Chapter 1

To live a life—and to grow older—means that the things you want to do gradually slip farther away, while the things you have to do keep piling up.

For the sake of doing what had to be done, the man woke up early as always and boarded public transportation packed with people.

“Good morning.”

“Hello.”

Although everyone’s faces were bright with smiles, the greetings were little more than formalities. After taking his seat, the man opened the notebook where he had listed everything he needed to do that day.

[Kim Sumi—loan screening]

[Call regarding Park Sang-cheol’s overdue payment]

[Park Mun-seong—overdue payment reminder ★]

“Hey, Manager Kim. Is something wrong? You look gloomy.”

What’s wrong?

Kim Si-min gave the senior team leader who had spoken to him an awkward smile.

“No, nothing’s wrong. I was just thinking that today is going to be another tough one.”

Eight years in banking.

During all those years of meeting customers and handling and managing loans, he had become exhausted in more ways than one.

Having to smile and pretend everything was fine even when it wasn’t, and having to respond positively to whatever customers said—working in a service job was anything but easy.

There were plenty of people who thought, ‘But don’t you get a high salary?’

A high salary, my ass.

It didn’t matter how much he earned. His bank balance still ended up in the red by payday.

And when the economy was struggling like it was these days, there were plenty of business owners going under.

Listening to their stories while simultaneously pressuring them for payment according to the bank’s rules was even harder.

“No, fuck! Do you know how long I’ve been doing business with Daehan Bank and how much money I’ve dealt with through you guys? I’ve kept you people fed for over twenty years! And you think you can treat me like this? Have I ever missed an interest payment before or what?”

No one had forced him to take out a bank loan.

Yet the customer had completely forgotten about the opportunities he had gained by borrowing money from the bank and was now saying things like this.

And of course, interest payments couldn’t simply be left overdue.

The customer might have had his reasons for being angry, but there was no way getting cursed at every time he made a collection call could feel good.

“Haa… Team Leader, Manager… it’s not that I’m refusing to pay. I really don’t have any money right now. I don’t. I swear, I don’t have a penny. So how am I supposed to pay you? Please, just let me live. I’m doing this because I’m trying to survive too.”

Hah. Here we go again.

They would scream and hurl abuse, and when that didn’t work, they would suddenly beg and plead as if they had become an entirely different person.

It was a pattern commonly seen among delinquent borrowers.

“Just repay two million won for now. You’re supposed to repay 100 million won, but if you can pay back that much, I’ll try submitting a request to extend the loan for another three months.”

Finding a way somehow.

Not demanding the full ten percent that was required, but helping them make even a partial payment so that their loan could be extended.

That was all Kim Si-min could do.

“I really don’t have any money, Team Leader. I’m going to the Han River bridge today. Please, just save me.”

“Sir, if there were a way, I’d like to help you too. But there really isn’t anything else I can do.”

Borrowers who received collection calls were always the same.

He’ll probably say he’s going to jump off a bridge in the end. Or tell me to do whatever I want with him.

There was no way Kim Si-min could fundamentally save these people.

Eight years into his banking career and now serving as a team leader, Manager Kim Si-min did his best to finish another day.

After spending yet another exhausting day like that, he dragged his tired body onto another bus packed with people on his way home.

“I don’t think there was ever a moment when I wanted to give up. Somehow, I’m going to take care of my grandfather. I’ll protect him until he turns one hundred.”

On ViewTube, which he had opened without thinking, a video appeared about a child whose body had been left impaired by complications from surgery. The child was desperately trying to find a way to continue taking care of his grandfather, and the video was asking people to help him.

‘Ah… that’s heartbreaking.’

He opened his banking app and checked his account balance.

Things were so tight that he could barely afford to help anyone.

‘I’ll put in at least ten thousand won.’

Just as Kim Si-min donated ten thousand won despite his own financial difficulties—

“Uh…! Hey…! Isn’t that a person over there?”

Someone suddenly shouted inside the bus, which was so crowded that it was difficult even to breathe.

The bus was crossing the Han River bridge when the passengers spotted a man apparently about to jump.

“Driver! Over there! Over there! Someone’s about to jump!”

The bus stopped, and the passengers poured out of it in a frantic rush.

With the emergency hazard lights flashing, people continued getting off, finally creating some breathing room inside the bus.

Kim Si-min began getting off more slowly than the others, moving sluggishly.

I’m tired.

How did things end up like this?

He had once been the kind of person who always stepped forward first whenever he saw someone in trouble.

But at some point, it seemed he had simply run out of the energy to do that.

“Sir! You have a family at home, don’t you?! What are they supposed to do if you do this?!”

“My family can only live if I’m gone! They’ll be better off without me!”

The man screamed desperately.

