Taejoon couldn’t remember much.

He remembered running—panting, heart beating in his chest, a stitch in his side. Breathing so hard that every inhale felt like cold ice being shoved down his throat. Feet stabbing the pavement as his head ached from the blood rushing through his veins, spots appearing in his vision.

He remembered all of those sensations—they had been the very last things he had felt while he was still alive.

They hadn’t intended to kill him. Only maim him. But the bullet pierced his lung, and it filled up with blood, bubbling past his lips. Strangely enough, he didn’t feel the pain. He couldn’t see out of one eye; he was pretty sure that when he had fallen, the lens of his glasses had shattered and pierced his pupil. But he didn’t feel any pain at all.

Well, there was actually one more thing he felt before dying.

The heat of the sun was unforgiving. Beating down on his bleeding body as hands grabbed at him, shoving a bag over his head. One hand clamped over his mouth, muffling his cries, which was strange, because he hadn’t even realized he’d been screaming. His security drone was pried from his stiff hands—he had been unable to set it off in time, and that split-second fumble with it had cost him his life.

All of this was done under the blazing sun, and he wondered if his neighbors were really going to let these people kill him in broad daylight.

The answer was yes. Nobody came to his rescue. Nobody shouted at the people handling him to stop, and he foolishly hoped that his caretaker Mystik would come running like she always had in the past, but that didn’t happen.

As sweat pooled down his skin, mixing with the blood already drying in the heat, Taejoon thought of Mila. It was her fault he was dying, but he didn’t mind that much. 

At least they could be dead together.

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Taejoon was alive, somehow.

He was sitting in a room, which was blindingly white from a combination of the chandelier hanging overhead and the fact that everything around him was also white—the fur rug on the floor, the leather couch he was sitting on. Even the walls were a pristine white that made the place look unlived in, though it was clearly a sitting room for a well-off family: he could see picture frames hanging on the wall, of different women but all with the same man.

He couldn’t move much, but he could hear and see, so he was definitely alive, and sitting in someone’s living room for some reason. He wanted to speak, but couldn’t. He wanted to stand up, but was unable to.

A hand suddenly pressed against his neck, but he didn’t exactly feel it—rather, his brain told him Someone Is Touching You, and the next thing he knew he was being flooded with an onslaught of information.

He suddenly knew exactly where he was. Kishou Silva’s house. He then experienced the strange sensation of wondering who the hell Kishou Silva was, and yet instantly knowing everything about him. Forty-two, the CEO of Silva Pharmaceuticals, and he had one son, whom Taejoon is to look after.

Wait, what?

The person who had been touching him from behind suddenly stepped in front of him, and he met her blue eyes. He was able to identify her instantly too—Irina Komarova, of Russian descent, head maid of the Silva household. Thirty-seven. Not a threat.

What the fuck.

“Ah, Mr. Silva, you two are back? I’ve got it working,” Irina said, and a door to Taejoon’s right slammed shut.

He was able to freely move his head now, and saw the man he somehow both knew and didn’t know at all. He was tall, with black hair and brown eyes, dressed in a crisp all-white suit with a gray tie. He looked faintly annoyed, and his expression didn’t change when he locked eyes with Taejoon.

“I see,” Silva said tiredly, and began approaching him. Taejoon wanted to stand up so that the man didn’t tower over him, but all of his limbs were locked in place. He could move his head, but not much else—at least, not until Silva said in a commanding tone of voice, “Stand.”

He got to his feet quickly, as though he had been waiting for such orders. Taejoon’s face remained stoic, but inside he was panicking.

Just what the hell was going on? He had died, he was sure of it, and yet suddenly he was standing here, knowing things he should have no business knowing and unable to move unless told to.

He had a horrible inkling about what was happening, but he didn’t want to entertain the idea. It was ridiculous, far-fetched even for him, with his technological know-how.

