That night smelled of electricity.The air carried a trace of ozone — dry, metallic, the scent that lingers around wires before a storm.Min Ki sat before the screen, eyes unblinking, the pale light laying across his face like a cold mask.Everything else had vanished — only the hum of processors and the soft crackle of servers remained, merging with his own breathing.
He felt no fatigue — only that razor-sharp focus that comes when the mind narrows to a single point of light.He was searching.Not for a person. Not even for a clear target — but for an anomaly.A trace left behind after Ryeon's exit from the network.
After the link had severed, noise began to spread through the system.It looked like ordinary digital residue — random, fragmented.But something in its structure was wrong: the frequencies matched timestamps that shouldn't exist.As if someone had left a mark on purpose.
Min Ki magnified the data — fragments of video streams, blurred surveillance frames, strings of synchronization code.And there it was — a still frame, frozen a few seconds too long.A face not found in any database.
A man.Young. Glasses. A camera slung over his shoulder.He stood in an old tunnel, looking toward the point where R-01's signal should have reappeared.Min Ki froze.
The file was tagged as Network Anomaly, yet somehow buried inside a restricted subfolder — an archive that couldn't be accessed through standard clearance.He scrolled through the logs.Amid timestamps and digital debris, one line stood out: "J. Son."No ID. No metadata. Just a signature — written as if by hand.
"Jae Son…?" he murmured, tasting the foreign name.
He began searching for matches — old city records, camera archives, media fragments, forgotten blog networks.At first, nothing.Then — a flicker.An old journalist's page, a photo-reporter. Deleted years ago.A project once titled "Those Who Remain Unseen."
Min Ki opened one of the cached pages.The same man. The same look. The same camera aimed into a dark corridor.Underneath the photo, a caption:"To watch is not to know."
He leaned back, fingers tightening around the armrest.He didn't know why that name struck him.He'd seen hundreds of faces, thousands of files — but this one aligned too neatly with something buried deep within the system.As if this man had accidentally stood too close to what was meant to stay hidden.
Min Ki opened the Hunter archive.A long list of encrypted logs, corrupted data, access points, control nodes.In one damaged file — a line repeated again and again:"Son Ji-hyun — Correlating Observer."
He read it several times.The name appeared where there should have been no external involvement.Not an agent. Not an operator. Not a target.Just an observer.
"Who are you, Son Ji-hyun…" he whispered. "How did you get in here?"
No reply came.Only the steady breathing of the fans, the faint crackle of cables.
Min Ki leaned back, closing his eyes.Two names stood before him now — R-01 and Son Ji-hyun.Separated by six years, and yet resurfacing side by side, as if someone was slowly dragging the past back into the light.
He slipped in his earpiece.The system was silent.But beneath the static, he thought he could hear a rhythm —a faint pulse.Like breathing.Soft, unsteady… human.
"If you're still somewhere in the network," he said quietly, almost a whisper, "give me a sign."
He wasn't speaking to anyone specific.Just to the void — the space where lost signals go.
His voice softened, lower now, unconsciously tender.Between his words, pauses lingered — not mechanical, but human.As though something gentle was hiding between the lines of code.
"I'll find you," he breathed."I'll find who this is — and why his name is in your files."
The light of the monitor trembled, flickering in his eyes.For a fleeting moment, it felt as if the screen were responding — as if someone on the other side of the network was watching him back.
Min Ki rubbed his face, removed the earpiece, and murmured to himself:
"Everything begins with the one who simply watches."
And in that quiet sentence, there was more truth than in a hundred lines of code —because for the first time in years, he felt that behind the numbers…there was a person.