EXT. WEAPONS FACTORY GATE - DAY

A chain-link gate on the edge of Seoul. Guards with rifles slung. Beyond them, long assembly halls breathe out the smell of machine oil.

A firing lane is chalked into the gravel. At its end, a steel plate on a frame.

Five DEFENSE BUYERS in windbreakers stand behind a rope. One films on his phone.

JIN-SU (30s), lean, tired watchful eyes, a worn suit pressed to a knife edge, checks a rifle's chamber. He does not look at the buyers.

Beside him, DO HAEMIN (30s), sharp haircut, all smile, winds an expensive watch with two fingers.

The buyers fumble with earmuffs. Jin-su shoulders the rifle.

A beat. Wind moves the rope.

He fires. Six rounds, evenly spaced. The steel plate rings, rings, rings.

Silence. A guard walks the plate back. Six holes, a fist-wide group.

The lead BUYER, heavyset, lowers his phone.

Haemin laughs, warm, and steps between them.

The buyers chuckle. Jin-su ejects the magazine. A spent brass casing rolls off the gravel and stops against his shoe.

He picks it up. Turns it once. Pockets it.

EXT. FACTORY GATE - MOMENTS LATER

Handshakes. Haemin works the line like a host at a wedding.

The lead buyer reaches for Jin-su's hand. Jin-su gives it, short.

He lets go first. Haemin glances at his watch, then at Jin-su.

Jin-su is already through the side gate.

EXT. BACK ALLEY - SEOUL BUSINESS DISTRICT - DAY

Glass towers overhead, a strip of sky between them. Down here: gas meters, stacked crates, a cat on a scooter seat.

Jin-su walks fast. His phone buzzes. HAEMIN on the screen. He silences it.

He touches his inside jacket pocket. A folded paper, soft at the creases. He doesn't take it out.

Somewhere ahead, a ladle knocks against a pot rim. Three knocks. A rhythm.

He slows.

Steam drifts across the alley, white against the towers.

EXT. GAEUN'S NOODLE STAND - CONTINUOUS

Four stools under a blue tarp, the tarp sun-bleached at the folds. A pot the size of a drum.

Behind it, BAEK GAEUN (early 30s), short-cropped hair, green apron, a burn mark across her left thumb, ladles broth into a bowl for a DELIVERY KID.

The kid laughs, eats standing.

On a low crate behind the stand, an OLD WOMAN, gray hair, weathered hands, a faded cardigan, peels scallions into a basin. She hums something old, half a tune, no words.

Jin-su stands at the edge of the steam. Doesn't step under the tarp.

On the battered cash register: a strip of paper, yellowed, its tape gone brown. Handwriting in black marker.

JIN-SU, ONE BOWL, OWED.

He looks at it a long time.

His hand goes to the jacket pocket again. Stays there.

The old woman stops humming. She has seen him. She sets a scallion down.

Gaeun turns, ladle raised, mid-laugh.

She sees him.

The ladle stays in the air. Broth drips from it, one drop, two, onto the burner. It hisses.

Nobody speaks. The delivery kid looks from one to the other, chopsticks stopped.

Jin-su's phone buzzes in his hand. HAEMIN.

Gaeun lowers the ladle into the pot. Slowly. Her eyes go to the tab on the register, then back to him.

The steam rises between them.

Gaeun blinks.

He tips his chin at the register, at the yellowed strip, the way a man reads a menu board in a city he's passing through.

The delivery kid's chopsticks start moving again, very slowly.

Gaeun wipes the ladle on a towel. Takes her time. Folds the towel in half, then in half again.

She sets the towel down.

The old woman snaps a scallion in two. The sound is loud.

Jin-su looks at the four stools. Red plastic, one cracked and wrapped in packing tape.

He doesn't sit.

His phone buzzes again. He doesn't look at it this time. He looks at her left hand on the counter, the burn across the thumb.

She sees him looking. She puts the hand in her apron pocket.

The kid tips the bowl back, drinks, wipes his mouth, slides off the stool. He squeezes past Jin-su, glancing up at him, then gone on his scooter.

Now it's the three of them and the pot.

Jin-su reaches into his jacket. Not the inside pocket. The outer one. Wallet.

Gaeun goes completely still. She says nothing. She doesn't move. The burner ticks.

He holds the wallet. Doesn't open it.

Puts it back.

He turns and walks out of the steam.

Gaeun watches his back until the alley bends. Then she picks up the ladle and stirs the pot that doesn't need stirring.

Gaeun stops stirring. Her finger finds the corner of the tab where the tape has lifted. She presses it flat. Presses it again.

INT. HOTEL RESTAURANT - DAY

White tablecloths. The five buyers mid-laugh. An empty chair beside Do Haemin, a folded napkin on its plate.

Haemin raises a glass.

Laughter. He drinks. Under the table his phone lights: SEOYEON HOSPITAL - BILLING. He turns it face down.

He winds his watch. Two fingers. Then he looks at the empty chair a little too long.

EXT. BACK ALLEY - CONTINUOUS

Jin-su walks fast, the way he came. At the corner he stops by the gas meters.

He pulls out the spent brass casing. Holds it. Then the folded paper from the inside pocket, soft at the creases.

He holds both, one in each hand. The casing knocks once against his ring finger.

He doesn't unfold the paper. He slides both back into the same pocket.

They click together inside the cloth.

INT. JIN-SU'S OFFICE - FACTORY - LATE AFTERNOON

A narrow office above the assembly hall. Machines hum through the floor. Spec sheets pinned in rows. A cot folded in the corner.

Jin-su stands at the window with his jacket off.

The door opens. Haemin leans in, tie loose, smiling.

Jin-su says nothing. Haemin's smile stays exactly where it is. He taps the doorframe twice and goes.

Jin-su turns back to the window.

Beyond the fence, past the rooftops, past the first row of glass towers, a strip of alley. In it, very small, a square of sun-bleached blue.

A thread of steam rises from it.

On the windowsill, a coffee mug, a pair of binoculars, and a ring of dust where the mug has stood in the same spot for a very long time.

He watches the steam until it stops.