More.
The blackout curtains of Unit 1418 sealed out the dawn while gray half-light pooled on the hardwood floor, 33°C, Manila in April, the air conditioning humming at a frequency that lived just beneath conscious notice.
Jae-min stood barefoot in the center of his living room with the black rift hovering beside him, patient and silent, a shadow made of nothing.
He had spent the last hour feeding it.
A hardcover book vanished into the cold darkness, then a throw pillow, then his Glock 19 from the bedroom safe, all of it floating in that pocket of nothing and waiting for him to pull it back.
He could feel the boundaries, roughly four cubic meters, a walk-in closet, barely enough.
'Not enough. I need a warehouse.' Jae-min calculated, a cold analytical frustration tightening his jaw as he pressed his fingertips to his temple.
He focused and pushed, imagining the walls of the void stretching outward, the darkness expanding to accommodate more and more and more until a sharp, blinding pain split his skull and warmth dripped from his right nostril, trailing down his upper lip as the metallic tang of blood touched his tongue.
He stopped and wiped the crimson smear away with the back of his hand while the void shuddered once inside his chest, then went still.
"Patience." Jae-min muttered, a grim acceptance settling behind his eyes as he stared at the crack hovering in the air.
It would grow; it had to, but first came fuel.
The hot water from the shower beat against his shoulders and washed away the phantom sensation of teeth tearing into his flesh, steam filling the bathroom while he toweled off and stepped into a crisp black suit and knotted his tie with mechanical precision.
The bathroom mirror reflected a sharp jawline and intense, unblinking dark eyes, a man who looked like a Korean-Filipino executive, a man who looked like money.
'Two days ago those neighbors were eating you.' Jae-min reminded himself, a bitter anchoring disgust cutting through the luxury as he adjusted his cufflinks. 'Now you're picking out cufflinks. Focus.'
He grabbed his keys and walked to the basement parking of Shore Residence 3 with the echo of his leather shoes bouncing off the concrete walls, pressing the fob as the pearl white GT-R Nismo beeped twice and her fierce LED headlights flashed under the fluorescent tubes.
He slid inside, and the fuel gauge read half a tank, ₱4,000 in premium gasoline, this car drinking fuel like a fish drinks water, endlessly and happily and without a single shred of financial remorse.
He turned the key and the twin-turbo V6 roared to life with a deep guttural snarl that vibrated through the steering wheel and into his bones, reversing out of the spot as the GT-R's exhaust barked twice, and he whipped the wheel.
— • • • —
Blackbird Fine Dining, Makati, 31°C, the night air thick with humidity and the distant thrum of rush-hour traffic bleeding into evening.
The maître d' greeted him with a practiced bow and a smile polished to a mirror shine.
"Good evening, sir, do you have a reservation?" the maître d' asked, a polished, rehearsed warmth softening his expression.
"No." Jae-min replied, his voice flat and detached, a door slamming shut.
A flicker of annoyance crossed the man's face, the kind of micro-expression that said; Here we go again, then he looked at Jae-min's suit, the fit, the fabric and the Rolex on his wrist, and the annoyance vanished like smoke.
"Right this way, sir." the maître d' offered, his entire demeanor rewriting itself in real time as he guided Jae-min toward a window table. "We have a lovely table by the window."
Jae-min sat down in a plush velvet chair with crisp white linen tablecloth pressed so sharp it could cut glass, a single candle flickering in a crystal holder and casting warm amber light across the silver cutlery.
The menu was a single leather-bound card with no prices, and he opened it and ordered everything.
"The full tasting menu and the wine pairing." Jae-min began, a controlled hunger that had nothing to do with food carrying each word with deliberate weight. "Add the truffle risotto as a supplementary course. The wagyu. The lobster thermidor. The chocolate soufflé for dessert."
He paused, looking at the candle flame.
"A bottle of the 2018 Château Margaux to start." Jae-min continued, his voice calm and certain. "And an espresso. Cognac to finish."
He looked up at the waiter.
"Actually, make it two bottles of the Margaux." Jae-min added, a faint dark warmth flickering behind his eyes. "I'm celebrating."
