Deep End | Hyunlix

46

The room felt entirely too small. The space between them seemed to contract with every passing second, the air growing thicker, charged with a tension that Felix couldn't escape. Every breath he took felt like it weighed a hundred pounds, his mind struggling to make sense of the chaos swirling around him.

Felix hadn't moved. Hyunjin hadn't moved. They both stood in the middle of the room, two people standing in the midst of a storm neither of them had been prepared for. Hyunjin, the man who had been an enigma, a distant memory of desire and confusion, was now revealed for what he truly was: the leader of the Snake Eye Clan. Felix's target. The man he had been hunting for the past few years.

His heart pounded in his chest, a steady rhythm that echoed in his ears, drowning out every other sound in the room. The revelation had come too quickly. He had walked into this moment expecting answers, but what he got was the truth. A truth that felt like it was pulling the ground out from beneath him.

Why haven't I arrested him? The question flashed in Felix's mind, and the weight of it hit him like a physical blow. He was supposed to be an officer of the law, bound by duty, by the rules that had defined him for so long. And yet here he was, standing in front of the very man he had sworn to bring down, unable to move, unable to make the choice that he should have made the moment Hyunjin walked into his life.

Felix took a step back, his gaze never leaving Hyunjin's. His fists clenched at his sides, his thoughts running in circles. The answer was clear, yet still, he couldn't bring himself to do it. He had been chasing Hyunjin for so long, and now that he finally had him, Felix didn't know what to do with the man standing in front of him. The truth felt like a crushing weight, a suffocating truth that threatened to consume him whole.

The silence stretched between them, thick and heavy, like a rope pulling them in opposite directions. Felix couldn't figure out who was going to break first, whether it would be him, or Hyunjin.

"Hyunjin..." Felix's voice was hoarse, barely more than a whisper, but it was enough to make Hyunjin flinch. Felix stepped forward before he could stop himself, even though every part of him screamed to turn away, to walk out of the room, to end this madness.

"Don't, Felix," Hyunjin's voice was cold, almost distant, but Felix could see the tension in his posture, the way his hands curled into fists at his sides, his body taut with a barely contained energy. "You know there isn't a future for us." Hyunjin's words were firm, as if he were trying to convince both Felix and himself. "We need to just walk away and forget everything. Go back to you chasing me, and me evading you."

Felix's heart skipped a beat, the finality in Hyunjin's words hitting him harder than anything else. He could feel the raw emotion buried beneath Hyunjin's cool exterior. The older man was fighting something inside of himself, but Felix wasn't sure what it was. Hyunjin's eyes flickered with something, regret, maybe, or something deeper, something that Felix couldn't quite name, but that made his chest ache.

Go back to chasing him? Felix's thoughts collided with the force of a car crash. I've been chasing him for so long. Is this really how it ends? He couldn't do that. He couldn't go back to the way things were before. Not now that he had seen Hyunjin for who he truly was. The man he had idolized, the man he had hunted, he was right here, standing in front of him, and Felix didn't know what to do with the truth.

Felix could feel the pull, the push, the tension that gripped both of them. He had wanted answers, but now that he had them, nothing felt clear. Hyunjin was the leader of the Snake Eye Clan. He was the very thing Felix had spent years trying to take down. And yet, standing here, with everything laid bare between them, Felix couldn't ignore the part of him that had fallen for Hyunjin, the part that had always been drawn to the older man, even when he shouldn't have been.