Under the flickering neon of Neo-Seoul that pulsed like the heartbeat of a city that never sleeps, the night market in Kyeong-Min District throbbed from every direction: the smell of grilled kimchi mixed with frying oil, the metallic clinks of survival-gear vendors, and the bargaining shouts of kid players hawking rare drops from last night's run. Near a narrow alley whose walls were plastered with guild posters and ads for the Cosmic Arena, a small Gate tore a hole in the air like a puncture wound. From its mouth came thick green smoke, a cold breath smelling of wet earth, and a low hum that made the shop windows tremble.
Raihan Kwon stood casually at the edge of that opening with both hands in his pockets, eyes half-closed while a multicolored ribbon he wore—a souvenir from a Level D raid a week ago—fluttered in the wind. He wore a thin leather jacket, compression pants, and sneakers that had been modified: non-slip soles once patented by a guildmate more mechanic than human. His hair was messy. His smile, if you could call it that, looked like someone who'd just heard a joke only he understood.
Inside the Gate, a hulking shadow rumbled: hoof-thick claws, scales gleaming like old pots, jaws lined with rows of sharp teeth. The monster's eyes were red, like traffic lights in a foggy night.
"Regular market boss," someone across the alley muttered. "Level C. Meteorite Drake. No problem for any elite team… unless it humiliates us."
Raihan turned, pressed a finger to his lips as if telling them to keep quiet. He stepped forward with a gait that betrayed neither brutality nor tension—more like someone walking up to enjoy a skewer. From his waist a small pouch made a sound—the honk of a carnival plastic horn.
What came out this time was not the clamor of strategy you'd expect when someone confronted a monster. No sharpening of tactics, no glittering attribute buffs. He opened his mouth and, with the salesmanship honed from haggling in traditional markets, said: "Bro, let's negotiate first, yeah?"
---
Raihan had a habit: whenever he faced a big opponent, he treated them like a person you could reason with. People laughed the first time they saw him haggle with a dragon. Many called it blasphemy against heroism—or at least an insult to the aesthetics of battle. But there was something that couldn't be denied: he always succeeded.
By every right, the Meteorite Drake should have rampaged when a human stood at the mouth of its Gate chewing ice cream. It lifted its head, sniffed the air, and roared. That roar was a frequency that could shatter bone if you lacked an anti-sonic buff. But, whether by ritual or karma, it stopped when it heard the word "negotiate."
Raihan set his ice cream down—a prime durian flavor. He bent so their eyes were at the same level. "Listen, My Scaled Brother," he began in a low voice sweet as a shop promoter's. "I know you're pissed because your egg got stolen by an amateur scientist in the Basement Gate next door. But, bro, look. If you help us, I can give you compensation. I've got… a fifty-percent discount voucher for that rare fish shop. How about it?"
For a moment the gathered crowd fell silent. Some young Players tried to hold back laughter until it nearly burst. On a small screen displayed on a spectator's sleeve, comments flew: "Plot twist!" "He's seriously bargaining with a dragon?" "Raihan's at it again, haha."
The Meteorite Drake sniffed again, its teeth scraping rock with a rough sound, then… it sniffed at the voucher. Close enough that the smell of plastic and printer ink reached its nostrils. It lowed—a sound closer to a bored cat—and inclined its head.
Raihan grinned. In his pouch were items known as market artifacts: not legendary dungeon drops, but promotional trinkets from Neo-Seoul shops. A retro snail magnet; a bottle of sauce that lit up when touched; and—most importantly—a scrap of fabric from a Level-B merchant's cloak that many market vendors believed brought luck to its owner.
He offered the trembling-handed scrap. "Here, bro. This is what you like. No one will touch your egg again. I promise."
Among the crowd, a little kid just learning to read held a tablet and typed: "Raihan selling luck. Price? Heart." Then a star-shaped laughing emoji. Everyone laughed—except for two pairs of eyes watching from afar—eyes encased in a soft, starry glow like a little sky screen; those weren't people. Those were Constellations watching.
---
Constellations watched in their own way: not with physical eyes but like opera-goers behind a cosmic curtain; their remarks ticked across a tiny sky only cosmic entities could see. Some placed bets: a few found Raihan amusing; some dismissed him. A few logged statistics: Player Kwon, Raihan — Kill rate: absurd; Engagement: viral; Variability: high.
"The Laughing Star," long fond of odd entertainments, chuckled like a child hearing a merry tune. "Oh, look. That clown is making a dragon negotiate. Free entertainment."
