Then the hatch groaned.

The sound of rust against rust. Metal straining.

Park took a half-step forward.

And then the world detonated.

It wasn’t just an explosion. It was a rupture, a violent tearing of air and light and sound that slammed into the forest like a god’s fist. For a moment, there was no color – only white. And then orange fire bloomed in the center of the clearing, swallowing everything in its path.

Jun-ho vanished in an instant.

There was no cry. No stumble. No time to react.

He was there – and then he wasn’t.

A concussive wave tore through the trees, sending dirt and debris into the air. Park felt it hit him like a wall, heat blasting across his face, branches cracking, the sky shuddering. His ears rang. His balance faltered. He dropped to a knee instinctively, one hand braced against the ground.

But his eyes never left the place where Jun-ho had been.

There was a crater now, jagged and smoking, filled with shredded foliage and blackened earth. Fire licked at the trees. Ash rained down like snow. The clearing was unrecognizable.

Park didn’t move. He couldn’t move.

All the air had gone out of his lungs.

The ringing in his ears was deafening, but it wasn’t the worst part.

The worst part was the silence that followed – the absence. No coughing. No groaning. No voice calling back to say I’m okay. Just fire. And the stench of burning cloth and flesh.

His thoughts spiraled, scattered by the blast. Not from fear. From memory.

The Front Man’s voice. Calm. Commanding. Unmistakable. “Make sure he doesn’t die.”

It had been an order. Not a plea. Not a hope. A command. And Park had nodded like a soldier and said yes, and now Jun-ho was gone. Not just hurt – not bleeding or unconscious – but obliterated. Taken in a burst of fire and steel.

Something hit him hard in the shoulder. He stumbled backward, instinctively catching it before it hit the ground – and immediately wished he hadn’t.

It wasn’t debris.

It was an arm.

Park’s hands froze around it.

Clean at the shoulder. Jagged at the end, where bone and tendon were torn instead of cut. Still clothed in black tactical fabric, the sleeve torn halfway down. The skin was blistered, half of it charred black, the other half streaked with ash and blood. Strands of tissue exposed like wire frayed from a circuit. The fingers were curled, blood-soaked, still twitching from the last electrical echoes of the blast.

His breath stopped.

He couldn’t make sense of it at first. Couldn’t comprehend the shape. The weight. The smell.

And on the wrist – tight against the burned skin, smudged with soot – was a watch.

Black band. Scuffed face. Second hand frozen mid-tick.

Park had seen that watch a hundred times. On the deck. In briefings. On Jun-ho’s wrist while he drank coffee and cracked some sarcastic comment, half-smiling over the rim of the cup.

He’d seen it this morning.

Park stared at it now like it was a ghost. It was the watch on the wrist what shattered him.

The world around him narrowed. The sounds of shouting, boots crunching through brush, the smoke still rising – it all fell away. Just him. The arm. The dirt. The blood.

Park’s stomach dropped. His knees nearly buckled.

“No…” he whispered, like saying it could undo it. Like denial could turn the world backward.

He lowered the arm slowly, gently, as if afraid to break it further. As if it wasn’t already broken beyond all recognition. The blood on his gloves smeared darker across the skin. The hand – god, it was so pale now – tilted slightly to the side, wrist loose, the knuckles turned outward as if reaching for something that wasn’t there.

Park backed away, breath sharp in his throat. A noise tore loose from his chest – part breath, part sound, part something he couldn’t name. His vision blurred at the edges. The sky swam.

He bent over and retched into the dirt.

When he finally straightened, his face was soaked in sweat, hands shaking so badly he couldn’t reclip his holster. He stared at the arm lying in the grass like it was some cursed relic dredged up from hell.

One of the soldiers moved toward it, unsure, horrified.

Park lifted a hand sharply. “Don’t touch it.”

His voice was hoarse. His throat felt flayed raw. His vision jumped from the blood, to the twisted wrist, to the crater where Jun-ho had been.

He wanted to scream. But he couldn’t even breathe.

His hands hovered over the limb – trembling, hesitant – like he was afraid it would vanish. Or worse, move. His fingers twitched toward the watch, not to take it, not to check the time, but as if touching it might rewind the seconds. Might undo the blast. Might bring the rest of Jun-ho back with it.

But there was no pulse under that wrist.

There was no rest of Jun-ho in sight.

Park’s breath hitched. He blinked hard, and for a moment, his vision split – he saw the crater, the wreckage, the smoke curling up into the trees – and then he saw the man who’d trusted him. The man in the mask. Cold. Controlled. Deadly.

The Front Man had told him once – “You’re good at cleaning up messes, Captain. That’s why I picked you.”

And now the worst mess of all had landed in his arms, literal and severed and bleeding down his front.

What the hell was he supposed to say now? He couldn’t even begin to think of how to explain this.

How do you explain carrying back a piece of someone? How do you say he’s gone, when all you’ve got is his arm? And worse – what if you’re wrong? What if the rest of him was still out there, mangled, alive, waiting to die slowly?

