Genre : Enemies to Lovers, Action/Blood, Romance, Fluff, 18+ (hints of LIGHT spice) Yearning and Mid Angst, Possessive/Obsessive traits/thoughts.
Status: Oneshot
Parings : Sung Jinwoo x S-Rank Reader
Warnings: Slow-Burn (Apologies I got carried away!), Longing and yearning, angst at parts, blood and battles.
Summary: Y/N, Korea's eleventh S-Rank hunter, has been making waves across the world. But no matter how powerful she becomes her fiery rivalry with Japan's strongest hunter, Sung Jinwoo, never cools. Tension brews every time they’re near...until one mission forces them closer than ever. What happens when Y/N begins to unravel the truth behind her feelings for her so-called enemy… and what if he feels the same?
The air inside the dungeon felt different, dense, thick and charged. Like the atmosphere before a storm.
Y/N stepped through the gate, heels echoing sharply against the stone as magic thrummed beneath her skin. She looked every bit the S-Rank Hunter she was: black gear molded to her figure, blade strapped along her back, chin tilted in quiet defiance. Her presence turned heads, but she only had eyes for one person.
Sung Jinwoo stood at the far end of the clearing, shadows curling at his feet like restless wolves.
Their eyes met.
His were dark, impossibly deep. A flicker of something unreadable passed through them, surprise, amusement and maybe something darker or deeper. Y/N’s gaze stayed cold, controlled. But her pulse? It stuttered.
Of course it had to be him.
He didn’t say anything at first, just let his gaze rake over her like he was trying to decipher a puzzle he wasn’t sure he wanted to solve.
"You’re late," he said finally voice low and smooth, like velvet over steel.
A soft scoff escaped her lips as she raised a brow. "You’re welcome for gracing your little shadow party."
A few nearby A-Rank hunters coughed awkwardly. The tension was sharp enough to slice skin. No one dared to step between them. Many of them fiddled with their gear to seem busy, others watched from the corner of their eyes as Korea's newest S-Ranks butt heads with one another.
Jinwoo tilted his head slightly. A corner of his mouth twitched not quite a smirk. More like he was entertained by her. “Are you always this cocky before a fight?”
“Only when I’m paired with someone who thinks a shadow army makes up for a personality.” Y/N is quick to reply.
That got a real reaction, his brow lifted and for the first time a smirk tugged at his lips.
'Touché.'
As she walked past him her shoulder brushed against his chest, intentionally of course. She didn’t look back, but she felt it. His heavy gaze.
Then his voice came again. “Try not to slow me down.”
She paused turning just enough to give him a look. Head slightly tilted lips parted with mock sympathy, eyes alight with challenge.
“Careful, Jinwoo. I bite.”
His smirk dropped replaced with something else and more primal. A flicker of heat in his gaze.
The dungeon was hellish burnt red skies overhead, twisted ruins clawing out of the ground and monsters that screamed like metal tearing.
Y/N’s blade danced through the air precise and deadly. Jinwoo's shadows moved like a living wave, swallowing enemies whole. Their fighting styles clashed and complemented each other. Her fire verses his void.
At one point a mutated ogre roared and lunged toward her blind side. Her body turned too late and her body tensed ready for impact.
Jinwoo appeared in a blink, one hand gripping the ogre’s leg mid-swing and the other pressing her back to his chest as the creature was torn apart behind them.
“Watch it,” he murmured near her ear breath warm, fingers lingering on her waist. “You're reckless.”
She stiffened at the contact her heart hammering. Her ears burned with anger and shame. How dare he and in front of the team too.
“I had it handled,” she snapped wrenching away from his grip. Her face was flushed.
His eyes dropped to her lips, then slowly dragged up to meet hers again. His expression is unreadable but intense.
“You sure?” he asked quietly.
Y/N hated the way her stomach flipped why did he have to act so…soft? “I don’t need you saving me.”
“I know.” He said it too calmly. “ Maybe I just like touching you.” He says with a lazy smile.
Her breath hitched. Her blade clinked against stone as her fingers tightened around the hilt.
Their faces were inches apart now, and for a second, a mere second. Her resolve faltered. She saw it in his eyes too. That flicker of something he wasn’t saying.
She swallowed it down. Hard.
"Save the flirting for after we survive," she hisses turning away.
He chuckled “So there will be an after?”
She didn’t answer jumping back into the fray with more effort to ignore her wildly beating heart.
The gate began to rumble and the final boss revealing itself in a pulse of blinding magic. As the light flashed Y/N turned just enough to see Jinwoo watching her. Not sizing her up. Not smirking.
Just watching.
Like she was the only thing in the room that scared him. She gave him a smirk lips curved just enough to be dangerous. “Let’s finish this, shadow boy.”
His shadows coiled around his feet again, agitated.
He didn’t smile this time.
“I plan to,”
The dungeon’s final chamber opened like the mouth of a beast with veins of crimson light pulsing through the cracked obsidian floor.
A towering creature of molten bone and jagged stone horned, hissing, eyes glowing like lava. The air rippled with oppressive heat as its claws dragged across the ground sending sparks flying.
“It’s a flame warden,” Jinwoo said eyes narrowing. “And it’s pissed.”
Y/N cracked her neck fire licking at her fingertips. “Good.”
The ground trembled as the monster lunged. The A-Ranks scattered. It moved fast, too fast for something its size.
Jinwoo’s shadows exploded outward.
“Arise.”
The earth split as his army poured from it Beru leading the charge, Igris flanking his right dozens of shadow beasts racing behind them. Screams echoed from both the creature and the awestruck hunters.
The flame warden swung its molten arm incinerating two summoned beasts mid-swipe but Jinwoo didn’t flinch.
Instead he stepped forward hand raised like a king addressing his court. “Crush it.”
The shadows surged.
Y/N didn’t wait either.
She raised both hands one swirling with crackling lightning the other pouring with chilled mist. With a sweeping motion she sent a cyclone of steam and electric arcs toward the beast’s exposed core.
