Dinner arrived two hours after the first game ended.
One gray plastic meal box per person—white rice and a small piece of steamed fish, portioned as if someone had calculated the exact minimum caloric intake to keep a human body functional and not a gram more. One small bottle of water, two hundred and fifty milliliters, barely enough to wet a throat that fear had baked dry.
Jiang Han ate slowly. The fish had no flavor. The rice was too firm. He scraped both clean anyway. Convenience store night shifts taught you one thing about food: eat it when it's in front of you, because you never know when the next meal is coming.
The dormitory soundscape was fragmented. Someone lay face-down in their pillow, shoulders hitching in silent sobs—not the howling kind, the kind that tries to make itself small. Someone was swearing at the air, the same curse on repeat, like a record player stuck in a groove. Someone knelt by their bunk praying in a language Jiang Han didn't recognize, forehead knocking against the iron bed frame hard enough to ring. More people than that did nothing at all—lying down, sitting, eyes aimed at the ceiling with pupils dilated to nowhere, souls already a step ahead of their bodies.
The commotion started from the northeast corner.
101. Kang Dae.
He and his four enforcers were making rounds. Their method was straightforward: walk past each bunk, check what was in the occupant's hands. If the answer was food or water, take it. If the occupant resisted, hit them. Meal boxes, water bottles, even a half-eaten rice ball—inside this sealed concrete box, anything edible or drinkable had become currency.
A middle-aged woman had her meal box grabbed. She reached for the enforcer's wrist—got backhanded to the floor.
218, the accountant in glasses, was hauled off his bunk by the collar. His glasses flew. His meal box was taken. When they dropped him back, the back of his head cracked against the bed frame with a flat, dull sound. He curled up without moving, but Jiang Han could see his hands shaking—and not entirely from fear. There was anger in those fingers.
The pink-suited staff at the door watched everything.
Didn't move.
They won't intervene. Jiang Han confirmed his earlier read. Violence outside of official games isn't their jurisdiction. The law of the jungle is part of the design—hunger and fear bring out the ugliest parts of human nature, and the organizers want to watch it happen.
When Kang Dae's crew reached Jiang Han's row, the stocky henchman from before stopped at his bunk. Looked down at the meal box in Jiang Han's hands.
"Done already?"
"Yeah."
"Water?"
Jiang Han held up the empty bottle, gave it a shake. Gone. He wasn't the type to save water for later—consuming it before someone could take it was a basic skill learned from years of dealing with coworkers who helped themselves to the staff fridge.
The henchman spat a curse and moved on.
Footsteps from the side. Light, rhythmic. Not Kang Dae's crew.
Yoon Seo.
She sat down on the empty bunk across from Jiang Han's—its owner wasn't coming back—carrying her meal box with half the rice still in it. She'd been eating deliberately slowly, timing it so Kang Dae's people had passed through her section before she resumed.
Smart.
She ate in silence for a while. Then she spoke, voice pressed low enough that only the space between them could hear it.
"You heard it. The motor buzz before the doll turned."
Not a question.
Jiang Han glanced at her. "So did you."
"I'm good with patterns." She swallowed the last bite of rice, set down her chopsticks. "But you were calm from the beginning—before you figured out the buzz. Everyone else was screaming and you were analyzing. Why?"
He was quiet for two seconds.
"Panicking has never kept anyone alive longer."
Yoon Seo studied him. Her eyes were very dark, the emergency lights' faint glow caught in her pupils as two needle-point reflections.
"You're not ordinary, 099."
"Twelve hours ago I was working a cash register at a convenience store."
"That's not what I asked."
He didn't answer that. After a few seconds, he redirected: "What about you. You're not afraid either—at least not on the surface. In a room where ninety percent of people are falling apart, you're sitting here eating dinner and making conversation. Why?"
Yoon Seo looked away. Closed her empty meal box. Quiet for a moment.
"My brother needs heart surgery. The surgery cost is why I'm here. If I die in this place, he doesn't make it either." Her tone was the same flat register you'd use for a weather report. "So I don't have the luxury of being afraid."
That was a kind of calm Jiang Han understood. Not the absence of fear—the presence of something you feared more than death.
He updated her file internally: Clear objective. Maintains rationality under pressure. Doesn't waste emotion on things she can't control. For now—trustworthy.
Yoon Seo stood up, empty box in hand. Took two steps, then stopped without turning around.
"Next game. If it makes sense... we can work together."
Then she left.
Jiang Han waited for the dormitory to settle before standing up and walking toward the water dispenser. He wasn't thirsty—he needed an excuse to pass by 001's bunk.
The old man sat on the edge of his mattress, both hands holding his meal box, eating rice one bite at a time.
The way he ate was different from everyone else. Unhurried. Each mouthful chewed thoroughly. Like he was sitting at his kitchen table at home, having a regular weeknight dinner. People around him were shivering, choking down food without chewing, hands trembling so badly they could barely hold their chopsticks. Only he seemed at ease.
Jiang Han reached the water dispenser, pressed the button. The machine gurgled. He used the posture to observe from his peripheral vision.
Three details.
