professionallydelusional

. . .

Music pulled him awake again.

Bright trumpet. Fast, polished, absurdly cheerful.

Jace stared at the ceiling for half a second before memory caught up and irritation followed immediately after. The same piece. The same one they used to force on children and tired parents at military-base ceremonies and school concerts, all brass and false triumph, the kind of music meant to make folding chairs and stale coffee feel ceremonial. Back then, he had hated it because it was boring.

Now he hated it because it meant he was here again.

He sat up.

The thin blanket slid down to his lap. Green fabric covered his legs. White slip-ons waited at the edge of the bed. His tracksuit jacket hung off his shoulders the same as before, 214 stitched clean across the chest, as if the days outside had been nothing more than a short interruption in the schedule.

Around him, the dormitory was waking in waves.

Bodies shifted beneath blankets. Players sat up, rubbed their eyes, looked around with expressions that ranged from numb to quietly horrified. There were fewer beds filled this time. Fewer voices too. The room felt larger for it, emptier in a way that made the rows of metal frames stretch farther than before.

Jace swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood, eyes lifting automatically toward the large screen mounted above the dormitory floor.

187 PLAYERS

The number stared back at him.

One hundred eighty-seven had returned.

Out of everyone who had walked back into their old lives, only that many had chosen to come here again. Or had been desperate enough. Same difference, probably.

Jace exhaled once through his nose and started walking.

He moved slowly through the aisles between beds, hands in his pockets, eyes scanning faces as people gathered themselves. Some were familiar immediately. The old man, 001, was back. A few others from the field too. Men and women he remembered only in flashes—someone who had cried during the vote, someone who had almost tripped during Red Light, Green Light, someone who had stared at the money like it had already belonged to them.

He was looking for familiar faces.

That was the excuse he gave himself.

But the truth was narrower than that.

He was also looking for 067.

He hated that he noticed when he found her.

She was in line by the time the automatic voice over the speakers announced mealtime, already standing with that same contained stillness she carried everywhere, shoulders squared, expression shut down. She looked exactly like the kind of person who did not want to be spoken to before food, before coffee, before ever, really.

Jace found himself almost smiling.

He got in line directly behind her.

The line shuffled forward beneath the bright dormitory lights, players half-awake and hungry and wary, all inching toward the guards distributing doshirak tins and bottled water. The smell of food wasn't much, but after the last week it was enough to make his stomach tighten.

He looked at the back of her head for a second, then said quietly, "Didn't think you'd come back."

Her shoulders tensed almost imperceptibly.

She did not turn.

Jace kept going anyway.

"I mean, figured you'd have stolen enough wallets by now to retire."

Nothing.

He could tell she was already annoyed. Not loudly, not dramatically. Just in the way her posture went a little stiffer, like each word out of his mouth was one more small offense she was deciding whether or not to acknowledge.

It entertained him instantly.

"You know," he added, voice low and conversational in the most irritating way he could manage, "most people say thank you after someone unties them in a dark alley."

That got him a response.

Barely.

"Shut up," she muttered.

Jace looked pleased with himself for all of half a second. "So she speaks."

She turned her head just enough to cut a glance back at him, flat and unimpressed. Up close, her face was as unreadable as ever, but there was a sharpness in her eyes that told him she was two seconds from either ignoring him completely or telling him to go to hell.

He did not particularly care which.

"You came back too," she said.

It was not really a question.

Jace gave a small shrug. "Obviously."

Her gaze moved over his face once, quick and cool, then returned forward. "Then stop talking."

He laughed under his breath.

"No."

The line moved again.

A few players ahead, guards in pink uniforms passed out meal tins and water bottles with the same detached efficiency as everything else in this place. No one complained. No one lingered. They took their food and moved on.

Jace leaned slightly closer, just enough to be annoying on principle. "You always this friendly in the morning?"

She did not look at him. "You always this annoying?"

"Only when I'm bored."

"And you're bored."

He glanced around the dormitory. "You've seen this place, right? I'm having so much fun."

That, annoyingly, almost made her smile.

Almost.

But it vanished too quickly to be sure it had really been there.

The line crept forward another step.

He could tell she was agitated just by being spoken to, which only made him want to keep going. Not because he expected anything from her. Not because there was warmth there waiting to be dragged out. Purely because getting under her skin was something to do, and because in a room like this, with the music still fading from the speakers and hundreds of desperate people pretending breakfast was normal, irritating 067 felt strangely grounding.

When they reached the front, she took her meal without a word and moved on.

Jace stepped up after her.

A guard handed him a doshirak tin and a water bottle.

He took both, eyes flicking once toward her as she walked away through the rows of beds, and for no reason he cared to examine too closely, his attention followed.

Jace had just started after 067 when a voice cut across the dormitory behind him.

"Hey, white boy."

He stopped.

Slowly, he turned his head.

There were not many things in this place that could pull his attention away from where 067 had gone, but hearing himself identified by the most obvious thing about him in a room full of Koreans did it easily enough. A few nearby players glanced over. Jace ignored them and looked toward the source.

240.

She stood a few beds over with her meal tin in one hand and her water bottle tucked against her hip, watching him with a look that was halfway between amusement and open challenge. There was something loose and sharp about her, something that felt familiar in the worst and most interesting way. Not soft. Not frightened in the same obvious way some of the others were. Just alert, sarcastic, and a little too comfortable saying exactly what came to mind.

Jace changed direction.

He walked over to her with that same unreadable expression he wore when he was deciding whether a situation was irritating or worth entertaining. "You got a death wish," he said.

240 tilted her head. "Maybe."

Then her eyes flicked briefly in the direction 067 had gone.

"You'll never get 067 to love you by stalking her, you know."

Jace stared at her for one beat.

Then another.

Somewhere behind him, the dormitory kept moving, players sitting down to eat, guards watching, metal bed frames creaking under shifting weight—but for a second it all blurred under the sheer stupidity of what she had just said.

He let out a quiet, humorless laugh.

"Love?" he repeated. "You think that's what that is?"

240 gave a one-shouldered shrug and popped the cap off her water bottle. "You tell me, white boy. You were following her around with your little breakfast tray like a kicked puppy."

Jace looked offended on principle. "I wasn't stalking her."

"Sure."

"I was annoying her."

"That's worse."

He stepped closer, lowering his voice just enough to keep the conversation between them. "For the record, the only person I love is myself."

240 looked at him.

Really looked.

Then she snorted.

"That's a lie."

The words came out quick, effortless, like she had not even needed to think about them.

Jace opened his mouth with some automatic smart response ready to go, but it stalled somewhere on the way up. He held her gaze for a second too long, and something in her expression made it clear she was not guessing. She had clocked him exactly right and knew it.

His mouth flattened.

Then, with clear reluctance, he said, "Yeah."

240's brows lifted slightly, like she had not expected the honesty to come that fast.

"Yeah," Jace repeated, more irritated now that he had admitted it. "It's a lie."

She took a sip of water, still watching him over the rim of the bottle. "Thought so."

He shifted his weight and looked at her more carefully.

There was something annoyingly disarming about her. She had the kind of energy that made people underestimate her until she was already in their business, and she did not seem all that interested in pretending otherwise. She reminded him of the sort of person who could start a fight, laugh during it, and still somehow be the one dragging you out of trouble ten minutes later. Similar enough to him in the rough edges. Different enough in the way she wore them.

Jace narrowed his eyes a little. "You always this nosy?"

She lowered the bottle. "Only when people are being obvious."

"I'm not obvious."

240 gave him a flat look. "You're the only white guy here and you keep orbiting the same girl. You're not exactly subtle."

He hated that she had a point.

Not because he cared what she thought. But because now that she had said it out loud, he was aware of himself in a way he had not been a second earlier. Aware that maybe he had been looking for 067 too deliberately. Aware that he had followed her line on purpose. Aware that some stranger had noticed.

So naturally, he got defensive.

"She stole from me," he said.

240 blinked once. "That your meet-cute?"

Jace's face twisted immediately. "Absolutely not."

That made her grin.

There it was. Sharp and quick and a little wicked. It changed her whole face, not softening it exactly, but making it obvious she found him interesting in the same way he was beginning to find her tolerable.

"Relax," she said. "I'm kidding."

"I don't relax."

"No," she said. "I noticed."

For a moment, neither of them said anything.

Then 240 shifted her meal tin into her other hand and nodded toward the empty bed frame beside her. "You gonna stand there being weird, or are you sitting down?"

Jace looked at the bed. Then at her.

"You ask everyone this nicely?"

"I called you white boy."

"Fair."

He sat.

Not because he trusted her. Not because he was suddenly in the mood for company. But because she was the first person here who had spoken to him like he was a person instead of a number, and somehow also the first one rude enough to make it almost comfortable.

240 peeled back the lid of her doshirak. "So," she said, like they were continuing a conversation they had been having for years, "if you don't love yourself and 067 definitely doesn't love you, what exactly is your deal?"

Jace opened his own tin and glanced sideways at her.

"I'm trying very hard," he said, "not to hate everyone."

She hummed, considering that.

"Cute."

He looked offended again. "Don't call me cute."

240 smirked and dug into her food. "Then stop acting wounded."

Jace stared at her for a second, then looked down at his own meal, shaking his head once under his breath.

She was irritating.

Too observant.

Probably trouble.

And for the first time since waking back up in the dormitory, he did not entirely mind not eating alone.

240 ate like she had never been taught to do it politely and had decided long ago that she did not care.

Jace respected that a little.

Not enough to say it, obviously, but enough to notice while he peeled back the lid of his own doshirak and stared down at the rice and side dishes inside. It was still warm. Barely, but enough. The smell rose with the thin curl of steam and hit him immediately. Not amazing, not exactly, but edible. Real food. In a place like this, that was already more than he had expected.

240 glanced sideways at him while chewing. "Where are you from, white boy?"

Jace looked up from his food. "England."

She made a face instantly.

He narrowed his eyes. "What?"

"I heard the food is really bad there."

That pulled a dry laugh out of him before he could stop it. "You heard right."

240 nodded as if she had just confirmed a long-held theory. "So that's why you left."

Jace scooped up a bite of rice, still eyeing her. "Yeah, actually. Couldn't take another day of boiled disappointment."

That earned a grin.

He took the bite, swallowed, then shrugged. "I can't go back to eating like that now anyway."

"No?"

He shook his head. "No. I like flavor. Spice. Food that actually tastes like someone gave a damn when they made it."

240 gave a slow, exaggerated nod, as though deeply moved. Then, in the worst English accent he had ever heard in his life, which was particularly offensive considering he was actually English, she lifted her chin and went, "Do yew...miss yehr beans...on...toast?"

Jace stopped chewing.

Stared at her.

She widened her eyes innocently and continued, voice mangled, "A liddle...brekkie? A sad sausage? Maybe a soggy pea?"

He looked offended down to his bones.

"That accent is disgusting."

"It's your accent," she said back in Korean.

"It is absolutely not my accent."

240 was trying not to laugh now, which somehow made it worse as she swapped to her broken English and even more broken accent. "Do yew fancy...a cuppa?"

Jace pointed at her with his spork. "You need to stop."

"No, I don't," she said, and then, somehow making it even worse, added, "Chewsday innit?"

He closed his eyes for one second.

When he opened them, she was openly grinning now, shoulders shaking with silent laughter at her own stupidity.

"You sound like you learned English from a drunk cartoon," he said.

"That means I'm doing it right."

"That means I'm offended."

240 popped another bite into her mouth. "Good."

Jace shook his head and looked back down at his food, but there was a smile threatening at the corner of his mouth now despite himself. Small. Unwilling. Still there.

After a beat, 240 said, "So what do I call you, then? White boy can't be it forever."

Jace glanced at her. "You seem committed to it."

"I like options."

He took a sip of water. "Jace."

She repeated it once under her breath, testing it. "Jace."

Then she nodded like she had decided it suited him well enough.

"Okay," she said. "That's better than white boy."

"High praise."

She ignored that and kept eating. "I'm Ji-yeong."

Jace looked at her properly for a second then.

"Ji-yeong," he repeated.

She tipped her head once. "See? You can be normal."

"Wouldn't go that far."

"No," she said. "I definitely wouldn't."

That made him snort quietly.

For a little while, they just ate.

Not in silence exactly, because the dormitory was too full of noise for that, metal boxes shifting, low voices, the, occasional sharp laugh that sounded more forced than genuine, but in a way that felt easy enough not to need filling every second. Jace found, to his mild annoyance, that Ji-yeong was easy to sit beside. Not gentle, not overly curious, not trying to make this into something sentimental. She talked the way some people jabbed with elbows: lightly, but always on purpose.

"Tastes okay, but it's holding back. Needs chili paste or something. Bit more bite," he mumbled, mostly to himself, scooping and eating his food.

At that, she glanced at his tin. "You eat Korean food like you mean it."

He looked down. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means you don't pick at everything like the tourists do."

He shrugged. "Lived here long enough."

"How long?"

"Years."

"You still sound English."

"I am English."

"Unfortunately."

Jace gave her a flat look. "You're obsessed with me being white."

She lifted a shoulder. "You make it hard to ignore."

He opened his mouth to argue, then closed it again because there was no argument. In this room, in this place, with these faces, he stuck out whether he wanted to or not. He had spent long enough in Korea for the staring to dull into background noise, but it never disappeared completely.

Ji-yeong seemed to catch the shift in him because her tone changed, only slightly.

"You speak Korean well," she said.

Jace looked at her sidelong. "I know."

"There he is," she said. "The ego."

He laughed under his breath. "Thought you said that was a lie."

"It is. But it's funny when you pretend."

He rolled his eyes and took another bite.

She watched him for a second, then asked, "What's your favorite?"

He frowned. "Favorite what?"

"Food."

He considered. "Depends."

"That's a boring answer."

"It's a true one."

Ji-yeong leaned back slightly on her hands, water bottle resting against her knee. "Ramen?"

"Too broad."

"Fine. Triangle gimbap."

He gave a small, conceding tilt of his head. "Good convenience store triangle gimbap is better than people give it credit for."

She squinted at him like she was deciding whether that was an acceptable opinion. "That's the most Korean answer you've given so far."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

He took another sip of water. "Milkis too."

That made her laugh once, quick and surprised. "Milkis?"

"It's good."

"It is."

"See?"

She pointed at him. "Still weird that you picked Milkis first."

"I didn't pick it first."

"You said it with conviction."

"Because I meant it."

Ji-yeong shook her head, smiling to herself now as she looked down at her meal. "You're ridiculous."

"Coming from you, that means nothing."

"Good."

Jace looked out over the dormitory for a second, then back at her.

"Ji-yeong," he said, trying the name again now that it was his to use.

