Improvisation
The moment Yeon-woo stepped outside, Son Jin-uk and Jeong Cheol-min came straight at him.
"Aigoo, mister. We're going to need to search you for a moment."
"We've received a tip that you're carrying something suspicious."
Son Jin-uk launched into the bit with shameless flair, reaching out, and Jeong Cheol-min picked it up without missing a beat. Yeon-woo laced his fingers together over his head with a look of helpless resignation.
"Are you two police officers? I could have sworn I saw you somewhere as a taxi driver."
Yeon-woo glanced at Jeong Cheol-min and referenced Dipangdal, the taxi driver role from White Blood, drawing a snort of laughter from the older man.
"And I'm really ticklish… especially around the ribs."
At those words, Son Jin-uk and Jeong Cheol-min's eyes drifted naturally toward his sides, and they began a thorough search from the breast pocket of his checkered shirt all the way down to his pants pockets.
But Yeon-woo had anticipated exactly that. He already had the card gripped in his hand.
By deliberately mentioning his ribs, he had funneled their attention onto the checkered shirt, ensuring the two men who rushed him would start their search with his clothes.
Magicians always say that the most important element of a trick is neither sleight of hand nor the gimmick itself, but misdirection.
It is the deliberate craft of deciding where an audience looks and what they think—inducing a calculated error that steers their gaze and their reasoning exactly where the magician wants them to go.
They patted Yeon-woo down from head to toe and found nothing. Son Jin-uk and Jeong Cheol-min exchanged a look.
"Cheol-min hyung. There's nothing in this kid's pockets."
"Hmm. Yeon-woo, open your hands."
Yeon-woo wriggled the fingers still resting atop his head and, in a flash, slid the card from his palm into the gap between his middle and ring fingers, flipping it onto the back of his hand.
Every bit of it was captured cleanly by the camera mounted above the doorway of PD Ju's office, where Yeon-woo was standing.
With a perfectly calm smile, Yeon-woo held his hands out, palms facing forward.
"Did you two spend your school days shaking down your classmates for lunch money? That was way too natural."
"We'll know once we find something, won't we?"
Just then Yeon-woo shifted into a suspicious stance, planting his weight on one leg and lightly pressing the toes of his right foot into the floor.
"Why are you suddenly fidgeting with your foot? That's shady."
"We've been filming forever—my foot's about to cramp."
In the brief instant their eyes dropped, Yeon-woo transferred the card from the back of his hand back into his palm and flipped his hand over.
"I told you, there's nothing. I already failed the mission."
The camera caught every lightning-fast movement as the card traveled between his palm and the back of his hand while he turned his hands over to show them empty.
Yeon-woo stretched with a long, weary yawn, and in the moment he raised his arms as if simply working out a kink, he swiftly stuck the card from his palm onto the back of his neck.
"Hwaaam."
"He steps outside and the first thing he says is he already failed a mission. Man, this is getting real suspicious."
Yeon-woo undid the buttons at his own cuffs and rolled up his sleeves to show them bare.
With the card already stuck to the back of his neck, he could freely use both hands without any problem.
And while Son Jin-uk and Jeong Cheol-min were locked onto his hands, the camera mounted above the door captured the Hi-Pass card stuck to the back of Yeon-woo's neck, gleaming under the fluorescent lights in perfect clarity.
Viewers marveled at Yeon-woo's lightning speed and sheer nerve—and at the same time, the sight of Jeong Cheol-min and Son Jin-uk being thoroughly played while standing right in front of him sent them into spontaneous laughter.
Then Jeong Cheol-min, who had been tilting his head in confusion the whole time, circled around behind Yeon-woo.
There was a fair height difference between Jeong Cheol-min and Yeon-woo, but there was no way he would miss a card stuck to the back of someone's neck.
With Son Jin-uk in front and Jeong Cheol-min behind, there was nowhere left to hide.
No choice, then.
Yeon-woo rolled his neck left and right as if working out the stiffness, and with that motion peeled the card free so it slipped down inside his shirt and began sliding along his back.
At the same instant, he timed it perfectly and tugged the front of his shirt taut with one hand.
The card sliding down inside caught against the fabric pulled tight from the front and stopped dead in the middle of his back.
With a completely casual expression, Yeon-woo rubbed his stomach with the hand still holding the shirt and turned to Son Jin-uk.
"Man, why am I so hungry all of a sudden. Aren't you getting a little peckish, hyung?"
"Hmm, I'm fine."
While Jeong Cheol-min completed a full circle around him, Yeon-woo looked over at Han Byeol and Jeong Su-yeon, who were sitting on the sofa watching the show.
"You guys hungry too?"
"A little bit!"
"Yeah. Me too, just a tiny bit?"
As Han Byeol and Jeong Su-yeon's voices briefly pulled Jeong Cheol-min's attention, Yeon-woo let go of the shirt.
The card slid smoothly down his back. Just before it hit the floor, he twisted his body slightly, caught it on the top of his foot so it made no sound, then dropped it and stepped on it.
The turn from catching it on his foot left him naturally facing the other way, and he pointed toward PD Ju's office behind him as he spoke.
"Want me to ask the production crew if they've got any ramen and boil some up? Coming over to hang out and making late-night ramen is basically the sacred rule, right?"
"Hmm, I'm not really that hungry."
Every single one of these movements linked together like water flowing downhill. To the actors on screen, they looked like ordinary, everyday gestures.
