Seoul Cyberpunk Story-Chapter 79: Lunch
I was buried deep in the break room bed at Dino Park.
Pizza plates surrounded me, several already empty.
Piece by piece, I munched on the pizzas Luna had made, letting out a contented sigh.
Just breathing and pizza kept appearing. This really was the good life.
Heehee.
But humans are creatures of greed, and sure enough, another kind of hunger began to crawl up inside me.
‘Ah, I wanna bring in Black Bio Pizza too...’
‘No—every good pizza joint in all of Babel needs to be part of this place!’
‘I heard there’s some amazing franchises in the South!’
Even though my stomach was starting to send that "you’re full now" signal, I still dumped a heap of hot sauce on another slice and shoved it into my mouth.
Right then, the break room exploded with dramatic sound effects.
I flinched at the sudden blast from the giant hologram TV.
“KyuAAANG!”
Agu, who had been curled up next to me, suddenly popped upright on its stubby back legs and let out a yell.
Then, like a tiny boxer, it began punching the air with its short front limbs.
‘What the hell?’
With a puzzled expression, I turned toward the screen.
A studio flooded with gaudy neon lights, earsplitting electronic music, and a crowd screaming with manic energy filled the frame.
It was Babel’s hottest current show: "Lex Chroma’s Cyber Showdown."
The host, Lex Chroma, was wrapped in golden neon implants and worked the audience into a frenzy with his exaggerated gestures and flashy tongue.
[Alright, folks! Tonight’s main event—straight from the East, the Destroyer: ‘Titan Fist’! And from the West, the Hammer: ‘Crusher Head’! Who will emerge victorious?!]
The screen showed two fighters decked out in grotesque, over-the-top implants.
Calling them human was a stretch at this point.
One had arms replaced entirely with machines. The other had half his skull covered in metal.
They charged at each other, swinging augmented limbs enhanced through tech.
Sparks flew as metal clashed—and the camera zoomed in just as one fighter’s cybernetic arm was torn off.
I shook my head.
To someone with my hundred-year-old instincts, it was hard to wrap my mind around.
It felt like watching some kind of full-doping Olympics, where anything went—drugs, tech, whatever.
“Kyuaaang! Kyuaaang!”
Agu cheered at the screen, throwing its full weight behind its favorite fighter.
I, clearly unimpressed, opened the AR interface and switched the channel.
“Kyuhinghing...”
Agu whimpered, eyes full of heartbreak, like I’d just stolen its pizza.
“You’re not watching that.”
I said it firmly.
I could sense Luna slowly walking out from the kitchen. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦
Lex Chroma’s Cyber Showdown was way too blood-soaked for someone like Luna to be seeing.
The new channel played the news.
Something about the civil war ending at Hexa Core Armory—but I couldn’t care less.
I picked up another slice and glanced around.
‘Wait... where are the kids?’
The Golden Child and Red Child were nowhere to be seen.
Usually, they’d be stuck to my side, munching pizza too. But at some point, they’d vanished.
I paused, then shrugged.
They were probably off playing with the shadow-dinosaurs or stirring up trouble somewhere else in Seoul Dino Park.
“Eh, they’ll be fine.”
I laid back on the bed, plopped the pizza slice on my face, and muttered.
****
Luna stepped out of the kitchen, pulling off her thick heat-proof gloves and the grease-stained apron.
Sweat beaded across her forehead—but her face wasn’t tired. It was glowing with a bright smile.
A peace she couldn’t have even imagined until recently was now her everyday life.
Her sister, Celine, who used to vanish at dawn for dangerous gigs, no longer looked like someone about to collapse.
The shadow on her face was gone. She was always nearby now.
No more debt collectors haunting their dreams. No more weird-smelling tap water for dinner.
Most of all, the knowledge Scarlet and Victor passed along when they had time—
how to read, how to write, how to fix simple machines, how to survive in brutal Babel—
Each day was full of new lessons, and those lessons gave Luna her first real grasp of what the word hope meant.
‘I’m... really happy.’
Walking down the corridor from the kitchen, Luna naturally glanced toward the break room, where the giant hologram screen was mounted.
As always, A was there.
Lounging diagonally on the oversized bed, a slice of pizza resting on her face.
