Chapter 11
Ihyeon rubbed his face with an expression of sheer disbelief. He felt like his life expectancy would end right along with this operation.
Yuju knew that asking this was crossing the line.
Using a director’s personal funds as operational capital was, by any stretch of the imagination, far from standard procedure.
However, it was the best way to protect her team under the watchful eyes of upper management, and above all, she knew better than anyone that Ihyeon was ultimately a man who couldn’t turn a blind eye.
“Alright. Let’s hear it then. What’s this plan you’ve cooked up?”
Ihyeon dropped the file he was holding back onto the desk with a thud.
“Home Sweet Home.” “……What on earth are you talking about?” “It means we need to look like an ordinary household. A place with leftover food in the fridge and laundry hanging on a clothesline. Given the high probability of this becoming a prolonged operation, it’s impossible without living undercover.” “So?” “Living together will also make the two teams’ chemistry flow smoothly. The average transit time from the Songdo safehouse to Gujong Cathedral is forty minutes by car, twenty-eight at night. But here, that shrinks to under a few minutes on foot. Not to mention eliminating communication lag.” “……” “Lastly, it’s safer than a standard safehouse.”
Yuju gazed at Ihyeon and Haesung in turn. There wasn’t a single hint of wavering in her eyes.
At that moment, Haesung, who had been quiet, spoke up.
“Signs of covert illegal scanning around the perimeter of the Songdo safehouse have already been detected twice just since I joined Team 5.”
Haesungās voice dropped low.
“For your reference, the safehouse location is information that only personnel with Level 5 clearance or higher within headquarters can access.”
Haesung intentionally paused for a moment. Looking alternately at Ihyeon and Yuju, a meaningful smile played lightly at the corners of his lips.
“You’d know better than anyone what that implies, wouldn’t you, Director?”
The playfulness from just moments before had vanished without a trace, replaced by a thoroughly cold and dry tone.
“Wouldn’t it be better to have the Director’s bank account breached rather than staying in a compromised safehouse?” “……”
Ihyeonās expression hardened for the first time. Countless possibilities seemed to race rapidly through his mind.
As the silence in the room prolonged, he slowly dragged a hand down his face.
“Fine.”
It was a short, singular word.
“Thank you.”
Yuju smiled faintly, as though she had expected nothing less.
“I’m not giving you a single penny, and the moment the operation is over, I’m selling the place off immediately.” “Understood. Once the mission is over, it’s up to the landlord.”
Yuju replied unconcernedly, as if she had anticipated even that.
Catching his breath for a moment, Ihyeon called out to Yuju again. A lingering sense of unease still hovered across his expression.
“And, Chae Yuju.” “……” “Aren’t you being a bit excessively proactive?”
For a second, Ihyeon’s gaze cut through sharply. The air in the room tightened tautly for a brief moment.
A few days earlier, after all the team members had left for the day, Yuju had stayed behind alone, rummaging through drawers and piles of documents.
Her purpose was to find a way to derail the joint operation with Black Core.
She had obsessively sifted through files dozens of times, refusing to miss even the tiniest detailāa minor operational mistake, a single missing line in a report, a protocol violation, deliberate information concealment, or any trivial trace.
Most of the relevant documents were thoroughly sealed as top-secret. Casual access was impossible from the start, and countless records were layered behind passwords and barriers.
Then, suddenly, her fingertips brushed against an old sheet of paper.
āWhy is this here……
The words stood out clearly against the faded paper.
Beneath the bold, clear text, a smaller title followed: ‘Black Core Internal Investigation Result Report.’
At that instant, Yuju’s heart began to hammer violently.
It was a name at the center of domestic drug distribution, and an organization that her father, NIS agent Chae Jinwoo, had pursued to the very end over a decade ago.
Yuju anxiously flipped the page.
However, the further she went into the back pages, the more blurred the details became.
Paragraphs blacked out with a marker, anonymized lists of informants, and the word ‘Black Core’ peppered here and there.