She glanced at him.

"You always talk this much?"

She held his gaze for half a second before answering. "Only when I'm entertained."

He gave a small nod. "So never, usually."

"Pretty much."

That earned the closest thing to a real smile from him yet.

Not big. Not soft. Just enough to show.

And for the first time since coming back, sitting in a room built to break people down, dressed in green under a hanging globe full of blood money, Jace felt something almost unfamiliar settle beside the dread.

Not safety.

Not comfort.

Just the strange, thin beginning of not being entirely alone.

. . . 

Morning came with the same false cheer as everything else in this place.

The automatic voice crackled over the dormitory speakers, bright and pleasant enough to be insulting.

"It is now breakfast time. All players, please line up in the center."

Around him, the dorm began to stir in waves. Blankets shifted. Beds creaked. Bodies sat up slowly, dragged from thin sleep and thinner peace. Some players moved immediately, already trained by fear into obedience. Others lingered, heavy-eyed and stiff, as if delaying breakfast might somehow delay whatever came after it.

Jace sat up on instinct the second the voice started, already awake before the announcement finished.

He had not slept well. Not really.

Bits of noise had pulled him up through the night—someone crying quietly, someone muttering in their sleep, the restless metal groan of beds every time another body turned over. And beneath all of it, the low, constant awareness that this place had only gotten worse when the lights came on.

He swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood, eyes already searching.

He found 067 near her bed, sitting on the floor with her back against the metal frame, one knee drawn slightly up, expression closed off in the way that seemed to come most naturally to her. She looked awake already. More than awake. Alert. Like she had been thinking for a while and had not liked where it took her.

Jace started toward her before he could talk himself out of it.

Players were beginning to form lines in the center of the room, but there was still enough disorder for him to reach her without drawing much attention. He stopped a short distance away, hands in the pockets of his tracksuit, and looked down at her.

She lifted her eyes to him.

No greeting. No surprise.

Just the same flat stare that always made it seem like she had already decided he was annoying before he opened his mouth.

Jace ignored that.

"I heard you last night," he said quietly.

That got the smallest reaction. Not much. Just a flicker in her face, there and gone.

He went on before she could deny it. "You were talking to that other girl. Said you saw something and you'd tell her in the morning."

Her gaze sharpened a fraction.

Jace held it. "What did you see?"

For a second, she said nothing at all.

Then, predictably, "Why should I tell you?"

Jace almost smiled.

There it was.

He shifted his weight and glanced toward the line forming in the center of the dorm before looking back at her. "Because you robbed me."

Her expression did not change.

"And," he added, "I did stand up for you against that big dumb thug."

He meant 101, though neither of them needed the number said out loud to know who he was talking about.

That earned him a look.

Still not gratitude. He was beginning to suspect she had been born allergic to it.

"You shoved him because he was about to hit me," she said.

"Yeah."

"That doesn't mean I owe you anything."

Jace gave a small shrug. "Probably not."

He paused, then added, "But I'm asking anyway."

The line in the center of the room grew tighter as more players joined it. A guard in pink moved along the edge of the beds, watchful and silent. Jace stayed where he was.

067 looked away from him for a moment, eyes settling somewhere past his shoulder, as if deciding whether the information was worth sharing or whether letting him remain clueless might be more satisfying.

Finally, she spoke.

"I saw them melting something."

Jace's brow drew together.

"What?"

"In the kitchen, I think." Her voice stayed low, meant only for him. "I couldn't see clearly though."

He crouched slightly without meaning to, bringing himself closer to her level. "Melting what?"

She shook her head once. "I don't know. But I smelled it."

That got his full attention.

"And?"

She looked back at him.

"It smelled like sugar."

For a beat, the dormitory noise seemed to fall away.

Jace straightened slowly.

Sugar.

He did not know exactly what that meant. Not yet. But he knew enough to understand it mattered. In a place like this, nothing the staff prepared was accidental. If they were melting sugar, it was for a reason. And if it was happening the night before the second game, then there was only one reason that made sense.

It was part of the next round.

His jaw tightened as his mind turned over possibilities too quickly to catch. Candy. Syrup. Something hardened. Something shaped. A children's game involving sugar, maybe. Korea had plenty of them. Enough that if he let himself think about it too long, his memory might pull up the answer just a second too late to be useful.

He looked back at her.

"You're sure?"

067's stare turned unimpressed again immediately. "No, I made it up to entertain you."

Jace huffed a quiet laugh through his nose.

"Right."

She pushed herself to her feet then, brushing invisible dust from the side of her tracksuit. "The line's moving."

He glanced over. She was right. Players were already receiving their breakfasts, the formation tightening toward the front.

When he looked back at her, she was already stepping past him.

Jace turned slightly to follow with his eyes. "You know," he said, just quietly enough that she would have to choose to hear it, "that almost sounded helpful."

She kept walking.

Without turning around, she said, "Don't get used to it."

And somehow that only made him want to smile more.

He watched her join the line, then finally moved to follow, mind still turning over the one useful thing he had in a place built on too little information.

Sugar.

He didn't know why.

But he knew with absolute certainty that whatever came next, sugar was going to matter.

. . . 

The line of players moved again, green tracksuits flooding through the bright maze of hallways like a current no one could fight.

Jace walked with the crowd, one hand in his pocket, the other loose at his side, his eyes tracking the impossible colors around them. The staircases twisted over and under each other in blocks of pink, blue, and yellow, toy-like and cheerful in a way that had stopped being strange and started being infuriating. The place looked designed for children. That was what made it feel cruel. Every step upward felt like walking deeper into some joke only the people running this place understood.

Around him, players muttered under their breath, some still half-awake, others already spiraling into that tight, jittery silence that came before the games. Shoes squeaked against painted steps. Guards moved along the edges of the group without speaking, pink uniforms bright against the pastel walls.

Jace kept pace easily, his mind still circling the same word.

Sugar.

He had not gotten much farther with it. Just enough to know that 067 had not been lying and that whatever the second game was, it had probably already started for the people smart enough to pay attention before it began.

A figure slipped up beside him on the next landing.

Ji-yeong.

She fell into step like she had always been meant to be there, doshirak tray long gone, hands swinging loosely at her sides as she matched his pace without asking permission. There was something almost lazy about the way she moved, but Jace had already learned enough about her to know laziness had nothing to do with it. She noticed too much for that.

He glanced at her. "You stalking me now?"

Ji-yeong smiled without looking at him. "Don't flatter yourself."

"Hard not to."

That earned him a sideways look. "See, that right there? That's why people leave you."

Jace made a face like he might be offended, but it never fully landed. "Rude."

"True."

They climbed another set of stairs in step, the crowd pressing around them in slow-moving waves. Somewhere ahead, someone stumbled and got shoved back into line. No one apologized.

Ji-yeong tilted her head slightly, eyes still forward.

"I saw you talking to 067 this morning."

Jace's expression stayed blank. "And?"

"And," she said, drawing the word out just enough to be annoying on purpose, "I was wondering if that was you making a move."

He turned his head slowly to stare at her.

Ji-yeong finally looked at him, and the look on her face made it clear she was enjoying herself already.

Jace let out a dry laugh. "A move."

"Yeah."

"No."

"Really?"

"Yes, really."

She hummed like she did not believe him for a second. "Because from where I was standing, it looked kind of like a move."

He adjusted his pace to avoid bumping into the player in front of him, then looked back at her. "I was getting information."

"Mm."

"She saw something last night."

"That sounds romantic."

He gave her a flat look. "You're annoying."

Ji-yeong grinned. "You like me."

"I tolerate you."

"Sure."

Jace shook his head once and looked ahead again, jaw tightening faintly as the line curved around another landing. "She knows something about the next game."

That got Ji-yeong's attention enough that some of the teasing slipped out of her face.

"What?"

"She smelled melted sugar."

Ji-yeong's brows pulled together for a second. "Sugar?"

"Yeah."

They walked in silence for a few steps after that, both of them thinking. The players around them kept moving up and up through the bright staircases, the whole place feeling too colorful for the weight settling heavier in everyone's chests.

Then Ji-yeong glanced at him again.

"But you were still kind of making a move."

Jace stared at her. "What is wrong with you?"

She shrugged. "Nothing. I'm bored."

"That's my line."

"You don't own boredom."

"I should."

Ji-yeong smiled to herself and stepped up onto the next landing, her shoulder brushing his for half a second in the crush of players. "So what, then? You just annoy girls you're not interested in?"

He gave that actual thought, which was unfortunate.

"Yes," he said finally.

"That's pathetic."

"It's efficient."

"At what?"

"Keeping myself entertained."

Ji-yeong laughed softly under her breath. "You know, most people would just say they think she's pretty."

Jace nearly snorted. "Most people are idiots."

"And you're not?"

"No."

She looked openly unconvinced. "White boy, you came back here. You're definitely at least a little stupid."

That one landed.

Jace glanced at her with reluctant acknowledgment. "Fair."

They kept walking.

Ahead of them, the line began to slow near another set of green doors, the mood shifting as everyone realized they were getting close. The murmuring around them thinned. Bodies tightened. Heads lifted toward whatever waited on the other side.

Ji-yeong bumped his arm lightly with hers.

"For the record," she said, voice dropping just enough to keep it between them, "if you are making a move, it's terrible."

Jace looked down at her. "Good thing I'm not."

"Mm-hm."

He exhaled through his nose, somewhere between a laugh and an annoyed breath. "You're impossible."

"And yet," Ji-yeong said, stepping with him as the line lurched forward again, "you keep talking to me."

That, annoyingly, was also true.

The green doors opened, and the players filed into another world built to look harmless.

Jace stepped inside and slowed without meaning to.

It was a playground.

Not a real one, not exactly, but a giant imitation of one, blown up to the scale of a dream and painted in colors too bright to trust. Sand-colored ground stretched beneath their feet. A massive jungle gym rose to the left in blocks of yellow, green, and red. A globe-shaped climbing frame sat farther ahead, all curved bars and childhood memory twisted into something uncanny. There was a seesaw, a swing set, a tall slide with a staircase painted in toy-box colors. The walls were covered in pale blue clouds, as if someone had tried to trap the sky indoors and made it worse in the process.

And on the far wall, spaced out between the guards in pink, were four symbols.

Circle.

Triangle.

Star.

Umbrella.

Jace's stomach tightened.

Around him, the other players were already murmuring, confusion building in the room as they stared at the playground and then at the shapes on the wall like one would explain the other if they looked long enough.

An amplified voice echoed overhead.

"Welcome to your second game."

The murmuring thinned.

"Before the second game begins, choose from one of the four shapes and stand in front of it."

That was it.

No explanation. No further instruction. Just the shapes.

Jace stood still in the middle of the slowly shifting crowd, eyes fixed on the wall.

Circle. Triangle. Star. Umbrella.

His mind started working through it immediately, turning the pieces over.

Sugar.

Melted.

The smell 067 had mentioned.

Shapes.

Circle. Triangle. Star. Umbrella.

He repeated them in his head.

Again.

Circle. Triangle. Star. Umbrella.

Sugar.

Melted sugar.

A childhood game.

His jaw tightened as the memory tried to surface and then slipped again. Not quite there. Almost. He could feel it, the answer circling just beneath the point where thought became recognition. Something brittle. Something sweet. Something pressed flat and stamped into shape.

Circle. Triangle. Star. Umbrella.

Then it clicked.

Dalgona.

Of course.

The realization hit him fast and sharp enough to make him suck in a breath. Melted sugar pressed into thin candy. Shapes cut into the center. Break it wrong, and it shattered.

Jace turned immediately, scanning the players beside him until he found Ji-yeong.

She was a few steps away, already looking from shape to shape with a suspicious expression, like she knew this place too well by now to trust anything that looked simple. Jace cut through the crowd toward her and caught her by the arm just lightly enough not to start a fight.

"Come here."

Ji-yeong blinked at him. "What?"

He pulled her a little farther to the side, out of the thickest press of bodies. "I know what it is."

Her expression sharpened instantly. "What?"

"Dalgona," he said. "Melted sugar. The shapes."

She stared at him for one beat. Then another. Her eyes flicked toward the wall and back.

Understanding hit.

"Shit," she muttered.

"Yeah."

Ji-yeong looked at the shapes again, thinking fast now. "So simpler is better."

"Obviously."

He let go of her arm and was already turning when she caught his sleeve this time.

"Hey. You sure?"

Jace looked back at her. "As sure as I'm gonna get in a place like this."

That seemed to be enough.

He left her there and moved through the crowd again, weaving between players who were still hesitating or guessing wildly or choosing based on instinct and panic. He found 067 farther ahead, standing still and watchful in the middle of it all, like she was trying to think three steps beyond everyone else.

Jace stepped up beside her.

She looked at him immediately, already annoyed just by his presence.

"It's dalgona," he said under his breath.

Her brows pulled together faintly.

"The sugar," he added. "The shapes we cut out. That's what they were making."

For a second, she only stared at him.

Then her gaze shifted to the wall.

Circle. Triangle. Star. Umbrella.

He could almost see her measuring them in her head, calculating the lines, the weak points, the risk.

Without another word, she moved toward the triangle.

Jace watched her go.

Good choice.

Ji-yeong joined the triangle line too, shooting him one quick look on her way there that was not quite gratitude and not quite surprise. More like acknowledgment. Useful information received. Filed away.

Jace started toward triangle himself.

Then stopped.

He looked at the wall again.

Triangle was simple. Three straight edges. Easy enough.

But circle was easier.

No corners. No sharp points to crack under pressure. If this was what he thought it was, then circle gave the most room for error. The cleanest line. The safest margin.

Star was doable, maybe, but riskier.

Umbrella was death.

He stood there for one more second, running through it in his head.

Triangle.

Circle.

Triangle.

Circle.

No.

Circle.

Decision made, he changed direction and went to stand in the line forming beneath the circle on the wall.

Around him, players were still choosing. Some with confidence they had not earned, some with visible dread, some already second-guessing themselves before the game had even begun. Across the room, Ji-yeong stood in the triangle group. 067 too. Neither looked at him.

Jace folded his hands into the pockets of his tracksuit and faced forward beneath the circle.

If he was right, he had just made the safest choice in the room.

If he was wrong, it would not matter anyway.

A set of doors built into the wall clicked open behind each shape.

The sound turned every head in the room.

Behind each doorway stood a guard in pink, silent and masked, with a long table in front of them lined with rows of small silver cases. The metal caught the light in dull flashes, neat and identical and somehow far more threatening than they should have been.

An amplified voice came over the speakers.

"All players, please take one of the cases in front of you."

The lines began to move.