"Celebrating, sir?" the waiter asked, blinking, his pen hovering over his notepad.
"Life." Jae-min answered, one word carrying the weight of a dead timeline.
The waiter blinked again and his pen hadn't moved.
"Also, send out a second wagyu." Jae-min added, his voice calm and certain. "I wasn't kidding about the celebrating."
The waiter's pen hovered and trembled and considered early retirement.
"Sir, that is a considerable amount of—" the waiter started, professional caution battling bewilderment.
"My car costs more than your annual salary and it burns through a full tank in less than two hundred kilometers." Jae-min countered, his eyes narrowing with a calculating precision. "Do I look like a man who counts calories?"
The waiter closed his mouth and nodded and disappeared, returning six minutes later with the first of three bread baskets Jae-min would completely demolish before the first course even arrived.
The first course landed twelve minutes later, seared foie gras with fig compote and brioche plated like a painting, microgreens scattered across the plate like tiny emerald islands in a sea of reduction sauce.
Jae-min closed his eyes as the richness melted on his tongue, the fat and the salt and the sweet fig obscenely decadent and perfect, and he ate it in four bites and wiped his mouth with the napkin and looked at the empty plate like it had personally offended him.
More.
He took a long sip of the Château Margaux, the wine velvet on his tongue with dark fruit and tobacco and a whisper of cedar and spice rolling down his throat like warm silk and blooming in his chest, finishing the first bottle before the second course arrived.
"Another." Jae-min said, holding up the empty bottle without looking at the waiter.
The man scurried off like Jae-min had detonated a silent bomb under his apron.
The courses kept coming one after another, each more exquisite than the last. The truffle risotto arrived as a mountain of arborio rice drenched in black truffle shavings and aged parmesan, and Jae-min inhaled deeply with the earthy, musky scent of the truffle filling his sinuses before he spooned a forkful into his mouth.
'This is what my ancestors died for.' Jae-min thought, a reverent, almost religious awe softening his voice as he closed his eyes.
The wagyu came next, A5 grade, the marbling so fine it looked like a pink cloud suspended over the plate, and he cut into it with barely any resistance, the knife sliding through like the meat wasn't even there, and he placed it on his tongue; it dissolved, and he ordered a third.
The lobster thermidor. The chocolate soufflé collapsing under his fork in a cascade of warm molten chocolate. The espresso bitter and strong. The cognac smooth as a whisper. He finished the second bottle of Château Margaux with the cognac while the waiter stood at a respectful distance watching Jae-min eat with the horrified fascination of a man witnessing a Great White shark work through a seal colony.
The bill arrived, and Jae-min didn't look at it, tucking a crisp ₱5,000 bill under the candle holder and standing while the waiter stared at the tip like it was a religious artifact.
— • • • —
Across the dining room, two women sat at a corner table near the bar.
Kiara Valdez leaned back in her chair and swirled a glass of Pinot Grigio with the lazy confidence of someone who owned every room she walked into, her designer dress a deep burgundy slip that hugged her curves and caught the candlelight while orange hair fell in loose waves past her shoulders.
Green eyes, sharp and predatory, scanned the room with the practiced precision of someone who catalogued every useful detail, flawless and calculated and expensive.
Beside her, Jennifer Avante was quieter. Icy-blue hair fell straight and long past her shoulders and caught the candlelight with a faint, almost metallic sheen. Blue eyes.
A simple cream blouse and a navy skirt she'd probably picked out in five minutes that morning, no jewelry except small gold stud earrings, no makeup except lip balm, looking like she'd rather be anywhere else.
"Look at him." Kiara muttered, her eyes fixed on Jae-min's table, a possessive irritation sharpening her tone. "Since when does he eat here?"
"He could afford it, sure; his family has money." Kiara continued, swirling her wine with a predatory focus. "But he never would. Jae-min was the guy who ate tapsilog at the carinderia across from the warehouse because he liked it. That was his fine dining."
Jennifer followed her gaze and her chest tightened.
Jae-min sat alone by the window with the candlelight carving shadows beneath his cheekbones, his black suit fitting him like it had been sewn onto his body.
