Chapter Text
Rain drummed relentlessly against the rooftops, turning the city below into a restless sea of blurred lights. From her position atop a neighboring building, View watched headlights stretch across the wet streets like fading streaks of gold while neon signs flickered through the storm, scattered and fractured against the darkness.
The weather should have made surveillance difficult.
Instead, it only sharpened her focus.
The Grand Aurelius Hotel stood at the heart of the city, glowing with the kind of elegance that made it feel distant from everything beyond its walls. Luxury cars arrived one after another beneath the entrance canopy, carrying politicians, executives, celebrities, and people whose wealth was significant enough that nobody dared question where it came from.
Guards occupied every visible corner of the property.
View counted them once.
Then again.
There were more than enough to make her wonder whether the Rattanawadee family was expecting trouble or if paranoia was simply another luxury they had grown accustomed to.
She adjusted the scope of her rifle and settled deeper into her position, eyes fixed on the entrance.
Her assignment was simple on paper.
Protect Mim Rattanawadee.
Simple assignments rarely stayed simple.
Even before accepting the contract, View had heard the stories.
Everyone had.
The Rattanawadees existed in a strange space within the criminal world. Their influence reached through businesses, politics, law enforcement, and countless other places where power quietly gathered. Their name carried weight. People lowered their voices when they spoke about them, often without realizing they were doing it.
And Mim Rattanawadee, according to rumor, was the worst of them all.
View had never trusted rumors.
Powerful families often built frightening reputations because fear was easier to maintain than loyalty.
A voice crackled through her earpiece, pulling her attention back toward the hotel entrance.
"Target has arrived."
The reaction was immediate.
Not obvious. Not dramatic. But pretty noticeable.
Nobody pointed. Nobody announced her arrival. Yet conversations shifted, movements slowed, and people subtly adjusted themselves around an invisible presence entering the room.
A black sedan came to a stop beneath the entrance canopy.
When the rear door opened, a woman stepped out onto the rain-darkened pavement.
Guards surrounded her, but not closely.
View noticed that immediately.
Professional bodyguards stayed near their principals, especially in a crowded environment like this. These men kept a deliberate distance, almost as if getting too close without permission was something they knew better than to do.
Mim Rattanawadee walked through the crowd with effortless composure.
She wasn't trying to draw attention.
Attention followed her anyway.
Through the scope, View studied her carefully, searching for the reason behknd the reaction she caused. Beauty was the easiest explanation, but it didn't feel like enough. Beautiful people existed everywhere.
There was something else about Mim.
Something harder to define.
She carried herself with the quiet confidence of someone who had never questioned where she belonged and never expected anyone else to question it either.
Halfway toward the entrance, Mim stopped.
View's focus sharpened instantly.
The movement itself was ordinary. People stopped all the time.
But something about it felt intentional.
Mim slowly lifted her head, her gaze moving upward through the curtain of rain.
View expected her to look at the hotel.
The storm.
Anything else.
Instead, Mim's attention settled somewhere among the surrounding rooftops.
A faint crease appeared between View's brows.
That shouldn't have been possible.
The distance between them was significant. Rain distorted visibility. Darkness concealed her position. She had chosen this rooftop specifically because it gave her a clear view while keeping her hidden from anyone below.
Yet Mim continued looking directly in her direction.
And somehow, that made View suddenly aware of everything around her.
The cold metal pressed against her shoulder.
The rain collecting beneath her collar.
The steady rhythm of her own breathing.
Then, almost imperceptibly, Mim smiled.
It wasn't the smile itself that unsettled View.
It was the certainty behind it.
The expression carried the strange feeling of recognition, as if Mim had found exactly what she had been searching for.
Before View could decide whether the thought was ridiculous, Mim turned away and disappeared into the hotel.
Leaving View alone on the rooftop with a feeling she couldn't explain.
"Weird," she muttered under her breath.
The gala maintained its illusion of control for exactly forty-three minutes.
Forty-three minutes of polished conversations, practiced smiles, and people moving through the room as though money had built a wall high enough to keep danger outside.
View watched from above, tracking movement through her scope and observing the predictable habits of people who had spent their entire lives believing they were untouchable.
Then the first gunshot broke through the ballroom.
For a moment, her mind refused to categorize the sound.
It was an interruption.
An error in an otherwise carefully controlled environment.
Something that did not belong.
Then the windows shattered inward.
Glass exploded across the polished floor, and the illusion disappeared all at once.
The room reacted a second too late.
Confusion came first then fear.
Guests turned toward exits that were no longer safe. Security personnel moved into action, but the response was already behind the situation unfolding in front of them. The careful order of the evening collapsed into panic, spreading faster than anyone could contain.
Masked figures entered through the broken openings, and the ballroom became something entirely different.
