CRIMINAL LOVE||L.HS X S.JY

S2: N I N E

SEASON TWO- NINE: A RETURN OF EVIL

'LEE HEESEUNG'

I couldn’t get Mario’s voice out of my head. *Jaeyun is alive.*

The words hit me like a sledgehammer, shattering the fragile wall I’d built around my grief. I stared at my reflection in the bathroom mirror, trying to steady myself. My hands gripped the sink so tightly my knuckles turned white. How had I been so blind? How had I let Venom’s lies control me?

I looked like a ghost. The person staring back at me was a shell of the man I used to be—hollow, drained, and barely hanging on. I had believed Jaeyun was dead. I had mourned him, let my heart shatter into a million pieces, and all the while, he was out there, alive, in Venom’s clutches.

The pain in my chest was unbearable. I’d failed him. I’d let my grief and guilt blind me to the truth, and now Jaeyun was paying the price. The thought made me sick, a wave of nausea rolling through me as I pushed away from the sink, unable to look at myself any longer.

I needed to get to Korea. Now.

The flight was a blur of anxiety and suffocating thoughts. Every minute that ticked by felt like a year, every memory of Jaeyun twisting the knife in my heart. His smile, the way he laughed, the way his eyes would light up when he saw me—all of it haunted me. I tried to hold onto those memories, even though they hurt, because they were all I had left of him. But the fear, the crushing fear that I might lose him again, was like a constant weight on my chest.

When I finally landed, the urgency in my veins was almost too much to bear. The drive to the mansion was a haze, the world outside passing by in a blur. My mind was already there, already with Jaeyun, imagining what Venom might be doing to him, how scared he must be, how alone.

As I stepped inside the mansion, the heavy silence of the place felt like it was closing in on me. The others were waiting, their faces filled with confusion and concern as I entered. Sunghoon was the first to speak, his voice tense. “Heeseung, what’s going on? Why are you back?”

I opened my mouth, but the words wouldn’t come. How could I explain this? How could I tell them that everything we thought we knew was a lie, that Jaeyun—my Jaeyun—was alive, but in unimaginable danger? My throat tightened, the enormity of it all pressing down on me.

“It’s Jaeyun,” I finally managed to say, my voice hoarse. “He’s alive.”

Shock rippled through the room, and for a moment, I couldn’t breathe. Their faces were a reflection of my own disbelief, the same disbelief that had paralyzed me when Mario first told me. But I couldn’t stop now. They needed to know the truth.

“Venom tricked us,” I continued, my voice gaining strength as anger replaced the despair. “He made us believe Jaeyun was dead. It was all part of his plan to break us. To break me. But Jaeyun’s alive. And Venom has him.”

The room fell into a stunned silence, the weight of my words sinking in. Jay looked like he wanted to punch something, his fists clenched tightly at his sides. “We need to get him back,” he said, his voice hard. “We can’t let Venom win.”

"and what about mario? why did he told you?" sunoo confusedly glnaced at me, i sighed, "he is with us in this, he wants his everything back and i just want jaeyun back