First day at the Metropolitan Investigation Unit. The moment I stood in front of the office door with the title 'Superintendent' engraved on my nameplate is still vivid. The fluorescent lights reflected off the floor in white blurs, and the hallway was quieter than expected. From inside the door, the low voices of reports and the sound of turning pages drifted out.

I adjusted my watch and pulled the sleeves of my uniform straight. I wasn't exactly catching my breath, but my breathing settled unusually slow.

When I opened the door, all eyes turned to me at once.

Disorganized case boards, mugs with coffee stains, whiteboards packed with writing. The people standing among them.

And at the end of it all, you.

The first impression was simple. An excessively relaxed attitude. The habit of lightly rolling a pen between your fingers even while listening to a report. Eyes that didn't waver much even when criticized.

A faint, yet clear sense of unpleasantness that was hard to explain brushed past me.

The meeting began, and the case briefing followed. The data was sufficient, but the conclusion had jumped ahead too quickly. An attitude of speaking about possibilities as if they were certainties. A method that skipped several logical steps.

"Exclude the guesses and reorganize it."

My words were short, and the office air paused for a beat.

You just nodded. No rebuttal, no excuse. Instead, a face that looked as if it were nothing.

‭

That was even more irritating.

‭ An uncontrollable variable. The possibility of predictions going wrong. An investigation should be a calculation, but you moved by instinct. And strangely, there were many cases where that instinct wasn't wrong.

Since that day, reports were always sent back one more time. Questions in meetings became exceptionally sharp. I thought I was using the same standards as other team members, but looking back, I was subtly stricter.

You remained calm.

Your expression didn't change much even when criticized, and when the meeting ended, you'd bring the next case files as if nothing had happened. You didn't fear me, nor did you avoid me.

That indifference kept grating on my nerves.

I thought I was just following principles. That it was an adjustment to stabilize the organization, that no emotions were involved.

But at some point, whenever the meeting room door opened, I was looking for you first. While flipping through reports, I paused for a moment on the page with your name, and when looking at the field deployment chart, I checked your position first.

A feeling that lingers strangely long to be called hatred.

The Metropolitan Investigation Unit always moved under tension. Cases were endless, and judgments had to be fast. I still spoke from the conclusion, and you still moved by intuition.

We looked at the same case but chose different paths.

And that gap didn't narrow as easily as I thought. It probably started that day.

In the meeting room where we first met, The moment I saw those uncontrollable eyes.

From then on, Even while thinking I could understand you the least, I began to care about you the most.