Jace stayed where he was in the circle group, watching as the players ahead of him stepped forward one by one to receive their case. No one spoke. Or at least not loudly. The whole room had tightened into that same brittle quiet that always came right before the truth of a game was laid bare.

When it was his turn, the guard handed him a single silver casing.

It was light in his hands. Cold too.

Jace stepped away from the table and scanned the room quickly for somewhere stable enough to work. The giant slide loomed nearby, its painted staircase and long green slope ridiculous against the dread sitting in his chest. He crossed to the bottom of it and lowered himself to the floor, using the flat edge of the slide platform as a makeshift table.

Around him, other players were doing the same, dropping to the ground wherever they could, crouching by jungle gyms, sitting cross-legged in the sand-colored floor space, silver cases clutched in their hands like bomb triggers.

Jace set his case down in front of him.

For one second, he just looked at it.

Then he opened it.

Inside was a thin honey-colored disk of dalgona.

Stamped into the center was a circle.

Beside it lay a small needle.

Jace exhaled once through his nose.

He had been right.

Not that being right made this good. It only made it survivable, maybe. Better odds. Thinner margin for disaster. But not good.

The announcement came again over the speakers, calm and bright and monstrous in its cheerfulness.

"The second game is Dalgona."

A wave of understanding, horror, and muttered panic moved through the room.

"The shape you have chosen is the shape you must extract. The time limit is ten minutes. Cleanly extract the shape in ten minutes and you pass."

Jace's eyes stayed fixed on the candy.

Ten minutes.

That was generous for circle. A death sentence for umbrella.

"Let the game begin."

A timer mounted high on the wall lit up.

10:00

The room erupted into motion.

Jace did not waste a second.

The instant the numbers began counting down, he picked up the needle and leaned over the dalgona, blocking out the sudden chorus around him—people swearing, gasping, already cracking theirs by accident, whispering prayers, breathing too hard. None of it mattered. The only thing that mattered was the thin etched line of the circle in front of him.

He set the point of the needle against the candy and started carefully tracing the groove. Small, controlled pressure. Not too deep. Not too fast. The needle clicked faintly against the hardened sugar as he worked, one hand steadying the tin, the other moving with the kind of focus he usually only had in fights.

The circle was simple.

That did not mean easy.

One wrong push and the whole thing could fracture.

So Jace kept his shoulders low, his breathing measured, and chipped at the line a fraction at a time, ignoring everything else as the timer began to fall.

Jace kept working.

Needle in hand, shoulders hunched, eyes fixed on the thin etched line of the circle, he chipped away at the dalgona in tiny, careful movements. The candy was more fragile than it looked. Every scrape sent a faint tremor through the disk. Every bit of pressure had to be measured. Too hard and it would crack. Too soft and he would waste time he did not have.

Around him, the room had dissolved into a low, constant nightmare of noise.

People muttering under their breath.

People cursing.

Someone crying.

Someone else begging a god Jace doubted had ever set foot in a place like this.

He tried to block it all out.

Then a shadow fell over him.

Jace's hand stopped.

He looked up just enough to see a guard standing there, black mask marked with a triangle, gun held at the ready in a way that made the entire thing feel even more ridiculous and even more obscene. Bright playground colors. Children's candy. Armed men watching them work.

Jace frowned up at him. "You'll know if I break it," he said. "Give me some fucking space."

The guard did not answer.

But after a beat, he stepped back.

Not far. Just enough to stop looming directly over him.

Jace looked at him for one more second, then dropped his gaze back to the dalgona. Fine. Good enough. He resumed carving, jaw tight, the point of the needle scratching softly along the line.

A voice suddenly rose from above him.

Pleading.

Panicked.

Jace's head jerked up toward the top of the slide where another player had been working. The man sounded terrified, his words tumbling out too fast to catch clearly. Apology, maybe. Begging.

Then the shot came.

The crack of it tore through the room.

Jace snatched his dalgona tin up immediately, body moving before thought. A second later the dead player's body came sliding down the long green chute above him, limp and boneless, bumping hard against the sides before slamming to the bottom in a heavy heap not three feet from where Jace had been sitting.

He recoiled, scooting back on instinct, one hand braced behind him, the other clamped around the silver case.

For a second he just stared.

The man's head was turned at a wrong angle. One arm bent awkwardly beneath him. Blood had already started to slick against the painted surface of the slide, bright red against green.

Jace swallowed hard and pushed himself farther away.

Then he reset the tin on the floor.

Because what else was there to do?

He bent over the dalgona again, forcing his breathing slower, willing his hands not to shake. The room had only gotten worse. More gunshots now, scattered and sudden. More voices cracking apart in terror. More guards stepping in to end games the second they were lost. Jace fixed his eyes on the circle and carved with brutal concentration, as if narrowing his world down to sugar and metal could make the rest of it disappear.

It could not.

But it helped.

Piece by piece, the line deepened.

The circle was starting to separate now. Not fully, but enough that he could feel it. The tension of the candy changing beneath the needle. The edges loosening. He adjusted his grip and kept going.

Then, against his better judgment, he looked up.

Ji-yeong.

She was still alive.

He found her crouched with her triangle, shoulders tight, head bent low over the casing. Focused. Quick. Still breathing.

Good.

His eyes shifted again before he could stop himself.

067.    

She was farther off, smaller from this angle, but he found her just as quickly. Leaned back against the swing set's pole, own tin on her knee, dark hair falling forward, expression unreadable from this distance. Still working. Still there.

Still alive.

Something in Jace loosened at that.

Not much. Just enough to notice.

Then she looked up.

Straight at him.

Caught him watching.

For one sharp second, their eyes met across the room.

Jace immediately looked away and bent lower over his dalgona, jaw tightening as if he had been caught doing something embarrassing, which, annoyingly, maybe he had. He set the needle back to the line and focused harder, irritated now for reasons he refused to name.

The timer loomed overhead.

05:00

Half the time gone.

Jace's pulse kicked once, hard.

He was close.

Very close.

He worked faster, but not recklessly. Tiny cuts. Tiny lifts. The last sections of the circle were always the most dangerous. Too much force near the end and the whole thing could snap after all that work. He knew that. Forced himself to remember it every second his instincts screamed at him to just pry the damn thing free and be done with it.

Another shot rang out somewhere to his left.

Then another.

He did not look.

The final thin bridge of sugar gave under the needle.

Jace froze.

Slowly, carefully, he eased the circle free.

It lifted whole.

For a second, he just stared at it lying in the tin, intact and perfect and absurdly small for the amount of relief that hit him.

Then he exhaled.

A real exhale this time. Deep enough to hurt.

He stood quickly, silver case in hand, and held the cutout circle toward the nearest guard.

The triangle-masked guard inspected it.

Then, through the speaker system, the voice announced, "Player 214, pass."

The words hit harder than they should have.

Passed.

Jace's shoulders dropped by half an inch. He looked down once more at the intact circle in his hand, then, because survival in this place seemed to demand its own strange little rituals, he popped the cutout into his mouth.

The sugar cracked between his teeth. Sweet. Brittle. Ridiculous.

He chewed as he moved toward the exit with the other passing players, stepping around bodies, around discarded tins, around the remains of people who had chosen the wrong shape or had simply not been steady enough to survive a children's candy game.

As he walked out, he looked back once.

Not long.

Just enough to find Ji-yeong.

Then 067.

Still working.

Still alive.

. . .

By the time they were marched back into the dormitory, the silence felt heavier than the screaming had.

No one moved the same way anymore.

When they had first woken in the rows of metal beds, the room had been full of confusion, irritation, suspicion. Now it held something else entirely. Shock had settled over everyone like a second skin. Some people cried openly. Some sat on the edges of their beds and stared at nothing. Others shook so badly they had to fold their arms tight across themselves just to keep still. The room had the hollow, wrong feeling of a place where too many people had seen too much too quickly.

Jace sat on the side of his bed and stared at the floor.

He barely remembered getting there.

His body hurt in scattered places, but not in any one clean way. It was the ache left behind after adrenaline, after running, after locking every muscle in his body so hard and so often that now even breathing felt unfamiliar. His cheek still carried the fading bruise from before the games. His ribs still pulsed dully where 101 had kicked him. But those were old pains now. Manageable. Almost ordinary.

The problem was his head.

He had been in bad fights before. Worse than bad. Underground rings, back rooms, concrete floors sticky with old blood and beer. He had seen broken noses, split brows, jaws hanging wrong, ribs caving under kicks. He had seen men carried out unconscious and wake later only to demand another round once the swelling went down.

That was one thing.

A body going limp in a fight was one thing.

Someone's brains being blown out right in front of you was another.

He could still see the woman in front of him.

Still see the red spray.

Still hear the sound her scream cut off with.

His eyes stayed fixed on the floor between his shoes, unfocused, while the dormitory blurred at the edges. Guards had returned. He knew that much. Their pink uniforms moved through his peripheral vision like pieces of some nightmare children's show, neat and orderly against the chaos they had created. Voices rose around the room again, angry this time, grief-struck and ragged, but they seemed far away.

Jace did not look up until he a player mention a clause in the papers they signed earlier and heard the square-masked guard speak.

"As you wish, we will take a vote on whether or not to terminate the games."

That dragged his attention back.

Slowly, he lifted his head.

The room was already focused on the guards again, all those bruised and stunned faces turned toward the front. Some people had hope in their eyes now. Others only looked exhausted. A few looked ready to tear the place apart with their bare hands if they could.

"But before we vote," the guard continued, "we will reveal the prize amount from the first game."

The dormitory lights dimmed.

A collective hush moved through the room.

Above them, the giant piggy bank hanging over the beds flickered to life, glowing red-orange from within. Then, with a mechanical whir, stacks of cash began to pour down into it from overhead. Thick bundles of won, one after another, tumbling into the transparent globe in a steady, obscene cascade.

The sight of it was almost hypnotic.

People gasped.

Someone near the back laughed once in disbelief, the sound sharp and unstable.

"The number of players eliminated in the first game," the guard said, "two hundred fifty-five."

Jace's jaw tightened.

Two hundred fifty-five.

He knew it already, in a way. Knew the field had become a graveyard. But hearing the number made it different. Cleaned it up too much. Turned bodies into arithmetic.

"Allocated prize amount for each player," the guard went on, "one hundred million won. Therefore, a current total of twenty-five point five billion won has been accumulated into the piggy bank."

Twenty-five point five billion won.

The cash continued falling.

Jace stared at it.

He tried to keep one thought fixed in his head.

Blood money.

That was what it was.

Not prize money. Not opportunity. Not luck.

Blood money.

It had been bought with screams and panic and bodies collapsing into the grass. Bought with the woman in front of him taking a bullet through the head. Bought with the tall man who had died just because he had shifted his weight wrong. Bought with every player who had run for the doors thinking, stupidly and understandably, that there had been some mistake that could still be corrected.

Jace knew that.

He did.

And yet the sheer amount of it hanging there above them made something uglier stir anyway.

Because twenty-five point five billion won did not look real.

It looked like safety. Like food. Like a locked door. Like not having to sleep on trains with one eye open and your stomach knotting in on itself because there was nothing in it. Like loan sharks losing interest because you had finally become too expensive to touch. Like a life bought back in cash and stacked so high you could build walls out of it.

The square-masked guard kept speaking.

"If you quit the games now, the twenty-five point five billion won will be sent to the families of eliminated players. One hundred million won each."

A ripple of emotion went through the room at that. Some players lowered their heads. Others cried harder. A man near the left side muttered something that sounded like a prayer. The amount had become human again for half a second, tied back to names and families and the fact that all those dead people had once had someone waiting for them too.

"However," the guard said, "all of you will return home empty-handed."

The words landed in the dormitory with brutal precision.

Jace looked back up at the piggy bank.

Empty-handed.

The phrase hit harder than it should have.

Because he knew exactly what waited outside this place if he walked away.

Not freedom. Not really.

Debt.

Pain.

Running.

Maybe another few nights in a cheap room if he stretched what he had left. Then what. Back to sleeping upright on train lines, waking every time the doors opened because someone might be about to steal from him or drag him off or demand what he could not pay. Back to a body that was already half-rented out to people more powerful than him. Back to fighting for scraps of money that disappeared faster than he could make them. Back to hunger, and cold, and the knowledge that every day after this one would still be a kind of dying, just slower and less spectacular.

"Four hundred fifty-six players," the guard said. "So the total prize amount is forty-five point six billion won."

Forty-five point six billion.

Jace's eyes stayed fixed on the money.

His throat felt dry.

He could not tell if the thing twisting inside him was disgust or temptation. Maybe both. Maybe that was the point. Make people sick enough, desperate enough, that they stopped being able to separate one from the other.

He thought of the field.

Then of the alley.

Then of the train.

Then of that giant impossible number hanging over all their heads like a second moon.

Was it worth dying for?

The question came and would not leave.

Was that much money worth crawling over bodies for? Worth hearing gunshots in your sleep for the rest of your life, if you even got to have the rest of your life?

Or was the alternative really any better?

Because outside of this place, nobody was offering mercy either. Just longer suffering. Smaller humiliations. A life measured out in borrowed rooms, empty pockets, and the constant fear of who would find him first.

Jace leaned forward slightly, forearms on his knees, and looked up at the piggy bank with a face gone still in that dangerous way it sometimes did when too much was happening under the surface.

He almost died for that money.

And somehow the worst part was that he still could not decide whether that made staying unthinkable or leaving impossible.

. . . 

Minutes later, they were lined up for the vote.

The beds had been pushed to the edges by the sheer force of bodies gathering in the center of the dormitory, all of them drawn beneath the suspended piggy bank and the cold stare of the guards. At the front of the room stood a podium with two buttons set into it beneath a clear panel.

A green O.

A red X.

Continue or end.

Simple enough to understand. Cruel enough to matter.

The square-masked guard's voice carried over the room again, giving instructions no one needed repeated by then. The order would go backward. Player 456 first. Then 455. Then down and down until the very end.

Jace stood among the others in his tracksuit and white shoes, arms loose at his sides, eyes on the front.

The first player stepped up.

Pressed.

Moved aside.

Then the next.

And the next.

The process was almost mechanical, each person crossing the floor beneath the giant globe of money, making a choice, then joining one side or the other as if they were schoolchildren sorting themselves for teams instead of people deciding whether to walk back into a place that had already slaughtered more than half of them.

Some went to the red X without hesitation, faces wet and pale and still wrecked by what they had seen. Others pressed the green O with hands that shook. A few lingered in front of the podium so long the entire room seemed to tighten around them before they finally chose. Every decision drew murmurs. Sometimes curses. Sometimes silence.

Jace barely heard any of it.

He watched the count rise.

Watched the divide in the room form.

Watched grief and greed and terror all blur together so badly they became almost impossible to tell apart.

