The commissioner had not taken long. A brief exchange of files, a passing comment about recent irregularities in the system, and then the obligatory handshakes that carried more political weight than Jungkook cared to acknowledge. By the time he and his uncle pulled back into the courtyard, the sun had barely shifted across the sky, as though the morning itself refused to move forward without him.

He walked toward his room with the distracted purpose of a man whose thoughts were already three steps ahead of his body. Normally, he returned from official matters with a mind still entrenched in work, still cataloguing loose threads in investigations, still strategizing about the next twenty-four hours. But today something else tugged at him with a far sharper hook—something he refused to name as worry, but which persisted in twisting the edges of every thought regardless.