Fragments of Memory (1)
"Huh... You want to learn the ropes?" The voice dripped with contempt. The men standing before Park Jocheol were low-level thugs from one of Seoul's more notorious gangs. "Beat it, kid. We don't need extra hands, especially not from some punk like you."
The burly man in the ill-fitting suit sneered and waved him off dismissively. It was the expected rejection, one Park Jocheol had already anticipated. He'd lived through this exact scene once before, so the thug's reaction didn't faze him.
"Just let me in. I need to talk to the person inside."
Instead of shrinking back as they expected, Park Jocheol replied with calm indifference. The thinner thug chuckled, amused. "Oh? Look at this little bastard trying to act tough. You're funny."
The lanky man sauntered closer. "Now that I get a good look, you've got the face for our line of work. How old are you anyway?"
Park Jocheol felt no fear. Even with his awakened stats sealed—whether due to some system glitch or not—the monsters he'd faced until now made these two street punks seem utterly insignificant.
Should I just knock them out and move on?
In the past, nineteen-year-old Park Jocheol had simply waited outside the business for hours, hoping to catch someone's attention. No matter how strong or stubborn he was, he'd known he couldn't take on two grown men at once. If I can just drop the big one, the rest should follow.
But things were different now. The gap in combat experience was too vast. These gangsters had only ever brawled in street fights, while Park Jocheol had been fighting for his life since the tutorial. Once that realization settled, he stopped hesitating.
He drove his fist straight into the thinner thug's solar plexus.
Thud!
"Guh...!"
The man's eyes widened in shock as his upper body folded forward. Park Jocheol followed up with a clean left hook to the jaw.
Crack!
Two strikes, and the man was out cold. But there was no time to relax—the larger thug was already charging.
"You crazy bastard!"
The big man was slow, but his sheer size made every swing dangerous. Park Jocheol watched him carefully, reading the clumsy attack with ease. These are the kind of guys I used to be afraid of?
Returning to the past had sharpened his vision. He could see their limits, their habits, the openings that would follow. It was the same kind of tactical reading Kim Siin had tried to teach him back on the third floor.
He caught the charging man's arm, twisted, and shifted his weight. The thug's feet left the ground.
"Wha—?!"
Park Jocheol lifted him cleanly and slammed him into the asphalt.
BOOM!
The impact echoed loudly. The man lay sprawled and motionless. After confirming he was still breathing, Park Jocheol exhaled and stepped past them.
The glass door of the large commercial building creaked open. Inside, more gangsters turned to stare.
"Huh? A customer?"
"Can't you see the school uniform? He's just some kid."
"Damn it, where's the guy at the door? How'd this brat just walk in?"
Ten or so thugs. They looked annoyed, but none of them seemed to realize what had happened outside yet.
"I'd like to speak with your boss."
Park Jocheol spoke with brazen confidence. His real objective was to fulfill the National Intelligence Service's order to investigate drugs within the gang—something that didn't exist, so he had nothing to fear. In this world, strength was everything. Acting bold might actually work in his favor.
"What the hell is this kid saying...?"
"He wants to meet the boss, I think."
More men began emerging from the hallway, drawn by the commotion. Their numbers kept growing.
"This... is more than I expected."
From one to two, then three. He'd known the building was large for a gang hideout, but he hadn't anticipated this many "big brothers." In his original past, he'd used his head to slip inside without a fight, so he had no idea of their full strength.
"Boss! Something happen outside? Seong-cheol and Hyeok-su are down out there!"
One of the newcomers had spotted the two unconscious men.
"What? Who—"
The man the others called "boss" frowned deeply, his gaze shifting from the messenger to the two slumped figures being helped inside. His eyes darted between the entrance and the hallway before finally settling on Park Jocheol's fists. He stopped moving.
"Son of a bitch. Who the hell are you? Who sent you?"
The boss's face twisted with fury. He clearly understood what had happened at the door. But Park Jocheol remained composed—his goal was clear.
"I'm a high school senior."
And the NIS sent me, he thought but didn't say. He shook his head and met the glaring gangster's eyes.
"I came to borrow money, but they turned me away. Then I said I wanted to work, and they tried to hit me. Anyway, I need to talk to your boss, so move aside."
The gangster's head tilted at the blunt honesty. He looked like he was barely holding back his disbelief. A high schooler showing up out of nowhere, taking out two guards, and demanding to see the boss was absurd enough—but the sheer audacity of it all left him speechless.
"Is this kid completely insane?"
"Whoa, that's harsh."
Park Jocheol could almost understand the reaction. If the situation were reversed and some high schooler had stormed into the NIS demanding to see the director after knocking out two agents, he'd probably say the same thing.
This got complicated.
He admitted his mistake. From the start, his goal had been to confront his past trauma by reliving these events. He'd assumed completing the NIS mission quickly would solve everything, but that assumption had created a massive problem.
Still, the water was already spilled. He couldn't use his old methods anymore, and time was running out. So he reached the only conclusion left.
"Screw it. Come at me, you gangster bastards. I'll find the boss myself."
A full-frontal assault. Strategy was Kim Siin and Namgung Cheonho's job, not his. Park Jocheol's role was to become the tool that executed the plan with the right amount of force. Somewhere along the way, he'd come to accept that as his purpose.
***
A few days later, Han Gamin was still desperately searching for her trauma with no success.
"Seriously, what even is my trauma? Did I get bullied without realizing it or something?"
Her mother's disappearance hadn't been a major trauma. She'd always known her parents' relationship was unstable, so when it finally collapsed, it felt inevitable. Even when it left her hungry, she hadn't found it particularly painful.
Looking back, I guess I was pretty pitiful.
She'd grown up fast. Just like most children from poor families who learned the value of money and the bitterness of the world early, she'd understood it all by the age of twelve. But people only recognized pain as pain once they'd known happiness. How could someone who'd never seen light understand darkness? To them, darkness was simply life—nothing more, nothing less.
"Haa..."
Now that she understood that pain, Han Gamin no longer wanted to go home. Even as a child, returning home had meant enduring misery. Back then, she'd assumed every father in the world was like hers. She'd believed all her peers were silently enduring the same suffering, and that single thought had been her only comfort.
"Maybe this really is my trauma."
A cursed house. But the Tower didn't want her to avoid her trauma—it wanted her to overcome it. Suppressing her rising irritation, Han Gamin carefully stepped inside.
Step. Step.
Something felt wrong. The atmosphere was different. She'd returned late at night when her father was usually asleep, but the house had never been this deathly silent before.
Creak.
There was no sound of her drunken father's snoring. In a tiny one-room apartment, the complete absence of any presence was deeply unsettling.
...Did a thief break in?
No—if a thief had entered, she should have heard either her father or the intruder. But all she felt was an oppressive stillness.
"..."
Han Gamin forced herself to breathe slowly, careful not to let her body tense up. She exhaled the anxious breath through her mouth and drew in the relatively cool air...
...This is...
A metallic scent she should never have grown used to. It was the unfamiliar smell of blood in a house that had never held such a thing in her memories.