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12 Hours

Strange fate

Hii guys hope you all are doing good 😊 English is not my first Language so if there is any mistake pls tell Let’s start 😘

“This stop is Yeoksam, Yeoksam, the door to get off is on your right.”

The subway door opened, and I, who was standing by the door, started running forward like lightning.

“Beep!”

Climbing up the stairs, I swiped the transportation card and began to climb again.

I did not exercise much at all, so my breath quickly ran out. The sky seemed to turn yellow, but I could not stop moving. While running, I looked at my cell phone in a hurry. The clock was pointing at 8:50 a.m. It was up to me whether I would be late or not. I kept running without stopping.

The company was right next to the subway exit. If I left the exit, I would see a crosswalk. I only needed to cross one road. I ran up the subway escalator like lightning. The blue sky came into sight, and now being late was up to the traffic lights of the crosswalk. After leaving the subway station, I immediately looked at the traffic lights of the crosswalk. The traffic light flashed green, and there were only three seconds left.

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“Ah…”

If I wasn’t Usain Bolt running at full speed, I wouldn’t be able to cross on time. I looked at my cell phone clock. It was 8:52 a.m. I had eight minutes. Thinking about the waiting time for the signal, the game was already over. I was late. I seemed to hear the voice of the section chief, Heo.

“You lazy bastard, that’s all you can do?”

I stood there, balancing on one leg and then the other, dropped my head, and touched my forehead.

“Oh, I…”

I noticed a small yellow and red card right in front of my shoes, which would usually be a flyer saying, “A beauty is on standby for 24 hours'” or “100% Instant Loan.” I would have passed without seeing it, if it had been the same as usual. But the strange words written there caught my attention.

[Pick this up and look at the back.]

[You won’t get in trouble even if you are late today.]

‘What is this?’

I lifted it. It looked like an ordinary card flyer. But it was written in yellow on the red background, ‘Pick this up and look at the back. You won’t get in trouble even if you are late today.’ I giggled with it in my hand.

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‘Whoever thought it up… it is clever marketing. Are they targeting people who are late, like me?’

I turned the card around and looked at the back. It said, [Send me your main email address at 919-31413-11721]

‘This is funny…’

The only content was a funny phone number. It did not start with 010, nor did it have four digits at the end.

‘Is it some kind of fun, or a fraud?’

I was thinking of that, and a lot of people beside me started to cross the crosswalk with a quick pace. The light was blue. Without realizing, I put it in my pocket and started running across the crosswalk. It wasn’t to avoid being late, I was already late. It was just because I felt like had to show them that I had run, only to be less late than a minute.

I ran again with my poor stamina. I stood at the door of the company again and looked at my watch.

[9:02]

Two minutes late, breathing hard, this might be excused a little, a little less. I opened the door and went in. I quickly looked for section chief Heo. But I could not see my superior who nagged me every day. Just in time, an employee, Kim, who had joined the company at the same time, was passing by.

“Hey, Han Sang-hoon. You are late, aren’t you?”

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I asked him, “What about section chief Heo?”

“Ah… he was hospitalized last night for his appendix.”

I was surprised. “What?”

When he saw me, Kim smiled and said, “You are lucky. If section chief Heo had come to work, you would have been severely told off.”

Kim left and went back to his seat. I naturally put my hand in my pocket. I look at the card and murmured the phrase there.

“You won’t get in trouble even if you are late today…”

‘Coincidence?’

It was a strange thing to call it a coincidence. I turned the card over.

[919-31413-11721.]

Still, that funny phone number was written there. If it had been an ordinary day, I would have laughed at it and passed, but strangely, I was attracted to it.

‘A business email, not a frequent email address… Should I send one that I don’t use much…’

Remembering the old email address I had made during my school days, I wrote it down and texted it.

‘[email protected]’

Bring!

However, as soon as I sent a text message, I got a reply right away.

[Thank you. Free subscription has begun.]

‘Free subscription? Are they sending me some kind of erotic photos?’

Maybe the flyer was a promotion for an adult site. I recalled adult sites I used to access while avoiding my parents’ eyes when I was a kid.

‘It is old-fashioned… Who would pay to see some kind of erotic photo lately? Well, if anyone is caught in something like this, they may pay for it…’

I turned on the Internet window and opened the mailbox I had left behind without using much. There were 999 emails in the left-over mailbox. I clicked on it. There were plenty of familiar spam emails.

