Hearts Cut in Two
The third hideout that week went up like dry paper.
Cha Eun‑ha watched the flames eat the warehouse roof, watched the steel beams bend and scream, and felt nothing.
Someone behind her was still screaming.
“W‑wait! We really don’t know! After the Association raid, we cut ties with that branch—”
His voice cut off with a wet sound.
One of her raid team staggered back, wiping a blade clean.
“Clear,” he reported tersely. “No survivors.”
There were bodies on the ground. Black Sun tattoos half‑melted by heat. Smoke stung the air. Sirens wailed somewhere far off.
“Search again,” Eun‑ha said.
The hunter frowned. “Guild Master, we already—”
“Search,” she repeated.
He flinched and nodded.
“Yes, ma’am.”
They scattered, boots crunching glass and bone.
She tilted her head back and stared at the flames.
For a moment, all she saw was fire bending off‑course.
Flames shaped like a dragon's head twisting in mid‑air.
Si‑woo’s body in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Her own hand yanking too late.
The fire kissed his coat as he vanished into shadow.
She hated to admit but If that fucking rat hadn’t stolen him, he would have died right there.
By her hand.
Her palm ached.
She can never forgive herself for that.
She looked down.
Her nails had dug into her own skin again. Half‑moons of red dotted her palm. She flexed her fingers, watched the blood smear.
“Trackers?” she asked.
One of the support mages swallowed.
“The charm on his collar was scrambled the moment he went under,” he said. “We got… nothing. No direction. No distance. It’s like he was cut out.”
Her teeth clicked together.
Cut out.
Of Red Dragon. Of Seoul. Of her reach.
She took a deep breath through her nose.
It tasted of ash.
“Guild Master.” Another hunter approached, helmet under his arm, face drawn. “Association liaison called again. They said… if we keep raiding Black Sun assets without coordination, they’ll file sanctions.”
“Sanctions,” Eun‑ha repeated.
“Yes. They—”
She turned her head slowly.
The hunter shut his mouth.
“Tell them,” she said, “as long as Black Sun breathes, Red Dragon will cut out its lungs.”
“Won’t that make things… complicated?” he asked carefully.
“Things already are,” she said.
She searched for weeks without sleeping properly.
Guild networks, Association databases, private contacts, smugglers, informants. Every petty psychic who claimed they could locate missing cats got paid absurd sums to “try.”
Nothing.
It was like he’d fallen off the map.
Like Yeonhwa had reached up, grabbed heaven’s cloth, and snipped one tiny piece out where “Han Si‑woo” used to be.
The guilt didn’t help.
Every time she closed her eyes, she saw that street.
He was supposed to be behind her.
Safe.
Out of the line.
Then he moved
Her flame followed her will, straight through where he’d been.
If Yeonhwa hadn’t pulled him into that filth‑coloured hole, he would have been ash.
She almost killed him.
She, who screamed at others for daring to scratch him, had thrown fire at his spine.
You don’t deserve to look for him, some part of her hissed.
The rest of her hissed back louder.
He’s mine.
He’s mine, so I fix what I burn.
Even if it means tearing apart the world.
In the end, she went somewhere she should never have gone.
The room was deep under an older part of the city, past three unmarked doors and one ward that had tried to make her forget why she was there.
It failed.
The man sitting on the threadbare cushion looked like any old drunk you'd see outside a convenience store. Clothes that had lost their colour. Hair that hadn’t decided between white and grey.
Only his eyes didn’t match the ruin. They were too clear.
“Red Dragon’s master,” he greeted. “The rumours are true, then.”
He poured tea from a chipped pot into a stained cup and pushed it toward her.
She didn’t drink.
“I need a location spell,” she said.
“I sell curses,” he corrected mildly. “Spells are for Association dogs.”
“I don’t care what you call it,” she said. “I want to find someone that even the Association can’t.”
He watched her for a beat.
“Name?”
“Han Si‑woo.”
He blinked, slow.
“Ah,” he said. “That one.”
Her fingers twitched.
“You know him?” she asked.
“I know people who died with his name on their tongues,” he said. “Some begging. Some cursing. Some Whispering love.”
Her jaw clenched.
“Can you find him or not,” she said.
He set the teapot down with exaggerated care.
“Black Sun’s shadows are wrapped around him,” he said. “Yours cling too. Association threads. Fate threads. A proper knot.”
“I’m good at untying,” she said.
“Mm.” He nodded, as if that tracked. “It’s possible. To cut through that much interference, you’ll need to pay a big price.”
“How big.”
He smiled.
“Lifespan.”
She didn’t blink.
"Can you pay the price?"
“How much,” she asked.
