"Alright, team, huddle up," J-Min ordered with an authoritative tone.
"But we're all already here," Vhy noted, looking at the four of them squeezed inside the janitor's closet.
With a bright spark of excitement in his eyes, J-Min exclaimed, "The mission was a success. 'Operation Nightingale Serenade' has been executed with flawless precision. Allow me to recap the events for the report."
He cleared his throat dramatically and pointed to a diagram taped to the only free wall in the closet. It was a 17-step flowchart that looked like something out of a NASA movie, filled with arrows, codes, and what was clearly a drawing of a bird wearing sunglasses.
[EXT. SECURITY OFFICE - 13:54]
The afternoon sun cast long shadows as K-Sey, alias "Pretty Poet," adjusted a black beret that was ridiculously oversized for him. On his face, just above his lips, a fake mustache itched with every breath—but don't worry, K-Sey was a professional.
"You have no idea how uncomfortable I feel," K-Sey muttered to himself. He was wearing a gray turtleneck sweater and a top hat, giving him the appearance of a pretentious intellectual.
From an earpiece, J-Min's voice crackled to life: "Are you in position, Pretty Poet?"
"Yes, but... why do I have to be 'Pretty Poet'?" K-Sey murmured into his hidden mic. "I could have been 'Lethal Spy' or 'Night Shadow'."
"Because you look pretty, obviously," J-Min clarified. "Less talk, more action. Ready to follow the best plan of your life?"
"I think... I'm close, over," J-Min's voice cut out instantly as K-Sey approached the security office door. He took a deep breath and adopted the persona of a tortured screenwriter.
Inside, Mr. Jahn, a security guard with a face like a bulldog, stared fixedly at a monitor.
"Forgive the intrusion into your sanctuary of vigilance," K-Sey declaimed as he entered, his voice resonating with fake pathos. "But my eyes, weary of searching for truth in empty pages, have found in you the aura of a forgotten warrior—a sentinel of modern justice."
Mr. Jahn looked up, confused. "Excuse me?"
"I am writing a historical drama, The Diaries of the Imperial Eunuch," K-Sey explained, leaning against the doorframe in a pose he had practiced in the mirror. "And I need the perspective of a man who has seen the true nature of humanity. You, noble guardian... you are my muse."
Mr. Jahn blinked, clearly flattered, scanning him from head to toe. "Well, I... I've seen a lot of things in my twenty years here..."
"Recite to me a verse of your experience!" K-Sey exclaimed, pulling crumpled napkins from his pocket. "Let your words flow like a river of wisdom and soak this poor, wakeful soul!"
[INT. NIGHTINGALE'S NEST (JANITOR'S CLOSET) - 13:57]
J-Min, alias "Dancer One," observed the scene through binoculars from the janitor's closet across the hall. He was surrounded by mops and buckets, a stopwatch on his wrist, and a diagram on the wall that looked like a treasure map.
"The bait has been cast," he whispered into a wrist communicator that was definitely bought at a toy store. "Pretty Poet is inside and... is he improvising poetry? That wasn't in the plan! Crying Prince, are you in position?"
[EXT. SECURITY OFFICE WINDOW - 13:57]
Jhin, alias "Crying Prince," was crouched among some rosebushes, dressed entirely in green like a naturalist ninja. In his left hand, he held a silver whistle and a clear plastic bag of seeds that shimmered with an almost magical luster.
"Did it really have to be 'Crying Prince'?" he muttered, adjusting the green shirt he was using as a mask. "I could have been 'Silent Shadow' or 'Night Wind'."
"Yeah, but Crying Prince just fits you better," J-Min said, almost laughing. "Are you in position yet!?"
"Affirmative, Dancer One," he replied, his voice trembling with nerves. "Releasing the winged chaos. And for the record, I formally protest my codename."
He brought the whistle to his lips and blew with all his might. The sound was inaudible to humans, but to the local bird population, it was an irresistible invitation. He tossed a handful of idol-quality seeds into the air.
In seconds, the sky darkened. A flock of sparrows, pigeons, and even a couple of suspiciously well-groomed cardinals descended upon Hathor High, creating a whirlwind of feathers and chirping.
[EXT. SECURITY OFFICE - 14:00]
"And tell me, sir, when your wife left you, how did your chest feel? Did your heart skip a beat for her differently?" K-Sey asked, using his best professional psychologist voice.
