Jin-woo's eyes snapped open at exactly 5:47 AM, the way they had every morning for eighteen years. No gradual awakening, no drowsy confusion, survival had carved that luxury from his life long ago. His hand moved to the metal pipe beneath his sleeping mat before his mind fully registered consciousness.
The pre-dawn light filtered through plastic sheeting and cardboard that covered the broken windows of his fourth-floor sanctuary. Gray light, Seoul light, the color of concrete and exhaustion. He lay motionless for thirty seconds, listening. Traffic hummed in the distance. Water dripped somewhere in the walls. No footsteps on the stairs. No voices in the hallway.
Safe. For now.
Jin-woo sat up, his orange-gold eyes catching the pale light like amber held to flame. Those eyes, too bright, too intense, too memorable, swept the cramped space that contained everything he owned. Twelve square meters of water-damaged apartment in a condemned building. His kingdom of nothing.
The routine began without thought. Check the door, the hair he'd left in the crack remained undisturbed. Check the street below through gaps in his window covering, early morning workers hurrying toward subway stations, their breath visible in the October cold. His body moved through the familiar choreography: one hundred push-ups, muscles burning against the chill. One hundred sit-ups on the cracked concrete floor.
The cold bit at his skin as he stripped to wash himself with a wet cloth, preserving what dignity he could without running water. Clean enough. Had to be enough. He pulled on his work clothes, the better of his two sets, though both bore the permanent stains of construction sites and survival.
From his backpack, he retrieved his breakfast: one cup of instant noodles. The sodium would sustain him through ten hours of manual labor, the small pleasure of hot food would sustain something else entirely. He ate slowly, deliberately, each bite savored because hunger had taught him that meals were promises the world rarely kept.
The old document lay at the bottom of his backpack, wrapped in plastic. "Kang Jin-woo" written in careful hangul, the ink faded but legible. Feminine handwriting. Someone had cared enough to write his name once. He touched the plastic but didn't unwrap it, that ritual belonged to nighttime, to the darkest hours when the weight of existing pressed too heavily on his chest.
At 6:30, Jin-woo shouldered his backpack and began the journey from Seobuk to Gangnam, from the forgotten to the gleaming.
The narrow alleys of the slums stirred to life around him. Mrs. Park wrestled with the heavy pots for her pojangmacha, her weathered hands shaking with effort. Jin-woo lifted them without being asked, settling them on her cart.
"Aigoo, Jin-woo-ya." She ladled fish cake soup into a paper cup. "You eat this."
"I'm not hungry."
"Eat it anyway." Her tone brooked no argument.
He accepted one piece of fish cake, the warm broth coating his fingers. She needed the money more than he needed pride, but their ritual demanded he refuse twice before accepting. Small kindnesses, carefully rationed between people who understood scarcity.
A blur of motion caught his peripheral vision, a child, maybe ten years old, sprinting through the alley with terror etched across his thin face. Behind him, a man in a cheap suit jogged with the lazy confidence of a predator who knew his prey would tire.
Jin-woo stepped into the pursuer's path.
No words passed between them. The man's gaze met Jin-woo's orange-gold eyes and found something there that made him recalculate his morning. The child's footsteps faded around a corner. The man muttered a curse and turned back the way he'd come.
Jin-woo continued toward the subway station.
The morning commute compressed him into a metal tube with the city's salary workers. Their complaints about minor inconveniences, their expensive clothes, their casual use of money that could feed him for a week, he absorbed it all without expression. A businessman bumped into him, wrinkled his nose at the cheap soap smell that clung to Jin-woo's skin, then moved away with obvious distaste.
Jin-woo's jaw tightened. The man's shoes cost more than Jin-woo earned in three months, but somehow Jin-woo was the offensive presence in this equation.
The city transformed outside the train windows. Buildings grew taller, streets grew wider, poverty became invisible. By the time Jin-woo emerged at the Gangnam station, he had become invisible too, just another laborer heading to another site, beneath the notice of the well-dressed crowds.
The construction site sprawled across what had once been an entire city block. Fifty stories of steel and ambition reaching toward the Seoul sky, built by men who would never afford to enter its gleaming lobby. Jin-woo joined the line of day laborers at the site office, waiting for assignment.
