Inside the Grand Master's quarters.
"..."
Tonight would be Annie Barrett's final night here. In less than five hours, she would have to depart.
Having finished her work, the Grand Master stood browsing through photo files on her iPad—pictures of her and her children during the winter trip to Sydney, Australia, earlier this year.
"..."
Skyler, her secretary—and the only one she truly trusted—couldn't help but speak up.
"That's from... Sydney, isn't it?"
"You were the one who took this, weren't you, Skyler?"
"Well, you told me to go ahead and snap it. I even asked if you wanted to pose first, and you said, just do it..."
"Posed photos are fake. I prefer these—taken when they're unaware. That's what you call a memory."
"..."
Annie closed the photo and turned to look out at the snow-covered forest outside the window.
"I keep finding myself thinking of the past... I guess that means I'm really getting old."
Skyler wanted to quip, 'You've long passed that point, ma'am,' but she wisely held her tongue—partly out of survival instinct—and pivoted the topic.
"Ma'am... about Jody's training. What exactly is her final test?"
"Why do you want to know?"
"I just think... you've pushed her to the limit. You haven't told her anything. You might give her an aneurysm from all the pressure..."
"You're exaggerating..."
Annie chuckled but nodded slightly.
"Still, you're not wrong. I have been pushing that girl. But it's because I want her true nature to come out... and it'll finally show itself when I return two weeks from now."
Annie glanced over and asked her secretary,
"Skyler... do you believe in the concept of a breaking point?"
"...Breaking point, like... the final straw?"
Breaking point.
In psychology, it refers to the moment a person under extreme stress and pressure can no longer endure. They snap—revealing their truest self.
"Skyler... every human has a dark side, no matter how virtuous they appear. The only question is how deeply that side is buried. Fortunately... I know exactly how to drag hers out."
"...And how are you going to do that?"
"Jody will have to defeat Liu."
" ! ! ! ! ! "
Skyler's eyes widened in shock the moment she heard that name.
Liu.
"Ma'am?! L-Liu?! You're going to release Liu from prison?!"
But Annie gave no response.
"Ma'am, with all due respect, I think that's too much for Jody! Two weeks isn't enough! And Liu?! That's basically guaranteeing she'll fail!"
"Whether she passes or not... I don't know."
Annie turned to face her.
"But only Liu, who's still on our side, can push Jody to the edge—can drive her to the point of no return."
Annie Anong Wongpudee stepped closer. Skyler could feel the weight of her presence...
"From the very first day... and for the next two weeks... you'll witness that girl change."
"...Ugh..."
Knock knock.
A knock came from outside. Skyler quickly stepped out.
{Ma'am, Seraphina Gilmore has arrived.}
"Ms. Sera is here."
"..."
Annie's expression didn't change—she seemed to have expected this.
"Go take a break."
"Yes, ma'am."
Click. Beep—Clunk.
The door opened, revealing Sera—freshly showered and neatly dressed after training.
She stepped in, passing Skyler, who gave her a smile before exiting.
The door shut behind them. Now, only Sera and Annie remained inside the Grand Master's private quarters.
"...Ugh..."
Sera swallowed hard.
"I heard you're leaving tonight..."
"Yes. If all goes as planned, we'll see each other again in two weeks."
"..."
"Um... the thing is..."
Jumping into the main topic right away might be too forward, Sera thought. So she decided to circle around it a little.
Don't worry. She had a roundabout way prepared.
"There's something I've wanted to ask for a while... and when I heard you were leaving, I just couldn't hold it in anymore."
"What is it?"
"Madam Annie... I've been wondering about something..."
"?"
Sera pulled out the collection of drawings Mickey had given her.
Annie didn't look surprised at all—she knew Mickey well and had already suspected he would draw something like this for Sera.
"Why does that Mannix guy like to draw such weird stuff?"
"You came here to ask me that?"
"W-Well... it's just that..."
Sera flipped through the pages one by one.
"Mannix told me you were the one who inspired his whole... artistic mindset. So I thought, maybe you'd know something?"
"Oh? He said that? I didn't have that much influence. Mickey chose to believe that himself."
"But was he right to believe it?"
"That depends on him."
"...Ugh..."
Sera narrowed her eyes at Annie. The longer they talked, the more Mickey's influence became clear.
That cryptic way of answering—so Mickey.
Sera spread out all four drawings.
"Look at this, ma'am. What kind of artist draws stuff this bizarre?"
"Well, that depends on your definition of 'bizarre.' What's bizarre to you might not be bizarre to me."
"...Ugh..."
"..."
"To be honest... I think it started the first day Syd brought him to my home in Bangkok."
"Your home, ma'am?"
"It's not that big, but worth at least fifty million. Back when I was newly rich, let's say."
And with that, the scene flashed back to a younger Annie Barrett—early forties—her voice narrating the memory in soft voiceover.
