Exposure

Some operating tables were empty, while others had people lying on them.

Living people.

They were strapped down, tubes inserted, their eyes half-open, as if heavily sedated with tranquilizers.

Choi Jeong-woong had been in this line of work for years and had seen plenty of dark things.

Corruption, fraud, and shady deals involving power and sex—he'd witnessed them all firsthand.

But compared to what he was seeing now, those things were nothing.

This was an assembly line for harvesting organs from living people.

His hands were shaking, but he forced himself to pull out a pin-hole camera.

Film it. He had to film it.

He recorded the operating tables, the people strapped down, the medical waste piled in the corner, the notebook on the workstation containing matching data—with all sorts of names in it.

At the seventeenth minute, he heard footsteps behind him.

Two people in white lab coats, three thugs in black suits.

The thugs had bulges at their waists—clearly packing heat.

He was caught.

Under normal circumstances, that would have been the end of Choi Jeong-woong.

An intruder who had seen things he shouldn't have—the cleanest way to handle it was to silence him permanently.

But then, after his blood sample was taken, things took a turn.

They discovered that Choi Jeong-woong's organ matching data was a near-perfect match for a waiting transplant client.

Organ transplants aren't just about blood type matching.

HLA typing had to align, immune system compatibility had to be within acceptable limits, and cross-match tests couldn't show a positive reaction.

The odds of a donor meeting all these conditions were extremely low.

Choi Jeong-woong was that rare match.

So he didn't die.

He was locked in a sealed room. People came every day to bring him food, draw his blood, and run various tests.

They were fattening him up like a pig.

Once the client was ready, one of his organs would be taken.

Choi Jeong-woong spent roughly eleven days in that room.

He'd kept count.

There were no windows on the walls, so he tracked time by the number of meals he was given.

On the night of the eleventh day, the door opened.

It wasn't the lab coats or the thugs who opened it.

Choi Jeong-woong still had no idea who that person was.

The person didn't show their face. They just tossed him a backpack containing all his belongings.

His phone, wallet, pin-hole camera, even the memory card.

"Run," the person said, just one word.

Choi Jeong-woong didn't ask questions. He grabbed the backpack and ran.

Every door along the way was open. Not just for him—the people who had been strapped to the operating tables were also untied.

Dozens of people crowded into the elevator.

Ding!

The elevator doors opened.

Two thugs stood outside, guns drawn and aimed at the crowd.

"Ah, shit! Get back in there!" one of them yelled.

A thought flashed through Choi Jeong-woong's mind: fight it out.

Either way, he was dead. If he charged out, there was at least a one-in-ten-thousand chance. He was about to take a step when he caught a flash of two streaks of blood in his peripheral vision.

Two knives flew in from nowhere, silent.

Both thugs' throats split open at the same time. Their guns were still raised as they collapsed to the ground.

Blood splattered onto Choi Jeong-woong's face.

He froze for less than a second, then bolted forward.

The others scattered along with him.

No one screamed. No one looked back.

They all ran for their lives.

Choi Jeong-woong didn't head back to his usual apartment.

He had a safe house.

It was a habit he'd developed in his third year on the job. Besides his regular residence, he'd always rent another place under a different identity.

Inside, he kept spare clothes, cash, a phone, a clean laptop, and enough food for three days.

When you've exposed that many people, you need a fallback plan.

The key was hidden in the crevice above the doorframe.

He opened the door. No lights on.

First, he stood in the dark and listened for two minutes.

No sound of breathing. No noise other than the hum of appliances.

He turned on the light.

A single-bedroom unit, thirty-five square meters—everything just as he had left it.

The cup on the table, the angle of the chair, even the thin layer of flour he'd sprinkled on the floor by the door. No footprints.

No one had been there.

He finally leaned his back against the door, his legs giving way as he slid down to the floor.

After a long while, he realized his hands were still shaking.

First, a shower.

As the hot water streamed over him, Choi Jeong-woong looked down at his body.

His inner arms were covered in needle marks—some had scabbed over, others were still bruised purple.

He stared at the marks for a few seconds, then turned the water temperature to maximum.

It scalded him, making him wince, but at least his life was intact.

Afterward, he boiled a pack of instant noodles.

Korean Shin Ramyun, with two eggs added.

On the first bite, he suddenly felt his eyes sting. Not because of the spice, or for some overly sentimental reason.

He just felt that being able to eat a hot bowl of noodles was something that could make a person want to cry.

He had survived.

Finished eating, he threw the bowl in the sink without washing it.

He sat down at the computer.

Opened the camera and exported the footage.

He checked it frame by frame. The video was a bit shaky, but sharp enough. The operating tables and the names on the matching records were all captured clearly.

He spent an hour and a half organizing all the materials and wrote an article of three thousand words.

No sentimentality, no rhetoric—just factual statements supported by photographic evidence.

That was enough.

After finishing the article, he didn't rush to publish it.

He picked up his phone, scrolled to a contact labeled "Owes Me Three Meals," and dialed.

The phone rang for a long time.

"Choi Jeong-woong, do you have any idea what time it is? It's three-forty in the morning! Three-forty! Are you even human? If you don't have something earth-shattering to tell me, I swear, I'll kill you tomorrow—I'll take prison time, I don't care!"

"Want a promotion?"

The shouting on the other end stopped dead.

"An opportunity—one where you stake everything you have."

There was silence on the line for three seconds, then the rustling sound of someone getting out of bed, turning on a light, pouring water.

"I'm ready. Talk."

The voice was deadly serious.

Choi Jeong-woong took ten minutes to explain everything.

He didn't embellish or leave out any details.

When he finished, the other end went silent again.

After a long pause, the person spoke, his voice completely different from before: "Jeong-woong, this thing... don't put it out there just yet. You know who might be behind this, right..."

Choi Jeong-woong glanced at his computer screen.

The cursor was blinking over the publish button.

"Sorry."

He pressed Enter.

"It's already out. Whatever you do next, it's up to you."

There was about two seconds of silence, followed by a loud "Ssi-bal."

Choi Jeong-woong didn't hear it—he'd already hung up.

He tossed his phone onto the table, leaned back in his chair, and stared at the ceiling.

If the other side didn't act, someone else would. Once something like this saw the light, no one could cover it up. That was the bet he was making.

The post he'd put up received over two hundred bookmarks in three minutes.

The comments section began to flood.

Seven minutes later, the first major blogger reposted it.

Fifteen minutes later, a related hashtag surged to ninth place on the real-time trending list.

Twenty-three minutes later, his blog's backend showed the page views had exceeded one hundred thousand.

There was no way this could be suppressed now.

Choi Jeong-woong turned off the screen and walked to the window.

Outside, the city was ablaze with lights.

How many things hidden in the shadows beneath those lights? He didn't know.

All he knew was that tonight, there was one fewer.