“Have you ever thought that maybe you're just as worthless as the rest of us?”

Seong Wookchan’s eyes, already wide and intense, narrowed further at Seoryeong’s calm remark.

Her frail body trembled violently, her breath ragged, but her expression remained utterly unbroken.

“One week is longer than you think.”

“What?”

“There are always going to be people who quit. That’s a guarantee. So if I were you, Seong Wookchan—”

“...!”

At the sound of his name spoken so precisely, Seong Wookchan’s eyebrows twitched.

“With that filthy temper of yours, you might as well put it to some good use.”

“What the hell are you saying...”

“That mean, petty nature of yours — why don’t you use it for something good for once?”

Her eyes, devoid of any mercy, fixed squarely on Seong Wookchan.

“I don’t know how to save everyone, but I think I might know how to kill off the rest.”

It was impossible to remember how many hours they’d been in the cold water. They shouted until their throats were raw and rowed until their shoulders felt like they’d tear apart.

By the time they circled the bay and returned, the sun was rising. Meals were handed out atop the pedal boats, eaten by hand. On the first day, everyone sobbed as they ate.

During the day, they climbed the mountain with the inflatable boats still hoisted on their backs, and at night, they were back in the water for yet another round of sea drills.

Despite the searing pain in her ligaments, Seoryeong gritted her teeth and shouldered the weight of the rubber boat. Each step felt like a battle against a crushing, all-consuming force.

If she misplaced her foot even slightly, she would collapse. And when she did, Lee Wooshin climbed atop the boat and blew into an accordion, shrill and jarring, driving them all to the brink of madness.

They carried wooden logs, chased each other in grueling rounds of tag, marched until their legs gave out, and performed the fifty-two exercises of UDT gymnastics for two hours every morning and afternoon. The instructors never let them rest for even a second.

No bathrooms were allowed for the recruits, so they had to relieve themselves in their pants. Seoryeong barely ate, restricting her food intake to avoid having to soil herself.

At night, they were given hot chicken porridge. But it was so bitterly cold that Seoryeong couldn’t even eat it — she smeared it over her body to keep warm.

The pale hue of her skin slowly began to redden again. By then, they were running laps in the sunlight.

For three days straight, Seoryeong didn’t sleep. The routine repeated itself relentlessly, until even the haunting memories of Kim Hyeon that had once plagued her mind faded to nothing.

On the fourth morning, they rolled through the mudflats. The mud was venomous — as soon as it touched their skin, it flared up in welts, red and inflamed. They crawled and rolled endlessly, their bodies caked in black sludge. By the end of it, they were so filthy that only the whites of their teeth stood out against the grime.

Four days without sleep. Their bodies reeked of filth, every pore clogged with mud and sweat. The recruits had reached their breaking point.

“If anyone falls asleep, the instructor will personally dunk their face in the water.”

At that, Seoryeong jerked awake, shaking her head violently. Lee Wooshin had cranked up classical music, using it as a weapon against their exhaustion. The moment anyone nodded off, he would stomp on them to jolt them awake.

Is he insane... Seoryeong bit down on her tongue, fighting to keep herself from slipping under.

Throughout hell week, Lee Wooshin had completely ignored Seoryeong, yet there were inexplicable moments when his eyes lingered on her. Every time they crossed paths, his gaze was as lifeless as stone — like he was studying a document, not a person.

Even as her body was pushed to the brink, she couldn’t shake the feeling that his gaze was a trap, a quiet snare waiting to snap shut.

His expression still carried that air of contempt, as though he were dealing with a troublesome pest, but it had become more calculated, more chillingly calm. And for some reason, that made Seoryeong’s heart race with an icy dread.

That eerie, inscrutable gaze made her feel like she was facing a test separate from the others — as though she alone was enduring a trial within the trial.

“Dong Jiwoo. Han Seoryeong. Stand up.”

Shit... I must’ve fallen asleep. I’m definitely not in my right mind anymore, if my thoughts are wandering this much.

By Thursday, the memories started to blur.

“......”

“......”

She was walking but falling asleep at the same time. From that point on, it didn’t matter what she did — she was constantly on the verge of passing out. The line between dream and reality blurred, and the recruits moved purely by instinct.

This was when some of them really started to see things that weren’t there.

“Hey, hey, why is there a whale with its mouth open over there...? Everyone, run!”

They scrambled to restrain the recruit who was screaming at the top of his lungs with dazed, glassy eyes. On land, there were others panicking, claiming that ghosts were chasing them.

Watching the chaos, Seoryeong chuckled to herself in secret. Finally, the opportunity had come.

“Seong Wookchan.”

The moment she whispered his name, his scowling face responded immediately.

“Ah, come on... Are you serious right now?”

