The knife sliced through the air where Kang Dae-hyun's throat had been a second earlier.
He moved without thinking, his left hand catching the attacker's wrist while his right palm drove upward into the man's elbow. The knife clattered to the wet alley ground, and Park Sung-ho's eyes widened with something between surprise and fear.
"You should have stayed down," Dae-hyun said quietly.
The gang enforcer snarled and threw a wild punch with his free hand, but Dae-hyun absorbed it against his shoulder without flinching. In one smooth motion, he twisted Park's arm behind his back and applied pressure to the shoulder joint until the man's knees buckled beneath him.
"Please, please, I'll—"
Dae-hyun snapped the handcuffs on without ceremony. "You'll come quietly. That's what you'll do."
Two uniformed officers rounded the corner then, breathless and red-faced from running. The younger one stopped short when he saw Park Sung-ho on his knees in the puddled water, then looked at Dae-hyun, who wasn't even breathing hard despite the fight. The officer's mouth opened and closed without sound.
"Book him," Dae-hyun said, handing the suspect off. "Assault, weapons charges, and whatever else you can dig up. He'll talk eventually."
"Yes, Captain," the older officer managed, and Dae-hyun walked out of the alley without looking back.
The rain had stopped sometime during the scuffle, leaving Seoul's streets gleaming with reflected neon light. Dae-hyun checked his watch as he reached his car—nearly nine at night—and realized he'd missed dinner again. His phone buzzed in his pocket before he could open the door.
Commissioner's office. Now.
He stared at the message for a long moment, then typed back a single word: Coming.
---
The National Police Agency headquarters stood dark against the night sky except for a few scattered windows on the upper floors. Dae-hyun rode the elevator to the top in silence, and when he stepped out, he found Commissioner Hwang's door already open, warm light spilling into the hallway.
"Come in, Dae-hyun."
Commissioner Hwang Jung-pil sat behind his desk like a man who'd been there for hours and intended to stay for many more. He was old but not frail, with sharp eyes that missed nothing and a patient smile that had fooled more politicians than Dae-hyun could count. He gestured to the chair across from him, and Dae-hyun sat.
"Coffee?"
"No thank you, sir."
The Commissioner nodded like he'd expected that answer. "You caught Park Sung-ho tonight. Alone and took you what, three minutes?"
"He had a knife and i had training."
"He had three prior assault convictions and a reputation for breaking the bones of people who tried to bring him in." The Commissioner's smile widened slightly. "You made him look like a child."
Dae-hyun said nothing. He waited.
"I didn't call you here at nine at night to talk about one gang enforcer, though." Commissioner Hwang pulled a thick folder from his drawer and slid it across the polished wood. "Seoul has a problem. Six unsolved homicides in the last four months. Three high-profile robberies with no leads. A kidnapping that went nowhere fast. The cases are piling up, and the public is starting to ask questions we can't answer."
Dae-hyun opened the folder and scanned the contents. The cases looked unrelated at first—different districts, different methods, different victims—but something about the way they'd gone cold bothered him. Evidence that dried up. Witnesses who vanished. Leads that led nowhere.
"They're connected," he said. It wasn't a question.
Commissioner Hwang's eyes sharpened with interest. "Maybe. Probably. We don't know yet, and that's exactly the problem." He stood and walked to the window, looking down at the city below. "I'm giving you a new assignment. A new squad. There's an entire police station in Yongsan District that's been sitting empty for six months. Budget issues, they said, but I say it's an opportunity."
Dae-hyun listened, his face giving nothing away.
"You'll have full authority out there. Choose your own people, run your own investigations, set your own rules. No interference from district chiefs, no bureaucratic approval chains to navigate. You report only to me." The Commissioner turned from the window. "The murder rate is climbing, the unsolved cases are stacking up, and someone out there is making sure they stay that way. I need someone who doesn't play by the rules to break this open."
"You want me to break rules."
"I want you to get results. The rules you break along the way are your own decision." Commissioner Hwang returned to his desk and sat down heavily. "So. Do you want the job?"
Dae-hyun considered the question for exactly three seconds. "Yes."
"Good. The station is yours. Keys are in the folder. Start building your team."
Dae-hyun stood, nodded once—he never saluted, and the Commissioner had long stopped expecting it—and walked out.
---
He found a small noodle shop still open near his apartment, the kind of place with plastic chairs and steam rising from open kitchens. The elderly woman who owned it had watched him eat at the same counter for six years, and she didn't ask why he looked tired tonight. She just placed an extra serving of kimchi beside his bowl and returned to the kitchen without a word.
After dinner, he walked home through streets he knew by heart, past convenience stores and PC bangs and late-night workers heading to their own shifts. His apartment was small and functional, a place to sleep between cases rather than a home anyone would recognize. He showered, laid out his clothes for the morning, and stared at the ceiling until sleep finally came.
---
The Yongsan District police station was exactly as the Commissioner had described: empty, clean, and waiting.
Dae-hyun arrived at six in the morning and let himself in with the keys from the folder. He spent an hour walking the halls alone, his footsteps echoing on polished floors. Three floors above ground, a basement level with holding cells, twelve offices, an interrogation room with a two-way mirror, and a bullpen large enough for a dozen detectives. The whole place smelled like fresh paint and floor wax and possibility.
