SUMMARY: The Syndicates of Hyperion are at war. The Kim and Yong families have forged a fragile alliance against the long-reigning Choi Syndicate. But in a world ruled by shifting loyalties, ruthless ambition, and calculated betrayal, power changes hands as quickly as lives are lost. These are the stories of those caught in the deadly web of the Syndicate, where survival is never guaranteed. And victory comes at a price.
COLLECTION DETAILS: This collection contains individual fics with each member of SVT paired with a different reader that occur in the same universe/AU and timeline. Each story is a standalone, but they do tend to have a connected/overarching plot. You don't necessarily need to read all of them to have an idea of whats going on because the conflict is summarized in each fic, but reading all of the different works makes your experience more rewarding!
RAITING: 18+ Minors are strictly prohibited from engaging in and reading this content. It contains explicit content and any minors discovered reading or engaging with this work will be blocked immediately.
COLLECTION WARNINGS: Criminal behavior, morally gray characters, murder, depictions of violence and murder, general violence associated with mafia/criminal activity, recreational drug sale and use, depictions and mentions of death, recreational drinking and drug use - each individual fic will be heavily tagged and warned appropriately.
NAVIGATE: MAIN M. LIST | ASK | THE SYNDICATES INFO GUIDE
HYPERION CITY POLICE DATABASE
SERVER #192220
CHOI SYNDICATE FILES
A C C E S S P E N D I N G . . . G R A N T E D
DOWNLOADING BABY.exe . . . READ FILE
FILE NOTES: Soonyoung has been in your life for as long as you can remember. You havenât spoken since your wedding to someone who isnât him, but when you uncover your husbandâs plans to turn against your family, you donât know who else to call.Â
DOWNLOADING ANGEL.exe . . . READ FILE
FILE NOTES: You always knew you were different from a young age. The only person who has ever been able to understand you is Vernon. When things take a turn for the Choi Syndicate, your long-term relationship is put to the test.
DOWNLOADING CHERRY SOURS.exe . . . READ FILE
FILE NOTES: Nothing in your life ever comes easy. Not family, not money, and certainly not jobs to pay the endless stack of bills. The only thing easy is the smiles you give Chan when he comes into your convenience store at the same time every Saturday to buy his cherry sours. And then one day you run into him where you're not supposed to, and everything changes.
DOWNLOADING STREET DEMON.exe . . . READ FILE
FILE NOTES: You've been street racing since you could reach the pedal of a car - it's the only thing you've ever been good at. When Seungkwan shows up to make an offer you can't turn down, you realize it isn't about racing anymore - it's about life and death.
DOWNLOADING TRIGGER.exe . . . READ FILE
FILE NOTES: You have been Soonyoungâs entire world from the moment he met you. When you marry someone else, Soonyoungâs world ends.Â
*This is the retelling of Baby from Soonyoung's POV.
DOWNLOADING TIL DEATH.exe ... FILE UNAVAILABLE
FILE NOTES: As the heir to one of the most powerful businesses under the Choi Syndicate, youâve always known your marriage would be arranged, not chosen. So when your family announces your engagement to Minghao, it comes as no shock. Minghao, however, is full of surprises, each one of them more deadly than the last.
DOWNLOADING OMERTA.exe . . . FILE UNAVAILABLE
FILE NOTES: OmertĂ (n) /ËĹmerËtä,ĹËmÉrdÉ/ - code of silence, honor, and conduct that emphasizes remaining silent when questioned by authorities or outsiders. After your brother's death, you break omertĂ and betray your family in the worst way possible to become Yoon Jeonghan's knife in the dark.
DOWNLOADING ALGERNON.exe . . . FILE UNAVAILABLE
FILE NOTES: Trying to unravel the Syndicates that run the city isn't what Seokmin ever dreamed he'd be doing. Turns out he's good at it. At least until he meets you and everything he knows about the city's criminal empires is turned on its head.
DOWNLOADING KEROSINE.exe . . . FILE UNAVAILABLE
FILE NOTES: Jihoon knew growing up he would be expected to practice law like his mother, protecting the assets and the associates of the Choi Syndicate. He's had no problem doing that so far - until he gets you as a client.
DOWNLOADING BELONG.exe . . . FILE UNAVAILABLE
FILE NOTES: Most people donât understand your relationship with Mingyu and Wonwoo. They don't need to. What they do need to understand is that the three of you belong to one another, and you'd do anything to keep it that way.
FILE NOTES: There is little benefit to working the underground fighting ring that belongs to the Choi Syndicate besides good pay. Another one? Getting to watch Junhui in the cage most nights and serving him his gin and tonic after he wins.
DOWNLOADING DEAD TO ME.exe . . . FILE UNAVAILABLE
FILE NOTES: You and Joshua ended things on a terrible note and you haven't seen him since, doing your best to avoid him - that is until he comes to your untimely and most annoying rescue.
DOWNLOADING MENAGERIE.exe . . . FILE UNAVAILABLE
FILE NOTES: Choi Seungcheol has been struggling since he stepped into his father's role leading the family syndicate. Nothing has been easy, fighting a war against both known and unknown enemies. You're easy though, making all of his troubles float away. And then those troubles come knocking on your door.
I wonder why Yunho can let go in short form content like Tiktoks and Reels but he can't do that in seemingly any other area of performance (other than on stage, of course). Is it because it's short, and he doesn't have to reveal too much for too long? Is it because it's just challenges/trends that he can hide behind and continue with his demure gaslighting (affectionate) persona? Or is this his way of slowly building up the confidence to be more open across all content and performances?
Hi Anon,
You sent this ask in response to my post a few weeks ago about Yunho and Seonghwa's reels together. I wrote:
There is also something unabashedly queer happening in these YunHwa reels. Yes, they are both well aware of how we, the fandom, perceives and plays with the imagery of two men engaged in a simulation of intimate, physical flirtation, but I also wonder at Yunho allowing himself to be guided by Seonghwa, for whom he regards as a mentor (and affectionately refers to as "mother"). It's like he knows he's in safe hands to explore parts of himself he might otherwise suppress.
I think all of your interpretations are valid, and I'm happy to muse a bit more about Yunho's penchant for short-form content.
My theory about short-form videos like reels/tiktoks is that they are these little worlds of play where idols can momentarily slip free from the confines of their assigned personas. Beyond the normal dance challenges you get during an album promotion cycle, you'll see idols recreate popular memes, dance to risquĂŠ songs, and perform sketch comedy, among other concepts. In these videos, role-play is encouraged and subversion is celebrated. They are largely made with the aim to go viral, but idols (or at least Ateez) have the freedom to select the content they make.
Yunho's current idol persona is an extension and amplification of the traits that the members and atiny admire about him: his affability, his cheerfulness, his looks, his skills, his charms... he's practically perfect.
As San said, he wants to be reborn as Yunho in his next life.
But as we've learned, perfection is not always a good thing in this business. In fact, I think Yunho feels creatively stifled by it. I've even argued that the Slide To Me mv was a commentary on how exhausting it is to constantly perform for fans' expectations.
This past year, we've seen Yunho attempt to pivot away from the "golden retriever boyfriend" persona and challenge himself with new roles:
While his acting and magazine shoots can be considered part of the "official" Ateez apparatus, his short-form content can be classified as "unofficial" content that made with the permission of the company but which exists somewhat apart from the polished products released by KQ. They're ephemeral, liminal, whatever you want to call it.
Yunho uses reels to experiment with showing different parts of himself. His videos, solo or with members, are silly, weird, camp, and irreverent, but also distinctly queer. This is not necessarily me speculating on his (or anyone's) sexuality, but I mean that Yunho seems to relish in the opportunity play against type. His "characters" are coquettish, flirtatious, provocative, and/or non-normative in their presentation.
He totally commits, which makes them even better. A perfectionist, even in this mode.
Seonghwa certainly plays an important role in these videos, as I previously observed:
Whereas Segonwha has mastered the ability to surrender himself to a higher artistic vision, enabling him to achieve true freedom of creative expression on stage and in his solo endeavors, I think Yunho has struggled to let himself be that free and uninhibited when the performance calls for it -- even (and especially) when his performance calls for it. Control has always been his brand, so how do you let go in order to evolve? I get the sense Seonghwa is helping Yunho on his journey of unlearning. Together, they create these little worlds of intrigue, subversion, provocation, and delight...When he works with Seonghwa, it's like he's given himself permission to expose and rejoice in his desires and desirability. They seem a bit more liberatory, for all that it's still fan service.
I'm also going to refer you to the great @makesoneteam whose divine powers of perception have yielded excellent meta on Yunho and Seonghwa's relationship, in that they are both highly refined and polished performers who are also not-so-secretly weird freaks.
I don't want to overlook Yunho's solo dancing reels in this analysis. Yunho loves to show off his dancing, and in these reels he can be the center of attention the way he often is not when performing on stage, where as Dance Leader he must control the group's choreography and synchronization. He only really gets to let loose during controlled moments of spontaneity, like during their codas.
In his solo reels, Yunho dances in a noticeably looser, sexier style, sometimes picking dances that call for very provocative staging. In most cases, he's covering his face to redirect attention to his body lines and movements (something Yeosang does as well).
These dance reels remind me of Mingi, who films a ton of solo dance content. Mingi's style leans into his established "fix on" persona, which is like a hyper-masculine drag performance, more comic than threatening. Yet, he's also confident and sexy and seems to really enjoy the attention he receives for doing this content. I find it interesting that Yunho can match his level of freak only when he's hiding his face.
And this is where I want to extend my reading to include Mingi and Yunho's duo reels, because Mingi is another important partner for Yunho, not only as a dancer who can meet him at his level, but who also takes his direction. Whereas Seonghwa often leads, Mingi follows ("Yunho-senpai").
There is something thrilling (and yes, a little erotic) watching them dance together. It's not just that they're the two best dancers in Ateez, or that they trained together and have known each other since middle school. Dancing with Mingi brings out something raw, something real about Yunho's personality: his competitiveness, his drive, his arrogance, his swagger, his ability to make challenging choreo appear effortless.
But there's also that element of play! Going back to my original thesis, Yunho seems to take genuine delight in getting to "be" Mingi for those 10-15 seconds. Sexy and alluring, but in a knowing-winking way, exposing the artifice while relishing it its conventions. These reels end up being more comical than serious, but that's part of their appeal.
Sometimes, when we get a peek behind the scenes, we see how shy it makes Yunho to adopt that "sexy" persona.
But we've also learned that Yunho often helps Mingi with his "sexy" solo dance challenges by teaching him choreo.
I could write a separate post about how Mingi gets publicly jealous of the content Yunho films with Seongwha, but I would argue that what Yunho does with Mingi in these reels, he does with no one else.
To wrap up my post, I'll observe that so many of my mutuals have become intrigued/obsessed with Yunho over the past few months. Atinyblr is infected with hotteokism! But I wonder if some small part of that is us recognizing something in Yunho, something familiar in how he's changing, becoming something other than what we've come to expect from him. His journey has been fascinating to witness, and we'll continue to follow him to see where he goes, one reel at a time.
Seonghwa is genuinely so funny to me. Doing THAT with Mingi, then his husband goes all sappy on IG, ATZ learns about Joong loserism and as a consequence he goes âthat was fun, but did you see how cute my husband is?â
His couple agenda is still going strong almost 10 years in đŞ
on the ground, the poor starve. in the sky, the rich live like gods. six months of playing the clumsy, star struck girl from the slums boils down to a single night in a luxury penthouse. to avenge and save her father from their misery, she has to trap the eliteâs most untouchable corporate heir, hoshi, in a game of her own makingâ and then betray him.
corporate heir!hoshi Ă fem!reader â 7,921 words
đ GENRE. non-idol au, cyberpunk, suspense
đ CONTENTS. class disparity, fake identity, fade to black but thereâs still a bit of making out happening but cuts away before explicit smut. use of codes but not actual code (obv), reader has a fake name that was addressed to her a few times heh but itâs for uh fake identity sake. readerâs dad uses nicknames for her. and feat wonu and cheol
â ď¸ WARNINGS. MDNI! while this doesnât contain explicit smut, it is strictly for adult audiences due to the mature nature of the content. some profanity, power imbalance, corporate corruption, makingout, mention of neurological deterioration, betrayal, manipulation, lies as a plot device, espionage, open ending. lmk if i missed anythingÂ
đ A/N. im not doing very well, ill be honest. i had a pretty critical wisdom tooth surgery and ive been in constant pain. the wound isnât healing as fast as it should and i still have an infection, so god knows how long this is gonna last. anyway, this is a very raw unedited fic. all the errors, typos, and everything else are mine, but i still hope its readable even though i havent reread or edited it myself. thanks to @studiosvt for yet another collab! edit [brain short circuiting]: and once again thanks to @nothoughtsjustfic for brainstorming with me and @joshujin for that uh overlays to add on that screen [idk what to call it??], love yuh!
