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Waking up in the early morning repeatedly is bound to change your biological rhythm. The reason my eyes opened even though the alarm I’d set didn’t go off was because of that.

The scene outside the frosty window was dark, while the digital clock displayed midnight. It was an early dawn, about an hour and twenty-one minutes ahead of the scheduled time.

There was no need to ponder; closing my eyelids and falling back to sleep wouldn’t draw any complaints. Such a dawn.

As my hazy mind came into contact with the night air, my senses began to sharpen. My stiff neck throbbed like it was about to explode. The joints, weary from relentless harassment, screamed in agony.

After swallowing a few Tylenol from the nightstand and using my arms as a sleep mask, I was just about to drift back to sleep when suddenly, a sound reached my ears.

The rubbing sound of rubber.

Someone was dragging slippers down the hallway.

I covered myself with the blanket and turned over, leaning on my arm. Then I started to think.

A villa not too far from the countryside.

According to Mr. Park from the real estate agency, it was a place that was gathering dust with no residents. Since the forward units were consolidated for the defense reform, it had become deserted.

The additional comment that the only people living on this line were shift workers and university students except for me was just a bonus.

A soft blanket slid to the floor.

As I lifted the pillow, which bore the marks of being pressed, a taser appeared. The sharp needle and multiple thin wires capable of piercing muscle were prepared to incapacitate a target at any moment.

‘……’

Holding the taser, I dialed a shortcut number on my smartphone. After connecting to the office, I finished all preparations and carefully approached the front door with the taser pressed against my chest.

When I opened the door, a familiar face peeked in.

“Son, were you not sleeping?”

“…Mom?”

—

**Side Episode – Sonata for a Beautiful Soul**

The clock’s hand passed six o’clock.

A more accurate calendar on my smartphone showed it was Sunday, and the comforting aroma of doenjang filled the dreary morning.

Perhaps because I had stayed up all night, my stomach felt like a jumbled mess. I forced my eyelids open and shoved some kimchi into my empty stomach.

“Hey, how come there’s not a proper side dish in the fridge?”

“…I ordered it from Coupang yesterday. I guess the delivery is late.”

Doenjang soup with potatoes and zucchini that had boiled to mush. I took a spoonful of enoki mushrooms, broth, and tofu and mixed it with freshly steamed rice.

The moist grains of rice crumbled at the mere touch of my tongue. Holding the rice bowl, I used chopsticks to pick at the side dishes when a fried egg was plopped onto the table.

As always, the gentle nagging followed suit.

“Eat slowly.”

I nodded with a nonchalant expression and tore apart the fried egg.

The salted egg had a familiar taste. Breaking the fluffy white with my chopsticks and eating it wrapped in rice and seaweed made me truly realize I was back in my homeland.

“Do you eat well?”

“I make sure to eat. They serve food at the unit.”

“Don’t say it as if it’s free. It obviously comes out of your salary… You might fool the King of Hell, but you can’t fool your mother.”

The kimchi that my grandmother packed for me, the seaweed I bought from the market, the hearty doenjang soup, and the salted egg—this simple yet clean Korean meal was something I had not had in ages.

Mom came out of the kitchen with sausages and a stainless steel bowl in her hands. As she carefully cleared away the side dish bowls, creating empty space, a couple of sausages took their place.

Across from the low table, sitting with one knee up, Mom began to peel chestnuts with a knife in the stainless bowl. After adjusting the alignment of the bowls, she smiled gently.

“Our son, your taste is exactly like your dad’s. He also loved doenjang soup.”

‘……’

“How’s the unit these days? Is the work tolerable?”

What else is there in the military? It’s all the same.

“Nothing special.”

Despite my curt reply, her smile showed no sign of waning.

Strangely, my stomach felt heavier. Naturally, the spoon that had been diligently moving became slower. Even in front of a delicious meal, my appetite vanished due to the questions that were sure to follow.

Who said it? An ominous hunch is always right.

As she tore the kimchi, Mom casually dropped a question in a nonchalant tone.

“Is living abroad bearable?”

The movement of the spoon, which was squishing the rice, suddenly stopped. It was an unconscious habit.

As I stared blankly at the meal, I consciously scooped up some rice and instinctively spat out a habitual answer.

“I’m not going abroad.”

“I saw the fridge; there are ingredients with twisted writing on them.”

Ding. As the knife hit the bowl, a crisp sound filled the air. Mom, peeling the chestnut, responded with a surprisingly decent German accent.

“Nürnberger Rostbratwurst. Did you bring that from Germany?”

Mom, who once made a name for herself at the foreign studies university, recognized the writing on the packaging at a glance.

It was only natural. A person from the German department wouldn’t not know German.

I picked up the sausage I had bought during my business trip with chopsticks. Mom’s voice followed in between the crunching sounds of the sausages.

“I used to eat a lot when I studied in West Berlin. I even met your dad for the first time at a sausage shop.”

‘……’

“I told you, right? You might fool the King of Hell, but you can’t fool your mother.”

