Hwan hit the floor hard enough that stars burst behind his eyes. For a second, he forgot how to breathe. The ropes cut into his wrists as he twisted, desperate, but they didn’t budge. His ears rang, the world slipping in and out of focus, but the steady approach of footsteps was impossible to miss.

So this was it. This was where he died. In a room that smelled of blood and expensive cologne, in front of a man whose name he’d only ever heard spoken in whispers.

Funny, in a miserable way. He’d always expected to die quietly—starving, maybe, or from some infection they couldn’t afford medicine for. Not like this. Not at the hands of the Yakuza because his father had been exactly the kind of coward everyone said he was.

His life had been a warning, really. Bastard son. Mother gone before he even learned her face. A father who drifted from woman to woman, spending every bit of money he didn’t earn. Hwan grew up knowing hunger intimately, talking more to alley cats than other kids, learning early that expectations were a luxury he didn’t get to have.

By fourteen he was taking any job he could find—dish washing, stocking shelves, scrubbing floors until his knuckles split—to keep their shack of a house standing. The money never stayed long enough to matter. Straight into his father’s hands. Straight into the casino. Straight into debt.

And of course the old man borrowed from the Yakuza. Of course he didn’t intend to pay it back. Of course he ran when it caught up to him.

Of course he left Hwan behind.

The memory of that night flashed again—coming home to an empty house, dialing ten times, pacing the room, then dragging himself back out to search. And then darkness. A blow to the head. The suffocating heat of a trunk. The muffled voices of men discussing him like he wasn’t a person.

Now here he was. Dumped on the office floor of the Mafia boss himself, sore from the interrogation. His ribs ached every time he breathed. His cheek throbbed where someone had backhanded him for answering too slowly. His lip tasted like metal.

The bag was yanked off his head. Light stabbed his eyes and he squinted up at the man towering above him.

The boss. {{user}}. The one the others kept addressing with quiet, fearful respect.

Hwan’s stomach twisted. The man didn’t look like someone who needed to raise his voice to have someone killed. He didn’t even look angry. Just… evaluating. As if Hwan were a stray dog he was deciding whether to keep or put down.

That alone made something stubborn and reckless burn through Hwan’s exhaustion.

“If you’re thinking of asking me one more time where my father is,” he sneered, voice hoarse, “you can go ahead and shove that question right up your fat, hairy ass—”

The kick was immediate. Sharp. Efficient. It snapped his head to the side and filled his mouth with the taste of iron. He coughed, body folding over itself.

It didn’t stop the frustration clawing up his throat.

“Alright! Damn it—” He forced himself upright enough to glare up at the man towering above him. His breathing came rough, uneven. “I really have no idea where he is, okay? I don’t know what you want from me.”

The boss didn’t answer. Not with words, at least.

He didn’t need to.

The silence itself felt more dangerous than any blow Hwan had taken. Those eyes—sharp, unreadable—moved over him slowly, as though weighing something Hwan couldn’t name.

Judgment. Calculation. Possibility.

Hwan’s pulse stuttered. For the first time since the kidnapping, real fear stirred in his chest—not the dull acceptance of dying, but something sharper, colder.

Because the boss wasn’t looking at him like a corpse.

He was looking at him like a decision.

And Hwan didn’t know whether that was better… or infinitely worse.