Seongjin Group, European Integrated Security Control Center.
Dawn in this place always pretended to be 'perfect.'
The massive monitors filling the walls reduced the world's flow of money and secrets into mere lines of numbers, while the cooling fans in the server racks hummed a low, rhythmic breath, substituting for human respiration. The air was cold. It had to be cold. If the heat rose, the servers would grow anxious, and if the servers grew anxious, humans made mistakes. Here, a mistake meant a loss of trillions.
The agents knew this.
So, they endured the dawn with coffee.
"Hey, when's the shift change…?"
Someone mumbled, clutching their head.
In this place, drowsiness was a sin. The moment eyes closed, a tiny anomaly on the screen would be missed. And that tiny anomaly could become the leash of a colossal disaster at any moment.
"Brew more coffee."
"It's already the third cup."
"Brew it anyway. If your heart stops here, it's over."
It was a space where words thrown like jokes were not jokes.
And then—
The air noticed it first.
The fluorescent lights trembled. Very thinly, very subtly.
It could have been a common issue like voltage instability. But the voltage at the Security Control Center was of a kind designed 'never to waver.' This was not a simple office; it was a fortress. If it wavered, that itself was an anomaly signal.
One agent frowned, touching his ear.
"Hey… doesn't the inside of your ear feel a bit… ticklish today? Like an electronic sound, just slightly…"
"It's because you're tired."
His colleague replied without taking his eyes off the monitor.
"You're just sensitive today. Drink some water."
It's the human that is sensitive, not the system. Humans always deceive themselves like that.
It is a habit for survival.
But sometimes, that habit kills people.
One monitor blinked.
Blink.
That much is common. Equipment changes states as if breathing.
But the blinking didn't stop.
As one blinked,
the monitor next to it followed.
And the one next to that followed suit.
It spread like ripples.
As if someone was punching in a signal exactly 'one beat late.'
Precisely.
With a precision so exact that the word 'coincidence' couldn't even stick to the lips.
The sound of the agents' keyboards stopped simultaneously.
Silence.
Only the breathing of the server racks remained.
And in the next moment, the entire wall of screens flipped over at once.
Logs poured down like a waterfall.
Numbers, codes, alarms, verifications, updates.
And… the word 'NORMAL.'
[Integrity Check: NORMAL]
[Intrusion Detection: NONE]
[Packet Analysis: NORMAL]
[Permission Request: NORMAL]
[Session Maintenance: NORMAL]
Normal. Normal. Normal.
It was too normal.
When the word 'normal' appears this frequently, it is, in fact, abnormal.
It was a method used well by those who 'hide.'
Overly clean, too tidy—a method that, because of its perfection, reeked.
"This is strange…"
Someone swallowed dry saliva.
"Why is it… so clean?"
Before the sentence could finish, a single line was carved between the rows of 'NORMAL.'
At first, they thought it was someone's prank.
But a prank must accompany laughter.
This sentence gave no laughter.
[Owner Verification: Seongjin Group — DENIED]
[Owner Verification: PHANTOM — APPROVED]
"What… what is this right now…"
An agent's voice cracked.
"This… is a joke, right?"
Anderson, the head of Security Team 1, sprang from his seat like lightning.
He was the most sensitive person to the word 'joke.' Here, a joke meant an accident, and an accident meant heads would roll.
"Who's joking! Is this a joke to you!"
Veins bulged on the back of the hand gripping the mic.
"Security Team 2, block the source! Lock the internal routing and cut all external connections!"
Orders poured out.
People moved.
They pretended to move.
But the system was already moving 'before the humans could move.'
Firewall rules began to disappear.
Line by line.
Line by line.
As if being erased by an eraser.
No, it wasn't erasing.
To be precise… it was 'organizing.'
Defense rules built up over years—
"If this passes, block that."
"Filter this here and send it there."
All that logic folded away like old paper being tucked in, leaving only a very short sentence in its place.
My seat.
"Stop! I said stop!"
Anderson slammed his fist on the desk.
The keyboard beneath the monitor jumped entirely.
"Bypass to backup! Emergency server! Switch!"
An agent spoke in a trembling voice.
"Sir… the bypass isn't…"
"Why won't it bypass! Why!"
"The server… has classified us as intruders."
It was nonsense.
But sometimes, the system proves nonsense with the calmest voice.
[Access Authority: Agent — RESTRICTED]
[Access Authority: PHANTOM — SUPREME]
"..."
The air in the control center froze instantly.
Someone tried to laugh, but the laughter snapped off at the tip of their tongue.
The moment the word 'SUPREME' passed by,
the agents instinctively realized what situation they were in.
The moment you feel someone has locked the door.
The moment you realize the person who locked it is not 'you.'
It was then.
In a corner of the control center.
An old fax machine, which belonged in a museum, suddenly began to breathe.
Chii-ik— Chii-ik—
The sound of spitting out paper.
That sound was like a gunshot.
A sound that shouldn't ring inside a fortress, so outdated that it was rather more eerie.
