Ji-hoon sat on the studio floor, back pressed against the cold wall, his cane resting beside him. He had been listening to the same faint audio loop over and over—a string recording warped by time and static. It wasn't music. It was a whisper hidden in harmonics, a voice buried in the shifting vibrato. For days now, his thoughts had spiraled, twisting like vines around the name he could no longer shake: Si-wan.
Si-wan's glove. It had arrived in a plain package. No sender. No note. Just the black leather glove, soft and expensive to the touch. But Ji-hoon didn't need eyes to know whose it was. The scent of it was embedded in memory—faint, citrus, and faintly burnt. The same cologne that haunted his nightmares. The same scent that clung to the man who took his mother from him.
He picked up the glove again, holding it to his face. He remembered the time he'd once shaken Si-wan's hand during a charity performance. Si-wan had squeezed too tightly. Too politely. Too calculated. He remembered how it took his mother a week to speak again after that concert. He hadn't understood it then.
He did now.
"Joon-won," Ji-hoon said, his voice brittle. "It's time."
The door opened immediately. Joon-won had been waiting for that signal. He walked in with a tense, professional air. He didn't need to ask what Ji-hoon meant. They'd been preparing. For weeks.
"He's in town," Joon-won said quietly. "Si-wan. Checked into the Observatory Hotel. Under a fake name, but we confirmed it."
Ji-hoon nodded slowly. "How many guards?"
"Six. Two of them former special forces."
Ji-hoon smiled faintly. "Then I'll need a bigger orchestra."
He stood, cane in hand. The blind pianist moved with an uncanny precision. Every inch of his practice studio was a part of him. He'd memorized every echo, every vibration underfoot. This was his domain. But tonight, his war wasn't here. Tonight, he had to step into the dark.
The street was quiet, the kind of silence that carries danger in the way the wind bends around the buildings. Ji-hoon walked between his men—five of them, hired assassins and former soldiers. Men who followed his steps not because he paid them, but because they believed in his story. They had seen the reports. They had dug up the secrets. Si-wan's ties to underground markets. His manipulation of conservatory funding. His obsession with Ara Yoo—the pianist whose genius he once tried to control.
Si-wan had worn that glove the night Ara died.
The Observatory Hotel rose above them like a monolith. Ji-hoon stopped at the entrance. He took a breath. "Room 1907," he said.
"How do you—" one guard started, but Joon-won cut him off.
"He just knows. Don't ask."
They moved quickly. The lobby was quiet. A bribed concierge nodded subtly. Upstairs, a quiet hallway pulsed with tension. Ji-hoon tapped his cane twice against the floor. Three sharp taps came in return—signals exchanged by his team as they secured the perimeter.
Then Ji-hoon turned toward the door. His hand hovered just above the knob. He could feel the heat behind the wood. Hear the soft shifting of weight. The door opened before he could touch it.
"Well, well," Si-wan's voice came, smooth as poison. "The blind prodigy. You've grown."
"I wish I could say the same about you," Ji-hoon said calmly. "But you always reeked of decay."
A chuckle. "Still poetic. Your mother taught you well."
Ji-hoon's fingers tightened around the glove in his pocket. "Don't say her name."
The next moment exploded.
One of Ji-hoon's men lunged. A bullet rang out. Another guard crashed through the window. Ji-hoon ducked as chaos erupted around him. Si-wan moved fast—too fast for a man of his age. But not fast enough. Ji-hoon had trained his ears to predict. He heard the shift of leather shoes. The breath before a strike. He spun his cane up, cracked it against Si-wan's ribs.
Si-wan groaned. "You fight like her."
"Good," Ji-hoon spat. "She fought for her life."
Gunfire. Screams. Two of Si-wan's bodyguards dropped. Ji-hoon's men were moving through the suite like shadows, executing years of pent-up vengeance with cold precision.
Ji-hoon made it to the center of the room. He stood near the grand piano—of course there was one. Si-wan had always craved the image of grace, even when he bled.
Si-wan crawled to the base of the instrument, one hand clutching his chest. Ji-hoon stepped forward, lifting the glove.
"I kept this," Ji-hoon said, voice shaking. "Because I needed to remember what the devil smells like."
"Then kill me," Si-wan hissed. "Be just like me."
"No," Ji-hoon said. "I'm nothing like you."
He dropped the glove onto Si-wan's chest.
Then he turned his back.
A single shot rang out. Ji-hoon didn't flinch.
Joon-won walked forward, gun still warm. "He was reaching for a blade."
Ji-hoon nodded. Silence returned to the suite. The battle was over. But the war inside Ji-hoon had only deepened.
He walked to the piano, fingers trembling. He pressed a single key.
F sharp.
It was off-tune.
He smiled bitterly. "Like him."
And then he sat down, in the center of the wreckage, and played a lullaby only he could hear.
Back at his apartment, Ji-hoon couldn't sleep. The glove was gone. The man was dead. But the music remained. And the silence that followed it.
He knew the scars wouldn't heal. But tonight, at least, he had played his part.
And Si-wan's glove would never touch another note again.
Ji-hoon sat on the edge of his hotel bed, the room still smelling faintly of gasoline and old blood. The silence wasn't peaceful—it was heavy, ringing in his ears like the tail-end of a scream. He clutched the leather glove tighter in his hand, the one Si-wan left behind like a signature on a murder letter. Ji-hoon couldn't see the glove, but his fingers traced every curve, every crease like it was a memory. He hated how well he remembered its texture. The smell of it. How his mother once said it reminded her of luxury—and how now, it only reeked of death.
He hadn't taken it off in hours.
"Why would he leave this behind?" Ji-hoon muttered, voice nearly breaking. Joon-won didn't answer right away. He was sitting on the windowsill, half-lost in the city lights.
