The Seoul night hummed with a thousand indifferent lights, but for Jackson Lee Mercer, they were a beautiful, blurry mosaic of tears.
The rooftop ledge was rough against the scuffed soles of his sneakers, a final, gritty barrier between his despair and the twenty-seven floors of empty air below.
He was a ghost in the city, a man lost in the neon labyrinth. They called him Jax.
A name that felt as foreign on his tongue as the person staring back from the mirror.
He was a byproduct of a Wall Street shark and a woman who was too kind for her own good. Morgan Mercer, his handsome, blonde father, was a memory of sirens and flashing lights that vanished when Jax was five.
He left behind a legacy of shame, a Western name that felt like a brand, and a mountain of debt.
His mother, Lee Soo-Rin, the only anchor in his life, was stolen by sickness and poverty when he was eighteen.
Now, at twenty-seven, Jax was a walking monument to failure.
His greasy hair clung to his pudgy cheeks, and his stomach, a soft cushion of self-pity, was a constant reminder of his addiction.
He was drowning in a ₩50 million debt to loan sharks whose smiles were sharper than their knives.
He chased the thrill of a win with the desperation of a man on fire, a gambler whose final bet was always the one that led to ruin.
He had never known the warmth of a woman's touch, only the cold fist of a bully and the sting of mockery.
"You have until tomorrow to pay up, Jax, or we start taking pieces," the loan shark, a toad-faced man named Mr. Park, had hissed over the phone an hour ago.
Pieces. He had nothing left to give. He was already in pieces.
He shuffled closer to the edge, the wind whipping his unkempt black hair across his face.
This was it. The final bet. A guaranteed loss that felt, paradoxically, like the only win he had left.
He closed his eyes, picturing his mother's tired but gentle smile.I'm sorry, Mom. I'm so sorry.
Just as he tensed his legs to jump, a flicker of movement caught his eye. Something was falling from the night sky, but it wasn't rain.
It was a single point of light, streaking through the clouds, arcing directly towards him.
It landed with a soft tink on the concrete a few feet away.
Jax blinked, his morbid trance broken. He crawled towards it.
It was a seed. But not like any he had ever seen or read about.
The countless hours he had spent as a lonely teen obsessing over Hunter blogs and seed encyclopedias told him that all known seeds were a uniform, brilliant gold.
This one was different.
It was a perfect, smooth orb that held the cosmos within it. Deep, swirling nebulas of purple and blue, dotted with pinpricks of silver that shimmered like distant stars.
It was beautiful. Terrifying. And unique.
He had heard whispers of Unique-rank seeds, theoretical artifacts of immense power or cosmic uselessness. A one-in-a-hundred-million chance.
For a moment, a spark of delirious hope ignited in his chest. Could this be it? A way out?
He picked it up. It was cool to the touch, humming with a faint, imperceptible energy.
With nothing left to lose, he didn't hesitate. He popped it into his mouth and swallowed.
He waited. One second. Ten. A minute.
Nothing. No system window. No surge of power. No spontaneous combustion. Just the bitter taste of ash and failure in his mouth.
A guttural laugh escaped his lips, a broken, wretched sound that turned into a sob.
Of course. Even a miracle would reject him. He was truly, utterly worthless.
The despair returned, heavier than before. He stood up, walked back to the ledge, and without a second thought, he stepped off.
The wind screamed in his ears. The city lights rushed up to meet him.
But as he fell, something warped. The vibrant colors of Seoul bled into a monochromatic smear.
The fabric of reality seemed to tear, stretching and twisting around him.
The world dissolved into an infinite, silent blackness. He was still falling, but into what, he didn't know.
Then, a jolt. A voice, shrill and familiar, cut through the void.
"Jackson Mercer! Wake up! Is my class so boring you'd rather sleep through it?"
Jax's eyes snapped open.