Jiang Zhilin stood under the shower in the precinct, letting the cold water wash the sweat from his neck.

In the mirror stared a pair of bloodshot eyes, with dark, sunken shadows beneath them—like evidence he hadn’t slept for three days.

Every time he closed his eyes, that cool, long-lashed gaze resurfaced, dragging him into a tangle of restless dreams he couldn’t shake off.

“Hey Jiang, you coming to dinner tonight?”

“New guy, Kobayashi, says he’s treating.”

A colleague knocked on the doorframe, voice muffled through steam.

“No. I’ve got a report to finish.”

He shut off the water. Drops slid from his hair as he wiped the moisture from his face, tone flat.

“Come on, seriously? You used to jump at free meals!”

The colleague leaned in, teasing.

“Don’t tell me—you secretly got a girlfriend?”

“Get lost.”

He grabbed a towel and tossed it over,
but didn’t laugh—the curve of his mouth froze halfway.

When had even banter with colleagues started to feel hollow?

He used to sink easily into noise:
adrenaline from a chase,
instant noodles after long nights,
rowdy drinks once a case wrapped up—
all threads of a life that used to feel real.

But now, what once lit him up—
hunts,
late-night meals,
shoulder-slapping camaraderie—
blurred like shapes behind frosted glass.

Only one thing stayed sharp:
the figure behind DEEP’s bar.

The turn of a wrist as he mixed a drink—clean, precise—
the faint chill clinging to the metal shaker against his palm.

The slow rise and fall of a shirt collar with each breath,
the chest beneath outlined in shifting shadows of fabric.

And that night—
pressed against a wall,
the bitten lip split under his force,
blood beading into the warm, damp air,
staining his fingertips red.

Damn it.

—Like a poison,
eating at his senses without a sound.

He swung the towel onto the wall hook, hard enough to set the metal rattling with a sharp clang.

His phone buzzed twice in the pocket of his uniform.
A new message flashed across the screen:
Target vehicle entered the port warehouse. Immediate backup required.

Once, he would’ve grabbed his gun and bolted without thinking.

But now—
as the red locator blinked on the screen—
his mind absurdly drifted to the scar tracing down Shen Yanxing’s lower back, disappearing into the waistband of his pants.
That night, when he’d lost control and sank his teeth into him—
had that taut waistline trembled from pain?

“…Fuck.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face, snatched up his keys, and stormed out of the precinct.

By the time he reached the port, chaos had already taken over.

Containers toppled, shattered crates spilling their cargo;
several figures were cuffed on the ground, their groans drowned beneath the rain.

“You’re a bit late, Captain Jiang.”

A colleague shot him a look, tone dripping with mockery.

Jiang Zhilin holstered his gun, not bothering to respond.
His gaze swept over the downed men—confirming none needed finishing off—
before he turned away.

He was late.
From the moment he saw the message to the moment he actually moved—
he’d wasted five whole minutes.

Five minutes.
Long enough for a cigarette to burn to the filter.
Long enough for memory to seep into bone.

Shaking rain from his hand, he slid into the driver’s seat, slammed the accelerator,
and the tires sliced through a puddle—cold water spraying up as he shot toward DEEP.

At two in the morning, DEEP’s neon sign bled into the rain,
its glow smearing into a wash of red.

Jiang Zhilin leaned against the bar,
fingertips tracing the rim of his whiskey glass,
his gaze cutting past the hazy lights
to lock onto the tall figure working behind the counter.

…

Tch.

Shen Yanxing was polishing a glass, lashes lowered,
his sleeves rolled to the elbow—
pale skin exposed, veins shifting faintly beneath each steady movement.

His fingers were precise, almost mechanical,
as if even his breathing matched the rhythm of the cocktails he made.

—Until Jiang Zhilin’s eyes caught the faint scar
on the inside of his wrist.

A pale mark, like blurred ink washed by water—
yet it dragged him straight back to the feel of that wrist
held in his grip that night:
fever-hot, trembling,
bearing a quiet strength beneath the pain.

His Adam’s apple bobbed.
He tipped back the rest of the whiskey,
but the burn sliding down his throat
did nothing to smother the restlessness clawing in his chest.

