Not even five minutes into the job and Junseo was already getting on my nerves.
"I told you to bring the old glass cutter," I hissed, the words puffing into a plume of white mist in the freezing night air.
"Relax, hyung. This one's new. It's titanium-tipped. Better," he whispered back, though his hands were shaking slightly from the cold.
Creeeeak… screech…
The tool grated against the reinforced window with a sound like a fingernail on a chalkboard. In the silence of the museum rooftop, it sounded loud enough to wake the ancestors in their graves.
"Keep it low, you dumbo," I muttered, glancing nervously at the silent security cameras we'd supposedly looped.
I leaned in, my eyes narrowing as I peered through the spotless glass. There it was—the beauty. A single, teardrop-shaped diamond sitting on a crimson velvet pedestal. It was the only reason we'd spent the last three hours freezing our asses off on a ledge two hundred feet above the pavement. And tonight, it was going to pay our rent for the next decade.
Junseo peeked over my shoulder, a smug grin pulling at his lips. "Seriously, hyung… don't you think these people are kinda stupid? Showing off a rock like that to the whole world. It's basically a formal invitation."
With a final, satisfying pop, he lifted the glass pane. He handled it like it weighed nothing, his movements finally showing the years of practice we had under our belts. We slipped inside—dropping onto the polished marble floor like shadows.
The museum was a tomb. Our footsteps echoed faintly, a rhythmic tap-tap that seemed to grow louder as we approached the pedestal. Under the cool blue security lights, the diamond didn't just sparkle; it seemed to glow with a life of its own, as if it owned the room and everything in it.
Junseo's eyes went round, reflecting the gem's brilliance. "Come here, baby… I'll keep you safe."
He reached out, his fingers twitching with greed.
I caught his wrist in a vice grip. "Yah. Careful."
He frowned. "You really think they'd put a diamond like this in a simple glass box?"
"Nothing expensive is ever easy," I muttered.
I began to circle the pedestal, my eyes scanning the floor and the base of the display. There—a faint, rhythmic pulse of blue light beneath the glass. "There it is."
"Uh-oh," Junseo crouched down, his bravado vanishing. "Digital alarm? Lasers?"
"Pressure sensors," I corrected. "High-sensitivity. It's calibrated to the gram."
Junseo threw his head back dramatically, letting out a silent, agonized groan. "We put the CCTV guard to sleep, tricked the patrol, froze on a rooftop—only to be stuck by a scale? Aish… if you'd just let me use my tech, hyung, we could've hacked the bypass by now."
I ignored him and reached into my inner jacket pocket. I pulled out a small leather pouch—scuffed, old, and heavy.
Junseo leaned closer, squinting. "…Hyung.
Tell me we're not playing marbles right now."
I didn't answer. I handed him a few of the glass spheres. He rolled them through his fingers, looking at me like I'd finally lost my mind. I ignored his judgment and stepped up to the pedestal. This wasn't a system you could hack with a tablet. It was physics.
"Think," I whispered, more to myself than him. "It only cares about the weight. We just have to keep the scale from noticing the diamond is gone."
I placed the first marble on the edge of the velvet. Click. A red diode on the side flickered, turned yellow, then stabilized.
My heart hammered against my ribs, but my hands stayed steady. One marble. Two.
Three. I placed them in a perfect ring around the gem, slow and balanced, like I was performing surgery.
Junseo held his breath so long his face started to turn red.
"Is this… actually going to—"
"Shh."
One final marble. With my left hand, I eased the last glass sphere onto the pressure plate. With my right, my gloved fingers slid beneath the diamond.
A heartbeat of pure silence.
I lifted.
The gem rose into my hand—cold, perfect, and terrifyingly heavy. The pedestal stayed silent. The alarm didn't scream.
Junseo exhaled a lungful of air. "Holy sh*t… it worked."
"Move," I said, tucking the diamond into a padded pocket. "We're only safe when we're three rooftops away."
The escape was a blur of adrenaline and freezing wind. We dropped down from the museum's rear exit, slipping into the thick treeline of the surrounding forest. The woods were dark and quiet, a perfect veil for two ghosts.
