The Last Rite of Remembrance

* Translated with the assistance of AI, based on the original Korean manuscript by the author. *mon, tue, wed, and thr.  The World War III ended with a miracle: The Right to Forget. Governments called it "Memory Deletion"—a welfare policy to scrub the scars of war from the human soul. They promised a utopia. They delivered a graveyard. Across the globe, those who forgot began to hollow out. Stripped of their pasts, they were consumed by the "Void Phenomenon"—a plague of inexplicable dread that left societies crumbling under a wave of suicides and silent madness. Only one city-state stands defiant: Arca. Arca’s peace is perfect, sterile, and lethal. Its secret? The Resonance Empaths. While the machines purge the data of a memory, the Empaths dive into the psychic runoff left behind: the 'Han (恨)'. It is a stagnant knot of ancient sorrow, a spiritual toxin that no algorithm can dissolve. To keep Arca’s neon lights humming, these shamans must act as living filters, swallowing the bitterness of millions until it rots them from the inside out. Yeon-hwa is the city’s finest filter. She bleeds so Arca can remain numb. But in a land where everything must be forgotten, Yeon-hwa is starting to remember. As the "Void" within her fractures, she uncovers a truth more terrifying than the silence.