Jiang Han knew things were going to be ugly the moment he drew his number.
Forty-six people standing in a row, a clear lottery box in front of them. Inside, forty-six white ping-pong balls, each with a number—the order you'd walk onto the bridge. Lower number, earlier on. Earlier on, closer to dead.
He reached in and pulled a ball.
5.
He turned it over, looked at it once, and closed his fingers around it.
Gasps nearby. Contestants around him had seen the number. Fifth meant he was the fifth person to set foot on the glass bridge. The first four were pure pathfinders—paying with their lives to test which panels held. Fifth wasn't much better. Four people ahead of him might clear four or five safe steps at best. Everything beyond that was uncharted.
Kang Dae drew something in the thirties. Safe as houses.
When he saw the number in Jiang Han's hand, he laughed. Loud enough for everyone to hear.
"Five? Ha! 099 drew five! The first ten are basically meat shields—you're paving the road for the rest of us."
His crew joined in.
Park the accountant drew seventh. He stared at the ball in his hand and the blood drained from his face in one beat, lips white.
Yoon Seo—twenty. Mid-range. Ma—fifteen. Also mid-range.
Jiang Han pocketed the ball without expression.
The arena was a high-altitude structure with extreme depth.
Two platforms facing each other across an abyss—similar to the tug-of-war layout, but the chasm was wider this time. Between the platforms ran a "bridge"—not a real one, but two parallel rows of transparent glass panels extending from one end to the other. Twenty-four steps total.
Each step had three glass panels side by side. Left, center, right. Only one of the three was tempered glass, strong enough to bear a person's weight. The other two were ordinary glass—step on one and it shatters, and you fall.
Twenty-four steps. Three choices each. Pure probability of making it across without breaking a single panel—
He ran it in his head. One-third to the twenty-fourth power. Roughly zero point zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero zero one percent.
In other words, guessing your way across was impossible. But each time someone ahead tested a step and identified the safe panel, the people behind gained one fewer blind spot. The people in front laid the road with their bodies. The people in back walked over them.
The intercom added rules:
"Time limit: sixteen minutes."
"Additional rule: every four minutes, one previously verified safe glass panel will shatter at random."
Random shattering. Meaning the people at the back weren't safe either—a panel that had proven solid could vanish from under your feet halfway through.
Whoever designed this round was a psychopath.
He stood at the bridge's starting platform, waiting for the first four to go.
Number 1 stepped onto the bridge. A man in his forties, legs trembling, every step placed as if the glass were a knife edge. He stood in front of the first set of three panels for about ten seconds, chose the left one—
Stepped on it.
Shattered.
The scream was very short. The man and the broken glass vanished into the abyss together.
Number 2. A young woman, crying as she walked onto the bridge. First step—she chose center. Stepped on it. Held. She half-laughed, half-sobbed, and shuffled forward. Second step—three panels—she chose right.
Shattered.
Number 3. A stocky man. From 1 and 2, he knew the first step's safe panel was center. He stepped on center—solid. Second step, he chose left—held. Third step—shattered.
Number 4. Followed the path of the first three through three steps. Fourth step, chose center—held. Fifth step—hesitated for a long time, chose left.
Held.
Sixth step—shattered.
Four people. Four lives. Five confirmed safe steps.
Jiang Han's turn.
He stood at the bridge's edge, looking down at the first glass panel. Transparent, reflective, indistinguishable from the two beside it. But he knew the center one was safe—Number 1 had confirmed that with his life.
He stepped on it. Solid.
Second step—left. Number 3 had verified it.
Third. Fourth. Fifth. Five safe steps, a passage bought with four lives.
He'd reached the end of the known safe zone. From step six onward, everything ahead was blind. Nineteen steps. Three choices each.
He didn't step forward.
He crouched down.
People behind him were urging him on—time wasn't waiting, nearly three minutes of the sixteen already gone. He ignored them. He brought his face to the side edge of the glass panel and observed the three panels at step six from a near-horizontal angle.
He was looking for one thing: the color at the edge.
Tempered glass had a higher iron content than regular glass. This caused the cut edge of tempered glass to show an extremely faint green tint at certain angles—while ordinary glass edges were pure transparent white. The difference was invisible from a normal viewing angle, but at near-horizontal, with overhead light hitting directly, you could just catch it.
