"It was you... The one I fell in love with. This entire time, it was you."
***
It all started with the end.
Han Jisung─an orphan whose only goal for the future is to build a better life for himself and his sister─and Lee Minho─also known as...
Listen to "I Bet on Losing Dogs" by Mitski for this chapter.
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Being locked in that room had been torture for Jisung.
Seungmin stayed with him the whole day and night, killing time on his phone or reading books, while Jisung cried and stared at the ceiling, wondering if his sister and his best friends were okay. If they missed him.
He didn't know why he was there, what they were planning to do with him, or if he was ever going to walk outside as a free man again. He tried to get some information out of his new bodyguard, but Seungmin was too blindly loyal to Minho to reveal anything.
Jisung was so furious with Minho that on his first day there, he refused to eat and didn't fall asleep until seven, when the sun was already visible in the sky.
That morning, a knock at the door woke him up.
He opened his eyes to a short lady dressed in a plain black dress. She carried a tray of hot food to the table in the middle of the room and bowed to Jisung. She had the same tattoo as Seungmin on her wrist.
"Good morning, sir. I brought you breakfast, which the master requests you eat this time."
Jisung sat up and looked around him. The room was bright because of the light that was coming from outside, and Seungmin was sleeping like a log on a little couch next to the bed. Jisung's heart sank when he remembered where he was.
"Who are you? Who is 'the master'?" he asked the woman, his voice raspy from all the screaming he did yesterday.
"I am a maid of this house. I was assigned to take care of you until you leave with the master today─ I mean Venom; the master is Venom."
At the simple mention of that name, Jisung started to whine and kick his legs, throwing a tantrum that only he knew the meaning of. Why couldn't he be free of Minho? Why?
He hit his pillow, the mattress, even his own head, as he squirmed and wailed, and the maid only stared.
So much squirming led to his body getting entrapped in the bed sheets like seaweed in a fishnet, but since he couldn't bear the pressure of escaping them, he rolled to the side until he fell off the bed and hit the ground.
He heard his nose crack at the contact with the floor.
The woman yelped. "S-sir, are you okay? Should I call an ambulance?"
Jisung chose not to say a thing. He waited ─ hoped ─ for the maid to leave, but she stayed in the same place.
He was so dangerously close to losing it and jumping out the window.
"What else do you need?" he asked when he convinced himself to stay calm, his face still glued to the floor.
"I'm waiting for you to eat, sir. I need to make sure you take all your pills and a bath before you leave."
