Torn Boundaries
Once the piercing siren fell silent, the campus square looked as though a different world had swallowed its center. Only moments earlier it had been lightly alive with the shuffle of student footsteps, bursts of laughter, late lunch plans, and the bustle of people hurrying between lectures. Now students stood frozen in various states of disbelief—one clutched a friend’s arm, face pale with denial; another checked her phone with trembling fingers to make sure the recording had actually captured what she’d seen; a third stumbled backward, horror finally catching up with her. Yet at the heart of it all, where a small patch of blood had seeped into the concrete around the fallen mutant and the Moorim Agency agents in black gloves formed a perfect circle, an unnatural quiet reigned. It was the kind of silence that descends when shock steals every voice at once.
The Moorim Agency’s special response team moved with practiced speed. They pushed back the crowd, strung fresh control lines, and coordinated via radio, their motions smooth and familiar. Still, Ha Yul could sense the tension coiled beneath that routine. Dealing with a blood crystal-implanted mutant in broad daylight on a university campus was no trivial matter. Especially not when a corporate collaboration seminar had just concluded in the very same building, its talking points still ringing in everyone’s ears while the nightmare it hinted at stepped into reality. This could not be written off as a simple cleanup.
Yu-jin approached Ha Yul at once. Her stride was as brisk and steady as ever, yet her eyes darted across the scene, missing nothing. She checked Ha Yul’s condition first. Specks of blood from slamming the mutant into the ground had spattered across the hem of her coat. Yu-jin’s gaze lingered on those stains before dropping to the creature sprawled on the pavement.
“Status?”
Ha Yul drew a steadying breath, then answered in a low voice, still tracing the memory of the fight.
“I didn’t kill it outright. I pinned the cervical vertebrae to suppress it, so it won’t be leaping up to attack anytime soon. Its limbs might twitch, but it won’t be able to stand on its own.”
Yu-jin gave a sharp nod. At her gesture, two team members moved in with practiced hands, securing the mutant with restraints and exposing the blood crystal embedded in its body. Their motions were swift and precise, yet Ha Yul caught the layer of caution beneath them. No one could be certain what reaction might occur the instant the crystal was disturbed. These were veterans who had handled similar scenes before—competent, but never complacent.
Lee Garam observed the entire process from a few paces away. She had radiated presence during the seminar, yet standing here without retreating even an inch made her seem even more imposing. Two bodyguard martial artists flanked her, but Garam herself showed not the slightest hesitation before the bloody tableau of mutant and concrete. She studied the fallen creature for a moment, then slowly lifted her gaze to Yu-jin.
“The Moorim Agency’s response is faster than I expected,” she remarked in a light tone that could almost have been taken as praise.
Yu-jin did not return the courtesy with a smile.
“When a blood… mutant is rampaging through the middle of campus, we cannot afford to be slow.”
Her reply was calm, yet it drew a clear line. As a national agency, their intervention was only natural—anything else would invite corporate meddling. Most of all, she had swallowed the word blood crystal at the last second.
The shouts of agents pushing students farther back, the crackle of radio static, and the distant clamor of people still trying to press closer continued, but above all those sounds the conversation between the two women rang with unnatural clarity.
“This mutant does not appear to be a simple berserker.”
“That seems like a rather hasty conclusion for an on-site assessment.”
“We held a seminar here today. One of the presentation topics was ‘behavioral pattern adjustment in response to external stimuli.’”
Yu-jin’s eyes narrowed. In time the students who had attended the seminar would begin asking questions; any attempt to silence them would only confirm the truth.
“You appear to have already reached a verdict.”
The question was indirect: How much do you actually know?
“Given my line of work, information reaches me whether I seek it or not.”
Garam’s voice remained perfectly even. Her gaze drifted once more to the mutant’s nape—precisely where the red crystal protruded. There was neither fear nor revulsion in her eyes, only the cool, clinical interest of a lead researcher confronting live data.
“This incident falls under Moorim Agency jurisdiction. Whether it occurred on campus or how much support your company provides to this school makes no difference. As a mutant-related event, custody of the specimen and all associated data will be secured by us.”
Yu-jin’s words carried absolute resolve not to relinquish control of the scene. Yet Garam showed no visible reaction. She accepted the statement as simple procedure, then—very briefly—the corner of her mouth curved in the faintest smile.
“Then allow me one question. Is this case not following the same pattern as the Jongro Redevelopment Area incident?”