"Back when I had just climbed my way to the top of society, there was one thing everyone in those circles loved to collect. It had practically become tradition—though no one really knows who started it."
Sera: "Which was?"
"Art."
An image of Annie in her forties walking through an art gallery in New York, surrounded by her fawning secretaries (back before Skyler). None of their chatter reached her ears.
She wasn't listening. She didn't care.
She was only there because her business partners were art fanatics.
"To me, it all seemed like a giant waste of time. I was still young then, and I thought... these people are so pretentious. Always showing off their ability to 'interpret' things in art. I hated it."
"..."
"It's not that I looked down on art. I just didn't click with it. You know how it is—art's value lies in the eye of the beholder. If you trade a Picasso for a house in LA, maybe you'll get it. But trade it with a monkey holding a banana... will it give you anything?"
"Well, no..."
"In fact, it might just rip that Picasso to shreds like a piece of trash. Don't you agree?"
"I suppose so..."
"Exactly. I'm simply not the type to appreciate those things. Since birth, I've never understood them. Picasso... Monet... Matisse... Karimski... Mucha... Dalí... even artists from my own country—I've never felt a thing."
Sera was a little stunned. Her assumption had been completely off. She had thought Annie would be into art like her.
But Annie stood on the opposite end. She didn't care about even the most iconic artists.
"Then... how does this tie back to all of this? If you don't—"
"Because I saw one piece... in that gallery."
It was a small corner reserved for foreign artists—less than 3% of the exhibition. But that tiny space made Annie stop in her tracks.
Because of a single painting by a single artist.
"...Who was he?"
"Zdzisław Beksiński."
Annie Barrett, at forty, stared at the painting frozen in place.
There were over a thousand pieces in that gallery—by world-famous names. But no one's work made her stop quite like his.
Sera quickly googled him on her phone. She'd never heard of the name before.
But as soon as the search results popped up—she gasped.
She had seen his work before. She just never knew who painted it.
And as she scrolled deeper, the answers became clearer...
The paintings—gritty, dystopian realism—were groundbreaking for their time. Back then, Zdzisław Beksinski was still alive...
Sera murmured, "That explains a lot... Okay."
"It all started making sense to me around then," Annie said. "And it becomes even more compelling when you read about his life. It wasn't dramatic—no rollercoaster of highs and lows. Beksinski was just... an ordinary man. Born during World War II."
"He was born in Poland," she continued. "Right when Nazi Germany marched in and leveled the country. That's what Beksinski experienced at just ten years old. Do you see it, Sera?"
"...The environment shaped his inner world."
"Exactly. If you study his background and look at his work, you'll notice traces of what haunted him. Like the rows of standing figures..."
"Prisoners of war," Sera guessed.
"Or villagers lined up waiting for relief aid."
"...I see."
"Or the faces wrapped in bandages... repeatedly slashed."
"Wounds of war..."
"We don't know. Maybe that's right. Maybe it isn't. He never created art to send a message. He once said, 'If I wanted to say something, I'd write it down instead.'"
That line sounded so familiar—it was exactly what Mickey had said to her once.
"His life was simple. Quiet, even. But his end was... tragic. You should look it up sometime. For me, Beksinski may not have been as famous as other painters, but his work struck me more deeply than anyone's. That's when I started collecting his paintings."
"...But why? Why do you like art that's so disturbing?"
"Taste, maybe?" Annie smiled softly.
"...Yikes."
Creepy, Sera thought.
"I bought about four or five of his works and hung them at home."
"You hung these kinds of paintings in your house?!"
What kind of person does that?
"My children complained the same as you," Annie replied, amused. "But I never found them frightening. These paintings evoke something—something we've all felt but never had the words for. I think Mickey felt the same way."
The scene shifted—
Mickey Mannix, newly cleaned up and dressed properly, being brought to Annie's home for the first time by Syd.
While Annie worked nearby, she noticed the boy standing stock-still, staring at one painting on the wall for over thirty minutes without moving.
"...."
The young Mickey sensed her presence as she came up behind him.
"I bought that painting myself."
He turned to listen, then looked back.
"It's strange, isn't it? The feeling you get when you look at it."
"...I guess... yeah."
"...Do you want to see more like it?"
Before he could answer, Annie asked:
"Syd told me you like to draw. Is that true?"
"...It's the only thing that makes me happy."
Annie gently placed her hand on his shoulder.
"You love it, don't you, Mickey?"
"...Yes."
"So do I," she said softly.
"Then why don't you try absorbing his work... and sweating it back out as your own?"
.
.
.
"You're the one who told Mickey to draw in this style?!"
"I encouraged him," Annie admitted.
"In the end, it's always up to the artist."
"..."
