1. How to Survive

Yoon Min had three ways to survive.

First, pretend to be a man.

Second, keep her head down and move as inconspicuously as possible.

Third, if someone messes with her, bite back fiercely until they regret it.

The second and third points might seem contradictory at first glance, but those who survived in this wretched world had learned the art of discerning when to stay hidden and when to stand their ground.

Yoon Min had a strong will to survive.

The old woman she’d lived with until last year had never bothered to hide the fact that she’d picked Yoon Min up from Sector 12. At every opportunity, she would grumble, ‘I must’ve been crazy to take in another mouth to feed.’

‘Then just get rid of me.’

‘Who’s gonna feed the stray dog, then?’

‘You could, auntie.’

‘You brat, if I’m doing all the work and feeding that mutt too, then when exactly am I supposed to get a break?’

The old woman was peculiar. Although her face was etched with enough wrinkles to call her ‘grandmother,’ she’d shudder whenever Yoon Min tried to call her that. Because of this, Min called her ‘auntie’ instead.

‘I have too many mouths to feed,’ ‘I must be out of my mind,’ and ‘I should just die soon,’ she’d often mutter harshly. Yet Min knew full well that her aunt wouldn’t abandon her. That’s why she felt free to throw out remarks like, ‘Then just get rid of me.’ In response, the old woman would insist she couldn’t abandon her because of her ‘thirty-minute-a-day task of feeding the mutt.’

Yoon Min never pressed her further. She planned to cling to her aunt’s side until the day she died. For a child, that was the only way to survive in this world.

‘The mutt’ was a mixed-breed dog that Yoon Min found the year she turned fifteen, shortly after moving to Sector 37.

Except for its four white paws, the dog was completely black, blending in with the trash bags abandoned in the alley. At first glance, they had nearly mistaken it for just another piece of garbage.

The alley was damp from the night’s rain. Yoon Min was the first to spot the little puppy, curled up among the plastic bags, whimpering softly. Like the pavement beneath it, the dog was drenched with rainwater.

“Auntie, there’s a puppy over there.”

“It’ll give you a virus.”

“We’re in Sector 37.”

“You think there’s anywhere safe these days?”

“If it were sick, it wouldn’t be whining like that. It would’ve shredded us to pieces by now.”

“So what do you expect me to do? You plan on keeping it?”

The old woman’s incredulous expression made Yoon Minstare silently at the black-coated creature. The tiny, trembling puppy tugged at her heart. She knew it was a useless feeling, one that did nothing for survival.

“If we keep it, you’ll have to share your food.”

With that final comment from her aunt, Yoon Min pushed aside her feelings for the puppy.

Just as she was about to say, ‘Let’s go,’ the puppy, who had been facing away from her, struggled to its feet and turned to look at her. Its eyes were black as berries, and Yoon Min noticed its paws were white, as though it wore tiny socks.

‘Wet socks. It looks cold.’

The puppy was even smaller than she’d thought.

“I haven’t had much of an appetite lately, anyway.”

Yoon Min murmured as she picked up the puppy, tucking its little body into her arms. The pup, chilled from the rain, nestled into her jacket, pressing its head against her chest. It was damp yet radiated warmth.

‘It’s warm. Could even double as a heater,’ Yoon Min muttered, justifying the puppy’s worth.

Her aunt scoffed. Yoon Min was a notorious eater, even consuming fermented scraps from the back alleys that her aunt couldn’t stomach. The notion that Yoon Min had ‘lost her appetite lately’ was laughable to her.

So it was the three of them: the old woman, Yoon Min, and the mutt, clinging to life like weeds in Sector 37.

Even back in Sector 12, the old woman had sold her body to survive. No matter how ruined the world, the ‘sex trade’ persisted like cockroaches, feeding the old woman, Yoon Min, and the mutt.

The old woman claimed that she’d started out quite popular, despite beginning her work at forty. She had once had a husband and a child, but the opening of fifteen more Gates and the collapse of the government tore her family apart.

Sectors below Sector 10 had become uninhabitable wastelands. After five years of searching through Sectors 11 and 12, hoping to find her husband and child, she came to terms with the reality: even Sector 11 was now contaminated, and Sector 12 was no place for anyone to live. Eventually, she accepted the truth—her husband and child were gone.

With hardly any civilians remaining in Sector 12, the old woman began selling herself to soldiers to survive, sometimes managing to attract a low-level Esper on lucky days. It was during this time that she found Yoon Min.

“She just had to be a girl,” was her first thought upon seeing Yoon Min.

“What’s wrong with her being a girl?”

