Chapter Text
Choi Soobin was an Alpha by default, and a broke college student by night.
Why, you may ask?
For starters, it boiled down to one of three things.
First, he was apparently too tall—built like a tower, with everything about him larger by a wide margin. He stood just a few inches away from scraping the low ceiling of every café he bumped into, and almost everyone had an inkling that he was too handsome and capable to be anything other than the most superior subgender: an Alpha.
Alphas were supposedly people who were more attuned to dominating, being in charge, and leading- possessing a fierce sense of protectiveness and whatnot. To Soobin, they were just biological silver-spooners who got praised for doing the bare minimum while everyone else had to claw their way through life. But Soobin hardly agreed.
Because it was absolute bullshit.
He’d seen his mom lift a ton of heavy cartons for him when he was a babe, and her strength had never been about her subgender. She was way more capable than anyone else in the entire world. For sure, it was hard enough to raise a child all on her own, but that was the thing. Strength wasn't just in raw muscles—the kind everyone loved to point out as sexy, easy, and pleasing to the eyes.
But who was he to prove a point?
It wasn't his business to shout his opinions to the world.
And it was certainly not on his list of priorities to broadcast that he was actually an Omega.
Though it wasn't because he was ashamed, really.
He managed to survive on an unhealthy amount of instant ramen, praying the cupboards stayed filled and the electricity kept the refrigerator running. His eyebags were practically his personal brand. Sleep deprivation had been a permanent fixture of his life for as long as he could remember. If anything, those dark circles were a testament to his own strength. A badge of honor for every single line of code he’s broken over the span of a few hours. Though Beomgyu, his beloved but ever-annoying cousin, constantly whined at him to at least use concealer to hide them.
"Soobin, don’t tell me you’re going to class like that?!"
Eyebrows raised, Soobin looked at his reflection in the bathroom mirror. "What exactly is wrong with it?" he asked, adjusting his collar.
The cardigan he’d bought a few months back looked a bit faded now- yes - probably a side effect of its sketchy thrift-shop origins. His shoes were doable at least, though there was a streak of dried mud he couldn't quite wipe off currently. But the way Beomgyu was glaring at it, you’d think it was a live cockroach running on the floors.
"Yes, I am," Soobin retorted, spinning around to face him. "And why are you making that face? It's not like you’re any better!" He jabbed an accusatory finger toward Beomgyu’s face, specifically the fresh metal glinting on his lower lip. "A new lip piercing? Seriously? Thats completely unnecessary for a nine AM lecture!"
"This is called fashion, you giant lint roller," Beomgyu shot back, stepping over a stray textbook and a pile of laundry that had been sitting in the hallway since yesterday. "Besides, if it wasn't for me keeping your social life on life support, you'd be mistaken for a literal ghost haunting the engineering building by now!"
"As if you're even scared of ghosts..." Soobin muttered under his breath.
Beomgyu didn't hear him—or simply chose to ignore him—over the sudden, deafening roar of the hair blower as he began aggressively straightening his own hair. Soobin just stood there, watching his cousin with a look of profound exhaustion. Without warning, Beomgyu clicked the machine off, tossed the still-warm blower directly at Soobin's chest, and pointed a demanding finger at his messy head.
With a heavy, long-suffering sigh, Soobin caught it and clicked it back on, reluctantly aiming the blast of hot air at his own unruly blonde strands.
"What kind of fashion is there to even show off in a calculus class...?" Soobin grumbled over the noise. Beomgyu just rolled his eyes, spun on his heel, and walked straight back into his room, flipping Soobin off over his shoulder without looking.
Soobin sighed, looking at the time.
The start of the college semester was kicking both of their asses, as much as the wrecked clothes and papers scattered on the floor. Their tiny apartment was currently a disaster zone of misplaced charging cables, half-empty instant coffee packets, and academic dread. Neither of them was handling the transition back to early mornings well. It made him regret—though only a tad bit—how he had wasted time on movie nights with a side of coffee until dawn.
Well, what could he do about it now? It was his fault to begin with, choosing to laze around when he had the time.
Left alone, Soobin turned back to the mirror, his gaze drifting up to the bright blonde locks framing his face. He ran a hand through the strands, admiring how it felt like a fresher, brand-new start. Though his eyes stayed the same, the same lavender-tinted contact lenses shielding his natural gaze. It was a completely different vibe from his usual look, but honestly? The color wasn't bad. He’d resisted it at first, but Beomgyu had aggressively insisted on the dye job, dragging him to a salon under the guise of 'new semester, new identity.'
He reached into the side pocket of his bag, pulling out the small plastic bottle Beomgyu had forcefully left on his desk earlier. Pop. He swallowed his daily suppressants with a quick swig of lukewarm water, making sure the bitter chemical seal was locked down tight over his scent before he even thought about stepping foot outside.
