There are exactly three things I trust in this world: instant ramen, anime openings, and the healing power of skipping class.
And since ramen can't get me out of trig class and anime can't erase the fact that my homeroom teacher called my mom again, that leaves me with Option C: walking out of the building like I've got a side quest waiting.
The security guard at the front gate gave me the usual side-eye. I smiled back with the confidence of a man who's watched six Isekai series and thinks he can dodge death with plot armor alone. He didn't stop me. He never does. I think he gave up somewhere around week four.
Anyway, Seoul's nicer when you're not stuck in a desk pretending imaginary numbers matter.
My feet carried me down to the edge of the subway construction site—y'know, the one the city sealed off two years ago after that whole "unexplained collapse". People say it's haunted. There were tremors, workers quit, some reporter tried to investigate and broke his leg before disappearing off the face of the earth. Classic cursed location lore.
Naturally, I brought chips.
I sat on a rusted pipe, headphones in, crunchy snack in hand. "Unravel" blasted in my ears. Fitting. If this were an anime, this is where the camera would pan up and the music would swell. The loner protagonist gazes at the horizon, totally unaware that destiny's got a baseball bat aimed at his face.
"This is the part where some dumb kid opens a cursed door and gets eaten by a ghost," I muttered to myself, flicking a chip into my mouth. "Lucky for you, I am that dumb kid."
The wind carried a chill. A storm was probably coming. Or maybe the world just had a flair for drama.
I kicked a loose rock, then wandered past the caution tape. The "Do Not Enter" signs had mostly faded, paint peeling like old skin. I followed the rusted scaffolding down a slope, past some concrete barriers, until the usual stuff turned… weird.
The air shifted. Like it got thicker somehow. And I spotted it: a half-buried service hatch behind a pile of twisted rebar. The wall around it was cracked — faint blue light pulsing in slow beats from inside.
"Huh."
The smart thing would've been to turn around. Go home. Tell nobody.
I stepped forward.
Because of course I did.
Because I'm the kind of idiot who thinks anime has taught him how to survive a cursed dungeon.
Also, because home sucks. And school sucks. And maybe, just maybe, the glowing crack in the wall had something better behind it than more lectures and leftover rice.
I pulled the hatch open.
It hissed like it was exhaling.
Darkness waited inside.
I grinned and pulled my hoodie tighter.
"Well, no turning back now."
The second I entered, the air changed — it was thicker and colder, and this weird scent that I couldn't quite place, but smelled maybe like something coppery. I took out my phone, turned on the flashlight, and walked inside.
The tunnel was narrow. Just wide enough for a single maintenance cart maybe, with wires drooping from the ceiling like the place was crying in electrical cables. My footsteps echoed a little too loud. It was like the tunnel was trying to remember what sound felt like.
About twenty meters in, my flashlight flickered.
Classic.
"Nope," I said, to no one. But I didn't stop walking, because I'm the kind of idiot who says "nope" while actively doing the thing he's nope-ing about.
The walls changed gradually. First it was just the concrete — rougher, like it had been carved by hand instead of poured. Then the carvings started.
Scales.
At least, that's what they looked like. Overlapping plate patterns, curling up the sides of the tunnel like something had dragged itself along the walls. Then wings. Teeth. A spiraling body, huge and ancient, etched like it belonged here long before Seoul ever existed.
"Okay… sure," I muttered, running my hand along the carvings. The stone was warm. Which stone isn't supposed to be, by the way. That's generally a bad sign in any horror movie or JRPG.
I rounded a corner and stopped dead.
A circular door waited in the wall ahead, maybe twice my height. Not metal — stone, again, but with veins of glowing blue threading through it like it was alive. A sigil sat in the center, cracked down the middle, faintly pulsing in time with… something. A heartbeat?
Probably mine.
I should've turned around. Taken a photo. Left.
Instead, I stepped forward and touched it.
Because bad decisions and I are in a long-term relationship.
The moment my fingers made contact, the sigil pulsed.
The tunnel shuddered.
