Lee Wooshin rolled the window all the way down, desperate to expel the warm air trapped inside the car by the heater. As snowflakes—fine as crushed rice—touched his skin, memories of holding her flooded back unbidden. Her warmth against his chest. The softness of her lips yielding beneath his.
The memories clung to him, stubborn and unwilling to leave.
The narrow alleys blurred past. The familiar walls stood unchanged. He pressed harder on the gas pedal, reckless now, remembering too many days when they had walked hand-in-hand through these streets in daylight—and stolen desperate kisses in the dark.
Even with the window fully open, he kept jabbing the button repeatedly, his forehead creased in frustration. Her scent still lingered in the car. No amount of winter wind could chase it away.
The phone screen lit up on the console.
Not wanting to wake Han Seoryeong earlier, he had set it to silent mode. Now, more than ten missed calls glowed accusingly on the display.
All from Na Wonchang.
The moment he answered through the speaker, a voice an octave higher than usual pierced his ears in full panic.
"Team Leader! Why haven't you been answering? It's an emergency—a **real** emergency!"
Lee Wooshin made no effort to hide his exhaustion. He rested his elbow against the window frame, black hair disheveled by the winter wind. His voice came out lazy, drained.
"What is it this late, Wonchang?"
"The Deputy Director called! And that owl is causing a **massive** mess!"
"The owl?" A faint scoff escaped him. "How could she make a mistake? I just dropped her off at home."
"I don't even know where to start—but it's about five billion won!"
"What?"
"That owl hacked into the account of a VIP's relative and **stole** five billion won! And she signed it with the name 'Kim Hyeon'—**Kim Hyeon**! Almost no one knows that name, and the IP address traces directly back to her house!"
His casual demeanor shattered instantly.
"I've been running around dealing with this and couldn't contact you," Wonchang continued, his voice tight with stress. "The Deputy Director has been breathing down my neck the entire time."
Through the phone, it sounded like the man was literally clawing at his own scalp.
"And the IP address wasn't even hidden well—just obscure enough for anyone who knows what they're doing to trace it. Like breadcrumbs! Like something Gretel would leave behind!" A sharp inhale. "But that's **not** the main problem!"
Wooshin's head pounded as though he'd been drinking for hours, even though he was stone sober. The faint scent clinging to the passenger seat only tangled his thoughts further.
After dropping a bomb like that, Wonchang was saying it wasn't the main problem?
What the hell could be worse?
His forehead creased deeply—
"The Deputy Director sent agents to interrogate the owl at her house!"
**Screech—!**
He slammed the brakes with brutal force.
Without conscious thought, Lee Wooshin gritted his teeth and wrenched the steering wheel around, spinning the car in a sharp U-turn.
Fifteen minutes. It had been fifteen minutes since he'd left her.
If male agents showed up unannounced and started an interrogation, she would be completely caught off guard. And considering she'd been drinking—her reflexes would be dulled, her defenses down.
He cut the return time to seven minutes.
The veins in his hand bulged against the steering wheel, tendons straining beneath the skin.
"Team Leader, where are you going? I'm not finished! The Deputy Director wants to talk to you!"
Na Wonchang's voice pitched higher, shaken by the screeching tires echoing through the phone.
"Tell me something, Wonchang."
His voice dropped—quiet, dangerous.
"Why do you think the Deputy Director would issue that order without telling me first?"
Silence swallowed the panicked shouting on the other end.
"Damn it..." Wooshin's jaw tightened. "Who gave him the right to send people to her house?"
The eyes reflected in the rearview mirror gleamed cold and predatory—like the tail-end flash of a shark disappearing into dark water.
"Y-yeah... that's what's been bothering me too." Wonchang's voice wavered, then steadied as he shifted into report mode. "But technically, Team Leader, you're assigned to a different mission now. Operation Bird Box is over. The Deputy Director has command authority."
A pause.
"He said this is a completely separate matter from Bird Box. He won't share the intelligence."
"Ah—"
Lee Wooshin licked his teeth slowly, then pulled his lips into a razor-thin smile.
"Hearing this... I'm truly disappointed. As her **husband**."
He ignored a red light and pressed the accelerator harder.
"If they really intended to cut me out, they should have done it cleanly. What's the point of calling me if they don't intend to give me any role?"
His voice dropped lower, coiled tight with barely restrained tension. He closed his eyes briefly, trying to breathe through the anger, but it only exploded outward again.
"They said... they made a deal with the owl." Wonchang's words came haltingly now. "One phone call—for five billion won."
"What the **hell**?! What kind of nonsense is that?!"
He could no longer suppress it—the fury that had been building with each new revelation.
And yet, even as he raged, his mind worked faster than his emotions. Cold. Calculating.
