Chains Don’t Lie

Cha Eun-ha hadn’t slept properly in six days.

She knew this because the healer had told her so in the same careful tone people used around explosives.

“You’ve lost weight, Guild Master. Your mana flow is unstable. You should rest.”

Rest.

With Han Si-woo in an underground cell, chained like some monster.

She almost laughed in the healer’s face.

Instead, she took the potion, said thank you like a civilized human being, and went back to the monitor room.

Back to the looping footage.

Si-woo’s back, disappearing into the dungeon entrance. Si-woo’s silhouette, caught by the Association street camera, slipping into Black Sun’s building.

Again and again, until the images smeared together and all she could see was his retreating figure.

She had always known she was greedy.

Back when Red Dragon was just a name on a cheap plaque and two rented floors in a leaking building, he was there.

Han Si-woo.

Messy hair. Calm eyes. A support who fought like a frontliner and healed like he’d been rewinding time. The kind of talent other guilds built recruitment strategies around.

She’d watched them notice him.

The Sword Saintess asking his name twice during a joint raid, eyes tracking him a little too long.

The Healer Association rep “joking” that if Red Dragon ever mistreated him, their doors were open. Low-rank hunters from other guilds giggling at his offhand jokes in the Association cafeteria.

At first, she told herself it was normal.

Of course they’d notice. He was good.

Then she caught him laughing at some healer’s comment, his shoulders loose, the corners of his eyes crinkling in that way they never did in her office, and something ugly twisted under her ribs.

It wasn’t logic. It wasn’t strategy.

It was pure, stupid, animal jealousy.

The idea of him being happy with someone else, in some other guild’s uniform, smiling like that for another woman, made her chest ache so sharply she had to look away.

Later, alone in the bathroom, she found half-moon marks on her palms where she’d dug her nails in without noticing. Tiny beads of blood stood out against her skin.

Hah.

At least something on her hurt as much as her chest did.

A good Guild Master would have polished his résumé and sent him where he’d shine most.

She didn’t.

She started closing doors instead.

She blocked his promotion to Vice Guild Master three times.

“We can’t spare you from the field.” “It’s too much politics. You hate that stuff. You prefer field work, right?”

She’d smiled as she said it, pretending it was for his sake.

Lies.

Vice Guild Masters had to be seen. They sat on panels. Shook hands. Attended banquets. Met other Guild Masters and executives and S-rankers who all would have seen exactly what she saw in him.

They would have tried to take him.

They already were.

The Sword Saintess watching him like a hawk. The Healer Association fishing for a crack in their relationship. Even their own rookies, eyes shining when he patted their shoulders after a raid.

They were all vultures.

He was hers.

So she buried him in work.

If he was busy with dungeon clear schedules, he had no time for networking events. If he was buried in paperwork, he had no energy to entertain other offers. If he spent his nights slumped on her office couch after “just one more report,” then at least he was near her, not out there smiling at someone else.

Sometimes she’d catch herself imagining him with another woman. Not in a dungeon, not mid-battle—just simple things. Laughing over late-night food. Holding someone else’s hand on a quiet street. Nodding along as she talked about nothing.

Every time that picture formed in her mind, something sharp and panicked flared in her chest.

She’d dig her nails into her arm until crescent marks bloomed red through the skin.

Pain helped. A little.

Enough to breathe again.

She told herself she was being ridiculous. That adults dated. That teammates fell in love. That she didn’t have the right to feel this way.

Then she’d watch him smile at someone else, and all those rational thoughts went straight to hell.

So she made sure he was too tired to go anywhere but home.

Too essential to be poached.

Too bound to her and Red Dragon to imagine another life.

It worked.

For a while.

And then, one entirely unremarkable morning, he was gone.

No resignation letter. No fight. No slammed doors.

Just an empty chair at the briefing table. A silent phone. A locker that stayed closed.

And then his name on Black Sun’s entry log.

The first time she saw it, she laughed.

“Must be a fake,” she said. “Someone cloned his card.”

Her Si-woo, joining Black Sun?

Her Si-woo, who cursed at her spreadsheets but still stayed late to fix them, who complained about her instant coffee but drank it anyway, who followed her into nightmare dungeons because she asked—walking into Black Sun’s lobby of his own will?

