Chapter 31. First Day Working at the Motel
Chapter 31. First Day Working at the Motel
Yoon Hyeonyoung. Kim Arin. Choi Yuri.
The three of them were second- or third-generation Korean Americans and CIA Korea agents.
Born in the U.S. and fluent in Korean, they attended elite universities and were recruited directly into the CIA.
After enduring the same grueling training, all of them had a romantic image of the job—spy agent, operative.
They shared the same preference for stimulation and thrills over a repetitive daily life, but during training, they also saw each other as rivals.
So when they were abruptly deployed into a single operation like this, they were conscious of one another, burning with competitiveness to produce better results.
Aside from small, minor tasks, none of them had ever been in a real operation.
They met the motel owner and passed the interview by acting like international students or Korean Americans who admired Korea.
Headquarters told them the mission they were assigned was extremely important, and expectations were high.
The mission itself was simple.
Get hired undercover as motel housekeepers, then report any unusual situations every day.
No matter how trivial it seemed, they were not to judge it themselves—only report.
Naturally, they were disappointed when they heard the briefing.
A simple information-gathering operation with no danger and no thrills was deflating.
But the CIA had even flown a director-level figure over from the U.S., set up a local situation room in Korea, and was focusing on this motel.
They couldn’t understand the gap between how simple the mission was and how intensely headquarters was concentrating on it, but since this was practically their first real assignment, they threw themselves into it.
But once the cleaning work actually began, it was nothing like what they imagined.
That damn Assistant Manager Kang.
They even activated their hidden-camera detector and bug detector, searching every inch, wondering if he had installed cameras in every room to monitor their work attitude.
Assistant Manager Kang, with a filthy look—his mouth smiling, but his eyes dead and pale like a fish—clearly had to be a germaphobe.
Every time they finished cleaning a room and tried to move on to the next one, he would appear and, like a ghost, spot a single strand of hair, a speck of dust, a tiny smudge on glass, then demand they clean again.
They were confident in their stamina, but working nonstop drained them hard.
Whenever they tried to sit and rest even briefly, he would somehow know, come up, and nag that there was a lot to do—rest after the work was finished.
Even the most expensive suites in a top luxury hotel wouldn’t be cleaned this obsessively.
All bedding had to be perfectly sharp, as if pressed into knife-straight lines.
Not a single speck of dust was tolerated anywhere—in the amenities or the room.
On their very first day, they completed eighty rooms like that.
Forty overnight rooms and forty short-stay rooms.
And what was wrong with these guests, too?
They trashed rooms so badly that in some rooms, just stepping inside made them feel like vomiting.
They had been fired up with motivation in the morning, but by the time they finished a filthy, awful lunch and started afternoon cleaning again, a wave of self-loathing rose up—why am I even doing this here?
Their hands slowed.
And, like a ghost, Assistant Manager Kang came up and started ranting that they wouldn’t meet the daily quota at this rate.
He even spat out a curse—if that was how it was going to be, they should just quit.
They fought down the urge to slap the expressionless face of Assistant Manager Kang as he coldly said he would fire them, emptied their minds, and moved their hands.
In all their lives, most men tried to curry favor with them because they were beautiful.
This was the first time they had met a man who treated them this brutally.
They couldn’t get fired.
They couldn’t get fired.
Mission or not, they had heard this operation was the single most important one inside the CIA.
Successfully completing it mattered for their careers.
Midnight.
When the ringtone sounded, Choi Yuri reflexively answered the phone.
“Good work. Go ahead and clock out!”
The three of them let out a breath of relief, thinking this nightmare cleaning shift was finally over.
That had been day one.
They were starting to feel dizzy thinking about how long this operation might last.
The new aunties…
Ah. They were in their twenties, so maybe not “aunties.”
They watched the cleaning team, exhausted, put their carts in order and head up to the rooftop dorms.
I had demanded perfect cleaning because I wanted to maintain room quality, but they followed along better than expected.
Anything is hard at the beginning. Once you get used to it, it is manageable.
