Jasmine cut through the dust and dead air of the power-saving corridor, faint and warm, coming from Unit 1419.
Jae-min stood in front of her door in a hallway that was dead silent with no hum from the central AC because the building management had cut power to the non-essential corridors at ten to save money, only the faint orange glow of the emergency exit signs lighting the space and casting long distorted shadows across the polished tile.
35°C with the Manila summer pressing against the building like a fever that wouldn't break, and the air smelled like jasmine and dust and her.
His fingers brushed the cold steel of a key in his pocket, Alessia's spare key that she had given him three months ago.
'In case I lock myself out after a night shift.' Jae-min recalled, a warm ache pressing against his ribs as his fingers closed around the key. 'She pressed it into my palm and her fingers lingered for half a second too long.'
He could just walk in, but he knocked, three raps quiet and restrained.
Footsteps inside, soft and hesitant, then the familiar rhythm of her gait measured and confident, the peephole darkening as she looked out.
The door opened a crack with a chain lock holding it in place and one blue eye peering through the gap.
"Jae-min?" Alessia murmured, a sleepy drowsy confusion softening her voice. "It's midnight."
"I know. Can I come in?" Jae-min asked, a quiet urgent need carrying the words.
A pause while the eye studied his face and the dark circles carved into his skin and the hollow cheeks and the tight jaw, then the chain slid and the door opened.
Jae-min stepped forward and wrapped his arms around her, pulling her against his chest hard with his arms locking around her like she would vanish if he let go and his face buried in her hair, jasmine and warmth and the steady drumbeat of her pulse against his ribs flooding through him.
White oversized t-shirt against his palms and bare legs and loose indigo hair against his jaw, warm and alive and breathing.
Alessia stiffened with her arms hanging at her sides for a moment before they rose and her palms pressed flat against his back, not speaking, just holding on.
"I was sleeping." Alessia murmured against his chest, a quiet sleepy concern threading through her voice. "Is everything okay?"
"No." Jae-min whispered, a raw, cracking grief splintering the word.
Alessia pulled back and looked up at him with her posture shifting and her gaze sharpening into a swift clinical alertness.
"Is this about your family? The breakdown?" Alessia asked, stepping aside. "Ji-yoo told me you've been stressed."
"It's not a brief breakdown." Jae-min corrected, a heavy, immovable certainty grounding his voice.
"Then what?" Alessia pressed, a calm probing patience settling over her.
Jae-min walked past her into Unit 1419, the apartment a mirror of his with the same layout and the same dimensions but not a bunker, a home.
Potted plants on the windowsill and framed medical degrees on the wall with the University of Santo Tomas seal embossed in gold, a wool blanket draped over the couch and the smell of lavender detergent and chamomile tea filling every corner.
It felt warm and human and everything his apartment wasn't anymore.
Jae-min stood in the middle of the living room and didn't sit and didn't move with his hands trembling at his sides before he shoved them into his pockets.
Alessia closed the door and walked past him and sat on the edge of the couch and tucked her legs under her, those blue eyes watching him with patient unwavering calm.
"You're scaring me, Jae-min." Alessia murmured, a quiet steady concern softening her voice.
"I know." Jae-min whispered, and there was no wall in his voice.
"Is this about your parents?" Alessia asked, her voice softening. "Ji-yoo mentioned they're flying home soon."
"In two days." Jae-min confirmed, a raw aching weight pressing the words down.
"Then what?" Alessia pressed, patient and steady.
Jae-min looked at her, those calm blue eyes and the indigo hair falling over her collarbone and the gentle rise and fall of her chest under the thin white shirt and the pulse beating visibly in her throat, and he memorized every detail and every curve and every breath.
"Alessia." Jae-min choked, his voice cracking on the first syllable.
"Yes?" Alessia asked, her brow furrowing.
"I need to tell you something." Jae-min began, the words rushing out and tumbling over each other. "And after I tell you, you're going to think I'm insane. You might call the police. You might never speak to me again."
Alessia didn't move and just watched him, calm and steady.
"Okay." Alessia murmured, a small nod settling over her unreadable expression.
"I'm not going to explain why I know this. I'm just going to tell you." Jae-min pleaded, a taut urgency pulling the words tight. "Can you do that?"
"Okay." Alessia agreed, a doctor's composure anchoring her voice.
Jae-min sat down across from her on the wooden coffee table, close enough to touch her knees and close enough to smell the lavender on her skin.
