Chapter Text
Squalo's morning did not start on the right foot. He woke to the relentless buzzing of his phone vibrating across the hotel nightstand.
The phone buzzed once.
Then twice.
Then five times in rapid succession.
With a groan, he reached over to blindly palm for his phone, intending to silence whichever idiot had decided to test his patience before his first cup of coffee.
Instead he was greeted by a flood of messages from various contacts asking for more details about the rumored new Vongola heir as well as Xanxus’s status. Squalo ignored them all and went to his pinned conversations instead.
Lussuria
Have you married him yet? 💕 Has the honeybun fallen love at first sight?
My taste in fashion is sure delightful, I must say so myself~
Luss got muted for the next 8 hours.
Another notification immediately replaced it.
Bel
Shishishi. Did Cloud-sama notice his bride yet?
Deleted.
Another vibration.
Mammon
You've rented the disguise another day. Additional fees will be applied.
Squalo's eye twitched. "...Voi."
They still didn't know the status of their Sky beyond rumors and hearsay. The Varia was days away from the most politically important battle in Vongola history. The future of Vongola and the Italian Mafia world hung by a thread. And somehow his fellow guardians had collectively decided that his humiliation was the funniest thing in the world.
Clearly he was surrounded by idiots.
He briefly entertained the fantasy of returning to Italy and throwing every last one of them through the nearest wall.
The thought barely cheered him enough to get out of bed and get dressed for the day.
-o-o-o-o-o-
The woman was still there. Sung Jinwoo spotted her reflection in a department store window long before he reached the crosswalk.
Today marked the fourth day.
The first three days had all looked roughly the same: long silver hair, oversized sunglasses, bright red lipstick, and clothes that looked as though someone had assembled an outfit after studying several fashion magazines without ever once considering comfort or the weather.
Jinah complained about things like that often enough that Jinwoo could recognize it now.
"Fashion should be functional too, Oppa!"
He had nodded at the time without truly understanding.
Now he did. Those shoes alone looked painful.
Today’s clothing remained just as painful looking as before with black pleated skirt, dark stockings, cream-colored blouse tucked neatly beneath a tailored leather jacket, and long pointy heels.
She looked elegant, professional-ish. It was entirely unsuited for walking around Seoul all day.
The posture ruined the illusion too. Ordinary tourists did not stand like that. Her shoulders were squared, back perfectly straight. Weight was distributed evenly across both feet like she was ready to response to any signs of violence. She never leaned against walls and never relaxed completely. The most obvious sign was how every few seconds, her attention drifted toward mirrors, reflective windows, parked cars—anything that widened her field of vision.
She had to be military or law enforcement. Maybe private security or foreign intelligence perhaps?
She didn’t make a good professional spy however. She always stayed roughly the same distance away from him. She was never closer and never farther as though there existed some invisible line she refused to cross.
She repeated the exact same behavior for four consecutive days.
It was curious.
Jinwoo adjusted the grocery bag hanging from his left hand.
Jinah had requested haemuljeon tonight. Beru had insisted he already knew the recipe, but Jinwoo had quietly decided to purchase backup ingredients anyway. Experience had taught him that Beru's confidence and Beru's cooking ability occasionally occupied different universes, and so he had chives, green onions, squid, shrimp, scallops, and flour in his refuseable grocery bag.
The afternoon streets bustled around him. Office workers were escaping early from the office before rush hour while retirees sold vegetables they had grown themselves on folding stools lining the sidewalks. Children chasing one another between storefronts with backpacks bouncing up and down on their backs. University students clustered around cafés with brightly colored drinks that contained enough sugar to qualify as dessert rather than coffee.
Life in Seoul was peaceful now. It was perfectly ordinary and predictable. Afternoons like these reminded Jinwoo why he had fought a war.
Still, his shadows didn’t let their guard down. They drifted silently through every patch of darkness watching and protecting.
Still following, Igris's voice echoed calmly through their connection.
"I know."
Shall we investigate? Beru practically vibrated with enthusiasm.
"No."
Beru wilted. A tiny investigation?
"No."
His Marshal sighed with theatrical disappointment. Jinwoo almost smiled.
If the woman wished to watch him, she could watch.
Eventually everyone revealed what they wanted.
-o-o-o-o-o-
His Sky was unconscious, the Ring Battle was in three days, and every hour they lost tightened the noose around Xanxus's neck another fraction.
Yet somehow Sung Jinwoo continued buying groceries like the fate of the Vongola did not depend upon him.
"...I hate this." Squalo yanked irritably at the hem of his skirt down again.
He wasn’t going to take fashion advice from Luss ever again. The stockings were tolerable, but the blouse strangled his shoulders from moving freely. The bra had to be a torture device invented by Mists. As for the heels...
The heels were crimes against humanity.
Every step reminded him why swordsmen wore boots.