“Another.”

He slid the empty glass forward,
his knuckles brushing—almost carelessly—against the back of Shen Yanxing’s hand.

Shen’s motion stilled for a beat.
When he lifted his gaze, his lashes cast a faint shadow under his eyes.

“You’re drinking more than usual tonight.”

“Worried about me?”

Jiang Zhilin’s lips curved as he leaned in,
the warm, woody scent of him drifting across the counter, laced with alcohol.

“I just don’t want to deal with a drunk.”

Shen stepped back half a pace,
his movements still smooth as he reached into the ice bucket and lifted fresh cubes with the tongs.

“Cold as ever…”
Jiang Zhilin let out a low chuckle,
his eyes drifting over the neat buttons at Shen’s collar.

“Funny—
that wasn’t how you were that night—”

Clack!

The base of the glass struck the marble counter with a sharp, muted crack. A stillness snapped into place.

Glass trembled; amber liquor rippled to the rim, catching the light in fractured glints.

Shen Yanxing set the glass down.
The metal bar spoon turned half a circle between his fingers—
its tip stopping, razor-still, against the empty glass Jiang Zhilin had pushed forward.

“Officer,” he said quietly,
“your record of harassment is long enough to bind into a legal code.”

“Is that so?”

“Then are you going to arrest me,
Shen. Yan. Xing.”

Instead of backing off, Jiang Zhilin leaned in,
his palm closing over Shen’s hand around the spoon.

The neon lights flicked to a cold blue,
pinning their standoff in silhouette against the mirrored wall.

Shen Yanxing’s pupils tightened—just a flicker—
and Jiang caught it, sharp as a blade:
a ripple breaking across a lake that should have stayed still.

“Relax. Just a joke.
Although…”

He suddenly let go, settling back into his seat as if nothing had happened,
fingers tapping an idle rhythm on the counter.

A beat later, he slid a hand into his inner pocket
and pulled out a sheet of paper—creased, worn.
With a flick of his finger, he pushed it across the marble counter.

“Your boundaries,” he murmured,
“are blurrier than I thought.”

The paper glided over stone with a soft scrape,
coming to a stop right at Shen Yanxing’s fingertips.

A blurred surveillance still surfaced on the yellowed page.

Three a.m.
In a dim back alley, Shen Yanxing’s profile vanished into a black sedan.

The window was cracked open—just enough for half a face to show.
Sunglasses hid the expression,
but the identity had been marked clearly in police records:
“Core member of a human-trafficking syndicate.”

Shen’s fingertips trembled—almost imperceptibly.

“Coincidence.”

He crushed the paper into a ball and tossed it into the ice crusher.
The blades shredded it with a harsh metallic roar,
drowning out the strain in his voice.

“This street’s cameras have been dead for six months.
Forging evidence is a felony, Officer Jiang.”

Jiang Zhilin narrowed his eyes.

Too clean.

Clean like a line rehearsed a thousand times.

Without warning, he grabbed Shen’s tie,
pulling him close—voice dropping low beneath the pounding bass.

“Your two-hour disappearance every Thursday at dawn…
also a coincidence?”

The tie snapped taut.
Shen Yanxing swayed,
pulled close enough that their heartbeats almost bled into each other.

When their breaths brushed—

a faint trace of blood seeped into the air,
coming from the sleeve Shen Yanxing had rolled up.

Jiang Zhilin’s pupils tightened.
His brows drew together.
“You’re hurt?”

His fingers barely grazed the fabric—

“None of your concern!”

Shen Yanxing jerked away.
The sharp edge of his cuff button scraped across Jiang’s palm,
leaving a thin line of blood in its wake.

The sting snapped a sliver of clarity back into him.

As Shen swiftly straightened his sleeve,
Jiang caught a fleeting glimpse of the wound—
a knife cut, its edges still flushed with swelling that hadn’t healed.

Instinct overtook emotion in an instant.
“You got into a fight? With who? Was it—”

“Jiang Zhilin.”

It was the first time Shen said his full name.
His voice was cold enough to frost the air.

“In what capacity are you asking me that?”

Silence thickened.

