The apartment was a disaster.
Sora stood in the middle of the small living room, her crutches balanced under her arms, and stared at the dark stain spreading across the ceiling. Water dripped into a bucket the landlord had placed there, a bucket that was already overflowing, judging by the puddle on the floor.
"The leak will be fixed by the end of the week," the agency woman said, her voice bright, her smile fixed. "It's just a small issue. Nothing to worry about."
Sora looked at the water damage on the walls. At the rust streaking down from the window frame. At the kitchen cabinets that hung slightly crooked, their doors not quite closing.
"The rent is too high for this," she said quietly.
The woman's smile tightened. "This is Mapo-gu. Prices are competitive."
Sora didn't argue. She was too tired to argue. It had been almost three weeks since Haneul left for LA. Three weeks of searching, of viewing apartments that were either too expensive or too damaged or too far from the hospital. A week of limping through the city on an ankle that still ached, a knee that still throbbed when she walked too long.
She was supposed to be resting. Instead, she was dragging herself through Seoul, looking for a place that felt like home.
She thanked the woman and limped back outside. The afternoon sun was bright, too bright, and she squinted as she pulled out her phone to check the next address. Three apartments today. Three disappointments. There was one more on her list, but her ankle was screaming, and her knee had started that familiar, burning ache that meant she needed to stop.
She leaned against the building wall and tried to catch her breath. Her phone buzzed. A message from Haneul.
Are you going to ignore me forever?
She stared at the words. There were other messages from him, scattered across the past two weeks. Short. Demanding. Accusatory. She hadn't replied to any of them. She couldn't. Every time she thought about responding, the anger rose in her throat, hot and bitter, and she knew she would say things she couldn't take back.
She still hadn't blocked him. She told herself it was because they needed to clear things, the apartment, the lease, the wedding deposits. But the truth was messier. The truth was that sixteen years didn't disappear in Three weeks. The truth was that some part of her still expected him to call and say the right words, the words that would undo everything, the words that would make her feel like she hadn't wasted her whole life on someone who had stopped loving her.
She put the phone away without responding.
She started walking toward the next apartment, her crutches clicking against the pavement, her ankle protesting with every step. The neighbourhood was quiet, residential, the kind of place where families lived and children played. She passed a small playground, empty now except for a few mothers pushing strollers, and she thought about the apartment she and Haneul had bought together.
Well, not together. She had put down the deposit. She had paid the first three months' rent. Haneul had promised to contribute, had promised to take care of the utilities, the furniture, the things that made a house a home. But Haneul's promises had a way of turning into something else. He was a model, earning more in a single campaign than she made in a year, but somehow, the money never seemed to make it to their shared account. There was always something, a new wardrobe, a trip, an expense she didn't know about until the credit card bill arrived.
She had paid for everything. She had told herself it was fine. She was a doctor. She made enough. And he was busy, he was working, he was building his career. She had made excuses for him for so long she had forgotten she was making them at all.
She stopped at the playground. Her ankle was burning. She needed to sit. She lowered herself onto a bench, setting her crutches beside her, and watched the children playing on the swings. A little boy was laughing, his mother pushing him higher, higher, his face tilted up toward the sky. A little girl was drawing on the pavement with chalk, her tongue poking out in concentration, her pigtails bouncing with each careful stroke.
Sora smiled. It was a small smile, fragile, but it was real.
This past month had been too much. The betrayal. The accident. The endless, grinding exhaustion of pretending she was fine when she was falling apart. And now, now there was something else. Something she didn't know how to name.
The man with the blue eyes.
He had been appearing in her dreams for the past week. Every night, without fail. She would close her eyes, and there he would be, tall and silent, his face half-shadowed, his eyes the colour of deep water. In her dreams, he never touched her. He just stood there, watching, and then he would say her name—Sora—slowly, deliberately, like he was tasting each syllable.
And she would wake up. Wet. Her thighs pressed together, her body hot, her heart pounding. She would lie in the dark, her face burning, and then she would have to get up and wash her underwear in the sink like a teenager who didn't know how to control her own body.
She was twenty-nine years old. She was a trauma surgeon. She had held dying hearts in her hands. She had told mothers their children were gone. And she was waking up every morning with her body aching for a man she had met once, a man she knew nothing about, a man whose face she saw every time she closed her eyes.
It was ridiculous. It was humiliating. It was the only thing that made her feel anything other than the hollow ache of a love that had died.
She watched the children play and let herself think about him. Just for a moment. Just until she could remember how to be alone again.
She was so lost in her thoughts that she almost didn't notice the couple walking past. They were young, maybe early twenties, their hands linked, their faces turned toward each other. The woman was holding an ice cream cone, pink and dripping, and the man was laughing at something she had said, his eyes crinkling, his whole face open and happy.
They looked like she and Haneul used to look.
The tears came before she could stop them. She pressed her hand to her mouth, trying to hold them back, but they slipped through her fingers, hot and silent. She didn't know when it had started. She didn't know when his feelings had faded, when the warmth in his eyes had turned to cold, when the man who had saved her had become someone she didn't recognise.
She had loved him. She had loved him so much she had built her whole life around him. And somewhere along the way, he had stopped loving her back, and she had been too afraid to see it.
