"Hold him down!" a nurse shouted urgently.
Yun Tae-sik and Choi Do-yun lunged forward, each grabbing one of the thrashing man's arms.
"Let go! Let go! Th-there... there!" the man screamed, eyes wild in terror. "Can't you see it? He's come to get me!"
His eyes had rolled back white, and he was nearly incoherent with fear. Yun Tae-sik pinned the man's shoulders to the bed and yelled, "Snap out of it! You're in a hospital—you're safe! There's no monster here!"
But the man only kept shrieking, panic filling his gaze as he pointed a trembling finger toward the ceiling. "Up there! Hanging on the ceiling, watching me! Those eyes, g-get those eyes away! Aaaaagh!" he howled. He looked for all the world like someone still trapped in a nightmare, screaming at phantoms no one else could see.
"Get a sedative, now!" came a voice from behind.
A middle-aged woman in a lab coat hurried over. "Leave him to me," she said briskly.
Yun and Choi managed to wrestle the man back down onto the gurney. He fought with desperate strength, tears streaming down his face. The doctor moved with calm efficiency—filling a syringe and swiftly injecting it into the man's arm.
Moments later, the man's violent thrashing began to slow. Eventually, with a broken sob, he went limp and fell quiet. Yun let out a long breath, wiping the sweat from his brow with his sleeve.
"That was almost a disaster..." one of the nurses murmured in relief as they set about tidying up. Several others echoed her sentiment with sighs as they cleared the area.
Yun steadied his breathing, then turned to the woman doctor who had administered the injection. She exhaled a thin sigh and checked the unconscious man's vitals, her face drawn with fatigue.
"Excuse me... you wouldn't happen to be Dr. Han So-young?" Choi Do-yun asked cautiously from beside Yun. At that, the doctor looked up.
"Yes, that's me," she said with a nod. "I'm a forensic pathologist—given the situation last night, I came down to help out in the ER." She spoke while rolling up the sleeves of her white coat. Yun suddenly realized why her name was familiar. Han So-young... a forensic doctor and emergency medicine specialist who often consulted with the police. He remembered seeing her face a few times in past cases.
Dr. Han lifted the man's eyelid to check his pupil response as she continued, "He's showing a severe trauma reaction. I gave him a sedative just now, so after a good sleep he should settle down a bit. But he may need psychiatric care..." Her voice trailed off thoughtfully. Her expression was grim and exhausted, worry filling her eyes as she glanced around at the other patients sprawled in beds throughout the emergency room.
"Most of the people who experienced hallucinations last night are deeply traumatized," she said quietly. "Many of them jolt awake from nightmares just like he did. It's as if they were all put under some kind of mass hypnosis...."
Yun Tae-sik wet his lips and asked carefully, "Medically speaking... what do you think caused it? I mean, could it have been some kind of drug intoxication, or a gas leak, something like that?"
Dr. Han shook her head. "From what I've seen, all the tests came back normal. There's no sign of any poison or toxin in their systems, and no lung damage like you'd see from inhaling corrosive gas. In other words, perfectly healthy people suddenly all fell into this state of collective delirium. It's almost impossible to explain scientifically." She pressed her lips together, frustration evident at the lack of answers.
"But..." she added, hesitating as she cast her gaze toward the intensive care unit at the end of the corridor, "clearly something did affect them. Every single patient was scared out of their wits, saying they saw some kind of misty... hallucination."
Yun fell silent for a moment, lost in thought. Then his eyes drifted over to the ICU window down the hall.
Beyond the glass lay the security guard who had plummeted from Gwanghwamun Square last night. Both his arms and legs were in casts, and an oxygen mask covered his face. Even from here, he looked to be in critical condition.
"How is he doing?" Choi asked under his breath, nodding toward the ICU.
Dr. Han followed his gaze and replied, "The patient, Kim Cheol-soo... fortunately, his injuries aren't life-threatening. He has a concussion and a couple of fractured ribs, but nothing that requires surgery. He's still unconscious, but I expect he'll wake up soon."
Yun and Choi exhaled in unison, relieved.
"Thank goodness... I honestly thought he was dead," Choi admitted, running a hand through his hair.
