Picking teams, at the end of the day, wasn't much different from haggling over produce at a market.
The moment the intercom announced game three was a team event, the atmosphere in the dormitory shifted in about three seconds flat. The dead, every-man-for-himself silence cracked open and was replaced by something new—connections between people, bristling with thorns. The strong were selecting. The weak were being selected. The leftovers sat in corners waiting for random assignment, and what "random assignment" meant inside a death game didn't need explaining.
Kang Dae moved first.
His selection criteria were as simple as they were crude: big frame, can fight, does what he's told. He stood in the center of the dormitory, pointed his finger into the crowd, and whoever he pointed at walked over. The ones who didn't walk voluntarily got "persuaded" by the henchmen flanking him. Inside half an hour, his team had about a dozen—wall-to-wall muscle, standing together like a barricade made of human bodies.
He paused when he passed Jiang Han's bunk.
Tilted his head. Looked him over, top to bottom—one-seventy-eight, lean build, no obvious muscle definition, long fingers that didn't belong to anyone who'd done manual labor.
"You. 099."
Jiang Han looked up at him.
"That night, someone hurt one of my guys. Your side of the room."
"It was dark. Hard to tell who bumped into who."
Kang Dae held the stare for three seconds. The calculation behind his eyes was transparent—was it worth making a scene at this particular juncture? The answer was clearly no. He grunted and turned away.
"Too scrawny. Pass."
His crew laughed. One of them added: "Don't worry, 099. We'll watch you die from above."
Jiang Han's expression didn't change. He waited until they were well past his row before pulling his gaze off their backs.
Rejected. Good. I wasn't planning to join you anyway.
The remaining pool was the leftovers—"leftovers" meaning everyone who hadn't passed the only screening criterion that mattered in Kang Dae's world, which was body mass.
Jiang Han stood up and started recruiting.
First—Yoon Seo.
She was sitting on her bunk. Saw him coming. Didn't ask a single question, just stood and followed. The "we can work together" from before, cashed in now, no extra conversation required.
Second—199, Sergeant Ma.
Former military, old injury in his right leg, slight limp in his walk. But his eyes were the steadiest thing Jiang Han had seen in this entire dormitory—the kind of calm that settled into a person after real combat, something no amount of gym time could replicate. Jiang Han walked up to him, skipped the pleasantries: "Team game. You in?"
Ma sized him up. Probably running the same assessment Kang Dae had—but using a different set of criteria.
"What's your plan?"
"Team game. Don't know the rules. But whatever the rules are, calm people outlast reckless ones."
Ma was silent for two seconds. Then he nodded.
Third—218, Park the accountant.
He was crouched in the corner of his bunk, wearing a replacement pair of glasses scrounged from some dead player's belongings, one lens cracked down the middle. When he saw Jiang Han approaching, his first reflex was to flinch backward—after being roughed up by Kang Dae's crew, anyone walking toward him triggered alarm.
"I'm not here to hit you." Jiang Han crouched to eye level. "In the candy game, you stared at the star for a full minute before starting. What were you calculating?"
Park pushed his cracked glasses up. The fracture line cut a crooked lightning bolt across the lens. "Optimal insertion angle for each point. Fracture threshold of caramel at varying thicknesses."
"Join the team."
Park hesitated. "But... I can't fight. And I'm not strong."
"This game might not be about fighting."
He hesitated again. Then he stood up.
Fourth—001, the old man.
This one Jiang Han needed beside him. Not out of trust—out of surveillance. He needed to watch the old man's every move at close range, especially during a game.
But before he could walk over, the old man came to him first.
Strolling. Hands clasped behind his back. That trademark gentle smile fixed to his face, like a man taking a turn through a park. He stopped in front of Jiang Han, tilted his head.
"Young man, I'll join your team."
The tone wasn't a request. It was a notification.
Jiang Han looked at him, thinking of the words from a few hours ago: You know things, don't you? The old man choosing to join his team—simple friendliness, or something with more intent behind it?
Didn't matter. Jiang Han wanted to watch the old man; the old man wanted to watch him. Both sides carrying their own agendas—better face-to-face than back-to-back.
"Welcome."
The old man smiled, nodded, and found an empty stool to sit on.
Beyond those four, three more drifted over on their own. A quiet middle-aged woman, number 200, who wore the tracksuit the way someone used to aprons and kitchen counters would—awkwardly, like a costume. Two men in their early twenties, unremarkable but at least not broken. And a tall, thin boy who looked like a college student, spoke with a stammer, but had unusually long fingers, the kind you'd see on a pianist.
Nine people total. If the team game required ten—one short.
"This'll do for now," Jiang Han said. "If we need a tenth, we deal with it on-site."
He gathered everyone into a clear patch near the corner of the dormitory and kept his voice low for a brief huddle.
Ma spoke first: "We don't know the rules. How do we prepare?"
"We can't prepare for the rules. But we can prepare ourselves." Jiang Han scanned each face, spending half a second on each—who was listening, who was panicking, who had stopped thinking and was just following on autopilot. "Three things."
