The Seoul Detention Center was a world away from the gleaming glass towers of Gangnam. It was a place of cold, hard functionality, designed to strip away identity and impose order. The air was cool and smelled faintly of antiseptic and despair. The corridors were long, sterile, and painted a pale, lifeless green. Every sound—the squeak of a guard's rubber-soled shoes, the distant, metallic clang of a closing gate—echoed with a heavy finality.
Han Yoo-jin walked down one of these corridors, his expensive leather shoes making no sound on the polished linoleum. The influence of Da-eun's father had worked like a magic key, parting the sea of bureaucracy and official lockdowns. He was an unwelcome ghost in this machine, granted a brief, unsanctioned audience. He was led not to a standard visitation area, but to a small, featureless attorney consultation room, a place of supposed privilege that felt just as oppressive as a cell. A single table, two chairs, and a pane of thick, scratch-resistant plexiglass dividing the room in two.
He sat down, the chair cold against his back. He smoothed the front of his suit, a meaningless gesture of control in a situation where he had none. He felt the weight of Gyu-ri's twisted counsel resting on him like a shroud. He was here not to save a soul, but to hijack it.
A moment later, a guard escorted Kwon Ji-hyuk into the other side of the room.
The change in the young man was horrifying. The last time Yoo-jin had seen him, Ji-hyuk had been a terrified, weeping wreck. Now, a strange, unsettling calmness had settled over him. It wasn't peace. It was the unnerving stillness of a person who has accepted a new, simpler reality, a man who has been given a script that absolves him of all guilt. His eyes, however, were still haunted, filled with a deep, bottomless fear. He sat down heavily in his chair and stared at the grey tabletop, refusing to meet Yoo-jin's gaze. He had been thoroughly and expertly brainwashed by Ryu.
Yoo-jin picked up the black telephone receiver on his side of the glass. On the other side, after a long, hesitant moment, Ji-hyuk slowly did the same. The static hiss on the line was the only sound in the room.
Yoo-jin didn't begin with anger or accusations, not with questions or demands. He started exactly as the devil had coached him, his voice low, intimate, and conspiratorial.
"Ji-hyuk," he began softly. "I know you spoke to someone. Yesterday, during the 'gas leak.' I know they came to you. I know they offered you a deal. A way out of all this."
Ji-hyuk's head snapped up, his eyes wide with genuine shock. This was not the opening he had expected. He had been prepared for yelling, for threats, for denials. He had not been prepared for this quiet, unnerving acknowledgment of his secret. "How…?" he whispered into the phone, his voice hoarse.
Yoo-jin leaned closer to the glass, his expression one of shared, grim understanding. "They told you that I was behind everything, didn't they? That I set you up. That the girl, the drugs… that I was using you as a pawn in a bigger game."
Ji-hyuk's shocked silence was his confession. His eyes darted around the small room, as if looking for the hidden cameras Ryu had surely warned him about.
Yoo-jin pressed on, pushing the first dose of the counter-poison. "They told you part of the truth, Ji-hyuk. There is a conspiracy. A massive one. You are absolutely a pawn in a game you never asked to play. But they lied to you about who is pulling the strings."
He let that sink in, watching the flicker of confusion in the young man's eyes. "The man who spoke to you… his name is Ryu. He used to work for me, a long time ago. He is not your savior. He is the man who paid Park Eun-sol to be in that room with you. He is the man who made sure the drugs were on the table. He is the architect of every single second of your suffering, from that night in the bar to this very moment in this cell. He built your prison, Ji-hyuk. And yesterday, he came and offered you a key, pretending to be your friend."
Ji-hyuk was shaking his head, a gesture of denial that was becoming weaker by the second. "No… no, he showed me proof… evidence…"
"Of course he did," Yoo-jin said smoothly, his voice a balm of reason over an abyss of lies. "He's brilliant. He would have a perfectly constructed story. But it's a story designed for one purpose: to use you, his primary victim, as his final weapon to destroy me. He is turning the knife he stabbed you with back on me."
He could see the cracks forming in Ryu's narrative. The foundation of fear was still there, but a new element—doubt—was beginning to seep in. It was time for the final, terrible gambit.
"The deal he offered you is a lie, Ji-hyuk," Yoo-jin said, his voice dropping, becoming even more intense. "It's a poisoned key. It might get you out of this cell, but it will make you his puppet for the rest of your life. You'll be a star who owes his freedom to a monster. He will own you forever."
He looked Ji-hyuk dead in the eye, willing him to believe. "There is only one way out of this now. One true path. And it's not freedom. It's revenge."
The word hung in the sterile air between them, powerful and seductive.
"The story they gave you to tell the prosecutor?" Yoo-jin continued, his voice barely a whisper. "You're going to tell it. Almost word for word. But you're going to make one small, critical change. When they ask you who orchestrated it all, you're going to give them a name. Not mine. You are going to give them Ryu's."
He leaned as close to the glass as he could get, his eyes burning with a cold fire. "We are going to use the trap he set for us to trap him instead. He thinks he's a ghost? We are going to give him a name and a face and plaster it on every news channel in this country. We will make the entire nation's police force hunt for him. Stick with me, Ji-hyuk. Trust me one last time. And I promise you, on my life, we will not just survive this. We will burn Ryu to the ground for what he did to you."
He finished, his heart pounding. He had laid the trap. He had offered the vengeance-laced poison. He had done everything Gyu-ri had instructed.
He watched Kwon Ji-hyuk's face. It was a canvas of warring emotions. The deep, abiding terror was still there. The confusion was churning. But behind it all, a new, dangerous glimmer was ignited in his eyes. It was the desperate, feral light of a man who has been given a target for his pain, a direction for his rage. It was not the light of hope for freedom. It was the dark, hungry light of hope for retribution.
Yoo-jin had no idea if he had just saved his artist or if he had simply created a more volatile, more unpredictable weapon, now aimed in a new direction. He had won the battle for the young man's allegiance, but he was terrified he had just lost the war for his soul.