Yoon Jiyon sat motionless in the half-lit silence of his apartment, knees drawn up, ramen untouched, phone still glowing in his hand.

[AUCTION SYSTEM: Welcome, New User. First Item Unlocks in 7 Days.]

He’d been staring at that screen for twelve minutes.

The light from it painted him ghost-pale, like it had dug up a corpse. Which, to be fair, it had. He’d been a corpse less than an hour ago.

Now? The air was too breathable. The walls were too intact. His heartbeat was too steady. His body didn’t ache from burns or broken ribs. There was no gavel in the sky, no fire on the horizon.

Only the faint buzzing of the fluorescent ceiling light and the clinking of the metal chopsticks as they slid from his hand into the bowl.

Jiyon stood slowly. The apartment smelled like laundry detergent and mild hopelessness. Rent overdue. Bills were stacked on the microwave. A mirror by the door reflected his face: younger, thinner, less scarred.

He touched his cheek. No bandages. No brands. No God-Marked Sigils.

No one had touched him yet.

Seven days.

Not much time. But too much to waste playing reincarnation drama.

He opened his closet, tossed aside old suits he never wore, and pulled out a dented duffel bag. Cash reserves—what little he remembered he’d stashed before the world went to hell. A burner phone. A hoodie that didn’t smell like regret.

The rules were simple:
Don’t act out of character. Don’t let anyone know. Don’t make a move until the System does.

Seven days from now, the first item would go live: a weak, Common-tier Fireball spell. Harmless on its own. But the man who bought it, a cocky wannabe streamer with zero survival instincts, would make it trend on every feed across the globe.

He’d kill two looters with it in a convenience store and die laughing in his viral video.

That was where the dominoes began to fall.
Where the Auction became real.

And where Jiyon planned to intercept it.

He checked the wall clock. 9:13 PM.

Right about now, five years ago, he’d been sitting in the grimy booth of a 24-hour PC bang, wiping soda off a broken keyboard and telling some stranger online that the System was just a scam.

He headed there now.

The air outside was crisp with summer static. Neon signs buzzed over noodle carts and clustered balconies. Seoul was still standing. Still noisy. Still innocent.

God, it looked so breakable.

He kept his head low as he passed under flickering lights, hood pulled tight. He caught his reflection in a pharmacy window—dark eyes, sullen mouth, tired beyond his years.

Not many people got to see the world before it ended.
Even fewer got to see it twice.

The PC bang was right where he remembered it: the third floor of a yellow building with too many cables hanging from its walls like nervous veins. He climbed the stairs two at a time and pushed the glass door open.

Cigarette smoke. Energy drink cans. Chairs squeaking. The familiar hum of a hundred MMOs eating away at people’s social lives.

He found his old booth. Terminal 38. The screen was still cracked in the corner. The keyboard is still missing its F7 key.

He sat down, logged in with an old ID, and pulled up the web forum that would, in exactly four days, light the fuse.

#AUCTIONSYSTEM
Thread: “Golden UI on My Phone?? Anyone else?”

14 posts. All dismissed as trolling.

He smiled.

So it had started.

And the idiot who made that post? The one whose curiosity would kill him?

Yoon Jiyon had a name to find.

Yoon Jiyon leaned closer to the dusty monitor, screenlight flickering across his eyes like a ghost trying to blink.

The forum post was still there, just as he remembered—word for word.

Posted by Hexstorm, 4 minutes ago

“WTF is this new app? Shows up when I restart. Looks gold and creepy. It asked me to ‘bid for fire.’ LMAO. Anyone else seeing this??”

There it was. The spark.

The laughter in the thread was predictable. Troll. Schizo. ARG. Scam. The usual internet crucifixion.

But Jiyon remembered.
In thirty-six hours, that thread would have a hundred thousand views.
In forty-eight, it would be gone, scrubbed by the System’s silent moderators.

He clicked the username: Hexstorm.

No profile picture. Forum join date: two weeks ago.
He remembered it being an alt.

Jiyon tapped his lip. The first time he’d seen the name, he’d laughed it off. Later, in year two of the apocalypse, he’d learned the truth: Hexstorm was Kim Doohyun.

Not famous. Not powerful. Not notable with his set of skills. Just the first dumbass to shout into the void with a match.

And it was time to find him.

Jiyon opened the adjacent terminal and pulled up an archive mirror—a preserved scrape of the early threads, before the System bought or deleted them. It wasn’t public. He’d found it in year four, after a scavenger bled out trying to protect the hard drive it was on.

Here, it was intact. Names. Handles. Geotags.
He searched: "Hexstorm."

Ping.

Archived Session ID: #554-TRK98 | IP: [redacted] | Exit Node: Yongsan-gu, Seoul
Device Sync: Mobile, PC (Home), PC (Internet Café: “Foxbyte Lounge”)

Jiyon’s mouth tilted into a cold, flat line.

“Bingo.”

He leaned back in the squeaky chair, fingers steepled in thought. Foxbyte Lounge was this place. But the home sync… that was what mattered.

And he remembered the address.

Apartment 4-B, Saejin Heights.
Just ten blocks from here.

The same building that would be burned to the frame in three weeks, when Kim Doohyun tried to “recreate” his first fireball for content, caught his face on fire, and launched the black market for healing items.

None of that was going to happen this time.
Because Kim Doohyun wasn’t getting to that bid.

Jiyon checked the time: 11:21 PM.
If memory served, the System’s first push notification to Kim Doohyun would arrive tomorrow at 2:14 AM.

Just under three hours.

He logged out, stood, and adjusted the strap of his duffel bag. His boots felt too loud in the corridor. The hallway reeked of cheap instant coffee and aftershave, the perfume of every regretful gamer under 30.

The clerk barely looked up as Jiyon passed. Just waved with a disinterested grunt. Probably assumed he was off to buy cigarettes or kill himself.

Maybe both.

Outside, the streets had thinned. Night buses groaned past. The horizon buzzed faintly with unnatural gold, just enough to make your brain itch if you stared too long.

Jiyon didn’t look up.

He already knew what was up there.