Chapter 1 THE INTEGRITY ERROR
The humidity in Seoul wasn’t just the weather. It was a weight — a thick, suffocating blanket that pressed against the back of Minjun’s neck and turned the construction site mud into a sticky paste that coated his skin, his teeth, and the inside of his nose.
He balanced on a rusted steel beam thirty feet above the flooded alley near the Han River. Below him, the makeshift shanties of Guryong Village spread like a dirty reef built from corrugated metal sheets, blue tarps, and scavenged scaffolding. The water below was dark and oily, reflecting nothing but the faint glow of distant Gangnam skyscrapers.
“Don’t move, you little bastard,” Minjun whispered.
The target: a half-buried lithium battery pack wedged inside the crushed casing of an old delivery drone. The drone itself was tangled in rebar and twisted scaffolding, hanging precariously off the edge of a half-collapsed illegal extension. One wrong move and the whole thing would plunge into the muddy water, and Minjun would go home empty-handed again.
He reached out with manual pliers. His hands were steady. They had to be. In this line of work, a single tremor meant another night without food or a new hospital bill he couldn’t afford.
Clink.
The pliers nipped the corroded wire. The battery pack hummed faintly — low and dying — and its indicator light blinked a weak blue.
“Gotcha.”
The steel beam groaned.
Not slowly. It was a sharp, violent crack, the sound metal makes right before it stops being a beam and becomes scrap. Minjun felt it in his boots before he heard it in his ears.
“Minjun! Jump!”
Jiho’s voice rose from the ground below. Already too late.
The beam snapped.
The world tilted. Gravity seized him by the gut and yanked hard. He had no breath to scream. He could only watch the faint blue light of the battery pack float upward — away from him — as he fell toward the dark, filthy water.
I’m going to die for a worthless battery pack. A stupid thought. A logical one.
Then everything stopped.
Not just the fall. Everything.
Rain droplets hung suspended in the air like cheap glass beads. Jiho on the wet concrete below had become a statue, mouth frozen mid-shout. The distant hum of scooters, the blaring horns, the slap of rain on tarps — all gone. Silence rang in his ears like a struck bell.
A plain white box appeared in front of his face. Simple. No glow, no drama. It looked like a cheap phone notification.
[CRITICAL INTEGRITY ERROR DETECTED]
[Target: Human_Subject_01 (Minjun)]
[Status: Terminal_Velocity]
[System Intervention Required. Granting Administrator Access...]
Minjun blinked. His heart hammered wildly, but his body refused to move. Nothing would.
“What…” His voice sounded distorted, like it was playing through a broken speaker. “What is this?”
[Access Granted. Select Attribute to Edit.]
A clean blue cursor appeared in his field of vision. It hovered over his own body, and a context menu dropped down, listing his stats like he was nothing more than broken inventory.
[Target: Minjun]
[Attributes:]
• [ Velocity: 54 m/s ]
• [ Mass: 72 kg ]
• [ Bone Density: Normal ]
• [ Fear: 98% ]
He stared at [Velocity]. His days were spent fixing machines — tightening loose belts, slowing spinning fans that threatened to fly apart. The number 54 felt familiar, like any other reading on any other broken thing.
Modify it, he thought. Make it zero.
[Editing...]
[New Velocity: 0 m/s]
The white box vanished.
WHAM.
The world snapped back into motion with brutal force. Five feet above the muddy water, Minjun hung suspended in mid-air, as if the rain itself had turned solid. The impact jolted up his spine, making his teeth ache, but he was breathing. He was alive.
He stood there unsteadily, his feet twitching just above the rippling puddles.
“Minjun?” Jiho’s voice shook as he stared up from the ground, eyes wide with terror. “How… how are you standing on air? Did you steal some kind of delivery drone stabilizer? Where did you get that?!”
Minjun said nothing. The blue cursor still floated at the edge of his vision. He looked at the ruined delivery drone — now half-sunk in the mud — and felt an instinctive pull in his mind, like reaching for a familiar tool on his belt.
[INSPECT]
Delivery Drone Model-4 (Ruined): [Target].
[Attributes:]
• [ Material: Aluminum/Plastic ]
• [ Damage: 94% ]
• [ Value: ₩8,000 ]
He focused on [Damage]. It felt like a handle waiting to be gripped.
Cut.
