For the love, for laughter

Davidson says the word ’synergistic’ twenty times in forty-six minutes, and you know this because Yuki’s been keeping count on the corner of her notepad.

She slides it across the conference table when he’s not looking—a running tally in neat black pen, complete with little angry faces drawn next to the higher numbers.

You’re supposed to be paying attention. Taking notes. Being a productive member of the Synergy International team.

Instead you’re watching Davidson gesture at a PowerPoint slide that’s somehow managed to use five different fonts in a single bullet point, and wondering if this is what hell looks like. Just endless corporate presentations in a too-cold conference room that smells like burnt coffee and someone’s tuna sandwich.

“And so,” Davidson announces, clicking to the next slide with all the gravitas of a man unveiling the cure for cancer, “I’m pleased to introduce our new campaign name.”

The slide loads.

PEPTIDE REVOLUTION: COLLAGEN FOR THE MODERN WOMAN

Silence.

Complete, absolute silence.

Amelie makes a noise that could be a cough or could be her soul leaving her body.

“Revolutionary,” Davidson continues, oblivious. “Forward-thinking. A real paradigm shift in how we approach beauty supplementation in the Japanese market.”

Yuki’s hand moves. You watch her add another tally mark, then write in tiny letters:

If he says ‘paradigm shift’ one more time, I’m jumping.

You have to bite the inside of your cheek to keep from laughing.

“Now, I know what you’re all thinking,” Davidson says, and absolutely no one is thinking what he thinks they’re thinking. “How do we communicate this paradigm—”

Yuki’s pen moves so fast it nearly tears the paper.

“—this shift in market positioning to our target demographic?”

She draws a stick figure falling off a building.

You’re losing it. Your shoulders are shaking. You have to look down at your own notebook and pretend to be writing something very serious and important.

Your phone buzzes in your pocket.

You shouldn’t check it. You’re in a meeting. You’re supposed to be professional.

You check it anyway, angling your body slightly away from Tanaka’s line of sight.

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙷𝚘𝚠’𝚜 𝚠𝚘𝚛𝚔?! (●’◡’●)ﾉ

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙾𝚗 𝚊 𝚜𝚌𝚊𝚕𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝟷 𝚝𝚘 ’𝙸 𝚠𝚊𝚗𝚝 𝚝𝚘 𝚠𝚊𝚕𝚔 𝚒𝚗𝚝𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚘𝚌𝚎𝚊𝚗’

You glance up. Davidson’s still talking. Something about Q4 projections and market penetration.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝙾𝚌𝚎𝚊𝚗’𝚜 𝚕𝚘𝚘𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚙𝚛𝚎𝚝𝚝𝚢 𝚐𝚘𝚘𝚍 𝚛𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝 𝚗𝚘𝚠 𝚊𝚌𝚝𝚞𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚢.

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝚃𝙷𝙰𝚃 𝙱𝙰𝙳?! (つ .•́ _ʖ •̀.)つ

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝙷𝚎 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚞𝚗𝚟𝚎𝚒𝚕𝚎𝚍 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚗𝚎𝚠 𝚌𝚊𝚖𝚙𝚊𝚒𝚐𝚗 𝚗𝚊𝚖𝚎.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: ’𝙿𝚎𝚙𝚝𝚒𝚍𝚎 𝚛𝚎𝚟𝚘𝚕𝚞𝚝𝚒𝚘𝚗.’

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙷𝙰𝙷𝙰𝙷𝙰𝙷𝙰

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙽𝙾

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝚃𝙷𝙰𝚃𝚂 𝙽𝙾𝚃 𝚁𝙴𝙰𝙻

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝙸 𝚏𝚞𝚌𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚠𝚒𝚜𝚑.

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙳𝚘𝚎𝚜 𝚒𝚝 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚠𝚒𝚝𝚑 𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚢 𝚙𝚎𝚙𝚝𝚒𝚍𝚎 𝚏𝚕𝚊𝚐𝚜?

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙳𝚘 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚌𝚘𝚕𝚕𝚊𝚐𝚎𝚗 𝚖𝚘𝚕𝚎𝚌𝚞𝚕𝚎𝚜 𝚜𝚝𝚘𝚛𝚖 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚋𝚊𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚕𝚕𝚎?

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: ‘𝚆𝚎 𝚍𝚎𝚜𝚎𝚛𝚟𝚎 𝚏𝚛𝚎𝚎𝚍𝚘𝚖 𝚏𝚛𝚘𝚖 𝚋𝚊𝚍 𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚔𝚎𝚝𝚒𝚗𝚐!’（｀Δ´）..!.

You have to cover your mouth with your hand.

Brianna glances over, catches your expression, raises an eyebrow. You shake your head slightly—later—and she nods, going back to her own notebook where she’s been doodling what appears to be Davidson’s head on fire.

“Which brings me,” Davidson says, and something in his tone makes you look up, “to some organisational updates.”

The room shifts. People sit up straighter.

organisational updates. In corporate-speak, that’s never good.

“As many of you know, Synergy International has been evaluating our operational efficiency across all regional offices.” He clicks to a new slide—just the company logo, which somehow makes it more ominous. “We’re committed to streamlining our processes to better serve our clients and maximize our impact.”

Streamlining. Maximizing impact.

Translation: someone’s getting sacked.

“Performance reviews will be conducted over the next two weeks,” he continues. “And we’ll be implementing some structural changes to ensure we’re operating at peak efficiency.”

Yuki’s pen has stopped moving. Amelie’s staring very intently at her hands.

You feel something cold settle in your stomach.

You’ve been here two months. Barely. You’re still figuring out where the good vending machines are. You don’t know half the systems. Your Japanese is passable but not fluent.

If they’re cutting people, you’re an obvious choice.

The newest hire. The foreigner who still can’t read half the memos. The one who definitely called in sick last week to help her friend finish his porn manga deadline.

Fuck.

Davidson keeps talking but you’ve stopped listening. Your brain’s already spiraling through the worst-case scenarios—getting sacked, having to find a new job, potentially having to leave Japan if you can’t get another work visa sponsor, going back to Sydney with your tail between your legs and everyone asking what happened.

Your phone buzzes again.

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚜𝚝𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛𝚎?

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙳𝚒𝚍 𝙳𝚊𝚟𝚒𝚍𝚜𝚘𝚗'𝚜 𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚊𝚍𝚒𝚐𝚖 𝚜𝚑𝚒𝚏𝚝 𝚔𝚒𝚕𝚕 𝚢𝚘𝚞?

You stare at the messages for a long moment.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝙸 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚔 𝚖𝚢 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚙𝚊𝚗𝚢 𝚒𝚜 𝚏𝚊𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚊𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝.

A reply lands almost immediately. Then another.

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝚂𝚑𝚒𝚝

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝚈𝚘𝚞 𝚘𝚔𝚊𝚢?

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚈𝚎𝚊𝚑, 𝚓𝚞𝚜𝚝...

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚁𝚎𝚜𝚝𝚛𝚞𝚌𝚝𝚞𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚔.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝙿𝚎𝚛𝚏𝚘𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚎 𝚛𝚎𝚟𝚒𝚎𝚠𝚜.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚞𝚜𝚞𝚊𝚕 𝚌𝚘𝚛𝚙𝚘𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚎 ’𝚠𝚎’𝚛𝚎 𝚏𝚒𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚙𝚎𝚘𝚙𝚕𝚎 𝚋𝚞𝚝 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚒𝚝 𝚜𝚘𝚞𝚗𝚍 𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚒𝚝𝚒𝚟𝚎’ 𝚋𝚞𝚕𝚕𝚜𝚑𝚒𝚝.

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙵𝚞𝚌𝚔 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚝

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙲𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛 𝚝𝚘𝚗𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙱𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚛𝚊𝚖𝚎𝚗

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝚆𝚎’𝚕𝚕 𝚏𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝚊𝚙𝚊𝚛𝚝 𝚝𝚘𝚐𝚎𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚛!(≧◡≦) ♡

Despite everything, you almost smile.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚅𝚎𝚛𝚢 𝚍𝚛𝚊𝚖𝚊𝚝𝚒𝚌.

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝚃𝚑𝚊𝚝’𝚜 𝚑𝚘𝚠 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚎𝚗𝚓𝚘𝚢 𝚖𝚢 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚙𝚊𝚗𝚢.

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙰𝚕𝚜𝚘 𝙸’𝚖 𝚜𝚎𝚛𝚒𝚘𝚞𝚜!

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙲𝚘𝚖𝚎 𝚘𝚟𝚎𝚛, 𝚢𝚎𝚊𝚑?

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝚆𝚎 𝚌𝚊𝚗 𝚠𝚊𝚝𝚌𝚑 𝙼𝚘𝚖𝚘 𝚋𝚎 𝚓𝚞𝚍𝚐𝚎𝚖𝚎𝚗𝚝𝚊𝚕 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚎𝚊𝚝 𝚌𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚙 𝚏𝚘𝚘𝚍 𝚊𝚗𝚍 𝚌𝚘𝚖𝚙𝚕𝚊𝚒𝚗 𝚊𝚋𝚘𝚞𝚝 𝚌𝚊𝚙𝚒𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚒𝚜𝚖

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙸𝚝’𝚕𝚕 𝚋𝚎 𝚐𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚝! (๑˃ᴗ˂)ﻭ

You shouldn’t. You should go home and update your CV and maybe look at job listings and be a responsible adult about this whole situation.

But the thought of going back to your empty flat and spiraling alone sounds approximately one thousand times worse than spiraling in Hoseok’s organised chaos.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝙵𝚒𝚗𝚎.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝙱𝚞𝚝 𝙸’𝚖 𝚋𝚞𝚢𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚎𝚡𝚙𝚎𝚗𝚜𝚒𝚟𝚎 𝚛𝚊𝚖𝚎𝚗.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝙽𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚘𝚏 𝚢𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝟻𝟶 𝚢𝚎𝚗 𝚌𝚞𝚙 𝚗𝚘𝚘𝚍𝚕𝚎 rubbish.

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝚆𝚘𝚠. 𝚂𝚘 𝚏𝚊𝚗𝚌𝚢.

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝚃𝚛𝚞𝚕𝚢, 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚜𝚙𝚘𝚒𝚕 𝚖𝚎. (￣▽￣)

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝙸 𝚗𝚎𝚎𝚍 𝚊𝚗 𝚎𝚡𝚌𝚞𝚜𝚎 𝚝𝚘 𝚕𝚎𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚊𝚝 𝟻 𝚜𝚑𝚊𝚛𝚙.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝙽𝚘𝚝 𝚜𝚝𝚊𝚢𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚕𝚊𝚝𝚎 𝚏𝚘𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚜 𝚋𝚞𝚕𝚕𝚜𝚑𝚒𝚝.

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙿𝚛𝚘𝚏𝚎𝚜𝚜𝚒𝚘𝚗𝚊𝚕 𝚌𝚘𝚛𝚙𝚘𝚛𝚊𝚝𝚎 𝚛𝚎𝚋𝚎𝚕𝚕𝚒𝚘𝚗.

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙻𝚘𝚟𝚎 𝚞

You blink at the screen.

Love u.

Your face goes hot. Stupidly, immediately hot, like someone's pressed a heated towel against both cheeks at once.

Your phone buzzes again. Three times in rapid succession.

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙸𝚃

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝚒𝚝*

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝚃𝚢𝚙𝚘

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝚂𝚠𝚛𝚘𝚛𝚢

A pause.

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝚂𝚘𝚛𝚛𝚢𝚜

Another pause.

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝚂𝚘𝚛𝚛𝚢*

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙷𝚊𝚑𝚊. 𝚃𝟿 𝚒𝚜 𝚊𝚐𝚊𝚒𝚗𝚜𝚝 𝚖𝚎 𝚝𝚘𝚍𝚊𝚢 (；′⌒`)

Your ears are burning. You can feel them. Physically feel the heat creeping up from your neck to the tips of your ears like some kind of biological betrayal.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝚈𝚘𝚞𝚛 𝚙𝚑𝚘𝚗𝚎 𝚝𝚢𝚙𝚎𝚜 𝚋𝚎𝚝𝚝𝚎𝚛 𝚝𝚑𝚊𝚗 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚍𝚘.

Safe. Deflective. Classic.

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙷𝙰. 𝚈𝚎𝚊𝚑!! 𝚂𝚝𝚞𝚙𝚒𝚍 𝚙𝚑𝚘𝚗𝚎!!

Two exclamation marks. He never uses two exclamation marks. One, sure. Three, when he's being dramatic. But two sits in this uncanny valley of trying too hard to sound casual.

Not that you're analysing his punctuation patterns.

That would be insane.

You slide your phone back into your pocket just as Davidson wraps up his presentation.

“Any questions?” he asks brightly.

No one says anything.

Amelie’s still staring at her hands. Adao’s jaw is clenched. Brianna’s crossed her arms and is radiating the kind of energy that suggests violence is not off the table.

“Wonderful! I’ll be scheduling individual check-ins over the next few days. Keep an eye on your calendars.”

The meeting ends. Everyone files out in silence.

You grab your notebook—covered in doodles of stick figures falling off buildings, courtesy of Yuki—and head back to your desk.

You drop into your chair and find the printer proofs waiting exactly where you left them: oversized sheets covered in crop marks, registration bars, and sticky notes from three departments that apparently communicate exclusively through arrows.

The collagen launch needs final English copy before the packaging vendor locks everything for print tomorrow. Bottle label, sachet cartons, counter display, beauty-counter cards, and a folded customer leaflet—each one carrying a slightly different version of the same claim.

Your job is to compare the proofs against the approved Japanese copy, clean up the agency’s English, and squeeze the corrections back into boxes designed for sentences half the length.

Across every sheet, in metallic-pink placeholder ink:

PEPTIDE REVOLUTION.

Thrilling stuff.

Your phone buzzes. You ignore it.

It buzzes again.

You keep typing.

Third buzz.

You grab it, fully prepared to tell Hoseok to fuck off and let you finish this soulless document in peace—

It's your mum.

𝐌𝐮𝐦: 𝙷𝚒 𝚜𝚠𝚎𝚎𝚝𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚛𝚝! 𝙷𝚘𝚠'𝚜 𝙹𝚊𝚙𝚊𝚗? 𝚇𝚡

You stare at the message for a solid ten seconds, then put the phone face-down on your desk.

Nope.

Not dealing with that right now.

The proofs aren’t going to correct themselves.

You start with the customer leaflet, lining a ruler beneath the first block so your eyes don’t jump between columns. The outside agency has translated one of the taglines as ‘Towards Every Day with Tension.’

Technically English. Spiritually a threat.

You cross it out in red, type a usable alternative into the master copy file, then count every character because the printer has allowed fifty-two spaces and Davidson wants eighty-seven spaces’ worth of nonsense.

Next is ‘Return Your Skin to Its Original Young Power’, followed by ‘Collagen That Understands the Modern Lady.’

You fix both. Then the carton. Then the bottle label. Then the counter card where Davidson has handwritten ‘Can we make this sound more revolutionary?’ beside a claim Legal already rejected twice.

You’re going to walk into the ocean. You’re actually going to do it.

By the time you’ve corrected the carton, the bottle label, and half the customer leaflet, the red pencil has left a dent in your middle finger.

You take a break to get coffee from the kitchen—the good stuff that Tanaka-san hides in the back of the cupboard behind the decaf no one touches.

When you get back, Adao's crouched next to Yuki's desk, half-disappeared under her monitor.

"No, see, is the connection," he's saying, wiggling something behind her computer tower. "The cable, it is—ah, there."

Yuki's leaning over, watching him work. "Oh! It's working now."

"Yes, I told you." He surfaces, pushing his hair back. There's a smudge of dust on his jaw. "Is always the cable. People think is the software but—" He makes a dismissive gesture. "Is just the cable."

"You're a lifesaver," Yuki says.

Adao stands, brushing off his knees. He's wearing dark jeans and a button-down that actually fits, sleeves rolled to his elbows. Proper IT guy who doesn't look like an IT guy.

He notices you staring and nods. "Your computer is okay?"

"Yeah, mine's fine."

"Good." He glances at Yuki, then back at you. "You are coming for drinks later? After work?"

You open your mouth.

From across the room, Amelie's head pops up over her cubicle divider like a meerkat. She presses her palms together. "Please."

"I—" You hesitate. "I've got plans already."

Amelie's face falls. Yuki spins in her chair, eyebrows raised.

"Tomorrow, maybe?" you offer, and you feel weirdly guilty about it, which is stupid.

You're allowed to have plans. You've had these plans for hours.

"Tomorrow works," Brianna says from her desk, not looking up from her screen. "I've got a thing tonight anyway."

Amelie brightens. "Okay! Tomorrow! We can do that place in Namba, the one with the good gyoza—"

"And the terrible service," Yuki adds.

"The service is fine—"

"They forgot your order twice."

Adao's still standing there, hands in his pockets, looking mildly amused. "Is decided, then. Tomorrow."

"Wait, wait, Adao—" Amelie swivels in her chair, zeroing in on him with laser focus. "You should bring Mr. Kim."

You blink. "Mr. Kim?"

"Oh—he's not Japanese," Amelie says, waving a hand. "American-Korean. We only talk to him in English, hence the 'Mr.' instead of—you know." She gestures vaguely. "The whole -san situation. He insists on Mr Kim. Says Kim-san makes him feel like someone’s dad."

"He does translation work," Yuki adds. "Cultural consulting. For international business stuff."

"He's also—" Amelie makes a helpless gesture. "Have you seen him?"

"I work in accounting," Yuki says. "I see everyone's files. I've seen his employee photo."

"Then you understand."

Adao's face does something complicated. "Ah…"

"Please," Amelie says, hands coming together like she's praying. "Please. I am begging you."

"He is very busy—"

"I don't care! Bring him anyway!"

"You have been talking about him for three weeks," Adao says, looking genuinely pained.

"Because he's—" Amelie gestures again, more emphatically. "I mean, come on."

"I will ask," Adao says carefully. "But—"

"Thank you!" Amelie's practically vibrating. "Oh my god, thank you, you're the best—"

"I said I will ask—"

"He's going to say yes. I can feel it."

Adao glances at you, then at Yuki, then back at Amelie.

"Women are scary," he says, very seriously.

"You're only just figuring that out?" Brianna asks, not looking up from her screen.

Yuki laughs, and Adao starts to turn back towards his desk. Before the conversation can fully dissolve, Amelie props her chin on her hand and turns to you with the particular look she gets when she’s decided something.

“You should totally invite your friend out with us, by the way.”

You glance up from your keyboard. “What friend.”

“Oh, come on.” She spins her chair to face you fully. “Don’t what friend me. The cinnamon-haired one from Midnight Keys.”

“The golden retriever,” Yuki adds, not looking up.

“He’s not my—” You stop. Start again. “I’m not bringing my childhood best friend to a company dinner.”

“It’s not a company dinner,” Amelie says, genuinely offended.

“Exactly,” Brianna cuts in, finally looking up. “How dare you call it that. Davidson is not coming. Don’t say that word.”

“It’s drinks,” Amelie insists. “Normal human drinks. Between normal humans who happen to work together and are allowed to have outside friends—”

“He’s cute, though,” Yuki says, still not looking up. “Your friend. Very enthusiastic.”

“He waves with both hands,” Brianna observes. “Like a Labrador.”

“Golden retriever,” Amelie corrects.

“Is there a difference?”

“Anyway.” Amelie fixes you with her most earnest expression. “Is he single?”

You stop typing.

The question sits there, perfectly ordinary, requiring a perfectly ordinary answer, and your brain immediately helpfully supplies: ‘we literally dry humped the other day so if he has a partner I’m worried for them.’

Instead, you settle for something a tad more diplomatic.

“I… guess?”

“You guess.”

“I mean—” You glance at his flat in your head.

The instant noodle tower. The sugar glider. The sketchbooks. The total absence of anything that suggests another human being has ever stayed there.

“Seeing his flat, I definitely don’t think he’s got anything going on. That’s for sure.”

Amelie looks delighted. Yuki finally looks up.

“Are you interested?” Amelie asks. Just like that. No preamble.

“What?” You actually choke on nothing. “No—he’s my childhood best friend, that’s—what kind of question even—”

“Okay, okay.” Amelie holds her hands up, way too pleased with the reaction. “So that’s a no.”

“That’s a obviously no.”

“Great.” Brianna leans forward, elbows on her desk. “So—was it the black-haired one? The cat-looking one?”

“Yoongi?”

You freeze.

Brianna's smiling. It's not a nice smile. It's the smile of someone who's got you pinned and knows it.

"Because if you're not interested," she continues, "I am begging you to introduce us."

Your face goes hot. "I don't even know him."

"But your golden retriever does," Yuki says, grinning.

"He's not my—"

"They always know everything," Yuki continues, ignoring you completely. "Golden retrievers. Very social creatures."

Amelie props her chin on her hand. "Personally, I like golden retrievers. They're so my type." She pauses. "What's his deal? Your friend?"

"He's—" You falter. What is Hoseok's deal? "He draws manga."

"Ooh, artist type."

"He's a disaster," you say flatly. "Eats instant noodles for every meal. Owns a sugar glider. His flat's a health hazard."

Amelie's eyes go wide. "A sugar glider?"

"Don't," you warn. "Don't do that voice."

"What voice?"

"That 'oh my god that's adorable' voice."

"I'm not—" She absolutely is. "Okay, but that is adorable."

Brianna's still watching you. "So. The black-haired one.”

"What about him?" you ask, trying for casual and landing somewhere around defensive.

"He was fit," Brianna says simply. "And I haven't been on a proper date since I moved here, so if you're not planning to make a move—"

”As I said, Bri—I don’t know him."

“Soo we get to know him, here's the plan. You ask your friend to hang out. Casual group thing. He brings Yoongi. That way you can figure out if you're actually interested, yeah? And if you're not—" She peeks her tongue out. "I'll also be there. I can shoot my shot. Everyone wins."

You stare at her.

It's… actually not a terrible plan.

You are curious about Yoongi. He's hot, yeah, but also—he's got that whole understated thing going on. The kind of guy who doesn't need to try, which is either very attractive or deeply annoying depending on the day.

"I can ask," you hear yourself say.

Amelie claps. Yuki grins. Brianna nods like you've just signed a contract.

"Brilliant," Brianna says. "See you tomorrow!”

Adao catches your eye and shakes his head slightly. The gesture very clearly says: You are in trouble now.

Yeah. You're aware.

You retreat to your desk, face still warm, and drag the folded customer leaflet back beneath your keyboard.

Supports firmer-looking skin for modern life.

Right. Back to the void.

You work through lunch—leftover rice balls from the konbini, eaten one-handed while checking product codes against the Japanese master and transferring your corrections into the copy file.

The office empties out around one. People drift back slowly, smelling like ramen and cigarette smoke.

Yuki appears at your desk at some point with a can of cold coffee. Sets it down without a word, then disappears again.

You drink it. It tastes like sweetened sadness, but the caffeine helps.

By four, you’ve reached the third proofing pass. Your wrist hurts from switching between the red pencil and keyboard. Your eyes hurt from comparing near-identical blocks of text.

You’re running purely on spite and the looming threat of restructuring.

By four-thirty, you’re done.

Five pieces of packaging. Two counter cards. One customer leaflet. Thirty-four separate blocks of English copy, all corrected, cross-checked, and bullied into the limited space provided by the printer.

Not a single skin youth revolution survives.

You stack the marked proofs in order, print the final list of corrections, staple it to the top, and email the clean copy file to the packaging vendor.

Then you carry the signed approval sheet to the fax machine.

It swallows the paper, shrieks at Osaka for forty seconds, and spits out a confirmation slip at 4:48 PM.

Done.

Davidson will look at the finished packaging next week, announce that the English feels ‘much more synergistic,’ and forget that anyone had to fix it.

You close your laptop. Stare at the ceiling for a moment.

Then you grab your bag, shove your notebook inside, and stand up.

Yuki glances over. "Leaving already?"

"It's almost five."

"It's 4:50."

"I'm preemptively leaving."

She grins. "Rebel."

"Someone's gotta do it." You sling your bag over your shoulder. "See you tomorrow, yeah?"

"Bring your golden retriever."

"He's not—" You give up. "Whatever. Yeah. Maybe."

Amelie waves from across the room. Adao nods. Brianna gives you a thumbs-up that feels vaguely threatening.

You take the lift down—seven floors of mildly depressing Muzak—and step out into the Umeda early evening.

The air's cooler now. November settling in properly.

You check your phone.

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙳𝚒𝚍 𝚢𝚘𝚞 𝚎𝚜𝚌𝚊𝚙𝚎??? (｡•̀ᴗ-)✧

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝙱𝚊𝚛𝚎𝚕𝚢.

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝙾𝚗 𝚖𝚢 𝚠𝚊𝚢 𝚗𝚘𝚠.

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙱𝚛𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚐𝚘𝚘𝚍 𝚛𝚊𝚖𝚎𝚗!!!

𝐘𝐨𝐮: 𝙸 𝚜𝚊𝚒𝚍 𝙸 𝚠𝚘𝚞𝚕𝚍, 𝚍𝚒𝚌𝚔𝚑𝚎𝚊𝚍.

𝐉𝐮𝐧𝐠 𝐇𝐨𝐬𝐞𝐨𝐤: 𝙹𝚞𝚜𝚝 𝚖𝚊𝚔𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚜𝚞𝚛𝚎!!! ♡(˃͈ દ ˂͈ ༶ )

You shove your phone back in your pocket and head towards the station.

Hoseok's pencil stops moving when you can't make your face do what he needs.

"Okay, so—" He taps the eraser against his bottom lip, eyes flicking between you and his reference sketches spread across the desk. "This scene is different. Miki's not performing anymore. She's alone in her flat and Yuuta's gone and she thinks—she's convinced herself she's lost him for good."

You're sitting on the edge of his bed, still in your work clothes minus the blazer. The expensive ramen sits cooling in takeout containers on his low table in the other room, barely touched. You'd made it three bites in before he'd asked if you were up for a session.

You'd said yes because what else were you going to do? Spiral about restructuring alone in your flat?

"Right," you say. "So, sad cat-girl. Got it."

"Not just sad." He flips to a previous page, showing you a sketch of Miki's face. "She's grieving. She's—it's that specific kind of loss where the person's still alive but you've lost them anyway. Like they're a stranger now and you don't know how to get them back."

Something uncomfortable shifts in your chest.

"Okay."

"So I need you to—" He gestures vaguely at your face. "Feel that. Show me what that looks like."

You arrange your expression. Sad eyes. Downturned mouth. The kind of thing you've seen in movies.

Hoseok frowns. "You look like you're constipated."

"Fuck off."

"I'm serious! That's—that's not grief, that's just..." He waves his hand. "I need real."

"What do you want me to do, actually cry on command?"

"No, just—" He runs a hand through his hair, and you notice he's taken his glasses off. They're sitting on the desk next to his pencil case, which means he's been drawing for hours already and his eyes are probably killing him. "Think about something real. Something that actually makes you feel—"

"Feel what?"

"Whatever Miki would feel. Alone. Missing someone who used to know everything about you."

The discomfort spreads. Roots deeper.

"Fine."

You try again. Soften your eyes. Think about sad things.

That dog food commercial that always gets you. The ending of Grave of the Fireflies. Your Year 9 English teacher who died of cancer.

Hoseok's frown deepens. "Stop acting."

"I'm not—"

"You are. You're doing a face. I can tell."

"Well, excuse me for not being a method actor—"

"Capy." He leans back in his chair, pencil dangling between his fingers. "Just... think about something that actually hurt. Something real."

You stare at him.

He stares back, completely oblivious to what he's asking.

"Okay," you say slowly. "What's the scene again?"

"Miki's alone. She had this huge fight with Yuuta—he said some things, she said some things, it got ugly. And he left. And she's sitting there in her flat thinking he's not coming back. That she's finally pushed him away for good." Hoseok's already sketching as he talks, rough lines taking shape on the page. "She spent all this time keeping him at a distance because she was scared of exactly this—of needing someone and losing them—and now it's happened anyway."

Your throat goes tight.

"And the worst part," he continues, completely absorbed now, tongue poking out slightly as he adds detail to Miki's cat ears, "is that she can't even be angry about it. Because she knows she did this. She pushed and pushed until he finally walked away. So now she's just... sitting there. Trying to figure out how you're supposed to miss someone who's still alive."

You don't say anything.

"It's complicated because Miki's whole thing is that she doesn't need anyone, right? She's got this image—confident, in control, doesn't catch feelings. But Yuuta saw through that. He knew her. Like, actually knew her, before she built all those walls." He's gesturing with the pencil now, sketching forgot. "And she got used to that. To having someone who just got it. Got her. And then one day they're strangers and she doesn't know how that happened."

Your jaw goes tight.

"So I need that expression. That specific hurt of—it's not dramatic, it's not loud. It's just this quiet realization that you've lost something you didn't even know you were relying on until it was gone."

You're not listening anymore.

You're thinking about the five years.

About Hoseok leaving Sydney in 1998 with his mum and two suitcases and a promise to call every week. About how those calls got less frequent. Monthly. Every few months. Then just occasional messages when you both happened to be online at the same time.

About the person he was at seventeen—loud and ridiculous and always showing up at your window with some new disaster he'd got himself into—and how you'd just assumed he'd always be like that. That you'd always know him.

About moving to Osaka and seeing his Friendster  profile and staring at it for three hours before finally typing out that first message. Because some part of you was terrified he wouldn't remember you. Or worse—that he'd remember you and not care.

