Chapter 0: Prologue

Bodam had a dream about a pig that day.

For some reason, his younger sister Bomi, just a year younger than him, appeared in the dream. It had been six years since he had last seen her after she entered the Center.

“Hey. Get lost.”

Bodam said to his sister, who was sitting in front of the computer on his desk.

“You get lost.”

Even after six years, his sister reacted exactly the same way in his dream. Bodam glared at Bomi as she chewed noisily and sprayed snack crumbs all over the keyboard, then launched a front kick.

The rolling chair slid back two steps, but couldn’t go far, weighed down by the pig riding it.

“This room’s mine now!”

Bomi, completely ignoring their tiny one-year age gap, launched a flying kick. Bodam, smaller in both height and build than his sister, flailed as he was toppled over.

The dignity of being the eldest had crumbled long ago, back when he was still just a toddler showing off. Bodam had always been naturally weak. It was definitely because that f*cking pig stole all the snacks from him.

“Just let me use it for an hour!”

Bodam stood up grandly and shouted. Bomi, his one and only sister whose ears even looked plump with fat, didn’t even pretend to listen. As if ignoring him wasn’t enough, she stretched out her beefy arm and flipped him off.

This older brother couldn’t stand it. He could let a beating slide, but not an insult. Especially when she was using his keyboard like a snack bowl, crumbs and all.

“Ugh, you f*cking pig!”

Emphasizing his sigh, Bodam called out his sister’s name with force.

And then,

“Huh…?”

Bomi turned into Bomi. No, she turned into a real pig, wrapped in pink skin.

“Oink?”

It was the spitting image of those parents in that Japanese animated movie, the ones who turned into pigs after gorging themselves and neglecting their kids.

It was f*cking terrifying.

“Oink?”

As Bomi scrunched her nose and made noises at him, Bodam glanced downward uneasily.

“Oink?”

“You, you… do whatever you want.”

Hurriedly surrendering the computer, he fled the room. That’s when he woke up. His alarm, screaming unnecessarily early on a Saturday morning, had snapped him out of the dream.

“Ha….”

It was a f*cked-up, completely useless dream. Probably just a stupid dream where he saw his sister’s ugly mug again. Or so he thought—until this happened.

***

3 p.m. on a precious Saturday afternoon.

Bodam, who should’ve been sleeping in, dragged himself home after being forced to work overtime and patched together a late lunch with a cup of instant noodles.

He craved spicy seafood noodles badly, but last night’s Friday chicken order had gone over 20,000 won, so he decided to restrain himself.

Slurping up the noodles and even draining the soup, Bodam felt miserable.

Working on a weekend pissed him off, and the pitiful state of his bank account only fueled his rage. He tried to calm himself, telling himself to hang on until next week’s payday, but then suddenly remembered the pig dream.

Maybe I should buy a lottery ticket.

Yawning from food coma and drowsiness, he opened his laptop. When the desktop popped up, he absentmindedly pulled up YouTube, just letting videos play in the background.

The lottery ticket was bought truly without any expectation or thought.

‘Since I dreamed of Yoon Bomi, maybe I’ll pick numbers based on her birthday,’ he thought casually, clicking onto the lottery site.

When you’re feeling down, you tend to just go with the flow. Even with only 18,720 won left in his account, he thought, ‘Screw it, I’ll just skip coffee,’ and dropped 5,000 won on tickets.

All because he was feeling a little down.

“Was that pig’s birthday July? March? Whatever.”

Of course, he didn’t know his sister’s birthday. He just opted for an automatic quick pick instead.

The time then was 17:36:51.

Bodam, barely keeping his eyes open, noted the timestamp on the lottery page and dove straight into bed.

Patching a meal with instant noodles and collapsing into bed without anything else to do—this was the greatest luxury Bodam could afford right now.

After briefly closing his eyes, Bodam opened them again to find the room bathed in evening twilight.

“Ah… my weekend.”

Feeling the crushing despair of losing one of his two precious weekend days, he forced himself up from bed. Searching for water to settle his heavy stomach, he groaned. He had forgotten to refill the Brita filter.

“Wow. What a day.”

Giving up on water, he grabbed a bottle of soju from the fridge.

Sitting back down at his laptop, he drank straight from the green bottle without even using a glass. It was a little past 10 p.m. Still determined to make meaningful use of the remaining Saturday night, he searched for a movie to watch.

“There’s so much, but nothing to watch.”

He wasted another hour just browsing through movies. Then suddenly, the thought of the lottery came back to him.

Tap tap tap.

Sipping soju, he tapped on the keyboard. The lottery draw results would have been announced by now.

Thinking, ‘If by some miracle I win, I’ll order myself jjampong,’ he typed ‘lottery winning numbers’ into the search bar.

“Let’s see, let’s see. Will Mr. Bodam get his jjampong–?”

Keeping the purchase page open on the side, he moved his eyes back and forth to compare the numbers. He could’ve just checked directly, but matching the numbers himself was half the fun.

“Three, oh nice. Fifteen, hell yeah, is jjampong happening? Twenty-five, f*ck—”

Bodam held his breath.

Before checking the remaining three numbers, the tiny bean-sized Bodam looked up at the ceiling.

He thought he had seen some familiar numbers.

Normally, one bottle of soju wouldn’t faze him, but now a flush of heat rushed to his face. His pounding heart dyed his pale face red like steamed rice cakes.

Exhaling deeply, he lowered his gaze again—and promptly fell backward with a gasp. He spent the entire next day completely sick.

4.6 billion won.

A number he would carry in his chest until the day he became a gray-haired old man.