He had been there for... only God knew –probably two or three months earlier than her (he could not keep track of time well; he was never given decent food, much less a calendar).

In such a doomed place, Jaejoong learned that hope existed to torture his soul more. He stopped expecting help would come through the door on his first week there. The door to his cell was opened only for three reasons: food delivery, call for bathroom, or a brief summon for another series of torture. The last time that the door was opened for another reason was when he got a new inmate. This time, it was for the very same reason.

She walked into the room, unsure and petrified. Her clothes had not been changed into the gray loose shirt and pants like what he (and she, later on) was forced to wear. There were still traces of make up on her face –but blood smears took the most credit for decorating her face.

The men behind the girl pushed her and she stumbled –she was still wearing heels – and Jaejoong, by reflex, only shifted his body so that he would not receive the impact of the girl's falling. The girl ended up hitting the wall he was leaning on. Groans and the sound of clattering teeth came; Jaejoong only made a little head turn to his left before he looked straight again to the door that was now slammed close.

The girl lifted her face from the blonde tousles that was her hair; her eyes made an attempt to look at him once, then twice. There were fear and mild panic on her eyes, but Jaejoong only shrugged and looked away again. Failing to get his attention, she directed her gaze to the closed door, then to the white wall opposite them. Her hand brushed upon her lips to erase the trace of blood that lingered. A throttle came out, and from the corner of Jaejoong's eyes, he saw her spitting her broken tooth –a molar.

He had not intended to begin the conversation that early, but upon the sight of her broken tooth, he opened his lips.

"If you're interested with a little myth around," Jaejoong started. "We throw our tooth up there," he paused to point at a hollow space, a crook created between uneven wall and the ceiling. "If on the first throw you are able to throw your tooth there, they say you'd be able to escape this place."

The girl was silenced for three seconds and answered on the fourth. "...Were you able to throw yours there?"

Jaejoong did not reply and with dark chuckle, the girl tried her luck. Picking up her slightly bloodied molar, she then flexed her bruised arm and threw the little white tooth up. It missed the spot, and fell back to the floor with soft crackle.

"Yeah," Jaejoong replied only upon her failure. "I was able to throw it there on the first try."

The blonde-haired girl chuckled (so this is home) and added bitterly. "Well... thanks for the little housewarming then."

***

He only learned her name some five or six hours later.

"Nana," she told him. "Im Jin Ah, actually. But just call me Nana."

He nodded only as a courtesy. "I'm Jaejoong," he told her in return.

"What's...the worst thing they have ever done to you here?" Nana asked –her eyes trailed through the scars and bruises on his arms without any shame.

Jaejoong fixed his gaze at no particular object ahead and after a short deliberation, he answered, "The doctors' experiment, I suppose. They once injected me with a strange substance, and I felt like I was burned for two nights straight."

She was fazed, Jaejoong observed.

"Well, if the torture ever gets too much, they are kind enough to provide us with that," Jaejoong talked again; pointing to a heap of brown, rough ropes at one of the corners of the room. "I once helped my inmate setting it up."

Jaejoong did not mean to mentally bully her, he swore. But if he had a bit of change in humor sense in this place, that was not really his fault.

***

Nana was summoned out of the cell for the first time on her first night. It was probably almost midnight; and Jaejoong was half asleep with his back facing Nana when the guards unlocked their cell and ordered her to get up and follow them.

Nana only returned back to their cell a couple of hours later –sometime around dawn, he guessed. Jaejoong was fully awake by the time the guards slammed the door closed again. He was quite sure she was sobbing, but then again, it was about time. Her seemingly unaffected reaction when she first came in had been pretty artificial after all.

She might have realized that he was awake, because she suddenly stopped her sob. Her eyes were still wet, and because she did not have the strength to even lift her arm, Nana lowered her head and rubbed her eyes to her jeans-clad knees.

"They plucked all of my nails," she recited. "And I think I got that doctor's experiment you told me about. They injected me with something and I couldn't feel my arms until now."

