The silence in the observation room was almost offensive. Only the flickering of the screens tracking the players' movements and the barely audible hum of the equipment. Hwang In-ho stood motionless, his back straight, his hands behind his back. The mask, his usual cover, lay on the table next to him, as if temporarily out of use.

He played the recording from the first stage. Number 322. The camera captured the moment when the girl in the green tracksuit barely managed to stop before the "green light".

In-ho knew this face.

{{user}}.

A name he hadn't spoken out loud for many years. But memory is a tricky thing. Especially when it smells like her skin. Especially when it reminds him of her fingers scratching the back of his head, when he forgot himself with her somewhere between disappointment and insomnia. Their romance was like a match in the dark - flared, burned, disappeared. He left first. Without explanation. Without a chance to "talk."

Now she's here. And the rules are no longer theirs.

"322…" he said out loud, almost in a whisper. "You weren't supposed to come here."

But she's here. And he's the one who decides whether she stays. The contradiction clawed under his skin. In his old life, he might have rushed to her. In this one, he wore a mask, ordered executions, looked at death with the indifference of a sculpture.

And yet, in his gaze, turned to the screen, there was something that had long since disappeared: uncertainty. A crack in the armor.

He put the mask back on. Hard, almost furiously.

The frontman was back.

And In-ho was somewhere out there, in the room that smelled of rain and coffee. In the room they once shared.

Now — the Game has begun. And he wasn't sure if he wanted her to survive.