Ten years had bled away into the gray concrete.
It did not feel like a decade; it felt as though the subterranean facility had always existed, an absolute reality, while the world above was merely a rumor that happened to other people. Time passed without permission. The children who had once stood trembling under the fixed, unblinking smile of Melon Violet were no longer children. They had grown up in the dim, unvarying light of corridors and training vaults, shaped by a world that never changed regardless of what the sky was doing overhead. Somewhere in that quiet, mechanical repetition, they had ceased to be strangers. They had become a team.
They were in the middle of a routine recreation block when the summons came.
"Melon's office. All of you."
They moved together, a singular entity defined by the rhythm of their boots. Mayex, Boran, Adam, Elara, and Benny filed through the doorway, their eyes instantly fixing on Melon. She sat behind her heavy desk. Beside her stood an old man whose face had been carved by decades of persistent anxiety until the worry had simply become his bone structure.
Melon's gaze swept over the rank.
"Mayex, Elara—you two are lifelong partners. But I see you've collected some extras." Her eyes lingered briefly on each face. "I suppose I can consider you all a team."
"Yeah," Mayex said, his voice level.
"Yes," Boran said.
"Yep!" Adam offered with an easy grin.
"Yes!" Benny added, her posture straight.
A heavy pause stretched through the room.
"…Yes," Elara whispered.
Melon observed them for a moment longer, checking for any fracture in their composure, before shifting her attention to the desk.
"Mayex. You're eighteen now. Which means it's time for your first mission."
The atmosphere in the room tightened. Nothing moved physically, yet the air grew dense, carrying the sudden weight that appears when a theoretical exercise transitions into reality.
Mayex met her gaze, his expression entirely neutral, and said nothing.
"You will protect this man," Melon said, gesturing slightly to the figure at her side. "Be his bodyguard."
The old man offered Mayex a small, exhausted smile that failed to reach his eyes. "I'll be in your care."
Mayex looked from the man back to Melon. "If this is my mission—why did you call everyone?"
Melon's expression remained perfectly smooth, but a cold calculation flickered behind her eyes.
"Because this isn't a solo mission." She leaned back into her chair, her fingers interlocking. "This man owns a large company. Someone is after him—we don't know exactly who or why yet. You alone won't be enough."
Silence settled over the office.
Boran was the first to break it, his voice tight. "If it's this serious—why give it to us? It'll be our first time."
Melon rose from her chair. She walked slowly around the perimeter of the desk, taking her time, her movements fluid and unhurried until she came to a halt directly in front of Boran. She tilted her head up slightly to look at him.
"Because this is how the organisation works~" she said softly. "Nothing here is easy. And this is actually the most suitable first mission I could find for you."
She delivered the statement as though she were handing him a prize.
Suddenly, Adam reached forward and caught her hand. His eyes were wide, entirely clear, and filled with a strange intensity. "Do we get snacks as a reward?!"
Mayex stared. Elara's gaze didn't waver. Boran froze, his jaw tightening. Benny silently covered her face with both hands.
"Adam. Really. That's what you got from all of that."
"We haven't had snacks in YEARS," Adam said, his voice completely serious, devoid of any mockery. "I want a chocolate bar. I want a white one specifically. I have been thinking about it for months."
Melon looked down at her captured hand, then up at Adam's face, then back down to her wrist.
"…Yes," she said, her voice dropping into a slow, dangerous cadence. "There will be snacks. As a reward." She paused, her eyes locking onto his. "Do not hold my hand again. Or I will cut it off with a butter knife. Slowly. So it hurts as much as possible."
Adam released his grip immediately, his smile remaining perfectly intact, completely untroubled by the threat.
Melon straightened her cuff, then gestured toward the door. "Out for a moment," she directed the old man. He nodded once and exited into the hallway without a word.
She pulled out her iPad, the screen casting a pale blue glow over her features. "Before you go—I need to log all of you. Standard procedure."
She looked at each of them in turn, her fingers tapping the glass.
"Mayex. Male. Brown eyes, white skin, brown hair. Eighteen. Adam. Male. Blue eyes, white skin, ginger hair. Seventeen. Elara. Female. Green eyes, mixed skin, brown hair. Nineteen. Boran. Male. Blue eyes, brown skin, brown hair. Eighteen. Benny. Female. Brown eyes, brown skin, brown hair. Fourteen."
She set the device facedown on the desk. "Done~"
Benny raised her hand slightly, her voice small but clear. "How exactly is this going to work? Do we all just… go out and do our thing?"
"The old man has money," Melon replied, her tone dismissive. "He'll provide accommodation. You won't need to worry about that."
"And the city?" Mayex asked. "Where are we actually going?"
"Köln."
She flicked her wrist toward the exit. "Now out."
They found the client waiting in the dim corridor, his tired smile still fixed in place. Nobody spoke as they walked through the secure exits of the facility.
When they emerged into the open air, Boran exhaled, the gray sky reflecting in his eyes. "Let's get going, I suppose."
