The morning after the green-eyed incident, Kim Jisoo was already awake long before Lee Hana stirred from her makeshift couch-bed in the lab.He wasn't a morning person, but sleep had eluded him again — not because of fear, but because his eyes refused to rest.
Even when he closed them, light existed.Not light in the normal sense — not from bulbs or sun rays — but patterns, pulses, strange moving filaments that swirled through the air like microscopic rivers.
At first, he assumed it was an afterimage from staring at the monitors too long.But when he blinked, they moved independently.
He sat still on the cold metal stool, hands clasped loosely, eyes scanning the space before him.
The lab looked normal — fluorescent panels, titanium workstations, RAIN's dormant interface glowing faintly in standby mode. But overlaid on top of all that, a new world shimmered — like the air itself carried architecture.
Pale, threadlike filaments ran across the walls and ceiling, some static, others flowing in curved paths.Occasionally, small pulses of light traveled through these threads, like tiny electrical signals jumping through invisible veins.
When one passed close to him, he felt it — a faint static against his skin, like the brush of spider silk.
He lifted his hand and waved it gently through the air.The light-thread bent, rippled, then reformed.
He murmured, fascinated, "Localized energy lattice…"
Behind him, the System blinked awake."Jisoo?"
He didn't look away. "I can see something… Something layered in the air."
The System floated closer, his holographic feet making no sound on the floor. "Describe it."
"Filamentous structures. Energy-dense. Possibly electromagnetic… but too organized to be random. They run parallel to conductive material."
"That sounds like the etheric grid," the System said, thoughtful. "A residual field left from the Outergod's bio-energy matrix."
Kim Jisoo turned slightly. "You mean it's alive?"
"Not exactly. More like… memory residue from a consciousness once embedded in the planet."
He nodded slowly, trying to reconcile the words. "Then I'm seeing something not visible to normal humans."
"That's correct," the System said. "Your vision has breached the standard human optical limit. Your eyes are likely filtering multiple wavelengths beyond visible light."
Lee Hana groaned from across the room, her voice muffled by her blanket."Could you guys not talk like two overclocked microwaves at 7 a.m.?"
Kim Jisoo ignored her and started pulling a diagnostic interface toward himself. "If the wavelengths extend beyond seven hundred nanometers, that puts them in the near-infrared or even sub-etheric range."
"Exactly," the System replied, watching him work. "The resonance you achieved has modified your retinal cones and neural receptors. You're essentially processing quantum photonic particles—"
"—which means my brain's visual cortex is interpreting raw energy signatures," Kim Jisoo finished for him, eyes narrowing. "That's… impossible."
Lee Hana yawned, finally sitting up. "What's impossible now? Oh, let me guess — physics broke again?"
He turned toward her. "No, just biology."
"Oh great," she muttered. "Your biology is breaking. Love that for us."
Kim Jisoo didn't respond. He was scanning the readings from his neural sensor. The data scrolled fast — brainwave irregularities, increased gamma frequency synchronization, light sensitivity exceeding safe thresholds.
But what stood out was a small line near the bottom.Neural-Photon Integration: 3.2% (stable)
He murmured, "So it's measurable."
The System hovered nearby. "You're integrating the Savior Core's photonic code. The process is stable for now, but…"
"But unstable long-term?" Jisoo guessed.
"Potentially."
"Potentially unstable," Lee Hana repeated sarcastically. "Cool, cool, that's scientist-speak for we're doomed later."
Kim Jisoo's green eyes glimmered faintly in the lab's low light. "Not doomed. Just… changed."
She gave him a look. "Changed into what? Glowing bug-man? Alien prophet? Maybe a human flashlight?"
He actually smiled faintly. "More likely the next evolutionary step."
"Oh god, he's enjoying this," she muttered.
A few hours later, he decided to test his visual perception systematically.
He dimmed all the lights and stood in the center of the lab.The System floated beside him, acting as recorder. Lee Hana, reluctantly roped into it, held a clipboard and a flashlight.
"This feels like we're about to summon a demon," she said flatly.
"Shine it toward the wall," Jisoo said.
She did. The flashlight beam hit the metal panel — and immediately, Jisoo's pupils dilated, locking onto the faint distortions rippling across the wall.
He exhaled slowly. "There's energy flow beneath the surface structure. Like veins. Metallic structures are amplifying something unseen."
Lee Hana squinted at the wall. "Looks like… a wall to me."
He ignored her. "It's moving. Almost like—" He stopped. His tone changed. "System, are there active dimensional residues here?"
