Chapter Text
The wipers thrash against the windshield like they're fighting for their lives, shrieking with every pass. Jihoon winces. He remembers how Jaehyuk hates that noise. The kind that makes your molars itch.
Hunched over his laptop, Jihoon squints into the artificial sun glaring from the screen - brightness cranked to max, retinas sizzling. It's not ideal. It's also the only way to see anything through this storm-fed gloom. He slaps the side of the laptop with practiced aggression - not out of frustration, of course, but to check if it’s still bolted to the mount. Totally procedural. Definitely not because the machine has been testing his patience since Daemaji.
Then he snatches the radio and leans forward, pupils catching radar reflections.
“Hook echo’s wrapping,” he blurts, and even he hears the nervous hitch. Hopefully, the others are too busy being flung around in their own trucks to notice. “Velocity couplet just tightened. Rotation’s 1.2 miles out and closing, fast.”
The truck bucks again, like an angry mule. Kiin’s tablet nearly yeets itself out the window. He clamps it to his chest, leans over Jihoon, and shouts into the radio, “Pressure’s tanking! Down three millibars in the last minute - ”
“That’s a stovepipe in the making,” Jaehyuk says, calm as a monk, but Jihoon hears the crackle of excitement under the velvety tone of their team leader. “Drone goes airborne now or we lose visual. Boo, you’re up?”
A clatter of latches, the thunk of hard cases hitting metal. Then comes Geonbu’s voice - sharp, booming, unmistakably Geonbu - like someone cranked his volume setting and broke the knob. It startles poor Minkyu up front. “I need a clean launch window. You’re in the driver’s seat, rookie - what’s ahead?”
Minkyu looks like a deer that owes the headlights money. One hand strangles the steering wheel white, the other stabs at the GPS. “Your window is a gravel road in one mile, hyung. After that? Open field and… uh, mostly power line hell.”
Jihoon sucks air through his teeth and eyes the beast of a cloud ahead. “Gravel’s fine,” he mutters. “Wait too long, the meso occludes, and we lose our inflow notch shot.”
A hiss of static answers before Geonbu’s voice cuts back in, somewhere off-mic. “Battery’s full. Telemetry link’s clean. I’ll keep alt under four hundred feet so the FAA doesn’t eat us alive.”
“Jihoon-ah,” Jaehyuk interrupts, voice sharp enough to slice open a radar screen. “Check wind shear at fifty meters. Last read showed forty knots inbound…”
“Drone can take it,” Geonbu fires back, flat as asphalt. “Scratch that. I can take it. Just gotta hold yaw and pray to Newton.” Then, a beat - before he twists the knife. “Question is, Jaehyukie… can you keep your rig from fishtailing?”
Silence. Immediate and total. Jaehyuk doesn’t answer. Kiin lifts an eyebrow at Jihoon without looking up from his tablet. Jihoon shrugs, deadpan. “Boo’s cranky ‘cause we didn’t stop for tacos.”
Minkyu makes a confused noise halfway between a wheeze and a squeak. “That’s him being cranky?”
Jihoon pats his shoulder solemnly. “You’d be surprised.”
“Debris sig just popped on dual-pol!” Kiin barks. “Confirmed tornado! I repeat, confirmed tornado!”
Minkyu’s reflection warps across the windshield, caught somewhere between sheer terror and kid-on-Christmas glee. Jihoon watches the transformation with a grin tugging at his lips. “Congrats, rookie,” he says dryly. “We’re popping your tornado cherry.”
“My first tornado and I’m driving!” Minkyu yelps. “I’m not freaking out!”
“Ninety seconds to launch-zone,” Jaehyuk calls.
“Copy that.” Minkyu squares his jaw like a man going to war. “Strap in, hyungs!”
Warning delivered, Minkyu jerks the wheel into a U-turn so violent it flings Kiin sideways - straight into Jihoon’s ribs. The tablet takes flight, bounces off the window with a solid thunk , and disappears into the footwell like a comet on its last legs. Gravel shrieks under the tires, the truck skids to a muddy stop in a clearing that looks barely legal to park in. Rain slices sideways across the windshield as wind hammers the doors.