About all the versions of Hoseok you'd missed.

University Hoseok. First-flat-in-Osaka Hoseok. Learning-to-draw-hentai-professionally Hoseok.

The Hoseok who'd got diagnosed with ADHD and figured out how to ask for help and built a life here without you in it.

You'd missed all of it.

And you can't get it back.

Your eyes are burning.

"—which is why the expression has to be subtle, you know? It's not about the tears, it's about what happens before the tears. That moment where you're still holding it together but you can feel it cracking—Capy?"

You blink hard. Try to force it back down.

"Yeah, I'm—"

Your voice cracks.

Shit.

"Did you fall asleep?"

He's turning around in his chair, grin already forming like he's about to tease you for dozing off during his artistic rambling—

His face changes.

The grin disappears. His eyes go wide.

"Oh."

His sketchbook slides off his lap. Hits the floor with a dull thump that neither of you react to.

You're not crying. Not really. Your eyes are just wet and your throat's gone tight and you're biting the inside of your cheek hard enough to taste copper.

"Capy..."

"I'm fine."

"You're not—"

"I said I'm fine."

He's staring at you like you've just materialized out of thin air. Like he's seeing you for the first time.

Then something clicks behind his eyes.

"I'm—I'm so sorry, I didn't mean—you haven't lost me—"

"Who said anything about you?"

It comes out sharper than you meant. Defensive. Your default setting.

"I—I don't know, I just thought—“

"Not everything's about you, you dickhead."

"I know! I know, I'm sorry, I just—" He looks genuinely distressed. "The whole thing about missing someone who knew you, and growing apart, and I—shit, I wasn't thinking—"

"It's fine."

"It's not—"

"Ott." Your voice cracks again and you hate it. "It's fine. You asked me to think about something real. I did. That's the job, yeah?"

There's a long silence.

Momo chirps from her cage on the other room.

"For what it's worth," he says quietly, "I missed you too."

Your throat closes up completely.

"Those five years were—" He stops. Starts again. "I thought about texting you so many times. Like, so many times. I'd write out the message and then delete it because I didn't know what to say anymore. Didn't know if you'd even want to hear from me."

"That's stupid."

"Yeah, probably." He's looking at his hands now. Fingers tapping against his thighs. "But I kept thinking—we grew up. We changed. You had your life in Sydney and I had... whatever this is. And maybe we were just supposed to be childhood friends, you know? Maybe that was it."

"That's really stupid."

"I know."

"Like, properly thick."

"I know."

You bite your lip. Try to hold it together.

Fail.

The sob comes out before you can stop it. Quiet but unmistakable.

Hoseok's head snaps up.

"Capy—"

"Shut up."

"I'm—"

"I said shut up."

Another sob.

You're furious at yourself—at your stupid eyes that won't stop burning, at your throat that won't unclench, at the fact that you're sitting here crying in Jung Hoseok's bedroom like you're sixteen again and he's the only person who knows how to make it stop hurting.

You hear him move. The chair creaking as he stands.

You look up, and he’s standing there, a metre away, arms slightly raised.

Simply offering. Like he always does when it comes to you.

Never taking anything for granted, just offering.

"You don't have to," he says quietly. "But if you want—"

You lean forward. Rest your forehead against his stomach. Your hands come up to grip the sides of his shirt.

His arms come around you immediately. One hand on your back, the other cradling the back of your head, gentle but solid.

"I've got you," he murmurs. "I'm right here."

You sob harder—ugly—and your face is hot and your nose runs and your whole body shakes with it.

And Hoseok just holds you.

Doesn't tell you to stop, doesn’t ask you to explain, doesn’t try to fix it.

He simply stands there in his stupid tee and worn-out jeans, letting you cry into his shirt.

"You smell like sakura mochi," he says eventually. Soft. Almost to himself.

You hiccup. "What?"

"Nothing. Just—you're here. You're actually here."

"Obviously."

"I know, but—" His hand moves slightly, fingers curving against your back. "For five years I thought I'd missed my chance. Thought you'd moved on and built this whole life without me and I'd just be this weird guy from your childhood who you'd be polite to if we ever ran into each other."

"You are a weird guy from my childhood."

"Yeah, but you came back." His voice does something. Gets quieter. "You reached out. You came to Osaka. You're here."

Your fingers tighten in his shirt.

"Not going anywhere," you mumble into his stomach.

"Good."

"Even though you're an idiot."

"Established."

"And your flat smells like burnt rice."

"Rude, but fair."

You pull back slightly. Just enough to wipe your face with the back of your hand. You probably look like a disaster—red eyes, blotchy cheeks, nose running.

Hoseok's looking at you like you're the best thing he's seen all week.

"Better?" he asks.

"No."

"Fair."

He's still got one arm around you. Loose enough that you could pull away if you wanted.

You don't want to.

"Did you get the expression?" you ask. "For your stupid manga?"

He blinks.

Then laughs—surprised and slightly amused. "I wasn't drawing."

"You should've been. That's what I was here for."

"Capy—"

"Professional reference model, remember?"

"You're impossible."

"And you're a sap."

"Also fair."

There's a pause. He's still looking at you like that. Like you've done something remarkable just by existing in his space.

"Want to watch Cowboy Bebop?" he asks suddenly.

You stare at him. "What?"

"Cowboy Bebop. The anime. I've got the DVDs." He gestures vaguely towards the living room. "We could just... sit. Watch a few episodes. Not think about anything."

"I look like shit."

"You look fine."

"I've got snot on my face."

"I've got tissues."

"Your ramen's cold."

"Microwaves exist."

You want to argue more. Want to insist you should go home and be a functional adult who doesn't have emotional breakdowns in other people's flats.

But the thought of going back to your empty flat right now makes something in your chest hurt worse than it already does.

"Fine," you hear yourself say. "But I'm picking the episodes."

His face lights up. "Deal."

He moves towards his desk, grabbing tissues from the box next to his monitor. Hands you several.

You wipe your face. Blow your nose. Try to pull yourself together.

And something suddenly catches your eye—something with a red cover, something that looks like a sketchbook.

But his usual sketchbook has a black cover…

Doesn’t it?

You steal his blanket before he can even think about it.

The grey one—the expensive one he splurged on last year, the one that’s somehow always perfectly warm.

You wrap it around yourself like a cape and tuck your legs under your chin, making yourself as small as possible in the corner of his couch.

Hoseok notices immediately when he comes back from the kitchen. Stops in the doorway, two steaming ramen containers balanced in his hands, and huffs.

“That’s mine.”

“Was yours.”

“I bought that with my own money.”

“Should’ve been faster.” You adjust the blanket tighter around your shoulders. “Also your couch is freezing.”

“It’s November. Everything’s freezing.”

But he’s already sitting down next to you anyway, close enough that his knee bumps yours as he settles in. He hands you one of the containers—yours, the one with extra green onions because he remembered without asking.

You balance it on top of your knees, chopsticks already in hand.

The TV flickers. Opening credits. That jazz saxophone cutting through the silence.

He’s already eating, slurping noodles with zero regard for decorum. Momo’s loose now, perched on the back of the couch behind him, tail twitching, watching the screen like she understands what’s happening.

You eat slower. Let the broth warm you from the inside.

“Why do you like it so much?” you ask eventually. “This show, I mean.”

Episode one.

Hoseok pauses mid-slurp. Finishes chewing. Swallows.

“Dunno.” He’s staring at the screen but you can tell he’s not really watching anymore. “Came back in ‘98 and iit was on telly here. I’d just…” He makes a vague gesture with his chopsticks. “I didn’t know anyone yet. Mum was at work most days and I was trying to find jobs but my Japanese was shit for business stuff even though I grew up speaking it, you know? Like I could talk to Mum fine but formal keigo with strangers—”

He trails off. Takes another bite.

“So I’d come home and watch this.” He chews thoughtfully. “It kept me company. When I was lonely.”

On screen, Spike and Jet are bickering about bounties. The ship drifts through space, aimless.

“That’s kinda sad, Ott.”

“Yeah.” He grins, but it’s crooked. “I was pretty sad back then.”

You continue eating your noodles, wipe your mouth with the back of your hand. Hoseok’s still working through his, slower now.

“Want a beer?” he asks.

“Yeah, alright.”

He gets up, goes into the kitchen. You hear the fridge open. The crack-hiss of cans. He comes back withtwo big Asahis and hands you one before dropping back onto the couch, closer this time.

The blanket’s big enough to cover both of you. You don’t offer. He doesn’t take.

You take a sip of your beer. Cold and bitter and exactly right.

Episode two starts.

You watch for a while. Drink your beer. Try to find the words for the question that’s been sitting in your throat since he mentioned ’98.

“I never asked you properly, I reckon,” you say finally, quietly. “But… why did you leave Sydney?”

Hoseok goes still, stops mid-drink, the can halfway to his mouth.

You keep your eyes on the TV. Easier that way.

“Like, I remember you said you wanted to be with your mum,” you continue, careful, “but I didn’t really get it back then. We were mates and then you were just… gone.”

He sets his beer down. Leans forward, elbows on his knees. Reaches over the arm of the couch and grabs something wedged in the cushions—a small round plushie. Orange cat with a grumpy face. He holds it in both hands.

“You knew about the divorce, yeah?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

Everyone knew. It wasn’t exactly quiet when his parents split.

He squeezes the plushie. “Mum cheated on Dad.”

You nod. You’d heard rumors. Seen Hoseok’s face go tight whenever anyone brought it up at school.

“I was so fucking mad at her,” he says, and there’s old anger in his voice still. “Like, properly furious. Didn’t want anything to do with her for ages. She’d call and I wouldn’t pick up. She’d send letters and I’d bin them. Because—” He squeezes the cat harder. “I don’t fuck with cheating. You don’t do that to someone.”

You take another sip of beer. Don’t interrupt.

“Dad made it ugly with lawyers. He wanted me to stay in Sydney, and Mum thought I should be allowed to decide. And I chose him because all my mates were in Sydney and I was pissed at Mum and Dad actually wanted me there, you know? He fought for me.”

His thumb presses into the plushie’s stomach. Over and over.

“But then…” He stops. Starts again. “Dad tried. He really did. He’d come home earlier, ask about school, actually show up to things. But work always—it always pulled him back. He’d promise to make dinner and then call at seven saying he was stuck in a meeting. He’d say we’d go to the cricket on Saturday and then have to fly to Melbourne for some emergency. He tried but it was never quite…”

“Enough,” you finish quietly.

“Yeah.” He laughs, but there’s no humor in it. “And I couldn’t even be mad because he was trying. Like, genuinely trying. But his best wasn’t—it just wasn’t enough.”

On screen, Jet’s watering his bonsai. Talking about the past.

“Mum kept calling,” Hoseok continues. “Every week. Even when I wouldn’t answer. And eventually I… I gave her a chance. Visited during summer holidays. And she was just—she was there, you know? Like, actually there. Made breakfast, asked about my day, wanted to know what I was drawing. And Osaka felt more like home than Sydney ever did, which was fucked because I grew up in Sydney.”

“But you had your mum here,” you say.

“Yeah. I had Mum.” He sets the beer down, both hands on the plushie now. “I started visiting more. Stayed longer each time. And then Dad met Vanessa and they got married and I knew they wanted a kid and I just—”

He stops. Jaw working.

“I thought maybe it was good. Like, maybe he’d finally have the family thing he wanted. Maybe this time work wouldn’t matter as much. Maybe he’d get it right with the new kid.” His voice cracks slightly. “So I moved here. Told him I was taking a gap year, maybe transferring to a Japanese uni. And he—”

Hoseok’s hands go still.

“He took it as this massive betrayal. After everything with Mum. After the courts, after the custody fight, after he won—I went to her anyway. And from his perspective I get it. I really do. But I couldn’t stay there watching him build a whole new life while I was just—”

“Background noise,” you finish.

“Yeah.”

You shift closer. Let your shoulder press against his.

“When’s the last time you talked to him?”

“Three years.” He says it flat. Simple. Like it doesn’t hurt. “He sends emails sometimes. About my brother. James. He’s three now. Seems like they were successful with the pregnancy.”

Your chest tightens. “Ott…”

“I always wanted a brother,” he says, and his voice does something awful. Goes small. “When I was a kid I’d ask Mum and Dad for one all the time. And now I’ve got one and I can’t—”

He stops. Squeezes the plushie so hard his knuckles go white.

“Dad won’t answer when I reply. He just sends these little updates and I don’t know how to fix it and James doesn’t even know I exist probably, or if he does I’m just this abstract concept of a brother in Japan who—”

His voice cracks properly this time.

You don’t think. Just reach over and take the plushie from his hands before he crushes it completely. Set it on the table. Take his hand instead.

“That’s really shit,” you say quietly.

“Yeah.” He squeezes your hand back. Hard. “It’s pretty shitty.”

He holds your hand for another beat, then two. His thumb brushes the side of your palm—rough skin, callous from holding pens, warm.

“Anyway,” he says, and the word is too loud. Too bright. He pulls his hand back like he’s just realized he was holding yours. “That’s enough heavy shit for a Tuesday.”

He grabs his beer. Downs half of it in one go.

“Yeah,” you say, looking away. “Heavy shit quota filled.”

“Exactly.” He sets the can down with a sharp click. “Now we focus on important things. Like how Jet is definitely the mum of the group.”

“Spike cooks sometimes.”

“Spike makes bell peppers and beef with no beef. That’s not cooking, that’s a cry for help.”

You snort. The tension breaks, just a little.

You pick up your ramen container again. It’s cooled down now, the plastic slightly soft in your hands. You balance it on your knees, chopsticks digging for a piece of pork you know is hiding at the bottom.

Hoseok shifts next to you. Restless. That energy of his that never really settles, always humming just under the skin. He leans over to grab the remote from the coffee table, stretching across your lap to reach it.

“What are you doing?”

“Checking how long is left. I wanna show you the—”

His elbow clips the edge of your container.

“Ott, watch out—”

Too late.

The container tips. Gravity does its thing.

And half a litre of shoyu broth, noodles, and that elusive piece of pork cascades directly onto your chest.

“Fuck!”

“Shit—Capy, I’m so—”

The heat hits you first. It’s not scalding—thank god for slow eaters—but it’s hot enough to make you gasp. Wet warmth soaks through your white work blouse instantly, plastering the fabric to your skin from collarbone to sternum.

“Oh my god,” Hoseok is scrambling, hands hovering, panic written all over his face. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t—shit, is it hot? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” you hiss, grabbing a napkin from the table and dabbing frantically at the disaster zone. “Just—wet. And smelling like pork and soy.”

He’s rolled his sleeves up. Both of them. Shoved them to his elbows in one quick, efficient motion so they wouldn't get wet, and now his forearms are right there.

“Here, let me—”

He grabs the hand towel without thinking—because he never thinks, does he? He just does—he reaches out and starts scrubbing at your shirt.

“It’s gonna stain,” he’s saying, frantic, rubbing the cloth against your chest. “Soy sauce stains like a bitch, we need to get cold water on it or maybe dish soap, Mum always said dish soap for oil—”

His hand is firm. Moving in quick, circular motions.

Right over your left breast.

You freeze.

When the fuck did his forearms get like that?

Not huge. Not bodybuilder nonsense. Just—defined. The tendons shifting under skin as his hands move, the veins visible along the inside of his wrists, the way the muscle flexes when he presses the cloth against your shirt.

You're staring. You know you're staring. You can't stop.

He could probably pin you down with one hand. Just—grab both your wrists, hold them above your head, spin you around and press you into the couch cushions with zero effort.

Your face goes nuclear.

“I think if we soak it now we can save it,” he mumbles, scrubbing harder. “Might need to use the stain remover I got for the ink spills, but—”

His knuckles brush the underside of your breast.

Your breath catches. A small, involuntary hitch in your throat that sounds suspiciously like a squeak.

Hoseok freezes. Looks up.

You’re staring at him. He’s staring at you.

And his hand is still on your boob.

You should say something. You should make a joke. You should shove him off and call him a pervert and laugh it off like you always do.

His gaze drops, slides from your eyes down to where his hand is resting, and his eyes immediately widen.

Because your shirt is wet. Soaked through. Translucent.

And underneath the sensible white cotton of your Synergy International work blouse, you are wearing the pale pink lace bra you bought on sale three weeks ago because the sales assistant said it made you look ‘delicate.’

It’s not a work bra. It’s a ‘I feel like shit and want to know I’m wearing something pretty underneath the corporate beig’ bra.

It’s lace. It’s sheer. And right now, thanks to the physics of wet fabric, it is entirely visible.

You can feel your face heating up. Not the slow burn from earlier—this is a flash fire. Your ears, your neck, your cheeks. You must look like a tomato.

Hoseok swallows. You see his throat click.

His eyes trace the line of lace. The curve of your breast pressed against the fabric. The way your nipple is hardening against the cold air (and his warm hand, oh god, his hand).

He looks back up at your face.

Then back down.

Then to the side, at the wall, like the wall is suddenly the most interesting thing in the universe.

Then back to your chest.

“I—” He starts. Voice rough. Clears his throat. “I should—”

He snatches his hand back like he’s been burned.

“Sorry,” he chokes out. “I—uh. The stain. I was just—”

He scrambles backward on the couch, catching his foot on the coffee table leg with a loud thud.

"痛っ、くそっ！" (Ow—fuck!) He stumbles, hopping on one leg, clutching his shin.

Which should not be attractive. It's objectively not attractive.

Except somehow the way he swears in Japanese—voice rough and breathless and pained—does something to your brain that you refuse to examine.

You wonder what other situations would make him curse like that.

Stop it.

Stop.

“Are you okay?” Your voice is an octave higher than usual.

Why is it higher? Stop that.

“Fine! I’m fine!” He’s standing now, clutching his shin, face roughly the same colour as the plushie he was strangling earlier. “Just—shin. Table. Classic. You know me.”

He laughs. It sounds hysterical.

“Right,” you say.

You look down at your chest.

It’s a disaster. Brown splotches. Wet fabric clinging to every curve. The pink lace grinning through like a neon sign saying ’LOOK AT ME’

You cross your arms over your chest immediately.

“I need to change,” you mumble into your shoulder.

“Yeah!” Hoseok squeaks. “Yeah. Change. Good idea. Wet clothes. Bad. Pneumonia. Not on my watch.”

He spins around. Marches towards his bedroom with the stiff-legged gait of a man who has forgot how knees work.

“I’ll get you—something. A shirt. Hoodie. I have hoodies.”

He disappears into the bedroom. You hear drawers opening and closing. A thud. A muffled curse. More rummaging.

You sit there on the couch, arms crossed, staring at the paused TV screen. Spike Spiegel is frozen mid-kick.

Your heart is hammering against your ribs.

Thud-thud-thud-thud.

Did he just—?

He definitely looked.

He didn’t just look. He stared.

And he didn’t make a joke. He didn’t say ‘nice undies, Capy’ or ‘scandalous’ or any of the things seventeen-year-old Hoseok would have said.

He just went red and ran away.

Which means…

Shut up. Don’t think about it. He was embarrassed because he spilled soup on you. That’s it. That’s all.

Hoseok reappears. He’s holding a black hoodie in both hands, presenting it like a sacred offering. He’s staring at the hoodie intently, refusing to look anywhere near you.

“Here,” he says to the floor. “It’s clean. I washed it last week.”

You stand up. Keep one arm across your chest. Reach out with the other.

“Thanks.”

Your fingers brush his as you take the hoodie.

He flinches. Actually flinches.

“Bathroom’s free,” he says quickly, stepping back. “Obviously. Since I’m here. And not in there.”

“Right.”

“I’ll—I’ll clean this up.” He gestures vaguely at the spilled ramen on the floor. “The mess.”

“Okay.”

You flee.

The bathroom door shuts behind you with a click that feels like safety. You lean back against it and exhale, long and shaky.

Jesus Christ.

You look in the mirror.

You look insane. Your hair is half-falling out of its clip. Your face is bright red. And your shirt is practically see-through, the delicate pink lace of your bra visible in high definition.

“You’re an idiot,” you whisper to your reflection. “Why did you wear this? Why today?”

You peel the wet shirt off. The fabric is cold and clammy now, smelling of soy sauce and shame. You drop it in the sink.

Standing there in just your bra and work trousers, you catch sight of yourself again. The lace against your skin. The way your breasts look in it—fuller, lifted.

You remember his eyes. The way they’d tracked the curve. The way his hand had felt, heavy and warm, right there.

A shiver runs through you that has nothing to do with the cold.

Stop it.

You pull the hoodie over your head.

It swallows you. The sleeves hang past your fingertips. The hem drops to mid-thigh. It's old and soft and clearly one of his favourites—the cotton worn thin in places, the drawstrings frayed at the tips.

And it smells like yuzu.

Not faintly. Not a hint. The full thing—bright and sharp and warm, baked into every fibre. His shampoo, his detergent, his skin.

It's everywhere. Surrounding you. Sinking into you.

You bring the collar up to your nose without thinking.

Inhale.

Fuck.

It smells like him. Like properly, unmistakably him. And it smells like—

That rainy day. Year 10. He was trying to impress Kenya Adebayo, walking next to her under the awning after school, doing that thing where he laughed too loud at everything she said.

But you were shivering behind them because you hadn't brought a jacket and the rain had come out of nowhere, and Kenya was cold too, and he'd looked between the two of you for exactly one second before pulling his hoodie off and shoving it at you.

"You first," he'd said. "Best mate privilege. Non-negotiable."

Kenya had looked annoyed. You'd looked at the hoodie. He'd looked at you like it was obvious—like there was never a question, not really.

He still smells like that. Like every stupid hoodie he ever lent you. Like yuzu and warmth and a decision he made before he even had to think about it.

You press your face deeper into the collar. Breathe in again. Slower. Let it fill your chest.

Your eyes drift to the mirror.

You're standing in Jung Hoseok's bathroom, wearing his oversized hoodie, face buried in the collar like a cat rubbing against its owner's scent to claim territory.

You jerk back so fast you nearly crack your head on the towel rack.

Are you actually insane? What are you doing? What is WRONG with you?

You drop the hoodie collar. Stand up very straight. Look yourself in the eye with the full force of your own contempt.

Embarrassing.

Right. You're staying over. That's—that's been established. It's late and you're tired and your shirt is ruined and you're not trekking back to Tennoji at this hour. So you might as well get comfortable.

You shimmy out of your work trousers. Fold them. Set them on top of the wet shirt.

Hoodie and bare legs. You look ridiculous. You look like every girl in every shojo manga Hoseok's ever made fun of.

Whatever. You need pants.

You open the bathroom door.

Hoseok's crouched by the coffee table, wiping up the ramen spill with paper towels. He's got three stacked in each hand, scrubbing at the table surface with way more focus than the task requires.

"Ott."

He doesn't look up. "Yep."

"Can you lend me some pants? Pyjama ones or whatever."

He looks up.

His mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.

His eyes land on your face. Drop. Snap back up. Drop again—to the hoodie, to where it ends at your thighs, to your bare legs—and then he's staring at the coffee table like it holds the secrets of the universe.

"Yep," he says again. Higher pitched this time. "Yep, yeah, sure, one sec—"

He stands. Trips over absolutely nothing. Catches himself on the back of the couch. Doesn't look at you as he disappears into his bedroom.

Comes back holding a pair of grey drawstring trackies at arm's length, eyes fixed on a spot approximately two metres to your left.

"Here."

"Cheers."

Back to the bathroom. Pants on. They're too long, pooling at your ankles, and you have to roll the waistband twice to keep them up.

His clothes. You're wearing his clothes. Head to toe. His hoodie, his pants, his scent wrapped around you like—

Stop. Stop it. Go sit on the couch and watch Cowboy Bebop like a normal person.

You walk back out.

Hoseok's sitting on the couch, fresh paper towels in hand, Bebop still playing. He's cleaned up the spill. He's also moved to the far end of the couch, which is notable, because this couch isn't big enough for ‘far ends’ to mean anything.

You sit down. Tuck your legs under you again. Reach for the blanket.

Silence. Spike's on screen, being cool and damaged.

Your stomach growls.

Not a polite little rumble. A proper, full-bodied, I haven't eaten since that sabotaged ramen growl that seems to echo off the thin walls of his flat.

Hoseok's eyes slide towards you. His lips press together. You can see the grin fighting to break through—the way his cheek twitches, the way he bites the inside of his mouth.

"Don't," you warn.

"Didn't say anything."

"Your face is saying it."

"My face is innocent."

Your stomach growls again. Louder. Like it's making a point.

You look away. Tug the blanket higher. Study a very interesting spot on the wall.

"Do you…" You clear your throat. "Have you got any… yubeshi? By any chance."

He blinks.

"Yubeshi?"

"Yeah. From that café. You had some the other day, I thought maybe you—" You're rambling. You don't ramble. "Never mind. Forget it."

"No, I—yeah, actually." He's already getting up, moving towards the kitchen. "I think there's some in the—yeah, hang on."

You pull the collar of his hoodie up over your nose.

Just because you're cold.

That's all.

…Sure.

He rattles around in the kitchen for a bit, cupboard doors opening and closing, the fridge seal sucking and releasing.

There’s a muffled, triumphant “aha,” then the crinkle of plastic.

Momo watches you from the back of the couch, beady eyes unblinking. Judging. Obviously.

Hoseok comes back with a small plastic container in one hand and a fork in the other—no plates, because of course—and drops down next to you. The cushions dip under his weight, shoving you half a centimetre closer, not that there’s anywhere else to go in a thirty-something square metre flat with furniture crammed into every available corner.

“Told you,” he says. “Yubeshi delivery.”

He peels the lid back with his teeth. The smell hits first—bright yuzu and chewy rice sweetness. Your stomach gives an embarrassingly enthusiastic lurch.

You lower the hoodie from your face, but keep the blanket tight, like you’re negotiating with the cold.

He spears a piece with the fork and holds it out, halfway between you.

You squint at it. “That’s not how this works. Hand it over.”

“What, you don’t trust my piloting skills?” He wiggles the fork. “Say ‘ah’.”

“Absolutely not.”

He just keeps holding it there, eyes wide, fake-innocent.

“Come on,” Hoseok sing-songs. “Open up. Be a good—”

You glare.

He stops. Clears his throat. “…good sport. Good friend. Completely normal friend.”

Still. You’re tired, hungry, and the fork is right there.

You lean forward and take the piece straight off it, lips brushing metal, teeth closing down. The yubeshi is perfect—chewy, citrusy, sweet enough to make your eyes half-close for a second.

“Mm.”

He looks unreasonably pleased with himself. “See? Piloting. Ten out of ten accuracy.”

“Congratulations, you learned to aim a fork.”

He spears another piece. This time when he holds it out with his fingers, you’re already moving, not really thinking about it. Your eyes stay on the TV. You lean in, bite down.

Some of the glossy sauce smears over his fingers. You taste it as you pull back, tongue catching the last of it without really paying attention.

He withdraws his hand. You notice he’s still got a streak of syrup on his thumb.

Before your brain gets a chance to file any objections, you reach out, catch his wrist, and lean in again.

You don’t think sexy. You don’t think anything at all.

You just… lick. Dragging your tongue across the pad of his thumb, catching the citrus-sweet stickiness, cleaning him off like you’d do with your own hand if you couldn’t be bothered to grab a napkin.

You let go, sit back, thumb of his hand slipping from between your fingers.

“Messy,” you mutter, more to yourself than to him, already chewing.

It takes a beat before you realise the room’s gone weirdly quiet.

You look up.

Hoseok hasn’t moved.

His eyes are half-lidded, fixed on his own thumb like it’s grown a second head. His lips are parted just a little. The tip of his tongue darts out to wet them, slow and unconscious.

He looks… dazed.

Your brain catches up with your body about five seconds late.

Oh.

Oh, shit.

You just licked his thumb.

You’re about to mumble something—anything—to brush it off when he finally drags his gaze away from his hand and up to you.

Then, gravel-rough, almost like the words sneak out past his filter, he murmurs, still looking at his thumb:

“…Think you missed a spot.”

The bottom drops out of your stomach.

It’s not what he says so much as how he says it—low, husky, like the line came straight from whatever part of his brain is currently not supervised by common sense. Like he’s talking to Miki, not you. Like this is a panel that should be shrink-wrapped and slapped with an 18+ sticker.

You stare at him.

Your heartbeat slams against your ribs, stupid and loud.

He realises what he’s just said a second too late. His eyes flick to yours, wide, like he wants to drag the sentence back into his mouth and swallow it whole.

You could laugh it off, call him a pervert, roll your eyes, tell him his brain’s made of hentai now.

You don’t.

You feel your lashes lower, like they’re heavy. Your mouth goes a little soft around the edges.

Fine, then.

If that’s the game.

You turn slightly on the couch, angle your body towards him. The blanket slips down one shoulder. You reach out again, fingers closing gently around his wrist.

The pulse there jumps under your thumb.

You keep your eyes on his, steady. Try on that look you’ve practiced for Miki in the mirror, the one that lives somewhere between bored and hungry.

“This spot?” you ask, voice coming out lower than you meant.