“She can’t haul anything heavy, has no stamina, and will just attract flies. You gonna sell your body too?”

The old woman snapped bitterly.

She raised Yoon Min like a boy. She kept her hair cropped short, dressed her in loose, shabby clothing that hid her body, and as her face grew more refined with age, smeared grease and grime across it to obscure her looks.

In hindsight, there was a hint of obsession in the old woman’s actions. It was almost as if she was compensating for the daughter she’d lost in the chaos by protecting Yoon Min. Not that Yoon Min had any complaints—how could she?

It had been thirty-five years since the government had collapsed. Although Centers emerged to govern Sectors and manage Espers and Guides, they prioritized the safety of a select few powerful and wealthy individuals, leaving the scattered common folk with nothing.

They were grateful just to scrape by each day. The world had fallen apart, yet people with an unyielding will to live—like the old woman and Yoon Min—found every means to stubbornly survive.

While the old woman sold herself in the crumbling shanty, Yoon Min roamed the streets begging. She collected the soldiers’ scattered coins, hoarding them in her worn wooden bowl.

Due to her small frame, Yoon Min, even at eighteen or nineteen, could beg without much trouble. Curled up with one leg dragging behind her and the puppy by her side, she drew either pity, indifference, or scorn.

As mentioned, Yoon Min adhered to her three rules for survival.

She moved quietly, staying inconspicuous. But if anyone dared to touch her coins or food, she would erupt like a madwoman, clinging onto them ferociously. Even if they beat her or pulled a knife, she clung on, securing her coins in the end. An eye for an eye, a blade for a blade—Yoon Min’s survival style was simple but fiercely determined.

Before long, people learned not to mess with her for a few coins.

The limping son of the old woman in the alley shanty—that was how people knew her. Yoon Min spent her days begging on the filthy streets, becoming just another part of the landscape to those who passed by.

* * *

“I should get a job too, maybe.”

One day, after watching the porters for a while, Yoon Min brought this up with her aunt.

“What job?”

“Maybe I’ll be a porter.”

“You crazy girl. Just because you dress as a man, you think you’re actually one? Even men in their prime struggle with Gate work.”

“But I can’t spend my whole life begging, especially once I’m an adult. You’re the only one making any money.”

“When you turn twenty, let’s head to Sector 41.”

“Sector 41?”

“They’ve set up a camp there.”

“Would they even have a place for us?”

“I know a low-level manager. He promised he’d find us a spot.”

Her aunt spoke quietly, puffing on a cheap cigarette. Seeing Yoon Min’s surprise, she gave a small laugh and pulled out a map and a business card from the mattress. She spent the whole night patiently explaining the route.

She instructed her to find ‘Choi Cheol-nam,’ an afternoon manager at Entrance 13 of the camp on Sector 41’s east side. She emphasized the importance of timing to meet him. It was puzzling that her aunt provided such detailed directions, as they could have just gone together. But her aunt was full of quirks: ordering her to call her ‘auntie,’ complaining about ‘finding a girl to take in,’ even though she’d never truly consider abandoning her. Yoon Min brushed off the strangeness.

A few days later, the old woman passed away.

It was exactly one week before Yoon Min’s twentieth birthday.

No one knew the cause. There were no doctors in Sector 37, and even to see a shady quack with a fake certificate cost more than they could ever afford.

In this world, death was commonplace. Having lived in Sector 12 until she was fifteen, Yoon Min had seen her share of death. A body cold as ice, vacant eyes, the empty shell of a person—no longer human.

After giving Yoon Min directions to the camp, her aunt had passed without a trace of regret, as if relieved to be free. She left behind Yoon Min and the mutt in this forsaken world. It was clear she had anticipated her death.

She wrapped the cold body in a bed sheet. Luckily, it was winter, so the corpse hadn’t begun to smell too badly. She spent about a week with the dead old woman before reporting it to a passing soldier, who took the body away. In this world, corpses had many uses. In the Gates, monsters infected by viruses often became distracted by corpses, allowing Espers and soldiers an opportunity to attack.

That was just last year.

Now, Yoon Min was twenty and hadn’t yet gone to Sector 41. She still begged in the narrow alleys of Sector 37, where shanties were crowded together, living quietly by her three rules for survival.

There was no particular reason she hadn’t left. The overflow of people who failed to get into the Sector 41 camp had spread across Sectors 35 through 40.

“Without money or connections, there’s no way in. The camp’s already full.”

“Damn it. They let in only a few thousand out of tens of thousands? That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s their way of telling people with no skills to go off and die.”

“Might as well try Sector 13. There are a lot of soldiers there, so finding work would be easier.”