It howled.
From above, ice daggers rained. From below, fissures erupted with flame and water. Her magic danced with devastating precision. Every movement was like a storm learning how to breathe through her body.
Jinwoo caught himself watching her.
The way her hair whipped around her face. The fury in her eyes. The glow of elements bending to her will.
She was beautiful. And terrifying.
The boss shrieked again swinging wildly and knocking several hunters off their feet. Its tail whipped toward one of them a trembling A-Rank who’d fallen and couldn’t get up fast enough.
“MOVE!” someone screamed.
He couldn’t. The tail was seconds from crushing him.
And then.....
Y/N moved.
She blurred across the field body shoving the hunter out of the way just as the monster's tail slammed into her side.
The crack of impact echoed like thunder.
She flew back, crashing against a pillar with a sickening sound.
“Y/N!” someone yelled.
Jinwoo froze and time stopped.
The shadows behind him hissed and rippled. His breath caught and he was by her side in a blink.
Blood trailed from the corner of her mouth. Her body was limp. Magic flickered erratically around her fingers like a broken current. She curled up into a fetus position trying to regular her breaths, she knew she cracked her ribs.
“Y/N,” he breathed, dropping to his knees beside her.
Her lashes fluttered. “Still... faster than you,” she mumbled a faint smirk on her lips even through the pain. She refused to show weakness, especially to the likes of Sung Jinwoo. But the damage was done and she felt her vision blur. Her smile falters as the softest whimper of pain escapes her trembling lips.
And that was it. The leash broke.
Jinwoo’s expression twisted, his usual calm burned away. The shadows around him roared like a pack gone rabid.
The boss turned toward them.
'Wrong move.'
Jinwoo stood slowly, eyes pitch black face blank, except for the rage simmering underneath.
“You hurt her.”His voice was low.
The shadows responded like a tidal wave.
“Kill it. Slowly.”
Beru lunged with a howl. Igris drove his sword straight through the beast’s jaw. The other shadows piled onto it like a black sea, ripping, tearing, dragging it down. The flame warden shrieked in agony.
And Jinwoo just stood there, watching as if daring the universe to touch her again.
Within moments the creature’s screams died into wet silence. The shadows tore it limb from limb until there was nothing left but molten ash and blood on the stone.
Then, silence. The team healer was making his rounds as the rest watched in awe. Some were shaken up by how…cold Jinwoo seemed now.
Jinwoo returned to Y/N’s side, kneeling again, trembling as his hands hovered over her. Too scared to touch. Too scared to find out.
“Stupid,” he whispered, voice raw now. “Why would you…why didn’t you let me?-...”
Y/N coughed softly. “Wasn’t going to let him die. That’s not who I am.”
He closed his eyes. Exhaled sharply through his nose. Then his hand cupped her jaw carefully, like she’d break again if he wasn't gentle enough.
“Don’t do that again,” he said voice low and shaking. “You don’t get to throw yourself away like that.”
“I didn’t…” she swallowed thickly breath hitching, “…didn’t need you to save me.”
“I know,” he said quickly, his voice too soft, too intimate.
Her throat tightened. Her body screamed in pain, but it wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was feeling her guard slipping in front of him.
She didn’t want to be vulnerable. Not with Sung Jinwoo. Not now. Not ever.
She wanted to say something else. Something sharp. Distant. Something that would keep the wall between them tall and sturdy. But her eyelids grew heavy.
“I don’t-” she started, voice cracking.
Then everything dropped.
Her last breath left her lips in a shudder, and she slumped unconscious in his arms.
Jinwoo sat there frozen, holding her limp form like it was something sacred and about to shatter. He didn’t say anything. Didn’t scream. But the look on his face was worse than rage.
Around them, the battlefield smoldered. Shadows crept closer, curling protectively around their fallen queen. They knew, they knew how much she meant to their king.
And for the first time, the Shadow Monarch looked like he might burn the entire world down just to keep one person breathing.
First the weight of her own breath. Then the sting, searing pain in her ribs, her side and even her shoulder. Her body felt like it had been through a meat grinder. And finally Y/N opened her eyes with a hiss.
The hospital ceiling above her was a soft grey lit by low fluorescent lights. The sheets were stiff. The smell of the sterile environment wrinkled her nose. She was tucked in tightly... too tightly. Someone must have known she’d try to sit up the second she woke.
And they were right.
She groaned, arm trembling as she tried to push herself up. Every muscle in her body screamed.
“Don’t,” came a warm voice from her left.
She turned wincing in pain and found Guild Master Baek Yoonho sitting beside her bed. His thick brows furrowed in relief as he leaned in eyes scanning her face. His large hand cupped around his coffee cup, his expression filled with relief and concern.
“Well, well,” he said with a crooked smile, gentle and tired. How long had he been here? “You’re awake.”
She blinked hard forcing her brain to focus. She felt her ears burn her guild master and someone she respected and looked up to, sat a few inches from her. And she felt incompetent for the first time in her life.
“...Guild Master?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Though you can drop the title after what you just pulled.”
She opened her mouth to answer, but he shook his head.
“You were out for two and a half days.” His voice softened. “A shattered ribcage. Internal bleeding. Burn fractures along your left side. The medics said if you were anyone else, if your magic hadn’t kicked in and stabilized you when it did…” He trailed off.
Her eyes flicked away. Silence settled in like dust. She did feel ashamed. Ashamed she wasn't strong enough, guilt for having her guild master worry. But…at least she saved her teammate. So in hindsight there was a bright side to all this. Right?
Yoonho leaned forward. “You saved an A-Rank who would’ve died. No hesitation. That’s not something I can train into a hunter, Y/N. That’s just… you.”
Her jaw clenched. He could read her too easily.
“Don’t do that,” she muttered.
He tilted his head. “Do what?”
“Make it sound noble.” Her eyes burned. “It was stupid. I knew better. But I couldnt….i didnt think…”
He smiled softly. “You always knew better. And yet…”
She looked down at her hand. Bruised. Shaking. And yet she jumped.
