Stigma Love's Algorithm [ A BTS x Reader Poly ]

Chapter 127: Uninvited and Unwelcome

Yoongi's POV

The basement server room of EchoTech isn't haunted.

But tonight... it feels like it could be.

The hum of the machines echoes through the metal bones of the building-low, ceaseless, almost like breathing.

Like something old and massive is sleeping all around us, and we're the idiots poking it with sticks.

A row of server racks blink with dim green and amber lights, neat and orderly.

Too orderly.

My fingers fly across the keyboard, the clack of keys the only real sound besides Si Woo's anxious breathing beside me.

We've been here for over four hours now. No breaks. No bullshit.
Just coffee and code.

He's pale under the monitor's glow, eyes ringed red from blue-light fatigue, posture wrecked from hunching like a vulture over his chair. His hoodie's halfway off one shoulder, forgotten.

But he's still here.

He didn't leave when I asked.

He didn't flinch when the logs started folding in on themselves like paper birds. He stayed.

Which tells me he feels it too.

Whatever this is... it's deeper than the breach.

And we're already under water.

Si Woo leans in closer now, his voice quieter than it needs to be, like saying it out loud will make it real.

"Their signature's almost... too clean. Like they wanted us to follow a fake trail."

I stop typing.

Not because he's wrong-because I've been thinking the same thing for the last twenty minutes and trying not to admit it.

I scroll through the access logs again. The lines of code loop smooth as silk, not a single flag.

No anomalies. No dropped packets. Every trace scrubbed clean... but too clean.

It's not just what's here.
It's what isn't.

Every system leaves a fingerprint.
Even ghosts leave dust.

This one?
This one left nothing-but somehow still left echoes.

"It's like they erased their footsteps," I murmur, heart ticking faster, "but left the sound of them."

Si Woo's silence sharpens.

Then, slowly, like the words hurt coming out of him, he says,

"This isn't just good. This is crafted."

I lean back in my chair and exhale through my nose.

My stomach's been twisted in a knot since the first ping showed up on the mirrored logs two nights ago.