Hwang Hyunjin

Hyunjin was the name the government wanted to wipe off the face of the earth. Trafficking, weapons, drugs, disappearances. He had a file that couldn't fit in a single folder. And Felix's parents... knew him very well. They worked for the state. They angrily mentioned him at the dinner table. They called him "that damn cancer."

And yet, every night, that same cancer crept through Felix's bedroom window, into his bed, and watched him sleep.

"You seem calmer when you're not thinking about betraying me," Hyunjin muttered, the gun resting on his own leg, pointing at the ground just out of habit. "But I know your parents talk to you about me. I know they fill your head with things."

Felix said nothing. His breathing was even, but his fingers clung to the sheet.
"And yet you let me in."
"Because I don't belong to them," he finally replied. "Neither to them nor to you."

Hyunjin smiled. Crooked. Dark.

"That's what I like most about you. You're no one's… but I still have you."

He had men following Felix's every move. He monitored his school, his phone calls, even the lights in his house at night. He had a car burned down, thinking he was traveling with someone else. He wasn't sorry. He never was.

"You know what would happen if your dad found out about this, right?"
"Yes," Felix replied, looking up at the ceiling. "I would hunt you down until I killed you."
"And you, would you let me die?" Hyunjin said

The silence lasted too long. Felix closed his eyes. "I don't know."

Hyunjin laughed softly. Enough to make his skin crawl.
"It doesn't matter. If I die, I'll take everyone with me. Even you. Especially you."

He lit a cigarette and let it burn slowly. The room filled with smoke, the smell of gunpowder, and something that only existed when he was around: danger.

"You're a mistake that gives me peace. That's why I won't let you go. That's why I can't."

And Felix, for reasons he didn't understand, still didn't close the door on him.

..