Chapter 4: Blood and Neon
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Jiung’s hand closed around Nayoung’s wrist, his grip not rough but unyielding as iron. “We’re not doing this here,” he stated, his voice a low blade slicing through the market’s carnival noise. He didn’t wait for agreement, simply pulled her away from the glowing stalls and their friends’ watchful eyes, navigating toward a narrow service alley choked with the smell of damp concrete and rotting produce.The relative silence was a shock. Flickering light from a faulty neon sign across the street painted his sharp features in erratic strokes of blue and shadow. “You’re trembling,” he observed, his tone clinical, detaching himself from the fact that he was the cause.
“I’m fine,” Nayoung lied, her voice barely a whisper. She wrapped her arms around herself, the “100% that bitch” facade crumbling in the isolation.“Why did you do that? Why did you even come tonight?”
“To see if you’d actually changed,” Jiung said, taking a step closer. The cold authority he’d worn all night cracked, revealing something raw and bruised beneath.“But you’re just playing the same game with a different toy. First me, now him? You run from anything real.”
Before she could fire back, a new voice cut through the alley, liquid and dangerous. “Well, look what the cat didn’t bother dragging in.”
Nayoung’s blood went icy. Jongwoo leaned against the alley’s mouth, his silhouette tall and taut, the colorful market lights haloing him like some blasphemous saint. His sharp eyes flicked from her distressed face to Jiung’s possessive stance. A slow, wicked smile spread across his lips.“Little Nayoungie. You don’t return my calls, but you’ll follow this loser into a stinking alley?”
Jiung shifted instantly, placing his body between Nayoung and Jongwoo.His relaxed confidence vanished, replaced by a predatory rigidity. “She’s not following anyone.She’s leaving. With me.”
Jongwoo pushed off the wall, his dancer’s grace making his approach a silent threat.“Is that right? And what are you, her babysitter? Last I checked, she packed your shit in a box and left you on the curb.” He stopped just a foot away, the space between them crackling.“She left you, Jongwoo. Walk the fuck away.”
“Yeah,” Jongwoo breathed, his gaze never leaving Nayoung’s over Jiung’s shoulder. “But she always comes back. I’m the only vice she needs, the only one who doesn’t bore her to tears with fucking ‘consistency’.” He laughed, a hollow sound. “Isn’t that right, baby? You like your chaos live.”
“You’re a mistake she’s outgrown,” Jiung spat, his cool facade incinerated by pure venom.
Jongwoo’s smile died. “And you’re the safe, boring choice she settled for.” He looked Jiung up and down, contempt dripping from every word. “You sacrificed your whole little life to hold her down, and for what? To be the guy she practices leaving?”
Jiung’s control snapped. “You don’t know a damn thing about us.”
“I know she cries my name when she comes,” Jongwoo fired back, a nuclear option deployed with casual cruelty. He saw Nayoung flinch and his eyes glittered with triumphant hurt. “I know she argues with me all day because she gives a shit.What did you two ever do? Schedule date nights?”
The shove was inevitable. Jiung’s hands slammed into Jongwoo’s chest, sending him stumbling back a step. “You ruin everything you touch!”
Jongwoo regained his balance, his own rage blazing hot.“I feel everything I touch! That’s the difference!” He surged forward, not with a fist, but by shoving Jiung hard into the stacked crates lining the alley. The rotten wood splintered with a sickening crunch, sending a cascade of empty containers and a cloud of foul-smelling litter crashing down around them.
The sound brought the others running.Suyeon’s scream pierced the air.“Hey! Stop it, you psychos!”
Haewon was the first to reach Nayoung, yanking her back from the brewing storm. Minjae and Hanbin moved as one, diving between the two men as Jongwoo reared back for a proper swing. Minjae hooked an arm around Jongwoo’s neck from behind while Hanbin locked down his arms. So Geon, driven by some misplaced competitive instinct, threw himself at Jiung, pinning him against the shattered crates.
The fight was a brief, brutal sculpture of tangled limbs and grunted curses. It ended with both men bloodied—Jiung from a split lip, Jongwoo with a scrape across his temple—panting and held apart by their friends.The festive market sounds around them felt like a cruel joke.
Nayoung, freed from Haewon’s grip, stepped into the wreckage. Her small frame trembled, but her voice, when it came, was clear and sharp as broken glass. “Both of you, stop.” She looked from Jiung’s shattered pride to Jongwoo’s raging defiance. “I am not a prize.I am not a vice. I’m not something you win by beating the shit out of each other.”
She wiped hastily at her eyes, smearing mascara like a war paint.“You’re both ghosts. And I’m done being haunted.” She turned, pushing past a stunned Hanna, and walked back toward the pulsing heart of the market without looking back.The crowd that had gathered began to disperse, murmuring. The group was left in the alley’s dim, neon-striped silence, the only sound the ragged breathing of the two wounded men and the distant, relentless beat of the city.