You bring his hand closer, slow. His gaze tracks the movement like he’s powerless not to.

Your tongue meets his skin again, this time careful. You drag the tip along the inside edge of his thumb, where the knuckle meets the pad. There’s barely any syrup left. Doesn’t matter. You trace there anyway, like you’re following the outline of something important.

His breath stutters, tiny hitch in his chest, air seems to catch halfway out.

You keep going. Just once, maybe twice. Then you pull back, releasing his hand, and lick your own lips slowly, chasing the lingering sweetness.

Like a cat cleaning its mouth after stealing cream.

His eyes stay locked on your mouth the entire time. His knees draw in a fraction, like his body’s trying to fold around something. The fork wobbles in his other hand.

He exhales, shaky.

“That was—”

He cuts himself off, jaw flexing. Looks away so abruptly it’s almost comical, like if he doesn’t find a neutral object in the room to stare at immediately, he’s going to combust.

Momo picks that exact moment to chitter, a scolding little sound from the back of the couch.

Hoseok practically flinches.

“Oh. Right. Yeah. Momo.” His voice jumps an octave, veers hard into flustered. “Uh—she—she wants attention. That’s her ‘you’re ignoring me, peasant’ noise.”

He turns, very intentionally away from you, and reaches back to scritch gently under her chin. Momo leans into it, offended dignity forgot for the sake of head scratches.

You breathe. Try to get your heart back under control. Act normal. The hoodie suddenly feels too warm, too close. You wish the couch would open up and swallow you.

He focuses on Momo like she’s a lifeline. “Jealous, huh? Yeah, yeah, I know, you’re the real star here.”

It’s absurdly transparent.

You could call him on it.

You don’t.

You’re too busy pretending your tongue didn’t just have Opinions about his skin.

After a moment, he drops back against the cushions, shoulders sinking a little.

You clear your throat. “So.”

“So,” he echoes.

Cowboy Bebop continues to play to absolutely no audience.

You grab for the nearest safe topic like you’re scrambling for a handhold.

“By the way.” You nudge his thigh with your knee under the blanket. “I told my lot about you today.”

He frowns. “Your… lot?”

“Work idiots. Yuki, Amelie, Brianna, Adao.” You roll your eyes. “They’re obsessed with meeting you and Yoongi now. Apparently the ‘golden retriever’ and the ‘cat-looking bartender’ made quite an impression.”

He blinks. “Wait, what?”

You sigh. “We were talking about going out tomorrow. Amelie lost her mind when Adao mentioned ‘Mr Kim’. She wants him there so badly it’s getting embarrassing.”

Hoseok laughs, the tension in his shoulders loosening a notch.

You shift, tucking your feet under you, blanket slipping so your bare toes brush his thigh through his jeans.

You try to pretend you don’t notice the contact.

Your skin sure as hell does.

“So,” you continue, “we’re doing a group thing, probably. Drinks or I don’t know, whatever they decide. You should come. Bring Yoongi. Let them drool over him in person instead of through my horror stories.”

“Trauma dump?” he protests. “You make it sound like I’d bring you to Midnight Keys for exposure therapy.”

“You’re totally the type to bring me there to bully me into karaoke.”

“That too.”

He thinks about it, chewing the inside of his cheek.

“Yoongi hates meeting new people.”

“Brianna and Amelie aren’t people, they’re forces of nature. He’ll be fine.”

Hoseok snorts. “Yeah, that’s what I’m afraid of.”

“Come on.” You bump his leg again. “It’s not like you’ve got a packed social calendar. Freelance hentai man, remember? My coworkers could be your pens.”

“Rude.” He pretends to be offended. “I’ll have you know I’m very in demand.”

“By printers and deadlines.”

“And you,” he points out. “You keep showing up like a bad smell.”

You sniff dramatically. “That’s the ramen.”

He laughs, softer this time.

Then, he nods. “Okay. Yeah. I’ll drag Yoongi. He’ll secretly enjoy himself. That’s his whole brand.”

You file away the way he says ’yeah’—no hesitation. No ‘if I’m free’. Just assumes he’ll be there if you are.

Warmth curls low in your chest that has nothing to do with yubeshi.

The show rolls into another episode. You shift again, resettling. The couch springs squeak. The blanket rustles.

His thigh is a steady line of heat along your calves now.

Japanese filters through the speakers—Spike talking, Faye snapping back. You catch scattered words; your brain’s too tired to string them together.

Thank god for English subtitles.

Formal meetings are one thing; slang in anime is another.

Hoseok chuckles at something on-screen.

You tilt your head, watch his profile more than the show. “You always understand all of that?”

He shrugs. “Most of it. Some of it’s old slang. But yeah.”

“You’re so fucking lucky,” you grumble. “I sit in meetings that are supposed to be only in English all day catching, like, thirty percent and guessing the rest.”

“You’re doing fine.”

“I’m doing barely not drowning. Not the same.” You roll your eyes. “You switch between languages like it’s nothing. It’s disgusting, actually.”

“Wow. Thank you.”

“Don’t get a big head.” You hesitate, then let the next bit slip out before you can overthink it. “It’s… kind of hot, though.”

Silence.

You realise what you’ve just said a beat too late.

You feel him go still beside you. Not visibly, not if you weren’t pressed this close, but you are. Every muscle seems to pause.

“…What?” he says.

You focus very intently on the TV. “The Japanese. When you talk. It’s—whatever. Forget it.”

He doesn’t forget it.

“You think it’s… hot,” he repeats, like he’s testing the shape of the word in his mouth.

You wish the cushion would smother you.

“It’s just—” You wave a hand, vague. “Brain stuff. Bilingual. It’s a thing.”

“Brain stuff,” he echoes faintly.

You risk a glance up.

He’s looking at you with pink ears and a parted mouth.

“…Really?” he asks, quiet.

You swallow. “Don’t make it weird.”

“I’m not making it—” He breaks off, laughs under his breath, helpless. Rubs the back of his neck. “Just—no one’s called my Japanese hot before.”

“Plenty of people probably have,” you mutter. “You just weren’t paying attention.”

“Trust me,” he says dryly, “I’d remember.”

You stifle a yawn. It still escapes, jaw cracking.

Your eyelids feel heavy. The day’s weight catches up all at once—the restructure announcement, the report, your mum’s text you’re pointedly ignoring, the thumb situation, of all things.

Your body decides unilaterally that it’s done.

“Tired?” he asks.

“No,” you lie, words slurring just a little.

He gives you that look. The one that says he’s known you since you had braces and a bad fringe; you can’t bluff him.

Without comment, he shifts, stretching one leg out along the couch, bending the other.

Then he pats his thigh twice, casual.

“C’mere,” he says. “Head.”

You stare. “What?”

“Pillow upgrade.” He pats his leg again like he’s summoning a cat. “Couch is lumpy.”

“That’s your fault for buying it off the side of the road.”

“And yet you keep sleeping on it.”

“That’s because I’m poor, not because it’s comfy.”

He just looks at you, patient. Hand still resting on his thigh, palm up now, like an invitation.

You hesitate.

It’s stupid. It’s him. You’ve sprawled all over each other before. Back when you were both idiots and the world was smaller and simpler.

“Take the damn pillow, Capy,” he says softly. “You’re falling over.”

You huff. “If your leg goes numb, I’m not helping.”

“Such compassion.”

You ease sideways under the blanket, twisting your body until you can lower your head carefully onto his lap. One arm folds under your chest; the other rests loosely against your stomach.

His thigh is soft under your cheek. You can feel the shift of his muscles as he adjusts, making space for you, spreading his knees just enough to cradle the weight of your head comfortably.

A hand hovers above your hair, uncertain.

Then his fingers settle gently against your scalp, just behind your ear. Slow, exploratory strokes.

Not really a massage, not quite a pat.

More like—

“Why are you petting me like a cat?” you mumble into his hoodie.

He scoffs. “Because you’re basically one now.”

You make a low, unimpressed noise. “Speciesist.”

“Miki,” he elaborates, thumb tracing idle circles against your skull. “Cat-girl. Ears. Tail. Full transformation. This is just method acting.”

“You’re an idiot.”

“Mm.”

His fingers keep moving, scratching lightly at your scalp, nails just enough to drag, not enough to hurt. It sends these little lines of warmth down the back of your neck, through your shoulders. Your body loosens by degrees, tension bleeding out into the cushions.

“You know,” he says after a while, quieter, “it’s not just a cat thing.”

You crack one eye open. “What?”

“Aunt Pat told me,” he continues, voice going soft around her name. “Back in Year 11. When you got that flu and disappeared for a week.”

You remember that. Fever, aching joints, the world shrinking to your bedroom and the shape of the bucket beside your bed.

You also remember him turning up at your door almost every day with homework and stupid comics. Sitting on the floor because your aunt wouldn’t let him too close in case he caught it.

“She said she’d been doing this since you were tiny,” he goes on, fingers threading slowly through your hair now, careful not to tug. “Said it helps you sleep.”

You want to argue. You don’t. Your body is already betraying you, sinking heavier against him, eyelids drooping.

“Traitor,” you tell your own brain.

He huffs a laugh. His hand moves to the crown of your head, fingertips pressing in small, firm circles. It’s… embarrassingly good. The right kind of pressure, not too light, not ticklish. Enough to ground you without setting off your nerves.

“Figured I’d try it,” he says softly. “Back then. ‘Cause you looked… wrecked. Thought maybe if it worked when you were five, it’d work when you were sixteen.”

“Did it?” you mumble.

“Yeah.” His palm smooths down, thumb tracing the curve of your skull. “You passed out sitting up. Scared the shit out of me. Aunt Pat just laughed and said, ‘See? Told you.’”

You can picture it. Aunt Pat at the doorway, fond and tired, watching this lanky teenage boy tentative behind you, hand in your hair.

The thought punches something loose in your chest.

“Helps me too, you know,” he says after a while, like he’s talking more to your hair than to you. “When you’re here.”

You make a questioning noise. Or try to. It comes out more like a sleepy hum.

“Sleeping.” His fingers pause, then resume, a little self-conscious now. “I sleep better. When you’re on the couch. Or the futon. Just… in the flat.”

Dangerous words, said in the soft, late-night register that makes everything feel truer.

You want to crack a joke. Tell him that’s pathetic. That he should get a hobby. That you snore and it’s probably just white noise.

Your mouth doesn’t cooperate.

“Same,” you hear yourself mumble. It slips out, unguarded, half-submerged. “Don’t like… empty flat.”

His hand stills for a heartbeat.

Then he resumes the rhythm, slower now.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “I know.”

Your body’s already gone heavy-limbed and useless. The hoodie smells like yuzu and him, the blanket like detergent and old ink. His thigh is warm under your cheek, solid, anchoring you to this ridiculous, cramped little couch in this ridiculous, cramped little Osaka flat that somehow feels more like home than your own bed.

Your thoughts start to fray at the edges. Words blur. The room tilts in that soft way that means gravity’s winning.

His fingers card through your hair once more, smoothing it back from your forehead.

“Go to sleep, Capy,” he murmurs.

You mean to tell him to piss off.

You don’t.

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© jungkoode 2025

It’s not what he says so much as how he says it—low, husky, like the line came straight from whatever part of his brain is currently not supervised by common sense.

Like he’s talking to Miki, not you.

Like this is a panel that should be shrink-wrapped and slapped with an 18+ sticker.

Your heartbeat slams against your ribs, stupid and loud.

He realises what he’s just said a second too late. His eyes flick to yours, wide, like he wants to drag the sentence back into his mouth and swallow it whole.

You could laugh it off, call him a pervert, roll your eyes, tell him his brain’s made of hentai now.

You don’t.

You feel your lashes lower, like they’re heavy. Your mouth goes a little soft around the edges.

Fine, then.

If that’s the game.

You turn slightly on the couch, angle your body towards him. The blanket slips down one shoulder. You reach out again, fingers closing gently around his wrist.

The pulse there jumps under your thumb.

You keep your eyes on his, steady. Try on that look you’ve practiced for Miki in the mirror, the one that lives somewhere between bored and hungry.

“This spot?” you ask, voice coming out lower than you meant.

Your tongue meets his skin again, dragging the tip along the inside edge of his thumb, where the knuckle meets the pad.

➜ Coming: When we reach 40 votes on ch 8 on Wattpad. <3

Not in the Hollow Crest way, where skin showing means freedom of movement. This is Valiskan obscene—exposure designed to make you look available while maintaining plausible deniability about intent.

The fabric is something called starweave—actual crystalline threading woven into midnight silk that catches light and throws it back in fragmented patterns.

It clings. Everywhere.

From the high collar that wraps your throat, down over your chest where the material goes sheer enough to suggest rather than conceal, then pools at your hips before splitting in a slit that runs up to mid-thigh.

Your back is completely exposed. Just bare skin from neck to the base of your spine, where the fabric finally deigns to exist again.

The color is deep indigo—Valis Core's signature shade—shot through with silver threading that forms patterns you don't recognize. Probably some cultural significance you're supposed to understand but don't because you're not actually from here.

You're just wearing their colors like a fucking flag.

"Stop fidgeting," Tara snaps from behind you.

You bare your teeth at the mirror. "Stop touching me."

"I'm adjusting." Her hands yank at the back of the dress, pulling it lower. Making more skin visible. "If you'd stand still for five seconds—"

"If you pull that any lower, my entire ass is gonna be out."

"The design requires proper positioning—"

"The design requires me to look like a whore." You twist away from her grip. "What's next, you gonna paint my tits and call it formal wear?"

Tara's mouth flattens. "You should be grateful Commander Kim selected something tasteful. The original design was far more revealing."

"Oh, fantastic. He picked the modest prostitute look instead of the ambitious one."

"You're being vulgar—"

"I'm being honest."

You gesture at the mirror. At the way the dress makes you look like some Valis Core fantasy of what a matched partner should be.

Polished. Displayed. 

Claimed.

"This entire thing is political theater, and I'm the prop."

"You're the match." Tara moves around you, assessing with critical eyes that make your skin itch. "100% compatibility. Unprecedented pairing. Of course they want to showcase—"

"Showcase. Right. That's a nice word for 'parade around like a trained animal.'"

She stops. Actually looks at you for the first time since this whole nightmare started.

And something in her expression shifts. Hardens.

"I can't believe someone like you got matched to Commander Kim."

You meet her eyes in the mirror.

She looks Valiskan—the height, the bone structure, the pale skin that screams Core genetics.

Everything about her reads pure bloodline. Proper. Acceptable.

Everything you're not.

"Yeah?" Your voice drops. "Well, neither can I. But here we are."

"You should be honored," she continues, and there's real bitterness threading through now. "Do you have any idea how many would kill to be in your position?"

"Yeah? Name one."

"Me." Her hands move to the dress again, yanking. "I would. Any of us would be grateful for—"

"For what?" You twist away from her grip. "For being matched to the architect of the death lottery? For getting dressed up so Consortium elite can admire the Algorithm's latest science project?"

"You don't deserve him—"

"You're right. I don't." You step closer. "I deserve to gut him. Slowly. While you watch."

Her face goes white. Then red. Then she's grabbing the dress again, yanking the fabric with enough force that you stumble.

"Stop—"

"The back needs to sit properly—"

"I said stop—"

Your hand shoots out. Swats hers away sharper than intended, harder.

And her eyes flash.

Not violet. Not the pure Valis purple you've been seeing everywhere since you got dragged to Core.

Red.

You freeze.

Because you know that glint. You’ve seen it in Jungkook’s eyes. You’ve seen it plenty in your childhood. Know exactly what it means.

Mournwell.

She's Mournwell.

Or half, at least. Enough that her eyes betray her under stress. Enough that she's been hiding it behind Valiskan features and proper behavior and—

"Tara."

You both freeze.

Namjoon stands in the doorway.

And fuck—

He looks—

Your brain stutters. Reroutes. Tries to process what you're seeing and fails because your body's already responding in ways you absolutely hate.

He's wearing formal Consortium attire. Not the standard tactical gear. Actual formal wear.

The jacket is structured—sharp lines and geometric weaves that emphasize his shoulders and height. Black base fabric with indigo accents that catch light like liquid, threaded with what looks like actual starlight. Platinum clasps at the collar and cuffs, engraved with symbols you don't recognize but that probably mean something hierarchical.

The pants fit. Really fit. Enough that you can see the way his thighs shift when he moves, the way fabric outlines muscle and—

Stop it.

His hair is styled back from his face, revealing the white streak fully. Making those purple eyes even more pronounced against pale skin that seems to glow.

He looks like authority.

Like power.

Like everything you've spent your life learning to destroy.

"Commander Kim." Tara's voice shifts immediately. Respectful. She folds her left arm behind her back—Valiskan sign of deference—and bows her head slightly. "The match is nearly prepared."

"The match has a name," you mutter.

Namjoon's gaze shifts to you.

And—

He stops.

Just for a second. Maybe less.

But you catch it. The way his eyes track down your body then back up. The way his pupils dilate just enough to be visible.

Then he blinks. Recalibrates. Expression smoothing back to neutral like nothing happened.

"Tara," he says, and his voice carries warmth you didn't know he was capable of. "Take some time off. Your duties have been executed excellently."

Tara blinks. "But Commander, the styling isn't complete—"

"It's sufficient." He tilts his head slightly. Almost... gentle. "You've worked three rotations without rest. The preparation halls can function without you for one Wane."

"I should stay to ensure—"

"Tara."

It's not harsh. But it’s firm.

"Rest."

Her mouth opens. Closes.

Then she nods, that red glint flickering in her eyes again before she gathers her supplies with quick movements and exits through the side door.

Leaving you alone with him.

In a room full of mirrors that show every angle of how exposed you are in this fucking dress.

Namjoon doesn't move from the doorway. Just stands there, one hand resting on a tablet, attention seemingly fixed on the screen.

Not looking at you.

Which pisses you off more than staring would.

"Something wrong, Warden?" You turn, letting the slit in the dress expose your leg fully. "Not what you ordered?"

"It's appropriate."

"Appropriate for what? A brothel?"

His mouth curves. Barely. "For a formal Consortium gathering. Which you are required to attend."

"Required to attend dressed like—" You gesture at yourself. "Like this?"

"Yes."

"And if I refuse?"

"You won't."

The certainty in his voice makes your hands curl into fists.

Because he's right. You can’t afford to refuse.

"What are you doing here?" you demand. "Thought formal preparation was supposed to be communal. Where's your bonding circle or whatever the fuck Valiskans do?"

"Completed earlier." He glances at the tablet screen, thumb moving across the interface. "I'm conducting final security review for tonight's attendee list."

"Of course you are."

You should leave him alone. Should finish whatever preparation bullshit is expected and get this nightmare evening over with.

Instead you move closer.

He's tall enough that even standing right next to him, you can't see the tablet screen properly. You rise onto your toes, leaning in to get a better angle—

The movement brings you into his personal space.

Close enough to smell winter storms and that particular snowy scent that accompanies him everywhere.

His posture shifts. Subtle adjustment that might be awareness or might be discomfort.

You peer at the screen.

Guest list. Names in Altsprek with Consortium designation codes. Approximately forty attendees authorized for tonight's celebration. Security clearance levels noted beside each entry.

Namjoon's hand hovers over one name.

Your eyes catch it just before his thumb moves.

Kim Seokjin - Clearance Level 6 - Independent Contractor

There's a pause. Maybe half a second where his thumb just... stops. Hovering over the entry like he's reconsidering.

Then he swipes.

The name gets flagged. Moved to the unauthorized column.

Crossed off the guest list.

"Old friend?" you ask quietly.

His gaze stays on the screen. "Old nothing."

His tongue clicks against the roof of his mouth. Dismissive.

The sound hits you like a backhand—not because it hurts, but because of what it means. That tiny, involuntary noise Valiskans make when something’s beneath their attention. When a question doesn’t even warrant the energy of a proper deflection.

He just tsk’d you.

Like you’re a child pulling at his sleeve.

“Right,” you say, voice going flat. “Old nothing. That’s why your thumb hovered for three seconds before you crossed him off.”

“My thumb hovered because the interface lagged.” He doesn’t look up. “Consortium networks experience latency spikes during high-security event preparation. If you understood basic systems architecture, you’d know that.”

“Right. Latency spike. On a local device running a cached guest list.” You tilt your head. “Must be a real shit network you’ve built if it can’t handle a swipe function.”

His jaw shifts. Barely.

Good.

“Your technical knowledge,” he says slowly, still staring at the tablet, “is impressive for someone who learned systems theory from smuggled data chips in mining tunnels. But it’s still mining tunnel knowledge. It has limitations you’re not equipped to identify.”

Your nails bite into your palms.

“Funny. My mining tunnel knowledge has cost your program six months of research data, four compromised facilities, and—what was it—forty-three confirmed casualties?” You smile. All teeth. “How many casualties has your Valis Core education produced, Warden? Oh, wait. You don’t count those. You call them necessary sacrifices for optimal biological continuation.”

He sets the tablet down, places it face-down on the surface beside him, aligns its edge with the table’s corner—perfectly parallel—then folds his hands behind his back.

And looks at you.

“You have food in your teeth,” he says.

You blink.

“What?”

“Protein residue. Left canine.” He turns back to the tablet. “You might want to address that before the gathering.”

Your tongue sweeps your teeth immediately—automatic, furious—and finds nothing. Nothing.

He lied.

The fucker lied to make you check.

To make you care about something as stupid as your appearance in front of him, even for half a second.

And you fell for it.

“Cute,” you manage, but the word comes out strangled.

He smiles then—that thin, polished little curve of his mouth that looks almost courteous until you catch what’s underneath it. Satisfaction. Amusement. The private kind. The kind that says he knows exactly where he cut and is pleased with the depth.

He scrolls again, maddeningly calm. “You spent four minutes explaining why I should fear your tactical record. I negated the entire performance with six words.”

“You mean you lied.”

“I mean I redirected.”

You stare at the side of his face. “God, you are such a smug piece of shit.”

His expression does not change, which only makes the faint menace in it worse. “And yet your pulse accelerated.”

“Because murder is cardio.”

“Mm.”

That little sound. That tiny, infuriating hum of acknowledgment.

Then his gaze lifts. His eyes travel from your shoulder to the exposed line of your spine, down to where the dress still sits higher than Tara wanted, clinging over the upper swell of your ass instead of dipping low enough to bare it the way she kept insisting it should.

“Your styling remains incomplete,” he says mildly.

You bark out a laugh. “Oh, now you care?”

“I cared when I entered the room. I merely deprioritized it in favor of security review.”

“You mean in favor of being annoying.”

He glances at you. “If that is what you want to call it.”

You scoff.

He tilts his head toward your reflection. “The back should sit lower.”

Your spine stiffens. “No.”

His gaze returns to the mirror. “Yes.”

“It’s already indecent.”

And that—finally—actually gets a reaction.

Surprise.

His brows shift by a fraction. His head turns slightly, properly regarding you now like you’ve just informed him gravity works differently in Hollow Crest.

“Indecent,” he repeats.

“Yes, indecent,” you snap. “You want my whole ass out for state dinner.”

“Your entire ass would not be out.”

“Anatomically generous distinction.”

“It would rest at the superior curve,” he says, in that maddeningly measured tone. “Which is the intended line.”

“The intended line is vulgar.”

This time he blinks.

Actually blinks.

Then his mouth parts just slightly, and when he speaks again there is the faintest edge of genuine disbelief under all that perfect control. “Vulgar?”

You throw your hands out. “Yes, vulgar.”

“That,” he says carefully, “is not considered vulgar.”

“In your weird nightmare city maybe—”

“In Valis Core,” he cuts in, turning fully toward you now, “selective exposure through structural draping and sheer layering is associated with rank, wealth, and formal aesthetic literacy.”

You stare at him.

He keeps going, because of course he does, as though explaining a theorem to a stubborn child.

“Visible skin is not inherently sexualized here. Improper presentation is.” His eyes drop meaningfully to the back of the dress. “This reads unfinished.”

You laugh once. Sharp. “Unfinished.”

“Yes.”

“Because I’m not showing enough ass?”

He pauses.

Then, with absolute seriousness: “Correct.”

For one full second the room goes silent.

Then you huff out a disbelieving breath. “You cannot be a real person.”

“I am unfortunately well-documented.”

“You’re telling me if I walk into this event with the back where it is now, people are gonna think I’m underdressed because they can’t see the beginning of my ass crack?”

His expression stays serenely composed. “They will think your tailoring was mishandled.”

“That is psychotic.”

“That is cultural differences.”

You glare at him in the mirror. “You just want something worth looking at.”

His pupils shift. Tiny. Immediate.

But his voice stays smooth. “The dress was selected for match appeal.”

“Oh my god.”

“You asked.”

“You are unbelievable.”

“And you are resisting on the basis of a social code that does not apply in this sector.”

You spin to face him. “You don’t get to talk to me like I’m a malfunctioning display unit.”

He considers you for a beat, then says with infuriating calm, “No. A display unit would have followed specification by now.”

The righteous little shit. Standing there in his immaculate formalwear pretending this is all objective, all polite, all proper, while every word lands like a calculated flick to the forehead.

You look at the mirror again. At the dress. At the high line of the back.

Fine.

Fine.

You hook your fingers at the sides and tug it down a fraction.

The silk slides over your skin.

Too much. Too exposed. Already wrong.

“There,” you say flatly. “Happy?”

His tongue clicks.

You hate that sound on sight now.

“No.”

You freeze. “No?”

“No.”

He walks toward you.

One step. Two.

You should move.

You don’t.

Because retreat would mean yielding ground and you are absolutely not giving him that satisfaction, even as every nerve under your skin starts sparking from his approach.

He stops behind you.

Your eyes lift to the mirror.

His are already on you there.

“Since this is apparently beyond your skill set,” he says softly, “hold still.”

“Don’t—”

His hands do not go to your waist.

That would have been easier.

Instead his thumbs brush the line where the fabric meets your lower back, barely touching skin, just enough to make your breath hitch with pure unwilling reflex. Then one hand steadies the silk at your hip while the other slides beneath the back edge.

Your whole body locks.

His finger dips under the fabric, knuckle grazing the top of your ass.

“Namjoon—”

“Commander Kim,” he corrects automatically, and the bastard sounds almost absentminded about it, like he’s more focused on the dress than on the fact that he has his hand under it.

Then he leans in.

Not enough to press against you. Not enough to give you anything as crude as contact. Just enough that his mouth is near your ear, his breath a cool thread against your skin.

“If this garment is intended to appeal to your match,” he murmurs, “it should, at minimum, be permitted to do its job.”

And then he pulls.

Slowly.

Slow enough that you feel every fraction of movement as the crystalline silk glides downward over your lower back. Slow enough that the room seems to narrow to that single point of contact, that single deliberate drag, until the dress settles exactly where Tara wanted it all along—right at the top of the curve, skimming the first revealed line of cleft, baring the upper round of your cheeks in a way that feels less naked than curated.

Presented.

Elegant, by Valiskan standards.

Obscene, by yours.

His hand stills there for one suspended second, the other thumb flattening the fabric as if testing the line for symmetry.

In the mirror, his face is composed.

Too composed.

But his eyes are not.

There’s a darkness in them now, low and intent and very, very aware. Not the flat observation from before. Not the bored cruelty of his little lie. This is attention. Controlled within an inch of its life, but attention all the same.

The same way, you realize in one sick hot flash, his own clothes were chosen for you.

The jacket cut to sharpen him. The fitted lines. The exposed throat above the clasp.

His, for your appeal.

Yours, for his.

You hate that understanding on contact.

He straightens. Leans back just enough to put an intolerable inch of air between you.

“There,” he says.

Your voice comes out hoarse. “I can’t believe this shit.”

“Well,” he says, gaze still fixed on the mirror. “This is merely correct.”

You swallow. Hard. “You put your hand under my dress.”

“I adjusted consortium-issued formalwear to proper presentation parameters.”

“You put your hand under my dress,” you repeat.

“And you attempted the correction incorrectly.”

That calm, immaculate tone. That little edge of superiority so clean it could cut glass.

You turn on him fast enough that the skirt sways around your legs. “You could have just told me.”

“I did.”

“You could have told me without—” You gesture helplessly at your own lower back. “Without being like that.”

He tilts his head. “Like what?”

You hate him.

You hate him.

You hate the composed blankness of his face when the corners of his mouth are still threatening that awful private smile.

“Smug.”

“I was precise.”

“Patronizing.”

“You were incorrect.”

“Insufferable.”

“That one,” he says, “is subjective.”

“You really think this makes me appealing?”

He looks at you then. Fully. No dodging. No fake attention to the tablet. His gaze drags once over the new line of the dress, the bare reveal of skin, the shape of you in indigo and silver and Consortium colors you never asked to wear.

And that tiny, mean little smile returns.

“Now,” he says, voice low and devastatingly polite, “you at least appear as though you made an effort.”

The urge that rises in you is immediate, bright, and absurdly clarifying.

Not to slap him.

Not to scream.

Not even to stab him.

Just to smile sweetly through the entire cursed evening and find something fatal to slip into his drink before the nectar course.

Namjoon does not concern himself with trivialities.

