That night, the city felt like a wound — damp, pulsing, and smelling of metal and coffee.
Neon slid down wet signs; fog wrapped around the alleyways, and the few people on the streets looked like silhouettes too tired of being real.
Ryeon walked fast, trying not to look around. Only the reflections in the shop windows caught his gaze — repeating his steps, his movements, the rhythm of his breath.
The earpiece was back in place. Min Ki's thin metallic voice slipped beneath his skin like a current — cold, precise, stripped of warmth or tone.
— Coordinates received. You'll pick up the envelope on Seonyeon Street, near the kiosk, locker sixteen-B. Then the port zone — fourth line. Cache under container twenty-eight. Take the money and leave without a trace.
— Understood, — he replied quietly, flatly, as though confirming not an order, but a breath.
The line went dead, and the city was his again — no commands, no surveillance, no background voice that had become as familiar as his own shadow.
He walked through the wet streets, feeling how the cold air brushed against his lungs, how the weight of life slowly returned to his fingers — real and solid.
The envelope was where it was supposed to be — in an old postal locker beside an abandoned kiosk, under a sign that hadn't lit up in years.
He didn't check the contents. Rules like that kept you alive.
He slipped the gray envelope into his inner pocket, moved on, and stopped by a small coffee stall where steam poured from a battered machine, carrying the smell of burnt sugar and tired milk.
He ordered black coffee without looking at the vendor and watched as thin streams of steam rose into the neon light, dissolving slowly — as if time itself were evaporating.
The port was about ten minutes away if he didn't rush.
With each step, the air thickened, grew heavier, filled with salt and the scent of machine oil. Cranes creaked in the wind, and distant lights rippled on the water like torn reflections.
Ryeon walked along a concrete path between rows of containers, his footsteps swallowed by the low hum of motors and the whistling wind.
He didn't like this place, but he respected it — there were no people here, no coincidences, only metal and agreements.
The cache was where it should be — under the lower panel of a rusted container with peeling paint.
He crouched, checked the seal, pried open the lid, and pulled out a small black package buried under grime.
Inside — a neatly wrapped bundle of cash.
He inhaled the smell of old paper and damp metal, closed the panel, and straightened up, ready to leave. But something in the air shifted — a flicker of light, a sound, a footstep too soft to belong to him.
He turned.
Between the containers, where the neon light fell at an angle, a shadow appeared.
A man with a camera.
The face wasn't visible, but the movement — confident, deliberate — revealed someone who'd hidden behind steel before.
A click, a flash, another step.
And only when light slid across the lens did Ryeon realize who it was.
— Ji-son.
He stood a few meters away — soaked jacket, no umbrella, camera in hand — filming something down the line, where two dark figures met in the fog.
Too close.
Too dangerous.
Get out of here, Ryeon wanted to say, but it was already too late.
A sound, like a sharp inhale.
Then — a click, a cry, and the crack of a bullet ricocheting off metal, sparking against the container wall.
Ji-son flinched, the camera slipped from his hands, and blood burst from his shoulder before his body collapsed beside it.
Ryeon didn't think.
He just moved.
Sirens broke the silence almost immediately — distant, fragmented, blending with the wind and the restless sea.
The taste of metal filled his mouth, the air turned hot, and reality narrowed to one point — body, blood, breath, the hiss of boots against wet concrete.
He grabbed Ji-son by the collar, hauled him upright, arm slung under his, feeling the hot streams of blood soaking through fabric into his fingers.
The body was heavier than expected, but he didn't let go — dragged, half-carried, until the sound of gunfire faded behind them.
They turned the corner of a hangar, where the wind drowned all noise.
Ji-son's face was pale, lips drained of color, eyes open but hazy.
Ryeon pressed him against the wall and examined the wound.
The bleeding was fast, but the bullet had gone clean through — the shoulder, not an artery.
He tore a strip from his sleeve, tied it tight, stopped the bleeding, pressed his palm over it, feeling the pulse beat back beneath his fingers.
— Breathe, — he said quietly, not looking him in the eye. — Slowly.
Ji-son tried to speak, but his voice broke.
— I… I was just… filming…
— You idiot, — Ryeon muttered, without anger, only exhaustion. — People die for that here.
— I know that now, — Ji-son exhaled, weakly smirking before his eyes closed.
Ryeon could feel the warmth of the blood seeping through fabric into his own skin — intimate, almost personal.
He didn't allow himself to think.
He just lifted him again and guided him forward — toward the one place left without cameras, people, or light.
***
The hideout met them with silence and the faint scent of iron.
A small room — an old mattress, a lamp glowing softly, almost homely, as if trying to lie about what the world outside had become.
He sat Ji-son on the bed, took off his jacket, then the bloodied shirt, adjusted the bandage.
The skin beneath it was hot, but his breathing had steadied.
Ryeon cleaned the wound, soaked the bandage with antiseptic — the hiss was like rain behind the window — and wrapped it again, tighter, careful, precise, with that cold focus he always carried when a life depended on it.
Ji-son stayed silent, barely moving, his eyes following every motion of Ryeon's hands — as if they alone were keeping the world from falling apart.
When it was done, Ryeon straightened, stepped back, wiped his face, shaking off the fatigue and the dampness clinging to his skin.
The room smelled of blood, iodine, and coffee — from somewhere, an old pot still simmered faintly on the stove.
He poured a bit into a cup, set it on the table without looking.
— Drink it when you wake up, — he said softly, but with the firmness of an order rather than advice.
Ji-son murmured something — his eyelids trembled, breathing slowed.
He fell asleep.
Ryeon stood beside the bed for a long while, watching. Too long. Until the lamplight began to look like dawn.
His fingers still smelled of iron and skin.
He tore a page from a notepad, wrote a few lines — short, unsigned. Only what needed to be said.
Then he left it on the nightstand, glanced at Ji-son one last time — as if to remember the face of someone who hadn't yet realized what he'd stepped into — and quietly walked out.
The door closed without a sound.
Outside, the city was the same — neon, fog, coffee, and blood.
But inside, something had shifted — as if the bullet hadn't passed through Ji-son's shoulder,
but through that hidden place where even cold hearts still manage to beat.