The Perils of Sneaking Out Without a Word
Does it make sense for a man to wake up early on the weekend? Amid the warm, harmonious atmosphere, it seemed like everyone had reached a perfect happy ending.
Having finished speaking, Elena returned Shinwoo's hand as if her confidence had vanished along with her words. She had become a woman who could only gaze at him with an entirely different look in her eyes. If she followed her heart, she would have plunged straight into a cold bath that very instant. Shinwoo wasn't quite as bad off as she was, but he felt just as embarrassed. Still, the joy of finally making a friend quickly overshadowed the recent incident, filling him with excitement.
'I finally have my first friend...!' One more item from his previous life's bucket list had been checked off right here. It truly was a flawless conclusion. What could possibly ruin such a perfectly prepared feast?
In such an ideal situation, a flicker of worry crossed Shinwoo's mind. But he soon shook his head. It felt like an overreaction. With the misunderstanding involving the National Intelligence Service completely cleared up, who in the world would spoil things now? That's what Shinwoo told himself.
Just then, Yoo Han-kyung, who had recovered enough to move, pushed herself up and slumped onto the floor. Her expression was oddly out of place. While everyone else was smiling, she alone wore a strange look—like the calm before a storm.
Shinwoo soon noticed the same sense of unease she was feeling. This was... a familiar rumbling of the ground.
Rumble. Rumble.
"W-what is that?"
"An earthquake...? It doesn't feel like one..."
Shinwoo knew this artificial tremor all too well. The sound of helicopters only made the memory sharper.
It had been last week. He had visited the prestigious high school he now attended to deliver a lunchbox to Chaewon. A man-versus-man fight. Or, to be honest, Shinwoo's standard assault. When the former student council president, Yoo Duhak, reported it, they had arrived within minutes—those heavily armed riot police units.
This was the small-scale earthquake created by their synchronized footsteps.
"No way... Are those the same riot police from back then?"
"Riot police?"
"But no one even reported anything, so why..."
The riot police weren't the NIS. Even if Shinwoo had gotten into a fight, without a report they had no reason to deploy. They wouldn't even know about the incident. For a moment, Shinwoo wondered if the police were monitoring him too. But that was impossible. He had even detected the NIS's meticulous surveillance. There was no chance he would miss anything less sophisticated from the police.
Which meant someone really had reported it. But who?
At the time, the area around Elena's house had been completely sealed off by the Chunsik Team's preliminary preparations. Not a single person had been allowed nearby, and the CCTVs had been hacked so no evidence remained.
Even as the propeller sounds drew closer, no suspect came to mind. Shinwoo frowned.
It was then.
"Sir Shinwoo."
"Yes?"
"Could you tell me exactly how you left the house this morning? In detail, if possible."
Team Leader Yoo Han-kyung seemed to have realized something as she looked at him. She had originally planned to meet him only in the afternoon, after the Chunsik Team finished their work. It was the weekend, after all. Yet Shinwoo had answered that he could come out immediately that morning. From that moment, Yoo Han-kyung had sensed something off. And now the final piece clicked into place.
"...I just left?"
Hearing his answer, she pressed a hand to her forehead.
"...What about your family? Don't tell me you left without saying a word to them?"
"Yes. Of course I did..."
I'm not a child, for crying out loud. But as he spoke, Shinwoo remembered his current situation. Just like Yoo Han-kyung, he put a hand to his own head.
That's right... This was that kind of world.
When he looked around, everyone—including Yoo Han-kyung and even Elena—was staring at him with wide eyes.
"A man leaves the house without saying a single word to his family! How dangerous is that?!"
"Ah, no. They were all asleep, so..."
Finding it utterly absurd, Elena grabbed Shinwoo's collar. The NIS, which had only just become his friend, had been willing to overlook it once.
"Then you should have woken them up even if it meant slapping them awake!"
Lee Do-youn, unable to stay silent any longer, outright suggested committing such an unfilial act. Shinwoo turned to her, wondering if she was insane, but her face showed not a trace of wrongdoing. On the contrary, every woman gathered in the living room seemed to fully agree.
"Even if you hit them, a light slap on the cheek would have sufficed..."
"I didn't mean for you to break their bones."
"At least give them a good flick on the forehead before leaving!"
"It's obvious. Your family must have reported you missing the moment they woke up and realized you were gone, Sir Shinwoo."
"No way... Even so, they wouldn't go that far..."
Right then, the loudspeaker blasted through everyone's ears. Even Shinwoo, who had been about to deny it, stopped mid-sentence at the sound of his mother's thunderous voice coming from outside the window.
The cause of this entire situation. It really had been him.
Every time his mother's voice rang out from outside, guilt kept Shinwoo's head bowed. He peeked through the curtained window to see what was happening outside. He swallowed hard.