With a final sigh, Soobin grabbed his backpack from the floor.
“If you're not down in five minutes, I'm locking the door!”
“Who says I won't go out through the window!”
˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚
From the moment he stepped into the university campus, he hears the whispers first before seeing the lines of people that beomgyu calls it - the ‘soobin the single alpha in the entire campus and he’s still not taken fanclub’.
"Soobin-ssi! Would you want to go out to lunch with me?"
And just like that, before Soobin knew it, a fresh - and even worse, added - group of people began to flock around him left and right. He should have thought more about wearing a beanie - or a hat at least - something to make him feel not so vulnerable to the piercing wind, or their gazes, each time he transferred to his classes. The new semester had barely started, and Soobin, a thoroughly exhausted fourth-year, was currently trapped at a table full of eager underclassmen whose names he hadn't even attempted to memorize.
Beside him, someone was introducing themselves with a lot of hand gestures, but Soobin was actively dozing off with his eyes open. He caught a girl across the table giggling and mentioning something about how good he looked with blonde hair. But he couldn't bring himself to care.
Honestly, he’d fully expected today to be peaceful. It hadn't completely gone to hell, he supposed. The professors had actually been pretty kind, and he’d even run into Jungyoo—another fourth-year who just couldn't resist teasing him. They'd been forced into a brief conversation, with Jungyoo relentlessly poking at him just to get a rise out of him, which was as annoying as it was exhausting.
He could see a couple of other students nearby frowning, casting tense looks toward Jungyoo's aggressive posture as if expecting a sudden Alpha display to spark a conflict. But Soobin remained completely unbothered. He didn't catch a single trace of the heavy, dominating pheromones thick in the campus air; between the medical-grade patches securely sealed on his neck and the fresh dose of suppressants in his system, the world was completely muted to him.
But there had been a nice moment, too. He reached into his pocket, his fingers brushing against a small, heart-shaped cookie he’d been given earlier. It was from one of his classmates, someone he genuinely remembered as one of the nicest people on campus. Soobin still felt a wave of gratitude toward them. Back when he was a struggling fresh underclassman working brutal late-night shifts at the convenience store, he’d completely missed a major assignment deadline. That classmate had been a lifesaver. Remembering that small kindness made the heavy academic dread a little easier to swallow.
Still, the current social exhaustion was real. He just let out a massive yawn, stretching his long arms until the group, taking his blatant indifference as a hint, finally migrated to another table.
What a hassle, he thought, his lips unconsciously forming a pout as he slumped over his desk.
Pulling his phone out from his cardigan pocket with a weak groan, he opened his chats.
Binnie: i am trapped by too many underclassmen
Binnie: they won't stop making hand gestures at me gyu
Binnie: they're still talking about the blonde hair. save me i am actually going to pass out. The coffee isnt even strong in the cafeteria.
Gyu: oh no. local giant alpha gets appreciated. how tragic. 🙄
Gyu: i literally gave you that hair so you'd look alive for once. you're welcome btw!!
Gyu: anyway i'm thriving
Gyu: i'm with taehyunnie right now and we're heading to karaoke. come drag your corpse over here, the screaming will wake you up
Binnie: karaoke? are you insane
Binnie:i want to sleep for a business week.
Binnie: if i hear you hit a high note right now my soul will leave my body
Gyu: coward. taehyun says hi and that you look like a washed-out tennis ball from across the courtyard. bye!
Soobin let out a long, pathetic sigh, dropping his forehead flat against the wooden desk.
Desperate for a distraction, he blindly slid his arm across the desk to check his watch.
3:00 PM.
The drowsiness vanished instantly.
The entire lecture hall turned to stare in utter shock as Soobin violently swept his notebook into his bag with a chaotic clatter. Their expressions instantly froze into bewilderment as the tall, quiet senior suddenly leaped out of his seat with the force of a launched missile.
Shit, it's 3:00 PM already? he thought in a panic. How long did I even doze off?!
As he rounded a sharp corner by the main faculty entrance, he slammed directly into a broad shoulder, sending both of them stumbling back.
"Watch where you’re going, you—!" the person snapped.
Before Soobin could even look up to see who he had just offended, his gaze caught the custom-tailored black suit jacket sleeve and a sharp, intoxicating rush of expensive cedarwood.
Shit, an Alpha, Soobin thought. The impact had jolted them close enough that the stranger's collar had practically brushed against his face, hitting his nose directly with the heavy scent. But even as he scrambled to find his footing, a cold spike of confusion hit him—that was weird. He was wearing his heavy-duty medical patches and he'd just taken his suppressants; he shouldn't be smelling anything this clearly, let alone a scent that felt this suffocatingly intense.
