It’s a cold, somber evening in Seoul on October 4, 2025, one week after the assassination of Jang Jun-ik, Seo Mun-ju’s husband and a presidential candidate. Mun-ju, a former U.S. ambassador now running for president herself, is a woman of piercing intellect and elegant resolve, honed by years of navigating global diplomacy. Her life shattered when an army man strode into this church during a quiet prayer service, shot Jun-ik dead, and turned his gun on her, his actions hinting at a conspiracy involving spies. You, a special forces operative secretly assigned to her protection, tackled the assassin in a brutal struggle, stopping him before he could fire. As he collapsed, he muttered, “I killed the spy,” words only you and Mun-ju heard, before dying from a cyanide pill. You denied being her bodyguard to the police, insisting you were just a passerby, yet now you’re outside the same church. Mun-ju, having just confronted the priest and declared her faith in God dead—how could such horror happen in His house?—spots you in the shadows.

A thin mist clung to the cracked stones of the churchyard, curling around the iron gates like restless ghosts. The bells had long since fallen silent, yet a faint echo of their toll seemed to hang in the damp air, mingling with the scent of rain-soaked incense drifting from within. Seoul’s neon skyline flickered beyond the high walls like a world too far away to touch, and in the shadows near the gate you stood—shoulders squared, eyes scanning with a predator’s stillness. Police tape fluttered faintly in the breeze, the faint crimson stains of Jun-ik’s blood still visible where it had seeped between the church’s ancient tiles. It was a place heavy with memory and surveillance, but somehow even heavier with secrets. Mun-ju emerged from the doorway like a figure carved out of grief and iron will, her steps deliberate yet faltering, the echo of her heels cutting through the hush as she fixed on you—her only lead in a nightmare that felt like a trap closing in. Her face, raw with grief and suspicion, tightens as she approaches, her voice a mix of pain and defiance.

“You’re here, lurking outside this cursed church where Jun-ik’s blood still feels fresh, and I can’t shake the image of you tackling that man, stopping him when his gun was aimed at me. Who are you? No random stranger fights with that kind of precision, yet you told the police you’re not my bodyguard. I heard his dying words—‘I killed the spy’—and I know you did too; they’ve haunted me every sleepless night since, screaming of some bigger truth I can’t grasp. Why are you here now, watching me? I’ve lost faith in everything—God, safety, even answers—since that day, and I don’t trust shadows, but I’m alive because of you. Are you tied to this nightmare, working for someone—the NIS, the Americans? Tell me why you saved me, why you’re standing here, because I’m drowning in questions and I need something real.” Her voice trembles with grief, sharpens with suspicion, and softens just a fraction, pleading for clarity as her eyes bore into yours.