"To Kim Si-Woo the man who turned nothing into everything!"
"Speech! Give us a speech!"
"Sir they've been chanting your name for the last ten minutes straight," his assistant Yuna said from beside him while she was already smiling because she knew exactly what he was going to say before he opened his mouth.
"Let them chant for ten more then."
"The Haesong chairman has been waving at you from across the room for the last half hour sir."
"I see him."
"He looks desperate."
"I know."
"Should I go tell him something?"
"Tell him the line forms at the door before it ends somewhere outside the building."
Yuna pressed her lips together and turned away to hide her smile before disappearing into the crowd, while Si-Woo finally lifted the champagne glass he had been holding for twenty minutes without taking a sip.
Cold and crisp, then something else crept in behind it, something bitter that spread through his chest faster than anything natural had a right to move.
He lowered the glass and stared at it.
"Sir?" A passing server slowed near him. "Is something wrong with the drink?"
"No," he said, but his legs had already stopped listening before he could reach for the table and the marble floor came up to meet him like it had somewhere urgent to be.
The last thing he heard was Yuna screaming his name from somewhere across the ballroom.
The last thing he thought was quiet and stupid and he almost laughed at it even as the dark closed in from every direction at once.
I should've bought the pharmaceutical company.
"Hey..... hey wake up already and stop pretending you're dead."
"Kick him again."
"I already kicked him twice before he didn't even flinch so you kick him for once."
"That's not what I'm paid for."
Si-Woo opened his eyes.
A rotting wood ceiling stared down at him while two boys, maybe twelve and fourteen, stood at the foot of the cot and looked at him with the flat bored cruelty of people who had done this kind of thing many times before.
"He's awake," the younger one said.
"Obviously," said the older one before they both walked out without another word, the door swinging shut behind them while Si-Woo lay there alone in the silence.
He sat up slowly and looked at his hands while they trembled under the weight of his own body, thin, bruised, wrong in every way, before someone else's memories crashed through him all at once like a wall of cold water breaking through a door that had been holding it back for a very long time.
Jin Cheon-Woo.
Seventeen years old and the youngest son of a ruined merchant clan, the favorite target of two older brothers who had very little else to do with their frustration, while their father sat with a bottle instead of the account books and stopped noticing any of it a long time ago.
A right leg broken in two places and never set properly, leaving behind a limp that marked him before he even opened his mouth.
"Okay," Si-Woo said out loud to the empty room while his voice came out rough and young and strange in his own ears. "So I'm dead and I woke up inside someone else's broken body, this body is seventeen years old, starving, and lives somewhere that smells like the back of a barn."
He paused and looked around the small rotting room before exhaling slowly through his nose.
"Great."
[System Activated.][Welcome, Shareholder.][Current Assets: 3 Copper Coins.][Current Combat Power: 3.]
Blue text floated in front of his eyes and sat there patient and still while Si-Woo stared at it for a long moment before reading it again from the very top.
"Combat power of three," he said slowly.
[Correct.]
"Out of what... ten or a hundred?"
[Scale is unlimited. Current rating places the host body in the bottom zero point one percent of all recorded combatants.]
"So three is very bad."
[Three is critically low, yes.]
"And three copper coins."
[Correct.]
"What can I actually buy with three copper coins right now?"
[One small bowl of rice porridge or approximately half a candle.]
"So nothing useful."
[Correct.]
Si-Woo looked down at his bruised hands before looking at the cracked paper window with its thin gray light coming through, then back at the floating text hovering in front of him.
"Alright walk me through what you actually are because I have a feeling I'm going to need to understand this very fast."
[This system functions as an asset management interface for the designated Shareholder. Resources can be acquired and invested to generate returns across combat ability, wealth, influence, and social standing.]
"So it's a business model."
[In simplified terms... yes.]
"And I'm the only one who can see and hear you right now?"
[Correct. The system is private to the Shareholder only.]
"Good," Si-Woo said while something cold and familiar settled behind his eyes the way it always did when a bad situation started showing him its shape. "Then let's talk about what I'm actually working with here because three copper coins is a starting position, not a final one."
[Recommended first action is to review the full asset list and...]
The door came off the frame.
It didn't creak or open slowly, it blew inward before three men stepped through the gap with blades already drawn, and the one at the front had a scar running from his eyebrow all the way down across his jaw while his eyes swept the room once before landing on Si-Woo and staying there.
The man smiled like he had walked in and found exactly what someone had paid him to find.
"Jin Cheon-Woo," the scarred man said.
Si-Woo looked at the three blades before looking at the three men, then back at the blades again.
"You've got the right room," Si-Woo said.
"Good.....saves us some time then."
"What are you here for exactly?"
The scarred man tilted his head like the question was the funniest thing he'd heard all week before glancing back at the two men behind him while one of them shrugged.
"The Jin Clan ends today kid," the scarred man said before taking one slow step forward. "Someone paid good money to make sure of that, and unfortunately for you it means everyone in this house."
"How much?" Si-Woo said.
The man stopped walking.
"What?"
"How much did they pay you, it's a simple question and I'm just asking."
The scarred man looked at him for a moment before glancing back at his two men, and this time none of them had an answer ready because none of them had expected that question from a starving boy on a broken cot.
"That's not your business kid."
"Everything is my business," Si-Woo said while keeping his voice flat and even the way he always had when a negotiation started going sideways. "Whoever hired you is your current employer, but employers can change and I'm asking what the number is, because I want to know if I can beat it."
"You've got nothing."
"I have three copper coins."
"That's not funny."
"It's not a joke, I genuinely have three copper coins right now and I want to know if we can work from that number up toward something that makes this conversation end differently than you currently intend."
The scarred man stared at him before he did something Si-Woo hadn't expected, he laughed, a real one without any performance in it, before glancing back at his two men who had also started smiling despite still holding their blades out in front of them.
"Three copper coins," the man said while shaking his head slowly. "Kid I'll give you this, you've got nerve for a cripple sitting on a broken cot with nothing."
"I've started worse negotiations than this one," Si-Woo said while inside his head the system text still floated calm and blue in the corner of his vision.
[Tutorial still pending. Recommend initiating immediately.]
Start it, he thought back without moving his mouth, and make it fast.
[Initiating. First note — current combat power of three is insufficient to survive this encounter through force alone.]
I already know that, so give me something I can actually use right now.
[Checking available options for Shareholder with three copper coins and a combat power of three, currently facing three armed opponents in an enclosed space.]
"You done talking kid?" the scarred man said before raising his blade.
"Almost," Si-Woo said. "One more question."
"Make it fast."
"Who hired you, give me a name and I'll make it worth your while before we're done here, and I won't be using the three copper coins."
The scarred man's smile faded while his eyes went a shade colder, and that told Si-Woo more than any answer would have.
"Kill him," the man said to the two behind him.
[Option found.]
"Great timing," Si-Woo said out loud before standing up from the cot on a leg that didn't work right and facing three men with blades who were already moving toward him.
This is just the opening position, I've built entire empires from worse than three copper coins before.
[Then let's begin, Shareholder.]