Ch. 1
“Every day it’s study, study! I’m so sick of it I could die!”
I shouted. Then, as always, Mom raised her voice to match mine.
Fighting with Mom was one of those things I couldn’t stop doing, no matter what.
“If it’s so embarrassing, why don’t you go find a smarter daughter? Oh, wait! I’ve got an idea! I’ll just disappear for you. That way, it’ll be so much easier for you! Who asked you to worry about someone like me? Who told you to have me? Did I ever ask for private lessons?”
Click.
I turned off my phone with a frustrated snap.
It was because she’d started saying the same annoying things she always did.
The daughter next door, the daughter of her coworker—every single one of them annoyed me.
It felt like, in her eyes, I was always an unsatisfactory person. The most unreliable human being in the world.
If that weren’t the case, how could she distrust me so much?
Even today was no different.
Normally, my day wouldn’t end until 11 p.m., after finishing academy classes and group tutoring. But today, the tutor canceled due to personal reasons.
For once, I could come home before sunset. When I called to let her know I’d be home early, Mom started yelling.
– Don’t lie. You probably skipped tutoring, didn’t you? What are you going to do if your grades drop compared to the group? Do you want to embarrass us?
I felt like Mom was the one who turned me into the worst child.
If embarrassment was such a big deal, why not just die? What’s the point of living?
Studying felt so empty and meaningless because I didn’t have anything I really wanted to do. According to Mom, I was just a clueless kid.
Honestly, I was sick of everything.
When I first entered high school, I was quite the honor student. But one day, I lost my way, and my grades started to plummet.
When my homeroom teacher asked me why I studied, everything felt so ridiculous that I gave a rebellious answer.
“Because everyone else does it. It’d be weird if I didn’t. What do I want to do? Not study.”
That response was the root of all my problems. Being too honest was a liability.
Of course, Mom found out, and from that day forward, she piled on more academies and tutors.
I’m pretty sure I complained about not wanting to study, so how did it end up with me doing even more? Did she think I’d slack off completely if left alone?
I was definitely a bad kid.
Out of rebellion, I guessed every answer on my midterms, and my average score came out to 23. From that day on, Mom treated me like a problem child.
I’d thought I’d been living a fairly normal life until then, but the reward for that was being labeled a failure.
Not a single act of defiance was forgiven.
I’d always maintained decent grades, made friends with reasonable kids, and never hung out with the wrong crowd. I’d been moderately obedient and moderately rebellious.
But Mom, who backed me into a corner, placed all the blame on me.
Why didn’t she acknowledge the effort I’d put in so far? Why couldn’t she see that I’d reached my limit and instead treated it as a problem?
My rebellious streak had recently peaked, and Mom’s distrust of me had hit its own extreme.
Our relationship was at its absolute worst.
‘Mom definitely hates me.’
If she found me so unsatisfactory, why couldn’t she just leave me alone? Just as I couldn’t choose my parents, she probably hadn’t wanted a stubborn, disobedient daughter like me.
I was angry.
Why was she trying to control me like this? If she was so tired of my attitude, why did she keep interfering?
I ignored my phone as it buzzed incessantly. Even the vibration annoyed me so much that I pulled out the battery and tossed it into my bag. Not long after, I grumbled to myself.
“Maybe I should just run away.”
Glaring out the window and trying to calm down, I suddenly felt a wave of exhaustion.
I was tired of studying until midnight every day, and this was a rare, brief respite.
My eyelids grew heavy.
This was just a boring bus ride with nothing to do. Normally, I’d kill time on my phone, but that wasn’t an option right now.
I had no desire to study English vocabulary, so I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the window.
Hugging my bag, I shifted into a comfortable position to sleep.
It would be a while before I got home, so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to rest a bit. Gradually, I drifted off.
Maybe I was running away from reality a little.
Even after fighting with Mom like this, home was still the only place I could go. That unpleasant thought consumed me as I fell deeper into sleep.
—
How long had I been asleep?
Screeeech—!
Boom!
“Ah!”
A violent jolt yanked me out of my slumber.
