???? ?? ?? ?? ??? ??? ??? ??? ????. ??? ? ?? ??? ??? ??? ???? ???.

  ??? ??? ???? ????. ??? ??? ??? ????.

  ? ? ??? ???? ??? ?? ? ???? ??? ?? ?? ????.

  'VIP'?? ??? ??? ???? ???? ??? ???? ? ? ????.

  ??.

  ? ? ?? ???? ?? ??? ????. ??? ???? ??? ?????.

  ???? ???? ??? ?, ??? ? ??? ??? ????? ?? ??? ?????? ?.

  ??? ??? ??? ?????.

  ??? ??? ????, ???? ?? ????. ?? ? ?? ?? ??? ? ???? ?? ??? ????.

  "? ???? ?? ??? ??? ? ?? ??."

  ??? ??? ??? ???? ???. ?? ??????, ?? ????? ?? ??? ???? ????.

  ??? ?? ?? ?? ??? ?? ??? ????. ??? ??? ???? ??? '?? ??'???.

  ??? ? ??? ?, ?? ?????? ??? ? ???? ?? ????? ?? ??? ?? ???.

  ??? ? ????.

  ?? ??? ??? ? ?? ?? ??,

  ??? ? ?? ???? ?? '??'? ? ???.

  ? ????? ?? ?? ?? ?? ?? ????.

  ??? ??? ?? ?? ?? ?? '? ???'?? ?????? ??? ??. ?? ??? ? ???? ???? ???.

  "?... ????. ?????... ????. ? ?? ????? ??..."

  "?? ?? ?? ?."

  ??? ???? ?? ?? ???.

  "? ??. ???? ?? ? ?? ? ??. ?????? ??? ?? ???."

  ??? ???? ???. ?? ?? ?? ??? ?? ? ???.

  '???? ??.'

  ??? ? ?? ? ????.

  ????? ? ???? ??? ?? ? ???? ?????, ?? ??? ??? ?? ?? ???? ???? ??? ????.

  "??," ??? ???? ???. ???? ??? ????? ???? ?????. "?? ??? ?????, ??? ??. ?? ? ?? ???? ??? ??."

  Tae-yoon hesitated.

  If he spoke, too much would leak out. The darkness he carried was too heavy to share with a civilian.

  But the badge... the access... the price was too high to ignore.

  Late that night.

  The team gathered in the safe house. The air was thick with the smell of cheap instant coffee and high-tension anxiety.

  Lee Hyun-ah was the first to break the silence.

  "Chief, that woman is dangerous."

  Tae-yoon leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling. He nodded slowly.

  "Yeah. She is."

  "You know, and you're still considering it?"

  Hyun-ah's voice sharpened.

  "She's a Foundation VIP. The moment she opens a door for us, our logs get stamped next to hers. We get tagged. And worse... she herself might be the bait."

  Han So-hee, usually calm, nodded in agreement. Her face was pale.

  "I agree. I have... a bad feeling about this. The Foundation doesn't operate on 'people'. It operates on 'classifications'. Bringing a VIP into a hacker's war is like bringing a nuclear warhead to a knife fight."

  Oh Se-na clasped her hands together tightly, her knuckles white.

  "A VIP badge... leaves a record everywhere. Every door it opens, every elevator it calls. Someone will see the trail."

  Min-su scoffed, crossing his arms.

  "So what? Are we going to starve to death staring at the door? We have to go in. Bait or not, we eat it."

  Ha-jun bit his lip, looking at Tae-yoon with worried eyes.

  "Hyung, just give us the conclusion."

  All eyes turned to Tae-yoon.

  Silence stretched, heavy and taut like a rubber band about to snap.

  Tae-yoon closed his eyes for a second, then opened them. The indecision was gone.

  "That's why I'm going in alone."

  Hyun-ah shot up from her seat.

  "Why you, Chief?"

  "If Seo-hyun is dangerous," Tae-yoon said, his voice dropping to a low rumble, "then I have to do the dangerous work. Someone has to carry the bomb while running."

