Taeui didn’t know when he had fallen asleep.

He opened his eyes, annoyed by the weak sound coming from the alarm clock. Blurry images repeated as he tried to open and blink his eyes a couple of times. After Taeui opened his eyes again and his vision returned to normal, he stared at the clock for a while, his gaze hazy.

The annoying sound came from the alarm clock.

“……”

Taeui hated being awakened by the sound of the alarm clock, so he rarely used it. He only set the alarm when he had to wake up early for work. But even then, he would still wake up a minute or two before the clock rang. Perhaps it was instinct. Taeui shuddered at the repetitive and annoying sound.

After reflexively turning it off, he wondered why the clock had rung. And he quickly remembered the answer after staring at the second hand of the clock until it almost completed a full circle.

“…..ah.”

Jeong Taeui muttered briefly.

“Within the 10-minute period from 4:30 am to 4:40 am on the 27th. It must be during that time.”

An invisible stern voice echoed in his head. Jeong Taeui looked at the clock, a few minutes had passed while he was still dazed. The alarm clock, set at 4:15, was ticking rapidly, rapidly.

Indeed, setting an early alarm as a precaution was the right thing to do. Surely anyone in the world would do the same.

Jeong Taeui put the clock down and was about to stand up. After turning on the computer, he wanted to quickly go to the bathroom to wash his face, his hazy mind needed to be clear right now.

“…Huh.”

However, as soon as he stepped out of bed, Jeong Taeui fell to the floor. His legs had no strength and his lower body was in pain. Taeui tried to suppress a groan that was about to escape his mouth.

He didn’t even need to wash his face anymore. His mind was awakened immediately after the fall.

Taeui sat on the floor. He clenched his fists and trembled before opening his eyes. The feeling of cursing was pouring out like a storm from his mouth.

He glanced at the bed. The dried white stains were still on the empty bedsheet. Taeui looked at it intensely, remembering each mark on his body was caused by some wretched person.

Damn it. He wanted to die right now!

Fortunately, this time he was able to endure that vile and ugly thing until the end, not like the previous time when he was overwhelmed as soon as it entered. Compared to the feeling of his body being torn apart the first time it advanced, at least this time he only felt tension around the “entrance” area.

Jeong Taeui bowed his head onto the bed and let out a long sigh mixed with groans.

It’s a bit illogical to blame only Ilay. Although it felt like he was being dragged into that crazy desire, he wasn’t even tied up this time, and he even tried to cooperate with him in his own way. So it’s not fair to say that he attacked him like he did in the past.

But his weak body still made Taeui feel frustrated.

“I am really a fool.”

He didn’t even learn from the previous pain. If it caused him so much pain, why did he do it with him again this time?

In addition, in this dry and withered relationship, what remains after those moments of pleasure is only a hollow sense of regret.

Jeong Taeui rubbed his head and sighed. Mixed feelings of sadness and joy.

Even when he met someone at a bar and spent the night with them, it didn’t leave him feeling as empty as this. But after doing it with Ilay, that feeling of restlessness and discomfort crept into his mind.

Taeui thinks that he was too naive when he told Ilay that he lacked basic humanity to treat people as human beings. He doesn’t hate people. It’s a matter of personality, so even if he is aware of it and tries to fix it, it’s like pouring water on a potato leaf.

He sighs heavily once again and suddenly wakes up, looking at the clock. A few minutes have passed since he lay down for a moment due to the exhaustion of his body.

Jeong Taeui quickly crawls back to the computer and turns it on. Because it’s a secret mission, someone will be disappointed if he doesn’t do it correctly. Although he doesn’t know what it is, it must be very important to his uncle and McKeen.

Taeui sits down and immediately furrows his brow. As soon as he sits down, his buttocks start to ache. What’s even more frightening is that he can feel drops of sweat dripping down his body, just like what he experienced once before. Taeui quickly takes off his shirt and puts on another one. He thinks he will have to throw this shirt away.

Thinking back, that damn bastard – after satisfying all his greed – left him almost unconscious and returned to his room feeling refreshed. Of course, if he stayed here, it would be considered somewhat considerate. But his attitude only satisfied his own desires and left Taeui alone, making him feel like he was just a masturbation tool.

