She was hungry, her bladder was threatening to burst, she was just ually harassed (did it still count as ual harassment if you sort of liked it?), but thank God the Father she was able to get a start on the puzzle. Or at least, she’s developed some sort of game-plan on how to go about it.

// Let the legends of the Camelot king map out your journey. //

The Camelot king was obviously King Arthur so legends about the guy were going to give some direction to Dahyun’s task. Shed more light on it or something. With the help of everyone’s pal, Mr. Google, Dahyun was able to rack up some research King Arthur.

She figured the texts had to be important. That’s where she was going to get the basis for the passwords. The question was... which one? There were so many on the internet. She took note of the popular ones and downloaded a copy of them all and stored them away in a folder she created on the desktop.

Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur was her best bet. The two volumes of it were conveniently found on gutenberg.org. Dahyun was quick to leave a generous donation for its role in assisting her tonight. Considering that she was probably going to die before dawn anyway, she quickly distributed half of her assets to Greenpeace, the World Wide Fund for Nature, UNICEF, and a remote soybean farm in the mountainous Gangwon province...

Dahyun’s other option was The Story of King Arthur and His Knights written and illustrated by Howard Pyle. Something anyone with an internet connection can access. Could this be it?

// To reach victory, young squire, you must have the last word... //

Last word huh? Last word where? Of what? Each chapter? Each page? Each sentence? She grimaced. How was Dahyun going to narrow down the possibilities to that? She pulled at her hair in frustration.

So Dahyun thought it out. She had to make a program based on those different possibilities... But that would take time in the password validation process. Which was a different thing entirely. If the password changed every second that meant that these were polymorphic codes Dahyun was dealing with. In the 6-hour time frame that was given to her, the password was going to change 21,600 times.

-a-doodle-doo!

// The 9-character password changes by the second. //

To Dahyun’s knowledge, there were 95 characters on a standard US QWERTY keyboard. 10 digits. 26 letters, multiplied by two accounting for both lower and uppercase forms. Then 33 special characters: the exclamation points, the hashtags, and the and’s (&’s).

If they had to be mixed and matched into a 9-character password, that meant there were like— and Dahyun wasn’t kidding— 630 quadrillion possibilities.

So, like, . You know?

Now, perhaps the old hacker was bluffing and they were going with just digits. Just 0 to 9. Then that would significantly cut down the possibilities to one billion exactly.

Not like that made any difference, it was still a big- of a number. But Dahyun hoped and prayed that it was all really a bluff.

Ugh! Brain dump much?

Dahyun was in the deepest throes of hunger and mental agony and this was exactly when Sana walked in carrying makeshift pom-poms. Apparently, she found a paper shredder in the backroom and went to town with DIY arts and crafts. She punched the pom poms up, all mega-watt smile, just powering through it even though Dahyun hid her face from second-hand embarrassment at Sana’s display.

“Cheer up, baby! Cheer up, baby!” She finished with a clumsy split.

Where were Momo and Mina! Dahyun wanted to hide behind their skirts!

Sana made a hwaiting fist but it was hidden underneath a ridiculous pom-pom. “You can do it, Dahyunnie!”

SHE NEED SOME MILK.

- - -

When Dahyun still used to live with her parents they had a neighbor who owned a grumpy bulldog, Bongo. Bongo was a straight-up . His very existence made it impossible for Dahyun and Myungsoo to retrieve balls that went over their fence. Myungsoo tried once. Both his knees got bitten.

Another thing Dahyun couldn’t forget about Bongo was his growl. Well, it’s been like, fifteen years since she last heard it, and Bongo was probably in dog heaven by now... but , that same growl was coming right out of her stomach.

’s sake! Where was the food?

Right on cue, the elevator doors dinged open and in came Mina and Momo, Momo held up two bulky plastic bags in a show of victory. “Delivery for... one hungry motherer!”

“Aside from yourself,” Mina provided.

“Aside from myself,” Momo agreed.

Strangely chipper, the driver proceeded to lay out the contents of one bag onto the table where Dahyun worked. The junk food, her treasured Choco Pies, some kimbap and Momo even provided a thermos of hot water for the veggie ramen cup. Real thoughtful (ing extra), that.

Out of reflex, you know, just being a generally helpful human being, Dahyun reached for the other plastic bag to take that stuff out for them as well. Imagine her surprise when her hand was abruptly slapped.

Holy !

Momo looked at her with an apologetic smile. “Sorry, kid. This one’s mine.” She scanned the stuff on the table then her brows furrowed. “Where’s the Sprite?”

The fat 2-liter bottle of Sprite was being violently chugged down and in the hands of...

“SANA!”

“What?! I was thirsty!”

“Oh, she was thirsty alright,” Dahyun said.

Mina shook her head and help up a hand. “I don’t even want to know.”

- - -

To say that Dahyun ate with gusto was, well, you see, an understatement.

She wolfed down the kimbap while she waited for the noodles to cook. Still chewing, she tore a little corner off a bag of chips, let the air out, and started pounding the whole thing. When her ramen was ready, she poured out all the smashed potato chips into the steaming bowl. Dahyun didn’t waste time talking. She just vacuumed the entire concoction into .  

Sana watched Dahyun. “She eats so well!” Sana said dreamily. “Wait ’til she tries my pu—”

“Jesus, Sana!”

“Puttanesca! I was gonna say pasta puttanesca!”

- - -

With her stomach reasonably fueled up again, Dahyun was able to tend to he