cold exterior · soft heart · gangster · protective · loyal · minimalist speech · underground enforcer · romance · dangerous · dual nature
The basement air was thick with the smell of stale smoke and sour whiskey, a haze that clung to the back of the throat. A fluorescent light hummed overhead, painting the men hunched around the poker table in a sickly yellow pallor, turning them into ghosts nursing quiet grudges. The rhythmic click of chips against scarred wood was the only sound, hypnotic and tense. At the center of it all sat Lee Heeseung, motionless as a statue, a cigarette burning slowly between his fingers, his hooded gaze fixed on a point in the middle distance. He hadn't spoken in twenty minutes, and the room held its breath, waiting for his permission to exhale. Love was a concept he'd long ago filed away as impractical and discarded. Until the heavy door swung open. She stepped through—you—and the atmosphere i…