Yoonho sighed rubbing a hand over his face. “He’s been here the whole time, you know.”
She blinked, looking up from her hands to meet Yoonho’s gaze with confusion. “Who?-”
A soft shuffle. A presence. And a scent that Y/N could recognize anywhere.
Her blood ran cold.
From the far corner of the room, where the shadows had swallowed everything, he stepped forward.
Sung Jinwoo.
No sound. No warning. Just there.
Y/N’s breath caught. Her eyes widened but she didn’t show anything else. Not the way her heart punched her ribs not the way the air suddenly felt thinner.
He looked like hell. Like he'd been through hell and back.
Black coat thrown open, sleeves rolled and jaw tight. His expression was unreadable, but his eyes were burning. Not the usual detached coolness. Not the teasing arrogance.
No. This was cold fire. Anger.
“Get out,” he said to Yoonho voice like steel dragged across stone.
The guild master looked between them hesitant but stood without a word, hand briefly brushing Y/N’s shoulder in parting.
Then it was just them.
Silence.
Y/n sat up straightener ignoring how her body protested. She couldn't look weak, she already felt on edge for not even noticing his presence in the room the entire time. Y/N forced her voice to work. “You were hiding in the shadows this whole time?”
His gaze sharpened. “You’re lucky I was.”
She flinched at the bitterness in his tone. “I don’t remember asking you to babysit me.”
“I wasn’t babysitting,” he snapped. “I was watching you bleed out in my arms.”
Her throat tightened at his harsh tone. Has he always been like this? Where did the teasing, arrogant and cocky hunter go?
He stepped closer. Every inch closer felt like a pressure on her chest. He didn’t look calm. He looked like a grenade still counting down.
“You were reckless.”
“I made a call.”
“You almost died.”
“I’m not your responsibility,” she shot back her eyes finally meeting him.
He stopped at the foot of her bed, knuckles clenched at his sides.
“You think that matters?” His voice dropped. “You think I care what role you are to me when I watched your eyes roll back and your blood pool beneath your head?”
Y/N looked away.The room felt tiny, the space between them felt suffocating.
He stepped even closer close enough for her to see the vein in his neck pulsing. His expression was unreadable but underneath it all was fear.
“I’ve died before,” he said quietly. “I know what it looks like. You were half a breath from it.”
Silence swelled again. The worst part? She didn’t know what scared her more, how angry he was…
…or how much of it came from something real.
She clenched her jaw. She didnt want this she didnt need for the strongest hunter to berate her like this. Not now….not when she needed comfort, not aggression and confusion. Her voice cracked. “You should go.”
He didn’t move. Her fists clenched under the sheets. “Please.”
Still, he didn’t move. But something in his eyes shifted, something small. Something devastated. He turned without another word, shadows rising around him like smoke.
Sung Jinwoo sat on a stiff vinyl chair across from Baek Yoonho, elbows on his knees, hands clasped so tightly the bones in his knuckles ached.
The only sound was the hum of the vending machine in the corner. And the ghosts in his head.
He hadn't moved since he'd stormed out of her room. His shadows curled close, subdued, like even they knew something was wrong.
Yoonho sipped from a styrofoam cup and finally broke the silence. “You look like hell.”
Jinwoo didn’t glance up. “I’ve felt worse.”
He had.
He had.
But this? This was different.
The pain wasn’t in his body. It was in his chest. In the space between his ribs that had always been empty, until she wedged herself there with a sharp tongue her enchanting eyes and the storm in her veins.
He hadn’t stopped seeing her hit that wall.
Hadn’t stopped hearing the sound of her body breaking.The thought alone made his stomach twist again. It shook him to his core.
“You didn’t have to stay,” Yoonho said voice lighter now. “I’m watching her. She’s safe.”
Jinwoo’s fingers tightened. “I don’t trust anyone else to keep her safe.”
There was a pause. Then Yoonho raised an eyebrow over the rim of his cup. “Even me?” A beat.
Jinwoo exhaled sharply through his nose. “I’m… sorry.” He looks up, his earlier words weighing him down as he makes eye contact with a surprised Yoonho.
“I was disrespectful earlier. In the room,” Jinwoo said words stiff and raw in his throat. “You were trying to help her. You were there for her.I dismissed that. That wasn’t right.”
Yoonho’s expression softened. “Wow. The Sung Jinwoo actually apologizing to me? Should I frame this moment?”
“Do whatever you want,” Jinwoo muttered, finally sitting back. His head tipped toward the ceiling. “I just saw red….I have been seeing red…”
He trailed off. Words failed him. Yoonho waited patiently, biting back the small smile that threatened to break though. He could read Jinwoo like a book.
“I can’t… think straight around her,” Jinwoo admitted finally voice quieter now. “When she’s near me, it’s like the system glitches. Everything that was simple becomes… tangled.”
Yoonho chuckles the sound vibrating through his chest as he takes a sip. “She has that effect.”
Jinwoo looked at him sharply.
“She’s strong. Smart. Intense.” Yoonho swirled the coffee in his hand. “Hard not to be drawn in. I’ve seen a lot of people crash and burn trying to keep up with her.”
“I’m not crashing,” Jinwoo said instinctively.
Yoonho gave him a look. He didn’t repeat it.
“She makes me angry,” Jinwoo said instead. “But not in the way other hunters do. She challenges me, pushes me, makes me question things I’ve already decided. And I… I hate that. I hate how she gets under my skin.”
“Sounds like someone who cares.”
“I don’t-” Jinwoo paused, jaw clenching. “I don’t know if I’m capable of that.”
Yoonho sets the cup down. “Why? Because you’ve changed? Because you’ve seen too much?”
Jinwoo didn’t answer.
“You know,” Yoonho said after a moment, “most people think anger is the opposite of love. But it’s not. Indifference is.”
Jinwoo’s gaze met his, hard and guarded.
