Chapter 267.1

Chapter 267.1

Each time the iron pipe came down, he saw the woman’s wrists swell. Tae Mu-kyung could not take his eyes off the man who kept striking the joint of the chain with relentless force.

Lee Wooshin smashed the chain as if his life depended on it, unaware that blood dripped from his bitten lips. His face had gone pale, as though he were carving away his own flesh. Cold sweat slicked his skin.

And yet, these two were not breaking. They were not collapsing.

The more Lee Wooshin pushed himself, the more layers peeled away from Tae Mu-kyung’s emotionless face.

The desperate resolve to take his wife out, even if it meant shattering her wrists.

The woman’s strength, as if she willingly endured the pain to share her husband’s burden.

“.…”

What did together even mean?

The bare face beneath Tae Mu-kyung’s rubber mask stiffened gradually. Beneath the mask of the youngest Director of the NIS, something long buried writhed in a chilling way.

“Even when I left my household and my wife behind to withdraw, the back of my neck felt cold as hell.”

He remembered Wooshin’s voice.

Bang, bang. Each strike crashed down like lightning, and his heart jolted violently.

Something inside him shook and cracked. The mission of an agent he had built over the years. The code, the duties, the principles, the obligations.

‘Who had truly been chained?’

Without realizing it, Tae Mu-kyung touched his own wrist. His numb face stared blankly at Lee Wooshin.

Even as he bruised his wife with his own hands, Lee Wooshin’s breathing and strength never wavered. His gaze did not tremble. He clenched his jaw so emotion would not ruin the task. Only one goal mattered. Free her within eight strikes.

Watch to the very end.

Was that it? Had he secretly longed for that face, that expression?

The mask he himself had once worn, just like Lee Wooshin, now moved and lived solely for his wife. The endless void that had dragged him down seemed to crash at last against the bottom of his chest with a resounding blow.

At that moment, Lee Wooshin brought the pipe down one final time.

Crack. The chain shattered.

“Seoryeong, breathe!”

‘As the chain snapped, his wife collapsed backward, and he caught her in his arms. Do not hold it in. You can make a sound now. It is over. He tore at the remaining chains binding her body with his bare hands in a frenzy.’

He lifted her as she gasped and choked out pain, patting her back repeatedly as if soothing a startled child. Only after she buried her face in her husband’s chest did she begin to tremble in relief.

Right then, the generator overheated by a margin of a single second and roared. The water in the tub began to boil. Then boom. A blue flame burst in midair with an explosion.

Water splashed everywhere, soaking the floor. The bathtub exploded, and fragments rained down like shrapnel.

“――!”

Lee Wooshin clutched his wife tightly and ran to the spot farthest from the water. But the residual current lingering in the air from the blast clung to his wet clothes with a hiss. Melted fabric stuck to his back and calves, yet he shielded only his wife.

“Seoryeong….”

The bathtub had already become unrecognizable debris. Melted graphite sheets from the generator had turned to black ash and covered the floor. Pipes burst from the ceiling, and cold water dripped down. But not a single drop touched her. Even the blue sparks snapping across the floor were blocked by Lee Wooshin’s torn, exposed back.

“…!”

The woman’s limp fingers brushed his cheek. That alone made Lee Wooshin bend at the waist as if all tension had drained from him. Then he quickly pulled himself together.

In the dark space, even as blue sparks shot wildly through the air, he forced himself upright and staggered toward the light outside.

Thick veins stood out along the arm holding his wife. His back looked stubborn, as if he would not allow her to remain in a place this damp and deadly for even a second. His back was torn open, raw and red.

Tae Mu-kyung could not tear his eyes away from the lengthening shadow.

That was not the back of a man running away.

‘Unlike me, that back faced it head on, and faced it again. A back like forged steel. A hollow laugh slipped from Tae Mu-kyung’s mouth.’

“.…”

Darkness slowly swallowed him. As if possessed, he watched the two of them crawl out of the abandoned building alive.

‘They lived,’ He muttered.

‘He saved her….’

He said it again under his breath. He took a few steps back. He slipped deeper into the dark, away from the light.

He had wanted to prove that all agents met the same tragedy. But he had been wrong. He had wanted proof that he had been right, and yet…

“He is smashing it apart right in front of me.”

Behind his slumped shoulders, a charred black hand slowly rose.

It was familiar. A hallucination of his wife. Even knowing that, Tae Mu-kyung grabbed the blackened hand.

His lips trembled faintly, but on a face that already looked dead, even that tremor seemed like nothing more than a reflex.

“I was too late….”