  Seo-hee—the woman who had lived as 'Baek Na-ri', the ghost—watched Tae-yoon quietly from the corner.

  Her eyes held a deep, exhausted understanding. She wanted to call him crazy. She wanted to scream that it was suicide.

  But she didn't.

  Instead, she spoke a single, heavy sentence.

  "Don't run alone."

  Tae-yoon looked at Seo-hee and offered a short, dry smile.

  "Right. Rule number one."

  Buzz.

  At that moment, Tae-yoon’s phone vibrated on the table.

  No number. No caller ID. Just a black screen lighting up.

  The room went deadly silent.

  Tae-yoon knew before he even looked.

  ‘The Owner.’

  The message floating on the screen was short.

  And because it was short, it was infinitely cruel.

  [ Choi Seo-hyun. The vessel of the 'Heart' you cherish. ]

  The air in the room froze instantly. It was as if the temperature had dropped ten degrees in a second.

  Ha-jun gasped, covering his mouth.

  "Hyung... the heart? Does he mean...?"

  Tae-yoon felt his grip on the phone tightening until his knuckles turned the color of bone. The plastic case creaked under the pressure.

  Seo-hee ground her teeth, a sound like crushing glass.

  "That bastard... he calls Seo-hyun a 'Vessel'?"

  Min-su spat out a curse, kicking the leg of the table.

  "Treating a human being like a spare part. Sick fuck."

  Tae-yoon didn't say a word.

  He didn't scream. He didn't throw the phone.

  He simply turned the screen off.

  Click.

  But turning it off didn't make it disappear.

  The words were already burned into his retina.

  Vessel.

  It wasn't a threat. It was a definition.

  Tae-yoon looked up. His eyes were devoid of the earlier hesitation.

  "Let's decide."

  His voice was cold, precise, and final.

  "Seo-hyun is no longer just a 'Door'."

  The team held their breath.

  "She is someone we must protect."

  [ The Former Company: The Two Names That Vanished ]

  "We need more talent."

  When Tae-yoon threw out that statement the next morning, Min-su raised an eyebrow.

  "Hey, we have enough heads. More people just means more mouths to shut."

  Tae-yoon shook his head, staring at the whiteboard covered in data maps.

  "It's not about the number of people. It's about the 'Gaps'."

  He tapped the desk with a marker.

  Tap. Tap.

  "Field work, documents, legal routes, ledgers, defense, analysis... we have those. But we are weak in 'Tracking' and 'Relationships'."

  Hyun-ah frowned.

  "Relationships?"

  "Yes."

  Tae-yoon’s eyes darkened.

  "Sungjin Group doesn't run on systems. It runs on 'People'. The VIP Protocol? That's not code. That's a web of human connections. Favors, debts, bloodlines."

  Han So-hee nodded slowly, understanding the implication.

  "That's true. Hospitals are the same. The regulations are on paper, but the decisions are made by hands shaking under the table."

  Tae-yoon recalled those 'hands'.

  And simultaneously, a memory from his time at the 'Former Company'—the intelligence agency—surfaced.

  A quiet corridor.

  Grey filing cabinets.

  And the names of the two people who disappeared after that day.

  Seo-hee's older brother. And her sister.

  And the moment after that incident, when Seo-hee stopped being human and transformed into a 'Ghost'.

  Tae-yoon swallowed a sigh that tasted like bitter ash.

  "We need to reactivate the Old Company Line."

  At those words, Oh Se-na flinched visibly.

  Se-na always shrank whenever the topic of the intelligence agency came up.

  "I... I don't want to talk about that place..."

  Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

  Se-na's voice trembled, becoming small.

  "The company back then... it was strange. People didn't say anything, but everyone... everyone was avoiding someone. Like there was a plague."

  Tae-yoon looked straight at Se-na. He didn't coddle her.

  "Se-na. I know you're scared. You're terrified."

  He leaned in.

  "But what we need right now isn't 'fearlessness'."

  "Then...?"

  "We need someone who is terrified," Tae-yoon said firmly, "but still refuses to hide when facing the numbers."

