The executive bathroom on the fifty-ninth floor was a mausoleum of cool, veined marble and silent, sensor-activated taps.
Ha-eun stood before the mirror, her hands braced against the sink's edge.
The water ran, a frigid stream over her fingers, but she didn't feel the cold.
She felt the phantom heat of a gaze, the residual charge of words spoken in a rasp.
In the reflection, Elena Yoon stared back. Perfect. Composed.
A woman carved from ice and strategy.
But for a fractured second, as a drop of water traced a path from the tap, Ha-eun didn't see the consultant.
She saw a smudge, a dark streak like grease or soot, high on her own cheekbone. A child's mark.
She blinked, a slow, deliberate shuttering of her eyes.
When she opened them, her skin was flawless again, pale under the clinical light.
The Dom was a nuisance today. Not a full fragment.
Just a low, persistent hum in the base of her skull, like a faulty fluorescent light.
It made the edges of things vibrate slightly.
It made memories feel closer to the surface, restless.
She turned off the water and dried her hands on a linen towel, the action methodical.
The fabric absorbed every drop.
She left no trace.
The lobby of the Haneul Tower was a cathedral to capitalist ambition, all soaring glass and echoes.
Ha-eun's heels clicked a steady, solitary rhythm on the polished granite.
She was almost to the revolving doors when a voice cut through the space.
"Consultant Yoon. Walking out with all your limbs intact. I'm impressed."
Kang Tae-sik leaned against a pillar of brushed steel, looking incongruously relaxed.
His worn leather jacket was a rebellion against the surrounding gloss.
He held two paper cups of coffee, steam curling from the sip-hole of one.
He extended it toward her like a peace offering, or a challenge.
Ha-eun stopped but did not accept the cup.
"Mr. Kang. I wasn't aware you were in the building."
"Oh, I float," he said, his smile not quite reaching his deep-set eyes.
He took a sip from his own cup, scratching idly at the side of his neck.
"Like a bad smell. Or useful intel."
His gaze, sharp despite its lazy delivery, scanned her face.
"Heard you rattled the old boys' club. Jun-ho too, from the sound of it. You poked the bear, and the cub came out snarling."
"I presented data. Any reaction to it is a reflection of the audience, not the presentation."
Tae-sik chuckled, a low, rasping sound.
"See, that's the ice-queen line. And it's a good one. But the thing about ice…"
He pushed off the pillar, closing the distance between them just enough.
"It melts under the right kind of heat. Or it cracks under pressure."
He offered the coffee again.
"Take it. It's just coffee. I'm not poisoning you. Yet."
This time, she took the cup. The heat was a shock against her chilled fingers.
She did not drink.
"I'm listening," she said.
"Good."
He leaned in, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial murmur.
"The old man, Seo Min-jun, he's a fortress. But Jun-ho… he's the restless prince in the highest tower. He sees the rot. Hates it. And hates himself for being part of it. That makes him volatile. Unpredictable."
And," Tae-sik's eyes glinted, "an exceptionally juicy target if you want to see the Haneul empire start to bleed from the inside."
"You're proposing an alliance."
"I'm proposing a mutually entertaining bit of chaos. Enemy of my enemy, and all that jazz."
He shrugged.
"I have certain… insights. Into where the bodies are buried. Literally, in some cases. You have the cold, beautiful face and the brain of a vengeful supercomputer. Together, we could have a lot of fun."
Ha-eun held his gaze.
He was a stray dog, clever and opportunistic, looking for a better-fed master to follow into a fight.
Useful. Unreliable.
"My methods are surgical, Mr. Kang. Not chaotic."
"All the best surgery looks like chaos to the person on the table."
He finally took a proper gulp of his coffee.
"Think about it. No pressure. Just… next time Jun-ho looks at you like he wants to dissect you or devour you—hard to tell with that kid—remember you don't have to face the whole family alone."
He gave her a loose, two-fingered salute and ambled away.
Ha-eun stood holding the warming cup.
After a moment, she placed it, untouched, on the ledge of a concrete planter.
She walked out into the evening.
Her apartment was not a home. It was a observation post. A cell.
It occupied the corner of a high-rise with a view that stretched across the Han River.
She kept it minimally furnished: a sofa of charcoal grey wool, a steel desk, a single bookshelf.
No photographs. No art.
The only color was the deliberate, recurring note of green.
