Chapter 2. The Last Mission and a New Beginning

The noisy classroom suddenly fell silent.

"Alright, pay attention. This is a new transfer student. Do you want to introduce yourself?"

The teacher asked, looking at Yeonwoo.

"Hi, everyone. I'm Ryu Yeonwoo, I transferred from Seoul. Nice to meet you all."

Wow!

Transfer students are always an interesting topic. Even though he's a boy, he received quite a lot of attention.

"Wow! Damn, he's handsome."

Although he still had some baby fat on his face, his appearance was striking enough to impress even the boys.

"Hey! Woo Seong-sik. What kind of language is that in front of the teacher?"

Woo Seong-sik, who was sitting in the front row, was grabbed by the ear and scolded from the moment he let out a curse without thinking.

"This guy, what a show. I just pretended to grab him."

Soon, the morning assembly ended, and with each break, Yeonwoo was bombarded with questions from his classmates, making lunchtime come quickly.

For Yeonwoo, who had worked in various fields and on various sites in his previous life, winning over the hearts of these energetic eighteen-year-old students was as easy as eating cold porridge.

"Yeonwoo, how have you never played LoL? Did you live in the mountains instead of Seoul?"

"I can try it now. After school, when can we go to the PC room, Junsoo?"

The only games Yeonwoo had played in his childhood were spinning tops and paper battles, so he had never played video games.

***

Meanwhile, in a conference room shrouded in darkness, a man was waiting to give a report.

Creak—

The door, which had not been oiled, opened with a sound like a scream, and another man entered.

The man who had been waiting stood up and bowed deeply.

A man with a fierce expression and intense eyes looked at the bowed man and opened his heavy mouth.

"Really... how many times do I have to tell you?"

The chilling, metallic voice from his throat made the man waiting to give the report shudder.

Click—

"Why do you always turn off the lights? Keep them on. Are we a secret organization or something?"

When the lights came on, the eerie atmosphere disappeared, revealing just an ordinary office.

"Why do you turn off the lights and play the puppet master?"

"Sorry."

The man with the fierce expression shrugged, saying it was no use, and went to his seat, sitting down heavily.

"Report. What's the update?"

"The two cases we handled before have been completely destroyed."

The man nodded, listening to the report.

Then, the report continued.

"Because we had to handle them secretly, we faced intense scrutiny. We need to be careful for a while."

The man, who had been nodding while listening to the report, opened a drawer, took out a massage ball, and spoke in his metallic voice.

"These days, my digestion isn't good, so I need to massage a bit. If there's a blockage, you need to stimulate it to clear it out. That's why we exist, right?"

The man giving the report bowed his head silently in response to the man sitting at the head of the table.

"Still, that's a good job. Did you send him off comfortably?"

"Yes. I shot him in the head with a sniper rifle..."

"Hey, it's almost mealtime. Don't ruin the appetite with such cruel talk."

The man cut off the report and fiddled with the massage ball in his hand.

"This is all for the greater good. That guy was just unlucky."

***

Yeonwoo had become quite close to the students, and thanks to his excellent memory from his agent days, he called everyone by their names, regardless of gender, making them feel close.

He had also gone to the PC room with Junsoo as agreed and played games together.

Yeonwoo, who had excellent reflexes, was surprisingly bad at games and kept dying, staring at the gray screen throughout the game.

Friends came over to his house, and his parents and younger sister seemed relieved by the change in Yeonwoo.

"Yeonwoo, let's go to Kono."

Woo Seong-sik and Kim Junsoo naturally followed Yeonwoo on the way home, putting their arms around his shoulders.

"Kono? What's that?"

"Wow. Did you really live in the mountains instead of Seoul?"

Seong-sik and Junsoo were stunned by Yeonwoo's question.

Yeonwoo, who had never been interested in music and was working overseas when karaoke booths became popular, had no idea what they were talking about.

After hearing Junsoo's brief explanation, Yeonwoo finally understood.

"Oh, I've seen it in dramas."

"Anyway, let's go. What do you think?"

Yeonwoo stroked his chin, thinking.

'In my previous life, I was tone-deaf, but maybe this time it'll be different.'

In his previous life, Jeon Su-hwan was good at everything but singing, which he had always avoided due to his poor skills.

"Hmm, let's go."

"Yeonwoo, you're great. You never back out when we suggest something."

***

"Yeonwoo, it's good that you don't back out, but it's better to back out when it comes to singing."

"Phew."

This was the first time Yeonwoo had felt a sense of frustration since his reincarnation.

Junsoo shook his head seriously, and Seong-sik, covering his mouth, pounded his thigh desperately.