We'd taken barely ten steps into the brush when a sound stopped us dead.
Crack.
The sound of a heavy branch snapping under a massive weight.
Then came the growl. A low, vibrating rumble that I felt in my chest more than I heard with my ears. Grrrrrr…
Junseo's voice was a tiny, terrified squeak.
"Hyung… please tell me that was your stomach."
A massive security dog, a beast that looked more like a wolf than a pet, stepped from the shadows. Its eyes were fixed on the pocket where the diamond sat.
"Oh," Junseo said weakly. "So one guard didn't take the bait."
"Not one," I replied, my blood turning to ice.
"Four."
Three more pairs of glowing eyes ignited in the darkness around us.
"What now?" Junseo's voice cracked.
I gave him the look—the one that usually
meant he was about to have a very bad day.
"You know the drill."
His face collapsed. "Hyung. No. Not the 'decoy' drill. Anything but that."
"You're faster."
"I'm also allergic to teeth!"
The lead dog lunged, snapping its jaws inches from my leg.
"Junseo," I said, my voice dropping an octave. "You can do this. Run."
"No, I cannot do this—"
"Okay then," I said, pivoting away. "I'll meet you at the extraction point."
"HYUNG—!"
Junseo bolted. He didn't have a choice. He tore into the trees, screaming at the top of his lungs, "Aishhh—WHY ME? HYUNG I SWEAR IF I SURVIVE THIS, I'M QUITTING!"
The dogs took the bait, four furry missiles chasing him into the depths of the woods. I moved in the opposite direction, my heart heavy with guilt until I heard his voice echoing through the trees again.
"HYUNG—THE TREES—WHY ARE THEY SUDDENLY SO TALL—NOT MY HANDSOME FACE—!"
Then, a sudden, muffled pfft.
The sound of a man farting out of pure terror.
The dogs actually paused, confused by the sudden chemical warfare. Junseo used the distraction to dive into a narrow bush tunnel, but his luck ran out halfway through.
"HYUNG! I— I'M STUCK! HYUNG HELP—!"
I sighed, rubbing my temples. I couldn't leave him. I doubled back, finding him caught in a mess of thorny branches, flailing like laundry in a typhoon.
"Aish… you're a disaster." I yanked him free, but the momentum sent us both tumbling—straight into the path of the three dogs that had circled back.
Behind us were the thorns. Ahead was death with a wagging tail.
"Hyung… I don't want to die ugly," Junseo whimpered, hiding behind my shoulder.
"No promises."
The first dog lunged. I shoved Junseo aside and kicked up a spray of dirt, blinding the beast for a split second. As the second one leaped, I grabbed a fallen branch, swinging it like a club. "Back off! I'm too broke to die today!"
We sprinted. It was a chaotic, lung-bursting dash through the undergrowth. I grabbed Junseo's wrist, yanking him over a fallen log just as the dogs slammed into the wood behind us in a barking pile.
We didn't stop until the forest began to thin and the city lights reappeared in the distance. Junseo collapsed against a tree, gasping for air. "If I survive… I'm buying a cat. A small, tiny, non-biting cat."
I flicked his forehead, my own breath coming in ragged gasps. "You're alive because of me. Again."
"That's why you're my hyung," he groaned, sliding down to sit on the damp earth. "My long-suffering, marble-playing brother."
We walked until we reached the edge of the treeline. Just as we were about to step out onto the road, I stopped. My skin prickled.
"What? Dogs again?" Junseo tensed, looking around wildly.
I didn't answer. I looked back into the deep, suffocating blackness of the forest. The shadows there… they weren't just dark.
They had shifted. It wasn't the dogs. It felt like something larger. Something that had been watching us not with hunger, but with curiosity.
"Hyung?" Junseo asked, his voice trembling.
I shook it off, though the chill remained in my bones. "Nothing. Let's go. Before the sun catches us."
We stepped out of the forest, our footsteps swallowed by the awakening city. Another job done. Another narrow escape. Neither of us knew that the diamond in my pocket was already starting to feel warm—or that we hadn't stolen a gem, but a key to a world that was about to hunt us down.