[Command: CUT]
[Characteristic 'Damage' written to Clipboard (Slot 1/2)]
The drone changed. Twisted metal straightened. Rust and dents simply vanished. The casing became smooth and glossy, the exposed wiring clean and intact. The machine looked brand new — factory fresh.
[Target: Delivery Drone Model-4 (Mint)]
[Value: ₩1,800,000]
Minjun’s breath caught.
One point eight million won. More money than his father had earned in three years of back-breaking labor. Enough to escape the village. Enough to buy a real chance.
He had simply erased an error. That was all.
“Minjun! Before the task force notices, get down!” Jiho hissed, already moving along the slippery path.
Minjun stepped forward. His foot met solid air. He accepted it as normal and dropped the last five feet into the shallow, muddy water. He quickly grabbed the drone’s sturdy frame.
Cold. Real.
“Help me get this inside,” he said quietly.
“Inside where?” Jiho stared at the pristine drone, eyes wide. “That thing looks brand new. If anyone sees us with tech this clean, the task force will call us thieves and beat us half to death.”
“Just help me carry it to my place. Lock the door. And Jiho — not even your older sister.”
---
The shack was tiny — barely four meters square — built from scavenged plywood and plastic sheets. It smelled of old grease, sweat, and damp. Inside, the gleaming delivery drone looked completely out of place, like a diamond dropped in a pile of coal.
Minjun sat on a low plastic stool. A heavy, monotonous ache was already building behind his eyes.
He had to see it again.
[INSPECT]
The menu returned. At the bottom of his vision, a thin red line pulsed slowly.
[Stamina: 42%]
[Note: High-level edits consume neural energy. Rest is recommended.]
“Neural energy…” Minjun said flatly. “It’s using me as a battery.”
He glanced at the scrap pile on his table — busted circuit boards, warped copper wiring, and a cracked smartphone screen from years ago. Maybe worth ₩15,000 on a good day if he found the right buyer.
The [Damage] he had cut earlier sat in his mind like something dark and oily. He could feel it. He picked up Jiho’s old handheld radio — the only way they sometimes caught news from the outer districts.
Paste.
[Command: PASTE]
[Applying Attribute: Damage (94%)]
Crr-ack.
The radio twisted and melted. The plastic casing bubbled and burned as if thrown into a furnace. The speaker fused into a grey lump, and shards of the broken screen sliced into Minjun’s palm.
“Hey! That was my radio!”
Minjun dropped the ruined device. Blood welled from his hand, but the pain felt distant, muted.
[Attribute Applied Successfully.]
[Clipboard: Empty.]
“I’ll get you a new one,” Minjun said. “A hundred new ones.”
“With what money? You just destroyed the only thing we had left!”
Minjun nodded toward the gleaming drone. “With that. We sell it. Get a real room — one with a proper door and a floor that isn’t mud.”
Jiho stared at the ruined radio, then at the perfect drone. He swallowed hard. “Minjun… what the hell happened back there? Did you hit your head?”
“I didn’t hit my head.” Minjun stood up. Something cold and hard had taken root inside him. His whole life he had been just another piece of scrap pushed around by the current. Now he realized there were too many errors in the world.
And he was the only one who could press Delete.
The rain hammered harder against the plastic roof. In the distance, task force sirens wailed through the night.
Minjun sat back down, ignoring the growing ache in his skull, and opened the menu again. This time he looked at himself.
[Target: Minjun]
[Attributes:]
• [ Status: Malnourished ]
• [ Occupation: Scrapper ]
• [ Bank Balance: ₩180 ]
He moved the cursor to [Bank Balance]. It was greyed out.
[Error: Insufficient Permissions. Level 1 Administrators cannot modify financial databases.]
“Okay,” he muttered. “The hard way.”
He stared at the cut on his palm.
[Target: Laceration]
[Attribute: Pain]
Cut.
The sting vanished instantly. The wound was still there, blood still seeping, but the pain had become irrelevant data. He wrapped the hand in a dirty rag and stood.
“Jiho. Cart. Black market. Before sunrise.”
“It’s already past three! The Crows will be out hunting!”
“Let them come.” Minjun picked up a heavy iron pipe from the corner. “I want to see what happens to a man’s heartbeat when I cut it.”
Jiho moved without argument. Something in Minjun’s voice killed any protest before it could form. It was no longer the voice of a struggling scrapper.
It was the voice of a man who had stopped playing the game and had started reading the source code.
---