"Maybe he wanted you to find it," Joon-won said at last, his voice low. "Maybe he wanted you to know it was him."
Ji-hoon chuckled bitterly, rubbing the back of his hand over his face. "Of course he did. He always wants to be seen, doesn't he? Even if I never could."
His words sat between them like a dropped glass, the pieces glinting in invisible light.
"You're still bleeding," Joon-won said suddenly.
Ji-hoon touched the cut at the side of his head—it had reopened in the last fight, the adrenaline masking the sting. Now, it throbbed like a warning bell.
"I know." He stood up, wavering just slightly. "Let it bleed."
"You're not immortal, Ji-hoon," Joon-won said. "I don't care how pissed you are. You burn another building, and next time it won't just be them that goes down."
"I want him to feel that," Ji-hoon whispered. "I want him to feel it every second the way I feel it every night."
And there it was again—that sharp thing inside him, the pain shaped like his mother's final scream. He could never unhear it, though he never truly heard it to begin with. Only in dreams. Only in guilt.
He walked over to the table where the gloves were—both now, Si-wan's old one and a duplicate he had made. He had no reason to wear them other than symbolism. He pulled them on slowly, fingers curling into fists.
"You really think you're ready to face him?" Joon-won asked, standing now. "Because if you go down this path, there's no soft piano solo at the end. It'll be all fire and broken strings."
Ji-hoon didn't smile. "That's fine. I've already heard the final note."
Three nights later, Seoul's underbelly swallowed him.
He walked alone through the back alley of a club known to be a hub for Si-wan's remaining sympathizers. There was music aboveground, laughter, intoxicated clapping. But down here, where the light flickered and cameras blinked out, the only rhythm was his steps and the echo of his cane tapping.
A bouncer stepped into his path. "You're lost, pretty boy."
Ji-hoon didn't hesitate. He reached under his coat and pulled the small taser he'd stolen weeks ago. One jab to the ribs and the man crumpled, convulsing quietly.
Ji-hoon moved past him, heart racing but expression calm. Inside, the hallway narrowed. Every sound amplified in his ears—music, whispers, boots, gunmetal. He counted steps. Seven to the left. Nine to the right. Pause. Door.
He kicked it open.
A card game scattered like birds, men jumping to their feet. Ji-hoon didn't flinch as three guns cocked.
"You wouldn't shoot a blind guy," Ji-hoon said calmly, lips curving.
Then he threw the flashbang.
The light meant nothing to him. But to them? It was hell. Screams. Gunfire misfired into walls. Ji-hoon moved with ruthless efficiency—he didn't fight with sight, but with sound, memory, fury. He swung his cane into one man's knee, catching the grunt mid-yell and bringing him to the floor.
Another lunged. Ji-hoon ducked, shoulder-rolled, then stabbed a hidden blade up into the man's side.
"Where is Si-wan?" he growled.
One of them screamed. "I don't know—he left Seoul!"
Ji-hoon grabbed his collar, pulling him close. "Don't lie to me. I've killed better men than you just this week."
That broke him.
"The mountains—north side! There's an estate! But you'll never get in—"
Ji-hoon knocked him out cold with a single, brutal elbow.
By morning, the police had already started whispering about a "mysterious vigilante." Reports of three men hospitalized with severe injuries, others vanishing entirely. The press was suspicious, but no one could confirm it was Ji-hoon.
He sat at the edge of his old apartment's rooftop, the city loud below. He felt it all press into him—the violence, the grief, the weight of the glove still in his pocket.
"I'm not done yet, mother," he said, voice raw. "He's still out there."
He leaned his head back to feel the wind on his face, blind eyes closed against the sun.
And from below, like a memory or ghost, a violin played softly.
Ji-hoon clenched his fists, feeling the tension coil in his chest. His eyes, blind and lifeless, stared into the distance, but he didn't need to see to know what was in front of him. He could feel it. The music was there, not in the form of a melody, but as an unspoken presence—like a shadow clinging to him, pulling him into the darkness.
The violin's notes hummed through the air, softly, sorrowfully, weaving in and out of his consciousness. His mother's music. He could hear her echoes, those faint, beautiful sounds, like the whispered promises of a past he could never get back.
But now, the world was different. The anger was stronger than any grief. The need for revenge burned hotter than any sadness. He had become a creature of pain, of rage, and it was only a matter of time before that fire consumed him completely.
His fingers trembled, and he reached for the glove again, holding it in his palm as though it were the only anchor keeping him from floating into oblivion. Si-wan's glove, the mark of the one who had taken everything from him. He'd destroyed his life, torn apart every single thread that held his sanity together.
But it was more than just that. It was the realization that all his hatred, all the rage, all the darkness he'd been feeding for years—it had been carefully orchestrated, led by someone who knew exactly what buttons to push. Si-wan had been toying with him, turning him into something he didn't even recognize anymore. A broken man. A blind puppet, shackled by the strings of his own destruction.
The sounds of the violin continued to haunt him.
"Do you hear it, mother?" Ji-hoon whispered, his voice cracking. "Can you hear the music still? Or am I just lost in the silence?"
He stood up slowly, the anger rising inside him like a tide, threatening to drown everything else. He couldn't keep running from this—he couldn't keep hiding behind the remnants of a life he could never have again. The only thing left to do was to face it head-on. To take the fight to Si-wan. To finally break the chains.
And so, he turned away from the rooftop, his cane tapping lightly against the ground. He didn't know where this path would lead him. But he knew one thing: it wouldn't stop until Si-wan was finally brought to justice. It couldn't. Not when he was so close.
With each step, Ji-hoon walked deeper into the abyss, determined not to lose himself to the darkness completely. He still had one thing left. His mother's music. And as long as he could hear it, he could still fight.