The heater inside Eun-bi’s car didn’t work well. It blew a thin, lukewarm stream of air against the dashboard, failing to clear the fog on the passenger window. Jun-ho sat with his knees pressed against the glove box, his oversized rubber boots clunking against the floorboards every time the car hit a bump on the main avenue.
Eun-bi kept both hands on the plastic steering wheel, her eyes locked on the brake lights of the delivery trucks ahead. "Where am I dropping you?"
"Sillim district," Jun-ho said. "The alley near the market."
"The semi-basement place?"
"Yeah."
She shifted gears, the transmission making a dull grind that she ignored. "You can’t stay there past tonight. Sang-woo is an arrogant idiot, but his father isn’t. When the guild gets the report about the broken gate, they’re going to trace the party log. They’ll see your name as the vanguard."
Jun-ho looked out the side window at the wet storefronts passing by. "The report says mechanical failure."
"The report I wrote says that," Eun-bi countered, her voice flat. "But insurance investigators don’t care about my logs. They’ll look at the iron hinges. They’ll see the metal didn’t snap from rust; it was sheared by a physical strike. They’ll know a Tier 1 meat shield shouldn’t have been able to walk out of that room alive while a Tier 3 hound was inside."
Jun-ho reached into his pocket and touched the cold black dust left over from the stone. It was dry against his skin. His stats were high now—his strength was over a hundred, and his mana pool felt like a deep, heavy weight behind his ribs. He wasn’t afraid of a corporate audit, but he didn’t want a fight on his doorstep before he could buy a proper weapon.
"How long do I have?" he asked.
"Twelve hours. Maybe less if Sang-woo wakes up in the hospital and starts screaming your name to his dad," Eun-bi said. She pulled the car up to a red light, finally turning her head to look at his torn sleeve. "You need to pack your things and disappear into the unregistered sectors. The unranked zones near the edge of the city don’t use ministry scanners."
"I don’t have many things," Jun-ho said.
"Good. Makes it easier to run."
The light turned green. She drove past a large electronic billboard on top of a bank building. The screen was showing a live news feed from the central district: Sun God Guild announces new rookie roster. A picture of a smiling young man in white armor flashed on the display, followed by a text block about contract values. Min-ah’s name wasn’t on the list. Her chance had vanished the moment she ran out of that iron door.
Eun-bi took a sharp right turn, entering the narrow, sloped streets of Jun-ho’s neighborhood. The houses here were small, built close together with tangled clusters of black electric wires hanging over the roofs.
She stopped the car next to a rusty green dumpster at the mouth of his alleyway.
"I’m logging off my shift now," she said, putting the car in park. She didn’t look at him, but her fingers were tapping a steady rhythm against the steering wheel. "If the auditors call me, I’ll tell them you ran away in a panic before the medical team arrived. That buys you some time."
Jun-ho opened the door, his large rubber boots hitting the wet pavement. He looked back at her through the open window. "Why are you going this far for a stranger?"
Eun-bi finally let out a short, dry laugh, her eyes narrowing as she looked at his face. "I told you. I hate Sang-woo’s family. But more than that, I’m tired of seeing people like you end up in my body bags because some rich kid needed a human wall. Don’t make me look stupid for saving your life, Jun-ho."
"I won’t," he said.
He closed the car door and walked into the dark alley, he headed toward his basement door.
The streetlights in this part of the district didn’t work. Jun ho walked past the green trash bins, his feet sliding inside the loose rubber boots. The plastic shafts rubbed against his calves with a soft, dull friction as he moved down the slope. He kept his right hand inside his coat pocket, his fingers rolling the dry black powder into small pellets between his nails.
He didn’t need to look at his phone to know the time. The sky over the roofs was turning the color of wet slate, the morning fog mixing with the smoke from the neighborhood fish shops.
He reached the corner where his building sat. It was a three-story brick block with a cracked foundation and a tangle of black television cables hanging over the entrance. To get to his room, he had to go down four concrete steps into a narrow trench below the sidewalk level. The walls down there were covered in green moss that smelled like old water pipes.
Min-ah was sitting on the top step.
