Chapter 216.1

Chapter 216.1

The bell above the door jingled, and a cold gust swept in, making everyone at the bar turn their heads.

Who the hell would walk in like that at this hour? Someone cleared their throat awkwardly.

Blood-stained coat, boots like a hunter’s, a swollen face that looked more corpse than human, and eyes glinting like a ghost’s through tangled hair.

As she trudged deeper into the lit bar, a strange silence fell over the room.

Her condition was already far from normal. She’d been abducted wearing nothing but thin clothes, so she had no choice but to scavenge coats and shoes from the dead.

She had followed the tracks backward, passed through a tunnel, and walked all the way down to the nearest town. Her eyes stung as she remembered her instructor’s words: a mercenary has to know how to keep walking, no matter what.

After hours of nonstop walking, she finally stepped into the first place she saw with lights on. Even in the bar’s warmth, Seoryeong shivered.

Limping, she sat at the counter, drawing the disapproving gaze of the burly middle-aged owner. She would’ve been fine with just a glass of water, but even opening her mouth felt impossible; her throat was frozen stiff.

“Hey, a customer just walked in. You gonna stand there staring all night?”

A woman crossed the room, scolding the owner as she draped a blanket over Seoryeong’s shoulders.

“God, your temper. That’s not it…”

The owner huffed and knocked on the counter like a warning.

“Miss, you shouldn’t be sitting here like this. You need a hospital. Want me to call an ambulance?”

“No…”

The heat from the stove felt like needles stabbing into her skin. She wanted to cry, not from the pain, but because Lee Wooshin wasn’t there.

Because he’d disappeared right in front of her… again.

But she couldn’t hate him anymore. Even when he’d let go of her hand on the tracks without hesitation, she knew now he’d done it to protect her. She couldn’t resent him like before.

Her tear-reddened eyes wavered with a cold, burning light.

‘Even without you, I won’t fall apart like before. Losing you once was enough to break me. That was the only time I’ll ever let loss devour me. This kind of separation can’t even touch me now.’

[…―Earlier this morning, the TX-1 train derailed during a test run, killing eight crew members including the engineer and injuring fifteen passengers. Among the released list of fatalities, Yuri Solzhenitsyn has been confirmed dead, shocking the public. We’ll now connect live to our reporter at the scene.]

Her red, frozen fingers twitched. The name stabbing at her ears made her slowly lift her head. A monitor hung over the bar counter.

Her gaze trembled before fixing on the screen. The wrecked train hanging in midair, the gorge below; it was a scene of complete devastation.

[Four cars of the TX-1 train derailed while passing through a tunnel and plunged into the gorge below. As you can see, the front of the train is tilted to one side, and every passenger window has been completely shattered. The TX-1, which was on a test run, reportedly went off the rails due to a sudden mechanical failure and crashed into nearby vehicles…]

“Oh my god… poor souls…”

“Still can’t believe it, no matter how many times I see it. Life can be so damn cruel…”

“You’re one to talk, mister!”

The woman shouted as she set down a steaming bowl of potato soup. Seoryeong began flexing her numb toes like a patient in rehab, then scooped up a spoonful.

Train wreckage floated away in the current. Rescue workers in orange suits searched every inch of the gorge. But nowhere in the broadcast did anyone mention the United States. Even with trembling hands, she devoured the soup like a starving animal.

[It has been eight hours since the derailment. Despite the deployment of firefighters, police, and even military forces, rescue and recovery efforts remain slow. People have gathered outside to mourn Yuri Solzhenitsyn. Moscow citizens are expressing quiet sorrow as they grieve yet another tragedy in the Solzhenitsyn family…]

Soup clung thickly to her lips. She stared at the monitor with bloodshot eyes, shoveling spoonful after spoonful without pause.

On the screen, fourteen-year-old Lee Wooshin smiled like an angel, his features still distinctly Western back then. Seoryeong’s sore eyes tightened even more.

Potato dissolved in her mouth, and soup dripped from the corner of her lips. She ate like a starving beast, stripped down to instinct. The people around her frowned at the sight of her coarse, desperate eating, but Seoryeong didn’t care.

She licked the bowl clean, chasing the last drop with her tongue. Wiping her mouth roughly with her palm, she spoke.

“Can I make a phone call?”

The owner gave her a look of suspicion, and she added, “I want to pay for the soup.”