Chapter Text
r/OutOfTheLoop
Posted by u/cowgirlbebop [A-Rank] - 4 months ago
Got knocked out for a while. Who the fuck is Han Yoojin, and why is some random Korean F-rank trending worldwide? [Awakened-centric]
I overused my skills during a raid and long story short ended up in the infirmary. Why are there so many posts about him on the r/huntermemes subreddit about this guy? From what I found, he’s a F-rank but people are still losing their minds over him.
I’ve seen that he can raise S-Rank dungeon beasts, that Guild Leaders are fighting over him, and so many different edits? Oh and since that wasn’t enough he also apparently supported that Korean whistleblower guy, Song Taewon?
How does a F-rank even get involved in all of this? Can someone explain what I missed? Is all of this even true?
24.9k comments | 43.7k upvotes | 7.1k downvotes
u/steponmequeenhyuna [C-Rank]
Han Yoojin isn’t just any F-rank. He’s a beast-raising specialist, and I mean specialist. Moon Hyuna’s mount? Yoojin raised it. He’s also behind several other dungeon beasts being used by S-rank hunters. His skills make him a legend, even though he doesn’t fight.
15.2k upvotes | 300 downvotes
u/kfc4mkc [B-Rank]
He’s famous because his little brother is Han Yoohyun, the Haeyeon Guild leader. If your younger sibling was an overpowered S-rank, you’d be trending too. Nepotism moment. Next.
7.4k upvotes | 3.9k downvotes
reply to u/kfc4mkc
u/iceprincessqueenboss100 [Unranked]stfu rn loser stanning a loser guild. han yoojin doesn’t even work for haeyeon you bitch. sung hyunjae wants him. all the guilds want him. nobody wants you tho. it’s giving daddy issues.
9.1k upvotes | 899 downvotes
u/the_mostcunninglinguist [Unranked]
I’m just here from the fancams. They’re everywhere. My favorite is the one where he walks out of that one building after calming the berserk beast.
3.1k upvotes | 200 downvotes
u/coupforchristmas13 [A-Rank]
Yoojin’s work with the Korean Hunter Association is insane. He helped expose corruption and had Song Taewon’s back when no one else would. This is why people respect him beyond just his beast-raising. He’s changing the game from the inside.
17.4k upvotes | 400 downvotes
reply to u/coupforchristmas13
u/the_mostcunninglinguist [Unranked]
ngl wish song taewon would blow my back out tbh28.6k upvotes | 21 downvotes
u/bratbutsummerisgone [D-Rank]
Imagine being an F-rank and still more famous than half the S-ranks out there. Meanwhile, I’m barely scraping by in D-rank raids. All men are not created equal.
7.3k upvotes | 1.1k downvotes
reply to u/bratbutsummerisgone
u/sigmadeohio [A-Rank]
L rank loser1.1k upvotes | 11.2k downvotes
reply to u/bratbutsummerisgone
u/grind_till_amex [F-Rank]
Right? While we’re grinding to get one decent piece of gear, this guy’s making dungeon beasts more powerful than some of us. Dude’s got the same rank I do but doesn’t need to step foot in a single dungeon.770 upvotes | 200 downvotes
u/gunsaregod69 [Unranked]
Maybe it’s because I’m not from Korea, but I don’t get the hype. Sure, beast-raising sounds cool, but how much impact can one F-Rank really have?
3.2k upvotes | 2.4k downvotes
reply to u/gunsaregod69
u/t_h_e_honggildong [A-Rank]
Okay, so I just checked my contract and this is what I can tell you.
His beasts are smarter, faster, and stronger than most combat hunters. That’s a game-changer in every dungeon. You’re underestimating how much of a difference it makes in lives lost.13.2k upvotes | 600 downvotes
reply to u/t_h_e_honggildong
u/dankruto2112 [Unranked]
You forgot the part where he’s unaffiliated. Every guild is panicking because whoever can sign him first will dominate the dungeon scene.3.0k upvotes | 82 downvotes
u/wishiwasanonlychild7 [A-Rank]
Han Yoohyun literally simps over his “hyung” even though he’s a S-Rank and his brother is a F-Rank. Meanwhile I’m A-Rank and my unawakened younger brother calls me “dumbass.”