“Depends how far he fell,” the old man said. “But if the Association truly has no trace, it won’t be cheap. Ten years, perhaps. Maybe more. Maybe all.”
“Take twenty,” she said. It didn't matter to her, as long she could see him again.
He actually choked.
“That is not how bargaining works,” he said. “You’re supposed to haggle down.”
“I don’t have time,” she said. “Take twenty. Take thirty. As long as there’s enough left to walk to him.”
He stared.
“The man you’re chasing,” he said slowly. “He must be extraordinary.”
“Yes,” she said.
“He must make you very happy,” he said.
She looked down at her hands.
At the faint scars on her knuckles. At the thin white line along her left forearm where he’d once stopped a blade aimed at her and bled all over her office floor.
“He’s the only thing I’m terrified of losing,” she said. “That’s enough.”
The old man clicked his tongue.
“Sit,” he said. “Give me your hand.”
She did.
His grip was dry and cold. He muttered words the air didn’t like. Something invisible sank its teeth into the bones of her wrist and chewed.
Pain climbed her arm, sharp and deep. Not like cuts. More like something was being scraped off from the inside.
The lamp hanging from the ceiling flickered.
When he let go, her breath came out ragged.
A strand of her hair drifted down into her vision.
White.
Her hair had turned white.
He plucked it from her shoulder with surprising gentleness.
“See?” he said. “That is the price.”
“Draw,” she said.
He spread an old map on the floor. Not just of Seoul. Of the whole world.
Dark ink bled up from the paper by itself, seeping into coastlines. Seoul blurred. Lines crawled across oceans.
The stain stopped somewhere on the western edge of Europe. A little coastal town that, until today, had never existed in her mind.
“Here,” he said. “He burns there.”
She memorised the shape of the bay, the curve of the cliffs, the position of a squat lighthouse drawn like an afterthought.
“How long?” she asked.
“For what?” he said.
“Before you come for the rest,” she said.
He laughed.
“I don’t come,” he said. “Time does. You just sold some of yours ahead of schedule.”
Sherose.
The room swayed, just a little.
He watched her steady herself.
“Regret?” he asked.
She thought of a burned street. A dragon of flame. A shadow stealing something from under her nose.
“Not yet,” she said.
The town was prettier in person.
It clung to the hillside like a stack of white blocks left out in the sun. Blue doors. Bougainvillea. Smell of frying fish.
Tourists took pictures without knowing that two people here had more blood on their hands than everyone else in a hundred‑kilometre radius combined.
Eun‑ha stood on a terrace above the main road and watched through the lens.
The glass was small, no bigger than a compact mirror. Its surface rippled with faint mana. The spell burned against her skin like a fever.
She focused.
The picture sharpened.
There he was.
Si‑woo.
He looked much better than last she saw him.
A normal man in rolled‑up sleeves, arguing with a Spanish rental guy about kayak sizes.
He laughed at something the man said. Shoulders loose. Eyes crinkling.
He’d never laughed like that in the guild.
In her office, maybe once or twice. Always tired. Always with a stack of reports waiting.
Here, there were no reports.
Just a cheap life vest and a plastic paddle.
Her throat felt tight.
She adjusted the lens, tracking him as he stepped away from the shack.
He stretched his arms above his head, back cracking audibly.
He looked… lighter.
Her hand clenched around the lens.
Was I the one who made you look like a corpse?
Of course she did.
She replayed old scenes.
Him on her couch, ink smudged on his fingers. Him slumped in a chair, tie loose, eyes half‑closed while she dictated. Him walking into explosions because she asked.
Him hanging from chains because she couldn’t stand the thought of anyone else getting to him first.
“If he’s happy,” she murmured, half to herself, “should I leave him?”
The idea tasted like rust.
She could.
She could walk away.
Go back to Seoul. Apologise to no one. Let him rot in peace on some foreign shore, eating seafood and pretending the past hadn’t happened.
She watched as he turned.
Someone called his name.
He smiled.
Yeonhwa walked into frame, towel draped over one arm, sunglasses pushed up into her hair. Casual. Like this was just another Tuesday.
Wearing some swimsuit… Of course that bitch was trying to seduce her Si-Woo.
He said something. She hit his shoulder lightly with the towel.
She touched him with her filthy hands.
He ducked.
He had never ducked away from Eun‑ha’s hand.
He’d stood there and taken it. Every order. Every weight.
This Si‑woo leaned into the warmth offered.
The smile he gave Yeonhwa didn’t belong to anyone else.
Her grip tightened.
The lens cracked.
A thin spiderweb spread from the centre where her thumb pressed.
She stared at the damage.