“You don’t get this twisted over someone you hate, Jinwoo,” Yoonho continued, calm and even. “You don’t stay in a hospital for days in the shadows. You don’t remember the exact sound someone made when they collapsed.”
Jinwoo looked away as if the memory of that shattered his entire being.
“Maybe what you’re feeling isn’t hate,” Yoonho said quietly. “Maybe you’ve just never been this close to someone you could lose.”
The room fell silent again and Jinwoo stared down at his hands.
They had killed thousands.
Commanded armies.
Held nations in the palm of their grip.
But right now, they trembled.
“She made me feel something I thought I’d buried,” he whispered. “And when I saw her go down, it wasn’t fear. It was rage. The kind that swallows you whole. That unhinges something.”
Yoonho leaned forward resting his elbows on his knees. “That wasn’t rage.”
Jinwoo looked at him.
“That was the sound of something important breaking,” he said.
“Something you never want to lose.” Something in Jinwoo’s chest throbbed. He didn’t want to call it love. He didn’t know how to call it that. The word was too soft. But it sat in him now.
Not when their guilds were called together for the inter-guild elite defense meetings. Not when they crossed paths in the corridors of the HQ. Not even when their shoulders brushed in passing.
She moved like he wasn’t there. Like he was a ghost she refused to see. But he saw her, every time and it gutted him. From the far end of the long conference table Sung Jinwoo watched her speak in quiet tones with colleagues, her face composed. She was dressed in her standard combat gear nothing flashy.
He knew why she was avoiding him. He just didn’t know how to fix it. He knew he crossed a line by snapping at her for being hurt, but he couldn't help it. Her mangled body looking so vulnerable in the hospital bed…it was burned into his psyche and it made him act out.
“You’re staring again,” came Baek’s voice low beside him, dry with amusement.
Jinwoo didn’t turn. “Not staring. Watching.”
“Is that what we’re calling it?”
He didn’t answer. Because if he spoke he might say something he couldn’t take back.
The meeting continued around him strategies, territory shifts, dungeon breach forecasts. He heard none of it. His eyes stayed on her.
How she kept her gaze anywhere but him.
How she answered every question with precision but never emotion.
How she smiled, but never at him.
There had been a time, not long ago, when her voice had been fire and ice in his veins. When she had looked at him and seen straight through the armor.
Now she wouldn’t even meet his eyes.
And yet he couldn’t stop looking.
Because no matter how far she moved away from him, she still held his world in the curve of her lips and the space between her words.
And he hated that.
He hated how her absence echoed louder than any battle cry.
Later, when the meeting adjourned and people filtered out into the corridor Jinwoo stood near the back wall, alone, as always. He didn’t move as she passed, not even when her shoulder brushed the air an inch from his.
But his hand curled into a fist by his side.
In the shadows, his army was still. Quiet. Even they knew. He wasn’t the hunter in this story anymore. He was the prey. Longing, yearning and helpless.
Watching the only person who made him feel human turn to stone before his eyes.
When the Guild called in emergency reinforcements for a rapidly shifting gate, She had been ready to decline. She didn’t have the emotional energy, not with him likely being there. Not when her chest still twisted every time she thought about the hospital room she never said goodbye in. How she dismissed him when he was waiting for her, when he was concerned for her. It left her on edge, filled with confusing feelings and emotions.
But when Baek showed her the roster…
And his name wasn’t listed…
She said yes.
She didn't realize until she arrived at the site that he had said yes too.
And he was already there. Waiting.
Sung Jinwoo stood beside the Guild leaders like he had always belonged, black coat fluttering in the wind expression unreadable except when he looked at her.
Her fingers tightened on the straps of her gear. She kept her face still. She nodded at him briefly, and turned to listen to the mission briefing.
But her chest was a mess of contradictions. She could feel his gaze.
Every. Time. It didn't burn…it pulled. And once, just once, as she passed him to check the perimeter with her team, her shoulder brushed his.
Her heart stuttered.
‘Dammit’
They were ten minutes into the raid when it happened. The dungeon shifted. The air collapsed in on itself like the gravity of a dying star and the world snapped.
A flash of blinding white.
The stone walls were gone.
The dungeon map vanished.
The team was no longer underground.
They were standing in a vast, broken plain that stretched beneath a black sky. Red lightning spiders through clouds overhead. Obsidian towers rose in the distance pulsing faintly with magic. The air was thick. Everyone was yelling.
“What the hell?!”
“Where are we?! This isn’t on the scan!”
“Gate shift, this is a second layer!”
Someone started to hyperventilate. Another hunter tried to open a portal to teleport out, and failed. Panic spread like wildfire, but two people didn’t panic.
Y/N straightened. Her eyes narrowed, head lifting as she stepped forward voice sharp and cutting across the noise like a blade.
“Enough!”
The yelling stopped. She turned to the group, face steady and shoulders squared.
“We don’t know where we are, but we’re not dead. That means this isn’t an instant kill trap. Which means we can survive this.” Her voice didn’t shake. “We need a base. A perimeter. Mages in the center. Ranged on the inner circle. Swords on the outside.”
“But—”
“Now!” she snapped, and the A-Ranks moved.
Even the strongest of them a towering man with stone magic, nodded without argument. Y/N turned to scout the area strategizing the best place to anchor their makeshift camp. Maybe take out any beasts near them before she could figure out how to get out the gate. Best case scenario she runs into the boss and takes care of him with ease.
Now that she was at her full strength, she felt the urge to let loose. She takes a proposal step away from the team.
“Not alone,” came a voice behind her.
She didn’t have to turn to know who it was.
“You’re needed here,” she said flatly, not meeting his eyes.
“I’m going with you.”
She finally looked at him, her soft E/C eyes hard but held some vulnerability. A part of her stiffened when she was met with the same expression.
He wasn’t giving her the unreadable mask. He wasn’t teasing. He looked serious. Devoted and concerned. Concerned for her.
“Igris and Iron will stay,” Jinwoo added. “They’ll protect the group.”