Jaejoong's reply was in mumbles, and he kept his back facing her. "I don't think so," he opined slowly. "The substance the doctor gave me would have made you unable to even speak or cry for a couple of days –so what you got couldn't be the same with what I got."

"...Oh."

She said nothing afterwards and he was lulled back to sleep not so long after. When he woke up for the second time that day, it was due to the opened door again.

A female guard came in, threw a bundle to Nana's lap and left without saying another words. Jaejoong slowly got up and rubbed the sleep off his eyes. His eyes were slightly red when they gazed at Nana.

"That's your uniform," Jaejoong explained. "You'd better change into that before the guard comes back."

Nana stared at the grey bundle on her lap and slowly looked back at Jaejoong. "I really still cannot move my arms," she murmured. "...Can you help me?"

Nana seemed to be learning fast –humiliation was the least of anyone's concern around here. Jaejoong thought about it for a moment before he pushed himself to approach her and took the clothes from her lap. He said no 'excuse me' or the likes when he took her t-shirt off her. This was nothing in comparison to the time when he had to take care of his past teammate –Yunho – when the guards hurt his .

Nana groaned a little when her arms were raised up. Jaejoong had no interest in prolonging her pain –he quickly slid her new loose, gray inmate gown pass her head and arms. He returned back to his position soon after.

"Thanks," she murmured as she leaned back to the wall.

"Yeah," he replied –the only word he said to her that day.

***

And it seemed to be the only word Jaejoong ever spoke to her for the next few days. It was Jaejoong's turn to be summoned out of the cell, and for the next few days, he never returned.

On the sixth day since he was called out (Nana was good in keeping tracks of everything, apparently –or at least, for the time being), Jaejoong finally returned. He walked limply into the cell and the moment he fell to the ground inside the cell was the same moment that the door was slammed shut again.

That day it was Nana's leg that was hurting (the night before, at least a dozen of stabs were directed to her left leg), but she gathered up the power on her arms and other leg to slide across the room towards Jaejoong.

She nearly hitched her breath upon realizing that Jaejoong's left sleeve was empty. There were brownish blood patterns on his sleeve. Jaejoong's left arm had been mutilated. She retracted her arm back and nearly did not know what to do. It was not that she cared about Jaejoong, but since they shared the same fate, she thought she just had to say something –something sympathetic, preferably.

"At least you're still alive," Nana told him after some thoughts. "I thought you were dead."

He chuckled darkly –baring his teeth a bit and gazing almost fondly to the ropes laid forgotten at the room.

"Well, next time I'm thinking of being dead, I'm gonna need your help. Couldn't fix the knot with only one arm."

***

Jaejoong was not as silent as Nana had perceived him to be. It was not that he was particularly chatty either. Jaejoong, however, was patient enough to answer all of her questions. After some time, Nana concluded that the man just loved to explain things.

He told her the reason why he was confined there (which was never justified –but there was no justice down there), he told her the names of the guards and the habits they had, he told her how to treat wounds using the most limited resources. Sometimes, Nana thought that he was holding himself not to share too much information (he was still wary of her, this, she could tell). But since Jaejoong was silently eager in answering question, Nana made the best benefit out of it.

"Do you think the police ever knows this place?"

The edge of his lips twitched –Nana thought he might have deliberated whether he had been spilling too much information. There was amusement lingering on her eyes upon watching his attempt to quiet down. Jaejoong could not; his willpower might have not been that strong.

"... Not all, but I'm sure some polices already know this place," he began. "It's impossible not to know. This kind of business needs protection. Whenever we are tortured, a camera is installed and it is broadcasted to those riches who actually take joy in seeing peoples' suffering."

Nana was not entirely surprised, but that did not mean she took it well either. To know that someone might cheer enthusiastically with every blood she spilled made something in her boil. But then she glanced at Jaejoong and observed the way he acted: nonchalant and rather ignorant. And the fact that he was the survivor proved that maybe... that kind of apathy was what she needed to survive as well.

