Chapter 1

“Lieutenant, I have something to tell you.”

There it was—the magic opener guaranteed to make any team leader squeeze their eyes shut in quiet dread. Supposedly, the moment those words dropped, a seasoned boss would mask their inner turmoil, reach for a notepad, and brace for impact while the rookie trailed behind with eyes full of nervous, faintly unhinged resolve. Ji Gyu-hwa, however, didn’t show a shred of the textbook superior’s reaction. He merely jerked his chin toward the conference room across the hall.

I cut across the desolate gray corridor and stepped inside. The room was sparse, furnished with nothing more than a steel table, a few chairs, and a cabinet nobody had ever bothered to open. After checking the hallway one last time to make sure no one was around, I eased the door shut.

The moment of truth had arrived. It was time to lay everything bare before Ji Gyu-hwa. Do you have any idea what happened to me over the last two—no, three years? You couldn’t begin to imagine.

I drew a deep breath, ready to dive straight to the point, when Ji Gyu-hwa lowered the hand he had been raking through his hair. As his elbow dipped, his wrist shifted at a subtle, unnatural angle, tapping one ear before dropping smoothly back to his side. It happened so fast I almost wondered if I had imagined it.

“What’s this about?” he asked, his voice level.

Ji Gyu-hwa wasn’t the sort of man to make idle gestures. It was a signal. The room was bugged, which meant we weren’t the only ones listening to this conversation.

The instant I caught his meaning, my pupils contracted. My thoughts raced so violently that time seemed to stretch like taffy. Now I had to sell a story to whoever was monitoring the line from afar. I needed a believable reason for why, the very second I arrived back at headquarters, I had singled out Ji Gyu-hwa, dragged him into an empty conference room, and announced that we needed to talk. Blathering on with something like, Nice weather today, hahaha! wouldn’t fool a soul. That would only prove we knew they were listening—and tip them off that we knew they knew.

I was in deep shit. I had been so preoccupied with spilling the truth to Ji Gyu-hwa that I hadn’t prepared a single contingency for surveillance. By reflex, my eyes met his. In that split second, he must have realized I didn’t have a shred of a backup plan, yet true to form, he didn’t lift a finger to bail me out.

Clinging to the sole imperative that I could not blow our cover, I parted my lips. What plausible reason would a rookie have to summon his team leader into a secluded room? There’s only one…

“Lieutenant,” I said.

A low hum, hovering somewhere between an acknowledgment and an expectant grunt, vibrated in his throat. Surrendering myself entirely to raw survival instinct, I blurted it out.

“I like you.”

A confession attack.

His composed demeanor—which until a second ago had practically dared me to dig my own way out of the mess—shifted for the first time. Ji Gyu-hwa raised both brows, one corner of his mouth hooking into an ambiguous smirk. I could already picture whoever was monitoring our feed choking on their drink, spraying juice across the console like that famous soap-opera reveal when the secret daughter is unmasked. If I were on the listening end, I would have spewed juice down my chin too, but Ji Gyu-hwa just stood there with an arched brow, looking thoroughly entertained by how pathetic I was.

“I truly have feelings for you,” I pressed on, forcing my voice to stay earnest. No, I don’t! I don’t like you at all! Yet it was the only excuse I could muster on the fly to justify hauling my commanding officer behind closed doors. “I tried to hide how I felt—tried to stop it—but I just couldn’t help myself.”

The only confession I had actually intended to make was along the lines of, I got caught up in some crackpot scientist’s experiment and slipped into the past, where I met you. What I had been trying to prevent was the collapse of the timeline, not some burgeoning office romance.

Widening my eyes as earnestly as I could, I shot Ji Gyu-hwa a frantic look and nudged my chin toward the door. Just reject me already and let’s get the hell out of here. Even if he was a ruthless, cold-blooded team leader who raised his youngest operative on brutal tough love, Ji Gyu-hwa still had basic professional decency. Surely he wouldn’t abandon me here. Surely he’d throw me a lifeline—

I was fucked. He was enjoying this.

That was the day I learned even a strikingly handsome man could smile like a great white shark under the wrong lighting. The severe line of his mouth, which ordinarily never budged, curved into an uncharacteristic arc. He knew damn well every word of this bullshit was a desperate cover cooked up for the wiretap, and he found it utterly fascinating.

