Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
CHAPTER 05 : BLEEDING
°°°°°°
He'd gotten used to the silence. He could read it, and he knew what that stillness represented.
The calm before the storm.
Huddled in the middle of the cold cell, blood from the last time drying underneath his naked body, Taehyung didn't bother to lift his head. His body hurt, but pain had become such a constant companion he'd managed to place it somewhere in the back of his consciousness. If he could move his fingers he'd curl them into fists, but for the moment they hung limply.
Breath, that pesky necessity, also hurt. Taking air into his lungs was a task, one Taehyung tried to master as he sat there.
Only one thing could cut a silence so thick, and Taehyung waited for it.
Waiting was something he was good at. And killing. Nowadays the waiting held more weight, because he was biding his time, waiting to kill.
Or to be killed.
The other half of the coin.
He was good with either option.
He'd been taught the family business of killing at an early age. Way earlier than a boy should have. But his father believed in perfection and readiness, and he ensured his son was exposed to the violence. Making it so Taehyung was numbed to it before his eighteenth birthday. He'd also taken his fair share of lives by then, too.
The pride in his father's eyes kept the blood flowing.
Growing up without a mother, and a father who traveled frequently under the image of a diplomat, there wasn't much opportunity to make anyone proud. The teachers at his boarding schools didn't count, and his uncle—Seokjin definitely cared.
But Seokjin wasn't Taehyung's father.
So any chance he got to make his father proud, he took it.
He opened his eyes and peered into the darkness. Time didn't have much of a meaning inside his cage. He didn't have a clock, or sunlight, only freezing darkness. No way to tell how long he'd been held here, caged captive, tortured, and tormented by Jung Hoseok.
As if Taehyung' thoughts had conjured him, a single scrape of shoe against the dusty floor reached his ears. He made himself look up then, though it felt as if a concrete block sat on his neck. He had to blink repeatedly to get his burning eyes to focus.
The darkness shifted, parted, and the lightbulb overheard came on, revealing his captor.
"Mr. Kim." Hoseok's voice made Taehyung shudder.
"Call me—" It was strange to hear himself nowadays. "Call me Taehyung." His lips cracked, and fresh drops of blood ran down onto his chin when Taehyung smiled. "We are, after all, intimate now. No?"
