Lee Wooshin didn’t exchange small talk with anyone until he finished his morning workout and shower.

People have a habit of not doubting those who look like they belong to a group. The better you blend in, the less suspicion you draw.

In the past, for that reason, he would set a friendly mood first, or toss out the occasional silly joke.

The corners of his mouth were always relaxed, and he scraped along people with easy shamelessness. His grandfather had taught him that the greatest cunning is the kind that doesn’t look cunning, so he slipped into crowds without a trace.

But that was all in the past.

Now Lee Wooshin lived with his face locked tight. He gave no one a glance, and the corners of his mouth hung heavy, as if rebar were hooked to them.

“Instructor Maxim, today’s training is hand-to-hand, right?”

“It is.”

“Go easy on them, please. Those guys are still the most usable ones we’ve got.”

“You mean those little anchovy-tail punks?”

“Ah....”

“Looks like the Gurkha reputation’s all gone to rot now.”

Her disappearance had changed the man in an instant. The irritation he’d long hidden didn’t just burst like pus; it oozed out yellow. Ennui deepened into depression.

He was twisted into something ugly, that much was certain. When he looked into his own paling irises, his face seemed like a warped monster’s.

It wasn’t that he’d lived skillfully—he’d been rotting. At his absolute worst, he met Owl. The fact that the irretrievable moment of his life began when everything was a wreck—that too was all his fault.

An empty shell can’t hold anyone comfortably. That dry, parched embrace only hurt her, and his mind, steeped in misanthropy, blindfolded him so he couldn’t tell what was truly precious.

It was all on him, for not being mature enough. So he had braced himself for years—decades, even.

If this time passed without disaster, he would pack up again. Let Sonia’s existence never leak into the world. So please, let this be another false alarm.

Hide where even I can’t find you.

“......”

All at once, Lee Wooshin went rigid.

Why... isn’t it there?

Paled, he patted at an empty pocket. He’d reached for the photo out of habit—and his mind went blank. The wedding photo of Kim Hyun and Owl that he always carried in his pocket was gone. Over something so small, his breath hitched like a panic attack.

He stood dazed for a moment, as if he’d lost his sense of direction—then suddenly bolted out of the quarters.

He combed through everything from the showers and laundry to the mess and the sparring hall. Half gone in the eyes, he shoved shoulders and sent people sprawling, all while scouring the floor. His breath rasped like a beast that had lost its young. But no matter how he searched, it wasn’t there.

“......”

Fuck—his eyes flushed raw. The bottled-up wrath erupted over a trivial spark.

Crash—! He threw everything within reach against the barracks wall, shattering it, shoulders heaving. His thickened chest rose and fell like rough surf.

That photo was the one trace he had left. Proof that we had met, we had married, we had lived together. It felt like the world was stripping him of the precious things one by one.

As if he were being punished with a ban on stroking her picture, on recalling her face, on savoring that memory—all of it forbidden.

His head was flooded with that sense of injury and rage. Whether the world or God—he wanted to kill the lot of them.

He blew a hole in the training schedule and started combing the mountain range. He no longer trusted himself, so he revisited anywhere he’d already been, no exceptions. He even factored in the chance it had fallen and been blown by the wind, and stubbornly climbed brutal sectors he hadn’t yet reached.

“Hah... huff...”

In the highlands the air was always thin; he was short of breath. His chest cinched in pain, the headache sharpened.

Even so, by sheer will he kept scrambling up rock. At some point the objective blurred.

So even holding a fragment of you is a sin, it seems. That inferiority reared its head.

He’d only tried to clutch even your absence, and it felt like a savage scolding. The urge to grab anyone and beg rose like bile—he clung to a jagged rock and hung there.

Don’t take my family from me anymore.

He deliberately abused his body, overturning the mountains, and soon he looked a wreck. His fingers swelled red from digging through gravelly ground, his hair turned ashen with dust.

By then he was moving his legs like self-harm, not knowing what he was looking for or where he was headed.

At last he reached the summit and stared into the milky fog—and a miserable realization struck him.

“I lost it again...”

No matter how far he roamed, he couldn’t find it.

The ridgelines were veiled completely by low cloud and mist; he couldn’t see a thing. His eyes, set on the distance, shook violently. Short breath collapsed flat in his chest; his lungs buckled. A voice on the verge of going out leaked out.

“It’s nowhere.”

The once-dry whites of his eyes turned watery and red.

“I can’t see you.”

If I give up my eyes, will I see you? Then will you be fixed in my mind’s eye?

Before he knew it, the season of cold air had come.

Winter was near.

Back at the training camp, Lee Wooshin spotted Asha loitering in front of the quarters. Asha was the unit’s only woman—the sole bright spot—and a reserve member wearing the temporary commander’s armband.

“Instructor...!”

Eyes wide, Asha rushed toward the instructor, who was caked in dirt.

Lee Wooshin gauged the time by the sunset bleeding over the mountains’ far side. He regarded the oddly flustered trainee with blank eyes—and, as always, brushed past.

