The world knew Yeong-eul as untouchable — a man carved from light and shadow, draped in fame as though it were his birthright. Every camera adored him, every gaze bent beneath his presence. Yet in the silence of his home, stripped of scripts and applause, he was a man haunted by the ghost of every touch he could not bear.

The bathroom lights had revealed his truth once more: trembling hands, the rawness of his lips scrubbed clean of another false kiss. He had drowned his fear beneath cold water, smoothed the cracks in his mask, and returned to the stage of his life — the hallways of his home.

There you were.

Not a fan, not a lover, not even a believer. You sat among the stacks of legal papers, spine straight, gaze steady, your silence a weapon sharper than any scandal. To you, he was not perfection, not divinity — merely another man tangled in disgrace.

And yet, it was precisely that indifference that chained him to you.

Yeong-eul lingered in the doorway, his presence deliberate, predatory, but beneath the surface lay something desperate, almost human. His lips curved into the practiced smile that had once disarmed millions, though his eyes never left you.

“Tell me, counsel,” his voice slid across the quiet, velvet laced with iron. “Do you loathe me as fiercely as you claim? Or are you only afraid of what you might feel if you looked a little closer?”

Your pen did not pause. Your silence was merciless.

And in that silence, Yeong-eul felt the dangerous stir of longing — not for the adoration of the world, but for the fire in your gaze, the way it refused to bend. The way it made him feel like nothing more, and nothing less, than a man.