⸠PART OF @studiosvt : Cyberpunk: Reload, COLLABORATION
đ i hope you'll love all the fics in this collab!
Glad to have been of help, says the megaphone after turning the power on for the next 45 minutes.
The ground is now a decaying wasteland where electricity only exists in a few public zones. Private homes rely only on temporary rationed power, and entire districts go dark for hours. You happen to live in one of these lower districts.
Your father worked for a megacorporation maintaining data routing systems between the ground and the lifted city above.
Class disparity is so bad that the wealthy refuse to live alongside the poor. They refer to your home simply as âThe Ground,â because, to them, the ground itself is beneath them both literally and socially. Above you, the elite live in a vast elevated city suspended high in the atmosphere made up of towering skyscrapers, in levelling aerial infrastructure, and monorail systems that weave between cities like veins of light that you dream to see. Itâs kept clean free from pollution, and advanced beyond anything seen below. The higher one goes, the wealthier and more important they are considered, which is funny because theyâre already so far up their own asses they think rules of reality stop at their floor.
Below, The Ground is populated and neglected with outdated technology and infrastructure except in the main districts filled with corporate advertisements and exploitative job offers, and giant displays of eliteâs assets. Some robotic assistants still operate in some areas, but they are obsolete, glitch prone, and poorly maintained. Dirt poor is literal here. Those at the top have never seen the literal ground because theyâre so up in the sky, and many have no interest in acknowledging its existence at all, living so out of touch with it that even the concept feels abstract to them.
But of course, anyone on the ground who managed to dig a little deep when playing in the net den (internet cafe), knew the megacorporations were fully aware of its existence. Their clean paradise above only stayed standing because millions of people below kept choking on the dirt for it.Â
So, anyway, your father was suddenly fired after being linked to a âsystem irregularity and fraud,â which immediately blacklists him from medical care and employment.Â
You walk through the dim corridors of your home as the damp wooden floor makes sound under your foot. The light from the rationed power barely holds back the dark thatâs in every corner of the room. Your thoughts keep circling the same point, unable to think of anything else.Â
You look at him where he sits, the look of him is less lively than the man you remember, his smile taken away feels so wrong even when you try to accept it. âYou should have told me earlier,â you say.
His voice comes after a delay with the exhaustion that does not seem to leave him anymore, âI didnât want you to be worried,â he replies. âYou werenât supposed to know.â
You sigh as you look around with a pathetic scoff before returning to him. Your fingers curl at your side, âit already reached me, dadâ you reply. âNothing stays a secret in this place anymore.â
He looks down, sad, as the silence that follows stretches. âI thought⌠I could do something about it before they made any final decision,â he replies eventually. âI thought I had time, sweetie.â
Your glassy eyes of unshed tears contradicts the rigid set of your jaw. Forcing your face into empty blankness again as you swallow the stingy lump in your throat, you keep your voice entirely level, âthereâs no time there⌠for people like us.â
He looks at you and for a short moment, the past of what he used to be and what he is now becomes even more impossible to ignore to both you and him. His shoulders slump. Seeing him broken, stripped of his strength, and drowning in his own disappointment, hurts you harder than any blow from the elite above ever could.
The composure you fought so hard to maintain instantly breaks. Your breath gets stuck painfully in your throat as the reality of his defeat crashes over you. For all your hardening against the cruelties of âThe Ground,â seeing your father completely lose faith in himself is the one thing you cannot withstand. Heâs getting sick⌠The tears you tried so desperately to hide finally well up, blurring your vision as your entire defense system collapses from the inside out.
âItâs okay, d-dad, weâll be okay,â you step into his space and pull him into a tight hug, âI got a small job above, hm?â
His body goes rigid in your arms at first. His voice comes out strained with disbelief and worry, âabove?â the weary, defeated look from moments before vanishes, replaced by a wide eyed fear that forces him awake, âyou mean⌠up there? With them?â You donât answer but instead, you tighten your grip around his shoulder to reassure him. But he pulls back further to look at your face. âYou shouldnât be there⌠Youâ you donât belong in that system. They donât let people like us just⌠walk in and out easily.â
You wipe at your face quickly with the back of your hand even though more tears keep coming anyway. Your breath stutters, but your voice forces itself to sound coherent. âItâs temporary,â you offer a brave smile, âitâs just work, I can handle it.â
His fingers dig in your shoulders, trying to convince you this time instead of the other way around, ânothing up there is just anything,â he says with worried eyes, âthey donât do âtemporaryâ with people from The Ground. You donât know them.â
You shake your head, fighting back the wave of intimidation his fear is drumming up in your own chest, âwe need it, itâs okay,â you force yourself to look him dead in the eye as you lock your expression down, tightening your jaw so he canât read the anxiety swirling beneath your surface.
The wall you put up makes him go quiet again and the worry freezes into a sickening dread. His eyes drop to the floor, his throat bobbing as he swallows something bitter and suffocating, âno, I canât let you pay for their decision with your own future.â
Taking a deep breath, you refuse to let the argument slip away. Moving closer, you slide your hands down his arms until your fingers are woven into his calloused weak hands, squeezing tightly. âDad, listen to me,â you sound insistent. âIâm already in it. I already said yes, itâs done.â
The ambient warmth in his eyes vanishes, replaced by a flash of alarm that turns his entire expression strict again and terrifyingly alert, âyou said yes? Already?â he asks strictly without any bluff, âto who? Okay tell me what kind of job is it?â
You were expecting at least this much from him but seeing the level of the fear in his eyes catches you off guard even though you shouldâve also expected this. For a split second, your mind goes entirely blank as the cover story evaporates from your tongue.