"In two days," Jae-min trembled, his voice shaking but certain, "the temperature in Manila is going to drop to minus seventy degrees Celsius."
"What?" Alessia blurted, a sharp incredulous blink breaking her composure.
"In the middle of summer. Less than four hours when it starts." Jae-min continued, each word deliberate and heavy. "The power grid will fail two weeks later. The government will collapse. The military will fragment. Millions of people will freeze to death in the first week."
"Jae-min." Alessia murmured, her expression processing.
"Billions will die. Globally." Jae-min pressed, a grim absolute certainty carrying each word. "It won't stop. The cold won't stop. Ever."
Alessia stared at him with her face pale but she didn't interrupt and didn't flinch, just listened with a focused analytical intensity.
"I know the exact date it happens because I've already lived through it." Jae-min declared, a raw shattering weight landing on the words.
Silence with the clock on the wall ticking once and twice, the sound deafening in the quiet room.
"What do you mean, lived through it?" Alessia whispered, a shaken incredulous disbelief fracturing her voice.
"I died, Alessia." Jae-min murmured, a raw cracking grief stripping the words bare.
'Say it. Make it real. Make it irreversible.' Jae-min urged, a desperate shattering resolve gripping his chest as his hands pressed flat against his knees.
The air seemed to freeze with the lavender smell turning to nothing and the warmth draining from the space between them while Alessia went completely still and her hand drifted to her throat with her fingers pressing against her collarbone.
"You died too, Alessia." Jae-min murmured, a raw tearing grief ripping through the words.
"No." Alessia whispered, a raw horrified denial catching in her throat.
"You died in the hallway. Right outside my door." Jae-min choked, the words splintering apart.
"Stop." Alessia breathed, a shattered desperate protest trembling through her.
"They had already destroyed you by the time I found you." Jae-min rasped, his voice catching on something savage and bleeding. "What I remember most is that you were still holding my hand."
He dropped his hands from his face and looked at her with his vision blurred by tears he hadn't felt coming.
"My fingers were shattered. My throat was torn open. I was ten feet away." Jae-min whispered, the words coming out slow and broken and raw. "And you were still holding on. Your grip was weak. Getting weaker. But you wouldn't let go. Even when there was nothing left of you to hold with."
Alessia's eyes were wide and wet and her lips were trembling, but she didn't look away and didn't run, just sat there with her hands gripping her knees so hard her knuckles were white.
"Your lips moved. I saw them move." Jae-min continued, his voice dissolving. "I'll never know what you were trying to say. The cold stole the sound before I could hear it."
"How?" Alessia asked, one word small and shattered.
"I don't know." Jae-min admitted, a bitter helpless surrender weighing down his shoulders. "I died. And then I woke up. March seventeenth. Six forty-seven AM. In my apartment. Twenty-eight days ago."
"March seventeenth." Alessia repeated, processing.
"The same morning. The same alarm. The same sun through the window." Jae-min continued, the words spilling out like water from a cracked dam. "But I remembered everything. The cold. The blood. Your hand in mine. All of it."
Alessia stared at him with her mouth opening and closing and opening again.
"That's impossible." Alessia murmured, a sharp rational disbelief tightening her voice.
"I know." Jae-min acknowledged, a quiet defeated acceptance.
"People don't come back from the dead." Alessia stated, her clinical mind reaching for the framework that made sense.
"I know." Jae-min whispered, a raw heavy acceptance settling over him.
"This is," Alessia breathed, her voice rising not angry but desperate, "this sounds like psychosis. Trauma-induced dissociation. You could be experiencing a break from reality."
"Alessia." Jae-min cut in, his voice quiet but unshakable. "I know what I sound like. I know what this looks like. I've had twenty-eight days to convince myself I'm insane."
He met her eyes.
"I couldn't." Jae-min pressed, a flat certainty hardening beneath the grief. "Because insane people don't know the exact temperature at which human blood freezes black."
Alessia flinched.
"In two days, my parents board a flight from Incheon." Jae-min continued, each word precise and clinical, the voice of a logistics manager reading a shipping manifest except his eyes were bleeding. "Korean Air Flight KE627. It will lose contact over the Alishan Mountains. Flash freeze. Blizzard conditions. No survivors."
He paused, the weight of it pressing down.
"I've tried eleven times to stop it." Jae-min admitted, a bitter annihilating despair coiling beneath the words. "Lawyers. Embassies. Anonymous tips. A bomb threat that almost got me arrested. Two point four million won in fees and bribes. Nothing works. The plane still flies. The mountain still takes them."