Mr. Jahn's eyes were brimming with tears. "I never stopped loving her! She took my Freyja with her!"
"I understand, sir. To love someone and not be able to show it is painful," K-Sey mused with a hint of genuine sincerity.
Suddenly, seeds fell in front of the door with little tinkling sounds. Following them, a swarm of birds began to fly in.
"What the hell!?" Mr. Jahn shouted, seeing the avian whirlwind. As he reached for the security phone, K-Sey grabbed his hands, pulling him toward the flock.
"It's a sign, Mr. Jahn!" K-Sey cried, throwing his arms up while dodging birds trying to crash into him. "The heavens weep for the beauty of your tragic story! They are the souls of the Imperial Eunuchs coming to hear your wisdom! Keep telling it, noble guardian! Show your wisdom while I direct this spiritual avian evacuation!"
From outside, Jhin watched in horror as the birds caused havoc. "Dancer One, we have a problem. The Golden Eagle has... well, technically it's a sparrow, but it has landed inside the objective."
"Improvise, Crying Prince!" J-Min hissed from his closet. "Use your training!"
"I didn't have any training! We put this together in fifteen minutes!" Having no other idea, Jhin blew the whistle again and dumped the remaining seeds all over himself. At that instant, the birds swarmed out of the office, heading straight for the Crying Prince.
The security guard ran out after them, awestruck, watching a boy dressed in green—using movements from a pre-set dance—control the birds like some sort of avian whisperer.
[INT. HALLWAY - 14:02]
Vhy, alias "Pinky," waited patiently in the shadows. He was wearing a completely black tracksuit and special "fingerprint-proof" gloves, which were actually kitchen gloves covered in purple glitter. Hearing the ruckus of the birds, he nodded. It was his signal.
"Pinky reporting in," he whispered into his communicator. "And for the record, I didn't choose my name either. Could I at least have been 'Pink Peacock'?"
"Hurry, Pinky!" J-Min shouted from the closet into Vhy's earbud.
Like an invisible ninja, Vhy moved behind the guard's back, stealthily heading toward Hathor's modern security facilities. With the grace of a peacock, Vhy reached the door. As he moved the handle, the hinges creaked in G-flat, exactly as J-Min had predicted.
"Hey Vhy, don't forget the plan."
"Ugh, fine..." Vhy didn't just push the door; as he entered, he executed a perfect pirouette—a quick, silent spin that brought him into the room while masking the creak with the friction of his sneakers.
Inside, he could only see two things: the monitors showing every security camera and the floor covered in papers damp with tears and mucus.
"What talent, K-Sey, what talent," he muttered.
As he took two steps toward the monitors, J-Min's voice exploded in his earbud: "Watch out for the imaginary lasers, Vhy!"
"What are you talking about? I'm like two feet away," Vhy complained.
"Follow the plan; it's meticulously designed!"
Vhy scratched his head before continuing, letting out a sigh. "What a drag."
He rolled his eyes. Then, Vhy started jumping, rolling, and even sliding—the whole thing looked like choreography from a global hit—only to end with a backflip, landing light as a feather.
But as he reached the monitor, he hadn't counted on the cat sitting in front of the ports.
A fat orange cat, clearly the office's unofficial pet, stared at him from under the desk, blinking with uneven eyes. Vhy froze as the cat tilted its head, curious.
"Hey, kitty," Vhy whispered. "Easy, I'm friendly, I promise. Can you move for me?"
The cat purred and hopped onto the desk chair. Vhy sighed in relief and continued the mission. His objective was in sight: an open port and the files ready to be copied.
With the precision of a surgeon, he connected the device. The USB stuck slightly, and Vhy had to struggle to get it to fit. Precisely, he copied the files from the last 24 hours onto his buttered-toast-shaped drive, waiting patiently for the download. Total success.
"Pinky has secured the package," he whispered. "I repeat, the toast is in the nest. And there's a cat that is now my accomplice."
As he tried to withdraw as stealthily as possible, he realized his suit was caught on a loose nail on the desk. The cat began to meow aggressively.
The guard, who was watching the avian spectacle in front of K-Sey with wonder, turned around, looking toward the door where the recordings were kept and where Vhy was stuck.
