He shook his head suddenly, forcing the thoughts out. Forget it. Forget about him. You're wasting time.
With one swift motion, Rin ripped the charcoal-black hydrogel mask from his face and tossed it to the floor of the shower with a loud slap.
Phew.
A sharp breath through clenched teeth. The steam was making him dizzy, but it wasn't just the heat. His thoughts were spiraling, threatening to get louder than he could control.
He stepped out, water still dripping from his lean frame. Toweling off mechanically, he walked to the mirror. His reflection stared back — bruised, exhausted, shirtless, but sharp-eyed.
A flicker of something passed in his gaze.
I need to find out who the hell you are, Rin thought, eyes narrowing slightly. Because people like you don't just "appear." Not in the middle of shootouts. Not wearing $8,000 crocodile shoes. Not dropping cigarettes that smell like death, sex, and war.
You left your scent behind like a trail.
And I'm going to follow it.
No matter where it leads.
No matter what waits at the end.
Click.
The door shut with a soft thud behind Rin as he carefully balanced the tray of food in one hand. The hallway's silence sealed out like a vacuum.
"Ah, thank you," he'd said to the bellboy, flashing a polite, almost automatic smile — one of those smooth, diplomatic smiles he'd mastered over the years. Enough to be forgettable. Disarming. Neutral.
Now inside, his expression dropped the second the lock clicked in place.
He walked across the dimly lit room, the soft lights of Moscow bleeding in through the tall glass windows. Setting the tray on the table, he pulled the silver dome off the plate. A steak. Bread rolls. Roasted potatoes. Basic room service — nothing suspicious. The scent was normal. Still hot. Good.
"Glad my stuff didn't get destroyed," Rin muttered under his breath, eyes flicking toward the pristine suitcase set neatly near the sofa. They didn't touch it. Not visibly, anyway.
He opened his laptop, fingers moving with a methodical precision that only came from muscle memory — tapping through encrypted protocols, bypassing mirrored firewalls. He didn't need to think. His hands remembered what his mind couldn't focus on yet.
I need to get in touch with Kim before he starts talking plenty.
As if on cue, the screen flickered to life with a secured video call. The man on the other end was already mid-sip of coffee, dressed in a crisp black turtleneck, hair slicked neatly to the side, eyes hidden behind frameless glasses that glinted from the screen's light.
"You're late," Kim said, casually, like Rin hadn't nearly died tonight.
"Oh my Buddha..." Rin exhaled, rubbing the bridge of his nose. "Why didn't you send someone safer for me to go undercover as?"
Kim smirked behind his mug. "If you're going to meet high-profile people, you ought to disguise as someone important enough to get kidnapped."
"You sound like you knew what happened." Rin arched a brow, narrowing his eyes. He wasn't joking. Not even a little.
Kim blinked, lips twitching. "Nonsense. Of course not. I simply believed you'd make it back alive. You're such an excellent agent." He paused for dramatic effect. "And look — you're alive."
"Barely," Rin muttered, rotating his wrist with a wince. The skin was bruised in a deep, irritated red — evidence of the cuffs that had held him down under that man's weight.
"So tell me something," Rin leaned in, voice quieter now, eyes sharp and cold. "You said someone from Gazenergo was supposed to pick up Choi Beom-gyu."
Kim nodded, setting his coffee aside. "That's right. We made official arrangements."
"Are you sure it was the right person you contacted at Gazenergo?" Rin's tone didn't accuse — it cut. Like a surgeon's scalpel.
Kim didn't flinch. "Yes. Very positive. We verified three times. There were official documents — digital and analog. Everything matched." Then his tone shifted slightly. More cautious. "You weren't showing up. The guy from Gazenergo waited almost two hours. He tried contacting you, but we barely managed to block the call before it reached your line. You said your flight was delayed, right?"
Rin nodded slowly. "Yeah."
"Then that's probably why you missed the real employee. And get this — apparently, another Korean man showed up earlier, claiming he was Choi Beom-gyu. Identical name, Korean passport, forged company credentials. Looks like the group who intercepted you staged it from the very beginning. The people who met you at the airport were fake."
Rin leaned back in his chair, eyes cast toward the ceiling. "That makes a lot of sense..." he muttered. Everything started going wrong the second I boarded that plane. The looks. The redirection at customs. The car waiting at a different terminal... It had all been so smooth he hadn't questioned it. That was their trap.
His gaze dropped back to the screen. "Anyway, I encountered a dangerous killer at the scene tonight. Not part of the group. A wildcard."
Kim raised a brow, intrigued now. "What kind of killer?"
Rin hesitated for a beat. Then leaned forward again. "I don't know who he is. No name. No ID. But he's highly trained. Faster than I expected. Stronger than I've ever dealt with — by a lot. Precision like a scalpel, and his presence—" Rin paused, pressing his fingers together like a steeple beneath his chin, thinking. "It was like… being watched by something that wasn't supposed to be human."
Kim's expression slowly flattened. "Scarlet, that's poetic but not useful. What did he look like?"
Rin's brow twitched.
"I didn't see his face. It was dark. He moved too fast."
Kim scoffed. "You're asking me to find a ghost. That's impossible."
