Sshhh... Sshhh...
The nocturnal rain of Velas City lashed heavily against the colossal windowpanes.
It birthed a weeping curtain of water, distorting the vibrant neon glare of the outside world into a blurred, incoherent haze.
Much like my own future.
A future I had crumpled and discarded with my very own hands.
I stood in the staff restroom, staring blankly at my own reflection in the expansive mirror.
A young man clad in a monochrome, black-and-white waiter's uniform stared back at me.
His face was gaunt, his eyes bruised with the deep shadows of countless sleepless nights. The vibrant spark that had once defined a 'musical prodigy' a decade ago had been thoroughly extinguished, leaving behind nothing but a hollow void.
With trembling fingers, I reached into my breast pocket.
I carefully extracted a small, meticulously folded piece of paper and unfurled it.
It wasn't a past-due invoice...
It was a flight itinerary.
[BKK - ZURICH : October 15]
Only twenty days left. Just twenty more days, and I would finally escape the deepest pits of this hell.
I would go as far away as possible, to a place where the name 'Yurin' meant absolutely nothing to anyone.
To a place where my nightmarish memories could no longer track me down to haunt me.
With the utmost reverence, I tucked the slip of paper back into my pocket.
It was my sole psychological anchor, the fragile lifeline that kept my lungs drawing breath each passing day.
I wasn't working at this establishment because I was desperate for cash.
I wasn't lingering here because my family had fallen into bankruptcy. I was here simply... to 'punish myself' and to bide my time until the day I could vanish without a trace. Forever.
"Yurin! What are you dawdling for? The venue is packed with guests!"
The manager's abrasive shout yanked me back to reality.
"Understood! I'm heading out now."
I drew in a deep, unsteady breath.
Swallowing the bitter lump in my throat, I fished out a tiny anti-panic pill.
I tossed it onto my tongue, swallowing it dry without a single drop of water, before seamlessly slipping on the mask of a 'lowly, obedient employee' and stepping out of the restroom.
The atmosphere inside the 'Grand Diamond' ballroom was so opulently extravagant it was almost nauseating.
The brilliant light from the crystal chandeliers scattered into a million blinding fractals.
It fiercely competed with the radiant gleam of diamonds resting upon the slender necks of high-society madams.
A cacophony of exorbitant, heavy perfumes clashed in the air, creating a dizzying scent.
To anyone else...
This place was an absolute paradise.
But to me, it was nothing more than an execution ground, teeming with hollow, artificial people.
I weaved my way through the dense throng of guests, balancing a tray of beverages in one hand.
I tried my hardest to shrink myself, to become as insignificant as possible—like a wandering specter invisible to the naked eye.
"Excuse me, sir. Would you care for more champagne?"
I offered the question in a flat, monotonous tone.
It was utterly devoid of emotion, yet perfectly wrapped in the required veneer of politeness.
"Yeah, just leave it right there."
The young man, adorned in a custom black suit that screamed old money, waved me away as if swatting a nuisance fly, not once bothering to glance at my face.
I was already numb to it.
Being overlooked and entirely ignored was the greatest blessing I could ask for in this life.
However... God has always had a cruel sense of humor when it comes to sinners like me.
"Kyaa!!"
A shrill, ear-piercing shriek suddenly tore through the air.
It was followed instantly by a heavy impact, crashing into my shoulder.
Crash!
The serving tray slipped from my grasp, plummeting to the floor.
Crystal flutes shattered with a deafening cacophony, sending golden champagne spraying mercilessly across the imported, plush carpet.
And directly onto the pristine, pure white evening gown of the young woman standing before me.
A suffocating silence immediately descended upon the immediate vicinity.
Even the live jazz band playing in the background seemed to instinctively mute their instruments into a barely audible hum.
"Are you completely blind?!"
The woman shrieked, her voice trembling with sheer outrage.
Her sculpted face contorted with fury.
"I had this dress custom-tailored in Paris! Do you even have the means to pay for this, you peasant?!"
I simply stood frozen.
I stared down at the sprawling wine stain on her dress with entirely vacant eyes.
My mind wasn't calculating the astronomical cost of the ruined fabric.
I wasn't trembling at the thought of my wages being docked.
Instead, a singular, familiar thought bubbled to the surface of my mind...
You deserve this... someone like you ruins everything you touch. Yurin.
You are nothing but a curse.
"I... I apologize, madam."
