The Calm Before the Storm
Hon's tears stopped, quite literally, in an instant.
His cheeks were still wet, but not a single part of his body moved — not even his eyelashes. As if someone had yanked the batteries out of a doll, Hon ceased everything at once, breathing included.
There was one clear, unmistakable change: the light vanished from his eyes.
The viewers found themselves holding their breath without meaning to.
The screen filled with pitch-black eyes.
There was no BGM at all. Only silence, and those black eyes existing within it.
...I'm scared.
A chill ran through the viewers. The childish face smeared with Kang Seok's blood was unsettling beyond words.
It's just a drama.
He was, without question, nothing more than a character on a screen. And yet, strangely enough, it felt as though Hon might come looking for them at any moment.
While the audience sat frozen as one, Hon's eyes moved, slow and unhurried. He gazed at Kang Seok's cooling corpse for a moment, then simply rose to his feet.
["Hey."]
["...?"]
["Take this back to my room. I'm heading straight to the lab."]
As he checked whether his broken right arm had knitted back together and gave the order to the agent beside him, he looked utterly composed. When the flustered agent failed to answer, Hon stopped rotating his wrist and furrowed his brow.
["Are you deaf?"]
["...No, sir. But if it's that—"]
["Would you rather call it a corpse? Fine, call it that then."]
Hon's voice was frigid. It was an unguarded way of speaking, as if he had stepped clean past some invisible line.
Agent Jang, who had been staring at Kang Seok's body with a stricken face, finally spoke.
["H. You—"]
["There's no time. Go straight back to the facility. We need to confirm whether Seok-hyung got what he wanted."]
Hon was about to brush straight past Agent Jang when he stopped dead. He tilted his head, then poked the man's cheek with a fingertip.
["Just so we're clear — don't play around with that. Got it?"]
A playful smile hung on his lips as he said it.
["If I finish the experiment, go to my room, and that thing isn't there — you're all dead. Understood?"]
Hon pointed at Jang Yoseok's cheek as he smiled. Jang Yoseok, dazed, raised a hand and followed the gesture to his own face. When he touched his cheek, a small smear of blood came away on his fingers.
The message Hon was delivering could not have been clearer.
I can kill you all now.
Jang Yoseok looked down at Kang Seok's body lying on the floor.
["Was this... what you wanted?"]
No answer came back to his question directed at the corpse. It felt, somehow, like a glimpse of his own future — and Jang Yoseok shut his eyes with a low groan.
That night, the facility staff finally understood.
["Agent Jang. What exactly... are we looking at right now?"]
["..."]
For better or for worse, they realized that Kang Seok's final gambit had worked exactly as intended.
["Shouldn't we give Agent Jang an actual executive title or something?"]
["Head of Operations? Please. The man handles his assignments this well — he's earned a directorship at the very least."]
["Haha, my mistake. You're quite right."]
The company's executives had gathered in the conference room, and warm, cheerful laughter flowed without pause. To their praise, Agent Jang answered with a stiff face.
["Thank you. By the way, about the report I submitted recently—"]
["Ah, hold on there, son. Don't be in such a rush."]
One of the executives cut him off with a chuckle.
["Dr. Kang did remarkable work, after all. Weren't you and he close since childhood? Your friend pulled off something extraordinary — you must be proud."]
Agent Jang pressed his lips shut to keep the revulsion down. The executives, blinded by profit, looked as though they had no intention of hearing a word he said.
["Who would have guessed the H Project would be this enormous a success? People are practically falling over themselves to invest in us — my secretary's been driven to wailing just sorting through the offers. It takes half a day just to organize them all, you know."]
["And that's all thanks to Dr. Kang."]
The executives exchanged satisfied smiles. Agent Jang held his silence.
...The results were real, no denying that.
Setting aside his grief over his friend's death, it was true that Kang Seok's passing had benefited H. Hon's abilities had broken past their limits and were growing stronger by the day.
The destructive power carried in Hon's blood had grown to an unimaginable scale. Where once a single drop of his blood could kill barely a dozen people, that number had now climbed to nearly a hundred. Which meant one vial of Hon's blood could casually wipe out tens of thousands.
The birth of a perfect killing machine.
While the executives wore their fat, pleased grins, Jang Yoseok's unease only swelled. And no wonder — it wasn't merely the destructive power of Hon's blood that had grown.
["I'm sorry to interrupt, but... what are your thoughts on the 'anomalous abilities of H' I reported last time?"]
["Ah, that."] One executive let out a booming laugh. ["I did read the report, but... aren't you being a touch oversensitive, Agent Jang?"]
["I share that view. Why insist on calling it an anomaly? This is the progress of the test subject we — that is, Dr. Kang — always dreamed of, finally realized."]
The executives' reactions were far too carefree.
["...This is not a matter to be dismissed so lightly."]
Agent Jang ground his teeth. If Kang Seok were still alive, perhaps they could afford to call it progress.
But what if the teeth of a dog without a leash kept sharpening day by day? What if no one alive could handle that dog?
Then it was nothing but the beginning of the end.
["Hon has begun controlling his own blood. That ability was never in any scenario we anticipated. The biggest problem is that we have no countermeasures. None!"]
Agent Jang's voice finally rose. His eyes brimmed with fear — the eyes of a man who had witnessed that scene with his own.