But the YouTube subscribers watching from the overhead camera angle could only sit with their mouths hanging open as they watched Yeon-woo deftly shuttle the Hi-Pass card this way and that, always just out of the other actors' line of sight, toying with them the entire time.
Hearing Son Jin-uk insist he wasn't hungry, Yeon-woo narrowed his eyes at him.
"Hyung, it kind of feels like you keep trying to stop me from going into the kitchen… What did you hide in there?"
"Me? No way!"
Son Jin-uk waved both hands in frantic denial. Yeon-woo nudged Jeong Cheol-min beside him.
"What do you think, Teacher?"
"Hmm. Suspicious."
Son Jin-uk stared at him, looking thoroughly aggrieved.
"Senior, is everything suspicious to you?"
And as Yeon-woo walked forward naturally, he shoved the card he'd been standing on with his back foot.
It skidded across the floor and slipped cleanly underneath a display cabinet against the wall.
I'll have to fish that out later with a hanger or something once everyone's asleep.
Then he bolted toward the kitchen, shouting over his shoulder.
"If there's anything car-related in the kitchen, I'm throwing it outside!"
Son Jin-uk, who had been denying everything, took off after him.
"I told you there's nothing in the kitchen!"
The way he sprinted after Yeon-woo looked, to anyone watching, exactly like a man who had hidden something in the kitchen.
Meanwhile, completely indifferent to whatever the others were doing, Han Byeol kept sneaking glances toward the bathroom—where she had stashed her own air freshener.
And with that scene, the first week's release came to an end.
Every pair of eyes in the conference room turned toward Yeon-woo.
Among them, the mouths of Jeong Cheol-min and Son Jin-uk—the two who had just been robbed blind with their eyes wide open—hung especially open.
"Huh. What the hell did I just watch…?"
"Is this kid Yeon-woo a full-blown card shark or what?"
Magician W, who ran a YouTube channel built around performing street magic for passersby, rewatched the Saebyeol Family video dozens of times.
Even breaking it down frame by frame, he couldn't stop marveling.
Requests from subscribers begging him to analyze the Saebyeol Family magic sequence were already flooding the community tab of his YouTube channel.
Even without the requests, he had planned to analyze it anyway.
"Hello, everyone. Magician W here. Just a few hours ago, a YouTube variety video dropped featuring an incredible sequence from actor Ryu Yeon-woo—and we're diving straight into the analysis!"
He slowed the footage and began drawing yellow lines with his mouse over the actors' eyelines and Yeon-woo's hand positions, explaining each move one by one.
"You see this right here? The sleight of hand Ryu Yeon-woo uses in this section isn't some flashy, high-difficulty technique. If you're a viewer who studies magic, you already know what this move is. But the important part is that all of this is live."
Then Magician W shook his head.
"Moving a card from palm to back of the hand, then to the nape of the neck, then inside the clothes and down to the floor—all of those moves are actually pretty easy for a skilled magician. But that's when you've prepared and stepped onto a stage."
There was nothing flashy or complex about the technique.
What there was, however, was perfectly timed misdirection and a seamless, natural flow of movement.
"Wow. I never expected I'd be uploading a video like this, but constructing improvisation on the fly—reading an opponent's unpredictable movements and making split-second decisions—that's an entirely different dimension of skill."
It wasn't just magicians. Ordinary viewers were equally floored by the astonishing sequence.
Someone immediately clipped the scene, and it began spreading across social media.
Meanwhile, having finished watching the variety show, Jeong Cheol-min and Son Jin-uk were already making plans for another round of drinks that evening.
"Senior, we clinking glasses again tonight?"
"Sounds good."
Watching Son Jin-uk make a little clinking motion with his mouth and an imaginary glass, Yeon-woo shook his head.
"Hyung. That just now was peak middle-aged-man energy."
"I'm basically mid-thirties next year. Middle-aged is accurate."
"Yeon-woo, you want to join us for a drink?"
Yeon-woo shook his head at Jeong Cheol-min's offer.
"I've got some things to take care of at home tonight. Let's drink together another time."
"Hss. Suspicious. What are you always rushing home for these days. You hiding a girlfriend at your place?"
Yeon-woo smiled at that.
Not a girlfriend—but he did have several men stashed away.
And not at home, either. Right upstairs on the fifth floor of the building he was standing in.
Lately he and Han Hae-un had been sorting through the intelligence the agents kept bringing in.
People in the prosecution, the police, and the military high command with connections to Baeksol.
In other words, they were mapping out Baeksol's lower organizational chart—so they could cut out the rot.
"Anyway, you two don't overdo it with the drinking."
"Yeah, yeah."
Since the sorting work required Yeon-woo's presence, Han Hae-un was waiting at home.
While he waited, he had been watching Saebyeol Family live on YouTube—and his mouth had fallen open just as wide as everyone else's.
"Did they seriously teach agents stuff like that back in the Team Leader's era…?"
He tilted his head, then pulled a credit card from his wallet.
Han Hae-un had been through plenty of intelligence operations himself and had a fair amount of confidence in his own hand skills.
Standing in front of the full-length mirror, he tried to mimic the moves Yeon-woo had made on screen—flicking the card from palm to the back of his hand and back again as fast as he could.
Thud—
He almost had it for a second, then the card dropped to the floor without fail.
"Hss. How did he even do that. And he pulled that off as pure field improvisation on the spot?"
When you see something that cool, how are you supposed to not try it yourself?
Until Yeon-woo got home and called him, Han Hae-un's fumbling continued in front of the mirror.