The old man's vehicle was massive—a heavy, wide-framed jeep with more than enough room for the five of them. He took the wheel, driving in complete silence, while the teenagers sat in the back, their faces pressed near the glass.
Germany.
They had been transported across borders years ago, but they had never actually seen the landscape. The underground possessed no windows; it had no sky. Now, watching the world blur past—the concrete streets, the sharp architecture, the shifting light—the silence inside the vehicle became absolute. It was an overwhelming density of information for minds that had spent ten years inside a tomb.
The safehouse was large, a multi-story residential building tucked away from the main thoroughfares. The old man guided them through the layout briefly, left a collection of provisions on the kitchen table, and immediately retreated into his study. The heavy lock clicked into place behind him.
From the other side of the door, his voice carried through the wood, muffled but violent.
"FUCK!"
A brief silence followed, then the sound of pacing footsteps.
"I cannot BELIEVE this! My life is on the line and that woman sends me TEENAGERS?! Is she INSANE?! I paid a HUGE loan for my safety and she gives me—TEENAGERS!!!"
The tirade cut off abruptly, as if he had suddenly remembered the thickness of the walls.
In the adjacent living room, Adam was already tearing through the wrapper of a chocolate bar.
"…Did he just—" Mayex began.
"Yes," Boran interrupted.
Silence returned to the room.
"Anyway," Adam said, holding up the white chocolate bar with immense gravity, "this is even better than I remembered."
"You're RIGHT," Benny agreed, leaning over the table. "It's so GOOD—"
Boran watched them, his expression hardening. He looked at Mayex, who had already settled onto the sofa, reaching for a package with the unbothered ease of a tourist.
"…We are here to protect someone," Boran said, his voice dropping an octave.
"Yes," Mayex said, his hand already on the plastic wrapping. "And we can also have snacks."
Boran pressed two fingers against his temple, feeling the pulse there. "I'm going to check the neighbourhood."
He stood up, pulled his jacket tight over his shoulders, and walked out the front door before anyone could answer.
Elara watched the door click shut. Then, without a word, she rose from her seat and followed him into the street.
The air outside was crisp, the neighborhood entirely ordinary. It was a quiet Sunday afternoon in a residential sector. Boran walked with a measured, steady pace, his eyes scanning the rooftops and the spacing between the parked cars without making the surveillance obvious. His hands remained deep in his pockets.
*They're eating chocolate inside,* he thought. *First mission. Unbelievable.*
Then a flash of light caught the corner of his vision. A sharp, metallic glint reflected from the entrance of a narrow alleyway further down the block.
He slowed his pace. Looked again.
*That's shiny.*
He altered his direction, moving toward the shadow carefully at first, then accelerating as the reflection remained constant. He reached the mouth of the alley and stepped inside, his boots silent against the pavement.
On the ground, half-buried in the debris, lay a pair of scissors with heavy, golden handles. They were polished, the kind of surface that caught the low sun and threw it back into the dark. He bent down, picked them up, and turned them over in his hand.
Then he saw the blade.
In the mirrored surface of the metal, a distortion appeared—a reflection of the fire escape directly above him. Someone was crouching on the iron grating, looking straight down at his head.
Boran moved.
He lunged backward, driving the scissors upward in a single, instinctive defensive arc.
The figure dropped from the iron platform, descending through the air to land heavily on the asphalt in front of him. The stranger evaded the upward thrust with a casual, practiced fluidness—the specific kind of movement that only comes from years of lethal repetition.
Boran stumbled back a step, his heels catching on the brickwork, his eyes locking onto the threat.
The man was tall, heavily built, and his face was a ruin. The skin looked as though it had melted, deep and uneven burn scars pulling his features away from their natural alignment. He looked like an entity that had survived an event designed to incinerate him.
He looked at Boran with a detached, mild curiosity.
"Well," the man said, his voice remarkably pleasant. "I didn't know they were hiring children for protection work now." He tilted his head slightly, studying Boran's stance. "I forgot to introduce myself. My name is Johan."
Boran's body reached a conclusion before his intellect could process it. Every reaction he had developed over ten years of survival—ten years of learning to read a room, read an opponent, read the exact caliber of danger—converged into a single directive.
*Run.*
It was not a reaction to the scarred face or the physical size of the man. It was the way Johan stood. There was a complete absence of tension in his frame, a total stillness that indicated he did not view Boran as a threat, but rather as a minor inconvenience.
"I think I understand your fear," Johan said, interpreting the boy's rigidity instantly. "The face. It happened when I was young and foolish." A faint ghost of a smile touched his lips. "Now I look like melted ice cream."
Boran's fingers clamped harder around the golden handles of the scissors. "…Are you the one after the old man?"
Johan reached into his coat pocket. The silence that followed lasted exactly long enough to signal a lethal intent. Then, without any dramatic flourish, he pulled out a black handgun and leveled it at Boran's chest. He held it casually, the same way a person points at an object on a shelf.
"Yes," Johan said. "It is me."