The Scent of Manipulation
The life sciences building in the late morning was nothing like the world Ha Yul usually moved through. The corridors were brightly lit, students hurried past, and every time the automatic doors opened, faint traces of cool air, coffee, and paper drifted out. No scent of blood from the field, no metallic tang from underground isolation chambers, no reek of alcohol and sweat from the night. This was a daytime research space. A place where people who were still intact gathered to analyze a world that had not yet completely broken.
Chae-won naturally took the lead. Calm, yet moving with the unhesitating pace of someone entering familiar territory. Her long, wavy black hair swayed gently over her shoulders and back, and even under the cold lighting, her soft profile somehow looked warm. At the end of the inner corridor, in front of a door that required an access card, Chae-won swiped her student ID. With an electronic chime the door opened, releasing a deeper chill and the hum of machinery.
As Ha Yul stepped inside, the first thing she saw was a specimen refrigerator. Through the glass door, neatly arranged containers—some submerged in liquid, others sealed. On the wall beside it hung a map of Seoul divided into districts, covered in multicolored pins and sticky notes. Redevelopment zones, sewers, abandoned factories, outer mountain ranges, underground ventilation shafts, areas with frequent missing-person reports. The opposite wall displayed drone photographs taken from above, while several monitors on the central desk showed GIS analysis screens. It was still a student lab, not a fully professional facility. One side of the bookshelf held textbooks and printed materials piled in disarray, alongside a coffee pot, cup noodles, and a half-eaten energy bar.
Su-min smiled first. “Welcome to the monster research lab.” She spoke as if she were the owner of the room.
Ha Yul slowly looked around. “Cleaner than I expected.”
“Well, it smells less foul than an actual scene,” Chae-won replied, heading to her seat and opening her laptop. Another monitor lit up, expanding the GIS display to show the full map of Seoul.
Ha Yul watched her back for a moment. The woman she had seen at the bar, the woman she had seen in bed, and the woman now sitting before the data were the same face, yet each carried a slightly different atmosphere. Quiet, but sharp in her own domain.
“Where was yesterday’s incident?” Chae-won asked, turning the screen.
Ha Yul approached the monitor and pointed to a corner of the Jongro Redevelopment Area. “Here.”
Chae-won marked it immediately. A single red dot appeared. Soon, other dots materialized on the screen—blue, yellow, black.
When Ha Yul narrowed her eyes, not yet understanding their meaning, Chae-won explained. “Previous mutant emergence locations.”
“Only the Jongro district?” Ha Yul asked.
“Centered on the redevelopment zone. Compiled from CCTV footage posted on news and community sites, plus civilian reports.”
Ha Yul’s gaze shifted slightly. This was different from reading scents and footprints on the ground. From above, gathering scattered traces onto a single map and searching for what people had missed.
Soon, faint lines appeared between the dots.
“Do you see a pattern?” Chae-won asked. Ha Yul stared silently at the screen. The lines that had been moving along the outskirts of the redevelopment zone suddenly bent downward at certain points—not along roads, but through building basements. Surface emergences would cut off midway, only to resume in another district. To ordinary eyes it might look random, but not to Ha Yul’s.
“Underground passages.”
Chae-won nodded. “That’s right. They’re moving through the underground of the redevelopment zone.”
Thin gray lines spread like a net beneath clusters of old buildings. Some were sealed, some open, some erased from official blueprints yet preserved in past field records. “Mutants like places like this,” Chae-won said. “Dark, warm, or simply deserted.”
Ha Yul muttered while studying the monitor. “So that’s why it came up through the utility floor.”
“Probably,” Chae-won answered. “Before fully emerging aboveground, it would make a good intermediate hiding spot.”
The explanation fit the Jongro incident perfectly—ventilation ducts, utility floors, shafts, the mutant climbing upward. Without realizing it, Ha Yul leaned closer to the monitor.
Then Chae-won spoke. “But there’s something strange.”
She opened another window. A graph. “This is the typical movement pattern of a rampaging mutant.” She pointed at the screen with her fingertip. “Once it goes berserk, it charges toward prey, then stops.”
Ha Yul watched quietly. Chae-won brought up a similar estimated route graph beside it, modeled after yesterday’s incident. Almost no stopping time. More passage points than feeding points. It resembled something heading toward a predetermined destination rather than a beast chasing prey.
“It looks like it’s searching for something. Probably acting on reason rather than impulse or instinct like bloodlust or appetite.”
Yet the very name “rampaging mutant” implied that such creatures should have no reason left—assuming they were naturally occurring.
The lab fell silent for a moment. Staring at the screen, Ha Yul spoke in a low voice. “Someone is controlling the mutants?”
“It’s possible,” Chae-won replied without jumping to conclusions. She never stated anything she could not be certain of. Yet she had circled around and reached the answer anyway. Ha Yul had not told her the full truth of the Jongro incident, but Chae-won had gone as far as her data allowed.
Su-min suddenly stood up. “Wait a second.” She walked to the bookshelf on the opposite side of the lab. Among the life sciences materials were file boxes that had somehow wedged themselves in as if they belonged. The labels were eclectic: urban legends, unofficial reports, internet community captures, cult cases, folk variations. Su-min pulled out several with practiced ease and dropped them onto the desk with a thud. One cover caught the eye: Blood God Worship Group. Mutant Deification Cult. Guiin Appearance Faith.