“Sir! What are you saying? If you die like this, your family will suffer for the rest of their lives! So please, just come over here!”

“My debt… Fuck, my debt… There’s no answer… There’s nothing I can do…”

The man’s voice, as he spoke about his debt, sounded strangely clear.

That voice…

It was familiar.

A voice he knew well.

Since he hadn’t originally handled the man’s loan, they had only met briefly when extending the loan, and otherwise had spoken solely over the phone.

Kim Si-min quickly moved toward him.

“I tried… I really tried… I struggled like hell to make things work and live properly… But what am I supposed to do when nothing works?! I don’t even have ten won to my name right now… and they’re telling me to pay two million won in three days! How the fuck am I supposed to do that, you bastards?!”

Two million won.

As expected, it was a familiar amount.

The man was still screaming, and Kim Si-min, who had been moving sluggishly only moments earlier, was now running toward him faster than anyone else.

“Sir… let’s live. Please. If you keep living, there’ll be a way somehow. There has to be a way to survive… Maybe you could even apply for bankruptcy…”

“Fuck off… Fuck all of you! If those bastards don’t get me, they’ll take my wife and kids and sell them off!”

There was no bank in this world that would seize people and sell them.

Well, at least there certainly wasn’t one in Korea.

With another bizarre outburst, the man tried to throw himself from the bridge.

No!

Kim Si-min instinctively lunged forward and grabbed the man’s hand as he tried to jump.

“Manager… Kim?”

“Come back up. You said you had a family, didn’t you?”

His voice trembled.

Although he had only seen the man’s face once, they had spoken on the phone many times over the years.

Kim Si-min desperately tried to pull him back up.

But the man, hanging precariously from Kim Si-min’s single hand, showed no intention of climbing back up.

“If I die… at least my family can live…”

He was still saying things Kim Si-min couldn’t understand.

The man tried to shake off Si-min’s hand.

Si-min relied on the people clinging to him from behind for support and used both hands, desperately trying to pull the man up.

“Stop saying such nonsense and come up!”

He shouted, but the man’s eyes had already made their decision.

Several people rushed forward to help Si-min, but the man used all his strength to wrench his hand free and began to fall.

It was a dark night on the way home from work.

The man who had thrown himself into the river became a tiny black speck before disappearing into the water.

Somewhere in the distance, sirens could be heard.

Police cars and ambulances were arriving.

Why?

How did things come to this?

For a long while, he stood there in a daze, staring at the bridge from which the man had jumped.

That evening, the news reported on the man who had jumped.

A man who had been unable to bear his debts any longer.

Apparently, someone had recorded the incident on their phone.

The man, his face pixelated, was shouting on the television.

“I tried… I really tried… I struggled like hell to make things work and live properly… But what am I supposed to do when nothing works?!”

Alone in his apartment, he stared blankly at the scene on the television before eventually collapsing into sleep.

Early the next morning, Kim Si-min went to work at the bank and made a phone call.

“The customer is unable to answer the phone…”

The face of Park Mun-seong, falling from the bridge, continued to haunt his mind.

Before he knew it, a week had passed.

Then someone knocked on his office door.

Knock, knock.

A middle-aged woman with hollow, exhausted eyes stood there, accompanied by a woman who looked like a university student and a boy who appeared to be a high school student.

In their hands were basic certificates and family-relation certificates.

Among the words he could glimpse, he saw the names ‘Park Mun-seong’ and ‘deceased.’

“My husband…”

His wife’s trembling, tearful voice struck Kim Si-min’s ears.

For a moment, he felt dizzy.

I did my best. It wasn’t my fault.

He desperately denied it to himself.

He had only done what he was supposed to do.

Even then, he had tried to help as much as he could.

It wasn’t as though he had pushed Park Mun-seong off the Han River bridge, was it?

And yet, strangely, guilt continued to wash over him.

I did enough. I did everything I could.

“…”

A curse rose to his throat.

The image of the man falling kept coming back to him.

“It’s such a shame. Looking at the family, the daughter seems young… and the son too… I guess he’s probably around college age now.”

The other employees’ emotionless comments were even more unpleasant to hear.

At quitting time that day, Kim Si-min fled the branch as though running away.

Normally, he would have boarded public transportation packed with people, just as he always did.

But that day, he crossed Cheonho Bridge and kept walking north.

Step.

He walked with his eyes fixed not on the sky, but simply on the ground.

At some point, he realized that the surroundings had become strangely quiet.

He hadn’t been in Seoul for very long, but he wasn’t completely unfamiliar with the city either.

Still, something felt strangely different.

Ah, my battery.

He had tried to open his map app, only to discover that his phone battery had died.

It feels like I spent the whole day out of my mind.

“Seriously…”

But why is it so dark around here?

