Even though I now have a lovely wife and a respectable career, my early days in this place were filled with more hardships than I care to remember.
Before coming here, I had researched the local conditions extensively and studied every document I could find. But just as there is a limit to how much academic knowledge can prepare someone for reality, the life I had imagined from books and reports was completely different from the life I actually experienced.
Even now, I can vividly remember the first day I arrived.
I was still young then.
After awkwardly waving down a taxi at the roadside, I headed toward the hotel I had reserved.
Until that moment, “getting into a car” had meant stepping into a bulletproof sedan driven by a personal chauffeur and casually naming my destination. The windows were completely tinted. No one outside could see what I was doing, and even if they could, nobody would have dared to approach and look inside.
So when I raised my wrist to show the taxi driver the hotel address, I found myself in an unexpected predicament.
A holographic screen should have appeared before my eyes.
Instead, my watch merely blinked the current time.
The hotel address I had saved was nowhere to be found. The weather forecast was gone. The navigation map that should have displayed my route was gone as well.
Only then did the reality truly sink in.
I was in Etatina.
Hurriedly recalling the hotel address from memory, I gave it to the driver, and the taxi lurched forward. The wheels felt sluggish, as though they were dragging through waterlogged cotton.
Outside the window, rain poured endlessly.
There were no clouds.
There was no sunlight.
Yet the rain fell as faithfully as a trained dog responding to its master’s command.
“Does it always rain in Etatina?”
Having spent my entire life beneath pleasant skies and warm sunshine, the weather here felt strangely alien.
The taxi driver smiled faintly.
“You aren’t from Etatina, are you? It’s always like this here. Are you visiting?”
The question confirmed my suspicion that my own had sounded unusual.
Quickly choosing one of the cover stories I had prepared, I replied,
“Something like that. I came here right after graduation. I thought traveling to different countries and gaining life experience would help my career.”
“I see. What do you do for a living?”
“I run a small business in the Kingdom of Humanita. I majored in business administration at university, so I started it with the simple idea of applying what I learned. I still have a long way to go as a businessman.”
“Ah, so you’re from Humanita. I occasionally read about it in the papers. Things seem to be booming there lately.”
“Has that rumor spread so far already? Living there myself, I sometimes wonder if it’s all exaggerated. Everyone seems overly excited. We should probably be more cautious before deciding where we’re heading.”
The conversation drifted naturally toward Humanita.
The driver appeared to be someone who diligently followed world affairs through newspapers. As a taxi driver, he likely met all kinds of people every day and gathered countless pieces of information through casual conversation.
During the ride, he used me shamelessly as a fact-checking resource.
The state of Humanita’s financial district.
Recent political scandals.
Tourist attractions worth visiting.
Popular cultural trends.
Famous restaurants.
Questions kept coming one after another.
Even though I was from Humanita, it was impossible to know every detail about my country. Fortunately, I had studied it thoroughly beforehand, allowing me to answer without embarrassing myself.
When we finally arrived at the hotel, the driver handed me a business card.
The paper was wrinkled, and the ink had smudged in several places as though it had been soaked by rain.
Since Etatina was perpetually wet, he explained, moving around in formal clothes would be difficult. He encouraged me to contact him if I needed transportation later.
I accepted the card out of politeness.
Glancing down at my clothes, I couldn’t entirely agree with his assessment. Compared to what I normally wore, this outfit was already remarkably casual.
Still, refusing such a kind gesture felt rude.
I nodded slightly and slipped the card into my coat pocket.
After checking in, I shook the rainwater from the cuffs of my trousers.
The receptionist handed me a room key, and just as I was about to head upstairs, a staff member emerged from the back and offered to carry my luggage.
I had no reason to refuse.
But there was one problem.
The route to my room involved stairs rather than an elevator.
Watching the employee struggle to carry a suitcase weighing nearly thirty kilograms up several flights, I eventually stopped them halfway and insisted on carrying it myself.
Even lifting something that heavy was difficult for me.
As I carried the luggage to my room, I couldn’t help thinking that hotel work must be incredibly demanding.
Once again, reality drove the lesson home.
This was Etatina.
After unpacking, I borrowed an umbrella from the front desk and asked for a recommendation for a nearby restaurant.
The meal was cheap, just as I’d been told.
Unfortunately, the old saying proved true:
You get what you pay for.
The food was nowhere near my expectations.
I focused solely on filling my stomach and returned to the hotel shortly afterward, stepping through puddles that reflected the deepening darkness.
Since I had arrived just before dinner, it wasn’t surprising that night had fallen so quickly.
Still, I wasn’t accustomed to a place where proper streetlights barely existed and where one had to rely entirely on their senses after sunset.
Before returning to my room, I asked whether the hotel had a portable light I could borrow.
They did not.
I had already prepared myself for losing most of the conveniences I had enjoyed back home by coming to Etatina.
But I hadn’t expected things to be this primitive.
For a brief moment, I considered abandoning everything and returning home.
Yet if I was going to live in Etatina, I needed to achieve something before leaving.
At the very least, I couldn’t return empty-handed.
So I endured.
Wrapping myself in a blanket that felt perpetually damp, I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
A few days later, I realized I had chosen the wrong place to stay.
Any hotel that met my standards was located on the hill.
I had believed my research had been thorough.
Making such a mistake in a country this small was frankly embarrassing.
Still, the people at my current hotel were genuinely kind, and I intended to stay until I found somewhere better.
Etatina was a micronation covering roughly seven square kilometers with a population of only thirty thousand.
The district known as “Up on the Hill,” home to the wealthiest three percent of residents, occupied just over one square kilometer.
Most of the nation’s educational institutions, political centers, and economic infrastructure were concentrated there.
