Chapter Text
It It happened so quickly that, at first, Lee Chaeha couldn't even tell that anything had changed.
There was no dramatic collapse, no warning signs, no sharp pain that would have made him stop in his tracks. Just another ordinary afternoon at the office.
He had stepped into the restroom for a brief break, finished washing his hands, and lingered in front of the mirror for a moment. The fluorescent lights overhead cast a pale glow across his reflection as he adjusted the collar of his dress shirt and smoothed a few unruly strands of dark hair back into place. His tie sat perfectly straight. His expression was composed, as always.
Then something stirred deep inside his chest.
At first, it was nothing more than a faint tickle— an irritation nestled somewhere in his lungs. He frowned slightly, expecting it to disappear with a clearing of his throat.
It didn't.
The sensation spread with unnerving slowness, crawling upward through his chest like tiny fingers brushing against the inside of his ribs. It wasn't painful, exactly. Just... wrong. Alien. An itch that couldn't be scratched.
He pressed a fist lightly against his mouth.
Cough.
The sound echoed softly against the tiled walls.
He waited. Nothing. Then it came again.
Cough. Cough. Cough.
The irritation intensified, forcing another fit from him. His shoulders tensed as he bent forward over the sink, one hand gripping the porcelain edge for support while the other covered his mouth. His eyes watered from the force of it.
He expected the metallic taste of blood. Or perhaps nothing at all.
Instead—
Something impossibly soft brushed against his lips.
A delicate purple petal drifted downward, landing silently in the pristine white sink.
Then another. And another.
Three iris petals lay scattered against the porcelain, impossibly vibrant beneath the harsh restroom lighting.
For a long second, Chaeha simply stared.
His breathing steadied. The strange pressure in his chest faded almost as suddenly as it had appeared, leaving behind only silence.
“...What?”
He picked up one of the petals between his fingers. It was real— paper-thin, velvety, impossibly fresh. Not plastic. Not fabric. Not something that should have come from inside a person's body.
He turned it over once, brows knitting together in quiet confusion. There was no blood. No lingering pain.
Nothing except the flowers.
The absurdity of the moment almost made him laugh.
He glanced at his reflection again. Aside from slightly reddened eyes from coughing, he looked perfectly fine. No feverish complexion. No sign of illness. Nothing that suggested flowers had just bloomed from his lungs.
After another moment of contemplation, he exhaled through his nose.
“...Weird.”
With the same practicality that defined most of his life, he folded the petals carefully into his palm, slipped them into the pocket of his coat, and straightened his tie once more. He smoothed his hair, adjusted his sleeves, and gave his reflection one final look.
There was work waiting.
Whatever had just happened could be dealt with later.
Leaving the restroom as though nothing unusual had occurred, Lee Chaeha returned to the office, carrying nothing more than a handful of purple iris petals hidden in his pocket— and no idea that his life had quietly begun to unravel.
Back in the office, Prosecutor Ju Taeseon sat at his desk, his attention fixed on the stack of case files spread neatly before him. The quiet clicking of a keyboard and the occasional rustle of paper blended into the familiar rhythm of the prosecution office, where everyone worked with practiced efficiency.
Lee Chaeha slipped back into the room as though nothing had happened.
His coat still concealed the handful of purple iris petals tucked away in one of its pockets.
No one noticed the slight delay in his return. No one questioned why his eyes lingered on the floor for a second longer than usual before he settled back into work.
Least of all the man seated across from him.
Prosecutor Ju Taeseon.
Officially, Taeseon was Chaeha's superior—the lead prosecutor assigned to the Violent Crimes Division, while Chaeha served as the investigator attached to his team. For the past three years, they had worked side by side, spending more hours together than they did with most of the people in their own lives. Three years of crime scenes, overnight stakeouts, endless paperwork, courtroom preparations, and late-night convenience store dinners eaten in exhausted silence.
Three years was enough time to learn a person's habits.
To everyone else in the office, Prosecutor Ju was difficult to approach.
He was reserved to a fault, carrying himself with an air of quiet detachment that discouraged unnecessary conversation. He rarely smiled, rarely lingered around idle chatter, and never involved himself in office gossip. If someone approached his desk, it was almost always because a case required it. His words were concise, professional, and measured, never wasting a sentence where a few words would suffice.
Many younger prosecutors found him intimidating.
The administrative staff often whispered that he looked angry even when he wasn't.
Some investigators jokingly referred to him as "the Ice Prosecutor," convinced that the man had never laughed a day in his life.
Taeseon never cared enough to correct them.
But Chaeha knew better.
Working alongside someone every day inevitably revealed the parts they never intended anyone else to see.
Taeseon wasn't cold.
He was simply quiet.
There was a difference.
He remembered how the prosecutor would silently place a cup of coffee on his desk whenever an investigation stretched late into the night, never saying who had bought it.
How he would notice when Chaeha skipped lunch and, without comment, leave a neatly wrapped sandwich within arm's reach before returning to his own work.
How, during particularly difficult cases, Taeseon would stay long after everyone else had gone home— not because he expected anyone to join him, but because he refused to leave his team carrying the burden alone.
His concern was never spoken.
It appeared in actions so subtle that most people overlooked them.
Even the prosecutor's conversations with Chaeha differed from those with everyone else.
The clipped, formal responses Taeseon gave his colleagues softened around the edges when he spoke to his investigator. He still wasn't particularly talkative—no one would ever accuse Ju Taeseon of being chatty—but he asked questions that had nothing to do with case reports from time to time.
“Did you eat?”
“Go home. You can finish the report tomorrow.”
“Get home safely.”
Simple words. Ordinary words.
Yet they carried a quiet warmth that Taeseon rarely allowed anyone else to see.
The walls he kept around himself had never disappeared.
But over the course of three years, little by little, he had lowered them around Lee Chaeha.
Not enough for anyone else in the office to notice.
Just enough for Chaeha to realize that beneath the prosecutor's impassive expression was a man far kinder than people gave him credit for.