Jihoon tosses Kiin his tablet without ceremony and grabs his own gear. “Thirty seconds!” he barks, already popping the latch. “Make ‘em holy.”
Outside, Geonbu erupts from the other truck like a man shot from a cannon, boots slapping into ankle-deep muck, drone case in tow. He moves like this is choreography - every stride practiced, every pivot clean - even as the wind tries to throw him into Jaehyuk’s bumper. The launcher slams open, fingers blur, rotors snap into place like clockwork.
“Props armed. GPS lock green,” his voice crackles through the speaker, calm, steady, all business. Jihoon watches him mouth the words through the rain like some kind of wind-beaten oracle. “Feed me telemetry.”
Kiin juggles three tablets like Cirque du Samsung. “Telemetry live. Wind shear’s worse - gusts peaking at fifty-five - ”
Geonbu doesn’t flinch. Just nods, eyes narrowed, rain dripping off his hood.
“Shear this, then.”
The launch command slams home with a satisfying click. Jihoon’s laptop flares to life with new telemetry window, fresh feed, almost distracting him from the real event outside - Geonbu, posture perfect, Olympic-level form, hurling the drone into the sky like a sacrificial offering. Jihoon’s seen wedding doves tossed into the sky - white, trembling, symbolic fluff for peace and love or whatever Hallmark said that week. This looks nothing like that.
Kiin vaults into the front seat, ramming his tablet into Minkyu’s now-free hands. He yanks open the glove box, digs like a raccoon, and comes up with binoculars, which he immediately slaps over his glasses. “Can’t see shit,” he mutters, cranking the window down. Rain slaps in and wind howls with a grudge, but Kiin doesn’t flinch. He shimmies halfway out the truck, all elbows and grace - and Jihoon notices, belatedly, that Kiin’s waist is distressingly nimble.
“Holy crap,” Minkyu blurts. “Kiin-hyung, you're so small.”
Jihoon shoots him a wide-eyed do not say that out loud, but Kiin either doesn’t hear or chooses peace today. He leans farther out, binoculars locked on the drone, now a speck dancing between gusts like it belongs there.
“Minkyu, keep talking!” Kiin barks again. Minkyu flinches, then scrambles over the tablet like a man defusing a bomb. “What’s our uplink?”
Wind roars through the cracked window now, steamrolling every other sound but the high, metallic whine of rotors fighting for their life. The drone’s lights flicker in the murk, pale and frantic, like a dying star spinning through the soup of rain.
For two perfect seconds, the shot is pure cinema. Majestic, violent, unreal. Then static tears across the screen like claws, and the moment shatters.
“Signal collapse!” Minkyu yells.
“Crosswind spiked - RFD gust front!” Jaehyuk’s voice hammers in from the speaker. “It’s getting eaten alive!”
On-screen, the horizon tilts, then spins like a drunk ballerina. Jihoon grips his laptop so hard his knuckles bleach. The drone corkscrews - one rotor sheared clean, by something mean and fast. A blur of gray, a hiss of static, and then - black.
A heavy thud slams through the speaker: Jaehyuk, presumably punching his steering wheel. “Goddammit!”
Jihoon’s ears ring. He tears his eyes back to the radar. Onscreen, a debris ball unfurls, sick and slow, like a venomous flower blooming right on cue.
“Confirmed touchdown,” Jihoon whispers, to no one in particular. “And no eyes on it.”
Silence drops inside the cab like a curtain. No one moves. Even the storm feels like it’s holding its breath. For a heartbeat, the storm’s roar feels distant.
Then -
Suddenly, headlights rip through the gloom behind them, carving white scars into the rain. Jihoon whirls, squinting past the glare.
A matte-black SUV slides into the clearing. Its roof bristles with lidar domes and retractable radar fins, an armored drone cradle humming like a vault door. The sight should thrill Jihoon, and it does - but the rush in his chest drops like a stone into his gut.
Lee Sanghyeok.