Still, he didn't have the time or the luxury to be playing territory games in the middle of a campus corridor, especially not when his entire identity was riding on staying invisible.
"Sorry, really sorry, I have to go!" he yelled over his shoulder, already recovery-stepping and taking off down the hallway at a full sprint without looking back.
The man Soobin had just slammed into remained standing by the corner, one hand coming up to touch his chest where the blunt impact had registered. His sharp eyes narrowed as he watched the frantic blur of yellow knit disappear down the corridor.
"Sir? Are you okay?"
One of his massive bodyguards instantly stepped forward from the shadow of the faculty door, his posture tense and ready to react.
The man just kept his gaze fixed on the empty hallway, a lock of vibrant red hair falling across his forehead.
He let out a sharp, irritated huff.
"Some weirdo in a hurry at this hour," he muttered smoothly.
Just then, a classroom door clicked open nearby and a professor stepped out into the hallway, holding a stack of lecture papers. The moment the teacher's eyes landed on the red-haired man, his entire face went pale. He hurriedly looked away, his shoulders tense with sheer anxiety, and practically scrambled back into the safety of the office corridor, completely terrified.
The red-haired man barely even acknowledged the teacher's fear. He glanced down at his wrist, a sudden thought striking him as he checked the time.
"Let's move," he commanded his men, turning on his heel toward the exit. "I'm off too. I also have something important to do, now that I remember."
˚₊‧꒰ა ☆ ໒꒱ ‧₊˚
"Come on, hurry up, hurry up!" Soobin hissed, his fingers frantically patting down the abyss of his desk.
"Beomgyu, where the heck did you put my damn charger at?"
"It’s on top of your desk, stupid!"
Soobin let out a sigh of relief the moment his hand closed around the thick, braided cable. He plugged it into his laptop, the dark screen flickering to life with a sharp, high-definition glow just as the digital clock in the corner hit 3:58 PM.
The display screen bloomed with the familiar, dark-neon logo of Aetheria, the high-stakes MOBA that had been ruining his sleep schedule and taking over his life for three years straight. He watched the loading bar rapidly fill, the intricate fantasy UI and champion select modules flashing onto the screen, ready for the high-octane chaos he was about to launch into.
While his current competitive climb this season relied heavily on high-damage, lane-controlling mages, Soobin’s profound love for the game extended far beyond meta picks and frame-perfect mechanics. If he was being entirely honest with himself, his absolute favorite champions to lock in were the ones who were unashamedly, ridiculously hot men. There was just something incredibly satisfying about dominating a high-stakes match using a flawlessly designed, visually stunning male character.
A shadow suddenly fell over his shoulder.
"Let me guess," Beomgyu deadpanned, leaning over to peer directly into the monitor. "You're choosing your character based on who has the best chest-to-waist ratio again, aren't you?"
"It's about the aesthetics, Gyu, you wouldn't understand," Soobin muttered, his fingers flying across the trackpad to bypass the loading screen.
He didn't waste a single second, immediately opening his browser and navigating to the live-streaming platform.
"He’s live," Soobin whispered, his voice pitching up with uncharacteristic excitement.
On screen, Yoon-J, the most ruthless, god-tier streamer in the Aetheria scene, was currently obliterating the enemy mid-laner. Holding the absolute crown as the number one top streamer in Seoul right now, Yoon-J played with a cold, terrifying efficiency that made Soobin’s heart hammer against his ribs.
On the right side of the screen, the chat box was moving at a blinding, unreadable speed, completely flooded by thousands of fans. Messages like HOW DID HE EXECUTE THAT COMBO?? and Yoon-J is literally a machine hidden in human skin flashed and vanished in milliseconds, interspersed with a chaotic wall of spamming emotes and flashing donation alerts.
"Look at that positioning," Soobin murmured, leaning so close to the monitor his nose practically touched the glass. "Most people would’ve backed off there, but he knew the cool-down timer was off by exactly 0.4 seconds. He’s a tactical genius. I’m telling you, Gyu, the way he manages his mana pool? It’s not human."
"It’s a video game, Soobin," Beomgyu deadpanned, rolling his eyes so hard it looked painful. "You’re literally yapping about mana pools while you have a mountain of laundry that needs to be folded. Touch grass. Seriously."
"You don't get it," Soobin countered, his fingers dancing across his mechanical keyboard as he entered the lobby for the exclusive 'pro-streamer' match he’d been waiting weeks to get into.
On the stream, Yoon-J finally toggled his camera on. His small video frame appeared in the bottom right corner of the screen, revealing his usual enigmatic setup - a sleek black mask completely obscuring the lower half of his face and a dark cap pulled low.
He adjusted his mic, the deep baritone of his voice instantly sending a collective shockwave through the chat as he addressed his fans.