"Mr. Jahn, where are you going? We are in the middle of a once-in-a-lifetime performance!"
The guard, with a clenched fist and a trembling foot, took a deep breath and, in the most serious voice he could muster, said, "You know what, mysterious poet? I thank you."
At that moment, Mr. Jahn approached the flock around Jhin and began to recite a poem in a Viking intonation.
"That's it, Mr. Jahn! Release your Imperial Eunuch spirit!"
"Hurry, Vhy, get out of there!" J-Min screamed.
Vhy had no choice but to yank his suit until it tore, freeing himself from the nail. He ran out without looking back, just as Mr. Jahn, with tears in his eyes, continued his Viking poetry.
With equal tears in his own eyes, K-Sey listened with admiration. "Incredible, Mr. Jahn. Incredible."
[INT. NIGHTINGALE'S NEST (JANITOR'S CLOSET) - 14:10]
The closet door slammed shut. The four of them were inside, squeezed between cleaning products like sardines in a tin. Vhy handed the USB to J-Min, who received it like it was the Holy Grail.
"Mission accomplished," J-Min said, his face glowing with pride as he checked his stopwatch. "Seventeen minutes and forty-three seconds. A perfect execution. Art in motion. Poetry and chaos combined to achieve the impossible."
"Speak for yourself," K-Sey grumbled, ripping off the mustache with a grimace of disgust. "I had to improvise a sonnet about modern security. A sonnet, J-Min. Do you know how hard it is to rhyme 'surveillance' with 'deliverance'? But at least I learned Mr. Jahn was a Viking before he was a guard."
"And I almost became cat food," Vhy added, pulling off a glittery glove. "Also, fingerprint-proof gloves? These are kitchen gloves with glitter." He looked at the only one he had left. "Wait, weren't there two?"
"Details make the difference," J-Min insisted, clutching his diagram. "As Sun Tzu said: 'All warfare is based on deception'."
"Sun Tzu never had to deal with rebellious birds," Jhin muttered, still picking feathers out of his hair. He breathed a sigh of relief but then frowned. "Though I have to admit, it worked. But next time, I choose my codename."
"Next time there won't be ridiculous codenames," Vhy promised. "Or at least, if there are, J-Min gets a shameful one too."
"What's wrong with 'Dancer One'?" J-Min protested. "It's elegant and professional."
"Exactly," the other three said in unison.
But looking at each other, they couldn't help but laugh.
[INT. NIGHTINGALE'S NEST (JANITOR'S CLOSET) - 14:20]
Just at that moment of triumph and mutual complaining, the closet door swung wide open.
The hallway light blinded them for a moment. When their eyes adjusted, they saw the figure of DM standing there, looking at them with an expression of total and utter confusion. In one hand, he held a small, boring black USB drive. In the other, a half-sucked coffee candy.
"I've got them," DM said with his usual air of calm, as if finding four of his friends dressed as spies in a closet was the most normal thing in the world.
The four froze. K-Sey still had bits of mustache glue on his face. Vhy had glitter on his hands. Jhin looked like a scarecrow. J-Min was hugging his diagram like it was his baby.
"You've got... what?" J-Min managed to choke out, his voice rising three octaves.
"The security footage," DM explained, shrugging and taking another lick of his candy. "I went to Mr. Jahn's office ten minutes ago. I just got back."
J-Min pointed to the toast USB in his hand with a trembling finger. "But... what about the screenwriter? The birds? The pirouette? My seventeen-phase diagram?"
DM blinked slowly, processing the information. "The pirouette? No... I just told him a fan had lost a very valuable earring near the library and we wanted to check the cameras to help her. He's a big fan of my rap; he asked for an autograph, told me about his wife and his cat—'Mr. Whiskers,' by the way—and gave me a copy of the last twenty-four hours. He also gave me this coffee candy and asked if I could give him tips on writing poetry. I told him to start with something simple, like rhyming 'security' with 'tranquility'. Oh, and I don't know if you knew, but he used to be a Viking."
A deathly silence filled the closet. The only sound was DM sucking on his candy.
Jhin stared at DM's USB like it was the Holy Grail. K-Sey let his beret drop to the floor with a soft thud. Vhy covered his face to hide a laugh that was shaking his shoulders. J-Min looked at the toast USB in his hand, then the real USB in DM's, then his seventeen-phase diagram, and finally let himself slide down the closet wall.
