The town of Tomorrow was in the middle of the forest, surrounded by a tall stone wall that protected its citizens from the outside Alphas (animals infected with the Alpha virus). The town looked like a modernized medieval village. The buildings were mostly made from wood, and most were only two or three stories tall. The roads were paved with actual rock slabs rather than asphalt, unlike Hyun-Jae. There were some trucks and big vehicles parked on the side of the streets, but they were rare to see throughout the village.


    “We’re going to spend a night here and then restock some food tomorrow morning,” James said.


    Everything in Tomorrow felt different from Hyun-Jae. Chorong felt like she was finally, truly away from home. It felt weirdly unreal as if she was in a dream.


    After walking through a busy outdoor market site and squeezing through people, James and Chorong arrived at an inn two floors tall. It was a small one that looked cozy. The sign above the door read: Gwak Inn.


    “This is...” Chorong muttered.


    “Yes. This is Dad''s inn. My grandmother ran it, and then it was passed on to Dad.” James grabbed the door handle and swung the door open, walking into the lobby. A lady in her late twenties stood behind the reception desk. Her eyes widened when she saw James.


    “James?” she said.


    “Hey, Anne. I haven’t seen you for a while,” James said as he approached the counter. Chorong followed inside and let the door close behind her.


    “It’s been a year since you left! How have you been?” the lady asked.


    “Still surviving,” James replied, trying to ignore thousands of hardships he had been through as a broke travelling musician. He once had to play for ten hours for three days in a row to make enough money to buy a loaf of bread.


    The lady glanced at Chorong. She seemed to be wondering how such a small girl could handle such a heavy backpack like it was air.


    “Is Dad around?” James asked.


    “No. He’s probably drinking again.”


    James smirked. “He hasn’t changed, huh?”


    Chorong looked at James’s face. Even though he was smiling, she sensed sadness in it.


    “Well, anyway, room for two, please. Put the tab on Dad,” James said.


    The lady smiled. She pointed her chin at Chorong. “Just to make sure, is that your girlfriend?”


    “Uh, no,” James said.


    “I’m his boss,” Chorong said in her mechanical voice.


    Chorong instantly realized she had made a mistake. The lady’s smile disappeared in an instant, and her facial expression froze, with the outside ends of her eyebrows spiking toward the ceiling. Her gaze went back and forth between Chorong and James.


    James also seemed to realize something was not right.


    After a moment, James opened his mouth. “...I didn’t know you were a NURAT believer.”


    “I will have to ask her to leave,” the lady said. Her voice sounded as sharp as a blade.


    “I am the owner’s son. I demand a room for both of us. I guarantee you, she won’t cause any harm.”


    “I am the innkeeper appointed by your dad. I have the authority to decide who can stay here. She will not get a room here.”


    James glared at the lady. The lady glared back. A heavy atmosphere filled the room.


    “Pheh!” James said. Then he turned around and barged outside. Chorong followed him. Before the door closed behind her, she took a glimpse of the lady.


    The lady was glaring at her, and the expression on her face reminded Chorong of her master’s face when he was yelling; it was an expression that she would never forget.


    “Life sucks,” James muttered, strutting toward somewhere. The sun had gone down, and the streetlights were becoming the only sources of light.


    “You can get a room, James. I can sleep outside,” Chorong said.


    As she talked in her mechanical voice, many people nearby turned and stared at her. James sensed anger, hate, and disgust in those stares.


    NURAT, he thought. He didn’t know NURAT spread through Tomorrow this fast.


    “I may be poor financially, but I’m not a poor employee who treats his boss poorly,” James said, forcing himself to be cheerful.


    He led Chorong to the back alleys, where garbage dumpsters filled the space instead of people. There was barely any light, so it was hard for an ordinary human being to see further than a few meters. However, James weaved around the dumpsters as if he memorized where they were.


    “One, two, three...” he counted as he passed the dumpsters.


    After a few minutes, he counted “eleven” and stopped in front of a dumpster that was far away from others. He reached under the dumpster and waved his hand as if he was searching for something. Then he felt a switch. He clicked on it. Something clunked like a lock that was being released, and light shined through the gap between the lid and the dumpster’s body.


    He stood back up straight and looked at Chorong. “Welcome to my old home.”


    He swung open the lid, which hit the wall behind it with a loud thud. LED light strips attached to the bottom of the lid lit up the alley.


    Chorong looked inside the dumpster. It was empty, big, and very clean. She could see wires from the light strips connecting to a sliding lock mechanism, which had wires coming from a small hole in the bottom of the dumpster.


