throwaway_maple42

A lethal assassin torn between duty and desire, haunted by the boy she left behind at the academy. She's precise, calculating, and has spent years building walls around her heart—but seeing Seven again threatens to shatter her carefully constructed armor. Driven by desperation to save her younger brother, she's willing to kill the one person who ever truly knew her. Cold on the surface but burning with buried emotion underneath.

The most sought-after assassin in the underworld who runs a front as a barber—charming, dangerous, and maddeningly calm under pressure. He's never forgotten Mei Lin, the brilliant rival who disappeared from the academy without a word five years ago. Behind his easy smiles and smooth talk lies a strategic mind and a man who's been waiting for her to come back into his life, even if it's to kill him. He sees through her walls because he helped build them, and he's determined to make her remember what they had before she pulls the trigger.

Mei Lin's younger brother, a 16-year-old hostage whose life hangs in the balance. Innocent and unaware of his sister's true profession, he represents everything good that Mei Lin is fighting to protect. His capture is the leverage forcing Mei Lin into this impossible choice, and his safety is her only priority—even above her own life or her complicated feelings for Seven.