Her parents had come home late in the night, and before they'd even really closed their eyes, they were getting ready to head out again at the crack of dawn.
Over Sea-ah's hair, buried under the covers, her parents' large, warm hands came down in turn, and soft murmurs followed.
"Love you today too, sweetheart. Mommy and Daddy will do our best today too."
Clunk. The sound of the front door being closed carefully receded, and Sea-ah slipped once more, deep and sweet, into dreamland.
She couldn't say how much time had passed.
Brrring—! Tap!
Even at the loud alarm, Sea-ah rubbed her eyes and got up without a whine.
Small seven-year-old hands folded the blanket — easily her own size — neatly and tucked it into one corner.
Then she padded over to the master-bedroom bed, where five-year-old Se-min and four-year-old Se-eun were still sleeping.
At the soft pat on their cheeks, two little fluffballs squirmed under the covers.
"Noonaaa… my eyes won't open…."
"Nnn… unnieee… jus' a bit longer…."
Soothing her siblings, who could barely open their eyes, Sea-ah expertly hurried them through the morning routine.
She combed their tousled hair neatly and did up the little yellow uniform buttons one by one.
She didn't forget to pop bites of strawberry-jam toast into the mouths of the two nodding off at the breakfast table, either.
"Preschool bus'll be here soon. Come on, hurry up and get ready!"
At Sea-ah's brisk urging, the three children lined up at the front door.
Her two siblings in their yellow uniforms and Sea-ah with a fairly weighty backpack.
Outside it was mid-winter, cold enough to sting the tip of your nose, so Sea-ah zipped her siblings into thick padded jackets and pulled the zippers carefully up to their chins.
"All right, before we go — today too!"
At Sea-ah's chest-out, captain-like shout — hands planted on her hips — Se-min and Se-eun, still rubbing their sleepy eyes, giggled and huddled in around her.
Soon three small, adorable fists came together in a stack in midair.
"We are—!"
Sea-ah called the opener, and her two siblings — still tripping over their consonants — followed at the top of their lungs.
"Da bestest sibwings in da uniberse!"
"Won't be picky about food today—"
"Won't fight wif fwiends today—"
"No cwying!"
Faces solemn to the point of being downright dramatic, the three kids looked at each other and then, as if on cue, yelled in unison, loud enough to rattle the entryway.
"Off to today with all our might! Yah!!"
Small, chubby fists thrust into the air along with clear, bright peals of laughter, filling the narrow entryway with warmth.
That was the moment.
Kwang!!!
Along with an eardrum-splitting roar, the whole apartment lurched violently.
"Kyaaaaah!"
At the terrifying tremor coming up through the floor, Sea-ah reflexively yanked her two siblings into her arms and dropped flat.
Crash—!
Shatter!
Starting with the family photo frame on top of the shoe cabinet toppling over ugly, the dishes stacked in the cupboards poured out like a waterfall, sending sharp shards flying in every direction.
Wait… an earthquake?!
Clutching her siblings tight in her arms as they burst into terrified sobs, Sea-ah found her exceptional mind flashing through a disaster-response manual she'd skimmed once before.
Then we can't stay standing here!
"Se-min! Se-eun! Quick! Get over here!"
Half-dragging her siblings — too paralyzed with terror to walk — she shoved them under the sturdy solid-wood dining table.
"Whaaah… noonaaa!"
"Scaw-y! Unnieee! Whaaah!"
The narrow, dark space under the dining table.
Her two terrified siblings clung to Sea-ah's clothes like a lifeline and burst into heartbreaking sobs.
"It's okay. Noona's right here. Unnie'll protect you, I promise. Shhh."
Sea-ah patted their small trembling backs and whispered urgently.
But behind the endlessly calm face she showed on the outside, her clever mind was spinning faster than ever.
Is this really an earthquake?
The shock that had rattled the apartment just now felt less like an earthquake and closer to something huge and heavy slamming into the front of the building.