The lack of sleep had made everyone’s movements sluggish, but Seoryeong’s eyes glinted sharply, more alive than ever.

“I told you. This is all I know how to do.”

The basic rule of tactics: attack when the opponent is at their weakest. Seoryeong had been waiting quietly for this exact moment since the first day of hell week.

“If I don’t know /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ how to keep everyone alive, I might as well mess with them all.”

Targeting emotional vulnerabilities to make them hypersensitive, sowing confusion, amplifying their fears — it was all fair game now.

That day, Seoryeong stormed the cafeteria and dumped mud all over the chicken porridge that had been prepared for lunch. Her intention was to starve them all.

The other recruits clicked their tongues at her ruthlessness, but Seoryeong only shrugged.

The instructors saw what was happening but did nothing to intervene. After all, this wasn’t a military base governed by laws and regulations, and they had never once emphasized ethics or order here. On the contrary, they watched Seoryeong’s team with keen interest, as if they were observing soldiers dropped into enemy territory, willing to use any means necessary.

The middle of hell week was when doubt and frustration peaked.

Seoryeong mentally went over the background information she’d heard from Nucksal about the recruits. Then, she began systematically targeting the leaders of each team and those most prone to hallucinations.

Whenever one of her own teammates started to see things, Seoryeong slapped them across the face without hesitation. When it was someone from another team, she screamed at them like a beast, amplifying their fear.

Seong Wookchan zeroed in on the recruits suffering from cellulitis, poking at their wounds whenever he had the chance. During the mudflat training, he occasionally stomped on their ankles.

And just when the recruits were at their lowest point, rumors about Blast Corp began to spread. They said the pay was less than promised, that the insurance didn’t cover injuries, and that if someone became disabled, they’d be discharged without a severance package.

Dong Jiwoo, ever the patient and strategic one, used those rumors to rile up the already exhausted recruits, leading one of them to ring the quitting bell.

Thus, Seoryeong’s team became the only one without a single dropout.

“Now the playing field’s a bit more even, don’t you think?” Seoryeong muttered, scratching the back of her neck, now dark and filthy from days without washing.

The other recruits stared at her in disbelief.

“So that’s what she meant by ‘good use of your nasty temper’...”

Finally, it was Sunday afternoon. Two hours remained until the end of hell week.

The stench of filth radiated from every recruit gathered together. Their bodies were caked with mud and waste, clothes soaked through with urine. The place felt like a sewage treatment plant.

It had been a week of unrelenting hell. Without showers and with only training to occupy them, their skin was chafed raw and blackened with grime. From head to toe, even their fingernails were stained, no longer their original color.

But at long last, the end of hell week was starting to come into view. And on the final day, Seoryeong pulled Dong Jiwoo aside and whispered,

“I think I’m going to pass out.”

“What?”

There had been nothing easy about this week.

A wave of dizziness surged over her, and for a moment, the world spun. Seoryeong immediately bent forward, resting her head between her knees and taking deep breaths.

She remembered instructing patients at the rehabilitation center to do this sometimes — a crude but effective way to get more oxygen to the brain quickly.

To keep herself grounded, Seoryeong drew random shapes in the dirt with her index finger, focusing on her breathing. But her body, already past its limit, wasn’t having it. Her ears rang, and her vision dimmed at the edges.

No... Not now... Not after all this...

With her eyelids fluttering, she forced the words out in a rapid, slurred whisper.

“If I black out, just pretend you don’t know me. Don’t make a fuss.”

“What...!”

“Act normal. I’ll get up on my own.”

Dong Jiwoo looked at her like she was out of her mind, but Seoryeong, despite predicting her own collapse, seemed eerily calm.

“As long as the instructors don’t notice. Especially Instructor Lee Wooshin. Don’t look him in the eye. The others are fine, but not him. Definitely not him.”

“Hey...”

The world suddenly went silent, like a fuse had blown. Seoryeong kept mumbling compulsively, her finger digging patterns into the ground.

“I can get up. I will get up...”

“Hey, hey, Han Seoryeong...”

“Don’t let them know... If they find out, I’m dead...”

Dong Jiwoo couldn’t even muster a proper shout. His throat constricted, producing only a wheezing sound.

Looking at her, it was impossible to tell if she was asleep or simply resting. But given how she had just issued such bizarre instructions, it was obvious to Dong Jiwoo that Seoryeong had genuinely passed out.

He quickly composed his expression, pretending to be nonchalant as he idly toyed with the sand. His shoulders were rigid, but after enduring hell week, even having one’s elbows bent backward wouldn’t be surprising.

And that was when he felt it — his throat going dry and his heart racing, pounding violently against his ribcage. Cold sweat dripped down his filthy face.

Instructor Lee Wooshin was striding straight toward them.