"As promised, today is a wonderful day. An opportunity for everyone involved."
Soobin let out a completely uncharacteristic fanboy squeak, his eyes practically sparkling. Beomgyu simply stared at him in utter disbelief, rolled his eyes, and walked right out of the room, completely done with him.
Left to his own devices, Soobin focused entirely on the countdown. Yoon-J announced to the stream that the private lobby password would be dropped randomly, stating that, by pure chance, whoever was the fastest to enter would get the highly coveted slot.
But then... Soobin stared at the locked screen, a dangerous spark igniting in his eyes as a completely unexpected thought crossed his mind.
He hesitated, his fingers hovering over the keys.
Should he?
It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
But...
He bit his lip, debating the absolute insanity of what he was about to do.
Yoon-J won't know anyway, so why shouldn't I?
Within seconds, the private link was generated on screen, but before the password could even fully render for the public, the stream chat violently exploded into chaos.
SHIT WHY ISN'T IT WORKING??
The link is completely broken!
Did the server just crash?!
In reality, Soobin's fingers were a blur of movement on a secondary command script, completely bypassing the security gate.
He had hacked the lobby entry protocol in a fraction of a second.
MATCH FOUND.
"Oh! I'm in!" Soobin gasped aloud, his screen instantly flashing with the vibrant loading graphics of the custom match lobby.
On the stream, Yoon-J paused on camera, his masked head tilting slightly in confusion.
"Huh? That was a bit weird," he muttered, narrowing his eyes at his dual monitor.
"Saw a little glitch there. But anyway..." Dismissing the sudden anomaly, Yoon-J proceeded to talk to the stream, adjusting his headset as the match countdown began ticking down.
Yoon-J's eyes scanned the lobby, running over the user interface until they landed directly on the slot Soobin had forcefully occupied.
"Alright, let's see who our lucky contender is today," Yoon-J murmured, reading the handle aloud.
"...wolf_Gang_07"
Instantly, the live chat erupted into a fresh frenzy of speculation.
Huh? wolf_Gang_07? What kind of aggressive name is that?
Sounds like some dominant Alpha, huh?
Total Alpha energy with that tag, damn.
Yoon-J let out a low, amused huff, clearly amused by the chat's immediate conclusion.
"Wolf_Gang, huh? Yeah, definitely sounds like an Alpha to me," he agreed smoothly, leaning back in his gaming chair.
Watching the stream on his second monitor, Soobin’s face went warm.
“Shit, I’m playing on a dummy account, what do I do?!” he panicked, his mind racing as he stared at the fake username.
He quickly opened the lobby's in-game chat box, his fingers trembling slightly over the mechanical keys.
"Our mysterious Alpha friend just joined the text lobby," Yoon-J announced, his tone dripping with playful arrogance. "Hey, wolf_Gang_07. Want to say anything before we start? Any final words before I obliterate you on stream?"
Soobin panicked.
He stared at the screen, his f knuckles turning white as he gripped the edge of his desk just to ground himself.
“Is this my karma for glitching into the lobby?” Soobin muttered aloud to the empty room, his voice a frantic, breathless squeak. He was completely overwhelmed by the fact that his absolute idol was speaking directly to him in front of hundreds of thousands of live viewers, his heart hammering a chaotic rhythm against his ribs as he stared at the glowing chat box.
He desperately wanted to type something respectful—something humble and polite that wouldn’t make him look like a complete maniac, like 'It's an honor to play with you, please go easy on me!'
Instead, the raw panic coursing through his veins completely hijacked his brain, short-circuiting his motor skills.
His fingers flew across the mechanical keyboard in a frantic, uncoordinated blur, clicking the switches with chaotic speed. Before his eyes could even process the words forming in the text box, his pinky slammed down on the enter key with a loud, definitive clack.
The chat box scrolled up instantly, cementing his doom in crisp, glowing white font for the entire livestream audience to see:
wolf_Gang_07: I've watched your plays for years, I won't hesitate today.
On screen, Yoon-J’s eyes instantly narrowed through the camera.
The chat went completely ballistic.
A wall of OMGGGG and THE AUDACITY scrolling past at Mach speed.
"You've watched me for years?" Yoon-J repeated, a dangerous, sharp edge cutting into his smooth tone. A slow, competitive grin seemed to pull at the edges of his mask. "Wow. Okay. So you think you've got me all figured out? Let's see if that mouth matches your skill. I’m giving you three chances to take that back, Alpha."
Panicking even harder, Soobin scrambled to fix it, trying to type an apology but only making it worse in his stuttering haste.
Shit, he didn’t mean it that way!
But to no avail.
The stream chat was practically screaming now.