This is not arrogance, merely allocation—cognitive bandwidth directed where it yields measurable return. Social performance at Consortium formal events yields very little. Structured chaos dressed in starweave and platinum, where every handshake conceals a negotiation and every toast carries enough subtext to warrant decryption software.

He has attended enough of these to predict behavioral patterns at 92.36% accuracy.

The remaining 7.64% belongs almost entirely to Daltrey.

Eris Daltrey, Commander of Hollow Crest. Level 9. The woman operates on a frequency Namjoon has never successfully mapped—not for lack of data, but because the data itself seems to shift each time he collects it. She contradicts her own patterns with a consistency that borders on tactical artistry. Cruel when mercy would serve her better. Merciful when cruelty would cost her nothing. He has known her since he was young enough that parental faces have since degraded to pixel-level recall in his memory, and she has not become easier to read in the intervening years.

He respects her. Obligatorily. Level 9 authority demands it regardless of personal assessment.

But he'd rather not greet her tonight. Not yet. Not until he has surveyed enough of the room to calculate which conversational angle she'll deploy first.

So his gaze drifts. Tracks perimeter. Catalogs attendees by threat tier and utility index.

Then stops.

You.

Twenty minutes. You have stayed within three meters of his position for twenty consecutive minutes, and Namjoon is still recalibrating why.

He'd projected immediate dispersal. Escape velocity the moment you crossed the threshold—a straight line toward the nearest blind spot in the surveillance grid, which you'd identify within forty seconds based on your documented pattern recognition capabilities. He had even pre-mapped your probable evasion routes (four viable, two optimal, one you'd choose because it would annoy him most).

None of them executed.

Instead, you remain. Close. Not beside him—never beside him, nothing so cooperative—but adjacent. Orbiting at a distance that reads deliberate rather than obedient.

Strange.

Not the compliance itself. He's witnessed compliance before. Forced, pharmaceutical, structural. This is none of those. This is something else, something closer to that quality he has observed in you across years of operational conflict—the way you collide with obstacles head-first rather than routing around them.

You don't evade problems. You bite into them until your teeth hit bone.

He has always found that particular trait…

The word he needs is annoying. He selects it. Confirms it. Logs it.

Annoying.

Specifically when directed at his databases. His encrypted servers. His operational infrastructure that you dismantled as if pulling apart a child's puzzle.

But standing here now, with the Consortium hall pressing its architecture around you—vaulted ceilings carved from Valis basalt, atmospheric aurora channeled through crystalline panels overhead, casting the room in shifting indigo and silver—he finds that the trait does not grate the way it once did.

It simply… exists. Documented. Filed. Permitted to remain without the usual annotation flagging it for behavioral correction.

Irrelevant observation. He moves on.

The dress, however, is not irrelevant.

He did not select it personally. Did not specify parameters or state preferences. But the Consortium's profiling systems are thorough—the same databases that track population heat cycles, rut schedules, genetic compatibility indices, behavioral mapping. They would have cross-referenced. Extrapolated. Delivered a result optimized for match appeal based on his logged responses to visual stimuli across years of accumulated data.

The result is effective.

He permits himself that word. Effective. Clinical. Appropriate for the assessment being conducted.

The starweave catches every source of ambient light in the hall, fragmenting it across the crystalline threading until the fabric itself seems to pulse with its own luminescence. Against your skin, the effect becomes something else entirely. The sheer panels—calculated transparency, neither concealing nor fully revealing—allow the faintest trace of your chromatophores to surface. Bioluminescent markers that shift in the dimming light as Wane approaches, catching blue along the pathways of your veins where Valiskan genetics assert themselves beneath the warmer sienna pigmentation of Crester heritage.

Two bloodlines in visible conflict on the same canvas.

He has reviewed your genetic profile. Knows the percentages. The markers. The exact ratio of Core to Crest expression in your cellular architecture.

Seeing it, though, is different from knowing it.

The way your collarbones catch indigo. The way the silver threading follows the line of your exposed spine and the light trapped in the weave mirrors the faint luminescence pulsing just beneath your skin. The way the fabric sits at your lower back exactly where he positioned it an hour ago, the superior curve exposed in accordance with Valiskan formal convention.

Effective.

He has already used that word. He notes the repetition. Does not correct it.

He almost considers approaching. Closing the three-meter gap to something operational. Necessary. There are logistics to discuss—positioning during the formal address, protocol for the introductory circuit, the eleven points of etiquette you will inevitably violate if left unmonitored.

But you are his match. And your tongue is a vulgarity he has not yet developed sufficient tolerance for in public settings.

So he remains where he is. Cataloging. Not approaching.

And then the 7.64% enters his peripheral vision.

Daltrey moves through the crowd the way atmospheric pressure shifts before a storm—nothing visibly changes, but every surface reacts. Attendees adjust posture. Conversations recalibrate pitch. Even the ambient lighting seems to tighten as she cuts a path directly toward him with the kind of inevitability that makes avoidance calculations collapse into single outcomes.

No reprieve tonight, then.

His spine straightens by a degree he controls, hands linking behind his back in the precise configuration drilled into him since before memory became reliable.

"Commander Kim."

"Commander Daltrey."

Her smile arrives three seconds before it reaches her mouth. He tracks it in the micro-adjustments first—the way her ice-gray eyes narrow by a calculated fraction, the slight lift of her chin, the predatory tilt of her head as she regards him.

"Congratulations are in order, I'm told. A perfect match. Unprecedented. The Algorithm outdid itself."

"The Algorithm performed within designed parameters," he corrects. "The result was statistically improbable, not unprecedented in—"

"Namjoon." She uses his given name the way one handles a scalpel—precise, intimate, meant to remind him she knew him before he became Commander anything. "Don't be tedious. Where are they?"

He does not glance at you. Does not need to. Your position has not shifted from its three-meter orbit since they entered. He can feel the heat signature of your proximity the way atmospheric sensors detect pressure changes before storms.

"My match is present," he says.

Daltrey follows his sightline.

And there you are.

Standing with your weight on one hip, starweave catching fractured light across your collarbones, expression hovering somewhere between bored and homicidal. You've acquired a drink—he didn't authorize that—and you're holding it the wrong way. Crester grip, fingers wrapped around the bowl instead of the stem.

Every Valiskan in your radius has noticed.

None of them matter. Daltrey does.

"Interesting," she murmurs.

He does not ask what she finds interesting. Asking gives her leverage.

"Bring her."

Not a request. Level 9 does not request from Level 7.

Namjoon crosses the three meters in four strides and stops at your shoulder.

"Commander Daltrey wishes to meet you," he says, low enough that only you hear.

Your eyes slide to his. Gold catching dim light. "And if I'd rather chew glass?"

"Then you'll chew glass at her table. She's Level 9. Refusal is not a variable."

You take a long, deliberate sip of whatever you acquired, maintaining eye contact in a way that is either defiant or obscene depending on cultural framework.

Then you move. He follows half a step behind, which he tells himself is tactical positioning and not deference.

Daltrey hasn't moved. She watches your approach.

"Commander Daltrey," Namjoon says, "my Transference match."

He doesn't offer your name. You don't have one that's safe to give in this room.

Your chin lifts. "Charmed."

The single word drips with so much Crester sarcasm it practically leaves residue on the floor.

Daltrey's mouth curves. Thin. Amused.

"Sit," she says, gesturing to the chairs flanking her at the head table. "Both of you. I've arranged placement."

Of course she has.

The seating configuration puts Daltrey at center, Namjoon to her left, you to her right. Strategically separated. Unable to coordinate without her between you like a blade between two whetstones.

He catalogs this. Files it under Daltrey, E. — tactical social positioning, variant 7.

You settle into the chair with the particular gracelessness of someone who's never attended formal dining and refuses to pretend otherwise. Your back hits the rest too hard. Your elbows land on the table immediately.

Three officials at the adjacent setting visibly recoil. Level 8, all of them. Security division. They exchange glances that Namjoon reads fluently: ’this is the match? This?’

"So," Daltrey says, leaning back. Her ice-gray gaze pins you with interest. "You're the variable that broke Namjoon's perfect system."

"Didn't break it." You swirl the drink. "Just showed it where it was already cracked."

Daltrey's attention shifts to him. Evaluating his response. Measuring.

He offers nothing.

"Tell me," Daltrey continues, turning back to you with a warmth that has no warmth in it whatsoever, "what does a Hollow Crest insurgent make of Valis Core hospitality? Are we meeting your standards?"

"The food's better than compressed protein paste. The company's worse." You take a sip. "Call it even."

Daltrey laughs.

"I can see why the Algorithm chose you." Her fingers trace the rim of her own glass—slow. "Namjoon has always surrounded himself with precision instruments. It must be refreshing to finally have something in his proximity that bites back."

Namjoon's jaw shifts by a millimeter.

"Commander Daltrey oversees Hollow Crest operations," he says. Neutral. Informational.

Your hand stills on the glass.

He watches the realization land—watches the way your shoulders lock, the gold in your eyes going flat and hard as you process exactly who is sitting beside you. The woman who governs the tunnels you grew up in. Who signs the mining quotas that grind Crester populations into compliance. Whose security forces patrol the corridors where your people starve and bleed and bury their dead in unmarked alcoves.

Your voice drops. "You run the Crest."

"I administer the Crest," Daltrey corrects. "Not the same."

"Yeah?" Your smile shows too many teeth. "The people choking on mineral dust twenty levels below your office might disagree."

Daltrey doesn't flinch.

That's the first thing he logs. No micro-expression shift. No tightening of the jaw. Not even the polite recalibration most officials perform when confronted with civilian suffering statistics in social settings.

She just looks at you.

"Mineral dust," she repeats, and her voice carries the particular flatness of someone who has heard every variation of this argument and found each one equally irrelevant. "Fascinating. You've been back in my sector for—what—forty-eight hours? And you've already appointed yourself advocate for the labor population."

Her fingers haven't moved from the glass. Still tracing the rim. Circular.

"Let me clarify something for you, since Commander Kim's briefings clearly omitted context."

She leans forward. Not much. An inch, maybe two. But the temperature at the table drops by a perceptible degree.

"I don't administer Hollow Crest to keep its citizens comfortable. I administer it to keep them functional. Comfort is a Crester myth your people invented to make poverty sound like a philosophy."

Your jaw locks. Namjoon watches the gold in your eyes go incandescent.

"Survival rates are a resource management outcome," Daltrey continues. "Not a moral one. If your miners are choking, it is because their sector allocation has not merited ventilation upgrades. Productivity earns infrastructure. Sentiment does not."

The Level 8 officials have stopped pretending to eat. Two are watching Daltrey with the careful reverence of subordinates who know exactly how fast she can end careers. The third is watching you with something Namjoon identifies, catalogs, and immediately dislikes.

Interest.

The particular kind of attention that Valiskan genetics produce in response to hybrid phenotype expression. Your chromatophores are still catching light through the starweave's sheer panels—Crester warmth and Valiskan bioluminescence in visible conflict across your skin—and in Valis Core, that combination triggers responses that have more to do with evolutionary biology than conscious preference.

Hybrids are rare. Hybrids with visible dual-spectrum chromatophore activity are rarer. Hybrids who look like you while wearing Valiskan formal couture are functionally nonexistent.

The official's gaze tracks the line of your throat above the high collar. Lingers.

Namjoon files it. Moves on.

(Does not move on. Logs this failure to move on. Moves on from that too.)

Daltrey has not moved on either, but her attention operates on different axes. Her ice-gray eyes trace the architecture of your face, the stubborn set of your mouth, the defiant angle of your shoulders, and something in her expression shifts by a fraction that most people would miss entirely.

Namjoon does not miss it.

Appreciation.

"Your match has opinions," Daltrey observes, addressing him without looking away from you.

"My match has a surplus of them," he confirms.

Your head snaps toward him. Gold eyes narrowing.

"Surplus," you repeat. "That's generous. Usually you just call them inefficient."

"Context-dependent. In private, inefficient. In public—" He pauses. Selects the word with care. "—abundant."

"Abundant." Your laugh is a sharp, ugly thing. "Hear that, Commander Daltrey? I'm abundant. That's Valiskan for 'won't shut the fuck up and it's embarrassing him.'"

Two officials cough simultaneously.

Daltrey's mouth curves. That thin, bloodless line that Namjoon has never once mistaken for warmth.

"Is it embarrassing?" she asks him.

He meets her gaze. Holds it. "Embarrassment requires emotional investment in external perception. I do not experience it."

"No," Daltrey agrees. "You don't, do you."

She turns back to you, chin resting on her knuckles. Commander's insignia catching light at her collar.

"But she does. Look at her, Namjoon. She's performing."

The word lands like a blade laid flat against skin. Not cutting. Promising.

Your expression stiffens.

"Performing," you say.

"Every word out of your mouth since you sat down has been calculated to provoke him." Daltrey's gaze doesn't waver. "The posture. The elbows on the table. The Crester grip on the glass. You're not ignorant of Valiskan etiquette—you're weaponizing your ignorance of it."

Silence.

Cold, structural silence that spreads outward from the head table like fracture lines through glass.

Namjoon watches your throat work. A swallow you're trying to suppress.

Because Daltrey is right. And you know she's right. And she knows you know.

"Interesting creature," Daltrey murmurs, and her eyes drop once—brief, deliberate—to the exposed line of your collarbones where chromatophores pulse faint blue through sienna skin. Then back up. "I understand the Algorithm's logic better now."

She lifts her glass. Tips it toward him in a gesture that carries seventeen layers of political meaning he decodes instantly.

This match is leverage. You know it. I know it. The question is who exploits it first.

"To the Epitaph Architect," she says, voice carrying across the table with the authority of someone who expects the room to listen. "And to his unprecedented variable."

Glasses rise around the table. Officials drink.

You do too.

Namjoon lifts his own glass.

Reflex stops him. Old habit, older than protocol, drilled into the autonomic layer where conscious thought doesn't reach.

The glass tilts in his grip—fractional, invisible to anyone not trained to look—and the liquid shifts against the rim at the precise angle required for olfactory assessment.

Sub-molecular. Buried beneath the fermentation profile and the sharp bite of Valiskan mineral-fruit alcohol—terrace-grown, sequence-fermented, calibrated for a fruitvore metabolism. A synthetic alkaloid derivative—Crester-sourced, black market grade, designed to pass standard Veyran sensory thresholds without detection. Faint. Elegant, almost.

Lethal within four minutes for any Veyran biology.

His gaze cuts to Daltrey's glass. Still in her hand. Still full. She's mid-sentence with a Level 8 security official, hasn't brought it to her mouth yet.

Then it cuts to you, already drinking it.

All three glasses.

You poisoned all three glasses.

Crude. Suicidal. Ruthlessly logical.

He lifts his glass. Drinks. All of it. Then sets his empty glass down. Reaches across Daltrey. Takes hers from her hand mid-sentence and drains it in one motion.

Daltrey's eyebrow lifts. A fraction.

"Commander Kim. That was mine."

"The vintage warranted appreciation." He places both empties on the table, aligned parallel. "Apologies for the breach of etiquette."

Her ice-gray gaze holds his for two seconds longer than social convention permits. She doesn't believe him. But she also doesn't press, because pressing would acknowledge irregularity she didn't orchestrate, and Daltrey does not concede that kind of ground.

Fifty-seven seconds. That's how long you have before the alkaloid reaches hepatic processing and begins systemic shutdown.

Namjoon stands.

"If you'll excuse us." His voice carries across the table with the particular calm that Level 7 authority affords—not requesting, informing. "My match requires air. The atmospheric composition appears to be causing discomfort."

Concerned murmurs. Officials shifting. Daltrey's gaze tracking him like a surveillance turret as he rounds the table, reaches your chair, and closes his hand around your upper arm.

His grip is not gentle.

You look up at him. Gold eyes flat. Calculating. Already reading the situation, already processing that something has gone wrong with your plan because he should be showing symptoms by now and he's not.

"Get up," he says. Low enough that the table doesn't hear.

"I'm fi—"

"You have forty-one seconds. Get up."

Something in his tone must register, because you stand. Unsteady—the first symptom, balance disruption as the alkaloid hits your vestibular system. He catalogues it. Keeps his hand on your arm. Tight enough that his fingers indent the bare skin above your elbow.

You cross the hall together.

From the outside, it reads as courteous escort. His hand at your arm, guiding. Your stride only slightly irregular—attributable to unfamiliar footwear or Valiskan atmospheric adjustment.

No one stops you two. No one questions Commander Kim attending to his matched partner's comfort at his own celebration.

The corridor narrows. Service wing. Less surveillance, more function.

His pace increases. Your feet struggle to keep up, the dress restricting your stride, and he doesn't slow down because you have twenty-eight seconds now and he can feel the tremor starting in your arm where his fingers grip.

"What—" You're pulling against him. "What are you doing—"

The bathroom door. He hits the panel. It slides open.

He shoves you through.

You stumble. Catch yourself on the basin's edge, whipping around with that feral snap he's noted a hundred times, and your fist connects with his shoulder before he's even cleared the doorframe.

"What the fuck is your problem—"

He locks the door. Steps forward.

You swing again. He catches your wrist. Redirects. Your back hits the wall beside the basin and his hand finds your jaw before you can recover.

Not a hold. A mechanism.

His thumb hooks against your lower teeth, forcing your mouth open. Presses down on your tongue, flattening it, keeping it out and forward so you can't bite, can't close, can't do anything but make a strangled sound of fury that vibrates against his fingers.

Your nails find his forearm. Drag. He feels the sting and ignores it.

His other hand tears a foil packet from his inner jacket pocket. Teeth rip the seal. Small capsule—white, unmarked, standard Consortium emergency antidote for Class-7 through Class-12 synthetic alkaloids.

He places it on the back of your tongue. Deep enough to trigger reflex.

"Swallow."

Your eyes are wild. Gold and furious and terrified in a way you'd rather die than admit, and your claws dig harder into his forearm, drawing blood now, but your throat works—involuntary, the gag reflex doing what your stubbornness won't—and the capsule goes down.

He holds your jaw for two more seconds. Counting. Confirming.

Then you spit in his face.

Direct hit. Center of his left cheek. The impact is warm and carries the lingering chemical trace of the alkaloid your body is already beginning to neutralize.

He releases you.

Steps back. Wipes his face with the back of his hand.

You're gasping. Bent forward, braced against the wall, chest heaving. The tremors haven't stopped yet—the antidote needs ninety seconds to fully counteract—and your hands are shaking against cold tile.

"You—" You choke on air. "You had no right—"

"You poisoned three glasses." His voice comes out level. Barely. There's something underneath now that isn't calm. "Yours. Mine. A Level 9 Commander's."

"I know what I did—"

"You ingested a lethal compound to maintain the appearance of safety so your actual targets would drink without suspicion."

"And it would have worked—"

"It would have killed you."

"THAT WAS THE POINT."

The words ring off tile. Echo. Settle like debris.

Silence.

Your breathing hasn't steadied. You're still shaking, still braced against the wall, the starweave catching bathroom light in patterns that make the fabric look like it's breathing with you.

"You detected it," you say. Hoarse. Accusatory. "How."

"My olfactory sensitivity operates at sub-molecular thresholds." He adjusts his cuff where your nails shredded fabric. Blood underneath. Minor. "The compound was elegant. It would have passed any standard Veyran detection."

"But not yours."

"No."

"And you drank it anyway." Your eyes narrow. "Both glasses. You drank both. That's—that's not possible. That dosage would flatline a fucking Grav."

"And yet."

You stare at him. Processing.

"You're immune," you whisper.

He says nothing. Which is confirmation enough.

"That's not—Valiskans aren't immune to—"

"I am."

"How?"

"Irrelevant to current situation."

"Irrelevant—you just swallowed enough synthetic alkaloid to kill six people and you're standing there adjusting your cuffs—"

"And you just attempted to assassinate yourself, your genetic match, and a Level 9 Consortium Commander at a formal dinner." His jaw shifts. "Did the last attempt teach you nothing? Or do you simply enjoy the repetition?"

Your laugh is raw. Wrecked. "What it taught me is that you keep surviving, and I keep having to find new ways to make sure you don't."

"Four attempts now. Zero successful. At what point does the data suggest a revised approach?"

"At the point where I stop breathing."

You push off the wall. Stand. The tremors have reduced to fine vibration in your fingers.

Antidote working.

"You want to know why?"

"Enlighten me."

"For the chance," you hiss. "That's what. For the one-in-a-hundred chance that your perfect fucking system missed something and you'd drop dead next to me. I'd take those odds every time, Warden. Every. Fucking. Time."

"Then you are going to run out of attempts," he says quietly, "long before I run out of patience."

"Good. I hope your patience tastes as bitter as that antidote."

"And I hope," he says, and his voice drops into something colder than protocol, "that you have an explanation for the spectacle you caused in that hall. Because what they saw was my match destabilizing a formal event. What Daltrey saw was leverage."

"Oh, so now you care about appearances—"

"I care about operational security, which you have now compromised for the fourth time in—"

"You dragged me into a bathroom—"

"Because you were dying—"

"I was handling it—"

"You were losing vestibular function and had approximately nine seconds before hepatic collapse." His hand hits the wall beside your head. Not a strike. A containment. "That is not handling it. That is suicide dressed as strategy."

Your chin jerks up. Defiant. That same angle you always default to when cornered—chin up, eyes blazing, throat exposed like a dare.

"Maybe that's the point," you snap. "Maybe I'd rather die on my terms than on yours."

"And maybe—" He leans forward. Closes the gap by an inch he shouldn't concede. "—you keep manufacturing these confrontations because you have know that hatred at this proximity with our compatibility does something you are not prepared to name."

Your pupils dilate for a fraction of a second before fury floods the space.

"Don't you dare—"

"Four assassination attempts. Each one requiring sustained aggression, elevated combat pheromones, extended physical proximity to me." His head tilts. "That's not tactical, Cipher. That's compulsive. You are engineering situations that force your body into arousal-adjacent states because confrontation is the only framework in which you'll permit yourself to—"

Your palm cracks across his face.

The sound bounces off tile. His head turns with the impact—controlled, absorbing the force rather than resisting it.

He stays turned for a second. Lets the sting register. Lets the heat bloom across his cheekbone.

Then he looks back at you.

"Interesting," he says.

"Shut up—"

"You could have aimed for the nose. The temple. The throat." His tongue traces the inside of his cheek, assessing damage. "You chose a slap. Open palm. Maximum sound, minimal damage."

"Next one won't be—"

"Next one won't happen."

His fingers wrap the column of your neck, thumb settling over the pulse point where your heartbeat hammers against his skin fast enough to constitute tactical intelligence.

You go still, your exhale hitting his mouth, his breathing disrupts the fall of your hair, the scent of bonfire ash and that stubborn sweetness underneath engulfs his lungs and suddenly he cannot breathe.

His blood runs hot. Hotter than protocol. Hotter than the calculated baseline he maintains through sheer architectural will.

Your combat pheromones are flooding the confined space.

His are answering.

“Du villst das,” he murmurs, and his voice has dropped past protocol, past Consortium diction, Altsprek scraping the edges of each syllable. “Willaikt sollte ik disem freken Mund geben, vorum er bettelt, und dik so hart fiken, dass du wergisst, vi man Gift miskt.” (You want this. Maybe I should give this insolent mouth what it’s begging for, and fuck you so hard you forget how to mix poison.)

You don't speak Altsprek.

He knows this. Has confirmed it through linguistic profiling.

But the guttural weight of consonants is a task your hindbrain processes without translation because it doesn't need translation.

Your tongue slides across your lower lip.

Slow. Unconscious. Wetting skin that's gone dry.

His gaze drops, inevitably, to your mouth. Slick where your tongue passed.

His hand tightens on your throat. Infinitesimal. A pulse of pressure that makes your breath stutter.

And he wants—

What he wants bypasses every filter, every protocol, every careful partition between operational logic and the catastrophic biology of what 100% compatibility actually means when you're breathing the same recycled air and his hand is on your throat and your pheromones taste like ignition.

He wants to close the distance. Press his mouth against yours. Swallow that sharp tongue whole and find out if you taste like poison and ash and all the things he should be immune to but—

Skaisse.

He releases your throat. Steps back. The motion is not smooth—it's a stagger, uncoordinated, his heel catching on tile as distance opens between his hand and your skin like a circuit breaking.

“Skaisse—vas tzum—” (Shit—what the—)

His hands link behind his back. Tight. Knuckles white.

You're staring at him from the wall. Throat still red from his grip. Lips still wet. Chest rising and falling in a rhythm that matches his exactly.

Synchronized breathing.

He hadn't noticed.

"We return to the hall," he says, too fast and clipped for his liking. "Immediately."

You open your mouth.

"Immediately."

He turns. Unlocks the door. Does not look back.

Because looking back would require acknowledging what just happened.

And what just happened does not fit within any operational parameter, any behavioral model, any system he has ever designed.

What just happened was a malfunction.

He counts his steps back to the corridor.

Ains. Tzvai. Drai. (One. Two. Three)

His pulse does not normalize until step forty-seven.

The walls breathe wrong in Valis Core.

Not literally—you're not that far gone yet, though give it another few days in this sterile coffin and check back.

But the sound-dampening technology embedded in every surface creates a silence so absolute it loops back around to noise. A pressure against your eardrums. The absence of sound so aggressive your brain fills the void with phantom echoes, and the phantom echoes sound a lot like heartbeats that aren't yours.

Your quarters. Level 7.

Containment dressed in furniture.

The lighting calibrates itself to your circadian rhythm whether you want it to or not. Somewhere behind those immaculate walls—behind the sound-dampening and the climate regulators and the carefully curated illusion of privacy—sensors log every shift in your body temperature, every spike in your heart rate, every microsecond of REM sleep.

You can feel them.

That's the part nobody talks about. The surveillance radiation. Faint enough that most Veyrans wouldn't register it, but you're not most Veyrans. Your Crester-adapted sensory system picks up the low-frequency emissions like a persistent itch behind your eyes. Like being stared at by something that doesn't blink.

Forty-seven minutes of pacing. Sleepwear that fits wrong—Valiskan cut, too loose at the shoulders, too tight at the hips. Nineteen degrees constant and your blood runs hot enough that the chill sits in your marrow like infection.

The comm unit crackles.

Shroud frequency. Encrypted. Your cipher pattern.

Static. Then—

"—visual confirmed, bearing south-southwest. Phantom sighted at former Blindfold approach, route six. Repeat, Phantom sighted—"

Your blood stops.

Taehyung.

Near Blindfold. Near your old command node, the one whose coordinates maybe seven people in the world have ever known. Three of them are dead.

Why the fuck would he surface there?

Unless he's looking for you.

Unless he's in trouble.

Unless he's already sold the grid and he's leading someone straight to—

Don't spiral. Think.

But thinking requires stillness and stillness requires safety and there is no safety in a room that documents your unconscious brain activity for Consortium research files.

You need out, you need out, you need out.

The window latch is biometric. You crack it in thirty seconds. The panel slides open and Valis Core's atmosphere hits your face—sterile, thin, that metallic ozone bite from the purification towers. High above, something winged scrapes along a spire and disappears into aurora glare before you can decide whether it's security hardware or something with teeth. Perfect. Even the fucking skyline has predators.

Three hundred meters below, the city sprawls in black spires and cold blue light.

You swing both legs over the sill, feet finding the decorative ridging on the facade—Valiskan architecture, all form and no function, but the ornamental grooves are deep enough if you distribute weight right.

One floor down. Fine. Your fingers know stone. Your body knows gravity. You've scaled the Hollow Crest shaft at Level 53 with Yoongi's explosives strapped to your back, Glowmice gone quiet in the walls, and felt nothing but annoyance at slippery handholds.

Two floors down.

Your stomach drops.

Not from height—physically drops, like gravity doubled beneath your ribcage. A wave of nausea so sudden it nearly pitches you forward into open air.

You grip the facade. Hold. Breathe.

What the fuck.

Three floors. The nausea deepens into something worse. Chest compression. Tightness behind your sternum that pulses outward like sonar hitting nothing. Your fingers shake against cold stone and the tremor isn't fatigue, it's something else.

Adrenaline. Has to be. You're free-climbing a building at Wane in your sleepwear. Body's just reacting.

Right.

Except you don't get nervous.

You don't.

Four floors and your vision blurs long enough that you miss a handhold and for one horrible suspended moment you're dangling by six fingers above several meters of nothing.

Move.

You move. Because moving is what you do. What you've always done. What Cresters are built for—quick, low, agile, navigating hostile architecture the way Valiskans navigate bureaucracy. Your body finds the service ledge at Level 2 by muscle memory you shouldn't have for a building you've been imprisoned in for days, but your brain mapped the schematics during a compatibility assessment while pretending to sleep.

The garden atrium opens below. Biodome bridging the Citadel's eastern wing to the Command Spires. Engineered groundcover. Root-soft, sterile, maintained at obscene cost so Consortium officials can perform reverence for living systems they only tolerate when controlled.

Your bare feet hit dew-soaked ground and the cold shocks through your soles. The nausea hasn't faded. Worse now. A building pressure behind your ribs that doesn't feel like sickness. Feels like—

Dread. Loss. Something being pulled from you that you didn't know was there.

Anxiety.