The aunties—no, the cleaning girls—went up to the dorm and started stripping off their clothes to shower.
I respected personal privacy and withdrew the telekinetic field connected to them.
If I had pushed the previous cleaning aunts the way I did today, they definitely would have staged a protest and quit.
That was why I had been forced to compromise on room quality until now.
But now, even if they went on strike, I wasn’t afraid—there was a second option.
Even as the Isu Gang brothers quit, they had said to call them anytime if needed.
Having a Plan B really was reassuring.
I sat at the counter and quietly closed my eyes.
The last room was already taken, and the sign lights were down.
Business had been insanely good lately.
So when we filled up early like this, my mind felt more at ease.
One billion.
How would Bella respond?
Given her personality—she didn’t seem that attached to money—I thought she would hand over the extra billion easily, but it was unexpected.
She claimed she didn’t know Korean whenever it was disadvantageous to her and painted me as a scammer.
She even said something ridiculous about hiring an international lawyer, claiming it could become an international dispute.
I tested her by saying we could treat it as if it never happened, but Bella didn’t seem willing to pay more—and didn’t seem willing to undo the deal either.
Ah… do I really have to back down like this?
Strictly speaking, gift tax was something I was supposed to pay, so I didn’t have the moral high ground.
But did I really have to let the National Tax Service rip a billion out of me like this?
Since yesterday, I hadn’t been able to regain my composure, and I had made a bunch of reckless moves I normally wouldn’t.
This wasn’t good.
I needed to take a deep breath and find my calm again.
Being cool and detached was my strength, but right now I was being far too emotional.
A heart demon.
A master who stood at the peak couldn’t be swayed by something like a heart demon.
As I breathed and tried to settle my mind, suspicious movement caught my attention near the parking lot.
Three men.
They were carrying various electronic devices.
They slipped into a blind spot not covered by the parking lot cameras and were installing something on the building’s outer wall.
A machine so small and dark it was hard to notice even in daylight.
When I checked inside, it contained an ultra-mini camera, a recorder, a battery, and more.
Crazy bastards.
When you work in lodging, you see plenty of people with weird hobbies.
These were the same type.
Hidden-camera criminals.
There had been news before—professional criminals who used rooms, secretly installed cameras, and later came back to retrieve them, got caught and made headlines.
These guys looked like pros too.
It had to be organized crime targeting motel hidden-camera footage.
Just in case, I inspected the entire building.
Then I saw it—dozens of ultra-mini cameras already installed in hallways and along the outer walls, like this wasn’t their first time.
With a sinking feeling, I did a full sweep of every room.
Even inside the rooms, there were hundreds of tiny devices, pinky-nail-sized, installed where you couldn’t easily spot them.
I crushed all of them in an instant with telekinesis.
I pulverized every last one so completely that not even dust remained, then scattered the remains outside.
Then I severed the three men’s cerebral arteries and killed them instantly.
The men, who had been clinging to the second-floor wall without any rope, fell to the ground.
At the same time, I started worrying about what to do with the three corpses in the parking lot.
If I reported it to the police, our motel would definitely make the news, and that would hurt business.
I really was more impulsive and emotional than usual right now.
It was definitely a heart demon.
“We lost all three.”
“Starting yesterday, the surveillance devices installed in the building were neutralized in an instant. It looks like an EMP-type attack.”
In the CIA Korea branch’s special situation room, they were left speechless by what had just happened.
“Smith. John. Kevin. All dead?”
“Yes. All three life signals have been cut. All confirmed dead.”
“Dispatch the standby team and recover the fallen agents. But what kind of attack was it?”
“We won’t know until we retrieve the bodies and do autopsies. And we also need to figure out how only our devices installed in the motel were selectively neutralized while other electronics remain fine. For now, we need to pull out. We’ve been exposed.”
“Fine. Pull out.”
Hundreds of screens in the situation room had been showing feeds transmitted from the motel.
Now they were all disconnected—blank screens.
