The next day, Min-woo was halfway across campus when he saw Jihan.
The black sedan rolled past the main gate too slowly to be ignored—too polished, too expensive, too out of place among the tide of students and cheap taxis clogging the road. It came to a smooth stop just outside the humanities building, and the back door opened first.
A boy stepped out.
Tall. Uniform neat enough to look ironed twice. A dark backpack hanging from one shoulder like he had never once had to fight for space on a crowded bus in his life. He shut the car door and bent slightly toward the open window, saying something Min-woo couldn't hear.
Then the man inside leaned closer.
Only for a second.
The window was down just enough for Min-woo to catch the side of a face—sharp jaw, dark hair swept back, a white shirt under a charcoal suit. His hand was resting loosely near the edge of the door, watch glinting under the morning light. Calm. Expensive. Familiar.
Min-woo stopped walking.
He knew that face.
Not because he had ever met him. But because three nights ago Jae-min had sat on the floor of his apartment with Jihan's social media profile open on his phone and stared at it so long Min-woo had nearly gotten sick of seeing the man's face.
That was him.
The sedan pulled away almost immediately, disappearing into the road traffic with the same quiet smoothness it had arrived with, but Min-woo was still staring after it when two girls brushed past him.
"Did you see that?"
"The car? Obviously I saw it. That's Tae-hyun."
Min-woo's attention snapped to them.
The girls slowed near the stairwell, coffee cups in hand, voices low.
"I'm serious, I heard from So-yeon that they're looking for another helper at their place."
"At the apartment?"
"Yeah. One of the staff left. Something about her mom being sick back in Busan, so she had to go home."
"No way. In that apartment?"
"Mm-hm. Rich people are always replacing staff."
Min-woo stopped pretending to look at his phone.
The girls kept walking, gossip spilling out between them with the ease of people who had no idea they were handing a stranger the key to someone else's life.
"Tae-hyun is insane handsome though."
"You say that about every rich guy."
"No, I'm serious this time. And the older brother is even worse. My cousin saw him once and said he looks like he walked out of a drama."
Min-woo barely heard the rest.
A vacancy.
At Jihan's apartment.
His head came up slowly.
For one beat he just stood there in the middle of campus, the sound of students moving around him fading into something dull and far away. Then a grin split across his face so fast it almost hurt.
"Oh, you're kidding me," he muttered.
He spun on his heel and started running.
---
Jae-min opened the apartment door with a textbook in one hand and an expression on his face that clearly said he had been two seconds away from yelling at whoever was pounding like the building was on fire.
"What—"
Min-woo shoved past him before he could finish.
"I found a way in."
Jae-min blinked. "What?"
Min-woo kicked the door shut behind him and turned, chest still rising from the run over. "I found a way in."
Jae-min stared at him for a second, then set the book down slowly on the shoe cabinet. "Min-woo."
"I'm serious."
"You ran across town to say that when you could just wait for me to get there?"
Min-woo pointed at him. "I saw him."
Jae-min's expression changed instantly.
"Jihan," Min-woo said, already pacing. "He dropped his brother, i think his name was Tae-hyun. He dropped him off at campus this morning. I recognized him from the photos you showed me. And while I was there, I overheard these girls talking about their apartment."
Jae-min's brows pulled together. "What about it?"
"There's a vacancy."
"A vacancy," Jae-min repeated.
"For help. Someone left. They need another person in the apartment."
Jae-min laughed once, but it came out wrong—sharp, disbelieving. "You're joking."
"Do I look like I sprinted here for fun?"
Jae-min's eyes were on him now, steady and unreadable in that way they got when he was trying very hard not to hope for something. "You're sure?"
"I'm sure enough to stake my pride on it." Min-woo crossed his arms. "And before you ask—yes, I'm already thinking about how to get the position."
Jae-min straightened. "How?"
Min-woo gave him a look. "Please. Have you met me?"
Despite everything, the corner of Jae-min's mouth twitched.
It vanished just as quickly.