But anyway, Taeui is happy because he will soon leave that damn perverted bastard.

Taeui opens the note he received from McKeen. Luckily, he has left, otherwise it would be difficult to do this if Ilay is still here.

He looks at the clock, there are only a few minutes left until the appointment. Taeui quickly scans the note that McKeen gave him. At the top is a line that looks like a web address. A short message is attached next to the long addresses, making him wonder which one is the correct address. Just a small mistake in entering the address will automatically block the connection. So he has to be careful.

It will be more difficult from here. Jeong furrows his brow in thought.

Below the address are two passwords and the name of a file. Below that are a few lines of undefined formulas.

“… …?”

Jeong Taeui suddenly tilts his head at the familiar formulas. No, it’s not even a formula, it’s a mixture of numbers, letters, and symbols like a chemical formula.

The chemical formula is long and complex to the point that he had to spend the whole night memorizing it when he was studying for high school entrance exams, and it’s so complex that he can hardly remember it all.

He only feels familiar with it because the format of the formula is similar.

Time passes as Taeui tilts his head and types each beat on the memo paper. He copies the address written in his memo, being careful not to miss any letters. And when he clicks connect, the screen immediately changes. It’s a protocol screen*. After entering the password, an endless scrolling list appears.

Taeui glances at the clock. He doesn’t have enough time to go through the list one by one because there are too many files.

He’s in trouble… …. .

The list is endless, but they are neatly arranged.

There’s no need to rush. He just needs to find a file and take it. As long as Taeui doesn’t stop scrolling them down, he can still leisurely find it.

The file name quickly found in the memo. After taking the file, he enters the second password into the password window that pops up again. Then the files start to transfer.

He only takes half the time he planned to get all the files, although it actually takes 10 minutes. After finishing the task ahead of schedule, Taeui looks back at the memo. Now all he has to do is check if the files are correct and send them somewhere else. Taeui types on the keyboard, gently and slowly. Before checking these data, he wants to have a drink of water. In reality, cigarettes and beer would be better, but not now.

Taeui has almost completed what he was asked to do, but he doesn’t feel okay. It’s because he roughly guessed the structure of these data. In the past, Taeui also did a job that was not like this, but had a similar structure. Although he was forced to do it unintentionally, it can be said that he helped complete it in some way.

“It’s like treason…”

“This is a crime…”

After muttering to himself with squinted eyes, he reconsidered. This time, he had assisted without thinking about preventing this from happening. He had even helped carry it out with his own hands. So, there was no reason to make excuses.

Nine out of ten cases, classified information leaked and was sold. It was hard to believe that his uncle and McKeen were on the same side under their disguises.

Perhaps, this was done to secure funding.

It happened everywhere in the world. To carry out what was called “fighting for a seat” cost more money than you would think. In some cases, the amount even exceeded imagination. Taeui didn’t know, but to stand in an important position at UNHRDO, it must have been a huge sum of money.

He didn’t often have to do risky things like this, so those files must be worth it. The value of a file downloaded in a few minutes was probably an amount that Jeong Taeui could only admire through numbers in his lifetime.

“Uncle… isn’t this too much?”

Taeui muttered and sighed, even though his uncle couldn’t hear. If he had heard his uncle’s story from the beginning, he might have guessed what he had to do today and might not have agreed. He would never do this if he wasn’t required to. Whether it was for ethics or because the risk was too great.

Under his uncle’s arrangement, it probably wouldn’t pose any danger to him. But if it wasn’t his uncle, this would be a dangerous bridge that he would never want to cross.

Taeui sighed and stood up, wanting to soothe this uncomfortable feeling in his stomach with water.

The moment he stood up, the pain that he had just forgotten came back. He groaned, leaning on the table and trying to move his hands. At least some shaky movements.

Taeui had nothing else to say to anyone. But if he had to say something, it would mostly be to Ilay, as he muttered a series of curses and then took out water.

“….”

Jeong Taeui put his lips to the bottle and drank slowly while staring blankly at the ceiling. As if someone had secretly put medicine in the water, its taste was extremely bitter. Taeui grimaced helplessly and put the water bottle down. He didn’t want to get involved in this, but the truth was that he had already been affected, and he was not at all at ease.