Ridiculous.

The second time the log confirmed, she stopped laughing.

Then Benny and Seo-yeon were ambushed at home. The attackers knew their patrol days, their off-duty nights, their alarm codes.

Then one of their hidden dungeon routes turned into a deathtrap, their own formation used against them.

Then somebody from accounting muttered just loudly enough, “Maybe giving him everything wasn’t so smart, Guild Master.”

That was the first time she punched a wall hard enough for her knuckles to split and the plaster to crack.

A few hours later, the bounty went public.

[HAN SI-WOO – WANTED: TREASON, LEAKING INTERNAL DATA. REWARD ISSUED.]

She stared at the bulletin until the letters swam.

Then she ordered the team to bring him in alive.

And if they couldn’t—

She hadn’t finished that sentence.

The detention room smelled like rust and old rage.

She pulled the door open, stepped through, let it slam behind her. The locks slid into place with a sound she’d grown to like. Solid. Final.

He hung from the chains, lit by the single bare bulb.

For a second, seeing him like that, she was almost sick.

He didn’t look weaker. His body was still roped with familiar muscle, all earned in places that stank like blood and mana.

But he felt… further away.

Like someone had taken the Si-woo she knew and tilted him ten degrees off.

She drew in a slow breath.

“Han Si-woo,” she said.

Then he lifted his head.

“Guild Master,” he said.

Not Eun-ha-noona.

The title dug into her ribs like a knife.

There was a time he’d called her noona without thinking, half-teasing, half-affectionate, especially after long nights when they were

the last ones in the office. It wasn’t professional. She’d never told him to stop.

Now it was gone, replaced by cold formality.

She smiled, but it felt wrong on her face.

“I’m glad you’re awake,” she said.

“Hard not to be. The accommodation service here is terrible.”

Still joking. Still trying to float.

“You still have that mouth,” she muttered, watching ash from her cigarette fall and scatter on the floor. “Even after everything.”

He asked if she was going to kill him, complaining about “hardcore bondage” like this was an overzealous prank.

“Kill you?” she’d laughed, the sound scraping her own ears. “No. That would be too easy. And too kind.”

He claimed he didn’t remember. Then, when pressed, remembered just enough to irritate her: Black Sun, the vault, the ambushes always dancing between honesty and deflection like he always had in debriefings.

He had the gall to act confused about why he was here, as if he hadn’t known she had burning inside-out for six days.

So she showed him why.

She showed him with a knife.

The blade slid into his thigh. His face contorted, but he swallowed the scream. Blood seeped out, dark and hot, staining his pants.

She watched his pain like it might give her answers.

Then she healed him.

The potion glowed against his skin as ruptured flesh closed, leaving only a faint line. It calmed her weirdly, seeing him mend. It was one of the few things in the last week that looked like it could be fixed.

She asked him why.

Why the vault access. Why Black Sun. Why comrades nearly died to intel only someone at his level could know.

He could have said money. Ambition. Blackmail.

Something simple. Something she could understand and slice cleanly away.

He said he was tired.

Tired of raids. Of paperwork. Of politics. He said he wanted to stop. That he wanted a normal life.

The words sat heavy and stupid between them.

Tired.

Of course he was tired.

She pictured him again: staying behind after everyone left, rearranging schedules, re-writing risk reports. Sitting across from her in the office with his tie loose, rubbing the bridge of his nose and muttering about rookie mistakes and bad intel. Pretending not to notice when she ordered him takeout because he’d “forgotten” to eat.

Of course he was tired.

You did this, something in her hissed.

You kept him busy so he wouldn’t have time to imagine a different life.

She thought of the promotion forms she’d vetoed.

“It’s too much politics. You hate that stuff. You prefer field work, right?”

Lies, stacked neatly in triplicate.

She thought of the Sword Saintess tilting her head and watching Si-woo with parted lips after a raid. She thought of the Healer Association sending carefully wrapped “thank you” gifts that only ever arrived on days he solo-carried impossible runs.

She thought of him, shoulder to shoulder with some other woman at a banquet, laughing, relaxed, his name being called with respect by people she couldn’t control.