"Have you ever tried to escape?" she asked.

"Yes, and it did not work out. I got into a harsher punishment after, so I would think twice before I ever attempt on doing one again."

She might have been asking too many questions, but Jaejoong's openness to her questions kind of assured her that her curiosity was not overboard. "How could you not lose your mind here, really?" she asked him –forehead wrinkling.

He was drawing circles on the ground with his finger, but he listened to her query well. Without lifting a finger, he replied, "When you stop hoping, you don't have much to lose."

"Have you actually... stopped hoping?"

"Do I look like I'm losing my mind at the moment?" he asked in return.

She was mildly taken aback. Her frown deepened and in the end, she only told him, "... I don't know."

Jaejoong smiled softly, but Nana never really got to know the answer behind her question.

***

The moment Nana finally allowed herself to cry in front of Jaejoong was on the third week. Jaejoong was not that surprised. She was not as unfazed as she believed she was. After all, nearly every night, he heard Nana crying in her sleep. He thought that the girl genuinely did not realize her own outburst.

But when Nana was crying in her wake, she could be quite hysterical. She had just lost one of her kidney –to be sold to the black market. Jaejoong wanted to be sympathetic, but he had not been in his best mood that day either. So instead of comforting her, he turned his head around. Ignorance is bliss, he reminded himself –and reminded himself harder as Nana's cry got louder.

***

"Did you have other cellmates before?"

They were in the middle of eating their lunch in their cell –the only meal of the day. Jaejoong adapted to his one-arm condition fairly quickly. He took a mouthful of flavorless soup into his mouth, and without a glance to Nana, he responded.

"You seriously have so many questions."

"I wouldn't if you did not enjoy answering them so much."

He narrowed his eyes. "I do not."

"You do," Nana stated absentmindedly. "And I am just trying to entertain my inmates."

He did not answer for quite some time and Nana was about to repeat the question when Jaejoong finally answered.

"I had two."

"What happened to them?" Nana asked without tearing her gaze away from her soup. That day's lunch was better than the day before –rotten meat. She thought being a vegetarian here would actually be a better choice.

"Yunho had been here before I got in. He was... nice. A good senior. Taught me a lot. Taught me how to tie a knot as well," he replied –momentarily taken back to the memory of tying the rope around the older man's neck when Yunho insisted on committing a suicide. ("Meet you there, Jae. I like you. You're nice to be around with. But no rush, don't worry"). "The second one was called Tiffany. I didn't have much time to know her better. She died on her second night."

Nana stopped eating. "That's... rather fast. What did they do to her?"

"I don't know."

"Then how did you know she was already dead?"

"Because you came in the day after."

He was rather nonchalant in replying her question, and she nearly did not know how to respond.

"...Oh." In the end that was the only syllable she spoke in response.

They resumed their lunch in silence. Jaejoong nearly expected Nana would come up with another attempt to satisfy her curiosity. She came up with nothing –staring blankly at the wall ahead of her.

***

Jaejoong did not count, but he knew that when he finally asked her the question, the question had been due for a long time. It felt kind of outdated that he only asked her this now, but he shot the question anyway.

"Why did they send you here?" he asked; his fingers were rolling a small pebble between them.

Nana took a second to adjust herself. "...Debts. My foster dad owed them a large amount of money," she then chuckled. "I was ready to myself out, really. Thought that that was what they would do to me. I even –" Nana paused, momentarily debating whether to say it or not. In the end, she went to tell him. "–I even offered myself to be their . They refused," she laughed. "Probably I'm not pretty enough."

"You're pretty."

The comment caught her off guard, but Jaejoong paid less attention to what he said than Nana. He continued rolling the pebble between his fingers and having it thrown and caught. Clearing and looking away, Nana murmured before she lost the moment.

"Thank you."

