Tower

Someone once told me that good-humored people never become writers. That people who nurse grudges and write them down when nobody is looking instead of immediately talking them out are the ones that become writers.

“You’re asking me why?” Words failed Choi Sinhak, countless thoughts flitting through his head. Among them was the thought that Beanstalk would finally bite the dust this time because the people in charge of keeping Beanstalk safe had questions to answer but were currently trying to hide behind questions of their own. This was the day when those re

His heart sank. This was a misdelivery. When was his last business trip? He did a mental count and realized it was over four months ago. Although Byungsoo doubted the bundle contained any important letters, something gnawed at the back of his mind. He pored over the letters. He came across a postcard addressed to a Cho Eunsoo at the E & K Desig

Born and raised in Beanstalk, he genuinely loved his city. He found it deeply irritating whenever Beanstalk was compared to the Tower of Babel. Admittedly, Beanstalk was something of a symbol of modern capitalism, where every inch and moment on its territory was commercialized, but it was not a nest of evil to Byungsoo. He told himself, “People who

Elephants look much bigger inside Beanstalk, since they fill up a whole corridor. People here don’t seem to have a realistic sense of his actual size as they’ve never seen an elephant outdoors. They’re overwhelmed just by looking at him.

Strictly speaking, I am not a verticalist. I’m just a government transportation official. There are people who mistake me for a verticalist because my nose is buried in an elevator map every day, but think about it: do you honestly think I can do what I do by only factoring in vertical transport? There are people who keep drawing distinctions betwe

Kids these days don’t know all this history and assume verticalism is categorically a rich people’s ideology and horizontalism a poor people’s one. But it’s not so simple. We can’t solve the problems of our lives with just one approach or the other, can we?

In Minso’s eyes, Beanstalk was another Tower of Babel—a city of hubris. He hated that Eunsoo had found a job there. It was only an internship, but Eunsoo seemed to think moving into Beanstalk would make all her dreams come true. It would not. Beanstalk was not welcoming to unestablished migrant workers like Eunsoo. Despite sitting on foreign territ

It was certainly an unexpected scenario, but we’d prepared ourselves for any situation and weren’t caught too off guard. Though swamped with work, we knew what to do. But just then, the Chief of Staff added a few conditions. You know what they were? “Half of the Office of the Army Staff’s Mobilization Planning Division has joined the coup and deser