Even late at night, the expressway was full of cars going down and cars coming up.

And along that dark expressway a box truck was running.

Whether it was loaded with something heavy or not, the vehicle drove as slowly as it could manage, keeping to the outer lane of the expressway, and after running that way for a long while — as the darkness passed and the sky began slowly to lighten — it arrived at the Gyeongju rest stop.

Turning naturally toward the freight parking area, the box truck parked itself among the cargo trucks belonging to Ilhyeon Construction that stood in the lot.

Even after the vehicle had come to a stop, the driver did not get out for a long time.

Since no one paid any particular attention to the freight-truck rest area — a remote corner of the service stop — there was no one who knew that the driver hadn't stepped down from the box truck, and even had there been someone who knew, they left the rest stop without giving it a thought.

And so, some length of time after the box truck had arrived, the sun began to rise in the distance.

With the coming of dawn, the number of cars pulling into the Gyeongju rest stop dwindled further still.

The service stop at daybreak was so quiet that one might have felt the dead of night had been the busier hour.

It was then that a passenger car came into the Gyeongju rest stop.

Unlike the other vehicles, it made not for the passenger parking spaces but for the freight lot.

Having parked in front of the box truck that had arrived ahead of it, two men got out — one from the driver's seat and one from the passenger seat.

Bang.

At the sound of the passenger car's door slamming shut, the door of the box truck — which until that moment had not so much as stirred — finally opened.

"Have you been waiting long?"

The man who had climbed out of the passenger car's driver's seat was the…