The first thing Xinyue did after dragging a bleeding stranger into her apartment was lock the door.
The second was stare at it for a full three second, one hand still gripping the deadbolt, and wonder if she had finally, completely lost her mind. Behind her, the man on the couch made a low grunting sound something in between pain and impatience.
Right. Crisis first. Breakdown later.
Xinyue turned around and slipped straight into doctor mode, that part of her brain clicking into place with almost insulting efficiency. She dropped her bag on the table, knelt beside the couch, and took stock.
He was worse than he had looked outside.
That was saying something.
Now, under the yellow light of her living room, the blood was impossible to ignore. It had soaked through his black shirt and spread across her pale couch in a stain her security deposit would never emotionally recover from. His skin had gone too pale, the kind that made alarm bells ring in every medically trained person within a ten-meter radius.
Unfortunately for her, that medically trained person was her.
"Stay awake," she said.
His eyes opened a fraction more. "Commanding, aren't you?"
"Yes. I'm trying to keep you alive, and you are being deeply uncooperative."
His eyes tracked her movements with almost predatory attention. Even fading in and out, he missed nothing. That bothered her more than it should, people with that much control usually had reasons. Bad reason preciously. "You brought me here."
"Believe me, I'm aware."
She rushed to the bathroom and yanked open the cabinet under the sink. First-aid kit, antiseptic, gauze, tape, scissors. 'Not enough. Never enough.' She grabbed the emergency supplies she kept because her mother had raised her to prepare for disaster, and her father had raised her to assume disaster might actually arrive.
Apparently, both had been right for today.
When she came back, Taehyun was barely conscious. His head had tilted back against the couch, eyes half-lidded, one hand braced over the wound as if sheer will could keep the blood inside his body.
Xinyue set everything down on the coffee table and leaned over him.
"I need to see the wound properly."
He did not move.
She stared at him. "That means I need you to stop glaring at me like I'm about to rob you."
His eyes shifted to hers. Even at the state of exhausted and weakened, there was something in that stare that felt distinctly unfair. A lot of men looked intense when they were hurt. This man looked dangerous.
Then, very slowly, he let his hand drop. Xinyue grabbed the scissors and cut through the ruined fabric of his shirt.
The moment the material fell away from his side, she inhaled sharply.
Gunshot wound, left flank. Entry wound only. No exit wound visible. Moderate to severe blood loss. Bruising around the area suggested impact, maybe a fall. There were also older scars across his torso - one near his ribs, another along the shoulder, pale and clean like an old history written under his skin. Like, this was not the first time violence had found him.
Not even close.
"You live like this often?" she asked before she could stop herself.
His voice was quieter now. "Like what?"
"Bleeding on strange places."
A pause.
"No."
"Well, that's almost reassuring."
She pressed gauze to the wound and his jaw tightened instantly. There it was. Pain. Real, sharp, impossible to hide completely. Good. She trusted him more when he looked human.
"Bullet's probably still in there," she muttered, mostly to herself. "You need CT. You need proper monitoring. You need around six things I do not have in this apartment."
"You talk too much."
"And you have impossible standards for someone on my couch at two in the morning."
Three in the morning now, actually. Time had become abstract for them.
She checked his pulse again. Still fast. Too fast for her liking.
Her mind ran through all the possibilities. If the bullet had missed anything major, he might survive removal and wound management here. If it hadn't, No. She isn't going there, not yet.
She stood up and headed into the kitchen, filling a pot with water she didn't really need but somehow needed anyway. The movement helped. Thinking helped less. 'What exactly had she brought into her apartment?'
He had said no hospital, no police. That meant one of two things: either he was running from the law, or he had enemies worse than the law. Given the gunshot wound and the general aura of "I have ruined several people's week," she was leaning toward both.
She returned with clean towels and the best alcohol she had, which, tragically, was not good enough to make any of this feel better.
Taehyun watched everything. That, itself unsettled her.
Most badly injured people drifted, obeyed, panicked, or begged. He observed. Measured. Stored things away like an onlooker. Even half-conscious, he looked like a man used to being the most dangerous person in any room.
And now he was in hers.
"Tell me if you feel dizzy," she said.
He looked at her blandly. "I've been shot."
"Yes, I noticed. I'm asking for updates, not a personality trait."