Then, slowly, she slid the lens back into her pocket.
She thought, bitterly:
If she can steal him in front of me, I can steal him back in front of her.
The decision settled in her chest like a stone.
She wanted her to feel every ounce of that pain. How it had burned her heart, and the memory of that day when she almost lost him.
She watched for two more days.
Daylight, people, sea.
Something nagged at her that had nothing to do with jealousy or hatred.
The group around him shrank.
The first day, there were eight people at the kayak shack.
The second, five.
The third, four.
The faces that smiled at him for longer than a few seconds just… didn’t come back.
The loud family with three kids. Gone.
The British couple arguing about sunscreen. Gone.
The two university girls who’d giggled when he tripped over a cooler. Gone.
“Vacation rush,” the rental guy said when Si‑woo asked.
“Family emergency,” the hotel clerk said when a neighbour’s room emptied overnight.
Eun‑ha’s fingers tapped against the stone railing.
Yeonhwa’s version of chaining, she thought:
Clear the map. Leave only your target.
It was almost admirable.
If it weren’t aimed at him.
At night, the town lit up for some festival whose name she didn’t care about.
Fireworks at the harbour. Music. Drunk singing.
She ignored all of it.
Her focus stayed on Si-Woo.
They took a walk to somewhere isloated, to the light house.
Hidden under a simple concealment charm she’d bullied out of the support team, Eun‑ha sat on a dark outcrop of rock below the pier. Spray sometimes reached her boots. She didn’t move.
Above, Si‑woo and Yeonhwa walked out along the stone path.
The sea wind caught their clothes.
He looked… cautious. Like he always did in new terrain.
Yeonhwa looked like someone about to unwrap a present.
They stopped near the base of the lighthouse.
Eun‑ha couldn’t hear the words clearly over the surf, but she didn’t need to.
She saw the box.
Small. Black.
Her fingers clawed at the rock.
She was speechless.
The audacity of this bitch, wanted to propose him? Her Si-Woo?
She stole him from her.
She hid him from her.
She removed every witness from around him.
And now you think you can marry him?
She almost laughed.
The sound got stuck in her throat.
Above, Yeonhwa opened the box.
The ring flashed once in the dim light. Dark metal. Of course. They both loved ugly things.
He reached.
Even from below, even with only the side of his face visible, Eun‑ha could tell he was about to say yes.
He had that look.
The “I’ll swallow any poison you hand me if it keeps me breathing” look.
He was about to promise himself to someone else.
Again.
Without her there.
The part of her that remembered fire twisting off his body, the smell of burnt fabric, whispered: if he stays with her, at least he’s not in your blast radius.
The rest of her screamed louder.
Mine.
She slid her hand into her coat.
Her fingers closed around cold metal.
Not a sword.
Not a gun.
A bracelet, dull silver, etched with old runes. Water attribute. Binding type.
She’d dug it out of the Red Dragon treasury two days ago. An artifact for restraining high‑rank monsters in flooded dungeons.
She had not brought fire this time.
She didn’t trust herself with it around him. After that.
She snapped the bracelet open.
Mana thrummed against her palm. Hungry.
“I want him back,” she whispered to it. “Unburned. Unbroken. With me.”
On the pier, Yeonhwa lifted the ring.
“Marry me, Si‑woo,” she said.
His hand moved.
Reaching for the box. For the future that didn’t have Eun‑ha in it.
Eun‑ha pressed the bracelet’s core.
A circle of magic snapped into existence under her boots, bright and cold.
Far above, on the pier, a matching circle bloomed for a heartbeat under his feet. A thin line of blue shot out, invisible to everyone but mages and madwomen.
It wrapped around his ankle like a transparent shackle.
His body jerked.
The box flew from his fingers.
The ring spun, glinting, and rolled toward the edge.
“SI‑WOOO—!” Yeonhwa screamed.
Eun‑ha pulled.
The ocean answered, surging up like a hand.
Water slammed over the side of the pier, swallowed him, and yanked him down.
For a fraction of a breath, she saw his face through the foam.
Surprised.
Then he was gone.
The roar of the waves swallowed his shape.
On the pier, Yeonhwa lunged for the edge, fingers closing on empty air.
Her scream tore across the water.
Eun-ha's laughter burst out.
Eun‑ha held the activated bracelet against her chest, teeth sunk into her lip hard enough to taste blood.
The binding circle on the sea dimmed, then winked out.
Somewhere below, somewhere along the chained path of magic, he would surface.
Near her.
Away from that woman who thought she could put a ring on him.
If I can’t be the one you run to, she thought, viciously calm, I’ll be the one you can’t escape.
