EPISODE 1

"Wahhhh!"

Takeru scrambled backward so fast his heels caught on the edge of his thin rug. He crashed off the side of the small couch, his elbow taking the brunt of the impact as he hit the hardwood floor. Panting, his chest heaving with sheer adrenaline, he scraped himself backward until his spine slammed flat against the plastered wall. His heart was hammering against his ribs like a trapped bird, his eyes wide as he stared up at the barrel of the gun still hovering in the air where his head had been a second prior.

The silver-haired man stood above him, looking down with cold, calculating indifference. He slowly lowered the gun, engaging the safety with a soft, mechanical click that sounded entirely too casual for a man who had almost painted the wall with Takeru’s brains.

"Tch. You're too loud," the man muttered, a look of profound annoyance crossing his razor-sharp features. He brought a hand up to scratch at his mess of white silver hair, wincing slightly as the movement pulled at the fresh stitches along his ribs.

"Keep your mouth shut, you pig."

That hit Takeru's nerves.

The fear that had paralyzed his bloodstream just a second ago instantly volatilized, replaced by a scalding wave of sheer, unadulterated fury. His cheeks flushed crimson, not from embarrassment, but from the outrageous audacity of the giant standing in his living room.

"Pig?! PIG?! IS THAT WHAT YOU CALL ME?!" Takeru barked, his voice cracking slightly on the high notes as he shoved himself up onto his knees. "Ex-fucking-cuse me! THIS IS WHAT I GET FOR SAVING YOUR UNGRATEFUL ASS?! NO 'THANK YOU'? NO 'APPRECIATE YOU NOT LETTING ME BLEED TO DEATH NEXT TO A DUMPSTER'?! WHAT A TOTAL JERK!"

Takeru was breathing heavily, his hands trembling with rage. He had spent three agonizing hours last night picking gravel out of this lunatic's shredded flesh, using his precious, hard-earned veterinarian supplies—expensive suture thread he had to pay for out of pocket—just to keep this heavy, cold-blooded walking corpse from bleeding out! He had barely gotten two hours of sleep on his own floor, and now he was getting threatened with a firearm and insulted in his own home! Totally an asshole!

The man’s dark brows pulled together, his icy blue eyes narrowing as his lips parted to offer a scathing retort. But before he could drop another insult, a sharp, buzzing vibration cut through the tense air in the room.

It was coming from the pocket of the man's bloody, discarded jacket resting on the coffee table.

RING...RING...RING!

The silver-haired stranger didn't rush. He moved with a lazy, predator-like grace, reaching down to pull out a sleek, black smartphone with a heavily encrypted interface. He looked at the caller ID, annoyance flashing across his handsome face.

Before answering, he turned back to Takeru. In one swift, terrifyingly quick movement, he closed the distance between them and pressed a long, calloused index finger directly over Takeru’s lips.

"Shh," the man commanded, his voice dropping into a dangerous low murmur. His gaze was heavy, carrying a silent promise of violence if Takeru so much as breathed too loudly.

Takeru froze, his lips pressed tight under the man's firm finger. The metallic scent of blood and expensive, woodsy cologne radiated off the stranger, overwhelming Takeru’s senses. He glared up at the giant with absolute murder in his eyes.

Satisfied that the smaller guy was silenced, the stranger pulled his hand back, took three casual steps toward the sunlit window, and swiped the screen to accept the call.

"What?" the man barked into the receiver, his tone dripping with cold boredom.

Even from across the room, Takeru could hear the frantic, panicked volume of the voice coming through the phone's speaker.

"Boss! Where the hell are you?!" the voice practically shrieked, sounding like a desperate man on the edge of a nervous breakdown. "You made us worried to death! The whole syndicate has been on lockdown since midnight! Why didn't you pick up any of our calls?! We thought the rival faction took you out after the ambush!"

The man tilted his head back, rolling his shoulders as if the panicked cries of his subordinates were nothing more than a mild headache.

"I'm alive, so stop fussing around like a flock of hens," he replied coolly. Then, a slow, terrifying smirk began to stretch across his lips. He turned his head sideways, his piercing blue eyes locking right back onto Takeru, who was still kneeling by the wall. "Besides...I found an interesting little toy."

Takeru felt a sudden, icy shiver race down his spine. The way the man said "toy" wasn't lighthearted. It was possessive, sinister, and completely unhinged.

