chimcess
chimcess
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⚔︎ Chapter Four: The Man from Gwangju Pairing: Taehyung x Reader Other Tags: Assassin!Taehyung, Assassin!Reader, Assassin!Jimin, Dad!Jimin, Assassin!Yoongi, Gang Leader!Yoongi, Assassin!Namjoon, Swordmaster!Hoseok, Chef!Hoseok, Pimp!Seokjin Genre: Assassins! AU, Exes!AU, Lovers to Enemies, Action, Comedy, Suspense, Martial Arts, Drama, Thriller, Romance (if you squint), Heavy Angst, Violence, 18+ only Word Count: 23.9k+ Summary: A former assassin awakens from a four-year coma after her ex-lover Taehyung tries to kill her on her wedding day. Driven by revenge for the loss of her unborn child and stolen life, she creates a hit list and embarks on a ruthless mission to take down everyone responsible. Warnings: Violent thoughts, implied miscarriage, flashbacks, PTSD, mental illness, guns, other weapons, traveling, arguing, bickering, use of katana, this is a pretty tame chapter all things considered, not many warnings for this one, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: I apologize if I miswrote any of the Korean I used in this chapter. I don't speak fluently and relying on Google can be difficult.
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Horizon City was somehow worse than El Paso. The sky pressed down like a lid on a pot, trapping the heat until the air itself felt heavy. No clouds. No breeze. Just that dry, punishing stillness that made the world feel abandoned. The pavement shimmered. Buildings sagged under the weight of it, their paint bleached to bone, their windows hot to the touch.
Down the center of it came the Pussy Wagon, too loud, too yellow, a smear of wrong color on a sunburned road. It didn’t belong here, not among rusted trucks and dead air conditioners. Heads turned. Conversations stopped. A woman at the pump froze mid-swipe, squinting like she wasn’t sure if she was awake. No one spoke. In Horizon, you didn’t ask questions unless you wanted answers that ruined sleep.
She didn’t care who stared.
Her bare feet pressed into the warped rubber floorboard, soles black from gas station dirt and bathroom tile. Every joint ached, stiff from too much stillness. Her spine creaked when she shifted. Muscles tugged like they’d forgotten their work. But it was pain she trusted, the kind that proved she was awake.
She turned off the main drag and coasted into a strip mall that had been dying for years but refused to finish. Half the shops were empty, windows papered with curling FOR LEASE signs. The others hung on out of spite. One, TexStyle Western Wear, flickered under a crooked sign. She killed the engine and let the truck tick and groan like it resented being roused.
The pavement nearly blistered her feet. She staggered once, steadied, then limped toward the storefront. Her hips screamed, her legs protested, but they worked. She didn’t look back.
Inside, the temperature dropped hard. The AC blasted chemical cold, making her skin prickle. Lights buzzed overhead, too bright, too dim, one always flickering. Country music bled from a speaker behind the counter, slow and stitched together with heartbreak. She knew the tune. She knew the kind of place this was: the kind where you could walk in dripping blood or ghosts and no one cared, as long as you didn’t yell or steal.
Her scrubs rustled as she moved through racks, baggy and stained, reminders of a place she wouldn’t name. She trailed her fingers along the denim, grounding herself. Jeans. A tank top. A jacket lined with shearling she didn’t need but wanted anyway, something to hide behind. Boots under the clearance rack: red leather, white stars dulled to cream. She pulled them on, breath catching at the pain in her thighs, but when she stood, they fit.
At the register, she dropped Buck’s damp bills on the counter. The clerk didn’t look twice. Just bagged her scrubs like trash.
Outside, the sun hadn’t softened. Her boots struck the pavement sharp as punctuation. She still ached, but she didn’t limp.
The truck’s interior hit her like a furnace. Metallic heat, vinyl, old fuel. The dashboard cracked, the rearview crooked, the windshield spiderwebbed. Her reflection blurred in broken glass, and she let it. She gripped the wheel, palms sticky. For a moment she only sat, list forming in her head, incomplete but enough. One more stop before a nameless motel.
She turned the key. The engine coughed, then rumbled alive, low and angry, a sound she was starting to mistake for comfort. Gravel spit behind her as she peeled out, Horizon City sliding by in the same monotony of sun and collapse.
The next place barely qualified as a department store: a sun-bleached block shouting about bargains to an empty lot. Something fried, chicken maybe, stank through the heat. She parked far from the door. Her legs still felt untrustworthy, but she needed to walk. Make them remember.
Inside, the cold slapped her. Too bright, too sterile, smelling of bleach and melted candy. The place buzzed with noise: screaming kids, arguing parents, a tantrum echoing from toys. She kept her eyes forward. People looked. She felt it, half-second glances sliding over scars and scuffed boots. She didn’t care.
She picked up a basket and drifted to the camping aisle. The shelves were thin, but she found what she needed. A folding shovel, its handle thick and heavy like a weapon. A short-handled pickaxe with a fiberglass grip slick under her palm. A flashlight that looked sturdy enough to swing. Waterproof matches in a bright orange case. And a map of Texas, worn soft at the folds, stained with someone else’s fingerprints. She ran her thumb over the crease before dropping it into the basket. She’d be the last to touch it.
She passed the clearance bins without slowing: Father’s Day mugs, novelty socks, foam can holders with jokes no one ever laughed at. Junk for people she didn’t know. Junk for people who weren’t her. In stationery, she stopped just long enough to grab a plain black notebook and a pack of felt pens.
The basket was filling, too heavy. She set it down and reached for another, the metal frame cool and rough, already rusting at the welds. This one she filled faster, almost frantic. Apricot shampoo and the matching conditioner. A plain white bar of soap, unscented. A bag of cheap pink razors. A loofah she didn’t bother to look at. Deodorant. Face wash. Lotion. Each item clattered against the others, no pause between them. She didn’t want to smell like blood anymore, or sweat, or antiseptic. She wanted the hospital scrubbed off her, layer by layer. She wanted her body back, her skin hers again.
Across the aisle, glass jars lined the shelves, full of bath salts in candy colors. Bubble bath bottles in bright, desperate packaging. A SALE sign shouted promises no one believed. She hadn’t planned to stop, but her feet slowed, drawn by a pull she hated. A scent she didn’t want but couldn’t shake.
An older woman was already there. White hair twisted into a bun, movements slow, deliberate, elegant. She opened jars one by one, breathing each in carefully, gently, as though the act itself was sacred. Y/N didn’t look at her. She just reached for the nearest jar and twisted it open.
Lavender.
The smell hit hard. Her stomach flipped. Her chest locked tight. She was back under hospital lights, antiseptic sharp in the air. IV bags swaying. Monitors chirping in steady beeps. Footsteps soft against tile. A cool hand brushing her hair while a voice whispered a lie: You’re going to be okay.
She snapped the lid closed and shoved the jar back like it had burned her.
Her hand shot out for another, no thought, no reading the label. She breathed deep. Citrus. Tropical. Artificial. But it worked. It cut through the memory, broke it apart. She dropped the jar into her basket.
The next bottle she grabbed was cracked, label peeling, its cap leaking a sticky line down the side. Vanilla, it claimed. She didn’t care. It wasn’t lavender.
At the register, she dumped both baskets onto the belt without ceremony. Her mind spun in jagged circles: Taehyung’s reflection in a rearview mirror, the clean white of hospital sheets, Sam Wallace’s cologne drifting in the heat of summer, the silence of her mother’s kitchen. And beneath it all, always there, the one memory that refused to wash out: her father.
The cashier looked barely old enough to work, hoodie strings chewed thin, nails chipped, one earbud still in. She didn’t speak. Just scanned.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Plastic bags crinkled as they filled. Lavender still clung to Y/N’s hands, her cuticles, her collar, her breath. And then, soft as a whisper in the dark, she heard it: Our Father, who art in heaven…
“Your total is thirty-two seventy-one.”
The voice cut through. She blinked, counted out the money, slid it across. The girl gave her change and the receipt without looking up.
“Have a good one,” she mumbled.
Y/N’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. She studied the girl’s face, saw the dull shadow of apathy in her eyes.
“You too,” she said, her own voice rough, low, like it had clawed its way up from somewhere deep.
She gathered her bags, two in one hand, the third looped over her wrist, and walked for the exit. The automatic doors opened with a hiss, like the store was exhaling her into the heat.
The Pussy Wagon waited at the edge of the lot, its paint so bright it looked like it might hum in the sun. Red flames curled down the sides, shimmering just enough in the heat to look alive. It didn’t look fast. It didn’t look mean. It looked like a mistake someone hadn’t lived down. She didn’t care. She kept walking, boots heavy against the asphalt, bags swinging like pendulums against her knees. Her spine throbbed. Her legs burned. The sun bore down like it wanted to erase her. She kept going.
The truck hit her like a furnace when she opened the door: stale air, rubber, sun-baked vinyl, the faint stink of sweat that wasn’t hers. She didn’t flinch. She cranked the window down halfway, tossed a bag onto the passenger seat, and climbed in. The vinyl clung to her thighs. She turned the key. The engine coughed, sputtered, then growled alive. Reluctant, but steady. It always caught.
She pulled out slow. Tires groaned on the blacktop. Horizon City slid past in layers of heat: fast food joints with sun-bleached signs, payday loan offices in buildings yellowed with age, gas stations with broken pumps, liquor stores called EZ Mart and Last Stop. Dust. Concrete. The occasional palm tree, warped and brittle under the sun, too stubborn to fall but long past thriving.
She didn’t need to look twice. She knew this town. She’d lived in three just like it. She’d died in one.
When the storefronts thinned, she turned onto a cracked lot overrun with crabgrass and potholes. At the far end squatted a two-story motel that looked abandoned mid-construction. Stucco walls blistered, paint curling in sheets, rust bleeding from the windows. Above the office, a crooked neon sign buzzed: The Texican. The “i” blinked like it was losing the fight.
She parked beneath the second-floor walkway, under Room 212. The blinds were shut, but one slat bent outward like a broken tooth. She stared for a beat, then shifted her weight, grabbed her bags, and stepped out.
The lobby smelled of mildew and old smoke. The air felt stale, sealed in too long. A ceiling fan turned slow, clicking each time its blade passed the same rusted edge. The desk at the back looked like it had been rescued from a junkyard. Behind it, a man slouched low in his chair, tank top gray with sweat, a serpent tattoo curling down his arm. His eyes were on a screen.
When he finally looked up, his gaze crawled over her: boots, thighs, waist, lingering where it shouldn’t. Her jaw tightened, but she didn’t blink. She pulled out a roll of bills and dropped it on the counter.
He dragged it close with two yellowed nails. “Night or week?” His voice was flat, dry, like gravel at the bottom of a well.
“Night.”
He grunted, slid her a keycard, and dropped his gaze again. No greeting. No smile. Exactly what she wanted.
She took the key and left.
The stairwell creaked under her weight. The rail was rough, flaking paint into her palm. Each step made her legs ache, tendons stiff, balance not yet fully hers. The building leaned with age, and the stairs tilted uneven.
When she reached the second floor, Room 212 waited. The numbers on the door sagged, one screw half out, the wood around the lock chipped where years of hands had missed their mark. Paint was smudged with failed attempts. She slid the card through. The reader gave a faint, uncertain beep, followed by the click of the lock: a sound sharp and organic, like a joint slipping from its socket.
She stood for a moment, hand hovering over the handle, the heat pressing into her shoulders, sweat sliding down her spine. Then she turned it and pushed inside.
The smell met her first. Not the acrid bite of fresh smoke, but the stale kind, decades old, soaked deep into carpet, curtains, drywall. It was a yellowed stench, baked permanent. Underneath it sat something sour and sharp: mildew, failed cleaning agents, an aftertaste of effort without success. The air felt stagnant, heavy, as if it hadn’t moved in years.
She closed the door behind her, let the deadbolt snap home, and slid the chain across with a thin metallic scrape. A chair in the corner caught her eye: stubby, mismatched, its upholstery faded to some indefinable shade. She dragged it under the knob, jamming it in place. It wouldn’t stop anyone who truly wanted in, but it was a line drawn. A gesture of refusal.
The room itself looked scavenged. Curtains drooped from bent hooks, corners sun-bleached uneven. The light that slipped past them split the bed in orange streaks, late sunlight carving the space apart. The carpet near the door was bald and sticky, its color long since lost to grime. Nothing matched. The nightstand sat too low, its lamp too tall, casting warped shadows up the wall. The desk was scarred with rings and burns, the ghosts of cups and cigarettes. The bedspread screamed in paisleys of red and green, loud and ugly enough to distract from the rest.
She dropped her bags by the mattress and stood still, listening to the silence press in. The wall unit stuttered to life, blasting air that smelled of dust and freon. Not clean, but colder. For the first time all day, she didn’t feel watched.
The bathroom light buzzed on with a flick. The bulb flickered, then held. The mirror above the sink was clouded, corners warped where the silver backing had rotted away. Her reflection returned in fragments, her face shifted, imperfect, unfamiliar.
The faucet groaned before giving up a stuttering flow. Rust-tinged water ran a few seconds before clearing. Heat came quickly, fogging the mirror, filling the small room with steam that climbed the walls and clung to her skin.
She opened the jar of bath salts, tipped two scoops into the tub. They dissolved with a hiss, releasing a softness that felt like it belonged to another life. She poured in the bubble bath, slow, steady, watching it curl through the rising water like melted gold. The white bar of soap she left on the edge, still wrapped, waiting.
Her clothes came off piece by piece, sticking to her skin like second layers. Shirt. Jeans. Damp underwear. She peeled them free and stood in the fog. The mirror caught her in fragments again: shoulder, waist, ribs. Bruises bloomed faintly along her sides, yellow-green fading into skin. Her stomach flat but hollow, her hips jutting sharp. The scar at her abdomen still pink and raised. She didn’t linger. She already knew.
One hand steady on the tile, she stepped into the tub. The heat bit her ankles, climbed her calves, forced a gasp from her throat. Still, she sank down, slow, deliberate, until the water closed around her shoulders and she was folded in on herself, knees tucked, arms looped tight. Steam wrapped her, heavy and close.
She let herself breathe.
The tropical scent lingered, cloying but gentle. Bubbles clung to the surface, catching the light in fragile sheens. Her skin burned, then loosened. Muscles unwound: jaw, neck, spine. For a moment, it felt almost like safety. Almost like being held.
The first sob tore out raw, deeper than her throat, violent as a cough. Another followed. Then another. She pressed her forehead to her knees, fingers digging into her shins, and tried to choke them back. Useless. Her body shook, her breath broke apart. She didn’t scream; there was no air for it. But she wept, bone-deep, every muscle wracked. Her ribs ached, her throat stung.
She wept for the baby she never held, gone before its first breath. For the man who promised to stay, whose blood had marked her hands and her dress and the altar floor. For the hospital bed, for the machines that never went quiet, for the fluorescent light that never dimmed. For every woman who pressed a hand to a belly still full. For every picture never taken, every name never whispered.
She wept for herself. For the years locked away. For her voice forgotten. For the silence that no one noticed.
Eventually her body emptied out. The sobs thinned to shudders, then silence. She sat in the cooling water, bubbles thinning, breath still uneven. Her arms uncoiled. The lavender clung. The bruises showed. The scar glistened.
Drip. Drip. Drip. The faucet tapped against porcelain. The fan above crackled softly, struggling on. Beyond the wall, the air conditioner rattled in fits, wheezing like it had something to prove. A breeze nudged the curtain against the sill, a tap-tap-tap in an accidental rhythm.
She reached for the soap.
It was motel standard, wrapped in stiff waxed paper that crackled as she peeled it open. Plain. White. The word SOAP stamped across in faded block letters, nothing more. She lathered it slow, the foam thick in her palms, and began.
Arms first, shoulder to wrist. Then chest. Then neck. Back to shoulders again, where tension clung deepest. Her jaw, careful. Her stomach, softer, her hand pausing at the scar as though in apology. Her legs, her feet, her fingers, behind her ears. Nothing frantic. Just deliberate, steady strokes, scraping memory away piece by piece.
The water changed, subtly at first. Soap film clouded the surface, swirling. Then faint streaks rose, pinkish, floating near her thighs. Tiny cuts reopened by heat. Or maybe old wounds, still not ready to close.
She picked up the apricot shampoo and snapped the cap open. The scent hit fast: sweet, bright, almost cheerful. Out of place in a room like this, but she let it in anyway. She poured a slick mound into her palm and worked it through her scalp, once, then again. On the third wash she slowed, fingers tracing circles, nails dragging lightly against her skin. It was no longer about cleaning. It was about feeling. Her own hand. Her own body. Her own presence. For a moment she wasn’t thinking about hospitals or sirens or the weight of what came next. Just herself.
Her hair drifted in strands around her, clinging to shoulders and arms, spreading across the water’s surface like ink in clear glass. Every small movement sent ripples over her collarbones. She moved carefully, hardly disturbing the surface.
By the time she rinsed, the bathwater had thickened with what she’d carried in: suds, oil, dirt, faint streaks of blood. Stray hairs, flecks of skin, things she didn’t bother to name. A film skated across the top, swirling quietly every time she exhaled.
She sat in it, arms locked around her knees, chin pressed down. The steam was fading now, air cooling just enough to raise goosebumps along her arms. The mirror across the room stayed fogged. The weight of the day pressed into her spine, her knees, her lungs. Still she didn’t move. Stillness was the point: the kind that emptied you without ceremony.
Her hand found the drain. She pulled.
At first it was a soft slurp. Then stronger, a steady pull. The water swirled around her body like it was trying to take its time saying goodbye. It licked her thighs, curved around her ribs, slid past her arms, then dropped in spirals. The drain swallowed it all without protest: the soap, the oil, the old blood, the pieces of herself she no longer wanted.
She stayed until only a thin puddle remained, circling once, twice, before vanishing with a hollow gurgle. Silence filled the space it left behind.
She pressed her palms against the rim of the tub. Cold now, slick with condensation. She welcomed the sting in her hands. Took a sharp breath, let it root her, then pushed herself upright.
Her legs trembled on the rise. Her arms shook with the effort. Joints complained. Muscles felt wrong, unfamiliar. But she kept moving, slow, steady, until she was standing.
Water traced down her skin in patient rivulets, dripping from her spine, elbows, fingertips. Each drop left its mark before disappearing into the porcelain. The steam had mostly lifted, retreating into the vent or curling beneath the door, leaving only faint streaks across the mirror.
She reached for the towel.
It was motel-issue, stiff, frayed at the edges, faintly sour with detergent and bleach. She dragged it over herself in blunt swipes. No ritual, no tenderness. Just the act of removing water from skin. Left arm, right. Shoulders. Legs. Stomach. The towel caught on raw patches where she’d scrubbed too hard, lit sparks under her skin, but she didn’t flinch.
Barefoot, she stepped out onto the motel carpet. It scratched at her heels like someone else’s memory, old and unpleasant. The room felt thinner than it had before the bath. The air sharper, like it had shifted in her absence.
Her clothes waited in a neat stack. She pulled on the jeans one leg at a time, denim dragging over fresh skin. They caught once on a healing scrape; she winced, then yanked them higher, cinching the belt until the pressure pressed her steady. The tank top next, damp fabric clinging across her ribs. Then the jacket, heavy, familiar, already too warm but necessary. Not for comfort. For armor.
She didn’t look at the bathroom mirror.
On the bed’s edge she bent forward, boots at her feet. She tugged one on, then the other, hands shaking. Not from nerves, but from exhaustion threaded deep, the kind that lived in marrow. The right slid in easy, a solid thump. The left resisted, ankle stiff, toes fighting the fit. She wriggled, yanked, coaxed it until it gave with a final snap. She stood.
The floor felt steadier than it had last night. That was enough.
At the sink, the mirror still wore a fogged film. She wiped it once with her palm, dragging away condensation. Her reflection stared back fractured through hairline cracks, the glass tinted yellow with time. It was her, but broken into pieces.
She looked older than she remembered. Cheeks hollowed, bones sharpened. Shadows pooled under her eyes like bruises. Lips pale, pressed flat. Jaw locked, clenched around years unsaid.
Her scar caught the light. Not a clean line, but a jagged pale bloom across her temple, skin pulled tight over the plate beneath. It hadn’t ruined her face. But it had changed it. Left its story whether she wanted one or not.
She didn’t turn away. Didn’t flinch. She stared until her chest tightened, until her throat threatened to close.
The rage was there, coiled low, steady. Not a fire that leapt. A coal that smoldered. It had lived in her for years, quiet and unyielding, and it stirred now, hot beneath her ribs.
She didn’t glance down at her stomach.
Her daughter. Gone.
Her breath hitched, sharp, and she stepped back.
The bathroom still clung to the last of the steam, curling in the corners, drifting as if reluctant to leave. When she opened the door, it slipped out behind her, dissolving into the dry stillness of the room. It wasn’t dawn yet, not quite. But the light was changing. That in-between hour, when night begins bleeding out but the world hasn’t decided to wake. Everything felt suspended. Waiting.
She crossed to the nightstand. The notebook sat where she’d left it, black cover smooth and unmarked, as if it were holding its breath. She lifted it with both hands, careful, like it might shift weight if she wasn’t. Heavier than it should have been, not from paper but from what it was meant to hold.
From her bag, she drew a pen. Plain, black, the kind sold by the dozen, designed to be used and forgotten. She uncapped it slowly, the click soft, almost apologetic in the hush.
The first page stared up at her.
Death List Five
Yoongi Min – Cottonmouth
Jimin Park – Copperhead
Namjoon Kim – Sidewinder
Brandi Phoenix – California Mountain Snake
Taehyung
She replaced the cap. Slid pen and notebook back into her bag.
Next, she found Buck’s sunglasses where she’d tossed them, bent and scratched, ridiculous in their persistence. She slipped them on. Crooked, as always. She nudged the bridge, tried to adjust, gave up. They never sat right. But they worked.
The room was still dim. Her boots thudded against the floor, each step certain, carrying the weight of promise. At the door, she paused. The chair was still wedged beneath the knob, stubborn in its defiance. She bent, joints stiff, dragged it aside. The scrape echoed across the linoleum, a punctuation mark in the silence.
Chain. Thumb flick. Deadbolt. Three turns, quick, practiced. Her fingers didn’t need thought.
The door groaned open, hinges low and grudging. Heat met her immediately, thick, dry, pressing. Asphalt fumes rising from the lot. Dust on the air. The tang of oil, the metallic bite of a day not yet begun.
The sky was shifting, neither gold nor pink, but some strange in-between shade that lasted only minutes. The motel sat inside it, silent, caught between one night ending and another day beginning. Paused.
The neon above the office buzzed faintly. A cicada started, cut off. A dog barked once. Silence folded back in.
She stepped out. The door clicked shut. She didn’t look back.
The Pussy Wagon crouched at the lot’s edge, yellow paint too bright for the hour, flames shimmering like they wanted to breathe. It looked absurd, dangerous, and proud in equal measure. A dare made metal. A joke sharpened into a blade.
She opened the door, slid inside. The vinyl seat was warm against her thighs, not yet burning but close. The cab smelled of lavender and motor oil, clean, antiseptic almost, but still mechanical. A machine rebuilt too many times, carrying the weight of its history.
For a moment, she sat still. Palms flat on her thighs, fingers twitching. The motel’s AC unit droned faintly in the distance. Inside, the truck held its own silence, coiled tight like a breath waiting to be exhaled.
She turned the key.
The engine caught on the second attempt, rumbling alive with a guttural growl. The cab shivered around her, wheel buzzing in her hands, the vibration running up her arms and into her chest. Settling there. She slid it into drive. Tires spit gravel, reluctant but obedient. The motel shrank behind her, just another room, another scar. Room 212 vanished in the rearview, swallowed by neon and dust.
She didn’t look back.
The highway opened in front of her, cracked asphalt unfurling like a dark ribbon across West Texas. Brush clawed at the shoulders, mesquite twisted like broken arms, rocks rusted red, skeletal trees brittle with drought. The sky stretched pale and empty, the sun still soft but already threatening.
By the time the desert swallowed her, night had fallen again. Not gentle. Not gradual. It dropped like a curtain, sudden and absolute. No moon. No stars. Just black. Heavy. Whole.
The truck didn’t belong here, and it knew it.
It roared too loud, headlights carving two stark tunnels into the void. The beams caught nothing but empty miles, white columns piercing a silence too thick to care. The engine hummed, steady and tired, as though warning her without conviction. Every dip rattled the frame, but the wheel stayed true under her hands. Ten and two. Steady.
Mirages shimmered at the edges of her vision, heat ghosts lingering after the sun. She didn’t chase them.
The desert whispered against the truck’s flanks, a dry, rattling scrape like fingernails on denim. Insects, wind, memory. Something flickered low across the road’s edge, fast, small, gone again. She didn’t check. She slowed instead.
The road narrowed to one lane, asphalt breaking apart under its own weight. She eased off the gas. Let the truck crawl. Then stopped.
Headlights washed over brush and stone. Stillness. Shadows deep enough to hide anything. Or nothing.
She cut the engine.
The silence arrived instantly. Not falling over her, but revealing itself, like it had always been here, waiting.
She reached for the flashlight on the passenger seat, opened the door.
The night air was sharp, not cold but exposing, stripping. She tugged her jacket closer. Gravel shifted under her boots. Behind her, the truck ticked softly as the engine cooled, the sound fading into the endless dark.
She clicked the flashlight on. A narrow beam cut the dark, sharp and clean, slicing through shadow like a scalpel. Everything beyond its reach stayed untouched, patient, waiting.
She didn’t hesitate. Her body carried her forward, step by step, as if it had walked this path before. Maybe it had. Her legs remembered what her mind wanted to forget.
Then she saw it.
A rock. Just a rock, if you didn’t know better. Pale limestone, sunk halfway into the dirt, weathered and ordinary. Something that should’ve blended in. Something anyone else would miss.
But not her.
She crouched, knees popping softly, flashlight wedged between shoulder and chin. The light crawled along the stone’s edge, shadows doubling its size. Her fingers dug into the packed soil at the base. She pulled.
It resisted. Heavier than it used to be. Maybe the ground had hardened. Maybe she had softened. Either way, she braced, set her boot, and pulled again. The stone shifted with a dry scrape.
Underneath, the mark was waiting.
An X, carved deep. Not faded, not worn down. Black as the day she burned it in. The sight of it caught her breath somewhere between release and recoil.
That mark had been a promise. If it was gone, she’d walk away. That was the deal. No vengeance. No names. Just silence. But it wasn’t gone.
The desert hadn’t erased it. Time hadn’t buried it. The universe hadn’t looked away. She stood. The cold closed in now, not wind but earth itself. The shadows seemed to lean forward, curious. She didn’t care. She went back to the truck.
The tools were waiting where they always had been: shovel, pickaxe, flashlight. Old companions. Her hand found the shovel without thought, as if it had already been chosen. She leaned into the cab, thumbed the stereo. Silence shattered. The riff echoed through the night, jagged and merciless, too much for the cab to contain. The truck rattled under it, tires humming against dirt, frame twitching as if it wanted to leap forward. Guitars clawed. Drums pounded like fists.
She turned away before the echo finished, walking back toward the rock. The music chased her into the dark, distorted by space but still sharp enough to cut. Her boots kept time with the rhythm, gravel crunching in sync.
One. Two. Three.
She counted, breath more than voice.
Four. Five. Six.
The flashlight swung at her side, beam lurching across dirt and brush. It caught on shadows, slid over brittle grass, bent across rocks. It felt like stepping into a story that hadn’t been written yet.
Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
Her body warmed against the cold, rhythm keeping her steady. The rock loomed again. Here the air shifted. The ground itself exhaled, cold rising up like something long-buried had soured. She gripped the shovel. The wood was damp. Not with sweat. With memory. Her gloves creaked against it. She drove it down. The first strike rang flat, earth baked into stone. It shoved back. Her arms jolted, shoulder jarred. She didn’t stop.
Another swing. Harder. Then another.
The dirt began to loosen. She fell into rhythm: dig, lift, pivot. Again. Breath shortened, sweat slid down her spine, her back sang with strain. Her palms throbbed inside her gloves. Still, she didn’t let up. Each blow cleared space inside her chest.
Behind her, Barracuda still screamed. The desert caught the sound and threw it back at her, warped but relentless. And she kept going.
Clink.
The sound was different. Heavier. It traveled up the handle, into her arms, into her spine. She froze, boot perched on the edge of the hole, dirt sliding down around her ankle. Breath caught. Heart stilled.
She dropped to her knees. Gloves filthy, jeans scraping rock. She set the flashlight down; its beam jittered, then steadied. Enough to show what waited beneath the soil.
Her hand closed around the pickaxe. She didn’t think. Just swung. Once. Twice. Again.
Chunks of dirt split, scattering sharp and dry. Her arms burned, lungs worked like pistons. Gravel dug into her knees. She didn’t stop until she saw it.
Black plastic. Torn in places, stretched tight over a shape too familiar. Boxy. Olive green peeking through. She knew before she touched it.
The pickaxe dropped from her grip. She clawed at the soil, ripping through plastic and dirt alike. Something slick caught under her nails—water, blood, it didn’t matter. She braced, boot pressed hard, and wrenched.
The earth gave with a groan. The box lurched free, knocking her backward. She landed hard, breath ragged, chest heaving.
Her gloves were filthy, her arms trembling with the effort, but the footlocker was out at last. It was army issue, the kind stamped into a generation. The metal was olive drab, dulled by time, corners dented, its surface scratched and scuffed, the paint chipped to reveal bare steel beneath. The hinges wore rust, but they still held; the latches were stiff but unbroken. It looked exactly as it should: forgotten, but intact.
She brushed a layer of dirt from the lid, her fingers finding the latches without hesitation. A practiced motion, quick and certain. Metal snapped against metal, followed by the creak of hinges straining after years of silence. Dust drifted up in a pale cloud, catching the flashlight’s beam and hanging there like ash in still air. She set the light on the rim and leaned closer.
The first thing she drew out was a sleeping bag, cheap nylon, navy blue, stiff with disuse. It unrolled with a brittle crackle, the zipper teeth clinking like links in a chain. She spread it beside the hole, pressing it flat with both hands. The flashlight cast a sharp bar of light across the box. Dust rose through it in lazy spirals, as though the past itself was breathing.
Beneath the bag lay rows of magazines, tight and orderly. Some bound with rubber, others wound in black electrical tape, the edges frayed with age. She picked one up, ran her thumb over the top round. Brass gleamed back at her, untarnished, untouched. As though it had been waiting.
The first pistol was compact and polished, silver bright against the dim. It looked too elegant for this place, but she knew better. A weapon meant for close range, not display. She tested the weight, how naturally it rested in her palm, before setting it aside with the holster.
Next came a snub-nosed .38. Plain steel, no ornament, no pretension. Just the kind of tool that did the job without complaint. She opened the cylinder, checked each chamber, and gave it a spin. It ticked clean and precise, like a clock. She slipped it into its ankle holster, the Velcro catching with a rasp.
Piece by piece, the Mossberg came out: the barrel, the stock, the slide. She brushed the dust off with her sleeve, each movement instinctive. Assembly came without thought. One part clicked into the next until the weapon lay whole across her lap, heavy, steady, ready.
Her hand brushed something smaller, curved and cold. She lifted a silver boomerang, edges honed thin enough to cut without effort. The light scattered across its surface in sharp shards. She turned it once in her grip, feeling the weight shift. This was older than everything else. Older than her scars, older than her anger. A remnant from another life. It slid into its old holster, and her hand lingered there for a moment too long.
At the bottom, she found a black attachĂŠ, snug in the foam. She freed it, laid it flat, and opened the twin latches. The case released with a click sharp enough to cut the silence. Inside, in carved slots, lay the broken-down parts of a sniper rifle: barrel, bolt, scope, mount. Each piece was immaculate, free of dust, as though untouched by time. She lifted the scope, tilted it upward, and caught a starlight pinprick sharp and clear through the glass.
She was about to close the case when something caught her eye, flat, tucked beneath the foam. A manila envelope, worn at the corners, soft with use. She stripped off her gloves, ignoring the soil packed beneath her nails, and lifted it carefully as if it might crumble. She slid a finger under the flap and unfolded the paper within, one crease at a time.
A black and white sonogram. Grainy but unmistakable. A curled shape no bigger than a thumb. The curve of a spine, the suggestion of a head, the faintest stretch of limbs. Her child.
She sat motionless. The wind seemed to pause with her, the desert holding its breath. Somewhere in the distance, music pulsed low, but she barely heard it. She stayed still in the dirt, sleeves caked with dust, staring at the ghost of a life that never came to be.
She folded the sonogram slowly, carefully, and slid it back into its envelope. The flap pressed closed under her thumb, unsealed but sufficient.
There was more. 
A Ziploc bag, cloudy and heat-wrinkled. Inside was an old Texas state ID. Candy Ralston. The photo was hers, but younger. Rounder in the face, skin untouched by scars. Hair pulled back too tightly, eyes uncertain but already watching. Lips pressed in a line that refused to trust.
Next to it lay a paper bank book, its spine softened from handling. Every entry written by hand, small withdrawals made with care. A pattern so patient it became invisible, until it led here. On the final page, one last choice.
And beneath the lining, exactly where memory said it would be, she found the key. Small, plain, tarnished. Dangling from a chipped novelty fob. The letters worn nearly smooth, but she didn’t need to read them.
Deadly Vipers.
She didn’t pause. No whispered vow, no lingering glance. She began to repack the footlocker, steady and sure. Each weapon slid into its place: the sniper rifle parts pressing into their foam, the boomerang curved into its cutout like it had never left. She closed the sleeping bag last, the zipper catching once before sliding true. The final click echoed in the still air, too loud, like a door shutting behind her.
She hefted the pack onto her shoulder. Heavy, but familiar. Her body shifted into the weight like it had carried it a hundred times before.
She stood, turned, and walked back toward the truck without a backward glance. The hole remained open in the dirt behind her, a raw gash in the earth, as if the desert had been holding its breath for years and finally let it out. No marker, no cross, no stone. Just a patch of sand that had kept its secret until it no longer had to. She left it that way.
The wind stirred, but the desert didn’t change. In the distance, the oil derrick kept grinding its endless rhythm, slow, mechanical, indifferent. The truck was still humming with music when she climbed inside, something sharp with guitars and drums heavy enough to bruise a ribcage. She didn’t touch the dial. Didn’t spare the radio a look. She only turned the key.
The engine growled awake, the wheel twitching under her grip as though impatient, eager to remind her why she’d come. She shifted into drive.
Gravel cracked under the tires, dust lifting in a thin veil behind her. No farewell, no second look. The hole stayed where it was, empty, unfinished, unmarked. Nothing would fill it, and nothing needed to.
Miles slipped beneath her tires, steady and relentless. The sun climbed higher, flattening the horizon into a long, wavering stretch of heat and light. She let the road carry her forward like a current she no longer fought.
By the time she pulled into the Commonwealth Bank of Texas, the sun was cruel at its peak, heat radiating off the concrete in dizzy waves. The building looked like it had been abandoned halfway through its design and forced into use anyway: beige brick, dull metal trim, a flickering red “OPEN” sign that couldn’t decide if it meant it.
It sat wedged between a shuttered taqueria and a payday loan office still dressed in tinsel from a Christmas no one remembered. Dust thickened in the sidewalk’s cracks. The kind of place people didn’t bother to notice. Perfect.
She cut the engine. The silence that followed felt sharper than the music. Her boots struck the pavement with the same deliberate weight they’d carried through the dirt. The sleeping bag was gone, tucked away with the rest. What stepped out here wasn’t the woman from the desert. This was Candy Ralston.
Not the bright-eyed Candy with the easy smile and the drawl sharpened just enough to charm. That Candy was dead. This one was leaner, skin pale, eyes too hollow to bother pretending. Her mouth was a hard line. She hadn’t come for company.
She crossed the lot in a slow, certain stride, one hand on the bag, the other close to her coat. The fabric swayed with each step, brushing her thighs, catching the breeze. She moved like someone who knew exactly what she carried and what it would cost to use it.
The bank’s glass doors didn’t invite. The tint was too dark, the reflection warped. Inside, fluorescent lights flickered and hummed, pouring a pale gray over everything. Blinds hung crooked, yellow at the edges. A place that didn’t improve, only endured.
She pushed through the door.
The buzzer cracked the hush, too loud in the cold, conditioned air. The chill was chemical, designed to keep people awake, unsettled. It smelled of citrus cleaner and overworked machines, with something faint beneath it, something like nerves.
The light was merciless, stripping every angle bare. Her coat stayed on.
She moved with the kind of presence that didn’t need to ask for space. Cameras swiveled from their black domes in the corners, lenses humming faintly if you listened close. She didn’t look up. Let them watch. Let them wonder.
Behind the counter sat a woman who might have been there since the doors first opened. Hair lacquered into a helmet, lipstick a shade of pink too bright for her complexion. The tag on her blouse, polyester and strawberry-colored, cheap, read MARJORIE in rigid block letters.
She looked up when the door chimed, flashing a smile polished for trouble. Too quick, too practiced, more reflex than welcome.
Y/N didn’t return it.
“Hi there,” Marjorie said, her voice soaked in the slow sweetness of a Texas drawl, one that sounded like it had been taught in finishing school and worn thin by years of repetition. “How can I help you today, ma’am?”
Y/N stepped forward, just close enough to make it feel personal, but not close enough to make it weird. Her voice came out low, a little frayed, like she’d worn it out talking to ghosts. “I need access to my safety deposit box.”
Even to her own ears, she sounded small. Not scared. Just tired in a way that lived deep in the bones. Her arms still ached from the dig, her back tight across the spine, her muscles running on fumes. It helped. The exhaustion made her seem soft at the edges, easier to dismiss.
She reached into her coat and pulled out the key. It was plain, silver dulled to a matte finish, worn down at the edges. Nothing remarkable. Except it was. The way she turned it in her fingers, how it caught the light for a second, made it something more than metal. This key had opened more than steel boxes. It had cracked things open that were meant to stay shut.
She placed it on the counter like it might still be hot. “My name’s Candy Ralston.”
Marjorie blinked. Just once. But it was enough. A pause in the rhythm. Her eyes dropped to the key, then back up. Something shifted in her face: some small recalculation, like a mental search engine had just returned an unexpected result. Not panic. Not even suspicion. Just awareness. A name that didn’t match a story. Or a story that was missing too many pages.
Y/N noticed. She always noticed. The flicker in the eyes, the slight tension in the mouth, the way Marjorie’s hands hovered over the keyboard for half a second too long, like they were waiting for instructions the rest of her wasn’t ready to give.
Y/N followed with the ID. Slid it across the glass, calm, steady. The photo was old but recent enough. Her face in it was rounder, eyes a little less guarded, a smile that barely made it to her mouth. Now her cheeks were hollowed out, skin drawn tighter, her gaze hard-edged. But the eyes—those stayed the same.
Marjorie studied the ID, compared it to the woman standing in front of her. Her smile didn’t return. Something behind it had turned mechanical.
“I’ll be right back, honey,” she said, and the warmth in her voice had vanished. She took the ID and the key, turned, and disappeared behind a gray metal door that hissed shut behind her like a vault sealing off bad memories.
Y/N didn’t move.
She scanned the lobby instead. Vault tucked in the corner, keypad locked. Two cameras, standard dome type, mounted high. Cheap, analog, probably on a timed loop. Footage saved to tapes or some outdated drive, nothing that uploaded to a cloud. She made a note of that. Good, not great. Sprinklers overhead, fire alarms every fifteen feet. No posted security. No visible guards. Just quiet.
It wasn’t much. But maybe enough to stay ahead if Taehyung had caught her scent.
Marjorie came back slower than she’d gone. The door opened with the same soft hiss. No smile now. Just neutral posture, the kind you wore when you didn’t want to pick sides. She held the door open without a word.
“Right this way.”
Y/N didn’t thank her. Didn’t speak. She just moved, coat brushing against the counter’s edge, boots making a soft sound against carpet chosen specifically to muffle footsteps. The hallway they entered was narrow, lined with anonymous doors that had no signs or names, only keypads in place of knobs. It smelled like cold paper and old wiring.
At the end of the corridor was a room built for forgetting. The temperature dipped the second they stepped in, not from AC but from something deeper, like the place had been sealed off from the rest of the world for too long. Fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, casting a flat, pale glow that made every surface look harsher than it was. Shadows clung to the corners, thick and reluctant.
The walls were covered in rows of steel safety deposit boxes, each one identical, stacked high like a wall of filing cabinets in a mausoleum. A square table sat in the middle, wood, worn smooth in some places, scratched in others. It didn’t look like anyone had ever sat comfortably at it.
Marjorie moved without speaking, walking straight to a lower drawer in the wall. Her fingers didn’t fumble. She pulled a steel box free and laid it on the table with a dull thunk. Then another. The sound was soft but final, like a decision being made in secret.
She didn’t look at Y/N. Didn’t ask any questions. Her whole body said the same thing: I don’t want to know.
Y/N didn’t open the box. Not here. Not with the lights buzzing and the cameras humming faintly above, and Marjorie pretending not to see but seeing everything anyway. This wasn’t the place for what came next. Not yet.
She stood slowly, letting her knees stretch, spine groan just a little as it straightened. She didn’t make a sound. Just rose, steady and full of weight.
Marjorie still stood by the door, hands folded tight, knuckles pale. Her voice came out quiet, not reverent, not polite. Something more cautious than that.
“Thanks for coming.”
Her eyes flicked to the bag over Y/N’s shoulder. Not curious. Just wary. There was no warmth in her voice. No welcome. Just the brittle sound of someone realizing too late that they should have asked fewer questions, or maybe more.
Y/N didn’t try to soothe it.
“Thanks for your help,” she said. Flat. Even. Just enough to be finished.
She turned and walked out.
Marjorie followed at a distance, like she didn’t want to be caught sharing space with whatever Y/N carried. Back through the hallway, down the long strip of carpet meant to erase sound and footprints. When they reached the counter again, Marjorie slid behind it without a word and sat very still, watching through the glass as Y/N moved toward the door and pushed it open.
The heat outside hit like a slow slap, drier than before, tinted orange by a sun that was just starting to fall. Shadows had grown long across the parking lot, stretching past broken curbs and faded paint lines. The sky had gone bruised at the edges. The truck waited exactly where it had been, dust settled thick across the windshield, the yellow paint looking tired in the last of the light.
She tossed the bag into the flatbed, climbed into the driver’s seat, and closed the door. The cab held the day’s warmth like a breath that hadn’t been let go. The engine took a second to respond. Then it grumbled to life with a thick, uneven roar that rattled the steering column.
She pulled out of the lot without a glance at the building behind her. No one followed.
The bank disappeared in the rearview, swallowed up by the flat lines of small-town architecture and the slow drag of coming night. Another door shut. Another name scratched off.
The road opened in front of her again, stretching west through brush and rock and the half-sleep of places too small to fight back. Her fingers rested easy on the wheel. Not loose. Not tense. Just ready. Her other hand twitched once against her thigh, like it was remembering something: some old rhythm, some old grip.
The sky behind her wasn’t just sunset. It was collapse, like something had given way at the edge of the world and let everything pour out. Red bled into deep violet, orange streaked like torn silk across the horizon. It was a hell of a sight, bold and feral, almost too much to look at. But she didn’t turn to see it. Endings didn’t impress her anymore.
Mile marker 233 blurred past. Just beyond it, the motel came into view. Low-slung and sagging between a boarded-up diner and a pawn shop with a broken front window and an “OPEN” sign that hadn’t glowed since Clinton was in office. The SUNRISE MOT_L sign blinked in sickly neon, the “E” long gone, leaving the name limping toward meaning. Plastic palm trees lined the driveway, sun-bleached and cracked, their fronds drooping like they had finally accepted their own artificiality.
The truck hissed as it settled, engine ticking like it had opinions about being parked. Heat shimmered off the hood. She stepped out, boots hitting the asphalt with the unhurried thud of someone who’d done this too many times before. Another town. Another key. Another night listening to the sound of her own breath and wondering if it was really hers anymore.
The lobby reeked of cheap cleaner fighting and failing to bury the smell of time. Old carpet. Burned coffee. That bitter lemon-polish tang on furniture nobody liked. Behind the counter, a man with red eyes and a week’s stubble looked up, sweat soaking through his shirt. He regarded her the way a man regards a thunderstorm from behind a screen door: resigned, a little impressed, but not about to step into it.
She laid cash on the counter without counting. No words. No name. Just a transaction. He slid a key across the laminate, a red plastic tag dangling from it, the number 11 painted in peeling gold. The plastic stuck to her fingers, tacky with years of grime.
“Back row,” he muttered, already turning away.
Room 11 waited at the far end of the building, tucked into the shadows like a bruise no one mentioned. The lock resisted until she leaned into it, shoulder tight against the door. It clicked open reluctantly, like the room had been holding its breath.
Inside, the air was still and heavy. Not hot. Not cold. Just stale. Saturated. Smoke in the walls, mildew in the carpet. She shut the door, bolted it, slid the chain, then dragged the desk chair under the knob. It wouldn’t stop anyone. But it gave her the illusion of control.
The bag hit the bed with a solid thud. She didn’t open it yet.
Plastic blinds rattled as she lowered them slat by slat, each click deliberate. Outside, the parking lot glowed under a flickering streetlamp, humming too loud, not sure whether to stay lit. A few cars scattered across the lot. Heat still rising off the pavement. Bugs swarming the light like it meant something.
She checked the bathroom. The bulb buzzed sickly yellow, throwing a crooked shadow behind her. Cracked tile. Rusted sink. Mirror fogged at the edges, warped with age. She left the door half open. Not for sightlines. Just habit. She didn’t close doors without a reason anymore.
The room sagged at the seams. Wallpaper peeled in corners, ceiling stained like a bruise. The air conditioner coughed, rattled, died again. She sat on the bed. Zipped the bag open.
Stacks of cash waited inside, neat and brittle, rubber bands fraying with time. She picked one up, breathing in the scent of sweat, dust, and long drives with cracked windows. Quiet money. The kind that didn’t ask questions.
Beneath it, weapons. Two pistols: one clean and compact, the other older, worn. The compact one she hadn’t touched since El Paso, since Lisa Wong walked out of a motel bathroom with a pregnancy test and silence in her eyes. Lisa left three days later. Faked her death the day after that.
She slid them aside. Pulled out the SOG knife. Perfect balance. Still hers. A straight razor waited beneath it, sleek and simple, for skin. She pocketed it. Better to have options.
At the bottom lay a rifle case. She opened it, checked the matte-black barrel. Functional. Nothing ornate. She closed it again. Korea would demand quieter tools.
A manila folder came next. Corners soft with use. Inside: passports. Fourteen identities, all hers. Candy Ralston. Minsook Cho. Emma Blevins. Others she barely remembered wearing. Different hair. Different smiles. Same eyes. Always hers.
A folded map slipped out. Korea. Red ink circling cities, tracing routes like a heartbeat across the paper. She didn’t remember marking it, but her hand had known.
Photographs. Old, blurred, pulled from yearbooks under borrowed names. A beach. An arm around Sam Wallace. Her own half-formed smile frozen in place. She flipped past them quickly.
Then came the sonograms. She didn’t need to unfold them. The shape lived in her spine now, lodged between her ribs.
She sat still with the folder on her lap, bag open beside her, lamp casting weak yellow light over everything. She didn’t check her phone. Didn’t turn on the TV. Just breathed. The room didn’t welcome her, but it didn’t push her out either. It was just a box. Four walls to keep the world at bay for one more night.
Outside, a car rolled past slow, tires whispering over gravel. Somewhere down the row, a door slammed, laughter cracked sharp through the air, and bass thudded heavy from an open window. The music swaggered, empty noise with no weight behind it.
She stayed still. Let it pass like weather. Then leaned forward, unzipped the smaller pocket of the bag, and pulled free something cold and compact. A refrigeration case. She set it on the bed. Unlaced the key from her boot. The lock clicked once, clean, before the lid opened.
Inside, two gold syringes gleamed against black foam. Between them, a vial. Pale amber liquid moved slow inside it, syrup-thick, heavy, like honey aged too long.
Taehyung had called it The Undisputed Truth. Said it burned the lies out of people. She hadn’t believed him. Still didn’t. But she’d taken it anyway. Maybe it worked. Maybe it didn’t. Soon, she’d have to find out.
She closed the case and turned the key with care. Slid it back behind her laces like it had never left. The weight settled into the bag with a muted thud, buried beneath layers of gear. Her hand brushed something soft in the side pocket: a flattened pack of Camels, paper crumpled, edges worn like it had been riding there for years.
She pulled it out, frowning. Couldn’t remember putting it in. Couldn’t remember the last time she even wanted to. Not since Pai Mei. Not since the split lip and two days of lungs scraped raw from the inside. That had been the line. She’d meant to quit.
But tonight didn’t care what she meant.
She tapped the pack twice against her knee and drew one out with her teeth. The lighter waited in the same pocket, cheap plastic, half-empty. It sputtered once, twice, then caught. Flame kissed the cigarette, flared too close, then steadied to a glow. She pulled deep, the smoke burning familiar paths down her chest, settling heavy in her lungs.
The exhale spiraled slow toward the ceiling, mixing with the stale motel air as if it had always belonged there. Maybe she had too. Another drag. Longer. The tremor in her hands eased. The knot in her chest unwound. The ache behind her eyes softened just enough to blink without pain.
She had what she needed. Enough money to disappear. Enough weapons to make sure no one stopped her. Enough names stitched into paper to build another self, somewhere no one was looking. She’d started with less before, built lives from crumbs. But this time the engine driving her was different. Not revenge alone. Not pain. Hunger. The kind born not from being hurt, but from surviving. From still being alive, and wanting more than survival.
Her fingers found the folded map. She spread it flat across the bed, pressing it open with both palms. The paper had gone soft, creases tired, ink smudged. But the line still held: red ink threading its way across borders and customs, curling through cities, circling names. A path toward Korea.
Her nail traced it slow, stopping at Busan. A small circle, marked twice. She tapped it. Once. Again. Then folded the map back with care, each edge pressed down as if she were sealing a thought she couldn’t afford to lose.
The cigarette had burned low, ash dangling fragile at the end. She stood, room folding closer around her. Not smaller. Just more present, more awake. The A/C wheezed, rattled, died with a final shudder. She didn’t look at it.
At the window, she slipped two fingers through the blinds, pulled them apart. Sodium light drowned the parking lot in its false orange glow. Nothing moved except the swarm of bugs around the lamp. Her truck crouched in the far corner, paint dulled, hood shadowed. It looked patient. Waiting. It knew this wasn’t the end. Only another checkpoint. Another launch point. A step toward digging up the version of herself she’d buried.
She smoked the cigarette down to the filter, ground it out in the cracked glass ashtray beside the lamp. Then stretched, long and slow, until her spine gave a small pop. Rolled her shoulders once. Tension snapped loose. Proof the engine was still running. Proof she hadn’t rusted out yet.
There was still work ahead. Still miles to burn. Still names that needed remembering. Or forgetting.
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The sky was still the color of a healing bruise when she stepped out of Room 11. That thin, breath-held hour before sunrise stretched across the motel, quiet and suspended, like the world wasn’t sure whether to wake up or go back to sleep. The air hung low and heavy, not cold anymore but still clinging to the memory of it, brushing at her ankles as she walked. Her boots met the gravel with a soft, steady crunch, her stride slow but sure. The door clicked shut behind her with the soft finality of a decision already made. She didn’t look back. She never did.
Whatever lingered inside that room—the musty reek of mildew, the peeling wallpaper, the silence pressed into the floor like dust—could stay there. The ghosts were welcome to it.
The lot was empty now, stripped of last night’s noise and movement. No music. No laughter. No arguing strangers trying to forget whatever they’d dragged in with them. Just the hum of a flickering security light and the shadows it cast, long and tired and mostly ignored. Her truck waited where she had left it, the same as it always did. Black. Battered. Dust-laced. It didn’t look fast or dangerous, only patient. Like it had seen everything and didn’t need to brag about any of it.
She opened the door. The hinges gave a soft groan. The duffel landed in the passenger seat with a solid weight, heavier now, heavier in more ways than one. Not just steel and currency, but decisions. Commitments. Endings. She sat behind the wheel and rested her hand on the key but didn’t turn it right away. Instead she looked through the windshield, past the sagging plastic palms and sun-warped signage, out toward the open road.
Somewhere along the way, something had shifted. She didn’t know the exact moment, but it was there in her blood, in her spine. The running was over. Whatever came next would not be a retreat. She wasn’t trying to disappear anymore. She was going back.
She turned the key.
The truck woke up with a low growl, not eager but ready. The kind of engine that didn’t expect praise, only purpose. She eased out of the lot without checking the mirror, letting the motel recede into the rearview like everything else she had buried. It would stay there, just another mile behind her.
The road to the airport unfolded like it always did in these parts, quiet highways full of tired signage and forgotten ambition. Diners with names like “Lisa’s Last Stop” and “Grill & Chill 24/7,” their neon flickering like it was fighting sleep. Empty parking lots. Billboards that promised injury settlements, eternal salvation, and the best damn pecan pie on Highway 9. Churches with broken steeples. Loan offices with barred windows. The skeleton of American promise, sun-bleached and hollowed out.
She didn’t turn on the radio. Didn’t crack the window. Her coffee sat untouched in the console, more for the heat in her hand than anything else. She drove with both hands on the wheel, letting her thoughts drift slow and aimless, looping back through the same questions and never settling on answers.
The sun rose behind her, crawling up the horizon like something tired of hiding. It lit the road in pale gold and chased her shadow out ahead of her, long and crooked. The towns she passed blurred together. Same gas stations. Same parking lots. Same dust settling on sun-baked signs. Nothing reached her. Nothing asked to.
By the time she pulled into the airport lot, the sky had turned that washed-out shade of blue that promised heat and little else. She parked in long-term, rows from anyone else. Killed the engine under a flickering lamppost that gave one last buzz before giving out. She sat a moment, hands still on the wheel, feeling the last bit of quiet settle around her. Then she slung the duffel over her shoulder and got out.
It hit her hip like a reminder. Cash. Steel. Papers. Lives. She didn’t walk fast, but she didn’t stall either. Just moved forward like time didn’t own her anymore.
The terminal ahead was all glass and stale light, catching the morning sky in fractured reflections. She stepped through the automatic doors and into the kind of cold that didn’t come from weather but from design. Manufactured. Artificial. Meant to keep people sharp and orderly. It smelled like lemons, plastic, and every departure that had come before her.
She paused just inside. Not hesitation. Just calibration. Listening. Feeling the hum of the place. Gate calls. Wheels dragging. Overhead pages layered with chatter. The low murmur of a world built for leaving. For going but not staying.
She moved through it like someone who didn’t need instructions.
The check-in counter was manned by a thin kid barely old enough to rent a car. His name tag said TYLER. His lanyard was a mess of meme pins and frayed cords. The kind of kid who clocked in with earbuds still in and forgot to take them out. He didn’t notice her at first, not until she was standing right in front of him.
The duffel hit the floor beside her with a small, final sound. Her voice stayed low.
“One-way ticket to Gwangju. First available.”
Tyler blinked, fingers stuttering a second before tapping at the keyboard. Gwangju wasn’t common. It made him look up again, a little more carefully this time. She said nothing else. Just waited.
She slid the passport across the counter. Emma Ji-woo. The photo was polished, airbrushed just enough to pass scrutiny. But the eyes were hers, still and unblinking, focused. Tyler studied the picture, then studied her. He didn’t ask questions. Maybe didn’t know how. Or maybe something in her expression told him not to.
She paid in cash. Clean bills. Neat stack. Pulled from the vault without hesitation, counted out like it was nothing. Like it hadn’t come with a history. The paper smelled faintly of oil and time, like everything important always did. Tyler took the money, his fingers slowing just a bit as he handled it, as if part of him was trying to memorize what wrong felt like.
He printed her ticket, hands fidgety now, and slid it across the counter like he was giving her something that might explode.
“Gate thirty-four,” he said. “You’ll connect through Incheon.”
She took the boarding pass without a word. She didn’t say thank you. She turned and walked toward security, leaving Tyler staring after her.
She didn’t ask about upgrades or snacks. She didn’t care what came in the seatback pocket or what counted as a meal at thirty-seven thousand feet. No interest in a foil-wrapped cookie or a lukewarm bottle of water labeled “premium.” She wasn’t here for comfort. She was here to move forward. To put sky between her and the things behind her. She wanted distance. Altitude. The kind of cold, wordless detachment that only the stratosphere could offer.
The security line wound like a slow fuse: plastic bins clattering, belts slipping through metal loops, the voices of TSA agents clipped and bored. She stepped through it like she’d done it a hundred times. Because she had. Her coat was dark wool, the sort you could wear to a funeral or a boardroom without drawing questions. The stitching was heavier than it looked, reinforced. Useful. Her boots cleared the scanners. The blade inside was legal by a fraction of an inch, packed with the precision of someone who had measured the limits. Her bag was clean where it counted. Nothing that would raise alarms. Just the weight of something lived-in and quiet.
They scanned her passport and boarding pass without a second glance. The photo matched. Emma Ji-woo. Hair slightly darker in the picture, lips touched with a professional half-smile. Believable. The machines beeped politely. No flags. No questions. Just a nod and a wave.
She didn’t breathe easier. She didn’t need to.
At the gate, the crowd had already started to gather. People sprawled in chairs, their energy muted by early hours and too many miles. Some stared at their phones. Some picked at overpriced muffins. One kid cried softly into a sweatshirt, and nobody looked up. It was the kind of communal fatigue that airports did best: a shared sense of waiting without purpose.
She took her place in line, middle of the pack. Not the first. Never the last. Just another body headed somewhere else.
When they called Group Two, she moved.
Her seat was by the window. It always was. The duffel slid under the seat in front of her with practiced ease, fitting like it had done this before. She let her fingers rest on it briefly, grounding herself in the weight of what it held: names, tools, contingencies. The pieces of a life carefully folded down to fit inside a single bag.
She leaned into the wall of the plane, cool against her shoulder, and looked out. Morning had arrived without conviction. The sky was a washed-out gray, the kind of color that came before heat, before light. Airport machinery drifted past—fuel trucks, baggage carts, people in reflective vests who looked like they hadn’t slept. The wing of the plane cut across her view, still and patient, waiting to rise. Sunlight slid over it in dull streaks, catching on the rivets and edges, turning everything gold and indifferent.
The overhead speaker crackled something about boarding zones and safety demonstrations, but none of it landed. Not for her. The sound washed past her ears without shape, the way wind moves through trees: present, but meaningless. Someone two rows up laughed too loudly. A baby fussed. Coffee burned its way through the air vents, mixing with the stale plastic scent of recycled cabin air.
She didn’t move. Didn’t fidget. Her hands were folded in her lap, posture calm, almost meditative. But inside, the tight coil sat waiting. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t nerves. Just pressure. A quiet readiness built from too many miles and not enough peace.
The engines rumbled to life beneath her feet. The metal shell around her vibrated in response, like the plane was stretching its limbs after too long on the ground. It rolled slowly toward the runway, wheels clunking over seams in the concrete. She didn’t grip the armrest. Didn’t reach for anything. Just watched.
Takeoff wasn’t elegant. It was mechanical force dressed up in aerodynamics. The thrust came all at once, raw, loud, unapologetic. The kind of motion that didn’t ask permission. Her body pressed back into the seat, gravity pulling at her chest as the ground fell away. For one long breath, the Earth clung to her like it didn’t want to let go. And then it did.
The airport dropped out of view, buildings and roads folding in on themselves, reduced to the flat language of maps and memory. Gas stations, parking lots, little rectangles of human effort. All of it faded under a rising haze, distant and forgettable.
Her breath touched the glass for a moment. A soft cloud, gone just as quickly. The sky beyond was endless and blue in that high, cold way. Not warm. Not kind. But honest. It didn’t care who she was. It didn’t care where she was going. It just was. Vast. Empty. Ready.
She stared out into it, not searching, not thinking. Just remembering how it felt to be small again. Small enough to disappear, but sharp enough not to.
Her hand moved without looking, brushing the inside pocket of her coat. Cotton. Folded. A handkerchief she didn’t remember packing. She pulled it out, fingers slow and careful. The cloth was clean. White. Pressed. The kind of thing you carried when you didn’t know if you’d cry, or bleed, or both.
From the same pocket came the needle. Fine steel. Polished. Paired with a single loop of red thread, already knotted. She didn’t check it. She didn’t need to.
She began to sew.
Her hands worked in small, deliberate motions, the thread pulling through the fabric with barely a sound. She didn’t glance down. Her fingers remembered the rhythm. The name formed, one letter at a time. T. A. E. H. Y. U. N. G. Each stroke was precise. Each pull tight. No wasted movement.
She didn’t say his name. Didn’t even let her lips shape it. But it was there. In the cloth. In the blood-colored thread. In the silence between stitches.
When the name was finished, she tied it off with a flick of her wrist. Trimmed the excess. Folded the cloth again. Pressed it back into her pocket. Over her heart.
The plane had leveled out. Cruising now. The clouds below looked like ash. The ocean below that: cold, dark, silent. Somewhere beyond it, past all this emptiness, was Korea. And the man from Gwangju.
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The plane hit the runway. A hard, ugly jolt that snapped her spine straight and rattled the tray table in front of her. The tires screamed against the tarmac, metal grinding in protest as the cabin vibrated with the kind of impact that made people forget how to breathe. Drinks sloshed. Seatbacks creaked. Somewhere up front, someone muttered a sharp curse under their breath. The overhead lights flickered once, barely a stutter, but she saw it. She always did.
Out the window, the city didn’t look like it was sleeping. It looked like it had never gone to bed in the first place. Darkness hung heavy, not clean or quiet, but thick, like smoke, like old breath trapped in a closed room. The kind of dark that didn’t just hide things, it held them. The runway lights sliced through it in stark, clinical lines. Past them, the faint blur of Gwangju shimmered in neon and haze: blues and reds pulsing like slow heartbeats, mirrored in wet pavement that hadn’t dried and maybe never would. The glass reflected back just enough of her face to remind her she was still here.
As she stepped into the gangway, the air shifted. Dense. Damp. Immediate. It clung to her skin like something familiar, something half-forgotten but buried deep enough in the bones to recognize on contact. A mix of exhaust, concrete, late summer heat, and something sweeter, grilled food maybe, or just memory dressed up like scent. It hit her lungs like a slow exhale. She didn’t rush. Just walked forward, each step steady, her bag slung across her shoulder in that way that made it clear she didn’t need help and wouldn’t ask for it. Her coat hung open now, too warm for the humidity but still part of the armor. She moved like someone who belonged in the space between strangers. Not local. Not lost. Just passing through with purpose.
And yet, something shifted the second she stepped off the plane and onto Korean soil. Nothing anyone could see, but she felt it: a small click, like a lock catching in place. A posture change that didn’t show in her spine but settled deeper, in muscle memory and instinct. The mask slid on without effort. Not Emma Ji-woo anymore, not exactly. Not Candy, not the others. Just the version of herself this place required. Whatever her name was, she carried it like a blade in her boot, quiet, hidden, ready.
Inside, the airport moved like it had been designed for silence. No chaos. No rush. Just clean lines and softened footsteps echoing off polished tile. People didn’t shout. They didn’t loiter. They moved with the kind of practiced grace that didn’t need announcements. The lights overhead were low and cool, and even the seating looked like it had been designed to be ignored.
Customs passed without friction. The officer barely glanced up, flicked through her documents like he was reading grocery lists. Her forged passport, Emma Ji-woo, South Korean citizen returning from years abroad, was fresh, well-aged in the right places. The photo had the right kind of editing: smooth enough to pass facial scan, textured enough to seem human. She handed it over with both hands, bowed just enough to make it believable, smiled with restraint. Polite. Non-threatening.
“감사합니다,” she said, her voice low and shaped just right.
The stamp fell with a dull, final thud. No questions. No extra eyes. Just a nod, a motion, and then the gates opened.
Outside, the night waited.
The city air hit harder, warmer, wetter. The kind of humidity that didn’t just touch you, it soaked in. Rain had fallen not long before; she could feel it in the way the concrete gave off heat like breath. The streetlights bounced off slick asphalt, halos forming in puddles that mirrored blinking shop signs and broken reflections of moving traffic. Scooters buzzed past, weaving between slow cars. The buzz of neon hummed in the wires overhead like a living thing. There wasn’t much noise, but everything felt alive. Breathing.
She walked toward the taxi stand without checking her phone, without checking directions. She already knew where she was going. Her bag pulled at her shoulder, not in protest, just in reminder. Inside, names and pasts and the pieces of herself that weren’t for daylight. But she didn’t adjust it. Didn’t even shift her stance.
The cab she picked wasn’t the newest. The bumper was scuffed, one headlight had the faint film of age, and the license plate was slightly crooked. But it was real. Lived-in. The driver leaned against the hood, half-lit by the overhead bulb, cigarette cupped loosely in two fingers. Middle-aged, maybe older. His shirt wrinkled, his gaze unreadable.
She smiled before she spoke. Soft, disarming, the kind of smile that made people assume you didn’t bite.
“안녕하세요,” she said. “Seongmin Heritage Hotel, please. Near Sajik Park? The one with the koi in the lobby?”
The man blinked at her. A flicker of recognition, more for her fluency than her face. But he nodded like it didn’t matter.
“Know it,” he said, voice rasped from smoke or years or both. “That’s a nice place.”
She slid into the back seat, her bag tucked in beside her, one hand resting on its handle.
As they pulled into the street, he glanced at her in the mirror. “Vacation?”
She let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. “Sort of,” she said, breezy, warm enough to sell. “I’m meeting someone.”
That made him smile, just a little. “Boyfriend?”
She tilted her head, just enough to suggest a blush. “Not exactly. I’ve known him for a long time.”
“And you’ve never met?” he said, eyes narrowing with casual disbelief. “Do you trust him?”
She leaned forward a little, voice softer, like she was sharing something real. “I guess I’m old-fashioned. I still believe in people.”
The driver chuckled, tapping ash out the window. “Well. Hope he’s worth the wait.”
She smiled again, turning her eyes back to the window. “Me too.”
Outside, the city slid past in glints and shadows. Signs blinked red and blue against walls slick with water. A lone man smoked beneath a streetlight. A group of teenagers laughed near a convenience store, their voices echoing sharp and bright. And above it all, Gwangju pulsed. Alive. Waiting.
Her body language was relaxed, open, even friendly, but not too friendly. Her smile landed right where it needed to: warm enough to seem genuine, distant enough to keep the woman behind the desk from asking questions she didn’t want to answer. And yet, beneath it all, behind her eyes, there was something else. Something sharp. Alert. A presence just beneath the surface, watching everything, holding still like a wire pulled tight.
The cab ride had taken about twenty minutes, maybe less. She couldn’t really tell. In that strange pocket of time, after midnight but before dawn, everything stretched or collapsed depending on how close you were watching. Cities didn’t sleep in those hours; they just drifted, like the tide. The cab driver barely spoke, his cigarette glowing faint in the corner of her vision, the smoke trailing out the half-open window into the warm, wet air. He drove like a man who’d forgotten how to be surprised by anything. She appreciated that. It made things easier.
Out the window, Gwangju blurred past in bands of neon and shadow, light warped by the sheen of recent rain. The storefronts were lit like stages no one was acting on anymore: 7-Elevens glowing sterile and perfect, their shelves full of snacks and instant noodles and bottled tea that no one needed but still bought. People moved through them slowly, hunched and quiet, looking like they were halfway between sleep and survival. The rest of the city felt paused, noodle shops with stools turned upside-down, karaoke bars locked behind metal grates, all of it blinking half-heartedly like no one had told the power to shut off yet. One sign above a barbecue place kept flickering between “삼겹살 24시” and total darkness, as if it couldn’t decide whether to keep going or give up.
They passed a hanbok rental place with mannequins frozen in the windows, draped in silk and thread, caught mid-movement in some forgotten celebration. The lights inside were faint, almost apologetic. The kind of glow you could miss if you weren’t looking directly at it. And everything outside, every puddle, every wall, every parked car, reflected that layered light. Hangul shimmered across wet streets like it was painted there in real time. Chicken. Tarot. Facials. Cheap drinks. Lost hopes. It was all advertised the same way, with bold fonts and desperate color.
She leaned her head against the cool glass of the cab window and let the city slide past her. She wasn’t sightseeing. She wasn’t curious. She was memorizing. Every corner. Every alley. Every building with a fire escape or a side entrance or a window that stayed cracked. Not just as someone taking in a new place, but as someone planning how to move through it. Where to hide. Where to hunt. Where to vanish.
She wasn’t here for a reunion. That was the lie she wore like cologne, pleasant, easy, expected. She was here to dig. To drag someone’s name back out of the dirt and make it mean something again. If this city had tried to forget him, she’d remind it. She’d burn the name into glass and pavement if she had to. She hadn’t come this far to let memory do the burying.
When the cab finally slowed in front of the Seongmin Heritage Hotel, she already knew the building before it came into full view. She’d studied it, grainy photos, tourist reviews, street-view walkthroughs. But even with all that preparation, it was still something to see in person. Polished, curated, old-world elegance repackaged as modern luxury. White stone columns stood like they were holding up more than a roof, like they were trying to convince the street this place mattered. Carved details along the trim caught the warm spill of interior lighting. The brass door handles gleamed like they’d never been touched by real weather. Above the entry, a stained-glass panel glowed amber and deep red, a honeyed light pouring over the curb like something sacred had just cracked open.
And just inside, behind a clean pane of tall glass, the koi pond gleamed. Black water, smooth and quiet, broken only by the slow turning of gold and orange fins. The fish moved in lazy arcs, each shift like a breath drawn too deep to be seen. Like they didn’t care who watched.
The driver parked and turned to look at her. His voice was low, soft, like he knew not to break whatever moment she was in.
“This it?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”
He watched her for a second too long, not in a threatening way, just thoughtful. Like he’d seen this before. Not her, maybe. But people like her. People with a story that couldn’t be told in the back of a cab. People walking toward something only they understood.
“Well,” he said after a pause, “good luck with your meeting.”
She smiled faintly, just enough to be polite. “I think it’ll be one to remember.”
She handed him a bill folded clean once. Double what the meter read. He glanced at it, then back at her, and nodded without another word.
She stepped out of the cab. The air hit her like it meant to. Heavy. Humid. Full of noise that hadn’t been made yet.
She shouldered her bag without shifting her weight. Moved toward the hotel doors like she was stepping into something familiar. And as the cab pulled away, the night closed back in behind her like it hadn’t noticed she’d arrived at all.
Inside, the hotel smelled like money pretending to be modest. Like expensive wood polish layered over old stone and cold air recycled too many times. The lighting was just dim enough to flatter the furniture but still show off the marble floors, clean, symmetrical, sharp where it counted. Every tile lined up like it had been laid by someone who understood symmetry wasn’t just about beauty. It was about control.
To her left, the koi pond curved around the front desk like a moat. Its surface was glassy and still, the fish drifting in slow spirals. They looked unreal in the low light, too bright, too calm, like someone had animated them just for her arrival. A tiny pump kept the water moving just enough to keep it from falling asleep, but the sound was so soft it might’ve been imagined. It wasn’t tranquil. It was measured. Controlled. Like everything else in this place.
She walked toward the desk like she’d done it a dozen times in other cities under other names. Calm, confident, casually forgettable. The kind of guest who knew how to tip well and never asked for room upgrades.
The woman behind the desk looked young but practiced. Hair styled into a sharp, no-nonsense bob. Uniform crisp. Movements efficient. Her name tag said Juha, though Y/N didn’t really need to read it. She’d already pegged her: precise, polite, not interested in small talk. Just enough kindness to pass for warmth. The kind of employee who wouldn’t remember a single detail about you by the end of her shift, and wouldn’t question why she didn’t.
Y/N offered her a smile. The good one. Just the right amount of curve. Something safe. Something easy to forget.
Y/N switched to Korean mid-step, her tone effortless, almost casual. “예약했어요. 캔디 랄스턴으로요.” Her accent was textbook Seoul.
The woman behind the desk didn’t blink. “환영합니다, 랄스턴 씨. 3박이시죠?”
Y/N nodded, and with a soft switch in rhythm, she slipped back into English. Her voice lifted just slightly, pleasant and open, with that eager brightness tourists wore like perfume. “First time in Korea. I’m really excited.”
The receptionist smiled as if on cue. Not warm, exactly. Rehearsed, but pleasant. She slid a room key forward, tucked inside a white sleeve embossed with the hotel’s gold crest. “Room 714. Elevator’s just to your right.”
Y/N offered a small bow, murmured her thanks again, and turned away. Her boots made no squeal against the floor, only that quiet, deliberate click that echoed soft and sharp like footsteps in a gallery. The kind of sound that didn’t try to be heard but couldn’t help leaving an impression.
The elevator was already waiting, doors wide open like it knew she was coming. She stepped inside and caught her reflection in the mirrored walls: three angles, three versions of herself looking back. Her posture was perfect, relaxed, composed. Her clothes, neutral tones and well-fitted, spoke of efficiency, not attention. Her makeup was subtle, just enough color to say effort had been made, not enough to say she cared about being seen.
She looked like someone organized. Someone harmless.
But the reflection in the center mirror told the truth. It was in the way her eyes held steady, unflinching, like they didn’t expect kindness anymore. Like they’d already learned what questions were traps, which silences meant danger, and how to vanish while still in plain sight. There was a stillness in her face, but not the kind that came from calm. This was stillness earned, built from rehearsals, from closing hotel doors behind you and counting exits before you even set your bag down.
The elevator rose, slow and steady. She shifted her canvas bag higher on her shoulder. Not because it hurt, she didn’t let things hurt, but because it grounded her. Inside was everything that counted: names, paper trails, backup plans. There was no wasted weight.
When the elevator doors slid open on the seventh floor, she was already halfway into the hallway.
It was quiet. Carpeted in something dull that might once have been green, the kind of floor that muted footsteps into suggestions. The wallpaper, floral and faded, curled at the corners where humidity had worked its way in over the years. The light overhead buzzed, faint and constant, like the building was humming to itself out of habit. A soft, tired sound.
Room 714 was near the end, just past a bend in the hallway where the emergency map was pinned slightly crooked on the wall. She paused in front of the door, keycard in hand.
And then she just stood there. Not long. Just long enough to listen.
Not for sound. For pressure. For presence. You didn’t survive by hearing footsteps, you survived by feeling when a room wasn’t empty. The temperature. The stillness. The quality of silence. She tilted her head slightly. Felt the way the air held its breath.
Nothing.
She slid the keycard through the reader. The lock beeped, followed by that soft, mechanical click. Small, almost polite. She pushed the door open with her shoulder and stepped inside without looking behind her. The door sealed shut behind her with the kind of sound that didn’t echo. It just ended.
She locked it: deadbolt first, then the chain. Her hands moved in a rhythm they’d known for years. One smooth motion, no hesitation. She wasn’t checking, she was securing. There was a difference.
The canvas bag landed on the bed with a deep, even thud. Not loud, just final, like it had arrived with intent. She didn’t stop to look around. Didn’t bother checking the view. The room wasn’t the point.
She walked to the desk in the corner and turned on the lamp. Warm light spilled across the pale wood, catching on the edges of the hotel stationery and the small, useless pen that had been placed there with the usual pretend care. The kind of detail that suggested someone had thought about your comfort, even if they hadn’t.
She sat down. The chair creaked faintly but held. Her body didn’t sag. She didn’t relax. She just settled into it.
She pulled the pad of paper toward her and picked up the pen. It was smooth, plastic, light, nothing special. It didn’t matter. She clicked it once and started writing in small, deliberate strokes.
Things to Do Tomorrow:
-Buy a light pink blouse. Something that moves. Something soft.
-Buy makeup
-Rehearse the story. Again.
-Smile until it hurts.
Her pen hovered above the last line for a beat. Then she added one more, slower this time:
-Be perfect.
She circled it. Once. Then again. Firm. Not as a reminder. As a rule.
She put the pen down beside the pad and exhaled. Not dramatically. Not with relief. Just enough to release the breath she’d been holding since the door clicked shut.
She stood.
The bathroom was exactly what she expected: white tile, cool light, no character. Clean without warmth. The mirror above the sink was wide and too tall, forcing her to step closer if she wanted to see all of herself at once. She didn’t bother.
The light buzzed overhead, sterile and flat, the kind of glow that made everything look a little too real.
She touched her fingertips to the edge of the counter. Steady.
She wasn’t tired. Not yet. What she was came after tired, and it had no name.
She reached out and turned the faucet, letting the water run. Cold at first, bright and clean, loud as it hit the porcelain. But beneath the noise, she listened. Not to the water itself, but to the way it moved through the pipes. The way it echoed off tile. The way it filled the silence with something that wasn’t her. It sounded pure, but she knew better. It had traveled through metal older than the building, scraped past rust and time, ghosts caught in the bends. Still, it came out confident. Unbothered. Like it hadn’t carried anything with it.
She didn’t hurry. Her fingers moved slowly to the hem of her shirt, tugged it over her head, and let it fall to the floor. Then the rest, belt, pants, underthings, peeled away without effort. She’d done this ritual a thousand times before. And yet tonight, her hands felt different. Not clumsy. Not unsure. Just heavy, like they remembered more than she wanted them to. Her clothes ended up in a soft heap at her feet. By then, the mirror had already fogged over.
She stood still for a moment. Not posed, not inspecting. Just there. Her arms hung loose at her sides, her toes sinking slightly into the tile. The steam softened everything: her outline, her skin, even the air. The reflection staring back at her was dulled at the edges, her features blurred by heat and breath. She could still see her shape. Her shoulders narrow but set, arms lined with the first signs of strength again. Her ribs still showed when she inhaled too deeply, but her thighs had started to look solid again. Her body was still catching up to the rest of her. Still figuring out how to be whole after Two Pines tried to carve her hollow. But she was getting there. Slowly. She could see it.
She tilted her head and scanned herself like she was reading a story she knew by heart. The scars stood out like chapters. The crescent just below her ribs where a blade had barely missed something vital. A paler burn at her hip, nearly invisible now, but still a map of pain. The line along her collarbone, clean and deliberate. Surgical. The scar on her forehead had been there the longest. She didn’t even notice it anymore.
She nodded once, almost imperceptibly. A quiet agreement between her and the woman behind the fog.
Then she stepped into the shower.
The water hit her like a warning. Scalding. Immediate. It slammed into her shoulders and rolled down her back, ruthless in its heat. But she didn’t flinch. She leaned into it. Let it rake across her spine, sting her arms, burn her thighs. The pain was real. Tangible. Honest in a way few things were. It didn’t lie, didn’t soften, didn’t ask questions. It just landed, over and over again, washing everything else into silence.
She closed her eyes, tilted her head forward, and let her forehead rest against the cool tile wall. It grounded her. Solid. Cold. Unmoving. She breathed. Not deeply. Just enough. Enough to be here.
Then it came.
Not a memory. Not an image she could blink away. It was sharper than that. It crashed through her like glass, fast, clean, final. No prelude. No grace.
A sonogram.
Not imagined. Not abstract. Burned into her mind with brutal clarity. Grainy black-and-white. A crescent of light, unmistakable. And there in the center, her. The child. Seven months. Spine curled tight. Fists pulled in. Fragile, yes, but undeniably alive.
Not a possibility. A fact.
The photo was still folded in the lining of her coat. Tucked behind Kevlar, buried between seams, carried across borders and terminals and checkpoints. It was creased so deeply now it had forgotten how to lie flat. She had kept it close because she couldn’t not. Because some part of her still believed the paper would remember the shape even if she forgot the name.
She used to whisper to her belly in motel rooms that reeked of other people’s stories. Whisper names in the dark. Some strong. Some gentle. Some stolen from myths. Some from books she hadn’t finished. She spoke them aloud like spells. Names in Korean. In English. Names that meant light. Names that meant defiance.
Now? Now she couldn’t remember a single goddamn one.
Not one.
The realization hit without warning. Her knees gave out, buckled like they had been kicked. She dropped too fast to catch herself, hands sliding helplessly down the wall. Her skin hit the shower floor hard, the ceramic slick and unforgiving. Her breath didn’t come. Her chest just stalled.
The water kept pounding down, relentless and hot, hammering her back, her scalp, her shoulders.
She folded in tight. Arms clamped around her stomach. Head bent. Forehead pressed hard to her knees. The heat had scalded her skin pink, but it was nothing compared to what was burning underneath. Her whole body trembled, not from cold but from something older, deeper, more bone-deep than fear. Her jaw locked so tight her teeth throbbed. Fingernails dug into her upper arms, leaving pale marks that flushed angry and red as the shower thundered down over her back. Her shoulders jolted with every breath. Her chest couldn’t seem to find a rhythm. Her mouth opened once, like maybe a sound would come out. It didn’t. Just steam and a shattered breath that barely made it past her lips.
She cried, but not the way people cry in movies. No cinematic sobs. No beautiful devastation. This was messier. Raw. She cried like it surprised her. Like her body had remembered something her mind wasn’t ready to revisit. It wasn’t gentle or cathartic. It was violent. Uncontrolled. The kind of grief that had waited in the walls of her bones, that had made a home beneath her ribs, that had lived inside her blood quietly for years and now refused to be quiet anymore.
It wasn’t just about the child, though it started there. She cried for the girl she never got to meet. For the weight of her. The impossible, invisible pull of a presence that had once lived beneath her skin and kicked in the dark and responded to her voice like it meant something. She cried for the names whispered into motel ceilings. For every plan made in secret. For the way she used to sleep with one hand on her belly and the other over the gun under her pillow, believing—naively, stupidly—that she could keep both safe.
She cried for herself too. Not the woman she was now, but the one she used to be. The one who thought she could walk two roads at once. Who thought she could live between love and violence and come out clean. That she could be sharp and soft. That she could kill for a living and still build a life worth protecting.
She had buried that woman. Or thought she had. But grief has a way of preserving what pain cannot quite dissolve. The version of herself she thought was long gone hadn’t decayed. It had hardened. It had turned into something fossilized under all the anger and training and years. Not gone. Just waiting.
And under the grief, something else had been building. Coiled low in her belly. Climbing her spine. Tightening around her throat.
The fury.
It hit hot and sudden. Like a flare lit inside her chest. Fast. Blinding. Unforgiving. Her muscles locked. Her fists curled tight. Her breath caught in the cage of her ribs. She wanted to wreck something. Rip the cabinet off the wall. Shatter the mirror with her elbow. Drag her knuckles down the glass until they split. She wanted to leave blood on porcelain. On tile. On her own hands.
She wanted to find him. Taehyung Kim. And make him understand what he had done. Not by telling him. By making him feel it. Every inch of it. Every second. She wanted to look him in the eyes as it hit him. As the weight of what he stole crushed him under its full, ugly truth.
Her knuckles went white. Her muscles trembled with the force of restraint. But she didn’t scream. Not because she couldn’t. Because she wouldn’t. That kind of rage needed to be saved. Stored. Honed.
It would have its moment. Just not here.
The shower kept running, loud and steady, until she moved. Just a breath. Just a twitch of her fingers. Then she reached up and turned the water off.
Silence crashed down like a wave. Thick. Dense. The kind that fills every crack in a room. The kind that listens back. Steam drifted in long, slow ribbons, curling around her shoulders like it wasn’t ready to leave either.
She blinked once. Her breathing evened out. Slower. Cooler. Her chest still ached, but the fire was banked now, drawn in close and dangerous. Not gone. Just shaped.
She stood.
Water clung to her skin. Her hair dripped in long strands down her back. Her face was flushed, eyes glassy but sharp now, clear in a way that felt surgical. She moved with precision, drying off in steady, methodical swipes, every motion practiced and spare. The towel trembled in her hands, but she kept her grip. Dressed quickly. Quietly. No wasted motion. Just armor going back on.
The grief didn’t vanish. She packed it back down. Tucked it into the parts of herself she didn’t let anyone see. But the rage—she left that right where it was. Let it sit beneath her skin. Close to the surface.
Because Taehyung Kim didn’t know what he had taken from her, but he would.
She wasn’t coming for answers.
She was coming for the truth.
And he would give it to her.
Because there would be no one left to stop her.
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The city didn’t perform. Gwangju just was. It didn’t blaze with ambition like Seoul or stretch itself into glitz the way Busan tried to. It moved slow, breathed heavier. Honest, unbothered, like an old man in his undershirt posted up on a plastic chair, feet bare, sweating into the sidewalk, waving off mosquitoes with a rolled-up newspaper. There was a stillness here that didn’t feel staged. It felt earned. Like time didn’t hurry. Like it hadn’t for a while. Even the heat didn’t rush. It pressed down in thick, lazy folds, dragging everything—footsteps, voices, the color out of the buildings—into something close to sleep.
The streets moved in rhythm with it: fans turning slowly in dim back rooms, the hum of overhead wires swaying with the weight of too many summers, the drag of slippers across concrete. Shops leaned on each other like they were tired of standing alone. Paint peeled in curls off old storefronts. Rust bloomed at the hinges of delivery carts and folding chairs. Hand-painted signs creaked as they shifted in the breeze, their edges warped like paper left out in the rain.
It was the kind of afternoon where nothing tried too hard. The air was a patchwork of smells: hot oil, boiled radish, exhaust, old metal, the damp tang of stone that’s never had a chance to dry. Vendors fanned themselves with bent menus, arguing halfheartedly with ajummas who bargained with the precision of habit. A mop of scooters rolled through puddles left by melted ice or a spilled soup bowl, weaving through crates and feet like they knew every shortcut before it was built. The city didn’t sleep. But it didn’t really wake up, either. It just existed. Like a held breath.
And tucked into all of it, halfway hidden between a shuttered bookstore and a florist with wilting carnations, was the door. If you could call it that. More a suggestion than an entrance. A curtain, once blue and now more of a stained gray, hung from a crooked rod that looked hammered into place out of stubbornness rather than skill. It shifted when the wind pushed at it, not with drama but with the quiet of something breathing. The name painted across the fabric had long since faded: 김밥바. The brushstrokes barely held together, as if the person who wrote them hoped the world would forget.
She didn’t go straight in.
Y/N stood across from it, phone in hand, thumb flicking absently at nothing. Her eyes weren’t on the screen. They were on the building. On the way the curtain moved. On the way the shadows behind it didn’t feel empty. A pigeon flapped once but didn’t fly. A scooter buzzed past, and an ajumma barked something sharp about cabbage. The usual sounds. The usual rhythm.
Still, she waited a beat longer. She watched how the light caught the doorway. She noticed how the air felt different here. Denser.
Then she stepped forward and slipped behind the curtain like she belonged.
And everything changed.
The moment it fell behind her, the city vanished. The noise didn’t fade. It ceased. Like someone hit pause on the outside world. Inside was quiet in a way only old places know how to be. Not just soundless. Still. The kind of stillness that settles in stone. The kind that remembers things. The air was cooler, not because of any fan or vent, but because it had never left. It clung to the walls, the wood, the floor. Everything felt touched by time.
The scent hit next. Not artificial or sanitized. Just real. A mix of rice, vinegar, seaweed, and broth so old it had soaked into the wood grain. Salt, smoke, a whisper of garlic. It was the kind of smell you carried home with you, in your clothes, your hair, your bones.
Her eyes adjusted fast.
The space was barely larger than a closet. Three stools lined a counter. One crooked. One stained. One seemingly untouched. The varnish had long worn off the wood, dulled by elbows and sweat and stories told over soup. A ceiling fan turned overhead, slow and uneven, ticking with every revolution like it was remembering something too late. A single fly moved in lazy circles beneath it.
Nobody else was here.
No music. No kitchen noise. Just a single plate on the counter. Empty except for one streak of red sauce. Chopsticks placed beside it with care. Not abandoned. Just waiting.
She walked in like she’d been here before. Like this was a memory, not a discovery. Her posture was casual. Her camera hung from her neck like a travel blog prop, the kind of thing that made her look like the type of woman who’d find “hidden gems” and write about the soul of a place as if she’d invented the concept. But none of that touched her eyes. They were focused. Clear. Watching.
And then he appeared. Quietly, without fuss, like he’d always been there and the world had only just remembered to look. The steam rolled out behind him, curling around his shoulders like it had followed him from some low, back kitchen heat that never fully cooled. He was tall, not imposing, but solid in the way that came from doing hard things for a long time. His build was lean, a little bowed at the shoulders, as if time and gravity had done their work. His skin had the baked-in tone of someone who’d spent years near open flame, his forearms marked by thin pale scars that spoke of burns, not battles. The white chef’s jacket he wore was buttoned but stained, spattered with dark brown that might have been soy sauce or something else. It was hard to tell, and maybe it wasn’t supposed to be clear.
His face didn’t offer much. It wasn’t unreadable in the cold, calculated way of spies or killers. It just didn’t feel the need to explain itself. High cheekbones softened the shape of his long face, and his eyes, dark and narrow, carried the quiet stillness of someone who watched more than he spoke. His hair was thick, slightly tousled, mostly black but peppered with gray at the temples. He was handsome, but the kind of handsome that didn’t advertise. He managed to exist right in the middle ground. Someone you’d forget until you saw them again and couldn’t stop wondering why.
Y/N kept her expression neutral as he stepped fully into view. Her body didn’t flinch. Her gaze didn’t drift. She looked at him plainly, openly, like she had no reason not to. But this was him. The man she’d crossed an ocean for. The one who had answers locked behind his teeth.
He saw her, and the smile came fast. Too fast. It stretched across his face like a reflex he hadn’t bothered updating in years. Broad, eager, practiced. The kind of smile that had been used too many times on too many strangers. The kind that worked better when you didn’t look too closely. He wore it like a uniform: the smile of a man who knew how to sell comfort, how to charm tourists just enough to make them stay, just long enough to make them leave before asking the wrong question. There was no real warmth in it. But it was a good act.
“English?” he asked, cautious but cheerful, testing each syllable like he was stepping over a puddle he didn’t trust.
She gave a half-shrug, tipping her head slightly as her mouth pulled into something lopsided and pleasant. “Almost,” she said. “American.”
Something about that word flipped a switch in him. He lit up like he’d been waiting for it. “Ah! America! Yes, welcome, welcome!” He nodded several times, as if the excitement might wear off if he didn’t hammer it in. “My English, very good. Yes.”
“Perfect,” she said, breezy and bright, like a woman with nowhere to be and all the time in the world. She stepped farther inside, her fingers ghosting along the edge of the counter. She didn’t look at it, not really, but the gesture made it seem like she was appreciating the wood, soaking up the charm. It wasn’t for him. It was for the story.
The chef smiled wide when she stepped in, his English laced with effort but cheerful all the same. “Welcome, American,” he said with a chuckle. “I hope you like my shop.”
She dipped her head, just enough to be polite. “안녕하세요,” she said, soft and even, her pronunciation clean, too natural to be brand-new.
That got a reaction. He lit up like someone had pulled a coin from behind his ear. “오오오! 안녕하세요!” He leaned forward with the delight of a man genuinely impressed. “Very good, very good! You speak Korean?”
She let out a modest laugh, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear like the compliment embarrassed her a little. “Not really,” she said. “Just a few words I picked up yesterday.”
Her eyes moved over the room, taking in the shelves, the old wood, the dust that softened the corners of things. “Is it okay if I sit here?”
“Sit, sit!” he said, already wiping down the bar with a damp cloth in wide, sweeping strokes like he was preparing an altar. “Of course. You sit. What words you learn? Oh, wait one second.”
He turned toward the curtain behind him, barked something in Korean without missing a beat. The words tumbled fast and irritated.
“We have a customer, bring out some tea, quickly!”
A voice called back, lazy and muffled. “I’m watching my soap operas.”
The chef rolled his eyes, snapping, “Lazy bastard! Screw your soap opera! Hurry up!”
“The tea’s hot. Why don’t you serve it yourself for once?”
“Shut up! Get your ass out here!”
Then he turned back to her, placing both palms on the bar like nothing had happened, though a thin line of annoyance still showed around his eyes. His smile remained pleasant. “So,” he said, “what else do you know in Korean?”
She tapped her chin lightly, brow furrowed like she was digging through a mental list. “감사합니다,” she said after a second, letting the word unfold carefully but not too perfectly. Like she was still getting comfortable with it.
He nodded with approval, the kind of praise people give freely but mean all the same. “Very good,” he said. “You say it nicely.”
She leaned forward just a touch, elbows resting gently on the bar, camera bumping softly against the edge. “알겠어요?” she tried, the hesitation built in just enough to seem earnest.
He brightened. “You know that one! ‘I understand.’ Good, very good. You learn fast.”
She smiled back. “Only what people say to me first.”
Then she tilted her head and added another. “안녕히 가세요?”
His expression flickered for a split second. The kind of shift most people wouldn’t catch. He recovered quickly, correcting her with a wave of his hand. “No, no, no. Say again.”
She blinked once, feigning the kind of sheepish confusion that made it look like maybe she had messed it up after all. She tried again, a little slower this time. “안녕히 가세요?”
He clapped his hands once, sharp and loud in the stillness of the shop. His smile stretched wide, but the lines around it didn’t move. “You speak Korean,” he said, voice lighter than it had been, but also a little tighter.
She laughed softly, tilting her head again. It was the kind of laugh you’d hear from someone caught in a harmless exaggeration. “Now you’re just flattering me.”
But he didn’t laugh with her. “No,” he said simply. “Serious. Your pronunciation... very good. You say 안녕히 가세요 like we say 안녕히 가세요.”
The air between them settled. Not tense, but heavier. The kind of pause that had weight in it, even if you didn’t know why.
His voice came again, this time quieter, slower. “You can learn Korean very easy.”
She let her gaze drop for half a second, just enough to give it texture, then lifted it again with a careful smile. “No kidding,” she said, her voice just a little softer now. “But thank you. 진짜... 감사합니다.”
He didn’t respond right away. Just breathed in through his nose, steady and thoughtful. Then he adjusted his stance, the shift so subtle most people wouldn’t notice. But she did. She saw the way his shoulders reset, the tiny movements that told her he wasn’t just running a shop. He was watching something unfold.
He turned without another word and picked up a rice paddle. His voice floated back over his shoulder, even and calm. “Let me make something for you.”
She nodded, her smile still in place, but the tone that followed wasn’t quite the same. “Anything’s fine.”
The chef stayed where he was, hands now methodically working at the counter. A bowl of rice, steam still clinging faintly to the grains. A bamboo mat laid flat. A half-sliced cucumber. The blade beside it already glinting in the overhead light.
“You like kimbap?” he asked, like it was just polite conversation.
“I love it,” she said, light and breezy.
She let the sentence hang just long enough to sound casual, like maybe this was a regular kind of moment, in a regular kind of place. But it wasn’t.
The knife moved with soft, measured sounds. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Carrot. Radish. Cucumber.
Every slice was uniform. Clean. The rhythm was precise, practiced. Not just skilled. Disciplined.
She didn’t take her eyes off him, not directly, but not obviously either. Her posture stayed relaxed, her hands resting on the bar. The camera around her neck swayed gently with the air from the ceiling fan, tapping now and then against the wood like a slow heartbeat.
She didn’t look dangerous.
But then, neither did he.
The overhead light gave a quiet hum, casting the shop in a worn, yellow wash that made everything look faintly out of date. The fan creaked once with each turn, ticking off invisible seconds. Outside, the alley was still. A cat passed, paused in the doorway, then disappeared again.
The chef didn’t look up from his cutting board. His voice came steady, like they were just passing time.
“You should learn Korean.”
She smiled, light but not airy. “You think so?”
He nodded slightly, slicing through radish with clean precision. “Yes.”
“I’ve heard it’s impossible.”
He nodded. “Yes. Very hard. But you,” he said, quieter now, “you have Korean tongue.”
He returned to his work, pulling a smaller knife from a drawer. It was heavier, curved differently. He laid slices of tuna onto a black ceramic plate. Next to them, he added a pinch of pickled ginger and a small, hand-shaped mound of wasabi.
He slid the dish toward her with quiet pride.
She looked down at it, then back up. “How’d you know tuna’s my favorite?”
He shrugged one shoulder, almost coy. “What?”
“Tuna,” she said again, watching him. “It’s my favorite.”
He smiled with the same practiced calm. “Ah. Thank you very much.”
Then he turned his head toward the beaded curtain and shouted, voice sharp. “야! 차 어디 갔어? 빨리 좀 해!”
Behind the curtain came a reply, loud and annoyed.
“지금 드라마 보고 있잖아!”
“드라마는 개뿔이지! 손님 왔잖아, 이 자식아. 빨리 갖고 와!”
“차 뜨거워! 너도 좀 움직여 봐!”
The chef muttered something under his breath, wiped his hands, and moved toward the curtain. The beads clinked as he grabbed the other man by the wrist mid-gesture, twisted it lightly, and leaned in close.
“네가 장군이면 나는 황제다. 그러니까 조용히 차나 갖고 와.”
Then, with a mocking grin and just enough weight to sting, he said in English: “Do you understand?”
The assistant pulled free, scowling, and glanced at Y/N. “대머리 아니거든,” he muttered. Then, in stiff English: “I shave. Do you understand me?”
The chef didn’t even look. He picked up a small knife and threw it underhanded toward the wall. It landed with a soft thud, blade buried in the wood just left of the curtain.
The assistant disappeared without another word.
Y/N didn’t follow his movement. Her fingers just found a napkin and began folding it, slow and absent, like she was trying to pass the time. But her attention stayed open, alert, listening to every creak from the fridge and every shift of weight behind the curtain. She tracked it all without looking.
The chef glanced her way and let out a low sigh. “Sorry,” he murmured.
She smiled, shook her head gently, still all ease and pleasant charm. “No worries at all.”
The chef had gone back to wiping a plate that didn’t need it, slow circles that looked more like habit than cleaning. He hummed something under his breath. No real melody, just sound for the sake of it. Every so often, his eyes drifted up. Not to her. To the curtain. He was waiting, too.
Y/N leaned her chin into her palm and let out a quiet sigh. The kind that sounded like she had nowhere else to be, like this was just another slow stop on a longer, looser itinerary. But beneath the quiet facade, her pulse had cooled into something steadier. Sharper. She was counting. Not seconds. Not movements. Just weight.
The beads stirred again.
The second man reappeared, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. The soju was cold, condensation sliding down the green glass in thick streaks. His fingers were wide, stained around the cuticles, the nails chipped like they had been trimmed with teeth or a dull blade. Hands that had done hard things.
He reached the counter and set the bottle and glass down. He turned to walk away. The chef didn’t let it slide.
His voice cracked through the air, hard and sudden. “야, 예의 좀 갖춰!”
The man didn’t stop completely. He only slowed. His shoulders shifted. A sigh leaked out, long and annoyed.
“뭐? 술 갖다 줬잖아.”
“손님 앞에서는 제대로 해. 외국인이라도.”
A scoff, barely loud enough to register. “외국인이라 모를 텐데 왜 신경 써?”
The chef’s reply came low, firm. “그러니까 더 조심해야지. 한국 사람처럼 보여도 다 듣고 있을 수도 있어.”
There was a pause. Just a few seconds, but heavy. The kind of quiet that wasn’t about silence. It was about choice.
The man muttered something under his breath, just noise really, but shaped by resentment. Then he twisted the cap off the bottle with a rough snap and poured. The soju splashed high in the glass, almost spilling. He shoved it toward her with one hand, the edge of the glass tapping wood just shy of rude.
Then he turned and disappeared again. The beads clattered harder this time. The chef let out a breath.
“죄송합니다,” he said, bowing his head slightly. “그 사람은... 사람 대하는 법을 몰라요.”
Y/N didn’t flinch. Her smile stayed where it had been the whole time, pleasant and unbothered. “Sorry?”
The chef’s tone softened, switching to English like it was muscle memory. “Ah, no, just... he doesn’t know how to talk,” he added, with a thin smile that almost reached his eyes.
She nodded, light, polite. Lifted the shot glass with a small, quiet toast. “Thank you,” she said, and took a sip.
The soju hit cool. Sweet up front, then a clean, sharp finish that sat in the back of her throat and lingered. It didn’t burn. It reminded.
She set the glass down. Picked up her chopsticks. The motion was fluid, casual, not stiff with performance, but practiced. The way a habit becomes part of muscle memory.
She lifted a piece of tuna from the plate, a clean slice that caught the light like silk. Deep ruby red, almost translucent, grain running fine through its surface. She placed it on her tongue and held it there, waiting. It melted. Soft and rich, just a trace of brine and something faintly metallic, like memory. She chewed once. Twice. Let it dissolve.
Her eyes drifted shut, just for a second. 
She set the chopsticks down, careful not to clatter them, then picked up the soju again and finished the glass in a single, smooth pull. The second hit went down easier. The warmth spread slow through her chest, settling in a place that had once held nerves.
Across the counter, the chef watched. He hadn’t changed his expression, but something in the way he stood had eased. Not relaxed, not soft, but carrying a kind of respect. He was noticing a quiet fluency. No words. Just recognition.
“First time in Korea?” he asked. His hands returned to the cutting board, fingers resting near the knife, though he didn’t pick it up yet.
Y/N nodded, finishing another bite. “Mmhmm.”
“What!” he said, voice rising with disbelief that didn’t quite ring false.
She swallowed, wiped the corner of her mouth lightly. “Yes. This is my first time.”
He tilted his head, eyes narrowing just a little. “What brings you to Gwangju?”
Outside, the alley shifted. A gust caught some stray bit of paper and skidded it along the brick like a coin on pavement. Somewhere nearby, a bird let out a single cry, sharp and fast, gone in a blink. The curtain behind her swayed faintly with a whisper-soft clatter, like wind chimes that never quite got the breeze they needed to sing. Y/N adjusted her chopsticks, repositioned them between her fingers, then gently set them down without ever lifting a bite. Her tone was light when she finally spoke, almost conversational.
“I came to see a man.”
The sentence didn’t echo, but it changed something in the room. A beat passed. Not long. But the chef’s hand froze mid-motion, his knife held just above the salmon, blade tilted slightly as if it too had paused to listen.
“Ah,” he said after a moment, stretching the word just enough to carry weight. “A friend in Gwangju?” He didn’t look up.
“Not quite,” she replied.
“Not a friend?”
“No.” She waited until his eyes found hers before continuing. “We’ve never met.”
The blade finally touched the board. A soft sound. Then he laid the knife aside, not quickly, but with care, like he’d decided whatever came next didn’t need a blade in hand. He kept his gaze on the cutting board for a moment longer than necessary, then finally looked up. The expression on his face didn’t shift much, but something behind his eyes sharpened. Not fear. Not even suspicion. Just awareness.
“And,” he said, more quietly now, “may I ask who he is?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Jung Hoseok.”
The name didn’t explode. It didn’t need to. It landed in the room like a rock dropped into still water. No splash. Just the heavy assurance that things were moving beneath the surface now. Her voice hadn’t changed. She wasn’t dramatic. She didn’t lean in. But the name was enough.
The chef went still. Not tense, simply anchored. Like something in him had snapped into place. His right hand rested on the edge of a towel. His left hovered briefly over the blade again, reflex more than anything. The tip of his finger brushed the metal and slipped. A sudden streak of red rose across his knuckle. He looked down at it, just for a moment, and lifted the hand to his mouth. Sucked the blood away like it was routine. No flinch. No sound. Just control, reset.
Behind her, the beads rattled once more, sharper this time. The bald man stepped through again, his face a clenched fist. He didn’t speak. Just let his eyes sweep the room, pausing on her. Not suspicion. Calculation. Like something in the air had told him to pay attention.
He crossed to the counter, picked up the bottle, and poured her another shot. This time, the movement was smooth. No clatter. No shove. Just a quiet, focused pour. He didn’t speak. Didn’t meet her eyes. He finished the pour, left the glass full, and walked out. The beads clacked shut behind him, not loud, not subtle. Just punctuation.
The chef exhaled slowly through his nose. No drama. Just release. Then he took a towel and began wiping his hands carefully, methodically. His eyes stayed on her.
She lifted the new glass in a small, silent toast, even though the man who’d poured it was already gone. The glass was cold enough that it clung to her fingers.
When the chef spoke again, the language changed. No more English. No pretense.
His voice lowered, smooth and even, each word placed with precision. “정호석에게 무슨 용건이 있습니까?”
Y/N didn’t blink.
She answered in Korean, her voice quiet, level. No showmanship. Just the kind of careful weight that traveled farther than volume ever could. “강철이 필요해요.”
His eyes narrowed. Not in suspicion. In thought. Like he was studying her words, not for truth, but for intention. He didn’t answer right away. He let the silence linger.
“왜 강철이 필요하죠?” he asked.
She looked at the glass beside her plate, a droplet tracing its way down the side. Then she met his eyes again. “쥐를 죽이려면요.”
There was another pause, longer this time, but not uncomfortable. Then the chef let out a short laugh. Not cruel. Not mocking. Just low and dry, like someone who had lived long enough to understand how serious things always start in calm voices.
“Must be a big rat,” he said in English this time, voice touched with something close to amusement. “If you need Jung Hoseok steel for it.”
She smiled, but only with one side of her mouth. The other half stayed still.
“Huge,” she said.
They didn’t move. Didn’t raise their voices. The air between them didn’t buzz with tension, but it held. Quiet. Pulled tight like thread stretched between fingers. It didn’t warn. It just waited.
The chef gave a small nod. Y/N didn’t speak, didn’t finish the food. She left the second shot untouched. The fish remained as he had plated it, artful, unspoiled. The only sign she had been there was the soft, fading ring left behind by her first glass, already drying into the grain of the wood.
She rose without a sound and followed him through the beaded curtain, not once looking back.
The hallway beyond was narrow and long, the kind of space that time forgets. The wallpaper, beige or yellow once, now sun-bleached into something closer to nicotine-stained parchment, peeled at the edges in slow curls. The floorboards creaked just enough to remind you that no one had fixed them in a long while, and maybe no one ever would. The air smelled lived-in, dense with cooking oil and old plaster, like generations of heat had steeped into the walls. A single bulb swung gently from the ceiling, flickering once before settling into a thin, steady glow.
Hoseok walked ahead, silent, his gait quiet but confident. He didn’t rush. He didn’t hesitate. His steps were even, deliberate, the kind of pace that didn’t waste energy or ask permission. When he reached the end of the corridor, he glanced up and found the pull cord, barely visible in the dim light, hanging like a spider’s thread. He tugged it once.
A low groan came from above, followed by a creaking shift. A square panel in the ceiling cracked open with a dusty exhale, and a folded ladder unfolded downward with slow, mechanical clicks, the rungs snapping into place like joints stretching after too long at rest.
He climbed first. She followed.
Her boots hit the rungs with soft thuds, the sound swallowed by the close space around her. One hand on each side rail, steady, smooth. No wasted movement. She didn’t glance up, didn’t glance down. Just climbed. The air thickened as she ascended, growing warmer, more still. There was a shift in temperature, and in smell. Wood. Oil. Steel.
As she rose through the opening, the attic revealed itself like a photograph developing in slow motion.
It wasn’t big, but it felt larger than it should have. The low ceiling curved inward slightly, giving the space a strange hush, like it was used to quiet. The warmth was immediate. Not stifling, but deep, the kind of heat that came from bodies and time and electricity burning low and constant. The scent was unmistakable to anyone who knew what it meant: cedar, carbon, and choji oil. That distinct blend of camellia and clove, familiar only to those who have ever cared for a blade.
The light from the window was weak, filtered through grime that hadn’t been wiped away in years. But what little came through cast long golden lines across the floor, picking out the pattern in the grain and throwing deep shadows that stretched and curled. The floor was clean. Worn, but swept. Not a speck of dust in sight. No clutter, no trash. This wasn’t storage. It was maintenance.
On the far wall stood the racks.
Not shelves. Not hooks. Racks, each one handmade, shaped with intention, joined by hand rather than hardware. Pale wood, aged and patient. No decoration. No flair. Just quiet craftsmanship. They held swords. Not just katanas. Blades.
Dozens of them, each one unique. Their sheaths glinted in the dim light: black lacquer with soft reflections, deep red urushi, mottled green like old bark. One was wrapped in white rayskin bound with gold. Each sageo tie—gray, plum, navy—was knotted tight and deliberate, tension held with purpose. The tsuka, wrapped in silk, were symmetrical to the point of obsession. Every fold precise. Every diamond perfect. Each kashira had its own story: copper dragons, koi fish, sakura petals, brass ships riding a storm. And the tsuba were miniature sculptures of iron and bronze, some simple, some elaborate, none ornamental for the sake of it. These weren’t pieces for display. They were weapons made to be used. Cared for, kept sharp, kept ready.
Y/N stepped forward, her movements quiet, measured. She didn’t touch anything. Didn’t need to. The room held its own gravity. The kind of silence that didn’t beg for reverence but commanded it through sheer presence. Every detail—the blades, the wood, the air itself—spoke for her to listen.
Behind her, Hoseok didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to either. His stillness wasn’t tense or withdrawn. It was aware. Watching, but not pressing.
She turned slightly, just enough to glance over her shoulder. Her voice, when it came, was soft. Her Korean clear and careful. “May I?”
A beat passed, subtle but intentional. Then, his reply, not in Korean this time but in English. And for some reason, that made it gentler. “Yes, you may. Second from the top. Sixth row. Left side.”
She nodded once and turned back to the racks. Her steps didn’t creak the floorboards. She moved with the kind of calm that came from purpose, not performance. Her eyes scanned, counted, found it: sixth row, left side, second down.
She stopped in front of it, let her gaze rest on the sheath before reaching for it. Black lacquer, smooth and deep enough to absorb the light. It reflected just the faintest outline of her face, blurred, formless. The finish was perfect, but not decorative. Not flashy. Maintained, not polished. Like someone had wiped it down once a week for decades, always with the same cloth.
The sageo cord was tied in a neat, practical knot. Not ornamental. Not lazy. Tight, squared. The kind of tie someone would redo until they got it right. The tsuba was brass, aged and worn, its surface darkened by time and touch. Etched pine branches crawled along its edges, simple, understated, and detailed enough to tell you it wasn’t mass-produced. It had been chosen.
Her fingers wrapped around the tsuka. The silk binding was tight, smooth, crisscrossed with perfect symmetry. Black cord over white rayskin. Traditional. Familiar. The handle sat against her palm like a known shape, like something she had used before, even if she hadn’t.
And something inside her, something she hadn’t even noticed was noisy, went quiet.
She drew the blade without hesitation, not for show, just to see. It came free with a sound so subtle it was almost imagined. Like breath drawn through cloth. The kind of sound that disappears if you’re not paying attention. But she always paid attention.
Light caught the blade and changed it. What had been metal turned fluid. Reflections danced along the edge, fractured and reformed as she moved. The hamon curled like a pale ripple, shifting with every minor tilt of her hands. The kissaki was long, graceful. Measured for reach, not for display. The sword wasn’t just well-made. It had purpose in its design. Intention.
She held it in both hands now. The balance fell into place like it knew where to go. No resistance. No demand. Just a quiet agreement between steel and muscle, weight and memory.
Behind her, Hoseok finally stirred. The smallest motion: fabric shifting, a heel settling more fully into the floor. When she turned slightly, she saw him near the window, one hand deep in his pocket. The other rolled something between his fingers.
A baseball. Worn, the leather dulled to a soft gray, the seams darkened, fraying. It looked like it had been tossed from hand to hand for years. He turned it over in his palm absently, like it was more habit than thought.
“Funny,” he said, voice quiet enough that the words didn’t quite disturb the stillness. “You like swords…”
He tossed the ball into the air, caught it once without looking.
“…I like baseball.”
Then, without warning, he threw it.
There was no flourish. No wind-up. Just a sudden motion, fast, clean, direct. The ball cut through the air on a line straight toward her. No room to think. No time for a plan.
Her arms moved before her mind did. The sword rose in a single arc, smooth and efficient. No tension in the shoulders, no wasted energy in the swing. The blade moved as though she were answering something, not striking.
The ball split cleanly.
There was no dramatic crack. No cinematic echo. Just a soft, muted thud, leather parting under steel, a sound more felt than heard. One half of the ball skidded off and rolled beneath the nearest rack. The other bounced off her boot and stopped.
She didn’t breathe out. Not yet. Her grip had already eased. The sword angled down, relaxed at her side, tip toward the floor. Balanced again, as if nothing had happened.
Hoseok stepped forward, steady as ever, though something behind his expression had shifted. Barely, but enough for her to notice. A flicker in his eyes, like a thought he hadn’t yet decided whether to keep or release. He lifted a hand toward her, slow and sure. Not a demand. Not a gesture of control. It was open, deliberate. A quiet invitation to return something that wasn’t quite hers yet.
She reversed the blade, offering the hilt without hesitation. No dramatic pause, no faltering. Just weight moving from her hands to his. The handoff was clean, unspoken, the kind of exchange that didn’t need ceremony to be understood.
He sheathed the sword with practiced ease, and the sound—soft, precise, the smooth slide of steel into lacquered wood—didn’t echo. It landed. Not loud, not theatrical. Just final. Like a breath held, then released.
“I wanted to show you these,” he said in Korean, the playful edge from earlier gone. His voice had changed, calmer now, older somehow. He held the sheathed blade in both hands, fingers gliding over the lacquer not to clean it, but to remember it. “But someone like you… someone like you already understands.”
He placed it gently back in its rack, hands steady, motions exact. Each movement held weight, the kind of intention that couldn’t be faked. “I no longer make instruments of death,” he said, softer now, almost to himself. “I keep them for their beauty. For what they once meant. Because I love them.”
There was a quiet pride in his words, not boastful, just true. He bowed his head slightly. “I’m proud of what I made. Proud of how well I made them. But I am retired.”
She stepped closer, silent. No threat in her approach, only certainty. Her presence filled the space without trying to. Her voice came softly, but with clarity.
“Then give me one.”
The words landed like a pin in still fabric. He turned to face her, jaw tightening.
“They’re not for sale.”
“I didn’t say sell me one.”
They locked eyes. Her stare didn’t waver. Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.
“I said give me one.”
A pause opened between them. Not long, but heavy. The kind that held all the weight of what hadn’t been said yet. When he spoke again, it was clipped. Cold.
“And why should I help you?”
She didn’t blink. “Because the vermin I’m after,” she said, the words clean and hard, “was your student.”
That stopped him. Not with a flinch, not with alarm. Just a subtle shift. Shoulders lowered by a fraction, breath held at the top of his chest. His silence was sudden and full.
She stepped in again. “And considering the student…” she let the rest hang, then added, “you have certain obligations.”
He turned and walked toward the narrow attic window, its frame sun-bleached and warped slightly with age. With the back of his hand, he wiped away a patch of fog, clearing a view just big enough to see the city stretching out below them—rooftops, wires, and the slow dimming of the day. The glass was damp, the edges still filmed in condensation.
With one finger, he reached up and began to write.
TAEHYUNG.
The name curved faintly in the glass, drawn in a line of skin oil and breath. Outside, the wind kicked up, brushing against the building with a hollow tap. The beams creaked. The attic seemed to lean into the moment. The name.
She didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just nodded once. That was enough.
Hoseok turned, walked to the trapdoor, and reached for the old latch. It gave with a dry metallic groan. The ladder creaked as it unfolded, the sound echoing faintly in the rafters.
He gestured to the corner. A futon, rolled neatly. A folded blanket beside it. A small jug of water, a wooden comb laid with care. Nothing lavish. Nothing new. Just clean. Lived-in.
“You can sleep here,” he said in Korean. “I’ll make space downstairs. Might take a day or two to find proper furniture.”
He descended the ladder with the same quiet weight he carried everywhere. But just before the hatch closed, his voice floated back up, lower and firmer.
“It’ll take a month to make the blade.”
A pause. The creak of one last step below.
“I suggest you spend it practicing.”
Then the hatch closed with a solid, wooden thunk. Not sharp. Not aggressive. Just complete.
She stood still, alone in the attic, the air settling around her like dust that had waited too long to fall. The quiet wasn’t just quiet anymore. It was thick, almost physical. A silence that had weight, like the room itself was holding its breath after what had been said, what had been written.
The last of the afternoon light had slipped away without notice, and in its place came the muted amber of early evening. Outside, the city blurred. Rooftops softened, edges dulled, the sky folding into dusk with no sharp lines left. Gwangju looked like it was remembering something it didn’t want to say out loud.
She walked toward the window, slow and steady, her boots tapping gently against the floor. The name was still there, hovering in the circle of cleared glass, faint but legible. TAEHYUNG. The letters had already started to run a little, the edges softened by moisture and time.
From her coat, she pulled a cloth. It was plain, the kind of fabric that had seen years of use—creased, worn, stripped of anything personal. Just something that did its job. She raised it and began to wipe. One pass. Then another. Then again. Not hard, not angry. Just firm. Methodical. With each motion, the letters blurred a little more, until they were nothing but streaks. And then nothing at all. Just fog again.
She held her hand to the glass for a second longer, palm pressed flat. The warmth from her skin left a faint outline before the cold reclaimed it. It faded just like the name had. Quick, quiet, complete.
She folded the cloth with care and tucked it back into her coat, her fingers working with practiced ease. No lingering. No pause for meaning.
Then she turned from the window.
Outside, the city kept fading. Behind her, the attic returned to stillness. The name was gone. And with it, whatever place he might’ve held in her. Taehyung Kim had already taken too much. There was no room left in her for the ghost of him. Not anymore.
He would fall. And when he did, she would finally be free.
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chimcess ¡ 4 days ago
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⚔︎ Chapter Four: The Man from Gwangju Pairing: Taehyung x Reader Other Tags: Assassin!Taehyung, Assassin!Reader, Assassin!Jimin, Dad!Jimin, Assassin!Yoongi, Gang Leader!Yoongi, Assassin!Namjoon, Swordmaster!Hoseok, Chef!Hoseok, Pimp!Seokjin Genre: Assassins! AU, Exes!AU, Lovers to Enemies, Action, Comedy, Suspense, Martial Arts, Drama, Thriller, Romance (if you squint), Heavy Angst, Violence, 18+ only Word Count: 23.9k+ Summary: A former assassin awakens from a four-year coma after her ex-lover Taehyung tries to kill her on her wedding day. Driven by revenge for the loss of her unborn child and stolen life, she creates a hit list and embarks on a ruthless mission to take down everyone responsible. Warnings: Violent thoughts, implied miscarriage, flashbacks, PTSD, mental illness, guns, other weapons, traveling, arguing, bickering, use of katana, this is a pretty tame chapter all things considered, not many warnings for this one, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: I apologize if I miswrote any of the Korean I used in this chapter. I don't speak fluently and relying on Google can be difficult.
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Horizon City was somehow worse than El Paso. The sky pressed down like a lid on a pot, trapping the heat until the air itself felt heavy. No clouds. No breeze. Just that dry, punishing stillness that made the world feel abandoned. The pavement shimmered. Buildings sagged under the weight of it, their paint bleached to bone, their windows hot to the touch.
Down the center of it came the Pussy Wagon, too loud, too yellow, a smear of wrong color on a sunburned road. It didn’t belong here, not among rusted trucks and dead air conditioners. Heads turned. Conversations stopped. A woman at the pump froze mid-swipe, squinting like she wasn’t sure if she was awake. No one spoke. In Horizon, you didn’t ask questions unless you wanted answers that ruined sleep.
She didn’t care who stared.
Her bare feet pressed into the warped rubber floorboard, soles black from gas station dirt and bathroom tile. Every joint ached, stiff from too much stillness. Her spine creaked when she shifted. Muscles tugged like they’d forgotten their work. But it was pain she trusted, the kind that proved she was awake.
She turned off the main drag and coasted into a strip mall that had been dying for years but refused to finish. Half the shops were empty, windows papered with curling FOR LEASE signs. The others hung on out of spite. One, TexStyle Western Wear, flickered under a crooked sign. She killed the engine and let the truck tick and groan like it resented being roused.
The pavement nearly blistered her feet. She staggered once, steadied, then limped toward the storefront. Her hips screamed, her legs protested, but they worked. She didn’t look back.
Inside, the temperature dropped hard. The AC blasted chemical cold, making her skin prickle. Lights buzzed overhead, too bright, too dim, one always flickering. Country music bled from a speaker behind the counter, slow and stitched together with heartbreak. She knew the tune. She knew the kind of place this was: the kind where you could walk in dripping blood or ghosts and no one cared, as long as you didn’t yell or steal.
Her scrubs rustled as she moved through racks, baggy and stained, reminders of a place she wouldn’t name. She trailed her fingers along the denim, grounding herself. Jeans. A tank top. A jacket lined with shearling she didn’t need but wanted anyway, something to hide behind. Boots under the clearance rack: red leather, white stars dulled to cream. She pulled them on, breath catching at the pain in her thighs, but when she stood, they fit.
At the register, she dropped Buck’s damp bills on the counter. The clerk didn’t look twice. Just bagged her scrubs like trash.
Outside, the sun hadn’t softened. Her boots struck the pavement sharp as punctuation. She still ached, but she didn’t limp.
The truck’s interior hit her like a furnace. Metallic heat, vinyl, old fuel. The dashboard cracked, the rearview crooked, the windshield spiderwebbed. Her reflection blurred in broken glass, and she let it. She gripped the wheel, palms sticky. For a moment she only sat, list forming in her head, incomplete but enough. One more stop before a nameless motel.
She turned the key. The engine coughed, then rumbled alive, low and angry, a sound she was starting to mistake for comfort. Gravel spit behind her as she peeled out, Horizon City sliding by in the same monotony of sun and collapse.
The next place barely qualified as a department store: a sun-bleached block shouting about bargains to an empty lot. Something fried, chicken maybe, stank through the heat. She parked far from the door. Her legs still felt untrustworthy, but she needed to walk. Make them remember.
Inside, the cold slapped her. Too bright, too sterile, smelling of bleach and melted candy. The place buzzed with noise: screaming kids, arguing parents, a tantrum echoing from toys. She kept her eyes forward. People looked. She felt it, half-second glances sliding over scars and scuffed boots. She didn’t care.
She picked up a basket and drifted to the camping aisle. The shelves were thin, but she found what she needed. A folding shovel, its handle thick and heavy like a weapon. A short-handled pickaxe with a fiberglass grip slick under her palm. A flashlight that looked sturdy enough to swing. Waterproof matches in a bright orange case. And a map of Texas, worn soft at the folds, stained with someone else’s fingerprints. She ran her thumb over the crease before dropping it into the basket. She’d be the last to touch it.
She passed the clearance bins without slowing: Father’s Day mugs, novelty socks, foam can holders with jokes no one ever laughed at. Junk for people she didn’t know. Junk for people who weren’t her. In stationery, she stopped just long enough to grab a plain black notebook and a pack of felt pens.
The basket was filling, too heavy. She set it down and reached for another, the metal frame cool and rough, already rusting at the welds. This one she filled faster, almost frantic. Apricot shampoo and the matching conditioner. A plain white bar of soap, unscented. A bag of cheap pink razors. A loofah she didn’t bother to look at. Deodorant. Face wash. Lotion. Each item clattered against the others, no pause between them. She didn’t want to smell like blood anymore, or sweat, or antiseptic. She wanted the hospital scrubbed off her, layer by layer. She wanted her body back, her skin hers again.
Across the aisle, glass jars lined the shelves, full of bath salts in candy colors. Bubble bath bottles in bright, desperate packaging. A SALE sign shouted promises no one believed. She hadn’t planned to stop, but her feet slowed, drawn by a pull she hated. A scent she didn’t want but couldn’t shake.
An older woman was already there. White hair twisted into a bun, movements slow, deliberate, elegant. She opened jars one by one, breathing each in carefully, gently, as though the act itself was sacred. Y/N didn’t look at her. She just reached for the nearest jar and twisted it open.
Lavender.
The smell hit hard. Her stomach flipped. Her chest locked tight. She was back under hospital lights, antiseptic sharp in the air. IV bags swaying. Monitors chirping in steady beeps. Footsteps soft against tile. A cool hand brushing her hair while a voice whispered a lie: You’re going to be okay.
She snapped the lid closed and shoved the jar back like it had burned her.
Her hand shot out for another, no thought, no reading the label. She breathed deep. Citrus. Tropical. Artificial. But it worked. It cut through the memory, broke it apart. She dropped the jar into her basket.
The next bottle she grabbed was cracked, label peeling, its cap leaking a sticky line down the side. Vanilla, it claimed. She didn’t care. It wasn’t lavender.
At the register, she dumped both baskets onto the belt without ceremony. Her mind spun in jagged circles: Taehyung’s reflection in a rearview mirror, the clean white of hospital sheets, Sam Wallace’s cologne drifting in the heat of summer, the silence of her mother’s kitchen. And beneath it all, always there, the one memory that refused to wash out: her father.
The cashier looked barely old enough to work, hoodie strings chewed thin, nails chipped, one earbud still in. She didn’t speak. Just scanned.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Plastic bags crinkled as they filled. Lavender still clung to Y/N’s hands, her cuticles, her collar, her breath. And then, soft as a whisper in the dark, she heard it: Our Father, who art in heaven…
“Your total is thirty-two seventy-one.”
The voice cut through. She blinked, counted out the money, slid it across. The girl gave her change and the receipt without looking up.
“Have a good one,” she mumbled.
Y/N’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. She studied the girl’s face, saw the dull shadow of apathy in her eyes.
“You too,” she said, her own voice rough, low, like it had clawed its way up from somewhere deep.
She gathered her bags, two in one hand, the third looped over her wrist, and walked for the exit. The automatic doors opened with a hiss, like the store was exhaling her into the heat.
The Pussy Wagon waited at the edge of the lot, its paint so bright it looked like it might hum in the sun. Red flames curled down the sides, shimmering just enough in the heat to look alive. It didn’t look fast. It didn’t look mean. It looked like a mistake someone hadn’t lived down. She didn’t care. She kept walking, boots heavy against the asphalt, bags swinging like pendulums against her knees. Her spine throbbed. Her legs burned. The sun bore down like it wanted to erase her. She kept going.
The truck hit her like a furnace when she opened the door: stale air, rubber, sun-baked vinyl, the faint stink of sweat that wasn’t hers. She didn’t flinch. She cranked the window down halfway, tossed a bag onto the passenger seat, and climbed in. The vinyl clung to her thighs. She turned the key. The engine coughed, sputtered, then growled alive. Reluctant, but steady. It always caught.
She pulled out slow. Tires groaned on the blacktop. Horizon City slid past in layers of heat: fast food joints with sun-bleached signs, payday loan offices in buildings yellowed with age, gas stations with broken pumps, liquor stores called EZ Mart and Last Stop. Dust. Concrete. The occasional palm tree, warped and brittle under the sun, too stubborn to fall but long past thriving.
She didn’t need to look twice. She knew this town. She’d lived in three just like it. She’d died in one.
When the storefronts thinned, she turned onto a cracked lot overrun with crabgrass and potholes. At the far end squatted a two-story motel that looked abandoned mid-construction. Stucco walls blistered, paint curling in sheets, rust bleeding from the windows. Above the office, a crooked neon sign buzzed: The Texican. The “i” blinked like it was losing the fight.
She parked beneath the second-floor walkway, under Room 212. The blinds were shut, but one slat bent outward like a broken tooth. She stared for a beat, then shifted her weight, grabbed her bags, and stepped out.
The lobby smelled of mildew and old smoke. The air felt stale, sealed in too long. A ceiling fan turned slow, clicking each time its blade passed the same rusted edge. The desk at the back looked like it had been rescued from a junkyard. Behind it, a man slouched low in his chair, tank top gray with sweat, a serpent tattoo curling down his arm. His eyes were on a screen.
When he finally looked up, his gaze crawled over her: boots, thighs, waist, lingering where it shouldn’t. Her jaw tightened, but she didn’t blink. She pulled out a roll of bills and dropped it on the counter.
He dragged it close with two yellowed nails. “Night or week?” His voice was flat, dry, like gravel at the bottom of a well.
“Night.”
He grunted, slid her a keycard, and dropped his gaze again. No greeting. No smile. Exactly what she wanted.
She took the key and left.
The stairwell creaked under her weight. The rail was rough, flaking paint into her palm. Each step made her legs ache, tendons stiff, balance not yet fully hers. The building leaned with age, and the stairs tilted uneven.
When she reached the second floor, Room 212 waited. The numbers on the door sagged, one screw half out, the wood around the lock chipped where years of hands had missed their mark. Paint was smudged with failed attempts. She slid the card through. The reader gave a faint, uncertain beep, followed by the click of the lock: a sound sharp and organic, like a joint slipping from its socket.
She stood for a moment, hand hovering over the handle, the heat pressing into her shoulders, sweat sliding down her spine. Then she turned it and pushed inside.
The smell met her first. Not the acrid bite of fresh smoke, but the stale kind, decades old, soaked deep into carpet, curtains, drywall. It was a yellowed stench, baked permanent. Underneath it sat something sour and sharp: mildew, failed cleaning agents, an aftertaste of effort without success. The air felt stagnant, heavy, as if it hadn’t moved in years.
She closed the door behind her, let the deadbolt snap home, and slid the chain across with a thin metallic scrape. A chair in the corner caught her eye: stubby, mismatched, its upholstery faded to some indefinable shade. She dragged it under the knob, jamming it in place. It wouldn’t stop anyone who truly wanted in, but it was a line drawn. A gesture of refusal.
The room itself looked scavenged. Curtains drooped from bent hooks, corners sun-bleached uneven. The light that slipped past them split the bed in orange streaks, late sunlight carving the space apart. The carpet near the door was bald and sticky, its color long since lost to grime. Nothing matched. The nightstand sat too low, its lamp too tall, casting warped shadows up the wall. The desk was scarred with rings and burns, the ghosts of cups and cigarettes. The bedspread screamed in paisleys of red and green, loud and ugly enough to distract from the rest.
She dropped her bags by the mattress and stood still, listening to the silence press in. The wall unit stuttered to life, blasting air that smelled of dust and freon. Not clean, but colder. For the first time all day, she didn’t feel watched.
The bathroom light buzzed on with a flick. The bulb flickered, then held. The mirror above the sink was clouded, corners warped where the silver backing had rotted away. Her reflection returned in fragments, her face shifted, imperfect, unfamiliar.
The faucet groaned before giving up a stuttering flow. Rust-tinged water ran a few seconds before clearing. Heat came quickly, fogging the mirror, filling the small room with steam that climbed the walls and clung to her skin.
She opened the jar of bath salts, tipped two scoops into the tub. They dissolved with a hiss, releasing a softness that felt like it belonged to another life. She poured in the bubble bath, slow, steady, watching it curl through the rising water like melted gold. The white bar of soap she left on the edge, still wrapped, waiting.
Her clothes came off piece by piece, sticking to her skin like second layers. Shirt. Jeans. Damp underwear. She peeled them free and stood in the fog. The mirror caught her in fragments again: shoulder, waist, ribs. Bruises bloomed faintly along her sides, yellow-green fading into skin. Her stomach flat but hollow, her hips jutting sharp. The scar at her abdomen still pink and raised. She didn’t linger. She already knew.
One hand steady on the tile, she stepped into the tub. The heat bit her ankles, climbed her calves, forced a gasp from her throat. Still, she sank down, slow, deliberate, until the water closed around her shoulders and she was folded in on herself, knees tucked, arms looped tight. Steam wrapped her, heavy and close.
She let herself breathe.
The tropical scent lingered, cloying but gentle. Bubbles clung to the surface, catching the light in fragile sheens. Her skin burned, then loosened. Muscles unwound: jaw, neck, spine. For a moment, it felt almost like safety. Almost like being held.
The first sob tore out raw, deeper than her throat, violent as a cough. Another followed. Then another. She pressed her forehead to her knees, fingers digging into her shins, and tried to choke them back. Useless. Her body shook, her breath broke apart. She didn’t scream; there was no air for it. But she wept, bone-deep, every muscle wracked. Her ribs ached, her throat stung.
She wept for the baby she never held, gone before its first breath. For the man who promised to stay, whose blood had marked her hands and her dress and the altar floor. For the hospital bed, for the machines that never went quiet, for the fluorescent light that never dimmed. For every woman who pressed a hand to a belly still full. For every picture never taken, every name never whispered.
She wept for herself. For the years locked away. For her voice forgotten. For the silence that no one noticed.
Eventually her body emptied out. The sobs thinned to shudders, then silence. She sat in the cooling water, bubbles thinning, breath still uneven. Her arms uncoiled. The lavender clung. The bruises showed. The scar glistened.
Drip. Drip. Drip. The faucet tapped against porcelain. The fan above crackled softly, struggling on. Beyond the wall, the air conditioner rattled in fits, wheezing like it had something to prove. A breeze nudged the curtain against the sill, a tap-tap-tap in an accidental rhythm.
She reached for the soap.
It was motel standard, wrapped in stiff waxed paper that crackled as she peeled it open. Plain. White. The word SOAP stamped across in faded block letters, nothing more. She lathered it slow, the foam thick in her palms, and began.
Arms first, shoulder to wrist. Then chest. Then neck. Back to shoulders again, where tension clung deepest. Her jaw, careful. Her stomach, softer, her hand pausing at the scar as though in apology. Her legs, her feet, her fingers, behind her ears. Nothing frantic. Just deliberate, steady strokes, scraping memory away piece by piece.
The water changed, subtly at first. Soap film clouded the surface, swirling. Then faint streaks rose, pinkish, floating near her thighs. Tiny cuts reopened by heat. Or maybe old wounds, still not ready to close.
She picked up the apricot shampoo and snapped the cap open. The scent hit fast: sweet, bright, almost cheerful. Out of place in a room like this, but she let it in anyway. She poured a slick mound into her palm and worked it through her scalp, once, then again. On the third wash she slowed, fingers tracing circles, nails dragging lightly against her skin. It was no longer about cleaning. It was about feeling. Her own hand. Her own body. Her own presence. For a moment she wasn’t thinking about hospitals or sirens or the weight of what came next. Just herself.
Her hair drifted in strands around her, clinging to shoulders and arms, spreading across the water’s surface like ink in clear glass. Every small movement sent ripples over her collarbones. She moved carefully, hardly disturbing the surface.
By the time she rinsed, the bathwater had thickened with what she’d carried in: suds, oil, dirt, faint streaks of blood. Stray hairs, flecks of skin, things she didn’t bother to name. A film skated across the top, swirling quietly every time she exhaled.
She sat in it, arms locked around her knees, chin pressed down. The steam was fading now, air cooling just enough to raise goosebumps along her arms. The mirror across the room stayed fogged. The weight of the day pressed into her spine, her knees, her lungs. Still she didn’t move. Stillness was the point: the kind that emptied you without ceremony.
Her hand found the drain. She pulled.
At first it was a soft slurp. Then stronger, a steady pull. The water swirled around her body like it was trying to take its time saying goodbye. It licked her thighs, curved around her ribs, slid past her arms, then dropped in spirals. The drain swallowed it all without protest: the soap, the oil, the old blood, the pieces of herself she no longer wanted.
She stayed until only a thin puddle remained, circling once, twice, before vanishing with a hollow gurgle. Silence filled the space it left behind.
She pressed her palms against the rim of the tub. Cold now, slick with condensation. She welcomed the sting in her hands. Took a sharp breath, let it root her, then pushed herself upright.
Her legs trembled on the rise. Her arms shook with the effort. Joints complained. Muscles felt wrong, unfamiliar. But she kept moving, slow, steady, until she was standing.
Water traced down her skin in patient rivulets, dripping from her spine, elbows, fingertips. Each drop left its mark before disappearing into the porcelain. The steam had mostly lifted, retreating into the vent or curling beneath the door, leaving only faint streaks across the mirror.
She reached for the towel.
It was motel-issue, stiff, frayed at the edges, faintly sour with detergent and bleach. She dragged it over herself in blunt swipes. No ritual, no tenderness. Just the act of removing water from skin. Left arm, right. Shoulders. Legs. Stomach. The towel caught on raw patches where she’d scrubbed too hard, lit sparks under her skin, but she didn’t flinch.
Barefoot, she stepped out onto the motel carpet. It scratched at her heels like someone else’s memory, old and unpleasant. The room felt thinner than it had before the bath. The air sharper, like it had shifted in her absence.
Her clothes waited in a neat stack. She pulled on the jeans one leg at a time, denim dragging over fresh skin. They caught once on a healing scrape; she winced, then yanked them higher, cinching the belt until the pressure pressed her steady. The tank top next, damp fabric clinging across her ribs. Then the jacket, heavy, familiar, already too warm but necessary. Not for comfort. For armor.
She didn’t look at the bathroom mirror.
On the bed’s edge she bent forward, boots at her feet. She tugged one on, then the other, hands shaking. Not from nerves, but from exhaustion threaded deep, the kind that lived in marrow. The right slid in easy, a solid thump. The left resisted, ankle stiff, toes fighting the fit. She wriggled, yanked, coaxed it until it gave with a final snap. She stood.
The floor felt steadier than it had last night. That was enough.
At the sink, the mirror still wore a fogged film. She wiped it once with her palm, dragging away condensation. Her reflection stared back fractured through hairline cracks, the glass tinted yellow with time. It was her, but broken into pieces.
She looked older than she remembered. Cheeks hollowed, bones sharpened. Shadows pooled under her eyes like bruises. Lips pale, pressed flat. Jaw locked, clenched around years unsaid.
Her scar caught the light. Not a clean line, but a jagged pale bloom across her temple, skin pulled tight over the plate beneath. It hadn’t ruined her face. But it had changed it. Left its story whether she wanted one or not.
She didn’t turn away. Didn’t flinch. She stared until her chest tightened, until her throat threatened to close.
The rage was there, coiled low, steady. Not a fire that leapt. A coal that smoldered. It had lived in her for years, quiet and unyielding, and it stirred now, hot beneath her ribs.
She didn’t glance down at her stomach.
Her daughter. Gone.
Her breath hitched, sharp, and she stepped back.
The bathroom still clung to the last of the steam, curling in the corners, drifting as if reluctant to leave. When she opened the door, it slipped out behind her, dissolving into the dry stillness of the room. It wasn’t dawn yet, not quite. But the light was changing. That in-between hour, when night begins bleeding out but the world hasn’t decided to wake. Everything felt suspended. Waiting.
She crossed to the nightstand. The notebook sat where she’d left it, black cover smooth and unmarked, as if it were holding its breath. She lifted it with both hands, careful, like it might shift weight if she wasn’t. Heavier than it should have been, not from paper but from what it was meant to hold.
From her bag, she drew a pen. Plain, black, the kind sold by the dozen, designed to be used and forgotten. She uncapped it slowly, the click soft, almost apologetic in the hush.
The first page stared up at her.
Death List Five
Yoongi Min – Cottonmouth
Jimin Park – Copperhead
Namjoon Kim – Sidewinder
Brandi Phoenix – California Mountain Snake
Taehyung
She replaced the cap. Slid pen and notebook back into her bag.
Next, she found Buck’s sunglasses where she’d tossed them, bent and scratched, ridiculous in their persistence. She slipped them on. Crooked, as always. She nudged the bridge, tried to adjust, gave up. They never sat right. But they worked.
The room was still dim. Her boots thudded against the floor, each step certain, carrying the weight of promise. At the door, she paused. The chair was still wedged beneath the knob, stubborn in its defiance. She bent, joints stiff, dragged it aside. The scrape echoed across the linoleum, a punctuation mark in the silence.
Chain. Thumb flick. Deadbolt. Three turns, quick, practiced. Her fingers didn’t need thought.
The door groaned open, hinges low and grudging. Heat met her immediately, thick, dry, pressing. Asphalt fumes rising from the lot. Dust on the air. The tang of oil, the metallic bite of a day not yet begun.
The sky was shifting, neither gold nor pink, but some strange in-between shade that lasted only minutes. The motel sat inside it, silent, caught between one night ending and another day beginning. Paused.
The neon above the office buzzed faintly. A cicada started, cut off. A dog barked once. Silence folded back in.
She stepped out. The door clicked shut. She didn’t look back.
The Pussy Wagon crouched at the lot’s edge, yellow paint too bright for the hour, flames shimmering like they wanted to breathe. It looked absurd, dangerous, and proud in equal measure. A dare made metal. A joke sharpened into a blade.
She opened the door, slid inside. The vinyl seat was warm against her thighs, not yet burning but close. The cab smelled of lavender and motor oil, clean, antiseptic almost, but still mechanical. A machine rebuilt too many times, carrying the weight of its history.
For a moment, she sat still. Palms flat on her thighs, fingers twitching. The motel’s AC unit droned faintly in the distance. Inside, the truck held its own silence, coiled tight like a breath waiting to be exhaled.
She turned the key.
The engine caught on the second attempt, rumbling alive with a guttural growl. The cab shivered around her, wheel buzzing in her hands, the vibration running up her arms and into her chest. Settling there. She slid it into drive. Tires spit gravel, reluctant but obedient. The motel shrank behind her, just another room, another scar. Room 212 vanished in the rearview, swallowed by neon and dust.
She didn’t look back.
The highway opened in front of her, cracked asphalt unfurling like a dark ribbon across West Texas. Brush clawed at the shoulders, mesquite twisted like broken arms, rocks rusted red, skeletal trees brittle with drought. The sky stretched pale and empty, the sun still soft but already threatening.
By the time the desert swallowed her, night had fallen again. Not gentle. Not gradual. It dropped like a curtain, sudden and absolute. No moon. No stars. Just black. Heavy. Whole.
The truck didn’t belong here, and it knew it.
It roared too loud, headlights carving two stark tunnels into the void. The beams caught nothing but empty miles, white columns piercing a silence too thick to care. The engine hummed, steady and tired, as though warning her without conviction. Every dip rattled the frame, but the wheel stayed true under her hands. Ten and two. Steady.
Mirages shimmered at the edges of her vision, heat ghosts lingering after the sun. She didn’t chase them.
The desert whispered against the truck’s flanks, a dry, rattling scrape like fingernails on denim. Insects, wind, memory. Something flickered low across the road’s edge, fast, small, gone again. She didn’t check. She slowed instead.
The road narrowed to one lane, asphalt breaking apart under its own weight. She eased off the gas. Let the truck crawl. Then stopped.
Headlights washed over brush and stone. Stillness. Shadows deep enough to hide anything. Or nothing.
She cut the engine.
The silence arrived instantly. Not falling over her, but revealing itself, like it had always been here, waiting.
She reached for the flashlight on the passenger seat, opened the door.
The night air was sharp, not cold but exposing, stripping. She tugged her jacket closer. Gravel shifted under her boots. Behind her, the truck ticked softly as the engine cooled, the sound fading into the endless dark.
She clicked the flashlight on. A narrow beam cut the dark, sharp and clean, slicing through shadow like a scalpel. Everything beyond its reach stayed untouched, patient, waiting.
She didn’t hesitate. Her body carried her forward, step by step, as if it had walked this path before. Maybe it had. Her legs remembered what her mind wanted to forget.
Then she saw it.
A rock. Just a rock, if you didn’t know better. Pale limestone, sunk halfway into the dirt, weathered and ordinary. Something that should’ve blended in. Something anyone else would miss.
But not her.
She crouched, knees popping softly, flashlight wedged between shoulder and chin. The light crawled along the stone’s edge, shadows doubling its size. Her fingers dug into the packed soil at the base. She pulled.
It resisted. Heavier than it used to be. Maybe the ground had hardened. Maybe she had softened. Either way, she braced, set her boot, and pulled again. The stone shifted with a dry scrape.
Underneath, the mark was waiting.
An X, carved deep. Not faded, not worn down. Black as the day she burned it in. The sight of it caught her breath somewhere between release and recoil.
That mark had been a promise. If it was gone, she’d walk away. That was the deal. No vengeance. No names. Just silence. But it wasn’t gone.
The desert hadn’t erased it. Time hadn’t buried it. The universe hadn’t looked away. She stood. The cold closed in now, not wind but earth itself. The shadows seemed to lean forward, curious. She didn’t care. She went back to the truck.
The tools were waiting where they always had been: shovel, pickaxe, flashlight. Old companions. Her hand found the shovel without thought, as if it had already been chosen. She leaned into the cab, thumbed the stereo. Silence shattered. The riff echoed through the night, jagged and merciless, too much for the cab to contain. The truck rattled under it, tires humming against dirt, frame twitching as if it wanted to leap forward. Guitars clawed. Drums pounded like fists.
She turned away before the echo finished, walking back toward the rock. The music chased her into the dark, distorted by space but still sharp enough to cut. Her boots kept time with the rhythm, gravel crunching in sync.
One. Two. Three.
She counted, breath more than voice.
Four. Five. Six.
The flashlight swung at her side, beam lurching across dirt and brush. It caught on shadows, slid over brittle grass, bent across rocks. It felt like stepping into a story that hadn’t been written yet.
Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
Her body warmed against the cold, rhythm keeping her steady. The rock loomed again. Here the air shifted. The ground itself exhaled, cold rising up like something long-buried had soured. She gripped the shovel. The wood was damp. Not with sweat. With memory. Her gloves creaked against it. She drove it down. The first strike rang flat, earth baked into stone. It shoved back. Her arms jolted, shoulder jarred. She didn’t stop.
Another swing. Harder. Then another.
The dirt began to loosen. She fell into rhythm: dig, lift, pivot. Again. Breath shortened, sweat slid down her spine, her back sang with strain. Her palms throbbed inside her gloves. Still, she didn’t let up. Each blow cleared space inside her chest.
Behind her, Barracuda still screamed. The desert caught the sound and threw it back at her, warped but relentless. And she kept going.
Clink.
The sound was different. Heavier. It traveled up the handle, into her arms, into her spine. She froze, boot perched on the edge of the hole, dirt sliding down around her ankle. Breath caught. Heart stilled.
She dropped to her knees. Gloves filthy, jeans scraping rock. She set the flashlight down; its beam jittered, then steadied. Enough to show what waited beneath the soil.
Her hand closed around the pickaxe. She didn’t think. Just swung. Once. Twice. Again.
Chunks of dirt split, scattering sharp and dry. Her arms burned, lungs worked like pistons. Gravel dug into her knees. She didn’t stop until she saw it.
Black plastic. Torn in places, stretched tight over a shape too familiar. Boxy. Olive green peeking through. She knew before she touched it.
The pickaxe dropped from her grip. She clawed at the soil, ripping through plastic and dirt alike. Something slick caught under her nails—water, blood, it didn’t matter. She braced, boot pressed hard, and wrenched.
The earth gave with a groan. The box lurched free, knocking her backward. She landed hard, breath ragged, chest heaving.
Her gloves were filthy, her arms trembling with the effort, but the footlocker was out at last. It was army issue, the kind stamped into a generation. The metal was olive drab, dulled by time, corners dented, its surface scratched and scuffed, the paint chipped to reveal bare steel beneath. The hinges wore rust, but they still held; the latches were stiff but unbroken. It looked exactly as it should: forgotten, but intact.
She brushed a layer of dirt from the lid, her fingers finding the latches without hesitation. A practiced motion, quick and certain. Metal snapped against metal, followed by the creak of hinges straining after years of silence. Dust drifted up in a pale cloud, catching the flashlight’s beam and hanging there like ash in still air. She set the light on the rim and leaned closer.
The first thing she drew out was a sleeping bag, cheap nylon, navy blue, stiff with disuse. It unrolled with a brittle crackle, the zipper teeth clinking like links in a chain. She spread it beside the hole, pressing it flat with both hands. The flashlight cast a sharp bar of light across the box. Dust rose through it in lazy spirals, as though the past itself was breathing.
Beneath the bag lay rows of magazines, tight and orderly. Some bound with rubber, others wound in black electrical tape, the edges frayed with age. She picked one up, ran her thumb over the top round. Brass gleamed back at her, untarnished, untouched. As though it had been waiting.
The first pistol was compact and polished, silver bright against the dim. It looked too elegant for this place, but she knew better. A weapon meant for close range, not display. She tested the weight, how naturally it rested in her palm, before setting it aside with the holster.
Next came a snub-nosed .38. Plain steel, no ornament, no pretension. Just the kind of tool that did the job without complaint. She opened the cylinder, checked each chamber, and gave it a spin. It ticked clean and precise, like a clock. She slipped it into its ankle holster, the Velcro catching with a rasp.
Piece by piece, the Mossberg came out: the barrel, the stock, the slide. She brushed the dust off with her sleeve, each movement instinctive. Assembly came without thought. One part clicked into the next until the weapon lay whole across her lap, heavy, steady, ready.
Her hand brushed something smaller, curved and cold. She lifted a silver boomerang, edges honed thin enough to cut without effort. The light scattered across its surface in sharp shards. She turned it once in her grip, feeling the weight shift. This was older than everything else. Older than her scars, older than her anger. A remnant from another life. It slid into its old holster, and her hand lingered there for a moment too long.
At the bottom, she found a black attachĂŠ, snug in the foam. She freed it, laid it flat, and opened the twin latches. The case released with a click sharp enough to cut the silence. Inside, in carved slots, lay the broken-down parts of a sniper rifle: barrel, bolt, scope, mount. Each piece was immaculate, free of dust, as though untouched by time. She lifted the scope, tilted it upward, and caught a starlight pinprick sharp and clear through the glass.
She was about to close the case when something caught her eye, flat, tucked beneath the foam. A manila envelope, worn at the corners, soft with use. She stripped off her gloves, ignoring the soil packed beneath her nails, and lifted it carefully as if it might crumble. She slid a finger under the flap and unfolded the paper within, one crease at a time.
A black and white sonogram. Grainy but unmistakable. A curled shape no bigger than a thumb. The curve of a spine, the suggestion of a head, the faintest stretch of limbs. Her child.
She sat motionless. The wind seemed to pause with her, the desert holding its breath. Somewhere in the distance, music pulsed low, but she barely heard it. She stayed still in the dirt, sleeves caked with dust, staring at the ghost of a life that never came to be.
She folded the sonogram slowly, carefully, and slid it back into its envelope. The flap pressed closed under her thumb, unsealed but sufficient.
There was more. 
A Ziploc bag, cloudy and heat-wrinkled. Inside was an old Texas state ID. Candy Ralston. The photo was hers, but younger. Rounder in the face, skin untouched by scars. Hair pulled back too tightly, eyes uncertain but already watching. Lips pressed in a line that refused to trust.
Next to it lay a paper bank book, its spine softened from handling. Every entry written by hand, small withdrawals made with care. A pattern so patient it became invisible, until it led here. On the final page, one last choice.
And beneath the lining, exactly where memory said it would be, she found the key. Small, plain, tarnished. Dangling from a chipped novelty fob. The letters worn nearly smooth, but she didn’t need to read them.
Deadly Vipers.
She didn’t pause. No whispered vow, no lingering glance. She began to repack the footlocker, steady and sure. Each weapon slid into its place: the sniper rifle parts pressing into their foam, the boomerang curved into its cutout like it had never left. She closed the sleeping bag last, the zipper catching once before sliding true. The final click echoed in the still air, too loud, like a door shutting behind her.
She hefted the pack onto her shoulder. Heavy, but familiar. Her body shifted into the weight like it had carried it a hundred times before.
She stood, turned, and walked back toward the truck without a backward glance. The hole remained open in the dirt behind her, a raw gash in the earth, as if the desert had been holding its breath for years and finally let it out. No marker, no cross, no stone. Just a patch of sand that had kept its secret until it no longer had to. She left it that way.
The wind stirred, but the desert didn’t change. In the distance, the oil derrick kept grinding its endless rhythm, slow, mechanical, indifferent. The truck was still humming with music when she climbed inside, something sharp with guitars and drums heavy enough to bruise a ribcage. She didn’t touch the dial. Didn’t spare the radio a look. She only turned the key.
The engine growled awake, the wheel twitching under her grip as though impatient, eager to remind her why she’d come. She shifted into drive.
Gravel cracked under the tires, dust lifting in a thin veil behind her. No farewell, no second look. The hole stayed where it was, empty, unfinished, unmarked. Nothing would fill it, and nothing needed to.
Miles slipped beneath her tires, steady and relentless. The sun climbed higher, flattening the horizon into a long, wavering stretch of heat and light. She let the road carry her forward like a current she no longer fought.
By the time she pulled into the Commonwealth Bank of Texas, the sun was cruel at its peak, heat radiating off the concrete in dizzy waves. The building looked like it had been abandoned halfway through its design and forced into use anyway: beige brick, dull metal trim, a flickering red “OPEN” sign that couldn’t decide if it meant it.
It sat wedged between a shuttered taqueria and a payday loan office still dressed in tinsel from a Christmas no one remembered. Dust thickened in the sidewalk’s cracks. The kind of place people didn’t bother to notice. Perfect.
She cut the engine. The silence that followed felt sharper than the music. Her boots struck the pavement with the same deliberate weight they’d carried through the dirt. The sleeping bag was gone, tucked away with the rest. What stepped out here wasn’t the woman from the desert. This was Candy Ralston.
Not the bright-eyed Candy with the easy smile and the drawl sharpened just enough to charm. That Candy was dead. This one was leaner, skin pale, eyes too hollow to bother pretending. Her mouth was a hard line. She hadn’t come for company.
She crossed the lot in a slow, certain stride, one hand on the bag, the other close to her coat. The fabric swayed with each step, brushing her thighs, catching the breeze. She moved like someone who knew exactly what she carried and what it would cost to use it.
The bank’s glass doors didn’t invite. The tint was too dark, the reflection warped. Inside, fluorescent lights flickered and hummed, pouring a pale gray over everything. Blinds hung crooked, yellow at the edges. A place that didn’t improve, only endured.
She pushed through the door.
The buzzer cracked the hush, too loud in the cold, conditioned air. The chill was chemical, designed to keep people awake, unsettled. It smelled of citrus cleaner and overworked machines, with something faint beneath it, something like nerves.
The light was merciless, stripping every angle bare. Her coat stayed on.
She moved with the kind of presence that didn’t need to ask for space. Cameras swiveled from their black domes in the corners, lenses humming faintly if you listened close. She didn’t look up. Let them watch. Let them wonder.
Behind the counter sat a woman who might have been there since the doors first opened. Hair lacquered into a helmet, lipstick a shade of pink too bright for her complexion. The tag on her blouse, polyester and strawberry-colored, cheap, read MARJORIE in rigid block letters.
She looked up when the door chimed, flashing a smile polished for trouble. Too quick, too practiced, more reflex than welcome.
Y/N didn’t return it.
“Hi there,” Marjorie said, her voice soaked in the slow sweetness of a Texas drawl, one that sounded like it had been taught in finishing school and worn thin by years of repetition. “How can I help you today, ma’am?”
Y/N stepped forward, just close enough to make it feel personal, but not close enough to make it weird. Her voice came out low, a little frayed, like she’d worn it out talking to ghosts. “I need access to my safety deposit box.”
Even to her own ears, she sounded small. Not scared. Just tired in a way that lived deep in the bones. Her arms still ached from the dig, her back tight across the spine, her muscles running on fumes. It helped. The exhaustion made her seem soft at the edges, easier to dismiss.
She reached into her coat and pulled out the key. It was plain, silver dulled to a matte finish, worn down at the edges. Nothing remarkable. Except it was. The way she turned it in her fingers, how it caught the light for a second, made it something more than metal. This key had opened more than steel boxes. It had cracked things open that were meant to stay shut.
She placed it on the counter like it might still be hot. “My name’s Candy Ralston.”
Marjorie blinked. Just once. But it was enough. A pause in the rhythm. Her eyes dropped to the key, then back up. Something shifted in her face: some small recalculation, like a mental search engine had just returned an unexpected result. Not panic. Not even suspicion. Just awareness. A name that didn’t match a story. Or a story that was missing too many pages.
Y/N noticed. She always noticed. The flicker in the eyes, the slight tension in the mouth, the way Marjorie’s hands hovered over the keyboard for half a second too long, like they were waiting for instructions the rest of her wasn’t ready to give.
Y/N followed with the ID. Slid it across the glass, calm, steady. The photo was old but recent enough. Her face in it was rounder, eyes a little less guarded, a smile that barely made it to her mouth. Now her cheeks were hollowed out, skin drawn tighter, her gaze hard-edged. But the eyes—those stayed the same.
Marjorie studied the ID, compared it to the woman standing in front of her. Her smile didn’t return. Something behind it had turned mechanical.
“I’ll be right back, honey,” she said, and the warmth in her voice had vanished. She took the ID and the key, turned, and disappeared behind a gray metal door that hissed shut behind her like a vault sealing off bad memories.
Y/N didn’t move.
She scanned the lobby instead. Vault tucked in the corner, keypad locked. Two cameras, standard dome type, mounted high. Cheap, analog, probably on a timed loop. Footage saved to tapes or some outdated drive, nothing that uploaded to a cloud. She made a note of that. Good, not great. Sprinklers overhead, fire alarms every fifteen feet. No posted security. No visible guards. Just quiet.
It wasn’t much. But maybe enough to stay ahead if Taehyung had caught her scent.
Marjorie came back slower than she’d gone. The door opened with the same soft hiss. No smile now. Just neutral posture, the kind you wore when you didn’t want to pick sides. She held the door open without a word.
“Right this way.”
Y/N didn’t thank her. Didn’t speak. She just moved, coat brushing against the counter’s edge, boots making a soft sound against carpet chosen specifically to muffle footsteps. The hallway they entered was narrow, lined with anonymous doors that had no signs or names, only keypads in place of knobs. It smelled like cold paper and old wiring.
At the end of the corridor was a room built for forgetting. The temperature dipped the second they stepped in, not from AC but from something deeper, like the place had been sealed off from the rest of the world for too long. Fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, casting a flat, pale glow that made every surface look harsher than it was. Shadows clung to the corners, thick and reluctant.
The walls were covered in rows of steel safety deposit boxes, each one identical, stacked high like a wall of filing cabinets in a mausoleum. A square table sat in the middle, wood, worn smooth in some places, scratched in others. It didn’t look like anyone had ever sat comfortably at it.
Marjorie moved without speaking, walking straight to a lower drawer in the wall. Her fingers didn’t fumble. She pulled a steel box free and laid it on the table with a dull thunk. Then another. The sound was soft but final, like a decision being made in secret.
She didn’t look at Y/N. Didn’t ask any questions. Her whole body said the same thing: I don’t want to know.
Y/N didn’t open the box. Not here. Not with the lights buzzing and the cameras humming faintly above, and Marjorie pretending not to see but seeing everything anyway. This wasn’t the place for what came next. Not yet.
She stood slowly, letting her knees stretch, spine groan just a little as it straightened. She didn’t make a sound. Just rose, steady and full of weight.
Marjorie still stood by the door, hands folded tight, knuckles pale. Her voice came out quiet, not reverent, not polite. Something more cautious than that.
“Thanks for coming.”
Her eyes flicked to the bag over Y/N’s shoulder. Not curious. Just wary. There was no warmth in her voice. No welcome. Just the brittle sound of someone realizing too late that they should have asked fewer questions, or maybe more.
Y/N didn’t try to soothe it.
“Thanks for your help,” she said. Flat. Even. Just enough to be finished.
She turned and walked out.
Marjorie followed at a distance, like she didn’t want to be caught sharing space with whatever Y/N carried. Back through the hallway, down the long strip of carpet meant to erase sound and footprints. When they reached the counter again, Marjorie slid behind it without a word and sat very still, watching through the glass as Y/N moved toward the door and pushed it open.
The heat outside hit like a slow slap, drier than before, tinted orange by a sun that was just starting to fall. Shadows had grown long across the parking lot, stretching past broken curbs and faded paint lines. The sky had gone bruised at the edges. The truck waited exactly where it had been, dust settled thick across the windshield, the yellow paint looking tired in the last of the light.
She tossed the bag into the flatbed, climbed into the driver’s seat, and closed the door. The cab held the day’s warmth like a breath that hadn’t been let go. The engine took a second to respond. Then it grumbled to life with a thick, uneven roar that rattled the steering column.
She pulled out of the lot without a glance at the building behind her. No one followed.
The bank disappeared in the rearview, swallowed up by the flat lines of small-town architecture and the slow drag of coming night. Another door shut. Another name scratched off.
The road opened in front of her again, stretching west through brush and rock and the half-sleep of places too small to fight back. Her fingers rested easy on the wheel. Not loose. Not tense. Just ready. Her other hand twitched once against her thigh, like it was remembering something: some old rhythm, some old grip.
The sky behind her wasn’t just sunset. It was collapse, like something had given way at the edge of the world and let everything pour out. Red bled into deep violet, orange streaked like torn silk across the horizon. It was a hell of a sight, bold and feral, almost too much to look at. But she didn’t turn to see it. Endings didn’t impress her anymore.
Mile marker 233 blurred past. Just beyond it, the motel came into view. Low-slung and sagging between a boarded-up diner and a pawn shop with a broken front window and an “OPEN” sign that hadn’t glowed since Clinton was in office. The SUNRISE MOT_L sign blinked in sickly neon, the “E” long gone, leaving the name limping toward meaning. Plastic palm trees lined the driveway, sun-bleached and cracked, their fronds drooping like they had finally accepted their own artificiality.
The truck hissed as it settled, engine ticking like it had opinions about being parked. Heat shimmered off the hood. She stepped out, boots hitting the asphalt with the unhurried thud of someone who’d done this too many times before. Another town. Another key. Another night listening to the sound of her own breath and wondering if it was really hers anymore.
The lobby reeked of cheap cleaner fighting and failing to bury the smell of time. Old carpet. Burned coffee. That bitter lemon-polish tang on furniture nobody liked. Behind the counter, a man with red eyes and a week’s stubble looked up, sweat soaking through his shirt. He regarded her the way a man regards a thunderstorm from behind a screen door: resigned, a little impressed, but not about to step into it.
She laid cash on the counter without counting. No words. No name. Just a transaction. He slid a key across the laminate, a red plastic tag dangling from it, the number 11 painted in peeling gold. The plastic stuck to her fingers, tacky with years of grime.
“Back row,” he muttered, already turning away.
Room 11 waited at the far end of the building, tucked into the shadows like a bruise no one mentioned. The lock resisted until she leaned into it, shoulder tight against the door. It clicked open reluctantly, like the room had been holding its breath.
Inside, the air was still and heavy. Not hot. Not cold. Just stale. Saturated. Smoke in the walls, mildew in the carpet. She shut the door, bolted it, slid the chain, then dragged the desk chair under the knob. It wouldn’t stop anyone. But it gave her the illusion of control.
The bag hit the bed with a solid thud. She didn’t open it yet.
Plastic blinds rattled as she lowered them slat by slat, each click deliberate. Outside, the parking lot glowed under a flickering streetlamp, humming too loud, not sure whether to stay lit. A few cars scattered across the lot. Heat still rising off the pavement. Bugs swarming the light like it meant something.
She checked the bathroom. The bulb buzzed sickly yellow, throwing a crooked shadow behind her. Cracked tile. Rusted sink. Mirror fogged at the edges, warped with age. She left the door half open. Not for sightlines. Just habit. She didn’t close doors without a reason anymore.
The room sagged at the seams. Wallpaper peeled in corners, ceiling stained like a bruise. The air conditioner coughed, rattled, died again. She sat on the bed. Zipped the bag open.
Stacks of cash waited inside, neat and brittle, rubber bands fraying with time. She picked one up, breathing in the scent of sweat, dust, and long drives with cracked windows. Quiet money. The kind that didn’t ask questions.
Beneath it, weapons. Two pistols: one clean and compact, the other older, worn. The compact one she hadn’t touched since El Paso, since Lisa Wong walked out of a motel bathroom with a pregnancy test and silence in her eyes. Lisa left three days later. Faked her death the day after that.
She slid them aside. Pulled out the SOG knife. Perfect balance. Still hers. A straight razor waited beneath it, sleek and simple, for skin. She pocketed it. Better to have options.
At the bottom lay a rifle case. She opened it, checked the matte-black barrel. Functional. Nothing ornate. She closed it again. Korea would demand quieter tools.
A manila folder came next. Corners soft with use. Inside: passports. Fourteen identities, all hers. Candy Ralston. Minsook Cho. Emma Blevins. Others she barely remembered wearing. Different hair. Different smiles. Same eyes. Always hers.
A folded map slipped out. Korea. Red ink circling cities, tracing routes like a heartbeat across the paper. She didn’t remember marking it, but her hand had known.
Photographs. Old, blurred, pulled from yearbooks under borrowed names. A beach. An arm around Sam Wallace. Her own half-formed smile frozen in place. She flipped past them quickly.
Then came the sonograms. She didn’t need to unfold them. The shape lived in her spine now, lodged between her ribs.
She sat still with the folder on her lap, bag open beside her, lamp casting weak yellow light over everything. She didn’t check her phone. Didn’t turn on the TV. Just breathed. The room didn’t welcome her, but it didn’t push her out either. It was just a box. Four walls to keep the world at bay for one more night.
Outside, a car rolled past slow, tires whispering over gravel. Somewhere down the row, a door slammed, laughter cracked sharp through the air, and bass thudded heavy from an open window. The music swaggered, empty noise with no weight behind it.
She stayed still. Let it pass like weather. Then leaned forward, unzipped the smaller pocket of the bag, and pulled free something cold and compact. A refrigeration case. She set it on the bed. Unlaced the key from her boot. The lock clicked once, clean, before the lid opened.
Inside, two gold syringes gleamed against black foam. Between them, a vial. Pale amber liquid moved slow inside it, syrup-thick, heavy, like honey aged too long.
Taehyung had called it The Undisputed Truth. Said it burned the lies out of people. She hadn’t believed him. Still didn’t. But she’d taken it anyway. Maybe it worked. Maybe it didn’t. Soon, she’d have to find out.
She closed the case and turned the key with care. Slid it back behind her laces like it had never left. The weight settled into the bag with a muted thud, buried beneath layers of gear. Her hand brushed something soft in the side pocket: a flattened pack of Camels, paper crumpled, edges worn like it had been riding there for years.
She pulled it out, frowning. Couldn’t remember putting it in. Couldn’t remember the last time she even wanted to. Not since Pai Mei. Not since the split lip and two days of lungs scraped raw from the inside. That had been the line. She’d meant to quit.
But tonight didn’t care what she meant.
She tapped the pack twice against her knee and drew one out with her teeth. The lighter waited in the same pocket, cheap plastic, half-empty. It sputtered once, twice, then caught. Flame kissed the cigarette, flared too close, then steadied to a glow. She pulled deep, the smoke burning familiar paths down her chest, settling heavy in her lungs.
The exhale spiraled slow toward the ceiling, mixing with the stale motel air as if it had always belonged there. Maybe she had too. Another drag. Longer. The tremor in her hands eased. The knot in her chest unwound. The ache behind her eyes softened just enough to blink without pain.
She had what she needed. Enough money to disappear. Enough weapons to make sure no one stopped her. Enough names stitched into paper to build another self, somewhere no one was looking. She’d started with less before, built lives from crumbs. But this time the engine driving her was different. Not revenge alone. Not pain. Hunger. The kind born not from being hurt, but from surviving. From still being alive, and wanting more than survival.
Her fingers found the folded map. She spread it flat across the bed, pressing it open with both palms. The paper had gone soft, creases tired, ink smudged. But the line still held: red ink threading its way across borders and customs, curling through cities, circling names. A path toward Korea.
Her nail traced it slow, stopping at Busan. A small circle, marked twice. She tapped it. Once. Again. Then folded the map back with care, each edge pressed down as if she were sealing a thought she couldn’t afford to lose.
The cigarette had burned low, ash dangling fragile at the end. She stood, room folding closer around her. Not smaller. Just more present, more awake. The A/C wheezed, rattled, died with a final shudder. She didn’t look at it.
At the window, she slipped two fingers through the blinds, pulled them apart. Sodium light drowned the parking lot in its false orange glow. Nothing moved except the swarm of bugs around the lamp. Her truck crouched in the far corner, paint dulled, hood shadowed. It looked patient. Waiting. It knew this wasn’t the end. Only another checkpoint. Another launch point. A step toward digging up the version of herself she’d buried.
She smoked the cigarette down to the filter, ground it out in the cracked glass ashtray beside the lamp. Then stretched, long and slow, until her spine gave a small pop. Rolled her shoulders once. Tension snapped loose. Proof the engine was still running. Proof she hadn’t rusted out yet.
There was still work ahead. Still miles to burn. Still names that needed remembering. Or forgetting.
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The sky was still the color of a healing bruise when she stepped out of Room 11. That thin, breath-held hour before sunrise stretched across the motel, quiet and suspended, like the world wasn’t sure whether to wake up or go back to sleep. The air hung low and heavy, not cold anymore but still clinging to the memory of it, brushing at her ankles as she walked. Her boots met the gravel with a soft, steady crunch, her stride slow but sure. The door clicked shut behind her with the soft finality of a decision already made. She didn’t look back. She never did.
Whatever lingered inside that room—the musty reek of mildew, the peeling wallpaper, the silence pressed into the floor like dust—could stay there. The ghosts were welcome to it.
The lot was empty now, stripped of last night’s noise and movement. No music. No laughter. No arguing strangers trying to forget whatever they’d dragged in with them. Just the hum of a flickering security light and the shadows it cast, long and tired and mostly ignored. Her truck waited where she had left it, the same as it always did. Black. Battered. Dust-laced. It didn’t look fast or dangerous, only patient. Like it had seen everything and didn’t need to brag about any of it.
She opened the door. The hinges gave a soft groan. The duffel landed in the passenger seat with a solid weight, heavier now, heavier in more ways than one. Not just steel and currency, but decisions. Commitments. Endings. She sat behind the wheel and rested her hand on the key but didn’t turn it right away. Instead she looked through the windshield, past the sagging plastic palms and sun-warped signage, out toward the open road.
Somewhere along the way, something had shifted. She didn’t know the exact moment, but it was there in her blood, in her spine. The running was over. Whatever came next would not be a retreat. She wasn’t trying to disappear anymore. She was going back.
She turned the key.
The truck woke up with a low growl, not eager but ready. The kind of engine that didn’t expect praise, only purpose. She eased out of the lot without checking the mirror, letting the motel recede into the rearview like everything else she had buried. It would stay there, just another mile behind her.
The road to the airport unfolded like it always did in these parts, quiet highways full of tired signage and forgotten ambition. Diners with names like “Lisa’s Last Stop” and “Grill & Chill 24/7,” their neon flickering like it was fighting sleep. Empty parking lots. Billboards that promised injury settlements, eternal salvation, and the best damn pecan pie on Highway 9. Churches with broken steeples. Loan offices with barred windows. The skeleton of American promise, sun-bleached and hollowed out.
She didn’t turn on the radio. Didn’t crack the window. Her coffee sat untouched in the console, more for the heat in her hand than anything else. She drove with both hands on the wheel, letting her thoughts drift slow and aimless, looping back through the same questions and never settling on answers.
The sun rose behind her, crawling up the horizon like something tired of hiding. It lit the road in pale gold and chased her shadow out ahead of her, long and crooked. The towns she passed blurred together. Same gas stations. Same parking lots. Same dust settling on sun-baked signs. Nothing reached her. Nothing asked to.
By the time she pulled into the airport lot, the sky had turned that washed-out shade of blue that promised heat and little else. She parked in long-term, rows from anyone else. Killed the engine under a flickering lamppost that gave one last buzz before giving out. She sat a moment, hands still on the wheel, feeling the last bit of quiet settle around her. Then she slung the duffel over her shoulder and got out.
It hit her hip like a reminder. Cash. Steel. Papers. Lives. She didn’t walk fast, but she didn’t stall either. Just moved forward like time didn’t own her anymore.
The terminal ahead was all glass and stale light, catching the morning sky in fractured reflections. She stepped through the automatic doors and into the kind of cold that didn’t come from weather but from design. Manufactured. Artificial. Meant to keep people sharp and orderly. It smelled like lemons, plastic, and every departure that had come before her.
She paused just inside. Not hesitation. Just calibration. Listening. Feeling the hum of the place. Gate calls. Wheels dragging. Overhead pages layered with chatter. The low murmur of a world built for leaving. For going but not staying.
She moved through it like someone who didn’t need instructions.
The check-in counter was manned by a thin kid barely old enough to rent a car. His name tag said TYLER. His lanyard was a mess of meme pins and frayed cords. The kind of kid who clocked in with earbuds still in and forgot to take them out. He didn’t notice her at first, not until she was standing right in front of him.
The duffel hit the floor beside her with a small, final sound. Her voice stayed low.
“One-way ticket to Gwangju. First available.”
Tyler blinked, fingers stuttering a second before tapping at the keyboard. Gwangju wasn’t common. It made him look up again, a little more carefully this time. She said nothing else. Just waited.
She slid the passport across the counter. Emma Ji-woo. The photo was polished, airbrushed just enough to pass scrutiny. But the eyes were hers, still and unblinking, focused. Tyler studied the picture, then studied her. He didn’t ask questions. Maybe didn’t know how. Or maybe something in her expression told him not to.
She paid in cash. Clean bills. Neat stack. Pulled from the vault without hesitation, counted out like it was nothing. Like it hadn’t come with a history. The paper smelled faintly of oil and time, like everything important always did. Tyler took the money, his fingers slowing just a bit as he handled it, as if part of him was trying to memorize what wrong felt like.
He printed her ticket, hands fidgety now, and slid it across the counter like he was giving her something that might explode.
“Gate thirty-four,” he said. “You’ll connect through Incheon.”
She took the boarding pass without a word. She didn’t say thank you. She turned and walked toward security, leaving Tyler staring after her.
She didn’t ask about upgrades or snacks. She didn’t care what came in the seatback pocket or what counted as a meal at thirty-seven thousand feet. No interest in a foil-wrapped cookie or a lukewarm bottle of water labeled “premium.” She wasn’t here for comfort. She was here to move forward. To put sky between her and the things behind her. She wanted distance. Altitude. The kind of cold, wordless detachment that only the stratosphere could offer.
The security line wound like a slow fuse: plastic bins clattering, belts slipping through metal loops, the voices of TSA agents clipped and bored. She stepped through it like she’d done it a hundred times. Because she had. Her coat was dark wool, the sort you could wear to a funeral or a boardroom without drawing questions. The stitching was heavier than it looked, reinforced. Useful. Her boots cleared the scanners. The blade inside was legal by a fraction of an inch, packed with the precision of someone who had measured the limits. Her bag was clean where it counted. Nothing that would raise alarms. Just the weight of something lived-in and quiet.
They scanned her passport and boarding pass without a second glance. The photo matched. Emma Ji-woo. Hair slightly darker in the picture, lips touched with a professional half-smile. Believable. The machines beeped politely. No flags. No questions. Just a nod and a wave.
She didn’t breathe easier. She didn’t need to.
At the gate, the crowd had already started to gather. People sprawled in chairs, their energy muted by early hours and too many miles. Some stared at their phones. Some picked at overpriced muffins. One kid cried softly into a sweatshirt, and nobody looked up. It was the kind of communal fatigue that airports did best: a shared sense of waiting without purpose.
She took her place in line, middle of the pack. Not the first. Never the last. Just another body headed somewhere else.
When they called Group Two, she moved.
Her seat was by the window. It always was. The duffel slid under the seat in front of her with practiced ease, fitting like it had done this before. She let her fingers rest on it briefly, grounding herself in the weight of what it held: names, tools, contingencies. The pieces of a life carefully folded down to fit inside a single bag.
She leaned into the wall of the plane, cool against her shoulder, and looked out. Morning had arrived without conviction. The sky was a washed-out gray, the kind of color that came before heat, before light. Airport machinery drifted past—fuel trucks, baggage carts, people in reflective vests who looked like they hadn’t slept. The wing of the plane cut across her view, still and patient, waiting to rise. Sunlight slid over it in dull streaks, catching on the rivets and edges, turning everything gold and indifferent.
The overhead speaker crackled something about boarding zones and safety demonstrations, but none of it landed. Not for her. The sound washed past her ears without shape, the way wind moves through trees: present, but meaningless. Someone two rows up laughed too loudly. A baby fussed. Coffee burned its way through the air vents, mixing with the stale plastic scent of recycled cabin air.
She didn’t move. Didn’t fidget. Her hands were folded in her lap, posture calm, almost meditative. But inside, the tight coil sat waiting. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t nerves. Just pressure. A quiet readiness built from too many miles and not enough peace.
The engines rumbled to life beneath her feet. The metal shell around her vibrated in response, like the plane was stretching its limbs after too long on the ground. It rolled slowly toward the runway, wheels clunking over seams in the concrete. She didn’t grip the armrest. Didn’t reach for anything. Just watched.
Takeoff wasn’t elegant. It was mechanical force dressed up in aerodynamics. The thrust came all at once, raw, loud, unapologetic. The kind of motion that didn’t ask permission. Her body pressed back into the seat, gravity pulling at her chest as the ground fell away. For one long breath, the Earth clung to her like it didn’t want to let go. And then it did.
The airport dropped out of view, buildings and roads folding in on themselves, reduced to the flat language of maps and memory. Gas stations, parking lots, little rectangles of human effort. All of it faded under a rising haze, distant and forgettable.
Her breath touched the glass for a moment. A soft cloud, gone just as quickly. The sky beyond was endless and blue in that high, cold way. Not warm. Not kind. But honest. It didn’t care who she was. It didn’t care where she was going. It just was. Vast. Empty. Ready.
She stared out into it, not searching, not thinking. Just remembering how it felt to be small again. Small enough to disappear, but sharp enough not to.
Her hand moved without looking, brushing the inside pocket of her coat. Cotton. Folded. A handkerchief she didn’t remember packing. She pulled it out, fingers slow and careful. The cloth was clean. White. Pressed. The kind of thing you carried when you didn’t know if you’d cry, or bleed, or both.
From the same pocket came the needle. Fine steel. Polished. Paired with a single loop of red thread, already knotted. She didn’t check it. She didn’t need to.
She began to sew.
Her hands worked in small, deliberate motions, the thread pulling through the fabric with barely a sound. She didn’t glance down. Her fingers remembered the rhythm. The name formed, one letter at a time. T. A. E. H. Y. U. N. G. Each stroke was precise. Each pull tight. No wasted movement.
She didn’t say his name. Didn’t even let her lips shape it. But it was there. In the cloth. In the blood-colored thread. In the silence between stitches.
When the name was finished, she tied it off with a flick of her wrist. Trimmed the excess. Folded the cloth again. Pressed it back into her pocket. Over her heart.
The plane had leveled out. Cruising now. The clouds below looked like ash. The ocean below that: cold, dark, silent. Somewhere beyond it, past all this emptiness, was Korea. And the man from Gwangju.
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The plane hit the runway. A hard, ugly jolt that snapped her spine straight and rattled the tray table in front of her. The tires screamed against the tarmac, metal grinding in protest as the cabin vibrated with the kind of impact that made people forget how to breathe. Drinks sloshed. Seatbacks creaked. Somewhere up front, someone muttered a sharp curse under their breath. The overhead lights flickered once, barely a stutter, but she saw it. She always did.
Out the window, the city didn’t look like it was sleeping. It looked like it had never gone to bed in the first place. Darkness hung heavy, not clean or quiet, but thick, like smoke, like old breath trapped in a closed room. The kind of dark that didn’t just hide things, it held them. The runway lights sliced through it in stark, clinical lines. Past them, the faint blur of Gwangju shimmered in neon and haze: blues and reds pulsing like slow heartbeats, mirrored in wet pavement that hadn’t dried and maybe never would. The glass reflected back just enough of her face to remind her she was still here.
As she stepped into the gangway, the air shifted. Dense. Damp. Immediate. It clung to her skin like something familiar, something half-forgotten but buried deep enough in the bones to recognize on contact. A mix of exhaust, concrete, late summer heat, and something sweeter, grilled food maybe, or just memory dressed up like scent. It hit her lungs like a slow exhale. She didn’t rush. Just walked forward, each step steady, her bag slung across her shoulder in that way that made it clear she didn’t need help and wouldn’t ask for it. Her coat hung open now, too warm for the humidity but still part of the armor. She moved like someone who belonged in the space between strangers. Not local. Not lost. Just passing through with purpose.
And yet, something shifted the second she stepped off the plane and onto Korean soil. Nothing anyone could see, but she felt it: a small click, like a lock catching in place. A posture change that didn’t show in her spine but settled deeper, in muscle memory and instinct. The mask slid on without effort. Not Emma Ji-woo anymore, not exactly. Not Candy, not the others. Just the version of herself this place required. Whatever her name was, she carried it like a blade in her boot, quiet, hidden, ready.
Inside, the airport moved like it had been designed for silence. No chaos. No rush. Just clean lines and softened footsteps echoing off polished tile. People didn’t shout. They didn’t loiter. They moved with the kind of practiced grace that didn’t need announcements. The lights overhead were low and cool, and even the seating looked like it had been designed to be ignored.
Customs passed without friction. The officer barely glanced up, flicked through her documents like he was reading grocery lists. Her forged passport, Emma Ji-woo, South Korean citizen returning from years abroad, was fresh, well-aged in the right places. The photo had the right kind of editing: smooth enough to pass facial scan, textured enough to seem human. She handed it over with both hands, bowed just enough to make it believable, smiled with restraint. Polite. Non-threatening.
“감사합니다,” she said, her voice low and shaped just right.
The stamp fell with a dull, final thud. No questions. No extra eyes. Just a nod, a motion, and then the gates opened.
Outside, the night waited.
The city air hit harder, warmer, wetter. The kind of humidity that didn’t just touch you, it soaked in. Rain had fallen not long before; she could feel it in the way the concrete gave off heat like breath. The streetlights bounced off slick asphalt, halos forming in puddles that mirrored blinking shop signs and broken reflections of moving traffic. Scooters buzzed past, weaving between slow cars. The buzz of neon hummed in the wires overhead like a living thing. There wasn’t much noise, but everything felt alive. Breathing.
She walked toward the taxi stand without checking her phone, without checking directions. She already knew where she was going. Her bag pulled at her shoulder, not in protest, just in reminder. Inside, names and pasts and the pieces of herself that weren’t for daylight. But she didn’t adjust it. Didn’t even shift her stance.
The cab she picked wasn’t the newest. The bumper was scuffed, one headlight had the faint film of age, and the license plate was slightly crooked. But it was real. Lived-in. The driver leaned against the hood, half-lit by the overhead bulb, cigarette cupped loosely in two fingers. Middle-aged, maybe older. His shirt wrinkled, his gaze unreadable.
She smiled before she spoke. Soft, disarming, the kind of smile that made people assume you didn’t bite.
“안녕하세요,” she said. “Seongmin Heritage Hotel, please. Near Sajik Park? The one with the koi in the lobby?”
The man blinked at her. A flicker of recognition, more for her fluency than her face. But he nodded like it didn’t matter.
“Know it,” he said, voice rasped from smoke or years or both. “That’s a nice place.”
She slid into the back seat, her bag tucked in beside her, one hand resting on its handle.
As they pulled into the street, he glanced at her in the mirror. “Vacation?”
She let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. “Sort of,” she said, breezy, warm enough to sell. “I’m meeting someone.”
That made him smile, just a little. “Boyfriend?”
She tilted her head, just enough to suggest a blush. “Not exactly. I’ve known him for a long time.”
“And you’ve never met?” he said, eyes narrowing with casual disbelief. “Do you trust him?”
She leaned forward a little, voice softer, like she was sharing something real. “I guess I’m old-fashioned. I still believe in people.”
The driver chuckled, tapping ash out the window. “Well. Hope he’s worth the wait.”
She smiled again, turning her eyes back to the window. “Me too.”
Outside, the city slid past in glints and shadows. Signs blinked red and blue against walls slick with water. A lone man smoked beneath a streetlight. A group of teenagers laughed near a convenience store, their voices echoing sharp and bright. And above it all, Gwangju pulsed. Alive. Waiting.
Her body language was relaxed, open, even friendly, but not too friendly. Her smile landed right where it needed to: warm enough to seem genuine, distant enough to keep the woman behind the desk from asking questions she didn’t want to answer. And yet, beneath it all, behind her eyes, there was something else. Something sharp. Alert. A presence just beneath the surface, watching everything, holding still like a wire pulled tight.
The cab ride had taken about twenty minutes, maybe less. She couldn’t really tell. In that strange pocket of time, after midnight but before dawn, everything stretched or collapsed depending on how close you were watching. Cities didn’t sleep in those hours; they just drifted, like the tide. The cab driver barely spoke, his cigarette glowing faint in the corner of her vision, the smoke trailing out the half-open window into the warm, wet air. He drove like a man who’d forgotten how to be surprised by anything. She appreciated that. It made things easier.
Out the window, Gwangju blurred past in bands of neon and shadow, light warped by the sheen of recent rain. The storefronts were lit like stages no one was acting on anymore: 7-Elevens glowing sterile and perfect, their shelves full of snacks and instant noodles and bottled tea that no one needed but still bought. People moved through them slowly, hunched and quiet, looking like they were halfway between sleep and survival. The rest of the city felt paused, noodle shops with stools turned upside-down, karaoke bars locked behind metal grates, all of it blinking half-heartedly like no one had told the power to shut off yet. One sign above a barbecue place kept flickering between “삼겹살 24시” and total darkness, as if it couldn’t decide whether to keep going or give up.
They passed a hanbok rental place with mannequins frozen in the windows, draped in silk and thread, caught mid-movement in some forgotten celebration. The lights inside were faint, almost apologetic. The kind of glow you could miss if you weren’t looking directly at it. And everything outside, every puddle, every wall, every parked car, reflected that layered light. Hangul shimmered across wet streets like it was painted there in real time. Chicken. Tarot. Facials. Cheap drinks. Lost hopes. It was all advertised the same way, with bold fonts and desperate color.
She leaned her head against the cool glass of the cab window and let the city slide past her. She wasn’t sightseeing. She wasn’t curious. She was memorizing. Every corner. Every alley. Every building with a fire escape or a side entrance or a window that stayed cracked. Not just as someone taking in a new place, but as someone planning how to move through it. Where to hide. Where to hunt. Where to vanish.
She wasn’t here for a reunion. That was the lie she wore like cologne, pleasant, easy, expected. She was here to dig. To drag someone’s name back out of the dirt and make it mean something again. If this city had tried to forget him, she’d remind it. She’d burn the name into glass and pavement if she had to. She hadn’t come this far to let memory do the burying.
When the cab finally slowed in front of the Seongmin Heritage Hotel, she already knew the building before it came into full view. She’d studied it, grainy photos, tourist reviews, street-view walkthroughs. But even with all that preparation, it was still something to see in person. Polished, curated, old-world elegance repackaged as modern luxury. White stone columns stood like they were holding up more than a roof, like they were trying to convince the street this place mattered. Carved details along the trim caught the warm spill of interior lighting. The brass door handles gleamed like they’d never been touched by real weather. Above the entry, a stained-glass panel glowed amber and deep red, a honeyed light pouring over the curb like something sacred had just cracked open.
And just inside, behind a clean pane of tall glass, the koi pond gleamed. Black water, smooth and quiet, broken only by the slow turning of gold and orange fins. The fish moved in lazy arcs, each shift like a breath drawn too deep to be seen. Like they didn’t care who watched.
The driver parked and turned to look at her. His voice was low, soft, like he knew not to break whatever moment she was in.
“This it?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”
He watched her for a second too long, not in a threatening way, just thoughtful. Like he’d seen this before. Not her, maybe. But people like her. People with a story that couldn’t be told in the back of a cab. People walking toward something only they understood.
“Well,” he said after a pause, “good luck with your meeting.”
She smiled faintly, just enough to be polite. “I think it’ll be one to remember.”
She handed him a bill folded clean once. Double what the meter read. He glanced at it, then back at her, and nodded without another word.
She stepped out of the cab. The air hit her like it meant to. Heavy. Humid. Full of noise that hadn’t been made yet.
She shouldered her bag without shifting her weight. Moved toward the hotel doors like she was stepping into something familiar. And as the cab pulled away, the night closed back in behind her like it hadn’t noticed she’d arrived at all.
Inside, the hotel smelled like money pretending to be modest. Like expensive wood polish layered over old stone and cold air recycled too many times. The lighting was just dim enough to flatter the furniture but still show off the marble floors, clean, symmetrical, sharp where it counted. Every tile lined up like it had been laid by someone who understood symmetry wasn’t just about beauty. It was about control.
To her left, the koi pond curved around the front desk like a moat. Its surface was glassy and still, the fish drifting in slow spirals. They looked unreal in the low light, too bright, too calm, like someone had animated them just for her arrival. A tiny pump kept the water moving just enough to keep it from falling asleep, but the sound was so soft it might’ve been imagined. It wasn’t tranquil. It was measured. Controlled. Like everything else in this place.
She walked toward the desk like she’d done it a dozen times in other cities under other names. Calm, confident, casually forgettable. The kind of guest who knew how to tip well and never asked for room upgrades.
The woman behind the desk looked young but practiced. Hair styled into a sharp, no-nonsense bob. Uniform crisp. Movements efficient. Her name tag said Juha, though Y/N didn’t really need to read it. She’d already pegged her: precise, polite, not interested in small talk. Just enough kindness to pass for warmth. The kind of employee who wouldn’t remember a single detail about you by the end of her shift, and wouldn’t question why she didn’t.
Y/N offered her a smile. The good one. Just the right amount of curve. Something safe. Something easy to forget.
Y/N switched to Korean mid-step, her tone effortless, almost casual. “예약했어요. 캔디 랄스턴으로요.” Her accent was textbook Seoul.
The woman behind the desk didn’t blink. “환영합니다, 랄스턴 씨. 3박이시죠?”
Y/N nodded, and with a soft switch in rhythm, she slipped back into English. Her voice lifted just slightly, pleasant and open, with that eager brightness tourists wore like perfume. “First time in Korea. I’m really excited.”
The receptionist smiled as if on cue. Not warm, exactly. Rehearsed, but pleasant. She slid a room key forward, tucked inside a white sleeve embossed with the hotel’s gold crest. “Room 714. Elevator’s just to your right.”
Y/N offered a small bow, murmured her thanks again, and turned away. Her boots made no squeal against the floor, only that quiet, deliberate click that echoed soft and sharp like footsteps in a gallery. The kind of sound that didn’t try to be heard but couldn’t help leaving an impression.
The elevator was already waiting, doors wide open like it knew she was coming. She stepped inside and caught her reflection in the mirrored walls: three angles, three versions of herself looking back. Her posture was perfect, relaxed, composed. Her clothes, neutral tones and well-fitted, spoke of efficiency, not attention. Her makeup was subtle, just enough color to say effort had been made, not enough to say she cared about being seen.
She looked like someone organized. Someone harmless.
But the reflection in the center mirror told the truth. It was in the way her eyes held steady, unflinching, like they didn’t expect kindness anymore. Like they’d already learned what questions were traps, which silences meant danger, and how to vanish while still in plain sight. There was a stillness in her face, but not the kind that came from calm. This was stillness earned, built from rehearsals, from closing hotel doors behind you and counting exits before you even set your bag down.
The elevator rose, slow and steady. She shifted her canvas bag higher on her shoulder. Not because it hurt, she didn’t let things hurt, but because it grounded her. Inside was everything that counted: names, paper trails, backup plans. There was no wasted weight.
When the elevator doors slid open on the seventh floor, she was already halfway into the hallway.
It was quiet. Carpeted in something dull that might once have been green, the kind of floor that muted footsteps into suggestions. The wallpaper, floral and faded, curled at the corners where humidity had worked its way in over the years. The light overhead buzzed, faint and constant, like the building was humming to itself out of habit. A soft, tired sound.
Room 714 was near the end, just past a bend in the hallway where the emergency map was pinned slightly crooked on the wall. She paused in front of the door, keycard in hand.
And then she just stood there. Not long. Just long enough to listen.
Not for sound. For pressure. For presence. You didn’t survive by hearing footsteps, you survived by feeling when a room wasn’t empty. The temperature. The stillness. The quality of silence. She tilted her head slightly. Felt the way the air held its breath.
Nothing.
She slid the keycard through the reader. The lock beeped, followed by that soft, mechanical click. Small, almost polite. She pushed the door open with her shoulder and stepped inside without looking behind her. The door sealed shut behind her with the kind of sound that didn’t echo. It just ended.
She locked it: deadbolt first, then the chain. Her hands moved in a rhythm they’d known for years. One smooth motion, no hesitation. She wasn’t checking, she was securing. There was a difference.
The canvas bag landed on the bed with a deep, even thud. Not loud, just final, like it had arrived with intent. She didn’t stop to look around. Didn’t bother checking the view. The room wasn’t the point.
She walked to the desk in the corner and turned on the lamp. Warm light spilled across the pale wood, catching on the edges of the hotel stationery and the small, useless pen that had been placed there with the usual pretend care. The kind of detail that suggested someone had thought about your comfort, even if they hadn’t.
She sat down. The chair creaked faintly but held. Her body didn’t sag. She didn’t relax. She just settled into it.
She pulled the pad of paper toward her and picked up the pen. It was smooth, plastic, light, nothing special. It didn’t matter. She clicked it once and started writing in small, deliberate strokes.
Things to Do Tomorrow:
-Buy a light pink blouse. Something that moves. Something soft.
-Buy makeup
-Rehearse the story. Again.
-Smile until it hurts.
Her pen hovered above the last line for a beat. Then she added one more, slower this time:
-Be perfect.
She circled it. Once. Then again. Firm. Not as a reminder. As a rule.
She put the pen down beside the pad and exhaled. Not dramatically. Not with relief. Just enough to release the breath she’d been holding since the door clicked shut.
She stood.
The bathroom was exactly what she expected: white tile, cool light, no character. Clean without warmth. The mirror above the sink was wide and too tall, forcing her to step closer if she wanted to see all of herself at once. She didn’t bother.
The light buzzed overhead, sterile and flat, the kind of glow that made everything look a little too real.
She touched her fingertips to the edge of the counter. Steady.
She wasn’t tired. Not yet. What she was came after tired, and it had no name.
She reached out and turned the faucet, letting the water run. Cold at first, bright and clean, loud as it hit the porcelain. But beneath the noise, she listened. Not to the water itself, but to the way it moved through the pipes. The way it echoed off tile. The way it filled the silence with something that wasn’t her. It sounded pure, but she knew better. It had traveled through metal older than the building, scraped past rust and time, ghosts caught in the bends. Still, it came out confident. Unbothered. Like it hadn’t carried anything with it.
She didn’t hurry. Her fingers moved slowly to the hem of her shirt, tugged it over her head, and let it fall to the floor. Then the rest, belt, pants, underthings, peeled away without effort. She’d done this ritual a thousand times before. And yet tonight, her hands felt different. Not clumsy. Not unsure. Just heavy, like they remembered more than she wanted them to. Her clothes ended up in a soft heap at her feet. By then, the mirror had already fogged over.