The silence here was absolute, a vacuum.
It was the only place where the hum of the Dom felt loud enough to be a tangible thing.
She didn't turn on the main lights. The city's glow was sufficient.
She went to the wall beside her bed, to a panel that looked seamless.
A press of her thumb, a quiet click, and a small, shallow safe opened.
Inside, on a bed of black velvet, lay a single object.
Her father's platinum pocket watch.
It was cool to the touch. She didn't lift it out. She just looked.
The casing was elegantly engraved, now marred by a long, jagged crack that spiderwebbed from the hinge.
The crystal was gone.
The hands were frozen at 11:07.
A time that meant nothing and everything.
This was the core of it. The still, silent heart of her vengeance.
Not a raging fire, but this: a perfect, broken mechanism that had stopped counting the seconds of a life.
The quiet in the room condensed around it, became a physical pressure in her ears.
It was louder than any scream, heavier than any confession.
She stood there until the city lights blurred into streaks of gold and white.
A soft chime came from her tablet on the desk.
A Crysalia alert. Encrypted, priority two.
She closed the safe, the soft thud a period to her reverie.
At her desk, she unlocked the message.
Re: Yoon Tech incident. Payment trail for the 'freelance safety inspectors' pre-accident. Clever. Laundered through a shell registered to a 'Moonflower Atelier'. Shell traces back to a silent partner. Name is a ghost, but the address is a flower shop. A very exclusive, members-only flower shop in Seongsu-dong. You know the one.
She did.
Byeolbit Garden. Madame Luna's domain.
Her heart gave a single, hard knock against her ribs.
A flower shop. A silent partner.
A thread, fine as silk, leading from a calculated "accident" to a place of curated beauty and whispered secrets.
Her fingers hovered over the keyboard.
The impulse was to dig, to rip the data apart now, in the dark.
But impulse was the enemy. Strategy was the tool.
She typed back, her movements calm.
Schedule a discreet consultation at Byeolbit. Frame it as a corporate client seeking unique floral arrangements for a high-stakes executive retreat. Use the Berlin cover identity. I'll attend.
The reply was almost immediate.
Acknowledged. Initial contact in 48 hours.
It was a start. A crack in the wall.
The taste in her mouth was complex, layered—the acrid bitterness of long-held ashes, and beneath it, a single, treacherous drop of something sweet.
It was the taste of the path forward.
She powered down the tablet, the screen dying to black.
She rose and moved through the apartment, killing the phantom lights of various electronics.
The room sank into deeper shadow.
As she passed the window, her own reflection ghosted over the cityscape.
A pale, severe woman in a dark room.
And then, for a heartbeat, the Dom surged.
It wasn't a smell or a sound. It was pure image, projected onto the dark canvas of the window.
A child's face, tear-streaked and smudged with dirt, eyes wide with a terror so profound it was silent.
The child's reflection was not in the glass.
It was inside it, superimposed over the distant lights, staring back at her from the surface of a cracked, fogged crystal of a pocket watch that wasn't there.
Ha-eun froze.
Her breath halted in her lungs.
The image lasted for the space of a single, frantic heartbeat.
Then it was gone.
In the utter silence that followed, the only sound was the sudden, ragged rush of her own inhalation.
A sound that was almost a gasp, almost a sob, but which she forcibly smoothed into nothing.
The air between them crackled.
Ha-eun was the first to move.
She stepped back, creating space where tension had pooled.
"Careful," she said softly. Not an apology. A warning.
Jun-ho's jaw tightened.
His gaze lingered on her face for half a second too long.
Then he stepped aside.
She passed him without another word.
The oak door closed behind her with a final, muffled sigh.
Outside, Seoul rushed back in—noise, exhaust, human chaos—violent in its normality.
She walked until the garden was nothing more than a memory clinging to her skin.
Only when she reached the street did she exhale fully.
The Dom was quiet now.
Not dormant.
Attentive.
As if something, somewhere, had heard her listening.
High above, unseen among the glass and steel, a clock chimed the hour.
Three times.
Then once more, delayed.
Ha-eun paused beneath a flickering streetlight, an inexplicable tension tightening between her shoulder blades.
The sensation was absurd.
And unmistakable.
The feeling of having been noticed.
She resumed walking, her reflection fracturing in the darkened windows she passed.
Some doors, once brushed against, did not wait to be opened.
They opened you.