There were stinging sounds of steam in the background and Minho felt suffocating heat surround him.

He’s never felt heat sweltering around him uncomfortably; he was made of it. This feeling was so dissimilar to what he’s lived with and he wanted nothing more than to get out of it.

He couldn’t open his eyes, though. It wasn’t like they were sewn shut, but incredibly heavy and glued down. He tried to move around, flinch to the least, but he couldn’t even do that.

He slowly breathed, trying to at least find sound, or feel for something.

All his could hear were sibilant noises going in and out, getting closer and further away from him.

Where he was, he didn’t know, and he needed to find out quickly.

Minho tried focusing on what he felt; the sweltering heat around him, a smooth surface against his back, and . . .

Around his wrists and ankles . . .

Where those shackles?

  “Wake up, sweetheart,” a high pitched voice greeted him in his ear, lightly tapping on his chest with a light finger, “Get out of that fuzzy state you’re in and open your eyes. I don’t have anything to put you back to sleep with.

  “Or maybe it’s better to keep your eyes closed . . . Um,” she pulled from his ear, tapping on his chest again, “It’s not going to be pleasant either way . . . I don’t even know if it’ll hurt you. I have no idea what creature you are . . .

  “Oh, whatever,” she sighed, “I know you’re awake. Do whatever you want, it won’t make a difference.”

Minho, confused, tried so hard to open his eyes, to look at who was talking to him in such a bi-polar manner, to look and see what she was talking about unpleasantness.

  “I mean,” she went on, her voice further away as something that sounded like metal scrapped against surface, “I’d feel better if you didn’t look at me. I mean, then you could come back and find me and then probably kill me and that’s pretty . . . unsettling to think about. Crap,” she groaned, the metal sound clanking against the surface, “Out of all jobs in the world, he stuck me with this one. I hate hearing people scream . . .”

Minho could feel himself tense when she said scream. He didn’t even know what she was going on about, what she was going to do—he didn’t know what pain she was talking about.

  “I’d rather you scream out then behind your lips. It makes it feel like I suffocated you or something . . .” she sighed, “I know I’m probably saying this for my benefit, but try exercising your jaw and it’ll wear off,” she suggested, a louder and now quite ominous clang was produced from the distance her voice came from.

  “Really, do it. You aren’t inhaling poison,” she input, seemingly set on him to move.

So Minho gave it a try with some suspicion—barely feeling a thing, but hearing his teeth gritting together. He felt the blood rush away from his face, leaving him with a partially numb yet jittery jaw. He tried moving his jaw again, his teeth grinding against each other harder, yet he was able to separate them.

  “Open your lips,” she told him, sounding busy with whatever she had.

He obeyed, his chapped lips rubbing against each other, making small pinches as his lips tried to stay stuck together.

  “I’m really sorry about this,” she apologized, “I really have to do this. If only the drugs lasted longer, you wouldn’t have even known this happened . . .

  “How . . . how about I go get you a towel to bite down on?”

At this point, Minho knew he wasn’t going to be feeling cotton and rainbows, but pain. She was being nice about it, but not nice enough to stop whatever she was doing.

He had no idea how, but he managed a slurred whisper of yes, and she blew air through , her heels walking away.

Minho tried opening his eyes, to figure out where he was; to figure out what she was going to do because it wasn’t obvious yet.

But they wouldn’t open. Whatever he was injected with sealed his eyes shut.

Her heels came to his side, tapping on his chest, “Keep moving your jaw, okay? I’m trying to put this off as long as I can . . .”

She went back to wherever she was in the beginning, clanks continuously ringing in Minho’s ears, laughing at him from the distance.

He kept trying to move his jaw; trying to move his body. He was really paralyzed, he could conclude. But maybe after whatever this girl was doing, he’d wake the hell up. It got easier to control his mouth, but his voice was still impaired. Nothing but useless air came from it.

He needed to get out of here. He needed to release himself from these shackles and run.

  “I’m . . . I’m ready,” she called, unsurely. Her heels came back to his side, and he could feel heat radiating from his side as subtle clanks hit what could’ve been a tray, “I’m going to put the towel in your mouth . . . okay?”

