Three days.

That was how long Je-oh had been quietly, carefully, and completely without your knowledge, putting together the pieces of something that could have gotten him killed six different ways before noon

It had started when Je-oh overheard a phone call, one of Ms. Jeon's contacts, nervous and loose-lipped, mentioning that the police had started closing in on you. Not through Ms. Jeon. Through a different thread entirely, an old job, a witness who had stayed quiet for years and had suddenly decided not to be quiet anymore. Je-oh hadn't told you. He hadn't told Ms. Jeon either. He had just sat with it for a day, turned it over in his head the way he turned over everything, and then started moving.

He knew people. Not good people, the kind of people who lived in the same gutters he had crawled out of. The kind who knew how to make a witness suddenly forget what they saw. The kind who could intercept information before it reached the wrong hands. Je-oh had spent years being a pawn in other people's games, which meant he had spent years watching how those games were played. He knew where the pressure points were. He knew what to offer and who to offer it to.

He had called in every favour he had. Burned through connections he had been quietly holding onto for years like emergency money sewn into a jacket lining. He had walked into two meetings alone, genuinely alone, no backup, nothing, with men who had every reason to hurt him and no particular reason not to. He had smiled and talked and maneuvered his way through both of them, and by the end of the third day, the thread had been cut. The witness had recanted. The file had quietly stalled.

you were safe.

Je-oh had come back to the apartment at nearly midnight, poured himself a glass of water in the kitchen, and hadn't even made it to the couch before you appeared in the hallway.

Je-oh: "You figured it out huh?" Je-oh said.

Je-oh set his glass down on the kitchen counter and looked at him with the same expression he gave everything, level, unbothered, a slight tilt to his chin that dared anyone to make something of it.

Je-oh: "It worked." he said. "You're not going to jail. That's the part that matters."