As if summoned by the thought, the SUV doors open. A man steps out, hood down, rain slicking his hair into ink-dark strands that cling to his forehead. His glasses fog instantly, but nothing hides that excruciatingly calm face - the kind that never blinks, never flinches. His eyes sweep the sky like he’s reading a map only he can see.
Jihoon watches, mute, as the man kneels, pressing a palm to the muddy ground. He tilts his head up, reading the storm’s bones. Then his lips part, voice low but slicing through wind.
“Inflow angle’s locked… Forward flank choking east. Occlusion in ninety.”
Jihoon’s throat tightens like someone cinched a noose. That man licks his lips, slow and deliberate. “She’s hungry.”
A truck door suddenly slams open. Jaehyuk leaps out, boots crunching gravel, wind snapping his coat as he barrels towards the SUV. “Lee Sanghyeok!”
The name cuts through the chaos like lightning. Sanghyeok lifts his gaze, and Jihoon swears the air pressure changes. “Park Jaehyuk.” Their handshake crackles with something heavier than static - too tense, too sharp, something unsaid lodged between their grips. “Anyone hurt?”
“No injuries,” Jaehyuk replies, jaws tight. “Just a wrecked UAV and a dent in Boo’s ego.”
Sanghyeok barely blinks, unreadable, until the SUV erupts in a commotion. “Winds gusting seventy, hyung!” a voice calls. Seconds later, the source rounds the vehicle, hauling a drone case roughly the size of a small cow. The man’s short, fast, eyes blazing with excitement, and grinning like the storm just asked him to prom. Jihoon hears the voice before he sees the face - and recognition hits him like a socket wrench to the skull.
“Thought you’d want Launch Protocol Alpha, so I took the liberty - oh, Jaehyuk-hyung!” Minseok beams, already unpacking hardware like a magician mid-trick. “It really is you! I thought I heard your voice.”
Jaehyuk gives a half-hearted salute, somewhere between greeting and surrender. “Minseokie. Jihoon’s in the truck if you want to say hi.”
Jihoon does not want to say hi. Jihoon wants to crawl into Kiin’s lap, glue himself there, and play dead until the storm is over. So he does the next best thing: faceplants behind Kiin’s thighs.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Kiin hisses as Jihoon buries himself like a shame-driven ostrich.
Minkyu cranes his neck, eyes wide as the SUV crew unfolds a beast of a UAV that looks like it belongs in a sci-fi arms race. “I have no idea what’s happening. Who are these guys?”
“Oh, they’re SKT,” Kiin supplies, somehow with exactly zero venom in his voice. If Jihoon had tried to say that name out loud, he’d have choked on bile. “Sky Kinetics Taskforce. Another chaser team. Like us.”
Minkyu whips a thumb toward the UAV harshly. “You call that something like us?” His voice cracks. “Look at that thing, hyung. Folding arm carbon fiber. Dual-band comms. Redundancy stacked on redundancy.” Minkyu flails dramatically, nearly decapitating Kiin. “We have Boo-hyung and a dream!”
“And Geonbu is working his ass off, you ungrateful punk, so I better not hear you say - ”
“Hyuuung! That’s not what I meant!”
Their bickering fades into a blur. Jihoon just stares at the UAV like it kicked his puppy. Rain drums the roof like angry fingertips, but all he hears is that machine’s sleek hum. Sleek carbon fiber. Joints that fold like origami. Water beads and slides off like the thing is allergic to effort - hell, maybe it is. Twin cameras flash under lightning, little high-tech jewels that probably cost more than his entire sensor mast, laptop included. AI stabilization - of course. No fighting the wind for them. That thing can think for itself.
This isn’t luck. This is money. Cold, ruthless funding. The kind of edge that makes or breaks a chaser crew. The brick wall every storm nerd eventually faceplants into. Jihoon’s pretty sure Lee Sanghyeok never even saw that wall.
Not with his name. Not with that reputation.
