Day 1
The walls of the room were white, weren't they? You stumbled forward, walking straight into a wall that was apparently closer than you had thought. Landing ungraciously on the ground, you brought a shaky hand to the wall to touch it, and the wall seemed to curve inward as your finger neared the white paint that now appeared to be spotted with black.
"(Y-Y/N)!" You heard a voice call from behind you. "Are you okay?"
You were guided off the floor and back toward the mattress on the ground by a pair of mystery hands. You recognized the voice vaguely, but your mind was too much of a jumble for you to form any coherent thoughts.
"Are you okay?" You replied, giggling as you repeated the question the voice just asked you. Your giggle quickly turned into a full laugh, something about the situation incredibly funny to you. Within seconds, though, your laughter had morphed into a wail as you felt your thoughts clear for a brief moment, followed by excruciating pain.
You clutched your head, then your stomach, then your leg, unsure of where the pain was coming and reached the realization, for perhaps the tenth time in the hour, that the pain had enveloped your body whole, making everything feel like literal hell.
You felt tears roll down your cheeks, and that only made you cry harder, the usually delicate drops of water now seeming to dig trenches of torment into your skin, into your head, into you.
Day 4
"I can't, Saeran, I can't do it anymore." You pushed Saeran away from you and retreated further into the corner of the room.
This was the clearest your mind had been in the past month you'd been here. I have been here a month, right? You thought and then nodded your head to yourself. Of course you'd been in the commitment room a month. Your brain may have been a fog at that moment, but it felt like an eternity had passed between that precise moment and when you were fed your first Elixir in the commitment room.
"(Y/N), please, you've been so good, just take a sip, and it'll all be over," Saeran tried pleading with you. "Please, don't make me force you."
You shrieked, looking around for something to throw at the white-haired male, something that would scare him off. You weren't drinking any more of the elixir. The pain wasn't worth it. "I'm not going to do it!"
Saeran ran a hand through his disheveled hair, and you couldn't tell what was going through his mind.
He turned around, and you sighed in relief when you noted his form moving toward the door. He was moving toward the door, right? You couldn't be sure anymore. The Elixir was messing with your mind.
Wait, no.
He wasn't moving toward the door.
He was moving toward you.
"(Y/N), please," he whispered, now standing directly in front of you (or so you thought, who could be sure?).
You pressed your back into the corner, ignoring the shot of pain that exploded as you applied pressure to agitated skin, and forced your mouth shut. Saeran pushed the glass containing the Elixir to your lips, trying to shove the liquid through the closed opening, but you were stubborn.
Seeming to give up, Saeran sat down next to the bed on you, moving quickly enough that your head spun for a moment, your brain temporarily lagging behind reality. "You know I love you, right, (Y/N)?" He murmured, and you smiled.
You did know that much, at the very least.
You still didn't open your lips, but nodded your head. "Please forgive me," Saeran whispered, his face getting closer and closer, until you two were kissing.
For the first time since you entered the Commitment Room, external touch didn't bring a wave of pain. Instead, Saeran's lips seemed to be cleansing your body of the Elixir, like he was the antidote your body had been craving this whole time.
Saeran pulled back for a moment, but you didn't open your eyes, wanting to savor the moment, and then his lips were on yours again. You leaned into the kiss, not embracing him with your arms but with your lips, and when he slid his tongue along your lip, you readily opened your mouth for him.
Then, betrayal.
Saeran released a mouthful of liquid into your mouth and leaned back, holding your mouth shut with his hand. You tried to spit it out, the bitterness all too familiar on your tongue, but Saeran's hand was unyielding.
"Swallow, (Y/N)," Saeran said, his voice devoid of emotion as you stared at him with eyes filled with anger, hate, and resentment.
With no other choice, you swallowed the elixir, and then it was like the liquid had become a sea of pain that you were drowning in. Saeran and his unforgivable acts were forgotten, and all that was left in your world was pain.
Day 12
You weren't sure when was the last time you had spoken. Or moved. Or did anything other than swallow the Elixir and lie on your mattress in pain.
You no longer had the mental capacity to think. Your mind was blank, the only verification of your presence in the world being the tic-tock of some clock outside your room. Earlier, what felt like a year ago, you had tried counting the tic's, but the opening of a door had broken you from your thoughts.
A door would open.
Someone would walk in.
"Swallow," A voice would say.
Pain.
Then, repeat.
You were pretty sure you had heard the voice apologize a couple times, but in your delirium, you couldn't be sure of anything anymore.
You strained your ears, hearing the familiar sound of a door opening.
Is it time already? You wondered, no longer hesitating to swallow the bitter liquid that trickled into your mouth.
You opened an eye for the first time in days, and a familiar face gazed at you with concern. So familiar. Who... You tried to recall the handsome man who stood before you, but the Elixir drowned your thoughts in pain, and before you ever authorized the closing of your eyes, they were scrunched shut, and everything was forgotten once more.
Day 21
"This is the last one, (Y/N)."
Those words repeated in your mind like a mantra, the weight of them bringing you to sit upright. Your head ached, but it wasn't the same harrowing sting that you had grown used to. It was more like the aftertaste of the pain, nauseating and unpleasant, but quite manageable.