She stood still for a moment. Not posed, not inspecting. Just there. Her arms hung loose at her sides, her toes sinking slightly into the tile. The steam softened everything: her outline, her skin, even the air. The reflection staring back at her was dulled at the edges, her features blurred by heat and breath. She could still see her shape. Her shoulders narrow but set, arms lined with the first signs of strength again. Her ribs still showed when she inhaled too deeply, but her thighs had started to look solid again. Her body was still catching up to the rest of her. Still figuring out how to be whole after Two Pines tried to carve her hollow. But she was getting there. Slowly. She could see it.
She tilted her head and scanned herself like she was reading a story she knew by heart. The scars stood out like chapters. The crescent just below her ribs where a blade had barely missed something vital. A paler burn at her hip, nearly invisible now, but still a map of pain. The line along her collarbone, clean and deliberate. Surgical. The scar on her forehead had been there the longest. She didn’t even notice it anymore.
She nodded once, almost imperceptibly. A quiet agreement between her and the woman behind the fog.
Then she stepped into the shower.
The water hit her like a warning. Scalding. Immediate. It slammed into her shoulders and rolled down her back, ruthless in its heat. But she didn’t flinch. She leaned into it. Let it rake across her spine, sting her arms, burn her thighs. The pain was real. Tangible. Honest in a way few things were. It didn’t lie, didn’t soften, didn’t ask questions. It just landed, over and over again, washing everything else into silence.
She closed her eyes, tilted her head forward, and let her forehead rest against the cool tile wall. It grounded her. Solid. Cold. Unmoving. She breathed. Not deeply. Just enough. Enough to be here.
Then it came.
Not a memory. Not an image she could blink away. It was sharper than that. It crashed through her like glass, fast, clean, final. No prelude. No grace.
A sonogram.
Not imagined. Not abstract. Burned into her mind with brutal clarity. Grainy black-and-white. A crescent of light, unmistakable. And there in the center, her. The child. Seven months. Spine curled tight. Fists pulled in. Fragile, yes, but undeniably alive.
Not a possibility. A fact.
The photo was still folded in the lining of her coat. Tucked behind Kevlar, buried between seams, carried across borders and terminals and checkpoints. It was creased so deeply now it had forgotten how to lie flat. She had kept it close because she couldn’t not. Because some part of her still believed the paper would remember the shape even if she forgot the name.
She used to whisper to her belly in motel rooms that reeked of other people’s stories. Whisper names in the dark. Some strong. Some gentle. Some stolen from myths. Some from books she hadn’t finished. She spoke them aloud like spells. Names in Korean. In English. Names that meant light. Names that meant defiance.
Now? Now she couldn’t remember a single goddamn one.
Not one.
The realization hit without warning. Her knees gave out, buckled like they had been kicked. She dropped too fast to catch herself, hands sliding helplessly down the wall. Her skin hit the shower floor hard, the ceramic slick and unforgiving. Her breath didn’t come. Her chest just stalled.
The water kept pounding down, relentless and hot, hammering her back, her scalp, her shoulders.
She folded in tight. Arms clamped around her stomach. Head bent. Forehead pressed hard to her knees. The heat had scalded her skin pink, but it was nothing compared to what was burning underneath. Her whole body trembled, not from cold but from something older, deeper, more bone-deep than fear. Her jaw locked so tight her teeth throbbed. Fingernails dug into her upper arms, leaving pale marks that flushed angry and red as the shower thundered down over her back. Her shoulders jolted with every breath. Her chest couldn’t seem to find a rhythm. Her mouth opened once, like maybe a sound would come out. It didn’t. Just steam and a shattered breath that barely made it past her lips.
She cried, but not the way people cry in movies. No cinematic sobs. No beautiful devastation. This was messier. Raw. She cried like it surprised her. Like her body had remembered something her mind wasn’t ready to revisit. It wasn’t gentle or cathartic. It was violent. Uncontrolled. The kind of grief that had waited in the walls of her bones, that had made a home beneath her ribs, that had lived inside her blood quietly for years and now refused to be quiet anymore.
It wasn’t just about the child, though it started there. She cried for the girl she never got to meet. For the weight of her. The impossible, invisible pull of a presence that had once lived beneath her skin and kicked in the dark and responded to her voice like it meant something. She cried for the names whispered into motel ceilings. For every plan made in secret. For the way she used to sleep with one hand on her belly and the other over the gun under her pillow, believing—naively, stupidly—that she could keep both safe.
She cried for herself too. Not the woman she was now, but the one she used to be. The one who thought she could walk two roads at once. Who thought she could live between love and violence and come out clean. That she could be sharp and soft. That she could kill for a living and still build a life worth protecting.
She had buried that woman. Or thought she had. But grief has a way of preserving what pain cannot quite dissolve. The version of herself she thought was long gone hadn’t decayed. It had hardened. It had turned into something fossilized under all the anger and training and years. Not gone. Just waiting.
And under the grief, something else had been building. Coiled low in her belly. Climbing her spine. Tightening around her throat.
The fury.
It hit hot and sudden. Like a flare lit inside her chest. Fast. Blinding. Unforgiving. Her muscles locked. Her fists curled tight. Her breath caught in the cage of her ribs. She wanted to wreck something. Rip the cabinet off the wall. Shatter the mirror with her elbow. Drag her knuckles down the glass until they split. She wanted to leave blood on porcelain. On tile. On her own hands.
She wanted to find him. Taehyung Kim. And make him understand what he had done. Not by telling him. By making him feel it. Every inch of it. Every second. She wanted to look him in the eyes as it hit him. As the weight of what he stole crushed him under its full, ugly truth.
Her knuckles went white. Her muscles trembled with the force of restraint. But she didn’t scream. Not because she couldn’t. Because she wouldn’t. That kind of rage needed to be saved. Stored. Honed.
It would have its moment. Just not here.
The shower kept running, loud and steady, until she moved. Just a breath. Just a twitch of her fingers. Then she reached up and turned the water off.
Silence crashed down like a wave. Thick. Dense. The kind that fills every crack in a room. The kind that listens back. Steam drifted in long, slow ribbons, curling around her shoulders like it wasn’t ready to leave either.
She blinked once. Her breathing evened out. Slower. Cooler. Her chest still ached, but the fire was banked now, drawn in close and dangerous. Not gone. Just shaped.
She stood.
Water clung to her skin. Her hair dripped in long strands down her back. Her face was flushed, eyes glassy but sharp now, clear in a way that felt surgical. She moved with precision, drying off in steady, methodical swipes, every motion practiced and spare. The towel trembled in her hands, but she kept her grip. Dressed quickly. Quietly. No wasted motion. Just armor going back on.
The grief didn’t vanish. She packed it back down. Tucked it into the parts of herself she didn’t let anyone see. But the rage—she left that right where it was. Let it sit beneath her skin. Close to the surface.
Because Taehyung Kim didn’t know what he had taken from her, but he would.
She wasn’t coming for answers.
She was coming for the truth.
And he would give it to her.
Because there would be no one left to stop her.
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The city didn’t perform. Gwangju just was. It didn’t blaze with ambition like Seoul or stretch itself into glitz the way Busan tried to. It moved slow, breathed heavier. Honest, unbothered, like an old man in his undershirt posted up on a plastic chair, feet bare, sweating into the sidewalk, waving off mosquitoes with a rolled-up newspaper. There was a stillness here that didn’t feel staged. It felt earned. Like time didn’t hurry. Like it hadn’t for a while. Even the heat didn’t rush. It pressed down in thick, lazy folds, dragging everything—footsteps, voices, the color out of the buildings—into something close to sleep.
The streets moved in rhythm with it: fans turning slowly in dim back rooms, the hum of overhead wires swaying with the weight of too many summers, the drag of slippers across concrete. Shops leaned on each other like they were tired of standing alone. Paint peeled in curls off old storefronts. Rust bloomed at the hinges of delivery carts and folding chairs. Hand-painted signs creaked as they shifted in the breeze, their edges warped like paper left out in the rain.
It was the kind of afternoon where nothing tried too hard. The air was a patchwork of smells: hot oil, boiled radish, exhaust, old metal, the damp tang of stone that’s never had a chance to dry. Vendors fanned themselves with bent menus, arguing halfheartedly with ajummas who bargained with the precision of habit. A mop of scooters rolled through puddles left by melted ice or a spilled soup bowl, weaving through crates and feet like they knew every shortcut before it was built. The city didn’t sleep. But it didn’t really wake up, either. It just existed. Like a held breath.
And tucked into all of it, halfway hidden between a shuttered bookstore and a florist with wilting carnations, was the door. If you could call it that. More a suggestion than an entrance. A curtain, once blue and now more of a stained gray, hung from a crooked rod that looked hammered into place out of stubbornness rather than skill. It shifted when the wind pushed at it, not with drama but with the quiet of something breathing. The name painted across the fabric had long since faded: 김밥바. The brushstrokes barely held together, as if the person who wrote them hoped the world would forget.
She didn’t go straight in.
Y/N stood across from it, phone in hand, thumb flicking absently at nothing. Her eyes weren’t on the screen. They were on the building. On the way the curtain moved. On the way the shadows behind it didn’t feel empty. A pigeon flapped once but didn’t fly. A scooter buzzed past, and an ajumma barked something sharp about cabbage. The usual sounds. The usual rhythm.
Still, she waited a beat longer. She watched how the light caught the doorway. She noticed how the air felt different here. Denser.
Then she stepped forward and slipped behind the curtain like she belonged.
And everything changed.
The moment it fell behind her, the city vanished. The noise didn’t fade. It ceased. Like someone hit pause on the outside world. Inside was quiet in a way only old places know how to be. Not just soundless. Still. The kind of stillness that settles in stone. The kind that remembers things. The air was cooler, not because of any fan or vent, but because it had never left. It clung to the walls, the wood, the floor. Everything felt touched by time.
The scent hit next. Not artificial or sanitized. Just real. A mix of rice, vinegar, seaweed, and broth so old it had soaked into the wood grain. Salt, smoke, a whisper of garlic. It was the kind of smell you carried home with you, in your clothes, your hair, your bones.
Her eyes adjusted fast.
The space was barely larger than a closet. Three stools lined a counter. One crooked. One stained. One seemingly untouched. The varnish had long worn off the wood, dulled by elbows and sweat and stories told over soup. A ceiling fan turned overhead, slow and uneven, ticking with every revolution like it was remembering something too late. A single fly moved in lazy circles beneath it.
Nobody else was here.
No music. No kitchen noise. Just a single plate on the counter. Empty except for one streak of red sauce. Chopsticks placed beside it with care. Not abandoned. Just waiting.
She walked in like she’d been here before. Like this was a memory, not a discovery. Her posture was casual. Her camera hung from her neck like a travel blog prop, the kind of thing that made her look like the type of woman who’d find “hidden gems” and write about the soul of a place as if she’d invented the concept. But none of that touched her eyes. They were focused. Clear. Watching.
And then he appeared. Quietly, without fuss, like he’d always been there and the world had only just remembered to look. The steam rolled out behind him, curling around his shoulders like it had followed him from some low, back kitchen heat that never fully cooled. He was tall, not imposing, but solid in the way that came from doing hard things for a long time. His build was lean, a little bowed at the shoulders, as if time and gravity had done their work. His skin had the baked-in tone of someone who’d spent years near open flame, his forearms marked by thin pale scars that spoke of burns, not battles. The white chef’s jacket he wore was buttoned but stained, spattered with dark brown that might have been soy sauce or something else. It was hard to tell, and maybe it wasn’t supposed to be clear.
His face didn’t offer much. It wasn’t unreadable in the cold, calculated way of spies or killers. It just didn’t feel the need to explain itself. High cheekbones softened the shape of his long face, and his eyes, dark and narrow, carried the quiet stillness of someone who watched more than he spoke. His hair was thick, slightly tousled, mostly black but peppered with gray at the temples. He was handsome, but the kind of handsome that didn’t advertise. He managed to exist right in the middle ground. Someone you’d forget until you saw them again and couldn’t stop wondering why.
Y/N kept her expression neutral as he stepped fully into view. Her body didn’t flinch. Her gaze didn’t drift. She looked at him plainly, openly, like she had no reason not to. But this was him. The man she’d crossed an ocean for. The one who had answers locked behind his teeth.
He saw her, and the smile came fast. Too fast. It stretched across his face like a reflex he hadn’t bothered updating in years. Broad, eager, practiced. The kind of smile that had been used too many times on too many strangers. The kind that worked better when you didn’t look too closely. He wore it like a uniform: the smile of a man who knew how to sell comfort, how to charm tourists just enough to make them stay, just long enough to make them leave before asking the wrong question. There was no real warmth in it. But it was a good act.
“English?” he asked, cautious but cheerful, testing each syllable like he was stepping over a puddle he didn’t trust.
She gave a half-shrug, tipping her head slightly as her mouth pulled into something lopsided and pleasant. “Almost,” she said. “American.”
Something about that word flipped a switch in him. He lit up like he’d been waiting for it. “Ah! America! Yes, welcome, welcome!” He nodded several times, as if the excitement might wear off if he didn’t hammer it in. “My English, very good. Yes.”
“Perfect,” she said, breezy and bright, like a woman with nowhere to be and all the time in the world. She stepped farther inside, her fingers ghosting along the edge of the counter. She didn’t look at it, not really, but the gesture made it seem like she was appreciating the wood, soaking up the charm. It wasn’t for him. It was for the story.
The chef smiled wide when she stepped in, his English laced with effort but cheerful all the same. “Welcome, American,” he said with a chuckle. “I hope you like my shop.”
She dipped her head, just enough to be polite. “안녕하세요,” she said, soft and even, her pronunciation clean, too natural to be brand-new.
That got a reaction. He lit up like someone had pulled a coin from behind his ear. “오오오! 안녕하세요!” He leaned forward with the delight of a man genuinely impressed. “Very good, very good! You speak Korean?”
She let out a modest laugh, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear like the compliment embarrassed her a little. “Not really,” she said. “Just a few words I picked up yesterday.”
Her eyes moved over the room, taking in the shelves, the old wood, the dust that softened the corners of things. “Is it okay if I sit here?”
“Sit, sit!” he said, already wiping down the bar with a damp cloth in wide, sweeping strokes like he was preparing an altar. “Of course. You sit. What words you learn? Oh, wait one second.”
He turned toward the curtain behind him, barked something in Korean without missing a beat. The words tumbled fast and irritated.
“We have a customer, bring out some tea, quickly!”
A voice called back, lazy and muffled. “I’m watching my soap operas.”
The chef rolled his eyes, snapping, “Lazy bastard! Screw your soap opera! Hurry up!”
“The tea’s hot. Why don’t you serve it yourself for once?”
“Shut up! Get your ass out here!”
Then he turned back to her, placing both palms on the bar like nothing had happened, though a thin line of annoyance still showed around his eyes. His smile remained pleasant. “So,” he said, “what else do you know in Korean?”
She tapped her chin lightly, brow furrowed like she was digging through a mental list. “감사합니다,” she said after a second, letting the word unfold carefully but not too perfectly. Like she was still getting comfortable with it.
He nodded with approval, the kind of praise people give freely but mean all the same. “Very good,” he said. “You say it nicely.”
She leaned forward just a touch, elbows resting gently on the bar, camera bumping softly against the edge. “알겠어요?” she tried, the hesitation built in just enough to seem earnest.
He brightened. “You know that one! ‘I understand.’ Good, very good. You learn fast.”
She smiled back. “Only what people say to me first.”
Then she tilted her head and added another. “안녕히 가세요?”
His expression flickered for a split second. The kind of shift most people wouldn’t catch. He recovered quickly, correcting her with a wave of his hand. “No, no, no. Say again.”
She blinked once, feigning the kind of sheepish confusion that made it look like maybe she had messed it up after all. She tried again, a little slower this time. “안녕히 가세요?”
He clapped his hands once, sharp and loud in the stillness of the shop. His smile stretched wide, but the lines around it didn’t move. “You speak Korean,” he said, voice lighter than it had been, but also a little tighter.
She laughed softly, tilting her head again. It was the kind of laugh you’d hear from someone caught in a harmless exaggeration. “Now you’re just flattering me.”
But he didn’t laugh with her. “No,” he said simply. “Serious. Your pronunciation... very good. You say 안녕히 가세요 like we say 안녕히 가세요.”
The air between them settled. Not tense, but heavier. The kind of pause that had weight in it, even if you didn’t know why.
His voice came again, this time quieter, slower. “You can learn Korean very easy.”
She let her gaze drop for half a second, just enough to give it texture, then lifted it again with a careful smile. “No kidding,” she said, her voice just a little softer now. “But thank you. 진짜... 감사합니다.”
He didn’t respond right away. Just breathed in through his nose, steady and thoughtful. Then he adjusted his stance, the shift so subtle most people wouldn’t notice. But she did. She saw the way his shoulders reset, the tiny movements that told her he wasn’t just running a shop. He was watching something unfold.
He turned without another word and picked up a rice paddle. His voice floated back over his shoulder, even and calm. “Let me make something for you.”
She nodded, her smile still in place, but the tone that followed wasn’t quite the same. “Anything’s fine.”
The chef stayed where he was, hands now methodically working at the counter. A bowl of rice, steam still clinging faintly to the grains. A bamboo mat laid flat. A half-sliced cucumber. The blade beside it already glinting in the overhead light.
“You like kimbap?” he asked, like it was just polite conversation.
“I love it,” she said, light and breezy.
She let the sentence hang just long enough to sound casual, like maybe this was a regular kind of moment, in a regular kind of place. But it wasn’t.
The knife moved with soft, measured sounds. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Carrot. Radish. Cucumber.
Every slice was uniform. Clean. The rhythm was precise, practiced. Not just skilled. Disciplined.
She didn’t take her eyes off him, not directly, but not obviously either. Her posture stayed relaxed, her hands resting on the bar. The camera around her neck swayed gently with the air from the ceiling fan, tapping now and then against the wood like a slow heartbeat.
She didn’t look dangerous.
But then, neither did he.
The overhead light gave a quiet hum, casting the shop in a worn, yellow wash that made everything look faintly out of date. The fan creaked once with each turn, ticking off invisible seconds. Outside, the alley was still. A cat passed, paused in the doorway, then disappeared again.
The chef didn’t look up from his cutting board. His voice came steady, like they were just passing time.
“You should learn Korean.”
She smiled, light but not airy. “You think so?”
He nodded slightly, slicing through radish with clean precision. “Yes.”
“I’ve heard it’s impossible.”
He nodded. “Yes. Very hard. But you,” he said, quieter now, “you have Korean tongue.”
He returned to his work, pulling a smaller knife from a drawer. It was heavier, curved differently. He laid slices of tuna onto a black ceramic plate. Next to them, he added a pinch of pickled ginger and a small, hand-shaped mound of wasabi.
He slid the dish toward her with quiet pride.
She looked down at it, then back up. “How’d you know tuna’s my favorite?”
He shrugged one shoulder, almost coy. “What?”
“Tuna,” she said again, watching him. “It’s my favorite.”
He smiled with the same practiced calm. “Ah. Thank you very much.”
Then he turned his head toward the beaded curtain and shouted, voice sharp. “야! 차 어디 갔어? 빨리 좀 해!”
Behind the curtain came a reply, loud and annoyed.
“지금 드라마 보고 있잖아!”
“드라마는 개뿔이지! 손님 왔잖아, 이 자식아. 빨리 갖고 와!”
“차 뜨거워! 너도 좀 움직여 봐!”
The chef muttered something under his breath, wiped his hands, and moved toward the curtain. The beads clinked as he grabbed the other man by the wrist mid-gesture, twisted it lightly, and leaned in close.
“네가 장군이면 나는 황제다. 그러니까 조용히 차나 갖고 와.”
Then, with a mocking grin and just enough weight to sting, he said in English: “Do you understand?”
The assistant pulled free, scowling, and glanced at Y/N. “대머리 아니거든,” he muttered. Then, in stiff English: “I shave. Do you understand me?”
The chef didn’t even look. He picked up a small knife and threw it underhanded toward the wall. It landed with a soft thud, blade buried in the wood just left of the curtain.
The assistant disappeared without another word.
Y/N didn’t follow his movement. Her fingers just found a napkin and began folding it, slow and absent, like she was trying to pass the time. But her attention stayed open, alert, listening to every creak from the fridge and every shift of weight behind the curtain. She tracked it all without looking.
The chef glanced her way and let out a low sigh. “Sorry,” he murmured.
She smiled, shook her head gently, still all ease and pleasant charm. “No worries at all.”
The chef had gone back to wiping a plate that didn’t need it, slow circles that looked more like habit than cleaning. He hummed something under his breath. No real melody, just sound for the sake of it. Every so often, his eyes drifted up. Not to her. To the curtain. He was waiting, too.
Y/N leaned her chin into her palm and let out a quiet sigh. The kind that sounded like she had nowhere else to be, like this was just another slow stop on a longer, looser itinerary. But beneath the quiet facade, her pulse had cooled into something steadier. Sharper. She was counting. Not seconds. Not movements. Just weight.
The beads stirred again.
The second man reappeared, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. The soju was cold, condensation sliding down the green glass in thick streaks. His fingers were wide, stained around the cuticles, the nails chipped like they had been trimmed with teeth or a dull blade. Hands that had done hard things.
He reached the counter and set the bottle and glass down. He turned to walk away. The chef didn’t let it slide.
His voice cracked through the air, hard and sudden. “야, 예의 좀 갖춰!”
The man didn’t stop completely. He only slowed. His shoulders shifted. A sigh leaked out, long and annoyed.
“뭐? 술 갖다 줬잖아.”
“손님 앞에서는 제대로 해. 외국인이라도.”
A scoff, barely loud enough to register. “외국인이라 모를 텐데 왜 신경 써?”
The chef’s reply came low, firm. “그러니까 더 조심해야지. 한국 사람처럼 보여도 다 듣고 있을 수도 있어.”
There was a pause. Just a few seconds, but heavy. The kind of quiet that wasn’t about silence. It was about choice.
The man muttered something under his breath, just noise really, but shaped by resentment. Then he twisted the cap off the bottle with a rough snap and poured. The soju splashed high in the glass, almost spilling. He shoved it toward her with one hand, the edge of the glass tapping wood just shy of rude.
Then he turned and disappeared again. The beads clattered harder this time. The chef let out a breath.
“죄송합니다,” he said, bowing his head slightly. “그 사람은... 사람 대하는 법을 몰라요.”
Y/N didn’t flinch. Her smile stayed where it had been the whole time, pleasant and unbothered. “Sorry?”
The chef’s tone softened, switching to English like it was muscle memory. “Ah, no, just... he doesn’t know how to talk,” he added, with a thin smile that almost reached his eyes.
She nodded, light, polite. Lifted the shot glass with a small, quiet toast. “Thank you,” she said, and took a sip.
The soju hit cool. Sweet up front, then a clean, sharp finish that sat in the back of her throat and lingered. It didn’t burn. It reminded.
She set the glass down. Picked up her chopsticks. The motion was fluid, casual, not stiff with performance, but practiced. The way a habit becomes part of muscle memory.
She lifted a piece of tuna from the plate, a clean slice that caught the light like silk. Deep ruby red, almost translucent, grain running fine through its surface. She placed it on her tongue and held it there, waiting. It melted. Soft and rich, just a trace of brine and something faintly metallic, like memory. She chewed once. Twice. Let it dissolve.
Her eyes drifted shut, just for a second. 
She set the chopsticks down, careful not to clatter them, then picked up the soju again and finished the glass in a single, smooth pull. The second hit went down easier. The warmth spread slow through her chest, settling in a place that had once held nerves.
Across the counter, the chef watched. He hadn’t changed his expression, but something in the way he stood had eased. Not relaxed, not soft, but carrying a kind of respect. He was noticing a quiet fluency. No words. Just recognition.
“First time in Korea?” he asked. His hands returned to the cutting board, fingers resting near the knife, though he didn’t pick it up yet.
Y/N nodded, finishing another bite. “Mmhmm.”
“What!” he said, voice rising with disbelief that didn’t quite ring false.
She swallowed, wiped the corner of her mouth lightly. “Yes. This is my first time.”
He tilted his head, eyes narrowing just a little. “What brings you to Gwangju?”
Outside, the alley shifted. A gust caught some stray bit of paper and skidded it along the brick like a coin on pavement. Somewhere nearby, a bird let out a single cry, sharp and fast, gone in a blink. The curtain behind her swayed faintly with a whisper-soft clatter, like wind chimes that never quite got the breeze they needed to sing. Y/N adjusted her chopsticks, repositioned them between her fingers, then gently set them down without ever lifting a bite. Her tone was light when she finally spoke, almost conversational.
“I came to see a man.”
The sentence didn’t echo, but it changed something in the room. A beat passed. Not long. But the chef’s hand froze mid-motion, his knife held just above the salmon, blade tilted slightly as if it too had paused to listen.
“Ah,” he said after a moment, stretching the word just enough to carry weight. “A friend in Gwangju?” He didn’t look up.
“Not quite,” she replied.
“Not a friend?”
“No.” She waited until his eyes found hers before continuing. “We’ve never met.”
The blade finally touched the board. A soft sound. Then he laid the knife aside, not quickly, but with care, like he’d decided whatever came next didn’t need a blade in hand. He kept his gaze on the cutting board for a moment longer than necessary, then finally looked up. The expression on his face didn’t shift much, but something behind his eyes sharpened. Not fear. Not even suspicion. Just awareness.
“And,” he said, more quietly now, “may I ask who he is?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Jung Hoseok.”
The name didn’t explode. It didn’t need to. It landed in the room like a rock dropped into still water. No splash. Just the heavy assurance that things were moving beneath the surface now. Her voice hadn’t changed. She wasn’t dramatic. She didn’t lean in. But the name was enough.
The chef went still. Not tense, simply anchored. Like something in him had snapped into place. His right hand rested on the edge of a towel. His left hovered briefly over the blade again, reflex more than anything. The tip of his finger brushed the metal and slipped. A sudden streak of red rose across his knuckle. He looked down at it, just for a moment, and lifted the hand to his mouth. Sucked the blood away like it was routine. No flinch. No sound. Just control, reset.
Behind her, the beads rattled once more, sharper this time. The bald man stepped through again, his face a clenched fist. He didn’t speak. Just let his eyes sweep the room, pausing on her. Not suspicion. Calculation. Like something in the air had told him to pay attention.
He crossed to the counter, picked up the bottle, and poured her another shot. This time, the movement was smooth. No clatter. No shove. Just a quiet, focused pour. He didn’t speak. Didn’t meet her eyes. He finished the pour, left the glass full, and walked out. The beads clacked shut behind him, not loud, not subtle. Just punctuation.
The chef exhaled slowly through his nose. No drama. Just release. Then he took a towel and began wiping his hands carefully, methodically. His eyes stayed on her.
She lifted the new glass in a small, silent toast, even though the man who’d poured it was already gone. The glass was cold enough that it clung to her fingers.
When the chef spoke again, the language changed. No more English. No pretense.
His voice lowered, smooth and even, each word placed with precision. “정호석에게 무슨 용건이 있습니까?”
Y/N didn’t blink.
She answered in Korean, her voice quiet, level. No showmanship. Just the kind of careful weight that traveled farther than volume ever could. “강철이 필요해요.”
His eyes narrowed. Not in suspicion. In thought. Like he was studying her words, not for truth, but for intention. He didn’t answer right away. He let the silence linger.
“왜 강철이 필요하죠?” he asked.
She looked at the glass beside her plate, a droplet tracing its way down the side. Then she met his eyes again. “쥐를 죽이려면요.”
There was another pause, longer this time, but not uncomfortable. Then the chef let out a short laugh. Not cruel. Not mocking. Just low and dry, like someone who had lived long enough to understand how serious things always start in calm voices.
“Must be a big rat,” he said in English this time, voice touched with something close to amusement. “If you need Jung Hoseok steel for it.”
She smiled, but only with one side of her mouth. The other half stayed still.
“Huge,” she said.
They didn’t move. Didn’t raise their voices. The air between them didn’t buzz with tension, but it held. Quiet. Pulled tight like thread stretched between fingers. It didn’t warn. It just waited.
The chef gave a small nod. Y/N didn’t speak, didn’t finish the food. She left the second shot untouched. The fish remained as he had plated it, artful, unspoiled. The only sign she had been there was the soft, fading ring left behind by her first glass, already drying into the grain of the wood.
She rose without a sound and followed him through the beaded curtain, not once looking back.
The hallway beyond was narrow and long, the kind of space that time forgets. The wallpaper, beige or yellow once, now sun-bleached into something closer to nicotine-stained parchment, peeled at the edges in slow curls. The floorboards creaked just enough to remind you that no one had fixed them in a long while, and maybe no one ever would. The air smelled lived-in, dense with cooking oil and old plaster, like generations of heat had steeped into the walls. A single bulb swung gently from the ceiling, flickering once before settling into a thin, steady glow.
Hoseok walked ahead, silent, his gait quiet but confident. He didn’t rush. He didn’t hesitate. His steps were even, deliberate, the kind of pace that didn’t waste energy or ask permission. When he reached the end of the corridor, he glanced up and found the pull cord, barely visible in the dim light, hanging like a spider’s thread. He tugged it once.
A low groan came from above, followed by a creaking shift. A square panel in the ceiling cracked open with a dusty exhale, and a folded ladder unfolded downward with slow, mechanical clicks, the rungs snapping into place like joints stretching after too long at rest.
He climbed first. She followed.
Her boots hit the rungs with soft thuds, the sound swallowed by the close space around her. One hand on each side rail, steady, smooth. No wasted movement. She didn’t glance up, didn’t glance down. Just climbed. The air thickened as she ascended, growing warmer, more still. There was a shift in temperature, and in smell. Wood. Oil. Steel.
As she rose through the opening, the attic revealed itself like a photograph developing in slow motion.
It wasn’t big, but it felt larger than it should have. The low ceiling curved inward slightly, giving the space a strange hush, like it was used to quiet. The warmth was immediate. Not stifling, but deep, the kind of heat that came from bodies and time and electricity burning low and constant. The scent was unmistakable to anyone who knew what it meant: cedar, carbon, and choji oil. That distinct blend of camellia and clove, familiar only to those who have ever cared for a blade.
The light from the window was weak, filtered through grime that hadn’t been wiped away in years. But what little came through cast long golden lines across the floor, picking out the pattern in the grain and throwing deep shadows that stretched and curled. The floor was clean. Worn, but swept. Not a speck of dust in sight. No clutter, no trash. This wasn’t storage. It was maintenance.
On the far wall stood the racks.
Not shelves. Not hooks. Racks, each one handmade, shaped with intention, joined by hand rather than hardware. Pale wood, aged and patient. No decoration. No flair. Just quiet craftsmanship. They held swords. Not just katanas. Blades.
Dozens of them, each one unique. Their sheaths glinted in the dim light: black lacquer with soft reflections, deep red urushi, mottled green like old bark. One was wrapped in white rayskin bound with gold. Each sageo tie—gray, plum, navy—was knotted tight and deliberate, tension held with purpose. The tsuka, wrapped in silk, were symmetrical to the point of obsession. Every fold precise. Every diamond perfect. Each kashira had its own story: copper dragons, koi fish, sakura petals, brass ships riding a storm. And the tsuba were miniature sculptures of iron and bronze, some simple, some elaborate, none ornamental for the sake of it. These weren’t pieces for display. They were weapons made to be used. Cared for, kept sharp, kept ready.
Y/N stepped forward, her movements quiet, measured. She didn’t touch anything. Didn’t need to. The room held its own gravity. The kind of silence that didn’t beg for reverence but commanded it through sheer presence. Every detail—the blades, the wood, the air itself—spoke for her to listen.
Behind her, Hoseok didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to either. His stillness wasn’t tense or withdrawn. It was aware. Watching, but not pressing.
She turned slightly, just enough to glance over her shoulder. Her voice, when it came, was soft. Her Korean clear and careful. “May I?”
A beat passed, subtle but intentional. Then, his reply, not in Korean this time but in English. And for some reason, that made it gentler. “Yes, you may. Second from the top. Sixth row. Left side.”
She nodded once and turned back to the racks. Her steps didn’t creak the floorboards. She moved with the kind of calm that came from purpose, not performance. Her eyes scanned, counted, found it: sixth row, left side, second down.
She stopped in front of it, let her gaze rest on the sheath before reaching for it. Black lacquer, smooth and deep enough to absorb the light. It reflected just the faintest outline of her face, blurred, formless. The finish was perfect, but not decorative. Not flashy. Maintained, not polished. Like someone had wiped it down once a week for decades, always with the same cloth.
The sageo cord was tied in a neat, practical knot. Not ornamental. Not lazy. Tight, squared. The kind of tie someone would redo until they got it right. The tsuba was brass, aged and worn, its surface darkened by time and touch. Etched pine branches crawled along its edges, simple, understated, and detailed enough to tell you it wasn’t mass-produced. It had been chosen.
Her fingers wrapped around the tsuka. The silk binding was tight, smooth, crisscrossed with perfect symmetry. Black cord over white rayskin. Traditional. Familiar. The handle sat against her palm like a known shape, like something she had used before, even if she hadn’t.
And something inside her, something she hadn’t even noticed was noisy, went quiet.
She drew the blade without hesitation, not for show, just to see. It came free with a sound so subtle it was almost imagined. Like breath drawn through cloth. The kind of sound that disappears if you’re not paying attention. But she always paid attention.
Light caught the blade and changed it. What had been metal turned fluid. Reflections danced along the edge, fractured and reformed as she moved. The hamon curled like a pale ripple, shifting with every minor tilt of her hands. The kissaki was long, graceful. Measured for reach, not for display. The sword wasn’t just well-made. It had purpose in its design. Intention.
She held it in both hands now. The balance fell into place like it knew where to go. No resistance. No demand. Just a quiet agreement between steel and muscle, weight and memory.
Behind her, Hoseok finally stirred. The smallest motion: fabric shifting, a heel settling more fully into the floor. When she turned slightly, she saw him near the window, one hand deep in his pocket. The other rolled something between his fingers.
A baseball. Worn, the leather dulled to a soft gray, the seams darkened, fraying. It looked like it had been tossed from hand to hand for years. He turned it over in his palm absently, like it was more habit than thought.
“Funny,” he said, voice quiet enough that the words didn’t quite disturb the stillness. “You like swords…”
He tossed the ball into the air, caught it once without looking.
“…I like baseball.”
Then, without warning, he threw it.
There was no flourish. No wind-up. Just a sudden motion, fast, clean, direct. The ball cut through the air on a line straight toward her. No room to think. No time for a plan.
Her arms moved before her mind did. The sword rose in a single arc, smooth and efficient. No tension in the shoulders, no wasted energy in the swing. The blade moved as though she were answering something, not striking.
The ball split cleanly.
There was no dramatic crack. No cinematic echo. Just a soft, muted thud, leather parting under steel, a sound more felt than heard. One half of the ball skidded off and rolled beneath the nearest rack. The other bounced off her boot and stopped.
She didn’t breathe out. Not yet. Her grip had already eased. The sword angled down, relaxed at her side, tip toward the floor. Balanced again, as if nothing had happened.
Hoseok stepped forward, steady as ever, though something behind his expression had shifted. Barely, but enough for her to notice. A flicker in his eyes, like a thought he hadn’t yet decided whether to keep or release. He lifted a hand toward her, slow and sure. Not a demand. Not a gesture of control. It was open, deliberate. A quiet invitation to return something that wasn’t quite hers yet.
She reversed the blade, offering the hilt without hesitation. No dramatic pause, no faltering. Just weight moving from her hands to his. The handoff was clean, unspoken, the kind of exchange that didn’t need ceremony to be understood.
He sheathed the sword with practiced ease, and the sound—soft, precise, the smooth slide of steel into lacquered wood—didn’t echo. It landed. Not loud, not theatrical. Just final. Like a breath held, then released.
“I wanted to show you these,” he said in Korean, the playful edge from earlier gone. His voice had changed, calmer now, older somehow. He held the sheathed blade in both hands, fingers gliding over the lacquer not to clean it, but to remember it. “But someone like you… someone like you already understands.”
He placed it gently back in its rack, hands steady, motions exact. Each movement held weight, the kind of intention that couldn’t be faked. “I no longer make instruments of death,” he said, softer now, almost to himself. “I keep them for their beauty. For what they once meant. Because I love them.”
There was a quiet pride in his words, not boastful, just true. He bowed his head slightly. “I’m proud of what I made. Proud of how well I made them. But I am retired.”
She stepped closer, silent. No threat in her approach, only certainty. Her presence filled the space without trying to. Her voice came softly, but with clarity.
“Then give me one.”
The words landed like a pin in still fabric. He turned to face her, jaw tightening.
“They’re not for sale.”
“I didn’t say sell me one.”
They locked eyes. Her stare didn’t waver. Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.
“I said give me one.”
A pause opened between them. Not long, but heavy. The kind that held all the weight of what hadn’t been said yet. When he spoke again, it was clipped. Cold.
“And why should I help you?”
She didn’t blink. “Because the vermin I’m after,” she said, the words clean and hard, “was your student.”
That stopped him. Not with a flinch, not with alarm. Just a subtle shift. Shoulders lowered by a fraction, breath held at the top of his chest. His silence was sudden and full.
She stepped in again. “And considering the student…” she let the rest hang, then added, “you have certain obligations.”
He turned and walked toward the narrow attic window, its frame sun-bleached and warped slightly with age. With the back of his hand, he wiped away a patch of fog, clearing a view just big enough to see the city stretching out below them—rooftops, wires, and the slow dimming of the day. The glass was damp, the edges still filmed in condensation.
With one finger, he reached up and began to write.
TAEHYUNG.
The name curved faintly in the glass, drawn in a line of skin oil and breath. Outside, the wind kicked up, brushing against the building with a hollow tap. The beams creaked. The attic seemed to lean into the moment. The name.
She didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just nodded once. That was enough.
Hoseok turned, walked to the trapdoor, and reached for the old latch. It gave with a dry metallic groan. The ladder creaked as it unfolded, the sound echoing faintly in the rafters.
He gestured to the corner. A futon, rolled neatly. A folded blanket beside it. A small jug of water, a wooden comb laid with care. Nothing lavish. Nothing new. Just clean. Lived-in.
“You can sleep here,” he said in Korean. “I’ll make space downstairs. Might take a day or two to find proper furniture.”
He descended the ladder with the same quiet weight he carried everywhere. But just before the hatch closed, his voice floated back up, lower and firmer.
“It’ll take a month to make the blade.”
A pause. The creak of one last step below.
“I suggest you spend it practicing.”
Then the hatch closed with a solid, wooden thunk. Not sharp. Not aggressive. Just complete.
She stood still, alone in the attic, the air settling around her like dust that had waited too long to fall. The quiet wasn’t just quiet anymore. It was thick, almost physical. A silence that had weight, like the room itself was holding its breath after what had been said, what had been written.
The last of the afternoon light had slipped away without notice, and in its place came the muted amber of early evening. Outside, the city blurred. Rooftops softened, edges dulled, the sky folding into dusk with no sharp lines left. Gwangju looked like it was remembering something it didn’t want to say out loud.
She walked toward the window, slow and steady, her boots tapping gently against the floor. The name was still there, hovering in the circle of cleared glass, faint but legible. TAEHYUNG. The letters had already started to run a little, the edges softened by moisture and time.
From her coat, she pulled a cloth. It was plain, the kind of fabric that had seen years of use—creased, worn, stripped of anything personal. Just something that did its job. She raised it and began to wipe. One pass. Then another. Then again. Not hard, not angry. Just firm. Methodical. With each motion, the letters blurred a little more, until they were nothing but streaks. And then nothing at all. Just fog again.
She held her hand to the glass for a second longer, palm pressed flat. The warmth from her skin left a faint outline before the cold reclaimed it. It faded just like the name had. Quick, quiet, complete.
She folded the cloth with care and tucked it back into her coat, her fingers working with practiced ease. No lingering. No pause for meaning.
Then she turned from the window.
Outside, the city kept fading. Behind her, the attic returned to stillness. The name was gone. And with it, whatever place he might’ve held in her. Taehyung Kim had already taken too much. There was no room left in her for the ghost of him. Not anymore.
He would fall. And when he did, she would finally be free.
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chimcess ¡ 4 days ago
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⚔︎ Chapter Five: The Snake in Busan Pairing: Taehyung x Reader Other Tags: Assassin!Taehyung, Assassin!Reader, Assassin!Jimin, Dad!Jimin, Assassin!Yoongi, Gang Leader!Yoongi, Assassin!Namjoon, Swordmaster!Hoseok, Chef!Hoseok, Pimp!Seokjin Genre: Assassins! AU, Exes!AU, Lovers to Enemies, Action, Comedy, Suspense, Martial Arts, Drama, Thriller, Romance (if you squint), Heavy Angst, Violence, 18+ only Word Count: 17k+ Summary: A former assassin awakens from a four-year coma after her ex-lover Taehyung tries to kill her on her wedding day. Driven by revenge for the loss of her unborn child and stolen life, she creates a hit list and embarks on a ruthless mission to take down everyone responsible. Warnings: toxic relationship, talks of character death, graphic violence, aggressive characters, jealousy, training, flashbacks, implied smut, bathing together, strong language, guilt, emotional turmoil, regret, vengeance, these relationships are all tangled up, non-graphic smut, backstory, another tame chapter, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: So, why did Hoseok Jung stop making swords?
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The attic was dim, the air thick with sandalwood. It clung to the rafters, soaked into the beams, and seeped from the floorboards like time itself had steeped in it. The walls exhaled the scent in slow, heavy breaths.
Candlelight sputtered low, throwing jagged shadows across old wood. Steel glinted in the flicker. Hoseok Jung’s sword collection lined the wall like a silent jury. Every blade had a name. Every saya was polished like a relic. Y/N had studied them all during her month in Gwangju. She’d held them, trained with them, bled on their edges. By the time the incense stopped catching in her throat, she knew each one like her own hands.
Hoseok stood at the altar, his black silk robe whisper-quiet as he moved. The candlelight reached for him, but the silk swallowed it whole. A serpent devouring its own tail was stitched across his chest in blood-red thread. Once, his face had been soft, someone who believed peace was a choice. Time, sorrow, and war had carved that man away. What was left was sharp. Dangerous. His eyes, obsidian, reflected nothing. His lips were drawn tight. Whatever softness Y/N had once known was gone. He had grown out his goatee during the month they trained.
Moon-Byul stood beside him, unmoving. His robe mirrored Hoseok’s, minus the serpent. Instead, gold-threaded cranes rose up from the hem. His head was freshly shaved, his expression unreadable. Moon always hovered between brilliance and boredom, amused, never impressed. Once, he called Y/N a lion after she bested him in a spar. She never forgot it. They were close in age, and he treated her as an equal. Hoseok, though, was a kindred spirit. After two weeks of wooden swords, Y/N knew his every move. When sticks stopped being fun, they switched to steel. They both got cut, nothing deep. They spent more time praising each other than nursing bruises.
Hoseok was still a master, but past his prime. Had they met when he was her age, she wouldn’t have stood a chance. She knew that. She just happened to meet him late enough to survive.
On the altar lay a single sword.
The lacquered sheath looked wet, like still water under moonlight. Brass fittings in the momoji style curled into maple leaves at each end. One leaf caught the light like it had something to say. A gold band ringed the fuchi.
The tsuba was a custom prayer wheel, Jung Style the smiths called it, flanked by Kozuka-ana and Kogai-ana holes. The seppa were plain brass. The menuki, blackened kongosho, three-pronged spears invoking Fudo Myo, the wrathful protector.
The sageo was mustard, tied in precise knots. No shitodome. Pure function. The saya was purpose shaped into beauty. Solid fittings. A gold ring off-center. Twin gold stripes traced its spine and edge. The ito was leather-wrapped, white ray skin beneath.
Y/N had seen many blades. Trained with legends. But this one didn’t gleam. It warned. It pulsed. It whispered. It was the most beautiful. And the most dangerous.
Silence held.
Then Hoseok spoke.
“I’m done doing what I swore to God nearly ten years ago I would never do again,” he said. “I’ve created... something that kills people.”
He looked at the blade. A breath passed.
“And in that purpose, I was a success.”
He stepped forward and knelt. The floor creaked beneath him. He turned slightly toward the girl in the shadows. Her hair hung loose, her eyes wide. A fading bruise marked her wrist. The candlelight caught the frayed hem of her pants. She stood like she was bracing for something.
“I did this,” Hoseok said, quieter, “because philosophically, I’m sympathetic to your aim.”
His palm rested on the sheath.
“This is my finest sword. If on your journey you should encounter God…” He gripped the hilt. “God will be cut.”
He rose. The light caught his jaw, casting deep shadows.
When he looked at her again, something in his gaze had shifted, just slightly. The way Pai Mei had looked at her before she left China. She thought of her old master, wondered if he was still alive, still alone. She never thought to visit. Pai Mei didn’t like guests. He would mock her if she showed up without reason. But he had cared for her. More than he cared for Taehyung. And that had meant something. Pai Mei saw Taehyung as a son.
She blinked, realized she had drifted. Hoseok was still staring.
“Revenge,” he said, “is never a straight line.”
The incense pressed in. The air thickened. The attic closed around them.
“It’s a forest,” he said. “And like a forest, it’s easy to lose your way. To get lost. To forget where you came in.”
He stepped forward again, robe trailing like dusk.
“To serve as a compass,” he said, “a combat philosophy must be adopted.”
Moon-Byul moved without sound, placing a scroll in Hoseok’s hands. The parchment looked brittle. The ink was claws on rice paper. The Doctrine. The old Yagu code. Hoseok’s legacy.
He looked at Y/N.
“Repeat after me.”
His voice turned sharp. He began in Japanese.
Hoseok was born in Gwangju but raised mostly in Okinawa, under his grandfather’s roof. His family had fled to Japan before the war, hiding in a village so small it escaped notice even during the bombings. His grandfather made katanas, not hwandos. Y/N doubted they kept the name “Jung” there.
Hoseok’s childhood was carved between languages, between cultures. Between silences.
He held the scroll.
“When engaged in combat, the vanquishing of thine enemy can be the warrior’s only concern…”
Y/N echoed him in Japanese, low and steady.
“This is the first and cardinal rule of combat…”
No pause.
“Suppress all human emotion and compassion…”
Her jaw clenched.
“Kill whoever stands in thy way,” Hoseok said, “even if that be Lord God or Buddha himself…”
She didn’t hesitate. Hoseok’s voice was smooth, almost soothing. Hers was rougher, clipped. Her Korean was better.
“This truth lies at the heart of the art of combat,” Hoseok whispered. “Once it is mastered… thou shall fear no one. Though the devil himself may bar thy way…”
Y/N didn’t blink.
Hoseok bowed. She bowed back, then stepped forward. Her fingers closed around the hilt, steady, callused. The blade slid free with a soft hiss, catching candlelight as it rose. It was flawless.
Two gold carvings marked it: the unfinished Hattori mon, raw and exposed, and a Shi-sha before a war spear, garnet eyes gleaming. Hoseok’s lion. His mark. All his swords bore it. Now it belonged to her.
The hamon shimmered. Notare cresting into chaos halfway up the blade. Chu-kissaki tip. Toriizori curve. Every line exact, every surface mirrored. She saw the whole room behind her in its polish.
Hoseok spoke in English.
“Be careful, Y/N.”
She looked at him. Really looked. Weeks of sweat and silence had taught her more than any master before. He hadn’t comforted her. He had prepared her. Soup left wordlessly. Mid-spar corrections, sharp and precise. Quiet care. The kind that mattered.
Moon-Byul had honed her into something hard and clean. She would miss them both. And the restaurant downstairs, sticky tables, chipped cups, perfect kimbap.
“Can I come back?” she asked. “If I need help?”
Hoseok smiled. Small. Honest. It softened him.
“You are always welcome here, Black Mamba.”
She bowed. Deep. He matched it.
Then straightened, voice lighter.
“Now,” he said, “you need to rest. You have vermin waiting.”
She turned toward the stairs, sword in hand. Neither man followed.
Her room was barely a closet. Low ceiling. Thin walls. But it was hers. Quiet.
She closed the door. The soft click of the lock steadied her. The air felt heavier now. Tomorrow pressed close.
At the desk, Hoseok had left paper and charcoals. A small gesture. She had mentioned once that she used to draw.
The page waited, too white, too still. She pulled one sheet loose, placed it flat.
Her hand moved before her mind caught up. Lines. Shapes. Motion without thought.
Then a name surfaced. Unwelcome. Unavoidable.
Yoongi Min.
Just thinking it made her chest tighten. She hadn’t said it out loud in years, afraid it might summon him. But her hand didn’t stop.
His face came first. Sharp cheekbones, guarded eyes, the mouth set hard, almost smiling. The cold was there. But so was the warmth. The version of him that existed only for her. She hated that she remembered.
“Bittersweet” was too neat a word. Nothing about him had ever been clean.
Yoongi wasn’t Taehyung. No one was. Taehyung had been wildfire, beautiful and ruinous. She had run toward that fire.
But Yoongi... he was the silence in a world that never stopped screaming. Tea at 3 a.m. No questions. No fixing. Just space. He didn’t tame her. He made room.
And for a while, that had been enough.
Her strokes slowed. Smaller now. More careful. Her wrist trembled once. Her eyes stung.
He hadn’t always been cruel. Not with her. There had been jokes. Seoul nights. The way he used to hold her like the world had ended. Even his rivalry with Brandi had dulled eventually. And she remembered how he used to look at her, like she was something holy. Like he wasn’t sure he deserved her. Maybe once, she believed it.
Then came Two Pines. Yoongi chose empire. Chose power over her without blinking. And whatever they had died in that moment. Now he wore the crown like it belonged to him. Never apologized. Never looked back.
She gripped the charcoal too hard. It snapped. She didn’t flinch. Just picked up the broken half and kept drawing.
Two Pines had been a dream: peace under trees, shared breath, a place to exhale. It became a slaughterhouse. He didn’t save her. Didn’t try. He watched. She never forgave him. She never would.
Yoongi Min would pay. That was carved into her bones now. Love didn’t excuse it. Didn’t clean it. Didn’t quiet the screams. She saw them in her sleep, felt them in her chest every time she closed her eyes.
This desk was her altar now. A page, a truth. Vengeance wasn’t theory. It was instinct. Ritual. Religion.
I loved him. And I’ll still kill him.
Once, that thought might’ve broken her. Now it fit. Now it kept her warm.
Sometimes she pictured it: the moment he saw her again. Not the executioner. Not the girl who once touched him like a prayer. Just two broken things who loved each other before they learned how to ruin everything.
Her eyes dropped to the sketch. His face stared back. Not a portrait. A reckoning. He didn’t look like the tyrant the world feared or the boy she trusted. He looked like what lived in between. A ghost of someone who never got to choose who he became.
A tear slid down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it. Didn’t need to. Her hand moved harder now, charcoal grinding into the paper, deepening the shadows beneath his eyes, carving out the line of his jaw, the shape of that mouth.
That mouth. It had saved her once. Destroyed her, too. She knew it better than her own reflection.
She was almost done.
When she drew the last line, something settled. The version of him on the page was final. Whatever was left of him in the world, she’d bury it herself.
Vengeance doesn’t wait. Not even for love.
She paused. The charcoal trembled in her grip. The lamp buzzed louder, throwing jagged shadows across the wall. Dust floated like time had paused, just to watch.
Then it came. A voice from somewhere deep. Old. At that moment, you think: it’s proof like no other. That not only does God exist, but you’re doing His will.
It hit like a splinter beneath the skin. She remembered hearing it once. Young. Believing. Blade in one hand, faith in the other. Back when certainty felt like armor. When killing felt like purpose.
A sound escaped her. Something like a laugh, scraped raw. That belief was dead now. Buried under ash, silk, and silence at Two Pines.
There was no holy mission. No divine justice. Just blood and what followed. She wasn’t a prophet. Wasn’t anyone’s daughter anymore. That girl, the one who prayed, was long gone. What remained was colder. Sharper.
Her fingers moved again. One last stroke across the collarbone, clean and exact. Not decoration. Not feeling. It was dissection. Finding what hadn’t rotted in the corpse of something long dead.
When I knew the least about my enemies, she thought, the first name I wrote was the easiest. And Yoongi Min had never tried to hide. Not from her. Not from anyone. No aliases. No masks. No intermediaries. He stood in the center of his own legend, calm as a man pouring tea. Never flinched. Never blinked.
They called him Busan’s velvet devil. A gentleman butcher. A king in wolf’s clothing. No one whispered his name, they said it with care. Like it might unlock something dangerous.
He didn’t build his empire in shadow. He built it loud. Deliberate. Brick by bloody brick. Face bare. Eyes forward. His business was fear, and he ran it like art.
And once, she had loved that face. Not like Taehyung. That had been fire. Destruction you welcomed. Yoongi was different. Solid. Still.
He sat with her on the bad nights. No questions. No comfort. Just presence. He let her have silence without trying to fill it. And when she needed him, really needed, he was there. Now she needed him gone.
The memories cut sharp. Her hand hesitated, then pressed on. She darkened the hollow of his throat. Sketched the collar of his coat, always black, always tailored. Gloves. Always gloves. A man who knew what he was. Never pretended otherwise.
Her thoughts circled back to where it began. Taehyung. He didn’t enter a room, he arrived. Moved like smoke. Looked like he knew secrets you hadn’t earned. Every move deliberate. Every silence calculated. He didn’t fight for the top, he acted like he already lived there. And the world didn’t argue. She’d loved that about him. God help her, she had.
Yoongi was twenty-nine when Taehyung handed him the kingdom. It wasn’t loyalty. It was strategy. A chess move disguised as trust. And Yoongi wore the crown like it had always been his.
She didn’t trust the memory, too warped, too worn. But it came back anyway. Again and again. Now, staring at the page, something in her chest went still. His eyes. That same emptiness. That certainty. Like he already knew how your story ended, and wasn’t impressed.
Once, those eyes had looked at her differently. Maybe not with love. But with recognition. Like he saw her. Now he wouldn’t blink. And neither would she.
Her hand slowed, weight behind each stroke. She shaped his mouth, the same one that once told her she was more than fire. The one that kissed her like she was something worth saving.
But that version of them was gone. Whatever she’d been to him, whatever he’d been to her, it didn’t matter anymore.
Hoseok had told her how the war ended. Not quietly. Not with peace. It ended the way power always does when it refuses to share: loud, brutal, almost holy in scale.
He said Yoongi had stood on the edge of the last battlefield, black hanbok catching the light like oil, moving like smoke. The final rival, once feared, bled out at his feet.
Yoongi didn’t gloat. Didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. He looked down. Stepped over the body. Kept walking. Like death was just another item crossed off the list. That was what made him terrifying. Not the violence. The indifference.
After that, Busan didn’t resist. It bowed. Now the only trace of that man lived in graphite and shadow on the page in front of her.
Her hand moved in steady strokes, building his face in layers. Every line felt less like art and more like exhumation. She wasn’t drawing. She was digging. Through wreckage. Through memory. Through what was left.
Yoongi’s features came together piece by piece. The sharp jaw. The cold slope of his eyes. The soft curve of his mouth, more memory than muscle now. Not quite a king. Not the boy she’d known. Something in between. A ghost on paper.
Then her hand slipped. The charcoal snapped, rolled across the desk, stopped against the edge of a dried tea stain. She didn’t reach for it. Just stared.
The face on the page looked back, unfinished. Not a monster. Not a myth. A man.
And still, the image stayed. Burned into memory like a scar: Yoongi, that night. Black hanbok, sleeves wet with blood, standing over the last man who dared to defy him. The body twitched once, reflex or defiance, but it didn’t matter. It was over.
Yoongi didn’t pause. He turned to the others. His face unreadable. Cold. If there was emotion, it was certainty.
And that was the thing that made him impossible to outrun. He didn’t need to conquer you. He made you realize you’d already lost.
Smoke from gunfire still hung in the air. Cries just beginning to fade. And there he stood beneath a shattered skylight, cherry blossoms drifting through broken glass. Still. Too still.
He looked like something pulled out of a dream and dressed in blood.
And when the final scream died, Busan bowed.
Hoseok had told her about that night like a prayer he wasn’t sure he should say.
“It was one of those nights,” he’d murmured, voice low. “You could feel it. In the air. Like the city already knew. Like it could taste the blood before it hit the ground.”
And after came the gathering at The Red Lantern Club. Not really a club. More like a mirage stitched together underground. Velvet curtains. Perfume and secrets. Jazz leaking through the walls. Lighting low and sharp. Voices too soft. Cigar smoke hanging like a lie.
Somewhere behind a locked door, a woman was always crying. No one ever asked why.
The deeper you went, the worse it got. The air thickened. The light reddened. By the time you hit the center, it didn’t feel like nightlife. It felt like hell with waitstaff and designer liquor.
That night, the city’s old guard had gathered. Six kkangpae bosses, men who’d ruled for decades. Draped in silk and legacy. Their suits cost more than most lives. Their rings were old as dynasties.
Behind them stood their muscle. Armed, still, waiting.
And in the center of it all stood Yoongi.
He wore a black suit that seemed to drain the light around it. Everything about him was honed to a point: jaw, eyes, presence. Hair slicked back. Not a strand out of place.
The chandelier above caught his face in shards. He didn’t look human. He looked like death taught how to wear a suit.
He didn’t speak. Just watched.
His gaze moved slow, surgical. A scalpel drawn across the room. Every glance measured posture, weakness, fear.
And the fear was heavy. Thick enough to taste.
These were men who weren’t used to being afraid. But they were smart enough to feel it.
They could kill him. They had the numbers, the firepower. But it would cost more than any of them were willing to pay.
One by one, they raised their glasses. Not respect. Ritual. Whiskey. Toasts. Smiles stretched too thin.
Everyone was pretending. No one was celebrating.
Except one.
Boss Yoon. All silk and silence. Hands folded over his stomach like he was holding something ugly inside. He didn’t toast. Didn’t smile. Just stared. He hated Yoongi.
Half-Japanese. Half-Korean. Raised on Camp Humphreys. Too foreign for tradition. Too clean for blood.
To men like Yoon, Yoongi didn’t belong. He hadn’t earned it. Hadn’t clawed his way up through mud and knives like they had.
In another time, another world, Yoongi wouldn’t have even been let in the building. But this wasn’t another time. This was Yoongi’s time.
Yoongi hadn’t inherited power. He hadn’t waited for it. He’d taken it, piece by piece. Clean. Quiet. He didn’t follow bloodlines. He erased them. Rewrote the hierarchy. Dug his throne out of the dead.
And Boss Yoon couldn’t stand it.
His son, Chan, sat beside him, tight-lipped, tense. When he moved, it was like something uncoiling. His hand came up slow, then slammed down, palm first, into his plate. The porcelain cracked hard, shards scattering across the table like shrapnel.
Silence hit the room like a slap. Every glass stopped midair. Every throat held breath. Even the jazz behind the walls seemed to pause, like the music knew when to be afraid.
Yoongi didn’t move.
Yoon stood. Slowly. Like the motion hurt. His shoulders were tight, jaw clenched, rage leaking through every breath. His guards shifted. Hands hovered over blades. The room felt suddenly very small.
A younger boss, maybe still naive enough to think this could be salvaged, broke the silence. “What’s the meaning of this?” he asked, voice pinched and too high. “What’s this outburst supposed to mean?”
Yoon didn’t answer right away. When he finally did, his voice sounded like old rust: thin, bitter, sharp enough to cut. “What am I supposed to celebrate?” he said, spitting each word. “The death of this council? The stain on our fathers’ work?”
The murmurs started small, like the first crackle of a fire. A glance here, a whisper there. Fast words. Faster doubt. The kind of unease that spreads before anyone admits it. The air thickened until it clung to the walls like smoke.
Then Yoongi spoke. “Gentlemen.”
One word. Calm. Even. Icy. It dropped into the room like ash from a fire that had already burned everything worth saving. He didn’t raise his voice. He never had to.
“Boss Yoon has something he’d like to share,” he said, tone flat, bored even. Like he was reciting bullet points at a board meeting. “So let’s hear it. What rot do you smell, Yoon-sshi?”
Yoon didn’t hesitate. Maybe he thought it was mercy. Maybe he thought it was his moment. Or maybe he just couldn’t stop himself. He pushed his chair back like a man stepping onto a stage. His knuckles were white against the table’s edge. His hands trembled, barely. But not from fear. It was deeper. Older. Resentment carved into bone.
“My father,” Yoon began, voice cracking under the weight of something too big for the room. “Yours. All of them. They built this council on blood. On discipline. On legacy. This table,” he gestured broadly, cuffs of his silk shaking, “was carved from code. From purity.”
A sharp crack rang out across the room. Boss Bae had slammed his glass down hard enough to chip the base. His eyes were wide with fury. “Outrageous,” he snapped. “You insult this council.” He grabbed his napkin and tossed it across the table like it meant something. “Bastard.”
Yoon caught it, didn’t look, flung it back. “Fuck face.”
“Enough,” Yoongi said. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. His eyes didn’t leave Yoon. “Speak.”
Yoon did. He stood straighter, like bracing for a storm, and let it out in one breath.
“I speak of the perversion we’ve allowed into this council. The disgrace that sits at its head. A place I’ve loved more than my own children. Desecrated. By crowning a half-breed Korean Jap-American bitch as its leader.”
It happened before the air had time to shift.
One moment Yoongi was seated. The next, he was standing on the table, sword already drawn. The blade cleared its sheath with a whisper. His coat moved like smoke. Spilled bourbon soaked into the soles of his shoes as he crouched, stepped forward, and swung.
One cut.
Yoon’s head came off like the sword had been waiting for it. It spun once in the air, a blur of silk and skin, then dropped with a sound too soft for what had just happened. Blood followed, bright and fast, arcing across the table. It soaked silver, silk, polished leather. Splattered napkins. Stained velvet. Pooled beneath the feet of men who had ruled Busan’s underworld longer than Yoongi had been alive. Yoon’s body folded in on itself like a puppet cut clean.
The room froze.
Yoongi stood at the center, framed in crystal and blood. His face was flecked red. Still. Unmoved. He rose from his crouch without urgency, eyes flat.
No one spoke. The six remaining bosses kept their eyes on the body or the floor. None dared look at him.
At the edge of the mess, Yoon’s two guards still held their swords. The moment had already passed. One trembled. The other stood stiff, waiting for a bullet that hadn’t come.
Yoongi turned to them. His face didn’t show anger. Or satisfaction. Just that cold certainty, the look of a man who didn’t guess. Who didn’t need to.
He didn’t make a threat. He didn’t have to.
“Fight me,” he said. “Or work for me.”
The two men looked at each other. Loyalty passed between them, brief, reflexive. But it didn’t hold. Not in this blood. Not in this room. They dropped their swords.
“On the floor,” Yoongi said.
The blades hit tile, sharp in the quiet.
“Get behind me.”
They moved, slow, hands open.
“On your knees.”
They knelt.
“Foreheads down.”
They lowered.
“Keep your mouths shut.”
Yoongi turned back toward the table.
No one had moved. Their hands stayed on armrests that no longer felt like theirs. Suits once tailored to power now looked too tight, like their authority no longer fit. These were men who had run cities, ordered executions between drinks, built empires in back rooms. Now they sat like children caught lying, avoiding Yoongi’s eyes, saying nothing.
Even the oldest among them, men who had once terrified nations, kept their heads down. They all understood what had changed. No one here was stupid enough to think they could challenge him. They had all seen what he’d done to reach this seat. No one was angry about his rise.
Boss Bae just hated Boss Yoon for ruining the mood.
Across the room, just beyond the chandelier’s reach, Lynn Easton watched. One leg crossed, cigarette between two fingers, unlit and forgotten. Her eyes never left Yoongi. There was something in her gaze that looked like admiration, but it wasn’t.
It was worship. Not the kind given to saints.
The kind reserved for gods who kill.
No fear in her. No hesitation. She knew what he was. Saw it in him like a reflection. She didn’t flinch. She smiled. Slow. Precise.
Yoongi spoke again. His voice was smooth, low. Velvet over steel. Polished. Corporate. Lethal.
“I’m going to say this in English,” he said to the table, “so you understand exactly how serious I am.”
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. Every word landed with the weight of steel.
“As your leader,” he said, tone flat, “I encourage you from time to time, and always in a respectful manner, to question my logic.”
Lynn translated quietly from her chair, thoroughly amused by his outburst.
“If you’re unconvinced that a particular plan of action I’ve decided is the wisest, tell me so,” Yoongi said. “But allow me to convince you and I promise you right here and now, no subject will ever be taboo.”
He paused.
“Except, of course, the subject that was just under discussion.”
He turned, slow, toward a soldier behind him. A big man, pale and sweating through his collar, standing like he wasn’t sure if movement would get him killed.
“Hand me the head.”
The soldier hesitated, then stepped across the blood-slick floor. He knelt, gripped Yoon’s hair through his gloves, and lifted what was left. Blood still dripped from the neck. The mouth hung slack. The eyes stared, wide and glassy. Whatever they had seen last had stayed with them.
Yoongi took it without ceremony. Like passing a file across a desk. He held it up slightly. Let the face do the talking.
That expression was still there, that last moment of realization, right before death, when the brain knows it’s over but the body hasn’t caught up.
Then Yoongi’s voice changed.
It dropped lower. Rougher. No polish now. No formality. This wasn’t the voice of a man at the head of a boardroom. This was the voice from before. From the alleys. From a life of being told he didn’t belong. A voice that didn’t learn to fight. It had to.
“The price you pay,” he said, every word slow and exact, “for bringing up either my Japanese or American heritage as a negative…”
He raised the head just a little higher.
“…is I collect your fuckin’ head.”
One of the dons swallowed, loud in the quiet. Another froze completely, like even the sound of a breath might draw attention. Under the table, someone moved to cross themselves, then stopped, maybe remembering no god watched over this place.
“Just like this fucker here,” Yoongi added, swinging the head in a small arc. A red line traced the table around him.
He turned in a slow circle, letting them see it.
“And if any of you sons of bitches got anything else to say…”
His voice lifted slightly, barely, but the force cracked through the room like a bullet.
“Now’s the fuckin’ time.”
He looked at each of them, one by one. Daring them. Giving them the chance. No one spoke. No one moved.
“I didn’t think so.”
He dropped the head.
It hit the table hard. A wet, blunt slap. Blood sprayed outward, over linen, over crystal, over the sleeve of the man closest to the corpse. The head rolled once, then again, and fell off the far edge. It landed with a soft thud and disappeared under the tablecloth.
Yoongi turned his back to them.
“Meeting’s adjourned,” he said.
He walked away. Two men who had once sworn to kill him followed without a word. Behind them, the room stayed still. The scent of blood lingered, thick and permanent. The council, once a cabal of giants, sat quiet, stripped down to what they really were.
Men. Just men. And they all stared at the spot where the king used to stand.
Y/N sat curled in the corner of her room. The cheap wooden chair pressed hard into her back, too stiff to be comfortable, but familiar enough not to notice. The smell fan she had screwed into the wall filled the silence with a steady hum.
Memory didn’t work like a book. You couldn’t flip to a clean page and read it straight. It was smoke. Slippery. Every time she tried to hold it still, it shifted. Time didn’t erase anything. It just dulled the edges. The things that used to cut now brushed against her like worn silk. The pain was still there. It just moved to the background, like old music from another room.
Yoongi Min lived there now. She didn’t cry for him anymore. The rage that used to keep her up at night, sweating and twisting in the sheets, was gone. So was the hate. That would have been easier.
Now, she just carried him.
Every night, before sleep dragged her under, she read the list. Names, dates, memories etched in ink, sealed in scars. Yoongi’s name had never moved. Always circled. Always there. Preserved in blood and intent.
Once, the irony amused her. That you could still want vengeance against someone you didn’t hate anymore. Now it just made her tired.
He hadn’t always been part of her story. Once, he was just a name. A man with quiet eyes who appeared one sunburned afternoon in Jalisco, uninvited but perfectly expected. She still remembered the smell of scorched dust, the scream of cicadas in the heat. She had been sitting on the veranda, a bitter drink in her hand, ice melting faster than her patience. The estate’s white walls radiated heat like an oven. She thought she would pass out before anything important happened.
Then he walked in.
Too still. Too composed. The kind of man who looked wrong in heat and noise because he didn’t sweat. Didn’t flinch. And that made him dangerous. Danger didn’t announce itself. It stood still in chaos and watched.
Her first thought was that he was too pretty to be a killer. Not soft, just out of place. The kind of face meant for cathedrals or concert halls, not backrooms and wars. It caught her off guard. She had felt that once before, the year she met Jimin. But Jimin weaponized his beauty. He distracted. Disarmed. Smiled before he cut.
Yoongi didn’t smile.
He was cold. Still. A presence that quieted rooms. The kind of man you didn’t approach. You waited to be seen.
She hadn’t trusted him. But she hadn’t objected either. When Taehyung asked if she approved, she hadn’t looked away. Just gave a brief nod and said, “What’s his name?”
Taehyung had already chosen.
“Cottonmouth,” he said, smiling like it amused him.
Yoongi didn’t stay long. Maybe forty-eight hours. Just long enough to shake the right hands and unlock the right doors. By Monday, he was gone, headed back to Korea with a folder of papers and a one-way ticket in his coat.
At the time, it didn’t seem important. It was 1992. She was still green. Still trying to figure out what kind of weapon she would become.
Back then, her hands hadn’t learned how to break things. Her heart still ached when it rained. She still prayed, sometimes. She hadn’t met Pai Mei yet. That part of her story hadn’t started.
But Taehyung, as always, had seen it coming. He knew she wasn’t ready. Or maybe he just couldn’t bring himself to be the one to turn the key. When it came time to learn the blade, he stepped back. Said it was too personal.
So he made the call. Yoongi picked up. Said yes.
Three days later, she arrived. The cold hit her the second she stepped off the plane. Busan didn’t feel like a city. The skyline was gray, resigned. The Min estate sat on the edge of that resignation, stone and silence, walls older than any name she knew. It didn’t feel like a home.
Yoongi was waiting in the great hall. Standing there, tall, composed, dressed in slate silk that shimmered like oil under low light. He didn’t move. Just watched her walk in with a stare that could empty a room.
So she bowed.
Not out of respect. Not even formality. Instinct. Survival. She knew men like him. You bowed first, or you didn’t get the chance.
She dropped to her knees. Lowered her head. Waited.
He didn’t speak.
The silence stretched, long enough for doubt to slip in and settle. But she held position.
Then, finally, he spoke. Quiet. Exact. His Korean was flawless. Formal. The kind you heard in courtrooms and memorial rites. Not Taehyung’s fast, back-alley Seoul dialect. This was old money. Inherited. Precise.
“Tell me,” he said, “why are you here?”
It wasn’t curiosity. It was a test. A mirror.
She raised her head. Met his eyes.
“Taehyung told me he already spoke with you,” she said, matching his dialect. The formality was stiff in her mouth, shaped by study, not instinct.
Something flickered in his eyes. Maybe approval. Maybe not.
“Our mutual acquaintance said he would send the foreigner I met in Mexico,” he said, kneeling so smoothly it made no sound. “But that’s not what I asked.”
Now they were eye-level. But she still felt beneath him. Not from height. From stillness.
Yoongi didn’t dominate a room. He erased it. Took the air out. Turned it into something cold and hollow. His stillness wasn’t passive. It pressed in, dense and quiet, until you felt it in your lungs. A slow pressure, like being buried.
Then he moved.
No warning. No wind-up. Just motion.
His hand reached out, fingers catching her chin. Not rough. Not kind. Just efficient. The touch felt clinical. His skin wasn’t cold, but it felt like it should have been.
“Why are you here?” he asked again. “If it’s training you want, Taehyung could’ve done it himself. But he didn’t. Why?” His voice didn’t rise. It sank, low, smooth, cold. “Is it because you think I’m closer to the roots of the blade? That your little infatuation with him would cloud the lessons?”
Then he leaned in. Barely. Just enough to close the distance. She caught the faint scent on his skin, wood smoke, paper, ink. His eyes narrowed.
“Or…” The edge in his voice sharpened. “Or is it because Taehyung found a new pet, and you couldn’t stand to watch him play with her?”
It hit like a punch. Not forceful. Precise. A clean shot to the soft place she never acknowledged. It found it anyway.
She didn’t flinch.
Her breath caught, just for a second, but she forced the air out slow. Steadied her gaze.
“Taehyung’s too busy to train a beginner,” she said, voice level. Even. Neutral. “And I wanted to get to know you. We’re closer in age than I am with the others. I thought we could become friends.”
A lie. But polished. Just enough truth to sound casual. Just enough simplicity to sell.
She let the silence stretch. Let it settle between them like pressure.
Something flickered in his face. Not a smile. Not quite mockery. Something colder. He brushed his thumb across her cheek. It could’ve passed as a gesture of comfort.
It wasn’t.
Without breaking eye contact, he switched languages. His English was flawless. Not practiced. Natural. Private-school crisp, but stripped of warmth.
“Well,” he murmured, “we’ll see what you are soon enough, won’t we?”
Then he stood. One clean motion. Effortless. Like movement didn’t cost him anything. He turned and walked away without a glance, already finished with her.
“Lynn will show you to your room.”
The door closed behind him. Quiet. Clean. Final.
She sat for a second in the echo of it. Her face still cold from his fingers.
Then she stood. Picked up the hotel phone. Dialed.
Taehyung answered on the second ring. Warm. Familiar. Almost amused.
“You good?” he asked before she said a word.
She opened her mouth but didn’t get the chance.
The door burst open.
No knock. No warning.
Lynn Easton stepped in like she owned the place. Black silk. Sharp tailoring. Heels like weapons. Her hair pulled back, expression blank. Her presence wasn’t. It filled the room.
Y/N’s instincts lit up.
She didn’t think. Just moved.
The gun was in her hand before Lynn crossed halfway in. Smooth draw. Safety off. Barrel aimed steady between the eyes.
The phone clattered to the floor. Taehyung’s voice buzzed faintly, tinny and distant.
Lynn didn’t blink.
She glanced at the phone. Then at Y/N. Something flickered, disgust. Then it vanished, replaced by something colder.
“I’m here to tell you,” she said, voice flat, dry, “training starts in ten. Main courtyard. Don’t let your little phone call make you late.”
Then she turned and walked out. Like the gun hadn’t mattered. Like the whole thing bored her.
Y/N lowered the weapon. Picked up the phone.
Taehyung was still there.
“You good?” he asked again, voice calm.
“Yeah,” she said. Too quick.
“I have to go. Yoongi’s waiting.”
A pause.
Then, gently: “Show him why I picked you. Don’t hope. Prove it.”
“I will.”
“Goodbye, Alabama.”
“Bye, Tae.”
She hung up. Stood still for a second. Smiled, just barely.
Three minutes later, she was already in the courtyard. She’d memorized the layout her first night. Not for aesthetics. She didn’t care about ancient stone, delicate bonsai, or cherry blossoms floating like confetti. That wasn’t her lens.
She mapped sightlines. Marked exits. Noted cover. Measured steps. Calculated what she could cross, where she could hide, how fast she could move.
Survival started with the map.
The courtyard was bare. Raked gravel. Slate tiles worn smooth by weather and time. Wind chimes overhead, their tones sharp and strange. A single cherry tree leaned in from the far corner, petals drifting down like soft debris.
Yoongi stood beneath it.
Back to her.
Still.
The sun cast his shadow long across the stone, a cut of darkness the light couldn’t touch. His robe was black, edged in silver thread. The fabric moved with the wind. He didn’t.
She crossed the courtyard without sound. Her boots were ghosts on the stone. No training mats. No racks of blades. Just Yoongi, and the wooden sword in his hand, held like he’d never put it down.
He didn’t turn.
“Show me how you hold this,” he said. No greeting. No warmth. Just a command dropped mid-movement, like she was late.
She took the sword in both hands. Grip clean. Textbook. Balanced.
Too clean.
It looked right but felt wrong. Like a pose held too long in front of a mirror.
She tried to channel Taehyung, the way his stance breathed, the way the blade looked grown from his hand. But she wasn’t him. And Yoongi wasn’t here for poetry.
He didn’t sigh. Didn’t speak. Just shifted his jaw, barely.
“No.”
He stepped forward. She didn’t see it happen. One second, still. The next, closer. The sword left her hands without resistance. He didn’t yank it. Didn’t ask. He just took it, like gravity claiming a dropped stone.
Then his hands were on her. Not rough. Not gentle. Just efficient. Fingers folding hers back around the hilt, sliding a thumb, adjusting the angle. One sharp push realigned her elbow. A tap moved her hips. Behind her, he pivoted her knee, nudged a foot half an inch forward. No words. No explanation. Just movement. Precise. Automatic. He worked like someone who had done this a thousand times and expected no questions.
It wasn’t teaching. It was sculpting.
She didn’t resist. It wasn’t instruction. It was command.
Yoongi’s style had no drama. No shouting. No speeches. No honor-bound riddles. Just correction and silence. He didn’t care when her arms began to shake or when her back pulled tight. His hands just kept moving, carving posture into muscle whether it wanted to hold or not.
By the time he stepped back, her entire body burned. Thighs tight. Shoulders screaming. Spine locked. Sweat clung to her jawline, her breathing short and shallow. Her hands cramped around the hilt.
He looked her over once. Then gave a single nod. “Hold that position for one hour,” he said. Flat. Final. “When it’s over, I’ll show you the next.”
She blinked. “An hour?”
The disbelief escaped before she could kill it. Regret followed instantly. Not just because she had questioned him. Because it sounded weak.
Yoongi didn’t answer.
He turned and walked to the bench beneath the cherry tree’s shade. A tea set sat waiting. Steam already curling from the spout. He poured a cup with the same precision he used on her stance. Not rushed. Not careless. Ritual.
He sipped. Closed his eyes. “Don’t speak,” he said. “Your muscles must stay still.”
She stared at his back, jaw tight. Part of her wanted to drop the sword. Just to see what he would do. To make him react.
She didn’t. Because this was still the test.
“There are children who start this training at four,” he said. “Most still fail.”
Another sip.
“You’ve spent two years playing with guns and knives and think that makes you ready.” A pause. “It doesn’t.”
The words didn’t sting. They landed. Quiet. Dry. Accurate. Like facts she had avoided saying out loud.
“Maybe your mind can learn. Maybe. But your body will. One way or another.”
He didn’t look at her when he added, “I’ll hope you leave this place a credit to my mother’s nation. Try not to disappoint, will you?”
It didn’t sound like hope. It sounded like a door closing.
A week and a half later, Yoongi decided to take the crew out. No reason. No plan. No destination. Just motion.
His people didn’t need details. Only direction. And they moved like gears. Quiet. Timed. Unquestioning.
Lynn delivered the message.
Y/N sat cross-legged on her floor, wrapping gauze around bruises that bloomed black beneath her ribs. Each pass dragged against raw skin. Her breath hitched when the edge of the bandage caught bone. She pressed her palm to her side and waited for the pain to settle. It didn’t. It just burrowed deeper. She gritted her teeth and kept going.
She was halfway through when the door opened.
Lynn stepped in like she owned the space. Black silk, tailored sharp. Not a wrinkle out of place. Posture perfect. Chin up. Shoulders square. Eyes level.
Y/N was on her feet before she realized it.
The pain screamed through her ribs, but her body moved on instinct. Her spine locked, and her hand shot out. The gun was in her grip a second later, trained on Lynn’s forehead without hesitation. The silence that followed wasn’t stillness. It was loaded. Bright and taut. Like air stretched too thin.
The only sound was the faint scrape of her phone sliding off the futon and hitting the floor. Taehyung’s voice, mid-sentence, flickered into static.
Lynn didn’t blink. She didn’t move. Her eyes ticked from the gun to the phone, then back to Y/N. Her expression didn’t shift, not really, but something passed through it. Faint. Fleeting. Contempt. The kind too old to be loud. She exhaled once through her nose, slow and quiet, then spoke.
“You’re allowed to come tonight,” she said, voice flat, the kind of flat that could cut glass. “We leave in five.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. Just turned and walked out, the tail of her silk shirt whispering across the doorway as she disappeared down the hall.
Y/N stood there, chest heaving. Her ribs throbbed. Her fingers loosened around the grip of the gun, but she didn’t lower it for a few more seconds. Long enough to make sure Lynn wasn’t coming back.
Then she bent to grab the phone, her hand trembling slightly as she brought it back to her ear.
“You good?” Taehyung’s voice was still there. Low. Calm. Annoyingly perceptive.
She exhaled, steadying herself. “Yeah,” she said. Too fast.
“I have to go. Yoongi’s waiting.”
A pause.
Then: “Show him why I picked you. Don’t hope. Prove it.”
“I will.”
“Goodbye, Alabama.”
“Bye, Taehyung.”
She ended the call and sat there for one beat longer than she needed to, staring at the wall. Then she stood, wincing, and pulled her boots on over aching legs. She didn’t change clothes. No time. The sweat-soaked tank top clung to her skin. Her jeans were still dirty from morning drills. She swiped a sleeve across her mouth to smear whatever lip gloss was left and ran a hand through her hair, tugging it back with a band that had seen better days.
She didn’t care about looking good. She cared about moving fast.
By the time she stepped into the front hall, she had already pushed the pain back down where it belonged. The light in the entryway was warm and gold, soft against the polished wood floors and cool stone walls. Yoongi stood near the door, speaking in clipped Korean to a man she didn’t recognize. He was tall and heavy-set, the kind of man whose hands looked like they knew how to break a jaw without wrinkling his cuffs. Yoongi’s voice was brisk and efficient. His eyes kept flicking toward the hallway.
When he saw her, they stopped. Just for a second. Long enough to notice, not long enough to mean anything. But it wasn’t nothing.
She fell into step behind the others, slipping into formation as if she had always been there. Not too close. Not too far. She knew the rhythm now. She knew the space she was allowed to occupy. Not inside. Not excluded. She was tolerated. Observed. Weighed.
A wiry man with too many rings and a mouth that seemed to smile more during fights than at parties offered her a drink. Something clear in a crystal vial. She shook her head. Not because she trusted him. She didn’t. But she needed every ounce of strength for whatever came next. Her body still buzzed from the morning’s drills. Her legs felt like overused rope. Her back ached. Her palms were raw.
Yoongi had worked her until she collapsed. Then he told her to start over. He hadn’t praised her. He hadn’t spoken at all when it ended. But he hadn’t walked away disappointed either. That counted.
In the narrow space between rejection and recognition, she could feel the pull. Not affection. Not ambition. Something simpler and hungrier. She wanted to be seen. Not as Taehyung’s pick. Not as the outsider with borrowed language and too much to prove. She wanted to be seen as a threat. Something that could not be ignored.
The car ride to the club was silent. Not awkward, but disciplined. Every man sat straight, knees aligned, backs stiff. No one spoke unless necessary. When they did, it was quick, quiet Korean. Clean and controlled. Not meant for her.
Up front, Yoongi sat next to Lynn. He never looked back. The passing streetlights carved his face into pieces, slicing him into segments of brightness and shadow, something not quite whole. When he spoke, the car quieted even more.
Y/N did not catch the words. She didn’t need to. The tone was enough. Low. Sharp. Exact. Lynn nodded once, her arms folded tight across her chest as if she were holding something in. Her reply was short and clipped, but her body shifted. Just a little. Like something inside her had been punched.
Y/N did not know what Yoongi had said. But she felt it in her teeth. He didn’t waste words. When he spoke, something somewhere bled.
The car stopped. She reached for the door, expecting one of the others to go first. Protocol. Order.
But the door opened from the outside.
Yoongi. Still seated, half turned, holding the door open for her. Just once. Just for her. It wasn’t gallantry. It wasn’t habit. It was a move.
Their eyes met. Half a second, maybe less, but it stretched longer than it should have. A flicker of understanding passed between them. Not fondness. Not even acknowledgment. Recognition. The game had begun.
The club was buried beneath an old hotel near the edge of the harbor. It sat tucked under stone and shadow like something too dangerous to live upstairs. There were no signs. No neon. Only a pair of matte black steel doors and a man standing in front of them who looked like he had retired from killing people professionally but still did it on weekends for fun. He didn’t speak. He didn’t check IDs or nod in recognition. He simply stepped aside when Yoongi approached, as if the man had already been through him once.
Inside, the air changed immediately. You felt it before you saw it. The atmosphere had weight. A low hum beneath the skin. Everything was red. Not just in color but in mood. The lighting bled against velvet walls and lacquered surfaces, casting shadows that clung to corners like secrets. Smoke curled from cigars too expensive to ask about, winding into the haze like something alive. The music was live jazz, but not the kind played in hotel lobbies. It had teeth. Brass and muscle. A saxophone wailed from the stage like it had history, like it had seen too much and was tired of staying quiet.
No one here danced. No one shouted over the music or begged for bottle service. This was not that kind of place. You didn’t come here to forget yourself. You came because you already knew exactly who you were and wanted others to know it too.
Every person in the room mattered. Nobody wore name tags. Their reputations arrived ahead of them, carried in rumors and police reports. Laughter was low and precise, like a shared joke you only understood if you had killed the same man. Weapons glinted beneath suits. Flashes of matte black steel and the occasional polished wood handle. Not a threat. A formality.
It wasn’t safe. But it was sacred.
Y/N didn’t need instructions. One glance from one of Yoongi’s men sent her toward the far end of the long table. No words. Just movement. The seat was obvious. Furthest from Yoongi, furthest from Lynn, tucked into the farthest edge of the heat. A place for the tolerated, not the trusted. She sat without protest. She didn’t take it personally. She poured herself a small cup of sake, careful not to let her fingers shake. Her body still ached from training. Shoulders like stone. Wrists sore. Back tight. But she held the cup steady.
The first sip burned. Sharp and clean. It didn’t dull the pain, but it gave her something else to focus on.
From her seat, she could see the whole room. What she saw caught her off guard. Yoongi was laughing.
Not a polite smirk. Not the curated charm he used with government contacts or lieutenants looking for approval. This was real. Mouth open, eyes creased at the corners, head tilted just enough to show his guard had dropped. Briefly, but fully. He leaned toward Lynn, said something low that made her roll her eyes and smirk. Something warm, almost playful. Not the usual predator’s smirk she wore like lipstick. This was different. Lighter. Familiar.
Yoongi tapped the table with two fingers, keeping time with the band. Occasionally, he snapped a word toward the musicians. They responded instantly, adjusting their tempo as if they were tuned to his mood.
She did not recognize this version of him.
This wasn’t the man who had held her elbow too long in the courtyard. Who had made her hold a stance until her thighs screamed and her arms went numb. Who corrected her without speaking, using only pressure and presence. That Yoongi was exacting. Brutal in his quiet.
This one was fluid. Charming. Dangerous in an entirely different way. This was the king.
She lifted her cup again. Just to do something with her hands.
That was when he looked up. Right at her. He did not blink. He did not smile. He only looked. For a moment, the noise in the room faded. Not because it stopped, but because she no longer heard it. Her heart struck once, hard enough to echo in her ears. She stayed still. Silent. She did not need to speak. The air had shifted. She felt it.
Then Yoongi stood. He smoothed his jacket, straightened his cuffs with a flick of his wrists, and walked. Not toward the band. Not toward the bathroom or the bar. He walked toward her.
Y/N did not move. Her cup hovered in mid-air. Everyone noticed, even if they pretended not to. Eyes flicked toward him, then slid away. It was like watching the sun move across the sky. You did not stare, but you felt it.
He reached her side of the table and sat across from her as if the seat had always been his. He did not ask. He did not wait. He claimed it.
The look he gave her was not kind and not cruel. It was measured.
“You like soju?” he asked. His voice was soft, almost casual, as if he were asking about the weather.
He reached across the table for the bottle in her hand and took it as if she had offered it. She had not, but that did not matter.
“I have had it with Taehyung before,” she said. Her voice stayed calm and steady. That was the important part.
Yoongi rolled the bottle between his fingers. The label caught the light and shimmered, a red gleam against his skin.
His mouth curved slightly. Not quite a smile. Something quieter.
“And am I right to believe,” he said in a tone that was light but edged just enough to sting, “that you have been enjoying this one all by yourself?”
She did not answer. Her pulse spoke for her.
“I see Eun-Jae has his own.” He nodded toward a man two seats down. “And Chi-Hun too.” He glanced again.
His voice did not rise. It did not need to. Every word cut deeper. The power was not in volume. It was in the edge.
“That makes this bottle yours.”
Eun-Jae and Chi-Hun moved together in perfect choreography. Each lifted his own bottle. Each poured for the men nearby. They did not look at her. They did not comment. The gesture was enough.
Her breath caught. Not for long and not dramatic, just enough to tighten her throat. Her body knew before her mind did. She had not meant to claim anything. She had not even realized she had. But she had. And now it was out in the open, sitting between them like a challenge carved into stone.
Yoongi did not believe in accidents. He did not believe in second chances either. Not here. Not with her.
The expression he had worn—cool, unreadable, almost amused—vanished from his face in an instant. The bottle tilted slowly in his hand. The last of the sake spilled across the table in a thin stream that soaked into the lacquered surface. It pooled quietly, unmistakably. A slow insult. A liquid reprimand. It did not splash. It bled.
“I will not allow a student still in training to get drunk,” he said. His voice was flat, stripped of warmth. Not angry. Worse than angry. Final. “Not when I have been generous enough to permit her a night of entertainment.”
Something inside her snapped. A coil wound too tight since the day she arrived. Since the first blow she had not been allowed to flinch from. Ten days of drills. Ten days of silence. Ten days of pain stitched into her skin and rules never explained but always punished. Ten days of never knowing if she was doing well because he only told her when she failed. Ten days of swallowing every ache, every humiliation, with no relief and no reward.
Her palms slammed against the table before she even realized she was moving. The sound cracked across the room like a gunshot. She rose halfway from her seat, the motion sharp and defiant. Her voice tore out, scraped raw from restraint.
“Then maybe you should have said that before we left the compound!” she snapped. “How the hell was I supposed to know when everyone else is drinking like it is a wedding?”
The room changed instantly. Breath seemed to vanish from it. Air turned still. Every conversation froze. Heads turned slowly, carefully. Chairs shifted. Hands slid toward weapons, not drawing yet, only resting, waiting. The silence was not empty. It was anticipation. Everyone in that room knew this kind of silence. Everyone had lived long enough to recognize the moment before something breaks.
Yoongi did not blink. He did not move.
He raised one hand.
And everything stopped.
His voice carried no volume, but it had gravity.
“Are you telling me,” he said slowly, “that I was wrong to assume Taehyung would only send someone intelligent enough to know training does not end when the sun goes down?”
Then he stood. No flourish. No threat. Only inevitability. Like the tide rolling in. Like gravity itself shifting around him.
“I do not excuse disrespect under the guise of ignorance,” he said. His words cut cleaner than a blade. “You may not yet understand what it means to belong to something greater than yourself, but you will learn what it means to respect the table you sit at.”
His eyes flicked to Eun-Jae. Then to Chi-Hun. Neither man moved. Neither breathed.
“For the rest of the night,” Yoongi said, turning back to her, his tone sharp and exact, “you will refill their glasses. To repay the insult of serving only yourself.”
He did not wait for a response. He did not look at her again.
“You.”
A waitress near the bar jumped as if struck. Her tray clattered in her hands.
“Bring her tea. Nothing else. And clean this mess.”
The girl moved immediately. No protest. No hesitation.
Yoongi walked away. Not storming. Not hurried. Simply finished. His point made. Nothing left to say.
The air shifted again in his absence. The room exhaled at last. Conversation resumed—too loud, too quick, forced. Nervous noise from people desperate to believe nothing serious had happened.
Y/N did not move. She could not. Her hands shook. Her skin burned, not only with humiliation but with something colder. Rage. Resentment. Shame. Worst of all, the hollow realization that the worst part was not what he had done to her.
It was that she had let it happen.
When Yoongi sat back beside Lynn, it was not him who looked at her.
It was Lynn.
Her smile was small. Precise. Cruel in a way that did not need teeth to draw blood.
They never spoke of it again. They didn’t need to.
Yoongi was not the kind of man who repeated himself, and Y/N was not the kind of woman who asked for wounds to be reopened. Training didn’t work that way. The lesson had been public, sharp, final. The silence that followed was the test. The message was clear.
After that, everything got colder. Sharper. Quieter.
The weeks bled together in a rhythm of pain and repetition. Every morning before the sun rose, Y/N stepped barefoot into the stone courtyard, bokken in hand, breath visible in the cold air. Her muscles ached before she began. Her fingers were raw and calloused. Her shoulders locked tight. Her back burned from the inside out.
Yoongi always appeared without sound. Gray silk draped his frame, hair tied neatly, a porcelain cup of tea in hand. He never greeted her. Never asked if she was ready. He gave one demonstration: a stance, a pivot, a strike. Then he left her to chase it. No instructions. No corrections. No praise.
Only silence.
And eyes. Always watching. From the edges. From shadows. From the corner of her vision where he lingered just long enough for her to feel it. Not seen, but tracked.
He never corrected her with words. He broke her rhythm instead. A faint frown. A raised brow. A soft clack of his own blade knocking hers out of line. Every mistake meant starting over, no matter how far she was into the sequence. No matter how tired. No matter how raw her hands had become.
He didn’t teach. He shaped. He disrupted. And he made it work.
It was a hot afternoon when she cracked. Spring clung to the air like a fever. Blossoms sagged on tired branches. Sweat slid in rivulets down her back. She was on the hundredth repetition of a basic kata, clean and practiced, almost meditative, when his voice sliced from behind her.
“You’ve gotten sloppy since returning from lunch.”
She froze for one second. It was all he needed.
Her hand tightened on the hilt. She didn’t turn. Didn’t answer. But her grip faltered. Her breath grew uneven. The stance that had been perfect a moment ago unraveled in an instant.
Of course he had been watching. Of course he never really left.
“I ran into Lynn at lunch,” Y/N said, her voice taut, held together by will alone. She didn’t explain further. She didn’t mention the way Lynn’s words had cut—soft but cruel, designed to slice without volume.
Her grip tightened until the wood groaned. Splinters bit into her skin. She didn’t loosen her hold.
Yoongi said nothing. He didn’t ask. He simply set down his tea and crossed the courtyard with that same quiet precision, deliberate and certain, without wasted motion. He moved like breath against glass. Soundless. Unshakable.
When he reached her, he took the bokken from her hands. Not with force. Not with kindness. Just decisively, as if the matter were already settled. As if her permission had never been required.
His fingers brushed hers, light and impersonal. Not comforting. Not cruel. Simply measuring damage. He turned her hand over, inspected the raw patches, the forming blister, the embedded sliver of wood at her thumb. He handled her like a craftsman checking his tools. Detached. Efficient.
“She’s jealous, I’m afraid.”
The words came casually, as if he were commenting on the weather. No bite. No warmth. Just fact.
Y/N blinked. “Jealous? Of what, my bruises?”
A flicker passed through his eyes. Amusement perhaps. Perhaps something sharper. His mouth twitched, not quite a smile.
“You haven’t figured it out yet? I thought you were supposed to be clever.”
He didn’t wait for her reply. Instead, he used a nail to lift the splinter from her skin—quick, practiced. Then he took her other hand. His thumbs pressed into old bruises along her palm and forearm, testing how far the tissue had hardened. Every movement was precise. Every touch necessary.
“She was Taehyung’s favorite before you,” he said evenly. “The only reason I ever worked with him was because she asked me to. She called it loyalty. I called it convenience. But I said yes.”
He paused just long enough for the weight to settle. Not dramatic. Just deliberate.
“Then he got bored. She returned here. And he sent you.”
Y/N didn’t flinch, but the words hit low and deep. She had no reply. She didn’t know what she was meant to feel. It wasn’t a compliment. It wasn’t a warning. It was both. It was neither.
He looked up and met her eyes.
“And now you’ve taken my attention too.”
There was no inflection in his tone. No tilt of the head. No softening smile. Only the weight of the words left hanging between them. Then he released her hands.
“You are beginning to have the hands of a samurai,” he said. “You may take the night off.”
And then, like always, he turned. Three steps away. No glance back.
But he stopped.
“Tomorrow,” he said, his back still to her, “I will join your practice.”
It should have felt like something. A victory. Recognition. A sign that she had finally crossed some invisible line. Instead it sank into her gut like stone: cold, heavy, permanent.
The next morning, the courtyard looked unchanged. Gravel neatly raked. Air still. Gray light blooming faint against the sky. But this time Yoongi was already there.
He stood beneath the cherry tree, bokken in hand, its wood darkened by years of use. He didn’t smile. He didn’t greet her.
“I will strike,” he said. “You will counter. You have until I reach you to remember the correct movement. If you fail...”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.
She set her stance. He moved.
No signal. No count. Only sudden motion. The first strike came fast and low, angled at her shoulder. She tried to shift, but too late.
The blow landed with a crack and dropped her to one knee. Pain flared down her ribs, bright and sharp. Her vision burst white at the edges. She didn’t cry out.
“Begin again,” he said.
So she did.
Over. And over. And over.
There were no drills, no warming up, no soft correction. Only his blade cutting through air, his feet silent on stone, and the sick thud of her body reacting too slow. Her shoulders screamed. Her calves cramped. Her palms ached from the grip. Her mind blurred between one motion and the next.
Yoongi gave her nothing. No feedback, no approval, not even disappointment. Only relentless pressure. He moved like a metronome with teeth, steady and ruthless. If she was off by an inch, he found it. If her balance faltered, he exploited it. Every failure reset the clock.
This was not training. It was exposure therapy. And it worked. Not in a single revelation or dramatic breakthrough, but in layers, in silence. Her body began to anticipate. Her feet stopped dragging. Her shoulder no longer ducked instinctively. The bruises still formed, but less often. Her hands stayed firm, her wrists stopped trembling, and she moved on reflex instead of thought.
Yoongi never slowed, yet cracks began to appear—not in him, but in the routine. A breath that came half a second late, a shift in weight before the strike, tiny tells that most would overlook. She did not. She kept them tucked away like cards she was not ready to play.
The change came late in the session. The heat pressed down, blossoms overhead curling in the sun. Her shirt clung to her spine and her lungs burned. She was deep into another repetition, automatic and unconscious, when Yoongi broke pattern. A sharp flick, a feint they had not practiced in more than a week. Her mind did not register it. Her body did. She pivoted and blocked, clean.
Yoongi stopped. He did not speak, did not nod, but something flickered at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile, not exactly, but close. It vanished almost immediately, sealed away behind the mask he always wore. Yet it had been there, and that—coming from Yoongi—was everything.
Something shifted between them, not in any dramatic glance or heavy moment, but in a quiet recalibration that needed no name to be real. She began watching him differently, not only reacting to his strikes but studying the seconds before. The tension in his shoulders. The draw of his breath. The way he set his weight before moving. She was reading him now, not following but predicting, feeling the current instead of bracing against it.
Without thinking, she tested him. It was not planned. Her body moved before her brain caught up, a twitch in the shoulder and a shift in her stance. She stepped in fast, blade sweeping low. It was not perfect, maybe not even wise, but it was honest. He caught it effortlessly, calm, as though he had been waiting for her to try.
That hint of a smile returned, small but unmistakable. Not approval, something more dangerous—recognition. She swung again, this time at a different angle, sharper, more deliberate. His block came quicker, and with it a subtle change in his stance, a pivot that revealed not a mistake but an invitation.
Try again.
And she did. For the next half hour they moved together, not quite sparring and not quite dancing. She pushed, he absorbed. Every inch of progress, every shard of discipline, every stubborn breath left in her body went into those exchanges. He gave her only what she earned, no more and no less. There were no corrections, no lectures, no fire. Only motion. The air between them tightened, charged with effort and silent calculation. For the first time, it did not feel like survival. It felt like progress.
But it could not last.
Yoongi shifted suddenly, swift and deceptively casual, and used a move she herself had tried earlier. A flick, a false step, something familiar that her body was not ready to counter in reverse. Her mind lagged behind, and the strike landed hard. The wooden blade slammed into her ribs with merciless precision, seizing her entire body. Her breath vanished. She fell, coughing, knees hitting gravel as heat exploded white-hot through her side. The courtyard spun.
Yoongi stood above her in silence, the bokken loose in his hand as if he had barely touched her. His breathing remained steady. His shoulders did not move. He looked almost bored.
“Very good,” he said, his voice dry as stone. “Although you would be dead if my sword had an edge. Try to remember faster tomorrow.”
No gloating. No malice. Just fact.
She forced herself upright, ribs protesting with each breath. Her vision swam, but she did not drop the sword. Her grip held—tight, shaky, but there. She had learned at least this much: pain no longer had the right to take things from her.
“Tomorrow?” she rasped.
Yoongi did not blink. “It is not even noon.”
She stared, sweat cooling against her skin, body throbbing in every place that mattered. He turned without waiting, walking with the same casual control, the blade swinging loosely at his side. One hand lifted behind him in a lazy gesture.
Follow.
So she did.
They were not heading to her room. She realized it the moment they took the east corridor. The pattern was wrong. The walls shifted to older stone, the silence heavier. She knew the layout. Taehyung had made her memorize every hall of the estate, every corner, every dead end, just in case. She had never come this far before, but she knew exactly where they were going.
Yoongi’s wing. Private. Off-limits. No one lingered there unless summoned.
At the end of the hall, he slid open a door and a wave of heat spilled out, thick with cedar and citrus and something older, like sun-warmed earth or smoke from the right kind of fire. The bath sprawled across stone as though it had grown from the earth itself. Sunken deep, carved clean, it sent steam curling into the air in long, slow threads. No marble. No gold. Only simplicity that dared anyone to call it lacking.
Yoongi stepped aside, leaving just enough room for her to pass.
“Your body is bruised. Your muscles are tight,” he said in the same even tone he used when calling a strike. “This will help.”
Not quite an offer, though it sounded like one. It carried weight, an order softened at the edges.
She looked at him. “Are you joining me?”
One brow lifted with faint amusement. “You are not interesting enough yet.”
He walked past her then, swallowed by the steam as if it belonged to him. The door slid shut behind him with a sound too soft to echo.
She stood there for a second and let the warmth reach her skin. The scent of yuzu and cedar clung to her clothes. The stone under her feet radiated quiet heat. For the first time in weeks, no one was watching.
She set the sword down.
The steam curled around her arms, climbed her spine, and softened the places that ached the most. Her ribs hummed where the strike had landed. Her shoulder blades loosened. Something deep inside her, the part that had gone tight and silent, let go. Not all at once, but a little.
Then the door slid open again.
Yoongi stepped into the steam without a word. Bare-chested, robe hanging loose at his hips, sash in one hand. His presence did not change with the space. He moved the same way he always did, with that silent, deliberate ease that made you forget you were watching something dangerous. Nothing in his posture acknowledged that she was there, standing in the doorway to his private sanctuary. It was as if her presence had already been accounted for, expected, filed neatly under inevitable.
“This is my bath,” he said, calm and even, like he was offering her a history lesson. “I thought you might appreciate something more civilized than the training hall showers.”
He folded the robe with practiced care, every motion tidy and purposeful. Not fussy, only controlled. Every crease smoothed, every corner aligned. He set it aside, then turned to the cold-water spout set into the stone wall, twisted the valve, and let the water slam against his skin.
No flinch. No breath hitch. Just the rhythmic sound of cold water hitting muscle and stone, echoing through the steam-heavy air.
She did not step forward yet. She only stood there, body worn down to the bone, every joint and bruise aching in protest. Her eyes stayed on him, though. The shape of his back. The way water sheeted off him, like even the elements could not quite stick. The stillness he carried, too perfect to be natural, too practiced to be peaceful. It should have unnerved her. Instead, it pulled at something deeper, something she did not want to name.
“Why?” she asked, keeping her voice low and steady. “Why bring me here?”
He looked over his shoulder. No smirk. No raised brow. Just a calm, clear look, as if he already knew what she was really asking.
“Consider it a reward,” he said. “You have not complained. Not once. Even when your body failed you. Or”—a faint pause sharpened the air between them—“maybe I just wanted a closer look at the strange girl who stayed, when I expected her to be gone before the week ended.”
She let out a short breath, half-scoff, half-laugh. Then peeled off her shirt. Slowly. Not to perform, only because it hurt. The fabric clung to her, damp with sweat and blood. She stripped it away piece by piece, revealing skin blotched purple and yellow, deep reds where the bruises still bloomed fresh. She did not hide them. Each one had cost her something.
“I do not think you know Taehyung very well,” she muttered, dropping the shirt onto the wooden bench behind her. “He does not exactly allow failure. I could not—”
“You could have,” Yoongi cut in. He was still not looking away. “Do not insult me by pretending you stayed because of him. That is not the woman who has been bleeding in my courtyard every morning. The last one he sent left before sundown.”
And just like that, he stepped into the bath.
No noise. No fanfare. Only water parting around him like it knew better than to resist.
“You are here because you chose to be,” he said. “Because whatever waits for you in Mexico scares you less than I do. And that is what makes you dangerous.”
The water hissed against his skin, steam rising around him. He closed his eyes and sank down to his collarbones, not to relax but to reset. Like a weapon cooling after too much use.
She followed. Slow. The heat hit her like a wall, hot enough to bite and chase breath from her lungs, but she kept going, deeper into the water until it wrapped around her aching limbs. It felt more like a purge than a relief. The bath did not comfort. It stripped.
Yoongi watched her.
Not hungrily. Not even curiously. Just like a man who knew how to read pain and wanted to see how she carried it. She felt him clock her every wince, every breath, every way she tried not to fold.
“I will admit,” he said quietly, “I did not think you would still be here the next morning. Or the one after. I kept waiting for a note. Or an empty room.”
She let her arms rest along the stone ledge, eyes half-shut, the heat working into her bones. And then, unexpectedly: “I never even thought about leaving.”
The words surprised her more than they surprised him. She had not realized it until she said it. She had given herself no options, no way out. Just one road forward, no matter the bruises it collected.
“It was not fear,” she added after a pause. “Not of Taehyung. Not of you. It was just…” Her voice cracked slightly, not with emotion but with exhaustion. “I could not fail. I could not be ordinary.”
Yoongi did not nod. He did not soften. But something passed through his gaze, quick and subtle. A quiet shift behind the eyes. Recognition. Like two hunters finally realizing they were not hunting each other. They were the same species.
He said nothing for a long moment. Then:
“A shame,” he murmured, “that you may someday be my equal.”
The words landed like a quiet blow. Not praise. Not warning. Just a truth, delivered with all the weight of something final.
She did not speak. She only let it settle in the place she kept the things that mattered most: the bruises, the insults, the small, hard reasons she got back up every morning.
By the time she had found the shape of a response, he was already moving again.
He stepped through the water, steam curling around his body, and stopped just beside her. Not close enough to touch, not yet, but close enough that she could feel him.
His hand came to rest on her shoulder. Measured. Still.
“Turn around,” he said.
She did, but not without asking, sharp and flat, “Why?”
His grip did not tighten. His voice did not shift.
“Your body flinches when you move, when you are touched. You are locking up from pain. Let me help.”
No invitation. No implication. Just fact.
So she turned, braced her forearms on the stone edge, and exposed her back to him. It should have felt like surrender. It did not. It felt like a quiet kind of trust.
His hands started at her shoulders. Not soft. Not hard. Just practiced. He found the bruises first, the places where muscle had tightened around injury, and adjusted his touch accordingly. His thumbs moved with clinical precision, pressing into old tension and coaxing it loose.
He did not speak. Neither did she.
Steam thickened around them, clinging to skin, softening the sharp edges of pain. Her body stopped resisting. The ache remained, but the weight of it changed. It no longer felt like failure. Only effort.
And Yoongi’s hands stayed steady, never drifting, never teasing. Just working. Like she was a map he already knew by heart. Like she was not broken. Only rebuilding.
For the first time in a long time, she let herself feel that. Not comfort, but something close.
His fingers brushed the curve of her breast.
Her entire body locked. Not from fear, not entirely, but from something else. Something older, older than instinct. Her spine jerked upright, colliding softly with his chest behind her. The bath seemed smaller. The air heavier. Steam closed in like a held breath.
She did not move again. Neither did he.
They only held there, suspended, as if the moment might break if either of them did more than breathe.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was low. Measured. Strained but steady.
He exhaled through his nose, slow and quiet, deliberate.
“I think you already know.”
No heat. No teasing. No playacting. Only honesty, dropped between them like a stone in still water.
“If you want me to stop,” he said, even softer now, “say it. I will not touch anything not freely given.”
Her breath faltered. Not at his words, but at the certainty in them. So calm. So absolute. The steam swirled between them, thick and clinging. She felt it against her face, in her lungs, wrapping around her hesitation like rope. Her voice cracked without meaning to.
“Taehyung…”
His name came out as a whisper, but Yoongi’s response didn’t miss a beat.
“Taehyung,” he said flatly, not as a question but as an answer, “would have had someone else in his bed before your plane even landed.”
Not cruel. Not bitter. Just fact.
And the worst part was that she knew he was right.
She didn’t speak again. She couldn’t. The words weren’t there. Only the heat, the ache, the tension that had never fully left her since day one. All that training, all that silence, all that held-in rage coiled too tight for too long.
Yoongi leaned in. Not close enough to crowd her, but enough that she could feel his breath at the base of her neck. Not a move, a signal. A question.
“Don’t pretend you haven’t been watching me,” he murmured. “Don’t pretend Lynn didn’t have reason to be angry. I told you she was jealous. What did you think she was jealous of?”
His hand slid across her stomach. Slow. Measured. Not pressing. Not assuming. Just there. Still waiting. Still giving her the choice.
“Say the word,” he said again, low and level. “And I’ll stop.”
She should have said it. She should have shut it down. Draw the line. Protect herself. Retreat behind the layers she had built to survive this world.
But she didn’t.
Her eyes closed. Not out of surrender, but something deeper. Something sharper. Not submission. Control.
A sound left her, quiet and raw, like breath torn from somewhere near her ribs, as his fingers moved lower between her thighs.
It wasn’t about lust. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even comfort. It was defiance. Against the pain. Against the bruises. Against every silent rule she had bent to. This was her crossing a line no one else would define for her.
She didn’t melt into his touch. She stepped into it. Not for him. For herself.
For the first time in too long, the choice was hers. And she took it.
Later, years later, she would remember the bath. The heat. The weight of his hand. The sound of his breath against her ear. Not with regret. Never with regret.
She remembered because it mattered. And in her world, memory did not fade. It sharpened. It cut cleaner the further away it got.
That night, when the list was finally made, when the names were written in ink instead of blood, she started at the beginning. Not with Taehyung. With Yoongi. That was why he had to be first. Not because he was the worst, but because he was the closest.
The charcoal slipped from her fingers, leaving a faint black streak on the desk. She didn’t pick it up. She just stared at the sketch.
Yoongi’s face stared back. Too precise. The downturn of his mouth. The stillness behind his eyes. That composure she knew better than anyone.
She hated how well she remembered. Because remembering meant the wound was still open. And an open wound was still a weapon.
Back then, she had held it for his approval. Now, she held it for blood.
She stood slowly, vertebrae popping like worn links in a rusted chain. Her spine stretched, uncoiling with the reluctant grace of something long kept in a cage. Her body did not feel like hers anymore. It did not even feel human. It felt sculpted, chiseled by pain, and honed by something colder than purpose. Something sharper than memory.
A knock shattered the stillness. She flinched instinctively, muscles wired tight from too many surprises that came with blood on the other side.
“Y/N, can I come in?”
Hoseok. His voice, always a balm, softened her edges just enough to remind her she had not been born with claws. Around him, she could almost remember being someone else. Someone less dangerous, more whole. She exhaled, slow and careful.
“Yes.”
The door creaked, ancient wood straining against metal hinges. He didn’t step inside. There wasn’t enough room for two people to stand without touching, and they had never been the kind to brush shoulders casually. She moved to the bed. He took her seat without hesitation. His eyes flicked to the drawing on the table, unimpressed.
“You’ve been thinking,” he said, tone dry.
Y/N let out a low, humorless chuckle. “I’m always thinking, ahjussi.”
Hoseok’s face contorted into that familiar grimace. She had always liked getting under his skin.
“I told you not to call me that.”
“No,” she replied, tilting her head, “you asked me not to.”
That made him laugh, the real kind. The kind that cracked open the air and let warmth bleed through. Rare and reckless. She joined him, not meaning to, but needing to.
Then the moment snapped shut like a trap.
“You hide behind words, Mamba,” he said, gaze locking onto hers with that old soldier’s weight. “But we both know you don’t say much of anything at all.”
The laughter died like a match in water. Hoseok never wasted time on half-truths.
“You’ve been in here two hours,” he added, “and all you’ve got is a rat’s face.”
She had no defense. He wasn’t wrong.
“Min Yoongi,” he said, voice low and flint-hard, “is your enemy now. Don’t forget that.”
She nodded once. A stiff, mechanical gesture. She knew it. She knew it in her bones. But knowing and acting were oceans apart. Yoongi had been her friend. He had also tried to kill her. The betrayal lived under her skin like a buried shard of glass. It didn’t make sense. Maybe it never would. But sense was not a prerequisite for vengeance.
He helped murder her daughter. He beat her while she was still carrying that fragile, innocent life. He killed Tommy. He opened the chapel door. He didn’t stop Taehyung when the gun was raised. He didn’t flinch when her world was reduced to ash. He chose his place at the table over her life. Over all their lives.
And she would be the one to remove him from it.
Because whatever they had once been, Yoongi had made sure they could never be that again.
“Are you listening?”
She blinked, dragged out of the spiral. Hoseok watched her through the hazy yellow light, and in that dull glow he looked younger. Sadder. Like something in him was wearing thin.
“No,” she said, honest and small. “Not as well as I should be.”
“Are you afraid?”
“No,” she whispered. “I just… can’t understand how any of this happened.”
The silence that followed made the room feel smaller.
“I want to tell you a story,” Hoseok said quietly. His voice slipped into Korean like a man retreating into the safety of his own skin. English was too sharp for grief. Too foreign to carry what lived in his chest. “Not because I think it will help. But because maybe you’ll do better than I did.”
He turned the chair around and straddled it, arms resting across the back. His robe fell open at the knee, revealing loose black cotton pants worn thin by years of habit. He looked almost relaxed, but his eyes betrayed him—stormy, hollowed out by memory.
“I met Taehyung when he was twenty-four. I was almost thirty. I had been making swords since I was a boy. My grandfather raised me with a hammer in one hand and a whetstone in the other. That was all I had. That was all I knew. That was how Kim Taehyung found me.”
His voice carried the rhythm of something rehearsed too often in silence. Not regret anymore, just the ghost of it, dulled with age.
“He was magnetic,” Hoseok went on. “Fast. Wild. Smarter than he let on. We started sparring in the alleys of Okinawa. Half-serious at first, then real. He was the only man I could never beat easily, and when I did, it was never by much. We bled together more than once. I trusted him with everything.”
He leaned forward, fingers drumming against the desk.
“Korea was behind me. My father. His belt. The silence after my mother died. I left it all to rot. But Sookie came with me. She was seventeen. Still called me oppa like she was five. Still believed the world was fair if you worked hard enough. My baby sister.”
His voice caught on that word, and he cleared his throat.
“She was stubborn. Mom named her after some American girl she saw on TV once. Sookie. Sounded dumb to me then. Still does. But it stuck. Everything stuck to her—smiles, people, hope. When she met Taehyung, I knew she was in love with him before he even looked her way.”
The bulb overhead flickered, but Hoseok’s face didn’t change.
“I told him to leave her alone. He promised. For a while, he kept it. But she wore him down, and he let himself be worn. A year later, he asked for my blessing. I gave it. I told myself he would never hurt her. He was loyal. I thought maybe he’d be family.”
Y/N’s voice came out soft as breath. “What changed?”
“She almost died,” Hoseok said flatly. “Ambush outside the noodle shop. Someone we knew. Someone Taehyung had history with. She was so scared after that. Told me she wanted out. Out of Japan. Out of him. I thought that would be it. She left with me. We went home to Gwangju. Bought a little house. She opened this kimbap shop. I fixed the walls and built shelves. She would hum while she cooked.”
His eyes drifted, unfocused. “That was the last time life felt small enough to hold.”
He touched his lower lip, as if searching for the taste of that last good meal with her, and maybe he couldn’t find it.
“Moon-Byul came into our lives by accident. Street kid with quick hands. One day he stopped a couple of punks from robbing the shop. I watched from the attic window. He had no blade, just a broken mop handle, and I thought—this kid might actually be something. I took him in. Trained him. We forged swords together. The attic became sacred.”
Y/N stayed motionless, her breath shallow.
“Then Taehyung came back. And Sookie let him in without hesitation. Just smiled and said he missed her. As if it were that simple. As if he hadn’t dragged violence to her door the first time. I saw it then. The rot. The way he turned everything around him to ash.”
His voice hardened.
“Two weeks later the Italians came looking for him. He had crossed someone. Money, territory, who knows. Instead of warning me, instead of protecting her, he took her to bed. He let her wake up to gunfire.”
The silence was suffocating.
“They stormed the house just after sunrise. Moon and I held the attic with whatever we had. Sookie tried to run. They gunned her down in the kitchen. Shot six times. She died on the tile, blood in her teeth. I slipped in it trying to reach her.”
Y/N’s hand trembled.
“And Taehyung? He killed everyone. Efficient. Beautiful, even. Like a painting. Then he looked at me, calm as ever, and said, ‘At least she went quick, Hobi-ah.’”
Hoseok stared at the floor. “That was when I knew. He wasn’t human anymore. And maybe neither was I.”
The breath he drew rattled like something breaking.
“I let him kill with my steel. I made those blades. I admired him. Protected him. And I never cared what it cost until it was my doorstep he brought death to. Until it was my sister.”
Y/N’s eyes glistened, but she didn’t look away.
“I challenged him that night. We fought in the dark, just like the old days. I won. First clean strike to the thigh. Second to the ribs. He bled all over my floor. And when I stood over him, blade at his throat, I couldn’t finish it. I let him crawl away. I watched him limp down my hallway. I have never seen him since.”
The silence that followed was a grave too big for words.
“And that,” Hoseok said, raw now, “is why I don’t make swords anymore. That’s why I don’t call him brother. And that’s why I’m telling you this. Not for pity, but so you understand what it costs when you wait too long to cut the monster’s head off.”
He looked at her then, truly looked. Not at the girl who had first stumbled through his door bloodied and silent, but at the woman who had survived everything after. The woman with a sword across her thighs and fire behind her teeth.
“Don’t wait like I did,” he said.
The air cracked with it. She shut her mouth on whatever retort crawled up her throat, teeth grinding until her jaw ached. He didn’t let her look away.
“If I had killed him in Okinawa like I wanted to,” Hoseok said, each word deliberate, “Sookie would still be alive. And you would not be this shadow of yourself, so full of rage and resentment. You would be in Alabama. Probably drunk in some dive bar, bragging about the time you stabbed a man with a pool stick in El Paso for grabbing you. You would have gone home. You never would have crossed paths with a man in a black button-down who thought ordering you a margarita was enough to own you. You would have had a life, Y/N. One worth fighting for. One worth keeping.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his shoulders sagging under the weight of the words he had carried too long. His voice was hoarse, not from shouting but from truth. Sharp and raw as steel dragged across bone.
“But instead,” he said slowly, “you’re here. Sitting in the wreckage of a life you never asked for. Caught in the wake of a man who turned your death into currency. Who stood there, watching, while four animals stomped your pregnant belly. A man who hates you, and can’t help but feel contempt towards you.”
His voice cracked at the edge, but he did not break. He would not, not in front of her. Not when she was holding it all in just like he used to.
She didn’t respond. She didn’t have to. Her silence was thick with memory and rage.
“They all deserve to die,” Hoseok said, quieter now, but no less cutting. “Yoongi. Taehyung. The whole pack of them. Maybe even us. We are not innocent, Mamba. We stopped being that a long time ago. We are sharpened edges and bad decisions. We are the end result of what happens when you trade mercy for survival. You and me? We are the kind of people others have to survive.”
He glanced up at her. His eyes were softer now. Something fatherly. Something fraternal. Something fierce.
“You remind me of Sookie. Not because you are gentle. You are not. But because you feel everything too deeply. You wear your wounds on the inside, and you carry them like armor. That is what will kill you, if you are not careful.”
A beat passed. Then another.
“If you want to live,” he said, “you need to stop pretending you are prey. You made your choice already. Stop circling it. Stand in it.”
Y/N didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. She moved like something uncoiling. The sword on her lap shifted as she leaned forward, the metal catching the light as if it recognized her now. As if it knew where it was going.
Hoseok saw it. And he stopped her, gently.
“I have something for you,” he said.
He rose and left without another word, his steps quiet but sure. She sat in the hush he left behind, breath slow, mind loud. The sketch of Yoongi stared up at her again—unfinished, but not incomplete. His face was already a tombstone.
When Hoseok returned, he was holding something wrapped in dark crimson cloth. It looked ceremonial. Heavy. He placed it on the desk, then unwrapped it as though unveiling a relic.
It was a sword. Not one for battle. Not meant for war.
It was beautiful. Clean. Silent.
She didn’t touch it.
“What is this?” she asked.
“My final blade,” he said. “The last one I ever forged, except for yours. I made it for Sookie. She never got the chance to hold it.”
Her chest tightened. Her hands clenched in her lap.
It was unlike the weapons she was used to. No bloodthirst in its shape. No vanity in its lines. It was simple. Pure. A shikomizue, disguised in feminine wood, sakura etched into the handle with the gentleness of a promise.
“Why give this to me?” she asked, voice barely a whisper.
Hoseok’s expression softened in a way that nearly broke her.
“Because it was made for someone I loved,” he said, “and now it belongs to someone who knows what it means not to use it.”
She picked it up slowly, reverently. It did not hum like her own sword. It did not beg for violence. It sat in her hands like something sacred.
“I won’t use it,” she said. “Not ever.”
“I know,” he replied. “That’s why I am giving it to you.”
She set it aside, her eyes burning.
“Thank you, Hoseok.”
He nodded once, then looked at her with that same worn, protective weight.
“You will be outnumbered.”
“I know.”
“You will probably die.”
“I know.”
He studied her face. Saw the steel. The sorrow. The storm.
“You will need to move like a shadow,” he said. “Yoongi’s men will feel you coming. If they do—”
“If they get wind I am coming,” she said, “that compound will be crawling with bodies before I even cross the street.”
“And do you want to take on all eighty-eight of the Crazy 88 alone?”
“No,” she said. “That would be less than ideal.”
Hoseok let out a short breath that landed somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. Something almost human passed through his expression. Soft. Worn. Vulnerable in a way she had not seen in years.
“I’m going to miss you.”
She looked toward the door. Her shadow stretched long across the floor, sword glinting at her side. Her stomach clenched. She hadn’t eaten. Couldn’t. Hoseok had tried earlier, but nerves had shredded her appetite.
“I’ll come back,” she said.
“I hope so.”
She turned to go. The moment tasted final.
“Y/N.”
She stopped.
“If you find him, and you hesitate, don’t wait for a second chance.”
She looked back at him, steady.
“There won’t be one.”
No words. She walked out, sword in hand, steps steady. She made it to the kitchen before he caught up to her, his hand landing gentle on her shoulder.
“Put the sword away,” he murmured. “I’ll bring you some soup. You can eat in your room tonight.”
She turned her head slightly. “Will you eat with me?”
He nodded. “If you’d like me to.”
“I would.”
He didn’t speak again, just disappeared around the corner. And for a moment the house was quiet, and warm, and almost kind.
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chimcess ¡ 4 days ago
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⚔︎ Chapter Four: The Man from Gwangju Pairing: Taehyung x Reader Other Tags: Assassin!Taehyung, Assassin!Reader, Assassin!Jimin, Dad!Jimin, Assassin!Yoongi, Gang Leader!Yoongi, Assassin!Namjoon, Swordmaster!Hoseok, Chef!Hoseok, Pimp!Seokjin Genre: Assassins! AU, Exes!AU, Lovers to Enemies, Action, Comedy, Suspense, Martial Arts, Drama, Thriller, Romance (if you squint), Heavy Angst, Violence, 18+ only Word Count: 23.9k+ Summary: A former assassin awakens from a four-year coma after her ex-lover Taehyung tries to kill her on her wedding day. Driven by revenge for the loss of her unborn child and stolen life, she creates a hit list and embarks on a ruthless mission to take down everyone responsible. Warnings: Violent thoughts, implied miscarriage, flashbacks, PTSD, mental illness, guns, other weapons, traveling, arguing, bickering, use of katana, this is a pretty tame chapter all things considered, not many warnings for this one, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: I apologize if I miswrote any of the Korean I used in this chapter. I don't speak fluently and relying on Google can be difficult.
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Horizon City was somehow worse than El Paso. The sky pressed down like a lid on a pot, trapping the heat until the air itself felt heavy. No clouds. No breeze. Just that dry, punishing stillness that made the world feel abandoned. The pavement shimmered. Buildings sagged under the weight of it, their paint bleached to bone, their windows hot to the touch.
Down the center of it came the Pussy Wagon, too loud, too yellow, a smear of wrong color on a sunburned road. It didn’t belong here, not among rusted trucks and dead air conditioners. Heads turned. Conversations stopped. A woman at the pump froze mid-swipe, squinting like she wasn’t sure if she was awake. No one spoke. In Horizon, you didn’t ask questions unless you wanted answers that ruined sleep.
She didn’t care who stared.
Her bare feet pressed into the warped rubber floorboard, soles black from gas station dirt and bathroom tile. Every joint ached, stiff from too much stillness. Her spine creaked when she shifted. Muscles tugged like they’d forgotten their work. But it was pain she trusted, the kind that proved she was awake.
She turned off the main drag and coasted into a strip mall that had been dying for years but refused to finish. Half the shops were empty, windows papered with curling FOR LEASE signs. The others hung on out of spite. One, TexStyle Western Wear, flickered under a crooked sign. She killed the engine and let the truck tick and groan like it resented being roused.
The pavement nearly blistered her feet. She staggered once, steadied, then limped toward the storefront. Her hips screamed, her legs protested, but they worked. She didn’t look back.
Inside, the temperature dropped hard. The AC blasted chemical cold, making her skin prickle. Lights buzzed overhead, too bright, too dim, one always flickering. Country music bled from a speaker behind the counter, slow and stitched together with heartbreak. She knew the tune. She knew the kind of place this was: the kind where you could walk in dripping blood or ghosts and no one cared, as long as you didn’t yell or steal.
Her scrubs rustled as she moved through racks, baggy and stained, reminders of a place she wouldn’t name. She trailed her fingers along the denim, grounding herself. Jeans. A tank top. A jacket lined with shearling she didn’t need but wanted anyway, something to hide behind. Boots under the clearance rack: red leather, white stars dulled to cream. She pulled them on, breath catching at the pain in her thighs, but when she stood, they fit.
At the register, she dropped Buck’s damp bills on the counter. The clerk didn’t look twice. Just bagged her scrubs like trash.
Outside, the sun hadn’t softened. Her boots struck the pavement sharp as punctuation. She still ached, but she didn’t limp.
The truck’s interior hit her like a furnace. Metallic heat, vinyl, old fuel. The dashboard cracked, the rearview crooked, the windshield spiderwebbed. Her reflection blurred in broken glass, and she let it. She gripped the wheel, palms sticky. For a moment she only sat, list forming in her head, incomplete but enough. One more stop before a nameless motel.
She turned the key. The engine coughed, then rumbled alive, low and angry, a sound she was starting to mistake for comfort. Gravel spit behind her as she peeled out, Horizon City sliding by in the same monotony of sun and collapse.
The next place barely qualified as a department store: a sun-bleached block shouting about bargains to an empty lot. Something fried, chicken maybe, stank through the heat. She parked far from the door. Her legs still felt untrustworthy, but she needed to walk. Make them remember.
Inside, the cold slapped her. Too bright, too sterile, smelling of bleach and melted candy. The place buzzed with noise: screaming kids, arguing parents, a tantrum echoing from toys. She kept her eyes forward. People looked. She felt it, half-second glances sliding over scars and scuffed boots. She didn’t care.
She picked up a basket and drifted to the camping aisle. The shelves were thin, but she found what she needed. A folding shovel, its handle thick and heavy like a weapon. A short-handled pickaxe with a fiberglass grip slick under her palm. A flashlight that looked sturdy enough to swing. Waterproof matches in a bright orange case. And a map of Texas, worn soft at the folds, stained with someone else’s fingerprints. She ran her thumb over the crease before dropping it into the basket. She’d be the last to touch it.
She passed the clearance bins without slowing: Father’s Day mugs, novelty socks, foam can holders with jokes no one ever laughed at. Junk for people she didn’t know. Junk for people who weren’t her. In stationery, she stopped just long enough to grab a plain black notebook and a pack of felt pens.
The basket was filling, too heavy. She set it down and reached for another, the metal frame cool and rough, already rusting at the welds. This one she filled faster, almost frantic. Apricot shampoo and the matching conditioner. A plain white bar of soap, unscented. A bag of cheap pink razors. A loofah she didn’t bother to look at. Deodorant. Face wash. Lotion. Each item clattered against the others, no pause between them. She didn’t want to smell like blood anymore, or sweat, or antiseptic. She wanted the hospital scrubbed off her, layer by layer. She wanted her body back, her skin hers again.
Across the aisle, glass jars lined the shelves, full of bath salts in candy colors. Bubble bath bottles in bright, desperate packaging. A SALE sign shouted promises no one believed. She hadn’t planned to stop, but her feet slowed, drawn by a pull she hated. A scent she didn’t want but couldn’t shake.
An older woman was already there. White hair twisted into a bun, movements slow, deliberate, elegant. She opened jars one by one, breathing each in carefully, gently, as though the act itself was sacred. Y/N didn’t look at her. She just reached for the nearest jar and twisted it open.
Lavender.
The smell hit hard. Her stomach flipped. Her chest locked tight. She was back under hospital lights, antiseptic sharp in the air. IV bags swaying. Monitors chirping in steady beeps. Footsteps soft against tile. A cool hand brushing her hair while a voice whispered a lie: You’re going to be okay.
She snapped the lid closed and shoved the jar back like it had burned her.
Her hand shot out for another, no thought, no reading the label. She breathed deep. Citrus. Tropical. Artificial. But it worked. It cut through the memory, broke it apart. She dropped the jar into her basket.
The next bottle she grabbed was cracked, label peeling, its cap leaking a sticky line down the side. Vanilla, it claimed. She didn’t care. It wasn’t lavender.
At the register, she dumped both baskets onto the belt without ceremony. Her mind spun in jagged circles: Taehyung’s reflection in a rearview mirror, the clean white of hospital sheets, Sam Wallace’s cologne drifting in the heat of summer, the silence of her mother’s kitchen. And beneath it all, always there, the one memory that refused to wash out: her father.
The cashier looked barely old enough to work, hoodie strings chewed thin, nails chipped, one earbud still in. She didn’t speak. Just scanned.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Plastic bags crinkled as they filled. Lavender still clung to Y/N’s hands, her cuticles, her collar, her breath. And then, soft as a whisper in the dark, she heard it: Our Father, who art in heaven…
“Your total is thirty-two seventy-one.”
The voice cut through. She blinked, counted out the money, slid it across. The girl gave her change and the receipt without looking up.
“Have a good one,” she mumbled.
Y/N’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. She studied the girl’s face, saw the dull shadow of apathy in her eyes.
“You too,” she said, her own voice rough, low, like it had clawed its way up from somewhere deep.
She gathered her bags, two in one hand, the third looped over her wrist, and walked for the exit. The automatic doors opened with a hiss, like the store was exhaling her into the heat.
The Pussy Wagon waited at the edge of the lot, its paint so bright it looked like it might hum in the sun. Red flames curled down the sides, shimmering just enough in the heat to look alive. It didn’t look fast. It didn’t look mean. It looked like a mistake someone hadn’t lived down. She didn’t care. She kept walking, boots heavy against the asphalt, bags swinging like pendulums against her knees. Her spine throbbed. Her legs burned. The sun bore down like it wanted to erase her. She kept going.
The truck hit her like a furnace when she opened the door: stale air, rubber, sun-baked vinyl, the faint stink of sweat that wasn’t hers. She didn’t flinch. She cranked the window down halfway, tossed a bag onto the passenger seat, and climbed in. The vinyl clung to her thighs. She turned the key. The engine coughed, sputtered, then growled alive. Reluctant, but steady. It always caught.
She pulled out slow. Tires groaned on the blacktop. Horizon City slid past in layers of heat: fast food joints with sun-bleached signs, payday loan offices in buildings yellowed with age, gas stations with broken pumps, liquor stores called EZ Mart and Last Stop. Dust. Concrete. The occasional palm tree, warped and brittle under the sun, too stubborn to fall but long past thriving.
She didn’t need to look twice. She knew this town. She’d lived in three just like it. She’d died in one.
When the storefronts thinned, she turned onto a cracked lot overrun with crabgrass and potholes. At the far end squatted a two-story motel that looked abandoned mid-construction. Stucco walls blistered, paint curling in sheets, rust bleeding from the windows. Above the office, a crooked neon sign buzzed: The Texican. The “i” blinked like it was losing the fight.
She parked beneath the second-floor walkway, under Room 212. The blinds were shut, but one slat bent outward like a broken tooth. She stared for a beat, then shifted her weight, grabbed her bags, and stepped out.
The lobby smelled of mildew and old smoke. The air felt stale, sealed in too long. A ceiling fan turned slow, clicking each time its blade passed the same rusted edge. The desk at the back looked like it had been rescued from a junkyard. Behind it, a man slouched low in his chair, tank top gray with sweat, a serpent tattoo curling down his arm. His eyes were on a screen.
When he finally looked up, his gaze crawled over her: boots, thighs, waist, lingering where it shouldn’t. Her jaw tightened, but she didn’t blink. She pulled out a roll of bills and dropped it on the counter.
He dragged it close with two yellowed nails. “Night or week?” His voice was flat, dry, like gravel at the bottom of a well.
“Night.”
He grunted, slid her a keycard, and dropped his gaze again. No greeting. No smile. Exactly what she wanted.
She took the key and left.
The stairwell creaked under her weight. The rail was rough, flaking paint into her palm. Each step made her legs ache, tendons stiff, balance not yet fully hers. The building leaned with age, and the stairs tilted uneven.
When she reached the second floor, Room 212 waited. The numbers on the door sagged, one screw half out, the wood around the lock chipped where years of hands had missed their mark. Paint was smudged with failed attempts. She slid the card through. The reader gave a faint, uncertain beep, followed by the click of the lock: a sound sharp and organic, like a joint slipping from its socket.
She stood for a moment, hand hovering over the handle, the heat pressing into her shoulders, sweat sliding down her spine. Then she turned it and pushed inside.
The smell met her first. Not the acrid bite of fresh smoke, but the stale kind, decades old, soaked deep into carpet, curtains, drywall. It was a yellowed stench, baked permanent. Underneath it sat something sour and sharp: mildew, failed cleaning agents, an aftertaste of effort without success. The air felt stagnant, heavy, as if it hadn’t moved in years.
She closed the door behind her, let the deadbolt snap home, and slid the chain across with a thin metallic scrape. A chair in the corner caught her eye: stubby, mismatched, its upholstery faded to some indefinable shade. She dragged it under the knob, jamming it in place. It wouldn’t stop anyone who truly wanted in, but it was a line drawn. A gesture of refusal.
The room itself looked scavenged. Curtains drooped from bent hooks, corners sun-bleached uneven. The light that slipped past them split the bed in orange streaks, late sunlight carving the space apart. The carpet near the door was bald and sticky, its color long since lost to grime. Nothing matched. The nightstand sat too low, its lamp too tall, casting warped shadows up the wall. The desk was scarred with rings and burns, the ghosts of cups and cigarettes. The bedspread screamed in paisleys of red and green, loud and ugly enough to distract from the rest.
She dropped her bags by the mattress and stood still, listening to the silence press in. The wall unit stuttered to life, blasting air that smelled of dust and freon. Not clean, but colder. For the first time all day, she didn’t feel watched.
The bathroom light buzzed on with a flick. The bulb flickered, then held. The mirror above the sink was clouded, corners warped where the silver backing had rotted away. Her reflection returned in fragments, her face shifted, imperfect, unfamiliar.
The faucet groaned before giving up a stuttering flow. Rust-tinged water ran a few seconds before clearing. Heat came quickly, fogging the mirror, filling the small room with steam that climbed the walls and clung to her skin.
She opened the jar of bath salts, tipped two scoops into the tub. They dissolved with a hiss, releasing a softness that felt like it belonged to another life. She poured in the bubble bath, slow, steady, watching it curl through the rising water like melted gold. The white bar of soap she left on the edge, still wrapped, waiting.
Her clothes came off piece by piece, sticking to her skin like second layers. Shirt. Jeans. Damp underwear. She peeled them free and stood in the fog. The mirror caught her in fragments again: shoulder, waist, ribs. Bruises bloomed faintly along her sides, yellow-green fading into skin. Her stomach flat but hollow, her hips jutting sharp. The scar at her abdomen still pink and raised. She didn’t linger. She already knew.
One hand steady on the tile, she stepped into the tub. The heat bit her ankles, climbed her calves, forced a gasp from her throat. Still, she sank down, slow, deliberate, until the water closed around her shoulders and she was folded in on herself, knees tucked, arms looped tight. Steam wrapped her, heavy and close.
She let herself breathe.
The tropical scent lingered, cloying but gentle. Bubbles clung to the surface, catching the light in fragile sheens. Her skin burned, then loosened. Muscles unwound: jaw, neck, spine. For a moment, it felt almost like safety. Almost like being held.
The first sob tore out raw, deeper than her throat, violent as a cough. Another followed. Then another. She pressed her forehead to her knees, fingers digging into her shins, and tried to choke them back. Useless. Her body shook, her breath broke apart. She didn’t scream; there was no air for it. But she wept, bone-deep, every muscle wracked. Her ribs ached, her throat stung.
She wept for the baby she never held, gone before its first breath. For the man who promised to stay, whose blood had marked her hands and her dress and the altar floor. For the hospital bed, for the machines that never went quiet, for the fluorescent light that never dimmed. For every woman who pressed a hand to a belly still full. For every picture never taken, every name never whispered.
She wept for herself. For the years locked away. For her voice forgotten. For the silence that no one noticed.
Eventually her body emptied out. The sobs thinned to shudders, then silence. She sat in the cooling water, bubbles thinning, breath still uneven. Her arms uncoiled. The lavender clung. The bruises showed. The scar glistened.
Drip. Drip. Drip. The faucet tapped against porcelain. The fan above crackled softly, struggling on. Beyond the wall, the air conditioner rattled in fits, wheezing like it had something to prove. A breeze nudged the curtain against the sill, a tap-tap-tap in an accidental rhythm.
She reached for the soap.
It was motel standard, wrapped in stiff waxed paper that crackled as she peeled it open. Plain. White. The word SOAP stamped across in faded block letters, nothing more. She lathered it slow, the foam thick in her palms, and began.
Arms first, shoulder to wrist. Then chest. Then neck. Back to shoulders again, where tension clung deepest. Her jaw, careful. Her stomach, softer, her hand pausing at the scar as though in apology. Her legs, her feet, her fingers, behind her ears. Nothing frantic. Just deliberate, steady strokes, scraping memory away piece by piece.
The water changed, subtly at first. Soap film clouded the surface, swirling. Then faint streaks rose, pinkish, floating near her thighs. Tiny cuts reopened by heat. Or maybe old wounds, still not ready to close.
She picked up the apricot shampoo and snapped the cap open. The scent hit fast: sweet, bright, almost cheerful. Out of place in a room like this, but she let it in anyway. She poured a slick mound into her palm and worked it through her scalp, once, then again. On the third wash she slowed, fingers tracing circles, nails dragging lightly against her skin. It was no longer about cleaning. It was about feeling. Her own hand. Her own body. Her own presence. For a moment she wasn’t thinking about hospitals or sirens or the weight of what came next. Just herself.
Her hair drifted in strands around her, clinging to shoulders and arms, spreading across the water’s surface like ink in clear glass. Every small movement sent ripples over her collarbones. She moved carefully, hardly disturbing the surface.
By the time she rinsed, the bathwater had thickened with what she’d carried in: suds, oil, dirt, faint streaks of blood. Stray hairs, flecks of skin, things she didn’t bother to name. A film skated across the top, swirling quietly every time she exhaled.
She sat in it, arms locked around her knees, chin pressed down. The steam was fading now, air cooling just enough to raise goosebumps along her arms. The mirror across the room stayed fogged. The weight of the day pressed into her spine, her knees, her lungs. Still she didn’t move. Stillness was the point: the kind that emptied you without ceremony.
Her hand found the drain. She pulled.
At first it was a soft slurp. Then stronger, a steady pull. The water swirled around her body like it was trying to take its time saying goodbye. It licked her thighs, curved around her ribs, slid past her arms, then dropped in spirals. The drain swallowed it all without protest: the soap, the oil, the old blood, the pieces of herself she no longer wanted.
She stayed until only a thin puddle remained, circling once, twice, before vanishing with a hollow gurgle. Silence filled the space it left behind.
She pressed her palms against the rim of the tub. Cold now, slick with condensation. She welcomed the sting in her hands. Took a sharp breath, let it root her, then pushed herself upright.
Her legs trembled on the rise. Her arms shook with the effort. Joints complained. Muscles felt wrong, unfamiliar. But she kept moving, slow, steady, until she was standing.
Water traced down her skin in patient rivulets, dripping from her spine, elbows, fingertips. Each drop left its mark before disappearing into the porcelain. The steam had mostly lifted, retreating into the vent or curling beneath the door, leaving only faint streaks across the mirror.
She reached for the towel.
It was motel-issue, stiff, frayed at the edges, faintly sour with detergent and bleach. She dragged it over herself in blunt swipes. No ritual, no tenderness. Just the act of removing water from skin. Left arm, right. Shoulders. Legs. Stomach. The towel caught on raw patches where she’d scrubbed too hard, lit sparks under her skin, but she didn’t flinch.
Barefoot, she stepped out onto the motel carpet. It scratched at her heels like someone else’s memory, old and unpleasant. The room felt thinner than it had before the bath. The air sharper, like it had shifted in her absence.
Her clothes waited in a neat stack. She pulled on the jeans one leg at a time, denim dragging over fresh skin. They caught once on a healing scrape; she winced, then yanked them higher, cinching the belt until the pressure pressed her steady. The tank top next, damp fabric clinging across her ribs. Then the jacket, heavy, familiar, already too warm but necessary. Not for comfort. For armor.
She didn’t look at the bathroom mirror.
On the bed’s edge she bent forward, boots at her feet. She tugged one on, then the other, hands shaking. Not from nerves, but from exhaustion threaded deep, the kind that lived in marrow. The right slid in easy, a solid thump. The left resisted, ankle stiff, toes fighting the fit. She wriggled, yanked, coaxed it until it gave with a final snap. She stood.
The floor felt steadier than it had last night. That was enough.
At the sink, the mirror still wore a fogged film. She wiped it once with her palm, dragging away condensation. Her reflection stared back fractured through hairline cracks, the glass tinted yellow with time. It was her, but broken into pieces.
She looked older than she remembered. Cheeks hollowed, bones sharpened. Shadows pooled under her eyes like bruises. Lips pale, pressed flat. Jaw locked, clenched around years unsaid.
Her scar caught the light. Not a clean line, but a jagged pale bloom across her temple, skin pulled tight over the plate beneath. It hadn’t ruined her face. But it had changed it. Left its story whether she wanted one or not.
She didn’t turn away. Didn’t flinch. She stared until her chest tightened, until her throat threatened to close.
The rage was there, coiled low, steady. Not a fire that leapt. A coal that smoldered. It had lived in her for years, quiet and unyielding, and it stirred now, hot beneath her ribs.
She didn’t glance down at her stomach.
Her daughter. Gone.
Her breath hitched, sharp, and she stepped back.
The bathroom still clung to the last of the steam, curling in the corners, drifting as if reluctant to leave. When she opened the door, it slipped out behind her, dissolving into the dry stillness of the room. It wasn’t dawn yet, not quite. But the light was changing. That in-between hour, when night begins bleeding out but the world hasn’t decided to wake. Everything felt suspended. Waiting.
She crossed to the nightstand. The notebook sat where she’d left it, black cover smooth and unmarked, as if it were holding its breath. She lifted it with both hands, careful, like it might shift weight if she wasn’t. Heavier than it should have been, not from paper but from what it was meant to hold.
From her bag, she drew a pen. Plain, black, the kind sold by the dozen, designed to be used and forgotten. She uncapped it slowly, the click soft, almost apologetic in the hush.
The first page stared up at her.
Death List Five
Yoongi Min – Cottonmouth
Jimin Park – Copperhead
Namjoon Kim – Sidewinder
Brandi Phoenix – California Mountain Snake
Taehyung
She replaced the cap. Slid pen and notebook back into her bag.
Next, she found Buck’s sunglasses where she’d tossed them, bent and scratched, ridiculous in their persistence. She slipped them on. Crooked, as always. She nudged the bridge, tried to adjust, gave up. They never sat right. But they worked.
The room was still dim. Her boots thudded against the floor, each step certain, carrying the weight of promise. At the door, she paused. The chair was still wedged beneath the knob, stubborn in its defiance. She bent, joints stiff, dragged it aside. The scrape echoed across the linoleum, a punctuation mark in the silence.
Chain. Thumb flick. Deadbolt. Three turns, quick, practiced. Her fingers didn’t need thought.
The door groaned open, hinges low and grudging. Heat met her immediately, thick, dry, pressing. Asphalt fumes rising from the lot. Dust on the air. The tang of oil, the metallic bite of a day not yet begun.
The sky was shifting, neither gold nor pink, but some strange in-between shade that lasted only minutes. The motel sat inside it, silent, caught between one night ending and another day beginning. Paused.
The neon above the office buzzed faintly. A cicada started, cut off. A dog barked once. Silence folded back in.
She stepped out. The door clicked shut. She didn’t look back.
The Pussy Wagon crouched at the lot’s edge, yellow paint too bright for the hour, flames shimmering like they wanted to breathe. It looked absurd, dangerous, and proud in equal measure. A dare made metal. A joke sharpened into a blade.
She opened the door, slid inside. The vinyl seat was warm against her thighs, not yet burning but close. The cab smelled of lavender and motor oil, clean, antiseptic almost, but still mechanical. A machine rebuilt too many times, carrying the weight of its history.
For a moment, she sat still. Palms flat on her thighs, fingers twitching. The motel’s AC unit droned faintly in the distance. Inside, the truck held its own silence, coiled tight like a breath waiting to be exhaled.
She turned the key.
The engine caught on the second attempt, rumbling alive with a guttural growl. The cab shivered around her, wheel buzzing in her hands, the vibration running up her arms and into her chest. Settling there. She slid it into drive. Tires spit gravel, reluctant but obedient. The motel shrank behind her, just another room, another scar. Room 212 vanished in the rearview, swallowed by neon and dust.
She didn’t look back.
The highway opened in front of her, cracked asphalt unfurling like a dark ribbon across West Texas. Brush clawed at the shoulders, mesquite twisted like broken arms, rocks rusted red, skeletal trees brittle with drought. The sky stretched pale and empty, the sun still soft but already threatening.
By the time the desert swallowed her, night had fallen again. Not gentle. Not gradual. It dropped like a curtain, sudden and absolute. No moon. No stars. Just black. Heavy. Whole.
The truck didn’t belong here, and it knew it.
It roared too loud, headlights carving two stark tunnels into the void. The beams caught nothing but empty miles, white columns piercing a silence too thick to care. The engine hummed, steady and tired, as though warning her without conviction. Every dip rattled the frame, but the wheel stayed true under her hands. Ten and two. Steady.
Mirages shimmered at the edges of her vision, heat ghosts lingering after the sun. She didn’t chase them.
The desert whispered against the truck’s flanks, a dry, rattling scrape like fingernails on denim. Insects, wind, memory. Something flickered low across the road’s edge, fast, small, gone again. She didn’t check. She slowed instead.
The road narrowed to one lane, asphalt breaking apart under its own weight. She eased off the gas. Let the truck crawl. Then stopped.
Headlights washed over brush and stone. Stillness. Shadows deep enough to hide anything. Or nothing.
She cut the engine.
The silence arrived instantly. Not falling over her, but revealing itself, like it had always been here, waiting.
She reached for the flashlight on the passenger seat, opened the door.
The night air was sharp, not cold but exposing, stripping. She tugged her jacket closer. Gravel shifted under her boots. Behind her, the truck ticked softly as the engine cooled, the sound fading into the endless dark.
She clicked the flashlight on. A narrow beam cut the dark, sharp and clean, slicing through shadow like a scalpel. Everything beyond its reach stayed untouched, patient, waiting.
She didn’t hesitate. Her body carried her forward, step by step, as if it had walked this path before. Maybe it had. Her legs remembered what her mind wanted to forget.
Then she saw it.
A rock. Just a rock, if you didn’t know better. Pale limestone, sunk halfway into the dirt, weathered and ordinary. Something that should’ve blended in. Something anyone else would miss.
But not her.
She crouched, knees popping softly, flashlight wedged between shoulder and chin. The light crawled along the stone’s edge, shadows doubling its size. Her fingers dug into the packed soil at the base. She pulled.
It resisted. Heavier than it used to be. Maybe the ground had hardened. Maybe she had softened. Either way, she braced, set her boot, and pulled again. The stone shifted with a dry scrape.
Underneath, the mark was waiting.
An X, carved deep. Not faded, not worn down. Black as the day she burned it in. The sight of it caught her breath somewhere between release and recoil.
That mark had been a promise. If it was gone, she’d walk away. That was the deal. No vengeance. No names. Just silence. But it wasn’t gone.
The desert hadn’t erased it. Time hadn’t buried it. The universe hadn’t looked away. She stood. The cold closed in now, not wind but earth itself. The shadows seemed to lean forward, curious. She didn’t care. She went back to the truck.
The tools were waiting where they always had been: shovel, pickaxe, flashlight. Old companions. Her hand found the shovel without thought, as if it had already been chosen. She leaned into the cab, thumbed the stereo. Silence shattered. The riff echoed through the night, jagged and merciless, too much for the cab to contain. The truck rattled under it, tires humming against dirt, frame twitching as if it wanted to leap forward. Guitars clawed. Drums pounded like fists.
She turned away before the echo finished, walking back toward the rock. The music chased her into the dark, distorted by space but still sharp enough to cut. Her boots kept time with the rhythm, gravel crunching in sync.
One. Two. Three.
She counted, breath more than voice.
Four. Five. Six.
The flashlight swung at her side, beam lurching across dirt and brush. It caught on shadows, slid over brittle grass, bent across rocks. It felt like stepping into a story that hadn’t been written yet.
Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
Her body warmed against the cold, rhythm keeping her steady. The rock loomed again. Here the air shifted. The ground itself exhaled, cold rising up like something long-buried had soured. She gripped the shovel. The wood was damp. Not with sweat. With memory. Her gloves creaked against it. She drove it down. The first strike rang flat, earth baked into stone. It shoved back. Her arms jolted, shoulder jarred. She didn’t stop.
Another swing. Harder. Then another.
The dirt began to loosen. She fell into rhythm: dig, lift, pivot. Again. Breath shortened, sweat slid down her spine, her back sang with strain. Her palms throbbed inside her gloves. Still, she didn’t let up. Each blow cleared space inside her chest.
Behind her, Barracuda still screamed. The desert caught the sound and threw it back at her, warped but relentless. And she kept going.
Clink.
The sound was different. Heavier. It traveled up the handle, into her arms, into her spine. She froze, boot perched on the edge of the hole, dirt sliding down around her ankle. Breath caught. Heart stilled.
She dropped to her knees. Gloves filthy, jeans scraping rock. She set the flashlight down; its beam jittered, then steadied. Enough to show what waited beneath the soil.
Her hand closed around the pickaxe. She didn’t think. Just swung. Once. Twice. Again.
Chunks of dirt split, scattering sharp and dry. Her arms burned, lungs worked like pistons. Gravel dug into her knees. She didn’t stop until she saw it.
Black plastic. Torn in places, stretched tight over a shape too familiar. Boxy. Olive green peeking through. She knew before she touched it.
The pickaxe dropped from her grip. She clawed at the soil, ripping through plastic and dirt alike. Something slick caught under her nails—water, blood, it didn’t matter. She braced, boot pressed hard, and wrenched.
The earth gave with a groan. The box lurched free, knocking her backward. She landed hard, breath ragged, chest heaving.
Her gloves were filthy, her arms trembling with the effort, but the footlocker was out at last. It was army issue, the kind stamped into a generation. The metal was olive drab, dulled by time, corners dented, its surface scratched and scuffed, the paint chipped to reveal bare steel beneath. The hinges wore rust, but they still held; the latches were stiff but unbroken. It looked exactly as it should: forgotten, but intact.
She brushed a layer of dirt from the lid, her fingers finding the latches without hesitation. A practiced motion, quick and certain. Metal snapped against metal, followed by the creak of hinges straining after years of silence. Dust drifted up in a pale cloud, catching the flashlight’s beam and hanging there like ash in still air. She set the light on the rim and leaned closer.
The first thing she drew out was a sleeping bag, cheap nylon, navy blue, stiff with disuse. It unrolled with a brittle crackle, the zipper teeth clinking like links in a chain. She spread it beside the hole, pressing it flat with both hands. The flashlight cast a sharp bar of light across the box. Dust rose through it in lazy spirals, as though the past itself was breathing.
Beneath the bag lay rows of magazines, tight and orderly. Some bound with rubber, others wound in black electrical tape, the edges frayed with age. She picked one up, ran her thumb over the top round. Brass gleamed back at her, untarnished, untouched. As though it had been waiting.
The first pistol was compact and polished, silver bright against the dim. It looked too elegant for this place, but she knew better. A weapon meant for close range, not display. She tested the weight, how naturally it rested in her palm, before setting it aside with the holster.
Next came a snub-nosed .38. Plain steel, no ornament, no pretension. Just the kind of tool that did the job without complaint. She opened the cylinder, checked each chamber, and gave it a spin. It ticked clean and precise, like a clock. She slipped it into its ankle holster, the Velcro catching with a rasp.
Piece by piece, the Mossberg came out: the barrel, the stock, the slide. She brushed the dust off with her sleeve, each movement instinctive. Assembly came without thought. One part clicked into the next until the weapon lay whole across her lap, heavy, steady, ready.
Her hand brushed something smaller, curved and cold. She lifted a silver boomerang, edges honed thin enough to cut without effort. The light scattered across its surface in sharp shards. She turned it once in her grip, feeling the weight shift. This was older than everything else. Older than her scars, older than her anger. A remnant from another life. It slid into its old holster, and her hand lingered there for a moment too long.
At the bottom, she found a black attachĂŠ, snug in the foam. She freed it, laid it flat, and opened the twin latches. The case released with a click sharp enough to cut the silence. Inside, in carved slots, lay the broken-down parts of a sniper rifle: barrel, bolt, scope, mount. Each piece was immaculate, free of dust, as though untouched by time. She lifted the scope, tilted it upward, and caught a starlight pinprick sharp and clear through the glass.
She was about to close the case when something caught her eye, flat, tucked beneath the foam. A manila envelope, worn at the corners, soft with use. She stripped off her gloves, ignoring the soil packed beneath her nails, and lifted it carefully as if it might crumble. She slid a finger under the flap and unfolded the paper within, one crease at a time.
A black and white sonogram. Grainy but unmistakable. A curled shape no bigger than a thumb. The curve of a spine, the suggestion of a head, the faintest stretch of limbs. Her child.
She sat motionless. The wind seemed to pause with her, the desert holding its breath. Somewhere in the distance, music pulsed low, but she barely heard it. She stayed still in the dirt, sleeves caked with dust, staring at the ghost of a life that never came to be.
She folded the sonogram slowly, carefully, and slid it back into its envelope. The flap pressed closed under her thumb, unsealed but sufficient.
There was more. 
A Ziploc bag, cloudy and heat-wrinkled. Inside was an old Texas state ID. Candy Ralston. The photo was hers, but younger. Rounder in the face, skin untouched by scars. Hair pulled back too tightly, eyes uncertain but already watching. Lips pressed in a line that refused to trust.
Next to it lay a paper bank book, its spine softened from handling. Every entry written by hand, small withdrawals made with care. A pattern so patient it became invisible, until it led here. On the final page, one last choice.
And beneath the lining, exactly where memory said it would be, she found the key. Small, plain, tarnished. Dangling from a chipped novelty fob. The letters worn nearly smooth, but she didn’t need to read them.
Deadly Vipers.
She didn’t pause. No whispered vow, no lingering glance. She began to repack the footlocker, steady and sure. Each weapon slid into its place: the sniper rifle parts pressing into their foam, the boomerang curved into its cutout like it had never left. She closed the sleeping bag last, the zipper catching once before sliding true. The final click echoed in the still air, too loud, like a door shutting behind her.
She hefted the pack onto her shoulder. Heavy, but familiar. Her body shifted into the weight like it had carried it a hundred times before.
She stood, turned, and walked back toward the truck without a backward glance. The hole remained open in the dirt behind her, a raw gash in the earth, as if the desert had been holding its breath for years and finally let it out. No marker, no cross, no stone. Just a patch of sand that had kept its secret until it no longer had to. She left it that way.
The wind stirred, but the desert didn’t change. In the distance, the oil derrick kept grinding its endless rhythm, slow, mechanical, indifferent. The truck was still humming with music when she climbed inside, something sharp with guitars and drums heavy enough to bruise a ribcage. She didn’t touch the dial. Didn’t spare the radio a look. She only turned the key.
The engine growled awake, the wheel twitching under her grip as though impatient, eager to remind her why she’d come. She shifted into drive.
Gravel cracked under the tires, dust lifting in a thin veil behind her. No farewell, no second look. The hole stayed where it was, empty, unfinished, unmarked. Nothing would fill it, and nothing needed to.
Miles slipped beneath her tires, steady and relentless. The sun climbed higher, flattening the horizon into a long, wavering stretch of heat and light. She let the road carry her forward like a current she no longer fought.
By the time she pulled into the Commonwealth Bank of Texas, the sun was cruel at its peak, heat radiating off the concrete in dizzy waves. The building looked like it had been abandoned halfway through its design and forced into use anyway: beige brick, dull metal trim, a flickering red “OPEN” sign that couldn’t decide if it meant it.
It sat wedged between a shuttered taqueria and a payday loan office still dressed in tinsel from a Christmas no one remembered. Dust thickened in the sidewalk’s cracks. The kind of place people didn’t bother to notice. Perfect.
She cut the engine. The silence that followed felt sharper than the music. Her boots struck the pavement with the same deliberate weight they’d carried through the dirt. The sleeping bag was gone, tucked away with the rest. What stepped out here wasn’t the woman from the desert. This was Candy Ralston.
Not the bright-eyed Candy with the easy smile and the drawl sharpened just enough to charm. That Candy was dead. This one was leaner, skin pale, eyes too hollow to bother pretending. Her mouth was a hard line. She hadn’t come for company.
She crossed the lot in a slow, certain stride, one hand on the bag, the other close to her coat. The fabric swayed with each step, brushing her thighs, catching the breeze. She moved like someone who knew exactly what she carried and what it would cost to use it.
The bank’s glass doors didn’t invite. The tint was too dark, the reflection warped. Inside, fluorescent lights flickered and hummed, pouring a pale gray over everything. Blinds hung crooked, yellow at the edges. A place that didn’t improve, only endured.
She pushed through the door.
The buzzer cracked the hush, too loud in the cold, conditioned air. The chill was chemical, designed to keep people awake, unsettled. It smelled of citrus cleaner and overworked machines, with something faint beneath it, something like nerves.
The light was merciless, stripping every angle bare. Her coat stayed on.
She moved with the kind of presence that didn’t need to ask for space. Cameras swiveled from their black domes in the corners, lenses humming faintly if you listened close. She didn’t look up. Let them watch. Let them wonder.
Behind the counter sat a woman who might have been there since the doors first opened. Hair lacquered into a helmet, lipstick a shade of pink too bright for her complexion. The tag on her blouse, polyester and strawberry-colored, cheap, read MARJORIE in rigid block letters.
She looked up when the door chimed, flashing a smile polished for trouble. Too quick, too practiced, more reflex than welcome.
Y/N didn’t return it.
“Hi there,” Marjorie said, her voice soaked in the slow sweetness of a Texas drawl, one that sounded like it had been taught in finishing school and worn thin by years of repetition. “How can I help you today, ma’am?”
Y/N stepped forward, just close enough to make it feel personal, but not close enough to make it weird. Her voice came out low, a little frayed, like she’d worn it out talking to ghosts. “I need access to my safety deposit box.”
Even to her own ears, she sounded small. Not scared. Just tired in a way that lived deep in the bones. Her arms still ached from the dig, her back tight across the spine, her muscles running on fumes. It helped. The exhaustion made her seem soft at the edges, easier to dismiss.
She reached into her coat and pulled out the key. It was plain, silver dulled to a matte finish, worn down at the edges. Nothing remarkable. Except it was. The way she turned it in her fingers, how it caught the light for a second, made it something more than metal. This key had opened more than steel boxes. It had cracked things open that were meant to stay shut.
She placed it on the counter like it might still be hot. “My name’s Candy Ralston.”
Marjorie blinked. Just once. But it was enough. A pause in the rhythm. Her eyes dropped to the key, then back up. Something shifted in her face: some small recalculation, like a mental search engine had just returned an unexpected result. Not panic. Not even suspicion. Just awareness. A name that didn’t match a story. Or a story that was missing too many pages.
Y/N noticed. She always noticed. The flicker in the eyes, the slight tension in the mouth, the way Marjorie’s hands hovered over the keyboard for half a second too long, like they were waiting for instructions the rest of her wasn’t ready to give.
Y/N followed with the ID. Slid it across the glass, calm, steady. The photo was old but recent enough. Her face in it was rounder, eyes a little less guarded, a smile that barely made it to her mouth. Now her cheeks were hollowed out, skin drawn tighter, her gaze hard-edged. But the eyes—those stayed the same.
Marjorie studied the ID, compared it to the woman standing in front of her. Her smile didn’t return. Something behind it had turned mechanical.
“I’ll be right back, honey,” she said, and the warmth in her voice had vanished. She took the ID and the key, turned, and disappeared behind a gray metal door that hissed shut behind her like a vault sealing off bad memories.
Y/N didn’t move.
She scanned the lobby instead. Vault tucked in the corner, keypad locked. Two cameras, standard dome type, mounted high. Cheap, analog, probably on a timed loop. Footage saved to tapes or some outdated drive, nothing that uploaded to a cloud. She made a note of that. Good, not great. Sprinklers overhead, fire alarms every fifteen feet. No posted security. No visible guards. Just quiet.
It wasn’t much. But maybe enough to stay ahead if Taehyung had caught her scent.
Marjorie came back slower than she’d gone. The door opened with the same soft hiss. No smile now. Just neutral posture, the kind you wore when you didn’t want to pick sides. She held the door open without a word.
“Right this way.”
Y/N didn’t thank her. Didn’t speak. She just moved, coat brushing against the counter’s edge, boots making a soft sound against carpet chosen specifically to muffle footsteps. The hallway they entered was narrow, lined with anonymous doors that had no signs or names, only keypads in place of knobs. It smelled like cold paper and old wiring.
At the end of the corridor was a room built for forgetting. The temperature dipped the second they stepped in, not from AC but from something deeper, like the place had been sealed off from the rest of the world for too long. Fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, casting a flat, pale glow that made every surface look harsher than it was. Shadows clung to the corners, thick and reluctant.
The walls were covered in rows of steel safety deposit boxes, each one identical, stacked high like a wall of filing cabinets in a mausoleum. A square table sat in the middle, wood, worn smooth in some places, scratched in others. It didn’t look like anyone had ever sat comfortably at it.
Marjorie moved without speaking, walking straight to a lower drawer in the wall. Her fingers didn’t fumble. She pulled a steel box free and laid it on the table with a dull thunk. Then another. The sound was soft but final, like a decision being made in secret.
She didn’t look at Y/N. Didn’t ask any questions. Her whole body said the same thing: I don’t want to know.
Y/N didn’t open the box. Not here. Not with the lights buzzing and the cameras humming faintly above, and Marjorie pretending not to see but seeing everything anyway. This wasn’t the place for what came next. Not yet.
She stood slowly, letting her knees stretch, spine groan just a little as it straightened. She didn’t make a sound. Just rose, steady and full of weight.
Marjorie still stood by the door, hands folded tight, knuckles pale. Her voice came out quiet, not reverent, not polite. Something more cautious than that.
“Thanks for coming.”
Her eyes flicked to the bag over Y/N’s shoulder. Not curious. Just wary. There was no warmth in her voice. No welcome. Just the brittle sound of someone realizing too late that they should have asked fewer questions, or maybe more.
Y/N didn’t try to soothe it.
“Thanks for your help,” she said. Flat. Even. Just enough to be finished.
She turned and walked out.
Marjorie followed at a distance, like she didn’t want to be caught sharing space with whatever Y/N carried. Back through the hallway, down the long strip of carpet meant to erase sound and footprints. When they reached the counter again, Marjorie slid behind it without a word and sat very still, watching through the glass as Y/N moved toward the door and pushed it open.
The heat outside hit like a slow slap, drier than before, tinted orange by a sun that was just starting to fall. Shadows had grown long across the parking lot, stretching past broken curbs and faded paint lines. The sky had gone bruised at the edges. The truck waited exactly where it had been, dust settled thick across the windshield, the yellow paint looking tired in the last of the light.
She tossed the bag into the flatbed, climbed into the driver’s seat, and closed the door. The cab held the day’s warmth like a breath that hadn’t been let go. The engine took a second to respond. Then it grumbled to life with a thick, uneven roar that rattled the steering column.
She pulled out of the lot without a glance at the building behind her. No one followed.
The bank disappeared in the rearview, swallowed up by the flat lines of small-town architecture and the slow drag of coming night. Another door shut. Another name scratched off.
The road opened in front of her again, stretching west through brush and rock and the half-sleep of places too small to fight back. Her fingers rested easy on the wheel. Not loose. Not tense. Just ready. Her other hand twitched once against her thigh, like it was remembering something: some old rhythm, some old grip.
The sky behind her wasn’t just sunset. It was collapse, like something had given way at the edge of the world and let everything pour out. Red bled into deep violet, orange streaked like torn silk across the horizon. It was a hell of a sight, bold and feral, almost too much to look at. But she didn’t turn to see it. Endings didn’t impress her anymore.
Mile marker 233 blurred past. Just beyond it, the motel came into view. Low-slung and sagging between a boarded-up diner and a pawn shop with a broken front window and an “OPEN” sign that hadn’t glowed since Clinton was in office. The SUNRISE MOT_L sign blinked in sickly neon, the “E” long gone, leaving the name limping toward meaning. Plastic palm trees lined the driveway, sun-bleached and cracked, their fronds drooping like they had finally accepted their own artificiality.
The truck hissed as it settled, engine ticking like it had opinions about being parked. Heat shimmered off the hood. She stepped out, boots hitting the asphalt with the unhurried thud of someone who’d done this too many times before. Another town. Another key. Another night listening to the sound of her own breath and wondering if it was really hers anymore.
The lobby reeked of cheap cleaner fighting and failing to bury the smell of time. Old carpet. Burned coffee. That bitter lemon-polish tang on furniture nobody liked. Behind the counter, a man with red eyes and a week’s stubble looked up, sweat soaking through his shirt. He regarded her the way a man regards a thunderstorm from behind a screen door: resigned, a little impressed, but not about to step into it.
She laid cash on the counter without counting. No words. No name. Just a transaction. He slid a key across the laminate, a red plastic tag dangling from it, the number 11 painted in peeling gold. The plastic stuck to her fingers, tacky with years of grime.
“Back row,” he muttered, already turning away.
Room 11 waited at the far end of the building, tucked into the shadows like a bruise no one mentioned. The lock resisted until she leaned into it, shoulder tight against the door. It clicked open reluctantly, like the room had been holding its breath.
Inside, the air was still and heavy. Not hot. Not cold. Just stale. Saturated. Smoke in the walls, mildew in the carpet. She shut the door, bolted it, slid the chain, then dragged the desk chair under the knob. It wouldn’t stop anyone. But it gave her the illusion of control.
The bag hit the bed with a solid thud. She didn’t open it yet.
Plastic blinds rattled as she lowered them slat by slat, each click deliberate. Outside, the parking lot glowed under a flickering streetlamp, humming too loud, not sure whether to stay lit. A few cars scattered across the lot. Heat still rising off the pavement. Bugs swarming the light like it meant something.
She checked the bathroom. The bulb buzzed sickly yellow, throwing a crooked shadow behind her. Cracked tile. Rusted sink. Mirror fogged at the edges, warped with age. She left the door half open. Not for sightlines. Just habit. She didn’t close doors without a reason anymore.
The room sagged at the seams. Wallpaper peeled in corners, ceiling stained like a bruise. The air conditioner coughed, rattled, died again. She sat on the bed. Zipped the bag open.
Stacks of cash waited inside, neat and brittle, rubber bands fraying with time. She picked one up, breathing in the scent of sweat, dust, and long drives with cracked windows. Quiet money. The kind that didn’t ask questions.
Beneath it, weapons. Two pistols: one clean and compact, the other older, worn. The compact one she hadn’t touched since El Paso, since Lisa Wong walked out of a motel bathroom with a pregnancy test and silence in her eyes. Lisa left three days later. Faked her death the day after that.
She slid them aside. Pulled out the SOG knife. Perfect balance. Still hers. A straight razor waited beneath it, sleek and simple, for skin. She pocketed it. Better to have options.
At the bottom lay a rifle case. She opened it, checked the matte-black barrel. Functional. Nothing ornate. She closed it again. Korea would demand quieter tools.
A manila folder came next. Corners soft with use. Inside: passports. Fourteen identities, all hers. Candy Ralston. Minsook Cho. Emma Blevins. Others she barely remembered wearing. Different hair. Different smiles. Same eyes. Always hers.
A folded map slipped out. Korea. Red ink circling cities, tracing routes like a heartbeat across the paper. She didn’t remember marking it, but her hand had known.
Photographs. Old, blurred, pulled from yearbooks under borrowed names. A beach. An arm around Sam Wallace. Her own half-formed smile frozen in place. She flipped past them quickly.
Then came the sonograms. She didn’t need to unfold them. The shape lived in her spine now, lodged between her ribs.
She sat still with the folder on her lap, bag open beside her, lamp casting weak yellow light over everything. She didn’t check her phone. Didn’t turn on the TV. Just breathed. The room didn’t welcome her, but it didn’t push her out either. It was just a box. Four walls to keep the world at bay for one more night.
Outside, a car rolled past slow, tires whispering over gravel. Somewhere down the row, a door slammed, laughter cracked sharp through the air, and bass thudded heavy from an open window. The music swaggered, empty noise with no weight behind it.
She stayed still. Let it pass like weather. Then leaned forward, unzipped the smaller pocket of the bag, and pulled free something cold and compact. A refrigeration case. She set it on the bed. Unlaced the key from her boot. The lock clicked once, clean, before the lid opened.
Inside, two gold syringes gleamed against black foam. Between them, a vial. Pale amber liquid moved slow inside it, syrup-thick, heavy, like honey aged too long.
Taehyung had called it The Undisputed Truth. Said it burned the lies out of people. She hadn’t believed him. Still didn’t. But she’d taken it anyway. Maybe it worked. Maybe it didn’t. Soon, she’d have to find out.
She closed the case and turned the key with care. Slid it back behind her laces like it had never left. The weight settled into the bag with a muted thud, buried beneath layers of gear. Her hand brushed something soft in the side pocket: a flattened pack of Camels, paper crumpled, edges worn like it had been riding there for years.
She pulled it out, frowning. Couldn’t remember putting it in. Couldn’t remember the last time she even wanted to. Not since Pai Mei. Not since the split lip and two days of lungs scraped raw from the inside. That had been the line. She’d meant to quit.
But tonight didn’t care what she meant.
She tapped the pack twice against her knee and drew one out with her teeth. The lighter waited in the same pocket, cheap plastic, half-empty. It sputtered once, twice, then caught. Flame kissed the cigarette, flared too close, then steadied to a glow. She pulled deep, the smoke burning familiar paths down her chest, settling heavy in her lungs.
The exhale spiraled slow toward the ceiling, mixing with the stale motel air as if it had always belonged there. Maybe she had too. Another drag. Longer. The tremor in her hands eased. The knot in her chest unwound. The ache behind her eyes softened just enough to blink without pain.
She had what she needed. Enough money to disappear. Enough weapons to make sure no one stopped her. Enough names stitched into paper to build another self, somewhere no one was looking. She’d started with less before, built lives from crumbs. But this time the engine driving her was different. Not revenge alone. Not pain. Hunger. The kind born not from being hurt, but from surviving. From still being alive, and wanting more than survival.
Her fingers found the folded map. She spread it flat across the bed, pressing it open with both palms. The paper had gone soft, creases tired, ink smudged. But the line still held: red ink threading its way across borders and customs, curling through cities, circling names. A path toward Korea.
Her nail traced it slow, stopping at Busan. A small circle, marked twice. She tapped it. Once. Again. Then folded the map back with care, each edge pressed down as if she were sealing a thought she couldn’t afford to lose.
The cigarette had burned low, ash dangling fragile at the end. She stood, room folding closer around her. Not smaller. Just more present, more awake. The A/C wheezed, rattled, died with a final shudder. She didn’t look at it.
At the window, she slipped two fingers through the blinds, pulled them apart. Sodium light drowned the parking lot in its false orange glow. Nothing moved except the swarm of bugs around the lamp. Her truck crouched in the far corner, paint dulled, hood shadowed. It looked patient. Waiting. It knew this wasn’t the end. Only another checkpoint. Another launch point. A step toward digging up the version of herself she’d buried.
She smoked the cigarette down to the filter, ground it out in the cracked glass ashtray beside the lamp. Then stretched, long and slow, until her spine gave a small pop. Rolled her shoulders once. Tension snapped loose. Proof the engine was still running. Proof she hadn’t rusted out yet.
There was still work ahead. Still miles to burn. Still names that needed remembering. Or forgetting.
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The sky was still the color of a healing bruise when she stepped out of Room 11. That thin, breath-held hour before sunrise stretched across the motel, quiet and suspended, like the world wasn’t sure whether to wake up or go back to sleep. The air hung low and heavy, not cold anymore but still clinging to the memory of it, brushing at her ankles as she walked. Her boots met the gravel with a soft, steady crunch, her stride slow but sure. The door clicked shut behind her with the soft finality of a decision already made. She didn’t look back. She never did.
Whatever lingered inside that room—the musty reek of mildew, the peeling wallpaper, the silence pressed into the floor like dust—could stay there. The ghosts were welcome to it.
The lot was empty now, stripped of last night’s noise and movement. No music. No laughter. No arguing strangers trying to forget whatever they’d dragged in with them. Just the hum of a flickering security light and the shadows it cast, long and tired and mostly ignored. Her truck waited where she had left it, the same as it always did. Black. Battered. Dust-laced. It didn’t look fast or dangerous, only patient. Like it had seen everything and didn’t need to brag about any of it.
She opened the door. The hinges gave a soft groan. The duffel landed in the passenger seat with a solid weight, heavier now, heavier in more ways than one. Not just steel and currency, but decisions. Commitments. Endings. She sat behind the wheel and rested her hand on the key but didn’t turn it right away. Instead she looked through the windshield, past the sagging plastic palms and sun-warped signage, out toward the open road.
Somewhere along the way, something had shifted. She didn’t know the exact moment, but it was there in her blood, in her spine. The running was over. Whatever came next would not be a retreat. She wasn’t trying to disappear anymore. She was going back.
She turned the key.
The truck woke up with a low growl, not eager but ready. The kind of engine that didn’t expect praise, only purpose. She eased out of the lot without checking the mirror, letting the motel recede into the rearview like everything else she had buried. It would stay there, just another mile behind her.
The road to the airport unfolded like it always did in these parts, quiet highways full of tired signage and forgotten ambition. Diners with names like “Lisa’s Last Stop” and “Grill & Chill 24/7,” their neon flickering like it was fighting sleep. Empty parking lots. Billboards that promised injury settlements, eternal salvation, and the best damn pecan pie on Highway 9. Churches with broken steeples. Loan offices with barred windows. The skeleton of American promise, sun-bleached and hollowed out.
She didn’t turn on the radio. Didn’t crack the window. Her coffee sat untouched in the console, more for the heat in her hand than anything else. She drove with both hands on the wheel, letting her thoughts drift slow and aimless, looping back through the same questions and never settling on answers.
The sun rose behind her, crawling up the horizon like something tired of hiding. It lit the road in pale gold and chased her shadow out ahead of her, long and crooked. The towns she passed blurred together. Same gas stations. Same parking lots. Same dust settling on sun-baked signs. Nothing reached her. Nothing asked to.
By the time she pulled into the airport lot, the sky had turned that washed-out shade of blue that promised heat and little else. She parked in long-term, rows from anyone else. Killed the engine under a flickering lamppost that gave one last buzz before giving out. She sat a moment, hands still on the wheel, feeling the last bit of quiet settle around her. Then she slung the duffel over her shoulder and got out.
It hit her hip like a reminder. Cash. Steel. Papers. Lives. She didn’t walk fast, but she didn’t stall either. Just moved forward like time didn’t own her anymore.
The terminal ahead was all glass and stale light, catching the morning sky in fractured reflections. She stepped through the automatic doors and into the kind of cold that didn’t come from weather but from design. Manufactured. Artificial. Meant to keep people sharp and orderly. It smelled like lemons, plastic, and every departure that had come before her.
She paused just inside. Not hesitation. Just calibration. Listening. Feeling the hum of the place. Gate calls. Wheels dragging. Overhead pages layered with chatter. The low murmur of a world built for leaving. For going but not staying.
She moved through it like someone who didn’t need instructions.
The check-in counter was manned by a thin kid barely old enough to rent a car. His name tag said TYLER. His lanyard was a mess of meme pins and frayed cords. The kind of kid who clocked in with earbuds still in and forgot to take them out. He didn’t notice her at first, not until she was standing right in front of him.
The duffel hit the floor beside her with a small, final sound. Her voice stayed low.
“One-way ticket to Gwangju. First available.”
Tyler blinked, fingers stuttering a second before tapping at the keyboard. Gwangju wasn’t common. It made him look up again, a little more carefully this time. She said nothing else. Just waited.
She slid the passport across the counter. Emma Ji-woo. The photo was polished, airbrushed just enough to pass scrutiny. But the eyes were hers, still and unblinking, focused. Tyler studied the picture, then studied her. He didn’t ask questions. Maybe didn’t know how. Or maybe something in her expression told him not to.
She paid in cash. Clean bills. Neat stack. Pulled from the vault without hesitation, counted out like it was nothing. Like it hadn’t come with a history. The paper smelled faintly of oil and time, like everything important always did. Tyler took the money, his fingers slowing just a bit as he handled it, as if part of him was trying to memorize what wrong felt like.
He printed her ticket, hands fidgety now, and slid it across the counter like he was giving her something that might explode.
“Gate thirty-four,” he said. “You’ll connect through Incheon.”
She took the boarding pass without a word. She didn’t say thank you. She turned and walked toward security, leaving Tyler staring after her.
She didn’t ask about upgrades or snacks. She didn’t care what came in the seatback pocket or what counted as a meal at thirty-seven thousand feet. No interest in a foil-wrapped cookie or a lukewarm bottle of water labeled “premium.” She wasn’t here for comfort. She was here to move forward. To put sky between her and the things behind her. She wanted distance. Altitude. The kind of cold, wordless detachment that only the stratosphere could offer.
The security line wound like a slow fuse: plastic bins clattering, belts slipping through metal loops, the voices of TSA agents clipped and bored. She stepped through it like she’d done it a hundred times. Because she had. Her coat was dark wool, the sort you could wear to a funeral or a boardroom without drawing questions. The stitching was heavier than it looked, reinforced. Useful. Her boots cleared the scanners. The blade inside was legal by a fraction of an inch, packed with the precision of someone who had measured the limits. Her bag was clean where it counted. Nothing that would raise alarms. Just the weight of something lived-in and quiet.
They scanned her passport and boarding pass without a second glance. The photo matched. Emma Ji-woo. Hair slightly darker in the picture, lips touched with a professional half-smile. Believable. The machines beeped politely. No flags. No questions. Just a nod and a wave.
She didn’t breathe easier. She didn’t need to.
At the gate, the crowd had already started to gather. People sprawled in chairs, their energy muted by early hours and too many miles. Some stared at their phones. Some picked at overpriced muffins. One kid cried softly into a sweatshirt, and nobody looked up. It was the kind of communal fatigue that airports did best: a shared sense of waiting without purpose.
She took her place in line, middle of the pack. Not the first. Never the last. Just another body headed somewhere else.
When they called Group Two, she moved.
Her seat was by the window. It always was. The duffel slid under the seat in front of her with practiced ease, fitting like it had done this before. She let her fingers rest on it briefly, grounding herself in the weight of what it held: names, tools, contingencies. The pieces of a life carefully folded down to fit inside a single bag.
She leaned into the wall of the plane, cool against her shoulder, and looked out. Morning had arrived without conviction. The sky was a washed-out gray, the kind of color that came before heat, before light. Airport machinery drifted past—fuel trucks, baggage carts, people in reflective vests who looked like they hadn’t slept. The wing of the plane cut across her view, still and patient, waiting to rise. Sunlight slid over it in dull streaks, catching on the rivets and edges, turning everything gold and indifferent.
The overhead speaker crackled something about boarding zones and safety demonstrations, but none of it landed. Not for her. The sound washed past her ears without shape, the way wind moves through trees: present, but meaningless. Someone two rows up laughed too loudly. A baby fussed. Coffee burned its way through the air vents, mixing with the stale plastic scent of recycled cabin air.
She didn’t move. Didn’t fidget. Her hands were folded in her lap, posture calm, almost meditative. But inside, the tight coil sat waiting. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t nerves. Just pressure. A quiet readiness built from too many miles and not enough peace.
The engines rumbled to life beneath her feet. The metal shell around her vibrated in response, like the plane was stretching its limbs after too long on the ground. It rolled slowly toward the runway, wheels clunking over seams in the concrete. She didn’t grip the armrest. Didn’t reach for anything. Just watched.
Takeoff wasn’t elegant. It was mechanical force dressed up in aerodynamics. The thrust came all at once, raw, loud, unapologetic. The kind of motion that didn’t ask permission. Her body pressed back into the seat, gravity pulling at her chest as the ground fell away. For one long breath, the Earth clung to her like it didn’t want to let go. And then it did.
The airport dropped out of view, buildings and roads folding in on themselves, reduced to the flat language of maps and memory. Gas stations, parking lots, little rectangles of human effort. All of it faded under a rising haze, distant and forgettable.
Her breath touched the glass for a moment. A soft cloud, gone just as quickly. The sky beyond was endless and blue in that high, cold way. Not warm. Not kind. But honest. It didn’t care who she was. It didn’t care where she was going. It just was. Vast. Empty. Ready.
She stared out into it, not searching, not thinking. Just remembering how it felt to be small again. Small enough to disappear, but sharp enough not to.
Her hand moved without looking, brushing the inside pocket of her coat. Cotton. Folded. A handkerchief she didn’t remember packing. She pulled it out, fingers slow and careful. The cloth was clean. White. Pressed. The kind of thing you carried when you didn’t know if you’d cry, or bleed, or both.
From the same pocket came the needle. Fine steel. Polished. Paired with a single loop of red thread, already knotted. She didn’t check it. She didn’t need to.
She began to sew.
Her hands worked in small, deliberate motions, the thread pulling through the fabric with barely a sound. She didn’t glance down. Her fingers remembered the rhythm. The name formed, one letter at a time. T. A. E. H. Y. U. N. G. Each stroke was precise. Each pull tight. No wasted movement.
She didn’t say his name. Didn’t even let her lips shape it. But it was there. In the cloth. In the blood-colored thread. In the silence between stitches.
When the name was finished, she tied it off with a flick of her wrist. Trimmed the excess. Folded the cloth again. Pressed it back into her pocket. Over her heart.
The plane had leveled out. Cruising now. The clouds below looked like ash. The ocean below that: cold, dark, silent. Somewhere beyond it, past all this emptiness, was Korea. And the man from Gwangju.
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The plane hit the runway. A hard, ugly jolt that snapped her spine straight and rattled the tray table in front of her. The tires screamed against the tarmac, metal grinding in protest as the cabin vibrated with the kind of impact that made people forget how to breathe. Drinks sloshed. Seatbacks creaked. Somewhere up front, someone muttered a sharp curse under their breath. The overhead lights flickered once, barely a stutter, but she saw it. She always did.
Out the window, the city didn’t look like it was sleeping. It looked like it had never gone to bed in the first place. Darkness hung heavy, not clean or quiet, but thick, like smoke, like old breath trapped in a closed room. The kind of dark that didn’t just hide things, it held them. The runway lights sliced through it in stark, clinical lines. Past them, the faint blur of Gwangju shimmered in neon and haze: blues and reds pulsing like slow heartbeats, mirrored in wet pavement that hadn’t dried and maybe never would. The glass reflected back just enough of her face to remind her she was still here.
As she stepped into the gangway, the air shifted. Dense. Damp. Immediate. It clung to her skin like something familiar, something half-forgotten but buried deep enough in the bones to recognize on contact. A mix of exhaust, concrete, late summer heat, and something sweeter, grilled food maybe, or just memory dressed up like scent. It hit her lungs like a slow exhale. She didn’t rush. Just walked forward, each step steady, her bag slung across her shoulder in that way that made it clear she didn’t need help and wouldn’t ask for it. Her coat hung open now, too warm for the humidity but still part of the armor. She moved like someone who belonged in the space between strangers. Not local. Not lost. Just passing through with purpose.
And yet, something shifted the second she stepped off the plane and onto Korean soil. Nothing anyone could see, but she felt it: a small click, like a lock catching in place. A posture change that didn’t show in her spine but settled deeper, in muscle memory and instinct. The mask slid on without effort. Not Emma Ji-woo anymore, not exactly. Not Candy, not the others. Just the version of herself this place required. Whatever her name was, she carried it like a blade in her boot, quiet, hidden, ready.
Inside, the airport moved like it had been designed for silence. No chaos. No rush. Just clean lines and softened footsteps echoing off polished tile. People didn’t shout. They didn’t loiter. They moved with the kind of practiced grace that didn’t need announcements. The lights overhead were low and cool, and even the seating looked like it had been designed to be ignored.
Customs passed without friction. The officer barely glanced up, flicked through her documents like he was reading grocery lists. Her forged passport, Emma Ji-woo, South Korean citizen returning from years abroad, was fresh, well-aged in the right places. The photo had the right kind of editing: smooth enough to pass facial scan, textured enough to seem human. She handed it over with both hands, bowed just enough to make it believable, smiled with restraint. Polite. Non-threatening.
“감사합니다,” she said, her voice low and shaped just right.
The stamp fell with a dull, final thud. No questions. No extra eyes. Just a nod, a motion, and then the gates opened.
Outside, the night waited.
The city air hit harder, warmer, wetter. The kind of humidity that didn’t just touch you, it soaked in. Rain had fallen not long before; she could feel it in the way the concrete gave off heat like breath. The streetlights bounced off slick asphalt, halos forming in puddles that mirrored blinking shop signs and broken reflections of moving traffic. Scooters buzzed past, weaving between slow cars. The buzz of neon hummed in the wires overhead like a living thing. There wasn’t much noise, but everything felt alive. Breathing.
She walked toward the taxi stand without checking her phone, without checking directions. She already knew where she was going. Her bag pulled at her shoulder, not in protest, just in reminder. Inside, names and pasts and the pieces of herself that weren’t for daylight. But she didn’t adjust it. Didn’t even shift her stance.
The cab she picked wasn’t the newest. The bumper was scuffed, one headlight had the faint film of age, and the license plate was slightly crooked. But it was real. Lived-in. The driver leaned against the hood, half-lit by the overhead bulb, cigarette cupped loosely in two fingers. Middle-aged, maybe older. His shirt wrinkled, his gaze unreadable.
She smiled before she spoke. Soft, disarming, the kind of smile that made people assume you didn’t bite.
“안녕하세요,” she said. “Seongmin Heritage Hotel, please. Near Sajik Park? The one with the koi in the lobby?”
The man blinked at her. A flicker of recognition, more for her fluency than her face. But he nodded like it didn’t matter.
“Know it,” he said, voice rasped from smoke or years or both. “That’s a nice place.”
She slid into the back seat, her bag tucked in beside her, one hand resting on its handle.
As they pulled into the street, he glanced at her in the mirror. “Vacation?”
She let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. “Sort of,” she said, breezy, warm enough to sell. “I’m meeting someone.”
That made him smile, just a little. “Boyfriend?”
She tilted her head, just enough to suggest a blush. “Not exactly. I’ve known him for a long time.”
“And you’ve never met?” he said, eyes narrowing with casual disbelief. “Do you trust him?”
She leaned forward a little, voice softer, like she was sharing something real. “I guess I’m old-fashioned. I still believe in people.”
The driver chuckled, tapping ash out the window. “Well. Hope he’s worth the wait.”
She smiled again, turning her eyes back to the window. “Me too.”
Outside, the city slid past in glints and shadows. Signs blinked red and blue against walls slick with water. A lone man smoked beneath a streetlight. A group of teenagers laughed near a convenience store, their voices echoing sharp and bright. And above it all, Gwangju pulsed. Alive. Waiting.
Her body language was relaxed, open, even friendly, but not too friendly. Her smile landed right where it needed to: warm enough to seem genuine, distant enough to keep the woman behind the desk from asking questions she didn’t want to answer. And yet, beneath it all, behind her eyes, there was something else. Something sharp. Alert. A presence just beneath the surface, watching everything, holding still like a wire pulled tight.
The cab ride had taken about twenty minutes, maybe less. She couldn’t really tell. In that strange pocket of time, after midnight but before dawn, everything stretched or collapsed depending on how close you were watching. Cities didn’t sleep in those hours; they just drifted, like the tide. The cab driver barely spoke, his cigarette glowing faint in the corner of her vision, the smoke trailing out the half-open window into the warm, wet air. He drove like a man who’d forgotten how to be surprised by anything. She appreciated that. It made things easier.
Out the window, Gwangju blurred past in bands of neon and shadow, light warped by the sheen of recent rain. The storefronts were lit like stages no one was acting on anymore: 7-Elevens glowing sterile and perfect, their shelves full of snacks and instant noodles and bottled tea that no one needed but still bought. People moved through them slowly, hunched and quiet, looking like they were halfway between sleep and survival. The rest of the city felt paused, noodle shops with stools turned upside-down, karaoke bars locked behind metal grates, all of it blinking half-heartedly like no one had told the power to shut off yet. One sign above a barbecue place kept flickering between “삼겹살 24시” and total darkness, as if it couldn’t decide whether to keep going or give up.
They passed a hanbok rental place with mannequins frozen in the windows, draped in silk and thread, caught mid-movement in some forgotten celebration. The lights inside were faint, almost apologetic. The kind of glow you could miss if you weren’t looking directly at it. And everything outside, every puddle, every wall, every parked car, reflected that layered light. Hangul shimmered across wet streets like it was painted there in real time. Chicken. Tarot. Facials. Cheap drinks. Lost hopes. It was all advertised the same way, with bold fonts and desperate color.
She leaned her head against the cool glass of the cab window and let the city slide past her. She wasn’t sightseeing. She wasn’t curious. She was memorizing. Every corner. Every alley. Every building with a fire escape or a side entrance or a window that stayed cracked. Not just as someone taking in a new place, but as someone planning how to move through it. Where to hide. Where to hunt. Where to vanish.
She wasn’t here for a reunion. That was the lie she wore like cologne, pleasant, easy, expected. She was here to dig. To drag someone’s name back out of the dirt and make it mean something again. If this city had tried to forget him, she’d remind it. She’d burn the name into glass and pavement if she had to. She hadn’t come this far to let memory do the burying.
When the cab finally slowed in front of the Seongmin Heritage Hotel, she already knew the building before it came into full view. She’d studied it, grainy photos, tourist reviews, street-view walkthroughs. But even with all that preparation, it was still something to see in person. Polished, curated, old-world elegance repackaged as modern luxury. White stone columns stood like they were holding up more than a roof, like they were trying to convince the street this place mattered. Carved details along the trim caught the warm spill of interior lighting. The brass door handles gleamed like they’d never been touched by real weather. Above the entry, a stained-glass panel glowed amber and deep red, a honeyed light pouring over the curb like something sacred had just cracked open.
And just inside, behind a clean pane of tall glass, the koi pond gleamed. Black water, smooth and quiet, broken only by the slow turning of gold and orange fins. The fish moved in lazy arcs, each shift like a breath drawn too deep to be seen. Like they didn’t care who watched.
The driver parked and turned to look at her. His voice was low, soft, like he knew not to break whatever moment she was in.
“This it?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”
He watched her for a second too long, not in a threatening way, just thoughtful. Like he’d seen this before. Not her, maybe. But people like her. People with a story that couldn’t be told in the back of a cab. People walking toward something only they understood.
“Well,” he said after a pause, “good luck with your meeting.”
She smiled faintly, just enough to be polite. “I think it’ll be one to remember.”
She handed him a bill folded clean once. Double what the meter read. He glanced at it, then back at her, and nodded without another word.
She stepped out of the cab. The air hit her like it meant to. Heavy. Humid. Full of noise that hadn’t been made yet.
She shouldered her bag without shifting her weight. Moved toward the hotel doors like she was stepping into something familiar. And as the cab pulled away, the night closed back in behind her like it hadn’t noticed she’d arrived at all.
Inside, the hotel smelled like money pretending to be modest. Like expensive wood polish layered over old stone and cold air recycled too many times. The lighting was just dim enough to flatter the furniture but still show off the marble floors, clean, symmetrical, sharp where it counted. Every tile lined up like it had been laid by someone who understood symmetry wasn’t just about beauty. It was about control.
To her left, the koi pond curved around the front desk like a moat. Its surface was glassy and still, the fish drifting in slow spirals. They looked unreal in the low light, too bright, too calm, like someone had animated them just for her arrival. A tiny pump kept the water moving just enough to keep it from falling asleep, but the sound was so soft it might’ve been imagined. It wasn’t tranquil. It was measured. Controlled. Like everything else in this place.
She walked toward the desk like she’d done it a dozen times in other cities under other names. Calm, confident, casually forgettable. The kind of guest who knew how to tip well and never asked for room upgrades.