"Number Seven." The site boss pointed at Jin-woo without looking up from his clipboard. Three years of working various sites, and the man had never bothered to learn his name. "Cement bags, eighth floor. Forty kilograms each. Move them fast or don't come back tomorrow."
₩80,000 for ten hours of breaking his body. Not enough to live on, but enough to not die. Jin-woo shouldered the first bag and began climbing.
The work consumed the morning hours. Lift, climb eight flights of scaffolding, drop the bag, descend, repeat. His shoulders screamed, his legs burned, his lungs labored in the concrete dust that coated everything. Around him, other workers took breaks, complained about the weight, the height, the endless repetition.
Jin-woo didn't stop. Street-trained endurance was one advantage poverty had given him. Pain was temporary, hunger lasted longer.
At noon, the whistle blew for lunch break. Workers gathered around benches, unwrapping the boxed meals the site provided for ₩5,000 deducted from daily wages. Jin-woo sat apart, drinking water and listening to his stomach remind him that breakfast had been twelve hours ago.
"Hyung." A young worker, maybe twenty, approached with half his lunch box extended. "You eat this."
Pride demanded refusal. Politeness required he refuse twice before accepting. Jin-woo accepted the rice and kimchi on the third offer, eating in the companionable silence of shared hardship.
The afternoon brought punishment disguised as assignment. "Number Seven, debris clearing, basement level." The site boss's smile contained malice. "Careful down there. Lots of sharp metal."
The basement was a maze of twisted rebar and concrete chunks, lit by a single bare bulb that cast more shadows than light. Rats scurried through piles of construction waste. The air tasted of rust and decay. Jin-woo worked methodically, filling wheelbarrows with debris and hauling them to the dump area.
A piece of jagged metal caught his hand as he lifted a chunk of concrete, opening a gash across his palm. Blood welled and dripped onto the dusty floor. He wrapped the cut in a strip torn from an old rag, tied it tight, and continued working. Another scar for his collection.
At 5:30, disaster struck in the form of an old man stumbling under the weight of a cement bag. The bag hit the ground and split, spilling gray powder across the work area. The site boss materialized as if summoned by the sound of lost profit.
"You clumsy bastard!" His voice echoed off concrete walls. "That bag costs ₩15,000! I'm taking it out of your pay!"
The old man's face crumpled. "Please, sir. My wife, she's sick. I need the money for her medicine."
Other workers studied their shoes. Getting involved meant risking their own wages, their own families' meals. Jin-woo understood the calculus, he'd made the same calculation a hundred times.
"I'll pay for it." His voice cut through the boss's tirade.
The site boss turned, eyebrows raised in mock surprise. "You? You can't even afford lunch."
"Take it from my wages."
The boss calculated quickly, greed overriding surprise. "₩15,000. Half your day's pay."
Jin-woo nodded once. The old man tried to protest, but Jin-woo was already walking away. Someone should have helped him once, when he was eight years old and had nowhere to go. No one did. The least he could do was be the someone he'd needed.
At six o'clock, workers lined up for their daily wages. The site boss counted out ₩65,000 - ₩80,000 minus the cement bag penalty, and threw the bills at Jin-woo's feet instead of placing them in his hand. The money scattered across the dirt.
Jin-woo picked up each bill slowly, deliberately, while other workers watched. He counted the money in front of the boss, checking each note. Exact amount, the man's petty cruelty would have to satisfy itself with humiliation rather than theft.
"Don't come back tomorrow." The boss's voice carried the weight of final judgment. "I don't like your eyes."
Jin-woo met his gaze, orange-gold eyes unwavering. The silence stretched between them until the boss looked away first.
"I'll be here at eight AM."
Jin-woo walked out. The boss wouldn't follow through, workers who could carry forty kilograms up eight flights without complaining were too valuable to waste on personal grudges.
The journey home carried him through Seoul's economic geography. In Gangnam, couples entered restaurants where a single meal cost more than Jin-woo earned in a day. In Seobuk, families counted coins to afford instant noodles. Two cities occupying the same space, invisible to each other.
