This World is too Cruel to Men – Chapter 571

It took a bit of time for Chae-rim to pick out the photo she wanted, but the hard drive work continued on afterward.

During that time, one thing I realized was that Mom seemed to have no talent for organizing files.

As proof, there were dozens of pointless folders, with all sorts of files from videos to photos, making the whole thing look maddeningly chaotic.

“Wow… um…”

Even Chae-rim, who was sitting next to me peering at the files, didn’t seem to have anything to say about that.

A sound escaped Chae-rim’s mouth that could only be described as either admiration or a sigh.

When I glanced over, I could see a look on her face that seemed to say, “What on earth should we do about this…?”

It was enough to dampen our spirits, but still, we persisted in checking everything.

However… hard work and results are not necessarily the same.

Whether we knew it or not, we found nothing substantial on the first hard drive.

Considering the time spent checking each one, we could have been disappointed, but neither Chae-rim nor I felt that way.

There was still one more hard drive left to check, so disappointment could wait.

Maybe we’d find something there.

So, I disconnected the current hard drive and hooked up a new one to resume the search, but…

Just like the first, I hoped even a small something would come up, yet the second hard drive yielded nothing worth celebrating.

“Did I make a wrong guess…?”

I thought we’d be able to find something by digging through these files…

Or did someone else get to them first?

Did someone glance through everything and just pull out files related to Mom’s research?

Fully convinced before that my suspicion was justified, it now seemed ridiculous.

It was during this time of nonsensical doubts that Chae-rim, with a voice as careful as could be, asked me for permission to take the mouse from my hand.

Then suddenly, she started clicking through the various photo files scattered around.

What was she doing all of a sudden?

I had no way of knowing.

I could only watch as Chae-rim clicked through photo files one by one.

How long had it been since she started this?

Just when I felt my focus slipping, I noticed Chae-rim’s eyebrows twitch.

As if she’d discovered something.

“Hey, Dogun, can you check this out?”

But all I saw was an utterly ordinary photo file.

So, without realizing it, I gave Chae-rim a confused look, and it seemed she picked up on my silent question.

“Not that, look at the file size part below.”

Immediately, she added.

Following her instructions, I directed my gaze further down and saw an utterly insignificant figure of 4 megabytes.

Nothing suspicious there, so what was the big deal?

Just as I pondered this, Chae-rim operated the keyboard and switched to the next photo file.

“Check it again.”

With those words, she said it, and I was in a situation where I couldn’t figure out her logic, increasing my bewilderment, but nevertheless, I followed her lead.

As I looked again at the file size section, I was met with—

“…Huh?”

It was clearly unusual, no, strange figures.

“Dogun, don’t you find this weird?”

What could I say?

Unlike the previous file boasting its paltry 4 megabytes, this new file held an alarming amount of data.

Though it seemed no different from the last file I checked, its size was almost dozens of times larger than the others.

Why was there such a difference?

As someone who was a selective expert, I had no clue about these things.

In contrast, Chae-rim appeared to have a hunch.

“Steganography…”

Steganography? What in the world was that?