NTN 05

Myriad Stars

While several people were chatting together, a bell rang from the side of the activity center.

Except for a handful of people, everyone else rose to their feet at once as if responding to an alarm.

This bell from the Supply Market signaled that only three minutes remained before the dining hall opened.

Watching the neighbors heading toward the employee cafeteria, Yong Yeohong glanced sideways at Seong Geon-woo and said,

“I didn’t expect you to agree with Aunt Im-gyeol’s opinion.”

Geon-woo met her gaze and replied,
“Maybe try asking in a different way?”

Yeohong furrowed her brow slightly, thought for a moment, then asked,
“What do you think about the Breeding Center system—the one meant to free women from pregnancy and childbirth?”

“Isn’t it a good thing?” Geon-woo answered without a trace of hesitation.

“⋯⋯.”

Yeohong found nothing to say to that.

Before long, the two of them reached the entrance of the Supply Market.

Because the market had no main gate, they could see everything inside at a glance.

On the left stretched rows of tables and counters. Employees who didn’t want to eat in the cafeteria quietly browsed and paid for goods there.
From the right side, the dining hall’s doors and windows exhaled the scent of food.

Soon the large doors opened, and the workers of the 495th floor—some carrying their own dishes, others empty-handed—filed in with calm precision.

Without a lunchbox of his own, Geon-woo parted ways with Yeohong and turned right once inside. He picked up two wooden bowls and a tray, then followed the fixed path and the people ahead toward each service window.

“Half a jin of sweet-potato rice, one serving of cabbage stew.
Two multigrain rolls.
One serving of boiled potatoes.”

After visiting four windows, both of his bowls were already brimming.
The cabbage stew was crowned with the boiled potato and the two golden rolls, while the bowl of sweet-potato rice was split nearly to bursting.

For this meal, he would spend fourteen contribution points: five for the rice, two per roll, two for the potatoes, and three for the slightly oily stew.

His final stop was the meat counter, rich with savory aroma.

After glancing around and hesitating for a heartbeat, he said,
“One serving of braised pork, please. A bit of extra sauce too.”

The woman in the gray uniform behind the counter scooped out three finger-length, not-too-thick pieces of pork with a ladle of seductive red sauce and set them atop the sweet-potato rice.

The crimson sauce quickly seeped down into the grains.

“Good thing you came early,” she said warmly. “A little later and it would’ve been gone.”

She was a neighbor from the same district and always treated him kindly.

“Thirty-two points,” she added.

Geon-woo eyed the hearty serving for a second, then swiped his electronic card.

After a quick thank-you, he added the complimentary thin broth to his tray and, after a short search, sat down across from Yeohong.

“Wow, someone’s splurging,” she said with genuine amazement.

Geon-woo ignored the comment, pushed the sauced portion of rice aside, and took a small bite of pork.

The meat flooded his mouth with rich flavor. He lowered his head and spooned up a section of rice untouched by the sauce.

His pace quickened. By the time the three pieces of pork were gone, only half the sweet-potato rice and cabbage stew remained, and both the potato and the rolls had vanished.

He poured the rest of the stew over the sauce-stained rice and scraped it all clean.

“Very satisfying,” he said.

Yeohong set down her chopsticks at the same time and let out a long breath.

Having finished even the watery broth, she asked,
“Want to go to the activity center together?”

Geon-woo shook his head.
“I’ll head back, listen to the radio, and turn in early.”

She started to speak as if to persuade him, then gave up.
“⋯⋯All right, then.”

After sitting for a moment longer, Geon-woo carried his tray to the exit and handed everything to the staff stationed there.

Lights embedded at intervals in the market ceiling illuminated the paths to other districts. Employees of varying ages and genders clustered in small groups, some walking toward the activity center, others heading home, children racing between them without pause.

Moving quickly past them, Geon-woo left Zone C and entered Zone B, where the walls were scribbled with graffiti and the rooms were packed closer together.

This underground complex had no real concept of “architecture.”
Living spaces were more like simple rooms than proper homes, not so different from the beehives many workers had seen in the ecological sector.

Even so, the corridors between the rooms were fairly wide, paved with smooth, milky bricks broad enough for half a dozen people to walk abreast.

Company regulations required such width so that, in emergencies or evacuations, the hallways would not clog.

After a long walk, his own room finally came into view.

