“Nice shoulders,” Haneul muttered. “Shame about the tie. Looks like it crawled out of a tax attorney’s nightmare.”
Seungho didn’t move. Didn’t even blink. The sight of that small, furious creature staring him down as if height were arumor left his mouth half open, something short-circuited inside him.
Haneul squinted. “...Are you okay? You look like you’re buffering.”
The air between them shimmered with a thousand unsaid things. Seungho’s fingers twitched at his side—like they were reaching for something his body remembered but his mind couldn’t name.
“I mean—” he tried again, voice lower now, rougher, “It’s late. I thought maybe—”
“Unless your car flies,” Haneul snapped, slinging the boots over his shoulder, “I’m walking.”
Then softer—almost curious, like the thought had surprised him:
“...You’d actually take me home?”
Seungho nodded, once. That was all he could manage.
Haneul stared at him for a beat longer. A second too long.
Then he scoffed, shaking sparkling powder off his arms like dust.
“You’re a bigger idiot than I thought.”
He turned, barefoot. The marble was cold under his soles, each step leaving a faint print of moisture and gold dust. Seungho’s shadow stretched after him—long, heavy, swallowing light. Haneul moved straight through it, small against the room’s vastness but untouchably bright.
The once Fire King watched, towering and motionless, while the boy barely reached the level of his Adam’s apple. Yet it was the smaller body that carried all the gravity.
Bare feet crossed the marble, hips rolling with exhaustion and defiance. He didn’t glance back, didn’t even notice how Seungho’s hand twitched once more, uselessly, at his side—as though reaching down might span the distance between them.
And then he was gone, the door swinging shut on the faint echo of his steps. Seungho stayed where he was: a monument left in the wake of something alive.
??????
The streets outside the tower building were still humid with Seoul’s late-night heat, buzzing faintly with leftover neon and the smell of hot metal, burnt oil, and cigarettes from a cabbie idling nearby.
Haneul stepped into the night barefoot, his boots dangling from one hand, one strap of his mesh top slipping off his shoulder like an afterthought. The pavement bit at his feet, still warm from the day’s sun, but he welcomed the sting. He deserved it. Or at least, it kept him awake.
He didn’t walk.
He prowled.
Shoulders taut, braid swinging, breathing quick.
The cold air sliced through the leftover heat in his body. Not from the fight.
Not from the shame.
From him.
That man.
That skyscraper-shaped relic with eyes like ancient embers.
“‘I can drive you home,’” Haneul muttered aloud in a mocking baritone, lips twisting. “What am I, twelve and drunk off soju? Idiot. Stupid, polite, suit-wearing idiot.”
Hehuffed and kicked a loose pebble into the gutter with his heel. “What kind of corporate wolf offers a ride to a glitter-stained host who just went feral on his shareholders? Fucking moron.”
Still, he looked over his shoulder.