My head slammed hard into the seat in front of me, leaving my neck sore from the impact.
Frowning from the sudden pain, I looked around. Outside the window, everything was pitch black.
A faint orange light filtered in—it seemed we were inside a tunnel.
“Everyone, get off! Quickly! Hurry!”
Still disoriented, I hadn’t fully grasped the situation.
The familiar sound of the bus doors opening felt ominous, and I awkwardly rose from my seat.
All the passengers were in disarray, unsure of what to do. Responding to the driver’s urgent shouting, they began exiting the bus one by one.
Had there been an accident? I grabbed my bag.
The moment I stepped off the bus, I was hit by a choking smell, forcing me to hold my breath.
The tunnel was thick with smoke and dust, making it hard to breathe.
There was a strange odor in the air.
It was sweet yet bitter and overwhelmingly nauseating, like burning oil.
And something else I couldn’t identify.
I grimaced. This wasn’t normal.
Smoke filled the tunnel, and every vehicle had come to a stop. Like me, the people who’d gotten off the bus were covering their noses and looking around in confusion.
“What’s going on? What happened?”
“There’s been an accident up ahead.”
The tunnel we were in usually took several minutes to drive through, and no light from the outside could be seen.
The headlights of the stationary cars and the tunnel’s orange lights were the only sources of illumination, but even they were dimmed by the thick smoke.
I could usually see well, but now I couldn’t make out anything even a meter ahead of me.
Was it because of the smoke?
In an instant, my eyes and throat began to sting painfully. I pulled my sleeves up to cover my mouth, but it was no use.
At that moment, I noticed people frantically running through the thick smoke.
One of them tripped over their own feet and fell clumsily to the ground. Strangely, it didn’t make me laugh.
The man’s face was filled with terror, as if he’d seen a monster. His hands trembled violently as he crawled along the ground, looking like someone who had just escaped from a life-threatening situation.
Then, an explosion echoed from the darkness.
Bang!
“Ah! Hah! F-fire!”
Someone bumped into my shoulder and shoved past me as they ran, and soon the murmuring of the crowd died away.
Silence took over for a brief moment before a few quick-witted people abruptly fled the scene.
While I stood there, frozen and unable to comprehend what was happening, everyone suddenly began to run.
Instinctively, I realized we were in danger.
As the people disappeared one by one into the smoke, I found myself left completely alone. Just a moment ago, I had been dozing off on the bus, and now—what was this?
Boom!
Another explosion roared.
I was forced to acknowledge that this was reality. I could see it—beyond the thick smoke, a crimson glow surged ominously.
It was too close, too unfamiliar, and utterly terrifying.
A chilling sense of dread coursed through my body, making my spine tingle and my skin crawl.
The raging flames crept closer, devouring the abandoned vehicles and inching toward the people who stood there frozen in shock.
People like me.
I tried to run but tripped and fell hard.
As I scrambled to my feet, I noticed my palms were slick with something. It was oil, coating the tunnel floor.
It suddenly occurred to me that someone had shouted earlier—something about a tanker truck full of oil ahead.
They had been telling us to run. That must have been it.
The deafening booms and blasts made my ears ring and my head throb.
A high-pitched mechanical whine echoed in my mind, and the gravel that dug into my palms stung sharply.
My nails had chipped, and my sleeves were smeared with the slick oil. I struggled to my feet, legs weak and unsteady.
That’s when I finally realized—I was engulfed in a wave of suffocating heat.
I turned my head and began to run, glancing back at the advancing flames.
I wasn’t a fast runner, but the flames were slow enough that I thought I could outrun them. I had to. I needed to.
But not far ahead, I spotted a body lying on the ground.
It was the first dead person I’d ever seen. Nothing about this felt real.
I’d just been napping a moment ago.
“Cough… ugh…”
The fear of witnessing death for the first time was nothing compared to the terror that I might end up like that myself.
I couldn’t think about anything else.
I ran as hard as I could, desperate to escape everything that was scaring me.
But before long, I realized something was wrong with my own body.