He dropped his backpack by the door. His body was trembling now that it was allowed to. He went straight to the bathroom because he didn’t know where else to fall apart.
He turned on the light — harsh, too clean — and stared at himself in the mirror: the dark bloom on his cheekbone, the red down his neck, the small, stunned boy that still lived under all that defiance. Then he shut the mirror’s light off again.
He stepped into the bathtub — empty, cold porcelain against his legs — and curled there, knees drawn up, one arm folded around his middle as if to hold himself inside his own skin. The sound of his breathing filled the room. It was enough to prove he hadn’t died.
??????
By the time Seungho stepped into the vestibule of the penthouse, the hallway was yawning with silence.
It was a little past 11 p.m. The elevators had groaned up slow, as if protesting the hour, and the automatic lights in the corridor had flickered with that faint fluorescent fatigue that belonged to long buildings and longer days. He wore his coat still, the collar turned up.
In his left hand was a white paper bag — the kind folded twice at the top with care — carrying ????, candied walnuts lacquered in brown syrup and sesame, still warm from a stall he passed on his way home. He’d thought of Haneul the moment he saw them.
The apartment door clicked open with the soft hush of modern engineering. He stepped inside, pulled the door closed behind him, and turned to kick off his shoes—
—and saw the blood.
Threedroplets. Small. Crimson. Drying at the edges.
It took a second for it to register. Not sauce. Not ink. Not the errant track of a broken pen.
The smell of sandalwood and paint still clung to the air — faint proof that the place had been shared, that it had known laughter once that week.
Seungho’s body moved before his mind did. The paper bag slipped from his fingers and hit the floor with a soft, muffled thump. Walnuts scattered like bones across the marble. He stepped over them, heartbeat accelerating. The place was quiet. Not just still — wrong.
He opened the bathroom door with a kind of terrible certainty already in his lungs.
There, in the bathtub — empty, bone-white — was Haneul.
Curled on his side, arms wrapped around himself like a child in the womb. His braid hung limp, the end frayed and red where the strands were stained. There was a crusted ribbon of blood across the nape of his neck, the skin torn like something had snagged it. One cheek bore a rising bruise, livid against the milk of his skin. His palms were raw. His eyes were open.
He wasn’t crying. That was worse.
Seungho stepped forward and dropped to his knees beside the tub. “Haneul,” he said, breathless. Not a question. Not a reprimand. Just his name — as if it could be a spell, as if it could undo time.
Haneul blinked, slow. His lips parted, but no sound came out.
Seungho reached for him. His hand hovered just above Haneul’s shoulder before it landed, careful as prayer.
“Can you move?” Seungho asked. “Are you hurt?”
That made Haneul laugh — a dry, broken sound, hoarse like he’d swallowed fire. “I bit him,” he said, voice cracking. “He bled more than I did.”
Seungho stilled.
His hand tightened on Haneul’s shoulder to anchor. He let out a breath through his nose, eyes scanning the mess of blood and skin and silence. He didn’t ask who. He knew.
“I’ll kill him,” he said softly, too soft. Like a secret shared between wolves.
“No,” Haneul said, shutting his eyes. “He’s already empty. Killing him would be… merciful.”
Seungho rose. Moved to the cupboard with a fluid, precise economy, like a man preparing for surgery. He took out the antiseptic, gauze, a pair of scissors. Wet a cloth. Returned. He slipped his coat off without thinking, draped it over the closed toilet lid, and knelt again.
He reached for the braid first, fingers hovering.
“It’s tangled,” he murmured.
Haneul stiffened. “Don’t.”
