The Drabble Challenge

SNOWFALL

THE PROMPT ;;
❛ At a garage sale, your character buys an antique urn that might look nice decorating a bookcase. But when your character arrives home, your character realises that there are someone's ashes in it...

GENRE ;;
Cyberpunk

AUTHOR ;;
asakayu

TRIGGER WARNINGS ;;
Profanity and mild violence

+

March 5th, 2251

It never snowed in Seoul.

Hana knew that but other than her personal goal, some part of her mind was expecting to witness the fall of pure snowflakes cloaking the ground.

Radical and rapid technological change was the weight that tipped the scale of social order in Korea. With the government cowering behind a megacorporation called Lumotech, run by a tyrant named Jung Hoseok, the social hierarchy had fallen apart and a group of rebels called The Insurgence had risen.

Seoul, the main sector of Korea, was the capital of all the technological advances, so it was industrialized to the image of perfection. The surrounding sectors, such as Incheon and Seongnam, had around the same level of modernization but didn't have the prime innovation that Seoul had. Outlying sectors such as Daegu and Gwangju, however, were neglected. Lumotech had no outreach to other sectors and Korea was left halfway transformed; part of the country had undergone technological gentrification while the rest had been left in the rubble.

The rebels resided in the outer sectors, scattered across the country as more and more recruits joined over the years. With the government's abandonment, the people had started to lose their faith and without anyone to rule over them, they went out to find their own leader. People who strayed like this eventually found their way into the arms of the rebels.

As for Park Hana, her allegiance to The Insurgence wasn't an accident. Her initiation into the group was shortly after her brother's initiation, Park Jimin, was killed by Lumotech. Sure, Jimin wasn't supposed to break into the company building, but he was desperate to get his hands on anything that could heal their dying neighbor who they weren't even that close with.

Jimin's heart was too kind and that was what got him killed by Jung Hoseok and his rats.

"You're surprisingly calm," came the smooth, silky voice of her best friend, Jeon Jungkook. "We're headed to the main sector today. Aren't you nervous?"

Jungkook and Hana had been friends since she and Jimin joined the rebel base. He was an assist on Jimin's final mission and could hardly bear to look at Hana when he got back with the mortifying news that Jung Hoseok had killed Park Jimin before he and the other rebels could do anything. Hana couldn't even have a proper burial for her brother with his corpse unreturned to her and her parents stubbornly residing in Seoul, refusing to leave even for their children's sake. Jungkook, however, helped her through their grief by holding a mini-vigil with her and praying for Jimin's soul.

Being the same age and training at the same time, they got along relatively well. And maybe it was their teenage hormones or maybe the fact that they spent all their time together, but lately, Hana started to see him as more than a friend. When those feelings arose like a riptide pulling her far from shore, she grounded herself back into her resolve to avenge her brother, and then those unwanted feelings buried themselves back into the depths of the sand.