Chapter 3
In Lost City, a contract was simply a means of dealing with the dirty jobs that could not be entrusted to law enforcement.
In other words, it was almost guaranteed to involve something illegal.
Assault for hire.
Theft.
Kidnapping.
Murder.
Hacking.
Not a single one of them was ordinary.
Yet the man sitting before Jin wanted something else.
“So... you want me to rescue your younger sibling?”
At Jin's question, the man's haggard face nodded.
“That's right. They're in danger.”
“Hm...”
Jin clenched his fist, crumpling the waffle wrapper into a ball as he organized everything he'd just heard.
“Your sibling is some kind of... BC? BHC? Some sort of editor?”
“A BH Editor. Brain Holic. Don't tell me... you've never heard of it?”
“Am I supposed to?”
“N-No, I guess not...”
The man looked Jin up and down in confusion.
Then his eyes suddenly widened in realization.
“…You don't have a neural socket. Are you a Purist?”
“A Purist? Oh, you mean a Noble House? No, I'm not from a Noble House. I picked Vagrant.”
“…?”
“Why?”
Question marks practically appeared above both of their heads.
Jin knew nothing about anti-implant ideology.
The man, meanwhile, could not make sense of the nonsense Jin was spouting.
Which was only natural.
As far as Jin's knowledge of this world went, everything he knew had come from the strategy guide he'd skimmed before starting the game.
And he hadn't even bothered reading the story sections because they seemed like too much work.
So, displaying all the confidence of someone with only the most superficial understanding of the setting, Jin asked,
“So what exactly is this BH thing? Let's hear it.”
“Uh... well...”
Swept along by the conversation, the man awkwardly began explaining.
“BH is a technology that lets people experience someone else's memories through neural transmission.”
“It reproduces not only the five senses—sight, smell, touch, hearing, and taste—but also the emotions the original person felt.”
Whoa. So that's a thing?
Jin raised an eyebrow.
I guess this really is an advanced world.
You can even experience someone else's life.
I wonder if anyone would like to try living mine.
You know, waking up trapped inside a game overnight.
“So BH is widely used throughout society for positive purposes, like rehabilitating criminals or creating educational material in various fields.”
“Of course... that's not all it's used for.”
The man let out a sigh.
One so deep it seemed to carry part of his soul away.
“BH is also traded underground as a tool for pursuing nothing but pleasure.”
“Something unethical.”
“Something immoral.”
“You could think of it as a kind of snuff film.”
Jin understood immediately.
Calling it an "experience" sounded nice, but in practice it was little different from possessing another person's body.
He didn't even need to look far for an example.
Back in South Korea, deepfakes alone had already fueled countless crimes.
If a technology could reproduce not only the five senses but even a person's emotions...
...Yeah.
No further explanation was necessary.
“My younger sibling is an editor who used to produce things like construction-site safety simulations.”
“You know... experiences showing what happens to workers who don't wear safety helmets.”
“That kind of person is being forced to produce BH content for a gang.”
“They won't survive it mentally.”
As the man muttered in a trembling voice, Jin folded his arms and chewed the inside of his cheek.
Should I do it?
Or not?
From the sound of it, accepting this meant making enemies of a gang.
If he handled it carelessly, things could get messy.
As Jin remained silent, carefully considering it, the man watched his expression before speaking cautiously.
“I'll pay whatever I can.”
“…!”
Jin's eyes widened.
Right.
I completely forgot to ask the most important part.
This was his first contract.
He had no established rate yet.
Should I ask for a hundred thousand credits?
No... start at two hundred thousand, then pretend to compromise after negotiating...
“How about two million credits?”
“All in cash.”
Jin's mind instantly shut down.
A few moments later, after his unconscious finally located and reinstalled the fuse known as reason, it began furiously running calculations.
Meatball spaghetti costs two thousand credits.
Two million credits...
That's one thousand plates of spaghetti.
Even if I ate three meals a day, it'd last me three hundred and thirty-three days.
And I'd still have enough left over for another waffle.
“I'll take the job.”
Before he realized it, Jin had already grabbed the man's hand with both of his and was enthusiastically shaking it up and down.
***
Gangs.
Gangsters.
Street mafias.
The name sounded terrifying.
But that wasn't always the case.
In Downtown, a gang could spring into existence the moment three punks decided to band together.
Dozens were born every day.
Dozens disappeared every day.
Of course, there were also organizations powerful enough to dominate all of Downtown.
Fortunately, the Steel Hands weren't one of them.
By reputation, they occupied somewhere in the lower-middle ranks.
That said, they were by no means insignificant.
True to their name, every single member of Steel Hands had replaced an arm with cybernetic hardware.
They were dangerous fighters.
As far as Jin was concerned, however, they were nothing more than lunatics who had cut off perfectly healthy arms just to replace them with steel ones.
Don't you know your body is a gift from your parents?
How could you do something like that to the body they gave you?
Then again...
Jin wasn't exactly in a position to criticize them.
His own body wasn't something inherited from his parents.
It was nothing more than the product of combining stats, skills, and traits.
And so, as Jin looked up at the night sky, he had a thought.
If there was anyone who could not be understood even in this godforsaken world, perhaps it was him.
Of course, this body might have had an origin and a backstory of its own.
But to Jin, who had simply opened his eyes with his face buried in a gutter, all of that felt like something from a dream.
Honestly, he was not interested.
He did not know anyone connected to this body, either.
As though he had fallen straight from the sky,
Jin had been Jin from the very beginning.
Just like any ordinary game character.
Enough. Stop.
I finally got my head together, and now I’m doing this again.
Focus. This is your first contract.