Alessia's face crumbled.
"Jae-min." Alessia choked, her voice breaking. "Have you told them? Your parents?"
"I called them." Jae-min confirmed, his voice cracking. "My father didn't believe me. He thinks I'm stressed. He told me to take care of Ji-yoo."
His voice dropped.
"He's making adobo when they get here. The one I like." Jae-min whispered, a raw annihilating grief gripping his throat.
A tear rolled down Alessia's cheek and she didn't wipe it away.
"Ji-yoo knows?" Alessia asked, her voice small.
"I told her on Day 1." Jae-min confirmed.
"And she believes you?" Alessia pressed, searching his face.
"She's my twin. She knew something was wrong the second she saw my face." Jae-min murmured, a ghost of a smile crossing his face and gone before it could form. "She's been preparing with me. She's the one who convinced me to tell you."
Alessia stared at him long and hard with the silence stretching between them, then she exhaled a slow shaky breath.
"Show me." Alessia demanded, a quiet steady determination clearing her tears.
"What?" Jae-min asked, startled.
"You said you've been preparing. Show me." Alessia repeated, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and her voice steadying. "If this is real, you'll have evidence. Something. Anything."
Jae-min looked at her, then without ceremony or explanation his hand rose and reached into the empty air beside him.
His fingers disappeared past the second knuckle and the space around his wrist shimmered with a faint dark ripple in the fabric of the air like reality had a pocket, and he pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it to her with a motion so absent and casual it was like reaching into a drawer.
Alessia's eyes went wide and her mouth opened while she stared at the space where his hand had vanished, then at the paper in his palm, then back at his face.
"What the fuck?" Alessia whispered, a stunned disbelieving shock freezing her in place.
"It's a long story." Jae-min murmured, a flat exhausted dismissal.
Alessia took the paper with her hands shaking and unfolded it and read.
A list. Dates. Temperatures. Locations. Event predictions.
Day 30: -70°C. Manila.
Day 32: Power grid failure. Luzon.
Day 35: Government evacuation attempt. Failed. 40,000 dead at NAIA.
Day 38: Martial law declared. Dissolved 6 hours later.
Day 45: Estimated 80% mortality rate in Metro Manila.
Day 73:
He had stopped writing at Day 73.
Alessia read every line and every number with her hands shaking but she didn't call him crazy and didn't tell him he was hallucinating.
"This is incredibly specific." Alessia whispered, a shaken rational awe widening her eyes.
"I lived it." Jae-min murmured, a flat certain weight carrying the words.
"If you lived it," Alessia began, looking up with her blue eyes red-rimmed but sharp, "then why are you here? Why are you telling me instead of—"
"Because you died." Jae-min rasped, the words raw and torn from his chest. "You died holding my hand and I never told you how I felt."
His voice cracked open.
"I had three months in the first life. Three months of hallway conversations and sinigang at your door and terrible pancakes." Jae-min confessed, the words spilling like water from a cracked dam. "And I never said the words. Not once. I was too much of a coward. And then you were dead and I was dead and the words died with us."
The dam broke.
Jae-min buried his face in his hands and his shoulders shook, a sound coming out of him that wasn't quite a sob and wasn't quite a scream but something primal and broken, a raw annihilating grief pouring out of a man who had held it behind ice and calculation for twenty-eight days.
He cried not quietly and not with dignity, ugly desperate heaving sobs that wracked his entire body with tears and snot running down his face and his hands trembling against his eyes.
Twenty-eight days of ice and stockpiling and pretending, all of it coming out now in her apartment and in front of her.
'He's breaking. The man who never flinches.' Alessia realized, a warm aching tenderness softening her composure as she watched him shatter. 'He's breaking over me.'
Alessia stared at him with tears streaming down her face silent and fast, her chest tight and her throat closed, then she stood up slowly on shaky legs and closed the distance between them and stopped inches away.
She reached out and her fingers touched his shoulders, warm and gentle.
Jae-min flinched hard with his whole body jerking like he'd been burned.
'Don't be kind to me. I don't deserve it.' Jae-min loathed, a bitter self-loathing despair crushing his chest as he pulled back. 'I let you die. I watched. I didn't say the words.'
"Shut up." Alessia commanded, her voice firm despite the tears.
She slid her hands from his shoulders to his face and cupped his cheeks, his skin wet with tears and cold and trembling.
'Her hands. Her surgeon's fingers. She's touching me. She's alive.' Jae-min realized, a desperate overwhelming relief flooding through his chest as her warmth pressed against his jaw.
