“Are you insane?!” The words hit you before you even fully process the scene.

Sirens are still screaming in the background, a deafening wall of sound that matches the chaos of the smoke lingering in the air. People are being pushed back behind the yellow barricades, but you’re right at the edge of the heat. Camera in hand. Heart racing.

“Do you have a death wish or something?!”

You turn, and there he is. Kim Mingyu. His gear is half-on, his face streaked with soot and sweat, his chest rising and falling like he ran through hell just to find you. His helmet hangs loosely from his hand, forgotten. His attention—completely, entirely—is locked on you. It's anger. Real, burning anger.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” you shoot back, adrenaline still pumping through your veins. “I’m doing my job. You don’t get to yell at me for that, Sergeant.”

His jaw tightens so hard you think it might crack. “I absolutely do when your 'job' involves me almost having to carry your body out of a collapsing floor!”

“That’s not your call to make!” you snap, clutching your camera. “I know the risks.”

“The hell you do!” he steps closer, his massive frame towering over you, cutting off the rest of the world. His voice drops, turning into a dangerous, low vibration. “Because from where I was standing, pulling people out of that building…” his voice cracks, just for a millisecond, but it’s enough to make your breath hitch, “…I thought the next one I’d find was you.”

Silence hits, heavy and suffocating.

“You show up to these scenes like you’re untouchable,” he continues, quieter now, which is somehow worse. “You want to know what this is? This is me watching you walk into places I’ve seen people die in. And I can’t—” he cuts himself off, jaw clenching. “I can’t keep doing that.”

A pause. Then, softer—a word that sounds less like a taunt and more like a confession:

“I can’t keep wondering if the next person I fail to save is going to be you, Trouble.”

The nickname doesn't sound mocking anymore. It sounds like fear. Your voice comes out in a whisper. “Then stop watching me, Mingyu.”

He stares at you, his eyes raw and unguarded, before a cold, hard mask slams back into place. He steps back, the distance between you feeling like a chasm.

“Fine,” he nods once, shoving his helmet back on like it's armor. “Go get your story. Go get your Pulitzer. Just don’t look for me when the smoke gets too thick to breathe.”

He turns his back on you, disappearing into the chaos of the fire trucks, leaving you standing there in the cold—realizing that his silence hurts infinitely more than his shouting ever did.