At UNHRDO, had his uncle ever done something like this?

Taeui sighed and rested his head against the back of the chair. He didn’t expect honesty or ethics from his uncle. He wasn’t naive enough to hope that he would always live a noble and clean life, staying away from the rot that was ringing inside. And he himself was not such a sincere person.

He wished he didn’t do things like this.

But he did it.

“Anything… but I can’t.”

Jeong Taeui muttered. The bitter taste didn’t disappear, and he also thought that he couldn’t do anything else.

“Removing negative things from your mind and forgetting about them will be easier. Let’s see…”

Taeui sat back in front of the computer. He only compared a few lines in the memo to see if he received the correct file and sent them to the listed addresses.

“If I take the wrong one, even just one file, it will end…”

Time flew by in an instant, Taeui frowned at the endless list with strange characters. He changed the lines of the list in his own way and rearranged them to make them easier to read. Even if anyone looked at this mess, it would be difficult to see anything.

But he couldn’t help but recognize it, because he was too familiar with it.

Jeong Taeui smiled, remembering the sheets of paper that looked like graffiti scattered randomly in the living room when he was with his older brother. His older brother had never organized everything, and when Taeui saw his messy pile of papers, he sarcastically said:

“No way. Even if you only take one of these, many people will consider it a precious treasure, and yet you scatter them like this?”

But Jaeui just shrugged indifferently.

Taeui was always the one to clean up those piles of papers when tidying up the living room. At that time, he couldn’t understand what was written on them, until he came here.

Taeui felt melancholic.

He sighed and picked up his note and started matching the letters appearing on the screen. Just by looking at a few first lines and a few last lines, the letters written on the paper matched each other. Luckily, it seemed that he didn’t take the wrong file.

Now, all he had to do was transmit these files. Everything was completed.

Jeong Taeui squinted at the screen. It wasn’t just letters that looked like upside-down writing on his brother’s paper. Taeui tilted his head. Even when looking at it like this, it was hard to tell what it was about, like reading a puzzle book. If someone like Moral looked at this data, he would surely hate it.

Of course, this is completely different from puzzles, it doesn’t have a solution itself, and to those involved, it’s no different from a text.

“3…7…7…0…….What is it…. ….”

Jeong Taeui looked at the regular expression and swiped his finger across the screen, then suddenly stopped. No, he wasn’t familiar with it. And he didn’t even know if it was something he had seen before.

His brother would often write formulas quickly and throw them away as if exhausted by them. But sometimes he would keep a piece of paper for a few days and get lost in thought.

There was a time when he held a piece of paper for five days straight, and Jeong Taeui thought it was strange and sat across from his brother, looking at the paper upside down. He couldn’t recognize what it was no matter how many times he looked at it. But when he casually chatted with him, saying that if he read the first letters vertically and read them backwards, their home phone number would appear. At that time, his brother would calmly explain its contents, but he still couldn’t understand even a part of it.

In the end, Jaeui bit his lip for a while when he saw Taeui’s lifeless face, and ended with a few sentences he could understand.

“I need to fill in some lines in the middle to solve it, but it’s not effective.”

“In fact, it’s better not to solve it. If someone takes this as a basis and designs it, something very dangerous will appear.”

His brother frowned and said it was better not to solve it, but he still wanted to complete the formula, so he kept it for a few more days.

At that time, Taeui didn’t know what his brother was designing.

But now, he could feel the muscles on his face stiffen. His eyes were fixed on the file appearing on the screen without moving.

Could this just be a random coincidence or even an illusion? But even when he was treading carefully through these incomprehensible words in these data files, he was sure about it. He was sure he had seen it before.

“…..ha…”

Taeui raised his hand to cover his mouth. He was confused, his eyes were dazed and unsteady. If his speculations were correct, both he, McKeen, and anyone involved in this would lose their minds.

This is not something that can be leaked outside, this damn secret. Although he didn’t know the purpose of this, it was clear that anyone would want to possess these things. If these documents could be used wisely, they could also be exploited for good purposes. But if these things fell into the hands of evil people, it’s uncertain what would happen.