_The Owl pulled another stunt like her previous attempt to defect to the North—this time dragging the NIS into it. And through it all, the name "Hyeon" keeps surfacing._
_The Deputy Director agreed to her terms._
_Why?_
A wave of unease crashed over him, but his analytical mind cut through it like a blade.
"Wonchang. If you can't trace a single account where that money went, the NIS should string you up themselves."
"That's just it! The money was withdrawn in **cash**. We've confirmed it went into a casino in Macau. But I haven't slept in three days tracking this! And once money enters a casino—"
"It's laundered. Nearly impossible to trace."
_Impossible for the Owl to do this alone._
A young face flashed through his mind—and Lee Wooshin's expression darkened like a storm rolling in.
It had only been a few days. A **few days** since she left the training camp, and she had already caused an incident of this magnitude.
He drew a long, furious breath. His broad chest rose and fell heavily.
The scent of her still clinging to the air only worsened everything.
_Damn it._
An inexplicable heat surged through him—something raw and ungovernable.
No matter how many times he had slipped his fingers inside her. No matter how desperately he had kissed those lips. Erasing **Hyeon** from Han Seoryeong was as impossible as removing an old tattoo from skin that had grown around the ink.
She was running toward Hyeon without the slightest shame.
Without hesitation.
Without guilt.
Every time he looked at her—at that completely unreadable face—his emotions swung violently, like riding a broken swing. One moment, white-hot anger. The next, his heart plummeting to the soles of his feet.
_What is this feeling?_
He didn't care what name it had.
He didn't **want** to know.
---
## — The Mask —
Emotions, for Lee Wooshin, were meant to be suppressed—never nurtured.
Buried—never analyzed.
Emotions were weakness. Showing them only revealed a person's true face—the ugly, terrifying thing hiding behind the mask.
Even the Owl, with her once-soft and elegant features, had turned out to be a liar.
A bitter, cynical smile flickered across his lips.
_That was the most brutal lesson I learned when I left Grandfather's homeland._
Russia had taught him well.
To have nothing. To **be** no one.
His carefully constructed mask—his firm, unyielding facade—was his greatest weapon. His only identity as a man.
A rule of life that could not be broken.
To drown out the self-loathing and disgust that gnawed at him, Lee Wooshin had made himself useful. Obsessively so. Living as a capable shadow agent was the only thing that had sustained his hollow existence all these years.
"So, Team Leader!" Wonchang's voice cut through his spiral. "I really have to make that call now."
Silence.
"We have Hyeon's voice data stored in our software. So now—"
Part of him wanted to turn back. To check on her. To see how badly Han Seoryeong was hurt.
But duty held him in place. Orders. Command structure.
That was the only motivation Lee Wooshin could trust—the most rational, the most effective.
He wrenched the steering wheel again, mechanical and precise.
Emotions drained from his eyes, leaving behind only ice.
"There might be a slight delay," Wonchang continued, sounding genuinely remorseful, "but we'll disguise Hyeon's voice convincingly and send it through. And this... is a direct order from the Deputy Director. I don't know his reasons. I'm sorry. I feel terrible about this."
Lee Wooshin's eyebrow twitched.
As he listened, something about all of this felt **wrong**—pieces that didn't fit, gaps where logic should be.
The dark road stretched endlessly ahead, like a tunnel leading nowhere.
"Go to the Deputy Director's second office immediately. Let us handle the call."
"Either you're talking nonsense," Wooshin said, his voice cutting cold, "or my understanding is fundamentally flawed."
"What?"
"The Owl is looking for Hyeon. So why would I hand that over to **you**?"
"Huh? That's because..."
Wonchang stumbled, nervous, like a man trying to stitch together a lie on the spot.
But at the low, firm call of—
"Wonchang."
—the junior agent seemed to choke back tears before finally confessing:
"It's because one of our **other** agents—not you—will be impersonating Hyeon!"
Something inside Lee Wooshin tore open.
A seam he'd held together for years—ripped clean through.
"You really think Deputy Head Joo Seolheon would hand over a **real** shadow agent?" Wonchang's voice pitched higher, panicked now. "He considers 'Hyeon' an NIS asset—not **you**. He sees the name, not the man behind it! Ah—we're starting the call now. I have to go!"
The line went dead.
Lee Wooshin's vision blurred.
The cold calculation that had sustained him moments ago was gone—replaced by something raw and boiling, something he couldn't name and refused to examine.
_An imitation._
_They're replacing me with an imitation._
He cursed under his breath, low and venomous, as he wrenched the wheel one final time.
The car sped back toward the place that had once been his office—and was now supposed to be his home.
His new life with Han Seoryeong.
---
The snow kept falling, indifferent to the storm raging inside him.