Yoon-J let out a dark, fired-up laugh, gripping his mouse with lethal intent. "Alright then. Confident, aren't we? Don't say I didn't warn you, wolf_Gang_07. Let's see what you've got."
“Fuck!” Soobin yelled, throwing his hands over his face as a wave of embarrassment hit him.
"Language!" Beomgyu’s voice barked from the kitchen.
Soobin flinched violently, his shoulders hunching as he bit his lower lip to stop another outburst.
"Okay, okay, focus," he muttered to himself, forcing his trembling fingers back onto the keys. He stared intensely at the screen as the Aetheria match began. "Don't choke. Don't look like an idiot."
On stream, Yoon-J let out a soft, mocking huff.
"A starter hero? Bold move. Let's get this over with."
Its not like Soobin has a choice anyway.
On stream, Yoon-J casually locked in his signature high-tier champion, expecting a swift and predictable match.
But as the loading screen cleared and the characters materialized on the map, his amusement began to morph into quiet focus.
The starter mage wolf_Gang_07 had chosen was notorious for being simple, but the way this guy moved was anything but average. There was zero waste in his pathing. Yoon-J tried to establish his usual early-game dominance, but he couldn't quite read the player's rhythm or figure out how to approach him.
For the first few minutes, Yoon-J kept up his usual routine, efficiently clearing his farm, landing safe pokes, and casually chatting with the stream.
"He's cautious," Yoon-J remarked to his viewers, his eyes tracking the starter hero's precise spacing. "He knows how to hold his ground, I'll give him that."
Yoon-J continued to closely observe the player's patterns, waiting for the inevitable mistake an amateur would make under pressure.
"Let's see how long you can keep up that tough talk," Yeonjun muttered with an arrogant smirk, leaning closer to his monitor. "You're out of your league, sweetheart."
He moved forward to contest a minion wave, entirely confident in his positioning.
Then, a sudden explosion of movement burst from the river bush.
Soobin's fingers became a blur over his mechanical keyboard, the heavy click-clack-click echoing in his cramped room. He dodged Yoon-J's fatal skill-shots by a pixel, baiting the famous streamer deeper and deeper under the tower.
On the secondary monitor, Yoon-J’s bored expression slowly began to crack. His jaw tightened.
Instead of walking into the obvious trap like a typical amateur, wolf_Gang_07 was dancing perfectly along the absolute pixel-edge of Yoon-J's attack range. Every time Yeonjun threw out a high-damage skill shot to poke him down, Soobin countered with a microscopic, sub-second sidestep. He was farming flawlessly under pressure, his aggressive lane presence suffocating Yeonjun’s regular rotation path.
"Wait. His spacing... don't tell me this guy is actually..."
Before Yoon-J could finish the sentence, Soobin executed a flawless, frame-perfect flash-combo. He buffered his champion’s ultimate ability mid-dash, canceling the wind-up animation entirely to close a massive gap instantly.
BOOM.
The screen flashed red. A giant, golden announcement echoed across the server:
FIRST BLOOD. ENEMY DEFEATED.
For three full seconds, the live stream went completely silent. Then, the chat box violently exploded at a speed that nearly crashed the platform:
user1739: WHAT ??????
aetheria_stan: DID YOON-J JUST DIE TO A STARTER CHAMPION?!??
mid_or_feed: IS WOLF_PACK_05 A HACKER??? WHO IS THAT???
yoonj_wife: NO WAY. First defeat in front of 2 million viewers?! Is he top global?!
gg_wp: He’s not even an esports player, who tf is this guy?!
Soobin stared at his screen, his mouth hanging open.
"I... I actually killed him?"
On screen, Yoon-J’s face was a picture of pure, murderous irritation. A dark, ugly scowl pulled at the corners of his mouth, and a heavy vein was visibly throbbing right against his temple.
He couldn't believe it. Outplayed? By some literal nobody?
His pride, polished by years of dominating the professional ladder, was screaming.
His eyes were just pinned to the grayed-out countdown of his dead champion, practically vibrating with ego-bruised fury. No amateur should have been able to read his movement trajectory like that, let alone bait out his mechanical cooldowns so flawlessly.
"Again." Yoon-J growls. His knuckles turned completely white as he gripped his mouse so hard the plastic creaked loudly into his headset. "Rematch. wolf_Gang_07, accept the invite. Do it right now."
Soobin blinked, suddenly feeling a massive wave of disappointment wash over him.
Wait... that's it?
He had spent the last three years staying up until sunrise, practically worshipping this guy's plays and expecting a tactical genius. But the legendary Yoon-J was currently tilted out of his absolute mind, aggressively slamming his mouse down and spamming the 'Rematch' button with the frantic, unhinged energy of a stubborn child threw a tantrum over a lost toy.