10.1k upvotes | 120 downvotes
reply to u/wishiwasanonlychild7
u/frogsareharmless [C-Rank]
mood man100 upvotes | 2 downvotes
u/givemethegold [Unranked]
What’s crazy is that he turned down Sung Hyunjae. The richest guildmaster in Korea. Do you know how terrifying that guy is? But Yoojin was just like, “Nah, I’m good.” Absolute madlad.
7.1k upvotes | 2.3k downvotes
reply to u/givemethegold
u/daddyshj_ [Unranked]
I wouldn’t mind being tamed by Hyunjae…4.3k upvotes | 2.1k downvotes
reply to u/givemethegold
u/gobtheguilder [Unawakened]
People are sleeping on the fact that Yoojin turned down two of the most powerful guilds in the world. If that doesn’t tell you how serious he is about being independent, I don’t know what will.2.1k upvotes | 123 downvotes
u/looksmaxxing_king_14 [F-Rank]
Man I love that one meme with Yoojin with the caption “F-rank? I run the ranks.”
5.1k upvotes | 972 downvotes
u/dragonloverbigirl [Unranked]
omg if you don’t know who han yoojin is. that one edit of him to THRICE’s new song. mwah mwah mwah. no other explanation needed.
1.1k upvotes | 30 downvotes
u/wintendo [C-Rank]
I still think the hype is a bit overblown. Sure, he’s good at what he does, but is a F-Rank really worth this level of attention?
Why are people acting like he’s a miracle? He’s a low level ranker that just happened to get famous. I’m not buying it. Something’s suspicious here.
12.2k upvotes | 3.1k downvotes
reply to u/wintendo
u/yoonaurnoona [D-Rank]
oh no! the upper ranks are scared the letters are just… letters! your rank doesn’t determine your worth. ugh i hope more folks like han yoojin get popular20.7k upvotes | 7.1k downvotes
reply to u/wintendo
u/forgemaster360 [Unranked]
You should try telling that to the B-Rank, A-Rank, even S-Rank hunters who rely on his beasts to survive dungeons. His work saves lives.15.2k upvotes | 800 downvotes
u/cashlandingonme [Unranked]
Han Yoojin’s life is a K-drama. F-rank with god-tier skills, an S-rank brother, powerful beasts, reforming the system, and guild leaders fighting over him?
I need the adaptation ASAP.
RemindMe! 1 year.
8.6k upvotes | 202 downvotes
Between the rise and fall of the moon and sun, Yoojin felt as if he were adrift in a void, somewhere beyond the edges of the world he once knew.
Six years.
Nearly a third of his life. Yet, it felt like a whole new lifetime had slipped past him, a cruel illusion that left him grasping at the remnants of what once was. Time had played its tricks—an unforgiving sleight of hand—and Yoojin was its unwilling witness. As if the clock had leapt forward mercilessly, hourglass sands spilling without pause, leaving him stranded in a reality that refused to wait. The present unfurled before him, stark and unrelenting, a puzzle of moments that neither asked for his consent nor his recollection.
The journey of his life had become an illegible map, its ink smudged and roads erased.
It felt, absurdly, like the plot of one of those shitty webnovels he used to pirate way back when. Late nights at the convenience store, its ceiling weeping rainwater onto the shelves, and its owner dragged away in cuffs for some scandal too sordid to speak of. Yoojin would crouch behind the counter, legs trembling from hours of standing, gnawing at his hunger because every scrap of food was for Yoohyun.
Fantasy was his only refuge back then.
Those stories were always about boys like him: poor, discarded, carrying the weight of the world on shoulders far too small to bear it. Boys whose lives changed by miracle, accident, or divine intervention—luck finally smiling upon them. A twist of fate, a hidden bloodline, a deus ex machina written to rescue them from the jaws of despair.
Protagonists born from tragedy, bound for greatness.
