Humanity Protection Company

Illustrations: None.

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The lightning snake grew rapidly.

It coiled around a whole area following the utility poles, and the unceasing flashes of lightning turned the entire world blue.

The snake raised its head toward the sky and opened its mouth wide. There was no roar, but it felt as if lightning was surging upward. The lightning took on the shape of a dragon.

Under the blue light, people looked up with their mouths open. Though their eyes hurt from the flashing lightning, they couldn\'t take their eyes off it.

“Wow….”

A low exclamation escaped. The police forgot their duties, the fleeing people stopped in their tracks, and those with camera apps instinctively raised their phones.

Everyone was half out of their minds at the sight of the huge anomaly.

Even the company workers.

“Was the lightning snake always this powerful…?”

Kim Gapdong trembled as he slowly took the bag off his shoulder and held it in his hand. The bag contained his taser gun and the lightning snake he managed.

Of course, he knew the risks from reading and hearing about them. There had been cases of the lightning snake taking over power plants. This one wasn\'t as bad, but feeling it firsthand was a whole new level of fear.

The flashing lightning and the massive body covered the narrow, rectangular sky between buildings.

Lee Yeonwoo also backed away from the bag as if it were an explosive. Cold sweat trickled down. He looked at Lee Seoyeon.

‘Can she control that?’

Lee Seoyeon, with her eyes shining in the lightning, raised her fist.

“It’s enough! Now deal with the flowers!”

As Yeonwoo and Kim Gapdong sent tense glances, the now-monster-like lightning snake flicked its forked tongue a few times.

The snake, larger than most buildings, tilted its head and looked down the street.

People were staring up, stunned. The humans who fed it, housed it, played with it.

And the blue flowers, which felt similar to it but seemed unappetizing.

“Uh… Didn’t you hear me? Friend!”

“If it goes out of control…”

Meanwhile, the company workers\' faces turned bluer than the lightning. If that thing went wild and rode the power lines to the transmission towers or power plants…

They looked at the snake with narrowed pupils. After hesitating for a moment, the snake fortunately began to move slowly.

Crackle- Crackle-

Its body, now closer to plasma than lightning, wriggled after consuming so much electricity.

Then it became lightning and began to roam the city. The blue lightning dashed across the sky.

Boom-!

Lightning branched out from its body and struck down small seeds or buds, killing them. The fully bloomed flowers were strangled and then bitten off.

It all happened in an instant.

In the aftermath of the flash, only the smell of burning, power outages in buildings, charred trees, and stunned people remained.

Rumble-!

The snake circled around the Blue House several times and finally flew into it, leaving the street quiet. Someone muttered with a dazed look.

“What the…?”

A reality so strange.

Blue flame-like flowers flying around and a lightning dragon roaming the sky. It felt like a dream, or maybe an event.

But it didn\'t take long for people to realize it was real.

Excited people started talking about the lightning snake captured on their cameras, chatting with family or friends, and posting on social media.

Lee Seoyeon, as excited as anyone, shouted with a flushed face.

“See! I told you my snake is really good!”

Meanwhile, Kim Gapdong\'s face turned pale. He looked around the street with a clear mind.

“How do we handle this?”

The blue flowers were already a headache, and there were countless witnesses to the lightning snake. And this was Seoul. People here would scatter everywhere. There were too many to track individually.

Lee Yeonwoo looked at the sky for a moment.

“Should we handle it?”

“…Maybe not.”

The Earth would be destroyed within 15 years, and the company would escape the planet. Would they bother with such matters?

“The secrecy might be broken…”

“It’ll be a mess.”

They foresaw the future through experience, intuition, and history.

The company focused on the Human Preservation Plan. The opposing factions were in civil war. The hostile groups were busy finding their own ways to survive, while the ignorant riffraff roamed freely. Even now, it was like this.

What if anomalies were revealed?

Ordinary people would react as diversely as they did now.

“Anomalous religions, Anomaly Rights Protection Associations, anomalous states, anomaly fan clubs, anomaly politics. Even those removed by the company were like this. It\'s ruined. It\'ll all come back. No, it’s a doomed Earth anyway.”

Kim Gapdong slumped. Lee Yeonwoo turned around. He spoke.

“This isn’t something we can handle. We need to do what we have to do.”

“That’s right! Yeonwoo! What’s with the repairman and the abnormal climate? I have a guess, but please explain.”

“Oh, that.”

Amid the bustling crowd.

Wearing fluorescent vests, they chased the lightning snake to the Blue House while talking. People didn’t pay attention to them, the very ones who had shot the lightning snake.

Though they had blocked the blue flower, the world was now one step closer to ruin. The company workers naturally disappeared from the streets.

---

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The blue lightning snake dealt with the blue flower. After a while, the lightning snake shrank back to the size that fit into the taser gun.

Lee Seoyeon received a scout offer from the Anomaly Research Society, praising her for training the blue snake so well and suggesting she put that ability to use.

Of course, Lee Seoyeon declined. It wasn’t cool, she said.

