Three alerts indicating cardiac arrest sounded from the machine.

If it were an ordinary patient and an ordinary doctor, the death would have been declared long ago.

However, the one lying on the operating table was one of the thirteen heroes, and the one performing the surgery was a veteran who had brought heroes back from the brink of death numerous times.

The surgery, which lasted well over ten hours, finally ended. A man, covered in blood from head to toe, emerged from the operating room with an exhausted face.

Sunjin, who had been waiting outside, calmly asked.

“Did he survive?”

Her tone was so composed that it was hard to believe this was a moment where the life of her closest friend hung in the balance. However, the doctor was well aware of the anxiety that lay within her words.

The man, who was the fifth hero and the personal doctor for all the heroes at the Center, nodded his head with a slow sigh.

“In all my years, I never thought I’d see the day where I’d have to piece together human bones like a jigsaw puzzle… If it weren’t for Team Leader Seo, there really would have been no hope.”

He had been shot and then hit by a speeding subway train.

If it were an ordinary person, instant death would have been certain. Even with a superhuman body, the situation would have been the same.

The one who saved Seungjoo, who had lost consciousness amidst that chaos, was none other than Heewon, who had recently returned to field work.

“You’ve done well. It hasn’t been long since you recovered yourself.”

The middle-aged doctor spoke while gazing at Heewon, who was standing a little distance from Sunjin.

Sunjin, while relieved that her friend had survived, unconsciously turned her head slightly to gauge the team leader’s reaction.

Heewon, without any change in expression, was in the middle of reporting something to Jihwan, the Center’s director, using the heroes’ communication device.

Eventually, after finishing his report, he approached the two and spoke.

“When K regains consciousness, you’ll need to keep him from leaving the ward until his recovery period is over. With his personality, he’ll ignore his condition and insist on returning to the field, causing a big fuss.”

Until now, no matter how urgent the situation, Heewon had always maintained a leisurely attitude with a cheeky smile.

Seeing his changed demeanor, the doctor simply nodded his head without further comment.

“Understood.”

“L. You head straight to Paju. A shopping mall building collapsed there, so move out immediately.”

“…Alright.”

Sunjin readily agreed to follow Heewon’s orders.

She was worried about her badly injured friend, but the outside was still in chaos.

With terror attacks happening every other day, she couldn’t just sit by the ward.

“J, where are you going?”

“I’ve been told that the armed individuals from Paju are heading to Incheon. I plan to lie in wait there and handle the situation.”

His tone, devoid of any playfulness, was almost machine-like.

As if even this conversation was a waste of time, Heewon bid farewell to the doctor with a small nod and turned his back.

Sunjin anxiously surveyed Heewon’s retreating figure.

Ever since he miraculously woke up and realized that Naeun had gone missing, the team leader had been in this state.

It would have been more understandable if he showed emotions like anger or anxiety, but he did no such thing.

Upon regaining consciousness, Heewon quickly assessed the current situation and began moving with the efficiency of a machine to achieve maximum results.

Heewon did not rush out of the hospital room before his recovery was complete.

He took sufficient rest as advised by the doctor and received all necessary treatments.

He didn’t argue when told he needed to rest, and he diligently ate all the meals provided to him in the right quantities.

Someone might say this is much better than neglecting his health and wasting away due to mental pressure.

However, anyone who saw Heewon expressionlessly eating his meals and taking his medication even once would never be able to say such a thing.

‘…Bro, if you don’t have an appetite, you don’t have to force yourself to eat so much.’

The fact that even Jaewon said this to his patient brother spoke volumes.

Watching Heewon continue his meal with an icy face was so unsettling that it made those around him shudder.

That’s not eating, it’s refueling. It’s no different from supplying fuel to operate a machine.

Seeing Heewon like this, Sunjin thought it would be less frightening if he got angry instead.

In the end, by strictly following the doctor’s orders and focusing on recovery, Heewon was able to return to the field in just a few days, and from that day on, he was a working machine.

