RAINBOW OF TEARS
The silence after the EMP pulse was absolute. No crickets, no distant traffic. Just the soft, rapid sound of Min-Ji's breathing and the whisper of the night wind through the pine needles.
Min-Hyuk's world narrowed to a hyper-focused tunnel. Elite Physique and Instantaneous Calculation fused into a single, devastating operating system. He was no longer a man with powers; he was a weapon that thought.
Target: 3 hostiles. Designated Alpha (rooftop, east), Beta (rooftop, west), Gamma (ground level, north wall). Weapons: suppressed submachine guns (probable H&K MP5SD variants), night optics. Intent: capture, not kill. Pattern: pincer movement toward the garden's center—toward her.
He didn't look at Min-Ji. He didn't need to. His Perfect Memory had already mapped her exact position, the rhythm of her breath, the faint tremor in her hand that held the beacon. Every detail was a variable in the equation of her survival.
"Stay behind the tree. Do not look. Do not speak," he murmured, the words barely a breath. He pressed a second, smaller device into her free hand—a single-use smoke pellet. "When I say 'cloud,' throw this at your feet. Then run to the gardener's door. Don't stop."
She gave a tiny, sharp nod. Her fear was there, but it was crystallized into obedience. She trusted the weapon he had become.
Alpha is moving. Descending via drainpipe. 8 seconds to ground contact.
Min-Hyuk moved. He didn't stand. He flowed from his crouch, using the deep shadows cast by the manicured shrubs as if they were solid walls. His footsteps made no sound, his body a paradox of coiled strength and utter silence. This wasn't the brawling efficiency of Kim Do-gi. This was something older, more precise—the ghost in the fog, the shadow that cuts.
Beta is holding position, providing overwatch. Gamma is circling to flank.
Alpha, a black-clad figure with the fluid grace of a professional, dropped the last few feet to the soft earth of the garden. He landed in a roll, coming up with his weapon raised, scanning. He never saw Min-Hyuk.
Min-Hyuk had already calculated the sound of the landing, the split-second of sensory adjustment. He came from behind, not with a punch, but with a single, devastating motion. His left hand clamped over the man's mouth and nose, cutting off sound and air. Simultaneously, his right arm snaked around the man's neck, applying pressure to the carotid artery with the precision of a neurosurgeon. Enhanced Physique provided the irresistible force. The man stiffened, consciousness fleeing in less than three seconds. Min-Hyuk lowered him silently to the ground, confiscating his weapon and comms unit in one smooth motion.
One down. Beta's line of sight is blocked by the ceremonial rock garden for 4.5 seconds.
He didn't have time to hide the body. Instead, he used it. He propped the unconscious man up against the base of the rock garden, creating a faint, human-shaped silhouette.
Beta will see it. Will hesitate for 0.8 seconds.
It was enough. As Beta's head tilted, processing the odd stillness of his comrade, Min-Hyuk was already moving. He didn't run at the wall. He ran up it. Two steps on the vertical wooden siding of a storage shed, a powerful push, and his hands caught the eaves of the low Hanok roof. He pulled himself up without a grunt, melting into the dark ceramic tiles.
Gamma is at the north wall, 10 meters from Min-Ji's position.
From the rooftop, Min-Hyuk had a vantage point. Beta was 15 feet away, crouched behind a chimney, his attention split between the garden and his silent partner below. Min-Hyuk discarded the submachine gun; it was too loud. From a sheath on his calf, he drew a tanto-style combat blade, its edge a dull black in the moonlight.
He became the night itself. He crossed the curved roof tiles not by walking, but by shifting his weight with a contortionist's control, distributing pressure so no tile clicked. He was behind Beta before the man's subconscious could register the change in air pressure.
The knife was not for killing. The flat of the blade struck the base of Beta's skull, a calibrated impact to disrupt the nervous system. At the same instant, Min-Hyuk's other hand found the pressure point under the man's jaw. Beta slumped, a puppet with cut strings. Min-Hyuk caught him, laid him flat, and disabled his comms.
Two down. Gamma is the alert one. He's noticed the silence.
On the ground, Gamma had stopped his advance. He was communicating softly into his mic, getting no response. He began to retreat, merging back with the shadows of the north wall, his weapon sweeping the garden. He was good. He was abandoning the capture for intelligence. A professional retreat.
Min-Hyuk couldn't let him report. He dropped from the roof, landing in a roll that absorbed the impact perfectly, and came up between Gamma and the wall's exit.