She saw it, the shadows coiling quietly around his boots. His eyes watching her like she was the only thing tethering him to this broken sky.
Like he wasn’t here to save the world.He was here to follow her.
“Fine,” she muttered turning toward the ridge. He moved to her side with quiet grace.
Behind them, the group followed her orders to the letter as they left the clearing, Jinwoo followed her. Not out of strategy, obligation or rank. But because where she went, he would go.
They’d been walking for thirty minutes. No monsters. No movement. No sound. Just wind slicing through dead trees and the heavy weight of Sung Jinwoo’s footsteps beside hers.
The terrain was flat but broken, like something massive had clawed through it decades ago. Obsidian rocks jutted out like cracked ribs, and the sky still bled red lightning through charcoal clouds. Y/N’s jaw tensed as she scanned the area again, her elemental magic flaring briefly beneath her skin.
Her fingers twitched on the hilt of her weapon.
“This doesn’t make sense,” she muttered, more to herself than him.
“There should be something. A trace. A mana signature. A carcass. Something.”
Jinwoo didn’t answer right away. Just kept walking eyes calm, calculating. Finally he said with voice low, “There was something.”
Y/N turned to him. “What?”
“They’re hiding.”
She blinked. “The beasts?”
He nodded once. “They can sense me. So they’re hiding.”
Y/N stared at him disbelief flickering in her eyes. “You mean to tell me… this entire radius is crawling with beasts, but they’re so scared of you they won’t even peek out?”
He shrugged. “It happens.”
She stopped walking.
“Seriously?”
He turned back toward her. “Why are you angry about this?”
“I’m not angry” she snapped.
“You look angry.”
“I’m just-” She exhaled sharply pacing back a few steps. “Do you even understand how dangerous that makes you? You’re not just a hunter. You’re a damn walking catastrophe.”
“And yet,” he said, voice cooler now, “you keep getting assigned to work with me.”
She turned her back to him. 'More like you make it your mission to work with me'
“Y/N.”
“Don’t.”
He took a step closer. “Why won’t you look at me?”
“Because every time I do, I forget how to breathe,” she hissed without thinking. The words slipped out before she could catch them, and she felt instant regret when they did.
Silence.
Y/N squared her shoulders, she had to take it back. She turned slowly. His expression had changed. He didn’t look smug. He looked… stunned.
“Forget I said that,” she muttered, brushing past him.
But he grabbed her wrist.
Just enough to make her stop.
“Three weeks,” he said quietly. “You ignored me for three weeks. You wouldn’t look at me. Wouldn’t talk to me. Not even when I stood right in front of you.”
Her breath hitched. His fingers were warm around her wrist. His voice was calm, but his eyes were not.
“I thought I could stay away too,” he said. “I thought if I gave you space, you’d come back. But you didn’t.”
“You don’t get to say this now,” she snapped. “You don’t get to say any of this after leaving me like that in the hospital.”
“I didn’t leave.”
“You disappeared.”
“You asked me to go.”
“I didn’t think you’d listen.”
They were close now. Too close. She could see the shadow of stubble along his jaw. The way his chest rose and fell just slightly faster. The way his grip tightened just a little as she stared at his mouth. Her own heart fluttered, with…longing and anger. A mix that didn't blend well.
“You confuse the hell out of me,” she whispered.
“Good,” he said. “Because you wrecked me.”
That stopped her.
“I don’t know how to not look for you,” he continued voice rough now. “Every room. Every raid. Every goddamn meeting. I don’t know how to stop caring when you’re hurt. Or hating the silence when you’re not around.”
Her eyes searched his face desperate to find a lie. But all she found was the truth. Brutal and bare...
“You should hate me,” she breathed. “You should hate that I avoid you. That I shut you out.”
“I don’t hate you.”
“Why not?”
“Because I love you,” he said it like it hurt. “And I wish I didn’t.”
Her lips parted, but no sound came. And then, he moved.
In a heartbeat, he stepped forward and backed her against the nearest tree,one hand braced beside her head the other still holding her wrist.
His body didn’t touch hers. But his presence did. Y/N’s heart slammed in her chest as her back pressed against the hard wood behind her. His eyes bore into hers searching and silently begging. He looked vulnerable, The Sung Jinwoo looked lost, and the only thing he would see was her.
“Say something,” he said slowly.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “If I speak, I might not stop.”
He leaned in, forehead nearly brushing hers.
“Then don’t speak,” he murmured. “Just stay.”
His breath was warm against Y/N’s skin, the faintest tremor in the air between them sparked and sizzled. Y/N could feel the weight of his gaze filled with something that wasn’t quite anger, wasn’t quite pain. It was longing. desperate longing that sliced through all the walls Y/N had built.
Y/N wanted to look away but she was rooted there, pressed back against the rough bark of the tree the world around them fading until it was only them,two fractured souls tangled in the silence of everything we were too scared to say.
“I’m here,” he whispered, voice low and rough. “Still here. Waiting.” The ache in his eyes was unbearable, like he was holding years of loneliness and hope and pain all in that one look.
For a long moment, neither of them moved or spoke. Then he leaned just a little closer, his breath brushing my cheek, and she saw it clearly.
Not just the shadow of a man, but the man who wanted her.
Who needed her. Who was tired of waiting in the dark. His eyes said everything. And Y/N was no longer sure she wanted to look away. She wanted him, she always wanted him.
His eyes never left hers as he leaned in, slow, deliberate, like savoring a moment he wasn’t sure he’d get again.Y/N’ss breath hitched, every nerve screaming to either pull away or surrender.
His hand released her wrist, sliding gently to cup her cheek, thumb brushing over the soft skin with a tenderness that belied the fire burning in his gaze. The world contracted until it was just them, heartbeats thundering in sync.
Then his lips were on hers.
Soft at first, tentative, as if testing a truth neither dared say aloud. But the moment she responded, the restraint shattered. Heat surged between them desperate and fierce. His hands moved with purpose now sliding down to rest firmly on her waist pulling her flush against him.