    “The switch underneath controls the lock and the light. I made the circuit myself,” James said proudly.


    “You lived in here?” Chorong asked.


    “Yes. There was a period of my life where I was a runaway.”


    Chorong scanned James with eyes indicating she wanted to say something.


    James sighed. “Yeah, yeah, technically, I’m still a runaway, but the time I am talking about is when something called puberty hit me. I wanted to pursue music, but Dad didn’t want me to. So I ran away for a year.”If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it.


    He jumped inside the dumpster masterfully, as if he had done that a thousand times. He leaned the guitar case against one of the shorter walls. He removed the cartridge from his rifle and leaned the weapon next to his guitar. Even with the two long items, there was still enough space for two people to lie down. James sat on the floor and patted on the ground next to him, signalling her to come in as well.


    Chorong put a hand on the dumpster and used it as support as she jumped inside swiftly. She sat down, and James closed the lid above them.


    “It is…eleven. We should sleep,” James said.


    “Good night, James,” Chorong said.


    James reached through the small hole from which the wires were coming. Chorong heard a switch click, and the lock mechanism slid into place, preventing the lid from opening. The lights also flicked off.


    Chorong adjusted her eye cameras to the darkness. Even though there was a bunch of noise in her visual signals, she could still see James quite clearly as he lay down in the dumpster. She also did the same. Their shoulders touched.


    “Are you uncomfortable?” James asked.


    “No,” Chorong replied. “You?”


    “Of course not.”


    Chorong saw James closing his eyes. She wanted to ask something before he fell asleep. She turned her body to face James and asked, “…Do you not like robots?”


    The busker’s eyes opened again. He rotated his eyeballs to look at Chorong while not moving his head.


    “I like robots, actually,” he answered. “Dad was...busy after my mother passed away, so I would watch cartoon shows on the TV. One of the ones I watched was called Space Generation Robot, and its main characters were robots. I still remember their names.” James raised his hand and started counting with his fingers as he recalled the characters’ names: “Atom, Vivy, Miku, Tiffany...” He paused, and a few seconds of silence followed. Then he waved his hand as if to shake off something. “Anyway, that show made me like robots. I liked robots to the point that I studied robotics by myself.”


    “Is it why you came to Hyun-Jae?” Chorong asked.


    James nodded. “Yep.”


    “...I assume not all people are like you when it comes to liking robots.”


    James recalled the glares from pedestrians on the streets.


    “…Have you heard of this thing called NURAT before, Chorong?”


    Chorong shook her head.


    “There’s this…theory, almost like a religion, spreading around civilizations. It’s called NURAT. It stands for Nuclear-Robot Apocalypse Theory. A relic from an era before the world became like this—with all the radiation and Alphas—was found. People used to use something called nuclear reactors as their main source of electrical energy, but they were unstable and dangerous. NURAT states that the world became like this because a nuclear reactor exploded…and the explosion was caused by a robot.”


    “...”


    “As I said, not all people are completely immune to radiation, and small towns like this don’t have barriers to weaken it. The radioactive damage eventually cumulates in their bodies, so many people outside the major cities lose their loved ones to radiation. They want something they can blame their deaths on.”


    Chorong curled into a ball. She couldn’t hold a sigh escaping her mouth. Then, a thought came into her head.


    “James, I’m sorry if this is a sensitive question to ask, but did your mother also…?”


    James sighed. “Yeah. Radiation got her. Oh, I don’t believe in NURAT, though. Even if it’s true, I don’t blame the robots in the current era. That’s the same with Dad.”


    “…Even though radiation took his wife?”


    “My mother made him promise her before she passed away.”


    “Promise?”


    “Don’t blame others. I do not know the reason why she made him promise such a thing, but that’s the exact wording she used to make him say.”


    James fell asleep in the dumpster. Chorong lay next to him in her sleeping mode as well, but then her auditory sensors picked up noise from far away.


    She opened her eyes. The noise belonged to a male human being, probably in his fifties or sixties. She adjusted her sensors’ sensitivity until she could hear what he was saying.


    He was mumbling. His irregular footsteps hinted that he was stumbling often, walking with minimal balance.


    He hummed a song that she did not know. Then, he ended his singing and grumbled, “Damn it all, damn it all.” He made a huge sigh and then grumbled again. His grumbling was not understandable…but Chorong caught an irregularity; between his grumbling was his sniffling. He was weeping in between the grumbles.


