Yeung-Sung held a clipboard at an angle against his forearm. He had just finished drawing a building plan of the storefront. Stretching as she approached, Woo-Yi peered over at it.

“What’s that?” she asked, pointing.

He set the slope of it flat against his chest and reddened. “We’re going to make a plan.”

“Oh? So, maybe you should show me then?” she teased. “Or are you worried that your art doesn’t hold up to your leadership skills?”

“Woo-Yi,” he moaned, trying to side-step her. He tapped the sheet, which made a satisfying ‘flap’. “We need to figure what needs to be done to make the store presentable. And how.” His arms sagging around his design, he decided, reluctantly, to show her. He turned it around but took a sidelong glance, ignoring a certain someone’s muffled laughter.

“First off, all of the stockroom will be sectioned off like so. And the -seriously, grow up!”

“Sorry, sorry. It’s been a while since I’ve seen anything so…”

“Terrible?”

“No. I was going to say, um -simple, I guess.” She grinned like an innocent child, stroked a hand down her neck nervously.

“That’s not much better,” Yeung-Sung said, turning and bolting towards the entryway of the stockroom.

“You’d be surprised,” Woo-Yi yelled out as she caught up. Yeung-Sung paused by the door and she had to pull herself back from hitting him. “It’s definitely not something that we get a lot of around here.” He caught her glancing down to where she kept her phone. Calming down from her erratic laughter, she took a deep breath and stated, in a voice well trained, well-practiced, “It’s not easy to make a difficult thing seem simple.”

He looked up from his plans and smiled half-heartedly. “Well, that’s disappointing, isn’t it?” he stated, after which there was an awkward moment, in which their faces grew hot like untamed kettles. Yeung-Sung broke the tension first and walked further inside, letting his cheek settle. But then, he thought he saw movement in the store again -like in the beginning- but he squeezed his eyelids shut, wringing the illusions from them so hard that they watered up. He had to wipe them, so he kept walking and quickly did so, with the lavender sleeve of his hoodie, careful that he wasn’t seen by Woo-Yi. This is all moving too fast.

It was simply impossible not to be sceptical. So many uncertainties. There was so much that Yeung-Sung had heard about the colony yet not acquainted himself with -I can’t believe I let Simon distract me with this grocery project when I haven’t so much as made my Airgead account yet! Supposedly, it was a thoughtful gesture. Was it? Or, was he being manipulated into fitting in? Was Simon, and by extension GLI luring him into conformation via experiencing their members testaments, as if this remote utopia was at all sustainable?

Cautiously, he checked over behind himself. He fondly watched as Woo-Yi merrily skipped around, following the layout of his stockroom plan perfectly. Apparently, she had already memorized it, Yeung-Sung realized, feeling a stab of justification.

She did seem happy here, which made Yeung-Sung feel both relieved and also made him more suspicious. She was satisfied here. How could a mega-popstar find contentment in this zen hellhole? There wasn’t even a grocery store -so she volunteered to help set it up! The things that he had seen here were simply incomprehensible, irreconcilable to Yeung-Sung. Not after living a life after the crash. No, he had decided, it was impossible.

When Woo-Yi noticed Yeung-Sung’s attention on her lingering for a little too long, he decided to seek some answers yet again. “Do you like it here, Woo-Yi?”

“Yeah,” she replied without hesitation, “The people are actually really nice here, for the most part. I don’t have to worry about being a target.”

Yeung-Sung swallowed. I guess that makes sense. She would be safer here, if that’s her main concern.

With a wind up, she bounded towards the door, still talking at the same level. Yet, with her natural tendency to project she was still easy to hear. “It was weird not having security for a while, I’ll admit. It took some…getting used to, but eventually I came to really enjoy it here. I have so much time to just work on my craft, on the things I want to do,”. Pivoting, she strutted back and jumped into a pose, mimicking it from an old poster Yeung-Sung recognised. “You know?”

She stood there nodding as Yeung-Sung hung his head. “Yup, I knew it. You were a pretty big fan, weren’t you, Yeung-Sung?”

Yeung-Sung locked his molars like seismic plates. “You were kind of everywhere. It was hard to avoid you unless you had an ad-blocker for just about every site.”

Her earrings chimed in rhythm to her giggling. “Well, I would’ve been disappointed if you didn’t know that move.” She stretched out her arms and performed a slanted twirl on one foot. “I’m pretty proud of that show. One of the last good ones, if I’m honest.”