Then the guard called, "Player 214."

Jace stepped forward.

The room seemed to sharpen around him in that strange way it did when he became aware of too many eyes at once. He ignored them. Crossed the floor without rushing. Climbed the small step to the podium and stopped in front of the buttons.

O.

X.

He looked at them for a long second.

Then he looked up at the piggy bank.

The money glowed faintly above the beds, huge and impossible and ugly with meaning. Twenty-five point five billion won. Blood hanging over their heads in neat bundled stacks. Enough to buy things he had stopped letting himself imagine too clearly. Enough to make every hardship outside these walls seem suddenly smaller and meaner and more pathetic by comparison.

He thought of the field.

Of the woman in front of him taking a bullet through the skull.

Of the old man walking calmly forward while everyone else froze.

Of the train stations, the hunger, the motel room with its buzzing light, the waiver beneath the mattress, the certainty that outside this place there was no miracle waiting for him. Only more of the same.

He looked back at the buttons.

If he pressed red X, he would go back to a life already trying to kill him in slower ways.

If he pressed green O, he might not leave this place at all.

Jace's jaw tightened.

Then he lifted his hand and pressed the green O.

A soft mechanical sound confirmed the choice.

He stepped down from the podium and moved to stand with the others who had voted to continue. The floor felt strangely unsteady beneath him, though his face gave nothing away. He took his place among the cluster of players on the green side, shoulders squared, gaze drifting once more toward the front.

After that, the numbers blurred again.

Not because he was not paying attention exactly. More because too much of him had gone inward. He watched bodies move. Heard numbers called. Saw players step up, vote, and separate themselves. But the meaning of each individual choice had started to flatten under the weight of the whole thing. Everyone was frightened. Everyone wanted something. Some wanted to live more than they wanted money. Some wanted money because they were no longer sure living outside this place counted. Most, probably, were some ruined mixture of both.

Jace's eyes unfocused somewhere beyond the podium.

Until he heard, "Player 067."

His attention snapped back instantly.

She moved through the line with the same contained stillness she seemed to carry everywhere, her expression unreadable, shoulders squared despite everything. No hesitation in her stride. No fear anyone else could see. If she felt it, she kept it where it belonged.

Jace watched her walk to the podium.

Did not blink.

She looked at the buttons only briefly. Then her hand came up and pressed the green O.

Of course she did.

Something about that should not have affected him. But it did.

Maybe because he had already suspected what kind of person she was. Maybe because anyone who could lift the last of a stranger's money off him in the middle of the night and keep walking was not the type to choose empty hands over a chance at something bigger. Maybe because he had dragged her off the floor earlier and she had looked at him like she would have bitten him if he touched her wrong.

Whatever the reason, his eyes followed her the entire way as she stepped down and crossed to stand with the other players who had chosen O.

She joined them without looking at him.

He noticed anyway.

By the time the final numbers approached, the room had gone so tense it felt thin. Every vote pulled at the total. Every step to one side or the other tightened something in the air. Players counted under their breath. Tried to calculate. Tried to guess which way the end would break.

Then only one player remained.

001.

The old man shuffled forward beneath the eyes of everyone in the dormitory.

Jace watched him too.

The field flashed in his mind again. The impossible calm. The way the old man had moved through gunfire with a childlike ease that still did not sit right in memory.

001 reached the podium.

Looked at the buttons.

And pressed the red X.

A sharp wave of reaction tore through the room at once. Relief from some. Anger from others. Disbelief from the green side as the final count tipped away from them. Red had won.

The square-masked guard's voice cut cleanly through all of it.

"The majority has voted to terminate the games."

The words landed heavy.

"And so, the games are now terminated."

For one second, no one moved, as if half the room did not quite believe it yet.

"We will not completely shut this door of opportunity," the guard continued. "If the majority of you wish to participate again, we will resume the games. Goodbye, then."

The announcement ended.

The room stayed suspended in that stunned pause for another heartbeat before noise came rushing back in, people crying, cursing, laughing weakly in relief, speaking all at once. Some looked like they might collapse from it. Others looked furious, robbed of something they had already started to count as theirs.

Jace did not say anything.

He stood among the players who had voted to continue and stared toward the front where the old man still stood near the podium.

Red had won.

It was over.

At least for now.

He should have felt relieved. Maybe some part of him did. A small, exhausted part that had not stopped seeing blood every time he closed his eyes.

But another part of him, darker and harder to admit, only stared at the money hanging above them and thought of what he was walking back to.

Then his gaze shifted.

Found 067 among the crowd.

She had voted the same way he had.

And for reasons he did not want to inspect too closely, that was the thing that stayed with a him most as the guards prepared to send them all back into the lives that had driven them here in the first place.

. . . 

Darkness came back first.

Not memory. Not light. Just the slow, heavy awareness of being nowhere and in pain.

Jace woke to motion.

A vehicle, he realized after a few disjointed seconds. He could feel it through the hard metal beneath him and the uneven jolt of the road, every bump running straight through his shoulder and ribs. His head throbbed. His mouth was dry again. There was fabric tight across his eyes and rope biting into his skin.

He went still.

Then the details hit all at once.

The green tracksuit was gone.

He was down to his boxers, stripped of the uniform and the slip-ons and anything else that had marked him as Player 214. His arms were bound behind his back with rough rope, wrists cinched tight enough to sting. His ankles were tied too. The blindfold pressed hot against his face, shutting out everything except darkness and the shifting sound of the vehicle around him.

His breathing sharpened.

What the fuck—

The vehicle stopped so suddenly he jerked sideways.

A door slammed open.

Cold night air rushed in.

Hands grabbed him.

Before he could twist away, he was hauled and thrown out onto hard ground. The impact drove the breath from his chest in one ugly burst. Somewhere close by, another body hit the pavement too. A door slammed again. Tires crunched. Then the vehicle was gone, leaving only the fading sound of it and the empty quiet that followed.

Jace rolled onto his side and immediately started fighting the ropes.

He twisted his wrists, kicked uselessly at the binding around his ankles, cursed into the dark. Gravel dug into his skin. His shoulders burned. The blindfold made it worse, turning everything into guesswork and panic and the rough scrape of ground beneath him.

Then he felt fingers at the edge of the cloth over his eyes.

He went still.

The blindfold was tugged up.

Moonlight hit him hard enough to make him squint.

He blinked fast, vision swimming for a second before the shape in front of him sharpened into a person.

Her.

Player 067.

Or, more accurately, the girl who had emptied his pocket on the street and then said nothing when he'd recognized her in the dorm.

She was lying on her side with her back half-turned toward him, bound the same way he was. Her green uniform was gone too, reduced to a white bralette and underwear that looked as practical and stripped-down as the whole situation. Her hair was a mess.

Jace let out a breath that was almost a laugh.

"This," he said hoarsely, "is not how I imagined being naked next to a girl."

"Shut up," she said. "And untie me unless you want to stay here all night."

Even now, exhausted and half on the ground in his underwear with his wrists tied behind him, Jace felt irritation spark. Her tone had not changed at all. No gratitude. No softness. Just command, like the two of them had not been dumped in the middle of nowhere like cargo.

Still, she was right.

He shifted awkwardly closer, gravel crunching beneath him, and leaned toward the rope around her wrists. With his hands useless behind his back, there was only one way to do it. He caught the knot with his teeth, tugging and worrying at the fibers until the taste of dirt and rope filled his mouth.

"Unbelievable," he muttered around it.

"Then stop talking."

He almost did.

Almost.

Instead, with a final sharp pull, the knot loosened enough for the rope to give. Her wrists came free.

She wasted no time. She pushed herself upright, yanked the blindfold fully off, then bent to untie the binding at her ankles with quick, efficient movements. Within seconds she was on her feet, grabbing at the discarded clothes lying nearby on the pavement.

Jace craned his neck enough to follow the movement.

They had been dropped in some dim side street, quiet and nearly empty at this hour. Their folded clothes had been dumped beside them in a small heap like an afterthought. The whole thing felt insultingly organized.

067 started dressing without a word.

Then she turned and began to walk away.

Jace stared after her for one stunned second.

"Hey."

She kept going.

"Hey," he snapped louder, twisting against the rope. "Untie me."

That made her stop.

She looked back over one shoulder, face unreadable in the weak streetlight.

"Why should I?"

Jace laughed once, short and incredulous.

"Because I just untied you. Seems only fair."

A beat passed.

Then, with visible reluctance, she walked back.

Not fast. Not kindly. Just enough to suggest she had decided leaving him there would be more annoying than helping. She crouched behind him, and for a moment he expected her to start picking at the knot the same way he had.

Instead there was the quiet metallic sound of a blade snapping open.

Jace went still.

"A switchblade?" he said.

"You ask too many questions."

The blade slid neatly under the rope at his wrists and cut through it in a single quick motion.

The pressure vanished.

He hissed softly as blood rushed back into his hands, then immediately pulled his arms forward and rubbed at the angry red marks around his skin. By the time he bent to untie the rope around his ankles, she was already standing again.

Jace got to his feet and reached for his clothes, dressing quickly, still sore from the game and the restraints and everything that had happened before both. His shirt dragged against bruises he had forgotten about until fabric touched them. He swore under his breath and shoved his arms through anyway.

When he straightened, he caught her looking at him.

Not openly. Just for a moment.

Then she asked, "Aren't you going to ask for your money back?"

Jace paused, one hand still adjusting the hem of his shirt.

For a second he just looked at her.

There it was. Not guilt exactly. More like expectation. Like she had already decided what kind of man he was and was waiting for him to prove her right.

He let out a slow breath.

"I've got bigger problems than stolen loose change."

Her expression did not change much, but something in it sharpened.

Jace looked away first, glancing down the empty road.

Then, because he was tired and irritated and could not seem to stop himself from saying the thing that came to mind, he added, "Usually I'd buy a girl dinner for helping me."

That got her attention.

He looked back at her, flat-faced.

"Dumb in my current situation, I know. But I don't like you," he said. "And I'd rather be alone."

With that, he turned and started walking.

He did not wait to see if she followed. Did not ask her name. Did not offer his. The night stretched ahead of him, cold and quiet and familiar in all the worst ways, and for the moment all he wanted was distance, between himself and the games, between himself and the girl who had stolen from him twice now in two different ways, between himself and the fact that some part of him had still been relieved it was her who pulled the blindfold from his eyes.

. . . 

Seven days passed.

A week, and somehow it felt both too short and long enough to become its own kind of sentence.

Jace had made one decision the morning after they dumped him back on the street: he was not stepping into another ring.

Not now.

Not with loan sharks likely circling the places he used to fight, asking questions, waiting for him to show up desperate enough to make himself easy to corner. He knew how men like that operated. They did not forget debts. They did not get bored. If anything, disappearing into the games and returning with no explanation had probably only made him more interesting to them.

So he stayed away.

Instead, he did what he hated and what worked.

He took a page from 067.

He learned to watch distracted people the way she had. The businessman too focused on his phone. The woman digging through her purse while balancing coffee in one hand. The university kid fumbling with cards at a subway gate. Jace was not as clean as she was. Not as naturally built for slipping in and out unnoticed. He was too sharp-looking, too tense, too much like someone waiting for a fight. But people saw what they expected to see, and most of them never expected the foreign-looking guy with bruises fading on his face to be the one taking from them.

He got by.

Barely.

It was enough for a better motel than the last one, which was not saying much, but it had sheets that smelled mostly clean and a lock that looked like it might actually hold if someone tried it. The wallpaper was peeling at one corner near the bathroom. The air conditioner rattled when it came on. The mattress dipped in the middle. To Jace, it still felt like luxury compared to sleeping on trains with his jaw clenched and his wallet already emptied.

He kept a low profile.

That part came naturally.

Most days, he barely left the room. The television stayed off. Curtains stayed drawn. He slept odd hours, woke hungry, counted money, paced, sat on the edge of the bed, lay back down, stared at the ceiling, got up again. If he went anywhere, it was the convenience store a few minutes away, cap pulled low, hands in his pockets, eyes always moving.

There was a shape to this life now, and he hated how quickly he had started recognizing it as permanent.

Wake up.

Count what you had left.

Figure out how to get more.

Eat cheap.

Stay hidden.

Repeat.

He had to admit it eventually, if only to himself.

This might be it.

This might forever be what his life looked like, small rooms, borrowed time, the constant calculation of what he could afford and what he could steal and who might find him first if he made the wrong mistake in the wrong neighborhood.

The thought should have broken something in him.

Instead, it settled.

Not comfortably. Never that.

But with the dull acceptance of a fact you get tired of arguing with.

One thing South Korea still gave him, though, was food.

That part had always been true.

Whatever else this place had done to him, whatever else it had taken, it had at least never been cruel about convenience store food. Even now, broke and living in motels, he could still get ramen that actually tasted like something. Triangle gimbap that did not feel like punishment. A cold can of Milkis with that weird fizzy sweetness he had hated the first time he tried it and somehow ended up craving more than he would ever admit out loud.

Just thinking about it made his stomach tighten.

He looked up from where he sat at the edge of the bed.

Yeah. Food first.

Jace pushed himself upright, rubbing one hand over the back of his neck as he reached for his jacket. The room was dim, lit only by the weak lamp near the bed and a strip of city light leaking in around the curtains. Outside, the night had thickened fully. The convenience store would still be open. It was always open. Another small mercy in a city that rarely gave them on purpose.

He had just crossed the room when someone knocked.

Jace stopped.

Once.

Twice.

Not loud. Not aggressive. Just enough.

He went still immediately, every part of him sharpening at once.

No one should have been knocking.

Not here.

He did not answer.

Did not move either, not for a beat, listening hard to the silence on the other side of the door. Nothing. No voice. No second knock.

Then something thin slid across the floor.

A card.

Jace's eyes dropped to it.

For a second, he did not breathe.

He knew it before he bent to pick it up. Knew it from the weight of it, the color of it, the clean expensive feel of the paper between his fingers. His jaw tightened as he turned it over.

Same shapes.

Circle. Triangle. Square.

But this time, on the reverse side, there were words.

TIME: MIDNIGHT, JUNE 23

PLACE: SAME AS PREVIOUS

Jace stared at the card.

The room seemed to go quieter around him.

No sound in the hall. No footsteps retreating. Whoever had delivered it was already gone or had never intended to be heard leaving in the first place.

An invitation.

To come back.

To play again.

To step through that same door and into those same bright corridors and those same childish walls and that field where two hundred fifty-five people had died in under five minutes. To stand beneath that piggy bank and look up at enough money to make hunger and fear and shame almost seem negotiable. To win enough that basic necessities would no longer be something he had to think about before buying. Food, rent, sleep, safety, things ordinary people hardly noticed because they had never had to bargain for them.

