What the Hell Are Those Two Up To?
“I’m just gonna step out for a bit.”
“Where do you think you’re going! You just came home after a whole month and you’re already trying to leave again!”
Her mother’s startled shout cut her off at the door.
It had only been a single day since the daughter who had vanished for an entire month had finally returned. As a parent, the thought of letting her wander off alone again was unthinkable.
Lee Sia understood that completely.
Honestly, she didn’t want to go either.
One week.
Only six days left now.
She had wanted to spend every last one of them with her parents—eating whatever she craved, doing whatever she pleased, living it up like a soldier on a hundred-day leave.
But she just couldn’t.
Not when she thought about those damn bastards.
That lunatic wasn’t enough—now even Ji-hoo’s at it!
What the hell were they doing without her?
Sia’s hand trembled around her phone. On the screen, a video looped of a teenage boy thrashing a group of soldiers. Park Ji-hoo. He was copying Seong Yujin’s stunt from the day before, and the sight alone was giving her a headache.
She had considered just ignoring it. This wasn’t inside the Tower. There was no real reason she had to stick with them out here. In a week she would be heading back in anyway—better for her mental health to stay out of it.
But she couldn’t.
Seong Yujin was one thing, but if even Park Ji-hoo was out there causing chaos, there had to be some reason she didn’t know about yet.
“I’ll be back soon. Just meeting some friends real quick. I’ll be home by dinner.”
She had no intention of staying long. Go, figure out what was going on, and come straight home.
After coaxing her mother into letting her leave, Sia headed out.
The taxi dropped her at Namsan, where an enormous crowd had gathered. People had poured in either to confirm the rumors or simply to satisfy their curiosity.
“Excuse me, coming through—sorry, just let me past.”
Sia weaved and ducked through the press of bodies, working her way forward.
“Step back! This is a restricted area. I repeat, this is a restricted zone—do not approach!”
Soldiers behind barricades were holding the crowd at bay. Had the situation already ended? There was no sign of Park Ji-hoo—only the scars of a brutal fight.
Those are Ji-hoo’s fist marks.
After a month of fighting side by side, she recognized the damage his punches left behind instantly.
Why the hell would he do this?
She never wanted to set foot near that damned Tower again. It was the same feeling soldiers got about the unit they had finally left—you didn’t even piss in that direction if you could help it. So what prize were Seong Yujin and Park Ji-hoo hoping to scavenge by coming back here?
Curiosity finally beat out her revulsion.
Sia pushed all the way to the front and approached the soldier managing the crowd.
“Do not approach.”
Mid-to-late twenties, maybe. Not even thirty yet. The soldier glared at her with open irritation.
“Hey.”
She ignored the glare and called out again.
“What? Did you not hear the order to stay back?”
“I heard it. I just want to ask one quick thing.”
She kept her tone as polite as possible. The answer came back just as cold.
“The only answer I can give you is the order not to approach any further.”
He had clearly been run ragged by the crowd. Sia gave him a look that said she understood, then lowered her voice to a careful whisper only he could hear.
“Seong Yujin and Park Ji-hoo are here, right? The ones in the video. I’m an acquaintance of theirs. Is there any way I could see them?”
Barely more than a breath.
“I don’t know. Do not approach. If you keep this up I’ll have no choice but to arrest—”
The soldier started to parrot the same line like a machine, then abruptly stopped. He stared at her.
“What did you just say?”
“Seong Yujin and Park Ji-hoo. Are they here?”
At the names, the soldier’s eyes flew wide. The emotion in them looked less like surprise and more like fear. He looked ready to shout at any second, but somehow he reined himself in and took a step back.
“W-who are you?”
“Me? Lee Sia. I know those two pretty well. How do I go about meeting them?”
The soldier swallowed hard, pulled out his phone, and made a call.
“Secure channel. This is Lieutenant Park Jin-cheol. We’ve got someone at the control line…”
His voice shook as he reported her name and the situation.
They really did raise hell.
The video of Seong Yujin and Park Ji-hoo hadn’t been long, but in that short clip the two of them had put down dozens of soldiers. No wonder everyone was terrified. If Sia herself hadn’t already been inside the Tower, she would have been just as scared.
Ask my questions and get out of here. Dad’s coming home tonight too.
For the first time in a month the whole family would sit down to dinner together. She had no intention of missing that. Finish the business and go home as fast as possible.
“Miss Lee Sia? You’re cleared to enter.”
The soldier finished the call, stepped aside, and shifted the barricade just enough for one person to slip through. Sia squeezed into the gap.
“Huh? What the—?”
“Why are they letting that woman through?”
“Is she famous or something?”
“Never seen her before…”
“Is she a reporter?”
“Hey, let us in too! Just tell us what’s going on!”