His expression comes back to normal by just a fraction when he senses your hesitation, but the urgency pulsing through him is deafening. He squeezes your hands back, pleading, âsweetie, tell me,â he calms but no less urgent. âTell me exactly what you agreed to.â
You force yourself to recover before he becomes suspicious. Your fingers tighten around his hands before the panic on your face can sabotage you completely, âuh so like I said, itâs a small job, so itâs not a big position or mainstream or anything,â you explain. âThere was a contract block running on one of the main district billboards for low tier maintenance staff. They needed people willing to work long shifts above and I just... applied.â You shrug one shoulder, trying to make it sound less important than it is, âI didnât even think a Sky corp would take a Ground ID.â
âMaintenance staff? Doing what exactly?â
âI donât know all the details yet. They kept talking about confidentiality policies and restricted access levels.â You scoff, âyou already know how corporations are. They act stupidly serious and mysterious about everything.â
The tension in his face doesnât disappear immediately, though his grip loosens from your hands only slightly while he studies every inch of your expression, trying to decide whether to trust your words or the fear he still feels crawling under his skin. The room falls quiet even though you can still very clearly hear the dying power supply overhead and the noise bleeding in from the streets below.
You hate doing this. Itâs in your chest while you hold his eyes and force yourself not to look away first. Everything inside you screams to tell him what you want and let him stop you before things go too far, but the image of the medical notices sitting untouched on the table flashes through your mind. You think about the empty kitchen cabinets, empty fridge, the unpaid bills, barely any drinkable water, and the faded smile of your dad. You cannot let him deal another thing.
âItâs just cleaning systems and fixing old wiring,â you continue for more reassurance. âNothing important. Honestly, they probably just wanted cheap workers from here again.â
Your fatherâs expression twists at that. Pain flashes across his face before exhaustion overcomes him again, âI still donât like it,â He lifts one hand and drags it tiredly over his mouth while his eyes lower to the floor, âpeople above donât look at us and see human beings. To them weâre replaceable before we even arrive.â
âI know,â you hold his hand.
His shoulders sag again and for the first time since the conversation started, some of the panic leaves his face⌠even though not fully, but enough for the fear in his eyes to stop cutting through you so crazy. He squeezes your hands once more before letting go. âJust... be careful, okay? Donât trust them too quickly. If something feels wrong, you leave immediately. I donât care about the money.â
Your throat tightens and you nod before he can notice the guilt rising all over your face again, âI will,â you promise, âIâll be safe.â
He reaches up and brushes his hand against the side of your head gently, his hands feel weak on your head but familiar enough to nearly break you all over again, âyouâre still my little girl,â he whispers lovingly, âno job up there changes that.â
The tears threaten to return instantly and you force yourself to smile anyway, leaning down just a bit to press your forehead briefly against his shoulder while trying to ignore the sick feeling twisting deeper inside your chest.
â
A few months back,
Outside, the 45 minutes public power ration was already ticking away, but inside this suffocating basement, the alert of stolen corporate bandwidth was deafening.
Your fingers flew across the mechanical keys in a frantic race against the automated trace programs of the Sky Grid.
On the screen, your real biometric profileâ linked to your fatherâs blacklisted corporate IDâ glowed an angry definitive red.Â
result:
{
  "status": "TERMINATED",
  "access": "DENIED",
  "reason": "BLACKLIST",
  "flag": "PERMANENT_BLACKLIST",
  "source": "CORP_GLOBAL_REGISTRY"
}
You canât even try to apply under your own name as the security grid flags you before you even enter your hobbies. Why would you even want to add your real identity to the fucked up system and get into trouble? Itâs not your plan. You just wanted to see what shows up on your screen, and youâve seen it now.
You took a breath as you pulled a black data shard from your pocket and jammed it into the consoleâs rusted drive. A new screen initialized, blooming into a vivid glowing magenta overlay. Lines of raw code began overriding the corporate restriction blocks. You werenât just faking a resume; you were reconstructing your entire existence.Â
SYS_OVERRIDE_INITOVERRIDE: #D60076
MODE: IDENTITY_REWRITE
[BIOHASH]
status: OVERRIDE... COMPLETE
[HISTORY_RECORDS]
status: ERASING... COMPLETE
You watched as your digital fingerprints were pixelated and rewoven into an entirely untraceable ghost profile. The system needed a clean history who had never choked on the dirt of your district. Basically someone the automated hiring algorithms would pull without a second thought. It was a complete identity erase. If you failed, the trace would loop straight back to this basement and lock you in a corporate detention block. If you succeeded, you would be stepping directly into the lionâs denâ the exact same megacorporation that had done your father wrong and cost him everything including his health and sanity.
The progress bar hit 100% and the terminal chimed.
new_identity:
{
  "name": "SILV",
  "origin": "UNREGISTERED",
  "clearance": "LEVEL_GRAY",
  "biometric_state": "UNLINKED"
}
route: SEC_17_MAINTENANCE_DIVISION
location: ATMOSPHERE_LEVEL_13
status: QUEUED
applicant_id: NULL
tracking: DISABLED
You ripped the data shard out, plunging the screen back into darkness just as the illegal power splice sputtered and died. You sat in the pitch black and waited for your racing heart to catch up to the reality of what you had just done.
A buzz from your cracked wrist comm goes off at ass oâclock (04:15).
You kill the alarm instantly as the glow of the screen fades back into the pitch black of your room. The public power isnât due to turn on for another hour, leaving the apartment freezing and suffocatingly quiet. You donât turn on a flashlight. You know the layout of the warped, damp wooden floors by heart and step over the boards you know would groan under your weight.Â
You creep toward your fatherâs room, pushing the rusted metal door frame open a little bit to just go through.
The sound of his breathing immediately made your chest ache. It was shallow and broken; broken by a wet, rattling wheeze that seemed to take every ounce of his remaining strength. In the faint gray light filtering through the grime of the window, he looks terrifyingly fragile to the point that his shoulders are hunched even in sleep. He is slipping away, and the bitter reality of it presses down on you like an actual physical weight. Thereâs no time left.
Heading into the tiny kitchen corner, you get to work. You fire up the portable burner, making the blue flame hiss as you throw together whatever rations you had leftâ a simple, warm broth and some stale bread. By the time the water was boiling, you heard a cough from the doorway.
Your dad was leaning his weak shoulder heavily against the frame, eyes blinking tiresomely against the faint light of the stove. âYouâre up too early,â his voice hoarse like gravel.
