The notification appeared at exactly 11:59 PM.
A soft chime echoed through the silent apartment, light and pleasant. It sounded like something meant to relax users, not scare them.
Across the room, a man froze.
His name was Jae Risk. Twenty-six. Freelance graphic designer. Debt balance: 4,820 Debt Points.
The glow from his phone reflected in his wide, shaking eyes. Sweat clung to his temple and slowly rolled down his cheek. His fingers hovered over the screen like he was afraid touching it would make everything worse.
The message reflected in bright crimson text.
INSTALLMENT DEADLINE: 60 SECONDS REMAINING
"No… no… I completed three missions today…" he whispered, his voice cracking like dry paper tearing.
His thumb moved quickly, scrolling through his dashboard. His breathing grew uneven, almost wheezing as panic squeezed his chest.
Transaction History. Mission Logs. Failed Conversion Requests.
Each page confirmed the same truth. He was short. Thirty-two Debt Points short.
His throat tightened painfully. He swallowed but it felt like he was swallowing broken glass.
"System… please…" he scraped, pressing the appeal button again. His hands trembled so badly he almost dropped the phone.
The screen flickered for a moment, like it was thinking, deciding whether he deserved mercy.
Then the message appeared: APPEAL DENIED.
Jaemin stared at it, unmoving, like his mind refused to understand what he was seeing. Then his knees buckled, and he collapsed onto the hardwood floor. The phone slipped from his fingers and skidded across the room.
His chest rose and fell rapidly as he crawled toward it, dragging himself across the floor like his body had forgotten how to stand.
The timer continued.
00:00:42
"I can still do something… there has to be another mission… another option…" he muttered, his voice breaking into uneven whispers.
He grabbed the phone again, his fingers hovered over the screen, sweat slicking his palms. Panic squeezed his chest, each shallow breath sharper than the last. The apartment looked normal, cheap furniture, empty takeout boxes, but he could barely register it.
"Someone… help me…" he whispered, though he didn't know who he was asking.
Outside his apartment there's a distant noise, a proof that life moved on quietly, despite the chaos in someone else's life. His apartment light flickered once, then went dark.
00:00:21
A new message appeared.
EXECUTION PROTOCOL INITIATED
Jaemin screamed. Or at least, he tried to, but no sound came out.
His throat clenched tightly, locking his voice inside his body. His mouth opened wide in silent terror. His chest convulsed as he struggled to breathe.
His shadow stretched unnaturally across the wall, twisting upward as if invisible hands were pulling it. Pain shot through his chest like knives. Vision blurred. Heartbeat skipped. Then—Stopped.
The phone screen went dark. The apartment lights returned to normal brightness as if nothing had happened. Jaemin's body lay still on the floor, his eyes frozen wide open, staring at a ceiling that no longer existed for him.
Across the city…
Six floors above a crowded neon intersection, another screen displayed the same event from a different angle.
Sylus leaned back slowly in his chair, watching the biometric readings flatten into a single unmoving line.
The room he was in was dark except for the glow of multiple monitors arranged in a curved wall before him. Each screen displayed different streams of data, live player feeds, debt balances, contract progress, execution logs, system traffic reports.
The faint sound of processors filled the air like a mechanical heartbeat.
Sylus hasn't blinked in an hour. He simply reached forward and typed a command.
Player 004812 – Contract Fulfilled.
His fingers paused above the keyboard for a brief moment. His jaw tightened slightly, almost unnoticeable. Then he leaned back again, exhaling slowly through his nose.
"They agreed to the terms," he murmured quietly to himself.
His voice sounded calm and practiced. Like he had repeated that sentence so many times it had become automatic. Below the execution confirmation, another statistic updated in real time.
GLOBAL PLAYER COUNT: 1,842,991
The number ticked upward again. And again. And again.
Sylus stared at it silently. The reflection of the growing number flickered across his eyes. His face remained expressionless, but a faint crease formed between his brows. The growth rate was exceeding his original projections. That should have been satisfying.
Instead, it made something uncomfortable settle in his chest. His gaze drifted away from the monitors toward a framed photograph resting beside his keyboard. It was slightly dusty, like it hadn't been touched in a long time.
The photo showed a younger Sylus standing beside a hospital bed. He looked thinner, smaller, his shoulders tense as if he had learned too early how heavy responsibility felt.
Beside him sat a woman with tired but gentle eyes. She smiled weakly at the camera, her hand resting over Sylus' smaller one.
Hospital machines surrounded her. Wires and monitors and tubes that beeped softly in the background of the captured moment. In the far corner of the photograph stood another figure. Barely visible.
A man whose presence felt blurred, like he was already fading out of their lives even while standing there. Sylus stared at the image longer than he intended to.
His hand moved slowly. He turned the photograph face down. The room felt quieter after that. Behind him, one of the monitors flickered.
Sylus frowned slightly, turning his chair toward it.
The system interface glitched for less than a second. The clean black dashboard distorted into twisted shapes. The text stretched like it was breathing. The layout twisted into something that looked almost organic… almost alive.
Then a message appeared, the font was wrong. The spacing was wrong. The color vibrated in a deep, unnatural crimson that looked thicker than normal light.
REGRET HARVEST SUCCESSFUL.
Sylus froze. His fingers hovered over his keyboard, unmoving.
"…That wasn't part of the code," he said under his breath.
His voice sounded softer now, less certain. Before he could trace the source, the message vanished. The screen returned to the normal dashboard. Exactly how he had designed it.
System Integrity: Stable
Execution Logs: Updated
Player Statistics: Active
Everything appeared perfect.
Yet a cold sensation lingered in his chest, crawling slowly under his ribs like something unseen had brushed against his heart.
Sylus leaned closer to the screen, scanning lines of code and backend logs. His eyes moved rapidly, searching for unauthorized commands or foreign scripts.
Nothing.
Every command traced back to legitimate system processes. Everything belonged to him.
And yet…
His hand hovered over the emergency shutdown command, a feature he had installed during development but never used. He stared at it for several seconds. The cursor blinked patiently beside the command line.
Then he slowly pulled his hand back.
Outside his apartment window, neon lights reflected against the glass, painting faint red streaks across his face. The city was busy, completely unaware of the invisible system spreading quietly through thousands of devices, contracts forming with every tap and swipe.
Sylus leaned back in his chair again, folding his arms loosely across his chest. His eyes returned to the rising player count.
1,843,204
Another update notification chimed softly somewhere among the monitors. Another player accepted a contract. Another debt began growing.
For a moment, Sylus closed his eyes. Just for a moment. Then he opened them again, his expression returning to its usual calm stillness.