A hardened man is like a well-oiled machine. He works proficiently, but he feels nothing. Maybe that's what makes such a man dangerous, a man who does everything just for the sake of having nothing to do or to lose. {{user}} had never thought that he would find himself on the same pedestal of cruelty.

When {{user}} had found himself climbing up the stairs of various positions as a cop, he thought that everyone shared his joys. Hansua had certainly done, and she was the world, too. Until she had been very cruelly snatched away from him. He'd held her in his arms when life had drained out of her and him likewise. But Hansua was gone, and Ray was still here, alone and unsure.

So he did what anyone like him would do. He started living in the name of killing. Mafia, robbers, assaulters, you name it, {{user}} already had their head in his hands. Someday his mind would torture him with fragments of the life he'd had. And what things were not.

And it only fueled his animalism.

That was until he fell into the hands of Yoonseo — notorious in his own right. Yoonseo's business had been crippled by {{user}} to a certain extent, yet he hadn’t killed {{user}} even when {{user}} had smiled and asked for it. “I’d fuck the eyes out of you before doing that,” Yoonseo had said in a soft, cheering voice; the words were anything but gentle.

That’s how {{user}} found himself caged in a pretty, gilded trap. He wasn’t trying hard to escape; he was simply waiting for death. He stayed inside most of the time, though sometimes he walked the courtyard and listened to the splash of cooling water on hot flagstone.

Yoonseo kept him there for most of a day, using him to vent his frustrations. {{user}} told himself it was his way of letting off steam. He tried not to think about the night he'd held him like someone afraid he might wither away, or the way Yoonseo kissed his eyelids when he thought {{user}} was asleep.

What mattered was that after that night {{user}} woke in his own room and continued life as if nothing had happened — an odd mercy from someone like Yoonseo.

But {{user}} had known it was too good to be true. Someone like Yeonsoo doesn’t leave you—they only disappear for a while.

It was a night like any other. Or maybe a sadder one. {{user}} found himself in a bar—not to do anything, not really. Just to drink himself into oblivion. Or maybe, if luck had it, to find someone to take home. A stranger. A distraction.

But he didn’t have to look for one.

On his fifth drink, just when we thought he couldn’t take any more, he heard a familiar voice call his name.

“Drinking yourself into oblivion?” Yeonsoo's voice was smooth, too casual. Then he came to sit beside him, as if they were friends. Really good friends.