The silence around him filled with smoke and flies. And for one wild second, Park thought he saw the hand twitch again. Not from nerves. Not from death.

But from spite.

Like Jun-ho wasn’t just dead – but furious about it. Like some part of him still refused to be finished.

Park shivered, stepping back again. The heat of the explosion clung to his skin. But he’d never felt colder in his life.

Around him, the others had begun moving. Kim was shouting. Someone was calling for evac. Another medic was already running forward. But Park stayed where he was, crouched in the dirt, the heat of the explosion still radiating through the clearing.

The weight of the moment settled on him like a stone.

The Front Man had given him one job.

And he had failed it in the worst possible way.

He wasn’t afraid of dying – not really. But he was afraid of that voice. Of what it would sound like when he had to press the radio to his lips and say the words.

There was an explosion. He was the closest. Jun-ho’s gone. I failed. I found his arm.

Park’s jaw clenched. His throat burned.

It wasn’t just fear. It was guilt. Deep, acidic guilt that clawed its way through his chest. He had known Jun-ho. Had watched him change, seen the fight in him, the stubborn drive that wouldn’t quit even when it should have. He’d kept him alive before – once, when no one else could. When In-ho had sent him to the water to recover a body and bring back a miracle.

But miracles didn’t repeat themselves.

Not twice.

Not for men like them.

Park’s gaze dropped to the wreckage again. To the twisted metal, the scorched branches, the blood spattered across the tree trunks. The arm.

There wasn’t even enough left of Jun-ho to mourn properly.

And still – somewhere in the back of his mind, a flicker of denial whispered that maybe, somehow, the kid had survived. That he’d come crawling out of the crater like he always did, bloodied and pissed off, yelling at Park for letting someone else open the door first.

But Park knew better.

He had seen enough death to recognize when the earth had swallowed someone whole.

Still, when he reached for the radio – hand trembling, throat tight – he couldn’t bring himself to speak.

Not yet.

Because for one terrible second, he thought: If he’s really gone… the Front Man will kill me.

And worse than that – he might not even raise his voice.

He’d just go quiet.

And that would be enough to make Park wish he’d been the one closest to the hatch.

❛ ━━━━━━･❪ ○△□ ❫ ･━━━━━━ ❜

The elevator let out a soft chime as it arrived at the top level.

Park stepped out slowly.

He looked like hell.

Blood dried black in the creases of his gloves. Dirt streaked the side of his jaw. His eyes were sunken – not from exhaustion, but from something deeper, like something inside had collapsed and hadn’t been replaced.

In one hand, he carried a sealed containment bag. He didn’t ask for permission. Just entered.

In-ho stood at the head of the table, perfectly still. Mask on. Posture rigid. The room behind him was dim, the blinds drawn. It was always dark, now.

Park walked to the table. Every step felt like it echoed.

Then he set the bag down.

No words. Not yet.

In-ho didn’t speak either. He only looked at it – at the thick plastic, sealed, the way the bag fogged slightly with residual heat.

“…What is that,” he asked, flatly. He already knew.

Park swallowed. His voice scraped out dry. “It’s his arm.”

The silence that followed was leaden. It didn’t stretch – it pressed.

Park kept his gaze fixed on the bag. He couldn’t meet the mask.

“It was… closest to me. When it happened,” he said, and his voice barely held shape. “I thought you might want to… have it. For burial. Or confirmation.”

In-ho didn’t move. He didn’t speak. His gaze slid to the plastic. It was smeared, but translucent enough that the shape inside was unmistakable. Black tactical fabric, twisted and scorched. A sleeve, half-burned, threadbare at the seams. A wrist bent at the wrong angle.

Fingers.

Familiar.

Still curled like they were reaching for something.

Still trying.

His heart dropped. Not fast. Not like a fall. Like it had been pulled out of his chest by force, muscle by muscle.

Jun-ho’s arm.

His brother’s.

But it wasn’t him.

Not the kid who used to trail after him in the rain with untied shoelaces and pockets full of rocks. Not the young officer who smiled too little and thought too much and never knew when to give up. Not the man who had survived everything – the fall, the bullet, the sea – only to be taken by something as stupid and brutal as a bomb buried in moss.

This wasn’t a person.

It was a leftover.

A piece.

A mockery.

In-ho felt something fracture. A crack through the middle of his chest. Clean and fast, but deep enough to echo.

The arm looked too real. Too human.

Too Jun-ho.

He took one step forward.

And froze.

That’s when the smell hit him.

Blood. Burnt cloth. Skin. It clung to the plastic like the air had been thickened with iron and ash. It curled into his lungs. It turned his stomach. And still he couldn’t look away.

The arm was pale beneath the soot. Discolored. Charred in places. But In-ho knew it. Knew the slope of that wrist, the faint scatter of freckles near the thumb – the scar at the base of the palm from when Jun-ho fell off his bike at ten and refused stitches.

He remembered that day.