  Se-na bit her lip.

  It wasn't a compliment. It was an assignment of a role. It pushed her back straight.

  That night, Tae-yoon opened his laptop alone in the dark.

  He didn't hack. He didn't break firewalls.

  He simply gathered the 'traces' that had drifted out into the world.

  Anonymous communities.

  Closed developer boards.

  Posts where someone whispered, "Ideally, the attack should have destroyed us, but it weirdly bent away."

  Those posts had a common pattern.

  The defense wasn't perfect. It was intentionally flawed.

  It left a tiny breathing hole. Just enough to let the target survive.

  Like a guardian angel with dirty wings.

  Tae-yoon's finger hovered over the keyboard.

  ‘This is... Seo-hee's habit.’

  He opened the draft folder of his encrypted messenger.

  A message he had written a long time ago but never sent.

  Back then, he had erased it, thinking it was weak.

  But now, he couldn't erase it.

  Tae-yoon typed the sentence again.

  [ Thank you for blocking it for us. Don't do it alone anymore. ]

  His fingertip trembled over the Enter key.

  Seo-hee was already on the team. They saw each other every day.

  Yet, he needed to send this.

  As if to say, it's not too late.

  And he asked himself a quiet question.

  ‘The vanished names... why are they surfacing in my mind now?’

  The answer was singular.

  Because S-2 had moved.

  The ghosts of the past were waking up to greet the monster of the present.

  [ Baek Na-ri's Appearance: 'No Solo Revenge' ]

  When the phone buzzed, Tae-yoon held his breath.

  The reply was short.

  Short and cool.

  [ Late with the gratitude, aren't you? ]

  Tae-yoon almost laughed when he read it.

  Seo-hee's tone.

  Seo-hee's breath.

  And her characteristic way of defining the situation as 'late' rather than 'emotional'.

  Tae-yoon didn't show the message to anyone.

  He simply put the phone down, face down.

  Because Seo-hee was sitting right across from him.

  Seo-hee noticed the subtle shift in his expression.

  "What?"

  Tae-yoon spoke without looking at his phone.

  "Your habit of doing things 'alone'. It's still there."

  Seo-hee's eyes sharpened.

  "You're bringing that up now?"

  Tae-yoon nodded.

  "Yeah. I have to say it now."

  Seo-hee scoffed, a dry sound.

  "Phantom. You're always late, and..."

  She couldn't finish the sentence.

  ‘You come late, and you save people.’

  The words stuck in her throat.

  Tae-yoon didn't fill in the blank for her.

  Instead, he spoke with absolute firmness.

  "Solo revenge is prohibited."

  Seo-hee's eyes widened slightly.

  "What?"

  "If you do it alone, you die," Tae-yoon said. "I won't allow that."

  Seo-hee's face wavered.

  The fluctuation wasn't anger or joy. It was exhaustion.

  The crushing fatigue of someone who had stood alone in the dark for too long.

  She spoke in a low voice.

  "Do you... even possess the right to say words like that?"

  Tae-yoon didn't avert his gaze.

  "I've lost people too."

  Seo-hee's jaw tightened.

  "I lost two."

  "I know," Tae-yoon whispered. "That's why you absolutely cannot do it alone."

  Seo-hee remained silent for a long time.

  Then, she spoke, her voice barely audible.

  "Then promise me."

  "..."

  "Don't throw away your warmth. That thing... the thing the bastards call a weakness... keep it. Because I'm going to rip apart the guy who calls it a weakness."

  Tae-yoon realized.

  That wasn't just a promise of revenge. It was a Declaration of Alliance.

  ‘She’s back.’

  Even if one lives as a ghost, eventually, a human returns to humans.

  [ The Complete 7, and the 'Declaration of Roles' ]

  The meeting wasn't long.

  It didn't need to be.

  Now, more than words, their positions mattered.

  Tae-yoon placed a single sheet of paper in the center of the table.

  There was no title.

  Just seven names and seven roles.

  "From now on," Tae-yoon said. "We are a Team."

