A Banana Fish Story

Chapter 3 - A Cottage by The Sea

Writer's block for almost three months, I heavily apologize for the delay as I had a massive writer's block, but now I am finally back~! Enjoy this massive hill of feels and see you down there ;) / Hana

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As soon as Zemin opened his eyes once more, he was met with bright lights inside of the room, when he finally got used with it, his vision got a bit clearer and realized he was tied up by the side of Max and Ibe. This got him ultimately confused, just a moment ago, they were all finely dressed for dinner and Eiji was nowhere to be seen back then, Shorter, Ash...Most importantly, where were those two?! Zemin looked around in panic before he spotted Ash all chained up a bit far away from where he was, what the hell was going on here? Where was Shorter? Where was Eiji? Where the hell were all of them at?!  Soon, he heard a door open up and he turned his head to see whoever entered, what he saw made him panic on the inside, Shorter? Why was he shirtless? Why did it look like he had seen some shit before? He didn't even want to believe it was Shorter who entered, but once his vision got even more clearer, there was no doubt, it was his boyfriend, standing there like a totally deranged man.

"S-Shorter?" Zemin called out to his lover while he grew incredibly worried and scared, did he recognize him? Was Shorter in his right senses? But as suspected, Shorter never replied, he never spoke nor did he even glance when he could have heard Zemin's voice, this got Zemin worried big time. It grew even worse when he saw Eiji being dragged inside and thrown against the ground, he saw what was happening. He watched as the disgusting Arthur made his way forth and gave both of Eiji and Shorter knives, knives...Oh no, were they going to fight?! But as soon as Shorter saw Eiji, something triggered within his brain and got him all worked up, the poor man screamed in fear, his eyes going all wide with fear and the intent of killing Eiji right in front of him. He lunged forward with the knife, attacking the scared Eiji who struggled to live. Zemin had to be honest, in a real fight between these two, Eiji would never stand a chance since Shorter was taller, stronger and had more advantage with violence and this was just an example of it, a worse example. It was a bloody chaos, Shorter screaming and attacking Eiji while Ash was trying his very best to convince his dearest friend to stop all of the madness, Zemin felt the tears form up in his eyes as he watched the terror keep going, he just realized...Shorter was drugged with that fucked up drug and as far as he knew, just like with Ash's late older brother, Griffin, once it ended, there was no turning back.

"No...S-Stop it, please..." He vaguely begged as he continued to watch and started to cry when Shorter managed to disarm Eiji and started to choke him, Zemin's breathing got heavier as the tears kept running and kept pleading for Shorter to stop and come back to his senses and hoping this was just a horrible nightmare. But sadly, this was the horrible reality Zemin lived in, not everyone got their happy endings, he began to even realize that his dream with Shorter, living in a cottage together with Ash and a dog, it was never going to happen, it started to crumble at the sight of Shorter. He watched in horror before he gathered the courage and clenched his tied fists as he stared at his boyfriend.

"STOP IT, SHORTER! THIS IS NOT YOU!" He screamed out, just hoping he got a reaction out of him and just by luck, he did. Shorter immediately stopped for a moment while everyone in the room were surprised over the sudden yelling, this sudden moment gave Eiji the chance to escape from Shorter's grip and scrambled away, it seemed like Shorter was staring at something before he turned his gaze at Zemin, his vacant eyes shivering in terror and panted heavily before he turned his gaze back at his best friend, he could only whisper out:

"Free me." Ash heard that and felt his heart ache even more when he realized what he had to do, he saw the gun Arthur tossed over earlier and started to doubt, but when Shorter returned to his frenzy and grabbed the knife, he was just about to attack Eiji when Arthur suddenly loosened up Ash's chains which let the young blonde run over to the gun and grabbed onto it. He screamed to Shorter to stop, but he didn't. Shorter just kept running towards Eiji and as much as Ash hated this with all over his heart and probably knew that Zemin was never going to forgive him, he had to do this: