They met in a place where no one listened.
A twenty-four–hour café wedged between a closed cinema and a pawn shop, its lights dim, its customers half-asleep, its corners thick with silence.
Tae-Hyun arrived first.
He chose the seat furthest from the counter.
Nearest the window.
Closest to the dark.
He was already seated when she entered.
Dr. Seo did not wear her lab coat.
Without it, she looked younger. Less guarded. Her hair was loose. Her face bare of professional sharpness.
But her eyes were the same.
Observant.
Unforgiving.
She ordered tea.
Then walked straight to his table.
"You followed," she said, sitting.
"I came," he replied.
A small difference.
She placed her hands around the warm cup.
Not to drink.
To steady herself.
"You're not sick," she said. "Not in any way medicine recognizes."
He tilted his head. "And yet I'm standing here."
Her gaze sharpened. "Your body is regulating itself faster than any system I've ever seen. In the lab, when I touched your wrist… your neural feedback adjusted to my presence."
He watched the faint steam rise between them.
"You make it sound like a machine."
"I don't know what else to call something that rewrites its own instructions."
Silence stretched.
The café's refrigerator hummed.
A spoon clinked somewhere.
He leaned back slightly.
"What would you do," he asked, "if you found something like that?"
She didn't answer immediately.
When she did, it was quiet.
"I would try to understand it," she said. "Before someone decided to use it."
He held her gaze.
"And if it could be used as a weapon?"
Her fingers tightened around the cup.
"Then I would want to know who was aiming it."
Another silence.
He saw it then.
Not fear.
Conflict.
She was not ignorant of Helix's darkness.
She was standing inside it, trying to map the shape of a storm.
"Why are you talking to me?" she asked.
"Because you already are," he said.
Her eyes flicked up.
He continued, "You could have reported me. You didn't. You could have ordered my removal from Section C. You didn't. Instead, you asked me here."
She inhaled slowly.
"Because when I looked at your data… the irregularities matched sealed files."
His chest stilled.
"Project-level anomalies," she continued. "Restricted access. Research I'm not cleared to see."
"And yet you saw them."
"I saw traces," she corrected. "And then I saw them inside you."
He didn't speak.
She leaned forward slightly.
"What are you connected to?"
He studied her.
The woman who might one day dissect him.
The woman who might one day save him.
The woman standing unknowingly on the grave of the man he had been.
"I don't know," he said.
Not entirely a lie.
"But I know it started the night I died."
Her breath hitched.
The café noise seemed to pull back.
"…You died."
"Yes."
"And you're sitting here."
"Yes."
She searched his face.
For madness.
For performance.
For the kind of cracks liars always carried.
She found none.
"Then whose life are you living?" she asked softly.
"A boy who was disappearing," he answered. "Before I woke up in his place."
Her throat moved.
Slowly, carefully, she reached across the table.
"May I?" she asked.
He hesitated.
Then nodded.
She placed two fingers lightly against his wrist.
The contact was gentle.
Clinical.
Yet the effect was anything but.
The hum inside him quieted completely.
Not suppressed.
Resolved.
As if something had clicked into its proper alignment.
His breath deepened involuntarily.
Her brows furrowed.
"…Your heart rhythm just stabilized," she murmured. "It shouldn't have. It was already normal."
"But now it's… coherent."
She lifted her fingers.
The hum stirred again.
Not violently.
Longingly.
She withdrew her hand slowly.
Their eyes remained locked.
"This isn't just biology," she said.
"No," he agreed. "It's connection."
The word settled between them.
She leaned back.
Exhaled.
"I work in Helix's advanced regenerative division," she said. "I was recruited to consult on something they won't fully show me. They call it a compatibility anomaly."
He already knew the real name.
But he let her continue.
"They're trying to make the human body accept something it shouldn't," she said. "And you are doing the reverse. You're making something inhuman behave… human."
His jaw tightened.
"You're in danger," she added quietly.
"I know."
"And so am I," she finished.
Their gazes met again.
Two people standing on opposite sides of a secret neither fully understood.
But both already trapped inside.
"I can't promise safety," he said.
She gave a faint, humorless smile.
"I don't think I asked for it."
They sat there as the city breathed around them.
A scientist who studied monsters.
And the one learning how to become one.