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summary of hanbit biotech, a 칼윈 au

this thriller socmed au of sorts made its rounds across aespa k-rps twt from late august to early september. it's pretty intense with quite a high production value and several interactive moments, which is why a lot of k-mys got into it. some anons here asked for a translated summary, which i am affixing below 'keep reading' for those who are interested :]

very long post ahead since i tried not to miss anything, but it's a bit difficult to capture all of the details of this au given that it involves a lot of theorising and problem solving from the beginning. all mistakes are mine, i am not at all a proficient korean speaker lol and i didn't translate the theory posts of k-jmjers which may have validated what is mentioned here

hanbit biotech co., ltd. is a biotechnology company engaging in highly classified, potentially dangerous research. in their employee onboarding video, they elaborate on the guidelines that everyone should follow. it includes taking these secret supplements (at grave peril, if you don't), reporting any shady behaviour to what is essentially the gestapo of the organisation (it's giving the armed guards in squid game), and what to do in case of emergencies (including accepting your demise in the line of work).

researcher y (yjm) uses the company’s twt to appeal for help, divulging that hanbit is involved in these shady experiments and created this unstable monster-like creature (which seems to have escaped the lab). a news org posts an article about an incident involving a potential virus leak from the laboratory and reports on how the residents near the company headquarters are also growing worried about the things they’re hearing. the article is immediately taken down, reinforcing how powerful hanbit is and how it is likely colluding with the government.

yjm uses dm’s to communicate with the outside world (aka actual real people, like k-jmjers), revealing that:

she’s personally involved in the most top secret, government-related experiments,

7 researchers from the same group are missing and presumably dead, likely related to the incident reported in the article,

the supplements they were required to take were initially stimulants that made them more work more efficiently, but jm stopped taking them because they seemed to have been changed into something that was altering her memories (also hence why she started asking for help online),

she knows mj (whose name she censors), but mj doesn’t and cannot know she works in hanbit. she gets quite irate that people know mj and refuses to answer any questions about her

she repeatedly pleads for people to remember that her name is yu jimin in case she goes missing. after answering questions, jm notices someone/thing enter the lab, but she can't see who or what it is. she approaches it, before a monster appears to have attacked her.

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day 1:

a new user (mj) begins using the hanbit account, asking where the original owner went. she says this 'unnie' (jm) lied to her about working in a university lab and hasn't been responding to her, so she will be using the account to post weird things in the meantime. she asks this unnie to reply to her.

people come to her dm's asking if she can't see the previous distressing tweets that were posted (by jm). mj says she can't, except for the deleted news article. people show her the tweets, and mj notices the year disparity, saying they are dated 2028, but they were posted in 2025. she asks for help looking for jm, and decides to go to hanbit in person. she also wonders how she got logged into hanbit's account on her phone when she didn't even know the password to the account and how people in dm's know her name lol.

hanbit is heavily guarded, so mj sneaks in from behind. she uses the vents to get in (as suggested by people on twt via voting). she sees a man at the information desk, but he responds to her like a robot. there are absolutely no guards inside. she checks the 2nd floor and it's empty. she goes up to the 3rd floor, it looks like a hospital, and she uses jm's employee id to enter this locked off area filled with labs. she heard that there is an underground lab in hanbit, but the elevator only goes up from the 1st to the 6th floor. someone walks into the hallway and notices her, and it seems like she wants to hide. someone or something tweets replay (notice how mj doesn't hide after this "error" and instead confronts the person she saw).

mj asks the person if they knew jm, person said they didn't. then mj asks if there was an underground lab somewhere, and the person ignores them. mj wonders if she said something wrong. someone or something tweets delete (seems like this made mj abandon her search for jm there).