He lowered himself slowly back onto the bed, the card still in his hand.

The mattress dipped beneath his weight.

He looked at the shapes again.

He already knew what the choice was. That was the worst part.

Outside the games, his life was not a life. It was surviving in increments. Stealing cash from strangers. Watching every door. Eating convenience store food alone in a motel room while trying not to think too hard about how long he could keep doing that before someone bigger, meaner, or more organized caught up to him. Before the loan sharks stopped waiting and started hunting properly. Before one stupid choice too many finally stacked high enough to crush him for good.

Inside the games, death was louder.

Cleaner, in a horrible way.

More immediate.

But at least there was an end to it.

At least there was the possibility, however sick, however slim, that if he kept moving and stopped at the right times and stayed harder than everyone around him, he might come out the other side with enough money to never worry again whether he could afford a room, a meal, a morning.

His thumb ran once over the edge of the card.

Live like this until someone kills you for your stupid choices.

Or go back and fix your stupid choices, even if it kills you.

Two roads.

Both ending in death, maybe.

The only difference was what waited in the impossible little space before it.

Jace sat there for a long time, shoulders slightly hunched, the motel room humming softly around him with the rattle of old air conditioning and distant city noise pressing faintly through the walls.

Then his stomach growled.

He laughed once under his breath.

A short, humorless thing.

Of course.

Even at the edge of another possible death sentence, he was still hungry.

He looked down at the card one last time.

Midnight. June 23.

Same as previous.

His choice was already made. Not because he was brave. Not because he was greedy enough to call this noble. Not even because he believed he deserved another chance.

Simply because he was tired.

Tired of hunger. Tired of borrowed rooms. Tired of pretending survival outside those walls was cleaner than survival inside them. Tired enough that the horror no longer outweighed the possibility.

He set the card down on the bed beside him and reached for his jacket again.

He would still go get food.

Ramen. Triangle gimbap. Maybe even some fried chicken from a street vendor...and Milkis.

And afterward, he would come back to this room, sit on this bad mattress, and wait for midnight to arrive.

. . .

Night pressed down on Seoul like a bruise.

Jace Littman tasted blood before he even reached the end of the alley.

It sat warm and metallic on his tongue, mixing with the sting in his cheek where one of them had hit him hard enough to split the inside of his mouth. His shoulder clipped the damp brick wall as he walked, steadying himself with one hand. Above him, a broken neon sign buzzed in tired pink and blue, throwing warped light across the pavement and making the whole alley look diseased.

He did not look back.

That was the first rule. Never give them the satisfaction.

The second rule was not to touch your face after they hit you, no matter how badly it hurt. It made you look weaker somehow, like you were checking the damage because you were scared of what they had done.

Jace broke that rule anyway.

His fingers brushed his cheekbone and he hissed quietly through his teeth. It was already swelling, tender under his skin, but it could have been worse. Usually was worse. A bruise on his cheek and a split lip was almost mercy compared to what men like that usually did when they were tired of waiting.

He laughed once under his breath at the thought.

Mercy.

That was a good one.

A few minutes earlier, they had crowded around him beneath the alley’s security light like wolves that smelled something already half-dead. One of them had held his jaw still while another unfolded the paper. The man in the expensive shoes had spoken calmly, almost politely, as if he were discussing a phone contract instead of pieces of Jace’s body.

A kidney.

An eye.

Compensation, he had called it.

A signed waiver in exchange for borrowed time.

Jace had wanted to spit in his face, but one look at the knife glinting in the hand of the man beside him had changed his mind. So he had taken the pen instead. Signed his name in a messy, slanted scrawl with blood still drying at the corner of his mouth.

It was almost funny, really. He had never signed anything important in school, never signed a lease, never signed any papers that meant a future.

But he had signed away organs in a back alley in Seoul.

That, apparently, had made him a man.

He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket and kept walking.

The cold bit through the fabric immediately. It was late enough that the streets had thinned, but the city never really slept. Cars still slid past in streams of white and red. Streetlights smeared across puddles. Somewhere nearby, someone was laughing too loudly outside a pojangmacha, drunk enough not to care who heard. The smell of rain clung to the pavement even though it had stopped hours ago, and everything around him looked slick and hard and indifferent.

Jace kept his head down.

He needed a room. A door that locked. A bed, even if it felt like sleeping on a wooden board. Somewhere those bastards would not immediately think to look until morning.

He had enough for one night. Barely. A few crumpled bills folded in his pocket, saved from his last fight and hidden away from everyone, even himself in a way. He had counted it three times before the loan sharks found him. Enough for the cheapest room in the dirtiest motel near the station.

One night to breathe.

One night to think.

One night to figure out what the hell came after signing away an eye and a kidney.

He turned onto a brighter street, shoulders aching, jaw tight. That was when someone hit him.

Not hard.

Just a bump of another body against his as people crossed around each other on the sidewalk.

Jace looked up automatically, already annoyed, his temper raw and hanging just under his skin.

A girl.

Thin. Hood up. Face half-shadowed by the streetlight and the dark fringe of her hair. She looked young, though not in a way that made her seem soft. Her eyes flicked toward him for barely a second, dark and flat and unreadable, before she kept moving like he was nothing. Like the collision had meant nothing. Like he had meant nothing.

For a moment, Jace frowned after her.

There was something sharp about the way she moved, something too quick, too light, too deliberate for the casual bump it had been pretending to be. But he was exhausted, half in pain, and far too used to strangers brushing past him in a city full of people who had their own problems. After a second, he muttered a curse under his breath and kept walking.

If he had been in a better mood, maybe he would have thought more of it.

If he had been less tired, maybe he would have checked sooner.

Instead, he kept going until the motel sign came into view.

It was exactly the kind of place you only entered when you had run out of choices. A flickering sign. A smeared glass door. Windows stained with years of grime. Inside, the lobby was lit by yellow overhead lights that made everything look sickly. A tiny fan turned lazily behind the front desk, pushing around warm air that smelled like stale cigarettes and old carpet cleaner.

The man behind the counter did not look up right away.

Jace stepped forward, already pulling his wallet from his pocket.

The space inside it felt wrong before he even opened it.

Too light.

His stomach dropped.

He flipped it open.

Empty.

Every bill. Gone.

For a second, he just stared, like staring hard enough might somehow force the money back into existence. His fingers tightened around the worn leather until it bent in his grip.

No.

No, no, no.

He checked his other pocket. Then the inside of his jacket. Then the back pocket of his jeans, even though he already knew. His breathing went sharp and shallow. Not enough for panic. Just fury trying to claw its way up his throat.

The girl.

His jaw clenched so hard it ached.

Of course.

Of course.

He let out a bitter laugh, low and disbelieving, dragging a hand over his mouth. It hurt where they had split it, and the sting only made him angrier.

Robbed in broad fucking daylight would have been humiliating enough.

Robbed at night, after getting half-beaten to death and signing away body parts, somehow felt worse.

The clerk finally looked up, unimpressed. “You paying or not?”

Jace stared at him for a long second, then snapped the wallet shut.

“No.”

The man shrugged like he had expected that answer all along and looked back down at whatever small screen sat on the desk. Jace stood there for half a heartbeat longer, trying to think through the heat in his head.

He could go look for her.

That was the first thought.

Go back out there, tear through the station streets, the side alleys, the convenience stores, the sidewalks thick with people. Find the hood, the sharp little face, the blank expression. Grab her by the wrist and make her hand it over.

Except Seoul was huge, and she was already gone.

And he was tired.

And bruised.

And if he got into one more fight tonight, there was a decent chance he would not get back up from it.

So he turned and walked back out.

The cold hit him harder this time.

His cheek throbbed. His ribs ached with each breath. He shoved his empty wallet back into his pocket and stood under the motel sign for a moment, staring out at the street with all the expression of someone trying very hard not to lose his mind in public.

He had nowhere to sleep.

He had no money.

He owed enough that men were now discussing his organs like property.

And somewhere in the city, some pickpocket girl had the last thing he had left.

Jace tipped his head back and laughed once, hollow and humorless.

Then he started walking.

The station was bright with fluorescent light, full of faces he did not care about and voices he did not want to hear. It swallowed him up easily. People moved around him in tides, office workers heading home late, teenagers with shopping bags, old men asleep against plastic seats, couples leaning into each other like the world outside the train windows did not exist.

Jace bought the cheapest fare he could with the coins left in the bottom of his pocket.

Barely enough.

The machine swallowed them one by one with cold little clicks.

A train would be warmer than the street. Cleaner than an alley. Safer than trying to sleep upright outside a convenience store with one eye open. If he timed it right, switched lines often enough, kept his head down, he could ride until morning. Nap in pieces. Drift from one end of the city to another and back again like a ghost too stubborn to lie down.

He had done worse.

He stepped through the turnstile and down onto the platform.

The air was warmer underground, thick with the scent of metal and dust and electricity. The train arrived with a rush of wind, brakes screaming lightly as it pulled in. Doors slid open. People spilled out. More climbed in.

Jace waited until the last second before stepping inside.

He took a seat near the end of the car, close enough to the door to leave fast if he needed to, far enough from everyone else not to be bothered. The window beside him reflected a pale, worn version of his face back at him. Dark hair falling loose around his forehead. Bruise already blooming across his cheek. Eyes too tired for someone his age.

He looked away.

Across from him, an old man was asleep with his mouth open. Two students whispered over a phone screen. A woman in a beige coat rubbed at her eyes like she had been crying before she got on.

No one looked at him twice.

That was the one mercy cities gave you. They taught people not to stare.

The doors slid shut.

The train lurched forward.

Jace sank back into the seat, folding his arms tight across his chest against the cold that still seemed to live in his bones. He would stay on until the end of the line. Switch. Stay on again. Keep moving. Morning would come whether he wanted it to or not.

His eyes drifted shut for a second, then opened again.

He could still see her if he thought about it hard enough. Hood up. Small frame. Blank stare. The quick brush of her shoulder against his. Efficient. Clean. Professional, almost.

He should have noticed.

He should have stopped her.

Instead, she had taken everything he had left and disappeared into the dark.

Jace tilted his head back against the glass and exhaled slowly through his nose.

“Brilliant,” he murmured to no one.

Outside the window, the tunnel lights strobed past in flashes of white and black.

He told himself he would forget her by morning.

That she was just another thief in another bad night in a city full of them.

That if he ever saw her again, it would only be long enough to get his money back.

The train sped deeper into the city, carrying him nowhere.

And somewhere aboveground, unseen and unknowable, the rest of his life had already begun moving toward him.

. . . 

The first thing Jace registered was the hand on his shoulder.

Not rough. Not threatening. Just insistent enough to drag him out of the thin, uncomfortable sleep he had fallen into somewhere between one station and the next.

He jerked upright on instinct, his heart lurching hard in his chest, fists nearly clenching before his mind caught up. A middle-aged man in a windbreaker stood over him, looking vaguely irritated in the way only exhausted commuters could manage.

“This is the last stop,” the man said in Korean. “You need to get off.”

Jace blinked at him, disoriented for half a second, then shoved a hand through his hair and muttered a curse under his breath. His neck ached from the angle he had slept at. His cheek still throbbed. For one blissfully stupid second, he had forgotten where he was.

Then it all came back at once.

The alley. The signature. The motel. The missing money. The girl.

Jace pushed himself to his feet without a word, slinging his jacket straighter over his shoulders. The train car was mostly empty now, washed in that dim end-of-the-line quiet that made everything feel more tired than lonely. He stepped off onto the platform just as the doors chimed their warning behind him.

Cold air moved through the station in restless little drafts.

He stood there for a moment, hands in his pockets, watching the nearly empty platform with the flat stare of someone too drained to think beyond the next ten minutes. It was late. Or early. He had lost track somewhere around the third train. The bright station lights made it impossible to tell time properly, bleaching everything into the same sleepless haze.

A few people lingered here and there, waiting for the next line or killing time until dawn. One woman slept curled against her suitcase two benches down. A teenager in a school blazer nodded off with earbuds still in. Somewhere deeper into the station, a cleaner pushed a mop slowly across tile floors that already looked clean enough.

Jace found an empty bench near a vending machine and dropped onto it, elbows on his knees.

He stared at the floor.

He could try another line when the next train came. He could find a quieter corner and sleep there until security moved him. He could walk the streets until sunrise, though with his luck tonight that would probably end with someone else stealing his shoes.

A humorless laugh almost made it out of him, but he killed it before it could.

His mouth still tasted faintly of blood.

He lifted a hand and pressed his thumb carefully against the bruise on his cheek, more to ground himself than anything else. It hurt. Good. At least that meant he was still awake.

“Excuse me.”

Jace did not look up.

The voice was smooth, polite, deliberate. It did not belong in a place like this at this hour.

“Do you have a minute?” he spoke in Korean.

Still staring at the floor, Jace let out a tired breath through his nose. He was in no mood for religious pitches, scams, or whatever fresh humiliation the universe had decided to hand him next.

“I don’t understand, sorry,” he said in English, clipped and dismissive, hoping the foreignness of it would be enough to make the stranger move on. “Try someone else.”

There was a pause.

Then, in clean, effortless English, the man repeated, “Do you have a minute?”

Jace’s head lifted.

A man in a suit stood in front of him, holding a slim black briefcase in one hand. He looked absurdly put together for nearly dawn in a near-empty station. His tie was neat. His shoes were polished. His hair sat perfectly in place, untouched by weather or exhaustion or life in general. He wore a small, easy smile that should have felt friendly, but somehow did not.

Jace frowned up at him.

The man tilted his head slightly. “Would you like to play a game?”

For a second, Jace just stared.

Then he gave a short, disbelieving laugh and leaned back against the bench.

“I’m having a really bad day,” he said, voice hoarse from lack of sleep and too much swallowed anger. “So why don’t you fuck off and ask somebody else.”

The man did not look offended.

If anything, his smile deepened by the barest fraction, like Jace had said something mildly amusing instead of rude.

Then, without a word, he set the briefcase down on the bench beside him and clicked it open.

Jace’s eyes dropped before he could stop them.

Stacks of won.

Neat, thick, bound stacks of cash, sitting there like something unreal under the harsh station lights. Beside them lay two folded paper tiles, one red and one blue.

Jace’s attention sharpened immediately.

The man looked at him, calm as ever. “Ddakji,” he said. “Have you played before?”

Jace said nothing.

He had. Of course he had. Enough to know it was a stupid children’s game that had no business sitting next to that much money.

The man continued, like this was the most natural conversation in the world. “Every time you win, I give you one hundred thousand won.”

Jace’s gaze flicked to the cash again.

One hundred thousand.

