Across the city, in a penthouse apartment that overlooked the Han River, Jack stood at the window and watched the city wake up.
The morning sun was rising over Seoul, painting the sky in shades of gold and pink, but he wasn't looking at the sky. He was looking at his phone. The tracking app showed her location, Seoul National University Hospital. She was there. She had found the flower.
He had sent it hours ago, before the sun rose, before the parking garage filled with cars, before anyone could see him place it on the hood of her vehicle. He had wanted to be there when she found it. He had wanted to see her face. But it was too soon. She wasn't ready to see him yet.
Soon. But not yet.
"You sent it."
Jack didn't turn. He had heard Leewon enter the apartment five minutes ago, had heard him pour himself a whiskey even though it was barely seven in the morning, had heard him settle onto the leather couch with the sigh of a man who had learned to expect the unexpected from his employer.
"A red camellia." Leewon's voice was dry. "Subtle."
"I'm not trying to be subtle."
Jack turned from the window. His blue eyes were cold, depth less, the colour of a frozen lake. But there was something in them, something that hadn't been there before. Something that Leewon recognised, though he had never seen it in Jack's face.
Leewon took a slow sip of his whiskey. He had known Jack for fifteen years. He had watched him survive things that would have broken anyone else. He had watched him become something cold, something empty, something that other men whispered about in the dark. He had watched him rise from the ashes of a childhood that should have destroyed him, and he had never, in all those years, seen him look at anything the way he looked at the photograph on his desk.
"She's a trauma surgeon," Leewon said. "She saves lives. She's not part of our world."
Jack's jaw tightened. Just a fraction. Just enough for Leewon to notice.
"She's already part of my world," Jack said. His voice was quiet, but there was steel beneath it. "She just doesn't know it yet."
Leewon studied him. He knew Jack's history. Knew what he was capable of. Knew that when Jack decided something was his, nothing, and no one, would stand in his way. He had seen it happen before. He had helped it happen before. But this was different. This wasn't territory or power or revenge. This was a woman with brown eyes and a mole beside her nose, a woman who had no idea that she was being hunted by a man who had never wanted anything in his life the way he wanted her.
She was a woman who had no idea, a man who was void of emotion was after her. He was after her in a way, that could destroy her.
"Be careful," Leewon said. "Obsession is a dangerous thing."
Jack's lips curved into something that wasn't quite a smile. It was the smile of a man who had spent his whole life in the dark, learning to become something that other people feared. The smile of a man who had finally found something worth destroying for.
"I know."
He looked at the photograph on his desk. It had been taken months ago, on a spring afternoon, when Sora had walked out of the hospital with her hair caught in the wind and her face turned toward something he couldn't see. She was smiling, a real smile, the kind that reached her eyes, and he had never seen anything so beautiful.
He had been watching her ever since. Learning her routines. Learning her face. Learning the way she tucked her hair behind her ear when she was nervous, the way she hummed under her breath when she thought no one was listening, the way she carried the weight of a childhood that had tried to break her.
He had watched her give her heart to a man who didn't deserve it. He had watched her shrink herself, make herself smaller, quieter, less, in an attempt to keep a love that was already dead. He had watched her break, piece by piece, and he had waited.
He had waited because the timing had to be perfect. Because if he moved too soon, she would run. Because she wasn't ready to see him, to really see him, to understand that the man watching her from the shadows was the only one who would never leave.
But she was ready now. She was standing in the ashes of everything she had believed in, and she was looking for something to hold onto. Kang Haneul was gone, a month in LA, a month of silence, a month for her to realise that she didn't need him. The path was clear.
Jack picked up his phone. He didn't send another message. He didn't need to. The flower had said everything he wanted to say.
You are the flame of my heart.
You belong to me.
He set the phone down and turned back to the window. The city was fully awake now, the streets filled with people who had no idea that something was about to shift. Somewhere out there, Park Sora was looking at a red camellia, wondering who had sent it, wondering what it meant. And somewhere in the back of her mind, maybe, just maybe, she was thinking of blue eyes that she saw at the convenience store. Those blue eyes that shook her to the core.
Soon, she wouldn't have to wonder. Soon, she would know exactly who she belonged to.
He smiled. It was not a kind smile. It was the smile of a man who had been patient for a very long time, and whose patience was finally about to be rewarded.
The kind of smile of a man who could do anything for his own desires. Even if he had to break her up, he would.
Because, in the end, she belongs to him.
---
Sora came home that evening with the red camellia in her bag.
She had tried to leave it at the hospital. She had told herself it was nothing, a mistake, a flower left on the wrong car. She had put it in the break room and walked away. But she had found herself walking back to it, picking it up, carrying it with her through the rest of her shift. She couldn't explain it. She couldn't explain any of it.
She set the vase on the kitchen counter. The deep red petals glowed under the light, the black ribbon still tied in a perfect bow. She stood there, looking at it, and tried to make sense of the feeling in her chest.
It wasn't fear. It should have been fear. A stranger had left a flower on her car. A stranger knew where she worked, when she arrived, what car she drove. A stranger had sent her a message in the language of flowers—you belong to me—and she should have been terrified.
But she wasn't.
She thought about what Nurse Choi had said. Red camellias mean 'you are the flame of my heart.' She thought about the way her heart had pounded when she saw the flower on her car, the way her hands had trembled when she picked it up. She thought about the image that had risen in her mind, unbidden, when Nurse Choi spoke the words.
Blue eyes.
Cold. Depthless. Watching. The eyes of a stranger she had seen once, in a convenience store, weeks ago. The eyes that had looked at her like they could destroy her. The eyes that could bring her miseries. But, those blue eyes could bring salvation among miseries.
She had no idea what salvation she was thinking of when she felt fear seeing them.
She shook her head. It was ridiculous. She was being ridiculous. She had seen that man once. She didn't know his name, his face, anything about him.
And, for god sake, they met only once, and that in a convenience store. For him, she was just someone in the store. He might not even remember it. If he did remember, there was no reason for him to do that. There was no reason for him to be the one leaving flowers on her car. There was no reason for her to think of him at all.
And yet.
She touched the petal of the camellia. It was soft, velvet, alive. She thought about the way Haneul had looked at her in the years since he had stopped loving her, like she was furniture, something comfortable and familiar and easily ignored. She thought about the way the stranger had looked at her in the convenience store, like she was the only thing in the world worth seeing and at the same time, worth destroying.
She had spent sixteen years trying to be enough for a man who had stopped seeing her. She had spent sixteen years shrinking herself, making herself smaller, quieter, less, in the hopes that he would look at her again the way he used to. But he never had. And he never would.
She looked at the flower. She thought about the message it carried. You belong to me. It should have frightened her. But after years of being invisible, of being unwanted, of being someone who could be left without a second thought... there was something in those words that made her chest ache.
Someone saw her. Someone had left her a flower. Someone had looked at her and thought she was worth seeing.
She didn't know who. She didn't know why. But for the first time in months, she didn't feel like she was disappearing.
She, somehow, in a sense felt comfort despite knowing she might have gotten a stalker.
She left the flower on the counter. She didn't throw it away.
She went to bed. And for the first time in weeks, she slept without dreaming of blue eyes. She slept, and the flower sat on the counter, its crimson petals glowing in the dark, a promise she didn't yet understand.
Whoever they are, I should be scared. But, it still gave me comfort that I'm not alone. Even though I should be concerned.