Chapter 22. Why Do You Want to Go to the Rooftop?
Chapter 22. Why Do You Want to Go to the Rooftop?
A normal motel in northern Seoul.
In front of that slightly tacky building stood Lauren Steel, a CIA black agent.
Lauren had been at a loss when she was ordered to investigate hundreds of ordinary rubber tubs with no clear reason.
But then the U.S. analysis team zoomed in on satellite footage and sent over an analysis of tiny scratches on the tub, and once she had a standard, the operation became easier.
After hiring a few errand agencies and private investigators, Lauren began searching for the rubber tub from the photo.
It wasn’t easy to investigate rubber tubs privately owned in ordinary homes without raising suspicion.
Sometimes they infiltrated quietly… sometimes, with plausible excuses—those errand agencies working for Lauren searched for the tub the U.S. wanted.
There was also a rubber tub on this motel’s rooftop.
Lauren had just checked out of the hotel she’d been staying at, and she planned to spend the night here and take a quick look.
So far, out of 832 rubber tubs, she had checked 608.
If she worked a few more days, she could finish investigating everything on the first list. But if the item didn’t turn up here, things would get difficult. The list the U.S. had sent only included locations where rubber tubs were stored on rooftops.
If they couldn’t find it among those, they would have to do a full sweep of every rubber tub across Seoul.
“Give me a room.”
“Just resting for a bit?”
The male employee asked Lauren that question.
He looked slick, and the way he scanned her up and down gave off the vibe of a guy who’d definitely chase women.
“Resting for a bit”… that was a love-motel phrase unique to Korea.
Wasn’t it called a short stay?
She could use a short stay and still investigate the rooftop, but she needed somewhere to stay tonight anyway.
“No. I’m staying the night.”
“We can’t do overnight right now. If you want to sleep here, you need to pay an additional fee.”
“What do you mean?”
“That’s how motels work. Overnight is only available from 10 p.m. It’s 7 p.m. right now, so the short-stay fee of 30,000 won gets added. Total is 90,000 won.”
It was 7 p.m., and they wanted extra money because she was checking in early?
Lauren thought the employee was trying to rip off a foreigner with a ridiculous excuse. She wanted to tear him a new one, but she held back.
She couldn’t cause unnecessary trouble in the middle of an operation.
“Fine.”
Hiding her disgust, she smiled brightly.
Seeing the red-haired beauty smiling, Chanhyeok threw her the “charming” smile he’d been practicing in spare moments.
“Room 104. First room in the first-floor hallway…”
Lauren was taking the key and the disposable toiletries when the front door opened and three people walked in.
A man in a suit, a man in a tracksuit, and a blonde beauty in a pink tracksuit.
They smelled of alcohol, like they’d been drinking.
“Hyung! Take this! I brought it to go!”
“Yeah. Thanks, Chan. Bella, did you eat well too?”
The employee spoke to the blonde beauty with a greasy smile, but she didn’t answer and went into Room 102.
Room 102, directly across from Lauren’s Room 104.
Then the man in the suit bowed ninety degrees to the tracksuit guy and went into Room 105.
Lauren tried to figure out who they were, but no matter how she thought about it, the combination made no sense.
11 p.m.
The door to Room 104 opened and Lauren stepped out.
The employee must have stepped away—there was no one at the counter.
Lauren took the elevator to the fifth floor and headed for the rooftop.
The wide rooftop had one bench and three container units that looked like they were used as storage.
Under the awning of the biggest container set apart from the others, she saw her target: a rubber tub.
Lauren turned on her phone flashlight and walked over quietly.
“Who are you?”
At that moment, the door of one container flew open, and the tracksuit guy from earlier stuck half his body out and asked.
Lauren didn’t panic. She gave him a smile that would make most men’s hearts flutter.
“I can’t sleep. I came up for some air.”
“So you’re the guest from earlier. No. You can’t be here. This is off-limits to guests. Go back down.”
“What? Why not? I’m just getting some air.”
“If you want air, use the first-floor parking area. The rooftop is off-limits to guests.”
