Seoul pulsed below in neon veins and thunder—bright, relentless, alive. Rain washed over concrete like intent, cleansing nothing but filling every crack. From the 17th-floor window of my backup hometown downtown, the city looked soft—as if it only appeared proud on stage.
I leaned on the balcony rail, watching scooters weave through narrow streets, their taillights slicing the mist. Six months ago, I'd have sketched these lights, dreaming of welding sparks into a fantasy engine. Then someone paid me to build Aetherline—a game named after ambition. I was lead planner and story author, paid not to complain.
It had felt like merit once.Not anymore.
Now I was caught in coding loops for mobile micro-transactions, watching every honest pixel get eaten by grind systems. That was the job, they said. Talent on loan. A hired dreamer who didn't own the dream.
Life Before the Fall
I used to wake up with purpose.
Back then, I lived in a small house near Eunpyeong, twenty minutes north of the Han River. Not luxury. Not even comfort. But it was mine. After college, I paid most of it off with draft money and freelance gigs. Steady. Real.
My mother still believed in small things—Sunday stew, the faint smell of laundry soap in the hallway closet. She never asked for help until my father died.
They told us it was suicide.He and an old friend had started a small business. My father borrowed heavily to keep it alive. When it failed, there was nothing left but the debt—and the silence that followed him to the riverbank.
Seoyeon was my middle school friend turned love story—quiet, fearless, and sharper than any design doc. We'd argued over quest morality systems back when we were kids. She became a narrative designer. I built worlds. We swore we'd make a story that mattered.
At Hexaworks, the office felt half-studio, half-family. I became lead on story direction. Seoyeon made sure the quests had humanity. We built late into the night. It was the kind of work where you forget the hour—until one day, the hour forgets you.
The Crack
But cracks don't show when things are good. Only when they're far gone.
After my father's death, my mother stopped cooking. She'd sit by the upstairs window, smoking into the night like she was waiting for him to come back. I brought her lunch. Said nothing.
Seoyeon noticed the way my smile thinned. I didn't tell her everything—only that my mother had stopped talking. She squeezed my hand once on the walk home in the rain.
"Good love isn't loud," she said.
It was enough.
The Letter
It came to my desk in a plain envelope.
Not from the government—worse. From my father's old friend.
I opened it under the same fluorescent light where I'd once sketched lore maps. The first numbers didn't make sense: ₩800 million… ₩900 million… and then: ₩1,000,000,000.
One billion won.All borrowed by my father. All unpaid. All tied to my name now.
The world narrowed to static. The sprint meeting blurred. People's voices turned to muffled underwater echoes.
"Hey—"A hand on my shoulder.Seoyeon. Kneeling beside me before I realized I'd slid down against the wall.
"What happened?" she asked, voice breaking through the fog.
I looked at her, tried to speak, but nothing came out. Only the sound of rain hitting the glass.
The Collapse
The house—₩800–₩1.1 billion with tax incentives. The car—₩30 million. My custom PC—₩2.5 million on resale. We sold what we could. Seoyeon built spreadsheets at night, deleting her own project profiles to make room for my mess.
I signed everything over.
If I didn't, they said, I'd lose the house and my career. My name would be branded. No studio would touch me.
On my last day as a developer, a tester dropped by with a bug."We called this guy 'Visionary,' right? You'd better fix it."
I didn't.
Three hours later, my email access changed to External Contract. They didn't fire me. They just made me disappear.
Aftermath
I returned to a cold apartment above the laundromat street.
But I wasn't alone.
Seoyeon stayed. She kept making coffee in the mornings, kept checking my drafts, kept pulling me back into the present whenever I drifted too far into silence.
The notebooks may have vanished from the server, my old team's channel may have been archived, but in the dim light of our small living room, she sat beside me with her laptop, working in quiet solidarity.
A billion won.And all the truth braided into it—the ambition, the loss, the shame—was the final echo I needed.
Now the story begins again.Not in an office.Not under neon.
But here.On the floor.With us.