Landing a Big Catch
In the pale light of early morning, as the darkness slowly gave way, Seong-min stood waiting on the sidewalk along the main road. From the far end of the street, a Santa Fe approached, slowing as it neared. The turn signal blinked, and the vehicle pulled onto the shoulder where he stood.
The passenger-side window rolled down, revealing Team Leader Jeong behind the wheel.
"Hop in, Seong-min."
Seong-min opened the door and climbed into the passenger seat.
"Hyung~!"
Min-hyeok called out from the back seat, his voice bright with welcome.
"How's the body holding up?"
"Not bad. How about you, Team Leader?"
"Same here. Condition management is non-negotiable."
"What about you, Min-hyeok?"
"I'm good too~! Ate well last night and went to bed early, so nothing feels heavy… heh heh…!"
Seong-min snorted at Min-hyeok's shameless little laugh.
"Seatbelt on?"
"It's on."
"Good. Then we're off~~"
Team Leader Jeong's Santa Fe pulled out from the shoulder and merged onto the road.
"How long to the destination from here?"
"If traffic's clear, under an hour and a half. If it's jammed, better budget a full two hours."
Work started at eight, so even with a generous two-hour cushion they'd arrive by seven — plenty of time to spare.
"As you know, we're heading out today and not coming back until Saturday, so make sure you've packed your toiletries properly."
"I've got spare underwear, sleep clothes, the works in this bag."
Work clothes and sleepwear were the obvious essentials for a bag like that.
"Hyung~ We're staying at a motel near the site!"
"A motel?"
"There's a five-story motel around the hotel building where we're working. We've got a twin room booked through Saturday."
"Did you arrange that, Team Leader?"
"If we're going to stay somewhere, the lodging has to be sorted first. I went down on Saturday, talked with the contact, checked the motel, and locked in the reservation myself."
"You really go the extra mile, Team Leader."
"Hahaha…! I'm the team leader — of course I handle all that. Otherwise, what's the point of being team leader?"
The day-to-day running of the team fell squarely on Team Leader Jeong's shoulders. Because of that, Seong-min never had to waste mental energy on logistics — advance scouting, lodging, any of it. Jeong was diligent and responsible in exactly those areas, and the team's trust in him ran deep.
"Hyung, Team Leader said he put you and me together for the room assignment!"
"You and me?"
"Yep~!"
"Seong-min, you're more comfortable rooming with someone your own age like Min-hyeok, right? Same goes for him."
Seong-min glanced at Min-hyeok's beaming face in the rearview mirror and let out a short laugh.
"Yeah, that's fair."
"So I paired you two up."
"Hyung, do you snore a lot?"
"Not really."
"Good~ I'm a light sleeper, so if someone snores I can't get any rest. Heh heh heh…"
"Surprising, right, Seong-min? Looking at him, you'd never guess Min-hyeok's that delicate about stuff like this."
"True."
"Why are you both like this~?! Do you have any idea how sensitive a man I am~~!!"
"Sure, sure. You go ahead and be a sensitive man."
"I'm not being a sensitive man — I am one, okay?! Ugh, this is so frustrating~!!"
They bantered lightly as the car rolled on, and before long they had left Seoul behind and merged onto the expressway.
After a stretch of highway driving they stopped once at a rest area — a quick bathroom break, and with time still left, a proper breakfast at the rest-stop restaurant.
Once they arrived they'd be starting work at eight, and on ordinary gombang jobs they often made do with convenience-store bread and milk, or a triangle kimbap. So sitting down for a real breakfast at a rest stop was nothing unusual.
They ate a solid meal, hit the restroom again, then climbed back into the car and headed for their destination.
"From here on we drive straight through, so grab whatever sleep you can until we arrive."
Back on the expressway, Team Leader Jeong pushed past a hundred kilometers an hour and kept the car pointed toward the job site.
"Alright — we're here."
The vehicle came to a stop. Seong-min and Min-hyeok unbuckled and climbed out; Team Leader Jeong stepped down from the driver's seat as well.
"Hey~!"
From a short distance away, the rest of the team waved and came over, faces bright with recognition.
"You all beat us here?"
"Luckily the roads were clear, hyung-nim."
"We flew right over, nice and smooth~!"
"Woke up earlier than expected, so we got a jump on the departure~!"
They traded quick greetings with the teammates who'd arrived first, shared the coffee someone had brought, and changed into work clothes. Those who'd already suited up beforehand — the way you did for gombang work — didn't need to change.
Meanwhile Team Leader Jeong finished a call with the site contact, then gathered everyone to pass along the instructions.
"We've got to finish everything by this Saturday, so we need to stay sharp. You'll see once we're on site — the volume isn't small. They said they'd prefer it done before five on Saturday, but there's no need to kill yourselves hitting that exact hour. The agreement is simply that we wrap by Saturday."
He looked over the nodding team once more, then spoke again.
"Alright. Looks like everyone's ready — let's move."
With Team Leader Jeong in the lead, they headed for the work site.
"Whoa…!"
"That's a hell of a pile…!"
"Getting all of this moved is going to be tight…"
Standing in front of the stacked materials, the whole team clicked their tongues. Cement bags, tiles, stone blocks, lumber — every kind of construction material filled the open lot in massive heaps.
Then the people who looked to be the site contacts approached. Team Leader Jeong shook hands as the team's representative and introduced the crew. The contacts asked them to take good care of the work and handed Jeong reference sheets detailing how many pieces needed to go to each floor and where. Once the contacts withdrew, Jeong briefed the team again using the sheets, then led them inside the hotel building under construction. Starting from the eighth floor, they walked down floor by floor, surveying the layout.
"This is actually going to be brutal, isn't it?"
Min-hyeok stuck out his tongue after they'd finished the walkthrough and come back outside.
