Lookism: King's Ascension

3 Months later

Anyang was on edge. 

The Circle was stirring, and it wasn't just the usual fights or territory disputes... something bigger was coming. 

Minho didn't need to hear whispers to know it. He could feel it, the way the streets seemed meaner, the way people held their breath like they were waiting for the first crack to split everything open.

He sat on the rooftop of a rundown apartment complex, cigarette dangling from his lips, gaze fixed on the streets below. 

Neon lights flickered, casting fractured reflections in the puddles lining the pavement. 

He exhaled smoke slowly, watching it curl into the night air.

Jeongdu stood next to him, leaning against the railing, arms crossed, staring down at the city below. Silent, as always. Minho didn't expect him to say anything. He never did unless he had to.

They'd been running together for years.

Not as friends. Not at first. 

Just two people who had crawled their way up from the same gutter, dragging themselves through the filth of Anyang's underbelly and refusing to drown in it. It wasn't trust, not really. It was survival.

It started in middle school.

Minho had always been quick… fast with his fists, faster on his feet. He knew how to talk his way out of trouble when he needed to, and when that didn't work, he knew how to hit first.

But Jeongdu… Jeongdu was something else.

He had been the kind of kid people learned to avoid without realizing why. Quiet, dead-eyed, with a mean streak that didn't come from anger but something colder. 

He fought like it didn't matter, like winning and losing were just afterthoughts to the act itself. 

Minho had seen a lot of fighters over the years… kids who swung wild with too much emotion, kids who threw punches for the thrill of it, kids who fought because they had something to prove.

But Jeongdu?

Jeongdu fought because it was the only thing he knew.

They clashed more than once, sometimes as enemies, sometimes just because they both needed to hit something. 

But they had ended up on the same side. Because in a place like this, you either found someone to watch your back, or you ended up alone.

And alone meant dead.

Then the Fists arrived.

One day, the gangs in Anyang were just doing what they had always done… small fights over turf, petty rivalries, nothing out of the ordinary. 

Then, out of nowhere, everything changed. Fights broke out across the city, not just in Anyang but everywhere. Gangs that had coexisted for years suddenly turned on each other like rabid dogs. 

Territory was swallowed overnight, students were dragged into the streets, entire neighborhoods became battlegrounds.

At first, people thought it was just random chaos. But it wasn't.

It was the Fists.

They weren't just one gang… they were old-school, real gangsters, men who had ruled Korea's underworld long before kids started playing at war. And now, for reasons no one understood, they were tearing the country apart. 

Some of them had power, real power, the kind that came from money, from connections, from violence sharpened over decades. But not all of them.

The Fists that had come to Anyang? They were the dregs. The ones left behind.

Maybe they thought they could take the city for themselves. Maybe they thought no one would fight back.

Minho, Jeongdu and the rest had proved them wrong.

It wasn't easy. It wasn't quick. But they fought, and they didn't stop. 

The Fists had experience, but they were old, slow, too used to the kind of fights that ended with one swing of a lead pipe.

But they weren't prepared for a war... not a real one, not against people who had nothing to lose.

So they wiped them out.

And that should have been the end of it.

But it wasn't.

The other cities weren't as lucky.

Minho had seen it happening in real-time. Without anyone strong enough to resist, the high school students… the kids like him, like Jeongdu, got recruited. 

First as runners, then as muscle, then as soldiers thrown into a war they barely understood. They didn't even realize what was happening until it was too late.

And then the fighting came back to Anyang.

Not from the Fists. From the other cities.

First, it was just outsiders causing trouble… kids from Suwon, from Bucheon, from places Minho had barely thought about before. But it escalated fast. 

Schools were targeted. Students beaten. Civilians caught in the crossfire. It didn't take a genius to see what was happening.

The Fists had been driven out. But the war they started? It was still spreading.

Minho knew what would happen next. If they didn't organize, if they didn't fight back, they would get swallowed up, just like everyone else.

So they made a choice.

They built their own Circle.

It started small. A few people, other kids who saw the writing on the wall. 

Fighters, thieves, kids who didn't have anywhere else to go. They took the name because that's what everyone else was doing… the Seoul Circle, the Incheon Circle, the Daegu Circle. Every city had one now.