He'd handled glass shelving in convenience store display cases more times than he could count, and had an unconscious sensitivity to glass texture and sheen. But what really lodged this technique in his memory was the glass factory worker from the original Squid Game.
Three panels. Left, center, right.
He pressed his eyes nearly flat against the glass surface and looked across—
The right one. A whisper of green at the edge, so faint it might have been imagination.
He stood up and stepped on the right panel.
Held.
Step seven. Same method—crouch, side-angle, find the green. Center. Step on it. Held.
Step eight. Left. Held.
His speed wasn't fast—each step required crouching and examining for several seconds—but his success rate was extraordinary. The contestants watching from behind went from surprised to disbelieving. This Number 5, who'd drawn what amounted to a death sentence, was stepping across the bridge as if he could see through glass.
Step nine. Ten. Eleven. All correct.
Four minutes hit.
Behind him—a sharp crack. One of the previously verified safe panels shattered at random. Step three's panel. Number 6, who'd been following behind, happened to be standing on step two—the path to step three suddenly ceased to exist. Below it: the abyss. He screamed, his body swaying—
He fell.
Jiang Han didn't look back.
Keep walking.
Step twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen. His visual method held about a seventy-percent accuracy rate—nowhere near perfect, but vastly better than a one-in-three blind guess. Occasionally all three panels looked identical, and he'd spend extra seconds examining from different angles until he found that infinitesimal difference.
Time was bleeding away. Eight minutes gone. He'd made it to step seventeen.
Step eighteen.
The overhead lights flickered—then the angle of illumination shifted.
Not off. The direction of the light tubes had been altered. What had been direct overhead lighting was now angled from the side. The moment the light angle changed, the color difference at the glass edges—his only means of identification—vanished completely.
The system panel pushed a line of red:
CORRUPTION INTERFERENCE. Lighting has been tampered with.
Six steps left. Completely blind.
The voices behind him grew more urgent—contestants following his safe path had caught up to around step fifteen. Time wouldn't wait.
Jiang Han stood on the safe panel at step eighteen and reached into his pocket.
His fingers touched a cool sphere with a faint warmth.
The silver marble.
He took it out and turned it in his palm. The marble's inner glow was more visible than ever in the dim angled light—like a tiny heart pulsing with light.
Will this work?
He placed the silver marble gently on the center panel at step nineteen.
The marble rolled half a revolution—then lit up. Silver light spread outward, tracing a soft ring across the glass surface.
Tempered glass.
He picked it up, set it on the left panel—nothing. Right panel—nothing. Only the center panel triggered the glow.
It worked. But he glanced at the system panel's corner notation—
Silver Marble: Remaining uses: 3
Six steps. Three detection chances. Three steps left to gamble.
He made a rapid decision: use the silver marble on the steps where his eyes were completely useless. For the rest, rely on whatever residual instinct he had left.
Step nineteen—marble scan—center. Stepped on it. Safe.
Step twenty—he stared for a few seconds, squeezing what was left from his visual experience. The light angle was wrong, but up close there was still the faintest sense of... something. He chose left.
Stepped on it.
Held.
He let out a breath.
Step twenty-one—marble scan—right. Safe.
Step twenty-two—a gamble. Center. Stepped on it.
Three seconds of blankness. The glass under his foot didn't budge.
Safe.
Step twenty-three—last marble use. He tested all three panels one by one. Left.
Stepped on it. Safe.
Step twenty-four—the final step. No marble left. Three glass panels in the murky side-lit gloom, looking absolutely identical.
He stood on step twenty-three's safe panel, staring at the three transparent, lethal slabs ahead.
People behind him shouting. The countdown running. The finish platform two meters away.
He closed his eyes.
Not surrender. He was cutting out the visual interference. He tapped the edge of the center panel with his toe—not stepping, just a probing touch. The vibration frequency traveled up through his shoe sole: thin glass vibrated fast, thick tempered glass vibrated slow.
This was a completely useless micro-skill he'd picked up from cleaning glass display cases at the convenience store.
Until right now.
The right panel. Lower vibration frequency.
He opened his eyes, took one deep breath, and stepped onto it.
Held.
Twenty-four steps. All clear.
He crossed onto the finish platform and his legs buckled, one knee slamming into the metal floor. Not from fear—from the mandatory shutdown signal his brain fired after fifteen-plus minutes of maximal mental focus.
The people behind began following the path he'd carved.
