I’m the Only One with Powers in the Apocalypse – Chapter 1

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Translated By Arcane Translations

Translator: Xrecker

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?!

A…

Apocalypse?!

I stared wide-eyed at the message.

I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing.

Apocalypse?

The apocalypse?!

The end of the world, that apocalypse?!

My eyes saw and understood the words, but my mind refused to accept them.

My narrow gosiwon, the bed.

The bed I was lying on.

The window next to the bed.

Birds were flying, chirping peacefully.

Cars followed their lanes, people walked down the street with placid, or perhaps bored, expressions.

…The apocalypse?

Watching the cars stop at the red light and start again when it turned green through the window, I felt a strange sense of emptiness.

…Was this a joke…?

I collapsed back onto the bed.

“…”

The panic I had felt moments ago vanished as if it had been a lie.

Come on, what kind of apocalypse involved following traffic laws and obeying traffic signals?

…No.

What was wrong with me?

Had my brain gone haywire?

That couldn’t be it.

Why was I suddenly in denial?

Had the messages ever lied to me in my entire 25 years of life?!

I shot up and searched for my phone.

Damn it, why could I never remember where I put it when I needed it most?!

I rummaged around the bed, checked the desk where my laptop sat, even dug through the box where I kept my clothes.

Nothing!

“Ah, shit! Where is it?!”

Someone lived next door, and the thin walls of the gosiwon offered little soundproofing.

So, I yelled in a whisper.

After circling the room about three times, I finally found my phone hidden behind my laptop.

Of course, it was always in the last place I looked.

I called my mom first.

Was she busy selling fruit?

Were there a lot of customers at the store?

Damn it! She wasn’t answering!

I called my dad.

No answer!

Was he out delivering fruit? Driving?

Pick up, please!

I had no choice but to call that bitch.

[Bitch]

I pressed the call button, and within seconds, the bitch answered.

“What, asshole? Why are you calling? Finally gone impotent?”

Seriously, the moment she picked up…

Where was her “hello”?

Whose daughter was she, anyway?

I’d record this and play it on giant speakers at her wedding.

…Patience. Sigh.

“Hey, where are you? At home?”

“What’s it to you, dickhead? I said, why are you calling?”

This little hellion, really.

I should just grab her and spank her five hundred times to teach her some manners.

“Ah, you bitch! A question deserves an answer. Are you at home?!”

“I’m out with a friend. Oh, thank you very much. Hey, asshole, my tteokbokki just arrived. If you don’t tell me why you called, I’m hanging up.”

Out with a friend, eating tteokbokki?

…Was everything alright?

“Mom and Dad? Are they okay?”

“I don’t know, asshole! They’re probably at the store! Bye!”

Click.

The line went dead.

That bitch, never failing to disappoint.

“…Ha…”

I put down the phone and looked out the window.

…Was everything really okay?

The message had long since disappeared.

The apocalypse has begun…

What did it even mean…?

What kind of apocalypse…?

“This won’t do.”

I couldn’t believe the message would lie to me. For 25 years, it had shown me all sorts of things, and not once had it been false or misleading.

After a lifetime of showing me only the truth, it was suddenly going to lie to me right after the countdown ended?

No way.

Absolutely no way.

I quickly pulled on my jeans, grabbed my bag, and left the gosiwon. Inside the room were just my textbooks for the new semester, some instant ramen, and bottled water.

It’d probably be fine to leave them there; no one would steal them.

My beloved Adidas backpack. It only held my wallet, but I never went anywhere without it.

With the light, almost empty bag slung over one shoulder, I trotted down the stairs.

The street in front of the building…

…A bus?

…No.

“Taxi!”

I hailed a taxi parked up the street and headed up the incline.

“Welcome. Where to?”

The older driver asked politely as I got in.

“Incheon Airport.”

“Yes, sir. Please fasten your seatbelt. Going abroad?”

“Uh, yeah. Sort of.”

This was annoying.

Did I look like I had time for small talk?

The driver, perhaps experienced enough to read his passengers, didn’t say anything else as he pulled away from the curb.

I looked out the window.

The familiar sight of my building, the convenience store, and the apartment complex at the end of the alley slowly drifted by.

…The apocalypse?

Really?

Cars stayed in their lanes, and across the street, a couple enjoyed a late lunch at a Korean BBQ restaurant, laughing as they wrapped grilled meat in lettuce leaves.

That’s when it happened.

A message appeared before my eyes.

…?!

Tu…

Tutorial?!

What…

What the hell?

What?!

