Chapter Text
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Verse 1: You'll tumble in my gaze, but you won't find the answers
XIII. It's starting to feel like something I didn't consider (shit)
I cut off my nose just to spite my face
The library’s air had been thick with dust and the faint scent of old paper when Satoru finally shut the last book. Hours of reading had left his eyes dry and his brain buzzing. Dimensional rifts, tears, spatial distortions, gates, wormholes - he had devoured everything he could find on the subject.
The information was mostly theoretical, frustratingly vague, but a few threads had sparked something in him.
He had a new plan now: if theory couldn’t give him the answers, maybe practice would.
He would go back to studying the gates directly, step into the dungeons again, and test the limits of what he’d learned. The thought lit a small, familiar spark of excitement. Beneath the exhaustion, his curiosity stirred - he had always been a little bit of a nerd, even if he’d never admit it out loud.
But for now, his head throbbed, and his body reminded him he hadn’t eaten since morning. He stretched his arms over his head, joints popping, and decided to call it a day. With a quiet exhale, he let the world fold around him.
The scent of vanilla and clean linen hit him first - warm and domestic, a contrast to the cold sterility of the library. But what caught his eye immediately was Sung. With his back turned, he stood before a dresser, the drawer half-open, rummaging through fabrics, clearly searching for a shirt. His bare torso was trained, defined, like it had been carved from stone.
Every muscle moved in slow motion beneath his skin, tinted warm by the glow of the ceiling light. Satoru blinked - once, twice - then deliberately let his gaze drift down the length of Sung’s back, to his narrow waist and back to his shoulder blades rising and falling slightly with each breath.
What a sight to behold.
He whistled. Quietly, reverently.
Sung flinched. He nearly dropped the shirt he had finally found, pressed it to his chest instead as if caught off guard - even though it was his apartment. His room.
“Are you trying to kill me?”, he snapped in a tone of voice that he obviously wanted to come across as threatening – instead it squeaked a little, halfway between anger and fear.
Satoru leaned casually against the doorframe in answer, a lazy smile curving his lips beneath the blindfold, still unashamedly staring at the man in front of him. It would be waste not to, after all.
“No reason to be shy.”
Sung half-turned, still holding the shirt like a shield. The gaze of his eyes felt angrier than the rest of him looked. Dark, cobalt blue over heated, reddened cheeks.
“It’s rude to barge into a room uninvited. Don’t you know any manners?”
“Manners?”
Satoru shrugged and flopped onto Sungs’s bed with exaggerated ease, keeping up the weird staring contest that had apparently begun just a moment before without missing any of the details of the rest of Sung.
Underneath the white fabric he pressed to his chest like a victorian maid, Satoru caught hard, wide muscles, just like at his back. At the right side, a pink nipple peeked out. The urge to bite into the flesh there came unbidden. Would the man taste sweet, too?
He shook his head. That wasn't a very productive thought – even if he had earned it.
“I can behave if I have to. But where’s the fun in that?”, he parried instead, voice teasing and soft, trying to keep the red on Sungs cheeks from lessening.
“Is there anything in your life that doesn’t mean fun?” Sung finally pulled the shirt on, his eyes darting to Satoru’s face - too briefly to be intentional. His eyebrows were pulled deep, further darkening the blue of his eyes. Satoru briefly wondered if he had seen them in any other state than 'annoyed' yet.
He grinned, over-exaggerated. “Of course. Work, for example. Long meetings. The thought of you putting on a shirt.”
Sung sighed deeply, as if Satoru were tormenting him inhumanly, yet still sat down next to him at the foot of the bed, his shoulders stiff. “You really don’t know any boundaries, do you?”
“Rarely.”
A moment of silence. Only their breathing. The faint scent of fresh laundry and a prince of shadows.
Vanilla.
Satoru closed his eyes for a brief second. It was so present, so… pleasant. Far too pleasant.
“I have another question,” Sung then offered into the quiet, fingers slowly smoothing out the creases in his shirt. “About my System - or what you see.”
Satoru stretched out on the bed, crossing his legs at the ankles. His ever-present grin stayed, but it slipped more into practice - playful, careless, hiding the static in his chest that hadn’t stopped humming since morning. Banter was easier than honesty.
Teasing the shadow prince was safer than facing the creeping anxiety that his research might never lead him home.