Ha Yul’s brow furrowed slightly. “What is this?”
Su-min answered casually. “Monster fan club.”
Ha Yul was momentarily speechless. She had heard of such things before, but still found them hard to believe. Seeing her expression, Su-min laughed. “They really exist.” She opened one file and slid a photograph forward. A red crystal pattern drawn on the back of a neck.
Ha Yul’s eyes narrowed. “This is……”
Su-min reacted at once. “You recognize it?”
Without taking her gaze from the image, Ha Yul said, “I saw it yesterday.”
Both Su-min and Chae-won turned to her at the same time. “Really?” Su-min asked.
Ha Yul nodded. “Instead of a drawing, they had embedded an artificial blood crystal in the back of the neck.”
The playfulness faded from Su-min’s face—just for a moment, but the researcher’s interest rose more clearly. “This is a pretty old urban legend.” She flipped the file to show the title. “Blood Crystal Ritual.”
Ha Yul rolled the words over in her mind. Su-min continued. “The story that blood condensed into crystals can push humans to the ‘next stage.’”
Chae-won immediately countered, “That’s just a cult.”
“Cults are usually started by people whose origins are unknown,” Su-min said with a shrug. “And the strange thing is, these documents keep appearing everywhere. Not just some crazy guy on the internet, but different groups using similar symbols.”
Ha Yul picked up the file herself. The red crystal pattern on the back of the neck. Ascension to the next stage. The gate to Guiin through the blooming of blood. The words were crude and fanatical, yet beneath that crudeness lay traces of someone who had actually witnessed the real thing.
“Summarize,” Ha Yul said quietly.
Su-min and Chae-won both looked at her. Chae-won spoke first. “The mutants’ movement patterns may be artificial.”
Su-min immediately followed. “Society is spreading faith in blood crystals and Guiin.”
Ha Yul added the final piece. “And yesterday, we found a blood crystal that an outsider had artificially implanted in an actual mutant’s neck.”
They looked at one another like people who had entered the same room through different doors.
“Wow.” Chae-won lowered her eyes for a moment before speaking slowly. “This seems like quite a big incident.”
Ha Yul muttered while closing the file. “That’s why I didn’t like it.”
“What didn’t you like?” Su-min asked.
Ha Yul glanced toward the window. Beyond the lab’s glass, the ordinary exterior of a university building, late-morning sunlight, and a few passing students were visible. “I could smell someone pulling strings.”
Following the analysis of the research institute’s processes, the movement patterns and cult documents now continued on the university lab monitors. It seemed someone was deliberately spreading stories, and others were trying to prove them through actual experiments. Su-min crossed her arms and perched on the edge of the desk. “Unnie.”
“What.”
Su-min smiled. “This is interesting.”
Chae-won sighed. “Su-min.”
“I’m not saying it lightly.” Su-min’s face was smiling, but her eyes were not. “Shall we investigate together?”
It could have sounded like a joke, but she was serious. Chae-won quietly added, “……If I can just provide the data properly, I can help too.”
Ha Yul looked between the two of them. It was a strange feeling. These were the same two women who had been rolling around in the same bed last night. The same two who had lain together under sunlight this morning. Now they were offering to dig into the case with her.
“It’s dangerous.”
Su-min answered at once. “You’re fine with it, though?”
“Because it’s my job—”
“How do you think we’d feel if you came back covered in blood?”
When Ha Yul fell silent, Chae-won spoke as well. “And we’re already involved. You told us yourself, didn’t you?”
Ha Yul realized how light and careless her own mouth had been. “More than anything…… there are suspicious circumstances on the academic side too.”
Ha Yul turned her gaze. “What do you mean.”
Chae-won flipped through several more windows on her laptop. Documents appeared—research project lists, budget tables, lists of partner institutions. “Lately, mutant biology data has a lot of funding,” she said. “Most of it is collaborative research with the Moorim Agency. There are almost no projects run solely by universities.”
Su-min cut in from the side. “Where there’s money, sponsorship follows. Especially the dangerous stuff.”
Chae-won nodded. “Mutant specimen management, movement pattern analysis, urban ecology prediction, stabilization drug response testing…… these kinds of projects receive large grants.” She added in an even tone, “And most of the funding comes from corporations.”
Ha Yul repeated, “Corporations?”
Su-min tapped the file on the desk with her fingertip. “Moorim Agency partner corporations.”
“For example, Ga-ram Bio.”
Moorim Agency collaboration. Biotechnology specializing in mutant data and research grants. Blood crystals and processes. The moment a corporate name was placed over these words, the suspicion grew heavier.
Su-min looked at Ha Yul’s face and grinned. “Now the smell’s getting stronger, isn’t it?”
Ha Yul did not answer. Instead, she looked again at the map of Seoul on Chae-won’s monitor. Underground passages. Redevelopment zone. Moving mutants. The red crystal symbol on the file. The night’s hunt was over, yet the daytime city had taken up the case. The fact that someone was pulling strings was finally beginning to take shape.