Another day had passed.
He went to check his passive income and paid out the amount.
BRRRR
[Shinhan Bank: Your Balance is 336,175,027 ₩]
Seventy-six million won. No donations, as before.
An idea popped into his mind. His metal door was still busted from the last burglary. If some asshole came back and decided to trash his rental—or worse, if he later had servers or other valuable assets stored there—they would be completely exposed. He needed to fortify his position.
After a quick search for "high-security garage doors South Korea," he found a contractor that seemed to operate on a different level entirely: Heo Security & Engineering.
Their website was a masterclass in UI design. It was all stark monochrome, professional photography, and data sheets. They specialized in importing and installing top-tier German security products: Hörmann industrial-grade doors, custom-built security gates, and reinforced windows from various manufacturers, including SILATEC. They even offered in-house engineering and consulting for integrated security systems.
What truly caught his eye was a section titled Test Reports. One video was for a door that was similar to his. He called Seo-yeon over.
"Watch this," he said, hitting play.
The video showed a stark white room containing only the door. A man, who was clearly a professional—not an actor, but a muscular individual with a balaclava pulled over his head—stood before it with a large, organized case of tools. A timer in the corner began to run.
For thirty minutes, they watched in silence as the man worked.
He started with brute force, delivering powerful, practiced kicks backward near the lock mechanism to shock it open. The door didn't budge. He signaled, and two additional associates joined him, the three of them throwing their combined weight against it. Still, it held firm.
Abandoning brute force, he turned to finesse. He inserted a screwdriver, tapping in wedges to try to create a gap between the door and the frame. The seals were too tight. He quickly grabbed his most trusted tool: a huge, battle-scarred crowbar. He leveraged all his strength, the metal groaning under the stress. The door flexed minutely as a single, unified unit but refused to bend or buckle. He tried every critical point—jamming the bar near the multi-point lock, then attacking the three heavy-duty hinges. Nothing yielded.
Frustration began to set in. He switched to an angle grinder. Sparks erupted in a violent shower as the disc bit into the steel face, but the blade quickly disintegrated. A subtitle appeared: "Door skin features an anti-abrasive matrix to degrade cutting discs."
After managing to peel back a small section of the outer skin with a pry bar, he revealed a dense, dark core. He tried a hacksaw, but the material—a composite of reinforced fibers and ceramic—jammed the blade after only a few centimeters, making it impossible to cut a hole large enough to reach through.
As a final test of structural integrity, the team brought out a compact, heavy-duty battering ram. The door shuddered violently with each thunderous impact, but the internal locking bolts, now fully engaged, transmitted the force evenly across the entire frame. It held.
As a last resort, he returned to the hinges with the grinder, this time using a specialized diamond blade. After a long, arduous effort, he severed one, then another. Yet, to his visible astonishment, the door remained perfectly in place. The multi-point locks, now acting as the primary anchors, made the hinges almost redundant.
After thirty relentless minutes, the man finally stepped back, chest heaving, wiping sweat from his brow. He pulled down his balaclava and simply shook his head at the camera in utter defeat.
The scene then cut to a clean-cut engineer standing beside the pristine, undamaged door.
"As demonstrated, the door remained secure even with the hinges fully severed. This is because the internal multi-point bolts act as the primary load-bearing anchors, transferring force directly into the reinforced steel frame. The external hinges are a secondary feature.
This systemic integrity is the key to effective deterrence. Industry data shows that most residential break-ins cease after approximately two minutes of failed entry. Furthermore, studies indicate that over 60% of burglars will actively seek a new target if they encounter a significant security obstacle.
The goal, therefore, is not to be impenetrable forever, but to present a level of resistance that makes your property an unviable, high-risk target. However," he added, pointing to the windows, "a door like this is only one part of the system. In most homes, windows remain the most significant weakness, especially large balcony doors."
The video then cut to a new title: "Standard Korean Residential Door: A Reality Check."
What followed was a swift and brutal demolition of the typical security that Dong-seung and millions of others relied on. The demonstration was short and dirty. Against a standard, factory-issue door, a technician—using only simple tools—effortlessly picked the lock in under fifteen seconds. A raking tool opened it even faster. A power drill made quick work of the cheap cylinder. The most shocking was the "kick test." A single, solid kick backwards, aimed near the lock, caused the frame to splinter and the door to fly inward, its flimsy bolt offering no resistance. The entire breach took less than two seconds.
Next, they tested a common aftermarket security gate installed in front of the standard door—the kind people bought for a few hundred thousand won for a false sense of security. A thief armed with a crowbar simply levered it between the gate and the wall. With a screech of tearing metal, the shallow, weak anchors ripped straight out of the concrete. The entire gate was peeled away in under thirty seconds, leaving the pathetic main door completely exposed.
