Lee Wooshin, publicly known as blind, wrapped his bandages thick and waited for the visitor. In that time, a brief dossier on Yu Dawit skimmed through his mind.

An unusual case who switched from seminary to soldier. Former Airborne Special Forces Brigade, deployed overseas as EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal).

Over the past half-year, Wooshin had ordered a review of Yu Dawit’s movements and a physical comparison program, and his subordinates stayed taut and silent like a drawn bowstring.

Jaw set, he tried to think of why Yu Dawit had come all the way to Russia, but there was no proper pretext.

At the same time, a knock, knock sounded through the sitting room. The door opened, and someone’s unhesitating steps thudded closer.

“Team Leader, it’s been a while.”

Wooshin tilted his head slightly toward the sound.

“What brings you this far.”

He tapped the sofa armrest with deceptive leisure, but with his eyes wrapped again he couldn’t freely check Seoryeong’s bedroom, and it was eating him alive.

The bedroom CCTV was his private monitor, shared with no one; now that it was blocked, an inexplicable impatience choked him. He felt he’d only settle once he sent Yu Dawit away and returned to Seoryeong.

“It seems an explanation is in order, Operative Yu Dawit.”

“I came to apologize.”

The voice was still thick and blunt. The deputy unit leader who had always held the center between finicky Gitaemin and always-energetic Jin Hoje. Leather cushions creaked as if he’d taken a seat.

“I think I mentioned Prime Minister Solzhenitsyn too often in front of you. I must have been out of line.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“No, it’s been sticking in my mind.”

“......”

“How could you be the prime minister’s grandson?”

The once-taciturn teammate spoke in the same weighty voice, sounding quite aggrieved. But from one ear came Hur Channa’s hard, clipped breathing.

—...Don’t be fooled. Operative Yu Dawit is smiling right now.

Wooshin swept the inside of his hardened cheek with the tip of his tongue.

“Even with your face covered like that, I recognized you at a glance. You’re the benefactor who saved me in a minefield—how could I not.”

If he couldn’t read the other man’s intent, he would be at a disadvantage. Wooshin sank back into the sofa and wore a mask of blankness. Just then, Na Wonchang, having finished a check, came on comms.

—...Team Leader, this guy is a bit off. Operatives Gitaemin and Jin Hoje are serving six-month prison terms right now, but Operative Yu Dawit alone got a suspended sentence and flew straight to the U.S.

Had it been a mistake to stop giving Blast Corporation a second glance? Having been consumed with finding his wife, even the names of his teammates sounded strange after so long.

To Wooshin, Blast Corporation had been nothing more than cover employment. His work as an infiltrator was entirely finished, and CEO Kang Taegon had already been arrested on charges including National Security Act violations and illicit solicitation.

Even so, the sudden intel chilled his gut. But it wasn’t enough. He needed more.

“As you can see, I can’t see. I can’t look at your face, Operative Yu. Did you come today wearing that ‘cross piercing’ again?”

“Sir?”

“To my eyes, that stood out. For someone who looked devout, what change of heart made you suddenly drop out of seminary and become a soldier? At first I figured it was hypocrisy or a pose.”

A subtle signal to Na Wonchang. Please, get it.

—Yes, sir! I’ll dig into his seminary days too!

Normally a guy who made him want to smack him in the back of the head, and for once he got it instantly.

“No special reason. I heard the voice of my Father on high.”

“What voice?”

“He told me to prepare for a single fight.”

“......”

“He’s my savior.”

Annoyance tightening, Wooshin kneaded the stiff back of his neck. He knew he had to wait until Na Wonchang finished the second sweep, but he just wanted to toss Yu Dawit out and be done.

Was Seoryeong still asleep? Impatience flared like a grassfire, and his clenched teeth throbbed.

Even so, to buy his capable subordinates time, he kept the conversation going.

“After Blast Corporation blew up, how did you manage. Do you know what became of the others?”

“Do you really know nothing, Team Leader?”

“About what.”

Wooshin idly shook his foot and recited, even.

“You pinned everything on the kids and walked with a suspended sentence by yourself?”

“......”

“Weren’t you the deputy unit leader of the special task team?”

“And where did you run off to, Team Leader? Russia, in the end?”

Silence stretched tight with tension.

“While I was being questioned, I must have said your name dozens of times, but oddly there was no file. I felt like shouting to a wall. We faced life and death together, but under the name Lee Wooshin there isn’t a single trace?”

“......”

“Isn’t that strange? Unless someone erased it on purpose. It was frustrating. It was frightening. Like I’d been possessed. So Russia was your backer?”

“State your business and be done.”

Wooshin cut him off cold.