First—Kang Dae's crew had swept through this section, stripping meal boxes from everyone in arm's reach. But when they'd passed 001, they'd skipped him. Not because they hadn't seen him. They'd seen him, and then looked away. As if some instinct told them not to touch this particular old man.
Second—the way he ate. Not the way a starving man eats when he finally gets food. The way a man eats an unremarkable meal that meets expectations. Anyone who could sit down to dinner with that attitude after a game that killed two hundred and seventy-three people was either completely detached from the value of life, or had known from the start that he was never in danger.
Third—his gaze occasionally drifted to a corner of the ceiling. A hemispherical camera was embedded there, half-hidden in a panel seam, easy to miss unless you were looking for it. Each time the old man's eyes found that spot, the corner of his mouth ticked upward—barely, like a man waving hello to someone behind a lens.
In the original show, you were the creator of all this. You inserted yourself into your own game just for the thrill.
But this isn't the original. The rules changed. Did you change too?
Or are there things even the corruption can't alter?
No new hints from the hidden quest. He filled his cup, turned to go back to his bunk.
Passing the old man's bed, 001 raised his head and smiled at him.
"Tough day, young man."
Raspy voice, warm tone. The words of a neighbor's grandfather.
Jiang Han gave a slight nod and kept walking.
The hair on the back of his neck was standing up.
Lights out came at what was apparently ten PM.
No windows, no natural light in this underground facility—time was whatever the organizers declared it to be. The fluorescents cut, and the dormitory plunged into near-total darkness, broken only by four dim red emergency lights in the ceiling corners that turned the space into something that resembled the bottom of a dark well lit by dying embers.
The first few minutes were quiet. A hundred and eighty-three people lying in the dark, listening to each other breathe, punctuated by the occasional shuddering sob.
Then the sounds started.
Metal bed frames clanking. Footsteps, muffled but coordinated. People moving in the dark—not one, at least four or five, setting out from the northeast corner, no discipline in their stride but headed in the same direction.
Kang Dae's crew.
The daytime robbery had been an appetizer. Darkness gave violence a mask—you could beat someone and nobody could see who did it. The victim couldn't identify the attacker, couldn't appeal to the staff. Not that the staff cared in the first place.
The first scream came thirty seconds in.
A man's voice—cut short in the throat, turned into a muffled grunt, then the sound of flesh hitting metal, then the rustle of something being torn from someone's grip. Food, water, or whatever they'd managed to scavenge from the dead during the game.
The chaos spread outward like ripples from a dropped stone. More footsteps. More screams. Someone was dragged off their bunk and slammed onto concrete. Someone swung blindly in the dark and hit the wrong person. Bed frames crashed and clanged.
Jiang Han had sat up the instant he heard the first scream.
But he didn't charge out.
Going at Kang Dae's crew head-on—with my build, that's just volunteering to get killed.
He did something else.
Three empty bunks nearby—their occupants gone. He grabbed the nearest one and hauled it sideways, iron legs screeching against the floor, and wedged it across the entrance to his row. Second one. Third. Three empty bed frames stacked cross-wise, blocking the only way into this section, forming a crude barricade.
Yoon Seo materialized beside him in the dark. Didn't ask questions. Just started locking the barricade tighter—she jammed one bed's leg into the gap of another frame, making the whole structure bite together like a puzzle.
218, the accountant, rolled off his bunk and scrambled to the barricade's safe side. 199, the ex-soldier Ma, limped over and twisted a loose iron bar free from a dismantled bed frame, gripping it in one hand. A few other nearby contestants squeezed in behind the barrier.
In the dark, someone crashed into the barricade. The bed frames rang.
"The fuck—" A hissed curse. One of Kang Dae's men.
He was trying to climb over. Left hand on the crossbar, body hauling upward—Jiang Han crouched on the barricade's inner side, eyes closed, tracking the man's position by sound alone. Hand on the crossbar: high. Breathing from above: weight leaning forward.
He shot his hand out, caught the wrist on the crossbar with precision, and yanked it toward him while sidestepping in the same motion.
The man hadn't expected anyone to fight back in the dark. He lost his balance completely, pulled over the crossbar, and fell face-first into the metal edge of another bed frame.
Cheekbone meeting steel pipe. The sound was dull and solid—the kind you felt in your own teeth.
The henchman howled, swore, and scrambled backward. In the dark, he couldn't see who'd done it.
Jiang Han retreated behind the barricade without a word.
The chaos lasted about twenty minutes. He stayed awake through all of it, monitoring the sounds outside. Yoon Seo crouched beside him, equally silent. In the faint red wash of emergency lights, he caught her profile—jaw locked tight, lips pressed thin, but her eyes were alert.
001, the old man—from his direction came nothing. No noise. No cries for help. No sounds of being attacked. Quiet as if the entire riot were happening in a different dimension.
When the lights came back on, the dormitory looked like a junkyard after a hurricane.
Bed frames sprawled across the aisles at broken angles. Blood smears, broken teeth, and a clump of hair on the floor that belonged to nobody willing to claim it. Several people huddled in corners, groaning over their injuries. Pink-suited staff entered, wordless, and began zipping the motionless bodies into black plastic bags and carrying them out.
Jiang Han counted.
