Lee Wooshin's eyebrows twitched as he fell silent for a moment, processing what he'd just heard. Na Wonchang, clearly exhausted, spoke in a hoarse voice—venting his frustration into the void like a man who'd been staring at a screen for days without rest.
Glancing at his watch, Wooshin said curtly, "Finish in three minutes."
As soon as the strict permission was granted, a sharp gasp came through the line, followed by the distant clatter of something falling beneath a desk. Lee Wooshin wiped his forehead with the back of his hand and checked the time again.
_There was still no news from Han Seoryeong._
Na Wonchang, panting as if overwhelmed by the weight of his own discoveries, spoke again in a rush—words tumbling over each other.
>"Did you know that the Owl has been receiving psychological counseling since childhood?"
"…!"
He didn't know. But before he could formulate a response, Na Wonchang—pressed for time and clearly eager to unload everything he'd uncovered—continued immediately.
>"It started when the Owl was around ten years old and has continued ever since."
Lee Wooshin's brow furrowed slightly. Ever since facing Han Seoryeong—not _the Owl,_ but **Seoryeong herself**—there had been a vague sense of unease gnawing at him. To confirm that discrepancy, he had even violated the strict compartmentalization rules of the National Intelligence Service and handled the data review personally.
Now, as that information gap was almost filled, his mouth felt inexplicably dry.
_Had he really done the right thing?_
He had deliberately chosen not to delve deeper into the Owl's identity beyond the sanitized notes on official paper. The mission was capture or eliminate. Understanding wasn't required. But now, curiosity about **Han Seoryeong**—the woman, not the asset—was slowly creeping in like water seeping through cracks.
His gaze became restless, darting toward the linen chute opening.
>"At that time, antisocial personality disorder was suspected, but because she was still a minor, it was considered too risky to officially diagnose. So instead, she continued to receive behavioral correction through ongoing counseling sessions."
"…!"
>"I've read all the counseling records. Apparently, the Owl had a talent for gymnastics. She'd been doing it since elementary school, but it wasn't competitive gymnastics—just recreational training—so she was treated like an ugly duckling by her peers. Did you know about that?"
For some reason, that detail bothered him more than it should have.
He didn't want to admit that he didn't even know something so **basic** about her.
Lee Wooshin gritted his teeth, his expression hardening into stone. He had confined the woman's identity to a few sterile facts: _orphan from an institutional facility, diligent worker, emotionally isolated._ He had never tried to understand her or extract meaning from the brief incident reports he'd skimmed. Everything he knew about the Owl was based solely on Deputy Director Joo's curated summaries. He had never reviewed the raw files himself.
_What kind of life had Han Seoryeong actually lived?_
_What burdens of sorrow had she carried while growing up alone?_
Those questions had never been his concern. As long as it wasn't for a political smear campaign, "understanding" wasn't part of his operational mandate.
_How ridiculous and superficial their relationship had been all this time._
But **when** had he started to feel curious—not about the Owl in the reports, but about the real and raw Han Seoryeong beneath the mask?
His brow furrowed again, as if trying to uncover something uncomfortable lodged deep inside his chest.
>"There's one more strange thing. It seems she received long-term treatment not only from psychiatrists but also from orthopedic specialists and dermatology clinics. Mostly for **bone dislocations** and **scar tissue treatment**…"
"…"
Lee Wooshin's jaw tightened. _Bone dislocations. Repeated injuries. Scar removal._
The clinical language couldn't disguise what those records suggested.
>"Then—and this is where it gets weird—although birth records and intake data from the orphanage exist, there's **no trace of her before the age of ten.** She was suddenly placed in the orphanage system, started mandatory counseling sessions, and then all her psychological medical records were seized by the National Intelligence Service. The sheer volume is enormous and highly unnatural. There are even **video recordings** of the sessions. Do you want me to send them to you?"
"I'm busy. Later."
>"And this is just a personal observation without any hard evidence to back it up…"
Na Wonchang hesitated for a moment, as if trying to steady himself before voicing something that clearly disturbed him.
>"I don't think the Owl has any **real memories** of her childhood."
"…!"
>"From what I've observed in the counseling transcripts, the doctors frequently asked about her past—trying to establish baseline emotional responses—but her answers were… strange."
"Strange how?"
>"Like she was answering **mechanically.** Reciting lines from a script." A pause. "She kept repeating one specific phrase: _'I rode a carousel with my father.'_ That exact sentence kept appearing in her responses, whether she was asked about her favorite childhood food, her earliest memory, or even her favorite color. **'I rode a carousel with my father.'** Over and over. I can't explain it properly, but…"
Lee Wooshin's hand tightened around the edge of the linen cart.