"You think this could work?" he asked.
Min-woo stared at him.
The room went quiet.
A month ago this would have sounded insane—Jae-min, top of his class, star of the basketball team, sitting in his apartment plotting how to ruin his sister's ex-boyfriend. Min-woo, who usually spent more time flirting with people than thinking, offering to slip into a stranger's home for revenge.
And yet here they were.
Jae-min looked away first.
His jaw had gone tight again, that same way it always did whenever his sister's name hovered anywhere near the conversation. The bruise of that night still lived in the apartment even if she didn't. It lived in the silence of her room. In the untouched mug she had left in the kitchen cabinet. In the way Jae-min kept checking his phone after midnight as if he expected bad news to crawl out of it again.
Min-woo's voice softened before he meant it to.
"It could work," he said. "If I get inside, I can watch his routine. Figure out how he moves. Where he goes. Who he's with. What kind of opening you'd need."
Jae-min's gaze lifted back to his face.
"You'd do that?"
Min-woo snorted. "I literally just ran here to tell you I would."
A quiet laugh escaped Jae-min then—small, brief, gone too fast. He scrubbed a hand over his face and exhaled.
"When did you become this ride-or-die?"
"When you started making that expression."
"What expression?"
"The one where you look like you haven't slept in two weeks and might commit a felony if left alone."
Jae-min rolled his eyes, but there was no real force in it.
Min-woo stepped closer and nudged his shoulder. "I'm serious, Jae. If this is what you want, then let's do it properly."
For a moment Jae-min said nothing.
Then he looked up, and whatever hesitation had still been sitting in his face hardened into something colder.
"Do it," he said.
Min-woo grinned. "That's what I wanted to hear."
"No half-assed plan. No stupid risks."
"That one might be harder." Min-woo winced, sucking air through his teeth.
"Min-woo."
"Fine, fine." He held up both hands. "I'll be smart."
Jae-min's eyes narrowed. "You?"
"Shut up."
For the first time in days, Min-woo saw something almost alive return to Jae-min's face—not happiness, not even relief. Just movement. Something sharp enough to cut through the anger that had been sitting on him like a second skin.
It was ugly, maybe. The beginning of what they were about to do.
But it was movement.
And right now, that was enough.
---
Min-woo got the job four days later.
He didn't tell Jae-min exactly how he pulled it off, mostly because Jae-min's face had gone flat with horror the moment he admitted the process involved smiling at an elderly building manager, carrying grocery bags for one of the older women on the fifth floor, and "accidentally" becoming useful enough to be remembered.
"I hate you," Jae-min had said over the phone.
"You hate that I'm charming."
"I hate that you say that word about yourself."
"Jealousy is ugly on you."
"Hang up."
Min-woo hadn't, of course. He'd stayed on the line until Jae-min threatened to block him, then hung up laughing and walked straight into the lion's den.
Jihan's apartment building was the kind of place that looked quiet on purpose.
The lobby floors gleamed. The elevators smelled faintly of cedar and money. The staff all moved with the same polished restraint, as if someone had trained them to take up as little space as possible in a home that was too expensive to ever feel lived in.
Min-woo learned fast.
He learned which housekeeper liked to talk when she folded laundry, which driver smoked behind the service entrance when he thought no one was watching, which auntie from the neighboring unit always wanted someone to listen to her complain about the building fees. He carried things, smiled at the right moments, let people underestimate him the way pretty boys were always underestimated, and listened.
By the end of the first week, he knew more than enough.
Jihan usually left for work between seven-thirty and eight depending on whether he had an early meeting. He had a driver. On school mornings, Tae-hyun rode with him part of the way before getting dropped at campus. Jihan came home late more often than not. He took calls in his study with the door half-shut. He barely looked at most people when they spoke to him, but he always thanked the staff who handed him his coffee.
That last detail had annoyed Min-woo for reasons he couldn't explain.
He also learned something else.
Something bigger.
He waited until the end of the week to bring it to Jae-min.