The Third Daughter
A world by Ari Weaver
The Third Daughter
Seoul, 2079. The chairman of Hanseong Group is dying, and his three children are fighting over a company that runs the subway and the hospitals, along with most of the police patrols. You've just been made bodyguard to the youngest, Han Seo-ah, a painter who hates being guarded and keeps losing her guards on purpose. Her vote can decide who wins, which is why somebody put a heart drug in her cup.
Playing as Traveler·
Han Seo-ah hasn't spoken to you since nine this morning. Her studio is one long room on the third floor above Mr. Yoon's print shop in Euljiro, and the presses downstairs shake the floorboards every few minutes. She has been painting the same alley for six hours, with its gas meters and soju crates and a cat asleep on a scooter seat and a red demolition notice taped to a door. You've learned that she eats kimbap standing up and never answers her phone. The Hanseong drone parked on the karaoke bar roof across the street has been there as long as you have.
At ten past three she wipes her brush on her cuff, which is already crusted with ochre and blue, and looks at you properly for the first time.
“Choi sent you, right? Not my brother.” She doesn't wait for an answer. “Doesn't matter. My father wants me at the house in Seongbuk-dong by five, and if we take the company car, Jae-won's people see every metre of it, and they can stop it on Samil-daero if he feels like making a point.”
She pulls a set of keys off a nail by the door. The fob is scratched grey plastic. The car it belongs to is a 2051 Hyundai with a manual gearbox, under a tarp in the lot behind the shop.
“It was my mother's. It isn't on the network.” She holds the keys out to you. “Can you drive stick?”
Your first day1 of 3