She wiped her tears with the back of her hand, her breath hitching. The children on the swings were still laughing. The mother was still pushing. The world was still turning, indifferent to her grief.
She couldn't sit here. She couldn't fall apart in front of strangers. She grabbed her crutches and pushed herself up, her ankle screaming, her knee buckling, but she forced herself to stand, to walk, to move forward.
She had one more apartment to see. One more chance to find somewhere that wasn't haunted by his ghost.
She was so focused on putting one foot in front of the other that she didn't notice the man leaning against a car across the street. She didn't notice the way his eyes followed her, the way his jaw tightened when he saw her tears, the way his hands clenched at his sides like he was physically stopping himself from going to her.
She didn't notice any of it.
But he saw her. He always saw her.
---
The golf course was quiet this early in the morning, the green stretching out before them like a carpet of emerald, the sky a pale, washed-out blue. Jack stood at the tee, his driver loose in his hands, his eyes on the flag in the distance.
Leewon stood beside him, a club over his shoulder, his face relaxed in the easy confidence of a man who had learned to find calm in the spaces between violence.
"You've been distracted," Leewon said.
Jack didn't answer. He swung. The ball arced through the air, clean and true, landing on the fairway with a soft thud.
"Your swing is off," Leewon continued. "You're thinking about her."
Jack took a slow breath. He was thinking about her. He was always thinking about her. He had followed her today, watched her limp from apartment to apartment, watched her sit on a bench and cry, watched her wipe her tears and keep walking like she was the only thing holding herself together. He had wanted to go to her. He had wanted to take her in his arms and tell her she didn't have to be strong, not with him, not ever.
He hadn't. He couldn't. Not yet.
"The mission," Jack said, his voice flat. "Update me."
Leewon sighed. He knew Jack well enough to know when he was being redirected, but he also knew when to push and when to let go. He picked up his own club, took his stance, and swung. The ball flew, landing a few feet behind Jack's.
"The weapon deal is in two months. The ships are being prepared. Weapons, paintings, jewelry—the usual luxuries for the elite." Leewon's voice was calm, measured, the voice of a man who had been planning this for months. "But there's more this time. Slaves. Women and children, mostly. Sold to the highest bidder."
Jack's grip tightened on his club. Human trafficking. His father's legacy. The thing that had been added after he killed Jack's mother, after he took the organization and twisted it into something ugly. The thing Jack had been waiting to destroy since he was twelve years old.
"We raid the ship on the day of departure," Jack said. "We take the weapons. We free the slaves. And if we can't take it—"
"We destroy it," Leewon finished. "Every crate. Every ship. Every trace of the deal."
Jack nodded. They had been planning this for months. The organisation was preparing for the biggest weapon deal in two years, major shareholders, elite families, political figures, all with their hands in the blood of the trade. The deal was supposed to cement Kim Minho's position as the next leader, to prove that he could carry on their father's legacy.
Jack was going to burn it to the ground.
"The problem," Leewon said, "is the route. We don't know when the weapons are being transported to the ship. We don't know the route. The only information we have is that the deal is in two months."
Jack walked toward his ball, his steps measured, his mind turning. "The person coordinating the transport. What do we have?"
Leewon fell into step beside him. "He's under the direct command of a political figure. Someone running for election. His identity is hidden—we only know he was sighted in Busan a week ago. Finding his hideout won't be difficult. Finding out what he knows will be."
Jack stopped. He looked out at the green, at the flag fluttering in the distance, at the game he was supposed to be playing. "Then we find him. And we make him talk."
"And the lieutenants?"
"We bring them to our side. Or we remove them." Jack's voice was cold, absolute. "If they stand with my father, they stand against us."
Leewon was quiet for a moment. He had known Jack for fifteen years. He had seen him become something other men feared. But this—this plan, this mission, this war—was the most dangerous thing they had ever attempted. If they failed, they wouldn't just lose. They would die.
"There's something else," Leewon said. "A rumor. A drug. They're calling it 'Elysium.' It's supposed to be released after the vote. A celebration if Minho wins."
Jack's jaw tightened. "What does it do?"
"They say it steals your happiness. That you take it, and you never feel joy again. Just... emptiness." Leewon's voice was grim. "It's not just a weapon. It's a way to control. To make sure no one rises against them."
Jack swung. The ball flew, straight and true, landing on the green. He didn't watch it land. He was already walking toward the next tee.
"Then we make sure Minho doesn't win," he said. "And we make sure that drug never sees the light of day."
Leewon followed. He didn't say anything. He didn't need to. They had been fighting this war for fifteen years. They would fight it for fifteen more if they had to.
But Jack's mind was already drifting. Already wandering back to the woman with the brown eyes and the mole beside her nose. To the tears she had wiped away when she thought no one was watching. To the way she had smiled at the children on the swings, fragile and real, like she was trying to remember how.
She was his reason. The only reason he was still fighting, still planning, still willing to burn his family to the ground. When this was over, when his father was dead and his siblings were scattered and the organisation was his, she would be there. Safe. Whole. His.
He just had to survive long enough to claim her.
Not when there are some bastards after her. Well, he had already removed the traces of him following her, that it wouldn't get her into trouble.