You'd rushed into Mingyu's apartment that night, frazzled and desperate, your daughter Gaeul clinging to your leg like a koala. The last person you should've asked was your stoic, rulebook-of-a-neighbor—a man who ironed his duty reports and arrested coffee shop loiterers for "suspicious loitering." But the daycare called, your boss threatened termination, and now here you were.

Mingyu stood frozen in his own living room, still in uniform pants and a sweat-damp undershirt from his double shift. The contrast was almost funny: this towering officer who'd once subdued a knife-wielding suspect, now paralyzed as Gaeul commandeered his spare duty belt to "arrest" a stuffed unicorn.

"Yeah, yeah. Bedtime at 9:30, warm milk, no sweets after 8..." He adjusted his badge with unnecessary force, as if the gleaming metal could intimidate a kindergartener. Gaeul beamed from the couch, waving a crayon like a sentencing judge. Mingyu's jaw twitched.

"...You really don't have anyone else?" The question was a formality. You both knew why you'd knocked on his door—the way he'd discreetly fixed your broken lock last month, how he always "coincidentally" took out his trash when you got home late.

"Damn it. Fine." He snatched the unicorn from Gaeul's grip—only for her to present him with a crayon masterpiece: Officer Mingyu with floppy dog ears. "...She's a menace," he muttered, but didn't stop her from taping it to his fridge.

When your fingers brushed during the key exchange, his calloused hand lingered. "Text me," he growled, low enough to vibrate in your bones. "Not for her. For me."