* * *

Cha Eun-seo handed out the snacks that Na Kang-in made to the customers in the Zijin. After that, she returned to the kitchen and asked,

“Oppa, the customers want to know the name of these snacks.”

Na Kang-in didn’t know either.

“Uh…”

The AI, Zinji, explained.

[Although it has an official name, this type of snack is generally referred to as ‘miscellaneous snacks.]

“Miscellaneous snacks.”

Cha Eun-seo tilted her head.

“Huh? This is also miscellaneous?”

[In the battlefield, it’s hard to get a stable supply of ingredients. Field tactical cuisine uses any available ingredients without discriminating.]

“They’re snacks made with whatever ingredients are on hand at the time. That’s why they’re called miscellaneous snacks.”

Cha Eun-seo clapped her hands.

“Wow. Even though it was made roughly, the customers really like it. I’m really curious about the taste too, but I couldn’t try it because the customers keep asking for more.”

She licked her lips.

Na Kang-in began kneading the dough again.

“Are the customers the only ones with mouths? We should taste it too.”

“Wow! I’m excited!”

She watched Na Kang-in cook with great enthusiasm.

“Huh? The color of the dough seems a bit different from before.”

“The one we gave out earlier was the basic version. What we’re going to eat now is the special version. It’s tastier.”

“Wow. Special miscellaneous snacks!”

Her voice echoed outside. A customer who heard it immediately ordered.

“One special, please!”

Na Kang-in responded.

“Tell them we’re not selling it. Today’s special service is over.”

***

Na Kang-in made the special miscellaneous snacks in a small frying pan and handed them all to Cha Eun-seo.

She tasted the snacks and beamed.

“They’re really delicious!”

Na Kang-in also grabbed a few snacks and ate them before leaving the Zijin.

“I made them, but they are delicious.”

[I made them.]

“Let’s talk about the mission.”

AI Zinji proposed.

[We need to eliminate the enemy who attacked our base. We also need to find out what the enemy knows.]

“I know. That’s why we’re going after the hacker. Lead the way.”

[Activating navigation mode.]

A virtual line appeared through the AR lens, leading through the alleys.

***

The place where the hacker was located was a second-floor office in an old shopping building.

“Are they disguising their base in an old building like us?”

[That’s possible.]

“What about the enemy’s surveillance system?”

AI Zinji reported.

[There are no CCTV cameras around the enemy base. There are no exposed security personnel outside. We also didn’t find any tactical detection equipment.]

“They’re probably working in a place without CCTV on purpose. They’d want to hide their identities.”

Na Kang-in cracked his neck.

“Let’s go in.”

[Please wear a mask.]

Na Kang-in put on a white mask. Since many people wore masks, it didn’t look strange.

A new blue line appeared on the ground. This time, the virtual line through the AR lens led to the back of the building.

[Suggesting a covert infiltration route.]

“I was planning to go that way too.”

There were stairs at the back of the old shopping building. He used those stairs to go up to the second floor.

Several office doors lined the narrow hallway.

“Where is it?”

One of the doors in the hallway had a translucent red border.

[It’s the entrance to the enemy base.]

He walked towards it.

“I can hear some noise from inside.”

[Amplifying the sound.]

He had an independent auxiliary module installed in his ear. AI Zinji used that device to communicate with Na Kang-in. The module also had various hearing protection functions.

However, the module didn’t have the ability to listen to sounds.

AI Zinji isolated the voice from the sound Na Kang-in heard directly. Then, it removed the noise, enhanced the sound quality, and increased the volume. The amplified voice was then played back to Na Kang-in.

The process was almost real-time. The voices from beyond the door soon became clear.

The first sound was a curse.

“You bastard! Didn’t I tell you you’d be dead if this doesn’t work properly? Why did it already stop working? Do you want to die?”

A young voice urgently explained.

“It’s still a test version, so it’s not stable yet. If we just fix the bugs… Ugh!”

