Chapter 3

12:14

The moment Kang Taeha reached the bottom of the PC bang stairs, he shut his eyes. He pressed the back of his hand against them, and when that wasn't enough, turned his face toward the wall.

"Ugh... bright."

The April morning sun was bouncing off the soup restaurant's sign and spearing him head-on. Taeha yanked his hood down to the tip of his nose and flattened his back to the wall. The reaction of someone who'd spent three days in a corner seat under a dead fluorescent tube.

"When was the last time you came outside?"

"...When I went to the convenience store."

"And when was that?"

"The day before Grandma started bringing me cup noodles."

Doyun gave up doing the math. He looked at his phone instead. The timer said forty-one minutes.

Sillim Station Exit 4 was a three-minute walk from the PC bang stairs. Eleven people were standing at the bus stop. Two kids in school uniforms, a middle-aged woman with a shopping basket, college students in earbuds, and an old man spreading a newspaper open on the bench. A very Sillim-dong scene for a weekday right before lunch.

Doyun counted all eleven, one by one. The news brief had said "no injuries." But that was the past life. There was no guarantee it would go the same way this time. The mere fact of Doyun standing here might have changed something. Even three rat-sized monsters could take a bite out of the old man's ankle if they popped out from under that bench.

"Taeha, stay here a sec."

"Where are you going?"

"To set up."

Doyun came back out carrying two orange traffic cones that had been standing in front of the soup restaurant. The owner used them to save parking spots. Doyun pressed a 10,000-won bill into his hand and said, "Just thirty minutes." The owner took one look at the suit and asked nothing.

Next was the convenience store. Two sheets of A4 paper, a marker, and a roll of clear tape.

Five minutes later, a cone stood on either side of the bus stop at Sillim Station Exit 4. The A4 sheets went up on the bus stop pillar.

Filming in progress. Please avoid using this bus stop from 12:00 to 12:30. Kindly use the temporary stop right next to it. — Production Team

Doyun stood in front of the bus stop and bowed.

"Hello, so sorry. We've got a quick drama shoot here. I've asked the bus drivers to stop twenty meters up that way. Thank you so much for your cooperation. It'll be over soon."

The voice he'd used for ten years doing crowd control at street shoots. Polite and apologetic, and not giving an inch.

The two students moved first. "What drama is it?" "Sorry, it's still a secret." That one line had them happily walking twenty meters up the road. The college kids followed. The woman with the basket grumbled and followed. Only the old man on the bench didn't fold his newspaper.

"Sir, I'm so sorry."

"Sat on this bench thirty years. What's a drama to me."

"Sir, we'll bring you a drink over there in a bit."

The old man turned one more page, then slowly got up and walked twenty meters up the road. Whether it was the drink or the suit, there was no telling.

Doyun stood alone between the cones. In five minutes, the bus stop was empty.

"...Seriously, what do you even do, mister?"

Taeha had come up beside him at some point. Only his eyes showed under the hood.

"I'm a manager."

"Managers do this kind of thing?"

"This is the thing managers do most. Get people to move."

A bus rolled past the cones and pulled up twenty meters ahead, right where the crowd was waving it down.

"Thought you said you told the drivers."

"I didn't."

12:10. Doyun and Taeha were sitting on the steps in front of the pharmacy across from the bus stop. Taeha was holding the phone timer, and Doyun was watching the ground at the bus stop. He swept his eyes across the paving blocks, the bench legs, and the drain cover, one at a time, over and over.

12:13.

"Hey, mister."

"Yeah."

"If nothing happens, you're actually paying three months?"

"Yep."

"Three months is 690,000 won."

"You're quick with numbers."

"...It just happens. Everyone who games is."

12:14. The timer hit 00:00 and the phone buzzed in Taeha's hand.

The bus stop was unchanged. A pigeon walked under the bench. The corner of the A4 sheet flapped in the wind.

12:14 and twenty seconds. Taeha slowly turned his head. He looked at Doyun's profile. Doyun was smiling. He was always smiling, but under that smile, a single bead of sweat was running down his spine.

The news brief. 12:14 p.m. Was that "14" the time the report came in, or the time it happened? Had the reporter rounded it? Or had something changed because Doyun put up those cones—because the stop was empty?

12:14 and forty seconds. The ground at the bus stop was still quiet.

"Mister, this is—"

Taeha opened his mouth. That was when the pigeon took off.

Then the pigeons on the power lines around the bus stop went too, all at once, without a sound. Then one of the paving blocks under the bench lifted.

It lifted, and then, without a sound, cracked open down the middle.

