IMCT 01

Chapter 1

 

Living life, and getting older, means that the things you want to do gradually move farther away, while the things you have to do keep piling up.

For the sake of doing what had to be done, the man woke up early as always and boarded public transportation packed with people.

“Good morning.”

“Good morning.”

With a bright smile on his face, he exchanged the almost-formal greetings, sat down, and opened the notebook where he had written down everything he had to do that day.

[Kim Su-mi Goddess Loan Review]

[Call regarding Park Sang-cheol’s overdue payment]

[Pressure Park Moon-seong for overdue payment ★]

“Hey, Team Leader Kim, is something wrong? You look gloomy.”

What could possibly be wrong?

Assistant Manager Kim Si-min gave the senior team leader who had spoken to him an awkward smile.

“No, nothing’s wrong. I was just thinking that today isn’t going to be easy either.”

Eight years in banking.

While meeting customers and handling loan sales and management, he had grown exhausted in many ways.

Working in a service industry where he had to smile and pretend everything was fine even when it wasn’t, and respond positively to whatever customers said, was far from easy.

There were plenty of people who thought, ‘But don’t you get a high salary?’

High salary, my ass. His bank balance was still in the red every payday anyway.

When the economy was struggling like it was these days, many business owners were going under.

Having to listen to their stories while still pressuring them to pay according to the bank’s rules was even harder.

—Fuck! Do you have any idea how long I’ve been banking with Daehan Bank and how much money I’ve done business with you for? I’ve supported you bastards for more than twenty years! And you’re treating me like this? Have I ever been late paying interest? Have I ever done anything wrong?

No one had forced him to take out a bank loan.

He had completely forgotten about all the opportunities he had gained by borrowing money from the bank, and yet he still complained like this.

And of course, interest had to be paid on time.

The customer might have his reasons for being upset, but there was nothing pleasant about being cursed at every time he made a collection call.

—Sigh… Team Leader, Assistant Manager, I’m not saying I won’t pay. I really don’t have any money right now. None. I swear, I don’t have a single penny. But how am I supposed to pay you? Please, just let me live. I’m doing this because I’m trying to survive, too.

Ha. This again.

First, they screamed and hurled insults. When that didn’t work, they suddenly begged and pleaded as if they had become completely different people.

It was a common pattern among overdue borrowers.

“Just pay back two million won for now. You owe one hundred million won, but if you can repay that much, I’ll try to submit a request for a three-month extension.”

Finding a way somehow.

Helping them repay not the required ten percent, but even a small portion of it so they could get an extension.

That was all Kim Si-min could do.

—I really don’t have any money, Team Leader. I’m going to the Han River bridge today. Please, save me.

“Sir, if there were a way, I’d like to help you. But there really isn’t another option.”

People being chased for their debts were always the same.

In the end, they would threaten to jump off a bridge.

Or tell him to go ahead and cut open their stomachs.

There was no way Kim Si-min could truly save them from the root of their problems.

Kim Si-min, an assistant manager in his eighth year at the bank who was now practically living as a team leader, did his best to finish another day.

After spending such an exhausting day,

he dragged his tired body onto another bus packed with people on his way home.

—There’s never really been a moment when I wanted to give up. Somehow, I’m going to take care of my grandfather. I’ll protect him until he turns one hundred.

On ViewTube, which he had opened without thinking, there was a video about a child whose body had been left impaired by complications from surgery. The child was trying to somehow continue living while taking care of his grandfather, and the video asked people to help him.

Ha… That really hurts my heart.

He opened the app and checked his bank balance.

It was barely enough for him to get by, so he had no room to think about helping anyone.

Even ten thousand won.

Just as Kim Si-min donated ten thousand won despite his own difficult financial situation—

“Uh…! Hey…! Isn’t that a person over there?”

Someone suddenly shouted inside the bus, which was so crowded that it was hard to breathe.

As the bus crossed the Han River bridge, the passengers saw a man about to jump.

“Driver! Over there! Over there! Someone’s trying to jump!”

The bus stopped, and the passengers packed inside rushed out all at once.

With the emergency lights flashing, the bus quickly emptied, leaving room to breathe.

Kim Si-min slowly got off the bus, moving more sluggishly than everyone else.

I’m tired.

How did things end up like this?

He used to be the kind of person who always stepped forward first whenever he saw someone in trouble.

But at some point, it seemed he had simply lost the energy to do so.

“Sir! You have a family at home, don’t you?! What are you going to do to them?!”

“My family can only live if I’m gone! They’ll be better off without me!”

The man screamed desperately.

“Sir! What are you saying? If you die like this, your family will spend the rest of their lives suffering! So please, just come over here!”

“My debt… Fuck, my debt… There’s no answer… There’s nothing I can do…”

The man’s voice as he spoke about his debt sounded strangely clear.

It’s familiar.

