The penthouse swallowed her whole the moment the elevator doors sighed shut behind Jimin’s retreating figure, the faint echo of his careful “Ma’am” still clinging to the marble like a stain that refused to lift. She stood there in the half-light of the living room, the silk dress Jungkook had chosen for her earlier now stiff in places where the captain’s blood had dried into dark, rust-colored constellations across the hem, the bullet pendant resting heavy and cold between her breasts like a promise she had never asked to wear. The city glittered beyond the floor-to-ceiling glass like a whore spread out for inspection, uncaring, endless, but up here the air was different—thicker, laced with the ghost of his cologne and something older, something that smelled like the inside of a wound that had finally decided to stop bleeding and start remembering.

And then the sound came - the rhythmic, meaty thud-thud-thud of fists meeting resistance until the resistance surrendered, over and over, a heartbeat made of pure, unfiltered rage. It drifted down from the upper floor like smoke from a fire no one had bothered to put out, heavy and wet and unmistakably him.