Not a celebration. A battlefield.
View was already moving before any order reached her.
She abandoned her position immediately, taking the emergency stairwell down at full speed. The metal structure trembled beneath her boots as she descended, distant explosions echoing through the building with every impact. Dust fell from above, carried by the violence spreading through the floors below.
By the time she reached the ballroom level, the scene had transformed beyond recognition.
Smoke hung heavily in the air, mixing with the mist from the activated sprinklers. Damaged lights flickered overhead, their fractured glow reflecting across scattered debris and shattered glass. The sound of gunfire had no clear direction anymore, bouncing between walls until everything became a blur of noise.
And in the center of it all-
Mim stood there.
View slowed without meaning to.
Everyone else in the room reacted instinctively.
They ran. They fought. They hide. Everything you could possibly think if to survive.
Mim did none of those things.
She remained completely still amid the chaos surrounding her, untouched by the panic that had consumed everyone else. Her expression gave nothing away, her attention focused somewhere beyond what View could understand.
Then someone reached her.
A man grabbed Mim's arm, shouting something that disappeared beneath the sound of gunfire.
His movement stopped almost immediately.
His expression changed first.
A sharp flash of pain crossed his face before his body followed, his balance giving way as he dropped to one knee. A scream escaped him moments later, cutting through the noise around them.
View's eyes narrowed.
His wrist hung at an unnatural angle as he held it, and her instincts immediately began analyzing what she had seen.
The force required, the timing, the lack of movement.
Mim had barely moved at all.
There should have been something.
The reaction and struggles. Anything.
But there was nothing. Only the result.
Before View could make sense of it, another gunman turned toward Mim and raised his weapon.
She reacted instantly.
One shot.
The attacker fell before he could finish aiming.
View didn't hesitate.
She moved through the chaos, reached Mim, grabbed her wrist, and pulled her away from the open area.
"Move," she said, her voice steady despite the destruction around them. "Are you trying to get yourself killed?"
Mim didn't resist.
Instead, her gaze dropped briefly to where View's hand held her wrist.
Not fear nor shock but something else.
Her attention lingered there a moment longer than necessary before she looked back at View.
Together, they moved through the ballroom and into one of the secured emergency rooms. The sound of gunfire followed them until the door finally shut behind them, cutting the chaos down to a distant echo.
The sudden silence felt heavier than the noise.
As if the room itself was holding onto everything that had happened outside.
View checked her magazine, keeping her focus on the locked door in front of her.
"Stay here, khun."
Mim sat on the couch without hesitation, as though the instruction carried no emotional weight beyond logistics. View maintained awareness of the corridor outside, listening for movement while processing the situation in fragments of focus.
Mim did not appear shaken. There was no visible stress response, no urgency, no delayed reaction catching up to her. Instead, she remained composed in a way that felt detached from the environment around her.
“What were you doing?” View asked after a moment, her voice controlled but edged with frustration. “You could have been killed.”
“But I wasn’t,” Mim replied.
“That’s not the point.”
Mim tilted her head slightly, studying View with sustained attention. “You’re different from the others.”
View glanced at her briefly. “What does that mean?”
“Are you not scared of me?”
View exhaled once and reloaded her weapon, the mechanical click grounding her back into immediate priorities. “I’ve seen people stronger than they should be before,” she said. “But I don’t have any reason to be scared of you.”
For the first time since they had met, Mim smiled openly.
The expression did not soften her presence. Instead, it created a contrast that made her harder to interpret, as if something had been acknowledged without being explained. View found herself registering it longer than necessary before forcing her attention back to the situation outside.
Even after the moment passed, it did not fully leave her thoughts.
Three days later, View moved into the Rattanawadee estate as Mim’s personal bodyguard.
The transition felt less like a relocation and more like stepping into a place that had been waiting for her long before she arrived.
The mansion revealed itself the moment she crossed its entrance.
Not through grand displays of wealth or intimidation.
Instead, it was defined by the absence of things View expected to find.
The sound was different here.
Conversations lowered the moment she approached. Footsteps seemed quieter than they should have been. Even the air carried a strange stillness, as though the entire estate had learned to exist around something it could never fully challenge.
The staff moved carefully through the halls, their voices rarely rising above whispers. Guards avoided direct eye contact whenever Mim passed, their gazes lowering with a practiced discipline that felt less like respect and more like instinct.
View noticed it every time.
The way rooms changed when Mim entered.
The way conversations shifted, everyone seemed to adjust around her without needing to be told.
As if Mim's presence alone changed the rules.
Mim herself remained consistent in ways that should have been ordinary.
But the longer View stayed, the harder those things became to ignore.
She never ate, not even once.
