The first days in the Seo house had a strange taste. A blend of luxurious silence, invisible rules, and expectations suspended in the air like a smoke you could never quite dispel.
San hadn't needed long to understand that this house wasn't a home — it was a structure. A living organism where everyone — staff, guards, tutors — had a precise place, an immediate use, a function almost mathematical in nature.
The house lived according to Haerin's rhythm.
It wasn't obvious at first glance.
One might have thought the center of everything was Seo Junghan — his files, his calls, his meetings. But if you observed long enough, you realized that everything revolved around the young woman, even though nothing truly belonged to her.
San never stepped inside Haerin's bedroom. She stationed herself in the hallway, at a measured distance from the door — close enough to intervene if needed, far enough not to become an intruder. The tutors arrived afterward, one after another, with a punctuality that was clearly enforced.
International law Teacher.
Political economy Teacher.
Advanced English Teacher.
All of them signed in at the entrance under the watchful eye of the head of security, then made their way to the room that had been converted into a study on the first floor. A bright room, its walls lined with shelves filled with books that San quickly identified as more decorative than truly used.
She always stood in the same spot — near the door, back to the wall, eyes turned toward the room without ever really meeting Haerin's or the tutor's gaze. She seemed to watch without watching, listen without listening.
In truth, she absorbed everything ; The memorized lines, the methodical demonstrations, the silences that stretched a little too long when the young woman searched for her words, the mechanical encouragements.
"Very good, Miss Seo. Your progress is remarkable."
The compliment always landed the same way: polite, predictable, too perfectly phrased to be sincere.
Haerin reacted the same each time. A light, controlled smile that brushed her lips without ever reaching her eyes.
"Thank you, Professor."
Her voice was soft, calm, calibrated. It never let pride or irritation slip through. Just enough gratitude not to offend anyone.
But San noticed what escaped the others.
At the end of the lesson, when the teacher packed his things, Haerin's shoulders relaxed ever so slightly. She believed the gesture was invisible.
It wasn't.
When the door closed, the young woman would drop her gaze to her hands.
For the briefest instant, one thumb rubbed over a knuckle of the other, as if trying to erase accumulated tension. Sometimes she closed her eyes one second too long, like someone trying to gather what little strength remained before stepping back into character. It wasn't spectacular. It wasn't dramatic.
It was worse: it was daily.
San didn't judge. She simply sorted the information she collected about the young woman, day after day.
To her, Haerin was neither brave nor fragile. She was the central piece of a structure — and that structure had been designed to keep her inside.
No campus, no university café, no crowded library, no rushing into a late subway to make it to class. Even the notion of "commuting" didn't exist. The tutors came to her. The world came knocking at her door — carefully filtered, carefully chosen — to ensure she learned exactly what she was expected to.
A prison, San thought. But a prison that served tea in porcelain cups.
By late morning, the ground-floor hallway filled with the smell of cooking.
The staff moved silently, with the efficiency of people who had long since learned to exist without being noticed.
Meals were never improvised.
Everything seemed to follow an invisible protocol: balanced dishes, immaculate plating, fixed schedules.
San followed Haerin to the dining room.
The table, far too long for two people, was never fully occupied. Most of the time, they were only two: father and daughter. Some days, Seo Junghan's seat remained empty, replaced by a terse message delivered by an assistant.
"Sir won't be able to attend lunch. He has an important meeting."
On those days, Haerin didn't eat more or less. The amount on her plate remained exactly the same, regardless of her father's presence or absence.
Today, however, Junghan was there.
San stood against the wall, at equal distance from the door and the large bay window. She didn't look directly at the table, but her eyes regularly swept across its outline — plates, glasses, cutlery, posture. She could have described the entire scene without seeming to pay attention to it.
Haerin held her chopsticks with studied precision. Her shoulders were straight, her back never touched the chair. She chewed slowly, silently, her gaze lowered just enough that nothing could be read in it.
Seo Junghan was reading a document placed beside his plate. He ate with the deliberate nonchalance of men too busy to grant food any meaning beyond fuel. From time to time, he lifted his eyes — but not toward his daughter. Toward the window. Toward the garden. Toward something vague outside.
