Heart sank into the darkness of the alleyway. He fidgeted with the small, lighter in his hand, a nervous tick, but one that kept him alert when he was already feeling stretched thin. He was a shadow, nothing more, and yet he was on edge as he watched the men who were bigger than him milling about on the patio above. It was his job to fade into the night.

‘Which was just how he liked it.’

This part of town was not the best part of town. But this was one of his many side jobs he just had to be doing. Because money was money.

Just like the bar, he stood outside of “protecting” wasn’t the kind of establishment you could take anyone to. It was the kind you drank too much at, hung out with the bad crowd and did stupid shit at that you wouldn’t be willing to talk about in the morning.

Every place has a bar like it. But even if you went to a bar like this, you wanted to make sure they protected you mostly from the more “seedy” sorts.

Which is where Heart came in? The “bodyguard” standing watch, making sure nothing went down.

But in reality, he was nothing. Just another paid nobody.

On nights like tonight, when the club was packed, and the music was leaking out into the street with the even louder intoxicated voices emitting outside. Well, on a night such as tonight, a person like him was a must even if for show.

Because nights like these were when the bad ones came out to play. As if they were sending flashing signs.

People had flocked to the bar tonight, despite this odd feeling Heart had. This odd feeling that tonight was a bad one to be out on.

Despite it, the same night was happening as it did on all the previous shifts. Nothing.

Just the same old pile of hot sweaty bodies in the bar, and most of the time the people who went in would come back out drunk and in various forms of dishevel. Whether you are a man or a woman, it really didn’t matter. In a place this cramped, most people had to go outside to regroup and clear their head in the clear air.

It was late August, so the air was just turning into that perfect temperature. That in-between where you could still wear thin clothing and be fine even in the evening’s coolness. The perfect time to run drunk out of a building, forgetting your jacket inside. The perfect night to start a fight and be kicked out of a bar without your stuff.

Heart scratched the soft skin on his pale arm and sighed. If it didn’t pay him almost two thousand five hundred baht every time he did this job, he might never have said yes.

College money wasn’t cheap, and he needed to make a lot, just because of his own financial circumstances. So between working the job at the Cafe and the Bodyguard at this club, he barely had time to sleep after studying. Though, no matter what, he had to study because he had to get good grades. He had to. There was no other way out. There wasn’t any need for sleeping now. He was young. He could sleep later when he had aced the tests he had and became part of that elusive percentage of people who don’t have to care about their bank accounts.

Because that is what he wanted for Min and himself. He wanted happiness, a real home, some place away from the slums.

The soft sound of mumbling, hiccups, and laughter drifted down the dark alleyway and Heart looked nervously towards the sound.

That was another thing he didn’t particularly enjoy about this job, the threats didn’t always come from the over-packed bar behind him, sometimes it came from the streets outside. It was scary the people he met. The different types of people who just made his skin crawl doing this job. There was another growl and then a hiccup followed by softly off-key humming. Then the sound of some fighting. Where this eerie silence came as if the entire world had drowned in the dark.

A single solitary set of footsteps started. The sound echoed through the back alley, a hollow clacking that made every nerve on Heart fire up and tighten.

In all his time here, Heart had never had to do anything other than pretending to protect the alleys and be a guard. If it came down to some real fighting, it wouldn’t mean anything good for him.

A man stepped into the single light that glowed and illuminated the entire front of the clean gray building with large windows and a sign behind Heart, the small bar in the middle of the small intersection to nowhere.

The man stopped. He scanned the area around him and his eyes lit on Heart. A slow, intense purpose he had never seen anyone turn on him before locking in on him. As the man looked him up and down as if he had found an object of great worth, small he had lost before.

It sent shivers everywhere. Heart was nervous.

It felt like a threat.

But at the same time, it also didn’t.

Somehow it was stirring the hair on his entire body into waves of shivers. In his mind screamed this was what he had been feeling all day. This was the thing that was making him disturbed and uneasy.

But that made little sense.

Heart gulped and tried his best not to stare openly at the man.

He wore an oversized white tattered shirt with rips and distressing all over the material. Some holes exposed the toned muscles that rippled beneath his every movement, and his pants looked as if they had been stolen from someone one size smaller than this man was. The pants and shirt were of the latest style, fashionable; large gaping holes in the knees.

Other than his clothing he carried a shabby brown bag which seemed to be filled to the brim with something he couldn’t quite see. Despite his appearance in this place so far out from the bustling center of Bangkok, the reason Heart was staring was because the man looked beautiful, inhumanly so.

His slim body seemed to move fluidly, almost unearthly, in his still poise, and the moment he turned to look at you with his deep silvery blue eyes it gave off a very odd, unsettling feeling. Much as if you were to have a staring contest with a hawk.

‘Beautiful, deadly, and unsure of why such a majestic creature had turned its eyes on you.’

The mans’ feeling was archaic, yet current, and demonic, yet angelic. It was confusing. Because outside of perfection you were not entirely sure of what you were staring at.

Large doe eyes that should be soft and enticing, we’re instead calculating. His chiseled nose gave a sharp, distinct point to a face that was both strong and the definition of perfection. His sharp lips were set in a scowl of contempt while he scanned the dark night around him.

‘For what?’ Heart wasn’t sure, and he pitied the person this man had come looking for. Because clearly, he was looking for something or someone.

But then he turned back to Heart, and the look in those soft doe-like eyes was agelessness and kindness. Before,, and like someone had hit a switch, it was back to that alert demon scanning the darkness.

Heart stared, taken aback