The dust hadn't even settled by the time the news hit national headlines.
"CRIMSON DIVISION SUSPENDED AFTER STUDENT-LED WHISTLEBLOWING OPERATION."
"DAEJIN HIGH: SHADOW NETWORK EXPOSED."
"WHO WERE THE GREY LIST?"
Dae-hyun hated that phrase—the Grey List. It had never been a group they asked to form. It was a label given by their enemies, worn as armor when no one else believed them. And now, when the fight was done, it had become a myth. An echo.
He stood outside the school gates, staring at the line of news vans, reporters, and Education Office agents escorting boxes out of the admin building. Vice Principal Kim had been taken into protective custody. Four teachers were under investigation. Division Zero was permanently shut down, its files under government review. The rest of the student body walked past in dazed silence.
Some whispered. Some bowed.
But no one dared confront him.
Min-ji appeared beside him without a word, hands in her coat pockets. Her knuckles were still bruised from the fight with Kraken, and she hadn't spoken much since. Not because she had nothing to say—but because too much was still unwinding inside her.
> "Heard anything from Ji-woo?" she asked.
Dae-hyun shook his head.
> "Just one message this morning. Said she was heading out of town. Laying low for a while."
> "You think she'll come back?"
> "I don't know. I think... she never really left."
They walked together down the path toward the track field, where a group of first-year students sat cross-legged, watching the big screen that used to broadcast Division announcements. Now it was dark. Silent.
Sun-woo leaned against the bleachers nearby, arms crossed, face freshly stitched above the eye where Kraken had cracked him.
> "You two gonna pretend we're not having a debrief meeting?" he asked.
> "We were getting there," Min-ji replied with a slight grin.
Chan-mi sat already on the field, a notebook in her lap, writing down final thoughts before she handed the flash drives to the investigative board. She didn't look up, just gestured for them to sit. Tae-yul was beside her, laptop in his lap, watching a progress bar crawl slowly as he decrypted a final folder Ji-woo had left behind.
When they were all seated in a circle, there was no speech. No ceremony. Just a long, quiet pause before Min-ji finally asked the one question that hung in all their minds.
> "What now?"
Sun-woo shrugged.
> "We do whatever normal students do. Get into college. Go back to sports. Eat garbage food."
Tae-yul looked up.
> "Some of us are applying to national tech academies. I already got interview calls. Apparently, exposing a surveillance ring looks good on a résumé."
Chan-mi smirked.
> "Only in Korea."
Min-ji twirled a blade of grass between her fingers.
> "I don't know if I can go back to being normal."
Dae-hyun looked at her.
> "Maybe we don't have to."
> "Then what? We form another group? New uniforms? Turn into some justice league?"
> "No. Just..."
He glanced up at the school building, windows now opened for the first time in months.
"...leave something behind."
Min-ji raised an eyebrow.
> "You want a monument?"
> "I want a manual."
Tae-yul closed his laptop.
> "A manual?"
> "For the next kid who gets beat down in a hallway. For the kid who hears rumors and wonders if they're going crazy. For the kid who wants to fight back but doesn't know how."
Sun-woo's lips twitched.
> "So like a guidebook for rebels?"
> "Not rebels," Dae-hyun said.
"Survivors."
Chan-mi finally looked up.
> "I can write it."
Min-ji nodded.
> "I'll edit."
Tae-yul smirked.
> "I'll encrypt it so only the right eyes find it."
Sun-woo cracked his knuckles.
> "I'll draw the diagrams. Gotta make the takedowns look cool."
They all chuckled.
But something shifted in that moment—something final.
This wasn't a war room anymore.
It was an exhale.
A slow return to breath.
---
Classes resumed within a week. Teachers rotated. Some resigned; others quietly returned with their heads low. The Crimson Division was no longer a title students feared—it was history.
And Daejin High was just a school again.
Mostly.
Some students still threw punches in stairwells. Some still whispered about "Grey List survivors." But the blind fear that once governed the hallways had lifted.
Power wasn't invisible anymore.
And no one wore the Crimson armband again.
---
Dae-hyun returned to his dorm late one evening and found an envelope taped to his door. No return name. No label.
Inside, there was a polaroid photo.
A younger Ji-woo. Maybe ten years old. Smiling, holding a chessboard with a missing knight piece.
On the back:
> "You were always the better player. I just learned how to watch."
Below it: one line in handwriting only he would recognize.
> "No more pieces left to move. I'm going to find out what life is like without the board."
He folded the photo gently and placed it in his desk drawer, next to the Queen of Hearts card he had carried through the entire war.
A knock came at the door.
Min-ji, in hoodie and sweatpants, hair tied back.
> "No more meetings," she said. "Just ramen. You in?"
He smiled.
> "Always."
As they walked down the dorm hallway, voices buzzed in nearby rooms. The sounds of laughter. Music. Arguments over test scores. Ordinary chaos.
And somewhere deep in the building, someone was printing out the first pages of the Grey List Manual.
The first line read:
> This is not a guide to power. This is a guide to surviving it.
Dae-hyun didn't turn to see who it was.
He didn't need to.
Because for the first time in a long time, the school wasn't watching them.
It was learning from them.
---
End of Chapter 16