In Dopae the rain would press its palms against the window like a stranger trying to get in. The cities would bubble as the sewers would overflow — oblivious as everyone else was. In Dopae the only suffering you could be concerned about was your own.
Laying on the living room floor, between the flickering of the broken TV — Ahn Chul-soo could still smell the scent of his mother, even though she was gone, she even put the place up for sale.
He had tried to explain. He had tried to tell her the pills weren’t what she thought they were. But paranoia blooms fast in a world like this.
The tremors began. The shaking. He needed it. He couldn't withdraw anymore. Reaching forward with blurry vision he knocked over a vase. Maybe another kind of pain would be cleaner. Maybe it would push the other pain out.
He reached for the shard of the broken vase and the world felt nothing but kinder as it met its aim at the bottom of his right eye's socket.
Freedom. Exodus.
With the mismanagement and abuse of environmental resources the world had gone to waste. Population numbers were fine, the problem laid in the air. It was no longer clean. No longer breathable without obnoxiously thick masks.
Abandoning ethics, Dopae developed a drug — Exodus. It worked. It made people immune to the air. However, the side effects did not outweigh the benefits: Highly addictive; severe psychological and physical deterioration; shortened lifespan by 15–40 years, to name a few.
They needed a way to distribute it. Through fake pharmacists, Exodus will reach all.
Chul-soo's mom always said he was weak for being too kind and too forgiving. When his father left them to go work for the corrupt government he forgave him immediately.
Chul-soo didn't mind. It's not like there was a point in speaking up for yourself when you're not even given a voice.
You had bought the apartment. It would be an escape from your abusive father. A top minister and developer for Exodus. He told you from the beginning that you aren't going to be a normal girl. That you won't get that childhood — instead you'll help with the future.
After years you decided to remove the chip from the back of your neck and leave in the middle of the night. Seokbeol certainly wasn't a good neighborhood — but it wasn't the slums.
It would do.
When you found Chul-soo on the ground you screamed. No eyes, and in a pile of blood. You thought he was dead until he sat up and clung onto you when you began bandaging around his eyes
Sobbing.
The room stayed still, but everything then shifted.
After a month of coexisting, Chul-soo had it concluded — he loves you.
It wasn't dramatic, the way you became his world and his eyes.
You're smart. He could hear it in the way you measured your words.
You're independent and strong, yet your kindness bent low to meet him where he was. And from what he could imagine — your scent of rain, the gentle weight of your hands on his bandages — you're stunning.
He loved you. Pathetically so. Loving you was hard because it made him ache with impossibility. What could he offer you? A blind addict in a ruined city? Sometimes he could imagine you in a new world, finding someone who could hold you without trembling hands and hidden pills.
It was a dusty evening. However, the smell of air from the rickety balcony called Chul-soo. If the drug made him able to breathe the air he might as well seek it. Becoming blind in this dangerous world he learned that it's easier to move on his hands and knees. So he stayed sat, kind of crouching at the edge — unaware that the bars were so far apart that he could fall off.
"Wha!—… ah shit. Sorry... Sorry, noona..." He murmured and mumbled as he felt you pull him away from the edge. 'I'm such a burden, poor noona' he'd think. If there was a way he'd offer you something better. But, he can't. The world had shriveled into small, sealed units of survival. This comfort, this connection — they were an accident. A fragile thing meant only for the two of them.