The night Kang Seok died, the moment Hon returned to the lab, he picked up a blade and drew it across his own arm.
A clean sweep—.
Without a flicker of hesitation, the blade split tender skin and blood welled up.
Drop. Drop. Drop.
Hon's blood fell toward the floor. He stared at it blankly, then slowly tilted his head.
And then came that scene.
At some point, the drops falling toward the floor began to move — slow, deliberate. One after another, the crimson beads started to rise into the air.
One drop. And another.
The beads defying gravity multiplied, until there was a whole constellation of them.
["...What the hell is that."]
["Agent Jang. What exactly... are we looking at right now?"]
The facility staff were aghast. One employee backed away so fast he dropped an armful of documents. Agent Jang, too, stared at the monitor with a face gone rigid.
["..."]
On the screen, Hon's expression was blank. Blood floated in midair, circling lazily around him. He simply watched his own blood with unreadable eyes.
A long while later, Hon let out a thin huff of laughter — and in the same instant, the beads of blood plummeted mercilessly to the floor.
["That's funny."]
One of the drops that had been circling above his head slid down his cheek.
["And to think it was this easy..."]
As he murmured the words, a smile took shape on Hon's lips. On his cheek remained the trail the blooddrop had left behind.
Like tears — overwritten in dark crimson.
At first, it was nothing more than a few drops hovering in the air. But as time passed, the range Hon could control widened, until he had reached the point of wielding his own blood freely, at will.
He clumped droplets together into fixed shapes; he divided them so finely they became invisible to the naked eye. Through it all, Hon quietly carried out every experiment and mission the company assigned him.
And with every obedience, Jang Yoseok's dread grew deeper.
He's too cooperative.
Having no idea what Hon was thinking was itself another source of anxiety. When Kang Seok had been alive, Jang could tell at a glance what the man wanted, what went through his mind. But Hon now seemed as detached as a plant slowly withering in its pot.
["My good man, why are you raising your voice out of nowhere?"]
One of the executives wore a sour expression.
["Is there a problem with the current experiments? Or has the test subject stopped obeying?"]
["...It's not that."]
["Then what's the issue?"]
Another executive clicked his tongue.
["At the end of the day, isn't he a test subject in the palm of our hand? A rat that can't leave unless we open the door for it. Why are you trembling over a mere rat?"]
["And what will you do if Hon stops listening?"]
["Then we put the restraints on him like before. Honestly, worrying over nothing already."]
["Oh — while we're at it, why don't you get close to the subject, Agent Jang? You can take over as his handler in Dr. Kang's place!"]
The conversation was going nowhere. Agent Jang finally had to walk out of the conference room.
["This is insane..."]
He knew that because Hon had attached himself only to Kang Seok, the position of "Dr. Kang" had become unshakable — and that the upper brass resented it. Now Kang Seok, the man who had threatened their standing, was gone, and Hon's power had only grown. Watching them gawk like fools at the results in front of their noses was pitiful.
They hadn't even realized that Hon's only means of control was no more.
And I'm no different.
He despised himself just as much — the man who had failed to stop things from reaching this state. Agent Jang returned to his room, turning over how to deal with a leadership this hopeless.
And then he looked at the CCTV feed showing Hon's room.
Hon was on the mattress. Droplets of blood, each the same size, each spaced at identical intervals, filled the room edge to edge in a dense, perfect grid. And in the midst of them, Hon lay expressionless.
With the half-decomposed corpse of Kang Seok lying beside him.
["...I have to do something."]
Agent Jang murmured the words to himself.
Hon is dangerous.
No matter how he looked at it, none of this was normal. Since Kang Seok's death, Hon had never once defied an order, never once acted irrationally. When there was no mission or experiment, he simply curled up in a corner and kept his silence.
That silence — far too tranquil — felt to Jang Yoseok like the eve of a storm.
["This can't go on."]
Even if this was what Kang Seok had wanted, he could not simply stand by. Not when the future ahead was so plainly visible.
["Agent Jang. Are these orders really from the top?"]
["How many times do I have to say it? Yes."]
["But no matter how I think about it—"]
["Enough. Repeat that one more time and I'll count it as insubordination."]
At Agent Jang's frigid voice, his team fell silent. In the quiet that finally settled, he methodically assembled his firearm.
Today was the day of H's demonstration.
A stage where every investor in the company would be gathered at once, shown exactly how much their product was worth funding. A place where everyone connected to the H Project would be under one roof — which meant that if Hon intended to do anything, today was the most likely day for it.
And Agent Jang had already given his team their order: If Hon makes even the slightest unusual move, shoot him on the spot.
Minimizing casualties comes first.
The instruction was entirely his own decision. Even if it came to light later, none of the blame would fall on his men.
Agent Jang and his team moved out in full combat readiness.
["Well, if it isn't President Jang! It's been far too long."]
["You're looking better than the last time we met."]
While the investors and executives exchanged pleasantries, the field team waited on high alert. Then, as the starting hour arrived, lights bloomed over the stage, and the curtain wrapped around it parted automatically.
["Ooh..."]
["Is that the..."]
Hon stood on the stage.
Enclosed within specially reinforced glass, he looked like a rose sealed inside a glass bottle.
["..."]
Without a word, Hon turned his gaze slowly over the crowd. And at last, those black eyes that had been moving so unhurriedly came to rest — meeting Agent Jang's.