“If you think it might be too much...”

Seoryeong trailed off as she looked at Channa, who was still only in her early twenties.

Just because she’d done things like this from a young age didn’t mean she was a master of everything. No matter how skilled she was, actually doing it would be something else entirely.

Seoryeong bit her lip bitterly and gently patted the round head in front of her. That’s when Channa’s eyes suddenly twisted, pride flashing like a wounded animal.

“The only thing I can’t break through is constipation!”

She wrinkled her nose, baring her front teeth like a small animal.

“And South Korea rarely even knows when it’s been hit!”

Whatever button had been pushed, she started fanning her collar in frustration.

“The internal documents from Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power getting leaked, the Nonghyup network being breached, the stolen medical data from Seoul National University Hospital—all of it was done by the Reconnaissance General Bureau—the intel division of the Korean People’s Army! And yet South Korea never even managed to respond!”

“......”

“But I’ve heard that in the past few years, they finally brought in some decent bitches, and the defense wall got tighter. So don’t look down on me, unnie. I’m gonna toy with that bastard day and night...”

Her baby-faced expression boiled with pride and the kind of rivalry that simmers like hot oil. Seeing that raw, undiluted will to win, Seoryeong could vaguely understand why the North Korean government had never managed to fully brainwash Channa—and why even after all this time, they were still desperate to dispose of her. There was nothing more dangerous than a wild young animal lost in its own world.

“Why would I sabotage my own plans by holding you back? I’m not saying don’t do it if it’s hard—I’m saying that, above all else, you need to leave one thing behind.”

“A... signature?”

At last, Channa calmed slightly, blinking up at her.

“You said North Korea often used the name Kim Sookhyang in phishing emails.”

“That’s right...”

It was a widely known anecdote that North Korean hacking groups often used the alias Kim Sookhyang when sending malware-laced phishing emails to steal personal data.

“I want to leave behind something like that too.”

“Like what?”

Seoryeong inhaled deeply, as if filled with emotion, and answered.

“Kim Hyeon.”

Everything would be marked with his name.

***

Na Wonchang, an off-the-books hacker for NIS Division of Overseas Strategic Interests, slumped out of the duty room with a yawn.

Dragging his slippers, scratching his messy hair, rubbing the double lid on one eyelid—it was clear he hadn’t even fully woken up by the time he got back to the office. He collapsed in front of a monitor emblazoned with the NIS logo.

“Sigh...”

His body sank into the chair like a sack of wet laundry, and he spun the wheels aimlessly with his toes.

Since he was secretly assigned to cover a Black Operative, Na Wonchang worked under the guise of a regular cybersecurity analyst.

Whirr—only the machines hummed in the dimly lit office.

Massive screens and an array of monitors filled the space, surrounding him on all sides. On the glass board and whiteboard, dozens of domain names, reverse DNS data, and related IPs were scribbled across in frenzied handwriting.

“Ah... Team Leader...”

Wonchang tilted his head back with a sigh.

The quiet reinvestigation of “Owl” that Lee Wooshin had secretly assigned to him.

It felt like a bomb ticking under his daily life. First, he was terrified of the Deputy Director catching on. Second, the more he dug into Owl, the weirder things got.

He wasn’t naturally suited for offense—he was a defender through and through. He preferred to build up ten or twenty layers of defense, then patch up anything that broke, rather than attacking head-on.

Rebuilding what was destroyed, piecing torn fragments together to trace back to the original shape and starting point. That was Na Wonchang’s specialty.

So it was no surprise—

That restoring Owl’s therapy records and surveillance footage wasn’t particularly difficult. Even if the files came close to a full terabyte.

The sessions had run from when the boy was ten up until just before the start of Operation Birdbox.

Wait... Wasn’t that mission supposed to have lasted only two and a half years? Why the hell is there this much data?

“――.”

Maybe Owl had been monitored far earlier than anyone realized. That fleeting thought made the hairs on Wonchang’s neck stand up.

A wave of regret surged through him—he had gone too deep. And with it came the icy realization: he had just violated internal protocol.

“Ugh... Team Leader...”

Each time that happened, a groan slipped out. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

“This is how curiosity kills the cat...”

At that moment, someone slammed through the glass door.