He set up in the corner office on the second floor, the one with windows facing the street and a desk that had probably belonged to some forgotten precinct captain years ago. A whiteboard still wrapped in plastic leaned against the wall. He unwrapped it, picked up a marker, and wrote six words at the top:
WHO DO I NEED?
Then he sat down at the desk, opened his laptop, and started researching.
Kim Min-jun was forty-five years old with the rank of Senior Detective and twenty-three years on the force behind him. He'd transferred six times—not because of any problems with his work, but because he was too good at his job and every precinct wanted him. His clearance rate was absurd by any measure, and his personnel file was thick with commendations from judges, prosecutors, and victims' families. But buried deep in the comments section, Dae-hyun found a note written by some captain five years ago: Min-jun doesn't play politics. He just solves cases. Some people find that threatening.
Dae-hyun smiled at that and made a call. Twenty minutes later, he had an address.
He found Min-jun at a coffee shop near Mapo District at eleven in the morning, sitting alone at a corner table with a newspaper and a cup of black coffee. The man looked up when Dae-hyun slid into the seat across from him, and his tired but sharp eyes narrowed with recognition.
"Kang Dae-hyun," Min-jun said. "I heard you caught Park Sung-ho alone last night. Show-off."
"I had help."
"Sure you did." Min-jun folded his newspaper and set it aside. "What do you want?"
"A new squad. Full authority, full autonomy, only the best investigators I can find. I want you on it."
Min-jun stared at him for a long moment, then laughed—a short, surprised sound that drew looks from the other customers. "You're serious about this."
"I don't joke about work."
"No. You don't." Min-jun picked up his coffee and took a long sip. "Why me, though? There are younger detectives out there. Faster ones."
"Because you're the best investigator in Seoul and everyone knows it. Because you've been passed over for promotion six times since you wouldn't kiss the right rings. And because I need someone on this squad who isn't afraid to tell me when I'm wrong."
Min-jun was quiet for a while, turning his coffee cup in his hands. Then: "Who else is on this squad?"
"Right now? Just me. And you, if you say yes."
Another long pause. Min-jun drained his coffee, set the cup down, and stood up from the table. "When do we start?"
"Tomorrow morning. Seven AM. Yongsan station."
Min-jun nodded once and walked out without another word.
Dae-hyun stayed at the coffee shop for a few minutes, finishing his own thoughts, and then he pulled out his phone and started making calls. Park Jin-young was next.
Park Jin-young was twenty-eight years old with the rank of Officer, but his file was mostly redacted. What remained showed a kid who'd been recruited straight out of university—not the police academy—for something called "special technical services." Translation: he was a hacker, and a good one, probably the best one the Cyber Bureau had ever seen. The problem was his attitude, which the file described delicately as "resistant to conventional authority structures."
Dae-hyun found him in a windowless room at the Cyber Bureau, surrounded by three monitors and the remains of what looked like a week's worth of instant noodle cups. Jin-young didn't look up when the door opened.
"The firewall patch you requested is on the server. I'm busy."
"I'm not here about a patch."
Jin-young's fingers stopped moving across the keyboard. He swiveled slowly in his chair, revealing a young face behind thick glasses and hair that defied gravity in multiple directions. "You're Kang Dae-hyun."
"Yes."
"You caught the Myeongdong Serial Killer three years ago when everyone said it was impossible. I read the file."
"That was a team effort."
"No it wasn't." Jin-young's eyes were sharp behind the lenses. "I read the actual file, not the press release. You figured it out alone. The rest of them just did the paperwork."
Dae-hyun didn't confirm or deny that. "I'm building a new squad. Special investigations, full autonomy, no bureaucratic oversight. I need someone who can find anything on any network anywhere in this city."
"You want a hacker."
"I want someone who sees what other people miss."
Jin-young considered this for a moment. "Is the food better than instant noodles?"
"I'll make sure of it."
Jin-young turned back to his monitors, typed three more lines of code, and then stood up abruptly. He grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair and walked toward the door. "Let's go, then. This place smells like failure anyway."
"Tomorrow morning," Dae-hyun called after him. "Seven AM. Yongsan station."
Jin-young raised a hand in acknowledgment without looking back.
The afternoon took Dae-hyun to a boxing gym in Itaewon, where he found Hwang Shi-eok alone in the ring, working a heavy bag like it owed him money.
Hwang Shi-eok was thirty-two with the rank of Detective, but his file told a more complicated story. Former special forces, discharged under circumstances the official paperwork described vaguely as "medical." But Dae-hyun's contacts in the military whispered differently: Shi-eok had chosen to leave after a mission went bad. He'd saved his entire team, taken three bullets doing it, and when they tried to give him a medal, he'd quietly requested a transfer to the police instead.
Dae-hyun found him at a boxing gym in Itaewon in the late afternoon. Shi-eok was alone in the ring, working a heavy bag like it owed him money, his massive frame moving with surprising grace. Sweat soaked through his tank top, and his scarred knuckles were wrapped in tape. When he noticed Dae-hyun watching from the edge of the ring, he stopped and reached for a towel.
