Prologue
The city never slept.
Han Seo-jin made sure of it.
Cameras watched every intersection. Sensors tracked movement, temperature, risk. His systems were designed to see what humans missed—to prevent accidents before they happened.
And yet, on the night his sister died, the city saw nothing.
The call came too late.A drunk driver.A red light ignored.
Seo-jin arrived at the hospital to a silence so complete it rang in his ears. A nurse placed something small into his hands—small blue shoes, barely worn.
“They were on their way home,” she said gently.
Home.
A word that no longer meant anything.
“Daddy?”
Seo-jin looked down.
A three-year-old boy stood in front of him, eyes swollen from crying, fingers curled tightly into the sleeve of Seo-jin’s coat. The word wasn’t meant for him. It never had been.
But Seo-jin didn’t correct him.
From that moment on, he learned how to build a life around one fragile existence—tracking every step, controlling every variable, never allowing negligence again.
He learned how to be careful.
