The first thing that assaulted Jin-woo as he kicked open the cabin door was the metallic stench of iron. The humid air, heavy with torrential rain, mixed with the blood splattered across the room, creating a grotesque, viscous atmosphere. The hiss-clunk of the overloaded respirator scratched at his eardrums like the final gasps of a dying animal.

  "Yuri! Stay with me! Please...!"

  Soaking wet, Jin-woo threw himself at her. The circuit board of the frequency jammer emitted a foul, acrid smoke. Yuri was coughing up dark red blood, staining the white sheets crimson. The warmth of her body against his fingertips was rapidly fading, crossing the irreversible boundary of life.

  BANG—!

  A cold, dry gunshot tore through the silence from the adjacent room. Before the smell of gunpowder could even fill the air, an agent—leaving only a blurred afterimage—finished executing Jin-ho and vanished into the darkness outside like smoke.

  "Oppa... Unni... No...!"

  Seo-hee’s scream was no longer a sound a human vocal cord could produce. It was the wail of a wounded beast, striking the low ceiling of the cabin and shattering into pieces. While Seo-hee clawed at the floor, clutching Jin-ho’s blood-soaked body, Yuri, within Jin-woo’s embrace, squeezed out the last fragment of her soul to grip his sleeve.

  Her gaze was already swimming in the void beyond this world, but her cracked lips moved ever so slightly for one person.

  "Ji... nu... I want to... rest... now..."

  That single sentence became a sharp dagger, hacking into the deepest part of Jin-woo’s heart. As Yuri’s hand went limp and dropped to the floor, a silence massive enough to erase the sound of the rain dominated the cabin.

  Jin-woo froze like a stone, burying his face in Yuri’s cooling chest. The man whose reason for protection had evaporated had only bloodshot eyes left; even his tears had dried up. Only the flickering red light of the fireplace elongated his shadow like a grotesque monster on the wall.

  "Yuri, you're sleeping, right? I told you I'd buy you meat today..."

  Jin-woo rubbed his face against her pale cheek, whispering in a voice scraping like rusted metal. But the only response was the creeping cold of a body turning into lead. Seo-hee tore at her own hair, spitting out the words "It's a lie" like dust. Despair was silently swallowing the cabin whole.

  Jin-woo let out a low, broken laugh and hugged Yuri until her bones might crush. He arranged her hair with the care of a potter molding porcelain, then grabbed a piece of burning kindling and threw it onto the drum of heating oil.

  WHOOSH—!

  The flames roared instantly, as if to incinerate all tragedy. The intense heat seared his skin, but Jin-woo didn't flinch. He grabbed Seo-hee, who tried to jump into the fire, threw her over his shoulder, and walked out into the pitch-black rain, turning his back on the blazing inferno.

  As the flames danced in the reflection of the puddles, Jin-woo’s shadow wavered over the memory of Yuri’s face. Just minutes ago, a pulse had proved her existence. Now, absolute silence reigned. The creeping cold from her fingertips seemed to flow into his marrow, freezing his heart solid.

  "Yuri, stop playing around. I'm going to get mad. You know how scary I am when I'm angry..."

  His voice crumbled like parched earth. He buried his lips deep into her cooling hand. The metallic taste of blood on her sleeve smeared onto his mouth, but he didn't care. He licked it up as if it were the last remaining warmth of her life. From the next room, the sound of Seo-hee’s soul escaping with choking coughs echoed.

  "I told you... I'd buy you meat. We were going to go to Hoengseong and eat the most expensive Hanwoo beef until we burst. Hey, Lim Yuri. You promised me..."

  Finally, a single hot tear fell from Jin-woo’s bloodshot eye, sliding down Yuri’s cheek. For a second, his heart plummeted, thinking she was crying. He hurriedly tried to wipe it away, only to freeze when he saw his own hand covered in filth.

  Blood, gunpowder, and mud. With these hands, he had taken countless lives and manipulated systems that shook the world. Yet, the helplessness of not being able to hold onto the last breath of the woman he loved most tore through his chest like a scalpel.

  "You haven't heard all my dad jokes yet. I have a mountain of them prepared... You said you wouldn't leave until you heard them all. You said you'd wake up just to tell me to shut up..."

  Jin-woo began to mutter jokes in a low voice, brushing her hair back like a madman. The saddest, most desperate jokes in the world scattered vainly before the silent corpse. In the darkness, his self-deprecating laughter mixed with the rain, echoing grotesquely. The Hanwoo beef in Hoengseong, the small house by the sea, the peaceful walks... those humble dreams shattered along with her stopped heart.

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  Suddenly, searchlights from 'S' pierced the fog again. The hounds had regrouped and were sniffing out death once more. Jin-woo left one last, long kiss on her cold forehead. The final spark of hope in his eyes flickered out, replaced by a deep abyss and venom.

  "Yuri, wait just a little bit. I won't let you be cold. And I won't let those maggots lay a single finger on your body... I'll burn it all."

  Jin-woo wrapped Yuri in the bed sheet and stood up slowly. The cabin was no longer a shelter; it had to become their massive crematorium and coffin. A worn lighter was clenched in his hand.

