Han Joon-seong stepped through the apartment door, still catching his breath from the long run home. Ervin, observing from his third-person view, could feel a stream of data trickling in from the body. left forearm, right hip, right foot. Seemed like the fight with that unknown man had left its mark.
He didn't send Han Joon-seong to bed just yet. Instead, he directed him to the bathroom.
Han Joon-seong stepped inside and pulled off his black shirt in front of the mirror. Ervin adjusted his floating perspective to see the reflection clearly.
"What the hell…"
The left forearm, the one that had Han Do-Yun's kick, was swollen and covered in a bruise so dark it looked almost black at the center. Blood vessels had ruptured beneath the skin, creating a violent stain from wrist to elbow. The hip was no better: the same deep purple swelling, the skin puffy and tender to the touch. Han Joon-seong's face tightened as he looked at it, not from pain, but just from how utterly painful it was to look at. He pulled off his shoe and sock and found his right foot, the one he'd used to kick the man in the face and then run for kilometers afterward, red and swollen around the metatarsals. Just shifting his weight onto it sent a sharp discomfort signal up the leg.
Han Joon-seong stared at the damage, brow furrowed, mouth pressed thin. Behind his eyes, Ervin processed it with disbelief.
"What the hell was that guy made of? Steel? Seriously?"
The fight had cost him. Yes, Han Joon-seong had knocked(kinda) the man out for a few minutes, but it had taken a cost. Hospital-level injuries. The kind that took weeks to heal. Now he wasn't sure it was worth it.
Ervin sighed internally. Han Joon-seong put his shirt back on, and obeyed the next command: sleep. He lay down on the bed, closed his eyes, and within seconds his breathing evened into the deep rhythm of unconsciousness. Auto Pilot took him.
Ervin remained alone in the quiet darkness. Then the familiar interface flickered to life.
[[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. 3)(4/40)
Strength (Lvl. 3)(0/40)
Endurance (Lvl. 3)(12/40)
Vigor (Lvl. 4)(16/80)
Intelligence (Lvl. 2)
[Tasks:
None]]
A second window appeared.
[Day Finished, awarded points [112 Points]]
Then the store materialized, the same layout as before.
[[Showing Store]
[Strengthening pills:
Looks [SOLD OUT]
Speed
Strength
Endurance
Vigor
Intelligence
Cost: 30 points each
Description: Strengthening Pills Level up a Characteristic by 1 when consumed]
[Weakening Pills:
Speed
Strength
Endurance
Vigor
Intelligence
Cost: 20 Points each
Description: Weakening Pills Decrease a Characteristic by 1 for 24h when consumed]
[Misc:
Character File - 250 points.
Recovery Pill - 100
Characteristic Card - 200]
And finally, a new prompt:
[[Tasks Available:
[Settle Differences — Make peace with Han Do-yun. Reward — 50 Points]]
Ervin stared at the name. Han Do-yun. His eyebrow lifted, or would have, if he'd had a face at the moment.
"Han Do-yun? Who the hell is Han Do-yun?"
He combed through the day's memories. The man in the alley had never introduced himself, and the fight had been too fast for names. It didn't even cross his mind that the task might be connected to the person who'd nearly broken his arm. To Ervin, those guys had just been random bullies, faceless, nameless and unimportant.
He shrugged internally. The name meant nothing.
"Whatever. Fifty points. I'll figure it out later."
He looked back at the store, his gaze settling on the word [SOLD OUT] beside "Looks." A quiet, resigned sigh.
"Pity the Looks pills are exhausted. But honestly, it makes sense. Something that miraculous can't be cheap to get."
He did the math in his head: eight points left from before, Twelve points from today, plus the hundred from the rescue mission. A hundred and twenty points total.
"Okay… A hundred and twenty points. I could buy at least three more pills. But is it worth spending them now?"
His attention drifted to the store
He stared at the Weakening Pills entry for a long moment, the silence of the void pressing in around him.
A pill that made him weaker. For twenty-four hours. Costing twenty points.
The absurdity of it settled over him like a cold blanket. He let the quiet stretch, his disembodied consciousness fixed on those lines of text as if waiting for them to reveal some hidden meaning. They didn't.