He had despised those boys, their too-perfect escapes and their too-destined lives. And yet, he had devoured their stories anyway. Pretending to love them while seething in his hollow heart. Because beneath his bitterness, there was something hauntingly familiar in those tales: the scrape of desperation, the ache of wanting more, the silent anger at gods who had never once turned their gaze to boys like him.
Yoojin had always known he wasn’t a protagonist.
And yet.
The world now seemed intent on pressing that role into his reluctant hands, shoving aside the anonymity he had worn like armor. Inspiration, they called him. A muse. An icon. He had become the subject of reverent awe, the kind of admiration that choked rather than exalted.
They painted him into myths, sculpted his likeness in marble, immortalized him in words that twisted and refracted like the light through shattered glass.
The weak looked to him for salvation, their eyes begging for deliverance. The strong knelt, asking to be forged into something greater.
But who was this version of him that they praised? This phantom, this specter that shared his name and wore his face but towered over the frail figure Yoojin knew himself to be? A shadow stretched long and cruel, obscuring the weary boy he had spent years becoming—a boy bent and bitter, too hollowed out by survival to stand beneath the weight of the world’s adoration.
The pressure was suffocating, and Yoojin could feel himself sinking beneath it.
The world around him felt askew, like a painting hung at the wrong angle. Or maybe it was just him—out of place in a story that didn’t seem to be his.
His phone sat in his hand like a foreign object, shiny and unblemished, too new, too sleek. It was a device that belonged to someone else, someone who wasn’t him. The smooth, seamless glass felt wrong beneath his fingers, and the motions he made to scroll through it—intuitive, practiced—felt like someone else’s instincts, not his own.
It wasn’t his phone—not really.
His phone had been a battered survivor, a relic of desperation. Its plastic back warped, its screen cracked into a spiderweb of fractures. The peeling protector curled away like dead skin, a fragile patchwork of tape holding it together—clinging to its battery the way Yoojin clung to life.
That phone had been his.
This phone was nothing like that.
The latest model, pristine in its design, encased in glass untouched by scratches or grit. Its screen protector was flawless. The case was beautiful and new, chosen with care by someone who could afford to pick something for its beauty and not just its utility. Even its weight felt alien—solid and balanced, like it belonged to someone with that sort of life.
Not someone like Yoojin.
This phone radiated affluence, an unmistakable kind of ease that was so foreign it almost felt hostile. There was no story in its unmarred surface, no scars of survival etched into its edges.
Untouched by the wear of desperation, its screen sharp and vivid, it gave him clarity that felt almost novel to someone used to piecing things through cracks.
The longer Yoojin held it, the more it seemed to vibrate with wrongness. It was a stranger’s possession, masquerading as his own. If he closed his eyes, he could still see his old phone—half-shattered, taped together with resignation and willpower. That phone had been a reflection of him. Bruised, battered, but functional. A relic of necessity that carried far more weight than it should have, but carried it all the same.
This one wasn’t.
It was a thing built for someone deserving, someone who had earned it.
Yoojin wasn’t that person.
This phone, this apartment, this entire world—everything felt the same. Shiny and sharp-edged, new in ways that he didn’t know how to hold onto. Polished, unfamiliar, and fundamentally at odds with the boy he had been. It was as though he’d stumbled into a life that wasn’t his, a narrative where every prop, every costume, every set piece whispered that he didn’t belong.
He wasn’t sure he was allowed to breathe inside it at all.
And yet, here he was.
His chest tightened as he stared at the phone’s screen, his reflection faint and distorted across its surface. Who was he looking at now?
The world had changed, but not in the slow, predictable way time usually worked. This change had been violent, abrupt—a sudden rupture in the fabric of reality. It was like flipping through hundreds of thousands of pages of a story, only to find yourself at the end without knowing how you got there.
And somehow, Yoojin was the protagonist.
The world had become unrecognizable, a kaleidoscope of fractured truths and impossible wonders. It wasn’t the threadbare existence Yoojin had once known—nineteen and exhausted, slogging through endless shifts beneath flickering lights, his hands trembling as he clung to roofied drinks and whispered prayers to wake up whole. That world had been grim and raw, a place where survival came in jagged fragments.