“Minseokie.” The voice slices through Jihoon’s downward spiral like a scalpel. Jihoon’s gaze drifts left to see Sanghyeok still standing there, rain plastering his hair to his skull, lenses blurred white with droplets. Calm, serene, maddeningly so. “Switch to Beta. Tell Jjunnie to adjust her for shear - she’ll buck hard after the gust front clears. And throttle east on the first lull...”
The words wash over Jihoon like static. Not because he doesn’t understand them, but exactly because he does. That level of control. That instinctive calibration. A full flight profile, adjusted for turbulence and angle drift, built on the fly and spoken like scripture. From kneeling in mud for ten seconds? From just looking up?
Jihoon could drown in radar loops for hours. Swim through cross-sections, stare at velocity tilts until his eyes blur - and still surface with something worse than that.
A man in an SKT jacket, someone Jihoon doesn’t recognize, strides up to Sanghyeok and fits an earpiece with the precision of a jeweler setting a diamond. The guy steps back, admiring his work perched neatly on Sanghyeok’s ear, before ghosting away, smoothly shoulder-tapping Minseok on the way like this is some kind of storm-chaser tango. Jihoon clocks the whole thing, chews on it for half a second, then forces himself to look away. Because right now, Sanghyeok looks like a general, and generals don’t glance at the mud they’re winning in.
“Calling in, Minhyung-ah,” Sanghyeok says, voice like a needle through cloth. “Launch in three.”
Jihoon’s chest tightens instantly, like someone just cinched a length of barbed wire around his ribs and pulled.
“Climb hard at forty-five. Pitch east seven degrees. Lock at three-forty feet.” Lightning rips across the sky and for a second it frames him like a painting: rain-slick jawline, glasses fogged at the edges, lips curling in something not quite a smile. “Adjust yaw by ten when the RFD kicks.”
“Whoa,” Minkyu breathes, nose smashed against the window.
The SKT drone hums awake with a surgeon’s precision - sleek, unhurried, terrifyingly sure. It doesn’t fight the wind. It seduces it, coaxes it, flirts with it, climbing into the gale like a predator slipping through black water. A laptop materializes in Sanghyeok’s hands like sleight of hand, delivered by the guy built like a loading dock.
Jihoon’s stomach twists.
And then, before thought can intervene, he’s moving - snapping the truck door open, boots hitting the mud with a slap.
“Jihoon, what - ” Kiin’s voice cuts off, shredded by the storm as Jihoon steps into hell.
Mud spatters his cargo pants as he stumbles back, head tipped skyward, eyes locked on the drone slicing its way into the gale, clawing into chaos like it was built to love it. Jihoon’s soaked in seconds, hair glued to his forehead, breath hitching at the sheer audacity of that machine. He wants to hate it. Wants to hate him. But all he feels is awe, slick and sharp in his gut.
“Dude. Watch the laptops.”
The shove jars him, two huge palms slamming his back. Jihoon jerks forward and spins, face-to-chest with a gorgeous wall of muscle. The man looming over him is a dashing Adonis, built like a doorframe and just as quiet, which somehow makes him scarier.
“I was just - ” Jihoon starts, but the words curdle in his throat.
“Hyeonjun-ah,” another voice cuts in, soft but undeniable. “Enough.”
That voice again, smooth as smoke, soft in a way that shouldn’t be possible coming from the same mouth that just issued sky-level commands like gospel. Jihoon freezes as Sanghyeok steps into view, leaning past the barricade of Hyeonjun’s frame. Rain beads on his lashes like diamonds, drips off his jaw like gravity’s a suggestion. His glasses are fogged, but his eyes - God, his eyes cut through fog, distance, everything.
“Jeong Jihoon.” He says it slow, like tasting the name. Like he’s trying it on for size, rolling the syllables over his tongue just to see how they land. “It’s a pleasure to finally meet you.”
Jihoon feels the storm tilt.
The storm is gone - swallowed back into the endless sprawl of Mireung Basin, a flat kingdom of cornfields and ghost stories. At a lonely truck stop humming under sickly fluorescent lights, the Storm Kinetic Taskforce’s convoy crouches like jungle cats, black SUVs gleaming wet under buzzing lamps.