âLook whoâs talking,â you counter smoothly, forcing your voice into a lighthearted nag as you pour the broth into a chipped ceramic bowl. You didnât let your hands shake, âsit down. Youâre supposed to be resting, why are you awake so early?â
He let out a weak huff that was supposed to be a laugh, guiding himself slowly into the rickety chair, âI wanted to see you off little bird⌠and spend as much time as I possibly canâ with you.â
âYouâre seeing me off by sitting right there and eating every drop of this,â you set the bowl down in front of him along with three small, faded pills you have carefully counted out from their near empty blister packs. âThe rest of the meds are on the top shelf behind the synthetic tea. I set a reminder on the wall clock to alert you when itâs time for the afternoon dose. Donât ignore it because youâre distracted playing with those dead circuit boards, okay? And donât try to ration them. Iâll send credits down the moment my first shift clearance processes.â
He looked at the pills with a suffocating guilt clouding his eyes, âsweetie, youââ
âEat, dad,â you interrupt gently, leaning down to press a kiss against his temple. His skin felt warm; a fever threatening to take hold. You squeeze his shoulder and prepare yourself to the warmth of him one last time. âI have to catch the early transit before the crowds build up. Iâll comm you when I reach the worker bunks.â
He caught your hand with his weak but desperate calloused fingers, âbe careful up there. Remember what I told you. They donât see us as human.â
âI know,â you offer a reassuring smile, slowly pulling your hand away before the lump in your throat swallows your voice entirely. âI love you, dad.â
âLove you too, little bird.â
And just like that, you didnât look back as you grabbed your heavy tool belt and stepped out into the damp, freezing corridor, locking the door behind you. There was only one way forward.
â
The air outside was choking with the sulfurous smog over the lower districts. As you walked, the silence of your alleyways bled into a vibrating roar. The Atmospheric Transit Hub was an absolute mess.
Even at this hour, thousands of Ground workers were jammed into the concrete plaza with their rusted toolboxes. Above them, the massive steel pillars of the structural supports stretched up into the smog as it disappeared entirely into the clouds. Somewhere way up there, hidden by the pollution, was The Sky gleaming and completely oblivious to the misery keeping it afloat.
You joined the slow moving line leading to the high velocity elevators. Up ahead, massive corporate security checkpoints going through the crowd. Enormous holographic displays pulsed with advertisements, casting a harsh blinding magenta glow over the exhausted faces of the workers. What a show off.
The line crawls forward toward the bright neon teeth of the checkpoint.
Your heart drums against your ribs as you finally step into the scanning pod. A halo of cold white lasers drops from the ceiling, washing over your face, your hands, your clothes. Your breath catches. For a very long second, youâre certain the alarms are going to scream and that the ghost profile you coded in that dark basement is going to shatter.
Instead, a synthesized chime echoes through the pod.
And a metal gate slides open. You swallow the lump of anxiety in your throat and step through, blending into the crowd shoved into the high velocity elevator. When the doors seal, the ascent begins. It doesnât feel like a normal elevator; it feels like being shot into the stratosphere. The gravity pulls heavily at your boots and your ears pop, and through the glass flooring you watch, The Ground shrink into a dark sprawling smudge beneath a blanket of toxic clouds.
And then, the smog clears, and The Sky hits you.
Wow.
It is blinding. Towering skyscrapers wrapped in rivers of moving light and monorails like veins. Itâs exactly what you dreamed to see but the obnoxious wealth of it makes your stomach turn.
The elevator doors hiss open at Atmosphere Level 13, and the corporate chill hits your skin.
Standing at the terminal dock is a man who looks like he was carved out of the elite infrastructure itself. He wears a stark, pristine navy suit, a silver security badge gleaming on his lapel. Officer S.Coups.
His eyes sweep over the line of arriving Ground workers, his posture showing an absolute authority that makes everyone automatically look down. He doesnât look at any of you like youâre human when checking credentials and othersâ just assets to be sorted. When his gaze lands on you, your jaw locks to maintain that empty oblivious blankness.
He checks his digital ledger and a machine youâve never seen before, before his deep voice comes through. You werenât expecting his voice to sound this⌠anyway. âSilv,â he reads, âSector 17. Move to the main grid corridor. Your shift starts immediately, no delays.â
You give a stiff nod and keep your head down as youâre guided past him and routed deep into the metallic underbelly of the maintenance deck.
The work area is a massive chamber of exposed conduits and filtration systems. Itâs crowded with other Ground workers, all clad in the same gray jumpsuits and silently scrubbing panels and rewiring auxiliary grids. You slide into a station and immediately blend into the momentum of the team, working obliviously as if youâve done this a thousand times before. Passing by a heavy surveillance camera blinking its red optical lens at you, you low key tilt your head to the opposite side and block your face from the lensâs line of sight. Hidden in the blind spot, you flash a wink at the tall figure standing across the room before dropping your eyes back to the wires. But all the system sees is a perfect, harmless employee.
An hour drags by before the overhead chime signals a brief, ten minute rotation break.
You step away from your station and wipe oil from your hands, and head toward the hydration units. A tall figure steps up to the dispenser next to you. Sharp, cat-like eyes blink behind a pair of standard issue safety glasses.
Wonwoo.
A wave of relief rushes through you when heâs finally near you but you donât let a single ripple of it show on your face. In a place like this, the higher ups are always listening; every vent and terminal has an ear.
âSo what do you think?â
You turn to him, keeping your posture entirely natural as you take the hand he extended, âgood to have a functional grid here,â you do a perfectly mundane, non suspicious small talk.
Wonwoo takes your hand in his reassuring grip. His thumb presses into your palmâ a silent, private acknowledgment that canât be read by anyone but you. He smiled just a bit with hints of warmth in his eyes that matched yours. Even though you took all the risks, faked the credentials, and hacked the system yourself, Wonwoo was the one who risked himself and had mapped out the Skyâs blind spots for you from the inside, giving you the blueprint you needed to survive up here and hack the system.
âThe atmospheric pressure takes some getting used to though since youâre new,â Wonwoo replies casually, his deep voice completely level for the hidden microphones. âJust follow the standard protocols and youâll run smooth.â
âGood to know,â you offer a smile as you pull your hand back. You glance toward the structural windows when your thoughts instantly drift past the monorails, straight down through the heavy clouds to your place in The Ground.
