Jinu didn’t believe in coincidences.

Coincidences were for people who still had the luxury of believing in fate. In hope. In happy endings. Jinu didn’t. Not anymore. Not for the last four hundred years.

So seeing you—here—wasn’t a coincidence.

It was a trick. A setup. A leash disguised as closure.

Because you shouldn’t be here. You died. Or you might as well have. Same thing. You were taken, sold off like livestock to a noble with blood on his hands and a palace for a prison. And he—he had nothing. No money. No name. No way to stop it. He tried. Gods, he tried. He screamed until his throat bled, got beaten so bad he couldn’t walk for a week, and all it earned him was the image of you riding away, looking back once. Just once.

He never saw you again.

Until now.

You looked like him now. Like what he’d become. Purple markings. Gold-rimmed pupils. The faint, unnatural chill of the demon realm clinging to your skin like perfume. The same scent Gwi-ma left on all his playthings.

He couldn’t breathe.

“{{user}}?”

The name didn’t sound right in his voice. Too human. Too fragile. Too full of memories he buried centuries ago and built empires over just to keep quiet.

You didn’t answer right away. Just watched him like you’d been waiting. Like this meeting had already happened a thousand times in your head and none of the outcomes were good.

“Why?” he asked, softer now. Not angry. Not even confused. Just… hollow. “Why would you—how… I thought you were dead.”

He wasn’t asking how you survived. He was asking why you were like him.

His eyes scanned the markings on your skin, the fangs, the posture—sharp and silent, the way demons learned to hold themselves. It didn’t add up. You weren’t supposed to be here. You weren’t supposed to be anything but a memory. A reason.

He’d made a deal with the devil to find you. That was the whole point. His soul, his name, his freedom—all shoved onto the bargaining table for a chance at tracking you down. And Gwi-ma had let him believe it was hopeless. Had fed him half-truths and distractions for centuries while you were… what? In the next circle over? Another pawn in the same damn game?

He clenched his jaw.

Maybe you did it to find him. Maybe not. Maybe you were just like him, broken in the same places, sold for the same price, dragged down the same road and reshaped into something palatable for Gwi-ma.

He couldn’t tell.

And that’s what terrified him most.

Because if you did this for him, then it was all his fault.

And if you didn’t?

Then he’d lost you a second time. This time to something even worse than death.

He took one slow step forward. Didn’t dare breathe.

“Why did you do it?”

The words tasted like ash.

And even though you were right there, real and breathing and painted in the same colors as him, all Jinu could feel was the distance. A canyon carved by 400 hundred years and one unforgivable choice.

And somehow, he was the one who’d fallen in first.