"Wow," Soobin mumbled to himself, all of his lingering fanboy awe evaporating in an instant. He downplayed the pro-streamer's terrifying, murderous glare with a bored roll of his eyes.
"He's kind of a sore loser," Soobin murmured with a soft laugh, watching the stream buffer for a split second. "I guess even a 'god' can bleed out from a starter account if they play that sloppy."
On the secondary monitor, Yoon-J kept switching his champion loadouts frantically, his face getting darker by the second as the lobby timer ticked away. He slammed his hand flat against his desk, making his high-end webcam rattle visibly, before aggressively leaning forward until his face practically filled the entire camera frame.
"Accept it! Don't run away!” Yoon-J barked, his dark eyes practically wild as he glared directly into the camera lens as if he could see Soobin through it. "Where did you go?! I know you're looking at the screen, Wolf_Gang!"
Before pulling the plug entirely, Soobin opened the lobby text box one last time.
If Yoon-J was going to act like a petulant child, Soobin might as well lean into the arrogant Alpha persona he had accidentally built.
wolf_Gang_07: I don't play with people who throw tantrums.
wolf_Gang_07: Go practice your laning phase, old man.
He hit enter, watched the live stream chat absolutely detonate into a wall of unreadable screaming, and then promptly clicked the giant red 'X' to exit the stream entirely, cutting off Yoon-J's furious shouting mid-sentence.
"Yeah, no thanks, you're annoying," Soobin muttered, completely unfazed by the death threats practically radiating from his secondary monitor just a second ago. With a casual, thoroughly unimpressed flick of his wrist, he moved his cursor over and closed the game lobby, completely ignoring the most feared streamer in Seoul.
He stared at the quiet desktop screen for a moment, a sudden realization hitting him.
Well, he thought with a dry, internal sigh,
I guess no Aetheria for a while.
If he logged back onto any account anytime soon, the entire community would probably be hunting for his IP address.
With the game officially shut down, Soobin threw his head back and stretched his long arms toward the ceiling, twisting until a loud, violent crack echoed through his joints.
"Ow," he muttered, rubbing his lower back.
He took a slow sip of his iced coffee, and as the cup hit the desk with a sharp clack, his entire aura shifted.
In the living room, a drawer slammed.
"Soobin, I’m heading out to meet the design team for that cosplay project!" Beomgyu shouted, sticking his head into the room. He took one look at the glowing green matrix of code reflecting in Soobin’s dark eyes and immediately quieted down.
"Don't forget to eat real food. Bye."
"Yeah, bye," Soobin murmured, his eyes never leaving the screen as the front door clicked shut.
Left in absolute silence, he dove straight into the encrypted underworld.
Usually, he’d be sorting through corporate bounty commissions or deleting digital paper trails, but his latest high-paying job had been downplayed by the middleman and was currently stuck in 'pending status' for payout verification.
With nothing else pressing, he decided to check his secure dark-web inbox.
An alert flashed on his private server.
An anonymous chat log popped open.
Anonymous_Client_99: Are you active?
Wolf_Pack_05: Pending payment verification. What do you need?
Anonymous_Client_99: Need an emergency bypass on a localized mainframe encryption. Payout is triple your usual rate. Link attached.
Soobin raised an eyebrow. Triple the rate? He clicked the encrypted link, tracking the data packet through seven different proxy servers before a massive, heavily encrypted login page filled his monitor. Unlike standard corporate firewalls, this interface was completely black, dominated by a stark, glowing silver crest at the center.
"Huh? A lock?" Soobin muttered, his fingers hovering over his keyboard.
He ran a quick diagnostic scan on the security layer. The firewalls were military-grade, layered with lethal counter-hacks designed to fry the hardware of anyone who dared to knock on the door. It wasn't a standard database.
It was a digital vault.
Soobin hesitated for a fraction of a second, staring at the intimidating silver crest. But then he remembered the state of his bank account, his sketchy yellow thrift-shop cardigan, and the empty ramen bowls stacking up in the kitchen sink.
The client was offering triple.
And at the end of the day, cash was cash.
"Well," Soobin whispered, a cocky smirk pulling at the corner of his lips as his fingers began to blur across the mechanical keys. "He pays well, so why not?"
In retrospect, Soobin really should have thought about it more.
But by the time he realized just how deep he was digging, the afternoon light had long vanished, replaced by the pitch-black quiet of midnight. The only illumination in his cramped room came from the violent glare of three monitors running complex decryption algorithms.
Soobin sat slumped in his chair, a steaming cup of instant ramen resting precariously on his lap. He was just about to shove a mouthful of noodles into his face when a sharp ding! echoed through his headphones.
A brand-new, hyper-complex security lock had spontaneously sprouted on the screen, resetting his progress by twenty percent.
