The One-Dollar Proof
"You really... read faces?"
The man's eyes wavered for only a moment.
As the leader who had survived by sifting through the countless lies and scraps of information that littered New York's underbelly, he quickly regained his composure.
"...An amusing joke. Or else a very carefully prepared con."
His hand slipped casually inside his coat as he spoke in a low, settled voice.
"How am I supposed to know whether that's really your gift—or whether the people who planted that guy sent you here in the first place?"
Even under the man's reasonable suspicion, Dohwan remained at ease.
"Fair doubt. Anyone who deals in information should think that way."
When Dohwan simply nodded and accepted it without protest, the man's brow furrowed even tighter.
"...So if you look at a face, you can know everything?"
"No. Knowing everything is impossible."
Dohwan kept both hands shoved in the pockets of his worn field jacket and continued in a flat tone.
"Safe combinations, hidden ledgers of black money—none of that shows up in my eyes. If you need that kind of intel, you'd better find a hacker, not me."
"Then what exactly do you see?"
"Only one thing. The 'fate' carved into a person's face."
Dohwan's deep, dark eyes rested quietly on the man's face.
"I simply tell you the past, present, and future held inside that fate."
No exaggerated threats. No grand bluster. Just a plain answer.
Yet the dry certainty in it was enough to send a chill down the man's spine.
The crackling flames of the oil drum flickered between them.
At last the man twisted one corner of his mouth into a cold smile.
"Fine. Let's put that fine fate of yours to the test."
He stepped closer until he stood right in front of Dohwan's eyes.
"Read my face. Tell me the real 'bottom' of me that no other gang in any other district could dig up no matter how hard they searched—something only I know. If your words are true, tonight I'll give you a top-grade tent and a bowl of hot stew. If they're fake, I'll beat the hell out of you and throw you—"
Dohwan cut him off, slowly locking eyes with him.
"No need to worry about that."
The man's eyebrows twitched faintly.
Dohwan paid it no mind and kept speaking.
"But isn't it a waste? You've got a chance to see how your future is going to unfold, and you're going to blow it just confirming some buried dirt?"
"Information only has value after its truth has been verified."
Even at Dohwan's words, the man did not budge an inch.
"The terms of the bet don't change. You prove your own worth."
Not a single crack showed in the man's expression.
Thorough to the bone. I guess this is what it takes to play boss.
Dohwan gave a short laugh and nodded.
The staring contest had gone far enough.
The other man had laid out the board; all that remained was to drop the perfect card onto it.
"All right. If you want it that badly, I'll look."
Dohwan's eyes narrowed.
Drawing up the power of Color Reading, his gaze began to dissect the man's face, reflected in the red glow of the oil drum, inch by inch.
The most private, intimate piece of information this man wants to hide more than anything.
Something as ordinary as a past job or the size of a fortune would not be enough.
He had to drag out a fatal wound or secret that only this man himself knew and had never spoken to another living soul.
Dohwan's gaze passed the man's eye corners and settled on the thick, filthy beard that half-covered his face.
Found it.
With Color Reading layered onto ordinary physiognomy, the energy hidden beneath the beard—something that should have been invisible—became clear.
"That bushy beard of yours."
At Dohwan's first words breaking the silence, the man's shoulders stiffened by the barest fraction.
"You grew it on purpose, didn't you? Other people just think it's the beard of a homeless man who never washes, but my eyes can see the terrible dark-crimson energy covering the lower jaw underneath... the area we call the Foundation."
Dohwan tapped his own chin with a finger and continued calmly.
"On the face, the Foundation is the base of a building—the skeleton of a person's life. When a murky dark-crimson energy pools there like dried blood, it means you took a physical blow so severe it nearly killed you. A bad burn, or a deep cut from a blade. That's what the beard is hiding. Am I wrong?"
"...You dragged all that out just to guess I have a scar on my chin?"
The man snorted, but his voice cracked ever so slightly.
Dohwan was in no hurry. He shifted his gaze to the man's left eyebrow.
