The sincerity in Lee Shin’s eyes as he said he wanted to return to the surface felt unmistakably real. And I had already begun to question whether it was right to force someone like him to live aboard the ship just because he no longer needed to fight for his life against the monsters up there.
Raising my hand, I gently cupped Lee Shin’s face. He continued to gaze at me, unflinching in his seriousness.
Images of all the time we had spent together flashed through my mind—the violent, hostile way he acted when we first met, full of suspicion and rage; the way he couldn’t resist sweet food; the day he called my name for the first time.
Short, if you called it short. Long, if you called it long.
“……”
I stared at his face for a long while, as if trying to etch every detail into memory, then slowly lowered my hand. Turning away, I headed for the entrance that led into the corridor.
Looking back, it was a mystery how someone who so desperately wanted to return to the surface hadn’t once run away when I came and went. Distracting him with candy was no better than gambling. I always thought such a flimsy bait would stop working at any moment.
Chiiik. With a hiss of depressurizing air, the door opened. I stepped aside.
“Come here.”
I spoke to Lee Shin, who was eyeing me with confusion.
“I’ll let you go.”
Out of the ship.
Lee Shin’s eyes widened.
“…Really?”
“Yeah.”
My job was to gently coax him into adjusting to life aboard the ship and to extract as much information about survival on the surface as possible.
But acting against that mission would undoubtedly come at a steep cost.
I could submit a request to the higher-ups to have Lee Shin returned to the surface. But even if I did, no one would approve it. They wouldn’t want to lose a rare survivor. On the contrary, the request might cause my assignment to be taken from me, or they might assign surveillance to make sure I didn’t pull something reckless.
And if I just sent Lee Shin out on my own authority, all the favor and attention I’d gained would instantly turn to disappointment—and possibly even hostility.
Even Yeo Wonjin, who had always supported me, would be no exception.
“You’re the one making the most meaningful progress on this ship right now. No one else has proven as much through direct action as you have. You’re the reason we still believe there’s hope to reclaim the surface someday.”
Yeo Wonjin stood at the very forefront of those responsible for the future of the ship. I could still clearly remember the light of conviction in his eyes.
There was a good chance I wouldn’t just be punished. I might be expelled from the ship altogether. Letting go of someone who could provide useful intel for the ship’s survival would be seen as a serious crime.
Even so, I couldn’t help it. I didn’t want to take part in something as cruel as chaining someone’s life down against their will.
And even as I accepted that, I didn’t follow Lee Shin down to the surface—because of the people I still wanted to be responsible for. At the very least, if something happened to me on the ship, everyone would know with certainty how I ended.
It was better for them to witness my definite end aboard the ship than to be left with the vague, tormenting hope of not knowing whether I’d survived or died on the surface. When someone dear might still be alive, people tend to cling to that false hope even in the most hopeless situations.
Just like I had once believed, upon seeing Ji Chanwoo alive, that maybe my parents might be alive too—a ridiculous thought, and yet one I couldn’t help but have.
“What about Suho?”
Lee Shin, staring up at me with unblinking eyes, asked. I looked at him quietly before shaking my head.
“I told you. I’m not going.”
“Why not?”
His brows furrowed in disbelief.
“It’s hard for you here, Suho.”
“……”
“You’re having such a hard time.”
I ran my tongue along the inside of my cheek. I had nothing to say to someone who was genuinely worried about me. I’d already shown up looking like a wreck, cried my eyes out like some helpless, homeless soul. Saying I was fine now would only sound hollow.
“Let’s go first, Lee Shin.”
Avoiding his question, I jerked my chin toward the door. Lee Shin tilted his head, puzzled, but obediently came closer as I asked.
With him in tow, I walked down the corridor and slipped past the barrier. Lee Shin’s eyes widened as he looked around in wonder, seemingly amazed to be standing in the space where I always met him. Then he strode over to the barrier and pressed his hand to the wall.
In the meantime, I checked the time on my watch.
“Lee Shin.”
I called out to him as he stared intently at the space he had just come from. As much as I wanted to let him explore, there was no time to waste. Everyone would soon be arriving at the lab for work.
“Yeah!”
He responded instantly to my voice and came running over. I let out a quiet breath of awe and removed the outer layer of my clothing to drape it over his shoulders. Then I gently gathered his long hair, tied it neatly, and tucked it inside the clothes.
“Stick close to me just like now. Ignore everyone, no matter who you see. Can you do that?”
“I can.”
Lee Shin nodded and tightly grabbed onto one of Suho’s elbows. The warmth of his large, calloused palm quickly seeped through the fabric.
