For a man who had spent lifetimes unraveling the encryption of global superpowers, the South Korean National Registry was less a fortress and more a beaded curtain.
Arthur sat in the dim glow of his monitors, his fingers dancing across the mechanical keyboard with a rhythmic, percussive grace. To the world, he was a ghost; to the data, he was the administrator they never knew they had.
Locating the Shin family was the easy part. Tracking the physical coordinates of Shin Youngwoo—the man who would become the "Grid" of Satisfy—was a matter of seconds.
But Arthur wasn't interested in just knowing where his target slept. He needed to be the shadow in the hallway. He needed to be the neighbor whose door closed just as Youngwoo's opened.
In the original narrative, Youngwoo was a loser, a man buried under 100 million won of debt, isolated by his own bitterness. To sabotage a destiny that hadn't happened yet, Arthur needed total environmental control.
"The building is at capacity," Arthur murmured, his eyes reflecting the green luminescence of the resident logs. "Of course it is. In a city like Seoul, space is the only true currency."
He leaned back, the silver strands of his hair catching the light. Most would see a dead end. Arthur saw a social engineering puzzle. If there were no empty apartments, he would simply have to create a vacancy.
Not through violence—that was messy and attracted the wrong kind of attention—but through the most potent weapon in a capitalist society: the irresistible offer.
Arthur's AI, Ciel, flickered to life inhis ear like an earpiece, her voice a silk-smooth frequency that resonated directly in his auditory nerve.
Arthur scrolled through the data. The Lee Family. It was a classic tragedy of the modern era.
• The Mother: Old Mrs. Lee, an elderly widow living alone in a sprawling 140-square-meter apartment. Four bedrooms, one living room—far too much space for a woman whose only company was the hum of an old refrigerator.
• The Son: Young Mr. Lee. Once a promising employee, now a victim of corporate downsizing. He was currently treading water in the "Daily Labor" pool, working back-breaking shifts at construction sites and cable-pulling gigs just to keep his three children fed.
• The Debt: Massive. The loan he took for buying his current apartment in Jong-sui is still 10 years due. His wife was working part-time at food stalls, and the children's education was a flickering candle in a gale.
"Perfect," Arthur whispered. "They aren't just poor; they are desperate. And desperate people don't look for traps—they look for lifeboats."
Arthur checked his "Ethical Hacking" account. 100 million won sat there—money earned from patching backdoors for corporations that didn't want to admit they'd been breached.
It was "grey" money. He couldn't use it to start his Ketchup empire yet—tax authorities would tear him apart—but he could use it to fund his tactical relocation.
Arthur's mind drifted to the Chaos Point (CP) Store. In this life, his power wasn't just his skill; it was his meta-knowledge.
He knew that the legendary class Pagma's Successor was the ultimate gold-mining tool. But even more importantly, he knew the secret formulas hidden in the CP shop. The Ketchup Formula priced at 10,000 CP.
To a layman, it sounded ridiculous. To a strategist, it was a monopoly on taste. By using his AFT (Allpurpose Farming Tool) to grow genetically superior Ruby tomatoes, Arthur planned to revolutionize the condiment industry. He had already secured a small plot of land and started the experimental growth.
Steal Pagma's Successor before Youngwoo.
Farm gold through legendary item production.
Convert gold to Won via the market exchanges.
But to do all of this, he had to monitor Youngwoo's progress in Satisfy. He had to ensure the "Grid" of this timeline stayed a loser for as long as possible.
The night was cold, the air thick with the scent of exhaust and fried oil. Arthur stood near the entrance of the Jong-sui apartments, his long white hair tucked into a hoodie, looking every bit the mysterious urbanite.
He watched as a man approached. Young Mr. Lee looked like he had been dragged through a rock crusher. His shoulders were slumped, his hands stained with the grease of cable-pulling, and his eyes were vacant with exhaustion.
"Mr. Lee, I assume?" Arthur's voice was calm, cutting through the man's fatigue.
"Who... who are you?" Lee asked, his hand tightening on the strap of his tool bag.
"My name is Kim Arthur. I have a proposition that will ensure your children never have to worry about tuition again. Shall we talk over soju?"
The bribe of a warm meal and a drink was too much for a hungry, tired man to refuse. They sat in a nearby tented stall (Pojangmacha). The steam from the grilled chicken feet rose between them like a veil.
