Chapter 1 - The Child Chosen by America
Chapter 1 - The Child Chosen by America
Winter of 2008, Busan
"Siwoo-ya, come eat."
"Yes."
Siwoo, who had been sitting in front of an old computer, lifted his head.
Hyejin glanced at the monitor while putting down the dining table.
"What were you watching again?"
"The internet."
"What are you doing on the internet?"
"I was looking at how computers far away connect to each other."
Hyejin stopped the hand that was putting down the spoon.
It wasn't an answer an eight-year-old would give.
Usually, kids that age watched cartoons or played games, but Siwoo was always different.
When he saw a radio, he asked why it made sound; when he saw a fan, he was curious about the motor structure; when he saw an electric bill, he asked why it was calculated in that way.
"The food is getting cold, stop watching and come."
"Yes."
"How was school?"
"Nothing happened."
"Did you listen to the teacher well?"
"Yes."
"And with your friends?"
Siwoo's chopsticks paused for a very brief moment.
"Just so-so."
Hyejin didn't ask further. She knew that Siwoo had almost no friends.
It wasn't that Siwoo had no friends from the beginning.
"Hey, Yoon Siwoo! Let's play soccer!"
When the neighborhood kids called him, Siwoo would go out to follow them, but the problem was that he was too good.
Siwoo could see the kids' movements. He could just see who would run in which direction, who would whiff the ball, and which way the goalkeeper would throw their body.
At first, the kids laughed, but as it kept repeating, their expressions hardened.
"Did you cheat?"
"I didn't."
"Then why do you always win?"
"Because I can just see it."
"See what?"
Siwoo couldn't answer. How could he explain that he could just see it?
It was the same with studying. If he finished his homework in a few minutes, they said he was lying; if he answered the teacher's questions immediately, they said he was showing off; and if he pointed out incorrect problems, they said he was arrogant.
From a certain point on, the kids stopped calling Siwoo, and Siwoo played alone.
He kicked a ball against the wall by himself in the vacant lot at the end of the alley, but Siwoo thought that was enough.
No, he believed it was enough.
"Aigoo, it's cold."
Taesik, who had gotten off work late, opened the door and came in; his work clothes were soaked with the smell of iron filings and oil.
"I'll warm up your food."
"Just a little, my stomach isn't great."
"You didn't eat properly again, did you?"
"Factory work is just like that."
Taesik rubbed his hands and entered the room, and Siwoo lifted his head.
"Appa, you're home?"
"Our son, did you fight with the computer today too?"
"I didn't fight."
"Then did you win?"
"You don't win against a computer."
Taesik chuckled and turned on the old TV.
The screen flickered once, then an advertisement played, and then a documentary started.
A black dot was moving in a strange trajectory in the blurry sky, and subtitles appeared at the bottom of the screen.
'Unidentified Flying Object, the truth about UFOs.'
Siwoo's spoon stopped.
"US government records on unidentified flying objects investigated in the past still leave many questions."
"Some documents have been released, but many materials remain classified."
"Omma."
"Yes?"
"Do aliens really exist?"
Hyejin laughed while doing the dishes.
"How would Omma know that?"
"Does Appa know?"
Taesik, who was eating, spoke while holding his spoon.
"Even if aliens exist, they won't come to our house."
"Why?"
"If they do come, I wish they'd fix the boiler first. It's too cold."
Hyejin said with a smile.
"Stop saying useless things and just eat."
The parents were laughing, but Siwoo was not.
Do aliens exist?
If they exist, why does no one know?
If they don't know, who does?
On TV, words like US government, military, and intelligence agencies kept flowing out, and Siwoo stored those words in his head one by one.
That night, after his parents fell asleep, Siwoo sat in front of the computer and typed words into the search bar.
Alien
UFO
US government UFO
CIA UFO
Area 51
Alien existence
UFO government files
There was a lot of data, but most of it was useless.
It was just blogs, advertisements, photos without sources, and posts repeating the same things, and Siwoo narrowed his eyes.
"Why do they all say the same thing?"
The released data was dodging the core.
The important parts were blurry, and the parts he really wanted to know were empty.
Siwoo looked at the monitor for a moment and thought.
If it doesn't come up when you search, you can just look at the place where the information might be. That thought came to him very naturally.
A normal person would have stopped there.
Because words like US government server, CIA, law, crime, and punishment would have come to mind first.