Blaming himself, he simply kept walking.

Then he spotted a single brightly lit supermarket.

[Daedong Mart]

Feeling a strange sense of familiarity toward the old-fashioned neighborhood store, the kind that was becoming increasingly rare in Seoul, Kim Si-min walked inside.

“Hello.”

“Welcome.”

He ignored the shopkeeper’s slow greeting, which for some reason seemed strangely lifeless, and picked up two cans of beer.

“That’s all you’re getting?”

“Yes. This is enough.”

“Looks like you’ve had a pretty rough time.”

“I guess so. Things have been strangely difficult lately.”

“That’s just how life is. When things get hard, you rest for a while and keep going. If you push yourself too hard, you’ll get sick.”

The old-fashioned words of comfort reminded Kim Si-min of his hometown, and he let out an involuntary sigh.

“Yeah… exactly.”

“Looks like you don’t have any family?”

“How did you know that?”

“You can tell just by looking. You’re not from around here, are you? And you took a wrong turn too, didn’t you?”

“How did you know that too?”

“I told you, we can tell just by looking. If you don’t have anywhere else to go, eat your beer right out front.”

Yeah. Maybe I’ll just stay and eat.

It’s not like anyone’s waiting for me at home anyway.

He sat down on the familiar wooden platform in front of the supermarket, opened a bag of Saewookkang shrimp crackers, and took a drink of beer.

He began pouring out the things he had no one else to talk to about to the supermarket lady.

“I’m not a bad guy, you know. Before I came to Seoul, I used to help people a lot. I even donated regularly. I work hard. I really work hard. I cut into the little free time I have, even sacrificing sleep… I really work so hard, but… I don’t understand why life has to be so painful.”

It was nothing more than a rant.

“I’m sure it wasn’t because of me… but that man too… damn…”

Thinking of the dead Park Mun-seong and his family, Kim Si-min downed the rest of his beer.

“Hey, young man. It wasn’t because of you. Don’t think like that.”

The supermarket owner, whom he had never met before, comforted him as though she knew everything, even though he hadn’t told her much.

After rambling for a while and finishing his beer, Kim Si-min rose from his seat.

“There aren’t many people around here. You’re not drunk from that little bit of beer, are you? There’s nothing else worth seeing around here. Just go straight down that road, understand? You’ll come out onto a main road.”

The owner patted Kim Si-min on the shoulder.

The supermarket owner’s hand, despite the warmth of her words, was strangely cold.

“Oh, right. This is a gift, so take it. Don’t ever lose it. Always wear it around your wrist, okay? It’ll help you.”

The owner fastened something resembling a bracelet around Kim Si-min’s wrist.

“Thank you, ma’am. Thank you.”

He thanked the supermarket owner several times for comforting him after such a difficult day, then continued walking in one direction.

Under normal circumstances, he would have looked around as he walked.

But for some reason, he simply followed the direction the owner had pointed out.

After walking for a while, just as she had said, he reached a main road and saw a bright light.

Then, in the next moment, he lost consciousness.

“Mr. Kim Si-min? Mr. Kim Si-min, wake up.”

Beep. Beep. Beep.

The sound of a machine he had heard countless times in medical dramas echoed in his ears.

His eyelids felt so heavy that he couldn’t open his eyes, and he had no idea what was happening.

“Can you see this, sir? How many fingers am I holding up?”

“Two…”

Why are my eyes so heavy? Why can’t I think straight?

A man who appeared to be a doctor in a white coat kept waving his fingers in front of him.

He was sure he had walked down the road just as the supermarket owner had instructed him, and then reached the main road.

“Hey, Manager Kim, are you okay? You know you collapsed immediately after walking out of the branch? You could’ve gotten seriously hurt if you’d hit your head.”

It was the voice of Team Leader Park Cheol-sun, a colleague he was usually close with.

What is he talking about?

I collapsed immediately after leaving the branch?

But I clearly walked for a long time.

I even went to a supermarket and drank beer.

“Damn, you live alone and don’t even take care of yourself. And you’re the guy who even competes in MMA matches. What good is being that tough if you’re so physically run-down?”

The team leader’s words sounded muffled.

Kim Si-min slowly managed to sit up and looked at him.

“Are you starting to come around?”

“Yes… But what do you mean? You said I collapsed in front of the branch?”

“You collapsed as soon as you walked out of the branch. Don’t you remember? Well, I guess there’s no reason for someone who passed out to remember.”

“But I walked for a long time, went to a supermarket, and collapsed on a main road…”

“What are you talking about? You still haven’t come to your senses.”

Was it really a dream?

But it was too vivid.

The taste of the beer.

The taste of the Saewookkang crackers.

Even the supermarket owner’s touch.