mj goes back down to the 1st floor, notices a security room, and decides to go inside (after people voted for her to do so lol). no one is inside, just cctv screens. she notices that the 2nd and 3rd floors are disproportionately being monitored more. she decides to go back to these floors by stairs, noticing that it's taking more than just one flight of stairs between the two floors. she concludes there must be something there. she finds a censor similar to the one in the locked off area earlier, she scans jm's id again, and the wall opens up, revealing a hallway. she ventures inside, but notices that she's unable to tweet and access tweets or dms. error tweets (something kind of similar to computer language), then error repair tweets are posted. mj is rightfully terrified, she touches something and it leaves a sticky residue on her hand. she decides to leave. she keeps going down but it seems like she isn't reaching the first floor. the end of the staircase reveals another employee id-accessible area. she thinks she hears jm's voice from there, but jm's id won't work on the censor this time. she stops hearing jm's voice, but the door finally opens.

she gets disinfected the moment she enters, and she sees a hazmat suit which she decides to wear. no one is inside, but she finds jm's phone on the floor. there's something like a prison/containment area inside, and also a laptop. she decides to check the laptop first (voted by people again). she sees the records of this huge 2.5 m creature the lab must be working on, but she wonders where it is as it does not seem to be in the containment area. she hears the sound of water, and she opts to leave. something tweets retry repeatedly, until the error is resolved. mj tweets again that she notices a prison in the room and hears water and she decides to hide under a desk (notice that the retry error brings her back to the point prior to her decision, so she would choose another option). mj tweets that she found jm, but this is deleted. mj notices the sound of water again, but comments that it sounds more like something walking over a wet surface. this something approaches her, and it's a big non-human creature with blue skin. mj begs for help.

mj says that a dm told her to check jm's phone, and on it, she sees a message on the notes app (presumably from jm) telling her not to make a sound, but should she see a test subject, to shine a light and shout so she can survive.

it seems to work. mj leaves her hiding place under the desk, but finds herself not where she was, but in a laboratory on the 3rd floor. several tweets from jm come in, but all of them yield errors. mj continues to try to escape, but the stairs seem to keep going on forever. jm keeps tweeting, desperate for mj to see her and answer her, but these keep getting errors. jm tries to comfort mj, who is growing ever more distressed and exhausted, of course to no avail. jm tells her to stay still, and the people from the outside world convey this to mj through dm's, so she stops. jm tries to go to mj, but the building seems to be different from what she knows, so jm is unable to reach her. mj despondently cries out that she misses jm, and jm answers that she's sorry, which mj cannot read. jm pleads with the outside world who sees her tweets to tell mj that she's looking for her.

mj tries to get out again, and notices that a surveillance camera moved. applying some logic into this, she decides to go to the security room, manages to find the hallway from earlier and goes back to the 2nd floor. she muses that she's exhausted, but isn't hungry, even though she hasn't eaten all this time. she then notices that the phone she thought was jm's wasn't the same model as jm's phone as she remembers it. but she thought it was because there was a photo of the two of them at the back of the phone, so there was no way it wasn't jm's. mj suddenly feels sleepy and falls asleep.

day 1 complete.

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day 2:

mj wakes up, but notices it's still very dark out based on what she can see. someone tells her to check what day it is on her phone and it says august 11, even though she's sure she came to the laboratory on 2028 august 12. she decides to just go with it and head back to the security room as she planned the day before. someone on dm's ask if she knew whether jm had two phones, one for work and one personal. mj replies she doesn't know, and all she wants is to go home with jm. she notices that the screenshots of her dm's show 1pm, even though it's 4am according to the time on her phone, so she wonders if it's 1pm where everyone is. people tell her that it is 2025 august 27 where everybody is, mj decides to just believe that the account is stuck in 2025 given how crazy her situation already is.

she gets on the elevator and manages to make her way back to the information desk, where the odd old man remains. she shouts for help by the entrance but no one hears her. she hears the sound of water again, and hides under a desk, where the odd man stares at her. what she presumes is the monster walks past her, leaving behind a weird residue on the floor. she goes to the security room, sees it's unchanged from when she saw it yesterday. before she leaves, she spots a note in jm's handwriting, telling mj that she's still alive. an additional message at the bottom of the note points mj to look for a computer file. she doesn't know where to start looking for it, the cctvs don't show anything for floors 4 to 6. people vote for her to start at the 4th floor. she reaches the 4th floor, but a communication error is registered. still, she finds a room full of computers and the open one she found shows the file name she's been searching for.

