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— we're not all in the right.
OCTOBER 21: JEON JEONGGUK
==
[ long chapter ahead lovelies c: ]
the air is warm.
there's a smell of something cooking, something remarkably delicious to his vaguely empty stomach. it feels like the old family dinners he used to sparingly attend (a regrettable decision, he decides now); his mother cooks every cuisine under the sun with such startlingly accuracy that it's hard to fathom she was self taught. usually he was tasked with turning on the electric fireplace (true wood made a smell too pungent), his father setting the table, his grandparents already three spoonfuls into their full plates. it was cozy. maybe his mother made him dinner. the thought makes him excited—college food becomes extremely monotonous after consecutive days of eating it.
college food. college. did his mother come all the way here to cook him dinner? he inhales. sharply. no, this smell isn't—
jeongguk opens his eyes.
it takes him a moment to adjust to the low lighting of his surroundings, vision blurry and a dull pain on the side of his head, near to his temple. he can't move his arms; they're immobile, somehow, painstakingly fixated behind his back. his throat is dry. when he pulls apart his chapped lips from each other, saliva pools at the corners of his mouth.
as the fuzziness finally escapes his vision, jeongguk realizes he's in a living room, large and open. the floors are a dark, waxy mahogany, and its long panels of wood stretch to his left into what looks like a kitchen. expensive leather couches surround him, positioned to face a walled t.v. screen, and framed artwork scatters the crimson walls with uncertain placement. the sharp smell still lingers—was i not imagining it? dull lights make jeongguk squint in vain to the numerous objects scattered on the mantel of the fireplace. it's expensive. it's unnerving.it's dark and undecipherable, shadows and shapes swirling around him. where is this?
jeongguk wipes his spit against the shoulder of his shirt, and he looks down. he's on a chair. tied. hands behind his back, calves held loosely against the chair legs with rope. for a moment he stops breathing; it's almost surreal, how horribly similar it is to all of the action movies he's seen, and his heart thunders against his chest.
something shifts in his peripheral vision, and jeongguk turns left—to see taehyung, wide-eyed with a purple bruise stretching over the side of his jaw. he's in the exact same predicament as jeongguk is, immobile against a chair. a flash of relief passes over his lowly illuminated face.
"thank god, you're awake," whispers taehyung, so quietly that jeongguk almost misses it. "i've been scared out of my wits for the past ten minutes."