They stepped out of the observation room just like that. Lee Shin stood there, dazed, watching the entrance open and the hallway shutter lift. The loud clamor from the moving shutter made him flinch and bare his teeth slightly, but thankfully, he didn’t attack it.
As they walked through the corridor together, Suho cast a glance toward the areas with surveillance cameras. Even though the Control Room monitored the lab’s overall activity in real time, no one could keep an eye on every section at once. And even if someone noticed that Suho entered the observation room alone but came out accompanied, they would likely assume Lee Shin was just someone accompanying him.
No one would imagine that a cleanly dressed man, walking normally down the corridor, was a person who had been confined within the lab, forbidden from leaving the observation room without upper-level clearance.
***
Sun Woosung stared coldly down at the corpses.
The two adult men, discovered lodged in the ship’s outer structure, unable to fall, matched Seo Suho’s descriptions precisely. Though decomposition had already begun, there would be no issue with identification.
“What a shame. Already dead,”
muttered Yeo Wonjin with a frown beside him.
He had personally come to the dissection room to witness the findings with his own eyes, intent on overseeing the progress of the investigation firsthand. There was always the possibility that Min Sanghan’s influence had reached even here.
Just as Min had once tried to interfere with the investigation by feeding Seo Suho nonsense to cover for his accomplices, there was no doubt he was still lurking, waiting for another chance. Originally, he had likely planned to quietly eliminate Seo Suho—but when that failed, it was only natural for him to scramble to clean up the mess.
“I doubt Min Sanghan killed them. If he used someone else to silence these two, he’d only be creating more witnesses to his crime. It would’ve made more sense for him to help them escape and cover their tracks.”
“The way all three victims were hit in the same vital spot makes it unlikely that the killer was one of Min Sanghan’s men.”
At Sun Woosung’s response, Yeo Wonjin narrowed his eyes.
“You think it was the same person?”
“Yes.”
During the investigation, they’d found footage of the accomplices on the ship’s surveillance cams—so it wasn’t as though they’d completely slipped through the cracks. When reviewing the footage by timestamp, the person who executed one of the culprits during Seo Suho’s abduction clearly wasn’t aligned with the other two, now dead.
There were signs of a physical struggle between them, but in the end, the fatal wounds were identical. From that, it was clear—the one who took care of the two bodies in a remote area and the one who killed the third at the site of Seo Suho’s abduction were one and the same. From the moment they found the bodies outside the ship, Sun Woosung had already felt sure.
If someone had rescued Seo Suho, it was almost certainly not one of Min Sanghan’s people.
…Who could it be?
Sun Woosung and Yeo Wonjin fell silent, sinking into thought.
Someone who knew Seo Suho was in danger.
Someone who knew there were multiple perpetrators—and eliminated them.
Someone who managed the aftermath with extreme precision.
“Would criminals really hide in a place like that? No one besides the engineers would even know it exists.”
He recalled what the engineer who assisted with the recon had said. If they’d only searched in areas known to the average crew member, they never would’ve found the culprits. Only someone who was aware of the hidden passageways used by the engineers—someone who knew about access points to the outside—could’ve done it…
“Min Yugeon?”
Sun Woosung turned his eyes toward Yeo Wonjin, who had muttered the name aloud as if arriving at the same thought.
“…No.”
Yeo Wonjin shook his head immediately.
Min Yugeon had been with Seo Suho at the time. Unless he had arranged for help in advance or had a contingency plan in place, it didn’t make sense.
Then again, something about Min Yugeon’s actions had felt off from the start. The moment he contacted Seo Suho just happened to coincide with the moment Suho was in danger. And even though Suho had left a vague hint, he hadn’t specified his location—yet Min Yugeon still made his way there.
Maybe he’d learned something from Min Sanghan.
As they exchanged theories, Yeo Wonjin and Sun Woosung eventually exited the dissection room.
“Captain.”
Just then, Yeo Wonjin’s watch vibrated and glowed, and an attendant who had been waiting in the hallway hurried over. Yeo Wonjin turned to face the attendant, sensing there was something urgent to be said.
“Min Yugeon has regained consciousness. The hospital just contacted us. Also…”
“Yes?”
Yeo Wonjin nodded, already thinking he needed to head straight to the hospital. He tapped his watch to check the incoming message—it was a report from the Security Force.
And the attendant had already relayed the contents accurately.
“Someone has stepped forward claiming they want to voluntarily confess to involvement in the case.”
“……”
Yeo Wonjin and Sun Woosung locked eyes in the air.