Dr. Han nodded. "I was preparing for emergency surgery and stayed up all night, but his condition turned out more stable than we feared. For someone who fell from such a height, it's nothing short of a miracle that he survived."
Yun Tae-sik gazed through the window at the guard's pale, unconscious face. Kim Cheol-soo, a man in his fifties, a hard-working father who'd been pulling night shifts as a security guard... To think he'd been overwhelmed by hallucinations and fallen from the very building he was guarding. When he wakes, how will he even begin to process what happened to him? Yun felt a pang of pity and stepped closer to the ICU door.
He had just reached the doorway when—
"...Seo...ha..."
A faint sound escaped the guard's lips. Yun froze. The man's lips were moving, ever so slightly.
Yun's heart lurched. Had he really just heard—? He leaned in, straining to listen.
Sure enough, through the hush of the ICU and the hiss of the oxygen, a weak, groaning whisper slipped from the patient's mouth.
"Lee... Seo-ha... in... danger..."
The voice was barely audible and broken, but Yun heard each word clearly. "Lee Seo-ha... in danger."
In that instant, Yun's heart thumped hard against his ribs.
"W-what did he just say...?" Choi Do-yun had come up behind him, eyes wide in shock.
Yun swallowed. His own voice shook as he repeated the guard's words: "'Lee Seo-ha... is in danger.' That's what it sounded like."
The two detectives stared at each other. Lee Seo-ha.
That name — it belonged to the missing woman they'd been chasing for days. In Yun's mind, scattered pieces of the puzzle suddenly snapped together. Lee Seo-ha... She was the missing person Detective Jung Hae-jun had been so fixated on. Ever since the incident at that abandoned building, they'd been tirelessly tracking her down — a disappearance intertwined with the red mist.
And now, out of nowhere, her name had surfaced here, of all places. Uttered in the fevered ramblings of an unconscious, hallucinating security guard.
"Dr. Han!" Yun called out urgently, beckoning her over. "Did you hear that? Did this patient just say something?"
Dr. Han had noticed the spike on the monitor and was already hurrying over. She glanced at the heart rate readout. "His pulse jumped a bit just now. He might be starting to come around… Did you say he spoke?"
Yun nodded, adrenaline thrumming in his veins. His words came out in a tremor: "He said, 'Lee Seo-ha… is in danger.'"
Dr. Han's brow creased. "Lee Seo-ha…? Is that someone you know?"
Yun's eyes flickered, realizing the significance. He pressed his lips into a firm line. "I'll explain later," he said, a note of urgency in his voice. Without another word, he grabbed Choi Do-yun's arm.
"We have to let Detective Jung know about this right away."
*
A short while later, the phone rang in the conference room of the Gwanghwamun Police Station. Park Jae-min picked it up, listened for a second, then quickly handed the receiver to Detective Jung Hae-jun. "It's Detective Yun Tae-sik," he said.
Jung Hae-jun pressed the phone to his ear. "Jung speaking."
On the other end, Yun Tae-sik's voice crackled with excitement. "Detective Jung, something big has happened. The security guard—he hasn't regained consciousness yet, but he started talking in his sleep. He muttered 'Lee Seo-ha… is in danger.'"
Yun's breathless excitement hissed over the line. For a moment Jung Hae-jun forgot to speak. "...Did you say Lee Seo-ha?" he managed at last, thinking he must have misheard.
"Yes, sir. I heard it clearly," Yun insisted. "The missing woman, Lee Seo-ha."
Jung's hand was suddenly trembling against the receiver. Only hours ago, amid the crimson hallucinations of the mist, he'd seen the face of a young woman appear before him like an apparition. That face now surged in his memory. Lee Seo-ha.
The missing person... and the key to these bizarre events. And now this unconscious guard had given a clear warning about her.
Jung Hae-jun quickly gathered himself. "Good work," he said into the phone, voice firm. "Keep an eye on the other patients and witnesses. I'll meet you back at the station shortly." He hung up, pulse pounding with a mix of confusion and a strange certainty.
Could it all come back to Lee Seo-ha? Was some threat closing in around her, entwining her fate with the red mist? Jung felt in his gut that this missing woman lay at the very heart of everything.
