"You're still here? I told you to be gone by morning."
Min-ho's voice is a raspy blade cutting through the dark of the living room. I don't turn around from the balcony glass. I can see his reflection in the window—a tall, ghostly shape in a silk robe, standing by the kitchen island. He looks exhausted, his shoulders slumped in a way he never allows when he knows I'm watching.
"It's 3:00 AM, Min-ho. Technically, it's still night," I say, my breath fogging the glass. "And the front door is deadbolted from the inside. I'm not leaving you alone in the dark."
"The dark is where I feel safest right now," he shots back, though the venom is missing. He sounds hollow. "At least in the dark, I don't have to look at the wedding photos of a man I don't recognize."
"You're hungry," I observe, watching his reflection. He's hovering near the stove where the pot of Dakdoritang sits.
"I told you, I don't want your 'loyalty' stew."
"Then why are you holding a spoon?"
He freezes. I see his silhouette stiffen, caught in the act of reaching for the lid. He lets out a frustrated huff and drops the spoon onto the granite with a sharp clack. "It's my kitchen. I can hold whatever utensil I want."
"Just eat it, Min-ho. It's better cold anyway. The spices settle."
I turn slightly, leaning against the cold glass. He's staring at the pot like it's a sentient enemy. Then, slowly, almost as if he's losing a battle with his own hands, he lifts the lid. The faint, savory scent of ginger and fermented chili drifts into the room.
He takes a bite. Then another. He doesn't sit down. He stands there in the shadows, eating straight from the pot, his movements hurried, almost primal. I watch the tension leave his neck. I watch his eyes close for a split second as the flavor hits his tongue.
"It... it has too much garlic," he mutters between mouthfuls.
"You always say that. Then you ask for a third bowl."
"I don't remember asking for anything," he snaps, but he doesn't stop eating. "Why does my body know the rhythm of this? The way the heat hits the back of my throat... it feels like a song I've forgotten the lyrics to."
"It's called muscle memory, Min-ho. Your brain can lie to you, but your nerves? They remember the hands that fed them. They remember the person who knows exactly how much salt you need to feel human again."
He stops eating, the spoon halfway to his mouth. He looks at me, his eyes dark and unreadable. "Is that what you are? A habit? A chemical reaction I've been conditioned to crave?"
"I'm your wife. But if you want to call it a chemical reaction, go ahead. Just finish the chicken."
He puts the lid back on, his appetite suddenly gone. He leans his weight against the island, looking down at his bare feet. "The Chief Prosecutor called again while I was in the office. He said the internal affairs team is looking into your background. He says your 'Protection Officer' credentials were scrubbed from the official database two years ago."
"Because I went deep-cover to protect you, Min-ho! I told you, we were investigating the mole inside the Ministry!"
"Or because you were never a Protection Officer at all," he counters, his voice dropping to a dangerous whisper. "The Chief thinks you're a high-level ghost hired by the Park Group to manage me. He thinks the 'attack' at the pier was a botched extraction. They wanted to take me, but you got greedy."
"And the bullet in my shoulder? Was that part of the 'greedy' plan?" I step toward him, the pain in my arm flaring as I move. "I am bleeding for you, and you're listening to a man who spends his weekends golfing with the Chairman's brother!"
"He's been my mentor for a decade, Hana! You've been a 'stranger' for three days!"
"Time doesn't equal truth!" I'm inches from him now, the heat from the stove and the heat from our argument blurring together. "You're a prosecutor. Use your eyes! Look at the way I'm watching the door! Look at the way I haven't slept! If I wanted you dead, Min-ho, I could have let that 'janitor' walk into your room with a syringe while you were sleeping! I'm the only thing standing between you and a shallow grave!"
"Maybe that's the point!" he roars, slamming his hand on the counter. "Maybe you're keeping me alive because I'm the only one who knows the biometric sequence for the Red File! Maybe I'm just a safe you haven't cracked yet!"
I flinch, the words stinging worse than the stitches in my arm. I back away, shaking my head. "You really think that low of yourself? You think the only reason I'd love you is for a file?"
"I don't know what to think!" He looks trapped, his eyes darting around the expensive kitchen as if the walls were closing in. "Every time I start to trust the way this food tastes, or the way you smell, I remember the burner phone. I remember the fingerprints. I remember that I am a man who has lost five years of his life, and the only person who claims to have found them is a woman who knows how to kill."
