Jin-ho leaned back, letting out a deep sigh before he began explaining how he had managed to stay hidden all these years. After returning to Korea, the heat hadn't caught up to him yet. That small window of opportunity was enough for him to slip into a new identity.
"Right after I came back," Jin-ho began, "I knew I didn't have much time. Eventually, someone would come looking, and I'd be found if I didn't act fast."
He reached into his jacket pocket, pulling out his wallet and retrieving an ID card. He placed it on the table, sliding it towards Hye-su and Hae-won. Their eyes widened as they saw the name: Jin-ho Lee. His family name, Gyeung, was no longer there.
"Lee?" Hae-won raised an eyebrow.
Jin-ho nodded.
"My brother-in-law's last name. After I came back, I moved in with my sister, Ha-eun. We filed the paperwork and got my name changed under the pretence of being her brother—technically, I am, but on paper, I became Jin-ho Lee. It wasn't hard, considering the circumstances. Everything went through smoothly within a week."
Hye-su and Hae-won exchanged a glance, realizing how this one legal manoeuvre made their entire search futile. The private investigators they had hired had come up empty, but it wasn't necessarily because they were bad at their job—Jin-ho had just covered his tracks too well.
"Why?" Hye-su asked quietly. "Why go through all this trouble to hide from us?"
Jin-ho stared at his hands for a moment before speaking, his voice softer now.
"I was afraid. I knew you'd come for me, and... I wasn't ready. I was afraid of what would happen if I faced you both. You know how stubborn I can be—I like to stay true to what I believe in, to the life I envisioned for myself. When NexaRealm started heading towards that competitive direction, it clashed with everything I believed in. I created it as a form of escape, a place where people could be free. But competition? It changes everything. It introduces values, and sentiments that I didn't want to see in my world."
He paused, looking up at the two women.
"I ran because I was afraid that if you two confronted me, I'd lose heart. I might've stayed, but it wouldn't have been true to myself. I needed to run, to hold on to the belief that I was right to leave."
The weight of his words hung in the air, thick with the unspoken questions still lingering between them.
Jin-ho paused, giving Hye-su and Hae-won a moment to process everything he had just said. Their silence hung in the air like a fog, thick with unspoken questions and emotions. But Jin-ho wasn't done yet—there was still more to explain, more to confess.
"I know you're probably wondering why I came back," Jin-ho continued, rubbing his temple as if the thought itself was exhausting. "Why did I jailbreak NexaRealm, why did I breach the system in the first place."
Jin-ho leaned back slightly, running a hand through his long, unruly hair as if what he was about to say was difficult to admit.
"The truth is... I relapsed," he confessed quietly, his gaze dropping to the floor. "I spent so many years in NexaRealm. Testing it, finding bugs, perfecting it. Half of my life was inside that game. And after years of not playing, of staying away, I just... I couldn't resist it anymore. The urge to log back in, to feel that world again—it never went away."
He paused, his voice heavy with the weight of his confession.
"Even my sister, Ha-eun, and my brother-in-law play it from time to time. Not as much as I used to, of course, but they still dabble in it. And Yoon-jae..." He smiled faintly, almost amused at the thought. "Even my nephew has started to show interest. He's not old enough yet, but he's waiting for the day he can play. That world, NexaRealm, it's everywhere around me, even when I'm trying to stay away. And I guess... I just couldn't anymore. I wanted to feel it again, to be a part of it, even if it meant breaking in the way I did."
The room grew quiet as Jin-ho's admission hung in the air, a stark reminder of how deeply NexaRealm had shaped his life. The two women, Hye-su and Hae-won, could see now that his return wasn't just about avoiding them or hiding—it was about reconnecting with something that had always been a part of him.
Jin-ho let out a sigh, his voice softening as if he were confessing a secret he'd kept buried for too long.
"And you both know that my original NexaRealm account was restricted and monitored. After I left, NexaCorp put me on a watchlist. I couldn't log in like a normal player, not without being flagged immediately."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small, sleek device—the original prototype of the Realm device.
"But I still had this. You remember, right? The prototype we made together, back when NexaRealm was just an idea. I held onto it, even after I left. It wasn't connected to NexaCorp's servers like the later models, so it gave me a loophole. I tweaked it—spent months modifying the code, testing it against firewalls, and finally managed to breach the protection NexaCorp installed. It wasn't easy, but I got in."
Hye-su and Hae-won exchanged a look of realization. Of course, he would have access to something like that—Jin-ho, Hye-su, and Hae-won were the founders, after all. It made sense that he had such a device in his possession.
"But my careful planning was a disaster the moment I logged in," Jin-ho admitted, his expression turning grim. "I became... well, you know, the mysterious man that caused all that chaos. I wasn't trying to break the system, but that's exactly what I did. I breached the Korean server, and somehow, it affected everything worldwide. The leaderboard went haywire, the stats glitched—it was a mess."
He sighed heavily, guilt etched on his face.
"Straight away, I want to apologize for that. I know NexaCorp Korea took a hit because of the breach, and that's on me. But to be fair, the login itself was fine—the problem was my actions."
Jin-ho leaned forward, his eyes narrowing slightly as he recalled the moment.
"When I logged in, I spawned in the middle of a boss arena. There was this kid—he was about to be killed by the boss. I didn't choose to step in, I just happened to appear there. My artefacts... well, you know how they work. They have their retribution effects, and before I knew it, the boss was dead."
The memory weighed on him, though he seemed more puzzled than anything.
"I didn't even do anything, and the system registered the kill. It flagged me and sent out notifications. That's how the whole mess spread. I became this... anomaly."
Hye-su and Hae-won both nodded. They knew the story. But what Jin-ho didn't know was the identity of the boy he had saved.
"The boy you saved," Hae-won finally said, her voice calm but measured, "was Joon-ho."
Jin-ho's brows furrowed.
"Joon-ho?"
Hye-su nodded, her expression softening.
"Joon-ho was protecting his friend, Soo-jin. That's how it all happened. And in a strange twist of fate, Joon-ho is the same boy who brought us to you now. He's the one who found you."
Jin-ho blinked, clearly taken aback by the revelation.
"Wait... you're telling me the kid I accidentally saved back then is the reason you're both here now?"
Both women nodded, watching as Jin-ho sat back, stunned by the sheer coincidence.
Jin-ho leaned back on the couch, exhaling as if the weight of fate itself had just landed on him.
"So the reason you're both able to track me here... is because I saved some random kid who turned out to be the person who led you to me?" He laughed, a short, incredulous sound. "That's some wild karma right there."
Hae-won grinned, leaning forward with a teasing glint in her eyes.
"Well, fate works in strange ways, Jin-ho. Whether you like it or not, the kid you saved brought you face-to-face with your past. And now here we are. After all the years of failure in finding you."
Jin-ho chuckled, shaking his head in disbelief.
"I really had no idea. Honestly, I was just trying to help—didn't even realize who I was saving."
For a brief moment, the tension in the room eased, the conversation dipping into lighter tones. But then silence fell again, the three of them sitting in that quiet lull, each reflecting on the bizarre series of events that had brought them together. The ticking of the clock on the wall filled the air, marking the time until more inevitable questions would arise.
But for now, they allowed the silence to settle, as if understanding that this was just the beginning of something far bigger than any of them could predict.