A / N; Just LOOK at the word count. My fingers hurt, I'm tired, it's almost 4am right now and I have to work later aaaah. I do hope you guys enjoy this a lot, because as you can probably tell, a lot of work went into this chapter. I have never written something so long. And honestly I don't know what else to say. Well, I hope that you don't hate me because of what I did to Bobby... poor guy. I promise to make up to you again though ;)
So, I'd be more than happy to read some comments from you guys, just tell me what you liked or what you didn't like, because I'd really like to know where I could improve! 
Thank you for reading and see you next time!

word count; 7089     date; 15/11/09

thirteen

Black Hole

December ft. Zic Jasper - Pretend
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zh5mVHWJQjw

!!! w a r n i n g !!! ; bad language, violence, physical abuse

The five of them started walking toward us in a line.

Describing it even now makes me cringe because it sounds so much like a cliche from a mafia movie, one of those scenes in which they just walk, calmly, flashing a triumphant smirk.

But it was like that. Exactly like that. They liked acting theatrically.

Everything was just a big joke to them sometimes and they knew it made me angry.

I flung Bobby around so he was standing behind me. I spread my arms in an attempt to shield him.

Of course it must have looked very weird.

A skinny girl trying to protect a guy that is 1 and a half heads taller than her? Ridiculous.

But I stood in front of him and did... exactly nothing.

Those five gangsters coming toward us were my friends. What was I supposed to do?

Shout at them to leave him alone, getting out my knife and threaten them?

I would have made a fool of myself in front of them. I had apparently somehow decided to make a fool out of myself in front of Bobby instead. That was how my pride worked. Because I depended on them. I hated it.

I was just standing there, feeling like I needed to prepare myself for a fight, straightening up again and again because I lost my will again and again.

But when they finally came to a halt in front of us, I let my head hang.

Seungyoon came to a halt directly in front of me. Everything went painfully slow. I dreaded every moment that was to come but felt even more powerless because I knew I couldn't avoid them.

He put two of his fingers under my chin and lifted it up.

Bobby stirred behind me, pushing himself against me.

I avoided his eyes because I knew the glow they would have in them. Loving but daring. He would look at me like I was his dearest but at the same time ridiculing me for it. He had perfected that look and I couldn't stand it. He knew it.

Whenever he put it on I was sure that he hated me at least a little.

“Why aren't you happy to see me?”, he said in a mellow way.

Bobby must have noticed it as well, the way he talked to me so familiar, after all he wasn't dense.

Still he ripped Seungyoon's arm away from my face he caressed, shouting threats at him, empty though they were.

Big mistake.

In the blink of an eye my best friend got out his 9mm and pointed the shaft directly at Bobby’s head, resting his arm on my shoulder. I felt the other one behind me jumping back.

I just wanted to throw up to be very honest.

“Sori-yah. Let's get this over with quickly, alright?”, he finally asked as if he really needed my permission. Seungyoon pushed me aside with his arm softly when I didn't answer, still pointing the gun at Bobby.

I staggered aside as if in a trance. If I would have moved any more I would have really thrown up, I was sure.

The only thoughts running through my head at that moment where apologies to my fairly new friend. He had taken care of me so many times. We had met in a fight club where all kinds of twisted people are regulars but he still hadn't doubted me. And now? I got him into this.

Once I was aside everything went pretty quick. I kept staring at my shoes but I heard Bobby, squirming like a fish on land when Mino and Seunghoon tried to get a grip of each of his two arms.

“Sori-yah! What the is happening?!”

I couldn't answer.

“Do something!!”

I couldn't.

Then I heard a muffled impact and it was done.

I hated when Seungyoon used his gun. When Mino or even our sniper Taehyun did, it was one time and everything was over with. But Seungyoon liked using it. He enjoyed it. Too much.

It was one blow. A second and a third blow.

He was sadistic. Sickly so. Another thing that had changed about him.

Seungyoon never had had a strong personality. Things had broken him.

Even if he had tried to act like, yes, maybe he had to deal with stuff you wouldn't even wish upon your worst enemies, but he can deal with it, I knew it was all just a big show of pretend.

Those things had broken his bones and I think there were still some splinters missing after they had healed.

And in the missing splinters' respective places all those abominable traits had manifested themselves deep down in his bones, tainting him, but ultimately forming who he is now.

Seungyoon had been weak and by himself, not most of his life but in the worst times of his life.

Most people live with their imperfections but I think Seungyoon never learned that incompleteness reshapes itself, banning all missing pieces. He had needed to be complete at any cost.