But Siwoo was eight years old, and to his eyes, computer security was not a scary wall.
He thought of it as a puzzle with a structure, and Siwoo examined the structure of the public website first.
Address system, document storage method, access rights, old backup paths.
No one had ever taught him, but he could tell just by looking.
There were rules in it, and there were gaps in the rules.
"Why did they connect it like this?"
Siwoo muttered softly.
At first, it was a public document repository, then an old link, then a deeper path; the security network was complex but not perfect.
Systems created in different eras were patched together, and there was a small gap between them.
Siwoo didn't attack or break the system; he just followed the open gap inside.
2:14 AM.
An abnormal access record was left in the US intelligence agency's outer network from an old computer in a Busan shantytown.
Siwoo didn't bypass his IP, and he didn't even know he needed to.
CIA Cyber Security Center in Virginia, USA.
Mark Henderson, an analyst on the night shift, was drinking coffee and looking at the screen.
"What the?"
It was a small warning, but it was strange.
Someone was accessing the internal data index through an old path in the outer system.
Mark thought it was an automatic scan at first, but his expression hardened as soon as he opened the logs.
"There's no bypass trace?"
The intruder didn't hide their location, and the path was too clean.
It was as if they had walked in through the front door and even written their name in the guestbook.
Mark checked the tracking information.
"Are they joking?"
He immediately called his superior, and a few minutes later, the person in charge, Ethan Lowell, entered the situation room.
"What's going on?"
"Outer intrusion."
"From where?"
"Korea, Busan."
"An agency?"
"No, it's a private home."
Ethan's eyebrows twitched.
"Say that again."
"It's a private home."
Ethan checked the logs himself.
The intrusion method wasn't crude; rather, it was too sophisticated.
There were no unnecessary attack traces, and it looked as if they hadn't forced their way through the system but had understood the security network and passed through it.
"The purpose?"
"Data search."
"What data?"
Mark said with a troubled face.
"UFO-related documents."
"...UFO?"
"Yes."
"Russian intelligence is looking for UFO documents?"
"That's not it."
Mark pulled up the subscriber information.
After checking that, Ethan's expression slowly hardened.
"How old is the user?"
"Estimated to be 8 years old."
The situation room went quiet, and someone let out a dry laugh, but no one laughed along.
Ethan stared at the logs on the screen.
"Submit a report."
"To what level?"
"Submit it to the highest level."
"Are you sure?"
"If this is true, something insane has happened."
The next morning, Siwoo woke up, ate, and went to school as usual.
The teacher's explanation was still slow, and his friends were still distant.
Siwoo sat at his desk, looking out the window, lost in thought.
The data he saw last night was nothing special compared to his expectations.
There was no definitive answer that aliens really existed, and while there were strange records, the conclusion was blurry.
That evening, two black vehicles came up the narrow alley in Busan.
South Korean government officials, US embassy officials, and Americans who did not reveal their exact identities got out of the cars.
They stood in front of Siwoo's house, and Hyejin opened the door and froze.
"Who are you?"
The Korean official said carefully.
"Are you the guardian of Yoon Siwoo-gun?"
Hyejin's face turned pale.
"Why for our Siwoo?"
Taesik came out from inside in a hurry.
"What is going on? Did our kid do something wrong?"
One of the Americans, Ethan Lowell, looked past the door, and Siwoo was peeking his head out there.
It wasn't a scared face, just a curious expression.
Seeing that expression, Ethan thought that this child didn't know what he had done right now.
The adults sat in the small room, and Hyejin brought out water with trembling hands.
Taesik kept bowing to the visitors.
"I'm sorry. The kid didn't know anything..."
As the interpreter translated, Ethan shook his head.
"We are not here to punish."
"Yes?"
"We came to check on Yoon Siwoo-gun."
Ethan looked at Siwoo, and Siwoo also looked at Ethan.
"Do aliens exist?"
The interpreter stopped for a moment.
Ethan couldn't hold back a laugh and raised the corners of his mouth slightly.
"Is that what you wanted to know?"
"Yes."
"Why did you do it?"
Siwoo said as if it were obvious.
"Because I was curious."
The adults in the room all went quiet.
Because he was curious—for that one reason, an eight-year-old accessed the US intelligence agency server.
Ethan had seen countless hackers until now.
Those who aimed for money, those who stole information, those who moved for power, those who wanted to show off their abilities—but this child was different.
