[POINT OF VIEW: JO YU-RI - THIRD PERSON]
The phone slipped from Wi Ha-joon's fingers and fell onto the designer rug with a soft, muffled thud. No one moved to pick it up. No one breathed. The only sound in the opulent living room of the safe villa was the echo of the news anchor's shout from the abandoned device's small screen.
Jo Yu-ri felt as if the entire world had plunged into the icy water of the Han River along with him. The image of his fall, a dark, solitary silhouette against the backdrop of an indifferent city, was seared into the inside of her eyelids. She saw his body impact the black surface of the water, an explosion of white foam devoured by the darkness an instant later. And then, nothing.
A guttural sound, a choked sob, escaped her throat. It was an ugly, raw sound, the sound of something irrevocably breaking inside her. She pressed both hands to her mouth, not to muffle the noise, but to contain the torrent of guilt and horror that threatened to drown her.
He was gone.
That man, whose name she never knew, the man who had terrified her, who had dragged her into his nightmare world, the man who had saved her three times in the span of a few hours, was gone. And she had killed him. No, she hadn't pushed his body from that rooftop, but she might as well have. Every word of her phone call had been another step closer to that edge. Every piece of information she had revealed in panic had been another nail in his coffin.
He had asked her for forty-eight hours of trust. She hadn't given him even one. And the price of her betrayal was his life, broadcast live as a macabre spectacle. The hatred she had felt for him in the alley now seemed like a blasphemy, the arrogant anger of a child who understood nothing. Now she understood everything, and that understanding was an unbearable burden. He had become the monster so she could remain the princess. He had drawn the dragons away so she could stay safe in her castle.
And now the dragon had eaten him.
[POINT OF VIEW: GROUP - THIRD PERSON]
The silence in the room was so thick it seemed to have weight. Lee Jung-jae, the veteran of a thousand fictional crises, found himself utterly devoid of a script. He had played heroes, villains, desperate men. But he had never witnessed such real despair, such an absolute act of sacrifice. He looked at the phone screen on the floor, then at Yu-ri, who was rocking back and forth, and felt a heaviness in his chest. It was the weight of helplessness. They had been mere spectators to a modern Greek tragedy.
Jung Ho-yeon knelt beside Yu-ri, wrapping her arms around her in a gesture of comfort that felt terribly inadequate. How do you comfort someone who believes they just caused a person's death? She herself was in shock, the image of the jump repeating in her mind. It was so different from the choreographed deaths on set. There had been no camera cut, no safety cushion. Just a man and an abyss.
Mr. Choi slumped into an armchair, his face a sickly grey. The part of his brain dedicated to public relations was short-circuited. A man had died in a chase that started at his event, after interacting with his star client. But for the first time in his career, the manager's instinct was superseded by the human one. What he had just seen was profoundly disturbing. The initial relief that the immediate danger had passed was replaced by the horrific image of the fall.
It was Wi Ha-joon who broke the trance. He bent down, picked up the phone, and turned the volume back up. His analytical mind, though shaken, struggled to make sense, to process the data.
"...we repeat, the unidentified suspect has jumped into the Han River from the rooftop of the Federation of Industries building," the anchor said, his voice trembling with disbelief. "Authorities have yet to arrive on the scene, but the unidentified helicopter pursuing the man is now... it's descending dangerously over the water."
Everyone looked back at the screen. The image showed Helix's black, unmarked helicopter hovering just a few meters above the river's surface, its powerful spotlight cutting through the darkness of the water where he had fallen. It moved in tight search patterns, sweeping the area again and again.
"They're not fleeing," Ha-joon whispered. "They're looking for the body. They need to confirm he's dead."
The thought was chilling. It wasn't enough that he had jumped; they wanted proof. As they watched, the scene on the screen dramatically changed once more.
Two streaks of fire tore across Seoul's night sky. Two jet fighters, with the unmistakable silhouette of the Republic of Korea Air Force's KF-21s, streaked by at incredible speed over the scene, the roar of their engines arriving seconds later like thunder that vibrated the villa's windows.
"They're military jets! They're Air Force jets!" the anchor screamed, on the verge of hysteria. "And wait... yes, we're seeing multiple Coast Guard and Army helicopters converging on the area! There's a massive military response underway!"
The screen filled with new lights. Official helicopters, with clearly visible Republic of Korea markings, surrounded the area. The arrival of regular armed forces had an immediate effect. Helix's black, unmarked helicopter did not engage them. It did not challenge the air force of a sovereign nation. The moment it was outnumbered and outgunned, it abandoned its search, climbed sharply, and sped east, disappearing into the night as mysteriously as it had appeared. It was a shadow organization, powerful but not omnipotent. They were not willing to start an open war.
