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The Captain appeared oddly triumphant. Not a good sign. Haero grew uneasy but tried to hide his expression as he looked up at him. The Captain rummaged through his pocket, grinned, and pulled out his hand. It was clenched in a fist. The sense of foreboding intensified. Haero forgot to pretend he was drugged and looked up at the Captain, teeth clenched.

The Captain playfully shone the flashlight on Haero’s face, then moved it away, repeating this before smiling with satisfaction. 

Then, fixing the flashlight on Haero’s face like a spotlight, he tossed what he was holding and said, “Here. A gift.”

Catching it reflexively, Haero felt chills run through him at the round object and the very fine thread-like thing connected to it that he held in his hand.

Even before looking, he seemed to know what it was, and after recognizing it, he desperately hoped it wasn’t that.

Haero tried frantically to get up, but Salmo pressed down on his shoulder, forcing him back down. As he opened his hand, inside was something he didn’t want to believe, something he had anticipated but truly hoped wasn’t real.

An artificial eye.

“You recognize whose it is, don’t you?”

Haero clutched the artificial eye and looked up at the Captain. His glare was fierce. “You’re lying.”

“Whether you believe it or not is your concern, and whether you’re curious or not isn’t my problem. Let me explain it as a kindness.” The Captain bent his knees and squatted down. Only then did 

Haero noticed that the scars on his face had increased. Particularly, one eye had a cloudy iris and couldn’t focus. He was blind in that eye.

“The end is always similar for those who act high and mighty because of their bloodline or connections. No matter how much they dress it up, it’s the ones beneath them who suffer. What hardships would they themselves have experienced? Everyone probably paved easy paths for them, being considerate and mindful.”

Haero gritted his teeth and glared at the Captain with murderous intent. He didn’t even realize he was repeatedly twitching, trying to lunge at him—until Salmo finally grabbed his body and slammed him against the wall.

“Even now, while you’re locked up here, he found his assigned quarters unsatisfactory and was leisurely wandering around an upscale hotel. I was very grateful. I’d been racking my brain about how to lure him out.”

“Stop your bullshit!” Unable to contain himself, Haero shouted with great agitation. His voice was choked with tears. 

The Captain seemed very pleased with his trembling voice. Laughing “Hahaha,” he tapped under his fingernails and spoke as if it had all been trivial and boring, “It wasn’t much. It was just troublesome because of the military police, but as for him himself… he seemed worse than his skill at putting on airs.”

The Captain rose from his seat with an “oof,” pressing on his knee. He was quite delighted to see Number 8, who had betrayed and fled without appreciation for the mercy of sparing his life, sobbing uncontrollably.

“Go ahead and mourn while hugging that. I won’t disturb you for a while.”

Not disturbing him meant they wouldn’t drug Haero. They wanted him to cope with this devastating news with a clear mind, to blame himself and ruminate over it.

The Captain nodded to Salmo. Salmo glanced at Haero, who seemed to have lost all signs or will to resist even without being restrained. Then he also left.

Only after slamming the door and turning the corridor corner did Salmo ask, “Did he really die? Isn’t this different from the plan?”

The plan referred to the Chief getting ransom for Yoon Moo-hwa’s life. 

The Captain, still grinning, reassured Salmo, “Don’t worry. He might still be alive. We’ll find out when he comes here. I told them not to kill him, but well, if he resisted too much, who knows.”

The people the Captain had sent to the South African base were those whose very births had never been registered in any documents in the world, who had grown up in extremely harsh environments and naturally learned to perceive evil as good. They were excellent weapons for him. With the disadvantage that they were almost too effective.

“Even if they accidentally killed him, I told them to pretend he was alive and bring him anyway. He’s soon to enter the market as a tempting trade item as a hostage, so we can check together in the warehouse then.”