My body reacted on pure, ingrained instinct, dropping heavily to my knees against the ruined floor.
I bowed my head, murmuring repetitive apologies. It wasn't born from fear, nor from any genuine respect.
It was simply the fastest, most pathetic method to make the ordeal end.
A jagged shard of crystal sliced deeply into my palm.
Fresh crimson blood began to slowly well up, mixing sickeningly with the spilled champagne on the carpet, yet I registered absolutely no physical pain.
Any torment inflicted upon my flesh...
Was utterly insignificant compared to the festering, rotting wounds that had ravaged my mind for the past ten years.
"Manager! Where is the manager?!" she continued to screech hysterically.
I kept my head bowed, silently picking up the broken glass piece by piece.
I let her venomous insults pass through my ears like a hollow breeze.
Just endure it... Only 20 more days... It will all be over soon.
But as I knelt there, fervently apologizing to the floor...
The very atmosphere in the ballroom underwent a catastrophic shift.
The ambient temperature plummeted instantly, sending a frigid chill down my spine.
It wasn't the artificial cool of the air conditioning. It was the unmistakable chill of lethal intent, radiating from somewhere close.
The rhythmic, commanding sound of leather dress shoes striking the marble floor echoed with absolute authority.
It sliced clearly through the sudden, deathly silence of the surrounding guests.
Tap... Tap...
Tap...
The cadence of the footsteps was perfectly measured.
Heavy. Unyielding. And... horrifyingly familiar.
My bloodied hand, mid-reach for a shard of glass, froze in midair.
The blood surging through my veins turned to absolute ice.
No... it can't be...
This is impossible...
Trembling, I forced myself to lift my head, moving with agonizing slowness, as if trapped under an unbreakable hex.
Peering through the parted sea of aristocratic legs...
At the far end of the lavish corridor...
The towering, slender silhouette of a man materialized.
He was impeccably dressed in a pitch-black bespoke suit that radiated an aura of absolute, tyrannical dominance.
His face was devastatingly handsome, akin to a fallen deity meticulously sculpted from glacial ice.
His narrow, obsidian eyes...
Swept lazily over the grand room, brimming with a potent mixture of utter boredom and innate disdain.
Ren!
My entire universe instantly collapsed into ash before my very eyes. The imaginary flight ticket to freedom was shredded into a thousand pieces.
The living embodiment of the darkest memory I had spent my entire life running from...
Was standing right there. Within arm's reach. Clearly visible in my line of sight.
He had changed drastically.
He was taller, exuding a predatory strength. He was colder and radiated a danger a thousand times more lethal than before.
Yet, the one thing that remained utterly unchanged...
Was the bottomless, consuming isolation buried deep within those dark eyes.
Suddenly... as if an invisible thread had been yanked... Ren halted his steps right in the middle of the hall.
His sharp, statuesque face slowly...
Turned precisely toward the spot where I knelt in the wreckage.
Amidst a sea of hundreds of elite guests... his eyes locked onto me.
He saw only me.
Our gazes collided.
In that fleeting fraction of a second...
My lungs forgot how to breathe.
Flashes of the past hijacked my mind.
The image of a heavily sealed storage room door. The memory of my own frail body trembling outside of it. And the desperate, agonizing cries for help that I had cowardly ignored.
Ren stared down at me, his eyes entirely unblinking.
There was no shock on his beautiful face, nor any trace of joy—to call it joy would be a grotesque miscalculation.
Instead, the corner of his lips slowly...
Curled upwards. A creeping smile that made me feel as though a venomous serpent had just constricted around my throat.
His lips parted, moving with deliberate slowness.
No sound escaped his throat.
Yet the words detonated inside my skull with deafening, inescapable clarity.
"You - can't - escape."
Tap... Tap...
His relentless footsteps finally ceased directly in front of me.
The flawlessly polished, black leather shoes reflected the ambient chandeliers.
The very tips of his shoes were mere centimeters away from my shaking, wine-soaked hands.
I held my breath... tucking my chin flush against my chest.
I didn't dare lift my eyes to look at him again.
I silently begged for the earth to crack open and swallow me whole. Right here. Right now.
"Oh my! Young Master Ren!"
The shrill woman in the ruined gown immediately shifted her tone from a banshee's screech to a sickeningly sweet coo.
She eagerly sidled up closer to him, attempting to plaster on a seductive, radiant smile.