The woman behind the desk looked young but practiced. Hair styled into a sharp, no-nonsense bob. Uniform crisp. Movements efficient. Her name tag said Juha, though Y/N didn’t really need to read it. She’d already pegged her: precise, polite, not interested in small talk. Just enough kindness to pass for warmth. The kind of employee who wouldn’t remember a single detail about you by the end of her shift, and wouldn’t question why she didn’t.
Y/N offered her a smile. The good one. Just the right amount of curve. Something safe. Something easy to forget.
Y/N switched to Korean mid-step, her tone effortless, almost casual. “예약했어요. 캔디 랄스턴으로요.” Her accent was textbook Seoul.
The woman behind the desk didn’t blink. “환영합니다, 랄스턴 씨. 3박이시죠?”
Y/N nodded, and with a soft switch in rhythm, she slipped back into English. Her voice lifted just slightly, pleasant and open, with that eager brightness tourists wore like perfume. “First time in Korea. I’m really excited.”
The receptionist smiled as if on cue. Not warm, exactly. Rehearsed, but pleasant. She slid a room key forward, tucked inside a white sleeve embossed with the hotel’s gold crest. “Room 714. Elevator’s just to your right.”
Y/N offered a small bow, murmured her thanks again, and turned away. Her boots made no squeal against the floor, only that quiet, deliberate click that echoed soft and sharp like footsteps in a gallery. The kind of sound that didn’t try to be heard but couldn’t help leaving an impression.
The elevator was already waiting, doors wide open like it knew she was coming. She stepped inside and caught her reflection in the mirrored walls: three angles, three versions of herself looking back. Her posture was perfect, relaxed, composed. Her clothes, neutral tones and well-fitted, spoke of efficiency, not attention. Her makeup was subtle, just enough color to say effort had been made, not enough to say she cared about being seen.
She looked like someone organized. Someone harmless.
But the reflection in the center mirror told the truth. It was in the way her eyes held steady, unflinching, like they didn’t expect kindness anymore. Like they’d already learned what questions were traps, which silences meant danger, and how to vanish while still in plain sight. There was a stillness in her face, but not the kind that came from calm. This was stillness earned, built from rehearsals, from closing hotel doors behind you and counting exits before you even set your bag down.
The elevator rose, slow and steady. She shifted her canvas bag higher on her shoulder. Not because it hurt, she didn’t let things hurt, but because it grounded her. Inside was everything that counted: names, paper trails, backup plans. There was no wasted weight.
When the elevator doors slid open on the seventh floor, she was already halfway into the hallway.
It was quiet. Carpeted in something dull that might once have been green, the kind of floor that muted footsteps into suggestions. The wallpaper, floral and faded, curled at the corners where humidity had worked its way in over the years. The light overhead buzzed, faint and constant, like the building was humming to itself out of habit. A soft, tired sound.
Room 714 was near the end, just past a bend in the hallway where the emergency map was pinned slightly crooked on the wall. She paused in front of the door, keycard in hand.
And then she just stood there. Not long. Just long enough to listen.
Not for sound. For pressure. For presence. You didn’t survive by hearing footsteps, you survived by feeling when a room wasn’t empty. The temperature. The stillness. The quality of silence. She tilted her head slightly. Felt the way the air held its breath.
Nothing.
She slid the keycard through the reader. The lock beeped, followed by that soft, mechanical click. Small, almost polite. She pushed the door open with her shoulder and stepped inside without looking behind her. The door sealed shut behind her with the kind of sound that didn’t echo. It just ended.
She locked it: deadbolt first, then the chain. Her hands moved in a rhythm they’d known for years. One smooth motion, no hesitation. She wasn’t checking, she was securing. There was a difference.
The canvas bag landed on the bed with a deep, even thud. Not loud, just final, like it had arrived with intent. She didn’t stop to look around. Didn’t bother checking the view. The room wasn’t the point.
She walked to the desk in the corner and turned on the lamp. Warm light spilled across the pale wood, catching on the edges of the hotel stationery and the small, useless pen that had been placed there with the usual pretend care. The kind of detail that suggested someone had thought about your comfort, even if they hadn’t.
She sat down. The chair creaked faintly but held. Her body didn’t sag. She didn’t relax. She just settled into it.
She pulled the pad of paper toward her and picked up the pen. It was smooth, plastic, light, nothing special. It didn’t matter. She clicked it once and started writing in small, deliberate strokes.
Things to Do Tomorrow:
-Buy a light pink blouse. Something that moves. Something soft.
-Buy makeup
-Rehearse the story. Again.
-Smile until it hurts.
Her pen hovered above the last line for a beat. Then she added one more, slower this time:
-Be perfect.
She circled it. Once. Then again. Firm. Not as a reminder. As a rule.
She put the pen down beside the pad and exhaled. Not dramatically. Not with relief. Just enough to release the breath she’d been holding since the door clicked shut.
She stood.
The bathroom was exactly what she expected: white tile, cool light, no character. Clean without warmth. The mirror above the sink was wide and too tall, forcing her to step closer if she wanted to see all of herself at once. She didn’t bother.
The light buzzed overhead, sterile and flat, the kind of glow that made everything look a little too real.
She touched her fingertips to the edge of the counter. Steady.
She wasn’t tired. Not yet. What she was came after tired, and it had no name.
She reached out and turned the faucet, letting the water run. Cold at first, bright and clean, loud as it hit the porcelain. But beneath the noise, she listened. Not to the water itself, but to the way it moved through the pipes. The way it echoed off tile. The way it filled the silence with something that wasn’t her. It sounded pure, but she knew better. It had traveled through metal older than the building, scraped past rust and time, ghosts caught in the bends. Still, it came out confident. Unbothered. Like it hadn’t carried anything with it.
She didn’t hurry. Her fingers moved slowly to the hem of her shirt, tugged it over her head, and let it fall to the floor. Then the rest, belt, pants, underthings, peeled away without effort. She’d done this ritual a thousand times before. And yet tonight, her hands felt different. Not clumsy. Not unsure. Just heavy, like they remembered more than she wanted them to. Her clothes ended up in a soft heap at her feet. By then, the mirror had already fogged over.
She stood still for a moment. Not posed, not inspecting. Just there. Her arms hung loose at her sides, her toes sinking slightly into the tile. The steam softened everything: her outline, her skin, even the air. The reflection staring back at her was dulled at the edges, her features blurred by heat and breath. She could still see her shape. Her shoulders narrow but set, arms lined with the first signs of strength again. Her ribs still showed when she inhaled too deeply, but her thighs had started to look solid again. Her body was still catching up to the rest of her. Still figuring out how to be whole after Two Pines tried to carve her hollow. But she was getting there. Slowly. She could see it.
She tilted her head and scanned herself like she was reading a story she knew by heart. The scars stood out like chapters. The crescent just below her ribs where a blade had barely missed something vital. A paler burn at her hip, nearly invisible now, but still a map of pain. The line along her collarbone, clean and deliberate. Surgical. The scar on her forehead had been there the longest. She didn’t even notice it anymore.
She nodded once, almost imperceptibly. A quiet agreement between her and the woman behind the fog.
Then she stepped into the shower.
The water hit her like a warning. Scalding. Immediate. It slammed into her shoulders and rolled down her back, ruthless in its heat. But she didn’t flinch. She leaned into it. Let it rake across her spine, sting her arms, burn her thighs. The pain was real. Tangible. Honest in a way few things were. It didn’t lie, didn’t soften, didn’t ask questions. It just landed, over and over again, washing everything else into silence.
She closed her eyes, tilted her head forward, and let her forehead rest against the cool tile wall. It grounded her. Solid. Cold. Unmoving. She breathed. Not deeply. Just enough. Enough to be here.
Then it came.
Not a memory. Not an image she could blink away. It was sharper than that. It crashed through her like glass, fast, clean, final. No prelude. No grace.
A sonogram.
Not imagined. Not abstract. Burned into her mind with brutal clarity. Grainy black-and-white. A crescent of light, unmistakable. And there in the center, her. The child. Seven months. Spine curled tight. Fists pulled in. Fragile, yes, but undeniably alive.
Not a possibility. A fact.
The photo was still folded in the lining of her coat. Tucked behind Kevlar, buried between seams, carried across borders and terminals and checkpoints. It was creased so deeply now it had forgotten how to lie flat. She had kept it close because she couldn’t not. Because some part of her still believed the paper would remember the shape even if she forgot the name.
She used to whisper to her belly in motel rooms that reeked of other people’s stories. Whisper names in the dark. Some strong. Some gentle. Some stolen from myths. Some from books she hadn’t finished. She spoke them aloud like spells. Names in Korean. In English. Names that meant light. Names that meant defiance.
Now? Now she couldn’t remember a single goddamn one.
Not one.
The realization hit without warning. Her knees gave out, buckled like they had been kicked. She dropped too fast to catch herself, hands sliding helplessly down the wall. Her skin hit the shower floor hard, the ceramic slick and unforgiving. Her breath didn’t come. Her chest just stalled.
The water kept pounding down, relentless and hot, hammering her back, her scalp, her shoulders.
She folded in tight. Arms clamped around her stomach. Head bent. Forehead pressed hard to her knees. The heat had scalded her skin pink, but it was nothing compared to what was burning underneath. Her whole body trembled, not from cold but from something older, deeper, more bone-deep than fear. Her jaw locked so tight her teeth throbbed. Fingernails dug into her upper arms, leaving pale marks that flushed angry and red as the shower thundered down over her back. Her shoulders jolted with every breath. Her chest couldn’t seem to find a rhythm. Her mouth opened once, like maybe a sound would come out. It didn’t. Just steam and a shattered breath that barely made it past her lips.
She cried, but not the way people cry in movies. No cinematic sobs. No beautiful devastation. This was messier. Raw. She cried like it surprised her. Like her body had remembered something her mind wasn’t ready to revisit. It wasn’t gentle or cathartic. It was violent. Uncontrolled. The kind of grief that had waited in the walls of her bones, that had made a home beneath her ribs, that had lived inside her blood quietly for years and now refused to be quiet anymore.
It wasn’t just about the child, though it started there. She cried for the girl she never got to meet. For the weight of her. The impossible, invisible pull of a presence that had once lived beneath her skin and kicked in the dark and responded to her voice like it meant something. She cried for the names whispered into motel ceilings. For every plan made in secret. For the way she used to sleep with one hand on her belly and the other over the gun under her pillow, believing—naively, stupidly—that she could keep both safe.
She cried for herself too. Not the woman she was now, but the one she used to be. The one who thought she could walk two roads at once. Who thought she could live between love and violence and come out clean. That she could be sharp and soft. That she could kill for a living and still build a life worth protecting.
She had buried that woman. Or thought she had. But grief has a way of preserving what pain cannot quite dissolve. The version of herself she thought was long gone hadn’t decayed. It had hardened. It had turned into something fossilized under all the anger and training and years. Not gone. Just waiting.
And under the grief, something else had been building. Coiled low in her belly. Climbing her spine. Tightening around her throat.
The fury.
It hit hot and sudden. Like a flare lit inside her chest. Fast. Blinding. Unforgiving. Her muscles locked. Her fists curled tight. Her breath caught in the cage of her ribs. She wanted to wreck something. Rip the cabinet off the wall. Shatter the mirror with her elbow. Drag her knuckles down the glass until they split. She wanted to leave blood on porcelain. On tile. On her own hands.
She wanted to find him. Taehyung Kim. And make him understand what he had done. Not by telling him. By making him feel it. Every inch of it. Every second. She wanted to look him in the eyes as it hit him. As the weight of what he stole crushed him under its full, ugly truth.
Her knuckles went white. Her muscles trembled with the force of restraint. But she didn’t scream. Not because she couldn’t. Because she wouldn’t. That kind of rage needed to be saved. Stored. Honed.
It would have its moment. Just not here.
The shower kept running, loud and steady, until she moved. Just a breath. Just a twitch of her fingers. Then she reached up and turned the water off.
Silence crashed down like a wave. Thick. Dense. The kind that fills every crack in a room. The kind that listens back. Steam drifted in long, slow ribbons, curling around her shoulders like it wasn’t ready to leave either.
She blinked once. Her breathing evened out. Slower. Cooler. Her chest still ached, but the fire was banked now, drawn in close and dangerous. Not gone. Just shaped.
She stood.
Water clung to her skin. Her hair dripped in long strands down her back. Her face was flushed, eyes glassy but sharp now, clear in a way that felt surgical. She moved with precision, drying off in steady, methodical swipes, every motion practiced and spare. The towel trembled in her hands, but she kept her grip. Dressed quickly. Quietly. No wasted motion. Just armor going back on.
The grief didn’t vanish. She packed it back down. Tucked it into the parts of herself she didn’t let anyone see. But the rage—she left that right where it was. Let it sit beneath her skin. Close to the surface.
Because Taehyung Kim didn’t know what he had taken from her, but he would.
She wasn’t coming for answers.
She was coming for the truth.
And he would give it to her.
Because there would be no one left to stop her.
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The city didn’t perform. Gwangju just was. It didn’t blaze with ambition like Seoul or stretch itself into glitz the way Busan tried to. It moved slow, breathed heavier. Honest, unbothered, like an old man in his undershirt posted up on a plastic chair, feet bare, sweating into the sidewalk, waving off mosquitoes with a rolled-up newspaper. There was a stillness here that didn’t feel staged. It felt earned. Like time didn’t hurry. Like it hadn’t for a while. Even the heat didn’t rush. It pressed down in thick, lazy folds, dragging everything—footsteps, voices, the color out of the buildings—into something close to sleep.
The streets moved in rhythm with it: fans turning slowly in dim back rooms, the hum of overhead wires swaying with the weight of too many summers, the drag of slippers across concrete. Shops leaned on each other like they were tired of standing alone. Paint peeled in curls off old storefronts. Rust bloomed at the hinges of delivery carts and folding chairs. Hand-painted signs creaked as they shifted in the breeze, their edges warped like paper left out in the rain.
It was the kind of afternoon where nothing tried too hard. The air was a patchwork of smells: hot oil, boiled radish, exhaust, old metal, the damp tang of stone that’s never had a chance to dry. Vendors fanned themselves with bent menus, arguing halfheartedly with ajummas who bargained with the precision of habit. A mop of scooters rolled through puddles left by melted ice or a spilled soup bowl, weaving through crates and feet like they knew every shortcut before it was built. The city didn’t sleep. But it didn’t really wake up, either. It just existed. Like a held breath.
And tucked into all of it, halfway hidden between a shuttered bookstore and a florist with wilting carnations, was the door. If you could call it that. More a suggestion than an entrance. A curtain, once blue and now more of a stained gray, hung from a crooked rod that looked hammered into place out of stubbornness rather than skill. It shifted when the wind pushed at it, not with drama but with the quiet of something breathing. The name painted across the fabric had long since faded: 김밥바. The brushstrokes barely held together, as if the person who wrote them hoped the world would forget.
She didn’t go straight in.
Y/N stood across from it, phone in hand, thumb flicking absently at nothing. Her eyes weren’t on the screen. They were on the building. On the way the curtain moved. On the way the shadows behind it didn’t feel empty. A pigeon flapped once but didn’t fly. A scooter buzzed past, and an ajumma barked something sharp about cabbage. The usual sounds. The usual rhythm.
Still, she waited a beat longer. She watched how the light caught the doorway. She noticed how the air felt different here. Denser.
Then she stepped forward and slipped behind the curtain like she belonged.
And everything changed.
The moment it fell behind her, the city vanished. The noise didn’t fade. It ceased. Like someone hit pause on the outside world. Inside was quiet in a way only old places know how to be. Not just soundless. Still. The kind of stillness that settles in stone. The kind that remembers things. The air was cooler, not because of any fan or vent, but because it had never left. It clung to the walls, the wood, the floor. Everything felt touched by time.
The scent hit next. Not artificial or sanitized. Just real. A mix of rice, vinegar, seaweed, and broth so old it had soaked into the wood grain. Salt, smoke, a whisper of garlic. It was the kind of smell you carried home with you, in your clothes, your hair, your bones.
Her eyes adjusted fast.
The space was barely larger than a closet. Three stools lined a counter. One crooked. One stained. One seemingly untouched. The varnish had long worn off the wood, dulled by elbows and sweat and stories told over soup. A ceiling fan turned overhead, slow and uneven, ticking with every revolution like it was remembering something too late. A single fly moved in lazy circles beneath it.
Nobody else was here.
No music. No kitchen noise. Just a single plate on the counter. Empty except for one streak of red sauce. Chopsticks placed beside it with care. Not abandoned. Just waiting.
She walked in like she’d been here before. Like this was a memory, not a discovery. Her posture was casual. Her camera hung from her neck like a travel blog prop, the kind of thing that made her look like the type of woman who’d find “hidden gems” and write about the soul of a place as if she’d invented the concept. But none of that touched her eyes. They were focused. Clear. Watching.
And then he appeared. Quietly, without fuss, like he’d always been there and the world had only just remembered to look. The steam rolled out behind him, curling around his shoulders like it had followed him from some low, back kitchen heat that never fully cooled. He was tall, not imposing, but solid in the way that came from doing hard things for a long time. His build was lean, a little bowed at the shoulders, as if time and gravity had done their work. His skin had the baked-in tone of someone who’d spent years near open flame, his forearms marked by thin pale scars that spoke of burns, not battles. The white chef’s jacket he wore was buttoned but stained, spattered with dark brown that might have been soy sauce or something else. It was hard to tell, and maybe it wasn’t supposed to be clear.
His face didn’t offer much. It wasn’t unreadable in the cold, calculated way of spies or killers. It just didn’t feel the need to explain itself. High cheekbones softened the shape of his long face, and his eyes, dark and narrow, carried the quiet stillness of someone who watched more than he spoke. His hair was thick, slightly tousled, mostly black but peppered with gray at the temples. He was handsome, but the kind of handsome that didn’t advertise. He managed to exist right in the middle ground. Someone you’d forget until you saw them again and couldn’t stop wondering why.
Y/N kept her expression neutral as he stepped fully into view. Her body didn’t flinch. Her gaze didn’t drift. She looked at him plainly, openly, like she had no reason not to. But this was him. The man she’d crossed an ocean for. The one who had answers locked behind his teeth.
He saw her, and the smile came fast. Too fast. It stretched across his face like a reflex he hadn’t bothered updating in years. Broad, eager, practiced. The kind of smile that had been used too many times on too many strangers. The kind that worked better when you didn’t look too closely. He wore it like a uniform: the smile of a man who knew how to sell comfort, how to charm tourists just enough to make them stay, just long enough to make them leave before asking the wrong question. There was no real warmth in it. But it was a good act.
“English?” he asked, cautious but cheerful, testing each syllable like he was stepping over a puddle he didn’t trust.
She gave a half-shrug, tipping her head slightly as her mouth pulled into something lopsided and pleasant. “Almost,” she said. “American.”
Something about that word flipped a switch in him. He lit up like he’d been waiting for it. “Ah! America! Yes, welcome, welcome!” He nodded several times, as if the excitement might wear off if he didn’t hammer it in. “My English, very good. Yes.”
“Perfect,” she said, breezy and bright, like a woman with nowhere to be and all the time in the world. She stepped farther inside, her fingers ghosting along the edge of the counter. She didn’t look at it, not really, but the gesture made it seem like she was appreciating the wood, soaking up the charm. It wasn’t for him. It was for the story.
The chef smiled wide when she stepped in, his English laced with effort but cheerful all the same. “Welcome, American,” he said with a chuckle. “I hope you like my shop.”
She dipped her head, just enough to be polite. “안녕하세요,” she said, soft and even, her pronunciation clean, too natural to be brand-new.
That got a reaction. He lit up like someone had pulled a coin from behind his ear. “오오오! 안녕하세요!” He leaned forward with the delight of a man genuinely impressed. “Very good, very good! You speak Korean?”
She let out a modest laugh, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear like the compliment embarrassed her a little. “Not really,” she said. “Just a few words I picked up yesterday.”
Her eyes moved over the room, taking in the shelves, the old wood, the dust that softened the corners of things. “Is it okay if I sit here?”
“Sit, sit!” he said, already wiping down the bar with a damp cloth in wide, sweeping strokes like he was preparing an altar. “Of course. You sit. What words you learn? Oh, wait one second.”
He turned toward the curtain behind him, barked something in Korean without missing a beat. The words tumbled fast and irritated.
“We have a customer, bring out some tea, quickly!”
A voice called back, lazy and muffled. “I’m watching my soap operas.”
The chef rolled his eyes, snapping, “Lazy bastard! Screw your soap opera! Hurry up!”
“The tea’s hot. Why don’t you serve it yourself for once?”
“Shut up! Get your ass out here!”
Then he turned back to her, placing both palms on the bar like nothing had happened, though a thin line of annoyance still showed around his eyes. His smile remained pleasant. “So,” he said, “what else do you know in Korean?”
She tapped her chin lightly, brow furrowed like she was digging through a mental list. “감사합니다,” she said after a second, letting the word unfold carefully but not too perfectly. Like she was still getting comfortable with it.
He nodded with approval, the kind of praise people give freely but mean all the same. “Very good,” he said. “You say it nicely.”
She leaned forward just a touch, elbows resting gently on the bar, camera bumping softly against the edge. “알겠어요?” she tried, the hesitation built in just enough to seem earnest.
He brightened. “You know that one! ‘I understand.’ Good, very good. You learn fast.”
She smiled back. “Only what people say to me first.”
Then she tilted her head and added another. “안녕히 가세요?”
His expression flickered for a split second. The kind of shift most people wouldn’t catch. He recovered quickly, correcting her with a wave of his hand. “No, no, no. Say again.”
She blinked once, feigning the kind of sheepish confusion that made it look like maybe she had messed it up after all. She tried again, a little slower this time. “안녕히 가세요?”
He clapped his hands once, sharp and loud in the stillness of the shop. His smile stretched wide, but the lines around it didn’t move. “You speak Korean,” he said, voice lighter than it had been, but also a little tighter.
She laughed softly, tilting her head again. It was the kind of laugh you’d hear from someone caught in a harmless exaggeration. “Now you’re just flattering me.”
But he didn’t laugh with her. “No,” he said simply. “Serious. Your pronunciation... very good. You say 안녕히 가세요 like we say 안녕히 가세요.”
The air between them settled. Not tense, but heavier. The kind of pause that had weight in it, even if you didn’t know why.
His voice came again, this time quieter, slower. “You can learn Korean very easy.”
She let her gaze drop for half a second, just enough to give it texture, then lifted it again with a careful smile. “No kidding,” she said, her voice just a little softer now. “But thank you. 진짜... 감사합니다.”
He didn’t respond right away. Just breathed in through his nose, steady and thoughtful. Then he adjusted his stance, the shift so subtle most people wouldn’t notice. But she did. She saw the way his shoulders reset, the tiny movements that told her he wasn’t just running a shop. He was watching something unfold.
He turned without another word and picked up a rice paddle. His voice floated back over his shoulder, even and calm. “Let me make something for you.”
She nodded, her smile still in place, but the tone that followed wasn’t quite the same. “Anything’s fine.”
The chef stayed where he was, hands now methodically working at the counter. A bowl of rice, steam still clinging faintly to the grains. A bamboo mat laid flat. A half-sliced cucumber. The blade beside it already glinting in the overhead light.
“You like kimbap?” he asked, like it was just polite conversation.
“I love it,” she said, light and breezy.
She let the sentence hang just long enough to sound casual, like maybe this was a regular kind of moment, in a regular kind of place. But it wasn’t.
The knife moved with soft, measured sounds. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Carrot. Radish. Cucumber.
Every slice was uniform. Clean. The rhythm was precise, practiced. Not just skilled. Disciplined.
She didn’t take her eyes off him, not directly, but not obviously either. Her posture stayed relaxed, her hands resting on the bar. The camera around her neck swayed gently with the air from the ceiling fan, tapping now and then against the wood like a slow heartbeat.
She didn’t look dangerous.
But then, neither did he.
The overhead light gave a quiet hum, casting the shop in a worn, yellow wash that made everything look faintly out of date. The fan creaked once with each turn, ticking off invisible seconds. Outside, the alley was still. A cat passed, paused in the doorway, then disappeared again.
The chef didn’t look up from his cutting board. His voice came steady, like they were just passing time.
“You should learn Korean.”
She smiled, light but not airy. “You think so?”
He nodded slightly, slicing through radish with clean precision. “Yes.”
“I’ve heard it’s impossible.”
He nodded. “Yes. Very hard. But you,” he said, quieter now, “you have Korean tongue.”
He returned to his work, pulling a smaller knife from a drawer. It was heavier, curved differently. He laid slices of tuna onto a black ceramic plate. Next to them, he added a pinch of pickled ginger and a small, hand-shaped mound of wasabi.
He slid the dish toward her with quiet pride.
She looked down at it, then back up. “How’d you know tuna’s my favorite?”
He shrugged one shoulder, almost coy. “What?”
“Tuna,” she said again, watching him. “It’s my favorite.”
He smiled with the same practiced calm. “Ah. Thank you very much.”
Then he turned his head toward the beaded curtain and shouted, voice sharp. “야! 차 어디 갔어? 빨리 좀 해!”
Behind the curtain came a reply, loud and annoyed.
“지금 드라마 보고 있잖아!”
“드라마는 개뿔이지! 손님 왔잖아, 이 자식아. 빨리 갖고 와!”
“차 뜨거워! 너도 좀 움직여 봐!”
The chef muttered something under his breath, wiped his hands, and moved toward the curtain. The beads clinked as he grabbed the other man by the wrist mid-gesture, twisted it lightly, and leaned in close.
“네가 장군이면 나는 황제다. 그러니까 조용히 차나 갖고 와.”
Then, with a mocking grin and just enough weight to sting, he said in English: “Do you understand?”
The assistant pulled free, scowling, and glanced at Y/N. “대머리 아니거든,” he muttered. Then, in stiff English: “I shave. Do you understand me?”
The chef didn’t even look. He picked up a small knife and threw it underhanded toward the wall. It landed with a soft thud, blade buried in the wood just left of the curtain.
The assistant disappeared without another word.
Y/N didn’t follow his movement. Her fingers just found a napkin and began folding it, slow and absent, like she was trying to pass the time. But her attention stayed open, alert, listening to every creak from the fridge and every shift of weight behind the curtain. She tracked it all without looking.
The chef glanced her way and let out a low sigh. “Sorry,” he murmured.
She smiled, shook her head gently, still all ease and pleasant charm. “No worries at all.”
The chef had gone back to wiping a plate that didn’t need it, slow circles that looked more like habit than cleaning. He hummed something under his breath. No real melody, just sound for the sake of it. Every so often, his eyes drifted up. Not to her. To the curtain. He was waiting, too.
Y/N leaned her chin into her palm and let out a quiet sigh. The kind that sounded like she had nowhere else to be, like this was just another slow stop on a longer, looser itinerary. But beneath the quiet facade, her pulse had cooled into something steadier. Sharper. She was counting. Not seconds. Not movements. Just weight.
The beads stirred again.
The second man reappeared, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. The soju was cold, condensation sliding down the green glass in thick streaks. His fingers were wide, stained around the cuticles, the nails chipped like they had been trimmed with teeth or a dull blade. Hands that had done hard things.
He reached the counter and set the bottle and glass down. He turned to walk away. The chef didn’t let it slide.
His voice cracked through the air, hard and sudden. “야, 예의 좀 갖춰!”
The man didn’t stop completely. He only slowed. His shoulders shifted. A sigh leaked out, long and annoyed.
“뭐? 술 갖다 줬잖아.”
“손님 앞에서는 제대로 해. 외국인이라도.”
A scoff, barely loud enough to register. “외국인이라 모를 텐데 왜 신경 써?”
The chef’s reply came low, firm. “그러니까 더 조심해야지. 한국 사람처럼 보여도 다 듣고 있을 수도 있어.”
There was a pause. Just a few seconds, but heavy. The kind of quiet that wasn’t about silence. It was about choice.
The man muttered something under his breath, just noise really, but shaped by resentment. Then he twisted the cap off the bottle with a rough snap and poured. The soju splashed high in the glass, almost spilling. He shoved it toward her with one hand, the edge of the glass tapping wood just shy of rude.
Then he turned and disappeared again. The beads clattered harder this time. The chef let out a breath.
“죄송합니다,” he said, bowing his head slightly. “그 사람은... 사람 대하는 법을 몰라요.”
Y/N didn’t flinch. Her smile stayed where it had been the whole time, pleasant and unbothered. “Sorry?”
The chef’s tone softened, switching to English like it was muscle memory. “Ah, no, just... he doesn’t know how to talk,” he added, with a thin smile that almost reached his eyes.
She nodded, light, polite. Lifted the shot glass with a small, quiet toast. “Thank you,” she said, and took a sip.
The soju hit cool. Sweet up front, then a clean, sharp finish that sat in the back of her throat and lingered. It didn’t burn. It reminded.
She set the glass down. Picked up her chopsticks. The motion was fluid, casual, not stiff with performance, but practiced. The way a habit becomes part of muscle memory.
She lifted a piece of tuna from the plate, a clean slice that caught the light like silk. Deep ruby red, almost translucent, grain running fine through its surface. She placed it on her tongue and held it there, waiting. It melted. Soft and rich, just a trace of brine and something faintly metallic, like memory. She chewed once. Twice. Let it dissolve.
Her eyes drifted shut, just for a second. 
She set the chopsticks down, careful not to clatter them, then picked up the soju again and finished the glass in a single, smooth pull. The second hit went down easier. The warmth spread slow through her chest, settling in a place that had once held nerves.
Across the counter, the chef watched. He hadn’t changed his expression, but something in the way he stood had eased. Not relaxed, not soft, but carrying a kind of respect. He was noticing a quiet fluency. No words. Just recognition.
“First time in Korea?” he asked. His hands returned to the cutting board, fingers resting near the knife, though he didn’t pick it up yet.
Y/N nodded, finishing another bite. “Mmhmm.”
“What!” he said, voice rising with disbelief that didn’t quite ring false.
She swallowed, wiped the corner of her mouth lightly. “Yes. This is my first time.”
He tilted his head, eyes narrowing just a little. “What brings you to Gwangju?”
Outside, the alley shifted. A gust caught some stray bit of paper and skidded it along the brick like a coin on pavement. Somewhere nearby, a bird let out a single cry, sharp and fast, gone in a blink. The curtain behind her swayed faintly with a whisper-soft clatter, like wind chimes that never quite got the breeze they needed to sing. Y/N adjusted her chopsticks, repositioned them between her fingers, then gently set them down without ever lifting a bite. Her tone was light when she finally spoke, almost conversational.
“I came to see a man.”
The sentence didn’t echo, but it changed something in the room. A beat passed. Not long. But the chef’s hand froze mid-motion, his knife held just above the salmon, blade tilted slightly as if it too had paused to listen.
“Ah,” he said after a moment, stretching the word just enough to carry weight. “A friend in Gwangju?” He didn’t look up.
“Not quite,” she replied.
“Not a friend?”
“No.” She waited until his eyes found hers before continuing. “We’ve never met.”
The blade finally touched the board. A soft sound. Then he laid the knife aside, not quickly, but with care, like he’d decided whatever came next didn’t need a blade in hand. He kept his gaze on the cutting board for a moment longer than necessary, then finally looked up. The expression on his face didn’t shift much, but something behind his eyes sharpened. Not fear. Not even suspicion. Just awareness.
“And,” he said, more quietly now, “may I ask who he is?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Jung Hoseok.”
The name didn’t explode. It didn’t need to. It landed in the room like a rock dropped into still water. No splash. Just the heavy assurance that things were moving beneath the surface now. Her voice hadn’t changed. She wasn’t dramatic. She didn’t lean in. But the name was enough.
The chef went still. Not tense, simply anchored. Like something in him had snapped into place. His right hand rested on the edge of a towel. His left hovered briefly over the blade again, reflex more than anything. The tip of his finger brushed the metal and slipped. A sudden streak of red rose across his knuckle. He looked down at it, just for a moment, and lifted the hand to his mouth. Sucked the blood away like it was routine. No flinch. No sound. Just control, reset.
Behind her, the beads rattled once more, sharper this time. The bald man stepped through again, his face a clenched fist. He didn’t speak. Just let his eyes sweep the room, pausing on her. Not suspicion. Calculation. Like something in the air had told him to pay attention.
He crossed to the counter, picked up the bottle, and poured her another shot. This time, the movement was smooth. No clatter. No shove. Just a quiet, focused pour. He didn’t speak. Didn’t meet her eyes. He finished the pour, left the glass full, and walked out. The beads clacked shut behind him, not loud, not subtle. Just punctuation.
The chef exhaled slowly through his nose. No drama. Just release. Then he took a towel and began wiping his hands carefully, methodically. His eyes stayed on her.
She lifted the new glass in a small, silent toast, even though the man who’d poured it was already gone. The glass was cold enough that it clung to her fingers.
When the chef spoke again, the language changed. No more English. No pretense.
His voice lowered, smooth and even, each word placed with precision. “정호석에게 무슨 용건이 있습니까?”
Y/N didn’t blink.
She answered in Korean, her voice quiet, level. No showmanship. Just the kind of careful weight that traveled farther than volume ever could. “강철이 필요해요.”
His eyes narrowed. Not in suspicion. In thought. Like he was studying her words, not for truth, but for intention. He didn’t answer right away. He let the silence linger.
“왜 강철이 필요하죠?” he asked.
She looked at the glass beside her plate, a droplet tracing its way down the side. Then she met his eyes again. “쥐를 죽이려면요.”
There was another pause, longer this time, but not uncomfortable. Then the chef let out a short laugh. Not cruel. Not mocking. Just low and dry, like someone who had lived long enough to understand how serious things always start in calm voices.
“Must be a big rat,” he said in English this time, voice touched with something close to amusement. “If you need Jung Hoseok steel for it.”
She smiled, but only with one side of her mouth. The other half stayed still.
“Huge,” she said.
They didn’t move. Didn’t raise their voices. The air between them didn’t buzz with tension, but it held. Quiet. Pulled tight like thread stretched between fingers. It didn’t warn. It just waited.
The chef gave a small nod. Y/N didn’t speak, didn’t finish the food. She left the second shot untouched. The fish remained as he had plated it, artful, unspoiled. The only sign she had been there was the soft, fading ring left behind by her first glass, already drying into the grain of the wood.
She rose without a sound and followed him through the beaded curtain, not once looking back.
The hallway beyond was narrow and long, the kind of space that time forgets. The wallpaper, beige or yellow once, now sun-bleached into something closer to nicotine-stained parchment, peeled at the edges in slow curls. The floorboards creaked just enough to remind you that no one had fixed them in a long while, and maybe no one ever would. The air smelled lived-in, dense with cooking oil and old plaster, like generations of heat had steeped into the walls. A single bulb swung gently from the ceiling, flickering once before settling into a thin, steady glow.
Hoseok walked ahead, silent, his gait quiet but confident. He didn’t rush. He didn’t hesitate. His steps were even, deliberate, the kind of pace that didn’t waste energy or ask permission. When he reached the end of the corridor, he glanced up and found the pull cord, barely visible in the dim light, hanging like a spider’s thread. He tugged it once.
A low groan came from above, followed by a creaking shift. A square panel in the ceiling cracked open with a dusty exhale, and a folded ladder unfolded downward with slow, mechanical clicks, the rungs snapping into place like joints stretching after too long at rest.
He climbed first. She followed.
Her boots hit the rungs with soft thuds, the sound swallowed by the close space around her. One hand on each side rail, steady, smooth. No wasted movement. She didn’t glance up, didn’t glance down. Just climbed. The air thickened as she ascended, growing warmer, more still. There was a shift in temperature, and in smell. Wood. Oil. Steel.
As she rose through the opening, the attic revealed itself like a photograph developing in slow motion.
It wasn’t big, but it felt larger than it should have. The low ceiling curved inward slightly, giving the space a strange hush, like it was used to quiet. The warmth was immediate. Not stifling, but deep, the kind of heat that came from bodies and time and electricity burning low and constant. The scent was unmistakable to anyone who knew what it meant: cedar, carbon, and choji oil. That distinct blend of camellia and clove, familiar only to those who have ever cared for a blade.
The light from the window was weak, filtered through grime that hadn’t been wiped away in years. But what little came through cast long golden lines across the floor, picking out the pattern in the grain and throwing deep shadows that stretched and curled. The floor was clean. Worn, but swept. Not a speck of dust in sight. No clutter, no trash. This wasn’t storage. It was maintenance.
On the far wall stood the racks.
Not shelves. Not hooks. Racks, each one handmade, shaped with intention, joined by hand rather than hardware. Pale wood, aged and patient. No decoration. No flair. Just quiet craftsmanship. They held swords. Not just katanas. Blades.
Dozens of them, each one unique. Their sheaths glinted in the dim light: black lacquer with soft reflections, deep red urushi, mottled green like old bark. One was wrapped in white rayskin bound with gold. Each sageo tie—gray, plum, navy—was knotted tight and deliberate, tension held with purpose. The tsuka, wrapped in silk, were symmetrical to the point of obsession. Every fold precise. Every diamond perfect. Each kashira had its own story: copper dragons, koi fish, sakura petals, brass ships riding a storm. And the tsuba were miniature sculptures of iron and bronze, some simple, some elaborate, none ornamental for the sake of it. These weren’t pieces for display. They were weapons made to be used. Cared for, kept sharp, kept ready.
Y/N stepped forward, her movements quiet, measured. She didn’t touch anything. Didn’t need to. The room held its own gravity. The kind of silence that didn’t beg for reverence but commanded it through sheer presence. Every detail—the blades, the wood, the air itself—spoke for her to listen.
Behind her, Hoseok didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to either. His stillness wasn’t tense or withdrawn. It was aware. Watching, but not pressing.
She turned slightly, just enough to glance over her shoulder. Her voice, when it came, was soft. Her Korean clear and careful. “May I?”
A beat passed, subtle but intentional. Then, his reply, not in Korean this time but in English. And for some reason, that made it gentler. “Yes, you may. Second from the top. Sixth row. Left side.”
She nodded once and turned back to the racks. Her steps didn’t creak the floorboards. She moved with the kind of calm that came from purpose, not performance. Her eyes scanned, counted, found it: sixth row, left side, second down.
She stopped in front of it, let her gaze rest on the sheath before reaching for it. Black lacquer, smooth and deep enough to absorb the light. It reflected just the faintest outline of her face, blurred, formless. The finish was perfect, but not decorative. Not flashy. Maintained, not polished. Like someone had wiped it down once a week for decades, always with the same cloth.
The sageo cord was tied in a neat, practical knot. Not ornamental. Not lazy. Tight, squared. The kind of tie someone would redo until they got it right. The tsuba was brass, aged and worn, its surface darkened by time and touch. Etched pine branches crawled along its edges, simple, understated, and detailed enough to tell you it wasn’t mass-produced. It had been chosen.
Her fingers wrapped around the tsuka. The silk binding was tight, smooth, crisscrossed with perfect symmetry. Black cord over white rayskin. Traditional. Familiar. The handle sat against her palm like a known shape, like something she had used before, even if she hadn’t.
And something inside her, something she hadn’t even noticed was noisy, went quiet.
She drew the blade without hesitation, not for show, just to see. It came free with a sound so subtle it was almost imagined. Like breath drawn through cloth. The kind of sound that disappears if you’re not paying attention. But she always paid attention.
Light caught the blade and changed it. What had been metal turned fluid. Reflections danced along the edge, fractured and reformed as she moved. The hamon curled like a pale ripple, shifting with every minor tilt of her hands. The kissaki was long, graceful. Measured for reach, not for display. The sword wasn’t just well-made. It had purpose in its design. Intention.
She held it in both hands now. The balance fell into place like it knew where to go. No resistance. No demand. Just a quiet agreement between steel and muscle, weight and memory.
Behind her, Hoseok finally stirred. The smallest motion: fabric shifting, a heel settling more fully into the floor. When she turned slightly, she saw him near the window, one hand deep in his pocket. The other rolled something between his fingers.
A baseball. Worn, the leather dulled to a soft gray, the seams darkened, fraying. It looked like it had been tossed from hand to hand for years. He turned it over in his palm absently, like it was more habit than thought.
“Funny,” he said, voice quiet enough that the words didn’t quite disturb the stillness. “You like swords…”
He tossed the ball into the air, caught it once without looking.
“…I like baseball.”
Then, without warning, he threw it.
There was no flourish. No wind-up. Just a sudden motion, fast, clean, direct. The ball cut through the air on a line straight toward her. No room to think. No time for a plan.
Her arms moved before her mind did. The sword rose in a single arc, smooth and efficient. No tension in the shoulders, no wasted energy in the swing. The blade moved as though she were answering something, not striking.
The ball split cleanly.
There was no dramatic crack. No cinematic echo. Just a soft, muted thud, leather parting under steel, a sound more felt than heard. One half of the ball skidded off and rolled beneath the nearest rack. The other bounced off her boot and stopped.
She didn’t breathe out. Not yet. Her grip had already eased. The sword angled down, relaxed at her side, tip toward the floor. Balanced again, as if nothing had happened.
Hoseok stepped forward, steady as ever, though something behind his expression had shifted. Barely, but enough for her to notice. A flicker in his eyes, like a thought he hadn’t yet decided whether to keep or release. He lifted a hand toward her, slow and sure. Not a demand. Not a gesture of control. It was open, deliberate. A quiet invitation to return something that wasn’t quite hers yet.
She reversed the blade, offering the hilt without hesitation. No dramatic pause, no faltering. Just weight moving from her hands to his. The handoff was clean, unspoken, the kind of exchange that didn’t need ceremony to be understood.
He sheathed the sword with practiced ease, and the sound—soft, precise, the smooth slide of steel into lacquered wood—didn’t echo. It landed. Not loud, not theatrical. Just final. Like a breath held, then released.
“I wanted to show you these,” he said in Korean, the playful edge from earlier gone. His voice had changed, calmer now, older somehow. He held the sheathed blade in both hands, fingers gliding over the lacquer not to clean it, but to remember it. “But someone like you… someone like you already understands.”
He placed it gently back in its rack, hands steady, motions exact. Each movement held weight, the kind of intention that couldn’t be faked. “I no longer make instruments of death,” he said, softer now, almost to himself. “I keep them for their beauty. For what they once meant. Because I love them.”
There was a quiet pride in his words, not boastful, just true. He bowed his head slightly. “I’m proud of what I made. Proud of how well I made them. But I am retired.”
She stepped closer, silent. No threat in her approach, only certainty. Her presence filled the space without trying to. Her voice came softly, but with clarity.
“Then give me one.”
The words landed like a pin in still fabric. He turned to face her, jaw tightening.
“They’re not for sale.”
“I didn’t say sell me one.”
They locked eyes. Her stare didn’t waver. Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.
“I said give me one.”
A pause opened between them. Not long, but heavy. The kind that held all the weight of what hadn’t been said yet. When he spoke again, it was clipped. Cold.
“And why should I help you?”
She didn’t blink. “Because the vermin I’m after,” she said, the words clean and hard, “was your student.”
That stopped him. Not with a flinch, not with alarm. Just a subtle shift. Shoulders lowered by a fraction, breath held at the top of his chest. His silence was sudden and full.
She stepped in again. “And considering the student…” she let the rest hang, then added, “you have certain obligations.”
He turned and walked toward the narrow attic window, its frame sun-bleached and warped slightly with age. With the back of his hand, he wiped away a patch of fog, clearing a view just big enough to see the city stretching out below them—rooftops, wires, and the slow dimming of the day. The glass was damp, the edges still filmed in condensation.
With one finger, he reached up and began to write.
TAEHYUNG.
The name curved faintly in the glass, drawn in a line of skin oil and breath. Outside, the wind kicked up, brushing against the building with a hollow tap. The beams creaked. The attic seemed to lean into the moment. The name.
She didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just nodded once. That was enough.
Hoseok turned, walked to the trapdoor, and reached for the old latch. It gave with a dry metallic groan. The ladder creaked as it unfolded, the sound echoing faintly in the rafters.
He gestured to the corner. A futon, rolled neatly. A folded blanket beside it. A small jug of water, a wooden comb laid with care. Nothing lavish. Nothing new. Just clean. Lived-in.
“You can sleep here,” he said in Korean. “I’ll make space downstairs. Might take a day or two to find proper furniture.”
He descended the ladder with the same quiet weight he carried everywhere. But just before the hatch closed, his voice floated back up, lower and firmer.
“It’ll take a month to make the blade.”
A pause. The creak of one last step below.
“I suggest you spend it practicing.”
Then the hatch closed with a solid, wooden thunk. Not sharp. Not aggressive. Just complete.
She stood still, alone in the attic, the air settling around her like dust that had waited too long to fall. The quiet wasn’t just quiet anymore. It was thick, almost physical. A silence that had weight, like the room itself was holding its breath after what had been said, what had been written.
The last of the afternoon light had slipped away without notice, and in its place came the muted amber of early evening. Outside, the city blurred. Rooftops softened, edges dulled, the sky folding into dusk with no sharp lines left. Gwangju looked like it was remembering something it didn’t want to say out loud.
She walked toward the window, slow and steady, her boots tapping gently against the floor. The name was still there, hovering in the circle of cleared glass, faint but legible. TAEHYUNG. The letters had already started to run a little, the edges softened by moisture and time.
From her coat, she pulled a cloth. It was plain, the kind of fabric that had seen years of use—creased, worn, stripped of anything personal. Just something that did its job. She raised it and began to wipe. One pass. Then another. Then again. Not hard, not angry. Just firm. Methodical. With each motion, the letters blurred a little more, until they were nothing but streaks. And then nothing at all. Just fog again.
She held her hand to the glass for a second longer, palm pressed flat. The warmth from her skin left a faint outline before the cold reclaimed it. It faded just like the name had. Quick, quiet, complete.
She folded the cloth with care and tucked it back into her coat, her fingers working with practiced ease. No lingering. No pause for meaning.
Then she turned from the window.
Outside, the city kept fading. Behind her, the attic returned to stillness. The name was gone. And with it, whatever place he might’ve held in her. Taehyung Kim had already taken too much. There was no room left in her for the ghost of him. Not anymore.
He would fall. And when he did, she would finally be free.
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chimcess ¡ 4 days ago
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⚔︎ Chapter Four: The Man from Gwangju Pairing: Taehyung x Reader Other Tags: Assassin!Taehyung, Assassin!Reader, Assassin!Jimin, Dad!Jimin, Assassin!Yoongi, Gang Leader!Yoongi, Assassin!Namjoon, Swordmaster!Hoseok, Chef!Hoseok, Pimp!Seokjin Genre: Assassins! AU, Exes!AU, Lovers to Enemies, Action, Comedy, Suspense, Martial Arts, Drama, Thriller, Romance (if you squint), Heavy Angst, Violence, 18+ only Word Count: 23.9k+ Summary: A former assassin awakens from a four-year coma after her ex-lover Taehyung tries to kill her on her wedding day. Driven by revenge for the loss of her unborn child and stolen life, she creates a hit list and embarks on a ruthless mission to take down everyone responsible. Warnings: Violent thoughts, implied miscarriage, flashbacks, PTSD, mental illness, guns, other weapons, traveling, arguing, bickering, use of katana, this is a pretty tame chapter all things considered, not many warnings for this one, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: I apologize if I miswrote any of the Korean I used in this chapter. I don't speak fluently and relying on Google can be difficult.
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Horizon City was somehow worse than El Paso. The sky pressed down like a lid on a pot, trapping the heat until the air itself felt heavy. No clouds. No breeze. Just that dry, punishing stillness that made the world feel abandoned. The pavement shimmered. Buildings sagged under the weight of it, their paint bleached to bone, their windows hot to the touch.
Down the center of it came the Pussy Wagon, too loud, too yellow, a smear of wrong color on a sunburned road. It didn’t belong here, not among rusted trucks and dead air conditioners. Heads turned. Conversations stopped. A woman at the pump froze mid-swipe, squinting like she wasn’t sure if she was awake. No one spoke. In Horizon, you didn’t ask questions unless you wanted answers that ruined sleep.
She didn’t care who stared.
Her bare feet pressed into the warped rubber floorboard, soles black from gas station dirt and bathroom tile. Every joint ached, stiff from too much stillness. Her spine creaked when she shifted. Muscles tugged like they’d forgotten their work. But it was pain she trusted, the kind that proved she was awake.
She turned off the main drag and coasted into a strip mall that had been dying for years but refused to finish. Half the shops were empty, windows papered with curling FOR LEASE signs. The others hung on out of spite. One, TexStyle Western Wear, flickered under a crooked sign. She killed the engine and let the truck tick and groan like it resented being roused.
The pavement nearly blistered her feet. She staggered once, steadied, then limped toward the storefront. Her hips screamed, her legs protested, but they worked. She didn’t look back.
Inside, the temperature dropped hard. The AC blasted chemical cold, making her skin prickle. Lights buzzed overhead, too bright, too dim, one always flickering. Country music bled from a speaker behind the counter, slow and stitched together with heartbreak. She knew the tune. She knew the kind of place this was: the kind where you could walk in dripping blood or ghosts and no one cared, as long as you didn’t yell or steal.
Her scrubs rustled as she moved through racks, baggy and stained, reminders of a place she wouldn’t name. She trailed her fingers along the denim, grounding herself. Jeans. A tank top. A jacket lined with shearling she didn’t need but wanted anyway, something to hide behind. Boots under the clearance rack: red leather, white stars dulled to cream. She pulled them on, breath catching at the pain in her thighs, but when she stood, they fit.
At the register, she dropped Buck’s damp bills on the counter. The clerk didn’t look twice. Just bagged her scrubs like trash.
Outside, the sun hadn’t softened. Her boots struck the pavement sharp as punctuation. She still ached, but she didn’t limp.
The truck’s interior hit her like a furnace. Metallic heat, vinyl, old fuel. The dashboard cracked, the rearview crooked, the windshield spiderwebbed. Her reflection blurred in broken glass, and she let it. She gripped the wheel, palms sticky. For a moment she only sat, list forming in her head, incomplete but enough. One more stop before a nameless motel.
She turned the key. The engine coughed, then rumbled alive, low and angry, a sound she was starting to mistake for comfort. Gravel spit behind her as she peeled out, Horizon City sliding by in the same monotony of sun and collapse.
The next place barely qualified as a department store: a sun-bleached block shouting about bargains to an empty lot. Something fried, chicken maybe, stank through the heat. She parked far from the door. Her legs still felt untrustworthy, but she needed to walk. Make them remember.
Inside, the cold slapped her. Too bright, too sterile, smelling of bleach and melted candy. The place buzzed with noise: screaming kids, arguing parents, a tantrum echoing from toys. She kept her eyes forward. People looked. She felt it, half-second glances sliding over scars and scuffed boots. She didn’t care.
She picked up a basket and drifted to the camping aisle. The shelves were thin, but she found what she needed. A folding shovel, its handle thick and heavy like a weapon. A short-handled pickaxe with a fiberglass grip slick under her palm. A flashlight that looked sturdy enough to swing. Waterproof matches in a bright orange case. And a map of Texas, worn soft at the folds, stained with someone else’s fingerprints. She ran her thumb over the crease before dropping it into the basket. She’d be the last to touch it.
She passed the clearance bins without slowing: Father’s Day mugs, novelty socks, foam can holders with jokes no one ever laughed at. Junk for people she didn’t know. Junk for people who weren’t her. In stationery, she stopped just long enough to grab a plain black notebook and a pack of felt pens.
The basket was filling, too heavy. She set it down and reached for another, the metal frame cool and rough, already rusting at the welds. This one she filled faster, almost frantic. Apricot shampoo and the matching conditioner. A plain white bar of soap, unscented. A bag of cheap pink razors. A loofah she didn’t bother to look at. Deodorant. Face wash. Lotion. Each item clattered against the others, no pause between them. She didn’t want to smell like blood anymore, or sweat, or antiseptic. She wanted the hospital scrubbed off her, layer by layer. She wanted her body back, her skin hers again.
Across the aisle, glass jars lined the shelves, full of bath salts in candy colors. Bubble bath bottles in bright, desperate packaging. A SALE sign shouted promises no one believed. She hadn’t planned to stop, but her feet slowed, drawn by a pull she hated. A scent she didn’t want but couldn’t shake.
An older woman was already there. White hair twisted into a bun, movements slow, deliberate, elegant. She opened jars one by one, breathing each in carefully, gently, as though the act itself was sacred. Y/N didn’t look at her. She just reached for the nearest jar and twisted it open.
Lavender.
The smell hit hard. Her stomach flipped. Her chest locked tight. She was back under hospital lights, antiseptic sharp in the air. IV bags swaying. Monitors chirping in steady beeps. Footsteps soft against tile. A cool hand brushing her hair while a voice whispered a lie: You’re going to be okay.
She snapped the lid closed and shoved the jar back like it had burned her.
Her hand shot out for another, no thought, no reading the label. She breathed deep. Citrus. Tropical. Artificial. But it worked. It cut through the memory, broke it apart. She dropped the jar into her basket.
The next bottle she grabbed was cracked, label peeling, its cap leaking a sticky line down the side. Vanilla, it claimed. She didn’t care. It wasn’t lavender.
At the register, she dumped both baskets onto the belt without ceremony. Her mind spun in jagged circles: Taehyung’s reflection in a rearview mirror, the clean white of hospital sheets, Sam Wallace’s cologne drifting in the heat of summer, the silence of her mother’s kitchen. And beneath it all, always there, the one memory that refused to wash out: her father.
The cashier looked barely old enough to work, hoodie strings chewed thin, nails chipped, one earbud still in. She didn’t speak. Just scanned.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Plastic bags crinkled as they filled. Lavender still clung to Y/N’s hands, her cuticles, her collar, her breath. And then, soft as a whisper in the dark, she heard it: Our Father, who art in heaven…
“Your total is thirty-two seventy-one.”
The voice cut through. She blinked, counted out the money, slid it across. The girl gave her change and the receipt without looking up.
“Have a good one,” she mumbled.
Y/N’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. She studied the girl’s face, saw the dull shadow of apathy in her eyes.
“You too,” she said, her own voice rough, low, like it had clawed its way up from somewhere deep.
She gathered her bags, two in one hand, the third looped over her wrist, and walked for the exit. The automatic doors opened with a hiss, like the store was exhaling her into the heat.
The Pussy Wagon waited at the edge of the lot, its paint so bright it looked like it might hum in the sun. Red flames curled down the sides, shimmering just enough in the heat to look alive. It didn’t look fast. It didn’t look mean. It looked like a mistake someone hadn’t lived down. She didn’t care. She kept walking, boots heavy against the asphalt, bags swinging like pendulums against her knees. Her spine throbbed. Her legs burned. The sun bore down like it wanted to erase her. She kept going.
The truck hit her like a furnace when she opened the door: stale air, rubber, sun-baked vinyl, the faint stink of sweat that wasn’t hers. She didn’t flinch. She cranked the window down halfway, tossed a bag onto the passenger seat, and climbed in. The vinyl clung to her thighs. She turned the key. The engine coughed, sputtered, then growled alive. Reluctant, but steady. It always caught.
She pulled out slow. Tires groaned on the blacktop. Horizon City slid past in layers of heat: fast food joints with sun-bleached signs, payday loan offices in buildings yellowed with age, gas stations with broken pumps, liquor stores called EZ Mart and Last Stop. Dust. Concrete. The occasional palm tree, warped and brittle under the sun, too stubborn to fall but long past thriving.
She didn’t need to look twice. She knew this town. She’d lived in three just like it. She’d died in one.
When the storefronts thinned, she turned onto a cracked lot overrun with crabgrass and potholes. At the far end squatted a two-story motel that looked abandoned mid-construction. Stucco walls blistered, paint curling in sheets, rust bleeding from the windows. Above the office, a crooked neon sign buzzed: The Texican. The “i” blinked like it was losing the fight.
She parked beneath the second-floor walkway, under Room 212. The blinds were shut, but one slat bent outward like a broken tooth. She stared for a beat, then shifted her weight, grabbed her bags, and stepped out.
The lobby smelled of mildew and old smoke. The air felt stale, sealed in too long. A ceiling fan turned slow, clicking each time its blade passed the same rusted edge. The desk at the back looked like it had been rescued from a junkyard. Behind it, a man slouched low in his chair, tank top gray with sweat, a serpent tattoo curling down his arm. His eyes were on a screen.
When he finally looked up, his gaze crawled over her: boots, thighs, waist, lingering where it shouldn’t. Her jaw tightened, but she didn’t blink. She pulled out a roll of bills and dropped it on the counter.
He dragged it close with two yellowed nails. “Night or week?” His voice was flat, dry, like gravel at the bottom of a well.
“Night.”
He grunted, slid her a keycard, and dropped his gaze again. No greeting. No smile. Exactly what she wanted.
She took the key and left.
The stairwell creaked under her weight. The rail was rough, flaking paint into her palm. Each step made her legs ache, tendons stiff, balance not yet fully hers. The building leaned with age, and the stairs tilted uneven.
When she reached the second floor, Room 212 waited. The numbers on the door sagged, one screw half out, the wood around the lock chipped where years of hands had missed their mark. Paint was smudged with failed attempts. She slid the card through. The reader gave a faint, uncertain beep, followed by the click of the lock: a sound sharp and organic, like a joint slipping from its socket.
She stood for a moment, hand hovering over the handle, the heat pressing into her shoulders, sweat sliding down her spine. Then she turned it and pushed inside.
The smell met her first. Not the acrid bite of fresh smoke, but the stale kind, decades old, soaked deep into carpet, curtains, drywall. It was a yellowed stench, baked permanent. Underneath it sat something sour and sharp: mildew, failed cleaning agents, an aftertaste of effort without success. The air felt stagnant, heavy, as if it hadn’t moved in years.
She closed the door behind her, let the deadbolt snap home, and slid the chain across with a thin metallic scrape. A chair in the corner caught her eye: stubby, mismatched, its upholstery faded to some indefinable shade. She dragged it under the knob, jamming it in place. It wouldn’t stop anyone who truly wanted in, but it was a line drawn. A gesture of refusal.
The room itself looked scavenged. Curtains drooped from bent hooks, corners sun-bleached uneven. The light that slipped past them split the bed in orange streaks, late sunlight carving the space apart. The carpet near the door was bald and sticky, its color long since lost to grime. Nothing matched. The nightstand sat too low, its lamp too tall, casting warped shadows up the wall. The desk was scarred with rings and burns, the ghosts of cups and cigarettes. The bedspread screamed in paisleys of red and green, loud and ugly enough to distract from the rest.
She dropped her bags by the mattress and stood still, listening to the silence press in. The wall unit stuttered to life, blasting air that smelled of dust and freon. Not clean, but colder. For the first time all day, she didn’t feel watched.
The bathroom light buzzed on with a flick. The bulb flickered, then held. The mirror above the sink was clouded, corners warped where the silver backing had rotted away. Her reflection returned in fragments, her face shifted, imperfect, unfamiliar.
The faucet groaned before giving up a stuttering flow. Rust-tinged water ran a few seconds before clearing. Heat came quickly, fogging the mirror, filling the small room with steam that climbed the walls and clung to her skin.
She opened the jar of bath salts, tipped two scoops into the tub. They dissolved with a hiss, releasing a softness that felt like it belonged to another life. She poured in the bubble bath, slow, steady, watching it curl through the rising water like melted gold. The white bar of soap she left on the edge, still wrapped, waiting.
Her clothes came off piece by piece, sticking to her skin like second layers. Shirt. Jeans. Damp underwear. She peeled them free and stood in the fog. The mirror caught her in fragments again: shoulder, waist, ribs. Bruises bloomed faintly along her sides, yellow-green fading into skin. Her stomach flat but hollow, her hips jutting sharp. The scar at her abdomen still pink and raised. She didn’t linger. She already knew.
One hand steady on the tile, she stepped into the tub. The heat bit her ankles, climbed her calves, forced a gasp from her throat. Still, she sank down, slow, deliberate, until the water closed around her shoulders and she was folded in on herself, knees tucked, arms looped tight. Steam wrapped her, heavy and close.
She let herself breathe.
The tropical scent lingered, cloying but gentle. Bubbles clung to the surface, catching the light in fragile sheens. Her skin burned, then loosened. Muscles unwound: jaw, neck, spine. For a moment, it felt almost like safety. Almost like being held.
The first sob tore out raw, deeper than her throat, violent as a cough. Another followed. Then another. She pressed her forehead to her knees, fingers digging into her shins, and tried to choke them back. Useless. Her body shook, her breath broke apart. She didn’t scream; there was no air for it. But she wept, bone-deep, every muscle wracked. Her ribs ached, her throat stung.
She wept for the baby she never held, gone before its first breath. For the man who promised to stay, whose blood had marked her hands and her dress and the altar floor. For the hospital bed, for the machines that never went quiet, for the fluorescent light that never dimmed. For every woman who pressed a hand to a belly still full. For every picture never taken, every name never whispered.
She wept for herself. For the years locked away. For her voice forgotten. For the silence that no one noticed.
Eventually her body emptied out. The sobs thinned to shudders, then silence. She sat in the cooling water, bubbles thinning, breath still uneven. Her arms uncoiled. The lavender clung. The bruises showed. The scar glistened.
Drip. Drip. Drip. The faucet tapped against porcelain. The fan above crackled softly, struggling on. Beyond the wall, the air conditioner rattled in fits, wheezing like it had something to prove. A breeze nudged the curtain against the sill, a tap-tap-tap in an accidental rhythm.
She reached for the soap.
It was motel standard, wrapped in stiff waxed paper that crackled as she peeled it open. Plain. White. The word SOAP stamped across in faded block letters, nothing more. She lathered it slow, the foam thick in her palms, and began.
Arms first, shoulder to wrist. Then chest. Then neck. Back to shoulders again, where tension clung deepest. Her jaw, careful. Her stomach, softer, her hand pausing at the scar as though in apology. Her legs, her feet, her fingers, behind her ears. Nothing frantic. Just deliberate, steady strokes, scraping memory away piece by piece.
The water changed, subtly at first. Soap film clouded the surface, swirling. Then faint streaks rose, pinkish, floating near her thighs. Tiny cuts reopened by heat. Or maybe old wounds, still not ready to close.
She picked up the apricot shampoo and snapped the cap open. The scent hit fast: sweet, bright, almost cheerful. Out of place in a room like this, but she let it in anyway. She poured a slick mound into her palm and worked it through her scalp, once, then again. On the third wash she slowed, fingers tracing circles, nails dragging lightly against her skin. It was no longer about cleaning. It was about feeling. Her own hand. Her own body. Her own presence. For a moment she wasn’t thinking about hospitals or sirens or the weight of what came next. Just herself.
Her hair drifted in strands around her, clinging to shoulders and arms, spreading across the water’s surface like ink in clear glass. Every small movement sent ripples over her collarbones. She moved carefully, hardly disturbing the surface.
By the time she rinsed, the bathwater had thickened with what she’d carried in: suds, oil, dirt, faint streaks of blood. Stray hairs, flecks of skin, things she didn’t bother to name. A film skated across the top, swirling quietly every time she exhaled.
She sat in it, arms locked around her knees, chin pressed down. The steam was fading now, air cooling just enough to raise goosebumps along her arms. The mirror across the room stayed fogged. The weight of the day pressed into her spine, her knees, her lungs. Still she didn’t move. Stillness was the point: the kind that emptied you without ceremony.
Her hand found the drain. She pulled.
At first it was a soft slurp. Then stronger, a steady pull. The water swirled around her body like it was trying to take its time saying goodbye. It licked her thighs, curved around her ribs, slid past her arms, then dropped in spirals. The drain swallowed it all without protest: the soap, the oil, the old blood, the pieces of herself she no longer wanted.
She stayed until only a thin puddle remained, circling once, twice, before vanishing with a hollow gurgle. Silence filled the space it left behind.
She pressed her palms against the rim of the tub. Cold now, slick with condensation. She welcomed the sting in her hands. Took a sharp breath, let it root her, then pushed herself upright.
Her legs trembled on the rise. Her arms shook with the effort. Joints complained. Muscles felt wrong, unfamiliar. But she kept moving, slow, steady, until she was standing.
Water traced down her skin in patient rivulets, dripping from her spine, elbows, fingertips. Each drop left its mark before disappearing into the porcelain. The steam had mostly lifted, retreating into the vent or curling beneath the door, leaving only faint streaks across the mirror.
She reached for the towel.
It was motel-issue, stiff, frayed at the edges, faintly sour with detergent and bleach. She dragged it over herself in blunt swipes. No ritual, no tenderness. Just the act of removing water from skin. Left arm, right. Shoulders. Legs. Stomach. The towel caught on raw patches where she’d scrubbed too hard, lit sparks under her skin, but she didn’t flinch.
Barefoot, she stepped out onto the motel carpet. It scratched at her heels like someone else’s memory, old and unpleasant. The room felt thinner than it had before the bath. The air sharper, like it had shifted in her absence.
Her clothes waited in a neat stack. She pulled on the jeans one leg at a time, denim dragging over fresh skin. They caught once on a healing scrape; she winced, then yanked them higher, cinching the belt until the pressure pressed her steady. The tank top next, damp fabric clinging across her ribs. Then the jacket, heavy, familiar, already too warm but necessary. Not for comfort. For armor.
She didn’t look at the bathroom mirror.
On the bed’s edge she bent forward, boots at her feet. She tugged one on, then the other, hands shaking. Not from nerves, but from exhaustion threaded deep, the kind that lived in marrow. The right slid in easy, a solid thump. The left resisted, ankle stiff, toes fighting the fit. She wriggled, yanked, coaxed it until it gave with a final snap. She stood.
The floor felt steadier than it had last night. That was enough.
At the sink, the mirror still wore a fogged film. She wiped it once with her palm, dragging away condensation. Her reflection stared back fractured through hairline cracks, the glass tinted yellow with time. It was her, but broken into pieces.
She looked older than she remembered. Cheeks hollowed, bones sharpened. Shadows pooled under her eyes like bruises. Lips pale, pressed flat. Jaw locked, clenched around years unsaid.
Her scar caught the light. Not a clean line, but a jagged pale bloom across her temple, skin pulled tight over the plate beneath. It hadn’t ruined her face. But it had changed it. Left its story whether she wanted one or not.
She didn’t turn away. Didn’t flinch. She stared until her chest tightened, until her throat threatened to close.
The rage was there, coiled low, steady. Not a fire that leapt. A coal that smoldered. It had lived in her for years, quiet and unyielding, and it stirred now, hot beneath her ribs.
She didn’t glance down at her stomach.
Her daughter. Gone.
Her breath hitched, sharp, and she stepped back.
The bathroom still clung to the last of the steam, curling in the corners, drifting as if reluctant to leave. When she opened the door, it slipped out behind her, dissolving into the dry stillness of the room. It wasn’t dawn yet, not quite. But the light was changing. That in-between hour, when night begins bleeding out but the world hasn’t decided to wake. Everything felt suspended. Waiting.
She crossed to the nightstand. The notebook sat where she’d left it, black cover smooth and unmarked, as if it were holding its breath. She lifted it with both hands, careful, like it might shift weight if she wasn’t. Heavier than it should have been, not from paper but from what it was meant to hold.
From her bag, she drew a pen. Plain, black, the kind sold by the dozen, designed to be used and forgotten. She uncapped it slowly, the click soft, almost apologetic in the hush.
The first page stared up at her.
Death List Five
Yoongi Min – Cottonmouth
Jimin Park – Copperhead
Namjoon Kim – Sidewinder
Brandi Phoenix – California Mountain Snake
Taehyung
She replaced the cap. Slid pen and notebook back into her bag.
Next, she found Buck’s sunglasses where she’d tossed them, bent and scratched, ridiculous in their persistence. She slipped them on. Crooked, as always. She nudged the bridge, tried to adjust, gave up. They never sat right. But they worked.
The room was still dim. Her boots thudded against the floor, each step certain, carrying the weight of promise. At the door, she paused. The chair was still wedged beneath the knob, stubborn in its defiance. She bent, joints stiff, dragged it aside. The scrape echoed across the linoleum, a punctuation mark in the silence.
Chain. Thumb flick. Deadbolt. Three turns, quick, practiced. Her fingers didn’t need thought.
The door groaned open, hinges low and grudging. Heat met her immediately, thick, dry, pressing. Asphalt fumes rising from the lot. Dust on the air. The tang of oil, the metallic bite of a day not yet begun.
The sky was shifting, neither gold nor pink, but some strange in-between shade that lasted only minutes. The motel sat inside it, silent, caught between one night ending and another day beginning. Paused.
The neon above the office buzzed faintly. A cicada started, cut off. A dog barked once. Silence folded back in.
She stepped out. The door clicked shut. She didn’t look back.
The Pussy Wagon crouched at the lot’s edge, yellow paint too bright for the hour, flames shimmering like they wanted to breathe. It looked absurd, dangerous, and proud in equal measure. A dare made metal. A joke sharpened into a blade.
She opened the door, slid inside. The vinyl seat was warm against her thighs, not yet burning but close. The cab smelled of lavender and motor oil, clean, antiseptic almost, but still mechanical. A machine rebuilt too many times, carrying the weight of its history.
For a moment, she sat still. Palms flat on her thighs, fingers twitching. The motel’s AC unit droned faintly in the distance. Inside, the truck held its own silence, coiled tight like a breath waiting to be exhaled.
She turned the key.
The engine caught on the second attempt, rumbling alive with a guttural growl. The cab shivered around her, wheel buzzing in her hands, the vibration running up her arms and into her chest. Settling there. She slid it into drive. Tires spit gravel, reluctant but obedient. The motel shrank behind her, just another room, another scar. Room 212 vanished in the rearview, swallowed by neon and dust.
She didn’t look back.
The highway opened in front of her, cracked asphalt unfurling like a dark ribbon across West Texas. Brush clawed at the shoulders, mesquite twisted like broken arms, rocks rusted red, skeletal trees brittle with drought. The sky stretched pale and empty, the sun still soft but already threatening.
By the time the desert swallowed her, night had fallen again. Not gentle. Not gradual. It dropped like a curtain, sudden and absolute. No moon. No stars. Just black. Heavy. Whole.
The truck didn’t belong here, and it knew it.
It roared too loud, headlights carving two stark tunnels into the void. The beams caught nothing but empty miles, white columns piercing a silence too thick to care. The engine hummed, steady and tired, as though warning her without conviction. Every dip rattled the frame, but the wheel stayed true under her hands. Ten and two. Steady.
Mirages shimmered at the edges of her vision, heat ghosts lingering after the sun. She didn’t chase them.
The desert whispered against the truck’s flanks, a dry, rattling scrape like fingernails on denim. Insects, wind, memory. Something flickered low across the road’s edge, fast, small, gone again. She didn’t check. She slowed instead.
The road narrowed to one lane, asphalt breaking apart under its own weight. She eased off the gas. Let the truck crawl. Then stopped.
Headlights washed over brush and stone. Stillness. Shadows deep enough to hide anything. Or nothing.
She cut the engine.
The silence arrived instantly. Not falling over her, but revealing itself, like it had always been here, waiting.
She reached for the flashlight on the passenger seat, opened the door.
The night air was sharp, not cold but exposing, stripping. She tugged her jacket closer. Gravel shifted under her boots. Behind her, the truck ticked softly as the engine cooled, the sound fading into the endless dark.
She clicked the flashlight on. A narrow beam cut the dark, sharp and clean, slicing through shadow like a scalpel. Everything beyond its reach stayed untouched, patient, waiting.
She didn’t hesitate. Her body carried her forward, step by step, as if it had walked this path before. Maybe it had. Her legs remembered what her mind wanted to forget.
Then she saw it.
A rock. Just a rock, if you didn’t know better. Pale limestone, sunk halfway into the dirt, weathered and ordinary. Something that should’ve blended in. Something anyone else would miss.
But not her.
She crouched, knees popping softly, flashlight wedged between shoulder and chin. The light crawled along the stone’s edge, shadows doubling its size. Her fingers dug into the packed soil at the base. She pulled.
It resisted. Heavier than it used to be. Maybe the ground had hardened. Maybe she had softened. Either way, she braced, set her boot, and pulled again. The stone shifted with a dry scrape.
Underneath, the mark was waiting.
An X, carved deep. Not faded, not worn down. Black as the day she burned it in. The sight of it caught her breath somewhere between release and recoil.
That mark had been a promise. If it was gone, she’d walk away. That was the deal. No vengeance. No names. Just silence. But it wasn’t gone.
The desert hadn’t erased it. Time hadn’t buried it. The universe hadn’t looked away. She stood. The cold closed in now, not wind but earth itself. The shadows seemed to lean forward, curious. She didn’t care. She went back to the truck.
The tools were waiting where they always had been: shovel, pickaxe, flashlight. Old companions. Her hand found the shovel without thought, as if it had already been chosen. She leaned into the cab, thumbed the stereo. Silence shattered. The riff echoed through the night, jagged and merciless, too much for the cab to contain. The truck rattled under it, tires humming against dirt, frame twitching as if it wanted to leap forward. Guitars clawed. Drums pounded like fists.
She turned away before the echo finished, walking back toward the rock. The music chased her into the dark, distorted by space but still sharp enough to cut. Her boots kept time with the rhythm, gravel crunching in sync.
One. Two. Three.
She counted, breath more than voice.
Four. Five. Six.
The flashlight swung at her side, beam lurching across dirt and brush. It caught on shadows, slid over brittle grass, bent across rocks. It felt like stepping into a story that hadn’t been written yet.
Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
Her body warmed against the cold, rhythm keeping her steady. The rock loomed again. Here the air shifted. The ground itself exhaled, cold rising up like something long-buried had soured. She gripped the shovel. The wood was damp. Not with sweat. With memory. Her gloves creaked against it. She drove it down. The first strike rang flat, earth baked into stone. It shoved back. Her arms jolted, shoulder jarred. She didn’t stop.
Another swing. Harder. Then another.
The dirt began to loosen. She fell into rhythm: dig, lift, pivot. Again. Breath shortened, sweat slid down her spine, her back sang with strain. Her palms throbbed inside her gloves. Still, she didn’t let up. Each blow cleared space inside her chest.
Behind her, Barracuda still screamed. The desert caught the sound and threw it back at her, warped but relentless. And she kept going.
Clink.
The sound was different. Heavier. It traveled up the handle, into her arms, into her spine. She froze, boot perched on the edge of the hole, dirt sliding down around her ankle. Breath caught. Heart stilled.
She dropped to her knees. Gloves filthy, jeans scraping rock. She set the flashlight down; its beam jittered, then steadied. Enough to show what waited beneath the soil.
Her hand closed around the pickaxe. She didn’t think. Just swung. Once. Twice. Again.
Chunks of dirt split, scattering sharp and dry. Her arms burned, lungs worked like pistons. Gravel dug into her knees. She didn’t stop until she saw it.
Black plastic. Torn in places, stretched tight over a shape too familiar. Boxy. Olive green peeking through. She knew before she touched it.
The pickaxe dropped from her grip. She clawed at the soil, ripping through plastic and dirt alike. Something slick caught under her nails—water, blood, it didn’t matter. She braced, boot pressed hard, and wrenched.
The earth gave with a groan. The box lurched free, knocking her backward. She landed hard, breath ragged, chest heaving.
Her gloves were filthy, her arms trembling with the effort, but the footlocker was out at last. It was army issue, the kind stamped into a generation. The metal was olive drab, dulled by time, corners dented, its surface scratched and scuffed, the paint chipped to reveal bare steel beneath. The hinges wore rust, but they still held; the latches were stiff but unbroken. It looked exactly as it should: forgotten, but intact.
She brushed a layer of dirt from the lid, her fingers finding the latches without hesitation. A practiced motion, quick and certain. Metal snapped against metal, followed by the creak of hinges straining after years of silence. Dust drifted up in a pale cloud, catching the flashlight’s beam and hanging there like ash in still air. She set the light on the rim and leaned closer.
The first thing she drew out was a sleeping bag, cheap nylon, navy blue, stiff with disuse. It unrolled with a brittle crackle, the zipper teeth clinking like links in a chain. She spread it beside the hole, pressing it flat with both hands. The flashlight cast a sharp bar of light across the box. Dust rose through it in lazy spirals, as though the past itself was breathing.
Beneath the bag lay rows of magazines, tight and orderly. Some bound with rubber, others wound in black electrical tape, the edges frayed with age. She picked one up, ran her thumb over the top round. Brass gleamed back at her, untarnished, untouched. As though it had been waiting.
The first pistol was compact and polished, silver bright against the dim. It looked too elegant for this place, but she knew better. A weapon meant for close range, not display. She tested the weight, how naturally it rested in her palm, before setting it aside with the holster.
Next came a snub-nosed .38. Plain steel, no ornament, no pretension. Just the kind of tool that did the job without complaint. She opened the cylinder, checked each chamber, and gave it a spin. It ticked clean and precise, like a clock. She slipped it into its ankle holster, the Velcro catching with a rasp.
Piece by piece, the Mossberg came out: the barrel, the stock, the slide. She brushed the dust off with her sleeve, each movement instinctive. Assembly came without thought. One part clicked into the next until the weapon lay whole across her lap, heavy, steady, ready.
Her hand brushed something smaller, curved and cold. She lifted a silver boomerang, edges honed thin enough to cut without effort. The light scattered across its surface in sharp shards. She turned it once in her grip, feeling the weight shift. This was older than everything else. Older than her scars, older than her anger. A remnant from another life. It slid into its old holster, and her hand lingered there for a moment too long.
At the bottom, she found a black attachĂŠ, snug in the foam. She freed it, laid it flat, and opened the twin latches. The case released with a click sharp enough to cut the silence. Inside, in carved slots, lay the broken-down parts of a sniper rifle: barrel, bolt, scope, mount. Each piece was immaculate, free of dust, as though untouched by time. She lifted the scope, tilted it upward, and caught a starlight pinprick sharp and clear through the glass.
She was about to close the case when something caught her eye, flat, tucked beneath the foam. A manila envelope, worn at the corners, soft with use. She stripped off her gloves, ignoring the soil packed beneath her nails, and lifted it carefully as if it might crumble. She slid a finger under the flap and unfolded the paper within, one crease at a time.
A black and white sonogram. Grainy but unmistakable. A curled shape no bigger than a thumb. The curve of a spine, the suggestion of a head, the faintest stretch of limbs. Her child.
She sat motionless. The wind seemed to pause with her, the desert holding its breath. Somewhere in the distance, music pulsed low, but she barely heard it. She stayed still in the dirt, sleeves caked with dust, staring at the ghost of a life that never came to be.
She folded the sonogram slowly, carefully, and slid it back into its envelope. The flap pressed closed under her thumb, unsealed but sufficient.
There was more. 
A Ziploc bag, cloudy and heat-wrinkled. Inside was an old Texas state ID. Candy Ralston. The photo was hers, but younger. Rounder in the face, skin untouched by scars. Hair pulled back too tightly, eyes uncertain but already watching. Lips pressed in a line that refused to trust.
Next to it lay a paper bank book, its spine softened from handling. Every entry written by hand, small withdrawals made with care. A pattern so patient it became invisible, until it led here. On the final page, one last choice.
And beneath the lining, exactly where memory said it would be, she found the key. Small, plain, tarnished. Dangling from a chipped novelty fob. The letters worn nearly smooth, but she didn’t need to read them.
Deadly Vipers.
She didn’t pause. No whispered vow, no lingering glance. She began to repack the footlocker, steady and sure. Each weapon slid into its place: the sniper rifle parts pressing into their foam, the boomerang curved into its cutout like it had never left. She closed the sleeping bag last, the zipper catching once before sliding true. The final click echoed in the still air, too loud, like a door shutting behind her.
She hefted the pack onto her shoulder. Heavy, but familiar. Her body shifted into the weight like it had carried it a hundred times before.
She stood, turned, and walked back toward the truck without a backward glance. The hole remained open in the dirt behind her, a raw gash in the earth, as if the desert had been holding its breath for years and finally let it out. No marker, no cross, no stone. Just a patch of sand that had kept its secret until it no longer had to. She left it that way.
The wind stirred, but the desert didn’t change. In the distance, the oil derrick kept grinding its endless rhythm, slow, mechanical, indifferent. The truck was still humming with music when she climbed inside, something sharp with guitars and drums heavy enough to bruise a ribcage. She didn’t touch the dial. Didn’t spare the radio a look. She only turned the key.
The engine growled awake, the wheel twitching under her grip as though impatient, eager to remind her why she’d come. She shifted into drive.
Gravel cracked under the tires, dust lifting in a thin veil behind her. No farewell, no second look. The hole stayed where it was, empty, unfinished, unmarked. Nothing would fill it, and nothing needed to.
Miles slipped beneath her tires, steady and relentless. The sun climbed higher, flattening the horizon into a long, wavering stretch of heat and light. She let the road carry her forward like a current she no longer fought.
By the time she pulled into the Commonwealth Bank of Texas, the sun was cruel at its peak, heat radiating off the concrete in dizzy waves. The building looked like it had been abandoned halfway through its design and forced into use anyway: beige brick, dull metal trim, a flickering red “OPEN” sign that couldn’t decide if it meant it.
It sat wedged between a shuttered taqueria and a payday loan office still dressed in tinsel from a Christmas no one remembered. Dust thickened in the sidewalk’s cracks. The kind of place people didn’t bother to notice. Perfect.
She cut the engine. The silence that followed felt sharper than the music. Her boots struck the pavement with the same deliberate weight they’d carried through the dirt. The sleeping bag was gone, tucked away with the rest. What stepped out here wasn’t the woman from the desert. This was Candy Ralston.
Not the bright-eyed Candy with the easy smile and the drawl sharpened just enough to charm. That Candy was dead. This one was leaner, skin pale, eyes too hollow to bother pretending. Her mouth was a hard line. She hadn’t come for company.
She crossed the lot in a slow, certain stride, one hand on the bag, the other close to her coat. The fabric swayed with each step, brushing her thighs, catching the breeze. She moved like someone who knew exactly what she carried and what it would cost to use it.
The bank’s glass doors didn’t invite. The tint was too dark, the reflection warped. Inside, fluorescent lights flickered and hummed, pouring a pale gray over everything. Blinds hung crooked, yellow at the edges. A place that didn’t improve, only endured.
She pushed through the door.
The buzzer cracked the hush, too loud in the cold, conditioned air. The chill was chemical, designed to keep people awake, unsettled. It smelled of citrus cleaner and overworked machines, with something faint beneath it, something like nerves.
The light was merciless, stripping every angle bare. Her coat stayed on.
She moved with the kind of presence that didn’t need to ask for space. Cameras swiveled from their black domes in the corners, lenses humming faintly if you listened close. She didn’t look up. Let them watch. Let them wonder.
Behind the counter sat a woman who might have been there since the doors first opened. Hair lacquered into a helmet, lipstick a shade of pink too bright for her complexion. The tag on her blouse, polyester and strawberry-colored, cheap, read MARJORIE in rigid block letters.
She looked up when the door chimed, flashing a smile polished for trouble. Too quick, too practiced, more reflex than welcome.
Y/N didn’t return it.
“Hi there,” Marjorie said, her voice soaked in the slow sweetness of a Texas drawl, one that sounded like it had been taught in finishing school and worn thin by years of repetition. “How can I help you today, ma’am?”
Y/N stepped forward, just close enough to make it feel personal, but not close enough to make it weird. Her voice came out low, a little frayed, like she’d worn it out talking to ghosts. “I need access to my safety deposit box.”
Even to her own ears, she sounded small. Not scared. Just tired in a way that lived deep in the bones. Her arms still ached from the dig, her back tight across the spine, her muscles running on fumes. It helped. The exhaustion made her seem soft at the edges, easier to dismiss.
She reached into her coat and pulled out the key. It was plain, silver dulled to a matte finish, worn down at the edges. Nothing remarkable. Except it was. The way she turned it in her fingers, how it caught the light for a second, made it something more than metal. This key had opened more than steel boxes. It had cracked things open that were meant to stay shut.
She placed it on the counter like it might still be hot. “My name’s Candy Ralston.”
Marjorie blinked. Just once. But it was enough. A pause in the rhythm. Her eyes dropped to the key, then back up. Something shifted in her face: some small recalculation, like a mental search engine had just returned an unexpected result. Not panic. Not even suspicion. Just awareness. A name that didn’t match a story. Or a story that was missing too many pages.
Y/N noticed. She always noticed. The flicker in the eyes, the slight tension in the mouth, the way Marjorie’s hands hovered over the keyboard for half a second too long, like they were waiting for instructions the rest of her wasn’t ready to give.
Y/N followed with the ID. Slid it across the glass, calm, steady. The photo was old but recent enough. Her face in it was rounder, eyes a little less guarded, a smile that barely made it to her mouth. Now her cheeks were hollowed out, skin drawn tighter, her gaze hard-edged. But the eyes—those stayed the same.
Marjorie studied the ID, compared it to the woman standing in front of her. Her smile didn’t return. Something behind it had turned mechanical.
“I’ll be right back, honey,” she said, and the warmth in her voice had vanished. She took the ID and the key, turned, and disappeared behind a gray metal door that hissed shut behind her like a vault sealing off bad memories.
Y/N didn’t move.
She scanned the lobby instead. Vault tucked in the corner, keypad locked. Two cameras, standard dome type, mounted high. Cheap, analog, probably on a timed loop. Footage saved to tapes or some outdated drive, nothing that uploaded to a cloud. She made a note of that. Good, not great. Sprinklers overhead, fire alarms every fifteen feet. No posted security. No visible guards. Just quiet.
It wasn’t much. But maybe enough to stay ahead if Taehyung had caught her scent.
Marjorie came back slower than she’d gone. The door opened with the same soft hiss. No smile now. Just neutral posture, the kind you wore when you didn’t want to pick sides. She held the door open without a word.
“Right this way.”
Y/N didn’t thank her. Didn’t speak. She just moved, coat brushing against the counter’s edge, boots making a soft sound against carpet chosen specifically to muffle footsteps. The hallway they entered was narrow, lined with anonymous doors that had no signs or names, only keypads in place of knobs. It smelled like cold paper and old wiring.
At the end of the corridor was a room built for forgetting. The temperature dipped the second they stepped in, not from AC but from something deeper, like the place had been sealed off from the rest of the world for too long. Fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, casting a flat, pale glow that made every surface look harsher than it was. Shadows clung to the corners, thick and reluctant.
The walls were covered in rows of steel safety deposit boxes, each one identical, stacked high like a wall of filing cabinets in a mausoleum. A square table sat in the middle, wood, worn smooth in some places, scratched in others. It didn’t look like anyone had ever sat comfortably at it.
Marjorie moved without speaking, walking straight to a lower drawer in the wall. Her fingers didn’t fumble. She pulled a steel box free and laid it on the table with a dull thunk. Then another. The sound was soft but final, like a decision being made in secret.
She didn’t look at Y/N. Didn’t ask any questions. Her whole body said the same thing: I don’t want to know.
Y/N didn’t open the box. Not here. Not with the lights buzzing and the cameras humming faintly above, and Marjorie pretending not to see but seeing everything anyway. This wasn’t the place for what came next. Not yet.
She stood slowly, letting her knees stretch, spine groan just a little as it straightened. She didn’t make a sound. Just rose, steady and full of weight.
Marjorie still stood by the door, hands folded tight, knuckles pale. Her voice came out quiet, not reverent, not polite. Something more cautious than that.
“Thanks for coming.”
Her eyes flicked to the bag over Y/N’s shoulder. Not curious. Just wary. There was no warmth in her voice. No welcome. Just the brittle sound of someone realizing too late that they should have asked fewer questions, or maybe more.
Y/N didn’t try to soothe it.
“Thanks for your help,” she said. Flat. Even. Just enough to be finished.
She turned and walked out.
Marjorie followed at a distance, like she didn’t want to be caught sharing space with whatever Y/N carried. Back through the hallway, down the long strip of carpet meant to erase sound and footprints. When they reached the counter again, Marjorie slid behind it without a word and sat very still, watching through the glass as Y/N moved toward the door and pushed it open.
The heat outside hit like a slow slap, drier than before, tinted orange by a sun that was just starting to fall. Shadows had grown long across the parking lot, stretching past broken curbs and faded paint lines. The sky had gone bruised at the edges. The truck waited exactly where it had been, dust settled thick across the windshield, the yellow paint looking tired in the last of the light.
She tossed the bag into the flatbed, climbed into the driver’s seat, and closed the door. The cab held the day’s warmth like a breath that hadn’t been let go. The engine took a second to respond. Then it grumbled to life with a thick, uneven roar that rattled the steering column.
She pulled out of the lot without a glance at the building behind her. No one followed.
The bank disappeared in the rearview, swallowed up by the flat lines of small-town architecture and the slow drag of coming night. Another door shut. Another name scratched off.
The road opened in front of her again, stretching west through brush and rock and the half-sleep of places too small to fight back. Her fingers rested easy on the wheel. Not loose. Not tense. Just ready. Her other hand twitched once against her thigh, like it was remembering something: some old rhythm, some old grip.
The sky behind her wasn’t just sunset. It was collapse, like something had given way at the edge of the world and let everything pour out. Red bled into deep violet, orange streaked like torn silk across the horizon. It was a hell of a sight, bold and feral, almost too much to look at. But she didn’t turn to see it. Endings didn’t impress her anymore.
Mile marker 233 blurred past. Just beyond it, the motel came into view. Low-slung and sagging between a boarded-up diner and a pawn shop with a broken front window and an “OPEN” sign that hadn’t glowed since Clinton was in office. The SUNRISE MOT_L sign blinked in sickly neon, the “E” long gone, leaving the name limping toward meaning. Plastic palm trees lined the driveway, sun-bleached and cracked, their fronds drooping like they had finally accepted their own artificiality.
The truck hissed as it settled, engine ticking like it had opinions about being parked. Heat shimmered off the hood. She stepped out, boots hitting the asphalt with the unhurried thud of someone who’d done this too many times before. Another town. Another key. Another night listening to the sound of her own breath and wondering if it was really hers anymore.
The lobby reeked of cheap cleaner fighting and failing to bury the smell of time. Old carpet. Burned coffee. That bitter lemon-polish tang on furniture nobody liked. Behind the counter, a man with red eyes and a week’s stubble looked up, sweat soaking through his shirt. He regarded her the way a man regards a thunderstorm from behind a screen door: resigned, a little impressed, but not about to step into it.
She laid cash on the counter without counting. No words. No name. Just a transaction. He slid a key across the laminate, a red plastic tag dangling from it, the number 11 painted in peeling gold. The plastic stuck to her fingers, tacky with years of grime.
“Back row,” he muttered, already turning away.
Room 11 waited at the far end of the building, tucked into the shadows like a bruise no one mentioned. The lock resisted until she leaned into it, shoulder tight against the door. It clicked open reluctantly, like the room had been holding its breath.
Inside, the air was still and heavy. Not hot. Not cold. Just stale. Saturated. Smoke in the walls, mildew in the carpet. She shut the door, bolted it, slid the chain, then dragged the desk chair under the knob. It wouldn’t stop anyone. But it gave her the illusion of control.
The bag hit the bed with a solid thud. She didn’t open it yet.
Plastic blinds rattled as she lowered them slat by slat, each click deliberate. Outside, the parking lot glowed under a flickering streetlamp, humming too loud, not sure whether to stay lit. A few cars scattered across the lot. Heat still rising off the pavement. Bugs swarming the light like it meant something.
She checked the bathroom. The bulb buzzed sickly yellow, throwing a crooked shadow behind her. Cracked tile. Rusted sink. Mirror fogged at the edges, warped with age. She left the door half open. Not for sightlines. Just habit. She didn’t close doors without a reason anymore.
The room sagged at the seams. Wallpaper peeled in corners, ceiling stained like a bruise. The air conditioner coughed, rattled, died again. She sat on the bed. Zipped the bag open.
Stacks of cash waited inside, neat and brittle, rubber bands fraying with time. She picked one up, breathing in the scent of sweat, dust, and long drives with cracked windows. Quiet money. The kind that didn’t ask questions.
Beneath it, weapons. Two pistols: one clean and compact, the other older, worn. The compact one she hadn’t touched since El Paso, since Lisa Wong walked out of a motel bathroom with a pregnancy test and silence in her eyes. Lisa left three days later. Faked her death the day after that.
She slid them aside. Pulled out the SOG knife. Perfect balance. Still hers. A straight razor waited beneath it, sleek and simple, for skin. She pocketed it. Better to have options.
At the bottom lay a rifle case. She opened it, checked the matte-black barrel. Functional. Nothing ornate. She closed it again. Korea would demand quieter tools.
A manila folder came next. Corners soft with use. Inside: passports. Fourteen identities, all hers. Candy Ralston. Minsook Cho. Emma Blevins. Others she barely remembered wearing. Different hair. Different smiles. Same eyes. Always hers.
A folded map slipped out. Korea. Red ink circling cities, tracing routes like a heartbeat across the paper. She didn’t remember marking it, but her hand had known.
Photographs. Old, blurred, pulled from yearbooks under borrowed names. A beach. An arm around Sam Wallace. Her own half-formed smile frozen in place. She flipped past them quickly.
Then came the sonograms. She didn’t need to unfold them. The shape lived in her spine now, lodged between her ribs.
She sat still with the folder on her lap, bag open beside her, lamp casting weak yellow light over everything. She didn’t check her phone. Didn’t turn on the TV. Just breathed. The room didn’t welcome her, but it didn’t push her out either. It was just a box. Four walls to keep the world at bay for one more night.
Outside, a car rolled past slow, tires whispering over gravel. Somewhere down the row, a door slammed, laughter cracked sharp through the air, and bass thudded heavy from an open window. The music swaggered, empty noise with no weight behind it.
She stayed still. Let it pass like weather. Then leaned forward, unzipped the smaller pocket of the bag, and pulled free something cold and compact. A refrigeration case. She set it on the bed. Unlaced the key from her boot. The lock clicked once, clean, before the lid opened.
Inside, two gold syringes gleamed against black foam. Between them, a vial. Pale amber liquid moved slow inside it, syrup-thick, heavy, like honey aged too long.
Taehyung had called it The Undisputed Truth. Said it burned the lies out of people. She hadn’t believed him. Still didn’t. But she’d taken it anyway. Maybe it worked. Maybe it didn’t. Soon, she’d have to find out.
She closed the case and turned the key with care. Slid it back behind her laces like it had never left. The weight settled into the bag with a muted thud, buried beneath layers of gear. Her hand brushed something soft in the side pocket: a flattened pack of Camels, paper crumpled, edges worn like it had been riding there for years.
She pulled it out, frowning. Couldn’t remember putting it in. Couldn’t remember the last time she even wanted to. Not since Pai Mei. Not since the split lip and two days of lungs scraped raw from the inside. That had been the line. She’d meant to quit.
But tonight didn’t care what she meant.
She tapped the pack twice against her knee and drew one out with her teeth. The lighter waited in the same pocket, cheap plastic, half-empty. It sputtered once, twice, then caught. Flame kissed the cigarette, flared too close, then steadied to a glow. She pulled deep, the smoke burning familiar paths down her chest, settling heavy in her lungs.
The exhale spiraled slow toward the ceiling, mixing with the stale motel air as if it had always belonged there. Maybe she had too. Another drag. Longer. The tremor in her hands eased. The knot in her chest unwound. The ache behind her eyes softened just enough to blink without pain.
She had what she needed. Enough money to disappear. Enough weapons to make sure no one stopped her. Enough names stitched into paper to build another self, somewhere no one was looking. She’d started with less before, built lives from crumbs. But this time the engine driving her was different. Not revenge alone. Not pain. Hunger. The kind born not from being hurt, but from surviving. From still being alive, and wanting more than survival.
Her fingers found the folded map. She spread it flat across the bed, pressing it open with both palms. The paper had gone soft, creases tired, ink smudged. But the line still held: red ink threading its way across borders and customs, curling through cities, circling names. A path toward Korea.
Her nail traced it slow, stopping at Busan. A small circle, marked twice. She tapped it. Once. Again. Then folded the map back with care, each edge pressed down as if she were sealing a thought she couldn’t afford to lose.
The cigarette had burned low, ash dangling fragile at the end. She stood, room folding closer around her. Not smaller. Just more present, more awake. The A/C wheezed, rattled, died with a final shudder. She didn’t look at it.
At the window, she slipped two fingers through the blinds, pulled them apart. Sodium light drowned the parking lot in its false orange glow. Nothing moved except the swarm of bugs around the lamp. Her truck crouched in the far corner, paint dulled, hood shadowed. It looked patient. Waiting. It knew this wasn’t the end. Only another checkpoint. Another launch point. A step toward digging up the version of herself she’d buried.
She smoked the cigarette down to the filter, ground it out in the cracked glass ashtray beside the lamp. Then stretched, long and slow, until her spine gave a small pop. Rolled her shoulders once. Tension snapped loose. Proof the engine was still running. Proof she hadn’t rusted out yet.
There was still work ahead. Still miles to burn. Still names that needed remembering. Or forgetting.
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The sky was still the color of a healing bruise when she stepped out of Room 11. That thin, breath-held hour before sunrise stretched across the motel, quiet and suspended, like the world wasn’t sure whether to wake up or go back to sleep. The air hung low and heavy, not cold anymore but still clinging to the memory of it, brushing at her ankles as she walked. Her boots met the gravel with a soft, steady crunch, her stride slow but sure. The door clicked shut behind her with the soft finality of a decision already made. She didn’t look back. She never did.
Whatever lingered inside that room—the musty reek of mildew, the peeling wallpaper, the silence pressed into the floor like dust—could stay there. The ghosts were welcome to it.
The lot was empty now, stripped of last night’s noise and movement. No music. No laughter. No arguing strangers trying to forget whatever they’d dragged in with them. Just the hum of a flickering security light and the shadows it cast, long and tired and mostly ignored. Her truck waited where she had left it, the same as it always did. Black. Battered. Dust-laced. It didn’t look fast or dangerous, only patient. Like it had seen everything and didn’t need to brag about any of it.
She opened the door. The hinges gave a soft groan. The duffel landed in the passenger seat with a solid weight, heavier now, heavier in more ways than one. Not just steel and currency, but decisions. Commitments. Endings. She sat behind the wheel and rested her hand on the key but didn’t turn it right away. Instead she looked through the windshield, past the sagging plastic palms and sun-warped signage, out toward the open road.
Somewhere along the way, something had shifted. She didn’t know the exact moment, but it was there in her blood, in her spine. The running was over. Whatever came next would not be a retreat. She wasn’t trying to disappear anymore. She was going back.
She turned the key.
The truck woke up with a low growl, not eager but ready. The kind of engine that didn’t expect praise, only purpose. She eased out of the lot without checking the mirror, letting the motel recede into the rearview like everything else she had buried. It would stay there, just another mile behind her.
The road to the airport unfolded like it always did in these parts, quiet highways full of tired signage and forgotten ambition. Diners with names like “Lisa’s Last Stop” and “Grill & Chill 24/7,” their neon flickering like it was fighting sleep. Empty parking lots. Billboards that promised injury settlements, eternal salvation, and the best damn pecan pie on Highway 9. Churches with broken steeples. Loan offices with barred windows. The skeleton of American promise, sun-bleached and hollowed out.
She didn’t turn on the radio. Didn’t crack the window. Her coffee sat untouched in the console, more for the heat in her hand than anything else. She drove with both hands on the wheel, letting her thoughts drift slow and aimless, looping back through the same questions and never settling on answers.
The sun rose behind her, crawling up the horizon like something tired of hiding. It lit the road in pale gold and chased her shadow out ahead of her, long and crooked. The towns she passed blurred together. Same gas stations. Same parking lots. Same dust settling on sun-baked signs. Nothing reached her. Nothing asked to.
By the time she pulled into the airport lot, the sky had turned that washed-out shade of blue that promised heat and little else. She parked in long-term, rows from anyone else. Killed the engine under a flickering lamppost that gave one last buzz before giving out. She sat a moment, hands still on the wheel, feeling the last bit of quiet settle around her. Then she slung the duffel over her shoulder and got out.
It hit her hip like a reminder. Cash. Steel. Papers. Lives. She didn’t walk fast, but she didn’t stall either. Just moved forward like time didn’t own her anymore.
The terminal ahead was all glass and stale light, catching the morning sky in fractured reflections. She stepped through the automatic doors and into the kind of cold that didn’t come from weather but from design. Manufactured. Artificial. Meant to keep people sharp and orderly. It smelled like lemons, plastic, and every departure that had come before her.
She paused just inside. Not hesitation. Just calibration. Listening. Feeling the hum of the place. Gate calls. Wheels dragging. Overhead pages layered with chatter. The low murmur of a world built for leaving. For going but not staying.
She moved through it like someone who didn’t need instructions.
The check-in counter was manned by a thin kid barely old enough to rent a car. His name tag said TYLER. His lanyard was a mess of meme pins and frayed cords. The kind of kid who clocked in with earbuds still in and forgot to take them out. He didn’t notice her at first, not until she was standing right in front of him.
The duffel hit the floor beside her with a small, final sound. Her voice stayed low.
“One-way ticket to Gwangju. First available.”
Tyler blinked, fingers stuttering a second before tapping at the keyboard. Gwangju wasn’t common. It made him look up again, a little more carefully this time. She said nothing else. Just waited.
She slid the passport across the counter. Emma Ji-woo. The photo was polished, airbrushed just enough to pass scrutiny. But the eyes were hers, still and unblinking, focused. Tyler studied the picture, then studied her. He didn’t ask questions. Maybe didn’t know how. Or maybe something in her expression told him not to.
She paid in cash. Clean bills. Neat stack. Pulled from the vault without hesitation, counted out like it was nothing. Like it hadn’t come with a history. The paper smelled faintly of oil and time, like everything important always did. Tyler took the money, his fingers slowing just a bit as he handled it, as if part of him was trying to memorize what wrong felt like.
He printed her ticket, hands fidgety now, and slid it across the counter like he was giving her something that might explode.
“Gate thirty-four,” he said. “You’ll connect through Incheon.”
She took the boarding pass without a word. She didn’t say thank you. She turned and walked toward security, leaving Tyler staring after her.
She didn’t ask about upgrades or snacks. She didn’t care what came in the seatback pocket or what counted as a meal at thirty-seven thousand feet. No interest in a foil-wrapped cookie or a lukewarm bottle of water labeled “premium.” She wasn’t here for comfort. She was here to move forward. To put sky between her and the things behind her. She wanted distance. Altitude. The kind of cold, wordless detachment that only the stratosphere could offer.
The security line wound like a slow fuse: plastic bins clattering, belts slipping through metal loops, the voices of TSA agents clipped and bored. She stepped through it like she’d done it a hundred times. Because she had. Her coat was dark wool, the sort you could wear to a funeral or a boardroom without drawing questions. The stitching was heavier than it looked, reinforced. Useful. Her boots cleared the scanners. The blade inside was legal by a fraction of an inch, packed with the precision of someone who had measured the limits. Her bag was clean where it counted. Nothing that would raise alarms. Just the weight of something lived-in and quiet.
They scanned her passport and boarding pass without a second glance. The photo matched. Emma Ji-woo. Hair slightly darker in the picture, lips touched with a professional half-smile. Believable. The machines beeped politely. No flags. No questions. Just a nod and a wave.
She didn’t breathe easier. She didn’t need to.
At the gate, the crowd had already started to gather. People sprawled in chairs, their energy muted by early hours and too many miles. Some stared at their phones. Some picked at overpriced muffins. One kid cried softly into a sweatshirt, and nobody looked up. It was the kind of communal fatigue that airports did best: a shared sense of waiting without purpose.
She took her place in line, middle of the pack. Not the first. Never the last. Just another body headed somewhere else.
When they called Group Two, she moved.
Her seat was by the window. It always was. The duffel slid under the seat in front of her with practiced ease, fitting like it had done this before. She let her fingers rest on it briefly, grounding herself in the weight of what it held: names, tools, contingencies. The pieces of a life carefully folded down to fit inside a single bag.
She leaned into the wall of the plane, cool against her shoulder, and looked out. Morning had arrived without conviction. The sky was a washed-out gray, the kind of color that came before heat, before light. Airport machinery drifted past—fuel trucks, baggage carts, people in reflective vests who looked like they hadn’t slept. The wing of the plane cut across her view, still and patient, waiting to rise. Sunlight slid over it in dull streaks, catching on the rivets and edges, turning everything gold and indifferent.
The overhead speaker crackled something about boarding zones and safety demonstrations, but none of it landed. Not for her. The sound washed past her ears without shape, the way wind moves through trees: present, but meaningless. Someone two rows up laughed too loudly. A baby fussed. Coffee burned its way through the air vents, mixing with the stale plastic scent of recycled cabin air.
She didn’t move. Didn’t fidget. Her hands were folded in her lap, posture calm, almost meditative. But inside, the tight coil sat waiting. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t nerves. Just pressure. A quiet readiness built from too many miles and not enough peace.
The engines rumbled to life beneath her feet. The metal shell around her vibrated in response, like the plane was stretching its limbs after too long on the ground. It rolled slowly toward the runway, wheels clunking over seams in the concrete. She didn’t grip the armrest. Didn’t reach for anything. Just watched.
Takeoff wasn’t elegant. It was mechanical force dressed up in aerodynamics. The thrust came all at once, raw, loud, unapologetic. The kind of motion that didn’t ask permission. Her body pressed back into the seat, gravity pulling at her chest as the ground fell away. For one long breath, the Earth clung to her like it didn’t want to let go. And then it did.
The airport dropped out of view, buildings and roads folding in on themselves, reduced to the flat language of maps and memory. Gas stations, parking lots, little rectangles of human effort. All of it faded under a rising haze, distant and forgettable.
Her breath touched the glass for a moment. A soft cloud, gone just as quickly. The sky beyond was endless and blue in that high, cold way. Not warm. Not kind. But honest. It didn’t care who she was. It didn’t care where she was going. It just was. Vast. Empty. Ready.
She stared out into it, not searching, not thinking. Just remembering how it felt to be small again. Small enough to disappear, but sharp enough not to.
Her hand moved without looking, brushing the inside pocket of her coat. Cotton. Folded. A handkerchief she didn’t remember packing. She pulled it out, fingers slow and careful. The cloth was clean. White. Pressed. The kind of thing you carried when you didn’t know if you’d cry, or bleed, or both.
From the same pocket came the needle. Fine steel. Polished. Paired with a single loop of red thread, already knotted. She didn’t check it. She didn’t need to.
She began to sew.
Her hands worked in small, deliberate motions, the thread pulling through the fabric with barely a sound. She didn’t glance down. Her fingers remembered the rhythm. The name formed, one letter at a time. T. A. E. H. Y. U. N. G. Each stroke was precise. Each pull tight. No wasted movement.
She didn’t say his name. Didn’t even let her lips shape it. But it was there. In the cloth. In the blood-colored thread. In the silence between stitches.
When the name was finished, she tied it off with a flick of her wrist. Trimmed the excess. Folded the cloth again. Pressed it back into her pocket. Over her heart.
The plane had leveled out. Cruising now. The clouds below looked like ash. The ocean below that: cold, dark, silent. Somewhere beyond it, past all this emptiness, was Korea. And the man from Gwangju.
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The plane hit the runway. A hard, ugly jolt that snapped her spine straight and rattled the tray table in front of her. The tires screamed against the tarmac, metal grinding in protest as the cabin vibrated with the kind of impact that made people forget how to breathe. Drinks sloshed. Seatbacks creaked. Somewhere up front, someone muttered a sharp curse under their breath. The overhead lights flickered once, barely a stutter, but she saw it. She always did.
Out the window, the city didn’t look like it was sleeping. It looked like it had never gone to bed in the first place. Darkness hung heavy, not clean or quiet, but thick, like smoke, like old breath trapped in a closed room. The kind of dark that didn’t just hide things, it held them. The runway lights sliced through it in stark, clinical lines. Past them, the faint blur of Gwangju shimmered in neon and haze: blues and reds pulsing like slow heartbeats, mirrored in wet pavement that hadn’t dried and maybe never would. The glass reflected back just enough of her face to remind her she was still here.
As she stepped into the gangway, the air shifted. Dense. Damp. Immediate. It clung to her skin like something familiar, something half-forgotten but buried deep enough in the bones to recognize on contact. A mix of exhaust, concrete, late summer heat, and something sweeter, grilled food maybe, or just memory dressed up like scent. It hit her lungs like a slow exhale. She didn’t rush. Just walked forward, each step steady, her bag slung across her shoulder in that way that made it clear she didn’t need help and wouldn’t ask for it. Her coat hung open now, too warm for the humidity but still part of the armor. She moved like someone who belonged in the space between strangers. Not local. Not lost. Just passing through with purpose.
And yet, something shifted the second she stepped off the plane and onto Korean soil. Nothing anyone could see, but she felt it: a small click, like a lock catching in place. A posture change that didn’t show in her spine but settled deeper, in muscle memory and instinct. The mask slid on without effort. Not Emma Ji-woo anymore, not exactly. Not Candy, not the others. Just the version of herself this place required. Whatever her name was, she carried it like a blade in her boot, quiet, hidden, ready.
Inside, the airport moved like it had been designed for silence. No chaos. No rush. Just clean lines and softened footsteps echoing off polished tile. People didn’t shout. They didn’t loiter. They moved with the kind of practiced grace that didn’t need announcements. The lights overhead were low and cool, and even the seating looked like it had been designed to be ignored.
Customs passed without friction. The officer barely glanced up, flicked through her documents like he was reading grocery lists. Her forged passport, Emma Ji-woo, South Korean citizen returning from years abroad, was fresh, well-aged in the right places. The photo had the right kind of editing: smooth enough to pass facial scan, textured enough to seem human. She handed it over with both hands, bowed just enough to make it believable, smiled with restraint. Polite. Non-threatening.
“감사합니다,” she said, her voice low and shaped just right.
The stamp fell with a dull, final thud. No questions. No extra eyes. Just a nod, a motion, and then the gates opened.
Outside, the night waited.
The city air hit harder, warmer, wetter. The kind of humidity that didn’t just touch you, it soaked in. Rain had fallen not long before; she could feel it in the way the concrete gave off heat like breath. The streetlights bounced off slick asphalt, halos forming in puddles that mirrored blinking shop signs and broken reflections of moving traffic. Scooters buzzed past, weaving between slow cars. The buzz of neon hummed in the wires overhead like a living thing. There wasn’t much noise, but everything felt alive. Breathing.
She walked toward the taxi stand without checking her phone, without checking directions. She already knew where she was going. Her bag pulled at her shoulder, not in protest, just in reminder. Inside, names and pasts and the pieces of herself that weren’t for daylight. But she didn’t adjust it. Didn’t even shift her stance.
The cab she picked wasn’t the newest. The bumper was scuffed, one headlight had the faint film of age, and the license plate was slightly crooked. But it was real. Lived-in. The driver leaned against the hood, half-lit by the overhead bulb, cigarette cupped loosely in two fingers. Middle-aged, maybe older. His shirt wrinkled, his gaze unreadable.
She smiled before she spoke. Soft, disarming, the kind of smile that made people assume you didn’t bite.
“안녕하세요,” she said. “Seongmin Heritage Hotel, please. Near Sajik Park? The one with the koi in the lobby?”
The man blinked at her. A flicker of recognition, more for her fluency than her face. But he nodded like it didn’t matter.
“Know it,” he said, voice rasped from smoke or years or both. “That’s a nice place.”
She slid into the back seat, her bag tucked in beside her, one hand resting on its handle.
As they pulled into the street, he glanced at her in the mirror. “Vacation?”
She let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. “Sort of,” she said, breezy, warm enough to sell. “I’m meeting someone.”
That made him smile, just a little. “Boyfriend?”
She tilted her head, just enough to suggest a blush. “Not exactly. I’ve known him for a long time.”
“And you’ve never met?” he said, eyes narrowing with casual disbelief. “Do you trust him?”
She leaned forward a little, voice softer, like she was sharing something real. “I guess I’m old-fashioned. I still believe in people.”
The driver chuckled, tapping ash out the window. “Well. Hope he’s worth the wait.”
She smiled again, turning her eyes back to the window. “Me too.”
Outside, the city slid past in glints and shadows. Signs blinked red and blue against walls slick with water. A lone man smoked beneath a streetlight. A group of teenagers laughed near a convenience store, their voices echoing sharp and bright. And above it all, Gwangju pulsed. Alive. Waiting.
Her body language was relaxed, open, even friendly, but not too friendly. Her smile landed right where it needed to: warm enough to seem genuine, distant enough to keep the woman behind the desk from asking questions she didn’t want to answer. And yet, beneath it all, behind her eyes, there was something else. Something sharp. Alert. A presence just beneath the surface, watching everything, holding still like a wire pulled tight.
The cab ride had taken about twenty minutes, maybe less. She couldn’t really tell. In that strange pocket of time, after midnight but before dawn, everything stretched or collapsed depending on how close you were watching. Cities didn’t sleep in those hours; they just drifted, like the tide. The cab driver barely spoke, his cigarette glowing faint in the corner of her vision, the smoke trailing out the half-open window into the warm, wet air. He drove like a man who’d forgotten how to be surprised by anything. She appreciated that. It made things easier.
Out the window, Gwangju blurred past in bands of neon and shadow, light warped by the sheen of recent rain. The storefronts were lit like stages no one was acting on anymore: 7-Elevens glowing sterile and perfect, their shelves full of snacks and instant noodles and bottled tea that no one needed but still bought. People moved through them slowly, hunched and quiet, looking like they were halfway between sleep and survival. The rest of the city felt paused, noodle shops with stools turned upside-down, karaoke bars locked behind metal grates, all of it blinking half-heartedly like no one had told the power to shut off yet. One sign above a barbecue place kept flickering between “삼겹살 24시” and total darkness, as if it couldn’t decide whether to keep going or give up.
They passed a hanbok rental place with mannequins frozen in the windows, draped in silk and thread, caught mid-movement in some forgotten celebration. The lights inside were faint, almost apologetic. The kind of glow you could miss if you weren’t looking directly at it. And everything outside, every puddle, every wall, every parked car, reflected that layered light. Hangul shimmered across wet streets like it was painted there in real time. Chicken. Tarot. Facials. Cheap drinks. Lost hopes. It was all advertised the same way, with bold fonts and desperate color.
She leaned her head against the cool glass of the cab window and let the city slide past her. She wasn’t sightseeing. She wasn’t curious. She was memorizing. Every corner. Every alley. Every building with a fire escape or a side entrance or a window that stayed cracked. Not just as someone taking in a new place, but as someone planning how to move through it. Where to hide. Where to hunt. Where to vanish.
She wasn’t here for a reunion. That was the lie she wore like cologne, pleasant, easy, expected. She was here to dig. To drag someone’s name back out of the dirt and make it mean something again. If this city had tried to forget him, she’d remind it. She’d burn the name into glass and pavement if she had to. She hadn’t come this far to let memory do the burying.
When the cab finally slowed in front of the Seongmin Heritage Hotel, she already knew the building before it came into full view. She’d studied it, grainy photos, tourist reviews, street-view walkthroughs. But even with all that preparation, it was still something to see in person. Polished, curated, old-world elegance repackaged as modern luxury. White stone columns stood like they were holding up more than a roof, like they were trying to convince the street this place mattered. Carved details along the trim caught the warm spill of interior lighting. The brass door handles gleamed like they’d never been touched by real weather. Above the entry, a stained-glass panel glowed amber and deep red, a honeyed light pouring over the curb like something sacred had just cracked open.
And just inside, behind a clean pane of tall glass, the koi pond gleamed. Black water, smooth and quiet, broken only by the slow turning of gold and orange fins. The fish moved in lazy arcs, each shift like a breath drawn too deep to be seen. Like they didn’t care who watched.
The driver parked and turned to look at her. His voice was low, soft, like he knew not to break whatever moment she was in.
“This it?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”
He watched her for a second too long, not in a threatening way, just thoughtful. Like he’d seen this before. Not her, maybe. But people like her. People with a story that couldn’t be told in the back of a cab. People walking toward something only they understood.
“Well,” he said after a pause, “good luck with your meeting.”
She smiled faintly, just enough to be polite. “I think it’ll be one to remember.”
She handed him a bill folded clean once. Double what the meter read. He glanced at it, then back at her, and nodded without another word.
She stepped out of the cab. The air hit her like it meant to. Heavy. Humid. Full of noise that hadn’t been made yet.
She shouldered her bag without shifting her weight. Moved toward the hotel doors like she was stepping into something familiar. And as the cab pulled away, the night closed back in behind her like it hadn’t noticed she’d arrived at all.
Inside, the hotel smelled like money pretending to be modest. Like expensive wood polish layered over old stone and cold air recycled too many times. The lighting was just dim enough to flatter the furniture but still show off the marble floors, clean, symmetrical, sharp where it counted. Every tile lined up like it had been laid by someone who understood symmetry wasn’t just about beauty. It was about control.
To her left, the koi pond curved around the front desk like a moat. Its surface was glassy and still, the fish drifting in slow spirals. They looked unreal in the low light, too bright, too calm, like someone had animated them just for her arrival. A tiny pump kept the water moving just enough to keep it from falling asleep, but the sound was so soft it might’ve been imagined. It wasn’t tranquil. It was measured. Controlled. Like everything else in this place.
She walked toward the desk like she’d done it a dozen times in other cities under other names. Calm, confident, casually forgettable. The kind of guest who knew how to tip well and never asked for room upgrades.
The woman behind the desk looked young but practiced. Hair styled into a sharp, no-nonsense bob. Uniform crisp. Movements efficient. Her name tag said Juha, though Y/N didn’t really need to read it. She’d already pegged her: precise, polite, not interested in small talk. Just enough kindness to pass for warmth. The kind of employee who wouldn’t remember a single detail about you by the end of her shift, and wouldn’t question why she didn’t.
Y/N offered her a smile. The good one. Just the right amount of curve. Something safe. Something easy to forget.
Y/N switched to Korean mid-step, her tone effortless, almost casual. “예약했어요. 캔디 랄스턴으로요.” Her accent was textbook Seoul.
The woman behind the desk didn’t blink. “환영합니다, 랄스턴 씨. 3박이시죠?”
Y/N nodded, and with a soft switch in rhythm, she slipped back into English. Her voice lifted just slightly, pleasant and open, with that eager brightness tourists wore like perfume. “First time in Korea. I’m really excited.”
The receptionist smiled as if on cue. Not warm, exactly. Rehearsed, but pleasant. She slid a room key forward, tucked inside a white sleeve embossed with the hotel’s gold crest. “Room 714. Elevator’s just to your right.”
Y/N offered a small bow, murmured her thanks again, and turned away. Her boots made no squeal against the floor, only that quiet, deliberate click that echoed soft and sharp like footsteps in a gallery. The kind of sound that didn’t try to be heard but couldn’t help leaving an impression.
The elevator was already waiting, doors wide open like it knew she was coming. She stepped inside and caught her reflection in the mirrored walls: three angles, three versions of herself looking back. Her posture was perfect, relaxed, composed. Her clothes, neutral tones and well-fitted, spoke of efficiency, not attention. Her makeup was subtle, just enough color to say effort had been made, not enough to say she cared about being seen.
She looked like someone organized. Someone harmless.
But the reflection in the center mirror told the truth. It was in the way her eyes held steady, unflinching, like they didn’t expect kindness anymore. Like they’d already learned what questions were traps, which silences meant danger, and how to vanish while still in plain sight. There was a stillness in her face, but not the kind that came from calm. This was stillness earned, built from rehearsals, from closing hotel doors behind you and counting exits before you even set your bag down.
The elevator rose, slow and steady. She shifted her canvas bag higher on her shoulder. Not because it hurt, she didn’t let things hurt, but because it grounded her. Inside was everything that counted: names, paper trails, backup plans. There was no wasted weight.
When the elevator doors slid open on the seventh floor, she was already halfway into the hallway.
It was quiet. Carpeted in something dull that might once have been green, the kind of floor that muted footsteps into suggestions. The wallpaper, floral and faded, curled at the corners where humidity had worked its way in over the years. The light overhead buzzed, faint and constant, like the building was humming to itself out of habit. A soft, tired sound.
Room 714 was near the end, just past a bend in the hallway where the emergency map was pinned slightly crooked on the wall. She paused in front of the door, keycard in hand.
And then she just stood there. Not long. Just long enough to listen.
Not for sound. For pressure. For presence. You didn’t survive by hearing footsteps, you survived by feeling when a room wasn’t empty. The temperature. The stillness. The quality of silence. She tilted her head slightly. Felt the way the air held its breath.
Nothing.
She slid the keycard through the reader. The lock beeped, followed by that soft, mechanical click. Small, almost polite. She pushed the door open with her shoulder and stepped inside without looking behind her. The door sealed shut behind her with the kind of sound that didn’t echo. It just ended.
She locked it: deadbolt first, then the chain. Her hands moved in a rhythm they’d known for years. One smooth motion, no hesitation. She wasn’t checking, she was securing. There was a difference.
The canvas bag landed on the bed with a deep, even thud. Not loud, just final, like it had arrived with intent. She didn’t stop to look around. Didn’t bother checking the view. The room wasn’t the point.
She walked to the desk in the corner and turned on the lamp. Warm light spilled across the pale wood, catching on the edges of the hotel stationery and the small, useless pen that had been placed there with the usual pretend care. The kind of detail that suggested someone had thought about your comfort, even if they hadn’t.
She sat down. The chair creaked faintly but held. Her body didn’t sag. She didn’t relax. She just settled into it.
She pulled the pad of paper toward her and picked up the pen. It was smooth, plastic, light, nothing special. It didn’t matter. She clicked it once and started writing in small, deliberate strokes.
Things to Do Tomorrow:
-Buy a light pink blouse. Something that moves. Something soft.
-Buy makeup
-Rehearse the story. Again.
-Smile until it hurts.
Her pen hovered above the last line for a beat. Then she added one more, slower this time:
-Be perfect.
She circled it. Once. Then again. Firm. Not as a reminder. As a rule.
She put the pen down beside the pad and exhaled. Not dramatically. Not with relief. Just enough to release the breath she’d been holding since the door clicked shut.
She stood.
The bathroom was exactly what she expected: white tile, cool light, no character. Clean without warmth. The mirror above the sink was wide and too tall, forcing her to step closer if she wanted to see all of herself at once. She didn’t bother.
The light buzzed overhead, sterile and flat, the kind of glow that made everything look a little too real.
She touched her fingertips to the edge of the counter. Steady.
She wasn’t tired. Not yet. What she was came after tired, and it had no name.
She reached out and turned the faucet, letting the water run. Cold at first, bright and clean, loud as it hit the porcelain. But beneath the noise, she listened. Not to the water itself, but to the way it moved through the pipes. The way it echoed off tile. The way it filled the silence with something that wasn’t her. It sounded pure, but she knew better. It had traveled through metal older than the building, scraped past rust and time, ghosts caught in the bends. Still, it came out confident. Unbothered. Like it hadn’t carried anything with it.
She didn’t hurry. Her fingers moved slowly to the hem of her shirt, tugged it over her head, and let it fall to the floor. Then the rest, belt, pants, underthings, peeled away without effort. She’d done this ritual a thousand times before. And yet tonight, her hands felt different. Not clumsy. Not unsure. Just heavy, like they remembered more than she wanted them to. Her clothes ended up in a soft heap at her feet. By then, the mirror had already fogged over.
She stood still for a moment. Not posed, not inspecting. Just there. Her arms hung loose at her sides, her toes sinking slightly into the tile. The steam softened everything: her outline, her skin, even the air. The reflection staring back at her was dulled at the edges, her features blurred by heat and breath. She could still see her shape. Her shoulders narrow but set, arms lined with the first signs of strength again. Her ribs still showed when she inhaled too deeply, but her thighs had started to look solid again. Her body was still catching up to the rest of her. Still figuring out how to be whole after Two Pines tried to carve her hollow. But she was getting there. Slowly. She could see it.
She tilted her head and scanned herself like she was reading a story she knew by heart. The scars stood out like chapters. The crescent just below her ribs where a blade had barely missed something vital. A paler burn at her hip, nearly invisible now, but still a map of pain. The line along her collarbone, clean and deliberate. Surgical. The scar on her forehead had been there the longest. She didn’t even notice it anymore.
She nodded once, almost imperceptibly. A quiet agreement between her and the woman behind the fog.
Then she stepped into the shower.
The water hit her like a warning. Scalding. Immediate. It slammed into her shoulders and rolled down her back, ruthless in its heat. But she didn’t flinch. She leaned into it. Let it rake across her spine, sting her arms, burn her thighs. The pain was real. Tangible. Honest in a way few things were. It didn’t lie, didn’t soften, didn’t ask questions. It just landed, over and over again, washing everything else into silence.
She closed her eyes, tilted her head forward, and let her forehead rest against the cool tile wall. It grounded her. Solid. Cold. Unmoving. She breathed. Not deeply. Just enough. Enough to be here.
Then it came.
Not a memory. Not an image she could blink away. It was sharper than that. It crashed through her like glass, fast, clean, final. No prelude. No grace.
A sonogram.
Not imagined. Not abstract. Burned into her mind with brutal clarity. Grainy black-and-white. A crescent of light, unmistakable. And there in the center, her. The child. Seven months. Spine curled tight. Fists pulled in. Fragile, yes, but undeniably alive.
Not a possibility. A fact.
The photo was still folded in the lining of her coat. Tucked behind Kevlar, buried between seams, carried across borders and terminals and checkpoints. It was creased so deeply now it had forgotten how to lie flat. She had kept it close because she couldn’t not. Because some part of her still believed the paper would remember the shape even if she forgot the name.
She used to whisper to her belly in motel rooms that reeked of other people’s stories. Whisper names in the dark. Some strong. Some gentle. Some stolen from myths. Some from books she hadn’t finished. She spoke them aloud like spells. Names in Korean. In English. Names that meant light. Names that meant defiance.
Now? Now she couldn’t remember a single goddamn one.
Not one.
The realization hit without warning. Her knees gave out, buckled like they had been kicked. She dropped too fast to catch herself, hands sliding helplessly down the wall. Her skin hit the shower floor hard, the ceramic slick and unforgiving. Her breath didn’t come. Her chest just stalled.
The water kept pounding down, relentless and hot, hammering her back, her scalp, her shoulders.
She folded in tight. Arms clamped around her stomach. Head bent. Forehead pressed hard to her knees. The heat had scalded her skin pink, but it was nothing compared to what was burning underneath. Her whole body trembled, not from cold but from something older, deeper, more bone-deep than fear. Her jaw locked so tight her teeth throbbed. Fingernails dug into her upper arms, leaving pale marks that flushed angry and red as the shower thundered down over her back. Her shoulders jolted with every breath. Her chest couldn’t seem to find a rhythm. Her mouth opened once, like maybe a sound would come out. It didn’t. Just steam and a shattered breath that barely made it past her lips.
She cried, but not the way people cry in movies. No cinematic sobs. No beautiful devastation. This was messier. Raw. She cried like it surprised her. Like her body had remembered something her mind wasn’t ready to revisit. It wasn’t gentle or cathartic. It was violent. Uncontrolled. The kind of grief that had waited in the walls of her bones, that had made a home beneath her ribs, that had lived inside her blood quietly for years and now refused to be quiet anymore.
It wasn’t just about the child, though it started there. She cried for the girl she never got to meet. For the weight of her. The impossible, invisible pull of a presence that had once lived beneath her skin and kicked in the dark and responded to her voice like it meant something. She cried for the names whispered into motel ceilings. For every plan made in secret. For the way she used to sleep with one hand on her belly and the other over the gun under her pillow, believing—naively, stupidly—that she could keep both safe.
She cried for herself too. Not the woman she was now, but the one she used to be. The one who thought she could walk two roads at once. Who thought she could live between love and violence and come out clean. That she could be sharp and soft. That she could kill for a living and still build a life worth protecting.
She had buried that woman. Or thought she had. But grief has a way of preserving what pain cannot quite dissolve. The version of herself she thought was long gone hadn’t decayed. It had hardened. It had turned into something fossilized under all the anger and training and years. Not gone. Just waiting.
And under the grief, something else had been building. Coiled low in her belly. Climbing her spine. Tightening around her throat.
The fury.
It hit hot and sudden. Like a flare lit inside her chest. Fast. Blinding. Unforgiving. Her muscles locked. Her fists curled tight. Her breath caught in the cage of her ribs. She wanted to wreck something. Rip the cabinet off the wall. Shatter the mirror with her elbow. Drag her knuckles down the glass until they split. She wanted to leave blood on porcelain. On tile. On her own hands.
She wanted to find him. Taehyung Kim. And make him understand what he had done. Not by telling him. By making him feel it. Every inch of it. Every second. She wanted to look him in the eyes as it hit him. As the weight of what he stole crushed him under its full, ugly truth.
Her knuckles went white. Her muscles trembled with the force of restraint. But she didn’t scream. Not because she couldn’t. Because she wouldn’t. That kind of rage needed to be saved. Stored. Honed.
It would have its moment. Just not here.
The shower kept running, loud and steady, until she moved. Just a breath. Just a twitch of her fingers. Then she reached up and turned the water off.
Silence crashed down like a wave. Thick. Dense. The kind that fills every crack in a room. The kind that listens back. Steam drifted in long, slow ribbons, curling around her shoulders like it wasn’t ready to leave either.
She blinked once. Her breathing evened out. Slower. Cooler. Her chest still ached, but the fire was banked now, drawn in close and dangerous. Not gone. Just shaped.
She stood.
Water clung to her skin. Her hair dripped in long strands down her back. Her face was flushed, eyes glassy but sharp now, clear in a way that felt surgical. She moved with precision, drying off in steady, methodical swipes, every motion practiced and spare. The towel trembled in her hands, but she kept her grip. Dressed quickly. Quietly. No wasted motion. Just armor going back on.
The grief didn’t vanish. She packed it back down. Tucked it into the parts of herself she didn’t let anyone see. But the rage—she left that right where it was. Let it sit beneath her skin. Close to the surface.
Because Taehyung Kim didn’t know what he had taken from her, but he would.
She wasn’t coming for answers.
She was coming for the truth.
And he would give it to her.
Because there would be no one left to stop her.
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The city didn’t perform. Gwangju just was. It didn’t blaze with ambition like Seoul or stretch itself into glitz the way Busan tried to. It moved slow, breathed heavier. Honest, unbothered, like an old man in his undershirt posted up on a plastic chair, feet bare, sweating into the sidewalk, waving off mosquitoes with a rolled-up newspaper. There was a stillness here that didn’t feel staged. It felt earned. Like time didn’t hurry. Like it hadn’t for a while. Even the heat didn’t rush. It pressed down in thick, lazy folds, dragging everything—footsteps, voices, the color out of the buildings—into something close to sleep.
The streets moved in rhythm with it: fans turning slowly in dim back rooms, the hum of overhead wires swaying with the weight of too many summers, the drag of slippers across concrete. Shops leaned on each other like they were tired of standing alone. Paint peeled in curls off old storefronts. Rust bloomed at the hinges of delivery carts and folding chairs. Hand-painted signs creaked as they shifted in the breeze, their edges warped like paper left out in the rain.
It was the kind of afternoon where nothing tried too hard. The air was a patchwork of smells: hot oil, boiled radish, exhaust, old metal, the damp tang of stone that’s never had a chance to dry. Vendors fanned themselves with bent menus, arguing halfheartedly with ajummas who bargained with the precision of habit. A mop of scooters rolled through puddles left by melted ice or a spilled soup bowl, weaving through crates and feet like they knew every shortcut before it was built. The city didn’t sleep. But it didn’t really wake up, either. It just existed. Like a held breath.
And tucked into all of it, halfway hidden between a shuttered bookstore and a florist with wilting carnations, was the door. If you could call it that. More a suggestion than an entrance. A curtain, once blue and now more of a stained gray, hung from a crooked rod that looked hammered into place out of stubbornness rather than skill. It shifted when the wind pushed at it, not with drama but with the quiet of something breathing. The name painted across the fabric had long since faded: 김밥바. The brushstrokes barely held together, as if the person who wrote them hoped the world would forget.
She didn’t go straight in.
Y/N stood across from it, phone in hand, thumb flicking absently at nothing. Her eyes weren’t on the screen. They were on the building. On the way the curtain moved. On the way the shadows behind it didn’t feel empty. A pigeon flapped once but didn’t fly. A scooter buzzed past, and an ajumma barked something sharp about cabbage. The usual sounds. The usual rhythm.
Still, she waited a beat longer. She watched how the light caught the doorway. She noticed how the air felt different here. Denser.
Then she stepped forward and slipped behind the curtain like she belonged.
And everything changed.
The moment it fell behind her, the city vanished. The noise didn’t fade. It ceased. Like someone hit pause on the outside world. Inside was quiet in a way only old places know how to be. Not just soundless. Still. The kind of stillness that settles in stone. The kind that remembers things. The air was cooler, not because of any fan or vent, but because it had never left. It clung to the walls, the wood, the floor. Everything felt touched by time.
The scent hit next. Not artificial or sanitized. Just real. A mix of rice, vinegar, seaweed, and broth so old it had soaked into the wood grain. Salt, smoke, a whisper of garlic. It was the kind of smell you carried home with you, in your clothes, your hair, your bones.
Her eyes adjusted fast.
The space was barely larger than a closet. Three stools lined a counter. One crooked. One stained. One seemingly untouched. The varnish had long worn off the wood, dulled by elbows and sweat and stories told over soup. A ceiling fan turned overhead, slow and uneven, ticking with every revolution like it was remembering something too late. A single fly moved in lazy circles beneath it.
Nobody else was here.
No music. No kitchen noise. Just a single plate on the counter. Empty except for one streak of red sauce. Chopsticks placed beside it with care. Not abandoned. Just waiting.
She walked in like she’d been here before. Like this was a memory, not a discovery. Her posture was casual. Her camera hung from her neck like a travel blog prop, the kind of thing that made her look like the type of woman who’d find “hidden gems” and write about the soul of a place as if she’d invented the concept. But none of that touched her eyes. They were focused. Clear. Watching.
And then he appeared. Quietly, without fuss, like he’d always been there and the world had only just remembered to look. The steam rolled out behind him, curling around his shoulders like it had followed him from some low, back kitchen heat that never fully cooled. He was tall, not imposing, but solid in the way that came from doing hard things for a long time. His build was lean, a little bowed at the shoulders, as if time and gravity had done their work. His skin had the baked-in tone of someone who’d spent years near open flame, his forearms marked by thin pale scars that spoke of burns, not battles. The white chef’s jacket he wore was buttoned but stained, spattered with dark brown that might have been soy sauce or something else. It was hard to tell, and maybe it wasn’t supposed to be clear.
His face didn’t offer much. It wasn’t unreadable in the cold, calculated way of spies or killers. It just didn’t feel the need to explain itself. High cheekbones softened the shape of his long face, and his eyes, dark and narrow, carried the quiet stillness of someone who watched more than he spoke. His hair was thick, slightly tousled, mostly black but peppered with gray at the temples. He was handsome, but the kind of handsome that didn’t advertise. He managed to exist right in the middle ground. Someone you’d forget until you saw them again and couldn’t stop wondering why.
Y/N kept her expression neutral as he stepped fully into view. Her body didn’t flinch. Her gaze didn’t drift. She looked at him plainly, openly, like she had no reason not to. But this was him. The man she’d crossed an ocean for. The one who had answers locked behind his teeth.
He saw her, and the smile came fast. Too fast. It stretched across his face like a reflex he hadn’t bothered updating in years. Broad, eager, practiced. The kind of smile that had been used too many times on too many strangers. The kind that worked better when you didn’t look too closely. He wore it like a uniform: the smile of a man who knew how to sell comfort, how to charm tourists just enough to make them stay, just long enough to make them leave before asking the wrong question. There was no real warmth in it. But it was a good act.
“English?” he asked, cautious but cheerful, testing each syllable like he was stepping over a puddle he didn’t trust.
She gave a half-shrug, tipping her head slightly as her mouth pulled into something lopsided and pleasant. “Almost,” she said. “American.”
Something about that word flipped a switch in him. He lit up like he’d been waiting for it. “Ah! America! Yes, welcome, welcome!” He nodded several times, as if the excitement might wear off if he didn’t hammer it in. “My English, very good. Yes.”
“Perfect,” she said, breezy and bright, like a woman with nowhere to be and all the time in the world. She stepped farther inside, her fingers ghosting along the edge of the counter. She didn’t look at it, not really, but the gesture made it seem like she was appreciating the wood, soaking up the charm. It wasn’t for him. It was for the story.
The chef smiled wide when she stepped in, his English laced with effort but cheerful all the same. “Welcome, American,” he said with a chuckle. “I hope you like my shop.”
She dipped her head, just enough to be polite. “안녕하세요,” she said, soft and even, her pronunciation clean, too natural to be brand-new.
That got a reaction. He lit up like someone had pulled a coin from behind his ear. “오오오! 안녕하세요!” He leaned forward with the delight of a man genuinely impressed. “Very good, very good! You speak Korean?”
She let out a modest laugh, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear like the compliment embarrassed her a little. “Not really,” she said. “Just a few words I picked up yesterday.”
Her eyes moved over the room, taking in the shelves, the old wood, the dust that softened the corners of things. “Is it okay if I sit here?”
“Sit, sit!” he said, already wiping down the bar with a damp cloth in wide, sweeping strokes like he was preparing an altar. “Of course. You sit. What words you learn? Oh, wait one second.”
He turned toward the curtain behind him, barked something in Korean without missing a beat. The words tumbled fast and irritated.
“We have a customer, bring out some tea, quickly!”
A voice called back, lazy and muffled. “I’m watching my soap operas.”
The chef rolled his eyes, snapping, “Lazy bastard! Screw your soap opera! Hurry up!”
“The tea’s hot. Why don’t you serve it yourself for once?”
“Shut up! Get your ass out here!”
Then he turned back to her, placing both palms on the bar like nothing had happened, though a thin line of annoyance still showed around his eyes. His smile remained pleasant. “So,” he said, “what else do you know in Korean?”
She tapped her chin lightly, brow furrowed like she was digging through a mental list. “감사합니다,” she said after a second, letting the word unfold carefully but not too perfectly. Like she was still getting comfortable with it.
He nodded with approval, the kind of praise people give freely but mean all the same. “Very good,” he said. “You say it nicely.”
She leaned forward just a touch, elbows resting gently on the bar, camera bumping softly against the edge. “알겠어요?” she tried, the hesitation built in just enough to seem earnest.
He brightened. “You know that one! ‘I understand.’ Good, very good. You learn fast.”
She smiled back. “Only what people say to me first.”
Then she tilted her head and added another. “안녕히 가세요?”
His expression flickered for a split second. The kind of shift most people wouldn’t catch. He recovered quickly, correcting her with a wave of his hand. “No, no, no. Say again.”
She blinked once, feigning the kind of sheepish confusion that made it look like maybe she had messed it up after all. She tried again, a little slower this time. “안녕히 가세요?”
He clapped his hands once, sharp and loud in the stillness of the shop. His smile stretched wide, but the lines around it didn’t move. “You speak Korean,” he said, voice lighter than it had been, but also a little tighter.
She laughed softly, tilting her head again. It was the kind of laugh you’d hear from someone caught in a harmless exaggeration. “Now you’re just flattering me.”
But he didn’t laugh with her. “No,” he said simply. “Serious. Your pronunciation... very good. You say 안녕히 가세요 like we say 안녕히 가세요.”
The air between them settled. Not tense, but heavier. The kind of pause that had weight in it, even if you didn’t know why.
His voice came again, this time quieter, slower. “You can learn Korean very easy.”
She let her gaze drop for half a second, just enough to give it texture, then lifted it again with a careful smile. “No kidding,” she said, her voice just a little softer now. “But thank you. 진짜... 감사합니다.”
He didn’t respond right away. Just breathed in through his nose, steady and thoughtful. Then he adjusted his stance, the shift so subtle most people wouldn’t notice. But she did. She saw the way his shoulders reset, the tiny movements that told her he wasn’t just running a shop. He was watching something unfold.
He turned without another word and picked up a rice paddle. His voice floated back over his shoulder, even and calm. “Let me make something for you.”
She nodded, her smile still in place, but the tone that followed wasn’t quite the same. “Anything’s fine.”
The chef stayed where he was, hands now methodically working at the counter. A bowl of rice, steam still clinging faintly to the grains. A bamboo mat laid flat. A half-sliced cucumber. The blade beside it already glinting in the overhead light.
“You like kimbap?” he asked, like it was just polite conversation.
“I love it,” she said, light and breezy.
She let the sentence hang just long enough to sound casual, like maybe this was a regular kind of moment, in a regular kind of place. But it wasn’t.
The knife moved with soft, measured sounds. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Carrot. Radish. Cucumber.
Every slice was uniform. Clean. The rhythm was precise, practiced. Not just skilled. Disciplined.
She didn’t take her eyes off him, not directly, but not obviously either. Her posture stayed relaxed, her hands resting on the bar. The camera around her neck swayed gently with the air from the ceiling fan, tapping now and then against the wood like a slow heartbeat.
She didn’t look dangerous.
But then, neither did he.
The overhead light gave a quiet hum, casting the shop in a worn, yellow wash that made everything look faintly out of date. The fan creaked once with each turn, ticking off invisible seconds. Outside, the alley was still. A cat passed, paused in the doorway, then disappeared again.
The chef didn’t look up from his cutting board. His voice came steady, like they were just passing time.
“You should learn Korean.”
She smiled, light but not airy. “You think so?”
He nodded slightly, slicing through radish with clean precision. “Yes.”
“I’ve heard it’s impossible.”
He nodded. “Yes. Very hard. But you,” he said, quieter now, “you have Korean tongue.”
He returned to his work, pulling a smaller knife from a drawer. It was heavier, curved differently. He laid slices of tuna onto a black ceramic plate. Next to them, he added a pinch of pickled ginger and a small, hand-shaped mound of wasabi.
He slid the dish toward her with quiet pride.
She looked down at it, then back up. “How’d you know tuna’s my favorite?”
He shrugged one shoulder, almost coy. “What?”
“Tuna,” she said again, watching him. “It’s my favorite.”
He smiled with the same practiced calm. “Ah. Thank you very much.”
Then he turned his head toward the beaded curtain and shouted, voice sharp. “야! 차 어디 갔어? 빨리 좀 해!”
Behind the curtain came a reply, loud and annoyed.
“지금 드라마 보고 있잖아!”
“드라마는 개뿔이지! 손님 왔잖아, 이 자식아. 빨리 갖고 와!”
“차 뜨거워! 너도 좀 움직여 봐!”
The chef muttered something under his breath, wiped his hands, and moved toward the curtain. The beads clinked as he grabbed the other man by the wrist mid-gesture, twisted it lightly, and leaned in close.
“네가 장군이면 나는 황제다. 그러니까 조용히 차나 갖고 와.”
Then, with a mocking grin and just enough weight to sting, he said in English: “Do you understand?”
The assistant pulled free, scowling, and glanced at Y/N. “대머리 아니거든,” he muttered. Then, in stiff English: “I shave. Do you understand me?”
The chef didn’t even look. He picked up a small knife and threw it underhanded toward the wall. It landed with a soft thud, blade buried in the wood just left of the curtain.
The assistant disappeared without another word.
Y/N didn’t follow his movement. Her fingers just found a napkin and began folding it, slow and absent, like she was trying to pass the time. But her attention stayed open, alert, listening to every creak from the fridge and every shift of weight behind the curtain. She tracked it all without looking.
The chef glanced her way and let out a low sigh. “Sorry,” he murmured.
She smiled, shook her head gently, still all ease and pleasant charm. “No worries at all.”
The chef had gone back to wiping a plate that didn’t need it, slow circles that looked more like habit than cleaning. He hummed something under his breath. No real melody, just sound for the sake of it. Every so often, his eyes drifted up. Not to her. To the curtain. He was waiting, too.
Y/N leaned her chin into her palm and let out a quiet sigh. The kind that sounded like she had nowhere else to be, like this was just another slow stop on a longer, looser itinerary. But beneath the quiet facade, her pulse had cooled into something steadier. Sharper. She was counting. Not seconds. Not movements. Just weight.
The beads stirred again.
The second man reappeared, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. The soju was cold, condensation sliding down the green glass in thick streaks. His fingers were wide, stained around the cuticles, the nails chipped like they had been trimmed with teeth or a dull blade. Hands that had done hard things.
He reached the counter and set the bottle and glass down. He turned to walk away. The chef didn’t let it slide.
His voice cracked through the air, hard and sudden. “야, 예의 좀 갖춰!”
The man didn’t stop completely. He only slowed. His shoulders shifted. A sigh leaked out, long and annoyed.
“뭐? 술 갖다 줬잖아.”
“손님 앞에서는 제대로 해. 외국인이라도.”
A scoff, barely loud enough to register. “외국인이라 모를 텐데 왜 신경 써?”
The chef’s reply came low, firm. “그러니까 더 조심해야지. 한국 사람처럼 보여도 다 듣고 있을 수도 있어.”
There was a pause. Just a few seconds, but heavy. The kind of quiet that wasn’t about silence. It was about choice.
The man muttered something under his breath, just noise really, but shaped by resentment. Then he twisted the cap off the bottle with a rough snap and poured. The soju splashed high in the glass, almost spilling. He shoved it toward her with one hand, the edge of the glass tapping wood just shy of rude.
Then he turned and disappeared again. The beads clattered harder this time. The chef let out a breath.
“죄송합니다,” he said, bowing his head slightly. “그 사람은... 사람 대하는 법을 몰라요.”
Y/N didn’t flinch. Her smile stayed where it had been the whole time, pleasant and unbothered. “Sorry?”
The chef’s tone softened, switching to English like it was muscle memory. “Ah, no, just... he doesn’t know how to talk,” he added, with a thin smile that almost reached his eyes.
She nodded, light, polite. Lifted the shot glass with a small, quiet toast. “Thank you,” she said, and took a sip.
The soju hit cool. Sweet up front, then a clean, sharp finish that sat in the back of her throat and lingered. It didn’t burn. It reminded.
She set the glass down. Picked up her chopsticks. The motion was fluid, casual, not stiff with performance, but practiced. The way a habit becomes part of muscle memory.
She lifted a piece of tuna from the plate, a clean slice that caught the light like silk. Deep ruby red, almost translucent, grain running fine through its surface. She placed it on her tongue and held it there, waiting. It melted. Soft and rich, just a trace of brine and something faintly metallic, like memory. She chewed once. Twice. Let it dissolve.
Her eyes drifted shut, just for a second. 
She set the chopsticks down, careful not to clatter them, then picked up the soju again and finished the glass in a single, smooth pull. The second hit went down easier. The warmth spread slow through her chest, settling in a place that had once held nerves.
Across the counter, the chef watched. He hadn’t changed his expression, but something in the way he stood had eased. Not relaxed, not soft, but carrying a kind of respect. He was noticing a quiet fluency. No words. Just recognition.
“First time in Korea?” he asked. His hands returned to the cutting board, fingers resting near the knife, though he didn’t pick it up yet.
Y/N nodded, finishing another bite. “Mmhmm.”
“What!” he said, voice rising with disbelief that didn’t quite ring false.
She swallowed, wiped the corner of her mouth lightly. “Yes. This is my first time.”
He tilted his head, eyes narrowing just a little. “What brings you to Gwangju?”
Outside, the alley shifted. A gust caught some stray bit of paper and skidded it along the brick like a coin on pavement. Somewhere nearby, a bird let out a single cry, sharp and fast, gone in a blink. The curtain behind her swayed faintly with a whisper-soft clatter, like wind chimes that never quite got the breeze they needed to sing. Y/N adjusted her chopsticks, repositioned them between her fingers, then gently set them down without ever lifting a bite. Her tone was light when she finally spoke, almost conversational.
“I came to see a man.”
The sentence didn’t echo, but it changed something in the room. A beat passed. Not long. But the chef’s hand froze mid-motion, his knife held just above the salmon, blade tilted slightly as if it too had paused to listen.
“Ah,” he said after a moment, stretching the word just enough to carry weight. “A friend in Gwangju?” He didn’t look up.
“Not quite,” she replied.
“Not a friend?”
“No.” She waited until his eyes found hers before continuing. “We’ve never met.”
The blade finally touched the board. A soft sound. Then he laid the knife aside, not quickly, but with care, like he’d decided whatever came next didn’t need a blade in hand. He kept his gaze on the cutting board for a moment longer than necessary, then finally looked up. The expression on his face didn’t shift much, but something behind his eyes sharpened. Not fear. Not even suspicion. Just awareness.
“And,” he said, more quietly now, “may I ask who he is?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Jung Hoseok.”
The name didn’t explode. It didn’t need to. It landed in the room like a rock dropped into still water. No splash. Just the heavy assurance that things were moving beneath the surface now. Her voice hadn’t changed. She wasn’t dramatic. She didn’t lean in. But the name was enough.
The chef went still. Not tense, simply anchored. Like something in him had snapped into place. His right hand rested on the edge of a towel. His left hovered briefly over the blade again, reflex more than anything. The tip of his finger brushed the metal and slipped. A sudden streak of red rose across his knuckle. He looked down at it, just for a moment, and lifted the hand to his mouth. Sucked the blood away like it was routine. No flinch. No sound. Just control, reset.
Behind her, the beads rattled once more, sharper this time. The bald man stepped through again, his face a clenched fist. He didn’t speak. Just let his eyes sweep the room, pausing on her. Not suspicion. Calculation. Like something in the air had told him to pay attention.
He crossed to the counter, picked up the bottle, and poured her another shot. This time, the movement was smooth. No clatter. No shove. Just a quiet, focused pour. He didn’t speak. Didn’t meet her eyes. He finished the pour, left the glass full, and walked out. The beads clacked shut behind him, not loud, not subtle. Just punctuation.
The chef exhaled slowly through his nose. No drama. Just release. Then he took a towel and began wiping his hands carefully, methodically. His eyes stayed on her.
She lifted the new glass in a small, silent toast, even though the man who’d poured it was already gone. The glass was cold enough that it clung to her fingers.
When the chef spoke again, the language changed. No more English. No pretense.
His voice lowered, smooth and even, each word placed with precision. “정호석에게 무슨 용건이 있습니까?”
Y/N didn’t blink.
She answered in Korean, her voice quiet, level. No showmanship. Just the kind of careful weight that traveled farther than volume ever could. “강철이 필요해요.”
His eyes narrowed. Not in suspicion. In thought. Like he was studying her words, not for truth, but for intention. He didn’t answer right away. He let the silence linger.
“왜 강철이 필요하죠?” he asked.
She looked at the glass beside her plate, a droplet tracing its way down the side. Then she met his eyes again. “쥐를 죽이려면요.”
There was another pause, longer this time, but not uncomfortable. Then the chef let out a short laugh. Not cruel. Not mocking. Just low and dry, like someone who had lived long enough to understand how serious things always start in calm voices.
“Must be a big rat,” he said in English this time, voice touched with something close to amusement. “If you need Jung Hoseok steel for it.”
She smiled, but only with one side of her mouth. The other half stayed still.
“Huge,” she said.
They didn’t move. Didn’t raise their voices. The air between them didn’t buzz with tension, but it held. Quiet. Pulled tight like thread stretched between fingers. It didn’t warn. It just waited.
The chef gave a small nod. Y/N didn’t speak, didn’t finish the food. She left the second shot untouched. The fish remained as he had plated it, artful, unspoiled. The only sign she had been there was the soft, fading ring left behind by her first glass, already drying into the grain of the wood.
She rose without a sound and followed him through the beaded curtain, not once looking back.
The hallway beyond was narrow and long, the kind of space that time forgets. The wallpaper, beige or yellow once, now sun-bleached into something closer to nicotine-stained parchment, peeled at the edges in slow curls. The floorboards creaked just enough to remind you that no one had fixed them in a long while, and maybe no one ever would. The air smelled lived-in, dense with cooking oil and old plaster, like generations of heat had steeped into the walls. A single bulb swung gently from the ceiling, flickering once before settling into a thin, steady glow.
Hoseok walked ahead, silent, his gait quiet but confident. He didn’t rush. He didn’t hesitate. His steps were even, deliberate, the kind of pace that didn’t waste energy or ask permission. When he reached the end of the corridor, he glanced up and found the pull cord, barely visible in the dim light, hanging like a spider’s thread. He tugged it once.
A low groan came from above, followed by a creaking shift. A square panel in the ceiling cracked open with a dusty exhale, and a folded ladder unfolded downward with slow, mechanical clicks, the rungs snapping into place like joints stretching after too long at rest.
He climbed first. She followed.
Her boots hit the rungs with soft thuds, the sound swallowed by the close space around her. One hand on each side rail, steady, smooth. No wasted movement. She didn’t glance up, didn’t glance down. Just climbed. The air thickened as she ascended, growing warmer, more still. There was a shift in temperature, and in smell. Wood. Oil. Steel.
As she rose through the opening, the attic revealed itself like a photograph developing in slow motion.
It wasn’t big, but it felt larger than it should have. The low ceiling curved inward slightly, giving the space a strange hush, like it was used to quiet. The warmth was immediate. Not stifling, but deep, the kind of heat that came from bodies and time and electricity burning low and constant. The scent was unmistakable to anyone who knew what it meant: cedar, carbon, and choji oil. That distinct blend of camellia and clove, familiar only to those who have ever cared for a blade.
The light from the window was weak, filtered through grime that hadn’t been wiped away in years. But what little came through cast long golden lines across the floor, picking out the pattern in the grain and throwing deep shadows that stretched and curled. The floor was clean. Worn, but swept. Not a speck of dust in sight. No clutter, no trash. This wasn’t storage. It was maintenance.
On the far wall stood the racks.
Not shelves. Not hooks. Racks, each one handmade, shaped with intention, joined by hand rather than hardware. Pale wood, aged and patient. No decoration. No flair. Just quiet craftsmanship. They held swords. Not just katanas. Blades.
Dozens of them, each one unique. Their sheaths glinted in the dim light: black lacquer with soft reflections, deep red urushi, mottled green like old bark. One was wrapped in white rayskin bound with gold. Each sageo tie—gray, plum, navy—was knotted tight and deliberate, tension held with purpose. The tsuka, wrapped in silk, were symmetrical to the point of obsession. Every fold precise. Every diamond perfect. Each kashira had its own story: copper dragons, koi fish, sakura petals, brass ships riding a storm. And the tsuba were miniature sculptures of iron and bronze, some simple, some elaborate, none ornamental for the sake of it. These weren’t pieces for display. They were weapons made to be used. Cared for, kept sharp, kept ready.
Y/N stepped forward, her movements quiet, measured. She didn’t touch anything. Didn’t need to. The room held its own gravity. The kind of silence that didn’t beg for reverence but commanded it through sheer presence. Every detail—the blades, the wood, the air itself—spoke for her to listen.
Behind her, Hoseok didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to either. His stillness wasn’t tense or withdrawn. It was aware. Watching, but not pressing.
She turned slightly, just enough to glance over her shoulder. Her voice, when it came, was soft. Her Korean clear and careful. “May I?”
A beat passed, subtle but intentional. Then, his reply, not in Korean this time but in English. And for some reason, that made it gentler. “Yes, you may. Second from the top. Sixth row. Left side.”
She nodded once and turned back to the racks. Her steps didn’t creak the floorboards. She moved with the kind of calm that came from purpose, not performance. Her eyes scanned, counted, found it: sixth row, left side, second down.
She stopped in front of it, let her gaze rest on the sheath before reaching for it. Black lacquer, smooth and deep enough to absorb the light. It reflected just the faintest outline of her face, blurred, formless. The finish was perfect, but not decorative. Not flashy. Maintained, not polished. Like someone had wiped it down once a week for decades, always with the same cloth.
The sageo cord was tied in a neat, practical knot. Not ornamental. Not lazy. Tight, squared. The kind of tie someone would redo until they got it right. The tsuba was brass, aged and worn, its surface darkened by time and touch. Etched pine branches crawled along its edges, simple, understated, and detailed enough to tell you it wasn’t mass-produced. It had been chosen.
Her fingers wrapped around the tsuka. The silk binding was tight, smooth, crisscrossed with perfect symmetry. Black cord over white rayskin. Traditional. Familiar. The handle sat against her palm like a known shape, like something she had used before, even if she hadn’t.
And something inside her, something she hadn’t even noticed was noisy, went quiet.
She drew the blade without hesitation, not for show, just to see. It came free with a sound so subtle it was almost imagined. Like breath drawn through cloth. The kind of sound that disappears if you’re not paying attention. But she always paid attention.
Light caught the blade and changed it. What had been metal turned fluid. Reflections danced along the edge, fractured and reformed as she moved. The hamon curled like a pale ripple, shifting with every minor tilt of her hands. The kissaki was long, graceful. Measured for reach, not for display. The sword wasn’t just well-made. It had purpose in its design. Intention.
She held it in both hands now. The balance fell into place like it knew where to go. No resistance. No demand. Just a quiet agreement between steel and muscle, weight and memory.
Behind her, Hoseok finally stirred. The smallest motion: fabric shifting, a heel settling more fully into the floor. When she turned slightly, she saw him near the window, one hand deep in his pocket. The other rolled something between his fingers.
A baseball. Worn, the leather dulled to a soft gray, the seams darkened, fraying. It looked like it had been tossed from hand to hand for years. He turned it over in his palm absently, like it was more habit than thought.
“Funny,” he said, voice quiet enough that the words didn’t quite disturb the stillness. “You like swords…”
He tossed the ball into the air, caught it once without looking.
“…I like baseball.”
Then, without warning, he threw it.
There was no flourish. No wind-up. Just a sudden motion, fast, clean, direct. The ball cut through the air on a line straight toward her. No room to think. No time for a plan.
Her arms moved before her mind did. The sword rose in a single arc, smooth and efficient. No tension in the shoulders, no wasted energy in the swing. The blade moved as though she were answering something, not striking.
The ball split cleanly.
There was no dramatic crack. No cinematic echo. Just a soft, muted thud, leather parting under steel, a sound more felt than heard. One half of the ball skidded off and rolled beneath the nearest rack. The other bounced off her boot and stopped.
She didn’t breathe out. Not yet. Her grip had already eased. The sword angled down, relaxed at her side, tip toward the floor. Balanced again, as if nothing had happened.
Hoseok stepped forward, steady as ever, though something behind his expression had shifted. Barely, but enough for her to notice. A flicker in his eyes, like a thought he hadn’t yet decided whether to keep or release. He lifted a hand toward her, slow and sure. Not a demand. Not a gesture of control. It was open, deliberate. A quiet invitation to return something that wasn’t quite hers yet.
She reversed the blade, offering the hilt without hesitation. No dramatic pause, no faltering. Just weight moving from her hands to his. The handoff was clean, unspoken, the kind of exchange that didn’t need ceremony to be understood.
He sheathed the sword with practiced ease, and the sound—soft, precise, the smooth slide of steel into lacquered wood—didn’t echo. It landed. Not loud, not theatrical. Just final. Like a breath held, then released.
“I wanted to show you these,” he said in Korean, the playful edge from earlier gone. His voice had changed, calmer now, older somehow. He held the sheathed blade in both hands, fingers gliding over the lacquer not to clean it, but to remember it. “But someone like you… someone like you already understands.”
He placed it gently back in its rack, hands steady, motions exact. Each movement held weight, the kind of intention that couldn’t be faked. “I no longer make instruments of death,” he said, softer now, almost to himself. “I keep them for their beauty. For what they once meant. Because I love them.”
There was a quiet pride in his words, not boastful, just true. He bowed his head slightly. “I’m proud of what I made. Proud of how well I made them. But I am retired.”
She stepped closer, silent. No threat in her approach, only certainty. Her presence filled the space without trying to. Her voice came softly, but with clarity.
“Then give me one.”
The words landed like a pin in still fabric. He turned to face her, jaw tightening.
“They’re not for sale.”
“I didn’t say sell me one.”
They locked eyes. Her stare didn’t waver. Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.
“I said give me one.”
A pause opened between them. Not long, but heavy. The kind that held all the weight of what hadn’t been said yet. When he spoke again, it was clipped. Cold.
“And why should I help you?”
She didn’t blink. “Because the vermin I’m after,” she said, the words clean and hard, “was your student.”
That stopped him. Not with a flinch, not with alarm. Just a subtle shift. Shoulders lowered by a fraction, breath held at the top of his chest. His silence was sudden and full.
She stepped in again. “And considering the student…” she let the rest hang, then added, “you have certain obligations.”
He turned and walked toward the narrow attic window, its frame sun-bleached and warped slightly with age. With the back of his hand, he wiped away a patch of fog, clearing a view just big enough to see the city stretching out below them—rooftops, wires, and the slow dimming of the day. The glass was damp, the edges still filmed in condensation.
With one finger, he reached up and began to write.
TAEHYUNG.
The name curved faintly in the glass, drawn in a line of skin oil and breath. Outside, the wind kicked up, brushing against the building with a hollow tap. The beams creaked. The attic seemed to lean into the moment. The name.
She didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just nodded once. That was enough.
Hoseok turned, walked to the trapdoor, and reached for the old latch. It gave with a dry metallic groan. The ladder creaked as it unfolded, the sound echoing faintly in the rafters.
He gestured to the corner. A futon, rolled neatly. A folded blanket beside it. A small jug of water, a wooden comb laid with care. Nothing lavish. Nothing new. Just clean. Lived-in.
“You can sleep here,” he said in Korean. “I’ll make space downstairs. Might take a day or two to find proper furniture.”
He descended the ladder with the same quiet weight he carried everywhere. But just before the hatch closed, his voice floated back up, lower and firmer.
“It’ll take a month to make the blade.”
A pause. The creak of one last step below.
“I suggest you spend it practicing.”
Then the hatch closed with a solid, wooden thunk. Not sharp. Not aggressive. Just complete.
She stood still, alone in the attic, the air settling around her like dust that had waited too long to fall. The quiet wasn’t just quiet anymore. It was thick, almost physical. A silence that had weight, like the room itself was holding its breath after what had been said, what had been written.
The last of the afternoon light had slipped away without notice, and in its place came the muted amber of early evening. Outside, the city blurred. Rooftops softened, edges dulled, the sky folding into dusk with no sharp lines left. Gwangju looked like it was remembering something it didn’t want to say out loud.
She walked toward the window, slow and steady, her boots tapping gently against the floor. The name was still there, hovering in the circle of cleared glass, faint but legible. TAEHYUNG. The letters had already started to run a little, the edges softened by moisture and time.
From her coat, she pulled a cloth. It was plain, the kind of fabric that had seen years of use—creased, worn, stripped of anything personal. Just something that did its job. She raised it and began to wipe. One pass. Then another. Then again. Not hard, not angry. Just firm. Methodical. With each motion, the letters blurred a little more, until they were nothing but streaks. And then nothing at all. Just fog again.
She held her hand to the glass for a second longer, palm pressed flat. The warmth from her skin left a faint outline before the cold reclaimed it. It faded just like the name had. Quick, quiet, complete.
She folded the cloth with care and tucked it back into her coat, her fingers working with practiced ease. No lingering. No pause for meaning.
Then she turned from the window.
Outside, the city kept fading. Behind her, the attic returned to stillness. The name was gone. And with it, whatever place he might’ve held in her. Taehyung Kim had already taken too much. There was no room left in her for the ghost of him. Not anymore.
He would fall. And when he did, she would finally be free.
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chimcess ¡ 4 days ago
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⚔︎ Chapter Five: The Snake in Busan Pairing: Taehyung x Reader Other Tags: Assassin!Taehyung, Assassin!Reader, Assassin!Jimin, Dad!Jimin, Assassin!Yoongi, Gang Leader!Yoongi, Assassin!Namjoon, Swordmaster!Hoseok, Chef!Hoseok, Pimp!Seokjin Genre: Assassins! AU, Exes!AU, Lovers to Enemies, Action, Comedy, Suspense, Martial Arts, Drama, Thriller, Romance (if you squint), Heavy Angst, Violence, 18+ only Word Count: 17k+ Summary: A former assassin awakens from a four-year coma after her ex-lover Taehyung tries to kill her on her wedding day. Driven by revenge for the loss of her unborn child and stolen life, she creates a hit list and embarks on a ruthless mission to take down everyone responsible. Warnings: toxic relationship, talks of character death, graphic violence, aggressive characters, jealousy, training, flashbacks, implied smut, bathing together, strong language, guilt, emotional turmoil, regret, vengeance, these relationships are all tangled up, non-graphic smut, backstory, another tame chapter, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: So, why did Hoseok Jung stop making swords?
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The attic was dim, the air thick with sandalwood. It clung to the rafters, soaked into the beams, and seeped from the floorboards like time itself had steeped in it. The walls exhaled the scent in slow, heavy breaths.
Candlelight sputtered low, throwing jagged shadows across old wood. Steel glinted in the flicker. Hoseok Jung’s sword collection lined the wall like a silent jury. Every blade had a name. Every saya was polished like a relic. Y/N had studied them all during her month in Gwangju. She’d held them, trained with them, bled on their edges. By the time the incense stopped catching in her throat, she knew each one like her own hands.
Hoseok stood at the altar, his black silk robe whisper-quiet as he moved. The candlelight reached for him, but the silk swallowed it whole. A serpent devouring its own tail was stitched across his chest in blood-red thread. Once, his face had been soft, someone who believed peace was a choice. Time, sorrow, and war had carved that man away. What was left was sharp. Dangerous. His eyes, obsidian, reflected nothing. His lips were drawn tight. Whatever softness Y/N had once known was gone. He had grown out his goatee during the month they trained.
Moon-Byul stood beside him, unmoving. His robe mirrored Hoseok’s, minus the serpent. Instead, gold-threaded cranes rose up from the hem. His head was freshly shaved, his expression unreadable. Moon always hovered between brilliance and boredom, amused, never impressed. Once, he called Y/N a lion after she bested him in a spar. She never forgot it. They were close in age, and he treated her as an equal. Hoseok, though, was a kindred spirit. After two weeks of wooden swords, Y/N knew his every move. When sticks stopped being fun, they switched to steel. They both got cut, nothing deep. They spent more time praising each other than nursing bruises.
Hoseok was still a master, but past his prime. Had they met when he was her age, she wouldn’t have stood a chance. She knew that. She just happened to meet him late enough to survive.
On the altar lay a single sword.
The lacquered sheath looked wet, like still water under moonlight. Brass fittings in the momoji style curled into maple leaves at each end. One leaf caught the light like it had something to say. A gold band ringed the fuchi.
The tsuba was a custom prayer wheel, Jung Style the smiths called it, flanked by Kozuka-ana and Kogai-ana holes. The seppa were plain brass. The menuki, blackened kongosho, three-pronged spears invoking Fudo Myo, the wrathful protector.
The sageo was mustard, tied in precise knots. No shitodome. Pure function. The saya was purpose shaped into beauty. Solid fittings. A gold ring off-center. Twin gold stripes traced its spine and edge. The ito was leather-wrapped, white ray skin beneath.
Y/N had seen many blades. Trained with legends. But this one didn’t gleam. It warned. It pulsed. It whispered. It was the most beautiful. And the most dangerous.
Silence held.
Then Hoseok spoke.
“I’m done doing what I swore to God nearly ten years ago I would never do again,” he said. “I’ve created... something that kills people.”
He looked at the blade. A breath passed.
“And in that purpose, I was a success.”
He stepped forward and knelt. The floor creaked beneath him. He turned slightly toward the girl in the shadows. Her hair hung loose, her eyes wide. A fading bruise marked her wrist. The candlelight caught the frayed hem of her pants. She stood like she was bracing for something.
“I did this,” Hoseok said, quieter, “because philosophically, I’m sympathetic to your aim.”
His palm rested on the sheath.
“This is my finest sword. If on your journey you should encounter God…” He gripped the hilt. “God will be cut.”
He rose. The light caught his jaw, casting deep shadows.
When he looked at her again, something in his gaze had shifted, just slightly. The way Pai Mei had looked at her before she left China. She thought of her old master, wondered if he was still alive, still alone. She never thought to visit. Pai Mei didn’t like guests. He would mock her if she showed up without reason. But he had cared for her. More than he cared for Taehyung. And that had meant something. Pai Mei saw Taehyung as a son.
She blinked, realized she had drifted. Hoseok was still staring.
“Revenge,” he said, “is never a straight line.”
The incense pressed in. The air thickened. The attic closed around them.
“It’s a forest,” he said. “And like a forest, it’s easy to lose your way. To get lost. To forget where you came in.”
He stepped forward again, robe trailing like dusk.
“To serve as a compass,” he said, “a combat philosophy must be adopted.”
Moon-Byul moved without sound, placing a scroll in Hoseok’s hands. The parchment looked brittle. The ink was claws on rice paper. The Doctrine. The old Yagu code. Hoseok’s legacy.
He looked at Y/N.
“Repeat after me.”
His voice turned sharp. He began in Japanese.
Hoseok was born in Gwangju but raised mostly in Okinawa, under his grandfather’s roof. His family had fled to Japan before the war, hiding in a village so small it escaped notice even during the bombings. His grandfather made katanas, not hwandos. Y/N doubted they kept the name “Jung” there.
Hoseok’s childhood was carved between languages, between cultures. Between silences.
He held the scroll.
“When engaged in combat, the vanquishing of thine enemy can be the warrior’s only concern…”
Y/N echoed him in Japanese, low and steady.
“This is the first and cardinal rule of combat…”
No pause.
“Suppress all human emotion and compassion…”
Her jaw clenched.
“Kill whoever stands in thy way,” Hoseok said, “even if that be Lord God or Buddha himself…”
She didn’t hesitate. Hoseok’s voice was smooth, almost soothing. Hers was rougher, clipped. Her Korean was better.
“This truth lies at the heart of the art of combat,” Hoseok whispered. “Once it is mastered… thou shall fear no one. Though the devil himself may bar thy way…”
Y/N didn’t blink.
Hoseok bowed. She bowed back, then stepped forward. Her fingers closed around the hilt, steady, callused. The blade slid free with a soft hiss, catching candlelight as it rose. It was flawless.
Two gold carvings marked it: the unfinished Hattori mon, raw and exposed, and a Shi-sha before a war spear, garnet eyes gleaming. Hoseok’s lion. His mark. All his swords bore it. Now it belonged to her.
The hamon shimmered. Notare cresting into chaos halfway up the blade. Chu-kissaki tip. Toriizori curve. Every line exact, every surface mirrored. She saw the whole room behind her in its polish.
Hoseok spoke in English.
“Be careful, Y/N.”
She looked at him. Really looked. Weeks of sweat and silence had taught her more than any master before. He hadn’t comforted her. He had prepared her. Soup left wordlessly. Mid-spar corrections, sharp and precise. Quiet care. The kind that mattered.
Moon-Byul had honed her into something hard and clean. She would miss them both. And the restaurant downstairs, sticky tables, chipped cups, perfect kimbap.
“Can I come back?” she asked. “If I need help?”
Hoseok smiled. Small. Honest. It softened him.
“You are always welcome here, Black Mamba.”
She bowed. Deep. He matched it.
Then straightened, voice lighter.
“Now,” he said, “you need to rest. You have vermin waiting.”
She turned toward the stairs, sword in hand. Neither man followed.
Her room was barely a closet. Low ceiling. Thin walls. But it was hers. Quiet.
She closed the door. The soft click of the lock steadied her. The air felt heavier now. Tomorrow pressed close.
At the desk, Hoseok had left paper and charcoals. A small gesture. She had mentioned once that she used to draw.
The page waited, too white, too still. She pulled one sheet loose, placed it flat.
Her hand moved before her mind caught up. Lines. Shapes. Motion without thought.
Then a name surfaced. Unwelcome. Unavoidable.
Yoongi Min.
Just thinking it made her chest tighten. She hadn’t said it out loud in years, afraid it might summon him. But her hand didn’t stop.
His face came first. Sharp cheekbones, guarded eyes, the mouth set hard, almost smiling. The cold was there. But so was the warmth. The version of him that existed only for her. She hated that she remembered.
“Bittersweet” was too neat a word. Nothing about him had ever been clean.
Yoongi wasn’t Taehyung. No one was. Taehyung had been wildfire, beautiful and ruinous. She had run toward that fire.
But Yoongi... he was the silence in a world that never stopped screaming. Tea at 3 a.m. No questions. No fixing. Just space. He didn’t tame her. He made room.
And for a while, that had been enough.
Her strokes slowed. Smaller now. More careful. Her wrist trembled once. Her eyes stung.
He hadn’t always been cruel. Not with her. There had been jokes. Seoul nights. The way he used to hold her like the world had ended. Even his rivalry with Brandi had dulled eventually. And she remembered how he used to look at her, like she was something holy. Like he wasn’t sure he deserved her. Maybe once, she believed it.
Then came Two Pines. Yoongi chose empire. Chose power over her without blinking. And whatever they had died in that moment. Now he wore the crown like it belonged to him. Never apologized. Never looked back.
She gripped the charcoal too hard. It snapped. She didn’t flinch. Just picked up the broken half and kept drawing.
Two Pines had been a dream: peace under trees, shared breath, a place to exhale. It became a slaughterhouse. He didn’t save her. Didn’t try. He watched. She never forgave him. She never would.
Yoongi Min would pay. That was carved into her bones now. Love didn’t excuse it. Didn’t clean it. Didn’t quiet the screams. She saw them in her sleep, felt them in her chest every time she closed her eyes.
This desk was her altar now. A page, a truth. Vengeance wasn’t theory. It was instinct. Ritual. Religion.
I loved him. And I’ll still kill him.
Once, that thought might’ve broken her. Now it fit. Now it kept her warm.
Sometimes she pictured it: the moment he saw her again. Not the executioner. Not the girl who once touched him like a prayer. Just two broken things who loved each other before they learned how to ruin everything.
Her eyes dropped to the sketch. His face stared back. Not a portrait. A reckoning. He didn’t look like the tyrant the world feared or the boy she trusted. He looked like what lived in between. A ghost of someone who never got to choose who he became.
A tear slid down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it. Didn’t need to. Her hand moved harder now, charcoal grinding into the paper, deepening the shadows beneath his eyes, carving out the line of his jaw, the shape of that mouth.
That mouth. It had saved her once. Destroyed her, too. She knew it better than her own reflection.
She was almost done.
When she drew the last line, something settled. The version of him on the page was final. Whatever was left of him in the world, she’d bury it herself.
Vengeance doesn’t wait. Not even for love.
She paused. The charcoal trembled in her grip. The lamp buzzed louder, throwing jagged shadows across the wall. Dust floated like time had paused, just to watch.
Then it came. A voice from somewhere deep. Old. At that moment, you think: it’s proof like no other. That not only does God exist, but you’re doing His will.
It hit like a splinter beneath the skin. She remembered hearing it once. Young. Believing. Blade in one hand, faith in the other. Back when certainty felt like armor. When killing felt like purpose.
A sound escaped her. Something like a laugh, scraped raw. That belief was dead now. Buried under ash, silk, and silence at Two Pines.
There was no holy mission. No divine justice. Just blood and what followed. She wasn’t a prophet. Wasn’t anyone’s daughter anymore. That girl, the one who prayed, was long gone. What remained was colder. Sharper.
Her fingers moved again. One last stroke across the collarbone, clean and exact. Not decoration. Not feeling. It was dissection. Finding what hadn’t rotted in the corpse of something long dead.
When I knew the least about my enemies, she thought, the first name I wrote was the easiest. And Yoongi Min had never tried to hide. Not from her. Not from anyone. No aliases. No masks. No intermediaries. He stood in the center of his own legend, calm as a man pouring tea. Never flinched. Never blinked.
They called him Busan’s velvet devil. A gentleman butcher. A king in wolf’s clothing. No one whispered his name, they said it with care. Like it might unlock something dangerous.
He didn’t build his empire in shadow. He built it loud. Deliberate. Brick by bloody brick. Face bare. Eyes forward. His business was fear, and he ran it like art.
And once, she had loved that face. Not like Taehyung. That had been fire. Destruction you welcomed. Yoongi was different. Solid. Still.
He sat with her on the bad nights. No questions. No comfort. Just presence. He let her have silence without trying to fill it. And when she needed him, really needed, he was there. Now she needed him gone.
The memories cut sharp. Her hand hesitated, then pressed on. She darkened the hollow of his throat. Sketched the collar of his coat, always black, always tailored. Gloves. Always gloves. A man who knew what he was. Never pretended otherwise.
Her thoughts circled back to where it began. Taehyung. He didn’t enter a room, he arrived. Moved like smoke. Looked like he knew secrets you hadn’t earned. Every move deliberate. Every silence calculated. He didn’t fight for the top, he acted like he already lived there. And the world didn’t argue. She’d loved that about him. God help her, she had.
Yoongi was twenty-nine when Taehyung handed him the kingdom. It wasn’t loyalty. It was strategy. A chess move disguised as trust. And Yoongi wore the crown like it had always been his.
She didn’t trust the memory, too warped, too worn. But it came back anyway. Again and again. Now, staring at the page, something in her chest went still. His eyes. That same emptiness. That certainty. Like he already knew how your story ended, and wasn’t impressed.
Once, those eyes had looked at her differently. Maybe not with love. But with recognition. Like he saw her. Now he wouldn’t blink. And neither would she.
Her hand slowed, weight behind each stroke. She shaped his mouth, the same one that once told her she was more than fire. The one that kissed her like she was something worth saving.
But that version of them was gone. Whatever she’d been to him, whatever he’d been to her, it didn’t matter anymore.
Hoseok had told her how the war ended. Not quietly. Not with peace. It ended the way power always does when it refuses to share: loud, brutal, almost holy in scale.
He said Yoongi had stood on the edge of the last battlefield, black hanbok catching the light like oil, moving like smoke. The final rival, once feared, bled out at his feet.
Yoongi didn’t gloat. Didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. He looked down. Stepped over the body. Kept walking. Like death was just another item crossed off the list. That was what made him terrifying. Not the violence. The indifference.
After that, Busan didn’t resist. It bowed. Now the only trace of that man lived in graphite and shadow on the page in front of her.
Her hand moved in steady strokes, building his face in layers. Every line felt less like art and more like exhumation. She wasn’t drawing. She was digging. Through wreckage. Through memory. Through what was left.
Yoongi’s features came together piece by piece. The sharp jaw. The cold slope of his eyes. The soft curve of his mouth, more memory than muscle now. Not quite a king. Not the boy she’d known. Something in between. A ghost on paper.
Then her hand slipped. The charcoal snapped, rolled across the desk, stopped against the edge of a dried tea stain. She didn’t reach for it. Just stared.
The face on the page looked back, unfinished. Not a monster. Not a myth. A man.
And still, the image stayed. Burned into memory like a scar: Yoongi, that night. Black hanbok, sleeves wet with blood, standing over the last man who dared to defy him. The body twitched once, reflex or defiance, but it didn’t matter. It was over.
Yoongi didn’t pause. He turned to the others. His face unreadable. Cold. If there was emotion, it was certainty.
And that was the thing that made him impossible to outrun. He didn’t need to conquer you. He made you realize you’d already lost.
Smoke from gunfire still hung in the air. Cries just beginning to fade. And there he stood beneath a shattered skylight, cherry blossoms drifting through broken glass. Still. Too still.
He looked like something pulled out of a dream and dressed in blood.
And when the final scream died, Busan bowed.
Hoseok had told her about that night like a prayer he wasn’t sure he should say.
“It was one of those nights,” he’d murmured, voice low. “You could feel it. In the air. Like the city already knew. Like it could taste the blood before it hit the ground.”
And after came the gathering at The Red Lantern Club. Not really a club. More like a mirage stitched together underground. Velvet curtains. Perfume and secrets. Jazz leaking through the walls. Lighting low and sharp. Voices too soft. Cigar smoke hanging like a lie.
Somewhere behind a locked door, a woman was always crying. No one ever asked why.
The deeper you went, the worse it got. The air thickened. The light reddened. By the time you hit the center, it didn’t feel like nightlife. It felt like hell with waitstaff and designer liquor.
That night, the city’s old guard had gathered. Six kkangpae bosses, men who’d ruled for decades. Draped in silk and legacy. Their suits cost more than most lives. Their rings were old as dynasties.
Behind them stood their muscle. Armed, still, waiting.
And in the center of it all stood Yoongi.
He wore a black suit that seemed to drain the light around it. Everything about him was honed to a point: jaw, eyes, presence. Hair slicked back. Not a strand out of place.
The chandelier above caught his face in shards. He didn’t look human. He looked like death taught how to wear a suit.
He didn’t speak. Just watched.
His gaze moved slow, surgical. A scalpel drawn across the room. Every glance measured posture, weakness, fear.
And the fear was heavy. Thick enough to taste.
These were men who weren’t used to being afraid. But they were smart enough to feel it.
They could kill him. They had the numbers, the firepower. But it would cost more than any of them were willing to pay.
One by one, they raised their glasses. Not respect. Ritual. Whiskey. Toasts. Smiles stretched too thin.
Everyone was pretending. No one was celebrating.
Except one.
Boss Yoon. All silk and silence. Hands folded over his stomach like he was holding something ugly inside. He didn’t toast. Didn’t smile. Just stared. He hated Yoongi.
Half-Japanese. Half-Korean. Raised on Camp Humphreys. Too foreign for tradition. Too clean for blood.
To men like Yoon, Yoongi didn’t belong. He hadn’t earned it. Hadn’t clawed his way up through mud and knives like they had.
In another time, another world, Yoongi wouldn’t have even been let in the building. But this wasn’t another time. This was Yoongi’s time.
Yoongi hadn’t inherited power. He hadn’t waited for it. He’d taken it, piece by piece. Clean. Quiet. He didn’t follow bloodlines. He erased them. Rewrote the hierarchy. Dug his throne out of the dead.
And Boss Yoon couldn’t stand it.
His son, Chan, sat beside him, tight-lipped, tense. When he moved, it was like something uncoiling. His hand came up slow, then slammed down, palm first, into his plate. The porcelain cracked hard, shards scattering across the table like shrapnel.
Silence hit the room like a slap. Every glass stopped midair. Every throat held breath. Even the jazz behind the walls seemed to pause, like the music knew when to be afraid.
Yoongi didn’t move.
Yoon stood. Slowly. Like the motion hurt. His shoulders were tight, jaw clenched, rage leaking through every breath. His guards shifted. Hands hovered over blades. The room felt suddenly very small.
A younger boss, maybe still naive enough to think this could be salvaged, broke the silence. “What’s the meaning of this?” he asked, voice pinched and too high. “What’s this outburst supposed to mean?”
Yoon didn’t answer right away. When he finally did, his voice sounded like old rust: thin, bitter, sharp enough to cut. “What am I supposed to celebrate?” he said, spitting each word. “The death of this council? The stain on our fathers’ work?”
The murmurs started small, like the first crackle of a fire. A glance here, a whisper there. Fast words. Faster doubt. The kind of unease that spreads before anyone admits it. The air thickened until it clung to the walls like smoke.
Then Yoongi spoke. “Gentlemen.”
One word. Calm. Even. Icy. It dropped into the room like ash from a fire that had already burned everything worth saving. He didn’t raise his voice. He never had to.
“Boss Yoon has something he’d like to share,” he said, tone flat, bored even. Like he was reciting bullet points at a board meeting. “So let’s hear it. What rot do you smell, Yoon-sshi?”
Yoon didn’t hesitate. Maybe he thought it was mercy. Maybe he thought it was his moment. Or maybe he just couldn’t stop himself. He pushed his chair back like a man stepping onto a stage. His knuckles were white against the table’s edge. His hands trembled, barely. But not from fear. It was deeper. Older. Resentment carved into bone.
“My father,” Yoon began, voice cracking under the weight of something too big for the room. “Yours. All of them. They built this council on blood. On discipline. On legacy. This table,” he gestured broadly, cuffs of his silk shaking, “was carved from code. From purity.”
A sharp crack rang out across the room. Boss Bae had slammed his glass down hard enough to chip the base. His eyes were wide with fury. “Outrageous,” he snapped. “You insult this council.” He grabbed his napkin and tossed it across the table like it meant something. “Bastard.”
Yoon caught it, didn’t look, flung it back. “Fuck face.”
“Enough,” Yoongi said. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. His eyes didn’t leave Yoon. “Speak.”
Yoon did. He stood straighter, like bracing for a storm, and let it out in one breath.
“I speak of the perversion we’ve allowed into this council. The disgrace that sits at its head. A place I’ve loved more than my own children. Desecrated. By crowning a half-breed Korean Jap-American bitch as its leader.”
It happened before the air had time to shift.
One moment Yoongi was seated. The next, he was standing on the table, sword already drawn. The blade cleared its sheath with a whisper. His coat moved like smoke. Spilled bourbon soaked into the soles of his shoes as he crouched, stepped forward, and swung.
One cut.
Yoon’s head came off like the sword had been waiting for it. It spun once in the air, a blur of silk and skin, then dropped with a sound too soft for what had just happened. Blood followed, bright and fast, arcing across the table. It soaked silver, silk, polished leather. Splattered napkins. Stained velvet. Pooled beneath the feet of men who had ruled Busan’s underworld longer than Yoongi had been alive. Yoon’s body folded in on itself like a puppet cut clean.
The room froze.
Yoongi stood at the center, framed in crystal and blood. His face was flecked red. Still. Unmoved. He rose from his crouch without urgency, eyes flat.
No one spoke. The six remaining bosses kept their eyes on the body or the floor. None dared look at him.
At the edge of the mess, Yoon’s two guards still held their swords. The moment had already passed. One trembled. The other stood stiff, waiting for a bullet that hadn’t come.
Yoongi turned to them. His face didn’t show anger. Or satisfaction. Just that cold certainty, the look of a man who didn’t guess. Who didn’t need to.
He didn’t make a threat. He didn’t have to.
“Fight me,” he said. “Or work for me.”
The two men looked at each other. Loyalty passed between them, brief, reflexive. But it didn’t hold. Not in this blood. Not in this room. They dropped their swords.
“On the floor,” Yoongi said.
The blades hit tile, sharp in the quiet.
“Get behind me.”
They moved, slow, hands open.
“On your knees.”
They knelt.
“Foreheads down.”
They lowered.
“Keep your mouths shut.”
Yoongi turned back toward the table.
No one had moved. Their hands stayed on armrests that no longer felt like theirs. Suits once tailored to power now looked too tight, like their authority no longer fit. These were men who had run cities, ordered executions between drinks, built empires in back rooms. Now they sat like children caught lying, avoiding Yoongi’s eyes, saying nothing.
Even the oldest among them, men who had once terrified nations, kept their heads down. They all understood what had changed. No one here was stupid enough to think they could challenge him. They had all seen what he’d done to reach this seat. No one was angry about his rise.
Boss Bae just hated Boss Yoon for ruining the mood.
Across the room, just beyond the chandelier’s reach, Lynn Easton watched. One leg crossed, cigarette between two fingers, unlit and forgotten. Her eyes never left Yoongi. There was something in her gaze that looked like admiration, but it wasn’t.
It was worship. Not the kind given to saints.
The kind reserved for gods who kill.
No fear in her. No hesitation. She knew what he was. Saw it in him like a reflection. She didn’t flinch. She smiled. Slow. Precise.
Yoongi spoke again. His voice was smooth, low. Velvet over steel. Polished. Corporate. Lethal.
“I’m going to say this in English,” he said to the table, “so you understand exactly how serious I am.”
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. Every word landed with the weight of steel.
“As your leader,” he said, tone flat, “I encourage you from time to time, and always in a respectful manner, to question my logic.”
Lynn translated quietly from her chair, thoroughly amused by his outburst.
“If you’re unconvinced that a particular plan of action I’ve decided is the wisest, tell me so,” Yoongi said. “But allow me to convince you and I promise you right here and now, no subject will ever be taboo.”
He paused.
“Except, of course, the subject that was just under discussion.”
He turned, slow, toward a soldier behind him. A big man, pale and sweating through his collar, standing like he wasn’t sure if movement would get him killed.
“Hand me the head.”
The soldier hesitated, then stepped across the blood-slick floor. He knelt, gripped Yoon’s hair through his gloves, and lifted what was left. Blood still dripped from the neck. The mouth hung slack. The eyes stared, wide and glassy. Whatever they had seen last had stayed with them.
Yoongi took it without ceremony. Like passing a file across a desk. He held it up slightly. Let the face do the talking.
That expression was still there, that last moment of realization, right before death, when the brain knows it’s over but the body hasn’t caught up.
Then Yoongi’s voice changed.
It dropped lower. Rougher. No polish now. No formality. This wasn’t the voice of a man at the head of a boardroom. This was the voice from before. From the alleys. From a life of being told he didn’t belong. A voice that didn’t learn to fight. It had to.
“The price you pay,” he said, every word slow and exact, “for bringing up either my Japanese or American heritage as a negative…”
He raised the head just a little higher.
“…is I collect your fuckin’ head.”
One of the dons swallowed, loud in the quiet. Another froze completely, like even the sound of a breath might draw attention. Under the table, someone moved to cross themselves, then stopped, maybe remembering no god watched over this place.
“Just like this fucker here,” Yoongi added, swinging the head in a small arc. A red line traced the table around him.
He turned in a slow circle, letting them see it.
“And if any of you sons of bitches got anything else to say…”
His voice lifted slightly, barely, but the force cracked through the room like a bullet.
“Now’s the fuckin’ time.”
He looked at each of them, one by one. Daring them. Giving them the chance. No one spoke. No one moved.
“I didn’t think so.”
He dropped the head.
It hit the table hard. A wet, blunt slap. Blood sprayed outward, over linen, over crystal, over the sleeve of the man closest to the corpse. The head rolled once, then again, and fell off the far edge. It landed with a soft thud and disappeared under the tablecloth.
Yoongi turned his back to them.
“Meeting’s adjourned,” he said.
He walked away. Two men who had once sworn to kill him followed without a word. Behind them, the room stayed still. The scent of blood lingered, thick and permanent. The council, once a cabal of giants, sat quiet, stripped down to what they really were.
Men. Just men. And they all stared at the spot where the king used to stand.
Y/N sat curled in the corner of her room. The cheap wooden chair pressed hard into her back, too stiff to be comfortable, but familiar enough not to notice. The smell fan she had screwed into the wall filled the silence with a steady hum.
Memory didn’t work like a book. You couldn’t flip to a clean page and read it straight. It was smoke. Slippery. Every time she tried to hold it still, it shifted. Time didn’t erase anything. It just dulled the edges. The things that used to cut now brushed against her like worn silk. The pain was still there. It just moved to the background, like old music from another room.
Yoongi Min lived there now. She didn’t cry for him anymore. The rage that used to keep her up at night, sweating and twisting in the sheets, was gone. So was the hate. That would have been easier.
Now, she just carried him.
Every night, before sleep dragged her under, she read the list. Names, dates, memories etched in ink, sealed in scars. Yoongi’s name had never moved. Always circled. Always there. Preserved in blood and intent.
Once, the irony amused her. That you could still want vengeance against someone you didn’t hate anymore. Now it just made her tired.
He hadn’t always been part of her story. Once, he was just a name. A man with quiet eyes who appeared one sunburned afternoon in Jalisco, uninvited but perfectly expected. She still remembered the smell of scorched dust, the scream of cicadas in the heat. She had been sitting on the veranda, a bitter drink in her hand, ice melting faster than her patience. The estate’s white walls radiated heat like an oven. She thought she would pass out before anything important happened.
Then he walked in.
Too still. Too composed. The kind of man who looked wrong in heat and noise because he didn’t sweat. Didn’t flinch. And that made him dangerous. Danger didn’t announce itself. It stood still in chaos and watched.
Her first thought was that he was too pretty to be a killer. Not soft, just out of place. The kind of face meant for cathedrals or concert halls, not backrooms and wars. It caught her off guard. She had felt that once before, the year she met Jimin. But Jimin weaponized his beauty. He distracted. Disarmed. Smiled before he cut.
Yoongi didn’t smile.
He was cold. Still. A presence that quieted rooms. The kind of man you didn’t approach. You waited to be seen.
She hadn’t trusted him. But she hadn’t objected either. When Taehyung asked if she approved, she hadn’t looked away. Just gave a brief nod and said, “What’s his name?”
Taehyung had already chosen.
“Cottonmouth,” he said, smiling like it amused him.
Yoongi didn’t stay long. Maybe forty-eight hours. Just long enough to shake the right hands and unlock the right doors. By Monday, he was gone, headed back to Korea with a folder of papers and a one-way ticket in his coat.
At the time, it didn’t seem important. It was 1992. She was still green. Still trying to figure out what kind of weapon she would become.
Back then, her hands hadn’t learned how to break things. Her heart still ached when it rained. She still prayed, sometimes. She hadn’t met Pai Mei yet. That part of her story hadn’t started.
But Taehyung, as always, had seen it coming. He knew she wasn’t ready. Or maybe he just couldn’t bring himself to be the one to turn the key. When it came time to learn the blade, he stepped back. Said it was too personal.
So he made the call. Yoongi picked up. Said yes.
Three days later, she arrived. The cold hit her the second she stepped off the plane. Busan didn’t feel like a city. The skyline was gray, resigned. The Min estate sat on the edge of that resignation, stone and silence, walls older than any name she knew. It didn’t feel like a home.
Yoongi was waiting in the great hall. Standing there, tall, composed, dressed in slate silk that shimmered like oil under low light. He didn’t move. Just watched her walk in with a stare that could empty a room.
So she bowed.
Not out of respect. Not even formality. Instinct. Survival. She knew men like him. You bowed first, or you didn’t get the chance.
She dropped to her knees. Lowered her head. Waited.
He didn’t speak.
The silence stretched, long enough for doubt to slip in and settle. But she held position.
Then, finally, he spoke. Quiet. Exact. His Korean was flawless. Formal. The kind you heard in courtrooms and memorial rites. Not Taehyung’s fast, back-alley Seoul dialect. This was old money. Inherited. Precise.
“Tell me,” he said, “why are you here?”
It wasn’t curiosity. It was a test. A mirror.
She raised her head. Met his eyes.
“Taehyung told me he already spoke with you,” she said, matching his dialect. The formality was stiff in her mouth, shaped by study, not instinct.
Something flickered in his eyes. Maybe approval. Maybe not.
“Our mutual acquaintance said he would send the foreigner I met in Mexico,” he said, kneeling so smoothly it made no sound. “But that’s not what I asked.”
Now they were eye-level. But she still felt beneath him. Not from height. From stillness.
Yoongi didn’t dominate a room. He erased it. Took the air out. Turned it into something cold and hollow. His stillness wasn’t passive. It pressed in, dense and quiet, until you felt it in your lungs. A slow pressure, like being buried.
Then he moved.
No warning. No wind-up. Just motion.
His hand reached out, fingers catching her chin. Not rough. Not kind. Just efficient. The touch felt clinical. His skin wasn’t cold, but it felt like it should have been.
“Why are you here?” he asked again. “If it’s training you want, Taehyung could’ve done it himself. But he didn’t. Why?” His voice didn’t rise. It sank, low, smooth, cold. “Is it because you think I’m closer to the roots of the blade? That your little infatuation with him would cloud the lessons?”