But this? This was something else entirely. A world where hunters walked boldly among monsters, their shadows stretching long and sharp. The fairy tales Yoojin had once spun for Yoohyun—soft, careful stories meant to soothe a restless child into sleep—had come alive.
He could still see it in his mind’s eye: Yoohyun curled up beside him, his small frame rising and falling with each breath, as Yoojin spoke in hushed tones. He had made the stories gentler than the books told them, smoothing out the edges, weaving happy endings where none had been written. The huntsmen always triumphed, the dragons always slumbered, the wolves were never so sharp-toothed that they couldn’t be tamed.
And now, those same tales had sharpened into the headlines he could hardly bear to read. Heroes moved through the streets like myths brought to life, their stories carved into the fabric of the world, bright and terrible. Where Yoojin had once softened the world for Yoohyun, this one refused to be tamed—it was wild and cruel, both beautiful and merciless.
A fairytale, yes, but not one he’d ever dared tell.
He had no idea how he had ended up inside it.
He turned the phone off, its screen blacking out with a quiet finality, and set it down as though relinquishing a weapon.
Yoojin’s fingers drifted to the hem of his shirt, rubbing the fabric instinctively, his hands searching for the worn edges and thin threads that always threatened to come undone. But this fabric didn’t fray. It didn’t carry stains worn in by years of sweat and struggle, nor did it threaten to unravel at the seams. It was soft, smooth, unyielding—a material so luxurious it made his skin itch with discomfort.
The shirt didn’t belong to someone like him. It was too perfect, too clean, too light.
His old clothes were his father’s oversized button-ups, handed down not with love but with the indifference of death. They had been relics of another life, too big and heavy for his teenage frame as they hung off his frame like old promises. Yoojin had worn them anyway, rolling the cuffs up over his forearms, tugging them tight so they wouldn’t get in the way. He could still feel the weight of them, his father’s ghost lingering in the folds, as if his father had pressed himself into the fabric and made sure Yoojin would never forget him.
This shirt wasn’t like that.
This one was impossibly light, free of burden or history. It didn’t carry the weight of someone else’s life. It didn’t sag with history or regret or expectation. It simply existed, fresh and new and impossibly clean, and it made Yoojin’s chest tighten because he didn’t know how to wear something like that—didn’t know how to move in it without ruining it.
He laughed, the sound bitter in the empty apartment. The shirt wasn’t that much bigger than his frame, but it was enough to feel like it belonged to a version of himself who didn’t exist.
Someone slightly taller, someone slightly stronger.
Someone who didn’t measure their worth in hunger pangs and sleepless nights.
Someone who wasn’t Yoojin.
Yoojin dragged his hands down his face, his palms rough against his skin, as if trying to scrape away the lingering haze. The itch in his fingers remained, a restless pull born from muscle memory. Years of survival had trained him well, taught him the habit he couldn’t unlearn: checking the price of everything. Calculating worth against need, weighing cost against survival.
Instinctively, he reached for the phone again, the polished thing still cool in his grasp, and searched for the brand stitched into the shirt’s collar.
The number stared back at him, stark and obscene.
It mocked him.
He had sold himself for less. Much less.
How could he wear this without defiling it? How could he drape this pristine, tailored fabric over a body steeped in the filth of who he was, of who he had been? The shirt didn’t just sit against his skin—it resisted, as though refusing to belong to him, to be marked by the stink of desperation and degradation.
His mind drifted back to the rooftop bar last week, to the man with the too-sharp smile and the drink that had tasted bitter in ways no alcohol could explain. The way his body had felt heavy, foreign, a puppet on strings, as though someone else had commandeered it while his soul hovered in the aftermath.
He remembered waking up somewhere unfamiliar, his clothes crumpled, his wallet heavier than it should have been. Enough to buy Yoohyun’s textbooks, enough to keep the lights on for another month. Enough to survive.
That was always the pattern: survive now, worry about the price later.