No. Shut the fuck up. You don't feel anxiety. Anxiety is for people who haven't survived everything that was supposed to kill them—

"Going somewhere?"

You spin.

He's at the garden's north entrance. Formal jacket unclasped at the collar, platinum hardware hanging loose. Hair half-fallen from the styled position, the white streak catching faint aurora light through the biodome panels.

And the nausea—

Stops. Gone. Like someone flipped a switch behind your sternum.

The compression, the dread, the shaking hands, the blurred vision—all of it draining away so fast it leaves you dizzy.

No.

No, that's not—you're not calmer because he's here. That's not how this works. That's not how you work.

(But the tremor in your fingers has stopped. And your breathing has evened. And the relief is so immediate and so total that it makes you want to vomit for entirely different reasons.)

His expression is not angry. It's worse.

It's done; the specific exhaustion of a man who has been tolerating a natural disaster for days and has reached the exact limit of what his patience can metabolize.

"How," you manage.

"The same way you found the garden." Flat. Clipped. "Biology. Which you would understand if you stopped trying to outrun it for five consecutive minutes."

"Taehyung was spotted—"

"I genuinely, deeply do not care."

"Near my old coordinates, near Blindfold—"

"Still do not care." He steps forward. "You are not leaving Valis Core tonight."

"Watch me."

You bolt.

The garden stretches thirty meters to the bridge—transparent walkway between the Citadel and the Spire, three hundred meters of glass above three hundred meters of nothing. Your bare feet tear across wet groundcover, pale pollinators lifting in irritated flickers around your ankles, and you are fast —Crester-fast, tunnel-runner fast, the kind of fast that's kept you alive since you were old enough to run from things bigger and meaner and better armed than you.

Valiskans don't chase. That's fundamental biology. Their frames are built for structure, control, sustained force—not explosive pursuit through uneven terrain. Every Consortium patrol you've ever outrun proved it. They lumber. They coordinate. They call for backup.

They don't sprint.

They definitely don’t sprint like Namjoon is doing right now.

What the fuck.

You hit the bridge at full speed, bare feet slapping transparent panels that show the cold blue nothing below. The walkway sways. You adjust without thinking, weight distribution shifting to compensate, every step calculated by the part of your brain that's been navigating unstable surfaces since childhood.

He's still gaining.

How.

You cut left, using the bridge's slight curve to force a wider pursuit angle. Crester tunnel doctrine—exploit geometry when you can't exploit speed.

His footsteps don't falter. Don't redirect. They anticipate the curve, cutting the angle before you complete it, and suddenly the distance between you is halving instead of holding.

Fifteen meters to the Spire entrance.

You pour everything into the last stretch—

And then the bridge purrs.

Not purrs. Wrong word. Something deeper than sound. A low ringed pressure that hits your back teeth before your ears catch up to it, like a generator coughing awake under glass. You feel it in your sternum. In the soles of your feet. The kind of vibration your body recognizes as animal before your brain admits it's possible.

The fuck.

Movement.

Underneath you.

Through the transparent panels something pale streaks along the bridge's underside—long body, gripping limbs, a counterweight tail flicking once as it rotates around a structural rib and reappears on top of the walkway six meters ahead of you, perfectly silent, perfectly placed.

Oh you have got to be fucking kidding.

It's standing in your path.

Lean. Pale. Hide-fur threaded with something silver that catches aurora light in tiny conducting filaments along its flanks. Vestigial wing-membranes folded tight against its ribs like a coat someone forgot to take off. Wide-set pale eyes locked on your sternum—not your face, your center of mass, the way a thing built to tackle reads a body—and its head is low, neck stretched forward, ears flat against the skull in that particular way that means I want your scent, not your blood.

Yet.

Oranen.

The word surfaces before the rest of the memory does, and when the memory comes it comes stupid—

You were maybe four. Maybe five. Pre-camp. Pre-everything. Some Valis cousin's terrace before your parents got publicly disassembled and your sister got reclassified as a problem to manage. You'd seen one of these things curled along an ornamental rib like a cat on a windowsill, all silver-pale and slow-blinking, and you'd asked—small, stupid, with the absolute certainty of a child who hadn't yet learned the world ate things like her—can I pet it.

Every adult in earshot had stilled.

Not laughed. Not corrected. Stilled. The way grown-ups go quiet when a kid asks something that flags her as the wrong species of person. You remember a Valis aunt's mouth opening slightly. Some uncle's hand pausing halfway to his glass. The cousin's mother turning her head with the slow horror of someone watching a child reach for an exposed wire.

They're not pets, sweetheart.

Said in the tone people use for 'we don't ask why grandfather doesn't come down to dinner anymore.'

You'd thought, at four: they look like pets. They look soft. They look like something that would let me hold it. You'd been wrong about a lot of things that year.

You are wrong about this one too.

Because the thing standing on the bridge is not soft. It's holding its tail out perfectly horizontal, dead level with the walkway, and even at four years old in your stupid little hand-me-down boots you would have known—if you'd been looking properly—that an animal holding itself that still is not a pet. It's a decision that hasn't landed yet.

Soft. Sure. Soft like a fucking trap.

"Don't move," Namjoon says, behind you. Close. Closer than he was a second ago.

"Yeah no shit—"

"Do not move."

The Oranen's forepaws knead the glass. Once. Twice. Mineral claws extending and retracting, scoring tiny clean lines into the panel without cracking it—because of course they're calibrated for that, of course they are, of course Valis built itself a bridge animal that won't damage the bridge—

Its tail tip flicks.

Decision made.

You drop into stance on instinct, shifting weight onto the balls of your feet, calculating elbow-angle to throat, knee to sternum, anything—and you know, even as you're doing it, that none of it will work. Not because you can't fight an animal. You've fought worse animals. You've fought humans worse than animals. But this thing has been bred—generations of it, cycles of it—to do exactly this. Pin and hold. Score glass without cracking it. Take a fleeing target alive until a handler shows up.

A handler is behind you.

The Oranen's chest expands. The throat-vurr rises—sharper this time, an alert note instead of an identification one—and you can feel a second pressure starting to answer it from somewhere up the Spire facade, another colony-pair flanking in from above—

"Halt."

Namjoon doesn't raise his voice. He doesn't have to. The word lands wrong in the air—it's not the cadence he uses with you, not the cadence he uses with anyone, it's something pressure-shaped, throat-tight, severe in a way that makes the consonants feel like they were filed before they left his mouth. Altsprek. The real version. The version he speaks when he's not condescending to your hybrid ear.

The Oranen freezes.

Not a slow freeze. Mid-step freeze. One forepaw still raised, claws still extended, throat-vurr cut off so cleanly it leaves a hum in the bridge that takes a second to fade. The second pressure from above stops climbing. Whatever was inbound just—stalled. Recategorized. Reset.

Your breath catches and you hate it.

Because the animal didn't stop for the word. You know that immediately. Cresters don't grow up around Oranen but you grew up around enough trained killers to recognize the difference between an order being heard and an order being recognized. The Oranen heard pressure, throat-tension, native cadence, and probably a clearance scent his body throws off without trying—and decided he was the senior thing in this exchange.

The animal didn't obey Namjoon.

The animal deferred to him.

"Mein."

Softer. Single syllable. Same wrong-cadence Altsprek that your stupid hybrid throat could probably mimic but never make register.

The Oranen's ears come up half a degree. Tail goes from horizontal to angled-down. Head tilts, slow, almost—polite—and that's when you understand he's just told it this one is mine, don't pin her, I've got her, and the animal accepted the override the way a guard dog accepts being called off by the only voice in the building it actually answers to.

Disgust hits you before the relief can.

Because—god, you'd forgotten this part. Forgotten how Valis Core does it. Forgotten that they didn't just build surveillance, they bred it, they sat down with something that used to live on cliffs and over generations they whittled it into a thing that would freeze when an elite cleared its throat right. Drones don't have a choice. This one did. Its great-great-whatever decided heated roosts and mineral-oil grooming was worth more than open sky and now its descendant is standing on a glass bridge declining to break your spine because a man behind you used the correct vowel.

Animals that bargained with the Consortium.

The animal steps back along the bridge. Two paces. Tail-tip flicks once, opposite direction this time, and the second pressure above you bleeds out of the facade like someone closing a valve.

You don’t turn around.

You can feel the specific quality of the silence he uses when he’s deciding whether to speak or just stand there until you do something stupid enough to settle the question for him.

He speaks.

“There is,” he says, and his voice has gone flat in a way that means he’s reached the section of his patience that runs on pure spite, “an aerosol dispenser in your bathroom.”

“What.”

“In your quarters. Wall-mounted. Above the basin.” A beat. “Standard Citadel issue.”

“I don’t—”

“If you had used it before climbing out a window in your sleepwear, the colony-pair currently deciding whether my override holds would have read you as cleared and ignored you entirely.”

You turn around.

Slowly.

Because the alternative is letting him deliver the rest of that sentence to the back of your head and you are not, not, giving him that.

He’s standing exactly where you knew he was standing. Collar still unclasped. Hair still half-fallen. The aurora light through the biodome panels above the bridge catches the white streak at his temple in a way that should be flattering and is, instead, exhausted. His arms are loose at his sides. His weight is on his back foot. His expression is the expression of a man explaining a basic safety protocol to someone who sets the building on fire every time she enters it.

“You’re telling me.” Your voice scrapes on the way out. “You’re telling me there’s a fucking can in my bathroom.”

“Yes.”

“That tells the colony-pair I’m not prey.”

“Yes.”

“And nobody mentioned this when they shoved me into Level 7—”

“Cipher.” His head tilts. “It is labeled.”

Heat sheets up your throat so fast your vision tunnels.

“It’s labeled in Altsprek, you condescending—”

“It is labeled in standard Consortium pictogram. Same as the climate panel. Same as the lighting calibrator. Same as every system in your quarters that you have, by your own admission, been refusing to engage with because you would rather pace a nineteen-degree room for three cycles than touch anything Valis built.” His hand rises. Drags down his face. “Which is, of course, your absolute right. Until it puts you on a glass bridge at Wane in your sleepwear with a colony-class interceptor calculating your bone density.”

“Oh, fuck you—”

“If you had been,” he says, voice dropping into the lethal-calm register that always means he has reached the bottom of his composure and started digging, “even marginally smarter about a flight you had already committed to attempting, you would have sprayed yourself before you went out the window. The pair would not have engaged. You’d have made it, what.” He tilts his head. Considers. “Three streets, perhaps. Maybe four if you’d kept to the service ridges and avoided the Threshold Gates. Though of course I would have caught you eventually.”

Your jaw locks.

“Of course.”

“Mm.” A small, exhausted nod. “But by your parameters, I imagine that still constitutes an improvement.”

Heat sheets up your throat so fast your vision tunnels at the edges.

“Oh, save it, you smug—” Your hand flicks at the bridge, the Oranen, the entire fucking architecture of him. “—condescending fucking piece of shit, you can’t even—you wouldn’t have caught me, that’s the funniest part, you absolute Valis-bred fossil, you couldn’t even keep me out of the Algorithm’s outer ring when you had seven layers of encryption and a ghost protocol riding it—”

“Cipher.”

“—and I was running it from a leaking utility panel in Hollow Crest with a stolen interface and one working hand because Yoongi’s fuse had snapped two hours earlier and my fingers were still numb, and I got three layers deep before your little vanity protocol noticed me, which by the way, who codes a vanity flag into a tier-one security architecture, that’s not security, that’s ego—”

“I am aware of how you breached the outer ring.”

“—you had to scrub the breach quietly because if your superiors had seen the actual logs you would have been demoted into a closet, and don’t think I didn’t notice you cleaned the entry vector and rewrote it instead of patching it, that’s not a fix, Warden, that’s vanity wearing a uniform—”

“I do not give a fuck.”

The bridge goes dead silent.

The Oranen’s ears flick.

“Did you—” Your voice cracks in a register that has never been used by you in your life. “Did you just curse?”

“Yes.”

“At me?!”

“Correct.”

“About the Algorithm breach?!”

“Cipher—”

“Stop using my fucking slang.”

“I figured,” he says, with the exact tonal flatness of a man defusing a piece of ordnance he has personally signed off on, “you’d understand me better if I used your lexicon.”

“OH FUCK YOU—”

He moves. You don’t even register the cross-step. One second three meters of bridge between you, the next his arm is hooking behind your knees and your back is hitting his chest and the world tilts sideways.

Bridal carry.

He’s fucking carrying you.

“Put me down—!”

"No."

"I will rip your throat out—!"

"You will try."

You thrash savagely. Elbows aimed at his jaw, knees kicking air, your whole body bucking against his grip like a trapped animal because that's what this is.

Captivity. Restraint.

Your fist cracks into his collarbone. He absorbs it. Keeps walking.

"I'm not a fucking doll—"

"Debatable, given the tantrum."

"That's not—I'm not having a tantrum, I'm fighting for my fucking life—"

"You're fighting the bridge. Poorly." He adjusts his grip. Practiced. Like he's carried feral things before. "And you're barefoot in sleepwear at three hundred meters elevation in Wane-deep cold. So forgive me if I deprioritize your dignity."

"Put me down, Warden." Your voice drops. Not screaming anymore.

The voice you use when you mean it—really mean it—and the difference must register because his stride changes.

"I don't like being carried." Each word scraped from somewhere deeper than anger. "I don't like being picked up and moved. I don't—"

Your jaw locks. Because what comes next is small and powerless and like the processing lines when they'd haul you by your arms and you are not giving him that.

Not ever.

Not any of it.

But he stops walking.

Stands there on the bridge, three hundred meters above nothing, with you rigid in his arms.

Then his grip shifts beneath your knees and your bare feet find glass.

You step back from him immediately. Put distance between your body and his. Try to pretend the shaking in your legs is cold and not residual proximity-whatever-the-fuck.

Silence. Aurora light shifting through the biodome above. Your breath fogging in the gap between you.

"I'm not going back to my quarters."

"That is not—"

"They watch me." The words rip out ragged. "Every breath. Every heartbeat. Every time I roll over in my sleep there's a sensor logging it. I can feel the surveillance radiation—Cresters can feel it, yeah? Sits behind my eyes like a migraine that never fucking stops."

His jaw shifts. Processing.

"I haven't slept," you continue, and you hate the sound of your own voice right now. Hate the rawness in it. "Not real sleep. Not once since they dragged me here. Because every time I close my eyes I can feel them documenting what my brain does unconscious and I can't—"

Stop.

Breathe.

"I want to stay at your quarters."

His hand rises. Presses against his forehead. Drags down his face with the particular slowness of a man counting internally to prevent homicide.

"Are you aware," he says, voice strained in a way you've never heard from him, "of how that sounds in my culture."

"I don't give a fuck about your cult—"

"You just propositioned a Commander in the middle of the garden."

Heat slaps into your cheeks. Immediate. Nuclear.

"What?"

His hand hasn't left his face.

"In Valis Core," he says from behind his palm, "when a matched partner requests shared quarters during Wane cycle—triff mich bei Wane—it carries a specific connotation. The connotation is not roommate arrangement."

"I didn't—that's not what I—"

"I'm aware."

"Then why are you making it weird—"

"I'm not making it weird. You made it weird. I am simply informing you that every surveillance microphone within range just recorded you asking your genetic match to bed you."

"I asked to sleep in a room without cameras—"

"Which contains one bed. Mine."

"—because your quarters are Command authority, they don't monitor you—"

"They will absolutely begin monitoring me if my matched partner moves into my quarters at Wane requesting shared sleeping arrangements."

"I'm not requesting—" You stop. Force your voice down. "Your room doesn't have surveillance radiation. That's it. That's the whole calculation. Couch. Floor. I don't care. I've slept on worse than your shitty Valiskan floor tiles."

He lowers his hand. Looks at you.

His gaze drops to your bare feet on the glass. To the goosebumps climbing your arms. To the way you're holding yourself like you'll fly apart if you loosen your grip on your own ribcage.

"If I formally request and authorize a transfer of your sleeping arrangements to my quarters," he says, and each word is measured, selected, placed with the care of someone defusing ordnance, "through official channels, with documented reasoning citing match-proximity optimization and subject wellness protocols—"

"Subject wellness," you repeat flatly.

"—you will not attempt to flee while I sleep."

Not a question. A condition. Terms being laid on the table the way he lays everything—squared, aligned, non-negotiable.

But he's offering.

He's not ordering you back to Level 7. He's not calling security.

He's standing on a bridge in the cold with his collar undone and his composure fraying at the seams, and he's negotiating.

"I won't attempt to flee while you sleep," you say.

"That is not what I asked." His eyes narrow. "Repetition is not agreement. I need explicit terms."

Fucking Valiskans.

"Fine. I will not attempt to flee. While you sleep. From your quarters. During the authorized Wane cycle. Happy?"

"Define flee."

"Oh, for fuck's—"

"You have attempted to kill me four times, attempted to poison a Level 9 Commander, escaped through a window in your sleepwear, and sprinted across a suspension bridge barefoot in sub-zero temperatures." He tilts his head. "Specificity is not unreasonable."

He's right. You hate that he's right. You hate that his version of right always sounds like a fucking legal deposition.

"I will not leave the physical perimeter of your quarters during Wane cycle without informing you first." You grit your teeth. "I will not sabotage your security systems, poison your food, or attempt to exit through windows, ventilation shafts, or any other structural opening. Is that specific enough for you?"

"And weapons."

"What about them."

"You will not bring concealed weapons into my quarters."

A beat. "I don't have any weapons."

His look could cut steel. "Cipher."

"Fine. No weapons."

"Including improvised ones."

"You want me to promise I won't sharpen your toothbrush into a shiv?"

"Yes."

"You're serious."

"I am always serious. That is something you should have established by now."

Your mouth opens. Closes.

Because he is serious. Dead serious.

Standing there with aurora light catching the white streak in his hair, asking you to formally promise not to weaponize his dental hygiene products.

This is your life now.

"No improvised weapons," you mutter. "No shivs. No garrotes made from bedsheets. No blunt force trauma via decorative objects. Satisfied?"

Something sits in the space between his brows where tension usually lives, and for one second—just one—it smooths.

"I will file the authorization tonight."

He says it without looking at you. Gaze fixed on the Spire entrance, jaw working through whatever internal protocol is screaming at him to do the opposite.

"Effective now. You sleep there tonight. The transfer will be documented as proximity-based wellness optimization per Epitaph Protocol 7.3."

Tonight.

Not next cycle. Not pending review. Not after seventeen layers of Consortium bureaucratic horseshit.

Now.

You open your mouth to say something cutting—something about how generous of him, how merciful, how very Consortium of him to grant basic fucking sleep like it's a reward for good behavior—

But nothing comes out.

Because your hands are still shaking. And your feet are numb. And you're standing on a glass bridge in your sleepwear at Wane-deep and he just... gave you the thing you asked for.

Without a fight. Without leverage. Without making you bleed for it first.

"I don't care what you call it," you manage.

"I know." He turns towards the building again. "That's why I'm telling you. So when you inevitably throw it in my face during an argument, you'll have the correct protocol number."

You stand on the bridge for three more seconds. Bare feet on cold glass. City glowing beneath you like something dying beautifully.

Then you follow.

Because—somewhere behind your ribs, in the space where the nausea used to sit—there's nothing.

Just the steady, unwelcome absence of pain that started the moment he appeared in that garden and hasn't left since.

next | index

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© jungkoode 2025

Team photo day is not, technically, a humanitarian crisis.

You know this. Intellectually. In the same way you know that traffic jams aren’t actually designed to ruin your life and that the universe doesn’t have a personal vendetta against you specifically.

And yet.

Here you are.

Seven forty-three in the morning, standing in front of your wardrobe, staring at nothing, eating pikotas out of the bag because you forgot to eat an actual breakfast and this is fine. This is completely fine. You’re fine.

You are not fine.

Photo day at Valdebebas means the entire Real Madrid roster in one building for six consecutive hours while photographers and club PR staff run around like badly caffeinated border collies trying to herd twenty-two professional athletes who have, collectively, the attention span of a fly. 

It means chaos. It means noise. It means approximately forty-seven different egos ricocheting off the same walls.

And it means him.

You should be in university right now. You would be in university right now if the universe had any sense of justice or basic narrative fairness, but instead you’re standing here in your bedroom at seven forty-three in the morning because your dad got a text last week—last week, you’d been living in blessed ignorance for seven whole days—that said all staff families invited for unity shots.

You remember reading it over his shoulder.

You remember the exact quality of silence that followed.

Your dad’s face did this thing it does sometimes—that small, private kind of hopeful. Like he’d been handed something unexpected and was trying not to show how much he wanted it. 

He didn’t say anything. 

Just set his phone down and went back to his coffee and was very, very carefully not looking at you.

And that was it.

That was the whole argument.

His stupid hopeful face.

You hate that face. You love that face. You would walk into a burning building for that face, which is essentially what you’re doing right now, except the building is Valdebebas and the fire is Kim Taehyung’s continued existence in your general vicinity.

You pull on a jacket. Check your phone. Ignore the three texts from Sofia, one of which is just a photo of her crying because dinosaurs went extinct that she sent at midnight for reasons you can’t fully parse.

Thirty minutes later you’re in the car, your dad driving, and he’s telling you about some new taping technique he learned at a conference in Valencia and you’re nodding in the right places and looking out the window and thinking, with great specificity, about all the things Taehyung could theoretically have come down with in the last seven days that would justify his absence today.

The list is not short.

Food poisoning, obviously. Pulled hamstring. Mysterious rash. Some dignity-adjacent incident at one of those Marbella villas that requires him to stay indoors and reconsider his choices for a minimum of six to eight weeks. A sudden onset of good judgment. A personality transplant. An inconvenient restraining order from a woman with better self-preservation instincts than you.

You’d take any of it.

You’d honestly take all of it.

Your dad turns into the Valdebebas entrance and waves at the security booth, and the gate opens, and the facility swallows you like it always does—this sprawling, impeccable machine of professional football; clean lines and manicured grass and the kind of quiet institutional money that’s visible in every single surface.

You hate how impressive it is.

You’ve spent most of your life in training facilities and you still can’t do it—can’t fully make yourself unimpressed by places like this. 

Barça’s was better. Obviously.

But Valdebebas has its own kind of weight. The kind that comes from decades of titles and the particular arrogance of an institution that has never once doubted its own importance.

Your dad parks. Gets out. Straightens his jacket with that small professional pride he always has walking into work, this guy who spent twenty years at Barça and is somehow still excited to show up.

You follow him inside.

The main building is already busy in that specific controlled-chaos way that happens when a large number of people have been told to be somewhere at the same time. Staff in lanyards. Photographers setting up rigs. A PA with a clipboard and the haunted expression of someone who has already been on shift for two hours longer than the day technically started. Players filtering in by twos and threes, some in full kit, some mid-conversation, some still wearing the slightly glazed look of people who were definitely not in bed at a reasonable hour last night.

You recognize most of them by now.

That’s what happens when your dad works here. You learn faces, positions, which ones are approachable and which ones have a thirty-meter exclusion radius of ego that you should respect for your own wellbeing.

You already know which one falls in the second category.

Your dad spots someone from medical across the lobby and says something about finding you in ten minutes and then he’s gone, absorbed into the professional ecosystem, and you are standing alone in the main corridor with your tote bag and your pikotas and your complete lack of enthusiasm.

Right.

Elevator. Floor three. Find somewhere quiet and get through the next six hours without doing anything you’ll need to explain to HR.

The elevator banks are at the end of the corridor, past the trophy cases—which, fine, are impressive, you’re not dead, you can acknowledge that—and you walk toward them, hands in your jacket pockets, looking at your phone because looking at your phone is a universal signal that you do not want to be talked to and most adults in professional environments respect this.

You press the call button and wait. Check your messages. Sofia’s meme is a photo of a man walking directly into a lake with the caption ’me, going to anything I said I wouldn’t go to.’ You send back a thumbs up. She’ll understand.

The elevator dings.

The doors open.

You step in without looking up, reaching for the button panel, and then you register the presence of another body already inside the elevator and your eyes lift on reflex—

Kim Taehyung.

In full kit, looking like he walked out of a shoot that hasn’t happened yet. Hair done. Chain sitting right. That specific quality of effortless that takes an annoying amount of effort. Holding a Coke Zero like it’s a prop. 

And smirking.

That smirk.

The one that says ’well, well, look at this,’ like your presence here is a delightful twist of fate rather than a logistical inevitability that you’ve been dreading for seven days.

You stare at him.

He stares back.

The elevator doors slide closed behind you.

Right.

So. That’s where you are.

Trapped in an elevator with Kim Taehyung at seven fifty-eight in the morning before you’ve had coffee, and the universe is clearly operating at full capacity today, fully committed to its bit, no notes.

You turn back to the panel. Press three. Face forward.

“Gominola.”

He says it like he’s greeting an old friend. Like this is pleasant. Like you didn’t spend seven days quietly hoping he’d contract something non-life-threatening but career-interruptive.

You face the doors.

“Don’t talk to me.”

He doesn’t respond.

Good. Excellent. Signs of personal growth, possibly.

Three seconds of silence.

“Wonder if they’re doing individual shirtless shots this year,” he says, conversationally, out loud. Into the air. “The club kept that one from two seasons ago for like eighteen months, which—I mean. Can you blame them.”

You stare at the doors.

“I said don’t talk to me.”

“I’m not talking to you.” Completely unbothered. “I’m talking to myself.”

You have no response to that. Not because you don’t have one—you have several—but because giving him one proves he’s talking to you, which he technically isn’t, and he knows that, and he’s enjoying this.

He suddenly leans in, and your hand moves without fully consulting your brain.

It lands flat on his stomach—reflexive, stopping him—and the contact registers immediately. Cotton kit. Solid under your palm. Warm in a way that’s distinctly inconvenient.

He goes still.

“Mhm?”

One syllable. Pointed. Like he’s giving you time to prepare yourself.

“I was just going to press the button. You missed it.”

You turn your head just enough to glance at the panel.

Floor three.

Not lit.

You could’ve sworn you had pressed it?

He reaches past you with his free hand and presses 3.

The button lights up. Small. Red. Humiliating.

“There,” he murmurs. “Proud of us.”

You go to pull your hand back, but his fingers close around your wrist before you can, tight enough to keep your palm where it is, still flattened against his stomach through the thin training top, like this was all your idea and he’s simply honoring the decision.

You look down at his hand on your wrist.

Then up at him.

Then back at his hand, because maybe visual confirmation will make this feel less insane. 

It does not.

“Let go.”

He doesn’t.

Instead he turns just enough to lean his other forearm—the one holding the Coke Zero—against the wall beside your head, easy as anything, trapping space down to something stupidly narrow. 

His chain catches the overhead light. So do his piercings. Of course they do. Every part of this man behaves like it’s in a campaign.

He’s annoyingly close. You can smell the citrusy scent of his, landing somewhere behind your ribs, where it has no business being. 

“What?” he says, glancing down at your hand on his abs and then back up. “Surprised?”

You blink at him.

He tilts his head, smugness in HD.

“Thought you’d already seen them.” His mouth twitches. “In your dad’s office. In the pool.”

“Yeah,” you say. “And they’re not impressive.”

There it is.

That reaction.

Tiny. Immediate. His teeth catch his lower lip and his whole expression shifts in a way that should probably be illegal before eight in the morning. 

Not offended. Worse. Delighted. 

Like you just tossed a match at a man made entirely of lighter fluid and ego.

“They’re not?” His voice drops a fraction. “You’ve spent an awful lot of time looking at them.”

You stare at him.

Do men like this come factory defective or is it environmental?

“Do you wake up and decide ‘yes, today I will be delusional,’” you ask, “or does it come naturally to you?”

His thumb strokes once over the inside of your wrist.

Your pulse, because your body is a traitor with no loyalty to the cause, kicks directly against it.

He notices. Obviously.

“Bit of both,” he says. “Depends how much attention I get before breakfast.”

“Incredible.”

“Thank you.”

“That wasn’t a compliment.”

“Everything you say to me is a compliment.” 

He leans a fraction closer and the citrus hits harder—not cologne, not product, just him, that sharp clean lemon scent that clings to his skin like it was engineered in a lab specifically to piss you off. 

“Even the insults. Especially the insults.”

Your jaw tightens. “You need medication.”

“Probably.” He’s not even pretending to disagree. “But right now I’m in an elevator with the prettiest girl in the building and she’s touching my abs, so. Priorities.”

You ignore the prettiest girl part. You ignore it completely. You file it in the trash folder of your brain where all of his compliments go, the one labeled ‘performative bullshit—do not engage.’

“Maybe if you drank less soda you’d have something worth looking at, Coke.”

His eyebrows go up.

“Oh.” He leans in a touch more, pleased in a deeply irritating way. “I got promoted?”

You frown. “Hm?”

“From Coke-boy to Coke.” His mouth curves. “Wow. We’re stripping me of gender now? I’m just an object now. A concept. A beverage.”

You deadpan at him. "If you want, I can make it simpler."

"Please do."

You hold his gaze when you say it. "Zero."

That really does something. Not visibly, not in any way a normal person would catch, but you're not a normal person when it comes to him. Unfortunately.  

