The glowing red and white notification hovered in front of me, vivid against the blood-red sky outside. My heart was pounding, not out of fear, not even shock, but sheer exhilaration.
This is it.
The trials. The twisted world transformation. Even the notification. My hand instinctively covered my face, pressing into a palm so familiar it could've been muscle memory. My fingers parted just enough for me to peek at the screen, a grin creeping onto my face despite the chaos erupting around me.
"You might as well spell it out at this point." I whispered in a rather creepy tone.
It was a change. A big one. No, an unpredictable one.
The kind I'd been waiting for.
"Dude, a—are you okay?" Jae-hyun's voice shook, breaking through my thoughts.
I turned to him, and the excitement bubbling in my chest dampened for a moment. His face was pale, his lips trembling. He wasn't excited. He wasn't ready. He was terrified.
And he wasn't the only one.
"What does elimination mean? Why is participation mandatory?! Is this some sort of prank?" a man screamed from the back of the bus, his voice cracking with desperation.
The bus erupted into chaos. Some passengers clutched their phones, trying to dial the police to no avail. Some glared at the notification in front of them, their faces pale and contorted in panic as they read and reread the text like it held the secret to survival. Others ignored it altogether, their wide eyes glued to the apocalyptic nightmare unfolding outside.
Cries from children echoed like sirens, drowning in the cacophony of frantic voices. A few people banged on the partitions at the front of the bus separating the passengers and the driver, screaming at him to let them out.
"Why are you smiling?!" Jae-hyun shouted, grabbing me by my arm. His voice cracked with fury and something deeper—fear. "Did you crack or something? Look outside. The world has gone to shit."
I stared at him for a moment. His bravado, his usual larger-than-life energy—it was gone. His eyes were red-rimmed, his vice-like grip on my arm shaking like a scattering flame.
I wanted to scream back, to tell him I wasn't crazy. I wasn't blind. But the look in his eyes gave me pause. I bit back the urge to laugh, to let the excitement spill out of me. Now wasn't the time.
This wasn't a web novel to Jae-hyun. This was reality.
"It's going to be fine," I said firmly, locking eyes with him. My voice was calm, steady—forced, but steady. "Listen to me. I know this is going to sound insane, but this is… this is the world of Survival 101."
Jae-hyun blinked, his grip loosening slightly. "The what?"
"The web novel! Survival 101! I know it sounds crazy, but it's the same. The notifications, the world falling apart—it's the exact same setup as the story."
For a second, just a second, something flickered in his eyes - something I had never seen. Trust, maybe? No, admiration.
But then it was gone, replaced with the familiar fury of a man pushed to his breaking point.
"HAVE YOU LOST IT?!" he yelled, shaking me. "YOU THINK THIS IS SOME DAMNED STORY? THE SKY IS RED. MONSTERS ARE POURING OUT OF CRACKS IN THE AIR. PEOPLE ARE SCREAMING. THE WORLD IS ABOUT TO END AND YOU THINK THIS IS THAT ABSURDLY LONG WEB NOVEL YOU WERE READING?!"
His voice hit me like a slap, piercing through my excitement.
This wasn't how it was supposed to go. Jae-hyun was supposed to believe me. He was supposed to trust me.
"Listen!" I snapped, breaking free of his grip. "I understand you can't trust me right now, but everything matches up. The trials, the bus ride—it's all the same! If I'm right, the first trial will start soon. The PA will make an announcement."
His expression twisted with disbelief. "Oh my God. You're actually fucking unbelievable."
Minutes passed with no change. Everyone in the bus was still scared. The children were sulking as they curled up next to their respective parents, who honestly looked more horrified than the children. One of the mothers was wrapped around her child, all the while incoherently muttering "This isn't real. This isn't real."
Close to her was a man in a proper suit and tie, probably going to a meeting or shit who held a few thousand won in his hands, flailing them loosely.
"I'll give a hundred thousand - no, a million - A MILLION WON to whoever lets me out." The man shouted, desperate. The offer was tempting, but no one came up. After all, no one knew a way out. Meanwhile, me? I didn't bother, since the money he was flexing would soon be meaningless scraps of paper. The true resources were the artefacts and the gold.
The gears in the bus clanked as its speed slowly started to decrease. Outside of the window was a skyscraper - a really large one at that - with a flat roof and what I knew to be an observation deck at the top. If everything went according to plan, the first trial would be "RACE TO THE ROOF". Of course not the normal kind, but rather a chaotic, mind bending race against time.
The bus rattled to a stop, right in front of the skyscraper's glass doors. It loomed overhead, casting jagged shadows against the fiery sky. Passengers scrambled to the exit, pounding on the doors, screaming or praying for escape.
Jae-hyun tried to leave a couple times, but I stopped him. After all, where would he go, even if he managed to break out? The streets were way worse than the bus. That's when a heavy built person came up next to us, giving me a crude glance before picking up the emergency fire extinguisher stuck to the wall.
I leaned back in my seat, crossing my legs. "I wouldn't do that if I were you," I said calmly, my voice cutting through the rising panic.
The man shot me a glare, his knuckles white around the extinguisher. "Shut up, kid."
Before I could warn him again, he raised the extinguisher and slammed it against the door with all his strength.
The result was immediate.
The man jolted back, his hands trembling as if he'd had just been shocked,
"See? I warned you. Now sit down—" I said, a little surprised at how he was still standing, considering how in survival 101, most people who got shocked were incapacitated for at least a few minutes.
"I told you to shut up, kid." The man yelled back, anger bubbling deep within him as he went in for another strike. Just as the extinguisher connected with the door, the loud thud was replaced by the man's blood curdling screams.
Dropping the extinguisher as he staggered back, his entire body convulsing, limbs flailing as if invisible wires were yanking him apart.
"It burns! IT FUCKING BURNS!" he shrieked, his voice tearing through the bus like a knife.
People recoiled in horror. Some screamed while others froze, too stunned to move. The children wailed louder, desperately clutching their parents who stared helplessly at the man thrashing on the ground.
I watched silently, my heart pounding.
This was the anti-cheat system. Anyone trying to break the rules would be electrocuted—first as a warning, then fatally.
The man collapsed to the floor, his body still twitching. His screams died into faint gasps before an overwhelming silence.
I looked at his pale body from a distance. My face instinctively contracting into disgust. Thoughts like I had warned him about what would happen. Sometimes people needed to learn the hard way, entered my mind but was this really necessary? I could have been more adamant. I could have explained.
No. That's just wishful thinking. Why would he have ever listened to me when even my best friend didn't trust me?
When I looked up, the rest of the passengers were looking at me, so was Jae-hyun. The air was thick with anticipation, coiling around my neck like a python looking at its next prey.
How the fuck was I going to explain the fact that I knew this would happen, again?
That's when it arrived. Or at least its voice did.
A sharp, mechanical screech cut through the bus like nails on a chalkboard. It came out of nowhere and everywhere at the same time, reverberating through the bus. The lights flickered, and the gears in the bus groaned.
"HELLO, HELLO! TESTING, TESTING… is this thing working? …It is? Great."
The voice boomed so loud it felt like my skull would split. Everyone flinched, clutching their ears. Was this really the same Survival 101 I'd spent months reading? Or was I just another idiot caught in a nightmare?
"Welcome to the first trial everyone. I am the Provincial Administrator for Seol. We will start in a little bit. Kekeke…"
The bus went dead silent. Even the kids stopped crying.
My grin returned. Nah, the events are way too similar. Even an actual idiot who had just read the novel would have made the connection by now.
Finally, I thought, looking around.
The new world, I had always dreamed of was here.