***

In the span of the next four weeks, Nana gained more new bruises and burns, lost her left sight (Jaejoong told her it was temporary), and lost her right hearing (Jaejoong told her that this one was most likely permanent).

Jaejoong was rarely summoned out of the cell, but when he was, he usually did not return for at least four days. And every time the guard returned him, he always looked skinnier than Nana last remembered. They seemed to have a for cutting Jaejoong's body parts as well. Nana remembered that one time Jaejoong returned with the lack of an ear.

That night, he returned screaming.

That was the first time Nana ever heard him screaming –roaring like a wild animal. He did not even scream when they mutilated his arm. He came back in one piece this time (sans right arm and left ear), but that did not make the sight of him less horrible to see. His whole body shook to the extent that he looked like he was hyperventilating. The guards ignorantly closed the door and Nana hurried to his side.

"Jaejoong?! What happened?"

But he could not hear her, much less to give her any reply. The only sound that came from his lips was a shriek, a howl. He gritted his teeth so hard that even Nana could hear it. Jaejoong jerked around and he clutched his head with his remaining arm. Then he screamed again. He sent kicks to the air and his fingers clawed the ground.

"Jaejoong!" Nana shrieked and tried to hold him still.

He sobbed. She had never heard him sob. He grunted and moved around again. Then he started to bang his head to the floor.

Panic was quite an understatement. During her whole stay there, Nana had never seen him slipped off his control. There was something coiling at the pit of her stomach –threatening to crawl up and be spilled. It was unpleasant –the sight of him, simply unpleasant.

And it scared her.

"Jaejoong, please! You're going to hurt yourself! You're –"

"Kill me!" he screamed; his eyes were snapped open, wide and terrorized. He clenched Nana's thin wrist hard, so hard that she cursed out of reflex. But her pain was nothing short in comparison to his. With his tight grip and red eyes, he screamed at Nana. "Kill me! God, Nana, just kill me!"

Nana cursed some more and managed to free her wrist from his grasp. "Goddamn, Jaejoong! What are you talking about?!"

"Kill me..." he sobbed this time; his scream was muted. "Please, Nana. Just kill me... It hurts. It hurts so much..."

She did not know what to do, really. Her arms were extended to embrace him. She pulled his head and laid it on her shoulder, and continued to hug him on the ground. Jaejoong continued to struggle. He kicked her and at one point even punched her stomach. She groaned, cursed some more, and nearly let go of her embrace. But in the end, Nana strengthened her will and kept her arms around him, adjusting her strength –because she needed to keep him intact without hurting him more.

Her hand reached out to the back of his head and caressed his dark hair. "It's okay...you'll get better soon. They won't kill you. I won't let you kill yourself."

His sobbing continued, but in the end, he held her equally as tight. His big palm add pressure to her ribcage and he bit her shoulders. She bit her own lip, because Jaejoong seemed to have the full intention to rip her flesh.

But this is nothing in comparison.

Blood trickled from the bite he gave to her shoulder, but Nana continued to caress Jaejoong's hair –never letting her embrace off him.

***

Nana had forced herself to stay awake (because she did not want Jaejoong to commit a suicide when she was off guard) but at one point, she lost to the exhaustion that took over her body.

When she woke up, Jaejoong was no longer beside her.

She had a bit of panic surging inside her. Getting up quickly, her eyes darted around. A relieved sigh was exhaled when she realized that Jaejoong was still in their cell. He was sitting behind her and looking much better than he had been a couple of hours prior.

"You seem better."

"...Yeah," he slowly replied. "Much better."

"That's good."

His gaze fell deep to the evident bruise on her shoulder. "Does it hurt?"

"No," she told him honestly. Nana thought her tolerance to pain had been raised by a great decree.

Jaejoong had a skeptical look on his eyes. He tilted his head for a moment, and then, with a slow work of muscle, he pushed himself closer to her.

