Jisung was dead. Or, he felt dead, anyway. His arms and legs were filled with rocks, his head filled with sand. He didn’t want to move, unsure why his body was feeling this way. Maybe it’s all the drugs. Or I’m unwillingly giving up.
He absently reached up and rubbed a lock of his black hair between his fingers, briefly wondering if he imagined the gentle fingers and the comforting voice. Was it Minho? What did he say? Jisung couldn’t remember. He could only remember the sound of the voice.
After a drawn out moment of laying there, Jisung slowly sat up and noticed the light spilling from the windows was golden and bright. It was evening already? He got to his feet and stepped out into the hall. He didn’t need to wonder if Minho was there because he was coming up the stairs, tucking a gun into the holster under his suit jacket.
Minho met his eyes in surprise and then smiled. “Good morning, sleeping beauty.”
“You could have gotten me up. It’s already so late.”
“You already don’t trust me, I would only make it worse by waking you up when you clearly needed sleep.”
Jisung couldn’t stamp down his small smile fast enough. “Thank you for the concern, but I don’t need to sleep all day.”
“You just did, so no, you don’t need to anymore.” Minho leaned back against the banister. “Feeling hungry? I went out and got some food.”
Eating wasn’t at the forefront of his mind, but the moment it was mentioned, he felt the hollow knock of hunger in his body. He nodded. “I could eat.”
Minho smiled. “Great. Come on, it’s still fresh.”
Jisung eyed his gun as he followed him downstairs. “Fresh as in you stole it from a delivery man?”
Minho noticed his gaze. “You could say that.”
“So you’re not above stealing food.”
“Never.”
Jisung let out a small laugh. He couldn’t help it. “I guess we’re all lowlifes, no matter how much money we have.”
“It’s who we are.”
In the kitchen, a variety of bags and boxes sat on the counter, all from different restaurants. It smelled heavenly, and Jisung’s stomach growled in response.
“The delivery man had a lot of options in his back seat, so I just… grabbed them all,” Minho said, a laugh in his voice as he opened one of the bags. “Help yourself.”
“I’m touched that you shook this out of a terrified delivery man for me,” Jisung teased, digging through the options. “No one’s ever done that for me before.”
Minho’s eyes were sparkling. “Never? How dreadful.”
“Did you just say dreadful? I don’t think I’ve heard anyone use that word aside from very old people.”
“It’s a good word, Jisung. You should expand your vocabulary.”
“So you’re creepy and nerdy.”
“You say that as if it’s a bad thing.”
A laugh bubbled out of Jisung. “Being creepy is a bad thing, Mr. Lee Minho.”
“I was talking about being nerdy.”
Jisung half wondered if he was still asleep and wandering a strange dream. Minho was nothing like he expected, and he was… strangely comfortable around him. Was that what this feeling was? Or was he experiencing Stockholm Syndrome? “Alright, being nerdy isn’t bad, but it doesn’t really go with your whole… being a mafia don thing.”
“Nonsense.” Minho didn’t make any further argument and dragged one of the bags off the counter. “The living room is pretty comfortable, come on.”
Jisung wasn’t sure why, but he followed his captor into the front room. They sat on the couches opposite each other, and he curled his legs under himself as he settled down to eat.
A subtle quiet hung in the air as they each dug into the food they chose. The events of the night before tip-toed around the edge of the room and poked at their minds. Neither acknowledged if for a drawn out time.
“Was last night successful?” Minho finally asked, a small amount of hesitancy following his words.
Jisung knew the question was coming, but he still wasn’t completely ready for it. “I think so.” He poked at his food, suddenly losing motivation to finish his meal. “I was dragged to a room and… I don’t really know what was going on, but I was in excruciating pain. The word pain doesn’t even cover it, actually.” He glanced up at Minho. “The symbol on our backs was all over the place, so I’m assuming you were kept there too.”
Minho’s eyes reflected memories, ones Jisung couldn’t see, as he set his food to the side. “I was.”
“And you remember everything.”
“I do.”
“You were… hurt too?”
“Yes. Just in different ways. We were different projects, so we each faced different torture every day.”
“Yet we still knew each other.”
Minho nodded slowly, like he didn’t want to discuss this information. “Some things worked out.”
Jisung didn’t like how vague that response was. “How do we know each other?” His voice came out softer, more vulnerable than he meant it to, but he wanted an answer. He needed it.
Minho met his eyes. “Can you remember anything regarding… that?”
The blurred vision he saw in the kitchen flashed through his mind; the vision where he heard Minho’s laugh. He felt silly talking about it. “I remember laughter.” Jisung watched that sink into the man in front of him, unable to assess what he was thinking. Suddenly, the view in front of him gave him a sense of deja vu. No, it was more like he was looking at a picture through a distorted mirror.
Minho noticed his odd stare. “Jisung?”
Jisung set his food on the low table in front of the couch and leaned forward, eyes glued to him. “I’ve seen this before.” He didn’t care that he sounded crazy.
“You mean you remember something like this?”
“Help me remember, Minho.”
It looked like Minho stopped breathing, his thoughts scrambling across his face as he tried to gather them back into their proper place to sort through later. “Uh-” he pulled his legs up, hands fidgeting. “A small room. Gray furniture. One door.”
Jisung nodded along, his mind filling in the blanks of the blurry memory he glimpsed before. He remembered the gray, the rough rough carpet below socked feet.
Minho was still going. “White clothes, one with red cuffs, one with blue cuffs.”
Jisung could see it. He was wearing a stiff, white jumpsuit, the sleeves cuffed with blue. An identical jumpsuit sat across from him, the sleeves red. A single chain connected his right wrist to the wall behind him. In front of him, slouched in the corner of the gray couch, head tilted, was Minho. A younger Minho plastered in uneven bandages, hand running over a chain that connected him to the opposite wall.
