"You're late," Jae-min said the second he opened the door.
Min-woo brushed past him and dropped onto the couch like a man who had been carrying secrets in his pockets all day. "You say that like I wasn't busy infiltrating enemy territory for you."
Jae-min shut the door and followed him into the living room. "Did you find anything?"
Min-woo kicked off his shoes. "Get me water first."
Jae-min stared.
Min-woo stared back.
A minute later, a cold bottle of water was shoved into his chest with enough force to count as violence.
"Wow," Min-woo said, unscrewing the cap. "So hostile."
"Talk."
Jae-min remained standing while Min-woo drank half the bottle in one go. The apartment smelled faintly of fabric softener and instant ramen. A game from the night before was frozen on the television screen, forgotten halfway through. Jae-min's hair was still damp, as though he'd only just showered after practice. He wore a black sleeveless shirt and gray sweats hanging low on his hips.
Min-woo noticed the irony immediately and almost laughed.
Perfect. He's literally already dressed for the trap.
He swallowed the thought before it reached his face.
"Okay," he said, setting the bottle down. "First, I've got his routine."
That got Jae-min moving. He grabbed a notebook from the table and sat down opposite him, expression sharpening into focus.
Min-woo spent the next ten minutes laying it all out.
What time Jihan left. Which mornings Tae-hyun rode with him. The route the driver usually took toward the main road. The time the car passed the school district. Which days Jihan looked busiest. Which days he was more likely to be on his phone in the back seat. Where the easiest place would be for Jae-min to appear without looking staged.
Jae-min wrote everything down.
By the time Min-woo finished, the page was a mess of times, arrows, street names, and underlined words.
Then Min-woo leaned back and folded his arms.
"There's something else."
Jae-min looked up.
Min-woo studied him for a second, weighing how to say it.
"I heard it from two of the older staff," he said at last. "Not directly. They were talking while folding linens and didn't know I was listening."
Jae-min's hand stilled over the notebook.
"They said years ago, before all this, Jihan dated a guy."
The room went still.
Jae-min's brows drew together. "What?"
"A man," Min-woo said. "Apparently it turned into a whole mess in the family. The father buried it. Paid people off, cleaned it up, whatever rich psychopaths do when they want a scandal dead."
Jae-min kept staring at him.
"You're sure?"
"As sure as I can be without digging up the man and interviewing him myself."
"That's not funny."
"I'm not joking."
Jae-min kept staring at the notebook. He hadn't turned the page. His pen hadn't moved.
Min-woo watched the realization move across his face—all at once.
If Jihan had dated a man before, then the plan they'd been shaping in the abstract was no longer just a fantasy of revenge stitched together from anger and guesswork. It meant Jihan could look at Jae-min and want exactly what Jae-min was planning to use against him.
It meant the trap had teeth.
Min-woo broke the silence first.
"You're pretty enough to ruin someone's life on a normal day," he said matter-of-factly. "If he likes men, you're not the weak point in this plan."
Jae-min looked up sharply. "Can you stop talking like that?"
"What? You want honesty or not?"
"I don't want you calling me pretty."
Min-woo burst out laughing.
Jae-min threw the nearest cushion at his head.
Min-woo caught it with one hand. "You know I'm right."
"Shut up."
"I'm serious, Jae. If he notices you, he'll keep noticing you."
Jae-min's expression shifted.
The amusement vanished first. Then the tension came back, quiet and hard.
He sat back against the couch, notebook still in hand, but his eyes had gone distant in a way Min-woo had seen that look before. Every time it appeared, it was only a matter of seconds before Jae-min mentioned his sister.
That was always where it led.
Min-woo watched him for a moment before speaking again, more carefully this time.
"You don't have to do it like this if you don't want to."
Jae-min let out a breath through his nose.
"You've seen her messages," he said quietly.
Min-woo's face softened.
He had.
The unanswered texts. The frantic pleading. The way Jae-min's sister had typed as if she could hold a person in place through sheer panic and love if she just found the right words.
Min-woo had never forgotten them.
"I know," he said.
Jae-min looked down at the page in his lap. "He ended it like she was disposable. Like she was nothing." His fingers tightened around the edge of the notebook. "And after that, she…" He stopped.
The apartment filled with the sound of the refrigerator humming in the kitchen. Somewhere outside, a car horn blared and faded.
Then Jae-min lifted his head again.
"When does he pass the school road?"
Min-woo knew that tone.
He knew that look too. Jae-min had already made up his mind.
He answered without missing a beat. "Seven-fifty on most mornings. A little earlier if he has a meeting."
Jae-min nodded once.