"This is completely useless! There is absolutely no scenario where I would spend points to become weaker. None."
He dismissed the thought with finality, pushing it out of his mind as though it had personally offended him. Not even worth the mental energy.
His attention shifted to the Misc section, and his thoughts began to churn in earnest.
Character File. Two hundred and fifty points. He glanced upward at his status window, where the words "Character 1; Han Joon-seong" glowed faintly. Character one. The implication of that number.
"Can I control more than one?"
The idea unfolded slowly. Multiple bodies. Multiple lives, running in parallel. He could be in two places at once, doing two things, training one body while the other handled something else. But the functional reality of it made him hesitate. Controlling one body already required a certain amount of mental bandwidth, even with Auto Pilot handling the execution. Splitting his attention between two might strain him past the point of usefulness. Maybe he would end up controlling neither properly.
He clicked his nonexistent tongue. "I'll set this aside for now. Something to think about later."
Next, Recovery Pill. One hundred points. His gaze flicked, in his mind's eye, to the body asleep on the bed below, to the deep purple bruise on its forearm, the swollen hip, the strained foot. Damage that would take days to heal on its own. Maybe weeks. Walking around injured in a city he barely understood, and goons like today's guys walking around, was not a wise position to be in. Spending the points now to reset the board, then grinding them back through training tomorrow, seemed like the smarter play.
He moved on to the Characteristic Card. Two hundred points. A new characteristic. He thought about the ones he already possesse, [Adaptation], [Talent], [Auto Pilot], [Money]. Some of them carried the label "Perfect." Some didn't. He found himself wondering what Perfect Strength would look like. What Perfect Speed would feel like. Did the card grant entirely new characteristics, or could it upgrade the ones he already had? And if he used it and got something he already possessed, what would happen? Would it stack? Would it waste the card?
"What kind of thing would I even get? Some kind of supernatural power? Telekinesis?" He paused, considering more mundane possibilities. "Or maybe a talent. Drawing. Finances. Something like that." But Considering something like [Auto Pilot] was a alternative, maybe it was so out of the box to thing other super natural powers coul show up...
He spent a long while turning it over in his mind, the hours slipping by unnoticed while Han Joon-seong's chest rose and fell in steady rhythm below. Finally, he let out a breath he didn't have lungs for.
"I've decided."
He willed the purchase. One hundred points vanished from his total, and in the darkness of his disembodied space, a pill materialized above his imaginary palm, a small, round capsule, vivid green, pulsing with a soft golden light that seemed to radiate warmth without heat. He held it between two imaginary fingers, turning it this way and that, studying the way the light danced across its surface.
"Where do these things even come from? This feels exactly like some RPG system I used to play."
He stared at it for another minute, then shrugged the question away. Questions for another time. He drifted closer to Han Joon-seong's sleeping body, leaned in, and placed the pill gently between the parted lips. The body swallowed on reflex, a single unconscious motion.
The effect was immediate. The dark bruising on the forearm began to lighten, purple fading to yellow, yellow fading to healthy skin. The swelling on the hip receded like air leaking from a cushion. The foot's angry redness cooled to its natural tone. Within seconds, there was no trace that the injuries had ever existed.
Ervin observed the process with quiet wonder. "Wow. If I could sell these to the medical industry, I'd be a millionaire overnight. Something for later."
Han Joon-seong slept on, undisturbed.
---
The next morning, Han Joon-seong's eyes opened on command. Ervin, slipping smoothly into the driver's seat, directed him to reach for the phone on the nightstand. The banking app opened with a tap.
The balance had climbed. In the roughly eight hours of sleep, the account had regained about twenty thousand won. Ervin didn't have a great frame of reference for whether twenty thousand won was a lot or a little — back in his old life, twenty thousand of anything sounded impressive, but in a world where he'd just casually dropped thirty million to pay off a stranger's debt, it was hard to gauge.
He filed the number away and sent Han Joon-seong to the bathroom for a shower.
In front of the mirror, he lifted his shirt. The skin of his forearm was smooth and unblemished. The hip, likewise. The foot bore no sign of yesterday's abuse. He pressed his fingers into the flesh, feeling nothing but the normal resistance of healthy tissue. The Recovery Pill had done its work completely.