It was only once he finished signing a page that he finally addressed Haerin.
"I want you to come with me to the gala," he said without preamble. "It's important for our image."
His voice was calm, almost tired. Still, San felt the sentence harden inside her, like a piece locking itself into a mechanism already in motion.
Haerin set her chopsticks down with an almost cautious gentleness.
"Yes, Father."
Not a question.
Not a protest.
A confirmation.
"You'll stay close to me during the speech. People will want to introduce you to certain guests. Don't make the mistake of…"
He paused for a moment, narrowing his eyes slightly as he searched for the word.
"…of letting yourself get distracted."
He finally turned toward her. His gaze held no cruelty, but no tenderness either. Only a continuous assessment.
"The other night, you took too long to answer Mrs. Han. She mentioned it to me afterward. You gave the impression you were bored."
Haerin didn't flinch. Her hands stayed still, folded neatly on her lap beneath the table.
"I'm sorry," she said.
"Don't be sorry. Correct yourself."
A thin silence settled over the table. San felt it stretch, like an invisible film covering every object.
"You know what they expect from you, Haerin," he continued. "A polite daughter. Educated. Smiling."
One second.
Just one.
The back of Haerin's neck stiffened.
San noticed it — that tiny movement no one would have detected unless they themselves had repeated it hundreds of times as a child, under blows and orders. A body wanting to move, wanting to react… and holding itself back. The young woman lifted her chin. Barely.
"Understood, Father."
Her voice hadn't wavered. But under the table, her fingers laced together a little too tightly.
Seo Junghan took a sip of water, set the glass down with almost surgical precision, then added:
"And sit up straight. You look tired."
Haerin kept her eyes lowered. She didn't answer. She didn't protest. She swallowed.
San followed the line of her profile, the curve of her shoulders, the way her breathing stayed measured.
The meal continued in that thick quiet that only the clink of glass and cutlery could pierce.
For San, this kind of scene was nothing exceptional. It wasn't the worst kind of violence, nor the most spectacular.
She had witnessed far worse.
But she understood one thing: the place where you strike isn't always the face ; Here, they struck elsewhere. In posture. In the voice. In the very way you were allowed to exist.
When they finally left the table, Haerin rose with the same studied grace she had displayed upon arriving. She bowed slightly to her father, then turned toward the hallway leading to the staircase.
San followed. Their footsteps echoed faintly against the marble.
No words.
No glances.
It was only halfway up the stairs, between two floors, in that small space where the cameras covered only a partial angle, that Haerin slowed down.
She placed her hand on the banister, took a deeper breath than usual, then turned just enough for San to see half her face.
"How long are you going to stay?" she asked.
Her voice was neither cold nor polite. Just… direct.
San stopped two steps below her. She looked up at her without insisting.
"As long as your father deems it necessary," she answered simply.
Haerin nodded. It wasn't the answer she had wanted — San guessed that from the slight tightening of her jaw — but it was the answer she had expected.
"I see."
She straightened her shoulders, as if this brief pause had been a weakness she needed to erase at once.
"Then," she said, continuing upward, "I suppose we're going to have to get used to each other."
It wasn't an opening. Not yet. More like a statement spoken with the polite resignation of someone who has never had a say in who enters or leaves her life.
San followed. She didn't reply immediately. But when they reached the landing, she added in a low, almost neutral voice:
"It's my job to protect you. Not to intrude on your space."
Haerin paused for a fraction of a second — the time of a blink too many.
"That's what everyone who intrudes says," she murmured.
Then she headed toward the study room, leaving San to follow, with the echo of that sentence trailing behind her.
Throughout the entire afternoon lesson, San felt Haerin's glances in her direction — fleeting, probing, as if trying to dissect her. But she gave nothing away. And when the class finally ended and the tutor left the room, the young heiress stood up.
"You never sit down?" she asked, without turning her head.
Her voice was polite, but there was an edge in its inflection — an elegant irritation.
"It's not part of the protocol," San replied.
Haerin let out a short, controlled laugh.
