The alarm rang at 4:00 a.m. sharp.
Not a second late. Not a second early.
Kang Tae-min opened his eyes before it could ring twice. The room was cold and dim—no curtains, no heater, only the sound of the wind slipping through the cracks of an old window. He sat up slowly, stretching his arms until his bones clicked, then reached for his running shoes. They were torn at the sides, soles flattened from years of use, but they still worked.
He tied them tight and stepped outside.
The air bit at his face as he started running. His route never changed: down the cracked road that led to the edge of town, then back again. The cold burned his lungs, his heart pounded steadily, and his breath came out in misty bursts. To anyone watching, it might've looked like discipline. To him, it was just routine.
Running made him forget.
Or maybe it reminded him of the one person he couldn't forget.
His father's voice still lingered in his head sometimes. "Push harder, Tae-min. The world doesn't wait for you."
His father had been a soldier—strong, loud, and stubborn. He used to make Tae-min train with him every morning before school. Back then, Tae-min hated it. He wanted to sleep in, to be like the other kids. But after the car crash, after watching his father's coffin lowered into the ground, he realized he missed it—the pain, the routine, the shouting.
Pain meant someone cared enough to push him.
Now, there was no one left.
He was twelve when they sent him to the orphanage. It wasn't bad—just lifeless. The caretakers were polite but distant, and the other kids came and went like ghosts. Tae-min learned early not to expect much from anyone. So he pushed himself instead.
By fourteen, he was working part-time jobs after school: delivering newspapers, cleaning tables, washing dishes. He didn't complain. He knew the system. If you wanted something, you earned it. And if you couldn't earn it, you didn't deserve it.
His teachers called him a "genius."
He didn't believe them.
He was just good at noticing patterns—how teachers graded, how questions were phrased, how people behaved when they lied. He aced every exam in high school, not because he loved learning, but because he understood the game.
By his final year, he'd calculated everything: his grades, his extracurriculars, his district ranking. He was supposed to be guaranteed a scholarship.
But life wasn't a formula.
The results came out one dull afternoon. He was top of the district—first place—but his name wasn't on any scholarship list. He didn't get angry. He didn't cry. He just stared at the announcement board until the crowd around him began to fade.
"I see," he muttered, his tone calm, almost relieved.
There was no point in being surprised. Things like this happened all the time to people like him—people without connections, without family names, without someone to make a call on their behalf.
That night, while the other students celebrated or cried, Tae-min packed his things. The orphanage didn't stop him. He was eighteen now—an adult in the eyes of the law. That meant one less mouth for them to feed.
The apartment he moved into wasn't much—bare walls, a small sink, a mattress on the floor, and a window that never closed properly. But it was his.
He started working seven, sometimes ten different jobs each week: delivery boy, cleaner, server, part-time cashier, anything that paid enough to cover rent. He never complained about the exhaustion. It was easier than thinking.
At night, when he lay in the dark, he'd stare at the ceiling and whisper the same question over and over:
"What's next?"
He wasn't disappointed.
He wasn't angry.
He just… didn't feel much at all.
The only thing that kept him moving was the echo of his father's voice, buried deep in his mind:
"Don't stop. Don't ever stop."
So he didn't.
He woke up every morning at four.
He ran until his legs screamed.
He worked until he couldn't think.
And somewhere between the exhaustion and silence, Kang Tae-min forgot what it felt like to live.