Jiang opened his mouth—
and realized he had no answer.

A cop?
A hookup?
Or some idiot clinging to an illusion?

“…Fuck.”

He yanked at his collar in frustration,
rose too fast,
and knocked the bar stool over.

Shen Yanxing wiped down the counter in silence,
the neon light slicing his profile into stark halves of shadow and glow.

Only when Jiang Zhilin’s silhouette vanished through the doorway
did Shen’s knuckles tighten—
thumb brushing the throb beneath his cuff where the wound pulsed softly.

In the drawer beneath the bar,
a single shell casing lay still.

Under the dim light, the dried blood on its metal surface
hid itself in the sheen.

Two hours ago,
he had carved it out of his own arm.

Outside, the rain fell in fine, steady threads,
the night sinking deep.

Darkness rolled in like a tide,
flooding the entire city.

Rumble—

A low thunder tore across the night sky,
and rain broke loose in a sudden, drenching downpour,
washing over the city’s lights and noise.

On the fire escape in the back alley,
Jiang Zhilin crouched with his back against the cold metal railing.
Rain streamed down his hair, mixing with the fresh red on his brow,
dripping one bead at a time into the puddle below.

Ten minutes earlier,
he had cornered a small-time peddler pushing hallucinogens by the dumpsters.
Panicked, the guy swung a metal pipe at him.

The wound wasn’t deep—
but when the sticky blood slid along his brow ridge and burned into his eye,
the image that flashed through his mind
was the knife wound beneath Shen Yanxing’s cuff.

“…Insane.”

He wiped a hand over his face,
as if he could smear away those indifferent eyes along with the rain.

Just then, a faint creak sounded overhead—
a window being pushed open.

Jiang lifted his head,
and met a pair of eyes looking down at him.

Shen Yanxing stood by the window,
rain slipping off the eaves, softening his expression—
only his voice fell clean and unmistakable:

“Come up.”

The attic was cramped and damp,
a first-aid kit lying open on the rickety wooden table.

Shen Yanxing tore open a packet of iodine swabs—
with the kind of force one used handling crime-scene evidence.

“Hss—”

Jiang Zhilin sucked in a sharp breath at the pain, but the moment Shen withdrew his hand, he flipped his grip and caught Shen’s wrist instead.

“You patch people up often?”

“Clubs don’t run short on idiots who bleed after fighting.”

Shen flicked his hand free,
wrapping the bandage tight and impenetrable.

“Don’t come here again.”

“And if I don’t?”

Jiang closed in, stepping forward until Shen was pinned against the table.

Rain hammered the tin roof overhead,
and the sharp scent of antiseptic rose warmly in the air.

Shen Yanxing’s lower back pressed against the edge of the table,
a thin pulse of pain flaring from an old wound.

He tipped his head back with a cold, mocking smile.
“What now—planning to cuff me until I behave?”

“I just want the truth.”

Jiang Zhilin’s thumb brushed over Shen’s lower lip,
fingertip grazing the scab he himself had bitten there.

“For example—why you’d rather carry a gunshot wound
than expose that car.”

“And when you look at me—”

His throat bobbed, voice dropping rough and low.
“—what the hell is going through your mind?”

Shen’s pupils tightened.

A heartbeat later, he shoved Jiang away—hard.
His knee struck the table; gauze and medicine bottles crashed to the floor.

“Get out.”

Jiang stayed where he was,
rain dripping from the ends of his hair.

Watching the faint tremor in Shen’s fingers,
Jiang suddenly realized—
he wasn’t the only one losing control.

He turned to leave,
but as his hand closed around the doorknob, he said quietly:

“Next time you lie,
hide the shell casing better.”

The door clicked shut.
Shen drove his fist into the wall.

Pain detonated along his knuckles;
through the haze he remembered the fresh cut on Jiang’s palm—
left by his own cuff button—
overlapping the old scar on the inside of his hand
like a twisted reflection.

Outside in the rain-soaked night,
Jiang crushed the bloodstained bandage in his palm.

He knew he was playing with fire.
But when Shen’s eyes wavered— pleasure. Sharp. Wrong.

No longer alone in this.