Vendetta

Chapter 11

Jeongin wrestled the camera off of the tripod, hoping that Chan wouldn't notice when he got home. The camera had to be at least worth a little importance in his unclear plan of escape. As he slipped out of the room, carefully removing any clues that he had been there, Jeongin felt another powerful wave of nausea wash over him, threatening to bring him to his knees.

    The videos had to be the project, it only made sense. Chan had developed the idea of a project just a month after their parents died three years ago. Three years ago marked the date of the first video and when Minho had begun to grow sickly. Was there an objective or purpose to the project, or did it serve as nothing but an outlet for Chan to unleash his twisted desires that he had held secret from their parents?

    The camera hit the bathroom floor with a dull click as Jeongin rushed to the toilet and threw up the contents of his stomach. Wave after wave of nausea hit him, making it nearly impossible for him to catch his breath in between wrenching. He couldn't believe he had begged Chan for so long to help with the project. There he was, thinking it was some wonderful thing Chan was doing. In reality, he could have ended up like Changbin or Hyunjin. Neither of them were quite the same after what they had been forced to do.

    Wiping off his mouth, Jeongin weakly reached for the camera as he pulled himself to his feet. He realized with a pang that there was footage on that camera of the incident that had given him his scar. It had proof that Chan, who he nearly worshiped, had left his mark on him, just as he had with all of his other siblings. However, he didn't need to watch the footage to remember.

    It came in bits and pieces. Chan's dark eyes glittering beneath the mask, Jeongin's arms chained so high above his head it was agonizing. The knife Chan held glinted dangerously under the fluorescent lighting, Jeongin powerless to do anything but watch. Chan's movements were slow and deliberate, meaning to prolong Jeongin's suffering as long as possible. To this day, Jeongin could still remember the stinging pain as the blade tore through his body like a saw, warm blood gushing down his front and onto the floor.

    Pushing the memory to the recesses of his mind, Jeongin stumbled to his bedroom, listening to his sibling's carefree shouts from the living room. Surely, they knew more than he did. They couldn't have forgotten what Chan did to them and what he made them do. Something had forced them to forget. Raging whirlwinds of conflicting thoughts ravaged his mind, but he pushed them to the side. If he played his cards right, the time would soon come where he could confront them head on.

    He slid the camera underneath his pillow for the time being before sneaking into his older sibling's room to talk to Minho. Instead of finding Minho's sickly frame shivering beneath three thin sheets, he only found a book sitting in the center of the bed. Minho was nowhere to be found. Jeongin's heart sank as he picked up the book that lay in Minho's place, wondering if he had intended for someone to find it.

    The book showed a person on the front jogging with 'A Guide to the Human Body' written on the top in large blue letters. Chan had given Minho the book as a present when he showed interest in how his body worked, Chan signing the recipient's name in sharpie at the top left corner. Jeongin flipped through the pages, pausing for a moment when he saw a page showing an x-ray of all the bones in the human body.

    On the right leg, Minho had made angry dashes through all the bones up to his hip in red ink. The lines had been made so aggressively that they nearly tore through the page. Jeongin knew that Minho was devastated by the inability to use his right leg and going blind in his left eye, but the trauma had gone deeper than he thought.

    He started flipping through the pages again, this time only stopping when he found a slip of paper tucked in the page on intestines. He snatched the paper, holding it close to his face to read Minho's chicken scratch handwriting. The more he read, the more his fury rose and he began experiencing an urge he had never felt before.