Yu-jin’s expression tightened for a fraction of a second—too brief for ordinary students to notice, but Ha Yul caught it. Yu-jin only wore that look when an opponent knew more than expected. The Jongro incident had not been fully publicized; details circulated only through internal reports and cooperative laboratories. Yet Garam had spoken the name so naturally, as though it were common knowledge. Was it a guess, or did Garam Bio have informants inside the Agency?
Garam’s gaze shifted to Ha Yul. She said nothing at first, simply scanning Ha Yul’s hands, her weapon, and the blood on her coat in turn.
“You subdued it, correct?”
Ha Yul nodded.
“Its movements must have seemed off. From what I observed, unlike typical berserk mutants it did not attack people indiscriminately.”
Ha Yul drew a short breath.
“It was fleeing. It wasn’t trying to attack anyone—it was trying to reach somewhere.”
Her voice stayed low and level, yet the weight of those words shifted the atmosphere once more. Escape. Destination. Priority of movement. The seminar content and the laboratory hypothesis had just aligned with cold reality.
Garam’s eyes changed by the smallest degree. She looked like someone who had just confirmed on-site a conclusion she had already half expected.
Yu-jin cut in.
“That cannot be confirmed until the investigation is complete. Observation and judgment are not the same thing.”
Garam gave a light nod, as if she had anticipated the rebuke, and smiled as though she had merely voiced an innocent observation.
By then the Agency agents had loaded the mutant into a sealed transport capsule. Sunlight glistened across the bloodstains on the concrete while whispers continued to ripple through the crowd of students.
“Wasn’t that exactly what they talked about in the seminar?”
“This is insane—look at the video.”
The words kept drifting across the square. Fear and fascination braided together as people linked the corporate presentation they had just heard with the horror they had just witnessed.
Su-min, listening from behind, muttered under her breath.
“That footage is going to spread everywhere.”
Her tone was light and teasing as always, yet she had read the situation with pinpoint accuracy. Chae-won gave a quiet nod of agreement.
Ha Yul did not reply aloud, but inside she had reached the same conclusion. Too many eyes were watching.
Yu-jin was not blind to it either. She assessed the scene rapidly. Before the students could be fully contained, word would spread. Videos had almost certainly already escaped the perimeter. With a corporate representative caught in the same frame, this could no longer be buried as a simple campus accident.
Yu-jin exhaled sharply and ordered the mutant sent straight to the laboratory. The agents moved at once.
She turned back to Garam.
“Should your company submit a formal request for cooperation, we will review it.”
The words were courteous, yet their true meaning was clear: no information access for now.
Garam remained silent for a moment, seemingly lost in thought. Her gaze followed the receding transport capsule, then drifted slowly back to Ha Yul.
“Today’s campus incident was a rather fascinating case. You in particular.”
Ha Yul said nothing. Sometimes silence answered better than words.
Garam seemed to savor that silence. A paper-thin smile lingered at the corner of her lips as she added that they would surely meet again. The statement carried the weight of near-certainty.
With that she turned away, her attendants and bodyguards naturally closing ranks around her as they left the square. As the corporate vehicles pulled out of campus, the square’s ambient noise began to return—though it was no longer the same sound. Student voices still trembled with fear and excitement. Videos shot from a distance were almost certainly already climbing the internet. Even the cleaning crew arriving to scrub the blood moved with visible tension.
Fatigue and unease had settled into Yu-jin’s face.
“The additional specimen found in Jongro this time was similar. That makes three.”
Jongro Redevelopment Area. The center of campus. And now the third discovery Yu-jin had mentioned. Points that had seemed like isolated incidents were beginning to connect with unmistakable intent.
A brief silence fell. Su-min and Chae-won watched quietly from a few steps back.
Ha Yul looked at Yu-jin, drew one slow breath, and waited.
Yu-jin fixed her gaze on the road beyond the square, where Seoul’s daylight stretched onward, and spoke in a low voice.
“Someone is releasing these things inside the city.”
It was no longer mere speculation. To everyone standing at the scene, it had already become a visceral certainty. The stench of blood that once clung only to night alleys, redevelopment zones, and underground passages had now risen into the bright campus square in broad daylight.
More than anything, Ha Yul hated that truth. The smell of people deliberately placing monsters inside a city was far worse than the smell of monsters devouring people.
The sunlight remained blindingly bright. On countless student phones the scene from moments ago was already replaying on loop. It was far too bright a day—which only made the boundary stand out more sharply. The line between the ordinary world where people attended classes, ate lunch, and fell in love, and the dark underside where someone implanted blood crystals and set mutants loose. That boundary was thinner than anyone wanted to admit, and it had already been torn in more places than they cared to count.
Today’s incident in the square had simply shown everyone exactly where those tears lay.