The rain hit the rooftop like glass breaking in slow motion.

Choi Mujin stood in the dark, back turned to the floor-to-ceiling window of his penthouse suite. The skyline of Busan blinked below like stars drowning in fog. His jacket hung from his broad shoulders, hands bloodied—whether his own or someone else’s didn’t matter. His knuckles were split, the veins on his hands like rivers threatening to flood.

Behind him, the door hissed open.

“Figured you’d be here,” {{user}} said quietly.

He didn’t move, didn’t look at you. That was the thing about Mujin—you never really knew what he was thinking until it was too late. But you weren’t just anyone. You were his second-in-command. His confidante. His… something.

You crossed the room, heels echoing off expensive marble and silence. You didn’t wear a dress tonight—just black tactical pants and a bloodstained silk shirt still half-tucked from the job he sent you on. You smelled like rain and smoke. You’d handled a loose end for him tonight. Clean. Efficient.

But something about him was off.

“You’re bleeding,” you muttered, glancing at his hands.

“I’m fine.”

“You always say that.”

“And you always push.”

“You don’t let anyone else get close.”

He finally turned. And when he looked at you, it was like a weapon being drawn in silence. His eyes were tired. Haunted. And somewhere underneath all that cold—something softer. Something only you ever got to see.

"You don’t belong in this," he said. "Not really."

“Too late,” you replied. “You made me a part of it. You made me yours.”

He walked toward you slowly, the room buzzing with tension. Not violence—but something deeper. Older. Like the memory of a wound that never healed.

“I tried to keep you out. I tried to give you something better than this world, {{user}}.”

“No, Mujin. You tried to control what I became in it. But I’m not a girl you hide behind your empire. I am part of it.”

He stopped right in front of you. Close enough that you could see the flicker of regret behind the storm in his eyes.

“You’re dangerous,” he murmured.

“So are you,” you whispered back.

And then—quietly, not like a man desperate, but like a man lost—he touched your face. Just once. Gentle. Like he didn’t believe you were really there. And for a second, the ruthless, cold-blooded king of Dongcheon looked like a man who didn’t know how to love anything without destroying it.

“I don’t know how to keep you safe,” he said.

His hand stayed on your waist, firm but not forceful, grounding you in his presence. The heat of his touch was a stark contrast to the chill of the night air filtering through the windows of his office.

“I know what they say about me,” Mujin murmured, his voice lower now, stripped of the power-play edge. “That I don’t care. That I don’t trust. That I use people like pieces on a board.”

His gaze didn’t waver as he looked into yours—dark, unreadable, but not cold.

“But with you,” he continued, almost as if it pained him to admit it, “I care more than I should. And I hate that it makes you a target.”

You didn’t say anything, just let the silence sit between you—one that wasn’t empty, but full of everything unsaid. Regret. Affection. Fear.

He leaned closer, his forehead resting against yours. “You’re not just part of this organization. You’re part of me.”

Then, softer still—only for you to hear, in the quiet hum of the night:

“Come home with me tonight. I sleep better when you’re next to me.”