Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
KEIRA
Jin-ho's studio smelled like rain and old books. I noticed it the moment he opened the door — that deep, mysterious scent that had haunted me since our first meeting at Narvi Entertainment. It wrapped around me like fog, pulling me forward into the dim space before I'd consciously decided to move.
"It's not much." Jin-ho stepped aside to let me enter, his voice low and measured as always, one hand gesturing toward the interior with understated pride. "But it's mine."
He was wrong. It was everything.
The studio was small but perfectly arranged — soundproofing on the walls, a mixing board that looked like it cost more than my apartment, instruments tucked into every corner.
A keyboard. Two guitars, one acoustic and one electric.
A violin case propped against the wall that surprised me.
Notebooks were stacked on every available surface, their pages bristling with sticky notes and loose papers covered in his sharp handwriting.
"You play violin?" I crossed to the case, running my fingers over the worn leather, feeling the history embedded in its scuffs and scratches.
"Since I was seven." He moved to his chair at the mixing board, settling into it with the ease of someone who spent most of his life in this exact spot, his long fingers trailing absently over the faders.
"My mother insisted. She wanted me to be 'cultured.
'" He made air quotes with his fingers, a hint of dry humor softening his usually stoic expression.
"I hated it for years. Then I loved it. Now I only play when I need to think. "
"Do you need to think often?" I turned to face him, leaning against the wall beside the violin case, crossing my arms loosely over my chest.
"Constantly." He met my eyes, and something flickered in those dark depths — amusement, maybe, or something sadder, harder to name. "It's exhausting, actually. The thinking. I can't seem to turn it off."
I understood that more than he knew.
"So." Jin-ho leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking softly as he studied me with that intense gaze that always made me feel like he was reading the parts of me I kept hidden.
"We have two options for today. I can show you my process — let you watch me work, explain how I compose.
Or..." He paused, something shifting in his expression, a crack in the careful neutrality. "Or we can actually work. Together."
"What do you mean?" I pushed off from the wall, curiosity drawing me closer to him, my feet carrying me across the small space before I'd made the conscious decision to move.
"You have a deadline." He said it matter-of-factly, no judgment in his tone, just observation, his dark eyes steady on mine. "The title track. You've been avoiding it since you got here."
I felt heat crawl up my neck at the accuracy of the statement. "How do you know I've been avoiding it?"
"Because I've read your lyrics." He reached for one of the notebooks on his desk, flipping it open to a page covered in my handwriting — copies he must have made from the files I'd submitted to the company.
"These are good. Really good, but they're not finished.
They stop right when they're about to become something extraordinary.”
I stared at the familiar words on the page, my chest tightening. He was right. I always stopped before the vulnerable part. Before the lyrics became too honest, too revealing, too much of myself on the page.
"I don't know how to finish them." The admission slipped out before I could stop it, quiet and raw in the dim studio, my voice smaller than I wanted it to be.
"Yes, you do." Jin-ho set the notebook down and turned to face me fully, his dark eyes holding mine with an intensity that made it hard to breathe, his jaw set with quiet certainty. "You're just afraid to."
The words landed like a blow — accurate and inescapable.
"What if we finished them together?" He asked it carefully, like he was offering something precious and fragile, his voice dropping lower as he leaned slightly forward in his chair. "Your words, my music. We could see what happens when they meet."
The bond pulsed in my chest, warm and wanting. This was what he'd promised last night. This was what I'd been nervous about all morning.
"Okay." I heard myself say, the word coming out steadier than I felt, surprising us both. "Let's try."
Two hours later, I understood why Jin-ho had been SIREN's primary songwriter since their debut.
He worked like nothing I'd ever seen — fingers dancing across the keyboard, humming melodies under his breath, scribbling notes in a shorthand only he could read.
But he never worked alone. Every few minutes, he'd turn to me with a question.
"This line — 'drowning in the echo of your voice' — what comes after drowning?" He played a chord progression, letting the notes hang in the air between us, his head tilted as he waited for my response. "What's the next feeling?"