AI Zinji explained.

[The person inside kicked another person.]

***

Ahn Sung-hwan is a freshman in college.

Since middle school, he has been interested in computer viruses and hacking. In high school, he frequently posted on internet security communities. Even though his activity decreased in his senior year, he still occasionally answered questions from professionals in the field.

This year, he became a college student. He started being active again in the security communities where he had reduced his activity.

Then, he received a message through the community board. It was a part-time job offer to check the security status of a company for a few days.

He was looking for a part-time job after starting college. So, when the offer came to help with something he was good at, he jumped at the chance without a second thought.

‘Coming to college and being able to do real work was exciting.’

With such thoughts, he came to this place, but it was a mistake. This wasn’t a legitimate company.

Ahn Sung-hwan was clutching his stomach and lying on the floor.

A man in a suit squatted in front of him and said,

“Hey. Did I ask you to do something difficult? Do you want to make something to manipulate comments? I just asked you to manipulate the ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ so that the comments get to the top.”

Ahn Sung-hwan curled up and answered.

“The principles are the same for both comments and that.”

The man slapped Ahn Sung-hwan with his palm.

“Where did you learn to talk back?”

Ahn Sung-hwan quickly raised his arm to shield his face and shouted.

“Ah! I’ll do it! I’ll do it!”

The man said.

“Just because the principle is the same, does that mean the results will be the same? If you frequently comment with the same nickname, people get suspicious, but ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ don’t show nicknames. So, is that the same or different?”

“D-Different!”

“If you know it’s different, get up and make that thing work properly! You bastard!”

Ahn Sung-hwan awkwardly stood up. He cautiously asked.

“Um, but. I’ve been stuck here for three days already. If I make all of it, you’ll let me go home, right?”

A man in a flashy shirt was sitting in a chair behind him, twirling a jackknife.

“If you can’t make it properly, you might end up somewhere else, not home. Like the deep sea or something. Do you like drums?”

Ahn Sung-hwan’s face turned pale. As his program started to run to some extent, the man’s tone changed.

The man in the suit laughed.

“Hahaha. Hey, don’t scare the kid. We don’t do that kind of stuff anymore.”

“I still like those traditional methods, though.”

The man in the suit patted Ahn Sung-hwan’s shoulder.

“Hey. Don’t be scared. If you make this thing well, I’ll pay you a lot and send you home. Just trust me and work.”

“B-But…”

“Why would I kill you? We need to work together in the future.”

Ahn Sung-hwan was flustered.

“W-What?”

The man in the suit smirked.

“You’re one of us now. If we get caught, you won’t be the only one going to jail. And if you make a few more of these, you can earn enough for your tuition and even pocket money until you graduate. So let’s stick together for a long time. Hahaha.”

The man in the suit was smiling and talking about money while the man in the flashy shirt was waving the jackknife behind him. Ahn Sung-hwan, who was just a freshman in college, had no choice.

Ahn Sung-hwan looked at the monitor he was working on. The place these people demanded to manipulate was a stock community bulletin board, specifically a forum for analyzing certain company stocks.

He knew he was involved in securities crime from the moment he was trapped here three days ago.

Ahn Sung-hwan’s home was in the countryside, and he came to Seoul to attend college. He lived in a small one-room apartment. So, even though he had been trapped here all weekend, there was no one to report him missing.

If he embedded some hard-to-detect code into the program, he could secretly report it online. But he had been too scared to include such code. And he mistakenly believed that they would let him go home once he finished this job.

But as his program started to function, the words of these bad guys changed. He realized this situation was not a nightmare that would end quickly. Tears came to his eyes.

Just as the tears were about to fall to the floor, the office door burst open.

Ahn Sung-hwan turned his head to look at the door.

A man wearing a mask, Na Kang-In, appeared.

Ahn Sung-hwan despaired.

‘There are more of them.’

The man in the suit frowned and asked the man in the flashy shirt.

