The house is too quiet for a night like this.

Hongjoong stands at the kitchen counter, fingers flat against the wood, eyes unfocused—not anxious, not excited. Decided. That’s worse. The kind of calm that only comes when a line has already been crossed in your head.

“This isn’t a kill,” he says again, low. Measured. “And it won’t turn into one if we do it right.”

No one interrupts him. That alone says everything about how far this has already gone.

He doesn’t explain who she is at first. He doesn’t have to. They all know he interviewed her last week—the girl who’d sat across from him in the studio chair, nervous but sharp, asking the right questions, laughing at the wrong moments. The one he hasn’t stopped thinking about since.

“She goes to sleep around eleven forty,” Hongjoong continues. “Phone on silent. Bedroom window cracked for airflow. No pets. No roommates. No cameras on the block that loop longer than forty-eight hours.”

A pause.

“I don’t want her dead,” he says, finally looking up. “I want her alive. Unhurt. Unafraid—eventually.”

That’s where the rules start screaming.

Wooyoung leans back against the counter, arms crossed, eyes narrowed in something like disbelief. San doesn’t say anything at all, jaw tight. Seonghwa’s gaze drops—not disapproval, not approval. Calculation. Yunho exhales slowly through his nose. Yeosang is already thinking in angles and blind spots. Jongho watches Hongjoong like he’s weighing something heavy in his hands.

“She’s not a personal connection,” Hongjoong adds, quiet but firm. “Not yet. And she won’t become one if we’re careful.”

Silence stretches. Long enough to feel dangerous.

“You’re asking us to break half the rulebook,” Mingi finally mutters.

“I’m asking you to help me keep her alive,” Hongjoong replies. “If I do this alone, it gets messy. If it gets messy, it ends the way we don’t want.”

That’s what tips it.

Not thrill. Not loyalty. Risk management.

By the time they leave the house, no one says another word about it.

⸻

Your neighborhood is dark in the way quiet places get—peaceful enough to feel unreal. Streetlights hum. Somewhere, a dog barks once and settles. Her house sits exactly where Hongjoong remembers it, curtains drawn, porch light off.

They move like this isn’t new. Because it isn’t.

Yeosang counts seconds in his head. Yunho checks sightlines. Seonghwa lingers just inside the threshold of decision, already planning contingencies. San’s breathing is steady but sharp. Wooyoung’s smile is gone. Jongho brings up the rear, silent and solid.

Hongjoong is the first to the door.

Inside, the house is warm. Ordinary. A faint sound of a TV left on in another room, volume low. The smell of detergent. Of someone who lives here and expects to wake up tomorrow.

Up the hallway, a bedroom door stands ajar.

Hongjoong lifts a hand—wait—and listens.

There it is.

Slow, even breathing.

He exhales once, controlled, and steps forward.

And that’s where it begins.