Then he leaned in. Barely. Just enough to close the distance. She caught the faint scent on his skin, wood smoke, paper, ink. His eyes narrowed.
“Or…” The edge in his voice sharpened. “Or is it because Taehyung found a new pet, and you couldn’t stand to watch him play with her?”
It hit like a punch. Not forceful. Precise. A clean shot to the soft place she never acknowledged. It found it anyway.
She didn’t flinch.
Her breath caught, just for a second, but she forced the air out slow. Steadied her gaze.
“Taehyung’s too busy to train a beginner,” she said, voice level. Even. Neutral. “And I wanted to get to know you. We’re closer in age than I am with the others. I thought we could become friends.”
A lie. But polished. Just enough truth to sound casual. Just enough simplicity to sell.
She let the silence stretch. Let it settle between them like pressure.
Something flickered in his face. Not a smile. Not quite mockery. Something colder. He brushed his thumb across her cheek. It could’ve passed as a gesture of comfort.
It wasn’t.
Without breaking eye contact, he switched languages. His English was flawless. Not practiced. Natural. Private-school crisp, but stripped of warmth.
“Well,” he murmured, “we’ll see what you are soon enough, won’t we?”
Then he stood. One clean motion. Effortless. Like movement didn’t cost him anything. He turned and walked away without a glance, already finished with her.
“Lynn will show you to your room.”
The door closed behind him. Quiet. Clean. Final.
She sat for a second in the echo of it. Her face still cold from his fingers.
Then she stood. Picked up the hotel phone. Dialed.
Taehyung answered on the second ring. Warm. Familiar. Almost amused.
“You good?” he asked before she said a word.
She opened her mouth but didn’t get the chance.
The door burst open.
No knock. No warning.
Lynn Easton stepped in like she owned the place. Black silk. Sharp tailoring. Heels like weapons. Her hair pulled back, expression blank. Her presence wasn’t. It filled the room.
Y/N’s instincts lit up.
She didn’t think. Just moved.
The gun was in her hand before Lynn crossed halfway in. Smooth draw. Safety off. Barrel aimed steady between the eyes.
The phone clattered to the floor. Taehyung’s voice buzzed faintly, tinny and distant.
Lynn didn’t blink.
She glanced at the phone. Then at Y/N. Something flickered, disgust. Then it vanished, replaced by something colder.
“I’m here to tell you,” she said, voice flat, dry, “training starts in ten. Main courtyard. Don’t let your little phone call make you late.”
Then she turned and walked out. Like the gun hadn’t mattered. Like the whole thing bored her.
Y/N lowered the weapon. Picked up the phone.
Taehyung was still there.
“You good?” he asked again, voice calm.
“Yeah,” she said. Too quick.
“I have to go. Yoongi’s waiting.”
A pause.
Then, gently: “Show him why I picked you. Don’t hope. Prove it.”
“I will.”
“Goodbye, Alabama.”
“Bye, Tae.”
She hung up. Stood still for a second. Smiled, just barely.
Three minutes later, she was already in the courtyard. She’d memorized the layout her first night. Not for aesthetics. She didn’t care about ancient stone, delicate bonsai, or cherry blossoms floating like confetti. That wasn’t her lens.
She mapped sightlines. Marked exits. Noted cover. Measured steps. Calculated what she could cross, where she could hide, how fast she could move.
Survival started with the map.
The courtyard was bare. Raked gravel. Slate tiles worn smooth by weather and time. Wind chimes overhead, their tones sharp and strange. A single cherry tree leaned in from the far corner, petals drifting down like soft debris.
Yoongi stood beneath it.
Back to her.
Still.
The sun cast his shadow long across the stone, a cut of darkness the light couldn’t touch. His robe was black, edged in silver thread. The fabric moved with the wind. He didn’t.
She crossed the courtyard without sound. Her boots were ghosts on the stone. No training mats. No racks of blades. Just Yoongi, and the wooden sword in his hand, held like he’d never put it down.
He didn’t turn.
“Show me how you hold this,” he said. No greeting. No warmth. Just a command dropped mid-movement, like she was late.
She took the sword in both hands. Grip clean. Textbook. Balanced.
Too clean.
It looked right but felt wrong. Like a pose held too long in front of a mirror.
She tried to channel Taehyung, the way his stance breathed, the way the blade looked grown from his hand. But she wasn’t him. And Yoongi wasn’t here for poetry.
He didn’t sigh. Didn’t speak. Just shifted his jaw, barely.
“No.”
He stepped forward. She didn’t see it happen. One second, still. The next, closer. The sword left her hands without resistance. He didn’t yank it. Didn’t ask. He just took it, like gravity claiming a dropped stone.
Then his hands were on her. Not rough. Not gentle. Just efficient. Fingers folding hers back around the hilt, sliding a thumb, adjusting the angle. One sharp push realigned her elbow. A tap moved her hips. Behind her, he pivoted her knee, nudged a foot half an inch forward. No words. No explanation. Just movement. Precise. Automatic. He worked like someone who had done this a thousand times and expected no questions.
It wasn’t teaching. It was sculpting.
She didn’t resist. It wasn’t instruction. It was command.
Yoongi’s style had no drama. No shouting. No speeches. No honor-bound riddles. Just correction and silence. He didn’t care when her arms began to shake or when her back pulled tight. His hands just kept moving, carving posture into muscle whether it wanted to hold or not.
By the time he stepped back, her entire body burned. Thighs tight. Shoulders screaming. Spine locked. Sweat clung to her jawline, her breathing short and shallow. Her hands cramped around the hilt.
He looked her over once. Then gave a single nod. “Hold that position for one hour,” he said. Flat. Final. “When it’s over, I’ll show you the next.”
She blinked. “An hour?”
The disbelief escaped before she could kill it. Regret followed instantly. Not just because she had questioned him. Because it sounded weak.
Yoongi didn’t answer.
He turned and walked to the bench beneath the cherry tree’s shade. A tea set sat waiting. Steam already curling from the spout. He poured a cup with the same precision he used on her stance. Not rushed. Not careless. Ritual.
He sipped. Closed his eyes. “Don’t speak,” he said. “Your muscles must stay still.”
She stared at his back, jaw tight. Part of her wanted to drop the sword. Just to see what he would do. To make him react.
She didn’t. Because this was still the test.
“There are children who start this training at four,” he said. “Most still fail.”
Another sip.
“You’ve spent two years playing with guns and knives and think that makes you ready.” A pause. “It doesn’t.”
The words didn’t sting. They landed. Quiet. Dry. Accurate. Like facts she had avoided saying out loud.
“Maybe your mind can learn. Maybe. But your body will. One way or another.”
He didn’t look at her when he added, “I’ll hope you leave this place a credit to my mother’s nation. Try not to disappoint, will you?”
It didn’t sound like hope. It sounded like a door closing.
A week and a half later, Yoongi decided to take the crew out. No reason. No plan. No destination. Just motion.
His people didn’t need details. Only direction. And they moved like gears. Quiet. Timed. Unquestioning.
Lynn delivered the message.
Y/N sat cross-legged on her floor, wrapping gauze around bruises that bloomed black beneath her ribs. Each pass dragged against raw skin. Her breath hitched when the edge of the bandage caught bone. She pressed her palm to her side and waited for the pain to settle. It didn’t. It just burrowed deeper. She gritted her teeth and kept going.
She was halfway through when the door opened.
Lynn stepped in like she owned the space. Black silk, tailored sharp. Not a wrinkle out of place. Posture perfect. Chin up. Shoulders square. Eyes level.
Y/N was on her feet before she realized it.
The pain screamed through her ribs, but her body moved on instinct. Her spine locked, and her hand shot out. The gun was in her grip a second later, trained on Lynn’s forehead without hesitation. The silence that followed wasn’t stillness. It was loaded. Bright and taut. Like air stretched too thin.
The only sound was the faint scrape of her phone sliding off the futon and hitting the floor. Taehyung’s voice, mid-sentence, flickered into static.
Lynn didn’t blink. She didn’t move. Her eyes ticked from the gun to the phone, then back to Y/N. Her expression didn’t shift, not really, but something passed through it. Faint. Fleeting. Contempt. The kind too old to be loud. She exhaled once through her nose, slow and quiet, then spoke.
“You’re allowed to come tonight,” she said, voice flat, the kind of flat that could cut glass. “We leave in five.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. Just turned and walked out, the tail of her silk shirt whispering across the doorway as she disappeared down the hall.
Y/N stood there, chest heaving. Her ribs throbbed. Her fingers loosened around the grip of the gun, but she didn’t lower it for a few more seconds. Long enough to make sure Lynn wasn’t coming back.
Then she bent to grab the phone, her hand trembling slightly as she brought it back to her ear.
“You good?” Taehyung’s voice was still there. Low. Calm. Annoyingly perceptive.
She exhaled, steadying herself. “Yeah,” she said. Too fast.
“I have to go. Yoongi’s waiting.”
A pause.
Then: “Show him why I picked you. Don’t hope. Prove it.”
“I will.”
“Goodbye, Alabama.”
“Bye, Taehyung.”
She ended the call and sat there for one beat longer than she needed to, staring at the wall. Then she stood, wincing, and pulled her boots on over aching legs. She didn’t change clothes. No time. The sweat-soaked tank top clung to her skin. Her jeans were still dirty from morning drills. She swiped a sleeve across her mouth to smear whatever lip gloss was left and ran a hand through her hair, tugging it back with a band that had seen better days.
She didn’t care about looking good. She cared about moving fast.
By the time she stepped into the front hall, she had already pushed the pain back down where it belonged. The light in the entryway was warm and gold, soft against the polished wood floors and cool stone walls. Yoongi stood near the door, speaking in clipped Korean to a man she didn’t recognize. He was tall and heavy-set, the kind of man whose hands looked like they knew how to break a jaw without wrinkling his cuffs. Yoongi’s voice was brisk and efficient. His eyes kept flicking toward the hallway.
When he saw her, they stopped. Just for a second. Long enough to notice, not long enough to mean anything. But it wasn’t nothing.
She fell into step behind the others, slipping into formation as if she had always been there. Not too close. Not too far. She knew the rhythm now. She knew the space she was allowed to occupy. Not inside. Not excluded. She was tolerated. Observed. Weighed.
A wiry man with too many rings and a mouth that seemed to smile more during fights than at parties offered her a drink. Something clear in a crystal vial. She shook her head. Not because she trusted him. She didn’t. But she needed every ounce of strength for whatever came next. Her body still buzzed from the morning’s drills. Her legs felt like overused rope. Her back ached. Her palms were raw.
Yoongi had worked her until she collapsed. Then he told her to start over. He hadn’t praised her. He hadn’t spoken at all when it ended. But he hadn’t walked away disappointed either. That counted.
In the narrow space between rejection and recognition, she could feel the pull. Not affection. Not ambition. Something simpler and hungrier. She wanted to be seen. Not as Taehyung’s pick. Not as the outsider with borrowed language and too much to prove. She wanted to be seen as a threat. Something that could not be ignored.
The car ride to the club was silent. Not awkward, but disciplined. Every man sat straight, knees aligned, backs stiff. No one spoke unless necessary. When they did, it was quick, quiet Korean. Clean and controlled. Not meant for her.
Up front, Yoongi sat next to Lynn. He never looked back. The passing streetlights carved his face into pieces, slicing him into segments of brightness and shadow, something not quite whole. When he spoke, the car quieted even more.
Y/N did not catch the words. She didn’t need to. The tone was enough. Low. Sharp. Exact. Lynn nodded once, her arms folded tight across her chest as if she were holding something in. Her reply was short and clipped, but her body shifted. Just a little. Like something inside her had been punched.
Y/N did not know what Yoongi had said. But she felt it in her teeth. He didn’t waste words. When he spoke, something somewhere bled.
The car stopped. She reached for the door, expecting one of the others to go first. Protocol. Order.
But the door opened from the outside.
Yoongi. Still seated, half turned, holding the door open for her. Just once. Just for her. It wasn’t gallantry. It wasn’t habit. It was a move.
Their eyes met. Half a second, maybe less, but it stretched longer than it should have. A flicker of understanding passed between them. Not fondness. Not even acknowledgment. Recognition. The game had begun.
The club was buried beneath an old hotel near the edge of the harbor. It sat tucked under stone and shadow like something too dangerous to live upstairs. There were no signs. No neon. Only a pair of matte black steel doors and a man standing in front of them who looked like he had retired from killing people professionally but still did it on weekends for fun. He didn’t speak. He didn’t check IDs or nod in recognition. He simply stepped aside when Yoongi approached, as if the man had already been through him once.
Inside, the air changed immediately. You felt it before you saw it. The atmosphere had weight. A low hum beneath the skin. Everything was red. Not just in color but in mood. The lighting bled against velvet walls and lacquered surfaces, casting shadows that clung to corners like secrets. Smoke curled from cigars too expensive to ask about, winding into the haze like something alive. The music was live jazz, but not the kind played in hotel lobbies. It had teeth. Brass and muscle. A saxophone wailed from the stage like it had history, like it had seen too much and was tired of staying quiet.
No one here danced. No one shouted over the music or begged for bottle service. This was not that kind of place. You didn’t come here to forget yourself. You came because you already knew exactly who you were and wanted others to know it too.
Every person in the room mattered. Nobody wore name tags. Their reputations arrived ahead of them, carried in rumors and police reports. Laughter was low and precise, like a shared joke you only understood if you had killed the same man. Weapons glinted beneath suits. Flashes of matte black steel and the occasional polished wood handle. Not a threat. A formality.
It wasn’t safe. But it was sacred.
Y/N didn’t need instructions. One glance from one of Yoongi’s men sent her toward the far end of the long table. No words. Just movement. The seat was obvious. Furthest from Yoongi, furthest from Lynn, tucked into the farthest edge of the heat. A place for the tolerated, not the trusted. She sat without protest. She didn’t take it personally. She poured herself a small cup of sake, careful not to let her fingers shake. Her body still ached from training. Shoulders like stone. Wrists sore. Back tight. But she held the cup steady.
The first sip burned. Sharp and clean. It didn’t dull the pain, but it gave her something else to focus on.
From her seat, she could see the whole room. What she saw caught her off guard. Yoongi was laughing.
Not a polite smirk. Not the curated charm he used with government contacts or lieutenants looking for approval. This was real. Mouth open, eyes creased at the corners, head tilted just enough to show his guard had dropped. Briefly, but fully. He leaned toward Lynn, said something low that made her roll her eyes and smirk. Something warm, almost playful. Not the usual predator’s smirk she wore like lipstick. This was different. Lighter. Familiar.
Yoongi tapped the table with two fingers, keeping time with the band. Occasionally, he snapped a word toward the musicians. They responded instantly, adjusting their tempo as if they were tuned to his mood.
She did not recognize this version of him.
This wasn’t the man who had held her elbow too long in the courtyard. Who had made her hold a stance until her thighs screamed and her arms went numb. Who corrected her without speaking, using only pressure and presence. That Yoongi was exacting. Brutal in his quiet.
This one was fluid. Charming. Dangerous in an entirely different way. This was the king.
She lifted her cup again. Just to do something with her hands.
That was when he looked up. Right at her. He did not blink. He did not smile. He only looked. For a moment, the noise in the room faded. Not because it stopped, but because she no longer heard it. Her heart struck once, hard enough to echo in her ears. She stayed still. Silent. She did not need to speak. The air had shifted. She felt it.
Then Yoongi stood. He smoothed his jacket, straightened his cuffs with a flick of his wrists, and walked. Not toward the band. Not toward the bathroom or the bar. He walked toward her.
Y/N did not move. Her cup hovered in mid-air. Everyone noticed, even if they pretended not to. Eyes flicked toward him, then slid away. It was like watching the sun move across the sky. You did not stare, but you felt it.
He reached her side of the table and sat across from her as if the seat had always been his. He did not ask. He did not wait. He claimed it.
The look he gave her was not kind and not cruel. It was measured.
“You like soju?” he asked. His voice was soft, almost casual, as if he were asking about the weather.
He reached across the table for the bottle in her hand and took it as if she had offered it. She had not, but that did not matter.
“I have had it with Taehyung before,” she said. Her voice stayed calm and steady. That was the important part.
Yoongi rolled the bottle between his fingers. The label caught the light and shimmered, a red gleam against his skin.
His mouth curved slightly. Not quite a smile. Something quieter.
“And am I right to believe,” he said in a tone that was light but edged just enough to sting, “that you have been enjoying this one all by yourself?”
She did not answer. Her pulse spoke for her.
“I see Eun-Jae has his own.” He nodded toward a man two seats down. “And Chi-Hun too.” He glanced again.
His voice did not rise. It did not need to. Every word cut deeper. The power was not in volume. It was in the edge.
“That makes this bottle yours.”
Eun-Jae and Chi-Hun moved together in perfect choreography. Each lifted his own bottle. Each poured for the men nearby. They did not look at her. They did not comment. The gesture was enough.
Her breath caught. Not for long and not dramatic, just enough to tighten her throat. Her body knew before her mind did. She had not meant to claim anything. She had not even realized she had. But she had. And now it was out in the open, sitting between them like a challenge carved into stone.
Yoongi did not believe in accidents. He did not believe in second chances either. Not here. Not with her.
The expression he had worn—cool, unreadable, almost amused—vanished from his face in an instant. The bottle tilted slowly in his hand. The last of the sake spilled across the table in a thin stream that soaked into the lacquered surface. It pooled quietly, unmistakably. A slow insult. A liquid reprimand. It did not splash. It bled.
“I will not allow a student still in training to get drunk,” he said. His voice was flat, stripped of warmth. Not angry. Worse than angry. Final. “Not when I have been generous enough to permit her a night of entertainment.”
Something inside her snapped. A coil wound too tight since the day she arrived. Since the first blow she had not been allowed to flinch from. Ten days of drills. Ten days of silence. Ten days of pain stitched into her skin and rules never explained but always punished. Ten days of never knowing if she was doing well because he only told her when she failed. Ten days of swallowing every ache, every humiliation, with no relief and no reward.
Her palms slammed against the table before she even realized she was moving. The sound cracked across the room like a gunshot. She rose halfway from her seat, the motion sharp and defiant. Her voice tore out, scraped raw from restraint.
“Then maybe you should have said that before we left the compound!” she snapped. “How the hell was I supposed to know when everyone else is drinking like it is a wedding?”
The room changed instantly. Breath seemed to vanish from it. Air turned still. Every conversation froze. Heads turned slowly, carefully. Chairs shifted. Hands slid toward weapons, not drawing yet, only resting, waiting. The silence was not empty. It was anticipation. Everyone in that room knew this kind of silence. Everyone had lived long enough to recognize the moment before something breaks.
Yoongi did not blink. He did not move.
He raised one hand.
And everything stopped.
His voice carried no volume, but it had gravity.
“Are you telling me,” he said slowly, “that I was wrong to assume Taehyung would only send someone intelligent enough to know training does not end when the sun goes down?”
Then he stood. No flourish. No threat. Only inevitability. Like the tide rolling in. Like gravity itself shifting around him.
“I do not excuse disrespect under the guise of ignorance,” he said. His words cut cleaner than a blade. “You may not yet understand what it means to belong to something greater than yourself, but you will learn what it means to respect the table you sit at.”
His eyes flicked to Eun-Jae. Then to Chi-Hun. Neither man moved. Neither breathed.
“For the rest of the night,” Yoongi said, turning back to her, his tone sharp and exact, “you will refill their glasses. To repay the insult of serving only yourself.”
He did not wait for a response. He did not look at her again.
“You.”
A waitress near the bar jumped as if struck. Her tray clattered in her hands.
“Bring her tea. Nothing else. And clean this mess.”
The girl moved immediately. No protest. No hesitation.
Yoongi walked away. Not storming. Not hurried. Simply finished. His point made. Nothing left to say.
The air shifted again in his absence. The room exhaled at last. Conversation resumed—too loud, too quick, forced. Nervous noise from people desperate to believe nothing serious had happened.
Y/N did not move. She could not. Her hands shook. Her skin burned, not only with humiliation but with something colder. Rage. Resentment. Shame. Worst of all, the hollow realization that the worst part was not what he had done to her.
It was that she had let it happen.
When Yoongi sat back beside Lynn, it was not him who looked at her.
It was Lynn.
Her smile was small. Precise. Cruel in a way that did not need teeth to draw blood.
They never spoke of it again. They didn’t need to.
Yoongi was not the kind of man who repeated himself, and Y/N was not the kind of woman who asked for wounds to be reopened. Training didn’t work that way. The lesson had been public, sharp, final. The silence that followed was the test. The message was clear.
After that, everything got colder. Sharper. Quieter.
The weeks bled together in a rhythm of pain and repetition. Every morning before the sun rose, Y/N stepped barefoot into the stone courtyard, bokken in hand, breath visible in the cold air. Her muscles ached before she began. Her fingers were raw and calloused. Her shoulders locked tight. Her back burned from the inside out.
Yoongi always appeared without sound. Gray silk draped his frame, hair tied neatly, a porcelain cup of tea in hand. He never greeted her. Never asked if she was ready. He gave one demonstration: a stance, a pivot, a strike. Then he left her to chase it. No instructions. No corrections. No praise.
Only silence.
And eyes. Always watching. From the edges. From shadows. From the corner of her vision where he lingered just long enough for her to feel it. Not seen, but tracked.
He never corrected her with words. He broke her rhythm instead. A faint frown. A raised brow. A soft clack of his own blade knocking hers out of line. Every mistake meant starting over, no matter how far she was into the sequence. No matter how tired. No matter how raw her hands had become.
He didn’t teach. He shaped. He disrupted. And he made it work.
It was a hot afternoon when she cracked. Spring clung to the air like a fever. Blossoms sagged on tired branches. Sweat slid in rivulets down her back. She was on the hundredth repetition of a basic kata, clean and practiced, almost meditative, when his voice sliced from behind her.
“You’ve gotten sloppy since returning from lunch.”
She froze for one second. It was all he needed.
Her hand tightened on the hilt. She didn’t turn. Didn’t answer. But her grip faltered. Her breath grew uneven. The stance that had been perfect a moment ago unraveled in an instant.
Of course he had been watching. Of course he never really left.
“I ran into Lynn at lunch,” Y/N said, her voice taut, held together by will alone. She didn’t explain further. She didn’t mention the way Lynn’s words had cut—soft but cruel, designed to slice without volume.
Her grip tightened until the wood groaned. Splinters bit into her skin. She didn’t loosen her hold.
Yoongi said nothing. He didn’t ask. He simply set down his tea and crossed the courtyard with that same quiet precision, deliberate and certain, without wasted motion. He moved like breath against glass. Soundless. Unshakable.
When he reached her, he took the bokken from her hands. Not with force. Not with kindness. Just decisively, as if the matter were already settled. As if her permission had never been required.
His fingers brushed hers, light and impersonal. Not comforting. Not cruel. Simply measuring damage. He turned her hand over, inspected the raw patches, the forming blister, the embedded sliver of wood at her thumb. He handled her like a craftsman checking his tools. Detached. Efficient.
“She’s jealous, I’m afraid.”
The words came casually, as if he were commenting on the weather. No bite. No warmth. Just fact.
Y/N blinked. “Jealous? Of what, my bruises?”
A flicker passed through his eyes. Amusement perhaps. Perhaps something sharper. His mouth twitched, not quite a smile.
“You haven’t figured it out yet? I thought you were supposed to be clever.”
He didn’t wait for her reply. Instead, he used a nail to lift the splinter from her skin—quick, practiced. Then he took her other hand. His thumbs pressed into old bruises along her palm and forearm, testing how far the tissue had hardened. Every movement was precise. Every touch necessary.
“She was Taehyung’s favorite before you,” he said evenly. “The only reason I ever worked with him was because she asked me to. She called it loyalty. I called it convenience. But I said yes.”
He paused just long enough for the weight to settle. Not dramatic. Just deliberate.
“Then he got bored. She returned here. And he sent you.”
Y/N didn’t flinch, but the words hit low and deep. She had no reply. She didn’t know what she was meant to feel. It wasn’t a compliment. It wasn’t a warning. It was both. It was neither.
He looked up and met her eyes.
“And now you’ve taken my attention too.”
There was no inflection in his tone. No tilt of the head. No softening smile. Only the weight of the words left hanging between them. Then he released her hands.
“You are beginning to have the hands of a samurai,” he said. “You may take the night off.”
And then, like always, he turned. Three steps away. No glance back.
But he stopped.
“Tomorrow,” he said, his back still to her, “I will join your practice.”
It should have felt like something. A victory. Recognition. A sign that she had finally crossed some invisible line. Instead it sank into her gut like stone: cold, heavy, permanent.
The next morning, the courtyard looked unchanged. Gravel neatly raked. Air still. Gray light blooming faint against the sky. But this time Yoongi was already there.
He stood beneath the cherry tree, bokken in hand, its wood darkened by years of use. He didn’t smile. He didn’t greet her.
“I will strike,” he said. “You will counter. You have until I reach you to remember the correct movement. If you fail...”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.
She set her stance. He moved.
No signal. No count. Only sudden motion. The first strike came fast and low, angled at her shoulder. She tried to shift, but too late.
The blow landed with a crack and dropped her to one knee. Pain flared down her ribs, bright and sharp. Her vision burst white at the edges. She didn’t cry out.
“Begin again,” he said.
So she did.
Over. And over. And over.
There were no drills, no warming up, no soft correction. Only his blade cutting through air, his feet silent on stone, and the sick thud of her body reacting too slow. Her shoulders screamed. Her calves cramped. Her palms ached from the grip. Her mind blurred between one motion and the next.
Yoongi gave her nothing. No feedback, no approval, not even disappointment. Only relentless pressure. He moved like a metronome with teeth, steady and ruthless. If she was off by an inch, he found it. If her balance faltered, he exploited it. Every failure reset the clock.
This was not training. It was exposure therapy. And it worked. Not in a single revelation or dramatic breakthrough, but in layers, in silence. Her body began to anticipate. Her feet stopped dragging. Her shoulder no longer ducked instinctively. The bruises still formed, but less often. Her hands stayed firm, her wrists stopped trembling, and she moved on reflex instead of thought.
Yoongi never slowed, yet cracks began to appear—not in him, but in the routine. A breath that came half a second late, a shift in weight before the strike, tiny tells that most would overlook. She did not. She kept them tucked away like cards she was not ready to play.
The change came late in the session. The heat pressed down, blossoms overhead curling in the sun. Her shirt clung to her spine and her lungs burned. She was deep into another repetition, automatic and unconscious, when Yoongi broke pattern. A sharp flick, a feint they had not practiced in more than a week. Her mind did not register it. Her body did. She pivoted and blocked, clean.
Yoongi stopped. He did not speak, did not nod, but something flickered at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile, not exactly, but close. It vanished almost immediately, sealed away behind the mask he always wore. Yet it had been there, and that—coming from Yoongi—was everything.
Something shifted between them, not in any dramatic glance or heavy moment, but in a quiet recalibration that needed no name to be real. She began watching him differently, not only reacting to his strikes but studying the seconds before. The tension in his shoulders. The draw of his breath. The way he set his weight before moving. She was reading him now, not following but predicting, feeling the current instead of bracing against it.
Without thinking, she tested him. It was not planned. Her body moved before her brain caught up, a twitch in the shoulder and a shift in her stance. She stepped in fast, blade sweeping low. It was not perfect, maybe not even wise, but it was honest. He caught it effortlessly, calm, as though he had been waiting for her to try.
That hint of a smile returned, small but unmistakable. Not approval, something more dangerous—recognition. She swung again, this time at a different angle, sharper, more deliberate. His block came quicker, and with it a subtle change in his stance, a pivot that revealed not a mistake but an invitation.
Try again.
And she did. For the next half hour they moved together, not quite sparring and not quite dancing. She pushed, he absorbed. Every inch of progress, every shard of discipline, every stubborn breath left in her body went into those exchanges. He gave her only what she earned, no more and no less. There were no corrections, no lectures, no fire. Only motion. The air between them tightened, charged with effort and silent calculation. For the first time, it did not feel like survival. It felt like progress.
But it could not last.
Yoongi shifted suddenly, swift and deceptively casual, and used a move she herself had tried earlier. A flick, a false step, something familiar that her body was not ready to counter in reverse. Her mind lagged behind, and the strike landed hard. The wooden blade slammed into her ribs with merciless precision, seizing her entire body. Her breath vanished. She fell, coughing, knees hitting gravel as heat exploded white-hot through her side. The courtyard spun.
Yoongi stood above her in silence, the bokken loose in his hand as if he had barely touched her. His breathing remained steady. His shoulders did not move. He looked almost bored.
“Very good,” he said, his voice dry as stone. “Although you would be dead if my sword had an edge. Try to remember faster tomorrow.”
No gloating. No malice. Just fact.
She forced herself upright, ribs protesting with each breath. Her vision swam, but she did not drop the sword. Her grip held—tight, shaky, but there. She had learned at least this much: pain no longer had the right to take things from her.
“Tomorrow?” she rasped.
Yoongi did not blink. “It is not even noon.”
She stared, sweat cooling against her skin, body throbbing in every place that mattered. He turned without waiting, walking with the same casual control, the blade swinging loosely at his side. One hand lifted behind him in a lazy gesture.
Follow.
So she did.
They were not heading to her room. She realized it the moment they took the east corridor. The pattern was wrong. The walls shifted to older stone, the silence heavier. She knew the layout. Taehyung had made her memorize every hall of the estate, every corner, every dead end, just in case. She had never come this far before, but she knew exactly where they were going.
Yoongi’s wing. Private. Off-limits. No one lingered there unless summoned.
At the end of the hall, he slid open a door and a wave of heat spilled out, thick with cedar and citrus and something older, like sun-warmed earth or smoke from the right kind of fire. The bath sprawled across stone as though it had grown from the earth itself. Sunken deep, carved clean, it sent steam curling into the air in long, slow threads. No marble. No gold. Only simplicity that dared anyone to call it lacking.
Yoongi stepped aside, leaving just enough room for her to pass.
“Your body is bruised. Your muscles are tight,” he said in the same even tone he used when calling a strike. “This will help.”
Not quite an offer, though it sounded like one. It carried weight, an order softened at the edges.
She looked at him. “Are you joining me?”
One brow lifted with faint amusement. “You are not interesting enough yet.”
He walked past her then, swallowed by the steam as if it belonged to him. The door slid shut behind him with a sound too soft to echo.
She stood there for a second and let the warmth reach her skin. The scent of yuzu and cedar clung to her clothes. The stone under her feet radiated quiet heat. For the first time in weeks, no one was watching.
She set the sword down.
The steam curled around her arms, climbed her spine, and softened the places that ached the most. Her ribs hummed where the strike had landed. Her shoulder blades loosened. Something deep inside her, the part that had gone tight and silent, let go. Not all at once, but a little.
Then the door slid open again.
Yoongi stepped into the steam without a word. Bare-chested, robe hanging loose at his hips, sash in one hand. His presence did not change with the space. He moved the same way he always did, with that silent, deliberate ease that made you forget you were watching something dangerous. Nothing in his posture acknowledged that she was there, standing in the doorway to his private sanctuary. It was as if her presence had already been accounted for, expected, filed neatly under inevitable.
“This is my bath,” he said, calm and even, like he was offering her a history lesson. “I thought you might appreciate something more civilized than the training hall showers.”
He folded the robe with practiced care, every motion tidy and purposeful. Not fussy, only controlled. Every crease smoothed, every corner aligned. He set it aside, then turned to the cold-water spout set into the stone wall, twisted the valve, and let the water slam against his skin.
No flinch. No breath hitch. Just the rhythmic sound of cold water hitting muscle and stone, echoing through the steam-heavy air.
She did not step forward yet. She only stood there, body worn down to the bone, every joint and bruise aching in protest. Her eyes stayed on him, though. The shape of his back. The way water sheeted off him, like even the elements could not quite stick. The stillness he carried, too perfect to be natural, too practiced to be peaceful. It should have unnerved her. Instead, it pulled at something deeper, something she did not want to name.
“Why?” she asked, keeping her voice low and steady. “Why bring me here?”
He looked over his shoulder. No smirk. No raised brow. Just a calm, clear look, as if he already knew what she was really asking.
“Consider it a reward,” he said. “You have not complained. Not once. Even when your body failed you. Or”—a faint pause sharpened the air between them—“maybe I just wanted a closer look at the strange girl who stayed, when I expected her to be gone before the week ended.”
She let out a short breath, half-scoff, half-laugh. Then peeled off her shirt. Slowly. Not to perform, only because it hurt. The fabric clung to her, damp with sweat and blood. She stripped it away piece by piece, revealing skin blotched purple and yellow, deep reds where the bruises still bloomed fresh. She did not hide them. Each one had cost her something.
“I do not think you know Taehyung very well,” she muttered, dropping the shirt onto the wooden bench behind her. “He does not exactly allow failure. I could not—”
“You could have,” Yoongi cut in. He was still not looking away. “Do not insult me by pretending you stayed because of him. That is not the woman who has been bleeding in my courtyard every morning. The last one he sent left before sundown.”
And just like that, he stepped into the bath.
No noise. No fanfare. Only water parting around him like it knew better than to resist.
“You are here because you chose to be,” he said. “Because whatever waits for you in Mexico scares you less than I do. And that is what makes you dangerous.”
The water hissed against his skin, steam rising around him. He closed his eyes and sank down to his collarbones, not to relax but to reset. Like a weapon cooling after too much use.
She followed. Slow. The heat hit her like a wall, hot enough to bite and chase breath from her lungs, but she kept going, deeper into the water until it wrapped around her aching limbs. It felt more like a purge than a relief. The bath did not comfort. It stripped.
Yoongi watched her.
Not hungrily. Not even curiously. Just like a man who knew how to read pain and wanted to see how she carried it. She felt him clock her every wince, every breath, every way she tried not to fold.
“I will admit,” he said quietly, “I did not think you would still be here the next morning. Or the one after. I kept waiting for a note. Or an empty room.”
She let her arms rest along the stone ledge, eyes half-shut, the heat working into her bones. And then, unexpectedly: “I never even thought about leaving.”
The words surprised her more than they surprised him. She had not realized it until she said it. She had given herself no options, no way out. Just one road forward, no matter the bruises it collected.
“It was not fear,” she added after a pause. “Not of Taehyung. Not of you. It was just…” Her voice cracked slightly, not with emotion but with exhaustion. “I could not fail. I could not be ordinary.”
Yoongi did not nod. He did not soften. But something passed through his gaze, quick and subtle. A quiet shift behind the eyes. Recognition. Like two hunters finally realizing they were not hunting each other. They were the same species.
He said nothing for a long moment. Then:
“A shame,” he murmured, “that you may someday be my equal.”
The words landed like a quiet blow. Not praise. Not warning. Just a truth, delivered with all the weight of something final.
She did not speak. She only let it settle in the place she kept the things that mattered most: the bruises, the insults, the small, hard reasons she got back up every morning.
By the time she had found the shape of a response, he was already moving again.
He stepped through the water, steam curling around his body, and stopped just beside her. Not close enough to touch, not yet, but close enough that she could feel him.
His hand came to rest on her shoulder. Measured. Still.
“Turn around,” he said.
She did, but not without asking, sharp and flat, “Why?”
His grip did not tighten. His voice did not shift.
“Your body flinches when you move, when you are touched. You are locking up from pain. Let me help.”
No invitation. No implication. Just fact.
So she turned, braced her forearms on the stone edge, and exposed her back to him. It should have felt like surrender. It did not. It felt like a quiet kind of trust.
His hands started at her shoulders. Not soft. Not hard. Just practiced. He found the bruises first, the places where muscle had tightened around injury, and adjusted his touch accordingly. His thumbs moved with clinical precision, pressing into old tension and coaxing it loose.
He did not speak. Neither did she.
Steam thickened around them, clinging to skin, softening the sharp edges of pain. Her body stopped resisting. The ache remained, but the weight of it changed. It no longer felt like failure. Only effort.
And Yoongi’s hands stayed steady, never drifting, never teasing. Just working. Like she was a map he already knew by heart. Like she was not broken. Only rebuilding.
For the first time in a long time, she let herself feel that. Not comfort, but something close.
His fingers brushed the curve of her breast.
Her entire body locked. Not from fear, not entirely, but from something else. Something older, older than instinct. Her spine jerked upright, colliding softly with his chest behind her. The bath seemed smaller. The air heavier. Steam closed in like a held breath.
She did not move again. Neither did he.
They only held there, suspended, as if the moment might break if either of them did more than breathe.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was low. Measured. Strained but steady.
He exhaled through his nose, slow and quiet, deliberate.
“I think you already know.”
No heat. No teasing. No playacting. Only honesty, dropped between them like a stone in still water.
“If you want me to stop,” he said, even softer now, “say it. I will not touch anything not freely given.”
Her breath faltered. Not at his words, but at the certainty in them. So calm. So absolute. The steam swirled between them, thick and clinging. She felt it against her face, in her lungs, wrapping around her hesitation like rope. Her voice cracked without meaning to.
“Taehyung…”
His name came out as a whisper, but Yoongi’s response didn’t miss a beat.
“Taehyung,” he said flatly, not as a question but as an answer, “would have had someone else in his bed before your plane even landed.”
Not cruel. Not bitter. Just fact.
And the worst part was that she knew he was right.
She didn’t speak again. She couldn’t. The words weren’t there. Only the heat, the ache, the tension that had never fully left her since day one. All that training, all that silence, all that held-in rage coiled too tight for too long.
Yoongi leaned in. Not close enough to crowd her, but enough that she could feel his breath at the base of her neck. Not a move, a signal. A question.
“Don’t pretend you haven’t been watching me,” he murmured. “Don’t pretend Lynn didn’t have reason to be angry. I told you she was jealous. What did you think she was jealous of?”
His hand slid across her stomach. Slow. Measured. Not pressing. Not assuming. Just there. Still waiting. Still giving her the choice.
“Say the word,” he said again, low and level. “And I’ll stop.”
She should have said it. She should have shut it down. Draw the line. Protect herself. Retreat behind the layers she had built to survive this world.
But she didn’t.
Her eyes closed. Not out of surrender, but something deeper. Something sharper. Not submission. Control.
A sound left her, quiet and raw, like breath torn from somewhere near her ribs, as his fingers moved lower between her thighs.
It wasn’t about lust. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even comfort. It was defiance. Against the pain. Against the bruises. Against every silent rule she had bent to. This was her crossing a line no one else would define for her.
She didn’t melt into his touch. She stepped into it. Not for him. For herself.
For the first time in too long, the choice was hers. And she took it.
Later, years later, she would remember the bath. The heat. The weight of his hand. The sound of his breath against her ear. Not with regret. Never with regret.
She remembered because it mattered. And in her world, memory did not fade. It sharpened. It cut cleaner the further away it got.
That night, when the list was finally made, when the names were written in ink instead of blood, she started at the beginning. Not with Taehyung. With Yoongi. That was why he had to be first. Not because he was the worst, but because he was the closest.
The charcoal slipped from her fingers, leaving a faint black streak on the desk. She didn’t pick it up. She just stared at the sketch.
Yoongi’s face stared back. Too precise. The downturn of his mouth. The stillness behind his eyes. That composure she knew better than anyone.
She hated how well she remembered. Because remembering meant the wound was still open. And an open wound was still a weapon.
Back then, she had held it for his approval. Now, she held it for blood.
She stood slowly, vertebrae popping like worn links in a rusted chain. Her spine stretched, uncoiling with the reluctant grace of something long kept in a cage. Her body did not feel like hers anymore. It did not even feel human. It felt sculpted, chiseled by pain, and honed by something colder than purpose. Something sharper than memory.
A knock shattered the stillness. She flinched instinctively, muscles wired tight from too many surprises that came with blood on the other side.
“Y/N, can I come in?”
Hoseok. His voice, always a balm, softened her edges just enough to remind her she had not been born with claws. Around him, she could almost remember being someone else. Someone less dangerous, more whole. She exhaled, slow and careful.
“Yes.”
The door creaked, ancient wood straining against metal hinges. He didn’t step inside. There wasn’t enough room for two people to stand without touching, and they had never been the kind to brush shoulders casually. She moved to the bed. He took her seat without hesitation. His eyes flicked to the drawing on the table, unimpressed.
“You’ve been thinking,” he said, tone dry.
Y/N let out a low, humorless chuckle. “I’m always thinking, ahjussi.”
Hoseok’s face contorted into that familiar grimace. She had always liked getting under his skin.
“I told you not to call me that.”
“No,” she replied, tilting her head, “you asked me not to.”
That made him laugh, the real kind. The kind that cracked open the air and let warmth bleed through. Rare and reckless. She joined him, not meaning to, but needing to.
Then the moment snapped shut like a trap.
“You hide behind words, Mamba,” he said, gaze locking onto hers with that old soldier’s weight. “But we both know you don’t say much of anything at all.”
The laughter died like a match in water. Hoseok never wasted time on half-truths.
“You’ve been in here two hours,” he added, “and all you’ve got is a rat’s face.”
She had no defense. He wasn’t wrong.
“Min Yoongi,” he said, voice low and flint-hard, “is your enemy now. Don’t forget that.”
She nodded once. A stiff, mechanical gesture. She knew it. She knew it in her bones. But knowing and acting were oceans apart. Yoongi had been her friend. He had also tried to kill her. The betrayal lived under her skin like a buried shard of glass. It didn’t make sense. Maybe it never would. But sense was not a prerequisite for vengeance.
He helped murder her daughter. He beat her while she was still carrying that fragile, innocent life. He killed Tommy. He opened the chapel door. He didn’t stop Taehyung when the gun was raised. He didn’t flinch when her world was reduced to ash. He chose his place at the table over her life. Over all their lives.
And she would be the one to remove him from it.
Because whatever they had once been, Yoongi had made sure they could never be that again.
“Are you listening?”
She blinked, dragged out of the spiral. Hoseok watched her through the hazy yellow light, and in that dull glow he looked younger. Sadder. Like something in him was wearing thin.
“No,” she said, honest and small. “Not as well as I should be.”
“Are you afraid?”
“No,” she whispered. “I just… can’t understand how any of this happened.”
The silence that followed made the room feel smaller.
“I want to tell you a story,” Hoseok said quietly. His voice slipped into Korean like a man retreating into the safety of his own skin. English was too sharp for grief. Too foreign to carry what lived in his chest. “Not because I think it will help. But because maybe you’ll do better than I did.”
He turned the chair around and straddled it, arms resting across the back. His robe fell open at the knee, revealing loose black cotton pants worn thin by years of habit. He looked almost relaxed, but his eyes betrayed him—stormy, hollowed out by memory.
“I met Taehyung when he was twenty-four. I was almost thirty. I had been making swords since I was a boy. My grandfather raised me with a hammer in one hand and a whetstone in the other. That was all I had. That was all I knew. That was how Kim Taehyung found me.”
His voice carried the rhythm of something rehearsed too often in silence. Not regret anymore, just the ghost of it, dulled with age.
“He was magnetic,” Hoseok went on. “Fast. Wild. Smarter than he let on. We started sparring in the alleys of Okinawa. Half-serious at first, then real. He was the only man I could never beat easily, and when I did, it was never by much. We bled together more than once. I trusted him with everything.”
He leaned forward, fingers drumming against the desk.
“Korea was behind me. My father. His belt. The silence after my mother died. I left it all to rot. But Sookie came with me. She was seventeen. Still called me oppa like she was five. Still believed the world was fair if you worked hard enough. My baby sister.”
His voice caught on that word, and he cleared his throat.
“She was stubborn. Mom named her after some American girl she saw on TV once. Sookie. Sounded dumb to me then. Still does. But it stuck. Everything stuck to her—smiles, people, hope. When she met Taehyung, I knew she was in love with him before he even looked her way.”
The bulb overhead flickered, but Hoseok’s face didn’t change.
“I told him to leave her alone. He promised. For a while, he kept it. But she wore him down, and he let himself be worn. A year later, he asked for my blessing. I gave it. I told myself he would never hurt her. He was loyal. I thought maybe he’d be family.”
Y/N’s voice came out soft as breath. “What changed?”
“She almost died,” Hoseok said flatly. “Ambush outside the noodle shop. Someone we knew. Someone Taehyung had history with. She was so scared after that. Told me she wanted out. Out of Japan. Out of him. I thought that would be it. She left with me. We went home to Gwangju. Bought a little house. She opened this kimbap shop. I fixed the walls and built shelves. She would hum while she cooked.”
His eyes drifted, unfocused. “That was the last time life felt small enough to hold.”
He touched his lower lip, as if searching for the taste of that last good meal with her, and maybe he couldn’t find it.
“Moon-Byul came into our lives by accident. Street kid with quick hands. One day he stopped a couple of punks from robbing the shop. I watched from the attic window. He had no blade, just a broken mop handle, and I thought—this kid might actually be something. I took him in. Trained him. We forged swords together. The attic became sacred.”
Y/N stayed motionless, her breath shallow.
“Then Taehyung came back. And Sookie let him in without hesitation. Just smiled and said he missed her. As if it were that simple. As if he hadn’t dragged violence to her door the first time. I saw it then. The rot. The way he turned everything around him to ash.”
His voice hardened.
“Two weeks later the Italians came looking for him. He had crossed someone. Money, territory, who knows. Instead of warning me, instead of protecting her, he took her to bed. He let her wake up to gunfire.”
The silence was suffocating.
“They stormed the house just after sunrise. Moon and I held the attic with whatever we had. Sookie tried to run. They gunned her down in the kitchen. Shot six times. She died on the tile, blood in her teeth. I slipped in it trying to reach her.”
Y/N’s hand trembled.
“And Taehyung? He killed everyone. Efficient. Beautiful, even. Like a painting. Then he looked at me, calm as ever, and said, ‘At least she went quick, Hobi-ah.’”
Hoseok stared at the floor. “That was when I knew. He wasn’t human anymore. And maybe neither was I.”
The breath he drew rattled like something breaking.
“I let him kill with my steel. I made those blades. I admired him. Protected him. And I never cared what it cost until it was my doorstep he brought death to. Until it was my sister.”
Y/N’s eyes glistened, but she didn’t look away.
“I challenged him that night. We fought in the dark, just like the old days. I won. First clean strike to the thigh. Second to the ribs. He bled all over my floor. And when I stood over him, blade at his throat, I couldn’t finish it. I let him crawl away. I watched him limp down my hallway. I have never seen him since.”
The silence that followed was a grave too big for words.
“And that,” Hoseok said, raw now, “is why I don’t make swords anymore. That’s why I don’t call him brother. And that’s why I’m telling you this. Not for pity, but so you understand what it costs when you wait too long to cut the monster’s head off.”
He looked at her then, truly looked. Not at the girl who had first stumbled through his door bloodied and silent, but at the woman who had survived everything after. The woman with a sword across her thighs and fire behind her teeth.
“Don’t wait like I did,” he said.
The air cracked with it. She shut her mouth on whatever retort crawled up her throat, teeth grinding until her jaw ached. He didn’t let her look away.
“If I had killed him in Okinawa like I wanted to,” Hoseok said, each word deliberate, “Sookie would still be alive. And you would not be this shadow of yourself, so full of rage and resentment. You would be in Alabama. Probably drunk in some dive bar, bragging about the time you stabbed a man with a pool stick in El Paso for grabbing you. You would have gone home. You never would have crossed paths with a man in a black button-down who thought ordering you a margarita was enough to own you. You would have had a life, Y/N. One worth fighting for. One worth keeping.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his shoulders sagging under the weight of the words he had carried too long. His voice was hoarse, not from shouting but from truth. Sharp and raw as steel dragged across bone.
“But instead,” he said slowly, “you’re here. Sitting in the wreckage of a life you never asked for. Caught in the wake of a man who turned your death into currency. Who stood there, watching, while four animals stomped your pregnant belly. A man who hates you, and can’t help but feel contempt towards you.”
His voice cracked at the edge, but he did not break. He would not, not in front of her. Not when she was holding it all in just like he used to.
She didn’t respond. She didn’t have to. Her silence was thick with memory and rage.
“They all deserve to die,” Hoseok said, quieter now, but no less cutting. “Yoongi. Taehyung. The whole pack of them. Maybe even us. We are not innocent, Mamba. We stopped being that a long time ago. We are sharpened edges and bad decisions. We are the end result of what happens when you trade mercy for survival. You and me? We are the kind of people others have to survive.”
He glanced up at her. His eyes were softer now. Something fatherly. Something fraternal. Something fierce.
“You remind me of Sookie. Not because you are gentle. You are not. But because you feel everything too deeply. You wear your wounds on the inside, and you carry them like armor. That is what will kill you, if you are not careful.”
A beat passed. Then another.
“If you want to live,” he said, “you need to stop pretending you are prey. You made your choice already. Stop circling it. Stand in it.”
Y/N didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. She moved like something uncoiling. The sword on her lap shifted as she leaned forward, the metal catching the light as if it recognized her now. As if it knew where it was going.
Hoseok saw it. And he stopped her, gently.
“I have something for you,” he said.
He rose and left without another word, his steps quiet but sure. She sat in the hush he left behind, breath slow, mind loud. The sketch of Yoongi stared up at her again—unfinished, but not incomplete. His face was already a tombstone.
When Hoseok returned, he was holding something wrapped in dark crimson cloth. It looked ceremonial. Heavy. He placed it on the desk, then unwrapped it as though unveiling a relic.
It was a sword. Not one for battle. Not meant for war.
It was beautiful. Clean. Silent.
She didn’t touch it.
“What is this?” she asked.
“My final blade,” he said. “The last one I ever forged, except for yours. I made it for Sookie. She never got the chance to hold it.”
Her chest tightened. Her hands clenched in her lap.
It was unlike the weapons she was used to. No bloodthirst in its shape. No vanity in its lines. It was simple. Pure. A shikomizue, disguised in feminine wood, sakura etched into the handle with the gentleness of a promise.
“Why give this to me?” she asked, voice barely a whisper.
Hoseok’s expression softened in a way that nearly broke her.
“Because it was made for someone I loved,” he said, “and now it belongs to someone who knows what it means not to use it.”
She picked it up slowly, reverently. It did not hum like her own sword. It did not beg for violence. It sat in her hands like something sacred.
“I won’t use it,” she said. “Not ever.”
“I know,” he replied. “That’s why I am giving it to you.”
She set it aside, her eyes burning.
“Thank you, Hoseok.”
He nodded once, then looked at her with that same worn, protective weight.
“You will be outnumbered.”
“I know.”
“You will probably die.”
“I know.”
He studied her face. Saw the steel. The sorrow. The storm.
“You will need to move like a shadow,” he said. “Yoongi’s men will feel you coming. If they do—”
“If they get wind I am coming,” she said, “that compound will be crawling with bodies before I even cross the street.”
“And do you want to take on all eighty-eight of the Crazy 88 alone?”
“No,” she said. “That would be less than ideal.”
Hoseok let out a short breath that landed somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. Something almost human passed through his expression. Soft. Worn. Vulnerable in a way she had not seen in years.
“I’m going to miss you.”
She looked toward the door. Her shadow stretched long across the floor, sword glinting at her side. Her stomach clenched. She hadn’t eaten. Couldn’t. Hoseok had tried earlier, but nerves had shredded her appetite.
“I’ll come back,” she said.
“I hope so.”
She turned to go. The moment tasted final.
“Y/N.”
She stopped.
“If you find him, and you hesitate, don’t wait for a second chance.”
She looked back at him, steady.
“There won’t be one.”
No words. She walked out, sword in hand, steps steady. She made it to the kitchen before he caught up to her, his hand landing gentle on her shoulder.
“Put the sword away,” he murmured. “I’ll bring you some soup. You can eat in your room tonight.”
She turned her head slightly. “Will you eat with me?”
He nodded. “If you’d like me to.”
“I would.”
He didn’t speak again, just disappeared around the corner. And for a moment the house was quiet, and warm, and almost kind.
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chimcess ¡ 4 days ago
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⚔︎ Chapter Four: The Man from Gwangju Pairing: Taehyung x Reader Other Tags: Assassin!Taehyung, Assassin!Reader, Assassin!Jimin, Dad!Jimin, Assassin!Yoongi, Gang Leader!Yoongi, Assassin!Namjoon, Swordmaster!Hoseok, Chef!Hoseok, Pimp!Seokjin Genre: Assassins! AU, Exes!AU, Lovers to Enemies, Action, Comedy, Suspense, Martial Arts, Drama, Thriller, Romance (if you squint), Heavy Angst, Violence, 18+ only Word Count: 23.9k+ Summary: A former assassin awakens from a four-year coma after her ex-lover Taehyung tries to kill her on her wedding day. Driven by revenge for the loss of her unborn child and stolen life, she creates a hit list and embarks on a ruthless mission to take down everyone responsible. Warnings: Violent thoughts, implied miscarriage, flashbacks, PTSD, mental illness, guns, other weapons, traveling, arguing, bickering, use of katana, this is a pretty tame chapter all things considered, not many warnings for this one, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: I apologize if I miswrote any of the Korean I used in this chapter. I don't speak fluently and relying on Google can be difficult.
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Horizon City was somehow worse than El Paso. The sky pressed down like a lid on a pot, trapping the heat until the air itself felt heavy. No clouds. No breeze. Just that dry, punishing stillness that made the world feel abandoned. The pavement shimmered. Buildings sagged under the weight of it, their paint bleached to bone, their windows hot to the touch.
Down the center of it came the Pussy Wagon, too loud, too yellow, a smear of wrong color on a sunburned road. It didn’t belong here, not among rusted trucks and dead air conditioners. Heads turned. Conversations stopped. A woman at the pump froze mid-swipe, squinting like she wasn’t sure if she was awake. No one spoke. In Horizon, you didn’t ask questions unless you wanted answers that ruined sleep.
She didn’t care who stared.
Her bare feet pressed into the warped rubber floorboard, soles black from gas station dirt and bathroom tile. Every joint ached, stiff from too much stillness. Her spine creaked when she shifted. Muscles tugged like they’d forgotten their work. But it was pain she trusted, the kind that proved she was awake.
She turned off the main drag and coasted into a strip mall that had been dying for years but refused to finish. Half the shops were empty, windows papered with curling FOR LEASE signs. The others hung on out of spite. One, TexStyle Western Wear, flickered under a crooked sign. She killed the engine and let the truck tick and groan like it resented being roused.
The pavement nearly blistered her feet. She staggered once, steadied, then limped toward the storefront. Her hips screamed, her legs protested, but they worked. She didn’t look back.
Inside, the temperature dropped hard. The AC blasted chemical cold, making her skin prickle. Lights buzzed overhead, too bright, too dim, one always flickering. Country music bled from a speaker behind the counter, slow and stitched together with heartbreak. She knew the tune. She knew the kind of place this was: the kind where you could walk in dripping blood or ghosts and no one cared, as long as you didn’t yell or steal.
Her scrubs rustled as she moved through racks, baggy and stained, reminders of a place she wouldn’t name. She trailed her fingers along the denim, grounding herself. Jeans. A tank top. A jacket lined with shearling she didn’t need but wanted anyway, something to hide behind. Boots under the clearance rack: red leather, white stars dulled to cream. She pulled them on, breath catching at the pain in her thighs, but when she stood, they fit.
At the register, she dropped Buck’s damp bills on the counter. The clerk didn’t look twice. Just bagged her scrubs like trash.
Outside, the sun hadn’t softened. Her boots struck the pavement sharp as punctuation. She still ached, but she didn’t limp.
The truck’s interior hit her like a furnace. Metallic heat, vinyl, old fuel. The dashboard cracked, the rearview crooked, the windshield spiderwebbed. Her reflection blurred in broken glass, and she let it. She gripped the wheel, palms sticky. For a moment she only sat, list forming in her head, incomplete but enough. One more stop before a nameless motel.
She turned the key. The engine coughed, then rumbled alive, low and angry, a sound she was starting to mistake for comfort. Gravel spit behind her as she peeled out, Horizon City sliding by in the same monotony of sun and collapse.
The next place barely qualified as a department store: a sun-bleached block shouting about bargains to an empty lot. Something fried, chicken maybe, stank through the heat. She parked far from the door. Her legs still felt untrustworthy, but she needed to walk. Make them remember.
Inside, the cold slapped her. Too bright, too sterile, smelling of bleach and melted candy. The place buzzed with noise: screaming kids, arguing parents, a tantrum echoing from toys. She kept her eyes forward. People looked. She felt it, half-second glances sliding over scars and scuffed boots. She didn’t care.
She picked up a basket and drifted to the camping aisle. The shelves were thin, but she found what she needed. A folding shovel, its handle thick and heavy like a weapon. A short-handled pickaxe with a fiberglass grip slick under her palm. A flashlight that looked sturdy enough to swing. Waterproof matches in a bright orange case. And a map of Texas, worn soft at the folds, stained with someone else’s fingerprints. She ran her thumb over the crease before dropping it into the basket. She’d be the last to touch it.
She passed the clearance bins without slowing: Father’s Day mugs, novelty socks, foam can holders with jokes no one ever laughed at. Junk for people she didn’t know. Junk for people who weren’t her. In stationery, she stopped just long enough to grab a plain black notebook and a pack of felt pens.
The basket was filling, too heavy. She set it down and reached for another, the metal frame cool and rough, already rusting at the welds. This one she filled faster, almost frantic. Apricot shampoo and the matching conditioner. A plain white bar of soap, unscented. A bag of cheap pink razors. A loofah she didn’t bother to look at. Deodorant. Face wash. Lotion. Each item clattered against the others, no pause between them. She didn’t want to smell like blood anymore, or sweat, or antiseptic. She wanted the hospital scrubbed off her, layer by layer. She wanted her body back, her skin hers again.
Across the aisle, glass jars lined the shelves, full of bath salts in candy colors. Bubble bath bottles in bright, desperate packaging. A SALE sign shouted promises no one believed. She hadn’t planned to stop, but her feet slowed, drawn by a pull she hated. A scent she didn’t want but couldn’t shake.
An older woman was already there. White hair twisted into a bun, movements slow, deliberate, elegant. She opened jars one by one, breathing each in carefully, gently, as though the act itself was sacred. Y/N didn’t look at her. She just reached for the nearest jar and twisted it open.
Lavender.
The smell hit hard. Her stomach flipped. Her chest locked tight. She was back under hospital lights, antiseptic sharp in the air. IV bags swaying. Monitors chirping in steady beeps. Footsteps soft against tile. A cool hand brushing her hair while a voice whispered a lie: You’re going to be okay.
She snapped the lid closed and shoved the jar back like it had burned her.
Her hand shot out for another, no thought, no reading the label. She breathed deep. Citrus. Tropical. Artificial. But it worked. It cut through the memory, broke it apart. She dropped the jar into her basket.
The next bottle she grabbed was cracked, label peeling, its cap leaking a sticky line down the side. Vanilla, it claimed. She didn’t care. It wasn’t lavender.
At the register, she dumped both baskets onto the belt without ceremony. Her mind spun in jagged circles: Taehyung’s reflection in a rearview mirror, the clean white of hospital sheets, Sam Wallace’s cologne drifting in the heat of summer, the silence of her mother’s kitchen. And beneath it all, always there, the one memory that refused to wash out: her father.
The cashier looked barely old enough to work, hoodie strings chewed thin, nails chipped, one earbud still in. She didn’t speak. Just scanned.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Plastic bags crinkled as they filled. Lavender still clung to Y/N’s hands, her cuticles, her collar, her breath. And then, soft as a whisper in the dark, she heard it: Our Father, who art in heaven…
“Your total is thirty-two seventy-one.”
The voice cut through. She blinked, counted out the money, slid it across. The girl gave her change and the receipt without looking up.
“Have a good one,” she mumbled.
Y/N’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. She studied the girl’s face, saw the dull shadow of apathy in her eyes.
“You too,” she said, her own voice rough, low, like it had clawed its way up from somewhere deep.
She gathered her bags, two in one hand, the third looped over her wrist, and walked for the exit. The automatic doors opened with a hiss, like the store was exhaling her into the heat.
The Pussy Wagon waited at the edge of the lot, its paint so bright it looked like it might hum in the sun. Red flames curled down the sides, shimmering just enough in the heat to look alive. It didn’t look fast. It didn’t look mean. It looked like a mistake someone hadn’t lived down. She didn’t care. She kept walking, boots heavy against the asphalt, bags swinging like pendulums against her knees. Her spine throbbed. Her legs burned. The sun bore down like it wanted to erase her. She kept going.
The truck hit her like a furnace when she opened the door: stale air, rubber, sun-baked vinyl, the faint stink of sweat that wasn’t hers. She didn’t flinch. She cranked the window down halfway, tossed a bag onto the passenger seat, and climbed in. The vinyl clung to her thighs. She turned the key. The engine coughed, sputtered, then growled alive. Reluctant, but steady. It always caught.
She pulled out slow. Tires groaned on the blacktop. Horizon City slid past in layers of heat: fast food joints with sun-bleached signs, payday loan offices in buildings yellowed with age, gas stations with broken pumps, liquor stores called EZ Mart and Last Stop. Dust. Concrete. The occasional palm tree, warped and brittle under the sun, too stubborn to fall but long past thriving.
She didn’t need to look twice. She knew this town. She’d lived in three just like it. She’d died in one.
When the storefronts thinned, she turned onto a cracked lot overrun with crabgrass and potholes. At the far end squatted a two-story motel that looked abandoned mid-construction. Stucco walls blistered, paint curling in sheets, rust bleeding from the windows. Above the office, a crooked neon sign buzzed: The Texican. The “i” blinked like it was losing the fight.
She parked beneath the second-floor walkway, under Room 212. The blinds were shut, but one slat bent outward like a broken tooth. She stared for a beat, then shifted her weight, grabbed her bags, and stepped out.
The lobby smelled of mildew and old smoke. The air felt stale, sealed in too long. A ceiling fan turned slow, clicking each time its blade passed the same rusted edge. The desk at the back looked like it had been rescued from a junkyard. Behind it, a man slouched low in his chair, tank top gray with sweat, a serpent tattoo curling down his arm. His eyes were on a screen.
When he finally looked up, his gaze crawled over her: boots, thighs, waist, lingering where it shouldn’t. Her jaw tightened, but she didn’t blink. She pulled out a roll of bills and dropped it on the counter.
He dragged it close with two yellowed nails. “Night or week?” His voice was flat, dry, like gravel at the bottom of a well.
“Night.”
He grunted, slid her a keycard, and dropped his gaze again. No greeting. No smile. Exactly what she wanted.
She took the key and left.
The stairwell creaked under her weight. The rail was rough, flaking paint into her palm. Each step made her legs ache, tendons stiff, balance not yet fully hers. The building leaned with age, and the stairs tilted uneven.
When she reached the second floor, Room 212 waited. The numbers on the door sagged, one screw half out, the wood around the lock chipped where years of hands had missed their mark. Paint was smudged with failed attempts. She slid the card through. The reader gave a faint, uncertain beep, followed by the click of the lock: a sound sharp and organic, like a joint slipping from its socket.
She stood for a moment, hand hovering over the handle, the heat pressing into her shoulders, sweat sliding down her spine. Then she turned it and pushed inside.
The smell met her first. Not the acrid bite of fresh smoke, but the stale kind, decades old, soaked deep into carpet, curtains, drywall. It was a yellowed stench, baked permanent. Underneath it sat something sour and sharp: mildew, failed cleaning agents, an aftertaste of effort without success. The air felt stagnant, heavy, as if it hadn’t moved in years.
She closed the door behind her, let the deadbolt snap home, and slid the chain across with a thin metallic scrape. A chair in the corner caught her eye: stubby, mismatched, its upholstery faded to some indefinable shade. She dragged it under the knob, jamming it in place. It wouldn’t stop anyone who truly wanted in, but it was a line drawn. A gesture of refusal.
The room itself looked scavenged. Curtains drooped from bent hooks, corners sun-bleached uneven. The light that slipped past them split the bed in orange streaks, late sunlight carving the space apart. The carpet near the door was bald and sticky, its color long since lost to grime. Nothing matched. The nightstand sat too low, its lamp too tall, casting warped shadows up the wall. The desk was scarred with rings and burns, the ghosts of cups and cigarettes. The bedspread screamed in paisleys of red and green, loud and ugly enough to distract from the rest.
She dropped her bags by the mattress and stood still, listening to the silence press in. The wall unit stuttered to life, blasting air that smelled of dust and freon. Not clean, but colder. For the first time all day, she didn’t feel watched.
The bathroom light buzzed on with a flick. The bulb flickered, then held. The mirror above the sink was clouded, corners warped where the silver backing had rotted away. Her reflection returned in fragments, her face shifted, imperfect, unfamiliar.
The faucet groaned before giving up a stuttering flow. Rust-tinged water ran a few seconds before clearing. Heat came quickly, fogging the mirror, filling the small room with steam that climbed the walls and clung to her skin.
She opened the jar of bath salts, tipped two scoops into the tub. They dissolved with a hiss, releasing a softness that felt like it belonged to another life. She poured in the bubble bath, slow, steady, watching it curl through the rising water like melted gold. The white bar of soap she left on the edge, still wrapped, waiting.
Her clothes came off piece by piece, sticking to her skin like second layers. Shirt. Jeans. Damp underwear. She peeled them free and stood in the fog. The mirror caught her in fragments again: shoulder, waist, ribs. Bruises bloomed faintly along her sides, yellow-green fading into skin. Her stomach flat but hollow, her hips jutting sharp. The scar at her abdomen still pink and raised. She didn’t linger. She already knew.
One hand steady on the tile, she stepped into the tub. The heat bit her ankles, climbed her calves, forced a gasp from her throat. Still, she sank down, slow, deliberate, until the water closed around her shoulders and she was folded in on herself, knees tucked, arms looped tight. Steam wrapped her, heavy and close.
She let herself breathe.
The tropical scent lingered, cloying but gentle. Bubbles clung to the surface, catching the light in fragile sheens. Her skin burned, then loosened. Muscles unwound: jaw, neck, spine. For a moment, it felt almost like safety. Almost like being held.
The first sob tore out raw, deeper than her throat, violent as a cough. Another followed. Then another. She pressed her forehead to her knees, fingers digging into her shins, and tried to choke them back. Useless. Her body shook, her breath broke apart. She didn’t scream; there was no air for it. But she wept, bone-deep, every muscle wracked. Her ribs ached, her throat stung.
She wept for the baby she never held, gone before its first breath. For the man who promised to stay, whose blood had marked her hands and her dress and the altar floor. For the hospital bed, for the machines that never went quiet, for the fluorescent light that never dimmed. For every woman who pressed a hand to a belly still full. For every picture never taken, every name never whispered.
She wept for herself. For the years locked away. For her voice forgotten. For the silence that no one noticed.
Eventually her body emptied out. The sobs thinned to shudders, then silence. She sat in the cooling water, bubbles thinning, breath still uneven. Her arms uncoiled. The lavender clung. The bruises showed. The scar glistened.
Drip. Drip. Drip. The faucet tapped against porcelain. The fan above crackled softly, struggling on. Beyond the wall, the air conditioner rattled in fits, wheezing like it had something to prove. A breeze nudged the curtain against the sill, a tap-tap-tap in an accidental rhythm.
She reached for the soap.
It was motel standard, wrapped in stiff waxed paper that crackled as she peeled it open. Plain. White. The word SOAP stamped across in faded block letters, nothing more. She lathered it slow, the foam thick in her palms, and began.
Arms first, shoulder to wrist. Then chest. Then neck. Back to shoulders again, where tension clung deepest. Her jaw, careful. Her stomach, softer, her hand pausing at the scar as though in apology. Her legs, her feet, her fingers, behind her ears. Nothing frantic. Just deliberate, steady strokes, scraping memory away piece by piece.
The water changed, subtly at first. Soap film clouded the surface, swirling. Then faint streaks rose, pinkish, floating near her thighs. Tiny cuts reopened by heat. Or maybe old wounds, still not ready to close.
She picked up the apricot shampoo and snapped the cap open. The scent hit fast: sweet, bright, almost cheerful. Out of place in a room like this, but she let it in anyway. She poured a slick mound into her palm and worked it through her scalp, once, then again. On the third wash she slowed, fingers tracing circles, nails dragging lightly against her skin. It was no longer about cleaning. It was about feeling. Her own hand. Her own body. Her own presence. For a moment she wasn’t thinking about hospitals or sirens or the weight of what came next. Just herself.
Her hair drifted in strands around her, clinging to shoulders and arms, spreading across the water’s surface like ink in clear glass. Every small movement sent ripples over her collarbones. She moved carefully, hardly disturbing the surface.
By the time she rinsed, the bathwater had thickened with what she’d carried in: suds, oil, dirt, faint streaks of blood. Stray hairs, flecks of skin, things she didn’t bother to name. A film skated across the top, swirling quietly every time she exhaled.
She sat in it, arms locked around her knees, chin pressed down. The steam was fading now, air cooling just enough to raise goosebumps along her arms. The mirror across the room stayed fogged. The weight of the day pressed into her spine, her knees, her lungs. Still she didn’t move. Stillness was the point: the kind that emptied you without ceremony.
Her hand found the drain. She pulled.
At first it was a soft slurp. Then stronger, a steady pull. The water swirled around her body like it was trying to take its time saying goodbye. It licked her thighs, curved around her ribs, slid past her arms, then dropped in spirals. The drain swallowed it all without protest: the soap, the oil, the old blood, the pieces of herself she no longer wanted.
She stayed until only a thin puddle remained, circling once, twice, before vanishing with a hollow gurgle. Silence filled the space it left behind.
She pressed her palms against the rim of the tub. Cold now, slick with condensation. She welcomed the sting in her hands. Took a sharp breath, let it root her, then pushed herself upright.
Her legs trembled on the rise. Her arms shook with the effort. Joints complained. Muscles felt wrong, unfamiliar. But she kept moving, slow, steady, until she was standing.
Water traced down her skin in patient rivulets, dripping from her spine, elbows, fingertips. Each drop left its mark before disappearing into the porcelain. The steam had mostly lifted, retreating into the vent or curling beneath the door, leaving only faint streaks across the mirror.
She reached for the towel.
It was motel-issue, stiff, frayed at the edges, faintly sour with detergent and bleach. She dragged it over herself in blunt swipes. No ritual, no tenderness. Just the act of removing water from skin. Left arm, right. Shoulders. Legs. Stomach. The towel caught on raw patches where she’d scrubbed too hard, lit sparks under her skin, but she didn’t flinch.
Barefoot, she stepped out onto the motel carpet. It scratched at her heels like someone else’s memory, old and unpleasant. The room felt thinner than it had before the bath. The air sharper, like it had shifted in her absence.
Her clothes waited in a neat stack. She pulled on the jeans one leg at a time, denim dragging over fresh skin. They caught once on a healing scrape; she winced, then yanked them higher, cinching the belt until the pressure pressed her steady. The tank top next, damp fabric clinging across her ribs. Then the jacket, heavy, familiar, already too warm but necessary. Not for comfort. For armor.
She didn’t look at the bathroom mirror.
On the bed’s edge she bent forward, boots at her feet. She tugged one on, then the other, hands shaking. Not from nerves, but from exhaustion threaded deep, the kind that lived in marrow. The right slid in easy, a solid thump. The left resisted, ankle stiff, toes fighting the fit. She wriggled, yanked, coaxed it until it gave with a final snap. She stood.
The floor felt steadier than it had last night. That was enough.
At the sink, the mirror still wore a fogged film. She wiped it once with her palm, dragging away condensation. Her reflection stared back fractured through hairline cracks, the glass tinted yellow with time. It was her, but broken into pieces.
She looked older than she remembered. Cheeks hollowed, bones sharpened. Shadows pooled under her eyes like bruises. Lips pale, pressed flat. Jaw locked, clenched around years unsaid.
Her scar caught the light. Not a clean line, but a jagged pale bloom across her temple, skin pulled tight over the plate beneath. It hadn’t ruined her face. But it had changed it. Left its story whether she wanted one or not.
She didn’t turn away. Didn’t flinch. She stared until her chest tightened, until her throat threatened to close.
The rage was there, coiled low, steady. Not a fire that leapt. A coal that smoldered. It had lived in her for years, quiet and unyielding, and it stirred now, hot beneath her ribs.
She didn’t glance down at her stomach.
Her daughter. Gone.
Her breath hitched, sharp, and she stepped back.
The bathroom still clung to the last of the steam, curling in the corners, drifting as if reluctant to leave. When she opened the door, it slipped out behind her, dissolving into the dry stillness of the room. It wasn’t dawn yet, not quite. But the light was changing. That in-between hour, when night begins bleeding out but the world hasn’t decided to wake. Everything felt suspended. Waiting.
She crossed to the nightstand. The notebook sat where she’d left it, black cover smooth and unmarked, as if it were holding its breath. She lifted it with both hands, careful, like it might shift weight if she wasn’t. Heavier than it should have been, not from paper but from what it was meant to hold.
From her bag, she drew a pen. Plain, black, the kind sold by the dozen, designed to be used and forgotten. She uncapped it slowly, the click soft, almost apologetic in the hush.
The first page stared up at her.
Death List Five
Yoongi Min – Cottonmouth
Jimin Park – Copperhead
Namjoon Kim – Sidewinder
Brandi Phoenix – California Mountain Snake
Taehyung
She replaced the cap. Slid pen and notebook back into her bag.
Next, she found Buck’s sunglasses where she’d tossed them, bent and scratched, ridiculous in their persistence. She slipped them on. Crooked, as always. She nudged the bridge, tried to adjust, gave up. They never sat right. But they worked.
The room was still dim. Her boots thudded against the floor, each step certain, carrying the weight of promise. At the door, she paused. The chair was still wedged beneath the knob, stubborn in its defiance. She bent, joints stiff, dragged it aside. The scrape echoed across the linoleum, a punctuation mark in the silence.
Chain. Thumb flick. Deadbolt. Three turns, quick, practiced. Her fingers didn’t need thought.
The door groaned open, hinges low and grudging. Heat met her immediately, thick, dry, pressing. Asphalt fumes rising from the lot. Dust on the air. The tang of oil, the metallic bite of a day not yet begun.
The sky was shifting, neither gold nor pink, but some strange in-between shade that lasted only minutes. The motel sat inside it, silent, caught between one night ending and another day beginning. Paused.
The neon above the office buzzed faintly. A cicada started, cut off. A dog barked once. Silence folded back in.
She stepped out. The door clicked shut. She didn’t look back.
The Pussy Wagon crouched at the lot’s edge, yellow paint too bright for the hour, flames shimmering like they wanted to breathe. It looked absurd, dangerous, and proud in equal measure. A dare made metal. A joke sharpened into a blade.
She opened the door, slid inside. The vinyl seat was warm against her thighs, not yet burning but close. The cab smelled of lavender and motor oil, clean, antiseptic almost, but still mechanical. A machine rebuilt too many times, carrying the weight of its history.
For a moment, she sat still. Palms flat on her thighs, fingers twitching. The motel’s AC unit droned faintly in the distance. Inside, the truck held its own silence, coiled tight like a breath waiting to be exhaled.
She turned the key.
The engine caught on the second attempt, rumbling alive with a guttural growl. The cab shivered around her, wheel buzzing in her hands, the vibration running up her arms and into her chest. Settling there. She slid it into drive. Tires spit gravel, reluctant but obedient. The motel shrank behind her, just another room, another scar. Room 212 vanished in the rearview, swallowed by neon and dust.
She didn’t look back.
The highway opened in front of her, cracked asphalt unfurling like a dark ribbon across West Texas. Brush clawed at the shoulders, mesquite twisted like broken arms, rocks rusted red, skeletal trees brittle with drought. The sky stretched pale and empty, the sun still soft but already threatening.
By the time the desert swallowed her, night had fallen again. Not gentle. Not gradual. It dropped like a curtain, sudden and absolute. No moon. No stars. Just black. Heavy. Whole.
The truck didn’t belong here, and it knew it.
It roared too loud, headlights carving two stark tunnels into the void. The beams caught nothing but empty miles, white columns piercing a silence too thick to care. The engine hummed, steady and tired, as though warning her without conviction. Every dip rattled the frame, but the wheel stayed true under her hands. Ten and two. Steady.
Mirages shimmered at the edges of her vision, heat ghosts lingering after the sun. She didn’t chase them.
The desert whispered against the truck’s flanks, a dry, rattling scrape like fingernails on denim. Insects, wind, memory. Something flickered low across the road’s edge, fast, small, gone again. She didn’t check. She slowed instead.
The road narrowed to one lane, asphalt breaking apart under its own weight. She eased off the gas. Let the truck crawl. Then stopped.
Headlights washed over brush and stone. Stillness. Shadows deep enough to hide anything. Or nothing.
She cut the engine.
The silence arrived instantly. Not falling over her, but revealing itself, like it had always been here, waiting.
She reached for the flashlight on the passenger seat, opened the door.
The night air was sharp, not cold but exposing, stripping. She tugged her jacket closer. Gravel shifted under her boots. Behind her, the truck ticked softly as the engine cooled, the sound fading into the endless dark.
She clicked the flashlight on. A narrow beam cut the dark, sharp and clean, slicing through shadow like a scalpel. Everything beyond its reach stayed untouched, patient, waiting.
She didn’t hesitate. Her body carried her forward, step by step, as if it had walked this path before. Maybe it had. Her legs remembered what her mind wanted to forget.
Then she saw it.
A rock. Just a rock, if you didn’t know better. Pale limestone, sunk halfway into the dirt, weathered and ordinary. Something that should’ve blended in. Something anyone else would miss.
But not her.
She crouched, knees popping softly, flashlight wedged between shoulder and chin. The light crawled along the stone’s edge, shadows doubling its size. Her fingers dug into the packed soil at the base. She pulled.
It resisted. Heavier than it used to be. Maybe the ground had hardened. Maybe she had softened. Either way, she braced, set her boot, and pulled again. The stone shifted with a dry scrape.
Underneath, the mark was waiting.
An X, carved deep. Not faded, not worn down. Black as the day she burned it in. The sight of it caught her breath somewhere between release and recoil.
That mark had been a promise. If it was gone, she’d walk away. That was the deal. No vengeance. No names. Just silence. But it wasn’t gone.
The desert hadn’t erased it. Time hadn’t buried it. The universe hadn’t looked away. She stood. The cold closed in now, not wind but earth itself. The shadows seemed to lean forward, curious. She didn’t care. She went back to the truck.
The tools were waiting where they always had been: shovel, pickaxe, flashlight. Old companions. Her hand found the shovel without thought, as if it had already been chosen. She leaned into the cab, thumbed the stereo. Silence shattered. The riff echoed through the night, jagged and merciless, too much for the cab to contain. The truck rattled under it, tires humming against dirt, frame twitching as if it wanted to leap forward. Guitars clawed. Drums pounded like fists.
She turned away before the echo finished, walking back toward the rock. The music chased her into the dark, distorted by space but still sharp enough to cut. Her boots kept time with the rhythm, gravel crunching in sync.
One. Two. Three.
She counted, breath more than voice.
Four. Five. Six.
The flashlight swung at her side, beam lurching across dirt and brush. It caught on shadows, slid over brittle grass, bent across rocks. It felt like stepping into a story that hadn’t been written yet.
Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
Her body warmed against the cold, rhythm keeping her steady. The rock loomed again. Here the air shifted. The ground itself exhaled, cold rising up like something long-buried had soured. She gripped the shovel. The wood was damp. Not with sweat. With memory. Her gloves creaked against it. She drove it down. The first strike rang flat, earth baked into stone. It shoved back. Her arms jolted, shoulder jarred. She didn’t stop.
Another swing. Harder. Then another.
The dirt began to loosen. She fell into rhythm: dig, lift, pivot. Again. Breath shortened, sweat slid down her spine, her back sang with strain. Her palms throbbed inside her gloves. Still, she didn’t let up. Each blow cleared space inside her chest.
Behind her, Barracuda still screamed. The desert caught the sound and threw it back at her, warped but relentless. And she kept going.
Clink.
The sound was different. Heavier. It traveled up the handle, into her arms, into her spine. She froze, boot perched on the edge of the hole, dirt sliding down around her ankle. Breath caught. Heart stilled.
She dropped to her knees. Gloves filthy, jeans scraping rock. She set the flashlight down; its beam jittered, then steadied. Enough to show what waited beneath the soil.
Her hand closed around the pickaxe. She didn’t think. Just swung. Once. Twice. Again.
Chunks of dirt split, scattering sharp and dry. Her arms burned, lungs worked like pistons. Gravel dug into her knees. She didn’t stop until she saw it.
Black plastic. Torn in places, stretched tight over a shape too familiar. Boxy. Olive green peeking through. She knew before she touched it.
The pickaxe dropped from her grip. She clawed at the soil, ripping through plastic and dirt alike. Something slick caught under her nails—water, blood, it didn’t matter. She braced, boot pressed hard, and wrenched.
The earth gave with a groan. The box lurched free, knocking her backward. She landed hard, breath ragged, chest heaving.
Her gloves were filthy, her arms trembling with the effort, but the footlocker was out at last. It was army issue, the kind stamped into a generation. The metal was olive drab, dulled by time, corners dented, its surface scratched and scuffed, the paint chipped to reveal bare steel beneath. The hinges wore rust, but they still held; the latches were stiff but unbroken. It looked exactly as it should: forgotten, but intact.
She brushed a layer of dirt from the lid, her fingers finding the latches without hesitation. A practiced motion, quick and certain. Metal snapped against metal, followed by the creak of hinges straining after years of silence. Dust drifted up in a pale cloud, catching the flashlight’s beam and hanging there like ash in still air. She set the light on the rim and leaned closer.
The first thing she drew out was a sleeping bag, cheap nylon, navy blue, stiff with disuse. It unrolled with a brittle crackle, the zipper teeth clinking like links in a chain. She spread it beside the hole, pressing it flat with both hands. The flashlight cast a sharp bar of light across the box. Dust rose through it in lazy spirals, as though the past itself was breathing.
Beneath the bag lay rows of magazines, tight and orderly. Some bound with rubber, others wound in black electrical tape, the edges frayed with age. She picked one up, ran her thumb over the top round. Brass gleamed back at her, untarnished, untouched. As though it had been waiting.
The first pistol was compact and polished, silver bright against the dim. It looked too elegant for this place, but she knew better. A weapon meant for close range, not display. She tested the weight, how naturally it rested in her palm, before setting it aside with the holster.
Next came a snub-nosed .38. Plain steel, no ornament, no pretension. Just the kind of tool that did the job without complaint. She opened the cylinder, checked each chamber, and gave it a spin. It ticked clean and precise, like a clock. She slipped it into its ankle holster, the Velcro catching with a rasp.
Piece by piece, the Mossberg came out: the barrel, the stock, the slide. She brushed the dust off with her sleeve, each movement instinctive. Assembly came without thought. One part clicked into the next until the weapon lay whole across her lap, heavy, steady, ready.
Her hand brushed something smaller, curved and cold. She lifted a silver boomerang, edges honed thin enough to cut without effort. The light scattered across its surface in sharp shards. She turned it once in her grip, feeling the weight shift. This was older than everything else. Older than her scars, older than her anger. A remnant from another life. It slid into its old holster, and her hand lingered there for a moment too long.
At the bottom, she found a black attachĂŠ, snug in the foam. She freed it, laid it flat, and opened the twin latches. The case released with a click sharp enough to cut the silence. Inside, in carved slots, lay the broken-down parts of a sniper rifle: barrel, bolt, scope, mount. Each piece was immaculate, free of dust, as though untouched by time. She lifted the scope, tilted it upward, and caught a starlight pinprick sharp and clear through the glass.
She was about to close the case when something caught her eye, flat, tucked beneath the foam. A manila envelope, worn at the corners, soft with use. She stripped off her gloves, ignoring the soil packed beneath her nails, and lifted it carefully as if it might crumble. She slid a finger under the flap and unfolded the paper within, one crease at a time.
A black and white sonogram. Grainy but unmistakable. A curled shape no bigger than a thumb. The curve of a spine, the suggestion of a head, the faintest stretch of limbs. Her child.
She sat motionless. The wind seemed to pause with her, the desert holding its breath. Somewhere in the distance, music pulsed low, but she barely heard it. She stayed still in the dirt, sleeves caked with dust, staring at the ghost of a life that never came to be.
She folded the sonogram slowly, carefully, and slid it back into its envelope. The flap pressed closed under her thumb, unsealed but sufficient.
There was more. 
A Ziploc bag, cloudy and heat-wrinkled. Inside was an old Texas state ID. Candy Ralston. The photo was hers, but younger. Rounder in the face, skin untouched by scars. Hair pulled back too tightly, eyes uncertain but already watching. Lips pressed in a line that refused to trust.
Next to it lay a paper bank book, its spine softened from handling. Every entry written by hand, small withdrawals made with care. A pattern so patient it became invisible, until it led here. On the final page, one last choice.
And beneath the lining, exactly where memory said it would be, she found the key. Small, plain, tarnished. Dangling from a chipped novelty fob. The letters worn nearly smooth, but she didn’t need to read them.
Deadly Vipers.
She didn’t pause. No whispered vow, no lingering glance. She began to repack the footlocker, steady and sure. Each weapon slid into its place: the sniper rifle parts pressing into their foam, the boomerang curved into its cutout like it had never left. She closed the sleeping bag last, the zipper catching once before sliding true. The final click echoed in the still air, too loud, like a door shutting behind her.
She hefted the pack onto her shoulder. Heavy, but familiar. Her body shifted into the weight like it had carried it a hundred times before.
She stood, turned, and walked back toward the truck without a backward glance. The hole remained open in the dirt behind her, a raw gash in the earth, as if the desert had been holding its breath for years and finally let it out. No marker, no cross, no stone. Just a patch of sand that had kept its secret until it no longer had to. She left it that way.
The wind stirred, but the desert didn’t change. In the distance, the oil derrick kept grinding its endless rhythm, slow, mechanical, indifferent. The truck was still humming with music when she climbed inside, something sharp with guitars and drums heavy enough to bruise a ribcage. She didn’t touch the dial. Didn’t spare the radio a look. She only turned the key.
The engine growled awake, the wheel twitching under her grip as though impatient, eager to remind her why she’d come. She shifted into drive.
Gravel cracked under the tires, dust lifting in a thin veil behind her. No farewell, no second look. The hole stayed where it was, empty, unfinished, unmarked. Nothing would fill it, and nothing needed to.
Miles slipped beneath her tires, steady and relentless. The sun climbed higher, flattening the horizon into a long, wavering stretch of heat and light. She let the road carry her forward like a current she no longer fought.
By the time she pulled into the Commonwealth Bank of Texas, the sun was cruel at its peak, heat radiating off the concrete in dizzy waves. The building looked like it had been abandoned halfway through its design and forced into use anyway: beige brick, dull metal trim, a flickering red “OPEN” sign that couldn’t decide if it meant it.
It sat wedged between a shuttered taqueria and a payday loan office still dressed in tinsel from a Christmas no one remembered. Dust thickened in the sidewalk’s cracks. The kind of place people didn’t bother to notice. Perfect.
She cut the engine. The silence that followed felt sharper than the music. Her boots struck the pavement with the same deliberate weight they’d carried through the dirt. The sleeping bag was gone, tucked away with the rest. What stepped out here wasn’t the woman from the desert. This was Candy Ralston.
Not the bright-eyed Candy with the easy smile and the drawl sharpened just enough to charm. That Candy was dead. This one was leaner, skin pale, eyes too hollow to bother pretending. Her mouth was a hard line. She hadn’t come for company.
She crossed the lot in a slow, certain stride, one hand on the bag, the other close to her coat. The fabric swayed with each step, brushing her thighs, catching the breeze. She moved like someone who knew exactly what she carried and what it would cost to use it.
The bank’s glass doors didn’t invite. The tint was too dark, the reflection warped. Inside, fluorescent lights flickered and hummed, pouring a pale gray over everything. Blinds hung crooked, yellow at the edges. A place that didn’t improve, only endured.
She pushed through the door.
The buzzer cracked the hush, too loud in the cold, conditioned air. The chill was chemical, designed to keep people awake, unsettled. It smelled of citrus cleaner and overworked machines, with something faint beneath it, something like nerves.
The light was merciless, stripping every angle bare. Her coat stayed on.
She moved with the kind of presence that didn’t need to ask for space. Cameras swiveled from their black domes in the corners, lenses humming faintly if you listened close. She didn’t look up. Let them watch. Let them wonder.
Behind the counter sat a woman who might have been there since the doors first opened. Hair lacquered into a helmet, lipstick a shade of pink too bright for her complexion. The tag on her blouse, polyester and strawberry-colored, cheap, read MARJORIE in rigid block letters.
She looked up when the door chimed, flashing a smile polished for trouble. Too quick, too practiced, more reflex than welcome.
Y/N didn’t return it.
“Hi there,” Marjorie said, her voice soaked in the slow sweetness of a Texas drawl, one that sounded like it had been taught in finishing school and worn thin by years of repetition. “How can I help you today, ma’am?”
Y/N stepped forward, just close enough to make it feel personal, but not close enough to make it weird. Her voice came out low, a little frayed, like she’d worn it out talking to ghosts. “I need access to my safety deposit box.”
Even to her own ears, she sounded small. Not scared. Just tired in a way that lived deep in the bones. Her arms still ached from the dig, her back tight across the spine, her muscles running on fumes. It helped. The exhaustion made her seem soft at the edges, easier to dismiss.
She reached into her coat and pulled out the key. It was plain, silver dulled to a matte finish, worn down at the edges. Nothing remarkable. Except it was. The way she turned it in her fingers, how it caught the light for a second, made it something more than metal. This key had opened more than steel boxes. It had cracked things open that were meant to stay shut.
She placed it on the counter like it might still be hot. “My name’s Candy Ralston.”
Marjorie blinked. Just once. But it was enough. A pause in the rhythm. Her eyes dropped to the key, then back up. Something shifted in her face: some small recalculation, like a mental search engine had just returned an unexpected result. Not panic. Not even suspicion. Just awareness. A name that didn’t match a story. Or a story that was missing too many pages.
Y/N noticed. She always noticed. The flicker in the eyes, the slight tension in the mouth, the way Marjorie’s hands hovered over the keyboard for half a second too long, like they were waiting for instructions the rest of her wasn’t ready to give.
Y/N followed with the ID. Slid it across the glass, calm, steady. The photo was old but recent enough. Her face in it was rounder, eyes a little less guarded, a smile that barely made it to her mouth. Now her cheeks were hollowed out, skin drawn tighter, her gaze hard-edged. But the eyes—those stayed the same.
Marjorie studied the ID, compared it to the woman standing in front of her. Her smile didn’t return. Something behind it had turned mechanical.
“I’ll be right back, honey,” she said, and the warmth in her voice had vanished. She took the ID and the key, turned, and disappeared behind a gray metal door that hissed shut behind her like a vault sealing off bad memories.
Y/N didn’t move.
She scanned the lobby instead. Vault tucked in the corner, keypad locked. Two cameras, standard dome type, mounted high. Cheap, analog, probably on a timed loop. Footage saved to tapes or some outdated drive, nothing that uploaded to a cloud. She made a note of that. Good, not great. Sprinklers overhead, fire alarms every fifteen feet. No posted security. No visible guards. Just quiet.
It wasn’t much. But maybe enough to stay ahead if Taehyung had caught her scent.
Marjorie came back slower than she’d gone. The door opened with the same soft hiss. No smile now. Just neutral posture, the kind you wore when you didn’t want to pick sides. She held the door open without a word.
“Right this way.”
Y/N didn’t thank her. Didn’t speak. She just moved, coat brushing against the counter’s edge, boots making a soft sound against carpet chosen specifically to muffle footsteps. The hallway they entered was narrow, lined with anonymous doors that had no signs or names, only keypads in place of knobs. It smelled like cold paper and old wiring.
At the end of the corridor was a room built for forgetting. The temperature dipped the second they stepped in, not from AC but from something deeper, like the place had been sealed off from the rest of the world for too long. Fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, casting a flat, pale glow that made every surface look harsher than it was. Shadows clung to the corners, thick and reluctant.
The walls were covered in rows of steel safety deposit boxes, each one identical, stacked high like a wall of filing cabinets in a mausoleum. A square table sat in the middle, wood, worn smooth in some places, scratched in others. It didn’t look like anyone had ever sat comfortably at it.
Marjorie moved without speaking, walking straight to a lower drawer in the wall. Her fingers didn’t fumble. She pulled a steel box free and laid it on the table with a dull thunk. Then another. The sound was soft but final, like a decision being made in secret.
She didn’t look at Y/N. Didn’t ask any questions. Her whole body said the same thing: I don’t want to know.
Y/N didn’t open the box. Not here. Not with the lights buzzing and the cameras humming faintly above, and Marjorie pretending not to see but seeing everything anyway. This wasn’t the place for what came next. Not yet.
She stood slowly, letting her knees stretch, spine groan just a little as it straightened. She didn’t make a sound. Just rose, steady and full of weight.
Marjorie still stood by the door, hands folded tight, knuckles pale. Her voice came out quiet, not reverent, not polite. Something more cautious than that.
“Thanks for coming.”
Her eyes flicked to the bag over Y/N’s shoulder. Not curious. Just wary. There was no warmth in her voice. No welcome. Just the brittle sound of someone realizing too late that they should have asked fewer questions, or maybe more.
Y/N didn’t try to soothe it.
“Thanks for your help,” she said. Flat. Even. Just enough to be finished.
She turned and walked out.
Marjorie followed at a distance, like she didn’t want to be caught sharing space with whatever Y/N carried. Back through the hallway, down the long strip of carpet meant to erase sound and footprints. When they reached the counter again, Marjorie slid behind it without a word and sat very still, watching through the glass as Y/N moved toward the door and pushed it open.
The heat outside hit like a slow slap, drier than before, tinted orange by a sun that was just starting to fall. Shadows had grown long across the parking lot, stretching past broken curbs and faded paint lines. The sky had gone bruised at the edges. The truck waited exactly where it had been, dust settled thick across the windshield, the yellow paint looking tired in the last of the light.
She tossed the bag into the flatbed, climbed into the driver’s seat, and closed the door. The cab held the day’s warmth like a breath that hadn’t been let go. The engine took a second to respond. Then it grumbled to life with a thick, uneven roar that rattled the steering column.
She pulled out of the lot without a glance at the building behind her. No one followed.
The bank disappeared in the rearview, swallowed up by the flat lines of small-town architecture and the slow drag of coming night. Another door shut. Another name scratched off.
The road opened in front of her again, stretching west through brush and rock and the half-sleep of places too small to fight back. Her fingers rested easy on the wheel. Not loose. Not tense. Just ready. Her other hand twitched once against her thigh, like it was remembering something: some old rhythm, some old grip.
The sky behind her wasn’t just sunset. It was collapse, like something had given way at the edge of the world and let everything pour out. Red bled into deep violet, orange streaked like torn silk across the horizon. It was a hell of a sight, bold and feral, almost too much to look at. But she didn’t turn to see it. Endings didn’t impress her anymore.
Mile marker 233 blurred past. Just beyond it, the motel came into view. Low-slung and sagging between a boarded-up diner and a pawn shop with a broken front window and an “OPEN” sign that hadn’t glowed since Clinton was in office. The SUNRISE MOT_L sign blinked in sickly neon, the “E” long gone, leaving the name limping toward meaning. Plastic palm trees lined the driveway, sun-bleached and cracked, their fronds drooping like they had finally accepted their own artificiality.
The truck hissed as it settled, engine ticking like it had opinions about being parked. Heat shimmered off the hood. She stepped out, boots hitting the asphalt with the unhurried thud of someone who’d done this too many times before. Another town. Another key. Another night listening to the sound of her own breath and wondering if it was really hers anymore.
The lobby reeked of cheap cleaner fighting and failing to bury the smell of time. Old carpet. Burned coffee. That bitter lemon-polish tang on furniture nobody liked. Behind the counter, a man with red eyes and a week’s stubble looked up, sweat soaking through his shirt. He regarded her the way a man regards a thunderstorm from behind a screen door: resigned, a little impressed, but not about to step into it.
She laid cash on the counter without counting. No words. No name. Just a transaction. He slid a key across the laminate, a red plastic tag dangling from it, the number 11 painted in peeling gold. The plastic stuck to her fingers, tacky with years of grime.
“Back row,” he muttered, already turning away.
Room 11 waited at the far end of the building, tucked into the shadows like a bruise no one mentioned. The lock resisted until she leaned into it, shoulder tight against the door. It clicked open reluctantly, like the room had been holding its breath.
Inside, the air was still and heavy. Not hot. Not cold. Just stale. Saturated. Smoke in the walls, mildew in the carpet. She shut the door, bolted it, slid the chain, then dragged the desk chair under the knob. It wouldn’t stop anyone. But it gave her the illusion of control.
The bag hit the bed with a solid thud. She didn’t open it yet.
Plastic blinds rattled as she lowered them slat by slat, each click deliberate. Outside, the parking lot glowed under a flickering streetlamp, humming too loud, not sure whether to stay lit. A few cars scattered across the lot. Heat still rising off the pavement. Bugs swarming the light like it meant something.
She checked the bathroom. The bulb buzzed sickly yellow, throwing a crooked shadow behind her. Cracked tile. Rusted sink. Mirror fogged at the edges, warped with age. She left the door half open. Not for sightlines. Just habit. She didn’t close doors without a reason anymore.
The room sagged at the seams. Wallpaper peeled in corners, ceiling stained like a bruise. The air conditioner coughed, rattled, died again. She sat on the bed. Zipped the bag open.
Stacks of cash waited inside, neat and brittle, rubber bands fraying with time. She picked one up, breathing in the scent of sweat, dust, and long drives with cracked windows. Quiet money. The kind that didn’t ask questions.
Beneath it, weapons. Two pistols: one clean and compact, the other older, worn. The compact one she hadn’t touched since El Paso, since Lisa Wong walked out of a motel bathroom with a pregnancy test and silence in her eyes. Lisa left three days later. Faked her death the day after that.
She slid them aside. Pulled out the SOG knife. Perfect balance. Still hers. A straight razor waited beneath it, sleek and simple, for skin. She pocketed it. Better to have options.
At the bottom lay a rifle case. She opened it, checked the matte-black barrel. Functional. Nothing ornate. She closed it again. Korea would demand quieter tools.
A manila folder came next. Corners soft with use. Inside: passports. Fourteen identities, all hers. Candy Ralston. Minsook Cho. Emma Blevins. Others she barely remembered wearing. Different hair. Different smiles. Same eyes. Always hers.
A folded map slipped out. Korea. Red ink circling cities, tracing routes like a heartbeat across the paper. She didn’t remember marking it, but her hand had known.
Photographs. Old, blurred, pulled from yearbooks under borrowed names. A beach. An arm around Sam Wallace. Her own half-formed smile frozen in place. She flipped past them quickly.
Then came the sonograms. She didn’t need to unfold them. The shape lived in her spine now, lodged between her ribs.
She sat still with the folder on her lap, bag open beside her, lamp casting weak yellow light over everything. She didn’t check her phone. Didn’t turn on the TV. Just breathed. The room didn’t welcome her, but it didn’t push her out either. It was just a box. Four walls to keep the world at bay for one more night.
Outside, a car rolled past slow, tires whispering over gravel. Somewhere down the row, a door slammed, laughter cracked sharp through the air, and bass thudded heavy from an open window. The music swaggered, empty noise with no weight behind it.
She stayed still. Let it pass like weather. Then leaned forward, unzipped the smaller pocket of the bag, and pulled free something cold and compact. A refrigeration case. She set it on the bed. Unlaced the key from her boot. The lock clicked once, clean, before the lid opened.
Inside, two gold syringes gleamed against black foam. Between them, a vial. Pale amber liquid moved slow inside it, syrup-thick, heavy, like honey aged too long.
Taehyung had called it The Undisputed Truth. Said it burned the lies out of people. She hadn’t believed him. Still didn’t. But she’d taken it anyway. Maybe it worked. Maybe it didn’t. Soon, she’d have to find out.
She closed the case and turned the key with care. Slid it back behind her laces like it had never left. The weight settled into the bag with a muted thud, buried beneath layers of gear. Her hand brushed something soft in the side pocket: a flattened pack of Camels, paper crumpled, edges worn like it had been riding there for years.
She pulled it out, frowning. Couldn’t remember putting it in. Couldn’t remember the last time she even wanted to. Not since Pai Mei. Not since the split lip and two days of lungs scraped raw from the inside. That had been the line. She’d meant to quit.
But tonight didn’t care what she meant.
She tapped the pack twice against her knee and drew one out with her teeth. The lighter waited in the same pocket, cheap plastic, half-empty. It sputtered once, twice, then caught. Flame kissed the cigarette, flared too close, then steadied to a glow. She pulled deep, the smoke burning familiar paths down her chest, settling heavy in her lungs.
The exhale spiraled slow toward the ceiling, mixing with the stale motel air as if it had always belonged there. Maybe she had too. Another drag. Longer. The tremor in her hands eased. The knot in her chest unwound. The ache behind her eyes softened just enough to blink without pain.
She had what she needed. Enough money to disappear. Enough weapons to make sure no one stopped her. Enough names stitched into paper to build another self, somewhere no one was looking. She’d started with less before, built lives from crumbs. But this time the engine driving her was different. Not revenge alone. Not pain. Hunger. The kind born not from being hurt, but from surviving. From still being alive, and wanting more than survival.
Her fingers found the folded map. She spread it flat across the bed, pressing it open with both palms. The paper had gone soft, creases tired, ink smudged. But the line still held: red ink threading its way across borders and customs, curling through cities, circling names. A path toward Korea.
Her nail traced it slow, stopping at Busan. A small circle, marked twice. She tapped it. Once. Again. Then folded the map back with care, each edge pressed down as if she were sealing a thought she couldn’t afford to lose.
The cigarette had burned low, ash dangling fragile at the end. She stood, room folding closer around her. Not smaller. Just more present, more awake. The A/C wheezed, rattled, died with a final shudder. She didn’t look at it.
At the window, she slipped two fingers through the blinds, pulled them apart. Sodium light drowned the parking lot in its false orange glow. Nothing moved except the swarm of bugs around the lamp. Her truck crouched in the far corner, paint dulled, hood shadowed. It looked patient. Waiting. It knew this wasn’t the end. Only another checkpoint. Another launch point. A step toward digging up the version of herself she’d buried.
She smoked the cigarette down to the filter, ground it out in the cracked glass ashtray beside the lamp. Then stretched, long and slow, until her spine gave a small pop. Rolled her shoulders once. Tension snapped loose. Proof the engine was still running. Proof she hadn’t rusted out yet.
There was still work ahead. Still miles to burn. Still names that needed remembering. Or forgetting.
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The sky was still the color of a healing bruise when she stepped out of Room 11. That thin, breath-held hour before sunrise stretched across the motel, quiet and suspended, like the world wasn’t sure whether to wake up or go back to sleep. The air hung low and heavy, not cold anymore but still clinging to the memory of it, brushing at her ankles as she walked. Her boots met the gravel with a soft, steady crunch, her stride slow but sure. The door clicked shut behind her with the soft finality of a decision already made. She didn’t look back. She never did.
Whatever lingered inside that room—the musty reek of mildew, the peeling wallpaper, the silence pressed into the floor like dust—could stay there. The ghosts were welcome to it.
The lot was empty now, stripped of last night’s noise and movement. No music. No laughter. No arguing strangers trying to forget whatever they’d dragged in with them. Just the hum of a flickering security light and the shadows it cast, long and tired and mostly ignored. Her truck waited where she had left it, the same as it always did. Black. Battered. Dust-laced. It didn’t look fast or dangerous, only patient. Like it had seen everything and didn’t need to brag about any of it.
She opened the door. The hinges gave a soft groan. The duffel landed in the passenger seat with a solid weight, heavier now, heavier in more ways than one. Not just steel and currency, but decisions. Commitments. Endings. She sat behind the wheel and rested her hand on the key but didn’t turn it right away. Instead she looked through the windshield, past the sagging plastic palms and sun-warped signage, out toward the open road.
Somewhere along the way, something had shifted. She didn’t know the exact moment, but it was there in her blood, in her spine. The running was over. Whatever came next would not be a retreat. She wasn’t trying to disappear anymore. She was going back.
She turned the key.
The truck woke up with a low growl, not eager but ready. The kind of engine that didn’t expect praise, only purpose. She eased out of the lot without checking the mirror, letting the motel recede into the rearview like everything else she had buried. It would stay there, just another mile behind her.
The road to the airport unfolded like it always did in these parts, quiet highways full of tired signage and forgotten ambition. Diners with names like “Lisa’s Last Stop” and “Grill & Chill 24/7,” their neon flickering like it was fighting sleep. Empty parking lots. Billboards that promised injury settlements, eternal salvation, and the best damn pecan pie on Highway 9. Churches with broken steeples. Loan offices with barred windows. The skeleton of American promise, sun-bleached and hollowed out.
She didn’t turn on the radio. Didn’t crack the window. Her coffee sat untouched in the console, more for the heat in her hand than anything else. She drove with both hands on the wheel, letting her thoughts drift slow and aimless, looping back through the same questions and never settling on answers.
The sun rose behind her, crawling up the horizon like something tired of hiding. It lit the road in pale gold and chased her shadow out ahead of her, long and crooked. The towns she passed blurred together. Same gas stations. Same parking lots. Same dust settling on sun-baked signs. Nothing reached her. Nothing asked to.
By the time she pulled into the airport lot, the sky had turned that washed-out shade of blue that promised heat and little else. She parked in long-term, rows from anyone else. Killed the engine under a flickering lamppost that gave one last buzz before giving out. She sat a moment, hands still on the wheel, feeling the last bit of quiet settle around her. Then she slung the duffel over her shoulder and got out.
It hit her hip like a reminder. Cash. Steel. Papers. Lives. She didn’t walk fast, but she didn’t stall either. Just moved forward like time didn’t own her anymore.
The terminal ahead was all glass and stale light, catching the morning sky in fractured reflections. She stepped through the automatic doors and into the kind of cold that didn’t come from weather but from design. Manufactured. Artificial. Meant to keep people sharp and orderly. It smelled like lemons, plastic, and every departure that had come before her.
She paused just inside. Not hesitation. Just calibration. Listening. Feeling the hum of the place. Gate calls. Wheels dragging. Overhead pages layered with chatter. The low murmur of a world built for leaving. For going but not staying.
She moved through it like someone who didn’t need instructions.
The check-in counter was manned by a thin kid barely old enough to rent a car. His name tag said TYLER. His lanyard was a mess of meme pins and frayed cords. The kind of kid who clocked in with earbuds still in and forgot to take them out. He didn’t notice her at first, not until she was standing right in front of him.
The duffel hit the floor beside her with a small, final sound. Her voice stayed low.
“One-way ticket to Gwangju. First available.”
Tyler blinked, fingers stuttering a second before tapping at the keyboard. Gwangju wasn’t common. It made him look up again, a little more carefully this time. She said nothing else. Just waited.
She slid the passport across the counter. Emma Ji-woo. The photo was polished, airbrushed just enough to pass scrutiny. But the eyes were hers, still and unblinking, focused. Tyler studied the picture, then studied her. He didn’t ask questions. Maybe didn’t know how. Or maybe something in her expression told him not to.
She paid in cash. Clean bills. Neat stack. Pulled from the vault without hesitation, counted out like it was nothing. Like it hadn’t come with a history. The paper smelled faintly of oil and time, like everything important always did. Tyler took the money, his fingers slowing just a bit as he handled it, as if part of him was trying to memorize what wrong felt like.
He printed her ticket, hands fidgety now, and slid it across the counter like he was giving her something that might explode.
“Gate thirty-four,” he said. “You’ll connect through Incheon.”
She took the boarding pass without a word. She didn’t say thank you. She turned and walked toward security, leaving Tyler staring after her.
She didn’t ask about upgrades or snacks. She didn’t care what came in the seatback pocket or what counted as a meal at thirty-seven thousand feet. No interest in a foil-wrapped cookie or a lukewarm bottle of water labeled “premium.” She wasn’t here for comfort. She was here to move forward. To put sky between her and the things behind her. She wanted distance. Altitude. The kind of cold, wordless detachment that only the stratosphere could offer.
The security line wound like a slow fuse: plastic bins clattering, belts slipping through metal loops, the voices of TSA agents clipped and bored. She stepped through it like she’d done it a hundred times. Because she had. Her coat was dark wool, the sort you could wear to a funeral or a boardroom without drawing questions. The stitching was heavier than it looked, reinforced. Useful. Her boots cleared the scanners. The blade inside was legal by a fraction of an inch, packed with the precision of someone who had measured the limits. Her bag was clean where it counted. Nothing that would raise alarms. Just the weight of something lived-in and quiet.
They scanned her passport and boarding pass without a second glance. The photo matched. Emma Ji-woo. Hair slightly darker in the picture, lips touched with a professional half-smile. Believable. The machines beeped politely. No flags. No questions. Just a nod and a wave.
She didn’t breathe easier. She didn’t need to.
At the gate, the crowd had already started to gather. People sprawled in chairs, their energy muted by early hours and too many miles. Some stared at their phones. Some picked at overpriced muffins. One kid cried softly into a sweatshirt, and nobody looked up. It was the kind of communal fatigue that airports did best: a shared sense of waiting without purpose.
She took her place in line, middle of the pack. Not the first. Never the last. Just another body headed somewhere else.
When they called Group Two, she moved.
Her seat was by the window. It always was. The duffel slid under the seat in front of her with practiced ease, fitting like it had done this before. She let her fingers rest on it briefly, grounding herself in the weight of what it held: names, tools, contingencies. The pieces of a life carefully folded down to fit inside a single bag.
She leaned into the wall of the plane, cool against her shoulder, and looked out. Morning had arrived without conviction. The sky was a washed-out gray, the kind of color that came before heat, before light. Airport machinery drifted past—fuel trucks, baggage carts, people in reflective vests who looked like they hadn’t slept. The wing of the plane cut across her view, still and patient, waiting to rise. Sunlight slid over it in dull streaks, catching on the rivets and edges, turning everything gold and indifferent.
The overhead speaker crackled something about boarding zones and safety demonstrations, but none of it landed. Not for her. The sound washed past her ears without shape, the way wind moves through trees: present, but meaningless. Someone two rows up laughed too loudly. A baby fussed. Coffee burned its way through the air vents, mixing with the stale plastic scent of recycled cabin air.
She didn’t move. Didn’t fidget. Her hands were folded in her lap, posture calm, almost meditative. But inside, the tight coil sat waiting. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t nerves. Just pressure. A quiet readiness built from too many miles and not enough peace.
The engines rumbled to life beneath her feet. The metal shell around her vibrated in response, like the plane was stretching its limbs after too long on the ground. It rolled slowly toward the runway, wheels clunking over seams in the concrete. She didn’t grip the armrest. Didn’t reach for anything. Just watched.
Takeoff wasn’t elegant. It was mechanical force dressed up in aerodynamics. The thrust came all at once, raw, loud, unapologetic. The kind of motion that didn’t ask permission. Her body pressed back into the seat, gravity pulling at her chest as the ground fell away. For one long breath, the Earth clung to her like it didn’t want to let go. And then it did.
The airport dropped out of view, buildings and roads folding in on themselves, reduced to the flat language of maps and memory. Gas stations, parking lots, little rectangles of human effort. All of it faded under a rising haze, distant and forgettable.
Her breath touched the glass for a moment. A soft cloud, gone just as quickly. The sky beyond was endless and blue in that high, cold way. Not warm. Not kind. But honest. It didn’t care who she was. It didn’t care where she was going. It just was. Vast. Empty. Ready.
She stared out into it, not searching, not thinking. Just remembering how it felt to be small again. Small enough to disappear, but sharp enough not to.
Her hand moved without looking, brushing the inside pocket of her coat. Cotton. Folded. A handkerchief she didn’t remember packing. She pulled it out, fingers slow and careful. The cloth was clean. White. Pressed. The kind of thing you carried when you didn’t know if you’d cry, or bleed, or both.
From the same pocket came the needle. Fine steel. Polished. Paired with a single loop of red thread, already knotted. She didn’t check it. She didn’t need to.
She began to sew.
Her hands worked in small, deliberate motions, the thread pulling through the fabric with barely a sound. She didn’t glance down. Her fingers remembered the rhythm. The name formed, one letter at a time. T. A. E. H. Y. U. N. G. Each stroke was precise. Each pull tight. No wasted movement.
She didn’t say his name. Didn’t even let her lips shape it. But it was there. In the cloth. In the blood-colored thread. In the silence between stitches.
When the name was finished, she tied it off with a flick of her wrist. Trimmed the excess. Folded the cloth again. Pressed it back into her pocket. Over her heart.
The plane had leveled out. Cruising now. The clouds below looked like ash. The ocean below that: cold, dark, silent. Somewhere beyond it, past all this emptiness, was Korea. And the man from Gwangju.
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The plane hit the runway. A hard, ugly jolt that snapped her spine straight and rattled the tray table in front of her. The tires screamed against the tarmac, metal grinding in protest as the cabin vibrated with the kind of impact that made people forget how to breathe. Drinks sloshed. Seatbacks creaked. Somewhere up front, someone muttered a sharp curse under their breath. The overhead lights flickered once, barely a stutter, but she saw it. She always did.
Out the window, the city didn’t look like it was sleeping. It looked like it had never gone to bed in the first place. Darkness hung heavy, not clean or quiet, but thick, like smoke, like old breath trapped in a closed room. The kind of dark that didn’t just hide things, it held them. The runway lights sliced through it in stark, clinical lines. Past them, the faint blur of Gwangju shimmered in neon and haze: blues and reds pulsing like slow heartbeats, mirrored in wet pavement that hadn’t dried and maybe never would. The glass reflected back just enough of her face to remind her she was still here.
As she stepped into the gangway, the air shifted. Dense. Damp. Immediate. It clung to her skin like something familiar, something half-forgotten but buried deep enough in the bones to recognize on contact. A mix of exhaust, concrete, late summer heat, and something sweeter, grilled food maybe, or just memory dressed up like scent. It hit her lungs like a slow exhale. She didn’t rush. Just walked forward, each step steady, her bag slung across her shoulder in that way that made it clear she didn’t need help and wouldn’t ask for it. Her coat hung open now, too warm for the humidity but still part of the armor. She moved like someone who belonged in the space between strangers. Not local. Not lost. Just passing through with purpose.
And yet, something shifted the second she stepped off the plane and onto Korean soil. Nothing anyone could see, but she felt it: a small click, like a lock catching in place. A posture change that didn’t show in her spine but settled deeper, in muscle memory and instinct. The mask slid on without effort. Not Emma Ji-woo anymore, not exactly. Not Candy, not the others. Just the version of herself this place required. Whatever her name was, she carried it like a blade in her boot, quiet, hidden, ready.
Inside, the airport moved like it had been designed for silence. No chaos. No rush. Just clean lines and softened footsteps echoing off polished tile. People didn’t shout. They didn’t loiter. They moved with the kind of practiced grace that didn’t need announcements. The lights overhead were low and cool, and even the seating looked like it had been designed to be ignored.
Customs passed without friction. The officer barely glanced up, flicked through her documents like he was reading grocery lists. Her forged passport, Emma Ji-woo, South Korean citizen returning from years abroad, was fresh, well-aged in the right places. The photo had the right kind of editing: smooth enough to pass facial scan, textured enough to seem human. She handed it over with both hands, bowed just enough to make it believable, smiled with restraint. Polite. Non-threatening.
“감사합니다,” she said, her voice low and shaped just right.
The stamp fell with a dull, final thud. No questions. No extra eyes. Just a nod, a motion, and then the gates opened.
Outside, the night waited.
The city air hit harder, warmer, wetter. The kind of humidity that didn’t just touch you, it soaked in. Rain had fallen not long before; she could feel it in the way the concrete gave off heat like breath. The streetlights bounced off slick asphalt, halos forming in puddles that mirrored blinking shop signs and broken reflections of moving traffic. Scooters buzzed past, weaving between slow cars. The buzz of neon hummed in the wires overhead like a living thing. There wasn’t much noise, but everything felt alive. Breathing.
She walked toward the taxi stand without checking her phone, without checking directions. She already knew where she was going. Her bag pulled at her shoulder, not in protest, just in reminder. Inside, names and pasts and the pieces of herself that weren’t for daylight. But she didn’t adjust it. Didn’t even shift her stance.
The cab she picked wasn’t the newest. The bumper was scuffed, one headlight had the faint film of age, and the license plate was slightly crooked. But it was real. Lived-in. The driver leaned against the hood, half-lit by the overhead bulb, cigarette cupped loosely in two fingers. Middle-aged, maybe older. His shirt wrinkled, his gaze unreadable.
She smiled before she spoke. Soft, disarming, the kind of smile that made people assume you didn’t bite.
“안녕하세요,” she said. “Seongmin Heritage Hotel, please. Near Sajik Park? The one with the koi in the lobby?”
The man blinked at her. A flicker of recognition, more for her fluency than her face. But he nodded like it didn’t matter.
“Know it,” he said, voice rasped from smoke or years or both. “That’s a nice place.”
She slid into the back seat, her bag tucked in beside her, one hand resting on its handle.
As they pulled into the street, he glanced at her in the mirror. “Vacation?”
She let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. “Sort of,” she said, breezy, warm enough to sell. “I’m meeting someone.”
That made him smile, just a little. “Boyfriend?”
She tilted her head, just enough to suggest a blush. “Not exactly. I’ve known him for a long time.”
“And you’ve never met?” he said, eyes narrowing with casual disbelief. “Do you trust him?”
She leaned forward a little, voice softer, like she was sharing something real. “I guess I’m old-fashioned. I still believe in people.”
The driver chuckled, tapping ash out the window. “Well. Hope he’s worth the wait.”
She smiled again, turning her eyes back to the window. “Me too.”
Outside, the city slid past in glints and shadows. Signs blinked red and blue against walls slick with water. A lone man smoked beneath a streetlight. A group of teenagers laughed near a convenience store, their voices echoing sharp and bright. And above it all, Gwangju pulsed. Alive. Waiting.
Her body language was relaxed, open, even friendly, but not too friendly. Her smile landed right where it needed to: warm enough to seem genuine, distant enough to keep the woman behind the desk from asking questions she didn’t want to answer. And yet, beneath it all, behind her eyes, there was something else. Something sharp. Alert. A presence just beneath the surface, watching everything, holding still like a wire pulled tight.
The cab ride had taken about twenty minutes, maybe less. She couldn’t really tell. In that strange pocket of time, after midnight but before dawn, everything stretched or collapsed depending on how close you were watching. Cities didn’t sleep in those hours; they just drifted, like the tide. The cab driver barely spoke, his cigarette glowing faint in the corner of her vision, the smoke trailing out the half-open window into the warm, wet air. He drove like a man who’d forgotten how to be surprised by anything. She appreciated that. It made things easier.
Out the window, Gwangju blurred past in bands of neon and shadow, light warped by the sheen of recent rain. The storefronts were lit like stages no one was acting on anymore: 7-Elevens glowing sterile and perfect, their shelves full of snacks and instant noodles and bottled tea that no one needed but still bought. People moved through them slowly, hunched and quiet, looking like they were halfway between sleep and survival. The rest of the city felt paused, noodle shops with stools turned upside-down, karaoke bars locked behind metal grates, all of it blinking half-heartedly like no one had told the power to shut off yet. One sign above a barbecue place kept flickering between “삼겹살 24시” and total darkness, as if it couldn’t decide whether to keep going or give up.
They passed a hanbok rental place with mannequins frozen in the windows, draped in silk and thread, caught mid-movement in some forgotten celebration. The lights inside were faint, almost apologetic. The kind of glow you could miss if you weren’t looking directly at it. And everything outside, every puddle, every wall, every parked car, reflected that layered light. Hangul shimmered across wet streets like it was painted there in real time. Chicken. Tarot. Facials. Cheap drinks. Lost hopes. It was all advertised the same way, with bold fonts and desperate color.
She leaned her head against the cool glass of the cab window and let the city slide past her. She wasn’t sightseeing. She wasn’t curious. She was memorizing. Every corner. Every alley. Every building with a fire escape or a side entrance or a window that stayed cracked. Not just as someone taking in a new place, but as someone planning how to move through it. Where to hide. Where to hunt. Where to vanish.
She wasn’t here for a reunion. That was the lie she wore like cologne, pleasant, easy, expected. She was here to dig. To drag someone’s name back out of the dirt and make it mean something again. If this city had tried to forget him, she’d remind it. She’d burn the name into glass and pavement if she had to. She hadn’t come this far to let memory do the burying.
When the cab finally slowed in front of the Seongmin Heritage Hotel, she already knew the building before it came into full view. She’d studied it, grainy photos, tourist reviews, street-view walkthroughs. But even with all that preparation, it was still something to see in person. Polished, curated, old-world elegance repackaged as modern luxury. White stone columns stood like they were holding up more than a roof, like they were trying to convince the street this place mattered. Carved details along the trim caught the warm spill of interior lighting. The brass door handles gleamed like they’d never been touched by real weather. Above the entry, a stained-glass panel glowed amber and deep red, a honeyed light pouring over the curb like something sacred had just cracked open.
And just inside, behind a clean pane of tall glass, the koi pond gleamed. Black water, smooth and quiet, broken only by the slow turning of gold and orange fins. The fish moved in lazy arcs, each shift like a breath drawn too deep to be seen. Like they didn’t care who watched.
The driver parked and turned to look at her. His voice was low, soft, like he knew not to break whatever moment she was in.
“This it?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”
He watched her for a second too long, not in a threatening way, just thoughtful. Like he’d seen this before. Not her, maybe. But people like her. People with a story that couldn’t be told in the back of a cab. People walking toward something only they understood.
“Well,” he said after a pause, “good luck with your meeting.”
She smiled faintly, just enough to be polite. “I think it’ll be one to remember.”
She handed him a bill folded clean once. Double what the meter read. He glanced at it, then back at her, and nodded without another word.
She stepped out of the cab. The air hit her like it meant to. Heavy. Humid. Full of noise that hadn’t been made yet.
She shouldered her bag without shifting her weight. Moved toward the hotel doors like she was stepping into something familiar. And as the cab pulled away, the night closed back in behind her like it hadn’t noticed she’d arrived at all.
Inside, the hotel smelled like money pretending to be modest. Like expensive wood polish layered over old stone and cold air recycled too many times. The lighting was just dim enough to flatter the furniture but still show off the marble floors, clean, symmetrical, sharp where it counted. Every tile lined up like it had been laid by someone who understood symmetry wasn’t just about beauty. It was about control.
To her left, the koi pond curved around the front desk like a moat. Its surface was glassy and still, the fish drifting in slow spirals. They looked unreal in the low light, too bright, too calm, like someone had animated them just for her arrival. A tiny pump kept the water moving just enough to keep it from falling asleep, but the sound was so soft it might’ve been imagined. It wasn’t tranquil. It was measured. Controlled. Like everything else in this place.
She walked toward the desk like she’d done it a dozen times in other cities under other names. Calm, confident, casually forgettable. The kind of guest who knew how to tip well and never asked for room upgrades.
The woman behind the desk looked young but practiced. Hair styled into a sharp, no-nonsense bob. Uniform crisp. Movements efficient. Her name tag said Juha, though Y/N didn’t really need to read it. She’d already pegged her: precise, polite, not interested in small talk. Just enough kindness to pass for warmth. The kind of employee who wouldn’t remember a single detail about you by the end of her shift, and wouldn’t question why she didn’t.
Y/N offered her a smile. The good one. Just the right amount of curve. Something safe. Something easy to forget.
Y/N switched to Korean mid-step, her tone effortless, almost casual. “예약했어요. 캔디 랄스턴으로요.” Her accent was textbook Seoul.
The woman behind the desk didn’t blink. “환영합니다, 랄스턴 씨. 3박이시죠?”
Y/N nodded, and with a soft switch in rhythm, she slipped back into English. Her voice lifted just slightly, pleasant and open, with that eager brightness tourists wore like perfume. “First time in Korea. I’m really excited.”
The receptionist smiled as if on cue. Not warm, exactly. Rehearsed, but pleasant. She slid a room key forward, tucked inside a white sleeve embossed with the hotel’s gold crest. “Room 714. Elevator’s just to your right.”
Y/N offered a small bow, murmured her thanks again, and turned away. Her boots made no squeal against the floor, only that quiet, deliberate click that echoed soft and sharp like footsteps in a gallery. The kind of sound that didn’t try to be heard but couldn’t help leaving an impression.
The elevator was already waiting, doors wide open like it knew she was coming. She stepped inside and caught her reflection in the mirrored walls: three angles, three versions of herself looking back. Her posture was perfect, relaxed, composed. Her clothes, neutral tones and well-fitted, spoke of efficiency, not attention. Her makeup was subtle, just enough color to say effort had been made, not enough to say she cared about being seen.
She looked like someone organized. Someone harmless.
But the reflection in the center mirror told the truth. It was in the way her eyes held steady, unflinching, like they didn’t expect kindness anymore. Like they’d already learned what questions were traps, which silences meant danger, and how to vanish while still in plain sight. There was a stillness in her face, but not the kind that came from calm. This was stillness earned, built from rehearsals, from closing hotel doors behind you and counting exits before you even set your bag down.
The elevator rose, slow and steady. She shifted her canvas bag higher on her shoulder. Not because it hurt, she didn’t let things hurt, but because it grounded her. Inside was everything that counted: names, paper trails, backup plans. There was no wasted weight.
When the elevator doors slid open on the seventh floor, she was already halfway into the hallway.
It was quiet. Carpeted in something dull that might once have been green, the kind of floor that muted footsteps into suggestions. The wallpaper, floral and faded, curled at the corners where humidity had worked its way in over the years. The light overhead buzzed, faint and constant, like the building was humming to itself out of habit. A soft, tired sound.
Room 714 was near the end, just past a bend in the hallway where the emergency map was pinned slightly crooked on the wall. She paused in front of the door, keycard in hand.
And then she just stood there. Not long. Just long enough to listen.
Not for sound. For pressure. For presence. You didn’t survive by hearing footsteps, you survived by feeling when a room wasn’t empty. The temperature. The stillness. The quality of silence. She tilted her head slightly. Felt the way the air held its breath.
Nothing.
She slid the keycard through the reader. The lock beeped, followed by that soft, mechanical click. Small, almost polite. She pushed the door open with her shoulder and stepped inside without looking behind her. The door sealed shut behind her with the kind of sound that didn’t echo. It just ended.
She locked it: deadbolt first, then the chain. Her hands moved in a rhythm they’d known for years. One smooth motion, no hesitation. She wasn’t checking, she was securing. There was a difference.
The canvas bag landed on the bed with a deep, even thud. Not loud, just final, like it had arrived with intent. She didn’t stop to look around. Didn’t bother checking the view. The room wasn’t the point.
She walked to the desk in the corner and turned on the lamp. Warm light spilled across the pale wood, catching on the edges of the hotel stationery and the small, useless pen that had been placed there with the usual pretend care. The kind of detail that suggested someone had thought about your comfort, even if they hadn’t.
She sat down. The chair creaked faintly but held. Her body didn’t sag. She didn’t relax. She just settled into it.
She pulled the pad of paper toward her and picked up the pen. It was smooth, plastic, light, nothing special. It didn’t matter. She clicked it once and started writing in small, deliberate strokes.
Things to Do Tomorrow:
-Buy a light pink blouse. Something that moves. Something soft.
-Buy makeup
-Rehearse the story. Again.
-Smile until it hurts.
Her pen hovered above the last line for a beat. Then she added one more, slower this time:
-Be perfect.
She circled it. Once. Then again. Firm. Not as a reminder. As a rule.
She put the pen down beside the pad and exhaled. Not dramatically. Not with relief. Just enough to release the breath she’d been holding since the door clicked shut.
She stood.
The bathroom was exactly what she expected: white tile, cool light, no character. Clean without warmth. The mirror above the sink was wide and too tall, forcing her to step closer if she wanted to see all of herself at once. She didn’t bother.
The light buzzed overhead, sterile and flat, the kind of glow that made everything look a little too real.
She touched her fingertips to the edge of the counter. Steady.
She wasn’t tired. Not yet. What she was came after tired, and it had no name.
She reached out and turned the faucet, letting the water run. Cold at first, bright and clean, loud as it hit the porcelain. But beneath the noise, she listened. Not to the water itself, but to the way it moved through the pipes. The way it echoed off tile. The way it filled the silence with something that wasn’t her. It sounded pure, but she knew better. It had traveled through metal older than the building, scraped past rust and time, ghosts caught in the bends. Still, it came out confident. Unbothered. Like it hadn’t carried anything with it.
She didn’t hurry. Her fingers moved slowly to the hem of her shirt, tugged it over her head, and let it fall to the floor. Then the rest, belt, pants, underthings, peeled away without effort. She’d done this ritual a thousand times before. And yet tonight, her hands felt different. Not clumsy. Not unsure. Just heavy, like they remembered more than she wanted them to. Her clothes ended up in a soft heap at her feet. By then, the mirror had already fogged over.
She stood still for a moment. Not posed, not inspecting. Just there. Her arms hung loose at her sides, her toes sinking slightly into the tile. The steam softened everything: her outline, her skin, even the air. The reflection staring back at her was dulled at the edges, her features blurred by heat and breath. She could still see her shape. Her shoulders narrow but set, arms lined with the first signs of strength again. Her ribs still showed when she inhaled too deeply, but her thighs had started to look solid again. Her body was still catching up to the rest of her. Still figuring out how to be whole after Two Pines tried to carve her hollow. But she was getting there. Slowly. She could see it.
She tilted her head and scanned herself like she was reading a story she knew by heart. The scars stood out like chapters. The crescent just below her ribs where a blade had barely missed something vital. A paler burn at her hip, nearly invisible now, but still a map of pain. The line along her collarbone, clean and deliberate. Surgical. The scar on her forehead had been there the longest. She didn’t even notice it anymore.
She nodded once, almost imperceptibly. A quiet agreement between her and the woman behind the fog.
Then she stepped into the shower.
The water hit her like a warning. Scalding. Immediate. It slammed into her shoulders and rolled down her back, ruthless in its heat. But she didn’t flinch. She leaned into it. Let it rake across her spine, sting her arms, burn her thighs. The pain was real. Tangible. Honest in a way few things were. It didn’t lie, didn’t soften, didn’t ask questions. It just landed, over and over again, washing everything else into silence.
She closed her eyes, tilted her head forward, and let her forehead rest against the cool tile wall. It grounded her. Solid. Cold. Unmoving. She breathed. Not deeply. Just enough. Enough to be here.
Then it came.
Not a memory. Not an image she could blink away. It was sharper than that. It crashed through her like glass, fast, clean, final. No prelude. No grace.
A sonogram.
Not imagined. Not abstract. Burned into her mind with brutal clarity. Grainy black-and-white. A crescent of light, unmistakable. And there in the center, her. The child. Seven months. Spine curled tight. Fists pulled in. Fragile, yes, but undeniably alive.
Not a possibility. A fact.
The photo was still folded in the lining of her coat. Tucked behind Kevlar, buried between seams, carried across borders and terminals and checkpoints. It was creased so deeply now it had forgotten how to lie flat. She had kept it close because she couldn’t not. Because some part of her still believed the paper would remember the shape even if she forgot the name.
She used to whisper to her belly in motel rooms that reeked of other people’s stories. Whisper names in the dark. Some strong. Some gentle. Some stolen from myths. Some from books she hadn’t finished. She spoke them aloud like spells. Names in Korean. In English. Names that meant light. Names that meant defiance.
Now? Now she couldn’t remember a single goddamn one.
Not one.
The realization hit without warning. Her knees gave out, buckled like they had been kicked. She dropped too fast to catch herself, hands sliding helplessly down the wall. Her skin hit the shower floor hard, the ceramic slick and unforgiving. Her breath didn’t come. Her chest just stalled.
The water kept pounding down, relentless and hot, hammering her back, her scalp, her shoulders.
She folded in tight. Arms clamped around her stomach. Head bent. Forehead pressed hard to her knees. The heat had scalded her skin pink, but it was nothing compared to what was burning underneath. Her whole body trembled, not from cold but from something older, deeper, more bone-deep than fear. Her jaw locked so tight her teeth throbbed. Fingernails dug into her upper arms, leaving pale marks that flushed angry and red as the shower thundered down over her back. Her shoulders jolted with every breath. Her chest couldn’t seem to find a rhythm. Her mouth opened once, like maybe a sound would come out. It didn’t. Just steam and a shattered breath that barely made it past her lips.
She cried, but not the way people cry in movies. No cinematic sobs. No beautiful devastation. This was messier. Raw. She cried like it surprised her. Like her body had remembered something her mind wasn’t ready to revisit. It wasn’t gentle or cathartic. It was violent. Uncontrolled. The kind of grief that had waited in the walls of her bones, that had made a home beneath her ribs, that had lived inside her blood quietly for years and now refused to be quiet anymore.
It wasn’t just about the child, though it started there. She cried for the girl she never got to meet. For the weight of her. The impossible, invisible pull of a presence that had once lived beneath her skin and kicked in the dark and responded to her voice like it meant something. She cried for the names whispered into motel ceilings. For every plan made in secret. For the way she used to sleep with one hand on her belly and the other over the gun under her pillow, believing—naively, stupidly—that she could keep both safe.
She cried for herself too. Not the woman she was now, but the one she used to be. The one who thought she could walk two roads at once. Who thought she could live between love and violence and come out clean. That she could be sharp and soft. That she could kill for a living and still build a life worth protecting.
She had buried that woman. Or thought she had. But grief has a way of preserving what pain cannot quite dissolve. The version of herself she thought was long gone hadn’t decayed. It had hardened. It had turned into something fossilized under all the anger and training and years. Not gone. Just waiting.
And under the grief, something else had been building. Coiled low in her belly. Climbing her spine. Tightening around her throat.
The fury.
It hit hot and sudden. Like a flare lit inside her chest. Fast. Blinding. Unforgiving. Her muscles locked. Her fists curled tight. Her breath caught in the cage of her ribs. She wanted to wreck something. Rip the cabinet off the wall. Shatter the mirror with her elbow. Drag her knuckles down the glass until they split. She wanted to leave blood on porcelain. On tile. On her own hands.
She wanted to find him. Taehyung Kim. And make him understand what he had done. Not by telling him. By making him feel it. Every inch of it. Every second. She wanted to look him in the eyes as it hit him. As the weight of what he stole crushed him under its full, ugly truth.
Her knuckles went white. Her muscles trembled with the force of restraint. But she didn’t scream. Not because she couldn’t. Because she wouldn’t. That kind of rage needed to be saved. Stored. Honed.
It would have its moment. Just not here.
The shower kept running, loud and steady, until she moved. Just a breath. Just a twitch of her fingers. Then she reached up and turned the water off.
Silence crashed down like a wave. Thick. Dense. The kind that fills every crack in a room. The kind that listens back. Steam drifted in long, slow ribbons, curling around her shoulders like it wasn’t ready to leave either.
She blinked once. Her breathing evened out. Slower. Cooler. Her chest still ached, but the fire was banked now, drawn in close and dangerous. Not gone. Just shaped.
She stood.
Water clung to her skin. Her hair dripped in long strands down her back. Her face was flushed, eyes glassy but sharp now, clear in a way that felt surgical. She moved with precision, drying off in steady, methodical swipes, every motion practiced and spare. The towel trembled in her hands, but she kept her grip. Dressed quickly. Quietly. No wasted motion. Just armor going back on.
The grief didn’t vanish. She packed it back down. Tucked it into the parts of herself she didn’t let anyone see. But the rage—she left that right where it was. Let it sit beneath her skin. Close to the surface.
Because Taehyung Kim didn’t know what he had taken from her, but he would.
She wasn’t coming for answers.
She was coming for the truth.
And he would give it to her.
Because there would be no one left to stop her.
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The city didn’t perform. Gwangju just was. It didn’t blaze with ambition like Seoul or stretch itself into glitz the way Busan tried to. It moved slow, breathed heavier. Honest, unbothered, like an old man in his undershirt posted up on a plastic chair, feet bare, sweating into the sidewalk, waving off mosquitoes with a rolled-up newspaper. There was a stillness here that didn’t feel staged. It felt earned. Like time didn’t hurry. Like it hadn’t for a while. Even the heat didn’t rush. It pressed down in thick, lazy folds, dragging everything—footsteps, voices, the color out of the buildings—into something close to sleep.
The streets moved in rhythm with it: fans turning slowly in dim back rooms, the hum of overhead wires swaying with the weight of too many summers, the drag of slippers across concrete. Shops leaned on each other like they were tired of standing alone. Paint peeled in curls off old storefronts. Rust bloomed at the hinges of delivery carts and folding chairs. Hand-painted signs creaked as they shifted in the breeze, their edges warped like paper left out in the rain.
It was the kind of afternoon where nothing tried too hard. The air was a patchwork of smells: hot oil, boiled radish, exhaust, old metal, the damp tang of stone that’s never had a chance to dry. Vendors fanned themselves with bent menus, arguing halfheartedly with ajummas who bargained with the precision of habit. A mop of scooters rolled through puddles left by melted ice or a spilled soup bowl, weaving through crates and feet like they knew every shortcut before it was built. The city didn’t sleep. But it didn’t really wake up, either. It just existed. Like a held breath.
And tucked into all of it, halfway hidden between a shuttered bookstore and a florist with wilting carnations, was the door. If you could call it that. More a suggestion than an entrance. A curtain, once blue and now more of a stained gray, hung from a crooked rod that looked hammered into place out of stubbornness rather than skill. It shifted when the wind pushed at it, not with drama but with the quiet of something breathing. The name painted across the fabric had long since faded: 김밥바. The brushstrokes barely held together, as if the person who wrote them hoped the world would forget.
She didn’t go straight in.
Y/N stood across from it, phone in hand, thumb flicking absently at nothing. Her eyes weren’t on the screen. They were on the building. On the way the curtain moved. On the way the shadows behind it didn’t feel empty. A pigeon flapped once but didn’t fly. A scooter buzzed past, and an ajumma barked something sharp about cabbage. The usual sounds. The usual rhythm.
Still, she waited a beat longer. She watched how the light caught the doorway. She noticed how the air felt different here. Denser.
Then she stepped forward and slipped behind the curtain like she belonged.
And everything changed.
The moment it fell behind her, the city vanished. The noise didn’t fade. It ceased. Like someone hit pause on the outside world. Inside was quiet in a way only old places know how to be. Not just soundless. Still. The kind of stillness that settles in stone. The kind that remembers things. The air was cooler, not because of any fan or vent, but because it had never left. It clung to the walls, the wood, the floor. Everything felt touched by time.
The scent hit next. Not artificial or sanitized. Just real. A mix of rice, vinegar, seaweed, and broth so old it had soaked into the wood grain. Salt, smoke, a whisper of garlic. It was the kind of smell you carried home with you, in your clothes, your hair, your bones.
Her eyes adjusted fast.
The space was barely larger than a closet. Three stools lined a counter. One crooked. One stained. One seemingly untouched. The varnish had long worn off the wood, dulled by elbows and sweat and stories told over soup. A ceiling fan turned overhead, slow and uneven, ticking with every revolution like it was remembering something too late. A single fly moved in lazy circles beneath it.
Nobody else was here.
No music. No kitchen noise. Just a single plate on the counter. Empty except for one streak of red sauce. Chopsticks placed beside it with care. Not abandoned. Just waiting.
She walked in like she’d been here before. Like this was a memory, not a discovery. Her posture was casual. Her camera hung from her neck like a travel blog prop, the kind of thing that made her look like the type of woman who’d find “hidden gems” and write about the soul of a place as if she’d invented the concept. But none of that touched her eyes. They were focused. Clear. Watching.
And then he appeared. Quietly, without fuss, like he’d always been there and the world had only just remembered to look. The steam rolled out behind him, curling around his shoulders like it had followed him from some low, back kitchen heat that never fully cooled. He was tall, not imposing, but solid in the way that came from doing hard things for a long time. His build was lean, a little bowed at the shoulders, as if time and gravity had done their work. His skin had the baked-in tone of someone who’d spent years near open flame, his forearms marked by thin pale scars that spoke of burns, not battles. The white chef’s jacket he wore was buttoned but stained, spattered with dark brown that might have been soy sauce or something else. It was hard to tell, and maybe it wasn’t supposed to be clear.
His face didn’t offer much. It wasn’t unreadable in the cold, calculated way of spies or killers. It just didn’t feel the need to explain itself. High cheekbones softened the shape of his long face, and his eyes, dark and narrow, carried the quiet stillness of someone who watched more than he spoke. His hair was thick, slightly tousled, mostly black but peppered with gray at the temples. He was handsome, but the kind of handsome that didn’t advertise. He managed to exist right in the middle ground. Someone you’d forget until you saw them again and couldn’t stop wondering why.
Y/N kept her expression neutral as he stepped fully into view. Her body didn’t flinch. Her gaze didn’t drift. She looked at him plainly, openly, like she had no reason not to. But this was him. The man she’d crossed an ocean for. The one who had answers locked behind his teeth.
He saw her, and the smile came fast. Too fast. It stretched across his face like a reflex he hadn’t bothered updating in years. Broad, eager, practiced. The kind of smile that had been used too many times on too many strangers. The kind that worked better when you didn’t look too closely. He wore it like a uniform: the smile of a man who knew how to sell comfort, how to charm tourists just enough to make them stay, just long enough to make them leave before asking the wrong question. There was no real warmth in it. But it was a good act.
“English?” he asked, cautious but cheerful, testing each syllable like he was stepping over a puddle he didn’t trust.
She gave a half-shrug, tipping her head slightly as her mouth pulled into something lopsided and pleasant. “Almost,” she said. “American.”
Something about that word flipped a switch in him. He lit up like he’d been waiting for it. “Ah! America! Yes, welcome, welcome!” He nodded several times, as if the excitement might wear off if he didn’t hammer it in. “My English, very good. Yes.”
“Perfect,” she said, breezy and bright, like a woman with nowhere to be and all the time in the world. She stepped farther inside, her fingers ghosting along the edge of the counter. She didn’t look at it, not really, but the gesture made it seem like she was appreciating the wood, soaking up the charm. It wasn’t for him. It was for the story.
The chef smiled wide when she stepped in, his English laced with effort but cheerful all the same. “Welcome, American,” he said with a chuckle. “I hope you like my shop.”
She dipped her head, just enough to be polite. “안녕하세요,” she said, soft and even, her pronunciation clean, too natural to be brand-new.
That got a reaction. He lit up like someone had pulled a coin from behind his ear. “오오오! 안녕하세요!” He leaned forward with the delight of a man genuinely impressed. “Very good, very good! You speak Korean?”
She let out a modest laugh, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear like the compliment embarrassed her a little. “Not really,” she said. “Just a few words I picked up yesterday.”
Her eyes moved over the room, taking in the shelves, the old wood, the dust that softened the corners of things. “Is it okay if I sit here?”
“Sit, sit!” he said, already wiping down the bar with a damp cloth in wide, sweeping strokes like he was preparing an altar. “Of course. You sit. What words you learn? Oh, wait one second.”
He turned toward the curtain behind him, barked something in Korean without missing a beat. The words tumbled fast and irritated.
“We have a customer, bring out some tea, quickly!”
A voice called back, lazy and muffled. “I’m watching my soap operas.”
The chef rolled his eyes, snapping, “Lazy bastard! Screw your soap opera! Hurry up!”
“The tea’s hot. Why don’t you serve it yourself for once?”
“Shut up! Get your ass out here!”
Then he turned back to her, placing both palms on the bar like nothing had happened, though a thin line of annoyance still showed around his eyes. His smile remained pleasant. “So,” he said, “what else do you know in Korean?”
She tapped her chin lightly, brow furrowed like she was digging through a mental list. “감사합니다,” she said after a second, letting the word unfold carefully but not too perfectly. Like she was still getting comfortable with it.
He nodded with approval, the kind of praise people give freely but mean all the same. “Very good,” he said. “You say it nicely.”
She leaned forward just a touch, elbows resting gently on the bar, camera bumping softly against the edge. “알겠어요?” she tried, the hesitation built in just enough to seem earnest.
He brightened. “You know that one! ‘I understand.’ Good, very good. You learn fast.”
She smiled back. “Only what people say to me first.”
Then she tilted her head and added another. “안녕히 가세요?”
His expression flickered for a split second. The kind of shift most people wouldn’t catch. He recovered quickly, correcting her with a wave of his hand. “No, no, no. Say again.”
She blinked once, feigning the kind of sheepish confusion that made it look like maybe she had messed it up after all. She tried again, a little slower this time. “안녕히 가세요?”
He clapped his hands once, sharp and loud in the stillness of the shop. His smile stretched wide, but the lines around it didn’t move. “You speak Korean,” he said, voice lighter than it had been, but also a little tighter.
She laughed softly, tilting her head again. It was the kind of laugh you’d hear from someone caught in a harmless exaggeration. “Now you’re just flattering me.”
But he didn’t laugh with her. “No,” he said simply. “Serious. Your pronunciation... very good. You say 안녕히 가세요 like we say 안녕히 가세요.”
The air between them settled. Not tense, but heavier. The kind of pause that had weight in it, even if you didn’t know why.
His voice came again, this time quieter, slower. “You can learn Korean very easy.”
She let her gaze drop for half a second, just enough to give it texture, then lifted it again with a careful smile. “No kidding,” she said, her voice just a little softer now. “But thank you. 진짜... 감사합니다.”
He didn’t respond right away. Just breathed in through his nose, steady and thoughtful. Then he adjusted his stance, the shift so subtle most people wouldn’t notice. But she did. She saw the way his shoulders reset, the tiny movements that told her he wasn’t just running a shop. He was watching something unfold.
He turned without another word and picked up a rice paddle. His voice floated back over his shoulder, even and calm. “Let me make something for you.”
She nodded, her smile still in place, but the tone that followed wasn’t quite the same. “Anything’s fine.”
The chef stayed where he was, hands now methodically working at the counter. A bowl of rice, steam still clinging faintly to the grains. A bamboo mat laid flat. A half-sliced cucumber. The blade beside it already glinting in the overhead light.
“You like kimbap?” he asked, like it was just polite conversation.
“I love it,” she said, light and breezy.
She let the sentence hang just long enough to sound casual, like maybe this was a regular kind of moment, in a regular kind of place. But it wasn’t.
The knife moved with soft, measured sounds. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Carrot. Radish. Cucumber.
Every slice was uniform. Clean. The rhythm was precise, practiced. Not just skilled. Disciplined.
She didn’t take her eyes off him, not directly, but not obviously either. Her posture stayed relaxed, her hands resting on the bar. The camera around her neck swayed gently with the air from the ceiling fan, tapping now and then against the wood like a slow heartbeat.
She didn’t look dangerous.
But then, neither did he.
The overhead light gave a quiet hum, casting the shop in a worn, yellow wash that made everything look faintly out of date. The fan creaked once with each turn, ticking off invisible seconds. Outside, the alley was still. A cat passed, paused in the doorway, then disappeared again.
The chef didn’t look up from his cutting board. His voice came steady, like they were just passing time.
“You should learn Korean.”
She smiled, light but not airy. “You think so?”
He nodded slightly, slicing through radish with clean precision. “Yes.”
“I’ve heard it’s impossible.”
He nodded. “Yes. Very hard. But you,” he said, quieter now, “you have Korean tongue.”
He returned to his work, pulling a smaller knife from a drawer. It was heavier, curved differently. He laid slices of tuna onto a black ceramic plate. Next to them, he added a pinch of pickled ginger and a small, hand-shaped mound of wasabi.
He slid the dish toward her with quiet pride.
She looked down at it, then back up. “How’d you know tuna’s my favorite?”
He shrugged one shoulder, almost coy. “What?���
“Tuna,” she said again, watching him. “It’s my favorite.”
He smiled with the same practiced calm. “Ah. Thank you very much.”
Then he turned his head toward the beaded curtain and shouted, voice sharp. “야! 차 어디 갔어? 빨리 좀 해!”
Behind the curtain came a reply, loud and annoyed.
“지금 드라마 보고 있잖아!”
“드라마는 개뿔이지! 손님 왔잖아, 이 자식아. 빨리 갖고 와!”
“차 뜨거워! 너도 좀 움직여 봐!”
The chef muttered something under his breath, wiped his hands, and moved toward the curtain. The beads clinked as he grabbed the other man by the wrist mid-gesture, twisted it lightly, and leaned in close.
“네가 장군이면 나는 황제다. 그러니까 조용히 차나 갖고 와.”
Then, with a mocking grin and just enough weight to sting, he said in English: “Do you understand?”
The assistant pulled free, scowling, and glanced at Y/N. “대머리 아니거든,” he muttered. Then, in stiff English: “I shave. Do you understand me?”
The chef didn’t even look. He picked up a small knife and threw it underhanded toward the wall. It landed with a soft thud, blade buried in the wood just left of the curtain.
The assistant disappeared without another word.
Y/N didn’t follow his movement. Her fingers just found a napkin and began folding it, slow and absent, like she was trying to pass the time. But her attention stayed open, alert, listening to every creak from the fridge and every shift of weight behind the curtain. She tracked it all without looking.
The chef glanced her way and let out a low sigh. “Sorry,” he murmured.
She smiled, shook her head gently, still all ease and pleasant charm. “No worries at all.”
The chef had gone back to wiping a plate that didn’t need it, slow circles that looked more like habit than cleaning. He hummed something under his breath. No real melody, just sound for the sake of it. Every so often, his eyes drifted up. Not to her. To the curtain. He was waiting, too.
Y/N leaned her chin into her palm and let out a quiet sigh. The kind that sounded like she had nowhere else to be, like this was just another slow stop on a longer, looser itinerary. But beneath the quiet facade, her pulse had cooled into something steadier. Sharper. She was counting. Not seconds. Not movements. Just weight.
The beads stirred again.
The second man reappeared, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. The soju was cold, condensation sliding down the green glass in thick streaks. His fingers were wide, stained around the cuticles, the nails chipped like they had been trimmed with teeth or a dull blade. Hands that had done hard things.
He reached the counter and set the bottle and glass down. He turned to walk away. The chef didn’t let it slide.
His voice cracked through the air, hard and sudden. “야, 예의 좀 갖춰!”
The man didn’t stop completely. He only slowed. His shoulders shifted. A sigh leaked out, long and annoyed.
“뭐? 술 갖다 줬잖아.”
“손님 앞에서는 제대로 해. 외국인이라도.”
A scoff, barely loud enough to register. “외국인이라 모를 텐데 왜 신경 써?”
The chef’s reply came low, firm. “그러니까 더 조심해야지. 한국 사람처럼 보여도 다 듣고 있을 수도 있어.”
There was a pause. Just a few seconds, but heavy. The kind of quiet that wasn’t about silence. It was about choice.
The man muttered something under his breath, just noise really, but shaped by resentment. Then he twisted the cap off the bottle with a rough snap and poured. The soju splashed high in the glass, almost spilling. He shoved it toward her with one hand, the edge of the glass tapping wood just shy of rude.
Then he turned and disappeared again. The beads clattered harder this time. The chef let out a breath.
“죄송합니다,” he said, bowing his head slightly. “그 사람은... 사람 대하는 법을 몰라요.”
Y/N didn’t flinch. Her smile stayed where it had been the whole time, pleasant and unbothered. “Sorry?”
The chef’s tone softened, switching to English like it was muscle memory. “Ah, no, just... he doesn’t know how to talk,” he added, with a thin smile that almost reached his eyes.
She nodded, light, polite. Lifted the shot glass with a small, quiet toast. “Thank you,” she said, and took a sip.
The soju hit cool. Sweet up front, then a clean, sharp finish that sat in the back of her throat and lingered. It didn’t burn. It reminded.
She set the glass down. Picked up her chopsticks. The motion was fluid, casual, not stiff with performance, but practiced. The way a habit becomes part of muscle memory.
She lifted a piece of tuna from the plate, a clean slice that caught the light like silk. Deep ruby red, almost translucent, grain running fine through its surface. She placed it on her tongue and held it there, waiting. It melted. Soft and rich, just a trace of brine and something faintly metallic, like memory. She chewed once. Twice. Let it dissolve.
Her eyes drifted shut, just for a second. 
She set the chopsticks down, careful not to clatter them, then picked up the soju again and finished the glass in a single, smooth pull. The second hit went down easier. The warmth spread slow through her chest, settling in a place that had once held nerves.
Across the counter, the chef watched. He hadn’t changed his expression, but something in the way he stood had eased. Not relaxed, not soft, but carrying a kind of respect. He was noticing a quiet fluency. No words. Just recognition.
“First time in Korea?” he asked. His hands returned to the cutting board, fingers resting near the knife, though he didn’t pick it up yet.
Y/N nodded, finishing another bite. “Mmhmm.”
“What!” he said, voice rising with disbelief that didn’t quite ring false.
She swallowed, wiped the corner of her mouth lightly. “Yes. This is my first time.”
He tilted his head, eyes narrowing just a little. “What brings you to Gwangju?”
Outside, the alley shifted. A gust caught some stray bit of paper and skidded it along the brick like a coin on pavement. Somewhere nearby, a bird let out a single cry, sharp and fast, gone in a blink. The curtain behind her swayed faintly with a whisper-soft clatter, like wind chimes that never quite got the breeze they needed to sing. Y/N adjusted her chopsticks, repositioned them between her fingers, then gently set them down without ever lifting a bite. Her tone was light when she finally spoke, almost conversational.
“I came to see a man.”
The sentence didn’t echo, but it changed something in the room. A beat passed. Not long. But the chef’s hand froze mid-motion, his knife held just above the salmon, blade tilted slightly as if it too had paused to listen.
“Ah,” he said after a moment, stretching the word just enough to carry weight. “A friend in Gwangju?” He didn’t look up.
“Not quite,” she replied.
“Not a friend?”
“No.” She waited until his eyes found hers before continuing. “We’ve never met.”
The blade finally touched the board. A soft sound. Then he laid the knife aside, not quickly, but with care, like he’d decided whatever came next didn’t need a blade in hand. He kept his gaze on the cutting board for a moment longer than necessary, then finally looked up. The expression on his face didn’t shift much, but something behind his eyes sharpened. Not fear. Not even suspicion. Just awareness.
“And,” he said, more quietly now, “may I ask who he is?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Jung Hoseok.”
The name didn’t explode. It didn’t need to. It landed in the room like a rock dropped into still water. No splash. Just the heavy assurance that things were moving beneath the surface now. Her voice hadn’t changed. She wasn’t dramatic. She didn’t lean in. But the name was enough.
The chef went still. Not tense, simply anchored. Like something in him had snapped into place. His right hand rested on the edge of a towel. His left hovered briefly over the blade again, reflex more than anything. The tip of his finger brushed the metal and slipped. A sudden streak of red rose across his knuckle. He looked down at it, just for a moment, and lifted the hand to his mouth. Sucked the blood away like it was routine. No flinch. No sound. Just control, reset.
Behind her, the beads rattled once more, sharper this time. The bald man stepped through again, his face a clenched fist. He didn’t speak. Just let his eyes sweep the room, pausing on her. Not suspicion. Calculation. Like something in the air had told him to pay attention.
He crossed to the counter, picked up the bottle, and poured her another shot. This time, the movement was smooth. No clatter. No shove. Just a quiet, focused pour. He didn’t speak. Didn’t meet her eyes. He finished the pour, left the glass full, and walked out. The beads clacked shut behind him, not loud, not subtle. Just punctuation.
The chef exhaled slowly through his nose. No drama. Just release. Then he took a towel and began wiping his hands carefully, methodically. His eyes stayed on her.
She lifted the new glass in a small, silent toast, even though the man who’d poured it was already gone. The glass was cold enough that it clung to her fingers.
When the chef spoke again, the language changed. No more English. No pretense.
His voice lowered, smooth and even, each word placed with precision. “정호석에게 무슨 용건이 있습니까?”
Y/N didn’t blink.
She answered in Korean, her voice quiet, level. No showmanship. Just the kind of careful weight that traveled farther than volume ever could. “강철이 필요해요.”
His eyes narrowed. Not in suspicion. In thought. Like he was studying her words, not for truth, but for intention. He didn’t answer right away. He let the silence linger.
“왜 강철이 필요하죠?” he asked.
She looked at the glass beside her plate, a droplet tracing its way down the side. Then she met his eyes again. “쥐를 죽이려면요.”
There was another pause, longer this time, but not uncomfortable. Then the chef let out a short laugh. Not cruel. Not mocking. Just low and dry, like someone who had lived long enough to understand how serious things always start in calm voices.
“Must be a big rat,” he said in English this time, voice touched with something close to amusement. “If you need Jung Hoseok steel for it.”
She smiled, but only with one side of her mouth. The other half stayed still.
“Huge,” she said.
They didn’t move. Didn’t raise their voices. The air between them didn’t buzz with tension, but it held. Quiet. Pulled tight like thread stretched between fingers. It didn’t warn. It just waited.
The chef gave a small nod. Y/N didn’t speak, didn’t finish the food. She left the second shot untouched. The fish remained as he had plated it, artful, unspoiled. The only sign she had been there was the soft, fading ring left behind by her first glass, already drying into the grain of the wood.
She rose without a sound and followed him through the beaded curtain, not once looking back.
The hallway beyond was narrow and long, the kind of space that time forgets. The wallpaper, beige or yellow once, now sun-bleached into something closer to nicotine-stained parchment, peeled at the edges in slow curls. The floorboards creaked just enough to remind you that no one had fixed them in a long while, and maybe no one ever would. The air smelled lived-in, dense with cooking oil and old plaster, like generations of heat had steeped into the walls. A single bulb swung gently from the ceiling, flickering once before settling into a thin, steady glow.
Hoseok walked ahead, silent, his gait quiet but confident. He didn’t rush. He didn’t hesitate. His steps were even, deliberate, the kind of pace that didn’t waste energy or ask permission. When he reached the end of the corridor, he glanced up and found the pull cord, barely visible in the dim light, hanging like a spider’s thread. He tugged it once.
A low groan came from above, followed by a creaking shift. A square panel in the ceiling cracked open with a dusty exhale, and a folded ladder unfolded downward with slow, mechanical clicks, the rungs snapping into place like joints stretching after too long at rest.
He climbed first. She followed.
Her boots hit the rungs with soft thuds, the sound swallowed by the close space around her. One hand on each side rail, steady, smooth. No wasted movement. She didn’t glance up, didn’t glance down. Just climbed. The air thickened as she ascended, growing warmer, more still. There was a shift in temperature, and in smell. Wood. Oil. Steel.
As she rose through the opening, the attic revealed itself like a photograph developing in slow motion.
It wasn’t big, but it felt larger than it should have. The low ceiling curved inward slightly, giving the space a strange hush, like it was used to quiet. The warmth was immediate. Not stifling, but deep, the kind of heat that came from bodies and time and electricity burning low and constant. The scent was unmistakable to anyone who knew what it meant: cedar, carbon, and choji oil. That distinct blend of camellia and clove, familiar only to those who have ever cared for a blade.
The light from the window was weak, filtered through grime that hadn’t been wiped away in years. But what little came through cast long golden lines across the floor, picking out the pattern in the grain and throwing deep shadows that stretched and curled. The floor was clean. Worn, but swept. Not a speck of dust in sight. No clutter, no trash. This wasn’t storage. It was maintenance.
On the far wall stood the racks.
Not shelves. Not hooks. Racks, each one handmade, shaped with intention, joined by hand rather than hardware. Pale wood, aged and patient. No decoration. No flair. Just quiet craftsmanship. They held swords. Not just katanas. Blades.
Dozens of them, each one unique. Their sheaths glinted in the dim light: black lacquer with soft reflections, deep red urushi, mottled green like old bark. One was wrapped in white rayskin bound with gold. Each sageo tie—gray, plum, navy—was knotted tight and deliberate, tension held with purpose. The tsuka, wrapped in silk, were symmetrical to the point of obsession. Every fold precise. Every diamond perfect. Each kashira had its own story: copper dragons, koi fish, sakura petals, brass ships riding a storm. And the tsuba were miniature sculptures of iron and bronze, some simple, some elaborate, none ornamental for the sake of it. These weren’t pieces for display. They were weapons made to be used. Cared for, kept sharp, kept ready.
Y/N stepped forward, her movements quiet, measured. She didn’t touch anything. Didn’t need to. The room held its own gravity. The kind of silence that didn’t beg for reverence but commanded it through sheer presence. Every detail—the blades, the wood, the air itself—spoke for her to listen.
Behind her, Hoseok didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to either. His stillness wasn’t tense or withdrawn. It was aware. Watching, but not pressing.
She turned slightly, just enough to glance over her shoulder. Her voice, when it came, was soft. Her Korean clear and careful. “May I?”
A beat passed, subtle but intentional. Then, his reply, not in Korean this time but in English. And for some reason, that made it gentler. “Yes, you may. Second from the top. Sixth row. Left side.”
She nodded once and turned back to the racks. Her steps didn’t creak the floorboards. She moved with the kind of calm that came from purpose, not performance. Her eyes scanned, counted, found it: sixth row, left side, second down.
She stopped in front of it, let her gaze rest on the sheath before reaching for it. Black lacquer, smooth and deep enough to absorb the light. It reflected just the faintest outline of her face, blurred, formless. The finish was perfect, but not decorative. Not flashy. Maintained, not polished. Like someone had wiped it down once a week for decades, always with the same cloth.
The sageo cord was tied in a neat, practical knot. Not ornamental. Not lazy. Tight, squared. The kind of tie someone would redo until they got it right. The tsuba was brass, aged and worn, its surface darkened by time and touch. Etched pine branches crawled along its edges, simple, understated, and detailed enough to tell you it wasn’t mass-produced. It had been chosen.
Her fingers wrapped around the tsuka. The silk binding was tight, smooth, crisscrossed with perfect symmetry. Black cord over white rayskin. Traditional. Familiar. The handle sat against her palm like a known shape, like something she had used before, even if she hadn’t.
And something inside her, something she hadn’t even noticed was noisy, went quiet.
She drew the blade without hesitation, not for show, just to see. It came free with a sound so subtle it was almost imagined. Like breath drawn through cloth. The kind of sound that disappears if you’re not paying attention. But she always paid attention.
Light caught the blade and changed it. What had been metal turned fluid. Reflections danced along the edge, fractured and reformed as she moved. The hamon curled like a pale ripple, shifting with every minor tilt of her hands. The kissaki was long, graceful. Measured for reach, not for display. The sword wasn’t just well-made. It had purpose in its design. Intention.
She held it in both hands now. The balance fell into place like it knew where to go. No resistance. No demand. Just a quiet agreement between steel and muscle, weight and memory.
Behind her, Hoseok finally stirred. The smallest motion: fabric shifting, a heel settling more fully into the floor. When she turned slightly, she saw him near the window, one hand deep in his pocket. The other rolled something between his fingers.
A baseball. Worn, the leather dulled to a soft gray, the seams darkened, fraying. It looked like it had been tossed from hand to hand for years. He turned it over in his palm absently, like it was more habit than thought.
“Funny,” he said, voice quiet enough that the words didn’t quite disturb the stillness. “You like swords…”
He tossed the ball into the air, caught it once without looking.
“…I like baseball.”
Then, without warning, he threw it.
There was no flourish. No wind-up. Just a sudden motion, fast, clean, direct. The ball cut through the air on a line straight toward her. No room to think. No time for a plan.
Her arms moved before her mind did. The sword rose in a single arc, smooth and efficient. No tension in the shoulders, no wasted energy in the swing. The blade moved as though she were answering something, not striking.
The ball split cleanly.
There was no dramatic crack. No cinematic echo. Just a soft, muted thud, leather parting under steel, a sound more felt than heard. One half of the ball skidded off and rolled beneath the nearest rack. The other bounced off her boot and stopped.
She didn’t breathe out. Not yet. Her grip had already eased. The sword angled down, relaxed at her side, tip toward the floor. Balanced again, as if nothing had happened.
Hoseok stepped forward, steady as ever, though something behind his expression had shifted. Barely, but enough for her to notice. A flicker in his eyes, like a thought he hadn’t yet decided whether to keep or release. He lifted a hand toward her, slow and sure. Not a demand. Not a gesture of control. It was open, deliberate. A quiet invitation to return something that wasn’t quite hers yet.
She reversed the blade, offering the hilt without hesitation. No dramatic pause, no faltering. Just weight moving from her hands to his. The handoff was clean, unspoken, the kind of exchange that didn’t need ceremony to be understood.
He sheathed the sword with practiced ease, and the sound—soft, precise, the smooth slide of steel into lacquered wood—didn’t echo. It landed. Not loud, not theatrical. Just final. Like a breath held, then released.
“I wanted to show you these,” he said in Korean, the playful edge from earlier gone. His voice had changed, calmer now, older somehow. He held the sheathed blade in both hands, fingers gliding over the lacquer not to clean it, but to remember it. “But someone like you… someone like you already understands.”
He placed it gently back in its rack, hands steady, motions exact. Each movement held weight, the kind of intention that couldn’t be faked. “I no longer make instruments of death,” he said, softer now, almost to himself. “I keep them for their beauty. For what they once meant. Because I love them.”
There was a quiet pride in his words, not boastful, just true. He bowed his head slightly. “I’m proud of what I made. Proud of how well I made them. But I am retired.”
She stepped closer, silent. No threat in her approach, only certainty. Her presence filled the space without trying to. Her voice came softly, but with clarity.
“Then give me one.”
The words landed like a pin in still fabric. He turned to face her, jaw tightening.
“They’re not for sale.”
“I didn’t say sell me one.”
They locked eyes. Her stare didn’t waver. Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.
“I said give me one.”
A pause opened between them. Not long, but heavy. The kind that held all the weight of what hadn’t been said yet. When he spoke again, it was clipped. Cold.
“And why should I help you?”
She didn’t blink. “Because the vermin I’m after,” she said, the words clean and hard, “was your student.”
That stopped him. Not with a flinch, not with alarm. Just a subtle shift. Shoulders lowered by a fraction, breath held at the top of his chest. His silence was sudden and full.
She stepped in again. “And considering the student…” she let the rest hang, then added, “you have certain obligations.”
He turned and walked toward the narrow attic window, its frame sun-bleached and warped slightly with age. With the back of his hand, he wiped away a patch of fog, clearing a view just big enough to see the city stretching out below them—rooftops, wires, and the slow dimming of the day. The glass was damp, the edges still filmed in condensation.
With one finger, he reached up and began to write.
TAEHYUNG.
The name curved faintly in the glass, drawn in a line of skin oil and breath. Outside, the wind kicked up, brushing against the building with a hollow tap. The beams creaked. The attic seemed to lean into the moment. The name.
She didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just nodded once. That was enough.
Hoseok turned, walked to the trapdoor, and reached for the old latch. It gave with a dry metallic groan. The ladder creaked as it unfolded, the sound echoing faintly in the rafters.
He gestured to the corner. A futon, rolled neatly. A folded blanket beside it. A small jug of water, a wooden comb laid with care. Nothing lavish. Nothing new. Just clean. Lived-in.
“You can sleep here,” he said in Korean. “I’ll make space downstairs. Might take a day or two to find proper furniture.”
He descended the ladder with the same quiet weight he carried everywhere. But just before the hatch closed, his voice floated back up, lower and firmer.
“It’ll take a month to make the blade.”
A pause. The creak of one last step below.
“I suggest you spend it practicing.”
Then the hatch closed with a solid, wooden thunk. Not sharp. Not aggressive. Just complete.
She stood still, alone in the attic, the air settling around her like dust that had waited too long to fall. The quiet wasn’t just quiet anymore. It was thick, almost physical. A silence that had weight, like the room itself was holding its breath after what had been said, what had been written.
The last of the afternoon light had slipped away without notice, and in its place came the muted amber of early evening. Outside, the city blurred. Rooftops softened, edges dulled, the sky folding into dusk with no sharp lines left. Gwangju looked like it was remembering something it didn’t want to say out loud.
She walked toward the window, slow and steady, her boots tapping gently against the floor. The name was still there, hovering in the circle of cleared glass, faint but legible. TAEHYUNG. The letters had already started to run a little, the edges softened by moisture and time.
From her coat, she pulled a cloth. It was plain, the kind of fabric that had seen years of use—creased, worn, stripped of anything personal. Just something that did its job. She raised it and began to wipe. One pass. Then another. Then again. Not hard, not angry. Just firm. Methodical. With each motion, the letters blurred a little more, until they were nothing but streaks. And then nothing at all. Just fog again.
She held her hand to the glass for a second longer, palm pressed flat. The warmth from her skin left a faint outline before the cold reclaimed it. It faded just like the name had. Quick, quiet, complete.
She folded the cloth with care and tucked it back into her coat, her fingers working with practiced ease. No lingering. No pause for meaning.
Then she turned from the window.
Outside, the city kept fading. Behind her, the attic returned to stillness. The name was gone. And with it, whatever place he might’ve held in her. Taehyung Kim had already taken too much. There was no room left in her for the ghost of him. Not anymore.
He would fall. And when he did, she would finally be free.
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chimcess ¡ 5 days ago
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⚔︎ Chapter Five: The Snake in Busan Pairing: Taehyung x Reader Other Tags: Assassin!Taehyung, Assassin!Reader, Assassin!Jimin, Dad!Jimin, Assassin!Yoongi, Gang Leader!Yoongi, Assassin!Namjoon, Swordmaster!Hoseok, Chef!Hoseok, Pimp!Seokjin Genre: Assassins! AU, Exes!AU, Lovers to Enemies, Action, Comedy, Suspense, Martial Arts, Drama, Thriller, Romance (if you squint), Heavy Angst, Violence, 18+ only Word Count: 17k+ Summary: A former assassin awakens from a four-year coma after her ex-lover Taehyung tries to kill her on her wedding day. Driven by revenge for the loss of her unborn child and stolen life, she creates a hit list and embarks on a ruthless mission to take down everyone responsible. Warnings: toxic relationship, talks of character death, graphic violence, aggressive characters, jealousy, training, flashbacks, implied smut, bathing together, strong language, guilt, emotional turmoil, regret, vengeance, these relationships are all tangled up, non-graphic smut, backstory, another tame chapter, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: So, why did Hoseok Jung stop making swords?
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The attic was dim, the air thick with sandalwood. It clung to the rafters, soaked into the beams, and seeped from the floorboards like time itself had steeped in it. The walls exhaled the scent in slow, heavy breaths.
Candlelight sputtered low, throwing jagged shadows across old wood. Steel glinted in the flicker. Hoseok Jung’s sword collection lined the wall like a silent jury. Every blade had a name. Every saya was polished like a relic. Y/N had studied them all during her month in Gwangju. She’d held them, trained with them, bled on their edges. By the time the incense stopped catching in her throat, she knew each one like her own hands.
Hoseok stood at the altar, his black silk robe whisper-quiet as he moved. The candlelight reached for him, but the silk swallowed it whole. A serpent devouring its own tail was stitched across his chest in blood-red thread. Once, his face had been soft, someone who believed peace was a choice. Time, sorrow, and war had carved that man away. What was left was sharp. Dangerous. His eyes, obsidian, reflected nothing. His lips were drawn tight. Whatever softness Y/N had once known was gone. He had grown out his goatee during the month they trained.
Moon-Byul stood beside him, unmoving. His robe mirrored Hoseok’s, minus the serpent. Instead, gold-threaded cranes rose up from the hem. His head was freshly shaved, his expression unreadable. Moon always hovered between brilliance and boredom, amused, never impressed. Once, he called Y/N a lion after she bested him in a spar. She never forgot it. They were close in age, and he treated her as an equal. Hoseok, though, was a kindred spirit. After two weeks of wooden swords, Y/N knew his every move. When sticks stopped being fun, they switched to steel. They both got cut, nothing deep. They spent more time praising each other than nursing bruises.
Hoseok was still a master, but past his prime. Had they met when he was her age, she wouldn’t have stood a chance. She knew that. She just happened to meet him late enough to survive.
On the altar lay a single sword.
The lacquered sheath looked wet, like still water under moonlight. Brass fittings in the momoji style curled into maple leaves at each end. One leaf caught the light like it had something to say. A gold band ringed the fuchi.
The tsuba was a custom prayer wheel, Jung Style the smiths called it, flanked by Kozuka-ana and Kogai-ana holes. The seppa were plain brass. The menuki, blackened kongosho, three-pronged spears invoking Fudo Myo, the wrathful protector.
The sageo was mustard, tied in precise knots. No shitodome. Pure function. The saya was purpose shaped into beauty. Solid fittings. A gold ring off-center. Twin gold stripes traced its spine and edge. The ito was leather-wrapped, white ray skin beneath.
Y/N had seen many blades. Trained with legends. But this one didn’t gleam. It warned. It pulsed. It whispered. It was the most beautiful. And the most dangerous.
Silence held.
Then Hoseok spoke.
“I’m done doing what I swore to God nearly ten years ago I would never do again,” he said. “I’ve created... something that kills people.”
He looked at the blade. A breath passed.
“And in that purpose, I was a success.”
He stepped forward and knelt. The floor creaked beneath him. He turned slightly toward the girl in the shadows. Her hair hung loose, her eyes wide. A fading bruise marked her wrist. The candlelight caught the frayed hem of her pants. She stood like she was bracing for something.
“I did this,” Hoseok said, quieter, “because philosophically, I’m sympathetic to your aim.”
His palm rested on the sheath.
“This is my finest sword. If on your journey you should encounter God…” He gripped the hilt. “God will be cut.”
He rose. The light caught his jaw, casting deep shadows.
When he looked at her again, something in his gaze had shifted, just slightly. The way Pai Mei had looked at her before she left China. She thought of her old master, wondered if he was still alive, still alone. She never thought to visit. Pai Mei didn’t like guests. He would mock her if she showed up without reason. But he had cared for her. More than he cared for Taehyung. And that had meant something. Pai Mei saw Taehyung as a son.
She blinked, realized she had drifted. Hoseok was still staring.
“Revenge,” he said, “is never a straight line.”
The incense pressed in. The air thickened. The attic closed around them.
“It’s a forest,” he said. “And like a forest, it’s easy to lose your way. To get lost. To forget where you came in.”
He stepped forward again, robe trailing like dusk.
“To serve as a compass,” he said, “a combat philosophy must be adopted.”
Moon-Byul moved without sound, placing a scroll in Hoseok’s hands. The parchment looked brittle. The ink was claws on rice paper. The Doctrine. The old Yagu code. Hoseok’s legacy.
He looked at Y/N.
“Repeat after me.”
His voice turned sharp. He began in Japanese.
Hoseok was born in Gwangju but raised mostly in Okinawa, under his grandfather’s roof. His family had fled to Japan before the war, hiding in a village so small it escaped notice even during the bombings. His grandfather made katanas, not hwandos. Y/N doubted they kept the name “Jung” there.
Hoseok’s childhood was carved between languages, between cultures. Between silences.
He held the scroll.
“When engaged in combat, the vanquishing of thine enemy can be the warrior’s only concern…”
Y/N echoed him in Japanese, low and steady.
“This is the first and cardinal rule of combat…”
No pause.
“Suppress all human emotion and compassion…”
Her jaw clenched.
“Kill whoever stands in thy way,” Hoseok said, “even if that be Lord God or Buddha himself…”
She didn’t hesitate. Hoseok’s voice was smooth, almost soothing. Hers was rougher, clipped. Her Korean was better.
“This truth lies at the heart of the art of combat,” Hoseok whispered. “Once it is mastered… thou shall fear no one. Though the devil himself may bar thy way…”
Y/N didn’t blink.
Hoseok bowed. She bowed back, then stepped forward. Her fingers closed around the hilt, steady, callused. The blade slid free with a soft hiss, catching candlelight as it rose. It was flawless.
Two gold carvings marked it: the unfinished Hattori mon, raw and exposed, and a Shi-sha before a war spear, garnet eyes gleaming. Hoseok’s lion. His mark. All his swords bore it. Now it belonged to her.
The hamon shimmered. Notare cresting into chaos halfway up the blade. Chu-kissaki tip. Toriizori curve. Every line exact, every surface mirrored. She saw the whole room behind her in its polish.
Hoseok spoke in English.
“Be careful, Y/N.”
She looked at him. Really looked. Weeks of sweat and silence had taught her more than any master before. He hadn’t comforted her. He had prepared her. Soup left wordlessly. Mid-spar corrections, sharp and precise. Quiet care. The kind that mattered.
Moon-Byul had honed her into something hard and clean. She would miss them both. And the restaurant downstairs, sticky tables, chipped cups, perfect kimbap.
“Can I come back?” she asked. “If I need help?”
Hoseok smiled. Small. Honest. It softened him.
“You are always welcome here, Black Mamba.”
She bowed. Deep. He matched it.
Then straightened, voice lighter.
“Now,” he said, “you need to rest. You have vermin waiting.”
She turned toward the stairs, sword in hand. Neither man followed.
Her room was barely a closet. Low ceiling. Thin walls. But it was hers. Quiet.
She closed the door. The soft click of the lock steadied her. The air felt heavier now. Tomorrow pressed close.
At the desk, Hoseok had left paper and charcoals. A small gesture. She had mentioned once that she used to draw.
The page waited, too white, too still. She pulled one sheet loose, placed it flat.
Her hand moved before her mind caught up. Lines. Shapes. Motion without thought.
Then a name surfaced. Unwelcome. Unavoidable.
Yoongi Min.
Just thinking it made her chest tighten. She hadn’t said it out loud in years, afraid it might summon him. But her hand didn’t stop.
His face came first. Sharp cheekbones, guarded eyes, the mouth set hard, almost smiling. The cold was there. But so was the warmth. The version of him that existed only for her. She hated that she remembered.
“Bittersweet” was too neat a word. Nothing about him had ever been clean.
Yoongi wasn’t Taehyung. No one was. Taehyung had been wildfire, beautiful and ruinous. She had run toward that fire.
But Yoongi... he was the silence in a world that never stopped screaming. Tea at 3 a.m. No questions. No fixing. Just space. He didn’t tame her. He made room.
And for a while, that had been enough.
Her strokes slowed. Smaller now. More careful. Her wrist trembled once. Her eyes stung.
He hadn’t always been cruel. Not with her. There had been jokes. Seoul nights. The way he used to hold her like the world had ended. Even his rivalry with Brandi had dulled eventually. And she remembered how he used to look at her, like she was something holy. Like he wasn’t sure he deserved her. Maybe once, she believed it.
Then came Two Pines. Yoongi chose empire. Chose power over her without blinking. And whatever they had died in that moment. Now he wore the crown like it belonged to him. Never apologized. Never looked back.
She gripped the charcoal too hard. It snapped. She didn’t flinch. Just picked up the broken half and kept drawing.
Two Pines had been a dream: peace under trees, shared breath, a place to exhale. It became a slaughterhouse. He didn’t save her. Didn’t try. He watched. She never forgave him. She never would.
Yoongi Min would pay. That was carved into her bones now. Love didn’t excuse it. Didn’t clean it. Didn’t quiet the screams. She saw them in her sleep, felt them in her chest every time she closed her eyes.
This desk was her altar now. A page, a truth. Vengeance wasn’t theory. It was instinct. Ritual. Religion.
I loved him. And I’ll still kill him.
Once, that thought might’ve broken her. Now it fit. Now it kept her warm.
Sometimes she pictured it: the moment he saw her again. Not the executioner. Not the girl who once touched him like a prayer. Just two broken things who loved each other before they learned how to ruin everything.
Her eyes dropped to the sketch. His face stared back. Not a portrait. A reckoning. He didn’t look like the tyrant the world feared or the boy she trusted. He looked like what lived in between. A ghost of someone who never got to choose who he became.
A tear slid down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it. Didn’t need to. Her hand moved harder now, charcoal grinding into the paper, deepening the shadows beneath his eyes, carving out the line of his jaw, the shape of that mouth.
That mouth. It had saved her once. Destroyed her, too. She knew it better than her own reflection.
She was almost done.
When she drew the last line, something settled. The version of him on the page was final. Whatever was left of him in the world, she’d bury it herself.
Vengeance doesn’t wait. Not even for love.
She paused. The charcoal trembled in her grip. The lamp buzzed louder, throwing jagged shadows across the wall. Dust floated like time had paused, just to watch.
Then it came. A voice from somewhere deep. Old. At that moment, you think: it’s proof like no other. That not only does God exist, but you’re doing His will.
It hit like a splinter beneath the skin. She remembered hearing it once. Young. Believing. Blade in one hand, faith in the other. Back when certainty felt like armor. When killing felt like purpose.
A sound escaped her. Something like a laugh, scraped raw. That belief was dead now. Buried under ash, silk, and silence at Two Pines.
There was no holy mission. No divine justice. Just blood and what followed. She wasn’t a prophet. Wasn’t anyone’s daughter anymore. That girl, the one who prayed, was long gone. What remained was colder. Sharper.
Her fingers moved again. One last stroke across the collarbone, clean and exact. Not decoration. Not feeling. It was dissection. Finding what hadn’t rotted in the corpse of something long dead.
When I knew the least about my enemies, she thought, the first name I wrote was the easiest. And Yoongi Min had never tried to hide. Not from her. Not from anyone. No aliases. No masks. No intermediaries. He stood in the center of his own legend, calm as a man pouring tea. Never flinched. Never blinked.
They called him Busan’s velvet devil. A gentleman butcher. A king in wolf’s clothing. No one whispered his name, they said it with care. Like it might unlock something dangerous.
He didn’t build his empire in shadow. He built it loud. Deliberate. Brick by bloody brick. Face bare. Eyes forward. His business was fear, and he ran it like art.
And once, she had loved that face. Not like Taehyung. That had been fire. Destruction you welcomed. Yoongi was different. Solid. Still.
He sat with her on the bad nights. No questions. No comfort. Just presence. He let her have silence without trying to fill it. And when she needed him, really needed, he was there. Now she needed him gone.
The memories cut sharp. Her hand hesitated, then pressed on. She darkened the hollow of his throat. Sketched the collar of his coat, always black, always tailored. Gloves. Always gloves. A man who knew what he was. Never pretended otherwise.
Her thoughts circled back to where it began. Taehyung. He didn’t enter a room, he arrived. Moved like smoke. Looked like he knew secrets you hadn’t earned. Every move deliberate. Every silence calculated. He didn’t fight for the top, he acted like he already lived there. And the world didn’t argue. She’d loved that about him. God help her, she had.
Yoongi was twenty-nine when Taehyung handed him the kingdom. It wasn’t loyalty. It was strategy. A chess move disguised as trust. And Yoongi wore the crown like it had always been his.
She didn’t trust the memory, too warped, too worn. But it came back anyway. Again and again. Now, staring at the page, something in her chest went still. His eyes. That same emptiness. That certainty. Like he already knew how your story ended, and wasn’t impressed.
Once, those eyes had looked at her differently. Maybe not with love. But with recognition. Like he saw her. Now he wouldn’t blink. And neither would she.
Her hand slowed, weight behind each stroke. She shaped his mouth, the same one that once told her she was more than fire. The one that kissed her like she was something worth saving.
But that version of them was gone. Whatever she’d been to him, whatever he’d been to her, it didn’t matter anymore.
Hoseok had told her how the war ended. Not quietly. Not with peace. It ended the way power always does when it refuses to share: loud, brutal, almost holy in scale.
He said Yoongi had stood on the edge of the last battlefield, black hanbok catching the light like oil, moving like smoke. The final rival, once feared, bled out at his feet.
Yoongi didn’t gloat. Didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. He looked down. Stepped over the body. Kept walking. Like death was just another item crossed off the list. That was what made him terrifying. Not the violence. The indifference.
After that, Busan didn’t resist. It bowed. Now the only trace of that man lived in graphite and shadow on the page in front of her.
Her hand moved in steady strokes, building his face in layers. Every line felt less like art and more like exhumation. She wasn’t drawing. She was digging. Through wreckage. Through memory. Through what was left.
Yoongi’s features came together piece by piece. The sharp jaw. The cold slope of his eyes. The soft curve of his mouth, more memory than muscle now. Not quite a king. Not the boy she’d known. Something in between. A ghost on paper.
Then her hand slipped. The charcoal snapped, rolled across the desk, stopped against the edge of a dried tea stain. She didn’t reach for it. Just stared.
The face on the page looked back, unfinished. Not a monster. Not a myth. A man.
And still, the image stayed. Burned into memory like a scar: Yoongi, that night. Black hanbok, sleeves wet with blood, standing over the last man who dared to defy him. The body twitched once, reflex or defiance, but it didn’t matter. It was over.
Yoongi didn’t pause. He turned to the others. His face unreadable. Cold. If there was emotion, it was certainty.
And that was the thing that made him impossible to outrun. He didn’t need to conquer you. He made you realize you’d already lost.
Smoke from gunfire still hung in the air. Cries just beginning to fade. And there he stood beneath a shattered skylight, cherry blossoms drifting through broken glass. Still. Too still.
He looked like something pulled out of a dream and dressed in blood.
And when the final scream died, Busan bowed.
Hoseok had told her about that night like a prayer he wasn’t sure he should say.
“It was one of those nights,” he’d murmured, voice low. “You could feel it. In the air. Like the city already knew. Like it could taste the blood before it hit the ground.”
And after came the gathering at The Red Lantern Club. Not really a club. More like a mirage stitched together underground. Velvet curtains. Perfume and secrets. Jazz leaking through the walls. Lighting low and sharp. Voices too soft. Cigar smoke hanging like a lie.
Somewhere behind a locked door, a woman was always crying. No one ever asked why.
The deeper you went, the worse it got. The air thickened. The light reddened. By the time you hit the center, it didn’t feel like nightlife. It felt like hell with waitstaff and designer liquor.
That night, the city’s old guard had gathered. Six kkangpae bosses, men who’d ruled for decades. Draped in silk and legacy. Their suits cost more than most lives. Their rings were old as dynasties.
Behind them stood their muscle. Armed, still, waiting.
And in the center of it all stood Yoongi.
He wore a black suit that seemed to drain the light around it. Everything about him was honed to a point: jaw, eyes, presence. Hair slicked back. Not a strand out of place.
The chandelier above caught his face in shards. He didn’t look human. He looked like death taught how to wear a suit.
He didn’t speak. Just watched.
His gaze moved slow, surgical. A scalpel drawn across the room. Every glance measured posture, weakness, fear.
And the fear was heavy. Thick enough to taste.
These were men who weren’t used to being afraid. But they were smart enough to feel it.
They could kill him. They had the numbers, the firepower. But it would cost more than any of them were willing to pay.
One by one, they raised their glasses. Not respect. Ritual. Whiskey. Toasts. Smiles stretched too thin.
Everyone was pretending. No one was celebrating.
Except one.
Boss Yoon. All silk and silence. Hands folded over his stomach like he was holding something ugly inside. He didn’t toast. Didn’t smile. Just stared. He hated Yoongi.
Half-Japanese. Half-Korean. Raised on Camp Humphreys. Too foreign for tradition. Too clean for blood.
To men like Yoon, Yoongi didn’t belong. He hadn’t earned it. Hadn’t clawed his way up through mud and knives like they had.
In another time, another world, Yoongi wouldn’t have even been let in the building. But this wasn’t another time. This was Yoongi’s time.
Yoongi hadn’t inherited power. He hadn’t waited for it. He’d taken it, piece by piece. Clean. Quiet. He didn’t follow bloodlines. He erased them. Rewrote the hierarchy. Dug his throne out of the dead.
And Boss Yoon couldn’t stand it.
His son, Chan, sat beside him, tight-lipped, tense. When he moved, it was like something uncoiling. His hand came up slow, then slammed down, palm first, into his plate. The porcelain cracked hard, shards scattering across the table like shrapnel.
Silence hit the room like a slap. Every glass stopped midair. Every throat held breath. Even the jazz behind the walls seemed to pause, like the music knew when to be afraid.
Yoongi didn’t move.
Yoon stood. Slowly. Like the motion hurt. His shoulders were tight, jaw clenched, rage leaking through every breath. His guards shifted. Hands hovered over blades. The room felt suddenly very small.
A younger boss, maybe still naive enough to think this could be salvaged, broke the silence. “What’s the meaning of this?” he asked, voice pinched and too high. “What’s this outburst supposed to mean?”
Yoon didn’t answer right away. When he finally did, his voice sounded like old rust: thin, bitter, sharp enough to cut. “What am I supposed to celebrate?” he said, spitting each word. “The death of this council? The stain on our fathers’ work?”
The murmurs started small, like the first crackle of a fire. A glance here, a whisper there. Fast words. Faster doubt. The kind of unease that spreads before anyone admits it. The air thickened until it clung to the walls like smoke.
Then Yoongi spoke. “Gentlemen.”
One word. Calm. Even. Icy. It dropped into the room like ash from a fire that had already burned everything worth saving. He didn’t raise his voice. He never had to.
“Boss Yoon has something he’d like to share,” he said, tone flat, bored even. Like he was reciting bullet points at a board meeting. “So let’s hear it. What rot do you smell, Yoon-sshi?”
Yoon didn’t hesitate. Maybe he thought it was mercy. Maybe he thought it was his moment. Or maybe he just couldn’t stop himself. He pushed his chair back like a man stepping onto a stage. His knuckles were white against the table’s edge. His hands trembled, barely. But not from fear. It was deeper. Older. Resentment carved into bone.
“My father,” Yoon began, voice cracking under the weight of something too big for the room. “Yours. All of them. They built this council on blood. On discipline. On legacy. This table,” he gestured broadly, cuffs of his silk shaking, “was carved from code. From purity.”
A sharp crack rang out across the room. Boss Bae had slammed his glass down hard enough to chip the base. His eyes were wide with fury. “Outrageous,” he snapped. “You insult this council.” He grabbed his napkin and tossed it across the table like it meant something. “Bastard.”
Yoon caught it, didn’t look, flung it back. “Fuck face.”
“Enough,” Yoongi said. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. His eyes didn’t leave Yoon. “Speak.”
Yoon did. He stood straighter, like bracing for a storm, and let it out in one breath.
“I speak of the perversion we’ve allowed into this council. The disgrace that sits at its head. A place I’ve loved more than my own children. Desecrated. By crowning a half-breed Korean Jap-American bitch as its leader.”
It happened before the air had time to shift.
One moment Yoongi was seated. The next, he was standing on the table, sword already drawn. The blade cleared its sheath with a whisper. His coat moved like smoke. Spilled bourbon soaked into the soles of his shoes as he crouched, stepped forward, and swung.
One cut.
Yoon’s head came off like the sword had been waiting for it. It spun once in the air, a blur of silk and skin, then dropped with a sound too soft for what had just happened. Blood followed, bright and fast, arcing across the table. It soaked silver, silk, polished leather. Splattered napkins. Stained velvet. Pooled beneath the feet of men who had ruled Busan’s underworld longer than Yoongi had been alive. Yoon’s body folded in on itself like a puppet cut clean.
The room froze.
Yoongi stood at the center, framed in crystal and blood. His face was flecked red. Still. Unmoved. He rose from his crouch without urgency, eyes flat.
No one spoke. The six remaining bosses kept their eyes on the body or the floor. None dared look at him.
At the edge of the mess, Yoon’s two guards still held their swords. The moment had already passed. One trembled. The other stood stiff, waiting for a bullet that hadn’t come.
Yoongi turned to them. His face didn’t show anger. Or satisfaction. Just that cold certainty, the look of a man who didn’t guess. Who didn’t need to.
He didn’t make a threat. He didn’t have to.
“Fight me,” he said. “Or work for me.”
The two men looked at each other. Loyalty passed between them, brief, reflexive. But it didn’t hold. Not in this blood. Not in this room. They dropped their swords.
“On the floor,” Yoongi said.
The blades hit tile, sharp in the quiet.
“Get behind me.”
They moved, slow, hands open.
“On your knees.”
They knelt.
“Foreheads down.”
They lowered.
“Keep your mouths shut.”
Yoongi turned back toward the table.
No one had moved. Their hands stayed on armrests that no longer felt like theirs. Suits once tailored to power now looked too tight, like their authority no longer fit. These were men who had run cities, ordered executions between drinks, built empires in back rooms. Now they sat like children caught lying, avoiding Yoongi’s eyes, saying nothing.
Even the oldest among them, men who had once terrified nations, kept their heads down. They all understood what had changed. No one here was stupid enough to think they could challenge him. They had all seen what he’d done to reach this seat. No one was angry about his rise.
Boss Bae just hated Boss Yoon for ruining the mood.
Across the room, just beyond the chandelier’s reach, Lynn Easton watched. One leg crossed, cigarette between two fingers, unlit and forgotten. Her eyes never left Yoongi. There was something in her gaze that looked like admiration, but it wasn’t.
It was worship. Not the kind given to saints.
The kind reserved for gods who kill.
No fear in her. No hesitation. She knew what he was. Saw it in him like a reflection. She didn’t flinch. She smiled. Slow. Precise.
Yoongi spoke again. His voice was smooth, low. Velvet over steel. Polished. Corporate. Lethal.
“I’m going to say this in English,” he said to the table, “so you understand exactly how serious I am.”
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. Every word landed with the weight of steel.
“As your leader,” he said, tone flat, “I encourage you from time to time, and always in a respectful manner, to question my logic.”
Lynn translated quietly from her chair, thoroughly amused by his outburst.
“If you’re unconvinced that a particular plan of action I’ve decided is the wisest, tell me so,” Yoongi said. “But allow me to convince you and I promise you right here and now, no subject will ever be taboo.”
He paused.
“Except, of course, the subject that was just under discussion.”
He turned, slow, toward a soldier behind him. A big man, pale and sweating through his collar, standing like he wasn’t sure if movement would get him killed.
“Hand me the head.”
The soldier hesitated, then stepped across the blood-slick floor. He knelt, gripped Yoon’s hair through his gloves, and lifted what was left. Blood still dripped from the neck. The mouth hung slack. The eyes stared, wide and glassy. Whatever they had seen last had stayed with them.
Yoongi took it without ceremony. Like passing a file across a desk. He held it up slightly. Let the face do the talking.
That expression was still there, that last moment of realization, right before death, when the brain knows it’s over but the body hasn’t caught up.
Then Yoongi’s voice changed.
It dropped lower. Rougher. No polish now. No formality. This wasn’t the voice of a man at the head of a boardroom. This was the voice from before. From the alleys. From a life of being told he didn’t belong. A voice that didn’t learn to fight. It had to.
“The price you pay,” he said, every word slow and exact, “for bringing up either my Japanese or American heritage as a negative…”
He raised the head just a little higher.
“…is I collect your fuckin’ head.”
One of the dons swallowed, loud in the quiet. Another froze completely, like even the sound of a breath might draw attention. Under the table, someone moved to cross themselves, then stopped, maybe remembering no god watched over this place.
