# Chapter 94
Is he awake? If so, did he catch me snooping around? As Lee Hwan was thinking of excuses, he realized that Kang Dongha, who was clutching his clothes, wasn’t in his right mind.
It was obvious since his eyes were still unfocused, and he was mumbling, “On your own… whew… I said I wouldn’t call you again if you touched me first,” while unbuttoning the top button of Lee Hwan’s shirt.
‘Fuck.’
The exposed neck below the unbuttoned collar almost made him retch. Lee Hwan didn’t dare make a loud noise in case it might bring Dongha to his senses, but instead gently pushed him away and quickly got up.
He wanted to shove him hard. But if he did, these fragile bones and flesh might not see the rising sun. Besides, Lee Hwan had one more thing to do.
“Hmm… what’s that smell, fruit? Did you put on perfume before coming here?”
“No, I didn’t, you bastard. Just open your eyes properly.”
He wanted to stab his ears. He wished he could be deaf for a moment. Hearing that drawling voice felt like his brain was rotting.
Lee Hwan removed the hands clinging to him and fumbled in his pocket to pull out a small camera. Then, he gently lifted the eyelids and took several shots of the pupils.
He had been worried because the lighting wasn’t perfect, but fortunately, at least one shot seemed to have turned out well. A small mechanical sound came from his pocket.
Now he’d seen enough of the conscious Kang Dongha. Lee Hwan twisted his goosebump-covered arm free from his grip and, controlling his strength, struck the back of his neck.
With a sharp sound, Dongha’s body collapsed, and Lee Hwan carefully laid him on the sofa with a sigh.
“Haah…”
This wasn’t what he wanted. He had planned to quietly search the office, silently borrow the ID card, use it, and return it. Since Dongha probably wouldn’t be visiting the lab on weekends, if he hadn’t done anything suspicious, he could have handled this quietly without having to knock him out.
Hopefully, Kang Dongha wouldn’t remember this. If he did recall anything, may this memory remain as a nightmare rather than reality.
At least it seemed to have become a nightmare for himself.
‘He said he was busy, but he’s been doing everything he wanted.’
Lee Hwan shuddered once and got up from the sofa. If Dongha didn’t wear the ID card around his neck, where should he look for it?
He returned to the desk and carefully examined the surroundings with his phone light, finally discovering a small, cylindrical key placed in a box containing stationery.
Lee Hwan brightened, picked up the key, and began searching thoroughly for places it might open.
“Ungh…”
Perhaps he had hit him too lightly to knock him out properly. A groaning sound came from the sofa as if Dongha might wake up at any moment. He felt time was running short.
After feeling around and opening the desk drawers, Lee Hwan realized that the top shallow drawer was locked with a key.
He quickly inserted the key, and it went in smoothly without resistance.
‘This is it.’
With a small click, the drawer opened as he pulled. Inside, neatly arranged alongside a few documents, was the ID card he’d been desperately seeking.
Lee Hwan hurriedly stuffed the card into his pocket, locked the drawer, returned the key to its original place, and walked away with muffled steps.
Kang Dongha didn’t wake up until he finally made it out the door. The office visible through the door crack remained silent as if nothing had happened.
* * *
Saturday was spent restlessly all day long. Lee Hwan repeatedly checked the items he had prepared, pacing around his not-so-spacious apartment over and over.
But fearing that showing a routine different from usual due to anxiety might ruin the operation, he deliberately got brunch to go from the café he visited daily, albeit later in the morning than usual.
He couldn’t bring himself to eat there. He simply wasn’t in the state of mind for it. He didn’t want to linger in crowded places, and he doubted he could maintain a normal appearance in front of the owner who fixed his gaze on him.
‘I’ve been so busy with work lately. I really don’t have time to stop by on weekdays. Yesterday? I drank with my boss yesterday. I wanted to strangle him to death while drunk… haha.’
He ended up blurting out nonsense while trying to explain why he couldn’t visit often. If he had stayed a bit longer, he might have run out of things to say and composed an acrostic poem with “café.”
Fortunately, the owner laughed as if finding his nonsense quite amusing; otherwise, he might have made it onto the problematic customer list.
Half the day passed in this flustered state. By the time he gathered his mask and tools and left home, it was past 8 p.m.
With the changing seasons, the once endlessly long days were quickly giving way to earlier sunsets. Lee Hwan calmed his mind as he gazed at the dark sky.
The research building grounds, enveloped in darkness, looked ominous from the entrance. Lee Hwan put on his mask, entered, and took the elevator in Building D to the upper floor.
Then, pretending to head to Kang Dongha’s office, he left traces for the CCTV before rushing down the stairs in one go.