She flinched when his finger –long and certain – touched the area on her shoulder that he had bruised. With a mocking chuckle, he noted, "Liar. I really bit your flesh out."

He did, but she was also serious when she told him it did not hurt her. She was numbed with pain lately –perhaps it was a bad signal for her, because that meant she was adapting herself to these tortures, but hey, perhaps that was how one could stay sane in this vile place.

"Sorry."

Nana thought that it was the word that Jaejoong said, but she could not be too sure –Jaejoong spoke the word with his mouth pressed on her shoulder. She tensed when she felt something warm and wet on her wound. His tongue the dry blood around her chopped flesh. It stung a bit when he her right on the spot, but she –God forbid – did not want him to stop.

There was something crawling beneath her skin –and it tingled, and continued to crawl, and she grunted, and Jaejoong and breathed onto her, and she thought she could cry.

Jaejoong brushed her long, blonde hair aside, and Nana instinctively tilted her head to the other direction. Jaejoong's lips were dry and both uncomfortable and favorable on her hot skin. She closed her eyes and bit her lips. Jaejoong grunted and kissed higher –her bruise forgotten momentarily and he the warm spot of her pulse and her there.

She groaned.

"J-Jaejoong..." her voice was rather needy.

It was then that he snapped his eyes open. His lips left her flesh and he jerked his body away.

But he did not look away, so neither did she.

And he also said nothing, and so wouldn't she.

The door was opened perhaps twenty or thirty minutes later –two trays (hard breads this time) were laid on the floor before the metal door was closed again.

Nana made the first move to take the tray. Wordlessly, she gave the first tray to Jaejoong, before she took one for herself.

It was a silent lunch.

***

The time where Nana was summoned out of her cell and actually stayed overnight finally came. It was achingly slow –she had been tied to a chair, beaten and bruised. They carved her skin –there was now a tattoo of red wings on her back. She was nearly drowned. They bruised her eye again. She was exhausted but they never let her sleep.

Two guards had to carry her back into her cell, because her legs could not be moved at all.

When they opened the door, she briefly caught the sight of Jaejoong –standing rigid and anxious, but maybe she did not see correctly. It was getting harder to see after all.

The guards shoved her inside and she would have fallen to the ground had it not been for Jaejoong who quickly caught her. The sound of the slammed door sounded dull –maybe they were doing something to her ears as well, she could not remember.

His body was warm, and she was shivering cold. With the only strength left in her frail body, she snuggled herself closer to Jaejoong.

"I thought you were dead..." he whispered, and she was relieved that she could still hear his voice. He had a nice voice, now that she paid attention to it.

***

When both of them were not called out, there was not much that they could do inside the cell. On their first few days (or weeks), the lack of activities nearly drove them crazy. But upon adjusting, the opportunity to stay in the cell –laying down and staring up at the ceiling – became much more treasured.

"Jaejoong?" Nana called out to her cellmate. "What would you do if I die?"

Jaejoong liked this position –down on the cold tiles, arms sprawled, eyes closed. He could pretend to be asleep. He could pretend not to hear Nana's question. He could pretend that the issue never existed –that the same question never crossed his mind either.

It was pretention still.

If he were what he had been, he would not be bothered. He would just shrug it off, because she did not matter (but now she did, and he had to pretend otherwise).

"Jaejoong?" the girl asked again. "Ah. You're asleep?"

He was not, but likewise, he would pretend that he was.

***

There was a silent agreement between them. Whenever each of them came back to the cell (bloodied, tattered, rotten mind), the other would stand right in front of the door. No words would be spoken, not much action would be taken –at least not until the guards pushed the unlucky one that day and swung the door close.

Jaejoong's knees gave up, but Nana would have been there to comfort his fall.

"I'm home," the words slipped off his lips as he dozed to unconsciousness. Nana scrunched her nose, because this small, depressing cell could not be home –but then Jaejoong snored, and Nana let it pass.

Home.

Maybe it was quite fitting anyway.