But this world—the one he’d somehow stumbled into—didn’t care about those textbooks. Here, the lights never flickered, never dimmed. The shirt on his back cost more than Yoojin had earned in a single night.
What was he supposed to do with that?
He thought of Yoohyun, the image sharp and blinding, like staring into the sun. Not the boy Yoojin had known, the fourteen-year-old whose voice still cracked when he spoke too soon. Yoohyun was twenty now, a man where a child had stood.
Not a university student hunched over textbooks, his head full of theories and deadlines. Not a young man clutching a cup of coffee, laughing with friends, losing himself in the soft mundanity of campus life.
No. Yoohyun led raids. He fought monsters. He wielded power Yoojin could barely comprehend, his name echoing in guild halls and news reports alike. One of the most powerful men in the country. Maybe even the world.
And yet, that image twisted something in Yoojin’s chest until it splintered.
Yoohyun should have been worrying about essays, not enemies. He should have been studying for finals, not slaying beasts. His hands should have been ink-stained, not calloused from wielding weapons.
At twenty, Yoohyun stood at the pinnacle of the world.
But Yoojin couldn’t stop thinking about what it had cost.
When Yoohyun was sixteen, he left home with fire in his veins, charming and commanding, swaying old men and women to his tune. He had forged a path through the world, shoulders unbowed, as though he had never doubted he belonged among the elite. When Yoojin was sixteen, he had been selling pieces of himself—body and dignity alike—to keep his eleven-year-old brother fed, clothed, and sheltered. He remembered the exhaustion, the gnawing hunger he ignored so Yoohyun wouldn’t have to feel it. The sting of hands that didn’t belong to him, the coldness of rooms that weren’t his.
And all for what?
Every sacrifice Yoojin had made had been a foundation, an offering meant to create something secure for Yoohyun. But what his brother had built wasn’t a life of quiet safety. It was something entirely different.
Something greater, yes. But greater didn’t mean kinder.
Yoojin stared at the ceiling, his mind heavy with the weight of that thought.
All those nights bent and bruised, trading himself away to buy textbooks and shoes that fit, food that wouldn’t rot in his stomach—what had it amounted to? He had imagined Yoohyun’s future as something soft, something secure. Instead, his brother carried a different weight: power.
Power came with its own burdens. Its own chains.
Had Yoohyun ever really needed him?
The question felt like a betrayal, the kind that came with no easy answers.
Yoohyun had survived, yes. Thrived, even. But this wasn’t the life Yoojin had wanted for him. There were no warm comforts, no serene stability. No safety net.
Yoohyun’s life was a fight, a relentless battle against forces Yoojin couldn’t begin to fathom.
Maybe, Yoojin thought bitterly, this had always been Yoohyun’s path.
Their parents had seen it, hadn’t they? That quiet unease in their eyes whenever they looked at him, the way their hands hovered before pulling back, too reluctant to linger. Yoohyun had never been theirs, not really. He was something otherworldly, something too vast and divine to belong to mortal hands.
Yoohyun had been born with a quietness that was more than stillness—it was absence, an emptiness that filled the room and made others uneasy. Their mother had cradled him with trembling hands; their father had lingered in doorways, hesitant, unsure whether to cross the threshold. They had searched Yoohyun’s eyes for something familiar, something human, and found only reflections staring back at them, distant and unknowable.
He was too quiet, too self-contained, too perfect in his lack of need. He didn’t cry. He didn’t reach for them. He didn’t demand anything from the world around him.
Yoohyun came to them fully formed, and that was the problem.
They had expected a baby, soft and unpolished, a child who would wail and giggle and cling to them. Instead, Yoohyun was a mirror, reflecting back all the ways they fell short. He needed nothing they could give.
And so, they had turned away. Slowly, at first—an uncertain step, a hesitant glance. But distance has a way of growing when left unchecked, and soon, they didn’t look at him at all.
Yoojin had seen it too.
He saw the way their mother’s hands shook as she wrapped the blanket tighter around Yoohyun, whispering to herself that this child wasn’t hers. He saw the way their father lingered in silence, as if waiting for the child to prove otherwise, to break the illusion.
