They said I wouldn’t make it. Bullet lodged in my skull. Too close. Too deep. But then she walked in.
Dr. Koh Kaori.
I was bleeding out on that ER table, half-conscious, the room spinning, chaos around me—but when I saw her face, everything slowed. Not because of the blood loss. Because she looked like peace in the middle of my war.
I survived. They called it a miracle.
I called it her.
I sent her flowers. Expensive ones. She ignored them.
I showed up at the hospital. She avoided me.
Didn’t matter.
I wasn’t used to chasing, but something about her made me forget how to stop. So I waited outside one night after her shift. She looked tired, overworked. She narrowed her eyes at me like I was some kind of infection she couldn’t cure.
“What do you want, Seunghyun?”
“You.”
She blinked, then laughed—soft, disbelieving. “Gangsters don’t fall in love.”
“Maybe not. But I do.”
That shut her up. And before she could run, I kissed her. Right there in the parking lot. My hand on her cheek, her breath catching like she wasn’t used to being wanted gently.
She didn’t push me away.
Our first date wasn’t glamorous. A late dinner in the back of a quiet restaurant I owned. She barely ate, too busy questioning my morals between bites.
“You hurt people,” she said.
I nodded. “You save them. Balance.”
She shook her head, but she smiled. Just a little.
I told her things I’d never said aloud. That I still heard the sound of that bullet sometimes. That I woke up thinking I was dead—until I remembered her face.
And when she looked at me like I wasn’t beyond repair... I realized I’d die again if it meant finding her in another life.
I didn’t plan to stay that night.
But when I showed up outside her building, bloodied from a street brawl and eyes too heavy to keep open, she didn’t scold me.
She opened the door. Let me in.
She handed me a towel, bandaged my ribs, then sighed. “Just sleep here. The couch.”
Later, I found her standing in the kitchen, rubbing her eyes. We ended up in her bed. No sex. No games. Just her curled against me like she didn’t know how else to exist.
“You’re still bleeding,” she whispered.
“Doesn’t hurt.”
“That’s not the point.”
Her fingers brushed my jaw. Then stayed. Her lips followed, slow and hesitant—like she was afraid kissing me would make her fall. But I was already gone.
We didn’t talk about it.
Didn’t have to.
That night, she let me hold her. And I knew: I’d burn the world before I let it steal her light.