A lazy grin sat on his face. “When I get out, they’ll see just what they made. Their machine turned against them.”
“I wish I could see it.”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“I’m never getting out. You know that.”
Minho’s eyes grew serious. “What if I promise to get you out?”
“The promise will break.”
“How?”
“I’ll already be gone.”
The vision, the memory, faded. Jisung met Minho’s eyes. “We talked about your escape and how mine wasn’t possible.”
Minho’s body visibly relaxed as tension fell from his bones. “You remembered me.”
“Only that moment. I still don’t know how or why we know each other,” Jisung clarified, twisting his fingers.
“You remembered me, that’s all that matters right now. I was the first thing those people wanted out of your memory.”
Jisung’s heart jumped. He was finally getting some answers. “Can you tell me more?” Minho opened his mouth. “Please,” Jisung interrupted.
The other paused for a long moment. So long, in fact, Jisung thought he was frozen.
“Where we were kept…” Minho began, sifting through his words carefully. “How do I put this?”
Jisung listened, his every sense on high alert as he waited for Minho to continue.
“Our captors were making soldiers, spies. They were making us machines, monsters, however you want to put it. My program was making soldiers while yours was making spies. But we were all put through what they called tests every day. It was torture, but they needed something to put on the paperwork, right?” Minho shook his head at his own lame attempt at lightening the mood. “I know you want to know everything, and I want that for you too. But I can’t give you everything.”
“You said I would drop dead if you told me everything. What did you mean by that?”
Minho scratched his head, his shoulders slightly hunched. “I guess you’re remembering enough that it should be safe. When they took your memory away, they implemented a precaution, that is, they implemented a kill switch.”
Jisung shook his head. “That doesn’t make sense, how-“
“Trust me, they can do it. These people, this organization, is far more advanced than anyone should be.”
“If they’re willing to kill me over recovering my memories, why didn’t they just kill me in the first place? Why go through the trouble of erasing my memory and setting me loose?”
Minho’s eyes grew distant and… sorrowful. “You were a failed project. The last step of their brainwashing in your program is to erase specific parts of your memory to make you the most obedient machine possible. But they erased pretty much everything, and by the time they realized it, you were already taken in by Nightfield.”
Jisung let the information sink in. It sounded so unbelievable, but it felt right. He had no room in his mind to deny it. “I’m safe as long as I remember most things on my own, right?”
“Yes. I’ve tried it on a few others from your program, and now I know your limitations.”
Others. Jisung wanted to ask how many other people suffered the same he did, but he kept the question in his chest. Something he couldn’t keep in his chest slipped free. “How did you find out about me? Being a failed project?”
The distant look in Minho’s eyes grew as looked somewhere far beyond the quiet room. “They told me you were dead. A failed project is a dead project.” His voice was quiet, sad.
Something about it made Jisung’s heart crumble. A strange rush of emotion welled up in his chest, emotion he didn’t understand. Why do I want to cry and hug him?
“I only found out you were alive after I got out, after I heard your name in passing when Nightfield started getting into my business.”
Jisung ran it all through his head. From how young Minho was in his memory, to when Chan found him, to when Nightfield began targeting Minho. “You thought I was dead for almost five years.”
“Five years and fifty-seven days.”
Both fell silent as the words they shared fell on the room in a layer of dust. Jisung’s mind and body were in conflict. While his mind was trying to understand everything, his heart reacted as if it knew everything already.
Minho pushed to his feet. “That’ll do for tonight.” He began cleaning up the discarded food, and Jisung got to his feet as well.
He didn’t like the tension that wound its way around their bodies. “So… did I miss my day out?”
Minho let out a breath that nearly sounded like a laugh, his demeanor relaxing. “No, you didn’t. This wasn’t a You Snooze You Lose situation.”
Jisung felt himself relax as well. “Good, I was about to submit a complaint to management.”
“Meaning you were going to complain to me?”
“Exactly.”
The pair took the leftovers into the kitchen and began cleaning up the other containers of delivery.
“I’m not good with complaints, some might say I get trigger-happy when I am inconvenienced,” Minho said, smiling like he shared a joke with himself.
Jisung rolled his eyes. “I heard you shot one of your men in both knees because he leaked some of your information to some gang, so I’m assuming that’s true.”
“It is. He was a rat, but a useful one, so he can’t do anything damaging as a cripple, but he can still provide me service.” Minho spoke as if he was talking about a dumpy copy machine at work.
“That’s cruel.”
“Killing him would have been counterproductive, and letting him go would be the same as releasing a snake into a mouse pit. It’s a win-win for everyone.”
Jisung didn’t argue. All he knew (at the moment) was the mafia, and the way of the mafia was cruel and always would be. So in a way, they really were having a conversation about a dumpy copy machine at work.
Minho gave him a sly smile. “You’re not the most angelic yourself, as far as I’ve heard.”
He couldn’t fight down his knowing smile. “Oh, really? Enlighten me, what have you heard?”
“I heard you are very skilled at getting information out of anyone with the use of some needles and a heated knife.”
Jisung smiled. “I do miss my interrogation kit.”
Minho stopped, his own smile growing on his face. “No way, really? Needles?”
“They’re surprisingly effective.”
“I do hope you’re not planning on using them on me.”
“You never know when things will come in handy.”
“That’s quite the threat.”
“And I’ll follow through with it if I don’t get my day out tomorrow.”
Minho held his hands up. “You’ll get it, I promise.”
Jisung smiled. “Good. I look forward to it.”
—————–Every time I write the sentence ‘in the kitchen’ my brain fills it in with the line from superbowl “In the kitchen, Michelin, irresistible.” It’s great lol. Anywho, another chapter down, YAS. Thanks for reading. \(â–¡_â–¡)/
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