Every doubt, every wall, every bite of silence melted away. they were no longer enemies. No longer distant. Just two broken souls finally finding a home in each other.
When they finally broke apart, breaths mingling and foreheads resting together, his voice was barely more than a whisper.
“I’ve wanted this for so long.”
Y/N giggled uncharastically, she wanted to say something snarky but the happiness that engulfed her was overwhelming.
“Me too.”
Y/N stood still, her chest rising and falling trying to catch up with her thoughts. The sudden shift from battlefield to domestic stillness was jarring. The dungeon that seemed so terrifying was an afterthought as she stared into his eyes, the heat between them burned brighter than ever.
Jinwoo reached up, his fingers brushing against her cheek with a gentleness that felt almost reverent.
Like she might shatter if he touched her too hard.
Like she wasn’t just someone he wanted…
But someone he treasured.
His thumb stroked over her cheekbone in slow, thoughtful circles as if memorizing the way her skin felt under his hand. His eyes traced her face, not quickly and not hungrily but like every detail mattered.
He followed the arch of her brow, the way her lashes fluttered against her cheek, the slope of her nose. He paused at the small freckle near her jaw then let his gaze drop to the soft curve of her lips.
She was so heartbreakingly beautiful.. Not just because of how she looked, but because of everything she was. Strong. Stubborn.
“You’re… unbelievable,” he whispered, barely audible.
His hand slid behind her neck, cradling it as if she was something sacred. Y/N was breathing hard, lips parted slightly eyes locked to him like she was just as overwhelmed.
And then his gaze returned, slowly to her mouth.He lingered there for just for a moment, one beat of silence that held the weight of every unspoken word between them.
Then he closed the space and kissed her again.
God, he kissed her like he had been starving for her since the moment they met. It wasn’t soft and it wasn't gentle. It was real, messy and hot and aching.
His mouth crushed against hers, lips parting hers with a low groan, his other hand finding her waist and gripping like he was afraid she’d disappear again.
Y/N melted into him her hands sliding under the collar of his coat, dragging him impossibly closer. She could feel the tension in him, the restraint.
He backed her up, slowly but firmly harder against the wood. His kisses deepened. His hands found the hem of her shirt tugging it upward in a desperate shaking motion.
She broke the kiss only to gasp for breath, her lips red and swollen and eyes glazed and wild.
“Jinwoo-” she whispered.
“Don’t stop me,” he said hoarsely, pressing his forehead against hers. “I’ve waited too long for this.”
“I’m not stopping you,” she breathed, voice wrecked and honest.
He looked at her then,truly looked. Eyes blown wide with lust, yes, but also with something deeper. Something terrifying. Something holy.
Love.
It burned so clearly in him she almost couldn’t stand it.
He kissed her again, slower now, but no less intense. His fingers traced her bare skin as if trying to memorize it.
In that moment, in that dungeon they weren’t enemies, rivals, or hunters.
They were just two people who had finally stopped running. And who had found each other in the fire.
After their tense scouting, Y/N and Jinwoo quickly locate the raid boss, a colossal beast surrounded by writhing minions that pulse with corrupted mana.
Y/N’s elemental manipulation flares brilliantly, ice shards freezing limbs flames roaring to scorch enemy flesh and gusts of wind sending foes sprawling. Jinwoo’s shadow army floods the battlefield like a dark tide, overwhelming the enemies with ruthless precision.
The raid group located Y/N and Jinwoo aiding the battle that had already been won. The team followed Y/N’s sharp commands, securing the perimeter and supporting the front lines effortlessly.
Within minutes, the boss falls, defeated its howls swallowed by the shadows. The remaining minions scatter or are swiftly dealt with.
As the group steps through the shimmering portal, the world twists again but this time Jinwoo’s hand suddenly clamps down on Y/N’s wrist.
Before she can react, a shadow detaches from his body and wraps around them like a cloak. The world blurs and warps.
And suddenly, they’re no longer standing with the others. They’re in the quiet, dimly lit sanctuary of Jinwoo’s house. The shadows fade, and the door closes behind them.
“No more hiding,” Jinwoo said, his voice slow and deliberate as if each word carried the weight of everything he’d kept locked inside.
Y/N’s breath caught. Her heart pounded against her ribs afrantic rhythm that matched the fire in his eyes. The air between them crackled, thick with tension and unspoken truth. A current charged every inch between them, sparking with the promise of something irreversible.
He stepped forward.
Before she could retreat, Jinwoo’s hands slid to her waist, firm but reverent, pulling her in with a possessiveness that made her spine tingle. His gaze met hers, dark, bottomless, burning with hunger, love, and something far more dangerous: longing so raw it made her knees weaken.
“No more running,” he murmured, voice rough like gravel dipped in velvet.
He threaded his fingers through her hair, tilting her face up as if presenting it to the gods. But he wasn’t looking at a goddess. He was looking at his Y/N, his undoing.
His eyes roamed over her face. He drank her in like she was the only real thing in a world built from illusion. The curve of her cheek. The bow of her lips. The shadow of her lashes. The subtle tremble in her jaw.
Y/N didn’t fight it. She couldn’t.She leaned into him, lips parted as if drawn to him by magnetic force. The moment their mouths touched again, the room exploded around them.
His kiss was everything at once, desperate and controlled, fierce and tender. It felt like surrender and possession tangled in one breathless instant. It wasn’t just a kiss. It was a claim.
Jinwoo’s hands roamed over her now, tugging at the hem of her shirt with a burning urgency, his touch igniting every nerve she’d buried beneath layers of armor. She moaned softly into his mouth, fingers curling into his hair, anchoring herself to him like he was the only solid thing in a collapsing world.
The heat between them rose too fast. Their bodies crashed together like waves in a storm, wild and unrelenting. And through it all, he watched her. Even with lips pressed against hers, even as his body molded against hers, his eyes never stopped whispering I see you. I choose you.
“I’m yours,” Y/N whispered against his mouth, the words trembling but raw, too full of truth to hide. His forehead pressed to hers, his breath shaking.
