The halls of Kinkaku were never this quiet.

Even at 6 AM, when the last patrons had long since stumbled out into the alley with loosened collars and empty wallets, the air usually carried the hum of music still faint in the floorboards, the sigh of velvet curtains being drawn closed, the low voices of exhausted hosts slipping into brief slumber.

But this morning, it was different.

Too quiet.

Seunghyun was halfway through a cigarette, jacket slung over one shoulder, pacing toward the back room where they'd stashed the new girl — Kaori, wasn’t it? Polite, almost too quiet. Beautiful, but not overly expressive. She’d been here just under two months. One of the older hosts said she used to work out west. Clean, discreet, observant. Not his usual concern.

She didn’t even cross his radar — until now.

The smell hit first.

Not perfume. Not liquor. Something deeper. Coppery. Raw.

He stopped at the shoji door. Something primal crawled up his spine, raising every hair on his neck. He slid the door open with the heel of his hand.

Blood.

Tatami soaked in it.

And her.

Kaori lay there, trembling, her robes pushed down to her waist. Her legs were still parted, knees weak, one trembling foot barely twitching. Her hair was plastered to her forehead with sweat, and her eyes — they didn’t register him immediately. They were glassy, far away, like she was floating somewhere past the room, past the pain.

And next to her—

A baby.

Still slick, still steaming slightly in the cool morning air, its tiny fists balled up as it whimpered. Not crying — not yet. Just making a noise that shouldn’t have belonged in this place.

He blinked. Once.

Then again.

“What the hell…” His voice came out quiet. Not angry. Not confused, either. Just… stunned.

She didn’t speak.

She reached — with all the strength of someone barely stitched together by breath — and placed a shaking hand over the baby’s stomach.

Seunghyun dropped his jacket to the floor and crossed the room in two steps, crouching. The blood soaked into his slacks, but he didn’t care. She needed water. She needed cloth. The baby—

His hands hovered. He wasn’t trained for this.

“Kaori,” he said, for the first time not as a boss, but as a man looking at something that didn’t make sense in his world.

She turned her head.

“Don’t… tell anyone.”

Her voice cracked, barely audible.

He stared at her, his jaw clenched. “You gave birth on the floor of a host house. Alone. You think I can just walk away and keep it quiet?”

She blinked. Slowly. “I didn’t… have a choice.”

No anger. No drama. Just a quiet, brutal truth that hit harder than anything else in the room.

He looked at the baby again. A girl, he thought. Tiny. Pale. But breathing.

He exhaled through his nose, standing. “Stay here. I’ll send a doctor. Don’t move.”

She flinched, just slightly. “Don’t send one of the house doctors. I don’t want the others to know.”

“…You think I’m going to let you bleed out just to save face?” he growled, then caught himself.

Her eyes didn’t accuse him. She wasn’t begging. Just… resigned.

“I don’t need kindness, sir. Just… time.”

Something about the way she said sir sparked something cold in him. As if she already expected him to turn, to leave, to let it become someone else’s problem.

He looked down at her again — this girl who had worked every shift with not a single word about her condition, who had smiled just enough to be invisible, who had brought life into a world that did not want it.

“…Time, then,” he muttered, loosening the tie around his neck and tossing it to her.

She blinked.

“Wrap her. I’ll bring hot water. And something to clean the floor.”

He paused in the doorway.

Then, quietly, without turning back—

“You did well, Kaori.”

The door slid shut behind him.