The aquarium was quieter than Kang Min expected for a weekend afternoon.
Maybe it was the hour, still early enough that families were finishing lunch elsewhere, or maybe Seoul’s population had simply thinned out over the past months in ways nobody wanted to say directly. Either way, the main hall was calm, lit in that deep ambient blue that made everything feel slightly underwater even before you reached the tanks.
Hus daughter walked between them, or more accurately, she walked ahead of them, stopping every few steps to press her entire face against the glass of whatever exhibit she’d decided was the most important thing in the world. She’d been doing it since the entrance. A small handprint and a nose sar left on every panel.
Woonhee walked with her hands in her jacket pockets, watching the girl with the patient attention of soone who had learned to follow rather than lead. She glanced sideways at Kang Min.
"You still haven’t nad her," she said.
Kang Min looked at her.
"Three months," Woonhee continued, her tone light but precise. "She’s been walking around with a placeholder. So father you are."
Min-ju chose that mont to slap both palms against a tank containing a slow-moving sea turtle, delighted by sothing only she could fully appreciate.
Kang Min watched her for a second. "Min-ju," he said.
Woonhee blinked. "That’s it?"
"Yes."
"You didn’t even think about it."
"I thought about it."
"For three seconds."
"Sotis that’s enough." He started walking again, following Min-ju as she moved toward the next tank. "She looks like a Min-ju."
Woonhee stared at the back of his head for a mont, then exhaled through her nose and followed. She didn’t argue the point, which ant she probably agreed, or at least couldn’t find a reason to disagree that didn’t sound petty.
Min-ju, had discovered the jellyfish.
She stood in front of the cylindrical tank with her mouth open, watching the translucent bodies drift upward in the current. The light in that section of the aquarium shifted between pale violet and white, and it caught in her eyes as she watched. Kang Min stopped beside her. He didn’t crouch down. He just stood there, looking at the sa tank, and for a while neither of them said anything.
Woonhee stopped on his other side.
"You moved fast," she said eventually. "Floor thirty. That’s where no Korean climber has ever reached."
"Mm."
"The streams were insane when you passed floor twenty-seven. People were watching at work. During etings. I had a staff mber crying in the break room." She paused. "She said she wasn’t sure why."
Kang Min said nothing. He watched a jellyfish drift past the glass, its trailing filants spread wide.
"And the comntary," Woonhee continued. "You changed sothing there too. Three months ago, stream comntary was just number-reading and damage breakdowns. Now everyone’s copying the format you use. Sponsors are paying triple what they were before for placents in climbing streams." She tilted her head slightly. "You’re aware of this."
"Sowhat."
"You’re too modest for soone who restructured an entire industry by accident."
"Well...you could say that."
She smiled at that. It was small, the kind of smile that ca with having expected exactly that answer.
Min-ju pointed at a jellyfish and looked back at Woonhee with an expression of absolute urgency. Woonhee crouched down and looked at where she was pointing and nodded seriously. Min-ju turned back to the tank, satisfied.
They drifted further into the hall. The tanks grew larger, the fish more nurous, schools of silver bodies turning in unison as if operated by a single thought. Min-ju ran ahead to a wide floor-to-ceiling panel, stopped, pressed her forehead against it, and looked up at the fish above her.
Kang Min watched her. Then he asked, "How is the company doing?"
"Which part?"
"All of it. The marketplace."
Woonhee straightened up and moved to stand beside him, keeping Min-ju in sight. "Revenue is up. The player marketplace is performing better than the initial projections. We’ve had a few thousand registered transactions in the past six weeks alone, and the verification system your team built is holding. No major fraud incidents." She paused.
"The guild formation wave is the more interesting developnt."
"Tell ."
"Four new guilds reached tier-two status in the past month. Three of them ca out of nowhere. Well-funded, organized, moving fast. They’re recruiting hard, signing mid-rank climbers before they hit public visibility."
She folded her arms loosely.
"Korea’s landscape is shifting. There was a period of relative stability while everyone watched you climb. Now that you’ve paused, people are moving."