"There's no... there's no art in that method," he whispered to himself, dropping the toast USB into a bucket of dirty water. "No art at all. No elegance. No... no poetry."
"But it worked," Vhy pointed out, still laughing. "And nobody had to dress up as a tortured poet."
"Hey!" K-Sey protested. "My acting was flawless. Mr. Jahn opened up like the petals of a beautiful rose when I recited my improvised sonnet on night surveillance."
"Wait," DM said, frowning. "You guys were in Mr. Jahn's office? He mentioned something about a very talented young poet who visited him. Said it was very inspiring. He also mentioned something about birds, but I thought he was being metaphorical."
The four exchanged looks of horror.
"He saw us?" Vhy asked.
"Does he know it was us?" Jhin added.
"Are we going to jail?" K-Sey groaned.
"You're not going to jail," DM said, rolling his eyes. "But Mr. Jahn wants the 'mysterious young poet' to come back next week to help him with more verses. Apparently, he discovered his passion for poetry."
K-Sey went pale. "Oh, no."
"Oh, yes," DM smiled. "And he also wants to meet the 'bird trainer' who organized that 'beautiful demonstration of natural harmony'."
Now it was Jhin's turn to go pale.
"Furthermore," DM continued, clearly enjoying the moment, "he found a glittery glove under his desk and thinks it was a gift from 'the silent angel who watches over his office'."
Vhy covered his face with his hands. "This can't be happening. No wonder I was missing one. When did I drop it?"
"And finally," DM saved the best for last, "he wants to personally thank the 'operation director' for coordinating such a beautiful artistic experience. Apparently, he's never seen anything so 'elaborately beautiful and completely unnecessary'."
J-Min slid slowly down the wall until he was sitting on the closet floor, hugging his diagram. "My masterpiece," he murmured. "My symphony of espionage. It turned into... into a weekly poetry date."
"Look on the bright side," DM said, finishing his candy. "At least now we know that if we ever stop being idols, K-Sey has a future as a poet, Jhin as a bird trainer, Vhy as... well, Vhy, and you, J-Min, as a director of unnecessarily complicated events."
They all looked at J-Min, their faces pale.
"Stop making those faces. Anyone want a candy?" DM added, pulling several more from his pocket. "Mr. Jahn gave me a whole bag. Says they're for his 'talented artist friends'."
The four looked at him in silence. Then, slowly, each one took a candy.
"Hey," Vhy claimed, unwrapping his. "I have a future as a gymnast. I realized today I can do backflips."
Everyone laughed at Vhy's comment.
"Next time," Vhy said, "we ask DM first."
"Next time," K-Sey added, "no codenames."
"Next time," Jhin muttered, "no more birds."
"Next time," J-Min sighed, looking sadly at his sweat-soaked, ruined diagram, "we keep things simple."
"Next time?" DM asked, raising an eyebrow. "Are you already planning another 'operation'?"
The four exchanged glances and, simultaneously, replied: "No."
But J-Min was already scribbling notes in the margin of his ruined diagram. Because, after all, there was always room to improve the art of unnecessarily complicated espionage.
And somewhere on campus, Mr. Jahn practiced his new sonnet about the beauty of night surveillance, anxiously awaiting the next visit from his new artist friends.
"In quiet stride the sentinel keeps watch, The moon traces shadows on his blade, The breeze blows austere and in the shade, And fear sleeps beneath his steady notch.
His eyes are lanterns in the waking trail Of a village resting in the break of dawn, There is no sleep in him, his anger gone, For he guards what he loves and will not fail."
"Mm... When he returns, I shall teach him how to recite in Viking... if he returns."
Sitting on the fountain behind him, dressed in his intellectual outfit and a new black cape with a crimson lining, the Pretty Poet looked down at him.
"How are you, Imperial Eunuch?"
"Mysterious poet, you returned," the guard said, with the tone of a child seeing a hero.
Taking off his top hat and tossing it into the air toward the sun, K-Sey exclaimed: "K-Sey! What is a member of NEON7 doing as a mysterious poet?"
The top hat returned to his hand like a thrown boomerang.
"My identity is a mystery known to few," he said, putting the hat back on. "But in your eyes, I see the glow of a true Imperial Eunuch. Come, my friend, let us make art."