At that moment—“Team Leader!”—Na Wonchang shouted in his ear. The breath, high and excited, suggested he’d found something. But, “He’s clean! Exemplary!”—and Wooshin’s brow jerked up.

—During seminary, Operative Yu studied abroad in the U.S. Looks like it was a school-run program. At that time, Islamist extremists carried out a terror attack on a Catholic church building. Seems he was caught up in it; there are papers from emergency surgery in the States. Some kind of... head... surgery...

The back of his skull went suddenly cold.

—Since he was a foreign student, the U.S. doctor apparently performed surgery at his own discretion without a guardian’s consent. After that, he returned to Korea, dropped out of seminary, and enlisted. He served diligently straight through, then joined Blast Corporation. Nothing stands out.

Contrary to Na Wonchang’s “looks clean,” Wooshin’s composure had already shattered. The path from surgery to returning to Korea and enlisting didn’t sit right. If that career he’d only thought peculiar wasn’t coincidence at all—

Damn it, the U.S.... He felt the blood drain from him for no reason.

—...Huh? But Team Leader, Operative Yu Dawit... seems he wore hearing aids for quite a long time. His mother has extensive records of buying children’s hearing aids every year.

“......!”

—He never registered a disability, so there’s no official record, but he got an exemption at the draft physical. After returning from the U.S., it looks like he was cleared as normal and enlisted.

The suspicion deepened. Was his taciturn nature shaped by years of not hearing?

The outlandish conjecture took one step further. If someone, after an accident that nearly killed him, had opened Yu Dawit’s head and, with unauthorized surgery, restored his hearing...

His set jaw wouldn’t loosen.

“In Sakhalin.”

Yu Dawit’s level, flat voice flowed out.

“Your feet were crushed to pulp under a truck tire, and you still moved, Team Leader. To find Operative Han Seoryeong, you ran without rest through the sorghum fields of Sakhalin and climbed a spire. Knowing what kind of man you are, I couldn’t believe you would hold another woman that long.”

“...What?”

“If you rolled in the sheets, it must have been Operative Han Seoryeong.”

“......!”

Pale as paper, Wooshin grabbed the gun hidden under the sofa. Ever since the Bird Box operation began, Deputy Director Ju Seolheon had begged him to quietly eliminate any actors approaching Owl; that order now constricted his throat like damp rope. What had sometimes felt like Ju Seolheon’s neurosis was materializing before his eyes.

His pulse thudded cold. A savage instinct that he must not let this man go sent him lunging like a beast. Just as he reached to slam the other man by the scruff, the broad panes of glass—without warning—crash—! shattered outward.

Driven by a powerful blast wave, his body slammed into the back of the sofa. He swallowed the heavy pain, bit his tongue, and spat out pooled blood. As he pushed up his torso without delay, sharp shards cascaded down.

Something was going wrong. Something, bit by bit, was going wrong. The scream of a premonition tore through his mind, and Hur Channa shouted:

—Armed men are entering the bedroom corridor!

The blood drained from Wooshin’s face. Damn it...! He cursed and slammed a fist into the floor. So this was the anxiety gnawing at him. Their objective was Han Seoryeong—no, Sonia—that much was certain now.

—Team Leader, Operative Yu is going out the window!

There was no time to think with two people as backup; he moved. He snatched Yu Dawit, who was grasping for a rope outside the window, and hurled him back into the sitting room. He drove kick after kick into the man’s abdomen until Yu Dawit wheezed, hrrk—! Clamping a twist on his neck, he slammed him into the table. Each time his fist smashed the jaw, the man’s limbs dangled.

—Ack...! Eyes—shield your eyes!

At Hur Channa’s cry, he jerked his head aside, but the slower-recovering corner of one eye got struck. Even so, as if feeling no pain, he charged again. He jammed his gun up under Yu Dawit’s jaw.

“State your exact affiliation. Who is the ‘Father’ you follow.”

“...He’s passed away now.”

“The first thing you heard when your ears opened—was it his voice?”

Wooshin chambered a round and this time rammed the muzzle roughly into the man’s ear canal.

“If you don’t talk, you won’t be using this ear again.”

As the hard muzzle ground as if to pierce that single thin layer of skin, he felt the other’s shoulders go rigid. Inch by °• N 𝑜 v 𝑒 l i g h t •° inch, he pressed the barrel in deeper, bearing down on him.

At the same time he snapped orders to Na Wonchang—“Lock down the front gate, get Ral on comms, wake the Gurkhas now!”—and, without hesitation, he pulled the trigger—bang. A terrible scream burst out at once. Clutching what was left of his half-blown ear, Yu Dawit cried out like a wail:

“Damon Kingsley—!”