Ji Chanwoo swallowed dryly and looked at the person seated across from him.
With a straight posture, brown hair, light-colored eyes, and finely sculpted features, the man appeared gentle at first glance. Yet, his presence was cold-blooded, his gaze fixed sharply on Ji Chanwoo like a predator watching its prey.
He hadn’t expected the Captain to personally seek him out. That only intensified his nerves. His body, already drained from a prior round of interrogation, stiffened involuntarily.
“About the incident… five years ago.”
He slowly opened his mouth.
“I’ll start by talking about the monster escape incident.”
“……”
“At the time, I was one of the personnel stationed near the building where the monster was confined.”
Ji Chanwoo began recounting the story, starting with the fact that his son, Ji Sung-hyun, had been hospitalized for an extended period.
“The hospital decided it was no longer meaningful to prolong Sung-hyun’s life through life support, as he’d been unconscious for so long. They began discussing plans to end his care. But that day, Min Sanghan—who I had no prior connection with—contacted me. He said that if I killed a family living nearby, he’d make sure my son could stay in the hospital longer…”
No matter how he explained it, it sounded like a weak excuse—that he had done it to protect his child. Ji Chanwoo recalled the look Seo Suho had given him and ran a dry hand over his face.
“I gave in to the offer and ended up killing the two of them.”
Ji Chanwoo clutched his hands tightly and stared at the floor, as if he couldn’t bear the horror of what he’d done. Yeo Wonjin watched him quietly.
“And then I tried to kill their child—Suho as well. But the monster broke through the barrier and attacked me, so I failed.”
“……”
For the first time, a murderous glint appeared in Yeo Wonjin’s otherwise emotionless eyes. Ji Chanwoo, with his head lowered, failed to notice it.
“After that, I fled to the research center and sought out Min Sanghan. I was treated for my injuries there and started living in the Capsule Place. During that time, I wanted to confess everything and beg for forgiveness from Suho, but the opportunity never came.”
“Convenient.”
Yeo Wonjin cut in coldly. If a voice could have a physical form, his would’ve been a finely honed blade, piercing straight through the ears.
“You mean, right up until your son died.”
“That’s not…!”
“The chance that never came while your son was alive suddenly appeared once there was no child left to secretly watch from the shadows?”
Though his tone feigned amusement, Ji Chanwoo could tell it was pure derision. Mouth agape, he slowly bowed his head again, realizing—once more—that he didn’t even have the right to feel ashamed.
“I just wanted to face Suho alone, in a place without anyone else. This isn’t the kind of story you can bring up just anywhere, and above all, I knew how much it would hurt Suho to hear it.”
“So you’re saying you fulfilled your own desires under the guise of sparing Suho.”
There was no rebutting that. Ji Chanwoo fell silent. But this was not a place where even silence was permitted him.
“Continue.”
“…After Sung-hyun passed, I truly did want to meet Suho. But while waiting for the right moment to talk to him, I ended up tailing him from a distance. Then out of nowhere, I was attacked by Min Yugeon. He dragged me off and interrogated me for several days.”
The story veered into unexpected territory, and Yeo Wonjin’s brow furrowed.
Min Yugeon?
“Min Yugeon… Min Sanghan’s son already knew everything that his father and I had done. Every day, he demanded I turn myself in. But I insisted I had to speak with Suho directly first—I couldn’t just give in.”
“……”
“Then Min Sanghan kidnapped Suho…”
After listening in detail to how he had negotiated with Min Yugeon, Yeo Wonjin tapped his fingertips lightly against his thigh.
It seemed Min Yugeon had helped Seo Suho in his own rough, roundabout way.
Yeo Wonjin, while mentally praising Min Yugeon’s unrestrained actions, also tasted bitterness in his mouth. He didn’t want to admit it, but he felt envy—and inferiority—toward someone who would go to any lengths to protect Seo Suho.
Yeo Wonjin could have slandered Min Sanghan too, without hesitation. But he was the Captain—someone with many things to protect. He couldn’t simply eliminate a personal enemy out of spite. He had to follow ship protocol: expose Min Sanghan’s crimes, have him expelled from the vessel, and ensure that he died a miserable death, shamed before everyone.
Perhaps that was painful enough for a man like Min Sanghan, who held honor and status above all else.
And yet, Yeo Wonjin found it lacking.
