Chapter 6

9-4

Get off at the last stop of the neighborhood bus at the foot of the hill in Sillim 9-dong, walk fifteen minutes uphill, and you come to a factory whose iron gate is half swallowed by ivy. The sign above the gate read DAESEONG DYEING, except the SEONG had fallen off. DAE DYEING. Dae, as in "great." For a dyeing factory, it had ended up with a rather grand name.

The gate was locked with a rusty padlock. I walked once around the wall. Behind the factory, there was a gap in a collapsed cinderblock wall I could get through. Do real estate for ten years and you can more or less see the way into other people's land. Not something to brag about.

Inside, the factory was wide. Dyeing machines stood in rusted rows, and dried dye had hardened in blotches across the floor. The skylights were broken in places, and the afternoon sun came down through them in pillars. Dust drifted through the light.

The stairs down to the basement were at the very back of the factory. Yellow tape was strung across the top of the stairs, with a handwritten sheet taped to it. DUNGEON — NO ENTRY — CHA GAPDON. Gap-dol's handwriting—though unlike his texts, not a single tilde.

I stepped over the tape and went down the stairs.

The sound of water came first.

The basement looked like it had originally been a dye storeroom. Low ceiling, concrete walls. And the floor was water. Just like Gap-dol said. When I put my foot down off the last step, my shoe sank to the ankle. Cold. Much colder than I expected.

I turned on my phone's flashlight. In the middle of the basement, a blue light wavered under the water. The dungeon entrance. Water covered it, so the light rippled with the surface. Water kept seeping from the walls. Thin streams ran down every crack in the concrete and mixed into the water on the floor.

I waded to the entrance. My trousers got soaked to the knee. These were one of the two pairs of suit trousers I own. I folded that thought away.

I stood in front of the entrance. Caught my breath, and looked the way I look at a commercial listing. A listing a client asked me to look at. Location, structure, defects, title.

The air in front of my eyes itched, and the letters came up.

【Listing】 Sillim 9-4 Dungeon (Flooded type)
Listed grade: F │ Actual grade: B
Deposits: Mid-grade mana stone (vein, undiscovered)
Defects: Groundwater inflow — mana stone vein reaction

I looked at those four lines for a long time.

Actual grade B.

A mid-grade mana stone vein.

And the defects line. Groundwater inflow, mana stone vein reaction. The reason for the leaking was the vein. The vein was pulling in the groundwater. The reason Gap-dol wanted to dump this for 100 million was, in fact, the reason this dungeon wasn't a 100-million-won dungeon.

Standing in the water, I did the math.

Mid-grade mana stones go for around 3 million won apiece. With a vein, there's no telling how many come out. Could be dozens, could be hundreds. B-rank dungeons in the Sillim area sell for 500 million at the least. If the vein is confirmed, you could ask a billion and people would line up to buy.

A hundred million.

Gap-dol said he'd sell this for a hundred million. With a yawn.

I climbed back up the stairs and sank down onto the factory floor. Water dripped from my wet trousers. One of the pillars of sunlight had come down right in front of my knees.

I wanted a coffee mix and dug through my pockets, but I'd left them on my desk at the office.

Sitting right there, I thought about how to buy this dungeon.

My own money was out from the start. My account held a few ten-thousand-won bills' worth, and I owed 1.3 million on the card loan. I was short pretty much the whole 100 million.

A loan was out too. Banks don't lend on F-rank dungeons. Because the certified appraisal says F. Guarantee insurance won't attach either. If I told the bank it looked like a B to my eyes, the bank would send me to a psychiatrist.

That left finding an investor. But to get an investor, I'd have to prove this dungeon was a B. To prove it, I'd need a re-appraisal, and to get a re-appraisal, I'd need Gap-dol's permission. It's someone else's land. If I asked Gap-dol for a re-appraisal, the moment I did, he'd start wondering why this guy was interested in a leaky F-rank. And he'd raise the price, or not sell at all.

None of the roads worked with just me.

The pillar of sunlight shifted sideways little by little. Watching it, I thought about something else.

Cheolho's deposit, 80 million. Han Soyeong's, 60 million. Together, 140 million. That money is with Gap-dol right now. More precisely, it's money owed to them by Gap-dol. Gap-dol has no intention of paying it. He doesn't have the money to pay it, either. Everything Gap-dol owns is hollow.

Except this one thing.

I rubbed my wet knees with my palms. There are people Gap-dol owes 140 million to. And there's a dungeon Gap-dol wants to dump for 100 million. If you swapped the two—

In my head, a contract turned page by page. Purchase price and method of payment, and then the special clauses.

And the problem was the name going on the very last line of that contract, in the buyer box. Cheolho and Han Soyeong. If their names went in, this dungeon would be theirs. My name wasn't anywhere in that box.

I sat on the factory floor and looked at that line for a long time. It was a contract I'd only drawn in my head, and still that line was perfectly clear.

I'm the one who found this. My eyes. I saw what nobody had seen in five years. Cheolho doesn't even know this dungeon exists. Neither does Han Soyeong. If I kept my mouth shut and found another way, this dungeon might be mine someday. However many years it took.

During those years, 7-2 goes over to the straw owner on Wednesday. 4-11 goes over sooner or later too. Cheolho and Han Soyeong get judgments against people with bad credit. Paper.

At twenty-four, I got a judgment too. A winning judgment. I never collected a single won.

The pillar of sunlight slid off my knees. I stood up. My wet trousers stuck to my legs.

I left the factory and came down to the last bus stop, where there was a little corner store. I bought a packet of coffee mix and some hot water there. The old woman at the store saw my wet trousers and clicked her tongue.

"You went in that factory? It's full of water in there."

"Yes. Just took a look."

"What for? Place has been empty for ten years."

The old woman told me things I hadn't asked. Neighborhood corner-store grannies are like that. Mrs. Park is too. Daeseong Dyeing went under ten years ago, she said. Dye prices went up and Chinese factories pushed them out. The owner tried to sell the factory, but nobody bought it because it was at the foot of the hill. Then last year some young fella came and bought the land—bought it after hearing redevelopment rumors, and everyone in the neighborhood laughed, she said.

"Redevelopment, my foot. They'd have to cut down that hill. That fella threw his money away."

"Do you think he knew there was a dungeon underneath?"

"Must've. But it's a flood down there, they say. Neighborhood kids went in and came out with nothing but ruined shoes. All that comes out of there is a few squishy things."

I stirred my coffee mix and nodded. Everyone had seen only the flood, and nobody had looked at why the water was filling up. A leaking dungeon is a hollow one—that was common sense in this business, after all.

I finished the paper cup and said goodbye to the old woman. She said I'd catch a cold riding the bus in wet trousers and gave me two plastic bags. To sit on.

My name could go in the buyer box of that contract, too. Next to Cheolho and Han Soyeong, in small print. In place of the success fee.

You could call that greed, or you could call it not greed. I decided not to settle which one it was. Instead, I took out my phone and texted Cheolho.

Come to the office tomorrow morning. Bring Han Soyeong too.

After I hit send, I looked back toward the factory gate. Where the SEONG had fallen off, only two rusty screw holes remained.

DAE DYEING.

I'd just spread a plastic bag on the bench at the stop and sat down when my phone buzzed. Cheolho. Four exclamation marks.

Yes sir!!!! But what's going on?? Did I mess something up again??

☾