Kang Min nodded slowly. It made sense. Attention had a gravitational weight, and while it had been concentrated upward toward the tower, the space behind it had been filling.
"And the sinkholes," he said.
Woonhee’s expression shifted slightly, becoming more careful. "People are still talking. The criticism hasn’t stopped. They’re calling it monopolization. So of the public comntary is pretty direct about calling it greed."
"I expected that."
"I know. But so of the guild leadership is starting to organize formal complaints. They want access to the relic inventory. They’re framing it as a resource equity issue." She glanced at him. "The optics aren’t ideal."
Kang Min was quiet for a mont. Ahead of them, Min-ju had moved to a smaller tank and was crouching with her hands on her knees, peering at sothing near the bottom.
"So of the relics from the sinkholes are vessels," Kang Min said.
Woonhee looked at him.
He kept his voice even.
"There are stars in the constellation stream who have no interest in humanity. Neutral at best. Hostile in varying degrees, depending on what they carry."
He paused, watching Min-ju carefully extend one finger toward the glass before pulling it back.
"When those stars lose their anchor or their position in the stream, they can compress themselves. Store a version of their presence or fable inside an object. A relic."
Woonhee was still.
"If soone picks that up without knowing what it is," he continued, "possession becos possible. Gradual, sotis. Fast in other cases. The star inhabits the body and uses it according to whatever agenda they were carrying when they fell.
Could be resentnt toward the towers. Could be a grudge against the constellation stream itself. Could be sothing older." He glanced at her.
"I kept the ones I couldn’t clear because releasing them into public circulation was not sothing I was willing to do. The safe ones will be sold. We’re already processing those."
Woonhee was quiet for a long mont. The ambient hum of the water filtration systems moved through the walls around them.
"You could have said that publicly," she said finally.
"I could have. And then every guild, every independent climber, and every governnt body with a stake in relic acquisition would have started their own investigation into which relics were safe and which weren’t, using thods and equipnt they don’t have, on objects they don’t understand." He looked forward. "I’ll say it when saying it is useful."
Woonhee exhaled. "That’s a very calm way to describe sitting on a potential catastrophe."
"Most of this work is calm catastrophe managent."
She almost laughed. It ca out as a short sound through her nose, which was close enough.
Min-ju had found the ray tank. She stood in front of it, completely absorbed, watching the flat bodies glide past with that particular expression children had when sothing was too large for them to contain. She reached up and touched the glass with two fingers, and a ray curved lazily past the spot like it was acknowledging her.
Woonhee walked over and stood beside her. Kang Min followed.
They stood together in front of the tank. The light was darker there, the water deeper, the shadows longer as the rays passed overhead. Min-ju reached up and grabbed Woonhee’s hand without looking away from the tank.
Woonhee looked down at her.
Then she looked up at Kang Min, and her expression shifted into sothing that was both warm and considering. She turned toward him slightly, and before he could read the intent in the movent, she reached up and placed both hands gently against his cheeks.
Kang Min went still. "What are you doing?"
Woonhee didn’t answer right away. She was looking at him with her brows drawing together, not in confusion exactly, but the careful focus of soone who had noticed sothing wrong and was trying to confirm it before saying anything.
She pulled her hands back.
"What’s wrong with your neck?"
Kang Min’s expression didn’t change. "What do you an?"
"There." She gestured toward the side of his neck, below and behind his jaw. "It looks like it’s cracking. The skin, or, I don’t know what that is. It looks like sothing underneath is splitting open. And there’s light coming through. Gold."
He turned his head slightly toward the tank.
The aquarium glass was dark enough, and the tank behind it bright enough, that the surface held a faint reflection. He could see himself in it. His own face, slightly warped by the curve of the glass, and there on the side of his neck, exactly where she’d been looking, a fracture line. Like a crack in ceramic. The edges of it glowing with a deep, warm gold that pulsed once, quietly, and then held.
His eyes widened.
"Oh no," he said.
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