The hallway lights flickered under the weight of dusk as Naya exited the operating room, sweat slicking her brow beneath her surgical cap. The smell of iodine and adrenaline still clung to her. The surgery had been brutal—an emergency trauma, a young boy injured in a roadside blast. Naya's hands trembled slightly, a cocktail of exhaustion and residual fear. She paused at the sink, water rushing over her fingers, her gaze locked on the silver band of light catching the corner of the mirror.
Nian.
He'd been brilliant. Fast, focused, and devastatingly calm. The kind of surgeon who became a myth inside hospital walls. Yet even amid the chaos of the OR, she'd felt it—his eyes finding her, trailing her every move. Like the scalpel in his hand, his gaze cut into her.
And she wasn't sure if it scared her or made her burn.
Naya dried her hands and pulled her coat tighter. The corridors of the hospital felt longer today, more cavernous. She needed air.
But the moment she pushed the door open and stepped into the quiet parking yard behind the hospital, she froze.
He was there.
Not Nian.
Someone else.
The man leaned against a dark sedan, arms folded, sleeves rolled up, exposing forearms that looked carved from marble. Tall, with broad shoulders, and a stance that said he didn't need permission to exist. His fitted black shirt clung to his body like it worshipped him. And then there were the glasses—thin-rimmed, elegant, sitting like art on his sculpted face. His hair was jet black, tousled in that effortless, intentional way. When he looked up, his eyes behind those glasses glinted like broken glass catching moonlight.
Naya blinked.
He smiled.
"Looking for someone?" His voice was smooth, accentless, but laced with something—seduction or mischief, she couldn't decide.
She stepped back instinctively.
"I'm sorry, do I… know you?" she asked.
Before he could answer, a voice cut in, sharp and immediate.
"Jun."
Nian.
He'd arrived at the entrance like a ghost summoned by history. His coat fluttered in the wind. The storm in his eyes wasn't masked this time. If Naya hadn't been watching so closely, she'd have missed the flicker of something ancient… painful.
Jun straightened, smiling wider. "Nian. You always did know how to ruin a dramatic entrance."
Naya looked between them. The air turned electric. There was no mistaking it now.
They knew each other.
Intimately.
Jun approached, slow and deliberate. "Still brooding, I see. Still trying to save the world one stitch at a time?"
Nian didn't respond. But his jaw clenched.
Jun finally turned to Naya. "He hasn't told you, has he?"
"Told me what?" she asked, her throat suddenly dry.
Jun's grin was wolfish. "That once upon a time, this perfect man of yours belonged to me."
Silence fell like a blade.
Naya's breath caught. Her mind spun.
Nian stepped forward. "Jun, don't—"
But Jun was already walking away, tossing one final glance over his shoulder. "Call me when you're tired of secrets, Naya."
---
The silence between Naya and Nian stretched long into the night. They sat in her two-roomed apartment, the air thick with everything unspoken.
"You were with him," she finally said, voice soft but shaking.
Nian exhaled. "A long time ago. We were in med school together. It was complicated."
"Complicated how?"
"He… Jun gets inside your head. He makes you feel like you're the center of the universe, and then he takes that world away. He's manipulative. Controlling. But I was young. I mistook obsession for love."
Naya stared at him, searching his face. "And now?"
"I'm not the same man I was back then. I swear to you, there's nothing between us anymore."
But the way Nian's voice cracked at the edge told her there were still embers buried deep. Not love, maybe—but memory. Heat.
She stood, pacing to the window. Her hands trembled again.
"I just… I need to breathe," she whispered.
Nian crossed the room slowly. When he reached her, he didn't speak. He just pulled her into his arms, his breath warm against her temple.
"I've made mistakes," he murmured. "But wanting you isn't one of them."
---
The week that followed was thick with tension. Jun was everywhere—suddenly volunteering with the medical alliance, offering to consult on trauma cases, slipping through corridors like a scent you couldn't wash off.
And every time Naya saw him, he smiled. The kind of smile that knew things. The kind that said, I was here first.
She hated how her pulse jumped.
Jun approached her one evening in the surgical lounge, holding a patient chart like it was an excuse.
"You have questions," he said.
"I don't want to talk about you and Nian."
Jun smirked. "But you should. Because if you don't understand where he came from, you'll never see where he's going."
She snapped the chart from his hand. "Is that supposed to be some cryptic warning?"
He leaned in, close enough for her to feel the warmth of his breath. "Just a reminder. Some ghosts don't stay buried."
---
That night, Naya found Nian alone on the hospital rooftop, sitting on the ledge with a cigarette unlit in his hand. He didn't smoke. She knew that.
But tonight, his hands were shaking too.
"He's trying to get in your head," Naya said softly, joining him.
Nian didn't look at her. "He already is."
She hesitated, then took the cigarette from his hand and tossed it over the edge.
"Then let's push him out together."
Nian turned, eyes heavy with unshed weight. "You should know… there was a time I thought I loved him. That scares me."
"Because you don't want to love a man?"
"No," Nian said quietly. "Because I don't want to love someone who hurt me that deeply again."
Their eyes locked.
And in that instant, the storm broke.
Nian kissed her.
Not softly.
It was fire and desperation, teeth and tongue, need and fear. He gripped her like a lifeline, like she was the only thing keeping him tethered to this world. She moaned against his mouth, her hands threading through his hair.
They stumbled back into her apartment, shedding layers like regrets. The foreplay was electric—his mouth trailing fire down her neck, his fingers tracing the swell of her hips. He worshipped her like a prayer, her body arching beneath his touch, her name a litany on his lips.
But even in the heat,
even as they moved as one, Naya felt it.
A shadow. Watching. Waiting.
Because Jun wasn't done.
And secrets don't stay buried forever.