"A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise."
—Niccolò Machiavelli
Money moves slow at first. Like water finding a crack in stone, it finds the smallest opening and widens it. We didn't need spectacle. We needed patience and a ledger.
After Ho-seok's first sweep, we sat in the library corner—the one with the cracked window that smelled faintly of old paper and rain. I opened my notebook and drew a line down the middle. One side: names. Other side: amounts. Underneath, in smaller script, I added terms. Nothing fancy. Just rules.
"Start with 1,000 won," I said, tapping the page. "Small. Affordable. People won't take it as charity or threat. They'll see it as convenience."
Ho-seok frowned. "1,000 won? That's—"
"Enough to matter if you collect five, ten times," I interrupted. "And enough to teach them to owe something. We give small loans to students who need cash for lunch, printing, transport. They take the loan because it's immediate. They pay us because we're there."
I wrote down names: Min-jun (printing), Sae-bom (bus), Eun-ji (lunch). Next to each I penciled 1,000, 1,200, sometimes 1,500. I explained the interest quietly—nothing predatory, just a fee for convenience. 200 won on every 1,000 if it's paid within a week. 400 won if it's late. Clear, measurable, predictable. People respond to rules that are simple.
Ho-seok watched, learning how the smallest numbers stack into something meaningful. He was beginning to see not just coins, but patterns. If ten kids borrowed 1,000 won each and paid back 1,200, that was 2,000 extra won. Two thousand turns quickly into 20,000 when you repeat it, and 20,000 buys more than pride. It buys options. It buys leverage.
"Don't threaten them," I told him. "We're not brutes. We position ourselves as service. A loan with a schedule. A promise of help—for a price. That price builds obligation. Obligation builds influence."
He nodded, though his fingers were still clumsy with the envelope of coins he carried. He had collected before—today he collected with a steadier hand. He knocked politely at Sae-bom's locker, exchanged a few words, handed over crisp coins and a receipt in my handwriting. The receipt mattered; it was proof, a paper trail that made the loan feel official. I taught him to fold the paper twice, hand it with his thumb at the corner, and keep his eyes level. Small rituals build confidence.
We ran into friction—Min-jun claimed he'd paid already. A misunderstanding. Ho-seok's jaw tensed; his old instinct was to fight. I stopped him with a look and whispered, "Ask for proof. If none, offer a partial credit. Make the next loan conditional." He did. Calm replaced rage. He collected half now, another half tomorrow. Problem solved without spectacle. That tiny negotiation was a victory.
By the end of the week our ledger grew thicker by a few lines. The coins in my pocket were small, not enough to thrill, but enough to prove the model worked. I kept the larger sums to myself—savings for reinvestment. Ho-seok got his share: enough to buy medicine his mother needed one afternoon. He folded the money into a small palm and looked at me like I'd taught him a new language.
"Cerberus starts with trust and tiny obligations," I said. "We don't need menacing words. We need reliability. Make people reliant on us for small things, and they'll give us room to grow."
He smiled once, worn but real. The plan crawled forward—slow, careful, patient. No dramatic takeovers, no brutal displays. Small loans, polite collections, receipts, and rules. The slow work of building power felt almost surgical.
Outside, the rain had stopped. The cracked window dripped a single bead into the sill. One drop at a time. One debt at a time. Cerberus learned to breathe, quietly, between the pages of a ledger.