[June 1997, Onsan, Ulsan]
Beneath a gray sky, trucks rumbled one after another through the gates of the landfill.
Each heavy wheel jolted against the uneven ground, kicking up dust that rose into the air and drifted back down slowly across people's faces whenever the wind shifted.
Outside the fence that enclosed the site, dozens of residents stood holding placards.
"Clean water for our children!"
"We are not test subjects!"
"We can't live like this!"
Beyond the signs, lines of police in red armbands waited in formation, while inside the construction site heavy equipment moved slowly, hauling waste from one heap to another.
The air reeked of chemicals, mixed with damp dust.
Someone coughed. Someone else, clutching a child, lifted their eyes in silence.
It was 1997.
The economy still came first. Environmental concerns were something "to talk about later."
The word environmental movement had yet to become part of everyday civic language, and fighting pollution was left mostly to the people living in its shadow.
The government pushed ahead with industrial complexes as planned, and small construction companies scrambled to seize the chance before them.
And yet, people were falling ill for reasons no one could name.
Here, in Onsan, Ulsan, those two forces were colliding head-on.
A small plastic water bottle rolled across the ground, kicked up and carried by the dust.
Above the site, another wave of dirt scattered into the air.
Someone sneezed. Someone else tilted their head back toward the sky—a sky not covered with clouds, but stained with the drifting haze of landfill dust and the exhaust of heavy machines.
No one there realized it in that moment: those invisible particles were mixing into the quiet wind, slipping deep into their lungs.
No one imagined that the dust of that day would, decades later, prove more devastating than a typhoon.
Back then it was dismissed as nothing more than "a nuisance," "a bad smell."
No one among those present could truly see that this place, this moment, was the quiet beginning of a climate crisis that would one day consume entire generations.
[1997, Outskirts of Ulsan – A Small Construction Office]
The sound of the protest had faded, but its echo still lingered in the wind outside the window.
Lee Jungho pulled the curtain aside in silence, then sat back down at his desk.
Piles of paperwork towered over the surface—investment prospectuses, municipal negotiation drafts, government subsidy documents.
Beside them sat a paper cup of cold coffee, forgotten. His face carried the weight of days without rest.
A staff member stepped in quietly, speaking in a low voice.
"They're against it again. The chairman's furious. If the government pulls out…"
Jungho only nodded, exhaling a long sigh before speaking.
"I know. We're already more than halfway in. If we stop now… layoffs will be the first step."
He reached for the phone, made a brief call, then pressed the computer's power button.
The monitor flickered to life, the familiar gray Windows desktop appearing.
He moved the mouse, opening a browser.
Slowly, painfully, the Hanmail and NATE portal homepages loaded.
Jungho typed into the search bar, one phrase after another:
"sustainable industrial waste management methods"
"U.S. Environmental Protection Agency standards"
"Japanese incineration facility cases"
His fingers slowed without him realizing it, the clack of the keyboard softening.
A question began to creep in, almost whispered to himself:
Will searching any of this actually change anything?
After a long moment, a small chime sounded from the bottom corner of the screen.
Jungho instinctively moved the mouse. A strange pop-up window overlapped his screen.
『Please help. This is the year 2050. The environmental crisis is severe.』
Jungho froze, his hand hovering midair. His brow furrowed.
He rubbed his forehead quickly.
"What is this… a virus? An ad?"
He dragged the cursor toward the little red X in the corner—then stopped.
Something about it felt oddly familiar, unsettling.
He stared at the pop-up, unmoving. Then, slowly, he brought the mouse back.
His hand hesitated on the keyboard, fingers trembling slightly as he typed:
『2050? You must be joking. If this isn't a prank… what kind of environmental problem are you talking about?』
The screen only flickered in silence. Jungho watched, his breath held.
Outside the window, the dusty sky had begun to turn red with dusk.
Jungho murmured under his breath:
"…Could this really be happening?"
His hand tightened around the mouse.
That small tremor at his fingertips was, perhaps, the very first response to a message carried across time.
[2050 – Doyoon's Room & 1997 – Jungho's Office: A Conversation Across Time]
2050, Doyoon's room.
Outside the window, Seoul still carried the pale light of winter after the record snowfall.
Through the narrow slit in the curtains, a washed-out sun spilled into the room.
Ji-an and Sia leaned close over the keyboard, shoulders tense, eyes fixed on the screen.
『Typhoons and heatwaves take turns battering us. Snow falls before the leaves can even turn red, and the ocean is already more than three degrees warmer than average.
Children are being poisoned by microplastics…』
Her fingers didn't stop, words flowing without pause.
Meanwhile, in 1997.
Lee Jungho sat at his desk, staring at the strange sentences on the pop-up window.
