Morning light came thin and gray through the thousand gaps in the shack walls.
Yoon Ma-ri moved slowly, like someone who had forgotten how to hope and was afraid to remember.
She sat cross-legged on the straw mat, the single silver coin resting in the center of her open palm as though it might vanish if she closed her fingers too tightly. Her eyes never left it.
Ah-yul watched her from the corner where he had curled up pretending to still be half-asleep. He had already calculated three different ways the day could go wrong and four ways it could go slightly better than expected.
Ma-ri finally spoke, voice soft and careful.
"We could buy rice. Real rice. Not the broken bits they sweep out of the sacks." She looked at him, searching his face. "Or… or a little charcoal. We could have heat tonight. Warm water. You could wash properly for once."
Ah-yul tilted his head. The child's body made the gesture look innocent. The mind behind it was already weighing long-term value against immediate comfort.
"Rice first," he said quietly. "Food keeps us alive. Warmth only makes dying more comfortable."
She blinked at him — startled by how calmly a six-year-old could speak like that.
Then she gave a small, tired smile. "You talk like an old man sometimes, Ah-yul."
He shrugged one thin shoulder. "Maybe I was an old man in a past life."
It was meant as a joke. She laughed anyway — a small, surprised sound that made something inside his chest ache in a way he didn't want to examine too closely.
She stood up, brushing straw from her patched skirt.
"I'll go to Widow Kim's stall. She sometimes gives an extra handful if you pay with silver instead of begging." She hesitated. "You… want to come with me?"
He shook his head.
"I'll wait here. I want to clean up a little. The floor is filthy."
Ma-ri looked doubtful. "You? Clean?"
"I can sweep," he said solemnly. "I watched you do it enough times."
She studied him for a long moment, then nodded slowly.
"Don't open the door for anyone," she warned. "And if that drunkard uncle from the next alley starts shouting again, just stay quiet."
"I know."
She bent down and kissed his forehead — quick, almost shy, as though she still wasn't sure she was allowed to show affection after last night's despair.
Then she was gone, the flimsy door swaying shut behind her.
The moment she disappeared, Ah-yul moved.
He went straight to the small crack in the back wall where three loose boards met the dirt floor. Years ago — in his first childhood — he had hidden things there: stolen rice grains, a broken knife blade, a shiny copper coin he never dared spend.
He pried the boards apart with small fingers.
Inside lay the single copper he had buried when he was eight in his original timeline. It had been there, untouched, for twenty-eight years in the future that no longer existed.
He took it.
One copper. One silver (already spent in his mind). Two coins total.
Enough to begin.
He tucked the copper into the waistband of his ragged pants and began sweeping the floor with a bundle of straw tied together with a scrap of cloth. It wasn't really about cleanliness. It was about creating normalcy. When Ma-ri returned she needed to see something ordinary — something safe. Not a child who already knew too much.
He worked methodically.
By the time he finished, the worst of the dirt was gone and the straw mat looked almost respectable.
He sat down to wait.
The city outside was waking in layers: First the roosters (mostly stolen or escaped), then the water-carriers shouting their routes, then the distant clang of blacksmith hammers, then the smell of frying dough and boiling noodle broth drifting on the morning breeze.
His stomach growled — loud, shameless, childish.
He ignored it.
Hunger had been his oldest companion. It could wait another hour.
Ma-ri returned sooner than expected.
She carried a small cloth bundle against her chest and a tiny paper packet pinched between two fingers.
Her face was flushed — not from cold, but from something dangerously close to excitement.
"Look," she whispered, kneeling beside him.
She opened the cloth.
A palm-sized heap of white rice — not the broken, discolored grains they usually begged for, but whole, clean kernels. Beside it lay two small dried plums and a single piece of salted radish.
And in the paper packet — miracle of miracles — a thumb-sized lump of brown sugar.
Ah-yul stared.
He had expected rice. He had not expected joy to look this fragile on her face.
"I told Widow Kim I found the silver by the river," Ma-ri said quickly, as though afraid someone might overhear and take it back. "She didn't believe me at first. But she weighed it and… and she gave me this much. Even threw in the sugar because she said you're too skinny."
She laughed — a short, shaky sound.
"I thought she was going to accuse me of stealing."
Ah-yul reached out and touched one of the plums.
It felt real.
He looked up at her.
"You didn't have to get the sugar."
"I wanted to." Her voice cracked a little. "I wanted you to taste something sweet for once."
He didn't know what to say to that.
So he didn't speak.
Instead he helped her build the tiniest fire in the corner pit — just enough charcoal dust and twigs to heat a cracked clay bowl of water.
They cooked the rice together.
It took forever and almost no time at all.
When it was done — sticky, steaming, fragrant — Ma-ri divided it carefully.