For the first time, she saw it clearly - that almost-smile again, quick and sharp at one corner of his mouth before it disappeared.
Ridiculous. She thought.
She knelt again and began cleaning the wound.
His body went still.
Not tense but controlled.
In a way that made it worse.
"Most people would complain by now," she said.
"Would it help?"
"No."
"Then I won't."
She exhaled through her nose. "You are either very disciplined or incredibly irritating."
"Both can be true."
She looked up at him, and for one strange second, they held each other's gaze in the too-small space of her living room. Outside, the city was quiet. Inside, it felt like the walls had moved closer. Then she dropped her eyes first and focused on the wound.
The bleeding had slowed, but not enough. She needed the bullet out if she could reach it.
That thought alone made her stomach twist.
She had done this before. In supervised trauma care, with equipment and assistance and proper protocols.
Not here, in her house. Not alone. Not while trying not to think about the very real possibility that whoever shot him might still be looking.
She washed her hands again, put on gloves, and laid out what she needed.
"You're not seriously considering this," he said.
Xinyue glanced up. "I'm considering all the options. At the moment, they range from bad to illegal."
"Leave it." He spoke.
"If I leave it and you develop internal complications, you'll die in a much more annoying way."
His eyes narrowed faintly, as if he was trying to decide whether she was fearless or foolish. Possibly both.
"You've have done this before."
"In hospital, yes. In my apartment? No. so let's both lower our standards."
"Why are you doing this?" he asked again.
The question landed heavier than it should have. Xinyue looked down at the blood on her gloves, then at the bullet wound, then finally at his face.
Because she was tired.
Because he was there.
Because some part of her had been built wrong for indifference.
"My father was a police officer," she said at last. "He used to say that if you can help, you help first. Then you deal with the consequences later."
Something changed in his expression when she said father.
Small. Quick. Gone before she could name it.
He looked away.
"That is a dangerous philosophy."
"That," she said quietly, "is becoming very obvious."
She prepared the anesthetic she had, painfully aware it wasn't enough.
"This is going to hurt."
He looked back at her. "Do what you need to do."
Simple words. Not dramatics. No fear.
Xinyue hated how much that steadied her.
"All right," she said softly. "Then don't move."
The room seemed to sharpen around them. The light. The sound of her own breathing. The hum of the refrigerator from the kitchen. The pulse pounding in her ears.
She worked carefully, fingers sure even while her thoughts weren't.
There.
Metal.
Her focus narrowed. His hand closed over the edge of the couch hard enough to whiten his knuckles, but he did not make a sound.
Xinyue kept going.
One second stretched into five, then ten.
And then - She pulled the bullet free.
It dropped into the tray with a tiny metallic sound that felt absurdly small for something that had nearly killed a man.
For a moment neither of them spoke.
Then Xinyue sat back a little and let out a breath she hadn't known she was holding.
"Well," she said, because apparently sarcasm was her last functioning defense mechanism, "that was intimate."
His eyes were on her face, not the bullet.
"You got it."
"Yes. Try to sound more surprised."
"I am."
She cleaned the wound again, stitched what she could, dressed it, checked him once more.
Still pale. Still too weak. But alive.
For now, alive.
When she finally peeled off her gloves and threw them away, her hands were shaking.
She hated that he noticed it.
"You should rest," he said.
Xinyue laughed once, short and tired. "You're giving me advice now?"
"You look like you'll collapse."
"Rude."
"It's a fact."
She stared at him.
Then, against all logic, she laughed. Of course, the bleeding stranger in her apartment would also be observant.
She sank into the armchair across from the couch and rubbed a hand over her face.
Silence settled between them. Not comfortable. Not quite hostile either.
Just… strange.
Then his voice came again, lower this time.
"You can still walk away."
Xinyue lowered her hand and looked at him.
At the man on her couch with the impossible control and the old scars and the eyes that looked like they belonged to someone who trusted very little. The mess she had made by choosing compassion over sense.
At the blood still drying on her floor.
"No," she said at last.
Something unreadable moved across his face. He didn't ask why. Maybe he already knew.
Maybe she did too.
Because the truth was simple.
She was already in it now.
Whatever this was.
Whoever he was.
She had crossed the all line the second she touched him in that alley.
And people like her did not get to pretend otherwise afterward.