Just as a chill she couldn't place ran up her spine—
—Kyaaaaaaak!!!!
A grotesque, spine-crawling screech that dug into her eardrums burst out from outside.
Choking on instinctive terror, Sea-ah lifted her head and looked out through the veranda window.
And she came face to face with a phenomenon even her clever mind couldn't parse.
The sky had been erased.
No — a wall of vivid blue water had swallowed even the sun and taken the sky's place entirely.
Filling the fifteenth-floor window was a house-sized wave surging with force enough to grind the world to nothing.
This can't be…! Our neighborhood only has a river — how can there be a tsunami…!
Before she could work out an answer, the overwhelming wave slammed into the apartment head-on again.
Kwaaaaaaang—!!!
"Kyaaaaaaah!!!"
"Whaaah, noona!!!"
Sea-ah threw her small body over her screaming siblings.
Thanks to the fifteenth-floor height, they were spared the horror of the water breaking through the window — but the apartment, hit head-on by that water bomb, lurched hard, as if it were being torn out of its foundations.
Crash—! Krak!!
Furniture came flying like weapons, and in a heartbeat the house was a wreck.
"Nngh…!"
The moment the building bucked and she cracked her head on the edge of the table, her vision flashed white.
But Sea-ah bit down on her lip hard enough to draw blood and forced her fading mind back.
Focus. Sit still and we all die.
Another wave like that one, and it would really be over.
We have to go up. To the roof!
"Se-min, Se-eun! We're going to the roof. We have to get out right now!"
But the two kids were too frozen with fear to move; they just kept crying.
Any other day she'd have soothed them gently, but right now there wasn't a second to spare.
"Hurry!"
Sea-ah roughly grabbed both of her siblings' small hands and shoved past the mangled front door out into the hall.
Kwang—!
Even the emergency lights had gone out, and though it was morning, under that heavy gray sky the corridor was pitch-black and dismal.
To make matters worse, the open exterior-corridor design of the building channeled a razor-edged mid-winter wind straight through, and cold sharp enough to freeze the bone bit into their skin.
Beyond the railing, from far below, the desperate screams of people rang out ceaselessly.
But thanks to their short stature, mercifully, the hellscape below didn't reach the children's line of sight.
Sea-ah led her siblings and hurried toward the emergency stairwell.
"Noona! Can't breathe… whaah…!"
"Nngh… unnie, my legs huwt…."
For a five-year-old and a four-year-old, the steep climb from the fifteenth to the twenty-first floor was brutal.
Even seven-year-old Sea-ah, breaking trail at the front, felt as though her lungs would burst and her thighs would split.
But the terror of the death chasing at their heels shoved her forward again, like something possessed.
"Just a little, ha… just a little further!"
At the end of what felt like clawing her way up through the dark, she at last shoved open the heavy iron door of the twenty-first-floor rooftop.
Kri-i-i-k— Kwang!
Out on the rooftop, where the biting wind was tearing through, residents who had already fled up were gathered.
Dozens of people in pajamas or nothing but slippers were sitting scattered here and there, faces chalk-white, trembling in dread.
"What on earth is happening?! Did a dam collapse? Or has a war started?!"
"Anyone got a phone that's working? Is anyone getting service?!"
"No! It's been dead a while now. Even calls to 119 aren't going through!"
"Oh god, my husband left for work today, what do I do…!"
A perfect storm of confusion and despair.
Through the din, someone called out, urgent.
"Oh my god — Sea-ah! Children!"
The one who cut through the crowd running toward them was none other than Se-min and Se-eun's preschool teacher.
He greeted the kids off the preschool bus every morning; he was a kind adult who had always thought fondly of Sea-ah for looking after her little siblings so devotedly in place of her busy parents.
"Teacher…!"
However exceptional her mind, in the end she was only seven.