While rushing to accident sites across the country every day to rescue civilians from terrorist attacks, Heewon simultaneously began searching for Naeun’s whereabouts.

During the day, he saved civilians from shootouts. At night, he scoured information from all ports and airports to discover that there was no record of Naeun leaving the country.

‘There’s no trace of her departure records being manipulated. If she’s still in the country, she’s at least in the capital region. She’d be with Han Jaekyung, after all.’

Sunjin found Heewon both reassuring and a bit chilling as he narrowed down Naeun’s possible location and began his search with the utmost efficiency.

Watching firsthand the level of efficiency a capable person could reach by suppressing their emotions and focusing on the task at hand felt strange.

Of course, she was just as anxious and uneasy about her missing friend, but with someone in an almost crazed state right next to her, her reason naturally returned.

That’s right. Seo Heewon, at the moment, seemed a bit insane.

What a bother.

“Save us, please!”

With a loud explosion, the outer wall of the shopping building collapsed. As Heewon rushed towards the people crying out for help from underneath, he thought.

…What a waste of time.

Contrary to his thoughts, his body moved swiftly.

In an instant, Heewon ran over and rescued two civilians who were about to be buried under the collapsing building debris.

He then coolly stared at the armed group, who were holding about six citizens at gunpoint in a hostage situation near the entrance of a vacant lot.

“Take one more step and these things will get holes in their heads, got it?”

One of the masked organization members threateningly warned Heewon. In response, Heewon tilted his head askew.

He rolled his eyes, scanning the pale, terrified hostages.

They were trembling in fear of imminent death, pleading to him in thin voices to save them.

Heewon gazed at those pitiful people and thought again.

So annoying.

“Y-you crazy bastard!”

One of the bloodied enemies shouted at Heewon, looking at him like a monster.

Heewon looked down at his opponent with emotionless eyes.

It took less than ten minutes to rescue all the hostages and incapacitate over a dozen armed enemies.

He said nothing to those thanking him for saving their lives.

From the start, he only felt that the time wasted on saving them was regrettable.

Despite having fought with all his might to save lives, Heewon paid no heed to that fact.

His sole focus at present was finding the whereabouts of the abducted Yoon Naeun.

He wished he could ignore the terrorist suppression and everything else to just search for Naeun, but the situation did not cooperate.

With accidents occurring daily, he had to spend half the day just cleaning them up.

As a result, Heewon drastically reduced his sleep and, in the process of suppressing terrorism, captured organization members one by one to interrogate and gather necessary information.

The reason Heewon did not go insane upon first regaining consciousness and learning of Naeun’s abduction was his conviction that she would be alive.

Han Jaekyung, at the very least, would not have been able to kill Yoon Naeun.

Instead of agonizing in hell over worries that she may have died, Heewon decided to focus all his reason on finding the whereabouts of the living Naeun.

In that process, hostage situations like today’s occurred frequently.

In fact, to save time, Heewon knew it would be most efficient to ignore the lives of the civilian hostages like before.

In the past, he certainly would have done so.

However, Heewon had rescued every single civilian caught up in the terrorist attacks without fail in all the missions he had undertaken.

It was certainly not due to a sudden sense of justice or self-sacrifice.

“G-go, quickly.”

He muttered indifferently to the young boy who was too frightened to even run away, collapsed amidst the corpses of the enemies.

At the same time, an enemy who had fallen at Heewon’s feet, gnashing his teeth, picked up a nearby gun. Heewon, without changing his expression, crushed the enemy’s wrist under his foot.

Aaargh! A terrible scream echoed all around, and Heewon narrowed his brows as if it was noisy.

Only the civilian who had been sitting a short distance away turned deathly pale.

The other hostages had all fled, but seeing someone still paralyzed with fear and unable to escape, Heewon looked at them with disdain.

It was annoying and bothersome. The thought of having wasted time to save someone like this irritated him.

Nevertheless, he did not remove his foot that was crushing the enemy’s wrist and spoke to the civilian once more.

“I said go. To safety.”

Someone must be worried about you too.

