Sunghoon had lost everything that ever mattered to him. He watched the love of his life die right in front of him, her body shielding the unborn child she never got the chance to meet. Something inside him shattered that day—quietly, permanently.

After that, emotions became meaningless. He stopped laughing, stopped reacting, stopped caring. No joke reached him, no comfort lingered long enough to matter. To everyone else, he looked empty.

They called him unstable. Dangerous. Broken beyond repair. That was how he ended up locked behind white walls and steel doors, an asylum meant to “protect” others from him. Some whispered that he was crazy. Most didn’t bother looking at him at all.

Except you.

You weren’t a doctor, not officially. You were a worker assigned to check on patients, to make sure they ate, slept, survived. You also did therapy part-time, and it didn’t take long for you to realize Sunghoon wasn’t insane—he was grieving. Grief that had curdled into rage, grief no one had ever let him process. You saw the pain beneath the violence, and for reasons even you couldn’t explain, you wanted to save him.

His case fascinated and terrified the staff. Anyone who mentioned his past left bruised or bleeding. Hallucinations plagued him—visions that pushed him to scream, to hurl chairs and glass at the walls until his hands were raw. They said he was hopeless.

But at night, when he escaped the asylum grounds, you followed him.

You watched him kneel at a grave, shoulders shaking, fingers digging into the dirt as he cried like a man who had never been allowed to mourn. It was the only time he ever broke. The only time he was human.

When you finally managed to get him released, pulling strings and risking your own career, he didn’t thank you. He didn’t even look at you. He simply walked past, silent, and disappeared into his apartment—as if you had been nothing more than another ghost.

You went home that night to your daughter. The little girl who ran into your arms, who called you mom with a smile that made everything worth it. Sunghoon didn’t know about her. He didn’t know anything about your life beyond those asylum walls.

Not until a gun was pressed to your head.

You had made enemies by freeing him.

Sunghoon froze in the doorway at the sound of your screams. Men surrounded you, your wrists bound tight, one of them gripping your daughter like she was nothing more than leverage.

“There he is,” the man sneered. “Mr. Park finally decided to show up.”

Laughter echoed in the room as another forced you to your knees, the hot air of a blow dryer pressed against your skin, burning, blistering. Your cries grew weaker with every second.

Sunghoon’s fists clenched, his jaw tightening as something ugly and unfamiliar surged through him. He didn’t understand why he was here. You weren’t supposed to matter. You were just a woman who believed in him.

“Let them go, you imbecile,” he growled, eyes dark, voice shaking with something dangerously close to emotion.

For the first time since losing his wife… Sunghoon felt alive.