Annie gently set the stack of drawings back on the table and slid them toward Sera. Then, slowly, she began circling the girl. The warm persona of "Annie Barrett" faded, replaced by the commanding presence of Grand Master Anong Wongpudee.
"Let's get to the point," she said. "I've heard you're interested in the Galeveki discipline. Is that true?"
A wave of pressure surged over Sera. She could feel it—the shift in tone, the intensity.
[Be honest. Annie respects sincerity.]
"Gulp... Yes."
"Why? May I ask?"
"...Because..."
Sera searched for the right words—choosing carefully.
"...Because I want to be stronger."
Anong stepped behind her, retrieving two glasses from the cabinet. She poured a chilled yellow liquid from a pitcher into both and handed one to Sera.
"Th-Thank you..."
Sera sipped out of politeness, only to be surprised by the sweet floral flavor.
"Chrysanthemum tea."
"Oh... I thought it was oolong."
Sip.
"Now, Miss Gilmore," Anong said, now leaning back against the Grand Master's desk. Her eyes fixated on Sera, calm yet unreadable. The tension in the room spiked. Sera didn't dare take another sip.
It was like she was being toyed with.
Anong seemed able to shift the entire room's mood on command—when to tighten the grip, when to let go... total control.
A test. This was a test.
"What does 'strong' mean to you?" she asked.
"!"
"...'Strong,' as in...?"
"You said you wanted to be stronger, did you not?"
"Um... I meant... mastery. Mastery in a particular field."
"That's the textbook definition. I don't want a dictionary answer."
As terrifying as Jody getting mad could be, this—Anong's calmly scathing tone—was on another level.
"!!!!!"
"..."
Sera swallowed hard. The pressure doubled. Had she said the wrong thing? When? Where?
"...Answer what you believe."
And just like that—Sera realized something.
This whole encounter wasn't about convincing Anong to let her try out for Galeveki.
The test... had already begun the moment she stepped into the room.
Sera had nearly missed it. Her previous answer was from a book. And Annie had seen right through her.
How lucky she was... that Annie had chosen to warn her first.
"..."
Exhale.
"Strong... to me..."
Sera looked up and locked eyes with the Grand Master.
"...Means being better than I was yesterday."
"...Why?"
"Because I'm weak right now."
"..."
She continued, voice steady.
"Back at the Aquarium... in Paris... even during the Priya extraction... did the reports tell you how many times I had to be saved?"
"...How many?"
"I lost count."
Her tone was firm.
"It happened so often, I can't even remember. Every time the enemy reached me... the mission was thrown off. I don't have air-trigger fingers like Jody. I can't defend myself."
"But you're training now, aren't you?"
"It's not enough."
Sera's eyes didn't waver.
"I want more. I want something of my own. Something that makes me more than just a medic... something that lets me bite back."
"That's your reason?"
"No..."
"..."
"The real reason... is that I'm falling behind. Maybe from your perspective that doesn't matter. But from mine... the other five—they're ahead of me. I'm not even standing on the same board."
"..."
"So please... I want to grow stronger. I want to be more than the stuck-up brat I was two months ago. I want to learn. Call it Galeveki, Bullet Time, I don't care... it's the only way I can stand alongside them again!"
"..."
"..."
Anong remained silent. Sera's eyes were red, though she fought to hold back tears. Despite the Grand Master's silence—despite the weight in the air—she pushed forward.
"Please... they've been hurt enough already, trying to protect me..."
"..."
Sera was done. She had nothing left to say. The rest was up to Anong.
"So... all this... is because you want to be stronger. For yourself? Or for the mission?"
"..."
"..."
Images flashed in her mind.
Roxxy.
Toshi.
Mickey.
"..."
"...Both."
"..."
Clink.
Annie took the glass from Sera's hand and placed it next to her own.
She smoothed her hair back.
Annie Barrett returned—face calm, expression unreadable.
She let out a quiet breath and finally spoke.
"There's one more thing I want to see from you."
"...Eh?"
"You're Idris's daughter. So I had an idea... a little exclusive test just for you. Sell yourself to me. Win me over—and I'll train you."
"!!"
"...You want me to pitch myself to you?"
Crap. Seriously?! This was like trying to sell a product... to the world's best salesperson!
Sera's sweat dripped down her cheek. Annie, smiling gently, wiped it for her with a tissue.
Now Sera understood.
Annie's "final test" wasn't push-ups or ten-kilometer runs. It wasn't collecting a mythical lotus flower.
It wasn't like those movies.
All this time, Annie had been testing one thing:
Mindset.
Personality.
That was all.
Well... screw it. Nothing left to lose.
Let's go all in.
The camera slowly zoomed out from Annie's room, leaving the sound of Sera's impassioned pitch echoing faintly in the background... panning back through the hallway... where Skyler stood nearby—
Eavesdropping.
"...Huh. She's got a silver tongue, that one."