The System's golden eyes flickered. "Possibly. You're describing an energy echo. These occur in areas touched by temporal instability. But you shouldn't be able to—"
Jisoo took a slow breath. "I can see it. Like fingerprints on time."
Lee Hana looked at him, uneasy now. "Okay… that sounds terrifying. You're saying you can see time?"
He shook his head. "No. I can see what it leaves behind."
The System nodded solemnly. "He's not wrong. Every moment of collapse leaves behind energy traces. He's reading them visually."
"So," Lee Hana said, trying to lighten the mood, "basically he's seeing ghost Wi-Fi."
The System blinked. "In crude human metaphor, yes."
Kim Jisoo gave a small exhale that might've been a laugh.
"Ghost Wi-Fi," he repeated. "That's one way to describe it."
She grinned, relieved he hadn't lost it yet. "You're welcome. If you start buffering mid-sentence, we'll know why."
But as the day went on, the "ghost Wi-Fi" grew stronger.
When he looked at people — even Hana — faint outlines shimmered around them, like colored mists.
For her, it was a soft orange mixed with gold. For the System, it was a sharp lattice of shifting light — geometric, angular, mathematical in nature.
He couldn't unsee it anymore. Even blinking didn't reset it.
Everywhere he looked, the world was full of layers — overlapping colors, energies, echoes of motion that defied physical laws.
His scientific side wanted to record everything. His human side… was quietly overwhelmed.
At one point, he caught his reflection in the glass wall and paused.
There was a green aura swirling around his own outline, pulsing with faint rhythmic patterns. Every few seconds, the glow would flicker and reveal something beneath — an intricate pattern of golden threads looping through his veins.
He whispered, "Bio-photonic architecture…"
Lee Hana looked up from her notes. "English, please?"
He turned toward her, his voice steady but his expression strange. "It's like my body's generating a lattice of light under the skin. Controlled, structured. Almost engineered."
"Meaning?"
"Meaning," he said, "I'm starting to see what this world is made of."
The System's eyes flickered with data light. "That's not a metaphor. He's literally seeing the world's underlying code. The Savior Core in him is synchronizing with the Monster System's framework."
Lee Hana leaned back in her chair. "And this is… safe?"
The System hesitated. "Define safe."
She groaned. "Oh, here we go again."
"His brain is adapting faster than expected," the System continued. "But the risk lies in perception drift. The more he sees, the harder it becomes to separate reality from substructure."
Kim Jisoo exhaled through his nose. "Hallucinations, then."
"Not hallucinations," the System corrected. "Overexposure. Think of it as seeing the source code behind everything."
Lee Hana stared at Kim Jisoo. "So you're like… Neo from the Matrix now?"
He blinked. "Who?"
She sighed. "Never mind."
By evening, the side effects intensified. The light around him didn't fade — it followed him. Even when he closed his eyes, the filaments traced after his movements.
When he touched the wall, faint green circuits formed where his fingertips pressed, then slowly faded.
He ran tests on himself, noting every anomaly. No temperature spike. No abnormal pain. But his heart rate fluctuated — not from fear, but from overstimulation.
The System observed quietly. "You're adapting faster than any recorded human subject."
"Or degrading faster," Jisoo replied without looking up.
Lee Hana, sitting on the counter again, kicked her legs idly. "You're way too calm for a guy who might be melting from the inside."
He turned his glowing eyes toward her. "If I panic, I learn nothing."
She frowned. "If you die, you learn nothing and we lose our cook."
For once, he chuckled softly. "Noted."
The System smiled faintly too. "You humans handle existential collapse with humor. It's oddly efficient."
Lee Hana grinned. "Yeah, we call it coping."
Kim Jisoo turned back to his scanner. The green light of his irises brightened briefly as he murmured, "If I'm the only one seeing these patterns, then maybe… the apocalypse wasn't about destruction. Maybe it was about perception."
The System tilted his head. "Explain."
He looked at the shifting filaments in the air — at the ghostly dance of energy around every object. "What if the sun dimming, the monsters, everything… was just this world phasing into a new layer of existence? And humans couldn't see it. So they called it death."
Lee Hana stared, wide-eyed. "You're saying the world didn't end… it just changed frequency?"
He met her gaze. "Maybe. And if that's true—"
The System finished softly, "—then you're the first to tune into the new world."
Silence settled in the lab.
The machines hummed. The light shimmered faintly around Kim Jisoo's silhouette.