Yeung-Sung cocked his head slightly, “you mean it doesn’t annoy you?”

“Annoy me?” she asked as she slowed her spin to a stop like she ran out of battery. “Nah, it’s nice to be recognised. In the colony, people have come from all over the world. You’ve seen Simon; not only are the researchers foreigners, everyone else is too.”

“So how many Koreans live here?” Yeung-Sung then asked.

Woo-Yi narrowed her eyebrows, “Would it surprise you that it’s just the two of us?” She laughed. “What do you think was the real reason that I came over to help you today, on your first day in the colony? Do I give off an ‘amazing customer service’ vibe?”

Yeung-Sung fumbled for words. But it was soon clear to him that she didn’t want a reply. It all makes a lot more sense. He bowed, thanking her, then a realisation dawned on him. “So you’re not going to stay working here?”

Woo-Yi shook her head and came closer. She set her hand his shoulder and rubbed it against the hoodie he was wearing. “Don’t be silly. A deal is a deal. I’ll be here”.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

He stared deeply into her eyes. She seemed genuine to Yeung-Sung, which was a relief; he was starting to acknowledge the fact that her presence was growing on him. He saw that Woo-Yi was looking back at him with lips parted, waiting for a response. “I’ll take your word for it”, he said quietly.

Yeung-Sung drew back at the same time as he was pushed away. The two both looked at each other with the same, shocked, surprised-at-themselves expression. Yeung-Sung’s eyes darted away from her. “I’m not that kind of fan.”

Without the usual force of wit that accompanied her retorts she said, “I’ll…take your word for it.”

Yeung-Sung began orbiting around her and quickly changed topics into something that he had been wondering about before. “When we were on our way here, Simon told me that there were a thousand people in the colony. Exactly.”

Woo-Yi’s posture became straight, angular. “Oh? Okay, sure”, she commented, “So what?” Her head followed as Yeung-Sung waltzed the stockroom around her in circles.

“That’s a good amount of people, Woo-Yi,” he said. Wrinkling his forehead, he tried to address the core of his suspicion. “Yet this morning,” he stopped as he said it, “I saw no one in the streets.”

Woo-Yi laughed. Yeung-Sung did not find her lack of seriousness amusing. “Is Airgead like a full-time job for some people? An, an economic activity that has them tied to their phone playing a game, each day, for their whole lives to get ahead? Is that what this is, an addiction that feeds the basis of a civilisation?”

Woo-Yi had stopped laughing, and as it was his own head that was spinning now, she seem to come at him from every direction as she knocked him over the head with the blade of her palm.

“Seriously, she sighed, “You’re way over thinking this considering that you haven’t even opened your phone once.” Bent over from the impact, Yeung-Sung glanced up, rubbing his scalp. He caught Woo-Yi as she gave her own face a sobering slap and groaned, “I can’t believe I got stuck with such a paranoid idiot”.

Yeung-Sung felt his fury opening up over his pain. “Well no one seems to be willing to explain the situation outright. All I want to do is make an informed decision!”

“Oh god, stop whining -Fine!” Woo-Yi snapped at him. She skipped over towards some nearby scaffolding and made herself comfortable, lying back with her forearms behind her balancing her body. In the back of Yeung-Sung’s head, he thought that she only took that position so that she would have a hard time hitting him again.

Woo-Yi stared up at the beams that ribbed the ceiling above, wide enough that they looked prepared enough for God’s wrath to pound down upon them. “Is Airgead a full-time job for some people? Yes”. She brought her gaze back down again. “But it is the day after the reset,” she said. She stared at him as if that answer was satisfactory.

He flinched. She must be doing this on purpose. That or she’s extremely short sighted. To his left was a box filled compostable bags. He snatched up a roll of the filmy, moss-coloured stuff and muttered, “I give up”, as he strode past Woo-Yi, back out to the main store.

Tearing off his first bag Yeung-Sung flapped it open and began to work through the first aisle, filling the bag with debris, ancient packets and whatever else had been trashed here years ago. His nose was hot with the heat of his frustration. Day after the reset? What’s being reset? What does that have to do with anything? Why am I expected to know that, Woo-Yi? Moving quickly through, hunching and scooping, hunching and scooping, he was turning into the second aisle in no time when Woo-Yi appeared in front of him.