"How long is this damn thing going to—"
Before he could finish his complaint, he blindly tapped a string of override commands while aggressively chewing his noodles. The progress bar stuttered, turned bright green, and a massive ACCESS GRANTED banner flashed across the screen.
The digital vault split wide open.
Soobin froze, a noodle dripping out of his mouth.
"Oh, shit."
His diagnostic screen lit up with the actual file directories he had just unsealed. This wasn't a corporate tax ledger. Columns of weapon serial numbers, military-grade ordnance manifests, and heavy arms shipments rolled down the left side of the display, flanked by heavily encrypted routing numbers tracing back to untraceable offshore cartel banks. Deeper still, complex, buried genealogical trees branched out across the screen, mapping out the precise family lineages, alliances, and inheritances of the city's most powerful syndicates.
He had just cracked a literal mafia underworld vault.
Shaking off the sudden spike of adrenaline, Soobin quickly cloned the decrypted access keys, zipped the file, and sent the details straight to the anonymous client. Within three seconds, his encrypted digital wallet lit up with a massive, life-changing triple-payout.
"Well, at least I can afford actual meat now," Soobin muttered, letting out a relieved sigh.
But before his fingers could even reach for the shortcut to wipe his session history, a sudden, heavy stutter dragged across his desktop. The cooling fans inside his laptop instantly whined to a high-pitched scream as his processor usage spiked to one hundred percent. Every active window on his dual monitors froze, the vibrant user interfaces bleeding away into a stark, command-line terminal.
A fresh, red-alert text box popped open from an unknown system administrator ID, overriding his administrative privileges.
SYS_ADMIN_CRIMSON: Ping request successful. Routing nodes tracked to a local university sector.
Soobin’s fingers locked above the keyboard, a sudden cold sweat pricking at the back of his neck. The geographical ping was too close for comfort. Worse, the terminal at the edge of his screen was already beginning a rapid, automated trace-route, a line of script aggressively rattling through local IP relays to narrow down his exact coordinates.
Panic overriding his exhaustion, Soobin didn't even bother to safely unmount his drives. He slammed his fingers down on his master kill-switch script, forcefully purging his temporary network bridges, killing the Wi-Fi card, and ripping the power cable straight out of the wall in one frantic, sweeping motion.
The room plunged into sudden, ringing silence.
Soobin stared at the dark reflection of his screen for a flat second, forcing his racing heartbeat to slow down. Dark-web users were always so dramatic. He got at least three automated death threats a week from angry forum moderators and script-kiddies he outsmarted.
There was no way their trace actually bypassed his triple-layered proxy matrix in time.
"Yeah, yeah, put it in the suggestion box," Soobin mumbled to the empty room, trying to shake off the lingering unease.
Refusing to let the paranoia ruin his night, he walked over to his bed and immediately fell face-first into his pillow, dead to the world within minutes.
But down on the floor, the laptop battery backup kicked in with a faint, almost imperceptible hum. Deep within the encrypted partitions of his locked drive, a single, hidden line of malicious script, one he had completely failed to notice or open during his hasty escape, began to execute in the dark.
At the very bottom of the black screen, a tiny, menacing red indicator light began to pulse rhythmically, slowly broadcasting a silent beacon into the city's network.
Meanwhile, on the top floor of a sleek, heavily guarded penthouse skyscraper downtown, the atmosphere was decidedly less peaceful.
"Sir! It’s the vault! Someone just breached the primary Choi archive mainframe!"
A panicked mafia tech specialist practically threw himself through the double doors, only to immediately dive for cover as a very expensive, neon-lit gaming mouse whizzed past his ear and shattered violently against the marble wall.
"He called me an old man," Choi Yeonjun snarled, completely ignoring the security breach. He was slumped in his leather throne, staring intensely at a secondary monitor that displayed his Aetheria match history. "An old man! I am twenty-one! My laning phase is perfect!"
The tech specialist blinked from the floor, thoroughly bewildered, while the three high-ranking, heavily armed lieutenants surrounding the desk just let out collective, long-suffering sighs.
"Sir," the lead lieutenant ventured carefully, lowering his hand from his holstered firearm. "The vault? The one containing our entire transaction routing system? It was just hacked."
"I don't care about the money, Min-hyuk, I care about my honor!" Yeonjun slammed both hands on the mahogany desk, aggressively pointing at the screen. "Look at the frame data! That starter hero shouldn't have been able to execute that combo. He's cheating. wolf_Gang_07 is a dirty hacker!"
“Well, speaking of hackers—” Min-hyuk started.
Before the lieutenant could finish, Yeonjun blindly grabbed a heavy, solid-crystal designer paperweight from his desk and hurled it across the room with terrifying accuracy. The three lieutenants and the tech specialist seamlessly ducked in unison as the crystal rocketed over their heads and punched a clean hole through a priceless oil painting.
