_What exactly is going on here?_
The tips of her fingers tensed, but Seoryeong forced her mind to stay clear. If this man had indeed been sent by the Deputy Director, then he was most likely someone from the National Intelligence Service. The thought made her want to laugh—a bitter, hollow sound that would taste like ash.
_This all felt disgusting._
If there was one person she had ever genuinely cared about during her training—one person she had allowed herself to be vulnerable around, even slightly—it was Dong Jiwoo.
The man now standing right in front of her with a knife in his hand.
"Hah…"
Her arm tightened further around the Deputy Director's neck, constricting like a python. Dong Jiwoo glanced anxiously between Seoryeong and Joo Seolheon, then drew his knife with a trained, fluid motion—readying himself for combat. The movement was too clean. Too practiced. Too different from the clumsy, warm-hearted man she thought she knew.
Their gazes met, and the familiarity that had once been there was gone. Now they looked at each other with the cold appraisal of sworn enemies.
"You planted him too, Deputy Director?"
Seoryeong asked, nodding slightly toward Jiwoo. There was no verbal answer, but the way Joo Seolheon's eyes flickered toward him—confirming his position without words—was proof enough of the man's affiliation.
"That's amazing." Her voice was flat. Dead. "You really went all out to take me down, didn't you?"
Something inside her seemed to crack and fall away, leaving an emptiness in her chest where warmth used to be. But at the same time, anger surged—so intense that her lower lip trembled with the effort of containing it.
_It wasn't just about Dong Jiwoo._
This was about the **long-standing resentment** toward the dark forces that had infiltrated every corner of her life. The invisible hands that moved people like chess pieces. The surveillance. The manipulation. The constant sense of being watched, tested, controlled.
_Who do you think you are? Who gave you the right to plant these damn puppets in my life?_
Just then, Dong Jiwoo began to approach slowly, knife raised in a defensive guard position. Seoryeong watched the shrinking distance between them—calculating, measuring—then suddenly **shoved** Joo Seolheon down the stairs and lunged at Jiwoo in the same motion.
"—!"
She slammed the reinforced plastic baton she was gripping into the man's thumb with surgical precision. On one side, the sound of the Deputy Director's body tumbling down the concrete stairs echoed through the stairwell, but Seoryeong's face remained cold and expressionless.
_No hesitation. No mercy._
Ruthlessly, she targeted one point after another—Dong Jiwoo's thumb, the back of his hand, then his knuckles—trying to force him to drop the knife. The baton was strong enough to shatter bricks or crack a skull, and each swing carried the full force of her body weight behind it, delivered with the power of a longsword strike.
And indeed, the man's wrist and fingers swelled immediately—bones likely fractured beneath the skin. However, with a trembling hand slick with blood, Dong Jiwoo **still** didn't let go of the knife. He even continued to attack, adjusting his grip despite the pain.
Their arms clashed in a flurry of movement. He tried to sweep her leg. She dodged and ducked low, but they became entangled again—a brutal, intimate dance of violence in the narrow stairwell.
_The clumsy figure she used to know was gone._
_Was all that warmth and kindness just an act? Was any of it real?_
With gritted teeth, Seoryeong avoided the knife blade slashing toward her ribs and struck the back of his knee with a sharp downward strike.
_Damn!_
She hit him repeatedly—knee, thigh, elbow—then swung the baton at his jaw with all her strength.
**Thwack!**
A dull, sickening thud echoed through the stairwell. Dong Jiwoo's jaw seemed to come loose from its hinge, his lips twisting at an unnatural angle. Several teeth flew out in a spray of blood and saliva, clattering against the concrete steps. Blood gushed from his swollen chin, painting his collar crimson.
Although her chest felt tight with emotion—grief, rage, betrayal all tangled together—she bit the inside of her cheek hard enough to draw blood, forcing herself to stay focused.
_Pushing people out of her life had become a habit. A survival mechanism._
With a sharp kick to his ribs, she knocked him down, then stood over him and warned through gritted teeth:
"Dong Jiwoo, **don't interfere with me.**"
"Ugh—!"
Even as the man groaned in pain, his bruised and broken face didn't elicit a single shred of pity from her. Seoryeong narrowed her eyes, looking at him with the same cold detachment she would give a wounded animal.
_It hurts, doesn't it? But I can't leave any witnesses._
_Then… what should I do?_
Her gaze swept over Dong Jiwoo's fallen body, calculating options. She could kill him. It would be easy. One more strike to the temple. Or the throat. But something—some small, stubborn part of her that still remembered what it felt like to trust him—held her back.
She knelt down beside him, forcing him to meet her eyes.
"What's your mission?"
"Ugh…"
"All this time, were you pretending to be close just to spy on my every move?"