As he spoke, the man shoved Lauren toward the stairwell by the rooftop entrance.
Then he shut the rooftop door.
Pushed out in an instant, Lauren tried to open the door, but it was locked and didn’t budge.
“Hey! Excuse me!”
She pounded and called out desperately, but no answer came from the tracksuit guy.
The next morning, 7 a.m.
Lauren felt insulted—like she’d been dismissed by some motel employee in Korea—so she drank a few cans of beer until dawn and fell asleep.
She tried going up to the rooftop once more in the early morning, but the metal door was tightly locked, so she had no choice but to turn back.
After thinking for a bit, she contacted one of the investigator agencies she had under contract.
She didn’t want a commotion, but she did want to execute the plan and take a little revenge on those unlucky motel employees.
10 a.m.
In her room, Lauren poured a cup of coffee from the bean coffee machine set out in the lobby, then sat on the lobby sofa and sipped.
The coffee tasted like absolute trash.
The slick guy who’d ripped her off yesterday was gone—probably off shift—and the tracksuit guy was now at the counter.
That arrogant tracksuit bastard saw her, smiled, and greeted her with a look.
Thinking about how that smug face would soon turn into a terrified one, Lauren felt good.
A text arrived on Lauren’s phone.
[We’re going in now.]
At the same time, three sturdy-looking men entered the lobby.
“Welcome.”
The employee, who had been fussing with something at the counter, stood up and greeted them with a smile.
Annoying.
The investigator-agency men Lauren hired didn’t even glance at Lauren. They marched straight to the counter and barked loudly.
“Hey! You work here?”
“Yes, sir. Are you resting for a bit?”
Three men walked in, and he asked if they were doing a short stay?
After a brief silence, one of the agency guys shouted.
“You son of a bitch! Are you messing with us? Three men, short stay? Are you out of your mind?”
“Sometimes we do have guests like that, but our policy is two people per room, so for three people, you’d need to book two rooms.”
Even with the agency guy’s vicious swearing, the motel employee didn’t drop his smile and answered steadily.
Lauren wondered if he was just gutsy, or if he had something backing him… or if he was simply an idiot.
She started to find the situation fun.
She always liked unexpected situations.
“So what brings you here? Our manager and owner haven’t come in yet.”
“Owner, manager—don’t need them. We need to go up to that rooftop.”
“The rooftop is off-limits except for employees.”
“This bastard won’t listen if we talk. Fine.”
One of the agency men raised his hand over his head and lowered it again, like he was about to strike.
He was only trying to scare him—there was no plan to actually hit.
But most people would normally get scared in a situation like this. He thought the employee would back down and guide them up to the rooftop.
But with the employee holding firm, the agency guy couldn’t use violence, but he also couldn’t back off, so he just kept cursing while lifting and dropping his hand.
Just then, three housekeepers came down to the first floor, pushing a cleaning cart.
But they looked strange.
Huge, muscular men—around 180 cm tall and easily over 120 kilos—wearing bandanas and aprons.
They were loading drink boxes onto a cart from the small storage room by the elevator when they glanced toward the counter, tilted their heads, then walked over.
The investigator-agency men were big and mean-looking, but next to these housekeepers, they looked weak.
The housekeepers briefly bowed their heads to the motel employee, then spoke to the agency men.
“What business do you have here?”
Crushed by the pressure coming off the huge muscleheads, the agency men stammered and couldn’t speak properly.
“Ah… it’s not like that. We just wanted to take a quick look at something.”
“Are you guests?”
“We’re not guests. We came to do a quick investigation on the rooftop—”
“Get lost. If you cause trouble here, I’ll handle you first.”
They sounded polite, but they reeked of thug.
The agency men kept stealing glances at Lauren, who was watching from the sofa, then fled outside.
Lauren was fascinated by what had just happened.
Plans going off track was common, but it had been a long time since something this unpredictable happened.
She sipped her coffee, thought for a moment, then texted someone.
