Han Sihun wasn’t born twisted.

  He just… never looked away.

  ***

  He was ten the first time he saw a corpse.

  His mother was a nurse. His father, a failed businessman who drowned in gambling debts and finally, in the Han River.

  They said it was suicide.

  Sihun didn’t cry.

  Instead, when he saw the body... bloated, blue, eyes half open, he leaned in.

  Curious.

  Unflinching.

  ***

  When he turned sixteen, his mother asked him if he wanted to become a doctor.

  He shook his head.

  “I want to know what’s under the skin.”

  “Like anatomy?”

  “Like truth.”

  ***

  Medical school welcomed him like a cold metal table.

  Brilliant. Top scores. Always calm, always neat.

  He was the youngest in his forensics program, and the first to volunteer for every dissection.

  Other students got sick during their first autopsy.

  Sihun?

  He stared at the open chest cavity and thought:

  “So this is how life ends.”

  ***

  His mentor once asked him, “What draws you to the dead?”

  Sihun answered honestly.

  “They don’t lie.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The living twist stories. Hide secrets. But the body, if you know how to look... it tells everything. The bruises. The angles. The wounds. The silence.”

  ***

  One case changed him forever.

  A little girl. Nine years old. Found buried under the floorboards of her house.

  Her stepfather cimed it was an accident. Said she fell down the stairs.

  Everyone believed him.

  But Sihun...

  He found the truth in the girl’s ribs.

  Six fractures. Different times. Different healing stages.

  He delivered the findings in court without a flicker of emotion.

  The stepfather cried. Begged.

  Sihun stared bnkly as the man was dragged away.

  ***

  That was when the police started calling him.

  Not just for autopsies, but for insight.

  He didn’t just read bodies.

  He read killers.

  ***

  But Serin…

  She was different.

  He couldn’t read her.

  Couldn’t dissect her.

  She was alive but her eyes were colder than any corpse.

  And strangely, beautifully, terrifyingly—

  She made him feel like the one under the knife.

  ***

  “What kind of monster smiles while hiding her own autopsy report in her heart?”

  And more importantly...

  “Why do I want to be the one to cut her open and understand everything she hides?”