The way Jun-ho had blinked up at him, lip trembling, hands bloodied and small, whispering through gritted teeth: “Don’t tell eomma.”

And In-ho hadn’t. He’d carried him home. Wrapped the cut himself. Stayed up that night to make sure the kid didn’t run a fever.

Now he was staring at that same hand – split from the rest of his body – sealed in a bag like evidence.

In-ho’s mask tilted slightly, as if he were looking not just at the arm, but through it – at every mistake, every betrayal, every choice that led to this moment.

Then, slowly, he raised his eyes to Park. There was no question in them. Only quiet devastation.

“You brought me his arm,” he said at last, and the voice that came out didn’t sound like it belonged to him. Not behind the modulator. Not behind the mask.

Just… hollow.

Park stood frozen. Not defiant. Not pleading. Just… quiet. Like he’d already accepted whatever came next.

In-ho lifted a gloved hand to his mask. He took it off slowly, as if the weight of it had tripled. His face was pale beneath it – paler than it should have been. His jaw clenched so tight the bones ached. His eyes never left the arm.

It didn’t look real. That was the worst part.

It looked like something preserved. Like something stolen from a morgue tray and sealed in plastic.

He stepped forward once. Just close enough to see the skin more clearly. The burns. The blood. The final shape of those fingers – still trying.

Still reaching. Always reaching. For the truth. For justice. For In-ho.

And that’s when it happened.

He flinched. Hard. Like someone had shoved something straight through his ribs. Because he remembered what that hand looked like alive. He remembered Jun-ho reaching for him on the cliff – fingers outstretched, mouth open, voice lost in wind.

He remembered pulling the trigger anyway.

This wasn’t justice. This wasn’t peace. This was punishment.

And not for Jun-ho.

For him.

A choked breath escaped before he could stop it. Not a sob. Not yet. Just the sound of a man being gutted from the inside.

In-ho didn’t say anything. He didn’t ask what happened to the rest. He didn’t ask if Park had tried to find it.

He already knew.

There wasn’t enough left to bury.

And yet somehow, this… thing – this arm – was worse than a body. Because it meant Jun-ho had been real. Had existed. Had been close enough to save. And had still been lost.

He didn’t look at Park. He couldn’t. His focus was fixed on the plastic, the twisted fabric, the pale curve of wrist half-hidden by soot. It felt obscene. Like staring at a corpse with no face.

But he couldn’t look away.

He remembered Jun-ho’s hands. How they used to fidget when he was nervous. How he rubbed at the base of his thumb when he lied. How he carried everything like he didn’t realize his own weight – all that stubbornness, all that purpose.

Now that same hand lay slack and severed in a bag, and In-ho couldn’t stop thinking: He should’ve stayed down. He should’ve let the fall be the end. He should’ve let the sea take him. He should’ve stopped reaching.

Because what kind of universe saves someone just to end them like this?

He just stood there, frozen in place, as something deep inside him went terribly still – like a flame that had burned too long on too little fuel, flickering out in the quiet.

“You think this means anything?” In-ho said. His voice was shaking now. No modulator to hide it. “You think I wanted a limb? A piece? A fucking fragment?”

Park stayed silent.

“I wanted him back.”

His hand slammed down on the table, inches from the bag. The impact echoed, sharp and hollow.

“I wanted his voice. His anger. His idiotic stubbornness. Alive. I wanted him to slam through that door and scream at me again. I wanted him to look at me – with hate! Call me a monster! Anything… Not –“

He couldn’t finish the sentence. His eyes locked on the bag.

The room didn’t breathe.

The images came fast now. Too fast to stop.

Jun-ho, six years old, falling asleep on the floor of their old apartment during a blackout, curled under In-ho’s jacket like it was armor.

Jun-ho, seventeen, arguing about his university application – voice sharp, eyes burning with the same stupid fire that got him killed.

Jun-ho, standing on that cliff with a bullet in his shoulder, asking why.

Jun-ho, now: reduced to a severed limb in a bag.

“I wanted a second chance.” His voice cracked.

He lifted the arm – bag and all – and for a second Park thought he might throw it. Smash it. Tear it apart like it was the thing that had done this.

But In-ho didn’t.

He just held it. Arms trembling. Looking down at it like it might start moving again. Like the fingers might twitch and curl around his own.

But they didn’t. They never would.

His knees nearly buckled under the weight of it.

A memory surged forward – Jun-ho as a child, skinning his knees, reaching up without crying. Just holding his hand out, wordless, waiting for comfort.

That same hand was in his grip now.

Lifeless.

Charred.

Gone.

He reached out and touched the edge of his mask.

It had been so easy once. To hide behind it. To play the role. To let the mask carry the guilt.

But now, it felt like a grave marker.

He slid it back on.

Not to forget.

But to survive.

Because without it – without the armor, the distance, the script – he didn’t know who he was anymore.

Only this: a man holding a piece of his brother. And nothing else.

No forgiveness.

No second chance.

Just silence.