_He had to stop now._
Between mild professional curiosity and the cruel temptation to know everything about her, that thought clanged in his mind like a warning bell—sharp and insistent.
>"It's like she's been **brainwashed,** Chief."
"…!"
>"Obviously, this can't be legally proven from a current forensic psychology standpoint yet, but…"
Lee Wooshin's face slowly darkened, the muscles in his jaw working beneath the skin.
Ever since his initial encounter with the woman at Blast Corp—ever since he had seen the indifference and bone-deep coldness that had **never** appeared during their brief, fabricated marriage—Lee Wooshin had been constantly plagued by the gnawing feeling that something was fundamentally **wrong.** That feeling had led him here, to this exact moment, standing in a hotel basement waiting for an unconscious intelligence officer to slide down a laundry chute.
Although he had felt vaguely uneasy every time he lay down at night—hadn't slept soundly for months, really—at some point, he had found himself able to sleep deeply when lying beside Han Seoryeong.
Every time the woman woke in a daze, staring blankly into the middle distance as if searching for Hyeon out of old, ingrained habit, her eyes would eventually wander and find **him** instead, bathed in pale morning sunlight filtering through cheap curtains.
In those moments, when Seoryeong smiled shyly—not even looking directly at him but only glancing vaguely at his neck or shoulder—he would pull her into an embrace and kiss her temple.
_Was that really part of the mission?_
He could have left anytime. Could have abandoned her to her obsessive search anytime. So why had he gone this far, trying to understand everything about her? Trying to **know** her?
What intrigued him wasn't the Owl. It was **Han Seoryeong.**
The ordinary, indifferent gaze the woman cast upon him—as if he were a complete stranger, a piece of furniture she occasionally noticed—left a frustration he couldn't erase no matter how hard he tried.
The emotional distance between them was too wide to bridge through proximity alone, leaving Lee Wooshin haunted by a cognitive dissonance that throbbed behind his eyes like a persistent headache.
_Why did something that should have been just a target—a mission that was even officially over—still bother him so much?_
That question had no good answer.
It was when Han Seoryeong began to push herself to dangerous limits in search of her missing husband that he finally started to see the **real** Han Seoryeong beneath the layers of conditioning and trauma. Yes—it had been a **discovery.**
In the moments when the woman metaphorically tore apart the sanitized pages of the reports he had once skimmed so indifferently, when she **exploded** out of those two-dimensional assessments and became three-dimensional, messy, **human**—every second felt like a stinging shock to his system.
>"But is the Owl really capable of genuine attachment?" Na Wonchang's voice pulled him back. "The psychiatric evaluations said she doesn't register other people's pain, easily ignores social rules and norms, and views violence purely as a **tool**—not something with moral weight. She acts selfishly and is hostile to most interpersonal contact."
"…!"
>"Now I'm not even sure if she's looking for Kim Hyeon purely out of **love!** What if it's just… possessiveness? Obsession? What if she doesn't even understand what love is?"
"…"
>"Chief, are you **sure** you still want to be involved with the Owl? Maybe it's time for you to step back before this gets worse? I've reviewed all the available data, and honestly—" His voice dropped. "—I'm **afraid** of going against her."
"I can't step back."
"What?"
"It's too late for that."
He didn't explain further. His expression remained flat, unreadable—the mask of a professional who'd made his choice.
_If Han Seoryeong truly possessed that kind of brutal, antisocial nature underneath everything, then all this time she had been **acting** in front of her husband. Playing a role. Performing normalcy._
Suddenly, a small, dark laugh escaped his lips.
_Damn. She's so endearing._
The obsessive heat that had flared whenever he saw the woman—the irrational pull—now felt like it had finally found justification. Like a puzzle piece clicking into place.
In the end, what he wanted to confirm were small, intimate truths like this. Things he had never cared about before. Things that shouldn't matter to someone in his position.
>"In essence, I think Deputy Director Joo deliberately altered or suppressed parts of the data to suit her own agenda. But it's not entirely clear what she wanted to hide. Having a difficult personality isn't unusual these days, and childhood memories **can** genuinely fade or become distorted over time. The only truly **striking** anomaly is that phrase she keeps repeating like a trained parrot."
Suddenly, a hollow **thudding** sound echoed from inside the linen chute—metal reverberating as something large struck the interior walls.
Lee Wooshin bent down, peering into the shiny aluminum tube. His brow furrowed, his sharp gaze shifting into full operational mode. The metal vibrated faintly, rattling in its moorings.
Na Wonchang's hesitant voice continued through the earpiece:
>"Maybe there's **secret information** hidden in the Owl's lost memories. Something she witnessed or experienced before the age of ten that someone wanted buried."
