Shin Haesu blinked as he regained his senses.

Of course, the man from 13 years ago wasn’t him. That man was even bigger than Haesu is now. But the chilling gaze—it wasn’t just similar; it was identical.

Whoosh—

At that moment, the woman pulled the knife from the man, and that gaze disappeared like a mirage, replaced by hollow, empty eyes.

She paid no attention to Haesu approaching, placing Arin on her lap and gripping the knife in reverse. Then, she took a stance as if to stab herself in the heart.

Suicide. Before the reset, she hadn’t been killed by someone—she had taken her own life.

Haesu ran toward her and shouted.

“She can be saved!”

The tip of the knife, aimed precisely at her heart, halted. It had already pierced slightly, and blood was seeping out.

Haesu carefully grasped her hand, prying it away from the knife.

“She can be saved, Arin can be saved, so put the knife down.”

Her eyes widened upon hearing Arin’s name. Only now did she seem to believe he was really the police.

Looking down at Arin, Haesu spoke into his radio.

“This is Maknae. I’ve found Arin in the far-right room on Basement Level 2. Call 119.”

—Basement Level 2, understood.

Haesu checked the woman’s condition first. She was covered in blood, but there were no severe external injuries.

He carefully took Arin from her and laid her flat on the floor, flipping her eyelids to check her pupils. They were constricted, and she wasn’t breathing. No, she was breathing—just barely. Her breath was so faint it was inaudible, but her pulse was still there.

Long-term drug addiction.

“You massage her limbs. I’ll do chest compressions.”

The woman silently stared into Haesu’s calm eyes before letting go of the knife.

“Hurry, or she’ll die.”

She clumsily pressed on Arin’s body. It was more like placing her hands on her than actually massaging.

“Harder! Massage her properly!”

Only then did she start applying real pressure. Meanwhile, Team Leader and Oh Gaeng entered the room. They were speechless at the sight of corpses littering the hallway.

“Damn…”

“What happened here? Some kind of internal conflict?”

“No way our assault leader took out all these guys, right?”

The presence of unfamiliar men made the woman flinch and tense up. Haesu didn’t even glance at her as he explained.

“They’re my teammates.”

She still didn’t relax, but she kept massaging. As they worked on her body and performed chest compressions, a bit of color started returning to Arin’s face.

“Ah… ah.”

Seeing a visible change in Arin, the woman’s expression brightened—just a little.

Haesu lifted Arin’s eyelid again to check her pupils. She was still in bad shape.

“Team Leader, the ambulance is coming, right?”

“It should be here soon. Oh Gaeng, go outside and guide them in. The layout here is complicated.”

“Already on it—”

It turned out the paramedics were already on their way in, as Oh Gaeng returned with them in less than a minute.

They loaded Arin onto a stretcher and carried her out. The Team Leader followed, and Haesu was about to leave as well when he noticed the woman standing still, unable to take a single step. As if bound by invisible chains to this place.

“Go ahead first.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, make sure she comes with you.”

Haesu turned back and approached her.

Now that he was looking at her properly, he realized something he hadn’t noticed before due to all the blood covering her—she was only wearing an undershirt and underwear.

He took off his jacket and put it on her, zipping it up all the way. It looked like she was wearing a loose-fitting dress. Then, he grabbed her wrist and guided her arm into his sleeve.

“Hold on.”

She hesitated, then slowly gripped the sleeve—once, then even tighter.

“Don’t let go.”

At Haesu’s words, she gave a small nod.

As soon as Arin left that underground world, she was rushed to the emergency room.

“Her condition isn’t good, but she’s out of immediate danger. However, this woman needs treatment too—”

When the doctor pointed at her, the woman backed away like a stray cat, her eyes sharp and wary. She looked like she might attack him at any moment.

Haesu stepped in between them.

“She’s fine.”

“Huh? Oh… okay.”

The doctor took a closer look at her from a distance. While she was covered in blood, he didn’t see any severe injuries, so he let it go.

The Team Leader immediately contacted Arin’s parents.

“…Yes, that’s correct. We’re at Daeseong Hospital. Yes, yes…”

Arin had a long dream. A dream of wandering in complete darkness, unable to see anything.

