Chapter Text
Cale's white linen shirt was plastered to his skin, rendered completely transparent by the wine and water. It clung to the lines of his chest, his abdomen, outlining a form that was lean and unexpectedly, devastatingly defined.
Droplets of red wine clung to his collarbone like jewels, tracing paths down his pale skin. His red hair was darkened at the tips, sticking to his neck and forehead.
He looked like a painting of a debauched angel.
Choi Jung Soo’s jaw literally dropped. A soft, strangled sound escaped him. ‘Holy…’
Lee Soo Hyuk’s breath hitched. A hot, uncomfortable flush crept up his neck. It felt like a sin to be looking at him like this. He forcibly tore his gaze away, staring fixedly at a knot in the wooden floor, his heart pounding an erratic rhythm against his ribs.
But Kim Roksoo’s attention was elsewhere. His eyes, sharp and cold, were locked not on Cale’s soaked form, but on the group leader’s face.
The man’s rage had evaporated, replaced by something far more vile. He was staring, mouth slightly agape, his eyes wide with a dazed, glazed-over lust. The sight of Cale, wet and disheveled, had short-circuited his anger and ignited a different, more predatory fire. He was drinking in the sight, his gaze crawling over the translucent shirt, the exposed skin.
Cale, meanwhile, looked down at himself with an expression of pure, annoyed inconvenience. He made a faint sound of disgust and began brushing at the wet fabric with his hands, a futile attempt to wipe away the mess. The motion drew even more attention to the planes of his body beneath the cloth.
The leader was mesmerized. His earlier intention to hurt was gone, replaced by a base, grasping desire. As Cale focused on the stain on his sleeve, the man’s hand came up slowly, almost reverently, reaching out to touch a damp lock of that beautiful red hair, or perhaps the wet fabric over Cale’s shoulder.
Roksoo's muscles coiled. He was already stepping out from behind the bar, his knuckles white, his eyes locked on the leader's reaching hand.
But he stopped mid-step.
The reason was: that filthy man never got to make contact
THWACK!
Because in the next instant, that bastard's world exploded into white-hot, catastrophic agony.
A foot driven with unexpected precision had connected squarely between his legs with enough force to lift him slightly off the ground.
“GAHHHHHHHHHHHH!"
The sound that escaped him was inhumane. It was a strangled, breathless wheeze, a noise that belonged to a dying animal. His eyes bulged, his face purpling from more than just wine, and he crumpled like a puppet with its strings severed.
The tavern was dead silent.
Cale Henituse lowered his leg with the casual grace of someone who had merely stretched, not just ended a bloodline. His reddish-brown eyes, half-lidded a moment ago, were now clear as cut glass— and just as sharp.
He looked down at the whimpering man with the same expression one might give a particularly ugly insect that had dared to crawl onto one's shoe.
Then, with unhurried grace, he reached into an inner pocket of his dark shirt and produced a white handkerchief— pristine, embroidered with a small golden turtle. He bent down slightly, just enough to wipe the toe of his boot. Once. Twice. Three times. He examined the fabric, frowned at a faint smudge, and wiped again.
Every movement was unhurried, meticulous, as if he had all the time in the world and these groveling men were merely an inconvenience to be tidied away
When Cale was satisfied, he looked at the soiled handkerchief with distaste. His gaze drifted down to the leader, still curled on the floor, making pathetic gurgling sounds.
"Ah," Cale said softly, almost to himself. "I don't want to carry such filthy things."
He let the handkerchief flutter from his fingers as it landed squarely on the leader's heaving face.
No one breathed.
"YOU—!"
One of the leader's companions surged forward, his face twisted with outrage. A second followed, and a third, their earlier frozen state gone in the face of their humiliated comrade.
They didn't make it more than two steps.
Cale looked at them.
That was all. He simply looked.
His reddish-brown eyes— those same eyes that had been glazed with wine and boredom just moments ago— had transformed. They weren't angry. They weren't threatening.
They were empty.
The kind of empty that comes from seeing things that cannot be unseen. The kind of empty that belongs to someone who has stood at the edge of the abyss and realized the abyss was staring back with their own reflection.
His aura was suffocating them.
It wasn't magic. It wasn't an aura of the knights. It was something else. Something heavier.
The three men stayed frozen.
Their bodies simply refused to move. Every instinct they had— honed from years of experience— was screaming one thing:
Do not move.
Do not approach.
Do not provoke.
This wasn't a trashy young master.
This was someone who has experienced something no one present can imagine.
Cale tilted his head, and a strand of wine-darkened red hair fell across his forehead. The movement should have been disarming. Instead, it made him look like a predator sizing up prey that had conveniently walked into its den.
Then he smiled.
It was a sweet smile. Genuinely sweet. The kind of smile a mother might give her child, or a lover might give their beloved. Soft. Warm. Gentle.
And that's what made it absolutely terrifying.
"Ah, you're still here," Cale said, his voice a low, melodic murmur. The same beautiful voice from before, but stripped of its slurred, drunken edges. Now it was clear as a bell— and sharp as a blade. "I thought you would have left by now. Isn't it past your bedtime, little boys?"
He gracefully lowered himself, his long fingers found something on the ground. A shard of glass from the bottle that had smashed against the fireplace.
He picked it up.
And began to play with it.
The glass shard rolled across his knuckles, danced between his fingers, caught the firelight and threw it in fractured rainbows.
A bead of red appeared on his fingertip where the glass had nicked him.
Cale looked at it with mild amusement, then at the frozen men.
"You know," he continued, still in that devastatingly sweet tone, "I was having a perfectly pleasant afternoon. The wine was adequate, and the rain was lovely. And then… you arrived." He sighed, the sound light and airy, as if discussing the weather. "You're not very considerate guests, are you?"