The tiny flare in his eyes. The way his tongue presses once against the inside of his cheek. The little almost-smile he has to bite back because apparently being insulted is his favorite hobby after staring at himself in reflective surfaces.

Seriously. Medical journals should be lining up outside his house.

“Zero,” he repeats.

“Mhm.”

“Because of the drink?” he asks.

“Partly.”

“And the other part?”

You hold his gaze. “Use your imagination.”

“Oh, I do.” His voice goes rough around the edges. “Constantly, actually.”

You ignore that with the dignity of a woman refusing to acknowledge a public indecency.

“It suits you,” you say. “Coke Zero. Zero nutritional value. Zero restraint. Zero redeeming qualities.”

He almost laughs. You can see him trying not to.

Instead he says, quietly amused, “Zero? Seriously, Gomi? That’s mean.”

“You sound insulted.”

“I am.”

He’s not.

He's absolutely not.

That's not what insulted looks like. That's what horny looks like, and you know the difference, and he knows you know the difference, and the whole thing is deeply, profoundly stupid.

His grip on your wrist shifts.

Your hand—still on his stomach, still pressed against that warm cotton—starts to move. Downward. Slow.

"Really, genuinely insulted."

Lower.

Past the hem of his kit. Past the elastic.

"Keep moving that hand," you say, very calm, very level, "and see what happens."

He goes still.

Then his eyes drop.

To your mouth.

"You know that makes me wanna do it more, right?"

He says it like he's sharing a fun fact. Like this is trivia night and he's contributing.

"So being pushy is your whole thing," you say. "Good to know. Something you should probably discuss with a psychologist."

"Psychologists are fake."

"That's not—"

"Made up. Whole field. Scam."

"You can't just—"

"Moving on."

Suddenly his grip on your wrist tightens and he pulls your palm down and presses it flat against his crotch—

And he's hard.

Fully hard. Zero ambiguity about what you're feeling—the thick, obvious shape of his cock straining against fabric, hot under your palm, and your brain processes this information in approximately point-three seconds before your body reacts on pure animal instinct.

You yank your hand back like you've touched a burner.

And shove him.

Both palms, flat against his chest, hard enough that he staggers backward two full steps, his shoulder blades hitting the elevator wall with a thud that makes the Coke Zero slosh in the can.

"Are you insane?"

Your voice comes out sharper than you intended. Pitched higher. Not flustered—you do not get flustered—but something adjacent to it that you refuse to name and will be taking to your grave.

Taehyung doesn't look sorry.

Taehyung looks like Christmas came early and brought him personally wrapped gifts.

He's laughing. This low, rough chuckle that sounds like it's being dragged out of him against his better judgment—if he had better judgment, which he doesn't, which has been firmly established.

"What?" He's still grinning, rubbing the spot on his chest where you shoved him with his free hand, not remotely bothered. "You've felt it against your pussy once already. Figured we were past the formalities."

Your mouth opens.

Closes.

Opens again.

Nothing comes out.

Because what do you say to that?

What is the appropriate verbal response to a man referencing the time he ground his erection against you in your father's treatment room while you're trapped in a moving elevator in a professional football facility at eight in the morning?!

Emily Post didn't write a chapter on this.

The elevator dings.

Floor three.

The doors slide open and reality floods back in—fluorescent lighting, corridor noise, the distant sound of someone yelling about lighting setups—and you stand there, pulse hammering, while the world outside the elevator continues to exist as if the last ninety seconds didn't just happen.

Taehyung straightens up. Adjusts his kit. Takes a sip of his Coke Zero with the calm of a man who did not just place your hand on his dick in a shared vertical transit space.

He steps out.

Pauses.

Turns.

And throws you the V sign.

Two fingers. Lazy. That same gesture from the party, the one that started all of this, and his tongue presses against the inside of his cheek as he does it, and his eyes hold yours for exactly long enough to make his point before he turns and walks down the corridor like nothing happened.

You stare at the closed doors.

Blink once.

Twice.

"What the fuck," you say, to no one, in an empty elevator, at eight in the morning.

Your hand smells like his kit.

You wipe it on your jacket.

It doesn't help.

You’ve been here eleven minutes. 

You know this because you’ve been counting, the way you count everything when you’re stuck somewhere you don’t want to be—minutes, ceiling tiles, the number of times the PR coordinator says ‘team’ (four so far).

You’re keeping a tally in the margin of your notebook next to your actual notes, which are sparse and getting sparser because this whole thing is a glorified logistics briefing disguised as a team bonding exercise and you are not on this team.

You’re the physio’s daughter.

You’re here because ‘staff families invited for unity shots’ apparently translates to ‘sit in a room for an hour while someone explains lighting arrangements like it’s a NATO summit.’

There are about fifteen people in here. Players scattered across the sectional couches and chairs, a few WAGs, some PR staff, two photographers who keep checking their light meters like nervous pilots. 

Your dad’s somewhere on the other side of the room talking to the head coach’s assistant about rotator cuff protocols, because he is constitutionally incapable of not working even when he’s technically off-duty.

You’ve got a seat at the end of the long couch, notebook open, pen moving, foot tapping a rhythm against the floor that’s half concentration and half residual irritation from the elevator incident that you are not thinking about.

You are not thinking about it.

You are taking notes.

Professional, organized, here-for-her-dad notes about photo scheduling and where staff families are supposed to stand during the group shots and—

A body drops onto the couch next to you.

Not across the room, where there are at least four empty seats. Not on the chair by the window, which is free and far away and would’ve been the choice of any person with functioning spatial awareness and a basic respect for personal boundaries.

Next to you.

Right next to you.

His thigh settles approximately two millimeters from yours. 

You don’t look up.

Don’t react.

Just keep writing.

The PR coordinator is explaining something about backdrop options for the individual portraits—white versus grey, apparently this is a debate that requires committee input—and you are focused on that. Entirely focused. One hundred percent of your attention on backdrop discourse.

Something crinkles.

You glance sideways—reflex, not choice—and watch Taehyung reach into the pocket of his training jacket and pull out a small bag of pikotas.

Your pikotas.

Not your literal pikotas. But your candy. Your thing. The sour-sweet cherry gummies that you keep in your tote and your nightstand and your jacket pockets because they’re yours, they’ve been yours since you were twelve, and now this man is sitting next to you in a professional meeting eating them like they’re his.

He pops one into his mouth. Chews. Doesn’t look at you.

“Where did you get those.”

It comes out before you can help it. Flat, but with an edge of genuine confusion, because pikotas aren’t exactly standard vending machine fare and you’ve never once seen them in the Valdebebas canteen.

He finally glances at you. Chewing. Taking his time about it. Extracting every possible second of enjoyment from both the candy and your face.

“You’d be surprised,” he says, “the kind of contacts Madrid players have.”

“Contacts.”

“Mm.” Another pikota. He makes a small show of examining the bag, turning it over like he’s reading the nutritional information. “Smuggling around kids’ candy. Whole underground network. Very serious operation.”

“Must be one hell of a job. Your braincells survive the mission?”

“I’m a man of many talents, Gomi.” He sucks the sugar off his thumb. Casual. Not looking at you. “Some of them are even legal.”

“Name one.”

“I just located and acquired your favorite candy within a fifteen-kilometer radius of a high-security football facility using nothing but my charm and a phone call.” He tilts the bag toward you. Offering. “That’s basically espionage.”

“That’s basically sad.”

“And yet.” He pulls the bag back, pops another one, and faces forward again. “You’re still talking to me about it.”

You turn back to your notebook.

Write nothing.

The meeting continues. Backdrop: grey wins. Schedule: roster goes first, staff families after lunch. Individual shots: alphabetical by surname, so Taehyung’s somewhere in the middle, which means he’ll be hanging around the facility for hours with nothing to do, which means he’ll be hanging around you for hours with nothing to do, which means today is going to be the longest day of your life and you haven’t even had coffee yet.

His knee taps yours.

Light. Brief. Could be accidental.

You shift your leg away.

Thirty seconds pass.

Tap.

You clench your jaw. Move your leg again.

Twenty seconds.

Tap.

This time it lingers—his knee pressing against the side of yours, holding contact for a full beat before pulling back.

You stare at your notebook. The words on the page have stopped meaning anything. You’re looking at your own handwriting and seeing hieroglyphics because your entire cognitive capacity has been rerouted to the single point of contact where his knee keeps finding yours like a homing missile with a personal grudge.

Tap.

Is he braindead?

Tap.

Is he actually, clinically, medically braindead? Because that’s the only explanation. Some kind of neurological event has occurred and the part of his brain responsible for reading social cues and understanding the concept of ’stop’ has been permanently deactivated.

Tap.

You could choke him. Right here. In this room. In front of fifteen people and a PR coordinator and two photographers. You could put your hands around his throat and squeeze and you’d feel nothing—no guilt, no remorse, just the deep, abiding satisfaction of a woman who has reached her absolute limit with a man who thinks his proximity is a gift.

Tap.

Who does he think he is? Genuinely. Is this the approach? Touch the girl, annoy the girl, be so relentlessly, suffocatingly present that eventually she breaks from sheer exhaustion? Is this what works on other women? Does he tap their knees in meetings and they just—what? Swoon? Melt? Decide that yes, being subtly harassed during a photo day logistics briefing is the romantic overture they’ve been waiting for?

Tap.

God. God, Kim Taehyung is a test. A full-blown, divinely orchestrated trial of patience. God really said ’men are insufferable and here’s one to prove it. Here’s the thesis statement with abs and a Coke Zero habit and zero—literally zero—understanding of the word no.’

What did you do in your previous life? 

It must’ve been bad. You must’ve burned down a convent or kicked a dog or committed some deeply specific sin that the universe decided could only be atoned for through repeated, sustained exposure to this man’s right kneecap.

Tap.

Karma. That’s what this is. Cosmic, targeted, inescapable karma.

Tap.

Fucking stupid attention-seeking—

“Stop.”

You say it through your teeth. Quiet. Just for him.

He doesn’t stop.

Tap.

His face is pointed at the front of the room. Attentive. Invested. Like he’s absorbing every single word about photo resolution requirements and has never been more intellectually stimulated.

Tap.

Fine.

You swing your knee sideways and crack it into his.

Hard.

Not a tap. Not a nudge. A full, mean, retaliatory strike that connects with the side of his kneecap with enough force that his whole leg jolts.

He snorts.

Tries to cover it—badly—pressing his fist against his mouth, shoulders shaking, this strangled sound escaping through his fingers that’s somewhere between a laugh and a cough.

Heads turn. Half the room glances over.

Taehyung clears his throat, fist still against his mouth, and nods at nobody in particular. 

“Sorry. Cough. Just a—” He thumps his chest once. “—tickle in the throat. Carry on.”

The PR coordinator blinks, adjusts her glasses, and continues talking about file format preferences.

Heads turn back.

You want to dissolve into the couch cushions and cease to exist.

He’s eating another pikota. Chewing with that self-satisfied rhythm of a man who just won a round and knows it.

Silence.

Blessed, temporary silence.

Forty-five seconds of peace in which you try to re-engage with the meeting, try to remember why you’re here, try to reconnect with the version of yourself that walked into this building this morning with functional blood pressure and the will to live.

Then he starts bouncing his knee.

Not the tapping. The bouncing. That full-leg rhythmic jitter that some people do when they’re restless, except he’s doing it at a frequency that vibrates through the couch cushion and directly into your thigh and it’s like sitting next to a human jackhammer.

Your pen stops moving.

You look at his leg.

Look at him.

He’s staring straight ahead. Chewing a pikota. Bouncing. Completely at peace with himself and the chaos he’s introducing into your nervous system.

You don’t think about it.

Your hand drops to his thigh and you dig your nails in.

Four fingers and a thumb, pressing into the muscle hard enough to anchor his leg to the couch and stop the vibration dead.

The effect is immediate.

His breath catches—audible, quick, a sound that has no business existing in a meeting room—and his head tips back. His arms go up, stretching overhead, spine arching slightly, and the groan that comes out of him is disguised as a stretch noise but it’s not a stretch noise and you know it’s not a stretch noise and he knows you know.

Every single head in the room turns again.

“Just—” His voice is rougher than it should be. He rolls his shoulders, committing to the bit. “Tight. From training. Sorry.”

The PR coordinator looks like she’s reconsidering her career choices.

You remove your hand from his thigh like it’s radioactive.

He looks at you.

That grin.

That absolute shit-eating, fully unrepentant, ‘I-just-made-a-noise-in-a-meeting-room-because-you-hurt-me-and-I-liked-it’ grin.

Your face is hot. Your ears are hot. Your entire body has decided to betray you by turning the exact shade of the pikotas he keeps eating, and you grip your pen so hard the plastic creaks.

He pops another pikota into his mouth.

Winks.

You are going to kill him. You are going to kill him and plead temporary insanity and every woman on the jury will acquit you.

The meeting wraps up approximately nine years later.

People start standing, gathering bags, fragmenting into side conversations. The PR coordinator distributes printed schedules. Someone mentions lunch. Normal, functional, human behavior happening all around you while you sit rigid on the couch thinking about the thirty-six different ways you could commit a crime and get away with it.

Taehyung shifts next to you. Doesn’t stand. Tilts his body toward yours, dropping his voice low enough that the words are just for you.

“I’m gonna be honest with you, Gomi.” Barely above a breath. “I didn’t hear a single word of that briefing.”

You stare at him.

“I have zero idea what’s happening for the photos. No clue. None. My entire blood supply was—” He makes a vague gesture downward. “—elsewhere. The whole time.”

“That sounds like a you problem.”

“It is a me problem.” He nods. Solemn. Completely unbothered. “A really pressing me problem.”

“Then go figure it out.”

“I was hoping my favorite physio’s daughter would brief me.”

“Briefly: no.”

“Gomi—”

You stand up. Grab your bag. Your schedule. The remains of your composure, which are admittedly scattered across the floor of this briefing room like debris.

“Your mess. Your cleanup. I’m not your personal assistant.”

“You’re really gonna leave me here?” He tips his head back against the couch, looking up at you with an expression of a kicked puppy. “Confused and alone?”

“Thriving and unbothered, actually.”

You’ve taken exactly two steps toward the door when Namjoon appears.

He’s holding a coffee—actual coffee, from the good machine on the second floor—and he’s got that easy, slightly disheveled energy he always has, glasses slightly askew, turtleneck doing its turtleneck thing. 

He smiles when he sees you.

“Hey. How was—”

“Don’t ask.”

“That bad?”

“Worse.”

He chuckles, and you’re about to ask him if he wants to grab food after the family shots when—

“Is that your boyfriend?”

You stop walking.

Turn around slowly.

Taehyung’s still on the couch, sprawled, one arm stretched across the backrest, looking at Namjoon with an expression that’s technically neutral and functionally anything but.

You open your mouth to tell him that’s none of his business, that he doesn’t get to ask you that, that the concept of your personal life should be as inaccessible to him as basic human decency apparently is—

“And what if I am?”

Namjoon’s voice. Calm. Even. Standing right beside you with his coffee and his turtleneck and an expression you’ve never seen on him before—steady and unbothered and looking directly at Taehyung like he’s got all day.

Taehyung simply looks at Namjoon from the couch, that sprawled-out posture, and there’s a beat—two, three seconds—where they just hold each other’s gaze. Weighing. Measuring.

Then Taehyung raises both hands. Palms out. That universal gesture of surrender that means nothing when it comes from him.

“My bad, dude.” Easy. Disarming. A smile that shows too many teeth. “Didn’t know.”

Namjoon doesn’t respond. Just holds the look for another second. Then turns to you.

“Ready?”

You pick up your tote strap, adjust it on your shoulder. “Let’s go.”

You make it three steps toward the door.

“Yo, dude!”

Both hands cupped around his mouth. Full volume. The kind of voice projection you use in stadiums, not conference rooms.

You both half turn, looking over shoulders.

“You better watch her.”

The smile that follows is the kind that could mean anything and definitely means something, and you grab Namjoon’s arm and pull him through the door before your face can give him any reaction at all.

The photo shoot is a circus and no one brought a tent.

You’re watching from behind the lighting rigs, tucked into one of those folding chairs they set up for families and staff, doing an excellent impression of someone who belongs here while internally calculating how many minutes until you can leave.

The roster shots are happening on the main pitch backdrop—that massive club crest banner they’ve rolled out like a red carpet for egos—and the photographer, a tiny woman with a headset, is trying to organize twenty-two professional athletes into neat rows.

It’s going about as well as you’d expect.

“Marco. Marco—I need you in the second row.”

“The second row?” Marco says it like she just asked him to stand in the car park. “Bro, my jawline doesn’t hit right from the second row. There’s a shadow thing. It’s an Italian bone structure issue.”

“It’s a height issue,” the photographer says flatly. “You’re five-eleven. Second row.”

“Five-eleven and three quarters—”

“Second row, Mr. Santelli.”

Leo, who’s already been placed in the second row, looks unreasonably pleased about this development. “Welcome to my world.”

“Shut up, Leo.”

“I’m just saying—”

“I said shut up.”

“The second row’s not that bad—”

“Leo, if you finish that sentence, I will tell Sofia what you said about her cooking last Tuesday.”

Leo shuts up.

The photographer repositions. Adjusts angles. Asks the first row to square their shoulders. Asks the third row to stop slouching. Asks Gabriel to please—please—take the AirPods out.

“Sorry, sorry—” Gabriel yanks them out, grinning that impossible grin that makes everyone forgive him immediately. “I was listening to something.”

“During the team photo?”

“It was a good song.” He says it like that’s a perfectly valid excuse. 

To be fair, for Gabriel, it probably is.

Sergio, standing front and center because he’s the captain and that’s his spot and nobody has ever once questioned this, pinches the bridge of his nose.

“Can we just—” He gestures at the group with the resigned authority of a man who’s done this forty times and it never gets easier. “Can we just take the photo. Please. One photo. Without anyone talking.”

“Bold of you to assume we know how to be quiet,” Marco says.

“I’m not assuming. I’m begging.”

“That’s sad, captain.”

“Your existence is sad, Marco. Smile.”

The photographer counts down. Three, two—

Taehyung bumps Marco’s shoulder. Hard enough to knock him sideways half a step.

Marco bumps him back.

Taehyung catches himself on Leo, who wasn’t involved but is now stumbling into Matías, who turns around with the expression of a man contemplating violence.

“¡Eh!” Matías shoves Leo back upright. “¿Qué coño hacéis?” (What the fuck are you doing?)

“It wasn’t me—”

“It’s never you—”

“Can we PLEASE—” The photographer’s voice has reached a frequency that could shatter crystal. “—take ONE photo where EVERYONE is looking at the camera and NOBODY is assaulting each other?”

Silence.

Twenty-two players stare forward.

Click.

“Thank god,” the photographer mutters.

“That’s gonna be a good one,” Marco announces to nobody. “I felt it in my bones.”

“You felt my elbow in your bones,” Taehyung says.

“Same thing.”

The photographer waves them off for a break while she checks the shots, and the formation dissolves immediately into chaos—players scattering, grabbing water, checking phones.

Leo drifts toward Marco and Taehyung like a satellite pulled by gravity, and within thirty seconds they’re clustered near the lighting rig to your left, close enough that you can hear every word whether you want to or not.

You do not want to.

You hear them anyway.

“—I’m just saying, the grey backdrop washes me out,” Marco’s saying, scrolling through his phone. “They should’ve gone with black. Black makes everyone look ten percent hotter. That’s science.”

“That’s not science,” Leo says.

“It is. I read it somewhere.”

“You don’t read.”

“I read captions, Leo. Captions count.”

Taehyung’s leaning against the rig, arms crossed, looking bored in the way he always looks bored when he’s actually paying attention to everything. His eyes drift across the room—casual, unhurried—and you know the exact moment they land on you because you feel it the way you feel a change in air pressure.

You don’t look up.

Keep reading your schedule.

“Alright, individual portraits next!” The photographer’s assistant—the PA with the clipboard and the thousand-yard stare—starts calling names. “Alphabetical by surname. We’re starting with—”

“Excuse me.” Xavi’s voice cuts through the noise. Not loud. Never loud. Just that specific frequency that makes every player in a thirty-meter radius instinctively straighten up. “Before individuals—can we address the team photo situation?”

He’s looking at the Chaos Coalition.

All three of them.

That look. You’ve seen your dad give it—the one that doesn’t need words because the disappointment is doing all the heavy lifting.

“The team photo,” Xavi repeats, “is the image the club uses for the entire season. It goes on the website. On posters. On merchandise. And you three—” He gestures with a water bottle. “—turned it into a playground fight.”

“It was a nudge,” Marco says.

“It was unprofessional.”

“Xavi—”

“This represents the club.” Xavi’s voice doesn’t rise. It doesn’t need to. He’s got that Andalusian calm that makes everything sound both reasonable and devastating. “The club that pays your salaries. That gave you a platform. The least you can do is stand still for eight seconds.”

Silence.

Marco blinks.

Leo stares at his shoes.

Taehyung tongues the inside of his cheek, jaw shifting, not saying a word.

Xavi holds the look for another two seconds—just to make sure it lands—then nods once and walks back toward the photographer, water bottle in hand, posture perfect, the absolute picture of professionalism.

The moment his back is turned, all three of them huddle closer.

“Look at him,” Marco mutters, barely moving his lips. “Being all… Xavi-like.”

“I mean,” Leo whispers back, “he is Xavi.”

“Yes but when I say Xavi-like I mean it as an insult, Leo. Focus.”

“Right. Sorry.”

Taehyung glances over his shoulder—checks Xavi’s position—then turns back. “Did you hear him? ‘The club that pays your salaries.’ Like I don’t know who pays my salary. I’m very aware of who pays my salary. My salary is excellent.”

“I’m so done with the salary lecture.” Marco shakes his head, solemn. “Top three worst moves. Right behind the ‘you represent something bigger than yourselves’ speech.”

“Oh god,” Leo groans. “That one’s the worst.”

“It’s so bad.”

“‘Something bigger than yourselves,’” Taehyung mimics, dropping his voice into Xavi’s measured cadence, chin lifted, an invisible water bottle in hand. “‘Every action you take reflects on this institution.’”

Marco snorts. Covers his mouth.

“‘The crest on your chest isn’t decoration,’” Marco adds, doing his own Xavi impression—slower, one hand pressed to his heart. “‘It’s a responsibility. A privilege. A—’”

“’—a legacy,’” Leo finishes, and all three of them mouth the word at the same time, like they’ve heard it four hundred times, which they probably have.

“At least the salary one’s short,” Taehyung concedes. “In, out, done. The ‘bigger than yourselves’ thing? That one’s got layers. He builds to it. There’s a crescendo.”

“There’s eye contact,” Marco adds, haunted. “He makes eye contact with every single person in the room.”

“Individually.”

“Individually.”

“Seriously, he’s all like—” Marco straightens up slightly, adjusts an imaginary collar. “‘Look at me. I’m Xavi. I’m morally superior because I’ve been in a relationship with someone who actually loves me for eight years and we just got engaged and I’ve never once thought about another woman because I’m built different’—”

“That one feels personal,” Leo says.

“It is personal.” Marco frowns. “Imagine being in love with the same person. Forever. Voluntarily.”

He shudders. Full body. Like the concept of monogamy is a physical affliction.

“Some people like that,” Leo says, carefully.

“Some people like eating plain rice, Leo. Doesn’t make it a personality.”

Taehyung snorts.

“Like, bro, the wedding?” Marco continues, eyes widening. “Have you seen the Pinterest board? Elena showed Isabella. There are mood boards. Plural. One for table settings. One for flowers. One for—get this—napkin folds.”

“Napkin folds,” Taehyung repeats.

“Specific napkin folds. There are apparently seven kinds and Elena has opinions about all of them.”

“And the water bottle thing too,” Leo mutters. “Like even his hydration is morally superior.”

“For real,” Taehyung says. “It’s like watching a documentary about discipline.”

“He’d make a great priest,” Leo offers.

“He’d make a great principal.”

“He’d make a great my-dad-when-I-got-bad-grades—”

Xavi looks over from across the room. Just a glance. Just a flicker of those dark eyes in their direction, chin lifting slightly, the way a lion turns its head when it hears rustling in the grass.

All three of them snap forward simultaneously.

Marco grabs his water bottle and drinks with aggressive innocence. Leo suddenly finds the ceiling fascinating. Taehyung pulls out his phone and stares at a blank screen with the focus of a man reading breaking news.

Nobody speaks.

Nobody breathes.

Xavi holds the look for three full seconds.

Then turns back to his conversation with Rafael.

Marco exhales through his teeth. “Close one.”

“He’s got eyes everywhere,” Leo whispers. “It’s like he can hear us thinking.”

“It’s the goalkeeper training,” Taehyung says, still fake-scrolling. “Peripheral vision. They see everything.”

“We should spread out,” Leo suggests. “Look natural.”

“We are natural—”

“We look like we’re planning a heist—”

“Okay, next please!” The photographer’s voice cuts across the room. 

Alexandre peels himself off the wall with the enthusiasm of a man walking to his own execution, and the room reshuffles again.

You’ve been watching all of this.

You didn’t mean to, but it’s impossible—genuinely, physically impossible—not to watch three grown men who earn more in a week than most people earn in a year act like twelve-year-olds who got told off by a substitute teacher.

The Xavi impression was good, though.

You’re not going to admit that to anyone.

The next hour passes in a blur of flash photography and fragile egos. Players cycle through individual shots—some take thirty seconds, some take fifteen minutes because they keep asking to see the screen and requesting different angles. Marco insists on a reshoot because his ‘jawline wasn’t catching the light.’ Taehyung, predictably, nails his in one take and walks away like he couldn’t care less. 

You saw him check the preview screen twice, though. 

He cared.

Your dad appears around noon, coffee in hand, looking pleased in that quiet way he gets when work is going well.

“Fotos de familia ahora, cariño.” (Family photos now, sweetheart.) He squeezes your shoulder. “Solo un par. Rápido.” (Just a couple. Quick.)

You close your notebook. Stand. Smooth down your jacket.

This is the part you’ve been dreading. Not the photos themselves—you can survive standing next to your dad and smiling for a camera. You’ve done it a thousand times, at a thousand Barça events, in a thousand corridors that smelled like medical tape and belonging.

It’s the context.

Staff families means you’re part of the Madrid machine now. Officially. Documented. Filed away in some PR folder as evidence of team unity and institutional warmth.

The photographer’s set up a new backdrop—warmer lighting, softer focus, the kind of setup designed to make everyone look approachable and human. Staff members are filing in with partners, kids, the occasional bemused-looking teenager who clearly got dragged here against their will.

You know the feeling.

Your dad steers you toward the cluster forming near the backdrop, his hand on your shoulder, already talking to one of the assistant coaches about someone’s hamstring.

The photographer’s assistant is arranging people into loose groupings. Staff on the left. Families on the right. Players who are part of the ‘unity shots’ scattered in between for that curated we’re-all-one-big-family aesthetic that clubs love and nobody believes.

You end up near the edge of the group. Reasonable. Safe. Far enough from the center that you’re visible but not prominent. Your dad’s beside you, already in position, radiating that calm professional warmth that makes everyone around him stand a little straighter.

This is fine.

You adjust your jacket. Fix your hair. Prepare the face—neutral, pleasant, the expression of a person who is here by choice and not because her father’s career depends on institutional goodwill.

And then—someone stepping into the space to your left where nobody was standing three seconds ago.

You feel it before you register it. 

That faint edge of citrus that your nose has started recognizing against your will.

His hand touches your lower back.

Light. Brief. Fingertips pressing through the fabric of your jacket, just below your shoulder blade, the kind of contact that could be dismissed as guidance. Positioning. Moving you into frame the way anyone might move anyone during a group photo.

Except his fingers linger.

One beat too long.

Two.

His palm flattens. Settles against the curve of your spine.

And stays.

“Chin up, Gomi,” he murmurs, voice low enough that only you hear it. “You look like you’re at a funeral.”

You don’t turn your head. Don’t look at him. Just face the camera with your expression locked in place and your back burning where his hand sits.

The photographer raises her camera.

“Everyone—smile!”

You do.

It’s late when the whole nightmare is finally over. 

The light through the hallway is going amber, that low-angle afternoon thing that happens when a day’s been going on too long and the building itself seems tired of hosting people. 

Most of the photo shoot chaos has been packed up. The photographer left an hour ago. Staff families filtered out after that, then the WAGs, then the players in staggered groups—some to the gym, some to their cars, some to whatever shiny nightlife commitment makes them feel alive after eight hours of being professionally agreeable.

You’re still here because your dad’s still here. Because your dad is always still here, because Jesús does not leave a facility until every piece of equipment is accounted for and every clipboard is initialed and every surface has been wiped down to his personal standard of medical-grade cleanliness.

Which means you’re in the closet.

Not metaphorically. Literally in the storage room off the main physio corridor, reaching for the electrode cables your dad asked you to grab from the top shelf because they migrated during the chaos of today and now they’re wedged behind a box of resistance bands that someone shoved up there with the spatial awareness of a drunk giraffe.

Your fingers graze the edge of the box. Miss the cables by about four centimeters.