The final comparison was to their own custom-built security gate. It was a night-and-day difference. It featured a massive three-point locking system that shot thick bolts into the top of the frame and the floor, in addition to the main lock. It was supported by three heavy-duty, reinforced hinges. Most importantly, the mounting points weren't just simple screws; they were massive, deeply set steel anchors embedded into the surrounding structure, making the entire unit a part of the wall itself.
Dong-seung was stunned. The dents are near the lock. A crowbar. He pictured it instantly—the leverage, the prying against the weak point of a metal door. The workshop door was probably as old and flimsy as the CRT monitors inside it. Against a determined thief with the right tool, it wouldn't have stood a chance. Shit. My cars are protected by a lock that could be peeled open like a can. He needed serious security, and he couldn't afford to procrastinate or be stingy.
"Whoa," Seo-yeon breathed, her eyes wide. "It's creepy… but smart? Who thinks like that?"
"People who are serious about security," Dong-seung replied, a new sense of purpose crystallizing. "That's the kind of door we need. Probably not the same model, but it should have the same rating."
"Dong-seung, I'll make some dinner," she giggled, heading towards the kitchen.
Alone again, he delved deeper into the portal. After studying the UI, he found another video, this one marked Security Windows by SILATEC.
The video opened not with a sterile test room, but with a sweeping shot of an industrial estate in a Bavarian town called Gelting. A narrator's voice, calm and authoritative, explained that this was where the company SILATEC had spent over two decades producing what they claimed was "the most secure glass in the world." The narrator then issued a challenge: "We will test this claim under the hardest conceivable conditions, and we will not shy away from anything. Truly, from nothing at all."
What followed was a systematic, almost brutal, deconstruction of every possible threat.
It began with the basics—a manhole cover, a classic tool for smashing jeweler's windows, was hurled at the glass. It bounced off with a dull thud, leaving no mark. Then came sledgehammers and firefighter axes, wielded by powerful men who grunted with effort. The window shuddered in its frame, but the laminated glass, with its secret polymer core, simply would not shatter or yield.
Dong-seung watched, mesmerized, as the tests escalated into the absurd. The crew first blasted a spot on the glass with a CO2 fire extinguisher, super-cooling it to -50°C, and then immediately attacked the frozen point with a professional battering ram used by SWAT teams. The glass held. They applied a flamethrower, bathing it in over 1000-degree Celsius fire. When the flames died down, the surface was just sooty, the structure beneath completely intact.
Then the scene shifted to a shooting range.
The narrator coolly listed the arsenal: a sniper rifle with full-metal-jacket 7.62x51mm rounds, a Kalashnikov AK-47, an AR-15, and a Glock pistol. From a distance of 25 meters, they opened fire. The report of the guns was deafening. On the glass, a spiderweb of cracks appeared where the bullets struck, but not a single projectile passed through. The window became a translucent, cratered wall, but it remained a barrier.
The final test was the most dramatic. A 1.5-ton car was rammed into the window at 30 km/h. The vehicle crumpled on impact, its hood buckling. The window and the stuntman behind it remained standing.
The video concluded with a simple message: the goal was not to be truly impenetrable, but to create a "wall of glass" that could stop any conceivable attack long enough for the police to arrive.
Dong-seung leaned back, his mind reeling.
Seo-yeon called out that dinner was ready, pulling him from his thoughts. He closed the laptop, the image of the bullet-riddled, yet unbroken, glass seared into his mind. The digital fortress felt a world away from the simple, steaming comfort waiting for him in the kitchen.
In front of him was a large, ceramic bowl of tteokbokki, its deep, rust-red sauce still bubbling gently from the heat. Plumes of fragrant steam rose, carrying the sharp, sweet scent of gochujang and the underlying earthiness of dried anchovy broth. The cylindrical rice cakes were plump and glistening, nestled among slices of fish cake, boiled eggs, and spring onions.
Seo-yeon, already seated, handed him a pair of chopsticks with a smile. "It's the cheap, instant kind from the packet," she admitted, "but I added extra cheese and an egg." The stringy mozzarella stretched satisfyingly as he lifted a bite, the spicy, savory, and creamy flavors exploding in a familiar, comforting symphony.
As the last rice cake was eaten, Dong-seung's mind, refreshed, returned to the problem with new clarity. He pulled out his phone and dialed the number for Heo Security & Engineering. The line was picked up almost immediately by a polite but no-nonsense dispatcher. After explaining his situation—a recent break-in and a need for a comprehensive assessment of his workshop's security—he was offered an appointment for the next morning.
"Our consultants work until 8 p.m., sir. We can have someone at your location at 10 a.m. tomorrow to assess the cost and possible points of entry," the voice stated, efficient and reassuring.
He agreed, ended the call, and felt a surge of satisfaction. They would come the next day, as it was already night. He was even surprised that they had such long operating hours; it spoke to a clientele that needed discretion and urgency, a world he was now stepping into.
"Was that the security people?" Seo-yeon asked, gathering the empty bowls.
"Yeah," he replied.