That voice is familiar.

Kim Si-min had not originally been the person handling the man’s loan. Aside from seeing him briefly while arranging an extension, they had only ever spoken over the phone.

But he knew that voice.

Kim Si-min quickly moved toward him.

“I… I tried… I tried to make things work… I tried so hard to live, struggling until I was half dead… But what am I supposed to do when nothing works?! I don’t even have ten won right now… They’re telling me to pay two million won in three days! How the fuck am I supposed to do that, you bastards?!”

Two million won.

As expected, it was a familiar amount.

The man continued screaming, while Kim Si-min, who had been moving sluggishly just moments ago, ran toward him faster than anyone else.

“Sir… let’s live…. If you keep living, there’ll be a way somehow. There has to be a way to survive…. You could at least try filing for bankruptcy…”

“Fuck that… Fuck all of it… Those bastards are going to take my wife and children and sell them off if I don’t die anyway!”

There was no bank in this world that would kidnap people and sell them.

Well, at least there certainly wasn’t one in Korea.

With those strange words, the man prepared to throw himself from the bridge.

No!

Kim Si-min suddenly rushed forward and grabbed the man’s hand as he tried to jump.

“Team… Team Leader Kim…?”

“Come back up. You said you have a family.”

His voice trembled.

He had only seen the man’s face once, but they had spoken on the phone many times over the past several months.

Kim Si-min desperately tried to pull him up.

But the man, hanging precariously from Kim Si-min’s single hand, showed no intention of climbing back up.

“If I die… at least my family can live…”

He was still saying things Kim Si-min couldn’t understand.

The man tried to pull his hand away.

Relying on the people clinging to his back and holding him, Si-min used both hands and desperately tried to pull the man up.

“Stop talking nonsense and come up!”

He shouted, but the look in the man’s eyes showed that he had already made his decision.

People rushed over to help Si-min, but the man used all his strength to tear his hand away and began to fall.

It was a dark night on the way home from work.

The man who had thrown himself into the river became a black dot before falling into the water.

Somewhere in the distance, sirens could be heard.

Police cars and ambulances were arriving.

Why?

How did things end up like this?

For a long time, he stood there in a daze, staring at the bridge where the man had jumped.

That evening,

the news reported the story of the man who had jumped.

A man who had been unable to endure his debts any longer.

Someone must have recorded the incident on their phone.

The man, his face blurred, was screaming on the TV.

—I… I tried… I tried to make things work… I tried so hard to live, struggling until I was half dead… But what am I supposed to do when nothing works?!

Alone in his empty home, he stared blankly at the scene on TV before eventually falling asleep as if collapsing.

---

Early the next morning, Kim Si-min went to work at the bank and made a call.

—The customer cannot answer the phone…

The face of Mr. Park Moon-seong as he fell beneath the bridge continued to haunt his mind.

A week passed without him even realizing how the time had gone.

Then, someone knocked on the door of his office.

Knock. Knock.

A middle-aged woman with hollow eyes, a woman who looked like a college student, and a boy who appeared to be in high school stood outside.

They were holding basic certificates and family relation certificates.

From the words he could glimpse, he saw the names ‘Park Moon-seong’ and ‘Deceased.’

“My husband…”

His wife’s trembling voice struck Kim Si-min’s ears.

He suddenly felt dizzy.

I did my best.

It wasn’t my fault.

He desperately tried to deny it.

He had only done what he was supposed to do.

Even then, he had tried to help as much as he could.

It wasn’t as if he had pushed Park Moon-seong off the Han River bridge.

And yet, for some reason, guilt kept washing over him.

I did everything I could.

I did the best I could.

“…”

An angry curse rose to his throat.

The image of Moon-seong falling kept appearing in his mind.

“It’s such a shame. Looking at his family, his daughter seems so young… And his son, too… Maybe he’s only around college age.”

The emotionless comments from the other employees were even harder to listen to.

At quitting time that day, Kim Si-min fled the branch as if he were running away.

Normally, just like always, he would have boarded public transportation packed with people.

But that day, he crossed Cheonho Bridge and kept walking north.

Farther and farther north.

Step. Step.

He kept walking with his eyes fixed not on the sky, but only on the ground.

At some point, he realized that his surroundings had become strangely quiet.

He hadn’t been in Seoul for very long, but he wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the city either.

Still, something about this place felt strange.

Ah, my battery.

He tried to open a map app, only to find that his phone battery had died.

I must have spent the entire day completely out of it.

“Seriously…”

But why was it so dark here?

Blaming himself, he simply kept walking.

Then he spotted a single supermarket brightly lit in the darkness.

[Daedong Mart]

Feeling a sense of nostalgia at the old-fashioned supermarket, something that was becoming increasingly difficult to find in Seoul, Kim Si-min walked inside.

“Hello.”

“Welcome.”

