Limitless || Mark Lee

Chapter 19

"Taeyong trained you?"

Mark nodded his head, motioning for her to sit down beside him.

"That's why all the guys reacted the way they did, because they've all seen it before. Taeyong.... he's a great assassin and I got all my skills from him, but it wasn't easy. I mean, you can't really think I was born so dead inside..."

A shiver ran through his body as he stared across the room, a haunted look on his face that scared Mirae.

"You don't... you don't have to tell me, Mark. It's okay."

She rested her hand on his shoulder to try and comfort him, but he only flinched away, snapping out of his trance. He looked at her for a moment before shaking his head and cautiously relaxing back onto the bed, allowing Mirae to continue to rub his shoulder.

"You need to know what you're heading into, there's still time to back out until you get your tattoo."

Mark shut his eyes for a moment, letting out a deep sigh and then turning to look at her.

"When Taeyong recruited me, I had nothing. My parents had left me when I was a child and I had no where to go. He saw me as a kid living on the streets and decided I was a good candidate to shape into a gang member. Me, knowing nothing, saw a nice guy offering to help me and who was I to say no? He trained me well, obviously, I lead one of our teams and I'm the ace. There's no doubt that Taeyong has skills and will make sure you have them too."

"Do you regret it?" Mirae jumps in, unable to help herself. "Do saying yes that day?"

"No." Mark says with a sigh. "No because I wouldn't have made it on my own. And I found these guys, my team. I don't regret it."

"Hmm, sorry for interrupting, continue."

"Right.... even though I was raised on the streets, I had found friends, gotten into a local school and was figuring it out. I always was the nice kid in class, I had tons of friends, I was a bit of a player not going to lie, but people liked me for how happy and smiley I was."

He paused when he saw her shocked expression.

"Hard to believe, I know. But someone so happy-go-lucky has no place in a mafia. I thought that I'd be able to make it through as I was, but Taeyong thought otherwise. He would keep me up for training hours and hours a day. From the moment the sun rose until midnight we'd be training. I felt like my body was going to break but I kept pushing. I didn't want to disappoint him."

Mark sucked in a sharp breath, pausing his story. Mirae noticed that his hands started to shake a bit as the memories flashed through his head. He pushed away the fear and continued speaking.

"He finally thought I might be ready and took me out for a mission. I almost died that night, and I almost brought the rest of NCT down with me. One of my school friends was on the other side and I couldn't kill him. I couldn't even fight him. I just froze as he pointed a gun at my head. His gang was able to overpower NCT and if it wasn't for Jaehyun having followed us solely because of a bad feeling he had.... we all would've died that night. Because of me."

"Mark...."

"It's okay. It's in the past. But Taeyong didn't take well to that. He worked me harder, he kidnapped my classmates and forced to me kill them. To watch my friends bleed out and die in my hands. He wouldn't even let me cry. I stayed locked in my room tormented by nightmares only for him to pull me back into the basement to kill another. And another."

There were tears in Mark's eyes now and Mirae could feel his pain. Her heart broke for the cold boy in front of her.

"It kept going until it didn't matter anymore. The final test was when he brought in my best friend. The guy who had found me on the streets when I was little and even let me stay at his house for a few years while we were in school together. He was like a brother to me. But when Taeyong said 'shoot' I didn't even think. I killed him and didn't feel a single thing."