His eyes wavered at the question—guilt, pain, something else she couldn't quite name flickering across his face. Seoryeong stared at him for a long moment, waiting for an answer that never came. Then she stood up without a word.
She took whatever she could carry—his watch, the pen in his plaid shirt pocket, his phone—and crushed them beneath her boot heel with brutal efficiency. Electronics sparked and glass cracked. After smoothing her hair back into place with shaking hands, she turned away without looking back.
_In the end, it was always this simple._
_Cut the ties. Move forward. Survive._
"Hah…"
As she turned around, she spotted a pair of high-heeled shoes—belonging to the Deputy Director—lying abandoned on the stairs like discarded props. But Joo Seolheon herself had already disappeared, leaving only smears of blood and the faint traces of her escape.
---
## — The Deputy Director's Escape —
**Brr… Brr…**
Limping badly, Joo Seolheon tried to contact Lee Wooshin via the emergency line she'd been given. Blood from the wound on her forehead had stained her false eyelashes, making them stick together uncomfortably. Meanwhile, she clutched her phone with trembling fingers, the screen cracked from the fall but still functional.
Her ankle throbbed—ligaments likely torn, the joint swelling rapidly inside her stocking. Each step sent lightning bolts of pain up her leg.
"You bastard!"
She gritted her teeth as she descended, one agonizing step at a time.
"You've been around the Owl all this time and didn't tell me **anything?** What exactly are you doing?!"
She had been suspicious ever since Lee Wooshin started vaguely mentioning the possibility of domestic terrorists operating independently, but he had remained frustratingly silent at every crucial moment. **Then what was the point of being on their side?**
Joo Seolheon was completely consumed by anger—white-hot and clarifying.
_They had the same goal, didn't they?_
As soon as she had seen the Owl's face clearly for the first time in that stairwell, she had immediately realized: now was the perfect time to bring Kim Hyeon into play. To leverage this situation. If only Lee Wooshin had shared his intelligence from the beginning, she would have definitely cooperated. Joined forces properly instead of this chaotic mess.
_Did he really have to wait for this scenario to become reality before making a move?_
"You bastard, **really!**"
The more she thought about Lee Wooshin's calculated silence, the more rage burned through her veins. Limping, she touched the torn wound on her forehead, wincing as her fingers came away sticky with blood. Her vision swam slightly—possible concussion, her mind noted clinically even as panic threatened to overwhelm her.
_That cold, unwavering gaze when Seoryeong pushed her down the stairs without the slightest hesitation…_
_Without regard for whether she lived or died…_
The situation had completely spiraled beyond anyone's control—and everyone involved looked like they had reached their breaking point. Joo Seolheon, though her face was tight with pain and fury, still forced herself to remain rational as she redialed the number on her phone with shaking fingers.
But the dull **thudding** sound from above—footsteps, fast and purposeful—made her entire body stiffen.
Even though she technically held leverage over the Owl through Kim Hyeon's secret, a primal chill ran down her spine.
_She's coming._
"Officer Park, where are you? Immediately go down to the second basement level," she ordered into her phone, suppressing the panicked edge in her tone. Then she called the operations head and activated the emergency extraction code that had been prepared for exactly this kind of contingency.
"These people! **All of them!**"
As soon as she passed through the narrow stairwell landing, she saw the exit door ahead—like a beacon of salvation at the end of a nightmare tunnel. Her tense shoulders relaxed fractionally, overcome with the first flutter of genuine relief.
_No matter how much they wanted Kim Hyeon's location, she wouldn't allow herself to be dragged along so easily. Not like this._
With a grim smile touching her bloodied lips, Joo Seolheon shoved the door open wide.
The damp, musty smell of an underground parking garage greeted her—oil, concrete, stale air. She scanned her surroundings frantically and spotted her sedan with its hazard lights blinking in the dim fluorescent light. Safety. Extraction. **Escape.**
But as she limped forward, relief flooding her system, the driver's eyes suddenly widened in shock—looking not at her, but **behind** her.
Before Officer Park could open his mouth to shout a warning, Joo Seolheon's head was **yanked** violently backward by her hair.
"—!"
_What the hell!?_
She tried to resist—clawing, twisting—but the iron grip on her hair dragged her back into the stairwell like a hooked fish. **Thump!** The door slammed shut, and the lock clicked into place—all of it happening in the space of three heartbeats.
Her face went deathly pale. Her heart pounded so hard she thought her ribs might crack. Gasping for breath, she struggled with every ounce of strength she had left.
_In vain._
As she was dragged into a shadowed corner of the stairwell, she found herself staring up at the Owl's face—jaw tight, eyes cold and empty of mercy—speaking slowly but with absolute finality.
"Rest for a bit. We'll talk more deeply later."
