Chapter 5: The First Transaction
The twenty-dollar bill was damp in his fist, the paper soft from his sweat. He stood under the buzzing neon sign of a 24-hour convenience store, a cube of harsh light in the deepening twilight. The ache in his feet was a blunt, persistent throb. His throat was a desert. The photoshoot in the back of the vintage shop had left a film of shame on his skin, sticky and inescapable, worse than the sweat under the silicone.
Water. It was a simple, biological need. A line of logic in the chaos. He pushed through the automatic doors.
The air inside hit him—a wall of frigid, over-processed chill that made the exposed skin of his midriff prickle into goosebumps. The lights weren’t just bright; they were predatory, bleaching every color into a stark, shadowless reality. The floor tiles were a sticky yellow grid. A lone vending machine hummed a discordant electrical tune in the corner.
He moved toward the coolers at the back, his gait unconsciously careful. The rhythmic, heavy sway of his chest felt obscenely loud in the quiet store. Clunk-slide. Clunk-slide. The sound of the silicone shifting inside the tight crop top seemed to echo off the racks of chips and candy.
He yanked open the glass door, the cold fog billowing out. He grabbed the first plastic bottle he saw, the condensation instantly wetting his palm. The normalcy of the action—choosing a water—was a bizarre contrast to everything else. He needed it. He turned.
The counter was at the front. A young guy, maybe his own real age, lounged on a stool behind it, scrolling on his phone. He had a sharp undercut and a silver hoop in his eyebrow. He didn’t look up as Jun-Ho approached.
Jun-Ho placed the bottle on the counter. The soft thud made the guy glance over. His eyes, initially bored, did a quick, automatic sweep. From the new, delicate face, down the exposed strip of stomach, over the pronounced curves under the white fabric, to the tight yoga pants. The sweep wasn’t fast. It was a slow, deliberate inventory. His eyebrows lifted a fraction.
Jun-Ho looked away, fixing his gaze on a rack of cheap sunglasses. He could feel the heat rising up his neck, into his new cheeks. He braced himself.
“That’s a dollar-eighty,” the guy said. His voice was flat, but there was a knowing weight behind it.
Jun-Ho’s hand trembled as he unfurled the crumpled twenty. He slid it across the counter, still not making eye contact.
The cashier took it, his fingers brushing against Jun-Ho’s. The contact was fleeting, dry, and intentional. He made a show of smoothing the bill on the counter before opening the register. The ching-ching of the machine was agonizingly slow.
“Out kinda late, huh?” the guy said casually, counting out change. His tone was conversational, but it felt like a probe.
Jun-Ho said nothing. He willed him to just hand over the change.
“That top’s… something.” A low chuckle. “Not really seeing a lot of support going on there. Must be uncomfortable.”
The words, so casually offensive, slithered into Jun-Ho’s ears. This wasn’t the staged, almost clinical appraisal of Elena the shop owner. This was raw, street-level scrutiny. This was a power play from a stranger who saw a young woman in a revealing outfit and felt entitled to comment. Jun-Ho’s old self, the CEO, would have eviscerated him with a sentence. Mina had no weapons.
He had to speak. He needed his change. He needed to leave.
“Can I… just have my change?” The voice that came out was a disaster. It was higher than his own, softer, but strained with tension. It cracked on the word ‘change,’ wavering into a humiliating squeak. It wasn’t a woman’s confident voice. It was the voice of someone scared, trying and failing to mask it.
The cashier’s smile widened. He’d heard the crack. He’d registered the fear. He placed the stack of coins and bills on the counter slowly, deliberately, but kept his fingertip on top of the pile. “Here you go. Mina.”
The name was a bucket of ice water dumped directly into his spine.
How? The thought was a white-hot spike of terror. How did he know? He hadn’t said it. He hadn’t—
Then he saw it. Peeking from under the cashier’s elbow, nearly hidden by a stack of lottery tickets, was a small, familiar notecard. The same creamy stock. The same elegant handwriting. It faced the cashier, not the customer. On it, he could just make out two words: “Hello, Mina.”
Hana had been here. She’d prepped the ground. This wasn’t random. This was another scene, meticulously staged. The convenience store was just another set, and this smirking guy was a bit player with a script.
The humiliation transformed, heating into a molten, quiet rage. He wasn’t just being mocked by a random jerk. He was being puppeteered into the mockery. His suffering was being curated, broadcasted.
He snatched his change, his fingers scraping against the cashier’s. He didn’t bother to count it. He grabbed the water bottle, the cold plastic now feeling like the only real thing in the room.
“Have a good night,” the cashier called after him, the smile evident in his voice. “Stay safe out there.”
The automatic doors hissed open, then shut behind him, sealing the fluorescent horror inside. He stumbled a few paces from the entrance and leaned against the rough brick wall of the building, gulping in the warmer, dirtier night air. He screwed the cap off the water and drank, the liquid shockingly cold, almost painful. It didn’t cleanse the taste of the interaction from his mouth.
He looked at the bottle in his hand. Then he noticed it. A small, square sticker, precisely placed on the label, over the mountain spring illustration.
It was another note from Hana. This one was printed, not handwritten.
Task Completed: Procurement.
New Asset: Hydration.
Next Objective: Return to the point of origin. The night bus departs from the stop on Grand and 7th in 22 minutes. Fare is $2.25. You have the correct change.
P.S. The silicone is hydrophilic. It will start to chafe spectacularly if it gets too dry. Keep the skin hydrated. You understand the assignment.
He stared at the words. The point of origin. The bus stop where he’d first arrived in this nightmare. She was putting him back on the bus. Sending him somewhere. And the postscript… it was a reminder of his total physical dependency. The suit wasn’t just a prison; it was a fragile, high-maintenance system he had to tend to, according to her instructions. You understand the assignment. It was the kind of phrase he’d used in emails to developers.
The rage flickered, then was smothered by a wave of sheer, debilitating fatigue. He was being managed. Every move was a response to her prompt. He had no agency, only a series of escalating reactions.
He pushed off the wall. Grand and 7th. He didn’t know where that was. He started walking again, each step a fresh negotiation with gravity and pain. The twenty dollars was gone, broken into change and a bottle of water that now came with attached conditions. He was a system running on her code, and she was debugging him in real time, finding every vulnerability. The city around him was no longer just a prison. It was her testing ground. And the bus, when he found it, would just be a shuttle to the next lab.