"Singing doesn't work even after reincarnation."

"Yeah, it seems like it won't work even after reincarnation."

No, that's not it. He had already reincarnated.

Swallowing the rest of his thoughts, Yeonwoo lowered his head.

Regardless, the next song started, and the friends began to sing.

Time passed, and the last song ended.

Of course, Yeonwoo had been a clapping robot the whole time.

"By the way, why do you look so closely at the evacuation map?"

On the way out, Seong-sik asked Yeonwoo, who was staring intently at the fire evacuation map in the karaoke room.

'I've never seen anyone look at it so closely.'

"It's a professional habit."

"But your profession is a student, right?"

"Um... yeah."

***

Time passed, and the midterm exams were approaching.

'These are quite difficult to solve with common knowledge, but it's good that I studied in my spare time.'

Ryu Yeonwoo, a former agent with a sharp mind and broad knowledge, found it challenging to solve the problems due to the different curriculum and lack of study in all subjects.

So, despite studying quite a bit, he still got three questions wrong.

Yeonwoo, who had studied well enough to enter a Korean university in his previous life, had expected this result, but the school was in an uproar.

"This is a real shock."

"That face, that physique, and now these grades? Wow, the transfer student is insane."

The friends were amazed.

"Hey, what can't you do?"

Yeonwoo, who flew around the soccer field and basketball court during lunch and PE, was asked by Kim Jae-yong, who sat behind him.

"Everything is perfect, but... singing."

Pfft—

Seong-sik, who was sitting next to them, spat out his water, remembering that shocking day.

Yeonwoo's grades, of course, left his parents speechless.

Only his cute younger sister, So-hyun, grumbled about how her parents' expectations had suddenly risen.

***

"Phew, I need to take care of this before it's too late."

Yeonwoo, who had been reincarnated for a little over four months, decided to act on something he felt he had to do.

In this life, he planned to pursue his dream of becoming an actor, something he hadn't been able to do in his previous life.

To do this, he needed to cut off all ties with his past, starting from his heart.

In his previous life, Jeon Su-hwan was dispatched to steal information after receiving intelligence that illegal weapons trading was detected in the Middle East, possibly by the North.

He and an additional agent managed to uncover the information, but he died before reporting it to headquarters, leaving a nagging feeling.

Today was the day to resolve that nagging feeling and completely clear his past.

Yeonwoo had prepared thoroughly to ensure that his new life wouldn't be affected by his previous one.

He had surveyed the area and planned his route based on the CCTV information he had gathered while playing futsal and visiting karaoke booths with his school friends.

His destination was an old public phone box in a neighborhood far from his residence.

Yeonwoo first searched his father's drawer for clothes of different styles.

He mixed them with his own clothes to create multiple outfits and gathered all the bags in the house.

He put the largest of his father's hiking bags first, then placed a bag with one set of clothes inside it.

He continued to place smaller bags inside, like Russian nesting dolls, before leaving the house.

The fully packed hiking bag was quite heavy, like a full military pack.

Yeonwoo headed to the back mountain behind his house, a route he often used for exercise, to avoid CCTV cameras and moved to a different neighborhood.

He entered a dilapidated public apartment complex he had surveyed and took out the bag inside the larger bag.

"Hmm, this..."

In the empty corridor, Yeonwoo quickly changed his clothes, put the original clothes in the hiking bag, and hid it in a corner of the stairwell leading to the roof.

He then came out in a completely different outfit, including a hat, with the second bag.

He moved to the next neighborhood, avoiding CCTV cameras as much as possible.

Arriving at an old commercial building he had scouted, Yeonwoo went up to the third floor.

Standing in front of a closed tailor shop, he changed into another outfit.

This time, he wore a hiking mask and a sun cap, making it hard to guess his age.

He changed his appearance several more times, altering his gait to make his movements more complex, and after a few hours, he finally stood in front of the public phone.

It was a fifteen-minute bus ride, but it took Yeonwoo several hours to get there.

Currently, he was playing the role of an old man, bent over, wearing shabby clothes, a mask, and a hat.

Yeonwoo put on disposable gloves and inserted a coin that didn't have his fingerprints into the public phone.

He then dialed a complex number including a shop and an asterisk.

Soon, the call was connected, and a normal customer service voice came from the other end.

- This is the service company. How can I assist you?

"Product number 478-54221. Category: Yun Dong-ju's new path."

Yeonwoo spoke the operation number and code phrase in a deep, modulated voice with no inflection.

A few seconds of silence followed, and then an automated voice came on.