The sunlight pouring down from the ceiling erased the shadows from her face. She was clearly visible in the air shimmering with warm light.

“The sea you want to go to?”

“The sea I have to go to.”

Eyes with a clear sense of purpose. Cheon Geon-young liked it when his partner made such a face. He liked it even more when she tilted her head as if trying to read his inner thoughts.

“I thought it would be good for you to go too. If you want to form a guild later, it’s good to visit a few ungoverned zones. It’s a land full of opportunities as much as it’s dangerous.”

She suddenly brought up the guild as an excuse. It was probably because she couldn’t directly mention the contract he had proposed. She had been careful every time to prevent their contract from leaking to the company.

From the very beginning. Strangely so.

On the screen they were watching, an interview with the research team that included Doctor Moon was playing.

“I’ll tell you later in a quiet place.”

Yoon Tae-ha subtly grabbed his arm and turned him around. Cheon Geon-young observed the changes in her expression with an almost obsessive gaze. After moving to a nearby conference room, Yoon Tae-ha explained the plan.

The explanation was simple, and the acceptance was even simpler.

Yoon Tae-ha explained the dangerous situations that could arise several times. If he didn’t want to go, he could cancel at any time. But there was no reason for him not to go.

Ostensibly, he had claimed he wanted to eliminate Orca, which was parasitizing Chairman Cheon’s company. Letting such an opportunity slip by was not the attitude someone with such a goal would take.

He also received a message from Changcheon telling him never to miss an opportunity. Kwon Hyuk was still skeptical about Yoon Tae-ha and Lee Hae-kyung.

<Normal people don’t know the extent of what we can do. We are much more blindly dedicated than they think.>

However, those words didn’t resonate as much as before.

As the woman, who was sensitive to heat, added more layers to her clothing, the hard shell surrounding him was peeling away one by one. Something that had been burnt and stuck, something he himself couldn’t do anything about.

Once, when she stubbornly didn’t order coffee. Once, when she timidly reached out and touched the tip of his finger first.

And now, once again, as he received a blue tie as a belated 100-day anniversary gift.

The explanation Yoon Tae-ha added when she suddenly handed him the gift in the conference room where they had gathered to prepare for the mission surprised him.

“I bought it in a similar style to the one you wore when you came for the interview. It looked good on you.”

“You remember?”

She, who had been looking at a holographic map to memorize the terrain, was surprisingly hesitant.

“I wasn’t looking closely. It’s just that the color was pretty. I saw something similar while walking around the department store and bought it.”

The hand that was rapidly tapping the button to view the next terrain looked urgent. The rugged mountain range depicted in the hologram separated them.

“I like it.”

“Who picked it? Of course you should like it.”

“Pick one for me next time too.”

“I’m not confident I can keep satisfying you...”

“I’d wear it even if you folded it out of paper.”

“Unbelievable, really.”

Her voice, which trailed off when she laughed, sounded better than ever. The woman, who had composed her expression as if concentrating on work and was moving her hands on the desk, soon sent something flying towards him.

It was a clumsy paper airplane made from a torn-out notebook page. The airplane fell weakly onto his lap. When he picked it up, a tingling sensation that started at his fingertips ran through him.

A few days later, Yoon Tae-ha trimmed the ends of her hair for the upcoming mission.

She often looked at her reflection in the glass, saying she felt awkward with her slightly shorter hair. Every time, he was standing right beside her.

Her clothes were different, but his expression was always the same. A face that showed both thirst and satisfaction.

When he called her name, she would always turn her head and meet his eyes. He wanted to repeatedly see the moment a smile spread across her beautiful face.

The smile, stripped of artificial kindness, was much more transparent than before. Like a clear lake that lured people in and made them walk towards her.

Having lived in acrid smoke and thick blood, he was at a loss every time he encountered her endearingly pure smile. He became angry only when she tried to hide her pain.

Can’t she be honest?

Even he thought it was a contradictory emotion. He was the one who had come to target the heart of the organization she loved.

The biggest lie was his. That was why the crueler time passed by in an instant.

________________________________________

The roadside trees changed color once again.

Internal preparations for Team Alpha were finally complete. Changcheon had also issued the mission to Cheon Geon-young.

It was to find evidence that Ark and Orca were collaborating.

Before Cheon Geon-young joined Ark, there had been a kidnapping incident near the Green Sea. Kwon Hyuk viewed it as Ark’s own doing.

<It seems they’re screening psychics with specific genetic factors through the school. The kidnapped espers are such cases. Since they can’t make them disappear quietly, they seem to be using Orca to smuggle them out and continue their experiments.>

In preparation for unforeseen circumstances, Changcheon had left for the Green Sea one step ahead of Ark. And when the departure schedule for Team Alpha was two days away, Cheon Geon-young visited his family home.

He still couldn’t access his grandfather’s room. This was because espers who were clearly not registered with either the Protection Bureau or Ark were heavily guarding it.

He acted like a grandson who deeply loved his grandfather, politely asking the resident doctor to take good care of him before leaving. The general manager of the mansion followed him out with a worried face.