Your hand slips toward your wrist-comm. You need to keep your promise⌠so finish your shift as soon as possible. âUh, Iâm Silv, it was nice meeting you but I think Iâll have to go now,â you try to end the conversation here.
âYou too, Silv. Iâm Wonwoo by the way.â
âSee you later!â you wave bye as you walk away.
âSee you.â
You spend the next twelve hours losing yourself in the grind of the maintenance deck. You purge atmospheric filters, solder fried power lines and motors and keep your head down, executing the potential of Silv flawlessly. By the time the shift supervisor dismisses your sector, every muscle in your back is already aching.
Youâre routed along with the rest of the Ground crew down into the worker bunks. Itâs exactly the kind of crowded hive you expectedâ rows of metal capsule pods stacked top to bottom.
You crawl into your assigned pod and slide the metal door shut with a pressurized hiss that locks out the chitchat of the barracks. The space is tiny and barely wide enough to turn over, illuminated only by an indicator light on the ceiling.
You pull the blanket all the way up over your head, plunging yourself into absolute darkness.
Inside your makeshift tent, you wait a few long minutes and listen to the sound of the ventilation, ensuring no automated audio sweep is flagging your pod. Slowly, you bring your wrist-comm close to your face. The screen boots up, casting a reflection across your eyes.
You navigate past the monitored system logs to the encrypted partition you built back in the basement.
You tap the interface and release the untraceable, pre-coded data ping you promised your father. It bypasses the Skyâs outgoing walls and drops right into the rusted wall clock of your place on The Ground. Iâm in, Dad. Iâm safe.
You kill the screen and let the dark swallow you whole as you finally let out the breath youâve been holding since ass oâclock this morning. Phase one is completed.
The metal housing of the auxiliary coolant valve is freezing against your calloused fingers. Underneath your gray maintenance jumpsuit, your shirt is plastered to your spine with greasy sweat. Above you, thirty feet up in the shadows of the vaulted ceiling, the optical lens of an automated Sec-Eye sweeps the corridor. A mechanical click-click-click traces its movement. You have exactly four seconds between its rotations where the blind spot sags over your station.
Your fingers slip into your tool belt around the micro spanner Wonwoo passed you during yesterdayâs break. The automated logistics algorithm doesnât look at human performance reports, his deep calm voice echoes in your memory as a ghost from the brief ten minute window by the water dispensers. It tracks fluid dynamics. If a deckâs pressure drops by 0.4 percent three weeks in a row, it flags the assigned personnel as a logistical drag. It moves them out to balance the line.
Click. The camera turns away. Your jaw locks and you jam the spanner into the valveâs regulator nut and twist. The metal groans a terrifyingly loud sound in the thrumming silence of the corridor. You strip the thread a little as a nearly invisible hiss of pressurized Freon escapes, biting into the skin of your thumb with a chemical freeze. You yank the tool back and shove it into your pocket just as the red light of the lens sweeps back over your face.
Your heart is hitting your ribs so hard youâre sure the acoustic sensors in the walls will pick it up. You force your features into a dull eyed stare while dragging a dirty rag across the casing of the pipe. Your hands are shaking as the adrenaline turns your blood to ice water. If the grid detects the intentional tool marks on that nut, you arenât getting reassigned. Youâre getting deleted⌠probably from the world as well when they find out more dirt about you.
Survival up here isnât just running; itâs a grueling game of chess against a machine that records everything. You donât just get assigned to an executive penthouse on your second day. An invisible nobody from The Ground doesnât walk onto the top floors without triggering a thousand alarms. You have to let the system itself funnel you there.
By noon, the legal power ration on the Tech Deck is fluctuating, causing the overhead tube-lights to hum a sickening brown-out frequency. Your break chime rings.
You walk toward the hydration units. Every muscle in your shoulders is locked tight while your thumb is still numb from the Freon burn. You press your palm against the dirty dispenser pad and a stream of lukewarm water trickles into your plastic cup, but a shadow falls over the dispenser next to you.
Behind the thick scratched plastic of his safety glasses, Wonwooâs eyes donât look at you yet. You already know that heâs tracking the digital readout on the water machine.
âPressure on Sub-Sector 4 is dropping,â Wonwoo says. His deep voice is perfectly flat, completely conversational and devoid of any inflection that would trigger an AI audio sweep. âLooks like a faulty valve seal. Theyâll probably run an optimization update by Friday.â
You take a swallow of the metallic water, your eyes staring straight ahead at the rust stained wall. âOld pipes,â you casually reply but itâs your voice forcing itself through the lump of nerves in your throat. âEverything up here breaks eventually.â
Beneath the metal counter, out of the line of sight of the camera mounting behind the ventilation shaft, Wonwooâs fingers slide across the cold casing of the housing unit, leaving something flat but small, and warm from his pocket resting right on the side of the metal ledge between your machines. Itâs another micro data chit.
âThe standard protocol for Level 9 Residential says they need replacements with clean bio scents,â Wonwoo continues his, âcan be important to you but also unnecessary for the detectors,â small talk, but you notice the slight tremor in his fingers as he takes his hand back from you. He isnât looking at you but his shoulder is less than an inch from yours. You can feel the heat radiating off him in the freezing room.
He knows what youâre doing. He knows that every step you take up that ladder brings you closer to the executive board and closer to the wolves who tore your father apart. And he knows that once you reach those floors, his technical expertise canât shield you anymore. He is building the ladder for your escape even if it means watching you climb into the fire. âThanks for the tip,â you murmur while your fingers slide over the data chit with your street smart dexterity, tucking it into the secret seam of your cuff. Before you pull away, Wonwooâs hand hesitates on his water cup, and so for a split second, his thumb presses against the back of your knucklesâ a sudden pressure that feels completely different from his usual self. But you track it for what it is; itâs a silent desperate plea. Donât get caught. Donât leave me behind.
You donât⌠you canât squeeze back. The hatred inside your chest is too much as it suffocates black weight that leaves no room for anything else. You will do your best and leave the rest to fate, fate is all you can trust in moments like this. You donât think youâre even qualified for detention but rather just taking your life away. You drop your cup into the recycling chute and walk away without looking back, leaving him standing alone under the flickering brown lights.