Somewhere deep beneath my feet, a sound like a dragon exhaling echoed upward. My flashlight exploded in a burst of static. And then—
Light.
Blinding. Swallowing.
And gravity?
Gone.
My feet left the ground and I screamed — not like a cool anime protagonist scream, more like a "this isn't fun anymore" scream. My hoodie flapped around me like a parachute that didn't get the memo. I was spinning, tumbling—
"I was joking about the cursed part!!" I shouted, because that's what you do when you're sucked into a glowing vortex and regret everything.
Then the world went white.
I slammed into solid stone like a sack of wet laundry.
The air punched itself out of my lungs. My body bounced once — not gracefully — then rolled to a stop, facedown and wheezing.
"Okay," I gasped into the floor, "I'm definitely dead."
But dead people don't feel like their ribs are on fire. Or that their nose is full of dust and ancient moss. So, unfortunately, I was still alive.
Barely.
I rolled over and blinked up at the ceiling — if you could call it that. It looked less like a roof and more like a fractured sky. Above me, cracks spiderwebbed through black stone, and through them… stars?
Not Seoul's stars. These pulsed blue and red and violet, slow and steady, like they were breathing.
I sat up, groaning.
The room — chamber? altar? boss arena? — stretched out around me in a dome of silent ruin. The walls had been carved into spirals and wings and what suspiciously appeared to be dragon skulls. Vines of luminous moss stretched over the floor and crawling up enormous statues that lined the edges — each of them a different dragon, each of them tormented into a different attitude. Watching. Like taking a gothic cathedral and crashing it into a spaceship and letting it rot a few thousand years.
"Right," I muttered. "Definitely not the Seoul Metro anymore."
Everything felt too real to be a dream. The chill in the air. The sting in my elbows. The faint electric tingle in my fingertips.
And then I saw it — in the center of the room, a console. Like a terminal built into the stone itself, humming faintly with light. Symbols circled its surface like orbiting moons, shifting slightly when I moved.
It was beautiful.
Also, clearly a trap.
But if you think that stopped me, you haven't been paying attention.
I limped toward it, still breathing like I'd lost a fight to a flight of stairs, and reached out.
Bad decision number two, incoming.
The moment my fingers brushed the edge, a jolt went through me — cold and fast, like static through bone. I staggered back, but it was already happening.
Something slithered into my head. Not a sound, not a voice, but presence.
"System initializing..."
I froze.
"…Who the hell said that?"
No one else was here.
"User: Han Jihoon. Binding: forced. Congratulations, you lucky idiot."
I clutched my head. "Nope. Nope nope nope. What kind of bootleg Isekai virus just hacked my brain?"
My vision twitched.
And then I saw it — floating just in front of me, like a HUD from a janky VR game:
[YOU CAN'T HANDLE MY POWER.exe – SYSTEM INSTALLED]
Side Effects: Confusion, sarcasm, sudden death. Enjoy!
The words faded, but the voice in my head stayed. Sarcastic. Unbothered. Vaguely British?
"Tutorial start. Objective: Survive."
That felt way too ominous.
A low rumble groaned through the ruin. Something massive shifted above me. The statues started cracking. The air itself turned electric.
"Oh great," I said. "Love a game with zero difficulty curve."
One of the dragon statues snapped at the neck — no movement, no warning. Just cracked stone and crumbling silence.
Then the floor tilted.
"Moving now," I muttered, sprinting. "We're moving."
The console behind me sparked and spit molten glyphs into the air. Runes warped and blurred. A siren — yes, an actual siren — screamed from the walls, like a magical nuke was about to go off.
"Warning: Ruin integrity failing. You may want to consider running. Just a suggestion."
"Gee, thanks."
A pillar exploded. I jumped over it and landed badly on my ankle. Fire hissed from a vent beside me.
[HP: 17%]
[Status Effect: Singed Ego]
My breath burned in my throat. I coughed, eyes stinging, limbs shaking. Something huge groaned above me.
"You're doing horribly, by the way."
