The kick connected with his forearm, and pain shot up through the bone hard enough that for a second Ervin forgot he wasn't supposed to feel things through Han Joon-seong's body the way he used to.
"Okay," he thought, "maybe blowing all my points on three [Looks] pills wasn't the best call."
He'd blocked it. That part was fine. But the impact told him something, this fight wasn't going to be easy, and Han Do-yun hit like it meant something personal.
He pulled Han Joon-seong's body back, a clean little hop to the side, controlled, almost lazy in how smooth it looked. Han Do-yun's foot came down wrong on the follow-through, his balance breaking for just a second, one step landing awkward on the pavement. Han Joon-seong straightened up on the other side, standing there looking like he hadn't broken a sweat.
"Nah," Ervin thought, watching from behind the wheel. "Worth every point. A hundred percent worth it."
[[System]
Player: Ervin Mandor
Character 1; Han Joon-seong
[Characteristics:
Adaptation(Perfect)
Talent(Perfect)
Auto Pilot(Perfect)
Money(Perfect|Middle-class)
Looks(Lvl. 5)
Speed(Lvl. 2)(2/20)
Strength (Lvl. 2)(6/20)
Endurance (Lvl. 3)(0/40)
Vigor (Lvl. 4)(10/80)
Intelligence (Lvl. 2)
[Tasks:
None]]
Han Joon-seong shook out his hand like the block hadn't hurt at all, then slid it back into his pocket, easy, unbothered. A breeze picked up right on cue and moved through his hair.
"Aren't you ashamed of yourself," Han Joon-seong said, "picking on a defenseless woman?"
Han Do-yun let out a short laugh. "Cliché, isn't it? We're not really doing the hero-versus-villain routine, are we? Spare me."
Han Joon-seong just shrugged.
"Fine," he said. "If you don't want to talk this out, I guess I'll have to put you on the ground too."
He dropped into a loose fighting stance. Han Do-yun mirrored him, and they closed the distance at the same time.
Han Do-yun's fist came in fast, aimed at Han Joon-seong's face. Joon-seong tilted just enough to let it graze past, and drove a punch into Han Do-yun's stomach in the same motion. Han Do-yun doubled slightly, ribs flexing around the hit, but he was already swinging again before the pain fully registered — another shot at Joon-seong's face. This one landed. Joon-seong's head snapped to the side, a solid crack of knuckle against jaw.
Han Do-yun pressed the opening, stepping in to sweep Joon-seong's leg out from under him. Joon-seong planted his weight on one foot, swung the other out of the way, and let Han Do-yun's own momentum put him on the ground. Han Do-yun caught himself with one hand flat against the pavement before he went down completely, and used the position to drive a kick up into Joon-seong's hip.
"Ouch," Ervin thought, It wasn't pain of course, but he knew that move hurt because of the information Han Joon-seong sent to him. His face didn't change. Nothing about him so much as flinched. He simply registered the information and moved on.
Behind the wheel, watching, he folded an imaginary arm and rested an imaginary hand on his hip. "Well," he thought, "I've got the advantage now, don't I? He's on the ground, I'm not."
Han Joon-seong raised one leg, high, weight shifting back, an axe kick, all of his mass and the momentum of the drop aimed straight down at where Han Do-yun lay. The air seemed to warp around the motion, a low distortion pushing outward as the leg came down. Han Do-yun felt the danger before he could think it through, and let himself fall instead of trying to stand, rolling clear across the pavement. The kick crashed into the ground where he'd been a half-second earlier, hard enough that the concrete seemed to shudder, or maybe that was just in his head, he couldn't be sure.
Han Do-yun pushed himself up onto one knee, looked up — and that was exactly the opening Han Joon-seong had been waiting for. He closed the distance and drove a kick straight into Han Do-yun's face, aimed at the eyes. It connected clean. Han Do-yun's head snapped back, and he staggered, disoriented, one hand clutching at his face, pain blooming behind his eyes bad enough that it would take him a moment to recover.
While Han Do-yun was still down, blinking through the pain, Han Joon-seong turned and ran to Lee Hye-jin. "Are you okay?" he asked, fast.
"Ah- ah- ah," was all she managed.
He glanced back. Han Do-yun was starting to get up, still clutching his face. No time.
"We don't have time for this," Han Joon-seong said, and swept her up into his arms, one arm under her knees, the other supporting her back, carrying her like a princess. Then he ran, full speed, putting distance between them and the alley as fast as he could.