"That can't be the end of it. We call this eyebrow area the Brother Palace. It stands for blood brothers—or partners so close they might as well be."
Dohwan's voice dropped lower and colder.
"But your left Brother Palace is severed as if someone took a knife to it. And above it hangs a thick, pale white energy that means absolute severance and death."
"..."
"Now, shall we put all of this together?"
Dohwan locked eyes with the man and drove the point home.
"About ten-odd years ago, the partner or brother you trusted most put a knife in your back. You took that ugly wound on your chin, barely escaped with your life, hid your identity, and slipped into this rotten New York underworld."
The man's breathing stopped, but Dohwan did not.
"Even with that excellent Gwanlokgung of yours, the reason you obsess over gathering 'information' instead of money all makes sense now. You're not just hiding like a rat."
Dohwan spoke in a low, almost whispering tone.
"You're here hunting for the one piece of 'fatal information' that will let you cut that traitor's throat in a single stroke."
A log cracked loudly inside the oil drum.
"Well? I think that reaches the real 'bottom' that only you know."
Suffocating silence pressed down beneath the bridge.
The man's hollow eyes had gone past mere trembling; they were now filled with the kind of horror reserved for staring at something that was not human.
With a sudden scrape, the old chair he had been sitting on toppled backward.
He glared at Dohwan with bloodshot eyes for a long time, then turned away, breathing hard.
"...Follow me."
His voice sounded somehow exhausted.
He no longer asked what Dohwan was.
Or rather, he could not ask.
The deduction just now was a truth that no information network on earth could have uncovered—something that existed only inside the man's own memory.
"This way."
The place they headed for was the deepest part of the tent village, a large, blackened, battered military tent pressed right up against one of the massive bridge pillars.
From the outside it looked no different from the other shabby, foul-smelling tents.
But when the man unzipped the thick flap and stepped inside, an entirely different world opened up.
Warm heat. Thick insulation mats and carpets covered the floor, completely blocking the cold. In one corner a nearly silent high-end portable generator hummed softly, powering a heater.
And on the portable burner beside it, a thick stew packed with meat and potatoes bubbled away, filling the air with a mouth-watering smell.
"Wow."
Dohwan drew a deep breath of the tent's air and genuinely marveled.
It was a cozy fortress that completely shut out the cutting wind.
"Just like you said. This really does deserve to be called a 'top-grade tent.'"
Dohwan grinned slyly and shook the field jacket off his shoulders.
"Here."
The man himself ladled out a bowl of stew and held it out.
Dohwan took the bowl and looked at him with open interest.
Should I say it matches his physiognomy? He keeps a promise like a knife. Thorough, all right.
He had fulfilled the promise he made if Dohwan won the bet: a top-grade tent and warm stew.
While spooning up the stew, Dohwan gave the man a sidelong glance.
For an information broker on the New York streets, the man had credit. There was no particularly murky energy of deep involvement in vicious crimes that crossed the line.
At this level, I could ask him to introduce me to people.
That did not mean he planned to ask for introductions out of the blue.
Everything needed a proper buildup.
After finishing the stew, Dohwan slipped into a sleeping bag and spoke.
"Ahh, that hit the spot. Tent's nice and warm, sleeping bag's soft—perfect. I'm turning in first, so you get some rest too, Boss."
Within less than a minute Dohwan was breathing in a steady, peaceful rhythm.
The boss stared at him with an incredulous look.
Still completely unaware of what kind of game Dohwan was setting up.
The next morning.
The tent was still warm. Dohwan glanced at the boss, who was still sunk in deep sleep, and quietly slipped outside.
He picked up a scrap of old cardboard, found a spot near the dying campfire, and settled in.
FACE READING — $1
I read faces. Just one dollar.
The reaction was ice-cold.
These were bottom-rung lives who fretted over the price of a single day's bread.
No one was about to hand money over to some unknown Asian offering a "one-dollar fortune."
They only shot him glances that said he was out of his mind.
But Dohwan was in no hurry.
