Chapter 664

“There’s no way around it. No matter how we try to bypass it, there are clear physical limitations.”

On the day the onboard party was set to begin, the people infiltrating the yacht would be elite field agents.

Lia was supposed to remain in the operations room with the White agents, manipulating the CCTV feeds, managing passwords, and transmitting real-time schematics of the cruise ship to help with infiltration and extraction.

That was how it was supposed to go.

“Isn’t controlling that exactly what Interpol is supposed to do?”

There was a reason they were confident enough to smuggle drugs under the guise of a cruise party.

Specialized software. Communications were possible only through an independent internal network completely cut off from external satellite communication systems.

“Once the yacht gets far enough from shore, the internal network password changes every ten minutes. How exactly are we supposed to control that?”

Someone would have to infiltrate the software room in person and operate a terminal inside the yacht.

Taeo stood with his arms crossed, murder in his eyes. It was hard to believe he was the same man who had wrapped a scarf around her the night before.

He looked at Lia as though asking, Who the hell are you to stick your nose into this?

“If we don’t do it this time, then next—”

“Yes. We’ll move the operation date to the next opportunity.”

“Time!”

“If you’re planning an operation using someone who isn’t an elite agent, I think we already know what the failure rate will look like.”

Because Taeo practically ground those words out at the ICC operations officer, Lia, who had worked up the courage to volunteer for the field, suddenly became the reason the operation might fail.

Her face flushed with humiliation.

“What if they don’t move the same way next time? What if they change the route?”

“ICC will identify the changed route.”

“And what if you can’t?”

“We will.”

The words exchanged between Lia and Taeo were unmistakably sharp with emotion.

Lia shot to her feet.

“Did I say I was going onto a battlefield? The operation itself is an infiltration from the start! We’re not even supposed to be pulling guns in the first place. We just have to avoid getting caught. That would only happen if something goes wrong, meaning as late as possible—”

“And if something does happen?”

-Fuck TT__TT Lia, that’s not what oppa means

-Ah fuck, something terrifying is waiting for you, Lia...

-Please don’t go T_T

“Is there any way for a field agent to infiltrate the software room and crack the password?”

“We ran simulations, and it’s impossible. Ten minutes was just an arbitrary example. It changes in real time. Ten minutes, five minutes, seven minutes and twenty-five seconds... We need someone who can respond to it in real time.”

“Can’t we just break through it physically on-site...? No, right. Sorry.”

“Can’t it be another agent instead of Lia?”

“We don’t like having to say this either, but Lia is an agent who can do the work of three people by herself. If we send other ‘agents,’ plural, we’ll have no choice but to reduce the number of field agents.”

No matter how they approached it, there was no breakthrough.

Lia herself had to infiltrate the yacht.

“Do you know how much damage those drugs will cause if we don’t infiltrate this time?”

Lia looked at Taeo.

“I assume you know that once drugs are divided up and sold on the black market, they trade for tens or hundreds of times their original cost. That money gets used not only to buy and sell human beings, but to traffic weapons, bribe public officials, and operate illegal businesses.”

-There it is, Han Yeoreum’s diction, fuck!!!

-TT_TT I seriously love hearing her do long lines like this so much

-If I were the writer I’d be sharpening my knife just to give Han Yeoreum lines she can rattle off nonstop LMAO The satisfaction is insane T_T

-It’s amazing she memorizes all of that too ????

“With just one kilogram of high-purity drugs, twenty to thirty thousand people can take a dose. Do you think drug users are just going to sit quietly at home and do it alone? Murder, arson, drunk driving, rape committed while hallucinating. Ridiculously enough, those indiscriminate violent crimes can become grounds for reduced sentences. Diminished responsibility, they call it. Children, women, the elderly, and the poor become victims, while people addicted to drugs are left with no future except endlessly creating more victims or becoming victims themselves.”

Lia had a fear of guns. She was an agent who had never voluntarily worked in the field before.

“And even then, we’re supposed to wait for another chance? Even when organizations on the level of ICC and Interpol are working together?”