For all the times Sung had questioned him, this sounded different – uncertain, even hesitant. Like pulling the words out had cost him something. It felt different, too. Satoru didn't really know where to put that.
“You mean the floating windows? The ones hovering around you like shy pets?”, he asked to buy time.
Sung’s mouth twitched, but he didn’t bite at the joke.
“Yes. What exactly do you see?”
Satoru rubbed his forehead with his thumb, thinking. Why was he asking this now? Did it have something to do with the other night, when they had talked about home? Ugh, he had already worked his brain today. Why was this stupid dark haired man making him think more now. He wanted easy distraction – wait... Not like that though!
Maybe he should just stay honest. That had worked out last time (and distracted him as well – focus on other's problems, not your own, Satoru!).
“Glass panels. Transparent boxes. Sometimes they’re faint, sometimes sharp. Always shifting.”
Sung’s brow furrowed, his eyes focused on his hands in his lap. Satoru stared too. They both watched as Sung played with the hem of his shirt, rolling the fabric between his fingers.
“But you can’t read them.”
Satoru hesitated, then gave a nonchalant shrug. “Not really. Just fragments.”
“What kind of fragments?”
“Digits. Numbers.”
He leaned back, resting on his elbows. From this position he couldn't watch the prince's slender fingers anymore, but he could stare at the nape of his neck where short, dark hair met light, smooth skin.
Did Sung have any scars? His torso had looked abnormally smooth. How old was he again? Right, he hadn't asked. But he had to be in his twenties. People had scars in their twenties – especially people fighting monsters.
His thoughts were broken by a slit of blue, eyes at their corners stealing a brief glance in his direction. He was getting of track.
At least he wasn't thinking of the crushing weight of disappointing every person he cared about by leaving them alone, right?
“When I focus, I can make out a few. But the last time I tried, it hurt like hell. Felt like my brain was trying to escape through my eye sockets.”, he explained further, not really listening to his own words.
Only, Sung looked up sharply at his answer, turned his head and leaned down, perched up on one hand.
“Like.. Headaches?”, his tone almost bordered on concerned. Cute-
“Worse.” Satoru smirked, masking the memory of white-hot pain behind stretched lips and white teeth. He really had to get a grip again.
The prince’s jaw tensed. He was quiet for a long moment, gaze sliding down Satorus upper body as if clinically dissecting him with his eyes, before he looked back up. His eyebrows were still furrowed. Satoru wondered if they could even be smooth.
“Did it hurt like that in your world too? When you used your Six Eyes?”
The question came almost reluctantly, like he had to force it past pride.
Satoru blinked, surprised. Then a laugh bubbled up – soft, amused, fond. He may be a pain, but at least Sung Jinwoo wasn't stupid.
“Oh, you figured that out, huh? Smart boy.”
Sung didn’t smile. “So?”
Satoru sighed, rubbing his neck. Again, he wasn't sure what to answer. Truth was honest, but it showed weakness he wasn't sure he should offer. Lying was safe, but ultimately unnecessary. Did it really matter? He wasn't sure he had a lot to loose here, anymore.
Everything he cared about was a dimension away, cut off through mirrors that only showed glimpses of his reality even existing.
If someone here – and the more he talked with Sung the clearer it got it wasn't him – wanted to hurt him, the worst they could to was kill him. It would have the same effect that the last few weeks of his incompetence had brought: He wasn't going home. So what would the truth matter?
He sighed, wistful.
“Yeah. It used to. When I was younger, I didn’t know when to stop... or more like, I didn't want to stop. My brain fried from the overload. The Six Eyes process everything - every particle, every speck of cursed energy. Every shift in air pressure. Every heartbeat. It’s… a lot. The synapses in my head work like overclocked circuits. When I overdo it, it feels like my skull’s cooking from the inside.”
Only when Satoru stopped did he realise he had talked too much again. How did this keep happening? He looked to his right. The faint horror in Sung’s eyes made him chuckle despite it.
“Relax.“, he offered, “I’m used to it. Doesn’t get that bad anymore. As long as I keep them covered when I don’t need them, I’m fine.”
Silence again. Not even the rustling of Sung’s fingers playing with cloth sliced through the air in the room. He seemed to be considering whether to ask something else. Satoru let him, leaning back on his elbows, eyes drifting to the ceiling patiently.