“Just like this fucker here,” Yoongi added, swinging the head in a small arc. A red line traced the table around him.
He turned in a slow circle, letting them see it.
“And if any of you sons of bitches got anything else to say…”
His voice lifted slightly, barely, but the force cracked through the room like a bullet.
“Now’s the fuckin’ time.”
He looked at each of them, one by one. Daring them. Giving them the chance. No one spoke. No one moved.
“I didn’t think so.”
He dropped the head.
It hit the table hard. A wet, blunt slap. Blood sprayed outward, over linen, over crystal, over the sleeve of the man closest to the corpse. The head rolled once, then again, and fell off the far edge. It landed with a soft thud and disappeared under the tablecloth.
Yoongi turned his back to them.
“Meeting’s adjourned,” he said.
He walked away. Two men who had once sworn to kill him followed without a word. Behind them, the room stayed still. The scent of blood lingered, thick and permanent. The council, once a cabal of giants, sat quiet, stripped down to what they really were.
Men. Just men. And they all stared at the spot where the king used to stand.
Y/N sat curled in the corner of her room. The cheap wooden chair pressed hard into her back, too stiff to be comfortable, but familiar enough not to notice. The smell fan she had screwed into the wall filled the silence with a steady hum.
Memory didn’t work like a book. You couldn’t flip to a clean page and read it straight. It was smoke. Slippery. Every time she tried to hold it still, it shifted. Time didn’t erase anything. It just dulled the edges. The things that used to cut now brushed against her like worn silk. The pain was still there. It just moved to the background, like old music from another room.
Yoongi Min lived there now. She didn’t cry for him anymore. The rage that used to keep her up at night, sweating and twisting in the sheets, was gone. So was the hate. That would have been easier.
Now, she just carried him.
Every night, before sleep dragged her under, she read the list. Names, dates, memories etched in ink, sealed in scars. Yoongi’s name had never moved. Always circled. Always there. Preserved in blood and intent.
Once, the irony amused her. That you could still want vengeance against someone you didn’t hate anymore. Now it just made her tired.
He hadn’t always been part of her story. Once, he was just a name. A man with quiet eyes who appeared one sunburned afternoon in Jalisco, uninvited but perfectly expected. She still remembered the smell of scorched dust, the scream of cicadas in the heat. She had been sitting on the veranda, a bitter drink in her hand, ice melting faster than her patience. The estate’s white walls radiated heat like an oven. She thought she would pass out before anything important happened.
Then he walked in.
Too still. Too composed. The kind of man who looked wrong in heat and noise because he didn’t sweat. Didn’t flinch. And that made him dangerous. Danger didn’t announce itself. It stood still in chaos and watched.
Her first thought was that he was too pretty to be a killer. Not soft, just out of place. The kind of face meant for cathedrals or concert halls, not backrooms and wars. It caught her off guard. She had felt that once before, the year she met Jimin. But Jimin weaponized his beauty. He distracted. Disarmed. Smiled before he cut.
Yoongi didn’t smile.
He was cold. Still. A presence that quieted rooms. The kind of man you didn’t approach. You waited to be seen.
She hadn’t trusted him. But she hadn’t objected either. When Taehyung asked if she approved, she hadn’t looked away. Just gave a brief nod and said, “What’s his name?”
Taehyung had already chosen.
“Cottonmouth,” he said, smiling like it amused him.
Yoongi didn’t stay long. Maybe forty-eight hours. Just long enough to shake the right hands and unlock the right doors. By Monday, he was gone, headed back to Korea with a folder of papers and a one-way ticket in his coat.
At the time, it didn’t seem important. It was 1992. She was still green. Still trying to figure out what kind of weapon she would become.
Back then, her hands hadn’t learned how to break things. Her heart still ached when it rained. She still prayed, sometimes. She hadn’t met Pai Mei yet. That part of her story hadn’t started.
But Taehyung, as always, had seen it coming. He knew she wasn’t ready. Or maybe he just couldn’t bring himself to be the one to turn the key. When it came time to learn the blade, he stepped back. Said it was too personal.
So he made the call. Yoongi picked up. Said yes.
Three days later, she arrived. The cold hit her the second she stepped off the plane. Busan didn’t feel like a city. The skyline was gray, resigned. The Min estate sat on the edge of that resignation, stone and silence, walls older than any name she knew. It didn’t feel like a home.
Yoongi was waiting in the great hall. Standing there, tall, composed, dressed in slate silk that shimmered like oil under low light. He didn’t move. Just watched her walk in with a stare that could empty a room.
So she bowed.
Not out of respect. Not even formality. Instinct. Survival. She knew men like him. You bowed first, or you didn’t get the chance.
She dropped to her knees. Lowered her head. Waited.
He didn’t speak.
The silence stretched, long enough for doubt to slip in and settle. But she held position.
Then, finally, he spoke. Quiet. Exact. His Korean was flawless. Formal. The kind you heard in courtrooms and memorial rites. Not Taehyung’s fast, back-alley Seoul dialect. This was old money. Inherited. Precise.
“Tell me,” he said, “why are you here?”
It wasn’t curiosity. It was a test. A mirror.
She raised her head. Met his eyes.
“Taehyung told me he already spoke with you,” she said, matching his dialect. The formality was stiff in her mouth, shaped by study, not instinct.
Something flickered in his eyes. Maybe approval. Maybe not.
“Our mutual acquaintance said he would send the foreigner I met in Mexico,” he said, kneeling so smoothly it made no sound. “But that’s not what I asked.”
Now they were eye-level. But she still felt beneath him. Not from height. From stillness.
Yoongi didn’t dominate a room. He erased it. Took the air out. Turned it into something cold and hollow. His stillness wasn’t passive. It pressed in, dense and quiet, until you felt it in your lungs. A slow pressure, like being buried.
Then he moved.
No warning. No wind-up. Just motion.
His hand reached out, fingers catching her chin. Not rough. Not kind. Just efficient. The touch felt clinical. His skin wasn’t cold, but it felt like it should have been.
“Why are you here?” he asked again. “If it’s training you want, Taehyung could’ve done it himself. But he didn’t. Why?” His voice didn’t rise. It sank, low, smooth, cold. “Is it because you think I’m closer to the roots of the blade? That your little infatuation with him would cloud the lessons?”
Then he leaned in. Barely. Just enough to close the distance. She caught the faint scent on his skin, wood smoke, paper, ink. His eyes narrowed.
“Or…” The edge in his voice sharpened. “Or is it because Taehyung found a new pet, and you couldn’t stand to watch him play with her?”
It hit like a punch. Not forceful. Precise. A clean shot to the soft place she never acknowledged. It found it anyway.
She didn’t flinch.
Her breath caught, just for a second, but she forced the air out slow. Steadied her gaze.
“Taehyung’s too busy to train a beginner,” she said, voice level. Even. Neutral. “And I wanted to get to know you. We’re closer in age than I am with the others. I thought we could become friends.”
A lie. But polished. Just enough truth to sound casual. Just enough simplicity to sell.
She let the silence stretch. Let it settle between them like pressure.
Something flickered in his face. Not a smile. Not quite mockery. Something colder. He brushed his thumb across her cheek. It could’ve passed as a gesture of comfort.
It wasn’t.
Without breaking eye contact, he switched languages. His English was flawless. Not practiced. Natural. Private-school crisp, but stripped of warmth.
“Well,” he murmured, “we’ll see what you are soon enough, won’t we?”
Then he stood. One clean motion. Effortless. Like movement didn’t cost him anything. He turned and walked away without a glance, already finished with her.
“Lynn will show you to your room.”
The door closed behind him. Quiet. Clean. Final.
She sat for a second in the echo of it. Her face still cold from his fingers.
Then she stood. Picked up the hotel phone. Dialed.
Taehyung answered on the second ring. Warm. Familiar. Almost amused.
“You good?” he asked before she said a word.
She opened her mouth but didn’t get the chance.
The door burst open.
No knock. No warning.
Lynn Easton stepped in like she owned the place. Black silk. Sharp tailoring. Heels like weapons. Her hair pulled back, expression blank. Her presence wasn’t. It filled the room.
Y/N’s instincts lit up.
She didn’t think. Just moved.
The gun was in her hand before Lynn crossed halfway in. Smooth draw. Safety off. Barrel aimed steady between the eyes.
The phone clattered to the floor. Taehyung’s voice buzzed faintly, tinny and distant.
Lynn didn’t blink.
She glanced at the phone. Then at Y/N. Something flickered, disgust. Then it vanished, replaced by something colder.
“I’m here to tell you,” she said, voice flat, dry, “training starts in ten. Main courtyard. Don’t let your little phone call make you late.”
Then she turned and walked out. Like the gun hadn’t mattered. Like the whole thing bored her.
Y/N lowered the weapon. Picked up the phone.
Taehyung was still there.
“You good?” he asked again, voice calm.
“Yeah,” she said. Too quick.
“I have to go. Yoongi’s waiting.”
A pause.
Then, gently: “Show him why I picked you. Don’t hope. Prove it.”
“I will.”
“Goodbye, Alabama.”
“Bye, Tae.”
She hung up. Stood still for a second. Smiled, just barely.
Three minutes later, she was already in the courtyard. She’d memorized the layout her first night. Not for aesthetics. She didn’t care about ancient stone, delicate bonsai, or cherry blossoms floating like confetti. That wasn’t her lens.
She mapped sightlines. Marked exits. Noted cover. Measured steps. Calculated what she could cross, where she could hide, how fast she could move.
Survival started with the map.
The courtyard was bare. Raked gravel. Slate tiles worn smooth by weather and time. Wind chimes overhead, their tones sharp and strange. A single cherry tree leaned in from the far corner, petals drifting down like soft debris.
Yoongi stood beneath it.
Back to her.
Still.
The sun cast his shadow long across the stone, a cut of darkness the light couldn’t touch. His robe was black, edged in silver thread. The fabric moved with the wind. He didn’t.
She crossed the courtyard without sound. Her boots were ghosts on the stone. No training mats. No racks of blades. Just Yoongi, and the wooden sword in his hand, held like he’d never put it down.
He didn’t turn.
“Show me how you hold this,” he said. No greeting. No warmth. Just a command dropped mid-movement, like she was late.
She took the sword in both hands. Grip clean. Textbook. Balanced.
Too clean.
It looked right but felt wrong. Like a pose held too long in front of a mirror.
She tried to channel Taehyung, the way his stance breathed, the way the blade looked grown from his hand. But she wasn’t him. And Yoongi wasn’t here for poetry.
He didn’t sigh. Didn’t speak. Just shifted his jaw, barely.
“No.”
He stepped forward. She didn’t see it happen. One second, still. The next, closer. The sword left her hands without resistance. He didn’t yank it. Didn’t ask. He just took it, like gravity claiming a dropped stone.
Then his hands were on her. Not rough. Not gentle. Just efficient. Fingers folding hers back around the hilt, sliding a thumb, adjusting the angle. One sharp push realigned her elbow. A tap moved her hips. Behind her, he pivoted her knee, nudged a foot half an inch forward. No words. No explanation. Just movement. Precise. Automatic. He worked like someone who had done this a thousand times and expected no questions.
It wasn’t teaching. It was sculpting.
She didn’t resist. It wasn’t instruction. It was command.
Yoongi’s style had no drama. No shouting. No speeches. No honor-bound riddles. Just correction and silence. He didn’t care when her arms began to shake or when her back pulled tight. His hands just kept moving, carving posture into muscle whether it wanted to hold or not.
By the time he stepped back, her entire body burned. Thighs tight. Shoulders screaming. Spine locked. Sweat clung to her jawline, her breathing short and shallow. Her hands cramped around the hilt.
He looked her over once. Then gave a single nod. “Hold that position for one hour,” he said. Flat. Final. “When it’s over, I’ll show you the next.”
She blinked. “An hour?”
The disbelief escaped before she could kill it. Regret followed instantly. Not just because she had questioned him. Because it sounded weak.
Yoongi didn’t answer.
He turned and walked to the bench beneath the cherry tree’s shade. A tea set sat waiting. Steam already curling from the spout. He poured a cup with the same precision he used on her stance. Not rushed. Not careless. Ritual.
He sipped. Closed his eyes. “Don’t speak,” he said. “Your muscles must stay still.”
She stared at his back, jaw tight. Part of her wanted to drop the sword. Just to see what he would do. To make him react.
She didn’t. Because this was still the test.
“There are children who start this training at four,” he said. “Most still fail.”
Another sip.
“You’ve spent two years playing with guns and knives and think that makes you ready.” A pause. “It doesn’t.”
The words didn’t sting. They landed. Quiet. Dry. Accurate. Like facts she had avoided saying out loud.
“Maybe your mind can learn. Maybe. But your body will. One way or another.”
He didn’t look at her when he added, “I’ll hope you leave this place a credit to my mother’s nation. Try not to disappoint, will you?”
It didn’t sound like hope. It sounded like a door closing.
A week and a half later, Yoongi decided to take the crew out. No reason. No plan. No destination. Just motion.
His people didn’t need details. Only direction. And they moved like gears. Quiet. Timed. Unquestioning.
Lynn delivered the message.
Y/N sat cross-legged on her floor, wrapping gauze around bruises that bloomed black beneath her ribs. Each pass dragged against raw skin. Her breath hitched when the edge of the bandage caught bone. She pressed her palm to her side and waited for the pain to settle. It didn’t. It just burrowed deeper. She gritted her teeth and kept going.
She was halfway through when the door opened.
Lynn stepped in like she owned the space. Black silk, tailored sharp. Not a wrinkle out of place. Posture perfect. Chin up. Shoulders square. Eyes level.
Y/N was on her feet before she realized it.
The pain screamed through her ribs, but her body moved on instinct. Her spine locked, and her hand shot out. The gun was in her grip a second later, trained on Lynn’s forehead without hesitation. The silence that followed wasn’t stillness. It was loaded. Bright and taut. Like air stretched too thin.
The only sound was the faint scrape of her phone sliding off the futon and hitting the floor. Taehyung’s voice, mid-sentence, flickered into static.
Lynn didn’t blink. She didn’t move. Her eyes ticked from the gun to the phone, then back to Y/N. Her expression didn’t shift, not really, but something passed through it. Faint. Fleeting. Contempt. The kind too old to be loud. She exhaled once through her nose, slow and quiet, then spoke.
“You’re allowed to come tonight,” she said, voice flat, the kind of flat that could cut glass. “We leave in five.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. Just turned and walked out, the tail of her silk shirt whispering across the doorway as she disappeared down the hall.
Y/N stood there, chest heaving. Her ribs throbbed. Her fingers loosened around the grip of the gun, but she didn’t lower it for a few more seconds. Long enough to make sure Lynn wasn’t coming back.
Then she bent to grab the phone, her hand trembling slightly as she brought it back to her ear.
“You good?” Taehyung’s voice was still there. Low. Calm. Annoyingly perceptive.
She exhaled, steadying herself. “Yeah,” she said. Too fast.
“I have to go. Yoongi’s waiting.”
A pause.
Then: “Show him why I picked you. Don’t hope. Prove it.”
“I will.”
“Goodbye, Alabama.”
“Bye, Taehyung.”
She ended the call and sat there for one beat longer than she needed to, staring at the wall. Then she stood, wincing, and pulled her boots on over aching legs. She didn’t change clothes. No time. The sweat-soaked tank top clung to her skin. Her jeans were still dirty from morning drills. She swiped a sleeve across her mouth to smear whatever lip gloss was left and ran a hand through her hair, tugging it back with a band that had seen better days.
She didn’t care about looking good. She cared about moving fast.
By the time she stepped into the front hall, she had already pushed the pain back down where it belonged. The light in the entryway was warm and gold, soft against the polished wood floors and cool stone walls. Yoongi stood near the door, speaking in clipped Korean to a man she didn’t recognize. He was tall and heavy-set, the kind of man whose hands looked like they knew how to break a jaw without wrinkling his cuffs. Yoongi’s voice was brisk and efficient. His eyes kept flicking toward the hallway.
When he saw her, they stopped. Just for a second. Long enough to notice, not long enough to mean anything. But it wasn’t nothing.
She fell into step behind the others, slipping into formation as if she had always been there. Not too close. Not too far. She knew the rhythm now. She knew the space she was allowed to occupy. Not inside. Not excluded. She was tolerated. Observed. Weighed.
A wiry man with too many rings and a mouth that seemed to smile more during fights than at parties offered her a drink. Something clear in a crystal vial. She shook her head. Not because she trusted him. She didn’t. But she needed every ounce of strength for whatever came next. Her body still buzzed from the morning’s drills. Her legs felt like overused rope. Her back ached. Her palms were raw.
Yoongi had worked her until she collapsed. Then he told her to start over. He hadn’t praised her. He hadn’t spoken at all when it ended. But he hadn’t walked away disappointed either. That counted.
In the narrow space between rejection and recognition, she could feel the pull. Not affection. Not ambition. Something simpler and hungrier. She wanted to be seen. Not as Taehyung’s pick. Not as the outsider with borrowed language and too much to prove. She wanted to be seen as a threat. Something that could not be ignored.
The car ride to the club was silent. Not awkward, but disciplined. Every man sat straight, knees aligned, backs stiff. No one spoke unless necessary. When they did, it was quick, quiet Korean. Clean and controlled. Not meant for her.
Up front, Yoongi sat next to Lynn. He never looked back. The passing streetlights carved his face into pieces, slicing him into segments of brightness and shadow, something not quite whole. When he spoke, the car quieted even more.
Y/N did not catch the words. She didn’t need to. The tone was enough. Low. Sharp. Exact. Lynn nodded once, her arms folded tight across her chest as if she were holding something in. Her reply was short and clipped, but her body shifted. Just a little. Like something inside her had been punched.
Y/N did not know what Yoongi had said. But she felt it in her teeth. He didn’t waste words. When he spoke, something somewhere bled.
The car stopped. She reached for the door, expecting one of the others to go first. Protocol. Order.
But the door opened from the outside.
Yoongi. Still seated, half turned, holding the door open for her. Just once. Just for her. It wasn’t gallantry. It wasn’t habit. It was a move.
Their eyes met. Half a second, maybe less, but it stretched longer than it should have. A flicker of understanding passed between them. Not fondness. Not even acknowledgment. Recognition. The game had begun.
The club was buried beneath an old hotel near the edge of the harbor. It sat tucked under stone and shadow like something too dangerous to live upstairs. There were no signs. No neon. Only a pair of matte black steel doors and a man standing in front of them who looked like he had retired from killing people professionally but still did it on weekends for fun. He didn’t speak. He didn’t check IDs or nod in recognition. He simply stepped aside when Yoongi approached, as if the man had already been through him once.
Inside, the air changed immediately. You felt it before you saw it. The atmosphere had weight. A low hum beneath the skin. Everything was red. Not just in color but in mood. The lighting bled against velvet walls and lacquered surfaces, casting shadows that clung to corners like secrets. Smoke curled from cigars too expensive to ask about, winding into the haze like something alive. The music was live jazz, but not the kind played in hotel lobbies. It had teeth. Brass and muscle. A saxophone wailed from the stage like it had history, like it had seen too much and was tired of staying quiet.
No one here danced. No one shouted over the music or begged for bottle service. This was not that kind of place. You didn’t come here to forget yourself. You came because you already knew exactly who you were and wanted others to know it too.
Every person in the room mattered. Nobody wore name tags. Their reputations arrived ahead of them, carried in rumors and police reports. Laughter was low and precise, like a shared joke you only understood if you had killed the same man. Weapons glinted beneath suits. Flashes of matte black steel and the occasional polished wood handle. Not a threat. A formality.
It wasn’t safe. But it was sacred.
Y/N didn’t need instructions. One glance from one of Yoongi’s men sent her toward the far end of the long table. No words. Just movement. The seat was obvious. Furthest from Yoongi, furthest from Lynn, tucked into the farthest edge of the heat. A place for the tolerated, not the trusted. She sat without protest. She didn’t take it personally. She poured herself a small cup of sake, careful not to let her fingers shake. Her body still ached from training. Shoulders like stone. Wrists sore. Back tight. But she held the cup steady.
The first sip burned. Sharp and clean. It didn’t dull the pain, but it gave her something else to focus on.
From her seat, she could see the whole room. What she saw caught her off guard. Yoongi was laughing.
Not a polite smirk. Not the curated charm he used with government contacts or lieutenants looking for approval. This was real. Mouth open, eyes creased at the corners, head tilted just enough to show his guard had dropped. Briefly, but fully. He leaned toward Lynn, said something low that made her roll her eyes and smirk. Something warm, almost playful. Not the usual predator’s smirk she wore like lipstick. This was different. Lighter. Familiar.
Yoongi tapped the table with two fingers, keeping time with the band. Occasionally, he snapped a word toward the musicians. They responded instantly, adjusting their tempo as if they were tuned to his mood.
She did not recognize this version of him.
This wasn’t the man who had held her elbow too long in the courtyard. Who had made her hold a stance until her thighs screamed and her arms went numb. Who corrected her without speaking, using only pressure and presence. That Yoongi was exacting. Brutal in his quiet.
This one was fluid. Charming. Dangerous in an entirely different way. This was the king.
She lifted her cup again. Just to do something with her hands.
That was when he looked up. Right at her. He did not blink. He did not smile. He only looked. For a moment, the noise in the room faded. Not because it stopped, but because she no longer heard it. Her heart struck once, hard enough to echo in her ears. She stayed still. Silent. She did not need to speak. The air had shifted. She felt it.
Then Yoongi stood. He smoothed his jacket, straightened his cuffs with a flick of his wrists, and walked. Not toward the band. Not toward the bathroom or the bar. He walked toward her.
Y/N did not move. Her cup hovered in mid-air. Everyone noticed, even if they pretended not to. Eyes flicked toward him, then slid away. It was like watching the sun move across the sky. You did not stare, but you felt it.
He reached her side of the table and sat across from her as if the seat had always been his. He did not ask. He did not wait. He claimed it.
The look he gave her was not kind and not cruel. It was measured.
“You like soju?” he asked. His voice was soft, almost casual, as if he were asking about the weather.
He reached across the table for the bottle in her hand and took it as if she had offered it. She had not, but that did not matter.
“I have had it with Taehyung before,” she said. Her voice stayed calm and steady. That was the important part.
Yoongi rolled the bottle between his fingers. The label caught the light and shimmered, a red gleam against his skin.
His mouth curved slightly. Not quite a smile. Something quieter.
“And am I right to believe,” he said in a tone that was light but edged just enough to sting, “that you have been enjoying this one all by yourself?”
She did not answer. Her pulse spoke for her.
“I see Eun-Jae has his own.” He nodded toward a man two seats down. “And Chi-Hun too.” He glanced again.
His voice did not rise. It did not need to. Every word cut deeper. The power was not in volume. It was in the edge.
“That makes this bottle yours.”
Eun-Jae and Chi-Hun moved together in perfect choreography. Each lifted his own bottle. Each poured for the men nearby. They did not look at her. They did not comment. The gesture was enough.
Her breath caught. Not for long and not dramatic, just enough to tighten her throat. Her body knew before her mind did. She had not meant to claim anything. She had not even realized she had. But she had. And now it was out in the open, sitting between them like a challenge carved into stone.
Yoongi did not believe in accidents. He did not believe in second chances either. Not here. Not with her.
The expression he had worn—cool, unreadable, almost amused—vanished from his face in an instant. The bottle tilted slowly in his hand. The last of the sake spilled across the table in a thin stream that soaked into the lacquered surface. It pooled quietly, unmistakably. A slow insult. A liquid reprimand. It did not splash. It bled.
“I will not allow a student still in training to get drunk,” he said. His voice was flat, stripped of warmth. Not angry. Worse than angry. Final. “Not when I have been generous enough to permit her a night of entertainment.”
Something inside her snapped. A coil wound too tight since the day she arrived. Since the first blow she had not been allowed to flinch from. Ten days of drills. Ten days of silence. Ten days of pain stitched into her skin and rules never explained but always punished. Ten days of never knowing if she was doing well because he only told her when she failed. Ten days of swallowing every ache, every humiliation, with no relief and no reward.
Her palms slammed against the table before she even realized she was moving. The sound cracked across the room like a gunshot. She rose halfway from her seat, the motion sharp and defiant. Her voice tore out, scraped raw from restraint.
“Then maybe you should have said that before we left the compound!” she snapped. “How the hell was I supposed to know when everyone else is drinking like it is a wedding?”
The room changed instantly. Breath seemed to vanish from it. Air turned still. Every conversation froze. Heads turned slowly, carefully. Chairs shifted. Hands slid toward weapons, not drawing yet, only resting, waiting. The silence was not empty. It was anticipation. Everyone in that room knew this kind of silence. Everyone had lived long enough to recognize the moment before something breaks.
Yoongi did not blink. He did not move.
He raised one hand.
And everything stopped.
His voice carried no volume, but it had gravity.
“Are you telling me,” he said slowly, “that I was wrong to assume Taehyung would only send someone intelligent enough to know training does not end when the sun goes down?”
Then he stood. No flourish. No threat. Only inevitability. Like the tide rolling in. Like gravity itself shifting around him.
“I do not excuse disrespect under the guise of ignorance,” he said. His words cut cleaner than a blade. “You may not yet understand what it means to belong to something greater than yourself, but you will learn what it means to respect the table you sit at.”
His eyes flicked to Eun-Jae. Then to Chi-Hun. Neither man moved. Neither breathed.
“For the rest of the night,” Yoongi said, turning back to her, his tone sharp and exact, “you will refill their glasses. To repay the insult of serving only yourself.”
He did not wait for a response. He did not look at her again.
“You.”
A waitress near the bar jumped as if struck. Her tray clattered in her hands.
“Bring her tea. Nothing else. And clean this mess.”
The girl moved immediately. No protest. No hesitation.
Yoongi walked away. Not storming. Not hurried. Simply finished. His point made. Nothing left to say.
The air shifted again in his absence. The room exhaled at last. Conversation resumed—too loud, too quick, forced. Nervous noise from people desperate to believe nothing serious had happened.
Y/N did not move. She could not. Her hands shook. Her skin burned, not only with humiliation but with something colder. Rage. Resentment. Shame. Worst of all, the hollow realization that the worst part was not what he had done to her.
It was that she had let it happen.
When Yoongi sat back beside Lynn, it was not him who looked at her.
It was Lynn.
Her smile was small. Precise. Cruel in a way that did not need teeth to draw blood.
They never spoke of it again. They didn’t need to.
Yoongi was not the kind of man who repeated himself, and Y/N was not the kind of woman who asked for wounds to be reopened. Training didn’t work that way. The lesson had been public, sharp, final. The silence that followed was the test. The message was clear.
After that, everything got colder. Sharper. Quieter.
The weeks bled together in a rhythm of pain and repetition. Every morning before the sun rose, Y/N stepped barefoot into the stone courtyard, bokken in hand, breath visible in the cold air. Her muscles ached before she began. Her fingers were raw and calloused. Her shoulders locked tight. Her back burned from the inside out.
Yoongi always appeared without sound. Gray silk draped his frame, hair tied neatly, a porcelain cup of tea in hand. He never greeted her. Never asked if she was ready. He gave one demonstration: a stance, a pivot, a strike. Then he left her to chase it. No instructions. No corrections. No praise.
Only silence.
And eyes. Always watching. From the edges. From shadows. From the corner of her vision where he lingered just long enough for her to feel it. Not seen, but tracked.
He never corrected her with words. He broke her rhythm instead. A faint frown. A raised brow. A soft clack of his own blade knocking hers out of line. Every mistake meant starting over, no matter how far she was into the sequence. No matter how tired. No matter how raw her hands had become.
He didn’t teach. He shaped. He disrupted. And he made it work.
It was a hot afternoon when she cracked. Spring clung to the air like a fever. Blossoms sagged on tired branches. Sweat slid in rivulets down her back. She was on the hundredth repetition of a basic kata, clean and practiced, almost meditative, when his voice sliced from behind her.
“You’ve gotten sloppy since returning from lunch.”
She froze for one second. It was all he needed.
Her hand tightened on the hilt. She didn’t turn. Didn’t answer. But her grip faltered. Her breath grew uneven. The stance that had been perfect a moment ago unraveled in an instant.
Of course he had been watching. Of course he never really left.
“I ran into Lynn at lunch,” Y/N said, her voice taut, held together by will alone. She didn’t explain further. She didn’t mention the way Lynn’s words had cut—soft but cruel, designed to slice without volume.
Her grip tightened until the wood groaned. Splinters bit into her skin. She didn’t loosen her hold.
Yoongi said nothing. He didn’t ask. He simply set down his tea and crossed the courtyard with that same quiet precision, deliberate and certain, without wasted motion. He moved like breath against glass. Soundless. Unshakable.
When he reached her, he took the bokken from her hands. Not with force. Not with kindness. Just decisively, as if the matter were already settled. As if her permission had never been required.
His fingers brushed hers, light and impersonal. Not comforting. Not cruel. Simply measuring damage. He turned her hand over, inspected the raw patches, the forming blister, the embedded sliver of wood at her thumb. He handled her like a craftsman checking his tools. Detached. Efficient.
“She’s jealous, I’m afraid.”
The words came casually, as if he were commenting on the weather. No bite. No warmth. Just fact.
Y/N blinked. “Jealous? Of what, my bruises?”
A flicker passed through his eyes. Amusement perhaps. Perhaps something sharper. His mouth twitched, not quite a smile.
“You haven’t figured it out yet? I thought you were supposed to be clever.”
He didn’t wait for her reply. Instead, he used a nail to lift the splinter from her skin—quick, practiced. Then he took her other hand. His thumbs pressed into old bruises along her palm and forearm, testing how far the tissue had hardened. Every movement was precise. Every touch necessary.
“She was Taehyung’s favorite before you,” he said evenly. “The only reason I ever worked with him was because she asked me to. She called it loyalty. I called it convenience. But I said yes.”
He paused just long enough for the weight to settle. Not dramatic. Just deliberate.
“Then he got bored. She returned here. And he sent you.”
Y/N didn’t flinch, but the words hit low and deep. She had no reply. She didn’t know what she was meant to feel. It wasn’t a compliment. It wasn’t a warning. It was both. It was neither.
He looked up and met her eyes.
“And now you’ve taken my attention too.”
There was no inflection in his tone. No tilt of the head. No softening smile. Only the weight of the words left hanging between them. Then he released her hands.
“You are beginning to have the hands of a samurai,” he said. “You may take the night off.”
And then, like always, he turned. Three steps away. No glance back.
But he stopped.
“Tomorrow,” he said, his back still to her, “I will join your practice.”
It should have felt like something. A victory. Recognition. A sign that she had finally crossed some invisible line. Instead it sank into her gut like stone: cold, heavy, permanent.
The next morning, the courtyard looked unchanged. Gravel neatly raked. Air still. Gray light blooming faint against the sky. But this time Yoongi was already there.
He stood beneath the cherry tree, bokken in hand, its wood darkened by years of use. He didn’t smile. He didn’t greet her.
“I will strike,” he said. “You will counter. You have until I reach you to remember the correct movement. If you fail...”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.
She set her stance. He moved.
No signal. No count. Only sudden motion. The first strike came fast and low, angled at her shoulder. She tried to shift, but too late.
The blow landed with a crack and dropped her to one knee. Pain flared down her ribs, bright and sharp. Her vision burst white at the edges. She didn’t cry out.
“Begin again,” he said.
So she did.
Over. And over. And over.
There were no drills, no warming up, no soft correction. Only his blade cutting through air, his feet silent on stone, and the sick thud of her body reacting too slow. Her shoulders screamed. Her calves cramped. Her palms ached from the grip. Her mind blurred between one motion and the next.
Yoongi gave her nothing. No feedback, no approval, not even disappointment. Only relentless pressure. He moved like a metronome with teeth, steady and ruthless. If she was off by an inch, he found it. If her balance faltered, he exploited it. Every failure reset the clock.
This was not training. It was exposure therapy. And it worked. Not in a single revelation or dramatic breakthrough, but in layers, in silence. Her body began to anticipate. Her feet stopped dragging. Her shoulder no longer ducked instinctively. The bruises still formed, but less often. Her hands stayed firm, her wrists stopped trembling, and she moved on reflex instead of thought.
Yoongi never slowed, yet cracks began to appear—not in him, but in the routine. A breath that came half a second late, a shift in weight before the strike, tiny tells that most would overlook. She did not. She kept them tucked away like cards she was not ready to play.
The change came late in the session. The heat pressed down, blossoms overhead curling in the sun. Her shirt clung to her spine and her lungs burned. She was deep into another repetition, automatic and unconscious, when Yoongi broke pattern. A sharp flick, a feint they had not practiced in more than a week. Her mind did not register it. Her body did. She pivoted and blocked, clean.
Yoongi stopped. He did not speak, did not nod, but something flickered at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile, not exactly, but close. It vanished almost immediately, sealed away behind the mask he always wore. Yet it had been there, and that—coming from Yoongi—was everything.
Something shifted between them, not in any dramatic glance or heavy moment, but in a quiet recalibration that needed no name to be real. She began watching him differently, not only reacting to his strikes but studying the seconds before. The tension in his shoulders. The draw of his breath. The way he set his weight before moving. She was reading him now, not following but predicting, feeling the current instead of bracing against it.
Without thinking, she tested him. It was not planned. Her body moved before her brain caught up, a twitch in the shoulder and a shift in her stance. She stepped in fast, blade sweeping low. It was not perfect, maybe not even wise, but it was honest. He caught it effortlessly, calm, as though he had been waiting for her to try.
That hint of a smile returned, small but unmistakable. Not approval, something more dangerous—recognition. She swung again, this time at a different angle, sharper, more deliberate. His block came quicker, and with it a subtle change in his stance, a pivot that revealed not a mistake but an invitation.
Try again.
And she did. For the next half hour they moved together, not quite sparring and not quite dancing. She pushed, he absorbed. Every inch of progress, every shard of discipline, every stubborn breath left in her body went into those exchanges. He gave her only what she earned, no more and no less. There were no corrections, no lectures, no fire. Only motion. The air between them tightened, charged with effort and silent calculation. For the first time, it did not feel like survival. It felt like progress.
But it could not last.
Yoongi shifted suddenly, swift and deceptively casual, and used a move she herself had tried earlier. A flick, a false step, something familiar that her body was not ready to counter in reverse. Her mind lagged behind, and the strike landed hard. The wooden blade slammed into her ribs with merciless precision, seizing her entire body. Her breath vanished. She fell, coughing, knees hitting gravel as heat exploded white-hot through her side. The courtyard spun.
Yoongi stood above her in silence, the bokken loose in his hand as if he had barely touched her. His breathing remained steady. His shoulders did not move. He looked almost bored.
“Very good,” he said, his voice dry as stone. “Although you would be dead if my sword had an edge. Try to remember faster tomorrow.”
No gloating. No malice. Just fact.
She forced herself upright, ribs protesting with each breath. Her vision swam, but she did not drop the sword. Her grip held—tight, shaky, but there. She had learned at least this much: pain no longer had the right to take things from her.
“Tomorrow?” she rasped.
Yoongi did not blink. “It is not even noon.”
She stared, sweat cooling against her skin, body throbbing in every place that mattered. He turned without waiting, walking with the same casual control, the blade swinging loosely at his side. One hand lifted behind him in a lazy gesture.
Follow.
So she did.
They were not heading to her room. She realized it the moment they took the east corridor. The pattern was wrong. The walls shifted to older stone, the silence heavier. She knew the layout. Taehyung had made her memorize every hall of the estate, every corner, every dead end, just in case. She had never come this far before, but she knew exactly where they were going.
Yoongi’s wing. Private. Off-limits. No one lingered there unless summoned.
At the end of the hall, he slid open a door and a wave of heat spilled out, thick with cedar and citrus and something older, like sun-warmed earth or smoke from the right kind of fire. The bath sprawled across stone as though it had grown from the earth itself. Sunken deep, carved clean, it sent steam curling into the air in long, slow threads. No marble. No gold. Only simplicity that dared anyone to call it lacking.
Yoongi stepped aside, leaving just enough room for her to pass.
“Your body is bruised. Your muscles are tight,” he said in the same even tone he used when calling a strike. “This will help.”
Not quite an offer, though it sounded like one. It carried weight, an order softened at the edges.
She looked at him. “Are you joining me?”
One brow lifted with faint amusement. “You are not interesting enough yet.”
He walked past her then, swallowed by the steam as if it belonged to him. The door slid shut behind him with a sound too soft to echo.
She stood there for a second and let the warmth reach her skin. The scent of yuzu and cedar clung to her clothes. The stone under her feet radiated quiet heat. For the first time in weeks, no one was watching.
She set the sword down.
The steam curled around her arms, climbed her spine, and softened the places that ached the most. Her ribs hummed where the strike had landed. Her shoulder blades loosened. Something deep inside her, the part that had gone tight and silent, let go. Not all at once, but a little.
Then the door slid open again.
Yoongi stepped into the steam without a word. Bare-chested, robe hanging loose at his hips, sash in one hand. His presence did not change with the space. He moved the same way he always did, with that silent, deliberate ease that made you forget you were watching something dangerous. Nothing in his posture acknowledged that she was there, standing in the doorway to his private sanctuary. It was as if her presence had already been accounted for, expected, filed neatly under inevitable.
“This is my bath,” he said, calm and even, like he was offering her a history lesson. “I thought you might appreciate something more civilized than the training hall showers.”
He folded the robe with practiced care, every motion tidy and purposeful. Not fussy, only controlled. Every crease smoothed, every corner aligned. He set it aside, then turned to the cold-water spout set into the stone wall, twisted the valve, and let the water slam against his skin.
No flinch. No breath hitch. Just the rhythmic sound of cold water hitting muscle and stone, echoing through the steam-heavy air.
She did not step forward yet. She only stood there, body worn down to the bone, every joint and bruise aching in protest. Her eyes stayed on him, though. The shape of his back. The way water sheeted off him, like even the elements could not quite stick. The stillness he carried, too perfect to be natural, too practiced to be peaceful. It should have unnerved her. Instead, it pulled at something deeper, something she did not want to name.
“Why?” she asked, keeping her voice low and steady. “Why bring me here?”
He looked over his shoulder. No smirk. No raised brow. Just a calm, clear look, as if he already knew what she was really asking.
“Consider it a reward,” he said. “You have not complained. Not once. Even when your body failed you. Or”—a faint pause sharpened the air between them—“maybe I just wanted a closer look at the strange girl who stayed, when I expected her to be gone before the week ended.”
She let out a short breath, half-scoff, half-laugh. Then peeled off her shirt. Slowly. Not to perform, only because it hurt. The fabric clung to her, damp with sweat and blood. She stripped it away piece by piece, revealing skin blotched purple and yellow, deep reds where the bruises still bloomed fresh. She did not hide them. Each one had cost her something.
“I do not think you know Taehyung very well,” she muttered, dropping the shirt onto the wooden bench behind her. “He does not exactly allow failure. I could not—”
“You could have,” Yoongi cut in. He was still not looking away. “Do not insult me by pretending you stayed because of him. That is not the woman who has been bleeding in my courtyard every morning. The last one he sent left before sundown.”
And just like that, he stepped into the bath.
No noise. No fanfare. Only water parting around him like it knew better than to resist.
“You are here because you chose to be,” he said. “Because whatever waits for you in Mexico scares you less than I do. And that is what makes you dangerous.”
The water hissed against his skin, steam rising around him. He closed his eyes and sank down to his collarbones, not to relax but to reset. Like a weapon cooling after too much use.
She followed. Slow. The heat hit her like a wall, hot enough to bite and chase breath from her lungs, but she kept going, deeper into the water until it wrapped around her aching limbs. It felt more like a purge than a relief. The bath did not comfort. It stripped.
Yoongi watched her.
Not hungrily. Not even curiously. Just like a man who knew how to read pain and wanted to see how she carried it. She felt him clock her every wince, every breath, every way she tried not to fold.
“I will admit,” he said quietly, “I did not think you would still be here the next morning. Or the one after. I kept waiting for a note. Or an empty room.”
She let her arms rest along the stone ledge, eyes half-shut, the heat working into her bones. And then, unexpectedly: “I never even thought about leaving.”
The words surprised her more than they surprised him. She had not realized it until she said it. She had given herself no options, no way out. Just one road forward, no matter the bruises it collected.
“It was not fear,” she added after a pause. “Not of Taehyung. Not of you. It was just…” Her voice cracked slightly, not with emotion but with exhaustion. “I could not fail. I could not be ordinary.”
Yoongi did not nod. He did not soften. But something passed through his gaze, quick and subtle. A quiet shift behind the eyes. Recognition. Like two hunters finally realizing they were not hunting each other. They were the same species.
He said nothing for a long moment. Then:
“A shame,” he murmured, “that you may someday be my equal.”
The words landed like a quiet blow. Not praise. Not warning. Just a truth, delivered with all the weight of something final.
She did not speak. She only let it settle in the place she kept the things that mattered most: the bruises, the insults, the small, hard reasons she got back up every morning.
By the time she had found the shape of a response, he was already moving again.
He stepped through the water, steam curling around his body, and stopped just beside her. Not close enough to touch, not yet, but close enough that she could feel him.
His hand came to rest on her shoulder. Measured. Still.
“Turn around,” he said.
She did, but not without asking, sharp and flat, “Why?”
His grip did not tighten. His voice did not shift.
“Your body flinches when you move, when you are touched. You are locking up from pain. Let me help.”
No invitation. No implication. Just fact.
So she turned, braced her forearms on the stone edge, and exposed her back to him. It should have felt like surrender. It did not. It felt like a quiet kind of trust.
His hands started at her shoulders. Not soft. Not hard. Just practiced. He found the bruises first, the places where muscle had tightened around injury, and adjusted his touch accordingly. His thumbs moved with clinical precision, pressing into old tension and coaxing it loose.
He did not speak. Neither did she.
Steam thickened around them, clinging to skin, softening the sharp edges of pain. Her body stopped resisting. The ache remained, but the weight of it changed. It no longer felt like failure. Only effort.
And Yoongi’s hands stayed steady, never drifting, never teasing. Just working. Like she was a map he already knew by heart. Like she was not broken. Only rebuilding.
For the first time in a long time, she let herself feel that. Not comfort, but something close.
His fingers brushed the curve of her breast.
Her entire body locked. Not from fear, not entirely, but from something else. Something older, older than instinct. Her spine jerked upright, colliding softly with his chest behind her. The bath seemed smaller. The air heavier. Steam closed in like a held breath.
She did not move again. Neither did he.
They only held there, suspended, as if the moment might break if either of them did more than breathe.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was low. Measured. Strained but steady.
He exhaled through his nose, slow and quiet, deliberate.
“I think you already know.”
No heat. No teasing. No playacting. Only honesty, dropped between them like a stone in still water.
“If you want me to stop,” he said, even softer now, “say it. I will not touch anything not freely given.”
Her breath faltered. Not at his words, but at the certainty in them. So calm. So absolute. The steam swirled between them, thick and clinging. She felt it against her face, in her lungs, wrapping around her hesitation like rope. Her voice cracked without meaning to.
“Taehyung…”
His name came out as a whisper, but Yoongi’s response didn’t miss a beat.
“Taehyung,” he said flatly, not as a question but as an answer, “would have had someone else in his bed before your plane even landed.”
Not cruel. Not bitter. Just fact.
And the worst part was that she knew he was right.
She didn’t speak again. She couldn’t. The words weren’t there. Only the heat, the ache, the tension that had never fully left her since day one. All that training, all that silence, all that held-in rage coiled too tight for too long.
Yoongi leaned in. Not close enough to crowd her, but enough that she could feel his breath at the base of her neck. Not a move, a signal. A question.
“Don’t pretend you haven’t been watching me,” he murmured. “Don’t pretend Lynn didn’t have reason to be angry. I told you she was jealous. What did you think she was jealous of?”
His hand slid across her stomach. Slow. Measured. Not pressing. Not assuming. Just there. Still waiting. Still giving her the choice.
“Say the word,” he said again, low and level. “And I’ll stop.”
She should have said it. She should have shut it down. Draw the line. Protect herself. Retreat behind the layers she had built to survive this world.
But she didn’t.
Her eyes closed. Not out of surrender, but something deeper. Something sharper. Not submission. Control.
A sound left her, quiet and raw, like breath torn from somewhere near her ribs, as his fingers moved lower between her thighs.
It wasn’t about lust. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even comfort. It was defiance. Against the pain. Against the bruises. Against every silent rule she had bent to. This was her crossing a line no one else would define for her.
She didn’t melt into his touch. She stepped into it. Not for him. For herself.
For the first time in too long, the choice was hers. And she took it.
Later, years later, she would remember the bath. The heat. The weight of his hand. The sound of his breath against her ear. Not with regret. Never with regret.
She remembered because it mattered. And in her world, memory did not fade. It sharpened. It cut cleaner the further away it got.
That night, when the list was finally made, when the names were written in ink instead of blood, she started at the beginning. Not with Taehyung. With Yoongi. That was why he had to be first. Not because he was the worst, but because he was the closest.
The charcoal slipped from her fingers, leaving a faint black streak on the desk. She didn’t pick it up. She just stared at the sketch.
Yoongi’s face stared back. Too precise. The downturn of his mouth. The stillness behind his eyes. That composure she knew better than anyone.
She hated how well she remembered. Because remembering meant the wound was still open. And an open wound was still a weapon.
Back then, she had held it for his approval. Now, she held it for blood.
She stood slowly, vertebrae popping like worn links in a rusted chain. Her spine stretched, uncoiling with the reluctant grace of something long kept in a cage. Her body did not feel like hers anymore. It did not even feel human. It felt sculpted, chiseled by pain, and honed by something colder than purpose. Something sharper than memory.
A knock shattered the stillness. She flinched instinctively, muscles wired tight from too many surprises that came with blood on the other side.
“Y/N, can I come in?”
Hoseok. His voice, always a balm, softened her edges just enough to remind her she had not been born with claws. Around him, she could almost remember being someone else. Someone less dangerous, more whole. She exhaled, slow and careful.
“Yes.”
The door creaked, ancient wood straining against metal hinges. He didn’t step inside. There wasn’t enough room for two people to stand without touching, and they had never been the kind to brush shoulders casually. She moved to the bed. He took her seat without hesitation. His eyes flicked to the drawing on the table, unimpressed.
“You’ve been thinking,” he said, tone dry.
Y/N let out a low, humorless chuckle. “I’m always thinking, ahjussi.”
Hoseok’s face contorted into that familiar grimace. She had always liked getting under his skin.
“I told you not to call me that.”
“No,” she replied, tilting her head, “you asked me not to.”
That made him laugh, the real kind. The kind that cracked open the air and let warmth bleed through. Rare and reckless. She joined him, not meaning to, but needing to.
Then the moment snapped shut like a trap.
“You hide behind words, Mamba,” he said, gaze locking onto hers with that old soldier’s weight. “But we both know you don’t say much of anything at all.”
The laughter died like a match in water. Hoseok never wasted time on half-truths.
“You’ve been in here two hours,” he added, “and all you’ve got is a rat’s face.”
She had no defense. He wasn’t wrong.
“Min Yoongi,” he said, voice low and flint-hard, “is your enemy now. Don’t forget that.”
She nodded once. A stiff, mechanical gesture. She knew it. She knew it in her bones. But knowing and acting were oceans apart. Yoongi had been her friend. He had also tried to kill her. The betrayal lived under her skin like a buried shard of glass. It didn’t make sense. Maybe it never would. But sense was not a prerequisite for vengeance.
He helped murder her daughter. He beat her while she was still carrying that fragile, innocent life. He killed Tommy. He opened the chapel door. He didn’t stop Taehyung when the gun was raised. He didn’t flinch when her world was reduced to ash. He chose his place at the table over her life. Over all their lives.
And she would be the one to remove him from it.
Because whatever they had once been, Yoongi had made sure they could never be that again.
“Are you listening?”
She blinked, dragged out of the spiral. Hoseok watched her through the hazy yellow light, and in that dull glow he looked younger. Sadder. Like something in him was wearing thin.
“No,” she said, honest and small. “Not as well as I should be.”
“Are you afraid?”
“No,” she whispered. “I just… can’t understand how any of this happened.”
The silence that followed made the room feel smaller.
“I want to tell you a story,” Hoseok said quietly. His voice slipped into Korean like a man retreating into the safety of his own skin. English was too sharp for grief. Too foreign to carry what lived in his chest. “Not because I think it will help. But because maybe you’ll do better than I did.”
He turned the chair around and straddled it, arms resting across the back. His robe fell open at the knee, revealing loose black cotton pants worn thin by years of habit. He looked almost relaxed, but his eyes betrayed him—stormy, hollowed out by memory.
“I met Taehyung when he was twenty-four. I was almost thirty. I had been making swords since I was a boy. My grandfather raised me with a hammer in one hand and a whetstone in the other. That was all I had. That was all I knew. That was how Kim Taehyung found me.”
His voice carried the rhythm of something rehearsed too often in silence. Not regret anymore, just the ghost of it, dulled with age.
“He was magnetic,” Hoseok went on. “Fast. Wild. Smarter than he let on. We started sparring in the alleys of Okinawa. Half-serious at first, then real. He was the only man I could never beat easily, and when I did, it was never by much. We bled together more than once. I trusted him with everything.”
He leaned forward, fingers drumming against the desk.
“Korea was behind me. My father. His belt. The silence after my mother died. I left it all to rot. But Sookie came with me. She was seventeen. Still called me oppa like she was five. Still believed the world was fair if you worked hard enough. My baby sister.”
His voice caught on that word, and he cleared his throat.
“She was stubborn. Mom named her after some American girl she saw on TV once. Sookie. Sounded dumb to me then. Still does. But it stuck. Everything stuck to her—smiles, people, hope. When she met Taehyung, I knew she was in love with him before he even looked her way.”
The bulb overhead flickered, but Hoseok’s face didn’t change.
“I told him to leave her alone. He promised. For a while, he kept it. But she wore him down, and he let himself be worn. A year later, he asked for my blessing. I gave it. I told myself he would never hurt her. He was loyal. I thought maybe he’d be family.”
Y/N’s voice came out soft as breath. “What changed?”
“She almost died,” Hoseok said flatly. “Ambush outside the noodle shop. Someone we knew. Someone Taehyung had history with. She was so scared after that. Told me she wanted out. Out of Japan. Out of him. I thought that would be it. She left with me. We went home to Gwangju. Bought a little house. She opened this kimbap shop. I fixed the walls and built shelves. She would hum while she cooked.”
His eyes drifted, unfocused. “That was the last time life felt small enough to hold.”
He touched his lower lip, as if searching for the taste of that last good meal with her, and maybe he couldn’t find it.
“Moon-Byul came into our lives by accident. Street kid with quick hands. One day he stopped a couple of punks from robbing the shop. I watched from the attic window. He had no blade, just a broken mop handle, and I thought—this kid might actually be something. I took him in. Trained him. We forged swords together. The attic became sacred.”
Y/N stayed motionless, her breath shallow.
“Then Taehyung came back. And Sookie let him in without hesitation. Just smiled and said he missed her. As if it were that simple. As if he hadn’t dragged violence to her door the first time. I saw it then. The rot. The way he turned everything around him to ash.”
His voice hardened.
“Two weeks later the Italians came looking for him. He had crossed someone. Money, territory, who knows. Instead of warning me, instead of protecting her, he took her to bed. He let her wake up to gunfire.”
The silence was suffocating.
“They stormed the house just after sunrise. Moon and I held the attic with whatever we had. Sookie tried to run. They gunned her down in the kitchen. Shot six times. She died on the tile, blood in her teeth. I slipped in it trying to reach her.”
Y/N’s hand trembled.
“And Taehyung? He killed everyone. Efficient. Beautiful, even. Like a painting. Then he looked at me, calm as ever, and said, ‘At least she went quick, Hobi-ah.’”
Hoseok stared at the floor. “That was when I knew. He wasn’t human anymore. And maybe neither was I.”
The breath he drew rattled like something breaking.
“I let him kill with my steel. I made those blades. I admired him. Protected him. And I never cared what it cost until it was my doorstep he brought death to. Until it was my sister.”
Y/N’s eyes glistened, but she didn’t look away.
“I challenged him that night. We fought in the dark, just like the old days. I won. First clean strike to the thigh. Second to the ribs. He bled all over my floor. And when I stood over him, blade at his throat, I couldn’t finish it. I let him crawl away. I watched him limp down my hallway. I have never seen him since.”
The silence that followed was a grave too big for words.
“And that,” Hoseok said, raw now, “is why I don’t make swords anymore. That’s why I don’t call him brother. And that’s why I’m telling you this. Not for pity, but so you understand what it costs when you wait too long to cut the monster’s head off.”
He looked at her then, truly looked. Not at the girl who had first stumbled through his door bloodied and silent, but at the woman who had survived everything after. The woman with a sword across her thighs and fire behind her teeth.
“Don’t wait like I did,” he said.
The air cracked with it. She shut her mouth on whatever retort crawled up her throat, teeth grinding until her jaw ached. He didn’t let her look away.
“If I had killed him in Okinawa like I wanted to,” Hoseok said, each word deliberate, “Sookie would still be alive. And you would not be this shadow of yourself, so full of rage and resentment. You would be in Alabama. Probably drunk in some dive bar, bragging about the time you stabbed a man with a pool stick in El Paso for grabbing you. You would have gone home. You never would have crossed paths with a man in a black button-down who thought ordering you a margarita was enough to own you. You would have had a life, Y/N. One worth fighting for. One worth keeping.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his shoulders sagging under the weight of the words he had carried too long. His voice was hoarse, not from shouting but from truth. Sharp and raw as steel dragged across bone.
“But instead,” he said slowly, “you’re here. Sitting in the wreckage of a life you never asked for. Caught in the wake of a man who turned your death into currency. Who stood there, watching, while four animals stomped your pregnant belly. A man who hates you, and can’t help but feel contempt towards you.”
His voice cracked at the edge, but he did not break. He would not, not in front of her. Not when she was holding it all in just like he used to.
She didn’t respond. She didn’t have to. Her silence was thick with memory and rage.
“They all deserve to die,” Hoseok said, quieter now, but no less cutting. “Yoongi. Taehyung. The whole pack of them. Maybe even us. We are not innocent, Mamba. We stopped being that a long time ago. We are sharpened edges and bad decisions. We are the end result of what happens when you trade mercy for survival. You and me? We are the kind of people others have to survive.”
He glanced up at her. His eyes were softer now. Something fatherly. Something fraternal. Something fierce.
“You remind me of Sookie. Not because you are gentle. You are not. But because you feel everything too deeply. You wear your wounds on the inside, and you carry them like armor. That is what will kill you, if you are not careful.”
A beat passed. Then another.
“If you want to live,” he said, “you need to stop pretending you are prey. You made your choice already. Stop circling it. Stand in it.”
Y/N didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. She moved like something uncoiling. The sword on her lap shifted as she leaned forward, the metal catching the light as if it recognized her now. As if it knew where it was going.
Hoseok saw it. And he stopped her, gently.
“I have something for you,” he said.
He rose and left without another word, his steps quiet but sure. She sat in the hush he left behind, breath slow, mind loud. The sketch of Yoongi stared up at her again—unfinished, but not incomplete. His face was already a tombstone.
When Hoseok returned, he was holding something wrapped in dark crimson cloth. It looked ceremonial. Heavy. He placed it on the desk, then unwrapped it as though unveiling a relic.
It was a sword. Not one for battle. Not meant for war.
It was beautiful. Clean. Silent.
She didn’t touch it.
“What is this?” she asked.
“My final blade,” he said. “The last one I ever forged, except for yours. I made it for Sookie. She never got the chance to hold it.”
Her chest tightened. Her hands clenched in her lap.
It was unlike the weapons she was used to. No bloodthirst in its shape. No vanity in its lines. It was simple. Pure. A shikomizue, disguised in feminine wood, sakura etched into the handle with the gentleness of a promise.
“Why give this to me?” she asked, voice barely a whisper.
Hoseok’s expression softened in a way that nearly broke her.
“Because it was made for someone I loved,” he said, “and now it belongs to someone who knows what it means not to use it.”
She picked it up slowly, reverently. It did not hum like her own sword. It did not beg for violence. It sat in her hands like something sacred.
“I won’t use it,” she said. “Not ever.”
“I know,” he replied. “That’s why I am giving it to you.”
She set it aside, her eyes burning.
“Thank you, Hoseok.”
He nodded once, then looked at her with that same worn, protective weight.
“You will be outnumbered.”
“I know.”
“You will probably die.”
“I know.”
He studied her face. Saw the steel. The sorrow. The storm.
“You will need to move like a shadow,” he said. “Yoongi’s men will feel you coming. If they do—”
“If they get wind I am coming,” she said, “that compound will be crawling with bodies before I even cross the street.”
“And do you want to take on all eighty-eight of the Crazy 88 alone?”
“No,” she said. “That would be less than ideal.”
Hoseok let out a short breath that landed somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. Something almost human passed through his expression. Soft. Worn. Vulnerable in a way she had not seen in years.
“I’m going to miss you.”
She looked toward the door. Her shadow stretched long across the floor, sword glinting at her side. Her stomach clenched. She hadn’t eaten. Couldn’t. Hoseok had tried earlier, but nerves had shredded her appetite.
“I’ll come back,” she said.
“I hope so.”
She turned to go. The moment tasted final.
“Y/N.”
She stopped.
“If you find him, and you hesitate, don’t wait for a second chance.”
She looked back at him, steady.
“There won’t be one.”
No words. She walked out, sword in hand, steps steady. She made it to the kitchen before he caught up to her, his hand landing gentle on her shoulder.
“Put the sword away,” he murmured. “I’ll bring you some soup. You can eat in your room tonight.”
She turned her head slightly. “Will you eat with me?”
He nodded. “If you’d like me to.”
“I would.”
He didn’t speak again, just disappeared around the corner. And for a moment the house was quiet, and warm, and almost kind.
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chimcess ¡ 5 days ago
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⚔︎ Chapter Four: The Man from Gwangju Pairing: Taehyung x Reader Other Tags: Assassin!Taehyung, Assassin!Reader, Assassin!Jimin, Dad!Jimin, Assassin!Yoongi, Gang Leader!Yoongi, Assassin!Namjoon, Swordmaster!Hoseok, Chef!Hoseok, Pimp!Seokjin Genre: Assassins! AU, Exes!AU, Lovers to Enemies, Action, Comedy, Suspense, Martial Arts, Drama, Thriller, Romance (if you squint), Heavy Angst, Violence, 18+ only Word Count: 23.9k+ Summary: A former assassin awakens from a four-year coma after her ex-lover Taehyung tries to kill her on her wedding day. Driven by revenge for the loss of her unborn child and stolen life, she creates a hit list and embarks on a ruthless mission to take down everyone responsible. Warnings: Violent thoughts, implied miscarriage, flashbacks, PTSD, mental illness, guns, other weapons, traveling, arguing, bickering, use of katana, this is a pretty tame chapter all things considered, not many warnings for this one, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: I apologize if I miswrote any of the Korean I used in this chapter. I don't speak fluently and relying on Google can be difficult.
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Horizon City was somehow worse than El Paso. The sky pressed down like a lid on a pot, trapping the heat until the air itself felt heavy. No clouds. No breeze. Just that dry, punishing stillness that made the world feel abandoned. The pavement shimmered. Buildings sagged under the weight of it, their paint bleached to bone, their windows hot to the touch.
Down the center of it came the Pussy Wagon, too loud, too yellow, a smear of wrong color on a sunburned road. It didn’t belong here, not among rusted trucks and dead air conditioners. Heads turned. Conversations stopped. A woman at the pump froze mid-swipe, squinting like she wasn’t sure if she was awake. No one spoke. In Horizon, you didn’t ask questions unless you wanted answers that ruined sleep.
She didn’t care who stared.
Her bare feet pressed into the warped rubber floorboard, soles black from gas station dirt and bathroom tile. Every joint ached, stiff from too much stillness. Her spine creaked when she shifted. Muscles tugged like they’d forgotten their work. But it was pain she trusted, the kind that proved she was awake.
She turned off the main drag and coasted into a strip mall that had been dying for years but refused to finish. Half the shops were empty, windows papered with curling FOR LEASE signs. The others hung on out of spite. One, TexStyle Western Wear, flickered under a crooked sign. She killed the engine and let the truck tick and groan like it resented being roused.
The pavement nearly blistered her feet. She staggered once, steadied, then limped toward the storefront. Her hips screamed, her legs protested, but they worked. She didn’t look back.
Inside, the temperature dropped hard. The AC blasted chemical cold, making her skin prickle. Lights buzzed overhead, too bright, too dim, one always flickering. Country music bled from a speaker behind the counter, slow and stitched together with heartbreak. She knew the tune. She knew the kind of place this was: the kind where you could walk in dripping blood or ghosts and no one cared, as long as you didn’t yell or steal.
Her scrubs rustled as she moved through racks, baggy and stained, reminders of a place she wouldn’t name. She trailed her fingers along the denim, grounding herself. Jeans. A tank top. A jacket lined with shearling she didn’t need but wanted anyway, something to hide behind. Boots under the clearance rack: red leather, white stars dulled to cream. She pulled them on, breath catching at the pain in her thighs, but when she stood, they fit.
At the register, she dropped Buck’s damp bills on the counter. The clerk didn’t look twice. Just bagged her scrubs like trash.
Outside, the sun hadn’t softened. Her boots struck the pavement sharp as punctuation. She still ached, but she didn’t limp.
The truck’s interior hit her like a furnace. Metallic heat, vinyl, old fuel. The dashboard cracked, the rearview crooked, the windshield spiderwebbed. Her reflection blurred in broken glass, and she let it. She gripped the wheel, palms sticky. For a moment she only sat, list forming in her head, incomplete but enough. One more stop before a nameless motel.
She turned the key. The engine coughed, then rumbled alive, low and angry, a sound she was starting to mistake for comfort. Gravel spit behind her as she peeled out, Horizon City sliding by in the same monotony of sun and collapse.
The next place barely qualified as a department store: a sun-bleached block shouting about bargains to an empty lot. Something fried, chicken maybe, stank through the heat. She parked far from the door. Her legs still felt untrustworthy, but she needed to walk. Make them remember.
Inside, the cold slapped her. Too bright, too sterile, smelling of bleach and melted candy. The place buzzed with noise: screaming kids, arguing parents, a tantrum echoing from toys. She kept her eyes forward. People looked. She felt it, half-second glances sliding over scars and scuffed boots. She didn’t care.
She picked up a basket and drifted to the camping aisle. The shelves were thin, but she found what she needed. A folding shovel, its handle thick and heavy like a weapon. A short-handled pickaxe with a fiberglass grip slick under her palm. A flashlight that looked sturdy enough to swing. Waterproof matches in a bright orange case. And a map of Texas, worn soft at the folds, stained with someone else’s fingerprints. She ran her thumb over the crease before dropping it into the basket. She’d be the last to touch it.
She passed the clearance bins without slowing: Father’s Day mugs, novelty socks, foam can holders with jokes no one ever laughed at. Junk for people she didn’t know. Junk for people who weren’t her. In stationery, she stopped just long enough to grab a plain black notebook and a pack of felt pens.
The basket was filling, too heavy. She set it down and reached for another, the metal frame cool and rough, already rusting at the welds. This one she filled faster, almost frantic. Apricot shampoo and the matching conditioner. A plain white bar of soap, unscented. A bag of cheap pink razors. A loofah she didn’t bother to look at. Deodorant. Face wash. Lotion. Each item clattered against the others, no pause between them. She didn’t want to smell like blood anymore, or sweat, or antiseptic. She wanted the hospital scrubbed off her, layer by layer. She wanted her body back, her skin hers again.
Across the aisle, glass jars lined the shelves, full of bath salts in candy colors. Bubble bath bottles in bright, desperate packaging. A SALE sign shouted promises no one believed. She hadn’t planned to stop, but her feet slowed, drawn by a pull she hated. A scent she didn’t want but couldn’t shake.
An older woman was already there. White hair twisted into a bun, movements slow, deliberate, elegant. She opened jars one by one, breathing each in carefully, gently, as though the act itself was sacred. Y/N didn’t look at her. She just reached for the nearest jar and twisted it open.
Lavender.
The smell hit hard. Her stomach flipped. Her chest locked tight. She was back under hospital lights, antiseptic sharp in the air. IV bags swaying. Monitors chirping in steady beeps. Footsteps soft against tile. A cool hand brushing her hair while a voice whispered a lie: You’re going to be okay.
She snapped the lid closed and shoved the jar back like it had burned her.
Her hand shot out for another, no thought, no reading the label. She breathed deep. Citrus. Tropical. Artificial. But it worked. It cut through the memory, broke it apart. She dropped the jar into her basket.
The next bottle she grabbed was cracked, label peeling, its cap leaking a sticky line down the side. Vanilla, it claimed. She didn’t care. It wasn’t lavender.
At the register, she dumped both baskets onto the belt without ceremony. Her mind spun in jagged circles: Taehyung’s reflection in a rearview mirror, the clean white of hospital sheets, Sam Wallace’s cologne drifting in the heat of summer, the silence of her mother’s kitchen. And beneath it all, always there, the one memory that refused to wash out: her father.
The cashier looked barely old enough to work, hoodie strings chewed thin, nails chipped, one earbud still in. She didn’t speak. Just scanned.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Plastic bags crinkled as they filled. Lavender still clung to Y/N’s hands, her cuticles, her collar, her breath. And then, soft as a whisper in the dark, she heard it: Our Father, who art in heaven…
“Your total is thirty-two seventy-one.”
The voice cut through. She blinked, counted out the money, slid it across. The girl gave her change and the receipt without looking up.
“Have a good one,” she mumbled.
Y/N’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. She studied the girl’s face, saw the dull shadow of apathy in her eyes.
“You too,” she said, her own voice rough, low, like it had clawed its way up from somewhere deep.
She gathered her bags, two in one hand, the third looped over her wrist, and walked for the exit. The automatic doors opened with a hiss, like the store was exhaling her into the heat.
The Pussy Wagon waited at the edge of the lot, its paint so bright it looked like it might hum in the sun. Red flames curled down the sides, shimmering just enough in the heat to look alive. It didn’t look fast. It didn’t look mean. It looked like a mistake someone hadn’t lived down. She didn’t care. She kept walking, boots heavy against the asphalt, bags swinging like pendulums against her knees. Her spine throbbed. Her legs burned. The sun bore down like it wanted to erase her. She kept going.
The truck hit her like a furnace when she opened the door: stale air, rubber, sun-baked vinyl, the faint stink of sweat that wasn’t hers. She didn’t flinch. She cranked the window down halfway, tossed a bag onto the passenger seat, and climbed in. The vinyl clung to her thighs. She turned the key. The engine coughed, sputtered, then growled alive. Reluctant, but steady. It always caught.
She pulled out slow. Tires groaned on the blacktop. Horizon City slid past in layers of heat: fast food joints with sun-bleached signs, payday loan offices in buildings yellowed with age, gas stations with broken pumps, liquor stores called EZ Mart and Last Stop. Dust. Concrete. The occasional palm tree, warped and brittle under the sun, too stubborn to fall but long past thriving.
She didn’t need to look twice. She knew this town. She’d lived in three just like it. She’d died in one.
When the storefronts thinned, she turned onto a cracked lot overrun with crabgrass and potholes. At the far end squatted a two-story motel that looked abandoned mid-construction. Stucco walls blistered, paint curling in sheets, rust bleeding from the windows. Above the office, a crooked neon sign buzzed: The Texican. The “i” blinked like it was losing the fight.
She parked beneath the second-floor walkway, under Room 212. The blinds were shut, but one slat bent outward like a broken tooth. She stared for a beat, then shifted her weight, grabbed her bags, and stepped out.
The lobby smelled of mildew and old smoke. The air felt stale, sealed in too long. A ceiling fan turned slow, clicking each time its blade passed the same rusted edge. The desk at the back looked like it had been rescued from a junkyard. Behind it, a man slouched low in his chair, tank top gray with sweat, a serpent tattoo curling down his arm. His eyes were on a screen.
When he finally looked up, his gaze crawled over her: boots, thighs, waist, lingering where it shouldn’t. Her jaw tightened, but she didn’t blink. She pulled out a roll of bills and dropped it on the counter.
He dragged it close with two yellowed nails. “Night or week?” His voice was flat, dry, like gravel at the bottom of a well.
“Night.”
He grunted, slid her a keycard, and dropped his gaze again. No greeting. No smile. Exactly what she wanted.
She took the key and left.
The stairwell creaked under her weight. The rail was rough, flaking paint into her palm. Each step made her legs ache, tendons stiff, balance not yet fully hers. The building leaned with age, and the stairs tilted uneven.
When she reached the second floor, Room 212 waited. The numbers on the door sagged, one screw half out, the wood around the lock chipped where years of hands had missed their mark. Paint was smudged with failed attempts. She slid the card through. The reader gave a faint, uncertain beep, followed by the click of the lock: a sound sharp and organic, like a joint slipping from its socket.
She stood for a moment, hand hovering over the handle, the heat pressing into her shoulders, sweat sliding down her spine. Then she turned it and pushed inside.
The smell met her first. Not the acrid bite of fresh smoke, but the stale kind, decades old, soaked deep into carpet, curtains, drywall. It was a yellowed stench, baked permanent. Underneath it sat something sour and sharp: mildew, failed cleaning agents, an aftertaste of effort without success. The air felt stagnant, heavy, as if it hadn’t moved in years.
She closed the door behind her, let the deadbolt snap home, and slid the chain across with a thin metallic scrape. A chair in the corner caught her eye: stubby, mismatched, its upholstery faded to some indefinable shade. She dragged it under the knob, jamming it in place. It wouldn’t stop anyone who truly wanted in, but it was a line drawn. A gesture of refusal.
The room itself looked scavenged. Curtains drooped from bent hooks, corners sun-bleached uneven. The light that slipped past them split the bed in orange streaks, late sunlight carving the space apart. The carpet near the door was bald and sticky, its color long since lost to grime. Nothing matched. The nightstand sat too low, its lamp too tall, casting warped shadows up the wall. The desk was scarred with rings and burns, the ghosts of cups and cigarettes. The bedspread screamed in paisleys of red and green, loud and ugly enough to distract from the rest.
She dropped her bags by the mattress and stood still, listening to the silence press in. The wall unit stuttered to life, blasting air that smelled of dust and freon. Not clean, but colder. For the first time all day, she didn’t feel watched.
The bathroom light buzzed on with a flick. The bulb flickered, then held. The mirror above the sink was clouded, corners warped where the silver backing had rotted away. Her reflection returned in fragments, her face shifted, imperfect, unfamiliar.
The faucet groaned before giving up a stuttering flow. Rust-tinged water ran a few seconds before clearing. Heat came quickly, fogging the mirror, filling the small room with steam that climbed the walls and clung to her skin.
She opened the jar of bath salts, tipped two scoops into the tub. They dissolved with a hiss, releasing a softness that felt like it belonged to another life. She poured in the bubble bath, slow, steady, watching it curl through the rising water like melted gold. The white bar of soap she left on the edge, still wrapped, waiting.
Her clothes came off piece by piece, sticking to her skin like second layers. Shirt. Jeans. Damp underwear. She peeled them free and stood in the fog. The mirror caught her in fragments again: shoulder, waist, ribs. Bruises bloomed faintly along her sides, yellow-green fading into skin. Her stomach flat but hollow, her hips jutting sharp. The scar at her abdomen still pink and raised. She didn’t linger. She already knew.
One hand steady on the tile, she stepped into the tub. The heat bit her ankles, climbed her calves, forced a gasp from her throat. Still, she sank down, slow, deliberate, until the water closed around her shoulders and she was folded in on herself, knees tucked, arms looped tight. Steam wrapped her, heavy and close.
She let herself breathe.
The tropical scent lingered, cloying but gentle. Bubbles clung to the surface, catching the light in fragile sheens. Her skin burned, then loosened. Muscles unwound: jaw, neck, spine. For a moment, it felt almost like safety. Almost like being held.
The first sob tore out raw, deeper than her throat, violent as a cough. Another followed. Then another. She pressed her forehead to her knees, fingers digging into her shins, and tried to choke them back. Useless. Her body shook, her breath broke apart. She didn’t scream; there was no air for it. But she wept, bone-deep, every muscle wracked. Her ribs ached, her throat stung.
She wept for the baby she never held, gone before its first breath. For the man who promised to stay, whose blood had marked her hands and her dress and the altar floor. For the hospital bed, for the machines that never went quiet, for the fluorescent light that never dimmed. For every woman who pressed a hand to a belly still full. For every picture never taken, every name never whispered.
She wept for herself. For the years locked away. For her voice forgotten. For the silence that no one noticed.
Eventually her body emptied out. The sobs thinned to shudders, then silence. She sat in the cooling water, bubbles thinning, breath still uneven. Her arms uncoiled. The lavender clung. The bruises showed. The scar glistened.
Drip. Drip. Drip. The faucet tapped against porcelain. The fan above crackled softly, struggling on. Beyond the wall, the air conditioner rattled in fits, wheezing like it had something to prove. A breeze nudged the curtain against the sill, a tap-tap-tap in an accidental rhythm.
She reached for the soap.
It was motel standard, wrapped in stiff waxed paper that crackled as she peeled it open. Plain. White. The word SOAP stamped across in faded block letters, nothing more. She lathered it slow, the foam thick in her palms, and began.
Arms first, shoulder to wrist. Then chest. Then neck. Back to shoulders again, where tension clung deepest. Her jaw, careful. Her stomach, softer, her hand pausing at the scar as though in apology. Her legs, her feet, her fingers, behind her ears. Nothing frantic. Just deliberate, steady strokes, scraping memory away piece by piece.
The water changed, subtly at first. Soap film clouded the surface, swirling. Then faint streaks rose, pinkish, floating near her thighs. Tiny cuts reopened by heat. Or maybe old wounds, still not ready to close.
She picked up the apricot shampoo and snapped the cap open. The scent hit fast: sweet, bright, almost cheerful. Out of place in a room like this, but she let it in anyway. She poured a slick mound into her palm and worked it through her scalp, once, then again. On the third wash she slowed, fingers tracing circles, nails dragging lightly against her skin. It was no longer about cleaning. It was about feeling. Her own hand. Her own body. Her own presence. For a moment she wasn’t thinking about hospitals or sirens or the weight of what came next. Just herself.
Her hair drifted in strands around her, clinging to shoulders and arms, spreading across the water’s surface like ink in clear glass. Every small movement sent ripples over her collarbones. She moved carefully, hardly disturbing the surface.
By the time she rinsed, the bathwater had thickened with what she’d carried in: suds, oil, dirt, faint streaks of blood. Stray hairs, flecks of skin, things she didn’t bother to name. A film skated across the top, swirling quietly every time she exhaled.
She sat in it, arms locked around her knees, chin pressed down. The steam was fading now, air cooling just enough to raise goosebumps along her arms. The mirror across the room stayed fogged. The weight of the day pressed into her spine, her knees, her lungs. Still she didn’t move. Stillness was the point: the kind that emptied you without ceremony.
Her hand found the drain. She pulled.
At first it was a soft slurp. Then stronger, a steady pull. The water swirled around her body like it was trying to take its time saying goodbye. It licked her thighs, curved around her ribs, slid past her arms, then dropped in spirals. The drain swallowed it all without protest: the soap, the oil, the old blood, the pieces of herself she no longer wanted.
She stayed until only a thin puddle remained, circling once, twice, before vanishing with a hollow gurgle. Silence filled the space it left behind.
She pressed her palms against the rim of the tub. Cold now, slick with condensation. She welcomed the sting in her hands. Took a sharp breath, let it root her, then pushed herself upright.
Her legs trembled on the rise. Her arms shook with the effort. Joints complained. Muscles felt wrong, unfamiliar. But she kept moving, slow, steady, until she was standing.
Water traced down her skin in patient rivulets, dripping from her spine, elbows, fingertips. Each drop left its mark before disappearing into the porcelain. The steam had mostly lifted, retreating into the vent or curling beneath the door, leaving only faint streaks across the mirror.
She reached for the towel.
It was motel-issue, stiff, frayed at the edges, faintly sour with detergent and bleach. She dragged it over herself in blunt swipes. No ritual, no tenderness. Just the act of removing water from skin. Left arm, right. Shoulders. Legs. Stomach. The towel caught on raw patches where she’d scrubbed too hard, lit sparks under her skin, but she didn’t flinch.
Barefoot, she stepped out onto the motel carpet. It scratched at her heels like someone else’s memory, old and unpleasant. The room felt thinner than it had before the bath. The air sharper, like it had shifted in her absence.
Her clothes waited in a neat stack. She pulled on the jeans one leg at a time, denim dragging over fresh skin. They caught once on a healing scrape; she winced, then yanked them higher, cinching the belt until the pressure pressed her steady. The tank top next, damp fabric clinging across her ribs. Then the jacket, heavy, familiar, already too warm but necessary. Not for comfort. For armor.
She didn’t look at the bathroom mirror.
On the bed’s edge she bent forward, boots at her feet. She tugged one on, then the other, hands shaking. Not from nerves, but from exhaustion threaded deep, the kind that lived in marrow. The right slid in easy, a solid thump. The left resisted, ankle stiff, toes fighting the fit. She wriggled, yanked, coaxed it until it gave with a final snap. She stood.
The floor felt steadier than it had last night. That was enough.
At the sink, the mirror still wore a fogged film. She wiped it once with her palm, dragging away condensation. Her reflection stared back fractured through hairline cracks, the glass tinted yellow with time. It was her, but broken into pieces.
She looked older than she remembered. Cheeks hollowed, bones sharpened. Shadows pooled under her eyes like bruises. Lips pale, pressed flat. Jaw locked, clenched around years unsaid.
Her scar caught the light. Not a clean line, but a jagged pale bloom across her temple, skin pulled tight over the plate beneath. It hadn’t ruined her face. But it had changed it. Left its story whether she wanted one or not.
She didn’t turn away. Didn’t flinch. She stared until her chest tightened, until her throat threatened to close.
The rage was there, coiled low, steady. Not a fire that leapt. A coal that smoldered. It had lived in her for years, quiet and unyielding, and it stirred now, hot beneath her ribs.
She didn’t glance down at her stomach.
Her daughter. Gone.
Her breath hitched, sharp, and she stepped back.
The bathroom still clung to the last of the steam, curling in the corners, drifting as if reluctant to leave. When she opened the door, it slipped out behind her, dissolving into the dry stillness of the room. It wasn’t dawn yet, not quite. But the light was changing. That in-between hour, when night begins bleeding out but the world hasn’t decided to wake. Everything felt suspended. Waiting.
She crossed to the nightstand. The notebook sat where she’d left it, black cover smooth and unmarked, as if it were holding its breath. She lifted it with both hands, careful, like it might shift weight if she wasn’t. Heavier than it should have been, not from paper but from what it was meant to hold.
From her bag, she drew a pen. Plain, black, the kind sold by the dozen, designed to be used and forgotten. She uncapped it slowly, the click soft, almost apologetic in the hush.
The first page stared up at her.
Death List Five
Yoongi Min – Cottonmouth
Jimin Park – Copperhead
Namjoon Kim – Sidewinder
Brandi Phoenix – California Mountain Snake
Taehyung
She replaced the cap. Slid pen and notebook back into her bag.
Next, she found Buck’s sunglasses where she’d tossed them, bent and scratched, ridiculous in their persistence. She slipped them on. Crooked, as always. She nudged the bridge, tried to adjust, gave up. They never sat right. But they worked.
The room was still dim. Her boots thudded against the floor, each step certain, carrying the weight of promise. At the door, she paused. The chair was still wedged beneath the knob, stubborn in its defiance. She bent, joints stiff, dragged it aside. The scrape echoed across the linoleum, a punctuation mark in the silence.
Chain. Thumb flick. Deadbolt. Three turns, quick, practiced. Her fingers didn’t need thought.
The door groaned open, hinges low and grudging. Heat met her immediately, thick, dry, pressing. Asphalt fumes rising from the lot. Dust on the air. The tang of oil, the metallic bite of a day not yet begun.
The sky was shifting, neither gold nor pink, but some strange in-between shade that lasted only minutes. The motel sat inside it, silent, caught between one night ending and another day beginning. Paused.
The neon above the office buzzed faintly. A cicada started, cut off. A dog barked once. Silence folded back in.
She stepped out. The door clicked shut. She didn’t look back.
The Pussy Wagon crouched at the lot’s edge, yellow paint too bright for the hour, flames shimmering like they wanted to breathe. It looked absurd, dangerous, and proud in equal measure. A dare made metal. A joke sharpened into a blade.
She opened the door, slid inside. The vinyl seat was warm against her thighs, not yet burning but close. The cab smelled of lavender and motor oil, clean, antiseptic almost, but still mechanical. A machine rebuilt too many times, carrying the weight of its history.
For a moment, she sat still. Palms flat on her thighs, fingers twitching. The motel’s AC unit droned faintly in the distance. Inside, the truck held its own silence, coiled tight like a breath waiting to be exhaled.
She turned the key.
The engine caught on the second attempt, rumbling alive with a guttural growl. The cab shivered around her, wheel buzzing in her hands, the vibration running up her arms and into her chest. Settling there. She slid it into drive. Tires spit gravel, reluctant but obedient. The motel shrank behind her, just another room, another scar. Room 212 vanished in the rearview, swallowed by neon and dust.
She didn’t look back.
The highway opened in front of her, cracked asphalt unfurling like a dark ribbon across West Texas. Brush clawed at the shoulders, mesquite twisted like broken arms, rocks rusted red, skeletal trees brittle with drought. The sky stretched pale and empty, the sun still soft but already threatening.
By the time the desert swallowed her, night had fallen again. Not gentle. Not gradual. It dropped like a curtain, sudden and absolute. No moon. No stars. Just black. Heavy. Whole.
The truck didn’t belong here, and it knew it.
It roared too loud, headlights carving two stark tunnels into the void. The beams caught nothing but empty miles, white columns piercing a silence too thick to care. The engine hummed, steady and tired, as though warning her without conviction. Every dip rattled the frame, but the wheel stayed true under her hands. Ten and two. Steady.
Mirages shimmered at the edges of her vision, heat ghosts lingering after the sun. She didn’t chase them.
The desert whispered against the truck’s flanks, a dry, rattling scrape like fingernails on denim. Insects, wind, memory. Something flickered low across the road’s edge, fast, small, gone again. She didn’t check. She slowed instead.
The road narrowed to one lane, asphalt breaking apart under its own weight. She eased off the gas. Let the truck crawl. Then stopped.
Headlights washed over brush and stone. Stillness. Shadows deep enough to hide anything. Or nothing.
She cut the engine.
The silence arrived instantly. Not falling over her, but revealing itself, like it had always been here, waiting.
She reached for the flashlight on the passenger seat, opened the door.
The night air was sharp, not cold but exposing, stripping. She tugged her jacket closer. Gravel shifted under her boots. Behind her, the truck ticked softly as the engine cooled, the sound fading into the endless dark.
She clicked the flashlight on. A narrow beam cut the dark, sharp and clean, slicing through shadow like a scalpel. Everything beyond its reach stayed untouched, patient, waiting.
She didn’t hesitate. Her body carried her forward, step by step, as if it had walked this path before. Maybe it had. Her legs remembered what her mind wanted to forget.
Then she saw it.
A rock. Just a rock, if you didn’t know better. Pale limestone, sunk halfway into the dirt, weathered and ordinary. Something that should’ve blended in. Something anyone else would miss.
But not her.
She crouched, knees popping softly, flashlight wedged between shoulder and chin. The light crawled along the stone’s edge, shadows doubling its size. Her fingers dug into the packed soil at the base. She pulled.
It resisted. Heavier than it used to be. Maybe the ground had hardened. Maybe she had softened. Either way, she braced, set her boot, and pulled again. The stone shifted with a dry scrape.
Underneath, the mark was waiting.
An X, carved deep. Not faded, not worn down. Black as the day she burned it in. The sight of it caught her breath somewhere between release and recoil.
That mark had been a promise. If it was gone, she’d walk away. That was the deal. No vengeance. No names. Just silence. But it wasn’t gone.
The desert hadn’t erased it. Time hadn’t buried it. The universe hadn’t looked away. She stood. The cold closed in now, not wind but earth itself. The shadows seemed to lean forward, curious. She didn’t care. She went back to the truck.
The tools were waiting where they always had been: shovel, pickaxe, flashlight. Old companions. Her hand found the shovel without thought, as if it had already been chosen. She leaned into the cab, thumbed the stereo. Silence shattered. The riff echoed through the night, jagged and merciless, too much for the cab to contain. The truck rattled under it, tires humming against dirt, frame twitching as if it wanted to leap forward. Guitars clawed. Drums pounded like fists.
She turned away before the echo finished, walking back toward the rock. The music chased her into the dark, distorted by space but still sharp enough to cut. Her boots kept time with the rhythm, gravel crunching in sync.
One. Two. Three.
She counted, breath more than voice.
Four. Five. Six.
The flashlight swung at her side, beam lurching across dirt and brush. It caught on shadows, slid over brittle grass, bent across rocks. It felt like stepping into a story that hadn’t been written yet.
Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
Her body warmed against the cold, rhythm keeping her steady. The rock loomed again. Here the air shifted. The ground itself exhaled, cold rising up like something long-buried had soured. She gripped the shovel. The wood was damp. Not with sweat. With memory. Her gloves creaked against it. She drove it down. The first strike rang flat, earth baked into stone. It shoved back. Her arms jolted, shoulder jarred. She didn’t stop.
Another swing. Harder. Then another.
The dirt began to loosen. She fell into rhythm: dig, lift, pivot. Again. Breath shortened, sweat slid down her spine, her back sang with strain. Her palms throbbed inside her gloves. Still, she didn’t let up. Each blow cleared space inside her chest.
Behind her, Barracuda still screamed. The desert caught the sound and threw it back at her, warped but relentless. And she kept going.
Clink.
The sound was different. Heavier. It traveled up the handle, into her arms, into her spine. She froze, boot perched on the edge of the hole, dirt sliding down around her ankle. Breath caught. Heart stilled.
She dropped to her knees. Gloves filthy, jeans scraping rock. She set the flashlight down; its beam jittered, then steadied. Enough to show what waited beneath the soil.
Her hand closed around the pickaxe. She didn’t think. Just swung. Once. Twice. Again.
Chunks of dirt split, scattering sharp and dry. Her arms burned, lungs worked like pistons. Gravel dug into her knees. She didn’t stop until she saw it.
Black plastic. Torn in places, stretched tight over a shape too familiar. Boxy. Olive green peeking through. She knew before she touched it.
The pickaxe dropped from her grip. She clawed at the soil, ripping through plastic and dirt alike. Something slick caught under her nails—water, blood, it didn’t matter. She braced, boot pressed hard, and wrenched.
The earth gave with a groan. The box lurched free, knocking her backward. She landed hard, breath ragged, chest heaving.
Her gloves were filthy, her arms trembling with the effort, but the footlocker was out at last. It was army issue, the kind stamped into a generation. The metal was olive drab, dulled by time, corners dented, its surface scratched and scuffed, the paint chipped to reveal bare steel beneath. The hinges wore rust, but they still held; the latches were stiff but unbroken. It looked exactly as it should: forgotten, but intact.
She brushed a layer of dirt from the lid, her fingers finding the latches without hesitation. A practiced motion, quick and certain. Metal snapped against metal, followed by the creak of hinges straining after years of silence. Dust drifted up in a pale cloud, catching the flashlight’s beam and hanging there like ash in still air. She set the light on the rim and leaned closer.
The first thing she drew out was a sleeping bag, cheap nylon, navy blue, stiff with disuse. It unrolled with a brittle crackle, the zipper teeth clinking like links in a chain. She spread it beside the hole, pressing it flat with both hands. The flashlight cast a sharp bar of light across the box. Dust rose through it in lazy spirals, as though the past itself was breathing.
Beneath the bag lay rows of magazines, tight and orderly. Some bound with rubber, others wound in black electrical tape, the edges frayed with age. She picked one up, ran her thumb over the top round. Brass gleamed back at her, untarnished, untouched. As though it had been waiting.
The first pistol was compact and polished, silver bright against the dim. It looked too elegant for this place, but she knew better. A weapon meant for close range, not display. She tested the weight, how naturally it rested in her palm, before setting it aside with the holster.
Next came a snub-nosed .38. Plain steel, no ornament, no pretension. Just the kind of tool that did the job without complaint. She opened the cylinder, checked each chamber, and gave it a spin. It ticked clean and precise, like a clock. She slipped it into its ankle holster, the Velcro catching with a rasp.
Piece by piece, the Mossberg came out: the barrel, the stock, the slide. She brushed the dust off with her sleeve, each movement instinctive. Assembly came without thought. One part clicked into the next until the weapon lay whole across her lap, heavy, steady, ready.
Her hand brushed something smaller, curved and cold. She lifted a silver boomerang, edges honed thin enough to cut without effort. The light scattered across its surface in sharp shards. She turned it once in her grip, feeling the weight shift. This was older than everything else. Older than her scars, older than her anger. A remnant from another life. It slid into its old holster, and her hand lingered there for a moment too long.
At the bottom, she found a black attachĂŠ, snug in the foam. She freed it, laid it flat, and opened the twin latches. The case released with a click sharp enough to cut the silence. Inside, in carved slots, lay the broken-down parts of a sniper rifle: barrel, bolt, scope, mount. Each piece was immaculate, free of dust, as though untouched by time. She lifted the scope, tilted it upward, and caught a starlight pinprick sharp and clear through the glass.
She was about to close the case when something caught her eye, flat, tucked beneath the foam. A manila envelope, worn at the corners, soft with use. She stripped off her gloves, ignoring the soil packed beneath her nails, and lifted it carefully as if it might crumble. She slid a finger under the flap and unfolded the paper within, one crease at a time.
A black and white sonogram. Grainy but unmistakable. A curled shape no bigger than a thumb. The curve of a spine, the suggestion of a head, the faintest stretch of limbs. Her child.
She sat motionless. The wind seemed to pause with her, the desert holding its breath. Somewhere in the distance, music pulsed low, but she barely heard it. She stayed still in the dirt, sleeves caked with dust, staring at the ghost of a life that never came to be.
She folded the sonogram slowly, carefully, and slid it back into its envelope. The flap pressed closed under her thumb, unsealed but sufficient.
There was more. 
A Ziploc bag, cloudy and heat-wrinkled. Inside was an old Texas state ID. Candy Ralston. The photo was hers, but younger. Rounder in the face, skin untouched by scars. Hair pulled back too tightly, eyes uncertain but already watching. Lips pressed in a line that refused to trust.
Next to it lay a paper bank book, its spine softened from handling. Every entry written by hand, small withdrawals made with care. A pattern so patient it became invisible, until it led here. On the final page, one last choice.
And beneath the lining, exactly where memory said it would be, she found the key. Small, plain, tarnished. Dangling from a chipped novelty fob. The letters worn nearly smooth, but she didn’t need to read them.
Deadly Vipers.
She didn’t pause. No whispered vow, no lingering glance. She began to repack the footlocker, steady and sure. Each weapon slid into its place: the sniper rifle parts pressing into their foam, the boomerang curved into its cutout like it had never left. She closed the sleeping bag last, the zipper catching once before sliding true. The final click echoed in the still air, too loud, like a door shutting behind her.
She hefted the pack onto her shoulder. Heavy, but familiar. Her body shifted into the weight like it had carried it a hundred times before.
She stood, turned, and walked back toward the truck without a backward glance. The hole remained open in the dirt behind her, a raw gash in the earth, as if the desert had been holding its breath for years and finally let it out. No marker, no cross, no stone. Just a patch of sand that had kept its secret until it no longer had to. She left it that way.
The wind stirred, but the desert didn’t change. In the distance, the oil derrick kept grinding its endless rhythm, slow, mechanical, indifferent. The truck was still humming with music when she climbed inside, something sharp with guitars and drums heavy enough to bruise a ribcage. She didn’t touch the dial. Didn’t spare the radio a look. She only turned the key.
The engine growled awake, the wheel twitching under her grip as though impatient, eager to remind her why she’d come. She shifted into drive.
Gravel cracked under the tires, dust lifting in a thin veil behind her. No farewell, no second look. The hole stayed where it was, empty, unfinished, unmarked. Nothing would fill it, and nothing needed to.
Miles slipped beneath her tires, steady and relentless. The sun climbed higher, flattening the horizon into a long, wavering stretch of heat and light. She let the road carry her forward like a current she no longer fought.
By the time she pulled into the Commonwealth Bank of Texas, the sun was cruel at its peak, heat radiating off the concrete in dizzy waves. The building looked like it had been abandoned halfway through its design and forced into use anyway: beige brick, dull metal trim, a flickering red “OPEN” sign that couldn’t decide if it meant it.
It sat wedged between a shuttered taqueria and a payday loan office still dressed in tinsel from a Christmas no one remembered. Dust thickened in the sidewalk’s cracks. The kind of place people didn’t bother to notice. Perfect.
She cut the engine. The silence that followed felt sharper than the music. Her boots struck the pavement with the same deliberate weight they’d carried through the dirt. The sleeping bag was gone, tucked away with the rest. What stepped out here wasn’t the woman from the desert. This was Candy Ralston.
Not the bright-eyed Candy with the easy smile and the drawl sharpened just enough to charm. That Candy was dead. This one was leaner, skin pale, eyes too hollow to bother pretending. Her mouth was a hard line. She hadn’t come for company.
She crossed the lot in a slow, certain stride, one hand on the bag, the other close to her coat. The fabric swayed with each step, brushing her thighs, catching the breeze. She moved like someone who knew exactly what she carried and what it would cost to use it.
The bank’s glass doors didn’t invite. The tint was too dark, the reflection warped. Inside, fluorescent lights flickered and hummed, pouring a pale gray over everything. Blinds hung crooked, yellow at the edges. A place that didn’t improve, only endured.
She pushed through the door.
The buzzer cracked the hush, too loud in the cold, conditioned air. The chill was chemical, designed to keep people awake, unsettled. It smelled of citrus cleaner and overworked machines, with something faint beneath it, something like nerves.
The light was merciless, stripping every angle bare. Her coat stayed on.
She moved with the kind of presence that didn’t need to ask for space. Cameras swiveled from their black domes in the corners, lenses humming faintly if you listened close. She didn’t look up. Let them watch. Let them wonder.
Behind the counter sat a woman who might have been there since the doors first opened. Hair lacquered into a helmet, lipstick a shade of pink too bright for her complexion. The tag on her blouse, polyester and strawberry-colored, cheap, read MARJORIE in rigid block letters.
She looked up when the door chimed, flashing a smile polished for trouble. Too quick, too practiced, more reflex than welcome.
Y/N didn’t return it.
“Hi there,” Marjorie said, her voice soaked in the slow sweetness of a Texas drawl, one that sounded like it had been taught in finishing school and worn thin by years of repetition. “How can I help you today, ma’am?”
Y/N stepped forward, just close enough to make it feel personal, but not close enough to make it weird. Her voice came out low, a little frayed, like she’d worn it out talking to ghosts. “I need access to my safety deposit box.”
Even to her own ears, she sounded small. Not scared. Just tired in a way that lived deep in the bones. Her arms still ached from the dig, her back tight across the spine, her muscles running on fumes. It helped. The exhaustion made her seem soft at the edges, easier to dismiss.
She reached into her coat and pulled out the key. It was plain, silver dulled to a matte finish, worn down at the edges. Nothing remarkable. Except it was. The way she turned it in her fingers, how it caught the light for a second, made it something more than metal. This key had opened more than steel boxes. It had cracked things open that were meant to stay shut.
She placed it on the counter like it might still be hot. “My name’s Candy Ralston.”
Marjorie blinked. Just once. But it was enough. A pause in the rhythm. Her eyes dropped to the key, then back up. Something shifted in her face: some small recalculation, like a mental search engine had just returned an unexpected result. Not panic. Not even suspicion. Just awareness. A name that didn’t match a story. Or a story that was missing too many pages.
Y/N noticed. She always noticed. The flicker in the eyes, the slight tension in the mouth, the way Marjorie’s hands hovered over the keyboard for half a second too long, like they were waiting for instructions the rest of her wasn’t ready to give.
Y/N followed with the ID. Slid it across the glass, calm, steady. The photo was old but recent enough. Her face in it was rounder, eyes a little less guarded, a smile that barely made it to her mouth. Now her cheeks were hollowed out, skin drawn tighter, her gaze hard-edged. But the eyes—those stayed the same.
Marjorie studied the ID, compared it to the woman standing in front of her. Her smile didn’t return. Something behind it had turned mechanical.
“I’ll be right back, honey,” she said, and the warmth in her voice had vanished. She took the ID and the key, turned, and disappeared behind a gray metal door that hissed shut behind her like a vault sealing off bad memories.
Y/N didn’t move.
She scanned the lobby instead. Vault tucked in the corner, keypad locked. Two cameras, standard dome type, mounted high. Cheap, analog, probably on a timed loop. Footage saved to tapes or some outdated drive, nothing that uploaded to a cloud. She made a note of that. Good, not great. Sprinklers overhead, fire alarms every fifteen feet. No posted security. No visible guards. Just quiet.
It wasn’t much. But maybe enough to stay ahead if Taehyung had caught her scent.
Marjorie came back slower than she’d gone. The door opened with the same soft hiss. No smile now. Just neutral posture, the kind you wore when you didn’t want to pick sides. She held the door open without a word.
“Right this way.”
Y/N didn’t thank her. Didn’t speak. She just moved, coat brushing against the counter’s edge, boots making a soft sound against carpet chosen specifically to muffle footsteps. The hallway they entered was narrow, lined with anonymous doors that had no signs or names, only keypads in place of knobs. It smelled like cold paper and old wiring.
At the end of the corridor was a room built for forgetting. The temperature dipped the second they stepped in, not from AC but from something deeper, like the place had been sealed off from the rest of the world for too long. Fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, casting a flat, pale glow that made every surface look harsher than it was. Shadows clung to the corners, thick and reluctant.
The walls were covered in rows of steel safety deposit boxes, each one identical, stacked high like a wall of filing cabinets in a mausoleum. A square table sat in the middle, wood, worn smooth in some places, scratched in others. It didn’t look like anyone had ever sat comfortably at it.
Marjorie moved without speaking, walking straight to a lower drawer in the wall. Her fingers didn’t fumble. She pulled a steel box free and laid it on the table with a dull thunk. Then another. The sound was soft but final, like a decision being made in secret.
She didn’t look at Y/N. Didn’t ask any questions. Her whole body said the same thing: I don’t want to know.
Y/N didn’t open the box. Not here. Not with the lights buzzing and the cameras humming faintly above, and Marjorie pretending not to see but seeing everything anyway. This wasn’t the place for what came next. Not yet.
She stood slowly, letting her knees stretch, spine groan just a little as it straightened. She didn’t make a sound. Just rose, steady and full of weight.
Marjorie still stood by the door, hands folded tight, knuckles pale. Her voice came out quiet, not reverent, not polite. Something more cautious than that.
“Thanks for coming.”
Her eyes flicked to the bag over Y/N’s shoulder. Not curious. Just wary. There was no warmth in her voice. No welcome. Just the brittle sound of someone realizing too late that they should have asked fewer questions, or maybe more.
Y/N didn’t try to soothe it.
“Thanks for your help,” she said. Flat. Even. Just enough to be finished.
She turned and walked out.
Marjorie followed at a distance, like she didn’t want to be caught sharing space with whatever Y/N carried. Back through the hallway, down the long strip of carpet meant to erase sound and footprints. When they reached the counter again, Marjorie slid behind it without a word and sat very still, watching through the glass as Y/N moved toward the door and pushed it open.
The heat outside hit like a slow slap, drier than before, tinted orange by a sun that was just starting to fall. Shadows had grown long across the parking lot, stretching past broken curbs and faded paint lines. The sky had gone bruised at the edges. The truck waited exactly where it had been, dust settled thick across the windshield, the yellow paint looking tired in the last of the light.
She tossed the bag into the flatbed, climbed into the driver’s seat, and closed the door. The cab held the day’s warmth like a breath that hadn’t been let go. The engine took a second to respond. Then it grumbled to life with a thick, uneven roar that rattled the steering column.
She pulled out of the lot without a glance at the building behind her. No one followed.
The bank disappeared in the rearview, swallowed up by the flat lines of small-town architecture and the slow drag of coming night. Another door shut. Another name scratched off.
The road opened in front of her again, stretching west through brush and rock and the half-sleep of places too small to fight back. Her fingers rested easy on the wheel. Not loose. Not tense. Just ready. Her other hand twitched once against her thigh, like it was remembering something: some old rhythm, some old grip.
The sky behind her wasn’t just sunset. It was collapse, like something had given way at the edge of the world and let everything pour out. Red bled into deep violet, orange streaked like torn silk across the horizon. It was a hell of a sight, bold and feral, almost too much to look at. But she didn’t turn to see it. Endings didn’t impress her anymore.
Mile marker 233 blurred past. Just beyond it, the motel came into view. Low-slung and sagging between a boarded-up diner and a pawn shop with a broken front window and an “OPEN” sign that hadn’t glowed since Clinton was in office. The SUNRISE MOT_L sign blinked in sickly neon, the “E” long gone, leaving the name limping toward meaning. Plastic palm trees lined the driveway, sun-bleached and cracked, their fronds drooping like they had finally accepted their own artificiality.
The truck hissed as it settled, engine ticking like it had opinions about being parked. Heat shimmered off the hood. She stepped out, boots hitting the asphalt with the unhurried thud of someone who’d done this too many times before. Another town. Another key. Another night listening to the sound of her own breath and wondering if it was really hers anymore.
The lobby reeked of cheap cleaner fighting and failing to bury the smell of time. Old carpet. Burned coffee. That bitter lemon-polish tang on furniture nobody liked. Behind the counter, a man with red eyes and a week’s stubble looked up, sweat soaking through his shirt. He regarded her the way a man regards a thunderstorm from behind a screen door: resigned, a little impressed, but not about to step into it.
She laid cash on the counter without counting. No words. No name. Just a transaction. He slid a key across the laminate, a red plastic tag dangling from it, the number 11 painted in peeling gold. The plastic stuck to her fingers, tacky with years of grime.
“Back row,” he muttered, already turning away.
Room 11 waited at the far end of the building, tucked into the shadows like a bruise no one mentioned. The lock resisted until she leaned into it, shoulder tight against the door. It clicked open reluctantly, like the room had been holding its breath.
Inside, the air was still and heavy. Not hot. Not cold. Just stale. Saturated. Smoke in the walls, mildew in the carpet. She shut the door, bolted it, slid the chain, then dragged the desk chair under the knob. It wouldn’t stop anyone. But it gave her the illusion of control.
The bag hit the bed with a solid thud. She didn’t open it yet.
Plastic blinds rattled as she lowered them slat by slat, each click deliberate. Outside, the parking lot glowed under a flickering streetlamp, humming too loud, not sure whether to stay lit. A few cars scattered across the lot. Heat still rising off the pavement. Bugs swarming the light like it meant something.
She checked the bathroom. The bulb buzzed sickly yellow, throwing a crooked shadow behind her. Cracked tile. Rusted sink. Mirror fogged at the edges, warped with age. She left the door half open. Not for sightlines. Just habit. She didn’t close doors without a reason anymore.
The room sagged at the seams. Wallpaper peeled in corners, ceiling stained like a bruise. The air conditioner coughed, rattled, died again. She sat on the bed. Zipped the bag open.
Stacks of cash waited inside, neat and brittle, rubber bands fraying with time. She picked one up, breathing in the scent of sweat, dust, and long drives with cracked windows. Quiet money. The kind that didn’t ask questions.
Beneath it, weapons. Two pistols: one clean and compact, the other older, worn. The compact one she hadn’t touched since El Paso, since Lisa Wong walked out of a motel bathroom with a pregnancy test and silence in her eyes. Lisa left three days later. Faked her death the day after that.
She slid them aside. Pulled out the SOG knife. Perfect balance. Still hers. A straight razor waited beneath it, sleek and simple, for skin. She pocketed it. Better to have options.
At the bottom lay a rifle case. She opened it, checked the matte-black barrel. Functional. Nothing ornate. She closed it again. Korea would demand quieter tools.
A manila folder came next. Corners soft with use. Inside: passports. Fourteen identities, all hers. Candy Ralston. Minsook Cho. Emma Blevins. Others she barely remembered wearing. Different hair. Different smiles. Same eyes. Always hers.
A folded map slipped out. Korea. Red ink circling cities, tracing routes like a heartbeat across the paper. She didn’t remember marking it, but her hand had known.
Photographs. Old, blurred, pulled from yearbooks under borrowed names. A beach. An arm around Sam Wallace. Her own half-formed smile frozen in place. She flipped past them quickly.
Then came the sonograms. She didn’t need to unfold them. The shape lived in her spine now, lodged between her ribs.
She sat still with the folder on her lap, bag open beside her, lamp casting weak yellow light over everything. She didn’t check her phone. Didn’t turn on the TV. Just breathed. The room didn’t welcome her, but it didn’t push her out either. It was just a box. Four walls to keep the world at bay for one more night.
Outside, a car rolled past slow, tires whispering over gravel. Somewhere down the row, a door slammed, laughter cracked sharp through the air, and bass thudded heavy from an open window. The music swaggered, empty noise with no weight behind it.
She stayed still. Let it pass like weather. Then leaned forward, unzipped the smaller pocket of the bag, and pulled free something cold and compact. A refrigeration case. She set it on the bed. Unlaced the key from her boot. The lock clicked once, clean, before the lid opened.
Inside, two gold syringes gleamed against black foam. Between them, a vial. Pale amber liquid moved slow inside it, syrup-thick, heavy, like honey aged too long.
Taehyung had called it The Undisputed Truth. Said it burned the lies out of people. She hadn’t believed him. Still didn’t. But she’d taken it anyway. Maybe it worked. Maybe it didn’t. Soon, she’d have to find out.
She closed the case and turned the key with care. Slid it back behind her laces like it had never left. The weight settled into the bag with a muted thud, buried beneath layers of gear. Her hand brushed something soft in the side pocket: a flattened pack of Camels, paper crumpled, edges worn like it had been riding there for years.
She pulled it out, frowning. Couldn’t remember putting it in. Couldn’t remember the last time she even wanted to. Not since Pai Mei. Not since the split lip and two days of lungs scraped raw from the inside. That had been the line. She’d meant to quit.
But tonight didn’t care what she meant.
She tapped the pack twice against her knee and drew one out with her teeth. The lighter waited in the same pocket, cheap plastic, half-empty. It sputtered once, twice, then caught. Flame kissed the cigarette, flared too close, then steadied to a glow. She pulled deep, the smoke burning familiar paths down her chest, settling heavy in her lungs.
The exhale spiraled slow toward the ceiling, mixing with the stale motel air as if it had always belonged there. Maybe she had too. Another drag. Longer. The tremor in her hands eased. The knot in her chest unwound. The ache behind her eyes softened just enough to blink without pain.
She had what she needed. Enough money to disappear. Enough weapons to make sure no one stopped her. Enough names stitched into paper to build another self, somewhere no one was looking. She’d started with less before, built lives from crumbs. But this time the engine driving her was different. Not revenge alone. Not pain. Hunger. The kind born not from being hurt, but from surviving. From still being alive, and wanting more than survival.
Her fingers found the folded map. She spread it flat across the bed, pressing it open with both palms. The paper had gone soft, creases tired, ink smudged. But the line still held: red ink threading its way across borders and customs, curling through cities, circling names. A path toward Korea.
Her nail traced it slow, stopping at Busan. A small circle, marked twice. She tapped it. Once. Again. Then folded the map back with care, each edge pressed down as if she were sealing a thought she couldn’t afford to lose.
The cigarette had burned low, ash dangling fragile at the end. She stood, room folding closer around her. Not smaller. Just more present, more awake. The A/C wheezed, rattled, died with a final shudder. She didn’t look at it.
At the window, she slipped two fingers through the blinds, pulled them apart. Sodium light drowned the parking lot in its false orange glow. Nothing moved except the swarm of bugs around the lamp. Her truck crouched in the far corner, paint dulled, hood shadowed. It looked patient. Waiting. It knew this wasn’t the end. Only another checkpoint. Another launch point. A step toward digging up the version of herself she’d buried.
She smoked the cigarette down to the filter, ground it out in the cracked glass ashtray beside the lamp. Then stretched, long and slow, until her spine gave a small pop. Rolled her shoulders once. Tension snapped loose. Proof the engine was still running. Proof she hadn’t rusted out yet.
There was still work ahead. Still miles to burn. Still names that needed remembering. Or forgetting.
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The sky was still the color of a healing bruise when she stepped out of Room 11. That thin, breath-held hour before sunrise stretched across the motel, quiet and suspended, like the world wasn’t sure whether to wake up or go back to sleep. The air hung low and heavy, not cold anymore but still clinging to the memory of it, brushing at her ankles as she walked. Her boots met the gravel with a soft, steady crunch, her stride slow but sure. The door clicked shut behind her with the soft finality of a decision already made. She didn’t look back. She never did.
Whatever lingered inside that room—the musty reek of mildew, the peeling wallpaper, the silence pressed into the floor like dust—could stay there. The ghosts were welcome to it.
The lot was empty now, stripped of last night’s noise and movement. No music. No laughter. No arguing strangers trying to forget whatever they’d dragged in with them. Just the hum of a flickering security light and the shadows it cast, long and tired and mostly ignored. Her truck waited where she had left it, the same as it always did. Black. Battered. Dust-laced. It didn’t look fast or dangerous, only patient. Like it had seen everything and didn’t need to brag about any of it.
She opened the door. The hinges gave a soft groan. The duffel landed in the passenger seat with a solid weight, heavier now, heavier in more ways than one. Not just steel and currency, but decisions. Commitments. Endings. She sat behind the wheel and rested her hand on the key but didn’t turn it right away. Instead she looked through the windshield, past the sagging plastic palms and sun-warped signage, out toward the open road.
Somewhere along the way, something had shifted. She didn’t know the exact moment, but it was there in her blood, in her spine. The running was over. Whatever came next would not be a retreat. She wasn’t trying to disappear anymore. She was going back.
She turned the key.
The truck woke up with a low growl, not eager but ready. The kind of engine that didn’t expect praise, only purpose. She eased out of the lot without checking the mirror, letting the motel recede into the rearview like everything else she had buried. It would stay there, just another mile behind her.
The road to the airport unfolded like it always did in these parts, quiet highways full of tired signage and forgotten ambition. Diners with names like “Lisa’s Last Stop” and “Grill & Chill 24/7,” their neon flickering like it was fighting sleep. Empty parking lots. Billboards that promised injury settlements, eternal salvation, and the best damn pecan pie on Highway 9. Churches with broken steeples. Loan offices with barred windows. The skeleton of American promise, sun-bleached and hollowed out.
She didn’t turn on the radio. Didn’t crack the window. Her coffee sat untouched in the console, more for the heat in her hand than anything else. She drove with both hands on the wheel, letting her thoughts drift slow and aimless, looping back through the same questions and never settling on answers.
The sun rose behind her, crawling up the horizon like something tired of hiding. It lit the road in pale gold and chased her shadow out ahead of her, long and crooked. The towns she passed blurred together. Same gas stations. Same parking lots. Same dust settling on sun-baked signs. Nothing reached her. Nothing asked to.
By the time she pulled into the airport lot, the sky had turned that washed-out shade of blue that promised heat and little else. She parked in long-term, rows from anyone else. Killed the engine under a flickering lamppost that gave one last buzz before giving out. She sat a moment, hands still on the wheel, feeling the last bit of quiet settle around her. Then she slung the duffel over her shoulder and got out.
It hit her hip like a reminder. Cash. Steel. Papers. Lives. She didn’t walk fast, but she didn’t stall either. Just moved forward like time didn’t own her anymore.
The terminal ahead was all glass and stale light, catching the morning sky in fractured reflections. She stepped through the automatic doors and into the kind of cold that didn’t come from weather but from design. Manufactured. Artificial. Meant to keep people sharp and orderly. It smelled like lemons, plastic, and every departure that had come before her.
She paused just inside. Not hesitation. Just calibration. Listening. Feeling the hum of the place. Gate calls. Wheels dragging. Overhead pages layered with chatter. The low murmur of a world built for leaving. For going but not staying.
She moved through it like someone who didn’t need instructions.
The check-in counter was manned by a thin kid barely old enough to rent a car. His name tag said TYLER. His lanyard was a mess of meme pins and frayed cords. The kind of kid who clocked in with earbuds still in and forgot to take them out. He didn’t notice her at first, not until she was standing right in front of him.
The duffel hit the floor beside her with a small, final sound. Her voice stayed low.
“One-way ticket to Gwangju. First available.”
Tyler blinked, fingers stuttering a second before tapping at the keyboard. Gwangju wasn’t common. It made him look up again, a little more carefully this time. She said nothing else. Just waited.
She slid the passport across the counter. Emma Ji-woo. The photo was polished, airbrushed just enough to pass scrutiny. But the eyes were hers, still and unblinking, focused. Tyler studied the picture, then studied her. He didn’t ask questions. Maybe didn’t know how. Or maybe something in her expression told him not to.
She paid in cash. Clean bills. Neat stack. Pulled from the vault without hesitation, counted out like it was nothing. Like it hadn’t come with a history. The paper smelled faintly of oil and time, like everything important always did. Tyler took the money, his fingers slowing just a bit as he handled it, as if part of him was trying to memorize what wrong felt like.
He printed her ticket, hands fidgety now, and slid it across the counter like he was giving her something that might explode.
“Gate thirty-four,” he said. “You’ll connect through Incheon.”
She took the boarding pass without a word. She didn’t say thank you. She turned and walked toward security, leaving Tyler staring after her.
She didn’t ask about upgrades or snacks. She didn’t care what came in the seatback pocket or what counted as a meal at thirty-seven thousand feet. No interest in a foil-wrapped cookie or a lukewarm bottle of water labeled “premium.” She wasn’t here for comfort. She was here to move forward. To put sky between her and the things behind her. She wanted distance. Altitude. The kind of cold, wordless detachment that only the stratosphere could offer.
The security line wound like a slow fuse: plastic bins clattering, belts slipping through metal loops, the voices of TSA agents clipped and bored. She stepped through it like she’d done it a hundred times. Because she had. Her coat was dark wool, the sort you could wear to a funeral or a boardroom without drawing questions. The stitching was heavier than it looked, reinforced. Useful. Her boots cleared the scanners. The blade inside was legal by a fraction of an inch, packed with the precision of someone who had measured the limits. Her bag was clean where it counted. Nothing that would raise alarms. Just the weight of something lived-in and quiet.
They scanned her passport and boarding pass without a second glance. The photo matched. Emma Ji-woo. Hair slightly darker in the picture, lips touched with a professional half-smile. Believable. The machines beeped politely. No flags. No questions. Just a nod and a wave.
She didn’t breathe easier. She didn’t need to.
At the gate, the crowd had already started to gather. People sprawled in chairs, their energy muted by early hours and too many miles. Some stared at their phones. Some picked at overpriced muffins. One kid cried softly into a sweatshirt, and nobody looked up. It was the kind of communal fatigue that airports did best: a shared sense of waiting without purpose.
She took her place in line, middle of the pack. Not the first. Never the last. Just another body headed somewhere else.
When they called Group Two, she moved.
Her seat was by the window. It always was. The duffel slid under the seat in front of her with practiced ease, fitting like it had done this before. She let her fingers rest on it briefly, grounding herself in the weight of what it held: names, tools, contingencies. The pieces of a life carefully folded down to fit inside a single bag.
She leaned into the wall of the plane, cool against her shoulder, and looked out. Morning had arrived without conviction. The sky was a washed-out gray, the kind of color that came before heat, before light. Airport machinery drifted past—fuel trucks, baggage carts, people in reflective vests who looked like they hadn’t slept. The wing of the plane cut across her view, still and patient, waiting to rise. Sunlight slid over it in dull streaks, catching on the rivets and edges, turning everything gold and indifferent.
The overhead speaker crackled something about boarding zones and safety demonstrations, but none of it landed. Not for her. The sound washed past her ears without shape, the way wind moves through trees: present, but meaningless. Someone two rows up laughed too loudly. A baby fussed. Coffee burned its way through the air vents, mixing with the stale plastic scent of recycled cabin air.
She didn’t move. Didn’t fidget. Her hands were folded in her lap, posture calm, almost meditative. But inside, the tight coil sat waiting. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t nerves. Just pressure. A quiet readiness built from too many miles and not enough peace.
The engines rumbled to life beneath her feet. The metal shell around her vibrated in response, like the plane was stretching its limbs after too long on the ground. It rolled slowly toward the runway, wheels clunking over seams in the concrete. She didn’t grip the armrest. Didn’t reach for anything. Just watched.
Takeoff wasn’t elegant. It was mechanical force dressed up in aerodynamics. The thrust came all at once, raw, loud, unapologetic. The kind of motion that didn’t ask permission. Her body pressed back into the seat, gravity pulling at her chest as the ground fell away. For one long breath, the Earth clung to her like it didn’t want to let go. And then it did.
The airport dropped out of view, buildings and roads folding in on themselves, reduced to the flat language of maps and memory. Gas stations, parking lots, little rectangles of human effort. All of it faded under a rising haze, distant and forgettable.
Her breath touched the glass for a moment. A soft cloud, gone just as quickly. The sky beyond was endless and blue in that high, cold way. Not warm. Not kind. But honest. It didn’t care who she was. It didn’t care where she was going. It just was. Vast. Empty. Ready.
She stared out into it, not searching, not thinking. Just remembering how it felt to be small again. Small enough to disappear, but sharp enough not to.
Her hand moved without looking, brushing the inside pocket of her coat. Cotton. Folded. A handkerchief she didn’t remember packing. She pulled it out, fingers slow and careful. The cloth was clean. White. Pressed. The kind of thing you carried when you didn’t know if you’d cry, or bleed, or both.
From the same pocket came the needle. Fine steel. Polished. Paired with a single loop of red thread, already knotted. She didn’t check it. She didn’t need to.
She began to sew.
Her hands worked in small, deliberate motions, the thread pulling through the fabric with barely a sound. She didn’t glance down. Her fingers remembered the rhythm. The name formed, one letter at a time. T. A. E. H. Y. U. N. G. Each stroke was precise. Each pull tight. No wasted movement.
She didn’t say his name. Didn’t even let her lips shape it. But it was there. In the cloth. In the blood-colored thread. In the silence between stitches.
When the name was finished, she tied it off with a flick of her wrist. Trimmed the excess. Folded the cloth again. Pressed it back into her pocket. Over her heart.
The plane had leveled out. Cruising now. The clouds below looked like ash. The ocean below that: cold, dark, silent. Somewhere beyond it, past all this emptiness, was Korea. And the man from Gwangju.
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The plane hit the runway. A hard, ugly jolt that snapped her spine straight and rattled the tray table in front of her. The tires screamed against the tarmac, metal grinding in protest as the cabin vibrated with the kind of impact that made people forget how to breathe. Drinks sloshed. Seatbacks creaked. Somewhere up front, someone muttered a sharp curse under their breath. The overhead lights flickered once, barely a stutter, but she saw it. She always did.
Out the window, the city didn’t look like it was sleeping. It looked like it had never gone to bed in the first place. Darkness hung heavy, not clean or quiet, but thick, like smoke, like old breath trapped in a closed room. The kind of dark that didn’t just hide things, it held them. The runway lights sliced through it in stark, clinical lines. Past them, the faint blur of Gwangju shimmered in neon and haze: blues and reds pulsing like slow heartbeats, mirrored in wet pavement that hadn’t dried and maybe never would. The glass reflected back just enough of her face to remind her she was still here.
As she stepped into the gangway, the air shifted. Dense. Damp. Immediate. It clung to her skin like something familiar, something half-forgotten but buried deep enough in the bones to recognize on contact. A mix of exhaust, concrete, late summer heat, and something sweeter, grilled food maybe, or just memory dressed up like scent. It hit her lungs like a slow exhale. She didn’t rush. Just walked forward, each step steady, her bag slung across her shoulder in that way that made it clear she didn’t need help and wouldn’t ask for it. Her coat hung open now, too warm for the humidity but still part of the armor. She moved like someone who belonged in the space between strangers. Not local. Not lost. Just passing through with purpose.
And yet, something shifted the second she stepped off the plane and onto Korean soil. Nothing anyone could see, but she felt it: a small click, like a lock catching in place. A posture change that didn’t show in her spine but settled deeper, in muscle memory and instinct. The mask slid on without effort. Not Emma Ji-woo anymore, not exactly. Not Candy, not the others. Just the version of herself this place required. Whatever her name was, she carried it like a blade in her boot, quiet, hidden, ready.
Inside, the airport moved like it had been designed for silence. No chaos. No rush. Just clean lines and softened footsteps echoing off polished tile. People didn’t shout. They didn’t loiter. They moved with the kind of practiced grace that didn’t need announcements. The lights overhead were low and cool, and even the seating looked like it had been designed to be ignored.
Customs passed without friction. The officer barely glanced up, flicked through her documents like he was reading grocery lists. Her forged passport, Emma Ji-woo, South Korean citizen returning from years abroad, was fresh, well-aged in the right places. The photo had the right kind of editing: smooth enough to pass facial scan, textured enough to seem human. She handed it over with both hands, bowed just enough to make it believable, smiled with restraint. Polite. Non-threatening.
“감사합니다,” she said, her voice low and shaped just right.
The stamp fell with a dull, final thud. No questions. No extra eyes. Just a nod, a motion, and then the gates opened.
Outside, the night waited.
The city air hit harder, warmer, wetter. The kind of humidity that didn’t just touch you, it soaked in. Rain had fallen not long before; she could feel it in the way the concrete gave off heat like breath. The streetlights bounced off slick asphalt, halos forming in puddles that mirrored blinking shop signs and broken reflections of moving traffic. Scooters buzzed past, weaving between slow cars. The buzz of neon hummed in the wires overhead like a living thing. There wasn’t much noise, but everything felt alive. Breathing.
She walked toward the taxi stand without checking her phone, without checking directions. She already knew where she was going. Her bag pulled at her shoulder, not in protest, just in reminder. Inside, names and pasts and the pieces of herself that weren’t for daylight. But she didn’t adjust it. Didn’t even shift her stance.
The cab she picked wasn’t the newest. The bumper was scuffed, one headlight had the faint film of age, and the license plate was slightly crooked. But it was real. Lived-in. The driver leaned against the hood, half-lit by the overhead bulb, cigarette cupped loosely in two fingers. Middle-aged, maybe older. His shirt wrinkled, his gaze unreadable.
She smiled before she spoke. Soft, disarming, the kind of smile that made people assume you didn’t bite.
“안녕하세요,” she said. “Seongmin Heritage Hotel, please. Near Sajik Park? The one with the koi in the lobby?”
The man blinked at her. A flicker of recognition, more for her fluency than her face. But he nodded like it didn’t matter.
“Know it,” he said, voice rasped from smoke or years or both. “That’s a nice place.”
She slid into the back seat, her bag tucked in beside her, one hand resting on its handle.
As they pulled into the street, he glanced at her in the mirror. “Vacation?”
She let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. “Sort of,” she said, breezy, warm enough to sell. “I’m meeting someone.”
That made him smile, just a little. “Boyfriend?”
She tilted her head, just enough to suggest a blush. “Not exactly. I’ve known him for a long time.”
“And you’ve never met?” he said, eyes narrowing with casual disbelief. “Do you trust him?”
She leaned forward a little, voice softer, like she was sharing something real. “I guess I’m old-fashioned. I still believe in people.”
The driver chuckled, tapping ash out the window. “Well. Hope he’s worth the wait.”
She smiled again, turning her eyes back to the window. “Me too.”
Outside, the city slid past in glints and shadows. Signs blinked red and blue against walls slick with water. A lone man smoked beneath a streetlight. A group of teenagers laughed near a convenience store, their voices echoing sharp and bright. And above it all, Gwangju pulsed. Alive. Waiting.
Her body language was relaxed, open, even friendly, but not too friendly. Her smile landed right where it needed to: warm enough to seem genuine, distant enough to keep the woman behind the desk from asking questions she didn’t want to answer. And yet, beneath it all, behind her eyes, there was something else. Something sharp. Alert. A presence just beneath the surface, watching everything, holding still like a wire pulled tight.
The cab ride had taken about twenty minutes, maybe less. She couldn’t really tell. In that strange pocket of time, after midnight but before dawn, everything stretched or collapsed depending on how close you were watching. Cities didn’t sleep in those hours; they just drifted, like the tide. The cab driver barely spoke, his cigarette glowing faint in the corner of her vision, the smoke trailing out the half-open window into the warm, wet air. He drove like a man who’d forgotten how to be surprised by anything. She appreciated that. It made things easier.
Out the window, Gwangju blurred past in bands of neon and shadow, light warped by the sheen of recent rain. The storefronts were lit like stages no one was acting on anymore: 7-Elevens glowing sterile and perfect, their shelves full of snacks and instant noodles and bottled tea that no one needed but still bought. People moved through them slowly, hunched and quiet, looking like they were halfway between sleep and survival. The rest of the city felt paused, noodle shops with stools turned upside-down, karaoke bars locked behind metal grates, all of it blinking half-heartedly like no one had told the power to shut off yet. One sign above a barbecue place kept flickering between “삼겹살 24시” and total darkness, as if it couldn’t decide whether to keep going or give up.
They passed a hanbok rental place with mannequins frozen in the windows, draped in silk and thread, caught mid-movement in some forgotten celebration. The lights inside were faint, almost apologetic. The kind of glow you could miss if you weren’t looking directly at it. And everything outside, every puddle, every wall, every parked car, reflected that layered light. Hangul shimmered across wet streets like it was painted there in real time. Chicken. Tarot. Facials. Cheap drinks. Lost hopes. It was all advertised the same way, with bold fonts and desperate color.
She leaned her head against the cool glass of the cab window and let the city slide past her. She wasn’t sightseeing. She wasn’t curious. She was memorizing. Every corner. Every alley. Every building with a fire escape or a side entrance or a window that stayed cracked. Not just as someone taking in a new place, but as someone planning how to move through it. Where to hide. Where to hunt. Where to vanish.
She wasn’t here for a reunion. That was the lie she wore like cologne, pleasant, easy, expected. She was here to dig. To drag someone’s name back out of the dirt and make it mean something again. If this city had tried to forget him, she’d remind it. She’d burn the name into glass and pavement if she had to. She hadn’t come this far to let memory do the burying.
When the cab finally slowed in front of the Seongmin Heritage Hotel, she already knew the building before it came into full view. She’d studied it, grainy photos, tourist reviews, street-view walkthroughs. But even with all that preparation, it was still something to see in person. Polished, curated, old-world elegance repackaged as modern luxury. White stone columns stood like they were holding up more than a roof, like they were trying to convince the street this place mattered. Carved details along the trim caught the warm spill of interior lighting. The brass door handles gleamed like they’d never been touched by real weather. Above the entry, a stained-glass panel glowed amber and deep red, a honeyed light pouring over the curb like something sacred had just cracked open.
And just inside, behind a clean pane of tall glass, the koi pond gleamed. Black water, smooth and quiet, broken only by the slow turning of gold and orange fins. The fish moved in lazy arcs, each shift like a breath drawn too deep to be seen. Like they didn’t care who watched.
The driver parked and turned to look at her. His voice was low, soft, like he knew not to break whatever moment she was in.
“This it?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”
He watched her for a second too long, not in a threatening way, just thoughtful. Like he’d seen this before. Not her, maybe. But people like her. People with a story that couldn’t be told in the back of a cab. People walking toward something only they understood.
“Well,” he said after a pause, “good luck with your meeting.”
She smiled faintly, just enough to be polite. “I think it’ll be one to remember.”
She handed him a bill folded clean once. Double what the meter read. He glanced at it, then back at her, and nodded without another word.
She stepped out of the cab. The air hit her like it meant to. Heavy. Humid. Full of noise that hadn’t been made yet.
She shouldered her bag without shifting her weight. Moved toward the hotel doors like she was stepping into something familiar. And as the cab pulled away, the night closed back in behind her like it hadn’t noticed she’d arrived at all.
Inside, the hotel smelled like money pretending to be modest. Like expensive wood polish layered over old stone and cold air recycled too many times. The lighting was just dim enough to flatter the furniture but still show off the marble floors, clean, symmetrical, sharp where it counted. Every tile lined up like it had been laid by someone who understood symmetry wasn’t just about beauty. It was about control.
To her left, the koi pond curved around the front desk like a moat. Its surface was glassy and still, the fish drifting in slow spirals. They looked unreal in the low light, too bright, too calm, like someone had animated them just for her arrival. A tiny pump kept the water moving just enough to keep it from falling asleep, but the sound was so soft it might’ve been imagined. It wasn’t tranquil. It was measured. Controlled. Like everything else in this place.
She walked toward the desk like she’d done it a dozen times in other cities under other names. Calm, confident, casually forgettable. The kind of guest who knew how to tip well and never asked for room upgrades.
The woman behind the desk looked young but practiced. Hair styled into a sharp, no-nonsense bob. Uniform crisp. Movements efficient. Her name tag said Juha, though Y/N didn’t really need to read it. She’d already pegged her: precise, polite, not interested in small talk. Just enough kindness to pass for warmth. The kind of employee who wouldn’t remember a single detail about you by the end of her shift, and wouldn’t question why she didn’t.
Y/N offered her a smile. The good one. Just the right amount of curve. Something safe. Something easy to forget.
Y/N switched to Korean mid-step, her tone effortless, almost casual. “예약했어요. 캔디 랄스턴으로요.” Her accent was textbook Seoul.
The woman behind the desk didn’t blink. “환영합니다, 랄스턴 씨. 3박이시죠?”
Y/N nodded, and with a soft switch in rhythm, she slipped back into English. Her voice lifted just slightly, pleasant and open, with that eager brightness tourists wore like perfume. “First time in Korea. I’m really excited.”
The receptionist smiled as if on cue. Not warm, exactly. Rehearsed, but pleasant. She slid a room key forward, tucked inside a white sleeve embossed with the hotel’s gold crest. “Room 714. Elevator’s just to your right.”
Y/N offered a small bow, murmured her thanks again, and turned away. Her boots made no squeal against the floor, only that quiet, deliberate click that echoed soft and sharp like footsteps in a gallery. The kind of sound that didn’t try to be heard but couldn’t help leaving an impression.
The elevator was already waiting, doors wide open like it knew she was coming. She stepped inside and caught her reflection in the mirrored walls: three angles, three versions of herself looking back. Her posture was perfect, relaxed, composed. Her clothes, neutral tones and well-fitted, spoke of efficiency, not attention. Her makeup was subtle, just enough color to say effort had been made, not enough to say she cared about being seen.
She looked like someone organized. Someone harmless.
But the reflection in the center mirror told the truth. It was in the way her eyes held steady, unflinching, like they didn’t expect kindness anymore. Like they’d already learned what questions were traps, which silences meant danger, and how to vanish while still in plain sight. There was a stillness in her face, but not the kind that came from calm. This was stillness earned, built from rehearsals, from closing hotel doors behind you and counting exits before you even set your bag down.
The elevator rose, slow and steady. She shifted her canvas bag higher on her shoulder. Not because it hurt, she didn’t let things hurt, but because it grounded her. Inside was everything that counted: names, paper trails, backup plans. There was no wasted weight.
When the elevator doors slid open on the seventh floor, she was already halfway into the hallway.
It was quiet. Carpeted in something dull that might once have been green, the kind of floor that muted footsteps into suggestions. The wallpaper, floral and faded, curled at the corners where humidity had worked its way in over the years. The light overhead buzzed, faint and constant, like the building was humming to itself out of habit. A soft, tired sound.
Room 714 was near the end, just past a bend in the hallway where the emergency map was pinned slightly crooked on the wall. She paused in front of the door, keycard in hand.
And then she just stood there. Not long. Just long enough to listen.
Not for sound. For pressure. For presence. You didn’t survive by hearing footsteps, you survived by feeling when a room wasn’t empty. The temperature. The stillness. The quality of silence. She tilted her head slightly. Felt the way the air held its breath.
Nothing.
She slid the keycard through the reader. The lock beeped, followed by that soft, mechanical click. Small, almost polite. She pushed the door open with her shoulder and stepped inside without looking behind her. The door sealed shut behind her with the kind of sound that didn’t echo. It just ended.
She locked it: deadbolt first, then the chain. Her hands moved in a rhythm they’d known for years. One smooth motion, no hesitation. She wasn’t checking, she was securing. There was a difference.
The canvas bag landed on the bed with a deep, even thud. Not loud, just final, like it had arrived with intent. She didn’t stop to look around. Didn’t bother checking the view. The room wasn’t the point.
She walked to the desk in the corner and turned on the lamp. Warm light spilled across the pale wood, catching on the edges of the hotel stationery and the small, useless pen that had been placed there with the usual pretend care. The kind of detail that suggested someone had thought about your comfort, even if they hadn’t.
She sat down. The chair creaked faintly but held. Her body didn’t sag. She didn’t relax. She just settled into it.
She pulled the pad of paper toward her and picked up the pen. It was smooth, plastic, light, nothing special. It didn’t matter. She clicked it once and started writing in small, deliberate strokes.
Things to Do Tomorrow:
-Buy a light pink blouse. Something that moves. Something soft.
-Buy makeup
-Rehearse the story. Again.
-Smile until it hurts.
Her pen hovered above the last line for a beat. Then she added one more, slower this time:
-Be perfect.
She circled it. Once. Then again. Firm. Not as a reminder. As a rule.
She put the pen down beside the pad and exhaled. Not dramatically. Not with relief. Just enough to release the breath she’d been holding since the door clicked shut.
She stood.
The bathroom was exactly what she expected: white tile, cool light, no character. Clean without warmth. The mirror above the sink was wide and too tall, forcing her to step closer if she wanted to see all of herself at once. She didn’t bother.
The light buzzed overhead, sterile and flat, the kind of glow that made everything look a little too real.
She touched her fingertips to the edge of the counter. Steady.
She wasn’t tired. Not yet. What she was came after tired, and it had no name.
She reached out and turned the faucet, letting the water run. Cold at first, bright and clean, loud as it hit the porcelain. But beneath the noise, she listened. Not to the water itself, but to the way it moved through the pipes. The way it echoed off tile. The way it filled the silence with something that wasn’t her. It sounded pure, but she knew better. It had traveled through metal older than the building, scraped past rust and time, ghosts caught in the bends. Still, it came out confident. Unbothered. Like it hadn’t carried anything with it.
She didn’t hurry. Her fingers moved slowly to the hem of her shirt, tugged it over her head, and let it fall to the floor. Then the rest, belt, pants, underthings, peeled away without effort. She’d done this ritual a thousand times before. And yet tonight, her hands felt different. Not clumsy. Not unsure. Just heavy, like they remembered more than she wanted them to. Her clothes ended up in a soft heap at her feet. By then, the mirror had already fogged over.
She stood still for a moment. Not posed, not inspecting. Just there. Her arms hung loose at her sides, her toes sinking slightly into the tile. The steam softened everything: her outline, her skin, even the air. The reflection staring back at her was dulled at the edges, her features blurred by heat and breath. She could still see her shape. Her shoulders narrow but set, arms lined with the first signs of strength again. Her ribs still showed when she inhaled too deeply, but her thighs had started to look solid again. Her body was still catching up to the rest of her. Still figuring out how to be whole after Two Pines tried to carve her hollow. But she was getting there. Slowly. She could see it.
She tilted her head and scanned herself like she was reading a story she knew by heart. The scars stood out like chapters. The crescent just below her ribs where a blade had barely missed something vital. A paler burn at her hip, nearly invisible now, but still a map of pain. The line along her collarbone, clean and deliberate. Surgical. The scar on her forehead had been there the longest. She didn’t even notice it anymore.
She nodded once, almost imperceptibly. A quiet agreement between her and the woman behind the fog.
Then she stepped into the shower.
The water hit her like a warning. Scalding. Immediate. It slammed into her shoulders and rolled down her back, ruthless in its heat. But she didn’t flinch. She leaned into it. Let it rake across her spine, sting her arms, burn her thighs. The pain was real. Tangible. Honest in a way few things were. It didn’t lie, didn’t soften, didn’t ask questions. It just landed, over and over again, washing everything else into silence.
She closed her eyes, tilted her head forward, and let her forehead rest against the cool tile wall. It grounded her. Solid. Cold. Unmoving. She breathed. Not deeply. Just enough. Enough to be here.
Then it came.
Not a memory. Not an image she could blink away. It was sharper than that. It crashed through her like glass, fast, clean, final. No prelude. No grace.
A sonogram.
Not imagined. Not abstract. Burned into her mind with brutal clarity. Grainy black-and-white. A crescent of light, unmistakable. And there in the center, her. The child. Seven months. Spine curled tight. Fists pulled in. Fragile, yes, but undeniably alive.
Not a possibility. A fact.
The photo was still folded in the lining of her coat. Tucked behind Kevlar, buried between seams, carried across borders and terminals and checkpoints. It was creased so deeply now it had forgotten how to lie flat. She had kept it close because she couldn’t not. Because some part of her still believed the paper would remember the shape even if she forgot the name.
She used to whisper to her belly in motel rooms that reeked of other people’s stories. Whisper names in the dark. Some strong. Some gentle. Some stolen from myths. Some from books she hadn’t finished. She spoke them aloud like spells. Names in Korean. In English. Names that meant light. Names that meant defiance.
Now? Now she couldn’t remember a single goddamn one.
Not one.
The realization hit without warning. Her knees gave out, buckled like they had been kicked. She dropped too fast to catch herself, hands sliding helplessly down the wall. Her skin hit the shower floor hard, the ceramic slick and unforgiving. Her breath didn’t come. Her chest just stalled.
The water kept pounding down, relentless and hot, hammering her back, her scalp, her shoulders.
She folded in tight. Arms clamped around her stomach. Head bent. Forehead pressed hard to her knees. The heat had scalded her skin pink, but it was nothing compared to what was burning underneath. Her whole body trembled, not from cold but from something older, deeper, more bone-deep than fear. Her jaw locked so tight her teeth throbbed. Fingernails dug into her upper arms, leaving pale marks that flushed angry and red as the shower thundered down over her back. Her shoulders jolted with every breath. Her chest couldn’t seem to find a rhythm. Her mouth opened once, like maybe a sound would come out. It didn’t. Just steam and a shattered breath that barely made it past her lips.
She cried, but not the way people cry in movies. No cinematic sobs. No beautiful devastation. This was messier. Raw. She cried like it surprised her. Like her body had remembered something her mind wasn’t ready to revisit. It wasn’t gentle or cathartic. It was violent. Uncontrolled. The kind of grief that had waited in the walls of her bones, that had made a home beneath her ribs, that had lived inside her blood quietly for years and now refused to be quiet anymore.
It wasn’t just about the child, though it started there. She cried for the girl she never got to meet. For the weight of her. The impossible, invisible pull of a presence that had once lived beneath her skin and kicked in the dark and responded to her voice like it meant something. She cried for the names whispered into motel ceilings. For every plan made in secret. For the way she used to sleep with one hand on her belly and the other over the gun under her pillow, believing—naively, stupidly—that she could keep both safe.
She cried for herself too. Not the woman she was now, but the one she used to be. The one who thought she could walk two roads at once. Who thought she could live between love and violence and come out clean. That she could be sharp and soft. That she could kill for a living and still build a life worth protecting.
She had buried that woman. Or thought she had. But grief has a way of preserving what pain cannot quite dissolve. The version of herself she thought was long gone hadn’t decayed. It had hardened. It had turned into something fossilized under all the anger and training and years. Not gone. Just waiting.
And under the grief, something else had been building. Coiled low in her belly. Climbing her spine. Tightening around her throat.
The fury.
It hit hot and sudden. Like a flare lit inside her chest. Fast. Blinding. Unforgiving. Her muscles locked. Her fists curled tight. Her breath caught in the cage of her ribs. She wanted to wreck something. Rip the cabinet off the wall. Shatter the mirror with her elbow. Drag her knuckles down the glass until they split. She wanted to leave blood on porcelain. On tile. On her own hands.
She wanted to find him. Taehyung Kim. And make him understand what he had done. Not by telling him. By making him feel it. Every inch of it. Every second. She wanted to look him in the eyes as it hit him. As the weight of what he stole crushed him under its full, ugly truth.
Her knuckles went white. Her muscles trembled with the force of restraint. But she didn’t scream. Not because she couldn’t. Because she wouldn’t. That kind of rage needed to be saved. Stored. Honed.
It would have its moment. Just not here.
The shower kept running, loud and steady, until she moved. Just a breath. Just a twitch of her fingers. Then she reached up and turned the water off.
Silence crashed down like a wave. Thick. Dense. The kind that fills every crack in a room. The kind that listens back. Steam drifted in long, slow ribbons, curling around her shoulders like it wasn’t ready to leave either.
She blinked once. Her breathing evened out. Slower. Cooler. Her chest still ached, but the fire was banked now, drawn in close and dangerous. Not gone. Just shaped.
She stood.
Water clung to her skin. Her hair dripped in long strands down her back. Her face was flushed, eyes glassy but sharp now, clear in a way that felt surgical. She moved with precision, drying off in steady, methodical swipes, every motion practiced and spare. The towel trembled in her hands, but she kept her grip. Dressed quickly. Quietly. No wasted motion. Just armor going back on.
The grief didn’t vanish. She packed it back down. Tucked it into the parts of herself she didn’t let anyone see. But the rage—she left that right where it was. Let it sit beneath her skin. Close to the surface.
Because Taehyung Kim didn’t know what he had taken from her, but he would.
She wasn’t coming for answers.
She was coming for the truth.
And he would give it to her.
Because there would be no one left to stop her.
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The city didn’t perform. Gwangju just was. It didn’t blaze with ambition like Seoul or stretch itself into glitz the way Busan tried to. It moved slow, breathed heavier. Honest, unbothered, like an old man in his undershirt posted up on a plastic chair, feet bare, sweating into the sidewalk, waving off mosquitoes with a rolled-up newspaper. There was a stillness here that didn’t feel staged. It felt earned. Like time didn’t hurry. Like it hadn’t for a while. Even the heat didn’t rush. It pressed down in thick, lazy folds, dragging everything—footsteps, voices, the color out of the buildings—into something close to sleep.
The streets moved in rhythm with it: fans turning slowly in dim back rooms, the hum of overhead wires swaying with the weight of too many summers, the drag of slippers across concrete. Shops leaned on each other like they were tired of standing alone. Paint peeled in curls off old storefronts. Rust bloomed at the hinges of delivery carts and folding chairs. Hand-painted signs creaked as they shifted in the breeze, their edges warped like paper left out in the rain.
It was the kind of afternoon where nothing tried too hard. The air was a patchwork of smells: hot oil, boiled radish, exhaust, old metal, the damp tang of stone that’s never had a chance to dry. Vendors fanned themselves with bent menus, arguing halfheartedly with ajummas who bargained with the precision of habit. A mop of scooters rolled through puddles left by melted ice or a spilled soup bowl, weaving through crates and feet like they knew every shortcut before it was built. The city didn’t sleep. But it didn’t really wake up, either. It just existed. Like a held breath.
And tucked into all of it, halfway hidden between a shuttered bookstore and a florist with wilting carnations, was the door. If you could call it that. More a suggestion than an entrance. A curtain, once blue and now more of a stained gray, hung from a crooked rod that looked hammered into place out of stubbornness rather than skill. It shifted when the wind pushed at it, not with drama but with the quiet of something breathing. The name painted across the fabric had long since faded: 김밥바. The brushstrokes barely held together, as if the person who wrote them hoped the world would forget.
She didn’t go straight in.
Y/N stood across from it, phone in hand, thumb flicking absently at nothing. Her eyes weren’t on the screen. They were on the building. On the way the curtain moved. On the way the shadows behind it didn’t feel empty. A pigeon flapped once but didn’t fly. A scooter buzzed past, and an ajumma barked something sharp about cabbage. The usual sounds. The usual rhythm.
Still, she waited a beat longer. She watched how the light caught the doorway. She noticed how the air felt different here. Denser.
Then she stepped forward and slipped behind the curtain like she belonged.
And everything changed.
The moment it fell behind her, the city vanished. The noise didn’t fade. It ceased. Like someone hit pause on the outside world. Inside was quiet in a way only old places know how to be. Not just soundless. Still. The kind of stillness that settles in stone. The kind that remembers things. The air was cooler, not because of any fan or vent, but because it had never left. It clung to the walls, the wood, the floor. Everything felt touched by time.
The scent hit next. Not artificial or sanitized. Just real. A mix of rice, vinegar, seaweed, and broth so old it had soaked into the wood grain. Salt, smoke, a whisper of garlic. It was the kind of smell you carried home with you, in your clothes, your hair, your bones.
Her eyes adjusted fast.
The space was barely larger than a closet. Three stools lined a counter. One crooked. One stained. One seemingly untouched. The varnish had long worn off the wood, dulled by elbows and sweat and stories told over soup. A ceiling fan turned overhead, slow and uneven, ticking with every revolution like it was remembering something too late. A single fly moved in lazy circles beneath it.
Nobody else was here.
No music. No kitchen noise. Just a single plate on the counter. Empty except for one streak of red sauce. Chopsticks placed beside it with care. Not abandoned. Just waiting.
She walked in like she’d been here before. Like this was a memory, not a discovery. Her posture was casual. Her camera hung from her neck like a travel blog prop, the kind of thing that made her look like the type of woman who’d find “hidden gems” and write about the soul of a place as if she’d invented the concept. But none of that touched her eyes. They were focused. Clear. Watching.
And then he appeared. Quietly, without fuss, like he’d always been there and the world had only just remembered to look. The steam rolled out behind him, curling around his shoulders like it had followed him from some low, back kitchen heat that never fully cooled. He was tall, not imposing, but solid in the way that came from doing hard things for a long time. His build was lean, a little bowed at the shoulders, as if time and gravity had done their work. His skin had the baked-in tone of someone who’d spent years near open flame, his forearms marked by thin pale scars that spoke of burns, not battles. The white chef’s jacket he wore was buttoned but stained, spattered with dark brown that might have been soy sauce or something else. It was hard to tell, and maybe it wasn’t supposed to be clear.
His face didn’t offer much. It wasn’t unreadable in the cold, calculated way of spies or killers. It just didn’t feel the need to explain itself. High cheekbones softened the shape of his long face, and his eyes, dark and narrow, carried the quiet stillness of someone who watched more than he spoke. His hair was thick, slightly tousled, mostly black but peppered with gray at the temples. He was handsome, but the kind of handsome that didn’t advertise. He managed to exist right in the middle ground. Someone you’d forget until you saw them again and couldn’t stop wondering why.
Y/N kept her expression neutral as he stepped fully into view. Her body didn’t flinch. Her gaze didn’t drift. She looked at him plainly, openly, like she had no reason not to. But this was him. The man she’d crossed an ocean for. The one who had answers locked behind his teeth.
He saw her, and the smile came fast. Too fast. It stretched across his face like a reflex he hadn’t bothered updating in years. Broad, eager, practiced. The kind of smile that had been used too many times on too many strangers. The kind that worked better when you didn’t look too closely. He wore it like a uniform: the smile of a man who knew how to sell comfort, how to charm tourists just enough to make them stay, just long enough to make them leave before asking the wrong question. There was no real warmth in it. But it was a good act.
“English?” he asked, cautious but cheerful, testing each syllable like he was stepping over a puddle he didn’t trust.
She gave a half-shrug, tipping her head slightly as her mouth pulled into something lopsided and pleasant. “Almost,” she said. “American.”
Something about that word flipped a switch in him. He lit up like he’d been waiting for it. “Ah! America! Yes, welcome, welcome!” He nodded several times, as if the excitement might wear off if he didn’t hammer it in. “My English, very good. Yes.”
“Perfect,” she said, breezy and bright, like a woman with nowhere to be and all the time in the world. She stepped farther inside, her fingers ghosting along the edge of the counter. She didn’t look at it, not really, but the gesture made it seem like she was appreciating the wood, soaking up the charm. It wasn’t for him. It was for the story.
The chef smiled wide when she stepped in, his English laced with effort but cheerful all the same. “Welcome, American,” he said with a chuckle. “I hope you like my shop.”
She dipped her head, just enough to be polite. “안녕하세요,” she said, soft and even, her pronunciation clean, too natural to be brand-new.
That got a reaction. He lit up like someone had pulled a coin from behind his ear. “오오오! 안녕하세요!” He leaned forward with the delight of a man genuinely impressed. “Very good, very good! You speak Korean?”
She let out a modest laugh, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear like the compliment embarrassed her a little. “Not really,” she said. “Just a few words I picked up yesterday.”
Her eyes moved over the room, taking in the shelves, the old wood, the dust that softened the corners of things. “Is it okay if I sit here?”
“Sit, sit!” he said, already wiping down the bar with a damp cloth in wide, sweeping strokes like he was preparing an altar. “Of course. You sit. What words you learn? Oh, wait one second.”
He turned toward the curtain behind him, barked something in Korean without missing a beat. The words tumbled fast and irritated.
“We have a customer, bring out some tea, quickly!”
A voice called back, lazy and muffled. “I’m watching my soap operas.”
The chef rolled his eyes, snapping, “Lazy bastard! Screw your soap opera! Hurry up!”
“The tea’s hot. Why don’t you serve it yourself for once?”
“Shut up! Get your ass out here!”
Then he turned back to her, placing both palms on the bar like nothing had happened, though a thin line of annoyance still showed around his eyes. His smile remained pleasant. “So,” he said, “what else do you know in Korean?”
She tapped her chin lightly, brow furrowed like she was digging through a mental list. “감사합니다,” she said after a second, letting the word unfold carefully but not too perfectly. Like she was still getting comfortable with it.
He nodded with approval, the kind of praise people give freely but mean all the same. “Very good,” he said. “You say it nicely.”
She leaned forward just a touch, elbows resting gently on the bar, camera bumping softly against the edge. “알겠어요?” she tried, the hesitation built in just enough to seem earnest.
He brightened. “You know that one! ‘I understand.’ Good, very good. You learn fast.”
She smiled back. “Only what people say to me first.”
Then she tilted her head and added another. “안녕히 가세요?”
His expression flickered for a split second. The kind of shift most people wouldn’t catch. He recovered quickly, correcting her with a wave of his hand. “No, no, no. Say again.”
She blinked once, feigning the kind of sheepish confusion that made it look like maybe she had messed it up after all. She tried again, a little slower this time. “안녕히 가세요?”
He clapped his hands once, sharp and loud in the stillness of the shop. His smile stretched wide, but the lines around it didn’t move. “You speak Korean,” he said, voice lighter than it had been, but also a little tighter.
She laughed softly, tilting her head again. It was the kind of laugh you’d hear from someone caught in a harmless exaggeration. “Now you’re just flattering me.”
But he didn’t laugh with her. “No,” he said simply. “Serious. Your pronunciation... very good. You say 안녕히 가세요 like we say 안녕히 가세요.”
The air between them settled. Not tense, but heavier. The kind of pause that had weight in it, even if you didn’t know why.
His voice came again, this time quieter, slower. “You can learn Korean very easy.”
She let her gaze drop for half a second, just enough to give it texture, then lifted it again with a careful smile. “No kidding,” she said, her voice just a little softer now. “But thank you. 진짜... 감사합니다.”
He didn’t respond right away. Just breathed in through his nose, steady and thoughtful. Then he adjusted his stance, the shift so subtle most people wouldn’t notice. But she did. She saw the way his shoulders reset, the tiny movements that told her he wasn’t just running a shop. He was watching something unfold.
He turned without another word and picked up a rice paddle. His voice floated back over his shoulder, even and calm. “Let me make something for you.”
She nodded, her smile still in place, but the tone that followed wasn’t quite the same. “Anything’s fine.”
The chef stayed where he was, hands now methodically working at the counter. A bowl of rice, steam still clinging faintly to the grains. A bamboo mat laid flat. A half-sliced cucumber. The blade beside it already glinting in the overhead light.
“You like kimbap?” he asked, like it was just polite conversation.
“I love it,” she said, light and breezy.
She let the sentence hang just long enough to sound casual, like maybe this was a regular kind of moment, in a regular kind of place. But it wasn’t.
The knife moved with soft, measured sounds. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Carrot. Radish. Cucumber.
Every slice was uniform. Clean. The rhythm was precise, practiced. Not just skilled. Disciplined.
She didn’t take her eyes off him, not directly, but not obviously either. Her posture stayed relaxed, her hands resting on the bar. The camera around her neck swayed gently with the air from the ceiling fan, tapping now and then against the wood like a slow heartbeat.
She didn’t look dangerous.
But then, neither did he.
The overhead light gave a quiet hum, casting the shop in a worn, yellow wash that made everything look faintly out of date. The fan creaked once with each turn, ticking off invisible seconds. Outside, the alley was still. A cat passed, paused in the doorway, then disappeared again.
The chef didn’t look up from his cutting board. His voice came steady, like they were just passing time.
“You should learn Korean.”
She smiled, light but not airy. “You think so?”
He nodded slightly, slicing through radish with clean precision. “Yes.”
“I’ve heard it’s impossible.”
He nodded. “Yes. Very hard. But you,” he said, quieter now, “you have Korean tongue.”
He returned to his work, pulling a smaller knife from a drawer. It was heavier, curved differently. He laid slices of tuna onto a black ceramic plate. Next to them, he added a pinch of pickled ginger and a small, hand-shaped mound of wasabi.
He slid the dish toward her with quiet pride.
She looked down at it, then back up. “How’d you know tuna’s my favorite?”
He shrugged one shoulder, almost coy. “What?”
“Tuna,” she said again, watching him. “It’s my favorite.”
He smiled with the same practiced calm. “Ah. Thank you very much.”
Then he turned his head toward the beaded curtain and shouted, voice sharp. “야! 차 어디 갔어? 빨리 좀 해!”
Behind the curtain came a reply, loud and annoyed.
“지금 드라마 보고 있잖아!”
“드라마는 개뿔이지! 손님 왔잖아, 이 자식아. 빨리 갖고 와!”
“차 뜨거워! 너도 좀 움직여 봐!”
The chef muttered something under his breath, wiped his hands, and moved toward the curtain. The beads clinked as he grabbed the other man by the wrist mid-gesture, twisted it lightly, and leaned in close.
“네가 장군이면 나는 황제다. 그러니까 조용히 차나 갖고 와.”
Then, with a mocking grin and just enough weight to sting, he said in English: “Do you understand?”
The assistant pulled free, scowling, and glanced at Y/N. “대머리 아니거든,” he muttered. Then, in stiff English: “I shave. Do you understand me?”
The chef didn’t even look. He picked up a small knife and threw it underhanded toward the wall. It landed with a soft thud, blade buried in the wood just left of the curtain.
The assistant disappeared without another word.
Y/N didn’t follow his movement. Her fingers just found a napkin and began folding it, slow and absent, like she was trying to pass the time. But her attention stayed open, alert, listening to every creak from the fridge and every shift of weight behind the curtain. She tracked it all without looking.
The chef glanced her way and let out a low sigh. “Sorry,” he murmured.
She smiled, shook her head gently, still all ease and pleasant charm. “No worries at all.”
The chef had gone back to wiping a plate that didn’t need it, slow circles that looked more like habit than cleaning. He hummed something under his breath. No real melody, just sound for the sake of it. Every so often, his eyes drifted up. Not to her. To the curtain. He was waiting, too.
Y/N leaned her chin into her palm and let out a quiet sigh. The kind that sounded like she had nowhere else to be, like this was just another slow stop on a longer, looser itinerary. But beneath the quiet facade, her pulse had cooled into something steadier. Sharper. She was counting. Not seconds. Not movements. Just weight.
The beads stirred again.
The second man reappeared, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. The soju was cold, condensation sliding down the green glass in thick streaks. His fingers were wide, stained around the cuticles, the nails chipped like they had been trimmed with teeth or a dull blade. Hands that had done hard things.
He reached the counter and set the bottle and glass down. He turned to walk away. The chef didn’t let it slide.
His voice cracked through the air, hard and sudden. “야, 예의 좀 갖춰!”
The man didn’t stop completely. He only slowed. His shoulders shifted. A sigh leaked out, long and annoyed.
“뭐? 술 갖다 줬잖아.”
“손님 앞에서는 제대로 해. 외국인이라도.”
A scoff, barely loud enough to register. “외국인이라 모를 텐데 왜 신경 써?”
The chef’s reply came low, firm. “그러니까 더 조심해야지. 한국 사람처럼 보여도 다 듣고 있을 수도 있어.”
There was a pause. Just a few seconds, but heavy. The kind of quiet that wasn’t about silence. It was about choice.
The man muttered something under his breath, just noise really, but shaped by resentment. Then he twisted the cap off the bottle with a rough snap and poured. The soju splashed high in the glass, almost spilling. He shoved it toward her with one hand, the edge of the glass tapping wood just shy of rude.
Then he turned and disappeared again. The beads clattered harder this time. The chef let out a breath.
“죄송합니다,” he said, bowing his head slightly. “그 사람은... 사람 대하는 법을 몰라요.”
Y/N didn’t flinch. Her smile stayed where it had been the whole time, pleasant and unbothered. “Sorry?”
The chef’s tone softened, switching to English like it was muscle memory. “Ah, no, just... he doesn’t know how to talk,” he added, with a thin smile that almost reached his eyes.
She nodded, light, polite. Lifted the shot glass with a small, quiet toast. “Thank you,” she said, and took a sip.
The soju hit cool. Sweet up front, then a clean, sharp finish that sat in the back of her throat and lingered. It didn’t burn. It reminded.
She set the glass down. Picked up her chopsticks. The motion was fluid, casual, not stiff with performance, but practiced. The way a habit becomes part of muscle memory.
She lifted a piece of tuna from the plate, a clean slice that caught the light like silk. Deep ruby red, almost translucent, grain running fine through its surface. She placed it on her tongue and held it there, waiting. It melted. Soft and rich, just a trace of brine and something faintly metallic, like memory. She chewed once. Twice. Let it dissolve.
Her eyes drifted shut, just for a second. 
She set the chopsticks down, careful not to clatter them, then picked up the soju again and finished the glass in a single, smooth pull. The second hit went down easier. The warmth spread slow through her chest, settling in a place that had once held nerves.
Across the counter, the chef watched. He hadn’t changed his expression, but something in the way he stood had eased. Not relaxed, not soft, but carrying a kind of respect. He was noticing a quiet fluency. No words. Just recognition.
“First time in Korea?” he asked. His hands returned to the cutting board, fingers resting near the knife, though he didn’t pick it up yet.
Y/N nodded, finishing another bite. “Mmhmm.”
“What!” he said, voice rising with disbelief that didn’t quite ring false.
She swallowed, wiped the corner of her mouth lightly. “Yes. This is my first time.”
He tilted his head, eyes narrowing just a little. “What brings you to Gwangju?”
Outside, the alley shifted. A gust caught some stray bit of paper and skidded it along the brick like a coin on pavement. Somewhere nearby, a bird let out a single cry, sharp and fast, gone in a blink. The curtain behind her swayed faintly with a whisper-soft clatter, like wind chimes that never quite got the breeze they needed to sing. Y/N adjusted her chopsticks, repositioned them between her fingers, then gently set them down without ever lifting a bite. Her tone was light when she finally spoke, almost conversational.
“I came to see a man.”
The sentence didn’t echo, but it changed something in the room. A beat passed. Not long. But the chef’s hand froze mid-motion, his knife held just above the salmon, blade tilted slightly as if it too had paused to listen.
“Ah,” he said after a moment, stretching the word just enough to carry weight. “A friend in Gwangju?” He didn’t look up.
“Not quite,” she replied.
“Not a friend?”
“No.” She waited until his eyes found hers before continuing. “We’ve never met.”
The blade finally touched the board. A soft sound. Then he laid the knife aside, not quickly, but with care, like he’d decided whatever came next didn’t need a blade in hand. He kept his gaze on the cutting board for a moment longer than necessary, then finally looked up. The expression on his face didn’t shift much, but something behind his eyes sharpened. Not fear. Not even suspicion. Just awareness.
“And,” he said, more quietly now, “may I ask who he is?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Jung Hoseok.”
The name didn’t explode. It didn’t need to. It landed in the room like a rock dropped into still water. No splash. Just the heavy assurance that things were moving beneath the surface now. Her voice hadn’t changed. She wasn’t dramatic. She didn’t lean in. But the name was enough.
The chef went still. Not tense, simply anchored. Like something in him had snapped into place. His right hand rested on the edge of a towel. His left hovered briefly over the blade again, reflex more than anything. The tip of his finger brushed the metal and slipped. A sudden streak of red rose across his knuckle. He looked down at it, just for a moment, and lifted the hand to his mouth. Sucked the blood away like it was routine. No flinch. No sound. Just control, reset.
Behind her, the beads rattled once more, sharper this time. The bald man stepped through again, his face a clenched fist. He didn’t speak. Just let his eyes sweep the room, pausing on her. Not suspicion. Calculation. Like something in the air had told him to pay attention.
He crossed to the counter, picked up the bottle, and poured her another shot. This time, the movement was smooth. No clatter. No shove. Just a quiet, focused pour. He didn’t speak. Didn’t meet her eyes. He finished the pour, left the glass full, and walked out. The beads clacked shut behind him, not loud, not subtle. Just punctuation.
The chef exhaled slowly through his nose. No drama. Just release. Then he took a towel and began wiping his hands carefully, methodically. His eyes stayed on her.
She lifted the new glass in a small, silent toast, even though the man who’d poured it was already gone. The glass was cold enough that it clung to her fingers.
When the chef spoke again, the language changed. No more English. No pretense.
His voice lowered, smooth and even, each word placed with precision. “정호석에게 무슨 용건이 있습니까?”
Y/N didn’t blink.
She answered in Korean, her voice quiet, level. No showmanship. Just the kind of careful weight that traveled farther than volume ever could. “강철이 필요해요.”
His eyes narrowed. Not in suspicion. In thought. Like he was studying her words, not for truth, but for intention. He didn’t answer right away. He let the silence linger.
“왜 강철이 필요하죠?” he asked.
She looked at the glass beside her plate, a droplet tracing its way down the side. Then she met his eyes again. “쥐를 죽이려면요.”
There was another pause, longer this time, but not uncomfortable. Then the chef let out a short laugh. Not cruel. Not mocking. Just low and dry, like someone who had lived long enough to understand how serious things always start in calm voices.
“Must be a big rat,” he said in English this time, voice touched with something close to amusement. “If you need Jung Hoseok steel for it.”
She smiled, but only with one side of her mouth. The other half stayed still.
“Huge,” she said.
They didn’t move. Didn’t raise their voices. The air between them didn’t buzz with tension, but it held. Quiet. Pulled tight like thread stretched between fingers. It didn’t warn. It just waited.
The chef gave a small nod. Y/N didn’t speak, didn’t finish the food. She left the second shot untouched. The fish remained as he had plated it, artful, unspoiled. The only sign she had been there was the soft, fading ring left behind by her first glass, already drying into the grain of the wood.
She rose without a sound and followed him through the beaded curtain, not once looking back.
The hallway beyond was narrow and long, the kind of space that time forgets. The wallpaper, beige or yellow once, now sun-bleached into something closer to nicotine-stained parchment, peeled at the edges in slow curls. The floorboards creaked just enough to remind you that no one had fixed them in a long while, and maybe no one ever would. The air smelled lived-in, dense with cooking oil and old plaster, like generations of heat had steeped into the walls. A single bulb swung gently from the ceiling, flickering once before settling into a thin, steady glow.
Hoseok walked ahead, silent, his gait quiet but confident. He didn’t rush. He didn’t hesitate. His steps were even, deliberate, the kind of pace that didn’t waste energy or ask permission. When he reached the end of the corridor, he glanced up and found the pull cord, barely visible in the dim light, hanging like a spider’s thread. He tugged it once.
A low groan came from above, followed by a creaking shift. A square panel in the ceiling cracked open with a dusty exhale, and a folded ladder unfolded downward with slow, mechanical clicks, the rungs snapping into place like joints stretching after too long at rest.
He climbed first. She followed.
Her boots hit the rungs with soft thuds, the sound swallowed by the close space around her. One hand on each side rail, steady, smooth. No wasted movement. She didn’t glance up, didn’t glance down. Just climbed. The air thickened as she ascended, growing warmer, more still. There was a shift in temperature, and in smell. Wood. Oil. Steel.
As she rose through the opening, the attic revealed itself like a photograph developing in slow motion.
It wasn’t big, but it felt larger than it should have. The low ceiling curved inward slightly, giving the space a strange hush, like it was used to quiet. The warmth was immediate. Not stifling, but deep, the kind of heat that came from bodies and time and electricity burning low and constant. The scent was unmistakable to anyone who knew what it meant: cedar, carbon, and choji oil. That distinct blend of camellia and clove, familiar only to those who have ever cared for a blade.
The light from the window was weak, filtered through grime that hadn’t been wiped away in years. But what little came through cast long golden lines across the floor, picking out the pattern in the grain and throwing deep shadows that stretched and curled. The floor was clean. Worn, but swept. Not a speck of dust in sight. No clutter, no trash. This wasn’t storage. It was maintenance.
On the far wall stood the racks.
Not shelves. Not hooks. Racks, each one handmade, shaped with intention, joined by hand rather than hardware. Pale wood, aged and patient. No decoration. No flair. Just quiet craftsmanship. They held swords. Not just katanas. Blades.
Dozens of them, each one unique. Their sheaths glinted in the dim light: black lacquer with soft reflections, deep red urushi, mottled green like old bark. One was wrapped in white rayskin bound with gold. Each sageo tie—gray, plum, navy—was knotted tight and deliberate, tension held with purpose. The tsuka, wrapped in silk, were symmetrical to the point of obsession. Every fold precise. Every diamond perfect. Each kashira had its own story: copper dragons, koi fish, sakura petals, brass ships riding a storm. And the tsuba were miniature sculptures of iron and bronze, some simple, some elaborate, none ornamental for the sake of it. These weren’t pieces for display. They were weapons made to be used. Cared for, kept sharp, kept ready.
Y/N stepped forward, her movements quiet, measured. She didn’t touch anything. Didn’t need to. The room held its own gravity. The kind of silence that didn’t beg for reverence but commanded it through sheer presence. Every detail—the blades, the wood, the air itself—spoke for her to listen.
Behind her, Hoseok didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to either. His stillness wasn’t tense or withdrawn. It was aware. Watching, but not pressing.
She turned slightly, just enough to glance over her shoulder. Her voice, when it came, was soft. Her Korean clear and careful. “May I?”
A beat passed, subtle but intentional. Then, his reply, not in Korean this time but in English. And for some reason, that made it gentler. “Yes, you may. Second from the top. Sixth row. Left side.”
She nodded once and turned back to the racks. Her steps didn’t creak the floorboards. She moved with the kind of calm that came from purpose, not performance. Her eyes scanned, counted, found it: sixth row, left side, second down.
She stopped in front of it, let her gaze rest on the sheath before reaching for it. Black lacquer, smooth and deep enough to absorb the light. It reflected just the faintest outline of her face, blurred, formless. The finish was perfect, but not decorative. Not flashy. Maintained, not polished. Like someone had wiped it down once a week for decades, always with the same cloth.
The sageo cord was tied in a neat, practical knot. Not ornamental. Not lazy. Tight, squared. The kind of tie someone would redo until they got it right. The tsuba was brass, aged and worn, its surface darkened by time and touch. Etched pine branches crawled along its edges, simple, understated, and detailed enough to tell you it wasn’t mass-produced. It had been chosen.
Her fingers wrapped around the tsuka. The silk binding was tight, smooth, crisscrossed with perfect symmetry. Black cord over white rayskin. Traditional. Familiar. The handle sat against her palm like a known shape, like something she had used before, even if she hadn’t.
And something inside her, something she hadn’t even noticed was noisy, went quiet.
She drew the blade without hesitation, not for show, just to see. It came free with a sound so subtle it was almost imagined. Like breath drawn through cloth. The kind of sound that disappears if you’re not paying attention. But she always paid attention.
Light caught the blade and changed it. What had been metal turned fluid. Reflections danced along the edge, fractured and reformed as she moved. The hamon curled like a pale ripple, shifting with every minor tilt of her hands. The kissaki was long, graceful. Measured for reach, not for display. The sword wasn’t just well-made. It had purpose in its design. Intention.
She held it in both hands now. The balance fell into place like it knew where to go. No resistance. No demand. Just a quiet agreement between steel and muscle, weight and memory.
Behind her, Hoseok finally stirred. The smallest motion: fabric shifting, a heel settling more fully into the floor. When she turned slightly, she saw him near the window, one hand deep in his pocket. The other rolled something between his fingers.
A baseball. Worn, the leather dulled to a soft gray, the seams darkened, fraying. It looked like it had been tossed from hand to hand for years. He turned it over in his palm absently, like it was more habit than thought.
“Funny,” he said, voice quiet enough that the words didn’t quite disturb the stillness. “You like swords…”
He tossed the ball into the air, caught it once without looking.
“…I like baseball.”
Then, without warning, he threw it.
There was no flourish. No wind-up. Just a sudden motion, fast, clean, direct. The ball cut through the air on a line straight toward her. No room to think. No time for a plan.
Her arms moved before her mind did. The sword rose in a single arc, smooth and efficient. No tension in the shoulders, no wasted energy in the swing. The blade moved as though she were answering something, not striking.
The ball split cleanly.
There was no dramatic crack. No cinematic echo. Just a soft, muted thud, leather parting under steel, a sound more felt than heard. One half of the ball skidded off and rolled beneath the nearest rack. The other bounced off her boot and stopped.
She didn’t breathe out. Not yet. Her grip had already eased. The sword angled down, relaxed at her side, tip toward the floor. Balanced again, as if nothing had happened.
Hoseok stepped forward, steady as ever, though something behind his expression had shifted. Barely, but enough for her to notice. A flicker in his eyes, like a thought he hadn’t yet decided whether to keep or release. He lifted a hand toward her, slow and sure. Not a demand. Not a gesture of control. It was open, deliberate. A quiet invitation to return something that wasn’t quite hers yet.
She reversed the blade, offering the hilt without hesitation. No dramatic pause, no faltering. Just weight moving from her hands to his. The handoff was clean, unspoken, the kind of exchange that didn’t need ceremony to be understood.
He sheathed the sword with practiced ease, and the sound—soft, precise, the smooth slide of steel into lacquered wood—didn’t echo. It landed. Not loud, not theatrical. Just final. Like a breath held, then released.
“I wanted to show you these,” he said in Korean, the playful edge from earlier gone. His voice had changed, calmer now, older somehow. He held the sheathed blade in both hands, fingers gliding over the lacquer not to clean it, but to remember it. “But someone like you… someone like you already understands.”
He placed it gently back in its rack, hands steady, motions exact. Each movement held weight, the kind of intention that couldn’t be faked. “I no longer make instruments of death,” he said, softer now, almost to himself. “I keep them for their beauty. For what they once meant. Because I love them.”
There was a quiet pride in his words, not boastful, just true. He bowed his head slightly. “I’m proud of what I made. Proud of how well I made them. But I am retired.”
She stepped closer, silent. No threat in her approach, only certainty. Her presence filled the space without trying to. Her voice came softly, but with clarity.
“Then give me one.”
The words landed like a pin in still fabric. He turned to face her, jaw tightening.
“They’re not for sale.”
“I didn’t say sell me one.”
They locked eyes. Her stare didn’t waver. Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.
“I said give me one.”
A pause opened between them. Not long, but heavy. The kind that held all the weight of what hadn’t been said yet. When he spoke again, it was clipped. Cold.
“And why should I help you?”
She didn’t blink. “Because the vermin I’m after,” she said, the words clean and hard, “was your student.”
That stopped him. Not with a flinch, not with alarm. Just a subtle shift. Shoulders lowered by a fraction, breath held at the top of his chest. His silence was sudden and full.
She stepped in again. “And considering the student…” she let the rest hang, then added, “you have certain obligations.”
He turned and walked toward the narrow attic window, its frame sun-bleached and warped slightly with age. With the back of his hand, he wiped away a patch of fog, clearing a view just big enough to see the city stretching out below them—rooftops, wires, and the slow dimming of the day. The glass was damp, the edges still filmed in condensation.
With one finger, he reached up and began to write.
TAEHYUNG.
The name curved faintly in the glass, drawn in a line of skin oil and breath. Outside, the wind kicked up, brushing against the building with a hollow tap. The beams creaked. The attic seemed to lean into the moment. The name.
She didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just nodded once. That was enough.
Hoseok turned, walked to the trapdoor, and reached for the old latch. It gave with a dry metallic groan. The ladder creaked as it unfolded, the sound echoing faintly in the rafters.
He gestured to the corner. A futon, rolled neatly. A folded blanket beside it. A small jug of water, a wooden comb laid with care. Nothing lavish. Nothing new. Just clean. Lived-in.
“You can sleep here,” he said in Korean. “I’ll make space downstairs. Might take a day or two to find proper furniture.”
He descended the ladder with the same quiet weight he carried everywhere. But just before the hatch closed, his voice floated back up, lower and firmer.
“It’ll take a month to make the blade.”
A pause. The creak of one last step below.
“I suggest you spend it practicing.”
Then the hatch closed with a solid, wooden thunk. Not sharp. Not aggressive. Just complete.
She stood still, alone in the attic, the air settling around her like dust that had waited too long to fall. The quiet wasn’t just quiet anymore. It was thick, almost physical. A silence that had weight, like the room itself was holding its breath after what had been said, what had been written.
The last of the afternoon light had slipped away without notice, and in its place came the muted amber of early evening. Outside, the city blurred. Rooftops softened, edges dulled, the sky folding into dusk with no sharp lines left. Gwangju looked like it was remembering something it didn’t want to say out loud.
She walked toward the window, slow and steady, her boots tapping gently against the floor. The name was still there, hovering in the circle of cleared glass, faint but legible. TAEHYUNG. The letters had already started to run a little, the edges softened by moisture and time.
From her coat, she pulled a cloth. It was plain, the kind of fabric that had seen years of use—creased, worn, stripped of anything personal. Just something that did its job. She raised it and began to wipe. One pass. Then another. Then again. Not hard, not angry. Just firm. Methodical. With each motion, the letters blurred a little more, until they were nothing but streaks. And then nothing at all. Just fog again.
She held her hand to the glass for a second longer, palm pressed flat. The warmth from her skin left a faint outline before the cold reclaimed it. It faded just like the name had. Quick, quiet, complete.
She folded the cloth with care and tucked it back into her coat, her fingers working with practiced ease. No lingering. No pause for meaning.
Then she turned from the window.
Outside, the city kept fading. Behind her, the attic returned to stillness. The name was gone. And with it, whatever place he might’ve held in her. Taehyung Kim had already taken too much. There was no room left in her for the ghost of him. Not anymore.
He would fall. And when he did, she would finally be free.
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chimcess ¡ 5 days ago
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⚔︎ Chapter Five: The Snake in Busan Pairing: Taehyung x Reader Other Tags: Assassin!Taehyung, Assassin!Reader, Assassin!Jimin, Dad!Jimin, Assassin!Yoongi, Gang Leader!Yoongi, Assassin!Namjoon, Swordmaster!Hoseok, Chef!Hoseok, Pimp!Seokjin Genre: Assassins! AU, Exes!AU, Lovers to Enemies, Action, Comedy, Suspense, Martial Arts, Drama, Thriller, Romance (if you squint), Heavy Angst, Violence, 18+ only Word Count: 17k+ Summary: A former assassin awakens from a four-year coma after her ex-lover Taehyung tries to kill her on her wedding day. Driven by revenge for the loss of her unborn child and stolen life, she creates a hit list and embarks on a ruthless mission to take down everyone responsible. Warnings: toxic relationship, talks of character death, graphic violence, aggressive characters, jealousy, training, flashbacks, implied smut, bathing together, strong language, guilt, emotional turmoil, regret, vengeance, these relationships are all tangled up, non-graphic smut, backstory, another tame chapter, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: So, why did Hoseok Jung stop making swords?
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The attic was dim, the air thick with sandalwood. It clung to the rafters, soaked into the beams, and seeped from the floorboards like time itself had steeped in it. The walls exhaled the scent in slow, heavy breaths.
Candlelight sputtered low, throwing jagged shadows across old wood. Steel glinted in the flicker. Hoseok Jung’s sword collection lined the wall like a silent jury. Every blade had a name. Every saya was polished like a relic. Y/N had studied them all during her month in Gwangju. She’d held them, trained with them, bled on their edges. By the time the incense stopped catching in her throat, she knew each one like her own hands.
Hoseok stood at the altar, his black silk robe whisper-quiet as he moved. The candlelight reached for him, but the silk swallowed it whole. A serpent devouring its own tail was stitched across his chest in blood-red thread. Once, his face had been soft, someone who believed peace was a choice. Time, sorrow, and war had carved that man away. What was left was sharp. Dangerous. His eyes, obsidian, reflected nothing. His lips were drawn tight. Whatever softness Y/N had once known was gone. He had grown out his goatee during the month they trained.
Moon-Byul stood beside him, unmoving. His robe mirrored Hoseok’s, minus the serpent. Instead, gold-threaded cranes rose up from the hem. His head was freshly shaved, his expression unreadable. Moon always hovered between brilliance and boredom, amused, never impressed. Once, he called Y/N a lion after she bested him in a spar. She never forgot it. They were close in age, and he treated her as an equal. Hoseok, though, was a kindred spirit. After two weeks of wooden swords, Y/N knew his every move. When sticks stopped being fun, they switched to steel. They both got cut, nothing deep. They spent more time praising each other than nursing bruises.
Hoseok was still a master, but past his prime. Had they met when he was her age, she wouldn’t have stood a chance. She knew that. She just happened to meet him late enough to survive.
On the altar lay a single sword.
The lacquered sheath looked wet, like still water under moonlight. Brass fittings in the momoji style curled into maple leaves at each end. One leaf caught the light like it had something to say. A gold band ringed the fuchi.
The tsuba was a custom prayer wheel, Jung Style the smiths called it, flanked by Kozuka-ana and Kogai-ana holes. The seppa were plain brass. The menuki, blackened kongosho, three-pronged spears invoking Fudo Myo, the wrathful protector.
The sageo was mustard, tied in precise knots. No shitodome. Pure function. The saya was purpose shaped into beauty. Solid fittings. A gold ring off-center. Twin gold stripes traced its spine and edge. The ito was leather-wrapped, white ray skin beneath.
Y/N had seen many blades. Trained with legends. But this one didn’t gleam. It warned. It pulsed. It whispered. It was the most beautiful. And the most dangerous.
Silence held.
Then Hoseok spoke.
“I’m done doing what I swore to God nearly ten years ago I would never do again,” he said. “I’ve created... something that kills people.”
He looked at the blade. A breath passed.
“And in that purpose, I was a success.”
He stepped forward and knelt. The floor creaked beneath him. He turned slightly toward the girl in the shadows. Her hair hung loose, her eyes wide. A fading bruise marked her wrist. The candlelight caught the frayed hem of her pants. She stood like she was bracing for something.
“I did this,” Hoseok said, quieter, “because philosophically, I’m sympathetic to your aim.”
His palm rested on the sheath.
“This is my finest sword. If on your journey you should encounter God…” He gripped the hilt. “God will be cut.”
He rose. The light caught his jaw, casting deep shadows.
When he looked at her again, something in his gaze had shifted, just slightly. The way Pai Mei had looked at her before she left China. She thought of her old master, wondered if he was still alive, still alone. She never thought to visit. Pai Mei didn’t like guests. He would mock her if she showed up without reason. But he had cared for her. More than he cared for Taehyung. And that had meant something. Pai Mei saw Taehyung as a son.
She blinked, realized she had drifted. Hoseok was still staring.
“Revenge,” he said, “is never a straight line.”
The incense pressed in. The air thickened. The attic closed around them.
“It’s a forest,” he said. “And like a forest, it’s easy to lose your way. To get lost. To forget where you came in.”
He stepped forward again, robe trailing like dusk.
“To serve as a compass,” he said, “a combat philosophy must be adopted.”
Moon-Byul moved without sound, placing a scroll in Hoseok’s hands. The parchment looked brittle. The ink was claws on rice paper. The Doctrine. The old Yagu code. Hoseok’s legacy.
He looked at Y/N.
“Repeat after me.”
His voice turned sharp. He began in Japanese.
Hoseok was born in Gwangju but raised mostly in Okinawa, under his grandfather’s roof. His family had fled to Japan before the war, hiding in a village so small it escaped notice even during the bombings. His grandfather made katanas, not hwandos. Y/N doubted they kept the name “Jung” there.
Hoseok’s childhood was carved between languages, between cultures. Between silences.
He held the scroll.
“When engaged in combat, the vanquishing of thine enemy can be the warrior’s only concern…”
Y/N echoed him in Japanese, low and steady.
“This is the first and cardinal rule of combat…”
No pause.
“Suppress all human emotion and compassion…”
Her jaw clenched.
“Kill whoever stands in thy way,” Hoseok said, “even if that be Lord God or Buddha himself…”
She didn’t hesitate. Hoseok’s voice was smooth, almost soothing. Hers was rougher, clipped. Her Korean was better.
“This truth lies at the heart of the art of combat,” Hoseok whispered. “Once it is mastered… thou shall fear no one. Though the devil himself may bar thy way…”
Y/N didn’t blink.
Hoseok bowed. She bowed back, then stepped forward. Her fingers closed around the hilt, steady, callused. The blade slid free with a soft hiss, catching candlelight as it rose. It was flawless.
Two gold carvings marked it: the unfinished Hattori mon, raw and exposed, and a Shi-sha before a war spear, garnet eyes gleaming. Hoseok’s lion. His mark. All his swords bore it. Now it belonged to her.
The hamon shimmered. Notare cresting into chaos halfway up the blade. Chu-kissaki tip. Toriizori curve. Every line exact, every surface mirrored. She saw the whole room behind her in its polish.
Hoseok spoke in English.
“Be careful, Y/N.”
She looked at him. Really looked. Weeks of sweat and silence had taught her more than any master before. He hadn’t comforted her. He had prepared her. Soup left wordlessly. Mid-spar corrections, sharp and precise. Quiet care. The kind that mattered.
Moon-Byul had honed her into something hard and clean. She would miss them both. And the restaurant downstairs, sticky tables, chipped cups, perfect kimbap.
“Can I come back?” she asked. “If I need help?”
Hoseok smiled. Small. Honest. It softened him.
“You are always welcome here, Black Mamba.”
She bowed. Deep. He matched it.
Then straightened, voice lighter.
“Now,” he said, “you need to rest. You have vermin waiting.”
She turned toward the stairs, sword in hand. Neither man followed.
Her room was barely a closet. Low ceiling. Thin walls. But it was hers. Quiet.
She closed the door. The soft click of the lock steadied her. The air felt heavier now. Tomorrow pressed close.
At the desk, Hoseok had left paper and charcoals. A small gesture. She had mentioned once that she used to draw.
The page waited, too white, too still. She pulled one sheet loose, placed it flat.
Her hand moved before her mind caught up. Lines. Shapes. Motion without thought.
Then a name surfaced. Unwelcome. Unavoidable.
Yoongi Min.
Just thinking it made her chest tighten. She hadn’t said it out loud in years, afraid it might summon him. But her hand didn’t stop.
His face came first. Sharp cheekbones, guarded eyes, the mouth set hard, almost smiling. The cold was there. But so was the warmth. The version of him that existed only for her. She hated that she remembered.
“Bittersweet” was too neat a word. Nothing about him had ever been clean.
Yoongi wasn’t Taehyung. No one was. Taehyung had been wildfire, beautiful and ruinous. She had run toward that fire.
But Yoongi... he was the silence in a world that never stopped screaming. Tea at 3 a.m. No questions. No fixing. Just space. He didn’t tame her. He made room.
And for a while, that had been enough.
Her strokes slowed. Smaller now. More careful. Her wrist trembled once. Her eyes stung.
He hadn’t always been cruel. Not with her. There had been jokes. Seoul nights. The way he used to hold her like the world had ended. Even his rivalry with Brandi had dulled eventually. And she remembered how he used to look at her, like she was something holy. Like he wasn’t sure he deserved her. Maybe once, she believed it.
Then came Two Pines. Yoongi chose empire. Chose power over her without blinking. And whatever they had died in that moment. Now he wore the crown like it belonged to him. Never apologized. Never looked back.
She gripped the charcoal too hard. It snapped. She didn’t flinch. Just picked up the broken half and kept drawing.
Two Pines had been a dream: peace under trees, shared breath, a place to exhale. It became a slaughterhouse. He didn’t save her. Didn’t try. He watched. She never forgave him. She never would.
Yoongi Min would pay. That was carved into her bones now. Love didn’t excuse it. Didn’t clean it. Didn’t quiet the screams. She saw them in her sleep, felt them in her chest every time she closed her eyes.
This desk was her altar now. A page, a truth. Vengeance wasn’t theory. It was instinct. Ritual. Religion.
I loved him. And I’ll still kill him.
Once, that thought might’ve broken her. Now it fit. Now it kept her warm.
Sometimes she pictured it: the moment he saw her again. Not the executioner. Not the girl who once touched him like a prayer. Just two broken things who loved each other before they learned how to ruin everything.
Her eyes dropped to the sketch. His face stared back. Not a portrait. A reckoning. He didn’t look like the tyrant the world feared or the boy she trusted. He looked like what lived in between. A ghost of someone who never got to choose who he became.
A tear slid down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it. Didn’t need to. Her hand moved harder now, charcoal grinding into the paper, deepening the shadows beneath his eyes, carving out the line of his jaw, the shape of that mouth.
That mouth. It had saved her once. Destroyed her, too. She knew it better than her own reflection.
She was almost done.
When she drew the last line, something settled. The version of him on the page was final. Whatever was left of him in the world, she’d bury it herself.
Vengeance doesn’t wait. Not even for love.
She paused. The charcoal trembled in her grip. The lamp buzzed louder, throwing jagged shadows across the wall. Dust floated like time had paused, just to watch.
Then it came. A voice from somewhere deep. Old. At that moment, you think: it’s proof like no other. That not only does God exist, but you’re doing His will.
It hit like a splinter beneath the skin. She remembered hearing it once. Young. Believing. Blade in one hand, faith in the other. Back when certainty felt like armor. When killing felt like purpose.
A sound escaped her. Something like a laugh, scraped raw. That belief was dead now. Buried under ash, silk, and silence at Two Pines.
There was no holy mission. No divine justice. Just blood and what followed. She wasn’t a prophet. Wasn’t anyone’s daughter anymore. That girl, the one who prayed, was long gone. What remained was colder. Sharper.
Her fingers moved again. One last stroke across the collarbone, clean and exact. Not decoration. Not feeling. It was dissection. Finding what hadn’t rotted in the corpse of something long dead.
When I knew the least about my enemies, she thought, the first name I wrote was the easiest. And Yoongi Min had never tried to hide. Not from her. Not from anyone. No aliases. No masks. No intermediaries. He stood in the center of his own legend, calm as a man pouring tea. Never flinched. Never blinked.
They called him Busan’s velvet devil. A gentleman butcher. A king in wolf’s clothing. No one whispered his name, they said it with care. Like it might unlock something dangerous.
He didn’t build his empire in shadow. He built it loud. Deliberate. Brick by bloody brick. Face bare. Eyes forward. His business was fear, and he ran it like art.
And once, she had loved that face. Not like Taehyung. That had been fire. Destruction you welcomed. Yoongi was different. Solid. Still.
He sat with her on the bad nights. No questions. No comfort. Just presence. He let her have silence without trying to fill it. And when she needed him, really needed, he was there. Now she needed him gone.
The memories cut sharp. Her hand hesitated, then pressed on. She darkened the hollow of his throat. Sketched the collar of his coat, always black, always tailored. Gloves. Always gloves. A man who knew what he was. Never pretended otherwise.
Her thoughts circled back to where it began. Taehyung. He didn’t enter a room, he arrived. Moved like smoke. Looked like he knew secrets you hadn’t earned. Every move deliberate. Every silence calculated. He didn’t fight for the top, he acted like he already lived there. And the world didn’t argue. She’d loved that about him. God help her, she had.
Yoongi was twenty-nine when Taehyung handed him the kingdom. It wasn’t loyalty. It was strategy. A chess move disguised as trust. And Yoongi wore the crown like it had always been his.
She didn’t trust the memory, too warped, too worn. But it came back anyway. Again and again. Now, staring at the page, something in her chest went still. His eyes. That same emptiness. That certainty. Like he already knew how your story ended, and wasn’t impressed.
Once, those eyes had looked at her differently. Maybe not with love. But with recognition. Like he saw her. Now he wouldn’t blink. And neither would she.
Her hand slowed, weight behind each stroke. She shaped his mouth, the same one that once told her she was more than fire. The one that kissed her like she was something worth saving.
But that version of them was gone. Whatever she’d been to him, whatever he’d been to her, it didn’t matter anymore.
Hoseok had told her how the war ended. Not quietly. Not with peace. It ended the way power always does when it refuses to share: loud, brutal, almost holy in scale.
He said Yoongi had stood on the edge of the last battlefield, black hanbok catching the light like oil, moving like smoke. The final rival, once feared, bled out at his feet.
Yoongi didn’t gloat. Didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. He looked down. Stepped over the body. Kept walking. Like death was just another item crossed off the list. That was what made him terrifying. Not the violence. The indifference.
After that, Busan didn’t resist. It bowed. Now the only trace of that man lived in graphite and shadow on the page in front of her.
Her hand moved in steady strokes, building his face in layers. Every line felt less like art and more like exhumation. She wasn’t drawing. She was digging. Through wreckage. Through memory. Through what was left.
Yoongi’s features came together piece by piece. The sharp jaw. The cold slope of his eyes. The soft curve of his mouth, more memory than muscle now. Not quite a king. Not the boy she’d known. Something in between. A ghost on paper.
Then her hand slipped. The charcoal snapped, rolled across the desk, stopped against the edge of a dried tea stain. She didn’t reach for it. Just stared.
The face on the page looked back, unfinished. Not a monster. Not a myth. A man.
And still, the image stayed. Burned into memory like a scar: Yoongi, that night. Black hanbok, sleeves wet with blood, standing over the last man who dared to defy him. The body twitched once, reflex or defiance, but it didn’t matter. It was over.
Yoongi didn’t pause. He turned to the others. His face unreadable. Cold. If there was emotion, it was certainty.
And that was the thing that made him impossible to outrun. He didn’t need to conquer you. He made you realize you’d already lost.
Smoke from gunfire still hung in the air. Cries just beginning to fade. And there he stood beneath a shattered skylight, cherry blossoms drifting through broken glass. Still. Too still.
He looked like something pulled out of a dream and dressed in blood.
And when the final scream died, Busan bowed.
Hoseok had told her about that night like a prayer he wasn’t sure he should say.
“It was one of those nights,” he’d murmured, voice low. “You could feel it. In the air. Like the city already knew. Like it could taste the blood before it hit the ground.”
And after came the gathering at The Red Lantern Club. Not really a club. More like a mirage stitched together underground. Velvet curtains. Perfume and secrets. Jazz leaking through the walls. Lighting low and sharp. Voices too soft. Cigar smoke hanging like a lie.
Somewhere behind a locked door, a woman was always crying. No one ever asked why.
The deeper you went, the worse it got. The air thickened. The light reddened. By the time you hit the center, it didn’t feel like nightlife. It felt like hell with waitstaff and designer liquor.
That night, the city’s old guard had gathered. Six kkangpae bosses, men who’d ruled for decades. Draped in silk and legacy. Their suits cost more than most lives. Their rings were old as dynasties.
Behind them stood their muscle. Armed, still, waiting.
And in the center of it all stood Yoongi.
He wore a black suit that seemed to drain the light around it. Everything about him was honed to a point: jaw, eyes, presence. Hair slicked back. Not a strand out of place.
The chandelier above caught his face in shards. He didn’t look human. He looked like death taught how to wear a suit.
He didn’t speak. Just watched.
His gaze moved slow, surgical. A scalpel drawn across the room. Every glance measured posture, weakness, fear.
And the fear was heavy. Thick enough to taste.
These were men who weren’t used to being afraid. But they were smart enough to feel it.
They could kill him. They had the numbers, the firepower. But it would cost more than any of them were willing to pay.
One by one, they raised their glasses. Not respect. Ritual. Whiskey. Toasts. Smiles stretched too thin.
Everyone was pretending. No one was celebrating.
Except one.
Boss Yoon. All silk and silence. Hands folded over his stomach like he was holding something ugly inside. He didn’t toast. Didn’t smile. Just stared. He hated Yoongi.
Half-Japanese. Half-Korean. Raised on Camp Humphreys. Too foreign for tradition. Too clean for blood.
To men like Yoon, Yoongi didn’t belong. He hadn’t earned it. Hadn’t clawed his way up through mud and knives like they had.
In another time, another world, Yoongi wouldn’t have even been let in the building. But this wasn’t another time. This was Yoongi’s time.
Yoongi hadn’t inherited power. He hadn’t waited for it. He’d taken it, piece by piece. Clean. Quiet. He didn’t follow bloodlines. He erased them. Rewrote the hierarchy. Dug his throne out of the dead.
And Boss Yoon couldn’t stand it.
His son, Chan, sat beside him, tight-lipped, tense. When he moved, it was like something uncoiling. His hand came up slow, then slammed down, palm first, into his plate. The porcelain cracked hard, shards scattering across the table like shrapnel.
Silence hit the room like a slap. Every glass stopped midair. Every throat held breath. Even the jazz behind the walls seemed to pause, like the music knew when to be afraid.
Yoongi didn’t move.
Yoon stood. Slowly. Like the motion hurt. His shoulders were tight, jaw clenched, rage leaking through every breath. His guards shifted. Hands hovered over blades. The room felt suddenly very small.
A younger boss, maybe still naive enough to think this could be salvaged, broke the silence. “What’s the meaning of this?” he asked, voice pinched and too high. “What’s this outburst supposed to mean?”
Yoon didn’t answer right away. When he finally did, his voice sounded like old rust: thin, bitter, sharp enough to cut. “What am I supposed to celebrate?” he said, spitting each word. “The death of this council? The stain on our fathers’ work?”
The murmurs started small, like the first crackle of a fire. A glance here, a whisper there. Fast words. Faster doubt. The kind of unease that spreads before anyone admits it. The air thickened until it clung to the walls like smoke.
Then Yoongi spoke. “Gentlemen.”
