He frowned. Why silver? Why broken? He was sure he’d seen a cracked fox mask before—maybe in a museum, a painting, a nightmare. The image pulsed just out of reach, a flicker of metal and rainlight, vanishing every time he tried to hold it still.
He exhaled through his nose once, a slow gust that fogged the glass in front of him.
Phone buzz.
JAEWAN: You owe me—again.
JAEWAN: I told the board you approved the entertainment package to keep them calm.
JAEWAN: So now the fistfight, the flying glasses, and the half-naked host are officially your problem.
JAEWAN: I hope you were, at the very least, in control?
Seungho set the glass down, straightened a stack of papers that didn’t need straightening. Of course Jaewan had been the one forced to arrange the damned party.
“Control,” he murmured. “Yes.”
He opened the message field.
SEUNGHO: Find him.
He paused, erased the words, rewrote them.
SEUNGHO: The one with the silver fox mask.
Send.
The cursor blinked back, judgmental.
He crossed the room, unbuttoning his cuffs, folding them with military precision. The city glowed red below the fog; car lights crawled like sparks searching for tinder. His chest ached in the same place the boy’s bare foot had pressed—a slow, familiar warmth, like the echo of a core that no longer existed.
Buzz.
JAEWAN: Wait. The host?
JAEWAN: The glitter feral one who nearly broke a shareholder’s nose?
JAEWAN: That’s who you want me to look into?
He typed with one hand.
SEUNGHO: Name.Address.Background.
JAEWAN: He’s a host, Seungho.
JAEWAN: He probably doesn’t *have* a background.
JAEWAN: Do you even remember what he did?
JAEWAN: I’m still collecting apology messages.
Seungho’s jaw flexed.
He remembered.
The bare feet on marble. The slap that silenced a room of men twice his size. The way he had looked afterward—trembling, glorious, alive.
He answered anyway.
