“......!”

Seoryeong’s eyes snapped open in shock, and the first thing she saw was a smooth, taut forearm. A clenched fist braced against her desk.

Lee Wooshin had slammed his fist down, causing the booklets she had carelessly stacked to scatter to the floor. Their eyes met — his gaze was icy, devoid of any emotion, and he said nothing.

Instead, he bent down and began picking up the fallen booklets. His gaze lingered momentarily on a corner of one of the pages, and his already expressionless face turned glacial.

Before Seoryeong could snatch the book back, he tore out a page with a swift, ripping motion.

“――!”

What the hell?! Why is he—?! Her shock only lasted a second before Wooshin crumpled the torn page into a tight, ping-pong-ball-sized wad in a single blink.

The crumpled paper disappeared into his pocket as though it were nothing but garbage. Seoryeong could only stare, stunned.

“Recruits do not sunbathe under the instructor’s nose,” he said flatly.

His solid chest rose and fell once in a controlled breath.

“Stop thinking useless thoughts and focus. When a crisis hits, people scrape every last bit of what they remember in a desperate attempt to survive. Even the most trivial things you heard while half-asleep might turn out to be invaluable.”

What useless thoughts...? Ah...! Seoryeong’s eyes tightened. Did he see what I wrote? Something like ‘potential husband’...

“Han Seoryeong. You have no idea how or when you might get fucked, but the instructor is here, running his mouth, and you’re just sitting there, napping. You said you were going to walk straight to hell — are you planning to sleep all the way there too?”

Wooshin’s biting words oozed with sarcasm before he casually strode away between the desks and resumed his lecture.

He continued discussing the geography and climate of Central and Southeast Asia and methods of constructing temporary shelters. From there, he transitioned into a summary of Blast Corp’s recent security and protection operations.

“In a recent armed robbery and hostage situation in the Philippines...”

At the word “hostage,” Seoryeong’s head shot up.

To sum it up, a local gunman had taken a group of Korean tourists hostage and extorted over a hundred million won.

A gunman. Seoryeong suddenly raised her hand.

Wooshin, who was facing away, merely arched a brow as if to signal he was going to ignore her. Seoryeong stubbornly kept her arm up. Next to her, a fellow recruit glanced nervously around and then reached over to tug her arm down.

At that moment, Wooshin spoke.

“What is it?”

“I have a question.”

“Then lower your arm first and move your chair back a bit.”

“What?”

“If not, the instructor won’t answer.”

What’s with all these damn rules...? Seoryeong scowled slightly but complied, lowering her arm and scooting her chair back. Then, she asked the question that had been gnawing at her since before she joined Blast Corp.

“What is it that a hostage fears more? The gun or the person holding it?”

Wooshin stared at her for a long moment before finally answering.

“The gun, obviously.”

“But guns aren’t omnipotent, are they?”

“If you put a gun in a kid’s hand, they become a child soldier. If you put it in the hands of a desperate father, he becomes a bank robber. How is that not omnipotent?”

“......”

“Hell, I once put a gun in the hands of someone who’d only ever held a ladle, and they still managed to make a mess.”

Despite the dark undertone of his words, Seoryeong didn’t back down. Her eyes were fixed on him, unwavering and unsettlingly intense, as if she had slipped into her own world.

“What if the target isn’t an ordinary civilian? Would someone familiar with guns still be afraid?”

At that, Wooshin let out a dry, mirthless laugh and tilted his head.

“Why, Han Seoryeong. Have you recently felt the urge to point a gun at someone?”

“Not particularly,” she said coolly, after a brief moment of consideration.

The truth was, torture training had been useful, and the PTSD-like symptoms she’d occasionally felt around Wooshin had all but vanished.

But Wooshin’s expression only tightened, as though her flat, unconcerned response had been even more irritating.

“To answer your question, the more familiar a person is with guns, the faster they respond. They either submit immediately or act to neutralize the threat — nothing in between.”

In Korea, civilians couldn’t own firearms, but certain security personnel and private military contractors could.

Blast Corp was definitely one of the easier ways to gain access to such privileges.

“So...”

Seoryeong hesitated. Should she push this further or not?

But wasn’t this exactly why Hur Channa had introduced her to Blast Corp? To gain allies, learn skills, and prepare for what was to come.