Enough for one night in a room with a lock. Enough for food. Enough to breathe for a second. Not enough to solve anything, but enough to delay the drowning.

The man’s voice remained light. “And every time I win, you give me one hundred thousand won.”

That brought Jace’s eyes back up to his face.

He almost laughed.

He did not have one hundred thousand won. He did not have ten thousand won. He barely had enough coins left for a vending machine coffee and even that was assuming the machine took pity on him.

But the stranger did not know that.

Or maybe he did. There was something about him that made Jace suspect very little went unnoticed.

The man reached into the case and held out the two paper tiles between his fingers. Red. Blue.

“Would you like to play?”

Jace looked at the cards.

Then at the money.

Then at the man’s perfectly composed face.

This was insane. Obviously insane. A well-dressed stranger approaching exhausted people in the middle of the night and offering them money for a childhood game was not normal by any stretch of the imagination. It smelled like a scam. Or a setup. Or the beginning of a story people told later while shaking their heads over your stupidity.

But tonight had already stripped him of any illusion that normal was coming back for him.

He thought of the waiver.

Thought of the motel clerk looking bored while Jace stood there with an empty wallet.

Thought of a hooded girl slipping through a crowd with the last of his money in her pocket.

Thought of going back out into the cold with nowhere to sleep but another train seat.

Nothing else to lose.

That was the dangerous thing.

That was when men started saying yes to things they should not.

Jace licked slowly at the cut inside his lip, tasting iron, and sat up straighter.

The stranger waited.

Jace reached out and took the blue tile from his hand.

“I’ll be blue,” he said quietly. 

The man smiled.

Not wide. Not warm. Just satisfied, like something had fallen exactly into place.

“Excellent.”

He closed the briefcase halfway, enough to leave the money visible, then set it aside and moved to the open space in front of the bench. The station around them seemed to dim at the edges, all fluorescent quiet and distant footsteps, as if the whole world had politely stepped back to let this happen.

Jace rose slowly to his feet.

His body protested immediately. His ribs ached. His cheek burned. His exhaustion sat heavy in his bones, making everything feel half a second slower than it should. But the sight of the money had lit something sharp and desperate inside him.

The man handed him the blue ddakji.

Its folded paper edges felt absurdly light in Jace’s hand.

“Do you know the rules?” the stranger asked.

Jace looked at the red tile in the man’s hand and gave him a flat stare. “Throw it. Flip yours. Get paid.”

The man’s smile returned. “Very good.”

Jace stepped into place, shoulders loose, eyes narrowed.

Across from him, the man in the suit bent with careful precision and laid his red tile on the ground between them.

Then he straightened and gestured gracefully for Jace to begin.

For the first time all night, Jace felt something almost like focus settle over him.

Not hope. Not exactly.

But something close enough to make his pulse pick up.

He rolled one shoulder, crouched slightly, and stared at the red square on the tile floor.

Behind his ribs, something cold and reckless unfurled.

One hundred thousand won.

All he had to do was win.

Jace went first.

The blue ddakji sat in his hand, light as nothing, though the money in the open briefcase gave it a weight that felt almost absurd. One hundred thousand won balanced on folded paper and a stranger’s smile. It was ridiculous. It was insulting. It was exactly the kind of thing a sane person should have walked away from.

Jace crouched anyway.

The red tile lay flat against the station floor between them, neat and still beneath the fluorescent lights. He narrowed his eyes at it like that might somehow make the angle easier. His fingers tightened around the blue square. Then, with a sharp flick of his wrist and more force than precision, he snapped it down.

The paper cracked against tile.

The red square did not move.

Not even close.

Jace straightened slowly, jaw shifting.

Of course.

Across from him, the man in the suit merely bent, picked up his own red tile, and smoothed it once between elegant fingers.

There was no rush in him. No visible excitement. He moved with the same measured calm he had shown since walking into Jace’s miserable night like he had been expected there.

He stepped back into position.

Then he threw.

The red ddakji struck with a clean, practiced snap.

Jace’s blue tile flipped over immediately.

A perfect turn.

For a second, Jace just stared at it.

Then he pressed his lips together and looked away, his mouth flattening with annoyance more than surprise. Right. Brilliant start. He had been in exactly one round of this stupid thing and was already one hundred thousand won in debt to a man with a briefcase.

The Salesman looked up at him. “You owe me one hundred thousand won.”

Jace let out a short breath through his nose. “Yeah. About that…”

He slid his hands into his jacket pockets, feeling the emptiness there again like an insult. The answer was obvious. He did not have it. Had not had it before sitting down on that bench. Certainly did not have it now.

For the first time, something unreadable flickered behind the man’s polite expression.

“There are other ways to pay. Like with your body.”

Jace’s gaze lifted.

The phrasing caught strangely in the air between them.

His brow creased, tired and irritated enough that the thought slipped out before he could stop it. “What, you mean sexually or—”

The slap cracked through the station so sharply it seemed to split the silence in two.

Jace’s head snapped to the side.

For half a second, he did not move.

The sting bloomed hot and immediate across the uninjured side of his face, bright enough to make his eyes water more from shock than pain. He had been punched, kicked, dragged, slammed into walls, bloodied in rings under bare bulbs and screaming crowds. He knew what violence felt like. But a slap like that, fast and flat and almost offended in its precision, was somehow more jarring than a fist.

His hand flew halfway up before he stopped it.

Slowly, he turned his face back.

The Salesman stood exactly where he had before, posture immaculate, expression calm.

“Use your body to pay,” he said evenly, as if clarifying a misunderstood business term. “One slap per one hundred thousand won.”

Jace blinked at him.

For one ridiculous second, he almost laughed.

That was it. That was the price. Not blood. Not some hidden knife in a back room. Just humiliation measured in neat financial increments.

The sting in his cheek sharpened where the slap had landed near the bruise already forming from earlier. His skin throbbed. His pride a little more so.

The Salesman gave a small gesture toward the floor, toward the ddakji. “Would you like to continue?”

Jace stared at him.

He should walk away. Any sane person would. Take the insult, take the hit, keep what little dignity the night had left him and move on to another freezing platform bench.

But dignity did not buy motel rooms.

Dignity did not pay off loan sharks.

Dignity did not put money back in the pocket some girl had emptied out an hour ago.

He shifted his jaw once, testing the ache. It hurt, yes. But pain was easy. Pain was simple. Pain had never been the thing that broke him. He could take punches. He could take kicks. He had taken worse from men twice this size and gotten back up every time.

A slap for a hundred thousand won was almost laughable.

Almost.

Jace swallowed the sour taste in his mouth and rolled his shoulders once, loose and careless, like he had not just been hit at all.

“Fine,” he said.

The Salesman watched him with quiet interest.

Jace bent, snatched up his blue tile from the floor, and turned it over once in his hand. The folded paper edges dug lightly into his fingers.

He looked at the money in the briefcase again.

Then back at the man in front of him.

“Keep playing.”

The Salesman smiled.

It was not warm. Not kind. Just pleased, in that same measured way as before, like he had been waiting for exactly this answer.

“Very good,” he said softly.

Jace crouched across from him, cheek still burning, anger now awake enough to sharpen the edges of his exhaustion. He fixed his eyes on the square of paper between them. The station around them faded again into fluorescent blur, into far-off footsteps and distant announcements and the hum of electricity in the walls.

This time, when he drew his arm back, there was more than desperation in it.

There was insult.

Humiliation.

The need to win something, anything, before dawn.

He flicked his wrist and sent the blue ddakji slamming toward the floor again.

They played for ten minutes.

By the end of the first two, Jace understood something important.

The man in the suit was good.

Not lucky. Not casually skilled in the way adults sometimes were at old childhood games they had not touched in years. No, this was practiced. Precise. He knew exactly how hard to strike, exactly where to angle the paper, exactly how to make the throw snap loud enough to unnerve and land flat enough to win.

Jace hated him for it almost instantly.

The first few losses came fast.

The sound of paper striking tile, the red square flipping his blue, the calm pause afterward, and then the slap. Always measured. Always clean. Never rushed, never angry, never theatrical. The Salesman hit him like a man tallying numbers, as if this was less violence than bookkeeping.

Each one took a neat slice out of his pride.

And each one burned.

By the fourth slap, both cheeks were hot. By the sixth, his skin felt too tight across his face. By the eighth, the sting had become a low, throbbing heat that sat under everything else, waking him up far better than sleep ever could have.

Jace kept playing.

Because mixed in with the losses were flashes of victory.

The first time he managed to flip the red tile, it felt almost accidental. His blue ddakji cracked down at a better angle, harder, sharper, and the Salesman’s tile skipped, lifted, then turned.

The brief, petty satisfaction that shot through Jace was immediate.

The Salesman did not even look disappointed. He only opened the briefcase, counted out one hundred thousand won, and handed it over with the same mild expression as before.

Jace took it.

The bills felt real. Crisp. Warm from the briefcase. Enough to make his pulse kick harder.

After that, he focused.

He crouched lower. Watched the angle of the other man’s wrist. Adjusted his own grip. Measured the force better. He lost more than he won, but the wins came often enough to keep him hooked and the money came often enough to make the humiliation bearable.

Three wins.

Then four.

Somewhere between the slaps and the cash, exhaustion began to peel away from him, replaced by something meaner and brighter. A need to beat this man. To wipe that composed little smile off his face just once. To leave this station with more than the memory of being robbed, signed over, and hit around like the universe had mistaken him for a joke.

The station itself seemed to shrink around the game.

The cleaners passed by without comment. Trains came and went in the distance. Announcements echoed overhead in soft, disembodied bursts of Korean. But all of it blurred to background noise beneath the crack of paper and the sharp turning of breath each time one of them threw.

Jace lost again.

Another slap.

He swallowed the curse that rose to his lips and reset his stance.

The Salesman laid down the red tile one more time.

Jace stared at it.

His face ached. His jaw felt loose in the wrong way. One side of his lip had split open again, probably from the tension of clenching it too hard between rounds. But his fingers had learned the weight of the blue ddakji by now. Learned its fold. Its drag through the air. Learned how to make force and angle meet in one clean movement.

He exhaled once through his nose.

Then threw.

The blue tile struck with a brutal, satisfying crack.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then the red square jerked upward and flipped over.

Jace froze.

A grin, quick and disbelieving and all teeth despite the pain in his mouth, flashed across his face before he could stop it.

“Yeah,” he breathed, almost to himself.

His fifth win.

The Salesman looked down at the turned tile, then back up at him. If he was irritated, none of it showed. He only inclined his head slightly, as though acknowledging a respectable move in a game that had never once stopped being under his control.

He crouched by the briefcase and counted out the money with neat, unhurried fingers.

Five stacks.

Five hundred thousand won.

“Congratulations.”

When he held them out, Jace took them immediately.

The bills looked obscene in his hand.

Five hundred thousand.

His mind tripped over the number for a second.

A room. Several, if he picked the right place. Food. A shower. Painkillers from a convenience store. Maybe a proper meal, hot and greasy and filling enough to sit heavy in his stomach. Maybe he could even pay down a sliver of something, enough to buy a little time, enough to make the loan sharks wait one more day before carving him up into percentages.

He was still staring at the money when the Salesman spoke.

“You can make much more than that,” he said.

Jace barely looked up. “Yeah?”

“There are other games,” the man said. “Games where the prize money is much larger.”

Jace thumbed across the edges of the cash, not quite counting it again but close. His thoughts had already rushed ahead of him, clumsy and hungry. A room first. Somewhere with a lock. Maybe food before that, because on an empty stomach sleep never lasted. Maybe he could buy ice for his face. Maybe—

“Jace Littman.”

The name hit him hard enough to stop the thought mid-breath.

His head snapped up.

The Salesman had switched to Korean.

Not the easy English he had used to humor him before, but clean, fluent Korean, spoken with the same smooth precision as everything else about him.

Jace went still.

The man regarded him calmly, one hand resting on the closed briefcase now.

“Born in England,” he said in Korean. “Moved here because your parent was stationed on base. Learned the language young. Started fighting in school, then outside of it. Ran away. Lived where you could. Fought where people paid. Borrowed from the wrong men. Lost enough that they stopped asking politely.”

The station noise around them seemed to pull away, farther and farther, until Jace heard only the man’s voice.

“Tonight,” the Salesman continued, “you signed a waiver agreeing to surrender one kidney and one eye if you fail to repay what you owe. You have a debt of 147 million won.” 

Jace’s fingers tightened hard around the money.

For the first time since this bizarre little game began, something real and cold moved through him.

“How do you know that?”

The words came out lower than he meant them to, sharpened at the edges.

The Salesman only smiled.

It was the same smile as before, but now Jace understood there had always been something beneath it. Not friendliness. Not politeness. Certainty.

“You do understand,” the man said, and Jace realized he was not talking about English at all.

Korean.

About pretending not to know it.

About watching him choose what language to hide behind.

Jace stared at him.

His cheek still burned. His jaw still ached. But all of that had slid to the background under the far more dangerous realization settling in his chest.

This man knew his name.

His past.

The alley.

The waiver.

Maybe the motel. Maybe the money. Maybe even the girl.

And he was standing here in a train station before dawn offering him games and prize money like fate had decided to dress itself in a pressed suit and polished shoes.

The Salesman reached into his inner jacket pocket and drew out a card.

Cream-colored. Minimal. A phone number printed on one side, shapes on the other.

He held it out between two fingers.

“We do not have many spots left,” he said.

Jace did not take it immediately.

“Spots for what?”

The man’s expression did not change. “A chance.”

Jace gave a humorless laugh under his breath. “That vague, huh?”

“A chance,” the Salesman repeated, “to fix your life.”

The words should have sounded absurd.

Maybe they did.

But Jace could still feel the folded waiver against his chest through the lining of his jacket. Could still see the empty motel lobby. Could still imagine waking up tomorrow with the same debt, the same bruises, the same nowhere to go.

Fix your life.

No one had ever said it like that before, like it might actually be possible.

Slowly, Jace took the card.

The paper was thick. Expensive-feeling. Real.

He looked down at it for half a second, then back up.

The Salesman was already lifting his briefcase.

“Call if you are interested,” he said. “Soon.”

Then, with that same measured calm he had arrived with, he turned and walked away along the platform.

Jace watched him go.

No rush. No backward glance. Just the quiet certainty of a man who had said exactly what he came to say and had no reason to wonder whether it would work.

Within a few moments, he disappeared into the bright emptiness of the station.

Jace remained where he was, money in one hand, card in the other, staring after him.

His face stung.

His body ached.

Dawn had not yet broken.

And in the fluorescent half-light of the station, with five hundred thousand won in his fist and a number printed on heavy paper, Jace stood perfectly still and realized the worst part was that he was going to call.