Even the CIA’s cutting-edge equipment was helpless against an unknown force, and they couldn’t even predict the enemy’s method.
“Give Lauren instructions for a honey-trap operation against Choi Cheolmin.”
“If today’s attack came from Choi Cheolmin’s side, there’s a high chance he’s already wary of Lauren too. Wouldn’t it be better to have one of the three agents deployed today approach instead?”
“That’s a good idea. Create a natural situation and make him fall for one of the deployed agents.”
The three cleaners, who would be assigned the mission of seducing Choi Cheolmin starting tomorrow, were exhausted from backbreaking labor and were currently snoring in deep sleep.
A van approached the motel parking lot and loaded the bodies.
Since it was a camera blind spot, even if someone reviewed footage later, it would just look like a car stopped briefly and left.
They were organized.
I considered chasing them down and killing them all, but it felt too brutal, so I held back.
Today, my hands were too heavy.
Normally, I would have just taught them a lesson and stopped.
But today I had casually killed three people.
This wasn’t good.
I spent the entire night trying to rein in my mind.
Excessive anger.
All of it came from insufficient self-cultivation.
Let go of greed.
I stopped physical training and telekinesis training and spent that night calming my heart demon.
Then, at 9:30 a.m., Chanhyeok came in for work.
Maybe getting to work early had become a habit—he didn’t look that tired anymore.
A bit later, the cleaning team came down, faces rough and puffy.
Arin, Hyeonyoung, Yuri—was it?
They looked at me and suddenly broke into bright smiles, greeting me warmly.
After how strict I had been yesterday, they had every reason to dislike me, but maybe they were just good-natured—they were polite and upbeat.
“Assistant Manager, hello! Good morning!”
“Yeah. You all rest well? But aren’t you eating? You can go to our designated restaurant.”
After the Isu Gang guys quit, the Owner / Sajang stopped providing high-end lunchboxes and went back to the previous system—a monthly contract with the restaurant in front of the motel.
“Yes. None of us eat breakfast, so… we’ll handle it ourselves!”
Yuri—the housekeeper—said cheerfully.
What they ate was up to them.
As long as they worked properly.
“Hello! Yuri, Arin, Hyeonyoung! Was yesterday manageable?”
It wasn’t even 10 a.m., but Chanhyeok came out to the counter.
He naturally pulled a cup of drip coffee and handed it to them.
“Yes. Assistant Manager Kang taught us really well! It’s our first time, so we’re inexperienced, but he kindly explained everything!”
As Yuri said that, I tilted my head, replaying whether I had been kind.
Yesterday, I had been in a heart-demon spiral and was pretty blunt…
“Then I’m off work. Good job today!”
As I greeted them and started to head upstairs, the door to Room 105 opened—and light poured out.
Choi Cheolmin stepped out in a suit, with an aura like a halo around his face.
He wasn’t just model-level—he had a world top-class model’s presence.
“Uh… oh my…”
The three new cleaners were defenseless against Choi Cheolmin’s beauty.
They were genuinely shocked—eyes wide, hands over their mouths, only managing breathy sounds of awe.
Chanhyeok was also seeing Choi Cheolmin’s upgraded looks for the first time today, and he forgot how to speak, just staring with his mouth open.
“Assistant Manager. Did you sleep well? Looks like you’re getting off work.”
“Yeah. Are you heading out too, Cheolmin hyung?”
“Yes. I have an important contract today, so I’m going out. If I come back early, let’s have dinner.”
“Sure.”
Choi Cheolmin, always kind and well-mannered, was my VVIP.
I smiled with satisfaction as I watched him leave through the front door.
The cleaning team, faces flushed, kept their hands over their mouths and stared after Choi Cheolmin—like fans seeing their favorite celebrity in real life.
10:03 a.m.
Work hours had already started, but instead of going up and working, they were slacking off.
No matter how I looked at it, these young women lacked the hunger the old cleaning aunts had.
I was sure they’d quit soon.
But today was my day off.
Chanhyeok and the Manager / Jibaein would handle it.
Whatever.