"A hundred for the morning and afternoon combined. Brace yourselves."
"Alright — ten-minute break, then we start right after~!"
Everyone took the rest however they liked, wetting their throats with the drinks and water they'd brought along.
Seong-min sent Hye-suk a text saying he'd arrived safely and was about to start work.
The read receipt cleared, and a moment later her reply came through.
The ten-minute break ran out.
"Alright — let's go~!!!"
Team Leader Jeong clapped his hands, pumping up the atmosphere, and the whole crew answered with a surge of energy as they threw themselves into the work.
They started with the cement bags, each man shouldering two at a time. One person hauling all the way to the eighth floor in a single run was unrealistic, so the original plan had been a relay: ground floor to the fourth, fourth to the mid-landing between four and five, then from that mid-landing up to the eighth.
That mid-landing — the halfway stairs between the fourth and fifth floors — was the handoff point.
They'd meant to divide the crew that way. Then the plan changed.
Because of Seong-min.
"So if we just stack the bags up to the fifth floor, that's enough?"
"Yes. Then I'll take whatever's piled on the fifth and move it up to the eighth in the right counts."
Seong-min's proposal was simple: the team ferries everything to the fifth floor, and he alone hauls those bags the rest of the way to the eighth, matching the required numbers on each floor.
Everyone looked stunned.
If the whole crew dumped bags on the fifth, Seong-min would be shouldering them alone and climbing three more floors, counting them out as he went.
"You sure you can handle that?"
"Maybe we should stick to the original plan…"
"He suggested it because he thinks it's more efficient, right?"
Team Leader Jeong cut in with the question, and every head turned toward him.
"I don't think Seong-min threw that out for no reason."
Their eyes swung back to Seong-min.
"I can do it. And I think the throughput will be better this way."
"Alright. Then that's what we'll do."
"You're really confident?"
"You know my stamina."
"Fair enough~ Our ace says he's got this — let's give it a shot…!"
"What the hell. Let's do it his way."
And so it was decided. The rest of the team would move bags only as far as the fifth floor; Seong-min would solo them from there to the eighth. That left the remaining crew free to run a shorter relay — ground floor to the mid-landing between two and three, then from that handoff up to the fifth.
The ground-floor crew started shouldering cement bags. The mid-landing receivers headed for their positions.
Seong-min didn't wait on the fifth. From the very first load he threw bags onto his back and started climbing — better to make one full run to the eighth right at the start than stand around waiting upstairs.
"Every time I see it, it's incredible~"
"How is anyone's stamina like that?"
"We're not even the same species, I swear."
"Stamina monster — straight-up monster~!!"
Even with cement bags strapped to his back, Seong-min climbed the stairs with a light, agile stride that outpaced the men walking empty-handed up to the mid-landing. He didn't look strained in the slightest — sharp and fluid the whole way.
And the team was right to be amazed. Seong-min genuinely wasn't struggling.
All that weekend grinding to level up and push the Physicality stat higher is paying off…!
Pushing the Physicality stat past a hundred and keeping it climbing had left him feeling even more charged than last week. At this rate, holding the same pace through the afternoon wouldn't be a problem at all.
All those hard workouts — and the sweet time spent with Hye-suk while leveling — had been worth it.
He dropped the cement bags in place on the eighth floor, then headed down to the fifth. After a short wait, the men who'd taken the handoff at the mid-landing started arriving one after another, setting their bags down.
"Good work."
Seong-min immediately scooped up the bags and started climbing for the eighth again.
By the end of the morning they had cleared everything down through the sixth floor. Through the afternoon they kept grinding — fifth, fourth, third, second, first — until the last bag from the ground floor sat in its proper place. By then the whole crew was wrecked.
The sheer volume from the eighth floor all the way down to the first would have been enough on its own, but finishing the cement today was the only way to stay on track for Saturday.
"Everyone did well."
Team Leader Jeong offered the words of encouragement while the team recovered with electrolyte drinks and water.
"Still — we got all the cement bags moved today on schedule. Keep this pace and we'll wrap clean by Saturday."
"Damn… hyung-nim. This is actually insane. I feel like I'm dying…!"
"Without a hundred-a-day rate, nobody would touch this volume."
"Even so, hitting today's target is genuinely impressive~!"
"This is the toughest gombang job I've ever done…!"
Min-hyeok wiped sweat as he said it, and the others nodded in full agreement. The volume really had been that brutal.
"Without our ace, no way we finish this in a single day~!"
"Of everyone here, Seong-min worked the hardest…!"
"We all put in the work."
"What are you talking about~!"
"Seong-min, you worked the hardest…!"
"Come on — round of applause for a job well done."
And so they clapped for one another, celebrating the fact that the day's target was met.
After cleaning up, the group headed out toward the lodging. Once they'd gone to their assigned rooms, showered, and changed, they planned to reconvene on the first floor and grab dinner at a nearby restaurant.
Seong-min and Min-hyeok entered room 501 on the fifth floor.
"Whoa~! Definitely a motel~!"
Min-hyeok's awed exclamation the moment they stepped inside drew a snort from Seong-min.
"Better than you expected?"
"No — it's just that the décor feels a little… suggestive for two guys sharing a room. Heh heh…"
"……"
"Oh~ hyung! Look at this~! They even stocked condoms…!"
Min-hyeok picked one up and held it out toward Seong-min.
"Want one, hyung?"
"I'm good, you idiot."
Seong-min turned away, pulled a change of clothes and underwear from his bag, and headed for the bathroom.
"Hyung~ Want company? Should I come in too~~?"
Seong-min spun around, face dead serious.
"You walk in and you die."
Then he disappeared into the bathroom.
"What's his problem?"
Min-hyeok scratched the back of his head, genuinely puzzled.