“Is that so?” Ji Gyu-hwa murmured, taking the bait with lazy amusement. “Well, well.”

No, you bastard, you’re supposed to help me!

“Now that I’ve gotten it off my chest, I feel much better,” I said quickly, backing toward the exit. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll be on my way.”

I reached for the handle, but his fingers clamped around my wrist like a steel shackle. Even as the squad’s youngest, I had plenty of field experience under my belt, yet Ji Gyu-hwa restrained my arm effortlessly.

“Not so fast,” he said, his grip unyielding. “This is quite sudden. Elaborate.”

The desperate urgency drained from my face, replaced by sheer disbelief. Elaborate on what? You’re the one who signaled we’re bugged, so get your ass out the door! I lunged for the handle with my free hand, but—thud. An arm like an iron beam shot out, slamming against the door panel to bar my path.

The man had zero intention of cooperating.

Blood began to simmer in my veins, sparking a reckless streak of rebellion. Ji Gyu-hwa clearly wanted to watch me squirm, and if I was going down, I was going to pay him back in kind.

“Didn’t you already know?” I shot back, tilting my chin in defiance. “You always waited around for me, heading into the showers the exact second I walked in.”

He had never done anything of the sort. How do you like that, Jaguar? We’re even now, aren’t we?

“You unbuckled your belt so slowly on purpose, staring right at me like you were putting on a striptease,” I added, narrowing my eyes before darting a pointed glance toward the corridor. “Rolling your hips and everything. Am I wrong?”

Ji Gyu-hwa’s lips pulled back into a wide, wolflike grin. “Quick on the uptake, aren’t you.”

Quick my ass.

“So you figured out I was waiting around to show off my body and seduce you,” he said smoothly.

I hadn’t figured out a damn thing, because it had never happened—or at least, it sure as hell shouldn’t have.

“Which is why you intentionally acted all cute whenever I came into view,” he continued, his gaze dropping over my face.

Me?

“Dragging out the ends of your words.”

“Yeeaaah, exactly,” I drawled through gritted teeth.

“Just like that.”

“Yeees. And I know you found it utterly adorable, Lieutenant.”

Ji Gyu-hwa stepped closer. The smile on his face struck such a wildly different chord from the way he used to smile as a boy that I momentarily lost my voice. This wasn’t a dry chuckle or a weary, wry smirk; the sharp corners of his mouth swept up in a clean, triumphant curve. He was having the time of his life.

After savoring my sour expression for a long beat, Ji Gyu-hwa finally lifted the hand anchored against the door. Just as I wrenched the handle down to make my escape, two words dropped over my head.

“Let’s date.”

Yena is Seon-jeong’s daughter…![1] Whoever was listening in on the wiretap must have choked on their drink all over again.

His words hit my skull like a physical bludgeon, rattling my vision as if a frag grenade had just gone off at my feet. I jerked my head up in a daze, genuinely wondering if there was a gaping hole in the back of Ji Gyu-hwa’s head leaking his brains onto the linoleum. We didn’t have time for this lunacy. I needed to share the truth somewhere no one could eavesdrop, yet I seemed to be the only one on pins and needles. Having apparently lost all curiosity about why I had dragged him in here in the first place, Ji Gyu-hwa propped his chin on his hand, looking pensively down at me.

“Too fast for our maknae, is it?” he asked.

Only then did he lower his arm completely, as if granting me some magnanimous concession. Even if there was a size difference between us, I was hardly small—I was a tall, heavily built living weapon in my own right. Yet Ji Gyu-hwa’s presence was so suffocatingly overbearing that simply having his arm cleared from my field of vision brought an involuntary wave of relief.

“Then let’s get to know each other with a serious relationship in mind,” he amended.

My face contorted as if an eager puppy had just showered me with sweet kisses, only for me to realize it had spent the last five minutes thoroughly licking its own asshole. Ji Gyu-hwa had been like this even as a kid, occasionally dropping sly, cheeky nonsense out of nowhere. The trouble was, because he was normally so devoid of frivolity, his absurd remarks never sounded entirely like jokes. His expression didn’t help, either. It had to be a joke, yet the gaze pinned on me held a distinctly unsettling edge.