Without a response, the towel was lightly patted over his tongue, enough to keep him from suffocating.

  “M . . . six-oh-nine,” she breathed, “So your name starts with M? A-ah, whatever. There’s four branders here. Doing them all at once should be best. . .”

Branders.

Branders.

, he was going to be burned with a mark.

Minho felt himself twitch, trying to thrash against his restraints to escape, but he could only manage those small twitches, his voice barely found yet.

  “I’m so sorry,” she apologized as Minho could hear her picking up all four rods.

His teeth bit down on the towel, tensing up as the heat grew closer to his left arm. He wasn’t ready to be marked—he didn’t belonged to be marked. This wasn’t right.

He bit down harder, his eyes shooting open and his voice crawling up to his throat as all four brands touched his skin. He was a fire-type creature and could overcome fire all the time, but this was plain out different. This just plain out hurt.

He could feel his skin dissolving and turning raw as the hot metal pressed hard to him. He screamed loudly, he twitched as much as he could, he begged for her to put them away.

The burn made it all the way down to the bone of his arm, disrupting the blood circulation around it. He could feel it. The blood within that arm was about to burst, he just knew it.

His lips curled back and he swore tears were coming out of his eyes as they started opening, staring at a gross brown of a ceiling with red lights. Why couldn’t they give him a tattoo instead of burning him of all things? Why the would someone do this anyway?

The brands pulled back and clattered on the tray, but that didn’t stop the pain. He could feel the outline of each brand. The M, the six, the zero, the nine. All of them he could feel. They felt so raw and so tight on his arm.

Water fell from the sides of his eyes as the ache on his arm was covered with a cool cloth, gently keeping it against his raw skin.

  “I’m sorry you had to go through that,” she apologized again, “You’ll never go through that again, I promise.”

Minho coughed as she removed the towel from his mouth, letting him breathe in and out harshly, small pleads escaping from his lips. He didn’t mean to seem so helpless, but really he couldn’t help it.

  “It’ll be over soon, sweetheart,” she soothed, smoothing his hair back, “It’ll stop.”

He looked over at her as soon as he could see, seeing the blonde hair falling towards him as she leaned over, concern plastered all over her face; apologies filling her eyes.

  “Breathe,” she nodded.

His mouth felt dry as he followed, closing his eyes again and trying to focus on anything but the mark on him.

Over what seemed forever, she continuously changed the cloth, dabbing it gently on his skin until it was only a dull ache in the background.

But then, he was breathing normally, eyes staring at the ceiling, eyes tracing all the pipes.

  “Let me go,” Minho said, finally in control of his mouth.

She stopped dabbing on his skin, staring at him, retracting the cloth and moving away, “I have no authority. I sent for someone to come down. They’ll be picking you up soon.”

  “Let me free,” Minho called to her, closing his eyes.

She was cleaning up, no doubt with all the clattering he was hearing and the fire dimming down, “I can’t do that.”

One of Minho’s shackled hands slammed down on whatever surface he was lying on, getting impatient now, irritation slowly building up in his blood, “I don’t want to turn on you.”

  “I can’t do as you say, don’t you get that?” She snipped at him, “It won’t be long. Keep yourself still.”

Minho sighed, hearing the door open with a cringing squeak, opening his eyes back up as he saw Onew with a strict face.

  “Ah, you,” she sighed in relief, “I’m glad it’s you.”

Onew’s face relaxed, warmly (as if it wasn’t hot enough in there) smiling at the girl with a small nod before he already started undoing Minho’s restraints, “I switched with Jungmo today.

  “How do you feel?” his attention was solely on Minho’s face, concern lacing in his voice.

  “,” Minho sighed, rotating his free right wrist around, “Do I have to go through that again?”

The girl started undoing the rest of the shackles, “No. It’s just a mark. It’ll stay there unless you decide to scrape your skin off.”

  “Luna,” Onew cringed, making a face at her.

She looked up at Onew, smiling with a chuckle, “You would, Oppa. You would.”