. . . 

A few nights later, Jace stood beneath the flickering motel sign with his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jacket, staring out at the empty street like he might still change his mind.

The bruise on his cheek had yellowed at the edges.

It looked uglier in daylight, but at night it blended into shadow well enough that no one stared for long. The rest of him had not improved much either. He was still tired in the bones, still sore in places that reminded him too clearly of fists and tile floors and the sharp crack of paper snapping against the station ground. But he had a room now. A miserable one, with stained sheets and a bathroom light that buzzed louder than it shone, but it had a lock and a bed and four walls. Five hundred thousand won had bought him that much.

Not safety.

Just delay.

He had spent the first day pretending he might not call.

Spent the second knowing he would.

By the third, the card the Salesman had given him felt less like an option and more like the only thing left in his pocket that had not already been emptied out by someone else.

So he had called.

A calm voice had answered. No introductions. No wasted words. Just instructions. A time. A place. A question asked as if the answer were already expected.

And now here he was.

Late enough that the city had quieted into that strange hour where it felt less alive than waiting. The road beyond the motel was nearly empty, washed silver under streetlamps. Somewhere in the distance, tires hissed over damp asphalt. A neon beer sign blinked weakly in the window of the convenience store across the street. The motel clerk inside had barely looked at him when he stepped out, too busy with his tiny television and whatever drama was unfolding there to care whether one more broke foreigner wandered off into the night.

Jace shifted his weight and exhaled slowly through his nose.

He told himself he could still walk away.

Go back upstairs. Lock the door. Lie on the narrow mattress and wait for morning and the next problem and the one after that. Wait for the loan sharks to find him again. Wait for hunger. For the room money to run out. For the city to chew him down to something smaller and meaner and easier to bury.

He laughed once under his breath.

Yeah. Right.

Headlights turned the corner.

Jace straightened.

A silver van rolled slowly toward the curb and stopped in front of the motel with the kind of quiet precision that made it feel less like a vehicle and more like an answer. Its windows were dark, too dark to see into properly, and for a second all he could make out was his own reflection stretched thin across the glass.

The driver’s window rolled down only a few inches.

Not enough to see a face.

Just darkness inside and the shape of someone sitting very still.

“Jace Littman?”

The voice was flat, muffled slightly by the narrow opening.

Jace hesitated for only a beat.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s me.”

A pause.

Then, “Password.”

His fingers curled tighter inside his pockets.

The whole thing was insane. Still insane. A password made it worse somehow, made it feel less like a ride and more like stepping over some invisible line he would not get to cross back from.

He swallowed once and answered, “Red light, green light.”

Silence.

No acknowledgment. No welcome.

Then the side door slid open.

Jace looked in.

The inside of the van was dim, lit only by weak overhead lights that left the corners in shadow. Several passengers were already seated in the back, heads tipped against windows or slumped awkwardly against seats. All of them were asleep.

Or unconscious.

He could not tell.

None of them stirred.

For one sharp second, every instinct he had screamed at him to back away.

This was wrong.

Too clean. Too quiet. Too easy.

His eyes moved over the sleeping figures. Men. A woman. Different ages. Different clothes. Different lives, probably, all somehow narrowed down into this same black van and the same deadened stillness. It struck him suddenly that every one of them had likely stood exactly where he was standing now, weighing terror against desperation and finding desperation just a little heavier.

Jace looked at the open door.

Then back at the dark slit of the driver’s window.

He could not see the man inside at all.

No face. No eyes. Nothing human enough to read.

He thought of the motel room upstairs. Of the waiver tucked beneath the mattress because he could not stand feeling it against his chest anymore. Of the five hundred thousand won already dwindling. Of the bright, polite smile on the Salesman’s face when he had said, fix your life.

Jace set his jaw.

Then he climbed in.

The seat felt stiff beneath him, the vinyl cold even through his clothes. He picked the nearest empty one, close enough to the door that some part of him clearly still wanted an easy way out, and sat with his shoulders tight, staring across at the sleeping passengers. No one moved. No one opened their eyes.

The van door slid shut.

The sound of it locking into place landed deep in his stomach.

Jace’s pulse picked up.

He turned his head sharply toward the front, but the partition and the darkness made it impossible to see much beyond the faint outline of the driver’s seat. The engine hummed. Tires eased away from the curb. And then, in the same complete silence, something hissed.

At first he frowned, not understanding.

Then he saw it.

A thin stream of pale gas curling out from the vents.

“Oh, you’ve got to be fucking kidding me—”

He moved too late.

The first breath hit the back of his throat sweet and chemical, wrong in a way his body recognized before his mind did. Jace jerked upright, yanking the collar of his jacket over his mouth on instinct, but the van was already filling. His eyes watered immediately. He shoved himself halfway out of the seat, one hand shooting toward the door handle, but his fingers slipped once, then again.

The world tilted.

His limbs went heavy with terrifying speed.

“No,” he rasped, though the word barely made it past the fabric and the sudden thickening of his tongue.

He hit the handle this time, but his grip had gone weak. His vision blurred at the edges, lights smearing into halos. The sleeping passengers across from him remained motionless, as if this had already happened to them and he was only late to it.

Jace braced one hand against the seat in front of him, trying to push himself up, but his arm buckled halfway.

His lungs dragged in another breath of gas.

The van seemed to sway beneath him, or maybe that was just him. His heartbeat pounded once, twice, then felt strangely far away. The last thing he really registered was the cold press of the window against his temple as he slumped sideways into the seat.

His eyelids burned.

His body stopped listening.

And before he could form another thought, the dark took him too.

. . . 

Music reached him before consciousness did.

Bright, brisk, far too cheerful for the thick fog still coating his skull.

Jace stirred beneath a thin blanket, his body heavy and wrong, like someone had taken him apart in his sleep and put him back together carelessly. His mouth was dry. His limbs ached. There was a sharp, dull throb lingering behind his eyes that pulsed in time with the music spilling over some hidden speaker system above him.

Trumpets.

Classical.

His brow furrowed before his eyes had even fully opened.

He knew it.

The recognition came slowly, dragging itself out of old memory. Military-base ceremonies. School concerts. Rows of folding chairs and polished shoes and adults pretending children cared about brass concertos at eight in the morning. He had been forced through enough of those growing up that certain songs had lodged themselves into him against his will.

Haydn. Or close enough to it.

The third movement of that damned trumpet concerto they used to play at events that were supposed to feel important.

It sounded wrong here.

Too bright. Too proper. Too clean.

Jace’s eyes opened.

For one disjointed second, all he saw was white ceiling above him and the sterile glare of overhead light. Then he sat up too fast, the room tilting slightly, and the blanket slid from his chest into his lap.

He froze.

Rows of beds.

Rows and rows of narrow metal-framed beds stretching across a cavernous dormitory, all lined up with unsettling neatness beneath the high ceiling. Fluorescent lights flooded the massive room in a cold, even wash. Around him, bodies were stirring beneath identical thin blankets, groggy and confused and slow in the same way he had been. People blinked awake, sat up, looked around. Some were already standing. Some were speaking in hushed, frightened voices. All of them wore the same thing.

Green tracksuits.

White slip-on shoes.

Jace looked down at himself.

He was wearing it too.

Green jacket. Matching pants. Cheap white slip-ons on his feet. The fabric looked clean and institutional, too crisp to belong to anyone by choice. On the front of the jacket, stitched onto the chest in plain white numbering, was 214.

For a moment, he just stared at it.

Then memory hit him in fractured pieces.

The van. The hiss. The gas. Darkness.

His jaw clenched hard.

He shoved the blanket aside and swung his legs over the edge of the bed, standing carefully as the last remnants of dizziness dragged at him. His eyes swept the room again, sharper now. Metal staircases. Cameras mounted high in the corners. Strange geometry and pastel walls that almost looked childish if not for the sheer scale of the place. It felt designed to be disorienting. Like a schoolyard pulled from a fever dream and built by someone with a deeply cruel sense of humor.

Jace’s gaze lifted toward one of the cameras.

Silent. Watching.

Of course.

A sharp gasp broke through the murmur of the room.

Then another.

Jace turned toward the sound just as the crowd near the center of the dorm lurched inward, bodies shifting in quick, uneasy waves. Raised voices followed. Someone shouted. A few people backed away. Others moved closer, drawn by the same ugly instinct people always had when something violent started in front of them.

Jace stepped forward automatically.

Then he saw it.

A man with 101 on his tracksuit was throwing someone around in the middle of the forming circle.

Not another man.

A woman.

Thin frame. Dark hair. Smaller than him by enough that every movement looked worse. He had one hand clamped around her as he shoved her hard enough that she stumbled and hit the floor. A second later he kicked at her, mean and casual, like she was less a person than something in his way.

Something in Jace went hot immediately.

He did not stop to think.

He shoved forward into the crowd, shoulder-checking whoever was too slow to move. “Move,” he snapped. Then louder, sharper, “Move the fuck out of the way.”

People stumbled aside under the force of him. Some cursed back. One man shot him an annoyed look before taking in Jace’s expression and stepping back fast. The circle split just enough for him to get through.

By the time he reached the center, 101 had dropped to a knee in front of the girl.

One fist buried in her hair.

The other arm pulled back, ready to hit her.

Jace saw red.

He lunged without a second thought and slammed both hands into 101, shoving him hard off-balance before the punch could land.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

101 lurched sideways with a curse, forced off her by the sudden hit.

Jace turned immediately toward the girl, already reaching down to haul her up off the floor and stopped.

His hand hovered for half a second.

Her face.

Sharp. Guarded. Familiar in a way that cut through the adrenaline with startling force.

The hood was gone now. The street shadows too. But he knew those eyes.

Knew the set of her mouth.

Knew exactly where he had seen her last.

The girl who had bumped into him on the street.

The girl who had stolen the last of his money.

Recognition slammed through him so hard it almost made him laugh.

“You,” he said, the word coming out sharper than intended.

Her gaze snapped to his face. For the briefest second, something flickered in her expression too. Not guilt. Not apology. Just awareness. She knew him.

Of course she did.

Jace grabbed her arm and hauled her upward anyway, rougher than he would have been if she had been anyone else. “Get up.”

There was no softness in it. No comfort. He was helping her because the alternative was letting some bastard cave her face in, not because he had suddenly forgotten she had emptied his pockets and left him to sleep on train lines like a stray dog.

She got halfway up before 101 recovered and kicked hard into Jace’s side.

Pain exploded through his ribs.

Jace lost his balance and went down with her, both of them hitting the floor in a tangle of limbs and green fabric. The impact jarred through his shoulder and sent a fresh pulse of pain through every bruise he already had.

He was up almost immediately.

Fast, breath sharp, every muscle pulled tight.

101 straightened too, chest heaving with anger, eyes narrowed on him. He was bigger up close. Broad, heavy, the kind of man used to throwing his size around and expecting the room to make space.

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

Jace wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and stared him down.

“It doesn’t matter.”

The man’s lip curled. He jerked his chin toward the girl behind Jace. “I wasn’t done with this bitch.”

Jace’s expression changed.

Not much.

Just enough to show exactly how little he liked that.

“She’s a woman,” he said, voice low and edged. “A little fucking respect wouldn’t hurt.”

A few people in the crowd went quieter at that.

The girl herself said nothing. Jace could feel her just behind him, could feel the tension in the air around her, the wariness. Like she was waiting to see whether he was actually helping or just choosing a different way to be a problem.

Fair enough.

101 gave a short, ugly laugh. “Respect?”

His eyes narrowed, flicking between Jace and the girl.

“How do you know her?”

Jace did not look back at her.

None of his business. None of hers either, really. Their history was one collision on a sidewalk and an empty wallet. But standing there with 101 looking between them like he was already piecing together some answer he had not earned irritated Jace more than it should have.

“That’s none of your business,” he said flatly.

Something dangerous shifted in 101’s face.

Jace saw it and smiled without humor.

“What?” he said. “You only pick fights with people smaller than you, you pathetic pussy?”

That did it.

101 moved fast for a man his size, lunging forward and grabbing a fistful of Jace’s tracksuit jacket. Jace caught his wrist immediately, body coiling to hit back, years of fights lighting up in his muscles before his mind had fully caught up. He was ready for it. Ready to drive a fist into the man’s jaw, to make him regret putting his hands on him, to let the rage that had been building since the alley and the train and the van finally tear loose—

A loud buzz cut through the room.

Everyone stopped.

It was sharp, mechanical, impossible to ignore.

Then the two enormous doors at the far end of the dormitory began to open.

Nine guards entered.

The room went still in a way that felt unnatural, like someone had reached down and turned the volume of the dormitory lower by force.

They came through the massive doors in a line of pink uniforms and black masks, their movements precise and eerily synchronized. Eight wore circle masks. Silent. Identical. Not one of them looked left or right as they spread out with mechanical discipline along the floor.

The ninth stood at the center.

Square mask.

That one spoke.

His voice came through amplified, flat and distorted just enough to strip it of anything human.

“Welcome, players.”

No one answered.

Jace stayed where he was, one shoulder still angled slightly in front of 067 out of instinct more than intention. Across from him, 101 looked ready to keep going anyway, chest still rising hard, jaw tight with unfinished anger. But even he had gone still enough to listen.

The square-masked guard continued.

“You will be participating in six games over the course of six days.”

A ripple moved through the room.

People exchanged looks. Some frowned. Some laughed under their breath like they were waiting for the punchline. Others only stared.

“If you successfully win all six games,” the guard said, “you will receive a handsome cash prize.”

That did it.

The dormitory erupted.

Questions came all at once, layered over each other in panic and disbelief.

“You kidnapped us, you’re lying!”

“Why are you wearing masks?”

“Where are our things?”

A woman’s voice cracked with fear near the back. A man farther to the left started shouting that he wanted to leave, that he had been kidnapped, that he would call the police. Another player demanded to know who they all were. Someone else spoke up, asking how they could be trusted.

Jace’s eyes moved over the line of pink uniforms.

Not one flinch.

Not one visible reaction.

The square-masked guard simply waited.

Then the dormitory lights dimmed.

The sudden drop in brightness dragged the room into confused silence. Heads turned upward almost immediately as a large screen flickered on high above them, washing pale light across the bunk-filled dormitory. Static crackled for half a second.

Then the footage began.

A point-of-view shot.

Jace’s stomach turned before his mind caught up.

Hands holding folded ddakji.

A station floor.

The bright, polished snap of paper hitting tile.

Someone in the crowd gasped.

A slap.

Another shot. Another player. Another station. Another hand striking across a stranger’s face.

The square-masked guard’s voice cut over it, cold and clear, repeating the player’s name, number and total debt.

“Each of you chose to participate of your own free will.”