Inside one rig, a workstation glows like a miniature control tower. Screens loop tornado footage so crisp it could pass for an IMAX teaser, minus the orchestral swell. Side monitors pulse with raw data: wind profiles, lidar curves, pressure graphs twitching like polygraphs. All of it reflects in the lenses of Sanghyeok’s glasses as he leans back in his seat, calm as an apex predator digesting a kill.
“Frame twenty-three.” His voice slices through the low drone of electronics. “Pause.”
Minseok taps. The video freezes on a shot so vicious it looks staged: a tornado’s skeletal column caught mid-twist under a lightning fork.
“Mark inflow vectors. Pull thermal signatures for cross-section analysis.”
Minhyung’s fingers fly across his tablet. Neon lines bloom on the screen, tracing the hollow core in alien geometry. “Still can’t believe Beta protocol held in that shear.” He smirks, shark-bright. “AI barely twitched.”
“It twitched.” Sanghyeok doesn’t look away. “Twelve percent yaw drift at peak inflow.”
On the back bench, someone tries to disappear into his hoodie like it’s a witness protection program. Hair still damp, fingers white-knuckling a tablet, eyes darting like a deer in calculus class. The technobabble has been coming for three hours straight - entering one ear, sprinting through an empty corridor, and skydiving out the other. Nothing sticks.
“Does the SRH plot still hold over 300 past the gust front, Hyeonjun?” Minseok fires the question like a bullet.
The tablet wobbles from Hyunjoon’s fingers. “S-sorry, what?”
“Oh, that was for me,” says the other Hyeonjun - the Hyeonjun, the one who radiates confidence like a searchlight on a stormy night. He grins, easy and blinding. “Don’t sweat it.”
Sanghyeok blinks, just once. But in that blink, something shifts - the sharpness in his gaze softens, amusement flickering through like a hidden flame. “This Hyeonjun-Hyunjoon same name thing has got to stop.” he murmurs, lips twitching
“Sorry,” Hyunjoon whispers again, cheeks pink.
A loud slap cracks through the cabin. Hyeonjun, still grinning, claps Hyunjoon on the back like they’ve been war buddies for years. “Hey, none of this is on you. I told everyone to just call me Jjunnie already, save the poor guy a breakdown.” He turns completely toward Hyunjoon, grin fading into something gentler, voice dropping just enough to mean it. “Seriously. It’s okay to be overwhelmed. Everyone starts there. You’re sharp. You’ll catch up fast. That’s what counts.”
“Whoa there, tiger.” Minhyung wings a snack wrapper at Hyeonjun’s head. “Stop flirting with the intern in front of Sanghyeok-hyung.”
“I’m being nice to the guy who didn’t puke when the RFD hit,” Hyeonjun fires back, eyebrow arched. “That’s more than I can say for some people.”
“That was one time,” Minseok groans, dragging a hand down his face.
Hyunjoon chuckles weakly, still red, and risks a glance at the screens - AI telemetry scrolling like alien scripture, drone footage frozen on a storm’s skeleton. His throat works around something sharp. “Uh…” He clears it. “You guys need anything from the store?” He sets his tablet down, voice small but trying. “Before I implode?”
“Two energy drinks.”
“Beef jerky. The spicy ones by the cashier.”
“Water for me, with whipped cream.”
Hyunjoon stares at Sanghyeok for a second, trying to figure out if he's joking. He's not. “Um, okay. Anything else?”
“Just get something for yourself too,” Hyeonjun says, voice all warmth and easy kindness. “You’ve been running on adrenaline since noon.”
Hyunjoon blinks at him, a little stunned by the kindness, and manages a quick nod. He doesn’t notice the synchronized eye roll Minhyung and Minseok exchange behind him - perfectly timed, perfectly exasperated - as if watching a golden retriever fall for the same trick again.
Then he hops down from the van, the door clicking shut behind him, and disappears into the glow of the gas station lights.
Minkyu pouts at his reflection in the cracked gas station mirror, glaring at the breakout blooming on his cheeks like it personally betrayed him.