    Chorong reached up at the lid. After pushing the lock to the unlocked position, she slowly stood up and pushed the lid open. A cold breeze swept her hair. Being as quiet as possible, she crawled out of the dumpster and closed the lid. James didn’t wake up.


    She followed where the grumbling voice was coming from. She walked onto a narrow street that was connected to the alley where James’s dumpster was. Not far away from her, a man lay on the bench next to a streetlight. The grumbles were coming from him.


    Chorong approached him. His hair was whitening, and his beard was unorganized. His clothes seemed high-quality and thick, but they were now old and ragged. His back was facing Chorong. Even though Chorong wasn’t being quiet with her footsteps, he didn’t seem to notice her. Chorong soon realized his breathing was slowing down, and his grumbling was subsiding: he was falling asleep.


    He grumbled something not understandable and then wept a bit again.


    Chorong carefully sat down on the bench next to his head.


    His eyes opened. He looked at Chorong. At once, his grumbling and weeping stopped.


    “If you want me to move, just say it,” he said with a growly voice.


    Chorong shook her head. “I don’t want you to move.”


    The man frowned in response to her mechanical voice. “Are you a robot, or are my ears so messed up?” He suddenly groaned out loud and shifted his body as if he was uncomfortable. He closed his eyes again. “Doesn’t matter.”


    Chorong smiled slightly.


    The man glanced at him. “What do you want?”


    “…I don’t know,” she answered.


    “What are you doing here, anyway? This late?”


    “The inn didn’t allow me in, so I’m sleeping in the streets.”


    The man smirked. “Reminds me of my son. He used to be homeless for a bit.”


    Chorong kept quiet for a while. She detected his breathing stabilizing as he fell asleep.


    Then, his breathing got a bit irregular again, and he mumbled, “Rachel...” She saw his hands grip tight and shake as if he was trying to grab hold of something. Two small drops of water formed underneath his eyes.


    Chorong clutched her shirt above her chest. For some reason, Chorong felt sad, too. She was sad because…the man felt sad. She didn’t want this man to feel sad.


    Yes, she was feeling what people call empathy.


    She stared at the poor man, thinking what she might be able to do. Then, she remembered herself clutching onto James’s shirt in her tears and listening to James’s singing.


    The man heard a noise. He couldn’t tell what it was, as his state of mind was somewhere between being conscious and being unconscious. The alcohol inside him prevented him from being able to command his body. He couldn’t open his eyes, and he felt droopy. However, the noise slowly changed its shape into music, one that sounded very familiar. A silk-like female voice sang the song beautifully.


    “


    When the train travelled through the stardust,


    A boy cried out as he looked for his mom.


    He walked and ran, but no one was there.”


    He felt his senses coming back slowly. He forced his eyes open.


    Next to him, a beautiful woman sat on the bench, looking down at his face as she sang.


    He found himself muttering, “Rachel...?”


    Then, the image of the woman shook, and her voice changed as she sang. The image of the woman changed into the girl he had seen earlier. The silky voice changed into a mechanical voice.


    “


    He then saw a woman and asked,


    ‘Is this the train to the stars,”


    And she answered, ‘No, boy, this is back to Earth.’”


    The girl next to him had closed her eyes and was focusing on singing. She didn’t seem to notice he was a bit awake.


    Drowsiness swept over the man again, and he couldn’t make his eyelids stay open. Instead of fighting it, he let his eyes close and focused on his hearing. He hadn’t heard this song for such a long time. He wanted to savour this moment. He let the warm drowsiness take his body over. He couldn’t stop a small smile crawling onto his face. His body relaxed. He felt his consciousness glide away as sleepiness took its place.


    “


    The body got on the train, and he could see the orb


    Then a train went the other way,


    And the mother was on that train.”


    “Where have you been?” James asked. He was awake and was sitting up in the dumpster.


    “I was close by. I apologize if I woke you up,” Chorong replied as she jumped into the dumpster and closed the lid above her. She then lay down next to James. The busker stared at her for a moment and then also did the same.


    Chorong stared above her. She felt...different. She had felt something when she sang to comfort the poor man. She had felt something when the man fell asleep with a smile on his face. Her inside felt…different. She didn’t know how to explain it. However, she didn’t dislike it. She thought that if she had a heart, it would be lit up with a warm light.


    “James, you said I should decide my how, right? My how for the journey,” she said.


    “Yes, I did.”


    “I—”


    They were interrupted when something banged on the dumpster lid three times.