During every scheduled meal, Mim would sit at the table with everyone else, untouched food placed in front of her and drinks occasionally stirred absentmindedly between her fingers. Conversations continued around her, but no one ever questioned why she never actually participated.
No one mentioned it or find it strange. And somehow, that made it stranger.
Her skin was always cold whenever View happened to touch her.
At first, View dismissed it.
A small detail nothing too much of a bother.
Something meaningless.
But it happened too often to remain coincidence.
Then there were the nights when Mim disappeared.
No explanation or whatsoever, just complete weird shit.
She would simply be gone and no one would dare to find her.
Everyone treated it as normal, and that was what bothered View the most.
Because it wasn't normal. No, not to her.
Whenever she attempted to ask about these things, Mim only responded with quiet amusement, as if View's questions revealed more about herself than they did about Mim.
"You notice too much," Mim said once when View asked why she never ate with the others.
The words weren't dismissive.
If anything, they sounded almost approving. More like an observation or an assessment.
Despite herself, View slowly adapted to the estate.
She learned its patterns.
The timing of guarded movements.
The unspoken rules everyone followed.
The way conversations changed whenever Mim entered a room.
What confused her most wasn't the strange things happening around her.
It was the fact that everyone else acted as though none of it was strange at all.
Some nights, when the estate became quiet enough that even the distant city seemed far away, View found Mim alone on the balcony overlooking the lights below.
The view should have been peaceful.
But there was always something unsettling about the way Mim stood there.
Still and silent.
As though she wasn't watching the city itself.
As though she was looking beyond it.
Those moments disrupted View’s assumptions more than anything else. In those instances, Mim did not resemble the figure described in rumors or the one who moved through violence without hesitation. She appeared removed from all of that entirely, not softened, but distanced in a way that suggested separation rather than contradiction.
“You’re staring again,” Mim said one night without turning around, her voice carrying easily through the still air.
View hesitated for only a moment before answering. “You make it hard not to.”
A quiet laugh followed, soft enough that it almost blended into the night air rather than interrupting it. Mim finally turned slightly, just enough for her presence to shift in View’s awareness.
“Are you flirting with me?” she asked, as if testing the idea rather than accusing it.
The question landed too quickly for View to control her reaction. “No,” she replied immediately, too fast for it to sound natural.
Mim’s expression softened into something faintly knowing, though not unkind. “Mm,” she said, as if confirming something she had already suspected. “oh, I’m sure.”
View regretted the entire exchange almost instantly, not because of what was said, but because of how easily Mim seemed to read the space between their words..
A month later, the attack came without warning.
It was supposed to be routine.
A simple convoy escort. The kind of assignment that usually ended with nothing more than a quiet return and another completed task added to the list.
The road stretched endlessly ahead, a long stretch of empty asphalt surrounded by darkness. For a while, everything remained exactly as expected.
Until the first sign of pursuit appeared.
Black SUVs emerged from the distance, closing in from both sides with deliberate precision.
Not randomly nor rushed. But it was planned.
Gunfire erupted across the highway almost immediately.
Inside the confined space of the vehicle, the sound became overwhelming. Glass shattered before View's mind fully processed what had changed. The mission had shifted from escort to ambush in the span of seconds.
She reacted without hesitation and grabbed Mim and forced her down into the seat as the driver fought to keep control of the vehicle. Bullets struck the frame repeatedly, each impact throwing the car further into instability.
Then came the crash.
BAM!!
The vehicle lost control and spun violently before slamming into the roadside barrier.
Metal screamed against concrete.
Everything inside the car shifted at once.
For a moment, there was only the ringing aftermath of impact.
View forced the door open despite the sharp pain already spreading through her shoulder. Smoke surrounded the wreckage, mixing with the lingering echoes of gunfire that still filled the air.
The attackers were already moving closer.
They emerged through the haze with weapons raised, their formation too organized to be an impulsive attack Someone surely planned this.
View raised her weapon without hesitation.
The first shots came in controlled succession, each movement precise and deliberate. Three attackers dropped before they could adjust their position.
Pain existed.
But it came secondary, right now View's priority is Mim's safety.
Every shot was instinct.
Every movement was calculated.
Then the fourth attacker moved faster than expected.
His aim shifted.
Not toward her but toward Mim.
View didn't think, no calculation, no hesitation.
Her body moved before her mind could catch up.
She stepped directly into the line of fire.
Mim stayed still for a long moment, her gaze fixed on View as if the answer required processing rather than acceptance. Whatever she saw in it did not resolve cleanly. Instead, it seemed to linger, unsettled, as though it had shifted something that was not supposed to move.
For someone like Mim Rattanawadee, hesitation was unfamiliar.
View had noticed that much since the day she entered the estate. Mim was never uncertain. Never startled. Never caught off guard. She moved through every situation with the same quiet confidence, as if the world naturally adjusted itself around her.