  When Jin-woo regained consciousness, the world was nothing but acrid ash and the smell of smoke. The cabin had collapsed, leaving only a skeletal frame, with intermittent embers screaming as they licked the darkness. Jin-woo forced his battered body up. Smoke filled his torn lungs, but he crawled like a beast toward where Yuri had lain.

  "Yuri... Yuri...!"

  But there was nothing. No bed where her warmth had lingered, not even the debris of the white sheet. Jin-woo began to dig through the burnt ruins with his bare hands like a lunatic. His fingertips were seared by embers, his fingernails flipped back, and black blood gushed out, but pain was a luxury he couldn't afford.

  It was strange. Even if the cabin had burned to the ground, a fragment of bone or a handful of remains should have been left. But the spot where Yuri had been was cleanly, almost surgically, scooped out. Jin-woo clawed at the dirt floor with trembling hands.

  It was them. In the brief window before the fire swallowed the cabin, the 'Cleaners' had infiltrated and stolen her body.

  "You... sons of bitches! Give her back... Give me back my Yuri!"

  Jin-woo’s scream scattered into the smoke. He realized then. The massive evil known as 'S' did not even permit Yuri the dignity of death. They treated her final breath as a piece of data, her body as a spare part for their 'Engine'.

  The pain felt as if his heart had been gouged out alive. The man who couldn't protect the name of the woman he loved, nor even her final remains, had fallen from a legend to something lower than a worm.

  Six Months Later.

  Seoul Station, Underground Level 3.

  The air here, where human dignity was washed away with excrement, was fishy. But unlike the metallic scent of blood at the cabin, this was the stench of rot and decay produced by those castrated of warmth.

  Jin-woo—no, a shell of a man—lay curled up like a fetus under layers of filthy newspapers at the core of this stench. The sharp glint of 'Phantom' that once commanded continents had long since settled as sediment at the bottom of a faded soju bottle.

  "Hey, you bastard! Stop talking in your sleep! It's loud!"

  A homeless man sleeping next to him kicked Jin-woo roughly in the ribs. A dull thud echoed, but Jin-woo didn't move, as if he had forgotten the concept of pain. On the back of his hand, exposed through the newspaper, were scars—grossly twisted fingernails that had grown back wrong after he had dug through the hot ashes of the cabin.

  Jin-woo stared at the moldy stains on the ceiling with unfocused eyes and swigged the cheap soju. The burning sensation of the toxic alcohol tearing down his esophagus was the only sensory proof that he hadn't become a corpse yet.

  His mind was still a vortex of auditory hallucinations. When he closed his eyes, Yuri’s shy smile dizzied his retinas. When he opened them, the empty pile of ash where her body had vanished became a black hole swallowing his vision. Every night, in his dreams, he dug through that cabin again. He dug until his finger bones were exposed, but woke up crying blood tears, never finding a single trace of her warmth. This hellish infinite loop had continued for half a year.

  Passersby held their noses and avoided this 'walking ghost' like filth. No one could imagine that this stinking man was once a hero who carried the fate of a nation. Jin-woo had erased himself from the world. The name 'Kang Jin-woo', the code name 'Phantom'—they were just fragments of a distant past life. He was merely a pendulum of despair, begging when the booze ran out, and falling into a death-like sleep when drunk.

  Thud. Thud. Thud.

  A rhythmic, heavy sound of military boots cut through the stagnant air of the underground passage. The footsteps stopped right at Jin-woo’s head. Jin-woo had lost the will to even lift his head, but a massive shadow covered him, accompanied by the thick smell of cigarette smoke.

  It was Min-su.

  Looking much more haggard than six months ago, Min-su looked down at the empty soju bottles rolling on the floor with bloodshot eyes. He slowly bent his knees and snatched the empty bottle Jin-woo was clutching like a lifeline, pouring the last drops onto the ground.

  Jin-woo slowly lifted his unfocused eyes to look up at Min-su. It was a dry, alien gaze, as if looking at a creature he was seeing for the first time in his life.

  "...Who are you."

  At Jin-woo’s voice, which cracked like a drought-stricken rice paddy, Min-su’s eyes instantly turned red. With trembling hands, Min-su pulled a heavy package wrapped in newspaper from his jacket and threw it onto Jin-woo’s chest.

  From the gaps in the newspaper, the savory, rich scent of raw meat rose up, instantly overpowering the stench of the underground.

  "Hey, Kang Jin-woo. What the hell are you doing here? Where did the Phantom go who bragged about buying me Hoengseong Hanwoo beef? Why is a ghost hugging a soju bottle, you stupid bastard!"

  Min-su’s voice trembled with grief. He grabbed Jin-woo by the collar and hauled him up as if vomiting out a cry. The filth-ridden fabric screamed as it twisted in Min-su’s grip.

  "The meat is getting cold, you punk. Get up. Hyeong-nim is here."

  Jin-woo’s vacant pupils began to tremble microscopically, as if an earthquake had hit his soul. The short word 'Meat' became a fragment of the promise he couldn't keep before Yuri’s final breath, cruelly hacking into the deepest part of his chest once again.