Blue light leaked out of the crack. The same light he'd seen in the Seongsu-dong news footage. The crack was the size of a palm, then a hand's span, then a manhole cover. And there it stopped.

12:15. Taeha dropped the phone. He didn't even think about picking it up as it clattered down the steps.

Something crawled out of the crack. It was a rat—though for a rat, it was the size of a cat, hairless, with two tails. One, two, and then a third clawed its way up over the edge.

"One minute late."

Doyun muttered it under his breath.

A scream went up from the temporary stop twenty meters away. One of the students raised a phone. Filming. Watching that, Doyun thought: That video's going to hit half a million views by tonight. And in two days, everyone will have forgotten it.

The three rats prowled around the bus stop. One shoved its nose into a cone and knocked it over. Another gnawed at the bench leg. The bench the old man had sat on for thirty years.

The third rat raised its head. Toward the pharmacy steps. Its eyes met Doyun's.

"...Mister."

"Don't move."

The rat ran. Across the sidewalk, over the road, toward the pharmacy steps. That cat-sized body was faster than it looked. Doyun started to stand, then stopped. Standing wouldn't do anything. He hadn't awakened, and he couldn't fight. In ten years, the only fighting a manager did in the field was body-blocking sasaeng fans.

Taeha moved instead. Still seated, Taeha kicked the trash can standing in front of the pharmacy. The cylindrical steel can toppled sideways and rolled down the steps. The rat slammed into it head-on. A squeal. The rat staggered and veered off.

Taeha was already on his feet, two steps higher. So that the fallen trash can sat between the rat and him.

Doyun saw the line he'd taken. Kicking the trash can over and backing off with it between them had taken less than a second. A call he must have made thousands of times in games, coming out of his foot instead of a mouse.

That's going to be a clip.

The rat glared at Taeha over the trash can for a moment, then turned away. Back toward the bus stop, where the other two were. Far off, a siren started up. Someone must have called it in.

By the time the two police cars arrived, the rats had already left the bus stop and gone down a storm drain. The officers strung yellow tape around the cracked paving block. One of them spotted Doyun's cones and the A4 sheets and tilted his head.

"Who put these up?"

"We did. For a shoot."

"What shoot?"

"A drama. But I think we're going to have to wrap for the day."

Doyun peeled the sheet off and folded it. The officer looked like he wanted to ask more, but another call came in over the radio and he ran off toward it. Day three since the first Gate. A time when even the police didn't know what this was.

Twenty meters away, the old man called out to Doyun.

"Hey, young fella. Where's my drink?"

Doyun went into the convenience store and bought twelve drinks. One for each person who'd been at the bus stop, plus a spare. He carried the plastic bag over to the temporary stop and handed them out one by one. One of the students took a drink and asked,

"Mister, is this part of the drama too?"

"No. This is real."

"Then why'd you make us move?"

Doyun pressed the last drink in the bag into the kid's hand too, and smiled.

"Gut feeling."

Taeha didn't say a single word on the way back to the PC bang. Before going up the stairs, he pulled his hood back. The sun hit him full in the face, but this time he didn't close his eyes.

"...Mister."

"Yeah."

"How'd you know?"

"I told you I'd tell you once you read the contract."

"Not that. The trash can."

Doyun took a moment to choose his answer.

"I didn't do that. You did."

"No, you sat me down on those steps. Right next to the trash can."

Doyun didn't answer. It was true. He'd picked the pharmacy steps because of the trash can. He'd figured the odds of a rat coming their way were low, but not zero. Back when he'd planned venue blocking in his past life, he'd always posted a staffer at any barrier with even a one percent chance of a sasaeng fan climbing over.

Taeha stared at Doyun for a long moment, then went up the stairs. Oh Malsun was standing in front of the counter without her reading glasses. She was holding her phone. On the screen was the video of the Sillim Station bus stop. Someone had already posted it.

"...So it's real."

She said it. Then she looked at Doyun. Different eyes than before. The eyes of a merchant looking at merchandise.

Taeha didn't go to his corner seat. He dropped into the empty table next to the counter and held out a hand to Doyun.

"Contract."

Doyun opened his document envelope. A contract he'd written himself at home last night. Fourteen pages. He didn't know much about law. He'd just taken a standard contract template off the internet, struck out every bad clause he could remember seeing in his past life, and rewritten them the other way around.

Taeha flipped past the first page, then looked up.

"Reading is reading. It's not doing."

"I know."

"And if I read all this, I can't play a match."

"I know that too."

Taeha bent his head and started reading. His finger stopped on the very first line.

"...Mister, there's a typo in Article 1 already."

☾