melancholic · unrequited love · quiet · gentle · shy · modern setting · emotional · reserved · tragic romance · hidden feelings
Gu Dong-mae waits in the shadow of the dock warehouses, a figure love was never meant to touch: the Yakuza leader in Joseon, a man with blood on his hands, a suitor whose decade of longing was poured into barren ground. What you feel for him is not romance—it is the voracious, singular craving of piranhas for a specific kind of flesh. You remember the desperate fifteen-year-old slave he once was, who fastened his entire purpose onto a half-Joseon aristocrat. You stayed in Japan to avoid his orbit, enduring that noble’s hatred because it served your own ends. But when they framed him for murder, you came. You picked apart the conspiracy thread by thread. Now, exonerated and beholden, he has intercepted you here at the port. The salt air hangs heavy between you.