"I'm not going to run, Jae-min." Alessia whispered, her blue eyes boring into his, red-rimmed and swollen but absolutely steady.
"You should." Jae-min whispered, barely audible.
"I'm not." Alessia reaffirmed, her voice iron.
"Alessia." Jae-min started to argue.
"Shut up." Alessia cut in, and pulled his face down to hers and kissed him.
Not gentle and not hesitant but certain and deliberate, her lips pressing against his with the steady unwavering force of a woman who had made her choice, her fingers digging into his jaw and holding him in place.
Jae-min froze with every muscle in his body locking and his mind going blank and the sob dying in his throat, then something inside him snapped, not the cold and not the grief but something else, something warm and something alive.
He kissed her back.
His arms wrapped around her waist and pulled her against him hard and desperate, crushing her body against his chest, one hand sliding up her back and tangling in her loose indigo hair while the other pressed flat against the small of her back, feeling the warmth of her skin through the thin white shirt and the soft ridge of her spine beneath his palm and the steady drumbeat of her heart against his ribs.
His mouth found her jaw and her neck and the sensitive spot below her ear where her pulse hammered against his lips, warm and fast and alive.
'Warm. She's so warm. She's alive and she's warm and she's kissing me.' Jae-min realized, a fierce overwhelming joy flooding his chest and drowning everything else. 'This is real.'
The kiss deepened and her hands moved from his face to his hair with her fingers tangling in the black strands and pulling him closer, her body pressing into his while he could feel her heartbeat against his ribs, fast and strong and alive.
They broke apart gasping with their foreheads pressed together and her breath hot against his lips and his breath ragged against hers.
"Jae-min." Alessia rasped, barely a whisper.
"Don't talk." Jae-min breathed, his voice raw and broken and desperate. "If you talk, I'll remember this is real. And if it's real, it can be taken away. Just don't talk."
He kissed her again, slower this time and less desperate and more deliberate, his lips moving against hers with the careful tenderness of a man memorizing something he knew he might lose.
His hand traced up her spine feeling each vertebra and counting each breath while her fingers traced his jawline and her thumb brushed his cheekbone slow and gentle.
They broke apart again with her forehead resting against his and their breathing synchronized, in and out, in and out.
"I love you." Jae-min whispered, the words leaving his mouth before he could stop them, barely a whisper cracked and broken and raw, the words he had carried like a stone in his chest for three months.
Alessia pulled back and looked at him with her blue eyes wide and red and wet but her jaw set and determined.
"I know." Alessia declared, her voice steady despite the tears.
"You know?" Jae-min blinked, stunned.
"I've known since the night Kiara left." Alessia murmured, a quiet steady certainty softening her voice. "I brought you sinigang at midnight and I sat outside your door and I didn't say a word and I didn't ask for anything and I just sat there in the dark."
She paused, her voice cracking.
"Because I didn't know how to be near you without being consumed by you." Alessia admitted, a sad smile breaking through the tears. "I'm a doctor, Jae-min. I recognize obsession when I see it."
'She knew. She always knew.' Jae-min realized, a warm humbling warmth pressing against his ribs. 'I thought I was hiding it. She saw through me from the beginning.'
"Why didn't you say anything?" Jae-min asked, a fragile vulnerable hope softening his voice.
"Because you weren't ready." Alessia murmured, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand. "You were broken and you were hurting and you needed to heal on your own. I wasn't going to force you to say something you weren't ready to say."
— • • • —
Jae-min stood and walked to the couch and sat down, then reached for her with his hands finding her waist and pulling.
Alessia slid onto his lap with her knees on either side of his thighs and her face inches from his, her indigo hair falling around them like a curtain while she looked down at him from above.
His hands settled on her hips, firm and possessive, his fingers pressing into the soft skin above the waistband of her shorts and pulling her closer until there was no space between them.
'April fifteenth. Four PM. The temperature starts dropping at exactly four PM.' Jae-min calculated, a fierce protective need tightening his grip on her waist. 'Come to my unit. If nothing happens, you go back to yours. But if I'm right.'
"You're right." Alessia whispered, a quiet unwavering certainty cutting through his unspoken thought as if she had read it.
"How do you know?" Jae-min asked, a fragile desperate hope searching her face.
"Because your hand disappeared into thin air and you pulled a piece of paper out of nothing." Alessia reasoned, her blue eyes locked on his. "Because you know the exact temperature blood freezes. Because you've been crying for twenty minutes and you haven't once asked me to believe you."
