Chapter 1 — A Nightmareful Night, 1
The restaurant was dim, lit by amber lamps that dangled too low, their yellow halos bleeding over scratched wooden tables. A piano track whispered from hidden speakers, endlessly looping the same hollow melody, as if someone had searched "romantic dinner" online and let it play on repeat.
The place smelled of cheap perfume and recycled grease. Couples sat in booths with their hands brushing over menus, trying to pretend they weren't listening to the fight brewing two tables from the kitchen.
Jin Soowhi sat in silence, his back straight, hands folded on the table, jaw locked in a soldier's composure. He was staring at the woman across from him — the woman he used to call girlfriend.
She looked polished, deliberate. A cream blouse that shimmered faintly under the lamps, hair curled in a way she never used to bother with, lips glossed to catch the light. Perfume drifted across the table like a trap. She had dressed herself up in memory, a parody of the girl he once thought he loved.
Her eyes darted from his face to the table to his hands, then back up. A dance rehearsed too many times in front of the mirror.
"Jin," she said softly, brushing condensation off her untouched glass of water, "I… I'm glad you came. I didn't think you would."
He didn't move. His eyes stayed fixed on her with a soldier's cold stare, unblinking, a wall she couldn't climb.
"You begged," he said flatly. His voice was sharp and tired all at once. "You said it was urgent. I wanted to hear what kind of urgent excuse you'd make."
She flinched, lips twitching, but smoothed her expression quickly. A small, calculated smile tugged at her mouth — thin, strained, designed to charm.
"I know you hate me," she said, voice breaking at just the right places. "And I deserve that. I do. But I've had time to think, Jin. About us. About what I did. And I… I want to fix things. I want to try again. Please."
The word please slid across the table like oil.
Jin tilted his head, eyes narrowing. Silence stretched, sharp enough that she shifted in her seat. Her fingers squeezed the glass harder, the condensation streaking down her knuckles.
"Fix things," he repeated, his tone dark.
"Yes," she rushed out, leaning forward, as though momentum could save her. "I was stupid, I was young, I didn't know what I wanted. But I see it now. You're the one who was always there for me. You worried about me even when you were deployed. You cared when no one else did. I threw that away, but I want to—"
She froze. Because Jin started laughing.
Not loud. Not cruel. Worse — a quiet, bitter laugh that scraped out of him like broken glass. The kind of laugh that told you the joke wasn't funny at all, but he had no other way left to breathe.
"What's so funny?" she asked, her voice trembling.
Jin leaned back in his chair, the ghost of a smile pulling at his lips. It wasn't warmth. It was teeth.
"You," he said. "You begging to fix things. After what you did."
"I said I was sorry—"
The word hit him like gasoline. His fist tightened on the table. In a heartbeat, he wasn't looking at her. He was back there.
Mud. Smoke. Gunfire ripping through the night. The metallic stench of blood thick in the air. He was on his stomach in a trench, his cheek pressed into cold mud, his rifle trembling against his shoulder. Whistles cut the dark — signals that meant run, fire, die.
And through all of it, through nights when he barely dared to close his eyes, he thought of her. She was the reason he fought. The tether he clung to.
Until he learned the truth.
The whispers in the barracks. The photos slipped into his hand by a comrade who couldn't stand to watch him be a fool. The image burned into his skull forever.
Her — his girlfriend. Straddling another man. Her hair spilled like a dark flag over his chest. Her face flushed with a joy Jin had never seen on her with him. The other man was laughing, and she was laughing too.
He had been swallowing mud and gunpowder, thinking only of her safety, while she gave herself away like he was already dead.
Now, here she was. Sitting across from him with painted lips and perfume, saying please.
His thoughts turned to venom. This ungrateful bitch. If it were legal, if it were right, I'd kill her right now.
Jin leaned forward slowly, elbows pressing into the table. His voice came out calm, measured, every syllable sharpened into a blade.
"No."
She blinked, startled. "Jin—"
"No." His tone cut her in half. His stare burned straight through her trembling smile. "Why should I date an ungrateful bitch? A slut. A hoe who spread her legs for another guy while her boyfriend was bleeding in the mud. While I was choking on smoke and still worrying about you."
Her lips parted. Her face drained of color. All around, couples froze with forks halfway to their mouths.