He did not add the words in his mind, and soon the child managed to get to his feet and began running away.

After sending off the last remaining hostage from the scene, an enemy sprawled on the ground spoke to Heewon with a resentful expression, his mouth covered in blood.

“The rumors about you were wrong.”

At the enemy’s sudden remark, Heewon lowered his head to look at him.

The man, his face now exposed with his mask removed, glared at Heewon like he was a monster and spoke.

“I heard you didn’t care about the lives of hostages…”

“…I didn’t.”

Heewon readily admitted to the enemy who seemed to know his information to some degree.

“So now you’ve decided to really play the hero?”

The man being trampled by Heewon gritted his teeth and sneered. Even at this provocation, Heewon shrugged with a smirk.

Within the Center, Heewon, who was nicknamed ‘psychopath,’ was a man who lived up to that name by being very insensitive to the pain of others.

‘Imagine those people who almost died are your family. Could you still act like that?’

Even when his former senior angrily said this to Heewon, who had thrown a civilian hostage off a cliff, he only responded with a bored yawn, showing no empathy.

Astonished by his inability to relate, the senior dubbed Heewon a psychopath that very day.

However, that did not mean Heewon did not love his family.

He cared for his family consisting of his parents and younger sibling in his own way and would risk his life to save them if they were in danger.

But Heewon’s family was in an environment where they were unlikely to find themselves in the victim’s position, and his father, the head of the household, was powerful enough to protect his mother and sibling, including Heewon.

Furthermore, considering his uncle Jihwan, it was natural that the senior’s advice did not resonate with Heewon.

If the family was in such danger?

There’s no way. Not with Father and Uncle around.

Thus, Heewon could not properly empathize with others about the feelings of having a loved one in peril.

Loving someone outside of blood relations was nearly impossible for him, and even more so as his relationships with women never went beyond playmates.

For the first time, he had someone precious to him who was not related by blood.

He clearly remembered treating Naeun’s life like a pawn on a chessboard when he first met her.

And when that once insignificant stranger became more precious to him than his own life, Heewon’s world turned upside down.

Not family.

Not someone originally within his circle.

Just an unrelated stranger.

…Yet they could become more precious than life itself.

Having never loved another in such a way, the moment Heewon realized it was possible, he couldn’t help but superimpose Naeun onto every civilian involved in incidents.

It happened automatically even if they had nothing in common with her. Then he had no choice but to save them.

Because imagining the despair he would feel the moment Yoon Naeun died drove him mad, and it was terrifying to think that agony could be real for someone else.

“…Right now, I have a kid more precious to me than myself.”

At Heewon’s sudden words, the man furrowed his brow. What nonsensical bullshit was this?

“At some point, I started seeing her face overlapping with other people’s… It made me want to save them.”

“What is this lunatic saying?”

In a way, it was quite a romantic thing to say, but saying it right after crushing someone’s hand bones really made him seem insane.

As the man grimaced, his face covered in blood, Heewon squatted right in front of him and spoke.

“I’m surprised too. I didn’t know I was capable of sympathy.”

“…So, you’re saying you pity me too and will let me live? Something like that?”

When the man asked, Heewon chuckled.

“You’re a villain.”

“…”

“She’s a kid who wouldn’t become a villain even if beaten to death.”

So while he may pity all civilians in the world, Heewon did not superimpose Yoon Naeun onto the villain lying before him.

And that was also this villain’s greatest misfortune.

“Do you guys also receive torture training or something?”

At Heewon’s question, the bloodied man’s complexion turned pale.

At the same time, Heewon grabbed the fallen man’s short hair.

The man now realized why Heewon had killed all the other comrades but left him alive.

He was the leader who communicated directly with the higher-ups, which meant he was the only one here who knew the location of the executives’ hideout.

“From now on, I’m going to ask you a few things, so if you can’t take it, let me know.”

Heewon smiled as he roughly stuffed a piece of cloth torn from another corpse into the man’s mouth.

“Don’t bite your tongue.”