The conversation had turned serious quickly. Yet he didn’t feel uncomfortable. Despite the silence, he wasn’t restless, unlike in the library. Maybe because he had unconsciously accepted that he was here for now – even if that acceptance only seemed to be blooming in the presence of the dark haired man next to him. Even if it wasn’t right.
In this moment he couldn’t change anything. He could only do everything to get back.
Beside him, there was a rustle as Sung shifted closer. Satoru's gaze slid back to him. His eyes had softened, for once not overshadowed by creased brows. He seemed to contemplate something, still, but it looked less like he had to force himself to think about it and more like he wanted to take the time to carefully do so. He almost looked... relaxed. Refined, untroubled.
Satoru watched him as he looked back at him, eyes big and timid. Open.
Satoru just breathed, took that in. It was nice, to be looked at. Especially from someone that – while undeniably powerful and strong – didn't seem to feel threatened by him. Not now.
Satoru wondered how long ago it had been.
How many years had gone by since he had last been treated as someone worth looking at for himself and not for his powers?
“Can you take the blindfold off?”
Satoru laughed, the sound like a breath too short for all the air to leave his lungs. Surprise tilted his head.
“So you want me to fry my brain? Damn, prince, I didn’t peg you for a sadist.”, he wanted to go for teasing, but the moment before dulled his edges more than he liked to admit. He sounded softer, just like Sung looked softer.
Satoru wondered how that had come about. Maybe it was his exhaustion. Maybe the calming scent that hung in the air. Maybe their initial headbutting had always just been a cheap farce to hide genuine intrique. (Lame!)
“Shut up,” Sung muttered, turning his face away, brows pulling downwards again. Gone was the air of soft openness. The realisation tugged at Satorus stomach uncomfortably. “I just… I’m curious about the numbers. I think you are too.”
He wasn’t wrong. Satoru’s grin faltered into something thoughtful. Curiosity had always been his undoing. But the few glimpses of numbers two days ago had ached furiously even after he had looked away. Despite the swirl of self-flagellating thoughts in his head, he wasn't a fan of pain. He strived to avoid it like any normal human being. And he wasn't sure if deliberately putting himself through literal hell was necessary in this case.
What would he get out of it?
Curiosity killed the cat, famously. He didn't want to waste the little energy he had left after frying his brain open on dimensional theories to look at numbers he didn't even understand. Though... They had to have a meaning. He had only glimpsed four digits the last time. But he was sure there were more.
They had to have a reason. And Sung had said something about being able to read them.
He sank back flat on the bed, one hand over his eyes. Massaged his closed eyelids with thumb and forefinger. He could really do without the pain. And yet… He grumbled unhappily. The pretty young man before him had asked him for something. Worse, the pretty young man that looked at him like a person had asked him for something. And Satoru understood why.
With one last deep breath, he decided. Curiosity killed the cat, famously.
But satisfaction bought it back.
“Fine,” he said finally, voice low. “But if I start bleeding out, you’re gonna have to play nurse.”
Then – slowly – he pulled the blindfold down. Blinked. Color deepened, air thickened, everything too vivid, too loud. And Sung - so close, so still - sat beside him, still braced on one hand, leaning slightly over him. The air between them thinned.
Their eyes met.
His eyes. Dark blue. Deeper than any ocean. Unmoving. Defiant. And yet… soft. Satoru lost himself in them for the span of a heartbeat.
No turning back.
Then, in between them, the glass panels appeared, swimming with numbers streaming bright and sharp around the prince’s form. Satoru focused, jaw tightening. The sound of the streets outside this room were easy to tune out.
61 22 31 12 76 41 54 47 31 26 57 34
67 41 54 41 31 34 51 36 54 26 75 13
The little flickers of the bugs – hunters! - were harder to ignore, because they didn't just hush and mumble, they flickered and moved. Sound was something that could be dimmed quieter because it was all compassing to him, one big thing to fade out, but movement in his peripherals was bound to make him look.
He wanted to focus on the numbers. Pressure built behind his eyes, a grinding pulse.
37 75 53 21 53 43 52 42 31 12 56 35
A firebug, two blocks north, moved.
Grunting, Satoru blinked against the movement. In front of him, Sung's mouth pulled thin.
Jaw tensed, Satoru blinked once more, then forced his focus on the panels.
Pain bloomed anyway – sharp , then unbearable. He could feel something beneath his hairline pull, pull, pull – pop!