  Hyun-ah crossed her arms.

  "We were already a team, Chief."

  Tae-yoon shook his head.

  "Until now, we were 'standing together'. From now on, we are 'getting hit together'."

  Han So-hee inhaled sharply. She understood the weight of those words.

  Tae-yoon pointed to each name.

  "I am Strategy and Decision."

  "Ha-jun is Core Analysis."

  "Min-su is Field and Supply."

  "Se-na is Ledgers and Numbers."

  "Hyun-ah is Internal Documents and Eyes."

  "So-hee is Legal Routes and Bridges."

  And—

  Tae-yoon looked at the last name.

  "Seo-hee is Defense and Infiltration."

  Seo-hee smirked.

  "'Infiltration'. Fancy word for crawling into the sewers."

  Tae-yoon didn't smile.

  "It means going into the filth so the others don't have to."

  Seo-hee's gaze turned cold.

  "Fine. One condition."

  "Name it."

  Seo-hee ground her teeth.

  "We go all the way to S-2."

  The air in the room grew heavy again.

  S-2.

  The invisible owner.

  The authority level higher than the Chairman.

  Ha-jun spoke quietly.

  "Hyung... S-2's clearance level is higher than the Chairman's."

  At those words, Hyun-ah swallowed a curse.

  "Crazy... So the Chairman was just a puppet?"

  Tae-yoon nodded.

  "Chairman equals Fake Boss."

  "First Son equals Fake S."

  "..."

  "The Second Son... '2F'... is the Real."

  Min-su cracked his knuckles.

  "So we're fighting the real final boss now."

  Tae-yoon chuckled low.

  "Yeah. The Real one."

  It wasn't a laugh of joy. It was the laugh of a soldier checking his ammunition.

  [ The Route of the Glass Heart: The 3 Steps of Laundering ]

  Evidence doesn't appear all at once.

  Evidence appears when there is 'too much' of it.

  When coincidences pile up until they can no longer be called coincidences.

  On Oh Se-na's spreadsheet, Han So-hee's legal data was overlaid.

  Then Seo-hee's metadata was placed on top.

  And Ha-jun's server analysis placed the period.

  The flow organized itself into three distinct steps.

  Tae-yoon wrote on the whiteboard.

  No, it wasn't a whiteboard anymore. It was a War Map.

  Record Void (Maintenance/Failure)

  Donor Code Change (2 times)

  Foundation Donation - Medical Bill Offset

  Hyun-ah raised her hand.

  "Record Void... you mean making a 'Zero' interval?"

  "Yes," Tae-yoon nodded. "The time when records vanish while people believe it's just 'Server Maintenance'."

  Han So-hee added.

  "During that specific period, the hospital line posted a clean maintenance notice. Perfectly timed. So no one suspected anything."

  Seo-hee laughed dryly.

  "Suspicion is blocked by notices. Classic."

  Oh Se-na spoke quietly, her finger trembling as she pointed at the screen.

  "And the codes... they changed twice."

  She traced the line.

  "Yuri → Anonymous → VIP Anonymous."

  Min-su ground his teeth.

  "They erased a person's name and pasted a label on it."

  Ha-jun read the final step.

  "And the end... is the Foundation Donation."

  "..."

  "Money came in as a donation and wiped out the medical bill. Under the name of 'Special Support'."

  Han So-hee gasped.

  "On the surface, it looks like charity."

  Hyun-ah whispered, her voice shaking.

  "But that charity... was actually the price for swapping a human heart?"

  Seo-hee's eyes burned with fury.

  "They selected the heart... and the person... like shopping for parts?"

  The words echoed in the room.

  Selected.

  Vessel.

  The word S-2 sent came back to haunt them.

  Tae-yoon remained silent.

  ?? ??? ???? ????. ??? ??? ??? ????.

  ?? ??? ??? ? ?? ???.

  [ Vessel Selector = S-2 ]

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  "?? ???? ??? ??? ??? ???… ?? ??? ????. S-2??."

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  "??."

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  "2??... ????? ???."