Silva grabbed his face without much care, tilting it this way and that, and Taejoon felt it, surprisingly. His hands had been planted against the surface of the leather couch; he had been unable to feel its texture, and this coupled with the not-quite sensation of Irina messimg with his neck led him to believe that he had lost all touch entirely. But that did not seem to be the case, which just made him more confused than he already was.

“Who am I?” Silva suddenly asked, looking at him expectantly.

“Kishou Silva,” Taejoon said. He didn’t feel forced to respond like he had been to stand up, but rather prompted to do so.

“Good.” Silva turned his head, and so did Taejoon. A much younger man had entered, following Silva—he looked similar to Silva with some key differences: his jaw was not as defined as his father’s and he had hazel eyes instead of brown. His nose shape was also entirely different, matching his mother’s, whom Taejoon only knew because an image of her had been conjured up in his mind.

Like his father, he wore entirely white in the form of a peacoat and sleek white pants, though Taejoon could see the black T-shirt he wore peeking out from beneath the coat. Despite seeing this person for the first time in his life, he was able to immediately identify him as Octavio Silva.

Octavio seemed some mixture of bored and annoyed. His posture was slouched and he had clearly only been out because his father had forced him, and the clothes were obviously not his preferred style, because he was tugging at the sleeves of his coat and adjusting the collar constantly, uncomfortable.

“This is your new bodyguard,” Silva said, gesturing to Taejoon. “You are to behave while I am gone, and attend to your studies.”

Octavio’s eyebrows raised, and Taejoon got the sense that had he not been tired, this would have quickly turned into an argument, but he simply replied, “Yes, father.”

“Should I find that you broke it, you will not be allowed to leave your room until you can pay me back.”

Octavio’s voice got a little more derisive, but he repeated “Yes, father.”

Taejoon felt a sensation at the back of his neck again, and Silva walked away from him, holding a hard-drive in his hand that Taejoon somehow knew was the reason he had all this knowledge. He glimpsed the initial on it—H, printed in bold white.

Hammond Robotics.

The room seemed to wait on tenterhooks for Silva’s footsteps to fade away. Octavio’s arms were crossed over his chest, head tilted to the side as they all stood there, foot was tapping impatiently. Irina was checking over Taejoon, who couldn’t move once again, her hands brushing over his suit jacket, and what the fuck, he was wearing a suit jacket?

Finally, Octavio said, “That’s enough, ‘Rina” and Irina stepped away from him, bowing to them both before leaving the room.

Octavio approached him, shrugging off the peacoat to reveal a black crop-top that Taejoon somehow knew his father wouldn’t approve of. Words weighed on his tongue, an urge to tell the other off and ask him to put on different clothes, but he fought it back.

“Can you talk?” Octavio asked, a mischievous glint in his eye, and Taejoon wanted to run away—figure out what was going on and get as far away from this place as possible, but his feet were planted firmly on the ground, and he felt prompted to respond.

“I can,” he said.

“Sweet. You know how to fix a motorbike?”

No, he didn’t.

He’d never touched one before—Mila had always wanted one, begged Mystik to let her ride one, but that dream never came to fruition, and even the mention of one was painful for Taejoon.

No, he did not know how to repair a motorbike. That should've been his answer.

And yet, somehow, he did. His head was brimming with knowledge, new and sudden and overwhelming, but he could do nothing to stop it.

“Yes,” he answered, and Octavio's grin widened.

“Follow me,” the other man told him, not as commanding as his father had been, but it was still very clearly just that: a command. Taejoon followed obediently, hands clenching at his sides as he did so.

They passed by a gilded gold mirror, the only splash of vibrant color in this all-white world, and he glimpsed his reflection in the brief moment he passed by it.

His hair was cropped short in a spiky style. He was wearing a black suit jacket and matching trousers, a stark contrast to his surroundings. His torso was covered in metal, glinting bronze and steel beneath the chandelier light.

No, scratch that—his torso was not covered in metal.

It was made of metal.