The Glitch That Wears Black
Siran, Coffee, and the Box That Should've Stayed Empty
The morning began like all the others, smudged in grayscale.
The digital curtains in Ryung's cramped apartment slid open with a low hum, flooding the room with artificial sunlight. Outside, Siran — the crowned capital of ZINZIN — buzzed to synthetic life, its skyline etched with shimmering towers and humming sky-rails. The city breathed in sync with the servers that kept it alive.
Ryung blinked once.
Then again.
Not because he was tired, but because it was tradition — part of his odd little checklist of meaningless rituals. Wake. Blink. Groan inwardly. And then—
"Another day in this four-walled simulation of meaning," he muttered, voice thick with sarcasm.
He stood, same as always, stretching limbs that never ached. His outfit was already laid out beside the bed, pressed to perfection: black slacks, black jacket, white buttoned shirt, no tie — never a tie — and a silver digital watch that clicked like a heartbeat he didn't quite believe in.
There were seven of that same outfit in his wardrobe. Seven for seven days. Efficiency, he'd tell himself. But the truth was… he couldn't remember choosing any of them.
His room was small. Too small. But it had everything he needed: a microwave that made perfect soup, a screen he never turned on, and a window that looked out over Siran's eastern quarter — a view that never changed, even when it rained.
As he walked down the corridor, every neighbor greeted him with a half-smile and a nod. Their faces changed very little. Their voices echoed the same recycled phrases each day.
> "Good morning, Ryung."
"Off to work again?"
"You look sharp today."
He smiled back politely, even chuckled once or twice, but he never responded. Deep down, a part of him knew… if he didn't answer, nothing would break.
His first stop was always the same.
JUNO'S COFFEE – BLACK CUP. BLACKER SOUL.
The neon sign glowed mockingly over the chipped-brick counter. The owner, a woman with silver lipstick and golden eyes, greeted him like a pre-recorded voicemail.
"Black. No sugar. No cream. The way you always like it," she sang, sliding the steaming cup across the glass.
"Consistency is a virtue," Ryung replied dryly, grabbing the cup with one hand, pocketing the receipt with the other.
The aroma was perfect. The taste was always mediocre. But it grounded him — as if the bitterness held the world together.
He strolled toward SIRAN BANK, the tallest building on Sector Line 7, its logo pulsing on a holo-board:
We Store Your Future.
Ryung had worked here for six years — or was it seven? — as a finance manager. A job filled with numbers, screens, and just enough human contact to stay sane.
Well… human enough.
Inside the marble halls, everything was polished to pixel-perfection. The floor never creaked. The light never flickered. The same elevator music played at the exact same volume every single day.
And waiting near the break room was Malik — broad-shouldered, always smiling, tie slightly loose like a rebellious statement against corporate oppression.
"Yo, glitch boy," Malik grinned. "You're late."
"I'm early," Ryung corrected. "You're just programmed to feel superior."
Malik laughed — one of those real, belly-deep ones that made Ryung forget how flat the world felt.
"You ever get tired of wearing that funeral suit?"
"You ever get tired of pretending your marriage is working?"
"Touché."
They bumped fists. Casual. Familiar. And then Malik headed off to the Vault Room while Ryung made his way toward the back hall — toward the Private Client Lockboxes.
Ryung had one.
Not for valuables. Not for secrets. Just… keepsakes. Papers he never needed. A childhood drawing. An old button. A dried-out pen. Things he wasn't sure he remembered owning.
But today — today there was something new.
Inside the cold steel box, resting on top of everything else, lay a sleek black card. Matte finish. No name. Just glowing green data lines that pulsed like a heartbeat.
He picked it up.
It blinked.
A small holographic display unfolded in the air like an origami secret from the gods:
---
IVIAN CODECARD – LEVEL ANALYSIS
ELEMENT: Green – 3rd Eye
HP: 200
STAMINA: 200
LEVEL: Realm 1 > Level 1 > Stage 1
SKILLS: Normal Illusion (Awakening: Unstable)
---
"What in the Zinzin...?" Ryung blinked.
He looked behind him. No one. No camera notification. No alarm. Just silence and soft ventilation hums.
A pause.
Then a smirk.
"Well... either someone's messing with me… or I'm due for a psychotic break. Both sound fun."
He slipped the card into his jacket pocket.
He wasn't sure why.
It just… felt important.
---
The World Beneath the World
The wind outside the bank was different.
Not louder. Not colder. Just… artificial, like it had been rendered slightly off-resolution. Ryung stepped through the grand double doors, adjusting his collar out of habit more than necessity, and paused mid-stride.
Something was wrong.
The street looked the same—Siran's pristine walkways, lined with floating ad-bubbles and blinking intersection nodes. And yet, every edge felt too sharp. Too perfect. Buildings stood like cardboard cutouts layered against a backdrop painted in static. The clouds moved, but their shadows did not.
His eyes scanned the horizon. On instinct. Not fear. Not quite.
Then he saw it—just above a woman's head as she crossed the street: a line of glowing green text, hovering mid-air like a game UI.
Name: JayaMoon_93
Status: Online | Level 14 | Quest Active: Retrieve the Locket
Ryung blinked hard.
When he opened his eyes, more of them appeared. Floating labels above people's heads. Stats. Statuses. Bars. All things he had never seen before. All things he somehow understood the moment he looked at them.
A teenager across the plaza sprinted by, shouting into nothing.
"Bro! I just bought an invis-potion! Watch this—"
And vanished mid-step.
Ryung's gaze snapped downward. Near the planter at the bank's edge, something small and glowing lay on the pavement. A bottle. Strange symbols spiraled across the glass in light-green etchings, and the cap shimmered with silver rings.