Having just escaped the disorganized office, I had only just received my leave. The department that had been visited by the inspection team and my colleagues due to an incident in Kyiv had exuded a funeral atmosphere even before I returned.

Just managing to escape that gloomy place, why was it that I couldn’t even find a moment of peace after returning home?

“I’m going to head out now. I have urgent business.”

Having calmed my insides with the cold barley tea in the kettle, I kicked the uncomfortable dining table and stood up.

—

Avoiding the uncomfortable spot, I stepped outside, but my mind was still uneasy. I felt simply bewildered.

To lift my gloomy spirits, I tried calling anyone whose contact I could find, but regrettably, there was no one idle.

“Uh, I’m on a business trip to Busan right now.”

“I’m sorry, senior. I’m busy.”

“You’re on vacation? I’m on my way to support the kids in Moscow… What should I say?”

“I just went out on a dispatch from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs a few days ago. Russia and Ukraine are in a major brawl, right? The situation in my area is no joke. I’m trying to help the staff in Kyiv; it’s been hectic.”

“Hey! Are you free now? That’s perfect. I’m playing golf with Team Leader Hwang; hurry up and come here. What? Hospital? Damn it. Fine, I’ll just call someone else.”

Once more, I repeat, there was no ‘idle’ person.

A superior who called a subordinate on vacation to golf does not count as a person. Such a thing could not, nor should not exist.

Ultimately, after wracking my brain trying to contact everyone, I turned my gaze to foreigners. Information officers of the US military stationed in Osan, a slick British gentleman at the embassy, and an acquaintance from Iraq who had come to Seoul after a stint in a remote area.

After a while of clutching the phone, a foreign company’s employee nearby accepted my invitation.

“Hey—long time no see!”

“…Is that you again, Michael?”

I met with Michael at a quiet sashimi restaurant overlooking the beach. The foreigner with blue eyes seemed to have completely blended in with the locals, downing some flatfish with soju.

I greeted the fellow waving his hand exuberantly. Sitting around a plastic table, I snapped wooden chopsticks. I shoved a piece of the pale flesh, dipped in sauce, into my mouth and exclaimed with delight.

“Mm—”

“Hey, you don’t know how to eat. Who dips it in sauce like that?”

“What are you talking about, you little Yankee brat? By the way, what brings you here?”

“I got a call from the intel brigade on the front, so I came. Suddenly felt like having some sashimi on the way back. But what about you? I heard you were on vacation?”

“I ran away after gobbling up a bucket of nagging.”

“From the office?”

“From home.”

“Oh….”

Michael, who was eating carrots dipped in ssamjang, let out a sigh as if he understood my situation. He chewed on the carrot like a blowfish, nodding repeatedly.

“Family trouble is a long-standing tradition in our industry. Your mother… is she very angry?”

“Stop with the absurd jokes….”

I shot him a cold glare, but

The nosey little brat just kept chuckling away. Ah, the rich traditions of the CIA! Michael kicked off the conversation with a subject he knew all too well: divorce.

It was probably around a hundred rants that spilled from his mouth, a tiresome lament about himself.

“Overseas deployment. Mhm, I know. My wife left because of that too. You can’t keep a family when you’re always flitting between Kabul, Damascus, and Tehran, right? I mean, how could you possibly miss your kids’ entrance and graduation ceremonies?”

“That’s not quite accurate, you know.”

“We’re in similar boats, aren’t we? Both of us struggling to maintain a career and family at the same time and getting all mixed up.”

“……”

I had nothing to retort. So, I silently downed the glass of soju that was constantly filling up.

Michael grilled a flounder fin with a torch he borrowed from the owner. The delicious aroma wafted up while the oil sizzled, and the American wolfed down the fin topped with wasabi in one big bite.

Savoring the crispiness of that golden fin, the CIA officer continued in a bitter tone.

“I used to be deployed often when I was in the military, and I went to a lot of gatherings for spouses of deployed personnel, so it didn’t bother me at that time. But once I got promoted to DIA, it became unbearable. When I was offered a job switch at my current workplace, my wife begged me not to leave.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. She resisted for a while, but I finally wore her down with persuasion. My DIA colleagues convinced her there wouldn’t be another opportunity like this.”

Michael took a deep breath, his face contorting in displeasure. A heavy sigh laced with alcohol escaped his lips.

“But then, after I almost died in Mosul… she asked for a divorce. She said she couldn’t raise our three kids—just graduated from elementary school—as orphans for life.”

“……”

“Well, it was a decision I can understand fully. The youngest was entering middle school, and the eldest was in high school. My wife decided to cut all ties, but don’t you think the kids might want to see their dad? We still keep in touch often, so they aren’t lonely.”

So that’s why he was sneaking around the office making secret calls.

The reason Michael had that family photo prominently displayed on his office desk while practically ignoring his family couldn’t be more obvious.

“…Did their mom permit that?”

