Jae-Min needed to test his limits.
He stood in the center of his living room. The black rift hovered beside him like a loyal dog. He had spent the last hour dropping things into it. A book. A pillow. His Glock 19 from the safe.
All of it vanished. All of it floated in that pocket of cold, silent darkness.
He could feel the space. Roughly the size of a walk-in closet. Four cubic meters.
Not enough. He needed a warehouse.
He focused. Pushed. Imagined the walls expanding.
A sharp pain split his skull. Blood dripped from his nose.
He stopped.
"Patience," he muttered. It would grow. It had to.
He needed fuel first.
Jae-Min showered. Put on a black suit. Fixed his tie. He looked in the mirror. Sharp jawline. Intense dark eyes. He looked like a rich Korean-Filipino executive.
He looked like a man who hadn't just been eaten alive two hours ago.
He grabbed his keys. Walked to the basement parking of Shore Residence 3. Pressed the fob.
The white Nissan GT-R Nismo beeped twice. LED headlights flashed under the fluorescent lights.
Beside it, the yellow Nissan Z Nismo sat gleaming. Ji-Yoo's car. She had left it here before flying to South Korea. A family visit. Mom, Dad, and Ji-Yoo.
In his first life, that flight never came back.
On the other side of the GT-R, a white VW Golf GTI. Alessia's car. She was probably sleeping inside her apartment right now. Exhausted from her night shift.
Three cars. Three women he needed to protect.
Only he knew two of them wouldn't survive if he failed.
He stepped inside the GT-R. The leather seat creaked. Smell of premium car freshener.
He started the engine. The twin-turbo V6 roared to life.
Blackbird Fine Dining. Makati.
Jae-Min walked past the maître d'. Didn't stop.
"Sir! Reservations are—"
He pushed into the kitchen. The head chef looked up. Appalled. A man in a black suit invading his domain.
"Who the hell are—"
Jae-Min dropped a thick envelope on the steel counter. ₱500,000 in cash.
"I need packed meals. For a thousand men. Army ration portions. High calorie. Long shelf life."
The chef stared at the money. Then at Jae-Min.
"This is a fine dining restaurant, not a—"
"I know what this is." Jae-Min met his eyes. Cold. Flat. "Can you do it or not?"
The chef swallowed. Something in Jae-Min's eyes told him this wasn't a joke.
"We... we can prep maybe two hundred meals with what we have in stock. If you want a thousand, I need to order supplies. It would take days."
"How long?"
"Three days. Minimum."
Too slow. But it was a start.
"Two hundred now. The rest in three days. I'll pay triple."
The chef's eyes widened. Triple the already inflated price of fine dining ingredients meant a fortune.
"Yes, sir. Absolutely, sir."
"Send everything to the back alley. Service entrance. I'll pick it up there."
The chef frowned. "Sir, we don't usually—"
"Back alley. One hour."
Jae-Min turned and walked out. He didn't go back to the dining area. He left through a side exit. Circled around the building.
The back alley was narrow. Smelled like grease and garbage. A single security light flickered overhead.
He waited.
Twenty minutes. Thirty.
A side door opened. A kitchen worker stepped out. Looked around nervously. Then another. They carried thermal bags. Stacked them on the ground. One after another.
Twenty bags. Thirty. Forty.
"Sir?" The worker looked confused. "Where's your vehicle? This is a lot of—"
"Inside. Bring them inside the door. Stack them."
The worker hesitated. "But—"
"Tip you ₱5,000."
The worker moved fast.
One by one, the thermal bags disappeared through the service door into a narrow corridor. Jae-Min followed. The corridor was dim. No cameras. Perfect.
The worker stacked the last bag and left. Closed the door.
Jae-Min was alone.
He touched the first thermal bag.
It vanished.
No sound. No light. Just a faint ripple in the air. Gone.
The void inside him drank greedily. The walls expanded. Slowly. Painfully. But they expanded.
One bag. Five. Ten. Twenty.
He moved like a machine. One touch. One vanish. One after another.
The pressure built behind his eyes. Dull. Throbbing.
The last bag vanished.
He counted. Two hundred meals. Enough to feed a platoon for weeks.
Not bad for day one.
He pulled out his phone. Sent a message to the chef.
"Triple the order. Three days. Back alley. Same time. Don't be late."
Jae-Min slipped out the side door. Walked around the building toward the main entrance.
He needed to check something.
He pushed through the front doors. Scanned the dining area.
There. By the window.
Kiara Valdez.
And beside her, Jennifer Avante.
Kiara looked exactly how he remembered. Perfect makeup. Designer dress. That fake sweet smile plastered on her face.
Jennifer looked uncomfortable. Shy. Eyes darting around.
They hadn't seen him. They were too busy talking. Kiara's hands moved wildly. Animated. Gossiping about something.
Jae-Min turned around. Walked back outside.
No need to engage. Not yet.
He didn't see Kiara glance up.
Didn't see her eyes narrow.
Didn't see her grab Jennifer's arm.
"Jen. That's him. That was Jae-Min. Where did he come from?"
"I don't know. He wasn't inside—"
"He was here. I saw him." Kiara pulled out her phone. Typed fast. "Follow him."
Jae-Min stepped into the white GT-R. Started the engine.
The void inside him hummed. Hungry for more.
He had food.
Now he needed guns.
He pulled out of the parking lot. As he passed the restaurant's back alley, his headlights swept across the dumpster.
A stray dog was picking at a pile of discarded meat scraps.
Jae-Min hit the brakes.
The dog wasn't eating the meat. It was eating a rock. A small, glowing red rock mixed in with the restaurant garbage. The dog's jaws crunched down on the stone, and a faint, unnatural steam rolled off its fur.
Jae-Min stared. In his first life, he had never seen anything like that until...
He shook his head. The dog ran into the darkness.