As the man kept his dark, predatory gaze fixed on him, Takeru shuffled backward another inch, his hands instinctively searching the floor behind him. His fingers brushed against the smooth porcelain base of his small ceramic flower vase resting on the low shelf nearby.

'You wanna go?' Takeru thought, his teeth grinding together. 'I swear to God, I will break this hand-painted ceramic right over your annoying ridiculously handsome face.'

"Boss? Is...is someone with you?" the voice on the phone asked, catching the sudden shift in the leader's tone. "Do you need us to send an extraction team to clean up the area?"

Takeru didn't wait to hear the rest of that sentence. 'Extraction team? Clean up the area?!' That was code for bringing in a crew with body bags and bleach!

Every survival instinct Takeru possessed lit up like a Christmas tree. He didn't care about his apartment, he didn't care about his classes today, and he certainly didn't care about this psychopathic criminal network. He just needed to get out.

Slowly and quietly, Takeru began to shift his weight onto his feet, preparing to leap toward the front door, snatch his shoes, and bolt down the emergency stairs. He took a subtle deep breath, tense as a coiled spring—

Whoosh!

Before Takeru’s feet could even push off the floor, a shadow blotted out the light above him. The silver-haired man had crossed the room without making a single sound. A heavy, leather-clad hand shot down, locking violently into the collar of Takeru’s oversized t-shirt. With effortless, brutal strength, the man yanked Takeru forward and slammed him down flat onto his back against the floorboards.

"Nghh...!" Takeru groaned, the air knocked cleanly out of his lungs as his shoulder blades struck to the ground.

The world spun for a fraction of a second and by the time his vision cleared, the stranger was already hovering directly over him, pinning Takeru beneath his impressive frame. The man held the phone casually to his ear with his left hand, while his right hand remained entirely free to trap Takeru beneath him.

"Yeah," the man spoke into the phone, his voice smooth as silk as a wicked, mocking smirk carved into his features. "Just a lowly pig."

"Let me go, you lunatic!" Takeru hissed, struggling wildly beneath him, but the man was like a solid mountain of pure muscle.

Ignoring Takeru's writhing entirely, the stranger’s free hand began to move.

At first, his rough fingers brushed lightly across Takeru’s cheek, tracing the line of his flushed skin down to his chin. Takeru flinched, turning his head away, but the man’s thumb caught his lower lip, pressing down with just enough force to feel the sharp edge of Takeru’s teeth beneath. The stranger’s touch lingered on his jawline before sliding down the column of his throat, feeling the rapid, frantic beat of Takeru’s pulse beneath his palm.

Takeru’s eyes went wide. What the hell is he doing?!

First, this bastard had pointed a lethal weapon at his head. Now, he was acting like a total, uninhibited pervert in broad daylight while casually talking to his mafia underlings on the phone!

The man’s calloused hand slid lower, slipping past the open neck of Takeru’s loose shirt to rest against his exposed chest, right over his pounding heart. His fingers brushed over the collarbone, trailing down to the sensitive skin of his ribs, checking the smaller man's physical reactions as if he were testing the quality of a piece of meat he had just purchased at a market.

"Boss?" the voice on the line sounded bewildered. "Should we trace your GPS?"

"No," the silver-haired man said softly into the phone, his gaze dropping to Takeru’s chest, his fingers lightly gripping the fabric of Takeru’s shirt. "Stay where you are. I’ll deal with this pet...myself."

That was the absolute final straw.

Takeru’s brain short-circuited with an explosive mix of indignity and rage. Lowly pig?! Toy?! PET?!

"The pig here..." Takeru spat, his eyes blazing with incandescent fury as he locked his gaze onto the man's smug face, "...is YOU! GO TO HELL!"

Using every ounce of core strength he possessed, Takeru didn't bother trying to push the heavy man off with his hands. Instead, he bucked his hips upward with maximum velocity and delivered a precise, lightning-fast, highly targeted kick right between the stranger's legs. Yeah-- his dick!

THWACK.

It was a clean, unreserved, full-force hit right to the nerve center.

The silver-haired man’s eyes blew wide open. The smug smirk instantly vanished from his face, replaced by an expression of absolute, pale shock. The dark, menacing aura surrounding him collapsed like a house of cards.

"Guh...!"

A strangled, breathless gasp escaped the man's throat. His phone slipped from his fingers, clattering onto the floorboards as he completely doubled over, clutching his midsection and falling sideways onto the rug, gasping for air like a fish out of water.

"Boss?! BOSS?! WHAT WAS THAT SOUND?! BOSS?!" the phone squeaked frantically from the floor, but nobody was listening.

Takeru didn't waste a single microsecond.

He scrambled to his feet like a madman. In one fluid, panic-fueled movement, he dove toward the small entryway table, snatched his wallet, his apartment keys, and his phone, and grabbed his tote bag off the hook. He didn't even bother putting his shoes on properly—he just shoved his feet into his worn sneakers, stepping on the heels, and yanked the front door open.

He threw one last look over his shoulder.

The legendary, terrifying mafia boss was currently curled into a tight fetal position on Takeru's cheap living room rug, clutching himself and groaning in agonizing defeat.

"Keep the apartment, you psycho bitch!" Takeru yelled, slamming the heavy door shut behind him with a thunderous BANG!

He turned the key in the lock from the outside, locking the lock twice just to buy himself a few extra seconds, before sprinting down the dimly lit apartment hallway as fast as his legs could carry him.

___________________________________

Takeru didn't stop running until he was four blocks away from his building, bursting out onto the busy main street near the university campus. The morning sun was bright, the sound of early morning commuter traffic roared around him, and normal pedestrians were walking past, carrying iced coffees and reading news on their phones.

He leaned against the brick exterior of a bakery, gasping for breath, his heart hammering violently against his ribs. Sweat was pouring down his temples, and his clothes were completely disheveled.

"I'm alive..." Takeru panted heavily, resting his hands on his knees as he tried to catch his breath. "I'm actually alive."

He looked down at his trembling hands. He had kicked a literal gang leader—a guy with a gun and an army of henchmen—straight in the groin, locked him in his own apartment, and ran away into the city.

"This is fine," Takeru muttered to himself, trying to rationalize the insanity of his morning as he straightened his shirt and shoved his phone into his pocket. "It's totally fine. He doesn't know my schedule. He doesn't know where I work. He was bleeding to death twelve hours ago, so he probably can't even run. I'll just stay at the university library all day, sleep at a manga cafe tonight, and call the landlord tomorrow to report a break-in."

It was a terrible plan, but it was the only plan he had.

Takeru checked his watch. 8:30 AM. His first lecture on avian pathology started in thirty minutes. If he hurried, he could slip into the back of the lecture hall, disappear into the crowd of two hundred students, and pretend his life wasn't rapidly spiraling into a criminal thriller novel.

He spent the rest of the morning in a state of hyper-vigilance. Every time a door opened at the back of the lecture hall, Takeru’s head snapped around, expecting to see a squad of men in black suits rolling in to drag him away. Every time his phone vibrated with a routine group chat notification, he nearly jumped out of his seat.

By the time 4:00 PM rolled around, Takeru was a nervous wreck, running entirely on anxiety and the faint residue of last night's cheap canned coffee.

"Hey, Takeru! You look like absolute death," his classmate, Kenji, said as they walked out of the veterinary anatomy lab. "Did you stay up all night cramming again?"

"Something like that," Takeru lied through his teeth, clutching his notebook tightly to his chest. "Just...had a weird morning."

"Well, don't overdo it. Dr. Yamamori said the evening shift at the clinic is going to be crazy tonight. Some rich guy donated a bunch of new surgical equipment, so we have to clear out the storage rooms." Kenji said.

Takeru blinked, snapping back to reality. "Wait. The evening shift? At the university clinic?"

"Yeah, didn't you check the schedule? You're on shift with Dr. Yamamori starting at 5:00 PM."

Takeru groaned, rubbing his temples. He had completely forgotten he had volunteered for the extra clinic hours. But as he thought about it, a wave of relief washed over him. The university veterinary clinic was high-security, locked behind digital keycards, and full of staff members and doctors. It was practically a fortress compared to his tiny studio apartment.

"Right. Clinic. I'm on it," Takeru said, offering a weak smile. "I'll head over now."

'But why do I suddenly feel uneasy...like something bad would happen..'

***Download NovelToon to enjoy a better reading experience!***