He tilted his head, hesitated, then finally laid his hands on the keyboard.
『That's… not the kind of environmental problem I know.
Here, trucks roll in every day, spewing dust, and children keep coughing for no reason.
The hospital says it's just the dust, but…』
Almost without thinking, his gaze drifted to the window.
Outside, his kindergarten-aged son stood in the yard, coughing again and again.
It was a sight he had witnessed many times before—yet today, for some reason, it caught at his chest.
Then, beside Ji-an's monitor in 2050, Doyoon's fingers flew across the keys.
Suddenly the screen flickered, and a broken line of text forced its way in.
『…Jungho, be careful. 1997… soon the economy…』
A warning tone blared. System instability flashed across the screen.
The text smeared into static, fragments barely legible:
『…economy… beware…』
Jungho frowned, eyes narrowing at the screen.
『What does that mean—beware the economy? What's about to happen?』
His hands hovered over the keyboard, motionless.
In his mind, the words "the year 2050" kept circling.
By then, his son would be far older than he was now.
If the world really changed the way they said… did his choices today decide the air his child would breathe, the water he would drink?
"If this is real… it means the decisions we make now could ruin the future for our children."
His voice was barely more than a whisper.
Ji-an and Sia read his reply in silence, swallowing hard.
The stranger's name on the other side of the screen carried far more weight—and far more hesitation—than either of them had expected.
Ji-an paused for a moment, gathering her thoughts, then carefully began typing again.
『I'm sorry. We didn't mean to frighten you. But the future we've seen… it's truly difficult. That's why we tried to reach out this way.』
Her fingers hesitated for a beat before continuing.
『This doesn't happen often. Honestly… we don't even know exactly why it connected now. Maybe it's a glitch in the system, or maybe it's an incredibly rare alignment of timing.』
Beside her, Sia slowly nodded and added her own words.
『But what we do know is this: connections like this have changed the future before.』
She leaned closer, her voice steady with sincerity.
『One small shift, a single piece of advice, even a local campaign—it has changed someone's life. And from there, the world began to change, little by little. We've seen it happen with our own eyes.』
Doyoon sat silently, scanning system logs. He knew it too.
Moments like this were impossibly rare—and impossibly important.
Back in 1997, Jungho read their words in silence.
A chill draft slipped through the window, rustling a paper on his desk.
Doubt and disbelief still clouded his face, but something was stirring beneath.
『You're saying… a small change could really alter the future?』
He stared at his own reflection in the monitor: tired eyes, a cold coffee cup, stalled construction projects, mounting debt.
『Right now… I've been telling myself I need to push this project through, no matter what, just to save my company.』
His hand went to his forehead.
"But if that decision… if it really shapes the world my family and my children will live in…"
It was barely a whisper, but for the first time, the words carried the weight of responsibility.
Ji-an leaned closer to the screen, sensing his hesitation.
He looked uncertain, but… something in him was beginning to waver.
『It's hard to believe. I know.』
She inhaled, steadied her hands, and typed again.
『But it really happened.
There was a student who hated the school lunches, so they started researching plant-based meals.
Now, they provide sustainable diets to thousands.』
Sia tapped on her tablet and added another message.
『And one high schooler once suggested a shared tumbler system. Over thirty years, it spread to tens of thousands of stores and reduced disposable cup use by nearly ninety percent.』
Ji-an typed softly, almost like a whisper.
『It all began with small questions—"Why is the lunch always like this?" "Why do we throw these cups away every day?"
They were just complaints… until someone truly listened.
And that's what changed things.』
Jungho sat motionless.
The silence in his office grew so heavy that even the clock's ticking seemed loud.
Slowly, he turned his head to look at the photo frame beside his desk.
In it, his young son grinned in his kindergarten uniform.
Beside him, his wife smiled warmly, one hand on her round belly.
Jungho exhaled, whispering without realizing it.
"If that's possible… if my children could live in a world even slightly better than this one…"
He returned to the keyboard. His fingers moved slowly, but with new certainty.
『I want to believe. No—let me try to believe.
If my choices now can give the next generation even a little more air to breathe… then I'll try.』
He pressed Send.
And in that instant, the monitor flickered violently.
A blood-red warning box filled the screen.
『Error: Temporal Link Protocol Conflict. Connection terminated immediately.』
The pop-up flashed once—and vanished.
The chat window, the messages from the future—all of it disappeared without a trace.
Jungho froze, staring at the monitor.
"…That's it? It's gone?"
He tapped the keyboard, but only the same old search engine filled the screen.
"Did I just imagine it? Was I too exhausted… or did I really connect with the future?"
His eyes drifted back to the framed photo.
The faces inside hadn't changed.
But something in Jungho's gaze had.
Time itself no longer carried the same weight it once did.