It was supposed to be an easy, unremarkable life for Mina. Or so it seemed.
The unraveling began when her sister, Alicia, gave her heart to Kim Taehyung. A man revered and feared alike, a being carved from iron will and unshakable strength, his ever...
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The morning air still held the hush of night, untouched by the warmth of dawn. Darkness lingered outside, cloaking the world in silence, but Rinkyu had already shaken sleep from his bones. With the quiet precision of someone familiar with solitude, he strode to the shower, the chill in the air matching the steel in his expression.
Cold water crashed over his broad, sculpted frame like a waterfall striking stone. He stood motionless beneath it, his breath slow, his face unreadable, eyes cast downward, as though teetering on the edge of something dangerous. The air around him felt weighted, not with sorrow, but with restraint. As if a storm raged just beneath his skin, one breath away from turning him into a menace.
His back flexed, muscles tightening and stretching beneath glistening skin, each ripple a silent testament to strength honed like a blade. Droplets slid down his spine, glinting like molten silver as they spilled toward the center of his back, where ink darkened his flesh. A black spider, wicked and sprawling, clung to the red bloom of a spider lily, its delicate petals twisted in violent beauty. The creature's legs stretched outward like threads spun from nightmares, as if stitching his destiny into the very skin he wore. Then came the smile. Crooked, predatory, a silent snarl disguised as a grin.
Just moments ago, he was carved from stillness, a statue in thought. But now, now his presence shifted. It swelled. His ego surged like a tidal wave crashing against its restraints, no longer content with silence.
"Wait for my return, Kim Taehyung," he declared, voice cold and unwavering.
It wasn’t a warning. It was a sentence.
💮
The wind was sharp that morning, tasting faintly of iron and frost.
Rinkyu stepped out of his mansion wearing his triangular glasses he could never be seen without it, dressed only in black slacks and a half-buttoned shirt that clung to his damp skin. Steam still danced from his shoulders like departing spirits. In one hand, he gripped a fresh bottle of vodka. Uncapped, already half-drained.
Behind the opulent estate, past a decaying koi pond and through a stretch of overgrown bamboo, stood the forgotten temple, once a place of silent prayers and still waters. Now, it was nothing but a carcass. A relic of peace, twisted into something far less holy.
The stone lions at its gates had long since lost their fangs. Moss blanketed every surface like funeral cloth. Yet the deeper one walked into its ruins, the more the air began to change. Warmer, wetter, almost humming with a heartbeat of its own.
Rinkyu kicked open the temple’s cracked wooden doors. Inside, the scent hit like a wave. Earth, rot, nectar, and blood. The greenhouse bloomed in violent beauty. Glass panels overhead were fractured like spiderwebs, letting slivers of light drip through onto rows of monstrous flora.