But where their parents hesitated, Yoojin stepped forward.
He hadn’t been asked to. No divine voice called him to action, no grand decree handed him the role. It was simply instinct, as natural to him as breathing. If their parents could not love Yoohyun, Yoojin would. If they flinched, he would stay.
Where their parents saw a burden, Yoojin saw salvation.
Yoohyun’s quiet wasn’t a void to him—it was weight. Heavy, yes, but not unbearable. Their mother whispered that Yoohyun wasn’t hers, their father muttered that Yoohyun wasn’t theirs, but Yoojin whispered to Yoohyun that it didn’t matter.
He would take their place. He would carry the weight.
Yoohyun didn’t cry, so Yoojin cried for him. Yoohyun didn’t reach out, so Yoojin extended his hands. Their parents had let go of their responsibility, but Yoojin clung to it, his grip firm even as it cut into his skin.
He became the first to recognize the light within him, the first to accept the weight of it—something so pure, so blinding that it made everyone else avert their gaze. He didn’t shrink from it; he embraced it, willingly bearing the burden of a greatness that was not his to claim, even when it left scars. If his brother was a divine promise, untouched by the flaws of the world, then he was the humble servant, offering himself fully to the task of protecting it, no matter the cost. Yoohyun wasn’t a child; he was a gift from the gods, an offering too radiant to exist in their bleak little world.
Their parents couldn’t bear to stand in the presence of it.
Yoojin knelt before it.
He stayed, kneeling, at the altar of what was beyond him, holding onto the belief that even in the shadow of such divinity, he could offer something meaningful, something pure. If his brother was something sacred, then Yoojin was its servant. He gave himself wholly to the task of raising, of teaching, of keeping his brother safe from a world too cruel to understand it.
And though it had cost him everything, he had never once wished for anything different.
Every piece of himself he had given—his childhood, his freedom, his body, his dignity—it had all been worth it. Because Yoojin had believed, with every part of his being, that Yoohyun was worth it.
But now, staring at this strange, polished world Yoohyun had risen to rule, Yoojin couldn’t help but wonder: what had he really contributed?
His sacrifices had been real, yes. They had been everything. But had they mattered?
Yoohyun had grown into a force of nature, a beacon of power and strength. He had become something extraordinary. But not the way Yoojin had imagined. Not the way Yoojin had worked for.
Yoohyun’s life wasn’t the safe, steady thing Yoojin had wanted to give him. It was a battlefield, one victory after another, power gained at the cost of peace.
Yoojin had known, somewhere, his fate was to be no more than a footnote. A stepping stone to someone else’s greatness.
A hero and a tragedy, intertwined and inseparable, yet irrevocably different.
And yet.
In this impossible future, the story was trying to make a legend of Yoojin too.
He felt like an imposter in someone else’s narrative. A ghost in borrowed skin, clinging to a role that didn’t belong to him, trapped in a life that whispered of greatness but felt like exile.
Like a counterfeit star in a constellation that had no place for him.
He looked around as he sat in the stillness of his apartment. It wasn’t the kind of space that whispered home, but one that belonged in the glossy frames of magazines or the curated, unattainable videos of the perpetually fortunate. Each piece of furniture carried an elegance he couldn’t quite decipher—smooth lines, muted tones, cushions plush enough to cradle dreams. It felt like a stage set for a life unbroken, unmarred by hunger or the grinding weight of survival.
But worse than the fridge, worse than the furniture, were the photos. They lined the walls and shelves, silent witnesses to a life Yoojin couldn’t remember living. Smiling faces stared back at him: one was his own, and beside it, Yoohyun’s, looking at peace, as though the years had been kind. But there were others too—strangers with expressions so warm they could have been family. Their gazes seemed to reach for him, to embrace a man who didn’t exist.
His trembling fingers hovered over a frame. The photo inside showed a group, laughter caught mid-bloom, Yoojin at the center, his face lit with something so foreign it felt like a betrayal. Happiness? Belonging? He traced the glass, his chest tightening with an ache that refused to be named.