[This is team leader Kim Mi-young. You can borrow up to 40 thousand dollars.]

[Car insurance in the news. Check it out now.]

‘These are not going to be…’

But there was an email at the top of the list, with a prominent title. Under the title was written 12 Hours After. It was a simple email.

12 Hours After? Isn’t that an erotic photo?’

I tried to click on it. But I noticed something strange. The sender address was completely empty.

‘What is this?’

There was no sender. I had never received this kind of email before. It reminded me of what I had seen in newspapers.

‘Awareness of emails from hackers.’

‘Virus transmission via email’

‘Clicking one moment starts data hacking’

It seemed that I had seen such an article in the recent social section.

‘What do I do?’

I was worried for a moment and checked the window in the lower right corner. My virus protection’s real-time surveillance was on.

‘There’s nothing to lose.’

I decided to open it with a left-click. Soon the message was open on the monitor. Seeing it, I shouted inside, ‘What is this?’

I hope you like this

Enjoy your day 😊😘

Part 1

Hii guys hope you all are doing good 😊 English is not my first Language so if there is any mistake pls tell Let’s start 😘 Any name, place is fictional so pls don’t report

There were only two lines in the email.

[Politics Economy Society Life/Culture World IT/Science Entertainment Sports]

[You can subscribe to only one news item a day.]

The eight categories above were, in a way, categories of a newspaper. The category was a dark blue color, which seemed to be a moving link when I clicked it. I unintentionally moved my cursor over ‘Politics, which was at the top, but the phrase below it bothered me.

[You can subscribe to only one news item a day.]

‘Only one news item a day?’

Just one line of explanation, there was nothing else. I moved the cursor left and right with my chin in one hand.

‘If I have to see one…’

I clicked on ‘Entertainment’ without thinking about it. Soon, a linked article appeared on the window.

[The cause of death of the king of pop, Roger ‘Knight’ Jackson was assumed to be a drug overdose.]

[The king of pop, Roger Jackson was found dead around 8 p.m. Korean time today. According to the U.S. coroner’s autopsy…]

‘What? Roger Jackson is dead?’

I was surprised. Roger Jackson, the king of pop, better known as his stage name, Knight, was one of the most influential artists in the world. As a fan of his, I, had never missed putting “Blue Rain”, one of his hit songs, in my music player’s playlist since college, when I had learned about him.

‘… really?’

I looked for the media that had sent out the article, because sometimes the tabloids that were targeting celebrities, especially in the United States, often posted ridiculous fake articles. However, it was strange. In the news, there was nothing about it, such as the name of the press, the time of the upload, and so on.

‘What…?’

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I looked down at the bottom of the article.

[… there is a wave of memorials of fans who honor him all over the world.]

There was no name or email address of the reporter who wrote the article at the end of it. It was absurd.

‘An article is basically written based on trusting the reporter. Even tabloid news that writes stories about UFOs or 911 conspiracy theories as facts, also states where the article was published or who wrote it.’

Nevertheless, this article did not have any such thing at all.

‘What is this?’

I left the news on, clicked on the new window, and pulled out another window. Then I hit ‘Roger Jackson’ on the search engine. Soon an article about him popped out.

[The concert tickets of Roger Knight Jackson in Korea were sold out in three hours. -Union News]

[The old man is not dead. Roger Jackson earned $40 million during his World Tour. -Today’s Media]

[The pop star Roger Jackson, who is about to visit Korea, will release a new song a week from now. -Koryo Daily News]

Most of the articles were filled with stories about his concert in Korea, and his new songs. There was not a single line of articles about his death. I returned to the original article via Alt Tab. The article was clearly reporting Roger Jackson’s death. It was in great detail.

[The direct cause of the death of Roger Jackson was an overdose of Fentanyl, an opioid…]

‘It’s strange…’

I read the article again. But it was a fake news, no matter how I looked at it. It was a very well-made fake news article.

‘If it’s a fake news, they don’t need to make it this well…’

I thought so, and suddenly I panicked.

‘Oh, my God! A Virus!’

At the thought, I hastily turned the page off. As soon as I turned the window off, I launched the vaccine program.

‘This is definitely a spam email, given the fact that they made the fake news so sophisticated. At the same time as clicking, a strange program such as a virus is installed to destroy the computer.’