As they moved, Ervin's mind kept working even as his body — or rather, Han Joon-seong's body — did the running for him. Okay. He'd knocked the guy down and gotten her out, but the task wasn't done yet. From what he'd overheard, this wasn't really about one confrontation. They wanted their money. Which meant the goal here wasn't just saving her from this one encounter; it was making sure nobody came after her again. Because if he left it here, they'd just come back. He nodded to himself, satisfied with that reasoning.
"Excuse me, miss?" Han Joon-seong said.
By now she'd caught up with what was happening, and her face had gone red, she was being carried, princess-style, by a man whose face looked like it belonged on a magazine cover, and the embarrassment of that fact had fully caught up with the fear.
"Ah, ah, yes, yes," she stammered.
"Those men who were surrounding you," he said. "What were they? Loan sharks?"
She paused at that, and something else crept into her expression, the realization hitting her all at once. They'd just beaten up the men who worked for the people she owed money to. If this made things worse for her instead of better, she was in serious trouble. Her head dropped slightly, worry creeping over her face.
Han Joon-seong studied her for a second, thinking, then asked, "How much do you owe them?"
She looked up at him and named the number. "Thirty million won...."
They came out of the alley onto the main street, and Han Joon-seong set her down for a moment, both of them catching their breath.
"Huh," Ervin thought, from somewhere behind his own eyes. "Thirty million?"
Han Joon-seong pulled out his phone and opened the banking app. The balance stared back at him: fifty million won.
Ervin sat with that for a second. "Well. Guess I beat up three people for nothing."
He looked at the number a moment longer, thoughtful, then locked the phone and slid it back into his pocket.
"Can you tell me where you got this loan from?" he asked her.
She blinked at him, not following. "Huh? S-Sir, why?"
He just looked at her and smiled. It was the kind of smile that seemed to make the air around him sparkle a little, and her heart skipped, stumbling over itself in her chest.
"Can you show me?" he asked again.
She swallowed hard and nodded, fast, too fast. "Yes yes!"
She gave him the location. It was some distance away.
"Would you mind if I carried you a bit further?" he asked. "It won't take long. Sorry for the trouble."
She swallowed again, opened her mouth, but nothing useful came out. She wasn't sure she could have walked there on her own anyway, she was still shaking, somewhere between fear and the fresh wave of embarrassment settling over her.
He didn't wait for an answer. He scooped her back up into his arms, princess-style, before she'd had time to process it, and took off running.
He ran straight down the street, weaving past pedestrians, who stared after them, baffled. A few pulled out their phones, murmuring guesses to each other; 'someone's filming a video for GikTok', someone else said, 'maybe it's for RealTube'. Lee Hye-jin heard the bits and pieces of it and buried her face in her hands, mortified at being carried down a public street in front of so many people. Han Joon-seong couldn't have cared less. He kept running.
He covered close to two kilometers in what felt like no time at all.
Eventually, he slowed as they reached the place she'd pointed him toward, a storefront that looked, at a glance, like any other small loan office on the block. Orange signage out front advertised fast approvals and easy monthly terms, cheerful and unassuming.
He set her down in front of it. She pointed, still a little shaky, toward a door near the back of the front room, half-hidden behind a rack of pamphlets. "That door," she said. "That's where the actual loan sharking business is. In the back."
He nodded and walked inside.
The front room looked exactly like what it was pretending to be, a folding table covered in glossy brochures, a low counter, a single clerk behind it typing something into an old computer, barely glancing up as Han Joon-seong walked past. Nobody stopped him. He pushed through the door at the back.
The room behind it was a different world entirely. A wide office space, fluorescent lighting, a couple of men lounging on a worn leather couch along one wall, one of them flipping through his phone, the other watching a small TV mounted in the corner. At the far end sat a heavyset man behind a desk stacked with ledgers and folders, a cigarette burning in an ashtray beside him.
Every head in the room turned toward Han Joon-seong as he walked in, and every one of them settled on the same reaction. It was a strikingly handsome face, carrying absolutely no warmth behind it, Ervin wanted to show to sign of pleasantries to these people after all. Every person in that room decided, within about two seconds of looking at him, that they didn't like him.
"Help you?" the heavyset man said.
"I'm here to settle a debt," Han Joon-seong said, in a tone that somehow made the sentence sound like he was doing them a favor just by speaking it. "It's on this Lee Hye-jin's account."
Behind him, Lee Hye-jin blinked, lost. "Sir?" she said. "What—"
He didn't stop to answer her.
One of the men on the couch sat up straighter. "Lee Hye-jin?" he said, voice rough and low. He pulled a laptop off the side table, typed for a few seconds, and found what he was looking for. "Thirty million won." He looked up scoffing. "You gonna pay that?"
Han Joon-seong took a few steps further into the room and let a small smile pull at his mouth, not a warm one. Something closer to mockery. "Yes," he said. "As long as all of you hold up your end, and stop bothering Miss Lee Hye-jin."