77 21 66 75 66 43 65 25 54 47 31 34
55 75 52 34 6 1 3 3 7 4...
He gritted his teeth, forced himself to hold the focus, to read - just a few more digits. It felt like fire crawling through his skull. He could feel nerve endings burning, hot and acidy. He always hated that feeling.
But he almost had all of it. Only a few more...
..7 5 5 5 34 73 75
67 25 62 21 52 42 46
Something warm stung inside his nose, liquid and foreign. It dripped onto his lip. His brain hurt.
„Fuck“, Satoru groaned, realising too late what was happening. He tipped his head back despite the fact that even the thought of moving made him ache, and forced his hand to cup underneath his chin. Not very sexy to bleed on a pretty man's bed sheets.
His eyes burned and the ceiling did little to dissipate it. Wincing, he closed his eyes, pretended to be able to breathe through the onslaught of sheer hurt his brain leaked into every cell of his body like a loud, red alarm bell ringing. He was aware the building was on fire, thank you very much.
Next to him, Sung had moved. He could hear him slide with his socks over the vinyl, rustling a little to his left. Suddenly, something was pressed under his nose, soft and warmed by long fingers bunching it up. A hand steadied him by the nape of his neck.
The touch was grounding - warm, real. The world swam in slow motion.
Satoru was always a little too cold. Suguru had always said he burned all his body heat trying too hard so there was nothing of it left to warm him. He had still lent him his jackets and sweaters, had tugged him under his arms and held him close to share his body heat.
How long ago had that been? Satoru had gotten used to the cold. He had begun to think it was the only thing helping with the pain – the ache of loneliness.
But Sungs hands were warm. They held. They touched.
“I’m touching you,” Sung said softly, disbelief threading through the words, like he had also just now realised.
Satoru huffed a shaky laugh against the cloth. Blood was probably still dyeing it red. He could still feel the tickling in his nose, uncomfortable but easy to forget with the warmth at his neck. The shadow prince's thumb pressed lightly into his muscles.
“You are.”, he breathed into the stillness.
Sung’s fingers tightened slightly at his neck. “How?”
Satoru tilted his head, a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. Eyes still closed, he could vividly picture the look on Sung's face. When had he begun to map his face so thoroughly to know just how wide, confused eyes looked on him?
If his head wasn't killing him, he would have liked to see the expression for real, not just imagine it.
“I told you when we met,” he murmured, voice low, amused. “I can bend infinity to my will.”
Sung’s breath caught. “Yeah.”
Satoru’s tone softened, almost tender. He glimpsed between his eyelids, catching the outline of pink cheeks and dark eyes framed by darker hair.
“So why would I keep it up now? There’s nothing threatening me here… is there?”
The silence that followed was fragile and charged. For once, Satoru didn’t hide behind the grin. And Sung didn’t look away.
Satoru let his eyes fall shut again, trying to breath steadily. Pain fizzed along his brow like static, then pooled heavy behind his nose. He tried to breathe around it - slow, shallow - pretend the throbbing was just a distant thing and not his own skull stitching itself back together after being split apart at his own will.
A whisper of movement brushed the air; the shadow prince adjusted the cloth under Satoru’s nose, careful and clinical at the same time, as if being to caring would lead to something he wasn't capable of withstanding.
“You don’t have to do that, you know?” Satoru murmured, voice smaller than he intended it to be - again. He could hear how thin it sounded. Too earnest in a room that had felt like held breath for minutes. He aimed for a smile and got a cracked edge instead.
Sung hummed to show he’d heard, then pressed the cloth back into place, firmer this time.
“Didn’t you say I’d have to play nurse if this happened?”
His thumb traced the tight ridge of muscle at the base of Satoru’s skull - one patient pass, then another - like he was memorizing tension as data.
The touch cut straight through him.
Satoru startled, a small laugh escaping on a sharp inhale. It wasn’t really funny. It was relief masquerading as humor, the kind that stung. He had just thought about it, but wandered to the thought again.
When was the last time he had been touched like this? It had to be over a decade ago. He wasn't a tactile person, at least not with everyone. And the people around him weren't either, hardened through battles with grimy, haunting figures taking the best of you and leaving the worst.
Fighting against other people's worst thoughts and intentions was draining and it made your skin ache in an unpleasant way that the wrong kind of touch only worsened. Better not to touch at all.
