When the phone rang, I was staring at a blank terminal, my mind drifting through the lines of code I hadn't written. But the moment I heard her voice—the shattered, jagged sound of her breath and the raw terror in the word Hanbin—my own heart stopped for a heartbeat before slamming into overdrive.
"Hanbin, please... he's here. Kai is at my door."
The world turned red. It wasn't a metaphor. A literal heat flooded my vision, a primal surge of adrenaline that bypassed every logical circuit in my brain. I didn't think. I didn't grab a coat. I didn't even put on shoes.
I kicked open my bedroom door and flew down the stairs of my apartment building in my thin cotton trousers and rubber house sandals. My lungs burned as I hit the night air, sprinting. I didn't care about the cold. I didn't care that the pavement was biting into my feet.
The distance between my house and her restaurant was exactly three blocks—a distance I had walked slowly many times, savoring the thought of her. Now, I covered it in a blur of motion. I was sweating, the cold wind turning the moisture on my forehead into ice, but inside, I was a furnace.
If he touches her. If he so much as lays a finger on her...
I reached the building, my chest heaving. I didn't wait for the elevator. I took the stairs three at a time, the sound of my own heavy breathing echoing in the narrow concrete stairwell. As I reached her floor, the sound hit me—the sickening thud of a foot hitting a wooden door and a man's voice, frantic and disgusting.
I rounded the corner.
There he was. Jung Kai. He was hunched over, his shoulder slammed against the wood of her door, his face twisted in a pathetic, desperate grimace.
I didn't shout. I didn't warn him.
I moved.
I reached him in two strides. My hand shot out like a piston, my fingers locking around the back of his neck—the thick, sweaty scruff of his collar. I didn't just grab him; I anchored him. With a roar of pure, unadulterated rage, I wrenched him backward, his feet leaving the floor as I slammed him against the opposite wall.
"Danoh!" I shouted, my voice cracking with the strain of my lungs. "Danoh, it's me! I'm here! I'm right outside!"
I heard the frantic clicking of locks. One, two, three. The door swung open.
Danoh stood there. She looked small, her face streaked with tears, her eyes wide with a trauma I never wanted her to know. The moment she saw me, she didn't hesitate. She threw herself forward, her arms wrapping around my waist, her face burying into my chest. She was trembling so hard I could feel her heart vibrating against my ribs.
My body was a study in contradictions. With my left arm, I pulled her into me, tucking her head under my chin, my hand splaying across her back to hold her together. With my right hand, I kept my grip on Kai's throat, pinning him to the wall like a moth to a board.
Kai was gasping, his hands clawing at my wrist, his eyes bulging with the same terror he had felt in that alleyway.
"Don't cry," I whispered into her hair, my voice trembling with a mix of fury and relief. "Just sit there. Go inside and sit on the floor, Danoh. Don't look."
I gently but firmly unpeeled her arms from me. I guided her back a step into the doorway. "Sit down. Don't look at this."
She collapsed onto the floor just inside the entrance, her hands over her mouth.
I turned back to Kai.
The "Ice Prince" was dead. There was only the "Shadow" now. I let go of his throat only to bury my fist into his stomach. The sound was a dull oomph as the air left his lungs. I didn't stop. I didn't give him a chance to fall. I grabbed his hair and slammed his head back against the plaster, once, twice.
I wasn't a programmer anymore. I was a machine designed for one purpose: deletion.
Every time I swung, I thought of the bruises on her leg. I thought of the way she had cried on the phone. I thought of the two weeks I had spent protecting her from a distance, only for this piece of filth to find his way to her door.
I hit him until my knuckles, already scarred, broke open again. I hit him until his face was a mask of red and he stopped trying to put his hands up. I didn't say a single word. Silence was the only thing that could contain the amount of hate I felt.
Five minutes. It felt like five seconds. It felt like five years.
The hallway was suddenly flooded with blue and red light reflecting off the windows. The sound of sirens and heavy boots echoed up the stairs.
"Police! Drop him! Get away from him!"
I didn't drop him. I simply stopped. My arm was leaden, my knuckles dripping blood onto the linoleum. I was exhausted, the adrenaline leaving me in a sickening wash of cold. I didn't even have the energy to stand up straight.
As the officers rushed forward, I let Kai slide down the wall. He was a heap of broken pride and bruised flesh. I didn't look at him. I leaned my head back against the wall, sliding down next to him until I was sitting on the floor, my head lolling to the side to rest against the very wall I had just slammed him into.
I closed my eyes, my breath coming in ragged, shallow hitches.
"Sir? Sir, stay still!" An officer was over me, but I didn't care.
I reached into my pocket with my non-bloody hand and pulled out my phone. My fingers were shaking so much I could barely unlock it. I hit the speed dial for the only person I could trust to handle the aftermath.
"Jeonghan," I rasped when he picked up.
"Hanbin? Why are you calling at—"
"Get to the Sinchon police station," I interrupted. My voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. "Now. I... I caught him. Just come."
I hung up. I looked toward the doorway. The police were talking to Danoh, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders. She was looking at me, her eyes filled with a mixture of horror and a deep, soul-shattering gratitude.
I wanted to go to her. I wanted to tell her it was over. But I couldn't move. I just sat there in my house sandals and sweat-soaked trousers, a broken guardian in a hallway that smelled of copper and rain.
The system had crashed. But she was safe. And as the police pulled me to my feet to lead me toward the station, that was the only line of code that mattered.