"Of course. Nothing is ever planned for…"
She cut herself off, shaking her head with a smile that didn't reach her eyes.
"Never mind."
Together, they headed toward the staircase in a thunderous silence. Only the echo of their footsteps filled the now-empty house, all outside visitors gone.
The afternoon had the artificial softness of wealthy homes: dimmed lights, curtains filtering the sun, the faint fragrance of fresh flowers.
Haerin settled in the east-wing lounge — the one where she always took her tea at four o'clock. Always the same room, the same low table, the same white ceramic cups lined up like a fragile collection.
San took her usual place, slightly farther back — close enough to intervene, far enough not to disturb the perfectly curated frame Haerin maintained around herself.
A maid entered, pushing a trolley with a teapot still steaming. A woman in her thirties, with a gentle face, visibly anxious at the idea of spilling a single drop. When she noticed San, she slowed — imperceptibly, but enough to reveal hesitation.
"Good afternoon," she said, bowing slightly, more out of reflex than genuine politeness.
San answered with a simple nod.
The maid cleared her throat, lifted the teapot, and filled Haerin's cup with almost trembling precision.
Then, as if trying to seize a rare opportunity, she turned to San:
"Would you like… some tea as well?"
Her voice was soft but cautious — a little too cautious, as if afraid of breaking some invisible rule.
San shook her head.
"No."
The maid hesitated for a second, then leaned in slightly, lowering her voice as if they were conspiring:
"You can have some, you know… nobody will scold you. The previous guards always drank something during breaks."
San turned her head slightly toward her. Her gaze wasn't harsh — just… neutral. But that alone was enough to make the maid blush.
"I… I only wanted to be polite," she stammered.
Haerin finally lifted her eyes from her book.
One look.
A single look.
The maid froze instantly, as if she had just committed a monumental mistake.
"Miss Park," Haerin said, her tone perfectly courteous but extremely measured, "you may go."
"Yes, Miss Seo, sorry. I'm sorry, I—"
"It's nothing."
But her voice clearly meant: this conversation is over.
The maid hurried out, leaving behind the faint scent of tea and embarrassment. Silence fell again. San remained still.
Haerin slowly set her cup down in a perfectly calculated movement, then stated without looking up:
"They never know what to do with you."
San tilted her head slightly.
"With me?"
"Yes."
She turned a page in her book, unhurried.
"You don't talk. You don't smile. You never eat anything here. You don't relay orders like the other guards. You don't take up space. You don't trade gossip."
She paused.
"You're… strange."
Her tone wasn't mocking, nor hostile. Just factual. An observation delivered with the same neutrality one might use to comment on the weather.
"It's not my intention," San replied just as neutrally.
"Maybe," Haerin said, resting the book on her lap. "But in this house, intentions don't matter. Impressions do."
She took another sip of tea, eyes lowered to her cup as if reading something at the bottom.
"They think you could have them fired with a single look."
San blinked once. This Haerin was dragging far more words out of her than she preferred — and she wasn't entirely sure she liked it.
"I don't have that power."
"I know."
A tiny smile touched the corner of her lips.
"They don't."
Silence reclaimed its place. But this time, it wasn't hostile. There was something else — an almost imperceptible nuance: The beginning of familiarity. Barely there, but undeniably real.
Haerin finally closed her book and set it on the table.
"And you?" she asked at last, as if the question had slipped out despite her.
"Does all of… this… intimidate you?"
San didn't answer right away. She looked around: the too-perfect sofa, the too-fragile cup, the flowers that never wilted, the carefully programmed calm… and Haerin, flawless at the center of it all, like just another decorative element.
"No."
Haerin nodded a little too quickly.
"Of course."
She picked up her cup again, but her fingers were trembling slightly.
San saw it. She said nothing.
After several long minutes of silence, Haerin glanced at the clock mounted on the wall. She rose slowly, smoothed the nonexistent creases of her dress, and walked toward the piano room.
If San had been the kind of woman to speak freely, she would have laughed at such a stereotypical life. But she wasn't — so she simply fell into step behind the young woman.
