Ruaan sat on the bed until midnight.

He had not eaten dinner. His stomach was just not ready to accept any food because his head was too busy and the two of them were not working together effectively. He also didn’t want to leave the room because Harolin could come if he was away. He didn’t want that to happen.

He had Harolin’s phone. He had looked at the notification again twice and put it face down both times. He had thought about the apology he needed to give to him about his mother. About two years of a plan that had somehow turned into this. Did he even deserve it? No.

So he had waited.

And waited. But Harolin did not come.

The calls on his phone went unanswered. He looked at the screen and saw the numbers accumulating and did not know whose calls they were because the numbers were not saved in his phone contacts and he was definitely not going to answer unknown numbers.

At midnight, he got up. He took Harolin’s phone and walked out of his room. He was going to search for him.

He went to the office first. It was dark, yet he managed to get there. On reaching there, he saw that it was locked. He stood outside it and looked at the dark gap under the door and moved on.

He went to Harolin’s room. He had the key around his neck. He unlocked it and stepped inside and turned the light on and stood in the middle of it.

The bed was empty. The desk has the documents from last night still in the bag. Everything was arranged in a specific way like someone who would be back for it.

But still, no sign of Harolin.

He locked the door behind him and stood in the corridor.

He was considering where else to look when footsteps came around the corner and he looked up and found Oren in a towel.

Just a towel and damp hair. The look of someone who had been in the shower and been interrupted mid-routine by an instinct.

Ruaan blinked.

"You really should be more careful," Oren said, looking at him outside Harolin’s room with Harolin’s key in his hand. "At this point the whole facility know will find out about your relationship."

"I need to find Harolin," Ruaan said. "Have you seen him anywhere?"

Oren looked at him. "He told me during lunch time he was going to you to talk about the message concerning the engagement. That was hours ago."

"He said he was going to see me?" Ruaan asked, already starting to panic. "He never came,"

Oren went quiet for a moment.

"Do you know about the engagement?" Oren said. "You don’t look surprised."

Ruaan took the phone out and held it up. Oren took it and looked at the notification. At the missed calls below it. At the time stamps.

"He has his watch," Oren said. "He could have answered any of these." He handed the phone back. "Something is definitely wrong."

Oren was already moving back toward his room, gripping his towel tight.

"Wait for me," he said. "Don’t go anywhere without me!"

Three minutes later Oren came back in full uniform with a flashlight.

"Come on, let’s go find Harolin together."

"Sure," Ruaan said and they went together.

.

.

The control room was quiet except for the hum of the screens.

Seo sat in the leather chair with his legs crossed watching the monitor feed. His father stood behind him with the specific energy of a man who had arrived somewhere he had not planned to be and was deciding how to process it.

On the screen, Ruaan and Oren were checking the east corridor bathrooms.

Seo laughed loudly, hitting his thighs. The kind that came from watching something unfold exactly the way you had calculated.

His father was silent for a long time.

"Where is he?" his father said finally. "Where did you hide him?"

Seo pointed at the floor. Downward.

"The underground dungeon?" His father’s voice was careful. "How could you have hidden him there? That place has been abandoned for years."

"Don’t worry, I cleaned one of the cells," Seo said pleasantly. "It’s actually not bad now. It even has good lighting and ventilation."

His father pressed his mouth together. He had known for a long time what his son was. He was the head of the hunters. He and his other team were used to killing people in jails. People who deserved more to the punishment that was given to them. They were clearly assassins.

Thanks to that, Seo was able to give his father a position in this facility. So, Seo is above him in everything.

"You’re not going to kill him, are you?" his father asked, snapping out of his thoughts.

Seo said nothing. He just kept staring at the screen.

"Seo."

"Who knows?" Seo said.

His father exhaled and started walking towards the door.

"Father." Seo called and the man stopped walking.

Seo turned the chair around slowly. He looked at his father with the expression that Ruaan had never seen and Oren had seen once. It was something only a handful of people had seen in their entire life. The real version of Seo.

"Elijah Crowe paid me fifty million," Seo said.

His father stared at him, confusion written over his face.

"By Elijah Crowe, do you mean...?"

"Yes, Harolin’s older brother," Seo continued. "The legitimate one. The next heir. Apparently Harolin’s existence complicates some inheritance situation and Elijah wants it resolved." He tilted his head. "So. Yes. Someone paid me to kill him."

"Then why is he in the dungeon and not—"

"Because of Ruaan," Seo said simply.

His father looked at him.

"I’m not killing Harolin," Seo said. "Not because I’ve gone soft. Because Ruaan would never forgive it." He turned back to the screen. "And I still intend to have Ruaan eventually. So Harolin gets to live." He watched the screen. "I just need a few things from him first."

Seo then leaned back on the chair.

"Do you understand what I mean by that?"

"Yes, I do. I’ll handle it." Like that, the director stepped out.

Seo watched Ruaan and Oren disappear around a corridor corner on the monitor.

"My dear Ruaan thinks I’m evil," Seo said to the empty room. He sounded almost fond. "I am. But not toward him." He stretched both arms above his head. "I want us bottom ten together because I genuinely just want to share a cell with him. Is that so complicated?"

He checked his watch and stood up.

"The drug should be wearing off," he said. "I should go check on my guest."

He found the passage behind the panel in the back of the room and walked through it. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

.

.

The underground dungeon smelled like old stone and new damp and something that had been closed for a long time and recently opened.

Seo walked to the cell at the end.

He heard it before he reached it. The grunts of someone awake and angry. Like someone who had been doing this since the moment consciousness returned.

He stepped into the light.

Harolin was in the chair. Shirtless. Chains on both wrists connecting to the chair arms. He had stopped struggling the moment he heard footsteps and was sitting completely still now.

He looked at Seo.

"You bastard," Harolin said. His voice was completely even. "What are you doing? Why am I chained here? Did you do anything to Ruaan?"

"Relax. I can’t answer all the questions," he said and tilted his head. "And also, I’m doing something so fucking necessary," Seo added.

"When I get out of this chair—"

"You’ll what?" Seo said pleasantly. "Kill me? Probably. But you’re not out of the chair yet."

He walked to the tool table at the side of the cell.

His hand moved across the items arranged there. He stopped at the scissors and picked them up. He set them down in a different space and picked up the pincer. He looked at it and pulled a glove on.

Harolin watched him.

He did not react. He was not going to give Seo a reaction. Whatever Seo wanted from this, entertainment was part of it, and Harolin was not in the business of providing entertainment to people who had drugged him in a corridor.

"Are you going to kill me?" Harolin said.

Seo looked at him. Then he laughed, the same laugh that had fooled everyone in the facility for however long he had been here.

"Kill you?" He walked behind the chair. "I’m not that evil." His gloved hand touched Harolin’s hair. "I just need a few things from you."

The scissors opened and a section of hair fell.

Seo held it up, looked at it, and sealed it in the transparent bag he had ready.

He walked around to the front and looked at Harolin’s hands tied to the chair arms.

He picked up the pincer.

"I’m not going to kill you," Seo said. He took Harolin’s thumb. He looked at it. "But I need you to appear dead."

Harolin looked at him as Seo positioned the pincer.

"Don’t give me anything," Seo said. "I hate it when people beg. Well, except Ruaan when he’s pinned underneath me."

He pulled.

The sound that came out of Harolin in the underground cell was not something that had ever come out of him before in eleven years of service.