Twelve. Twelve more gone overnight.
One hundred and seventy-one remaining.
Kang Dae's gaze swept toward this section. Not at Jiang Han specifically—at the area, at the bed frames still jammed together as a barricade. One of his henchmen had a makeshift bandage on his face, cheekbone bruised a deep purple.
Kang Dae's eyes met Jiang Han's.
Three seconds.
Kang Dae was evaluating. This skinny young man—was he the one who hit his guy? Couldn't tell in the dark. But he'd remember the direction.
Jiang Han didn't look away. Not provocation—just not retreat.
Three seconds later, Kang Dae grunted and turned his head.
Over. For now.
For now.
The intercom came on again sometime that morning—if "morning" had any meaning inside a bunker with no clocks.
"Players. In light of the events that have occurred during the games, the organizers have decided to offer you a choice."
"Each player may cast a vote. If a majority votes to terminate, the games will end immediately and all survivors may leave—but no prize money will be awarded."
"If a majority is not reached, the games continue."
"Voting begins now."
The dormitory went off like a grenade had landed in it.
Someone sobbed that they wanted it to end, please, just let us go. Someone else gritted their teeth and said they couldn't leave empty-handed. Kang Dae's crew shouted at everyone nearby to vote continue—more dead meant more money, simple math.
Above them, hanging from the vaulted ceiling, a giant transparent piggy bank. Gold-painted, shaped like a cartoon pig, packed with bills that had piled into a small mountain. Every eliminated player added a share. Light filtered through the gaps between the bills, throwing dense, shifting shadows across the piggy bank's surface.
Fear and greed flickered across a hundred and seventy-one faces, trading places with each other.
Voting was old-fashioned: red ball for terminate, blue ball for continue, dropped into a box.
Jiang Han didn't vote immediately.
He was waiting. He needed to see how 001 voted.
Red balls went in, one after another—many of them. The people who'd been beaten last night, the people who'd nearly died in the game, the people who'd cried through the dark hours and couldn't take another round. They'd had enough. They wanted out.
Blue balls accumulated too. Kang Dae's faction voted continue almost unanimously. And others—the quiet ones, the ones who kept glancing at the mountain of cash overhead—clenched their jaws and dropped blue.
001, the old man, rose from his seat, walked slowly to the voting box.
He picked up a ball.
Blue.
When he dropped it in, the corner of his mouth turned up.
The result came quickly. A staff member wrote two numbers on a whiteboard.
Terminate: 89 votes.
Continue: 82 votes.
Murmuring rippled through the room. Someone shouted: "Terminate has more! The game has to end!"
The intercom's voice crushed everything flat: "Voting result—the games will continue."
Jiang Han narrowed his eyes.
Eighty-nine for terminate. One hundred and seventy-one people. Majority of one seventy-one was eighty-six. Eighty-nine was greater than eighty-six. Terminate had a clear majority.
But the games continued.
He replayed the announcement word by word in his head.
"Each player may cast a vote. If a majority votes to terminate—"
Player.
Not "person present." Not "survivor." Player.
Four hundred and fifty-six players had entered. Two hundred and seventy-three died in game one. Twelve died overnight. But death didn't remove you from the roster—their numbers still hung above empty bunks, their tracksuits still folded on pillows.
The dead were still players.
If the denominator for "majority" wasn't one hundred and seventy-one, but four hundred and fifty-six—
Majority was two hundred and twenty-nine.
Eighty-nine wasn't even halfway there.
His breath hitched. One hundred and seventy-one living players. Even if every single one of them voted terminate—one seventy-one was still less than two twenty-nine.
It would never be enough.
This vote had never had the possibility of ending the game. It wasn't a choice—it was theater. Make people believe an exit exists, and when they discover the exit is welded shut, the despair cuts deeper than if they'd never seen a door at all.
But something else stuck in his throat.
001.
If the old man was the master of this game, he knew the vote was a show. Knew that no matter how anyone voted, the game would continue. Which meant it didn't matter what ball he picked.
But he hadn't picked randomly. He'd stood up from his seat, walked slowly to the box in front of everyone, picked up the blue ball, and dropped it in with a smile.
He wasn't voting. He was declaring: I want you to keep playing.
The system panel pushed new text into his vision:
HIDDEN QUEST UPDATE: 2/5
"He chose to let the game continue.
He has the power to end it, but he won't.
Why?"
Jiang Han's hand clenched slowly.
He was growing more certain with every observation—that old man, 001, was not an ordinary player. His role in this game ran far deeper than what the surface showed. And the system's phrasing—"He has the power to end it"—
That wasn't a hint anymore.
It was a card played face-up.
The intercom spoke once more: "Game two will begin in six hours. Please make preparations."
Six hours.
Jiang Han lay back on his bunk, hands behind his head, eyes on the golden piggy bank hanging from the ceiling.
Between the hills of cash, something caught the light. Not a reflection from the fluorescents—a crack in the piggy bank's surface. Hair-thin, almost invisible unless you were staring right at it.
The crack was spreading. Slowly.
From inside the fracture, a thread of dark red light seeped through.
Like something locked inside was pushing its way out, one sliver at a time.