When Da-eun and Rora pushed the front door open after the final bell, the house was completely wrapped in a heavy, unusual stillness. The familiar hum of the TV wasn't playing in the background, and the jacket In-ah usually threw over the entryway chair was gone.

They walked into the dining room, their shoes clicking softly on the hardwood.

Sitting right in the center of the polished wooden dining table was a single, neon-yellow sticky note. Next to it sat three covered ceramic bowls, still radiating a faint, comforting warmth.

Da-eun leaned over and picked up the note, reading the neat, sharp handwriting aloud:

"I have a case to solve, there's food on the table, have it. I made your favorites."

Rora let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding, looking at the covered bowls of food. "So... she really just left for her actual work. A real police case."

"Yeah," Da-eun said, a slight wave of relief washing over her face as she set the sticky note back down. "With everything happening with the Kims and the courtyard, we're getting paranoid. She has no idea about the bugs or the firewall. She's just doing her job."

Rora walked over to the counter, checking her phone. "But this actually works in our favor. In-ah is completely out of the house for the night, handling a real investigation. We have the entire place to ourselves, and since she accidentally fried that hidden Kim transmitter earlier while cleaning, we are completely in the dark."

"An absolute blind spot," Da-eun murmured, a spark returning to her eyes. "The Kims think we're behaving, In-ah is occupied downtown, and we have zero surveillance inside these four walls tonight."

Rora pulled out her laptop and opened the secure, offline workspace. "We don't waste this time. Call So-min. Tell her to log into the encrypted local network right now."

POV: So-min

The vibration against my thigh was different this time. It wasn’t the standard ping from our school group chat; it was the specific, double-pulsed haptic hum that meant Rora’s secure local network was wide open.

I locked myself in my bedroom, pulling the chair under the doorknob just in case my parents decided to do a random check on my homework progress. I pulled my tablet from beneath the false bottom of my desk drawer and watched the childhood interface boot up.

[LOCAL BRIDGE ESTABLISHED]
> NODE: SECURE
> INTERCEPTION PROBABILITY: 0%

Seeing that zero percent felt like taking my first real breath in three days.

[So-min]: [04.12.98] I’m in. Are you sure we’re clean? I’ve been looking over my shoulder at school so much my neck hurts.

Rora’s text box appeared almost instantly.

[Rora]: [Archive-True] We are completely blacked out. In-ah fried the Kim transmitter by accident while cleaning today, and now she’s out on an actual police case downtown. We have a total blind spot. Talk freely.

I leaned back against my headboard, a cold mix of relief and intense frustration washing over me.

[So-min]: [04.12.98] Good, because the media department files were a complete dead end. Hobi’s 2019 logs didn't just have a security lock—they were scrubbed from the local administrative root. Someone inside the Park family explicitly deleted his digital footprint from that year.

[Da-eun]: [Grid-Lock] It matches what Chae-won did on the burner chat. When we mentioned the courtyard, she completely blanked out at the letters J.Y. and Y.E. She told us we were focusing on the wrong things.

I stared at those letters on my screen. J.Y. and Y.E. We had spent the last twenty-four hours acting like brainless, superficial high school students, giggling in the hallways and stressing over chemistry quizzes just to keep the Kims from breathing down our necks. We had played the part perfectly. But while our bodies were stuck in the classroom, my mind had been trapped in that courtyard, staring at the shattered glass and the dark history Chae-won’s siblings were so desperate to keep buried.

[So-min]: [04.12.98] Chae-won isn't just protecting us. She's protecting her family. If Woo-jin and Ha-yun are fighting with her about curfew, it means the Parks are terrified of what happens if the Kims think the alliance is compromised. If digital archives are wiped, and Hobi's files are gone, we have to look for physical paper. Corporate registry offices, old real estate deeds before the 2019 wipe.

I paused, my thumbs hovering over the glass as I looked out my window at the quiet, dark street below. The Kims were still out there, monitoring the city gates, completely unaware that for the next few hours, we held the deck.

[So-min]: [04.12.98] We have the advantage tonight. Tell me what we're building next, Rora. I'm not going back to school tomorrow just to play pretend without a real plan.

CHAPTER ENDS