"I'm not asking you to find a ghost," Rin said sharply. "I'm telling you there's a highly dangerous unknown variable roaming Moscow who knew exactly where to find me. He neutralized a squad of armed men alone. And he wasn't trying to save me. I was just in the way."
Kim stayed quiet this time.
Rin looked down at his wrist again. The swelling hadn't gone down.
Rin tapped a finger on the desk. "Do you think Choi Beom-gyu had enemies in Moscow?"
Kim exhaled slowly. "If he didn't before, he does now. Gazenergo's latest contract replaced half a dozen energy moguls and pissed off three major cartels. He might've become a walking target the second the ink dried."
"So someone could've sent a cleaner — a third party — to make sure he never arrived," Rin muttered, mostly to himself.
"Scarlet," Kim said, more seriously now. "You need to be careful. This isn't a local gang job. This is international-level sabotage. If someone embedded a plant before you even got to the airport, then they're not just one step ahead — they're inside someone's network."
"I'm not running scared," Rin said. "I just want to know who the hell he is. And why he was there."
Kim gave him a long look. "Just don't make it personal."
Too late.
The screen flickered again as Kim leaned back in his chair, eyes squinting in that classic I'm-about-to-mess-with-your-solitude look.
"Anyway... I know you like working alone, Scarlet." Kim's voice had that slightly smug, smooth corporate-meets-black-ops tone — half boss, half frenemy. "But not this time. You've already gotten into too much trouble in less than 24 hours. Which is... impressive, honestly, even for you."
Rin's brow twitched. Here we go.
"Since I'm such a worried boss — and a deeply affectionate friend, obviously — we're assigning you a partner." Kim continued, now swirling the last inch of his coffee. "He's someone who knows his way around. Russia is his playground — he understands how money moves, where the power hides, and most importantly, how to survive in this cold, mafia-scented jungle."
Rin blinked once. Slowly. Then leaned back into his chair with a sharp inhale through the nose, a look of pure exhaustion crossing his face.
"You never mentioned anything about a partner before, Kim." His voice was flat. Not angry — just done.
"I didn't think I'd need to." Kim shrugged with no remorse whatsoever. "Then you got kidnapped. So... surprise. He'll find you first. Two days from now, tops. We'll send you his file when the time is right." He glanced at something off-screen. "When you get it, take a good look. Don't judge him too quickly."
"No promises." Rin muttered.
"Oh, and—" Kim clapped his hands together like an HR rep about to drop a compliance bomb. "Tomorrow, you'll be meeting with the officials heading the Zalovsk Petrochemical Development Facility project. Big deal. Very Russian. Very dirty. Study up. We uploaded the briefing packet. Good luck, and—" He grinned like the devil. "Byeeee!"
Click.
The call cut.
Rin stared at the now-dark screen, lips slightly parted like he couldn't believe the audacity of that little goodbye.
"Worried boss and friend?" he muttered. "Right. Maybe next time show your worry by not sending me into a live wire death trap disguised as a flight."
A second later, his phone buzzed. A soft chime.
File received.
Sender: [KIM - COMMAND].
He opened it.
"What in the..."
A sharp exhale left his lungs as the file loaded. The scroll bar didn't just shrink — it vanished.
600 pages.
Not summaries. Not bullet points. Dense, bureaucratic hell. Technical blueprints. Maps. Shady financial transfers buried under fake subsidiaries. Surveillance photos labeled with timestamped Cyrillic. Employee lists. Politicians. Lobbyists. Multiple languages.
His eyes glazed.
"Kim...I swear to God."
Rin groaned and dragged a hand down his face. The cold from his palm didn't do much to wipe the exhaustion pressing behind his temples. He turned toward the tray of food still untouched — the scent of warm steak now a kind of cruel background music.
He looked at the bed.
Then the food.
Then back at the screen with its unholy stack of pages.
"They look so near... but so far."
He stared at the meal like it had personally offended him by not jumping into his mouth.
His stomach growled violently in protest.
"Fuck it. I'm starving." He muttered, finally getting up.
As he crossed over to the table, something about the silence of the room hit harder than it should have. Now that the adrenaline was gone, and the voices were off, the place felt too quiet. Cold. Even with the heater on, the chill from outside seemed to crawl up from the floorboards, like the city itself was trying to get under his skin.
He sat down, cut into the steak. Chewed slowly.
Eyes still on the laptop.
Zalovsk facility, huh?
He knew that name. Not from recent briefings — from deeper files. Dirty ones. Buried ones. The kind of project no one wanted to be connected to unless they had offshore accounts and zero conscience.
He'd have to memorize names. Faces. Maps. Fast.
And now there was this new "partner."
He didn't like partners. They talked too much. Or too little. They got in the way, or worse — they didn't see things he saw. People like Rin didn't partner. They shadowed. They cut through. They vanished.
So whoever this guy was, he better be sharp. Or quiet.
Or both.
Rin stabbed another piece of meat, chewing mechanically.
His eyes flicked once more to the laptop screen.
600 pages.
He sighed.
"Maybe I should've just died back there."
