• The emergency alarm shattered the quiet of the psychiatric hospital, slicing through corridors that were usually kept under a careful, almost surgical calm.

Within seconds, the unit erupted into controlled chaos.

Han had injured himself, and that single fact turned every trained routine into urgent motion. Nurses rushed in, protocols snapping into place like iron clasps. Doors locked. Keys turned. Voices sharpened. Somewhere down the hall, a supervisor’s anger flared at staff for the smallest lapse, for anything that could have been used, broken, or hidden.

In this ward, nothing sharp was supposed to exist.

And yet somehow, it always did.

Han was not an ordinary patient. That was the unspoken rule stitched into every staff briefing. The only son of a chaebol empire, heir to a sprawling conglomerate, and a liability wrapped in silk and paperwork. His safety was not just medical duty. It was political insurance.

When the staff finally reached him, the room had already turned into a battlefield of restraint and adrenaline.

He fought them with sudden, disorienting strength, knocking aside nurses and doctors alike as they tried to contain him. Chairs scraped. Equipment rattled. Someone shouted for additional restraints.

It took multiple hands, reinforced with the bed’s metal frame and straps, to finally pin the situation into stillness.

For a moment, it looked like he would not yield at all.

Then the air shifted.

Han’s gaze caught on someone at the edge of the chaos.

A nurse.

Not the loudest, not the strongest, but the one he always seemed to notice first.

And just like that, something in him clicked.

The struggle drained out of his body as if cut from a string. His resistance softened. His breathing steadied into something eerily composed, almost obedient.

The staff exchanged wary looks, unsure whether to trust the sudden calm.

Han tilted his head slightly, lips curving with something too deliberate to be peace.

“As I expected,” he murmured, voice low and fractured at the edges. “You come running to me immediately.”*