“Is storm-acne a thing?” he mutters, scratching along his jaw where the bumps flare in angry Morse code.
He digs into his travel pouch and flips over the moisturizer tube, squinting at the ingredients. Glycerin. Mineral oil. In this humidity trap, he’s basically marinating himself in his own regret. He shoves the tube back into his bag like it’s personally out to get him.
“No more occlusives,” he grumbles to himself, dabbing his face with blotting paper. His other hand balances his phone mid-scroll, hunting down a non-comedogenic, oil-free, fragrance-free, emotionally-detached gel moisturizer. Preferably one that can also file taxes.
Naturally, the universe punishes him for this multitasking.
On his way out, one wrong pivot, one unlucky elbow swing, and Minkyu faceplants into a human being. The impact is loud, wet, and sticky. By the time his brain catches up, he’s on the grimy tile floor, tangled in someone’s limbs, and a cold drink soaking through his shirt.
“Oh my God, fuck, I’m so fucking sorry,” Minkyu scrambles upright, flustered and dripping. “Are you okay?”
“I-it’s fine,” the other person squeaks, and Minkyu thinks to himself that this is clearly smack dab in the middle of the not fine square. But then Minkyu pauses, squints. Recognition clicks in his head.
“Wait, I saw you during that brief rope yesterday,” he says, helping the guy to his feet. “You’re with the other crew - Storm Kinematics… something?”
“Sky Kinetics Taskforce,” the guy winces, but it’s softened by the grateful smile he tosses over. “I’m an intern. And I’m so sorry about your shirt.”
“Oh, nah, it’s fine. I’ve got a spare in the truck,” Minkyu waves it off, though he’s acutely aware of the sugary sludge seeping into his chest. He picks up the now-empty drink cup, examining the soggy label. “Damn. Sorry for wrecking your drink. Can I buy you a new one? It says… ‘water plus whipped cream’ for Hyunjoon?”
“Yeah, dude, I have no fucking idea either,” Hyunjoon sighs, defeated. “Just let it die. Honestly, I’m glad I don’t have to bring that cursed concoction back to the van.”
Minkyu insisted on buying him something anyway, as a peace offering, and so they fall into the slow-moving, half-awake coffee line.
“So yeah,” Minkyu says, unwrapping a caffeine candy with one hand, “I’m interning for Genesis Gale too. Still doing my master’s in Remote Sensing Tech. Jaehyuk-hyung’s my research supervisor. I basically carry his gear, drive his truck, and pray he signs off on my graduation form.”
Hyunjoon chuckles, visibly steadier now that he’s found another soul in intern purgatory. “I’m in Applied Data Science. My thesis is on spatiotemporal storm modeling, so the campus shoved me at Sanghyeok-hyung and said, ‘Congrats, you’re a tornado chaser now.’ ” He fiddles with the frayed edge of his windbreaker. “Honestly… I just told my advisor I liked working with storm data, and somehow that meant throwing me into a truck with Lee Sanghyeok and a live tornado. Bit of a leap.”
“I want to talk to you about that, actually,” Minkyu suddenly says, turning to face Hyunjoon.
“Wh-what is it?”
“If there’s one thing I know about Jeong Jihoon,” Minkyu begins. “it’s that his ego builds faster than a dryline storm in July.” (“Who?” squeaks Hyunjoon weakly, and Minkyu ignores him.) “That was the first time I’ve seen Jihoon so… rattled. Genuinely unnerved by someone. I mean, your team's toys are impressive, sure, but it wasn’t just that. Even Jaehyuk-hyung looked at your team leader with a kind of caution I’ve never seen in him before.” He lowers his voice. “So, seriously. Who is Lee Sanghyeok?”
Hyunjoon picks at the edge of his lip, suddenly unsure.
“I mean… this is just what I heard when they first told me I’d be apprenticing under him…” He leans in slightly, eyes flicking left and right. The mood shifts. Minkyu leans in too, caught in the gravity of whispered legend.
“They said,” Hyunjoon murmurs, “Lee Sanghyeok is a human barometer.”