Ryu Yeon-woo and Han Hae-un
That same day, on Jeju Island.
The cherry blossoms that had once been in full bloom were falling, and even the yellow canola flowers were gradually wilting.
A sturdy-built man was climbing one of Jeju’s oreum at a slow, deliberate pace.
"So, I am me, that's for sure. But if this is a past life, it doesn't feel all that distant either…"
Muttering constantly to himself as he tried to sort through his thoughts, he kept putting one foot in front of the other.
This was none other than Prosecutor Han Hae-un, the man who had collapsed on the very day Yeon-woo won the Rookie of the Year award.
The new memories that had flooded back that day were so chaotic that Han Hae-un had tacked his accumulated vacation days onto a medical leave and come down to Jeju for a few days of rest.
"I died two years ago, but…"
It felt as if someone else's memories had been cut into fragments and shoved into his head.
What Han Hae-un remembered were the memories of an NIS agent named Baek Yu-hyeon.
The most vivid recollection of all was the moment of his death.
It had happened on the exact same day Han Hae-un himself had died of a cerebral hemorrhage and come back to life.
Inside a safe house in a Middle Eastern operational zone, Yu-hyeon had been assisting his superior—Team Leader Jeon Su-hwan—with intelligence gathering when gunfire and explosions suddenly crackled through his headphones.
Static—
"Team Leader! Team Leader Jeon!"
……
No matter how many times he called, Jeon Su-hwan, linked by radio, never answered.
Sensing that something had gone terribly wrong, Yu-hyeon hastily destroyed the materials he had been investigating on his own, then opened the safe-house door to escape. That was the last thing he ever did.
Though the memory was missing from Han Hae-un's mind, he could only assume a waiting sniper had taken the shot.
Because those memories were so vivid, Han Hae-un felt that Baek Yu-hyeon was another version of himself.
Everything else that surfaced was fragmentary; he could not clearly deduce what operation they had been running or what relationships he had shared with the people who appeared in those memories.
One thing among those fragments was certain: the Pilates instructor named Jeong Hae-min whom he had gone to investigate was the wife of the deceased Baek Yu-hyeon.
"For now, the only solid connection I can investigate is still Jeon Su-hwan."
During his leave, using the memories that had returned, he had taken the risk of logging into the NIS system with Baek Yu-hyeon's access codes.
Fortunately, the codes were still active.
He had tried to gather leads on Jeon Su-hwan and Baek Yu-hyeon, but even inside the agency the matter was classified; almost nothing came up.
Desperately combing through everything, he finally found one document.
It was an approval form requesting confirmation of a report.
Looking at the details, he saw that for some reason it had been rejected midway and never reached the upper echelons.
Public phone in Daejeon, Grade-A report, CCTV analysis result: elderly man estimated to be in his seventies? Whereabouts unknown.
No attachments explained the reported content; that was all the information available.
Yet Han Hae-un was certain.
"…Team Leader Jeon Su-hwan. He reincarnated into someone else's body."
Just like me.
The only Grade-A agent Baek Yu-hyeon had ever known was Jeon Su-hwan.
There were not many Grade-A agents inside the NIS to begin with.
In popular media they were commonly known as "black agents"—the highest-tier human intelligence operatives.
Case officers. In plain terms, the ones in charge of field operatives.
A report filed under a Grade-A agent's cipher code had simply been dropped?
That was impossible.
This had to be an approval form requesting confirmation of a report that had come in from an agent already confirmed dead.
The moment he obtained the information, Han Hae-un threw the laptop he had used into the sea off Jeju.
After finishing the shoot for Park Kang-woo's scene, Director Park Chan-hong approached the actors who were gazing at the sunset.
"Everyone, let's go finish strong."
To film the final scene of the movie, the extra who would handle the driving, Han So-hyun, Maseok Do, and Ryu Yeon-woo climbed into a motorboat; a second boat carrying the staff also put out to sea.
Once they were a fair distance from the harbor, the director's voice came over a megaphone from the neighboring boat.
"Ready, everyone?"
"Yes!"
"Here we go. Last scene—ready, action!"
At the director's cue the cameras began rolling.
The men who had climbed down the ladder boarded the motorboats prepared at the stern of the freighter.
Jennifer, waiting in the boat, opened her mouth with a surly expression.
"What took you so long? Too much sea wind ruins the skin."
"What do you mean, long? It was over in no time."
Pierre shrugged as he answered the grumbling Jennifer.
"This—should I do the honors?"
Just then Kwak Ji-chul lifted the switch and asked Pierre.
"No. I can't let you steal the biggest fun."
He snatched the switch, raised it high, and pressed it.
BOOM—
The explosives the "Junk Shop" team had planted detonated, blowing apart the empty bridge.
"Ugh!"
At the roar and the blast of heat, everyone in the boat ducked their heads at once.
Of course they were only acting in the spot where the CG explosion would later be inserted.
At the same time, the scene of Park Kang-woo collapsing that they had filmed earlier would be cut in.
"Wow, the firepower is insane."
"You think the Junk Shop guy ever does anything half-assed? Always rock-solid."
The boat pulled away across the water.
"Hey, buddy. Where should we drop you?"
Pierre Choi asked, looking at Kwak Ji-chul.
Kwak Ji-chul answered with an ambiguous face.
"I don't know."
Jennifer laughed at the sight.
"Aha-ha. I knew it. This old man got a taste for the game, didn't he?"
She jabbed Kwak Ji-chul in the ribs with her elbow as if she knew everything.
Watching them, Pierre let out a short snort of laughter.
"Get off whenever you feel like it. Nobody's going to complain if you don't."
