An Extraordinary Lawyer’s Subspace - Chapter 173



Only Noblemtl

【Episode 173 – The New Owner of the City】

There was sun here too.

There were clouds too.

The streets were lined with tall buildings, and there were street trees and cars.

At first glance, it looked like any American city.

It was as if aliens had shot a beam into a city where people had lived until yesterday, instantly making everyone inside disappear without a trace.

Ironically, the fact that there were no people in sight gave me a strange sense of relief.

Even though there was an expectation that someone would be there.

I put down the butterfly I was holding and carefully explored the ‘city’.

At first, I just wandered around the streets.

I checked that the electricity was being supplied,

I found that the water and sewer system was working.

I originally planned to look around for only about an hour, but somehow it ended up being over three hours.

The sun in the sky was not visible because it was blocked by the building.

I was hungry, but it seemed like it would get dark soon, so I went back to the shopping mall.

I returned to my subspace through the warehouse door.

I felt strangely relieved.

I didn’t encounter anything particularly dangerous though.

The sun in my subspace was in the middle of the sky.

We confirmed that there is a time difference between the two subspaces.

*

The second expedition took place 18 hours later.

The third expedition took place 24 hours after the end of the second expedition.

The fourth expedition took place 12 hours after the end of the third expedition.

The fifth expedition took place 48 hours after the fourth expedition ended.

By going back and forth in this way for a week, I found out that the time difference between the two subspaces is about 6 hours based on the time of sunrise.

The weather was similar.

The time the sun was up seemed to be about an hour longer in my subspace.

I had to spend some more time there to find out if there were seasons in that subspace too.

The information we learned during our five expeditions wasn’t just about time differences and weather.

I drove the car,

I climbed up to the roof of the tallest building in the ‘city’,

I tested the food from the supermarket.

And then, for the first time, we encountered animals other than ourselves.

It was an eagle.

A bald eagle with a white head and yellow beak.

The guy looked down at us from the top of the building, as if to say that this was his land.

I was momentarily nervous, wondering if he was after a butterfly.

It flew away while I was holding the rifle.

“Animals live here too.”

When I returned from my second expedition, I brought back food and drinks that were on display at the mart.

We each brought fruits, meats, canned goods, cereals, and frozen products.

I tried feeding them to animals I caught in the forest.

Observe whether there are any abnormal signs or not.

I didn’t find anything particularly strange.

There were no test subjects who ate and transformed.

There were no dead animals.

The third expedition also brought food and drinks.

This time, we left it to a private food research institute in the real world to check the ingredients.

Fruit was fruit, and meat was meat.

Processed foods had the same ingredient labels as the companies that manufactured them.

Testing of food and beverage items brought from the ‘city’ continued after that.

I checked by changing the products and also checked the ones brought from other marts.

It was after returning from my thirtieth expedition that I first tried it myself.

“I am alive.”

Another thing I was able to confirm while bringing food and beverage items from the mart was that fresh food spoils.

Clearly, things that were fresh when I first entered have become spoiled over time.

In fact, one of the reasons I explored so cautiously in the beginning was because of the fresh foods on display at the mart.

Aren’t fresh foods like the warmth of a home? Like the engine of a car you just got in?

The fact that fresh produce was on display was clearly considered evidence that humans had been present there until a few days ago.

Since it is impossible to build a city like this alone, the possibility of multiple people existing is also open.

If not humans, it also kept in mind the possibility that other intelligent life forms similar to humans might exist.

The presence of fresh food on display suggested that people or living things had not been there for a long time.

So, in the beginning, I was extremely careful.

He moved almost as if he was hiding.

I didn’t get to move around much.

A week passed like that,

The fresh food in the supermarket was spoiling, but no one showed up to clean it up.

The food continued to rot.

A week has passed.

No one showed up.

The food began to smell rotten.

A month has passed since the first exploration.

Still no one showed up,

The rotten food began to attract bugs.

Based on the phenomenon I witnessed, I developed a hypothesis.

“I don’t know if anyone has been here, but I haven’t been here since I entered this space.”

The experiment I did after that was to intentionally leave traces.

At first, it started with small things like changing the direction of objects or pouring oil on the floor.

Next, I tried painting the exterior walls of the building.

I fired the gun, got out of my spot and watched to see who was coming.

I even tried flying a balloon,

I even lit a fire.

No one showed up.

I’ve continued to test the presence of others in various ways, but it seems they haven’t come in since I was able to enter here.

First, we cleaned up the rotting food in the mart in the building with the door.

Not only did it smell bad, but it was also a problem when bugs and rats started showing up.

And then he closed the door and locked it.

It was an attempt to spend the night.

‘Are there things that only appear at night?’

There is a movie called I Am Legend starring Will Smith.

Based on the novel of the same name, the film tells the story of a man surviving alone in Manhattan, New York, against monsters that appear only at night.

Looking at the condition of the street, it didn’t seem like that would happen, but just in case, I made thorough preparations and stayed the night.

I was a little uneasy because it wasn’t necessarily a monster in human form.

If anything, I ran to the warehouse and prepared a rappel to the wall to get to ‘my subspace’.

We also set up traps here and there in case we were chased by them(?).

Observed for three nights.

The monster did not appear.

After that, I moved a little more boldly.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I just went around like that.

Just like when exploring a forest, we built safety shelters here and there and prepared emergency food and weapons there.