“When will you be returning after this trip?”

“I can’t say for sure.”

“We will wait for your safe return. The Chairman would wish for that as well.”

“Of course. I’ll come back healthy and see Grandfather open his eyes.”

He stepped out into the garden, filled with garden trees that were to the Chairman’s liking. Most of the irregularly twisted trees had a rough edge to them. Among them, the magnificent pine tree, which seemed to have plucked a piece of cloud and hung it on its branches, was particularly impressive.

Next to the white outdoor table under the pine tree were two chairs. A middle-aged woman with a straight posture was sitting there.

Cheon Geon-young strode across the garden. Bae Hee-joo sensed his presence but didn’t turn her head.

“Are you leaving?”

“Yes. I came to say goodbye.”

“The people of this house always come to say goodbye to the Chairman before going to the afterlife. Is it a family tradition?”

The woman in dark navy clothes turned her body slightly.

“Did you also come sensing your end?”

He had learned through Bae Hee-joo that his parents had argued with his grandfather before they died.

Chairman Cheon’s second son was someone who was polite to everyone and never raised his voice no matter the situation. That such a man had shouted like thunder at his own father for the first time. There was no way to confirm the truth.

It was a story that had already disappeared into the veil of the past that Cheon Geon-young couldn’t see.

“I’m glad I get to see even Grandmother’s face before I go. I feel relieved.”

“You speak as if you’re going on vacation to that dreadful sea.”

“Why not? If I get what I need and come back, that’s a vacation.”

Bae Hee-joo gave a smile like a sharp thorn.

“People only look at your face and call you Cheon Seo-wan’s spitting image... But you actually resemble your mother more than your father. She was a remarkable woman, wasn’t she?”

“Isn’t that why I live like this?”

“If your cousin even half resembled you, he would have ruined the business less than he has. I hear things are turbulent in that guild these days.”

An old poetry collection lay on the desk. Even just looking at the cover, it was full of traces of someone reading it over and over. When the wind blew, the yellowed pages fluttered and turned.

Cheon Geon-young noticed with his keen eye that there were words pressed firmly on a specific page. It was definitely not his grandfather’s handwriting. It didn’t look like Bae Hee-joo’s either.

“If you wanted to give illegal nutritional supplements, you should have put them in the brain. What’s the point of putting them in the body?”

She didn’t realize that Cheon Geon-young had read the letters. There was a sense of satisfaction in her voice as she ridiculed the vice-chairman’s family. Bae Hee-joo looked up at her step-grandson.

“Did you do it?”

He didn’t seem inclined to answer. But she intuitively grasped the culprit.

“This house drives even sane people crazy.”

Bae Hee-joo turned her body and picked up the poetry collection. Her hand that searched for the page she had been reading just moments ago was delicate.

“You’re trying to hide it, but you’re also that man’s blood.”

“That’s not a compliment, coming from Grandmother.”

“You’re sharp.”

Looking at the edge of the shadow cast by the pine tree, Bae Hee-joo waved her hand, signaling him to leave now.

Cheon Geon-young bowed politely as he had at the beginning and then left the mansion.

The partner who would head to the Green Sea with him had been so busy lately that it was difficult to even see her face. Yoon Tae-ha was holed up in the lab with the white-haired foreigner, learning how to use weapons.

She also occasionally showed inexplicable behavior.

She suddenly came close, roughly measured his height with her hand, and muttered, “Too tall?”

Cheon Geon-young wasn’t exactly overflowing with composure either.

He had been working diligently with Secretary Kang until the night before their departure. Secretary Kang carefully reported the results of his investigation.

“It seems this delivery motorcycle was used by the Vice Chairman’s side to transport goods.”

The results of tracking the vehicle through the convenience store owner’s notes, which he had brought back after the Western infiltration mission, had come in. They had found evidence that several vehicles had been going in and out of a private warehouse owned by the Vice Chairman’s brother-in-law.

“And regarding Doctor Moon So-eun, whom you mentioned before, it seems there aren’t many people outside who know about her.”

Cheon Geon-young, leaning back in his chair, cast a cold gaze at Doctor Moon’s file. The more difficult it was to obtain information, the greater his suspicion grew.

“Her family relations are simple. She never married and had one older sister. But after her sister and her husband died due to a rift, Doctor Moon took in one niece.”

“Moon Seon-woo.”

Cheon Geon-young’s brow furrowed as he looked at the photo. It was someone he was seeing for the first time, yet they gave him a strange sense of unease. Déjà vu. Both the name Moon Seon-woo and the man’s face.

“According to official records, she died due to a natural disaster that occurred during a mission.”

“It seems that’s all the information our side can access.”

Secretary Kang shook his head with a look of regret.

“Yes. If we could access Gaia, we might be able to get more detailed records, but for now...”

Gaia. Following the school, that name blocked him again. Twirling his pen, he suddenly thought of the equipment his partner possessed.

Glasses equipped with artificial intelligence that answered many questions readily. Come to think of it, Yoon Tae-ha hadn’t worn her glasses much lately.

At that moment, the pen spinning in his hand stopped abruptly.