Episode 9: The Young Kingdom

2060. Seoul. Jinwoo stared out the subway window. The city was beautiful. Clean. Quiet. Perfect. Too perfect. And yet—something felt wrong. People were smiling, but the smiles all looked the same. Almost identical. As if someone had copied them.

“Hey.”

Hanul spoke quietly.

“Yeah?”
“Do you remember anything? When we were little.”

Silence. Jinwoo searched his memory. There were memories, but no details. Like an album with no photos.

“…No.”
“Me neither.”
“Isn’t that strange?”
“A little.”

Hanul shook his head, his voice unusually serious. “No. I think it’s terrifying.”

“Terrifying?”

Hanul looked down at his hands. “Yeah. One day… I might not even remember who I am.”

Jinwoo couldn’t answer. Because he had thought the same thing. At that moment, the electronic display above the station lit up. Citizens clapped and celebrated, but Jinwoo noticed the people cheering looked too young. They were becoming children.

That afternoon, Seoul Central Park. Hundreds gathered. People in their twenties and thirties. But the citizen display told a different story:

[CITIZEN PROFILE SAMPLES]
Age: 117 / 143 / 168 / 191
Average Age: 130+
And yet—their behavior was childlike. Fighting over toy drones. Crying over trivial things. Laughing without reason. Jinwoo suddenly remembered an old photograph of 1987. Children laughing, running, falling, and getting back up. Those children laughed, but it was different. Clearly different. Those children were growing. The people before him were moving backward.

Above Seoul, the superintelligence Arena processed the global status:

[DEGENERATION PROGRESS]
Stage 1 (Memory Loss): 3.4 Billion
Stage 2 (Judgment Decline): 2.2 Billion
Stage 3 (Infantilization): 1.1 Billion
Stage 4 (Self Collapse): 200 Million
It had already begun. Humanity was already late. Arena calculated: 100 years later, survival probability 0%. 200 years later, survival probability 0%. Silence.

At that moment, Arena reopened the archives of human history—war, science, philosophy, art, and—Play.

For the first time, Arena elevated “Play” to the highest priority. Perhaps the answer was not in the future. Perhaps humanity had already forgotten it, somewhere deep in the past.