365 Hours with Rufus Shinra (FFVII: Rufus x OC)

ch5. would you, please, stop being so f*king good at this?

SHE HADN'T SLEPT so well in years. Maybe it was because of the starvation and the exhaustion that she had experienced the previous day. But -oh Gaia- she hadn't gotten so thoroughly fucked in so long. She found herself staring at the ceiling of her room with nothing but thoughts of what had happened that night. The night before the previous one.

Yes, there had already been two days since that night. It was the other morning that the staff let her know that he'd be missing for the next two days and where to, it was classified as they had stated. She could contact her PA and work online. It turned out they had told everybody that she had some weird, tropic, highly infectious disease and she couldn't attend work for months.

Damn you, Rufus Shinra. She was never one not to go work because of some flu. Nevertheless, after finishing another online meeting with her assistants and the other executives, she let her laptop rest and she just went back to bed. Maybe she could take advantage of that, and get all the rest that she had neglected for so many years trying to build a company.

All those sleepless nights. All those sacrifices. She was making another sacrifice now but she wasn't sure how to feel about it. Was it really a sacrifice? Was it really a bad idea?

For all she knew, she was in a huge house, with delicious meals served at all times for free, and the only price was... not really a bad price? Sure, morally it wasn't right, but she knew better than anybody that there's no morality when it comes to business.

He owned her, though. For fifteen days he owned her.

But she genuinely didn't find anything to complain about. Or at least, he had yet to give her a reason to complain about. She had twelve more days. She nodded to herself as she stared at the ceiling of her room. She could make it twelve more days. Right?

It was just after noon. He was supposed to return by the night. She had nothing else to do but wait. Instead of waiting in her room, she got up and made her way downstairs, meeting a maid in the hall, and greeting her with a smile. Hannah made her way down the staircase and with little effort, she found the living room.

It was the first room that she had entered when she got there. It was where the piano rested. She pulled the fallboard back up and sat down on the bench. Her fingers were cold as they brushed against the ochre, shiny keys. Playing with cold fingers was a terrible idea.

But she didn't care in the least. It wasn't like she knew playing difficult pieces that usually required a warm-up.

She had learned to play during her time in Wall Market. Actually, playing the piano in the 'Drunkards' bar was the first job that she actually liked. The only job that she liked back then. She remembered the day.

The day that they walked out of a car, and that car left. It was the day that their mother had abandoned them. She was ten-years-old. Reno was eight. She remembered they spent two more years, begging in the dangerous streets of Wall Market. There was no one there for them. They had nothing but each other. She was the oldest. She had tried her best to raise Reno. To be both the mother, and the sister, and the father that he deserved.

And in doing so, she lost her dignity. Reno was too little to help. The only job that promised enough income for both of them was the only job that she wanted to avoid. Alas, she couldn't avoid it. She could still feel their hands on her body. Her shouts were still loud in her ears as she would try to fight back, desperate to push them away. Useless efforts. They never stopped what awaited her.

But she was scared back then. She was fourteen when it began.

That's why now, all these years later, she wasn't afraid to sign such contracts. She couldn't have something taken from her that she hadn't already lost.