Who was this version of him?
His thumb hovered over the gallery app, but he couldn’t bring himself to open it. Not again. The photos he’d seen earlier were already etched into his memory—photos of him, of Yoohyun, of people he didn’t recognize laughing, leaning into him like they belonged there.
His own face, radiant in every shot, looked back at him like a stranger mocking his struggles. A life too beautiful, too full, too good to be real.
He couldn’t remember the last time he’d smiled like that, not with his whole body, not like he believed it.
Each photo had been a stab to the chest, a painful reminder of how foreign this world was. His fingers trembled as he recalled scrolling further, past images of celebrations, of dinner tables full of food, of arms slung over shoulders. He had paused on one: Yoohyun, older than Yoojin could comprehend, his face sharper, his eyes harder. His baby brother, no longer a boy but a man, standing next to Yoojin with an ease that felt almost mocking.
Yoojin had stared at that photo the longest, the ache in his chest threatening to pull him apart. What was this version of his brother?
He had scrolled faster, tears blurring the faces he didn’t recognize, faces that blurred into ghosts, into nothing. Videos had lain waiting in the gallery too, but he didn’t dare touch them.
If the photos had been daggers, each one slipping between his ribs, then the videos would be swords, sharp and unrelenting, cleaving through the soft, hidden parts of himself he had spent years hardening.
This couldn’t be his life.
The ache in his chest grew sharper with every photo, every piece of evidence that this version of Yoojin—the one who smiled, who laughed, who lived—managed to exist. It felt like a mockery, a cruel hallucination crafted by a mind desperate for something better. He squeezed his eyes shut, his breath shuddering.
Could this be real? Could it?
It didn’t feel possible. Fate had never been kind to him. Yoojin had spent years scavenging scraps from a life that refused to give him anything more. He had sold everything he could—his body, his dignity, his dreams—just to keep Yoohyun alive. The world had turned him into a scavenger, a shadow crawling through dirt and ash, inch by inch, only to find himself back where he started.
And yet, wasn’t this justice? For all that had been stolen, for every piece of himself he had traded for survival? Couldn’t this be the world’s way of finally tipping the scales, offering him some fragile shard of balance? A quiet voice deep within him—a voice both hopeful and cruel—whispered yes. It insisted this was fate’s atonement, a meager gift for all the years of suffering it had left in its wake.
But Yoojin couldn’t believe it.
His trembling fingers found his phone, and before he could stop himself, he typed in the address of the apartment. The price appeared on the screen, stark and unyielding, staring back at him like a judge passing sentence. He felt the weight of the numbers settle in his chest as he scrolled through descriptions that might as well have been written in a foreign language: “luxury living,” “state-of-the-art amenities,” “prime location.” The words blurred together, meaningless under the enormity of what they represented.
He dropped the phone onto the couch, his hands unsteady.
It was too much. All of it. The photos, the clothes, the apartment. The lavish replacement of it all threatened to swallow him whole. His breath came in shallow gasps as the memories surged—years spent crawling, kneeling, begging, the weight of every desperate choice made, the countless nights lying awake beneath the crushing press of poverty’s relentless hand. He had carried it all, Atlas with the weight of a world he never asked for.
And now, it was gone. The crushing burden replaced by something heavier still: the unbearable emptiness of not knowing who he was without it.
The couch beneath him was too soft. It embraced him in a way that felt suffocating, swallowing him whole. Yoojin leaned back, closing his eyes against the perfection of this place. He couldn’t bring himself to sleep in the bed. It was too plush, too foreign, a cradle for someone who deserved more than what Yoojin had ever been.
Instead, he curled up on the couch, his body folding into itself as though to protect the ache in his chest. He pulled his knees to his chest, the tension in his limbs refusing to unwind even as exhaustion crept over him. Each breath grew heavier, slower, until sleep, at last, began to claim him.
And as he drifted into unconsciousness, Yoojin’s thoughts clung to a single, fragile question: would he wake up again? Or would this, too, be taken from him, as so much else had been?