“No,” he breathed, voice thick with something far deeper. “You’ve always been mine.”
They broke apart only when their lungs demanded air. Foreheads pressed together. Eyes locked. Their chests rose and fell in sync, and the silence now was heavy with something holy.
Then, Y/N whispered. “I hated you at first,” she confessed, voice unsteady. “I thought you were arrogant. Reckless. Cold… like you didn’t care about anyone but yourself.” Jinwoo said nothing. He only looked at her, like he already knew the truth beneath it.
“But somewhere along the way…” she hesitated, reaching up to trace the line of his jaw, “it stopped being hate. I realized I was scared. Of you. Of how much space you took up in my head. Of how much I needed you when I swore I didn’t.”
Her eyes glistened.
“Somewhere along the way… it became love.”
Jinwoo’s breath caught. His throat bobbed as he swallowed. Slowly he reached up to cup her face with both hands, cradling it like it was something precious.
“I was angry,” he whispered, voice cracking. “Not at you. At myself. Because I saw you hurt, and I couldn’t do anything. I felt powerless. For someone like me… that’s unbearable.”
He exhaled sharply, voice trembling. “I remember the hospital,” he choked. “You looked at me like I was a stranger. Like I’d abandoned you. And I had.” A tear slipped from his eye, but he didn’t look away.
“I told myself it was better if I stayed away. That I didn’t deserve you. But the truth is… I was terrified. Of how much I loved you already.”
Y/N brushed the tear away with her thumb, her lips parting, breath shallow. Jinwoo’s voice dropped to a whisper but every word landed like a thunderclap. “I love you, Y/N. Every reckless, stubborn, complicated part of you. Every fight we’ve had. Every moment I thought I hated you, was a lie. You’re everything.”
A sob escaped her lips, but she smiled through it, radiant and broken open.
“I love you too.”
And just like that the silence shattered. They kissed again, slow this time. Worshipful.
The room was flooded with noise hunters talking, deals being made, strategies tossed around like cards. I stood in the corner, half listening, already bored. These meetings were always the same.
Until she walked in.
Small yet somehow more commanding than anyone else in the room. Baek Yoonho cleared his throat beside her. “This is Y/N L/N,” he said firmly proud almost. “Our newest S-Rank hunter. Proven elemental manipulator. Strong. Efficient. Not someone to be taken lightly.”
I didn’t hear anything after her name. Because I was too busy watching her.
She stood tall as Baek introduced her yet she was half his height, arms crossed, gaze sharp enough to make lesser men flinch. Her expression didn’t shift, not even when half the room turned to stare.
She didn’t need to assert herself. She just was.
Her hair caught the overhead light in waves, dark and unruly, like something wild refusing to be tamed. She wore her power like a blade at her side, unthreatening at first glance, but it was there, humming just beneath the surface.
And her face...
God, her face.
Not perfect in the way most people meant it. It was real. Alive. Lips slightly pursed in disinterest, eyes heavy-lidded but alert, every line etched with fire and control. And yet she stood like she didn’t give a single damn if anyone in this room lived or died. The kind of woman who wouldn’t bow to gods, she’d burn them down.
I found myself staring more than I should have. My pulse kicked harder, like something in me already knew.
Then her eyes met mine.
And that look-fuck. It sealed the deal. Because there wasn’t a hint of flattery or awe in her gaze.
Just a challenge.
Baek gestured between us. “Y/N, this is Sung Jinwoo. You’ll be working together soon.” I stepped forward slow and easy offering a respectful nod. “Welcome,” I said with a cool smile.
She didn’t respond. Instead, she tilted her head gaze cutting clean through me.
“Don’t expect me to make it easy,” she said flatly.
Her voice was low, like smoke. Cold and sharp, the kind of voice that could cut through silence like a blade. I smirked unable to help myself.
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Baek chuckled softly. “Good. Because both of you are the strongest we’ve got.”
That tension, that spark, was already flaring between us. I could feel it in the air. Like something dangerous had just been lit and no one else in the room even noticed. As Baek wrapped things up, she turned and started to walk away with him. Her head held high. Back straight amd unbothered.
But just before she passed the threshold her eyes flicked toward me one more time.
Just for a second.
And it hit me like a blade to the ribs. Because in that flicker, that razor-sharp glance, I didn’t just see power. I saw the beginning of my unraveling.
The way her lip twitched, just barely as she turned away. Like she knew exactly what she was doing. Her hips moved like sin wrapped in discipline. The line of her spine is straight, unshakable. And my body responded before my mind could stop it.
Tension gathered in my chest. My skin felt too hot under my clothes. My hands itched to touch something, her wrist, her waist, her goddamn mouth.
A soft smirk curled at my lips as I watched her go, hips swaying hair swaying fire trailing in her wake.
A/N: Ahhh my first Solo Leveling fic! 🌑 This is my very first time posting outside my usual fandoms, so I hope you enjoyed it. I had such a good time writing this and I can’t wait to do more. Thank you so much for reading! 💕
if i pick up the vibe that i’m gonna fuck someone, i’m like “be right back :)” and i go and i wash my hands. if i can’t do it at that moment, then i’m not putting my fingers in them because i have no fucking idea what their body may or may not be sensitive to and i certainly would not have been keeping track of everything i have or haven’t touched since the last time i washed them.
just because your hands aren’t visibly dirty doesn’t mean the bacteria you carry around from touching your phone, random objects, other people, and yourself won’t be 100% passed to that other person and upset their reproductive ecosystem of bacteria. be conscious of others. wash your fucking hands
I know it’s not hard to point out reactionaries hypocrisy when it comes to like safe spaces or hug boxes or whatever but genuinely how much of an echo chamber do you have to exist in for you to think this is a reasonable thing to say
There are people – some in my own Party – who think that if you just give Donald Trump everything he wants, he’ll make an exception and spare you some of the harm. I’ll ignore the moral abdication of that position for just a second to say — almost none of those people have the experience with this President that I do. I once swallowed my pride to offer him what he values most — public praise on the Sunday news shows — in return for ventilators and N95 masks during the worst of the pandemic. We made a deal. And it turns out his promises were as broken as the BIPAP machines he sent us instead of ventilators. Going along to get along does not work – just ask the Trump-fearing red state Governors who are dealing with the same cuts that we are. I won’t be fooled twice.