The boat headed toward the sunset, leaving a lingering aftertaste.
Static—
Director Park Chan-hong's radio transmission crackled into Yeon-woo's boat.
— Okay. Cut! Filming of Master Plan is complete!
Busan. Han Hae-un's apartment.
I've confirmed he's alive, but how the hell do you find a black agent who's deliberately gone to ground?
It was only a theory, yet Han Hae-un believed Jeon Su-hwan was alive the same way he himself was.
After that, however, he could not catch a single lead.
Just then an advertisement playing on the television he had turned on to break the silence snagged his ear.
"Deyandor?"
Han Hae-un reflexively looked at the television.
It was a word he had definitely heard in the conversations with Team Leader Jeon Su-hwan that had been appearing in his dreams lately.
Normally a man of few words, Team Leader Jeon had shown unusual interest whenever the talk turned to movies or musicals.
Among them, the musical he had always made a point of seeing whenever he was posted to a new country—if the chance arose—was Deyandor.
Han Hae-un concentrated as hard as he could, trying to recall the dream content that hovered just out of reach.
"So that makes you an n-time viewer, Team Leader?"
— n-time? Is that what they call it these days?
Baek Yu-hyeon, bored, kept talking to Jeon Su-hwan without pause.
"What kind of charm does that musical have?"
— Charm, huh…
After a brief pause, Jeon Su-hwan continued.
It was probably the longest thing Baek Yu-hyeon had ever heard him say.
— In Deyandor, the heroine, despairing of her love, stabs herself with a knife and dies. In that moment every emotion a human being can feel passes across her face. If you watch that expression from the highest terrace seats on the right, it's wondrous.
"The right terrace!"
Han Hae-un powered on his laptop and logged into a ticketing site.
"If the Team Leader goes, it'll definitely be the opening performance."
He hurried through the ticket purchase.
Once his leave ended, Han Hae-un devoted every free moment outside of the cases he handled at work to searching for Jeon Su-hwan from home.
He had decided that on the day he and Jeon Su-hwan had both died—and the day he himself had been revived—Jeon Su-hwan had miraculously reincarnated into the body of someone who had died that same day, and he had built his investigation around that premise.
But the volume of nationwide records was simply too vast, so he had started with Daejeon, where the report had originated.
"Ha… maybe I guessed wrong."
Perhaps, because it was a transportation hub, the person had drifted into Daejeon from somewhere else.
No matter how hard he looked, nothing turned up.
In reality Ryu Yeon-woo had made his extreme choice in Seoul, so finding the link that led to the subsequent move to Daejeon was difficult.
Two weeks later, Han Hae-un arrived at the National Theater of Korea to see the musical Deyandor.
No—not to see Deyandor, but to find Jeon Su-hwan.
He deliberately arrived thirty minutes early and entered.
"May I check your ticket?"
"Yes, here."
When Han Hae-un handed over the ticket, the staff member checked it and bowed.
"Enjoy the performance."
Han Hae-un headed straight for the highest terrace seats Jeon Su-hwan had mentioned—Section B on the third floor.
The terrace was still empty.
"Haa… this isn't a wild goose chase, is it?"
He had come clutching at straws.
Of course Team Leader Jeon might not come at all, and there was no guarantee he had even reincarnated the way Han Hae-un had.
Meeting Team Leader Jeon would not solve anything either.
He had simply followed wherever fate seemed to be pulling him.
About ten minutes later a middle-aged woman entered the terrace seats.
The terrace could hold five people in total.
…There's no law saying he had to reincarnate as a man.
Han Hae-un began examining the woman out of the corner of his eye as discreetly as possible.
She was dressed rather expensively, yet she looked like an ordinary middle-aged woman.
"Mom."
A young woman entered next.
"Did you park okay?"
"Yeah, the lot was big so it was easy."
The daughter sat beside her mother, and then a middle-aged man with a slight paunch came in.
This time the dad?
Because he was roughly the same age as the first woman, Han Hae-un thought they might be family.
But the man walked straight past them and sat down next to Han Hae-un, so they were not together.
Judging by the fact that he had taken the remaining seat between the middle-aged woman and Han Hae-un, he seemed to be a solo audience member.
Could this be him? He looks older than the original Team Leader Jeon, though.
Han Hae-un himself had reincarnated at roughly the same age, but there was no rule that Jeon Su-hwan had to do the same.
Soon the performance time approached; looking down into the theater he saw that the first- and second-floor seats were filling up, and the house lights gradually dimmed.
Besides me, only those three? The most likely candidate is the middle-aged man next to me.
No choice. He would have to gamble.
The theater grew steadily darker.
Everyone fell quiet, focusing on the stage where the musical was about to begin.
At that moment Han Hae-un began speaking in a voice loud enough for everyone inside the third-floor terrace to hear.
"Team Leader Jeon Su-hwan, do you remember that time near Yazd when the GPS died and we got lost in the desert?"
The incident near the city of Yazd, located in the middle of Iran's central desert, when their Humvee had broken down and, to make matters worse, the GPS had failed as well.
"Ahem!"
The middle-aged man in the next seat cleared his throat, signaling that etiquette should be observed in the face of Han Hae-un's sudden outburst.
"The desert on that last day was pretty cold too, wasn't it? It's me, Baek Yu-hyeon."
"It's about to start. Let's keep it down."
The middle-aged man scolded him with an expression that said, What kind of nonsense is this? while the mother and daughter beside him glared as if they had just witnessed some bizarre creature.
…I guessed wrong after all.
Just as he was about to apologize, something cold and hard pressed against Han Hae-un's neck.