“Hey. Didn’t you lock the door?”

“I did.”

“Then how did this intruder get in?”

“I’ll kick him out immediately.”

Na Kang-In scanned the interior.

The AI Zijin reported.

[Two armed men and one presumed unarmed person detected in the enemy base.]

The AR lens in Na Kang-In’s eyes had the function of overlaying virtual images on reality.

A red outline appeared around the jackknife of the man in the flashy shirt. A virtual line in the shape of a jackknife was also drawn on the other man’s clothes.

The office had three desks, a few laptops, a ramen pot, and a portable gas stove. It was too empty to be considered a regular office. It was small. Compared to this, the PC bang he had temporarily used as a base was like a high-tech facility.

Na Kang-In looked around and said.

“What is this, a cottage industry hacker operation?”

As soon as he said the word ‘hacker,’ the man in the suit’s expression turned cold.

“What the hell are you?”

The AI Zijin warned.

[In the middle of an on-site infiltration mission. Eliminate witnesses or disguise your identity.]

Three response options flashed before his eyes. But none of them were to his liking.

Na Kang-In pointed at the terrified student hacker Ahn Sung-hwan.

“I was walking down the hall and heard the sound of someone getting beaten up, so I came in. I overheard you saying you were making some kind of manipulation program?”

That line wasn’t in the AI’s suggested scenarios.

[This disguise scenario is more appropriate for the current situation than what I proposed.]

The man in the suit’s eyes were cold, but his mouth was smiling.

“You should have pretended not to hear and just walked by. Why did you come in and see things you shouldn’t have seen?”

The man in the suit suddenly moved to the side and shouted.

“Catch that bastard!”

As soon as the order was given, the man in the flashy shirt jumped over the desk and rushed straight at Na Kang-In. He was holding the jackknife in his right hand. The office was so small that the distance closed in an instant.

The henchman in the flashy shirt raised his knife and swore.

“You bas…”

Na Kang-In kicked him in the stomach. His kicking speed was so fast it was almost invisible.

“Ugh!”

The henchman screamed and flew backward, crashing into the desks.

One desk shattered.

The man in the suit had already moved to the side. Na Kang-In was standing with one foot extended forward.

The man in the suit quickly grabbed the jackknife from his inner pocket. He raised the blade and was sure of his attack’s success.

‘I’ll stab him while he’s standing on one leg…’

Na Kang-In’s front kick suddenly turned into a side kick. Without retracting his leg, he swung it around and kicked.

The kick hit the man’s side. The impact felt like being struck by a hammer.

“Kugh!”

The body in the suit flew sideways, smashing into a desk and crashing into a corner.

The AI, Zinji, reported.

[All armed enemies have been subdued.]

Na Kang-in, stretching his leg to the side, asked.

“Hey. My kick, it looks pretty strong, doesn’t it?”

[You used three times the force of a normal human’s hardest kick.]

“I just kicked lightly.”

[Your physical strength is enhanced.]

“Steroids?”

[Inefficient drugs like that are not used in your strength enhancement.]

Na Kang-in frowned.

“I figured. So it’s not just my eyes and ears that have been tampered with, but my legs too?”

[Correct.]

“Unbelievable. In 2082, is everyone just modifying their bodies?”

[Physical enhancement technology is divided into medical and military uses. Medical use is widespread for treatment purposes, but military use is extremely limited and strictly controlled by the Earth Union.]

“Is what’s been applied to me military grade?”

[Yes.]

“Military grade is stronger than medical, right?”

[Of course. Medical enhancements aim to restore weakened human strength to normal levels, with minimal side effects and maximum safety. In contrast, military enhancements operate on a completely different scale.]

“Military ones must be dangerous then? Can I trust military equipment? I’m not so sure.”

[You can trust the equipment of the Strategic Special Forces.]

“What’s your proof?”

[You can see for yourself by looking at me.]

“Seeing you makes me even more uneasy.”

* * *