'Insane...'
It had been like this at school too, but this was on another level. Helicopters and heavily armed units—he'd seen those before, so fine. But soldiers carrying rifles and tanks? Wasn't that a bit excessive? The scene looked like the middle of a battlefield. Even in his previous life, he had never taken cover in such a hopeless situation. It was a perfect siege from all directions.
Amid it all, he spotted his mother sobbing uncontrollably among the soldiers and police. Chaewon and Mijin were holding her tightly, the three of them crying together in perfect mother-daughter harmony.
He was seriously going to lose his mind.
Elena's house was now completely surrounded. By the greatest military force this nation could muster—a collaboration between the Republic of Korea Armed Forces and the police.
But it hadn't been a carefully planned, systematic operation. It had simply started when his mother woke up in the morning, discovered Shinwoo was missing, and panicked. Her calls had reached the right people, and since it was the weekend, the nearby artillery unit that had been enjoying some free time received news of her son's kidnapping.
Under normal circumstances, the female soldiers would have preferred desertion over showing up for a fully armed weekend operation. But the regiment commander in charge had said:
"Just so you know, only volunteers will be accepted."
"......"
"And the kidnapped child is apparently a boy two or three years younger than all of you."
"Waaaaaaaaah!!"
In a barracks culture controlled with iron discipline—where they rarely even saw photos of men, let alone had time for personal relief—the news that they could see a real, living man in the flesh turned them into fully armed soldiers in seconds. They even applied full camouflage cream.
It was a unit without real combat experience, yet their morale was so high it seemed they could unify the peninsula if war broke out immediately.
In front of the surrounded house, they were locked in a staring contest with the riot police, each side hoping the kidnapped man would rely on them more.
'Even in the middle of this, they're still fighting over factions...'
The regiment commander of the dispatched artillery unit and Police Captain Ha Min-ah, who was jointly commanding the riot police, both let out heavy sighs. They should have been working together smoothly, but these energetic twenty-somethings were so fierce that even speaking to them felt dangerous. If it had only been the lower ranks, it might have been manageable.
Ha Min-ah exchanged glances with the artillery regiment commander. Both women sighed again at the same time.
Behind them, standing with Shinwoo's family, were two people glaring at each other—individuals neither of them dared to stop or calm down.
One was the current Commissioner of the Korean National Police Agency. The other was a four-star General, the top commander at the Ministry of National Defense.
"You damn rebel bastards! Stay right there and don't move a muscle! I'm driving a tank over there right now and blowing all your heads off!"
The person commanding an entire artillery regiment was none other than one of the nation's highest generals. The watching Police Commissioner shot back,
"Do you understand, kidnappers? The tables have turned. You mistook our continued goodwill for a right. It's not that we lack the power to enter."
She refused to back down. In reality, it was practically a small-scale war breaking out in the heart of Seoul.
Ha Min-ah and the regiment commander looked at each other for a moment.
"By the way, was it really necessary to bring tanks?"
"Yes. The General ordered us to bring them... Though bringing a helicopter for the police side seems a bit excessive too, doesn't it?"
"Ah, the law changed last year, so the Commissioner ordered us to bring it."
The two executives smiled bitterly at the aggressive commands coming from these old maids who had never once held a man's hand.
...They just wanted to submit their resignations.
Meanwhile, Shinwoo's family was openly expressing dissatisfaction with the two old maids' aggressive orders.
"What if our son gets hit by a tank shell?!"
"Ma'am, we won't actually fire. These are all for intimidation purposes..."
"What if the criminal treats Shinwoo even more violently because of your threats?"
"In that case, our riot police suppression team will handle..."
"Grandmas! Anyway, even if our brother dies, you people won't take any responsibility!"
The veteran leaders of each organization, completely at the mercy of the man's family. They had rushed over after hearing the news while nearby, but the world was no longer like the old days.
To women who had lived through the Korean War, the kidnapping of a man had once required this level of response as standard.
Flamethrowers. Incendiary bombs. Various chemical weapons.
In the past, when a man was kidnapped from a village, they would begin by using those tools to reduce the village population by half.
"The times have improved quite a bit..."
"At least they didn't deploy fighter jets..."
The two old veterans, who had tried to hold a young man's hand with their wrinkled fingers only to grow dejected, looked downcast. When Mijin threw a tearful tantrum, even the tank seemed embarrassed as it lowered its barrel.
It was then.
"Commissioner! General! Look over there!"
A soldier—or perhaps a riot policeman—shouted. At those words, everyone's eyes turned in that direction.
The door of the single-family home opened. Everyone held their breath, aiming guns, weapons, and barrels.
And the two people who emerged were Shinwoo and Elena, standing side by side, holding hands with tense expressions.
Chaewon's face darkened instantly.