12:30 PM – Gazenergo Headquarters, Central Moscow
"Mr. Choi, I heard about what happened. Are you okay?" The overly polished man leaned in, oozing concern like oil from a cracked pipe. His cologne was too sweet. His smile too trained. "Truly, I must apologize that you had to go through something like that in our country."
Rin gave him a polite, dismissive smile. "Oh, no, it's fine... I should've been more careful."
He glanced at his watch.
12:30 PM.
The meeting was scheduled for noon. Thirty full minutes late. Still no sign of the CEO.
He scanned the room again.
The droning voices. The overdone suits. The half-hearted jokes about foreign investments and "Asian efficiency." The sound of cheap coffee being poured into expensive cups.
"I cannot sit through another minute of this manufactured bullshit."
Rin stood, straightening his blazer.
"Excuse me for a moment."
He didn't wait for a response.
His shoes echoed on the marble floors as he slipped into the hallway. He moved fast, quiet — not fleeing, just... evacuating. He needed air. He needed less noise. He needed—
"DO I LOOK LIKE I CARE? WHERE IS THE CEO? ISN'T HE SUPPOSED TO BE HERE BEFORE TWELVE? WHAT THE HELL DO YOU MEAN YOU'RE BRINGING SOMEONE ELSE?!"
A man's voice echoed from around the corridor, barking into a phone like it owed him blood.
Rin's steps slowed.
Another Gazenergo employee? No... I memorized every single one of their faces.
He ducked into the washroom.
The marble interior reflected the sharp line of his jaw, the faded bruising on his wrist, and the slow fatigue circling his eyes like smoke rings. He sighed and ran cold water over his hands.
"So the CEO's bailing out. Of course. Probably too afraid to show his face. All my prep work — all those hours choking on technical documents just to sit through PowerPoint diplomacy — for nothing."
He looked up at the mirror. Water still running.
"When this mission is over, I'm mailing Kim my eyeballs. He can shove them into the next agent he wants to babysit oil tycoons."
Then —
Click.
Click.
Footsteps. Expensive. Unapologetic. Louder than they should be in a room built for silence.
Rin froze.
He didn't even have to turn around to feel it.
The voice came like velvet draped over a knife:
"Da net, ya prishol, prosto tut takaya skukotishcha... Chestno, sdokhnut' mozhno."
(Nah, I just showed up. It's so damn boring here... Honestly, I could die.)
Rin's spine locked.
That voice. That damn voice.
"Yesli ty pytayesh'sya spikhnut' na menya uborku — ya dumal, ya uzhe i tak dostatochno sdelal."
(If you're trying to dump cleanup on me — I figured I already did more than enough.)
Then a low, knowing laugh.
That scent.
The tobacco. Earthy. Rich. Not the kind sold in stores. The kind people remember. The kind that stains everything — skin, memory, moments.
He wasn't even smoking.
But the air around him carried that scent like it was part of his DNA.
Rin turned slowly, breath caught at the edge of his chest like prey frozen in tall grass.
The bathroom door opened behind him with a soft creak.
He stepped in.
A white fur coat draped over his tall frame like some aristocratic warlord from a forgotten empire. His presence devoured the room — not with loudness, but weight. He wasn't loud. He never had to be.
It was him.
Rin didn't speak. He barely breathed.
"Why? Why here of all places? Is he stalking me? Or is this just some massive coincidence? No. This is a move. A play. A game I didn't even realize I was part of."
"Mm... ladno, ya tebe potom nabyeru." (Mm... fine, I'll call you later.)
He ended the call without taking his eyes off the mirror. Or Rin.
Rin glanced sidelong.
He caught the man's reflection in the marble tile — lazy smirk, eyes like ice submerged in honey. Relaxed. Dangerous. Familiar.
"Considering how rich he is... I guess I shouldn't be surprised. Only men like him show up in fur coats at executive meetings like it's a casual Tuesday."
Rin reached for the tap. Time to vanish.
Get out. Now. Before it escalates.
Then —
"Mr. Choi — not even a 'hi' for me? That's not how a first encounter should go."
The man's English was flawless. Every word smooth, dipped in untraceable accent.
Rin froze, palm still on the tap.
"I never knew Koreans were this rude."
Nope.
Nope nope nope.
Rin pushed out of the bathroom without looking back, heart thudding quietly in his chest.
"I need to get away from that walking skyscraper. Now. He's too much. Everything about him is too loud even when he's silent. That's not just a killer — that's a predator built for rooms like this."
His phone buzzed.
A message from Kim.
Subject line:
"Partner Incoming. Memorize."
Rin opened the file. It was loading.
Slow. Agonizingly slow.
"Of all times... of course the hotel Wi-Fi would act possessed right now."
He tapped again. Buffering. Still loading.
And then —
That presence.
Right behind him.
Like a shadow that detached itself from light and followed on instinct.
"Oh... is that me?"
The man said, glancing at the screen. Like it was nothing. Like he already knew.
Rin didn't move.
He didn't have to see the screen. He already knew who it was.
His new "partner."
The man who saved him. The man who hurt him. The man who laughed like endings were entertainment.
Rin swallowed, his hand tightening around the phone.
"I'm going to kill Kim."