"Surrender." I said it without thinking, the word pulled from somewhere deep in my chest, surprising me with its certainty. "After drowning comes surrender. Giving up the fight."
His fingers found new keys, the melody shifting into something darker, more desperate, his brow furrowing with concentration as the music evolved. "Like this?"
"Yes." I leaned closer, drawn by the music, by him, my shoulder nearly brushing his.
"Exactly like that." This was how it went.
He'd play something, and I'd feel the words rise up in response.
I'd suggest a lyric, and he'd translate it into sound before I'd finished speaking.
It was like we were having a conversation in a language I'd never learned but somehow always knew.
"I've never worked like this." I admitted during a brief pause, watching him scribble notes onto a fresh page, his handwriting sharp and precise even when he was rushing.
"With someone else, I mean. I always thought collaboration would feel like compromise and have to loose alot of what I put into my work. "
"And does it?" He looked up at me, pen still poised over the paper, his dark hair falling across his forehead in a way that made my fingers itch to brush it back.
"No." I shook my head slowly, trying to find the right words for something I didn't fully understand, my gaze drifting to the mixing board and back. "It feels like... finding pieces I didn't know were missing."
Something shifted in his expression — a crack in that careful composure he always wore, something raw and hopeful breaking through. "That's how it feels for me too. With you."
The studio suddenly felt smaller. Warmer. The violet bond hummed between us, and I was acutely aware of how close we were sitting — our knees almost touching, our breath mixing in the small space.
"Can I ask you something?" I pulled my knees up, wrapping my arms around them like a shield between us, needing something to hold onto.
"Anything." He set down his pen, giving me his full attention in that way he had — like nothing else in the world existed except this moment, this conversation, me.
"Why do people think you're cold?" I watched his face carefully as I asked it, looking for the flinch, the shutdown, the walls going up. "I've read the comments online. They call you the 'ice prince.' Say you're unapproachable."
For a long moment, he didn't answer. Then he let out a breath that seemed to come from somewhere deep inside him, his shoulders dropping slightly as tension released.
"Because I don't know how to show what I feel.
" His voice was quiet, almost lost in the hum of equipment around us, his gaze dropping to his hands.
"I feel everything — too much, probably.
Every emotion hits me like a wave, and I never learned how to let it show on my face.
So people assume there's nothing there." He paused, his jaw tightening as he looked back up at me.
"It's easier to let them think that. Being cold is simpler than being misunderstood. "
"I understand that." I said it softly, recognition settling heavy in my chest, the weight of shared experience pressing against my ribs. "I've spent years building walls so high that people stopped trying to climb them. It's lonely, but it's safe. Or it feels safe, anyway."
"But it's not." Jin-ho leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, his face closer to mine than it had been all day, close enough that I could see the different shades of brown in his eyes. "Safe is just another word for alone. And alone is just another word for slowly dying inside."
The words hit me like cold water — jarring and clarifying all at once.
"You sound like you've thought about this a lot." My voice came out rougher than I intended, thick with emotion I hadn't meant to show.
"I've lived it." His dark eyes held mine, and I saw something there I recognized — the same loneliness I'd been carrying since my mother died, reflected back at me like a mirror.
"Until the pack found each other, I spent years convinced I was broken.
That there was something wrong with me because I couldn't connect the way other people did.
" He paused, something painful flickering across his features, a muscle jumping in his jaw.
"Then I realized it wasn't that I couldn't connect.
It was that I was waiting for someone worth connecting to. "
"And now?" I barely breathed the question, my heart hammering against my ribs.
"Now I'm looking at her." He said it simply, like it was obvious, like it was the most natural thing in the world, his gaze unwavering on mine.
My heart stopped. Then started again, hammering so hard I was sure he could hear it.
"Jin-ho..." I didn't know what I was going to say. His name felt like the only word I could form, the only thing my brain could process.