Two portions.
Hers noticeably smaller.
Ah-yul pushed some of his share onto her side.
She tried to protest.
He just looked at her — calm, stubborn, unblinking.
She gave in.
They ate slowly.
Every bite felt like a crime against thirty years of hunger.
When the bowl was empty and the sugar had been divided into two careful pinches, Ma-ri leaned back against the wall and let out a long, trembling breath.
"I forgot what full feels like," she whispered.
Ah-yul looked at her.
The strategist inside him was already moving to the next step.
But the child — the real child who had once loved this woman more than survival itself — wanted something else first.
He crawled over and curled against her side.
She wrapped both arms around him instantly.
They sat like that for a long time.
No words.
Just breathing. And warmth. And the small, impossible feeling that today was not going to end in despair.
Eventually Ma-ri spoke again, voice very low.
"Ah-yul… do you think things can get better? Not just today. For good?"
He closed his eyes.
"I know they will."
She let out a soft, disbelieving laugh.
"You sound so sure."
"I am."
He didn't elaborate.
He couldn't tell her that he had already seen the future — seen her grow thinner every year, seen her beauty fade under endless hardship, seen her die quietly in a winter alley when he was nineteen and too busy climbing the ranks of the Murim Alliance to come home.
He couldn't tell her that version of the story ended with him becoming the second-most feared man in the orthodox world…
…and still losing the only person who ever mattered.
This time would be different.
He would make it different.
Even if he had to drown the entire central plains in blood to do it.
Later — after the fire had died and the bowl had been carefully washed with the last of their water — Ma-ri lay down for a rare daytime nap. The small meal and the safety of having food in her stomach had finally overwhelmed her exhaustion.
Ah-yul waited until her breathing deepened into sleep.
Then he slipped outside again.
This time he carried the single copper coin.
The beggar's market was quieter during the day — most of the desperate night sellers had crawled away to sleep or beg in more trafficked streets.
But Old Gam was still there.
Same cart. Same crutch. Same sharp, restless eye.
He looked up when Ah-yul approached.
"You again," he rasped. "Caravan came. Jo Yang-pil threw a fit when they offered thirty silver. Held out for forty-two in the end. Crimson Heart Lotus changed hands. I made a tidy profit on the resell."
He studied the boy.
"You weren't lying."
"I don't lie when it costs me money," Ah-yul said.
Old Gam chuckled — dry and phlegmy.
He reached into his coat and tossed another silver coin.
It spun through the air.
Ah-yul caught it cleanly.
"That's two," Old Gam said. "Like we agreed. Now… what else you got?"
Ah-yul pocketed the silver.
Then he leaned in close and spoke so quietly that only the old man could hear.
"Three days from now, at the Hour of the Horse, a young man wearing a faded blue robe will come to the west bridge. He carries a bamboo slip case under his left arm. Inside are the original patrol schedules for the Black Tortoise Gate — the ones the city guards are supposed to burn tonight."
Old Gam went very still.
Ah-yul continued.
"He will try to sell them to a one-eyed man called Iron Jaw. Iron Jaw will offer eight silver. He'll take ten if you get there first and offer nine."
The old man stared at him.
"How do you know all this?"
"I listen," Ah-yul said simply. "People talk when they think no one small is listening."
Old Gam rubbed his stubbled jaw.
"You're a strange little bastard."
"I'm a hungry little bastard," Ah-yul corrected.
Another long silence.
Then Old Gam nodded once.
"Bring me more. We'll see how long your ears stay lucky."
Ah-yul turned to leave.
Old Gam called after him.
"Boy."
He paused.
"Don't get yourself killed before you grow tall enough to be useful."
Ah-yul looked back over his shoulder.
"I don't plan to die for a very long time."
He walked away.
The second silver coin felt heavier than the first.
Because this time it wasn't luck.
This time it was knowledge.
And knowledge — properly used — was the sharpest weapon in any world.
When he slipped back inside the shack, Ma-ri was still asleep.
He placed the new silver coin beside the empty rice bowl.
Then he lay down beside her.
He didn't sleep.
He planned.
Tomorrow he would buy a small knife — nothing fancy, just sharp enough to cut rope and intimidate drunks.
The day after he would start memorizing the exact sequence of low-grade cultivation techniques sold by street peddlers.
In three months he would have enough coin to bribe a wandering martial artist for a single breathing method.
In one year he would leave this alley behind forever.
And thirty years from now…
Baek Wol-seong would look into the eyes of the child he once murdered and realize — too late — that some debts are paid in blood.
Outside, a distant temple bell rang the hour.
Inside, a mother slept peacefully for the first time in years.
And beside her, a six-year-old monster smiled into the dark.