the file contains observations of what i assume is the creature mj keeps running into. but there's also some numerical code at the bottom. another error is registered. people dm mj the decrypted message: "minjeong, i'm sorry for dragging you into a place like this. but let's find each other, we will get out of here eventually." mj is relieved jm is still alive and deduces that it must have been jm who moved the camera yesterday. she decides to stay quiet and use the phone's flashlight as suggested in the file, and continues her search for jm.

she again muses what's been going on with the time moving backwards, wonders what point in time jm is even at. mj reviews the tweets from yesterday, and sees one from jm which she missed, the one where jm asks if there was any way to let mj know she's watching her. mj wonders if this means jm is watching her from the security room with the cctvs. an excess of information error is registered. the system is disconnected and reconnected. mj decides to leave the server room and head to the security room just from a gut feeling (notice how it's not because she found out that jm may have been watching her from the cctvs).

she reaches the security room and sees jm pacing around the stairwell on the cameras, seemingly looking for mj, on camera 3 as jm specified in the note she left mj. she concludes it really must have been jm who moved the cameras the day prior. she decides to leave her phone in the room for jm to see, also leaving a sticky note message for her. mj gets emotional thinking jm must be blaming herself for this predicament they're in. jm goes in somewhere but the cameras lose her. mj decides to go to the 6th floor since there's no footage there. people tell her to take the stairs, but she's afraid she might run into the monster.

she reaches the 6th floor, which is lined with many doors. she opens a door and finds it filled with men all lined up, all with the same expression on their faces. her hands shake as she covers her mouth so she wouldn't scream. she notes the men are similar to the man on the information desk. the men are all different, they all seem human, but they're all together in this way, which makes everything creepier. she opens another door, and it's the same -- filled with men all lined up. she opens another door, and there's nobody inside, just a table lined with pills. there are other types of medications, but those yellow pills are majority of them. she tries another room, but it has a passcode. she asks the outside world for help. 340805 (the numbers on the note jm left her) is the correct code.

the door opens and she finds a whiteboard inside, saying to open the door again at 00:00. on her end, it's still bright out. but for the outside world, she finds out it's 10:40pm, so she tells everyone to let her know when it's 12mn. mj is still scared being on the 6th floor alone, so she asks if she can go down to the 1st floor and just go back up when it's 5 minutes from 12mn. she complains a bit about jm making her do all this, interacting with the scary monster, when she could have just told her to go to that room from the beginning.

anyway, she enters the passcode at 11:59 and is ready to hit confirm, but then a system message is registered, saying that the administrator is forcibly changing the perspective and converting jm and mj's conversation into text. jmj talk and jm tells mj that she can't leave because they're stuck at different points in time: jm august 5, mj august 11. they only have a 1-hour window to talk, and jm's been waiting for mj. mj is outraged at the situation, and jm keeps apologising for doing the experiment and getting mj involved. jm assures her that she's okay, but that the test subject is manipulating people's minds and spacetime. it also manipulated people into creating that drug (the supplement, the pills mj saw earlier) that is altering people's minds and making them forget (see: the seemingly brainwashed people filling rooms on the 6th floor).

jm also reveals that she is the "subject" of the loop (see: all the system changes being made periodically), and she knows the decisions that mj will make. but she can't see an ending where both of them survive. jm has been in hundreds, thousands of loops (author later explains these are minor loops, think restart. vs major loops which are resets), but no matter what she does, she can't save mj. mj asks if she's a burden, but jm tells her that getting to communicate with her now is the only thing keeping her from giving up.

jm tells her that she'll be using the phone mj left to communicate. it seems dire, and if this loop ends and time is restarted, it may be near impossible for them to quickly regain their memories, which may also be a side effect of these loops. mj feels distraught at knowing they might lose their memories, but jm reassures her that they will regain their memories no matter what and that she is always looking out for mj and finding traces of mj. mj is the one keeping her going and these traces connect them. jm tells her that mj has to go, that they will meet again at the same room. jm reminds mj that she loves her, and no matter how many times she has to repeat the loop, she will find a way to save mj. another system message is registered, saying that the administrator is again forcibly changing the perspective.

day 2 complete. the system admin pleads for the right choices to be made as the main loop is extremely risky.