His eyes narrowed just slightly on the word "hold up," and the man across from him caught the implication sitting underneath it.
"You calling us liars?" the man said.
Han Joon-seong just looked at him, expression as flat and cold as before. "I don't know. That's something you'll have to tell me."
The air in the room thickened. The men on the couch straightened up, shoulders squaring, hands drifting a little closer to their sides, ready for something.
The man behind the desk waved a hand, breaking the tension before it could go anywhere. "Alright, alright. You want to pay off her debt, you can pay it off. How many installments? Two? Four?"
"In full," Han Joon-seong said. "All of it. Now."
The room went quiet for a second. Someone muttered, "Rich kid, huh," half under his breath.
"Okay then," the man behind the desk said. "You actually got the money for that?"
Han Joon-seong pulled out his phone. "Let's not waste time going back and forth. Give me your account information. You'll see soon enough whether I have it or not."
The man rattled off a bank account number. Han Joon-seong typed it in, confirmed the transfer, and sent it.
A few seconds later, the man's own phone buzzed on the desk. He picked it up, looked at the screen, and his expression shifted, genuine shock breaking through the boredom. It had actually gone through.
Lee Hye-jin stood there almost as shocked, actually completely lost, watching the whole exchange without understanding a single part of why any of this was happening.
"Well," Han Joon-seong said, already turning to leave, "I think our business here is finished. Have a good afternoon, gentlemen."
He walked toward the door. Lee Hye-jin startled, reaching a hand out after him. "Wait ! hey, hey- "
He was already too far to catch. He glanced back once, gave her a small smile, and dipped his head. "Have a good afternoon, Miss Lee Hye-jin."
Then he stepped out, closed the door behind him, and, at Ervin's command, took off running.
Lee Hye-jin rushed to the door a second later, pulled it open, and found place completely empty. He was just gone, like he'd vanished into thin air. Something in her chest sank a little at that, a small, strange pang she didn't fully understand. She stood there with one hand pressed to her chest and thought,
"I didn't even ask his name..."
—
Han Joon-seong was already miles(not really) away, running full speed back toward the apartment. "Well," Ervin thought, watching from behind, "since I'm already out here-" and he kept the body running at full pace, deliberately taking the long way home. "Might as well get some training in."
By the time he made it back, he'd picked up another four points of experience in [Speed.]
Somewhere in the middle of that run, Han Joon-seong pulled out his phone again and checked the banking app. The balance was already climbing back up on its own. He'd just spent thirty million won, and the number was refilling itself in real time.
"Huh," he murmured, quiet enough that no one on the street would notice. "So that's what the Money characteristic does. I earn it back passively, up to some limit."
He thought about that for a second, the [Money(Perfect|Middle-class)] line from his status screen. Perfect. He guessed "Perfect" probably referred to how fast the money regenerated, not the total amount itself. Looking at the numbers so far, he'd already earned back something like a thousand won in under an hour since spending the thirty million. If that rate held steady, he could regenerate the full fifty million every month.
Ervin, watching from his own high view, thought it over. He didn't have a great sense of what thirty million won actually meant in real terms, but judging by the reactions in that room, and on the girl's face, it had to be a serious amount of money. He'd have to sit down later and actually figure out what he could and couldn't do with it.
The body kept running home.
—
Elsewhere in the city, in a penthouse apartment with a wide window looking out over the skyline, a man sat in the fading light of early evening, the sun low and warm over the rooftops. His phone rang.
He answered. Han Do-yun's voice came through on the other end.
"We have a problem."
"What kind of problem," the man said, his voice deep, unhurried.
"I can't really say for certain," Han Do-yun said. "But someone moved into our territory."
The man went quiet for a second, something skeptical creeping into the silence. "What do you mean, moved into our territory?"
"Someone got involved with one of our debtors. And on top of that, he paid off her whole debt."
"Sounds like a boyfriend," the man said. "Nothing unusual about that."
"That's not the problem, Hyeong-nim. He hit me."
The man let out something close to a laugh. "Everyone gets hit sometimes, Do-yun."
"No, I mean he knocked me out. For a few minutes."
Silence stretched on the other end. The man's grip tightened on the arm of his chair, the leather creaking under his hand.
"You're not trying to pull something on me, are you?"
"No, Hyeong-nim. I wouldn't do that." Han Do-yun's voice stayed level, steady. "He really did knock me out with one punch."
The man went quiet again, long enough that Han Do-yun checked in. "...Hyeong-nim?"
"Look into him," the man said finally. "It might be worth having someone like that in our Juhwang-pa."