Then, a memo scribbled crookedly in a familiar handwriting caught her eye.
<Cheongryong (201X, Black Core Faction Month) Signs XX and by direct government high-ranking intervention of officials ā>
That date, 201X, XX Month, precisely coincided with the period right before her father passed away.
A corner of her chest grew coldly numb.
At the edge of the document remained a short, resolute sentence in what looked like her father’s handwriting.
<Beware be collaborator identified information internal leaks; must of>
If the clues written in this document were all there was, she had no choice but to be certain that her father’s death was no mere accident, and that Black Core and the Cheongryong Faction were right in the middle of that truth.
Yuju quietly folded the document and slid it to the very bottom of the file. Her fingertips were trembling minutely, but her mind was slowly clearing up.
Yuju had no way of knowing just how far Do Haesung could practically access. But right here and now, there was a high probability that he held the closest key to the truth she was searching for.
She no longer had any reason to waste energy obstructing the joint operation.
Instead, she resolved to actively pull everything into her line of sightāthe intelligence gathered under the name of Black Core and the traces left wherever Do Haesung’s hands reached.
Suddenly, the texture of the old document under the fluorescent light vanished from Yuju’s fingertips.
When she opened her eyes again, the reality of the air struck her skin sharply.
“Is it wrong for an NIS agent to be proactive in a national security operation?”
Yuju met his gaze calmly, without a single flicker of hesitation.
At that, Ihyeon offered a wry smile and continued.
“Do I only see you for a day or two? Do you think I don’t know you have an ulterior motive?”
Yuju knew that Ihyeon was worried about her. But it was still not the time to spill everything.
Above all, she couldn’t let Do Haesung catch wind of her intentions.
“……”
Watching Yuju and Ihyeon alternately, Haesung lowered his head slightly with an inscrutable expression.
Yuju felt his gaze quietly observing her, but she steadfastly received his look.
“I’m simply doing what needs to be done.”
Ihyeon kept his mouth shut and let out a short sigh. A resignation that asking further questions would be pointless permeated that breath.
“……Fine. That’s enough. Go clear up your teams.” “Yes.” “Team Leader Do, you go organize your team as well.” “Understood.”
The director’s office door closed, and the footsteps of the two echoed side by side down the corridor. The sound of dress shoes lightly striking the marble floor spread calmly.
“……”
Amidst the silent steps, each other’s presence felt all the more vivid.
It was a distance close enough for their breaths to touch.
Dingā
The elevator that opened with a chime was completely empty.
The moment they stepped together into the narrow space, a strange tension rapidly swelled up over the walls enclosing them on all sides.
Yuju turned her head away as if nothing was wrong, staring indifferently straight ahead. But awkwardness had already spread like the air itself.
Srrrsk, as the doors closed and completely cut them off from the outside world, the sound of Haesung quietly regulating his breath beside her broke the silence, reaching Yuju’s ears with crystal clarity.
Because even the tiniest sound made her hyper-aware, Yuju swallowed hard without realizing it. At that moment, Haesung, who had been facing forward, slowly turned his head to look at Yuju.
“Team Leader Chae.”
A low, heavy voice soon flowed quietly toward her.
At that call, Yuju’s shoulders twitched lightly. She had hoped this time would pass by quietly, but contrary to her wish, the sudden voice grated on her nerves.
“Yes.”
Yuju briefly answered, forcing her expression to steady.
“You didn’t answer the Director’s question earlier.”
Haesung’s words drifted out casually, but they carried a force that left no room for escape.
Yuju, who had been looking straight ahead, paused to catch her breath and tightened the grip on her fingertips.
“I did answer. I asked if being proactive in a national security operation was wrong.”
Haesung glanced at Yuju out of the corner of his eye, raising the corners of his lips ever so slightly.
“That wasn’t an answer.”
His tone was imbued with both a stubborn determination to press the issue and a subtle trace of playfulness.