Sure, he ruffled Megumi's hair sometimes, patted him on the shoulder. He gently punched Nanamis on the upper arm to get a raise out of him (as if his mere presence wasn't enough for that) and let Kugisaki and Itadori hug and cling to him - but that was different. Megumi pretended to despise his small attempts at physical affection (as if he hadn't regularly climbed into his bed and held onto him when he was younger), Kugisaki and Itadori were just kids with too much energy and too little boundaries. Nanami was... a lot.
Point of the matter - Satoru didn't have anyone who touched him like this. Grounding and calming and for the sole purpose of sharing something small and intimate, too fragile to name. He had missed out on it for longer than he had ever known it before and only now, faced with the warmth coursing through his body, did he realize how much he missed it.
How badly he'd trained himself to live without it.
His whole body shivered with it.
But under that hunger, something colder tried to claw upwards: wrong. Unfair. Undeserved.
It thrummed through his ribs with the pain, hushed and mean. He revelled in the press of a simple thumb to the muscle of his neck. How pathetic. He didn't even deserve this. What had he done to deserve it? He could stop it if he wanted - one thought and Infinity would settle between them again, neat and sterile.
He didn’t.
“That was just a joke,” he said at last, apology tucked into the corners of the words. He wasn’t sure if he said it for Sung or for himself.
He lifted his own hand, fingers cool, and wrapped them around Sung’s wrist because the coldness clawed and he didn't want it to reach far enough to touch Sung. Gently, he eased the prince’s hand down from his face and sat up. The movement made the room tilt and his stomach pull tight; a low sound slipped out of him, halfway to a groan. Shadow Prince stayed angled toward him, still close, the weight of his presence leaning in without actually leaning.
Satoru took the cloth, set it under his own nose, and gave a wry little wink that didn’t quite reach his mouth.
“I’m an adult. I can handle myself.”
His fingers trembled around the fabric. He pretended not to notice. Pretended the jump of his pulse was from the pain. It wasn’t. The intimacy of the last minutes kept circling them like heat - vanilla and something caramel-warm in the air, the memory of a thumb at his nape, the fact that they were still too close and neither of them had moved. Inside he was ice-cold.
Silence returned, not empty now but threaded with their breathing. Satoru tried to find the edge of himself again - counted his breathing, pushed back the pain and focused on stitching nerve endings together that were responsible for doing just that. It felt like trying to open a car door with his teeth, slow and tiring beyond measure. His vision swam once more and he wasn't sure if it was the room swaying or him.
Probably him.
A small shift in the mattress. Sung’s gaze landed on him - heavy, steady.
“How old are you?” the prince asked. It came out like a slip, like he’d caught the question with his palms and it had spilled between his fingers anyway.
Satoru glanced up and the raw brightness of the room knifed through his Six Eyes. The numbers he’d forced into meaning were gone, but the afterimage remained: a migraine-shaped halo, a sting at his sinuses, nerves still crackling. He winced and blinked away, hand patting the bed for the blindfold. He hated the soft sound that escaped him, the narrow line his mouth made when he fought not to let the pain show.
Fabric whispered. Then the gentle press of cloth against his temple; deft fingers tied the blindfold back into place. He exhaled - relief dropping his shoulders a centimeter he hadn’t realized he was holding.
“Twenty-nine,” he said, breath hitching on the number.
“You’re older than me,” Sung observed, neutral as a note in a file. The cloth lifted from Satoru’s hand. Footsteps crossed the floor. The door opened; air shifted.
For a heartbeat, Satoru thought the prince had left.
He lay back, muscles unclenching by degrees now that the world was dim and quiet again. Darkness gathered behind the lenses, clean and cool. He focused on the ordinary ache of a day too long: the library dust in his lungs, the stubborn throb at the bridge of his nose, the residual burn of nerves that had been forced to sprint and were now trying to remember how to walk.
He let the day run through him like film: the stacks and the scribbles, the stupid little spark of hope when a theory aligned with a memory, the way he’d spent it to buy a moment of play with the prince because play was easier than despair.
Sung asking. Satoru answering. The numbers.
