. If something isn't done right, the blame always rolls downhill. And I'm not going to be crushed by this mess."

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With literally no clue of what she was referring to, I admitted defeat. "Yes, yes."

This was my daily walk home. Eun-Kyung lived a mere two blocks down from my own abode. She was the single continuous burst of energy in my otherwise monotonous routine. Whether I wanted it or not, she often found a way to walk alongside me, venting her frustrations or talking about her latest projects. Not that I minded, though. It filled the silence that usually consumed my life.

Eun-Kyung paused, narrowing her eyes. "You didn't hear a word I said, did you?"

I blinked. "Of course I did."

She raised an eyebrow, clearly unconvinced but too tired to argue further. "Fine, whatever. Anyway, I'm just saying, if he doesn't get back to me soon, I'll have to handle it myself. As usual."

Yup. I had no idea what she was babbling about.

Her words floated around me, but I found myself more focused on the rhythm of our footsteps against the pavement. This was part of our dynamic — her talking, me nodding.

"... well, that's about it." Her constant barrage of simple vocabulary came to a stop. Ah, seemed she was done talking. The awkward silence was filled with the sounds of hundreds of vehicles driving past us and the crowd of people going to their own homes after finishing a long day's work.

The silence continued for a moment. For some reason, her pair of glinting yet gentle eyes were stuck on my face, as if searching for something beneath my usual indifference. It was unlike her to linger in silence, and for a brief second, I wondered if I had missed something important in her stream of words.

At a single glance, I could understand why so many would submit to that face. I replied, "Sorry, I spaced out. What's up?"

"... Nothing much."

The tension of the conversation was building at a rapid pace, so I took the initiative to change the topic. Rather, just escape the conversation as a whole. "Oh. It's my turn. Well, bye." That was how my life was. Unintentional insolence and awkward isolation. Everyone in life had a set path paved for them. Just as you couldn't swap lanes in the middle of a bowling game, you couldn't make a complete U-turn in the direction of your life.

However, as soon as I turned around, a bloodcurdling shriek, which I swore I could only hear in my nightmares, resonated throughout the filled streets of Seoul. It was nothing less than the start of my nightmares.

In the middle of the sidewalk, a darkness darker than a black hole — maybe the size of a volleyball — had appeared. People around it dumbfoundedly stared at it. Confusion was the only possible emotion that could be felt at the current time.

This was followed by curiousity. A group of spectators walked up to it as they reached out to this dark 'ball'. Then, it was terror. The portions of the limbs that had gone into the black sphere had completely disappeared. Not burned off, nor cut off. It was as if the limbs were turned to nothing and simply ceased to exist. After the sphere had 'absorbed' the limbs, it seemed to grow in size.

Horrific howls came from those who had lost their body parts. Pandemonium quickly spread across the busy streets of peak-hour Seoul. The lighthearted music playing on the loudspeakers nearby had been completely masqueraded by the spine-chilling shrieks of the majority.

But I was frozen in place. I didn't know why. It was like an eerie familiarity to that 'object'. Could I say it that way? Is it even right to call it an 'object'? I didn't know. However, my instincts were clearly roaring at me that this would be the end of my current lifestyle.

The start of the apocalypse.