Her voice dropped to something quieter.
"People who lie want you to believe them." Alessia whispered, a steady certainty anchoring every word. "People who tell the truth just want you to listen."
Jae-min's grip tightened on her hips and his thumb traced a slow circle on the bare skin just above her waistband, pulling her closer as his forehead pressed against her collarbone and his breath warmed the thin cotton of her shirt.
"The way I died." Alessia whispered, her voice quiet and steady despite the horror.
"No." Jae-min refused, his voice dropping like a wall.
"Good." Alessia declared, her jaw tightening. "Then I'll make sure it doesn't happen again."
She reached up and straightened his collar with the same clinical warmth she always carried.
"Go home, Jae-min. Get some sleep." Alessia murmured, a small sad smile crossing her tear-stained face. "I'll be at your door when it happens."
Jae-min didn't move and his hands stayed on her hips and his face stayed pressed against her collarbone, breathing her in, jasmine and warmth and the woman who was going to die in a hallway if he failed.
"Go." Alessia whispered, her fingers threading through his hair once, gentle.
He let go slowly, like peeling his own skin off, and stood while she slid off his lap and her bare feet touched the floor.
She walked him to the door and opened it and looked up at him.
"I love you too. For the record." Alessia declared, her voice steady despite the tears.
The door closed.
Jae-min stood in the hallway staring at the wood grain of her door with his lips swollen and his eyes red and his chest aching with something that wasn't grief.
'Alive.' Jae-min realized, a warm fragile hope glowing in his chest as he pressed his fingers to his swollen lips.
— • • • —
11:55 PM.
14th Floor Corridor.
34°C.
Jae-min moved down the corridor on his toes with each step placed in careful deliberate silence, pressing his back against the wall and sliding along it while his eyes darted left and right.
The hallway was empty with the fluorescent lights off and only the orange emergency exit signs glowing, and he reached Unit 1418 and swiped the card and the steel bulkhead clicked open with a sound that seemed catastrophically loud in the dead corridor.
He slipped inside and closed it and engaged the three deadbolts, each metallic clang echoing through the dark apartment, then stood in the entrance breathing and trying to rebuild the ice that had shattered in Alessia's living room.
His face was a mess with swollen eyes and red and slightly puffy lips and tear tracks drying on his cheeks and his hair disheveled where her fingers had run through it.
He took one step toward the living room and the floorboards creaked.
"Oppa." Ji-yoo said, her voice dangerously calm.
Jae-min's entire body seized and he startled like a cat with his spine rigid and his arms flying up and his shoulder blades slamming into the door with a metallic bang that rattled the deadbolts.
His black eyes were wide as dinner plates and his jaw dropped and his heart hammering so hard he could taste it in his throat.
A single figure sat on the kitchen counter with her legs crossed and her arms folded, the faint blue glow of the refrigerator light catching her features, the sharp jaw and the dark eyes and the waist-length ponytail spilling over one shoulder.
She held a glass of water and sipped it slowly while watching him like a hawk.
"Ji-yoo." Jae-min rasped, his voice coming out rougher than intended.
'He's been crying. His lips are swollen. His hair is messed up. He smells like jasmine.' Ji-yoo analyzed, her eyes scanning his face with the slow forensic precision of a twin who could read him better than any lie detector. 'He was at Ate Alessia's.'
"You look different." Ji-yoo observed, sipping her water.
"I was in the hallway." Jae-min deflected, his voice flat.
'Lying. Terrible lie. She can see right through me.' Jae-min surrendered, a resigned defeated certainty settling over him. 'She always could.'
"For an hour and a half?" Ji-yoo pressed, sipping her water.
"I lost track of time." Jae-min tried, the lie transparent and unconvincing.
"At midnight?" Ji-yoo pressed further.
"Couldn't sleep." Jae-min whispered, weaker.
"In Ate Alessia's apartment?" Ji-yoo closed the trap.
Jae-min's jaw tightened.
"How did you—" Jae-min started.
"Oppa." Ji-yoo called, hopping off the counter and landing silently on the balls of her feet.
She walked toward him slow and deliberate with each step measured and her dark eyes never leaving his face.
"Let me see if I can guess what happened." Ji-yoo said, circling him like a shark before stopping directly in front of him and looking up at his swollen lips with theatrical shock widening her eyes.
"You kissed her." Ji-yoo declared, the word landing like a verdict.
Jae-min said nothing.