You stretch higher. Your jacket rides up. Your shoulder protests.

Seriously. This shelf is just unreasonably placed, designed by someone who assumed that everyone who uses this room is three meters tall and plays professional football.

You stretch again. Fingertips brush plastic. Almost—

A hand reaches past you.

Long arm. Over your shoulder. Fingers closing around the cable bundle and pulling it down with zero effort, like the shelf is at eye level and not somewhere near the ceiling.

The smell hits you before the identity does.

Lemons.

That specific scent that isn’t cologne, isn’t soap, isn’t anything you can pin to a product—it’s just Kim Taehyung. The way his skin smells after a full day. Bright and tangy and warm in a way that makes your throat do something inconvenient.

He always smells like lemons, doesn’t he?

You’re not a citrus girl. Never have been. You don’t squeeze lemon into your water or order limoncello or buy those yellow cleaning products that smell like summer kitchens.

But right now, standing in a storage closet with his arm still extended past your head and his chest approximately four inches from your back, the lemon thing is—

Present.

Very present.

He drops the cables into your hand.

“Here.”

You take them. Step sideways, putting distance between you and whatever just happened in your olfactory system.

“Thanks.”

He shrugs. Moves back. Leans against the opposite shelf with that particular brand of engineered casualness that he does—arms folded, one ankle crossed over the other, like he ended up here by accident and not because he walked into a storage closet that he has absolutely no reason to be in.

You look at him.

He looks at you.

The silence sits there for a second, the same way that happens at the end of a very long day when everyone’s used up all their performance energy and there’s nothing left but the actual person underneath.

“You look tired,” he says.

“Wow.” You don’t miss a beat. “Charming.”

“I mean—” He pauses. His jaw works slightly, like he’s chewing on the next word before releasing it. “This kind of day is exhausting. The performing.”

You don’t respond immediately.

Because that’s—

That’s not a line. 

That’s not a setup for something. 

There’s no smirk chasing the sentence, no innuendo tucked into the pause, no gleam in his eye that says gotcha. 

He’s just standing there, looking at you, and his voice sounds different. Flatter. Stripped of the usual coating.

Tired, actually.

He looks tired too. Not the kind of tired that makes people ugly—because the universe wouldn’t grant you that mercy—but the kind that shows in the looseness of his posture. 

The way his shoulders sit lower than usual. 

The faint shadow under his eyes that his bone structure almost hides but not quite.

“You’d know,” you say. Quieter than you intended.

“Yeah.” He holds your gaze. “I would.”

Something passes between you. Brief. Unnamed. The kind of thing that happens when two people who spend all their time performing accidentally stop at the same time and realize they’re both just standing there without a script.

Then—

“So you perform too.”

His mouth shifts. Not a grin. Something smaller. More knowing.

“Thought you were above that.”

The sincerity evaporates like a puddle in July.

“Meaning?” Your defenses snap back online. Immediate. Automatic.

“Meaning—” He tilts his head, that half-interested expression settling over his features. “—I put my hand on your back during the photos. Right there. Full palm.” He makes a vague gesture. “And you just… stood there.”

“Because we were being photographed.”

“Because you were performing.” He says it like he’s delighted by the discovery. “After the meeting—after the—” 

He mimes clawing fingers.

Nails digging into a thigh. 

Your nails. His thigh. 

“—that whole thing, I was expecting you to turn around and stomp on my foot. Elbow to the ribs. Something.”

“I didn’t want to cause a scene.”

“You always want to cause a scene. You charged fifteen grand to my card at a party.”

“That was different.”

“How?”

“That was revenge. The photo was just logistics.”

“Logistics.” He repeats the word like it’s amusing. Like it’s a candy he’s rolling around his mouth. “Right. My hand on your back was logistics.”

“It was.”

“And you letting it stay there?”

“Tolerance.”

“Tolerance,” he echoes. His eyes narrow. “See, Gomi, I don’t buy that.”

“I don’t care what you buy.”

“Because I think—” He pushes off the shelf. Doesn’t step closer. Just shifts his weight forward in a way that makes the room feel smaller. “—you liked it.”

“I tolerated it.”

“You tolerated my hand on your back but tried to puncture my femoral artery with your fingernails forty-five minutes earlier?”

“Yes.”

“Those are mixed signals.”

“Those are boundaries. One was a briefing room where you were being insufferable. The other was a photo where pulling away would’ve looked weird.”

“Mm.” He’s almost smiling now. Containing it. Barely. “So you didn’t pull away because of optics.”

“Correct.”

“Not because my hand felt good.”

“Your hand felt like a hand. Congratulations on having one.”

He bites back whatever’s threatening to break across his face. 

You can see it—the way his jaw locks, the way his cheek hollows slightly with the effort of not grinning.

“Okay,” he says. “Fair. But the nails thing.”

“What about it.”

“I liked that.”

You stare at him. “You liked that you almost got caught making sex noises in a briefing.”

“I liked the nails thing, Gomgom.”

No lead-up. No cushioning. 

He just drops it into the air between you like it’s a reasonable contribution to a conversation between two people standing in a storage closet.

“Good for you.”

“I mean—I’m used to scratches.” He tilts his head, rolling one shoulder back like he’s remembering something specific, something physical. “My back’s basically a canvas at this point. Comes with the territory.”

“Disgusting.”

“So like, not news.” He doesn’t even register the insult. Just keeps going, the way a train keeps going when someone throws a pebble at it. “Girls scratch. It happens. Standard operating procedure. But you—” 

He points at you. One finger. 

"—you scratched me like you were actually trying to get to the bone.”

“Because I was trying to get to the bone.”

“—and that was so hot, Gomi.” His voice drops, rough, as if the memory’s doing something to him in real time. “Like, fuck. That’s all I could think about for the rest of that meeting.”

“Explains why you got nothing out of it.”

“Exactly! See?” He spreads his hands. Beaming. “We get each other.”

“We absolutely do not get each other.”

“You’re right.” He nods, solemn, like he’s reconsidering his position and arriving at a new conclusion. “I think we should get to know each other. In my room. My bed, specifically. So you can add those scratches to my back. For real this time.”

There it is.

The proposition. Delivered with all the subtlety of a billboard on the M-30 and twice the confidence.

In a normal setting—on a normal day—with a normal amount of patience left in your reserves, you’d say ’I don’t want to know’ or ‘what the fuck is wrong with you’ or even a mere ‘boy, whatever’ and walk out and that would be the end of it. Clean exit. Dignity intact. The mature response of a woman who does not engage with men who proposition her in storage closets after photo days.

But it’s not a normal day.

And Taehyung is not a normal person. 

And it’s been a twelve-hour day of performing and tolerating and sitting next to his stupid bouncing knee and feeling his stupid hand on your stupid back and smelling his stupid lemon smell and you are fed up. 

Past fed up. Beyond it. 

Somewhere in the territory where irritation curdles into recklessness and your mouth stops consulting your brain before opening.

“You wouldn’t last long enough,” you say, “to get me to scratch you.”

The room goes very still.

Taehyung’s face does something you’ve never seen it do.

It goes blank.

Completely, totally blank—every expression wiped clean for a full second, like his operating system just crashed and is rebooting. 

His mouth is slightly open. 

His eyes are fixed on you with the intensity of a man who just heard something in a language he didn’t know he spoke.

Then the reboot completes.

And the grin that spreads across his face is predatory.

Not his usual smirk. Not the cocky, performative thing he wears like a uniform. 

This one’s slower. Meaner. All teeth and something behind the teeth that makes the air in the closet feel like it dropped ten degrees and heated up simultaneously.

“Wanna bet?”

Two words, low enough that you feel them more than hear them. 

His tongue presses against the inside of his cheek, and his whole posture shifts—pushing off the shelf, not moving toward you but orienting toward you, his body language suddenly very awake for a man who looked exhausted thirty seconds ago.

Something about the way he says it sounds like a door opening onto a room you shouldn’t walk into.

You step back.

“I’m leaving.”

“Gomi—”

“Goodbye.” 

You tuck the cables under your arm, grip the shelf with your free hand for balance as you step around him—giving him the widest possible berth in a closet that doesn’t offer much berth to give—and head for the door, flipping him off. 

“Oi!”

His voice bounces off the corridor walls, too loud, too pleased.

“That’s the first time you’ve flipped me off!”

You keep walking.

“That’s a milestone, Gomi! We should mark the date!”

You round the corner.

His voice follows, fading but warm.

“I’m putting it in my calendar!”

The lemon smell stays on the cables the whole walk back.

You don’t notice.

You absolutely, categorically don’t notice.

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You feel him shift behind you, then beside you, then his chest brushes your shoulder as he leans in.

“We need to sweep first,” he murmurs, breath warm against your ear.

Goosebumps race down your neck, and you bite the inside of your cheek because Jesus, his voice does things when it’s pitched low like that.

His eyes are already moving. Methodical. Left sector, center, right. You watch his pupils dilate slightly as he processes everything, like his brain’s running equations you can’t see.

"Kaleido mentioned four men," he says, voice barely above a whisper. "But that's surface intel. Could be six. Could be eight. Depends on shift rotation and whether Fervio called for backup after the villa."

His fingers tap against your hip. Once, twice, three times. Soft little pulses that you feel more than hear.

"Wind's coming from the northeast at approximately four knots, which means sound carries toward the warehouses, not the water. Visibility's decent—maybe sixty percent with the fog rolling in. Moon's at seventy-two percent luminosity, provides enough light for visual confirmation without night vision but not enough for clean long-range shots without thermal."

You blink. "...What?"

His thumb shifts slightly, pressing into the small of your back like he's anchoring himself.

"The patterns," he continues, totally unbothered by your confusion. "They'll likely run standard perimeter checks—two mobile, two stationary. If they're smart, they've got overwatch on the ship itself, probably the bridge or the cargo deck. If they're really smart, they've got a counter-sniper positioned somewhere with elevation advantage, which means I need to map probable vantage points before we move."

"Jeon."

"Blind spots are—"

"Jeon."

He pauses. You feel it in the way his body goes still against yours, that tactical calculator brain of his grinding to a halt.

"Yeah?"

"I'm Seduction Division, not Tactical." You tilt your head just enough to catch his profile in your peripheral vision. "Translate for us mere mortals?"

His lips twitch. Not quite a smile, but close enough that it does something stupid to your pulse.

"Okay," he says, and his voice drops lower, softer, like he's letting you in on a secret. "See those three ships docked to the left?"

You nod.

"Two of Fervio's men are probably moving between them. They'll sweep the perimeter every fifteen minutes, maybe twenty if they're lazy. That gives us a window to move, but only if we time it right."

His fingers tap again, and you're starting to think it's not just tactical—it's nervous energy.

Or maybe focus.

Hard to tell with him.

"The other two are stationary. One's probably on the ship itself, keeping watch over Yunjin. The other..." His eyes scan the surrounding buildings. "Somewhere high. Watching the approach."

"So we can't just walk up there."

"No. We need elevation first. Higher ground means better sightlines, which means I can map their positions before we commit to an approach vector."

You process that. "You need to see them before they see us."

"Exactly."

There's something almost pleased in his tone, like you passed some kind of test.

It shouldn't make you feel as good as it does.

"That's the difference," he adds, and there's a shift in his voice—something darker threading through. "Between Tactical and Stealth."

You go still.

He brought it up. 

He brought up V.

"V would already be moving," Jeon continues, matter-of-fact. "He'd use the fog, the shadows, the blind spots between ships. By the time they realized someone was there, he'd already be inside, and half of them would be dead."

His thumb presses harder against your back. Not painful, just... there.

Then his jaw tightens. Just a fraction.

“Stealth is about chaos. V would go in close, fast, loud when it counts. He’d use the first kill to draw the others out, then cut through them before they could process what’s happening. No corridor. No plan. Just”—he exhales sharply through his nose—“circles.”

“Circles?”

“I think in straight lines,” Jeon says, and there’s something almost bitter in his tone. “Point A to point B. Cause and effect. V thinks in circles. Loops. He’ll take the longest route if it means fucking with someone’s head first.”

You process that.

The way he knows V’s patterns down to the philosophy behind them.

The way he can predict every one of V’s moves despite the obvious hatred simmering between them.

You swallow. "You worked together though."

The words come out carefully. Not quite a question, but an opening. An invitation to say more if he wants.

"Before," you add, watching his face in the reflection of the water.

Before.

Jeon’s silent for a long moment. Long enough that you think he’s going to shut down completely, ice you out like he does when anyone gets too close to whatever history’s carved into his bones.

But then he sighs.

It's barely audible, just this small exhale that sounds... tired.

"We did," he admits. The fingers on your hip go still. "We were—"

He stops. Recalculates. You can practically hear the gears turning as he searches for the right word.

"Effective."

That's not what he wanted to say.

You can tell by the way his jaw tightens, the way his thumb twitches against your back like he's physically holding something in.

"Effective how?" you venture, keeping your voice light.

Curious but not pushy, make it his choice to share, not like you're digging.

His hand shifts on your hip. Not leaving, just adjusting. Getting more comfortable, maybe. Or bracing himself.

"I'd clear the approach," he says finally. "Long-range. Silent. By the time targets knew something was wrong, V was already inside, cleaning up. Zero survivors. Zero witnesses. Perfect operational efficiency."

Past tense.

Your chest tightens. You want to ask what happened, want to dig into the wound and see what made two of Kkangpae’s best stop being a team.

But you know Jeon. Know that pushing too hard means he’ll shut down completely.

So you aim as soft as you can.

“What happened?”

Jeon’s quiet again. You feel his chest expand against yours as he takes a deeper breath, scanning the pier one more time before his gaze drops to you.

For a second, you think he’s going to pull away and insist you move forward.

But his hand doesn’t move.

“We need to get to higher ground,” he says instead, nodding toward a stack of containers to the north. “I need line of sight. Need to map where Kaleido’s four men are, plus any extras he didn’t mention.”

He’s avoiding the question.

But his hand’s still on your hip.

And he’s looking at you like he wants to say more but doesn’t know how.

His fingers then hesitate, and there’s no missing it—the moment where he realizes his hand’s been resting there this whole time, anchoring you, keeping you close when tactically there’s no reason for it anymore.

The hesitation stretches.

One second.

Two.

Then his hand drops.

Cool air rushes in where his palm used to be, and you resist—barely—the urge to grab it and put it back.

“Come on,” he says, voice back to business. “Stay low. Follow my lead.”

He moves forward, fluid and silent, and you follow. But you’re still thinking about his hand.

About the way it felt.

About the word he didn’t say when he described working with V.

You try to match his rhythm anyways, the way he distributes his weight so his boots barely whisper against the concrete.

The shipping container looms ahead—rusted red steel stacked two high, perfect cover from whatever’s waiting on the ship. Jeon reaches it first, dropping into a crouch so fluid it looks choreographed. His head tilts back toward you, and then—

His right hand opens in the air.

Palm up. Fingers spread. Waiting.

You blink. Once. Twice.

Oh.

Oh.

He wants you to use his hand as a step. To boost yourself up onto the container.

Your eyes flick upward, taking in the second container stacked on top, the way it creates a perfect concealed pocket where you can move without being spotted from the ship.

Your gaze drops back to his outstretched palm.

One hand.

Just—one hand.

Is he seriously planning to not only support but propel your entire body weight up there with just his right arm? Like you’re a fucking feather instead of a full-grown woman in tactical gear?

You press your lips together, biting back what is definitely not a smile because this is absolutely not the time to be thinking about how stupidly strong he is. How those forearms that you’ve been trying very hard not to stare at aren’t just for show.

But Jesus.

The man’s hand doesn’t even waver. Just stays there, steady and sure, like boosting people several feet into the air is something he does on a weekday.

You take a breath. Deep and measured, the way Flower taught you before high-stakes ops.

Trust the plan.

Trust your partner.

Trust that Jeon’s physics-defying upper body strength won’t let you, you know, crash face-first into rusted steel.

You step forward, right foot lifting to settle into his palm. His fingers close around your boot, grip firm but careful, and you feel the coiled tension in his arm as he prepares to—

“Up,” he whispers.

His arm extends in one smooth, powerful motion, and you reach out instinctively, hands slapping against the steel rim, but you’re moving too fast, momentum carrying you forward and—

You wobble.

Shit. Shit.

Your balance tilts sideways, weight shifting wrong, and for a split second you’re certain you’re going to topple right off the edge and land in a very loud, very ungraceful heap.

But then his left hand catches your hip.

Warm. Steady. Anchoring you as he finishes the movement, pushing you up and over until you can get your elbows on solid steel and haul yourself the rest of the way.

You roll onto the container’s surface, staying low like he showed you, heart hammering from the adrenaline rush. When you turn back to look down, he’s already moving.

Jeon jumps, plants both palms on the container’s edge and pushes himself up.

And fuck, you should look away. Should focus on scanning for threats or checking sight lines or literally anything else that isn’t the way his forearms flex as he lifts his entire body weight like it’s nothing.

But you don’t look away.

Can’t, really.

Because watching Jeon move is like watching engineering in action. Every muscle coordinated, every motion efficient, no wasted energy or unnecessary effort. His shoulders bunch as he pulls himself higher, biceps straining against the black thermal fabric, and then he’s swinging one leg over the edge with liquid grace.

He lands in a crouch beside you, settling against the container wall without even breathing hard.

Show off.

Not that you’re complaining.

“You good?” he asks, voice pitched low.

“Yeah.”

The word comes out steadier than you feel. Because you are good—better than good, actually. There’s something about moving with him like this, matching his rhythm, trusting his strength, that makes every nerve ending feel sparked.

He nods once, already shifting into surveillance mode. His eyes sweep the pier below, noting shadows and movement, building that tactical map in his head.

You try to focus on the mission. Really, you do.

But you’re still thinking about his hands.

The way his right palm felt solid and sure beneath your boot. The way his left hand found your hip without looking, pure instinct guiding him to steady you when you needed it most.

The casual display of strength that probably didn’t even register to him as anything special.

Focus.

Right. Focus on the job. On finding the four men Kaleido mentioned. On mapping exit routes and identifying threats.

Not on the man beside you whose presence feels increasingly magnetic with every passing minute.

You shift slightly, trying to find a comfortable position against the steel, and accidentally brush his shoulder with yours.

He doesn’t move away.

Neither do you.

And maybe—maybe that’s a problem you’ll worry about later.

When Yunjin’s safe.

When the mission’s complete.

When you can afford to think about the way Jeon’s body heat seeps through your thermal top and makes your skin tingle.

You breathe steady as he shifts beside you, body angling for a better view of the pier.

He peers over the container’s edge, just enough to scan without exposing himself. Makes this soft humming noise, like he’s reviewing information in real time.

“I need a higher vantage point,” he murmurs, eyes tracking upward to the container stacked above you both.

Then he tilts his head toward you, beckoning with the slightest nod.

You scoot forward until you’re pressed against his side, close enough to follow his line of sight. The proximity sends heat crawling up your neck, but you ignore it. Mission first.

His arm extends, finger pointing toward the far right side of the pier. “See that first container?”

You nod.

“One man there.” His neck stretches as he adjusts his angle, scanning further. “Another one on the container after that. They’re both carrying HK416s 5.56, effective range about found hundred meters with those optics, though given the modifications I’m seeing…” He catches himself, throat clearing slightly. “Right. So, rifles.”

You bite back a smile. Only Jeon would start rattling off weapon specifications during a stealth operation and then remember he’s talking to someone who doesn’t need the technical breakdown.

His gaze moves upward again.

“I’ll be your eyes up there.” He points to the container above you both, then shifts back to scan the containers near the boats. “You handle close range, I’ll cover distance.”

And just like that, you realize what he’s saying.

He trusts you.

Trusts you to handle yourself without supervision.

Trusts your training enough that he can focus on what he does best—long-range precision—instead of worrying about babysitting a rookie through close combat.

The weight of that trust hits you square in the chest, making something flutter behind your ribs. Not butterflies exactly. Something bigger. More significant.

He believes in you.

You nod, and his mouth curves into the faintest smile.

Then his expression shifts, brows drawing together as he studies the layout ahead. His lips press into a thin line.

“The problem now is how to get you there.”

You follow his gaze, mapping the route.

There’s the container you’re on, then the massive one balanced on top of both yours and the adjacent container. The gap between them is wide—maybe four feet of empty air with concrete waiting below.

You can’t climb the bridging container. Being on top would leave you completely exposed, visible from the ship. And you can’t scale it while pressed against the side because there’s no foothold, nothing to grip except smooth steel.

But there might be another way.

You reach down, fingers finding the knife strapped to your ankle. The blade slides free with barely a whisper of steel on leather.

“Think I got an idea,” you whisper.

Jeon’s eyes drop to the knife, then flick back to your face. One eyebrow quirks up, curious but not doubtful.

His fingers suddenly catch your chin.

Thumb and index, firm but careful, turning your face toward his. The movement’s so quick you don’t have time to process it before you’re looking directly into those stormy eyes.

“What—”

But his other hand’s already moving. He reaches into the pocket of his tactical pants and pulls out two earpieces—yours and his. Must’ve pocketed them both back at the gravel lot.

He holds yours up, eyebrow raised.

You tilt your head without thinking, offering your ear, and his fingers brush the shell as he fits the piece back in. Careful. Precise. Way more gentle than the situation calls for.

Your skin prickles.

He fits his own in with his free hand, taps it twice, then goes back to yours—adjusting something, fingers working the tiny device with that little furrow between his brows.

“What are you doing?” you whisper.

“Chief’s override,” he murmurs back. “Private channel.”

Oh.

Just you and him. No V. No main frequency. No one listening.

He finishes whatever technical magic he just performed and his hand drops. But his eyes stay on yours, scanning your face like he’s checking something important.

“That plan of yours is reckless, sunshine.”

Sunshine.

There it is. The nickname he’s been holding back all night, the one that only comes out when you’re alone and his guard drops just enough to let it slip through.

Bet he’s been wanting to call you that since you stepped foot in that palazzo.

His gaze drifts past you, tracking the route you’re thinking of taking without you having to explain a damn thing. Like your brain and his are running on the same frequency.

Container. Gap. Knife point. Swing. Left turn. First target. Straight line. Second target.

He sees it all in maybe three seconds.

“But then again,” he continues, and something that might be amusement tugs at the corner of his mouth, “your brand of recklessness tends to be refreshing.”

His head tilts slightly, one eyebrow quirking up. That little silver barbell catches the moonlight, and combined with the barely-there smirk playing across his lips, he looks almost… fond.

Fond.

Of your recklessness.

You can’t help but smile back. “I’ve got you, chief.”

The words come out easier than they should. Confident. Trusting. Like there’s no question in your mind that he’ll be exactly where you need him to be, when you need him there.

His expression shifts. Something unreadable flickers across his features before settling into that familiar mask of professional calm.

But his eyes stay soft.

“Yeah,” he says quietly. “You do.”

You turn your attention back to the route, mind already working through the mechanics.

The distance between containers. The angle you’ll need. The momentum required to clear the gap without making noise.

It’s doable. Risky as hell, but doable.

Cross to the bridging container. Wait for cover noise—ship horns work perfectly, loud enough to mask any sound you might make. Embed the knife deep enough to support your weight. Use it as an anchor point to swing yourself across the gap with enough momentum to land silently on the adjacent container.

Then it’s just following the inverse L formation. Left turn, drop down to take out the first guard. Straight line to the second container, quick jump, neutralize the second target.

All while Jeon provides overwatch from his elevated position, ready to take out any sniper that might have you in their sights.

Simple. Clean. Effective.

The kind of plan that blends stealth and tactical precision in a way that shouldn’t work but does.

Seduction Division at its finest.

A low horn echoes across the water. Deep, resonant, the kind of sound that carries for miles and drowns out everything else for those few precious seconds.

Perfect.

You grip the knife handle, testing the weight. The blade’s perfectly balanced, sharp enough to bite deep into steel if you hit it right.

You wait for the next horn.

When it comes, you move.

The knife leaves your hand in a clean arc, spinning once before sinking into a corrugated seam with a solid thunk—wedged deep between the steel panels like a piton.

The horn’s still echoing when you’re already moving, hands reaching for the knife handle, body coiling to make the swing.

Got it.

The swing carries you across the gap with perfect momentum. Your boots hit the adjacent container with barely a whisper, knees bending to absorb the impact.

Nailed it.

You stay low, pressing against the steel as you catch your breath. The knife’s still embedded in the bridging container behind you—you’ll have to retrieve it later. For now, you need cover.

You sprint across the container’s surface, staying crouched until you reach the far edge. Drop behind it, back pressed to the metal wall. Your heart hammers against your ribs, but your breathing stays controlled.

Focus.

A quick peek around the corner shows nothing. Empty pier stretching ahead, shadows dancing between stacked containers. No movement. No glint of weapons or boots.

Good.

You move left, following the route you mapped out earlier. The inverse L formation that’ll take you to the first target, then straight across to the second.

There’s another container stacked on top of the one ahead—perfect cover for what you’re planning. You reach the end of your current position and stop, pressing your hand to your earpiece.

Jeon’s voice comes through immediately, low and steady.

“Hold position, sunshine.”

Sunshine.

Even in the middle of a tactical operation, hearing that nickname makes something warm unfurl in your chest.

“He’s on my right,” Jeon continues, “so your left. Take the right side of the container, stay pressed against it. Walk slow—no rushing. When you reach the corner, wait for my signal.”

You nod even though he can’t see you. “Copy.”

“And remember—he’s got height on you. Use that. Get under his line of sight, come up from below. Arms up when you make contact.”

You move right, keeping your back flush against the container wall, weight distributed to minimize sound.

Slow and steady.

Your fingers brush the spare knife at your hip—backup plan if things go sideways. But you’re hoping it won’t come to that. Clean and quiet is the goal.

The container’s corner approaches. You can hear something now—faint shuffling, the scrape of boots against concrete.

He’s close.

Very close.

You press yourself tighter against the wall, hand finding your earpiece again.

Jeon’s voice is barely a whisper. “He’s lighting a cigarette. Distracted. You’ve got maybe thirty seconds before he starts moving again.”

Perfect.

Cigarette means his hands are occupied. Means his attention’s split between keeping watch and getting his nicotine fix.

“On my mark,” Jeon continues. “Three… two…”

You coil your muscles, ready to spring.

“One. Go.”

You round the corner fast but controlled, staying low like he taught you.

And there he is—tall guy with a rifle slung over his shoulder, lighter held up to his face. The orange glow illuminates his features for just a second.

Now.

You surge upward, arms coming up exactly like Jeon said. Your forearm catches the guy’s throat, cutting off any sound he might make. Your other hand goes for his weapon, yanking it away before he can react.

He’s bigger than you, stronger, but surprise is on your side. He stumbles backward, hands clawing at your arm, but you’re already shifting your weight, using his momentum against him.

Basic Seduction Division training. Get close, get control, get it over with.

The rifle clatters to the ground as you adjust your grip, cutting off his air supply completely. His struggles get weaker, more desperate, but you hold on.

Sorry, dude. Wrong place, wrong time.

He goes limp after what feels like forever but was probably only twenty seconds. You lower him carefully, making sure he doesn’t hit the ground too hard.

One down.

“Target neutralized,” you whisper into your earpiece.

“Clean work.” There’s something that might be pride in Jeon’s voice. “Second target’s moving. Straight ahead, next container over. Same approach—he’s scanning left, so come from his right side.”

You’re already moving, adrenaline singing through your veins.

This is what you trained for. What you’re good at.

And knowing Jeon’s watching, that he trusts you enough to let you handle this alone?

That makes you feel unstoppable.

You move right along the container wall. The steel feels solid against your back as you inch forward, listening for any sound that might give away the second guard’s position.

Your breathing stays controlled despite the adrenaline singing through your veins.

The corner approaches. You can hear him now, footsteps pacing back and forth. Restless energy. Good—means he’s not fully focused.

You coil your muscles, ready to spring around the corner and catch him off guard like the first guy.

But then you hear it.

Beep. Beep.

Some kind of notification. Radio chatter, maybe. Or a phone.

Shit.

You round the corner anyway, hoping to catch him while he’s distracted, but his head snaps up the second you move into his line of sight.

Fuck.

His eyes go wide—surprise, then immediate calculation. He’s bigger than the first guy, broader shoulders, and his hand’s already moving toward the rifle strapped across his chest.

You launch yourself at him anyway.

Your forearm catches him in the throat, but he jerks backward just enough that the hit doesn’t land clean. He staggers but doesn’t go down, and his hand closes around your wrist with crushing force.

Strong. Really fucking strong.

He twists your arm, trying to throw you off balance, but you go with it instead of fighting it.

Your legs come up, thighs clamping around his neck in a move Flower drilled into you until you could do it in your sleep. Perfect positioning—if you can just get the pressure right, cut off his blood flow, he’ll be unconscious in seconds.

But he doesn’t panic like most people do when they suddenly can’t breathe.

Instead, his fists start slamming into your thighs.

Ow. Fuck. OW.

Each hit sends spikes of pain up your legs, but you squeeze harder, trying to finish this before he can break free. The angle’s good, you’ve got leverage, just need to—

His hands find your ankles and he yanks.

