Not Broken. Jaehyun Mafia Au

Yeah yeah yeah

Stepping out, my eyes noticed two more doors. More slowly this time, I opened the first one, still taking every precaution to not make any unnecessary noise.

Bathroom.

Okay, on to the next one.

I knew that this time it had to be the right door given the fact that it seemed pretty unlikely that they had built a room around me as I slept.

I turned the knob expecting a clicking sound but it never came.

Locked.

I sighed in frustration.

Of course, it was locked.

I turned around, resting my back against the door as I slid down to the floor.

I groan let my lips as my imaged reflected itself on a large mirror on the other side of the room.

I hadn't had a chance to look around the room since once I realized it wasn't mine, I had become preoccupied with the goal of leaving it, but seeing as I had nothing else to do, I figured I could at least find something to turn into a makeshift weapon or something along those lines.

Taking in the room's décor, I noticed that it was a lot less flashy than the bedroom I learned had used to belong to IU. Where her room was mostly filled with purple detailing, this room was covered in more black and grey tones. The walls were painted a plain white color. The hardwood floors were coated in a dark glaze that really drew attention to the details that appeared in the wood's natural patterns. The room only had 5 pieces of furniture: a bed with a charcoal toned net canopy, the sections of which were tied around the wooden bed poles that ended only a foot below the ceiling; a nightstand that matched the wood of the bed; a medium sized vanity table on top of which was the mirror spotted my reflection in, along with a small matching chair and a much larger chair on the other side of the room that reminded me of one of those chairs wealthy old men sat in when smoking a cigar in front of the fireplace in the movies.

I carefully stood up, painfully aware of the aches and pains which taunted every nerve. I walked towards the vanity, never talking my gaze off my reflection. My eyes weren't as swollen as they once were, but I couldn't help but notice that they were even darker from before.

<><><><>Flashback<><><><>

"Bruises take around six days from the point of the injury to fully develop, after that, they'll turn slightly green, then yellow, and then they'll start to slowly fade away," My mother told me as rummaged through the cupboards. I was sitting on the bathroom counter, watching her as she searched for the first aid kit. My older brother, the one who disappeared with our family's inheritance, had pushed me down after I tried to join him and his friends in their soccer game. My knee hadn't been scraped since my jeans shielded its impact, but it was obvious that a bruise was starting to form. I was eight at the time.

"So, they don't turn purple immediately?" I asked.

"Nope."

"That's so stupid! You mean that I have to wait for it to get purple before it goes away?"

My mother rolled up my pant leg, a slight smile adorned her features.

"Sometimes things get worse before they can get better. That's the way life is sometimes," She hummed as she opened a jar lacking in any sort of label.

She noticed my pouting expression and let out a chuckle.

"But you know, you don't have to sit there and put up with it. That's why we use vitamin k cream, to clot the broken capillaries so that the bruises fade faster," She explained in her usual sing-songy tone.

"That's so stupid. What does that even mean?" I whined.

"You'll understand when you're older."

<><><>End of flashback<><><><>

I smiled at the memory but the tears that filled my eyes revealed the real truth.

My mom always seemed to know exactly what to say. It was like she always knew that everything was going to be okay, no matter how bad it appeared to be. That knowing smile which reassured me that things would turn out the way they were supposed to, wound up being a false comfort. Things didn't turn out the way they were supposed to. Not then when she and my father died in that car accident, and not now.

My mom wasn't here to tell me everything was going to be okay and she never would again.

Staring at myself in the mirror, the tears spilled over one by one, until a sudden series of knocks started coming from the locked door.

I tried to wipe the tears away using the sleeve of the pajamas, but the unabsorbant satin merely spread them over my cheeks.

Seriously?

"Y/N? I'm coming in now," the voice announced.

Making one last effort to wipe the moisture from my face with my hands, I turned towards the opened door. The first thing I noticed was red.

It was Taeyong.