Lee Suho

"The extreme limit of wisdom, that's what the public calls madness."

4

Before Dice could react, a slim black smartphone of an unknown model popped out of nowhere, and because he was too stunned to catch it, it landed with a soft 'thud' on the large bed. 

It was inconspicuous in the middle of the plain white sheets, like a blot of ink on white paper.

Dice stared at the object with disbelief.

'M-M-Ma—holy shit! Is this magic?!'

Only now did he find out one could even stutter in his thoughts. That was how shocking the situation was for him.

Dice picked up the black phone and scrutinized it carefully, afraid of it disappearing at the slightest touch. It felt like a real phone. There was no brand or logo, not even a case, but its design was classy and high-end, just like the rest of the penthouse.

'How did I make it appear?'

'Can I also make it disappear?'

He focused on the phone, imagining it being put away…

…and he failed.

How did the phone materialize out of nowhere then?

Dice could not figure out how this magic thingy works.

'At least, I have a phone now! I can call my brother and make sense of this shit!' 

The phone used facial recognition technology to unlock, and the moment he saw the date, his guess was confirmed.

[Monday, February 28, 20xx]

Dice's last decent memory was in October, days before his birthday, and a few days shy of him turning 24 years old. 

More than five years had passed since then.

Five years…

He didn't know what to feel at the discovery that so much time had passed. 

Reality was yet to sink in.

'Huh?'

His screen was bursting with notifications.

Dice hurried to scroll among the hundreds of messages and the call logs from unfamiliar people. All of them were only a day's worth of notifications.

'Strange. There is not a single message from Assistant Kim?'

There were around five people with the surname Kim, but from the content of their messages, they didn't seem to be the so-called Professor's assistant or subordinate. They were asking about setting up a private meeting, or asking for a favor about some kind of raw material.

He tried to take in as much information as he could with the little time he was given, but he was a ball of confusion at the moment. The more he read, the more he didn't understand the situation.

Did he get dumb?

No, that should not be the case.

The images in his picture gallery were either machinery, documents or strange symbols. Did he shift to an engineering course? Did he become a scientist?

Dice was a business administration student. His major was marketing, minor in entrepreneurship.

For him to tinker with ores and machinery, how did things end up this way?

In the end, he decided to do what he intended to do in the first place—call family. Only they could clear up his doubts.

'Did Sehun change his number?'

His younger brother, Lee Sehun, was not among his phone contacts. Thankfully, Dice had his number memorized. He dialed it, but the call wouldn't connect.

Alarmed, he also scrolled to find his parents' contact numbers, Lloyd's number, Jin's number…

'They're not here?'

'Could it be this is not my phone?'

'Whose phone is it then, and where is my phone?'

However, he changed his mind. He ordered Tubby to call his personal number and this phone rang in response. It meant this belonged to him.

'But from the look of things, it is more appropriate to say this is a company phone.'

Dice double-checked the phone, realizing belatedly that although similar, the apps were not the same ones in his memory. 

He checked what appeared to be the internet browser, and to his surprise, the main page of it was not Google but a…news forum?

The most eye-catching articles on the home page were about an announcement made by a guild called Craft.

[The System now supports global messaging! Craft Guild's new venture…]

[The Professor's latest achievement connects the world!]

[District Nine's popularity explodes along with Craft Guild's launch of…]

[Chairman Lee of Craft appoints five districts to beta test the new features of the System…]

Dice was dumbfounded.

System? Craft? District Nine?

But remembering five years had passed, he attempted to redirect his attention. 

'The Professor in the new article couldn't possibly be me, right?'

It was nonsense.

A delusional nonsense.

How could he be in the news, right? The headlines to boot.

Yet when he checked, more to soothe his growing curiosity, what he found was pretty absurd.

Both the Professor and the Chairman of Craft Guild were named Lee Suho.

What a coincidence, right?

Or not.

After a few minutes of reading, Dice put down the black phone in disbelief.

Lee Suho, age 29, one of the S-ranked Awakened of South Korea, ranked 87th in the World Rankings

Chairman of Craft Guild and Founder of the System

Alias, The Professor.

Job Classification: Blacksmith

There were no pictures of him in the news articles, but he had connected the dots enough to understand it was him being talked about. After all, from the phone messages, to the call logs, as well as the inquiries and invitations extended to him, he figured out that he was the very same Lee Suho of Craft.

'System? What System?'

'Blacksmith, what?'

'And what's the Craft Guild?'

'Fuck, what the hell happened to the world in the past five years?!'

Urgent knocks came from his door, breaking Dice away from his panicked train of thoughts.

"Professor! You will be late for your first appointment for the day!" came the words from the inhuman Assistant Kim. The man's voice was normal, extremely normal, but the moment Dice heard it, his heart began to race.

His hands grew clammy and he found his fingers shaking.

Fear.

His body was shaking in fear.

The cause was the man on the other side of the door. His intuition was screaming for him to run.

For a moment, Dice wondered if there was another door connected to this bedroom. 

An emergency exit, perhaps? 

Would he survive jumping down the window?

He needed to escape!