I frantically looked around. The taxi was just turning into a gas station, merging onto the main road. Cars followed their lanes, stopping at red lights, while our side of the intersection flowed with green.

What tutorial?

I was in a taxi!

“Why is traffic so heavy? It’s not rush hour…”

The taxi driver muttered to himself and turned on the radio. It was a traffic broadcast.

“-So, we’ve enjoyed reading the story sent in by our listener. Reading about people living such interesting lives really warms the heart, wouldn’t you say…? Oh, we’ve just received a breaking news alert.”

Ah, mister.

The volume was a bit loud. Could he turn it down?

“It appears a patient has escaped from a hospital. He’s believed to be hallucinating and is running erratically, both on the sidewalks and in the streets. This is causing congestion in certain areas of Seoul.”

…No, don’t turn it down, mister.

“Police are currently on the scene. We’ll continue to provide updates on the situation here on Traffic Radio. Now, on to our next story.”

…A hallucinating patient…

I looked ahead.

Traffic was indeed quite heavy.

I couldn’t see any crazy person running around, though.

…Guess it wasn’t around here.

The radio hosts chuckled amongst themselves as they read another uninteresting story.

I picked up my phone.

The tutorial had begun, it said.

There had to be more.

I plugged in my earphones and opened YouTube. A live news channel.

Anything?

…Breaking news was flashing across the screen.

“A serious assault has occurred in Gwangju. A man in his 50s, believed to be intoxicated, attacked a pedestrian and bit her wrist. The perpetrator has been apprehended at the scene. Police are conducting drug tests-”

…Bit her wrist?

Another news channel.

“Now to Busan. A 20-year-old woman bit a man’s shoulder at a cafe in Haeundae. Immediately after the incident, the woman jumped from the second floor. Amazingly, she escaped the scene without any injuries. Police are currently on the scene-”

…Bit…

Bit him…?

W…

Wait a minute…

I closed YouTube and opened the news portal. A stream of real-time updates scrolled down the page.

Diet news, celebrity gossip, political updates… I scrolled past them all until something caught my eye.

-New highly contagious infectious disease outbreak.

…Updated two seconds ago.

I clicked on the headline.

—

A homeless woman in her 60s attacked a 20-year-old woman waiting for a bus at a bus stop in Daejeon.

The victim exhibited the same symptoms as the attacker and attacked another person.

People are currently evacuating.

Police and paramedics are on the scene.

—

Short and to the point. A true breaking news report.

Those occasional, really rare, very short articles.

Real breaking news.

Was…

Was this…

Only I could see this?

Were these news articles visible only to me?

Seoul… Busan… Gwangju… Daejeon…

Major cities…!

I looked around.

Traffic was jammed.

Everything seemed normal.

The sun was warm.

Birds chirped.

Then, I heard a scream.

A bloodcurdling, horrifying scream. It was more like a death rattle.

The driver and I turned our heads simultaneously, startled.

Across the street, on the sidewalk.

A street lined with coffee shops, a McDonald’s, and a convenience store.

People were running around in a frenzy.

No, they weren’t just running.

They were chasing each other!

Hunting and being hunted!

A college student?

A young woman sprinted and tackled a middle-aged woman carrying a shopping basket.

They tumbled to the ground together.

Onions and scallions flew through the air.

An extremely frail, elderly man, looking barely able to walk, ran like a wild animal and lunged at a well-built young man. It was like watching a large dog attack.

The young man stumbled backward in shock and surprise, falling to the ground with the old man on top of him.

More bloodcurdling screams.

People scattered in all directions, panicked.

Most ran onto the sidewalk.

But some desperately darted into the street.

Screech-

With the shriek of brakes, a car slammed into a middle-aged man. The man who had run into the street in terror.

He flew several meters and crashed into a tree.

I saw it.

I saw it clearly.

The man’s neck snapped completely as he hit the tree.

Instant death.

The driver, a young woman, flung open the car door in shock and stumbled out. The moment she did, the housewife, having discarded her shopping basket, pounced on her.

The man with the broken neck twitched and convulsed on the ground.

The convulsions stopped.

The middle-aged man slowly stood up.

His head was twisted backward.

…Impossible.

It was impossible for him to stand up!

I couldn’t believe my eyes.

But the man was definitely standing.

His back to me, facing me.

Half of his face was mangled, his jaw twisted at an unnatural angle.

He opened his mouth wide, emitting a grotesque sound, and ran off somewhere.

Screams.

Chaos.

Chills ran down my spine.

This…

This was what the message had shown me…

…The beginning… of the apocalypse…

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