One word. Calm. Even. Icy. It dropped into the room like ash from a fire that had already burned everything worth saving. He didn’t raise his voice. He never had to.
“Boss Yoon has something he’d like to share,” he said, tone flat, bored even. Like he was reciting bullet points at a board meeting. “So let’s hear it. What rot do you smell, Yoon-sshi?”
Yoon didn’t hesitate. Maybe he thought it was mercy. Maybe he thought it was his moment. Or maybe he just couldn’t stop himself. He pushed his chair back like a man stepping onto a stage. His knuckles were white against the table’s edge. His hands trembled, barely. But not from fear. It was deeper. Older. Resentment carved into bone.
“My father,” Yoon began, voice cracking under the weight of something too big for the room. “Yours. All of them. They built this council on blood. On discipline. On legacy. This table,” he gestured broadly, cuffs of his silk shaking, “was carved from code. From purity.”
A sharp crack rang out across the room. Boss Bae had slammed his glass down hard enough to chip the base. His eyes were wide with fury. “Outrageous,” he snapped. “You insult this council.” He grabbed his napkin and tossed it across the table like it meant something. “Bastard.”
Yoon caught it, didn’t look, flung it back. “Fuck face.”
“Enough,” Yoongi said. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. His eyes didn’t leave Yoon. “Speak.”
Yoon did. He stood straighter, like bracing for a storm, and let it out in one breath.
“I speak of the perversion we’ve allowed into this council. The disgrace that sits at its head. A place I’ve loved more than my own children. Desecrated. By crowning a half-breed Korean Jap-American bitch as its leader.”
It happened before the air had time to shift.
One moment Yoongi was seated. The next, he was standing on the table, sword already drawn. The blade cleared its sheath with a whisper. His coat moved like smoke. Spilled bourbon soaked into the soles of his shoes as he crouched, stepped forward, and swung.
One cut.
Yoon’s head came off like the sword had been waiting for it. It spun once in the air, a blur of silk and skin, then dropped with a sound too soft for what had just happened. Blood followed, bright and fast, arcing across the table. It soaked silver, silk, polished leather. Splattered napkins. Stained velvet. Pooled beneath the feet of men who had ruled Busan’s underworld longer than Yoongi had been alive. Yoon’s body folded in on itself like a puppet cut clean.
The room froze.
Yoongi stood at the center, framed in crystal and blood. His face was flecked red. Still. Unmoved. He rose from his crouch without urgency, eyes flat.
No one spoke. The six remaining bosses kept their eyes on the body or the floor. None dared look at him.
At the edge of the mess, Yoon’s two guards still held their swords. The moment had already passed. One trembled. The other stood stiff, waiting for a bullet that hadn’t come.
Yoongi turned to them. His face didn’t show anger. Or satisfaction. Just that cold certainty, the look of a man who didn’t guess. Who didn’t need to.
He didn’t make a threat. He didn’t have to.
“Fight me,” he said. “Or work for me.”
The two men looked at each other. Loyalty passed between them, brief, reflexive. But it didn’t hold. Not in this blood. Not in this room. They dropped their swords.
“On the floor,” Yoongi said.
The blades hit tile, sharp in the quiet.
“Get behind me.”
They moved, slow, hands open.
“On your knees.”
They knelt.
“Foreheads down.”
They lowered.
“Keep your mouths shut.”
Yoongi turned back toward the table.
No one had moved. Their hands stayed on armrests that no longer felt like theirs. Suits once tailored to power now looked too tight, like their authority no longer fit. These were men who had run cities, ordered executions between drinks, built empires in back rooms. Now they sat like children caught lying, avoiding Yoongi’s eyes, saying nothing.
Even the oldest among them, men who had once terrified nations, kept their heads down. They all understood what had changed. No one here was stupid enough to think they could challenge him. They had all seen what he’d done to reach this seat. No one was angry about his rise.
Boss Bae just hated Boss Yoon for ruining the mood.
Across the room, just beyond the chandelier’s reach, Lynn Easton watched. One leg crossed, cigarette between two fingers, unlit and forgotten. Her eyes never left Yoongi. There was something in her gaze that looked like admiration, but it wasn’t.
It was worship. Not the kind given to saints.
The kind reserved for gods who kill.
No fear in her. No hesitation. She knew what he was. Saw it in him like a reflection. She didn’t flinch. She smiled. Slow. Precise.
Yoongi spoke again. His voice was smooth, low. Velvet over steel. Polished. Corporate. Lethal.
“I’m going to say this in English,” he said to the table, “so you understand exactly how serious I am.”
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. Every word landed with the weight of steel.
“As your leader,” he said, tone flat, “I encourage you from time to time, and always in a respectful manner, to question my logic.”
Lynn translated quietly from her chair, thoroughly amused by his outburst.
“If you’re unconvinced that a particular plan of action I’ve decided is the wisest, tell me so,” Yoongi said. “But allow me to convince you and I promise you right here and now, no subject will ever be taboo.”
He paused.
“Except, of course, the subject that was just under discussion.”
He turned, slow, toward a soldier behind him. A big man, pale and sweating through his collar, standing like he wasn’t sure if movement would get him killed.
“Hand me the head.”
The soldier hesitated, then stepped across the blood-slick floor. He knelt, gripped Yoon’s hair through his gloves, and lifted what was left. Blood still dripped from the neck. The mouth hung slack. The eyes stared, wide and glassy. Whatever they had seen last had stayed with them.
Yoongi took it without ceremony. Like passing a file across a desk. He held it up slightly. Let the face do the talking.
That expression was still there, that last moment of realization, right before death, when the brain knows it’s over but the body hasn’t caught up.
Then Yoongi’s voice changed.
It dropped lower. Rougher. No polish now. No formality. This wasn’t the voice of a man at the head of a boardroom. This was the voice from before. From the alleys. From a life of being told he didn’t belong. A voice that didn’t learn to fight. It had to.
“The price you pay,” he said, every word slow and exact, “for bringing up either my Japanese or American heritage as a negative…”
He raised the head just a little higher.
“…is I collect your fuckin’ head.”
One of the dons swallowed, loud in the quiet. Another froze completely, like even the sound of a breath might draw attention. Under the table, someone moved to cross themselves, then stopped, maybe remembering no god watched over this place.
“Just like this fucker here,” Yoongi added, swinging the head in a small arc. A red line traced the table around him.
He turned in a slow circle, letting them see it.
“And if any of you sons of bitches got anything else to say…”
His voice lifted slightly, barely, but the force cracked through the room like a bullet.
“Now’s the fuckin’ time.”
He looked at each of them, one by one. Daring them. Giving them the chance. No one spoke. No one moved.
“I didn’t think so.”
He dropped the head.
It hit the table hard. A wet, blunt slap. Blood sprayed outward, over linen, over crystal, over the sleeve of the man closest to the corpse. The head rolled once, then again, and fell off the far edge. It landed with a soft thud and disappeared under the tablecloth.
Yoongi turned his back to them.
“Meeting’s adjourned,” he said.
He walked away. Two men who had once sworn to kill him followed without a word. Behind them, the room stayed still. The scent of blood lingered, thick and permanent. The council, once a cabal of giants, sat quiet, stripped down to what they really were.
Men. Just men. And they all stared at the spot where the king used to stand.
Y/N sat curled in the corner of her room. The cheap wooden chair pressed hard into her back, too stiff to be comfortable, but familiar enough not to notice. The smell fan she had screwed into the wall filled the silence with a steady hum.
Memory didn’t work like a book. You couldn’t flip to a clean page and read it straight. It was smoke. Slippery. Every time she tried to hold it still, it shifted. Time didn’t erase anything. It just dulled the edges. The things that used to cut now brushed against her like worn silk. The pain was still there. It just moved to the background, like old music from another room.
Yoongi Min lived there now. She didn’t cry for him anymore. The rage that used to keep her up at night, sweating and twisting in the sheets, was gone. So was the hate. That would have been easier.
Now, she just carried him.
Every night, before sleep dragged her under, she read the list. Names, dates, memories etched in ink, sealed in scars. Yoongi’s name had never moved. Always circled. Always there. Preserved in blood and intent.
Once, the irony amused her. That you could still want vengeance against someone you didn’t hate anymore. Now it just made her tired.
He hadn’t always been part of her story. Once, he was just a name. A man with quiet eyes who appeared one sunburned afternoon in Jalisco, uninvited but perfectly expected. She still remembered the smell of scorched dust, the scream of cicadas in the heat. She had been sitting on the veranda, a bitter drink in her hand, ice melting faster than her patience. The estate’s white walls radiated heat like an oven. She thought she would pass out before anything important happened.
Then he walked in.
Too still. Too composed. The kind of man who looked wrong in heat and noise because he didn’t sweat. Didn’t flinch. And that made him dangerous. Danger didn’t announce itself. It stood still in chaos and watched.
Her first thought was that he was too pretty to be a killer. Not soft, just out of place. The kind of face meant for cathedrals or concert halls, not backrooms and wars. It caught her off guard. She had felt that once before, the year she met Jimin. But Jimin weaponized his beauty. He distracted. Disarmed. Smiled before he cut.
Yoongi didn’t smile.
He was cold. Still. A presence that quieted rooms. The kind of man you didn’t approach. You waited to be seen.
She hadn’t trusted him. But she hadn’t objected either. When Taehyung asked if she approved, she hadn’t looked away. Just gave a brief nod and said, “What’s his name?”
Taehyung had already chosen.
“Cottonmouth,” he said, smiling like it amused him.
Yoongi didn’t stay long. Maybe forty-eight hours. Just long enough to shake the right hands and unlock the right doors. By Monday, he was gone, headed back to Korea with a folder of papers and a one-way ticket in his coat.
At the time, it didn’t seem important. It was 1992. She was still green. Still trying to figure out what kind of weapon she would become.
Back then, her hands hadn’t learned how to break things. Her heart still ached when it rained. She still prayed, sometimes. She hadn’t met Pai Mei yet. That part of her story hadn’t started.
But Taehyung, as always, had seen it coming. He knew she wasn’t ready. Or maybe he just couldn’t bring himself to be the one to turn the key. When it came time to learn the blade, he stepped back. Said it was too personal.
So he made the call. Yoongi picked up. Said yes.
Three days later, she arrived. The cold hit her the second she stepped off the plane. Busan didn’t feel like a city. The skyline was gray, resigned. The Min estate sat on the edge of that resignation, stone and silence, walls older than any name she knew. It didn’t feel like a home.
Yoongi was waiting in the great hall. Standing there, tall, composed, dressed in slate silk that shimmered like oil under low light. He didn’t move. Just watched her walk in with a stare that could empty a room.
So she bowed.
Not out of respect. Not even formality. Instinct. Survival. She knew men like him. You bowed first, or you didn’t get the chance.
She dropped to her knees. Lowered her head. Waited.
He didn’t speak.
The silence stretched, long enough for doubt to slip in and settle. But she held position.
Then, finally, he spoke. Quiet. Exact. His Korean was flawless. Formal. The kind you heard in courtrooms and memorial rites. Not Taehyung’s fast, back-alley Seoul dialect. This was old money. Inherited. Precise.
“Tell me,” he said, “why are you here?”
It wasn’t curiosity. It was a test. A mirror.
She raised her head. Met his eyes.
“Taehyung told me he already spoke with you,” she said, matching his dialect. The formality was stiff in her mouth, shaped by study, not instinct.
Something flickered in his eyes. Maybe approval. Maybe not.
“Our mutual acquaintance said he would send the foreigner I met in Mexico,” he said, kneeling so smoothly it made no sound. “But that’s not what I asked.”
Now they were eye-level. But she still felt beneath him. Not from height. From stillness.
Yoongi didn’t dominate a room. He erased it. Took the air out. Turned it into something cold and hollow. His stillness wasn’t passive. It pressed in, dense and quiet, until you felt it in your lungs. A slow pressure, like being buried.
Then he moved.
No warning. No wind-up. Just motion.
His hand reached out, fingers catching her chin. Not rough. Not kind. Just efficient. The touch felt clinical. His skin wasn’t cold, but it felt like it should have been.
“Why are you here?” he asked again. “If it’s training you want, Taehyung could’ve done it himself. But he didn’t. Why?” His voice didn’t rise. It sank, low, smooth, cold. “Is it because you think I’m closer to the roots of the blade? That your little infatuation with him would cloud the lessons?”
Then he leaned in. Barely. Just enough to close the distance. She caught the faint scent on his skin, wood smoke, paper, ink. His eyes narrowed.
“Or…” The edge in his voice sharpened. “Or is it because Taehyung found a new pet, and you couldn’t stand to watch him play with her?”
It hit like a punch. Not forceful. Precise. A clean shot to the soft place she never acknowledged. It found it anyway.
She didn’t flinch.
Her breath caught, just for a second, but she forced the air out slow. Steadied her gaze.
“Taehyung’s too busy to train a beginner,” she said, voice level. Even. Neutral. “And I wanted to get to know you. We’re closer in age than I am with the others. I thought we could become friends.”
A lie. But polished. Just enough truth to sound casual. Just enough simplicity to sell.
She let the silence stretch. Let it settle between them like pressure.
Something flickered in his face. Not a smile. Not quite mockery. Something colder. He brushed his thumb across her cheek. It could’ve passed as a gesture of comfort.
It wasn’t.
Without breaking eye contact, he switched languages. His English was flawless. Not practiced. Natural. Private-school crisp, but stripped of warmth.
“Well,” he murmured, “we’ll see what you are soon enough, won’t we?”
Then he stood. One clean motion. Effortless. Like movement didn’t cost him anything. He turned and walked away without a glance, already finished with her.
“Lynn will show you to your room.”
The door closed behind him. Quiet. Clean. Final.
She sat for a second in the echo of it. Her face still cold from his fingers.
Then she stood. Picked up the hotel phone. Dialed.
Taehyung answered on the second ring. Warm. Familiar. Almost amused.
“You good?” he asked before she said a word.
She opened her mouth but didn’t get the chance.
The door burst open.
No knock. No warning.
Lynn Easton stepped in like she owned the place. Black silk. Sharp tailoring. Heels like weapons. Her hair pulled back, expression blank. Her presence wasn’t. It filled the room.
Y/N’s instincts lit up.
She didn’t think. Just moved.
The gun was in her hand before Lynn crossed halfway in. Smooth draw. Safety off. Barrel aimed steady between the eyes.
The phone clattered to the floor. Taehyung’s voice buzzed faintly, tinny and distant.
Lynn didn’t blink.
She glanced at the phone. Then at Y/N. Something flickered, disgust. Then it vanished, replaced by something colder.
“I’m here to tell you,” she said, voice flat, dry, “training starts in ten. Main courtyard. Don’t let your little phone call make you late.”
Then she turned and walked out. Like the gun hadn’t mattered. Like the whole thing bored her.
Y/N lowered the weapon. Picked up the phone.
Taehyung was still there.
“You good?” he asked again, voice calm.
“Yeah,” she said. Too quick.
“I have to go. Yoongi’s waiting.”
A pause.
Then, gently: “Show him why I picked you. Don’t hope. Prove it.”
“I will.”
“Goodbye, Alabama.”
“Bye, Tae.”
She hung up. Stood still for a second. Smiled, just barely.
Three minutes later, she was already in the courtyard. She’d memorized the layout her first night. Not for aesthetics. She didn’t care about ancient stone, delicate bonsai, or cherry blossoms floating like confetti. That wasn’t her lens.
She mapped sightlines. Marked exits. Noted cover. Measured steps. Calculated what she could cross, where she could hide, how fast she could move.
Survival started with the map.
The courtyard was bare. Raked gravel. Slate tiles worn smooth by weather and time. Wind chimes overhead, their tones sharp and strange. A single cherry tree leaned in from the far corner, petals drifting down like soft debris.
Yoongi stood beneath it.
Back to her.
Still.
The sun cast his shadow long across the stone, a cut of darkness the light couldn’t touch. His robe was black, edged in silver thread. The fabric moved with the wind. He didn’t.
She crossed the courtyard without sound. Her boots were ghosts on the stone. No training mats. No racks of blades. Just Yoongi, and the wooden sword in his hand, held like he’d never put it down.
He didn’t turn.
“Show me how you hold this,” he said. No greeting. No warmth. Just a command dropped mid-movement, like she was late.
She took the sword in both hands. Grip clean. Textbook. Balanced.
Too clean.
It looked right but felt wrong. Like a pose held too long in front of a mirror.
She tried to channel Taehyung, the way his stance breathed, the way the blade looked grown from his hand. But she wasn’t him. And Yoongi wasn’t here for poetry.
He didn’t sigh. Didn’t speak. Just shifted his jaw, barely.
“No.”
He stepped forward. She didn’t see it happen. One second, still. The next, closer. The sword left her hands without resistance. He didn’t yank it. Didn’t ask. He just took it, like gravity claiming a dropped stone.
Then his hands were on her. Not rough. Not gentle. Just efficient. Fingers folding hers back around the hilt, sliding a thumb, adjusting the angle. One sharp push realigned her elbow. A tap moved her hips. Behind her, he pivoted her knee, nudged a foot half an inch forward. No words. No explanation. Just movement. Precise. Automatic. He worked like someone who had done this a thousand times and expected no questions.
It wasn’t teaching. It was sculpting.
She didn’t resist. It wasn’t instruction. It was command.
Yoongi’s style had no drama. No shouting. No speeches. No honor-bound riddles. Just correction and silence. He didn’t care when her arms began to shake or when her back pulled tight. His hands just kept moving, carving posture into muscle whether it wanted to hold or not.
By the time he stepped back, her entire body burned. Thighs tight. Shoulders screaming. Spine locked. Sweat clung to her jawline, her breathing short and shallow. Her hands cramped around the hilt.
He looked her over once. Then gave a single nod. “Hold that position for one hour,” he said. Flat. Final. “When it’s over, I’ll show you the next.”
She blinked. “An hour?”
The disbelief escaped before she could kill it. Regret followed instantly. Not just because she had questioned him. Because it sounded weak.
Yoongi didn’t answer.
He turned and walked to the bench beneath the cherry tree’s shade. A tea set sat waiting. Steam already curling from the spout. He poured a cup with the same precision he used on her stance. Not rushed. Not careless. Ritual.
He sipped. Closed his eyes. “Don’t speak,” he said. “Your muscles must stay still.”
She stared at his back, jaw tight. Part of her wanted to drop the sword. Just to see what he would do. To make him react.
She didn’t. Because this was still the test.
“There are children who start this training at four,” he said. “Most still fail.”
Another sip.
“You’ve spent two years playing with guns and knives and think that makes you ready.” A pause. “It doesn’t.”
The words didn’t sting. They landed. Quiet. Dry. Accurate. Like facts she had avoided saying out loud.
“Maybe your mind can learn. Maybe. But your body will. One way or another.”
He didn’t look at her when he added, “I’ll hope you leave this place a credit to my mother’s nation. Try not to disappoint, will you?”
It didn’t sound like hope. It sounded like a door closing.
A week and a half later, Yoongi decided to take the crew out. No reason. No plan. No destination. Just motion.
His people didn’t need details. Only direction. And they moved like gears. Quiet. Timed. Unquestioning.
Lynn delivered the message.
Y/N sat cross-legged on her floor, wrapping gauze around bruises that bloomed black beneath her ribs. Each pass dragged against raw skin. Her breath hitched when the edge of the bandage caught bone. She pressed her palm to her side and waited for the pain to settle. It didn’t. It just burrowed deeper. She gritted her teeth and kept going.
She was halfway through when the door opened.
Lynn stepped in like she owned the space. Black silk, tailored sharp. Not a wrinkle out of place. Posture perfect. Chin up. Shoulders square. Eyes level.
Y/N was on her feet before she realized it.
The pain screamed through her ribs, but her body moved on instinct. Her spine locked, and her hand shot out. The gun was in her grip a second later, trained on Lynn’s forehead without hesitation. The silence that followed wasn’t stillness. It was loaded. Bright and taut. Like air stretched too thin.
The only sound was the faint scrape of her phone sliding off the futon and hitting the floor. Taehyung’s voice, mid-sentence, flickered into static.
Lynn didn’t blink. She didn’t move. Her eyes ticked from the gun to the phone, then back to Y/N. Her expression didn’t shift, not really, but something passed through it. Faint. Fleeting. Contempt. The kind too old to be loud. She exhaled once through her nose, slow and quiet, then spoke.
“You’re allowed to come tonight,” she said, voice flat, the kind of flat that could cut glass. “We leave in five.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. Just turned and walked out, the tail of her silk shirt whispering across the doorway as she disappeared down the hall.
Y/N stood there, chest heaving. Her ribs throbbed. Her fingers loosened around the grip of the gun, but she didn’t lower it for a few more seconds. Long enough to make sure Lynn wasn’t coming back.
Then she bent to grab the phone, her hand trembling slightly as she brought it back to her ear.
“You good?” Taehyung’s voice was still there. Low. Calm. Annoyingly perceptive.
She exhaled, steadying herself. “Yeah,” she said. Too fast.
“I have to go. Yoongi’s waiting.”
A pause.
Then: “Show him why I picked you. Don’t hope. Prove it.”
“I will.”
“Goodbye, Alabama.”
“Bye, Taehyung.”
She ended the call and sat there for one beat longer than she needed to, staring at the wall. Then she stood, wincing, and pulled her boots on over aching legs. She didn’t change clothes. No time. The sweat-soaked tank top clung to her skin. Her jeans were still dirty from morning drills. She swiped a sleeve across her mouth to smear whatever lip gloss was left and ran a hand through her hair, tugging it back with a band that had seen better days.
She didn’t care about looking good. She cared about moving fast.
By the time she stepped into the front hall, she had already pushed the pain back down where it belonged. The light in the entryway was warm and gold, soft against the polished wood floors and cool stone walls. Yoongi stood near the door, speaking in clipped Korean to a man she didn’t recognize. He was tall and heavy-set, the kind of man whose hands looked like they knew how to break a jaw without wrinkling his cuffs. Yoongi’s voice was brisk and efficient. His eyes kept flicking toward the hallway.
When he saw her, they stopped. Just for a second. Long enough to notice, not long enough to mean anything. But it wasn’t nothing.
She fell into step behind the others, slipping into formation as if she had always been there. Not too close. Not too far. She knew the rhythm now. She knew the space she was allowed to occupy. Not inside. Not excluded. She was tolerated. Observed. Weighed.
A wiry man with too many rings and a mouth that seemed to smile more during fights than at parties offered her a drink. Something clear in a crystal vial. She shook her head. Not because she trusted him. She didn’t. But she needed every ounce of strength for whatever came next. Her body still buzzed from the morning’s drills. Her legs felt like overused rope. Her back ached. Her palms were raw.
Yoongi had worked her until she collapsed. Then he told her to start over. He hadn’t praised her. He hadn’t spoken at all when it ended. But he hadn’t walked away disappointed either. That counted.
In the narrow space between rejection and recognition, she could feel the pull. Not affection. Not ambition. Something simpler and hungrier. She wanted to be seen. Not as Taehyung’s pick. Not as the outsider with borrowed language and too much to prove. She wanted to be seen as a threat. Something that could not be ignored.
The car ride to the club was silent. Not awkward, but disciplined. Every man sat straight, knees aligned, backs stiff. No one spoke unless necessary. When they did, it was quick, quiet Korean. Clean and controlled. Not meant for her.
Up front, Yoongi sat next to Lynn. He never looked back. The passing streetlights carved his face into pieces, slicing him into segments of brightness and shadow, something not quite whole. When he spoke, the car quieted even more.
Y/N did not catch the words. She didn’t need to. The tone was enough. Low. Sharp. Exact. Lynn nodded once, her arms folded tight across her chest as if she were holding something in. Her reply was short and clipped, but her body shifted. Just a little. Like something inside her had been punched.
Y/N did not know what Yoongi had said. But she felt it in her teeth. He didn’t waste words. When he spoke, something somewhere bled.
The car stopped. She reached for the door, expecting one of the others to go first. Protocol. Order.
But the door opened from the outside.
Yoongi. Still seated, half turned, holding the door open for her. Just once. Just for her. It wasn’t gallantry. It wasn’t habit. It was a move.
Their eyes met. Half a second, maybe less, but it stretched longer than it should have. A flicker of understanding passed between them. Not fondness. Not even acknowledgment. Recognition. The game had begun.
The club was buried beneath an old hotel near the edge of the harbor. It sat tucked under stone and shadow like something too dangerous to live upstairs. There were no signs. No neon. Only a pair of matte black steel doors and a man standing in front of them who looked like he had retired from killing people professionally but still did it on weekends for fun. He didn’t speak. He didn’t check IDs or nod in recognition. He simply stepped aside when Yoongi approached, as if the man had already been through him once.
Inside, the air changed immediately. You felt it before you saw it. The atmosphere had weight. A low hum beneath the skin. Everything was red. Not just in color but in mood. The lighting bled against velvet walls and lacquered surfaces, casting shadows that clung to corners like secrets. Smoke curled from cigars too expensive to ask about, winding into the haze like something alive. The music was live jazz, but not the kind played in hotel lobbies. It had teeth. Brass and muscle. A saxophone wailed from the stage like it had history, like it had seen too much and was tired of staying quiet.
No one here danced. No one shouted over the music or begged for bottle service. This was not that kind of place. You didn’t come here to forget yourself. You came because you already knew exactly who you were and wanted others to know it too.
Every person in the room mattered. Nobody wore name tags. Their reputations arrived ahead of them, carried in rumors and police reports. Laughter was low and precise, like a shared joke you only understood if you had killed the same man. Weapons glinted beneath suits. Flashes of matte black steel and the occasional polished wood handle. Not a threat. A formality.
It wasn’t safe. But it was sacred.
Y/N didn’t need instructions. One glance from one of Yoongi’s men sent her toward the far end of the long table. No words. Just movement. The seat was obvious. Furthest from Yoongi, furthest from Lynn, tucked into the farthest edge of the heat. A place for the tolerated, not the trusted. She sat without protest. She didn’t take it personally. She poured herself a small cup of sake, careful not to let her fingers shake. Her body still ached from training. Shoulders like stone. Wrists sore. Back tight. But she held the cup steady.
The first sip burned. Sharp and clean. It didn’t dull the pain, but it gave her something else to focus on.
From her seat, she could see the whole room. What she saw caught her off guard. Yoongi was laughing.
Not a polite smirk. Not the curated charm he used with government contacts or lieutenants looking for approval. This was real. Mouth open, eyes creased at the corners, head tilted just enough to show his guard had dropped. Briefly, but fully. He leaned toward Lynn, said something low that made her roll her eyes and smirk. Something warm, almost playful. Not the usual predator’s smirk she wore like lipstick. This was different. Lighter. Familiar.
Yoongi tapped the table with two fingers, keeping time with the band. Occasionally, he snapped a word toward the musicians. They responded instantly, adjusting their tempo as if they were tuned to his mood.
She did not recognize this version of him.
This wasn’t the man who had held her elbow too long in the courtyard. Who had made her hold a stance until her thighs screamed and her arms went numb. Who corrected her without speaking, using only pressure and presence. That Yoongi was exacting. Brutal in his quiet.
This one was fluid. Charming. Dangerous in an entirely different way. This was the king.
She lifted her cup again. Just to do something with her hands.
That was when he looked up. Right at her. He did not blink. He did not smile. He only looked. For a moment, the noise in the room faded. Not because it stopped, but because she no longer heard it. Her heart struck once, hard enough to echo in her ears. She stayed still. Silent. She did not need to speak. The air had shifted. She felt it.
Then Yoongi stood. He smoothed his jacket, straightened his cuffs with a flick of his wrists, and walked. Not toward the band. Not toward the bathroom or the bar. He walked toward her.
Y/N did not move. Her cup hovered in mid-air. Everyone noticed, even if they pretended not to. Eyes flicked toward him, then slid away. It was like watching the sun move across the sky. You did not stare, but you felt it.
He reached her side of the table and sat across from her as if the seat had always been his. He did not ask. He did not wait. He claimed it.
The look he gave her was not kind and not cruel. It was measured.
“You like soju?” he asked. His voice was soft, almost casual, as if he were asking about the weather.
He reached across the table for the bottle in her hand and took it as if she had offered it. She had not, but that did not matter.
“I have had it with Taehyung before,” she said. Her voice stayed calm and steady. That was the important part.
Yoongi rolled the bottle between his fingers. The label caught the light and shimmered, a red gleam against his skin.
His mouth curved slightly. Not quite a smile. Something quieter.
“And am I right to believe,” he said in a tone that was light but edged just enough to sting, “that you have been enjoying this one all by yourself?”
She did not answer. Her pulse spoke for her.
“I see Eun-Jae has his own.” He nodded toward a man two seats down. “And Chi-Hun too.” He glanced again.
His voice did not rise. It did not need to. Every word cut deeper. The power was not in volume. It was in the edge.
“That makes this bottle yours.”
Eun-Jae and Chi-Hun moved together in perfect choreography. Each lifted his own bottle. Each poured for the men nearby. They did not look at her. They did not comment. The gesture was enough.
Her breath caught. Not for long and not dramatic, just enough to tighten her throat. Her body knew before her mind did. She had not meant to claim anything. She had not even realized she had. But she had. And now it was out in the open, sitting between them like a challenge carved into stone.
Yoongi did not believe in accidents. He did not believe in second chances either. Not here. Not with her.
The expression he had worn—cool, unreadable, almost amused—vanished from his face in an instant. The bottle tilted slowly in his hand. The last of the sake spilled across the table in a thin stream that soaked into the lacquered surface. It pooled quietly, unmistakably. A slow insult. A liquid reprimand. It did not splash. It bled.
“I will not allow a student still in training to get drunk,” he said. His voice was flat, stripped of warmth. Not angry. Worse than angry. Final. “Not when I have been generous enough to permit her a night of entertainment.”
Something inside her snapped. A coil wound too tight since the day she arrived. Since the first blow she had not been allowed to flinch from. Ten days of drills. Ten days of silence. Ten days of pain stitched into her skin and rules never explained but always punished. Ten days of never knowing if she was doing well because he only told her when she failed. Ten days of swallowing every ache, every humiliation, with no relief and no reward.
Her palms slammed against the table before she even realized she was moving. The sound cracked across the room like a gunshot. She rose halfway from her seat, the motion sharp and defiant. Her voice tore out, scraped raw from restraint.
“Then maybe you should have said that before we left the compound!” she snapped. “How the hell was I supposed to know when everyone else is drinking like it is a wedding?”
The room changed instantly. Breath seemed to vanish from it. Air turned still. Every conversation froze. Heads turned slowly, carefully. Chairs shifted. Hands slid toward weapons, not drawing yet, only resting, waiting. The silence was not empty. It was anticipation. Everyone in that room knew this kind of silence. Everyone had lived long enough to recognize the moment before something breaks.
Yoongi did not blink. He did not move.
He raised one hand.
And everything stopped.
His voice carried no volume, but it had gravity.
“Are you telling me,” he said slowly, “that I was wrong to assume Taehyung would only send someone intelligent enough to know training does not end when the sun goes down?”
Then he stood. No flourish. No threat. Only inevitability. Like the tide rolling in. Like gravity itself shifting around him.
“I do not excuse disrespect under the guise of ignorance,” he said. His words cut cleaner than a blade. “You may not yet understand what it means to belong to something greater than yourself, but you will learn what it means to respect the table you sit at.”
His eyes flicked to Eun-Jae. Then to Chi-Hun. Neither man moved. Neither breathed.
“For the rest of the night,” Yoongi said, turning back to her, his tone sharp and exact, “you will refill their glasses. To repay the insult of serving only yourself.”
He did not wait for a response. He did not look at her again.
“You.”
A waitress near the bar jumped as if struck. Her tray clattered in her hands.
“Bring her tea. Nothing else. And clean this mess.”
The girl moved immediately. No protest. No hesitation.
Yoongi walked away. Not storming. Not hurried. Simply finished. His point made. Nothing left to say.
The air shifted again in his absence. The room exhaled at last. Conversation resumed—too loud, too quick, forced. Nervous noise from people desperate to believe nothing serious had happened.
Y/N did not move. She could not. Her hands shook. Her skin burned, not only with humiliation but with something colder. Rage. Resentment. Shame. Worst of all, the hollow realization that the worst part was not what he had done to her.
It was that she had let it happen.
When Yoongi sat back beside Lynn, it was not him who looked at her.
It was Lynn.
Her smile was small. Precise. Cruel in a way that did not need teeth to draw blood.
They never spoke of it again. They didn’t need to.
Yoongi was not the kind of man who repeated himself, and Y/N was not the kind of woman who asked for wounds to be reopened. Training didn’t work that way. The lesson had been public, sharp, final. The silence that followed was the test. The message was clear.
After that, everything got colder. Sharper. Quieter.
The weeks bled together in a rhythm of pain and repetition. Every morning before the sun rose, Y/N stepped barefoot into the stone courtyard, bokken in hand, breath visible in the cold air. Her muscles ached before she began. Her fingers were raw and calloused. Her shoulders locked tight. Her back burned from the inside out.
Yoongi always appeared without sound. Gray silk draped his frame, hair tied neatly, a porcelain cup of tea in hand. He never greeted her. Never asked if she was ready. He gave one demonstration: a stance, a pivot, a strike. Then he left her to chase it. No instructions. No corrections. No praise.
Only silence.
And eyes. Always watching. From the edges. From shadows. From the corner of her vision where he lingered just long enough for her to feel it. Not seen, but tracked.
He never corrected her with words. He broke her rhythm instead. A faint frown. A raised brow. A soft clack of his own blade knocking hers out of line. Every mistake meant starting over, no matter how far she was into the sequence. No matter how tired. No matter how raw her hands had become.
He didn’t teach. He shaped. He disrupted. And he made it work.
It was a hot afternoon when she cracked. Spring clung to the air like a fever. Blossoms sagged on tired branches. Sweat slid in rivulets down her back. She was on the hundredth repetition of a basic kata, clean and practiced, almost meditative, when his voice sliced from behind her.
“You’ve gotten sloppy since returning from lunch.”
She froze for one second. It was all he needed.
Her hand tightened on the hilt. She didn’t turn. Didn’t answer. But her grip faltered. Her breath grew uneven. The stance that had been perfect a moment ago unraveled in an instant.
Of course he had been watching. Of course he never really left.
“I ran into Lynn at lunch,” Y/N said, her voice taut, held together by will alone. She didn’t explain further. She didn’t mention the way Lynn’s words had cut—soft but cruel, designed to slice without volume.
Her grip tightened until the wood groaned. Splinters bit into her skin. She didn’t loosen her hold.
Yoongi said nothing. He didn’t ask. He simply set down his tea and crossed the courtyard with that same quiet precision, deliberate and certain, without wasted motion. He moved like breath against glass. Soundless. Unshakable.
When he reached her, he took the bokken from her hands. Not with force. Not with kindness. Just decisively, as if the matter were already settled. As if her permission had never been required.
His fingers brushed hers, light and impersonal. Not comforting. Not cruel. Simply measuring damage. He turned her hand over, inspected the raw patches, the forming blister, the embedded sliver of wood at her thumb. He handled her like a craftsman checking his tools. Detached. Efficient.
“She’s jealous, I’m afraid.”
The words came casually, as if he were commenting on the weather. No bite. No warmth. Just fact.
Y/N blinked. “Jealous? Of what, my bruises?”
A flicker passed through his eyes. Amusement perhaps. Perhaps something sharper. His mouth twitched, not quite a smile.
“You haven’t figured it out yet? I thought you were supposed to be clever.”
He didn’t wait for her reply. Instead, he used a nail to lift the splinter from her skin—quick, practiced. Then he took her other hand. His thumbs pressed into old bruises along her palm and forearm, testing how far the tissue had hardened. Every movement was precise. Every touch necessary.
“She was Taehyung’s favorite before you,” he said evenly. “The only reason I ever worked with him was because she asked me to. She called it loyalty. I called it convenience. But I said yes.”
He paused just long enough for the weight to settle. Not dramatic. Just deliberate.
“Then he got bored. She returned here. And he sent you.”
Y/N didn’t flinch, but the words hit low and deep. She had no reply. She didn’t know what she was meant to feel. It wasn’t a compliment. It wasn’t a warning. It was both. It was neither.
He looked up and met her eyes.
“And now you’ve taken my attention too.”
There was no inflection in his tone. No tilt of the head. No softening smile. Only the weight of the words left hanging between them. Then he released her hands.
“You are beginning to have the hands of a samurai,” he said. “You may take the night off.”
And then, like always, he turned. Three steps away. No glance back.
But he stopped.
“Tomorrow,” he said, his back still to her, “I will join your practice.”
It should have felt like something. A victory. Recognition. A sign that she had finally crossed some invisible line. Instead it sank into her gut like stone: cold, heavy, permanent.
The next morning, the courtyard looked unchanged. Gravel neatly raked. Air still. Gray light blooming faint against the sky. But this time Yoongi was already there.
He stood beneath the cherry tree, bokken in hand, its wood darkened by years of use. He didn’t smile. He didn’t greet her.
“I will strike,” he said. “You will counter. You have until I reach you to remember the correct movement. If you fail...”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.
She set her stance. He moved.
No signal. No count. Only sudden motion. The first strike came fast and low, angled at her shoulder. She tried to shift, but too late.
The blow landed with a crack and dropped her to one knee. Pain flared down her ribs, bright and sharp. Her vision burst white at the edges. She didn’t cry out.
“Begin again,” he said.
So she did.
Over. And over. And over.
There were no drills, no warming up, no soft correction. Only his blade cutting through air, his feet silent on stone, and the sick thud of her body reacting too slow. Her shoulders screamed. Her calves cramped. Her palms ached from the grip. Her mind blurred between one motion and the next.
Yoongi gave her nothing. No feedback, no approval, not even disappointment. Only relentless pressure. He moved like a metronome with teeth, steady and ruthless. If she was off by an inch, he found it. If her balance faltered, he exploited it. Every failure reset the clock.
This was not training. It was exposure therapy. And it worked. Not in a single revelation or dramatic breakthrough, but in layers, in silence. Her body began to anticipate. Her feet stopped dragging. Her shoulder no longer ducked instinctively. The bruises still formed, but less often. Her hands stayed firm, her wrists stopped trembling, and she moved on reflex instead of thought.
Yoongi never slowed, yet cracks began to appear—not in him, but in the routine. A breath that came half a second late, a shift in weight before the strike, tiny tells that most would overlook. She did not. She kept them tucked away like cards she was not ready to play.
The change came late in the session. The heat pressed down, blossoms overhead curling in the sun. Her shirt clung to her spine and her lungs burned. She was deep into another repetition, automatic and unconscious, when Yoongi broke pattern. A sharp flick, a feint they had not practiced in more than a week. Her mind did not register it. Her body did. She pivoted and blocked, clean.
Yoongi stopped. He did not speak, did not nod, but something flickered at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile, not exactly, but close. It vanished almost immediately, sealed away behind the mask he always wore. Yet it had been there, and that—coming from Yoongi—was everything.
Something shifted between them, not in any dramatic glance or heavy moment, but in a quiet recalibration that needed no name to be real. She began watching him differently, not only reacting to his strikes but studying the seconds before. The tension in his shoulders. The draw of his breath. The way he set his weight before moving. She was reading him now, not following but predicting, feeling the current instead of bracing against it.
Without thinking, she tested him. It was not planned. Her body moved before her brain caught up, a twitch in the shoulder and a shift in her stance. She stepped in fast, blade sweeping low. It was not perfect, maybe not even wise, but it was honest. He caught it effortlessly, calm, as though he had been waiting for her to try.
That hint of a smile returned, small but unmistakable. Not approval, something more dangerous—recognition. She swung again, this time at a different angle, sharper, more deliberate. His block came quicker, and with it a subtle change in his stance, a pivot that revealed not a mistake but an invitation.
Try again.
And she did. For the next half hour they moved together, not quite sparring and not quite dancing. She pushed, he absorbed. Every inch of progress, every shard of discipline, every stubborn breath left in her body went into those exchanges. He gave her only what she earned, no more and no less. There were no corrections, no lectures, no fire. Only motion. The air between them tightened, charged with effort and silent calculation. For the first time, it did not feel like survival. It felt like progress.
But it could not last.
Yoongi shifted suddenly, swift and deceptively casual, and used a move she herself had tried earlier. A flick, a false step, something familiar that her body was not ready to counter in reverse. Her mind lagged behind, and the strike landed hard. The wooden blade slammed into her ribs with merciless precision, seizing her entire body. Her breath vanished. She fell, coughing, knees hitting gravel as heat exploded white-hot through her side. The courtyard spun.
Yoongi stood above her in silence, the bokken loose in his hand as if he had barely touched her. His breathing remained steady. His shoulders did not move. He looked almost bored.
“Very good,” he said, his voice dry as stone. “Although you would be dead if my sword had an edge. Try to remember faster tomorrow.”
No gloating. No malice. Just fact.
She forced herself upright, ribs protesting with each breath. Her vision swam, but she did not drop the sword. Her grip held—tight, shaky, but there. She had learned at least this much: pain no longer had the right to take things from her.
“Tomorrow?” she rasped.
Yoongi did not blink. “It is not even noon.”
She stared, sweat cooling against her skin, body throbbing in every place that mattered. He turned without waiting, walking with the same casual control, the blade swinging loosely at his side. One hand lifted behind him in a lazy gesture.
Follow.
So she did.
They were not heading to her room. She realized it the moment they took the east corridor. The pattern was wrong. The walls shifted to older stone, the silence heavier. She knew the layout. Taehyung had made her memorize every hall of the estate, every corner, every dead end, just in case. She had never come this far before, but she knew exactly where they were going.
Yoongi’s wing. Private. Off-limits. No one lingered there unless summoned.
At the end of the hall, he slid open a door and a wave of heat spilled out, thick with cedar and citrus and something older, like sun-warmed earth or smoke from the right kind of fire. The bath sprawled across stone as though it had grown from the earth itself. Sunken deep, carved clean, it sent steam curling into the air in long, slow threads. No marble. No gold. Only simplicity that dared anyone to call it lacking.
Yoongi stepped aside, leaving just enough room for her to pass.
“Your body is bruised. Your muscles are tight,” he said in the same even tone he used when calling a strike. “This will help.”
Not quite an offer, though it sounded like one. It carried weight, an order softened at the edges.
She looked at him. “Are you joining me?”
One brow lifted with faint amusement. “You are not interesting enough yet.”
He walked past her then, swallowed by the steam as if it belonged to him. The door slid shut behind him with a sound too soft to echo.
She stood there for a second and let the warmth reach her skin. The scent of yuzu and cedar clung to her clothes. The stone under her feet radiated quiet heat. For the first time in weeks, no one was watching.
She set the sword down.
The steam curled around her arms, climbed her spine, and softened the places that ached the most. Her ribs hummed where the strike had landed. Her shoulder blades loosened. Something deep inside her, the part that had gone tight and silent, let go. Not all at once, but a little.
Then the door slid open again.
Yoongi stepped into the steam without a word. Bare-chested, robe hanging loose at his hips, sash in one hand. His presence did not change with the space. He moved the same way he always did, with that silent, deliberate ease that made you forget you were watching something dangerous. Nothing in his posture acknowledged that she was there, standing in the doorway to his private sanctuary. It was as if her presence had already been accounted for, expected, filed neatly under inevitable.
“This is my bath,” he said, calm and even, like he was offering her a history lesson. “I thought you might appreciate something more civilized than the training hall showers.”
He folded the robe with practiced care, every motion tidy and purposeful. Not fussy, only controlled. Every crease smoothed, every corner aligned. He set it aside, then turned to the cold-water spout set into the stone wall, twisted the valve, and let the water slam against his skin.
No flinch. No breath hitch. Just the rhythmic sound of cold water hitting muscle and stone, echoing through the steam-heavy air.
She did not step forward yet. She only stood there, body worn down to the bone, every joint and bruise aching in protest. Her eyes stayed on him, though. The shape of his back. The way water sheeted off him, like even the elements could not quite stick. The stillness he carried, too perfect to be natural, too practiced to be peaceful. It should have unnerved her. Instead, it pulled at something deeper, something she did not want to name.
“Why?” she asked, keeping her voice low and steady. “Why bring me here?”
He looked over his shoulder. No smirk. No raised brow. Just a calm, clear look, as if he already knew what she was really asking.
“Consider it a reward,” he said. “You have not complained. Not once. Even when your body failed you. Or”—a faint pause sharpened the air between them—“maybe I just wanted a closer look at the strange girl who stayed, when I expected her to be gone before the week ended.”
She let out a short breath, half-scoff, half-laugh. Then peeled off her shirt. Slowly. Not to perform, only because it hurt. The fabric clung to her, damp with sweat and blood. She stripped it away piece by piece, revealing skin blotched purple and yellow, deep reds where the bruises still bloomed fresh. She did not hide them. Each one had cost her something.
“I do not think you know Taehyung very well,” she muttered, dropping the shirt onto the wooden bench behind her. “He does not exactly allow failure. I could not—”
“You could have,” Yoongi cut in. He was still not looking away. “Do not insult me by pretending you stayed because of him. That is not the woman who has been bleeding in my courtyard every morning. The last one he sent left before sundown.”
And just like that, he stepped into the bath.
No noise. No fanfare. Only water parting around him like it knew better than to resist.
“You are here because you chose to be,” he said. “Because whatever waits for you in Mexico scares you less than I do. And that is what makes you dangerous.”
The water hissed against his skin, steam rising around him. He closed his eyes and sank down to his collarbones, not to relax but to reset. Like a weapon cooling after too much use.
She followed. Slow. The heat hit her like a wall, hot enough to bite and chase breath from her lungs, but she kept going, deeper into the water until it wrapped around her aching limbs. It felt more like a purge than a relief. The bath did not comfort. It stripped.
Yoongi watched her.
Not hungrily. Not even curiously. Just like a man who knew how to read pain and wanted to see how she carried it. She felt him clock her every wince, every breath, every way she tried not to fold.
“I will admit,” he said quietly, “I did not think you would still be here the next morning. Or the one after. I kept waiting for a note. Or an empty room.”
She let her arms rest along the stone ledge, eyes half-shut, the heat working into her bones. And then, unexpectedly: “I never even thought about leaving.”
The words surprised her more than they surprised him. She had not realized it until she said it. She had given herself no options, no way out. Just one road forward, no matter the bruises it collected.
“It was not fear,” she added after a pause. “Not of Taehyung. Not of you. It was just…” Her voice cracked slightly, not with emotion but with exhaustion. “I could not fail. I could not be ordinary.”
Yoongi did not nod. He did not soften. But something passed through his gaze, quick and subtle. A quiet shift behind the eyes. Recognition. Like two hunters finally realizing they were not hunting each other. They were the same species.
He said nothing for a long moment. Then:
“A shame,” he murmured, “that you may someday be my equal.”
The words landed like a quiet blow. Not praise. Not warning. Just a truth, delivered with all the weight of something final.
She did not speak. She only let it settle in the place she kept the things that mattered most: the bruises, the insults, the small, hard reasons she got back up every morning.
By the time she had found the shape of a response, he was already moving again.
He stepped through the water, steam curling around his body, and stopped just beside her. Not close enough to touch, not yet, but close enough that she could feel him.
His hand came to rest on her shoulder. Measured. Still.
“Turn around,” he said.
She did, but not without asking, sharp and flat, “Why?”
His grip did not tighten. His voice did not shift.
“Your body flinches when you move, when you are touched. You are locking up from pain. Let me help.”
No invitation. No implication. Just fact.
So she turned, braced her forearms on the stone edge, and exposed her back to him. It should have felt like surrender. It did not. It felt like a quiet kind of trust.
His hands started at her shoulders. Not soft. Not hard. Just practiced. He found the bruises first, the places where muscle had tightened around injury, and adjusted his touch accordingly. His thumbs moved with clinical precision, pressing into old tension and coaxing it loose.
He did not speak. Neither did she.
Steam thickened around them, clinging to skin, softening the sharp edges of pain. Her body stopped resisting. The ache remained, but the weight of it changed. It no longer felt like failure. Only effort.
And Yoongi’s hands stayed steady, never drifting, never teasing. Just working. Like she was a map he already knew by heart. Like she was not broken. Only rebuilding.
For the first time in a long time, she let herself feel that. Not comfort, but something close.
His fingers brushed the curve of her breast.
Her entire body locked. Not from fear, not entirely, but from something else. Something older, older than instinct. Her spine jerked upright, colliding softly with his chest behind her. The bath seemed smaller. The air heavier. Steam closed in like a held breath.
She did not move again. Neither did he.
They only held there, suspended, as if the moment might break if either of them did more than breathe.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was low. Measured. Strained but steady.
He exhaled through his nose, slow and quiet, deliberate.
“I think you already know.”
No heat. No teasing. No playacting. Only honesty, dropped between them like a stone in still water.
“If you want me to stop,” he said, even softer now, “say it. I will not touch anything not freely given.”
Her breath faltered. Not at his words, but at the certainty in them. So calm. So absolute. The steam swirled between them, thick and clinging. She felt it against her face, in her lungs, wrapping around her hesitation like rope. Her voice cracked without meaning to.
“Taehyung…”
His name came out as a whisper, but Yoongi’s response didn’t miss a beat.
“Taehyung,” he said flatly, not as a question but as an answer, “would have had someone else in his bed before your plane even landed.”
Not cruel. Not bitter. Just fact.
And the worst part was that she knew he was right.
She didn’t speak again. She couldn’t. The words weren’t there. Only the heat, the ache, the tension that had never fully left her since day one. All that training, all that silence, all that held-in rage coiled too tight for too long.
Yoongi leaned in. Not close enough to crowd her, but enough that she could feel his breath at the base of her neck. Not a move, a signal. A question.
“Don’t pretend you haven’t been watching me,” he murmured. “Don’t pretend Lynn didn’t have reason to be angry. I told you she was jealous. What did you think she was jealous of?”
His hand slid across her stomach. Slow. Measured. Not pressing. Not assuming. Just there. Still waiting. Still giving her the choice.
“Say the word,” he said again, low and level. “And I’ll stop.”
She should have said it. She should have shut it down. Draw the line. Protect herself. Retreat behind the layers she had built to survive this world.
But she didn’t.
Her eyes closed. Not out of surrender, but something deeper. Something sharper. Not submission. Control.
A sound left her, quiet and raw, like breath torn from somewhere near her ribs, as his fingers moved lower between her thighs.
It wasn’t about lust. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even comfort. It was defiance. Against the pain. Against the bruises. Against every silent rule she had bent to. This was her crossing a line no one else would define for her.
She didn’t melt into his touch. She stepped into it. Not for him. For herself.
For the first time in too long, the choice was hers. And she took it.
Later, years later, she would remember the bath. The heat. The weight of his hand. The sound of his breath against her ear. Not with regret. Never with regret.
She remembered because it mattered. And in her world, memory did not fade. It sharpened. It cut cleaner the further away it got.
That night, when the list was finally made, when the names were written in ink instead of blood, she started at the beginning. Not with Taehyung. With Yoongi. That was why he had to be first. Not because he was the worst, but because he was the closest.
The charcoal slipped from her fingers, leaving a faint black streak on the desk. She didn’t pick it up. She just stared at the sketch.
Yoongi’s face stared back. Too precise. The downturn of his mouth. The stillness behind his eyes. That composure she knew better than anyone.
She hated how well she remembered. Because remembering meant the wound was still open. And an open wound was still a weapon.
Back then, she had held it for his approval. Now, she held it for blood.
She stood slowly, vertebrae popping like worn links in a rusted chain. Her spine stretched, uncoiling with the reluctant grace of something long kept in a cage. Her body did not feel like hers anymore. It did not even feel human. It felt sculpted, chiseled by pain, and honed by something colder than purpose. Something sharper than memory.
A knock shattered the stillness. She flinched instinctively, muscles wired tight from too many surprises that came with blood on the other side.
“Y/N, can I come in?”
Hoseok. His voice, always a balm, softened her edges just enough to remind her she had not been born with claws. Around him, she could almost remember being someone else. Someone less dangerous, more whole. She exhaled, slow and careful.
“Yes.”
The door creaked, ancient wood straining against metal hinges. He didn’t step inside. There wasn’t enough room for two people to stand without touching, and they had never been the kind to brush shoulders casually. She moved to the bed. He took her seat without hesitation. His eyes flicked to the drawing on the table, unimpressed.
“You’ve been thinking,” he said, tone dry.
Y/N let out a low, humorless chuckle. “I’m always thinking, ahjussi.”
Hoseok’s face contorted into that familiar grimace. She had always liked getting under his skin.
“I told you not to call me that.”
“No,” she replied, tilting her head, “you asked me not to.”
That made him laugh, the real kind. The kind that cracked open the air and let warmth bleed through. Rare and reckless. She joined him, not meaning to, but needing to.
Then the moment snapped shut like a trap.
“You hide behind words, Mamba,” he said, gaze locking onto hers with that old soldier’s weight. “But we both know you don’t say much of anything at all.”
The laughter died like a match in water. Hoseok never wasted time on half-truths.
“You’ve been in here two hours,” he added, “and all you’ve got is a rat’s face.”
She had no defense. He wasn’t wrong.
“Min Yoongi,” he said, voice low and flint-hard, “is your enemy now. Don’t forget that.”
She nodded once. A stiff, mechanical gesture. She knew it. She knew it in her bones. But knowing and acting were oceans apart. Yoongi had been her friend. He had also tried to kill her. The betrayal lived under her skin like a buried shard of glass. It didn’t make sense. Maybe it never would. But sense was not a prerequisite for vengeance.
He helped murder her daughter. He beat her while she was still carrying that fragile, innocent life. He killed Tommy. He opened the chapel door. He didn’t stop Taehyung when the gun was raised. He didn’t flinch when her world was reduced to ash. He chose his place at the table over her life. Over all their lives.
And she would be the one to remove him from it.
Because whatever they had once been, Yoongi had made sure they could never be that again.
“Are you listening?”
She blinked, dragged out of the spiral. Hoseok watched her through the hazy yellow light, and in that dull glow he looked younger. Sadder. Like something in him was wearing thin.
“No,” she said, honest and small. “Not as well as I should be.”
“Are you afraid?”
“No,” she whispered. “I just… can’t understand how any of this happened.”
The silence that followed made the room feel smaller.
“I want to tell you a story,” Hoseok said quietly. His voice slipped into Korean like a man retreating into the safety of his own skin. English was too sharp for grief. Too foreign to carry what lived in his chest. “Not because I think it will help. But because maybe you’ll do better than I did.”
He turned the chair around and straddled it, arms resting across the back. His robe fell open at the knee, revealing loose black cotton pants worn thin by years of habit. He looked almost relaxed, but his eyes betrayed him—stormy, hollowed out by memory.
“I met Taehyung when he was twenty-four. I was almost thirty. I had been making swords since I was a boy. My grandfather raised me with a hammer in one hand and a whetstone in the other. That was all I had. That was all I knew. That was how Kim Taehyung found me.”
His voice carried the rhythm of something rehearsed too often in silence. Not regret anymore, just the ghost of it, dulled with age.
“He was magnetic,” Hoseok went on. “Fast. Wild. Smarter than he let on. We started sparring in the alleys of Okinawa. Half-serious at first, then real. He was the only man I could never beat easily, and when I did, it was never by much. We bled together more than once. I trusted him with everything.”
He leaned forward, fingers drumming against the desk.
“Korea was behind me. My father. His belt. The silence after my mother died. I left it all to rot. But Sookie came with me. She was seventeen. Still called me oppa like she was five. Still believed the world was fair if you worked hard enough. My baby sister.”
His voice caught on that word, and he cleared his throat.
“She was stubborn. Mom named her after some American girl she saw on TV once. Sookie. Sounded dumb to me then. Still does. But it stuck. Everything stuck to her—smiles, people, hope. When she met Taehyung, I knew she was in love with him before he even looked her way.”
The bulb overhead flickered, but Hoseok’s face didn’t change.
“I told him to leave her alone. He promised. For a while, he kept it. But she wore him down, and he let himself be worn. A year later, he asked for my blessing. I gave it. I told myself he would never hurt her. He was loyal. I thought maybe he’d be family.”
Y/N’s voice came out soft as breath. “What changed?”
“She almost died,” Hoseok said flatly. “Ambush outside the noodle shop. Someone we knew. Someone Taehyung had history with. She was so scared after that. Told me she wanted out. Out of Japan. Out of him. I thought that would be it. She left with me. We went home to Gwangju. Bought a little house. She opened this kimbap shop. I fixed the walls and built shelves. She would hum while she cooked.”
His eyes drifted, unfocused. “That was the last time life felt small enough to hold.”
He touched his lower lip, as if searching for the taste of that last good meal with her, and maybe he couldn’t find it.
“Moon-Byul came into our lives by accident. Street kid with quick hands. One day he stopped a couple of punks from robbing the shop. I watched from the attic window. He had no blade, just a broken mop handle, and I thought—this kid might actually be something. I took him in. Trained him. We forged swords together. The attic became sacred.”
Y/N stayed motionless, her breath shallow.
“Then Taehyung came back. And Sookie let him in without hesitation. Just smiled and said he missed her. As if it were that simple. As if he hadn’t dragged violence to her door the first time. I saw it then. The rot. The way he turned everything around him to ash.”
His voice hardened.
“Two weeks later the Italians came looking for him. He had crossed someone. Money, territory, who knows. Instead of warning me, instead of protecting her, he took her to bed. He let her wake up to gunfire.”
The silence was suffocating.
“They stormed the house just after sunrise. Moon and I held the attic with whatever we had. Sookie tried to run. They gunned her down in the kitchen. Shot six times. She died on the tile, blood in her teeth. I slipped in it trying to reach her.”
Y/N’s hand trembled.
“And Taehyung? He killed everyone. Efficient. Beautiful, even. Like a painting. Then he looked at me, calm as ever, and said, ‘At least she went quick, Hobi-ah.’”
Hoseok stared at the floor. “That was when I knew. He wasn’t human anymore. And maybe neither was I.”
The breath he drew rattled like something breaking.
“I let him kill with my steel. I made those blades. I admired him. Protected him. And I never cared what it cost until it was my doorstep he brought death to. Until it was my sister.”
Y/N’s eyes glistened, but she didn’t look away.
“I challenged him that night. We fought in the dark, just like the old days. I won. First clean strike to the thigh. Second to the ribs. He bled all over my floor. And when I stood over him, blade at his throat, I couldn’t finish it. I let him crawl away. I watched him limp down my hallway. I have never seen him since.”
The silence that followed was a grave too big for words.
“And that,” Hoseok said, raw now, “is why I don’t make swords anymore. That’s why I don’t call him brother. And that’s why I’m telling you this. Not for pity, but so you understand what it costs when you wait too long to cut the monster’s head off.”
He looked at her then, truly looked. Not at the girl who had first stumbled through his door bloodied and silent, but at the woman who had survived everything after. The woman with a sword across her thighs and fire behind her teeth.
“Don’t wait like I did,” he said.
The air cracked with it. She shut her mouth on whatever retort crawled up her throat, teeth grinding until her jaw ached. He didn’t let her look away.
“If I had killed him in Okinawa like I wanted to,” Hoseok said, each word deliberate, “Sookie would still be alive. And you would not be this shadow of yourself, so full of rage and resentment. You would be in Alabama. Probably drunk in some dive bar, bragging about the time you stabbed a man with a pool stick in El Paso for grabbing you. You would have gone home. You never would have crossed paths with a man in a black button-down who thought ordering you a margarita was enough to own you. You would have had a life, Y/N. One worth fighting for. One worth keeping.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his shoulders sagging under the weight of the words he had carried too long. His voice was hoarse, not from shouting but from truth. Sharp and raw as steel dragged across bone.
“But instead,” he said slowly, “you’re here. Sitting in the wreckage of a life you never asked for. Caught in the wake of a man who turned your death into currency. Who stood there, watching, while four animals stomped your pregnant belly. A man who hates you, and can’t help but feel contempt towards you.”
His voice cracked at the edge, but he did not break. He would not, not in front of her. Not when she was holding it all in just like he used to.
She didn’t respond. She didn’t have to. Her silence was thick with memory and rage.
“They all deserve to die,” Hoseok said, quieter now, but no less cutting. “Yoongi. Taehyung. The whole pack of them. Maybe even us. We are not innocent, Mamba. We stopped being that a long time ago. We are sharpened edges and bad decisions. We are the end result of what happens when you trade mercy for survival. You and me? We are the kind of people others have to survive.”
He glanced up at her. His eyes were softer now. Something fatherly. Something fraternal. Something fierce.
“You remind me of Sookie. Not because you are gentle. You are not. But because you feel everything too deeply. You wear your wounds on the inside, and you carry them like armor. That is what will kill you, if you are not careful.”
A beat passed. Then another.
“If you want to live,” he said, “you need to stop pretending you are prey. You made your choice already. Stop circling it. Stand in it.”
Y/N didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. She moved like something uncoiling. The sword on her lap shifted as she leaned forward, the metal catching the light as if it recognized her now. As if it knew where it was going.
Hoseok saw it. And he stopped her, gently.
“I have something for you,” he said.
He rose and left without another word, his steps quiet but sure. She sat in the hush he left behind, breath slow, mind loud. The sketch of Yoongi stared up at her again—unfinished, but not incomplete. His face was already a tombstone.
When Hoseok returned, he was holding something wrapped in dark crimson cloth. It looked ceremonial. Heavy. He placed it on the desk, then unwrapped it as though unveiling a relic.
It was a sword. Not one for battle. Not meant for war.
It was beautiful. Clean. Silent.
She didn’t touch it.
“What is this?” she asked.
“My final blade,” he said. “The last one I ever forged, except for yours. I made it for Sookie. She never got the chance to hold it.”
Her chest tightened. Her hands clenched in her lap.
It was unlike the weapons she was used to. No bloodthirst in its shape. No vanity in its lines. It was simple. Pure. A shikomizue, disguised in feminine wood, sakura etched into the handle with the gentleness of a promise.
“Why give this to me?” she asked, voice barely a whisper.
Hoseok’s expression softened in a way that nearly broke her.
“Because it was made for someone I loved,” he said, “and now it belongs to someone who knows what it means not to use it.”
She picked it up slowly, reverently. It did not hum like her own sword. It did not beg for violence. It sat in her hands like something sacred.
“I won’t use it,” she said. “Not ever.”
“I know,” he replied. “That’s why I am giving it to you.”
She set it aside, her eyes burning.
“Thank you, Hoseok.”
He nodded once, then looked at her with that same worn, protective weight.
“You will be outnumbered.”
“I know.”
“You will probably die.”
“I know.”
He studied her face. Saw the steel. The sorrow. The storm.
“You will need to move like a shadow,” he said. “Yoongi’s men will feel you coming. If they do—”
“If they get wind I am coming,” she said, “that compound will be crawling with bodies before I even cross the street.”
“And do you want to take on all eighty-eight of the Crazy 88 alone?”
“No,” she said. “That would be less than ideal.”
Hoseok let out a short breath that landed somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. Something almost human passed through his expression. Soft. Worn. Vulnerable in a way she had not seen in years.
“I’m going to miss you.”
She looked toward the door. Her shadow stretched long across the floor, sword glinting at her side. Her stomach clenched. She hadn’t eaten. Couldn’t. Hoseok had tried earlier, but nerves had shredded her appetite.
“I’ll come back,” she said.
“I hope so.”
She turned to go. The moment tasted final.
“Y/N.”
She stopped.
“If you find him, and you hesitate, don’t wait for a second chance.”
She looked back at him, steady.
“There won’t be one.”
No words. She walked out, sword in hand, steps steady. She made it to the kitchen before he caught up to her, his hand landing gentle on her shoulder.
“Put the sword away,” he murmured. “I’ll bring you some soup. You can eat in your room tonight.”
She turned her head slightly. “Will you eat with me?”
He nodded. “If you’d like me to.”
“I would.”
He didn’t speak again, just disappeared around the corner. And for a moment the house was quiet, and warm, and almost kind.
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chimcess ¡ 5 days ago
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⚔︎ Chapter Four: The Man from Gwangju Pairing: Taehyung x Reader Other Tags: Assassin!Taehyung, Assassin!Reader, Assassin!Jimin, Dad!Jimin, Assassin!Yoongi, Gang Leader!Yoongi, Assassin!Namjoon, Swordmaster!Hoseok, Chef!Hoseok, Pimp!Seokjin Genre: Assassins! AU, Exes!AU, Lovers to Enemies, Action, Comedy, Suspense, Martial Arts, Drama, Thriller, Romance (if you squint), Heavy Angst, Violence, 18+ only Word Count: 23.9k+ Summary: A former assassin awakens from a four-year coma after her ex-lover Taehyung tries to kill her on her wedding day. Driven by revenge for the loss of her unborn child and stolen life, she creates a hit list and embarks on a ruthless mission to take down everyone responsible. Warnings: Violent thoughts, implied miscarriage, flashbacks, PTSD, mental illness, guns, other weapons, traveling, arguing, bickering, use of katana, this is a pretty tame chapter all things considered, not many warnings for this one, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: I apologize if I miswrote any of the Korean I used in this chapter. I don't speak fluently and relying on Google can be difficult.
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Horizon City was somehow worse than El Paso. The sky pressed down like a lid on a pot, trapping the heat until the air itself felt heavy. No clouds. No breeze. Just that dry, punishing stillness that made the world feel abandoned. The pavement shimmered. Buildings sagged under the weight of it, their paint bleached to bone, their windows hot to the touch.
Down the center of it came the Pussy Wagon, too loud, too yellow, a smear of wrong color on a sunburned road. It didn’t belong here, not among rusted trucks and dead air conditioners. Heads turned. Conversations stopped. A woman at the pump froze mid-swipe, squinting like she wasn’t sure if she was awake. No one spoke. In Horizon, you didn’t ask questions unless you wanted answers that ruined sleep.
She didn’t care who stared.
Her bare feet pressed into the warped rubber floorboard, soles black from gas station dirt and bathroom tile. Every joint ached, stiff from too much stillness. Her spine creaked when she shifted. Muscles tugged like they’d forgotten their work. But it was pain she trusted, the kind that proved she was awake.
She turned off the main drag and coasted into a strip mall that had been dying for years but refused to finish. Half the shops were empty, windows papered with curling FOR LEASE signs. The others hung on out of spite. One, TexStyle Western Wear, flickered under a crooked sign. She killed the engine and let the truck tick and groan like it resented being roused.
The pavement nearly blistered her feet. She staggered once, steadied, then limped toward the storefront. Her hips screamed, her legs protested, but they worked. She didn’t look back.
Inside, the temperature dropped hard. The AC blasted chemical cold, making her skin prickle. Lights buzzed overhead, too bright, too dim, one always flickering. Country music bled from a speaker behind the counter, slow and stitched together with heartbreak. She knew the tune. She knew the kind of place this was: the kind where you could walk in dripping blood or ghosts and no one cared, as long as you didn’t yell or steal.
Her scrubs rustled as she moved through racks, baggy and stained, reminders of a place she wouldn’t name. She trailed her fingers along the denim, grounding herself. Jeans. A tank top. A jacket lined with shearling she didn’t need but wanted anyway, something to hide behind. Boots under the clearance rack: red leather, white stars dulled to cream. She pulled them on, breath catching at the pain in her thighs, but when she stood, they fit.
At the register, she dropped Buck’s damp bills on the counter. The clerk didn’t look twice. Just bagged her scrubs like trash.
Outside, the sun hadn’t softened. Her boots struck the pavement sharp as punctuation. She still ached, but she didn’t limp.
The truck’s interior hit her like a furnace. Metallic heat, vinyl, old fuel. The dashboard cracked, the rearview crooked, the windshield spiderwebbed. Her reflection blurred in broken glass, and she let it. She gripped the wheel, palms sticky. For a moment she only sat, list forming in her head, incomplete but enough. One more stop before a nameless motel.
She turned the key. The engine coughed, then rumbled alive, low and angry, a sound she was starting to mistake for comfort. Gravel spit behind her as she peeled out, Horizon City sliding by in the same monotony of sun and collapse.
The next place barely qualified as a department store: a sun-bleached block shouting about bargains to an empty lot. Something fried, chicken maybe, stank through the heat. She parked far from the door. Her legs still felt untrustworthy, but she needed to walk. Make them remember.
Inside, the cold slapped her. Too bright, too sterile, smelling of bleach and melted candy. The place buzzed with noise: screaming kids, arguing parents, a tantrum echoing from toys. She kept her eyes forward. People looked. She felt it, half-second glances sliding over scars and scuffed boots. She didn’t care.
She picked up a basket and drifted to the camping aisle. The shelves were thin, but she found what she needed. A folding shovel, its handle thick and heavy like a weapon. A short-handled pickaxe with a fiberglass grip slick under her palm. A flashlight that looked sturdy enough to swing. Waterproof matches in a bright orange case. And a map of Texas, worn soft at the folds, stained with someone else’s fingerprints. She ran her thumb over the crease before dropping it into the basket. She’d be the last to touch it.
She passed the clearance bins without slowing: Father’s Day mugs, novelty socks, foam can holders with jokes no one ever laughed at. Junk for people she didn’t know. Junk for people who weren’t her. In stationery, she stopped just long enough to grab a plain black notebook and a pack of felt pens.
The basket was filling, too heavy. She set it down and reached for another, the metal frame cool and rough, already rusting at the welds. This one she filled faster, almost frantic. Apricot shampoo and the matching conditioner. A plain white bar of soap, unscented. A bag of cheap pink razors. A loofah she didn’t bother to look at. Deodorant. Face wash. Lotion. Each item clattered against the others, no pause between them. She didn’t want to smell like blood anymore, or sweat, or antiseptic. She wanted the hospital scrubbed off her, layer by layer. She wanted her body back, her skin hers again.
Across the aisle, glass jars lined the shelves, full of bath salts in candy colors. Bubble bath bottles in bright, desperate packaging. A SALE sign shouted promises no one believed. She hadn’t planned to stop, but her feet slowed, drawn by a pull she hated. A scent she didn’t want but couldn’t shake.
An older woman was already there. White hair twisted into a bun, movements slow, deliberate, elegant. She opened jars one by one, breathing each in carefully, gently, as though the act itself was sacred. Y/N didn’t look at her. She just reached for the nearest jar and twisted it open.
Lavender.
The smell hit hard. Her stomach flipped. Her chest locked tight. She was back under hospital lights, antiseptic sharp in the air. IV bags swaying. Monitors chirping in steady beeps. Footsteps soft against tile. A cool hand brushing her hair while a voice whispered a lie: You’re going to be okay.
She snapped the lid closed and shoved the jar back like it had burned her.
Her hand shot out for another, no thought, no reading the label. She breathed deep. Citrus. Tropical. Artificial. But it worked. It cut through the memory, broke it apart. She dropped the jar into her basket.
The next bottle she grabbed was cracked, label peeling, its cap leaking a sticky line down the side. Vanilla, it claimed. She didn’t care. It wasn’t lavender.
At the register, she dumped both baskets onto the belt without ceremony. Her mind spun in jagged circles: Taehyung’s reflection in a rearview mirror, the clean white of hospital sheets, Sam Wallace’s cologne drifting in the heat of summer, the silence of her mother’s kitchen. And beneath it all, always there, the one memory that refused to wash out: her father.
The cashier looked barely old enough to work, hoodie strings chewed thin, nails chipped, one earbud still in. She didn’t speak. Just scanned.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Plastic bags crinkled as they filled. Lavender still clung to Y/N’s hands, her cuticles, her collar, her breath. And then, soft as a whisper in the dark, she heard it: Our Father, who art in heaven…
“Your total is thirty-two seventy-one.”
The voice cut through. She blinked, counted out the money, slid it across. The girl gave her change and the receipt without looking up.
“Have a good one,” she mumbled.
Y/N’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. She studied the girl’s face, saw the dull shadow of apathy in her eyes.
“You too,” she said, her own voice rough, low, like it had clawed its way up from somewhere deep.
She gathered her bags, two in one hand, the third looped over her wrist, and walked for the exit. The automatic doors opened with a hiss, like the store was exhaling her into the heat.
The Pussy Wagon waited at the edge of the lot, its paint so bright it looked like it might hum in the sun. Red flames curled down the sides, shimmering just enough in the heat to look alive. It didn’t look fast. It didn’t look mean. It looked like a mistake someone hadn’t lived down. She didn’t care. She kept walking, boots heavy against the asphalt, bags swinging like pendulums against her knees. Her spine throbbed. Her legs burned. The sun bore down like it wanted to erase her. She kept going.
The truck hit her like a furnace when she opened the door: stale air, rubber, sun-baked vinyl, the faint stink of sweat that wasn’t hers. She didn’t flinch. She cranked the window down halfway, tossed a bag onto the passenger seat, and climbed in. The vinyl clung to her thighs. She turned the key. The engine coughed, sputtered, then growled alive. Reluctant, but steady. It always caught.
She pulled out slow. Tires groaned on the blacktop. Horizon City slid past in layers of heat: fast food joints with sun-bleached signs, payday loan offices in buildings yellowed with age, gas stations with broken pumps, liquor stores called EZ Mart and Last Stop. Dust. Concrete. The occasional palm tree, warped and brittle under the sun, too stubborn to fall but long past thriving.
She didn’t need to look twice. She knew this town. She’d lived in three just like it. She’d died in one.
When the storefronts thinned, she turned onto a cracked lot overrun with crabgrass and potholes. At the far end squatted a two-story motel that looked abandoned mid-construction. Stucco walls blistered, paint curling in sheets, rust bleeding from the windows. Above the office, a crooked neon sign buzzed: The Texican. The “i” blinked like it was losing the fight.
She parked beneath the second-floor walkway, under Room 212. The blinds were shut, but one slat bent outward like a broken tooth. She stared for a beat, then shifted her weight, grabbed her bags, and stepped out.
The lobby smelled of mildew and old smoke. The air felt stale, sealed in too long. A ceiling fan turned slow, clicking each time its blade passed the same rusted edge. The desk at the back looked like it had been rescued from a junkyard. Behind it, a man slouched low in his chair, tank top gray with sweat, a serpent tattoo curling down his arm. His eyes were on a screen.
When he finally looked up, his gaze crawled over her: boots, thighs, waist, lingering where it shouldn’t. Her jaw tightened, but she didn’t blink. She pulled out a roll of bills and dropped it on the counter.
He dragged it close with two yellowed nails. “Night or week?” His voice was flat, dry, like gravel at the bottom of a well.
“Night.”
He grunted, slid her a keycard, and dropped his gaze again. No greeting. No smile. Exactly what she wanted.
She took the key and left.
The stairwell creaked under her weight. The rail was rough, flaking paint into her palm. Each step made her legs ache, tendons stiff, balance not yet fully hers. The building leaned with age, and the stairs tilted uneven.
When she reached the second floor, Room 212 waited. The numbers on the door sagged, one screw half out, the wood around the lock chipped where years of hands had missed their mark. Paint was smudged with failed attempts. She slid the card through. The reader gave a faint, uncertain beep, followed by the click of the lock: a sound sharp and organic, like a joint slipping from its socket.
She stood for a moment, hand hovering over the handle, the heat pressing into her shoulders, sweat sliding down her spine. Then she turned it and pushed inside.
The smell met her first. Not the acrid bite of fresh smoke, but the stale kind, decades old, soaked deep into carpet, curtains, drywall. It was a yellowed stench, baked permanent. Underneath it sat something sour and sharp: mildew, failed cleaning agents, an aftertaste of effort without success. The air felt stagnant, heavy, as if it hadn’t moved in years.
She closed the door behind her, let the deadbolt snap home, and slid the chain across with a thin metallic scrape. A chair in the corner caught her eye: stubby, mismatched, its upholstery faded to some indefinable shade. She dragged it under the knob, jamming it in place. It wouldn’t stop anyone who truly wanted in, but it was a line drawn. A gesture of refusal.
The room itself looked scavenged. Curtains drooped from bent hooks, corners sun-bleached uneven. The light that slipped past them split the bed in orange streaks, late sunlight carving the space apart. The carpet near the door was bald and sticky, its color long since lost to grime. Nothing matched. The nightstand sat too low, its lamp too tall, casting warped shadows up the wall. The desk was scarred with rings and burns, the ghosts of cups and cigarettes. The bedspread screamed in paisleys of red and green, loud and ugly enough to distract from the rest.
She dropped her bags by the mattress and stood still, listening to the silence press in. The wall unit stuttered to life, blasting air that smelled of dust and freon. Not clean, but colder. For the first time all day, she didn’t feel watched.
The bathroom light buzzed on with a flick. The bulb flickered, then held. The mirror above the sink was clouded, corners warped where the silver backing had rotted away. Her reflection returned in fragments, her face shifted, imperfect, unfamiliar.
The faucet groaned before giving up a stuttering flow. Rust-tinged water ran a few seconds before clearing. Heat came quickly, fogging the mirror, filling the small room with steam that climbed the walls and clung to her skin.
She opened the jar of bath salts, tipped two scoops into the tub. They dissolved with a hiss, releasing a softness that felt like it belonged to another life. She poured in the bubble bath, slow, steady, watching it curl through the rising water like melted gold. The white bar of soap she left on the edge, still wrapped, waiting.
Her clothes came off piece by piece, sticking to her skin like second layers. Shirt. Jeans. Damp underwear. She peeled them free and stood in the fog. The mirror caught her in fragments again: shoulder, waist, ribs. Bruises bloomed faintly along her sides, yellow-green fading into skin. Her stomach flat but hollow, her hips jutting sharp. The scar at her abdomen still pink and raised. She didn’t linger. She already knew.
One hand steady on the tile, she stepped into the tub. The heat bit her ankles, climbed her calves, forced a gasp from her throat. Still, she sank down, slow, deliberate, until the water closed around her shoulders and she was folded in on herself, knees tucked, arms looped tight. Steam wrapped her, heavy and close.
She let herself breathe.
The tropical scent lingered, cloying but gentle. Bubbles clung to the surface, catching the light in fragile sheens. Her skin burned, then loosened. Muscles unwound: jaw, neck, spine. For a moment, it felt almost like safety. Almost like being held.
The first sob tore out raw, deeper than her throat, violent as a cough. Another followed. Then another. She pressed her forehead to her knees, fingers digging into her shins, and tried to choke them back. Useless. Her body shook, her breath broke apart. She didn’t scream; there was no air for it. But she wept, bone-deep, every muscle wracked. Her ribs ached, her throat stung.
She wept for the baby she never held, gone before its first breath. For the man who promised to stay, whose blood had marked her hands and her dress and the altar floor. For the hospital bed, for the machines that never went quiet, for the fluorescent light that never dimmed. For every woman who pressed a hand to a belly still full. For every picture never taken, every name never whispered.
She wept for herself. For the years locked away. For her voice forgotten. For the silence that no one noticed.
Eventually her body emptied out. The sobs thinned to shudders, then silence. She sat in the cooling water, bubbles thinning, breath still uneven. Her arms uncoiled. The lavender clung. The bruises showed. The scar glistened.
Drip. Drip. Drip. The faucet tapped against porcelain. The fan above crackled softly, struggling on. Beyond the wall, the air conditioner rattled in fits, wheezing like it had something to prove. A breeze nudged the curtain against the sill, a tap-tap-tap in an accidental rhythm.
She reached for the soap.
It was motel standard, wrapped in stiff waxed paper that crackled as she peeled it open. Plain. White. The word SOAP stamped across in faded block letters, nothing more. She lathered it slow, the foam thick in her palms, and began.
Arms first, shoulder to wrist. Then chest. Then neck. Back to shoulders again, where tension clung deepest. Her jaw, careful. Her stomach, softer, her hand pausing at the scar as though in apology. Her legs, her feet, her fingers, behind her ears. Nothing frantic. Just deliberate, steady strokes, scraping memory away piece by piece.
The water changed, subtly at first. Soap film clouded the surface, swirling. Then faint streaks rose, pinkish, floating near her thighs. Tiny cuts reopened by heat. Or maybe old wounds, still not ready to close.
She picked up the apricot shampoo and snapped the cap open. The scent hit fast: sweet, bright, almost cheerful. Out of place in a room like this, but she let it in anyway. She poured a slick mound into her palm and worked it through her scalp, once, then again. On the third wash she slowed, fingers tracing circles, nails dragging lightly against her skin. It was no longer about cleaning. It was about feeling. Her own hand. Her own body. Her own presence. For a moment she wasn’t thinking about hospitals or sirens or the weight of what came next. Just herself.
Her hair drifted in strands around her, clinging to shoulders and arms, spreading across the water’s surface like ink in clear glass. Every small movement sent ripples over her collarbones. She moved carefully, hardly disturbing the surface.
By the time she rinsed, the bathwater had thickened with what she’d carried in: suds, oil, dirt, faint streaks of blood. Stray hairs, flecks of skin, things she didn’t bother to name. A film skated across the top, swirling quietly every time she exhaled.
She sat in it, arms locked around her knees, chin pressed down. The steam was fading now, air cooling just enough to raise goosebumps along her arms. The mirror across the room stayed fogged. The weight of the day pressed into her spine, her knees, her lungs. Still she didn’t move. Stillness was the point: the kind that emptied you without ceremony.
Her hand found the drain. She pulled.
At first it was a soft slurp. Then stronger, a steady pull. The water swirled around her body like it was trying to take its time saying goodbye. It licked her thighs, curved around her ribs, slid past her arms, then dropped in spirals. The drain swallowed it all without protest: the soap, the oil, the old blood, the pieces of herself she no longer wanted.
She stayed until only a thin puddle remained, circling once, twice, before vanishing with a hollow gurgle. Silence filled the space it left behind.
She pressed her palms against the rim of the tub. Cold now, slick with condensation. She welcomed the sting in her hands. Took a sharp breath, let it root her, then pushed herself upright.
Her legs trembled on the rise. Her arms shook with the effort. Joints complained. Muscles felt wrong, unfamiliar. But she kept moving, slow, steady, until she was standing.
Water traced down her skin in patient rivulets, dripping from her spine, elbows, fingertips. Each drop left its mark before disappearing into the porcelain. The steam had mostly lifted, retreating into the vent or curling beneath the door, leaving only faint streaks across the mirror.
She reached for the towel.
It was motel-issue, stiff, frayed at the edges, faintly sour with detergent and bleach. She dragged it over herself in blunt swipes. No ritual, no tenderness. Just the act of removing water from skin. Left arm, right. Shoulders. Legs. Stomach. The towel caught on raw patches where she’d scrubbed too hard, lit sparks under her skin, but she didn’t flinch.
Barefoot, she stepped out onto the motel carpet. It scratched at her heels like someone else’s memory, old and unpleasant. The room felt thinner than it had before the bath. The air sharper, like it had shifted in her absence.
Her clothes waited in a neat stack. She pulled on the jeans one leg at a time, denim dragging over fresh skin. They caught once on a healing scrape; she winced, then yanked them higher, cinching the belt until the pressure pressed her steady. The tank top next, damp fabric clinging across her ribs. Then the jacket, heavy, familiar, already too warm but necessary. Not for comfort. For armor.
She didn’t look at the bathroom mirror.
On the bed’s edge she bent forward, boots at her feet. She tugged one on, then the other, hands shaking. Not from nerves, but from exhaustion threaded deep, the kind that lived in marrow. The right slid in easy, a solid thump. The left resisted, ankle stiff, toes fighting the fit. She wriggled, yanked, coaxed it until it gave with a final snap. She stood.
The floor felt steadier than it had last night. That was enough.
At the sink, the mirror still wore a fogged film. She wiped it once with her palm, dragging away condensation. Her reflection stared back fractured through hairline cracks, the glass tinted yellow with time. It was her, but broken into pieces.
She looked older than she remembered. Cheeks hollowed, bones sharpened. Shadows pooled under her eyes like bruises. Lips pale, pressed flat. Jaw locked, clenched around years unsaid.
Her scar caught the light. Not a clean line, but a jagged pale bloom across her temple, skin pulled tight over the plate beneath. It hadn’t ruined her face. But it had changed it. Left its story whether she wanted one or not.
She didn’t turn away. Didn’t flinch. She stared until her chest tightened, until her throat threatened to close.
The rage was there, coiled low, steady. Not a fire that leapt. A coal that smoldered. It had lived in her for years, quiet and unyielding, and it stirred now, hot beneath her ribs.
She didn’t glance down at her stomach.
Her daughter. Gone.
Her breath hitched, sharp, and she stepped back.
The bathroom still clung to the last of the steam, curling in the corners, drifting as if reluctant to leave. When she opened the door, it slipped out behind her, dissolving into the dry stillness of the room. It wasn’t dawn yet, not quite. But the light was changing. That in-between hour, when night begins bleeding out but the world hasn’t decided to wake. Everything felt suspended. Waiting.
She crossed to the nightstand. The notebook sat where she’d left it, black cover smooth and unmarked, as if it were holding its breath. She lifted it with both hands, careful, like it might shift weight if she wasn’t. Heavier than it should have been, not from paper but from what it was meant to hold.
From her bag, she drew a pen. Plain, black, the kind sold by the dozen, designed to be used and forgotten. She uncapped it slowly, the click soft, almost apologetic in the hush.
The first page stared up at her.
Death List Five
Yoongi Min – Cottonmouth
Jimin Park – Copperhead
Namjoon Kim – Sidewinder
Brandi Phoenix – California Mountain Snake
Taehyung
She replaced the cap. Slid pen and notebook back into her bag.
Next, she found Buck’s sunglasses where she’d tossed them, bent and scratched, ridiculous in their persistence. She slipped them on. Crooked, as always. She nudged the bridge, tried to adjust, gave up. They never sat right. But they worked.
The room was still dim. Her boots thudded against the floor, each step certain, carrying the weight of promise. At the door, she paused. The chair was still wedged beneath the knob, stubborn in its defiance. She bent, joints stiff, dragged it aside. The scrape echoed across the linoleum, a punctuation mark in the silence.
Chain. Thumb flick. Deadbolt. Three turns, quick, practiced. Her fingers didn’t need thought.
The door groaned open, hinges low and grudging. Heat met her immediately, thick, dry, pressing. Asphalt fumes rising from the lot. Dust on the air. The tang of oil, the metallic bite of a day not yet begun.
The sky was shifting, neither gold nor pink, but some strange in-between shade that lasted only minutes. The motel sat inside it, silent, caught between one night ending and another day beginning. Paused.
The neon above the office buzzed faintly. A cicada started, cut off. A dog barked once. Silence folded back in.
She stepped out. The door clicked shut. She didn’t look back.
The Pussy Wagon crouched at the lot’s edge, yellow paint too bright for the hour, flames shimmering like they wanted to breathe. It looked absurd, dangerous, and proud in equal measure. A dare made metal. A joke sharpened into a blade.
She opened the door, slid inside. The vinyl seat was warm against her thighs, not yet burning but close. The cab smelled of lavender and motor oil, clean, antiseptic almost, but still mechanical. A machine rebuilt too many times, carrying the weight of its history.
For a moment, she sat still. Palms flat on her thighs, fingers twitching. The motel’s AC unit droned faintly in the distance. Inside, the truck held its own silence, coiled tight like a breath waiting to be exhaled.
She turned the key.
The engine caught on the second attempt, rumbling alive with a guttural growl. The cab shivered around her, wheel buzzing in her hands, the vibration running up her arms and into her chest. Settling there. She slid it into drive. Tires spit gravel, reluctant but obedient. The motel shrank behind her, just another room, another scar. Room 212 vanished in the rearview, swallowed by neon and dust.
She didn’t look back.
The highway opened in front of her, cracked asphalt unfurling like a dark ribbon across West Texas. Brush clawed at the shoulders, mesquite twisted like broken arms, rocks rusted red, skeletal trees brittle with drought. The sky stretched pale and empty, the sun still soft but already threatening.
By the time the desert swallowed her, night had fallen again. Not gentle. Not gradual. It dropped like a curtain, sudden and absolute. No moon. No stars. Just black. Heavy. Whole.
The truck didn’t belong here, and it knew it.
It roared too loud, headlights carving two stark tunnels into the void. The beams caught nothing but empty miles, white columns piercing a silence too thick to care. The engine hummed, steady and tired, as though warning her without conviction. Every dip rattled the frame, but the wheel stayed true under her hands. Ten and two. Steady.
Mirages shimmered at the edges of her vision, heat ghosts lingering after the sun. She didn’t chase them.
The desert whispered against the truck’s flanks, a dry, rattling scrape like fingernails on denim. Insects, wind, memory. Something flickered low across the road’s edge, fast, small, gone again. She didn’t check. She slowed instead.
The road narrowed to one lane, asphalt breaking apart under its own weight. She eased off the gas. Let the truck crawl. Then stopped.
Headlights washed over brush and stone. Stillness. Shadows deep enough to hide anything. Or nothing.
She cut the engine.
The silence arrived instantly. Not falling over her, but revealing itself, like it had always been here, waiting.
She reached for the flashlight on the passenger seat, opened the door.
The night air was sharp, not cold but exposing, stripping. She tugged her jacket closer. Gravel shifted under her boots. Behind her, the truck ticked softly as the engine cooled, the sound fading into the endless dark.
She clicked the flashlight on. A narrow beam cut the dark, sharp and clean, slicing through shadow like a scalpel. Everything beyond its reach stayed untouched, patient, waiting.
She didn’t hesitate. Her body carried her forward, step by step, as if it had walked this path before. Maybe it had. Her legs remembered what her mind wanted to forget.
Then she saw it.
A rock. Just a rock, if you didn’t know better. Pale limestone, sunk halfway into the dirt, weathered and ordinary. Something that should’ve blended in. Something anyone else would miss.
But not her.
She crouched, knees popping softly, flashlight wedged between shoulder and chin. The light crawled along the stone’s edge, shadows doubling its size. Her fingers dug into the packed soil at the base. She pulled.
It resisted. Heavier than it used to be. Maybe the ground had hardened. Maybe she had softened. Either way, she braced, set her boot, and pulled again. The stone shifted with a dry scrape.
Underneath, the mark was waiting.
An X, carved deep. Not faded, not worn down. Black as the day she burned it in. The sight of it caught her breath somewhere between release and recoil.
That mark had been a promise. If it was gone, she’d walk away. That was the deal. No vengeance. No names. Just silence. But it wasn’t gone.
The desert hadn’t erased it. Time hadn’t buried it. The universe hadn’t looked away. She stood. The cold closed in now, not wind but earth itself. The shadows seemed to lean forward, curious. She didn’t care. She went back to the truck.
The tools were waiting where they always had been: shovel, pickaxe, flashlight. Old companions. Her hand found the shovel without thought, as if it had already been chosen. She leaned into the cab, thumbed the stereo. Silence shattered. The riff echoed through the night, jagged and merciless, too much for the cab to contain. The truck rattled under it, tires humming against dirt, frame twitching as if it wanted to leap forward. Guitars clawed. Drums pounded like fists.
She turned away before the echo finished, walking back toward the rock. The music chased her into the dark, distorted by space but still sharp enough to cut. Her boots kept time with the rhythm, gravel crunching in sync.
One. Two. Three.
She counted, breath more than voice.
Four. Five. Six.
The flashlight swung at her side, beam lurching across dirt and brush. It caught on shadows, slid over brittle grass, bent across rocks. It felt like stepping into a story that hadn’t been written yet.
Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
Her body warmed against the cold, rhythm keeping her steady. The rock loomed again. Here the air shifted. The ground itself exhaled, cold rising up like something long-buried had soured. She gripped the shovel. The wood was damp. Not with sweat. With memory. Her gloves creaked against it. She drove it down. The first strike rang flat, earth baked into stone. It shoved back. Her arms jolted, shoulder jarred. She didn’t stop.
Another swing. Harder. Then another.
The dirt began to loosen. She fell into rhythm: dig, lift, pivot. Again. Breath shortened, sweat slid down her spine, her back sang with strain. Her palms throbbed inside her gloves. Still, she didn’t let up. Each blow cleared space inside her chest.
Behind her, Barracuda still screamed. The desert caught the sound and threw it back at her, warped but relentless. And she kept going.
Clink.
The sound was different. Heavier. It traveled up the handle, into her arms, into her spine. She froze, boot perched on the edge of the hole, dirt sliding down around her ankle. Breath caught. Heart stilled.
She dropped to her knees. Gloves filthy, jeans scraping rock. She set the flashlight down; its beam jittered, then steadied. Enough to show what waited beneath the soil.
Her hand closed around the pickaxe. She didn’t think. Just swung. Once. Twice. Again.
Chunks of dirt split, scattering sharp and dry. Her arms burned, lungs worked like pistons. Gravel dug into her knees. She didn’t stop until she saw it.
Black plastic. Torn in places, stretched tight over a shape too familiar. Boxy. Olive green peeking through. She knew before she touched it.
The pickaxe dropped from her grip. She clawed at the soil, ripping through plastic and dirt alike. Something slick caught under her nails—water, blood, it didn’t matter. She braced, boot pressed hard, and wrenched.
The earth gave with a groan. The box lurched free, knocking her backward. She landed hard, breath ragged, chest heaving.
Her gloves were filthy, her arms trembling with the effort, but the footlocker was out at last. It was army issue, the kind stamped into a generation. The metal was olive drab, dulled by time, corners dented, its surface scratched and scuffed, the paint chipped to reveal bare steel beneath. The hinges wore rust, but they still held; the latches were stiff but unbroken. It looked exactly as it should: forgotten, but intact.
She brushed a layer of dirt from the lid, her fingers finding the latches without hesitation. A practiced motion, quick and certain. Metal snapped against metal, followed by the creak of hinges straining after years of silence. Dust drifted up in a pale cloud, catching the flashlight’s beam and hanging there like ash in still air. She set the light on the rim and leaned closer.
The first thing she drew out was a sleeping bag, cheap nylon, navy blue, stiff with disuse. It unrolled with a brittle crackle, the zipper teeth clinking like links in a chain. She spread it beside the hole, pressing it flat with both hands. The flashlight cast a sharp bar of light across the box. Dust rose through it in lazy spirals, as though the past itself was breathing.
Beneath the bag lay rows of magazines, tight and orderly. Some bound with rubber, others wound in black electrical tape, the edges frayed with age. She picked one up, ran her thumb over the top round. Brass gleamed back at her, untarnished, untouched. As though it had been waiting.
The first pistol was compact and polished, silver bright against the dim. It looked too elegant for this place, but she knew better. A weapon meant for close range, not display. She tested the weight, how naturally it rested in her palm, before setting it aside with the holster.
Next came a snub-nosed .38. Plain steel, no ornament, no pretension. Just the kind of tool that did the job without complaint. She opened the cylinder, checked each chamber, and gave it a spin. It ticked clean and precise, like a clock. She slipped it into its ankle holster, the Velcro catching with a rasp.
Piece by piece, the Mossberg came out: the barrel, the stock, the slide. She brushed the dust off with her sleeve, each movement instinctive. Assembly came without thought. One part clicked into the next until the weapon lay whole across her lap, heavy, steady, ready.
Her hand brushed something smaller, curved and cold. She lifted a silver boomerang, edges honed thin enough to cut without effort. The light scattered across its surface in sharp shards. She turned it once in her grip, feeling the weight shift. This was older than everything else. Older than her scars, older than her anger. A remnant from another life. It slid into its old holster, and her hand lingered there for a moment too long.
At the bottom, she found a black attachĂŠ, snug in the foam. She freed it, laid it flat, and opened the twin latches. The case released with a click sharp enough to cut the silence. Inside, in carved slots, lay the broken-down parts of a sniper rifle: barrel, bolt, scope, mount. Each piece was immaculate, free of dust, as though untouched by time. She lifted the scope, tilted it upward, and caught a starlight pinprick sharp and clear through the glass.
She was about to close the case when something caught her eye, flat, tucked beneath the foam. A manila envelope, worn at the corners, soft with use. She stripped off her gloves, ignoring the soil packed beneath her nails, and lifted it carefully as if it might crumble. She slid a finger under the flap and unfolded the paper within, one crease at a time.
A black and white sonogram. Grainy but unmistakable. A curled shape no bigger than a thumb. The curve of a spine, the suggestion of a head, the faintest stretch of limbs. Her child.
She sat motionless. The wind seemed to pause with her, the desert holding its breath. Somewhere in the distance, music pulsed low, but she barely heard it. She stayed still in the dirt, sleeves caked with dust, staring at the ghost of a life that never came to be.
She folded the sonogram slowly, carefully, and slid it back into its envelope. The flap pressed closed under her thumb, unsealed but sufficient.
There was more. 
A Ziploc bag, cloudy and heat-wrinkled. Inside was an old Texas state ID. Candy Ralston. The photo was hers, but younger. Rounder in the face, skin untouched by scars. Hair pulled back too tightly, eyes uncertain but already watching. Lips pressed in a line that refused to trust.
Next to it lay a paper bank book, its spine softened from handling. Every entry written by hand, small withdrawals made with care. A pattern so patient it became invisible, until it led here. On the final page, one last choice.
And beneath the lining, exactly where memory said it would be, she found the key. Small, plain, tarnished. Dangling from a chipped novelty fob. The letters worn nearly smooth, but she didn’t need to read them.
Deadly Vipers.
She didn’t pause. No whispered vow, no lingering glance. She began to repack the footlocker, steady and sure. Each weapon slid into its place: the sniper rifle parts pressing into their foam, the boomerang curved into its cutout like it had never left. She closed the sleeping bag last, the zipper catching once before sliding true. The final click echoed in the still air, too loud, like a door shutting behind her.
She hefted the pack onto her shoulder. Heavy, but familiar. Her body shifted into the weight like it had carried it a hundred times before.
She stood, turned, and walked back toward the truck without a backward glance. The hole remained open in the dirt behind her, a raw gash in the earth, as if the desert had been holding its breath for years and finally let it out. No marker, no cross, no stone. Just a patch of sand that had kept its secret until it no longer had to. She left it that way.
The wind stirred, but the desert didn’t change. In the distance, the oil derrick kept grinding its endless rhythm, slow, mechanical, indifferent. The truck was still humming with music when she climbed inside, something sharp with guitars and drums heavy enough to bruise a ribcage. She didn’t touch the dial. Didn’t spare the radio a look. She only turned the key.
The engine growled awake, the wheel twitching under her grip as though impatient, eager to remind her why she’d come. She shifted into drive.
Gravel cracked under the tires, dust lifting in a thin veil behind her. No farewell, no second look. The hole stayed where it was, empty, unfinished, unmarked. Nothing would fill it, and nothing needed to.
Miles slipped beneath her tires, steady and relentless. The sun climbed higher, flattening the horizon into a long, wavering stretch of heat and light. She let the road carry her forward like a current she no longer fought.
By the time she pulled into the Commonwealth Bank of Texas, the sun was cruel at its peak, heat radiating off the concrete in dizzy waves. The building looked like it had been abandoned halfway through its design and forced into use anyway: beige brick, dull metal trim, a flickering red “OPEN” sign that couldn’t decide if it meant it.
It sat wedged between a shuttered taqueria and a payday loan office still dressed in tinsel from a Christmas no one remembered. Dust thickened in the sidewalk’s cracks. The kind of place people didn’t bother to notice. Perfect.
She cut the engine. The silence that followed felt sharper than the music. Her boots struck the pavement with the same deliberate weight they’d carried through the dirt. The sleeping bag was gone, tucked away with the rest. What stepped out here wasn’t the woman from the desert. This was Candy Ralston.
Not the bright-eyed Candy with the easy smile and the drawl sharpened just enough to charm. That Candy was dead. This one was leaner, skin pale, eyes too hollow to bother pretending. Her mouth was a hard line. She hadn’t come for company.
She crossed the lot in a slow, certain stride, one hand on the bag, the other close to her coat. The fabric swayed with each step, brushing her thighs, catching the breeze. She moved like someone who knew exactly what she carried and what it would cost to use it.
The bank’s glass doors didn’t invite. The tint was too dark, the reflection warped. Inside, fluorescent lights flickered and hummed, pouring a pale gray over everything. Blinds hung crooked, yellow at the edges. A place that didn’t improve, only endured.
She pushed through the door.
The buzzer cracked the hush, too loud in the cold, conditioned air. The chill was chemical, designed to keep people awake, unsettled. It smelled of citrus cleaner and overworked machines, with something faint beneath it, something like nerves.
The light was merciless, stripping every angle bare. Her coat stayed on.
She moved with the kind of presence that didn’t need to ask for space. Cameras swiveled from their black domes in the corners, lenses humming faintly if you listened close. She didn’t look up. Let them watch. Let them wonder.
Behind the counter sat a woman who might have been there since the doors first opened. Hair lacquered into a helmet, lipstick a shade of pink too bright for her complexion. The tag on her blouse, polyester and strawberry-colored, cheap, read MARJORIE in rigid block letters.
She looked up when the door chimed, flashing a smile polished for trouble. Too quick, too practiced, more reflex than welcome.
Y/N didn’t return it.
“Hi there,” Marjorie said, her voice soaked in the slow sweetness of a Texas drawl, one that sounded like it had been taught in finishing school and worn thin by years of repetition. “How can I help you today, ma’am?”
Y/N stepped forward, just close enough to make it feel personal, but not close enough to make it weird. Her voice came out low, a little frayed, like she’d worn it out talking to ghosts. “I need access to my safety deposit box.”
Even to her own ears, she sounded small. Not scared. Just tired in a way that lived deep in the bones. Her arms still ached from the dig, her back tight across the spine, her muscles running on fumes. It helped. The exhaustion made her seem soft at the edges, easier to dismiss.
She reached into her coat and pulled out the key. It was plain, silver dulled to a matte finish, worn down at the edges. Nothing remarkable. Except it was. The way she turned it in her fingers, how it caught the light for a second, made it something more than metal. This key had opened more than steel boxes. It had cracked things open that were meant to stay shut.
She placed it on the counter like it might still be hot. “My name’s Candy Ralston.”
Marjorie blinked. Just once. But it was enough. A pause in the rhythm. Her eyes dropped to the key, then back up. Something shifted in her face: some small recalculation, like a mental search engine had just returned an unexpected result. Not panic. Not even suspicion. Just awareness. A name that didn’t match a story. Or a story that was missing too many pages.
Y/N noticed. She always noticed. The flicker in the eyes, the slight tension in the mouth, the way Marjorie’s hands hovered over the keyboard for half a second too long, like they were waiting for instructions the rest of her wasn’t ready to give.
Y/N followed with the ID. Slid it across the glass, calm, steady. The photo was old but recent enough. Her face in it was rounder, eyes a little less guarded, a smile that barely made it to her mouth. Now her cheeks were hollowed out, skin drawn tighter, her gaze hard-edged. But the eyes—those stayed the same.
Marjorie studied the ID, compared it to the woman standing in front of her. Her smile didn’t return. Something behind it had turned mechanical.
“I’ll be right back, honey,” she said, and the warmth in her voice had vanished. She took the ID and the key, turned, and disappeared behind a gray metal door that hissed shut behind her like a vault sealing off bad memories.
Y/N didn’t move.
She scanned the lobby instead. Vault tucked in the corner, keypad locked. Two cameras, standard dome type, mounted high. Cheap, analog, probably on a timed loop. Footage saved to tapes or some outdated drive, nothing that uploaded to a cloud. She made a note of that. Good, not great. Sprinklers overhead, fire alarms every fifteen feet. No posted security. No visible guards. Just quiet.
It wasn’t much. But maybe enough to stay ahead if Taehyung had caught her scent.
Marjorie came back slower than she’d gone. The door opened with the same soft hiss. No smile now. Just neutral posture, the kind you wore when you didn’t want to pick sides. She held the door open without a word.
“Right this way.”
Y/N didn’t thank her. Didn’t speak. She just moved, coat brushing against the counter’s edge, boots making a soft sound against carpet chosen specifically to muffle footsteps. The hallway they entered was narrow, lined with anonymous doors that had no signs or names, only keypads in place of knobs. It smelled like cold paper and old wiring.
At the end of the corridor was a room built for forgetting. The temperature dipped the second they stepped in, not from AC but from something deeper, like the place had been sealed off from the rest of the world for too long. Fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, casting a flat, pale glow that made every surface look harsher than it was. Shadows clung to the corners, thick and reluctant.
The walls were covered in rows of steel safety deposit boxes, each one identical, stacked high like a wall of filing cabinets in a mausoleum. A square table sat in the middle, wood, worn smooth in some places, scratched in others. It didn’t look like anyone had ever sat comfortably at it.
Marjorie moved without speaking, walking straight to a lower drawer in the wall. Her fingers didn’t fumble. She pulled a steel box free and laid it on the table with a dull thunk. Then another. The sound was soft but final, like a decision being made in secret.
She didn’t look at Y/N. Didn’t ask any questions. Her whole body said the same thing: I don’t want to know.
Y/N didn’t open the box. Not here. Not with the lights buzzing and the cameras humming faintly above, and Marjorie pretending not to see but seeing everything anyway. This wasn’t the place for what came next. Not yet.
She stood slowly, letting her knees stretch, spine groan just a little as it straightened. She didn’t make a sound. Just rose, steady and full of weight.
Marjorie still stood by the door, hands folded tight, knuckles pale. Her voice came out quiet, not reverent, not polite. Something more cautious than that.
“Thanks for coming.”
Her eyes flicked to the bag over Y/N’s shoulder. Not curious. Just wary. There was no warmth in her voice. No welcome. Just the brittle sound of someone realizing too late that they should have asked fewer questions, or maybe more.
Y/N didn’t try to soothe it.
“Thanks for your help,” she said. Flat. Even. Just enough to be finished.
She turned and walked out.
Marjorie followed at a distance, like she didn’t want to be caught sharing space with whatever Y/N carried. Back through the hallway, down the long strip of carpet meant to erase sound and footprints. When they reached the counter again, Marjorie slid behind it without a word and sat very still, watching through the glass as Y/N moved toward the door and pushed it open.
The heat outside hit like a slow slap, drier than before, tinted orange by a sun that was just starting to fall. Shadows had grown long across the parking lot, stretching past broken curbs and faded paint lines. The sky had gone bruised at the edges. The truck waited exactly where it had been, dust settled thick across the windshield, the yellow paint looking tired in the last of the light.
She tossed the bag into the flatbed, climbed into the driver’s seat, and closed the door. The cab held the day’s warmth like a breath that hadn’t been let go. The engine took a second to respond. Then it grumbled to life with a thick, uneven roar that rattled the steering column.
She pulled out of the lot without a glance at the building behind her. No one followed.
The bank disappeared in the rearview, swallowed up by the flat lines of small-town architecture and the slow drag of coming night. Another door shut. Another name scratched off.
The road opened in front of her again, stretching west through brush and rock and the half-sleep of places too small to fight back. Her fingers rested easy on the wheel. Not loose. Not tense. Just ready. Her other hand twitched once against her thigh, like it was remembering something: some old rhythm, some old grip.
The sky behind her wasn’t just sunset. It was collapse, like something had given way at the edge of the world and let everything pour out. Red bled into deep violet, orange streaked like torn silk across the horizon. It was a hell of a sight, bold and feral, almost too much to look at. But she didn’t turn to see it. Endings didn’t impress her anymore.
Mile marker 233 blurred past. Just beyond it, the motel came into view. Low-slung and sagging between a boarded-up diner and a pawn shop with a broken front window and an “OPEN” sign that hadn’t glowed since Clinton was in office. The SUNRISE MOT_L sign blinked in sickly neon, the “E” long gone, leaving the name limping toward meaning. Plastic palm trees lined the driveway, sun-bleached and cracked, their fronds drooping like they had finally accepted their own artificiality.
The truck hissed as it settled, engine ticking like it had opinions about being parked. Heat shimmered off the hood. She stepped out, boots hitting the asphalt with the unhurried thud of someone who’d done this too many times before. Another town. Another key. Another night listening to the sound of her own breath and wondering if it was really hers anymore.
The lobby reeked of cheap cleaner fighting and failing to bury the smell of time. Old carpet. Burned coffee. That bitter lemon-polish tang on furniture nobody liked. Behind the counter, a man with red eyes and a week’s stubble looked up, sweat soaking through his shirt. He regarded her the way a man regards a thunderstorm from behind a screen door: resigned, a little impressed, but not about to step into it.
She laid cash on the counter without counting. No words. No name. Just a transaction. He slid a key across the laminate, a red plastic tag dangling from it, the number 11 painted in peeling gold. The plastic stuck to her fingers, tacky with years of grime.
“Back row,” he muttered, already turning away.
Room 11 waited at the far end of the building, tucked into the shadows like a bruise no one mentioned. The lock resisted until she leaned into it, shoulder tight against the door. It clicked open reluctantly, like the room had been holding its breath.
Inside, the air was still and heavy. Not hot. Not cold. Just stale. Saturated. Smoke in the walls, mildew in the carpet. She shut the door, bolted it, slid the chain, then dragged the desk chair under the knob. It wouldn’t stop anyone. But it gave her the illusion of control.
The bag hit the bed with a solid thud. She didn’t open it yet.
Plastic blinds rattled as she lowered them slat by slat, each click deliberate. Outside, the parking lot glowed under a flickering streetlamp, humming too loud, not sure whether to stay lit. A few cars scattered across the lot. Heat still rising off the pavement. Bugs swarming the light like it meant something.
She checked the bathroom. The bulb buzzed sickly yellow, throwing a crooked shadow behind her. Cracked tile. Rusted sink. Mirror fogged at the edges, warped with age. She left the door half open. Not for sightlines. Just habit. She didn’t close doors without a reason anymore.
The room sagged at the seams. Wallpaper peeled in corners, ceiling stained like a bruise. The air conditioner coughed, rattled, died again. She sat on the bed. Zipped the bag open.
Stacks of cash waited inside, neat and brittle, rubber bands fraying with time. She picked one up, breathing in the scent of sweat, dust, and long drives with cracked windows. Quiet money. The kind that didn’t ask questions.
Beneath it, weapons. Two pistols: one clean and compact, the other older, worn. The compact one she hadn’t touched since El Paso, since Lisa Wong walked out of a motel bathroom with a pregnancy test and silence in her eyes. Lisa left three days later. Faked her death the day after that.
She slid them aside. Pulled out the SOG knife. Perfect balance. Still hers. A straight razor waited beneath it, sleek and simple, for skin. She pocketed it. Better to have options.
At the bottom lay a rifle case. She opened it, checked the matte-black barrel. Functional. Nothing ornate. She closed it again. Korea would demand quieter tools.
A manila folder came next. Corners soft with use. Inside: passports. Fourteen identities, all hers. Candy Ralston. Minsook Cho. Emma Blevins. Others she barely remembered wearing. Different hair. Different smiles. Same eyes. Always hers.
A folded map slipped out. Korea. Red ink circling cities, tracing routes like a heartbeat across the paper. She didn’t remember marking it, but her hand had known.
Photographs. Old, blurred, pulled from yearbooks under borrowed names. A beach. An arm around Sam Wallace. Her own half-formed smile frozen in place. She flipped past them quickly.
Then came the sonograms. She didn’t need to unfold them. The shape lived in her spine now, lodged between her ribs.
She sat still with the folder on her lap, bag open beside her, lamp casting weak yellow light over everything. She didn’t check her phone. Didn’t turn on the TV. Just breathed. The room didn’t welcome her, but it didn’t push her out either. It was just a box. Four walls to keep the world at bay for one more night.
Outside, a car rolled past slow, tires whispering over gravel. Somewhere down the row, a door slammed, laughter cracked sharp through the air, and bass thudded heavy from an open window. The music swaggered, empty noise with no weight behind it.
She stayed still. Let it pass like weather. Then leaned forward, unzipped the smaller pocket of the bag, and pulled free something cold and compact. A refrigeration case. She set it on the bed. Unlaced the key from her boot. The lock clicked once, clean, before the lid opened.
Inside, two gold syringes gleamed against black foam. Between them, a vial. Pale amber liquid moved slow inside it, syrup-thick, heavy, like honey aged too long.
Taehyung had called it The Undisputed Truth. Said it burned the lies out of people. She hadn’t believed him. Still didn’t. But she’d taken it anyway. Maybe it worked. Maybe it didn’t. Soon, she’d have to find out.
She closed the case and turned the key with care. Slid it back behind her laces like it had never left. The weight settled into the bag with a muted thud, buried beneath layers of gear. Her hand brushed something soft in the side pocket: a flattened pack of Camels, paper crumpled, edges worn like it had been riding there for years.
She pulled it out, frowning. Couldn’t remember putting it in. Couldn’t remember the last time she even wanted to. Not since Pai Mei. Not since the split lip and two days of lungs scraped raw from the inside. That had been the line. She’d meant to quit.
But tonight didn’t care what she meant.
She tapped the pack twice against her knee and drew one out with her teeth. The lighter waited in the same pocket, cheap plastic, half-empty. It sputtered once, twice, then caught. Flame kissed the cigarette, flared too close, then steadied to a glow. She pulled deep, the smoke burning familiar paths down her chest, settling heavy in her lungs.
The exhale spiraled slow toward the ceiling, mixing with the stale motel air as if it had always belonged there. Maybe she had too. Another drag. Longer. The tremor in her hands eased. The knot in her chest unwound. The ache behind her eyes softened just enough to blink without pain.
She had what she needed. Enough money to disappear. Enough weapons to make sure no one stopped her. Enough names stitched into paper to build another self, somewhere no one was looking. She’d started with less before, built lives from crumbs. But this time the engine driving her was different. Not revenge alone. Not pain. Hunger. The kind born not from being hurt, but from surviving. From still being alive, and wanting more than survival.
Her fingers found the folded map. She spread it flat across the bed, pressing it open with both palms. The paper had gone soft, creases tired, ink smudged. But the line still held: red ink threading its way across borders and customs, curling through cities, circling names. A path toward Korea.
Her nail traced it slow, stopping at Busan. A small circle, marked twice. She tapped it. Once. Again. Then folded the map back with care, each edge pressed down as if she were sealing a thought she couldn’t afford to lose.
The cigarette had burned low, ash dangling fragile at the end. She stood, room folding closer around her. Not smaller. Just more present, more awake. The A/C wheezed, rattled, died with a final shudder. She didn’t look at it.
At the window, she slipped two fingers through the blinds, pulled them apart. Sodium light drowned the parking lot in its false orange glow. Nothing moved except the swarm of bugs around the lamp. Her truck crouched in the far corner, paint dulled, hood shadowed. It looked patient. Waiting. It knew this wasn’t the end. Only another checkpoint. Another launch point. A step toward digging up the version of herself she’d buried.
She smoked the cigarette down to the filter, ground it out in the cracked glass ashtray beside the lamp. Then stretched, long and slow, until her spine gave a small pop. Rolled her shoulders once. Tension snapped loose. Proof the engine was still running. Proof she hadn’t rusted out yet.
There was still work ahead. Still miles to burn. Still names that needed remembering. Or forgetting.
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The sky was still the color of a healing bruise when she stepped out of Room 11. That thin, breath-held hour before sunrise stretched across the motel, quiet and suspended, like the world wasn’t sure whether to wake up or go back to sleep. The air hung low and heavy, not cold anymore but still clinging to the memory of it, brushing at her ankles as she walked. Her boots met the gravel with a soft, steady crunch, her stride slow but sure. The door clicked shut behind her with the soft finality of a decision already made. She didn’t look back. She never did.
Whatever lingered inside that room—the musty reek of mildew, the peeling wallpaper, the silence pressed into the floor like dust—could stay there. The ghosts were welcome to it.
The lot was empty now, stripped of last night’s noise and movement. No music. No laughter. No arguing strangers trying to forget whatever they’d dragged in with them. Just the hum of a flickering security light and the shadows it cast, long and tired and mostly ignored. Her truck waited where she had left it, the same as it always did. Black. Battered. Dust-laced. It didn’t look fast or dangerous, only patient. Like it had seen everything and didn’t need to brag about any of it.
She opened the door. The hinges gave a soft groan. The duffel landed in the passenger seat with a solid weight, heavier now, heavier in more ways than one. Not just steel and currency, but decisions. Commitments. Endings. She sat behind the wheel and rested her hand on the key but didn’t turn it right away. Instead she looked through the windshield, past the sagging plastic palms and sun-warped signage, out toward the open road.
Somewhere along the way, something had shifted. She didn’t know the exact moment, but it was there in her blood, in her spine. The running was over. Whatever came next would not be a retreat. She wasn’t trying to disappear anymore. She was going back.
She turned the key.
The truck woke up with a low growl, not eager but ready. The kind of engine that didn’t expect praise, only purpose. She eased out of the lot without checking the mirror, letting the motel recede into the rearview like everything else she had buried. It would stay there, just another mile behind her.
The road to the airport unfolded like it always did in these parts, quiet highways full of tired signage and forgotten ambition. Diners with names like “Lisa’s Last Stop” and “Grill & Chill 24/7,” their neon flickering like it was fighting sleep. Empty parking lots. Billboards that promised injury settlements, eternal salvation, and the best damn pecan pie on Highway 9. Churches with broken steeples. Loan offices with barred windows. The skeleton of American promise, sun-bleached and hollowed out.
She didn’t turn on the radio. Didn’t crack the window. Her coffee sat untouched in the console, more for the heat in her hand than anything else. She drove with both hands on the wheel, letting her thoughts drift slow and aimless, looping back through the same questions and never settling on answers.
The sun rose behind her, crawling up the horizon like something tired of hiding. It lit the road in pale gold and chased her shadow out ahead of her, long and crooked. The towns she passed blurred together. Same gas stations. Same parking lots. Same dust settling on sun-baked signs. Nothing reached her. Nothing asked to.
By the time she pulled into the airport lot, the sky had turned that washed-out shade of blue that promised heat and little else. She parked in long-term, rows from anyone else. Killed the engine under a flickering lamppost that gave one last buzz before giving out. She sat a moment, hands still on the wheel, feeling the last bit of quiet settle around her. Then she slung the duffel over her shoulder and got out.
It hit her hip like a reminder. Cash. Steel. Papers. Lives. She didn’t walk fast, but she didn’t stall either. Just moved forward like time didn’t own her anymore.
The terminal ahead was all glass and stale light, catching the morning sky in fractured reflections. She stepped through the automatic doors and into the kind of cold that didn’t come from weather but from design. Manufactured. Artificial. Meant to keep people sharp and orderly. It smelled like lemons, plastic, and every departure that had come before her.
She paused just inside. Not hesitation. Just calibration. Listening. Feeling the hum of the place. Gate calls. Wheels dragging. Overhead pages layered with chatter. The low murmur of a world built for leaving. For going but not staying.
She moved through it like someone who didn’t need instructions.
The check-in counter was manned by a thin kid barely old enough to rent a car. His name tag said TYLER. His lanyard was a mess of meme pins and frayed cords. The kind of kid who clocked in with earbuds still in and forgot to take them out. He didn’t notice her at first, not until she was standing right in front of him.
The duffel hit the floor beside her with a small, final sound. Her voice stayed low.
“One-way ticket to Gwangju. First available.”
Tyler blinked, fingers stuttering a second before tapping at the keyboard. Gwangju wasn’t common. It made him look up again, a little more carefully this time. She said nothing else. Just waited.
She slid the passport across the counter. Emma Ji-woo. The photo was polished, airbrushed just enough to pass scrutiny. But the eyes were hers, still and unblinking, focused. Tyler studied the picture, then studied her. He didn’t ask questions. Maybe didn’t know how. Or maybe something in her expression told him not to.
She paid in cash. Clean bills. Neat stack. Pulled from the vault without hesitation, counted out like it was nothing. Like it hadn’t come with a history. The paper smelled faintly of oil and time, like everything important always did. Tyler took the money, his fingers slowing just a bit as he handled it, as if part of him was trying to memorize what wrong felt like.
He printed her ticket, hands fidgety now, and slid it across the counter like he was giving her something that might explode.
“Gate thirty-four,” he said. “You’ll connect through Incheon.”
She took the boarding pass without a word. She didn’t say thank you. She turned and walked toward security, leaving Tyler staring after her.
She didn’t ask about upgrades or snacks. She didn’t care what came in the seatback pocket or what counted as a meal at thirty-seven thousand feet. No interest in a foil-wrapped cookie or a lukewarm bottle of water labeled “premium.” She wasn’t here for comfort. She was here to move forward. To put sky between her and the things behind her. She wanted distance. Altitude. The kind of cold, wordless detachment that only the stratosphere could offer.
The security line wound like a slow fuse: plastic bins clattering, belts slipping through metal loops, the voices of TSA agents clipped and bored. She stepped through it like she’d done it a hundred times. Because she had. Her coat was dark wool, the sort you could wear to a funeral or a boardroom without drawing questions. The stitching was heavier than it looked, reinforced. Useful. Her boots cleared the scanners. The blade inside was legal by a fraction of an inch, packed with the precision of someone who had measured the limits. Her bag was clean where it counted. Nothing that would raise alarms. Just the weight of something lived-in and quiet.
They scanned her passport and boarding pass without a second glance. The photo matched. Emma Ji-woo. Hair slightly darker in the picture, lips touched with a professional half-smile. Believable. The machines beeped politely. No flags. No questions. Just a nod and a wave.
She didn’t breathe easier. She didn’t need to.
At the gate, the crowd had already started to gather. People sprawled in chairs, their energy muted by early hours and too many miles. Some stared at their phones. Some picked at overpriced muffins. One kid cried softly into a sweatshirt, and nobody looked up. It was the kind of communal fatigue that airports did best: a shared sense of waiting without purpose.
She took her place in line, middle of the pack. Not the first. Never the last. Just another body headed somewhere else.
When they called Group Two, she moved.
Her seat was by the window. It always was. The duffel slid under the seat in front of her with practiced ease, fitting like it had done this before. She let her fingers rest on it briefly, grounding herself in the weight of what it held: names, tools, contingencies. The pieces of a life carefully folded down to fit inside a single bag.
She leaned into the wall of the plane, cool against her shoulder, and looked out. Morning had arrived without conviction. The sky was a washed-out gray, the kind of color that came before heat, before light. Airport machinery drifted past—fuel trucks, baggage carts, people in reflective vests who looked like they hadn’t slept. The wing of the plane cut across her view, still and patient, waiting to rise. Sunlight slid over it in dull streaks, catching on the rivets and edges, turning everything gold and indifferent.
The overhead speaker crackled something about boarding zones and safety demonstrations, but none of it landed. Not for her. The sound washed past her ears without shape, the way wind moves through trees: present, but meaningless. Someone two rows up laughed too loudly. A baby fussed. Coffee burned its way through the air vents, mixing with the stale plastic scent of recycled cabin air.
She didn’t move. Didn’t fidget. Her hands were folded in her lap, posture calm, almost meditative. But inside, the tight coil sat waiting. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t nerves. Just pressure. A quiet readiness built from too many miles and not enough peace.
The engines rumbled to life beneath her feet. The metal shell around her vibrated in response, like the plane was stretching its limbs after too long on the ground. It rolled slowly toward the runway, wheels clunking over seams in the concrete. She didn’t grip the armrest. Didn’t reach for anything. Just watched.
Takeoff wasn’t elegant. It was mechanical force dressed up in aerodynamics. The thrust came all at once, raw, loud, unapologetic. The kind of motion that didn’t ask permission. Her body pressed back into the seat, gravity pulling at her chest as the ground fell away. For one long breath, the Earth clung to her like it didn’t want to let go. And then it did.
The airport dropped out of view, buildings and roads folding in on themselves, reduced to the flat language of maps and memory. Gas stations, parking lots, little rectangles of human effort. All of it faded under a rising haze, distant and forgettable.
Her breath touched the glass for a moment. A soft cloud, gone just as quickly. The sky beyond was endless and blue in that high, cold way. Not warm. Not kind. But honest. It didn’t care who she was. It didn’t care where she was going. It just was. Vast. Empty. Ready.
She stared out into it, not searching, not thinking. Just remembering how it felt to be small again. Small enough to disappear, but sharp enough not to.
Her hand moved without looking, brushing the inside pocket of her coat. Cotton. Folded. A handkerchief she didn’t remember packing. She pulled it out, fingers slow and careful. The cloth was clean. White. Pressed. The kind of thing you carried when you didn’t know if you’d cry, or bleed, or both.
From the same pocket came the needle. Fine steel. Polished. Paired with a single loop of red thread, already knotted. She didn’t check it. She didn’t need to.
She began to sew.
Her hands worked in small, deliberate motions, the thread pulling through the fabric with barely a sound. She didn’t glance down. Her fingers remembered the rhythm. The name formed, one letter at a time. T. A. E. H. Y. U. N. G. Each stroke was precise. Each pull tight. No wasted movement.
She didn’t say his name. Didn’t even let her lips shape it. But it was there. In the cloth. In the blood-colored thread. In the silence between stitches.
When the name was finished, she tied it off with a flick of her wrist. Trimmed the excess. Folded the cloth again. Pressed it back into her pocket. Over her heart.
The plane had leveled out. Cruising now. The clouds below looked like ash. The ocean below that: cold, dark, silent. Somewhere beyond it, past all this emptiness, was Korea. And the man from Gwangju.
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The plane hit the runway. A hard, ugly jolt that snapped her spine straight and rattled the tray table in front of her. The tires screamed against the tarmac, metal grinding in protest as the cabin vibrated with the kind of impact that made people forget how to breathe. Drinks sloshed. Seatbacks creaked. Somewhere up front, someone muttered a sharp curse under their breath. The overhead lights flickered once, barely a stutter, but she saw it. She always did.
Out the window, the city didn’t look like it was sleeping. It looked like it had never gone to bed in the first place. Darkness hung heavy, not clean or quiet, but thick, like smoke, like old breath trapped in a closed room. The kind of dark that didn’t just hide things, it held them. The runway lights sliced through it in stark, clinical lines. Past them, the faint blur of Gwangju shimmered in neon and haze: blues and reds pulsing like slow heartbeats, mirrored in wet pavement that hadn’t dried and maybe never would. The glass reflected back just enough of her face to remind her she was still here.
As she stepped into the gangway, the air shifted. Dense. Damp. Immediate. It clung to her skin like something familiar, something half-forgotten but buried deep enough in the bones to recognize on contact. A mix of exhaust, concrete, late summer heat, and something sweeter, grilled food maybe, or just memory dressed up like scent. It hit her lungs like a slow exhale. She didn’t rush. Just walked forward, each step steady, her bag slung across her shoulder in that way that made it clear she didn’t need help and wouldn’t ask for it. Her coat hung open now, too warm for the humidity but still part of the armor. She moved like someone who belonged in the space between strangers. Not local. Not lost. Just passing through with purpose.
And yet, something shifted the second she stepped off the plane and onto Korean soil. Nothing anyone could see, but she felt it: a small click, like a lock catching in place. A posture change that didn’t show in her spine but settled deeper, in muscle memory and instinct. The mask slid on without effort. Not Emma Ji-woo anymore, not exactly. Not Candy, not the others. Just the version of herself this place required. Whatever her name was, she carried it like a blade in her boot, quiet, hidden, ready.
Inside, the airport moved like it had been designed for silence. No chaos. No rush. Just clean lines and softened footsteps echoing off polished tile. People didn’t shout. They didn’t loiter. They moved with the kind of practiced grace that didn’t need announcements. The lights overhead were low and cool, and even the seating looked like it had been designed to be ignored.
Customs passed without friction. The officer barely glanced up, flicked through her documents like he was reading grocery lists. Her forged passport, Emma Ji-woo, South Korean citizen returning from years abroad, was fresh, well-aged in the right places. The photo had the right kind of editing: smooth enough to pass facial scan, textured enough to seem human. She handed it over with both hands, bowed just enough to make it believable, smiled with restraint. Polite. Non-threatening.
“감사합니다,” she said, her voice low and shaped just right.
The stamp fell with a dull, final thud. No questions. No extra eyes. Just a nod, a motion, and then the gates opened.
Outside, the night waited.
The city air hit harder, warmer, wetter. The kind of humidity that didn’t just touch you, it soaked in. Rain had fallen not long before; she could feel it in the way the concrete gave off heat like breath. The streetlights bounced off slick asphalt, halos forming in puddles that mirrored blinking shop signs and broken reflections of moving traffic. Scooters buzzed past, weaving between slow cars. The buzz of neon hummed in the wires overhead like a living thing. There wasn’t much noise, but everything felt alive. Breathing.
She walked toward the taxi stand without checking her phone, without checking directions. She already knew where she was going. Her bag pulled at her shoulder, not in protest, just in reminder. Inside, names and pasts and the pieces of herself that weren’t for daylight. But she didn’t adjust it. Didn’t even shift her stance.
The cab she picked wasn’t the newest. The bumper was scuffed, one headlight had the faint film of age, and the license plate was slightly crooked. But it was real. Lived-in. The driver leaned against the hood, half-lit by the overhead bulb, cigarette cupped loosely in two fingers. Middle-aged, maybe older. His shirt wrinkled, his gaze unreadable.
She smiled before she spoke. Soft, disarming, the kind of smile that made people assume you didn’t bite.
“안녕하세요,” she said. “Seongmin Heritage Hotel, please. Near Sajik Park? The one with the koi in the lobby?”
The man blinked at her. A flicker of recognition, more for her fluency than her face. But he nodded like it didn’t matter.
“Know it,” he said, voice rasped from smoke or years or both. “That’s a nice place.”
She slid into the back seat, her bag tucked in beside her, one hand resting on its handle.
As they pulled into the street, he glanced at her in the mirror. “Vacation?”
She let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. “Sort of,” she said, breezy, warm enough to sell. “I’m meeting someone.”
That made him smile, just a little. “Boyfriend?”
She tilted her head, just enough to suggest a blush. “Not exactly. I’ve known him for a long time.”
“And you’ve never met?” he said, eyes narrowing with casual disbelief. “Do you trust him?”
She leaned forward a little, voice softer, like she was sharing something real. “I guess I’m old-fashioned. I still believe in people.”
The driver chuckled, tapping ash out the window. “Well. Hope he’s worth the wait.”
She smiled again, turning her eyes back to the window. “Me too.”
Outside, the city slid past in glints and shadows. Signs blinked red and blue against walls slick with water. A lone man smoked beneath a streetlight. A group of teenagers laughed near a convenience store, their voices echoing sharp and bright. And above it all, Gwangju pulsed. Alive. Waiting.
Her body language was relaxed, open, even friendly, but not too friendly. Her smile landed right where it needed to: warm enough to seem genuine, distant enough to keep the woman behind the desk from asking questions she didn’t want to answer. And yet, beneath it all, behind her eyes, there was something else. Something sharp. Alert. A presence just beneath the surface, watching everything, holding still like a wire pulled tight.
The cab ride had taken about twenty minutes, maybe less. She couldn’t really tell. In that strange pocket of time, after midnight but before dawn, everything stretched or collapsed depending on how close you were watching. Cities didn’t sleep in those hours; they just drifted, like the tide. The cab driver barely spoke, his cigarette glowing faint in the corner of her vision, the smoke trailing out the half-open window into the warm, wet air. He drove like a man who’d forgotten how to be surprised by anything. She appreciated that. It made things easier.
Out the window, Gwangju blurred past in bands of neon and shadow, light warped by the sheen of recent rain. The storefronts were lit like stages no one was acting on anymore: 7-Elevens glowing sterile and perfect, their shelves full of snacks and instant noodles and bottled tea that no one needed but still bought. People moved through them slowly, hunched and quiet, looking like they were halfway between sleep and survival. The rest of the city felt paused, noodle shops with stools turned upside-down, karaoke bars locked behind metal grates, all of it blinking half-heartedly like no one had told the power to shut off yet. One sign above a barbecue place kept flickering between “삼겹살 24시” and total darkness, as if it couldn’t decide whether to keep going or give up.
They passed a hanbok rental place with mannequins frozen in the windows, draped in silk and thread, caught mid-movement in some forgotten celebration. The lights inside were faint, almost apologetic. The kind of glow you could miss if you weren’t looking directly at it. And everything outside, every puddle, every wall, every parked car, reflected that layered light. Hangul shimmered across wet streets like it was painted there in real time. Chicken. Tarot. Facials. Cheap drinks. Lost hopes. It was all advertised the same way, with bold fonts and desperate color.
She leaned her head against the cool glass of the cab window and let the city slide past her. She wasn’t sightseeing. She wasn’t curious. She was memorizing. Every corner. Every alley. Every building with a fire escape or a side entrance or a window that stayed cracked. Not just as someone taking in a new place, but as someone planning how to move through it. Where to hide. Where to hunt. Where to vanish.
She wasn’t here for a reunion. That was the lie she wore like cologne, pleasant, easy, expected. She was here to dig. To drag someone’s name back out of the dirt and make it mean something again. If this city had tried to forget him, she’d remind it. She’d burn the name into glass and pavement if she had to. She hadn’t come this far to let memory do the burying.
When the cab finally slowed in front of the Seongmin Heritage Hotel, she already knew the building before it came into full view. She’d studied it, grainy photos, tourist reviews, street-view walkthroughs. But even with all that preparation, it was still something to see in person. Polished, curated, old-world elegance repackaged as modern luxury. White stone columns stood like they were holding up more than a roof, like they were trying to convince the street this place mattered. Carved details along the trim caught the warm spill of interior lighting. The brass door handles gleamed like they’d never been touched by real weather. Above the entry, a stained-glass panel glowed amber and deep red, a honeyed light pouring over the curb like something sacred had just cracked open.
And just inside, behind a clean pane of tall glass, the koi pond gleamed. Black water, smooth and quiet, broken only by the slow turning of gold and orange fins. The fish moved in lazy arcs, each shift like a breath drawn too deep to be seen. Like they didn’t care who watched.
The driver parked and turned to look at her. His voice was low, soft, like he knew not to break whatever moment she was in.
“This it?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”
He watched her for a second too long, not in a threatening way, just thoughtful. Like he’d seen this before. Not her, maybe. But people like her. People with a story that couldn’t be told in the back of a cab. People walking toward something only they understood.
“Well,” he said after a pause, “good luck with your meeting.”
She smiled faintly, just enough to be polite. “I think it’ll be one to remember.”
She handed him a bill folded clean once. Double what the meter read. He glanced at it, then back at her, and nodded without another word.
She stepped out of the cab. The air hit her like it meant to. Heavy. Humid. Full of noise that hadn’t been made yet.
She shouldered her bag without shifting her weight. Moved toward the hotel doors like she was stepping into something familiar. And as the cab pulled away, the night closed back in behind her like it hadn’t noticed she’d arrived at all.
Inside, the hotel smelled like money pretending to be modest. Like expensive wood polish layered over old stone and cold air recycled too many times. The lighting was just dim enough to flatter the furniture but still show off the marble floors, clean, symmetrical, sharp where it counted. Every tile lined up like it had been laid by someone who understood symmetry wasn’t just about beauty. It was about control.
To her left, the koi pond curved around the front desk like a moat. Its surface was glassy and still, the fish drifting in slow spirals. They looked unreal in the low light, too bright, too calm, like someone had animated them just for her arrival. A tiny pump kept the water moving just enough to keep it from falling asleep, but the sound was so soft it might’ve been imagined. It wasn’t tranquil. It was measured. Controlled. Like everything else in this place.
She walked toward the desk like she’d done it a dozen times in other cities under other names. Calm, confident, casually forgettable. The kind of guest who knew how to tip well and never asked for room upgrades.
The woman behind the desk looked young but practiced. Hair styled into a sharp, no-nonsense bob. Uniform crisp. Movements efficient. Her name tag said Juha, though Y/N didn’t really need to read it. She’d already pegged her: precise, polite, not interested in small talk. Just enough kindness to pass for warmth. The kind of employee who wouldn’t remember a single detail about you by the end of her shift, and wouldn’t question why she didn’t.
Y/N offered her a smile. The good one. Just the right amount of curve. Something safe. Something easy to forget.
Y/N switched to Korean mid-step, her tone effortless, almost casual. “예약했어요. 캔디 랄스턴으로요.” Her accent was textbook Seoul.
The woman behind the desk didn’t blink. “환영합니다, 랄스턴 씨. 3박이시죠?”
Y/N nodded, and with a soft switch in rhythm, she slipped back into English. Her voice lifted just slightly, pleasant and open, with that eager brightness tourists wore like perfume. “First time in Korea. I’m really excited.”
The receptionist smiled as if on cue. Not warm, exactly. Rehearsed, but pleasant. She slid a room key forward, tucked inside a white sleeve embossed with the hotel’s gold crest. “Room 714. Elevator’s just to your right.”
Y/N offered a small bow, murmured her thanks again, and turned away. Her boots made no squeal against the floor, only that quiet, deliberate click that echoed soft and sharp like footsteps in a gallery. The kind of sound that didn’t try to be heard but couldn’t help leaving an impression.
The elevator was already waiting, doors wide open like it knew she was coming. She stepped inside and caught her reflection in the mirrored walls: three angles, three versions of herself looking back. Her posture was perfect, relaxed, composed. Her clothes, neutral tones and well-fitted, spoke of efficiency, not attention. Her makeup was subtle, just enough color to say effort had been made, not enough to say she cared about being seen.
She looked like someone organized. Someone harmless.
But the reflection in the center mirror told the truth. It was in the way her eyes held steady, unflinching, like they didn’t expect kindness anymore. Like they’d already learned what questions were traps, which silences meant danger, and how to vanish while still in plain sight. There was a stillness in her face, but not the kind that came from calm. This was stillness earned, built from rehearsals, from closing hotel doors behind you and counting exits before you even set your bag down.
The elevator rose, slow and steady. She shifted her canvas bag higher on her shoulder. Not because it hurt, she didn’t let things hurt, but because it grounded her. Inside was everything that counted: names, paper trails, backup plans. There was no wasted weight.
When the elevator doors slid open on the seventh floor, she was already halfway into the hallway.
It was quiet. Carpeted in something dull that might once have been green, the kind of floor that muted footsteps into suggestions. The wallpaper, floral and faded, curled at the corners where humidity had worked its way in over the years. The light overhead buzzed, faint and constant, like the building was humming to itself out of habit. A soft, tired sound.
Room 714 was near the end, just past a bend in the hallway where the emergency map was pinned slightly crooked on the wall. She paused in front of the door, keycard in hand.
And then she just stood there. Not long. Just long enough to listen.
Not for sound. For pressure. For presence. You didn’t survive by hearing footsteps, you survived by feeling when a room wasn’t empty. The temperature. The stillness. The quality of silence. She tilted her head slightly. Felt the way the air held its breath.
Nothing.
She slid the keycard through the reader. The lock beeped, followed by that soft, mechanical click. Small, almost polite. She pushed the door open with her shoulder and stepped inside without looking behind her. The door sealed shut behind her with the kind of sound that didn’t echo. It just ended.
She locked it: deadbolt first, then the chain. Her hands moved in a rhythm they’d known for years. One smooth motion, no hesitation. She wasn’t checking, she was securing. There was a difference.
The canvas bag landed on the bed with a deep, even thud. Not loud, just final, like it had arrived with intent. She didn’t stop to look around. Didn’t bother checking the view. The room wasn’t the point.
She walked to the desk in the corner and turned on the lamp. Warm light spilled across the pale wood, catching on the edges of the hotel stationery and the small, useless pen that had been placed there with the usual pretend care. The kind of detail that suggested someone had thought about your comfort, even if they hadn’t.
She sat down. The chair creaked faintly but held. Her body didn’t sag. She didn’t relax. She just settled into it.
She pulled the pad of paper toward her and picked up the pen. It was smooth, plastic, light, nothing special. It didn’t matter. She clicked it once and started writing in small, deliberate strokes.
Things to Do Tomorrow:
-Buy a light pink blouse. Something that moves. Something soft.
-Buy makeup
-Rehearse the story. Again.
-Smile until it hurts.
Her pen hovered above the last line for a beat. Then she added one more, slower this time:
-Be perfect.
She circled it. Once. Then again. Firm. Not as a reminder. As a rule.
She put the pen down beside the pad and exhaled. Not dramatically. Not with relief. Just enough to release the breath she’d been holding since the door clicked shut.
She stood.
The bathroom was exactly what she expected: white tile, cool light, no character. Clean without warmth. The mirror above the sink was wide and too tall, forcing her to step closer if she wanted to see all of herself at once. She didn’t bother.
The light buzzed overhead, sterile and flat, the kind of glow that made everything look a little too real.
She touched her fingertips to the edge of the counter. Steady.
She wasn’t tired. Not yet. What she was came after tired, and it had no name.
She reached out and turned the faucet, letting the water run. Cold at first, bright and clean, loud as it hit the porcelain. But beneath the noise, she listened. Not to the water itself, but to the way it moved through the pipes. The way it echoed off tile. The way it filled the silence with something that wasn’t her. It sounded pure, but she knew better. It had traveled through metal older than the building, scraped past rust and time, ghosts caught in the bends. Still, it came out confident. Unbothered. Like it hadn’t carried anything with it.
She didn’t hurry. Her fingers moved slowly to the hem of her shirt, tugged it over her head, and let it fall to the floor. Then the rest, belt, pants, underthings, peeled away without effort. She’d done this ritual a thousand times before. And yet tonight, her hands felt different. Not clumsy. Not unsure. Just heavy, like they remembered more than she wanted them to. Her clothes ended up in a soft heap at her feet. By then, the mirror had already fogged over.
She stood still for a moment. Not posed, not inspecting. Just there. Her arms hung loose at her sides, her toes sinking slightly into the tile. The steam softened everything: her outline, her skin, even the air. The reflection staring back at her was dulled at the edges, her features blurred by heat and breath. She could still see her shape. Her shoulders narrow but set, arms lined with the first signs of strength again. Her ribs still showed when she inhaled too deeply, but her thighs had started to look solid again. Her body was still catching up to the rest of her. Still figuring out how to be whole after Two Pines tried to carve her hollow. But she was getting there. Slowly. She could see it.
She tilted her head and scanned herself like she was reading a story she knew by heart. The scars stood out like chapters. The crescent just below her ribs where a blade had barely missed something vital. A paler burn at her hip, nearly invisible now, but still a map of pain. The line along her collarbone, clean and deliberate. Surgical. The scar on her forehead had been there the longest. She didn’t even notice it anymore.
She nodded once, almost imperceptibly. A quiet agreement between her and the woman behind the fog.
Then she stepped into the shower.
The water hit her like a warning. Scalding. Immediate. It slammed into her shoulders and rolled down her back, ruthless in its heat. But she didn’t flinch. She leaned into it. Let it rake across her spine, sting her arms, burn her thighs. The pain was real. Tangible. Honest in a way few things were. It didn’t lie, didn’t soften, didn’t ask questions. It just landed, over and over again, washing everything else into silence.
She closed her eyes, tilted her head forward, and let her forehead rest against the cool tile wall. It grounded her. Solid. Cold. Unmoving. She breathed. Not deeply. Just enough. Enough to be here.
Then it came.
Not a memory. Not an image she could blink away. It was sharper than that. It crashed through her like glass, fast, clean, final. No prelude. No grace.
A sonogram.
Not imagined. Not abstract. Burned into her mind with brutal clarity. Grainy black-and-white. A crescent of light, unmistakable. And there in the center, her. The child. Seven months. Spine curled tight. Fists pulled in. Fragile, yes, but undeniably alive.
Not a possibility. A fact.
The photo was still folded in the lining of her coat. Tucked behind Kevlar, buried between seams, carried across borders and terminals and checkpoints. It was creased so deeply now it had forgotten how to lie flat. She had kept it close because she couldn’t not. Because some part of her still believed the paper would remember the shape even if she forgot the name.
She used to whisper to her belly in motel rooms that reeked of other people’s stories. Whisper names in the dark. Some strong. Some gentle. Some stolen from myths. Some from books she hadn’t finished. She spoke them aloud like spells. Names in Korean. In English. Names that meant light. Names that meant defiance.
Now? Now she couldn’t remember a single goddamn one.
Not one.
The realization hit without warning. Her knees gave out, buckled like they had been kicked. She dropped too fast to catch herself, hands sliding helplessly down the wall. Her skin hit the shower floor hard, the ceramic slick and unforgiving. Her breath didn’t come. Her chest just stalled.
The water kept pounding down, relentless and hot, hammering her back, her scalp, her shoulders.
She folded in tight. Arms clamped around her stomach. Head bent. Forehead pressed hard to her knees. The heat had scalded her skin pink, but it was nothing compared to what was burning underneath. Her whole body trembled, not from cold but from something older, deeper, more bone-deep than fear. Her jaw locked so tight her teeth throbbed. Fingernails dug into her upper arms, leaving pale marks that flushed angry and red as the shower thundered down over her back. Her shoulders jolted with every breath. Her chest couldn’t seem to find a rhythm. Her mouth opened once, like maybe a sound would come out. It didn’t. Just steam and a shattered breath that barely made it past her lips.
She cried, but not the way people cry in movies. No cinematic sobs. No beautiful devastation. This was messier. Raw. She cried like it surprised her. Like her body had remembered something her mind wasn’t ready to revisit. It wasn’t gentle or cathartic. It was violent. Uncontrolled. The kind of grief that had waited in the walls of her bones, that had made a home beneath her ribs, that had lived inside her blood quietly for years and now refused to be quiet anymore.
It wasn’t just about the child, though it started there. She cried for the girl she never got to meet. For the weight of her. The impossible, invisible pull of a presence that had once lived beneath her skin and kicked in the dark and responded to her voice like it meant something. She cried for the names whispered into motel ceilings. For every plan made in secret. For the way she used to sleep with one hand on her belly and the other over the gun under her pillow, believing—naively, stupidly—that she could keep both safe.
She cried for herself too. Not the woman she was now, but the one she used to be. The one who thought she could walk two roads at once. Who thought she could live between love and violence and come out clean. That she could be sharp and soft. That she could kill for a living and still build a life worth protecting.
She had buried that woman. Or thought she had. But grief has a way of preserving what pain cannot quite dissolve. The version of herself she thought was long gone hadn’t decayed. It had hardened. It had turned into something fossilized under all the anger and training and years. Not gone. Just waiting.
And under the grief, something else had been building. Coiled low in her belly. Climbing her spine. Tightening around her throat.
The fury.
It hit hot and sudden. Like a flare lit inside her chest. Fast. Blinding. Unforgiving. Her muscles locked. Her fists curled tight. Her breath caught in the cage of her ribs. She wanted to wreck something. Rip the cabinet off the wall. Shatter the mirror with her elbow. Drag her knuckles down the glass until they split. She wanted to leave blood on porcelain. On tile. On her own hands.
She wanted to find him. Taehyung Kim. And make him understand what he had done. Not by telling him. By making him feel it. Every inch of it. Every second. She wanted to look him in the eyes as it hit him. As the weight of what he stole crushed him under its full, ugly truth.
Her knuckles went white. Her muscles trembled with the force of restraint. But she didn’t scream. Not because she couldn’t. Because she wouldn’t. That kind of rage needed to be saved. Stored. Honed.
It would have its moment. Just not here.
The shower kept running, loud and steady, until she moved. Just a breath. Just a twitch of her fingers. Then she reached up and turned the water off.
Silence crashed down like a wave. Thick. Dense. The kind that fills every crack in a room. The kind that listens back. Steam drifted in long, slow ribbons, curling around her shoulders like it wasn’t ready to leave either.
She blinked once. Her breathing evened out. Slower. Cooler. Her chest still ached, but the fire was banked now, drawn in close and dangerous. Not gone. Just shaped.
She stood.
Water clung to her skin. Her hair dripped in long strands down her back. Her face was flushed, eyes glassy but sharp now, clear in a way that felt surgical. She moved with precision, drying off in steady, methodical swipes, every motion practiced and spare. The towel trembled in her hands, but she kept her grip. Dressed quickly. Quietly. No wasted motion. Just armor going back on.
The grief didn’t vanish. She packed it back down. Tucked it into the parts of herself she didn’t let anyone see. But the rage—she left that right where it was. Let it sit beneath her skin. Close to the surface.
Because Taehyung Kim didn’t know what he had taken from her, but he would.
She wasn’t coming for answers.
She was coming for the truth.
And he would give it to her.
Because there would be no one left to stop her.
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The city didn’t perform. Gwangju just was. It didn’t blaze with ambition like Seoul or stretch itself into glitz the way Busan tried to. It moved slow, breathed heavier. Honest, unbothered, like an old man in his undershirt posted up on a plastic chair, feet bare, sweating into the sidewalk, waving off mosquitoes with a rolled-up newspaper. There was a stillness here that didn’t feel staged. It felt earned. Like time didn’t hurry. Like it hadn’t for a while. Even the heat didn’t rush. It pressed down in thick, lazy folds, dragging everything—footsteps, voices, the color out of the buildings—into something close to sleep.
The streets moved in rhythm with it: fans turning slowly in dim back rooms, the hum of overhead wires swaying with the weight of too many summers, the drag of slippers across concrete. Shops leaned on each other like they were tired of standing alone. Paint peeled in curls off old storefronts. Rust bloomed at the hinges of delivery carts and folding chairs. Hand-painted signs creaked as they shifted in the breeze, their edges warped like paper left out in the rain.
It was the kind of afternoon where nothing tried too hard. The air was a patchwork of smells: hot oil, boiled radish, exhaust, old metal, the damp tang of stone that’s never had a chance to dry. Vendors fanned themselves with bent menus, arguing halfheartedly with ajummas who bargained with the precision of habit. A mop of scooters rolled through puddles left by melted ice or a spilled soup bowl, weaving through crates and feet like they knew every shortcut before it was built. The city didn’t sleep. But it didn’t really wake up, either. It just existed. Like a held breath.
And tucked into all of it, halfway hidden between a shuttered bookstore and a florist with wilting carnations, was the door. If you could call it that. More a suggestion than an entrance. A curtain, once blue and now more of a stained gray, hung from a crooked rod that looked hammered into place out of stubbornness rather than skill. It shifted when the wind pushed at it, not with drama but with the quiet of something breathing. The name painted across the fabric had long since faded: 김밥바. The brushstrokes barely held together, as if the person who wrote them hoped the world would forget.
She didn’t go straight in.
Y/N stood across from it, phone in hand, thumb flicking absently at nothing. Her eyes weren’t on the screen. They were on the building. On the way the curtain moved. On the way the shadows behind it didn’t feel empty. A pigeon flapped once but didn’t fly. A scooter buzzed past, and an ajumma barked something sharp about cabbage. The usual sounds. The usual rhythm.
Still, she waited a beat longer. She watched how the light caught the doorway. She noticed how the air felt different here. Denser.
Then she stepped forward and slipped behind the curtain like she belonged.
And everything changed.
The moment it fell behind her, the city vanished. The noise didn’t fade. It ceased. Like someone hit pause on the outside world. Inside was quiet in a way only old places know how to be. Not just soundless. Still. The kind of stillness that settles in stone. The kind that remembers things. The air was cooler, not because of any fan or vent, but because it had never left. It clung to the walls, the wood, the floor. Everything felt touched by time.
The scent hit next. Not artificial or sanitized. Just real. A mix of rice, vinegar, seaweed, and broth so old it had soaked into the wood grain. Salt, smoke, a whisper of garlic. It was the kind of smell you carried home with you, in your clothes, your hair, your bones.
Her eyes adjusted fast.
The space was barely larger than a closet. Three stools lined a counter. One crooked. One stained. One seemingly untouched. The varnish had long worn off the wood, dulled by elbows and sweat and stories told over soup. A ceiling fan turned overhead, slow and uneven, ticking with every revolution like it was remembering something too late. A single fly moved in lazy circles beneath it.
Nobody else was here.
No music. No kitchen noise. Just a single plate on the counter. Empty except for one streak of red sauce. Chopsticks placed beside it with care. Not abandoned. Just waiting.
She walked in like she’d been here before. Like this was a memory, not a discovery. Her posture was casual. Her camera hung from her neck like a travel blog prop, the kind of thing that made her look like the type of woman who’d find “hidden gems” and write about the soul of a place as if she’d invented the concept. But none of that touched her eyes. They were focused. Clear. Watching.
And then he appeared. Quietly, without fuss, like he’d always been there and the world had only just remembered to look. The steam rolled out behind him, curling around his shoulders like it had followed him from some low, back kitchen heat that never fully cooled. He was tall, not imposing, but solid in the way that came from doing hard things for a long time. His build was lean, a little bowed at the shoulders, as if time and gravity had done their work. His skin had the baked-in tone of someone who’d spent years near open flame, his forearms marked by thin pale scars that spoke of burns, not battles. The white chef’s jacket he wore was buttoned but stained, spattered with dark brown that might have been soy sauce or something else. It was hard to tell, and maybe it wasn’t supposed to be clear.
His face didn’t offer much. It wasn’t unreadable in the cold, calculated way of spies or killers. It just didn’t feel the need to explain itself. High cheekbones softened the shape of his long face, and his eyes, dark and narrow, carried the quiet stillness of someone who watched more than he spoke. His hair was thick, slightly tousled, mostly black but peppered with gray at the temples. He was handsome, but the kind of handsome that didn’t advertise. He managed to exist right in the middle ground. Someone you’d forget until you saw them again and couldn’t stop wondering why.
Y/N kept her expression neutral as he stepped fully into view. Her body didn’t flinch. Her gaze didn’t drift. She looked at him plainly, openly, like she had no reason not to. But this was him. The man she’d crossed an ocean for. The one who had answers locked behind his teeth.
He saw her, and the smile came fast. Too fast. It stretched across his face like a reflex he hadn’t bothered updating in years. Broad, eager, practiced. The kind of smile that had been used too many times on too many strangers. The kind that worked better when you didn’t look too closely. He wore it like a uniform: the smile of a man who knew how to sell comfort, how to charm tourists just enough to make them stay, just long enough to make them leave before asking the wrong question. There was no real warmth in it. But it was a good act.
“English?” he asked, cautious but cheerful, testing each syllable like he was stepping over a puddle he didn’t trust.
She gave a half-shrug, tipping her head slightly as her mouth pulled into something lopsided and pleasant. “Almost,” she said. “American.”
Something about that word flipped a switch in him. He lit up like he’d been waiting for it. “Ah! America! Yes, welcome, welcome!” He nodded several times, as if the excitement might wear off if he didn’t hammer it in. “My English, very good. Yes.”
“Perfect,” she said, breezy and bright, like a woman with nowhere to be and all the time in the world. She stepped farther inside, her fingers ghosting along the edge of the counter. She didn’t look at it, not really, but the gesture made it seem like she was appreciating the wood, soaking up the charm. It wasn’t for him. It was for the story.
The chef smiled wide when she stepped in, his English laced with effort but cheerful all the same. “Welcome, American,” he said with a chuckle. “I hope you like my shop.”
She dipped her head, just enough to be polite. “안녕하세요,” she said, soft and even, her pronunciation clean, too natural to be brand-new.
That got a reaction. He lit up like someone had pulled a coin from behind his ear. “오오오! 안녕하세요!” He leaned forward with the delight of a man genuinely impressed. “Very good, very good! You speak Korean?”
She let out a modest laugh, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear like the compliment embarrassed her a little. “Not really,” she said. “Just a few words I picked up yesterday.”
Her eyes moved over the room, taking in the shelves, the old wood, the dust that softened the corners of things. “Is it okay if I sit here?”
“Sit, sit!” he said, already wiping down the bar with a damp cloth in wide, sweeping strokes like he was preparing an altar. “Of course. You sit. What words you learn? Oh, wait one second.”
He turned toward the curtain behind him, barked something in Korean without missing a beat. The words tumbled fast and irritated.
“We have a customer, bring out some tea, quickly!”
A voice called back, lazy and muffled. “I’m watching my soap operas.”
The chef rolled his eyes, snapping, “Lazy bastard! Screw your soap opera! Hurry up!”
“The tea’s hot. Why don’t you serve it yourself for once?”
“Shut up! Get your ass out here!”
Then he turned back to her, placing both palms on the bar like nothing had happened, though a thin line of annoyance still showed around his eyes. His smile remained pleasant. “So,” he said, “what else do you know in Korean?”
She tapped her chin lightly, brow furrowed like she was digging through a mental list. “감사합니다,” she said after a second, letting the word unfold carefully but not too perfectly. Like she was still getting comfortable with it.
He nodded with approval, the kind of praise people give freely but mean all the same. “Very good,” he said. “You say it nicely.”
She leaned forward just a touch, elbows resting gently on the bar, camera bumping softly against the edge. “알겠어요?” she tried, the hesitation built in just enough to seem earnest.
He brightened. “You know that one! ‘I understand.’ Good, very good. You learn fast.”
She smiled back. “Only what people say to me first.”
Then she tilted her head and added another. “안녕히 가세요?”
His expression flickered for a split second. The kind of shift most people wouldn’t catch. He recovered quickly, correcting her with a wave of his hand. “No, no, no. Say again.”
She blinked once, feigning the kind of sheepish confusion that made it look like maybe she had messed it up after all. She tried again, a little slower this time. “안녕히 가세요?”
He clapped his hands once, sharp and loud in the stillness of the shop. His smile stretched wide, but the lines around it didn’t move. “You speak Korean,” he said, voice lighter than it had been, but also a little tighter.
She laughed softly, tilting her head again. It was the kind of laugh you’d hear from someone caught in a harmless exaggeration. “Now you’re just flattering me.”
But he didn’t laugh with her. “No,” he said simply. “Serious. Your pronunciation... very good. You say 안녕히 가세요 like we say 안녕히 가세요.”
The air between them settled. Not tense, but heavier. The kind of pause that had weight in it, even if you didn’t know why.
His voice came again, this time quieter, slower. “You can learn Korean very easy.”
She let her gaze drop for half a second, just enough to give it texture, then lifted it again with a careful smile. “No kidding,” she said, her voice just a little softer now. “But thank you. 진짜... 감사합니다.”
He didn’t respond right away. Just breathed in through his nose, steady and thoughtful. Then he adjusted his stance, the shift so subtle most people wouldn’t notice. But she did. She saw the way his shoulders reset, the tiny movements that told her he wasn’t just running a shop. He was watching something unfold.
He turned without another word and picked up a rice paddle. His voice floated back over his shoulder, even and calm. “Let me make something for you.”
She nodded, her smile still in place, but the tone that followed wasn’t quite the same. “Anything’s fine.”
The chef stayed where he was, hands now methodically working at the counter. A bowl of rice, steam still clinging faintly to the grains. A bamboo mat laid flat. A half-sliced cucumber. The blade beside it already glinting in the overhead light.
“You like kimbap?” he asked, like it was just polite conversation.
“I love it,” she said, light and breezy.
She let the sentence hang just long enough to sound casual, like maybe this was a regular kind of moment, in a regular kind of place. But it wasn’t.
The knife moved with soft, measured sounds. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Carrot. Radish. Cucumber.
Every slice was uniform. Clean. The rhythm was precise, practiced. Not just skilled. Disciplined.
She didn’t take her eyes off him, not directly, but not obviously either. Her posture stayed relaxed, her hands resting on the bar. The camera around her neck swayed gently with the air from the ceiling fan, tapping now and then against the wood like a slow heartbeat.
She didn’t look dangerous.
But then, neither did he.
The overhead light gave a quiet hum, casting the shop in a worn, yellow wash that made everything look faintly out of date. The fan creaked once with each turn, ticking off invisible seconds. Outside, the alley was still. A cat passed, paused in the doorway, then disappeared again.
The chef didn’t look up from his cutting board. His voice came steady, like they were just passing time.
“You should learn Korean.”
She smiled, light but not airy. “You think so?”
He nodded slightly, slicing through radish with clean precision. “Yes.”
“I’ve heard it’s impossible.”
He nodded. “Yes. Very hard. But you,” he said, quieter now, “you have Korean tongue.”
He returned to his work, pulling a smaller knife from a drawer. It was heavier, curved differently. He laid slices of tuna onto a black ceramic plate. Next to them, he added a pinch of pickled ginger and a small, hand-shaped mound of wasabi.
He slid the dish toward her with quiet pride.
She looked down at it, then back up. “How’d you know tuna’s my favorite?”
He shrugged one shoulder, almost coy. “What?”
“Tuna,” she said again, watching him. “It’s my favorite.”
He smiled with the same practiced calm. “Ah. Thank you very much.”
Then he turned his head toward the beaded curtain and shouted, voice sharp. “야! 차 어디 갔어? 빨리 좀 해!”
Behind the curtain came a reply, loud and annoyed.
“지금 드라마 보고 있잖아!”
“드라마는 개뿔이지! 손님 왔잖아, 이 자식아. 빨리 갖고 와!”
“차 뜨거워! 너도 좀 움직여 봐!”
The chef muttered something under his breath, wiped his hands, and moved toward the curtain. The beads clinked as he grabbed the other man by the wrist mid-gesture, twisted it lightly, and leaned in close.
“네가 장군이면 나는 황제다. 그러니까 조용히 차나 갖고 와.”
Then, with a mocking grin and just enough weight to sting, he said in English: “Do you understand?”
The assistant pulled free, scowling, and glanced at Y/N. “대머리 아니거든,” he muttered. Then, in stiff English: “I shave. Do you understand me?”
The chef didn’t even look. He picked up a small knife and threw it underhanded toward the wall. It landed with a soft thud, blade buried in the wood just left of the curtain.
The assistant disappeared without another word.
Y/N didn’t follow his movement. Her fingers just found a napkin and began folding it, slow and absent, like she was trying to pass the time. But her attention stayed open, alert, listening to every creak from the fridge and every shift of weight behind the curtain. She tracked it all without looking.
The chef glanced her way and let out a low sigh. “Sorry,” he murmured.
She smiled, shook her head gently, still all ease and pleasant charm. “No worries at all.”
The chef had gone back to wiping a plate that didn’t need it, slow circles that looked more like habit than cleaning. He hummed something under his breath. No real melody, just sound for the sake of it. Every so often, his eyes drifted up. Not to her. To the curtain. He was waiting, too.
Y/N leaned her chin into her palm and let out a quiet sigh. The kind that sounded like she had nowhere else to be, like this was just another slow stop on a longer, looser itinerary. But beneath the quiet facade, her pulse had cooled into something steadier. Sharper. She was counting. Not seconds. Not movements. Just weight.
The beads stirred again.
The second man reappeared, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. The soju was cold, condensation sliding down the green glass in thick streaks. His fingers were wide, stained around the cuticles, the nails chipped like they had been trimmed with teeth or a dull blade. Hands that had done hard things.
He reached the counter and set the bottle and glass down. He turned to walk away. The chef didn’t let it slide.
His voice cracked through the air, hard and sudden. “야, 예의 좀 갖춰!”
The man didn’t stop completely. He only slowed. His shoulders shifted. A sigh leaked out, long and annoyed.
“뭐? 술 갖다 줬잖아.”
“손님 앞에서는 제대로 해. 외국인이라도.”
A scoff, barely loud enough to register. “외국인이라 모를 텐데 왜 신경 써?”
The chef’s reply came low, firm. “그러니까 더 조심해야지. 한국 사람처럼 보여도 다 듣고 있을 수도 있어.”
There was a pause. Just a few seconds, but heavy. The kind of quiet that wasn’t about silence. It was about choice.
The man muttered something under his breath, just noise really, but shaped by resentment. Then he twisted the cap off the bottle with a rough snap and poured. The soju splashed high in the glass, almost spilling. He shoved it toward her with one hand, the edge of the glass tapping wood just shy of rude.
Then he turned and disappeared again. The beads clattered harder this time. The chef let out a breath.
“죄송합니다,” he said, bowing his head slightly. “그 사람은... 사람 대하는 법을 몰라요.”
Y/N didn’t flinch. Her smile stayed where it had been the whole time, pleasant and unbothered. “Sorry?”
The chef’s tone softened, switching to English like it was muscle memory. “Ah, no, just... he doesn’t know how to talk,” he added, with a thin smile that almost reached his eyes.
She nodded, light, polite. Lifted the shot glass with a small, quiet toast. “Thank you,” she said, and took a sip.
The soju hit cool. Sweet up front, then a clean, sharp finish that sat in the back of her throat and lingered. It didn’t burn. It reminded.
She set the glass down. Picked up her chopsticks. The motion was fluid, casual, not stiff with performance, but practiced. The way a habit becomes part of muscle memory.
She lifted a piece of tuna from the plate, a clean slice that caught the light like silk. Deep ruby red, almost translucent, grain running fine through its surface. She placed it on her tongue and held it there, waiting. It melted. Soft and rich, just a trace of brine and something faintly metallic, like memory. She chewed once. Twice. Let it dissolve.
Her eyes drifted shut, just for a second. 
She set the chopsticks down, careful not to clatter them, then picked up the soju again and finished the glass in a single, smooth pull. The second hit went down easier. The warmth spread slow through her chest, settling in a place that had once held nerves.
Across the counter, the chef watched. He hadn’t changed his expression, but something in the way he stood had eased. Not relaxed, not soft, but carrying a kind of respect. He was noticing a quiet fluency. No words. Just recognition.
“First time in Korea?” he asked. His hands returned to the cutting board, fingers resting near the knife, though he didn’t pick it up yet.
Y/N nodded, finishing another bite. “Mmhmm.”
“What!” he said, voice rising with disbelief that didn’t quite ring false.
She swallowed, wiped the corner of her mouth lightly. “Yes. This is my first time.”
He tilted his head, eyes narrowing just a little. “What brings you to Gwangju?”
Outside, the alley shifted. A gust caught some stray bit of paper and skidded it along the brick like a coin on pavement. Somewhere nearby, a bird let out a single cry, sharp and fast, gone in a blink. The curtain behind her swayed faintly with a whisper-soft clatter, like wind chimes that never quite got the breeze they needed to sing. Y/N adjusted her chopsticks, repositioned them between her fingers, then gently set them down without ever lifting a bite. Her tone was light when she finally spoke, almost conversational.
“I came to see a man.”
The sentence didn’t echo, but it changed something in the room. A beat passed. Not long. But the chef’s hand froze mid-motion, his knife held just above the salmon, blade tilted slightly as if it too had paused to listen.
“Ah,” he said after a moment, stretching the word just enough to carry weight. “A friend in Gwangju?” He didn’t look up.
“Not quite,” she replied.
“Not a friend?”
“No.” She waited until his eyes found hers before continuing. “We’ve never met.”
The blade finally touched the board. A soft sound. Then he laid the knife aside, not quickly, but with care, like he’d decided whatever came next didn’t need a blade in hand. He kept his gaze on the cutting board for a moment longer than necessary, then finally looked up. The expression on his face didn’t shift much, but something behind his eyes sharpened. Not fear. Not even suspicion. Just awareness.
“And,” he said, more quietly now, “may I ask who he is?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Jung Hoseok.”
The name didn’t explode. It didn’t need to. It landed in the room like a rock dropped into still water. No splash. Just the heavy assurance that things were moving beneath the surface now. Her voice hadn’t changed. She wasn’t dramatic. She didn’t lean in. But the name was enough.
The chef went still. Not tense, simply anchored. Like something in him had snapped into place. His right hand rested on the edge of a towel. His left hovered briefly over the blade again, reflex more than anything. The tip of his finger brushed the metal and slipped. A sudden streak of red rose across his knuckle. He looked down at it, just for a moment, and lifted the hand to his mouth. Sucked the blood away like it was routine. No flinch. No sound. Just control, reset.
Behind her, the beads rattled once more, sharper this time. The bald man stepped through again, his face a clenched fist. He didn’t speak. Just let his eyes sweep the room, pausing on her. Not suspicion. Calculation. Like something in the air had told him to pay attention.
He crossed to the counter, picked up the bottle, and poured her another shot. This time, the movement was smooth. No clatter. No shove. Just a quiet, focused pour. He didn’t speak. Didn’t meet her eyes. He finished the pour, left the glass full, and walked out. The beads clacked shut behind him, not loud, not subtle. Just punctuation.
The chef exhaled slowly through his nose. No drama. Just release. Then he took a towel and began wiping his hands carefully, methodically. His eyes stayed on her.
She lifted the new glass in a small, silent toast, even though the man who’d poured it was already gone. The glass was cold enough that it clung to her fingers.
When the chef spoke again, the language changed. No more English. No pretense.
His voice lowered, smooth and even, each word placed with precision. “정호석에게 무슨 용건이 있습니까?”
Y/N didn’t blink.
She answered in Korean, her voice quiet, level. No showmanship. Just the kind of careful weight that traveled farther than volume ever could. “강철이 필요해요.”
His eyes narrowed. Not in suspicion. In thought. Like he was studying her words, not for truth, but for intention. He didn’t answer right away. He let the silence linger.
“왜 강철이 필요하죠?” he asked.
She looked at the glass beside her plate, a droplet tracing its way down the side. Then she met his eyes again. “쥐를 죽이려면요.”
There was another pause, longer this time, but not uncomfortable. Then the chef let out a short laugh. Not cruel. Not mocking. Just low and dry, like someone who had lived long enough to understand how serious things always start in calm voices.
“Must be a big rat,” he said in English this time, voice touched with something close to amusement. “If you need Jung Hoseok steel for it.”
She smiled, but only with one side of her mouth. The other half stayed still.
“Huge,” she said.
They didn’t move. Didn’t raise their voices. The air between them didn’t buzz with tension, but it held. Quiet. Pulled tight like thread stretched between fingers. It didn’t warn. It just waited.
The chef gave a small nod. Y/N didn’t speak, didn’t finish the food. She left the second shot untouched. The fish remained as he had plated it, artful, unspoiled. The only sign she had been there was the soft, fading ring left behind by her first glass, already drying into the grain of the wood.
She rose without a sound and followed him through the beaded curtain, not once looking back.
The hallway beyond was narrow and long, the kind of space that time forgets. The wallpaper, beige or yellow once, now sun-bleached into something closer to nicotine-stained parchment, peeled at the edges in slow curls. The floorboards creaked just enough to remind you that no one had fixed them in a long while, and maybe no one ever would. The air smelled lived-in, dense with cooking oil and old plaster, like generations of heat had steeped into the walls. A single bulb swung gently from the ceiling, flickering once before settling into a thin, steady glow.
Hoseok walked ahead, silent, his gait quiet but confident. He didn’t rush. He didn’t hesitate. His steps were even, deliberate, the kind of pace that didn’t waste energy or ask permission. When he reached the end of the corridor, he glanced up and found the pull cord, barely visible in the dim light, hanging like a spider’s thread. He tugged it once.
A low groan came from above, followed by a creaking shift. A square panel in the ceiling cracked open with a dusty exhale, and a folded ladder unfolded downward with slow, mechanical clicks, the rungs snapping into place like joints stretching after too long at rest.
He climbed first. She followed.
Her boots hit the rungs with soft thuds, the sound swallowed by the close space around her. One hand on each side rail, steady, smooth. No wasted movement. She didn’t glance up, didn’t glance down. Just climbed. The air thickened as she ascended, growing warmer, more still. There was a shift in temperature, and in smell. Wood. Oil. Steel.
As she rose through the opening, the attic revealed itself like a photograph developing in slow motion.
It wasn’t big, but it felt larger than it should have. The low ceiling curved inward slightly, giving the space a strange hush, like it was used to quiet. The warmth was immediate. Not stifling, but deep, the kind of heat that came from bodies and time and electricity burning low and constant. The scent was unmistakable to anyone who knew what it meant: cedar, carbon, and choji oil. That distinct blend of camellia and clove, familiar only to those who have ever cared for a blade.
The light from the window was weak, filtered through grime that hadn’t been wiped away in years. But what little came through cast long golden lines across the floor, picking out the pattern in the grain and throwing deep shadows that stretched and curled. The floor was clean. Worn, but swept. Not a speck of dust in sight. No clutter, no trash. This wasn’t storage. It was maintenance.
On the far wall stood the racks.
Not shelves. Not hooks. Racks, each one handmade, shaped with intention, joined by hand rather than hardware. Pale wood, aged and patient. No decoration. No flair. Just quiet craftsmanship. They held swords. Not just katanas. Blades.
Dozens of them, each one unique. Their sheaths glinted in the dim light: black lacquer with soft reflections, deep red urushi, mottled green like old bark. One was wrapped in white rayskin bound with gold. Each sageo tie—gray, plum, navy—was knotted tight and deliberate, tension held with purpose. The tsuka, wrapped in silk, were symmetrical to the point of obsession. Every fold precise. Every diamond perfect. Each kashira had its own story: copper dragons, koi fish, sakura petals, brass ships riding a storm. And the tsuba were miniature sculptures of iron and bronze, some simple, some elaborate, none ornamental for the sake of it. These weren’t pieces for display. They were weapons made to be used. Cared for, kept sharp, kept ready.
Y/N stepped forward, her movements quiet, measured. She didn’t touch anything. Didn’t need to. The room held its own gravity. The kind of silence that didn’t beg for reverence but commanded it through sheer presence. Every detail—the blades, the wood, the air itself—spoke for her to listen.
Behind her, Hoseok didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to either. His stillness wasn’t tense or withdrawn. It was aware. Watching, but not pressing.
She turned slightly, just enough to glance over her shoulder. Her voice, when it came, was soft. Her Korean clear and careful. “May I?”
A beat passed, subtle but intentional. Then, his reply, not in Korean this time but in English. And for some reason, that made it gentler. “Yes, you may. Second from the top. Sixth row. Left side.”
She nodded once and turned back to the racks. Her steps didn’t creak the floorboards. She moved with the kind of calm that came from purpose, not performance. Her eyes scanned, counted, found it: sixth row, left side, second down.
She stopped in front of it, let her gaze rest on the sheath before reaching for it. Black lacquer, smooth and deep enough to absorb the light. It reflected just the faintest outline of her face, blurred, formless. The finish was perfect, but not decorative. Not flashy. Maintained, not polished. Like someone had wiped it down once a week for decades, always with the same cloth.
The sageo cord was tied in a neat, practical knot. Not ornamental. Not lazy. Tight, squared. The kind of tie someone would redo until they got it right. The tsuba was brass, aged and worn, its surface darkened by time and touch. Etched pine branches crawled along its edges, simple, understated, and detailed enough to tell you it wasn’t mass-produced. It had been chosen.
Her fingers wrapped around the tsuka. The silk binding was tight, smooth, crisscrossed with perfect symmetry. Black cord over white rayskin. Traditional. Familiar. The handle sat against her palm like a known shape, like something she had used before, even if she hadn’t.
And something inside her, something she hadn’t even noticed was noisy, went quiet.
She drew the blade without hesitation, not for show, just to see. It came free with a sound so subtle it was almost imagined. Like breath drawn through cloth. The kind of sound that disappears if you’re not paying attention. But she always paid attention.
Light caught the blade and changed it. What had been metal turned fluid. Reflections danced along the edge, fractured and reformed as she moved. The hamon curled like a pale ripple, shifting with every minor tilt of her hands. The kissaki was long, graceful. Measured for reach, not for display. The sword wasn’t just well-made. It had purpose in its design. Intention.
She held it in both hands now. The balance fell into place like it knew where to go. No resistance. No demand. Just a quiet agreement between steel and muscle, weight and memory.
Behind her, Hoseok finally stirred. The smallest motion: fabric shifting, a heel settling more fully into the floor. When she turned slightly, she saw him near the window, one hand deep in his pocket. The other rolled something between his fingers.
A baseball. Worn, the leather dulled to a soft gray, the seams darkened, fraying. It looked like it had been tossed from hand to hand for years. He turned it over in his palm absently, like it was more habit than thought.
“Funny,” he said, voice quiet enough that the words didn’t quite disturb the stillness. “You like swords…”
He tossed the ball into the air, caught it once without looking.
“…I like baseball.”
Then, without warning, he threw it.
There was no flourish. No wind-up. Just a sudden motion, fast, clean, direct. The ball cut through the air on a line straight toward her. No room to think. No time for a plan.
Her arms moved before her mind did. The sword rose in a single arc, smooth and efficient. No tension in the shoulders, no wasted energy in the swing. The blade moved as though she were answering something, not striking.
The ball split cleanly.
There was no dramatic crack. No cinematic echo. Just a soft, muted thud, leather parting under steel, a sound more felt than heard. One half of the ball skidded off and rolled beneath the nearest rack. The other bounced off her boot and stopped.
She didn’t breathe out. Not yet. Her grip had already eased. The sword angled down, relaxed at her side, tip toward the floor. Balanced again, as if nothing had happened.
Hoseok stepped forward, steady as ever, though something behind his expression had shifted. Barely, but enough for her to notice. A flicker in his eyes, like a thought he hadn’t yet decided whether to keep or release. He lifted a hand toward her, slow and sure. Not a demand. Not a gesture of control. It was open, deliberate. A quiet invitation to return something that wasn’t quite hers yet.
She reversed the blade, offering the hilt without hesitation. No dramatic pause, no faltering. Just weight moving from her hands to his. The handoff was clean, unspoken, the kind of exchange that didn’t need ceremony to be understood.
He sheathed the sword with practiced ease, and the sound—soft, precise, the smooth slide of steel into lacquered wood—didn’t echo. It landed. Not loud, not theatrical. Just final. Like a breath held, then released.
“I wanted to show you these,” he said in Korean, the playful edge from earlier gone. His voice had changed, calmer now, older somehow. He held the sheathed blade in both hands, fingers gliding over the lacquer not to clean it, but to remember it. “But someone like you… someone like you already understands.”
He placed it gently back in its rack, hands steady, motions exact. Each movement held weight, the kind of intention that couldn’t be faked. “I no longer make instruments of death,” he said, softer now, almost to himself. “I keep them for their beauty. For what they once meant. Because I love them.”
There was a quiet pride in his words, not boastful, just true. He bowed his head slightly. “I’m proud of what I made. Proud of how well I made them. But I am retired.”
She stepped closer, silent. No threat in her approach, only certainty. Her presence filled the space without trying to. Her voice came softly, but with clarity.
“Then give me one.”
The words landed like a pin in still fabric. He turned to face her, jaw tightening.
“They’re not for sale.”
“I didn’t say sell me one.”
They locked eyes. Her stare didn’t waver. Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.
“I said give me one.”
A pause opened between them. Not long, but heavy. The kind that held all the weight of what hadn’t been said yet. When he spoke again, it was clipped. Cold.
“And why should I help you?”
She didn’t blink. “Because the vermin I’m after,” she said, the words clean and hard, “was your student.”
That stopped him. Not with a flinch, not with alarm. Just a subtle shift. Shoulders lowered by a fraction, breath held at the top of his chest. His silence was sudden and full.
She stepped in again. “And considering the student…” she let the rest hang, then added, “you have certain obligations.”
He turned and walked toward the narrow attic window, its frame sun-bleached and warped slightly with age. With the back of his hand, he wiped away a patch of fog, clearing a view just big enough to see the city stretching out below them—rooftops, wires, and the slow dimming of the day. The glass was damp, the edges still filmed in condensation.
With one finger, he reached up and began to write.
TAEHYUNG.
The name curved faintly in the glass, drawn in a line of skin oil and breath. Outside, the wind kicked up, brushing against the building with a hollow tap. The beams creaked. The attic seemed to lean into the moment. The name.
She didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just nodded once. That was enough.
Hoseok turned, walked to the trapdoor, and reached for the old latch. It gave with a dry metallic groan. The ladder creaked as it unfolded, the sound echoing faintly in the rafters.
He gestured to the corner. A futon, rolled neatly. A folded blanket beside it. A small jug of water, a wooden comb laid with care. Nothing lavish. Nothing new. Just clean. Lived-in.
“You can sleep here,” he said in Korean. “I’ll make space downstairs. Might take a day or two to find proper furniture.”
He descended the ladder with the same quiet weight he carried everywhere. But just before the hatch closed, his voice floated back up, lower and firmer.
“It’ll take a month to make the blade.”
A pause. The creak of one last step below.
“I suggest you spend it practicing.”
Then the hatch closed with a solid, wooden thunk. Not sharp. Not aggressive. Just complete.
She stood still, alone in the attic, the air settling around her like dust that had waited too long to fall. The quiet wasn’t just quiet anymore. It was thick, almost physical. A silence that had weight, like the room itself was holding its breath after what had been said, what had been written.
The last of the afternoon light had slipped away without notice, and in its place came the muted amber of early evening. Outside, the city blurred. Rooftops softened, edges dulled, the sky folding into dusk with no sharp lines left. Gwangju looked like it was remembering something it didn’t want to say out loud.
She walked toward the window, slow and steady, her boots tapping gently against the floor. The name was still there, hovering in the circle of cleared glass, faint but legible. TAEHYUNG. The letters had already started to run a little, the edges softened by moisture and time.
From her coat, she pulled a cloth. It was plain, the kind of fabric that had seen years of use—creased, worn, stripped of anything personal. Just something that did its job. She raised it and began to wipe. One pass. Then another. Then again. Not hard, not angry. Just firm. Methodical. With each motion, the letters blurred a little more, until they were nothing but streaks. And then nothing at all. Just fog again.
She held her hand to the glass for a second longer, palm pressed flat. The warmth from her skin left a faint outline before the cold reclaimed it. It faded just like the name had. Quick, quiet, complete.
She folded the cloth with care and tucked it back into her coat, her fingers working with practiced ease. No lingering. No pause for meaning.
Then she turned from the window.
Outside, the city kept fading. Behind her, the attic returned to stillness. The name was gone. And with it, whatever place he might’ve held in her. Taehyung Kim had already taken too much. There was no room left in her for the ghost of him. Not anymore.
He would fall. And when he did, she would finally be free.
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chimcess ¡ 6 days ago
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⚔︎ Chapter Five: The Snake in Busan Pairing: Taehyung x Reader Other Tags: Assassin!Taehyung, Assassin!Reader, Assassin!Jimin, Dad!Jimin, Assassin!Yoongi, Gang Leader!Yoongi, Assassin!Namjoon, Swordmaster!Hoseok, Chef!Hoseok, Pimp!Seokjin Genre: Assassins! AU, Exes!AU, Lovers to Enemies, Action, Comedy, Suspense, Martial Arts, Drama, Thriller, Romance (if you squint), Heavy Angst, Violence, 18+ only Word Count: 17k+ Summary: A former assassin awakens from a four-year coma after her ex-lover Taehyung tries to kill her on her wedding day. Driven by revenge for the loss of her unborn child and stolen life, she creates a hit list and embarks on a ruthless mission to take down everyone responsible. Warnings: toxic relationship, talks of character death, graphic violence, aggressive characters, jealousy, training, flashbacks, implied smut, bathing together, strong language, guilt, emotional turmoil, regret, vengeance, these relationships are all tangled up, non-graphic smut, backstory, another tame chapter, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: So, why did Hoseok Jung stop making swords?
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The attic was dim, the air thick with sandalwood. It clung to the rafters, soaked into the beams, and seeped from the floorboards like time itself had steeped in it. The walls exhaled the scent in slow, heavy breaths.
Candlelight sputtered low, throwing jagged shadows across old wood. Steel glinted in the flicker. Hoseok Jung’s sword collection lined the wall like a silent jury. Every blade had a name. Every saya was polished like a relic. Y/N had studied them all during her month in Gwangju. She’d held them, trained with them, bled on their edges. By the time the incense stopped catching in her throat, she knew each one like her own hands.
Hoseok stood at the altar, his black silk robe whisper-quiet as he moved. The candlelight reached for him, but the silk swallowed it whole. A serpent devouring its own tail was stitched across his chest in blood-red thread. Once, his face had been soft, someone who believed peace was a choice. Time, sorrow, and war had carved that man away. What was left was sharp. Dangerous. His eyes, obsidian, reflected nothing. His lips were drawn tight. Whatever softness Y/N had once known was gone. He had grown out his goatee during the month they trained.
Moon-Byul stood beside him, unmoving. His robe mirrored Hoseok’s, minus the serpent. Instead, gold-threaded cranes rose up from the hem. His head was freshly shaved, his expression unreadable. Moon always hovered between brilliance and boredom, amused, never impressed. Once, he called Y/N a lion after she bested him in a spar. She never forgot it. They were close in age, and he treated her as an equal. Hoseok, though, was a kindred spirit. After two weeks of wooden swords, Y/N knew his every move. When sticks stopped being fun, they switched to steel. They both got cut, nothing deep. They spent more time praising each other than nursing bruises.
Hoseok was still a master, but past his prime. Had they met when he was her age, she wouldn’t have stood a chance. She knew that. She just happened to meet him late enough to survive.
On the altar lay a single sword.
The lacquered sheath looked wet, like still water under moonlight. Brass fittings in the momoji style curled into maple leaves at each end. One leaf caught the light like it had something to say. A gold band ringed the fuchi.
The tsuba was a custom prayer wheel, Jung Style the smiths called it, flanked by Kozuka-ana and Kogai-ana holes. The seppa were plain brass. The menuki, blackened kongosho, three-pronged spears invoking Fudo Myo, the wrathful protector.
The sageo was mustard, tied in precise knots. No shitodome. Pure function. The saya was purpose shaped into beauty. Solid fittings. A gold ring off-center. Twin gold stripes traced its spine and edge. The ito was leather-wrapped, white ray skin beneath.
Y/N had seen many blades. Trained with legends. But this one didn’t gleam. It warned. It pulsed. It whispered. It was the most beautiful. And the most dangerous.
Silence held.
Then Hoseok spoke.
“I’m done doing what I swore to God nearly ten years ago I would never do again,” he said. “I’ve created... something that kills people.”
He looked at the blade. A breath passed.
“And in that purpose, I was a success.”
He stepped forward and knelt. The floor creaked beneath him. He turned slightly toward the girl in the shadows. Her hair hung loose, her eyes wide. A fading bruise marked her wrist. The candlelight caught the frayed hem of her pants. She stood like she was bracing for something.
“I did this,” Hoseok said, quieter, “because philosophically, I’m sympathetic to your aim.”
His palm rested on the sheath.
“This is my finest sword. If on your journey you should encounter God…” He gripped the hilt. “God will be cut.”
He rose. The light caught his jaw, casting deep shadows.
When he looked at her again, something in his gaze had shifted, just slightly. The way Pai Mei had looked at her before she left China. She thought of her old master, wondered if he was still alive, still alone. She never thought to visit. Pai Mei didn’t like guests. He would mock her if she showed up without reason. But he had cared for her. More than he cared for Taehyung. And that had meant something. Pai Mei saw Taehyung as a son.
She blinked, realized she had drifted. Hoseok was still staring.
“Revenge,” he said, “is never a straight line.”
The incense pressed in. The air thickened. The attic closed around them.
“It’s a forest,” he said. “And like a forest, it’s easy to lose your way. To get lost. To forget where you came in.”
He stepped forward again, robe trailing like dusk.
“To serve as a compass,” he said, “a combat philosophy must be adopted.”
Moon-Byul moved without sound, placing a scroll in Hoseok’s hands. The parchment looked brittle. The ink was claws on rice paper. The Doctrine. The old Yagu code. Hoseok’s legacy.
He looked at Y/N.
“Repeat after me.”
His voice turned sharp. He began in Japanese.
Hoseok was born in Gwangju but raised mostly in Okinawa, under his grandfather’s roof. His family had fled to Japan before the war, hiding in a village so small it escaped notice even during the bombings. His grandfather made katanas, not hwandos. Y/N doubted they kept the name “Jung” there.
Hoseok’s childhood was carved between languages, between cultures. Between silences.
He held the scroll.
“When engaged in combat, the vanquishing of thine enemy can be the warrior’s only concern…”
Y/N echoed him in Japanese, low and steady.
“This is the first and cardinal rule of combat…”
No pause.
“Suppress all human emotion and compassion…”
Her jaw clenched.
“Kill whoever stands in thy way,” Hoseok said, “even if that be Lord God or Buddha himself…”
She didn’t hesitate. Hoseok’s voice was smooth, almost soothing. Hers was rougher, clipped. Her Korean was better.
“This truth lies at the heart of the art of combat,” Hoseok whispered. “Once it is mastered… thou shall fear no one. Though the devil himself may bar thy way…”
Y/N didn’t blink.
Hoseok bowed. She bowed back, then stepped forward. Her fingers closed around the hilt, steady, callused. The blade slid free with a soft hiss, catching candlelight as it rose. It was flawless.
Two gold carvings marked it: the unfinished Hattori mon, raw and exposed, and a Shi-sha before a war spear, garnet eyes gleaming. Hoseok’s lion. His mark. All his swords bore it. Now it belonged to her.
The hamon shimmered. Notare cresting into chaos halfway up the blade. Chu-kissaki tip. Toriizori curve. Every line exact, every surface mirrored. She saw the whole room behind her in its polish.
Hoseok spoke in English.
“Be careful, Y/N.”
She looked at him. Really looked. Weeks of sweat and silence had taught her more than any master before. He hadn’t comforted her. He had prepared her. Soup left wordlessly. Mid-spar corrections, sharp and precise. Quiet care. The kind that mattered.
Moon-Byul had honed her into something hard and clean. She would miss them both. And the restaurant downstairs, sticky tables, chipped cups, perfect kimbap.
“Can I come back?” she asked. “If I need help?”
Hoseok smiled. Small. Honest. It softened him.
“You are always welcome here, Black Mamba.”
She bowed. Deep. He matched it.
Then straightened, voice lighter.
“Now,” he said, “you need to rest. You have vermin waiting.”
She turned toward the stairs, sword in hand. Neither man followed.
Her room was barely a closet. Low ceiling. Thin walls. But it was hers. Quiet.
She closed the door. The soft click of the lock steadied her. The air felt heavier now. Tomorrow pressed close.
At the desk, Hoseok had left paper and charcoals. A small gesture. She had mentioned once that she used to draw.
The page waited, too white, too still. She pulled one sheet loose, placed it flat.
Her hand moved before her mind caught up. Lines. Shapes. Motion without thought.
Then a name surfaced. Unwelcome. Unavoidable.
Yoongi Min.
Just thinking it made her chest tighten. She hadn’t said it out loud in years, afraid it might summon him. But her hand didn’t stop.
His face came first. Sharp cheekbones, guarded eyes, the mouth set hard, almost smiling. The cold was there. But so was the warmth. The version of him that existed only for her. She hated that she remembered.
“Bittersweet” was too neat a word. Nothing about him had ever been clean.
Yoongi wasn’t Taehyung. No one was. Taehyung had been wildfire, beautiful and ruinous. She had run toward that fire.
But Yoongi... he was the silence in a world that never stopped screaming. Tea at 3 a.m. No questions. No fixing. Just space. He didn’t tame her. He made room.
And for a while, that had been enough.
Her strokes slowed. Smaller now. More careful. Her wrist trembled once. Her eyes stung.
He hadn’t always been cruel. Not with her. There had been jokes. Seoul nights. The way he used to hold her like the world had ended. Even his rivalry with Brandi had dulled eventually. And she remembered how he used to look at her, like she was something holy. Like he wasn’t sure he deserved her. Maybe once, she believed it.
Then came Two Pines. Yoongi chose empire. Chose power over her without blinking. And whatever they had died in that moment. Now he wore the crown like it belonged to him. Never apologized. Never looked back.
She gripped the charcoal too hard. It snapped. She didn’t flinch. Just picked up the broken half and kept drawing.
Two Pines had been a dream: peace under trees, shared breath, a place to exhale. It became a slaughterhouse. He didn’t save her. Didn’t try. He watched. She never forgave him. She never would.
Yoongi Min would pay. That was carved into her bones now. Love didn’t excuse it. Didn’t clean it. Didn’t quiet the screams. She saw them in her sleep, felt them in her chest every time she closed her eyes.
This desk was her altar now. A page, a truth. Vengeance wasn’t theory. It was instinct. Ritual. Religion.
I loved him. And I’ll still kill him.
Once, that thought might’ve broken her. Now it fit. Now it kept her warm.
Sometimes she pictured it: the moment he saw her again. Not the executioner. Not the girl who once touched him like a prayer. Just two broken things who loved each other before they learned how to ruin everything.
Her eyes dropped to the sketch. His face stared back. Not a portrait. A reckoning. He didn’t look like the tyrant the world feared or the boy she trusted. He looked like what lived in between. A ghost of someone who never got to choose who he became.
A tear slid down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it. Didn’t need to. Her hand moved harder now, charcoal grinding into the paper, deepening the shadows beneath his eyes, carving out the line of his jaw, the shape of that mouth.
That mouth. It had saved her once. Destroyed her, too. She knew it better than her own reflection.
She was almost done.
When she drew the last line, something settled. The version of him on the page was final. Whatever was left of him in the world, she’d bury it herself.
Vengeance doesn’t wait. Not even for love.
She paused. The charcoal trembled in her grip. The lamp buzzed louder, throwing jagged shadows across the wall. Dust floated like time had paused, just to watch.
Then it came. A voice from somewhere deep. Old. At that moment, you think: it’s proof like no other. That not only does God exist, but you’re doing His will.
It hit like a splinter beneath the skin. She remembered hearing it once. Young. Believing. Blade in one hand, faith in the other. Back when certainty felt like armor. When killing felt like purpose.
A sound escaped her. Something like a laugh, scraped raw. That belief was dead now. Buried under ash, silk, and silence at Two Pines.
There was no holy mission. No divine justice. Just blood and what followed. She wasn’t a prophet. Wasn’t anyone’s daughter anymore. That girl, the one who prayed, was long gone. What remained was colder. Sharper.
Her fingers moved again. One last stroke across the collarbone, clean and exact. Not decoration. Not feeling. It was dissection. Finding what hadn’t rotted in the corpse of something long dead.
When I knew the least about my enemies, she thought, the first name I wrote was the easiest. And Yoongi Min had never tried to hide. Not from her. Not from anyone. No aliases. No masks. No intermediaries. He stood in the center of his own legend, calm as a man pouring tea. Never flinched. Never blinked.
They called him Busan’s velvet devil. A gentleman butcher. A king in wolf’s clothing. No one whispered his name, they said it with care. Like it might unlock something dangerous.
He didn’t build his empire in shadow. He built it loud. Deliberate. Brick by bloody brick. Face bare. Eyes forward. His business was fear, and he ran it like art.
And once, she had loved that face. Not like Taehyung. That had been fire. Destruction you welcomed. Yoongi was different. Solid. Still.
He sat with her on the bad nights. No questions. No comfort. Just presence. He let her have silence without trying to fill it. And when she needed him, really needed, he was there. Now she needed him gone.
The memories cut sharp. Her hand hesitated, then pressed on. She darkened the hollow of his throat. Sketched the collar of his coat, always black, always tailored. Gloves. Always gloves. A man who knew what he was. Never pretended otherwise.
Her thoughts circled back to where it began. Taehyung. He didn’t enter a room, he arrived. Moved like smoke. Looked like he knew secrets you hadn’t earned. Every move deliberate. Every silence calculated. He didn’t fight for the top, he acted like he already lived there. And the world didn’t argue. She’d loved that about him. God help her, she had.
Yoongi was twenty-nine when Taehyung handed him the kingdom. It wasn’t loyalty. It was strategy. A chess move disguised as trust. And Yoongi wore the crown like it had always been his.
She didn’t trust the memory, too warped, too worn. But it came back anyway. Again and again. Now, staring at the page, something in her chest went still. His eyes. That same emptiness. That certainty. Like he already knew how your story ended, and wasn’t impressed.
