Lee Young-jin’s lungs, which had been tightly constricted, suddenly inhaled sharply, his chest expanding rapidly, and then a long, relaxed exhale followed. His shoulders shook greatly. His fingertips trembled. He clenched his shaking hands tightly. Ten cold, stiff fingers overlapped with great force. He took a deep breath and released his hands.
He checked the time.
05:02.
There was still time until 5:30, as Yoon Hwa-kyeong promised.
‘Maybe.’
He recalled a fairy tale book that his grandfather had once forced upon him when he was very young. He had been a child uninterested in such fanciful stories, yet occasionally, his grandfather would sit at the head of his bed and read those books to him line by line. The crackling voice continued softly with dreams and hopes, love and friendship, patience and rewards, revenge, and the absurdly adapted oral folklore about perfect happy endings.
At this moment, Lee Young-jin thought about those happy endings.
TRANSMITTING ALL DATA TO A VALID TARGET . . . 57%
The numbers in the monitor changed slowly, contrary to his impatient heart.
‘Quickly. Quickly.’
Lee Young-jin had never felt such anxious anticipation for anything.
Most of his waiting was spent sitting alone at the edge of a breakwater, quietly watching the distant waves beyond the rough surface of the tetrapods.
But he knew that nothing would emerge from those waves, so there was no anxiousness in his wait.
When the sunset, his grandfather would come to find him, talking about the spirit of a fisherman trapped in the tetrapods, holding Lee Young-jin’s hand tightly with his warm, rough hands.
Later on, no one came for him.
Thus, Lee Young-jin’s wait was just vague and endless.
Unlike now.
TRANSMITTING ALL DATA TO A VALID TARGET . . . 99%
The hand clutching the laptop monitor trembled with impatience.
A microsecond passed.
As 99 changed to 100, the monitor was filled with fresh lines of text, scrolling down swiftly. Lee Young-jin glared at it, eyes wide. The screen that had been dropping incessantly, suddenly stopped.
DATA TRANSMITTING COMPLETED
REMAINING DATA WILL AUTOMATICALLY BE REMOVED
— progress status configuration —
In Progress (1) 2 pts in total, 1% completed
Lee Young-jin’s hands started to move erratically. He pulled out the cable, stuffing it back into the backpack. Simultaneously, he reached for his own laptop, pushed aside earlier. His ten fingers moved rapidly over the keyboard, his actions of accessing a cloud server not his own as skilled as trained maneuvers. His black eyes stared unblinkingly at the monitor. The screen changed several times.
In a corner of the server, stripped of all security, lay the naked files.
A compressed file of just a few megabytes.
Lee Young-jin calmly moved the mouse cursor and dragged the file into the computer’s internal drive.
Just a few seconds.
From Seoul to Shanghai, then to Bogotá. Underneath all that, astronomical amounts of money and information secretly exchanged. From Switzerland to the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Samoa, Gibraltar, Panama, and then the Bahamas, astronomical sums transferred from anonymous account to anonymous account. A list comprising of tycoons who rarely show their faces in the media.
All those desires, greed, and ambitions compressed into a file of a few megabytes were transferred to Lee Young-jin’s laptop in just a few seconds.
At that moment, Lee Young-jin felt no emotion other than relief.
He checked the time.
5:14.
There was still time left.
Yoon Hwa-kyeong would be waiting for him.
‘I need to get this to CEO quickly.’
It was right then, as Lee Young-jin was inputting Seo Seung-hyun’s contact into his address book, which he had just discovered, that he noticed something amiss. His computer’s firewall was being disabled at a rapid pace. His heavy eyelids slowly fell and rose again. His eyelashes cast long shadows on his cheeks before rising. He was not flustered.
‘It must be the owner of the cloud server. They’ve noticed my intrusion.’
One thing became clear.
Whoever it was, the fact that they had detected Lee Young-jin’s intrusion so quickly meant they were monitoring the server almost in real time, and that they knew the expected time the laptop battery would drain.
‘The person who asked Teacher to drain this must be the same person.’
He moved as soon as he thought.
He force-closed all programs and slammed the laptop lid shut.
He reached into his backpack and pulled out a screwdriver, flipping the laptop to unscrew the case. His actions were decisive. Peeling off the case, his hands removed the IEEE 802.11ac standard wireless network card. Since it was a laptop that Lee Young-jin himself had modified by removing the built-in network chipset from the motherboard and installing an additional network card to overclock, removing the network card forcibly disconnected all networks from the laptop, ending the attack.