"A good show," whispered another entity, a voice like an echo inside a metal tube. "But the stats disrupt the narrative. How far will he exceed expectations?"
Those voices did not reach human ears, except one: the ear meant for the absurd. Raihan caught a slight vibration of those comments—a warm sensation like a small review on the head that made the hairs on his neck stand up. He shrugged, beamed a wide smile, and chose to open the bottle of sauce he'd brought.
"I'll give a discount," he told the dragon, which then bowed improperly like a shopkeeper taking a bribe. "But you gotta close that door from the inside. Don't make trouble in the market anymore, yeah? If you don't cooperate, I'll just pull the voucher and sell it to a street vendor. They love unique stuff."
The Meteorite Drake watched closely, then flapped its small, cracked-glass-like wings and, with a slow movement, partly closed the Gate's mouth. Green smoke flowed out like water from a tightened tap. The air cooled. The crowd cheered—partly in relief, partly in sarcasm.
A young man with a guild logo plastered to his shoulder—face flushed, pride wounded—said, "He's bargaining with a dragon. Did we just lose to… haggling?"
Raihan bowed his head, pointed to the voucher, and said, "Eating a voucher can make dragon breath smell nice. Not kidding. Dragons have tastes too, bro."
Laughter erupted again. Amateur cameras filmed, and people paid for clips labeled: 'Raihan vs Drake: Negotiation Edition'. Within minutes, the video tags hit thousands. In the corner of small screens, some fan accounts dropped emojis: clown hat, stars, and the word LEGEND.
---
In a world where Gates could spew two hundred ghoul soldiers at once and Players carved reputations with blood and strategy, Raihan sold their disappointment back to them as comedy. It was a kind of craft not everyone understood.
After Drake partially closed the Gate, Raihan did something even more absurd: he opened a small box he'd brought, set it on the ground, and turned its knob like winding a music box. A mechanical laugh spilled out—an artificial chuckle made of river shells, gears, and a tiny motor.
That laugh spread through the air like the scent of flowers. The monster that had just closed the door lifted its head again, stared blankly for a moment, and then—whether from nostalgia or an environmental bug—imitated the laugh with a hoarse voice that made some people scream in fright. At the same time, a group of daring teens tried to point their cameras at the dragon, hoping to capture a viral moment. One camera fell and shattered—the broken glass glittering like a falling star—and when the sound of the camera cracking joined the mechanical laugh, an odd thing happened: the Gate emitted a harmless pink glow, like a stadium neon.
"I said, if you become a dragon influencer, we can arrange a content collab," Raihan said as he picked up the broken camera and handed it to a gadget vendor. "Eh, free repair, bro. Don't forget to tag me."
The gadget vendor half laughed, half bewildered, taking the camera that was clearly no longer 'reel ready'. Everyone knew: this logic wasn't coincidence. It was method.
---
When everything was settled—or at least settled enough for the market to breathe again and the kids to return to playing—Raihan strolled to a small café at the market corner called The Broken Compass. He sat without ordering anything, switched on his phone whose screen overflowed with notifications—250 comments, 700 shares, 12 private messages from local news accounts. He rubbed his jaw.
While waiting, he opened an app: Arena Feed. The app that could make Players into celebrities or scandals; it tracked stats, ratings, interactions. The screen showed a graph—spiking sharply in a small section, labeled: Viral: Negotiation vs Drake. A rare purple notification blinked: Constellation Reaction. Usually only one or two small reactions appeared, but this time the indicator flickered like a warning light.
Raihan shrugged. He remembered a friend's advice: "If you're famous, you have to pay an attention tax." He chuckled to himself, rolled up his jacket sleeves, and propped his elbow on the table. Across from him, a barista set down a cup of black coffee fragrant with spices. The coffee was hot, slightly bitter, with a sweet bitterness underneath—like the life he led. He sipped.
Outside the café, beyond the neon clouds, something shifted: a small sign in the sky, a point of light that glowed oddly—not a star, not a satellite. It seemed to… laugh, though laughing in the language of stars, a sound that made space vibrate faintly inside Raihan's head.
He closed his eyes for a moment. A warm feeling washed over him. He pictured several Constellations—entities often depicted in literature as gods, audience members, investors from other dimensions—busy placing bets. Some find him amusing. Some find him dangerous. But the entertaining one? That was The Laughing Star.