"Then we start Monday."
"Don't forget the plan. Trap. Ruin. Dispose."
Jae-min nodded in agreement.
---
Jae-min woke before sunrise, dragged himself out of bed on four hours of sleep, threw on his school uniform under a hoodie, and met Min-woo outside the apartment with a face that looked actively offended by the existence of morning.
"You look disgusting," Min-woo said by way of greeting.
Jae-min glared at him and opened the back door of the taxi.
The route to Jihan's side of the city took almost forty minutes at that hour. Long enough for Jae-min to fall silent and stay that way. He kept checking the time on his phone, thumb tapping restlessly against the case. By the time the cab dropped them off two streets from the school road, the sky had barely finished lightening.
"Remember," Min-woo said, walking backward in front of him, "don't overdo it."
"I know."
"Natural sweaty. Not serial killer sweaty."
Jae-min looked at him blankly.
Min-woo sighed. "Jog a little. Don't run like you're being chased by debt."
Jae-min shoved him aside and started down the sidewalk.
The plan was simple enough to sound stupid.
Jae-min would appear on the route Jihan's car took when dropping Tae-hyun near campus—just a student heading to school, maybe a little flushed from rushing, maybe a little sweaty from the morning walk. Harmless. Good-looking enough to be memorable. Familiar enough, after a few repeated sightings, to stick.
That was all.
Just repetition and timing and the hope that Jihan's attention could be trained in the right direction.
Jae-min jogged the length of the next block, slowed near the crossing, raked a hand through his hair, and started walking toward the school road with his backpack hanging off one shoulder.
Min-woo watched from farther back, trying not to grin.
The bastard was annoyingly good at this.
His face was flushed just enough. The black uniform jacket hung open over a white shirt that clung lightly to his skin from the run. His hair had gone messy in exactly the way expensive haircuts always did when ruined a little. He looked like every rich-school fantasy rolled into one exhausted university athlete on his way to class.
If Min-woo didn't know better, he'd have thought the whole thing was natural.
A black sedan turned the corner.
Min-woo straightened.
Jae-min kept walking.
The car passed right by him.
No pause. No slowing. No glance through the tinted window that meant anything at all.
It just kept going.
Jae-min didn't stop walking until it was half a block away.
Then he turned his head very slowly and stared after it.
Min-woo burst out laughing.
"Oh my God," he wheezed when Jae-min marched back toward him with murder in his eyes. "He didn't even look at you."
"Shut up."
"He was on his phone!"
"I said shut up."
Min-woo clutched his stomach. "All that effort. The little jog. The wet hair. And he just—"
Jae-min smacked the back of his head as he passed.
"Try laughing again and I'll push you into traffic."
---
The second try went only slightly better.
This time Jihan looked up.
That was it.
One glance through the car window. Brief. Casual. Gone.
No slowing. No second look.
Jae-min came home and threw his bag onto the couch hard enough to bounce it off.
"This is humiliating," he announced to the ceiling.
Min-woo, sprawled across the floor with a bowl of ramen balanced on his knee, looked up. "I don't know. I'm having fun."
Jae-min kicked his foot.
"You're enjoying this because it's not your pride on the line."
"Correction. It is your pride and my entertainment."
"Get out of my house."
"You invited me."
"I'm uninviting you."
Min-woo slurped his noodles with the loud satisfaction of a man who knew he was safe.
---
The third try almost worked.
Almost.
Jihan looked longer this time.
Long enough for Jae-min to feel it.
The sedan had slowed at the light, and for two suspended seconds Jae-min could feel the weight of someone's gaze from behind the tinted glass. He kept walking, pulse jumping, every muscle in his body painfully aware of itself.
Then the light changed.
The car moved.
Gone again.
Jae-min got into Min-woo's taxi afterward and slammed the door harder than necessary.
"Did you see that?" Min-woo asked.
"Yes."
"He definitely looked."
"Yes."
Min-woo turned in his seat, grinning. "I think he likes the face."
Jae-min shoved him away with one hand. "Can you not sound thrilled that I'm trying to seduce my sister's ex-boyfriend?"
"Technically you're trying to ruin him."
"Using seduction."
Min-woo shrugged. "A versatile strategy."
Jae-min groaned and tipped his head back against the seat.
By the time they reached campus, he was in a mood foul enough to curdle milk.
He skipped lunch. Snapped at two teammates. Nearly got into an argument with a professor over an assignment he hadn't even forgotten to submit. When Min-woo found him later that evening sitting alone in the bleachers, spinning a basketball between both palms with the expression of someone fantasizing about violence, he knew better than to start with a joke.