His real hair already reached his waist, making the brown wig Luss stuffed into his suitcase technically unnecessary.
Silver, however, attracted attention. Brown blended into crowds easier. Unfortunately, after spending half an hour fighting impossible tangles on his first day in South Korea, Squalo had finally ripped the damned thing off and declared war upon synthetic hair.
If anyone recognized him because of it… They'd die. Simple as that.
The disguise itself worked almost insultingly well.
To everyone around him, he looked nothing like Captain Squalo of the Varia. He was merely another attractive foreign tourist - one nursing an obvious crush on a handsome Korean man. Old grandmothers smiled knowingly whenever they noticed him looking toward Jinwoo. Middle-aged women giggled behind shopping bags. And more than once someone nudged a friend before discreetly pointing toward Jinwoo.
Even without understanding Korean perfectly, Squalo caught enough.
"She's cute."
"Look at her."
"She keeps staring at him."
"Maybe she's waiting for him to ask her out."
What do they mean “cute”?! Squalo contemplated several homicides.
Still… The disguise accomplished exactly what it needed to.
Nobody questioned why the same woman appeared outside the police station every morning. Nobody cared that she frequented the same cafés as him. Nobody wondered why she always seemed to cross paths with the handsome detective.
People saw what they expected to see: a pretty girl with a crush on a handsome guy. And then they went about their day forgetting about what they saw
The disguise was as useful as it was humiliating.
-o-o-o-o-o-
The first warning came not from instinct, but from the old bastard's shoes.
The first thing Squalo noticed was how the leather was scuffed cheap leather. The soles had worn unevenly and the right foot dragged slightly.
Then he paid attention to the pace. It was too slow for someone trying to reach a destination and too aimless for someone actually shopping. Predators wandered, customers didn't.
He caught the movement reflected in a department store window while pretending to compare handbags he would rather set on fire than carry.
He ignored the old civilian; it was just a civilian after all.
His mission came first. Today was the fourth humiliating, skirt-wearing, heel-clicking day. He mentally cheered when Sung Jinwoo had wandered into a quieter section of the district where there were fewer police and fewer civilians around.
If the detective refused to acknowledge him today… Then Squalo was going to break etiquette.
To hell with tradition!
Time had become more valuable than manners.
Yet for whatever reason, the old man continued drifted closer to him. Without thinking, Squalo adjusted half a step.
The man matched it immediately.
Tsk, what persistent.
Still, Squalo’s attention remained mostly on Jinwoo several storefronts ahead. A civilian registered as no threat, so he didn’t pay the old man any thought.
The detective had paused before an outdoor fruit stand full of fresh strawberries from Jeju Island. He was examining them with the same concentration he'd shown while studying murder victims.
What kind of man inspected strawberries that seriously?
Cloud etiquette could rot in hell. Squalo was planning to make his way up to the strawberry stand to strike up a conversation, but the old man following him reached inside his jacket and pulled out a phone.
The old man lowered the phone too low.
Click.
The sound was tiny. It was almost swallowed by passing traffic.
Squalo glanced downward at the motion
Then...
The angle that the phone had been placed at registered. The phone was near the hem of the skirt, the back camera pointed upward.
The old bastard was smiling at the ground for no good reason.
For one perfectly calm heartbeat...
Squalo simply stared.
His brain refused to accept what his eyes had already understood.
.
.
.
"VOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII!!"
His roar echoed down the entire street, scaring the old man so much that he recoiled violently enough to drop his phone.
"W-What—"
Squalo was already moving. Killing intent rolled off him in suffocating waves. Pedestrians instinctively stumbled backward without understanding why.
Squalo’s right hand reached automatically toward his hip—
Nothing. There was nothing there. There was no sword or knife because…
Fuck.
He had a skirt on.
"Damn it."
Fine.
He'd settle for using his hands.
One fist seized the old man's jacket and the next instant, the bastard's feet dangled half a meter above the pavement.
"You piece of trash!" The words exploded from Squalo's throat. "What the hell did you just do?!"
"I-I—"
"What." Squalo’s voice dropped and became quiet and cold. "Did. You. Do."
The old fool actually looked offended. "It was only one picture!"
Squalo’s world narrowed to a single point. Some distant, increasingly irrelevant part of Squalo remembered he was undercover for a very important mission.
But all of that vanished beneath a far older instinct: someone had just volunteered to die.
He remembered that Sung Jinwoo was still walking away and he needed to go catch up, but all of those thoughts were immediately drowned beneath pure incandescent fury: I'm going to kill him. He didn’t have his sword on him, but he didn’t need one to squat this fly.
"ONE?!" His free hand clenched. The pavement cracked beneath his foot. "You disgusting little—" His fist drew back.
"Excuse me." A quiet, calm, almost gentle voice interrupted.