It felt like she would be trapped there forever. But then, someone grabbed her by the nape and pulled her out.

Her eyelids felt so heavy. It was hard to open them. She felt sensation and smell before sight.

It wasn’t the stale, suffocating air she was used to breathing—this was strange, yet inexplicably comforting.

Her left hand felt warmth. Someone was holding it. But no one ever held her hand. Could it be… her sister?

Slowly—

Arin barely managed to lift her eyelids. Her blurry vision gradually returned to focus.

‘Is this a dream?’

The face she always dreamed of seeing when she slept in that hell—it was right in front of her. No, it couldn’t be.

“…Rin, Arin, are you awake?”

“…Mom?”

“My baby!!”

Her mother pulled her into a tight embrace. Her father joined in, holding them both.

Arin was dazed, unable to believe what was happening. It felt like a dream, and she was afraid that if she woke up, it would disappear. She pushed her mother away to see her face again.

‘Before I forget… I want to remember more, more…’

But the warmth from her mother’s hands was real. The voice, filled with worry, was real.

Only after a long moment did Arin finally embrace her mother properly and burst into tears.

“I… I was scared. I was so, so scared, Mom…”

“I know, I know. It’s all okay now, my baby…”

The emotions of parents who had lost their child and found her again after a month couldn’t be put into words.

At that moment, as a family was being reunited in tears—

Someone else was retreating, as if her chest were being pierced by needles.

Step, step.

Watching Arin embrace her family in happiness, the woman could only step back.

Arin had returned to her family. The memories of that hellish place, the presence of someone who reminded her of it—she had to stay away.

No one asked Arin about what had happened. And Arin acted as if she had forgotten everything, living brightly as if nothing had occurred.

However, sometimes, when she saw a young woman passing by, she would turn her head and watch for a long time.

The massive underground criminal organization that the Kangjin Police Unit had taken down was a gang called Jeoksahoe, connected to Chinese syndicates. Even though it was only a branch, it was a large-scale operation.

They had rescued twelve adult women and twenty children from that hell. More than twenty gang members had been arrested alive.

Because of that, the Kangjin Police Unit was overwhelmed with paperwork.

Haesu had left the officers at the precinct in charge of the hospital while preparing to head back.

Clang!

“Kyaaah!”

A nurse screamed, dropping the medical kit she had been holding.

The woman was gripping a ballpoint pen like a knife, backing into the corner of the hospital bed and hissing at the nurse. She didn’t lower her guard even as another female officer approached.

“Ha…”

Haesu’s feet wouldn’t move. She was a very strange woman. Was she suffering from severe psychological shock?

It had only been a brief moment, but that dangerous glint in her eyes was unforgettable. She could cause a major incident.

“Chief, I’ll stay behind.”

“What? We have a mountain of work to do…”

The chief spoke while following Haesu’s gaze toward the woman. He had already heard from Haesu that she had killed a gangster.

“Fine, just hurry back. I’ll be waiting.”

“Yes, sir.”

As Haesu approached, she lowered the ballpoint pen and reached out, grabbing his sleeve. He could feel her fingers trembling. It wasn’t out of anger or any other emotion—it was fear.

‘What the hell is this woman…?’

Following Haesu’s gesture, the nurses and officers moved further away. As they gave her space, her breathing gradually stabilized.

Haesu helped her sit on the bed and sat across from her.

“From now on, you need to answer my questions truthfully.”

Since they would need to write up the report after her treatment, he decided to start early.

“Name.”

“…”

“Do you not have a name?”

“Hey, you, bitch, fucking whore, cunt…”

Haesu was taken aback. She wasn’t just cursing—these were the names she had been called.

“You really don’t remember your real name?”

She silently shook her head.

“Your parents’ names?”

She lowered her head further and shook it again.

“How long have you been there?”

Even if she was a woman, she could have been a member of a crime syndicate. But considering the countless scars on her body, including fresh ones, it didn’t seem likely.

She opened her palm, raised her hand into the air, and spoke.

“Since then…”

Haesu assumed she meant her height—implying she had been there since she was a child. No wonder she didn’t remember her name.