And even though his incompleteness had shaped into something soft and round, he needed to rebuild what he had lost with anything at hand. That's how he grew sharp edges and spikes. So no one would ever touch him in that way again.

We came back home and transported his seemingly lifeless body into our basement.

They did. I walked next to Jiwon's body, constantly checking for his pulse.

I knew they wouldn't have bothered.

The basement was basically our place for work. All the huge computers and data, the interrogation rooms, cells, strategy rooms, practice rooms, everything was down there.

No windows, a heavy iron door with 3 locks, opened by key, code or fingerprint, crazy alarm systems and an emergency self-destruction plan protected the basement.

I hadn't been down there often enough to feel anything close to comfortable or save.

I had always liked the idea of performing my work down there, being involved, fearless of using all the practice facilities but once I did go down there, I felt endlessly trapped.

Like this was where I would die.

After the one minute it took Jinwoo to unlock the door we entered a pitch black nothingness.

The lights switched on once the door fell shut and one could count all seven clicks of the locks closing again with an unusually loud echo in the eerie silence.

The artificial light made me go blind for about 3 seconds and I fastened my grip on Bobby's wrist to lead me.

It was one straight hallway ending on another iron door, heavier protected than the front door.

Both sides of the hallway were lined with more doors with no signs to tell in what kind of room they would lead you.

As I'm describing this, I noticed one could imagine it being all sterile and futuristic down here. You would be disappointed. Our house was in fact very clean and modern, but the only thing about the basement you could describe like that were the two heavy entrance doors and the laboratories.

The light came from uncovered halogen bulbs from which cobwebs dangled, distorting the light in some places. The hallway was one piece of raw concrete, dirtier every time you walked through it. Scruffs of paper, leaves and whatever that had been carried in unnoticed, decorated them.

Drips and smears of blood blended into the dirty walls and floor almost invisibly. But to me they were all to present. There were several holes in the concrete as well, but I don't know what had happened to create them. Water leaked through some of them.

And the smell was worst. Stale air with a whiff of foulness, it felt constantly damp as well.

I didn't know what they had in mind with my friend but my eyes instinctively traveled to the 5th door on the right side. I got goose bumps so bad, my skin hurt.

We passed two cells on the right and two of Jinwoo's laboratories on the left and then halted in front of the door opposite to what I was sure was one of the two practice rooms. I had never entered either. Seungyoon had kept me away from them at all cost.

My heart skipped a beat when the door unlocked after Jinwoo had punched in the 4-digit code and the light came to life.

The nice one. I sighed in relief even though I knew that didn't mean they would be any less hard on him.

Let me explain. There were two interrogation rooms. The nice one, with a bunch of chairs and a desk and fairly good lighting. The floor was covered in all kinds of dirt and scrub but at least you were able to breathe the air in there.

Not so much in the other room. It had one flickering light bulb and a contraption of link chains, a thicker version of the ones I had used for fighting, hanging from the ceiling with a hook attached to the end of them. Oh, and an old mop. For when you had to question a very stubborn candidate.

So in a weird sense a smile formed on my lips when I saw “The nice one”.

The furniture in the nice room was pretty much discarded rubbish found on a dumpster thrown together so one chair had been an executive chair with a lot of holes in the leather, one a bar stool and another one a children's stool.

Minho and Seungyoon who had been carrying Bobby, threw him on a wooden chair from which he almost fell because it had no arm rests. I had to push myself against and hold him up in a sitting position.

For a brief moment we all stared at him as if waiting for something to happen.

The only thing I heard was water dripping into a puddle that must have formed somewhere in the room.

We did in fact wait for Seungyoon's order that he uttered by pointing at the far corner where there was a faucet and a bucket, not saying a word.

Seunghoon hurried over to fill the bucket while Jinwoo placed a metal stool facing Bobby and got out something that looked like a kit of some sort, placing it on the table.

Taehyun and Mino stood on either side slightly behind him, always ready to act.

Seungyoon sat a little behind Jinwoo in the big chair, he would just observe.

At least that's what I had hoped he would do when I looked at him, him seemingly in thought and staring at me.

“What are you thinking?”

Seunghoon waited, the bucket at ready. Jinwoo had stood up so the water would not splash onto him.

Usually they acted like friends, no one was superior to the other but in situations like those you knew Seungyoon was the one who pulled the strings.

So when he did a careless swishing gesture with his hand, Seunghoon dumped all the bucket's freezing cold contents on my friend.

I say contents because what had came out of that tap was surely not plain water.