He ignored the shopkeeper’s slow greeting, which somehow sounded strangely lifeless, and picked up two cans of beer.

“That’s all you’re getting?”

“Yes. This is enough.”

“You must have had a really hard time.”

“I guess so. Things have been strangely difficult lately.”

“That’s just how life is. When things get hard, you have to stop and rest sometimes. If you push yourself too hard, you’ll get sick.”

The shopkeeper’s old-fashioned words of comfort reminded Kim Si-min of his hometown, and he let out a sigh without realizing it.

“Ha… Exactly.”

“Looks like you don’t have any family?”

“How did you know that?”

“You can tell just by looking. You’re not from around here, are you? You took a wrong turn, too, didn’t you?”

“How did you know that?”

“I told you, we can tell just by looking. If you have nowhere else to go, sit out front and have a drink.”

Yeah. Should I just eat here? There’s no one waiting for me at home anyway.

He sat down on the familiar wooden platform in front of the supermarket, opened a bag of Saewookkang, and took a drink of beer.

He began pouring out all the things he had no one else to talk to the supermarket lady about.

“I’m not a bad person, you know. Before I came up to Seoul, I used to help people a lot. I even donated regularly. I worked hard. I really worked hard. I cut into the little free time I had, gave up sleep, and… I really have been trying so hard to live… but I don’t know why life is so painful.”

It was nothing more than a ramble.

“I’m sure it wasn’t because of me… but that man, too… Ha…”

Thinking of the dead Park Moon-seong and his family, Kim Si-min downed the rest of his beer.

“Hey, young man. It wasn’t because of you. Don’t think like that.”

The supermarket owner, a woman he had never met before, comforted him as if she already knew everything, even though he hadn’t told her much.

After rambling for a while and finishing his beer, Kim Si-min got up from his seat.

“There aren’t many people around here. You’re not drunk from just that little bit of beer, are you? There’s nothing worth seeing in the other direction. Just keep going straight down that road, all right? You’ll reach a main road.”

The shopkeeper patted Kim Si-min on the shoulder.

The hand of the supermarket owner he had met in this unfamiliar place was strangely cold, completely different from the warmth of her heart.

“Oh, right. This is a gift, so take it. You must never lose it. Wear it around your wrist at all times, understand? It’ll help you.”

The shopkeeper fastened something that looked like a bracelet around Kim Si-min’s wrist.

“Thank you, ma’am. Thank you.”

He thanked the supermarket owner several times for comforting him after such a difficult day, then continued walking in one direction.

Normally, he would have looked around as he walked, but for some reason, he simply followed the direction the shopkeeper had pointed him toward.

After walking for some time, just as the shopkeeper had said, he reached a main road and saw a bright light.

And the next moment, he lost consciousness.

---

“Mr. Kim Si-min? Mr. Kim Si-min, wake up.”

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The sound of a machine he had heard in medical dramas echoed beside his ears.

His eyelids were so heavy that he couldn’t open his eyes, and he had no idea what was happening.

“Patient, can you see this? How many fingers are these?”

“Two…”

Why are my eyes so heavy? Why can’t I think straight?

A man in a white coat who looked like a doctor kept waving his fingers in front of him.

He had definitely followed the supermarket owner’s directions, walked until he reached a main road…

“Hey, Manager Kim, are you okay? You know you collapsed right after walking out of the branch? If you’d hit your head wrong, it could’ve been serious.”

It was the voice of Team Leader Park Cheol-sun, someone Kim Si-min was normally close with.

What is he talking about? I collapsed right after leaving the branch?

But I definitely… I walked for quite a while.

I even drank beer at the supermarket.

“Damn, you live alone and don’t even take care of yourself. You’re the guy who even competes in MMA matches, so what good is being that skinny and weak?”

Team Leader Park’s words sounded muffled.

Kim Si-min finally managed to sit up and looked at him.

“You coming around?”

“Yes… But what do you mean? I collapsed in front of the branch?”

“You collapsed the moment you walked out of the branch. You don’t remember? Well, I guess a guy who passed out wouldn’t remember.”

“I walked for a long time… I even went to a supermarket and then collapsed on a main road…”

“What are you talking about? You still haven’t come to your senses.”

Was it really a dream?

It had been too vivid for that.

The taste of the beer.

The taste of the Saewookkang.

Even the touch of the supermarket owner’s hand.

Huh…

Kim Si-min suddenly felt a chill run down his spine.

This… Why is this here?

—Oh, right. This is a gift, so take it. You must never lose it. Wear it around your wrist at all times, understand? It’ll help you.

The supermarket owner’s warm voice echoed in his mind.

—User imprint is beginning. Mr. Kim Si-min, welcome. You have become the owner of Lighthouse Co., Ltd., the company that lends opportunities.

He was seeing things.

Hearing things.

For a moment, Kim Si-min truly thought he had gone insane.