“Nope. Of course, I’m doing it secretly! Last time, when I got caught sneaking a call, Kate confiscated the kids’ phones. Though I managed to get another phone for myself.”

Sigh.

“You’ve got it rough too.”

Hearing that almost seemed like a mutter of concern or perhaps a self-reflection made Michael chuckle lightly.

“Don’t worry, buddy. I’m your future.”

“Get lost.”

“I’m serious! You’ll know when you get married—that sometimes your wife can be scarier than those North Korean kids.”

With zero plans for marriage, let alone dating, I’d better hold onto my worries tightly. I might have bantered back in the day, but…

“Be ashamed of being a bro who’s still single.” “Get that thing off your forehead now.” After all the teasing, I really had nothing to say anymore.

Better to die than groan. What choice did I have?

In that moment, trying to soothe my painful heart with another shot of soju—

“Treat your family well.”

As Michael popped open another bottle of soju, that comment slipped out of him unexpectedly.

“There’s a saying that you can only count on family. Whether it’s your wife or mother, just treat them well.”

“What are you getting at…”

“You keep pushing your mom away.”

He filled my soju glass while I stared at him silently.

“No matter how many people at work abandon the idea of marriage, aren’t you a different case? Always buried in work. You hate going on business trips but still drag your feet overseas. If you look at it closely, you don’t seem to enjoy working at all, do you? You know? Your colleagues at the office think you’re a bit odd too.”

“….”

“It was the same when an office staff encountered trouble. And when that General Association of Korean Residents in Japan Executive Park Chung-sik’s informant was murdered by the Yakuza, everyone was against it, but you still rushed in to attack their guys, didn’t you?”

“…….”

“And it’s happening again. It was no sooner after a Mossad agent was killed that some Iranian information agents turned up dead.”

That was you, wasn’t it?

Silence was my only response. The complicated quietness said nothing but hinted at a multitude of things.

“Fortunately, no one raised a fuss, so it passed quietly. But moving forward, pay attention to more than just work. Tone down your temper too. What’s with all the chaos? It’s not like you’ve got anger issues.”

Clink. The tilted bottle was set back down on the table. A full glass was placed in front of me and another in front of Michael.

The CIA information officer who delivered my soju leaned in casually, and that one question pierced right through me.

“Is it because of your father?”

My lips quivered. A burning thirst twisted my tongue into knots.

I tried to wet my dry lips, but the words wouldn’t come. All that escaped my choked throat were fragmented sounds.

The table flipped over, and the seawater flooded the place like a horror show. Black, tar-like seawater began to wrap around my limbs.

Trying to open my mouth amid that sinking consciousness, but nothing would come out from my blocked lips.

So I swallowed that firm denial again.

And once again, I woke up from a dream.

*

“Manager, are you back? The sorting work you mentioned is almost done.”

“I’ve also compiled the damage reports coming in from various parts of the Mauritania Continent. There are cases of armed group terrorism, robbery, looting, and arson. There’s also information concerning sporadic protests and riots. As an unusual note, there’s the report from the Nabuktu regional media about a ‘man-eating tree’… The local Ministry of the Interior briefing material has arrived and I’ve attached it, so you might want to check it out.”

“…….”

“Um, Manager?”

Pippin called out in a bemused tone. Frederick took the analysis report from Pippin’s hand without saying a word.

His expression was grim. He resembled a department head who had just received terrible news.

Just for a moment, the eyes of the two information officers clashed in the air, and after exchanging glances with Pippin, Jake tentatively started to ask a question while keeping a calm demeanor.

“Did something happen?”

“No, nothing at all.”

“Oh, um… It’s just that you look a bit tired.”

Papers fluttered as Frederick skimmed through the report and opened his mouth. It was a new directive.

“Send all the data coming in from the Nabuktu area straight to my desk. Prioritize it over other reports; don’t let any slip through.”

“Understood.”

“And that’s enough for now. Everyone, you can head home.”

As the superior granted permission to leave, the faces of the subordinates brightened. Pippin, who pulled on the jumper hanging on the coat rack, packed her things, while Jake slipped off his indoor shoes and gathered up the documents.

Once everything was ready, Jake’s gaze wandered to the inner table as he flipped off the lights in the office. Frederick was still there.

“Manager, aren’t you heading home?”

A gesture waved him off, a sign for him to leave first.

Take care. Pippin and Jake exchanged polite nods as they exited the office.

Sensing movement, the light that had turned on shut its eyelids once again. The sound of shoes scuffed against the floor, the chatter of the departing subordinates faded away beyond the empty offices.

Frederick pulled a cigarette from his front pocket. The oil-soaked wick burned away, igniting the cigarette.

The red sun descended by the office window.

The sky, filled with the passing seasons, was shy, signaling the nearing end of summer.

One information officer with a cigarette in his mouth gazed at the darkening horizon.

He left a pistol resting on the desk.

Bringing the mobile phone to his ear.

“…Yes, Mother. Is everything alright?”

 

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