The reckless, daily trips to the police station stopped cold. It was time to find another way.

Following the kind-faced priest’s suggestion that this might be “God’s will,” she had taken a photo of the flyer and had it read aloud through her voice app. That’s how she found this place.

“Then why don’t we start with the neighbors? Just tell me everything you remember.”

Seoryeong furrowed her brow. It was definitely a new approach.

“Did you ever consider the possibility that that bastard—ah, I mean, your husband—and those neighbors might’ve all been working together?”

She couldn’t have been more than in her early twenties. The girl cleared her throat, correcting her speech out of habit, and reeked of both cookies and cigarettes.

Is her hair cut short? Seoryeong narrowed her eyes. She could see just a little more clearly now, even at this moment.

“It looks like this was all orchestrated. Whether it was some multi-level scam or a decentralized cell or whatever, someone out there was directing the whole thing—milking you for everything you had. The question is, who the hell was it?”

Her fingers clattered cheerfully across the keyboard. As for the neighbors, Seoryeong only remembered a few names, workplaces, and schools. She dumped out everything she could recall in no particular order.

Since her eyes hadn’t been able to give her visual information, she’d had to compensate in other ways—footsteps, smells, voices. Even scraps of small talk, things she never thought mattered.

She scraped her memory clean and handed all those fragments to the investigator.

“Then I’ll start by cracking into the neighbors...!”

Exactly one week later, she called.

―Who the fuck was that bastard you were living with?

The voice was manic. From the receiver came a gruff shout: Hey! Your dialect!

***

“Miss Seoryeong...”

Still the same sofa with the worst cushioning in the world.

The investigator smelled just as before—sugary cookies and smoke.

This time, though, next to her stood a man who looked to be in his fifties, arms crossed, watching her with a grave expression.

The way the younger investigator seemed unusually nervous around him, combined with his stout build and bald head, suggested his seniority.

She could definitely see better now. Where everything had once looked like smudged fog, it was now more like a dirty window—still blurry, but far more legible.

“Hello, Ms. Han Seoryeong.”

The man unfolded his arms and introduced himself.

“I’m Jeong Pilgyu, team leader of the information analysis unit at BLAST.”

BLAST...? Did a place like that really exist in a tiny errand service like this? Seoryeong furrowed her brows, and as if that reaction was familiar, he flicked the younger investigator lightly on the forehead.

“It might be unfamiliar to civilians, but BLAST is a private military company. We provide security services in conflict zones with government authorization.”

To Seoryeong, who had been a caregiver since age twenty, it all sounded like a story from another world.

“This errand center is just one of our side businesses—usually used for training rookies or handing out disciplinary assignments.”

Jeong Pilgyu’s teeth ground as he glared at the employee, Heo Channa.

“That’s enough introduction. Ms. Han Seoryeong.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sorry, but we’re not going to be able to take your case.”

His refusal was polite, but firm. Seoryeong didn’t react at first. If anything, it was Channa who was more worked up. “This bastard...!” she snapped, sharply turning her head in defiance. Her breathing turned ragged, and she stared at Seoryeong with burning eyes.

“Most of those neighbors’ names were fake! The schools and jobs? All bullshit! But not everything was fake. That bastard never expected I’d dig all the way into the neighbors’ personal records.”

“Hey, hey, Channa! Watch the dialect!”

Even after Jeong Pilgyu smacked her on the back, her fire didn’t dim.

“You remember that guy with the long hair who owned a dog? Even if the rest of them were fake, that dog’s name was real!”

Seoryeong’s eyebrows rose. It was an unexpected thread.

“We tracked the dog’s name through a vet’s database and found a match—one and a half hours away from where you live. That’s when I started smelling something off. The medical records listed a different owner: Kim Yeonmi, age 67.”

“.......”

“So I pulled five years’ worth of Kim Yeonmi’s credit card receipts, and holy shit—turns out we were being naïve!”

Channa spat the words and then sucked in a deep breath.

“This is what I found.”

She nudged the man next to her with an elbow.

