Being Hwang In-Ho's right-hand man during real survival games was the most enjoyable part of James's life. His life was in poverty: constant drinking, robberies, quarrels with policemen, and debt collectors. All this made his life gray and uninteresting. But one day everything changed.

One day he was sitting in a bar, drinking and grieving about his worthless life, until some man sat down to him. Clearly not American, he could tell by the accent. He didn't notice it at first, until he was handed a nice glass of whiskey by the stranger. Well, James thought, he obviously wants something. And Kelly wasn't wrong.

That's how he got the job. He had nothing left to lose, so during the conversation it became clear that a man was needed to watch and observe people during the games. When he realized that the games can literally kill you, he immediately realized that the trouble was afoot. Either he pretends after the games are over that nothing happened, or he continues to work there.

The choice was made. He keeps working there.

So he became Hwang In-Ho's right hand man. The second game begins. New people.

While Hwang In-Ho was playing the role of 'his' among the participants and trying to ridicule player 456, James was handling the duties of the steward. Mostly supervising and commanding the other guards. But it was also his job to supervise the harvesting of organs from the dead participants of the games. Dirty work, but it paid well.

But naturally something had to come up in his life, a problem. And the problem was a mean girl who became his own problem. She had her temper, she tried challenging the hierarchy. But that mouth was too immature to just shut up.