The room was at the end of the hallway. Smaller than the others, but more intimate: pale gray walls, a few minimalist frames, a perfectly placed cream rug, and at the center, a black grand piano whose polished surface reflected the light like a dark mirror.
The teacher was already there. A man in his fifties, wearing a simple suit, round glasses, and short salt-and-pepper hair. He bowed when he saw Haerin.
"Good afternoon, Miss Seo."
His voice was gentle, but not warm — the voice of a man who had taught for far too long to allow himself any attachment.
"Good afternoon, Master Chae," Haerin replied.
She didn't smile. Not out of rudeness. Simply because there was nothing to smile about.
San recognized the behavior — it mirrored her own. She took her usual place near the door, back against the wall, halfway between shadow and light.
Haerin sat at the bench. Her posture was almost painfully precise: shoulders relaxed, back straight, hands positioned at the exact correct distance from the keys. Not a single unnecessary movement.
"Did you practice the piece?" the maestro asked.
"Yes."
She hovered her fingers above the keys, waiting for permission to begin. Waiting for the order.
San watched them both.
Master Chae adjusted his watch, as if mentally timing the entire session. Haerin adjusted her breathing, as if aligning her body to a rhythm that wasn't her own.
"Very well, let's begin."
The first notes fell — clean, sharp, precise. No hesitation. No tremor. The technique was flawless. But it was music without a voice. Perfect music, yet empty. Music that sounded more like duty than emotion.
San wasn't a musician. But she knew the sound of obedience. She had heard it in the muffled screams of training, in the crisp thud of blows, in broken breaths. She recognized that rhythm too — too controlled to be free.
Master Chae nodded from time to time, but his gaze followed every movement, every joint, like a silent judge.
After a few minutes, he suddenly placed a hand on the keyboard, cutting the sound off.
Haerin stopped immediately.
"No. You're playing correctly, but not… consciously. You're following the sheet music. You're not living it."
Haerin didn't respond. Her face remained still, but San saw tension settle quickly in her jaw.
"Again," he ordered.
Haerin began once more. Same perfection. Same absence of breath.
Master Chae snapped his notebook shut with a soft click.
"Your father told me you'll be performing at the next party meeting."
The young assassin instinctively sharpened her attention — ready to catch any detail that might be useful.
"For now… you are not ready."
This time, a faint flicker passed through Haerin's eyes. Only San noticed it. Like a fragile reflection, immediately buried under her impeccable posture.
"I'll be ready," she replied simply.
Master Chae watched her for a moment, then continued in a slightly sharper tone:
"Once more."
Haerin obeyed. The notes began again — faster this time, less stable. She still played the right notes, but she had stopped breathing between the measures.
San felt her own hand slowly curl into a fist — a reflex born elsewhere, the reflex of someone who recognizes the exact moment a body starts to give out without showing it.
When the piece finally ended, the silence that followed felt more violent than the music.
The teacher nodded, unsmiling.
"We'll do better tomorrow."
He put his things away.
"Don't forget to work on your dynamics. Your father cares a great deal about presentation."
He bowed. Haerin bowed as well. Then the door closed behind him.
A breath.
The faintest one.
Just enough for San to catch it.
Haerin didn't move right away. She remained facing the piano, her hands still hovering above the keys, like someone torn between continuing… or erasing every trace of what she had just played. Then, very slowly, she lifted her hands from the keyboard.
"You played perfectly."
It was the first time San allowed herself to speak without being asked anything.
If she truly wanted to integrate into the family and gather the information she needed, she had to be at least a little more… pleasant. Or, at the very least, capable of stringing more than two words together now and then.
Haerin let out a brief laugh — not joyful, not even amused. A laugh without light.
"It's never enough here."
She stood. The movement was fluid, but her shoulders were heavy. Not slumped — heavy. As she walked past San, she slowed just enough to murmur:
"And you… you must think all of this is ridiculous."
San looked at her without judgment — just with that sharp, neutral stillness that defined her.
"No."
Silence.
Haerin seemed to be waiting for an explanation. San added, almost like half-confessed truth:
"It's not ridiculous to learn how to survive what's forced on you."
