The groundbreaking Korean phenomenon that Chobahm''s perfect life in Snowglobe came crashing down when she discovered the truth about Haeri; the girl she watched faithfully on television was far from perfect. And the TV family, revered by millions, was nothing more than an illusion created by the Yibonn Media corporation. Nothing is as it seems in the carefully curated programs released from Snowglobe. But revealing the lies behind the Yibonn Media group was only the first crack in Snowglobe. Suddenly, the heat is rising inside the domed utopia--and with the soaring temperatures, come new secrets. Chobahm learned that you can''t believe what you see in Snowlglobe, but the millions of viewers watching have no idea what the truth is, so when footage emerges of Chobahm committing a murder, she knows someone''s out to get her. The only person who can help to clear her name is no other than the disgraced Yibonn heir, Bonwhe. And Bonwhe knows better than anyone that enemies exist everywhere in Snowglobe. Sometimes you can''t even trust yourself.

Autorentext

Soyoung Park; translated by Joungmin Lee Comfort

Klappentext

The groundbreaking Korean phenomenon that Entertainment Weekly called "The Hunger Games meets Squid Game" continues with even more dark secrets and shocking surprises. The temperature is rising and the truth at the center of Chobahm’s frozen world will be revealed in the final installment of this epic dystopian saga.

Chobahm's perfect life in Snowglobe came crashing down when she discovered the truth about Haeri. The girl she watched faithfully on television was far from perfect. And the TV family revered by millions was nothing more than an illusion created by the sinister Director Cha. But revealing the lies was only the first crack in the domed utopia. 

Director Cha may be behind bars, but the Yibonn Media corporation, the corrupt entity that runs Snowglobe, is still in power. They’ll do anything to hide their own secret—the dark truth behind the domed city’s signature warmth—and when footage emerges of Chobahm committing a murder, she knows they’re not finished with her yet.

The only person who can help to clear her name is none other than the disgraced Yibonn heir, Bonwhe—who knows better than anyone that enemies exist everywhere. Sometimes you can’t even trust yourself. 

The heat is rising—and with the soaring temperatures come new secrets. And new lies.

Leseprobe
Seven Degrees to Disaster

At once, all the lights go out and the TV goes dead. On the dark screen, ghostly afterimages linger for another moment before they, too, dissipate, plunging us into darkness.

“For real?” Beside me, Somyung balls her fists at her sides and squeals with a nervous laugh.

My brother Ongi sighs softly with wonder.

“The news was on point . . .”

It was just minutes ago that News at 9 announced an imminent power outage for District 1, our home district, located on the east side of Snowglobe—­the domed, temperature-­controlled city where we live, and the only warm refuge in our otherwise-­frozen world. Inside the dome, a record-­setting heat wave has been raging for five days straight, with tropical conditions continuing into the nights without remit, resulting in round-­the-­clock use of air conditioning and fans everywhere by people seeking relief. Needless to say, this has put a major strain on our electrical grids. All week, experts have been warning us of shortages and blackouts, but we ignored them. What else could we do? Roast ourselves alive? And now here we are, dealing with the first outage of the season.

On the table, a small desk clock dutifully ticks on. Nineteen past nine, according to its luminescent dial. My eyes are still adjusting to the dark, when heat and humidity begin pressing from all sides. Overhead, the fan stops completely, finally losing the last of its momentum, and it doesn’t matter if all it did was chop uselessly at the ovenlike air settling thick over us. Our discomfort is absolute.

“Damn, it’s hot,” Somyung mutters. Beneath her short hair, her face is identical to mine—­as both she and I are identical to Haeri, the onetime megastar of Snowglobe’s most popular reality show. It seems like only recently that I saw her for the first time in the break room of the Ja-­B-­6 plant in the open world; that the two of us, along with others, realized we were integral parts of the sinister Director Cha’s plot to create the perfect TV heroine.

That the Haeri we grew up watching on our screens never existed . . . at least, not in the way we thought she did.

We might as well have kept the air on all afternoon instead of doing our part as responsible citizens and trying to conserve energy. That’s probably what everyone else did, maximize consumption, believing that if they didn’t do it, someone else would anyway.

Then the third of us, Shinae, quips, while fumbling in the dark for a handheld fan, “Ha! Running out of electricity because people are trying desperately to cool down? What a concept!”

This induces a chuckle from everyone—­everyone but Hyang, that is, who glares at us, unimpressed, from where she is sitting. For the rest of us non-­natives who are used to an annual temperature of negative fifty degrees, Snowglobe’s sizzling summer is at once intimidating and kind of amazing. But for Hyang, who grew up in luxury as Director Cha’s sister and a onetime director herself before being exiled to the retirees’ village where I met her, this heat must be a familiar foe.

Hyang and Miryu, another former Snowglobe actor whose show—­a brutal murder program starring Miryu herself as the merciless killer—­also resulted in her ostracization and banishment before she and Hyang reunited recently, move deftly through the dark, lighting candles, drawing a huge pitcher of ice water, and even getting ice pops from the freezer. Meanwhile, all Shinae and I can do is lie plastered to the wooden floor while fanning ourselves. Ongi and Somyung head off to cool down with cold showers in the first-­ and second-­floor bathrooms, respectively.

“Man, it’s hot!” I cry out for the dozenth time, crunching ice cubes between my teeth, but the cool relief they offer stays with me for all of a few seconds before escaping through my sweating pores. I know from experience, it’s the same with cold showers. Just moments after you step out and towel off, the warm, waterlogged air welcomes you back into its sticky embrace. Outside the wide-­open windows of the living room, cars and trucks zip by, kicking up gusts of heat and exhaust into our already boiling house.

“Ugh . . . Should we forget the candles? They’ve gotta be adding to the heat,” Shinae suggests, squinting at the tiny flames. Like me, she was raised in the open world, completely unaware that the people she thought were her parents were in fact just foster parents—­that she, also like me, was conceived as one of a number of Haeri clones. It still sickens me to think of it. How Director Cha introduced the world to Haeri as a baby, then created a host of stand-­ins to swap out when her perfect star started acting less-­than-­perfect. I myself was brought in only after the previous “Haeri”—­whose true name was Jo Yeosu—­took her own life. And even then, I was only meant to reside in Snowglobe for a short time, as a replacement for the intended replacement, Serin, while Serin underwent surgery to remove childhood scars.

But Director Cha didn’t realize her creations could fight back. She didn’t think any of us, if given t…