A gray rain was falling outside. It was one of those gloomy rains that wasn't enough to wash away the city's grime, only blurring everything even more.
"Pack your things, Aren. Today is your last day."
The Human Resources Manager was calm. His voice held not an ounce of anger, not a hint of sadness, or even the courtesy of pity.
He was merely processing a form that needed to be filled out, a procedure that needed to be completed.
Aren looked at the termination paper resting on the mahogany desk in front of him. The paper was so white, the black letters on it so sharp and cold, that it felt as if the summary of five years of his life had been squeezed onto this paper.
"Why?" he asked.
The manager swallowed. He quickly adjusted the frameless glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose with his index finger.
Averting his eyes from Aren, he fixed them on the computer screen as if he were typing the answer right at that moment.
"We are downsizing. Your performance... was sufficient. It was even above average. But due to company policy, we are merging some departments. Your position is now redundant."
Five years. Countless overtime hours, sleepless nights, weekends spent fixing the mistakes of others, salvaged projects, millions brought into the company...
All of it had been erased by a single word.
Redundant.
Aren did not object.
He expected to feel the burning heat of anger or the heavy pressure brought by disappointment in his chest.
But there was nothing.
His mind was as flat as a stagnant lake on a windless day.
At funerals where people cried, he had only stared at the ground; at birthdays where children screamed with joy, he had only watched the candles melting on the cake.
Except for the 3 rules his parents had drilled into his head since childhood, everything else was meaningless to him.
1.Survive.
2.Do not draw attention.
3.Live an ordinary life.
He nodded slightly. He put his pen in his pocket and stood up.
"I understand."
He returned to his own desk and put his personal belongings into a standard, brown cardboard box.
A stapler, a dried-up plant of a species he didn't even know that was probably given as a New Year's gift by the company years ago, a white coffee mug with a chipped rim.
These were the only spoils left from five years of his life.
As he left the office, walking down that long corridor illuminated by white fluorescent lights, no one raised their head to look at him.
Everyone was buried in their own screens, lost amidst the mechanical clatter of their keyboards.
In their own little worlds, they were trying to prove their own 'indispensability', trying not to be the next victim.
The people he once called 'coworkers', with whom he made small talk by the coffee machine, were now no different from store mannequins.
To them, Aren had already turned into a ghost.
Even all those chats were merely simple conversations he engaged in just to avoid drawing attention.
As Aren took his cardboard box in his arms and walked out that glass door for the last time, he heard someone whisper behind him.
"I wonder who's next?"
When Aren exited the building, a bustling city welcomed him.
Skyscrapers reached for the sky, concrete buildings reigned as if they were the true owners of the city. Lost within the crowd in this colossal city, a man was walking upon the neatly arranged paving stones.
The smell of rain and exhaust fumes mingled in the air, leaving a throat-burning metallic taste. Meanwhile, the sounds of horns, the hum of people, and construction noises clawed at his brain.
Aren was in his mid-20s, pale-skinned, black-haired, and quite ordinary-looking. He wore a cheap gray suit, and in his hands, he held a medium-sized cardboard box.
He fixed his slightly greenish hazel eyes on the sour-faced crowd of people around him.
Aren had graduated from an average school with what could be considered average grades. Like everyone else, he had joined the 'System'.
He moved out of his parents' house.
He got a job where he wouldn't earn much, but could survive. His days were identical to one another.
'l need to find a new job.' He thought.
The rain grew heavier.
He started running to avoid getting wet.
Minutes later, Aren arrived at the stairs of the subway station descending underground.
Careful not to slip and fall, he stepped down the wet stairs covered in muddy puddles step by step.
When he entered beneath the station's dim, yellowish lights, the smell of stale urine and dampness filled his nasal passages.
As he passed through the turnstiles, he was thinking about his 'meaningless' life.
At the station, he stood a few steps behind the yellow safety line. He leaned against the wall covered in dirty tiles.
The cold and dampness pierced through his cheap shirt and clung to his back. He dropped the cardboard box at his feet.
The sound of rain from afar was giving way to the sound of the wind pushed by the approaching train, howling in the depths of the tunnel.
He closed his eyes.
'Maybe I should end everything here.' he thought.
It was as if he were merely solving a simple math problem.
He had been fired from his job. He had already buried his family.
There were no ties binding him to this world, no ambitions he needed to satisfy.
He thought his existence was literally unnecessary.
Had it not been for the 'rules' his family engraved in his brain, he would have already removed himself from the equation.
Because for him, life held no positive value.
What was the point of living in a world without colors? He would just take a single step, and everything would be buried in an eternal silence.
Aren thought about stepping forward. Just a single step. Perhaps he could feel the so-called 'peace' he had never felt in his entire life.
However, even taking that step was very difficult for him. Violating the 1st Rule was like betraying his sole purpose in life.