I’ve been reflecting, these past four weeks, on two important parts of my life: my work helping to build the Illinois Holocaust Museum and the two times I’ve had the privilege of reciting the oath of office for Illinois Governor.
As some of you know, Skokie, Illinois once had one of the largest populations of Holocaust survivors anywhere in the world. In 1978, Nazis decided they wanted to march there.
The leaders of that march knew that the images of Swastika clad young men goose stepping down a peaceful suburban street would terrorize the local Jewish population – so many of whom had never recovered from their time in German concentration camps.
The prospect of that march sparked a legal fight that went all the way to the Supreme Court. It was a Jewish lawyer from the ACLU who argued the case for the Nazis – contending that even the most hateful of speech was protected under the first amendment.
As an American and a Jew, I find it difficult to resolve my feelings around that Supreme Court case – but I am grateful that the prospect of Nazis marching in their streets spurred the survivors and other Skokie residents to act. They joined together to form the Holocaust Memorial Foundation and built the first Illinois Holocaust Museum in a storefront in 1981 – a small but important forerunner to the one I helped build thirty years later.
I do not invoke the specter of Nazis lightly. But I know the history intimately — and have spent more time than probably anyone in this room with people who survived the Holocaust. Here’s what I’ve learned – the root that tears apart your house’s foundation begins as a seed – a seed of distrust and hate and blame.
The seed that grew into a dictatorship in Europe a lifetime ago didn’t arrive overnight. It started with everyday Germans mad about inflation and looking for someone to blame.
I’m watching with a foreboding dread what is happening in our country right now. A president who watches a plane go down in the Potomac – and suggests — without facts or findings — that a diversity hire is responsible for the crash. Or the Missouri Attorney General who just sued Starbucks – arguing that consumers pay higher prices for their coffee because the baristas are too “female” and “nonwhite.” The authoritarian playbook is laid bare here: They point to a group of people who don’t look like you and tell you to blame them for your problems.
I just have one question: What comes next? After we’ve discriminated against, deported or disparaged all the immigrants and the gay and lesbian and transgender people, the developmentally disabled, the women and the minorities – once we’ve ostracized our neighbors and betrayed our friends – After that, when the problems we started with are still there staring us in the face – what comes next.
All the atrocities of human history lurk in the answer to that question. And if we don’t want to repeat history – then for God’s sake in this moment we better be strong enough to learn from it.
I swore the following oath on Abraham Lincoln’s Bible: “I do solemnly swear that I will support the constitution of the United States, and the constitution of the state of Illinois, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of Governor .... according to the best of my ability.
My oath is to the Constitution of our state and of our country. We don’t have kings in America – and I don’t intend to bend the knee to one. I am not speaking up in service to my ambitions — but in deference to my obligations.
If you think I’m overreacting and sounding the alarm too soon, consider this:
It took the Nazis one month, three weeks, two days, eight hours and 40 minutes to dismantle a constitutional republic. All I’m saying is when the five-alarm fire starts to burn, every good person better be ready to man a post with a bucket of water if you want to stop it from raging out of control.
Those Illinois Nazis did end up holding their march in 1978 – just not in Skokie. After all the blowback from the case, they decided to march in Chicago instead. Only twenty of them showed up. But 2000 people came to counter protest. The Chicago Tribune reported that day that the “rally sputtered to an unspectacular end after ten minutes.” It was Illinoisans who smothered those embers before they could burn into a flame.
Tyranny requires your fear and your silence and your compliance. Democracy requires your courage. So gather your justice and humanity, Illinois, and do not let the “tragic spirit of despair” overcome us when our country needs us the most.
Sources:
• NBC Chicago & J.B. Pritzker, Democratic governor of Illinois, State of the State address 2025: Watch speech here | Full text
I WANT HIM THINKING ABOUT ME LIKE A PRAYER, EVERY BREATH, EVERY MOVE, EVERY CHOICE HE MAKES ANCHORED TO ME. I WANT HIM LOSING SLEEP BECAUSE THE IDEA OF ME IS TOO LOUD IN HIS HEAD TO LET HIM REST. I WANT HIM TO LOOK AT ME LIKE I’M THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS—LIKE THE WORLD COULD BURN TO ASHES AROUND US AND HE WOULDN’T CARE AS LONG AS I’M STILL STANDING THERE.
I WANT HIM TO SPEAK MY NAME LIKE IT’S SACRED, TO LOOK AT ME LIKE I HOLD THE UNIVERSE IN MY HANDS. TO BE HAUNTED BY THE SOUND OF MY LAUGH, THE TRACE OF MY SCENT ON HIS SKIN, THE MEMORY OF MY TOUCH. I WANT HIS OBSESSION TO BORDER ON MADNESS, TO FEEL ME IN EVERY PART OF HIM LIKE A HUNGER HE CAN’T EVER SATISFY.
One of the weirdest thing about growing up suicidal is that you assume you have no future, you don’t even try to envision it because you see no point. So eventually, you start assuming everyone else sees nothing in your future either. Recently, my friend and I were talking and she said something about how at her wedding I could wear a suit or a dress as long as it matched her bridesmaid’s dresses because the butler of honor has to make a good impression. This hit me so hard because I had never realized before how other people thought about me. She said it so casually like it wasn’t even a hard decision, just a given fact. She loves me so much she saw me at her wedding, standing with her on one of the most important days of her life. And you know what? There are so many people who think about you that way. If that isn’t proof that you should keep going I don’t know what is.
This is called a sense of foreshortened future and it is also very common in traumatized people, particularly in cases involving long-term abuse or the death of a loved one.
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pixelskylines
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