The Anyang Circle wasn't the biggest. It wasn't the strongest. But it survived.

At first, making money wasn't hard. They took over a few karaoke bars, the kind that already had shady business running in the back rooms. It wasn't much, but it was enough to keep people paid, to keep the Circle moving.

But the fighting never stopped.

More enemies came. More people needed to be paid. And soon, the money from a few bars wasn't enough.

Minho knew what that meant.

Expansion.

They needed more territory. More businesses. More ways to make money. And the only way to get that was to take it.

Anyang had survived this long, but for how much longer?

They were running low on fresh talent.

It wasn't just about numbers… they had numbers. They had kids willing to throw a punch, kids willing to bleed for a fight. 

But that wasn't enough. 

Numbers didn't mean shit when the other Circles had monsters.

Everyone knew about Seoul's new advisor, the snake eyed fucker who even the Pre-gens were listening to. And even with all that, he was supposed to be nearly unbeatable in combat.

The fact that he'd destroyed Jeongdu's squad on his lonesome seemed to be proof enough.

Suwon had Seokdu and the rest of their Pre-gen members. Them and their staffing agency was ridiculous with the money making. And they had an even more ridiculous number of bodies to throw at them during war.

It wasn't even just that.

He'd heard about the new monster that had popped up in Ansan, almost starting a civil war amongst their numbers.

Daegu had their boxers and Incheon seemed to be overflowing with fighters.

And Anyang?

They had Minho. Jeongdu. And him. Maybe a few of his own handpicked fighters too but...

That wasn't enough.

Jeongdu didn't speak, but Minho knew he was thinking the same thing.

We need better fighters.

Jeongdu didn't say anything. He just stared out at the city, unreadable as ever.

But Minho already knew the answer. They had been searching for months, trying to find someone worth keeping. Most kids didn't last. The ones that did weren't good enough.

And then there was Taeyang.

The thief. 

Minho had almost laughed when he'd heard about the kid stealing. He'd thought it was a funny story until he'd realised they hadn't been kidding.

So he'd paid him a visit in their holding rooms.

He had expected the blubbering, the begging for his life… 

What he hadn't expected was him asking to join their Circle.

It was the one thing no one did. All the hospitals were overflowing with injured, with crippled and coma victims.

You didn't join a Circle unless you were threatened into it.

So Minho had let him join. Just to see how long he'd take to die on the first outing.

He'd survived.

And Jeongdu had seen the potential in him.

It had been two months since the fight with Suwon. A month since Taeyang had clawed his way into their Circle, bloody and grinning like he belonged there.

Minho wasn't sure what to make of him yet.

There were plenty of guys like him… kids who thought fighting was the way up, who thought pain meant something. But most of them? 

They broke. They lost once, twice, and then they folded, learned their place, started following orders.

But Minho had seen what Jeongdu had.

Taeyang didn't fold.

He didn't just fight… he enjoyed it.

What had started as a kid clawing his way through fights just to survive had turned into something different. Something worse. 

Taeyang wasn't just surviving anymore. He was thriving. Fighting because he couldn't see himself doing anything else.

And that kind of fighter was dangerous.

Minho shook his head.

It was funny, in a way. Most fighters came upon a title at some point in their life, a name spoken in hushed whispers, a name that carried weight.

Minho and Jeongdu had lucked out… their names had spread naturally after they'd driven the Fist out of Anyang. 

It was easy when you had a whole city backing you, when the people around you made sure your reputation traveled.

But Taeyang?

Minho snickered.

After one of his outings... his title was certainly unique, but not in the way most people would expect.

It wasn't the kind of title that made you think of legends or instilled fear just by being spoken.

No.

It was something else.

Something that clung to him like blood under his nails.

A title he had earned simply by being exactly what he was... and honestly?

It was somewhat amusing.

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Didn't want to jump straight into a timeskip so here's an interlude to soften the blow!

Minho and Jeongdu are going to be very important characters if you couldn't tell from before. Expect much development from them. And as for the mysterious third fighter in Anyang... he'll be introduced soon enough.

Taeyang's title will be shown in the next chapter.

And also, here's a picture of Minho

Ta-da! 

Thanks for reading. Take this blessing of handsomeness!