And yet she was saying she was willing to find the courage.

“Leaving everything else aside, couldn’t one person handle the CCTV manipulation for just a few sections instead of the whole thing?”

But Taeo ignored Lia. He merely turned his head and questioned the ICC operations officer.

“I know you don’t trust me.”

“If we split into an advance team and a follow-up team, manipulate only the CCTV along the advance team’s route, and have the follow-up team communicate by radio—”

“Just like you can shoot a hundred people by yourself, I can save a hundred people by myself.”

Taeo, who had been determined to ignore her until the end, stood up roughly.

The force sent the chair he had been sitting in crashing onto the floor with a loud clatter.

At the sudden noise, everyone held their breath.

Lia, too, bit down hard on her lip and looked up at Taeo.

He looked down at her and spoke.

His tone made it sound as though he were asking just how much longer he was supposed to tolerate her.

“Common sense says only field agents go into the field.”

Taeo shook off the ICC operations officer who grabbed his arm and walked out of the conference room.

“Try to understand him. Give it a little time and he’ll realize there’s no other way.”

The ICC operations officer said that to Lia as he followed Taeo out.

Only then did the agents, who had been frozen by the tense atmosphere, let out deep breaths.

“I’ve never failed an operation even once! Somebody make sure that man hears that clearly. Maybe he’ll at least pretend to listen if it comes from someone else in ICC!”

Lia grabbed her laptop from the table and left the operations room.

Bang—!

And as though shouting, You think you’re the only one who gets to do whatever you want?, she slammed the door hard in frustration.

Even though she knew Time wasn’t even inside the operations room anymore.

She simply couldn’t control her mood.

V immediately fell into step beside Lia.

“Calm down, Lia.”

“I seriously don’t understand. They can’t do this without me, so why?”

Her anger had risen all the way to the top of her head, and she walked as though she wanted to kick the floor apart.

“Lia. I hate to say this, but I agree with Time. ‘Infiltration operation’ sounds nice, but the worst-case scenario can still happen.”

“...You too!”

“It’s too dangerous. You can’t even count all the variables that can appear in the field. How could I throw you into that kind of danger? My heart would break.”

V clasped both hands over his chest in an exaggerated display, but Lia replied without batting an eye.

“You can protect me. What’s the problem?”

V immediately dropped to the floor.

“Aaaaaah, that’s cheating.... That’s seriously cheating....”

“What are you talking about? Get up already! This is embarrassing in ICC!”

“If you do that, I can’t oppose it. How am I supposed to?”

“Get up! What are they going to think of Interpol?”

“I’ll make sure I never forget that you just acted cute with me. I’ll treasure it deep inside my head forever. Of course I’ll protect you. I’ll gladly stake this one life of mine and protect you no matter what, Lia.”

“You don’t have to stake your life. There’s no need to go that far.”

“How can you throw away a man’s pure devotion like that....”

Lia abandoned the squatting V and walked ahead.

V sprang up as though nothing had happened and followed after her, then asked a question that went straight to the heart of the matter.

“But suddenly.”

“What?”

“Why are you only this fired up about an operation with ICC? You’re someone who absolutely refuses to go into the field.”

Lia pressed the elevator button and remained silent for a moment.

Then, when the sound announcing the elevator’s arrival rang out, she spoke quietly.

“Because I know how dangerous it gets when you don’t receive proper backup in the field....”

It wasn’t like Lia, who had been talking normally until just moments ago.

She sounded distracted, as though her mind were somewhere else.

Everyone could tell.

They could tell who Lia was thinking about.

“He’s seriously making such a fuss even when I’m offering to help.”

For someone who wouldn’t ask for help even when death had come within a hair’s breadth of him, he was awfully good at telling her not to expose herself to danger.

She had only stepped a little closer to the side of a man who seemed so accustomed to being alone that solitude itself had become his entire life.

Yet his cold attitude seemed to scream with his whole body for her not to come any closer.

Lia’s shoulders drooped.

