NOT EDITED. NO PLANS TO BE EDITED. READ AT YOUR OWN RISK.

< PRELUDE. TaeChung Trading Company's Section Chief Han GyuHo >

Mission: FCA – Free Carrier (Carrier delivery conditions)
d+1 (One day after operation start) 0540
10.008773, 43.163271, Borama North-Northwest, Somalia, Africa

The man wearing camouflage opened the heavy steel door. The musty air stabbed at his nose. Rather, the stench was more putrid than musty. The smell couldn't be this pungent from just excrements. It had to contain blood.

The man slightly creased his face and quietly entered the room. In the room about a meter squared, the man found his mark amidst the thickening stench. The man slowly approached a bloody bundle of rags that appeared to be a fallen animal, he confirmed his mark.

Alive?

The man carefully put his hand to the mark's neck. The area jutting out beneath the jaw, the area where the artery is close to the skin. The man who placed his hand on the area where the heartbeat is easily verified, he felt a weak heartbeat, but it was there. Alive for now.

Alive. For now. If the mark stays in this sort of condition, he would die, but he was still alive.

The man shook the mark's shoulders. The mark opened his eyes as if it were a conditioned reflex once his shoulders shook. Fear flashed in his eyes. The man quickly covered the mark's mouth. Some noise was fine. Already, there was no living being that could listen in on their conversation. But even so, the man blocked the mark's mouth. and said.

“Agent Noyce?”

The mark's eyes wavered, but didn't nod his head.

A trained agent. A very well trained one.

“Agent Noyce, I'll say the code now. Echo Nine, Port Alice, November (N), Golf (G), Uniform (U), Whiskey (W), Tango (T), Yankee (Y), Bravo (B), Hotel (H).”

The man who came to rescue said the code.

The mark's eyes quivered even more. His emotions could be seen from the dilated pupils. From fear to hope.

He asked again.

“Agent Enoch?”

The mark nodded. Finally the man removed his hand which was covering the mark's mouth and talked into his ear.

“The United States of America sent me to bring you back. Do you agree?”

The CIA agent, Enoch Noyce, from the Center of Prevention of Nuclear Weapon Proliferation nodded his head.

The man said again.

“Say it out loud. Do you agree to the escape?”

“Yes, I agree. Please take me home. Sir.”

The weak, shaking voice showing his will escaped his lips. Get his agreement, and document it.

It was essential.

“Ok. Let's go home.”

Han GyuHo said while smiling. Seeing the smile, Enoch Noyce thought it was a smile he could trust.

—————–

Mission: FCA – Free Carrier (Carrier delivery conditions)
d-5 (5 days before the mission) 1000 Songpdong, Seoul, Korea

The man was annoyed.
He had just fallen asleep after a torturous hangover when the text rang.
The man could fall asleep anywhere when he deemed it was safe.

Sleep when you can. Eat when you can. It was the man's rules of survival.

The reason he woke was because of a feeling he had. The sound of the alarm wasn't what woke him, but the instinct that the alarm was important was what woke him. The very instinct that had always kept his life safe.

The man grabbed his phone and checked the text message.

‘1300 Weekly Conference Planned.'

A simple phrase not even including a preposition.

“Weekly conference my ass. This geezer has good timing. He was born with the ability of harassing people.”

If he wanted to grab a bowl of soup after getting up and taking a quick shower he had to move now. (TLN 해장국 – soup for hangovers)

The man grasped his aching head and got up from the bed.

Gyeonggi-do Seongnam-si Sujung-gu Sansung-dong. On the 3rd floor of building located on the alleyway heading up to the Korean Polytechnics University was a sign with TaeChung Trading Company on it.

The company was a small trading company that dealt with import and export of the manufacturing companies within Seongnam for 5 years, but after the recent global economic recession and the following import and export decreases that brought about negative business profits was just another trading company with no competitive edge.
In addition, the company lost one of their consigner to a larger trading company and had to brace another hard year.

There was one department in TaeChung Trading Company.

Import Export 2nd Division.

The department was made up of one section chief, who doesn't even deal with normal import export duties nor sales. Not only that, but he doesn't even come in to work so he didn't have a desk.

Occasionally, when the one and only section chief shows his face at the company, he is seen smoking on the sofa in the CEO's room, but never working.

There were rumors of him being a distant family member of the CEO, or even that he was the company sponsor's son.

TaeChung Trading Company's Import Export 2nd Division's Section Chief Han GyuHo

The man who was complaining just a moment ago on the bed when he read the text, Han GyuHo.

Section Chief Han GyuHo opened the doors and entered the CEO's office immediately. It wasn't as if he had a desk, and he wasn't close enough to the other employees to greet them. If they thought he was a product of nepotism, let them think that. (TLN 낙하산 – slang to denote parachuting into a company aka nepotism.)

As he opened the office door the culprit that woke him from his sweet dreams was looking at documents.

TaeChung Trading Company's CEO Kim WonHyung. The typical mid 60s Korean male who runs a small trading company and has graying hair, deep creases in his face.

Han GyuHo threw himself into the sofa without a greeting.

“What is it now?”

‘How have you been?' ‘How's your health?' ‘You've been well?' No greetings of the sort.

It's been 20 years since they've met each other, but it wasn't far off to say they've never greeted each other affectionately.

CEO Kim WonHyung kept on looking at the documents in his hands without a reply, and only once he quickly signed the bottom of it did he turn his eyes to Han GyuHo as he pressed the button on his desk.

A ‘zzzzzzing' vibration hit Han GyuHo's eardrums. It was a high frequency vibration that normal people couldn't hear. It vibrates the windows along with a signal jammer.

Wiretapping has long been discarded. Especially the wireless ones that use radio waves are detected 100% or cancelled out. So the method that came to be was to use the vibration of the windows.

Human words are delivered through vibrational sound waves, and these vibrations are tuned to the windows. The wiretapping that could pick up these vibrations rose up as an alternative method.

To prevent this, TaeChung Trading Company placed a high frequency vibrational aligner in the CEO's office. To put it simply, it was an extension of the noise cancelling ear-chute technology.

Even after the wire-tap cancelling device was fully operational, Kim WonHyung said nothing for a while.

It was Kim WonHyung's habit to deliberate even in these conditions.

“You'll need to work with Americans.”

“Americans? They're a bit annoying…”

“They're CIA so it'll be clean. If you don't want to, you don't have to, but give it a try. The Americans are one thing, but this has the Prime Contract riled up as well.”

Prime Contract. It meant someone was commisioned by the CIA, and that commission came to Han GyuHo. The Prime Contract was the Korean Intelligence Agency.

“What about them? It's not them that's working.”

“It means they want the Americans to owe them. They pressured you into moving. That sort of thing.”

Han GyuHo thought. Now I don't want to do it even more.

“I don't want to do it even more. What do I get out of it?”

“Think of it as placing a debt with the Primary Contract. It's the NIS (National Intelligence Service), not the Primary Contract.”

“Do I have to do it? I don't want to.”

“Just go and hear what they have to say. If you go, you'll go today. Go to K-5 5.

I didn't like it.

Annoying from the start.

Section Cheif Han GyuHo, who in truth was an Independent Agent who does jobs commissioned by the Intelligence Agencies of various countries, thought this annoyance would continue on.

< PRELUDE. TaeChung Trading Company's Section Chief Han GyuHo >

도서관식객 (Library Houseguest)

*This is meant to be an example of translation as the originals are easily found on the Korean webnovel site munpia for free.

*It will be taken down when requested by those that have legal hold over the original works