Her parting smile—sharp as a blade.
The accusation that he had overturned her brother’s warning for fifteen million won echoed like phantom sound in his ears.
Yoonjae sat on the edge of his bed, staring at Lee Seojun’s research notebook.
An entry dated February 27, 2019.
Just after he had joined AS—Academic Solutions.
The sentence he had altered without understanding its weight.
The cost had been brutal.
Five years ago, Prosecutor Han Yoonjae—who once spoke of justice—had died.
What remained now was a “professional writer” who laundered truth with elegant prose.
Ding.
3:10 a.m.
The laptop notification pierced the still room.
A message from A-12, sent via Signal.
[A-12: Was your meeting with Ms. Lee concluded satisfactorily? There is no time to be ruled by emotion. Let’s begin the main project.]
A chill ran down his spine.
They knew.
That Seoyeon had been here.
What they had discussed.
[A-12: Project code 3870-112. Clinical paper for Daeyoung Medical’s new stent. A sequel to the project Lee Seojun last handled.]
Daeyoung Medical.
The name that had driven Seojun to death.
The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
The name that had made Yoonjae an accomplice.
This was no coincidence.
AS was testing his loyalty—with the cruelest possible review assignment.
[A-12: Sending raw data. This time, not revision—reconstruction. Render the adverse reaction rate statistically insignificant.]
Yoonjae opened the file.
An Excel sheet—thousands of patient records.
His old instincts as a prosecutor stirred. Data patterns. Weak points.
“If I alter the numbers, I’ll be caught.”
AS’s internal verification system was meticulous.
Changing figures outright was amateur work.
So he put on the mask.
The writer.
He would compose what they wanted—
while embedding something else inside.
He revised the sentence:
“The device has minimal impact on vascular endothelium.”
His fingers moved again.
“The biocompatibility of the device has been observed within statistical significance, sufficient to exclude the likelihood of endothelial alteration.”
Ordinary.
Dry passive voice. Proper terminology.
The kind of lifeless academic prose written by a sleep-deprived resident.
No one would suspect poison inside something so dull.
But Yoonjae knew.
“sufficient to exclude.”
Behind that phrase, he had planted a trap.
A linguistic strand of DNA—
interpretable only by him—
that could later prove the data had been distorted.
He embedded twelve such “poisons” throughout the paper.
He finished at 5:45 a.m.
Before pressing send, he closed Seojun’s notebook.
“They taught me how to erase.”
His eyes sharpened.
“But I chose to learn how to leave something behind.”
Click.
The file was sent.
The reply came almost immediately.
[A-12: Excellent. As expected, you do not disappoint. We proceed to the next phase. Your father is now safe.]
Yoonjae shut the laptop.
A pale blue dawn seeped through the window.
He wrote dates on the memo beside his calendar.
AS server replacement cycles.
Daeyoung Medical’s approval timeline.
The numbers converged.
He circled one figure.
106 days.
The time remaining to bring AS down.
Only the first line of the trap had been drawn.
“Writer Han, your phrasing seems… overly definitive.”
A-12’s voice was cold.
Had the poison been discovered?
Or was this another test?
Between lethal trap and flawless defense—
the first verification of a 106-day war begins.
Remove the record.
Replace the sentence.
Neutralize the risk.
A deliberately chosen ambiguity.
A sentence that sounds complete yet carries a fracture inside—
They are time bombs.
He is still complicit.
Still inside the system.
he is no longer writing for survival alone.
And 106 days is not much time.