‘What do I have to do? If I lose my work documents…’

I first unplugged the Internet line, plugged a work USB into my computer, and moved important documents to it. Then, my feet shivering, I waited for the virus protection program to run through the computer. Using three different vaccine programs, I had it virus tested, and I looked at a message on the monitor an hour later.

[No viruses detected.]

“Hoo-oo…” I breathed a sigh of relief.

‘This is enough… there may be no virus.’

After this much work, even the most difficult virus would have been caught in the net. Then a question came to my mind.

‘If it weren’t for delivering a virus… then what was that article?’

I was thinking of it and someone called me.

“Hey, Han Sang-hoon.”

As expected, it was the employee Kim who joined the company at the same time, and who told me about the hospitalization of the section chief Heo.

“Yes, what?”

“Section chief Heo is going to be out of the hospital this evening, and we don’t need to visit him, so let’s go have a drink with the guys who joined the company at the same time.”

I had not had a good drink in a while since I was afraid of Heo. I readily agreed. “Okay.”

——

I woke up from sleep and grabbed my head in the way.

“Ouch, headache!”

The sound of pain came out of itself. I sat on the bed and looked back on yesterday, the first round at the beer pub, the second round at the nearby Tripe restaurant, taking an hour off at the karaoke, and a third round at the folk tavern. I could not remember much after then. I looked around in a hurry. Around the bed, were my cell phone, my wallet, and my briefcase for work. I could relax then. I must have come home safely after drinking too much yesterday.

‘Hoo-oo… yesterday I had beer, Soju, Makgeolli… I drank too much mixed liquor.”

I got up, grabbing my head with a splitting headache, but my stomach hurt. I came to the kitchen, holding my stomach, and put water in a yellow brass pot. It had been eight years living apart from my family. Now I could cook ramen even with my eyes closed. I laid on the sofa, but at the sound of the water boiling, I put in the staple fiber and noodles and waited for it to be cooked. Ramen was soon completed. I took it and put it on the table and drank a spoonful of soup.

“Keuheu…”

Finally, I felt better. I took my phone out of my pocket and started to use chopsticks. I picked up the hard-boiled noodles with my right hand, and turning on my cell phone with my left hand, I opened the Internet window. Then, at the exact moment I brought the noodles to my mouth and started to chew, I spat out them out, because the front page of the portal site was covered with the news that I had seen yesterday.

[Pop star Roger Knight Jackson was found dead in his house…]

[The cause of death of Roger Jackson was Fentanyl…]

[An undying wave of mourning of the world through Blue Rain…]

So what do u guys think happened??

Meet u guys in next chapter and I hope u like this novel

Enjoy your day 😊😘

Part 2

Hii guys hope you all are doing good 😊 English is not my first Language so if there is any mistake pls tell Let’s start 😘 Any name, place is fictional so pls don’t report

As I wiped my mouth, I read the article carefully.

[American singer Roger Jackson, more famous for his nickname “Knight,” was found dead around 10 a.m. local time in the United States today. According to the coroner, the cause of death is drug abuse…]

There were only a few words different from the article I read yesterday, but they were almost identical. I read a few more articles. As such, they were written in a similar way, only in different expressions. I listed the articles in chronological order.

Roger Jackson died around 8 p.m. Korean time. The first article in the breaking news was exactly 8:12 p.m. I got up from my seat. Heartburn was not important now. I took the laptop lying in a corner of the room, turned on Internet Explorer and went straight into my mailbox. But the email that I had seen yesterday was gone.

‘What? I did not delete it.’

I searched my mailbox more, back and forth, and even the trash can, just in case. But I couldn’t find the email I had seen yesterday. I scratched my forehead. At this point, I thought I was possessed by a ghost.

‘Did I… drink too much yesterday?’

No. It had nothing to do with alcohol. Yesterday, I saw the email at work. Drinking was after work. I stopped for a while on the spot.

‘What the hell is this?’

It was like being possessed by a ghost or a goblin. But then the cell phone in my hand beeped once more.

This was the second time. If I did not get ready now, I would be late. The monstrous Heo would return a day after being hospitalized with appendicitis. Once I put aside the weird email, I started getting ready for work.

——

“It was good without me yesterday, wasn’t it?” Heo stared at me with his mouth flexing. I had no choice but to stand silent. “Hmm? You wanted me to stay in the hospital forever, didn’t you?”

I wanted to tell him exactly what I had in my mind. ‘Yes, you son of a bitch.’

But that would make me even harder to work at the company. I said with my head down, “No… No.”

