Blood dripped to the floor with sullen echoes.
The room was barely lit. Top floor, cold, damp, empty but for a few chairs and ropes. A makeshift torture chamber. Taemin didn’t even know why it existed. He didn’t care.   The sickening thwack of another punch resounded as Lil’ slammed his fist for an eighth time against Taemin’s cheek, the jaw almost knocked out of place, almost broken, yet not quite. He'd lost a tooth – one from the back of his mouth, invisible to most – that lay on the wooden floor, drowned in the blood that dripped from his lips as his head hung, wavering. He was in danger of blacking out. He was in danger of choking. He was in danger of losing an eye.   Lil’ took a step away, gazing at his handiwork; he was an artist, he'd established, for he found the human reactions to pain so invariably unique. Some screamed and howled in anguish, whilst others groaned subtly. Few even managed complete silence, such as Taemin, who'd resorted to a state of fragile nothingness as soon as Lil’ had slashed slightly into the young man’s right arm with the small penknife he kept with him. His strangely yellow-crimson blood streaked down his arm, stained the neck of his t-shirt if it'd failed to pool on the ground.   The electrical light that whirred in the corner spoke whispers as Lil’ wiped his penknife against his shirt, the blood thick, and leant closely into Taemin. Taemin felt his breath against his cheek, the sour scent of liquor and power, and refused to watch as Lil’ jabbed the knife into his right arm slightly. A pop of pain, but no sound was made, as Lil’ withdrew the knife, Taemin’s face scrunching up.   ​"You don't disobey me," Lil' muttered, "do you understand that now?"
Taemin didn’t move, he just sat, arms bound in front of him, too pained to even form an answer. Despite the absolute terror in Taemin’s eyes, it seemed that Lil’ took this silence as a declination towards his question, a defiant stand from Taemin.   That wouldn't do at all.   "I'll be back in a minute,” he informed, stepping away to the door and disappearing as nothing but a bulky shadow.   Taemin slumped, mind fringing in and out of blackness. Any thought he tried to gather instantly diminished in a hazy cloud. The room was dark, but his mind was darker, as his eyelids drooped and his head swung. He wanted to give up. He wanted to give in. But he had nothing to give in to.   Ten minutes passed as Taemin registered nothing but the pain coursing through him, and then the door was opened again, shut, and Lil’ returned, carrying something large, something heavy. He dropped the load atop the chair opposite Taemin, and instantly got to work on binding what he'd brought to the session. Taemin could just look onwards, the name he attempted to speak simply cracking against his parched throat and forming a string of distant syllables.   Lil’ moved backwards, and they waited in silence for the man to wake.   When he did wake, Jonghyun didn’t know where he was. Taemin couldn’t blame him, and assumed it was a feeling becoming increasingly familiar to the elder, as his head whipped around and his eyes darted back and forth, to the shadowed corners of the room and the sight of Taemin and Lil’, and then to his hands-   Jonghyun stared at his bandaged hand, blinked, and frowned.   "Wh