He lifted a glass of red wine to his lips, and Jennifer watched the way his fingers curled around the stem, long and deliberate and unhurried, the way the candlelight caught the edge of his jaw, the way his dark eyes half-lidded reflected nothing but the flame.
He looked devastating. He always had.
'I fell in love with him in that cafeteria.' Jennifer ached, a desperate, suffocating longing pressing against her ribs as her fingers tightened around her wine glass. 'One lunch at a time. One stolen glance after another. Until the feeling was so deep I couldn't tell where it started anymore.'
She'd watched him for years in the company cafeteria, picking at her tray in the far corner while he sat in the same corner booth with his back to the wall and his face toward the entrance, the way he folded his napkin into a perfect square before eating and chewed slowly and deliberately like he was rationing something precious.
She'd memorized everything about him, and Kiara had seen it eventually because Kiara always saw everything; details were ammunition, and one day, with the surgical precision of someone who identified a vulnerability and decided to exploit it, Kiara walked up to Jae-min and asked him out.
Jennifer had smiled and congratulated her best friend and gone home that night and cried into her pillow for three hours.
'I never said a word.' Jennifer grieved, a dull permanent ache settling deep in her chest as she watched the candlelight play across Jae-min's face from across the room. 'Not to him. Not to her. Not to anyone.'
Years of watching from the front row, Kiara's shoulder to cry on, the patient listener who nodded and said he's an idiot when Kiara complained and you'll be fine when Kiara cried and I'm sure he still loves you when Kiara panicked, every word a small private self-inflicted wound dressed in bandages of loyalty.
'I would give anything to be the one sitting across from him.' Jennifer yearned, her hands trembling faintly in her lap as she pressed her knees together beneath the table. 'Anything.'
Kiara's eyes narrowed as Jae-min took a bite of the wagyu and closed his eyes slowly, like he was savoring something more than just the food.
"Something's different about him." Kiara murmured, a predatory calculation sharpening her focus as she tilted her head. "He's not the same. The way he moves, the way he looks at things, it's like he's somewhere else."
Jennifer watched too, and she saw what Kiara couldn't, not because Kiara wasn't observant but because Kiara had never really looked at Jae-min, not the way Jennifer had, not with years of memorized details stacked behind her eyes.
The way he held his fork had changed, casual and relaxed in the old days but now precise and controlled, the way a soldier holds a weapon, familiar and automatic and ready.
His eyes had always been warm; even when he was quiet, there'd been a softness to them, a gentleness that leaked through no matter how hard he tried to look serious, but that softness was gone now and what remained was something flat and hard and impossibly dark, like a door had been shut behind his eyes and locked from the inside.
And the way he ate was slow and reverent, each bite treated like a ceremony, like he was trying to memorize the taste of something he knew he'd never have again.
"He looks sad." Jennifer whispered, her voice trembling faintly as her blue eyes traced the shadows beneath his cheekbones.
"He looks like he's trying to make me jealous." Kiara countered, her voice sweet but her smile not reaching her eyes.
"He hasn't looked at you once, Kiara." Jennifer breathed, her voice barely above a whisper, her shoulders hunching slightly inward as if bracing for a blow.
Silence, the words landing between them like a dropped glass.
Kiara's jaw tightened, and she set her wine glass down with a sharp, deliberate click that made the candle flame shudder.
"He blocked my number, did you know that?" Kiara seethed, the fake sweetness vanishing into pure venomous spite.
Jennifer flinched, because she did know, because Kiara had told her approximately forty-seven times in the past two weeks.
"H-He'll unblock you when he calms down." Jennifer whispered, shrinking back into her chair.
The words tasted like ash; she didn't believe them, and she didn't think Kiara believed them either, but it was the script, and they both knew their lines.
"I sent him a message from a different number, and he blocked that one too." Kiara continued, her voice tightening like a wire. "I tried calling from the office phone, and he didn't pick up."
"Maybe he needs space." Jennifer offered, her gaze firmly fixed on the tablecloth, her hands clasped tightly in her lap to stop them from shaking.
"I made one mistake, Jen, one." Kiara hissed, the mask slipping for just a second and revealing the cold, manipulative rage underneath. "And he acts like I killed someone."
