Chapter 5 – Before The Snow Falls
The city was still twitching with neon by the time Haneul made it home.
He didn’t turn on the lights. Just kicked off his boots, peeled off his jacket, and stood in the center of the room while the radiator clunked like it might die tonight.
The bathroom smell still hadn’t left.
He stripped off his ripped mesh shirt slowly, one arm at a time, wincing as the hem caught on his ribs. The bruise there had darkened, plum-bloomed and deep. He pressed two fingers into it—then harder. Not out of self-pity. Just to feel it.
To make sure it hadn’t vanished into air like everything else.
He walked to the drawer beside his mattress. Third one down, shoved beneath crumpled receipts and a phone charger with frayed teeth.
He pulled out the folded page.
The paper was yellowed, soft at the creases from being opened and closed a thousand times. Ink smudged. The writing in hangul, barely legible now. A child’s treasure, clung to through orphanage hands and laundry thefts and winters with no names.
Haneul didn’t remember his mother’s voice.
Didn’t remember her face.
Only that someone, somewhere, once tucked this poem into his coat pocket. Before the foster homes. Before the police stations. Before the world got loud.
The soft translation surfaced, like a childhood fever dream:
“Lovely leaves
have all been shed
from the mountain ahead of me.
Longing for the empty mountain,
white snow
might fall
upon the river.
Before the snow falls,
I would love to see you.”
He’d always clung to that last line.
Didn’t know why.
Maybe because the snow always came. And no one ever showed up.
Minseok never asked about the poem.
Minseok never asked about anything, really. Only what Haneul could do with his hands. His mouth. His silence.
He sat on the mattress in his underwear, bruises rising like moss along his hips, and let the page flutter down into his lap.
He thought about how they met.
About the wrist he bit. The drink he took. The mistake he didn’t know how to undo.
Minseok was the first person who looked at him and didn’t see a stray.
Or maybe that was wrong. Maybe Minseok did see the stray — and decided he liked that. Decided to keep it. Break it in.
Minseok wasn’t the worst thing that ever happened to him.
That’s how it started. That’s how he explained it to himself at first.
He wasn’t a john. He wasn’t a cop. He wasn’t a landlord who made you pay in bruises.
Minseok bought him a drink the first time they met.
Not with charm — with precision. Like he’d calculated it.
Haneul had been working nights back then. Underage and underpaid, drawing flier art for the seedier clubs, sleeping behind coin karaoke booths when his shift ended. He hadn’t eaten in a day and a half. His shirt had holes. His boots had duct tape in the soles.
Minseok had spotted him arguing with a bouncer. Called him “interesting.” Asked if he was selling.
Haneul bit him.
Just once. On the wrist.
Not hard enough to break skin — just enough to be remembered.
Minseok laughed. Bought him food. A drink. A room.
Then told him to strip.
And when Haneul didn’t flinch — not because he was brave, but because he didn’t know the rules — Minseok took that as a yes.
The first time wasn’t rough.
The second time was. Haneul thought that was normal. No one ever explained how affection was supposed to feel.
And when Minseok left bruises, he apologized with shoes. With taxis. With money on the counter and mockery in his mouth, Haneul told himself it wasn’t abuse. He’d seen real abuse. This was just… staying warm. Staying wanted.
And that was better than sleeping in the subway.
Wasn’t it?
??????
The phone buzzed near his hip.
He let it ring once. Twice.
Then checked it.
Junseo:
— you up? — boss says you’re on the list for Saturday — the corporate gig I told you about, all suits and ties. rich crowd.
— bring the fox mask. They like that shit.
Haneul snorted. Tossed the phone onto the mattress and lay back, arms above his head.
The paper was still in his lap.
He closed his eyes and whispered the last line again, lips barely parting.
“Before the snow falls,
I would love to see you.”
He didn’t know who he was saying it to.
But something in his ribs ached like it might answer.
??????
The room had become overly warm, stuffy and perfumed with synthetic musk, cologne so expensive it smelled cheap, and the lingering, stale bite of champagne.
Men in sharp suits lounged around the plush private room, their eyes glistening with alcohol and lustful anticipation, each waiting for their chosen entertainment, a fantasy to make them forget their lives, wives, stress, and emptiness.
This was business as usual: transaction masked in glitter, drunken laughter and debauchery, every gaze greedy, every touch invasive.
But not for Seungho.
His figure stood apart, imposing in a tailored black suit that hugged his broad shoulders like battle armor, crimson-golden eyes cold as winter fire, a wall of silent disdain.