"I thought of you every night out there," Jin continued, his voice rising, steady and merciless. "Every night, I prayed I'd live long enough to see you again. And while I was fighting to breathe, you were fucking someone else. That's who you are. That's what you did."
"Jin, please—" she whispered, tears brimming. "I—I made a mistake—"
His palm slammed against the table. The glasses rattled violently, water splashing across the wood. The sound cracked across the restaurant like a gunshot.
"This is enough!" he roared. "I don't want contact with you anymore. Not in my phone. Not in my life. You're finished."
She recoiled, covering her mouth with her hand, but Jin's fury was relentless. His eyes didn't soften.
"And remember this," he said, voice dropping into a low, poisonous hiss. "I will always curse you to death."
The restaurant was dead silent except for the pathetic piano music, still looping its hollow refrain.
Jin stood. His chair scraped loudly against the floor. He didn't wait for her answer. Didn't care about the stares following him. He walked straight out, his footsteps hard, the door slamming behind him.
---
The city greeted him like a wound.
Rain slicked the streets, neon lights bleeding across puddles in red and blue and green. Cars hissed past on wet asphalt, their headlights carving ghosts into the night. Steam rose from sewer grates, curling up into the black sky like breath from some sleeping beast.
Jin shoved his hands into his coat pockets and walked fast, his jaw clenched so tight it ached. His reflection followed him in every glass window he passed: a tall man with eyes too sharp, shoulders tense, and fury leaking out of every step.
He thought about the battlefield again. Not the bullets, not the blood — he could live with those. No, it was the memory of holding on for her. Of imagining her face every time he shut his eyes in the mud.
And then remembering how she was laughing in another man's arms.
That betrayal cut deeper than any wound he'd ever taken. Bullets you could dig out. Shrapnel you could stitch. Betrayal — that was bone-deep rot.
"She thought I'd crawl back," he muttered, voice drowned by the rain. "She thought she could beg and I'd just forget. Ungrateful bitch. Slut. Hoe."
He repeated the words like mantras, curses hot on his tongue. Each one carved the memory sharper.
His boots splashed through a puddle, sending dirty water up his leg, but he didn't care. He was too far gone in thought.
And then another thought came, jagged, unwanted.
Love & Chains.
The reverse harem dating sim he had once despised, the one he'd poured hours into just to prove how stupid it was. He remembered throwing his phone against the wall after watching another one of the heroine's rivals get destroyed for no reason but drama.
He hated that game. He hated its shallow romance, its perfect pretty-boy heroes, its way of discarding women as if they were garbage. He hated the way villains existed only to die as stepping stones.
The rage he felt tonight felt the same. As if life itself had been mocking him with the same twisted script.
He spat onto the wet pavement. "If only I could burn that whole game out of existence."
By the time he reached his neighborhood, the streets had quieted. No neon, no traffic. Just a long drive lined with tall, dark trees, slick with rain.
His mansion stood at the end like a sentinel.
It was sleek, modern, and expensive. Glass walls gleamed under the low lights that lined the driveway. Sharp, minimalist architecture stretched wide across the lot, every line deliberate, clean, ruthless. A place built not for warmth but for control.
He had bought it himself, brick by brick, floor by floor, with his own money. With the sleepless years of grinding, the soldier's discipline that carried over into the games and ventures that made him rich. Even Love & Chains had played a part — not in enjoyment, but in exploitation. He'd learned its systems, beaten it into submission, used its mechanics to make money through streaming and strategy.
The mansion was his trophy. His proof that he could conquer anything.
And yet, as he unlocked the front door and stepped inside, the silence swallowed him whole.
The interior was immaculate: polished wood floors, white leather couches, a minimalist glass staircase that curved up into the second floor. A wide-open living space with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked the glittering city below.
He tossed his coat onto the couch, the sound echoing in the emptiness.
It was beautiful. It was everything he thought he wanted. And it was hollow.
He walked to the window, rain sliding down the glass like veins, the city lights smeared and distant. His reflection stared back at him: tall, cold-eyed, fists clenched.
The words replayed in his head like a drumbeat.Ungrateful bitch. Slut. Hoe. I will always curse you to death.
He whispered them once more to the glass, his breath fogging the surface.
The city didn't answer.
But the night felt heavier than before.
And somewhere in the silence of his mansion, Jin Soowhi wondered if his curse had already been heard.