[POINT OF VIEW: WI HA-JOON - THIRD PERSON]
The next few hours were an exercise in methodical frustration.
The villa, once a stage for high-voltage dramas, had transformed into the world's most tense research library. The war council resumed, but the enemy was no longer Helix or North Korea; it was a four-line poem written in an archaic dialect.
Wi Ha-joon plunged into the task with the dedication of a scholarly monk. He and Helena, despite their opposing methods, formed a formidable research team. He brought deductive logic and technological expertise; she, a lifetime of encyclopedic knowledge of hidden history and forgotten artifacts.
"The serpent that swallows the setting sun," Ha-joon murmured, flipping through pages of an Asian iconography database. "It could refer to the Ouroboros, but its origin is Egyptian and Greek, it doesn't fit the Yi dynasty. It could be a metaphor for an annular solar eclipse. I've cross-referenced astronomical records. There were three eclipses visible from the Korean peninsula during the period in question. The trajectories give us three possible search areas. All in remote, mountainous regions."
"Too obvious," Helena retorted from across the table, where she examined a facsimile of an ancient geographical text. "Leo said it was a wordplay, a riddle. Kim Hong-do was a poet, an artist. Not an astronomer. The answer won't be in science, but in symbolism."
Hours passed chasing false leads. They investigated legends about river dragons said to live in westward-flowing rivers. They searched for temples and monasteries whose names translated to "Jade Lair." They found seventeen. They explored geological maps for underwater caves in mountain lakes with jade formations. They found two, both explored in the 1980s and completely empty.
Every potential clue dissolved into a dead end. The frustration in the room was as thick as monsoon humidity. Lee Jung-jae, Min-jun, and Ho-yeon tried to help, searching online, but they were out of their element, their searches those of mere amateurs in a professional game. Mr. Choi, having decided that geopolitical problems were beyond his control, had dedicated himself to making a series of calls to find a replacement Louis XIV chair, his own way of dealing with stress.
And all this time, Leo remained on the sofa.
He had sat there after changing, in silence. He watched their work, his head tilted, but his eyes, normally so full of restless energy, were dull. The fire had gone out. He was a ghostly presence in the room, the chaotic genius now caged and docile. Occasionally, Yu-ri brought him a glass of water or a piece of fruit, and he accepted it with an almost inaudible murmur of thanks. It was like watching an eagle in a cage. You knew it was meant to fly, and to see it perched and still was simply... wrong.
After almost four hours of fruitless work, Helena rubbed the bridge of her nose, a rare gesture of fatigue. "This is useless. We're thinking like police and academics. We need to think like a mad 18th-century poet."
"We need to think like him," Lee Jung-jae said quietly, looking towards the sofa where Leo was sitting.
As if invoked, Leo stood up. His movements were slow, almost sluggish, devoid of his usual energy. He walked towards the war table, his feet dragging slightly on the carpet. The group parted, leaving a space for him.
"Let me see," he said. His voice was flat, monotone. The vibrant timbre was gone.
[POINT OF VIEW: JO YU-RI - THIRD PERSON]
Jo Yu-ri watched, holding her breath, as Leo leaned over the table. Helena and Wi Ha-joon, skeptical but completely stumped, yielded their positions to him.
And then, Yu-ri witnessed a miracle.
It was like watching the sunrise after a long night. The moment Leo's eyes landed on the mess of maps, texts, and images, something shifted. A switch flipped deep within his brain. The haze of the medication seemed to recede, consumed by a new, fierce intensity. His pupils dilated. His posture changed, from languid to taut, like a predator who has located its prey. The genius, dormant but not dead, had awakened.
He didn't read the documents. He absorbed them. His eyes didn't move from left to right, but darted across the pages, across the maps, across the tablet screen, in seemingly random patterns. He wasn't processing information linearly. He was weaving a web of data, looking for connections, resonances, patterns no one else could see.
He began to murmur to himself, his voice a low, rapid hum. "It's not a snake... it's the shape... the shape... The Ouroboros is a circle, history repeats... No, it's a meander. A meander of a river on an ancient map... The setting sun isn't an event, it's a symbol. The emblem of a fallen dynasty..."
His fingers flew across the tablet's keyboard. He wasn't looking for history. He was looking for art. Goryeo dynasty ceramic designs. Silla era temple architectural motifs. Embroidery patterns on royal robes.
"Water that does not wet..." he whispered. "A reflection. It's a reflection. It's not an underwater cave. It's an optical illusion."
The rest of the group watched in stunned silence. They were witnessing the pure manifestation of an intellect on another level. The man who, a few hours earlier, had fallen into a pool singing about muffins, was now conducting a symphony of historical, artistic, and geographical data in his head. It was terrifying and utterly brilliant.
Suddenly, he stopped. His index finger descended and landed on a spot on a detailed map of northern Thailand. The silence in the room was complete.
"Here," Leo said. His voice, for the first time in hours, held an echo of his old authority. "The Hidden Dragon Temple. On the outskirts of Chiang Mai."