She didn’t answer anything before that. Whether she had really lost her memory or simply didn’t want to answer was unknown.

Without a registered DNA record, there was no way to determine her identity.

Adult women in her situation were often kidnapped or sold due to debt, used for prostitution or as playthings.

But this woman’s scars were especially severe. Her eyes were unsettling.

‘Just what is she?’

Gangjin Police Station

Haesu brought her to the police station to finish the report. But since she still refused to speak, frustration mounted.

Just then, a gangster under interrogation pointed at her and said,

“She’s a fighting dog, a fighting dog.”

“A fighting dog? Explain in detail.”

Since she wasn’t talking, Haesu gathered information from the gangsters.

According to them, she had been brought in by a branch leader ten years ago. Strangely, she wasn’t forced to manufacture drugs but was only made to participate in underground fights.

“…She always came back battered, but she never died. It was amazing.”

“Am I your friend?”

“…Sir.”

“So she was a professional underground fighter?”

“Yes. The guy who took her to fights said she was decent in the ring… but who knows until you see it yourself.”

The branch leader who had brought her in was killed during an arrest, so there was no way to trace her past.

Judging by her face, she seemed to be in her early twenties. If she had been there for ten years, she would have been at most fifteen when forced into those violent fights.

“…Fucking scumbags.”

Underground fights didn’t differentiate between men and women. There were plenty of perverts who enjoyed watching women get beaten, so the detectives suspected she had been used to cater to those customers.

Regardless, since she was a kidnapping victim and had been ruled to have acted in self-defense when she killed the gangster, they couldn’t detain her any longer.

Everyone felt uneasy about letting her go after hearing her story.

Kidnapped as a child, without fingerprint records, and no memory—finding her family was impossible. They had submitted her DNA to the missing persons registry, but the match rate was below 5%.

The chief frowned.

“What do we do with this young lady? She has no money and no home.”

“What else can we do? She’s an adult. There’s nowhere suitable to send her.”

“Those bastards called it a branch, right? Just in case, give her a bracelet.”

“Yes, chief.”

Haesu took a personal safety smartwatch from the cabinet and fastened it around her thin wrist.

“If you shake your hand like this, your location is sent to 112. Use it if you’re in danger.”

She stared at the bracelet with dull eyes, saying nothing. Haesu also slipped a few 50,000-won bills into the pocket of her tracksuit jacket.

And so, she stepped out of the police station.

“Haaahm—”

That night, Haesu stretched and yawned, celebrating the completion of his reports. He could finally go home.

Bang—!

Just then, a rough-looking man barged into the violent crimes unit’s office. His face was swollen, his nose bleeding.

“Officers! There’s a crazy woman outside beating people up! Random assault, random assault! Hurry and arrest her!”

Hearing that it was a woman, Haesu furrowed his brows and stood up.

“I’ll check it out.”

“Sure, rookie. Just clock out on your way back.”

Following the man outside, Haesu spotted a woman squatting at the corner of the bus stop across from the station, knees bent.

“It’s that bitch! That bitch!”

As he got closer, a female student sitting on a bench waiting for the bus spoke up.

“That guy was hitting on her, so she beat him up. Serves him right.”

Hearing that, Haesu’s gaze turned sharp. The man suddenly shivered and backed away, waving his hands.

“N-No, that’s ridiculous! That filthy-looking woman… Anyway, officer! Put that bitch in jail!”

With that, the man disappeared into the distance. Haesu crouched down in front of her.

Her vacant eyes slowly traveled from his shoes, up his pants, to his arms, and finally met his gaze.

“Do you have anywhere to go?”

She gave the faintest nod.

Of course not. She had spent ten years locked up, treated as nothing more than a fighting dog, and was now suddenly thrust into society with nothing.

“Hah…”

He couldn’t just leave this stray cat with razor-sharp claws to fend for herself. Haesu slowly raised his hand.

As if they had made an unspoken agreement, she clung tightly to his sleeve.

Shin Haesu’s home was a tiny 8-pyeong studio apartment, including the bathroom and kitchen.

‘I must be crazy. What the hell am I doing…’

Snapping back to reality, he found himself in that cramped space, face to face with her.