Kim Do-ki woke with one hand pressed to his stomach. The room was dark except for the rainlight slipping through the curtains, painting the ceiling in pale shadows. For a moment, he did not know where he was. He only knew the ache.

It sat low and deep under his blue sweatshirt, not the same as the first pain, not the horrible heat of Oh Won-sang’s bullet tearing through him, but something slower: A pulling ache. A belly pain that returned when he was tired, when he breathed too hard, when his body remembered what his mind kept trying to survive.

Do-ki swallowed and lifted the hem of his sweatshirt just enough to look. The scar was still there. Red-brown and healing, cutting across the softness of his abdomen like a secret no one had asked permission to write. Below it, his navel dipped into shadow, vulnerable in a way he hated noticing.

He let the fabric fall.

“Still hurts?”

Do-ki froze.

The voice came from beside the bed, low and familiar enough to make his chest tighten before fear could arrive. He turned his head. On Ha-jun stood in the dark.

Not as he had been in Do-ki’s nightmare: bloodied and unreachable. He looked softer tonight, almost unreal, his face touched by moonlight, his eyes carrying that strange sadness Do-ki had never known how to answer.

“You’re dead,” Do-ki whispered.

Ha-jun’s mouth curved faintly. “You always start there.”

“It’s true.”

“So is the pain.”

Do-ki’s hand moved back to his stomach before he could stop it. Ha-jun saw, of course, he did. Even as a ghost, he noticed too much.

“You keep holding it,” Ha-jun said. “Like you’re afraid you’ll come apart.”

Do-ki looked away. “Maybe I am.”

The silence that followed was too gentle.

Then Ha-jun sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress dipped beneath him, impossible and intimate. Do-ki should’ve moved, should’ve demanded answers or should’ve asked why the dead came back looking beautiful enough to hurt.

Instead, he stayed still.

Ha-jun’s fingers touched the hem of his sweatshirt.

“May I?”

Do-ki’s breath caught.

This was worse than violence. Violence was simple. Violence gave him something to resist. But Ha-jun, asking, Ha-jun waiting, Ha-jun letting Do-ki decide what happened to his own body, that made something inside him tremble.

“Say it,” Ha-jun murmured. “I need to hear you.”

Do-ki closed his eyes. “Touch me.”

Slowly, Ha-jun lifted his sweatshirt.

Cool air brushed Do-ki’s stomach. His muscles tensed, the scar pulling slightly. Ha-jun noticed immediately and stilled.

“Too much?”

“No.” Do-ki’s voice was rough. “Just sensitive.”

Ha-jun lowered his hand.

His palm settled beside the scar first, warm in a way ghosts should not be. Then his fingers moved in careful circles, massaging the skin around the wound, never pressing too hard, never treating the scar like something ugly.

Do-ki’s breathing changed.

Ha-jun looked up. “Here?”

“A little lower.”

The words embarrassed him as soon as they left his mouth. But Ha-jun only obeyed. His hand moved lower, slow over the soft plane of Do-ki’s belly, thumb brushing the skin above his navel. Do-ki’s fingers curled into the bedsheet. “There,” Do-ki whispered.

Ha-jun’s thumb circled the rim of his navel, light at first, then firmer, coaxing warmth into the place where the belly pain had gathered all night. When one finger dipped carefully into the hollow, massaging inside in small, slow circles, Do-ki gasped.

Ha-jun stopped.

Do-ki grabbed his wrist.

“Don’t.”

“Don’t stop?”

Do-ki’s cheeks burned. “Keep going.”

Something flickered across Ha-jun’s face: hunger, tenderness, grief, all tangled together. He leaned down and kissed the skin just above the scar.

Do-ki went still.

The kiss was soft, almost reverent. Then Ha-jun kissed the scar itself, not directly on the most tender place, but along the edge, as if apologising to every inch of Do-ki that had been hurt. His mouth moved lower. Another kiss, then another, around the scar. Beneath it. To the warm skin beside his navel.

Do-ki’s hand slid into Ha-jun’s hair.

“Ha-jun…”

“I’m here.”

“You’re not.”

Ha-jun looked up at him from beneath the lifted sweatshirt. “Then tell me to leave.”

Do-ki could not.

Instead, he whispered, “Make me forget it hurts.”

Ha-jun climbed over him carefully, one knee on either side, keeping his weight away from the injury. His hand remained on Do-ki’s belly, protective and possessive at once. When he kissed Do-ki’s mouth, it was slow enough to be a question, deep enough to answer.

Do-ki opened for him with a sound he would have denied in daylight.

Ha-jun kissed his neck next, his jaw, the place beneath his ear that made his body soften without permission. Do-ki arched, then winced when the scar pulled.

Immediately, Ha-jun’s hand returned to his stomach.

“Easy,” he whispered. “I’ve got you.”

That should not have sounded so devastating.

Do-ki laughed once, breathless and broken. “You’re dead and still bossy.”

“You’re alive and still pretending you don’t want to be held.”

Do-ki looked at him.

The words hit too close. Ha-jun saw it and lowered his mouth to Do-ki’s throat again, kissing him until the argument left his body.

“Tell me what you want,” Ha-jun whispered.

Do-ki’s voice came out small. “Kiss me there again.”

Ha-jun’s eyes darkened. He kissed down to the scar, then lower, his mouth brushing the dip of Do-ki’s navel before his finger returned there, massaging inside with a slow, intimate rhythm that turned the ache warm.

Not gone. Changed.

Do-ki covered his mouth, embarrassed by the sound he made, but Ha-jun caught his hand and pinned it gently beside his head.

“Let me hear you.”

Do-ki shook beneath him. Ha-jun kissed his wrist, then leaned close enough for their foreheads to touch.

“You survived,” Ha-jun whispered. “Don’t punish your body for wanting comfort.”

Do-ki’s eyes burned.

The night blurred into the hum of Seoul, into the kisses at his neck, hands at his waist and desire handled like something sacred. Do-ki let himself be touched, wanted, held open by tenderness instead of violence. Ha-jun moved with him carefully, always returning his palm to the wound as if reminding him: here too, you can be loved.

Later, Do-ki lay trembling beneath the sheets, sweatshirt still pushed up, scar exposed to the quiet room.

Ha-jun traced one last circle around his navel.

“You’ll wake up alone,” he said.

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

Do-ki pressed Ha-jun’s hand to his stomach. “Come back when it hurts.”

Ha-jun kissed the scar once more.

“I already do.”

By morning, the bed was empty. But Do-ki’s belly was warm beneath his own palm, the pain softened into something bearable.

For the first time since the gunshot, his body did not feel like the place violence had found him.

It felt like the place someone had returned to him.