Instead, Lee Seoyeon joined the Clock Repairmen Korean Branch. Kim Gapdong did too.

“Here’s the beer.”

At a bar.

Lee Yeonwoo, Lee Seoyeon, and Kim Gapdong sat at a table, munching on puffed rice snacks, holding cold beer glasses.

Cheers-

The beer glasses clinked in the middle of the table. After a few gulps, Kim Gapdong looked around the noisy bar.

“Is this real? I mean, what the…”

“Check WeTube. It’s crazy.”

People talked loudly, while a TV broadcasted the recent blue flower and blue snake incident.

The news anchor, with the giant blue flower and the raised snake in the background, spoke clearly.

-The cause of the disaster at the Blue House remains unknown. We don’t know what those things are.

“Damn…”

“They’ve given up on secrecy now.”

It wasn’t officially announced, but the people from their world didn’t step up to inform either. They just didn’t stop the natural spread of the information.

Despite the chaos on social media and the internet, the existence of anomalies was spreading rapidly. Much faster than the blue flower\'s proliferation.

Kim Gapdong lifted his beer glass and began to drink heavily. The remaining beer disappeared entirely.

Bang, he slammed the glass down roughly, letting out a hollow laugh.

“The company really gave up.”

After hearing from Yeonwoo, denying, despairing, and being angry for days,

Kim Gapdong finally accepted reality.

On the other hand, Lee Seoyeon never lost her enthusiasm from the start. Clenching her fist, she spoke confidently.

“Then we should do it. We’re part of the Clock Repairmen now.”

“Do you think it’s possible?”

Kim Gapdong fiddled with the beer glass handle, filled with doubt.

“If one faction could do it, the company would’ve done it already. It’s better than doing nothing, though.”

“Other factions are responding in their own ways, so there is hope.”

Lee Yeonwoo, tapping on his phone, looked up and spoke to them. Encouraging new colleagues wasn’t hard.

“There\'s just under 15 years left. It’s possible.”

“Right?”

“Even if it’s not, we’ll make it possible.”

“That’s right. Let’s stay strong.”

They grabbed their beer glasses to toast again, but Kim Gapdong noticed his glass was empty.

He pressed the bell to call the waiter.

“Yeah! Let’s think positively! We have plenty of time! We can stop it! ...A bottle of soju, please.”

The waiter soon brought three soju glasses and a bottle of soju. Kim Gapdong took the bottle, opened it, and filled the glasses.

“Let’s stop talking about depressing stuff and drink!”

“No, I wanted to talk about what we should do as Clock Repairmen today-”

“What is there to talk about? We’ll live reasonably, and if we find something useful to deal with the abnormal climate, we use it. Whether it’s an anomaly or a person.”

Cheers-

They clinked glasses several times like that.

Before any snacks arrived, they had already finished several bottles. They continued to eat and drink at the table for quite some time.

Maybe because he was frustrated, Kim Gapdong drank glass after glass until he was completely drunk.

Lee Seoyeon and Lee Yeonwoo looked at each other.

“It seems like it’s time to go.”

“He\'s really drunk.”

Kim Gapdong, with unfocused eyes, waved his hand. His hand flopped weakly.

“I’ll pay. Move aside. Move aside-”

“Senior, you were saving money to start a chicken restaurant.”

“I broke my savings. What good is a chicken restaurant? This, this damn company. I can’t even quit.”

Suddenly, he stood up and staggered toward the cashier. Lee Seoyeon and Lee Yeonwoo didn’t stop him. Instead, they slowly prepared to leave.

After gathering their belongings, the two left the bar first.

The night breeze was cool. They glanced back at the bar for a moment, then Lee Seoyeon pulled out her phone, searched for something, and showed it to Lee Yeonwoo.

“Do you remember Park Sangjoon?”

“Who was that?”

After thinking for a while, he remembered.

The person who passed the Human Qualification Exam. The one who couldn’t endure the new employee training and left. The one who attempted suicide at Gwaebaek Mountain, where the fog monster appeared.

“Oh, that guy.”

“He’s become really famous lately.”

Lee Seoyeon tilted her phone. Yeonwoo saw it was a video site.

He vaguely remembered Park Sangjoon, whose face was now in a typical thumbnail. The title and caption were overlaid with pictures of the blue flower and the blue snake.

Lee Seoyeon clicked a few times to enter Park Sangjoon’s channel, showing a list of videos he had posted. Some familiar titles caught their eyes.

[Shock! A Monster Lives in Gwaebaek Mountain! Gwaebaek Mountain Designated as a Protected Area, Is the Government Raising a Monster?!]

[The Secret of the Cheonghae Port Incident! Unbelievable Investigation Results, What Is the Government Hiding?!]

[The Reason for Silence Despite a Murder in an Apartment!]

In addition to those, there were many conspiracy theories, mysteries, and horror videos, with impressive view counts.

“Wow.”

Yeonwoo was genuinely impressed.

He gave up on the civil service exam and found a way to make a living. The timing was perfect. If the company had been operating normally, it would have censored everything.