At every step, he'd scraped the sole of his shoe hard against the safe panel, leaving visible marks. Anyone who followed the scuff marks could dramatically lower their risk.
But the four-minute random shattering kept harvesting. When Yoon Seo reached step sixteen, a safe panel two steps ahead of her disintegrated without warning. Her foot hung over empty air for an instant—she threw her weight backward by reflex, caught herself on the previous step, then leaped over the gap and kept going.
Ma's leg gave out near the end, his old injury flaring until his right leg was practically dead weight. He gritted his teeth and dragged himself step by step, collapsing face-down on the finish platform.
Park nearly went over at step twelve—a safe panel ahead of him shattered and he lost balance, tipping right, his foot catching the edge of an ordinary glass panel beside him. The glass cracked but didn't fully break. In that one-second window he threw himself back onto the safe panel and crawled the last few steps on his stomach. Ma reached down from the platform and pulled him up.
Kang Dae's crew, with their high numbers, hardly needed to risk anything—the safe path had been fully mapped by everyone who'd come before. But the random shattering still took one of his men. Kang Dae stood on the finish platform watching his subordinate fall, face carrying the expression of someone watching an ant get stepped on.
00:00.
The intercom: "Game five complete. Survivors: twenty-eight."
When Kang Dae walked up to Jiang Han, everyone was watching.
"How did you do it?"
No mockery in his voice this time. Something more dangerous had replaced it: assessment.
"The first ten should be dead on arrival. You were number five. You should have died on that bridge."
Jiang Han was crouching, rubbing feeling back into his numb calves. He looked up at Kang Dae.
"Lucky."
"Cut the bullshit." Kang Dae bent down, grabbed Jiang Han's collar, and hauled him off the floor. Their faces were less than twenty centimeters apart, Kang Dae's breath smelling of beef jerky. "You crouched down and looked at the glass on that bridge. What did you see?"
Ma and Yoon Seo closed in from both sides. Ma's hand was already a fist.
Jiang Han didn't struggle. He let his arms hang, and looked calmly into Kang Dae's eyes.
"You want to know? Next time you draw top five, I'll show you."
The air froze for two seconds.
Kang Dae's fingers tightened on the collar—then released. He shoved Jiang Han backward and turned away.
"Luck." He repeated the word, as if convincing himself. "That's all it is."
A few steps later he stopped. Didn't turn around.
"Luck runs out, 099."
Jiang Han straightened his crumpled collar.
"Luck runs out. Skill doesn't."
He said it quietly, but the dormitory was silent enough that every person heard it.
Kang Dae's silhouette hitched for a beat. Then kept walking.
The way the other contestants looked at Jiang Han had changed. The people who'd laughed and said he'd be first to die—some dropped their eyes, some looked away. A few who'd been neutral now looked at him with something new.
Not pity. Conviction.
The system panel refreshed after he sat back down on his bunk:
GAME 5 COMPLETE
Survivors: 28 / 456
NP Earned: +250
Silver Marble: DEPLETED (remaining uses: 0)
Item will dissolve upon leaving current world.
Corruption Level: 41% (rising)
FINAL GAME INCOMING
⚠ WARNING: Projected final game corruption exceeds 50%.
Non-human entities: CONFIRMED.
The final game will not follow any known rules.
Twenty-eight.
Four hundred and fifty-six in. Twenty-eight left.
The silver marble was spent. The old man 001 had been "eliminated after failing the marble game"—at least that was the story the other contestants believed. His help was finished.
And the final game—corruption over fifty percent. No known rules apply.
Every scrap of Squid Game knowledge in Jiang Han's head would be worth exactly nothing in the next round.
He raised his eyes to the golden piggy bank hanging from the ceiling.
Cracks had spread across its entire surface—no longer a single line or a few threads, but a dense web, like a spider's lattice covering the pig from snout to tail. Dark red light pulsed from every fracture, brightening and dimming in a steady rhythm, like the heartbeat of something alive.
And the piggy bank's eyes—those two little black dots that had been nothing but decoration, painted circles—
Were glowing.
Dark red light bled out from those two circles, as if the piggy bank's "eyes" had woken up.
It was looking at him.
Jiang Han held the stare of a transparent piggy bank for three seconds.
Then he looked away, lay down, and closed his eyes.
Tomorrow was the final game.
Whatever it was—he had no way out. He'd had no way out since the night a truck killed him in the rain.