The Monday morning air at the academy was crisp, but inside the crowded corridors, everything felt suffocatingly normal. The lockers slammed, students gossiped about the weekend, and the heavy oak doors of the classrooms remained unchanged.

Da-eun and Rora walked side by side, their backpacks slung over their shoulders. To anyone watching, they were just two sisters rushing to homeroom. But beneath the surface, every muscle in their bodies was tense.

Near the main trophy case, So-min was already waiting, leaning against the glass with a travel mug of coffee. As they approached, she looked up, her expression perfectly blank—the mask they had agreed to wear in the code.

"Did you guys finish the history outline for chapter twelve?" So-min asked aloud as they fell into step, her voice carrying easily over the chatter of passing students. "I completely blanked on the last three questions."

"Rora helped me with mine last night," Da-eun replied smoothly, offering a small, casual smile. "It was mostly just a review of the mid-term material anyway. We can look over it during lunch if you want."

"Please do," So-min sighed, adjusting her bag. "My brain is completely fried today. I barely got any sleep."

They moved down the hall together, talking casually about upcoming exams, complaints about the cafeteria menu, and a project deadline for the end of the week. Not a single word was spoken about the dark alleyway, the shattered glass, or the sleek gray SUV.

And they certainly didn't expect to see Chae-won here. After all, Chae-won didn't even attend the academy. As a songwriter, her schedule was completely detached from the rigid high school routine the three of them endured. She spent her days in studios, locked behind soundproof glass, writing the lyrics that kept her family's public image flawless while secretly tracking the alliance's darkest secrets on the side.

Knowing she was likely back at the Park estate or holed up in a recording studio made the quiet hallways feel even wider. She was out there in the real world, carrying the answers they desperately needed, completely out of reach.

Chapter 22: The Silent Network

The final bell of the day rang, and the crowd of students rushed toward the main exit. But Da-eun, Rora, and So-min didn't head downtown toward the studio district. They didn't make a single suspicious move. Instead, they walked straight to the library, checked out their standard textbooks, and went straight home, playing the part of terrified, compliant teenagers to perfection.

Safe back inside their bedroom, the real communication began.

Rora sat at her desk, her laptop open, bypassed the standard internet protocols entirely. She had written a custom script that masked her data packets as harmless, background automated pings to a generic weather server.

Miles away in her private recording studio, Chae-won sat on a leather sofa, her headphones resting around her neck. Her main phone sat on the mixing console, completely visible, but her hand was slipped into her jacket pocket, her fingers resting on the cheap plastic keys of her hidden burner phone.

A faint, rhythmic vibration pulsed against Chae-won's palm. Rora had established the connection, routing the signal through three separate encrypted proxies to keep the location entirely anonymous.

Chae-won flipped the burner open beneath the shadow of the console, keeping her eyes on the sound engineer working behind the glass partition.

[Rora]: [Archive-True // Mask Active] We're home. No tails. The academy was clean. Are you locked down?

Chae-won’s thumbs flew across the small keypad, typing back in the same childhood cipher the girls had revived.

[Chae-won]: [Studio-Safe] I'm covered. My brother thinks I'm finishing a track demo. He checked my primary phone logs ten minutes ago—nothing there. You bypassed the Kim perimeter filters cleanly. Ji-hoon is furious, but he thinks you panicked and fled back to your bedrooms out of pure fear.

[Rora]: [Archive-True] That’s exactly what we want him to think. We played the part today. But we know the courtyard is the anchor. We aren't giving up, Chae-won.

[Chae-won]: [Studio-Safe] I told you to stop. If you dig any further into what happened seven years ago, the Kims won't just send a warning next time. They will lock down the entire city network

Rora stared at the decrypted lines on her laptop screen, her jaw tightening. She exchanged a tense look with Da-eun, who was leaning over her shoulder. Chae-won was terrified, but her deflection was telling. She was purposely steering them away from the letters they had found, refusing to even acknowledge them.

Rora's fingers flew across the keyboard, keeping the encryption tight.

[Rora]: [Archive-True] We know you’re trying to protect us, Chae-won. But we aren't blind. We know whatever is under that courtyard connects back to everything that went wrong back then. You can't expect us to just sit here and wait for the next attack.

Over in the dimly lit studio, Chae-won watched the text decode on her burner phone. Her throat felt tight. She glanced at the sound engineer through the glass, ensuring his attention was still entirely on the audio tracks.

She knew the girls were looking at J.Y. and Y.E. as a code to be cracked—a puzzle to solve. What they didn't understand was that those letters weren't a cypher. They weren't a security key to the courtyard.

That was something else entirely.

But Chae-won couldn't bring herself to type that out. To admit what it was meant opening a door to the alliance's worst atrocity—the very event that had shattered the four families seven years ago and turned them into monsters. If the girls knew the truth about the names, they would stop looking at this like a mystery and realize it was a tragedy they were actively walking into.

She deleted her first draft and typed a cold, flat response.

[Chae-won]: [Studio-Safe] You're focusing on the wrong things. Leave the past alone. Just stay in your rooms and stay alive.