"It'll work tomorrow," he said instead.
Jae-min didn't answer.
Min-woo dropped down beside him. "Hey."
Nothing.
Min-woo nudged his knee. "You know it's not about whether you're good-looking enough, right?"
Jae-min turned slowly. "Excuse me?"
"I'm serious." Min-woo lifted both hands. "Your ego is unbearable, but even I'm not delusional enough to think this is because he doesn't find you attractive."
Jae-min looked offended despite himself.
"Then what is it?"
Min-woo shrugged. "Maybe he's distracted. Maybe he's cautious. Maybe he noticed you yesterday and is trying to figure out if he's seen you before. Rich men are weird."
Jae-min stared at the court for a long moment, basketball resting silent in his lap now.
Then, quieter, he said, "I hate this."
Min-woo's expression softened.
The evening light cut across Jae-min's face, catching the tension in his jaw, the exhaustion under his eyes. He looked younger when he was like this. Not because he was actually young—though he was—but because all the sharp confidence people usually saw in him kept slipping whenever his sister entered the conversation, even silently.
"I know," Min-woo said.
Jae-min swallowed and looked away. "Every time I stand there waiting for his car, I keep thinking about her. About what she looked like that night. And then I think about him stopping because he wants…" He broke off with a bitter laugh. "It makes me sick."
Min-woo let the words sit.
After a while, he said, "Then let it make you sick. Just don't forget why you're doing it."
Jae-min was quiet.
The basketball slipped from his hands and thudded once against the concrete between his shoes.
When he finally spoke, his voice was flat again.
"He'll stop tomorrow."
Min-woo looked at him.
Jae-min lifted his eyes, and there it was again—that hard, ugly resolve that had started living in him ever since the night he found his sister on the floor.
"He has to."
---
On the fourth morning, it rained.
Not hard. Just enough to leave the roads damp and the air heavy.
Jae-min got out of the taxi, stretched his neck once, and stared down the street like he was preparing for war.
Min-woo stepped out after him with two iced coffees and held one out.
Jae-min took it without a word.
"You look scary," Min-woo said.
"I haven't had breakfast."
"That explains it."
Jae-min drained half the coffee in one go, handed the empty cup back, and rolled his shoulders. "What time?"
Min-woo checked his phone. "Three minutes."
Jae-min nodded.
The road was quieter than usual, morning traffic still thin this far from the main intersection. A line of trees ran along one side of the pavement, leaves still wet from the night rain.
Jae-min pulled his hoodie off and shoved it at Min-woo.
Underneath, he was wearing a fitted black sports shirt instead of his uniform jacket, the school crest visible near the collar. His sleeves were pushed up to his elbows. His hair was still slightly damp from the sink where he'd splashed water over it ten minutes earlier. He looked less polished today. More real. Like someone who had run late and had no time to care.
Min-woo looked him over once and whistled.
"If this doesn't work, you get to curse at me."
Jae-min gave him the finger and started jogging.
Just enough to put a flush under his skin and a shine of sweat at the base of his throat. By the time he slowed near the crossing and started walking toward the school road, his breathing had gone a little uneven.
Min-woo stepped back beneath the awning of a convenience store and watched.
A black sedan turned onto the street.
Jae-min kept his pace steady.
The car moved closer.
Closer.
For one horrible second Min-woo thought they were about to fail again. Jae-min must have thought the same thing, because even from where he stood Min-woo could see the tension in the set of his shoulders.
Then the sedan slowed.
Min-woo straightened.
The car passed Jae-min by a few feet.
Stopped. Reversed.
Jae-min halted.
The back window slid down.
Jihan was sitting inside in a dark suit, one hand resting near his phone, the other loose against his thigh. Tae-hyun sat beside him, looking equally startled by the sudden stop. Jihan barely seemed to notice. His gaze was fixed on Jae-min now, moving over him with quiet, unmistakable interest.
Even from where Min-woo stood, it was obvious this wasn't a casual glance anymore.
Jae-min turned toward the car with exactly the right amount of confusion on his face.
Up close, Min-woo could see Jihan more clearly than he ever had before. He was handsome in a way that didn't beg for attention—clean lines, controlled expression, eyes too sharp to be soft even this early in the morning. But there was something different in his face now, something faintly arrested. For a split second, Jihan looked almost surprised by himself.
His gaze returned to Jae-min's face and stayed there a beat too long.
Then Jihan spoke.
"Hey," he said, voice calm through the open window. "It looks like you're heading our way."
He glanced once toward the school road ahead, then back at Jae-min.
"Do you need a lift?"