She had her knees pulled up to her chest, her arms wrapped around her legs to keep the rain off her leather vest. Her hair was damp, sticking to her cheeks in long, thin strands. When she heard his boots shift on the gravel, she flinched and looked up, her eyes wide and red from crying.
Jun-ho stopped two paces away. He didn’t take his hand out of his pocket.
"Jun-hoya," she said, her voice small and raspy from the cold. She stood up quickly, but her foot caught on the hem of her trousers, making her stumble against the brick wall. She reached out, her fingers catching the edge of his sleeve before he could pull back. "You didn’t go to the hospital. I went to the district clinic, but the nurse said no one named Jun-ho had checked in."
"I didn’t need a nurse," Jun-ho said.
His voice didn’t have any anger in it. It was just flat, like he was reading the back of a noodle packet. He looked down at her fingers on his jacket. , she trembling from the chill or the panic, he couldn’t tell which.
"Sang-woo’s father is at the station," she whispered, her teeth clicking together. She let go of his arm and tucked her hands into her armpits, looking around the empty alley as if a patrol car was about to turn the corner. "He brought three guild investigators from the main office. They are looking at the gate logs right now. They know the mana signature from the broken hinges didn’t come from a Tier 3 monster. They think Sang-woo was attacked by an unregistered red hunter."
"They’re probably right," Jun-ho said.
"They’re going to check your room, Jun-ho!" She grabbed his wrist again, her grip tighter this time. "Sang-woo told them you died inside the room. He told his father that you got crushed in the first five seconds so he could explain why he lost the core. If they find you here alive, they’ll know he lied. They’ll know we... they’ll know I used the wind spell on you."
Jun-ho looked past her head, down into the dark trench where his door sat. The small pad of gray text at the bottom of his eye gave a slow, single blink, checking his status.
[Status: Stable.]
[Mana: 760/760]
"Why are you here, Min-ah?" he asked quietly.
"We have to leave," she said, her words coming out fast, tumbling over each other. "I have three million won left in my school account. We can take the express bus to the southern ports. The unranked zones down there don’t check for hunter licenses at the docks. We can buy a small room, just like before. I’ll help you fix your gear. I’ll talk to the local brokers. We can start over, Jun-hoya. Just like the early days."
Jun-ho let out a short, breathy sound that wasn’t a laugh. He reached down and peeled her fingers off his wrist, his movement slow but so firm that she couldn’t resist it. Her hands dropped to her sides like dead weight.
"The early days," he said, looking at the water stain near the basement door. "In the early days, I ate half a bowl of rice a day so you could buy mana paper for your exams. On Sunday, you hit my spine with a gale spell because you didn’t want to lose a spot in a corporate subsidiary."
"I was scared!" she screamed, her voice cracking as she took a step backward into the rain. "The hound was right there, Jun-ho! You don’t know what it’s like to look at something that big and know you’re about to be eaten! I didn’t think... I didn’t plan it!"
"You talked to Sang-woo about it before we even scanned our cards at the turnstile," Jun-ho said. His face didn’t move a muscle. "I heard you from the bench."
Min-ah froze. The crying stopped instantly, her lips staying open in a small, ugly circle. The fake panic on her face vanished, leaving only a cold, hard realization that her leash had been broken long before they ever entered the tunnel.
"You knew?" she whispered.
"I knew," Jun-ho said.
He walked past her, his large rubber boots making a dull scrape against the concrete steps as he went down into the trench. He didn’t look back to see if she was following. He reached his door, punched the five-digit code into the dirty plastic keypad, and pushed the frame open.
The room smelled like old paper and cold linoleum. He didn’t turn on the lights. He grabbed a black canvas duffel bag from the top of his closet, threw his spare trousers and two shirts inside, and left his broken vanguard shield leaning against the wall near the trash bin. He didn’t need it anymore. His skin was thicker than the iron plate now.
When he walked back up the stairs five minutes later, the alley was empty. Min-ah was gone, leaving only a few wet footprints on the gravel that were already disappearing under the rain.
He pulled the strap of his duffel bag over his left shoulder, turned away from the market street, and started walking toward the unranked transit line at the edge of the district.
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