Panel 1: Inside the packed convenience store, customers sit on floors between shelves, emergency supplies sorted by handwritten signs; Yubin rubs his eyes behind the counter. Panel 2: Baek stands at the counter holding her caramel, face cal

Panel 1: Yubin places the caramel on a plain white convenience-store microwave plate. Panel 2: His finger presses 9 on the worn keypad; the digital display reads 00:09. Panel 3: The microwave window turns into a black circular void like an

The convenience-store aisles elongate into an impossible corridor, shelves repeating into darkness, all other customers vanished. Only Yubin and Baek stand under a single fluorescent light, isolated from the normal store.

Baek straightens from stooped old woman into an ageless elder with gold hourglass pupils. Her white hair unpins and flows down her back, purple vest dissolving into a dark old manager coat stitched with faded receipt strips. Brass coins spi

Panel 1: Yubin steps back into a shelf of instant coffee, face shocked and angry, scanner raised uselessly. Panel 2: Baek lifts one hand, and a flat blue-black memory window unfolds in the aisle like a receipt, showing a distant city grid.

Panel 1: In Baek's memory window, a clean bright city from another apocalypse cycle shows citizens lined in perfect ration queues under numbered life-minute boards. No one fights; no one smiles. Panel 2: Close-up of Baek's gold hourglass pu

Panel 1: Memory image of strong workers receiving medicine from a glowing counter. Panel 2: Memory image of sick elders outside a sealed door, hands pressed to glass. Panel 3: A child in the memory counts tiny glowing seconds in both hands,

Panel 1: Tight close-up of Yubin's face, teeth clenched, fluorescent light cutting across his white hair streak. Panel 2: Baek stands still in her old manager coat, chin lifted, no defense in her posture.

Above the endless aisle, a vast system interface opens like a cold corporate hiring board. The words WORLD MANAGER VACANCY glow over Yubin and Baek, making them look small beneath its scale.

Panel 1: Baek leans toward Yubin, gold eyes severe, brass coins orbiting her wrist. Panel 2: A system list of current customers appears beside Yubin's shoulder, each name paired with remaining life minutes and estimated usefulness.

Panel 1: The impossible aisle snaps back toward the plain microwave as it dings, caramel softened on the plate. Panel 2: The packed store is normal again; customers continue murmuring, Rian checks battery levels, Minseo labels medicine, Han

Yubin stands alone behind the counter in three-quarter view, staring at the front windows. In the glass reflection, blue lists of customers, life minutes, and usefulness scores overlay the frightened people inside. Outside, Doha's armed fig