Kyung-min, a man erased from humanity itself—his name, his date of birth, his identity, and every trace of his existence had vanished as if they had never been written into the world. No documents remembered him. No databases stored him. No mind could hold onto him for more than a fleeting moment.
Yet he still lived.
Long ago, in the year 2003, he had been nothing more than an ordinary human being. He had a small but warm family—two parents who argued over dinner sometimes but always made up before sleep, an older brother who teased him endlessly, and a younger sister who followed him everywhere like a shadow.
His life was simple: school in the morning, homework in the afternoon, and evenings filled with noise from the television and the smell of rice cooking in the kitchen.
August 6, 2003, began like any other day.
The sky was clear, and cicadas cried loudly from the trees near his home. Kyung-min had just stepped outside when something streaked across the heavens, cutting the blue sky open with a burning red line.
A deafening sound followed, and the ground trembled slightly, as if the earth itself had flinched.
Something had fallen.
Curiosity overpowered fear. Against every instinct that told him to run back inside, Kyung-min moved toward the crash site near the hills beyond his neighborhood.
Smoke curled upward like a dark ribbon, and at the center of the scorched ground lay an object unlike anything he had ever seen. It looked like stone, yet not stone—its surface pulsed faintly, as if it were alive.
The moment his fingers brushed against it, a beam of crimson light erupted outward.
The world vanished.
His ears rang. His vision drowned in red. His body felt as though it were being pulled apart and stitched back together at the same time. When the glow finally faded, Kyung-min collapsed to his knees, gasping for air.
He opened his eyes.
It was still Korea.
But not the Korea he knew.
The buildings were taller. Screens glowed from every corner. Strange vehicles moved silently along the roads. People walked past him wearing unfamiliar clothes, their faces buried in devices he had never seen before. The air itself felt different—heavier, filled with sounds of machines and distant voices.
Kyung-min staggered to his feet, heart pounding. Panic rose in his chest.
He ran into the nearest convenience store, nearly slipping on the polished floor.
"What year is it?" he asked the cashier urgently. "Please—what year is it?"
The cashier stared straight through him.
Not past him. Through him.
Kyung-min repeated himself, louder this time. "What year is it?!"
No response.
Customers brushed past him as if he were air. One nearly collided with his shoulder, paused for a split second, then frowned in confusion before walking away, as if the thought of him had already disappeared.
His eyes darted to the television mounted on the wall.
A news broadcast played calmly.
"…a meteorite that crashed on August 6, 2003…"
His breath caught.
"2003?" Kyung-min whispered.
Then he noticed the date displayed at the bottom of the screen.
March 2, 2025.
"March… 2… 2025?"
The words tasted unreal in his mouth.
Twenty-two years.
He had leapt forward twenty-two years in an instant.
His legs weakened, and he sank down beside a shelf of snacks no one would ever remember seeing him touch. His mind refused to accept it. This had to be a dream. A hallucination. Some strange aftereffect of the light. But the cold floor beneath him felt solid. The sounds of the city were too real.
If it was truly 2025… then his family…
His parents would be older. His brother and sister grown. His home might not even exist anymore.
He rushed back outside and ran through streets that no longer recognized him. He searched for familiar landmarks, but even the places he remembered had been transformed beyond recognition.
When he tried to ask people for directions, their eyes slid past him.
When someone accidentally bumped into him, they opened their mouth to complain—then stopped, blinking in confusion, their expression empty.
Whatever force had brought him here had also cursed him.
Anyone who interacted with Kyung-min forgot him instantly.
Their memories of him dissolved the moment they formed.
It was as if reality itself rejected the idea of his existence.
Days passed—or perhaps weeks. Time became meaningless when no one acknowledged you. Kyung-min wandered through Seoul like a ghost trapped in daylight. He slept in empty corners of subway stations and under bridges, unnoticed and unrecorded. He tried writing his name on paper, only to watch people glance at it and then look away, forgetting why they had stopped.
He found mirrors and stared at his reflection, searching for proof that he was still real.
"I'm here," he whispered to himself. "I exist."
But the world did not answer.
At night, he stood among crowds watching bright screens flash advertisements and news headlines about events he never lived through. Wars he never fought. Technologies he never learned. Years stolen from him in a single breath.
Sometimes he would follow strangers, hoping someone—anyone—might remember him for more than a moment. Sometimes he shouted in busy streets, his voice swallowed by noise. Sometimes he sat silently, afraid that if he moved too much, even he would forget himself.
And somewhere deep inside him, a terrifying truth slowly formed:
He had not only traveled to the future.
He had been erased from humanity.
Yet he could not die.
His body did not age. Hunger came and went strangely. Wounds healed too fast. Time passed, but he did not change with it.
Kyung-min continued walking through a world that no longer had a place for him, searching for answers in a city that could not remember his face, while the memory of August 6, 2003 burned endlessly in his mind…