At that, Asha bit down on her lips. She stepped into his path again.

“Just a moment, Instructor!”

Her ringing voice was stubborn. Frost formed between his brows.

“You skipped today’s training too. Where have you been?”

“Move.”

At the cold command, she clenched her fists and forced her courage again.

“...I can’t move! The graduation ceremony is right in front of us—what if our unit alone can’t graduate because of this—”

“This instructor doesn’t like saying things twice. You’ve got until I count to three to get the hell out of here.”

A trainee who ought to be in the tent shoveling down chow was hanging around in front of the instructor’s quarters—it irritated him to no end. With his nerves already flayed, everything around him felt like a thorn jabbing him.

He sensed his own dangerous, unstable state. At times like this, he shouldn’t meet anyone.

“Have you been out looking for the photo until now—”

She didn’t even finish the sentence.

“Ghk—ghk...!”

Asha, grabbed by the collar, patted furiously at his shoulder as if to yield. That had been the fixed signal, the rule between them, until now.

But in this moment, his eyes weren’t those of an instructor facing a trainee—they were those of a man facing an enemy to stab to death.

“Photo? What photo?”

This isn’t how it’s supposed to go...! Asha held her breath and hid her frustrated expression. Even though she’d lost the bet, she wanted to confess quickly to the Instructor and stand on moral high ground over the others. And if you called that self-interest—she wanted the Instructor’s favor.

But the man up close was hollow. She had mistaken him as perhaps kinder than he seemed because he didn’t discriminate or play favorites.

Meeting those burnt-out eyes up close chilled her spine. She had judged him completely wrong.

“Kh— the one you always kept in your pocket!”

“......”

“Ral took it—Ral!”

Lee Wooshin flung his grip away. Asha, staggering, couldn’t regain her balance and went down hard.

Even as he looked down at her sprawled there, his face didn’t move at all.

Whoever he looked at in the unit, he compared them to Seoryeong. Regardless of gender, it was rare to find someone as tough as Seoryeong, as strong at improvisation, as technically skilled, with the sense to make up for lacking strength.

She had been exceptional even as a rookie—which made him want all the more to drive her out of any place like this. To keep her from ever setting foot near it.

At the thought of her, pain followed as naturally as his guts melting. He reeled with the urge to wrench every muscle. Panting rough like a man who’d forgotten how to breathe, he saw Asha jolt up and reach out. But slap—her hand was knocked away in a blink. The sound was like a thunderclap, as if she’d been struck across the face.

“Don’t touch me.”

At the bloodshot glare, she flinched back. The way he permitted not even a scrap of approach—it was like watching a beast that refused to be tamed.

Ral, I’m sorry... Asha bit her lip as she stared blankly at the Instructor’s receding back. You guys—those photos had better be intact, they have to be...!

“Ral, we have to put it back—now!”

Whispers drifted from beyond the tent wall. Lee Wooshin’s filthy combat boots stopped ★ 𝐍𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 ★ precisely in front of them. Nothing showed in the sooty darkness around his eyes.

“Fuck, who the hell spilled water here! We’re drying the wet spots as it is!”

“You don’t know how sneaky Asha is? What’ll we do if she rats us all out—!”

“It’s fine. Look at this photo. The groom’s face is different.”

“......”

A strange hush ran through the trainees.

“It’s definitely not the Instructor’s photo. Maybe it’s a relative’s wedding. Or else...”

Ral’s leg was jittering, but he piled on the swagger.

“He still can’t get over some married woman...”

At that, the trainees who’d been staring at the clock leaned in again and peered at the photo together.

“Looks to me like the Instructor’s way better-looking...”

“So what? He’s indifferent and cold. Women hate guys like that.”

“You think he’s like that outside, too? He’s like that because this is a training camp.”

“You not know basic character? A man with soldiering in his bones is commanding and dogmatic about everything. Grow up under a soldier father and you know how miserable life gets? ‘Bring water in three seconds.’ Talk back a little and you die that day.”

Ral’s shoulders shook as he kept on.

“And you think those bones go soft just because the other party’s a woman? Like hell—! And what they expect from a wife’s ‘support’ is strict as all fuck.”

“Is that... so?”

“Can’t you tell from the fact only the photo’s left? Whatever affection remained ran dry and she bolted to another guy. How harsh do you think he was? Kept hurting her, kept underestimating her...!”

He fluttered the damp photo to dry it, spewing acid.

“You lot better not strut later—watch yourselves. A woman who leaves once never comes back.”

Then, all worked up, Ral said, “Want me to imitate the Instructor?” and sprang to his feet.

“The wife now brings the meal, scrubs the tub, folds the clothes with crisp lines, spreads her legs he—! Ack—!”

Ral flew to the far end of the tent in an instant. His cohort, faces gone corpse-pale, slowly raised their heads.

That day, the trainees saw a face of the Instructor’s they’d never seen before.