Moving north.
High pressure, cherry blossoms, someone's death.
Going south.

Yellow dust, strikes, trash.

The fastest-moving news of the past week has been news of deaths.
It has a short shelf life, so it is quick to use as it loses its effectiveness after it has been released.
The news started in Jinhae, Gyeongnam.
Of all places, it's the birthplace of cherry blossoms.
Under a massive tsunami one afternoon, all life there suddenly came to a halt.
dot.
dot.
It was cut off.
People who went to greet the flowers, people walking, buildings sunbathing, streetlights on the beach, they were all dots.
dot.
dot.
It was shipwrecked.

--- pp.9~10

At that time, Kim got on the elevator with me.
And as soon as the door was closed, he said to Jonah:
“Johnson asked me to say hello to you.”
“Who is it?”
“It’s Johnson, my Johnson.”
Kim's finger was pointing at his own groin.
It was an elevator going down from the 21st floor to the 3rd floor, and there were only Kim and Yona.
Kim's hand grabbed Jonah's buttocks without giving her a chance to be surprised.
It was Jonah's butt.
It wasn't a mistake, it was intentional, and it was a gesture that showed that it didn't matter if it was found out.

“Aren’t you still young? Why can’t you understand what I’m saying?”
Jonah turned his body as naturally as possible to avoid Kim's hand.
This time, Kim put his hand inside Yona's blouse.
Jonah's heart sank.
It wasn't because I saw a different side of Kim.
It wasn't because I was sexually harassed by my boss.
As far as Yona knows, Kim has always targeted only the trash for sexual harassment.
People who have received a yellow card or are about to receive one.
Maybe Kim didn't even know that sexual harassment itself was a yellow card.

--- pp.18~19

The desert sinkhole was a 5-night, 6-day package.
The destination was a place called 'Mui', but I had to do some searching on the internet to find out where it was.
Mui was an island nation the size of Jeju Island.
To get to Mui, you had to go through southern Vietnam.
To get there, you need to take a plane to Ho Chi Minh City Airport, then a bus to the coastal city of Phan Thiet, and then a boat from Phan Thiet for about 30 minutes.
I think I know why this product isn't popular.
The scenery that could be seen in a day's journey there and a day's journey back seemed weaker than that of other disaster travel products.
As the product name suggests, it is true that a sinkhole has appeared in the desert, and as the promotional material describes, it may be a rather 'scary and sad sight,' but the problem is that it has now turned into a lake, so it doesn't look particularly scary or unique.
When people say "sinkhole," they now conjure up images of the 500-meter-deep, catastrophic hole that opened in the heart of Guatemala City in 2010.
I'm already beginning to wonder if this region can live up to those expectations.

(……)
If a disaster can tear a world apart like a fault, the camera is a tool that helps us experience that fault.
The moment the camera clicks, what is captured is no longer a person or a landscape.
It's a gap in time.
Sometimes, a short gap in time can have a greater impact on our lives than the time we are living in now.
Jonah thought.
Perhaps every journey has already crossed the starting line before it even begins.
A journey is merely a confirmation of a step that has already begun.

--- pp.33~35

There are people in the world who believe in Heinrich's Law.
It is said that before a disaster occurs, there are hundreds of small signs that can be seen in advance.
However, this only focuses on the occurrence of disasters, and there is no such rule for those who suffer from disasters.
Disasters just happen suddenly.
It's like the ground beneath your feet suddenly crumbling down one day, something too absurd to be coincidence, but too sad to be fate.
But can such a thing be created artificially?
“Before writing the script, I took pictures.
There were so many people taking pictures of the originals with a camera that I didn't really care about it, so I started doing the opposite.
You look at the photo and restore the original.
There was a time when I was receiving so many requests from the Internet that I couldn't take a single day off a week.
Some people bring their digital cameras and ask us to restore the images as they are, or to recreate the interior, and in some cases, we even hired similar people to recreate the graduation photo scenes in the digital cameras.
Now I work in disaster relief.
This isn't the first sinkhole.
Not all disasters are God's domain.
“There must be a human stake underneath that.”
(……)
“Aren’t you anxious?”
“For an artist, anxiety is like shoes.
“If you want to walk anywhere, you need shoes.”
“Later, many people will delve into the cause of the sinkhole.”
“The cause is the foundation work.
Mr. Jonah, I'm not an amateur.
Sinkholes can occur when underground rock dissolves or the ground is weak, or they can be caused by internal shocks such as earthquakes, or when groundwater is depleted or the ground dries out due to drought.
All of those things combined together created the cause.
I'm talking about the tower construction.
That tower will be our alibi.
It is said that many people actually went into the desert during the construction of the tower.
That's why I'm saying that.
Even though they were artificially created, those holes are much larger than the ones we first created.
The diameter and depth have both become much larger.
Things went so much easier than we expected that we were even a little taken aback.
It is said that sinkholes often occur in limestone areas, but regardless of whether it is limestone or not, the ground itself is not so difficult to dig a hole in.
I started to think that if I just left it like this, it would really collapse someday, and the tower that stood out in the distance looked unsettling.
“I believe that half of it was created by human labor and half by the desert itself.”
--- pp.122~124

Mui moved according to the script.
There were many fish caught in the net, as if the appropriate tension was giving a sense of tension to both land and sea.
The fishermen were somewhat surprised by the unexpected abundance of crops, but it was no bad thing.
The road was a little crowded with people pulling carts full of dead fish.
Some people were seen hanging CCTV cameras like Christmas trees on desert towers and roads.
The alarms also multiplied.
While everything was progressing smoothly, minor problems arose.
A few people disappeared.
It was not clear whether he had died or left, or for what reason.
The positions of male 11, female 15, and female 16 are vacant.
But it wasn't a machine that couldn't be turned around if a few parts were missing.
The empty seats were filled by others.

Jonah had witnessed a few car accidents firsthand, but they weren't as shocking as the first time.
It's just that the faces of the people who just died felt a little more familiar.
Among them was a woman who once came to Jonah and asked him about crocodiles.
Even after witnessing the woman being hit by a yellow truck, Jonah couldn't be sure if it was a dream or reality.
The woman seemed to have disappeared, perhaps for sure.
This is because the silhouette of a woman who often wandered around the resort like a ghost has not been seen for some time.
The woman was the only one who could enter the manager's room at night.
But now someone else was playing that role.
“Just release the crocodiles.
If you throw out the bait, everyone will gather.
Are you going to stay still and not move?
They always wanted one thing.
“It’s a residence permit.”
That was exactly what the woman wanted to know.

The manager's words were gradually forming a bigger picture in Jonah's head.
Jonah tried to numb himself to this scenario, but the first Sunday in August often appeared to him in his dreams.
When the crocodiles, summoned two hours before the sports day, are excited about getting their residency permits, they dream of the ground beneath their feet crumbling like hell.
It was not a dream, but a reality that would happen in a few days.

The only time Jonah could escape that reality was when he thought about Luck.
Of course, it wasn't perfect.
When I think of luck, crocodiles naturally come to mind.

--- pp.190~191

Moving north.
Low pressure, monsoon rains, someone's death.
Going south.

Strike, trash, story.

story.

The fastest-moving news of the past week has been news of deaths.
It has a short shelf life, so it is quick to use as it loses its effectiveness after it has been released.

The news started in Mui.
A place name that more people don't know than do.
Under a massive tsunami one night, all life there suddenly vanished.
dot.
dot.
It was cut off.
There is an island of trash stranded on the beach of Mui.
dot.
dot.
Scattered.
Plastics with Korean writing on them were scattered on the beach like shipwrecked sailors.

--- pp.223~224