Jennifer's fingers tightened around her own wine glass with the cool glass pressing into her palm, her silence trembling with everything she couldn't say, the way it always did, the way it always had.
Across the room, Jae-min set down his cognac glass and stood and tucked the ₱5,000 bill under the candle holder and walked toward the back of the restaurant, not toward the exit but toward the kitchen.
Kiara's eyes tracked him like a predator watching prey leave cover.
"Where is he going?" Kiara hissed, quiet, leaning forward.
"I-I don't know." Jennifer murmured, quiet, her blue eyes following him until the swinging kitchen doors swallowed him whole.
Something cold and heavy settled in her stomach, the same feeling she'd had the night her father left for Singapore and never came back, fourteen years old watching him pack his bag at the kitchen table, kissing her forehead and saying I'll be back soon sweetie, she'd believed him because she was fourteen and fathers always came back.
They didn't.
And now Jae-min walked the same way, like a man who had already said goodbye to everything and was just going through the motions of pretending otherwise.
"Jen." Kiara cut in, her voice sharp. "Are you listening to me?"
"Y-Yes." Jennifer stammered, something fragile cracking beneath the composure as she pulled her eyes back to Kiara.
"I said I'm going to find out what he's doing in that kitchen." Kiara declared, tilting her head and cataloguing details with the precision of a woman collecting ammunition.
"Kiara, d-don't—" Jennifer started, her blue eyes darting nervously.
But Kiara was already pulling out her phone with her thumbs flying across the screen and her nails clicking against the glass like tiny gunshots.
— • • • —
Jae-min pushed through the swinging kitchen doors, and the blast of humid food-scented air hit him like a wall, sizzling butter and roasting garlic and the sharp tang of chopped onions filling the space while the kitchen ran in controlled chaos with line cooks shouting orders and flames leaping from pans and the rapid percussion of knives against cutting boards.
The head chef looked up from his plating at the sight of a man in a tailored black suit invading his domain.
"Who the hell are—" the chef started, swallowing hard, professional pride warring with confusion.
Jae-min reached into his jacket and dropped a thick, heavy envelope on the stainless steel counter where it hit the metal with a dense, damp thwack, ₱500,000 in crisp banded bills.
The kitchen went silent as every line cook stopped and every flame seemed to flicker in shock, a pan of garlic butter sizzling on its own unattended like even the food was holding its breath.
"I need packed meals for a thousand men." Jae-min breathed, a controlled urgency making the words sound like a military briefing. "Army ration portions, high calorie, long shelf life."
The chef stared at the money, then at Jae-min, then at the money again, picking up the envelope, opening it, flipping through the bills with the slow reverence usually reserved for religious texts and winning lottery tickets.
"Sir, this is a lot of money for what, exactly?" the chef asked, his professional identity suffering a full-scale existential crisis. "Packed meals? Like packed lunches? You want me to turn my kitchen into a Jollibee?"
"I want you to turn your kitchen into an army canteen." Jae-min commanded, his voice cold and leaving no room for argument. "High-calorie meals, rice, meat, dried fruit, long shelf life, the kind of food that keeps a man alive when there's nothing else."
The chef stared at him with a vein pulsing at his temple.
"Sir, this is a fine dining restaurant; we serve wagyu and truffle risotto." the chef protested, his culinary training offering no protocol for this situation. "We don't serve MREs to a fictional army."
"You served me two wagyus and a risotto tonight." Jae-min noted, his gaze flat and assessing. "They were delicious."
"…Thank you, sir." the chef managed, completely adrift.
"Now I need you to make food that people won't Instagram." Jae-min ordered, no room for hesitation.
The chef blinked while a line cook in the back snorted into his sleeve and immediately pretended he was coughing.
"We can prep maybe two hundred meals with what we have in stock." the chef calculated, his mind already running the numbers. "If you want a thousand, I need to order supplies. It would take days."
"How long?" Jae-min pressed, already three steps ahead.
"Three days, minimum." the chef answered, clutching the envelope like Jae-min might ask for it back.
"Two hundred now, the rest in three days." Jae-min decided, not looking up, already moving. "I'll pay triple."