"Thailand?" Ha-joon asked, confused. "What does that have to do with the Joseon Dynasty?"
"Everything," Leo replied, without taking his finger off the map. "It was built in the 19th century by Prince Yi In-hwan, an exiled member of the Korean royal family who fled after a failed power struggle. He became a Buddhist monk, but he never renounced his roots. He was a poet and an artist, like Kim Hong-do."
He pointed to a river winding around the temple's location on the map. "The 'serpent that swallows the setting sun.' It's not a snake, it's the Ping River. And in that region, it's known as the 'Serpent River' because of its bends. And it flows west, towards the setting sun."
Then, he rotated the tablet, displaying an image of an exquisite temple. "And this is the 'jade lair under water that does not wet.' The temple has a unique roof, made with thousands of polished green jade tiles, a gift from the King of Siam. During the winter solstice, exactly at sunset, for about ten minutes, the sun's angle is such that the temple is perfectly reflected in the lotus pond in front of it. It creates the illusion of an identical jade temple underwater. A temple under water that, of course, does not wet."
He leaned back, the work finished. "The Royal Seal is there. Hidden in a secret chamber within the temple. It's the only answer that fits all the pieces of the riddle."
It had taken him ten minutes. Ten minutes to solve a riddle that had kept a team of brilliant minds completely paralyzed for hours. The living room was plunged into a silence of pure awe. Helena and Ha-joon rushed to their laptops, frantically verifying the information. The story of the exiled prince. The temple's architecture. The astronomical alignment of the solstice.
Everything fit. Every detail. It was perfect. It was brilliant.
[POINT OF VIEW: LEO - FIRST PERSON]
The moment the last piece of the puzzle clicked into place, I felt the light go out.
The intense, glorious rush of dopamine that had flooded my brain from solving the riddle faded as quickly as it had arrived. The stimulus was gone. The problem was solved. And the silence... the silence returned.
The silence of the medication was worse than any noise. It was a void. A blank space where there was once a universe of ideas and possibilities. The world, which for ten glorious minutes had been a vibrant tapestry of patterns and connections, became flat, dull, and slow again.
As the others began to talk excitedly, confirming my discovery, discussing the logistics of a trip to Thailand, I felt a wave of immense, heavy fatigue and sadness wash over me. The purpose was gone. And without a purpose, without a problem to solve, the silent cage of my mind was unbearable.
I said nothing. There was nothing to say. My part was done. I turned, moving away from the victory table. I walked back to the sofa that had been my prison all morning. I didn't sit. I lay down. I curled up facing the cushions, turning my back on the world, on the solution I had just created. I grabbed a blanket from the back of the sofa and pulled it over my head, blocking out the light, the sound, everything.
The genius had gone to sleep. And only the broken man who hated silence remained.
[POINT OF VIEW: JO YU-RI - THIRD PERSON]
Jo Yu-ri was the only one who didn't rush to verify the data. She was the only one who didn't join the chorus of exclamations of awe. Because she wasn't looking at the maps. She was looking at him.
She saw the fire ignite in his eyes when he started working. She saw the incredible confidence, the crackling energy that emanated from him as his mind danced through the centuries. It was the first time she had seen the legendary Leo in action, and it was the most impressive thing she had ever witnessed.
And she saw the exact moment the fire went out.
The instant he said, "That's where the Royal Seal is," the light left his eyes, as if someone had flipped a switch. The vibrating tension left his shoulders. The energy vanished. She watched the mask of genius crumble to reveal the tired, empty man beneath.
She saw him turn and walk to the sofa. She saw him curl up like a frightened child and disappear under a blanket.
While the others celebrated his brilliance, she mourned its cost.
"Leo, that was absolutely incredible!" Lee Jung-jae exclaimed, finally turning, his face lit up with the excitement of discovery. "Are you okay?"
There was no response from under the blanket. Only the sound of slow, heavy breathing.
The enthusiasm in the room faded, replaced by an uncomfortable understanding. Helena looked at them, her expression a mix of pride in her protégé's feat and a deep, old sadness.
"It's the price," she said softly, and her words fell like stones into the silence. "The medication allows him to channel all that chaos, all that genius, into a single, laser point. He can solve the impossible. But when the problem is solved, the stimulus disappears. And the drug doesn't let him create a new one. So what's left... is the silence. And he can't stand it."
The group looked at the still form on the sofa. Their secret weapon. Their savior. Their greatest asset. And now, their heaviest burden.
Yu-ri slowly approached the sofa. The others resumed their planning, but their voices were softer now, tinged with a new understanding. They had solved the "what" and the "where." But the "who," the complex and tragic equation that was Leo, remained a mystery.
She didn't try to speak to him. She didn't touch him. She understood, somehow, that words and touch were useless now. Instead, she grabbed a small dining chair, pulled it close to the sofa, and sat down.
She stayed there, in silence, a solitary vigil for the depressed genius. A guardian for the man who had solved the world's riddle, but who was now lost in the silent maze of his own mind.