It looked no different from those on either side or across the hall: glossy black walls that seemed almost bottomless, a dark-brown wooden door, and a small four-paned window.

The only way to tell it was his was the white number on the door:

Room 196, Zone B, 495th Floor.

Geon-woo drew a brass key from his pocket, slid it into the matching lock, and turned it.

Click.
With his other hand he pressed the knob and pushed. The door opened only halfway, stopping where his range stand sat behind it.

The room measured two meters wide, three meters long, and four meters high. A single bed, just long enough for him to stretch out, lay across the back wall, leaving less than ten centimeters between bed and wall. No other furniture stood there.
From large nails in the wall hung two plain, simple sets of clothes.

Beside them, half hidden by a plastic sheet, was a tiny sink; opposite it, a hooded range-stand that doubled as a cabinet.

Geon-woo was grateful for these amenities—far from every room had them.

The vast underground building housed an enormous population and countless floors. That meant elevators, ventilation, water, and power systems could fail at any time.
To prevent a single fault from crippling the whole structure, everything—elevators, vents, plumbing—was divided into subsystems. Every fifteen floors or so, each zone shared a separate circuit.

Thanks to this setup, a breakdown would affect only a single section, never the entire complex.

For water stability, the company had installed plumbing only in certain newer rooms.

Most employees therefore queued for the communal toilets in the corridors, and during nights or early mornings, when power was scarce, many levels grew quite cold.

For countless residents, being able to wash up without leaving their blanket was a dream.

Beneath the window stood a small red table, not very sturdy. On it lay several books, a black fountain pen, and a bottle of black ink.

Light from the corridor lamps outside spilled through the window, illuminating the book covers.

Had his window not been wedged between two lamps, giving just enough light, Geon-woo might have needed no extra energy to read at night.

The wooden table had a drawer; before it sat a dark-brown chair mottled with rust beneath the paint. Two rickety stools stood behind it, lending a faint air of a living room.

Right beside this “living room” space was the bed.

He didn’t turn on the room light. His allotted energy was small, and he conserved it.

Pulling out the key and closing the door, he relied on the streetlight glow to cross to the dim bed.

Propping the grain-filled pillow against the wall, he leaned back half-reclined.

From this position he could see the electric frying pan and rice cooker on the range stand. Their spotted, rust-stained surfaces showed their age.

They had been in his earliest memories.
One, his father had found while on an external mission with the Security Department, salvaged from the ruins of an Old-World city. His father had supposedly given up other allotted spoils to bring it home.

The other, his mother had bought after saving contribution points for years following their marriage. New goods from the market were always costly and scarce.

Yet this room was not the home of those memories.
The original had been Room 28 of Zone A: a large room, a small room, and a cramped private bathroom.

Thanks to that, as a child he never had to queue for public toilets or endure their stench.

But after his father disappeared and his mother died, the company reclaimed that home and reassigned it to another qualified worker.
The room he now occupied was the one he received when he left the orphanage to enter college.

These newer rooms saved energy by using ordinary locks salvaged from Old-World ruins instead of electronic ones, some produced in local factories.

Leisurely, Geon-woo turned his gaze to the window table.

According to his mother, that table had been built by his father, who bought lumber from the market with hard-saved money when they married.

Inside its drawer lay clothes his mother had sewn herself and two small electronic devices—items returned to him after his three years in the orphanage.

But he could never wear those clothes again.

He closed his eyes and pressed his temple with his right hand, then let his arm fall and sat perfectly still.

The room grew unnaturally quiet, the darkness deepening.

Leaning against the pillow, Geon-woo seemed already fast asleep.

When he opened his eyes, it was as if he had expected it: a vast hall stretched before him.

It dwarfed even the Supply Market.

Around him rose black walls gleaming with metallic chill, and above, a darkness so absolute he could not guess its height.

That darkness was filled with countless points of light.
Moving slowly, they formed dreamlike strands of diamond brilliance.

The sight left him speechless.

It reminded him only of the images of space his professor had once shown on a screen when he first entered university.

That had been his first view of the cosmos.

And now he seemed to stand among the stars themselves.

In the center of the hall, a shaft of starlight condensed into a faint silhouette.

Arms extended outward, it held a perfect, scale-like symmetry.

Then a voice, as if granting revelation to the myriad stars, echoed through the hall:

“One price, three blessings.
One price, three blessings⋯⋯.”