We created a map and identified safe routes to use in case of an emergency.

Honestly, it was fun.

It’s not that the nature of subspace was boring, but the city was something else.

Even in a city with electricity.

There are endless things I want to try if only safety was 100%, no, 99%.

There was a game shop in the shopping mall.

And on the road,

“Harley Davidson!”

There was a fat boy.

I wanted to run and ride it right away, but I held myself back for the time being.

We chose the safest-looking Humvee jeep and continued exploring the city in it.

I thought about going all the way to the end of the city, but it was bigger than I expected.

I’ve been running for an hour and it’s still not over.

After thinking about whether to run further, I returned to base (a shopping mall with a warehouse).

Instead, I found the tallest building nearby and climbed it.

“and!”

I didn’t realize it until I went up there, but the 73-story building was the tallest building there.

And from the very top floor, which was accessible by foot, one could see the edge of the city.

‘There is an end.’

It was certainly a huge city, but it had an end.

On one side there was a ‘forest’, and on the other side there was a large body of water, either the sea or a lake, I don’t know.

And in another direction, in the distance, a mountain was visible.

After watching the sight for a while, I came down from the building and got into the car.

Then he ran to the water’s edge.

The waterfront we reached in just under an hour.

I could tell without even trying it.

I got it.

“It was the sea.”

I remembered the conversation I had with my brother, Moo-yeol.

Maybe, just as my brother imagined, this place really is a ‘city’ created by someone else.

It could be that the owner of this place died and I came in.

Or maybe he’s not dead, he’s just not coming in.

That was something only time would tell.

I briefly wondered if this wasn’t a world created by the late Gateway CEO’s older brother.

I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think so.

This is not a city that can be built by someone who has lived in Korea his entire life.

Thought after thought leads to a chain of thoughts.

Honestly, even if you live in America, you can’t do this alone.

Unless I used magic, or was aided by some future technology I didn’t know about.

‘So does that mean there was more than one person who made this?’

Magic is something I cannot understand,

If this was future technology, wouldn’t it look like this?

The door to subspace can grow or shrink in size.

Could it possibly grow as large as a city?

Even if that were possible, what about the people living inside?

Could it be that only buildings and objects are being moved, without people coming in?

Because no one other than the owner of the space can enter?

Was the gray door there from the beginning?

Or did it appear later?

If this is ‘another person’s subspace’, why did it appear to me?

Are there really ‘gray doors’ that have not yet opened?

If this is ‘another person’s subspace’, then there must be a ‘door’ somewhere here that leads to the world he lived in.

If you find it, won’t you be able to know about ‘him’?

I can go to the world he lived in···

Without giving a single answer,

At home, only the home could continue.

As I watch the sunset setting into the distant horizon, my complicated mind becomes calm.

I drove back to base.

I headed towards my subspace through the warehouse door.

After changing into her pajamas, she returned to her Boston apartment where she was waiting.

-*-

Boston,

Beacon Hill Apartments.

“Water?”

“huh?”

“Didn’t you go to get water?”

“Oh, I drank it.”

I got inside the bed sheets she was lying on.

It was warm.

Her skin.

“Ah- good. The smell of grass.”

She put her nose against mine and sniffed at me.

“Stop. It tickles.”

“What can I do with a good thing!”

“Haha- it tickles.”

I climbed on top of her, grabbing her arms to keep her from tickling the back of my neck with her pointy nose.

That was the sole reason.

however···

It was too beautiful to just sit and watch.

“How can this be?”

“huh?”

“How is it?”

“what?”

“You look at me like I’ve been away on vacation for a month.”

“that···.”

Is it true?

“Ahem- huh? What is it? It smells like the sea, why?”

uh?!

“Not the smell of sweat?”

“Anything is fine. …Would you like to hug me again?”

Coming soon

As spring break approaches, law school students get busy.

As the cold weather gets warmer, I’m excited to go out and play, but more than that, the summer internship application period, which starts in three months, is ending.

“Laura, have you confirmed your summer internship?”

“No, not yet.”

“Where did you apply?”

“Kirkland, Adam & Watkins, Skadden, all the firms that support it, I put them all in.”

“New York?”

“huh.”

It’s no different from Harvard Law School.

Even Harvard Law School students, who have a 99% employment rate, are like swindlers who want to get into bigger, better law firms, so they are not just waiting for the fruit to fall from the tree.

Try your best to stand out.

“You, Nadia? You’re already confirmed?”

“Me too, not yet.”

“really?!”

“I submitted my application right after winter break, but it hasn’t arrived yet.”

Law school is a vocational school.

This is where you come in to become a lawyer.

And, it is no exaggeration to say that the beginning of a lawyer’s career is not at the time of graduation three years later, but rather from the summer internship that begins right after the end of the first year.

“Where did you put it? I thought you would have already decided. You’re coming, right? If you do, where do you want to go the most?”

“Actually, I only applied to one place.”

“Really? Only one place?”

“huh.”

Laura felt a little relieved to hear that Nadia, who was voted the most successful student at Harvard Law School this year by an unofficial classmate, was also still waiting for her internship offer to be confirmed.

Still, it’s a bit odd that it only supports one place.

“Where? Where did you apply?”

I asked with the thought, ‘She’d definitely fit in anywhere.’

However, when I told her the name of the law firm she had applied to, I could understand why she looked a little anxious.

“Kaiser Dutton Hill.”