"I am so terribly sorry you had to witness such an unsightly scene. This clumsy, incompetent waiter spilled wine all over me.
He's absolutely useless."
She babbled on, drawing out her words.
Desperately vying for a shred of his attention.
But Ren... didn't so much as spare her a peripheral glance.
His heavy, suffocating gaze remained anchored exclusively on me.
On the pathetic creature kneeling in subservience at his feet.
The air surrounding him grew so profoundly freezing that the woman finally seemed to sense the danger.
Her voice faltered, slowly dying out in utter bewilderment.
"Stand up."
A short, definitive command.
It slipped smoothly from his lips.
The tone was flat, completely devoid of inflection.
Yet it carried the heavy, crushing weight of an absolute decree.
My body convulsed with tremors.
My legs had turned to lead; the weakness was so profound I couldn't command a single muscle to obey.
The terror of the past was buried too deeply.
So deeply that my body was acting purely on paralyzed instinct.
Seeing that I remained motionless... Ren slowly...
Crouched down, lowering his towering frame until his piercing eyes were perfectly level with mine. Face to face.
He extended a hand toward me.
A hand that, to an ignorant observer, might look like the chivalrous offering of a gentleman.
"I said. Stand up."
I gradually, fearfully...
Lifted my gaze to meet his, my eyes wide with naked terror.
And in that split second, his hand shot out, clamping down on my injured wrist!
"Ugh!"
A choked gasp of pure agony slipped past my lips.
His long fingers dug directly into the fresh wound. Fresh crimson blood immediately spilled over, staining his pristine palm.
Yet, he didn't flinch. He didn't care.
The corners of his lips quirked upward into the ghost of a smile.
But it wasn't a smile of comfort or mercy.
It was a smile that unequivocally stated, 'You cannot run from me.'
"N... No... Let go..."
I weakly tried to twist my wrist out of his merciless grip.
But his fingers only tightened further, clamping down like iron pincers.
With a sharp heave, he dragged me upward, forcing me to stand face-to-face with him.
"Does Young Master Ren happen to know this lowly employee?" the woman interjected, unable to mask her burning curiosity.
Ren finally shifted his gaze to her for a fraction of a second.
His sharp eyes slashed toward her with the lethal precision of a guillotine.
"Madam..."
"Y... Yes?"
"You are currently intruding upon my private time."
The sheer coldness of that single sentence drained the blood entirely from the woman's face.
Her mouth hung agape. Stripped of her voice, she stood frozen, utterly humiliated.
Ren redirected his dark focus back to me.
He leaned his face in closer.
So close that my senses were assaulted by his expensive cologne, laced with the scent of high-grade tobacco.
"Shall we have a little chat, Mr. Yu-rin?"
He enunciated my name with chilling slowness.
So clearly.
As if to hammer home the horrifying reality that...
He remembered every single detail.
"I... I have to work."
I scrambled for any pathetic excuse I could find.
My voice trembled so badly it was downright pitiful.
"Work?"
Ren arched a perfect brow, analyzing me with profound disdain.
His eyes slowly raked over my cheap, poorly-fitted waiter's uniform.
"Is this the kind of pathetic work you willingly chose?"
"Since when did someone like you... belong in a place like this?"
His words were jagged blades carving directly into the center of my chest.
He had flawlessly struck my deepest, most agonizing nerve.
The truth that I was once a brilliant 'hope', only to be reduced to nothing more than
'garbage'.
"Manager!"
Ren sharply snapped his fingers, summoning the hotel manager who was visibly sweating bullets a few paces away.
"Y... Yes, sir! Young Master Ren, how may I be of service?!"
"This employee. I am taking him off your hands."
"Uh... Pardon? You mean..."
Ren casually pulled a pristine, snow-white handkerchief from his breast pocket.
With deliberate slowness, he wiped my smeared blood from his fingers.
Once finished, he callously dropped the ruined fabric to the floor, discarding it like trash.
"I am hiring him. Privately."
"Invoice me for whatever exorbitant fee you desire. But I need to speak with him. Right now."
"Y... Yes, sir! Absolutely, sir! Yurin! Why are you just standing there like an idiot?! Hurry up and follow the Young Master!"
The manager aggressively shoved my back, eagerly offering me up to Ren without a second thought.
As if he were hurriedly liquidating damaged goods.
My only avenue of escape... had just been completely sealed.