Meanwhile, the serious guilds watched from afar: on big screens around the city the clip of Raihan played, comments flowed not only from ordinary accounts but from major guilds. Some called him a novelty; some called him a risk to the proper narrative. A man in a suit with a guild emblem—Gideon Park—furrowed his brow as he watched the scene on a monitor in his headquarters, his face lit by blue light. Gideon tapped the table lightly—not in pain, but because his pride had been pricked.
"How did this happen?" Gideon muttered. "Who gave him the screen? Who gave him an audience?"
In the Cosmic Arena, among auroral ripples that could map emotions, a whisper ran through the zones: "That unpredictable Player… is disrupting the formula." Others answered: "Maybe he brings the variation we need." As usual, Constellations behaved like giant showrunners—picking characters, handing out gifts, and sometimes cutting them when the scene turned unpleasant.
Raihan, in the café corner, shrugged as if he'd just ruffled a cat. He looked at his phone: positive comments, jeers, and a few private messages from strangers asking to be taught how to 'sweet-talk a dragon.'
He typed a short reply to one that read: "How are you so calm?" He wrote: "Good coffee + a stuffed dragon = calm." Then he added a silly emoji: clown hat.
A news drone landed a few blocks away, delivering an invitation card. The card shimmered with a flashy material—an invite to next month's biggest charity guild event. There would be skill exhibitions, duel exhibitions. If he wanted, he could join and maybe—just maybe—get a sponsor. Sponsorship, however, came with a condition: presentable behavior.
Raihan folded the card, studied it for a moment, and slipped it into his pocket—not because he wanted to look tidy, but because it was a funny accessory: an organizer's card that somehow felt like a free meal coupon.
---
That night, after city patrols cleared the last of the smoke and vendors began to close their stalls, a small rumor spread among those who lived on the margins: that odd symbols had appeared around the Gate when Drake partly closed it. A thin glowing line, like a neon sticker shaped like an alien letter. Some kids noted the line almost resembled a smiling star—but busier, more hypnotic.
A little girl covered her mouth as she passed and pointed to the sky. "Look, it's laughing," she told her mother.
Her mother just smoothed the girl's scarf, patted her neck, and said, "Naughty child. It's only lights. Don't believe old stories."
Yet beneath the dismissive surface there was a subtle vibration—as if something had been marked. A center of attention was forming. The small laugh—the one that left a warm echo in Raihan's head—did not disappear. It reverberated in his thoughts, making him want to wind another music box or do some other foolish thing, just to see what would happen.
When he finally returned to his compact rental—a tiny room that doubled as bedroom, wardrobe, and storage—he placed the voucher, the cloth scrap, and the camera fragment on his small table. He turned on a lamp that chimed like a little bell. On the wall he had stuck a poster he'd made himself that read: "Raihan Kwon — Negotiation Specialist (part time)." He smiled at it like someone who'd just bumped the status quo and found it amusing.
Outside, Neo-Seoul's sky rolled. City lights shimmered in puddles, and a billboard near the main road flashed a headline: "NEGOTIATION HERO OR NUISANCE? RAIHAN GOES VIRAL." Under it, user comments: "Our hero needs humor." and "Kick him out of the guilds."
Raihan closed his eyes, clasped his phone, and heard once more—very faint, like a sound from beyond ordinary reach—that laughter. Again he smiled. Not because he craved fame, but because he always had a backup plan: if everyone got mad, he'd open a comedy stall.
He opened a small shelf, pulled out rolls of colored tape and a set of tiny masks, put one on, and lay down on the bed. He whispered to himself half-jokingly, "Tomorrow, we'll make new content: How to Sweet-Talk an SSS."
The city's heart beat on. Gates still hummed in the distance. In the sky, something small but unmistakably bright winked, like an audience eye finding a new favorite.
And somewhere above it all, in the countless seats of a cosmic theater, voices shifted tone: some laughed, some took notes. One voice, growing clearer, said softly, like a promise of the unexpected: "Let's see how much color he can bring to this story."
In his cramped room, Raihan drifted off; his breathing slowed. He didn't—yet—know what all that attention meant. He only knew: today had been fun. Ice cream, a voucher, and a mechanical laugh. That was enough for the night.
Outside, city lights swept the streets. In the sky, the smiling star winked once more, then rotated gently like a child finishing applause. And as he slept, the echo of that laughter remained in Raihan's head—warm, teasing, like an invitation.
A small, subtle cliffhanger: on the phone he'd left on the table, a new notification from the Constellation system—direct, not from the general feed—blinked with one word: "Observed."