Wonchang frowned, turning toward the noise. The man who burst in, tie flapping, was panting hard.

“Hey, hey—get up, man! Come over to our team for a minute!”

It was a familiar face—an agent from the Financial Crime Division under the 3rd Deputy Director. Even with the door flung open, the guy stood with one foot halfway back, as if ready to run again.

Wonchang just spun his chair lazily, balancing a pencil on his upper lip. The other man growled in frustration.

“It’s DEFCON right now—Park Gwangdu’s account just got cleaned out. Fifty billion!”

“...What?”

Only then did Wonchang’s indifferent gaze sharpen.

“The method looks a lot like the 2011 Nonghyup breach. Started with a phishing email, malware hit the network, systems went down briefly—then, once it was restored, every last won was gone from Park Gwangdu’s account.”

Wonchang’s eyebrow twitched. He was clearly surprised, but not enough to get up. His voice stayed flat.

“North Korea again?”

“Not confirmed. But does it look familiar to you?”

North Korea’s cyberwarfare capabilities were neck-and-neck with Russia’s. It was insane how a country that couldn’t even build basic IT infrastructure could churn out maniacs like that.

They’d hacked Sony Pictures over a film mocking the regime, stolen 2.09 trillion won from crypto exchanges, hacked KHNP, KAI, and DSME to steal /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ internal secrets—snatching tech and money wherever they could.

They were the kind of group that popped up every time people started to forget about them. Just a few days ago, they’d hacked 207 computers through a hole in the Financial Security Institute’s system.

“Was the email account named Kim Sookhyang?”

“Nope. That was the name used in the KHNP breach, but not this time. We’re keeping an open mind—it might not be North Korea. But the scope’s enormous. Be real, is there a single citizen who didn’t resent that 50 billion won retirement bonus?”

Wonchang still looked unmoved.

Just thinking about Owl—his virtual sister-in-law—was enough to make his brain feel like it would explode. Who the hell cared about some missing retirement money? He pressed the sides of his eyes with his knuckles like he was trying to massage the exhaustion away.

“But that guy—he’s the First Lady’s cousin-in-law, right? If we don’t recover that money, our team’s heads are gonna roll. So come help us out! Not even a trace was left from the theft—nothing!”

“......”

“And the weird thing is, a certain name keeps showing up during every trace—even though it’s from an account we’ve never seen before. So now we’re checking if ‘Kim Hyeon’ is maybe some kind of code...”

That’s when the pencil rolled off Wonchang’s lip and hit the floor.

“...What did you just say?”

He sprang up, chair toppling backward with a crash.

“The email. What was the name?”

His voice cracked at the edges.

***

The dream was restless, but she felt great that morning.

It was the kind of day where you just knew something big was going to happen. Waking up on a soft mattress instead of that hard, miserable training camp cot—it was almost too perfect.

The giggling that had filled the room day and night had finally gone silent.

Channa had finished the job. She’d stashed the stolen fifty billion in a bank in Manila, then used a middleman to break it into four chunks and move it to a casino account. As a precaution, Seoryeong had slipped Channa inside Blast Corp.

Now alone again, she unpacked the gear stuffed into her sports bag and started tackling the mountain of housework. But whenever the sunlight streaming in from the balcony touched her toes, memories of napping with her husband would return like a physical ache.

“......”

And then the warmth she’d shared with Lee Wooshin...

Wait, what?

Her hands paused mid-fold, frozen over a towel. What the hell was that thought? Was she insane? Seoryeong shook herself like she had the chills.

Maybe it was some kind of withdrawal. After living in chaos for so long, dropping back into domestic silence was probably messing with her.

It was true—something felt off without the instructor constantly in her face.

The last time she saw Wooshin was on the cliff that day. Even though they’d clashed nonstop for two and a half months, the moment training ended, he never reappeared before the recruits.

Cutting ties as cleanly as slicing radish—it was exactly as she’d expected. Her grip tightened on the folded towel.

Just then, her phone buzzed with a message alert. She glanced at the screen—an unknown number.

📨 NOTICE

Welcome Party & Team Dinner for New Special Security Team Recruits

We invite all members to attend for the sake of team cohesion.

📅 20XX.02.14 (Thu) 19:00

📍 Julimgwan (2249 XX-daero, XX-dong, Seoul)