failures III » kpop ✓

chapter 6

· ͟͟͞͞➳❥ 06 « traces of vice »

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I don't like white rooms.

Bad things start in white rooms. In my nightmares, I am always trapped in one of them. I am trapped within those four white walls, holding visions of all the times that I got called in my elementary school teacher's office and screamed at for what he called baseless assaults, images of the shadow of my mother's hanging body, the recollections of my time spent in a psychiatric hospital. I want to run away, but there is no door that I could use to escape and I am forced to relive the traumatic memories that feel like acid, slowly melting away the last bits of my sanity until I suddenly wake up again.

Gasping for air and shaking, but never crying.

The pills made me lose the ability to cry a long time ago already.

I was standing within four white walls that night too. Tapping my foot against the ground and trying to ignore the growing anxiety that was clawing in my stomach. The fingers of my left hand were slowly tightening in to a fist and something in my head was trying to convince me to grab the gun of the security guard that was standing right behind me, shoot everyone and get out of that room while I still could. Before something bad would happen in there too.

'' I like you, Kirin. You know why? Because usually, you bother to use your brain. You know the district. You know the people. And you use that to your benefit. '' I lowered my gaze from the ceiling and looked at the man that was sitting at the desk in front of me. Kazuo was nearing his sixties already, but he still managed to maintain the respect that people had for him ever since he passed his fifteenth birthday, killed his first target and joined the yakuza. His skin was covered in tattoos and his eyes were sharper than the knives that he knew how to wield with the precision that could only match the one of a sushi chef. He was far from being one though. The only thing that Kazuo chopped with his knives, were fingers. Sometimes whole hands and arms. On special occasions even other, more graphic parts of a man's body too. '' That's why I don't like the fact that you've befriended a cop. ''

I stuck my hands in my pockets and lowered my head. '' I... I would never cause trouble for you. I know what would happen to me if I would try. To both me and the detective. ''

The yakuza were good at making people disappear quietly, but that didn't mean that their targets didn't suffer before they got taken out. Usually, it was the exact opposite. A friend of mine who worked for Kazuo, Kim Junmyeon, signed up to the Bunny girls website after images of murder kept haunting his mind and he told me all about the gruesome ways that he was taught to kill people. All of them involved the most horrible types of torture, but the one that rose to popularity just recently, was drowning someone in cement.

To my surprise, Kazuo wanted me to keep investigating with Baekhyun. '' I think that someone might be after my position as the leader of this district. That's why I want you to keep working with that detective and find out who is behind the murders of those prostitutes. They are the reason why I have cops running around the district and snooping in my business and it's starting to really piss me off... You can get rid of the lowlives too, while you're at it. I don't mind, as long as you leave me alone. People have no clue about how to be real criminals these days. ''

The aging man began one of his speeches about the old days and I barely held myself back from letting out an annoyed sigh. Smoke was rising from his cigar and making the air in his office, even harder to breathe than it already was. He always moved from one place to another, but right now, he was leading his operations from a themed club, where hosts walked around in bikinis and held special dancing shows while ankle deep in pools of water. They had a couple of bathing rooms too and the steam that was rising from them, was making so that the entire second floor of the building was overly hot and unbearable to spend too much time in.