The world will end in 40 days.
And I couldn't care less.
I woke up to the usual piercing sunbeam that poked my eyes. For the umpteenth time, I cursed myself for forgetting to close the curtain the night before and instantly winced. I knew it was just a few minutes after noon - 12:04 PM to be exact.
I reached out to the bedside table and checked my phone expecting the same old same old, and well, it was the same old - 12:04 PM.
Flicking through the news pages has become my daily routine, which was pretty stupid considering that there was never going to be any 'news' for me. I have long gone past the stage of desperately wishing for something new, and I felt foolish doing this every time I woke up on the 1st of October, 2024 again.
The green banner of Neyver portal app stayed green, the political news was the same, the number of people who died from an overnight fire breakout in one of the major residential buildings in the city was the same, and the limited-time discount offer for the special edition of my favorite potato chips was the same. I clicked on it instinctively only to be greeted by a 'Sold Out' message yet again.
Damn, I really wanted to eat that prawn curry-flavored potato chips at least once before I die.
If I could even die, that is.
I have been looking for inconsistencies.
Although I knew it was all futile, for a long time I cared. I hoped that different news would come up on Neyver main page. I hoped that fewer people died in the fire (failing that, more people dying wouldn't have been too bad either). I hoped that for a change, I could get my prawn curry-flavored potato chips.
Because it was now the 79th time I woke up back on the 1st of October 2024.
Being the useless NEET girl that I was, I did fantasize about the end of the world many times even before all this started. I thought about an asteroid crash that would wipe the smirk off the faces of HR managers in 53 companies that rejected my applications. I imagined a nuclear warhead landing on the campus of the shitty university that I barely managed to graduate from. I prayed for a rain of 40 days and 40 nights that would flood this entire world, so everyone in it could drown just like how I felt every single day in my pointless life.
Yet I never expected that the world would end with the appearance of a massive beast from hell on the 9th of November.
When I first came across it while I was munching on kimbap from a small shop in Hongdae I thought I was hallucinating. It's not like I've ever taken illegal drugs before, as they are serious criminal offenses in Korea and I didn't even know where to get them from, but when I was six years old I experienced an absolutely horrible side effect from a medicine my Mom forced me to take for motion sickness - a side effect that sent me on a three days trip of hallucinations.
But that was a long ago and I have been more or less mentally stable for past years.
So when I saw that incredible monster towering above everything and stomping people, turning them into exploded ketchup bottles with its every step, first I was afraid. Then I was petrified. Then I ran for my life thinking maybe I will survive.
Survive I did.
Unfortunately.
As far as I'm aware, the world ended that day, only for me to wake up back in my room with the same nasty sun poking my eyes because I forgot to close the damn curtain the night before.
Then it happened again and again.
The same 40 days went by like an extended version of Groundhog Day, and on November 9th, what I decided to call 'The Hell Beast' appeared.
It didn't matter where I was. I even took a train to Busan from Seoul (where I lived), the furthest major city down in the South of Korea. But when I went there hoping I might have a few extra days to live before the Beast made its way down from Seoul, I witnessed it appear from the sea of Haeundae Beach.
I tried so many things.
I informed the police that the Hell Beast would appear and destroy the world. They put me in the cell and made me take a drug test. I called the media outlets and was laughed at countless times. I made posts on so many online forums and got banned for trolling.
Nothing worked.
So I just decided to go back to being the useless waste of space that I was.
I binge-read and watched manga and anime. I finished all seasons of anything worthwhile on Notflex. I read all the best romance and fantasy novels on Webnovel. Heck, at one point I even took out what little credit I had left on my credit card to gift castles and gachapons to my favorite authors like there was no tomorrow.
Because there really was no tomorrow.
I guess that was the only good thing about this life stuck in the cycle of 40 days before the Apocalypse. I could waste everything I had and didn't have to worry about financial consequences because I knew I'd never have to pay the bills.
But alas, it also meant that no matter how diligently I updated, I would never get paid from Webnovel either. What a cruel destiny it was that the last day of the world was on the 9th.
Not that it really mattered, because my contract application would get rejected twice anyway, be accepted on the third try, and accumulate exactly the same number of views and collections before November 9th.
And there was always this same fucker who left me a one-star review.
The time was now 12:30 PM and my stomach growled like a clockwork.
I'll go eat something else today. That has become my goal recently. Just try new food and enjoy all the tastes in the world until I get bored. This food phase will probably last a few cycles and I'll have to find something more amusing to do again. But it's OK. I have an infinite amount of time in my hand.
Because the world will end in 40 days.
And I couldn't care less.