"You! Ugh—!"
Something sharp pierced the skin of her neck. A milky, opaque liquid flowed into her veins through the syringe, and her vision immediately began to blur at the edges. The world tilted. Her limbs grew heavy.
_Propofol._
**Thump, thump!** Officer Park banged on the locked door frantically from the other side, his muffled shouts barely audible.
"Deputy Director! Are you alright?!"
The doorknob rattled violently, metal scraping against metal. But Joo Seolheon couldn't answer. Her tongue felt thick and useless. Her knees buckled.
Seoryeong, with an utterly expressionless face, caught the unconscious woman's body and lifted her onto her shoulder in a fireman's carry—surprisingly strong for her frame.
Just then, the emergency alarm in the parking garage **blared** to life—a piercing, repetitive siren that echoed off the concrete walls.
She clicked her tongue in annoyance.
_The driver had definitely pressed the panic button._
Once that alarm was triggered, hotel security would swarm the area within minutes. Seoryeong gritted her teeth, mind racing through contingencies.
_She was trapped._
Taking a deep breath, she assessed her options: the locked door, the stairs leading up, the body on her shoulder. Plans never went perfectly, did they? But she had always been good at improvisation. And there was always a backup plan—**always**.
Adjusting Joo Seolheon's dead weight on her shoulder, she visualized the hotel layout she had memorized from Channa's blueprints. Every floor. Every service corridor. Every hidden passage meant for staff.
She finally understood her instructor's cryptic words from years ago: _"If you can navigate a building on foot better than anyone else, you can escape from anything."_
With renewed determination hardening her features, Seoryeong began to climb the stairs again—this time going **up** instead of down.
"Huff…"
Her destination: the **seventh floor**, where the guest rooms were located. And more importantly—where the service areas held exactly what she needed.
Her thighs trembled with exertion. Her back went numb under the weight. She briefly considered calling Lee Wooshin for extraction support. But no. Absolutely not. This was something she had to execute herself, without anyone else's help.
_If it was about Kim Hyeon—about proving she could do this—she at least wanted to maintain her dignity._
"Linen chute… linen chute…"
Sweat dripped down her face, stinging her eyes, as she finally reached the seventh-floor staff area and shouldered open the door marked **STAFF ONLY** in faded letters. Inside the cramped pantry, wedged between industrial shelving units, there was a large metal duct resembling a restaurant's exhaust chimney extending vertically along the wall.
_The linen chute._
A kind of gravity-fed slide tunnel that led directly to the industrial laundry facility in the basement. Housekeeping used it to send dirty sheets and towels down without having to carry heavy bags through the guest areas.
Without hesitation, her face as calm as if she were discarding trash, Seoryeong opened the hatch and **dropped** Joo Seolheon's unconscious body into the dark opening.
"—!"
The sound of the body scraping and tumbling against the aluminum-lined walls echoed upward—a hollow, rattling descent that seemed to last forever. She stared into the dark hole with cold, calculating eyes, already moving to the next phase of her plan.
---
## — Lee Wooshin's Move —
At the same time, Lee Wooshin received yet another encrypted message indicating that the plan had changed—**again**. He immediately altered course, heading toward the linen chute exit in the basement laundry facility.
Wearing a borrowed facilities worker's vest, a baseball cap pulled low, and a surgical mask covering the lower half of his face, he pushed a large commercial linen cart with squeaking wheels across the tile floor. The laundry room was blessedly empty—staff rotation meant no one would be back for at least twenty minutes.
Something had clearly gone wrong upstairs, but there had been no SOS signal from Seoryeong. No panic code. Just a terse update: **"Extraction route changed. Linen chute. Basement laundry. 3 min."**
Wooshin bit his lower lip, a mixture of concern and grudging admiration stirring in his chest.
_Still, this was so typical of Han Seoryeong._
Unlike his wife—who required constant supervision, reassurance, hand-holding through every crisis—Seoryeong wouldn't complain even if she had to crawl through sewage to complete an objective. She adapted. She improvised. She **survived**.
A small, unconscious smile touched his lips behind the mask.
Just then, the red indicator light on the communication device in his ear blinked urgently.
>"Team leader, this is Wonchang. Can you talk?"
"I'm busy. Call back later."
He was about to disconnect when—
>"You told me to analyze one **terabyte** of data! At least hear me out for thirty seconds!"
"What?" His hand paused over the earpiece.
>"The re-investigation into the Owl case files is finally complete! Do you know how hard it was to compile, cross-reference, analyze, and summarize everything?! My eyesight must have dropped by at least 0.8 diopters because of this, I'm absolutely sure!"
Lee Wooshin glanced at the linen chute opening, then back toward the laundry room entrance.
"You have twenty seconds. Talk."
---