As the men who wanted to see the rooftop vanished outside the motel, I took my tablet and went up to check the checked-out rooms starting from the fifth floor.
After realizing I could reshape the telekinetic field into whatever form I wanted and monitor only the areas I needed, I didn’t actually have to carry a tablet around anymore. Within my domain, I could perceive movement as if I were seeing it with my own eyes.
But I carried the tablet anyway because of other people’s eyes.
I went up to the fifth floor, but I still knew what the red-haired woman on the lobby sofa was doing.
She’d tried to come up to the rooftop at dawn too. I used telekinesis to keep the door from opening—she tried a few times, then went back down.
The three men who came earlier also wanted to go up to the rooftop.
When they left the motel, they stole glances at her like they were checking her reaction. It felt like they were connected to the woman in Room 104.
All kinds of unexpected people come to a motel.
So I usually let things slide, but since I had a huge amount of cash hidden on the rooftop, this one bothered me.
Were they really after the money I’d hidden?
My precious money, hidden between the sign and the gaps in the building, was still safely there this very moment.
But if they were targeting it, how did they even know there was money up there?
No matter how I thought, nothing came to mind.
When her first operation failed, Lauren immediately launched a second one.
About an hour later, the people who would execute the second operation would arrive.
After chugging down the disgusting coffee, Lauren decided to wait in Room 104 until the second team arrived.
Just as she was about to open the door to Room 104, the door across from her—Room 102—opened, and the pink-tracksuit woman from last night stepped out.
But what she saw through the open door of Room 102 was beyond anything she expected.
A space so large it looked twice the size of her room, filled with a top-tier bed, dazzling furniture, and all kinds of appliances.
That bed was the kind you only saw in the top-floor suite of a luxury hotel.
After suffering all night on a cheap mattress, Lauren stared at the open Room 102 with her mouth hanging open.
The pink-tracksuit woman looked at Lauren and said,
“What are you looking at?”
This motel was full of unpleasant people. Being that rude to a stranger.
“I’m sorry. I’m a guest staying here, and your door opened unexpectedly, so I happened to see your room. But it’s really nice. Your room. It’s completely on another level compared to mine.”
The other woman frowned and said,
“Too long. If it’s long, Bella doesn’t know. Korean is hard.”
Only then did Lauren realize the woman wasn’t being rude—she simply wasn’t good at Korean.
Lauren smiled and nodded, then went into Room 104.
Because our cleaning team handled even the supply restocking on each floor—things I normally had to do—when I came back down to the counter, it wasn’t even 11 a.m.
Before, I usually didn’t get down until almost noon, but thanks to Cheolmin hyung, work had gotten easier.
For about two days after the nuclear missile incident, there were so few guests that it felt like the motel was going to go under.
But starting on the third day exactly, even weekdays were packed to the point there were no rooms left.
Chanhyeok hyung’s theory seemed right: after people felt a brush with death, their breeding instinct woke up.
The owner, who used to frown every day about the cleaning manpower being excessive, didn’t bring it up anymore.
Our muscle cleaning team didn’t seem tired at all—they cleaned perfectly by the book every day.
Looking at today’s flow, it felt like we’d get seventy or eighty short stays, which made it basically a weekend.
The door to Room 105 opened, and Cheolmin hyung came out. He made two cups of mix coffee—one for me and one for himself.
Then the manager arrived for work and naturally greeted Cheolmin hyung.
It was a gangster-style greeting, and the manager looked like he’d started believing he was a gangster too.
Cheolmin hyung accepted the greeting like it was normal.
Only the owner seemed deeply uncomfortable around Cheolmin hyung and rarely showed up for work.
Even when he did come in, he’d run the moment he saw Cheolmin hyung.
The manager, having identified the real power, kept sucking up to Cheolmin hyung, and he was also polite to me.
The old behavior—calling me “bastard” and trying to smack me in the back of the head—was gone.
Then suddenly, three men in suits opened the door and walked in. They held out documents and said,
“We’re from the district office construction department. We need to investigate an illegal structure violation. Open the rooftop door.”