I half-crawled, half-limped across the rubble, and tripped onto a raised platform just as the floor behind me gave out.
The platform flared with light the second my body touched it.
[System Sync: 47% → 83% → 99%...]
Runes spiraled around me like orbiting stars. The voice in my head got quieter — not gone, just... bracing.
"Unstable release imminent. Try not to die."
"Oh yeah? How about you try being the one flung into a boss room with no pants upgrade?!"
The light exploded.
Heat, static, energy — all of it rushed into my bones like I'd been plugged into a divine socket.
The last thing I felt before passing out was the system's cheerful little sign-off:
"Skill installation complete. Status: Technically Not Dead."
I woke up falling.
Which, let me tell you, is not the ideal way to start your day. Or your afterlife. Or your interdimensional misadventure — whatever this counted as.
Wind screamed past my ears. My hoodie flapped like a dying kite. Somewhere below me: trees, cliffs, glowing rivers, floating islands like something out of a high-budget anime. Somewhere above me: three moons and a storm punching holes through the clouds like it was mad at the sky itself.
I had exactly one coherent thought before gravity reminded me I wasn't built for flight.
"AAAAAAAAAAGHHHHH—"
"System Skill Triggered: [Feathercrash]."
"…Feather what—?"
A pulse of silvery light exploded below me, slowing my descent just enough for it to still hurt. I hit something wet, skipped across it like a rock on a pond, and belly-flopped into what I could only assume was a shallow lake.
It was majestic. Graceful. Beautiful, even.
I emerged from the water coughing like a half-drowned cat.
[HP: 9%]
"Welcome, Han Jihoon. Try not to die. Again."
I wheezed, faceplanting into the mud. "Even my hallucinations have attitude."
My entire body throbbed. Every limb protested. I dragged myself onto the shore, flopped onto my back, and stared up at a sky that made no sense.
Three moons. Purple stars. An island floating above me, covered in glowing trees that looked like they'd been pulled out of a dream.
"Okay," I whispered to nobody. "I've officially lost it."
But it didn't feel like a dream. Not in the way dreams do — all soft edges and fading logic. This was sharp. Real. The water was cold. The mud soaked through my hoodie. My bruises felt like they'd taken out a mortgage on my soul.
I glanced at my reflection in the lake. Scratched face. Burned sleeves. Eyes red from wind and smoke and whatever else I'd been through. I didn't look like someone who belonged here.
Wherever here was.
[Achievement Unlocked: Accidental Skydiver]
Reward: Nothing. Maybe stop throwing yourself through portals.
I groaned and flopped back down.
"…Great. Isekai'd by a cursed subway tunnel and babysat by a Windows XP virus with a superiority complex."
The moons kept drifting above me. The lake was faintly glowing, reflecting new constellations I had never seen. For just a moment, lying there half-dead and fully confused…
…it was almost beautiful.
Night fell fast here.
Not a sunset. Just a blink, and suddenly the world was washed in violet shadows. The moons hung low and quiet, casting silver light on the grass around me.
I lay there, too tired to move, staring at stars I didn't recognize.
"So that happened," I said.
The system was quiet now. No sarcastic voice. No pop-ups. Just silence.
Almost peaceful.
Until the trees rustled.
Not wind. Not small. Something big. Graceful. Heavy.
The hairs on my neck stood up. I didn't move. Just breathed. Quiet. Careful.
Whatever it was — it was watching me. I couldn't see it. But I felt it. Like a thought behind a locked door. A weight in the air.
And whatever it was…
…it wasn't human.
📘 Author's Note Chapter 1 is done. Jihoon survived (barely).
Now let's settle something important:
🗳️ What nearly killed Jihoon the most?
1️⃣ Gravity – betrayed by physics.
2️⃣ The System – definitely cursed.
3️⃣ Ancient ruins – collapsing on sight.
4️⃣ His own life choices.
5️⃣ Yes.
Vote in the comments. Or don't. The system is judging you either way.
Next chapter drops soon — assuming Jihoon doesn't die again. 😅