It looked… ridiculous. Like a prank. But the label floated next to it.
Item: Speed Up Potion
Effect: 15 seconds of enhanced motion velocity
Warning: Collisions may result in temporary damage
He stared at it for a moment. Then, with a shrug that dismissed common sense, self-preservation, and the natural order of things, he picked it up.
The glass was warm in his hand.
The liquid inside swirled like a miniature storm.
"Why not," he muttered, twisting the cap.
It tasted like static. Like mint. Like burning.
The effect was instant.
The world slowed, and he exploded forward.
At first, it was exhilarating—wind peeling past his face, pedestrians moving like statues, time unraveling beneath his feet. He sprinted across blocks, skipping over intersections like a phantom, darting past moving vehicles and frozen airtrams. His heart thundered with a joy he didn't recognize, a laughter clawing at the back of his throat.
Then came the wall.
He didn't even see it until it was three feet from his face.
There was a crash, an echo, and then the pavement.
He lay there for a moment, eyes blinking stars away.
Somewhere nearby, a woman screamed. Or maybe laughed. Hard to tell.
He sat up, groaning—not from pain, but from confusion. His coat was torn slightly near the shoulder, and his vision pulsed in delayed waves. For a moment, he thought he might vomit pixels.
Then the card in his pocket blinked.
IVIAN CODECARD – STATUS UPDATE
HP: Dropped by 5 | Current: 195
Condition: Mild Impact Registered
Advice: Watch Where You're Going
He stared at it.
"...Okay, snarky magic card. That's new."
He stood, brushing dust from clothes that never wrinkled, and turned—only to find a young man staring at him from across the plaza. Pale face. Platinum armor. A player, clearly. His eyes tracked Ryung for a few seconds, lips half-parted as if unsure whether to say something… or report him.
They locked eyes.
The player nodded once.
Then walked away.
Ryung stayed still for a moment, watching the crowd blur and flow around him like water over stone.
Inside his head, something cracked.
He didn't understand this world anymore. Or maybe he never did. But whatever this was—this glitch, this card, this bottle, this sudden storm of madness—one thing was certain:
He was not just another banker in Siran.
And this was not just another day.
---
The Ones Who Watch
Year: 2222
Location: IVAS Corporation Headquarters, Echelon City — North Continental Sector
The sky outside was starless. Glass spires scraped the heavens, and every window of IVAS Tower pulsed with cold, electric breath. Inside the Operations Chamber, the temperature was locked at a sterile 19 degrees Celsius. No breeze. No warmth. Just the endless hum of simulated worlds echoing across layers of servers the size of city blocks.
Room 704, Subsector X: Live Monitoring Lab.
Dozens of screens flickered in dim blue. Each projected feeds from sectors of the hyper-real simulation known as World IVIAN — a sprawling artificial realm designed for commerce, conflict, and curated immersion. NPCs evolved. Players thrived. Glitches... were contained.
"Pull Sector S-12 feed," said Dev 4K, a lean woman with chroma implants across her scalp. Her fingers danced across the haptic console. "Siran Capital— anomaly flagged. Time code 13:04."
Beside her, Dev 3C — an older man with deep bags under his eyes and a jaw that clenched too often — leaned closer to the hologram that bloomed into view. He watched the footage without blinking.
A man in black. Sprinting through crowds. Defying limits. Interacting with objects he had no business recognizing. No permission tags. No active quest flags. Yet somehow, triggering UI overlays, consuming potions, draining HP.
"He's not a Player," 3C said quietly.
"No registered login," 4K confirmed. "His ID tag reads 'Ryung_47' — assigned NPC. Bank Employee Role. Dialogue tree set to Tier-2 Variance. No aggression. No progression path."
They both stared.
"He drank a Speed-Up."
"Yeah."
"And took collision damage."
"Yeah."
3C leaned back, ran a hand down his face. "He shouldn't know how to drink a potion. He shouldn't even be able to pick one up."
"I know."
Silence stretched.
4K turned. "This isn't the first one, is it?"
"No," he muttered, voice low. "Back in '29. A tavern bard started following a player for forty in-game hours. Singing new lines we never coded. Had to terminate the entire township."
"Ugh. And Sector V— the priestess girl."
"Same thing. She developed paranoia. Started hiding key items from players. Took three weeks to trace the source code mutation."
4K exhaled. "So what's Ryung?"
3C didn't answer right away.
Instead, he brought up Ryung's card.
IVIAN CODECARD | CLASS: Undefined
Elemental Signature: Obscured
Interaction Log: Growing
Status: Self-Directed Anomaly
4K muttered, "No code thread. No plugin trail. No external exploit. It's like he spawned with the card already embedded."
3C narrowed his eyes. "Then someone did this manually. Or the system evolved again."
"That would make it the fifth time."
"Or the last."
A beat passed. 4K's voice dropped low.
"We tell Alya?"
He hesitated. Alya, the Director of Internal Reality Stability, had already warned them: One more uncontained glitch, and I shut the server down for a full cycle. She had the authority. And the fear.
"Not yet," he said. "We track him. Quietly. Tag his memory flow, his behavior trees. I want a full behavioral map by midnight."
"What if he jumps sectors?"
"Then we follow. Every step."
"And if he breaks containment?"
3C stared at the footage.
Ryung was walking again. Calm. Collected. Human. More human than scripted lines should allow. His eyes looked up once, as if sensing something beyond his skyline—past clouds, past digital code, past gods who sat in chairs and watched simulations for a living.
Then he smiled.
And 3C felt it in his chest. That smile. It wasn't from code.
It was knowing.
"He won't be the first," 3C whispered.
"But he might be the one that remembers."
"But how we must find out prepare yourself we are going to log in zinzin server"
---
END OF CHAPTER 1