"I'm going back to the balcony," I say, my voice cold. "Eat your stew, Prosecutor. It's the only thing in this house that isn't trying to lie to you."
I walk away, the silence in the room feeling like a physical weight. I step back out onto the balcony, the night air of Seoul hitting me like a slap. The city is a sea of lights, beautiful and indifferent. I lean against the railing, my eyes scanning the street fourteen floors below.
A black sedan is parked three blocks down. It hasn't moved in an hour.
I shift my gaze to the rooftop of the commercial building directly across from our terrace. It's a dead zone—mostly HVAC units and shadows. But then, I see it.
A glint. A tiny, metallic flash that shouldn't be there.
My heart stops. My pulse turns into a drumbeat in my ears. I don't move my head. I just shift my eyes, tracking the line of sight.
A tiny, pin-prick of red light appears on the glass of the sliding door. It's a dancing dot, vibrant and lethal. It moves across the frame, hunting. It slides over the handle, across the curtains, and then...
It stops.
It's sitting right on the back of Min-ho's head as he leans over the sink to rinse his bowl.
"Min-ho, don't move," I whisper, my voice barely audible even to myself.
"What now, Hana? Another 'tactical' observation?" he calls out, his back still turned to the window. "Are you going to tell me the moon looks suspicious?"
"Min-ho, listen to me very carefully," I say, my hand slowly reaching for the heavy stone planter next to me. "Step to your left. Slowly."
"I'm done with the games," he says, turning around. He's holding the bowl, a defiant look on his face. "I'm going to bed. And tomorrow, I'm changing the locks."
The red dot moves. It's no longer on the back of his head. It's centered perfectly on the bridge of his nose, right between those cold, skeptical eyes.
He sees it. He sees the tiny red light reflected in the stainless steel of the refrigerator behind me. He freezes, his mouth falling open.
"Hana?" he breathes, the bowl slipping from his fingers.
The ceramic hits the floor and shatters.
In that same microsecond, I see the flash from the rooftop across the street.
"DOWN!" I scream.
I don't think. I don't feel the pain in my shoulder. I launch myself through the open balcony door, my body a blurred arc of desperate motion. I hit him at waist height, my good arm wrapping around his torso, my momentum slamming him into the hard granite of the kitchen floor.
CRAAA-ACK!
The sound is deafening. The reinforced glass of the balcony door explodes inward, a crystalline rain of shards showering over us. A heavy thud echoes as a high-velocity round buries itself in the solid wood of the pantry door—exactly where Min-ho's head had been a heartbeat ago.
We're a tangle of limbs on the floor, the smell of gunpowder and spicy chicken stew filling the air. Min-ho is gasping under me, his heart hammering against my chest like a trapped bird.
"Stay down!" I hiss, my hand searching the floor for a shard of glass—anything to use as a weapon. "Don't you dare move!"
"They... they shot at me," he whispers, his voice trembling with a raw, primal shock. "They actually tried to kill me."
"I told you," I say, my voice a low, lethal growl. I'm already scanning the room, calculating the angle of the shot, looking for the secondary shooter I know is coming. "I told you they were coming."
I look down at him. His eyes are wide, looking at me with a terrifying mix of horror and a sudden, jagged realization. He looks at the shattered glass, then at the hole in the pantry, then back at me.
But as I move to pull him toward the hallway, a drop of hot, dark red liquid falls from my chin and lands on his white shirt.
I'm not the one who was shot. But as I look at the balcony door, I see something that doesn't make sense. The bullet hole in the glass is perfectly round, but there's a second, jagged tear in the curtain—higher up.
If the sniper was aiming for Min-ho, why was the first shot a foot too high, and why did the second one hit the pantry?
I pull him into the safety of the corridor, my mind racing through the tactical errors of a professional hit.
"Hana, you're bleeding," Min-ho gasps, grabbing my arm. "Your face... the glass..."
"It's a scratch," I snap, though my vision is blurring. "We have to move. Now."
I drag him toward the safe room, but as I glance back at the kitchen, the mystery tightens its grip on my heart. The red laser dot is gone, but the black sedan downstairs is still parked there, its lights off.
If they wanted him dead, they had the perfect shot. Why did the most elite assassins in Seoul miss a stationary target from less than two hundred yards?
And as the sirens begin to wail in the distance, I have to ask the question that makes my blood run colder than the sniper's sights:
Was that bullet meant to kill my husband, or was it a signal for me to finish the job myself?