Lee Young-jin threw the removed network card into his backpack.
He checked the time once more.
5:17.
He could no longer afford to dawdle.
The original plan was to transmit the files to Seo Seung-hyun, but that was no longer an option.
He had to deliver it in person.
And to do that, he needed to leave Magnolia Island.
Lee Young-jin shoved the laptop into his backpack and stood up. Slipping the backpack onto his shoulder, he hurriedly moved out of the vault. His hand fumbled in his back pocket for his smartphone. His calm fingers swiftly brought up the latest message. He tapped the name [YOON] floating at the top and quickly composed a message.
[It’s done. I’ll be right there.]
The reply came swiftly.
[I’ll get the boat ready.]
As soon as he read the reply, his heels crossed over the threshold of the vault door. Lee Young-jin turned and reached for the touch panel at the entrance of the vault. The panel lit up. [Superuser authorization added. Activating lock for the blue door.] With a heavy sound, the vault door that had receded into the wall began to align with the wall surface again.
Lee Young-jin didn’t wait to see the door fully close and immediately turned around.
His feet moved hastily.
He quickly passed through the hallway adorned with empty metal shelves and climbed the stairs.
At the end of the dark, narrow staircase, a faint glow hovered around a lead door.
Lee Young-jin looked straight at that door.
His knees wobbled as he climbed the steep stairs.
His breaths quickened, and exhalations rushed out.
The last step.
He barely reached out to grab the doorframe, pulling himself up.
His struggling body emerged through the door gap.
The heavy lead door, left wide open perhaps for Yoon Hwa-kyeong to move boxes, was there. Lee Young-jin caught his breath and pressed his palm firmly against the door surface. With a groan, the massive door that could withstand a nuclear blast closed off the narrow hallway and staircase.
Now the time was 5:19.
Lee Young-jin started running.
Passing the village hall’s floor heating room, scraps of worn newspaper, pieces of black plastic bags, empty snack wrappers, worn-out playing cards covered in dust, and everything else he had left behind fell away.
As he emerged from the village hall, a glimmer caught the edge of Lee Young-jin’s vision.
As if enchanted, his steps halted.
He turned his head to look down the slope, at the empty houses lined up and the black sea sandwiched between the low hills like a folding screen. The surface of his wet eyes reflected the twinkling light from the empty harbor. His eyelids slowly drooped and then lifted. Along with it, the light reflected on the surface of his pupils blinked at regular intervals.
It was familiar. It was the signal light emanating from the bow of a ship.
Lee Young-jin’s heart started to beat rapidly.
As he was about to move his stalled feet, trying to suppress his heart pounding uncontrollably with pain,
“Young-jin.”
His feet froze as if rooted to the spot.
That voice was one he had heard like a mantra for ten years, a voice that had dominated his entire life.
From between the half-collapsed stone walls and the overgrown weeds behind the broken boats, a dozen shadows sprang forth abruptly.
Among the expressionless professionals armed with firearms and bulletproof vests, a familiar face smiled at Lee Young-jin.
“Did you bring the item?”
Teacher asked in a gentle tone.
Lee Young-jin stepped back hesitantly.
His grip on the backpack straps tightened, the veins in his hands prominent.
“Young-jin.”
Teacher called him once again. Lee Young-jin didn’t look at his face, fixing his gaze into the darkness ahead, searching for an escape. But as if the heavy steps had anticipated where Lee Young-jin’s gaze was directed, they blocked his path.
Lee Young-jin retreated further.
“Where were you planning to take the item?”
The voice remained calm.
“Do you even know what it is that you’re trying to take?”
That question.
Only then did Lee Young-jin turn his head to look at Teacher. Teacher smiled, pleased. His wrinkled eyes narrowed, and his pupils were obscured by the darkness, hiding their shine.
Lee Young-jin did not attempt to read his expression or thoughts.
As before, there was no need to do so now.
“…I don’t know.”
“Hahaha.”
Teacher let out a low, mocking laugh.
“Young-jin.”
He spoke calmly, as if cajoling a pet or explaining something to a very stupid child.
“That is a very dangerous item. You shouldn’t handle it carelessly. If it falls into the wrong hands, something very bad could happen. Now, give it back to your teacher.”
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