-Fuck, she’s definitely still hung up on how Taeo was doing all that miserable shit alone TT_TT

-This guy fought one-versus-thirty on a rooftop himself... then advised a woman not to do that and laughed haha... and now he’s completely losing his shit because she says she’ll go into the field... Fuck, who wouldn’t fall in love with that;

-I love V so much, what is that face? A man whose knees hit the floor way too easily is seriously my ideal type TT_TT

-He can clown around in front of her all he wants and in the end she still goes to another guy, fuck

?Isn’t that exactly the taste of a second male lead?

“You’re doing this because you’re worried about me, aren’t you? Eeeeeeng... I’m touched....”

V teased Lia, but unlike before, his eyes weren’t joking.

He, too, was an agent who had gone through extensive training, but this wasn’t the kind of thing he had figured out through learned powers of deduction.

He simply wasn’t stupid enough not to notice who the woman he had a one-sided crush on was thinking about.

“You know by now that time isn’t on our side.”

Taeo couldn’t argue with the operations officer.

The more desperate they became, the bolder the methods they would attempt.

Their target was Lia and Lia alone.

The sacrificial lamb would be Lia and Lia alone.

He wanted to stop it all the way to the end.

The helplessness of being unable to save her or protect her weighed down on Taeo.

A woman who would obviously fall straight into hell if she took even one wrong step.

Unable to control his emotions, Taeo slammed his fist into the wall.

Again and again, punching it as though pouring out his rage.

“Time!”

Taeo kept his fist pressed against the wall and lowered his forehead against it.

Even the cold tile couldn’t cool his burning forehead.

The skin across the back of his hand had split open, and blood ran down it.

* * *

“Viper, Raven... good. You two make flawless waiters.”

“That somehow doesn’t sound like a compliment.”

“Haze. Put your chef’s uniform on properly.”

“Ah... don’t wanna....”

“Ghost! Rain! Check your comms. Make sure they’re working properly.”

The ICC operations officer meticulously inspected the agents who would be infiltrating the cruise party.

At last, today was D-Day.

Everything had to be perfect.

“Taeo... I don’t even need to say anything to you. You’ll have done it properly.”

Dressed in neat party attire, Taeo stood at the very front of the line of agents with his hands clasped behind his back.

Taeo, who normally wore pitch-black clothes as though he were meant to melt into darkness itself, was standing beside a sunlit window today in a white shirt.

His sharply tailored suit fit his body perfectly, making him look at first glance like a disciplined soldier.

The crisp, immaculate atmosphere around him made it difficult to imagine that he was a sniper.

-Han Yohan, seriously, ah, he has such an undeniable eldest-son-in-law face, I just want to marry him right this second,,

-He’s always hanging around collapsing rooftops, pitch-dark training rooms, or operations rooms under nasty blue fluorescent lights, so seeing him somewhere bright for once is nice.. T_T

?That’s what makes it delicious, don’t cry

?For real, this man shines brightest when he’s being worked to death

“Lia.”

And then Lia appeared on-screen.

-Holy shit

-What

-Fuck, she’s so fucking pretty

-TT___TT They really came prepared to make people lose their minds today

Lia was wearing a dress, long satin gloves reaching all the way to her elbows, and a dazzling necklace.

Her long, straight hair hung loose as she inserted a tiny earpiece into the inside of her ear, barely visible between strands of hair, and secured it in place.

She checked the USB attached to the inside of her necklace as well.

Her flowing hair shifted as though tickling her exposed collarbones.

“Aaaaaaaah!!! She’s blinding!!!”

Standing in front of Lia, V pressed both hands to his cheeks and acted bashful.

-???

-What the hell is this right now

-Isn’t that supposed to be our line...

-Thank you so much for blessing our eyes

The moment Jo Eunnara appeared, not only the live discussion thread for <Code Name: Time Seven> but every drama-related board briefly began to lag.

It wasn’t because of her naturally terrible luck.

It was because of the face she had managed to preserve despite the endless amount of bullshit thrown her way.

The buzz exploded so violently in an instant that the site simply couldn’t handle it.