Compared to the damp, rain-soaked land below—which remained wet all 365 days of the year—the hill enjoyed cleaner air and clearer skies.
Although sunlight was still scarce, it sat closest to the Bloodon Empire, often nicknamed the Heavenly Realm.
Residents could at least feel traces of genuine warmth.
Artificial sunlight powered by electricity illuminated the district as well, so brightly that it was almost blinding.
The hill was inhabited primarily by politicians, business leaders, and scholars.
Naturally, every institution of higher education was located there.
For those living below, receiving a proper education was nearly impossible.
The only way up was to possess extraordinary talent and earn a full scholarship—or to be born into one of the hill’s families.
Having already learned about the miserable conditions below the hill, and lacking the confidence to start from absolute poverty, I decided to find a residence above.
The real-estate agent I had contacted beforehand showed me several properties.
To my surprise, the prices weren’t nearly as expensive as I expected.
Wasn’t this where the elite lived?
When I introduced myself as a businessman from Humanita and asked why housing was so affordable, the agent smiled faintly.
“The hill’s wealthiest residents are still insignificant compared to the Bloodon Empire. That’s why it seems cheap to you.”
Even after my rude question, he answered politely and sincerely.
Like the taxi driver.
Perhaps quiet kindness toward outsiders was simply part of Etatina’s culture.
At that moment, the penthouse of the tallest skyscraper on the hill happened to be vacant.
The previous owner had been the chairman of a power company and the richest man on the hill.
Naturally, a young foreign businessman purchasing a residence that only a CEO could normally afford would become major news.
The penthouse itself exceeded my expectations.
It was clean.
Fully furnished.
Equipped with all the essentials for daily life.
If this was considered the finest residence in Etatina, there was little reason to continue searching.
I decided to sign immediately.
Preparing the paperwork would take over an hour, so I went for a walk around the district.
Three percent of thirty thousand people meant just over a thousand residents.
Yet the hill felt enormous.
The roads were broad.
The buildings were large and widely spaced.
In the distance, a university stood against the horizon like a monument symbolizing the district itself.
Lush greenery filled every gap between roads and buildings.
Few people walked.
Everyone owned a car.
Most pedestrians appeared only in parks, residential areas, or around the university.
It was a utopia seemingly designed to fulfill every fantasy of the privileged class.
And yet…
No holograms appeared when I raised my wrist.
The finest restaurants failed to satisfy me.
I had to drive my own car.
Though I had obtained a driver’s license as soon as I was eligible, a chauffeur had always been available at home.
The thought of crashing into a building with my rusty driving skills made me laugh bitterly.
When I returned to the agency, an enormous stack of paperwork awaited me.
I had naturally assumed contracts would be finalized through fingerprints or iris scans.
Instead, every document was printed on paper.
One by one, I signed them using a simple ballpoint pen.
Then I froze.
At the bottom of the stack were two documents printed in bright red letters beside a skull emblem.
—Warning
—Confidentiality Agreement
I had signed countless property contracts before.
Never had I seen anything so openly threatening.
The agreement stated that the electrical supply used on the hill differed from that below and that residents were forbidden from revealing any details to the people living beneath it.
I knew the wealth gap in Etatina was severe.
I had never imagined it was this severe.
“Do all the people here accept this?”
“This document is mandatory for anyone wishing to reside on the hill.”
“Then it’s limited to hill residents… Is there a particular reason it can’t be disclosed below?”
For a moment, my pen stopped.
The nondisclosure clause was one thing.
But the final sentence was far worse.
Printed in the same bright red as the title, it occupied the last paragraph alone.
—You will face death if you speak.
I stared at the words.
Why would anyone go this far over electricity?
Unless the hill itself depended on keeping everyone silent.
“It sounds as if you’ve planted spies everywhere. Has anyone actually died?”
The agent shrugged.
“We only collect signatures. Whether it’s legally enforceable is another matter.”
It sounded exactly like something an innocent citizen in a spy thriller would say.
Or perhaps something a mastermind pretending ignorance would say.
Either way, I doubted I would learn anything more from him.
Cancelling the contract and postponing the decision until tomorrow felt troublesome.
The hotel below the hill was comfortable enough, but there were too many inconveniences for long-term living.
More than anything, I wanted a decent bed.
The red text wasn’t merely unsettling.
It was absurd.
Yet if I wanted a place to live immediately, I had little choice.
Even if breaking the rule truly endangered my life, I knew better than anyone that I wasn’t easy to kill.
I had mastered self-defense techniques to a degree bordering on lethality.
If someone came after me, perhaps they would be the one who died instead.
All I would need to do was punish them appropriately.
With lingering reluctance, I signed my name in the bottom-right corner.
The agent collected the documents and left to process them.
While waiting, I gazed out the window at the artificial sun hanging in the sky.
“Thank you. We hope you enjoy your life here.”
The farewell was perfunctory.
Stepping outside, bathed in artificial light rather than sunlight, I felt as though I were trapped inside a perfectly maintained greenhouse.
The feeling didn’t last long.
On my way back, carrying the envelope containing my contracts, I noticed something that seemed connected to the agreement.
Surveillance cameras.
They were everywhere.
Hidden carefully out of public sight.
So well concealed that even the local residents might not know they existed.
Are they using electricity as an excuse to hold something over people’s heads?
Still, one thing didn’t make sense.
How could a thousand people be controlled by a single flimsy pledge?
Unless the entire district had joined a cult, what was so frightening about those ridiculous words that everyone remained silent?
Shaking my head, I continued down the road.
Cars sped past on the vast boulevard while I walked alone along the edge of the pavement.
My footsteps grew heavier with each step.
I really need to buy a car as soon as possible.