The bed felt oddly comfortable with the position he was in - feet on the floor, back on the mattress. He realized as his conciousness drifted that he could fall asleep here. It smelled nice, the air was pleasantly warmed if a little stuffed. His self-deprecation - comparatively inactive today except for a few minutes ago - held no match against the embracing feeling of calm that wafted through the air like perfume.
He was halfway to sleep, drifting between breath and thought. when a socked foot nudged his shin.
“Oi,” Sung muttered, voice low, a scrape over velvet. “Don’t fall asleep like this. It’s gross.”
Satoru grumbled, swatted air at the voice, but then a hand caught his and tugged. He let himself be pulled upwards without helping even a little, which disappointingly had no effect on Sung's plan to get him standing. Upwards on his own two feet, the platinum blonde swayed a little.
Despite the blindfold, he didn't trust his eyes to be able to handle his surroundings right now. His head still throbbed fiercely while healing.
These types of injuries - self inflicted - were always the worst to heal with his reversed curse technique. Maybe it was a punishment for getting himself to this point, though by his own conciousness or some damn higher being he couldn't tell.
His brows furrowed, concentrating. Sung was still holding his hand, pulling lightly to get him moving. Blindly, Satoru followed. Even though he hadn't lived in this apartment for long, he recognized the route they took from Sung's bedroom to the small bathroom.
In there, Sung let go of his hand, shuffled out. Silent, Satoru squinted his eyes open just enough to make out the faucet, washed the blood from his face and sighed tiredly when his blindfold got wet because of it.
He should have fallen asleep faster (nevermind the fact that he mostly couldn't fall asleep for hours and sometimes not even at all).
When Sung returned, they didn't speak. Clothes were shoved into his hands, deliberate yet cautious, as if the dark haired man knew that Satoru was fragile right now. Pathetic.
Again, warmth coursed through his veins, now not even because of a touch. What had he done to deserve this?
He changed, stumbled out of the bathroom, all the reserve energy he had left drained by the simple act of getting out of jeans and into joggers. Hands steadied him at the shoulder, turned him and crowded him back into a room. Huh.
Wasn't the couch the other way? His thoughts felt sluggish.
Slender fingers pushed, much too gentle once more, until he fell forward. He didn't have the strength, much less the motivation to catch the fall. His cheek met soft fabric. The room smelled sweet, warm.
I want to go home. The sentence filled him like a tide, dragged back, came again. I’m tired. It stacked on top of it. Enough. His chest tightened with the repetition until it felt like a spell that couldn’t be broken by will alone.
All of this was wrong. He didn't deserve any of it. No gentleness, no warmth, no kindness. He didn't belong here.
Why couldn't he belong here?
This wasn't even his bed. It was Sung's. It belonged to the man standing at the foot of the bed who, without any reason or complaint, wiggled the blanket out from under Satoru to then cover him with it.
Tears stung at his eyes. Not because of the pain.
"Thank you", he whispered, voice smaller than he had ever heard it out of his mouth. All of this stung worse than the headache. It ripped at something in his chest that had rotten for years, untouched and barely alive.
Yet, he couldn't really concentrate on it. Weariness beyond normal exhaustion pulled at him from every limb.
If he had any thoughts left to spare, he would realize it wasn't because of the physical exhaustion.
If he had any thoughts left to spare, he would realize that everything that had happened the last few weeks, from him being thrust into this dimension to being cared for by someone was gentle and warm as Sung Jinwoo, had pushed him into a bone-deep depression. Because, what had he done to deserve any of it?
He was sure now that the universe or whatever deity may exist to watch over him, had taken him here as a punishment.
His own, personal hell.
Sung's voice pulled him back, quiet and even, "I'll take the couch tonight."
Only now, with his brain fried and his nose full of the scent of copper and vanilla, did Satoru notice how deep Sung's voice actually was. It was smooth and nice to listen to. Satoru could probably fall asleep to it. But not tonight.
Tonight, he hummed and burrowed further under the blanket, inhaled the soft whispers of caramel that lingered in the sheets and tried to ignore the clawing in his chest and the thawing in his veins.
Socked feet shuffled over the floor, almost completely silent. The door creaked a little as the younger man opened it. He turned his head toward the sound of it even though he couldn't really see. The world was dark but he could aim for where the prince was anyway.
“How old are you?” he asked, softer than he meant to.
A breath - half a scoff. The door handle squeaked, like it was pushed down too forcefully.
“Twenty-five,” Sung said, and disappeared behind the door.