Refusing to dignify that with an answer, I pulled on the door again. It didn’t budge. This time, Ji Gyu-hwa had planted his combat boot like a steel bollard against the bottom edge.

“…”

“…”

After a brief, silent contest of strength, I lost. Ha. I could have wiped the floor with thirteen-year-old Ji Gyu-hwa.

“…I appreciate the thought,” I muttered, forcing the words past my teeth, “but—”

“Why?” He tilted his head. “You said you liked me. Didn’t you claim you couldn’t stop it or hide it?”

Technically, my exact words had been hide it, or stop it—not that the order mattered right now. Ji Gyu-hwa’s fingers brushed his ear again. Someone was still listening, and I needed to stay in character. I forced my stiff lips to move.

“…No, it’s just that I can hardly believe it. That’s all.”

“Overwhelmed with emotion?”

“Yeaaah,” I bleated, my voice quavering like a goat’s.

Ji Gyu-hwa’s lip curled into a satisfied smirk, and at last, he lifted his boot.

I wrenched the door open and bolted into the corridor. Never again would I pull Ji Gyu-hwa aside into a private room. I wasn’t going to bring up his past, and I certainly wasn’t going to breathe a word about the secret we shared. One botched attempt at a conversation, and now we were on Day One of dating. Day One? What in the world am I supposed to do with a kid I’ve known since his first year of middle school?

Just as I tried to slip down the hall at a brisk clip, a warm weight brushed my shoulder, then slid up to cradle the back of my head. His hand. I froze on reflex. Unlike the senior operatives who ruffled my hair every day like affectionate older brothers, my commanding officer rarely initiated physical contact—and more than anything, I still felt awkward around him. Besides, Ji Gyu-hwa was the kind of man who smashed skulls into tables, not the kind who gently patted them. The only thing he stroked on a regular basis was probably the bloodied edge of a tactical knife while muttering something like, Heh-heh, the blood of an enemy commander.

“Don’t cause a scene,” he murmured behind me.

“Yes, sir.”

Terrified that talking back might prompt the palm cradling my head to crush my skull, I tiptoed away as quietly as humanly possible. Behind me, I could have sworn I heard a faint snort of laughter.

I scurried down the hallway at a silent, rapid clip, agonizing over what had just happened. It was a joke, right? A joke… wasn’t it, Lieutenant? It had to be. Because the person I met when I fell into the past was you—when you were thirteen.

Wait. Why was I even agonizing over this? Of course it was an act. Seeing that Jaguar didn’t have his usual predatory glare when we stepped out of the conference room, my cover story must have worked. Right, I’d covered my tracks well. When you can’t hit your boss with a resignation notice, hit him with a confession attack.

I was nodding to myself to soothe my frayed nerves when my entire body locked up mid-step.

Resignation notice or confession attack? Wait—couldn’t I have just told him I was thinking about applying for a discharge?! What the hell did I just do? …Fuck. No, wait. Fuck!

Having ground to a dead halt in the middle of the passage, I forced strength back into my legs and resumed walking as if nothing had happened.

“Where you headed, Maknae?” a passing senior called out.

Haaah. Don’t know, go away, fuck off.

“Whoa, what the hell? The kid looks scary as shit.”

Drawing from several years of firsthand experience slipping through time, a fresh truth crystallized in my mind—an arrow loosed from the bow can never be called back. My limbs suddenly felt heavy as lead, and I slowed to a halt near the end of the corridor.

When I decided to tell him I had been to the past, the very first thing I wanted to give him was relief. I wanted to tell him that I hadn’t died, that he had done nothing wrong, and that if he had ever blamed himself over all these years, he didn’t need to anymore. And because he had been thirteen back then while I had been who I was now, I needed reassurance, too—the certainty that what we had shared was a memory, not a scar.

I glanced back over my shoulder, but Ji Gyu-hwa was already gone. Just as I had abruptly vanished from his life when he was a boy, he had disappeared from my sight. Only the conference room door, left faintly ajar down the empty hall, remained to prove we had spoken at all.