He turned that ice-cold gaze towards them. “Inconsiderate people should get punished. Don't you think so?"
The three men stared at the glass shard spinning in his fingers. Their mouths moved, but no sound came out.
Cale's smile didn't waver.
He tilted the shard, catching the firelight, and a thin beam of fractured rainbows slid across the nearest man's throat.
The man flinched like he'd been cut.
"Ah," Cale murmured, lowering the shard. "You're no fun at all.”
The leader, still gasping on the floor, finally managed to push himself up onto his elbows. His face was full of pain and humiliation, the handkerchief falling away. Spittle and blood mingled on his lips.
"Don't... don't just stand there!" he snarled at his men, his voice cracking. "He's just a— just a noble brat! HE CAN'T DO ANYTHING! He's bluffing! Get him! GET—"
Cale's hand flicked.
The glass shard flew.
Thwack.
It embedded itself into the wooden floor, half an inch from the leader's left eye. The man's tirade cut off into a strangled squeak. His eyes crossed, staring at the sliver of glass that was close enough to reflect his own dilated pupil.
The tavern was so quiet that the dripping of wine from Cale's hair sounded like thunder.
He reached down and picked up another shard of glass from the floor.
And began turning it between his fingers, exactly as before.
The message was clear: ‘I can do that again. And again. And I won't miss.’
"Sorry," he said, still smiling that sweet, sweet smile. "My hand slipped. You were saying?"
The leader's mouth opened and closed like a fish on dry land. No sound came out.
His companions didn't need to be told anything anymore.
One of them let out a whimper and bolted for the door. The others followed, scrambling over each other, tripping over chairs, not even pausing to grab their fallen comrade.
"Hey," Cale murmured, stopping the others in their tracks. "Take your garbage with you."
Two of the men scrambled to haul their whimpering leader off the floor. The others were already backing toward the door. They didn't stop. Didn't look back. Just grabbed their fallen comrade and practically flew out of the tavern, the door slamming shut behind them.
Silence.
Every patron was frozen in place, eyes wide, drinks forgotten. Gerth, who had hidden behind the bar at the first sign of trouble, peeked out with an expression of sheer disbelief.
Cale sighed.
The cold aura vanished. He slumped back into his chair, the shard of glass clattering onto the table, and reached for his wine glass as if nothing had happened.
"Refill," he called out, his voice once again bored and irritated. "And someone clean up that mess."
No one moved.
Cale's eyebrow twitched. "Did I stutter?"
That broke the spell. Cleaners scrambled. Patrons returned to their drinks with trembling hands, none daring to look at the young master.
Everyone was in various states of shock.
A man who had been mid-sip now had wine dribbling down his chin, forgotten. A woman had her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide as saucers.
This... this wasn't the Young Master Cale they knew.
The Cale they knew threw tantrums. He insulted people loudly and broke things angrily. He was a nuisance, a headache, a problem to be managed and tolerated.
He wasn't... this.
This cold person who could make others wet their pants with an angelic smile.
The Cale they knew would never have physically hurt anyone. Would never have cleaned his shoe like the man was dirt. Would never have made those expressions while doing any of it.
What had they just witnessed?
And more terrifyingly— how long had he been hiding this?
---
The Soos, however, were having a very different experience.
Choi Jung Soo's jaw, which had dropped at the sight of wet!Cale, had somehow dropped further. His eyes were the size of dinner plates. His hands were gripping the edge of the bar so hard his knuckles had turned white.
'That... that was...' His brain struggled to find words, any words, to process what he'd just witnessed. 'He... he— the smile—'
Lee Soo Hyuk had given up on staring at the floor. He couldn't look away from Cale. His heart was pounding in his chest for entirely different reasons than before.
'He didn't need us,' he realized, the thought settling somewhere between awe and a strange, aching disappointment. 'He could have handled them himself the entire time.'
But that wasn't what was gnawing at him.
What was gnawing at him was the discrepancy.
According to the novel, Cale Henituse scared off gangsters by being an unbearable trash— loud, obnoxious, throwing his noble status around.
He didn't handle things in... that way.
The hard-to-approach aura, the cold eyes, the sweet voice that promised nothing good— that's not how he was supposed to behave.
Beside him, Kim Roksoo was very, very still.
His hand, which had been reaching for the leader's wrist, was frozen mid-air. He hadn't even made it out from behind the bar. Cale had been faster.
Roksoo stared at the back of Cale's head— at those wine-dark strands of red hair, at the elegant line of his neck, at the way he sat so casually among the wreckage as if it were a throne.
'I miscalculated.'
The thought was cold.
'I assumed he would maintain his ‘trash’ character. I assumed he would do nothing to defend himself like when he faced Choi Han. I assumed… he needs someone to protect him.'
His fingers curled into a fist.
But Cale hadn't needed protection. Cale had handled it efficiently but beautifully.
And yet...
Roksoo's eyes narrowed slightly.
This wasn't in the novel.
Not once, in all the descriptions of Cale's early days as the trash of the Henituse family, had there been a scene like this. He scared off gangsters, yes. But through tantrums.
Moreover, he never once tried to defend himself when someone bad-mouthed him or when someone beat him.
‘But it doesn't matter,' he told himself.
It doesn't matter that Cale was slowly coming out of his trash persona— it just made it easier for them to fix his reputation.
It doesn't matter that he could protect himself— why would they let Cale dirty his hands when he has them?
It doesn't matter Cale would be fine on his own— they would make him realize he doesn't need to do everything by himself.
Cale still needs someone who will always be by his side.
Because the person Cale needs the most protection from... is himself.