Happy Birthday to Pixie-tink, and also to bocchandwhite for tomorrow!

Semi felt like she was going to puke when she woke up.  There was a nauseating taste clinging to and throat and she could tell even before she opened her eyes that she was light-headed.

She also had a killer headache.  The voices speaking above her really didn’t help on that front.  They echoed around her skull like it was a cave.

“Exactly how much chloroform did you use, Youngjae?”

“Not enough to kill her!”

“You’d better not.  She’s been out for hours.  The boss doesn’t pay you to make mistakes.”

“I haven’t made a mistake,” the man called Youngjae protested.  “I might have overdone the chloroform because I wasn’t given her height and weight so it was difficult to calculate exactly how much I needed, but it’s still much better than knocking her out would have been, even though that would have been simpler and cheaper.  And she should be awake by now, anyway.  Chloroform wears off really quickly.  But no, she just has to remain unconscious and the boss just has to go and request she’s untouched, like what the—?”

“Like what the what, Youngjae?”  A new voice had joined the discussion.

There was a terrifying silence that was almost more stifling than the chloroform had been.  Semi kept utterly still, frightened of attracting attention.

“Nothing, boss,” Youngjae said in a small voice.

“It had better be nothing.  Why hasn’t she been strip-searched?”

There was another silence, though this time it was more awkward than stifling.

“We, ah, weren’t sure exactly which kind of untouched you meant, boss,” said the voice that wasn’t Youngjae.

There came the sound of somebody whacking somebody else over the head.

“Both, you dolt, but physical injuries of any kind can’t be visible.  I want Jungmin back alive.”

“But boss,” Youngjae butted in, “are you sure the police are actually going to give him back?  What if they prosecute?”

“They won’t if they want their precious witness back.  I’ve got people placed who can tell me if they’re planning not to and in that case I’ll kill her.”

“Wait, they let a witness—?”

“None of your business, Youngjae.”

“Could she testify against Jungmin?”

“No.  Luhan.”

“Oh.”

It went quiet again.

“If she’s not awake in thirty minutes, Youngjae, I’m holding you responsible.”

“But boss—!”

There were footsteps and a door slammed.

“Will he really cut my fingers off if she doesn’t wake up?”  Youngjae sounded panicked.

“I’ve never seen him not follow through on a threat.”

“Oh God.”

Semi felt a pang of pity towards Youngjae, but he had chloroformed her and she was feeling very tired, so she just went to sleep.

It must have been under half an hour that she dozed, because the panicked man she was faced with when she opened her eyes still had all his fingers.  She was also cold, and it took her a moment or two to realise that somebody had changed her into shorts and a thin t-shirt.  Alarmed, she reached for her earlobes to check that her earrings were still there.  The movement attracted Youngjae’s attention, but his exclamation of relief didn’t really distract her from the fact that the earrings were gone.  She almost freaked out.

Fortunately, common sense struck at the last moment, and she realised that being unduly worried about them would probably alert Youngjae to the fact that they had been abnormal, and there was still a chance that he or whoever had removed them had done so as a matter of routine and hadn’t realised there was anything weird about them.

“Finally!” exclaimed Youngjae, busying himself with his phone.  “I can move you out of the infirmary now.  We’ll go to a safe house.”

Infirmary?  Semi looked around.  The room was dark – the only light came from a street lamp outside the window, indicating that she was on the first floor somewhere – and the carpet she was lying on boasted no furniture whatsoever besides a desk near the window and a filing cabinet beside it.  There wasn’t even a chair, let alone anything like a bed.

Prodding absently at the false crown in to check it was still there, Semi turned back to Youngjae and surveyed him.  She wasn’t sure how you were supposed to address somebody who had kidnapped you with the tenuous permission of the police.  She was sure that Chen or Jongin, or Kyungsoo at the very least, would have told her if they had been aware that chloroform was planned.

That was assuming she’d been kidnapped by the right people.  There was always the possibility that it had gone horribly wrong, but considering the boss had mentioned a deal with the police, she reckoned she probably was with