Unlike the others, he did not lounge. He didn't relax.
He stood and then sat, distant and stiff, near a massive mahogany desk, his jaw tense, eyes sharp.
This gathering was a concession to his shareholders—a sordid ritual he despised, yet couldn't entirely avoid. His authority stretched vast, but not absolute. He had resisted vehemently, only to be cornered by cold corporate politics. So here he was, tolerating the indignity with grim patience.
Then the door opened.
Music hummed gently, velvet-edged and sultry, but suddenly no one heard it. Every set of eyes snapped to the newcomers, a quartet of beautiful boys, all edges, mischief, and dangerous allure. And among them, burning brighter, more violent and dazzling than the rest, was Haneul.
He entered like a sharp breath, lightning wrapped in human skin, his body a provocative weapon, lithe muscle exposed shamelessly beneath the cropped black top, porcelain skin luminescent under strategic star-shaped glitter.
His legs stretched miles in impossibly tight black denim, and the silver-goldenblue fox mask that covered half his face gleamed cold and sharp under the soft lights, making his already striking features devastatingly lethal.
And Seungho’s world tilted.
Flashbacks slammed into him without warning, visceral echoes from another lifetime—silver fox mask, lethal grace, a dance of death and ice upon a Joseon rooftop under the full moon.
A heart thundering, confusion surging, wonder flooding.
Breath caught painfully in his throat. Impossible.
A face he couldn’t have seen. A voice that never existed.
Yet something in him folded—recognition without name, ache without origin.
There he stood, unmistakably, brutally alive, dazzling with untempered, raw rebellion, glittering, snarling, familiar and heartbreakingly strange.
Across the room, eyes hidden beneath the silver mask flickered, locked onto Seungho.
And in that instant, the chaos creature—still a boy, always a storm—froze utterly.
Recognition without memory rippled visibly across his taut body, tension coiling in muscles that suddenly seemed too sharp, too wild.
Instinct flashed in his eyes, confusion pooling dangerously.
Another boy laughed flirtatiously and tried to approach Seungho, already offering a coy smile, hand outstretched as if to claim territory.
But Haneul snarled sharply, moving quicker than thought, slamming a merciless elbow into the other's ribs, his voice a harsh whip-crack that sliced across the murmurs.
"The daddy is mine."
The intruder recoiled, breath knocked sharply away, face twisting with irritation. Yet no one dared protest, least of all Seungho. Every gaze in the room lingered for a heartbeat longer, then moved away hastily. This one belonged only to the storm.
Unhurried, defiant, utterly unapologetic, Haneul prowled toward Seungho, each step a provocation, an invitation and a threat.
His eyes glittered coldly beneath the mask, blue enough to drown in, intense enough to burn.
And when he reached Seungho, the boy planted himself on the desk before him with languid arrogance, knees spreading shamelessly wide, unashamed and bold, devastating in his casual vulgarity.
Seungho stood stone still, eyes narrowing dangerously, tension like heated steel in every powerful muscle. Yet he didn’t step back. Didn’t flinch. He held his ground, crimson-golden eyes locked onto the glinting mask, the somewhat familiar defiant tilt of the jaw beneath it.
Haneul's lips curled into a viciously pretty smile, dangerously fanged, the smear of rouge on his lower lip enticingly raw.
“Listen… oversized skyscraper beast,” he drawled slowly, voice velvet-wrapped steel, rough yet unbearably sweet, lashes lowering briefly, hiding and showing too much at once.
“I don’t want to do this, and your face tells me you don’t wanna either so…
just talk whatever, pretend to like me, and pay me a good tip, and I’ll not bite your face off.
I might even let you buy me a mooncake from the conbini downstairs. ”
Seungho exhaled a breath he hadn’t realized he'd been holding, the air catching in his chest. His mind struggled furiously against impossibility and deja vu, logic and longing colliding fiercely.
Yet his expression betrayed none of it, voice rumbling quietly, each word careful, controlled, silk-draped granite.
"Bold words, fox," he murmured deeply, eyes heavy-lidded yet unblinking, their gaze piercing through the boy’s careful bravado. "Are you always this reckless, or is this a special occasion?"
Haneul’s eyes narrowed, interest flaring dangerously, pupils dilating with challenge. His lips curled further, teeth sharp and white beneath the red paint, body leaning forward provocatively, every line daring him closer, pushing him away simultaneously.