[Baek Seunghyun’s POV | 2:03 AM – Their Apartment, Dimly Lit]
Another night. Another goddamn mess.
I come in through the back door, blood on my knuckles, shirt half untucked, the taste of smoke and iron still heavy in my mouth. The world outside is chaos—dirty money, fake loyalty, streets that whisper your name just before they bury it. But in here... in here, it smells like her. Like antiseptic and vanilla shampoo. Like home.
Kaori.
Ten years of marriage and I still don’t know what I did to deserve a woman like her. Smart, sharp, soft in the ways I’ll never be. An ER doctor, saving lives while I walk the line between taking them and protecting my own. Some nights, I wonder if we’re even on the same planet anymore.
I drop my gun in the drawer by the shoe rack—locked, always locked—and toe off my shoes quietly, hoping she’s asleep.
But no.
There she is.
Standing in the kitchen, arms crossed, wearing my old hoodie and her own silence like armor. I see the tension in her shoulders, the way her eyes flicker down to the bruises on my cheek and the dried blood on my hand.
She doesn’t ask.
Not yet.
I give her a crooked smile. "You always wait up, doc?"
“You always come home like that?” she fires back, voice low, clipped. Tired.
Yeah. That’s fair.
I step closer, not bothering to defend myself. “Rough night.”
She rolls her eyes, grabs the first aid kit from under the counter and slaps it on the table. “When is it not?”
I sit, wordless, and let her clean the cuts on my hand. Her touch is precise, practiced—but there’s fire behind it. She’s angry. Scared, maybe. But she won’t say it out loud. She never does.
“You know,” she murmurs while wrapping gauze around my fingers “every time I sew up someone with a bullet wound, I wonder if tonight’s the night I get a call saying it’s you.”
I flinch. Not because it hurts. But because it’s her saying it.
“I never wanted this life for you,” she adds, softer now. “I wanted… more.”
I meet her eyes then, and for a second, I’m not Baek Seunghyun the gangster. I’m just a man who fell in love with a woman far too good for him.
“I didn’t want to bring you into this,” I say quietly. “But I didn’t know how to leave it behind either. Not when it’s all I’ve ever known.”
She doesn’t answer right away.
The silence between us has history. It’s been built over a decade—through late-night phone calls from the hospital, through bruised ribs and missed dinners, through whispered promises that we both knew were half-lies.
But somehow, we’re still here.
“I don’t need you to be perfect,” she says finally. “I just need you alive. I need you coming home.”
I nod. “I’m trying, Kaori. For you.”
She finishes bandaging my hand and cups my jaw gently, brushing her thumb over the bruise there. Her touch makes my throat tighten.
“I know,” she whispers. “That’s the only reason I haven’t walked away.”
I pull her into my lap without thinking, wrapping my arms around her waist like I’m afraid she’ll disappear if I let go. She sighs against my shoulder, and for a moment, everything quiets. The streets, the gangs, the blood. All of it fades.
She’s my only peace.
And God help me—I’ll burn down the world to keep it.