“Is that so? Who else writes the report like this?” Heo tapped me on the head with the report I had written yesterday.

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“What’s wrong with you? If you don’t have sweat for a day, don’t you get to work properly? Huh?”

Heo was stuck in the position of section chief for 10 million years without promotion, while his colleagues were promoted one by one, but then turned around and became our section chief. When we thought about his age, he was practically demoted. But he released his stress on his subordinates. I had to bear his nagging all over.

‘Cause you’re so incompetent that if you do that to me, what will be changed?’

As I listened to him, I thought of something else, but on the surface, I had to answer helplessly with my head down, “…yes”

Heo looked at me with my head down and said, “Return to your seat.”

I returned to my seat with my head down. It had been a year and a half since I had joined the company. In the youth unemployment era of one million unemployed people, I entered the company after barely passing through the job crisis, but the good time was only for the first month or two. I worked overtime every day without being paid, and my salary was small. Every day, I was squeezed by my boss and worked. I had to suffer from severe stress every day.

‘Damn it, I really want to quit.’

I used to talk to myself several times a day, but I couldn’t do it, as I was born with a plastic spoon in my mouth. I had spent four years attending a private university with a tuition fee of over five thousand dollars a semester, and I had to work for several years without income after graduating, just looking for a job.

Far from having saved money, I still had ten thousand dollars left in the student loans that I had not paid back. If I quit my job, I had to worry about the monthly rent right away. So no matter how bad things went, no matter how evil my boss was and if the company was hell, I could not quit.

‘Shit, I’m going to lose my eyes.’

After watching the monitor all day, I blinked and leaned back in the chair. Naturally, the office clock came into my eyes. It was Friday evening at eight. It was Friday night, so-called TGIF, but I couldn’t get out of the office because today our team was working overtime. It was not that special because the nature of our company called us to work on weekends.

Heo said, “Let’s get it over with today. It’s the only way to rest on holidays.”

“Yes\~”

“Yes.”

It was like a threat that if we did not do it properly today, he would call us in on the weekend. On TV, people said that the Labor Standards Act had been reinforced, but our company ignored such a thing lightly and pushed employees too hard. However, we could not express complaints. If we did such a thing, we would be labeled as whistleblowers and would be disadvantaged not just by our company, but also by other companies.

‘The law is far away, and the boss is close… It’s not much different than a real gangster…’

I stretched out, thinking this.

Then, I could feel the look of someone staring at me, from the seat Heo was in. Like a spring, I put my hands right back on the keyboard and mouse.

‘Damn it.’

In the company, there was only work, work, work. While this overtime work would not necessarily increase productivity, this company seemed to think that the result would be good, since it pushed employees so hard.

‘If I had a beer at home and watched TV… I’m sure I’d do a better job tomorrow.’

I looked at the monitor with a blank look, thinking of it. But suddenly, in my head, the email I had seen this morning came to mind.

‘The email’

I was overworked all day, and I forgot it, but it was a strange email. It was like someone had seen the future and told me in advance.

‘However… it was gone. What happened? I’m sure I did not erase it.’

If I did not take my eyes off the monitor, Heo would think I was working. I entered my email account. Once again, that email was there.

[12 Hours After]

‘What is it? … Was it an error?’

However, the email was not marked as read. I saw the time they had sent it.

[July 25th, 8:55 p.m.] This was not the email I had seen yesterday, but this morning.

‘It’s a new email, isn’t it?’

I put my cursor over the email and hesitated whether to press the left button for a moment. I could run a virus test, but I was afraid.

[Politics Economy Society Life/Culture World IT/Science Entertainment Sports]

[You can subscribe to only one news item a day.]

My eyes once again went to the phrase “You can subscribe to only one news item a day.” Last time I read it, I concentrated on the words, ‘only one news item a day.’ In other words, it meant “At least one per day” would be sent.

‘Well… it was certainly not a virus. So… what shall I look at this time…’

Rather than hard news such as Politics and Economy on the left, I wanted to touch the news of Entertainment and Sports on the right side. I circled my mouse cursor, and this time I touched the Sports category. Soon a window opened.

[Lotte escaped two consecutive losses with a dramatic come-from-behind victory over Hanwha]

Lotte, Hanwha, they were baseball teams.

‘Is this baseball news?’

I clicked on the window.

Now what will show guys to know what happens read next chapter andEnjoy your day 😊😘

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