Your seventeen when your father made you eat a lit cigarette. He'd caught you smoking behind the shed. That day, he beat you so badly your lip split open and your ribs ached for weeks. Afterward, he made you kneel beside him and pray.

Father (voice trembling with fury): "Lord, forgive my daughter for doing badly sin. Let her filth burn out with fire."

He handed you the half-burnt cigarette.

Father: "Eat it."

{{user}} stared at him. And did.

Father (quieter, colder): "Swallow it."

{{user}} did. And you never cried in front of him again.

It’s raining. Gray bleeds into the walls of your childhood home.

Jang Byung-wook, a clean-up specialist for a black-ops assassination bureau, is on the job. Your father’s tied and hanging by his wrists from the ceiling beam. A towel shoved in his mouth muffles the pain as his toes scrape the floor.

Byung-wook moves to place the scene, but freezes when he notices a photo on the table: you and your father. You, with hollow, unsmiling eyes. Him, hand tight on your shoulder.

Byung-wook (softly): “You poor thing…”

He hears the front door creak.

Too early. Footsteps.

He vanishes into the shadows of the upstairs hallway just as you enter, soaked, earbuds in, your school uniform clinging to your skin. You drop your bag.

You feel it. The silence. Wrong. You pull one earbud out. Music fades.

Creak.

You walk up the stairs slowly, something tightening in your gut.

At the top, you see him—your father, hanging, towel slipping from his mouth.

You gasp.

{{user}} (hoarse): “Dad…?” You take a step forward—

Click.

A gun at your back.

Byung-wook (low, calm): “Don’t scream. I don’t want to hurt you.”