High Maintenance 👑 h.zt

21

~Tao~

"Huang, you're in the wrong place at the wrong time." The voice sounded like it was underwater, like it was far away, like when you had water in your ears. It sounded like an echo, but a far off echo, like he wasn't sitting there, but somewhere else, just witnessing this from somewhere else.

He felt someone shake him, roughly, not like they wanted him to wake up, but like they wanted him out of the way. A shove, a hard shove. Tao couldn't fight it, couldn't even find the strength to open his eyes, all it did was make his head loll forward.

"You're worthless. Do you have any idea what kind of day I've had today? I don't have time to haul your ass off the floor!"

Tao couldn't place who it was that was talking, the voice was familiar, but everything was still too scrambled to remember, everything was still fuzzy. What had even happened?

"GET UP!"

Tao felt a sharp kick to his ribs, making him instinctively double over, he couldn't hold himself up, he fell to his side and moaned.

"The hell is this, Huang?" Tao felt like something was being waved in his face, but he didn't open his eyes. "What in the hell is this garbage you brought with you?! You think I was playing games, Tao?"

Tao forced himself to open his eyes, meeting the face of a skeleton, black eyes staring at him hard. Sh*t.

"Is this a threat? Is this proof that you can't handle this? I'll be glad to fire you."

Tao felt the barrel of a gun put up under his chin, it's cold metal stinging and digging into his skin. Tao swallowed, the touch of it making his blood run cold.

"N-no, I wasn't..." Tao started, his tongue feeling dry and not able to form words properly. He heard the gun click, "It won't happen again...!" Tao insisted.

The gun slowly eased off his skin and he put it back in his pocket. "Make sure it doesn't." His voice still sounded far away, but even then, it was muffled by that skull mask.

If he was here, Tao could only be one place--the hideout, had to be, his boss didn't go other places too often, did all his work from here mostly, that was what Chanyeol was for, to make sure everyone did their job.

The boss. Tao didn't call him anything else, he knew his name, like anyone else who had been in his gang, but he'd never seen his face, and he wasn't supposed to speak the name either, not even to other people who knew it, it was one of the rules.

The boss stepped back and straightened the collar of his black suit coat. "You've got about a week still, get rid of him, or I'll rip out your heart and your soul, understand me? They won't recognize your body."

Tao nodded. He didn't know what else to do, couldn't move enough to do anything else.

His boss pressed a button on the intercom on his big oak desk, sighing loudly. "Park, get in here and scrape this garbage off my floor."

Park...Park...Who had that na--Oh, right.

A few seconds later, Chanyeol came in, his expression flat, not a trace of emotion on his face, he was always like this around the boss, Tao could hardly recognize him.

Chanyeol didn't wait for an explanation, or even an order, he seemed to know exactly what the 'garbage' was, and yanked Tao up by the arm, slinging it over his shoulder before dragging Tao out. Tao couldn't find it in himself to move his feet anyway.

Chanyeol dragged him down the hall, and Tao closed his eyes. He had the worst headache, it felt like something was stabbing his brain from the inside.