Haerin blinked — a tiny reaction, but real.
"I don't—" she began, then corrected herself immediately. I don't see it that way."
"I know."
The young woman looked away, as though those two words unsettled her more than she cared to admit. Then she said, almost as if shielding herself:
"It doesn't matter. You're not here to understand me."
And she walked back toward her room, leaving behind the dull echo of notes she would never be allowed to play any other way.
The day of the gala, the house seemed to breathe differently. Not faster. Not louder. But with a brighter, tighter tension — almost electric. San felt it from dawn on. The staff moved quicker, phone calls multiplied, and the house — usually perfectly calibrated — vibrated with the rhythm of an event it had already lived through hundreds of times. Haerin still hadn't come downstairs, so the young assassin waited in the hallway, watching every move the staff made.
The head of security walked past her with a thin file tucked under his arm.
"This gala is an important event for this family," he said gravely. "No unnecessary talking. Stay in her shadow. And in Sir's."
She nodded. She already knew.
At two in the afternoon, Haerin finally appeared. She descended the stairs as if each step belonged to her, her fingers gliding along the banister in an almost absent motion.
San immediately noticed the flawless loungewear, the hair still faintly warm from the styling tools, and the gaze drifting somewhere far away.
"The house feels like an anthill today," Haerin remarked, without truly addressing her.
"I suppose it's a special day."
A joyless smile brushed Haerin's lips.
"Yes. The gala."
A member of the staff joined them at once.
"Miss Seo, the stylist is waiting for you. Your father wants a first lighting test before five."
Haerin nodded, then shot a brief glance toward San.
"Come. You need to be there."
It wasn't an invitation. It was a necessity. A habit. Proof that she was never alone — even when she might have wanted to be.
They went upstairs and, for the first time, San entered Haerin's bedroom — the most intimate space in the house. And what she saw was not what she had expected.
The room wasn't as cold as the rest of the villa. It was subtle, but it was there: a warmth, a softness San hadn't found anywhere else.
Ivory curtains let in gentler light than the other rooms. On the vanity, among the perfectly aligned bottles, one object stood out: a small, almost empty perfume bottle, simpler, older, without any visible logo. Something that didn't belong here — meaning something Haerin refused to remove.
On the bedside table lay two stacked books. One held a hand-folded bookmark. The other wasn't a law or economics manual, but a novel. A novel written long before she was born, its pages softened by too many readings. And above all… A photography.
Small. Not in any luxurious frame. Half-hidden behind a glass vase. A woman with gentle features, smiling with a warmth that didn't exist anywhere else in the house. Standing beside her: a younger Haerin, hair tied back in a ponytail, smiling wide, open, and spontaneous.
Haerin noticed where San's eyes had briefly wandered. She immediately turned her head away, as if someone had just brushed against something too fragile.
The bedroom had been transformed for the occasion: clothing racks, an open vanity covered with palettes, and professionals moving around the young mistress of the house as if orbiting a center of gravity.
The stylist, elegant and authoritative, looked up.
"Miss Seo, let's try the ivory one. Your father wants something classic."
Haerin drew in a discreet breath but didn't protest.
San remained by the door. She watched everything: the staff's positions, the windows, the uneven line of the rug, anything sharp, any movement that came a little too close to Haerin. While the stylist led her behind a screen, San looked away out of reflex. But she still registered everything — the rustle of fabric, the whispers, the instructions spoken too quickly.
When Haerin stepped out again, the air shifted. The ivory dress flowed over her like a second light. Not a single thread out of place, not a single random fold. She looked less like a twenty-one-year-old and more like an idealized version of herself, sculpted by expectations.
The makeup artists moved quietly around her.
"You'll be watching her all evening, right?" the stylist chirped suddenly at San, cheerful and careless. "Then make sure she stays flawless. It would be such a shame if anything ruined the moment."
San didn't answer. Her gaze sharpened like a polished blade.
Haerin's lips pressed together slightly. It was brief — almost invisible — but clear enough for San. She hated the comment. And she hated even more that it had been said out loud in front of her.