Now was the time. Whatever Wooshin’s personal motives might be, he was still a living textbook — one that could potentially teach her more than any manual or drill.

The Terrible Ones.

The realization struck her hard, and a surge of excitement bubbled up in her gut. Masking her anticipation behind a neutral expression, she asked:

“Instructor, have you ever had to take someone captive and transport them somewhere?”

“Yes.”

“Did you feed them? Give them water? Keep them for days?”

“Yes.”

Of course, his expression didn’t change as he answered.

“What did you do then? Were there any particular precautions you took?”

The NIS Deputy Directors — there were three of them.

The First Deputy Director of Overseas Intelligence, the Second Deputy Director of Counterintelligence, and the Third Deputy Director of Scientific and Cyber Espionage.

The resolve she’d made to endure for two months was already half over. Three weeks remained until the end of training. Any one of those three would do.

Wooshin may not have taught her exactly what he’d intended, but Seoryeong had still learned what she needed to.

From the very beginning, she’d only wanted to know one thing.

How do professionals conduct torture?

A flicker of satisfaction gleamed in Seoryeong’s eyes. What she had learned through her own body, through her own suffering, had solidified into something concrete.

Thanks to Wooshin’s “lessons,” along with the examples demonstrated by her fellow recruits, the number of torture techniques she’d absorbed had increased exponentially.

One would be enough. Just one out of those three deputy directors — that would be sufficient. A single target. As long as she could get close, as long as she could extract even a single strand of Kim Hyeon’s hair.

Her gaze remained fixed on Wooshin’s sealed lips, unwavering, as if willing him to open them and speak.

“......”

“......”

But Wooshin remained silent, scrutinizing her with a dark, suspicious expression.

Did I say something wrong? But we’re all recruits in Blast Corp, and he’s the instructor. It’s a perfectly reasonable question...

But as his stare grew more intense, Seoryeong had no choice but to slap on a convenient excuse to dispel his suspicions.

“You said it yourself, Instructor. You never know when or where something will happen. You told us to think of even the most trivial things in moments of urgency, right? I’m just... trying to get a sense of things while I can.”

She thought she had handled it well, but Wooshin’s brow only furrowed deeper. He rubbed his lower lip with a thumb and then, abruptly, spoke.

“Whether it’s a kidnapping or any other kind of operation, the fundamental principle is the same. How much you can lower the target’s guard — that’s where the entire outcome is decided.”

“......”

“In general, people let their guard down around those who don’t seem culturally or linguistically different, those who appear predictable and harmless.”

His impassive face suddenly twisted into a crooked grin.

“If Han Seoryeong finds herself without a gun, without a knife, without any drugs, and needs to manipulate someone to escape, then use those human biases. Sometimes it’s more effective to disarm a person’s trigger finger than to brandish a gun.”

He seemed to be talking about an emergency situation, but Seoryeong wasn’t thinking about escaping — she was thinking about a hostage situation. Either way, the instructor’s advice was more than useful to her.

Targets of protection rarely suspect their own bodyguards. Moreover, she was a young, pretty woman. And she could act sweet and unassuming when necessary. If she played her cards right...

A single thought struck her like a bolt of lightning. And right then, Wooshin added something along the same line of thought.

“That’s why, when you kill someone, you take on the appearance of a feeble old man. When you run off with their savings, you look like a friendly neighbor. And when you destroy someone, you wrap yourself in love.”

Seoryeong was so busy sorting through her own thoughts that she didn’t even ✪ Nоvеlіgһt ✪ (Official version) notice how chilling his voice had become.

I made the right choice coming here...! Seoryeong nodded eagerly. How much more could she wring out of that instructor who’d been out in the field for so long? Suddenly, her eyes gleamed with a slick, oily shine.

But then, the guy sitting next to her started poking her side with his finger, over and over again.

At first, it was more annoying than anything — like a mosquito buzzing around her ear. But the persistent jabbing became harder to ignore. Annoyed, Seoryeong snapped her head around to glare at him.

The fellow recruit tightened his grip around her forearm, signaling her to pay attention to something.

What the hell is he doing?

Only then did Seoryeong take a proper look around. All the other recruits were sitting stiffly, their shoulders rigid, eyes darting around in anxious silence.