Chapter 2

The PC Bang in Sillim-dong

Out Exit 4 of Sillim Station, two turns into the alley, up the stairs between a blood-sausage soup restaurant and a phone store—that was where you'd find Malsun PC Bang on the second floor. The neon L in the sign had burned out, so at night it read "MA SUN PC BANG," and the neighbors liked to say that suited the owner even better.

Doyun straightened his tie once at the foot of the stairs. Eleven a.m., a weekday, a man in a suit walking into a PC bang—it looked suspicious from every angle, but he had no intention of losing the tie. In his past life, he'd shown up at a trainee's house in a windbreaker and been turned away at the door by the parents three times.

The moment he opened the door, the smell of cigarettes and cup noodles and the heat of the machines hit him in the face all at once. There was a no-smoking sticker on every door, but the smell didn't read stickers.

"C'mon in. How many hours?"

A thick, raspy voice flew over the counter. An old woman in floral baggy work pants and a neon-pink vest was punching numbers into a calculator. She looked past sixty, and her eyes swept him over the top of her reading glasses, from his dress shoes up to his tie, in one go.

The assessment took about two seconds.

"Suit, in a PC bang? Insurance, or pyramid scheme?"

"Neither, ma'am. I'm here looking for someone."

"Debt collector, you can go out the back. I don't sell out my customers."

"I'm not here to collect a debt. If anything, I'm here to give money."

Her eyebrows rose above her glasses. Doyun smiled. A smile tempered by ten years spent between trainees' parents and agency CEOs. This was the old lady of neighborhood legend: Oh Malsun. The woman Kang Taeha had named in every single interview after he'd climbed to world No. 1 under the nickname Sword Emperor—"The person who saved my life was the owner of a PC bang."

The Taeha of his past life never got to repay her. By the time he'd earned enough to do it, Zeus Guild owned every hour he had.

"There's a guy named Kang Taeha here, right?"

Oh Malsun's face hardened. The hand on the calculator stopped.

"What d'you want with that kid?"

"Put him to work."

"That kid? Work?"

Oh Malsun snorted. Then she jerked her chin at the far back corner of the shop, a seat with no window at all.

"There. Three days in that seat. I feed him cup noodles myself. He's a month behind. 230,000 won."

"I'll pay it."

"Say what?"

Doyun took a card out of his wallet and set it on the counter. The card with a balance of 3.27 million won. 230,000 won was 7 percent of that. Cheap, as casting costs went.

Oh Malsun didn't pick up the card. Instead she looked him up and down again. This time it took five seconds.

"Young man. Name."

"Han Doyun. I'm a manager."

"Manager? Like for celebrities?"

"Something like that."

Oh Malsun stared at him a long while, then picked up the card and swiped it through the reader. The receipt crawled out with a long screech. She tore it off, held it out to him, and added one more thing.

"You get that boy into anythin' crooked, I'll come find you."

"It's the opposite, ma'am."

One of the fluorescent tubes over the far corner seat was dead, so it sat a shade darker than everywhere else. In that gloom two monitors flashed, and in front of them a man was hunched over with his hoodie pulled low. Next to the keyboard sat three empty cup noodle containers and a stack of five energy drink cans.

On the monitor, a character was swinging a sword. In the ranking window at the top right, the ID "TAEHA_" sat at No. 1. Top of the entire server. Triple the score of No. 2.

Doyun watched the screen for a moment. The way that character moved was strangely familiar. To be exact, it was the movement he'd scrubbed through thousands of times in S-rank Hunter fancams ten years from now. A sword that circled in when blocked and chased all the way in when dodged. It was a game character, but the judgment coming out of those fingertips was the same.

"Kang Taeha?"

No answer. The mouse clicks just got faster.

"Kang Taeha, my name's Han Doyun. Can I talk to you for a—"

"Ugh, what..."

A voice crawled out of the hood. The voice of someone who hadn't spoken to anyone in three days. Hoarse and low, and thick with annoyance.