Min Sanghan, who had poisoned his own mother and tried to kill Seo Suho, didn’t deserve just mental anguish—he needed to suffer long and physically, in the most brutal way imaginable.
As Yeo Wonjin envisioned a death befitting Min Sanghan, the faint traces of humanity in his expression completely vanished.
“……!”
Ji Chanwoo flinched, a chill running down his spine.
***
A man in a military uniform radiating a heavy, commanding presence stepped into the hospital.
Passing through the hallway, he found his way to an unfamiliar room where a tall man sat blankly on the bed.
“I’m Colonel Sun Woosung from the Reconnaissance Unit.”
Approaching the bed and maintaining a respectful distance, Sun Woosung addressed the patient.
Min Yugeon slowly turned his head to look at him, like a machine responding to external stimuli.
When Sun Woosung met those hollow eyes directly, his expression tightened.
Seo Suho’s longtime friend—and the son of Min Sanghan. To Sun Woosung, Min Yugeon was nothing more than someone who had tormented Seo Suho. He gave him credit for rushing to save Suho, but from Suho’s perspective, the betrayal ran deeper: his friend’s father had tried to kill him. The shock and pain must have been unimaginable.
“…May I speak with you for a moment?”
“……”
Min Yugeon stared back at him expressionlessly.
“I heard you still haven’t spoken with the Security Force. But your testimony could help Seo Suho.”
At the mention of Seo Suho’s name, a faint light returned to Min Yugeon’s eyes. His lips, which had been tightly sealed, parted slightly.
“Why is the Reconnaissance Unit handling the Security Force’s job?”
“It’s under the Captain’s orders.”
At the concise answer, Min Yugeon fell silent. His dark brown eyes shifted to the embroidered name on Sun Woosung’s uniform.
“It was you, wasn’t it? The one who found Suho’s parents.”
He hadn’t forgotten the name Seo Suho had briefly mentioned.
As if he ever could.
This was the man who’d uncovered the identities of those murdered by Min Sanghan—who’d allowed Suho to hold on to reality, even if just barely.
To Min Yugeon, Sun Woosung was also someone to be grateful for.
Caught off guard by the unexpected words, Sun Woosung nodded slightly, suspecting that Min Yugeon had heard about him from Suho.
Min Yugeon stared quietly at him, then opened his mouth.
“…The people who were killed—my father was the one responsible.”
He hated calling Min Sanghan his father, but there was no denying the blood that bound them. It was disgusting. Still, it was as if even that disgust had been burned to ash—now, there was only numbness. He didn’t want to feel anything toward Min Sanghan. All that remained in his mind was the image of Seo Suho’s final expression.
“He’d long coveted the position of Research Director, and he saw Suho’s parents as obstacles to that goal.”
His tone was flat, like someone who had given up on everything. Sun Woosung quietly listened throughout Min Yugeon’s testimony.
Min Sanghan had used Ji Chanwoo to try and wipe out Seo Suho’s entire family. When Min Yugeon learned the full truth, Min Sanghan had tried to blackmail him by taking Suho hostage. So Min Yugeon, who had Ji Chanwoo under his watch, turned the man around and attempted to rescue Suho. He recounted all of it, then reached for his wrist and unfastened his watch.
“Take it.”
“……”
“It contains records of my conversations with my father. It should be more than enough as evidence.”
While Min Yugeon had been unconscious, all the voice logs on his watch from his conversations with Min Sanghan had been erased. It was clearly Min Sanghan’s doing—he must’ve come to the hospital several times.
But what Min Sanghan failed to consider was that Min Yugeon had long been skilled with machines and programming. He realized right away that his watch had been tampered with and used a specialized program to recover the deleted data. If the records had also been deleted from the data center, recovery might have been impossible—but the data stored directly on the watch remained intact.
—Suho… Don’t lay a single finger on him. Let him go, now.
—Don’t worry. I won’t do anything— yet.
Sun Woosung listened to the recording Min Yugeon played and glanced at him.
He hadn’t expected this much.
There was no room for reinterpretation—what Min Sanghan had done clearly warranted expulsion beyond the ship’s bounds.
Yet Min Yugeon showed no hesitation or remorse about driving his father toward death with his own hands.
The man before him truly seemed like an empty shell.
“…Are you sure about this?”
Sun Woosung asked the obligatory question out of courtesy.
“This could mean punishment for you as well.”
“……”
Min Yugeon turned his sunken gaze toward the empty air, without a word.