And it also got on me for that matter, because I was still holding all the weight of my body against him so he wouldn't fall. But no one said anything because it was my own misfortune for sympathizing with the “enemy”. Laughable.

Bobby suddenly startled up as if he had never been unconscious. His body squirmed and his eyes ripped open all at once and he took heavy breaths. I had to force my body to tense up though I was shaking from the cold water already, otherwise we would've both landed on the floor.

That's how hysterical he was. Completely understandable.

5 creatures staring down on us, calm and quiet, shadows looming over their faces just like they were looming over us. It made them look like predators. Like we were their prey waiting for them to jump at us any second now.

Bobby probably thought we were in the same boat. Maybe he had been confused when one of those gangsters had called me by my name, speaking so familiar. And I had betrayed him then. But now I was by his side.

“Sori-yah.”, Seungyoon called again like he had in the alley, which I almost overheard in the hassle of trying to keep my friend from falling in his fits of confusion, his ragged breaths.

I had to get up, I knew. I had to betray him again.

I had never been present at anything like this before, but I knew from the hardness in Seungyoon's voice that he was in his work-mode. Merciless.

Bobby fell to his side and off the chair as soon as I had moved away, a scream of agony erupting in his deep voice. But Minho and Seunghoon, who seemed to me more like bodyguards at that moment, quickly picked him up again. I wondered what they were thinking. Did they like what they were doing?

Did they want this to be over with as quick as possible like me?

“Andromeda!!”, Bobby shouted. My eyes widened in shock. Not that name. Not in their presence.

“Andromeda!!”

I didn't react to it, but someone must have noticed the way I suddenly halted all I was doing.

“What the is going on! Where am I!!”, Bobby growled with fear in his voice, coughing in between. He must have gotten some of the water into his trachea.

“Some of you bastards tell me!!!”

I was standing with my back to him but the wall facing me was lined with mirrors. One could have thought they were two way mirrors but as I said. It wasn't that fancy down there.

I could see every shocked, perplexed emotion riding over his face in that mirror. His body trying to jerk free from the grips of those two strangers, but to no avail.

Everyone was silent. Waiting again.

They didn't shout at him to shut up, didn't punch him. Not just yet.

After a minute or an eternity for all I knew, his voice died down.

“Andro- ”, Bobby tried again but stopped. “Sori-yah.....”

It came out as a croak. I bit my lip. I was so angry.

“Sori-yah, please tell me...”

He spoke so polite to me, but I felt like I didn't deserve that at all.

Minho and Seunghoon had stepped back again once Seungyoon gestured them to do so and when Jinwoo had finished taking notes, he sat back down on his metal stool.

Now for starters, when you saw him, Jinwoo wasn't exactly one of the intimidating guys in our gang, or in all of Seoul for that matter.

But still waters are deep. And dangerous. And equipped with all kinds of “remedies”.

“Name.”, he demanded.

Bobby scoffed at him. He probably thought the same so many others had thought before.

What can this dewy eyed petite man possibly do to me?

“Name. And age if we're at it.”

He gave the same reaction. I bit my lip, I was worried. Jinwoo was as scary as a fluff of cotton candy when you looked at him, but it was what he did behind the doors of his laboratories. They were his and only his.

Reading my story, you will notice him popping up a lot less than the others. Most of the time he just was in the basement. But he played a huge role nonetheless.

Jinwoo didn't shift position, it was like he was frozen on the spot, he just stared at the man opposite to him. All while his right hand was resting on a kit he had placed on the table next to him earlier.

“THIS IS NOT THE RIGHT SITUATION TO ING PROVE YOURSELF, JIWON!”, I screamed internally.

“Your name and age. Right now.”, the oldest of our group demanded again.

The muscles in his hand tightened around the kit. He was getting impatient.

Jinwoo always had great patience when operating his experiments but with people... most of the times he would just walk away. If he could, that is. Because if he didn't, he himself knew he'd do bad things. Once he reached a certain point he couldn't control himself. It was a compulsive disorder. And it was scary and cruel.

“Why would I tell you? What is this here anyways? Are you some kind of gang?”

“Please...”, I whispered more to myself though. I wanted him to stop talking. He would literally risk his neck with his careless talk.

“A group of teenage boys playing gangsters? Ridiculous.”

“Don't be stupid, now.”, Taehyun warned him. And he was right. He was downright being stupid.

WINNER were not the kind to just be insulted. Not that they really cared but when they were given a chance, they loved acting up. Especially Seungyoon.

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