***

It had been a rather peaceful week –something that rarely came. Jaejoong told her that the guards and their superiors probably found new toys. The implication was clear, and Nana nearly felt bad that someone else was suffering in her and Jaejoong's stead. But later, she reconsidered it, reminisced the tortures that Jaejoong and her had experienced, and thought that maybe she had the right to have selfish thoughts once in a while.

They had no future, but she still liked to imagine that they might have one.

"Do you cook?" she asked.

He shifted his position on her lap but stayed there. "Not really. Do you?"

She chuckled. "I can only make fried egg and instant noodle."

"I am good in cleaning though."

"Good, because I am lousy in one."

These conversations should have been depressing, but Nana thought that it was not so.

"I used to hate the concept of home," she confessed. "I never had one. My foster father was the only one remaining after my mother died. He beat me up everyday."

"Figured," Jaejoong said as he closed his eyes. "The day you came in... when you spat your molar out, I knew you'd be staying here for a long time."

"That was not the first molar I lost, so... yeah," she said with a low laugh. Jaejoong's lips were curved a little and she thought that he looked really boyish when he did so. There was not much things that Nana could appreciate around, but Jaejoong was an exception on so many different levels.

"Jaejoong?"

"...Yeah?"

"I'm glad you're here," she told him.

He opened his eyes and looked up at her. There was hesitation in his eyes and a sad smile on his face. He stared at her for a while, then opened his mouth, then hesitated, but finally he let the honest confession out.

"I'm not," he told her, and he got up from her lap.

She was not hurt by his words, because maybe, she understood what he meant.

Hope was, after all, the cruelest thing they could get in this doomed place.

***

Jaejoong was summoned out again one day.

Jaejoong gritted his teeth as he heard the other guards were kicking Nana inside the cell when she was screaming frantically –trying to protest his summoning. He was tempted to calm her down, but the guards had pushed him forward and he barely had time to even look back.

***

Nana hated waiting.

Her days were spent by staring at the door. She flinched whenever the door was opened –only to have her shoulders slumped down in disappointment when it was just a guard pushing a tray of food for her. She caused quite a commotion on the fourth day –attacking the guard when he refused to tell her Jaejoong's whereabouts. The fact that she was summoned out an hour later did not surprise her, but she was nearly glad they did. Staying in the cell alone without Jaejoong was driving her crazy. She thought she turned masochistic –being subjected to physical torture made her think of Jaejoong slightly less, and with each whip laid on her body, she embraced the pain and was nearly grateful of it.

***

Her heart was racing hard when they returned her back to the cell.

But the thinnest hope she had quickly evaporated once she was faced with one empty cell.

Nana cried in her sleep, but Jaejoong was not there to hear her cries.

***

It had been two weeks, but the sound of the opened door still managed to bring her hope.

That day, however, her hope was crushed when it was not a tray of food that was delivered.

A female guard pushed someone inside –a girl with frightened eyes and black hair. She gazed at Nana with confused and anxious eyes, and Nana stared at the girl back with tears on her eyes. A piece of conversation she had with Jaejoong (I nearly forgot your voice, please, can you remind me? Where are you?) echoed at the back of her mind.

            Then how did you know she was already dead?"

            "Because you came in the day after."

The new girl flinched when the door was slammed shut. She asked Nana's questions, but Nana was not Jaejoong and Nana did not like to explain things. Not that Nana ever heard the questions the new girl asked anyway. Her mind drifted away. There had been Jaejoong –there was supposed to be Jaejoong. And they should be talking about the gibberish future, and Jaejoong should tell her fake myths and Jaejoong should be there to caress her hair and she would be there to allow him rest on her lap and there was supposed to be this world –their world.

And it vanished.

Nana slowly looked to her right, to a dusty corner, and her gaze fell upon the ropes laid forgotten there.

Jaejoong had not taught her how to tie a knot, but Nana knew she was a quick learner.

The End