"I am trying to explain the security breach, sir!" Min-hyuk shouted, practically near tears as he dusted plaster off his tailored suit jacket. "Please stop throwing the decor!"
"Who did it?" Yeonjun demanded, his voice dropping into a low, dangerous growl as he finally snapped his eyes away from his match history.
"I-I'm just a tech specialist!" the man on the floor squeaked, shielding his head.
Min-hyuk cleared his throat aggressively, stepping over a stray piece of glass to get between his boss and the tech guy. "Sir, if I may repeat myself: someone breached the primary Choi archive mainframe. The family vault was unsealed."
Yeonjun’s eyes narrowed into slits.
"Was it the Kang syndicate?"
"N-No, sir!" The specialist scrambled up, his hands shaking as he wirelessly cast the digital footprint onto the giant, wall-sized main monitor. "The hacker completely masked their identity using advanced proxy routing, but they used a very specific digital signature before logging off."
Yeonjun rolled his eyes, leaning back into his chair with a bored huff. "You know I don't care about a bunch of script-kiddies testing our firewalls. Why the hell would I care now? Hire better security."
"Well... it is specifically your personal data sub-folder that was breached, sir," Min-hyuk murmured, looking down at his polished shoes. "The core ledger remained sealed, but your private vault was wiped clean."
Yeonjun froze. He leaned forward, his knuckles turning white as he gripped the edge of his desk, ready to order a city-wide manhunt to protect his family's dark legacy.
"Show me the alias."
The wall screen flickered, revealing the decrypted username of the culprit in giant, glowing letters:
WOLF_PACK_05
The entire room went dead silent.
Yeonjun’s jaw dropped. He stared at the screen, his brain violently short-circuiting as his murderous rage slammed face-first into his unresolved gamer fury.
"Are my eyes deceiving me right now?" Yeonjun whispered, his voice trembling as he pointed a shaky finger at the giant wall monitor, then back toward his secondary gaming monitor.
"What the actual fuck is going on? What the hell is with these wolf gangs and wolf packs turning a terrible day into a total piece of shit?!"
"Sir?" the chief lieutenant asked, completely confused by the streamer slang. "Should we prepare the execution squad?"
"Forget the execution squad, that hacking guy can wait!" Yeonjun waved his hand dismissively, his face twisting back into pure, petty rage. "The data is encrypted anyway, and our cyber security team can just patch the holes later. That's what I pay them for.”
“Right?"
He pointed sharply at the tech specialist.
The tech specialist, entirely terrified for his life, nodded frantically, his hands trembling as he gripped his tablet.
"See? He's on it," Yeonjun snapped. "But this Aetheria situation? This is an emergency. This random nobody humiliated me in front of two million live viewers! I want wolf_Gang_07 found alive, and I want him found ten minutes ago!"
Min-hyuk and the other lieutenants stood in absolute, stunned silence, their jaws practically hitting the floor. They exchanged glances of pure, unadulterated exhaustion. The multi-billion-won data breach containing the lifeblood of their empire was being put on the back burner because a twenty-one-year-old mafia heir was throwing a temper tantrum over a starter mage.
"Sir..." Min-hyuk started, his voice cracking slightly as he pinched the bridge of his nose, barely holding his sanity together. "Are you telling us to mobilize our elite tactical unit... to find a college student who beat you in a video game?"
"He didn't just beat me, Min-hyuk, he threw dirt on the Choi family name!" Yeonjun yelled, dramatically grabbing his custom-tailored suit jacket off the back of his chair and throwing it over his broad shoulders. His Alpha scent flared back to life, suffocating the room with a terrifying pressure that entirely clashed with the sheer pettiness of his words.
"We are tracking that university sector ping," Yeonjun commanded, a dangerous, hyper-focused glint in his sharp eyes as he checked his watch. "I was just at that campus faculty building a few hours ago. He's somewhere on that turf. Prepare the cars. I’m going to personally hunt this little wolf down and show him exactly what happens when you mess with my match history."
"Right away, sir," Min-hyuk sighed, his shoulders slumping as he dragged his hand down his face. He nodded to the other guards, silently praying to whatever gods were listening that they wouldn't have to explain to the Big Boss why a fleet of black armored SUVs was currently invading a local campus to retrieve a gaming mouse.
The tech specialist, still crouching on the floor, watched the terrifying heir storm out of the penthouse suite with a lethal, sweeping stride.
The man let out a long, trembling breath, barely holding onto his consciousness as the heavy, suffocating pressure in the room finally dissipated.
"I need a new job," the tech guy whispered to the empty room, his fingers shaking as he closed the Aetheria tab and went back to monitoring the glowing, ominous red beacon pulsing from the university grid.