"Can I help you?"
"Kang Dae-hyun. I'm building a squad, and I want you on it."
Shi-eok wiped his face with the towel. "I'm just a patrol officer now. You've got the wrong guy."
"Your file says different."
"My file is old."
Dae-hyun stepped closer to the ring. "I don't need muscle. I need someone who can walk into a room full of violence and keep his head. Someone who knows what it costs to protect people. Someone who reads poetry in his spare time."
Shi-eok's eyes widened slightly. "How did you know about that?"
"I research everyone I recruit. Thoroughly."
A long silence stretched between them. Shi-eok looked down at his wrapped hands, at the tape covering old scars. "I'm not the man I used to be."
"Good. I don't need that man. I need the one who became a cop instead of taking a medal and walking away."
Shi-eok's jaw tightened. Then he nodded once, sharp and final. "When do I start?"
"Tomorrow morning. Seven AM. Yongsan station."
Kang Soo-ah was twenty-six with the rank of Assistant Inspector, which meant she was brand new, still wet behind the ears, still learning which end of the paperwork went where. Her academy scores were near-perfect, and her instructor comments glowed with praise, but she'd been assigned to traffic duty because that's where rookies went to prove themselves. Dae-hyun found her directing cars near Gwanghwamun Square in the middle of a drizzly afternoon, her uniform jacket dark with rain.
She spotted him watching from the sidewalk and approached cautiously, her expression uncertain. "Can I help you, sir?"
"Kang Soo-ah?"
"Yes?"
"I'm Kang Dae-hyun. I'm recruiting for a special squad. I want you."
Her mouth opened, then closed, then opened again. "I'm sorry, sir, but I've been on the job for three months. I direct traffic. I haven't even drawn my weapon outside the firing range."
"I know."
"I don't understand."
Dae-hyun gestured to the intersection behind her. "You've been out here for hours in the rain. You've helped three lost tourists find their way, you prevented a hit-and-run by noticing a drunk driver before he even moved his car, and you haven't complained once about the weather." He paused. "Your training scores say you notice things. Small things. Details that other people miss."
Soo-ah blinked rain from her eyes. "I... yes. Sometimes."
"That's not something they teach at the academy. That's something you're born with." He turned to leave. "Report to the Yongsan station tomorrow at seven in the morning. Or don't. Your choice."
He was halfway down the block when he heard her call out behind him: "I'll be there, sir!"
Jung Hae-rin was thirty-four with the rank of Inspector, but her real value lay in her specialty. She was a criminal profiler with a master's degree in psychology from Yonsei University and a PhD candidate when she wasn't working cases. Her file was thin on arrests but thick with praise from everyone who'd ever consulted her—detectives, prosecutors, even a few judges who'd called her insights uncanny.
Finding her was harder than the others. She didn't work out of a precinct. She consulted, floated between cases like a ghost, appeared when needed and vanished when the work was done. It took Dae-hyun long time to track her to a university library in Sinchon, where she sat alone in a corner surrounded by books on criminal behavior and forensic psychology.
"You're hard to find," he said, sitting down across from her.
She looked up from her book. Her eyes were calm and assessing, the kind of eyes that missed nothing. "Kang Dae-hyun. You caught Park Sung-ho. Impressive takedown."
"You know about that?"
"I know about everything." She closed her book and set it aside. "You're building a squad. Special investigations, full autonomy, direct report to the Commissioner. You've already recruited Min-jun, Jin-young, Shi-eok, and that rookie, Soo-ah."
Dae-hyun didn't ask how she knew. "You're good."
"I'm excellent. Which is why I'm wondering what you want with me."
"Because you see what people hide. Because you understand why criminals do what they do. And because"—he leaned forward slightly—"I think these cases we're about to investigate aren't random. Someone's planning something, and I need to understand how they think."
Hae-rin studied him for a long moment. Then she smiled, a small knowing expression that didn't quite reach her eyes. "You're different from your reputation, Captain Kang."
"My reputation?"
"They say you're cold. Unreadable. That you don't trust anyone." She gathered her books slowly. "But you just told me your theory about the cases. You trusted me with that."
Dae-hyun said nothing.
Hae-rin stood, clutching her books to her chest. "I'll join your squad. Not because you asked nicely, and not because I believe in your theory. I'll join because I want to see if you're right."
She walked away then, leaving him alone in the library's quiet.
---
Six members now, Dae-hyun thought as he stood in his new office the next morning. Six specialists. Six people who would either become the best squad Seoul had ever seen or tear each other apart trying.
He looked at the names on his whiteboard. Kim Min-jun. Park Jin-young. Hwang Shi-eok. Kang Soo-ah. Jung Hae-rin.
And one empty space.
The Commissioner had mentioned something else during their meeting that night. A seventh member. Someone Dae-hyun hadn't chosen and wouldn't choose. Someone coming whether he wanted them or not.
"Don't worry about it yet," Commissioner Hwang had said with that patient smile. "You'll meet her soon enough."
Dae-hyun didn't like mysteries he couldn't solve. But for now, he had a squad to build and cases to crack.
Team Zero was born.