"Apartment 707," Arthur began, pouring the soju with practiced etiquette. "Your mother lives there alone. It's too big for her, and your own home is... cramped. Your children are sharing a single room, aren't they?"
Lee's face twisted into a mask of defensiveness. "Are you a debt collector? If you've come to harass my mother—"
"Quite the opposite," Arthur interrupted. "I want to rent it. I'll offer you 2,800,000 won a month. And if you agree, I'll pay six months in advance tonight on the spot."
The silence that followed was heavy. The market rate for that aging building was barely 1.5 million won. Arthur was offering nearly double.
"Why?" Lee stammered. "Why would you pay that much?"
Arthur leaned in, spinning a web of calculated lies. "A friend of mine—lives right next door to your mother, named Shin Youngwoo. He told me about your situation. He's a good friend in the game we play, Satisfy. He wanted to help, but he's... well, he's humble and I need a base in Seoul. He asked me to reach out to you for this apartment, this will fulfil my need of base in Seoul and your need of money, a total win-win."
The mention of Youngwoo changed everything. To Mr. Lee, Youngwoo was a fellow laborer, a man who also struggled at the job center. The idea that Youngwoo had "made it" in a game and was looking out for his neighbors was a narrative that fit the desperate man's hope.
"Youngwoo... that useless fellow actually did something right?" Lee laughed, a sound of pure relief. "2.8 million... that would change everything. Alright, I agree!"
"Happy cooperation," Arthur said, shaking the man's calloused hand.
As Arthur stood up to leave, a small, stiff card fell from Mr. Lee's pocket. It landed face-up on the dirt floor.
But seeing that card, Arthur froze.
On the front: A Circle, a Triangle, and a Square.
On the back: A phone number.
The "Squid Game."
The air in the stall suddenly felt several degrees colder. Arthur hadn't expected this. His world wasn't just a fusion of game narratives; it was a collision of survival tropes. The Lee family wasn't just poor; they were being scouted for a slaughterhouse.
"Mr. Lee," Arthur's voice lost its warmth. It became as sharp as a surgical scalpel. "Did you play Ddakji at the train stations Or any alleyways recently? With a man in a suit?"
Lee blinked, surprised by the change in tone and the accurate projection, "Yeah. Won a million won. He said there was more where that came from if I called the number. Why? You know him?"
Arthur grabbed Lee's shoulder, his grip iron-tight. "Listen to me very carefully. If you love your wife, if you want to see your daughters grow up, do not call that number. Burn the card. Forget the man exists. If you need money, you have my rent. That card is an invitation to a early grave without a memorial."
The sheer intensity in Arthur's eyes—the eyes of a man who had seen civilizations fall—forced Lee to recoil. "I... I understand. I'll throw it away."
Walking home, Arthur whispered to himself. "Ciel. Monitor Mr. Lee's biometrics. If he approaches that phone number, I want to know. And Ciel... search for the 'Salesman.' If the Squid Game exists here, the organizers are a source of Chaos Points I haven't tapped yet."
"Good," Arthur grinned, his white hair whipping in the wind. "A stable world is a world with no room for a king. A chaotic world is a playground."
He had secured the apartment. He had secured a front-row seat to Grid's downfall. And he had just discovered that the stakes of this life were much, much higher than a VR game.
On the other side...
The displacement of an elderly woman from her home of decades is rarely a clean affair; it is a quiet tragedy of necessity.
In the cramped, dimly lit living room of the Lee household, the air was thick with the smell of cheap tea and the heavy, suffocating weight of poverty.
Young Mr. Lee sat across from his mother, his head bowed, his calloused hands trembling. Beside him, his wife—her skin sallow from long hours standing at food stalls—clutched a stack of unpaid tuition notices like a shield.
"Mother," Lee whispered, his voice cracking. "I am a failure. I pull cables until my arms go numb, and I still can't buy the children new shoes. Their school... they won't let them stay past this month. The fees are too much."
Old Mrs. Lee looked at her son, then at her daughter-in-law, and finally at the three children huddled in the corner, their eyes wide with a precocious understanding of their family's ruin.
She looked at the four-bedroom apartment she occupied alone—a relic of a time when her husband was alive and the world felt stable.
The promise of 2,800,000 won a month wasn't just rent; it was a lifeline. It was the difference between her grandchildren becoming scholars or laborers.
With a heavy sigh and a single, weathered hand resting on her son's shoulder, she agreed to evacuate the apartment for rent, if this could let her grandchildren study in school, she'll do it.