Jeong Pilgyu, who had been slapping his smooth scalp in frustration ever since Channa started speaking in North Korean dialect, handed over the tablet with a disapproving look.

But Seoryeong didn’t respond, so Channa read the receipts out loud herself.

“‘NIS Level 9 Exam Questions,’ ‘NIS NIAT Beginner,’ ‘Applied,’ ‘Advanced,’ ‘National Intelligence Service Written Test Prep’...”

“......!”

Seoryeong froze. She hadn’t seen this coming at all. Jeong Pilgyu rubbed his face with dry hands and spoke with visible exhaustion.

“Kim Yeonmi has a son. The records say he worked at a publishing company, but field agents often use that cover.”

“.......”

“Anyway, here’s the real point. If her son passed the NIS exam and went undercover near you as a field agent—this wasn’t a scam. It wasn’t some pyramid scheme—”

Seoryeong’s lips parted, dry and cracked.

“He might be an NIS agent. That’s the most plausible explanation we’ve got right now.”

“Then my husband...”

Her hand trembled faintly. At this point, it wasn’t even about the shock anymore.

It felt like, at the end of a long, long tunnel, she could finally see light. After weeks of hearing “we can’t find him,” “go home,” “you were conned,” this was the first time something tangible was within reach.

She gripped the hem of her shirt tightly. This was real progress. She was getting closer to the real Kim Hyun. If she could just find out who he really was...!

“But Ms. Han Seoryeong, who are you, exactly?”

Jeong Pilgyu’s voice turned cold. There was an edge to his tone that made her stiffen.

“For someone to completely destroy a woman, make her look absolutely insane, buy out an entire villa, lock down a 200-meter radius around it, and leave not a single witness—that’s not the work of some random agent. This wasn’t just a mission. And it wasn’t ordinary.”

“.......”

“And you say you dated for six months and were married for two years. That’s not normal. You were living in a meticulously constructed set. The level of control was insane. ◈ Nоvеlіgһт ◈ (Continue reading) Only a government body could pull that off.”

“.......”

“Are you starting to get the picture?”

Jeong Pilgyu chugged a glass of water from the table.

But Seoryeong truly had no idea. She grew up in an orphanage, got thrown into society early, and lived independently long before most.

She’d been kicked out of the gymnastics team she was good at, failed her entrance exams, and now, even her marriage had failed. She lived simply because she had no choice. Her life had been nothing but a series of joyless, repetitive days.

What about that could possibly be special...? Sure, she fought with her childhood friends, but that was just personality.

She was the one who wanted to ask. How could he break her like this—leave her unable to survive a single day without him, and then disappear after destroying her world? Was there any justifiable reason for that?

“You had a black agent assigned to you.”

“...A black agent?”

Her heart dropped like a stone. Her fingertips turned ice cold with dread.

“Sigh... When you work at NIS long enough, you learn to trust your instincts. And this—this is the same gut feeling I had just once during my entire career.”

“.......”

“So I can’t take this case. Honestly, I’m not qualified.”

Jeong Pilgyu exhaled heavily.

“You’ll never find him.”

“.......”

It felt like a death sentence. You’ll never find him. The certainty in those words locked her jaw tight.

If she had the strength, she would’ve hurled a glass across the room—but she couldn’t even move a finger.

Her knees had already buckled. Her eyelids twitched uncontrollably.

“No one, aside from the highest-level NIS executives, knows the identities of black agents. Once they’re sent overseas, they’re literal spies. And even if their identity is revealed, the government won’t acknowledge them. That means if they’re caught abroad, they serve prison time—or worse, they’re executed.”

“.......”

“You’ll never find him.”

Silence filled the room. Her ears rang. Time seemed to slow down. She had no idea how long she’d been frozen.

All she knew was that the man had been speaking, pouring words over her like water, and her head spun with them, round and round.

We tried to track Kim Yeonmi’s son, but he’s already vanished... Maybe he was rewarded for working you for so long...

Her chest began to heave. A violent urge rose up—to shut him up, to crush that mouth with her bare hands.

“Just think of it like you got bit by a rabid dog. Forget him. Let it go. That’s what’s best for you.”