"While you're at it, you might as well kill me. Let's see how you pn to recover your loan after that," I said with a firm and serious tone. Knowing that showing fear would only make them push harder—and besides, that wasn't my style.

  "You think I won't kill you?" the head goon asked, lowering his shades to gre at me through the van's rearview mirror. "I heard your brother became a Grimlock and got signed by the Zenith Grim Reapers Guild. If you die, we'll find him."

  "Sure. All the best," I replied with a smirk. They wouldn't have abducted me off the street if they truly believed Crayon's Grimlock sibling cared about his older brother. Whatever flimsy illusion of family they had maintained had been shattered publicly during the signing ceremony. That was the whole reason they dared come looking for Crayon despite knowing his sibling was a Grimlock.

  And that wasn't even considering the Zenith Guild backing Crayon's ungrateful sibling. They were extravagant and arrogant enough to staff their entire reception with beautiful female Grimlocks. People like that didn't need a reason to wipe out a shady loan agency—assuming these idiots even had the balls to knock on their door.

  Annoyed by my sneer, the head goon was visibly enraged. I quit while I was ahead and proposed, "There is no need to resort to violence. You know my situation better than I do. Give me a few weeks to get back on my feet. After this whole scandal blows over, I will find some work and continue paying the loan repayments on time as usual."

  I had no choice but to bend to my current circumstances. I could sort them out in the future. If I'm not flexible now, not only will my present be hard, but there won't be a future.

  "Kid, don't act smart with me. Take out the hush money the guild gave you, and we'll close all your outstanding loans," the head goon said, finally dropping the pretense. And just like that, I understood why they'd shown up at dawn.

  "Boss, you've got the wrong idea," I said, shaking my head. "Do I look like someone who suddenly came into money? The guild's goons jumped me st night while I was visiting my parents' graves, trying to drown my sorrows. They warned me to stay away from my little brother and to stop running my mouth about him. Then they beat me until I bcked out. I just woke up and was heading to the Grimway Station to try my luck. I don't even have enough to book a ride, so I walked… and ran into you guys."

  I lifted my hands helplessly. "If you don't believe me, there's nothing I can do. Just kill me. I've got nothing left to live for."

  I id it out pinly, editing out Crayon's death and my transmigration, keeping only the parts they needed to hear.

  I figured honesty was my safest bet. They didn't actually want to kill me—not when they hadn't recovered the loan money they had lent. Also, I was their personal cash cow, destined to pay obscene interest on a loan someone else had taken out under my name for the rest of my life.

  "Check him. And search every G-wallet on his phones," the head goon ordered the burly men pinning me between them as he rubbed at his temples in frustration. He clearly couldn't believe that a major guild like Zenith wouldn't pay even a single cent to quiet a scandal and instead relied purely on intimidation. Maybe that expined exactly why they'd risen to where they were today.

  "He's not lying, boss. They really worked him over," the burly goon on my right said after lifting my sleeves and colr, revealing heavy, dark bruises. "Damn… they didn't pull any punches."

  Meanwhile, the goon on my left finished scrolling through my phone and reported, "Boss, all his G-wallets are empty. Everything got drained by automatic payments for his online loans. Honestly… killing him might be doing him a favor."

  "Ah, damn it!" the head goon barked, smming his palm against the dashboard hard enough to rattle the van. "I can't believe I woke up early in the morning for this."

  Silence settled over us—until my stomach betrayed me.

  *Grumble—*

  "Sorry," I muttered while my cheeks were warming up in embarrassment. "I haven't had anything to eat or drink since yesterday afternoon."

  The head goon, having regained his composure, fixed me with a cold look. "You have three days. Start making the minimum payments, or I'll sell your corpse on the bck market to recover whatever the agency can. Do you understand?"

  Meeting his gaze in the rearview mirror, I nodded solemnly. Crayon's memories made the threat all too real. Grimlocks used corpses to craft Gion Zombie and Gion Puppet cards. In this economy, they were cheap to produce and constantly in demand. There was never enough supply to meet the market's appetite. My body wouldn't go to waste.

  The head goon tapped the dashboard, signaling the driver to stop. I braced myself to get out, but before I could move, one of the burly goons seized my right hand. He snapped my left pinky and ring finger with a clean twist at the palm joint. Pain fred white-hot, but before I could scream, they shoved me out of the van and barked after me, "You have three days!"

  I hit the hard asphalt, skin scraping raw across my palms, elbows, and knees. Gritting my teeth, I pushed myself upright. My pinky and ring finger dangled at an angle it clearly shouldn't, but the sharp pain had already dulled. I pulled out a handkerchief and bound the broken fingers to my middle finger for support.

  "That should do the trick," I muttered, gncing around to spot the massive steel arch rising into the clouds in the distance. At least something good had come out of this ordeal—I was only a few hundred yards from the Grimway Station.