At a convenience store, he made his careful calculations. Five cups of instant noodles, ₩3,500. Two bottles of water ₩1,800. The cheapest bread ₩1,000. A bar of soap ₩800. Total: ₩7,100. At a street vendor, three boiled eggs for protein ₩2,000.
₩55,900 remained from his reduced wages. He needed to save ₩40,000 for emergencies, leaving ₩15,900 for the rest of the week. Tomorrow was his last work day. If the site boss actually followed through on his threat...
Problems. Always problems.
The abandoned building welcomed him back with its familiar decay. Jin-woo checked the street, slipped through the broken fence, climbed the stairs in darkness. The hair he'd left in his door frame remained undisturbed. Three locks clicked open, paranoia refined by eighteen years of survival.
In the flickering light of a single candle, he tended to his cut hand properly. Boiled water over his camping stove, cleaned the wound, bandaged it with strips cut from an old shirt. Small rituals that preserved both health and sanity.
Dinner: one cup of instant noodles, one boiled egg, a piece of bread. The rest saved for tomorrow. He ate sitting by the window, watching the slums settle into darkness below.
The document emerged from his backpack as it did every week. "Kang Jin-woo" stared back at him in faded ink. Feminine handwriting, careful strokes that suggested education, care. Someone had known his name once. Someone had written it down as if it mattered.
Who were you supposed to be?
The question followed him into the restless hours between exhaustion and sleep. At 11 PM, shouting erupted from the alley below. Three men surrounding a fourth, fists and boots connecting with sickening impacts. The victim went down, stopped moving. The attackers rifled through his pockets, taking wallet, phone, watch.
Jin-woo gripped the window frame. Not his problem. Couldn't save everyone. The math was simple: three opponents, possibly armed, definitely dangerous. Getting involved meant risking everything, his health, his shelter, his carefully maintained invisibility.
The victim groaned. Still alive.
One attacker spat on the unconscious man and laughed.
"Damn it."
Jin-woo grabbed his metal pipe and descended into the night. He circled through back alleys, approaching from the attackers' blind spot. They were celebrating their haul when he stepped into view.
"Leave him."
Three faces turned toward him, expressions shifting from surprise to amusement. The leader, a thick-necked man in a leather jacket, grinned.
"Walk away, kid. This doesn't concern you."
"Leave. Him."
They spread out, experienced in group tactics. Jin-woo didn't move, waiting for their commitment. The leader rushed first, always a mistake. Jin-woo sidestepped and brought the pipe down on his knee. The crack echoed off alley walls.
The second attacker pulled a knife. Jin-woo's expression didn't change. Fast exchange: pipe blocked blade, boot connected with solar plexus. The man dropped, gasping for air that wouldn't come.
The third attacker ran, smart enough to recognize when a situation had turned impossible. He dragged his knife-wielding partner with him, leaving their leader to crawl after them while cursing Jin-woo's ancestry back seven generations.
Jin-woo checked the victim, middle-aged, drunk, beaten but breathing. He dragged the man toward the 24-hour convenience store where someone would eventually call an ambulance. Didn't stay to answer questions he couldn't afford to answer.
Back in his apartment, he cleaned the blood off his pipe. Not his blood this time, but violence left its own stains. His knuckles had split open again, old wounds refusing to heal properly. His ribs ached from blocking kicks he'd barely registered during the fight.
Stupid. Could have been killed over a drunk stranger. Could have faced guns instead of fists and knives. Could have lost everything for someone who would never know his name.
But the man was alive. That had to count for something.
Jin-woo lay on his sleeping mat, staring at the water-stained ceiling. Five hours until he had to wake up. Body sore, hand throbbing, future uncertain. Another day survived, another small victory against a world that seemed designed to grind him into nothing.
Was this the life? Fight, work, survive, repeat? Until when, until he was too slow, too old, too broken to continue? Die in a gutter like that drunk almost had?
The orange-gold eyes closed, but sleep remained elusive. Somewhere in the darkness between exhaustion and dawn, Jin-woo wondered if there was supposed to be more than mere survival. If the careful handwriting on that old document had imagined something different for the boy who became Kang Jin-woo.
At 5:30 AM, his eyes opened again.