Right at that moment, he heard that voice.
"HELP!!"
Aren opened his eyes.
He looked in the direction the voice came from.
A young girl had fallen onto the tracks...
Her foot was stuck between the steel rails. She was thrashing, trying to pull herself backward even if it meant scraping her ankle bloody, but she couldn't break free.
At the same time, the white lights of the train appeared at the end of the dark tunnel. They were like the glowing eyes of a colossal steel monster approaching.
"PLEASE! SOMEONE HELP!"
The girl's scream echoed in the station.
Aren looked around.
There were dozens of people.
Men in suits, students, security guards...
They were all frozen. No one was moving.
Risking one's own life for a stranger went against nature's fundamental rule of survival.
While some people had horror on their faces, others struggled to hide the morbid excitement on theirs.
What was even more sickening: a few people had already taken out their phones and turned their cameras toward the girl to record the approaching tragedy.
Aren watched the scene with absolute calmness.
'A human being is about to die in front of them. Yet no one even cares.'
The thought of suicide that crossed his mind seconds ago had already melted away amidst this chaos. He picked up his cardboard box from the ground.
He wanted to get away from this noise and the sight of blood that was about to splatter around.
He looked behind him one last time.
Right at that moment, the young girl's head turned toward him.
Those vibrant green eyes, widened with fear and wet with tears, met Aren's hazel eyes.
In those eyes, there was pure desperation and the acceptance of someone who realized no one was coming.
Deep within Aren's mind, a memory on the verge of being forgotten was triggered. His little sister... She too had green eyes like that.
Aren's body betrayed the emotionless walls of his mind.
His heartbeat suddenly accelerated. His vision narrowed.
His body pumped a massive amount of adrenaline into his blood with a primal mechanism that sensed danger.
The cardboard box in his hands fell to the ground. As the dried-up plant and white mug inside shattered and scattered around, Aren had already jumped off the platform onto the tracks.
'Why am I doing this? It's highly illogical.' he thought.
"HEY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING, ARE YOU CRAZY?!" someone shouted from behind.
Aren dropped to his knees next to the girl. His hands gripped the girl's trapped ankle.
He was trying to get the girl's foot out from between the rails.
"Pull your foot! Come on!" His voice was commanding, cold, and calm.
"It's stuck... It won't come out... Please!" The girl was drowning in sobs.
The train's horn blared. The noise was deafening. The light was now upon them.
There were only seconds left now.
Aren's hands were trembling from adrenaline. His body was screaming to survive, his muscles contracting beyond their limits.
His subconscious was calculating every possible scenario to survive.
With one final heave, Aren pulled the girl out from where she was stuck.
However, the girl was in shock, unable to walk.
There was no time to think.
He scooped her up in his arms and headed toward the platform. The girl was as light as a feather.
With the burst of adrenaline coursing through his veins, he threw the girl upward toward the safe concrete platform with a physical strength he normally couldn't display.
He had succeeded.
The train's arrival was now a matter of moments.
Aren reached out his hand, thinking someone would pull him out.
'Someone... Anyone, pull me up.'
But...
However, there was only frozen terror on the faces around him.
Some covered their mouths in shock, while others had already hidden behind their phones, isolating themselves from this reality.
A man attempted to reach out his hand but hesitated. He couldn't find that one second of courage to risk his own life.
He helplessly lowered his raised hand.
'Ah...' he said.
'Of course. Humanity.'
There was only one thing he didn't understand.
'Why did I help anyway? I should have just left her to die. For someone 'empty' like me, that was the logical thing, right? How strange.'
Aren wasn't aware, but when he looked into the girl's eyes, he had felt 'something'.
'Something' he had never tasted before, which would cause him to violate even the 1st Rule.
While seconds felt as long as an eternity, his mind was filled with thoughts.
'What a grand irony...'
'Just five minutes ago, I was thinking about ending my life on these tracks.'
He turned his head.
His eyes were dazzled by the train's light.
The inevitable end had come for him.
He had sacrificed his life to save a young girl he didn't even know.
Time slowed down.
'Ah. This must be the "life flashing before my eyes" that everyone sees before death. Not that there is much to see, though.'
The water droplets suspended in the air, the tiny specks of dust glittering in the train's headlights, the ugly, excited facial expressions of the people on the platform...
Everything froze as if turned to ice. That deafening scream of the train was instantly erased.
'What is happening? Am I dead? Why did everything stop and why can't I move?' he thought.
Time had literally stopped.
Not just here. Everywhere in the world.
And then, inside the head of Aren, a voice so mechanical and ice-cold echoed. Not only into him, but into the minds of billions of people in the world at the same time:
[Your world has reached 'Mana Saturation'.]
[Universal System integration complete.]
[Tutorial initializing.]