The crowd erupted the moment they saw her pass. The soldiers remained unmoved, allowing only Sia through while blocking everyone else. The noise swelled. Alone, none of them would have dared raise their voices against armed, aggressive troops, but mob psychology made it easy. That vague modern-Korean confidence that soldiers would never actually harm civilians probably helped too. Either way, after Sia’s entry the crowd’s behavior grew steadily more aggressive.
“Looks rough out here.”
Sia spoke to the soldier guiding her inward, leaving the uproar behind. No answer came. He simply led her deeper under a tight, brittle tension.
Talk about stiff.
Feeling awkward, she shut her mouth and followed.
How long did they walk? A large prefabricated building came into view—so big she wondered when something like that had even been erected on Namsan. The soldier pulled a card from his pocket and tapped it against the reader by the door.
Beep.
Identity confirmed. The door opened, revealing the interior.
A lab?
It looked exactly like a research facility out of a movie. People in pristine white coats hurried back and forth among banks of experimental equipment.
What are they researching… ah. The Tower.
She had almost forgotten—the damn Tower of Light stood right nearby. These people had clearly been gathered here to study it. Not that she expected them to actually discover anything useful.
“This way.”
The soldier escorted her down a white corridor deeper into the building. Eyes followed them. Sia was in leggings and an oversized T-shirt—comfortable clothes that clashed completely with the sterile surroundings. She clearly looked out of place to them.
Maybe I should’ve dressed up a little.
If she had known the atmosphere would be like this, she would have chosen something else. The sidelong glances made her scratch her head self-consciously. Then the soldier spoke again.
“I was told you’re acquainted with Seong Yujin and Park Ji-hoo.”
“Ah, yes! That’s right.”
She seized the chance to change the subject, flashing a bright smile and nodding. The soldier looked at her with a complicated mix of emotions, the strongest of which was still fear—the same fear that had surfaced the first time he heard those two names.
He hesitated, then carefully asked,
“Just what are those two, exactly?”
“…What are they?”
“That’s right.”
His body trembled faintly.
“Are they even human?”
“Ah—”
A fair question. She had seen the video of Seong Yujin and Park Ji-hoo fighting soldiers too. To ordinary people it must have been incomprehensible—something that only happened in superhero movies, now happening right in front of them.
“They’re human. Just… not exactly ordinary ones.”
The two of them were about as far from ordinary as it was possible to get. And so was she, for that matter.
“You don’t have to be that scared, though. Seong Yujin’s a complete psycho, sure, but he doesn’t just go around casually killing people.”
Even as she said it she tilted her head. She couldn’t quite make herself sound certain. After watching him butcher monsters, she could easily imagine him doing the same to people without batting an eye.
“I see.”
The soldier looked like he had a dozen more questions, but he didn’t ask them. The silence returned as they continued deeper inside.
“Here we are.”
He finally stopped in front of a firmly closed office door. The nameplate read Chief Researcher Lee Ki-seok.
“Do I just go in?”
“Yes.”
The soldier answered, then turned on his heel and left without another word. Sia clicked her tongue, then knocked.
Knock knock.
“Come in.”
A middle-aged man’s voice. She opened the door slowly.
“Nuna!”
The first thing she saw was Park Ji-hoo. Even though a full day had passed since they left the Tower, he still looked like an absolute mess.
No—has he gotten even filthier?
Fresh red blood that wasn’t monster blood seemed to have been layered over the old stains.
“Ji-hoo, what the hell have you been—”
The scolding came out automatically the moment she saw his face. But she never finished the sentence.
Because the person sitting next to him, staring at her with a bored expression, had just come into view.
“I don’t get why you all keep crawling in here like there’s free food. Missed me that much?”
For a second she seriously considered whether to rip his mouth open. If she had the ability, she might have at least tried.
“Who said I came to see you, mister? Delusions that bad need treatment, you know?”
Pfft.
Seong Yujin burst out laughing at her words. It was clearly a sneer.
“Anyway! That’s what I want to ask. What is this place that you two decided to throw a full-on riot here? That video of you is all over Korea!”
“People were gonna find out sooner or later. So it got out a little early—big deal?”
Yujin dug a finger in his ear with a completely uninterested look.
“Wasn’t exactly the plan, but since you’re already here, sit down. I already finished talking things over with this guy.”
“Talking about what?”
“The Tower. And Players. Pretty much everything you already know—I told him the whole thing.”
At that, Sia’s gaze flicked, almost against her will, to the middle-aged man sitting across from Yujin. He wore an awkward smile. Clearly the owner of the office.
“And he believes you?”
Sia’s expression turned incredulous. Even she would have written the whole story off as pure insanity if she hadn’t lived it herself.
“What’s he gonna do if he doesn’t? The evidence and the witnesses are sitting right here.”