"What?" She breathed out in utter disbelief. Whipping her head around, she met the eyes of Park Chanyeol.
He stared back at her. And she searched through those glassy orbs for any sort of denial, explanation even. But there was none.
Her heart dropped.
His expression said it all.
Guilty.
That hard demeanour he tried to put up only exuded the mask of pain he wore. Because behind that deep brown gaze was a tormented man; the internal conflict behind those very eyes almost screaming for her, willing her to hear him out.
But the more she looked at him, the more her blood boiled in fury. Now she understood finally, albeit a bit too late, of his distant, icy behaviour towards her in the past few days. How could he now even look at her sympathetically, pitifully? How dare he even have nerve to be sad for her?
"ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!" She screamed at him from across the room, to which she only received an expected disappointing, soul crushing silence (again).
The reality sunk in.
A hollow empty feeling sat in her stomach. The feeling of being abandoned and betrayed again crept up to her.
She was alone. And this time, she blamed herself when she laid all of her vulnerabilities on the table for Park Chanyeol to see and he used her for his own gain.
This is what happens when you open up to people.
Tears pricked at the end of her eyes but she quickly blinked them away. The stubborn bone inside her refused to let herself shed even a single tear in front of all these people.
Crying wouldn't help.
So woman up and think of a solution!
As the seconds ticked by, the only thing running through her mind was all the sickening scenarios that this vile Jean Pierre would do to her.
A bead of sweat slid down her forehead as she calculated her options; she could let Jean Pierre take her away and escape later, but that was a huge risk she herself couldn't afford.
He'll have me skinned alive before I could even spell escape.
Or she could try it here. Either way, her chances of survival are zero to none.
One thing's for certain, though. There was no way in hell she would go with this perverted creep willingly without a fight.
And so, without even thinking twice, she used the moves she learnt in self defence and struck her arm into the crook of Jean Pierre's neck. His breath caught in his throat, the harsh blow caught him off guard, temporarily disabling him for a few seconds.
She almost jumped in victory when he actually stumbled a few steps back, giving her chance to dodge around him and dash to the door.
Not that she thought she could beat against 50 odd strong men twice her size, but at least it distracted everyone enough when they began shuffling around to check the pervert was okay.
In the hopes that she could just skip by the door in the midst of the chaos, her hopes crushed as soon as they formed when a hand wrapped its fist around her hair, lurching her back.
A throbbing pain erupted in the back of her head as a clump of her hair was ripped out from its roots. Tears of pain involuntarily rolled down her cheeks like a waterfall and she hated herself for crying when she only promised herself a few seconds ago that she wouldn't.
Jean Pierre wrapped one arm around her waist from behind, keeping her in place, while the other hand remained on the scalp of her head, keeping her at his mercy. His cigar breath hit her in the face as he snickered vulgarly into her ear.
"You excite me," he grinned. His words shook her to the core of her bones when he slipped his hand under her shirt and began feeling up her stomach.
Oh, God.
Soo-ji squirmed against him, using every limb she could to fight against the strong hold against her.
She closed her eyes tightly shut when his large hand began roughly tugging on the cup of her bra, his fingernails digging into the skin of her breast as he groped and clawed at her.
Her vision blurred from the hot tears clouding her senses. Her knees fell limp, her ears vaguely registering the whimpers and sobs coming out of her mouth.
No one's going to help.
And she hated herself, again, for being the hopeless, useless girl everyone had told her she was.
A few metres away, Kai held Chanyeol back.
"Don't interfere!" Kai warned him in the struggle, "we're done here. Let's just get the money and get out!"
A piercing scream interrupted them and Chanyeol snapped his head to the direction of the distressing cry.
To his horror, Jean Pierre had one hand on her lower stomach, fumbling around the strings of Soo-ji's shorts, while the other hand wrapped around her hair so hard that her head tilted upwards towards the ceiling.
"Chanyeol!" Kai yelled to him, desperately bringing his attention back by shaking his shoulders vigorously, "listen to me! Choi Soo-ji is not our responsibility anymore! She's no one, she's just a distraction, you'll get bored of her soon! Don't be reckless and get a fucking grip on yourself!"
His chest constricted suffocatingly in pain the longer he watched Soo-ji. The degradation, the helplessness and the mere fact of watching her get hurt hurt him more than anything.
It was then that something snapped in him.
It was then that he decided to make a decision.
It was time to admit his feelings.
And flashing an infuriating glare at Kai once, long gone was the conflicted, indecisive man. Instead, the powerful, strong leader of the XV Gang returned.
"She's a risk I'm willing to take." He said to Kai, then pushed him aside as he whipped out the pistol from the back of his belt, took aim and shot.
An explosion-like sound shook the walls of the room. Screams and shouts were heard next as everyone took cover.
The immobilising restraint of Jean Pierre's arms slithered away from Soo-ji. Gasping for breath, she spun around and directly at her feet laid Jean Pierre, a bullet hole in the middle of his forehead as blood gushed out of the gaping hole. His unblinking eyes remained still and open, no sign of shock or tremor on his face as Chanyeol's clean shot killed him instantly on the spot.
Unsuspecting.
Unexpected.
Soo-ji stood paralysed; the puddle of his thick blood creeping towards her shoes shocked her into oblivion.
Then, a gust of wind whooshed past her as she was suddenly pulled into someone's chest, her head just missing the surge of a bullet penetrating through her brain.
She looked up, and recognised her saviour to be none other than Chanyeol, who was now pulling her towards the corner of the room. Flipping over a mechanics table, he dragged her behind it.
Crouching down and taking cover together, Chanyeol's hands went straight to both of her cheeks, cupping them in his palm as he wiped the splattered blood away.
