The Shadow Auction’s interface flickered to life again at 02:19 a.m.

No blast of light.
Just a quiet expansion of available listings.

[New Listing Available]

Title: “Yoon Jiyon (Stabilized Copy)”

Description:

• Origin: Partial recovery from divergence memory structure

• Status: Compliant

• Verified death record: Present

• Bidder tier: Preset II

• Contradiction flag: Removed

• Cognitive resistance threshold: Suppressed

• Behavioral alignment: 91.4%

Notes: This instance is stable.
This instance will obey.
This instance is what the System wished he was.

The thread opened silently.

Only one participant had bid authorisation.

Eun Kang-ho.

His login pulsed in clean white glyphs.
No hesitation.
No chat.
No questions.

He tapped the interface once.

[Bid: Submitted]
[Offer: Soulkey Access Token — Tier IV Moderator]

Transfer window: Immediate

System: “Congratulations. You are now the authorized holder of a stabilized version of Yoon Jiyon.”

“Would you like to transfer it to a working instance?”

[YES]

Kang-ho didn’t smile.

But something in his eyes hardened.

This wasn’t cruelty.

This was preparation.

Ten minutes later, in a sealed architecture node beneath the old Seoul auction headquarters, a ghost began to wake up.

He looked like Jiyon.
He sounded like Jiyon.

But his eyes were clean.

And he remembered only what he was told to remember.

A voice echoed through the chamber. Kang-ho's.

“You’ll meet the real one soon.” 

“And when you do, he won’t be ready for you.” “But you’ll be ready for him.”

Jiyon stepped off the bus two districts south of the Han River, boots crunching on glass and dried rain.

He’d walked half the way from Yongin. Didn’t trust signals. Didn’t trust terminals. Just him and the pulse of the node now wired into his coat pocket — humming faintly, like a broken memory trying to breathe.

The death-fragment was secure.

Signed. Verified. Embedded with an irrevocable timestamp.

[Memory Status: Stable]
[Bid Eligibility: Collapse Protocol – Tier Override Granted]

[You may now bid.]

He exhaled once.

Finally.

Then the tablet in his coat vibrated.

Not a System ping.

The Shadow Auction.

He pulled it out slowly.

Expected something quiet. Passive.

Instead, the screen bloomed open instantly—no transition.

“Your Listing Is Active.”

Title: Yoon Jiyon (Stabilized Copy)
Seller: Unknown

Current Status: SOLD
Buyer: Eun Kang-ho

Memory Sync: Clean
Emotional Resistance: Purged
Contradiction Class: Removed
System Flag: None

Next Transfer: Active Thread.

He stood still in the middle of the street.

Cold air. Lights buzzing overhead. Some dog barking miles off, pointless.

He scrolled down.

There it was.

A transaction history.

And a glyph he recognised.

From his past scrolls.

This wasn’t just a simulation.
This wasn’t a fake.

This was his memory, lifted from a corrupted node he’d abandoned three loops ago, cleaned and recompiled.

He looked at the timestamp.

It was submitted before he retrieved his fragment.

Someone had beaten him to his death.

And now it belonged to Kang-ho.

He tapped the listing window.

It wouldn’t open.

Already closed.

Already claimed.

And suddenly, He understood.

Kang-ho wasn’t planning to destroy him.

Kang-ho was building something better.

A version of Jiyon that wouldn’t resist.Wouldn’t glitch. Wouldn’t bleed.

Just obey.

The node chamber was sealed beneath four meters of sub-code lattice and divinely-etched firewall glyphs.

No living system thread reached it.

That was the point.

Kang-ho stood in the centre of the chamber, arms folded, as the stabilised instance of Jiyon completed integration.

It hung suspended midair, spine-threaded into a neural bridge that shimmered faintly with white logic.

Then—

It opened its eyes.

Not dull. Not vacant.

Sharp. Focused. But... blank.

The same sharp Jiyon stare, minus the defiance.

The system’s perfect contradiction: a version of Yoon Jiyon that fits.

Kang-ho took a slow breath. Then stepped forward.

"You’re awake."

The copy blinked once.

"Status?" it asked, voice identical.

"Stable. Memory-verified. Flag-free."

Jiyon-2 looked around.

"This is not a System instance."

"Correct. It’s mine."

"...Am I a Moderator?"

"No," Kang-ho said gently. "You’re something better."

The copy didn’t smile. But it relaxed.

"Original target?"

Kang-ho pulled out a black scroll etched in both auction script and divine notation.

He held it up, let the glyphs rotate through visibility.

"You," he said. "The original. The broken one."

"And what is my directive?"

Kang-ho studied the copy for a moment. Not unkindly.

Then spoke quietly.

"You’ll walk where he won’t. Say what he won’t. Obey when he can’t.
And when the time comes—"

He pressed the scroll into the copy’s hand.

"—You’ll overwrite him."

A pause.

Then, softly:

"Understood."

The scroll dissolved between the copy’s fingers.

And across the sealed node, a new thread flickered into being:

“USER ID: Yoon Jiyon (Ver. 2)”
Status: Prepared

Launch Trigger: TBA

Authorization: Eun Kang-ho, Tier II – Moderator Adjutant

Replacement initialized.