You lose your grip around his neck and suddenly you’re airborne, the world spinning as he swings you around and releases you like you’re a fucking rag doll.

You hit the container floor hard, pain exploding through your shoulder and hip. Stars dance across your vision, but training kicks in before panic can.

Move. Get up. Fight back.

You roll onto your back just as he lunges toward you, probably planning to pin you down and finish this with his hands around your throat.

But you’re already lifting your leg, boot aimed straight at his descending face—

CRACK.

The sound echoes across the pier like thunder. The guard’s head snaps backward in a spray of red, his body crumpling to the side before he can complete his lunge.

Headshot. Clean. Instant.

Jeon.

“That gave away my position,” his voice comes through your earpiece, calm as if he just hadn’t turned someone’s skull into abstract art. “Listen carefully, sunshine. Point to your left.”

You push yourself up to sitting, wiping blood from where your lip split when you hit the container. Your thighs throb from where the guard’s fists connected, but nothing feels broken.

“My left?” you ask, getting your bearings.

“Your left. See that crane about two hundred meters out?”

You scan the pier until you spot it—massive industrial crane silhouetted against the pre-dawn sky, all steel beams and cables.

“Yeah.”

“There’s a sniper nest on the platform. Third level up, northwest corner. He’s got eyes on us now.”

Your stomach drops. “How do you know?”

“Because I would.” Matter-of-fact, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “He heard my shot, knows there’s a counter-sniper in play. He’s acquiring me now, setting sights on my last position. You’ve got maybe thirty seconds before he realizes I’m moving and decides to focus on you instead.”

“Comforting.”

“Grab the rifle. The one that just dropped.”

You look around, spotting the weapon that fell when the now-headless guard went down. It’s splattered with blood and bits of brain matter, but at this point you’re past being squeamish.

“Got it.”

“Good. Now—you’re going to take the shot.”

You nearly drop the rifle. “What?”

“You heard me. I need you to neutralize the sniper while I relocate. He’s focused on my last position, doesn’t expect you to be armed with anything more than a handgun. Won’t see it coming.”

“Jeon, I’m not—I don’t have sniper training—”

“You have training. Different training, but the fundamentals apply. Breathe, sunshine. Trust me.”

His voice is steady, confident. Like there’s no question in his mind that you can do this.

Okay. Okay.

You grip the rifle properly, checking that the safety’s off. It’s heavier than you expected, built for stopping power at distance.

“Sight picture first,” Jeon continues, voice patient and sure. “Look through the scope, find the crane platform.”

You bring the rifle up, awkward at first until you find a comfortable position. The scope’s magnification makes everything swim into sharp detail.

“I see it.”

“Northwest corner. Look for movement, reflected light, anything that doesn’t belong.”

You scan the platform methodically, the way Flower taught you to observe targets during intelligence gathering.

There—a glint of metal catching the pre-dawn light.

Definitely artificial. Definitely a weapon.

“Got something. Metallic reflection, northwest side like you said.”

“Perfect. Now listen carefully—you need to adjust for distance and elevation. See that shipping container directly below the crane?”

“Yeah.”

“That’s your reference point. Target’s approximately three meters above that container, maybe fifteen meters back from the platform edge. You need to account for windage too—there’s a crosswind coming off the water. Adjust two meters to the right.”

Two meters right, three meters up.

You move the crosshairs, trying to apply everything he’s telling you while your heart hammers against your ribs.

“When I say fire, squeeze the trigger smooth and steady. Don’t jerk it, don’t second-guess. Just like target practice, except this target shoots back.”

“Jeon, what if I miss?”

“You won’t.” No hesitation in his voice. Zero doubt. “You’re steady under pressure, sunshine. I’ve seen it. This is just another target.”

Just another target.

Sure. A target that could kill both of you if you fuck this up.

“On my mark,” he continues. “Take a deep breath, let half of it out, hold the rest. Find your natural respiratory pause and squeeze through it.”

You do exactly what he says.

Deep breath in. Half out. Hold.

The crosshairs settle on where you think the sniper should be, accounting for all the adjustments Jeon gave you.

“Three…” His voice is calm, steady. “Two…”

Don’t think. Just shoot.

“One. Fire.”

You squeeze.

The rifle kicks against your shoulder, and through the scope you watch the sniper’s body jerk backward before crumpling behind the crane platform.

Got him.

A satisfied hum crackles through your earpiece, low and pleased.

“That’s my girl.”

Something hot and violent flutters in your stomach at the words before you can stop it. You squash that feeling down hard, focus on the mission, but jesus—the way he said it.

Like he’s proud of you.

“Moving to your position now,” Jeon’s voice continues, all business again. “Stay put until I—”

“Negative.” You’re already shifting, scanning the pier below. “I’m dropping down. We need to get to that ship.”

“Sunshine, wait—”

But you’re already moving, slinging the rifle over your shoulder and dropping to the edge of the container.

The jump down to ground level isn’t bad—maybe six feet—and you land in a crouch, absorbing the impact through your legs.

Sea level now. The smell of salt water and diesel fuel hits you immediately, stronger down here where the waves slap against the pier supports.

You straighten up, checking your surroundings.

Empty shipping containers stretch in both directions, creating a maze of steel and shadow. The ship’s probably fifty meters ahead, past the next row of—

An arm snakes around your throat from behind.

Fuck.

Pure instinct kicks in. You bite down hard on the bicep pressed against your neck, tasting blood and sweat and something chemical—antiseptic, maybe. Medical supplies.

The arm jerks away with a sharp curse, and you spin around to face—

Fervio.

How the fuck is he still standing?

The last time you saw this asshole, V was turning him into modern art.

He should be unconscious. Should be dead.

But here he is, very much alive and apparently ready for round two.

Blood seeps through his jacket where V’s knives found their mark. His face is a mess of cuts and bruises, one eye swollen nearly shut. But his remaining eye burns with something that makes your skin crawl.

Hunger.

“Hello again, little dove,” he says, voice rough like gravel.

He lunges forward, faster than someone that injured should be able to move. You dodge left, but his hand catches your shoulder, spinning you around.

The rifle slides off your back and clatters across the concrete.

Shit.

You go for the knife at your hip, but Fervio’s already there, his hand closing over yours with crushing force.

“How the fuck are you still standing?” you grunt, trying to wrench free.

He laughs, and the sound makes your stomach turn. “You don’t know what adrenaline injections can do, do you? Black market pharmaceuticals are fascinating these days.”

Great. A psycho hopped up on experimental stimulants.

His grip tightens until you feel bones grinding together. You twist your body, use the momentum to drive your knee toward his ribs, but he shifts at the last second.

Your knee hits solid muscle instead of wounded flesh.

He uses your off-balance moment to grab the rifle and heave it across the pier. It skitters under a shipping container, completely out of reach.

“No, no,” he tsks, still holding your wrist. “That would be too quick. Too easy.”

Sadistic fuck.

He pulls a knife from somewhere—not the curved one from before, this one’s smaller, sharper. Built for precision cuts, not killing blows.

Torture.

You wrench your arm free and stumble backward, putting distance between you and that blade. Your hand finds the backup knife, fingers closing around the handle.

“Come now,” Fervio says, advancing slowly. “I promise to make this educational.”

The way he says it makes your skin crawl. Like he’s planning to take his time. Like he’s got all night to work.

Fuck that.

You feint left, then dart right, trying to get behind him. But he’s ready for it, pivoting to match your movement.

The knife flashes toward your ribs. You block with your forearm, feel the blade slice through fabric and skin, but it’s not deep.

Keep moving.

You circle each other, looking for openings. He’s bigger, stronger, probably more experienced with close combat.

But you’re faster. And you’re pissed.

You dart in low, aiming for his wounded side where V’s knife work left him vulnerable. Your blade finds flesh, slides between ribs.

Fervio grunts but doesn’t go down. Just grins wider, like pain is exactly what he was hoping for.

Psycho.

His knife arcs toward your face. You duck, feel steel whistle past your ear, and drive your elbow up into his chin.

His head snaps back, but he recovers faster than he should. Grabs your wrist and twists until your knife drops.

Then his blade is moving again, too fast to track, and suddenly there’s fire in your thigh.

You look down and see steel buried deep in muscle, blood already soaking through your pants.

Motherfucker.

Pain explodes through your thigh, white-hot and immediate.

You scream—can’t help it—as steel bites deep into muscle. But the sound cuts off when Fervio’s hand clamps over your mouth, muffling everything into a pathetic whimper.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.

Blood seeps around the blade, warm and sticky, soaking through your tactical pants. The knife’s still embedded, and every movement, as tiny as it is, sends fresh waves of agony radiating up your leg.

“Shh, shh,” Fervio whispers against your ear, voice sickeningly gentle. “Save your energy, little dove. We’re just getting started.”

You try to elbow him in the ribs, aim for one of V’s wounds, but he anticipates it. Shifts his weight and suddenly you’re spinning, your back slamming against his chest.

No no no—

His arm snakes around your ribs, pinning your arms to your sides. The other hand moves to your throat, fingers pressing just hard enough to remind you how easily he could crush your windpipe.

You’re trapped. Completely fucking trapped.

“Much better,” he purrs, and you can feel his smile against your temple. “Now we can have a proper conversation.”

He tilts his head toward the maze of shipping containers, voice rising to carry across the pier.

“Jeon!” he calls out, theatrical and mocking. “Come out and play with the grownups!”

Silence. Just the slap of waves against pylons and the distant hum of ship engines.

Your eyes scan the shadows frantically, looking for any sign of movement. Any hint that Jeon’s positioning himself for a shot.

Come on. Where is he?

Fervio waits maybe ten seconds before clearing his throat, the sound vibrating through his chest against your back.

“No? Nothing?” He chuckles, low and pleased. “How disappointing.”

Then his hand moves to the knife buried in your thigh.

“No, don’t—”

But he’s already gripping the handle, and when he yanks it free, the scream that rips from your throat echoes across the entire pier.

Jesus fucking Christ—

Blood gushes from the wound, soaking your leg, dripping onto the concrete in steady plink plink plink sounds that make your stomach lurch. The pain is incredible—like someone’s driving a hot poker through your muscle with every heartbeat.

“Jeon!” Fervio calls again, voice bright with satisfaction. “Come out now, or the next thing that’ll gush blood apart from her thigh is her throat. Hands visible and up.”

Please. Please just shoot this motherfucker.

But even as you think it, you know Jeon can’t take the shot.

Not with Fervio using you as a human shield.

Not when one wrong move means your blood painting the pier.

Movement in your peripheral vision. A shadow detaching itself from behind a shipping container.

Jeon.

He emerges with his hands raised, jaw clenched so tight you can see the muscle jumping in his cheek. His eyes find yours immediately, and what you see there makes your chest tight.

Fury.

Pure, cold, calculating rage barely held in check.

“There he is,” Fervio purrs against your ear, sounding delighted. “The famous sniper. The ghost of Seoul. The man who never misses.”

Jeon’s gaze flicks to the knife in Fervio’s hand, then to the blood pooling beneath your feet. His nostrils flare.

“Let her go,” he says, voice flat and deadly calm. “Your issue’s with me.”

“Oh, but she’s so much more fun,” Fervio replies, pressing the blade against your throat. Not cutting—not yet—but the threat’s crystal clear. “The gun. Drop it.”

Jeon doesn’t move. Doesn’t even blink.

The knife presses harder. You feel the sharp edge bite into skin, feel blood start to trickle down your neck in warm rivulets.

Shit. He’s actually cutting—

“Do it slowly,” Fervio continues when Jeon hesitates, dragging the blade sideways just enough to open a shallow cut. “Any sudden movements and… well. You understand.”

Jesus Christ that hurts.

You bite back a whimper, focusing on staying perfectly still. Any movement could drive that blade deeper, turn a shallow cut into something permanent.

Jeon’s eyes meet yours for just a second. You see the calculation there—the tactical assessment running through his head at light speed.

But also something else.

Panic.

He crouches slowly, placing his gun on the concrete carefully.

“Kick it away.”

Jeon complies, sending the weapon skittering across the pier until it disappears under a shipping container with a metallic clang.

“Good boy,” Fervio grins, and you can hear the satisfaction dripping from his voice. “Now. Where’s your psychotic little boyfriend? V didn’t come to our reunion party?”

“He’s busy,” Jeon says, voice still that deadly flat. “Keeping your boyfriend Kaleido company.”

Fervio laughs—actually laughs—like this is the funniest thing he’s heard all night.

“Aw, but I was so looking forward to seeing him again. I wanted him to watch when I take one of his precious dolls.” His grip on your throat tightens slightly, fingers digging into your pulse points. “Just like he did to me in Venice. You remember that, don’t you, Jeon? Or were you too busy playing hero from your little perch?”

Venice.

Something passes between them—some shared history you’re not privy to. But the way Jeon’s face goes completely blank, like a mask slamming down, tells you it’s not good.

“That was different,” Jeon says quietly. Too quietly.

“Was it?” Fervio’s voice turns mocking, theatrical. “Seemed pretty similar to me. V taking something I cared about. Making me watch while he—”

“She was a target,” Jeon cuts him off, words sharp as glass. “A legitimate military target.”

“She was mine.”

Fervio’s voice goes ice cold, all pretense of amusement dropping away like a discarded mask. The blade presses harder against your throat—you feel more blood start to flow.

“And he made sure I knew exactly what he was doing when he slit her throat. Made it slow. Made it artistic. Made me watch every. Single. Second.”

Oh.

The picture’s starting to come together now.

Some girl in Venice, years ago. Someone Fervio cared about—loved, maybe? if he’s capable of love on the first place. Someone V killed while Fervio watched.

And now he wants payback.

Fantastic.

“So here we are,” Fervio continues, voice returning to that sick tone. “Full circle. Except this time, I’m the one holding the blade.”

The knife moves against your throat—not cutting deeper, but promising. A preview of what’s coming.

“And when I get back to that sweet little princess on my ship, I’m going to take my time. Hours and hours. She’s going to learn every technique I’ve perfected over the years. Every way the human body can experience exquisite agony before it finally shatters.”

Your blood turns to ice. Because he’s not just talking about cutting or stabbing.

He’s talking about torture. Real, prolonged, sadistic torture.

“I’m going to make her scream until her voice gives out. Then I’ll wait for it to come back, just so I can make her scream again. And when I’m finally done playing, when there’s nothing left of that pretty little mind except fear and pain…”

He leans closer, breath hot against your ear.

“…I’m gonna send what’s left of her back to V in a pretty pink bow.”

The image he’s painting makes your stomach turn to acid.

Yunjin—sweet, bubbly Yunjin who makes cotton candy seem sophisticated—in the hands of this s̶a̶d̶i̶s̶t̶i̶c̶ monster.

No. No no no.

“But enough about future plans,” Fervio continues, voice shifting back to that mock-reasonable tone. “Let’s discuss present arrangements. I’m willing to make a deal.”

Jeon’s eyes narrow. “What kind of deal?”

“Simple. I leave with my little pink princess, and in exchange…” The knife presses just a fraction deeper against your throat. “I give you my word that this beauty here won’t be hunted down by my team. Clean slate. Fresh start.”

You feel Jeon’s entire body go rigid at the suggestion. Even from here, you can see his hands clenching into fists.

“Your word?” Jeon’s voice is flat, dangerous. “You think I’d—”

“Ah ah ah.” Fervio cuts him off with a tsk. “We both know words hold no value in our line of work. Which is why I’m prepared to make this… official.”

He shifts slightly behind you, and you hear the soft clink of metal against metal.

What the fuck—

“Personal binding coins,” Fervio explains, like he’s discussing dinner plans instead of human trafficking. “You know how it works. I give mine, you give yours. Physical proof of the contract. Break it, and both our organizations know exactly who can’t be trusted.”

Oh shit.

Personal binding coins are serious business in the underworld.

Not like the neutral coins used for transactions—these are about honor, about binding agreements between high-ranking operatives. When someone gives you their personal coin, it’s their word made tangible. Break that agreement, and your reputation is d̶e̶s̶t̶r̶o̶y̶e̶d̶ gone.

And Fervio knows Jeon has one. All Council of 9 members do.

You watch Jeon’s face go through a series of micro-expressions—calculation, fury, disgust. His jaw works silently, like he’s biting back words that would probably get you killed.

“You sick fuck,” he finally says, voice low and deadly. “I don’t bargain with—”

HOOOOOONK.

The ship’s horn blares across the pier, deep and resonant and perfectly timed to mask the sound of—

CRACK.

Jeon staggers forward, red blooming across his shoulder like a flower. His eyes go wide—not with pain, but with pure shock.

He got shot.

Someone fucking shot him.

Everything slows down.

You watch the impact ripple through his body, see his knees buckle slightly as his brain processes what just happened. Blood seeps through the black thermal fabric, spreading outward in a pattern that looks almost artistic if you ignore the fact that it’s Jeon’s blood.

The man who never gets caught off guard.

Who always has a plan.

Who sees everything coming from a mile away.

Just got shot in the fucking back.

Fervio doesn’t waste the opportunity.

His arms release you suddenly, and then you’re flying through the air, thrown like a rag doll straight at Jeon’s chest.

You collide hard—ribs against ribs, shoulder against wounded shoulder. Jeon grunts in pain but catches you anyway, his good arm wrapping around your waist to keep you both upright.

“Move!”

His voice cuts through the chaos, sharp and commanding despite the blood loss. His hand clamps around your wrist like a vice, and suddenly you’re being dragged, stumbling, behind the nearest shipping container.

You hear Fervio’s laughter echoing across the pier, already fading as he makes his escape.

“Yunjin!” you scream, trying to wrench free from Jeon’s grip. “They’re leaving! They’re fucking leaving with—”

“Sit the fuck down.” His voice is ice cold, furious, as he forces you down behind the container wall.

His good hand presses against your shoulder, pinning you in place.

“You’re bleeding, I’m bleeding, and we are unarmed,” he continues through gritted teeth, breathing hard. “Sit. Down.”

His head tilts back against the steel, face pale but eyes still sharp.

Blood seeps steadily from the wound where the bullet tore through muscle and sinew, staining his thermal top crimson.

But he’s not letting go of your wrist.

Can’t. Can’t just sit here.

“Let me go.” Your voice cracks on the words, panic making everything feel razor-sharp. “Let me fucking go!”

You try to push yourself up, try to get to your feet, but Jeon’s hand clamps down on your wrist.

“They got Yunjin—”

“Do you think I don’t fucking know that?” The words explode out of him, voice cracking like a whip.

His eyes snap open, and jesus—you’ve never seen him look like this.

Wound tight enough to snap, fury and something that looks like despair warring across his features.

“Then why are we still here?” Your voice rises to match his. “We need to—!”

“We need to what?” He turns toward you, and there’s blood smeared across his mouth where he bit his tongue. “Run onto that ship unarmed? Let them cut us both down?”

“We can’t just sit here!”

“Yes, we fucking can!”

“She’s my best friend!” The words tear out of your throat, and you don’t care that you’re screaming, don’t care that your voice is cracking. “She’s my—”

“You think I don’t want to go after her?” His voice drops to something quieter but no less vicious. “You think I don’t want to tear that ship apart board by board until I find her?”

His breathing’s gone harsh and uneven, like he’s fighting for air.

“Then why—”

“Because I fucking considered it!”

The words explode between you like a grenade, sharp and devastating.

What.

Your mouth falls open.

You stare at him, at the self-loathing written across every line of his face.

“For a fucking second,” he continues, voice breaking on every word, “I considered it. Considered trading your fucking life for Yunjin’s.”

The silence that follows is deafening.

Your tongue feels completely, utterly, absolutely useless inside your mouth.

“When he offered that deal—when he wanted to trade my coin for his—” Jeon’s head falls back against the container with a dull thunk. “For one second, I thought about it. Weighed the options. One life versus another.”

You can’t breathe. Can’t think past the rushing in your ears.

“And that makes me no better than him,” he whispers, staring up at the gray pre-dawn sky. “No better than the piece of shit who just walked away with her.”

Jesus christ.

He actually considered it. Actually stood there and considered your life was worth more than Yunjin’s.

Part of you wants to hit him. Wants to scream until your voice gives out.

But a bigger part—the part that knows him, knows how his brain works—understands exactly why that thought would destroy him.

Because Jeon doesn’t make emotional decisions.

He weighs variables and chooses the most tactically sound option, and the fact that he even considered sacrificing Yunjin means—

Means you matter to him.

More than just professionally. More than just as a team member or a responsibility.

“Jeon,” you start, but he cuts you off.

“Don’t.” His voice is flat again, empty. “Just—don’t.”

The sound of the engines gets lost in the distance.

Yunjin is gone. The microchip isn’t secured. The mission has been a catastrophic disaster.

And you’re both sitting here bleeding onto concrete, having the worst possible revelation at the worst possible time.

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The full-length mirror on the back of the bathroom door has been catching you in fragments all evening—an elbow here, a hip there, the gold clasp of the snake cuff Irya wrestled onto your upper arm twenty minutes ago—but you haven't committed to the full picture yet.

Irya's got her phone propped on the counter, a YouTube tutorial frozen on a girl with a $400 highlight palette doing something architectural to her cheekbones.

She's been flitting between you and the screen for the last half hour, dabbing gold shimmer along your collarbones with a fan brush and narrating the process like a nature documentary. 

"Okay, hold still."

She tilts your chin up. Dusts something across the bridge of your nose. Steps back. Studies you like you’re some sort of painting in a museum.

"God, you're annoying."

"What?"

"Your bone structure. It's annoying. Like, medically." She waves the brush at your face. "Some of us have to contour for the aesthetic. You just—look pretty. Sitting there. Rent-free."

"Irya."

"I'm stating facts. Hold still."

More powder. A final sweep. Then she clicks the compact shut with satisfaction and drops it into the mess of products crowding the marble counter—lipstick tubes rolling into setting spray cans, a palette balanced on the edge of the sink, bobby pins scattered everywhere.

"Okay. Collarbone shimmer's done, base is set, lips need one more layer but that's after this coat sets."

She's already gathering her things—the curling iron she brought for Yeji's wig, three different hair clips, a ziplock bag of bobby pins that looks like it weighs a pound.

"I gotta go wrestle Yeji into her corset before she decides leather is 'too conformist' and shows up in a trash bag."

"She would absolutely show up in a trash bag."

"She has shown up in a trash bag. Sophomore year. She called it 'deconstructed capitalism.'"

Irya pauses at the door, arms full, and gives you a once-over.

Whatever she sees makes her smile—soft, private, the kind she saves for when she actually means it.

"You look really good. Like, crazy good. Jason's going to lose his entire mind."

The door clicks shut behind her and the bathroom goes quiet.

Just you and the mirror.

You finally turn to face it.

The skirt is—okay. It's not obscene. It's a draped Grecian thing, dark green, slit high on the left thigh, with a gold chain belt sitting low on your hips.

The top is a structured corset-style piece that Yeji found at some vintage shop in Bushwick and mailed to you with a note that just said ’WEAR THIS OR PERISH.’

You don’t want to perish.

It's tight. Tighter than you usually go.

You can see the dip of your waist and the press of your ribs when you breathe, and where your chest looks—well.

Present. Accounted for. Very much there.

The snake cuff wraps your left bicep. Gold snake earrings hang from your lobes, and Irya threaded smaller gold chains through your hair so they catch the light when you move.

You look like something out of a Caravaggio painting, if Caravaggio had access to Amazon Prime and a $30 costume budget.

You look good.

You think you look good?

You tug the skirt down half an inch, which accomplishes absolutely nothing because the fabric just slides back up.

The slit gapes. Your thigh is right there.

This is—it's a lot of skin.

More skin than you usually show when there are people around who aren't contractually obligated to find you attractive.

More skin than you showed at Pulse that night, and look how that turned out.

Don't think about Pulse.

You're adjusting the chain belt when the bathroom door swings open and Jimin appears in the frame, already half in costume—white button-down untucked over black slacks, sleeves rolled to his elbows, a smear of fake blood on his collar that he hasn't blended yet.

He stops when he sees you. Actually stops. Feet planted, lips parting, the whole thing.

"Oh my god."

"Don't."

"Oh my god."

He steps inside, closing the door behind him, and his face does something complicated and openly delighted.

"You look—girl. Seriously. That's so—the snakes in your hair? And the—is that a cuff?"

He reaches for your arm, turning it gently so the light catches the gold coils.

"This is incredible. Yeji picked this out, didn't she."

"She threatened my life if I didn't wear it."

"Correct response."

He lets go of your arm. Leans against the counter with his hip, crossing his ankles, and it strikes you again how Jimin occupies space—gently, without demand.

Even now, in a bathroom that isn't his, he's somehow not intruding.

"Medusa?"

"Medusa."

"The original 'I'll ruin your life if you look at me wrong.'"

"That's—yeah, actually. That's exactly what I was going for."

Jimin tilts his head, studying you the way he studies texts in the library—attentive, as if reading between lines you didn't know were there.

Then his gaze snags on your eyes and he frowns. Not a bad frown. An assessing one.

"Did Irya do your liner?"

"She was going to but she had to go deal with Yeji's corset situation."

"So you haven't done it yet."

"I was going to wing it." Beat. "No pun intended."

He's already scanning the counter, fingers drifting over the scattered products with the same familiarity you saw before Emma’s birthday party.

He picks up the liquid liner pen, uncaps it, checks the tip. Caps it again. Picks up a different one—the felt tip, the good one, Irya's—and holds it up.

"Can I?"

The question is so casual and so careful at the same time that it takes you a second.

"Please save me."

He chuckles, pulling a hand towel off the rack and drapes it over his shoulder—the move of someone who's done this enough to know about smudging.

"Close your eyes."

You close your eyes.

His fingers are feather-light on your jaw, tilting your face toward the overhead light.

The first stroke of the liner is precise—no wobble, no hesitation. A clean pull from the inner corner outward, measured and smooth, and you feel the little flick at the end that means he's going for a wing without even asking your preference.

Bold choice. Correct choice, but still.

"You're good at this," you say, eyes still closed.

"Yeah."

A pause, careful, like he's deciding how much to give.

The liner moves to the other eye. Another clean stroke.

"My sisters used to practice on me. Back in middle school. I was the—you know. The patient one. Sat still."

"That tracks."

"And then I just..." He trails off. You feel him angle the pen for the wing. "Kept doing it. On my own. Thought it was fun."

Another pause, and something shifts in his voice—gets quieter. Not ashamed, but conscious. Aware of the shape of what he's saying.

"…Nails too. I like nails. I'm good with color."

You think about the neon pink nail you grabbed in the car.

How fast he snatched his hand back.

The embarrassment that flickered across his face before he buried it under.

"The pink nail," you say softly. Eyes still closed.

He doesn't answer for a second. The liner pauses on your lid.

"Yeah." He resumes. Finishes the wing.

"It looked good," you tell him. "Really good. The color was perfect on you."

The liner lifts.

You open your eyes.

Jimin’s face is close—inches away—and he's looking at you with an expression that's hard to name. Grateful, maybe. Or something simpler than that.

Just seen.

"You think so?"

"I know so. You've got the hands for it."

You gesture at them—the slim fingers, the clean nail beds, the careful way he holds the pen like it's calligraphy and not drugstore liquid liner.

He looks down at his own hands. Turns them over slowly, like he's seeing them through your description instead of his own.

"My dad used to call them piano hands." A small exhale that's not quite a laugh. "Which was his way of saying they weren't—you know. Right. For a boy."

The liner pen rests between his index and middle fingers. He rolls it once. Twice.

"I don't talk to him anymore. Either of them, actually. My mom—she just kind of... agreed with whatever he said? So." A shrug that tries very hard to be casual and lands somewhere south of it. "My sisters, though. They're good. They get it. They got me the nail kit for my birthday last year. The real one, with the UV lamp and everything."

He says ’they get it’ like it's a complete sentence. Like there's a whole second half he trimmed off before it could reach the air.

You don't push. You know what trimmed sentences sound like—you've been editing your own since you were fifteen, snipping the parts that felt too raw to survive outside your own head.

"That's a good birthday present," you say instead.

"Best one I've gotten."

The bathroom is quiet for a second and Jimin looks at the liner pen in his hands like it contains some answer to a question he hasn't asked yet.

Then he asks it.

"Can I ask you something?"

He's chewing the inside of his cheek. There's a crease between his brows that wasn't there thirty seconds ago, and his thumb is rubbing the cap of the liner in small circles like a worry stone.

"Yeah. Of course."

"How did you know..."

He starts, stops.

Starts again. "How do you know—"

Another stop.

His jaw works around something that doesn't want to become language.

"That you're... what you're supposed to be?"

You almost deflect. Almost hit him with something sarcastic, something light—’I'm supposed to be a lot drunker right now’—because that's what you do when conversations tilt toward something more serious.

But Jimin's face is doing the thing. The still thing. Like he's bracing.

So you don't deflect.

"I don't."

He blinks.

"I don't know," you repeat, and it comes out quieter than you intended. More honest. "I have—literally no idea. About any of it. What I'm supposed to be, what I'm supposed to want, who I'm supposed to be doing it with—"

You catch yourself gesturing vaguely at the entirety of existence and drop your hand.