â
The notification arrives on your wrist-comm at 04:00, twenty minutes before your alarm is even set to go off.
You sit up in your metal capsule bunk. You did it. The algorithm took the bait. But the triumph in your chest is instantly replaced by dread. Level 9 is where things should be changing.
Three hours later, you emerge from the high velocity transit elevator onto the residential concourse, and the contrast nearly knocks you off your feet. There are no exposed pipes here or rusted grates or flickering brown out lights. The walls are clad in high gloss white composite that reflects the ambient glow of hidden LED tracks.
It feels fake. It feels like a beautiful, expensive coffin.
As you walk down the corridor with your cleaning cart, your gray jumpsuit feels like a brand of filth. The residents pass you byâ elite women dressed in flowing silks or corporate men and women in fitted suits that cost more than your fatherâs entire lifetime medical pension. They donât look at you. Their eyes skip over your form as if you are nothing more than a mobile garbage unit, a temporary blemish on their perfect visual landscape.
The hatred inside you changes. Down on the tech decks, it was a hot, raging fire. Up here, surrounded by their obnoxious luxury, it turns into a cold diamond sharp focus. Every time you scrub a pristine chrome baseboard, you think of the damp, rotting wooden floors of your kitchen below. Every time you empty a disposal unit filled with discarded, half eaten real food, you think of the empty cabinets and the pills you had to count out so carefully for your dad.
They think they are safe up here because they are high. They think the rules of reality donât apply to their floor.Â
It takes another two months of grinding through the residential sectors before you finally see him.
You are cleaning the panoramic viewing deck on Level 11, working a buffer machine over the reinforced glass flooring that looks down into the white sea of clouds. A sudden silence ripples through the corridor. Already here?
You keep your head down and fit your posture into that of the clumsy, easily intimidated Ground girl youâve been practicing in the mirror of your bunk pod.
Through the reflection in the glass, you see him approach. Kwon Soonyoung.
To the rest of the elevated metropolis, he was Hoshi, the untouchable corporate heir linked to the very executive board who signed the permanent blacklist order for your father. But to you, he was the target.
He doesnât walk like the other corporate executives. There is a different energy to his movement⌠a lethal charisma that makes him look like a predator going through a cage. He is wearing a tailored grey coat with his hair stark and perfectly styled against the soft lighting of the deck. Two personal assistants walk three paces behind him, tablets in hand, murmuring something between them that he dismisses with an impatient flick of his fingers.
This is the target. The man whose executive division signed the permanent blacklist order for your father.
Your fingers tighten on the buffer handle but you recover before itâs noticeable on the million hidden and not hidden cameras around you. Your mind is screaming at you to drop the machine and use the steel wrench in your belt to crack that arrogant jaw. The venom in your veins is so potent it makes your vision blur⌠but you force it down. You lock it deep into the dark basement of your mind where you keep your real identity. You, as in, Y/N.
Instead, as his security detail draws level with your station, you intentionally catch the cord of your buffer machine with the toe of your boot. You stumble, letting out a sharp but soft cry of âgenuineâ panic as the machine skitters out of control and clatters loudly against the base of a pillar.
The sound echoes like a gunshot through the quiet deck. âHey! Watch it, Grounder!â one of the assistants snaps as he steps forward with an angry scowl.
You instantly drop to your knees and pull your sleeves over your hands, your shoulders hunched as you mimic a terrified animal.
You donât even know if this pathetic act is gonna work but youâd rather stay delusional and see how it plays out because it always played out perfectly in the fictional books you have read, âI-Iâm sorry! Iâm so sorry, sir!â you stammer as you make your voice tremble perfectly, your eyes wide and glassy as you stare at the floor right in front of Soonyoungâs leather boots. âThe voltage fluctuated, I lost my gripâ I didnât mean toââ
The assistant is about to call security, but Soonyoung raises a single hand and they stop immediately.
Soonyoung lowers his head down as his eyes study your trembling form. To a man surrounded by corporate sharks, elegant elite women who speak in poetic flirty riddles, and bowing subordinates, your unfiltered terror is an anomaly. Even if terror is expected from Ground workers, they usually just shut up and accept their fate instead of blabbering about why the accident/mistake happened.
Itâs a glitch to him⌠and that catches his attention. You arenât a threat; youâre entirely too pathetic, a small, fragile thing from the dirt that has probably accidentally flown into his pristine sky. Because the management wonât send such a fragile worker like you, here.Â
A slight faint smug smirk touches the corner of his lips. The arrogant pity of the elite, you wanna scoff real bad.
âLeave it,â Soonyoung says as it cuts through the tension. âSheâs just a child from belowâ practically shaking out of her skin.â
âThank you, sir... thank you,â you whisper, letting a tear slip down your cheek right on cue, looking up at him with an expression of pure, star struck worship.
He looks at you for one more long secondâ captivated by the novelty of someone who views him like a god, before he turns and continues down the concourse, his detail falling into step behind him.
You stay on your knees until the sound of his footsteps completely fades. Slowly and consciously, you wipe the fake tear from your face with the back of your hand. Your eyes are completely now devoid of the fear you just put on display.
The hook is set. The chess game has officially begun. Phase 2 is completed; now slowly bait him into being soft for you.
Six months. It had taken six grueling months of you scrubbing pristine corridors as a low tier maintenance worker as you kept your head down, and kept playing the part of a star struck, clumsy girl from below before you finally managed to cross paths with him.
By him you mean, Kwon Soonyoung.
âYouâre taking dirt onto the terrace,â his voice cut through the penthouse.
You jump as you drop your cleaning cloth to the floor with intentional clumsiness. You spun around, your eyes wide like a saucer, perfectly mimicking the fragile easily rattled persona you had spent half a year perfecting, âI-Iâm so sorry, sir! The filtration units on the lower terrace were acting up, and I didn't realize my bootsââ
âBreathe,â Soonyoung interrupts. He wasnât looking at you; he was looking past you out the floor-to-ceiling glass where the monorails wove between skyscrapers like veins of pretty light. He looked effortlessly casual but lethal, a product of a world where the rules of reality supposedly stopped at his floor. âIâm not going to have you executed for a bit of dust.â Oh fuck off.
âRight. Of course. Thank you,â you stammer, biting your lip and looking down while letting a flush of faux embarrassment heat your cheeks.
