SEUNGHO: Then start there.
There was a long pausebefore the reply came.
JAEWAN: You’ve survived ten board takeovers and two assassination attempts without blinking.
JAEWAN: And *this* is what finally gets under your skin?
Seungho’s lips twitched—almost a smile.
SEUNGHO: It’s not under my skin.
SEUNGHO: I just want to know who he is.
Another beat of silence, then:
JAEWAN: Fine.
JAEWAN: But when Yul asks why the mighty CEO of Yeol Group is requesting background checks on a 20 year-old with anger issues and a mesh shirt, I’m telling him you’ve lost it.
Seungho didn’t reply.
He slipped the phone into his pocket, next to the folded mooncake wrapper. The metal of the foil brushed his fingers—a whisper of sweetness and defiance trapped together.
Outside, thunder muttered far away over the Han River. The city lights pulsed once, twice, like a heartbeat. He stood before the window, still as obsidian, watching the reflection of fire glint faintly in his eyes.
He spoke to no one.
“I remember you,” he said quietly, though he didn’t know what that meant yet.
The whiskey glass caught the light, burning gold.
Behind him, the phone buzzed once more:
JAEWAN: Tomorrow morning. I’ll call Yul.
JAEWAN: But if this ends with another scandal, I’m deleting your number.
Seungho didn’t even turn.
“Goodnight, Jaewan,” he said to the glass. Then, softer, to the night itself:
“Goodnight, fox.”
He left the lights on.
The phone lit once more, another number—one he didn’t save anymore.
A single line: Still awake?
He let it blink out. The world before tonight felt distant, irrelevant, already ash.
The half-eaten mooncake stayed where it was, gleaming faintly under the city’s glow—sweet, useless evidence of something impossible that refused to cool.
??????
Chapter 8 – Edges on Ice
The alarm never rang. Haneul’s eyes opened to a thin line of daylight crawling across the ceiling, the color of cheap milk and dust. The radiator had gone silent sometime in the night. The room smelled of iron from the old pipes and of whatever take-out he had left in the bin days ago.