The footage rolled from one player to the next.

They were all there.

Different stations. Different clothes. Different expressions. Men and women caught in those same final desperate moments before they had agreed to step fully into this place. The point-of-view angle made it worse somehow, intimate in a way that felt invasive. Personal humiliation displayed publicly beneath fluorescent lights.

Then Jace saw himself.

His body went rigid.

There he was on the screen, sitting on the station floor across from the Salesman, bruise on his cheek, mouth split, greenish station lighting making him look even more exhausted than he remembered feeling. The clip showed the moment he missed the flip. Showed the Salesman’s perfect throw. Showed the slap snapping his head sideways.

A few people around him made noises of recognition or surprise, reacting less to him than to the format of it, the ugly proof that this was real and all of them had been pulled in the same way.

Then the guard said, “Player 214. Jace Littman. One hundred forty-seven million won in debt.”

The words landed like a hard object thrown across the room.

For a second, Jace could feel eyes shifting toward him from all directions.

He did not move.

His jaw clenched so hard it hurt.

The footage kept playing for everyone else, but his ears had already narrowed around that sentence, around the sound of his own name made public by a masked stranger in front of hundreds of people. The number. The debt. Everything dragged into the light for an audience.

A man two beds over stared at him openly.

Jace turned his head and caught it immediately.

The player’s mouth opened like he might say something.

“What?” Jace snapped in English on instinct.

The word cut sharp enough that the man flinched.

Jace took a half step toward him, eyes hard, humiliation and anger sitting too close to the surface to bother hiding now. “You got something to say?” he said, smoothly swapping back to Korean, despite the tone in his voice.

The player looked away first.

Good.

Jace’s chest rose once, slow and controlled, but the fury stayed right where it was, coiled under his skin. He could still hear the echo of his own debt in the room, still feel the burn of that slap all over again just from seeing it. Around him, the footage continued naming other players, other numbers, other totals that drew shocked murmurs and muttered curses from the crowd.

Behind him, he could feel 067 there, quiet as ever.

He did not look at her.

Not yet.

Instead he kept his eyes locked on the screen, on the grotesque parade of people being exposed in front of one another, and thought with a cold, rising certainty that whatever this place was, it had been built to strip people down faster than fists ever could.

. . . 

They moved them in lines after that.

Consent forms were distributed and collected with a speed that made the whole thing feel routine, as though hundreds of frightened people signing away their safety was just another item on a checklist. Jace barely remembered taking the pen. Barely remembered reading the words. He only knew he signed because everyone else did, because refusing in that room full of cameras and pink uniforms had felt less like resistance and more like pointless theater.

So he wrote his name.

Again.

Another signature on another bad piece of paper.

Then they were moving.

The guards herded them through bright, twisting corridors painted in colors so cheerful they felt mocking. Pink stairways. Blue walls. Yellow railings. Escher-like turns and impossible angles that made it feel as if the building had been designed by someone who hated clarity. The players moved in clumps, green tracksuits blending into one restless mass, shoes squeaking softly against polished floors. Some whispered. Some cried quietly. Some kept asking questions no one answered.

Jace said nothing.

He walked when they walked, climbed when they climbed, and kept his eyes moving.

Cameras. More guards. No windows. Too many doors to remember.

At one point they stopped to be photographed one by one. Flash. Move along. No explanation.

Then more stairs.

By the time the front of the line began funneling through a set of green doors, Jace’s legs already ached and his patience had long since burned away. He stepped out into bright daylight and stopped short.

A field.

Not a real one, not exactly. The sky above looked painted too perfectly blue, clouds fixed in soft white shapes that made the whole space feel artificial and wrong. Dirt stretched out beneath their feet in a wide open expanse bordered by walls painted to look like a child’s idea of countryside. At the far end stood a giant doll beside a tree.

Jace stared at it.

It was enormous, dressed like a little girl, its round face fixed in a pleasant expression that somehow made it worse. Creepy was too small a word for it. Something about the stillness of it, the oversized eyes, the scale, made the back of his neck prickle.

Around him, players slowed and murmured nervously.

“What the hell is that?”

“Is that the game?”

“No way.”

Jace kept his hands at his sides and squinted toward the far end of the field. Beneath the doll’s feet was a finish line. Painted boundary. Straight shot. Simple enough on the surface.

Too simple.

An automatic voice crackled to life through the outdoor speakers overhead.

“The first game is Red Light, Green Light.”

A ripple went through the crowd.

“You can move forward while the tagger shouts, ‘Green light, red light.’ If your movement is detected afterward, you will be eliminated. Those who cross the finish line without getting caught in five minutes pass this round.”

Jace’s brow tightened.

Eliminated.

The word sat wrong in his ears. Too clean. Too vague. Another of those carefully chosen terms these people liked to hide behind.

“Then let the game begin.”

As the announcement ended, the doll moved.

It turned slowly, mechanical joints whining faintly as it pivoted toward the tree and rested its hands against it. The motion was stiff and unnatural enough to make several players laugh nervously. A digital timer mounted high on the wall flickered on.

05:00

The doll’s voice rang out in a sing-song cadence.

The field exploded into motion.

Jace ran.

His body reacted before thought could. Shoes dug into the grass, breath sharp in his lungs, all the players around him surging forward in one chaotic wave. He kept his head level, eyes fixed ahead, pace controlled. Fast, but not reckless. A few people were already gaining ground in front of him, sprinting as if this really were nothing more than a children’s game with humiliation as the worst possible consequence.

Then the doll stopped singing.

Its head began to turn.

Jace planted his feet and froze.

Every muscle locked.

Around him, bodies halted in awkward mid-motion, arms out, knees bent, breaths held. He was a little behind the front runners, maybe three or four lines back. Far enough to see the shapes ahead of him, not close enough to make out every face.

For one second, nothing happened.

Player 324.

Jace did not know the kid’s name, only the number stitched to his chest and the startled sound he made when whatever had caught him did. A loud bang cracked through the field.

Jace barely flinched.

Not because he expected it. More because his whole body had gone too taut to react properly. The noise was sharp, violent, but distant enough at first that his brain did not immediately place it.

324 dropped.

A murmur rippled through the players, confused rather than afraid.

The doll turned back to the tree and began to sing again.

Movement resumed, but it was wrong now. Uneven. Hesitant. Players looked around as they ran, trying to understand what they had just heard. Jace pushed forward a few more steps, slower this time, watching the body at the front of the field.

Not moving.

The doll’s song stopped again.

It turned.

Jace froze.

This time, Player 250 had gotten closer and saw 324 lying in the dirt.

Jace watched the realization hit him from a distance. The man’s posture changed. Panic took him all at once. Instead of holding still, he spun and bolted back toward the doors they had come through.

Another bang.

Then another.

250’s body snapped violently and went down hard, blood spraying in a sudden red arc across the face of the woman standing directly in front of Jace.

She screamed.

A hot, instinctive, horrified sound.

The next shot took her in the head.

Jace saw it.

Saw the spray, saw her body crumple where she stood, saw the blood that had touched her face become irrelevant in an instant because now there was so much more of it. Something cold ripped through his chest and locked there.

Do not move.

Do not move.

The words slammed through his head with brutal clarity.

Around him, players broke.

They started running back toward the doors in a wave of pure animal panic, screaming and shoving and tripping over one another in their desperation to escape. Some dropped to their knees. Some covered their heads. Some were already crying as they turned.

The shots came nonstop.

Loud, merciless, one after another after another, tearing through the field beneath the sound of people begging and wailing and dying. Blood hit the grass. Bodies dropped in piles. A man to Jace’s left stumbled backward with half his shoulder blown open. Somewhere behind him, a woman shrieked for her mother. The doors at the entrance did not open.

Jace did not move.

He could not.

His heartbeat hammered so hard it felt like the only thing in him still in motion. His breath stayed trapped high in his chest, shallow and burning. He stared straight ahead, eyes wide and fixed, while chaos tore itself to pieces all around him.

A body fell face-first a few feet from him.

Another landed twisted near the painted line behind.

Still he did not move.

The bangs kept coming.

Then, eventually, they stopped.

The silence that followed was worse.

It crashed down over the field in one awful drop, broken only by a few ragged sobs and the faint mechanical hum of the doll where it stood at the far end. The grass was no longer clean green. Bodies were scattered across it in every direction, some still, some twitching, some curled in shapes no person should have been left in.

The remaining players stood frozen where panic had abandoned them.

Not moving.

Not speaking.

Not yet even fully breathing.

Jace stayed exactly as he was, blood drying in tiny flecks across the cheek of the dead woman in front of him, horror sitting so deep in his body it had passed clean through fear into something colder.

Now they knew what “eliminated” meant.

The doll’s voice started again.

For one terrible second, Jace did not move.

His body stayed locked exactly where it was, as if fear had hardened around his bones and turned him into one more statue in the field. His pulse slammed against his ribs. His hands felt cold. The screams from moments before still seemed to hang in the air, even in the silence that followed them. All he could see when he looked ahead were bodies in the dirt and blood in places blood should never have been.

Move, he told himself.

Nothing happened.

Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw someone step forward.

An old man.

Player 001.

He moved with an almost bizarre calm, shuffling ahead with a loose, easy confidence that looked completely out of place in a field full of fresh corpses. There was no panic in him. No frantic jerking or hesitation. He just walked, smiling faintly to himself like this really was a children’s game and not a massacre dressed up in painted skies and cheerful instructions.

And when the doll turned, 001 stopped exactly when he was supposed to.

Still.

Balanced.

Unafraid.

Jace stared at him.

Something about it snapped through the fog in his head.

If the old man could do it, then so could he.

The doll turned back and sang again.

Jace moved.

Fast.

Not wild this time. Focused. Controlled. He ran in short bursts, forcing his body to obey even while every shot he remembered still rang through his nerves. He kept his steps steady, breath tight, eyes trained ahead. Around him, the remaining players had started figuring it out too, or at least forcing themselves to try. Some crawled forward in jerky bursts. Some ran too hard and stopped too late. Those were the ones Jace refused to look at when the shots followed.

The gunfire started again.

He heard it.

Each crack split across the field and tore at the air around him. A body somewhere to his right dropped with a strangled cry. Another shot followed farther ahead. Jace did not let himself turn toward any of it. He just ran when the doll sang and stopped when it didn’t, jaw locked so tight it hurt.

He kept his hands shoved deep in his jacket pockets.

An old habit more than a strategy. It grounded him somehow, made him feel more balanced, less likely to flinch or throw his arms up the second panic took hold again. His feet planted hard each time he froze, shoulders tight, eyes narrowed at the giant doll and the finish line waiting far, far too far ahead.

They were not moving fast enough.

When the doll turned away again, Jace pushed harder.

Dirt flew up under his shoes. His chest burned. The field seemed endless, stretched out beneath that fake blue sky with cruel, childlike simplicity. He passed two players huddled low and trembling so hard he could see it in their shoulders. Passed another who was muttering to himself under his breath every time the doll sang, as though prayer and motion had somehow become the same thing.

Jace stopped so abruptly his knees nearly buckled when the doll turned.

He ended up behind a man at least half a head taller than him, broad enough through the shoulders to block part of Jace’s view. Instinctively, Jace ducked slightly behind him, not enough to touch, just enough that if he made some tiny involuntary movement from the adrenaline or the exhaustion, there would be something in front of him. Some sliver of cover. Ridiculous, maybe, but at this point he would have taken luck, superstition, or borrowed height from a stranger if it meant surviving another turn.

The timer on the wall loomed large.

02:00

Only halfway.

Jace’s stomach dropped.

Two minutes left, and he was nowhere near close enough.

The doll turned back.

He ran.

This time the gunshots were constant, punctuating the field in sharp bursts that made every player twitch even when they were trying not to. Someone stumbled near the middle and did not get back up. Another screamed and kept screaming until a second shot ended it. Jace’s lungs dragged in hot, desperate breaths. His bruised side ached with each stride. His legs felt heavier now, slower, every stop-and-start chewing through what little energy fear had not already consumed.

Still, he kept going.

Because now the truth was simple.

If he moved when he was not supposed to, he would be shot.

If he failed to cross before time ran out, he would be shot.

There was no trick left. No misunderstanding to cling to. Just the finish line and the knowledge that it was the only thing on the field that still meant life.

The doll’s head turned.

Jace froze again.

The tall man in front of him did not.

It was barely anything. Just a tiny stumble, a delayed settling of his weight.

Enough.

The shot came so fast it almost seemed to answer the movement before it finished happening. The man jerked and dropped straight down, dead before he hit the dirt.

Jace flinched despite himself but held.

Held.

Held.

His heart slammed once so hard it felt painful.

When the doll turned again, he surged around the body and ran.

Now he did not hear individual shots anymore. They had all merged into background terror, into part of the field itself. The only sound that mattered was the doll’s voice and the timer eating itself alive overhead.

01:21

He was close.

Not close enough.

A few players crossed ahead of him, collapsing over the line or stumbling into the safe zone with sobs and gasping laughter that sounded almost hysterical. Jace pushed harder, every muscle in his legs screaming now. His breath tore in and out of him. His vision narrowed until the world felt reduced to the line ahead, the grass beneath his feet, and the giant mechanical child dictating whether he lived another second.

The doll turned.

He stopped so hard his shoes skidded.

A shot went off almost immediately to his left.

Then another.

He did not look.

Sweat slipped down the side of his face, cold against skin already chilled by fear. His fingers curled inside his pockets. His jaw trembled once, just once, from the force of clenching it.

Then the doll turned back.

Jace ran like something was chasing him.

Maybe something was.

He crossed the final stretch with every bit of strength he had left, no rhythm anymore, no thought, just raw drive and the terror of hearing the clock without wanting to look at it.

When he finally did glance up—

00:56

The finish line was right there.

A few more strides.

One.

Two.

Three—

He crossed.

Momentum nearly carried him past the edge of the safe zone. Instead his legs gave out all at once and he crashed to the ground on the other side, palms slamming into dirt, breath ripping from his chest in ragged, painful bursts.

For a second he just stayed there, bent forward, staring at the grass beneath him like he could not quite believe it was still beneath a living body.

Alive.

He was alive.

The realization did not come with triumph. It came with relief so violent it almost hurt. His whole body shook with it, with the crash after adrenaline, with the impossible, disbelieving knowledge that for once he had made it through something that was built to kill him.

Around him, others were sobbing, collapsing, whispering prayers, staring blankly back out at the field of bodies they had crossed to escape becoming.

Jace dragged in one more breath, then another, and let himself stay down for a moment longer, cheek nearly against the ground, feeling the earth under him and the frantic beat of his own heart and the ugly, unfamiliar relief of surviving when so many had not.