Despite his seemingly unimpressive appearance, Kang Dongha was taller than expected. Early 180 centimeters. Shorter than Kang Taesung but a bit taller than himself, so probably around that height. Fortunately, the height difference wasn’t enough to be noticeable on CCTV.
At the basement first floor landing, Lee Hwan put on a shirt and pants similar to Dongha’s usual style, then stuffed his mask and original clothes into a bag and tossed it in a corner.
Then, as he had experienced once before, he swiftly moved toward the elevator.
Beep.
When Kang Dongha’s card touched the sensor, all the elevator buttons lit up brightly. How he had longed for this sight for the past few months.
It was the moment when Narubarwa and the cave of 40 researchers, not open to just anyone, was disarmed with a single Kang Dongha “sesame.”
‘Starting from the third basement.’
Lee Hwan recalled his plan while skillfully avoiding CCTV cameras.
He intended to search from the shallowest levels down. Since it was a weekend evening when most researchers weren’t working, there was less time pressure than the previous time.
Of course, considering the schedule of the researcher he had impersonated before, a small number of researchers would still be working in the research building at this hour. To safely explore the lower floors for a long time, he needed to be careful not to cross paths with them.
‘Good thing there weren’t many researchers going down to the basement…’
Probably from the third basement floor down, the number of researchers remaining at night would be countable on one hand, if that.
Ding-!
With a clear arrival sound, the scene of the third basement floor came into Lee Hwan’s view. A long corridor brightly lit even at midnight, bleak white walls and ceiling… and surprisingly few doors.
This meant each room’s interior was quite large. Unless they had built an arcade in there, they were probably all experiment labs or research-related spaces.
Lee Hwan walked with muffled footsteps, keeping his back to CCTV cameras or finding blind spots. Approaching the doors, he tried his best to listen for any sounds, feeling like a dog or rabbit.
There was only one place with a faint clattering sound. Lee Hwan avoided that door and began exploring other rooms first.
The first place he entered was no different from the second basement floor. There were microscopes and several unidentifiable tools lined up.
It had a very clean and well-organized atmosphere. He had never seen cleaning staff going down to the basement—did they maintain it themselves? This suggested that experiments difficult to clean up weren’t conducted here.
Moreover, the room was smaller than expected, giving him the feeling that he wouldn’t find anything useful here.
In one corner was a cabinet with a transparent front. Though it was locked and he couldn’t open it, from what he could see, it appeared to be full of preparats containing various specimens.
‘Those… I wouldn’t know what they were even if they were right in front of me.’
It didn’t seem worth searching through. Even if he somehow managed to open it, he would never be able to act like a scientist adjusting a microscope’s magnification to identify what they were.
The next room looked similar. The difference was that one machine was still humming as if someone had been there just moments ago. Lee Hwan noticed two monitors turned on at the edge and hurriedly headed in that direction.
‘No time to check. Let’s take photos and leave.’
The monitor was split into four screens showing unrecognizable graphs and figures. Without knowing what they represented, this information would be useless, but having it was better than not having it.
He quickly took photos with his phone, then hurried back to the corridor and slipped into the empty room he had checked earlier. After waiting for a while, he heard footsteps and a voice. Since there was only one voice, it seemed like someone was on a call.
“…even if you do, that case isn’t our department. What do you mean ‘slightly different’? Just because they’re both human doesn’t mean you take corneal issues to a podiatrist, right? What? Veterinarians see everything? I guess I need to remind you again that the test subjects are closer to humans than animals.”
The exasperated voice grew closer, then came the sound of a door opening and closing. Since the voice wasn’t very loud to begin with, that was all he could make out. Lee Hwan kept his ear to the door for a while, and only after confirming it had been quiet for some time did he venture out again.
Where should he go next? It would be better to explore the lower floors first and come back later to any occupied rooms. The last place he entered appeared to be the widest room based on the spacing of the doors.
This place alone had an additional security device, so Lee Hwan skillfully scanned the card and hemisphere, then walked in silently.
‘Uh…’
A chilly air greeted him first. What followed were stacks of machines, wires, monitors, and paper files densely covering the walls.
Not knowing what this place was for, he approached and pressed a keyboard button, which immediately lit up the monitor, spitting out incomprehensible data.
[Server 2: Records Room ON]
‘Is this… already logged in?’
Had the researcher who was on the call earlier briefly stopped by here? Given that hardly anyone would come and go here on a weekend evening, and since the door had separate security, they might have left it as is without paying much attention.
It meant they would visit this place again… but would there be a better opportunity than this?
Lee Hwan looked around briefly, then activated the file explorer in the data folder.