The pizza slowly shrank, bit by bit, squirming and creeping as it matched A’s subtle breathing.
‘Pizza absorption...’
The term came to Luna unbidden.
However you looked at it, A’s unique method of pizza consumption felt more like absorption than eating.
She’d once worked up the courage to ask A why she ate pizza like that.
A had answered matter-of-factly:
“Because I’m full... So I just breathe in the scent, and slowly, very slowly, savor the flavor.”
‘Why not just save it for later...?’
It made no sense to Luna. But she nodded anyway.
If you were going to be called the Pizza Demon, that kind of behavior probably came with the territory.
After giving A a polite nod, Luna returned to her room, where a familiar sight greeted her.
The two kids were on her desk, kneading each other’s pudgy bellies like they were competing to see who was chubbier.
“They’re at it again...”
These two, who looked like little clones of A, didn’t match her exactly—but they still did things no one could understand.
Suddenly throwing up their hands and hopping in place.
Or spinning in circles around a weird ketchup-drawn ring with the Kiwis, dancing.
[Ddeji!]
[Ddeji!]
The children laughed, chirping soundless words back and forth at each other.
But something felt strange.
Luna could almost make out what they were saying—something she’d never been able to understand before.
‘Wait... am I understanding the kids right now?’
Her eyes widened in surprise.
And then, in that instant, Luna realized something even more unbelievable.
Neither of the kids was coated.
And yet—she could still see them clearly!
Up until now, the only ones who could perceive the uncoated forms of the children were A, Agu, and the Kiwis!
‘Am I hallucinating?’
Doubting her eyes, Luna rubbed them hard with both hands.
But when she looked again, an even more bizarre scene awaited her.
Where just moments ago there had been two pudgy children, there were now three—all with their normal, usual body types.
“U-Unnieeeeeee!”
Luna screamed and bolted from the room, slamming the door open as she ran.
She had to tell someone what just happened. Right now.
Left behind on the desk in the empty room, the children looked at each other and smiled brightly.
[New friend!]
[Friend!]
Their happy laughter filled the room.
*****
At that same moment Luna had shouted and dashed off in shock at the children’s strange transformation...
In the deepest part of Seoul Dino Park, in the central control room, Ember was staring grimly at the AR interface screen.
On the surface, it was just one of Babel City’s countless info pages—nothing special at all.
<We buy century-old antiques at the highest price.>
That line, written in faded script at the top of the page, greeted her.
Below it was a list of tradeable item types, approximate price ranges, and promises of complete seller anonymity.
At the bottom, the following information appeared in fine print:
<Location: Babel Outskirts, Sector A-7, near the waste disposal site (exact location provided upon confirmed trade)>
<Contact: Secure Channel XX-X-XXXX-XXXXX (Voice Modulation Required)>
<Seeking all items related to life and culture from 100 years ago. Damaged or incomplete goods will still be appraised and purchased.>
<Pre-Cataclysm Cultural Research Society.>
In Babel, antique dealers like this weren’t common, but they weren’t rare either.
Some among the ultra-rich still paid high prices for old relics.
Trying, maybe, to remember the world before everything broke.
But Ember’s expression was more serious than ever.
This seemingly innocuous page—was actually an encrypted communication channel she had used back when she operated inside the Nexus Node, meeting with external informants in secret.
“Pre-Cataclysm Cultural Research Society” was just a front.
Specific word patterns and hidden tags embedded in the page contained coded messages only she and the informant could understand.
<Requesting contact. Previous meeting location. Same time. Urgent matter.>
The problem was—the informant who sent this message had been dead for a very long time.
Ember herself had confirmed the death.
She’d seen the cold corpse. Extracted the final data from their implant.
‘A trap? Or...’
A deep crease formed in Ember’s brow.
A message from the dead.
It was an obvious contradiction—and it stirred something cold and dreadful in her chest.
Was someone using the old channel to lure her in?
Or... had a dead comrade somehow reached out from beyond?
Swallowing dryly, Ember slowly reached for the long-dead communications rig.
She didn’t know what kind of danger might be waiting on the other end.
But she couldn’t ignore this message.
That informant had once meant more to her than just a source.