Once, those eyes had looked at her differently. Maybe not with love. But with recognition. Like he saw her. Now he wouldn’t blink. And neither would she.
Her hand slowed, weight behind each stroke. She shaped his mouth, the same one that once told her she was more than fire. The one that kissed her like she was something worth saving.
But that version of them was gone. Whatever she’d been to him, whatever he’d been to her, it didn’t matter anymore.
Hoseok had told her how the war ended. Not quietly. Not with peace. It ended the way power always does when it refuses to share: loud, brutal, almost holy in scale.
He said Yoongi had stood on the edge of the last battlefield, black hanbok catching the light like oil, moving like smoke. The final rival, once feared, bled out at his feet.
Yoongi didn’t gloat. Didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. He looked down. Stepped over the body. Kept walking. Like death was just another item crossed off the list. That was what made him terrifying. Not the violence. The indifference.
After that, Busan didn’t resist. It bowed. Now the only trace of that man lived in graphite and shadow on the page in front of her.
Her hand moved in steady strokes, building his face in layers. Every line felt less like art and more like exhumation. She wasn’t drawing. She was digging. Through wreckage. Through memory. Through what was left.
Yoongi’s features came together piece by piece. The sharp jaw. The cold slope of his eyes. The soft curve of his mouth, more memory than muscle now. Not quite a king. Not the boy she’d known. Something in between. A ghost on paper.
Then her hand slipped. The charcoal snapped, rolled across the desk, stopped against the edge of a dried tea stain. She didn’t reach for it. Just stared.
The face on the page looked back, unfinished. Not a monster. Not a myth. A man.
And still, the image stayed. Burned into memory like a scar: Yoongi, that night. Black hanbok, sleeves wet with blood, standing over the last man who dared to defy him. The body twitched once, reflex or defiance, but it didn’t matter. It was over.
Yoongi didn’t pause. He turned to the others. His face unreadable. Cold. If there was emotion, it was certainty.
And that was the thing that made him impossible to outrun. He didn’t need to conquer you. He made you realize you’d already lost.
Smoke from gunfire still hung in the air. Cries just beginning to fade. And there he stood beneath a shattered skylight, cherry blossoms drifting through broken glass. Still. Too still.
He looked like something pulled out of a dream and dressed in blood.
And when the final scream died, Busan bowed.
Hoseok had told her about that night like a prayer he wasn’t sure he should say.
“It was one of those nights,” he’d murmured, voice low. “You could feel it. In the air. Like the city already knew. Like it could taste the blood before it hit the ground.”
And after came the gathering at The Red Lantern Club. Not really a club. More like a mirage stitched together underground. Velvet curtains. Perfume and secrets. Jazz leaking through the walls. Lighting low and sharp. Voices too soft. Cigar smoke hanging like a lie.
Somewhere behind a locked door, a woman was always crying. No one ever asked why.
The deeper you went, the worse it got. The air thickened. The light reddened. By the time you hit the center, it didn’t feel like nightlife. It felt like hell with waitstaff and designer liquor.
That night, the city’s old guard had gathered. Six kkangpae bosses, men who’d ruled for decades. Draped in silk and legacy. Their suits cost more than most lives. Their rings were old as dynasties.
Behind them stood their muscle. Armed, still, waiting.
And in the center of it all stood Yoongi.
He wore a black suit that seemed to drain the light around it. Everything about him was honed to a point: jaw, eyes, presence. Hair slicked back. Not a strand out of place.
The chandelier above caught his face in shards. He didn’t look human. He looked like death taught how to wear a suit.
He didn’t speak. Just watched.
His gaze moved slow, surgical. A scalpel drawn across the room. Every glance measured posture, weakness, fear.
And the fear was heavy. Thick enough to taste.
These were men who weren’t used to being afraid. But they were smart enough to feel it.
They could kill him. They had the numbers, the firepower. But it would cost more than any of them were willing to pay.
One by one, they raised their glasses. Not respect. Ritual. Whiskey. Toasts. Smiles stretched too thin.
Everyone was pretending. No one was celebrating.
Except one.
Boss Yoon. All silk and silence. Hands folded over his stomach like he was holding something ugly inside. He didn’t toast. Didn’t smile. Just stared. He hated Yoongi.
Half-Japanese. Half-Korean. Raised on Camp Humphreys. Too foreign for tradition. Too clean for blood.
To men like Yoon, Yoongi didn’t belong. He hadn’t earned it. Hadn’t clawed his way up through mud and knives like they had.
In another time, another world, Yoongi wouldn’t have even been let in the building. But this wasn’t another time. This was Yoongi’s time.
Yoongi hadn’t inherited power. He hadn’t waited for it. He’d taken it, piece by piece. Clean. Quiet. He didn’t follow bloodlines. He erased them. Rewrote the hierarchy. Dug his throne out of the dead.
And Boss Yoon couldn’t stand it.
His son, Chan, sat beside him, tight-lipped, tense. When he moved, it was like something uncoiling. His hand came up slow, then slammed down, palm first, into his plate. The porcelain cracked hard, shards scattering across the table like shrapnel.
Silence hit the room like a slap. Every glass stopped midair. Every throat held breath. Even the jazz behind the walls seemed to pause, like the music knew when to be afraid.
Yoongi didn’t move.
Yoon stood. Slowly. Like the motion hurt. His shoulders were tight, jaw clenched, rage leaking through every breath. His guards shifted. Hands hovered over blades. The room felt suddenly very small.
A younger boss, maybe still naive enough to think this could be salvaged, broke the silence. “What’s the meaning of this?” he asked, voice pinched and too high. “What’s this outburst supposed to mean?”
Yoon didn’t answer right away. When he finally did, his voice sounded like old rust: thin, bitter, sharp enough to cut. “What am I supposed to celebrate?” he said, spitting each word. “The death of this council? The stain on our fathers’ work?”
The murmurs started small, like the first crackle of a fire. A glance here, a whisper there. Fast words. Faster doubt. The kind of unease that spreads before anyone admits it. The air thickened until it clung to the walls like smoke.
Then Yoongi spoke. “Gentlemen.”
One word. Calm. Even. Icy. It dropped into the room like ash from a fire that had already burned everything worth saving. He didn’t raise his voice. He never had to.
“Boss Yoon has something he’d like to share,” he said, tone flat, bored even. Like he was reciting bullet points at a board meeting. “So let’s hear it. What rot do you smell, Yoon-sshi?”
Yoon didn’t hesitate. Maybe he thought it was mercy. Maybe he thought it was his moment. Or maybe he just couldn’t stop himself. He pushed his chair back like a man stepping onto a stage. His knuckles were white against the table’s edge. His hands trembled, barely. But not from fear. It was deeper. Older. Resentment carved into bone.
“My father,” Yoon began, voice cracking under the weight of something too big for the room. “Yours. All of them. They built this council on blood. On discipline. On legacy. This table,” he gestured broadly, cuffs of his silk shaking, “was carved from code. From purity.”
A sharp crack rang out across the room. Boss Bae had slammed his glass down hard enough to chip the base. His eyes were wide with fury. “Outrageous,” he snapped. “You insult this council.” He grabbed his napkin and tossed it across the table like it meant something. “Bastard.”
Yoon caught it, didn’t look, flung it back. “Fuck face.”
“Enough,” Yoongi said. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. His eyes didn’t leave Yoon. “Speak.”
Yoon did. He stood straighter, like bracing for a storm, and let it out in one breath.
“I speak of the perversion we’ve allowed into this council. The disgrace that sits at its head. A place I’ve loved more than my own children. Desecrated. By crowning a half-breed Korean Jap-American bitch as its leader.”
It happened before the air had time to shift.
One moment Yoongi was seated. The next, he was standing on the table, sword already drawn. The blade cleared its sheath with a whisper. His coat moved like smoke. Spilled bourbon soaked into the soles of his shoes as he crouched, stepped forward, and swung.
One cut.
Yoon’s head came off like the sword had been waiting for it. It spun once in the air, a blur of silk and skin, then dropped with a sound too soft for what had just happened. Blood followed, bright and fast, arcing across the table. It soaked silver, silk, polished leather. Splattered napkins. Stained velvet. Pooled beneath the feet of men who had ruled Busan’s underworld longer than Yoongi had been alive. Yoon’s body folded in on itself like a puppet cut clean.
The room froze.
Yoongi stood at the center, framed in crystal and blood. His face was flecked red. Still. Unmoved. He rose from his crouch without urgency, eyes flat.
No one spoke. The six remaining bosses kept their eyes on the body or the floor. None dared look at him.
At the edge of the mess, Yoon’s two guards still held their swords. The moment had already passed. One trembled. The other stood stiff, waiting for a bullet that hadn’t come.
Yoongi turned to them. His face didn’t show anger. Or satisfaction. Just that cold certainty, the look of a man who didn’t guess. Who didn’t need to.
He didn’t make a threat. He didn’t have to.
“Fight me,” he said. “Or work for me.”
The two men looked at each other. Loyalty passed between them, brief, reflexive. But it didn’t hold. Not in this blood. Not in this room. They dropped their swords.
“On the floor,” Yoongi said.
The blades hit tile, sharp in the quiet.
“Get behind me.”
They moved, slow, hands open.
“On your knees.”
They knelt.
“Foreheads down.”
They lowered.
“Keep your mouths shut.”
Yoongi turned back toward the table.
No one had moved. Their hands stayed on armrests that no longer felt like theirs. Suits once tailored to power now looked too tight, like their authority no longer fit. These were men who had run cities, ordered executions between drinks, built empires in back rooms. Now they sat like children caught lying, avoiding Yoongi’s eyes, saying nothing.
Even the oldest among them, men who had once terrified nations, kept their heads down. They all understood what had changed. No one here was stupid enough to think they could challenge him. They had all seen what he’d done to reach this seat. No one was angry about his rise.
Boss Bae just hated Boss Yoon for ruining the mood.
Across the room, just beyond the chandelier’s reach, Lynn Easton watched. One leg crossed, cigarette between two fingers, unlit and forgotten. Her eyes never left Yoongi. There was something in her gaze that looked like admiration, but it wasn’t.
It was worship. Not the kind given to saints.
The kind reserved for gods who kill.
No fear in her. No hesitation. She knew what he was. Saw it in him like a reflection. She didn’t flinch. She smiled. Slow. Precise.
Yoongi spoke again. His voice was smooth, low. Velvet over steel. Polished. Corporate. Lethal.
“I’m going to say this in English,” he said to the table, “so you understand exactly how serious I am.”
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. Every word landed with the weight of steel.
“As your leader,” he said, tone flat, “I encourage you from time to time, and always in a respectful manner, to question my logic.”
Lynn translated quietly from her chair, thoroughly amused by his outburst.
“If you’re unconvinced that a particular plan of action I’ve decided is the wisest, tell me so,” Yoongi said. “But allow me to convince you and I promise you right here and now, no subject will ever be taboo.”
He paused.
“Except, of course, the subject that was just under discussion.”
He turned, slow, toward a soldier behind him. A big man, pale and sweating through his collar, standing like he wasn’t sure if movement would get him killed.
“Hand me the head.”
The soldier hesitated, then stepped across the blood-slick floor. He knelt, gripped Yoon’s hair through his gloves, and lifted what was left. Blood still dripped from the neck. The mouth hung slack. The eyes stared, wide and glassy. Whatever they had seen last had stayed with them.
Yoongi took it without ceremony. Like passing a file across a desk. He held it up slightly. Let the face do the talking.
That expression was still there, that last moment of realization, right before death, when the brain knows it’s over but the body hasn’t caught up.
Then Yoongi’s voice changed.
It dropped lower. Rougher. No polish now. No formality. This wasn’t the voice of a man at the head of a boardroom. This was the voice from before. From the alleys. From a life of being told he didn’t belong. A voice that didn’t learn to fight. It had to.
“The price you pay,” he said, every word slow and exact, “for bringing up either my Japanese or American heritage as a negative…”
He raised the head just a little higher.
“…is I collect your fuckin’ head.”
One of the dons swallowed, loud in the quiet. Another froze completely, like even the sound of a breath might draw attention. Under the table, someone moved to cross themselves, then stopped, maybe remembering no god watched over this place.
“Just like this fucker here,” Yoongi added, swinging the head in a small arc. A red line traced the table around him.
He turned in a slow circle, letting them see it.
“And if any of you sons of bitches got anything else to say…”
His voice lifted slightly, barely, but the force cracked through the room like a bullet.
“Now’s the fuckin’ time.”
He looked at each of them, one by one. Daring them. Giving them the chance. No one spoke. No one moved.
“I didn’t think so.”
He dropped the head.
It hit the table hard. A wet, blunt slap. Blood sprayed outward, over linen, over crystal, over the sleeve of the man closest to the corpse. The head rolled once, then again, and fell off the far edge. It landed with a soft thud and disappeared under the tablecloth.
Yoongi turned his back to them.
“Meeting’s adjourned,” he said.
He walked away. Two men who had once sworn to kill him followed without a word. Behind them, the room stayed still. The scent of blood lingered, thick and permanent. The council, once a cabal of giants, sat quiet, stripped down to what they really were.
Men. Just men. And they all stared at the spot where the king used to stand.
Y/N sat curled in the corner of her room. The cheap wooden chair pressed hard into her back, too stiff to be comfortable, but familiar enough not to notice. The smell fan she had screwed into the wall filled the silence with a steady hum.
Memory didn’t work like a book. You couldn’t flip to a clean page and read it straight. It was smoke. Slippery. Every time she tried to hold it still, it shifted. Time didn’t erase anything. It just dulled the edges. The things that used to cut now brushed against her like worn silk. The pain was still there. It just moved to the background, like old music from another room.
Yoongi Min lived there now. She didn’t cry for him anymore. The rage that used to keep her up at night, sweating and twisting in the sheets, was gone. So was the hate. That would have been easier.
Now, she just carried him.
Every night, before sleep dragged her under, she read the list. Names, dates, memories etched in ink, sealed in scars. Yoongi’s name had never moved. Always circled. Always there. Preserved in blood and intent.
Once, the irony amused her. That you could still want vengeance against someone you didn’t hate anymore. Now it just made her tired.
He hadn’t always been part of her story. Once, he was just a name. A man with quiet eyes who appeared one sunburned afternoon in Jalisco, uninvited but perfectly expected. She still remembered the smell of scorched dust, the scream of cicadas in the heat. She had been sitting on the veranda, a bitter drink in her hand, ice melting faster than her patience. The estate’s white walls radiated heat like an oven. She thought she would pass out before anything important happened.
Then he walked in.
Too still. Too composed. The kind of man who looked wrong in heat and noise because he didn’t sweat. Didn’t flinch. And that made him dangerous. Danger didn’t announce itself. It stood still in chaos and watched.
Her first thought was that he was too pretty to be a killer. Not soft, just out of place. The kind of face meant for cathedrals or concert halls, not backrooms and wars. It caught her off guard. She had felt that once before, the year she met Jimin. But Jimin weaponized his beauty. He distracted. Disarmed. Smiled before he cut.
Yoongi didn’t smile.
He was cold. Still. A presence that quieted rooms. The kind of man you didn’t approach. You waited to be seen.
She hadn’t trusted him. But she hadn’t objected either. When Taehyung asked if she approved, she hadn’t looked away. Just gave a brief nod and said, “What’s his name?”
Taehyung had already chosen.
“Cottonmouth,” he said, smiling like it amused him.
Yoongi didn’t stay long. Maybe forty-eight hours. Just long enough to shake the right hands and unlock the right doors. By Monday, he was gone, headed back to Korea with a folder of papers and a one-way ticket in his coat.
At the time, it didn’t seem important. It was 1992. She was still green. Still trying to figure out what kind of weapon she would become.
Back then, her hands hadn’t learned how to break things. Her heart still ached when it rained. She still prayed, sometimes. She hadn’t met Pai Mei yet. That part of her story hadn’t started.
But Taehyung, as always, had seen it coming. He knew she wasn’t ready. Or maybe he just couldn’t bring himself to be the one to turn the key. When it came time to learn the blade, he stepped back. Said it was too personal.
So he made the call. Yoongi picked up. Said yes.
Three days later, she arrived. The cold hit her the second she stepped off the plane. Busan didn’t feel like a city. The skyline was gray, resigned. The Min estate sat on the edge of that resignation, stone and silence, walls older than any name she knew. It didn’t feel like a home.
Yoongi was waiting in the great hall. Standing there, tall, composed, dressed in slate silk that shimmered like oil under low light. He didn’t move. Just watched her walk in with a stare that could empty a room.
So she bowed.
Not out of respect. Not even formality. Instinct. Survival. She knew men like him. You bowed first, or you didn’t get the chance.
She dropped to her knees. Lowered her head. Waited.
He didn’t speak.
The silence stretched, long enough for doubt to slip in and settle. But she held position.
Then, finally, he spoke. Quiet. Exact. His Korean was flawless. Formal. The kind you heard in courtrooms and memorial rites. Not Taehyung’s fast, back-alley Seoul dialect. This was old money. Inherited. Precise.
“Tell me,” he said, “why are you here?”
It wasn’t curiosity. It was a test. A mirror.
She raised her head. Met his eyes.
“Taehyung told me he already spoke with you,” she said, matching his dialect. The formality was stiff in her mouth, shaped by study, not instinct.
Something flickered in his eyes. Maybe approval. Maybe not.
“Our mutual acquaintance said he would send the foreigner I met in Mexico,” he said, kneeling so smoothly it made no sound. “But that’s not what I asked.”
Now they were eye-level. But she still felt beneath him. Not from height. From stillness.
Yoongi didn’t dominate a room. He erased it. Took the air out. Turned it into something cold and hollow. His stillness wasn’t passive. It pressed in, dense and quiet, until you felt it in your lungs. A slow pressure, like being buried.
Then he moved.
No warning. No wind-up. Just motion.
His hand reached out, fingers catching her chin. Not rough. Not kind. Just efficient. The touch felt clinical. His skin wasn’t cold, but it felt like it should have been.
“Why are you here?” he asked again. “If it’s training you want, Taehyung could’ve done it himself. But he didn’t. Why?” His voice didn’t rise. It sank, low, smooth, cold. “Is it because you think I’m closer to the roots of the blade? That your little infatuation with him would cloud the lessons?”
Then he leaned in. Barely. Just enough to close the distance. She caught the faint scent on his skin, wood smoke, paper, ink. His eyes narrowed.
“Or…” The edge in his voice sharpened. “Or is it because Taehyung found a new pet, and you couldn’t stand to watch him play with her?”
It hit like a punch. Not forceful. Precise. A clean shot to the soft place she never acknowledged. It found it anyway.
She didn’t flinch.
Her breath caught, just for a second, but she forced the air out slow. Steadied her gaze.
“Taehyung’s too busy to train a beginner,” she said, voice level. Even. Neutral. “And I wanted to get to know you. We’re closer in age than I am with the others. I thought we could become friends.”
A lie. But polished. Just enough truth to sound casual. Just enough simplicity to sell.
She let the silence stretch. Let it settle between them like pressure.
Something flickered in his face. Not a smile. Not quite mockery. Something colder. He brushed his thumb across her cheek. It could’ve passed as a gesture of comfort.
It wasn’t.
Without breaking eye contact, he switched languages. His English was flawless. Not practiced. Natural. Private-school crisp, but stripped of warmth.
“Well,” he murmured, “we’ll see what you are soon enough, won’t we?”
Then he stood. One clean motion. Effortless. Like movement didn’t cost him anything. He turned and walked away without a glance, already finished with her.
“Lynn will show you to your room.”
The door closed behind him. Quiet. Clean. Final.
She sat for a second in the echo of it. Her face still cold from his fingers.
Then she stood. Picked up the hotel phone. Dialed.
Taehyung answered on the second ring. Warm. Familiar. Almost amused.
“You good?” he asked before she said a word.
She opened her mouth but didn’t get the chance.
The door burst open.
No knock. No warning.
Lynn Easton stepped in like she owned the place. Black silk. Sharp tailoring. Heels like weapons. Her hair pulled back, expression blank. Her presence wasn’t. It filled the room.
Y/N’s instincts lit up.
She didn’t think. Just moved.
The gun was in her hand before Lynn crossed halfway in. Smooth draw. Safety off. Barrel aimed steady between the eyes.
The phone clattered to the floor. Taehyung’s voice buzzed faintly, tinny and distant.
Lynn didn’t blink.
She glanced at the phone. Then at Y/N. Something flickered, disgust. Then it vanished, replaced by something colder.
“I’m here to tell you,” she said, voice flat, dry, “training starts in ten. Main courtyard. Don’t let your little phone call make you late.”
Then she turned and walked out. Like the gun hadn’t mattered. Like the whole thing bored her.
Y/N lowered the weapon. Picked up the phone.
Taehyung was still there.
“You good?” he asked again, voice calm.
“Yeah,” she said. Too quick.
“I have to go. Yoongi’s waiting.”
A pause.
Then, gently: “Show him why I picked you. Don’t hope. Prove it.”
“I will.”
“Goodbye, Alabama.”
“Bye, Tae.”
She hung up. Stood still for a second. Smiled, just barely.
Three minutes later, she was already in the courtyard. She’d memorized the layout her first night. Not for aesthetics. She didn’t care about ancient stone, delicate bonsai, or cherry blossoms floating like confetti. That wasn’t her lens.
She mapped sightlines. Marked exits. Noted cover. Measured steps. Calculated what she could cross, where she could hide, how fast she could move.
Survival started with the map.
The courtyard was bare. Raked gravel. Slate tiles worn smooth by weather and time. Wind chimes overhead, their tones sharp and strange. A single cherry tree leaned in from the far corner, petals drifting down like soft debris.
Yoongi stood beneath it.
Back to her.
Still.
The sun cast his shadow long across the stone, a cut of darkness the light couldn’t touch. His robe was black, edged in silver thread. The fabric moved with the wind. He didn’t.
She crossed the courtyard without sound. Her boots were ghosts on the stone. No training mats. No racks of blades. Just Yoongi, and the wooden sword in his hand, held like he’d never put it down.
He didn’t turn.
“Show me how you hold this,” he said. No greeting. No warmth. Just a command dropped mid-movement, like she was late.
She took the sword in both hands. Grip clean. Textbook. Balanced.
Too clean.
It looked right but felt wrong. Like a pose held too long in front of a mirror.
She tried to channel Taehyung, the way his stance breathed, the way the blade looked grown from his hand. But she wasn’t him. And Yoongi wasn’t here for poetry.
He didn’t sigh. Didn’t speak. Just shifted his jaw, barely.
“No.”
He stepped forward. She didn’t see it happen. One second, still. The next, closer. The sword left her hands without resistance. He didn’t yank it. Didn’t ask. He just took it, like gravity claiming a dropped stone.
Then his hands were on her. Not rough. Not gentle. Just efficient. Fingers folding hers back around the hilt, sliding a thumb, adjusting the angle. One sharp push realigned her elbow. A tap moved her hips. Behind her, he pivoted her knee, nudged a foot half an inch forward. No words. No explanation. Just movement. Precise. Automatic. He worked like someone who had done this a thousand times and expected no questions.
It wasn’t teaching. It was sculpting.
She didn’t resist. It wasn’t instruction. It was command.
Yoongi’s style had no drama. No shouting. No speeches. No honor-bound riddles. Just correction and silence. He didn’t care when her arms began to shake or when her back pulled tight. His hands just kept moving, carving posture into muscle whether it wanted to hold or not.
By the time he stepped back, her entire body burned. Thighs tight. Shoulders screaming. Spine locked. Sweat clung to her jawline, her breathing short and shallow. Her hands cramped around the hilt.
He looked her over once. Then gave a single nod. “Hold that position for one hour,” he said. Flat. Final. “When it’s over, I’ll show you the next.”
She blinked. “An hour?”
The disbelief escaped before she could kill it. Regret followed instantly. Not just because she had questioned him. Because it sounded weak.
Yoongi didn’t answer.
He turned and walked to the bench beneath the cherry tree’s shade. A tea set sat waiting. Steam already curling from the spout. He poured a cup with the same precision he used on her stance. Not rushed. Not careless. Ritual.
He sipped. Closed his eyes. “Don’t speak,” he said. “Your muscles must stay still.”
She stared at his back, jaw tight. Part of her wanted to drop the sword. Just to see what he would do. To make him react.
She didn’t. Because this was still the test.
“There are children who start this training at four,” he said. “Most still fail.”
Another sip.
“You’ve spent two years playing with guns and knives and think that makes you ready.” A pause. “It doesn’t.”
The words didn’t sting. They landed. Quiet. Dry. Accurate. Like facts she had avoided saying out loud.
“Maybe your mind can learn. Maybe. But your body will. One way or another.”
He didn’t look at her when he added, “I’ll hope you leave this place a credit to my mother’s nation. Try not to disappoint, will you?”
It didn’t sound like hope. It sounded like a door closing.
A week and a half later, Yoongi decided to take the crew out. No reason. No plan. No destination. Just motion.
His people didn’t need details. Only direction. And they moved like gears. Quiet. Timed. Unquestioning.
Lynn delivered the message.
Y/N sat cross-legged on her floor, wrapping gauze around bruises that bloomed black beneath her ribs. Each pass dragged against raw skin. Her breath hitched when the edge of the bandage caught bone. She pressed her palm to her side and waited for the pain to settle. It didn’t. It just burrowed deeper. She gritted her teeth and kept going.
She was halfway through when the door opened.
Lynn stepped in like she owned the space. Black silk, tailored sharp. Not a wrinkle out of place. Posture perfect. Chin up. Shoulders square. Eyes level.
Y/N was on her feet before she realized it.
The pain screamed through her ribs, but her body moved on instinct. Her spine locked, and her hand shot out. The gun was in her grip a second later, trained on Lynn’s forehead without hesitation. The silence that followed wasn’t stillness. It was loaded. Bright and taut. Like air stretched too thin.
The only sound was the faint scrape of her phone sliding off the futon and hitting the floor. Taehyung’s voice, mid-sentence, flickered into static.
Lynn didn’t blink. She didn’t move. Her eyes ticked from the gun to the phone, then back to Y/N. Her expression didn’t shift, not really, but something passed through it. Faint. Fleeting. Contempt. The kind too old to be loud. She exhaled once through her nose, slow and quiet, then spoke.
“You’re allowed to come tonight,” she said, voice flat, the kind of flat that could cut glass. “We leave in five.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. Just turned and walked out, the tail of her silk shirt whispering across the doorway as she disappeared down the hall.
Y/N stood there, chest heaving. Her ribs throbbed. Her fingers loosened around the grip of the gun, but she didn’t lower it for a few more seconds. Long enough to make sure Lynn wasn’t coming back.
Then she bent to grab the phone, her hand trembling slightly as she brought it back to her ear.
“You good?” Taehyung’s voice was still there. Low. Calm. Annoyingly perceptive.
She exhaled, steadying herself. “Yeah,” she said. Too fast.
“I have to go. Yoongi’s waiting.”
A pause.
Then: “Show him why I picked you. Don’t hope. Prove it.”
“I will.”
“Goodbye, Alabama.”
“Bye, Taehyung.”
She ended the call and sat there for one beat longer than she needed to, staring at the wall. Then she stood, wincing, and pulled her boots on over aching legs. She didn’t change clothes. No time. The sweat-soaked tank top clung to her skin. Her jeans were still dirty from morning drills. She swiped a sleeve across her mouth to smear whatever lip gloss was left and ran a hand through her hair, tugging it back with a band that had seen better days.
She didn’t care about looking good. She cared about moving fast.
By the time she stepped into the front hall, she had already pushed the pain back down where it belonged. The light in the entryway was warm and gold, soft against the polished wood floors and cool stone walls. Yoongi stood near the door, speaking in clipped Korean to a man she didn’t recognize. He was tall and heavy-set, the kind of man whose hands looked like they knew how to break a jaw without wrinkling his cuffs. Yoongi’s voice was brisk and efficient. His eyes kept flicking toward the hallway.
When he saw her, they stopped. Just for a second. Long enough to notice, not long enough to mean anything. But it wasn’t nothing.
She fell into step behind the others, slipping into formation as if she had always been there. Not too close. Not too far. She knew the rhythm now. She knew the space she was allowed to occupy. Not inside. Not excluded. She was tolerated. Observed. Weighed.
A wiry man with too many rings and a mouth that seemed to smile more during fights than at parties offered her a drink. Something clear in a crystal vial. She shook her head. Not because she trusted him. She didn’t. But she needed every ounce of strength for whatever came next. Her body still buzzed from the morning’s drills. Her legs felt like overused rope. Her back ached. Her palms were raw.
Yoongi had worked her until she collapsed. Then he told her to start over. He hadn’t praised her. He hadn’t spoken at all when it ended. But he hadn’t walked away disappointed either. That counted.
In the narrow space between rejection and recognition, she could feel the pull. Not affection. Not ambition. Something simpler and hungrier. She wanted to be seen. Not as Taehyung’s pick. Not as the outsider with borrowed language and too much to prove. She wanted to be seen as a threat. Something that could not be ignored.
The car ride to the club was silent. Not awkward, but disciplined. Every man sat straight, knees aligned, backs stiff. No one spoke unless necessary. When they did, it was quick, quiet Korean. Clean and controlled. Not meant for her.
Up front, Yoongi sat next to Lynn. He never looked back. The passing streetlights carved his face into pieces, slicing him into segments of brightness and shadow, something not quite whole. When he spoke, the car quieted even more.
Y/N did not catch the words. She didn’t need to. The tone was enough. Low. Sharp. Exact. Lynn nodded once, her arms folded tight across her chest as if she were holding something in. Her reply was short and clipped, but her body shifted. Just a little. Like something inside her had been punched.
Y/N did not know what Yoongi had said. But she felt it in her teeth. He didn’t waste words. When he spoke, something somewhere bled.
The car stopped. She reached for the door, expecting one of the others to go first. Protocol. Order.
But the door opened from the outside.
Yoongi. Still seated, half turned, holding the door open for her. Just once. Just for her. It wasn’t gallantry. It wasn’t habit. It was a move.
Their eyes met. Half a second, maybe less, but it stretched longer than it should have. A flicker of understanding passed between them. Not fondness. Not even acknowledgment. Recognition. The game had begun.
The club was buried beneath an old hotel near the edge of the harbor. It sat tucked under stone and shadow like something too dangerous to live upstairs. There were no signs. No neon. Only a pair of matte black steel doors and a man standing in front of them who looked like he had retired from killing people professionally but still did it on weekends for fun. He didn’t speak. He didn’t check IDs or nod in recognition. He simply stepped aside when Yoongi approached, as if the man had already been through him once.
Inside, the air changed immediately. You felt it before you saw it. The atmosphere had weight. A low hum beneath the skin. Everything was red. Not just in color but in mood. The lighting bled against velvet walls and lacquered surfaces, casting shadows that clung to corners like secrets. Smoke curled from cigars too expensive to ask about, winding into the haze like something alive. The music was live jazz, but not the kind played in hotel lobbies. It had teeth. Brass and muscle. A saxophone wailed from the stage like it had history, like it had seen too much and was tired of staying quiet.
No one here danced. No one shouted over the music or begged for bottle service. This was not that kind of place. You didn’t come here to forget yourself. You came because you already knew exactly who you were and wanted others to know it too.
Every person in the room mattered. Nobody wore name tags. Their reputations arrived ahead of them, carried in rumors and police reports. Laughter was low and precise, like a shared joke you only understood if you had killed the same man. Weapons glinted beneath suits. Flashes of matte black steel and the occasional polished wood handle. Not a threat. A formality.
It wasn’t safe. But it was sacred.
Y/N didn’t need instructions. One glance from one of Yoongi’s men sent her toward the far end of the long table. No words. Just movement. The seat was obvious. Furthest from Yoongi, furthest from Lynn, tucked into the farthest edge of the heat. A place for the tolerated, not the trusted. She sat without protest. She didn’t take it personally. She poured herself a small cup of sake, careful not to let her fingers shake. Her body still ached from training. Shoulders like stone. Wrists sore. Back tight. But she held the cup steady.
The first sip burned. Sharp and clean. It didn’t dull the pain, but it gave her something else to focus on.
From her seat, she could see the whole room. What she saw caught her off guard. Yoongi was laughing.
Not a polite smirk. Not the curated charm he used with government contacts or lieutenants looking for approval. This was real. Mouth open, eyes creased at the corners, head tilted just enough to show his guard had dropped. Briefly, but fully. He leaned toward Lynn, said something low that made her roll her eyes and smirk. Something warm, almost playful. Not the usual predator’s smirk she wore like lipstick. This was different. Lighter. Familiar.
Yoongi tapped the table with two fingers, keeping time with the band. Occasionally, he snapped a word toward the musicians. They responded instantly, adjusting their tempo as if they were tuned to his mood.
She did not recognize this version of him.
This wasn’t the man who had held her elbow too long in the courtyard. Who had made her hold a stance until her thighs screamed and her arms went numb. Who corrected her without speaking, using only pressure and presence. That Yoongi was exacting. Brutal in his quiet.
This one was fluid. Charming. Dangerous in an entirely different way. This was the king.
She lifted her cup again. Just to do something with her hands.
That was when he looked up. Right at her. He did not blink. He did not smile. He only looked. For a moment, the noise in the room faded. Not because it stopped, but because she no longer heard it. Her heart struck once, hard enough to echo in her ears. She stayed still. Silent. She did not need to speak. The air had shifted. She felt it.
Then Yoongi stood. He smoothed his jacket, straightened his cuffs with a flick of his wrists, and walked. Not toward the band. Not toward the bathroom or the bar. He walked toward her.
Y/N did not move. Her cup hovered in mid-air. Everyone noticed, even if they pretended not to. Eyes flicked toward him, then slid away. It was like watching the sun move across the sky. You did not stare, but you felt it.
He reached her side of the table and sat across from her as if the seat had always been his. He did not ask. He did not wait. He claimed it.
The look he gave her was not kind and not cruel. It was measured.
“You like soju?” he asked. His voice was soft, almost casual, as if he were asking about the weather.
He reached across the table for the bottle in her hand and took it as if she had offered it. She had not, but that did not matter.
“I have had it with Taehyung before,” she said. Her voice stayed calm and steady. That was the important part.
Yoongi rolled the bottle between his fingers. The label caught the light and shimmered, a red gleam against his skin.
His mouth curved slightly. Not quite a smile. Something quieter.
“And am I right to believe,” he said in a tone that was light but edged just enough to sting, “that you have been enjoying this one all by yourself?”
She did not answer. Her pulse spoke for her.
“I see Eun-Jae has his own.” He nodded toward a man two seats down. “And Chi-Hun too.” He glanced again.
His voice did not rise. It did not need to. Every word cut deeper. The power was not in volume. It was in the edge.
“That makes this bottle yours.”
Eun-Jae and Chi-Hun moved together in perfect choreography. Each lifted his own bottle. Each poured for the men nearby. They did not look at her. They did not comment. The gesture was enough.
Her breath caught. Not for long and not dramatic, just enough to tighten her throat. Her body knew before her mind did. She had not meant to claim anything. She had not even realized she had. But she had. And now it was out in the open, sitting between them like a challenge carved into stone.
Yoongi did not believe in accidents. He did not believe in second chances either. Not here. Not with her.
The expression he had worn—cool, unreadable, almost amused—vanished from his face in an instant. The bottle tilted slowly in his hand. The last of the sake spilled across the table in a thin stream that soaked into the lacquered surface. It pooled quietly, unmistakably. A slow insult. A liquid reprimand. It did not splash. It bled.
“I will not allow a student still in training to get drunk,” he said. His voice was flat, stripped of warmth. Not angry. Worse than angry. Final. “Not when I have been generous enough to permit her a night of entertainment.”
Something inside her snapped. A coil wound too tight since the day she arrived. Since the first blow she had not been allowed to flinch from. Ten days of drills. Ten days of silence. Ten days of pain stitched into her skin and rules never explained but always punished. Ten days of never knowing if she was doing well because he only told her when she failed. Ten days of swallowing every ache, every humiliation, with no relief and no reward.
Her palms slammed against the table before she even realized she was moving. The sound cracked across the room like a gunshot. She rose halfway from her seat, the motion sharp and defiant. Her voice tore out, scraped raw from restraint.
“Then maybe you should have said that before we left the compound!” she snapped. “How the hell was I supposed to know when everyone else is drinking like it is a wedding?”
The room changed instantly. Breath seemed to vanish from it. Air turned still. Every conversation froze. Heads turned slowly, carefully. Chairs shifted. Hands slid toward weapons, not drawing yet, only resting, waiting. The silence was not empty. It was anticipation. Everyone in that room knew this kind of silence. Everyone had lived long enough to recognize the moment before something breaks.
Yoongi did not blink. He did not move.
He raised one hand.
And everything stopped.
His voice carried no volume, but it had gravity.
“Are you telling me,” he said slowly, “that I was wrong to assume Taehyung would only send someone intelligent enough to know training does not end when the sun goes down?”
Then he stood. No flourish. No threat. Only inevitability. Like the tide rolling in. Like gravity itself shifting around him.
“I do not excuse disrespect under the guise of ignorance,” he said. His words cut cleaner than a blade. “You may not yet understand what it means to belong to something greater than yourself, but you will learn what it means to respect the table you sit at.”
His eyes flicked to Eun-Jae. Then to Chi-Hun. Neither man moved. Neither breathed.
“For the rest of the night,” Yoongi said, turning back to her, his tone sharp and exact, “you will refill their glasses. To repay the insult of serving only yourself.”
He did not wait for a response. He did not look at her again.
“You.”
A waitress near the bar jumped as if struck. Her tray clattered in her hands.
“Bring her tea. Nothing else. And clean this mess.”
The girl moved immediately. No protest. No hesitation.
Yoongi walked away. Not storming. Not hurried. Simply finished. His point made. Nothing left to say.
The air shifted again in his absence. The room exhaled at last. Conversation resumed—too loud, too quick, forced. Nervous noise from people desperate to believe nothing serious had happened.
Y/N did not move. She could not. Her hands shook. Her skin burned, not only with humiliation but with something colder. Rage. Resentment. Shame. Worst of all, the hollow realization that the worst part was not what he had done to her.
It was that she had let it happen.
When Yoongi sat back beside Lynn, it was not him who looked at her.
It was Lynn.
Her smile was small. Precise. Cruel in a way that did not need teeth to draw blood.
They never spoke of it again. They didn’t need to.
Yoongi was not the kind of man who repeated himself, and Y/N was not the kind of woman who asked for wounds to be reopened. Training didn’t work that way. The lesson had been public, sharp, final. The silence that followed was the test. The message was clear.
After that, everything got colder. Sharper. Quieter.
The weeks bled together in a rhythm of pain and repetition. Every morning before the sun rose, Y/N stepped barefoot into the stone courtyard, bokken in hand, breath visible in the cold air. Her muscles ached before she began. Her fingers were raw and calloused. Her shoulders locked tight. Her back burned from the inside out.
Yoongi always appeared without sound. Gray silk draped his frame, hair tied neatly, a porcelain cup of tea in hand. He never greeted her. Never asked if she was ready. He gave one demonstration: a stance, a pivot, a strike. Then he left her to chase it. No instructions. No corrections. No praise.
Only silence.
And eyes. Always watching. From the edges. From shadows. From the corner of her vision where he lingered just long enough for her to feel it. Not seen, but tracked.
He never corrected her with words. He broke her rhythm instead. A faint frown. A raised brow. A soft clack of his own blade knocking hers out of line. Every mistake meant starting over, no matter how far she was into the sequence. No matter how tired. No matter how raw her hands had become.
He didn’t teach. He shaped. He disrupted. And he made it work.
It was a hot afternoon when she cracked. Spring clung to the air like a fever. Blossoms sagged on tired branches. Sweat slid in rivulets down her back. She was on the hundredth repetition of a basic kata, clean and practiced, almost meditative, when his voice sliced from behind her.
“You’ve gotten sloppy since returning from lunch.”
She froze for one second. It was all he needed.
Her hand tightened on the hilt. She didn’t turn. Didn’t answer. But her grip faltered. Her breath grew uneven. The stance that had been perfect a moment ago unraveled in an instant.
Of course he had been watching. Of course he never really left.
“I ran into Lynn at lunch,” Y/N said, her voice taut, held together by will alone. She didn’t explain further. She didn’t mention the way Lynn’s words had cut—soft but cruel, designed to slice without volume.
Her grip tightened until the wood groaned. Splinters bit into her skin. She didn’t loosen her hold.
Yoongi said nothing. He didn’t ask. He simply set down his tea and crossed the courtyard with that same quiet precision, deliberate and certain, without wasted motion. He moved like breath against glass. Soundless. Unshakable.
When he reached her, he took the bokken from her hands. Not with force. Not with kindness. Just decisively, as if the matter were already settled. As if her permission had never been required.
His fingers brushed hers, light and impersonal. Not comforting. Not cruel. Simply measuring damage. He turned her hand over, inspected the raw patches, the forming blister, the embedded sliver of wood at her thumb. He handled her like a craftsman checking his tools. Detached. Efficient.
“She’s jealous, I’m afraid.”
The words came casually, as if he were commenting on the weather. No bite. No warmth. Just fact.
Y/N blinked. “Jealous? Of what, my bruises?”
A flicker passed through his eyes. Amusement perhaps. Perhaps something sharper. His mouth twitched, not quite a smile.
“You haven’t figured it out yet? I thought you were supposed to be clever.”
He didn’t wait for her reply. Instead, he used a nail to lift the splinter from her skin—quick, practiced. Then he took her other hand. His thumbs pressed into old bruises along her palm and forearm, testing how far the tissue had hardened. Every movement was precise. Every touch necessary.
“She was Taehyung’s favorite before you,” he said evenly. “The only reason I ever worked with him was because she asked me to. She called it loyalty. I called it convenience. But I said yes.”
He paused just long enough for the weight to settle. Not dramatic. Just deliberate.
“Then he got bored. She returned here. And he sent you.”
Y/N didn’t flinch, but the words hit low and deep. She had no reply. She didn’t know what she was meant to feel. It wasn’t a compliment. It wasn’t a warning. It was both. It was neither.
He looked up and met her eyes.
“And now you’ve taken my attention too.”
There was no inflection in his tone. No tilt of the head. No softening smile. Only the weight of the words left hanging between them. Then he released her hands.
“You are beginning to have the hands of a samurai,” he said. “You may take the night off.”
And then, like always, he turned. Three steps away. No glance back.
But he stopped.
“Tomorrow,” he said, his back still to her, “I will join your practice.”
It should have felt like something. A victory. Recognition. A sign that she had finally crossed some invisible line. Instead it sank into her gut like stone: cold, heavy, permanent.
The next morning, the courtyard looked unchanged. Gravel neatly raked. Air still. Gray light blooming faint against the sky. But this time Yoongi was already there.
He stood beneath the cherry tree, bokken in hand, its wood darkened by years of use. He didn’t smile. He didn’t greet her.
“I will strike,” he said. “You will counter. You have until I reach you to remember the correct movement. If you fail...”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.
She set her stance. He moved.
No signal. No count. Only sudden motion. The first strike came fast and low, angled at her shoulder. She tried to shift, but too late.
The blow landed with a crack and dropped her to one knee. Pain flared down her ribs, bright and sharp. Her vision burst white at the edges. She didn’t cry out.
“Begin again,” he said.
So she did.
Over. And over. And over.
There were no drills, no warming up, no soft correction. Only his blade cutting through air, his feet silent on stone, and the sick thud of her body reacting too slow. Her shoulders screamed. Her calves cramped. Her palms ached from the grip. Her mind blurred between one motion and the next.
Yoongi gave her nothing. No feedback, no approval, not even disappointment. Only relentless pressure. He moved like a metronome with teeth, steady and ruthless. If she was off by an inch, he found it. If her balance faltered, he exploited it. Every failure reset the clock.
This was not training. It was exposure therapy. And it worked. Not in a single revelation or dramatic breakthrough, but in layers, in silence. Her body began to anticipate. Her feet stopped dragging. Her shoulder no longer ducked instinctively. The bruises still formed, but less often. Her hands stayed firm, her wrists stopped trembling, and she moved on reflex instead of thought.
Yoongi never slowed, yet cracks began to appear—not in him, but in the routine. A breath that came half a second late, a shift in weight before the strike, tiny tells that most would overlook. She did not. She kept them tucked away like cards she was not ready to play.
The change came late in the session. The heat pressed down, blossoms overhead curling in the sun. Her shirt clung to her spine and her lungs burned. She was deep into another repetition, automatic and unconscious, when Yoongi broke pattern. A sharp flick, a feint they had not practiced in more than a week. Her mind did not register it. Her body did. She pivoted and blocked, clean.
Yoongi stopped. He did not speak, did not nod, but something flickered at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile, not exactly, but close. It vanished almost immediately, sealed away behind the mask he always wore. Yet it had been there, and that—coming from Yoongi—was everything.
Something shifted between them, not in any dramatic glance or heavy moment, but in a quiet recalibration that needed no name to be real. She began watching him differently, not only reacting to his strikes but studying the seconds before. The tension in his shoulders. The draw of his breath. The way he set his weight before moving. She was reading him now, not following but predicting, feeling the current instead of bracing against it.
Without thinking, she tested him. It was not planned. Her body moved before her brain caught up, a twitch in the shoulder and a shift in her stance. She stepped in fast, blade sweeping low. It was not perfect, maybe not even wise, but it was honest. He caught it effortlessly, calm, as though he had been waiting for her to try.
That hint of a smile returned, small but unmistakable. Not approval, something more dangerous—recognition. She swung again, this time at a different angle, sharper, more deliberate. His block came quicker, and with it a subtle change in his stance, a pivot that revealed not a mistake but an invitation.
Try again.
And she did. For the next half hour they moved together, not quite sparring and not quite dancing. She pushed, he absorbed. Every inch of progress, every shard of discipline, every stubborn breath left in her body went into those exchanges. He gave her only what she earned, no more and no less. There were no corrections, no lectures, no fire. Only motion. The air between them tightened, charged with effort and silent calculation. For the first time, it did not feel like survival. It felt like progress.
But it could not last.
Yoongi shifted suddenly, swift and deceptively casual, and used a move she herself had tried earlier. A flick, a false step, something familiar that her body was not ready to counter in reverse. Her mind lagged behind, and the strike landed hard. The wooden blade slammed into her ribs with merciless precision, seizing her entire body. Her breath vanished. She fell, coughing, knees hitting gravel as heat exploded white-hot through her side. The courtyard spun.
Yoongi stood above her in silence, the bokken loose in his hand as if he had barely touched her. His breathing remained steady. His shoulders did not move. He looked almost bored.
“Very good,” he said, his voice dry as stone. “Although you would be dead if my sword had an edge. Try to remember faster tomorrow.”
No gloating. No malice. Just fact.
She forced herself upright, ribs protesting with each breath. Her vision swam, but she did not drop the sword. Her grip held—tight, shaky, but there. She had learned at least this much: pain no longer had the right to take things from her.
“Tomorrow?” she rasped.
Yoongi did not blink. “It is not even noon.”
She stared, sweat cooling against her skin, body throbbing in every place that mattered. He turned without waiting, walking with the same casual control, the blade swinging loosely at his side. One hand lifted behind him in a lazy gesture.
Follow.
So she did.
They were not heading to her room. She realized it the moment they took the east corridor. The pattern was wrong. The walls shifted to older stone, the silence heavier. She knew the layout. Taehyung had made her memorize every hall of the estate, every corner, every dead end, just in case. She had never come this far before, but she knew exactly where they were going.
Yoongi’s wing. Private. Off-limits. No one lingered there unless summoned.
At the end of the hall, he slid open a door and a wave of heat spilled out, thick with cedar and citrus and something older, like sun-warmed earth or smoke from the right kind of fire. The bath sprawled across stone as though it had grown from the earth itself. Sunken deep, carved clean, it sent steam curling into the air in long, slow threads. No marble. No gold. Only simplicity that dared anyone to call it lacking.
Yoongi stepped aside, leaving just enough room for her to pass.
“Your body is bruised. Your muscles are tight,” he said in the same even tone he used when calling a strike. “This will help.”
Not quite an offer, though it sounded like one. It carried weight, an order softened at the edges.
She looked at him. “Are you joining me?”
One brow lifted with faint amusement. “You are not interesting enough yet.”
He walked past her then, swallowed by the steam as if it belonged to him. The door slid shut behind him with a sound too soft to echo.
She stood there for a second and let the warmth reach her skin. The scent of yuzu and cedar clung to her clothes. The stone under her feet radiated quiet heat. For the first time in weeks, no one was watching.
She set the sword down.
The steam curled around her arms, climbed her spine, and softened the places that ached the most. Her ribs hummed where the strike had landed. Her shoulder blades loosened. Something deep inside her, the part that had gone tight and silent, let go. Not all at once, but a little.
Then the door slid open again.
Yoongi stepped into the steam without a word. Bare-chested, robe hanging loose at his hips, sash in one hand. His presence did not change with the space. He moved the same way he always did, with that silent, deliberate ease that made you forget you were watching something dangerous. Nothing in his posture acknowledged that she was there, standing in the doorway to his private sanctuary. It was as if her presence had already been accounted for, expected, filed neatly under inevitable.
“This is my bath,” he said, calm and even, like he was offering her a history lesson. “I thought you might appreciate something more civilized than the training hall showers.”
He folded the robe with practiced care, every motion tidy and purposeful. Not fussy, only controlled. Every crease smoothed, every corner aligned. He set it aside, then turned to the cold-water spout set into the stone wall, twisted the valve, and let the water slam against his skin.
No flinch. No breath hitch. Just the rhythmic sound of cold water hitting muscle and stone, echoing through the steam-heavy air.
She did not step forward yet. She only stood there, body worn down to the bone, every joint and bruise aching in protest. Her eyes stayed on him, though. The shape of his back. The way water sheeted off him, like even the elements could not quite stick. The stillness he carried, too perfect to be natural, too practiced to be peaceful. It should have unnerved her. Instead, it pulled at something deeper, something she did not want to name.
“Why?” she asked, keeping her voice low and steady. “Why bring me here?”
He looked over his shoulder. No smirk. No raised brow. Just a calm, clear look, as if he already knew what she was really asking.
“Consider it a reward,” he said. “You have not complained. Not once. Even when your body failed you. Or”—a faint pause sharpened the air between them—“maybe I just wanted a closer look at the strange girl who stayed, when I expected her to be gone before the week ended.”
She let out a short breath, half-scoff, half-laugh. Then peeled off her shirt. Slowly. Not to perform, only because it hurt. The fabric clung to her, damp with sweat and blood. She stripped it away piece by piece, revealing skin blotched purple and yellow, deep reds where the bruises still bloomed fresh. She did not hide them. Each one had cost her something.
“I do not think you know Taehyung very well,” she muttered, dropping the shirt onto the wooden bench behind her. “He does not exactly allow failure. I could not—”
“You could have,” Yoongi cut in. He was still not looking away. “Do not insult me by pretending you stayed because of him. That is not the woman who has been bleeding in my courtyard every morning. The last one he sent left before sundown.”
And just like that, he stepped into the bath.
No noise. No fanfare. Only water parting around him like it knew better than to resist.
“You are here because you chose to be,” he said. “Because whatever waits for you in Mexico scares you less than I do. And that is what makes you dangerous.”
The water hissed against his skin, steam rising around him. He closed his eyes and sank down to his collarbones, not to relax but to reset. Like a weapon cooling after too much use.
She followed. Slow. The heat hit her like a wall, hot enough to bite and chase breath from her lungs, but she kept going, deeper into the water until it wrapped around her aching limbs. It felt more like a purge than a relief. The bath did not comfort. It stripped.
Yoongi watched her.
Not hungrily. Not even curiously. Just like a man who knew how to read pain and wanted to see how she carried it. She felt him clock her every wince, every breath, every way she tried not to fold.
“I will admit,” he said quietly, “I did not think you would still be here the next morning. Or the one after. I kept waiting for a note. Or an empty room.”
She let her arms rest along the stone ledge, eyes half-shut, the heat working into her bones. And then, unexpectedly: “I never even thought about leaving.”
The words surprised her more than they surprised him. She had not realized it until she said it. She had given herself no options, no way out. Just one road forward, no matter the bruises it collected.
“It was not fear,” she added after a pause. “Not of Taehyung. Not of you. It was just…” Her voice cracked slightly, not with emotion but with exhaustion. “I could not fail. I could not be ordinary.”
Yoongi did not nod. He did not soften. But something passed through his gaze, quick and subtle. A quiet shift behind the eyes. Recognition. Like two hunters finally realizing they were not hunting each other. They were the same species.
He said nothing for a long moment. Then:
“A shame,” he murmured, “that you may someday be my equal.”
The words landed like a quiet blow. Not praise. Not warning. Just a truth, delivered with all the weight of something final.
She did not speak. She only let it settle in the place she kept the things that mattered most: the bruises, the insults, the small, hard reasons she got back up every morning.
By the time she had found the shape of a response, he was already moving again.
He stepped through the water, steam curling around his body, and stopped just beside her. Not close enough to touch, not yet, but close enough that she could feel him.
His hand came to rest on her shoulder. Measured. Still.
“Turn around,” he said.
She did, but not without asking, sharp and flat, “Why?”
His grip did not tighten. His voice did not shift.
“Your body flinches when you move, when you are touched. You are locking up from pain. Let me help.”
No invitation. No implication. Just fact.
So she turned, braced her forearms on the stone edge, and exposed her back to him. It should have felt like surrender. It did not. It felt like a quiet kind of trust.
His hands started at her shoulders. Not soft. Not hard. Just practiced. He found the bruises first, the places where muscle had tightened around injury, and adjusted his touch accordingly. His thumbs moved with clinical precision, pressing into old tension and coaxing it loose.
He did not speak. Neither did she.
Steam thickened around them, clinging to skin, softening the sharp edges of pain. Her body stopped resisting. The ache remained, but the weight of it changed. It no longer felt like failure. Only effort.
And Yoongi’s hands stayed steady, never drifting, never teasing. Just working. Like she was a map he already knew by heart. Like she was not broken. Only rebuilding.
For the first time in a long time, she let herself feel that. Not comfort, but something close.
His fingers brushed the curve of her breast.
Her entire body locked. Not from fear, not entirely, but from something else. Something older, older than instinct. Her spine jerked upright, colliding softly with his chest behind her. The bath seemed smaller. The air heavier. Steam closed in like a held breath.
She did not move again. Neither did he.
They only held there, suspended, as if the moment might break if either of them did more than breathe.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was low. Measured. Strained but steady.
He exhaled through his nose, slow and quiet, deliberate.
“I think you already know.”
No heat. No teasing. No playacting. Only honesty, dropped between them like a stone in still water.
“If you want me to stop,” he said, even softer now, “say it. I will not touch anything not freely given.”
Her breath faltered. Not at his words, but at the certainty in them. So calm. So absolute. The steam swirled between them, thick and clinging. She felt it against her face, in her lungs, wrapping around her hesitation like rope. Her voice cracked without meaning to.
“Taehyung…”
His name came out as a whisper, but Yoongi’s response didn’t miss a beat.
“Taehyung,” he said flatly, not as a question but as an answer, “would have had someone else in his bed before your plane even landed.”
Not cruel. Not bitter. Just fact.
And the worst part was that she knew he was right.
She didn’t speak again. She couldn’t. The words weren’t there. Only the heat, the ache, the tension that had never fully left her since day one. All that training, all that silence, all that held-in rage coiled too tight for too long.
Yoongi leaned in. Not close enough to crowd her, but enough that she could feel his breath at the base of her neck. Not a move, a signal. A question.
“Don’t pretend you haven’t been watching me,” he murmured. “Don’t pretend Lynn didn’t have reason to be angry. I told you she was jealous. What did you think she was jealous of?”
His hand slid across her stomach. Slow. Measured. Not pressing. Not assuming. Just there. Still waiting. Still giving her the choice.
“Say the word,” he said again, low and level. “And I’ll stop.”
She should have said it. She should have shut it down. Draw the line. Protect herself. Retreat behind the layers she had built to survive this world.
But she didn’t.
Her eyes closed. Not out of surrender, but something deeper. Something sharper. Not submission. Control.
A sound left her, quiet and raw, like breath torn from somewhere near her ribs, as his fingers moved lower between her thighs.
It wasn’t about lust. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even comfort. It was defiance. Against the pain. Against the bruises. Against every silent rule she had bent to. This was her crossing a line no one else would define for her.
She didn’t melt into his touch. She stepped into it. Not for him. For herself.
For the first time in too long, the choice was hers. And she took it.
Later, years later, she would remember the bath. The heat. The weight of his hand. The sound of his breath against her ear. Not with regret. Never with regret.
She remembered because it mattered. And in her world, memory did not fade. It sharpened. It cut cleaner the further away it got.
That night, when the list was finally made, when the names were written in ink instead of blood, she started at the beginning. Not with Taehyung. With Yoongi. That was why he had to be first. Not because he was the worst, but because he was the closest.
The charcoal slipped from her fingers, leaving a faint black streak on the desk. She didn’t pick it up. She just stared at the sketch.
Yoongi’s face stared back. Too precise. The downturn of his mouth. The stillness behind his eyes. That composure she knew better than anyone.
She hated how well she remembered. Because remembering meant the wound was still open. And an open wound was still a weapon.
Back then, she had held it for his approval. Now, she held it for blood.
She stood slowly, vertebrae popping like worn links in a rusted chain. Her spine stretched, uncoiling with the reluctant grace of something long kept in a cage. Her body did not feel like hers anymore. It did not even feel human. It felt sculpted, chiseled by pain, and honed by something colder than purpose. Something sharper than memory.
A knock shattered the stillness. She flinched instinctively, muscles wired tight from too many surprises that came with blood on the other side.
“Y/N, can I come in?”
Hoseok. His voice, always a balm, softened her edges just enough to remind her she had not been born with claws. Around him, she could almost remember being someone else. Someone less dangerous, more whole. She exhaled, slow and careful.
“Yes.”
The door creaked, ancient wood straining against metal hinges. He didn’t step inside. There wasn’t enough room for two people to stand without touching, and they had never been the kind to brush shoulders casually. She moved to the bed. He took her seat without hesitation. His eyes flicked to the drawing on the table, unimpressed.
“You’ve been thinking,” he said, tone dry.
Y/N let out a low, humorless chuckle. “I’m always thinking, ahjussi.”
Hoseok’s face contorted into that familiar grimace. She had always liked getting under his skin.
“I told you not to call me that.”
“No,” she replied, tilting her head, “you asked me not to.”
That made him laugh, the real kind. The kind that cracked open the air and let warmth bleed through. Rare and reckless. She joined him, not meaning to, but needing to.
Then the moment snapped shut like a trap.
“You hide behind words, Mamba,” he said, gaze locking onto hers with that old soldier’s weight. “But we both know you don’t say much of anything at all.”
The laughter died like a match in water. Hoseok never wasted time on half-truths.
“You’ve been in here two hours,” he added, “and all you’ve got is a rat’s face.”
She had no defense. He wasn’t wrong.
“Min Yoongi,” he said, voice low and flint-hard, “is your enemy now. Don’t forget that.”
She nodded once. A stiff, mechanical gesture. She knew it. She knew it in her bones. But knowing and acting were oceans apart. Yoongi had been her friend. He had also tried to kill her. The betrayal lived under her skin like a buried shard of glass. It didn’t make sense. Maybe it never would. But sense was not a prerequisite for vengeance.
He helped murder her daughter. He beat her while she was still carrying that fragile, innocent life. He killed Tommy. He opened the chapel door. He didn’t stop Taehyung when the gun was raised. He didn’t flinch when her world was reduced to ash. He chose his place at the table over her life. Over all their lives.
And she would be the one to remove him from it.
Because whatever they had once been, Yoongi had made sure they could never be that again.
“Are you listening?”
She blinked, dragged out of the spiral. Hoseok watched her through the hazy yellow light, and in that dull glow he looked younger. Sadder. Like something in him was wearing thin.
“No,” she said, honest and small. “Not as well as I should be.”
“Are you afraid?”
“No,” she whispered. “I just… can’t understand how any of this happened.”
The silence that followed made the room feel smaller.
“I want to tell you a story,” Hoseok said quietly. His voice slipped into Korean like a man retreating into the safety of his own skin. English was too sharp for grief. Too foreign to carry what lived in his chest. “Not because I think it will help. But because maybe you’ll do better than I did.”
He turned the chair around and straddled it, arms resting across the back. His robe fell open at the knee, revealing loose black cotton pants worn thin by years of habit. He looked almost relaxed, but his eyes betrayed him—stormy, hollowed out by memory.
“I met Taehyung when he was twenty-four. I was almost thirty. I had been making swords since I was a boy. My grandfather raised me with a hammer in one hand and a whetstone in the other. That was all I had. That was all I knew. That was how Kim Taehyung found me.”
His voice carried the rhythm of something rehearsed too often in silence. Not regret anymore, just the ghost of it, dulled with age.
“He was magnetic,” Hoseok went on. “Fast. Wild. Smarter than he let on. We started sparring in the alleys of Okinawa. Half-serious at first, then real. He was the only man I could never beat easily, and when I did, it was never by much. We bled together more than once. I trusted him with everything.”
He leaned forward, fingers drumming against the desk.
“Korea was behind me. My father. His belt. The silence after my mother died. I left it all to rot. But Sookie came with me. She was seventeen. Still called me oppa like she was five. Still believed the world was fair if you worked hard enough. My baby sister.”
His voice caught on that word, and he cleared his throat.
“She was stubborn. Mom named her after some American girl she saw on TV once. Sookie. Sounded dumb to me then. Still does. But it stuck. Everything stuck to her—smiles, people, hope. When she met Taehyung, I knew she was in love with him before he even looked her way.”
The bulb overhead flickered, but Hoseok’s face didn’t change.
“I told him to leave her alone. He promised. For a while, he kept it. But she wore him down, and he let himself be worn. A year later, he asked for my blessing. I gave it. I told myself he would never hurt her. He was loyal. I thought maybe he’d be family.”
Y/N’s voice came out soft as breath. “What changed?”
“She almost died,” Hoseok said flatly. “Ambush outside the noodle shop. Someone we knew. Someone Taehyung had history with. She was so scared after that. Told me she wanted out. Out of Japan. Out of him. I thought that would be it. She left with me. We went home to Gwangju. Bought a little house. She opened this kimbap shop. I fixed the walls and built shelves. She would hum while she cooked.”
His eyes drifted, unfocused. “That was the last time life felt small enough to hold.”
He touched his lower lip, as if searching for the taste of that last good meal with her, and maybe he couldn’t find it.
“Moon-Byul came into our lives by accident. Street kid with quick hands. One day he stopped a couple of punks from robbing the shop. I watched from the attic window. He had no blade, just a broken mop handle, and I thought—this kid might actually be something. I took him in. Trained him. We forged swords together. The attic became sacred.”
Y/N stayed motionless, her breath shallow.
“Then Taehyung came back. And Sookie let him in without hesitation. Just smiled and said he missed her. As if it were that simple. As if he hadn’t dragged violence to her door the first time. I saw it then. The rot. The way he turned everything around him to ash.”
His voice hardened.
“Two weeks later the Italians came looking for him. He had crossed someone. Money, territory, who knows. Instead of warning me, instead of protecting her, he took her to bed. He let her wake up to gunfire.”
The silence was suffocating.
“They stormed the house just after sunrise. Moon and I held the attic with whatever we had. Sookie tried to run. They gunned her down in the kitchen. Shot six times. She died on the tile, blood in her teeth. I slipped in it trying to reach her.”
Y/N’s hand trembled.
“And Taehyung? He killed everyone. Efficient. Beautiful, even. Like a painting. Then he looked at me, calm as ever, and said, ‘At least she went quick, Hobi-ah.’”
Hoseok stared at the floor. “That was when I knew. He wasn’t human anymore. And maybe neither was I.”
The breath he drew rattled like something breaking.
“I let him kill with my steel. I made those blades. I admired him. Protected him. And I never cared what it cost until it was my doorstep he brought death to. Until it was my sister.”
Y/N’s eyes glistened, but she didn’t look away.
“I challenged him that night. We fought in the dark, just like the old days. I won. First clean strike to the thigh. Second to the ribs. He bled all over my floor. And when I stood over him, blade at his throat, I couldn’t finish it. I let him crawl away. I watched him limp down my hallway. I have never seen him since.”
The silence that followed was a grave too big for words.
“And that,” Hoseok said, raw now, “is why I don’t make swords anymore. That’s why I don’t call him brother. And that’s why I’m telling you this. Not for pity, but so you understand what it costs when you wait too long to cut the monster’s head off.”
He looked at her then, truly looked. Not at the girl who had first stumbled through his door bloodied and silent, but at the woman who had survived everything after. The woman with a sword across her thighs and fire behind her teeth.
“Don’t wait like I did,” he said.
The air cracked with it. She shut her mouth on whatever retort crawled up her throat, teeth grinding until her jaw ached. He didn’t let her look away.
“If I had killed him in Okinawa like I wanted to,” Hoseok said, each word deliberate, “Sookie would still be alive. And you would not be this shadow of yourself, so full of rage and resentment. You would be in Alabama. Probably drunk in some dive bar, bragging about the time you stabbed a man with a pool stick in El Paso for grabbing you. You would have gone home. You never would have crossed paths with a man in a black button-down who thought ordering you a margarita was enough to own you. You would have had a life, Y/N. One worth fighting for. One worth keeping.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his shoulders sagging under the weight of the words he had carried too long. His voice was hoarse, not from shouting but from truth. Sharp and raw as steel dragged across bone.
“But instead,” he said slowly, “you’re here. Sitting in the wreckage of a life you never asked for. Caught in the wake of a man who turned your death into currency. Who stood there, watching, while four animals stomped your pregnant belly. A man who hates you, and can’t help but feel contempt towards you.”
His voice cracked at the edge, but he did not break. He would not, not in front of her. Not when she was holding it all in just like he used to.
She didn’t respond. She didn’t have to. Her silence was thick with memory and rage.
“They all deserve to die,” Hoseok said, quieter now, but no less cutting. “Yoongi. Taehyung. The whole pack of them. Maybe even us. We are not innocent, Mamba. We stopped being that a long time ago. We are sharpened edges and bad decisions. We are the end result of what happens when you trade mercy for survival. You and me? We are the kind of people others have to survive.”
He glanced up at her. His eyes were softer now. Something fatherly. Something fraternal. Something fierce.
“You remind me of Sookie. Not because you are gentle. You are not. But because you feel everything too deeply. You wear your wounds on the inside, and you carry them like armor. That is what will kill you, if you are not careful.”
A beat passed. Then another.
“If you want to live,” he said, “you need to stop pretending you are prey. You made your choice already. Stop circling it. Stand in it.”
Y/N didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. She moved like something uncoiling. The sword on her lap shifted as she leaned forward, the metal catching the light as if it recognized her now. As if it knew where it was going.
Hoseok saw it. And he stopped her, gently.
“I have something for you,” he said.
He rose and left without another word, his steps quiet but sure. She sat in the hush he left behind, breath slow, mind loud. The sketch of Yoongi stared up at her again—unfinished, but not incomplete. His face was already a tombstone.
When Hoseok returned, he was holding something wrapped in dark crimson cloth. It looked ceremonial. Heavy. He placed it on the desk, then unwrapped it as though unveiling a relic.
It was a sword. Not one for battle. Not meant for war.
It was beautiful. Clean. Silent.
She didn’t touch it.
“What is this?” she asked.
“My final blade,” he said. “The last one I ever forged, except for yours. I made it for Sookie. She never got the chance to hold it.”
Her chest tightened. Her hands clenched in her lap.
It was unlike the weapons she was used to. No bloodthirst in its shape. No vanity in its lines. It was simple. Pure. A shikomizue, disguised in feminine wood, sakura etched into the handle with the gentleness of a promise.
“Why give this to me?” she asked, voice barely a whisper.
Hoseok’s expression softened in a way that nearly broke her.
“Because it was made for someone I loved,” he said, “and now it belongs to someone who knows what it means not to use it.”
She picked it up slowly, reverently. It did not hum like her own sword. It did not beg for violence. It sat in her hands like something sacred.
“I won’t use it,” she said. “Not ever.”
“I know,” he replied. “That’s why I am giving it to you.”
She set it aside, her eyes burning.
“Thank you, Hoseok.”
He nodded once, then looked at her with that same worn, protective weight.
“You will be outnumbered.”
“I know.”
“You will probably die.”
“I know.”
He studied her face. Saw the steel. The sorrow. The storm.
“You will need to move like a shadow,” he said. “Yoongi’s men will feel you coming. If they do—”
“If they get wind I am coming,” she said, “that compound will be crawling with bodies before I even cross the street.”
“And do you want to take on all eighty-eight of the Crazy 88 alone?”
“No,” she said. “That would be less than ideal.”
Hoseok let out a short breath that landed somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. Something almost human passed through his expression. Soft. Worn. Vulnerable in a way she had not seen in years.
“I’m going to miss you.”
She looked toward the door. Her shadow stretched long across the floor, sword glinting at her side. Her stomach clenched. She hadn’t eaten. Couldn’t. Hoseok had tried earlier, but nerves had shredded her appetite.
“I’ll come back,” she said.
“I hope so.”
She turned to go. The moment tasted final.
“Y/N.”
She stopped.
“If you find him, and you hesitate, don’t wait for a second chance.”
She looked back at him, steady.
“There won’t be one.”
No words. She walked out, sword in hand, steps steady. She made it to the kitchen before he caught up to her, his hand landing gentle on her shoulder.
“Put the sword away,” he murmured. “I’ll bring you some soup. You can eat in your room tonight.”
She turned her head slightly. “Will you eat with me?”
He nodded. “If you’d like me to.”
“I would.”
He didn’t speak again, just disappeared around the corner. And for a moment the house was quiet, and warm, and almost kind.
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chimcess ¡ 6 days ago
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⚔︎ Chapter Four: The Man from Gwangju Pairing: Taehyung x Reader Other Tags: Assassin!Taehyung, Assassin!Reader, Assassin!Jimin, Dad!Jimin, Assassin!Yoongi, Gang Leader!Yoongi, Assassin!Namjoon, Swordmaster!Hoseok, Chef!Hoseok, Pimp!Seokjin Genre: Assassins! AU, Exes!AU, Lovers to Enemies, Action, Comedy, Suspense, Martial Arts, Drama, Thriller, Romance (if you squint), Heavy Angst, Violence, 18+ only Word Count: 23.9k+ Summary: A former assassin awakens from a four-year coma after her ex-lover Taehyung tries to kill her on her wedding day. Driven by revenge for the loss of her unborn child and stolen life, she creates a hit list and embarks on a ruthless mission to take down everyone responsible. Warnings: Violent thoughts, implied miscarriage, flashbacks, PTSD, mental illness, guns, other weapons, traveling, arguing, bickering, use of katana, this is a pretty tame chapter all things considered, not many warnings for this one, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: I apologize if I miswrote any of the Korean I used in this chapter. I don't speak fluently and relying on Google can be difficult.
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Horizon City was somehow worse than El Paso. The sky pressed down like a lid on a pot, trapping the heat until the air itself felt heavy. No clouds. No breeze. Just that dry, punishing stillness that made the world feel abandoned. The pavement shimmered. Buildings sagged under the weight of it, their paint bleached to bone, their windows hot to the touch.
Down the center of it came the Pussy Wagon, too loud, too yellow, a smear of wrong color on a sunburned road. It didn’t belong here, not among rusted trucks and dead air conditioners. Heads turned. Conversations stopped. A woman at the pump froze mid-swipe, squinting like she wasn’t sure if she was awake. No one spoke. In Horizon, you didn’t ask questions unless you wanted answers that ruined sleep.
She didn’t care who stared.
Her bare feet pressed into the warped rubber floorboard, soles black from gas station dirt and bathroom tile. Every joint ached, stiff from too much stillness. Her spine creaked when she shifted. Muscles tugged like they’d forgotten their work. But it was pain she trusted, the kind that proved she was awake.
She turned off the main drag and coasted into a strip mall that had been dying for years but refused to finish. Half the shops were empty, windows papered with curling FOR LEASE signs. The others hung on out of spite. One, TexStyle Western Wear, flickered under a crooked sign. She killed the engine and let the truck tick and groan like it resented being roused.
The pavement nearly blistered her feet. She staggered once, steadied, then limped toward the storefront. Her hips screamed, her legs protested, but they worked. She didn’t look back.
Inside, the temperature dropped hard. The AC blasted chemical cold, making her skin prickle. Lights buzzed overhead, too bright, too dim, one always flickering. Country music bled from a speaker behind the counter, slow and stitched together with heartbreak. She knew the tune. She knew the kind of place this was: the kind where you could walk in dripping blood or ghosts and no one cared, as long as you didn’t yell or steal.
Her scrubs rustled as she moved through racks, baggy and stained, reminders of a place she wouldn’t name. She trailed her fingers along the denim, grounding herself. Jeans. A tank top. A jacket lined with shearling she didn’t need but wanted anyway, something to hide behind. Boots under the clearance rack: red leather, white stars dulled to cream. She pulled them on, breath catching at the pain in her thighs, but when she stood, they fit.
At the register, she dropped Buck’s damp bills on the counter. The clerk didn’t look twice. Just bagged her scrubs like trash.
Outside, the sun hadn’t softened. Her boots struck the pavement sharp as punctuation. She still ached, but she didn’t limp.
The truck’s interior hit her like a furnace. Metallic heat, vinyl, old fuel. The dashboard cracked, the rearview crooked, the windshield spiderwebbed. Her reflection blurred in broken glass, and she let it. She gripped the wheel, palms sticky. For a moment she only sat, list forming in her head, incomplete but enough. One more stop before a nameless motel.
She turned the key. The engine coughed, then rumbled alive, low and angry, a sound she was starting to mistake for comfort. Gravel spit behind her as she peeled out, Horizon City sliding by in the same monotony of sun and collapse.
The next place barely qualified as a department store: a sun-bleached block shouting about bargains to an empty lot. Something fried, chicken maybe, stank through the heat. She parked far from the door. Her legs still felt untrustworthy, but she needed to walk. Make them remember.
Inside, the cold slapped her. Too bright, too sterile, smelling of bleach and melted candy. The place buzzed with noise: screaming kids, arguing parents, a tantrum echoing from toys. She kept her eyes forward. People looked. She felt it, half-second glances sliding over scars and scuffed boots. She didn’t care.
She picked up a basket and drifted to the camping aisle. The shelves were thin, but she found what she needed. A folding shovel, its handle thick and heavy like a weapon. A short-handled pickaxe with a fiberglass grip slick under her palm. A flashlight that looked sturdy enough to swing. Waterproof matches in a bright orange case. And a map of Texas, worn soft at the folds, stained with someone else’s fingerprints. She ran her thumb over the crease before dropping it into the basket. She’d be the last to touch it.
She passed the clearance bins without slowing: Father’s Day mugs, novelty socks, foam can holders with jokes no one ever laughed at. Junk for people she didn’t know. Junk for people who weren’t her. In stationery, she stopped just long enough to grab a plain black notebook and a pack of felt pens.
The basket was filling, too heavy. She set it down and reached for another, the metal frame cool and rough, already rusting at the welds. This one she filled faster, almost frantic. Apricot shampoo and the matching conditioner. A plain white bar of soap, unscented. A bag of cheap pink razors. A loofah she didn’t bother to look at. Deodorant. Face wash. Lotion. Each item clattered against the others, no pause between them. She didn’t want to smell like blood anymore, or sweat, or antiseptic. She wanted the hospital scrubbed off her, layer by layer. She wanted her body back, her skin hers again.
Across the aisle, glass jars lined the shelves, full of bath salts in candy colors. Bubble bath bottles in bright, desperate packaging. A SALE sign shouted promises no one believed. She hadn’t planned to stop, but her feet slowed, drawn by a pull she hated. A scent she didn’t want but couldn’t shake.
An older woman was already there. White hair twisted into a bun, movements slow, deliberate, elegant. She opened jars one by one, breathing each in carefully, gently, as though the act itself was sacred. Y/N didn’t look at her. She just reached for the nearest jar and twisted it open.
Lavender.
The smell hit hard. Her stomach flipped. Her chest locked tight. She was back under hospital lights, antiseptic sharp in the air. IV bags swaying. Monitors chirping in steady beeps. Footsteps soft against tile. A cool hand brushing her hair while a voice whispered a lie: You’re going to be okay.
She snapped the lid closed and shoved the jar back like it had burned her.
Her hand shot out for another, no thought, no reading the label. She breathed deep. Citrus. Tropical. Artificial. But it worked. It cut through the memory, broke it apart. She dropped the jar into her basket.
The next bottle she grabbed was cracked, label peeling, its cap leaking a sticky line down the side. Vanilla, it claimed. She didn’t care. It wasn’t lavender.
At the register, she dumped both baskets onto the belt without ceremony. Her mind spun in jagged circles: Taehyung’s reflection in a rearview mirror, the clean white of hospital sheets, Sam Wallace’s cologne drifting in the heat of summer, the silence of her mother’s kitchen. And beneath it all, always there, the one memory that refused to wash out: her father.
The cashier looked barely old enough to work, hoodie strings chewed thin, nails chipped, one earbud still in. She didn’t speak. Just scanned.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Plastic bags crinkled as they filled. Lavender still clung to Y/N’s hands, her cuticles, her collar, her breath. And then, soft as a whisper in the dark, she heard it: Our Father, who art in heaven…
“Your total is thirty-two seventy-one.”
The voice cut through. She blinked, counted out the money, slid it across. The girl gave her change and the receipt without looking up.
“Have a good one,” she mumbled.
Y/N’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. She studied the girl’s face, saw the dull shadow of apathy in her eyes.
“You too,” she said, her own voice rough, low, like it had clawed its way up from somewhere deep.
She gathered her bags, two in one hand, the third looped over her wrist, and walked for the exit. The automatic doors opened with a hiss, like the store was exhaling her into the heat.
The Pussy Wagon waited at the edge of the lot, its paint so bright it looked like it might hum in the sun. Red flames curled down the sides, shimmering just enough in the heat to look alive. It didn’t look fast. It didn’t look mean. It looked like a mistake someone hadn’t lived down. She didn’t care. She kept walking, boots heavy against the asphalt, bags swinging like pendulums against her knees. Her spine throbbed. Her legs burned. The sun bore down like it wanted to erase her. She kept going.
The truck hit her like a furnace when she opened the door: stale air, rubber, sun-baked vinyl, the faint stink of sweat that wasn’t hers. She didn’t flinch. She cranked the window down halfway, tossed a bag onto the passenger seat, and climbed in. The vinyl clung to her thighs. She turned the key. The engine coughed, sputtered, then growled alive. Reluctant, but steady. It always caught.
She pulled out slow. Tires groaned on the blacktop. Horizon City slid past in layers of heat: fast food joints with sun-bleached signs, payday loan offices in buildings yellowed with age, gas stations with broken pumps, liquor stores called EZ Mart and Last Stop. Dust. Concrete. The occasional palm tree, warped and brittle under the sun, too stubborn to fall but long past thriving.
She didn’t need to look twice. She knew this town. She’d lived in three just like it. She’d died in one.
When the storefronts thinned, she turned onto a cracked lot overrun with crabgrass and potholes. At the far end squatted a two-story motel that looked abandoned mid-construction. Stucco walls blistered, paint curling in sheets, rust bleeding from the windows. Above the office, a crooked neon sign buzzed: The Texican. The “i” blinked like it was losing the fight.
She parked beneath the second-floor walkway, under Room 212. The blinds were shut, but one slat bent outward like a broken tooth. She stared for a beat, then shifted her weight, grabbed her bags, and stepped out.
The lobby smelled of mildew and old smoke. The air felt stale, sealed in too long. A ceiling fan turned slow, clicking each time its blade passed the same rusted edge. The desk at the back looked like it had been rescued from a junkyard. Behind it, a man slouched low in his chair, tank top gray with sweat, a serpent tattoo curling down his arm. His eyes were on a screen.
When he finally looked up, his gaze crawled over her: boots, thighs, waist, lingering where it shouldn’t. Her jaw tightened, but she didn’t blink. She pulled out a roll of bills and dropped it on the counter.
He dragged it close with two yellowed nails. “Night or week?” His voice was flat, dry, like gravel at the bottom of a well.
“Night.”
He grunted, slid her a keycard, and dropped his gaze again. No greeting. No smile. Exactly what she wanted.
She took the key and left.
The stairwell creaked under her weight. The rail was rough, flaking paint into her palm. Each step made her legs ache, tendons stiff, balance not yet fully hers. The building leaned with age, and the stairs tilted uneven.
When she reached the second floor, Room 212 waited. The numbers on the door sagged, one screw half out, the wood around the lock chipped where years of hands had missed their mark. Paint was smudged with failed attempts. She slid the card through. The reader gave a faint, uncertain beep, followed by the click of the lock: a sound sharp and organic, like a joint slipping from its socket.
She stood for a moment, hand hovering over the handle, the heat pressing into her shoulders, sweat sliding down her spine. Then she turned it and pushed inside.
The smell met her first. Not the acrid bite of fresh smoke, but the stale kind, decades old, soaked deep into carpet, curtains, drywall. It was a yellowed stench, baked permanent. Underneath it sat something sour and sharp: mildew, failed cleaning agents, an aftertaste of effort without success. The air felt stagnant, heavy, as if it hadn’t moved in years.
She closed the door behind her, let the deadbolt snap home, and slid the chain across with a thin metallic scrape. A chair in the corner caught her eye: stubby, mismatched, its upholstery faded to some indefinable shade. She dragged it under the knob, jamming it in place. It wouldn’t stop anyone who truly wanted in, but it was a line drawn. A gesture of refusal.
The room itself looked scavenged. Curtains drooped from bent hooks, corners sun-bleached uneven. The light that slipped past them split the bed in orange streaks, late sunlight carving the space apart. The carpet near the door was bald and sticky, its color long since lost to grime. Nothing matched. The nightstand sat too low, its lamp too tall, casting warped shadows up the wall. The desk was scarred with rings and burns, the ghosts of cups and cigarettes. The bedspread screamed in paisleys of red and green, loud and ugly enough to distract from the rest.
She dropped her bags by the mattress and stood still, listening to the silence press in. The wall unit stuttered to life, blasting air that smelled of dust and freon. Not clean, but colder. For the first time all day, she didn’t feel watched.
The bathroom light buzzed on with a flick. The bulb flickered, then held. The mirror above the sink was clouded, corners warped where the silver backing had rotted away. Her reflection returned in fragments, her face shifted, imperfect, unfamiliar.
The faucet groaned before giving up a stuttering flow. Rust-tinged water ran a few seconds before clearing. Heat came quickly, fogging the mirror, filling the small room with steam that climbed the walls and clung to her skin.
She opened the jar of bath salts, tipped two scoops into the tub. They dissolved with a hiss, releasing a softness that felt like it belonged to another life. She poured in the bubble bath, slow, steady, watching it curl through the rising water like melted gold. The white bar of soap she left on the edge, still wrapped, waiting.
Her clothes came off piece by piece, sticking to her skin like second layers. Shirt. Jeans. Damp underwear. She peeled them free and stood in the fog. The mirror caught her in fragments again: shoulder, waist, ribs. Bruises bloomed faintly along her sides, yellow-green fading into skin. Her stomach flat but hollow, her hips jutting sharp. The scar at her abdomen still pink and raised. She didn’t linger. She already knew.
One hand steady on the tile, she stepped into the tub. The heat bit her ankles, climbed her calves, forced a gasp from her throat. Still, she sank down, slow, deliberate, until the water closed around her shoulders and she was folded in on herself, knees tucked, arms looped tight. Steam wrapped her, heavy and close.
She let herself breathe.
The tropical scent lingered, cloying but gentle. Bubbles clung to the surface, catching the light in fragile sheens. Her skin burned, then loosened. Muscles unwound: jaw, neck, spine. For a moment, it felt almost like safety. Almost like being held.
The first sob tore out raw, deeper than her throat, violent as a cough. Another followed. Then another. She pressed her forehead to her knees, fingers digging into her shins, and tried to choke them back. Useless. Her body shook, her breath broke apart. She didn’t scream; there was no air for it. But she wept, bone-deep, every muscle wracked. Her ribs ached, her throat stung.
She wept for the baby she never held, gone before its first breath. For the man who promised to stay, whose blood had marked her hands and her dress and the altar floor. For the hospital bed, for the machines that never went quiet, for the fluorescent light that never dimmed. For every woman who pressed a hand to a belly still full. For every picture never taken, every name never whispered.
She wept for herself. For the years locked away. For her voice forgotten. For the silence that no one noticed.
Eventually her body emptied out. The sobs thinned to shudders, then silence. She sat in the cooling water, bubbles thinning, breath still uneven. Her arms uncoiled. The lavender clung. The bruises showed. The scar glistened.
Drip. Drip. Drip. The faucet tapped against porcelain. The fan above crackled softly, struggling on. Beyond the wall, the air conditioner rattled in fits, wheezing like it had something to prove. A breeze nudged the curtain against the sill, a tap-tap-tap in an accidental rhythm.
She reached for the soap.
It was motel standard, wrapped in stiff waxed paper that crackled as she peeled it open. Plain. White. The word SOAP stamped across in faded block letters, nothing more. She lathered it slow, the foam thick in her palms, and began.
Arms first, shoulder to wrist. Then chest. Then neck. Back to shoulders again, where tension clung deepest. Her jaw, careful. Her stomach, softer, her hand pausing at the scar as though in apology. Her legs, her feet, her fingers, behind her ears. Nothing frantic. Just deliberate, steady strokes, scraping memory away piece by piece.
The water changed, subtly at first. Soap film clouded the surface, swirling. Then faint streaks rose, pinkish, floating near her thighs. Tiny cuts reopened by heat. Or maybe old wounds, still not ready to close.
She picked up the apricot shampoo and snapped the cap open. The scent hit fast: sweet, bright, almost cheerful. Out of place in a room like this, but she let it in anyway. She poured a slick mound into her palm and worked it through her scalp, once, then again. On the third wash she slowed, fingers tracing circles, nails dragging lightly against her skin. It was no longer about cleaning. It was about feeling. Her own hand. Her own body. Her own presence. For a moment she wasn’t thinking about hospitals or sirens or the weight of what came next. Just herself.
Her hair drifted in strands around her, clinging to shoulders and arms, spreading across the water’s surface like ink in clear glass. Every small movement sent ripples over her collarbones. She moved carefully, hardly disturbing the surface.
By the time she rinsed, the bathwater had thickened with what she’d carried in: suds, oil, dirt, faint streaks of blood. Stray hairs, flecks of skin, things she didn’t bother to name. A film skated across the top, swirling quietly every time she exhaled.
She sat in it, arms locked around her knees, chin pressed down. The steam was fading now, air cooling just enough to raise goosebumps along her arms. The mirror across the room stayed fogged. The weight of the day pressed into her spine, her knees, her lungs. Still she didn’t move. Stillness was the point: the kind that emptied you without ceremony.
Her hand found the drain. She pulled.
At first it was a soft slurp. Then stronger, a steady pull. The water swirled around her body like it was trying to take its time saying goodbye. It licked her thighs, curved around her ribs, slid past her arms, then dropped in spirals. The drain swallowed it all without protest: the soap, the oil, the old blood, the pieces of herself she no longer wanted.
She stayed until only a thin puddle remained, circling once, twice, before vanishing with a hollow gurgle. Silence filled the space it left behind.
She pressed her palms against the rim of the tub. Cold now, slick with condensation. She welcomed the sting in her hands. Took a sharp breath, let it root her, then pushed herself upright.
Her legs trembled on the rise. Her arms shook with the effort. Joints complained. Muscles felt wrong, unfamiliar. But she kept moving, slow, steady, until she was standing.
Water traced down her skin in patient rivulets, dripping from her spine, elbows, fingertips. Each drop left its mark before disappearing into the porcelain. The steam had mostly lifted, retreating into the vent or curling beneath the door, leaving only faint streaks across the mirror.
She reached for the towel.
It was motel-issue, stiff, frayed at the edges, faintly sour with detergent and bleach. She dragged it over herself in blunt swipes. No ritual, no tenderness. Just the act of removing water from skin. Left arm, right. Shoulders. Legs. Stomach. The towel caught on raw patches where she’d scrubbed too hard, lit sparks under her skin, but she didn’t flinch.
Barefoot, she stepped out onto the motel carpet. It scratched at her heels like someone else’s memory, old and unpleasant. The room felt thinner than it had before the bath. The air sharper, like it had shifted in her absence.
Her clothes waited in a neat stack. She pulled on the jeans one leg at a time, denim dragging over fresh skin. They caught once on a healing scrape; she winced, then yanked them higher, cinching the belt until the pressure pressed her steady. The tank top next, damp fabric clinging across her ribs. Then the jacket, heavy, familiar, already too warm but necessary. Not for comfort. For armor.
She didn’t look at the bathroom mirror.
On the bed’s edge she bent forward, boots at her feet. She tugged one on, then the other, hands shaking. Not from nerves, but from exhaustion threaded deep, the kind that lived in marrow. The right slid in easy, a solid thump. The left resisted, ankle stiff, toes fighting the fit. She wriggled, yanked, coaxed it until it gave with a final snap. She stood.
The floor felt steadier than it had last night. That was enough.
At the sink, the mirror still wore a fogged film. She wiped it once with her palm, dragging away condensation. Her reflection stared back fractured through hairline cracks, the glass tinted yellow with time. It was her, but broken into pieces.
She looked older than she remembered. Cheeks hollowed, bones sharpened. Shadows pooled under her eyes like bruises. Lips pale, pressed flat. Jaw locked, clenched around years unsaid.
Her scar caught the light. Not a clean line, but a jagged pale bloom across her temple, skin pulled tight over the plate beneath. It hadn’t ruined her face. But it had changed it. Left its story whether she wanted one or not.
She didn’t turn away. Didn’t flinch. She stared until her chest tightened, until her throat threatened to close.
The rage was there, coiled low, steady. Not a fire that leapt. A coal that smoldered. It had lived in her for years, quiet and unyielding, and it stirred now, hot beneath her ribs.
She didn’t glance down at her stomach.
Her daughter. Gone.
Her breath hitched, sharp, and she stepped back.
The bathroom still clung to the last of the steam, curling in the corners, drifting as if reluctant to leave. When she opened the door, it slipped out behind her, dissolving into the dry stillness of the room. It wasn’t dawn yet, not quite. But the light was changing. That in-between hour, when night begins bleeding out but the world hasn’t decided to wake. Everything felt suspended. Waiting.
She crossed to the nightstand. The notebook sat where she’d left it, black cover smooth and unmarked, as if it were holding its breath. She lifted it with both hands, careful, like it might shift weight if she wasn’t. Heavier than it should have been, not from paper but from what it was meant to hold.
From her bag, she drew a pen. Plain, black, the kind sold by the dozen, designed to be used and forgotten. She uncapped it slowly, the click soft, almost apologetic in the hush.
The first page stared up at her.
Death List Five
Yoongi Min – Cottonmouth
Jimin Park – Copperhead
Namjoon Kim – Sidewinder
Brandi Phoenix – California Mountain Snake
Taehyung
She replaced the cap. Slid pen and notebook back into her bag.
Next, she found Buck’s sunglasses where she’d tossed them, bent and scratched, ridiculous in their persistence. She slipped them on. Crooked, as always. She nudged the bridge, tried to adjust, gave up. They never sat right. But they worked.
The room was still dim. Her boots thudded against the floor, each step certain, carrying the weight of promise. At the door, she paused. The chair was still wedged beneath the knob, stubborn in its defiance. She bent, joints stiff, dragged it aside. The scrape echoed across the linoleum, a punctuation mark in the silence.
Chain. Thumb flick. Deadbolt. Three turns, quick, practiced. Her fingers didn’t need thought.
The door groaned open, hinges low and grudging. Heat met her immediately, thick, dry, pressing. Asphalt fumes rising from the lot. Dust on the air. The tang of oil, the metallic bite of a day not yet begun.
The sky was shifting, neither gold nor pink, but some strange in-between shade that lasted only minutes. The motel sat inside it, silent, caught between one night ending and another day beginning. Paused.
The neon above the office buzzed faintly. A cicada started, cut off. A dog barked once. Silence folded back in.
She stepped out. The door clicked shut. She didn’t look back.
The Pussy Wagon crouched at the lot’s edge, yellow paint too bright for the hour, flames shimmering like they wanted to breathe. It looked absurd, dangerous, and proud in equal measure. A dare made metal. A joke sharpened into a blade.
She opened the door, slid inside. The vinyl seat was warm against her thighs, not yet burning but close. The cab smelled of lavender and motor oil, clean, antiseptic almost, but still mechanical. A machine rebuilt too many times, carrying the weight of its history.
For a moment, she sat still. Palms flat on her thighs, fingers twitching. The motel’s AC unit droned faintly in the distance. Inside, the truck held its own silence, coiled tight like a breath waiting to be exhaled.
She turned the key.
The engine caught on the second attempt, rumbling alive with a guttural growl. The cab shivered around her, wheel buzzing in her hands, the vibration running up her arms and into her chest. Settling there. She slid it into drive. Tires spit gravel, reluctant but obedient. The motel shrank behind her, just another room, another scar. Room 212 vanished in the rearview, swallowed by neon and dust.
She didn’t look back.
The highway opened in front of her, cracked asphalt unfurling like a dark ribbon across West Texas. Brush clawed at the shoulders, mesquite twisted like broken arms, rocks rusted red, skeletal trees brittle with drought. The sky stretched pale and empty, the sun still soft but already threatening.
By the time the desert swallowed her, night had fallen again. Not gentle. Not gradual. It dropped like a curtain, sudden and absolute. No moon. No stars. Just black. Heavy. Whole.
The truck didn’t belong here, and it knew it.
It roared too loud, headlights carving two stark tunnels into the void. The beams caught nothing but empty miles, white columns piercing a silence too thick to care. The engine hummed, steady and tired, as though warning her without conviction. Every dip rattled the frame, but the wheel stayed true under her hands. Ten and two. Steady.
Mirages shimmered at the edges of her vision, heat ghosts lingering after the sun. She didn’t chase them.
The desert whispered against the truck’s flanks, a dry, rattling scrape like fingernails on denim. Insects, wind, memory. Something flickered low across the road’s edge, fast, small, gone again. She didn’t check. She slowed instead.
The road narrowed to one lane, asphalt breaking apart under its own weight. She eased off the gas. Let the truck crawl. Then stopped.
Headlights washed over brush and stone. Stillness. Shadows deep enough to hide anything. Or nothing.
She cut the engine.
The silence arrived instantly. Not falling over her, but revealing itself, like it had always been here, waiting.
She reached for the flashlight on the passenger seat, opened the door.
The night air was sharp, not cold but exposing, stripping. She tugged her jacket closer. Gravel shifted under her boots. Behind her, the truck ticked softly as the engine cooled, the sound fading into the endless dark.
She clicked the flashlight on. A narrow beam cut the dark, sharp and clean, slicing through shadow like a scalpel. Everything beyond its reach stayed untouched, patient, waiting.
She didn’t hesitate. Her body carried her forward, step by step, as if it had walked this path before. Maybe it had. Her legs remembered what her mind wanted to forget.
Then she saw it.
A rock. Just a rock, if you didn’t know better. Pale limestone, sunk halfway into the dirt, weathered and ordinary. Something that should’ve blended in. Something anyone else would miss.
But not her.
She crouched, knees popping softly, flashlight wedged between shoulder and chin. The light crawled along the stone’s edge, shadows doubling its size. Her fingers dug into the packed soil at the base. She pulled.
It resisted. Heavier than it used to be. Maybe the ground had hardened. Maybe she had softened. Either way, she braced, set her boot, and pulled again. The stone shifted with a dry scrape.
Underneath, the mark was waiting.
An X, carved deep. Not faded, not worn down. Black as the day she burned it in. The sight of it caught her breath somewhere between release and recoil.
That mark had been a promise. If it was gone, she’d walk away. That was the deal. No vengeance. No names. Just silence. But it wasn’t gone.
The desert hadn’t erased it. Time hadn’t buried it. The universe hadn’t looked away. She stood. The cold closed in now, not wind but earth itself. The shadows seemed to lean forward, curious. She didn’t care. She went back to the truck.
The tools were waiting where they always had been: shovel, pickaxe, flashlight. Old companions. Her hand found the shovel without thought, as if it had already been chosen. She leaned into the cab, thumbed the stereo. Silence shattered. The riff echoed through the night, jagged and merciless, too much for the cab to contain. The truck rattled under it, tires humming against dirt, frame twitching as if it wanted to leap forward. Guitars clawed. Drums pounded like fists.
She turned away before the echo finished, walking back toward the rock. The music chased her into the dark, distorted by space but still sharp enough to cut. Her boots kept time with the rhythm, gravel crunching in sync.
One. Two. Three.
She counted, breath more than voice.
Four. Five. Six.
The flashlight swung at her side, beam lurching across dirt and brush. It caught on shadows, slid over brittle grass, bent across rocks. It felt like stepping into a story that hadn’t been written yet.
Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
Her body warmed against the cold, rhythm keeping her steady. The rock loomed again. Here the air shifted. The ground itself exhaled, cold rising up like something long-buried had soured. She gripped the shovel. The wood was damp. Not with sweat. With memory. Her gloves creaked against it. She drove it down. The first strike rang flat, earth baked into stone. It shoved back. Her arms jolted, shoulder jarred. She didn’t stop.
Another swing. Harder. Then another.
The dirt began to loosen. She fell into rhythm: dig, lift, pivot. Again. Breath shortened, sweat slid down her spine, her back sang with strain. Her palms throbbed inside her gloves. Still, she didn’t let up. Each blow cleared space inside her chest.
Behind her, Barracuda still screamed. The desert caught the sound and threw it back at her, warped but relentless. And she kept going.
Clink.
The sound was different. Heavier. It traveled up the handle, into her arms, into her spine. She froze, boot perched on the edge of the hole, dirt sliding down around her ankle. Breath caught. Heart stilled.
She dropped to her knees. Gloves filthy, jeans scraping rock. She set the flashlight down; its beam jittered, then steadied. Enough to show what waited beneath the soil.
Her hand closed around the pickaxe. She didn’t think. Just swung. Once. Twice. Again.
Chunks of dirt split, scattering sharp and dry. Her arms burned, lungs worked like pistons. Gravel dug into her knees. She didn’t stop until she saw it.
Black plastic. Torn in places, stretched tight over a shape too familiar. Boxy. Olive green peeking through. She knew before she touched it.
The pickaxe dropped from her grip. She clawed at the soil, ripping through plastic and dirt alike. Something slick caught under her nails—water, blood, it didn’t matter. She braced, boot pressed hard, and wrenched.
The earth gave with a groan. The box lurched free, knocking her backward. She landed hard, breath ragged, chest heaving.
Her gloves were filthy, her arms trembling with the effort, but the footlocker was out at last. It was army issue, the kind stamped into a generation. The metal was olive drab, dulled by time, corners dented, its surface scratched and scuffed, the paint chipped to reveal bare steel beneath. The hinges wore rust, but they still held; the latches were stiff but unbroken. It looked exactly as it should: forgotten, but intact.
She brushed a layer of dirt from the lid, her fingers finding the latches without hesitation. A practiced motion, quick and certain. Metal snapped against metal, followed by the creak of hinges straining after years of silence. Dust drifted up in a pale cloud, catching the flashlight’s beam and hanging there like ash in still air. She set the light on the rim and leaned closer.
The first thing she drew out was a sleeping bag, cheap nylon, navy blue, stiff with disuse. It unrolled with a brittle crackle, the zipper teeth clinking like links in a chain. She spread it beside the hole, pressing it flat with both hands. The flashlight cast a sharp bar of light across the box. Dust rose through it in lazy spirals, as though the past itself was breathing.
Beneath the bag lay rows of magazines, tight and orderly. Some bound with rubber, others wound in black electrical tape, the edges frayed with age. She picked one up, ran her thumb over the top round. Brass gleamed back at her, untarnished, untouched. As though it had been waiting.
The first pistol was compact and polished, silver bright against the dim. It looked too elegant for this place, but she knew better. A weapon meant for close range, not display. She tested the weight, how naturally it rested in her palm, before setting it aside with the holster.
Next came a snub-nosed .38. Plain steel, no ornament, no pretension. Just the kind of tool that did the job without complaint. She opened the cylinder, checked each chamber, and gave it a spin. It ticked clean and precise, like a clock. She slipped it into its ankle holster, the Velcro catching with a rasp.
Piece by piece, the Mossberg came out: the barrel, the stock, the slide. She brushed the dust off with her sleeve, each movement instinctive. Assembly came without thought. One part clicked into the next until the weapon lay whole across her lap, heavy, steady, ready.
Her hand brushed something smaller, curved and cold. She lifted a silver boomerang, edges honed thin enough to cut without effort. The light scattered across its surface in sharp shards. She turned it once in her grip, feeling the weight shift. This was older than everything else. Older than her scars, older than her anger. A remnant from another life. It slid into its old holster, and her hand lingered there for a moment too long.
At the bottom, she found a black attachĂŠ, snug in the foam. She freed it, laid it flat, and opened the twin latches. The case released with a click sharp enough to cut the silence. Inside, in carved slots, lay the broken-down parts of a sniper rifle: barrel, bolt, scope, mount. Each piece was immaculate, free of dust, as though untouched by time. She lifted the scope, tilted it upward, and caught a starlight pinprick sharp and clear through the glass.
She was about to close the case when something caught her eye, flat, tucked beneath the foam. A manila envelope, worn at the corners, soft with use. She stripped off her gloves, ignoring the soil packed beneath her nails, and lifted it carefully as if it might crumble. She slid a finger under the flap and unfolded the paper within, one crease at a time.
A black and white sonogram. Grainy but unmistakable. A curled shape no bigger than a thumb. The curve of a spine, the suggestion of a head, the faintest stretch of limbs. Her child.
She sat motionless. The wind seemed to pause with her, the desert holding its breath. Somewhere in the distance, music pulsed low, but she barely heard it. She stayed still in the dirt, sleeves caked with dust, staring at the ghost of a life that never came to be.
She folded the sonogram slowly, carefully, and slid it back into its envelope. The flap pressed closed under her thumb, unsealed but sufficient.
There was more. 
A Ziploc bag, cloudy and heat-wrinkled. Inside was an old Texas state ID. Candy Ralston. The photo was hers, but younger. Rounder in the face, skin untouched by scars. Hair pulled back too tightly, eyes uncertain but already watching. Lips pressed in a line that refused to trust.
Next to it lay a paper bank book, its spine softened from handling. Every entry written by hand, small withdrawals made with care. A pattern so patient it became invisible, until it led here. On the final page, one last choice.
And beneath the lining, exactly where memory said it would be, she found the key. Small, plain, tarnished. Dangling from a chipped novelty fob. The letters worn nearly smooth, but she didn’t need to read them.
Deadly Vipers.
She didn’t pause. No whispered vow, no lingering glance. She began to repack the footlocker, steady and sure. Each weapon slid into its place: the sniper rifle parts pressing into their foam, the boomerang curved into its cutout like it had never left. She closed the sleeping bag last, the zipper catching once before sliding true. The final click echoed in the still air, too loud, like a door shutting behind her.
She hefted the pack onto her shoulder. Heavy, but familiar. Her body shifted into the weight like it had carried it a hundred times before.
She stood, turned, and walked back toward the truck without a backward glance. The hole remained open in the dirt behind her, a raw gash in the earth, as if the desert had been holding its breath for years and finally let it out. No marker, no cross, no stone. Just a patch of sand that had kept its secret until it no longer had to. She left it that way.
The wind stirred, but the desert didn’t change. In the distance, the oil derrick kept grinding its endless rhythm, slow, mechanical, indifferent. The truck was still humming with music when she climbed inside, something sharp with guitars and drums heavy enough to bruise a ribcage. She didn’t touch the dial. Didn’t spare the radio a look. She only turned the key.
The engine growled awake, the wheel twitching under her grip as though impatient, eager to remind her why she’d come. She shifted into drive.
Gravel cracked under the tires, dust lifting in a thin veil behind her. No farewell, no second look. The hole stayed where it was, empty, unfinished, unmarked. Nothing would fill it, and nothing needed to.
Miles slipped beneath her tires, steady and relentless. The sun climbed higher, flattening the horizon into a long, wavering stretch of heat and light. She let the road carry her forward like a current she no longer fought.
By the time she pulled into the Commonwealth Bank of Texas, the sun was cruel at its peak, heat radiating off the concrete in dizzy waves. The building looked like it had been abandoned halfway through its design and forced into use anyway: beige brick, dull metal trim, a flickering red “OPEN” sign that couldn’t decide if it meant it.
It sat wedged between a shuttered taqueria and a payday loan office still dressed in tinsel from a Christmas no one remembered. Dust thickened in the sidewalk’s cracks. The kind of place people didn’t bother to notice. Perfect.
She cut the engine. The silence that followed felt sharper than the music. Her boots struck the pavement with the same deliberate weight they’d carried through the dirt. The sleeping bag was gone, tucked away with the rest. What stepped out here wasn’t the woman from the desert. This was Candy Ralston.
Not the bright-eyed Candy with the easy smile and the drawl sharpened just enough to charm. That Candy was dead. This one was leaner, skin pale, eyes too hollow to bother pretending. Her mouth was a hard line. She hadn’t come for company.
She crossed the lot in a slow, certain stride, one hand on the bag, the other close to her coat. The fabric swayed with each step, brushing her thighs, catching the breeze. She moved like someone who knew exactly what she carried and what it would cost to use it.
The bank’s glass doors didn’t invite. The tint was too dark, the reflection warped. Inside, fluorescent lights flickered and hummed, pouring a pale gray over everything. Blinds hung crooked, yellow at the edges. A place that didn’t improve, only endured.
She pushed through the door.
The buzzer cracked the hush, too loud in the cold, conditioned air. The chill was chemical, designed to keep people awake, unsettled. It smelled of citrus cleaner and overworked machines, with something faint beneath it, something like nerves.
The light was merciless, stripping every angle bare. Her coat stayed on.
She moved with the kind of presence that didn’t need to ask for space. Cameras swiveled from their black domes in the corners, lenses humming faintly if you listened close. She didn’t look up. Let them watch. Let them wonder.
Behind the counter sat a woman who might have been there since the doors first opened. Hair lacquered into a helmet, lipstick a shade of pink too bright for her complexion. The tag on her blouse, polyester and strawberry-colored, cheap, read MARJORIE in rigid block letters.
She looked up when the door chimed, flashing a smile polished for trouble. Too quick, too practiced, more reflex than welcome.
Y/N didn’t return it.
“Hi there,” Marjorie said, her voice soaked in the slow sweetness of a Texas drawl, one that sounded like it had been taught in finishing school and worn thin by years of repetition. “How can I help you today, ma’am?”
Y/N stepped forward, just close enough to make it feel personal, but not close enough to make it weird. Her voice came out low, a little frayed, like she’d worn it out talking to ghosts. “I need access to my safety deposit box.”
Even to her own ears, she sounded small. Not scared. Just tired in a way that lived deep in the bones. Her arms still ached from the dig, her back tight across the spine, her muscles running on fumes. It helped. The exhaustion made her seem soft at the edges, easier to dismiss.
She reached into her coat and pulled out the key. It was plain, silver dulled to a matte finish, worn down at the edges. Nothing remarkable. Except it was. The way she turned it in her fingers, how it caught the light for a second, made it something more than metal. This key had opened more than steel boxes. It had cracked things open that were meant to stay shut.
She placed it on the counter like it might still be hot. “My name’s Candy Ralston.”
Marjorie blinked. Just once. But it was enough. A pause in the rhythm. Her eyes dropped to the key, then back up. Something shifted in her face: some small recalculation, like a mental search engine had just returned an unexpected result. Not panic. Not even suspicion. Just awareness. A name that didn’t match a story. Or a story that was missing too many pages.
Y/N noticed. She always noticed. The flicker in the eyes, the slight tension in the mouth, the way Marjorie’s hands hovered over the keyboard for half a second too long, like they were waiting for instructions the rest of her wasn’t ready to give.
Y/N followed with the ID. Slid it across the glass, calm, steady. The photo was old but recent enough. Her face in it was rounder, eyes a little less guarded, a smile that barely made it to her mouth. Now her cheeks were hollowed out, skin drawn tighter, her gaze hard-edged. But the eyes—those stayed the same.
Marjorie studied the ID, compared it to the woman standing in front of her. Her smile didn’t return. Something behind it had turned mechanical.
“I’ll be right back, honey,” she said, and the warmth in her voice had vanished. She took the ID and the key, turned, and disappeared behind a gray metal door that hissed shut behind her like a vault sealing off bad memories.
Y/N didn’t move.
She scanned the lobby instead. Vault tucked in the corner, keypad locked. Two cameras, standard dome type, mounted high. Cheap, analog, probably on a timed loop. Footage saved to tapes or some outdated drive, nothing that uploaded to a cloud. She made a note of that. Good, not great. Sprinklers overhead, fire alarms every fifteen feet. No posted security. No visible guards. Just quiet.
It wasn’t much. But maybe enough to stay ahead if Taehyung had caught her scent.
Marjorie came back slower than she’d gone. The door opened with the same soft hiss. No smile now. Just neutral posture, the kind you wore when you didn’t want to pick sides. She held the door open without a word.
“Right this way.”
Y/N didn’t thank her. Didn’t speak. She just moved, coat brushing against the counter’s edge, boots making a soft sound against carpet chosen specifically to muffle footsteps. The hallway they entered was narrow, lined with anonymous doors that had no signs or names, only keypads in place of knobs. It smelled like cold paper and old wiring.
At the end of the corridor was a room built for forgetting. The temperature dipped the second they stepped in, not from AC but from something deeper, like the place had been sealed off from the rest of the world for too long. Fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, casting a flat, pale glow that made every surface look harsher than it was. Shadows clung to the corners, thick and reluctant.
The walls were covered in rows of steel safety deposit boxes, each one identical, stacked high like a wall of filing cabinets in a mausoleum. A square table sat in the middle, wood, worn smooth in some places, scratched in others. It didn’t look like anyone had ever sat comfortably at it.
Marjorie moved without speaking, walking straight to a lower drawer in the wall. Her fingers didn’t fumble. She pulled a steel box free and laid it on the table with a dull thunk. Then another. The sound was soft but final, like a decision being made in secret.
She didn’t look at Y/N. Didn’t ask any questions. Her whole body said the same thing: I don’t want to know.
Y/N didn’t open the box. Not here. Not with the lights buzzing and the cameras humming faintly above, and Marjorie pretending not to see but seeing everything anyway. This wasn’t the place for what came next. Not yet.
She stood slowly, letting her knees stretch, spine groan just a little as it straightened. She didn’t make a sound. Just rose, steady and full of weight.
Marjorie still stood by the door, hands folded tight, knuckles pale. Her voice came out quiet, not reverent, not polite. Something more cautious than that.
“Thanks for coming.”
Her eyes flicked to the bag over Y/N’s shoulder. Not curious. Just wary. There was no warmth in her voice. No welcome. Just the brittle sound of someone realizing too late that they should have asked fewer questions, or maybe more.
Y/N didn’t try to soothe it.
“Thanks for your help,” she said. Flat. Even. Just enough to be finished.
She turned and walked out.
Marjorie followed at a distance, like she didn’t want to be caught sharing space with whatever Y/N carried. Back through the hallway, down the long strip of carpet meant to erase sound and footprints. When they reached the counter again, Marjorie slid behind it without a word and sat very still, watching through the glass as Y/N moved toward the door and pushed it open.
The heat outside hit like a slow slap, drier than before, tinted orange by a sun that was just starting to fall. Shadows had grown long across the parking lot, stretching past broken curbs and faded paint lines. The sky had gone bruised at the edges. The truck waited exactly where it had been, dust settled thick across the windshield, the yellow paint looking tired in the last of the light.
She tossed the bag into the flatbed, climbed into the driver’s seat, and closed the door. The cab held the day’s warmth like a breath that hadn’t been let go. The engine took a second to respond. Then it grumbled to life with a thick, uneven roar that rattled the steering column.
She pulled out of the lot without a glance at the building behind her. No one followed.
The bank disappeared in the rearview, swallowed up by the flat lines of small-town architecture and the slow drag of coming night. Another door shut. Another name scratched off.
The road opened in front of her again, stretching west through brush and rock and the half-sleep of places too small to fight back. Her fingers rested easy on the wheel. Not loose. Not tense. Just ready. Her other hand twitched once against her thigh, like it was remembering something: some old rhythm, some old grip.
The sky behind her wasn’t just sunset. It was collapse, like something had given way at the edge of the world and let everything pour out. Red bled into deep violet, orange streaked like torn silk across the horizon. It was a hell of a sight, bold and feral, almost too much to look at. But she didn’t turn to see it. Endings didn’t impress her anymore.
Mile marker 233 blurred past. Just beyond it, the motel came into view. Low-slung and sagging between a boarded-up diner and a pawn shop with a broken front window and an “OPEN” sign that hadn’t glowed since Clinton was in office. The SUNRISE MOT_L sign blinked in sickly neon, the “E” long gone, leaving the name limping toward meaning. Plastic palm trees lined the driveway, sun-bleached and cracked, their fronds drooping like they had finally accepted their own artificiality.
The truck hissed as it settled, engine ticking like it had opinions about being parked. Heat shimmered off the hood. She stepped out, boots hitting the asphalt with the unhurried thud of someone who’d done this too many times before. Another town. Another key. Another night listening to the sound of her own breath and wondering if it was really hers anymore.
The lobby reeked of cheap cleaner fighting and failing to bury the smell of time. Old carpet. Burned coffee. That bitter lemon-polish tang on furniture nobody liked. Behind the counter, a man with red eyes and a week’s stubble looked up, sweat soaking through his shirt. He regarded her the way a man regards a thunderstorm from behind a screen door: resigned, a little impressed, but not about to step into it.
She laid cash on the counter without counting. No words. No name. Just a transaction. He slid a key across the laminate, a red plastic tag dangling from it, the number 11 painted in peeling gold. The plastic stuck to her fingers, tacky with years of grime.
“Back row,” he muttered, already turning away.
Room 11 waited at the far end of the building, tucked into the shadows like a bruise no one mentioned. The lock resisted until she leaned into it, shoulder tight against the door. It clicked open reluctantly, like the room had been holding its breath.
Inside, the air was still and heavy. Not hot. Not cold. Just stale. Saturated. Smoke in the walls, mildew in the carpet. She shut the door, bolted it, slid the chain, then dragged the desk chair under the knob. It wouldn’t stop anyone. But it gave her the illusion of control.
The bag hit the bed with a solid thud. She didn’t open it yet.
Plastic blinds rattled as she lowered them slat by slat, each click deliberate. Outside, the parking lot glowed under a flickering streetlamp, humming too loud, not sure whether to stay lit. A few cars scattered across the lot. Heat still rising off the pavement. Bugs swarming the light like it meant something.
She checked the bathroom. The bulb buzzed sickly yellow, throwing a crooked shadow behind her. Cracked tile. Rusted sink. Mirror fogged at the edges, warped with age. She left the door half open. Not for sightlines. Just habit. She didn’t close doors without a reason anymore.
The room sagged at the seams. Wallpaper peeled in corners, ceiling stained like a bruise. The air conditioner coughed, rattled, died again. She sat on the bed. Zipped the bag open.
Stacks of cash waited inside, neat and brittle, rubber bands fraying with time. She picked one up, breathing in the scent of sweat, dust, and long drives with cracked windows. Quiet money. The kind that didn’t ask questions.
Beneath it, weapons. Two pistols: one clean and compact, the other older, worn. The compact one she hadn’t touched since El Paso, since Lisa Wong walked out of a motel bathroom with a pregnancy test and silence in her eyes. Lisa left three days later. Faked her death the day after that.
She slid them aside. Pulled out the SOG knife. Perfect balance. Still hers. A straight razor waited beneath it, sleek and simple, for skin. She pocketed it. Better to have options.
At the bottom lay a rifle case. She opened it, checked the matte-black barrel. Functional. Nothing ornate. She closed it again. Korea would demand quieter tools.
A manila folder came next. Corners soft with use. Inside: passports. Fourteen identities, all hers. Candy Ralston. Minsook Cho. Emma Blevins. Others she barely remembered wearing. Different hair. Different smiles. Same eyes. Always hers.
A folded map slipped out. Korea. Red ink circling cities, tracing routes like a heartbeat across the paper. She didn’t remember marking it, but her hand had known.
Photographs. Old, blurred, pulled from yearbooks under borrowed names. A beach. An arm around Sam Wallace. Her own half-formed smile frozen in place. She flipped past them quickly.
Then came the sonograms. She didn’t need to unfold them. The shape lived in her spine now, lodged between her ribs.
She sat still with the folder on her lap, bag open beside her, lamp casting weak yellow light over everything. She didn’t check her phone. Didn’t turn on the TV. Just breathed. The room didn’t welcome her, but it didn’t push her out either. It was just a box. Four walls to keep the world at bay for one more night.
Outside, a car rolled past slow, tires whispering over gravel. Somewhere down the row, a door slammed, laughter cracked sharp through the air, and bass thudded heavy from an open window. The music swaggered, empty noise with no weight behind it.
She stayed still. Let it pass like weather. Then leaned forward, unzipped the smaller pocket of the bag, and pulled free something cold and compact. A refrigeration case. She set it on the bed. Unlaced the key from her boot. The lock clicked once, clean, before the lid opened.
Inside, two gold syringes gleamed against black foam. Between them, a vial. Pale amber liquid moved slow inside it, syrup-thick, heavy, like honey aged too long.
Taehyung had called it The Undisputed Truth. Said it burned the lies out of people. She hadn’t believed him. Still didn’t. But she’d taken it anyway. Maybe it worked. Maybe it didn’t. Soon, she’d have to find out.
She closed the case and turned the key with care. Slid it back behind her laces like it had never left. The weight settled into the bag with a muted thud, buried beneath layers of gear. Her hand brushed something soft in the side pocket: a flattened pack of Camels, paper crumpled, edges worn like it had been riding there for years.
She pulled it out, frowning. Couldn’t remember putting it in. Couldn’t remember the last time she even wanted to. Not since Pai Mei. Not since the split lip and two days of lungs scraped raw from the inside. That had been the line. She’d meant to quit.
But tonight didn’t care what she meant.
She tapped the pack twice against her knee and drew one out with her teeth. The lighter waited in the same pocket, cheap plastic, half-empty. It sputtered once, twice, then caught. Flame kissed the cigarette, flared too close, then steadied to a glow. She pulled deep, the smoke burning familiar paths down her chest, settling heavy in her lungs.
The exhale spiraled slow toward the ceiling, mixing with the stale motel air as if it had always belonged there. Maybe she had too. Another drag. Longer. The tremor in her hands eased. The knot in her chest unwound. The ache behind her eyes softened just enough to blink without pain.
She had what she needed. Enough money to disappear. Enough weapons to make sure no one stopped her. Enough names stitched into paper to build another self, somewhere no one was looking. She’d started with less before, built lives from crumbs. But this time the engine driving her was different. Not revenge alone. Not pain. Hunger. The kind born not from being hurt, but from surviving. From still being alive, and wanting more than survival.
Her fingers found the folded map. She spread it flat across the bed, pressing it open with both palms. The paper had gone soft, creases tired, ink smudged. But the line still held: red ink threading its way across borders and customs, curling through cities, circling names. A path toward Korea.
Her nail traced it slow, stopping at Busan. A small circle, marked twice. She tapped it. Once. Again. Then folded the map back with care, each edge pressed down as if she were sealing a thought she couldn’t afford to lose.
The cigarette had burned low, ash dangling fragile at the end. She stood, room folding closer around her. Not smaller. Just more present, more awake. The A/C wheezed, rattled, died with a final shudder. She didn’t look at it.
At the window, she slipped two fingers through the blinds, pulled them apart. Sodium light drowned the parking lot in its false orange glow. Nothing moved except the swarm of bugs around the lamp. Her truck crouched in the far corner, paint dulled, hood shadowed. It looked patient. Waiting. It knew this wasn’t the end. Only another checkpoint. Another launch point. A step toward digging up the version of herself she’d buried.
She smoked the cigarette down to the filter, ground it out in the cracked glass ashtray beside the lamp. Then stretched, long and slow, until her spine gave a small pop. Rolled her shoulders once. Tension snapped loose. Proof the engine was still running. Proof she hadn’t rusted out yet.
There was still work ahead. Still miles to burn. Still names that needed remembering. Or forgetting.
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The sky was still the color of a healing bruise when she stepped out of Room 11. That thin, breath-held hour before sunrise stretched across the motel, quiet and suspended, like the world wasn’t sure whether to wake up or go back to sleep. The air hung low and heavy, not cold anymore but still clinging to the memory of it, brushing at her ankles as she walked. Her boots met the gravel with a soft, steady crunch, her stride slow but sure. The door clicked shut behind her with the soft finality of a decision already made. She didn’t look back. She never did.
Whatever lingered inside that room—the musty reek of mildew, the peeling wallpaper, the silence pressed into the floor like dust—could stay there. The ghosts were welcome to it.
The lot was empty now, stripped of last night’s noise and movement. No music. No laughter. No arguing strangers trying to forget whatever they’d dragged in with them. Just the hum of a flickering security light and the shadows it cast, long and tired and mostly ignored. Her truck waited where she had left it, the same as it always did. Black. Battered. Dust-laced. It didn’t look fast or dangerous, only patient. Like it had seen everything and didn’t need to brag about any of it.
She opened the door. The hinges gave a soft groan. The duffel landed in the passenger seat with a solid weight, heavier now, heavier in more ways than one. Not just steel and currency, but decisions. Commitments. Endings. She sat behind the wheel and rested her hand on the key but didn’t turn it right away. Instead she looked through the windshield, past the sagging plastic palms and sun-warped signage, out toward the open road.
Somewhere along the way, something had shifted. She didn’t know the exact moment, but it was there in her blood, in her spine. The running was over. Whatever came next would not be a retreat. She wasn’t trying to disappear anymore. She was going back.
She turned the key.
The truck woke up with a low growl, not eager but ready. The kind of engine that didn’t expect praise, only purpose. She eased out of the lot without checking the mirror, letting the motel recede into the rearview like everything else she had buried. It would stay there, just another mile behind her.
The road to the airport unfolded like it always did in these parts, quiet highways full of tired signage and forgotten ambition. Diners with names like “Lisa’s Last Stop” and “Grill & Chill 24/7,” their neon flickering like it was fighting sleep. Empty parking lots. Billboards that promised injury settlements, eternal salvation, and the best damn pecan pie on Highway 9. Churches with broken steeples. Loan offices with barred windows. The skeleton of American promise, sun-bleached and hollowed out.
She didn’t turn on the radio. Didn’t crack the window. Her coffee sat untouched in the console, more for the heat in her hand than anything else. She drove with both hands on the wheel, letting her thoughts drift slow and aimless, looping back through the same questions and never settling on answers.
The sun rose behind her, crawling up the horizon like something tired of hiding. It lit the road in pale gold and chased her shadow out ahead of her, long and crooked. The towns she passed blurred together. Same gas stations. Same parking lots. Same dust settling on sun-baked signs. Nothing reached her. Nothing asked to.
By the time she pulled into the airport lot, the sky had turned that washed-out shade of blue that promised heat and little else. She parked in long-term, rows from anyone else. Killed the engine under a flickering lamppost that gave one last buzz before giving out. She sat a moment, hands still on the wheel, feeling the last bit of quiet settle around her. Then she slung the duffel over her shoulder and got out.
It hit her hip like a reminder. Cash. Steel. Papers. Lives. She didn’t walk fast, but she didn’t stall either. Just moved forward like time didn’t own her anymore.
The terminal ahead was all glass and stale light, catching the morning sky in fractured reflections. She stepped through the automatic doors and into the kind of cold that didn’t come from weather but from design. Manufactured. Artificial. Meant to keep people sharp and orderly. It smelled like lemons, plastic, and every departure that had come before her.
She paused just inside. Not hesitation. Just calibration. Listening. Feeling the hum of the place. Gate calls. Wheels dragging. Overhead pages layered with chatter. The low murmur of a world built for leaving. For going but not staying.
She moved through it like someone who didn’t need instructions.
The check-in counter was manned by a thin kid barely old enough to rent a car. His name tag said TYLER. His lanyard was a mess of meme pins and frayed cords. The kind of kid who clocked in with earbuds still in and forgot to take them out. He didn’t notice her at first, not until she was standing right in front of him.
The duffel hit the floor beside her with a small, final sound. Her voice stayed low.
“One-way ticket to Gwangju. First available.”
Tyler blinked, fingers stuttering a second before tapping at the keyboard. Gwangju wasn’t common. It made him look up again, a little more carefully this time. She said nothing else. Just waited.
She slid the passport across the counter. Emma Ji-woo. The photo was polished, airbrushed just enough to pass scrutiny. But the eyes were hers, still and unblinking, focused. Tyler studied the picture, then studied her. He didn’t ask questions. Maybe didn’t know how. Or maybe something in her expression told him not to.
She paid in cash. Clean bills. Neat stack. Pulled from the vault without hesitation, counted out like it was nothing. Like it hadn’t come with a history. The paper smelled faintly of oil and time, like everything important always did. Tyler took the money, his fingers slowing just a bit as he handled it, as if part of him was trying to memorize what wrong felt like.
He printed her ticket, hands fidgety now, and slid it across the counter like he was giving her something that might explode.
“Gate thirty-four,” he said. “You’ll connect through Incheon.”
She took the boarding pass without a word. She didn’t say thank you. She turned and walked toward security, leaving Tyler staring after her.
She didn’t ask about upgrades or snacks. She didn’t care what came in the seatback pocket or what counted as a meal at thirty-seven thousand feet. No interest in a foil-wrapped cookie or a lukewarm bottle of water labeled “premium.” She wasn’t here for comfort. She was here to move forward. To put sky between her and the things behind her. She wanted distance. Altitude. The kind of cold, wordless detachment that only the stratosphere could offer.
The security line wound like a slow fuse: plastic bins clattering, belts slipping through metal loops, the voices of TSA agents clipped and bored. She stepped through it like she’d done it a hundred times. Because she had. Her coat was dark wool, the sort you could wear to a funeral or a boardroom without drawing questions. The stitching was heavier than it looked, reinforced. Useful. Her boots cleared the scanners. The blade inside was legal by a fraction of an inch, packed with the precision of someone who had measured the limits. Her bag was clean where it counted. Nothing that would raise alarms. Just the weight of something lived-in and quiet.
They scanned her passport and boarding pass without a second glance. The photo matched. Emma Ji-woo. Hair slightly darker in the picture, lips touched with a professional half-smile. Believable. The machines beeped politely. No flags. No questions. Just a nod and a wave.
She didn’t breathe easier. She didn’t need to.
At the gate, the crowd had already started to gather. People sprawled in chairs, their energy muted by early hours and too many miles. Some stared at their phones. Some picked at overpriced muffins. One kid cried softly into a sweatshirt, and nobody looked up. It was the kind of communal fatigue that airports did best: a shared sense of waiting without purpose.
She took her place in line, middle of the pack. Not the first. Never the last. Just another body headed somewhere else.
When they called Group Two, she moved.
Her seat was by the window. It always was. The duffel slid under the seat in front of her with practiced ease, fitting like it had done this before. She let her fingers rest on it briefly, grounding herself in the weight of what it held: names, tools, contingencies. The pieces of a life carefully folded down to fit inside a single bag.
She leaned into the wall of the plane, cool against her shoulder, and looked out. Morning had arrived without conviction. The sky was a washed-out gray, the kind of color that came before heat, before light. Airport machinery drifted past—fuel trucks, baggage carts, people in reflective vests who looked like they hadn’t slept. The wing of the plane cut across her view, still and patient, waiting to rise. Sunlight slid over it in dull streaks, catching on the rivets and edges, turning everything gold and indifferent.
The overhead speaker crackled something about boarding zones and safety demonstrations, but none of it landed. Not for her. The sound washed past her ears without shape, the way wind moves through trees: present, but meaningless. Someone two rows up laughed too loudly. A baby fussed. Coffee burned its way through the air vents, mixing with the stale plastic scent of recycled cabin air.
She didn’t move. Didn’t fidget. Her hands were folded in her lap, posture calm, almost meditative. But inside, the tight coil sat waiting. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t nerves. Just pressure. A quiet readiness built from too many miles and not enough peace.
The engines rumbled to life beneath her feet. The metal shell around her vibrated in response, like the plane was stretching its limbs after too long on the ground. It rolled slowly toward the runway, wheels clunking over seams in the concrete. She didn’t grip the armrest. Didn’t reach for anything. Just watched.
Takeoff wasn’t elegant. It was mechanical force dressed up in aerodynamics. The thrust came all at once, raw, loud, unapologetic. The kind of motion that didn’t ask permission. Her body pressed back into the seat, gravity pulling at her chest as the ground fell away. For one long breath, the Earth clung to her like it didn’t want to let go. And then it did.
The airport dropped out of view, buildings and roads folding in on themselves, reduced to the flat language of maps and memory. Gas stations, parking lots, little rectangles of human effort. All of it faded under a rising haze, distant and forgettable.
Her breath touched the glass for a moment. A soft cloud, gone just as quickly. The sky beyond was endless and blue in that high, cold way. Not warm. Not kind. But honest. It didn’t care who she was. It didn’t care where she was going. It just was. Vast. Empty. Ready.
She stared out into it, not searching, not thinking. Just remembering how it felt to be small again. Small enough to disappear, but sharp enough not to.
Her hand moved without looking, brushing the inside pocket of her coat. Cotton. Folded. A handkerchief she didn’t remember packing. She pulled it out, fingers slow and careful. The cloth was clean. White. Pressed. The kind of thing you carried when you didn’t know if you’d cry, or bleed, or both.
From the same pocket came the needle. Fine steel. Polished. Paired with a single loop of red thread, already knotted. She didn’t check it. She didn’t need to.
She began to sew.
Her hands worked in small, deliberate motions, the thread pulling through the fabric with barely a sound. She didn’t glance down. Her fingers remembered the rhythm. The name formed, one letter at a time. T. A. E. H. Y. U. N. G. Each stroke was precise. Each pull tight. No wasted movement.
She didn’t say his name. Didn’t even let her lips shape it. But it was there. In the cloth. In the blood-colored thread. In the silence between stitches.
When the name was finished, she tied it off with a flick of her wrist. Trimmed the excess. Folded the cloth again. Pressed it back into her pocket. Over her heart.
The plane had leveled out. Cruising now. The clouds below looked like ash. The ocean below that: cold, dark, silent. Somewhere beyond it, past all this emptiness, was Korea. And the man from Gwangju.
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The plane hit the runway. A hard, ugly jolt that snapped her spine straight and rattled the tray table in front of her. The tires screamed against the tarmac, metal grinding in protest as the cabin vibrated with the kind of impact that made people forget how to breathe. Drinks sloshed. Seatbacks creaked. Somewhere up front, someone muttered a sharp curse under their breath. The overhead lights flickered once, barely a stutter, but she saw it. She always did.
Out the window, the city didn’t look like it was sleeping. It looked like it had never gone to bed in the first place. Darkness hung heavy, not clean or quiet, but thick, like smoke, like old breath trapped in a closed room. The kind of dark that didn’t just hide things, it held them. The runway lights sliced through it in stark, clinical lines. Past them, the faint blur of Gwangju shimmered in neon and haze: blues and reds pulsing like slow heartbeats, mirrored in wet pavement that hadn’t dried and maybe never would. The glass reflected back just enough of her face to remind her she was still here.
As she stepped into the gangway, the air shifted. Dense. Damp. Immediate. It clung to her skin like something familiar, something half-forgotten but buried deep enough in the bones to recognize on contact. A mix of exhaust, concrete, late summer heat, and something sweeter, grilled food maybe, or just memory dressed up like scent. It hit her lungs like a slow exhale. She didn’t rush. Just walked forward, each step steady, her bag slung across her shoulder in that way that made it clear she didn’t need help and wouldn’t ask for it. Her coat hung open now, too warm for the humidity but still part of the armor. She moved like someone who belonged in the space between strangers. Not local. Not lost. Just passing through with purpose.
And yet, something shifted the second she stepped off the plane and onto Korean soil. Nothing anyone could see, but she felt it: a small click, like a lock catching in place. A posture change that didn’t show in her spine but settled deeper, in muscle memory and instinct. The mask slid on without effort. Not Emma Ji-woo anymore, not exactly. Not Candy, not the others. Just the version of herself this place required. Whatever her name was, she carried it like a blade in her boot, quiet, hidden, ready.
Inside, the airport moved like it had been designed for silence. No chaos. No rush. Just clean lines and softened footsteps echoing off polished tile. People didn’t shout. They didn’t loiter. They moved with the kind of practiced grace that didn’t need announcements. The lights overhead were low and cool, and even the seating looked like it had been designed to be ignored.
Customs passed without friction. The officer barely glanced up, flicked through her documents like he was reading grocery lists. Her forged passport, Emma Ji-woo, South Korean citizen returning from years abroad, was fresh, well-aged in the right places. The photo had the right kind of editing: smooth enough to pass facial scan, textured enough to seem human. She handed it over with both hands, bowed just enough to make it believable, smiled with restraint. Polite. Non-threatening.
“감사합니다,” she said, her voice low and shaped just right.
The stamp fell with a dull, final thud. No questions. No extra eyes. Just a nod, a motion, and then the gates opened.
Outside, the night waited.
The city air hit harder, warmer, wetter. The kind of humidity that didn’t just touch you, it soaked in. Rain had fallen not long before; she could feel it in the way the concrete gave off heat like breath. The streetlights bounced off slick asphalt, halos forming in puddles that mirrored blinking shop signs and broken reflections of moving traffic. Scooters buzzed past, weaving between slow cars. The buzz of neon hummed in the wires overhead like a living thing. There wasn’t much noise, but everything felt alive. Breathing.
She walked toward the taxi stand without checking her phone, without checking directions. She already knew where she was going. Her bag pulled at her shoulder, not in protest, just in reminder. Inside, names and pasts and the pieces of herself that weren’t for daylight. But she didn’t adjust it. Didn’t even shift her stance.
The cab she picked wasn’t the newest. The bumper was scuffed, one headlight had the faint film of age, and the license plate was slightly crooked. But it was real. Lived-in. The driver leaned against the hood, half-lit by the overhead bulb, cigarette cupped loosely in two fingers. Middle-aged, maybe older. His shirt wrinkled, his gaze unreadable.
She smiled before she spoke. Soft, disarming, the kind of smile that made people assume you didn’t bite.
“안녕하세요,” she said. “Seongmin Heritage Hotel, please. Near Sajik Park? The one with the koi in the lobby?”
The man blinked at her. A flicker of recognition, more for her fluency than her face. But he nodded like it didn’t matter.
“Know it,” he said, voice rasped from smoke or years or both. “That’s a nice place.”
She slid into the back seat, her bag tucked in beside her, one hand resting on its handle.
As they pulled into the street, he glanced at her in the mirror. “Vacation?”
She let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. “Sort of,” she said, breezy, warm enough to sell. “I’m meeting someone.”
That made him smile, just a little. “Boyfriend?”
She tilted her head, just enough to suggest a blush. “Not exactly. I’ve known him for a long time.”
“And you’ve never met?” he said, eyes narrowing with casual disbelief. “Do you trust him?”
She leaned forward a little, voice softer, like she was sharing something real. “I guess I’m old-fashioned. I still believe in people.”
The driver chuckled, tapping ash out the window. “Well. Hope he’s worth the wait.”
She smiled again, turning her eyes back to the window. “Me too.”
Outside, the city slid past in glints and shadows. Signs blinked red and blue against walls slick with water. A lone man smoked beneath a streetlight. A group of teenagers laughed near a convenience store, their voices echoing sharp and bright. And above it all, Gwangju pulsed. Alive. Waiting.
Her body language was relaxed, open, even friendly, but not too friendly. Her smile landed right where it needed to: warm enough to seem genuine, distant enough to keep the woman behind the desk from asking questions she didn’t want to answer. And yet, beneath it all, behind her eyes, there was something else. Something sharp. Alert. A presence just beneath the surface, watching everything, holding still like a wire pulled tight.
The cab ride had taken about twenty minutes, maybe less. She couldn’t really tell. In that strange pocket of time, after midnight but before dawn, everything stretched or collapsed depending on how close you were watching. Cities didn’t sleep in those hours; they just drifted, like the tide. The cab driver barely spoke, his cigarette glowing faint in the corner of her vision, the smoke trailing out the half-open window into the warm, wet air. He drove like a man who’d forgotten how to be surprised by anything. She appreciated that. It made things easier.
Out the window, Gwangju blurred past in bands of neon and shadow, light warped by the sheen of recent rain. The storefronts were lit like stages no one was acting on anymore: 7-Elevens glowing sterile and perfect, their shelves full of snacks and instant noodles and bottled tea that no one needed but still bought. People moved through them slowly, hunched and quiet, looking like they were halfway between sleep and survival. The rest of the city felt paused, noodle shops with stools turned upside-down, karaoke bars locked behind metal grates, all of it blinking half-heartedly like no one had told the power to shut off yet. One sign above a barbecue place kept flickering between “삼겹살 24시” and total darkness, as if it couldn’t decide whether to keep going or give up.
They passed a hanbok rental place with mannequins frozen in the windows, draped in silk and thread, caught mid-movement in some forgotten celebration. The lights inside were faint, almost apologetic. The kind of glow you could miss if you weren’t looking directly at it. And everything outside, every puddle, every wall, every parked car, reflected that layered light. Hangul shimmered across wet streets like it was painted there in real time. Chicken. Tarot. Facials. Cheap drinks. Lost hopes. It was all advertised the same way, with bold fonts and desperate color.
She leaned her head against the cool glass of the cab window and let the city slide past her. She wasn’t sightseeing. She wasn’t curious. She was memorizing. Every corner. Every alley. Every building with a fire escape or a side entrance or a window that stayed cracked. Not just as someone taking in a new place, but as someone planning how to move through it. Where to hide. Where to hunt. Where to vanish.
She wasn’t here for a reunion. That was the lie she wore like cologne, pleasant, easy, expected. She was here to dig. To drag someone’s name back out of the dirt and make it mean something again. If this city had tried to forget him, she’d remind it. She’d burn the name into glass and pavement if she had to. She hadn’t come this far to let memory do the burying.
When the cab finally slowed in front of the Seongmin Heritage Hotel, she already knew the building before it came into full view. She’d studied it, grainy photos, tourist reviews, street-view walkthroughs. But even with all that preparation, it was still something to see in person. Polished, curated, old-world elegance repackaged as modern luxury. White stone columns stood like they were holding up more than a roof, like they were trying to convince the street this place mattered. Carved details along the trim caught the warm spill of interior lighting. The brass door handles gleamed like they’d never been touched by real weather. Above the entry, a stained-glass panel glowed amber and deep red, a honeyed light pouring over the curb like something sacred had just cracked open.
And just inside, behind a clean pane of tall glass, the koi pond gleamed. Black water, smooth and quiet, broken only by the slow turning of gold and orange fins. The fish moved in lazy arcs, each shift like a breath drawn too deep to be seen. Like they didn’t care who watched.
The driver parked and turned to look at her. His voice was low, soft, like he knew not to break whatever moment she was in.
“This it?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”
He watched her for a second too long, not in a threatening way, just thoughtful. Like he’d seen this before. Not her, maybe. But people like her. People with a story that couldn’t be told in the back of a cab. People walking toward something only they understood.
“Well,” he said after a pause, “good luck with your meeting.”
She smiled faintly, just enough to be polite. “I think it’ll be one to remember.”
She handed him a bill folded clean once. Double what the meter read. He glanced at it, then back at her, and nodded without another word.
She stepped out of the cab. The air hit her like it meant to. Heavy. Humid. Full of noise that hadn’t been made yet.
She shouldered her bag without shifting her weight. Moved toward the hotel doors like she was stepping into something familiar. And as the cab pulled away, the night closed back in behind her like it hadn’t noticed she’d arrived at all.
Inside, the hotel smelled like money pretending to be modest. Like expensive wood polish layered over old stone and cold air recycled too many times. The lighting was just dim enough to flatter the furniture but still show off the marble floors, clean, symmetrical, sharp where it counted. Every tile lined up like it had been laid by someone who understood symmetry wasn’t just about beauty. It was about control.
To her left, the koi pond curved around the front desk like a moat. Its surface was glassy and still, the fish drifting in slow spirals. They looked unreal in the low light, too bright, too calm, like someone had animated them just for her arrival. A tiny pump kept the water moving just enough to keep it from falling asleep, but the sound was so soft it might’ve been imagined. It wasn’t tranquil. It was measured. Controlled. Like everything else in this place.
She walked toward the desk like she’d done it a dozen times in other cities under other names. Calm, confident, casually forgettable. The kind of guest who knew how to tip well and never asked for room upgrades.
The woman behind the desk looked young but practiced. Hair styled into a sharp, no-nonsense bob. Uniform crisp. Movements efficient. Her name tag said Juha, though Y/N didn’t really need to read it. She’d already pegged her: precise, polite, not interested in small talk. Just enough kindness to pass for warmth. The kind of employee who wouldn’t remember a single detail about you by the end of her shift, and wouldn’t question why she didn’t.
Y/N offered her a smile. The good one. Just the right amount of curve. Something safe. Something easy to forget.
Y/N switched to Korean mid-step, her tone effortless, almost casual. “예약했어요. 캔디 랄스턴으로요.” Her accent was textbook Seoul.
The woman behind the desk didn’t blink. “환영합니다, 랄스턴 씨. 3박이시죠?”
Y/N nodded, and with a soft switch in rhythm, she slipped back into English. Her voice lifted just slightly, pleasant and open, with that eager brightness tourists wore like perfume. “First time in Korea. I’m really excited.”
The receptionist smiled as if on cue. Not warm, exactly. Rehearsed, but pleasant. She slid a room key forward, tucked inside a white sleeve embossed with the hotel’s gold crest. “Room 714. Elevator’s just to your right.”
Y/N offered a small bow, murmured her thanks again, and turned away. Her boots made no squeal against the floor, only that quiet, deliberate click that echoed soft and sharp like footsteps in a gallery. The kind of sound that didn’t try to be heard but couldn’t help leaving an impression.
The elevator was already waiting, doors wide open like it knew she was coming. She stepped inside and caught her reflection in the mirrored walls: three angles, three versions of herself looking back. Her posture was perfect, relaxed, composed. Her clothes, neutral tones and well-fitted, spoke of efficiency, not attention. Her makeup was subtle, just enough color to say effort had been made, not enough to say she cared about being seen.
She looked like someone organized. Someone harmless.
But the reflection in the center mirror told the truth. It was in the way her eyes held steady, unflinching, like they didn’t expect kindness anymore. Like they’d already learned what questions were traps, which silences meant danger, and how to vanish while still in plain sight. There was a stillness in her face, but not the kind that came from calm. This was stillness earned, built from rehearsals, from closing hotel doors behind you and counting exits before you even set your bag down.
The elevator rose, slow and steady. She shifted her canvas bag higher on her shoulder. Not because it hurt, she didn’t let things hurt, but because it grounded her. Inside was everything that counted: names, paper trails, backup plans. There was no wasted weight.
When the elevator doors slid open on the seventh floor, she was already halfway into the hallway.
It was quiet. Carpeted in something dull that might once have been green, the kind of floor that muted footsteps into suggestions. The wallpaper, floral and faded, curled at the corners where humidity had worked its way in over the years. The light overhead buzzed, faint and constant, like the building was humming to itself out of habit. A soft, tired sound.
Room 714 was near the end, just past a bend in the hallway where the emergency map was pinned slightly crooked on the wall. She paused in front of the door, keycard in hand.
And then she just stood there. Not long. Just long enough to listen.
Not for sound. For pressure. For presence. You didn’t survive by hearing footsteps, you survived by feeling when a room wasn’t empty. The temperature. The stillness. The quality of silence. She tilted her head slightly. Felt the way the air held its breath.
Nothing.
She slid the keycard through the reader. The lock beeped, followed by that soft, mechanical click. Small, almost polite. She pushed the door open with her shoulder and stepped inside without looking behind her. The door sealed shut behind her with the kind of sound that didn’t echo. It just ended.
She locked it: deadbolt first, then the chain. Her hands moved in a rhythm they’d known for years. One smooth motion, no hesitation. She wasn’t checking, she was securing. There was a difference.
The canvas bag landed on the bed with a deep, even thud. Not loud, just final, like it had arrived with intent. She didn’t stop to look around. Didn’t bother checking the view. The room wasn’t the point.
She walked to the desk in the corner and turned on the lamp. Warm light spilled across the pale wood, catching on the edges of the hotel stationery and the small, useless pen that had been placed there with the usual pretend care. The kind of detail that suggested someone had thought about your comfort, even if they hadn’t.
She sat down. The chair creaked faintly but held. Her body didn’t sag. She didn’t relax. She just settled into it.
She pulled the pad of paper toward her and picked up the pen. It was smooth, plastic, light, nothing special. It didn’t matter. She clicked it once and started writing in small, deliberate strokes.
Things to Do Tomorrow:
-Buy a light pink blouse. Something that moves. Something soft.
-Buy makeup
-Rehearse the story. Again.
-Smile until it hurts.
Her pen hovered above the last line for a beat. Then she added one more, slower this time:
-Be perfect.
She circled it. Once. Then again. Firm. Not as a reminder. As a rule.
She put the pen down beside the pad and exhaled. Not dramatically. Not with relief. Just enough to release the breath she’d been holding since the door clicked shut.
She stood.
The bathroom was exactly what she expected: white tile, cool light, no character. Clean without warmth. The mirror above the sink was wide and too tall, forcing her to step closer if she wanted to see all of herself at once. She didn’t bother.
The light buzzed overhead, sterile and flat, the kind of glow that made everything look a little too real.
She touched her fingertips to the edge of the counter. Steady.
She wasn’t tired. Not yet. What she was came after tired, and it had no name.
She reached out and turned the faucet, letting the water run. Cold at first, bright and clean, loud as it hit the porcelain. But beneath the noise, she listened. Not to the water itself, but to the way it moved through the pipes. The way it echoed off tile. The way it filled the silence with something that wasn’t her. It sounded pure, but she knew better. It had traveled through metal older than the building, scraped past rust and time, ghosts caught in the bends. Still, it came out confident. Unbothered. Like it hadn’t carried anything with it.
She didn’t hurry. Her fingers moved slowly to the hem of her shirt, tugged it over her head, and let it fall to the floor. Then the rest, belt, pants, underthings, peeled away without effort. She’d done this ritual a thousand times before. And yet tonight, her hands felt different. Not clumsy. Not unsure. Just heavy, like they remembered more than she wanted them to. Her clothes ended up in a soft heap at her feet. By then, the mirror had already fogged over.
She stood still for a moment. Not posed, not inspecting. Just there. Her arms hung loose at her sides, her toes sinking slightly into the tile. The steam softened everything: her outline, her skin, even the air. The reflection staring back at her was dulled at the edges, her features blurred by heat and breath. She could still see her shape. Her shoulders narrow but set, arms lined with the first signs of strength again. Her ribs still showed when she inhaled too deeply, but her thighs had started to look solid again. Her body was still catching up to the rest of her. Still figuring out how to be whole after Two Pines tried to carve her hollow. But she was getting there. Slowly. She could see it.
She tilted her head and scanned herself like she was reading a story she knew by heart. The scars stood out like chapters. The crescent just below her ribs where a blade had barely missed something vital. A paler burn at her hip, nearly invisible now, but still a map of pain. The line along her collarbone, clean and deliberate. Surgical. The scar on her forehead had been there the longest. She didn’t even notice it anymore.
She nodded once, almost imperceptibly. A quiet agreement between her and the woman behind the fog.
Then she stepped into the shower.
The water hit her like a warning. Scalding. Immediate. It slammed into her shoulders and rolled down her back, ruthless in its heat. But she didn’t flinch. She leaned into it. Let it rake across her spine, sting her arms, burn her thighs. The pain was real. Tangible. Honest in a way few things were. It didn’t lie, didn’t soften, didn’t ask questions. It just landed, over and over again, washing everything else into silence.
She closed her eyes, tilted her head forward, and let her forehead rest against the cool tile wall. It grounded her. Solid. Cold. Unmoving. She breathed. Not deeply. Just enough. Enough to be here.
Then it came.
Not a memory. Not an image she could blink away. It was sharper than that. It crashed through her like glass, fast, clean, final. No prelude. No grace.
A sonogram.
Not imagined. Not abstract. Burned into her mind with brutal clarity. Grainy black-and-white. A crescent of light, unmistakable. And there in the center, her. The child. Seven months. Spine curled tight. Fists pulled in. Fragile, yes, but undeniably alive.
Not a possibility. A fact.
The photo was still folded in the lining of her coat. Tucked behind Kevlar, buried between seams, carried across borders and terminals and checkpoints. It was creased so deeply now it had forgotten how to lie flat. She had kept it close because she couldn’t not. Because some part of her still believed the paper would remember the shape even if she forgot the name.
She used to whisper to her belly in motel rooms that reeked of other people’s stories. Whisper names in the dark. Some strong. Some gentle. Some stolen from myths. Some from books she hadn’t finished. She spoke them aloud like spells. Names in Korean. In English. Names that meant light. Names that meant defiance.
Now? Now she couldn’t remember a single goddamn one.
Not one.
The realization hit without warning. Her knees gave out, buckled like they had been kicked. She dropped too fast to catch herself, hands sliding helplessly down the wall. Her skin hit the shower floor hard, the ceramic slick and unforgiving. Her breath didn’t come. Her chest just stalled.
The water kept pounding down, relentless and hot, hammering her back, her scalp, her shoulders.
She folded in tight. Arms clamped around her stomach. Head bent. Forehead pressed hard to her knees. The heat had scalded her skin pink, but it was nothing compared to what was burning underneath. Her whole body trembled, not from cold but from something older, deeper, more bone-deep than fear. Her jaw locked so tight her teeth throbbed. Fingernails dug into her upper arms, leaving pale marks that flushed angry and red as the shower thundered down over her back. Her shoulders jolted with every breath. Her chest couldn’t seem to find a rhythm. Her mouth opened once, like maybe a sound would come out. It didn’t. Just steam and a shattered breath that barely made it past her lips.
She cried, but not the way people cry in movies. No cinematic sobs. No beautiful devastation. This was messier. Raw. She cried like it surprised her. Like her body had remembered something her mind wasn’t ready to revisit. It wasn’t gentle or cathartic. It was violent. Uncontrolled. The kind of grief that had waited in the walls of her bones, that had made a home beneath her ribs, that had lived inside her blood quietly for years and now refused to be quiet anymore.
It wasn’t just about the child, though it started there. She cried for the girl she never got to meet. For the weight of her. The impossible, invisible pull of a presence that had once lived beneath her skin and kicked in the dark and responded to her voice like it meant something. She cried for the names whispered into motel ceilings. For every plan made in secret. For the way she used to sleep with one hand on her belly and the other over the gun under her pillow, believing—naively, stupidly—that she could keep both safe.
She cried for herself too. Not the woman she was now, but the one she used to be. The one who thought she could walk two roads at once. Who thought she could live between love and violence and come out clean. That she could be sharp and soft. That she could kill for a living and still build a life worth protecting.
She had buried that woman. Or thought she had. But grief has a way of preserving what pain cannot quite dissolve. The version of herself she thought was long gone hadn’t decayed. It had hardened. It had turned into something fossilized under all the anger and training and years. Not gone. Just waiting.
And under the grief, something else had been building. Coiled low in her belly. Climbing her spine. Tightening around her throat.
The fury.
It hit hot and sudden. Like a flare lit inside her chest. Fast. Blinding. Unforgiving. Her muscles locked. Her fists curled tight. Her breath caught in the cage of her ribs. She wanted to wreck something. Rip the cabinet off the wall. Shatter the mirror with her elbow. Drag her knuckles down the glass until they split. She wanted to leave blood on porcelain. On tile. On her own hands.
She wanted to find him. Taehyung Kim. And make him understand what he had done. Not by telling him. By making him feel it. Every inch of it. Every second. She wanted to look him in the eyes as it hit him. As the weight of what he stole crushed him under its full, ugly truth.
Her knuckles went white. Her muscles trembled with the force of restraint. But she didn’t scream. Not because she couldn’t. Because she wouldn’t. That kind of rage needed to be saved. Stored. Honed.
It would have its moment. Just not here.
The shower kept running, loud and steady, until she moved. Just a breath. Just a twitch of her fingers. Then she reached up and turned the water off.
Silence crashed down like a wave. Thick. Dense. The kind that fills every crack in a room. The kind that listens back. Steam drifted in long, slow ribbons, curling around her shoulders like it wasn’t ready to leave either.
She blinked once. Her breathing evened out. Slower. Cooler. Her chest still ached, but the fire was banked now, drawn in close and dangerous. Not gone. Just shaped.
She stood.
Water clung to her skin. Her hair dripped in long strands down her back. Her face was flushed, eyes glassy but sharp now, clear in a way that felt surgical. She moved with precision, drying off in steady, methodical swipes, every motion practiced and spare. The towel trembled in her hands, but she kept her grip. Dressed quickly. Quietly. No wasted motion. Just armor going back on.
The grief didn’t vanish. She packed it back down. Tucked it into the parts of herself she didn’t let anyone see. But the rage—she left that right where it was. Let it sit beneath her skin. Close to the surface.
Because Taehyung Kim didn’t know what he had taken from her, but he would.
She wasn’t coming for answers.
She was coming for the truth.
And he would give it to her.
Because there would be no one left to stop her.
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The city didn’t perform. Gwangju just was. It didn’t blaze with ambition like Seoul or stretch itself into glitz the way Busan tried to. It moved slow, breathed heavier. Honest, unbothered, like an old man in his undershirt posted up on a plastic chair, feet bare, sweating into the sidewalk, waving off mosquitoes with a rolled-up newspaper. There was a stillness here that didn’t feel staged. It felt earned. Like time didn’t hurry. Like it hadn’t for a while. Even the heat didn’t rush. It pressed down in thick, lazy folds, dragging everything—footsteps, voices, the color out of the buildings—into something close to sleep.
The streets moved in rhythm with it: fans turning slowly in dim back rooms, the hum of overhead wires swaying with the weight of too many summers, the drag of slippers across concrete. Shops leaned on each other like they were tired of standing alone. Paint peeled in curls off old storefronts. Rust bloomed at the hinges of delivery carts and folding chairs. Hand-painted signs creaked as they shifted in the breeze, their edges warped like paper left out in the rain.
It was the kind of afternoon where nothing tried too hard. The air was a patchwork of smells: hot oil, boiled radish, exhaust, old metal, the damp tang of stone that’s never had a chance to dry. Vendors fanned themselves with bent menus, arguing halfheartedly with ajummas who bargained with the precision of habit. A mop of scooters rolled through puddles left by melted ice or a spilled soup bowl, weaving through crates and feet like they knew every shortcut before it was built. The city didn’t sleep. But it didn’t really wake up, either. It just existed. Like a held breath.
And tucked into all of it, halfway hidden between a shuttered bookstore and a florist with wilting carnations, was the door. If you could call it that. More a suggestion than an entrance. A curtain, once blue and now more of a stained gray, hung from a crooked rod that looked hammered into place out of stubbornness rather than skill. It shifted when the wind pushed at it, not with drama but with the quiet of something breathing. The name painted across the fabric had long since faded: 김밥바. The brushstrokes barely held together, as if the person who wrote them hoped the world would forget.
She didn’t go straight in.
Y/N stood across from it, phone in hand, thumb flicking absently at nothing. Her eyes weren’t on the screen. They were on the building. On the way the curtain moved. On the way the shadows behind it didn’t feel empty. A pigeon flapped once but didn’t fly. A scooter buzzed past, and an ajumma barked something sharp about cabbage. The usual sounds. The usual rhythm.
Still, she waited a beat longer. She watched how the light caught the doorway. She noticed how the air felt different here. Denser.
Then she stepped forward and slipped behind the curtain like she belonged.
And everything changed.
The moment it fell behind her, the city vanished. The noise didn’t fade. It ceased. Like someone hit pause on the outside world. Inside was quiet in a way only old places know how to be. Not just soundless. Still. The kind of stillness that settles in stone. The kind that remembers things. The air was cooler, not because of any fan or vent, but because it had never left. It clung to the walls, the wood, the floor. Everything felt touched by time.
The scent hit next. Not artificial or sanitized. Just real. A mix of rice, vinegar, seaweed, and broth so old it had soaked into the wood grain. Salt, smoke, a whisper of garlic. It was the kind of smell you carried home with you, in your clothes, your hair, your bones.
Her eyes adjusted fast.
The space was barely larger than a closet. Three stools lined a counter. One crooked. One stained. One seemingly untouched. The varnish had long worn off the wood, dulled by elbows and sweat and stories told over soup. A ceiling fan turned overhead, slow and uneven, ticking with every revolution like it was remembering something too late. A single fly moved in lazy circles beneath it.
Nobody else was here.
No music. No kitchen noise. Just a single plate on the counter. Empty except for one streak of red sauce. Chopsticks placed beside it with care. Not abandoned. Just waiting.
She walked in like she’d been here before. Like this was a memory, not a discovery. Her posture was casual. Her camera hung from her neck like a travel blog prop, the kind of thing that made her look like the type of woman who’d find “hidden gems” and write about the soul of a place as if she’d invented the concept. But none of that touched her eyes. They were focused. Clear. Watching.
And then he appeared. Quietly, without fuss, like he’d always been there and the world had only just remembered to look. The steam rolled out behind him, curling around his shoulders like it had followed him from some low, back kitchen heat that never fully cooled. He was tall, not imposing, but solid in the way that came from doing hard things for a long time. His build was lean, a little bowed at the shoulders, as if time and gravity had done their work. His skin had the baked-in tone of someone who’d spent years near open flame, his forearms marked by thin pale scars that spoke of burns, not battles. The white chef’s jacket he wore was buttoned but stained, spattered with dark brown that might have been soy sauce or something else. It was hard to tell, and maybe it wasn’t supposed to be clear.
His face didn’t offer much. It wasn’t unreadable in the cold, calculated way of spies or killers. It just didn’t feel the need to explain itself. High cheekbones softened the shape of his long face, and his eyes, dark and narrow, carried the quiet stillness of someone who watched more than he spoke. His hair was thick, slightly tousled, mostly black but peppered with gray at the temples. He was handsome, but the kind of handsome that didn’t advertise. He managed to exist right in the middle ground. Someone you’d forget until you saw them again and couldn’t stop wondering why.
Y/N kept her expression neutral as he stepped fully into view. Her body didn’t flinch. Her gaze didn’t drift. She looked at him plainly, openly, like she had no reason not to. But this was him. The man she’d crossed an ocean for. The one who had answers locked behind his teeth.
He saw her, and the smile came fast. Too fast. It stretched across his face like a reflex he hadn’t bothered updating in years. Broad, eager, practiced. The kind of smile that had been used too many times on too many strangers. The kind that worked better when you didn’t look too closely. He wore it like a uniform: the smile of a man who knew how to sell comfort, how to charm tourists just enough to make them stay, just long enough to make them leave before asking the wrong question. There was no real warmth in it. But it was a good act.
“English?” he asked, cautious but cheerful, testing each syllable like he was stepping over a puddle he didn’t trust.
She gave a half-shrug, tipping her head slightly as her mouth pulled into something lopsided and pleasant. “Almost,” she said. “American.”
Something about that word flipped a switch in him. He lit up like he’d been waiting for it. “Ah! America! Yes, welcome, welcome!” He nodded several times, as if the excitement might wear off if he didn’t hammer it in. “My English, very good. Yes.”
“Perfect,” she said, breezy and bright, like a woman with nowhere to be and all the time in the world. She stepped farther inside, her fingers ghosting along the edge of the counter. She didn’t look at it, not really, but the gesture made it seem like she was appreciating the wood, soaking up the charm. It wasn’t for him. It was for the story.
The chef smiled wide when she stepped in, his English laced with effort but cheerful all the same. “Welcome, American,” he said with a chuckle. “I hope you like my shop.”
She dipped her head, just enough to be polite. “안녕하세요,” she said, soft and even, her pronunciation clean, too natural to be brand-new.
That got a reaction. He lit up like someone had pulled a coin from behind his ear. “오오오! 안녕하세요!” He leaned forward with the delight of a man genuinely impressed. “Very good, very good! You speak Korean?”
She let out a modest laugh, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear like the compliment embarrassed her a little. “Not really,” she said. “Just a few words I picked up yesterday.”
Her eyes moved over the room, taking in the shelves, the old wood, the dust that softened the corners of things. “Is it okay if I sit here?”
“Sit, sit!” he said, already wiping down the bar with a damp cloth in wide, sweeping strokes like he was preparing an altar. “Of course. You sit. What words you learn? Oh, wait one second.”
He turned toward the curtain behind him, barked something in Korean without missing a beat. The words tumbled fast and irritated.
“We have a customer, bring out some tea, quickly!”
A voice called back, lazy and muffled. “I’m watching my soap operas.”
The chef rolled his eyes, snapping, “Lazy bastard! Screw your soap opera! Hurry up!”
“The tea’s hot. Why don’t you serve it yourself for once?”
“Shut up! Get your ass out here!”
Then he turned back to her, placing both palms on the bar like nothing had happened, though a thin line of annoyance still showed around his eyes. His smile remained pleasant. “So,” he said, “what else do you know in Korean?”
She tapped her chin lightly, brow furrowed like she was digging through a mental list. “감사합니다,” she said after a second, letting the word unfold carefully but not too perfectly. Like she was still getting comfortable with it.
He nodded with approval, the kind of praise people give freely but mean all the same. “Very good,” he said. “You say it nicely.”
She leaned forward just a touch, elbows resting gently on the bar, camera bumping softly against the edge. “알겠어요?” she tried, the hesitation built in just enough to seem earnest.
He brightened. “You know that one! ‘I understand.’ Good, very good. You learn fast.”
She smiled back. “Only what people say to me first.”
Then she tilted her head and added another. “안녕히 가세요?”
His expression flickered for a split second. The kind of shift most people wouldn’t catch. He recovered quickly, correcting her with a wave of his hand. “No, no, no. Say again.”
She blinked once, feigning the kind of sheepish confusion that made it look like maybe she had messed it up after all. She tried again, a little slower this time. “안녕히 가세요?”
He clapped his hands once, sharp and loud in the stillness of the shop. His smile stretched wide, but the lines around it didn’t move. “You speak Korean,” he said, voice lighter than it had been, but also a little tighter.
She laughed softly, tilting her head again. It was the kind of laugh you’d hear from someone caught in a harmless exaggeration. “Now you’re just flattering me.”
But he didn’t laugh with her. “No,” he said simply. “Serious. Your pronunciation... very good. You say 안녕히 가세요 like we say 안녕히 가세요.”
The air between them settled. Not tense, but heavier. The kind of pause that had weight in it, even if you didn’t know why.
His voice came again, this time quieter, slower. “You can learn Korean very easy.”
She let her gaze drop for half a second, just enough to give it texture, then lifted it again with a careful smile. “No kidding,” she said, her voice just a little softer now. “But thank you. 진짜... 감사합니다.”
He didn’t respond right away. Just breathed in through his nose, steady and thoughtful. Then he adjusted his stance, the shift so subtle most people wouldn’t notice. But she did. She saw the way his shoulders reset, the tiny movements that told her he wasn’t just running a shop. He was watching something unfold.
He turned without another word and picked up a rice paddle. His voice floated back over his shoulder, even and calm. “Let me make something for you.”
She nodded, her smile still in place, but the tone that followed wasn’t quite the same. “Anything’s fine.”
The chef stayed where he was, hands now methodically working at the counter. A bowl of rice, steam still clinging faintly to the grains. A bamboo mat laid flat. A half-sliced cucumber. The blade beside it already glinting in the overhead light.
“You like kimbap?” he asked, like it was just polite conversation.
“I love it,” she said, light and breezy.
She let the sentence hang just long enough to sound casual, like maybe this was a regular kind of moment, in a regular kind of place. But it wasn’t.
The knife moved with soft, measured sounds. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Carrot. Radish. Cucumber.
Every slice was uniform. Clean. The rhythm was precise, practiced. Not just skilled. Disciplined.
She didn’t take her eyes off him, not directly, but not obviously either. Her posture stayed relaxed, her hands resting on the bar. The camera around her neck swayed gently with the air from the ceiling fan, tapping now and then against the wood like a slow heartbeat.
She didn’t look dangerous.
But then, neither did he.
The overhead light gave a quiet hum, casting the shop in a worn, yellow wash that made everything look faintly out of date. The fan creaked once with each turn, ticking off invisible seconds. Outside, the alley was still. A cat passed, paused in the doorway, then disappeared again.
The chef didn’t look up from his cutting board. His voice came steady, like they were just passing time.
“You should learn Korean.”
She smiled, light but not airy. “You think so?”
He nodded slightly, slicing through radish with clean precision. “Yes.”
“I’ve heard it’s impossible.”
He nodded. “Yes. Very hard. But you,” he said, quieter now, “you have Korean tongue.”
He returned to his work, pulling a smaller knife from a drawer. It was heavier, curved differently. He laid slices of tuna onto a black ceramic plate. Next to them, he added a pinch of pickled ginger and a small, hand-shaped mound of wasabi.
He slid the dish toward her with quiet pride.
She looked down at it, then back up. “How’d you know tuna’s my favorite?”
He shrugged one shoulder, almost coy. “What?”
“Tuna,” she said again, watching him. “It’s my favorite.”
He smiled with the same practiced calm. “Ah. Thank you very much.”
Then he turned his head toward the beaded curtain and shouted, voice sharp. “야! 차 어디 갔어? 빨리 좀 해!”
Behind the curtain came a reply, loud and annoyed.
“지금 드라마 보고 있잖아!”
“드라마는 개뿔이지! 손님 왔잖아, 이 자식아. 빨리 갖고 와!”
“차 뜨거워! 너도 좀 움직여 봐!”
The chef muttered something under his breath, wiped his hands, and moved toward the curtain. The beads clinked as he grabbed the other man by the wrist mid-gesture, twisted it lightly, and leaned in close.
“네가 장군이면 나는 황제다. 그러니까 조용히 차나 갖고 와.”
Then, with a mocking grin and just enough weight to sting, he said in English: “Do you understand?”
The assistant pulled free, scowling, and glanced at Y/N. “대머리 아니거든,” he muttered. Then, in stiff English: “I shave. Do you understand me?”
The chef didn’t even look. He picked up a small knife and threw it underhanded toward the wall. It landed with a soft thud, blade buried in the wood just left of the curtain.
The assistant disappeared without another word.
Y/N didn’t follow his movement. Her fingers just found a napkin and began folding it, slow and absent, like she was trying to pass the time. But her attention stayed open, alert, listening to every creak from the fridge and every shift of weight behind the curtain. She tracked it all without looking.
The chef glanced her way and let out a low sigh. “Sorry,” he murmured.
She smiled, shook her head gently, still all ease and pleasant charm. “No worries at all.”
The chef had gone back to wiping a plate that didn’t need it, slow circles that looked more like habit than cleaning. He hummed something under his breath. No real melody, just sound for the sake of it. Every so often, his eyes drifted up. Not to her. To the curtain. He was waiting, too.
Y/N leaned her chin into her palm and let out a quiet sigh. The kind that sounded like she had nowhere else to be, like this was just another slow stop on a longer, looser itinerary. But beneath the quiet facade, her pulse had cooled into something steadier. Sharper. She was counting. Not seconds. Not movements. Just weight.
The beads stirred again.
The second man reappeared, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. The soju was cold, condensation sliding down the green glass in thick streaks. His fingers were wide, stained around the cuticles, the nails chipped like they had been trimmed with teeth or a dull blade. Hands that had done hard things.
He reached the counter and set the bottle and glass down. He turned to walk away. The chef didn’t let it slide.
His voice cracked through the air, hard and sudden. “야, 예의 좀 갖춰!”
The man didn’t stop completely. He only slowed. His shoulders shifted. A sigh leaked out, long and annoyed.
“뭐? 술 갖다 줬잖아.”
“손님 앞에서는 제대로 해. 외국인이라도.”
A scoff, barely loud enough to register. “외국인이라 모를 텐데 왜 신경 써?”
The chef’s reply came low, firm. “그러니까 더 조심해야지. 한국 사람처럼 보여도 다 듣고 있을 수도 있어.”
There was a pause. Just a few seconds, but heavy. The kind of quiet that wasn’t about silence. It was about choice.
The man muttered something under his breath, just noise really, but shaped by resentment. Then he twisted the cap off the bottle with a rough snap and poured. The soju splashed high in the glass, almost spilling. He shoved it toward her with one hand, the edge of the glass tapping wood just shy of rude.
Then he turned and disappeared again. The beads clattered harder this time. The chef let out a breath.
“죄송합니다,” he said, bowing his head slightly. “그 사람은... 사람 대하는 법을 몰라요.”
Y/N didn’t flinch. Her smile stayed where it had been the whole time, pleasant and unbothered. “Sorry?”
The chef’s tone softened, switching to English like it was muscle memory. “Ah, no, just... he doesn’t know how to talk,” he added, with a thin smile that almost reached his eyes.
She nodded, light, polite. Lifted the shot glass with a small, quiet toast. “Thank you,” she said, and took a sip.
The soju hit cool. Sweet up front, then a clean, sharp finish that sat in the back of her throat and lingered. It didn’t burn. It reminded.
She set the glass down. Picked up her chopsticks. The motion was fluid, casual, not stiff with performance, but practiced. The way a habit becomes part of muscle memory.
She lifted a piece of tuna from the plate, a clean slice that caught the light like silk. Deep ruby red, almost translucent, grain running fine through its surface. She placed it on her tongue and held it there, waiting. It melted. Soft and rich, just a trace of brine and something faintly metallic, like memory. She chewed once. Twice. Let it dissolve.
Her eyes drifted shut, just for a second. 
She set the chopsticks down, careful not to clatter them, then picked up the soju again and finished the glass in a single, smooth pull. The second hit went down easier. The warmth spread slow through her chest, settling in a place that had once held nerves.
Across the counter, the chef watched. He hadn’t changed his expression, but something in the way he stood had eased. Not relaxed, not soft, but carrying a kind of respect. He was noticing a quiet fluency. No words. Just recognition.
“First time in Korea?” he asked. His hands returned to the cutting board, fingers resting near the knife, though he didn’t pick it up yet.
Y/N nodded, finishing another bite. “Mmhmm.”
“What!” he said, voice rising with disbelief that didn’t quite ring false.
She swallowed, wiped the corner of her mouth lightly. “Yes. This is my first time.”
He tilted his head, eyes narrowing just a little. “What brings you to Gwangju?”
Outside, the alley shifted. A gust caught some stray bit of paper and skidded it along the brick like a coin on pavement. Somewhere nearby, a bird let out a single cry, sharp and fast, gone in a blink. The curtain behind her swayed faintly with a whisper-soft clatter, like wind chimes that never quite got the breeze they needed to sing. Y/N adjusted her chopsticks, repositioned them between her fingers, then gently set them down without ever lifting a bite. Her tone was light when she finally spoke, almost conversational.
“I came to see a man.”
The sentence didn’t echo, but it changed something in the room. A beat passed. Not long. But the chef’s hand froze mid-motion, his knife held just above the salmon, blade tilted slightly as if it too had paused to listen.
“Ah,” he said after a moment, stretching the word just enough to carry weight. “A friend in Gwangju?” He didn’t look up.
“Not quite,” she replied.
“Not a friend?”
“No.” She waited until his eyes found hers before continuing. “We’ve never met.”
The blade finally touched the board. A soft sound. Then he laid the knife aside, not quickly, but with care, like he’d decided whatever came next didn’t need a blade in hand. He kept his gaze on the cutting board for a moment longer than necessary, then finally looked up. The expression on his face didn’t shift much, but something behind his eyes sharpened. Not fear. Not even suspicion. Just awareness.
“And,” he said, more quietly now, “may I ask who he is?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Jung Hoseok.”
The name didn’t explode. It didn’t need to. It landed in the room like a rock dropped into still water. No splash. Just the heavy assurance that things were moving beneath the surface now. Her voice hadn’t changed. She wasn’t dramatic. She didn’t lean in. But the name was enough.
The chef went still. Not tense, simply anchored. Like something in him had snapped into place. His right hand rested on the edge of a towel. His left hovered briefly over the blade again, reflex more than anything. The tip of his finger brushed the metal and slipped. A sudden streak of red rose across his knuckle. He looked down at it, just for a moment, and lifted the hand to his mouth. Sucked the blood away like it was routine. No flinch. No sound. Just control, reset.
Behind her, the beads rattled once more, sharper this time. The bald man stepped through again, his face a clenched fist. He didn’t speak. Just let his eyes sweep the room, pausing on her. Not suspicion. Calculation. Like something in the air had told him to pay attention.
He crossed to the counter, picked up the bottle, and poured her another shot. This time, the movement was smooth. No clatter. No shove. Just a quiet, focused pour. He didn’t speak. Didn’t meet her eyes. He finished the pour, left the glass full, and walked out. The beads clacked shut behind him, not loud, not subtle. Just punctuation.
The chef exhaled slowly through his nose. No drama. Just release. Then he took a towel and began wiping his hands carefully, methodically. His eyes stayed on her.
She lifted the new glass in a small, silent toast, even though the man who’d poured it was already gone. The glass was cold enough that it clung to her fingers.
When the chef spoke again, the language changed. No more English. No pretense.
His voice lowered, smooth and even, each word placed with precision. “정호석에게 무슨 용건이 있습니까?”
Y/N didn’t blink.
She answered in Korean, her voice quiet, level. No showmanship. Just the kind of careful weight that traveled farther than volume ever could. “강철이 필요해요.”
His eyes narrowed. Not in suspicion. In thought. Like he was studying her words, not for truth, but for intention. He didn’t answer right away. He let the silence linger.
“왜 강철이 필요하죠?” he asked.
She looked at the glass beside her plate, a droplet tracing its way down the side. Then she met his eyes again. “쥐를 죽이려면요.”
There was another pause, longer this time, but not uncomfortable. Then the chef let out a short laugh. Not cruel. Not mocking. Just low and dry, like someone who had lived long enough to understand how serious things always start in calm voices.
“Must be a big rat,” he said in English this time, voice touched with something close to amusement. “If you need Jung Hoseok steel for it.”
She smiled, but only with one side of her mouth. The other half stayed still.
“Huge,” she said.
They didn’t move. Didn’t raise their voices. The air between them didn’t buzz with tension, but it held. Quiet. Pulled tight like thread stretched between fingers. It didn’t warn. It just waited.
The chef gave a small nod. Y/N didn’t speak, didn’t finish the food. She left the second shot untouched. The fish remained as he had plated it, artful, unspoiled. The only sign she had been there was the soft, fading ring left behind by her first glass, already drying into the grain of the wood.
She rose without a sound and followed him through the beaded curtain, not once looking back.
The hallway beyond was narrow and long, the kind of space that time forgets. The wallpaper, beige or yellow once, now sun-bleached into something closer to nicotine-stained parchment, peeled at the edges in slow curls. The floorboards creaked just enough to remind you that no one had fixed them in a long while, and maybe no one ever would. The air smelled lived-in, dense with cooking oil and old plaster, like generations of heat had steeped into the walls. A single bulb swung gently from the ceiling, flickering once before settling into a thin, steady glow.
Hoseok walked ahead, silent, his gait quiet but confident. He didn’t rush. He didn’t hesitate. His steps were even, deliberate, the kind of pace that didn’t waste energy or ask permission. When he reached the end of the corridor, he glanced up and found the pull cord, barely visible in the dim light, hanging like a spider’s thread. He tugged it once.
A low groan came from above, followed by a creaking shift. A square panel in the ceiling cracked open with a dusty exhale, and a folded ladder unfolded downward with slow, mechanical clicks, the rungs snapping into place like joints stretching after too long at rest.
He climbed first. She followed.
Her boots hit the rungs with soft thuds, the sound swallowed by the close space around her. One hand on each side rail, steady, smooth. No wasted movement. She didn’t glance up, didn’t glance down. Just climbed. The air thickened as she ascended, growing warmer, more still. There was a shift in temperature, and in smell. Wood. Oil. Steel.
As she rose through the opening, the attic revealed itself like a photograph developing in slow motion.
It wasn’t big, but it felt larger than it should have. The low ceiling curved inward slightly, giving the space a strange hush, like it was used to quiet. The warmth was immediate. Not stifling, but deep, the kind of heat that came from bodies and time and electricity burning low and constant. The scent was unmistakable to anyone who knew what it meant: cedar, carbon, and choji oil. That distinct blend of camellia and clove, familiar only to those who have ever cared for a blade.
The light from the window was weak, filtered through grime that hadn’t been wiped away in years. But what little came through cast long golden lines across the floor, picking out the pattern in the grain and throwing deep shadows that stretched and curled. The floor was clean. Worn, but swept. Not a speck of dust in sight. No clutter, no trash. This wasn’t storage. It was maintenance.
On the far wall stood the racks.
Not shelves. Not hooks. Racks, each one handmade, shaped with intention, joined by hand rather than hardware. Pale wood, aged and patient. No decoration. No flair. Just quiet craftsmanship. They held swords. Not just katanas. Blades.
Dozens of them, each one unique. Their sheaths glinted in the dim light: black lacquer with soft reflections, deep red urushi, mottled green like old bark. One was wrapped in white rayskin bound with gold. Each sageo tie—gray, plum, navy—was knotted tight and deliberate, tension held with purpose. The tsuka, wrapped in silk, were symmetrical to the point of obsession. Every fold precise. Every diamond perfect. Each kashira had its own story: copper dragons, koi fish, sakura petals, brass ships riding a storm. And the tsuba were miniature sculptures of iron and bronze, some simple, some elaborate, none ornamental for the sake of it. These weren’t pieces for display. They were weapons made to be used. Cared for, kept sharp, kept ready.
Y/N stepped forward, her movements quiet, measured. She didn’t touch anything. Didn’t need to. The room held its own gravity. The kind of silence that didn’t beg for reverence but commanded it through sheer presence. Every detail—the blades, the wood, the air itself—spoke for her to listen.
Behind her, Hoseok didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to either. His stillness wasn’t tense or withdrawn. It was aware. Watching, but not pressing.
She turned slightly, just enough to glance over her shoulder. Her voice, when it came, was soft. Her Korean clear and careful. “May I?”
A beat passed, subtle but intentional. Then, his reply, not in Korean this time but in English. And for some reason, that made it gentler. “Yes, you may. Second from the top. Sixth row. Left side.”
She nodded once and turned back to the racks. Her steps didn’t creak the floorboards. She moved with the kind of calm that came from purpose, not performance. Her eyes scanned, counted, found it: sixth row, left side, second down.
She stopped in front of it, let her gaze rest on the sheath before reaching for it. Black lacquer, smooth and deep enough to absorb the light. It reflected just the faintest outline of her face, blurred, formless. The finish was perfect, but not decorative. Not flashy. Maintained, not polished. Like someone had wiped it down once a week for decades, always with the same cloth.
The sageo cord was tied in a neat, practical knot. Not ornamental. Not lazy. Tight, squared. The kind of tie someone would redo until they got it right. The tsuba was brass, aged and worn, its surface darkened by time and touch. Etched pine branches crawled along its edges, simple, understated, and detailed enough to tell you it wasn’t mass-produced. It had been chosen.
Her fingers wrapped around the tsuka. The silk binding was tight, smooth, crisscrossed with perfect symmetry. Black cord over white rayskin. Traditional. Familiar. The handle sat against her palm like a known shape, like something she had used before, even if she hadn’t.
And something inside her, something she hadn’t even noticed was noisy, went quiet.
She drew the blade without hesitation, not for show, just to see. It came free with a sound so subtle it was almost imagined. Like breath drawn through cloth. The kind of sound that disappears if you’re not paying attention. But she always paid attention.
Light caught the blade and changed it. What had been metal turned fluid. Reflections danced along the edge, fractured and reformed as she moved. The hamon curled like a pale ripple, shifting with every minor tilt of her hands. The kissaki was long, graceful. Measured for reach, not for display. The sword wasn’t just well-made. It had purpose in its design. Intention.
She held it in both hands now. The balance fell into place like it knew where to go. No resistance. No demand. Just a quiet agreement between steel and muscle, weight and memory.
Behind her, Hoseok finally stirred. The smallest motion: fabric shifting, a heel settling more fully into the floor. When she turned slightly, she saw him near the window, one hand deep in his pocket. The other rolled something between his fingers.
A baseball. Worn, the leather dulled to a soft gray, the seams darkened, fraying. It looked like it had been tossed from hand to hand for years. He turned it over in his palm absently, like it was more habit than thought.
“Funny,” he said, voice quiet enough that the words didn’t quite disturb the stillness. “You like swords…”
He tossed the ball into the air, caught it once without looking.
“…I like baseball.”
Then, without warning, he threw it.
There was no flourish. No wind-up. Just a sudden motion, fast, clean, direct. The ball cut through the air on a line straight toward her. No room to think. No time for a plan.
Her arms moved before her mind did. The sword rose in a single arc, smooth and efficient. No tension in the shoulders, no wasted energy in the swing. The blade moved as though she were answering something, not striking.
The ball split cleanly.
There was no dramatic crack. No cinematic echo. Just a soft, muted thud, leather parting under steel, a sound more felt than heard. One half of the ball skidded off and rolled beneath the nearest rack. The other bounced off her boot and stopped.
She didn’t breathe out. Not yet. Her grip had already eased. The sword angled down, relaxed at her side, tip toward the floor. Balanced again, as if nothing had happened.
Hoseok stepped forward, steady as ever, though something behind his expression had shifted. Barely, but enough for her to notice. A flicker in his eyes, like a thought he hadn’t yet decided whether to keep or release. He lifted a hand toward her, slow and sure. Not a demand. Not a gesture of control. It was open, deliberate. A quiet invitation to return something that wasn’t quite hers yet.
She reversed the blade, offering the hilt without hesitation. No dramatic pause, no faltering. Just weight moving from her hands to his. The handoff was clean, unspoken, the kind of exchange that didn’t need ceremony to be understood.
He sheathed the sword with practiced ease, and the sound—soft, precise, the smooth slide of steel into lacquered wood—didn’t echo. It landed. Not loud, not theatrical. Just final. Like a breath held, then released.
“I wanted to show you these,” he said in Korean, the playful edge from earlier gone. His voice had changed, calmer now, older somehow. He held the sheathed blade in both hands, fingers gliding over the lacquer not to clean it, but to remember it. “But someone like you… someone like you already understands.”
He placed it gently back in its rack, hands steady, motions exact. Each movement held weight, the kind of intention that couldn’t be faked. “I no longer make instruments of death,” he said, softer now, almost to himself. “I keep them for their beauty. For what they once meant. Because I love them.”
There was a quiet pride in his words, not boastful, just true. He bowed his head slightly. “I’m proud of what I made. Proud of how well I made them. But I am retired.”
She stepped closer, silent. No threat in her approach, only certainty. Her presence filled the space without trying to. Her voice came softly, but with clarity.
“Then give me one.”
The words landed like a pin in still fabric. He turned to face her, jaw tightening.
“They’re not for sale.”
“I didn’t say sell me one.”
They locked eyes. Her stare didn’t waver. Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.
“I said give me one.”
A pause opened between them. Not long, but heavy. The kind that held all the weight of what hadn’t been said yet. When he spoke again, it was clipped. Cold.
“And why should I help you?”
She didn’t blink. “Because the vermin I’m after,” she said, the words clean and hard, “was your student.”
That stopped him. Not with a flinch, not with alarm. Just a subtle shift. Shoulders lowered by a fraction, breath held at the top of his chest. His silence was sudden and full.
She stepped in again. “And considering the student…” she let the rest hang, then added, “you have certain obligations.”
He turned and walked toward the narrow attic window, its frame sun-bleached and warped slightly with age. With the back of his hand, he wiped away a patch of fog, clearing a view just big enough to see the city stretching out below them—rooftops, wires, and the slow dimming of the day. The glass was damp, the edges still filmed in condensation.
With one finger, he reached up and began to write.
TAEHYUNG.
The name curved faintly in the glass, drawn in a line of skin oil and breath. Outside, the wind kicked up, brushing against the building with a hollow tap. The beams creaked. The attic seemed to lean into the moment. The name.
She didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just nodded once. That was enough.
Hoseok turned, walked to the trapdoor, and reached for the old latch. It gave with a dry metallic groan. The ladder creaked as it unfolded, the sound echoing faintly in the rafters.
He gestured to the corner. A futon, rolled neatly. A folded blanket beside it. A small jug of water, a wooden comb laid with care. Nothing lavish. Nothing new. Just clean. Lived-in.
“You can sleep here,” he said in Korean. “I’ll make space downstairs. Might take a day or two to find proper furniture.”
He descended the ladder with the same quiet weight he carried everywhere. But just before the hatch closed, his voice floated back up, lower and firmer.
“It’ll take a month to make the blade.”
A pause. The creak of one last step below.
“I suggest you spend it practicing.”
Then the hatch closed with a solid, wooden thunk. Not sharp. Not aggressive. Just complete.
She stood still, alone in the attic, the air settling around her like dust that had waited too long to fall. The quiet wasn’t just quiet anymore. It was thick, almost physical. A silence that had weight, like the room itself was holding its breath after what had been said, what had been written.
The last of the afternoon light had slipped away without notice, and in its place came the muted amber of early evening. Outside, the city blurred. Rooftops softened, edges dulled, the sky folding into dusk with no sharp lines left. Gwangju looked like it was remembering something it didn’t want to say out loud.
She walked toward the window, slow and steady, her boots tapping gently against the floor. The name was still there, hovering in the circle of cleared glass, faint but legible. TAEHYUNG. The letters had already started to run a little, the edges softened by moisture and time.
From her coat, she pulled a cloth. It was plain, the kind of fabric that had seen years of use—creased, worn, stripped of anything personal. Just something that did its job. She raised it and began to wipe. One pass. Then another. Then again. Not hard, not angry. Just firm. Methodical. With each motion, the letters blurred a little more, until they were nothing but streaks. And then nothing at all. Just fog again.
She held her hand to the glass for a second longer, palm pressed flat. The warmth from her skin left a faint outline before the cold reclaimed it. It faded just like the name had. Quick, quiet, complete.
She folded the cloth with care and tucked it back into her coat, her fingers working with practiced ease. No lingering. No pause for meaning.
Then she turned from the window.
Outside, the city kept fading. Behind her, the attic returned to stillness. The name was gone. And with it, whatever place he might’ve held in her. Taehyung Kim had already taken too much. There was no room left in her for the ghost of him. Not anymore.
He would fall. And when he did, she would finally be free.
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Taglist: @haru-jiminn @fancypeacepersona @futuristicenemychaos @cranberrycupcake @mar-lo-pap @wannaghostbts @solephile @paramedicnerd004 @stargirl-mayaa @calmyourtitts7 @bjoriis @11thenightwemet11 @screamertannie @everybodysaynoooooo
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chimcess ¡ 7 days ago
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Double Update for The Bride... Chapters 4 & 5 are out now!
I won't be able to update until after Halloween since I need to update Pitch Black as well, so I thought I'd give you guys a little surprise.
Thanks for reading!
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chimcess ¡ 7 days ago
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⚔︎ Chapter Five: The Snake in Busan Pairing: Taehyung x Reader Other Tags: Assassin!Taehyung, Assassin!Reader, Assassin!Jimin, Dad!Jimin, Assassin!Yoongi, Gang Leader!Yoongi, Assassin!Namjoon, Swordmaster!Hoseok, Chef!Hoseok, Pimp!Seokjin Genre: Assassins! AU, Exes!AU, Lovers to Enemies, Action, Comedy, Suspense, Martial Arts, Drama, Thriller, Romance (if you squint), Heavy Angst, Violence, 18+ only Word Count: 17k+ Summary: A former assassin awakens from a four-year coma after her ex-lover Taehyung tries to kill her on her wedding day. Driven by revenge for the loss of her unborn child and stolen life, she creates a hit list and embarks on a ruthless mission to take down everyone responsible. Warnings: toxic relationship, talks of character death, graphic violence, aggressive characters, jealousy, training, flashbacks, implied smut, bathing together, strong language, guilt, emotional turmoil, regret, vengeance, these relationships are all tangled up, non-graphic smut, backstory, another tame chapter, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: So, why did Hoseok Jung stop making swords?
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The attic was dim, the air thick with sandalwood. It clung to the rafters, soaked into the beams, and seeped from the floorboards like time itself had steeped in it. The walls exhaled the scent in slow, heavy breaths.
Candlelight sputtered low, throwing jagged shadows across old wood. Steel glinted in the flicker. Hoseok Jung’s sword collection lined the wall like a silent jury. Every blade had a name. Every saya was polished like a relic. Y/N had studied them all during her month in Gwangju. She’d held them, trained with them, bled on their edges. By the time the incense stopped catching in her throat, she knew each one like her own hands.
Hoseok stood at the altar, his black silk robe whisper-quiet as he moved. The candlelight reached for him, but the silk swallowed it whole. A serpent devouring its own tail was stitched across his chest in blood-red thread. Once, his face had been soft, someone who believed peace was a choice. Time, sorrow, and war had carved that man away. What was left was sharp. Dangerous. His eyes, obsidian, reflected nothing. His lips were drawn tight. Whatever softness Y/N had once known was gone. He had grown out his goatee during the month they trained.
Moon-Byul stood beside him, unmoving. His robe mirrored Hoseok’s, minus the serpent. Instead, gold-threaded cranes rose up from the hem. His head was freshly shaved, his expression unreadable. Moon always hovered between brilliance and boredom, amused, never impressed. Once, he called Y/N a lion after she bested him in a spar. She never forgot it. They were close in age, and he treated her as an equal. Hoseok, though, was a kindred spirit. After two weeks of wooden swords, Y/N knew his every move. When sticks stopped being fun, they switched to steel. They both got cut, nothing deep. They spent more time praising each other than nursing bruises.
Hoseok was still a master, but past his prime. Had they met when he was her age, she wouldn’t have stood a chance. She knew that. She just happened to meet him late enough to survive.
On the altar lay a single sword.
The lacquered sheath looked wet, like still water under moonlight. Brass fittings in the momoji style curled into maple leaves at each end. One leaf caught the light like it had something to say. A gold band ringed the fuchi.
The tsuba was a custom prayer wheel, Jung Style the smiths called it, flanked by Kozuka-ana and Kogai-ana holes. The seppa were plain brass. The menuki, blackened kongosho, three-pronged spears invoking Fudo Myo, the wrathful protector.
The sageo was mustard, tied in precise knots. No shitodome. Pure function. The saya was purpose shaped into beauty. Solid fittings. A gold ring off-center. Twin gold stripes traced its spine and edge. The ito was leather-wrapped, white ray skin beneath.
Y/N had seen many blades. Trained with legends. But this one didn’t gleam. It warned. It pulsed. It whispered. It was the most beautiful. And the most dangerous.
Silence held.
Then Hoseok spoke.
“I’m done doing what I swore to God nearly ten years ago I would never do again,” he said. “I’ve created... something that kills people.”
He looked at the blade. A breath passed.
“And in that purpose, I was a success.”
He stepped forward and knelt. The floor creaked beneath him. He turned slightly toward the girl in the shadows. Her hair hung loose, her eyes wide. A fading bruise marked her wrist. The candlelight caught the frayed hem of her pants. She stood like she was bracing for something.
“I did this,” Hoseok said, quieter, “because philosophically, I’m sympathetic to your aim.”
His palm rested on the sheath.
“This is my finest sword. If on your journey you should encounter God…” He gripped the hilt. “God will be cut.”
He rose. The light caught his jaw, casting deep shadows.
When he looked at her again, something in his gaze had shifted, just slightly. The way Pai Mei had looked at her before she left China. She thought of her old master, wondered if he was still alive, still alone. She never thought to visit. Pai Mei didn’t like guests. He would mock her if she showed up without reason. But he had cared for her. More than he cared for Taehyung. And that had meant something. Pai Mei saw Taehyung as a son.
She blinked, realized she had drifted. Hoseok was still staring.
“Revenge,” he said, “is never a straight line.”
The incense pressed in. The air thickened. The attic closed around them.
“It’s a forest,” he said. “And like a forest, it’s easy to lose your way. To get lost. To forget where you came in.”
He stepped forward again, robe trailing like dusk.
“To serve as a compass,” he said, “a combat philosophy must be adopted.”
Moon-Byul moved without sound, placing a scroll in Hoseok’s hands. The parchment looked brittle. The ink was claws on rice paper. The Doctrine. The old Yagu code. Hoseok’s legacy.
He looked at Y/N.
“Repeat after me.”
His voice turned sharp. He began in Japanese.
Hoseok was born in Gwangju but raised mostly in Okinawa, under his grandfather’s roof. His family had fled to Japan before the war, hiding in a village so small it escaped notice even during the bombings. His grandfather made katanas, not hwandos. Y/N doubted they kept the name “Jung” there.
Hoseok’s childhood was carved between languages, between cultures. Between silences.
He held the scroll.
“When engaged in combat, the vanquishing of thine enemy can be the warrior’s only concern…”
Y/N echoed him in Japanese, low and steady.
“This is the first and cardinal rule of combat…”
No pause.
“Suppress all human emotion and compassion…”
Her jaw clenched.
“Kill whoever stands in thy way,” Hoseok said, “even if that be Lord God or Buddha himself…”
She didn’t hesitate. Hoseok’s voice was smooth, almost soothing. Hers was rougher, clipped. Her Korean was better.
“This truth lies at the heart of the art of combat,” Hoseok whispered. “Once it is mastered… thou shall fear no one. Though the devil himself may bar thy way…”
Y/N didn’t blink.
Hoseok bowed. She bowed back, then stepped forward. Her fingers closed around the hilt, steady, callused. The blade slid free with a soft hiss, catching candlelight as it rose. It was flawless.
Two gold carvings marked it: the unfinished Hattori mon, raw and exposed, and a Shi-sha before a war spear, garnet eyes gleaming. Hoseok’s lion. His mark. All his swords bore it. Now it belonged to her.
The hamon shimmered. Notare cresting into chaos halfway up the blade. Chu-kissaki tip. Toriizori curve. Every line exact, every surface mirrored. She saw the whole room behind her in its polish.
Hoseok spoke in English.
“Be careful, Y/N.”
