In the quiet of the early morning, I began my usual rounds around the apartment complex, doing my duty as the caretaker.

Most of the tenants were just heading out for the morning commute when I spotted Loona accompanying her husband, Josh, outside. He was nicely dressed in a tailored black suit, while she wore a flowing maroon morning gown. To an outsider, they would have looked like the picture-perfect, doting couple. But I wasn’t the type to be fooled by a pretty facade.

I watched closely as Josh’s eyes wandered toward Secretary Kim’s unit. The moment she stepped out, looking as effortlessly hot and dangerously captivating as ever, Josh deliberately stopped, pulled Loona in, and began kissing her.

It wasn’t a gesture of passion. It was the desperate act of a man using one woman to spite an ex-lover. Watching it turn my stomach.

With a dismissive word, he sent Loona back inside and strode off toward the corporate building, trailing just a few paces behind Secretary Kim. He walked with his hands shoved in his pockets, carrying himself like he’d actually accomplished something. What a pathetic loser. Trying to hurt an ex by weaponizing another woman’s devotion is the ultimate amateur move.

I continued my patrol, a wooden nightstick swinging in my hand as the morning rushed past. Eventually, the building emptied out, leaving the corridors shrouded in silence.

I made my way back into the apartment and stopped directly in front of Loona’s door. I knocked, the sound echoing in the empty hallway.

"Who is it?" her voice called out, muffled and strained.

"It’s Asher... the caretaker," I replied.

A moment later, I heard her hesitant footsteps approaching. The door cracked open, and she peered out at me. "What do you want, Asher?"

I looked at her from top to bottom. The usual composure she tried so hard to maintain was completely gone. Her face was flushed, and her eyes were red and heavily swollen.

"Have you been crying?" I asked gently.

"Mind your own damn business!" she snapped, her voice raspy. "If you don’t actually need anything, goodbye."

She tried to slam the door in my face, but I was faster. I jammed my boot into the frame, blocking it from closing.

"You were crying," I pressed, keeping my voice low. "Is this about Josh?"

That touched a raw nerve. Her chest heaved, and she blinked rapidly as a fresh wave of tears welled up, clouding her eyes.

Pushing the door open, I stepped into the room and closed it quietly behind us. I reached out, my thumb gently wiping away the hot tears spilling down her cheeks. "Don’t hold it in," I murmured. "It only hurts worse if you swallow it. Talk to me. I’m a good listener."

"I don’t... I don’t want to talk about it!" she sobbed, the dam finally breaking as the tears flowed freely.

I guided her over to the couch, pulling her trembling body into a tight embrace as she sat down. She buried her face against my chest, her sobs soaking right through my uniform. I slowly rubbed her back, offering what little silent comfort I could.

"I’m fucking tired Asher.... I really am," she whispered against my chest, the confession slipping out despite her earlier protest.

I listened intently as she began to pour her heart out, her words tumbling out with the same desperate intensity as her tears. As it turned out, this girl had walked through a living hell she never deserved. But what caught my attention was how neatly her tragedy tied back to the very people my ex-wife, Karen, had associated me with just recently.

Before all of this, Loona had been a kind, innocent young woman from a humble background. Her family was poor, but they had managed to get by. Driven by the heartbreaking loss of her mother who had passed away from an illness they simply couldn’t afford to treat, Loona’s only dream had been to become a doctor so she could save others from the same fate.

But before that, her father had ruined everything. He had taken out a massive loan from the Shinigami, the ruthless syndicate of Tokyo thugs—under the guise of paying for his dying wife’s medical bills. In reality, the man was a hopeless drunk and a gambling addict. He blew every single yen at the tables, leaving his wife to die without a single penny spent on her care.

Loona’s body shuddered against mine as she recalled the deeply buried trauma.

"The worst part," she choked out, her voice fractured by heartbreak, "is that when I confronted him—when I asked why he gambled away Mom’s medical fees—he just looked at me and said she was going to die anyway. He said there was no point wasting good money on a corpse."

I squeezed my eyes shut, my fists tightening involuntarily as a cold anger formed in my chest. I kept my voice steady for her sake, continuing to rub her back. "Don’t cry. You have to stay strong."

Hearing her story, I realized Loona and I were cut from the exact same cloth. I had lost both of my parents too, though not to disease. Their car had mysteriously erupted into flames in the middle of a highway, burning them to a crisp. The details of their deaths remained an unsolved enigma to this day; they were simply found on the asphalt, their skin charred beyond recognition. The doctors couldn’t save them. That shared trauma was the exact reason I, too, had once pursued medicine—to keep the people I cared about from slipping away.

Loona swallowed hard and forced herself to continue. After her mother’s death, her father sank even deeper into depravity.

He spent his days in an alcohol-induced stupor, bringing prostitutes into their home and squandering the rest of the dirty money while living like a king. He completely abandoned his responsibilities, refusing to buy groceries or pay her tuition. By the tender age of seventeen, Loona was forced to work around the clock just to survive.

Then, the Shinigami came collecting. And they wanted their interest. 𝓯𝙧𝓮𝓮𝒘𝓮𝙗𝙣𝒐𝒗𝒆𝓵.𝓬𝓸𝒎

"My father didn’t have a dime, of course," Loona explained, her tears finally drying up, replaced by a hollow, shuddering breath. "Every time they showed up and he couldn’t pay, they would cut off one of his fingers."

A chill ran down my spine. "Horrifying."

"At first, it was once a week. Then it became everyday. It wasn’t long before he didn’t have any fingers left. And without hands, he couldn’t even attempt to work to pay off the debt."

I forced myself to remain entirely calm, though my mind was racing. "So, what happened next?"

She swallowed audibly, the sheer weight of the memory pressing down on the room. She glanced around the apartment nervously, ensuring we were completely alone. Then, leaning in close, she muttered in a barely audible whisper:

"One of the senior Shinigami officers took me as collateral. They told me to surrender everything—my body, my dignity, my innocence. While my father tries to find a way to magically raise the money, I am forced to play the role of the submissive wife in a loveless marriage."

My eyebrows shot up. "You mean Josh is...?"

Loona nodded grimly, her voice hushed. "Yes, Asher. He’s not some ordinary corporate office worker. This company is a front, filled with incredibly dangerous people. If I were you, I’d watch my back very carefully around here."

I sat there in stunned silence. A dozen logical questions flashed through my mind, among them being how a man with no fingers was supposed to raise a massive syndicate debt—but my entire understanding of this place had just been shattered.

Josh was a senior member of the Shinigami? That sounded hard to believe. He looked like a worthless loser.

From everything I knew, the Shinigami were high-level, ultra-wealthy mafiosi. Why on earth was a guy like that working a day job at Akira’s firm? What was that company actually trading in? And most unsettling of all, how did this connect back to the Shinigami jacket that my ex-wife, Karen, had shown to my old friend Tom—the one she swore belonged to me before I passed away?

It felt as though a high-speed freight train of confusion had just slammed directly into my skull.

I only hoped things wouldn’t lead to a most heartbreaking conclusion l feared the most.

I took a heavy breath. ’Akira... my brother.’

To be continued...