Taeui looked at the clock. It was too early to contact others at 5am, but now he needed to talk to his uncle.

He daringly picked up his phone and remembered that his uncle, who was in Canberra, was probably already 8am. But no matter how many times he called, the signal kept getting disconnected without any signs of response.

Taeui clicked his tongue, his uncle rarely didn’t answer the phone outside of normal working hours. Could it be that he didn’t want to pick up?

His mood became chaotic. No, there was nothing to worry about. The initially designated time was just the time to access and safely download the files without security breaches. There was no need to send them during that time. And now, the 10-minute deadline had passed. Taeui didn’t intend to send the files immediately, but planned to do something with them after reconnecting with his uncle. These files might be deleted if he continued to leave them like this.

As soon as he thought they would be destroyed, the sense of worry in him naturally diminished somewhat. But the uneasiness increased.

How could Uncle Changin not know? And McKeen too.

The worst case scenario is that these things will be applied to chemical weapons or similar dangerous things. Because I don’t know the specific content of this document, negative thoughts keep appearing in my mind. Whatever the result may be, it certainly won’t bring anything good.

Taeui bit his lip, not knowing what to do other than sitting in front of the computer screen, staring at the characters on it and sighing, then finally closing the still bright window on the screen.

He rubbed his tired and dry eyes with his fingers. Damn it. Taeui tried to get rid of them and tried to sleep a little more, but in the end, he still couldn’t sleep.

Today, Taeui left the room earlier than usual because he couldn’t close his eyes after that. And also because he thought McKeen would be the first to come to the Instructor’s room.

After sitting on the bed and staring at his toes for a while, Taeui stood up and prepared to go out. Just before leaving the room, he tried to call Changin again but still didn’t get a response.

It feels really bad.

Jeong Taeui put on his shoes and looked at his reflection in the mirror in front of the door. The pathetic appearance of a young man reflected in the mirror. He was sick and couldn’t sleep, tortured by crazy people every day. He was physically and mentally exhausted, and the headaches kept coming. If he could still be healthy after all this, he would have become a second Ilay long ago.

Taeui sighed and left the room.

He looked at the clock, it was still early in the morning. This is the time when others have to wake up. (Usually because Ilay has done all the work, he can sleep in.) Taeui went up the stairs. When the mind is tired, the body can’t relax. But when the body feels comfortable, the thoughts keep biting at his spirit. It’s not pleasant at all.

But then when he reached the second basement level, he regretted a bit. He should have taken the elevator. Taeui held onto the railing and endured the pain in his lower back for a while before having to go up again. When he climbed to the last step, sweat was already dripping down his back.

“Damn it! See if I ever do that to you again!”

No, he immediately denied it. He guessed that he would be dragged and sink into desire with him again. No, if he agreed to let him in again, he would call him father!

In an instant, he forgot the tangled thoughts just now and let Ilay occupy his brain with deep hatred until he reached the first floor. He stood at the end of the hallway, out of sight of the Instructor’s room, and stopped for a moment.

During Instructor meetings, not only Instructors but also Assistant Instructors have to attend. Throughout the joint training period, there were almost always such meetings every morning and evening, and today was no exception.

Taeui looked at the clock.

It’s too early for anyone to be in the meeting room. He stood by the hallway and silently looked ahead. Even when the other members were gathered here, it would take an hour or longer for them to come one by one.

McKeen is not in the Instructor’s room as he expected, although he already anticipated that.

His heart beats with anxiety and tension.

If his guesses are correct, what should he do? Even if he wracks his brain thinking about it, he can’t find any clues for the answer.

Taeui slowly took a step forward. He could hear the creaking sound of the weak wet wooden floor under his feet and the rustling sound of trees in a quiet space. It’s strange, as if stepping into a dilapidated prison deep in the forest.

His mood suddenly calmed down. He stood alone in the dim hallway with no one in sight. Hesitating for a moment when standing in front of the Instructor’s room, then slowly opened the door. A blue light enveloped by darkness appeared inside the room.

How long has it been since he last saw such a light?

It feels really strange.