The last one...am I done? Have I lasted a month? Has my secondary commitment ended? Thoughts raced through your mind like a swarm of insects, quick to come and quicker to go.
You forced yourself to stand on the mattress, and a subconscious grin spread across your face. It was over. It had to be.
The door opened, and for the first time since your arrival in this room, your vision was clear. No curved walls, no black spots on the white paint, no random dips in the flat floor. It looked normal. It was normal.
"Saeran!" You cried out, practically leaping into the male's arms. "Is it over? Am I committed?"
Your grin was contagious, bringing a soft smile to Saeran's usually stoic face as he saw you greet him for the first time too long. "(Y/N), my princess," He whispered, burying his face in your hair, holding you impossibly tight, "I've missed you so much."
You only smiled in return.
"But..."
You felt a frown tug at your lips. "But what?" You said, your voice flat, the question not really a question but more of a command.
"You're not done."
Saeran felt your spirits drop from cloud nine all the way down to the cold hard earth, and he was quick to try to salvage the situation, "But you won't need any more Elixirs! The worst of the pain is over, (Y/N), really."
You looked up at Saeran and let out a mirthless chuckle. You weren't sure how much more of this you could handle.
Your mouth set itself into a thin line, neither smiling nor frowning, and Saeran continued, "You have five days of rest. As the elixir leaves your system, the Savior will visit you...but you probably won't recall her visit. At least, I don't remember her visits with me from my secondary commitment. Soon, we'll bleach your hair and tattoo you. And then..."
"The eyes?" You asked bluntly, already aware that the final step in your commitment would likely be as painful as the elixirs.
Saeran nodded.
For a while, the two of you just stood there, unmoving and unspeaking, but after enough time had passed, Saeran sat next to you on the bed.
"Lie down, princess," he said, patting his lap, and for the first time, you didn't think of the impending pain you'd be faced with in the next few days. You simply allowed yourself to forget everything else in the world once more until all that was left was you and Saeran, and the braid he was pulling your hair into.
Day 30
Nearly thirty full days, you laid on your mattress and shut your eyes. At least, that's what Saeran said.
But, oh, what a blessing that was.
It didn't matter that at the time that your stomach was pumped full of the Elixir, that your saliva tasted bitter, and you couldn't move without pain shooting through your body like rockets.
You could still close your eyes.
The ability to blink is greatly underappreciated. Something you resigned yourself to never forget as Saeran tightened the eye brace that was keeping your eyelids from blinking down. There were about ten seconds of nonchalance before the pain set in, and it was one of the worst pains you've ever felt.
Back when you were just taking the Elixir, your mind was numbed as your body succumbed to the torture. You weren't aware of what was happening, and you sure as hell didn't remember a thing from any of it.
Now though? All you could think about were your corneas, astutely aware of the appalling level of pain your eyes would be subject to for the next twenty hours.
"Just bear with it, (Y/N), this is going to be over so soon," Saeran said, holding your hand tightly. Your entire body was strapped to a chair, all your limbs tied down so that you wouldn't be able to remove the brace, "I'm sorry," He said for the thousandth time, "I'm so sorry."
You couldn't bring yourself to acknowledge Saeran, though. You could barely think.
It was like someone had taken a picture of a person right before they died, in that moment where the body is fighting desperately for its life and every single sense is on fire, the brain haphazardly sending a million waves of pain and ache and agony to the location in question in hopes that something will save it, and had frozen you in time so that you were feeling like that every goddamn second.
"H..." You started, trying to focus on your words to lessen the effect of the pain.
"Help me, Saeran."
The boy's eyes filled with sympathy at your words, desperately wanting to do something to alleviate your pain but not knowing what. "The pain will ease out when the color gets injected, it's just a few more hours, and I'll be here the whole time, (Y/N), I promi-"
"No," You interrupted him, unable to bear it any longer. "No."
Saeran opened his mouth and closed it, at a loss for words.
"Knock me out, Saeran," You whispered, keeping your voice low as if the Savior were listening at the door. "The eye brace will keep my eyes open, and I won't have to deal with the pain. Please."
Saeran hesitated, unsure. "(Y/N), if the Savior finds out, we'll both..."
"Do it, Saeran!" You shouted, the pain unbearable as tears rolled down your cheeks, "Please!"
Your vision turned blurry, and you couldn't see straight anymore, your eyes crying out in pain and the unfairness of it all. This wasn't just. It wasn't right. And it was so close to being over. You looked upward and murmured a prayer the orphanage had taught you, desperately asking to be saved from the world of pain you were in; for Saeran to knock you out and give you a break from misery.
Then, redemption.
You felt Saeran strike your head, allowing darkness had set in despite your eyes staying open, the pain distant once more.
Word count: 2.2k
Notes: Welp that's another chapter. Lmao sorry for posting it so late, I had this done a while back but I wound up being busy so I pulled my first all-nighter of 2020 working on all the history homework I'd procrastinated on. EW HISTORY. I'm team physics ;) Ngl I'm still in school and I have an actually amazing history teacher but he makes us work so hard and it's ROUGH but probably because whenever I should be doing homework I'm messing around on Wattpad so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
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Next Update: 01/09/20
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