The chef's eyes went wide, and the whites showed while the line cook in the back who had been snorting stopped laughing entirely and started paying very close attention.
"Triple, sir?" the chef asked, wondering if he'd suffered a stroke.
"You heard me." Jae-min confirmed, his voice calm and certain.
"Sir, triple of fine dining ingredients for army rations is—" the chef stammered, the mathematics breaking something inside him. "That's more than some people's houses."
"My car costs twelve million pesos, and it gets eight kilometers to the liter." Jae-min declared, controlled, the way a man holds a wound closed. "I stopped caring about money around the time I filled up the tank for the first time."
The chef stared while a line cook whispered to another line cook; the whisper cascaded down the line like a very quiet, and very confused game of telephone.
"Yes sir, absolutely sir." the chef barked, snapping back to reality. "Two hundred meals, high calorie, long shelf life, army rations."
"Packed in thermal bags, sturdy ones." Jae-min specified, his voice calm and certain.
"Of course, sir." the chef nodded, nodding mechanically.
"Send everything to the back alley, service entrance." Jae-min added, his voice low and deliberate. "I'll pick it up there."
The chef frowned and glanced at his confused line cooks.
"Sir, we don't usually—" the chef started, professional protocol warring with the half-million pesos in his hand.
"Chef." Jae-min said, one word carrying the absolute authority of a commanding officer.
"…Yes, sir?" the chef asked, smaller now.
"I just paid you half a million pesos and promised to triple the order." Jae-min measured, something steady behind his eyes, not cold but resolute. "If I say I want it delivered to the moon, you should ask me if I prefer Apollo or Falcon Heavy."
The chef opened his mouth, closed it, and nodded slowly.
"Back alley, one hour." the chef said, final.
Jae-min turned on his heel.
"Sir, one more thing." the chef called after him.
Jae-min paused at the door.
"Make sure none of the line cooks taste the food." the chef said, a ghost of humor surfacing through the shock.
"Why?" Jae-min asked, barely a whisper.
"Because the portions are for soldiers, sir." the chef replied, the first genuine smile cracking through his professional mask. "If my staff eats from those batches, they won't fit into their uniforms by the end of the night."
A line cook in the back burst out laughing, and someone threw a towel at him.
Jae-min almost smiled, almost, then pushed through the doors and disappeared into the dining room.
The kitchen exploded into chaos the moment he was gone.
"Did that just happen?" a line cook whispered, his spatula frozen mid-flip.
"He just bought two hundred army rations from a Michelin-starred kitchen." another cook breathed, quiet and wide-eyed.
"With cash." a third cook added.
"Half a million, in cash." a fourth cook asked, staring at the swinging doors. "Who carries that much cash?"
"He was wearing a Rolex that costs more than this entire kitchen." the sous chef murmured, staring at the swinging doors.
"That suit alone could pay my rent for a year." a dishwasher said from the corner.
The chef stood at his station with the thick envelope still in his hands, then looked at his team, twelve people all frozen and all staring at him with the same expression of bewildered awe.
He clapped his hands once; the sound cracked through the kitchen like a gunshot, and everyone jumped.
"MOVE!" the chef barked, the command cracking through the kitchen like a gunshot.
The kitchen lurched back to life with pans clattering and knives resuming their rhythm and the saucier barking orders at the prep cooks like a drill sergeant with a deadline.
Then the chef held up a hand, the kitchen stopped again, and he set the envelope on the counter, counted out ten thousand-peso bills, and began distributing them to each staff member.
"Triple pay for the next three days." the chef declared, the authority of a man who had just been handed a blank check. "Anyone who talks about this outside this kitchen loses their bonus."
The line cooks stared at the bills in their hands.
"Is this a bribe or a bonus?" the sous chef asked, quiet.
"Yes." the chef said, deadpan.
The kitchen roared back to life with an energy that could have powered Makati's grid for a week.
— • • • —
Jae-min walked out through the dimly lit side exit and circled around the building into a back alley that was narrow and clogged with shadow and smelled heavily of old grease and spilled beer and rotting garbage from the nearby bins.
A single yellow security light flickered overhead and buzzed like a dying wasp; 29°C, the night air clinging to his skin humid and close.
