UNFED

The office of the battalion commander of the 707th Special Mission Unit, Army Special Warfare Command. A unit located somewhere south of Seoul.

It was a windowless room. There were only fluorescent lights. There were documents on the desk. This was one of them.

He had commanded this unit for three years. Before that, two years as an executive officer in the same battalion, and before that, a decade spread across reconnaissance and counter-terror assignments that didn't appear on any public record. Fifty-nine years old. Unmarried. No children.

The unit had been, for most of his adult life, the closest thing he had to a family that didn't ask questions he couldn't answer.

The file's title was simple: "Report on International Trends Regarding the Non-Eating Group." It bore a security classification. Park Jeong-su had received it through military intelligence. Following the UN conference, military intelligence agencies from various countries had begun sharing information about this group.

The 707th was part of that channel—not because the unit had any stated mission involving the group, but because someone several ranks above Park Jeong-su had decided the technology was worth tracking, and units like his existed precisely to track things before anyone above them had decided what to do about them.

Park Jeong-su read the file.

The first page. Overview. Definition of the Non-Eaters, current status of their spread, and responses from various governments. His expression didn't change as he read. Park Jeong-su was a man who never let his emotions show on his face.

It was the result of nearly fifty years of training—not military training alone. He had been like this as a boy too, in the seaside village where he grew up, the kind of child adults described as "hard to read" without ever quite deciding whether that was praise or worry.

Second page. Key figures. A list of English names. Viktor Sorel. Yuki Tanaka. Carlos Mendoza. Each was accompanied by a brief description—nationality, prior occupation, presumed role within the network.

And at the very bottom.

Korean male. In his fifties. Name unknown. Presumed to be a key figure in the movement.

Next to it, in small print, was an additional note: History of residence in the Philippines. Record of residence in Dasol, Pangasinan Province.

Park Jeong-su paused at that word.

Dasol.

Not many people knew that name. A small coastal village in Pangasinan. There was only one reason Park Jeong-su knew that name.

Hoon had said he was there. The last time they'd been in contact. That was over two years ago.

Park Jeong-su closed the file. Then he opened it again. He looked at the word "Dasol" once more.

In his fifties. A Korean man. Dasol.

If all three matched, it was the same person.

* * *

Park Jeong-su looked at the windowless room.

Fluorescent light. If he sat in this room for too long, he couldn't tell if it was day or night outside. That was how this job worked. Forgetting the time.

Park Jeong-su had been in this room for fifteen years. To be precise, in rooms like this one. In windowless rooms. Along with the files. Even when his unit changed, the room remained the same. The fluorescent lights were the same. The way the documents piled up was the same.

He thought, briefly, of the last time he'd seen actual sunlight for an entire day without interruption—a training exercise on the east coast, three years ago, where the unit had spent a week in the open instead of underground.

He remembered being surprised at how tired his eyes had felt by the second day, as though they'd forgotten what unfiltered daylight demanded of them.

He had never found it strange that this was his life.

He didn't find it strange now, either.

But then there was the word "Dasol."

Park Jeong-su pressed the intercom button.

"Aide."

"Yes, Commander."

"Clear your schedule for next week."

"Which day?"

"Empty it all out."

There was a brief silence.

"Understood."

* * *

Park Jeong-su put the file in the drawer. He locked it.

Then he leaned back in his chair.

Hoon.

He didn't say the name out loud. Only in his head. Staring at the fluorescent light.

Park Jeong-su couldn't remember exactly when Hoon had last called him. He didn't know if he had been trying not to remember. Contact had grown sparse, then stopped altogether. Their paths had diverged.

Hoon had gone into research and writing. Park Jeong-su had gone into the military. As their directions changed, contact dwindled. That was the way of adults.

He thought of the last conversation he could actually recall in detail—Hoon's voice thin and strained over a bad connection, saying something about his health, about a place called Dasol where the air was supposedly good for him.

Park Jeong-su had been in the middle of a field exercise that week. He remembered telling Hoon he'd call back properly when things settled down. He couldn't remember if he ever had.

But Dasol was in this file.

If that was Hoon...

He didn't push that thought to its logical conclusion. Not yet. He had to see it for himself.

Park Jeong-su knew all too well the difference between seeing something in person and seeing it in a report.

Reports were always incomplete. People were like that. There were things in people that reports couldn't capture.

He had built an entire career on that single fact—on knowing that the gap between a written assessment and the man standing in front of you was where the real intelligence work happened.

He had to go there in person.

That much was clear.