And beyond the healing, there was the other thing.
He looked at himself, really looked. The three Looks pills he had taken on the first day had reshaped him from the inside out. The layer of softness that had clung to his frame was gone, replaced by definition. he had gained some muscle after consuming the 3 pills, nor performative mass by any means, no, these were strictly for show, not much strength laid inside these fibers that now adorned his body.
Every muscle sat where it was supposed to sit, outlined with a clarity that seemed like he had been sculpted out of a marble statue rather than born among man. His belly had turned into a six pack. His jaw was sharper. His hair had became healthier and smoother. His skin had a quality to it that was hard to name but impossible to ignore. Fair, smooth, beautiful
And then there were the more private changes. Inside his pants he felt it, there was definitely some change.
He looked at his reflection and shook his head slowly. "Not even in my old life was I this... well-equipped." A beat. He shrugged it off. "Anyway. Doesn't matter. Time to test this money."
He showered, and while the water ran over him, he allowed himself a moment of vanity. He turned his head this way and that, watching the way the droplets traced the lines of his face. He flexed an arm, just to see it move. He made a face, then another, testing expressions. It was stupid. He knew it was stupid. He was also, undeniably, very pleased.
After drying off, he walked to the wardrobe and opened it. The clothes inside were the same ones from his originalld apartment, all the cheap, simple, junk he had purchased for function over form. A collection of muted grays and faded blacks. He had never cared enough to invest in anything nicer.
He pulled on a plain shirt and a pair of jeans and stepped back to the mirror. Even in these, the fit was different. The fabric sat on his frame in a way it never had before. He turned slightly, examining the line of his shoulders, and allowed himself a small smile.
"Perfect," Han Joon-seong said to his reflection. And Ervin, watching from behind, added silently: "One hundred percent worth it. I will never regret spending those points on [Looks] pills."
He turned and walked out of the apartment, his stride confident, almost buoyant.
---
The street was busy with the mid-morning crowd. Han Joon-seong walked with his hands in his pockets, his expression relaxed, but Ervin, floating invisibly behind and above, was paying attention. He heard the murmurs as he passed — a pair of young women whispering to each other on the sidewalk, their eyes following him.
"Is he a model? I feel like I've never seen him before."
"I don't know. With those looks, he's got to be someone famous, right?"
A little further on, an older woman nudged her companion and nodded in his direction with an approving raise of her eyebrows.
Ervin let the satisfaction bleed through, just a little, onto Han Joon-seong's face. The corner of his mouth tugged upward. His hand came up, casual, and ran through his hair. The motion drew a second glance from someone across the street.
"Ah, it's good to be sexy," Ervin thought, and let himself enjoy it.
He reached the convenience store and stepped inside, the automatic door chiming softly. The air conditioning was a welcome shift from the warmth outside. He walked the aisles slowly, picking up items one by one and checking their prices. A single-serving ice cream bar: 1,500 won. A packaged pastry: 1,200 won. A small bottle of yogurt drink: 1,500 won. A carton of milk: 2,500 won.
He stood in the middle of the aisle, holding the yogurt, doing mental math. Twenty million won was about fifteen thousand dollars, give or take. If he'd earned twenty thousand won in roughly eight hours of sleep, that was… he ran the numbers… around fifty dollars a day. Not bad, honestly. But at that rate, he wouldn't regenerate the full fifty million in a month.
He pulled out his phone and checked the banking app again. His eyebrows lifted. The balance had already jumped by another hundred thousand won since he'd last looked, minutes ago.
"Accelerating," he murmured, one hand coming to his chin. The math was slipping out of his grasp. He'd need more data, a full day, maybe a full week, before he could map the curve.
He decided to let it ride. He grabbed a yogurt, took it to the counter, paid, and stepped back out into the sun.
As he walked, he peeled the wrapper off a lollipop he had grabbed at the register and popped it into his mouth. The sweet, artificial strawberry flavor hit his tongue, and Han Joon-seong's face registered the taste with a small, unconscious nod of approval.
"Alright," Ervin thought. "That's enough economics for one morning. Time to find a gym. I've got attributes to grind."