Beside him, Park Jae-min had been watching intently. He swallowed and asked in a hushed tone, "Sir... do you think Lee Seo-ha is connected to what happened last night?"
Jung's jaw tightened. "We have to consider every possibility," he answered tersely. He turned back toward the evidence board at the front of the room, where a scatter of photos and notes awaited. Only a few hours ago, the clues plastered there had seemed absurd, impossible to fit together. But now those once-disparate pieces were slowly assembling into a coherent picture.
The red mist. The hallucinations. The black figure. And the missing woman, Lee Seo-ha.
Jung Hae-jun stood for a moment, gazing through the meeting room window at the sun that was just beginning to rise over Seoul. In the slanting rays of morning light, countless dust motes swirled lazily—suspended in the glow like faint remnants of the crimson fog. It struck him then that this case would not be solved by ordinary means.
"This case... can't be solved in the usual way," he muttered under his breath. He spat out the thought like a bitter seed and made a decision. If he had to expose an enemy that lurked beyond the visible and the rational, then he would step beyond the bounds of conventional logic. Whatever it took to reveal the darkness that lay hidden from sight, he was willing to do it.
*
In a small private office tucked away in one corner of the station, Jung Hae-jun finally found a moment to himself. He sank wearily into the chair behind his desk. Dawn had broken fully now, and the events of the night kept replaying in his mind. After the long night of chaos and investigation, his body felt leaden, drained to the bone—yet his dark eyes still glinted with razor-sharp focus.
His desk was a mess of hastily written reports and evidence bags. Among the scattered items was a small pendant necklace he'd collected a few days earlier at the scene of that abandoned building incident. Jung reached out and gently picked up the pendant.
He had found it in the dank basement of the derelict building—a tiny pendant, no larger than a fingernail, engraved with an unfamiliar symbol. The design was ominous, like a series of jagged blades fused together. At the time, with no other leads to go on, he'd pocketed the necklace on a hunch. Now, after witnessing the red mist last night, this little trinket nagged at him relentlessly.
Jung turned the pendant over in his palm, his thoughts drifting. Lee Seo-ha... and the red mist...
He closed his fist around the pendant, lost in thought. There had been traces of that crimson mist at the site of Lee Seo-ha's disappearance. Shortly afterward, something eerily similar had occurred during the abandoned-building case. And now, the phenomenon had erupted in the heart of the city at Gwanghwamun Square. This nightmare was growing bolder, each time revealing itself more brazenly to the world.
So why, why did the name Lee Seo-ha keep surfacing at every turn?
Jung absently thumbed the pendant's worn chain. Could Lee Seo-ha truly be at the center of all this? If he could just find her, maybe—just maybe—he could unravel the secret of the red mist and put an end to these horrors.
Outside the window, bright morning sunlight flooded the streets. Seoul was beginning a new day, its citizens moving along as if nothing unusual had happened. But Jung Hae-jun knew better. He could sense it keenly now: a fundamental change in reality, a truth that last night's events had laid bare. There were no safe zones left anymore.
The red mist had seen to that. In the blink of an eye, the everyday world had cracked, the solid walls of reality buckling under the weight of the impossible. Everything he thought he could trust had almost come crashing down.
Jung clenched and unclenched his fist, steeling himself. Invisible, irrational—whatever form the enemy took, he vowed to hunt it down. A fierce resolve blazed up in his chest, hotter than any fear.
His gaze fell to the little pendant glinting on the desk. How absurd that something so small and insignificant-looking might hold the key to a catastrophe beyond imagination.
He made a silent vow to himself then. If the dawn will not come, then I will go to find it. No matter how thick the darkness, it would yield to the light of truth. And if that light needed a bearer, he knew it had to be him.
Blinking the exhaustion from his eyes, Jung Hae-jun rose to his feet. As he did, he whispered under his breath, "Hidden enemy... wherever you are, I will find you."
His words faded into the hush of the morning, carried off on the first golden beams of sunlight that filtered through his office window. He knew that shards of the nightmare still lingered somewhere out of sight, watching, waiting for their moment.
Jung drew in a slow, deep breath and strode toward the door. He was ready now—ready to step beyond the boundary of reality, and chase the unseen enemy into whatever darkness it hid.