[POINT OF VIEW: LEO - FIRST PERSON]
The silence after the slap was almost as deafening as the shootout in Pyongyang. For a moment, I just stood there, Jo Yu-ri's hand stinging on my cheek and her arms wrapped around my neck. My brain, which can process bullet trajectories and the erosion of millennia-old pressure traps, short-circuited.
The slap, yes, I understood that. I probably deserved it. The guilt, the fear, the frustration... it had to come out somewhere, and my face was the most convenient target. But the hug... that was new. That was completely uncharted territory. I could handle mafia thugs, special forces soldiers, and enraged dictators, but a K-Pop idol crying and hugging me after slapping me... there was no manual for that.
Awkwardly, I patted her back. She smelled of expensive shampoo and my own dirty hoodie. A strange combination. I felt the entire group staring at us, their expressions ranging from stupefaction (the actors) to contained fury (Helena). This was definitely the weirdest homecoming I'd ever had.
When she finally pulled away, her eyes were red and swollen, but there was a new determination in them. The scared girl I'd dragged through the alleys was gone. This version was... more complicated. And much more interesting.
"Well," I said, breaking the silence and rubbing my cheek. "I guess after this, we're even, right?"
No one laughed. The atmosphere remained tense.
[POINT OF VIEW: GROUP - THIRD PERSON]
The scene slowly readjusted. Mr. Choi was revived from his faint with Min-jun's help. Helena took the whiskey glass from Leo's hand and poured herself a double. Inspector Park spoke softly into his phone, likely informing the highest echelons of the South Korean government that their biggest international problem had just appeared in a Seoul villa with two canvas bags and a carefree attitude.
Leo was seated on a sofa, and while Ho-yeon, who seemed the least traumatized, cleaned the cut on his lip with a first-aid kit, the interrogation began.
Wi Ha-joon took the lead, his detective's curiosity completely overriding his shock. He knelt in front of Leo, his gaze intense. "The logistics," he said, as if the word could impose order on chaos. "Forget the Supreme Leader's karaoke and the soju raft for a moment. How did you get from the Yalu River, on the border with China, to this villa in Seoul, in less than 48 hours, undetected by the CIA, Mossad, MI6, or our own National Intelligence Service, who I assure you were looking for a ghost like you?"
Leo took a large bite of a sandwich Min-jun had prepared, chewed thoughtfully, then shrugged. "Oh, that. That was the easy part. Smuggling isn't just for weapons and drugs, Inspector. Do you know what a USB stick full of the latest K-Pop videos and South Korean soap operas is worth on the Sinuiju black market? A fortune. I bribed a couple of Chinese border guards with a hard drive containing the latest season of 'Crash Landing on You.' They cried with emotion. They stuffed me in the back of a diplomatic supply truck headed for Dandong."
"From there, a cargo train to Dalian, I stowed away on a freighter bound for Incheon, and the rest was a pleasant taxi ride," he concluded, taking another bite of his sandwich as if he had just described a weekend trip.
"And the security of this villa?" Park asked, finishing his call. "We had a perimeter. Agents. Sensors."
"Your sensors are commercial grade. Easy to bypass," Leo said with his mouth full. "And your agents are police, not soldiers. They're trained to look for frontal threats, not someone climbing in through the roof and rappelling down the facade using the decorative vines. By the way, you should prune those; they offer too much cover."
Lee Jung-jae shook his head, a resigned smile on his face. "Unbelievable. And the photo? The one in the bedroom. You haven't told us that part. How did you get so close to him?"
Leo grinned, his eyes sparkling with the memory of the mischief. "Patience. And a deep understanding of Swiss cognac-induced sleep patterns. After his karaoke session, he drank half a bottle. I knew I had a window of about four hours of deep sleep. The rest was stealth, nerves of steel, and knowing which floorboards creak. His palace is surprisingly cheaply built in some places."
The explanation, so simple yet so insane, left everyone speechless once more. This man did not operate by the same rules of reality as the rest of humanity.
[POINT OF VIEW: HELENA - THIRD PERSON]
Helena had remained silent for most of Leo's recount, watching him from her armchair like a panther evaluating her most problematic cub. She had let the others ask the easy questions. Now it was her turn.
She stood up and approached, her presence commanding immediate silence. She stood in front of him, her face a mask of ice.
"You've told the funny anecdotes, Leonidas," she said, her voice dangerously soft. "Now tell the end of the story. You left behind a humiliated and enraged dictator, and his entire personal army chasing you through the halls of his own palace. They wouldn't stop. They would have locked down the entire city, the entire country. They would have searched every house, every sewer. There was no escape."
She stared at him. "So how did you get rid of them? Why did they stop looking for you so intently that you had time to negotiate with K-Pop smugglers?"
The question hung in the air. It was the missing piece, the final act that had allowed this impossible return.
[POINT OF VIEW: LEO - FIRST PERSON]
Ah, the big question. I looked around. All faces were fixed on me, expectant. I saw Ha-joon's curiosity, Jung-jae's paternal concern, Choi's latent panic, and Yu-ri's gaze... a mix of awe and a new, intense caution, as if she were deciding whether I was a genius or the stupidest man to ever walk the Earth.
I decided to have a little fun. They had earned it.
I took a long swig of the whiskey I'd swiped from Helena. I set the glass down, cleared my throat, and adopted an expression of solemn gravity.