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day 3:

mj wakes up to august 10 with her head pounding as she cried herself to sleep. she doesn't remember much, even though she feels like there was something she shouldn't forget. jm tries to reach mj again through tweets, but they keep registering as error. a system message comes up, saying that the administrator is watching. mj feels horrible, like she's about to throw up because of the pain in her head. she wants to take medicine but is discouraged by people from doing so (a move later revealed to have helped her preserve her memories). she relents and looks around the room, sees one pill on the floor. she decides to keep it just in case. as she was picking it up and about to leave the room, someone from the other room is blocking the door. she hears knocking from the wall and someone saying to go to the 5th floor. people figure out the knocking is morse code for JM. messages in morse code also from jm come in (VT, NUMBER, FLOOR, VITAL TEST are the decrypted words), but they register as errors. another system message comes up, saying that there's a communication error. people from the other room flood in saying they are there to decontaminate, they grab the person by the door earlier. mj thinks if jm was the one who was making the knocking noises and the one who orchestrated what just happened. she's more convinced of the morse code one (later revealed that it was jm who made the knocking noise and sent the man who told her to go to the 5th floor, hence why those many other men stormed in because they figured out this other man was kind of like a bug in the system)

anyway, someone messages her about a bio lab that jm kind of touched on somewhere (i don't recall where lol) and mj agrees that she should head there next. she finds a room in the 3rd floor labelled VT section, which seems to be the right place. she sees an iv drip, an xray, and an examination table, and then she smells blood. she sees that a computer on the lab bench is switched on. it's locked behind a password and the keyboard is unresponsive, save from "." and "-". people help her out, and the correct passcode is 2220 (for V and T).

she finds a file, which contains essentially a log of a few loops in which each trial is a failure. the last loop recorded is loop 25,631 (presumably the current loop) in which jm leaves a message for mj to hide now. mj gains some of her memories and hides in a locker containing lab gowns. she hears the sound of water, again likely from the experimental creature. somehow, jm and mj make some sort of contact. jm urgently instructs mj to open the locker, shine a light on the creature, and run to the 4th floor server room the moment the creature reaches the locker she's hiding in. mj, though terrified, manages to do it. system messages of excess of information then recovered after 5 hours are registered. another message is sent: thank you for saving me this time, as well.

jmj are able to contact each other after the 5 hours. jm tells mj that she's done well so far, instructs her of the next things she needs to do. jm tells her to look at this file containing detailed information about the test subject creature. the creature becomes incredibly powerful (see: being highly sensitive to all stimuli, having twice the strength of a human, ability to induce hallucinations and control the minds of people, effectively killing people by just touching them) once it becomes an adult. the date it became an adult is 2025 september 4. the creature's core must be destroyed before then. mj wonders how they're going to do this since it's already 2028, could they go back 3 years prior? jm asks mj if she's curious how she's able to loop themselves over and over again. jm says she's effectively able to do this by using the creature's powers of mind and spacetime distortion in reverse. it's a bit confusing here and i can't even manage to explain how it all works since i don't really understand some of the details myself, but essentially, different versions of mj seem to be going through the loops (some versions make the wrong decisions and die or lose their memories, etc., some make more correct decisions), but there is only the same single jm looping. mj's survival hinges on jm's survival. they're either both dead or both alive. jm keeps looping to find the optimal outcome. she's failed so many times, gambled her life over and over again. but this time, they have the power of friendship of the people in the outside world in 2025 helping them LOL breaking the fourth wall here. anyway, jm tells her to meet her again at the 5th floor. a system message is registered, presumably jm telling the audience to take a rest for now as things will get harder moving forward, and they need to keep up the good work for mj's sake.

day 3 complete.