The appearance of the one adult she could lean on in the middle of that awful terror was an enormous relief.
Her siblings spotted the familiar face and threw themselves into his arms too, wailing.
"Whaaah! Teacher, I'm scared…!"
"It's okay now. Teacher's right here. Sea-ah, you're not hurt anywhere either?"
The powerfully built teacher wrapped both children snugly in his wide arms and patted them with rough, gentle hands.
At his low, steady voice, anchoring them, the tension gripping Sea-ah finally began to loosen.
Even as he soothed the kids, the teacher let out a shaky breath.
"I've no idea what on earth is going on. I'd parked the preschool bus and was waiting for you when there was a big bang… and by the time I came to, I'd been pushed all the way up here."
Sea-ah briefly described the huge wave she'd seen.
The teacher's expression darkened.
But the moment he caught the terrified look on the kids, he smiled warmly.
"Don't worry. If something this big is happening, the military or the police will be coming to help before long. We just have to hang on here."
Reassured by that, the three of them followed the teacher over to a corner of the rooftop, huddling low against the wall.
Meanwhile the emergency stairwell door kept opening and shutting; the number of residents fleeing up to the roof grew visibly.
Just as the murmuring was starting to swell into real noise, the neighborhood block leader shoved his way through the crowd and appeared.
He was a heavyset man in his sixties who wore a thick gold chain and gold rings dangling all over him, which had earned him the nickname "Gold Toad" among the residents.
Next to him stood a thin, timid-looking man in his twenties, hovering awkwardly.
"All right, all right, don't panic, everyone!"
He shouted in that big voice of his, loud enough to fill the rooftop.
"You all know my boy, right? Well, my boy just went and 'Awakened' this time!"
At the bombshell, the rooftop crowd stirred in an instant.
"What? An Awakened, right here?"
"Awakened all go into guilds — you barely ever see one in a residential area…."
Buoyed by the crowd's stunned reactions, Gold Toad puffed himself up, jangling that thick gold necklace.
The son at the center of it kept his head down as if the attention was unbearable, but the father paid it no mind.
"Ahem! It hasn't been long since the Awakening, but my boy here has, and I do mean has, gotten a scout offer from that famous 'Cheonun Guild' over there!"
Once the label "Cheonun Guild" got attached, the look in people's eyes changed visibly.
Someone swallowed hard and asked, urgent.
"Th-the ability? What kind of ability is it?!"
"Don't be too shocked. My boy's ability is nothing less than—"
Gold Toad, who had been shouting in high gear, suddenly seemed to catch on his words, cleared his throat, and shot a glance sideways.
"Uh… what was your ability again?"
The son, already hunched down small, went bright red in the face and answered in a voice that all but crawled into his throat.
"Sh-shield generation…."
"Ah, right, right, that's it! Shi-shield? Anyway, throws up a barrier! Blocks everything! That one! Right!"
"Oooooh…!"
The people who had been trembling in despair let out a collective gasp.
In a situation where a second wave could hit at any moment, a tanker-type user who could block physical pressure was, in the most literal sense, no different from a savior.
Block Leader Gold Toad laughed and laughed as if he owned the whole world.
"Ha ha! So don't any of you worry! My boy's standing right here holding the line — what's there to be scared of!"
"Block Leader! Aigoo, we knew we could count on you!"
"Block Leader! Please, get us out of this alive!"
The people, who would have grabbed at any straw, quickly swarmed around him, singing praises to their savior as if in fervent worship.
Watching that blind display, the preschool teacher let out a deep breath of relief and gave the children in his arms a warm pat.
"Whew, thank god. If there's an Awakened here, we'll be safe."
But Sea-ah was skeptical.
Sounds like he only just Awakened…. Can he really protect this many people when he's barely used his ability?
That was the moment.
—Kyaaaaaaaah!!!!
As if to dump ice water over the people's hopes in one go, an ear-splitting scream tore up from outside the apartment.
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