About five minutes passed.
A white man who looked as if he had just finished an all-nighter and returned to camp was about to walk past Dohwan.
His steps had a strange bounce to them, and one hand kept protectively cupping the inside pocket of his jacket.
Dohwan tossed out a casual line.
"Whatever's in that inside pocket—if you're thinking of selling it somewhere else, drop the idea. Unless you want the back of your head cracked open on the way."
The man's feet stopped dead.
"...What?"
"Listen first. If what I say sounds like garbage, just walk away. But if I'm right or it helps you, then you pay the dollar. Want to hear it? You've got nothing to lose."
Looking half-convinced, the man glanced around, then squatted down in front of Dohwan's cardboard.
Dohwan calmly scanned the man's face.
"Your Jaebaekgung—the tip of your nose and the wings—has yellow energy clinging to it. Looks like you scored something pretty valuable last night, either goods or information."
"...!"
"But a pitch-black energy is stretching from between your eyebrows up to your forehead. That means someone is targeting you and coming after you."
The man's face went rigid.
"When you grabbed that thing, there was someone watching you from behind."
"Don't lie. There was nobody."
"If you want to check whether I'm lying or not, turn around right now and look behind that abandoned truck by the camp entrance."
The man whipped his head around.
And his eyes met those of a big Black man who had been hiding behind the wrecked truck outside the camp, staring this way with predatory focus.
Realizing he had been spotted, the watcher hastily melted back into the darkness.
"Hah...! Th-that's Wilson!"
A shocked gasp burst from the man's mouth.
Wilson. A guy infamous in this district for freely swinging blunt weapons just to empty other people's pockets.
If not for Dohwan's words, the man would have walked down some dark alley and taken a steel pipe to the head.
Losing the information and goods that were as good as his life would have been a foregone conclusion.
With trembling hands the man started to pull a crumpled one-dollar bill from his jacket pocket, then instead laid a five-dollar bill on the cardboard.
"Keep the change. Th-thanks for saving my life!"
As the man scrambled off to hide in his own tent, the eyes of the tent-village people who had been watching the whole scene in silence suddenly filled with shock.
"H-holy shit. He looked at a face and knew who was tailing him?"
"That's the Asian the boss brought in yesterday!"
"Hey, me! Read mine too! Tell me if anything bad's coming!"
The quiet tent village turned into pure chaos in an instant.
Knowing whether you were about to get the back of your head cracked or whether you could keep your wallet intact was a matter of pure survival.
Dohwan casually raked in the bills raining onto the cardboard and crooked a finger.
"Next. You with the beanie. Don't meet anyone today. Looking at the murky energy pooled on your forehead, the person you're planning to see is the type who swings fists before talking money."
Every time Dohwan's dry, razor-sharp explanations landed, the people of the tent village handed over money as if possessed.
In that moment, a mere one-dollar face reading completely took over the entire tent village.
And a little while later.
The boss, who had tossed and turned all night trying to figure out what Dohwan really was, frowned at the noise outside and stepped out of the tent.
Then he had no choice but to stop in his tracks.
"Oh my god, he was right! How the hell did he know the guy I argued with yesterday was going to show up with a steel pipe today!"
"That Asian's the real deal! For just one dollar you never have to worry about getting jumped!"
"Take my money first! Read the face of the broker I'm dealing with tomorrow!"
Information brokers who survived by doubting everyone more than anyone else.
Those very people were now swarming around one unknown Asian, fretting and jostling just to hand over a single dollar.
The boss let out a hollow laugh at the sight.
"Ha..."
Even when Dohwan had pierced his own hidden wound the night before, the man had not completely dropped his suspicion.
But investigating the pasts or futures of this many people in advance was physically impossible.
The scene before his eyes was the most certain, most intuitive proof that the insight he had experienced yesterday was the real thing—no tricks.
Standing there with his mouth hanging open, the man scrubbed both hands over his face and muttered under his breath.
"What the hell kind of monster just rolled into my camp...?"