You’re a proper Solo now.
Forcefully shaking off the existential doubts that kept threatening to deepen, Jin slapped his cheeks a few times and quickened his pace.
Before long, he arrived at a club.
[STEEL NIGHT]
Beneath a pistol-shaped LED neon sign, where a bullet engraved with the club’s name blinked on and off, a guard with folded steel arms looked Jin up and down.
A reasonably handsome face.
Tall stature.
A bomber jacket and jeans that suited him well.
A man in his mid-twenties with a rather conspicuous outline below the waist.
That was more than enough to pass.
“…Go in.”
Jin walked past the guard, who gestured with his chin.
“Fuck, that’s huge.”
Leaving the guard’s uncomfortable mutter behind, Jin opened the door.
A long staircase leading underground came into view, accompanied by pounding noise.
Steel Night.
It was both a business establishment managed by the Steel Hands and one of their hideouts.
The client had repeatedly emphasized, with a haggard expression, that his younger sibling was definitely being held here.
Jenny, was it?
Repeating the kidnapped BH Editor’s name in his mind, Jin suddenly realized that he had already reached the bottom of the stairs.
He turned his head toward the deafening noise.
At the same time, flashing lights and people dancing beneath them filled his gray eyes.
“Oh.”
Jin let out a quiet sound of admiration.
Watching the crowd sway in intoxicated pleasure made him feel as though he had entered another world.
What the hell? Was I the only one struggling just to survive this whole time?
Feeling as though he had missed out on half of life, Jin headed toward the counter.
He unfolded a few crumpled bills from his pocket and spoke casually.
“One glass of the cheapest thing you’ve got.”
“…”
While the bartender took the credits with a look that suggested he had seen all kinds of beggars, Jin sat on a round backless stool and turned himself around one hundred and eighty degrees.
One, two, three…
The club was spacious.
Even so, identifying the gang members was not particularly difficult.
All he had to do was look for intimidating men who were not dancing and had cybernetic arms on both sides.
Jin spotted eight gang members in total.
One of them was guarding an entrance leading somewhere else.
That must be it.
As Jin reached that conclusion, something landed behind him with a clack.
He turned his head and saw alcohol in a glass filled with ice.
He also saw the bartender already walking away without a word.
“Seriously?”
Jin shrugged and picked up the glass.
He took a light sip.
The cheap liquor ran down his throat, leaving behind a sharp, burning heat.
“…I should’ve asked for cola.”
In truth, Jin did not like alcohol.
The day after drinking, he always became hungry.
The temporary drop in blood sugar caused by insulin secretion was an unpleasant sensation he had no desire to seek out, especially with his trauma regarding starvation.
So Jin quietly set the glass down.
Then he rose from the stool and headed toward the restroom.
More precisely, with one hand resting on his lower abdomen, he began following a gang member who had just passed in front of him.
“Ugh. Did I eat something bad?”
The gang member hurried into one of the stalls and frantically began undoing his pants.
Jin entered the restroom soon afterward and looked around.
Amid the silence, he saw a man shuddering in front of a urinal before pulling up his belt.
“Phewww. Man, I’m drunk. So drunk.”
Jin watched him stagger out of the restroom while muttering to himself.
Click.
He locked the door behind him.
Then he walked toward the stall from which repeated firecracker-like noises were coming and pulled the handle.
Wait. Why did this open so easily?
Jin had originally planned to rip the door off its hinges.
Instead, he found the gang member sitting on the toilet beyond the door, which had opened without any resistance.
Jin frowned.
“Damn it. Why didn’t you lock the door? I wasn’t mentally prepared for this.”
Between the man’s hairy shins, a pair of white underwear hung like a hammock.
Jin turned his eyes away in disgust.
Only then did the gang member, who had been staring blankly until that moment, finally shout.
“Hey! You fucking bastard! Shut the door right no—Ghk!”
But Jin’s kick was faster.
The sole of his shoe smashed directly into the man’s face.
The gang member’s head snapped backward, spraying blood.
“Get some sleep.”
Jin closed the door as he spoke.
At the same time, a subtle sense of fulfillment spread through the depths of his chest.
“…There we go.”
Jin clenched his fist.
I knew it.
It felt like I only needed one more.
In truth, Jin had a plan.
No matter how much money was involved, he was still going up against an entire gang.
Money could never be more valuable than his life.
The only reason he had accepted the contract was because he had something he trusted.
Something like leveling up.
Jin closed his eyes.
When he focused his mind,
his awareness expanded until it illuminated a vast night sky.
Then, before eyes that should have been closed, a glittering constellation appeared.
Beginning with the first light known as Rapid Recovery, the stars formed the shape of a fist.
Jin’s achievement lacked only one final point.
It was the result of spending the past year being beaten down and rolling through hardship, connecting the path between the stars one by one.
The XP he had gained from dealing with the thugs the previous day, combined with the quest reward he had received that morning, had nearly filled his proficiency.
He had been certain that defeating just one more person would light up the final dark star at the end of the constellation.
And now—
that one person had collapsed over a toilet.
A strand of light stretched cleanly through the nebula.
Then the light awakened the final sleeping star and made it shine.
At that moment, a new word appeared within Jin.
[Superhuman]
The cluster of stars that had finally formed a complete constellation shone brilliantly.
Jin opened his eyes.
He could feel that his body had become even more solid.
His senses had been honed to a sharper edge as well.
“Shall we?”
Jin cracked his neck from side to side and left the restroom.
Then he walked steadily toward the gang member guarding the entrance.
His fist slowly tightened.
The club’s deafening beat seemed to herald what was about to happen.