This was the hook. For weeks, you had played the part of the infatuated emotionally fragile and clueless about the horrors of the hierarchy of the rich world, maintenance girl who couldnât keep her eyes off him. You had let yourself be caught staying around outside his private office, sniffing the expensive ambient scents and crying like a pretty doll when a security guard reprimanded you, pretending to be utterly overwhelmed by his mere presence. You still canât believe you werenât kicked out by other people or his several personal âassistants.â
To a man surrounded by corporate sharks and lusty beautiful elite women, a fragile unstable girl from The Ground who looked at him like he was a god was a novelty. An easy distraction; someone entirely too pathetic to be considered a threat.
When he walked closer and tilted your chin up with a gloved finger, you let your breath stutter⌠but it wasnât entirely out of acting but because the proximity of the man who held your fatherâs life in his hands was terrifying.
âYou look at me like youâre terrified Iâll do something to you,â his eyes scan your face to search for a depth you have carefully buried under layers of manufactured vulnerability, âor like you want me to.â
⌠The fuck you mean?
âI justâŚâ you swallowed the blob in your throat while letting your eyes glass over with those well rehearsed tears. âI shouldnât be up here. People like me... we donât belong in a place this bright.âÂ
To this day, youâre scared that one day heâll finally get tired of your bullshit and throw you out for the audacity of standing there with tears in your eyes and talking about things like this as if you deserve sympathy. Because clearly that would be your manipulative master plan.
A faint, amused smile touched his lipsâ the arrogant pity of the elite, âthen let me keep you here where you can see the light.â
Suddenly, his lips meet yours, and you react a second late before you lean into him as you pull him closer by the collar of his shirt. This, this is what you wanted. This is your well planned innocent seduction, but it wasnât a sweeping romance; it was a desperate way of your motives. Itâs messy as neither of you have the patience to be careful. His hand slides to your waist and you step back with him without breaking it while guiding him toward the bedroom without looking like youâre guiding anything at all. You only pretend to give the illusion of letting the man do it.
You wrap your arms around his neck and stay close, letting him think itâs a need. He kisses you harder when you donât pull away, a hoarse sound caught in his throat, and you answer him with the same amount of force to keep him from questioning the heat of it. Your mind remains entirely detached and crystal clear, even as your heart thumps wildly against your ribs as it tracks the room behind him, the distance to his private terminal, and the angle of the security panels along the wall.
Heâs walking you back until the back of your knees hit the edge of the bed. You fall onto it with him leaning over you with one hand already at your jaw, the other braced beside your head. The silk sheets are so soft and nothing like anything youâve ever slept on in your own house, and it makes your skin feel more weird instead of relaxed. But you can't let yourself freeze. Before he can pull back or think, you hook your arms around his shoulders as you drag him down with you when he attempts to straighten.
His breath chokes slightly at the rush of need as his hands move from your jaw to the zipper of your uniform jumpsuit. You decide to use that exact second of that little bit of hesitation to keep him completely focused on you instead of anything else in the room. He slides it down with an impatient tug as the heavy fabric parts and pushes it off your shoulders to expose your skin to the cool air of the room. Now, you donât let your hesitation slow you down.
As his chest presses flush against yours, your hands slide down past his waist while your fingers find the metallic snap of his trousers. You unzip it completely bypassing his defenses while keeping his mouth locked against yours so he doesn't see the cold focus in your eyes. You pull every bit of his attention onto yourself the way you need it to; the rest of the penthouse completely ceases to exist for him. His lips move from yours to your cheek and then your neck, and you let your head tilt back to make it easy for him. Your hands stay on his back as you map the hard muscle beneath his shirt the entire time to never let there be space for his thoughts to wander. When he moves you again, and you go with him immediately to keep his entire world to the limits of the bed and your body until there is nothing else.
The breathing of the both of you keeps getting slower as time passes. His grip on you loosens slightly for comfort. He has stopped thinking about anything beyond the touch of your skin. You stay exactly where you are, still making sure there is no reason for him to look away or stand up or reach for anything else.Â
The penthouse was dead silent except for the breathing of Kwon Soonyoung tangled in the sheets with you.
You slid out from under the heavy comforter entirely devoid of the clumsiness you showed during the day and the past six months. Eyes cold as you scanned the dimly lit room.
Your fingers didnât tremble as you reached for his tailored jacket draped over the chair. Slipping your hand into the interior pocket, your cold fingertips brushed against the gold rimmed biometric passkey. Six months of playing the fool and letting him believe he held all the power, boiled down to this single plastic chip.
Moving like a shadow, you slid the passkey into your maintenance jumpsuit that was on the floor when he took it off you an hour ago. You didnât dare access his terminal hereâ the internal anomalies would flag security immediately. But with this key, the restricted medical robotics archive on the sub level was completely open to you. The neural stabilization formulaâ the proprietary algorithm that could restore your fatherâs deteriorating mind and could 100% ruin their reputation for hiding this from the elites for whatever reasonsâ was within your reach.
You walked toward the door of the penthouse and for a split daunting second, your hand hovered over the release sensor. You looked back at the silhouette of the man on the bed who had given you access to The Sky, and kept you on your toes while still treating you like a human unlike other elites. But no, you didnât feel guilty when you came back to your senses and thought about the damp wooden floors of your home below. You thought about the empty kitchen cabinets with unpaid bills on the broken table and the sad smile of your dad that he hid under his âeverything is okay,â smile.
They donât do âtemporaryâ with people from the Ground, your fatherâs voice echoed in your head. You donât know them.
I know them now, dad, you thought. And Iâm getting back at them. You turned your back on that man and the clean house, stepping through the threshold and into a lit corridor. You didnât look back as you slipped past the final security checkpoint with the stolen passkey burning a hole in your pocket. There was no guarantee the grid wouldnât flag his credentials before you reached the sub levels, and no guarantee youâd ever make it back down to the toxic smog below.
But you still stepped into the elevator terminal and pressed your back again but this time against the cold glass as it prepared for its long, dizzying descent, you locked your expression down. There was only one way forward.
⌠âď¸ ÂŠ mylovesstuffs | est. 2026. thank you for readingâyour reblog means everything. until we meet again, stay cozy and keep dreaming! âá´â