"Ah, that," I said with a sigh, as if recalling a heavy burden. "It was... complicated. I couldn't just outrun them. I had to give them something more important to worry about. I had to... create a distraction. Something big enough, catastrophic enough, for my humble disappearance to become the least of their problems for the next 24 hours."
I leaned forward, lowering my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "In my little palace tour, I found something fascinating. The nuclear command bunker. Turns out the fat man has all his biggest toys connected to a central control panel. A bit outdated system, if you ask me. Pretty vulnerable. Terrible cybersecurity."
I gave them my most innocent smile. "So... while I was running through the halls, I made a quick pit stop. And I activated one of the warheads."
[POINT OF VIEW: GROUP - THIRD PERSON]
The silence that followed Leo's declaration was unlike the others. This was a silence of absolute void, the silence of the end of the world. The air seemed to solidify, trapping dust in the light rays. The idea was so monstrous, so apocalyptically stupid, that their brains refused to process it.
Mr. Choi began making a wheezing sound, like a deflating balloon.
Leo, apparently oblivious to the mental cataclysm he had just caused, continued with his explanation. "But hey, I'm no monster! I didn't want to start World War III, I just needed a distraction. So I left them a way to deactivate it. An emergency override key. I wrote down the sequence on a piece of paper and left it on his nightstand, next to a glass of water. A courtesy gesture."
He started patting the pockets of his stolen uniform. "In fact, I was smart enough to make a copy, just in case..." He pulled out a crumpled, greasy piece of paper. He unfolded it, looked at it, and his face, his incredibly convincing amateur actor's face, transformed. His eyes widened with a panic that seemed horribly genuine.
"Oh, no," he whispered, his voice trembling.
He looked at the group, his face a mask of absolute terror.
"This is my grocery list from last week," he said in a thin voice. "I think... I think I left them my grandmother's kimchi recipe."
And then, the world ended.
"AAAAAHHHH!!!" screamed Mr. Choi, leaping to his feet and grabbing his hair. "WE'RE GOING TO DIE! HE'S KILLED THE WORLD! AND ALL FOR A MAP!"
"LEONIDAS, I'M GOING TO KILL YOU MYSELF, I SWEAR ON MY MOTHER'S SOUL!" roared Helena, jumping from her seat, her face a mask of white fury. "YOU HAVE CONDEMNED BILLIONS OF PEOPLE FOR A STUPID PRANK!"
Inspector Park was already shouting into his phone. "CODE BLUE! NO, CODE BLACK! CODE END OF THE WORLD! CONNECT ME TO THE BLUE HOUSE RIGHT NOW! I DON'T CARE IF THE PRESIDENT IS SLEEPING!"
Min-jun and Ho-yeon were huddled together, screaming. Lee Jung-jae had clutched a hand to his heart, his face as pale as a ghost.
Even Wi Ha-joon, the analyst, had lost his composure. "The simulations! A detonation on the Korean peninsula would trigger an automatic response from China and the United States! Fallout would cover Japan in twelve hours! It's the end of civilization!"
Only Yu-ri was silent. She stood, staring at Leo, her mind blank, unable to process a horror of such magnitude. The man she had mourned was not just a thief. He was the Herald of the Apocalypse.
In the midst of that pandemonium of screams, panic, and global damnation, Leo did something unexpected.
He started laughing.
It wasn't a small laugh. It was a booming, uncontrollable guffaw that doubled him over. He laughed so hard tears streamed down his dirty cheeks, laughing at the panic, the chaos, their faces of absolute terror.
Finally, he managed to gasp for air, though he was still shaking with laughter. He pointed at their terrified faces.
"You had..." he gasped, trying to speak. "You had... to see... your faces!"
He burst into laughter again. "My God! Seriously! You totally fell for it! Hook, line, and sinker!"
The room fell silent once more. A different kind of silence. The relief was so sudden and intense it was physically painful, like surfacing after nearly drowning. And it was immediately followed by a wave of fury so pure and concentrated it could have set the room on fire.
Helena was the first to move. She lunged at him and grabbed him by the collar of his uniform. "So, what did you do, you clown?" she hissed, her voice icy venom. "The truth. Now."
Leo, still grinning, raised his hands in surrender. "Almost. The idea was good, but the execution was more subtle. I didn't activate the warhead. I only activated the warhead launch alarm throughout the bunker. And then, I used a small virus I introduced into their system to wipe the control panel logs for an hour. They couldn't confirm if the alarm was real or false without doing a full manual review of the entire silo."
His smile widened. "I caused a DEFCON 1 level panic. While all their generals, including the fat man, ran around like headless chickens thinking they were going to start the apocalypse, I simply walked out the kitchen service door. It probably took them days to ensure everything was okay. By the time they realized it had been a false alarm, I was already in China, negotiating the price of a pair of fake sneakers."
He stared at the group, his eyes gleaming with childlike satisfaction.
Jo Yu-ri watched him, emotionally drained. The terror, the anger, the relief, the renewed fury... it was a rollercoaster that had left her spent. She walked slowly towards Leo, took the whiskey glass from a still-paralyzed Helena's hand, and drank it in one gulp. The burning liquid scorched her throat.
She looked at Leo. The man who had jumped off a rooftop for her. The man who had taken selfies with a dictator. The man who had just faked the end of the world as a joke.
And for the first time, she felt neither fear, nor anger, nor gratitude. She felt a kind of weary, exasperated acceptance. This was her life now. Her life involved this walking disaster of a man. And she wasn't sure if that was the worst tragedy of her life or, secretly, the funniest thing that had ever happened to her.