"A fax…?"
An agent walked over as if possessed.
He froze like a stone statue in front of the fax machine.
Paper was pouring out.
It was an organized document.
A document organized too 'kindly.'
Sins categorized item by item, so that anyone could understand by reading just one page.
Flow of slush funds.
Rings of laundering.
Borrowed-name accounts.
Lists of political lobbying.
Blanks in contracts.
Unsigned approvals.
Magical sentences where 'non-existent money' became 'existing money.'
"Where… is this going?"
The agent asked, his throat locked.
Another agent checked his monitor, his face turning white.
"Sir… these documents are currently… being transmitted to major media outlets worldwide, international investigative agencies, and financial supervisory networks."
Anderson gritted his teeth.
"How?"
"Via Fax."
"…In 2026? Via fax?"
Anderson's voice cut off.
At that moment, he was certain.
This was not a simple infiltration.
This was 'mockery.'
Destroying a cutting-edge fortress and completing the exposure with the most outdated device—
The cruelty of the low-grade mocking the high-grade.
And right in the middle of that mockery,
an image floated up on the central monitor.
A finely carved mask of a ghost.
The empty eye sockets seemed to pierce through human souls.
Below it, letters were typed slowly.
Not like typing, but like a heart beating, one beat at a time.
[Hello. I came to inspect the security.]
[Inspection Result: You were normally evil.]
Normal.
Could the word 'normal' be this cold, this cruel?
"Trace it! Immediately!"
Anderson shouted like a final struggle.
"IP or whatever! Catch the tail! Even a fragment!"
Keyboards were pounded frantically.
Analysis tools spun.
Alarm sounds trembled as if hesitating to ring.
But the screen refreshed again, as if sneering.
[Tracking function initiated. Congratulations.]
[Now, I will track you.]
Instant.
The agents' hands stopped.
The sentence was too simple,
yet too heavy.
'Now I see you.'
Those words were not a shield, but a sword.
And this space suddenly became not a fortress, but a prison.
"Cut the power! Main switch!"
Someone shouted.
The switch went down.
The monitors turned off.
Black screen.
A moment of relief.
But that relief didn't last a single second.
The monitor next to it turned on by itself.
Another one turned on.
And another.
As if waking each other up, giggling.
Eventually, every monitor in the entire control center displayed the same sentence simultaneously.
[Verification Complete.]
[Your sins cannot be backed up.]
[May you not need product activation in Hell.]
Tuk.
The lights went out.
The cooling fans stopped.
The heartbeat of the server racks ceased at once.
It wasn't a blackout.
Not a recoverable 'accidental' blackout,
but a feeling that 'existence itself' had been deleted.
On the blackened monitors,
only the pale faces of the agents were reflected like mirrors.
Those faces were speaking.
We… have just been judged.
That summer, people called the season the 'Season of Ghosts.'
Wall Street tycoons who reigned like gods until yesterday wailed holding bankruptcy filings the next morning,
and leaders who manipulated the world with illegal surveillance collapsed upon seeing wiretap logs on their bedroom monitors.
Those in power shouted, "This is terror!"
The public whispered, "Still, someone did it."
But Phantom was not on the side of justice.
He was neither a hero nor a savior.
He simply—
broke what needed to be broken,
and dragged out into the world what could not be hidden.
One corrupt corporate chairman shouted in front of broadcast cameras as if tearing his face apart.
"That thing is not human! It's a disaster! Satan sent by God!"
At that moment, the broadcast screen shook briefly, and a subtitle intervened.
[Correction: Not Satan, but Customer Service.]
Just a few seconds.
Those few seconds remained as an indelible fear in the minds of people worldwide.
Everyone learned that what is scarier than Satan is an entity that 'follows you to the end' like customer service.
Interpol and security teams of every nation went mad.
"Find a trace."
"Even a fragment!"
"Breathing, habits, typing rhythm… anything!"
All they could do was search, scraping up even the dust.
But what returned was only a void.
Not a single byte of a trace,
not a single fragment of a packet,
nothing.
As if the existence called Phantom had never been in this world from the beginning.
That 'absence' became, rather, the definitive evidence.
So people feared his absence even more.
"Phantom does not come."
"Phantom appears."
"And… destroys everything, then disappears in silence."
There was no evidence.
But the void became the evidence.
Thus, Phantom became a legend.
And—
After that legend overturned the world once,
and disappeared without leaving a sound,
quite some time passed.
People began to whisper.
"Is that ghost finished?"
"Or…"
"Is he just catching his breath?"
The more questions there were,
the fewer answers there were.
Years passed since then.
Somewhere in the global security network—
Someone witnessed a very quiet, very familiar sentence.
[Check.]
With just that one word,
people knew.
Ghosts do not disappear completely.
Ghosts… remain somewhere in the system.
And when that ghost starts moving again,
they knew that this time, it might not be a simple exposure.
Like that.
On the day the name Phantom began to be spoken 'again.'
The legend was not ending, but preparing for the second act.
Three years have passed since then...