He waited twenty minutes, then thirty, until a heavy steel side door creaked open and a kitchen worker stepped out, blinking in the gloom, then another, carrying heavy canvas thermal bags that rustled as they stacked them on the damp oil-stained pavement one after another, twenty bags, thirty, forty.
"Sir, where's your vehicle?" the worker asked, confused and slightly out of breath from the weight. "This is a lot of—"
"Inside." Jae-min commanded, pointing to the narrow corridor. "Bring them inside the door, stack them."
The worker hesitated and shifted his grip.
"But—" the worker started, wiping sweat from his brow.
"Tip you ₱5,000." Jae-min offered, his voice calm and certain.
The worker moved fast, and one by one the thermal bags disappeared through the service door into a narrow brick-walled corridor that was dim and had no cameras, perfect.
The worker stacked the last bag and left; the heavy door clicked shut, and Jae-min was alone with the only sound being the muffled hum of the restaurant's industrial exhaust fans.
He reached out; his fingertips touched the rough canvas of the first thermal bag, and it vanished with no sound and no flash of light, just a faint inky ripple in the air like heat distortion rising off summer asphalt, gone.
The void inside his chest drank greedily, and he could feel the walls of the pocket dimension expanding slowly and painfully but expanding, one bag then five then ten then twenty, moving like a machine with one touch and one vanish and one after another.
The pressure built behind his eyes, dull and throbbing, a low-grade migraine forming at the base of his skull from the strain as the last bag vanished.
He closed his eyes and counted the inventory in his mind: two hundred meals, enough to feed a platoon for weeks, not bad for day two.
He pulled out his phone and the bright screen burned his eyes in the dark corridor.
[Jae-min]: Triple the order. Three days. Back alley. Same time. Don't be late.
— • • • —
Jae-min slipped out the side door and walked around to the front of the building where his GT-R was parked thirty meters away, the pearl white paint gleaming under the streetlights.
He didn't see Kiara standing at the restaurant's glass front doors, didn't see her eyes track him as he crossed the sidewalk, didn't see her pull out her phone and snap a photo of his car, the make and the plate and the Nismo badge on the rear.
"Jen, get your bag." Kiara said, her voice flat and cold, the warmth gone.
Jennifer appeared beside her, blinked, and clutched her purse tightly to her chest.
"W-What? Why?" Jennifer asked, shrinking back slightly.
"He just walked out of my restaurant after eating a ten-thousand-peso meal and then went into their kitchen for an hour." Kiara hissed, her thumb scrolling through her phone and her eyes locked on Jae-min's retreating figure. "He came out the back alley looking like he'd just buried a body. I want to know what Jae-min Del Rosario is up to."
"Kiara, m-maybe you should just—" Jennifer started, her voice barely above a whisper.
"Get. Your. Bag." Kiara seethed, her nails drumming against the table.
Jennifer swallowed hard, grabbed her purse, and followed Kiara into the humid Manila night, her eyes lingering on the spot where Jae-min's car had been, a silent, agonizing prayer escaping her lips.
— • • • —
Jae-min stepped into the GT-R and pulled the door shut, sealing out the city noise, starting the engine as the low predatory rumble vibrated through the steering wheel and the void inside him hummed, hungry for more.
He had food.
'Now I need guns.' Jae-min resolved, a cold, lethal determination hardening his core as he gripped the steering wheel and put the car in gear.
He pulled out of the parking lot and rolled past the restaurant's dark back alley, his bright LED headlights sweeping across the dumpster like a spotlight.
A stray matted dog was picking at a pile of discarded meat scraps, but the dog wasn't eating the meat; it was eating a rock, a small glowing red stone mixed in with the restaurant garbage.
The dog's jaws crunched down on the stone, and a faint unnatural steam rolled off its mangy fur, sizzling in the night air.
Jae-min stared with his breath fogging the windshield slightly.
'What the fuck?' Jae-min recoiled, a cold, creeping dread icing his spine as his hands tightened on the wheel.
He shook his head, broke the trance, and the dog dropped the glowing stone, let out a low whine, and scrambled into the darkness.