The hunt was over. Now the search began.
[POINT OF VIEW: MR. CHOI AND LEE JUNG-JAE - THIRD PERSON]
Inspector Park, who had watched the entire televised scene with an unreadable expression, cleared his throat, pulling them back to the reality of the room.
"Alright," he said, his voice calm but firm. "Now that the external situation is... stabilizing, I need your statements. Everything you remember. From the beginning."
Mr. Choi stood up, his manager mode reactivating with the new threat: the truth. "What are we supposed to say? The truth? That a super spy fought an evil organization at our gala and then jumped into a river?"
"The truth is often the best option," the inspector said calmly.
"The truth will kill us!" Choi retorted, his voice gaining strength. "The truth will drag us into his world! Do you want Jo Yu-ri, a national treasure, to be interrogated by intelligence agencies about secret corporations and military helicopters? Do you want those people, Helix or whatever they call themselves, to think we know something and decide we're the next 'loose ends'?"
He turned to the group. "That man... that man did what he did to get us out of this. He threw himself off a building to break any connection between his world and ours. The best, the only way to honor that sacrifice is to stay out. Build a wall between what happened and us."
Lee Jung-jae, who had remained silent, intervened. "I feel we owe him more than silence. He saved our lives."
"And for that very reason we owe him silence, sunbae-nim," Choi argued with ruthless logic. "Telling the truth would undo what he did. It would make his death in vain."
The word "death" hung in the air. Wi Ha-joon nodded slowly. "Choi's right. From a tactical standpoint, our best defense is ignorance. We are the famous victims who got caught in crossfire they didn't understand."
A story was agreed upon, a carefully sanitized version of events. There was an altercation at the gala. A man, believing Jo Yu-ri was in danger, removed her to protect her. He reunited her with them and then fled, pursued by the same unknown attackers. They didn't know who he was. They didn't know who they were. They were simply traumatized survivors. It was a plausible story that kept them safe, but it left a bitter taste of betrayal in everyone's mouth. They were erasing their savior from history.
[POINT OF VIEW: JO YU-RI - THIRD PERSON]
Hours later, Jo Yu-ri sat on the windowsill of a luxurious guest room. She hadn't slept. She couldn't. Below, the sun began to hint at the horizon, tinting the sky a pale grey. The city awoke, oblivious to the secret war that had been waged in its skies.
She was wearing the black hoodie he had given her. It was large and smelled of him, of the strange mix of metal, ozone, and danger. She hugged it tightly, as if it were the last vestige of him on Earth. It was her penance. Her reminder.
Her mind was a courtroom where she was at once prosecutor, judge, and accused. She replayed every second since he had landed beside her. His arrogance in taking the glass. Her anger in the alley. Her defiance in the safe house. And her stupid, stupid phone call. Each of her actions had been a stone that contributed to the avalanche. He had offered her a way out, a 48-hour pact of trust, and she had spat in his face. And he, despite everything, had kept his part of the bargain to the last, most horrifying consequence.
The news on the room's now-silent television showed images of Coast Guard boats combing the Han River. Divers, sonar, drones. A massive search operation. The headline read: "Search underway for unidentified suspect after dramatic jump into Han River." The government had already issued a confused statement, speaking of a "security incident" and urging calm. They were beginning to bury the truth under layers of bureaucracy.
Was he a hero? No, not entirely. He was a thief, a man who lived outside the law. But in those final moments, he had been more heroic than any character she or her friends had ever played. He had sacrificed himself for strangers who had only caused him trouble.
The tears she had shed earlier had dried, leaving behind a cold, heavy emptiness. She knew, with absolute certainty, that the Jo Yu-ri who had gone to that gala the night before was dead, as dead as he was. She had disappeared into the dark waters of that experience. The person who remained now was... changed. Marked. She carried the weight of a debt she could never repay to a man whose name she didn't even know.
The sun finally rose, bathing Seoul in a golden light. The news reports remained the same. The search continued. But as the hours passed, the conclusion became increasingly inevitable. No one could have survived that fall, that freezing water.
And yet, as the announcer reported that "no body has been found yet," a tiny, impossible, and surely false thought lodged itself in Yu-ri's mind. A thought that clung to the hoodie she wore.
Ghosts don't leave bodies.
And he had promised her he would become one.