The idea made her stomach turn.

Her nails dug into her palm again. Fresh pain. Fresh crescent moons of red.

She’d rather keep him here, in this ugly room, than see that.

“I ruined you,” she heard herself say.

His brows pulled together. He looked thrown. Good.

She told him more than she planned to.

That she’d overloaded him. Blocked his promotion. Pushed him until his only exit looked like self-destruction.

It sounded worse out loud.

She watched his face like it might show her a verdict.

He just stared at her like they were in different stories.

“You should have told me,” she said.

“And would you have listened?” he asked.

Silence stretched.

“No,” she admitted softly. “I wouldn’t have.”

She froze.

She reached up and cupped his cheek anyway.

His skin was hot from potion, or anger, or both.

He didn’t lean into her touch.

He didn’t pull away.

Up close, she could see the strain in his neck, the faint tremor in the muscles of his chest. The kind of tension that said there were more injuries than the obvious stab wound she’d already healed.

She dropped her hand from his face to his collar.

His eyes widened as she began to undo the buttons of his shirt, one by one, fabric parting to reveal bruised skin, yellowed around the edges, ugly purple in the center.

“Hey,” he said, voice tight. “What are you doing?”

"Checking," she murmured, her fingers brushing against his skin, cold and deliberate. "To see what else they did to you while you were pretending to be a traitor."

She pushed the shirt aside. Old cuts. Fresh bruises. The faint ripple of a badly healed rib.

Of course he’d walked back into an exploding dungeon alone.

She pressed her palm flat against his chest. Green light bled from her fingers, sinking into bone and flesh. Micro-fractures knitted. Deep bruises faded from black to sickly green.

He hissed once, air catching in his throat, then went still.

“There,” she said quietly. “At least this much, I can fix.”

She let the fabric fall back into place, fingers lingering for a second longer than necessary on the last button, then forced herself to step back, mind already moving ahead of her.

The Association. The bounty. The vultures.

“This is Cha Eun-ha. Red Dragon Guild. The traitor’s been secured.”

A few threaded lies. A staged photograph. Enough blood on a cloak to satisfy paperwork.

By sunrise, the Association had updated his file:

[HAN SI-WOO – STATUS: NEUTRALIZED.]

Dead.

Convenient.

She went back down to the detention level.

“Right now, the Association thinks you’re a traitor,” she told him. “There’s a bounty on your head. You were on every bulletin board in the city.”

His eyes widened, shock finally puncturing that infuriating composure.

“But, I fixed it.” Her voice softened without her permission. “I told them we killed the traitor during the capture. You’re off the board. They closed the case.”

He stared like she’d slapped him.

“You… ‘fixed’ it,” he repeated.

“You don’t exist anymore, Si-woo.”

His throat worked

“What, wait—”

“You said you were tired.” She cut him off because if she listened now, she might waver. “You wanted out. No more raids. No more guild politics. No more idiots depending on you until you break.”

“Not like this.”

“This is the only way it works.” She shrugged, like they were discussing logistics, not his entire existence. “If I send you out there, you get hunted. By Black Sun. By people who still believe the bulletin. By anyone who wants the bounty.”

She walked to the door and rested her hand on the lock.

“You wanted a quiet life?” she said. “I’ll give you one.”

She looked back at him.

“Just for us.”

“For—what the hell does that even mean?” His chains rattled as he shifted, anger finally surfacing naked. “You’re going to keep me in a basement and call it ‘quiet’? I’m not an animal you can just imprison!”

“Basement is an ugly word.” She smiled, letting just a hint of teeth show. “Think of it as… retirement. No dungeons. No missions. No other guilds. No other women.”

His face froze for a split second at that last part.

Good.

He understood at least that much.

“Guildmaster!”

She opened the door.

The corridor outside was dim, lined with mana-sealed doors. Safe. Contained. Hard to reach from the outside. Impossible to escape from the inside.

It was ugly, yes.

But so was the world that had taken so much from both of them.

“I waited six days to see your face again,” she said over her shoulder. “But my patience has run out.”

The door shut between them with a heavy, satisfying thud.

Locks slid into place.

Clack. Clack. Clack.