"First. When we enter the arena, whatever you see, stay calm. If you can't manage calm, then shut up. Don't make a sound. Panic is contagious—one person loses it, the whole team collapses."
"Second. Everyone's eyes are useful. You watch left, she watches right, he watches above. Each person covers a different direction and shares what they see immediately. One person's field of vision is narrow. Nine people can cover an entire arena."
"Third. Trust chain. If someone yells 'stop' or 'move,' everyone obeys instantly, no questioning. Hesitating for one second in the field is enough time to die three times over. Save the debates for after the game—assuming you're still alive."
Park pushed his cracked glasses up. "Sounds like basic military squad coordination."
Ma looked at Jiang Han with something new in his gaze—not suspicion, more like recalibration. "You served?"
"No. I just watch a lot of movies."
This was the truth. In the most literal sense possible.
001 sat through the entire briefing in silence, hands on his knees, occasionally smiling and nodding—like a retired executive sitting in on a junior staff meeting. He didn't say a single word, but his presence alone changed the texture of the air in some subtle way. Everyone could feel that this old man was different. Nobody could articulate how.
Yoon Seo leaned against a bed frame post through the whole thing, arms crossed. She wasn't the type who built presence through talking—hers came from a quiet, scanner-like stillness. After the huddle broke, she walked up beside Jiang Han and spoke at a volume only two people could hear: "You're keeping tabs on the old man."
Not a question.
Jiang Han glanced at her.
"Your observation skills are a bit excessive."
"Look who's talking."
Hours crawled past. The dormitory atmosphere thickened with each one—like oil heating slowly in a pan, not yet boiling but already starting to spit.
Kang Dae's team passed by and stopped in front of them on purpose.
A dozen-plus heavyweights standing in a row, looking down at Jiang Han's group: a limping middle-aged man, an accountant in cracked glasses, a seventy-something grandfather, two unremarkable young men, a stammering college boy, a fidgety middle-aged woman, a quiet young woman, and a convenience store night-shifter.
One of Kang Dae's henchmen burst out laughing. "That's your team? A cripple, a blind guy, a bunch of piss-scared kids, and a grandpa? You won't last the first round."
Another one helpfully added: "Don't stress, 099. Dying doesn't hurt. It's quick."
Jiang Han didn't respond. Yoon Seo's fists tightened at her sides, but she held. Ma's jaw muscles bunched, his hands curling into fists—but he stayed still.
Only the old man, 001, chimed in cheerfully: "Young people, so much energy."
No mockery in the tone. No weakness. Nothing that could be grabbed and used against him. The sentence floated back at them like a pebble wrapped in cotton—soft enough that it couldn't be caught or cursed at.
The henchman blinked, muttered something, and moved on.
After they were gone, Park said quietly: "They're right, you know. If it's anything physical, we don't stand a chance against them."
"Physical strength isn't the only way to win."
"You sound very sure for someone who doesn't know the rules either."
Jiang Han didn't answer. Not because he had an answer—he genuinely didn't. The rules had been corrupted, and everything he knew about the original tug of war might be completely worthless.
But he couldn't let the team fall apart before the game even started.
"You'll know in six hours."
Six hours passed.
The intercom spoke, and the contestants were funneled into the corridors.
Footsteps echoed between candy-colored walls. A hundred and thirty-one people walked in silence. All the pointless chatter from the dormitory evaporated in the corridor—everyone was locked in a final wrestling match with the fear inside their own skull.
Jiang Han walked in the middle of the group. The system panel had been quiet in the corner of his vision. He'd started to think there wouldn't be a corruption alert this time—the last game hadn't had one, so maybe the system only flagged major deviations.
Then the panel jumped.
Red.
His stride hitched for half a beat.
⚠ CORRUPTION SPIKE DETECTED ⚠
Game 3 Corruption Level: 28%
(World average: 12%)
This game has been significantly altered.
Additional element detected: NON-HUMAN ENTITY
WARNING: Not all opponents in this game are players.
Non-human entity.
He turned those three words over in his head three times.
Squid Game. A Korean live-action survival drama with zero supernatural elements. Every threat in the show came from humans—the designers were human, the enforcers were human, the contestants were human.
But the corruption level had jumped from twelve to twenty-eight percent. The narrative of this world was being warped—things that didn't originally exist were being shoved in.
A non-human entity. In a story that was supposed to contain only humans.
He looked at his teammates beside him—Yoon Seo, Ma, Park, the old man, the others. Nine people. Not one with any supernatural ability. And he was ordinary too. Ability slots locked. Temporary copy locked. Narrative points accumulating with nowhere to spend them.
Empty-handed.
The doors ahead began to open.
A wave of cold air poured through the gap, carrying a smell he couldn't name—not blood, not disinfectant, something more primitive, more ancient. Like the stale exhale of a basement that had been sealed for decades, opened for the first time.
Behind the doors was dark.
Not lights-off dark. The thick, textured kind—darkness that had substance, like a wall built from ink, absorbing light instead of reflecting it.
Everyone stopped walking.
Nobody wanted to be the first one through.
The synthetic voice of the intercom descended from overhead, cold and non-negotiable:
"Players. Game three—"
"Begin."