"What the hell were you thinking?!" He yelled to her, "you're asking to be killed by just standing there, idiot!"
Soo-ji stared at him, blank. Her white washed face paling to the point where he thought she was gonna be sick.
"Yah! Choi Soo-ji! Snap out of it! Are you okay?" He screamed in her face, "are you hurt anywhere?" He then began twisting her arm and body around, checking for any wounds.
Waking up from her momentary shock, she blinked herself back to reality and clapped a hand across his face.
His head whipped to the side. Wincing, his tongue popped the inside of his cheek as the harsh sting flared up on one side of his face.
For a split second, Soo-ji thought he'd be mad. But when he turned his head back to her, the gentle and soft features of his face said otherwise.
"Hit me all you want later. I'm gonna have to jump back out there. Stay here and don't move, okay? I'll come back for you."
But as soon as he left her, with an angry firing round of bullets pelting around her, another figure came running up to her, gasping for breath.
"There you are!" Hwasa exasperated. Soo-ji looked at her up and down. The glamorous girl she saw only a few minutes ago completely transformed into a ragged doll dragged through hell and back. Blood stains coated all over her glitzy dress, a huge gash on her knee needed urgent care and her hair was no longer the slick and beautiful.
"This is Taehyung's second task for you." And she then pressed a lighter into the middle of Soo-ji's palm.
"What am I meant to do with thi-"
Before Soo-ji could finish asking the question, Hwasa's body crashed forward into her chest as she was shot in the back.
"No..."
Looking up, she caught Chanyeol's eye who was aiming his gun towards them.
"Why the FUCK did you kill her?!" She screamed at him, but after seeing her safe and sound, he was already gone, jumping straight back into the action.
As much as she appreciated him looking out for her, this was the time she wanted him to not be so good at what he was doing for once. Because for the second time, she wouldn't know what the bloody damn task was.
Clutching the lighter tightly in her palm, she looked around frantically.
The second task must be somewhere here.
And then her eyes landed on the forklift of cocaine abandoned in the middle of the carnage.
Something told her that it had something to do with that.
And then it clicked.
"After the deal is sealed," she remembered Hwasa saying to her before in the club toilets, "we'll burn all the drugs to the ground. Park Chanyeol is ten million poorer, Jean Pierre won't have the goods to sell to the streets and we've just made the world a bit better; it's a win win situation!"
The realisation hit her like a smack in the face.
Of course! She shouted at herself in the head. I should've known.
Spinning her head left and right, she searched for something to set the huge forklift on fire with just a little lighter. Her eyes widened when she stumbled upon the discarded toolbox and the various mechanical equipment scattered all over the floor.
Crawling on all fours, she reached over to a bottle of white spirit, stuffed a dirty rag inside and lit it.
This was it.
As she watched Chanyeol for a few seconds, who was beating the crap out of some guy on the floor, unleashing all of his anger on the poor soul who didn't know his impending death, the more her own anger rose.
"Fuck him. Fuck drugs. And fuck everything else." She muttered to herself. And without thinking twice, she launched the Molotov cocktail into his ten million worth of cocaine.
A monstrous orange flame erupted to the ceiling as soon as the bottle smashed and Soo-ji was instantly thrown backwards by the force.
The back of her head slammed against the concrete floor, causing stars to cloud her vision. In complete blindness to her senses, a sharp ringing then pierced through to her ear drums.
Groaning in pain, she forced her eyes to stay open under the will to live.
There's no way I'm dying in here.
Gasping for breath, she dragged her heavy body to the door where a stampede of the alive were treading over themselves to get out.
As she slid across the floor, she came face to face with countless lifeless bodies. Some burnt, some even with missing arms and legs.
She didn't realise how the place turned into a gory massacre until she looked down at her own bloody hands, or the drag marks her body left behind on the floor.
It scared her. That she might be one of the dead in here.
But just when that thought crossed her mind, she felt herself weightlessly lifted off the ground when Chanyeol hurled her up, slinging an arm around his shoulder as he carried her to the exit.
As black smoke and orange flames surrounded them, she felt a wash of feathery lightness rush through her body as her breathing turned ragged and irregular, her heartbeat slowing down.
Any second now, she would pass out.
"Hold on!" She heard Chanyeol shout in her ear, pushing past the screaming people.
Amidst the struggle of hot sweaty bodies crushing her in, she tripped over the dead bodies underneath her feet.
She felt herself slipping away from Chanyeol. But his grip on her only tightened as if afraid to let her go.
I'm not gonna make it.
Just when she closed her eyes to succumb to the suffocating darkness, a gust of wind hit them both in the face as they barraged through the door.
Heaving, she held onto Chanyeol as she coughed and coughed, the toxic smoke infiltrating her lungs. She felt herself go dizzy as her vision faded in and out at the lack of oxygen in her brain.
"You're okay, you're good." He whispered to her, cradling her head. "We're going home."
But as soon as he said that, a deadly gunshot shook through the night and Soo-ji was suddenly pulled to the ground.
She laid there, feeling the pain to come but it never did.
When she glanced next to her, Chanyeol laid unmoving. A large red circle coated his chest, blood seeping through the front of his shirt.
Her eyes widened. But her attention was brought to a pair of feet stopped in front of her as a figure towered over her like a looming shadow.
And when she looked up, a chill ran down her spine.
"Yoongi..." She breathed out in terror.
Glancing once at the lifeless Chanyeol next to her, his expression bearing no emotion whatsoever, Yoongi stared down at her.
"I've come to take back what's mine," he said to her. "My fucking story, for one. And you."
[A/N]
Happy crimbo to all my lovely readers! 🎅🏻🤶🏻🎄☃️🎁
Consider the above cliffhanger as my prezzie to y'all. ✌🏻