She looked at him. Really looked. Weeks of sweat and silence had taught her more than any master before. He hadn’t comforted her. He had prepared her. Soup left wordlessly. Mid-spar corrections, sharp and precise. Quiet care. The kind that mattered.
Moon-Byul had honed her into something hard and clean. She would miss them both. And the restaurant downstairs, sticky tables, chipped cups, perfect kimbap.
“Can I come back?” she asked. “If I need help?”
Hoseok smiled. Small. Honest. It softened him.
“You are always welcome here, Black Mamba.”
She bowed. Deep. He matched it.
Then straightened, voice lighter.
“Now,” he said, “you need to rest. You have vermin waiting.”
She turned toward the stairs, sword in hand. Neither man followed.
Her room was barely a closet. Low ceiling. Thin walls. But it was hers. Quiet.
She closed the door. The soft click of the lock steadied her. The air felt heavier now. Tomorrow pressed close.
At the desk, Hoseok had left paper and charcoals. A small gesture. She had mentioned once that she used to draw.
The page waited, too white, too still. She pulled one sheet loose, placed it flat.
Her hand moved before her mind caught up. Lines. Shapes. Motion without thought.
Then a name surfaced. Unwelcome. Unavoidable.
Yoongi Min.
Just thinking it made her chest tighten. She hadn’t said it out loud in years, afraid it might summon him. But her hand didn’t stop.
His face came first. Sharp cheekbones, guarded eyes, the mouth set hard, almost smiling. The cold was there. But so was the warmth. The version of him that existed only for her. She hated that she remembered.
“Bittersweet” was too neat a word. Nothing about him had ever been clean.
Yoongi wasn’t Taehyung. No one was. Taehyung had been wildfire, beautiful and ruinous. She had run toward that fire.
But Yoongi... he was the silence in a world that never stopped screaming. Tea at 3 a.m. No questions. No fixing. Just space. He didn’t tame her. He made room.
And for a while, that had been enough.
Her strokes slowed. Smaller now. More careful. Her wrist trembled once. Her eyes stung.
He hadn’t always been cruel. Not with her. There had been jokes. Seoul nights. The way he used to hold her like the world had ended. Even his rivalry with Brandi had dulled eventually. And she remembered how he used to look at her, like she was something holy. Like he wasn’t sure he deserved her. Maybe once, she believed it.
Then came Two Pines. Yoongi chose empire. Chose power over her without blinking. And whatever they had died in that moment. Now he wore the crown like it belonged to him. Never apologized. Never looked back.
She gripped the charcoal too hard. It snapped. She didn’t flinch. Just picked up the broken half and kept drawing.
Two Pines had been a dream: peace under trees, shared breath, a place to exhale. It became a slaughterhouse. He didn’t save her. Didn’t try. He watched. She never forgave him. She never would.
Yoongi Min would pay. That was carved into her bones now. Love didn’t excuse it. Didn’t clean it. Didn’t quiet the screams. She saw them in her sleep, felt them in her chest every time she closed her eyes.
This desk was her altar now. A page, a truth. Vengeance wasn’t theory. It was instinct. Ritual. Religion.
I loved him. And I’ll still kill him.
Once, that thought might’ve broken her. Now it fit. Now it kept her warm.
Sometimes she pictured it: the moment he saw her again. Not the executioner. Not the girl who once touched him like a prayer. Just two broken things who loved each other before they learned how to ruin everything.
Her eyes dropped to the sketch. His face stared back. Not a portrait. A reckoning. He didn’t look like the tyrant the world feared or the boy she trusted. He looked like what lived in between. A ghost of someone who never got to choose who he became.
A tear slid down her cheek. She didn’t wipe it. Didn’t need to. Her hand moved harder now, charcoal grinding into the paper, deepening the shadows beneath his eyes, carving out the line of his jaw, the shape of that mouth.
That mouth. It had saved her once. Destroyed her, too. She knew it better than her own reflection.
She was almost done.
When she drew the last line, something settled. The version of him on the page was final. Whatever was left of him in the world, she’d bury it herself.
Vengeance doesn’t wait. Not even for love.
She paused. The charcoal trembled in her grip. The lamp buzzed louder, throwing jagged shadows across the wall. Dust floated like time had paused, just to watch.
Then it came. A voice from somewhere deep. Old. At that moment, you think: it’s proof like no other. That not only does God exist, but you’re doing His will.
It hit like a splinter beneath the skin. She remembered hearing it once. Young. Believing. Blade in one hand, faith in the other. Back when certainty felt like armor. When killing felt like purpose.
A sound escaped her. Something like a laugh, scraped raw. That belief was dead now. Buried under ash, silk, and silence at Two Pines.
There was no holy mission. No divine justice. Just blood and what followed. She wasn’t a prophet. Wasn’t anyone’s daughter anymore. That girl, the one who prayed, was long gone. What remained was colder. Sharper.
Her fingers moved again. One last stroke across the collarbone, clean and exact. Not decoration. Not feeling. It was dissection. Finding what hadn’t rotted in the corpse of something long dead.
When I knew the least about my enemies, she thought, the first name I wrote was the easiest. And Yoongi Min had never tried to hide. Not from her. Not from anyone. No aliases. No masks. No intermediaries. He stood in the center of his own legend, calm as a man pouring tea. Never flinched. Never blinked.
They called him Busan’s velvet devil. A gentleman butcher. A king in wolf’s clothing. No one whispered his name, they said it with care. Like it might unlock something dangerous.
He didn’t build his empire in shadow. He built it loud. Deliberate. Brick by bloody brick. Face bare. Eyes forward. His business was fear, and he ran it like art.
And once, she had loved that face. Not like Taehyung. That had been fire. Destruction you welcomed. Yoongi was different. Solid. Still.
He sat with her on the bad nights. No questions. No comfort. Just presence. He let her have silence without trying to fill it. And when she needed him, really needed, he was there. Now she needed him gone.
The memories cut sharp. Her hand hesitated, then pressed on. She darkened the hollow of his throat. Sketched the collar of his coat, always black, always tailored. Gloves. Always gloves. A man who knew what he was. Never pretended otherwise.
Her thoughts circled back to where it began. Taehyung. He didn’t enter a room, he arrived. Moved like smoke. Looked like he knew secrets you hadn’t earned. Every move deliberate. Every silence calculated. He didn’t fight for the top, he acted like he already lived there. And the world didn’t argue. She’d loved that about him. God help her, she had.
Yoongi was twenty-nine when Taehyung handed him the kingdom. It wasn’t loyalty. It was strategy. A chess move disguised as trust. And Yoongi wore the crown like it had always been his.
She didn’t trust the memory, too warped, too worn. But it came back anyway. Again and again. Now, staring at the page, something in her chest went still. His eyes. That same emptiness. That certainty. Like he already knew how your story ended, and wasn’t impressed.
Once, those eyes had looked at her differently. Maybe not with love. But with recognition. Like he saw her. Now he wouldn’t blink. And neither would she.
Her hand slowed, weight behind each stroke. She shaped his mouth, the same one that once told her she was more than fire. The one that kissed her like she was something worth saving.
But that version of them was gone. Whatever she’d been to him, whatever he’d been to her, it didn’t matter anymore.
Hoseok had told her how the war ended. Not quietly. Not with peace. It ended the way power always does when it refuses to share: loud, brutal, almost holy in scale.
He said Yoongi had stood on the edge of the last battlefield, black hanbok catching the light like oil, moving like smoke. The final rival, once feared, bled out at his feet.
Yoongi didn’t gloat. Didn’t speak. Didn’t blink. He looked down. Stepped over the body. Kept walking. Like death was just another item crossed off the list. That was what made him terrifying. Not the violence. The indifference.
After that, Busan didn’t resist. It bowed. Now the only trace of that man lived in graphite and shadow on the page in front of her.
Her hand moved in steady strokes, building his face in layers. Every line felt less like art and more like exhumation. She wasn’t drawing. She was digging. Through wreckage. Through memory. Through what was left.
Yoongi’s features came together piece by piece. The sharp jaw. The cold slope of his eyes. The soft curve of his mouth, more memory than muscle now. Not quite a king. Not the boy she’d known. Something in between. A ghost on paper.
Then her hand slipped. The charcoal snapped, rolled across the desk, stopped against the edge of a dried tea stain. She didn’t reach for it. Just stared.
The face on the page looked back, unfinished. Not a monster. Not a myth. A man.
And still, the image stayed. Burned into memory like a scar: Yoongi, that night. Black hanbok, sleeves wet with blood, standing over the last man who dared to defy him. The body twitched once, reflex or defiance, but it didn’t matter. It was over.
Yoongi didn’t pause. He turned to the others. His face unreadable. Cold. If there was emotion, it was certainty.
And that was the thing that made him impossible to outrun. He didn’t need to conquer you. He made you realize you’d already lost.
Smoke from gunfire still hung in the air. Cries just beginning to fade. And there he stood beneath a shattered skylight, cherry blossoms drifting through broken glass. Still. Too still.
He looked like something pulled out of a dream and dressed in blood.
And when the final scream died, Busan bowed.
Hoseok had told her about that night like a prayer he wasn’t sure he should say.
“It was one of those nights,” he’d murmured, voice low. “You could feel it. In the air. Like the city already knew. Like it could taste the blood before it hit the ground.”
And after came the gathering at The Red Lantern Club. Not really a club. More like a mirage stitched together underground. Velvet curtains. Perfume and secrets. Jazz leaking through the walls. Lighting low and sharp. Voices too soft. Cigar smoke hanging like a lie.
Somewhere behind a locked door, a woman was always crying. No one ever asked why.
The deeper you went, the worse it got. The air thickened. The light reddened. By the time you hit the center, it didn’t feel like nightlife. It felt like hell with waitstaff and designer liquor.
That night, the city’s old guard had gathered. Six kkangpae bosses, men who’d ruled for decades. Draped in silk and legacy. Their suits cost more than most lives. Their rings were old as dynasties.
Behind them stood their muscle. Armed, still, waiting.
And in the center of it all stood Yoongi.
He wore a black suit that seemed to drain the light around it. Everything about him was honed to a point: jaw, eyes, presence. Hair slicked back. Not a strand out of place.
The chandelier above caught his face in shards. He didn’t look human. He looked like death taught how to wear a suit.
He didn’t speak. Just watched.
His gaze moved slow, surgical. A scalpel drawn across the room. Every glance measured posture, weakness, fear.
And the fear was heavy. Thick enough to taste.
These were men who weren’t used to being afraid. But they were smart enough to feel it.
They could kill him. They had the numbers, the firepower. But it would cost more than any of them were willing to pay.
One by one, they raised their glasses. Not respect. Ritual. Whiskey. Toasts. Smiles stretched too thin.
Everyone was pretending. No one was celebrating.
Except one.
Boss Yoon. All silk and silence. Hands folded over his stomach like he was holding something ugly inside. He didn’t toast. Didn’t smile. Just stared. He hated Yoongi.
Half-Japanese. Half-Korean. Raised on Camp Humphreys. Too foreign for tradition. Too clean for blood.
To men like Yoon, Yoongi didn’t belong. He hadn’t earned it. Hadn’t clawed his way up through mud and knives like they had.
In another time, another world, Yoongi wouldn’t have even been let in the building. But this wasn’t another time. This was Yoongi’s time.
Yoongi hadn’t inherited power. He hadn’t waited for it. He’d taken it, piece by piece. Clean. Quiet. He didn’t follow bloodlines. He erased them. Rewrote the hierarchy. Dug his throne out of the dead.
And Boss Yoon couldn’t stand it.
His son, Chan, sat beside him, tight-lipped, tense. When he moved, it was like something uncoiling. His hand came up slow, then slammed down, palm first, into his plate. The porcelain cracked hard, shards scattering across the table like shrapnel.
Silence hit the room like a slap. Every glass stopped midair. Every throat held breath. Even the jazz behind the walls seemed to pause, like the music knew when to be afraid.
Yoongi didn’t move.
Yoon stood. Slowly. Like the motion hurt. His shoulders were tight, jaw clenched, rage leaking through every breath. His guards shifted. Hands hovered over blades. The room felt suddenly very small.
A younger boss, maybe still naive enough to think this could be salvaged, broke the silence. “What’s the meaning of this?” he asked, voice pinched and too high. “What’s this outburst supposed to mean?”
Yoon didn’t answer right away. When he finally did, his voice sounded like old rust: thin, bitter, sharp enough to cut. “What am I supposed to celebrate?” he said, spitting each word. “The death of this council? The stain on our fathers’ work?”
The murmurs started small, like the first crackle of a fire. A glance here, a whisper there. Fast words. Faster doubt. The kind of unease that spreads before anyone admits it. The air thickened until it clung to the walls like smoke.
Then Yoongi spoke. “Gentlemen.”
One word. Calm. Even. Icy. It dropped into the room like ash from a fire that had already burned everything worth saving. He didn’t raise his voice. He never had to.
“Boss Yoon has something he’d like to share,” he said, tone flat, bored even. Like he was reciting bullet points at a board meeting. “So let’s hear it. What rot do you smell, Yoon-sshi?”
Yoon didn’t hesitate. Maybe he thought it was mercy. Maybe he thought it was his moment. Or maybe he just couldn’t stop himself. He pushed his chair back like a man stepping onto a stage. His knuckles were white against the table’s edge. His hands trembled, barely. But not from fear. It was deeper. Older. Resentment carved into bone.
“My father,” Yoon began, voice cracking under the weight of something too big for the room. “Yours. All of them. They built this council on blood. On discipline. On legacy. This table,” he gestured broadly, cuffs of his silk shaking, “was carved from code. From purity.”
A sharp crack rang out across the room. Boss Bae had slammed his glass down hard enough to chip the base. His eyes were wide with fury. “Outrageous,” he snapped. “You insult this council.” He grabbed his napkin and tossed it across the table like it meant something. “Bastard.”
Yoon caught it, didn’t look, flung it back. “Fuck face.”
“Enough,” Yoongi said. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. His eyes didn’t leave Yoon. “Speak.”
Yoon did. He stood straighter, like bracing for a storm, and let it out in one breath.
“I speak of the perversion we’ve allowed into this council. The disgrace that sits at its head. A place I’ve loved more than my own children. Desecrated. By crowning a half-breed Korean Jap-American bitch as its leader.”
It happened before the air had time to shift.
One moment Yoongi was seated. The next, he was standing on the table, sword already drawn. The blade cleared its sheath with a whisper. His coat moved like smoke. Spilled bourbon soaked into the soles of his shoes as he crouched, stepped forward, and swung.
One cut.
Yoon’s head came off like the sword had been waiting for it. It spun once in the air, a blur of silk and skin, then dropped with a sound too soft for what had just happened. Blood followed, bright and fast, arcing across the table. It soaked silver, silk, polished leather. Splattered napkins. Stained velvet. Pooled beneath the feet of men who had ruled Busan’s underworld longer than Yoongi had been alive. Yoon’s body folded in on itself like a puppet cut clean.
The room froze.
Yoongi stood at the center, framed in crystal and blood. His face was flecked red. Still. Unmoved. He rose from his crouch without urgency, eyes flat.
No one spoke. The six remaining bosses kept their eyes on the body or the floor. None dared look at him.
At the edge of the mess, Yoon’s two guards still held their swords. The moment had already passed. One trembled. The other stood stiff, waiting for a bullet that hadn’t come.
Yoongi turned to them. His face didn’t show anger. Or satisfaction. Just that cold certainty, the look of a man who didn’t guess. Who didn’t need to.
He didn’t make a threat. He didn’t have to.
“Fight me,” he said. “Or work for me.”
The two men looked at each other. Loyalty passed between them, brief, reflexive. But it didn’t hold. Not in this blood. Not in this room. They dropped their swords.
“On the floor,” Yoongi said.
The blades hit tile, sharp in the quiet.
“Get behind me.”
They moved, slow, hands open.
“On your knees.”
They knelt.
“Foreheads down.”
They lowered.
“Keep your mouths shut.”
Yoongi turned back toward the table.
No one had moved. Their hands stayed on armrests that no longer felt like theirs. Suits once tailored to power now looked too tight, like their authority no longer fit. These were men who had run cities, ordered executions between drinks, built empires in back rooms. Now they sat like children caught lying, avoiding Yoongi’s eyes, saying nothing.
Even the oldest among them, men who had once terrified nations, kept their heads down. They all understood what had changed. No one here was stupid enough to think they could challenge him. They had all seen what he’d done to reach this seat. No one was angry about his rise.
Boss Bae just hated Boss Yoon for ruining the mood.
Across the room, just beyond the chandelier’s reach, Lynn Easton watched. One leg crossed, cigarette between two fingers, unlit and forgotten. Her eyes never left Yoongi. There was something in her gaze that looked like admiration, but it wasn’t.
It was worship. Not the kind given to saints.
The kind reserved for gods who kill.
No fear in her. No hesitation. She knew what he was. Saw it in him like a reflection. She didn’t flinch. She smiled. Slow. Precise.
Yoongi spoke again. His voice was smooth, low. Velvet over steel. Polished. Corporate. Lethal.
“I’m going to say this in English,” he said to the table, “so you understand exactly how serious I am.”
He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t need to. Every word landed with the weight of steel.
“As your leader,” he said, tone flat, “I encourage you from time to time, and always in a respectful manner, to question my logic.”
Lynn translated quietly from her chair, thoroughly amused by his outburst.
“If you’re unconvinced that a particular plan of action I’ve decided is the wisest, tell me so,” Yoongi said. “But allow me to convince you and I promise you right here and now, no subject will ever be taboo.”
He paused.
“Except, of course, the subject that was just under discussion.”
He turned, slow, toward a soldier behind him. A big man, pale and sweating through his collar, standing like he wasn’t sure if movement would get him killed.
“Hand me the head.”
The soldier hesitated, then stepped across the blood-slick floor. He knelt, gripped Yoon’s hair through his gloves, and lifted what was left. Blood still dripped from the neck. The mouth hung slack. The eyes stared, wide and glassy. Whatever they had seen last had stayed with them.
Yoongi took it without ceremony. Like passing a file across a desk. He held it up slightly. Let the face do the talking.
That expression was still there, that last moment of realization, right before death, when the brain knows it’s over but the body hasn’t caught up.
Then Yoongi’s voice changed.
It dropped lower. Rougher. No polish now. No formality. This wasn’t the voice of a man at the head of a boardroom. This was the voice from before. From the alleys. From a life of being told he didn’t belong. A voice that didn’t learn to fight. It had to.
“The price you pay,” he said, every word slow and exact, “for bringing up either my Japanese or American heritage as a negative…”
He raised the head just a little higher.
“…is I collect your fuckin’ head.”
One of the dons swallowed, loud in the quiet. Another froze completely, like even the sound of a breath might draw attention. Under the table, someone moved to cross themselves, then stopped, maybe remembering no god watched over this place.
“Just like this fucker here,” Yoongi added, swinging the head in a small arc. A red line traced the table around him.
He turned in a slow circle, letting them see it.
“And if any of you sons of bitches got anything else to say…”
His voice lifted slightly, barely, but the force cracked through the room like a bullet.
“Now’s the fuckin’ time.”
He looked at each of them, one by one. Daring them. Giving them the chance. No one spoke. No one moved.
“I didn’t think so.”
He dropped the head.
It hit the table hard. A wet, blunt slap. Blood sprayed outward, over linen, over crystal, over the sleeve of the man closest to the corpse. The head rolled once, then again, and fell off the far edge. It landed with a soft thud and disappeared under the tablecloth.
Yoongi turned his back to them.
“Meeting’s adjourned,” he said.
He walked away. Two men who had once sworn to kill him followed without a word. Behind them, the room stayed still. The scent of blood lingered, thick and permanent. The council, once a cabal of giants, sat quiet, stripped down to what they really were.
Men. Just men. And they all stared at the spot where the king used to stand.
Y/N sat curled in the corner of her room. The cheap wooden chair pressed hard into her back, too stiff to be comfortable, but familiar enough not to notice. The smell fan she had screwed into the wall filled the silence with a steady hum.
Memory didn’t work like a book. You couldn’t flip to a clean page and read it straight. It was smoke. Slippery. Every time she tried to hold it still, it shifted. Time didn’t erase anything. It just dulled the edges. The things that used to cut now brushed against her like worn silk. The pain was still there. It just moved to the background, like old music from another room.
Yoongi Min lived there now. She didn’t cry for him anymore. The rage that used to keep her up at night, sweating and twisting in the sheets, was gone. So was the hate. That would have been easier.
Now, she just carried him.
Every night, before sleep dragged her under, she read the list. Names, dates, memories etched in ink, sealed in scars. Yoongi’s name had never moved. Always circled. Always there. Preserved in blood and intent.
Once, the irony amused her. That you could still want vengeance against someone you didn’t hate anymore. Now it just made her tired.
He hadn’t always been part of her story. Once, he was just a name. A man with quiet eyes who appeared one sunburned afternoon in Jalisco, uninvited but perfectly expected. She still remembered the smell of scorched dust, the scream of cicadas in the heat. She had been sitting on the veranda, a bitter drink in her hand, ice melting faster than her patience. The estate’s white walls radiated heat like an oven. She thought she would pass out before anything important happened.
Then he walked in.
Too still. Too composed. The kind of man who looked wrong in heat and noise because he didn’t sweat. Didn’t flinch. And that made him dangerous. Danger didn’t announce itself. It stood still in chaos and watched.
Her first thought was that he was too pretty to be a killer. Not soft, just out of place. The kind of face meant for cathedrals or concert halls, not backrooms and wars. It caught her off guard. She had felt that once before, the year she met Jimin. But Jimin weaponized his beauty. He distracted. Disarmed. Smiled before he cut.
Yoongi didn’t smile.
He was cold. Still. A presence that quieted rooms. The kind of man you didn’t approach. You waited to be seen.
She hadn’t trusted him. But she hadn’t objected either. When Taehyung asked if she approved, she hadn’t looked away. Just gave a brief nod and said, “What’s his name?”
Taehyung had already chosen.
“Cottonmouth,” he said, smiling like it amused him.
Yoongi didn’t stay long. Maybe forty-eight hours. Just long enough to shake the right hands and unlock the right doors. By Monday, he was gone, headed back to Korea with a folder of papers and a one-way ticket in his coat.
At the time, it didn’t seem important. It was 1992. She was still green. Still trying to figure out what kind of weapon she would become.
Back then, her hands hadn’t learned how to break things. Her heart still ached when it rained. She still prayed, sometimes. She hadn’t met Pai Mei yet. That part of her story hadn’t started.
But Taehyung, as always, had seen it coming. He knew she wasn’t ready. Or maybe he just couldn’t bring himself to be the one to turn the key. When it came time to learn the blade, he stepped back. Said it was too personal.
So he made the call. Yoongi picked up. Said yes.
Three days later, she arrived. The cold hit her the second she stepped off the plane. Busan didn’t feel like a city. The skyline was gray, resigned. The Min estate sat on the edge of that resignation, stone and silence, walls older than any name she knew. It didn’t feel like a home.
Yoongi was waiting in the great hall. Standing there, tall, composed, dressed in slate silk that shimmered like oil under low light. He didn’t move. Just watched her walk in with a stare that could empty a room.
So she bowed.
Not out of respect. Not even formality. Instinct. Survival. She knew men like him. You bowed first, or you didn’t get the chance.
She dropped to her knees. Lowered her head. Waited.
He didn’t speak.
The silence stretched, long enough for doubt to slip in and settle. But she held position.
Then, finally, he spoke. Quiet. Exact. His Korean was flawless. Formal. The kind you heard in courtrooms and memorial rites. Not Taehyung’s fast, back-alley Seoul dialect. This was old money. Inherited. Precise.
“Tell me,” he said, “why are you here?”
It wasn’t curiosity. It was a test. A mirror.
She raised her head. Met his eyes.
“Taehyung told me he already spoke with you,” she said, matching his dialect. The formality was stiff in her mouth, shaped by study, not instinct.
Something flickered in his eyes. Maybe approval. Maybe not.
“Our mutual acquaintance said he would send the foreigner I met in Mexico,” he said, kneeling so smoothly it made no sound. “But that’s not what I asked.”
Now they were eye-level. But she still felt beneath him. Not from height. From stillness.
Yoongi didn’t dominate a room. He erased it. Took the air out. Turned it into something cold and hollow. His stillness wasn’t passive. It pressed in, dense and quiet, until you felt it in your lungs. A slow pressure, like being buried.
Then he moved.
No warning. No wind-up. Just motion.
His hand reached out, fingers catching her chin. Not rough. Not kind. Just efficient. The touch felt clinical. His skin wasn’t cold, but it felt like it should have been.
“Why are you here?” he asked again. “If it’s training you want, Taehyung could’ve done it himself. But he didn’t. Why?” His voice didn’t rise. It sank, low, smooth, cold. “Is it because you think I’m closer to the roots of the blade? That your little infatuation with him would cloud the lessons?”
Then he leaned in. Barely. Just enough to close the distance. She caught the faint scent on his skin, wood smoke, paper, ink. His eyes narrowed.
“Or…” The edge in his voice sharpened. “Or is it because Taehyung found a new pet, and you couldn’t stand to watch him play with her?”
It hit like a punch. Not forceful. Precise. A clean shot to the soft place she never acknowledged. It found it anyway.
She didn’t flinch.
Her breath caught, just for a second, but she forced the air out slow. Steadied her gaze.
“Taehyung’s too busy to train a beginner,” she said, voice level. Even. Neutral. “And I wanted to get to know you. We’re closer in age than I am with the others. I thought we could become friends.”
A lie. But polished. Just enough truth to sound casual. Just enough simplicity to sell.
She let the silence stretch. Let it settle between them like pressure.
Something flickered in his face. Not a smile. Not quite mockery. Something colder. He brushed his thumb across her cheek. It could’ve passed as a gesture of comfort.
It wasn’t.
Without breaking eye contact, he switched languages. His English was flawless. Not practiced. Natural. Private-school crisp, but stripped of warmth.
“Well,” he murmured, “we’ll see what you are soon enough, won’t we?”
Then he stood. One clean motion. Effortless. Like movement didn’t cost him anything. He turned and walked away without a glance, already finished with her.
“Lynn will show you to your room.”
The door closed behind him. Quiet. Clean. Final.
She sat for a second in the echo of it. Her face still cold from his fingers.
Then she stood. Picked up the hotel phone. Dialed.
Taehyung answered on the second ring. Warm. Familiar. Almost amused.
“You good?” he asked before she said a word.
She opened her mouth but didn’t get the chance.
The door burst open.
No knock. No warning.
Lynn Easton stepped in like she owned the place. Black silk. Sharp tailoring. Heels like weapons. Her hair pulled back, expression blank. Her presence wasn’t. It filled the room.
Y/N’s instincts lit up.
She didn’t think. Just moved.
The gun was in her hand before Lynn crossed halfway in. Smooth draw. Safety off. Barrel aimed steady between the eyes.
The phone clattered to the floor. Taehyung’s voice buzzed faintly, tinny and distant.
Lynn didn’t blink.
She glanced at the phone. Then at Y/N. Something flickered, disgust. Then it vanished, replaced by something colder.
“I’m here to tell you,” she said, voice flat, dry, “training starts in ten. Main courtyard. Don’t let your little phone call make you late.”
Then she turned and walked out. Like the gun hadn’t mattered. Like the whole thing bored her.
Y/N lowered the weapon. Picked up the phone.
Taehyung was still there.
“You good?” he asked again, voice calm.
“Yeah,” she said. Too quick.
“I have to go. Yoongi’s waiting.”
A pause.
Then, gently: “Show him why I picked you. Don’t hope. Prove it.”
“I will.”
“Goodbye, Alabama.”
“Bye, Tae.”
She hung up. Stood still for a second. Smiled, just barely.
Three minutes later, she was already in the courtyard. She’d memorized the layout her first night. Not for aesthetics. She didn’t care about ancient stone, delicate bonsai, or cherry blossoms floating like confetti. That wasn’t her lens.
She mapped sightlines. Marked exits. Noted cover. Measured steps. Calculated what she could cross, where she could hide, how fast she could move.
Survival started with the map.
The courtyard was bare. Raked gravel. Slate tiles worn smooth by weather and time. Wind chimes overhead, their tones sharp and strange. A single cherry tree leaned in from the far corner, petals drifting down like soft debris.
Yoongi stood beneath it.
Back to her.
Still.
The sun cast his shadow long across the stone, a cut of darkness the light couldn’t touch. His robe was black, edged in silver thread. The fabric moved with the wind. He didn’t.
She crossed the courtyard without sound. Her boots were ghosts on the stone. No training mats. No racks of blades. Just Yoongi, and the wooden sword in his hand, held like he’d never put it down.
He didn’t turn.
“Show me how you hold this,” he said. No greeting. No warmth. Just a command dropped mid-movement, like she was late.
She took the sword in both hands. Grip clean. Textbook. Balanced.
Too clean.
It looked right but felt wrong. Like a pose held too long in front of a mirror.
She tried to channel Taehyung, the way his stance breathed, the way the blade looked grown from his hand. But she wasn’t him. And Yoongi wasn’t here for poetry.
He didn’t sigh. Didn’t speak. Just shifted his jaw, barely.
“No.”
He stepped forward. She didn’t see it happen. One second, still. The next, closer. The sword left her hands without resistance. He didn’t yank it. Didn’t ask. He just took it, like gravity claiming a dropped stone.
Then his hands were on her. Not rough. Not gentle. Just efficient. Fingers folding hers back around the hilt, sliding a thumb, adjusting the angle. One sharp push realigned her elbow. A tap moved her hips. Behind her, he pivoted her knee, nudged a foot half an inch forward. No words. No explanation. Just movement. Precise. Automatic. He worked like someone who had done this a thousand times and expected no questions.
It wasn’t teaching. It was sculpting.
She didn’t resist. It wasn’t instruction. It was command.
Yoongi’s style had no drama. No shouting. No speeches. No honor-bound riddles. Just correction and silence. He didn’t care when her arms began to shake or when her back pulled tight. His hands just kept moving, carving posture into muscle whether it wanted to hold or not.
By the time he stepped back, her entire body burned. Thighs tight. Shoulders screaming. Spine locked. Sweat clung to her jawline, her breathing short and shallow. Her hands cramped around the hilt.
He looked her over once. Then gave a single nod. “Hold that position for one hour,” he said. Flat. Final. “When it’s over, I’ll show you the next.”
She blinked. “An hour?”
The disbelief escaped before she could kill it. Regret followed instantly. Not just because she had questioned him. Because it sounded weak.
Yoongi didn’t answer.
He turned and walked to the bench beneath the cherry tree’s shade. A tea set sat waiting. Steam already curling from the spout. He poured a cup with the same precision he used on her stance. Not rushed. Not careless. Ritual.
He sipped. Closed his eyes. “Don’t speak,” he said. “Your muscles must stay still.”
She stared at his back, jaw tight. Part of her wanted to drop the sword. Just to see what he would do. To make him react.
She didn’t. Because this was still the test.
“There are children who start this training at four,” he said. “Most still fail.”
Another sip.
“You’ve spent two years playing with guns and knives and think that makes you ready.” A pause. “It doesn’t.”
The words didn’t sting. They landed. Quiet. Dry. Accurate. Like facts she had avoided saying out loud.
“Maybe your mind can learn. Maybe. But your body will. One way or another.”
He didn’t look at her when he added, “I’ll hope you leave this place a credit to my mother’s nation. Try not to disappoint, will you?”
It didn’t sound like hope. It sounded like a door closing.
A week and a half later, Yoongi decided to take the crew out. No reason. No plan. No destination. Just motion.
His people didn’t need details. Only direction. And they moved like gears. Quiet. Timed. Unquestioning.
Lynn delivered the message.
Y/N sat cross-legged on her floor, wrapping gauze around bruises that bloomed black beneath her ribs. Each pass dragged against raw skin. Her breath hitched when the edge of the bandage caught bone. She pressed her palm to her side and waited for the pain to settle. It didn’t. It just burrowed deeper. She gritted her teeth and kept going.
She was halfway through when the door opened.
Lynn stepped in like she owned the space. Black silk, tailored sharp. Not a wrinkle out of place. Posture perfect. Chin up. Shoulders square. Eyes level.
Y/N was on her feet before she realized it.
The pain screamed through her ribs, but her body moved on instinct. Her spine locked, and her hand shot out. The gun was in her grip a second later, trained on Lynn’s forehead without hesitation. The silence that followed wasn’t stillness. It was loaded. Bright and taut. Like air stretched too thin.
The only sound was the faint scrape of her phone sliding off the futon and hitting the floor. Taehyung’s voice, mid-sentence, flickered into static.
Lynn didn’t blink. She didn’t move. Her eyes ticked from the gun to the phone, then back to Y/N. Her expression didn’t shift, not really, but something passed through it. Faint. Fleeting. Contempt. The kind too old to be loud. She exhaled once through her nose, slow and quiet, then spoke.
“You’re allowed to come tonight,” she said, voice flat, the kind of flat that could cut glass. “We leave in five.”
She didn’t wait for an answer. Just turned and walked out, the tail of her silk shirt whispering across the doorway as she disappeared down the hall.
Y/N stood there, chest heaving. Her ribs throbbed. Her fingers loosened around the grip of the gun, but she didn’t lower it for a few more seconds. Long enough to make sure Lynn wasn’t coming back.
Then she bent to grab the phone, her hand trembling slightly as she brought it back to her ear.
“You good?” Taehyung’s voice was still there. Low. Calm. Annoyingly perceptive.
She exhaled, steadying herself. “Yeah,” she said. Too fast.
“I have to go. Yoongi’s waiting.”
A pause.
Then: “Show him why I picked you. Don’t hope. Prove it.”
“I will.”
“Goodbye, Alabama.”
“Bye, Taehyung.”
She ended the call and sat there for one beat longer than she needed to, staring at the wall. Then she stood, wincing, and pulled her boots on over aching legs. She didn’t change clothes. No time. The sweat-soaked tank top clung to her skin. Her jeans were still dirty from morning drills. She swiped a sleeve across her mouth to smear whatever lip gloss was left and ran a hand through her hair, tugging it back with a band that had seen better days.
She didn’t care about looking good. She cared about moving fast.
By the time she stepped into the front hall, she had already pushed the pain back down where it belonged. The light in the entryway was warm and gold, soft against the polished wood floors and cool stone walls. Yoongi stood near the door, speaking in clipped Korean to a man she didn’t recognize. He was tall and heavy-set, the kind of man whose hands looked like they knew how to break a jaw without wrinkling his cuffs. Yoongi’s voice was brisk and efficient. His eyes kept flicking toward the hallway.
When he saw her, they stopped. Just for a second. Long enough to notice, not long enough to mean anything. But it wasn’t nothing.
She fell into step behind the others, slipping into formation as if she had always been there. Not too close. Not too far. She knew the rhythm now. She knew the space she was allowed to occupy. Not inside. Not excluded. She was tolerated. Observed. Weighed.
A wiry man with too many rings and a mouth that seemed to smile more during fights than at parties offered her a drink. Something clear in a crystal vial. She shook her head. Not because she trusted him. She didn’t. But she needed every ounce of strength for whatever came next. Her body still buzzed from the morning’s drills. Her legs felt like overused rope. Her back ached. Her palms were raw.
Yoongi had worked her until she collapsed. Then he told her to start over. He hadn’t praised her. He hadn’t spoken at all when it ended. But he hadn’t walked away disappointed either. That counted.
In the narrow space between rejection and recognition, she could feel the pull. Not affection. Not ambition. Something simpler and hungrier. She wanted to be seen. Not as Taehyung’s pick. Not as the outsider with borrowed language and too much to prove. She wanted to be seen as a threat. Something that could not be ignored.
The car ride to the club was silent. Not awkward, but disciplined. Every man sat straight, knees aligned, backs stiff. No one spoke unless necessary. When they did, it was quick, quiet Korean. Clean and controlled. Not meant for her.
Up front, Yoongi sat next to Lynn. He never looked back. The passing streetlights carved his face into pieces, slicing him into segments of brightness and shadow, something not quite whole. When he spoke, the car quieted even more.
Y/N did not catch the words. She didn’t need to. The tone was enough. Low. Sharp. Exact. Lynn nodded once, her arms folded tight across her chest as if she were holding something in. Her reply was short and clipped, but her body shifted. Just a little. Like something inside her had been punched.
Y/N did not know what Yoongi had said. But she felt it in her teeth. He didn’t waste words. When he spoke, something somewhere bled.
The car stopped. She reached for the door, expecting one of the others to go first. Protocol. Order.
But the door opened from the outside.
Yoongi. Still seated, half turned, holding the door open for her. Just once. Just for her. It wasn’t gallantry. It wasn’t habit. It was a move.
Their eyes met. Half a second, maybe less, but it stretched longer than it should have. A flicker of understanding passed between them. Not fondness. Not even acknowledgment. Recognition. The game had begun.
The club was buried beneath an old hotel near the edge of the harbor. It sat tucked under stone and shadow like something too dangerous to live upstairs. There were no signs. No neon. Only a pair of matte black steel doors and a man standing in front of them who looked like he had retired from killing people professionally but still did it on weekends for fun. He didn’t speak. He didn’t check IDs or nod in recognition. He simply stepped aside when Yoongi approached, as if the man had already been through him once.
Inside, the air changed immediately. You felt it before you saw it. The atmosphere had weight. A low hum beneath the skin. Everything was red. Not just in color but in mood. The lighting bled against velvet walls and lacquered surfaces, casting shadows that clung to corners like secrets. Smoke curled from cigars too expensive to ask about, winding into the haze like something alive. The music was live jazz, but not the kind played in hotel lobbies. It had teeth. Brass and muscle. A saxophone wailed from the stage like it had history, like it had seen too much and was tired of staying quiet.
No one here danced. No one shouted over the music or begged for bottle service. This was not that kind of place. You didn’t come here to forget yourself. You came because you already knew exactly who you were and wanted others to know it too.
Every person in the room mattered. Nobody wore name tags. Their reputations arrived ahead of them, carried in rumors and police reports. Laughter was low and precise, like a shared joke you only understood if you had killed the same man. Weapons glinted beneath suits. Flashes of matte black steel and the occasional polished wood handle. Not a threat. A formality.
It wasn’t safe. But it was sacred.
Y/N didn’t need instructions. One glance from one of Yoongi’s men sent her toward the far end of the long table. No words. Just movement. The seat was obvious. Furthest from Yoongi, furthest from Lynn, tucked into the farthest edge of the heat. A place for the tolerated, not the trusted. She sat without protest. She didn’t take it personally. She poured herself a small cup of sake, careful not to let her fingers shake. Her body still ached from training. Shoulders like stone. Wrists sore. Back tight. But she held the cup steady.
The first sip burned. Sharp and clean. It didn’t dull the pain, but it gave her something else to focus on.
From her seat, she could see the whole room. What she saw caught her off guard. Yoongi was laughing.
Not a polite smirk. Not the curated charm he used with government contacts or lieutenants looking for approval. This was real. Mouth open, eyes creased at the corners, head tilted just enough to show his guard had dropped. Briefly, but fully. He leaned toward Lynn, said something low that made her roll her eyes and smirk. Something warm, almost playful. Not the usual predator’s smirk she wore like lipstick. This was different. Lighter. Familiar.
Yoongi tapped the table with two fingers, keeping time with the band. Occasionally, he snapped a word toward the musicians. They responded instantly, adjusting their tempo as if they were tuned to his mood.
She did not recognize this version of him.
This wasn’t the man who had held her elbow too long in the courtyard. Who had made her hold a stance until her thighs screamed and her arms went numb. Who corrected her without speaking, using only pressure and presence. That Yoongi was exacting. Brutal in his quiet.
This one was fluid. Charming. Dangerous in an entirely different way. This was the king.
She lifted her cup again. Just to do something with her hands.
That was when he looked up. Right at her. He did not blink. He did not smile. He only looked. For a moment, the noise in the room faded. Not because it stopped, but because she no longer heard it. Her heart struck once, hard enough to echo in her ears. She stayed still. Silent. She did not need to speak. The air had shifted. She felt it.
Then Yoongi stood. He smoothed his jacket, straightened his cuffs with a flick of his wrists, and walked. Not toward the band. Not toward the bathroom or the bar. He walked toward her.
Y/N did not move. Her cup hovered in mid-air. Everyone noticed, even if they pretended not to. Eyes flicked toward him, then slid away. It was like watching the sun move across the sky. You did not stare, but you felt it.
He reached her side of the table and sat across from her as if the seat had always been his. He did not ask. He did not wait. He claimed it.
The look he gave her was not kind and not cruel. It was measured.
“You like soju?” he asked. His voice was soft, almost casual, as if he were asking about the weather.
He reached across the table for the bottle in her hand and took it as if she had offered it. She had not, but that did not matter.
“I have had it with Taehyung before,” she said. Her voice stayed calm and steady. That was the important part.
Yoongi rolled the bottle between his fingers. The label caught the light and shimmered, a red gleam against his skin.
His mouth curved slightly. Not quite a smile. Something quieter.
“And am I right to believe,” he said in a tone that was light but edged just enough to sting, “that you have been enjoying this one all by yourself?”
She did not answer. Her pulse spoke for her.
“I see Eun-Jae has his own.” He nodded toward a man two seats down. “And Chi-Hun too.” He glanced again.
His voice did not rise. It did not need to. Every word cut deeper. The power was not in volume. It was in the edge.
“That makes this bottle yours.”
Eun-Jae and Chi-Hun moved together in perfect choreography. Each lifted his own bottle. Each poured for the men nearby. They did not look at her. They did not comment. The gesture was enough.
Her breath caught. Not for long and not dramatic, just enough to tighten her throat. Her body knew before her mind did. She had not meant to claim anything. She had not even realized she had. But she had. And now it was out in the open, sitting between them like a challenge carved into stone.
Yoongi did not believe in accidents. He did not believe in second chances either. Not here. Not with her.
The expression he had worn—cool, unreadable, almost amused—vanished from his face in an instant. The bottle tilted slowly in his hand. The last of the sake spilled across the table in a thin stream that soaked into the lacquered surface. It pooled quietly, unmistakably. A slow insult. A liquid reprimand. It did not splash. It bled.
“I will not allow a student still in training to get drunk,” he said. His voice was flat, stripped of warmth. Not angry. Worse than angry. Final. “Not when I have been generous enough to permit her a night of entertainment.”
Something inside her snapped. A coil wound too tight since the day she arrived. Since the first blow she had not been allowed to flinch from. Ten days of drills. Ten days of silence. Ten days of pain stitched into her skin and rules never explained but always punished. Ten days of never knowing if she was doing well because he only told her when she failed. Ten days of swallowing every ache, every humiliation, with no relief and no reward.
Her palms slammed against the table before she even realized she was moving. The sound cracked across the room like a gunshot. She rose halfway from her seat, the motion sharp and defiant. Her voice tore out, scraped raw from restraint.
“Then maybe you should have said that before we left the compound!” she snapped. “How the hell was I supposed to know when everyone else is drinking like it is a wedding?”
The room changed instantly. Breath seemed to vanish from it. Air turned still. Every conversation froze. Heads turned slowly, carefully. Chairs shifted. Hands slid toward weapons, not drawing yet, only resting, waiting. The silence was not empty. It was anticipation. Everyone in that room knew this kind of silence. Everyone had lived long enough to recognize the moment before something breaks.
Yoongi did not blink. He did not move.
He raised one hand.
And everything stopped.
His voice carried no volume, but it had gravity.
“Are you telling me,” he said slowly, “that I was wrong to assume Taehyung would only send someone intelligent enough to know training does not end when the sun goes down?”
Then he stood. No flourish. No threat. Only inevitability. Like the tide rolling in. Like gravity itself shifting around him.
“I do not excuse disrespect under the guise of ignorance,” he said. His words cut cleaner than a blade. “You may not yet understand what it means to belong to something greater than yourself, but you will learn what it means to respect the table you sit at.”
His eyes flicked to Eun-Jae. Then to Chi-Hun. Neither man moved. Neither breathed.
“For the rest of the night,” Yoongi said, turning back to her, his tone sharp and exact, “you will refill their glasses. To repay the insult of serving only yourself.”
He did not wait for a response. He did not look at her again.
“You.”
A waitress near the bar jumped as if struck. Her tray clattered in her hands.
“Bring her tea. Nothing else. And clean this mess.”
The girl moved immediately. No protest. No hesitation.
Yoongi walked away. Not storming. Not hurried. Simply finished. His point made. Nothing left to say.
The air shifted again in his absence. The room exhaled at last. Conversation resumed—too loud, too quick, forced. Nervous noise from people desperate to believe nothing serious had happened.
Y/N did not move. She could not. Her hands shook. Her skin burned, not only with humiliation but with something colder. Rage. Resentment. Shame. Worst of all, the hollow realization that the worst part was not what he had done to her.
It was that she had let it happen.
When Yoongi sat back beside Lynn, it was not him who looked at her.
It was Lynn.
Her smile was small. Precise. Cruel in a way that did not need teeth to draw blood.
They never spoke of it again. They didn’t need to.
Yoongi was not the kind of man who repeated himself, and Y/N was not the kind of woman who asked for wounds to be reopened. Training didn’t work that way. The lesson had been public, sharp, final. The silence that followed was the test. The message was clear.
After that, everything got colder. Sharper. Quieter.
The weeks bled together in a rhythm of pain and repetition. Every morning before the sun rose, Y/N stepped barefoot into the stone courtyard, bokken in hand, breath visible in the cold air. Her muscles ached before she began. Her fingers were raw and calloused. Her shoulders locked tight. Her back burned from the inside out.
Yoongi always appeared without sound. Gray silk draped his frame, hair tied neatly, a porcelain cup of tea in hand. He never greeted her. Never asked if she was ready. He gave one demonstration: a stance, a pivot, a strike. Then he left her to chase it. No instructions. No corrections. No praise.
Only silence.
And eyes. Always watching. From the edges. From shadows. From the corner of her vision where he lingered just long enough for her to feel it. Not seen, but tracked.
He never corrected her with words. He broke her rhythm instead. A faint frown. A raised brow. A soft clack of his own blade knocking hers out of line. Every mistake meant starting over, no matter how far she was into the sequence. No matter how tired. No matter how raw her hands had become.
He didn’t teach. He shaped. He disrupted. And he made it work.
It was a hot afternoon when she cracked. Spring clung to the air like a fever. Blossoms sagged on tired branches. Sweat slid in rivulets down her back. She was on the hundredth repetition of a basic kata, clean and practiced, almost meditative, when his voice sliced from behind her.
“You’ve gotten sloppy since returning from lunch.”
She froze for one second. It was all he needed.
Her hand tightened on the hilt. She didn’t turn. Didn’t answer. But her grip faltered. Her breath grew uneven. The stance that had been perfect a moment ago unraveled in an instant.
Of course he had been watching. Of course he never really left.
“I ran into Lynn at lunch,” Y/N said, her voice taut, held together by will alone. She didn’t explain further. She didn’t mention the way Lynn’s words had cut—soft but cruel, designed to slice without volume.
Her grip tightened until the wood groaned. Splinters bit into her skin. She didn’t loosen her hold.
Yoongi said nothing. He didn’t ask. He simply set down his tea and crossed the courtyard with that same quiet precision, deliberate and certain, without wasted motion. He moved like breath against glass. Soundless. Unshakable.
When he reached her, he took the bokken from her hands. Not with force. Not with kindness. Just decisively, as if the matter were already settled. As if her permission had never been required.
His fingers brushed hers, light and impersonal. Not comforting. Not cruel. Simply measuring damage. He turned her hand over, inspected the raw patches, the forming blister, the embedded sliver of wood at her thumb. He handled her like a craftsman checking his tools. Detached. Efficient.
“She’s jealous, I’m afraid.”
The words came casually, as if he were commenting on the weather. No bite. No warmth. Just fact.
Y/N blinked. “Jealous? Of what, my bruises?”
A flicker passed through his eyes. Amusement perhaps. Perhaps something sharper. His mouth twitched, not quite a smile.
“You haven’t figured it out yet? I thought you were supposed to be clever.”
He didn’t wait for her reply. Instead, he used a nail to lift the splinter from her skin—quick, practiced. Then he took her other hand. His thumbs pressed into old bruises along her palm and forearm, testing how far the tissue had hardened. Every movement was precise. Every touch necessary.
“She was Taehyung’s favorite before you,” he said evenly. “The only reason I ever worked with him was because she asked me to. She called it loyalty. I called it convenience. But I said yes.”
He paused just long enough for the weight to settle. Not dramatic. Just deliberate.
“Then he got bored. She returned here. And he sent you.”
Y/N didn’t flinch, but the words hit low and deep. She had no reply. She didn’t know what she was meant to feel. It wasn’t a compliment. It wasn’t a warning. It was both. It was neither.
He looked up and met her eyes.
“And now you’ve taken my attention too.”
There was no inflection in his tone. No tilt of the head. No softening smile. Only the weight of the words left hanging between them. Then he released her hands.
“You are beginning to have the hands of a samurai,” he said. “You may take the night off.”
And then, like always, he turned. Three steps away. No glance back.
But he stopped.
“Tomorrow,” he said, his back still to her, “I will join your practice.”
It should have felt like something. A victory. Recognition. A sign that she had finally crossed some invisible line. Instead it sank into her gut like stone: cold, heavy, permanent.
The next morning, the courtyard looked unchanged. Gravel neatly raked. Air still. Gray light blooming faint against the sky. But this time Yoongi was already there.
He stood beneath the cherry tree, bokken in hand, its wood darkened by years of use. He didn’t smile. He didn’t greet her.
“I will strike,” he said. “You will counter. You have until I reach you to remember the correct movement. If you fail...”
He didn’t finish. He didn’t need to.
She set her stance. He moved.
No signal. No count. Only sudden motion. The first strike came fast and low, angled at her shoulder. She tried to shift, but too late.
The blow landed with a crack and dropped her to one knee. Pain flared down her ribs, bright and sharp. Her vision burst white at the edges. She didn’t cry out.
“Begin again,” he said.
So she did.
Over. And over. And over.
There were no drills, no warming up, no soft correction. Only his blade cutting through air, his feet silent on stone, and the sick thud of her body reacting too slow. Her shoulders screamed. Her calves cramped. Her palms ached from the grip. Her mind blurred between one motion and the next.
Yoongi gave her nothing. No feedback, no approval, not even disappointment. Only relentless pressure. He moved like a metronome with teeth, steady and ruthless. If she was off by an inch, he found it. If her balance faltered, he exploited it. Every failure reset the clock.
This was not training. It was exposure therapy. And it worked. Not in a single revelation or dramatic breakthrough, but in layers, in silence. Her body began to anticipate. Her feet stopped dragging. Her shoulder no longer ducked instinctively. The bruises still formed, but less often. Her hands stayed firm, her wrists stopped trembling, and she moved on reflex instead of thought.
Yoongi never slowed, yet cracks began to appear—not in him, but in the routine. A breath that came half a second late, a shift in weight before the strike, tiny tells that most would overlook. She did not. She kept them tucked away like cards she was not ready to play.
The change came late in the session. The heat pressed down, blossoms overhead curling in the sun. Her shirt clung to her spine and her lungs burned. She was deep into another repetition, automatic and unconscious, when Yoongi broke pattern. A sharp flick, a feint they had not practiced in more than a week. Her mind did not register it. Her body did. She pivoted and blocked, clean.
Yoongi stopped. He did not speak, did not nod, but something flickered at the corner of his mouth. Not a smile, not exactly, but close. It vanished almost immediately, sealed away behind the mask he always wore. Yet it had been there, and that—coming from Yoongi—was everything.
Something shifted between them, not in any dramatic glance or heavy moment, but in a quiet recalibration that needed no name to be real. She began watching him differently, not only reacting to his strikes but studying the seconds before. The tension in his shoulders. The draw of his breath. The way he set his weight before moving. She was reading him now, not following but predicting, feeling the current instead of bracing against it.
Without thinking, she tested him. It was not planned. Her body moved before her brain caught up, a twitch in the shoulder and a shift in her stance. She stepped in fast, blade sweeping low. It was not perfect, maybe not even wise, but it was honest. He caught it effortlessly, calm, as though he had been waiting for her to try.
That hint of a smile returned, small but unmistakable. Not approval, something more dangerous—recognition. She swung again, this time at a different angle, sharper, more deliberate. His block came quicker, and with it a subtle change in his stance, a pivot that revealed not a mistake but an invitation.
Try again.
And she did. For the next half hour they moved together, not quite sparring and not quite dancing. She pushed, he absorbed. Every inch of progress, every shard of discipline, every stubborn breath left in her body went into those exchanges. He gave her only what she earned, no more and no less. There were no corrections, no lectures, no fire. Only motion. The air between them tightened, charged with effort and silent calculation. For the first time, it did not feel like survival. It felt like progress.
But it could not last.
Yoongi shifted suddenly, swift and deceptively casual, and used a move she herself had tried earlier. A flick, a false step, something familiar that her body was not ready to counter in reverse. Her mind lagged behind, and the strike landed hard. The wooden blade slammed into her ribs with merciless precision, seizing her entire body. Her breath vanished. She fell, coughing, knees hitting gravel as heat exploded white-hot through her side. The courtyard spun.
Yoongi stood above her in silence, the bokken loose in his hand as if he had barely touched her. His breathing remained steady. His shoulders did not move. He looked almost bored.
“Very good,” he said, his voice dry as stone. “Although you would be dead if my sword had an edge. Try to remember faster tomorrow.”
No gloating. No malice. Just fact.
She forced herself upright, ribs protesting with each breath. Her vision swam, but she did not drop the sword. Her grip held—tight, shaky, but there. She had learned at least this much: pain no longer had the right to take things from her.
“Tomorrow?” she rasped.
Yoongi did not blink. “It is not even noon.”
She stared, sweat cooling against her skin, body throbbing in every place that mattered. He turned without waiting, walking with the same casual control, the blade swinging loosely at his side. One hand lifted behind him in a lazy gesture.
Follow.
So she did.
They were not heading to her room. She realized it the moment they took the east corridor. The pattern was wrong. The walls shifted to older stone, the silence heavier. She knew the layout. Taehyung had made her memorize every hall of the estate, every corner, every dead end, just in case. She had never come this far before, but she knew exactly where they were going.
Yoongi’s wing. Private. Off-limits. No one lingered there unless summoned.
At the end of the hall, he slid open a door and a wave of heat spilled out, thick with cedar and citrus and something older, like sun-warmed earth or smoke from the right kind of fire. The bath sprawled across stone as though it had grown from the earth itself. Sunken deep, carved clean, it sent steam curling into the air in long, slow threads. No marble. No gold. Only simplicity that dared anyone to call it lacking.
Yoongi stepped aside, leaving just enough room for her to pass.
“Your body is bruised. Your muscles are tight,” he said in the same even tone he used when calling a strike. “This will help.”
Not quite an offer, though it sounded like one. It carried weight, an order softened at the edges.
She looked at him. “Are you joining me?”
One brow lifted with faint amusement. “You are not interesting enough yet.”
He walked past her then, swallowed by the steam as if it belonged to him. The door slid shut behind him with a sound too soft to echo.
She stood there for a second and let the warmth reach her skin. The scent of yuzu and cedar clung to her clothes. The stone under her feet radiated quiet heat. For the first time in weeks, no one was watching.
She set the sword down.
The steam curled around her arms, climbed her spine, and softened the places that ached the most. Her ribs hummed where the strike had landed. Her shoulder blades loosened. Something deep inside her, the part that had gone tight and silent, let go. Not all at once, but a little.
Then the door slid open again.
Yoongi stepped into the steam without a word. Bare-chested, robe hanging loose at his hips, sash in one hand. His presence did not change with the space. He moved the same way he always did, with that silent, deliberate ease that made you forget you were watching something dangerous. Nothing in his posture acknowledged that she was there, standing in the doorway to his private sanctuary. It was as if her presence had already been accounted for, expected, filed neatly under inevitable.
“This is my bath,” he said, calm and even, like he was offering her a history lesson. “I thought you might appreciate something more civilized than the training hall showers.”
He folded the robe with practiced care, every motion tidy and purposeful. Not fussy, only controlled. Every crease smoothed, every corner aligned. He set it aside, then turned to the cold-water spout set into the stone wall, twisted the valve, and let the water slam against his skin.
No flinch. No breath hitch. Just the rhythmic sound of cold water hitting muscle and stone, echoing through the steam-heavy air.
She did not step forward yet. She only stood there, body worn down to the bone, every joint and bruise aching in protest. Her eyes stayed on him, though. The shape of his back. The way water sheeted off him, like even the elements could not quite stick. The stillness he carried, too perfect to be natural, too practiced to be peaceful. It should have unnerved her. Instead, it pulled at something deeper, something she did not want to name.
“Why?” she asked, keeping her voice low and steady. “Why bring me here?”
He looked over his shoulder. No smirk. No raised brow. Just a calm, clear look, as if he already knew what she was really asking.
“Consider it a reward,” he said. “You have not complained. Not once. Even when your body failed you. Or”—a faint pause sharpened the air between them—“maybe I just wanted a closer look at the strange girl who stayed, when I expected her to be gone before the week ended.”
She let out a short breath, half-scoff, half-laugh. Then peeled off her shirt. Slowly. Not to perform, only because it hurt. The fabric clung to her, damp with sweat and blood. She stripped it away piece by piece, revealing skin blotched purple and yellow, deep reds where the bruises still bloomed fresh. She did not hide them. Each one had cost her something.
“I do not think you know Taehyung very well,” she muttered, dropping the shirt onto the wooden bench behind her. “He does not exactly allow failure. I could not—”
“You could have,” Yoongi cut in. He was still not looking away. “Do not insult me by pretending you stayed because of him. That is not the woman who has been bleeding in my courtyard every morning. The last one he sent left before sundown.”
And just like that, he stepped into the bath.
No noise. No fanfare. Only water parting around him like it knew better than to resist.
“You are here because you chose to be,” he said. “Because whatever waits for you in Mexico scares you less than I do. And that is what makes you dangerous.”
The water hissed against his skin, steam rising around him. He closed his eyes and sank down to his collarbones, not to relax but to reset. Like a weapon cooling after too much use.
She followed. Slow. The heat hit her like a wall, hot enough to bite and chase breath from her lungs, but she kept going, deeper into the water until it wrapped around her aching limbs. It felt more like a purge than a relief. The bath did not comfort. It stripped.
Yoongi watched her.
Not hungrily. Not even curiously. Just like a man who knew how to read pain and wanted to see how she carried it. She felt him clock her every wince, every breath, every way she tried not to fold.
“I will admit,” he said quietly, “I did not think you would still be here the next morning. Or the one after. I kept waiting for a note. Or an empty room.”
She let her arms rest along the stone ledge, eyes half-shut, the heat working into her bones. And then, unexpectedly: “I never even thought about leaving.”
The words surprised her more than they surprised him. She had not realized it until she said it. She had given herself no options, no way out. Just one road forward, no matter the bruises it collected.
“It was not fear,” she added after a pause. “Not of Taehyung. Not of you. It was just…” Her voice cracked slightly, not with emotion but with exhaustion. “I could not fail. I could not be ordinary.”
Yoongi did not nod. He did not soften. But something passed through his gaze, quick and subtle. A quiet shift behind the eyes. Recognition. Like two hunters finally realizing they were not hunting each other. They were the same species.
He said nothing for a long moment. Then:
“A shame,” he murmured, “that you may someday be my equal.”
The words landed like a quiet blow. Not praise. Not warning. Just a truth, delivered with all the weight of something final.
She did not speak. She only let it settle in the place she kept the things that mattered most: the bruises, the insults, the small, hard reasons she got back up every morning.
By the time she had found the shape of a response, he was already moving again.
He stepped through the water, steam curling around his body, and stopped just beside her. Not close enough to touch, not yet, but close enough that she could feel him.
His hand came to rest on her shoulder. Measured. Still.
“Turn around,” he said.
She did, but not without asking, sharp and flat, “Why?”
His grip did not tighten. His voice did not shift.
“Your body flinches when you move, when you are touched. You are locking up from pain. Let me help.”
No invitation. No implication. Just fact.
So she turned, braced her forearms on the stone edge, and exposed her back to him. It should have felt like surrender. It did not. It felt like a quiet kind of trust.
His hands started at her shoulders. Not soft. Not hard. Just practiced. He found the bruises first, the places where muscle had tightened around injury, and adjusted his touch accordingly. His thumbs moved with clinical precision, pressing into old tension and coaxing it loose.
He did not speak. Neither did she.
Steam thickened around them, clinging to skin, softening the sharp edges of pain. Her body stopped resisting. The ache remained, but the weight of it changed. It no longer felt like failure. Only effort.
And Yoongi’s hands stayed steady, never drifting, never teasing. Just working. Like she was a map he already knew by heart. Like she was not broken. Only rebuilding.
For the first time in a long time, she let herself feel that. Not comfort, but something close.
His fingers brushed the curve of her breast.
Her entire body locked. Not from fear, not entirely, but from something else. Something older, older than instinct. Her spine jerked upright, colliding softly with his chest behind her. The bath seemed smaller. The air heavier. Steam closed in like a held breath.
She did not move again. Neither did he.
They only held there, suspended, as if the moment might break if either of them did more than breathe.
“What are you doing?” Her voice was low. Measured. Strained but steady.
He exhaled through his nose, slow and quiet, deliberate.
“I think you already know.”
No heat. No teasing. No playacting. Only honesty, dropped between them like a stone in still water.
“If you want me to stop,” he said, even softer now, “say it. I will not touch anything not freely given.”
Her breath faltered. Not at his words, but at the certainty in them. So calm. So absolute. The steam swirled between them, thick and clinging. She felt it against her face, in her lungs, wrapping around her hesitation like rope. Her voice cracked without meaning to.
“Taehyung…”
His name came out as a whisper, but Yoongi’s response didn’t miss a beat.
“Taehyung,” he said flatly, not as a question but as an answer, “would have had someone else in his bed before your plane even landed.”
Not cruel. Not bitter. Just fact.
And the worst part was that she knew he was right.
She didn’t speak again. She couldn’t. The words weren’t there. Only the heat, the ache, the tension that had never fully left her since day one. All that training, all that silence, all that held-in rage coiled too tight for too long.
Yoongi leaned in. Not close enough to crowd her, but enough that she could feel his breath at the base of her neck. Not a move, a signal. A question.
“Don’t pretend you haven’t been watching me,” he murmured. “Don’t pretend Lynn didn’t have reason to be angry. I told you she was jealous. What did you think she was jealous of?”
His hand slid across her stomach. Slow. Measured. Not pressing. Not assuming. Just there. Still waiting. Still giving her the choice.
“Say the word,” he said again, low and level. “And I’ll stop.”
She should have said it. She should have shut it down. Draw the line. Protect herself. Retreat behind the layers she had built to survive this world.
But she didn’t.
Her eyes closed. Not out of surrender, but something deeper. Something sharper. Not submission. Control.
A sound left her, quiet and raw, like breath torn from somewhere near her ribs, as his fingers moved lower between her thighs.
It wasn’t about lust. It wasn’t love. It wasn’t even comfort. It was defiance. Against the pain. Against the bruises. Against every silent rule she had bent to. This was her crossing a line no one else would define for her.
She didn’t melt into his touch. She stepped into it. Not for him. For herself.
For the first time in too long, the choice was hers. And she took it.
Later, years later, she would remember the bath. The heat. The weight of his hand. The sound of his breath against her ear. Not with regret. Never with regret.
She remembered because it mattered. And in her world, memory did not fade. It sharpened. It cut cleaner the further away it got.
That night, when the list was finally made, when the names were written in ink instead of blood, she started at the beginning. Not with Taehyung. With Yoongi. That was why he had to be first. Not because he was the worst, but because he was the closest.
The charcoal slipped from her fingers, leaving a faint black streak on the desk. She didn’t pick it up. She just stared at the sketch.
Yoongi’s face stared back. Too precise. The downturn of his mouth. The stillness behind his eyes. That composure she knew better than anyone.
She hated how well she remembered. Because remembering meant the wound was still open. And an open wound was still a weapon.
Back then, she had held it for his approval. Now, she held it for blood.
She stood slowly, vertebrae popping like worn links in a rusted chain. Her spine stretched, uncoiling with the reluctant grace of something long kept in a cage. Her body did not feel like hers anymore. It did not even feel human. It felt sculpted, chiseled by pain, and honed by something colder than purpose. Something sharper than memory.
A knock shattered the stillness. She flinched instinctively, muscles wired tight from too many surprises that came with blood on the other side.
“Y/N, can I come in?”
Hoseok. His voice, always a balm, softened her edges just enough to remind her she had not been born with claws. Around him, she could almost remember being someone else. Someone less dangerous, more whole. She exhaled, slow and careful.
“Yes.”
The door creaked, ancient wood straining against metal hinges. He didn’t step inside. There wasn’t enough room for two people to stand without touching, and they had never been the kind to brush shoulders casually. She moved to the bed. He took her seat without hesitation. His eyes flicked to the drawing on the table, unimpressed.
“You’ve been thinking,” he said, tone dry.
Y/N let out a low, humorless chuckle. “I’m always thinking, ahjussi.”
Hoseok’s face contorted into that familiar grimace. She had always liked getting under his skin.
“I told you not to call me that.”
“No,” she replied, tilting her head, “you asked me not to.”
That made him laugh, the real kind. The kind that cracked open the air and let warmth bleed through. Rare and reckless. She joined him, not meaning to, but needing to.
Then the moment snapped shut like a trap.
“You hide behind words, Mamba,” he said, gaze locking onto hers with that old soldier’s weight. “But we both know you don’t say much of anything at all.”
The laughter died like a match in water. Hoseok never wasted time on half-truths.
“You’ve been in here two hours,” he added, “and all you’ve got is a rat’s face.”
She had no defense. He wasn’t wrong.
“Min Yoongi,” he said, voice low and flint-hard, “is your enemy now. Don’t forget that.”
She nodded once. A stiff, mechanical gesture. She knew it. She knew it in her bones. But knowing and acting were oceans apart. Yoongi had been her friend. He had also tried to kill her. The betrayal lived under her skin like a buried shard of glass. It didn’t make sense. Maybe it never would. But sense was not a prerequisite for vengeance.
He helped murder her daughter. He beat her while she was still carrying that fragile, innocent life. He killed Tommy. He opened the chapel door. He didn’t stop Taehyung when the gun was raised. He didn’t flinch when her world was reduced to ash. He chose his place at the table over her life. Over all their lives.
And she would be the one to remove him from it.
Because whatever they had once been, Yoongi had made sure they could never be that again.
“Are you listening?”
She blinked, dragged out of the spiral. Hoseok watched her through the hazy yellow light, and in that dull glow he looked younger. Sadder. Like something in him was wearing thin.
“No,” she said, honest and small. “Not as well as I should be.”
“Are you afraid?”
“No,” she whispered. “I just… can’t understand how any of this happened.”
The silence that followed made the room feel smaller.
“I want to tell you a story,” Hoseok said quietly. His voice slipped into Korean like a man retreating into the safety of his own skin. English was too sharp for grief. Too foreign to carry what lived in his chest. “Not because I think it will help. But because maybe you’ll do better than I did.”
He turned the chair around and straddled it, arms resting across the back. His robe fell open at the knee, revealing loose black cotton pants worn thin by years of habit. He looked almost relaxed, but his eyes betrayed him—stormy, hollowed out by memory.
“I met Taehyung when he was twenty-four. I was almost thirty. I had been making swords since I was a boy. My grandfather raised me with a hammer in one hand and a whetstone in the other. That was all I had. That was all I knew. That was how Kim Taehyung found me.”
His voice carried the rhythm of something rehearsed too often in silence. Not regret anymore, just the ghost of it, dulled with age.
“He was magnetic,” Hoseok went on. “Fast. Wild. Smarter than he let on. We started sparring in the alleys of Okinawa. Half-serious at first, then real. He was the only man I could never beat easily, and when I did, it was never by much. We bled together more than once. I trusted him with everything.”
He leaned forward, fingers drumming against the desk.
“Korea was behind me. My father. His belt. The silence after my mother died. I left it all to rot. But Sookie came with me. She was seventeen. Still called me oppa like she was five. Still believed the world was fair if you worked hard enough. My baby sister.”
His voice caught on that word, and he cleared his throat.
“She was stubborn. Mom named her after some American girl she saw on TV once. Sookie. Sounded dumb to me then. Still does. But it stuck. Everything stuck to her—smiles, people, hope. When she met Taehyung, I knew she was in love with him before he even looked her way.”
The bulb overhead flickered, but Hoseok’s face didn’t change.
“I told him to leave her alone. He promised. For a while, he kept it. But she wore him down, and he let himself be worn. A year later, he asked for my blessing. I gave it. I told myself he would never hurt her. He was loyal. I thought maybe he’d be family.”
Y/N’s voice came out soft as breath. “What changed?”
“She almost died,” Hoseok said flatly. “Ambush outside the noodle shop. Someone we knew. Someone Taehyung had history with. She was so scared after that. Told me she wanted out. Out of Japan. Out of him. I thought that would be it. She left with me. We went home to Gwangju. Bought a little house. She opened this kimbap shop. I fixed the walls and built shelves. She would hum while she cooked.”
His eyes drifted, unfocused. “That was the last time life felt small enough to hold.”
He touched his lower lip, as if searching for the taste of that last good meal with her, and maybe he couldn’t find it.
“Moon-Byul came into our lives by accident. Street kid with quick hands. One day he stopped a couple of punks from robbing the shop. I watched from the attic window. He had no blade, just a broken mop handle, and I thought—this kid might actually be something. I took him in. Trained him. We forged swords together. The attic became sacred.”
Y/N stayed motionless, her breath shallow.
“Then Taehyung came back. And Sookie let him in without hesitation. Just smiled and said he missed her. As if it were that simple. As if he hadn’t dragged violence to her door the first time. I saw it then. The rot. The way he turned everything around him to ash.”
His voice hardened.
“Two weeks later the Italians came looking for him. He had crossed someone. Money, territory, who knows. Instead of warning me, instead of protecting her, he took her to bed. He let her wake up to gunfire.”
The silence was suffocating.
“They stormed the house just after sunrise. Moon and I held the attic with whatever we had. Sookie tried to run. They gunned her down in the kitchen. Shot six times. She died on the tile, blood in her teeth. I slipped in it trying to reach her.”
Y/N’s hand trembled.
“And Taehyung? He killed everyone. Efficient. Beautiful, even. Like a painting. Then he looked at me, calm as ever, and said, ‘At least she went quick, Hobi-ah.’”
Hoseok stared at the floor. “That was when I knew. He wasn’t human anymore. And maybe neither was I.”
The breath he drew rattled like something breaking.
“I let him kill with my steel. I made those blades. I admired him. Protected him. And I never cared what it cost until it was my doorstep he brought death to. Until it was my sister.”
Y/N’s eyes glistened, but she didn’t look away.
“I challenged him that night. We fought in the dark, just like the old days. I won. First clean strike to the thigh. Second to the ribs. He bled all over my floor. And when I stood over him, blade at his throat, I couldn’t finish it. I let him crawl away. I watched him limp down my hallway. I have never seen him since.”
The silence that followed was a grave too big for words.
“And that,” Hoseok said, raw now, “is why I don’t make swords anymore. That’s why I don’t call him brother. And that’s why I’m telling you this. Not for pity, but so you understand what it costs when you wait too long to cut the monster’s head off.”
He looked at her then, truly looked. Not at the girl who had first stumbled through his door bloodied and silent, but at the woman who had survived everything after. The woman with a sword across her thighs and fire behind her teeth.
“Don’t wait like I did,” he said.
The air cracked with it. She shut her mouth on whatever retort crawled up her throat, teeth grinding until her jaw ached. He didn’t let her look away.
“If I had killed him in Okinawa like I wanted to,” Hoseok said, each word deliberate, “Sookie would still be alive. And you would not be this shadow of yourself, so full of rage and resentment. You would be in Alabama. Probably drunk in some dive bar, bragging about the time you stabbed a man with a pool stick in El Paso for grabbing you. You would have gone home. You never would have crossed paths with a man in a black button-down who thought ordering you a margarita was enough to own you. You would have had a life, Y/N. One worth fighting for. One worth keeping.”
He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, his shoulders sagging under the weight of the words he had carried too long. His voice was hoarse, not from shouting but from truth. Sharp and raw as steel dragged across bone.
“But instead,” he said slowly, “you’re here. Sitting in the wreckage of a life you never asked for. Caught in the wake of a man who turned your death into currency. Who stood there, watching, while four animals stomped your pregnant belly. A man who hates you, and can’t help but feel contempt towards you.”
His voice cracked at the edge, but he did not break. He would not, not in front of her. Not when she was holding it all in just like he used to.
She didn’t respond. She didn’t have to. Her silence was thick with memory and rage.
“They all deserve to die,” Hoseok said, quieter now, but no less cutting. “Yoongi. Taehyung. The whole pack of them. Maybe even us. We are not innocent, Mamba. We stopped being that a long time ago. We are sharpened edges and bad decisions. We are the end result of what happens when you trade mercy for survival. You and me? We are the kind of people others have to survive.”
He glanced up at her. His eyes were softer now. Something fatherly. Something fraternal. Something fierce.
“You remind me of Sookie. Not because you are gentle. You are not. But because you feel everything too deeply. You wear your wounds on the inside, and you carry them like armor. That is what will kill you, if you are not careful.”
A beat passed. Then another.
“If you want to live,” he said, “you need to stop pretending you are prey. You made your choice already. Stop circling it. Stand in it.”
Y/N didn’t speak. She didn’t have to. She moved like something uncoiling. The sword on her lap shifted as she leaned forward, the metal catching the light as if it recognized her now. As if it knew where it was going.
Hoseok saw it. And he stopped her, gently.
“I have something for you,” he said.
He rose and left without another word, his steps quiet but sure. She sat in the hush he left behind, breath slow, mind loud. The sketch of Yoongi stared up at her again—unfinished, but not incomplete. His face was already a tombstone.
When Hoseok returned, he was holding something wrapped in dark crimson cloth. It looked ceremonial. Heavy. He placed it on the desk, then unwrapped it as though unveiling a relic.
It was a sword. Not one for battle. Not meant for war.
It was beautiful. Clean. Silent.
She didn’t touch it.
“What is this?” she asked.
“My final blade,” he said. “The last one I ever forged, except for yours. I made it for Sookie. She never got the chance to hold it.”
Her chest tightened. Her hands clenched in her lap.
It was unlike the weapons she was used to. No bloodthirst in its shape. No vanity in its lines. It was simple. Pure. A shikomizue, disguised in feminine wood, sakura etched into the handle with the gentleness of a promise.
“Why give this to me?” she asked, voice barely a whisper.
Hoseok’s expression softened in a way that nearly broke her.
“Because it was made for someone I loved,” he said, “and now it belongs to someone who knows what it means not to use it.”
She picked it up slowly, reverently. It did not hum like her own sword. It did not beg for violence. It sat in her hands like something sacred.
“I won’t use it,” she said. “Not ever.”
“I know,” he replied. “That’s why I am giving it to you.”
She set it aside, her eyes burning.
“Thank you, Hoseok.”
He nodded once, then looked at her with that same worn, protective weight.
“You will be outnumbered.”
“I know.”
“You will probably die.”
“I know.”
He studied her face. Saw the steel. The sorrow. The storm.
“You will need to move like a shadow,” he said. “Yoongi’s men will feel you coming. If they do—”
“If they get wind I am coming,” she said, “that compound will be crawling with bodies before I even cross the street.”
“And do you want to take on all eighty-eight of the Crazy 88 alone?”
“No,�� she said. “That would be less than ideal.”
Hoseok let out a short breath that landed somewhere between a sigh and a laugh. Something almost human passed through his expression. Soft. Worn. Vulnerable in a way she had not seen in years.
“I’m going to miss you.”
She looked toward the door. Her shadow stretched long across the floor, sword glinting at her side. Her stomach clenched. She hadn’t eaten. Couldn’t. Hoseok had tried earlier, but nerves had shredded her appetite.
“I’ll come back,” she said.
“I hope so.”
She turned to go. The moment tasted final.
“Y/N.”
She stopped.
“If you find him, and you hesitate, don’t wait for a second chance.”
She looked back at him, steady.
“There won’t be one.”
No words. She walked out, sword in hand, steps steady. She made it to the kitchen before he caught up to her, his hand landing gentle on her shoulder.
“Put the sword away,” he murmured. “I’ll bring you some soup. You can eat in your room tonight.”
She turned her head slightly. “Will you eat with me?”
He nodded. “If you’d like me to.”
“I would.”
He didn’t speak again, just disappeared around the corner. And for a moment the house was quiet, and warm, and almost kind.
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chimcess ¡ 7 days ago
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⚔︎ Chapter Four: The Man from Gwangju Pairing: Taehyung x Reader Other Tags: Assassin!Taehyung, Assassin!Reader, Assassin!Jimin, Dad!Jimin, Assassin!Yoongi, Gang Leader!Yoongi, Assassin!Namjoon, Swordmaster!Hoseok, Chef!Hoseok, Pimp!Seokjin Genre: Assassins! AU, Exes!AU, Lovers to Enemies, Action, Comedy, Suspense, Martial Arts, Drama, Thriller, Romance (if you squint), Heavy Angst, Violence, 18+ only Word Count: 23.9k+ Summary: A former assassin awakens from a four-year coma after her ex-lover Taehyung tries to kill her on her wedding day. Driven by revenge for the loss of her unborn child and stolen life, she creates a hit list and embarks on a ruthless mission to take down everyone responsible. Warnings: Violent thoughts, implied miscarriage, flashbacks, PTSD, mental illness, guns, other weapons, traveling, arguing, bickering, use of katana, this is a pretty tame chapter all things considered, not many warnings for this one, let me know if I missed anything... A/N: I apologize if I miswrote any of the Korean I used in this chapter. I don't speak fluently and relying on Google can be difficult.
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Horizon City was somehow worse than El Paso. The sky pressed down like a lid on a pot, trapping the heat until the air itself felt heavy. No clouds. No breeze. Just that dry, punishing stillness that made the world feel abandoned. The pavement shimmered. Buildings sagged under the weight of it, their paint bleached to bone, their windows hot to the touch.
Down the center of it came the Pussy Wagon, too loud, too yellow, a smear of wrong color on a sunburned road. It didn’t belong here, not among rusted trucks and dead air conditioners. Heads turned. Conversations stopped. A woman at the pump froze mid-swipe, squinting like she wasn’t sure if she was awake. No one spoke. In Horizon, you didn’t ask questions unless you wanted answers that ruined sleep.
She didn’t care who stared.
Her bare feet pressed into the warped rubber floorboard, soles black from gas station dirt and bathroom tile. Every joint ached, stiff from too much stillness. Her spine creaked when she shifted. Muscles tugged like they’d forgotten their work. But it was pain she trusted, the kind that proved she was awake.
She turned off the main drag and coasted into a strip mall that had been dying for years but refused to finish. Half the shops were empty, windows papered with curling FOR LEASE signs. The others hung on out of spite. One, TexStyle Western Wear, flickered under a crooked sign. She killed the engine and let the truck tick and groan like it resented being roused.
The pavement nearly blistered her feet. She staggered once, steadied, then limped toward the storefront. Her hips screamed, her legs protested, but they worked. She didn’t look back.
Inside, the temperature dropped hard. The AC blasted chemical cold, making her skin prickle. Lights buzzed overhead, too bright, too dim, one always flickering. Country music bled from a speaker behind the counter, slow and stitched together with heartbreak. She knew the tune. She knew the kind of place this was: the kind where you could walk in dripping blood or ghosts and no one cared, as long as you didn’t yell or steal.
Her scrubs rustled as she moved through racks, baggy and stained, reminders of a place she wouldn’t name. She trailed her fingers along the denim, grounding herself. Jeans. A tank top. A jacket lined with shearling she didn’t need but wanted anyway, something to hide behind. Boots under the clearance rack: red leather, white stars dulled to cream. She pulled them on, breath catching at the pain in her thighs, but when she stood, they fit.
At the register, she dropped Buck’s damp bills on the counter. The clerk didn’t look twice. Just bagged her scrubs like trash.
Outside, the sun hadn’t softened. Her boots struck the pavement sharp as punctuation. She still ached, but she didn’t limp.
The truck’s interior hit her like a furnace. Metallic heat, vinyl, old fuel. The dashboard cracked, the rearview crooked, the windshield spiderwebbed. Her reflection blurred in broken glass, and she let it. She gripped the wheel, palms sticky. For a moment she only sat, list forming in her head, incomplete but enough. One more stop before a nameless motel.
She turned the key. The engine coughed, then rumbled alive, low and angry, a sound she was starting to mistake for comfort. Gravel spit behind her as she peeled out, Horizon City sliding by in the same monotony of sun and collapse.
The next place barely qualified as a department store: a sun-bleached block shouting about bargains to an empty lot. Something fried, chicken maybe, stank through the heat. She parked far from the door. Her legs still felt untrustworthy, but she needed to walk. Make them remember.
Inside, the cold slapped her. Too bright, too sterile, smelling of bleach and melted candy. The place buzzed with noise: screaming kids, arguing parents, a tantrum echoing from toys. She kept her eyes forward. People looked. She felt it, half-second glances sliding over scars and scuffed boots. She didn’t care.
She picked up a basket and drifted to the camping aisle. The shelves were thin, but she found what she needed. A folding shovel, its handle thick and heavy like a weapon. A short-handled pickaxe with a fiberglass grip slick under her palm. A flashlight that looked sturdy enough to swing. Waterproof matches in a bright orange case. And a map of Texas, worn soft at the folds, stained with someone else’s fingerprints. She ran her thumb over the crease before dropping it into the basket. She’d be the last to touch it.
She passed the clearance bins without slowing: Father’s Day mugs, novelty socks, foam can holders with jokes no one ever laughed at. Junk for people she didn’t know. Junk for people who weren’t her. In stationery, she stopped just long enough to grab a plain black notebook and a pack of felt pens.
The basket was filling, too heavy. She set it down and reached for another, the metal frame cool and rough, already rusting at the welds. This one she filled faster, almost frantic. Apricot shampoo and the matching conditioner. A plain white bar of soap, unscented. A bag of cheap pink razors. A loofah she didn’t bother to look at. Deodorant. Face wash. Lotion. Each item clattered against the others, no pause between them. She didn’t want to smell like blood anymore, or sweat, or antiseptic. She wanted the hospital scrubbed off her, layer by layer. She wanted her body back, her skin hers again.
Across the aisle, glass jars lined the shelves, full of bath salts in candy colors. Bubble bath bottles in bright, desperate packaging. A SALE sign shouted promises no one believed. She hadn’t planned to stop, but her feet slowed, drawn by a pull she hated. A scent she didn’t want but couldn’t shake.
An older woman was already there. White hair twisted into a bun, movements slow, deliberate, elegant. She opened jars one by one, breathing each in carefully, gently, as though the act itself was sacred. Y/N didn’t look at her. She just reached for the nearest jar and twisted it open.
Lavender.
The smell hit hard. Her stomach flipped. Her chest locked tight. She was back under hospital lights, antiseptic sharp in the air. IV bags swaying. Monitors chirping in steady beeps. Footsteps soft against tile. A cool hand brushing her hair while a voice whispered a lie: You’re going to be okay.
She snapped the lid closed and shoved the jar back like it had burned her.
Her hand shot out for another, no thought, no reading the label. She breathed deep. Citrus. Tropical. Artificial. But it worked. It cut through the memory, broke it apart. She dropped the jar into her basket.
The next bottle she grabbed was cracked, label peeling, its cap leaking a sticky line down the side. Vanilla, it claimed. She didn’t care. It wasn’t lavender.
At the register, she dumped both baskets onto the belt without ceremony. Her mind spun in jagged circles: Taehyung’s reflection in a rearview mirror, the clean white of hospital sheets, Sam Wallace’s cologne drifting in the heat of summer, the silence of her mother’s kitchen. And beneath it all, always there, the one memory that refused to wash out: her father.
The cashier looked barely old enough to work, hoodie strings chewed thin, nails chipped, one earbud still in. She didn’t speak. Just scanned.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Plastic bags crinkled as they filled. Lavender still clung to Y/N’s hands, her cuticles, her collar, her breath. And then, soft as a whisper in the dark, she heard it: Our Father, who art in heaven…
“Your total is thirty-two seventy-one.”
The voice cut through. She blinked, counted out the money, slid it across. The girl gave her change and the receipt without looking up.
“Have a good one,” she mumbled.
Y/N’s mouth twitched, almost a smile. She studied the girl’s face, saw the dull shadow of apathy in her eyes.
“You too,” she said, her own voice rough, low, like it had clawed its way up from somewhere deep.
She gathered her bags, two in one hand, the third looped over her wrist, and walked for the exit. The automatic doors opened with a hiss, like the store was exhaling her into the heat.
The Pussy Wagon waited at the edge of the lot, its paint so bright it looked like it might hum in the sun. Red flames curled down the sides, shimmering just enough in the heat to look alive. It didn’t look fast. It didn’t look mean. It looked like a mistake someone hadn’t lived down. She didn’t care. She kept walking, boots heavy against the asphalt, bags swinging like pendulums against her knees. Her spine throbbed. Her legs burned. The sun bore down like it wanted to erase her. She kept going.
The truck hit her like a furnace when she opened the door: stale air, rubber, sun-baked vinyl, the faint stink of sweat that wasn’t hers. She didn’t flinch. She cranked the window down halfway, tossed a bag onto the passenger seat, and climbed in. The vinyl clung to her thighs. She turned the key. The engine coughed, sputtered, then growled alive. Reluctant, but steady. It always caught.
She pulled out slow. Tires groaned on the blacktop. Horizon City slid past in layers of heat: fast food joints with sun-bleached signs, payday loan offices in buildings yellowed with age, gas stations with broken pumps, liquor stores called EZ Mart and Last Stop. Dust. Concrete. The occasional palm tree, warped and brittle under the sun, too stubborn to fall but long past thriving.
She didn’t need to look twice. She knew this town. She’d lived in three just like it. She’d died in one.
When the storefronts thinned, she turned onto a cracked lot overrun with crabgrass and potholes. At the far end squatted a two-story motel that looked abandoned mid-construction. Stucco walls blistered, paint curling in sheets, rust bleeding from the windows. Above the office, a crooked neon sign buzzed: The Texican. The “i” blinked like it was losing the fight.
She parked beneath the second-floor walkway, under Room 212. The blinds were shut, but one slat bent outward like a broken tooth. She stared for a beat, then shifted her weight, grabbed her bags, and stepped out.
The lobby smelled of mildew and old smoke. The air felt stale, sealed in too long. A ceiling fan turned slow, clicking each time its blade passed the same rusted edge. The desk at the back looked like it had been rescued from a junkyard. Behind it, a man slouched low in his chair, tank top gray with sweat, a serpent tattoo curling down his arm. His eyes were on a screen.
When he finally looked up, his gaze crawled over her: boots, thighs, waist, lingering where it shouldn’t. Her jaw tightened, but she didn’t blink. She pulled out a roll of bills and dropped it on the counter.
He dragged it close with two yellowed nails. “Night or week?” His voice was flat, dry, like gravel at the bottom of a well.
“Night.”
He grunted, slid her a keycard, and dropped his gaze again. No greeting. No smile. Exactly what she wanted.
She took the key and left.
The stairwell creaked under her weight. The rail was rough, flaking paint into her palm. Each step made her legs ache, tendons stiff, balance not yet fully hers. The building leaned with age, and the stairs tilted uneven.
When she reached the second floor, Room 212 waited. The numbers on the door sagged, one screw half out, the wood around the lock chipped where years of hands had missed their mark. Paint was smudged with failed attempts. She slid the card through. The reader gave a faint, uncertain beep, followed by the click of the lock: a sound sharp and organic, like a joint slipping from its socket.
She stood for a moment, hand hovering over the handle, the heat pressing into her shoulders, sweat sliding down her spine. Then she turned it and pushed inside.
The smell met her first. Not the acrid bite of fresh smoke, but the stale kind, decades old, soaked deep into carpet, curtains, drywall. It was a yellowed stench, baked permanent. Underneath it sat something sour and sharp: mildew, failed cleaning agents, an aftertaste of effort without success. The air felt stagnant, heavy, as if it hadn’t moved in years.
She closed the door behind her, let the deadbolt snap home, and slid the chain across with a thin metallic scrape. A chair in the corner caught her eye: stubby, mismatched, its upholstery faded to some indefinable shade. She dragged it under the knob, jamming it in place. It wouldn’t stop anyone who truly wanted in, but it was a line drawn. A gesture of refusal.
The room itself looked scavenged. Curtains drooped from bent hooks, corners sun-bleached uneven. The light that slipped past them split the bed in orange streaks, late sunlight carving the space apart. The carpet near the door was bald and sticky, its color long since lost to grime. Nothing matched. The nightstand sat too low, its lamp too tall, casting warped shadows up the wall. The desk was scarred with rings and burns, the ghosts of cups and cigarettes. The bedspread screamed in paisleys of red and green, loud and ugly enough to distract from the rest.
She dropped her bags by the mattress and stood still, listening to the silence press in. The wall unit stuttered to life, blasting air that smelled of dust and freon. Not clean, but colder. For the first time all day, she didn’t feel watched.
The bathroom light buzzed on with a flick. The bulb flickered, then held. The mirror above the sink was clouded, corners warped where the silver backing had rotted away. Her reflection returned in fragments, her face shifted, imperfect, unfamiliar.
The faucet groaned before giving up a stuttering flow. Rust-tinged water ran a few seconds before clearing. Heat came quickly, fogging the mirror, filling the small room with steam that climbed the walls and clung to her skin.
She opened the jar of bath salts, tipped two scoops into the tub. They dissolved with a hiss, releasing a softness that felt like it belonged to another life. She poured in the bubble bath, slow, steady, watching it curl through the rising water like melted gold. The white bar of soap she left on the edge, still wrapped, waiting.
Her clothes came off piece by piece, sticking to her skin like second layers. Shirt. Jeans. Damp underwear. She peeled them free and stood in the fog. The mirror caught her in fragments again: shoulder, waist, ribs. Bruises bloomed faintly along her sides, yellow-green fading into skin. Her stomach flat but hollow, her hips jutting sharp. The scar at her abdomen still pink and raised. She didn’t linger. She already knew.
One hand steady on the tile, she stepped into the tub. The heat bit her ankles, climbed her calves, forced a gasp from her throat. Still, she sank down, slow, deliberate, until the water closed around her shoulders and she was folded in on herself, knees tucked, arms looped tight. Steam wrapped her, heavy and close.
She let herself breathe.
The tropical scent lingered, cloying but gentle. Bubbles clung to the surface, catching the light in fragile sheens. Her skin burned, then loosened. Muscles unwound: jaw, neck, spine. For a moment, it felt almost like safety. Almost like being held.
The first sob tore out raw, deeper than her throat, violent as a cough. Another followed. Then another. She pressed her forehead to her knees, fingers digging into her shins, and tried to choke them back. Useless. Her body shook, her breath broke apart. She didn’t scream; there was no air for it. But she wept, bone-deep, every muscle wracked. Her ribs ached, her throat stung.
She wept for the baby she never held, gone before its first breath. For the man who promised to stay, whose blood had marked her hands and her dress and the altar floor. For the hospital bed, for the machines that never went quiet, for the fluorescent light that never dimmed. For every woman who pressed a hand to a belly still full. For every picture never taken, every name never whispered.
She wept for herself. For the years locked away. For her voice forgotten. For the silence that no one noticed.
Eventually her body emptied out. The sobs thinned to shudders, then silence. She sat in the cooling water, bubbles thinning, breath still uneven. Her arms uncoiled. The lavender clung. The bruises showed. The scar glistened.
Drip. Drip. Drip. The faucet tapped against porcelain. The fan above crackled softly, struggling on. Beyond the wall, the air conditioner rattled in fits, wheezing like it had something to prove. A breeze nudged the curtain against the sill, a tap-tap-tap in an accidental rhythm.
She reached for the soap.
It was motel standard, wrapped in stiff waxed paper that crackled as she peeled it open. Plain. White. The word SOAP stamped across in faded block letters, nothing more. She lathered it slow, the foam thick in her palms, and began.
Arms first, shoulder to wrist. Then chest. Then neck. Back to shoulders again, where tension clung deepest. Her jaw, careful. Her stomach, softer, her hand pausing at the scar as though in apology. Her legs, her feet, her fingers, behind her ears. Nothing frantic. Just deliberate, steady strokes, scraping memory away piece by piece.
The water changed, subtly at first. Soap film clouded the surface, swirling. Then faint streaks rose, pinkish, floating near her thighs. Tiny cuts reopened by heat. Or maybe old wounds, still not ready to close.
She picked up the apricot shampoo and snapped the cap open. The scent hit fast: sweet, bright, almost cheerful. Out of place in a room like this, but she let it in anyway. She poured a slick mound into her palm and worked it through her scalp, once, then again. On the third wash she slowed, fingers tracing circles, nails dragging lightly against her skin. It was no longer about cleaning. It was about feeling. Her own hand. Her own body. Her own presence. For a moment she wasn’t thinking about hospitals or sirens or the weight of what came next. Just herself.
Her hair drifted in strands around her, clinging to shoulders and arms, spreading across the water’s surface like ink in clear glass. Every small movement sent ripples over her collarbones. She moved carefully, hardly disturbing the surface.
By the time she rinsed, the bathwater had thickened with what she’d carried in: suds, oil, dirt, faint streaks of blood. Stray hairs, flecks of skin, things she didn’t bother to name. A film skated across the top, swirling quietly every time she exhaled.
She sat in it, arms locked around her knees, chin pressed down. The steam was fading now, air cooling just enough to raise goosebumps along her arms. The mirror across the room stayed fogged. The weight of the day pressed into her spine, her knees, her lungs. Still she didn’t move. Stillness was the point: the kind that emptied you without ceremony.
Her hand found the drain. She pulled.
At first it was a soft slurp. Then stronger, a steady pull. The water swirled around her body like it was trying to take its time saying goodbye. It licked her thighs, curved around her ribs, slid past her arms, then dropped in spirals. The drain swallowed it all without protest: the soap, the oil, the old blood, the pieces of herself she no longer wanted.
She stayed until only a thin puddle remained, circling once, twice, before vanishing with a hollow gurgle. Silence filled the space it left behind.
She pressed her palms against the rim of the tub. Cold now, slick with condensation. She welcomed the sting in her hands. Took a sharp breath, let it root her, then pushed herself upright.
Her legs trembled on the rise. Her arms shook with the effort. Joints complained. Muscles felt wrong, unfamiliar. But she kept moving, slow, steady, until she was standing.
Water traced down her skin in patient rivulets, dripping from her spine, elbows, fingertips. Each drop left its mark before disappearing into the porcelain. The steam had mostly lifted, retreating into the vent or curling beneath the door, leaving only faint streaks across the mirror.
She reached for the towel.
It was motel-issue, stiff, frayed at the edges, faintly sour with detergent and bleach. She dragged it over herself in blunt swipes. No ritual, no tenderness. Just the act of removing water from skin. Left arm, right. Shoulders. Legs. Stomach. The towel caught on raw patches where she’d scrubbed too hard, lit sparks under her skin, but she didn’t flinch.
Barefoot, she stepped out onto the motel carpet. It scratched at her heels like someone else’s memory, old and unpleasant. The room felt thinner than it had before the bath. The air sharper, like it had shifted in her absence.
Her clothes waited in a neat stack. She pulled on the jeans one leg at a time, denim dragging over fresh skin. They caught once on a healing scrape; she winced, then yanked them higher, cinching the belt until the pressure pressed her steady. The tank top next, damp fabric clinging across her ribs. Then the jacket, heavy, familiar, already too warm but necessary. Not for comfort. For armor.
She didn’t look at the bathroom mirror.
On the bed’s edge she bent forward, boots at her feet. She tugged one on, then the other, hands shaking. Not from nerves, but from exhaustion threaded deep, the kind that lived in marrow. The right slid in easy, a solid thump. The left resisted, ankle stiff, toes fighting the fit. She wriggled, yanked, coaxed it until it gave with a final snap. She stood.
The floor felt steadier than it had last night. That was enough.
At the sink, the mirror still wore a fogged film. She wiped it once with her palm, dragging away condensation. Her reflection stared back fractured through hairline cracks, the glass tinted yellow with time. It was her, but broken into pieces.
She looked older than she remembered. Cheeks hollowed, bones sharpened. Shadows pooled under her eyes like bruises. Lips pale, pressed flat. Jaw locked, clenched around years unsaid.
Her scar caught the light. Not a clean line, but a jagged pale bloom across her temple, skin pulled tight over the plate beneath. It hadn’t ruined her face. But it had changed it. Left its story whether she wanted one or not.
She didn’t turn away. Didn’t flinch. She stared until her chest tightened, until her throat threatened to close.
The rage was there, coiled low, steady. Not a fire that leapt. A coal that smoldered. It had lived in her for years, quiet and unyielding, and it stirred now, hot beneath her ribs.
She didn’t glance down at her stomach.
Her daughter. Gone.
Her breath hitched, sharp, and she stepped back.
The bathroom still clung to the last of the steam, curling in the corners, drifting as if reluctant to leave. When she opened the door, it slipped out behind her, dissolving into the dry stillness of the room. It wasn’t dawn yet, not quite. But the light was changing. That in-between hour, when night begins bleeding out but the world hasn’t decided to wake. Everything felt suspended. Waiting.
She crossed to the nightstand. The notebook sat where she’d left it, black cover smooth and unmarked, as if it were holding its breath. She lifted it with both hands, careful, like it might shift weight if she wasn’t. Heavier than it should have been, not from paper but from what it was meant to hold.
From her bag, she drew a pen. Plain, black, the kind sold by the dozen, designed to be used and forgotten. She uncapped it slowly, the click soft, almost apologetic in the hush.
The first page stared up at her.
Death List Five
Yoongi Min – Cottonmouth
Jimin Park – Copperhead
Namjoon Kim – Sidewinder
Brandi Phoenix – California Mountain Snake
Taehyung
She replaced the cap. Slid pen and notebook back into her bag.
Next, she found Buck’s sunglasses where she’d tossed them, bent and scratched, ridiculous in their persistence. She slipped them on. Crooked, as always. She nudged the bridge, tried to adjust, gave up. They never sat right. But they worked.
The room was still dim. Her boots thudded against the floor, each step certain, carrying the weight of promise. At the door, she paused. The chair was still wedged beneath the knob, stubborn in its defiance. She bent, joints stiff, dragged it aside. The scrape echoed across the linoleum, a punctuation mark in the silence.
Chain. Thumb flick. Deadbolt. Three turns, quick, practiced. Her fingers didn’t need thought.
The door groaned open, hinges low and grudging. Heat met her immediately, thick, dry, pressing. Asphalt fumes rising from the lot. Dust on the air. The tang of oil, the metallic bite of a day not yet begun.
The sky was shifting, neither gold nor pink, but some strange in-between shade that lasted only minutes. The motel sat inside it, silent, caught between one night ending and another day beginning. Paused.
The neon above the office buzzed faintly. A cicada started, cut off. A dog barked once. Silence folded back in.
She stepped out. The door clicked shut. She didn’t look back.
The Pussy Wagon crouched at the lot’s edge, yellow paint too bright for the hour, flames shimmering like they wanted to breathe. It looked absurd, dangerous, and proud in equal measure. A dare made metal. A joke sharpened into a blade.
She opened the door, slid inside. The vinyl seat was warm against her thighs, not yet burning but close. The cab smelled of lavender and motor oil, clean, antiseptic almost, but still mechanical. A machine rebuilt too many times, carrying the weight of its history.
For a moment, she sat still. Palms flat on her thighs, fingers twitching. The motel’s AC unit droned faintly in the distance. Inside, the truck held its own silence, coiled tight like a breath waiting to be exhaled.
She turned the key.
The engine caught on the second attempt, rumbling alive with a guttural growl. The cab shivered around her, wheel buzzing in her hands, the vibration running up her arms and into her chest. Settling there. She slid it into drive. Tires spit gravel, reluctant but obedient. The motel shrank behind her, just another room, another scar. Room 212 vanished in the rearview, swallowed by neon and dust.
She didn’t look back.
The highway opened in front of her, cracked asphalt unfurling like a dark ribbon across West Texas. Brush clawed at the shoulders, mesquite twisted like broken arms, rocks rusted red, skeletal trees brittle with drought. The sky stretched pale and empty, the sun still soft but already threatening.
By the time the desert swallowed her, night had fallen again. Not gentle. Not gradual. It dropped like a curtain, sudden and absolute. No moon. No stars. Just black. Heavy. Whole.
The truck didn’t belong here, and it knew it.
It roared too loud, headlights carving two stark tunnels into the void. The beams caught nothing but empty miles, white columns piercing a silence too thick to care. The engine hummed, steady and tired, as though warning her without conviction. Every dip rattled the frame, but the wheel stayed true under her hands. Ten and two. Steady.
Mirages shimmered at the edges of her vision, heat ghosts lingering after the sun. She didn’t chase them.
The desert whispered against the truck’s flanks, a dry, rattling scrape like fingernails on denim. Insects, wind, memory. Something flickered low across the road’s edge, fast, small, gone again. She didn’t check. She slowed instead.
The road narrowed to one lane, asphalt breaking apart under its own weight. She eased off the gas. Let the truck crawl. Then stopped.
Headlights washed over brush and stone. Stillness. Shadows deep enough to hide anything. Or nothing.
She cut the engine.
The silence arrived instantly. Not falling over her, but revealing itself, like it had always been here, waiting.
She reached for the flashlight on the passenger seat, opened the door.
The night air was sharp, not cold but exposing, stripping. She tugged her jacket closer. Gravel shifted under her boots. Behind her, the truck ticked softly as the engine cooled, the sound fading into the endless dark.
She clicked the flashlight on. A narrow beam cut the dark, sharp and clean, slicing through shadow like a scalpel. Everything beyond its reach stayed untouched, patient, waiting.
She didn’t hesitate. Her body carried her forward, step by step, as if it had walked this path before. Maybe it had. Her legs remembered what her mind wanted to forget.
Then she saw it.
A rock. Just a rock, if you didn’t know better. Pale limestone, sunk halfway into the dirt, weathered and ordinary. Something that should’ve blended in. Something anyone else would miss.
But not her.
She crouched, knees popping softly, flashlight wedged between shoulder and chin. The light crawled along the stone’s edge, shadows doubling its size. Her fingers dug into the packed soil at the base. She pulled.
It resisted. Heavier than it used to be. Maybe the ground had hardened. Maybe she had softened. Either way, she braced, set her boot, and pulled again. The stone shifted with a dry scrape.
Underneath, the mark was waiting.
An X, carved deep. Not faded, not worn down. Black as the day she burned it in. The sight of it caught her breath somewhere between release and recoil.
That mark had been a promise. If it was gone, she’d walk away. That was the deal. No vengeance. No names. Just silence. But it wasn’t gone.
The desert hadn’t erased it. Time hadn’t buried it. The universe hadn’t looked away. She stood. The cold closed in now, not wind but earth itself. The shadows seemed to lean forward, curious. She didn’t care. She went back to the truck.
The tools were waiting where they always had been: shovel, pickaxe, flashlight. Old companions. Her hand found the shovel without thought, as if it had already been chosen. She leaned into the cab, thumbed the stereo. Silence shattered. The riff echoed through the night, jagged and merciless, too much for the cab to contain. The truck rattled under it, tires humming against dirt, frame twitching as if it wanted to leap forward. Guitars clawed. Drums pounded like fists.
She turned away before the echo finished, walking back toward the rock. The music chased her into the dark, distorted by space but still sharp enough to cut. Her boots kept time with the rhythm, gravel crunching in sync.
One. Two. Three.
She counted, breath more than voice.
Four. Five. Six.
The flashlight swung at her side, beam lurching across dirt and brush. It caught on shadows, slid over brittle grass, bent across rocks. It felt like stepping into a story that hadn’t been written yet.
Seven. Eight. Nine. Ten.
Her body warmed against the cold, rhythm keeping her steady. The rock loomed again. Here the air shifted. The ground itself exhaled, cold rising up like something long-buried had soured. She gripped the shovel. The wood was damp. Not with sweat. With memory. Her gloves creaked against it. She drove it down. The first strike rang flat, earth baked into stone. It shoved back. Her arms jolted, shoulder jarred. She didn’t stop.
Another swing. Harder. Then another.
The dirt began to loosen. She fell into rhythm: dig, lift, pivot. Again. Breath shortened, sweat slid down her spine, her back sang with strain. Her palms throbbed inside her gloves. Still, she didn’t let up. Each blow cleared space inside her chest.
Behind her, Barracuda still screamed. The desert caught the sound and threw it back at her, warped but relentless. And she kept going.
Clink.
The sound was different. Heavier. It traveled up the handle, into her arms, into her spine. She froze, boot perched on the edge of the hole, dirt sliding down around her ankle. Breath caught. Heart stilled.
She dropped to her knees. Gloves filthy, jeans scraping rock. She set the flashlight down; its beam jittered, then steadied. Enough to show what waited beneath the soil.
Her hand closed around the pickaxe. She didn’t think. Just swung. Once. Twice. Again.
Chunks of dirt split, scattering sharp and dry. Her arms burned, lungs worked like pistons. Gravel dug into her knees. She didn’t stop until she saw it.
Black plastic. Torn in places, stretched tight over a shape too familiar. Boxy. Olive green peeking through. She knew before she touched it.
The pickaxe dropped from her grip. She clawed at the soil, ripping through plastic and dirt alike. Something slick caught under her nails—water, blood, it didn’t matter. She braced, boot pressed hard, and wrenched.
The earth gave with a groan. The box lurched free, knocking her backward. She landed hard, breath ragged, chest heaving.
Her gloves were filthy, her arms trembling with the effort, but the footlocker was out at last. It was army issue, the kind stamped into a generation. The metal was olive drab, dulled by time, corners dented, its surface scratched and scuffed, the paint chipped to reveal bare steel beneath. The hinges wore rust, but they still held; the latches were stiff but unbroken. It looked exactly as it should: forgotten, but intact.
She brushed a layer of dirt from the lid, her fingers finding the latches without hesitation. A practiced motion, quick and certain. Metal snapped against metal, followed by the creak of hinges straining after years of silence. Dust drifted up in a pale cloud, catching the flashlight’s beam and hanging there like ash in still air. She set the light on the rim and leaned closer.
The first thing she drew out was a sleeping bag, cheap nylon, navy blue, stiff with disuse. It unrolled with a brittle crackle, the zipper teeth clinking like links in a chain. She spread it beside the hole, pressing it flat with both hands. The flashlight cast a sharp bar of light across the box. Dust rose through it in lazy spirals, as though the past itself was breathing.
Beneath the bag lay rows of magazines, tight and orderly. Some bound with rubber, others wound in black electrical tape, the edges frayed with age. She picked one up, ran her thumb over the top round. Brass gleamed back at her, untarnished, untouched. As though it had been waiting.
The first pistol was compact and polished, silver bright against the dim. It looked too elegant for this place, but she knew better. A weapon meant for close range, not display. She tested the weight, how naturally it rested in her palm, before setting it aside with the holster.
Next came a snub-nosed .38. Plain steel, no ornament, no pretension. Just the kind of tool that did the job without complaint. She opened the cylinder, checked each chamber, and gave it a spin. It ticked clean and precise, like a clock. She slipped it into its ankle holster, the Velcro catching with a rasp.
Piece by piece, the Mossberg came out: the barrel, the stock, the slide. She brushed the dust off with her sleeve, each movement instinctive. Assembly came without thought. One part clicked into the next until the weapon lay whole across her lap, heavy, steady, ready.
Her hand brushed something smaller, curved and cold. She lifted a silver boomerang, edges honed thin enough to cut without effort. The light scattered across its surface in sharp shards. She turned it once in her grip, feeling the weight shift. This was older than everything else. Older than her scars, older than her anger. A remnant from another life. It slid into its old holster, and her hand lingered there for a moment too long.
At the bottom, she found a black attachĂŠ, snug in the foam. She freed it, laid it flat, and opened the twin latches. The case released with a click sharp enough to cut the silence. Inside, in carved slots, lay the broken-down parts of a sniper rifle: barrel, bolt, scope, mount. Each piece was immaculate, free of dust, as though untouched by time. She lifted the scope, tilted it upward, and caught a starlight pinprick sharp and clear through the glass.
She was about to close the case when something caught her eye, flat, tucked beneath the foam. A manila envelope, worn at the corners, soft with use. She stripped off her gloves, ignoring the soil packed beneath her nails, and lifted it carefully as if it might crumble. She slid a finger under the flap and unfolded the paper within, one crease at a time.
A black and white sonogram. Grainy but unmistakable. A curled shape no bigger than a thumb. The curve of a spine, the suggestion of a head, the faintest stretch of limbs. Her child.
She sat motionless. The wind seemed to pause with her, the desert holding its breath. Somewhere in the distance, music pulsed low, but she barely heard it. She stayed still in the dirt, sleeves caked with dust, staring at the ghost of a life that never came to be.
She folded the sonogram slowly, carefully, and slid it back into its envelope. The flap pressed closed under her thumb, unsealed but sufficient.
There was more. 
A Ziploc bag, cloudy and heat-wrinkled. Inside was an old Texas state ID. Candy Ralston. The photo was hers, but younger. Rounder in the face, skin untouched by scars. Hair pulled back too tightly, eyes uncertain but already watching. Lips pressed in a line that refused to trust.
Next to it lay a paper bank book, its spine softened from handling. Every entry written by hand, small withdrawals made with care. A pattern so patient it became invisible, until it led here. On the final page, one last choice.
And beneath the lining, exactly where memory said it would be, she found the key. Small, plain, tarnished. Dangling from a chipped novelty fob. The letters worn nearly smooth, but she didn’t need to read them.
Deadly Vipers.
She didn’t pause. No whispered vow, no lingering glance. She began to repack the footlocker, steady and sure. Each weapon slid into its place: the sniper rifle parts pressing into their foam, the boomerang curved into its cutout like it had never left. She closed the sleeping bag last, the zipper catching once before sliding true. The final click echoed in the still air, too loud, like a door shutting behind her.
She hefted the pack onto her shoulder. Heavy, but familiar. Her body shifted into the weight like it had carried it a hundred times before.
She stood, turned, and walked back toward the truck without a backward glance. The hole remained open in the dirt behind her, a raw gash in the earth, as if the desert had been holding its breath for years and finally let it out. No marker, no cross, no stone. Just a patch of sand that had kept its secret until it no longer had to. She left it that way.
The wind stirred, but the desert didn’t change. In the distance, the oil derrick kept grinding its endless rhythm, slow, mechanical, indifferent. The truck was still humming with music when she climbed inside, something sharp with guitars and drums heavy enough to bruise a ribcage. She didn’t touch the dial. Didn’t spare the radio a look. She only turned the key.
The engine growled awake, the wheel twitching under her grip as though impatient, eager to remind her why she’d come. She shifted into drive.
Gravel cracked under the tires, dust lifting in a thin veil behind her. No farewell, no second look. The hole stayed where it was, empty, unfinished, unmarked. Nothing would fill it, and nothing needed to.
Miles slipped beneath her tires, steady and relentless. The sun climbed higher, flattening the horizon into a long, wavering stretch of heat and light. She let the road carry her forward like a current she no longer fought.
By the time she pulled into the Commonwealth Bank of Texas, the sun was cruel at its peak, heat radiating off the concrete in dizzy waves. The building looked like it had been abandoned halfway through its design and forced into use anyway: beige brick, dull metal trim, a flickering red “OPEN” sign that couldn’t decide if it meant it.
It sat wedged between a shuttered taqueria and a payday loan office still dressed in tinsel from a Christmas no one remembered. Dust thickened in the sidewalk’s cracks. The kind of place people didn’t bother to notice. Perfect.
She cut the engine. The silence that followed felt sharper than the music. Her boots struck the pavement with the same deliberate weight they’d carried through the dirt. The sleeping bag was gone, tucked away with the rest. What stepped out here wasn’t the woman from the desert. This was Candy Ralston.
Not the bright-eyed Candy with the easy smile and the drawl sharpened just enough to charm. That Candy was dead. This one was leaner, skin pale, eyes too hollow to bother pretending. Her mouth was a hard line. She hadn’t come for company.
She crossed the lot in a slow, certain stride, one hand on the bag, the other close to her coat. The fabric swayed with each step, brushing her thighs, catching the breeze. She moved like someone who knew exactly what she carried and what it would cost to use it.
The bank’s glass doors didn’t invite. The tint was too dark, the reflection warped. Inside, fluorescent lights flickered and hummed, pouring a pale gray over everything. Blinds hung crooked, yellow at the edges. A place that didn’t improve, only endured.
She pushed through the door.
The buzzer cracked the hush, too loud in the cold, conditioned air. The chill was chemical, designed to keep people awake, unsettled. It smelled of citrus cleaner and overworked machines, with something faint beneath it, something like nerves.
The light was merciless, stripping every angle bare. Her coat stayed on.
She moved with the kind of presence that didn’t need to ask for space. Cameras swiveled from their black domes in the corners, lenses humming faintly if you listened close. She didn’t look up. Let them watch. Let them wonder.
Behind the counter sat a woman who might have been there since the doors first opened. Hair lacquered into a helmet, lipstick a shade of pink too bright for her complexion. The tag on her blouse, polyester and strawberry-colored, cheap, read MARJORIE in rigid block letters.
She looked up when the door chimed, flashing a smile polished for trouble. Too quick, too practiced, more reflex than welcome.
Y/N didn’t return it.
“Hi there,” Marjorie said, her voice soaked in the slow sweetness of a Texas drawl, one that sounded like it had been taught in finishing school and worn thin by years of repetition. “How can I help you today, ma’am?”
Y/N stepped forward, just close enough to make it feel personal, but not close enough to make it weird. Her voice came out low, a little frayed, like she’d worn it out talking to ghosts. “I need access to my safety deposit box.”
Even to her own ears, she sounded small. Not scared. Just tired in a way that lived deep in the bones. Her arms still ached from the dig, her back tight across the spine, her muscles running on fumes. It helped. The exhaustion made her seem soft at the edges, easier to dismiss.
She reached into her coat and pulled out the key. It was plain, silver dulled to a matte finish, worn down at the edges. Nothing remarkable. Except it was. The way she turned it in her fingers, how it caught the light for a second, made it something more than metal. This key had opened more than steel boxes. It had cracked things open that were meant to stay shut.
She placed it on the counter like it might still be hot. “My name’s Candy Ralston.”
Marjorie blinked. Just once. But it was enough. A pause in the rhythm. Her eyes dropped to the key, then back up. Something shifted in her face: some small recalculation, like a mental search engine had just returned an unexpected result. Not panic. Not even suspicion. Just awareness. A name that didn’t match a story. Or a story that was missing too many pages.
Y/N noticed. She always noticed. The flicker in the eyes, the slight tension in the mouth, the way Marjorie’s hands hovered over the keyboard for half a second too long, like they were waiting for instructions the rest of her wasn’t ready to give.
Y/N followed with the ID. Slid it across the glass, calm, steady. The photo was old but recent enough. Her face in it was rounder, eyes a little less guarded, a smile that barely made it to her mouth. Now her cheeks were hollowed out, skin drawn tighter, her gaze hard-edged. But the eyes—those stayed the same.
Marjorie studied the ID, compared it to the woman standing in front of her. Her smile didn’t return. Something behind it had turned mechanical.
“I’ll be right back, honey,” she said, and the warmth in her voice had vanished. She took the ID and the key, turned, and disappeared behind a gray metal door that hissed shut behind her like a vault sealing off bad memories.
Y/N didn’t move.
She scanned the lobby instead. Vault tucked in the corner, keypad locked. Two cameras, standard dome type, mounted high. Cheap, analog, probably on a timed loop. Footage saved to tapes or some outdated drive, nothing that uploaded to a cloud. She made a note of that. Good, not great. Sprinklers overhead, fire alarms every fifteen feet. No posted security. No visible guards. Just quiet.
It wasn’t much. But maybe enough to stay ahead if Taehyung had caught her scent.
Marjorie came back slower than she’d gone. The door opened with the same soft hiss. No smile now. Just neutral posture, the kind you wore when you didn’t want to pick sides. She held the door open without a word.
“Right this way.”
Y/N didn’t thank her. Didn’t speak. She just moved, coat brushing against the counter’s edge, boots making a soft sound against carpet chosen specifically to muffle footsteps. The hallway they entered was narrow, lined with anonymous doors that had no signs or names, only keypads in place of knobs. It smelled like cold paper and old wiring.
At the end of the corridor was a room built for forgetting. The temperature dipped the second they stepped in, not from AC but from something deeper, like the place had been sealed off from the rest of the world for too long. Fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, casting a flat, pale glow that made every surface look harsher than it was. Shadows clung to the corners, thick and reluctant.
The walls were covered in rows of steel safety deposit boxes, each one identical, stacked high like a wall of filing cabinets in a mausoleum. A square table sat in the middle, wood, worn smooth in some places, scratched in others. It didn’t look like anyone had ever sat comfortably at it.
Marjorie moved without speaking, walking straight to a lower drawer in the wall. Her fingers didn’t fumble. She pulled a steel box free and laid it on the table with a dull thunk. Then another. The sound was soft but final, like a decision being made in secret.
She didn’t look at Y/N. Didn’t ask any questions. Her whole body said the same thing: I don’t want to know.
Y/N didn’t open the box. Not here. Not with the lights buzzing and the cameras humming faintly above, and Marjorie pretending not to see but seeing everything anyway. This wasn’t the place for what came next. Not yet.
She stood slowly, letting her knees stretch, spine groan just a little as it straightened. She didn’t make a sound. Just rose, steady and full of weight.
Marjorie still stood by the door, hands folded tight, knuckles pale. Her voice came out quiet, not reverent, not polite. Something more cautious than that.
“Thanks for coming.”
Her eyes flicked to the bag over Y/N’s shoulder. Not curious. Just wary. There was no warmth in her voice. No welcome. Just the brittle sound of someone realizing too late that they should have asked fewer questions, or maybe more.
Y/N didn’t try to soothe it.
“Thanks for your help,” she said. Flat. Even. Just enough to be finished.
She turned and walked out.
Marjorie followed at a distance, like she didn’t want to be caught sharing space with whatever Y/N carried. Back through the hallway, down the long strip of carpet meant to erase sound and footprints. When they reached the counter again, Marjorie slid behind it without a word and sat very still, watching through the glass as Y/N moved toward the door and pushed it open.
The heat outside hit like a slow slap, drier than before, tinted orange by a sun that was just starting to fall. Shadows had grown long across the parking lot, stretching past broken curbs and faded paint lines. The sky had gone bruised at the edges. The truck waited exactly where it had been, dust settled thick across the windshield, the yellow paint looking tired in the last of the light.
She tossed the bag into the flatbed, climbed into the driver’s seat, and closed the door. The cab held the day’s warmth like a breath that hadn’t been let go. The engine took a second to respond. Then it grumbled to life with a thick, uneven roar that rattled the steering column.
She pulled out of the lot without a glance at the building behind her. No one followed.
The bank disappeared in the rearview, swallowed up by the flat lines of small-town architecture and the slow drag of coming night. Another door shut. Another name scratched off.
The road opened in front of her again, stretching west through brush and rock and the half-sleep of places too small to fight back. Her fingers rested easy on the wheel. Not loose. Not tense. Just ready. Her other hand twitched once against her thigh, like it was remembering something: some old rhythm, some old grip.
The sky behind her wasn’t just sunset. It was collapse, like something had given way at the edge of the world and let everything pour out. Red bled into deep violet, orange streaked like torn silk across the horizon. It was a hell of a sight, bold and feral, almost too much to look at. But she didn’t turn to see it. Endings didn’t impress her anymore.
Mile marker 233 blurred past. Just beyond it, the motel came into view. Low-slung and sagging between a boarded-up diner and a pawn shop with a broken front window and an “OPEN” sign that hadn’t glowed since Clinton was in office. The SUNRISE MOT_L sign blinked in sickly neon, the “E” long gone, leaving the name limping toward meaning. Plastic palm trees lined the driveway, sun-bleached and cracked, their fronds drooping like they had finally accepted their own artificiality.
The truck hissed as it settled, engine ticking like it had opinions about being parked. Heat shimmered off the hood. She stepped out, boots hitting the asphalt with the unhurried thud of someone who’d done this too many times before. Another town. Another key. Another night listening to the sound of her own breath and wondering if it was really hers anymore.
The lobby reeked of cheap cleaner fighting and failing to bury the smell of time. Old carpet. Burned coffee. That bitter lemon-polish tang on furniture nobody liked. Behind the counter, a man with red eyes and a week’s stubble looked up, sweat soaking through his shirt. He regarded her the way a man regards a thunderstorm from behind a screen door: resigned, a little impressed, but not about to step into it.
She laid cash on the counter without counting. No words. No name. Just a transaction. He slid a key across the laminate, a red plastic tag dangling from it, the number 11 painted in peeling gold. The plastic stuck to her fingers, tacky with years of grime.
“Back row,” he muttered, already turning away.
Room 11 waited at the far end of the building, tucked into the shadows like a bruise no one mentioned. The lock resisted until she leaned into it, shoulder tight against the door. It clicked open reluctantly, like the room had been holding its breath.
Inside, the air was still and heavy. Not hot. Not cold. Just stale. Saturated. Smoke in the walls, mildew in the carpet. She shut the door, bolted it, slid the chain, then dragged the desk chair under the knob. It wouldn’t stop anyone. But it gave her the illusion of control.
The bag hit the bed with a solid thud. She didn’t open it yet.
Plastic blinds rattled as she lowered them slat by slat, each click deliberate. Outside, the parking lot glowed under a flickering streetlamp, humming too loud, not sure whether to stay lit. A few cars scattered across the lot. Heat still rising off the pavement. Bugs swarming the light like it meant something.
She checked the bathroom. The bulb buzzed sickly yellow, throwing a crooked shadow behind her. Cracked tile. Rusted sink. Mirror fogged at the edges, warped with age. She left the door half open. Not for sightlines. Just habit. She didn’t close doors without a reason anymore.
The room sagged at the seams. Wallpaper peeled in corners, ceiling stained like a bruise. The air conditioner coughed, rattled, died again. She sat on the bed. Zipped the bag open.
Stacks of cash waited inside, neat and brittle, rubber bands fraying with time. She picked one up, breathing in the scent of sweat, dust, and long drives with cracked windows. Quiet money. The kind that didn’t ask questions.
Beneath it, weapons. Two pistols: one clean and compact, the other older, worn. The compact one she hadn’t touched since El Paso, since Lisa Wong walked out of a motel bathroom with a pregnancy test and silence in her eyes. Lisa left three days later. Faked her death the day after that.
She slid them aside. Pulled out the SOG knife. Perfect balance. Still hers. A straight razor waited beneath it, sleek and simple, for skin. She pocketed it. Better to have options.
At the bottom lay a rifle case. She opened it, checked the matte-black barrel. Functional. Nothing ornate. She closed it again. Korea would demand quieter tools.
A manila folder came next. Corners soft with use. Inside: passports. Fourteen identities, all hers. Candy Ralston. Minsook Cho. Emma Blevins. Others she barely remembered wearing. Different hair. Different smiles. Same eyes. Always hers.
A folded map slipped out. Korea. Red ink circling cities, tracing routes like a heartbeat across the paper. She didn’t remember marking it, but her hand had known.
Photographs. Old, blurred, pulled from yearbooks under borrowed names. A beach. An arm around Sam Wallace. Her own half-formed smile frozen in place. She flipped past them quickly.
Then came the sonograms. She didn’t need to unfold them. The shape lived in her spine now, lodged between her ribs.
She sat still with the folder on her lap, bag open beside her, lamp casting weak yellow light over everything. She didn’t check her phone. Didn’t turn on the TV. Just breathed. The room didn’t welcome her, but it didn’t push her out either. It was just a box. Four walls to keep the world at bay for one more night.
Outside, a car rolled past slow, tires whispering over gravel. Somewhere down the row, a door slammed, laughter cracked sharp through the air, and bass thudded heavy from an open window. The music swaggered, empty noise with no weight behind it.
She stayed still. Let it pass like weather. Then leaned forward, unzipped the smaller pocket of the bag, and pulled free something cold and compact. A refrigeration case. She set it on the bed. Unlaced the key from her boot. The lock clicked once, clean, before the lid opened.
Inside, two gold syringes gleamed against black foam. Between them, a vial. Pale amber liquid moved slow inside it, syrup-thick, heavy, like honey aged too long.
Taehyung had called it The Undisputed Truth. Said it burned the lies out of people. She hadn’t believed him. Still didn’t. But she’d taken it anyway. Maybe it worked. Maybe it didn’t. Soon, she’d have to find out.
She closed the case and turned the key with care. Slid it back behind her laces like it had never left. The weight settled into the bag with a muted thud, buried beneath layers of gear. Her hand brushed something soft in the side pocket: a flattened pack of Camels, paper crumpled, edges worn like it had been riding there for years.
She pulled it out, frowning. Couldn’t remember putting it in. Couldn’t remember the last time she even wanted to. Not since Pai Mei. Not since the split lip and two days of lungs scraped raw from the inside. That had been the line. She’d meant to quit.
But tonight didn’t care what she meant.
She tapped the pack twice against her knee and drew one out with her teeth. The lighter waited in the same pocket, cheap plastic, half-empty. It sputtered once, twice, then caught. Flame kissed the cigarette, flared too close, then steadied to a glow. She pulled deep, the smoke burning familiar paths down her chest, settling heavy in her lungs.
The exhale spiraled slow toward the ceiling, mixing with the stale motel air as if it had always belonged there. Maybe she had too. Another drag. Longer. The tremor in her hands eased. The knot in her chest unwound. The ache behind her eyes softened just enough to blink without pain.
She had what she needed. Enough money to disappear. Enough weapons to make sure no one stopped her. Enough names stitched into paper to build another self, somewhere no one was looking. She’d started with less before, built lives from crumbs. But this time the engine driving her was different. Not revenge alone. Not pain. Hunger. The kind born not from being hurt, but from surviving. From still being alive, and wanting more than survival.
Her fingers found the folded map. She spread it flat across the bed, pressing it open with both palms. The paper had gone soft, creases tired, ink smudged. But the line still held: red ink threading its way across borders and customs, curling through cities, circling names. A path toward Korea.
Her nail traced it slow, stopping at Busan. A small circle, marked twice. She tapped it. Once. Again. Then folded the map back with care, each edge pressed down as if she were sealing a thought she couldn’t afford to lose.
The cigarette had burned low, ash dangling fragile at the end. She stood, room folding closer around her. Not smaller. Just more present, more awake. The A/C wheezed, rattled, died with a final shudder. She didn’t look at it.
At the window, she slipped two fingers through the blinds, pulled them apart. Sodium light drowned the parking lot in its false orange glow. Nothing moved except the swarm of bugs around the lamp. Her truck crouched in the far corner, paint dulled, hood shadowed. It looked patient. Waiting. It knew this wasn’t the end. Only another checkpoint. Another launch point. A step toward digging up the version of herself she’d buried.
She smoked the cigarette down to the filter, ground it out in the cracked glass ashtray beside the lamp. Then stretched, long and slow, until her spine gave a small pop. Rolled her shoulders once. Tension snapped loose. Proof the engine was still running. Proof she hadn’t rusted out yet.
There was still work ahead. Still miles to burn. Still names that needed remembering. Or forgetting.
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The sky was still the color of a healing bruise when she stepped out of Room 11. That thin, breath-held hour before sunrise stretched across the motel, quiet and suspended, like the world wasn’t sure whether to wake up or go back to sleep. The air hung low and heavy, not cold anymore but still clinging to the memory of it, brushing at her ankles as she walked. Her boots met the gravel with a soft, steady crunch, her stride slow but sure. The door clicked shut behind her with the soft finality of a decision already made. She didn’t look back. She never did.
Whatever lingered inside that room—the musty reek of mildew, the peeling wallpaper, the silence pressed into the floor like dust—could stay there. The ghosts were welcome to it.
The lot was empty now, stripped of last night’s noise and movement. No music. No laughter. No arguing strangers trying to forget whatever they’d dragged in with them. Just the hum of a flickering security light and the shadows it cast, long and tired and mostly ignored. Her truck waited where she had left it, the same as it always did. Black. Battered. Dust-laced. It didn’t look fast or dangerous, only patient. Like it had seen everything and didn’t need to brag about any of it.
She opened the door. The hinges gave a soft groan. The duffel landed in the passenger seat with a solid weight, heavier now, heavier in more ways than one. Not just steel and currency, but decisions. Commitments. Endings. She sat behind the wheel and rested her hand on the key but didn’t turn it right away. Instead she looked through the windshield, past the sagging plastic palms and sun-warped signage, out toward the open road.
Somewhere along the way, something had shifted. She didn’t know the exact moment, but it was there in her blood, in her spine. The running was over. Whatever came next would not be a retreat. She wasn’t trying to disappear anymore. She was going back.
She turned the key.
The truck woke up with a low growl, not eager but ready. The kind of engine that didn’t expect praise, only purpose. She eased out of the lot without checking the mirror, letting the motel recede into the rearview like everything else she had buried. It would stay there, just another mile behind her.
The road to the airport unfolded like it always did in these parts, quiet highways full of tired signage and forgotten ambition. Diners with names like “Lisa’s Last Stop” and “Grill & Chill 24/7,” their neon flickering like it was fighting sleep. Empty parking lots. Billboards that promised injury settlements, eternal salvation, and the best damn pecan pie on Highway 9. Churches with broken steeples. Loan offices with barred windows. The skeleton of American promise, sun-bleached and hollowed out.
She didn’t turn on the radio. Didn’t crack the window. Her coffee sat untouched in the console, more for the heat in her hand than anything else. She drove with both hands on the wheel, letting her thoughts drift slow and aimless, looping back through the same questions and never settling on answers.
The sun rose behind her, crawling up the horizon like something tired of hiding. It lit the road in pale gold and chased her shadow out ahead of her, long and crooked. The towns she passed blurred together. Same gas stations. Same parking lots. Same dust settling on sun-baked signs. Nothing reached her. Nothing asked to.
By the time she pulled into the airport lot, the sky had turned that washed-out shade of blue that promised heat and little else. She parked in long-term, rows from anyone else. Killed the engine under a flickering lamppost that gave one last buzz before giving out. She sat a moment, hands still on the wheel, feeling the last bit of quiet settle around her. Then she slung the duffel over her shoulder and got out.
It hit her hip like a reminder. Cash. Steel. Papers. Lives. She didn’t walk fast, but she didn’t stall either. Just moved forward like time didn’t own her anymore.
The terminal ahead was all glass and stale light, catching the morning sky in fractured reflections. She stepped through the automatic doors and into the kind of cold that didn’t come from weather but from design. Manufactured. Artificial. Meant to keep people sharp and orderly. It smelled like lemons, plastic, and every departure that had come before her.
She paused just inside. Not hesitation. Just calibration. Listening. Feeling the hum of the place. Gate calls. Wheels dragging. Overhead pages layered with chatter. The low murmur of a world built for leaving. For going but not staying.
She moved through it like someone who didn’t need instructions.
The check-in counter was manned by a thin kid barely old enough to rent a car. His name tag said TYLER. His lanyard was a mess of meme pins and frayed cords. The kind of kid who clocked in with earbuds still in and forgot to take them out. He didn’t notice her at first, not until she was standing right in front of him.
The duffel hit the floor beside her with a small, final sound. Her voice stayed low.
“One-way ticket to Gwangju. First available.”
Tyler blinked, fingers stuttering a second before tapping at the keyboard. Gwangju wasn’t common. It made him look up again, a little more carefully this time. She said nothing else. Just waited.
She slid the passport across the counter. Emma Ji-woo. The photo was polished, airbrushed just enough to pass scrutiny. But the eyes were hers, still and unblinking, focused. Tyler studied the picture, then studied her. He didn’t ask questions. Maybe didn’t know how. Or maybe something in her expression told him not to.
She paid in cash. Clean bills. Neat stack. Pulled from the vault without hesitation, counted out like it was nothing. Like it hadn’t come with a history. The paper smelled faintly of oil and time, like everything important always did. Tyler took the money, his fingers slowing just a bit as he handled it, as if part of him was trying to memorize what wrong felt like.
He printed her ticket, hands fidgety now, and slid it across the counter like he was giving her something that might explode.
“Gate thirty-four,” he said. “You’ll connect through Incheon.”
She took the boarding pass without a word. She didn’t say thank you. She turned and walked toward security, leaving Tyler staring after her.
She didn’t ask about upgrades or snacks. She didn’t care what came in the seatback pocket or what counted as a meal at thirty-seven thousand feet. No interest in a foil-wrapped cookie or a lukewarm bottle of water labeled “premium.” She wasn’t here for comfort. She was here to move forward. To put sky between her and the things behind her. She wanted distance. Altitude. The kind of cold, wordless detachment that only the stratosphere could offer.
The security line wound like a slow fuse: plastic bins clattering, belts slipping through metal loops, the voices of TSA agents clipped and bored. She stepped through it like she’d done it a hundred times. Because she had. Her coat was dark wool, the sort you could wear to a funeral or a boardroom without drawing questions. The stitching was heavier than it looked, reinforced. Useful. Her boots cleared the scanners. The blade inside was legal by a fraction of an inch, packed with the precision of someone who had measured the limits. Her bag was clean where it counted. Nothing that would raise alarms. Just the weight of something lived-in and quiet.
They scanned her passport and boarding pass without a second glance. The photo matched. Emma Ji-woo. Hair slightly darker in the picture, lips touched with a professional half-smile. Believable. The machines beeped politely. No flags. No questions. Just a nod and a wave.
She didn’t breathe easier. She didn’t need to.
At the gate, the crowd had already started to gather. People sprawled in chairs, their energy muted by early hours and too many miles. Some stared at their phones. Some picked at overpriced muffins. One kid cried softly into a sweatshirt, and nobody looked up. It was the kind of communal fatigue that airports did best: a shared sense of waiting without purpose.
She took her place in line, middle of the pack. Not the first. Never the last. Just another body headed somewhere else.
When they called Group Two, she moved.
Her seat was by the window. It always was. The duffel slid under the seat in front of her with practiced ease, fitting like it had done this before. She let her fingers rest on it briefly, grounding herself in the weight of what it held: names, tools, contingencies. The pieces of a life carefully folded down to fit inside a single bag.
She leaned into the wall of the plane, cool against her shoulder, and looked out. Morning had arrived without conviction. The sky was a washed-out gray, the kind of color that came before heat, before light. Airport machinery drifted past—fuel trucks, baggage carts, people in reflective vests who looked like they hadn’t slept. The wing of the plane cut across her view, still and patient, waiting to rise. Sunlight slid over it in dull streaks, catching on the rivets and edges, turning everything gold and indifferent.
The overhead speaker crackled something about boarding zones and safety demonstrations, but none of it landed. Not for her. The sound washed past her ears without shape, the way wind moves through trees: present, but meaningless. Someone two rows up laughed too loudly. A baby fussed. Coffee burned its way through the air vents, mixing with the stale plastic scent of recycled cabin air.
She didn’t move. Didn’t fidget. Her hands were folded in her lap, posture calm, almost meditative. But inside, the tight coil sat waiting. It wasn’t fear. It wasn’t nerves. Just pressure. A quiet readiness built from too many miles and not enough peace.
The engines rumbled to life beneath her feet. The metal shell around her vibrated in response, like the plane was stretching its limbs after too long on the ground. It rolled slowly toward the runway, wheels clunking over seams in the concrete. She didn’t grip the armrest. Didn’t reach for anything. Just watched.
Takeoff wasn’t elegant. It was mechanical force dressed up in aerodynamics. The thrust came all at once, raw, loud, unapologetic. The kind of motion that didn’t ask permission. Her body pressed back into the seat, gravity pulling at her chest as the ground fell away. For one long breath, the Earth clung to her like it didn’t want to let go. And then it did.
The airport dropped out of view, buildings and roads folding in on themselves, reduced to the flat language of maps and memory. Gas stations, parking lots, little rectangles of human effort. All of it faded under a rising haze, distant and forgettable.
Her breath touched the glass for a moment. A soft cloud, gone just as quickly. The sky beyond was endless and blue in that high, cold way. Not warm. Not kind. But honest. It didn’t care who she was. It didn’t care where she was going. It just was. Vast. Empty. Ready.
She stared out into it, not searching, not thinking. Just remembering how it felt to be small again. Small enough to disappear, but sharp enough not to.
Her hand moved without looking, brushing the inside pocket of her coat. Cotton. Folded. A handkerchief she didn’t remember packing. She pulled it out, fingers slow and careful. The cloth was clean. White. Pressed. The kind of thing you carried when you didn’t know if you’d cry, or bleed, or both.
From the same pocket came the needle. Fine steel. Polished. Paired with a single loop of red thread, already knotted. She didn’t check it. She didn’t need to.
She began to sew.
Her hands worked in small, deliberate motions, the thread pulling through the fabric with barely a sound. She didn’t glance down. Her fingers remembered the rhythm. The name formed, one letter at a time. T. A. E. H. Y. U. N. G. Each stroke was precise. Each pull tight. No wasted movement.
She didn’t say his name. Didn’t even let her lips shape it. But it was there. In the cloth. In the blood-colored thread. In the silence between stitches.
When the name was finished, she tied it off with a flick of her wrist. Trimmed the excess. Folded the cloth again. Pressed it back into her pocket. Over her heart.
The plane had leveled out. Cruising now. The clouds below looked like ash. The ocean below that: cold, dark, silent. Somewhere beyond it, past all this emptiness, was Korea. And the man from Gwangju.
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The plane hit the runway. A hard, ugly jolt that snapped her spine straight and rattled the tray table in front of her. The tires screamed against the tarmac, metal grinding in protest as the cabin vibrated with the kind of impact that made people forget how to breathe. Drinks sloshed. Seatbacks creaked. Somewhere up front, someone muttered a sharp curse under their breath. The overhead lights flickered once, barely a stutter, but she saw it. She always did.
Out the window, the city didn’t look like it was sleeping. It looked like it had never gone to bed in the first place. Darkness hung heavy, not clean or quiet, but thick, like smoke, like old breath trapped in a closed room. The kind of dark that didn’t just hide things, it held them. The runway lights sliced through it in stark, clinical lines. Past them, the faint blur of Gwangju shimmered in neon and haze: blues and reds pulsing like slow heartbeats, mirrored in wet pavement that hadn’t dried and maybe never would. The glass reflected back just enough of her face to remind her she was still here.
As she stepped into the gangway, the air shifted. Dense. Damp. Immediate. It clung to her skin like something familiar, something half-forgotten but buried deep enough in the bones to recognize on contact. A mix of exhaust, concrete, late summer heat, and something sweeter, grilled food maybe, or just memory dressed up like scent. It hit her lungs like a slow exhale. She didn’t rush. Just walked forward, each step steady, her bag slung across her shoulder in that way that made it clear she didn’t need help and wouldn’t ask for it. Her coat hung open now, too warm for the humidity but still part of the armor. She moved like someone who belonged in the space between strangers. Not local. Not lost. Just passing through with purpose.
And yet, something shifted the second she stepped off the plane and onto Korean soil. Nothing anyone could see, but she felt it: a small click, like a lock catching in place. A posture change that didn’t show in her spine but settled deeper, in muscle memory and instinct. The mask slid on without effort. Not Emma Ji-woo anymore, not exactly. Not Candy, not the others. Just the version of herself this place required. Whatever her name was, she carried it like a blade in her boot, quiet, hidden, ready.
Inside, the airport moved like it had been designed for silence. No chaos. No rush. Just clean lines and softened footsteps echoing off polished tile. People didn’t shout. They didn’t loiter. They moved with the kind of practiced grace that didn’t need announcements. The lights overhead were low and cool, and even the seating looked like it had been designed to be ignored.
Customs passed without friction. The officer barely glanced up, flicked through her documents like he was reading grocery lists. Her forged passport, Emma Ji-woo, South Korean citizen returning from years abroad, was fresh, well-aged in the right places. The photo had the right kind of editing: smooth enough to pass facial scan, textured enough to seem human. She handed it over with both hands, bowed just enough to make it believable, smiled with restraint. Polite. Non-threatening.
“감사합니다,” she said, her voice low and shaped just right.
The stamp fell with a dull, final thud. No questions. No extra eyes. Just a nod, a motion, and then the gates opened.
Outside, the night waited.
The city air hit harder, warmer, wetter. The kind of humidity that didn’t just touch you, it soaked in. Rain had fallen not long before; she could feel it in the way the concrete gave off heat like breath. The streetlights bounced off slick asphalt, halos forming in puddles that mirrored blinking shop signs and broken reflections of moving traffic. Scooters buzzed past, weaving between slow cars. The buzz of neon hummed in the wires overhead like a living thing. There wasn’t much noise, but everything felt alive. Breathing.
She walked toward the taxi stand without checking her phone, without checking directions. She already knew where she was going. Her bag pulled at her shoulder, not in protest, just in reminder. Inside, names and pasts and the pieces of herself that weren’t for daylight. But she didn’t adjust it. Didn’t even shift her stance.
The cab she picked wasn’t the newest. The bumper was scuffed, one headlight had the faint film of age, and the license plate was slightly crooked. But it was real. Lived-in. The driver leaned against the hood, half-lit by the overhead bulb, cigarette cupped loosely in two fingers. Middle-aged, maybe older. His shirt wrinkled, his gaze unreadable.
She smiled before she spoke. Soft, disarming, the kind of smile that made people assume you didn’t bite.
“안녕하세요,” she said. “Seongmin Heritage Hotel, please. Near Sajik Park? The one with the koi in the lobby?”
The man blinked at her. A flicker of recognition, more for her fluency than her face. But he nodded like it didn’t matter.
“Know it,” he said, voice rasped from smoke or years or both. “That’s a nice place.”
She slid into the back seat, her bag tucked in beside her, one hand resting on its handle.
As they pulled into the street, he glanced at her in the mirror. “Vacation?”
She let out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. “Sort of,” she said, breezy, warm enough to sell. “I’m meeting someone.”
That made him smile, just a little. “Boyfriend?”
She tilted her head, just enough to suggest a blush. “Not exactly. I’ve known him for a long time.”
“And you’ve never met?” he said, eyes narrowing with casual disbelief. “Do you trust him?”
She leaned forward a little, voice softer, like she was sharing something real. “I guess I’m old-fashioned. I still believe in people.”
The driver chuckled, tapping ash out the window. “Well. Hope he’s worth the wait.”
She smiled again, turning her eyes back to the window. “Me too.”
Outside, the city slid past in glints and shadows. Signs blinked red and blue against walls slick with water. A lone man smoked beneath a streetlight. A group of teenagers laughed near a convenience store, their voices echoing sharp and bright. And above it all, Gwangju pulsed. Alive. Waiting.
Her body language was relaxed, open, even friendly, but not too friendly. Her smile landed right where it needed to: warm enough to seem genuine, distant enough to keep the woman behind the desk from asking questions she didn’t want to answer. And yet, beneath it all, behind her eyes, there was something else. Something sharp. Alert. A presence just beneath the surface, watching everything, holding still like a wire pulled tight.
The cab ride had taken about twenty minutes, maybe less. She couldn’t really tell. In that strange pocket of time, after midnight but before dawn, everything stretched or collapsed depending on how close you were watching. Cities didn’t sleep in those hours; they just drifted, like the tide. The cab driver barely spoke, his cigarette glowing faint in the corner of her vision, the smoke trailing out the half-open window into the warm, wet air. He drove like a man who’d forgotten how to be surprised by anything. She appreciated that. It made things easier.
Out the window, Gwangju blurred past in bands of neon and shadow, light warped by the sheen of recent rain. The storefronts were lit like stages no one was acting on anymore: 7-Elevens glowing sterile and perfect, their shelves full of snacks and instant noodles and bottled tea that no one needed but still bought. People moved through them slowly, hunched and quiet, looking like they were halfway between sleep and survival. The rest of the city felt paused, noodle shops with stools turned upside-down, karaoke bars locked behind metal grates, all of it blinking half-heartedly like no one had told the power to shut off yet. One sign above a barbecue place kept flickering between “삼겹살 24시” and total darkness, as if it couldn’t decide whether to keep going or give up.
They passed a hanbok rental place with mannequins frozen in the windows, draped in silk and thread, caught mid-movement in some forgotten celebration. The lights inside were faint, almost apologetic. The kind of glow you could miss if you weren’t looking directly at it. And everything outside, every puddle, every wall, every parked car, reflected that layered light. Hangul shimmered across wet streets like it was painted there in real time. Chicken. Tarot. Facials. Cheap drinks. Lost hopes. It was all advertised the same way, with bold fonts and desperate color.
She leaned her head against the cool glass of the cab window and let the city slide past her. She wasn’t sightseeing. She wasn’t curious. She was memorizing. Every corner. Every alley. Every building with a fire escape or a side entrance or a window that stayed cracked. Not just as someone taking in a new place, but as someone planning how to move through it. Where to hide. Where to hunt. Where to vanish.
She wasn’t here for a reunion. That was the lie she wore like cologne, pleasant, easy, expected. She was here to dig. To drag someone’s name back out of the dirt and make it mean something again. If this city had tried to forget him, she’d remind it. She’d burn the name into glass and pavement if she had to. She hadn’t come this far to let memory do the burying.
When the cab finally slowed in front of the Seongmin Heritage Hotel, she already knew the building before it came into full view. She’d studied it, grainy photos, tourist reviews, street-view walkthroughs. But even with all that preparation, it was still something to see in person. Polished, curated, old-world elegance repackaged as modern luxury. White stone columns stood like they were holding up more than a roof, like they were trying to convince the street this place mattered. Carved details along the trim caught the warm spill of interior lighting. The brass door handles gleamed like they’d never been touched by real weather. Above the entry, a stained-glass panel glowed amber and deep red, a honeyed light pouring over the curb like something sacred had just cracked open.
And just inside, behind a clean pane of tall glass, the koi pond gleamed. Black water, smooth and quiet, broken only by the slow turning of gold and orange fins. The fish moved in lazy arcs, each shift like a breath drawn too deep to be seen. Like they didn’t care who watched.
The driver parked and turned to look at her. His voice was low, soft, like he knew not to break whatever moment she was in.
“This it?”
She nodded. “Yeah. Thanks.”
He watched her for a second too long, not in a threatening way, just thoughtful. Like he’d seen this before. Not her, maybe. But people like her. People with a story that couldn’t be told in the back of a cab. People walking toward something only they understood.
“Well,” he said after a pause, “good luck with your meeting.”
She smiled faintly, just enough to be polite. “I think it’ll be one to remember.”
She handed him a bill folded clean once. Double what the meter read. He glanced at it, then back at her, and nodded without another word.
She stepped out of the cab. The air hit her like it meant to. Heavy. Humid. Full of noise that hadn’t been made yet.
She shouldered her bag without shifting her weight. Moved toward the hotel doors like she was stepping into something familiar. And as the cab pulled away, the night closed back in behind her like it hadn’t noticed she’d arrived at all.
Inside, the hotel smelled like money pretending to be modest. Like expensive wood polish layered over old stone and cold air recycled too many times. The lighting was just dim enough to flatter the furniture but still show off the marble floors, clean, symmetrical, sharp where it counted. Every tile lined up like it had been laid by someone who understood symmetry wasn’t just about beauty. It was about control.
To her left, the koi pond curved around the front desk like a moat. Its surface was glassy and still, the fish drifting in slow spirals. They looked unreal in the low light, too bright, too calm, like someone had animated them just for her arrival. A tiny pump kept the water moving just enough to keep it from falling asleep, but the sound was so soft it might’ve been imagined. It wasn’t tranquil. It was measured. Controlled. Like everything else in this place.
She walked toward the desk like she’d done it a dozen times in other cities under other names. Calm, confident, casually forgettable. The kind of guest who knew how to tip well and never asked for room upgrades.
The woman behind the desk looked young but practiced. Hair styled into a sharp, no-nonsense bob. Uniform crisp. Movements efficient. Her name tag said Juha, though Y/N didn’t really need to read it. She’d already pegged her: precise, polite, not interested in small talk. Just enough kindness to pass for warmth. The kind of employee who wouldn’t remember a single detail about you by the end of her shift, and wouldn’t question why she didn’t.
Y/N offered her a smile. The good one. Just the right amount of curve. Something safe. Something easy to forget.
Y/N switched to Korean mid-step, her tone effortless, almost casual. “예약했어요. 캔디 랄스턴으로요.” Her accent was textbook Seoul.
The woman behind the desk didn’t blink. “환영합니다, 랄스턴 씨. 3박이시죠?”
Y/N nodded, and with a soft switch in rhythm, she slipped back into English. Her voice lifted just slightly, pleasant and open, with that eager brightness tourists wore like perfume. “First time in Korea. I’m really excited.”
The receptionist smiled as if on cue. Not warm, exactly. Rehearsed, but pleasant. She slid a room key forward, tucked inside a white sleeve embossed with the hotel’s gold crest. “Room 714. Elevator’s just to your right.”
Y/N offered a small bow, murmured her thanks again, and turned away. Her boots made no squeal against the floor, only that quiet, deliberate click that echoed soft and sharp like footsteps in a gallery. The kind of sound that didn’t try to be heard but couldn’t help leaving an impression.
The elevator was already waiting, doors wide open like it knew she was coming. She stepped inside and caught her reflection in the mirrored walls: three angles, three versions of herself looking back. Her posture was perfect, relaxed, composed. Her clothes, neutral tones and well-fitted, spoke of efficiency, not attention. Her makeup was subtle, just enough color to say effort had been made, not enough to say she cared about being seen.
She looked like someone organized. Someone harmless.
But the reflection in the center mirror told the truth. It was in the way her eyes held steady, unflinching, like they didn’t expect kindness anymore. Like they’d already learned what questions were traps, which silences meant danger, and how to vanish while still in plain sight. There was a stillness in her face, but not the kind that came from calm. This was stillness earned, built from rehearsals, from closing hotel doors behind you and counting exits before you even set your bag down.
The elevator rose, slow and steady. She shifted her canvas bag higher on her shoulder. Not because it hurt, she didn’t let things hurt, but because it grounded her. Inside was everything that counted: names, paper trails, backup plans. There was no wasted weight.
When the elevator doors slid open on the seventh floor, she was already halfway into the hallway.
It was quiet. Carpeted in something dull that might once have been green, the kind of floor that muted footsteps into suggestions. The wallpaper, floral and faded, curled at the corners where humidity had worked its way in over the years. The light overhead buzzed, faint and constant, like the building was humming to itself out of habit. A soft, tired sound.
Room 714 was near the end, just past a bend in the hallway where the emergency map was pinned slightly crooked on the wall. She paused in front of the door, keycard in hand.
And then she just stood there. Not long. Just long enough to listen.
Not for sound. For pressure. For presence. You didn’t survive by hearing footsteps, you survived by feeling when a room wasn’t empty. The temperature. The stillness. The quality of silence. She tilted her head slightly. Felt the way the air held its breath.
Nothing.
She slid the keycard through the reader. The lock beeped, followed by that soft, mechanical click. Small, almost polite. She pushed the door open with her shoulder and stepped inside without looking behind her. The door sealed shut behind her with the kind of sound that didn’t echo. It just ended.
She locked it: deadbolt first, then the chain. Her hands moved in a rhythm they’d known for years. One smooth motion, no hesitation. She wasn’t checking, she was securing. There was a difference.
The canvas bag landed on the bed with a deep, even thud. Not loud, just final, like it had arrived with intent. She didn’t stop to look around. Didn’t bother checking the view. The room wasn’t the point.
She walked to the desk in the corner and turned on the lamp. Warm light spilled across the pale wood, catching on the edges of the hotel stationery and the small, useless pen that had been placed there with the usual pretend care. The kind of detail that suggested someone had thought about your comfort, even if they hadn’t.
She sat down. The chair creaked faintly but held. Her body didn’t sag. She didn’t relax. She just settled into it.
She pulled the pad of paper toward her and picked up the pen. It was smooth, plastic, light, nothing special. It didn’t matter. She clicked it once and started writing in small, deliberate strokes.
Things to Do Tomorrow:
-Buy a light pink blouse. Something that moves. Something soft.
-Buy makeup
-Rehearse the story. Again.
-Smile until it hurts.
Her pen hovered above the last line for a beat. Then she added one more, slower this time:
-Be perfect.
She circled it. Once. Then again. Firm. Not as a reminder. As a rule.
She put the pen down beside the pad and exhaled. Not dramatically. Not with relief. Just enough to release the breath she’d been holding since the door clicked shut.
She stood.
The bathroom was exactly what she expected: white tile, cool light, no character. Clean without warmth. The mirror above the sink was wide and too tall, forcing her to step closer if she wanted to see all of herself at once. She didn’t bother.
The light buzzed overhead, sterile and flat, the kind of glow that made everything look a little too real.
She touched her fingertips to the edge of the counter. Steady.
She wasn’t tired. Not yet. What she was came after tired, and it had no name.
She reached out and turned the faucet, letting the water run. Cold at first, bright and clean, loud as it hit the porcelain. But beneath the noise, she listened. Not to the water itself, but to the way it moved through the pipes. The way it echoed off tile. The way it filled the silence with something that wasn’t her. It sounded pure, but she knew better. It had traveled through metal older than the building, scraped past rust and time, ghosts caught in the bends. Still, it came out confident. Unbothered. Like it hadn’t carried anything with it.
She didn’t hurry. Her fingers moved slowly to the hem of her shirt, tugged it over her head, and let it fall to the floor. Then the rest, belt, pants, underthings, peeled away without effort. She’d done this ritual a thousand times before. And yet tonight, her hands felt different. Not clumsy. Not unsure. Just heavy, like they remembered more than she wanted them to. Her clothes ended up in a soft heap at her feet. By then, the mirror had already fogged over.
She stood still for a moment. Not posed, not inspecting. Just there. Her arms hung loose at her sides, her toes sinking slightly into the tile. The steam softened everything: her outline, her skin, even the air. The reflection staring back at her was dulled at the edges, her features blurred by heat and breath. She could still see her shape. Her shoulders narrow but set, arms lined with the first signs of strength again. Her ribs still showed when she inhaled too deeply, but her thighs had started to look solid again. Her body was still catching up to the rest of her. Still figuring out how to be whole after Two Pines tried to carve her hollow. But she was getting there. Slowly. She could see it.
She tilted her head and scanned herself like she was reading a story she knew by heart. The scars stood out like chapters. The crescent just below her ribs where a blade had barely missed something vital. A paler burn at her hip, nearly invisible now, but still a map of pain. The line along her collarbone, clean and deliberate. Surgical. The scar on her forehead had been there the longest. She didn’t even notice it anymore.
She nodded once, almost imperceptibly. A quiet agreement between her and the woman behind the fog.
Then she stepped into the shower.
The water hit her like a warning. Scalding. Immediate. It slammed into her shoulders and rolled down her back, ruthless in its heat. But she didn’t flinch. She leaned into it. Let it rake across her spine, sting her arms, burn her thighs. The pain was real. Tangible. Honest in a way few things were. It didn’t lie, didn’t soften, didn’t ask questions. It just landed, over and over again, washing everything else into silence.
She closed her eyes, tilted her head forward, and let her forehead rest against the cool tile wall. It grounded her. Solid. Cold. Unmoving. She breathed. Not deeply. Just enough. Enough to be here.
Then it came.
Not a memory. Not an image she could blink away. It was sharper than that. It crashed through her like glass, fast, clean, final. No prelude. No grace.
A sonogram.
Not imagined. Not abstract. Burned into her mind with brutal clarity. Grainy black-and-white. A crescent of light, unmistakable. And there in the center, her. The child. Seven months. Spine curled tight. Fists pulled in. Fragile, yes, but undeniably alive.
Not a possibility. A fact.
The photo was still folded in the lining of her coat. Tucked behind Kevlar, buried between seams, carried across borders and terminals and checkpoints. It was creased so deeply now it had forgotten how to lie flat. She had kept it close because she couldn’t not. Because some part of her still believed the paper would remember the shape even if she forgot the name.
She used to whisper to her belly in motel rooms that reeked of other people’s stories. Whisper names in the dark. Some strong. Some gentle. Some stolen from myths. Some from books she hadn’t finished. She spoke them aloud like spells. Names in Korean. In English. Names that meant light. Names that meant defiance.
Now? Now she couldn’t remember a single goddamn one.
Not one.
The realization hit without warning. Her knees gave out, buckled like they had been kicked. She dropped too fast to catch herself, hands sliding helplessly down the wall. Her skin hit the shower floor hard, the ceramic slick and unforgiving. Her breath didn’t come. Her chest just stalled.
The water kept pounding down, relentless and hot, hammering her back, her scalp, her shoulders.
She folded in tight. Arms clamped around her stomach. Head bent. Forehead pressed hard to her knees. The heat had scalded her skin pink, but it was nothing compared to what was burning underneath. Her whole body trembled, not from cold but from something older, deeper, more bone-deep than fear. Her jaw locked so tight her teeth throbbed. Fingernails dug into her upper arms, leaving pale marks that flushed angry and red as the shower thundered down over her back. Her shoulders jolted with every breath. Her chest couldn’t seem to find a rhythm. Her mouth opened once, like maybe a sound would come out. It didn’t. Just steam and a shattered breath that barely made it past her lips.
She cried, but not the way people cry in movies. No cinematic sobs. No beautiful devastation. This was messier. Raw. She cried like it surprised her. Like her body had remembered something her mind wasn’t ready to revisit. It wasn’t gentle or cathartic. It was violent. Uncontrolled. The kind of grief that had waited in the walls of her bones, that had made a home beneath her ribs, that had lived inside her blood quietly for years and now refused to be quiet anymore.
It wasn’t just about the child, though it started there. She cried for the girl she never got to meet. For the weight of her. The impossible, invisible pull of a presence that had once lived beneath her skin and kicked in the dark and responded to her voice like it meant something. She cried for the names whispered into motel ceilings. For every plan made in secret. For the way she used to sleep with one hand on her belly and the other over the gun under her pillow, believing—naively, stupidly—that she could keep both safe.
She cried for herself too. Not the woman she was now, but the one she used to be. The one who thought she could walk two roads at once. Who thought she could live between love and violence and come out clean. That she could be sharp and soft. That she could kill for a living and still build a life worth protecting.
She had buried that woman. Or thought she had. But grief has a way of preserving what pain cannot quite dissolve. The version of herself she thought was long gone hadn’t decayed. It had hardened. It had turned into something fossilized under all the anger and training and years. Not gone. Just waiting.
And under the grief, something else had been building. Coiled low in her belly. Climbing her spine. Tightening around her throat.
The fury.
It hit hot and sudden. Like a flare lit inside her chest. Fast. Blinding. Unforgiving. Her muscles locked. Her fists curled tight. Her breath caught in the cage of her ribs. She wanted to wreck something. Rip the cabinet off the wall. Shatter the mirror with her elbow. Drag her knuckles down the glass until they split. She wanted to leave blood on porcelain. On tile. On her own hands.
She wanted to find him. Taehyung Kim. And make him understand what he had done. Not by telling him. By making him feel it. Every inch of it. Every second. She wanted to look him in the eyes as it hit him. As the weight of what he stole crushed him under its full, ugly truth.
Her knuckles went white. Her muscles trembled with the force of restraint. But she didn’t scream. Not because she couldn’t. Because she wouldn’t. That kind of rage needed to be saved. Stored. Honed.
It would have its moment. Just not here.
The shower kept running, loud and steady, until she moved. Just a breath. Just a twitch of her fingers. Then she reached up and turned the water off.
Silence crashed down like a wave. Thick. Dense. The kind that fills every crack in a room. The kind that listens back. Steam drifted in long, slow ribbons, curling around her shoulders like it wasn’t ready to leave either.
She blinked once. Her breathing evened out. Slower. Cooler. Her chest still ached, but the fire was banked now, drawn in close and dangerous. Not gone. Just shaped.
She stood.
Water clung to her skin. Her hair dripped in long strands down her back. Her face was flushed, eyes glassy but sharp now, clear in a way that felt surgical. She moved with precision, drying off in steady, methodical swipes, every motion practiced and spare. The towel trembled in her hands, but she kept her grip. Dressed quickly. Quietly. No wasted motion. Just armor going back on.
The grief didn’t vanish. She packed it back down. Tucked it into the parts of herself she didn’t let anyone see. But the rage—she left that right where it was. Let it sit beneath her skin. Close to the surface.
Because Taehyung Kim didn’t know what he had taken from her, but he would.
She wasn’t coming for answers.
She was coming for the truth.
And he would give it to her.
Because there would be no one left to stop her.
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The city didn’t perform. Gwangju just was. It didn’t blaze with ambition like Seoul or stretch itself into glitz the way Busan tried to. It moved slow, breathed heavier. Honest, unbothered, like an old man in his undershirt posted up on a plastic chair, feet bare, sweating into the sidewalk, waving off mosquitoes with a rolled-up newspaper. There was a stillness here that didn’t feel staged. It felt earned. Like time didn’t hurry. Like it hadn’t for a while. Even the heat didn’t rush. It pressed down in thick, lazy folds, dragging everything—footsteps, voices, the color out of the buildings—into something close to sleep.
The streets moved in rhythm with it: fans turning slowly in dim back rooms, the hum of overhead wires swaying with the weight of too many summers, the drag of slippers across concrete. Shops leaned on each other like they were tired of standing alone. Paint peeled in curls off old storefronts. Rust bloomed at the hinges of delivery carts and folding chairs. Hand-painted signs creaked as they shifted in the breeze, their edges warped like paper left out in the rain.
It was the kind of afternoon where nothing tried too hard. The air was a patchwork of smells: hot oil, boiled radish, exhaust, old metal, the damp tang of stone that’s never had a chance to dry. Vendors fanned themselves with bent menus, arguing halfheartedly with ajummas who bargained with the precision of habit. A mop of scooters rolled through puddles left by melted ice or a spilled soup bowl, weaving through crates and feet like they knew every shortcut before it was built. The city didn’t sleep. But it didn’t really wake up, either. It just existed. Like a held breath.
And tucked into all of it, halfway hidden between a shuttered bookstore and a florist with wilting carnations, was the door. If you could call it that. More a suggestion than an entrance. A curtain, once blue and now more of a stained gray, hung from a crooked rod that looked hammered into place out of stubbornness rather than skill. It shifted when the wind pushed at it, not with drama but with the quiet of something breathing. The name painted across the fabric had long since faded: 김밥바. The brushstrokes barely held together, as if the person who wrote them hoped the world would forget.
She didn’t go straight in.
Y/N stood across from it, phone in hand, thumb flicking absently at nothing. Her eyes weren’t on the screen. They were on the building. On the way the curtain moved. On the way the shadows behind it didn’t feel empty. A pigeon flapped once but didn’t fly. A scooter buzzed past, and an ajumma barked something sharp about cabbage. The usual sounds. The usual rhythm.
Still, she waited a beat longer. She watched how the light caught the doorway. She noticed how the air felt different here. Denser.
Then she stepped forward and slipped behind the curtain like she belonged.
And everything changed.
The moment it fell behind her, the city vanished. The noise didn’t fade. It ceased. Like someone hit pause on the outside world. Inside was quiet in a way only old places know how to be. Not just soundless. Still. The kind of stillness that settles in stone. The kind that remembers things. The air was cooler, not because of any fan or vent, but because it had never left. It clung to the walls, the wood, the floor. Everything felt touched by time.
The scent hit next. Not artificial or sanitized. Just real. A mix of rice, vinegar, seaweed, and broth so old it had soaked into the wood grain. Salt, smoke, a whisper of garlic. It was the kind of smell you carried home with you, in your clothes, your hair, your bones.
Her eyes adjusted fast.
The space was barely larger than a closet. Three stools lined a counter. One crooked. One stained. One seemingly untouched. The varnish had long worn off the wood, dulled by elbows and sweat and stories told over soup. A ceiling fan turned overhead, slow and uneven, ticking with every revolution like it was remembering something too late. A single fly moved in lazy circles beneath it.
Nobody else was here.
No music. No kitchen noise. Just a single plate on the counter. Empty except for one streak of red sauce. Chopsticks placed beside it with care. Not abandoned. Just waiting.
She walked in like she’d been here before. Like this was a memory, not a discovery. Her posture was casual. Her camera hung from her neck like a travel blog prop, the kind of thing that made her look like the type of woman who’d find “hidden gems” and write about the soul of a place as if she’d invented the concept. But none of that touched her eyes. They were focused. Clear. Watching.
And then he appeared. Quietly, without fuss, like he’d always been there and the world had only just remembered to look. The steam rolled out behind him, curling around his shoulders like it had followed him from some low, back kitchen heat that never fully cooled. He was tall, not imposing, but solid in the way that came from doing hard things for a long time. His build was lean, a little bowed at the shoulders, as if time and gravity had done their work. His skin had the baked-in tone of someone who’d spent years near open flame, his forearms marked by thin pale scars that spoke of burns, not battles. The white chef’s jacket he wore was buttoned but stained, spattered with dark brown that might have been soy sauce or something else. It was hard to tell, and maybe it wasn’t supposed to be clear.
His face didn’t offer much. It wasn’t unreadable in the cold, calculated way of spies or killers. It just didn’t feel the need to explain itself. High cheekbones softened the shape of his long face, and his eyes, dark and narrow, carried the quiet stillness of someone who watched more than he spoke. His hair was thick, slightly tousled, mostly black but peppered with gray at the temples. He was handsome, but the kind of handsome that didn’t advertise. He managed to exist right in the middle ground. Someone you’d forget until you saw them again and couldn’t stop wondering why.
Y/N kept her expression neutral as he stepped fully into view. Her body didn’t flinch. Her gaze didn’t drift. She looked at him plainly, openly, like she had no reason not to. But this was him. The man she’d crossed an ocean for. The one who had answers locked behind his teeth.
He saw her, and the smile came fast. Too fast. It stretched across his face like a reflex he hadn’t bothered updating in years. Broad, eager, practiced. The kind of smile that had been used too many times on too many strangers. The kind that worked better when you didn’t look too closely. He wore it like a uniform: the smile of a man who knew how to sell comfort, how to charm tourists just enough to make them stay, just long enough to make them leave before asking the wrong question. There was no real warmth in it. But it was a good act.
“English?” he asked, cautious but cheerful, testing each syllable like he was stepping over a puddle he didn’t trust.
She gave a half-shrug, tipping her head slightly as her mouth pulled into something lopsided and pleasant. “Almost,” she said. “American.”
Something about that word flipped a switch in him. He lit up like he’d been waiting for it. “Ah! America! Yes, welcome, welcome!” He nodded several times, as if the excitement might wear off if he didn’t hammer it in. “My English, very good. Yes.”
“Perfect,” she said, breezy and bright, like a woman with nowhere to be and all the time in the world. She stepped farther inside, her fingers ghosting along the edge of the counter. She didn’t look at it, not really, but the gesture made it seem like she was appreciating the wood, soaking up the charm. It wasn’t for him. It was for the story.
The chef smiled wide when she stepped in, his English laced with effort but cheerful all the same. “Welcome, American,” he said with a chuckle. “I hope you like my shop.”
She dipped her head, just enough to be polite. “안녕하세요,” she said, soft and even, her pronunciation clean, too natural to be brand-new.
That got a reaction. He lit up like someone had pulled a coin from behind his ear. “오오오! 안녕하세요!” He leaned forward with the delight of a man genuinely impressed. “Very good, very good! You speak Korean?”
She let out a modest laugh, brushing a strand of hair behind her ear like the compliment embarrassed her a little. “Not really,” she said. “Just a few words I picked up yesterday.”
Her eyes moved over the room, taking in the shelves, the old wood, the dust that softened the corners of things. “Is it okay if I sit here?”
“Sit, sit!” he said, already wiping down the bar with a damp cloth in wide, sweeping strokes like he was preparing an altar. “Of course. You sit. What words you learn? Oh, wait one second.”
He turned toward the curtain behind him, barked something in Korean without missing a beat. The words tumbled fast and irritated.
“We have a customer, bring out some tea, quickly!”
A voice called back, lazy and muffled. “I’m watching my soap operas.”
The chef rolled his eyes, snapping, “Lazy bastard! Screw your soap opera! Hurry up!”
“The tea’s hot. Why don’t you serve it yourself for once?”
“Shut up! Get your ass out here!”
Then he turned back to her, placing both palms on the bar like nothing had happened, though a thin line of annoyance still showed around his eyes. His smile remained pleasant. “So,” he said, “what else do you know in Korean?”
She tapped her chin lightly, brow furrowed like she was digging through a mental list. “감사합니다,” she said after a second, letting the word unfold carefully but not too perfectly. Like she was still getting comfortable with it.
He nodded with approval, the kind of praise people give freely but mean all the same. “Very good,” he said. “You say it nicely.”
She leaned forward just a touch, elbows resting gently on the bar, camera bumping softly against the edge. “알겠어요?” she tried, the hesitation built in just enough to seem earnest.
He brightened. “You know that one! ‘I understand.’ Good, very good. You learn fast.”
She smiled back. “Only what people say to me first.”
Then she tilted her head and added another. “안녕히 가세요?”
His expression flickered for a split second. The kind of shift most people wouldn’t catch. He recovered quickly, correcting her with a wave of his hand. “No, no, no. Say again.”
She blinked once, feigning the kind of sheepish confusion that made it look like maybe she had messed it up after all. She tried again, a little slower this time. “안녕히 가세요?”
He clapped his hands once, sharp and loud in the stillness of the shop. His smile stretched wide, but the lines around it didn’t move. “You speak Korean,” he said, voice lighter than it had been, but also a little tighter.
She laughed softly, tilting her head again. It was the kind of laugh you’d hear from someone caught in a harmless exaggeration. “Now you’re just flattering me.”
But he didn’t laugh with her. “No,” he said simply. “Serious. Your pronunciation... very good. You say 안녕히 가세요 like we say 안녕히 가세요.”
The air between them settled. Not tense, but heavier. The kind of pause that had weight in it, even if you didn’t know why.
His voice came again, this time quieter, slower. “You can learn Korean very easy.”
She let her gaze drop for half a second, just enough to give it texture, then lifted it again with a careful smile. “No kidding,” she said, her voice just a little softer now. “But thank you. 진짜... 감사합니다.”
He didn’t respond right away. Just breathed in through his nose, steady and thoughtful. Then he adjusted his stance, the shift so subtle most people wouldn’t notice. But she did. She saw the way his shoulders reset, the tiny movements that told her he wasn’t just running a shop. He was watching something unfold.
He turned without another word and picked up a rice paddle. His voice floated back over his shoulder, even and calm. “Let me make something for you.”
She nodded, her smile still in place, but the tone that followed wasn’t quite the same. “Anything’s fine.”
The chef stayed where he was, hands now methodically working at the counter. A bowl of rice, steam still clinging faintly to the grains. A bamboo mat laid flat. A half-sliced cucumber. The blade beside it already glinting in the overhead light.
“You like kimbap?” he asked, like it was just polite conversation.
“I love it,” she said, light and breezy.
She let the sentence hang just long enough to sound casual, like maybe this was a regular kind of moment, in a regular kind of place. But it wasn’t.
The knife moved with soft, measured sounds. Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.
Carrot. Radish. Cucumber.
Every slice was uniform. Clean. The rhythm was precise, practiced. Not just skilled. Disciplined.
She didn’t take her eyes off him, not directly, but not obviously either. Her posture stayed relaxed, her hands resting on the bar. The camera around her neck swayed gently with the air from the ceiling fan, tapping now and then against the wood like a slow heartbeat.
She didn’t look dangerous.
But then, neither did he.
The overhead light gave a quiet hum, casting the shop in a worn, yellow wash that made everything look faintly out of date. The fan creaked once with each turn, ticking off invisible seconds. Outside, the alley was still. A cat passed, paused in the doorway, then disappeared again.
The chef didn’t look up from his cutting board. His voice came steady, like they were just passing time.
“You should learn Korean.”
She smiled, light but not airy. “You think so?”
He nodded slightly, slicing through radish with clean precision. “Yes.”
“I’ve heard it’s impossible.”
He nodded. “Yes. Very hard. But you,” he said, quieter now, “you have Korean tongue.”
He returned to his work, pulling a smaller knife from a drawer. It was heavier, curved differently. He laid slices of tuna onto a black ceramic plate. Next to them, he added a pinch of pickled ginger and a small, hand-shaped mound of wasabi.
He slid the dish toward her with quiet pride.
She looked down at it, then back up. “How’d you know tuna’s my favorite?”
He shrugged one shoulder, almost coy. “What?”
“Tuna,” she said again, watching him. “It’s my favorite.”
He smiled with the same practiced calm. “Ah. Thank you very much.”
Then he turned his head toward the beaded curtain and shouted, voice sharp. “야! 차 어디 갔어? 빨리 좀 해!”
Behind the curtain came a reply, loud and annoyed.
“지금 드라마 보고 있잖아!”
“드라마는 개뿔이지! 손님 왔잖아, 이 자식아. 빨리 갖고 와!”
“차 뜨거워! 너도 좀 움직여 봐!”
The chef muttered something under his breath, wiped his hands, and moved toward the curtain. The beads clinked as he grabbed the other man by the wrist mid-gesture, twisted it lightly, and leaned in close.
“네가 장군이면 나는 황제다. 그러니까 조용히 차나 갖고 와.”
Then, with a mocking grin and just enough weight to sting, he said in English: “Do you understand?”
The assistant pulled free, scowling, and glanced at Y/N. “대머리 아니거든,” he muttered. Then, in stiff English: “I shave. Do you understand me?”
The chef didn’t even look. He picked up a small knife and threw it underhanded toward the wall. It landed with a soft thud, blade buried in the wood just left of the curtain.
The assistant disappeared without another word.
Y/N didn’t follow his movement. Her fingers just found a napkin and began folding it, slow and absent, like she was trying to pass the time. But her attention stayed open, alert, listening to every creak from the fridge and every shift of weight behind the curtain. She tracked it all without looking.
The chef glanced her way and let out a low sigh. “Sorry,” he murmured.
She smiled, shook her head gently, still all ease and pleasant charm. “No worries at all.”
The chef had gone back to wiping a plate that didn’t need it, slow circles that looked more like habit than cleaning. He hummed something under his breath. No real melody, just sound for the sake of it. Every so often, his eyes drifted up. Not to her. To the curtain. He was waiting, too.
Y/N leaned her chin into her palm and let out a quiet sigh. The kind that sounded like she had nowhere else to be, like this was just another slow stop on a longer, looser itinerary. But beneath the quiet facade, her pulse had cooled into something steadier. Sharper. She was counting. Not seconds. Not movements. Just weight.
The beads stirred again.
The second man reappeared, bottle in one hand, glass in the other. The soju was cold, condensation sliding down the green glass in thick streaks. His fingers were wide, stained around the cuticles, the nails chipped like they had been trimmed with teeth or a dull blade. Hands that had done hard things.
He reached the counter and set the bottle and glass down. He turned to walk away. The chef didn’t let it slide.
His voice cracked through the air, hard and sudden. “야, 예의 좀 갖춰!”
The man didn’t stop completely. He only slowed. His shoulders shifted. A sigh leaked out, long and annoyed.
“뭐? 술 갖다 줬잖아.”
“손님 앞에서는 제대로 해. 외국인이라도.”
A scoff, barely loud enough to register. “외국인이라 모를 텐데 왜 신경 써?”
The chef’s reply came low, firm. “그러니까 더 조심해야지. 한국 사람처럼 보여도 다 듣고 있을 수도 있어.”
There was a pause. Just a few seconds, but heavy. The kind of quiet that wasn’t about silence. It was about choice.
The man muttered something under his breath, just noise really, but shaped by resentment. Then he twisted the cap off the bottle with a rough snap and poured. The soju splashed high in the glass, almost spilling. He shoved it toward her with one hand, the edge of the glass tapping wood just shy of rude.
Then he turned and disappeared again. The beads clattered harder this time. The chef let out a breath.
“죄송합니다,” he said, bowing his head slightly. “그 사람은... 사람 대하는 법을 몰라요.”
Y/N didn’t flinch. Her smile stayed where it had been the whole time, pleasant and unbothered. “Sorry?”
The chef’s tone softened, switching to English like it was muscle memory. “Ah, no, just... he doesn’t know how to talk,” he added, with a thin smile that almost reached his eyes.
She nodded, light, polite. Lifted the shot glass with a small, quiet toast. “Thank you,” she said, and took a sip.
The soju hit cool. Sweet up front, then a clean, sharp finish that sat in the back of her throat and lingered. It didn’t burn. It reminded.
She set the glass down. Picked up her chopsticks. The motion was fluid, casual, not stiff with performance, but practiced. The way a habit becomes part of muscle memory.
She lifted a piece of tuna from the plate, a clean slice that caught the light like silk. Deep ruby red, almost translucent, grain running fine through its surface. She placed it on her tongue and held it there, waiting. It melted. Soft and rich, just a trace of brine and something faintly metallic, like memory. She chewed once. Twice. Let it dissolve.
Her eyes drifted shut, just for a second. 
She set the chopsticks down, careful not to clatter them, then picked up the soju again and finished the glass in a single, smooth pull. The second hit went down easier. The warmth spread slow through her chest, settling in a place that had once held nerves.
Across the counter, the chef watched. He hadn’t changed his expression, but something in the way he stood had eased. Not relaxed, not soft, but carrying a kind of respect. He was noticing a quiet fluency. No words. Just recognition.
“First time in Korea?” he asked. His hands returned to the cutting board, fingers resting near the knife, though he didn’t pick it up yet.
Y/N nodded, finishing another bite. “Mmhmm.”
“What!” he said, voice rising with disbelief that didn’t quite ring false.
She swallowed, wiped the corner of her mouth lightly. “Yes. This is my first time.”
He tilted his head, eyes narrowing just a little. “What brings you to Gwangju?”
Outside, the alley shifted. A gust caught some stray bit of paper and skidded it along the brick like a coin on pavement. Somewhere nearby, a bird let out a single cry, sharp and fast, gone in a blink. The curtain behind her swayed faintly with a whisper-soft clatter, like wind chimes that never quite got the breeze they needed to sing. Y/N adjusted her chopsticks, repositioned them between her fingers, then gently set them down without ever lifting a bite. Her tone was light when she finally spoke, almost conversational.
“I came to see a man.”
The sentence didn’t echo, but it changed something in the room. A beat passed. Not long. But the chef’s hand froze mid-motion, his knife held just above the salmon, blade tilted slightly as if it too had paused to listen.
“Ah,” he said after a moment, stretching the word just enough to carry weight. “A friend in Gwangju?” He didn’t look up.
“Not quite,” she replied.
“Not a friend?”
“No.” She waited until his eyes found hers before continuing. “We’ve never met.”
The blade finally touched the board. A soft sound. Then he laid the knife aside, not quickly, but with care, like he’d decided whatever came next didn’t need a blade in hand. He kept his gaze on the cutting board for a moment longer than necessary, then finally looked up. The expression on his face didn’t shift much, but something behind his eyes sharpened. Not fear. Not even suspicion. Just awareness.
“And,” he said, more quietly now, “may I ask who he is?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Jung Hoseok.”
The name didn’t explode. It didn’t need to. It landed in the room like a rock dropped into still water. No splash. Just the heavy assurance that things were moving beneath the surface now. Her voice hadn’t changed. She wasn’t dramatic. She didn’t lean in. But the name was enough.
The chef went still. Not tense, simply anchored. Like something in him had snapped into place. His right hand rested on the edge of a towel. His left hovered briefly over the blade again, reflex more than anything. The tip of his finger brushed the metal and slipped. A sudden streak of red rose across his knuckle. He looked down at it, just for a moment, and lifted the hand to his mouth. Sucked the blood away like it was routine. No flinch. No sound. Just control, reset.
Behind her, the beads rattled once more, sharper this time. The bald man stepped through again, his face a clenched fist. He didn’t speak. Just let his eyes sweep the room, pausing on her. Not suspicion. Calculation. Like something in the air had told him to pay attention.
He crossed to the counter, picked up the bottle, and poured her another shot. This time, the movement was smooth. No clatter. No shove. Just a quiet, focused pour. He didn’t speak. Didn’t meet her eyes. He finished the pour, left the glass full, and walked out. The beads clacked shut behind him, not loud, not subtle. Just punctuation.
The chef exhaled slowly through his nose. No drama. Just release. Then he took a towel and began wiping his hands carefully, methodically. His eyes stayed on her.
She lifted the new glass in a small, silent toast, even though the man who’d poured it was already gone. The glass was cold enough that it clung to her fingers.
When the chef spoke again, the language changed. No more English. No pretense.
His voice lowered, smooth and even, each word placed with precision. “정호석에게 무슨 용건이 있습니까?”
Y/N didn’t blink.
She answered in Korean, her voice quiet, level. No showmanship. Just the kind of careful weight that traveled farther than volume ever could. “강철이 필요해요.”
His eyes narrowed. Not in suspicion. In thought. Like he was studying her words, not for truth, but for intention. He didn’t answer right away. He let the silence linger.
“왜 강철이 필요하죠?” he asked.
She looked at the glass beside her plate, a droplet tracing its way down the side. Then she met his eyes again. “쥐를 죽이려면요.”
There was another pause, longer this time, but not uncomfortable. Then the chef let out a short laugh. Not cruel. Not mocking. Just low and dry, like someone who had lived long enough to understand how serious things always start in calm voices.
“Must be a big rat,” he said in English this time, voice touched with something close to amusement. “If you need Jung Hoseok steel for it.”
She smiled, but only with one side of her mouth. The other half stayed still.
“Huge,” she said.
They didn’t move. Didn’t raise their voices. The air between them didn’t buzz with tension, but it held. Quiet. Pulled tight like thread stretched between fingers. It didn’t warn. It just waited.
The chef gave a small nod. Y/N didn’t speak, didn’t finish the food. She left the second shot untouched. The fish remained as he had plated it, artful, unspoiled. The only sign she had been there was the soft, fading ring left behind by her first glass, already drying into the grain of the wood.
She rose without a sound and followed him through the beaded curtain, not once looking back.
The hallway beyond was narrow and long, the kind of space that time forgets. The wallpaper, beige or yellow once, now sun-bleached into something closer to nicotine-stained parchment, peeled at the edges in slow curls. The floorboards creaked just enough to remind you that no one had fixed them in a long while, and maybe no one ever would. The air smelled lived-in, dense with cooking oil and old plaster, like generations of heat had steeped into the walls. A single bulb swung gently from the ceiling, flickering once before settling into a thin, steady glow.
Hoseok walked ahead, silent, his gait quiet but confident. He didn’t rush. He didn’t hesitate. His steps were even, deliberate, the kind of pace that didn’t waste energy or ask permission. When he reached the end of the corridor, he glanced up and found the pull cord, barely visible in the dim light, hanging like a spider’s thread. He tugged it once.
A low groan came from above, followed by a creaking shift. A square panel in the ceiling cracked open with a dusty exhale, and a folded ladder unfolded downward with slow, mechanical clicks, the rungs snapping into place like joints stretching after too long at rest.
He climbed first. She followed.
Her boots hit the rungs with soft thuds, the sound swallowed by the close space around her. One hand on each side rail, steady, smooth. No wasted movement. She didn’t glance up, didn’t glance down. Just climbed. The air thickened as she ascended, growing warmer, more still. There was a shift in temperature, and in smell. Wood. Oil. Steel.
As she rose through the opening, the attic revealed itself like a photograph developing in slow motion.
It wasn’t big, but it felt larger than it should have. The low ceiling curved inward slightly, giving the space a strange hush, like it was used to quiet. The warmth was immediate. Not stifling, but deep, the kind of heat that came from bodies and time and electricity burning low and constant. The scent was unmistakable to anyone who knew what it meant: cedar, carbon, and choji oil. That distinct blend of camellia and clove, familiar only to those who have ever cared for a blade.
The light from the window was weak, filtered through grime that hadn’t been wiped away in years. But what little came through cast long golden lines across the floor, picking out the pattern in the grain and throwing deep shadows that stretched and curled. The floor was clean. Worn, but swept. Not a speck of dust in sight. No clutter, no trash. This wasn’t storage. It was maintenance.
On the far wall stood the racks.
Not shelves. Not hooks. Racks, each one handmade, shaped with intention, joined by hand rather than hardware. Pale wood, aged and patient. No decoration. No flair. Just quiet craftsmanship. They held swords. Not just katanas. Blades.
Dozens of them, each one unique. Their sheaths glinted in the dim light: black lacquer with soft reflections, deep red urushi, mottled green like old bark. One was wrapped in white rayskin bound with gold. Each sageo tie—gray, plum, navy—was knotted tight and deliberate, tension held with purpose. The tsuka, wrapped in silk, were symmetrical to the point of obsession. Every fold precise. Every diamond perfect. Each kashira had its own story: copper dragons, koi fish, sakura petals, brass ships riding a storm. And the tsuba were miniature sculptures of iron and bronze, some simple, some elaborate, none ornamental for the sake of it. These weren’t pieces for display. They were weapons made to be used. Cared for, kept sharp, kept ready.
Y/N stepped forward, her movements quiet, measured. She didn’t touch anything. Didn’t need to. The room held its own gravity. The kind of silence that didn’t beg for reverence but commanded it through sheer presence. Every detail—the blades, the wood, the air itself—spoke for her to listen.
Behind her, Hoseok didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to either. His stillness wasn’t tense or withdrawn. It was aware. Watching, but not pressing.
She turned slightly, just enough to glance over her shoulder. Her voice, when it came, was soft. Her Korean clear and careful. “May I?”
A beat passed, subtle but intentional. Then, his reply, not in Korean this time but in English. And for some reason, that made it gentler. “Yes, you may. Second from the top. Sixth row. Left side.”
She nodded once and turned back to the racks. Her steps didn’t creak the floorboards. She moved with the kind of calm that came from purpose, not performance. Her eyes scanned, counted, found it: sixth row, left side, second down.
She stopped in front of it, let her gaze rest on the sheath before reaching for it. Black lacquer, smooth and deep enough to absorb the light. It reflected just the faintest outline of her face, blurred, formless. The finish was perfect, but not decorative. Not flashy. Maintained, not polished. Like someone had wiped it down once a week for decades, always with the same cloth.
The sageo cord was tied in a neat, practical knot. Not ornamental. Not lazy. Tight, squared. The kind of tie someone would redo until they got it right. The tsuba was brass, aged and worn, its surface darkened by time and touch. Etched pine branches crawled along its edges, simple, understated, and detailed enough to tell you it wasn’t mass-produced. It had been chosen.
Her fingers wrapped around the tsuka. The silk binding was tight, smooth, crisscrossed with perfect symmetry. Black cord over white rayskin. Traditional. Familiar. The handle sat against her palm like a known shape, like something she had used before, even if she hadn’t.
And something inside her, something she hadn’t even noticed was noisy, went quiet.
She drew the blade without hesitation, not for show, just to see. It came free with a sound so subtle it was almost imagined. Like breath drawn through cloth. The kind of sound that disappears if you’re not paying attention. But she always paid attention.
Light caught the blade and changed it. What had been metal turned fluid. Reflections danced along the edge, fractured and reformed as she moved. The hamon curled like a pale ripple, shifting with every minor tilt of her hands. The kissaki was long, graceful. Measured for reach, not for display. The sword wasn’t just well-made. It had purpose in its design. Intention.
She held it in both hands now. The balance fell into place like it knew where to go. No resistance. No demand. Just a quiet agreement between steel and muscle, weight and memory.
Behind her, Hoseok finally stirred. The smallest motion: fabric shifting, a heel settling more fully into the floor. When she turned slightly, she saw him near the window, one hand deep in his pocket. The other rolled something between his fingers.
A baseball. Worn, the leather dulled to a soft gray, the seams darkened, fraying. It looked like it had been tossed from hand to hand for years. He turned it over in his palm absently, like it was more habit than thought.
“Funny,” he said, voice quiet enough that the words didn’t quite disturb the stillness. “You like swords…”
He tossed the ball into the air, caught it once without looking.
“…I like baseball.”
Then, without warning, he threw it.
There was no flourish. No wind-up. Just a sudden motion, fast, clean, direct. The ball cut through the air on a line straight toward her. No room to think. No time for a plan.
Her arms moved before her mind did. The sword rose in a single arc, smooth and efficient. No tension in the shoulders, no wasted energy in the swing. The blade moved as though she were answering something, not striking.
The ball split cleanly.
There was no dramatic crack. No cinematic echo. Just a soft, muted thud, leather parting under steel, a sound more felt than heard. One half of the ball skidded off and rolled beneath the nearest rack. The other bounced off her boot and stopped.
She didn’t breathe out. Not yet. Her grip had already eased. The sword angled down, relaxed at her side, tip toward the floor. Balanced again, as if nothing had happened.
Hoseok stepped forward, steady as ever, though something behind his expression had shifted. Barely, but enough for her to notice. A flicker in his eyes, like a thought he hadn’t yet decided whether to keep or release. He lifted a hand toward her, slow and sure. Not a demand. Not a gesture of control. It was open, deliberate. A quiet invitation to return something that wasn’t quite hers yet.
She reversed the blade, offering the hilt without hesitation. No dramatic pause, no faltering. Just weight moving from her hands to his. The handoff was clean, unspoken, the kind of exchange that didn’t need ceremony to be understood.
He sheathed the sword with practiced ease, and the sound—soft, precise, the smooth slide of steel into lacquered wood—didn’t echo. It landed. Not loud, not theatrical. Just final. Like a breath held, then released.
“I wanted to show you these,” he said in Korean, the playful edge from earlier gone. His voice had changed, calmer now, older somehow. He held the sheathed blade in both hands, fingers gliding over the lacquer not to clean it, but to remember it. “But someone like you… someone like you already understands.”
He placed it gently back in its rack, hands steady, motions exact. Each movement held weight, the kind of intention that couldn’t be faked. “I no longer make instruments of death,” he said, softer now, almost to himself. “I keep them for their beauty. For what they once meant. Because I love them.”
There was a quiet pride in his words, not boastful, just true. He bowed his head slightly. “I’m proud of what I made. Proud of how well I made them. But I am retired.”
She stepped closer, silent. No threat in her approach, only certainty. Her presence filled the space without trying to. Her voice came softly, but with clarity.
“Then give me one.”
The words landed like a pin in still fabric. He turned to face her, jaw tightening.
“They’re not for sale.”
“I didn’t say sell me one.”
They locked eyes. Her stare didn’t waver. Her voice didn’t rise. It didn’t need to.
“I said give me one.”
A pause opened between them. Not long, but heavy. The kind that held all the weight of what hadn’t been said yet. When he spoke again, it was clipped. Cold.
“And why should I help you?”
She didn’t blink. “Because the vermin I’m after,” she said, the words clean and hard, “was your student.”
That stopped him. Not with a flinch, not with alarm. Just a subtle shift. Shoulders lowered by a fraction, breath held at the top of his chest. His silence was sudden and full.
She stepped in again. “And considering the student…” she let the rest hang, then added, “you have certain obligations.”
He turned and walked toward the narrow attic window, its frame sun-bleached and warped slightly with age. With the back of his hand, he wiped away a patch of fog, clearing a view just big enough to see the city stretching out below them—rooftops, wires, and the slow dimming of the day. The glass was damp, the edges still filmed in condensation.
With one finger, he reached up and began to write.
TAEHYUNG.
The name curved faintly in the glass, drawn in a line of skin oil and breath. Outside, the wind kicked up, brushing against the building with a hollow tap. The beams creaked. The attic seemed to lean into the moment. The name.
She didn’t move. Didn’t speak. Just nodded once. That was enough.
Hoseok turned, walked to the trapdoor, and reached for the old latch. It gave with a dry metallic groan. The ladder creaked as it unfolded, the sound echoing faintly in the rafters.
He gestured to the corner. A futon, rolled neatly. A folded blanket beside it. A small jug of water, a wooden comb laid with care. Nothing lavish. Nothing new. Just clean. Lived-in.
“You can sleep here,” he said in Korean. “I’ll make space downstairs. Might take a day or two to find proper furniture.”
He descended the ladder with the same quiet weight he carried everywhere. But just before the hatch closed, his voice floated back up, lower and firmer.
“It’ll take a month to make the blade.”
A pause. The creak of one last step below.
“I suggest you spend it practicing.”
Then the hatch closed with a solid, wooden thunk. Not sharp. Not aggressive. Just complete.
She stood still, alone in the attic, the air settling around her like dust that had waited too long to fall. The quiet wasn’t just quiet anymore. It was thick, almost physical. A silence that had weight, like the room itself was holding its breath after what had been said, what had been written.
The last of the afternoon light had slipped away without notice, and in its place came the muted amber of early evening. Outside, the city blurred. Rooftops softened, edges dulled, the sky folding into dusk with no sharp lines left. Gwangju looked like it was remembering something it didn’t want to say out loud.
She walked toward the window, slow and steady, her boots tapping gently against the floor. The name was still there, hovering in the circle of cleared glass, faint but legible. TAEHYUNG. The letters had already started to run a little, the edges softened by moisture and time.
From her coat, she pulled a cloth. It was plain, the kind of fabric that had seen years of use—creased, worn, stripped of anything personal. Just something that did its job. She raised it and began to wipe. One pass. Then another. Then again. Not hard, not angry. Just firm. Methodical. With each motion, the letters blurred a little more, until they were nothing but streaks. And then nothing at all. Just fog again.
She held her hand to the glass for a second longer, palm pressed flat. The warmth from her skin left a faint outline before the cold reclaimed it. It faded just like the name had. Quick, quiet, complete.
She folded the cloth with care and tucked it back into her coat, her fingers working with practiced ease. No lingering. No pause for meaning.
Then she turned from the window.
Outside, the city kept fading. Behind her, the attic returned to stillness. The name was gone. And with it, whatever place he might’ve held in her. Taehyung Kim had already taken too much. There was no room left in her for the ghost of him. Not anymore.
He would fall. And when he did, she would finally be free.
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chimcess ¡ 9 days ago
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ooh what are eclipse and park about? just recently stumbled upon your page and im having so much fun reading through your works 💜
Hi Anon!
Thanks for reading my work. I have fun writing it so it's always nice to hear that other people like what I do.
Eclipse is a science fiction about an arranged marriage between a prince and a princess of different moons that have been at war for over 100 years.
Park is basically me attempting to fix everything wrong with 50 Shades of Grey. There's a lot there. It's difficult because I don't want to change absolutely everything, but too much just makes my skin crawl. It's been my way of working on my smut writing skills so I can write them more often in my other works.
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