muse: kwon ryung, currently under the fake alias 'jinwoo'. open to: anyone! can be a new friend/innocent, old childhood best friend, or potentially someone gang affiliated. muses of color to the front as always. plot/muse background: born in the slums of guryong village, ryung learned fast that compassion didn't feed you or keep you alive. his toughness and willingness to do whatever to survive eventually caught the eye of a local gangster from the black serpents, a rising korean syndicate, who molded him into a weapon------------------ teaching him to kill, manipulate, and break men without hesitation or mercy. by eighteen, they were calling him the demon of daejeon, his horrific reputation spreading through the city's underworld and eventually creeping all the way into seoul. but even monsters grow tired of their own reflection, and one night ryung vanished, leaving behind his gang ties for bangkok, hiding behind a false alias, quietly working security gigs in the red-light district and pretending his old life was dead. the truth, though, is that he may have only traded one hell for another; between chinese triads, thai cartels, and foreign mercenaries fighting over territory, bangkok's underworld has its own way of pulling men back in. and once bodies start turning up in alleys he knows too well, ryung realizes the city's changing-------------- and that the demon might not be able to stay buried for long.
"Bail's posted. You're free to go."
Liquor and adrenaline had left Ryung's mind heavy and slowed, whilst the officer lounged against the cell door across from him, indifferent and unmoved, like the night's carnage of blood, bruises, and smashed teeth were nothing more than another ordinary Tuesday in Bangkok. The ex-gangster hadn't even been allowed a phone call, and the cramped holding cell had felt smaller than any apartment in the slums of Guryong.
Back at Club Raksa, a fight had spun completely out of fucking control before Ryung could so much as take a step back and recall the personal vow he'd made to leave the past behind. He hadn't thrown the first punch... but by the time security intervened, he'd definitely looked like the attacker, and the cops just had to haul him in after witnesses had given about a dozen versions of the story that each looked bad on paper. Assaults like this in Thailand rarely meant jail time, usually a night in the holding cell, but his tattoos, the marks of the Black Serpent, had incited reasonable curiosity and swift questioning. Ryung, naturally, only answered about the bare minimum. Not out of loyalty to his old gang, but because he wasn't some damn snitch.
And then, before the sun even crested the horizon, someone had come through with bail money. All cash, unsigned and untraceable, and Ryung didn't bother asking questions. He just needed out of this fucking place.
The moment he stepped outside, rain hit him in sheets, Bangkok's heat meeting the downpour in a humid mix, the neon signs of the precinct flickering off wet asphalt with puddles forming in the grooves of the street. Water ran down the bridge of his nose, slicked his dark hair back, and traced the lethal cut of his jaw. That's when he finally spotted someone, a figure at the corner of the puddle-lit street, face half-hidden. His body braced automatically, ready for whatever trap might be waiting.
Rain dripped from his brows as he stepped closer, boots sending shallow splashes across the asphalt. "Who the fuck are you?"