"I want to talk about work."

"Pass."

"I haven't told you what kind of work yet."

"Whatever it is, pass."

The character on screen cut down two opponents at once. The score next to "TAEHA_" ticked up. Taeha didn't even turn his head.

Doyun dragged over the chair from the next seat and sat. He felt his suit pants meet some unidentifiable stain on the PC bang chair and ignored it. This was a butt that had survived ten years of broadcast-station stairwells and van trunks. This seat was luxury.

"Taeha, did you see the news? The hole in Seongsu-dong?"

"...Saw it."

"The weird stuff coming out of it. And how the people who caught those things suddenly got stronger."

"Saw that too."

"There are going to be more people like that. A lot more. And the strongest of all of them is going to be you."

The mouse went quiet.

For the first time, Taeha turned his head. The face under the shadow of the hood was younger and thinner than expected, though the skin under his eyes was a lot darker than expected. Those eyes looked Doyun up and down. The same assessment Oh Malsun had given—except this one seemed to reach the opposite conclusion.

"You're a scammer, right, mister."

"No."

"Scammers all say no."

"Fair point."

Doyun nodded with a smile. Taeha turned back to his monitor. Conversation over, that meant.

They said that in his past life, Kang Taeha had said the exact same thing when Zeus Guild's casting director showed up with a contract worth a billion won a year. Ugh, what. Pass. The day he finally signed came three weeks later. A Gate opened right at the intersection in front of this PC bang, and a monster smashed the window of Oh Malsun's shop. Taeha awakened for the first time that day, and signed with Zeus the day after. To pay for fixing Grandma's shop.

Three weeks from now would be too late.

That day, Oh Malsun cut her leg on the broken glass, and she never walked straight again.

Doyun took out his notebook. He'd written down everything he could remember last night. Dates, places, times. The memory of a manager who'd checked Hunter industry news every morning for ten years was more accurate than you'd think. Especially things like the debut story of the industry's biggest star—they'd milked it on TV so many times you couldn't help memorizing it.

That line was no use to him today.

"Taeha, want to make a bet?"

"Pass."

"Not a game bet. A bet you win no matter what."

The mouse paused for a beat, then started moving again. He was listening, then.

Doyun put his finger on one line in the notebook. April 9th, 12:14 p.m., Sillim-dong, Gwanak-gu. The first "secondary rift." The second hole to open in Seoul after Seongsu-dong. The bus stop in front of Sillim Station Exit 4. It was small, and the only things that came out were three monsters the size of rats. So the news gave it one line in a brief and moved on. The reason Doyun remembered that one line was an interview ten years later, where Kang Taeha said, "The first rift I ever saw was at the Sillim Station bus stop."

Doyun checked his watch. 11:15 a.m.

"One hour from now. 12:14. A hole's going to open at the bus stop outside Sillim Station Exit 4, right out there. Like Seongsu-dong. A small one."

Taeha turned his head. This time it was less annoyance than disbelief.

"...How would you know that."

"I'll tell you if I'm right. But if I'm right, you read my contract. Just once. You don't have to sign it. Just read it."

"And if you're wrong?"

"If I'm wrong, I prepay three months of your tab here, and I never come back."

Taeha stared at Doyun. Then he craned his neck to look toward the counter. Oh Malsun had her reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose and was glaring this way. The face of someone who'd heard every word.

"...Grandma, this guy's weird."

"I know. But he paid what you owe."

"What?"

"The whole month. 230,000 won."

Taeha's mouth fell half open. Without a word, Doyun took out his phone and set a timer. Fifty-nine minutes. Then he turned the screen toward Taeha and laid it down next to the keyboard.

59:00.

58:59.

Taeha looked down at the numbers for a long time, then minimized the game window.

The character of server No. 1 "TAEHA_" vanished from the screen. First time in three days, Oh Malsun muttered to herself at the counter.

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