"Mr. Do, You still need to pay," the person behind the desk put their hand out.

"I'm sorry," Soo gave a funny smile, "I should have thought of that sooner, here," and he handed them his card. Knowing Baekhyun, all of the rest was taken care of in this packet too, but he flipped through the pages just to make sure.

After he got his card back, he realized the last thing he had to do was provide his legal signature and he quickly scribbled it down.

So this was real, this was actually happening.

He'd just bought a person.

He could feel Baekhyun excitedly pulling him out of the shop and back into the cold street, but he just didn't feel right. And that's when he turned and saw Chanyeol and someone else standing by the brick-wall they'd just gotten too.

The new person had a dark complexion and long black hair with bangs going down a little past his eyebrows. His nose was a bit flat, and Baek was certainly being honest when he described the pout this person had.

He was tall, much taller than himself, and he had an aura of indifference around him with a look in his eye that could only be described as trouble.

Kyungsoo couldn't stop his heart from skipping a beat.

"Its time for you to take him home now Soo," and Kai, with the shorter's bag across his shoulder, filed next to his new owner.  

Usually I wouldn’t include an excerpt from the story on my prologue, but since I’m not posting the first chapter officially for a few more weeks, I decided to give anyone with an interest so far a taste. The story is an au story exploring what would happen if human trafficking became so mainstream that it was societally acceptable. So much so, that the laws would work to protect owners and keep the enslaved without rights. It is heavily inspired by some of the attitudes and views of pre-civil war United States, but set in modern Korea. With that background, I thought I could really create a story that looked at what it is to be a person and what it is to not question what is happening around oneself. It is much more philosophical than my first story, though not nearly as complicated.

Upon writing this -- luckily I’m almost completed and as soon as that happens I will start posting full time, I set out to write a story that was much more ually mature than my first one. So I guess that is a warning to my audience, as the story develops there will be more themes of love, uality, dom/sub relationship, etc (all chapters that have mature content will be marked with the ‘m’ of course). I’m really happy with how it’s turning out and I really hope you like it and that this little bit from chapter one will wet your whistle until I really begin.

The term Chattel (you will see it alot) is an old colloquialism for slave and the title of the story is an in-reference; both of these will by explained chapter 1. I got the title from my studies into the theory of Biophilia and from the wonderful Björk album bearing the name.

Lastly, the cover is a rough collage of some of the themes of the story and the main characters and how I pictured them while writing; it was inspired by the incredible artist Jeff Koons, who I am infatuated with right now. And the background image is another Koons inspired creation that I’ve titled ‘stairway to heaven.’ It’s not really a spoiler, but more a metaphor for later things in the story. Really, really loose metaphor though. Haha

So happy valentines day peoples!!

Please subscribe and comment lovelies.