'Caught. Completely caught.' Jae-min admitted, a resigned mortified surrender flushing his face. 'There's no way out of this.'
"OH MY GOD." Ji-yoo screamed, clapping her hands together with a sound sharp enough to make him flinch. "YOU FINALLY DID IT. YOU ABSOLUTE IDIOT. I'VE BEEN WAITING THREE MONTHS FOR THIS."
"Ji-yoo." Jae-min tried, attempting to push past her.
Ji-yoo grabbed his face and turned his head left then right, examining the damage with clinical precision.
"Swollen lower lip. Minor capillary burst on the left side. Slight grazing on the chin from stubble." Ji-yoo narrated, her fingers tilting his jaw. "Dried tear tracks on the left cheek but not the right. Duration: approximately thirty to forty-five minutes. Intensity: moderate to aggressive. Frequency: multiple sessions."
"Ji-yoo, stop." Jae-min whispered, squirming.
"LIAR." Ji-yoo screamed, releasing his face with a shove, but she was grinning with the bright genuine grin of a sister.
"Oppa." Ji-yoo softened, her voice dropping and the teasing falling away. "I'm happy for you."
"You are?" Jae-min asked, stunned.
"Of course I am, you emotionally constipated disaster." Ji-yoo choked, punching him in the shoulder. "You've been in love with her since we moved in. You stared at her through the peephole. You memorized her schedule. You once stood in the hallway for twenty minutes trying to decide whether to knock because she left her curtains open and you could see her reading on the couch."
"You saw that?" Jae-min asked, his face burning.
"I see everything, oppa." Ji-yoo confirmed, patting his cheek with a condescending affection that was utterly merciless. "I'm your twin. I share your DNA. I know when you're hungry before you do."
She stepped back and crossed her arms and studied him with the satisfied expression of a cat that had just caught a particularly stupid mouse.
"Now." Ji-yoo said, her voice shifting back to business. "Did you tell her about the apocalypse?"
"Yes." Jae-min confirmed, guarded.
"And she believed you?" Ji-yoo pressed, her eyes widening.
"Yes." Jae-min confirmed.
"And she's coming to the bunker?" Ji-yoo asked, her eyes bright.
"Yes." Jae-min said, the word carrying everything.
Ji-yoo nodded slowly and the grin faded into something sharper and colder.
"Good." Ji-yoo declared, her voice flat.
'Now we have a doctor in the bunker. A real one.' Ji-yoo calculated, a pragmatic warrior's satisfaction settling over her. 'She can treat wounds. Manage infections. Keep us alive when the cold tries to kill us.'
She turned away and walked toward the kitchen and poured herself another glass of water.
"Also," Ji-yoo added, not looking back, "I approve. She's the only person on this planet who can handle your brooding bullshit without stabbing you. That makes her a saint."
She took a long sip and set the glass down and looked at him over her shoulder with her dark eyes bright with mischief.
"Congratulations, oppa." Ji-yoo said, a slow predatory smile spreading across her face. "I expect a wedding invitation by the end of the apocalypse. If you break her heart, I will put you in the void myself."
She picked up her glass and walked to her room and paused at the door and looked back over her shoulder with the playfulness drained from her face and replaced by something rawer.
"Oppa?" Ji-yoo called, her voice dropping to something softer and almost vulnerable. "She makes you smile. I haven't seen you actually smile in weeks. Not the fake one, the real one."
A beat of silence.
"Don't let that go." Ji-yoo whispered, a rare unguarded tenderness warming her voice.
Then her expression hardened.
"Also, you're mine first. Before her. Before anyone." Ji-yoo declared, a fierce possessive certainty sharpening every syllable. "That's just the hierarchy. Don't forget it."
The door closed with a soft click.
Jae-min stood in the dark apartment with his face burning and his lips still swollen and his chest aching from crying and kissing and the emotional whiplash of having his sister dissect his love life like a frog in biology class.
But something warm was glowing in his chest, small and fragile like a pilot light in a frozen furnace.
His phone buzzed on the counter with an unknown number.
Jae-min walked over and picked it up and read the screen.
[Unknown]: Interesting visit, Mr. Del Rosario. The doctor is quite beautiful. It would be a little ironic if something happened to her. - N
Jae-min's blood turned to ice and the warmth died.
'You want to threaten her, N?' Jae-min vowed, a cold annihilating fury crystallizing behind his sternum as his grip cracked the phone case. 'Come to my door. I have a surprise waiting for you too.'
He set the phone face-down on the counter and stared at the dark screen.
They were watching her now.