This child was just curious and only wanted to find the answer.
The means were just abnormal.
"Siwoo-ya."
Taesik called him carefully.
"You... what did you do last night?"
"I looked it up."
"What?"
"UFO data hidden by the US government."
Hyejin covered her mouth.
"Oh my god..."
Taesik's face turned white.
"Why look that up!"
"Because it didn't come up in the search."
"If it doesn't come up, you don't look!"
"But I'm curious."
Taesik couldn't say anything more, and Ethan let out a low breath.
"We need a test."
As the interpreter translated, Hyejin asked immediately.
"What test?"
"It is a procedure to confirm the child's ability. It is not forced."
Taesik said with a stiff face.
"Where are you planning to take our kid?"
"We do nothing without the guardian's consent."
"How can I trust that?"
"I know it is a situation that is hard to believe."
Taesik gritted his teeth.
"Even if our house looks poor, you can't just take our kid."
Hyejin wrapped her arms around Siwoo's shoulders with trembling hands.
"Siwoo is still young."
Ethan nodded.
"That is why we need the parents."
A few days later, Siwoo took several tests.
Math, language, logic, spatial perception, cryptography, computer structure, physics—the results made no sense.
"Is this not a leak of the problem set?"
"It is the first time seeing these problems."
"What about a machine error?"
"We retested three times."
"Then you mean these scores are correct?"
The experts doubted machine error at first, and then they suspected a leak of the problems.
In the end, they had no choice but to admit that their own standards were wrong.
Siwoo tilted his head with the test paper in front of him.
"Why are you solving the same problem again?"
"Was it difficult?"
"No."
"Then?"
"I already solved it earlier."
"We are solving it again to check."
"The answer doesn't change."
The examiner couldn't say anything, and the American psychologist wrote this in the report.
'This child is beyond measurable range.'
That night, Ethan sat down with Siwoo's parents again.
"Siwoo is special."
The interpreter translated.
"Very, very special."
"Is our kid... sick?"
"It is not that he is sick."
"Then what is it?"
"The ability this child has is difficult to protect properly here."
Taesik's face stiffened.
"What do you mean?"
"Come to the United States."
Hyejin's hand stopped.
"Are you talking about immigration?"
"Yes."
"Us?"
"The whole family."
Taesik couldn't say anything for a while.
A life born and raised in Busan, his job, language, house—to throw everything away and go to the United States was something he had never even imagined.
"Why must we go to the United States?"
Ethan looked at Siwoo, and Siwoo was rolling a small ball in one corner of the room.
"At first it was UFO documents, but..."
"Next time, it might not be."
"..."
"This child does not stop when he is curious."
"And there are many doors in the world that should not be opened just because one is curious."
Hyejin looked at Siwoo.
Eight years old, still too young.
"What if we refuse?"
"We will respect it."
"Really?"
"Yes. But if other countries and other agencies find out about this fact, the situation might change."
"Will our Siwoo be in danger?"
Ethan didn't answer immediately, but that silence was the answer.
That night, the couple couldn't sleep, and Hyejin was sitting on the quilt.
"Honey."
"Yeah."
"America..."
"I don't know either."
"We can't speak the language, we don't know anyone, what are we going to eat and live on there?"
Taesik looked out the window.
A narrow alley, old stairs, old houses—he didn't hate this place, but this place was too narrow for Siwoo.
"Shouldn't we not hold him back out of our own greed?"
Tears welled up in Hyejin's eyes, and a moment later, Hyejin said quietly.
"What if Siwoo is lonely there?"
"He is lonely here too."
Taesik's voice was rough, but it was trembling.
"He is alone at school, alone in the alley, and only watches the computer when he comes home."
"We just pretended not to see."
"..."
"If we go to the United States, I don't know if it will get better or if it will be harder."
"But at least... the place for that child to hide will be wider..."
The next day.
"Siwoo-ya."
"Yes?"
"Do you want to go to America?"
"Can I learn more if I go there?"
Taesik smiled with difficulty.
"Probably."
"Are Omma and Appa going too?"
Hyejin answered immediately.
"Of course."
"Then I can go."
A few days later, they finished immigration preparations and arrived at Gimhae Airport.
Hyejin kept looking back, and Taesik was gripping the handle of his old bag tightly.
Siwoo looked at the runway outside the window, and soon the boarding announcement rang out.
"Siwoo-ya, let's go."
"Yes."