They would pass through the neutral country of Lesotho, exit through Swaziland, and come to this hideout made of ghost islands and rock islands between the Cape of Good Hope and Madagascar. They never would have dreamed their hideout was so close. The irregularly shaped archipelago created by rising sea levels and the moon’s capricious influence, with its characteristic of appearing and disappearing, was an opportunity for people like pirates or fugitives.

“If he tries to kill himself, stop him for now. Not yet. If he’s still alive, we should give them a chance to reunite, shouldn’t we?” After giving this cruel final order, the Captain asked, “By the way, where’s Sister? Is she still inside?”

She didn’t go out much originally and stayed quietly in her room, but recently it had gotten worse. It seemed she had been in conflict with the current group’s leader, who had apparently been her lover, but he didn’t know the details. The Captain wasn’t interested in women’s affairs.

“Yes. She’s inside. Shall I bring her?”

“No need. You’ll take better care of her. About Number 3, you still couldn’t  find him?”

“Not since he changed his name. I was staying with your sister at the time.”

Salmo was legally a minor, so he had been with the women in a protective facility. Unlike Number 3, who was a child.

The captain brought Salmo and his sister from near the shipyard, almost like a kidnapping. The two were calm, as if they had anticipated such a thing. Not realizing that their calmness was due to resignation and helplessness, the captain found it admirable. It’s precisely in this way that we’re family, but Number 8 committed an act of betrayal against the family. It was unforgivable.

“I understand. We can find him later.”

Salmo didn’t think the captain would persistently search for Number 3, as the captain didn’t feel a strong need for him.

He glanced briefly in the direction where Number 8 had been, behind the captain, then continued following the captain.

Haero, who remained in the room, crouched tightly in a corner, clutching traces of Yoon Moo-hwa in both hands, holding his breath for a long time.

He didn’t cry. It seemed he had forgotten how to cry due to the enormous shock.

How much time had passed? While he didn’t feel hunger, the dull ache in his chest suggested his stomach had been empty for quite some time.

Though he was finally able to think after a long time and should use this opportunity to formulate a strategy, he didn’t want to. The massive shock had become a vast, overwhelming void, creating a wall in Haero’s thought process. Nevertheless, his slow, creaking thoughts led to denial that anything bad could have happened to Yoon Moo-hwa.

Haero slowly raised his head. Having instantly become gaunt, he pressed his dry lips together and slowly opened his hands.

Inside was a round eyeball. Still wanting to deny reality, Haero crawled toward the light source that was only as big as his palm. Then, relying on that tiny light, he turned the eyeball around.

He remembered all of Yoon Moo-hwa’s complex artificial body mechanism serial numbers. He could recite them without missing a single detail. As he read each serial number he had managed to find, he cursed his own memory.

The combination of numbers and letters on the eyeball matched exactly what Haero remembered. Without a doubt, it belonged to Yoon Moo-hwa.

“Impossible.” Haero denied it with a cracked voice, crouching and lying down.

With his forehead against his fist, muttering “impossible, impossible” without pause, Haero suddenly opened his tightly closed eyes.

He jerked his head up and examined the eyeball again under the flickering light that continued to flicker despite the replacement bulb. This time he focused not on the back where the serial number was written, but on the front.

When an artificial eyeball is not in use, the iris color and pupil color unify, returning to their original light beige tone. The condition is “when not in use.”

If it had never been used at all, that might be different, but if it had been inserted into a human body and used even once, another change occurs.

‘Upon the user’s death, the artificial body part stops operating and returns to an inactive state.’

Yoon Moo-hwa’s in particular was an expensive military-grade eyeball, with a more secure lock to prevent someone from forcibly taking and reusing it. If it wasn’t the registered user’s body information, it couldn’t be used, but the power wouldn’t turn off.

Haero fumbled as he caressed the eyeball.

The iris was gray, and the pupil was distinctly separate.

‘Upon the user’s death, the artificial body part stops operating and returns to an inactive state.’

The eyeball was not in an inactive state. It was merely locked.

Machines don’t lie. Machines cannot lie.

Yoon Moo-hwa was not dead.