“Okay, I guess you wouldn’t have understood that.”

Ignoring her, Yeung-Sung continued his pouncing work into the next aisle. She followed him, whipping her hands out as she tried to explain herself. “You haven’t experienced it yet. I get it, sorry for being so snide about it. Yeung-Sung -Yeung-Sung? Come back -I’m apologising”. Leaving her behind as he moved on, he heard her let out a howl of frustration -and smiled to himself. She quickly trotted back to him.

“Alright, I’ll explain,” she said, her words coming out of her in a flurry, “When each version of Airgead is reset, well, there’s this big rush to see who can breach the first few milestones.”

Yeung-Sung peered back for a moment, interested, before continuing to heartlessly clean up.

“-To umm, make that first impact into the economy. They call it a ‘head start’. A lot of, like, political power comes from that. You want to be the player that cracked initial strategy, most do anyway. It basically ensures that you get invited to work with the best factions -though who that is changes all the time.”

Yeung-Sung had swept into the final aisle now and was slowing down. His binbag was full and he had worked up a sweat in that sprint of activity. Woo-Yi didn’t stop thought. She moaned every time he cut into the corner and cut her off, and crept up behind him now, panting through her explanation, “That’s why you didn’t see anyone this morning, Yeung-Sung. That’s also why you don’t need to worry about selling anything today; no one has won the first medal.” Bent over with her hands by her sides, she gathered her breath at the end of her run, which was at the start of the store. Yeung-Sung could barely hold back the smugness he was feeling.

“It’s not always like this, but right now, yes, almost everyone in the colony is holed up in their rooms desperately attempting to be the first person to create the initial flood of money,” she finished.

Yeung-Sung fumbled with knotting the bag when he decided to acknowledge her again. “But not you?”

Woo-Yi pushed herself straight off her knees, confusion swirling in her face until she realised that he had in fact been listening. Smiling again, a little strength of wit had entered her voice again, “I’m not that competitive, I guess.”

Yeung-Sung took a final look at the store, still struggling to feel optimistic for its future. “I see,” he nodded and turned out towards the entrance. “Won’t that be a disadvantage, then” he asked. For both of us?

“I’ll find my niche somewhere to keep me afloat,” Woo-Yi said, her statement brimming with the hopefulness that eluded Yeung-Sung. She walked up to his level and they exited the store side by side. “And I’ll work here too.”

“Thanks,” he said without thinking, losing his façade of anger. He stared out over the overripe horizon, adding, “I’d like that.”

After that, they both agreed that there was too much work to be done in just one day and instead made a list (Which Woo-Yi wrote on her phone) for next time. By then, the sunlight that had been streaming in had settled, dissipating through a lens of cloud, and the two Korean natives stood outside the entrance, read to leave their grocery store, which was yet unnamed.

Staring across the road, Yeung-Sung shook his head at the surreal architectural backdrop; the red-brick residential areas clustering around bone-white giants that were the GLI apartment blocks. The old thinning itself out with the new clawing its way up through it.

“What else have they built aside from the apartments? “he asked Woo-Yi. “A thousand people and no grocery store until now… doesn’t make sense to me.”

Woo-Yi was too busy beating the dust from her shirt; a short thing patterned with branching swirls of lilac and orange flames that matched her hair. She took the hairclip that was in her mouth and put it through one of her bangs to support it. “I can show you around if you like, to most places”.

She stretched her wiry arms and flexed her legs, standing on her tippy toes. “A few of the facilities are off-site, and I don’t think the autocar service is back on yet -I know there was an incident last night- but all the good stuff is nearby.”

Yeung-Sung hesitated at the autocars.

“It’ll be fun!” Woo-Yi exclaimed.

“Are- are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Woo-Yi replied, springing up with her freshly stretched limbs. “Now would be the perfect time,” she said, coming in close and folding her hands around his with glee, “Nobody’s around to bother us, as you said yourself. Let’s go, tour time!”

Yeung-Sung was about to pull away, to protest against going and insist that they could go another time -but he didn’t. He had been doubting everything she said up to this point, as per each pint of her mirth was this piercing pinch that tasted of sorrow. But when she suggested that they go around the colony together, the flavour of her joy was pure. So he let himself be dragged forward. They would see the colony, together.