"…!"
>"That's why I think she's been constantly monitored and psychologically managed ever since. Of course—" He added hastily, "—this is just my personal hypothesis based on pattern analysis!"
At that exact moment, a body **slid** through the linen chute with a muffled scrape of fabric against metal and landed with a soft **thump** on the pile of towels Lee Wooshin had prepared at the bottom.
It was Deputy Director Joo Seolheon, now lying unconscious—face bruised, ankle swollen, forehead bleeding sluggishly.
Lee Wooshin stared down at her, his face as cold and emotionless as carved ice.
"Basically, humans are driven by fear," he said quietly into the mic.
"What?"
"I mean—everyone has doors they keep tightly locked. Secrets they'll do anything to protect."
"…"
"You've done your job well, Wonchang. You brought me something **very** useful."
He ended the call with a tap of his finger, then pressed two fingers against the upper part of Joo Seolheon's neck, checking her pulse with clinical detachment. His unreadable gaze lingered near the woman's carotid artery—measuring, calculating.
Then he extracted the phone from Joo Seolheon's jacket pocket and held down the power button until the screen went dark.
A heavier **thudding** sound echoed from above as he unceremoniously lifted the woman's limp body and deposited her into the large linen cart, covering her with a layer of soiled towels.
"—!"
The pile of fabric swayed. And then—**familiar breathing** brushed against his ear from behind.
Lee Wooshin lowered his mask and reached out a hand without even turning around, as if he had been waiting for exactly this moment.
But Seoryeong, utterly exhausted from having to carry someone's dead weight up seven flights of stairs, only shook her head wearily and braced herself against the doorframe.
Without hesitation, he slipped his hands under the woman's armpits and lifted her effortlessly—supporting her full weight as if she weighed nothing.
"Who told you to go limp in the middle of an operation?"
"Straighten your legs and stand properly."
"But—"
"You haven't even finished your task yet."
_Clearly, something had gone terribly wrong within him._
_He was supposed to stay detached. Professional. And yet._
---
## — Extraction —
The two of them pushed the linen cart out through the service corridors and finally emerged into the underground passage that connected the hotel to the adjacent shopping mall. Outside, the situation was **chaos incarnate.**
Fire trucks and ambulances were neatly lined up along the curb, their lights painting the pavement in alternating flashes of red and white. Paramedics and firefighters swarmed the entrance. Police had cordoned off the main doors.
Seoryeong led them directly to the ambulance she had discreetly parked in a shadowed corner earlier and yanked open the back doors.
Lee Wooshin, now carrying the Deputy Director slung over his shoulder in a fireman's carry, frowned when he saw the interior.
"You drive," Seoryeong said, tossing him the keys.
She climbed into the back and laid Joo Seolheon down on the emergency stretcher, then secured the woman's wrists and ankles with Velcro restraint straps in smooth, practiced movements—the kind that came from muscle memory.
The inside of the ambulance was filled with familiar medical equipment: walls lined with additional restraint belts, a box of soiled surgical gloves, a peeling portable oxygen tank that had seen better days, a scratched defibrillator, IV stands, and more.
But the space felt **cold** and stale in a way that had nothing to do with temperature, making Lee Wooshin's chest tighten as he realized exactly what was going to happen in this cramped, mobile interrogation room.
"We'll pull out when the other ambulances start moving," Seoryeong said, her voice flat and businesslike. "Blend in with the convoy."
"When did you prepare this?" Lee Wooshin asked, starting the engine with a faintly surprised expression.
"From the nursing home where I used to work. They had a private ambulance service for patient transfers." She stripped off her jacket and methodically rolled up the sleeves of her white blouse. "I contacted the administrator, and it turned out this old unit was scheduled to be scrapped anyway. I bought it for next to nothing."
"…!"
"This way, we can keep moving without any interference. No one stops an ambulance in transit."
She opened a small medical kit and began laying out supplies with calm efficiency.
Lee Wooshin couldn't help but release a low, impressed chuckle.
_An ambulance._
A cramped, mobile space where they would **never** be caught. Where screams would be muffled by sirens. Where no one would think to look.
Shortly after, he flipped on the red emergency lights. The siren wailed to life, and they smoothly pulled out onto the main road, blending seamlessly into the stream of emergency vehicles departing the scene.
With a brief flash of the turn signal—a polite thank-you to the civilian cars yielding right of way—they accelerated quickly down the highway, leaving the chaos of the Grand Hotel far behind.
Inside the back, Seoryeong knelt beside the unconscious Deputy Director, her face utterly calm.
_Now,_ she thought, _we talk._
---