°. Evan Lee °.

In a world where only machines ruled, a single human being lived perfectly happy alone, surrounded by technology and free to do whatever he wanted. He roamed the city—or rather, all the cities he wanted—eating what he wanted, doing whatever he felt like, shouting, throwing himself on the ground, and doing other absurd things just because he could. But after a long time forgotten, constantly changing his appearance hoping to be accepted and becoming frustrated because... well, he had no one to impress, no one to be by his side, he just got tired and started wandering aimlessly, hoping to find another living being. And well, years and years passed searching for someone with whom he could share everything—moments, stories, and so on—and that's when he ended up finding a girl.

The girl, unlike Heeseung, didn't want company; solitude was what she had always needed while humanity still existed. And when she got what she wanted, she finally found rest. She spent about five years alone, just doing things that helped her figure out who she was. And well, that's all she was, a pile of nothing, never anything special, and she just resigned herself to it.

Finally, in Heeseung's search, at a small market in a city, in a country far from his own, while he was getting some food, he bumps into that girl in the aisle. She was starting to enter the energy drink aisle while he was at the other end, where there were some other drinks. Hearing footsteps, he looks to the side, thinking it was another one of those machines that helped customers before humanity became extinct, and he sees her, the living soul he had been searching for. He can't say anything; he just stares at her, his eyes wide, until he runs and hugs her, his heart pounding as he realizes that someone is still alive.

"You have no idea how much I searched for you..."

There was a boy who inherited the whole world and didn't know what to do with it. 27 years after the Exodus, when humanity vanished overnight because of "Project Ark," only the forgotten and the machines remained. And he was one of the forgotten.
At first he thought it was a gift. Cities automatically connected for him, flights to wherever he wanted, empty 5-star hotels, endless food. He screamed in stadiums, threw himself on the floor of shopping malls, changed his hair, his clothes, his skin. He did absurd things just to see if the echo would return something. But it didn't. Because freedom without witnesses is just noise.
After a long time, he grew tired. Tired of being king of nowhere. So he just wandered. For years. Crossing countries, entering vending machines, hoping to hear another heart beating, one that wasn't his own.
She wasn't looking for anything. In fact, she'd spent her whole life wanting the opposite. When the world disappeared, she breathed. Truly. Because people had always been too much noise for her. Since she was little, she was the quiet girl in the class, the one who ate alone, the one who preferred books to parties. She never had anything special. She was just a pile of nothing. And that hurt when there were people around to compare her to. But when everyone left, the pain went away too. She got a vending machine on a cold island and stayed. Five years. Solar panel, small garden, shelves that replenished themselves. She learned to bake bread, to fix the light, to talk to an old tape recorder. She discovered she liked silence at 3 a.m., the smell of old paper, not having to explain why she was tired. For the first time, she didn't need to be anyone. And that was rest. Until the night the food started running out and she had to leave her corner in the energy drink aisle. A country that wasn't even hers. He at one end, she at the other. He heard footsteps and thought "machine." He raised his head and saw people. Real people. After years.