Gamma saw him—a silhouette materializing from nothing. He fired, a three-round burst that was a soft phut-phut-phut in the silent night.
Instant Calculation: Trajectory. Velocity. Min-Hyuk was already moving, not away, but into the angles. The first round passed where his head had been. The second tugged at the fabric of his sleeve. The third missed by a centimeter. Before Gamma could adjust his aim, Min-Hyuk was inside his guard.
This was close-quarters combat elevated to an art form. Min-Hyuk's hands were a blur. A strike to the wrist disarmed Gamma. A heel stomp shattered his kneecap with a sickening crunch that was louder than the suppressed gunshots. As Gamma gasped, falling forward, Min-Hyuk caught him, his forearm a bar across the man's throat, cutting off his cry.
"Who sent you?" Min-Hyuk's voice was the coldest sound in the garden.
Gamma choked, his eyes wide with a mix of pain and shock at the sheer, inhuman speed of his defeat. "Spade… retrieval… for the client…" he gurgled.
"The client. Name."
"The… aunts… They want the girl… leverage…"
Confirmation. The family had hired the best to clean up their mess and seize control.
A roar of engines and the screech of tires erupted from the street beyond the wall. The cavalry. Rainbow and Delta.
Gamma used the distraction. With a final, desperate surge, he bit down on a false tooth. Cyanide. A professional to the end. His body went limp.
Min-Hyuk let him drop. He turned, his senses already reaching for Min-Ji. She was still behind the tree, exactly where he'd left her, her eyes huge in the darkness, fixed on him. She had seen it all—the silent takedowns, the wall-run, the blinding, brutal dance of violence. She had seen the myth become a man, and the man become a monster of efficiency.
In that moment, he saw not admiration in her eyes, but a kind of terrified awe. She was seeing the true depth of the darkness he inhabited.
The gardener's door burst open. Kim Do-gi entered first, weapon up, scanning. Marco was half a step behind, his gaze taking in the two unconscious forms and the dead one with a single, professional glance before settling on Min-Hyuk.
"Principal. Asset secure?"
Min-Hyuk didn't answer him. He walked to Min-Ji, who flinched ever so slightly as he approached. The reaction was a knife to a part of him he didn't know he had. He stopped an arm's length away.
"The immediate threat is neutralized," he said, his voice carefully empty of the warrior who had just moved through the night. "But the client who sent them is still your family. This place is burnt. You can't stay here."
She looked from him to Marco, to Do-gi, to the world of violence that had literally crashed into her garden. The gala, the victory, the boardroom—it was all a distant dream. This was her new reality.
"Where do I go?" she asked, her voice small. The heiress was gone. The queen was in exile.
Min-Hyuk looked at Marco. "The white cell is compromised. We need a black site."
Marco nodded. "We have a mobile unit. A fortified cargo container rig, currently en route to a secure dock. It's a ghost. Even we won't know its final location for more than 12 hours at a time. It's the only place her aunts' money can't trace."
Min-Ji looked at Min-Hyuk, a silent question in her eyes: Are you coming?
He had delivered justice. He had protected the client. The case, by all his old metrics, was closing. But the sight of her flinching from him, the knowledge that the monsters were now coming for her personally, and the memory of her whispered "Am I just another case?" created a fault line in his logic.
"I'll be your driver," he said, the words simple, final. "Until this is done."
Not a lawyer. Not a vigilante on a mission. A driver. For her.
He offered his hand, not to pull her up, but as a bridge between the bloody garden and the unknown road ahead.
After a heartbeat, she took it. Her grip was firm, her gaze steadying. The awe was shifting into something harder, something forged in the same fire that had made him. "Then let's go," Park Min-Ji said. "Before the next wave arrives."
As they moved through the shattered garden, flanked by warriors, Min-Hyuk knew the calculus had changed forever. He was no longer just delivering revenge.
He was guarding the only light he'd found in his own long darkness. And he would fight like a demon from the shadows to keep it from being snuffed out.
[End of Episode 10]
[Status: Mobile Evacuation]
[Threat Level: Critical & Personal (Family-Ordered Hit)]
[Min-Ji's Status: High-Value Asset in Protective Custody]
[Min-Hyuk's Role: Primary Protector (Emotional Attachment Confirmed)]
[Safehouse: Delta Mobile Black Site (The "Ghost Container")]
[Next Episode: The Road to Nowhere & The Family Council.]