Squalo immediately froze and turned around. The voice wasn’t commanding; if anything, it was almost apologetic. Yet somehow it cut cleanly through the noise of the crowded shopping street.
Sung Jinwoo stood a few paces away, grocery bag still hanging from one hand, a few bundles of green onion poking out from the top alongside a bulky brown package that smelled somewhat fishy. His right hand—his ungloved hand—held open a leather wallet with a police badge under the plastic cover.
The detective's expression was exactly as calm as it had been every other day. His gaze swept over the scene exactly once from the old man danging in Squalo’s grip, the phone lying face up on the pavement, and the gathering crowd.
"Police." The word was spoken conversationally, yet it felt menacing in the way that all Cloud’s words were. “Can I ask what's happening here?” His eyes settled on Squalo. “Is this man bothering you, ma’am?”
The old man's face immediately drained of color. "He—"
"Upskirt photograph?" The interruption came so naturally that it almost sounded like Sung Jinwoo was confirming something he already knew rather than asking. His eyes shifted toward the phone then back to the old man. "I'll take it from here."
Squalo stared.
The Cloud...
The Cloud had approached first. The Cloud had initiated contact.
YES! Fucking damnit, yes!
Finally, it only took four days. Four goddamn long days. Cloud etiquette could finally stop tormenting him.
Without another word, Squalo released the old man.
The bastard hit the pavement with an undignified yelp.
Good, he deserved worse.
Jinwoo crouched smoothly, retrieving the fallen phone before anyone else could touch it. He tapped the now cracked screen once. Barely two seconds passed before he said conversationally, "The deleted photographs can usually be recovered. Do you know non-consensual upskirt photography carries a prison sentence of 5 years?"
The old man went pale enough to resemble fresh paper.
It reminded Squalo somewhat of Mammon during negotiations: nothing escaped either of them. The difference was that Mammon would charge you through the nose for every conclusion.
Patrol officers arrived less than five minutes later and took the old man to the police station for a stern talking to. When the patrol car finally drove away, the shopping street slowly returned to life, the crowd having already dispersed the moment a police badge had been flashed around.
The city resumed breathing.
Only then did Jinwoo turn toward Squalo.
"You've been following me."
It was a simple statement, yet Squalo felt the pressure behind those words. He opened his mouth and closed it. He had spent four days mentally rehearsing this conversation, but now that it was finally happening, his mind had gone blank like a Varia newbie on their first mission. "...Yeah."
"Four days is an awful long time." Jinwoo regarded him quietly.
"When did you notice?"
"On the first day."
"...The first day."
Jinwoo nodded. "I assumed you had a reason for not approaching me, so I left you alone."
Cloud etiquette.
The bastard had somehow reversed Cloud etiquette on him without even knowing Cloud etiquette existed.
Squalo suddenly understood why Cloud Guardians drove everyone insane. He repressed the urge to laugh out of frustration. Instead he took a slow breath to try to calm down.
"Look." Squalo rubbed the bridge of his nose. The words had come out sounding far more exhausted than he'd intended. "My... friend..." He hesitated over the word. Boss would probably shoot him for calling him a friend instead of Boss. “needs help.”
He glanced around the street. There were too many civilians - too many ears - hanging around within earshot.
“Can we take this somewhere more private?"
Jinwoo didn't immediately answer. He studied Squalo. "What kind of help? Why haven’t you filed a police report?"
Those were reasonable questions. Those were also exactly the sort of questions Squalo had been hoping to avoid answering in the middle of a shopping district because the truthful answer was: The victim is the son of the most powerful Mafia boss in the world and this is about Mafia affairs.
Instead, he tried another angle. “You met Xanxus a decade ago.”
Sung Jinwoo blinked but showed no reaction.
“Foreigner? Black hair, red eyes? Italian teenager with anger issues?”
There were still no signs of familiarity from the detective.
Squalo sighed. "Red feathers."
Sung Jinwoo cocked his head slightly.
"Way too much leather and chains. Likes to threaten people and call them trash."
Jinwoo remained politely blank.
Squalo resisted the urge to let out another loud ‘voi’. "You kept giving him your jacket and told him to stop skipping classes and listen to his guardians more."
Recognition finally flickered in the Korean’s face. "Oh, the delinquent." Jinwoo frowned thoughtfully. "The one,” he looked rather embarrassed, his ears a little red, "with a rather intense teenage crush and bad English. He liked going around talking about courtship, right?"
Squalo closed his eyes in embarrassment.
Of course.
Of course that was what the detective remembered.
“So that’ll make you the ‘shark’ swordsman then.” Jinwoo’s eyes scanned down to Squalo’s mini skirt that contrasted sharply with Squalo’s distinctively masculine voice.
"...Yeah." The admission physically hurt. "...That's..." He sighed heavily, "...not entirely wrong."
The silence that followed somehow felt even more painful than four straight days of walking around in heels.