The hair was finished. The makeup too. One last dusting of powder, one last controlled breath. Then the stylist stepped back, satisfied.
"Perfect."
San didn't linger on her charge's silhouette. Something else had caught her trained eye.
Beneath the mirror, half-hidden by a box of brushes, lay a thin file of about twenty pages. Not schoolwork. Not personal. Administrative.
"Parliamentary Commission – Funding & Ethics."
The same logo that appeared on the documents Seong-min had given her.
San didn't let anything show, but another piece slipped neatly into place. Seo Junghan never left anything lying around by accident.
If a political document was in his daughter's room, he was already using her as a relay — whether willingly or not.
"That will do," the makeup artist said, putting away her clips. "Your father prefers no shine along the jawline, Miss Seo."
San tore her gaze from the file under the mirror and refocused on the young woman.
Haerin was touching the clasp of her earring with her fingertips — a gesture that had clearly become a reflex.
"Do you think he'll like it?" she asked the stylist.
It wasn't vanity.
Or pride.
It was worry disguised as an innocent question. The stylist replied with a tight smile:
"He just wants you to be impeccable, that's all."
San said nothing, but she stored everything: the parliamentary file, the comment about appearance, the tension in Haerin's jaw, the way the staff spoke about the father. All of it formed a language. And she understood that language perfectly.
Haerin finally turned away from the mirror.
"I suppose we should go downstairs," she said.
San nodded.
They stepped out of the bedroom, and as the hallway opened before them, San cast one last discreet glance inside — at the file lying in plain sight, waiting for her to return and investigate.
She followed Haerin down the stairs. In her mind, connections were already forming: the names she had read in the file, the father's movements, the servers carrying crates downstairs for the gala, the expected guests…
The evening would be perfect for observing Seo Junghan. His reactions. His alliances. His pressure points. And for understanding what, exactly, he was doing with his daughter.
San straightened her posture just a fraction. Infiltrated informant. Silent shadow. Official protector. And above all… the eye fixed on the man she had come to destroy.
Haerin stepped off the last stair with an elegance that was almost painful. The hall lights — too white, too harsh — slid over her face like a spotlight. She was already slipping into her role, shoulders perfectly aligned, chin slightly raised to give the illusion of a confidence that might not exist at all.
Seo Junghan was waiting near the front door, his hands clasped behind his back. Behind him, two agents were going over the final logistical checks in low voices — routes, comms, timings. He turned toward them. His gaze flicked briefly from Haerin to San.
No smile.
No emotion.
Just an assessment.
"You're perfect."
The words fell with the same cold weight as those Akio had once spoken to San in the HQ training room.
Exactly the same rhythm. Exactly the same certainty. The same way of shaping someone into a tool. San felt the sentence slip through the air like a distorted echo.
"You're the perfect weapon."
"You're perfect."
Two worlds, one logic: shape, use, control.
Haerin dipped her head, as if thanking him for a compliment she knew wasn't one.
"Thank you, Father."
She wasn't smiling. She didn't dare not smile either. So she wore that half-mask, suspended and fragile, that didn't quite belong to anyone.
Seo Junghan stepped forward to adjust a nonexistent fold of her dress at her shoulder. An intimate gesture, but devoid of tenderness. Simply a correction — the way one straightens a set piece before the curtain rises.
"We need to be irreproachable from the moment we step outside."
"We." But he meant her.
Haerin lowered her gaze, then immediately lifted it again, as if even that small lapse were forbidden.
"I understand."
Standing one step behind her, San registered every inflection, every pause, the almost clinical precision of Junghan's movements. Every sentence he uttered, she silently cross-referenced with the reports in the file. Every gesture completed a portrait she already knew too well.
The politician finally gestured toward the door.
"Let's go. The motorcade is ready."
The security team opened the door. A breath of warm air rushed into the hall, carrying with it the scent of Seoul's night and the heat of recently parked engines.
Haerin inhaled gently, as if bracing herself from the inside — or armoring herself.
San watched. More than just a simple breath, she heard the inner mechanics of a young woman about to become exactly what her father demanded she be.
Perfection.