Onew started helping Minho up by his back, gently lifting him to sit up. Minho could finally breathe, stretching as he could feel his body again, cracking his neck sideways.

He looked at his left arm, seeing the ‘M609’ printed on his skin with a dark ashy color, the skin around it pink and puffy.

  “This is gross and heinous,” Minho grimaced, his finger softly tracing around the puffy outline, gritting his teeth in dismay.

  “But it’s mandatory,” Onew sighed.

  “For people like me?” Minho looked up at Onew, the look of hate in his eyes.

Onew and Luna looked at each other, both of them hesitating before lifting one of their green sleeves to reveal marks similar to Minho’s on their forearms. Their faces looked ashamed, innocent, even.

And Minho didn’t believe what he was seeing.

  “Are you serious?!”

Luna looked at the S2247 mark, pulling back down her sleeve, “Proof we can’t leave.”

Minho looked back at Onew, inspecting the J2014 mark, Onew quickly pulling his sleeve down as Minho got a look.

Minho looked up at his face, unable to comprehend what he saw, “Yours is a J and hers is an S.”

  “Well—that’s because . . .”

Luna grabbed on to Minho’s wrist, and Minho sharply turned his head, flinching at her cold hands despite the warm room, “We left our names behind. Isn’t that right, Oppa?”

Minho could see the light dim down in Onew’s eyes, something dark to Onew that he hadn’t seen yet.

  “Onew and I couldn’t keep our names,” Luna bit her lip, shaking her head, “Our real names are from our past; the time before we were forced to give up and can never get back. Those names represented our freedom, our family . . . But we didn’t want to bring shame to those names, so we left them behind when we met. Out of the two hundred new workers, we met.”

Minho couldn’t understand. Not only creatures were taken, but innocent people, too. People like Luna and Onew were taken and imprisoned when they’ve done nothing.

But why was it like this? What happened that caused normal humans to be trapped like he was?

Nothing made sense. It was only a dictatorship that stood out. Whoever started this mess, whoever began imprisoning creatures, went too far. Someone was too powerful to understand the importance of innocence and freedom.

  “Another time,” Onew shook his head, helping Minho to his feet, “God, it’s hot.”

Luna perked and fetched for something off a table across the room, “That’s why I took his shirt and socks off. I hope you didn’t mind.”

Minho watched as she returned with a gray shirt, the sleeves ripped off and the neckline looking as if some wild lion bit a hole through it.

  “I have a shirt?” he asked, bewildered.

  “Well, you were wearing one when you came in . . .”

Now of all times, Minho had a shirt and he didn’t even want it. It was way too hot in this furnace to even think about clothes, let alone on his body.

  “I can’t waste any more time,” Onew urgently spoke, taking the clothes and forcefully pulling it over Minho. Minho hissed as his left arm was moved, and Onew apologized, “SangJung—”

Minho groaned at the Devil’s name, “Do I have to see him now?”

He wanted to damn break. The entire week he’s been tortured without any mercy and he could use a damn breather.

  “You’ll get a break from him soon,” Onew responded without emotion, letting Minho put on the socks and shoes himself before constricting his wrists, “After this one, your visits will be less frequent.”

Onew brought Minho forward, silently telling him ‘let’s go’.

And with Minho being reluctant, his response was concluded as ‘let’s go to Hell’.

----Note~----

'Evening. c:

Another Saturday, another chapter. 

So, we've met Luna. Luna's not so much of a ditz as I wrote her as in this chapter, but you know, wouldn't you be worried if you were harming something and it could come back to bite you in the ? Yup.

I have to say, by what I've written so far, here and the BTS of this (which is still not posted), Luna has to be one of my favorite written characters. I'm sort of putting myself into her personality so... yup, again.

One more chapter of character introduction. It'll get less boring by then. I'll be you'll know who the next character is (From SHINee, obviously). c:

Notice for the 'Behind the Scenes (BTS)' of ETR, I'm not sure when I'll be posting; It could even be after this fic is done and over with. Is that okay?

Welp, I've got nothing more to say.

Thank you to any view, comment, or sub. <33333333333

~FlaMinhoe

//I do not own the picture