But now, for the first time, View saw something different like it's something almost human.
Mim’s fingers remained against her side, her touch colder than it should have been, yet somehow gentler than View expected. The contradiction bothered her more than the wound itself.
Everything about Mim bothered her.
The rumors. The secrets. The impossible things she witnessed and the way everyone around her acted as though none of it was strange. The way Mim looked at her sometimes, as if she was seeing through every wall View had spent years building.
And now this.
Now Mim was looking at her like protecting her was the one thing she couldn’t understand.
View swallowed against the ache spreading through her body and forced herself to focus.
“You’re staring again,” she murmured.
The words came out weaker than intended, but the familiar teasing edge remained.
Mim blinked slightly, as if being pulled back from somewhere far away.
Then, slowly, she looked away.
“I don’t understand you,” Mim admitted.
It was quiet. Almost too quiet.
View almost laughed.
Of all the things she expected to hear from Mim, that was not one of them.
“You don’t understand me?” View repeated, raising an eyebrow despite the pain. “You’re the mysterious one here.”
A faint expression crossed Mim’s face. Not quite amusement. Not quite annoyance.
Something softer.
“You ran toward danger without hesitation,” Mim said.
“You didn’t even think about yourself."
View looked at her for a moment.
“That’s what a bodyguard does.”
Again, that answer.
Simple. Practical. And obvious, of course.
Yet Mim stared at her as if it meant something far more complicated.
And for some reason, that made View more uncomfortable than the attack itself.
Because she knew how people looked at Mim.
They feared her, respected her more than they respect themselves and obey anything she says.
But View?
View looked at her and saw the unanswered questions.
The things hidden beneath the reputation.
The person everyone else seemed too afraid to search for.
Mim slowly removed her hand from View’s side, though her eyes remained fixed on her.
“You really are strange,” she whispered.
View let out a tired breath.
“Funny. I was about to say the same thing about you..”
For a moment, neither of them spoke.
The highway remained silent around them, the remains of the attack scattered across the darkness. The danger had passed, but the feeling left behind was something neither of them could ignore.
Something had changed but View doesn't know what.
And judging by the way Mim looked at her, neither did she.
...
That night, sleep never fully settled into View’s body, not because she was unaccustomed to pain, but because pain had a way of sharpening awareness rather than dulling it. The wound on her side pulsed in slow, insistent reminders of the convoy, forcing her to remain conscious longer than she wanted as the mansion around her sank into its usual unnatural silence.
Eventually she gave up on rest and moved through the hallways alone, her steps measured more from habit than caution. The estate at night felt even more detached from reality than it did during the day. The lighting dimmed in ways that made distance difficult to judge, and the silence seemed layered, as if it had depth rather than absence.
She told herself she was only walking to clear her head, but the thought did not fully hold when she noticed the staircase.
It was narrow and unmarked compared to the rest of the mansion’s carefully maintained structure, leading downward in a way that immediately separated it from everything else. The absence of signage made it obvious enough that it was not meant to be used freely, and that alone made it impossible to ignore.
View paused only briefly before descending.
The corridor below was colder, not in temperature alone but in atmosphere, as though the air itself had been left unused for a long time. Her footsteps echoed in a way that felt too loud for the space, interrupted only by the distant sound of dripping water that suggested the building extended further than it should.
At the end of the corridor stood a storage room.
The door was old compared to everything else in the estate, its surface worn in a way that did not match the rest of the mansion’s maintained perfection. Inside, shelves lined the walls, filled with dusty boxes and objects that had clearly been left untouched for years. Framed photographs leaned against each other in uneven stacks, their glass dulled by time.
View picked one up without thinking too deeply about it at first.
Then she stopped moving.
The image was older than anything else in the room suggested it should be. The edges were faded, and the colors had lost their clarity, but the figures inside were unmistakable. The date printed beneath the photograph confirmed what instinct had already begun to suggest, placing it more than forty years in the past.
Standing beside the Rattanawadee family patriarch was Mim.
The same face.
The same eyes.
The same presence that had not shifted even after everything View had witnessed.
Her grip on the photograph tightened slightly as her breathing slowed without conscious intent, her mind attempting to reconcile details that refused to align with anything she understood about time or identity.
Behind her, the silence changed.
It did not break so much as acknowledge itself.
“You really shouldn’t be here,” Mim said.
The voice was calm, almost gentle, carrying through the storage room without urgency.
View turned immediately.
Mim stood in the doorway, framed by dim light from the corridor, her expression carrying something that resembled amusement but did not fully belong to it. She was smiling, but the expression did not reach anything that felt warm or reassuring. Instead, it sat on her face like a decision already made rather than a reaction formed in the moment.
End of chapter 1