(the au then takes a 3-day break for the aespa concert in seoul LOL)

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day 4:

mj again wakes up with a headache. she sets off to find jm's lab. finds a room that is slightly different, spots jm's lab gown draped over one of the chairs. people vote for mj to wear the gown, and this calms mj down (and it's later revealed that this made the creature confused between jmj, something like that, which helped in facilitating what happens later on). she sees an incubator and photos of cells. she spots a door and goes in. she tries to take a photo inside but it looks like this. she hears the sound of experimenting going on, wonders if she should venture on. jm talks to her (i really can't tell if it comes to mj in like the form of a voice in her head but okay we roll with it), telling her to go inside. a system message is registered, saying that the administrator is forcibly changing the perspective and converting jm and mj's conversation into text.

everything is dangerous and mj is crying and is pretty distraught, jm comforts her. mj is just really scared and desperately wants to be with jm now, but jm is so sorry because she can't at that moment. jm tells her that where they are now, the 'backroom', is the place where several spacetimes converge. the deeper they go from there, the more mj's existence will unravel and the more their signal for communicating weakens. when the test subject creature comes near, reality will distort further and will try to dominate mj. jm tells her that no matter what happens, no matter what the hallucinations tell her, she should only trust jm. they have to kill this creature at that moment. mj begs jm not to leave her, to stay with her for just a moment more, but jm has to go. she's so incredibly sorry, but she has to do it to save mj. mj rebukes jm for being so selfish and leaving her. another system message is registered, saying that the administrator is again forcibly changing the perspective.

mj moves forward, but then a critical error is logged. a poll comes up, verifying if the administrator wants to delete MJ, all the options are no. another system message says [MJ] attempting to self-fix, but this yields an error. a system message is registered, saying that the administrator is forcibly changing the perspective and converting mj's monologue into text.

mj enters a bit of a lengthy hallucination. she sees a bunch of things like her house and also a fire. she tries to stay focused on doing what she has to do in jm's lab. her monologue goes on while jm also tries to establish contact with her. jm seemingly gets attacked by the creature in the hallucination. a bit confused here, but a poll comes up asking what must be done with this last chance: to push the test subject away and save jm, or to observe jm's death. the results are incredibly tight, but the latter option wins. the rationalisation i think is jm mentioning earlier than when she dies, the creature can't do anything.

day 4 complete. a system message is registered, jm asking mj and everyone to remember her words.

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day 5:

very confused here, but mj apparently does neither and actually took the medicine from earlier and plays the creature's game in the hallucination. this is apparently a good, incredibly charismatic move as the test creature is successfully deleted before it becomes an adult. the author explains this in a postype q&a, that mj taking the medicine was successful because it created a break in her mind that was already being taken over by the creature, causing her to be firm in her resolve not to save jm but also gave them enough of a window to capture the creature, idk again i'm still confused.

jm celebrates in the system messages, says this success wouldn't have happened without gaining what they did from the failed 25k+ previous loops and without the help of the audience lol. the loop ends and jm is able to break free from the system she is trapped in and reunites with mj at the present day, 2028 august 13. hanbit had been shut down by this time. everything is normal again, except the two of them have some ptsd and jm is unemployed lmao. the final video posted shows the outcome of each of the decision points the audience helped out in and how these led to the particular flow of events in the story. author mentions on postype that should the audience have chosen other options at any point, the story would have been slightly different (mj encountering info earlier or later than she should have, more loops, etc.), but ultimately it would end similarly

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that's about it lol, the author shares more in this postype post, so it covers the things i explained poorly here. thank you for making it this far, hope this gave anyone curious a rough idea of the story? i tried haha this took me like 4 hours

#jiminjeong #fics

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