interlude [1]

1

A long day of work had finally ended for you, luckily the late shift meant that it wasn't busy anymore, but it did mean coming home more tired than on other days. Today you had no other choice but working late, seeing the co-workers all had home duties such as their own families or events they had to go to. You were kind enough to say yes when they had asked you to work a late shift and afterward clean up a bit as well. You had done as you had been asked, even though you had wished to be home with each hour of the day that had been passed.

The way home was calm and slightly uncomfortable, the streets being so empty was something you could never get used to, especially not with the recent big circumstances in the city. And the darkness made a horror movie scenario seem more likely than you had hoped. Your steps were fast, something that would make you seem suspicious if other people were around, but you were just in a hurry. You wanted to get home as fast as possible.

Once you were inside the apartment building, you made your way to the place that you called home. You got the key out of your bag only to find that you had somehow left your door unlocked, you didn't know how you managed to forget that, but blamed it on the tiredness that you had been feeling even before your shift had started. After a second of hesitating to go on, you decided you had no other option than to go in.

"I'm home" You announced to no one in particular as you got into the small hallway: leaving your shoes and jacket behind in their place there before you walked further into the place that you were renting. The lights were off, making it dark aside from the street lights that shone a bit of light through your window. Without turning on the lights, you made your way towards the windows to close the curtains, as you wanted that bit of privacy at this late hour of the night.

Once it was pitch black inside, you realized your stupid mistake and roamed your hand around in your bag until you had found your phone. And rather than turning on its flashlight, you let the lockscreen provide you with the slightest bit of light to get you through the nearest light switch. Your heart was beating fast as you went through the dark, even if you were in your own house right now. Your hand reached out once the light of the phone brought the light switch against the wall in sight, the little sound the light switch made came synchronously with the light in the middle of the living room.

Your eyes scanned the familiar surroundings as if they weren't so familiar after all, but seeing everything left the way it had been before, made a sigh of relief push itself past your lip. These days it wasn't easy to live here: a lot of criminalities happened and it wouldn't be new that the mafia hid for the police in the nearest house they could break in to. Luckily, that was something you didn't have experience with, yet it was something that brought a spark of fear each time you came home.

The silence of the place was broken when you turned on the tv and afterwards guide your bare feet towards the fridge to get yourself some water before you would go to bed. A voice was heard through the living room, making you hear what once again was the local news: the same local news each day, with once again the subject of the infamous NCT mafia. Your ears didn't want to hear it and yet you were fast to sit on your sofa to listen and watch at the same time. "According to international sources, the mafia group NCT has spread out to countries as far as China and are planning to grow even larger." The host spoke as some undercover pictures of the mafia group seemed to appear on the screen: how could they even get away unnoticed when some of them had the weirdest hair colors?

The host went on to the next subject of the news that you were no longer interested in, making you switch through the channels. But at midnight not much was on television anymore: aside from programs that weren't made for the eyes of innocent children. After swapping back and forth between some channels, you turned off the tv and got up, leaving your bottle of water on the coffee table as you headed towards your bathroom to wash up a bit.

The house seemed quieter without the television but you did your nightly routine without focusing on the eery feeling you had in your own home. Your clothes were exchanged for your nightwear and your face was ready to hydrate and rest for the night without feeling the air from the outside blow upon it. A look in the mirror revealed how tired you were after today, but it wasn't as if anyone would ever notice or speak up about the eyebags that rested underneath your eyes.

Your feet took themselves to your bathroom after you had cleaned up the slight mess you made in there. The lights again had turned off but you were quick enough to turn the one in your bedroom on so that it wouldn't be pitch black for the second time that night. "Let's sleep" you mumbled to yourself as you made sure the curtains in your room were closed and that your phone was really charging itself on your nightstand. Without noticing anything else in the room: you laid down in your bed and pulled the little string that hung against the wall, turning off the light which automatically left your eyes to close themselves.

Falling asleep took a little while as your mind was still occupied with the busy day you had today, and wondering if tomorrow would be the same kind of busy day as well. Thoughts didn't seem to leave, not even when you tried to imagine the vocals in your favorite song, and not even when all you tried to think of was falling asleep. Maybe it was too warm in bed, which caused you to rest your legs upon the blankets instead of underneath them. Maybe you had been staying up too late which caused you to be so tired that you just weren't able to sleep at all.

Your thoughts never seemed to stop wandering and it seemed to last hours, even if you knew probably only half an hour had passed in reality, but you were too stubborn to check the time on your phone. Slumber eventually started to take over your body, although it was as if you were still conscious of the non-existent surroundings. At least, that's what you thought.

A few sounds were heard in the bedroom but sleep managed to lie to you and say that it was just nothing at all. Your closed eyes didn't see the other presence in the room, neither did your body feel it. The room slowly filled itself with the scent of chloroform as the person that had crawled from underneath the bed, applied a generous amount of the liquid onto a rag he had found in your home.

"Sorry doll, had to hide in here so I gotta take you now" The voice spoke as the rag was pressed against your nose and mouth to make sure that you were completely gone within minutes. Because of your sleep: you hadn't noticed anything, not even your own coughs or the horrid smell of the chloroform woke you up. Something that made it only easier for Ten: the guy that brought you under an even deeper sleep.

After a few minutes, Ten was sure that you were completely away from the world and called out for Winwin who immediately came from your closet. The two of them carried you out of your own apartment and into the basement, where Winwin had found access to a car of one of the other inhabitants of the building. "Put her in the backseat," Ten said and soon enough you were laid on the backseat by the two mafia members. After both of the guys got in the front of the car, they drove away and back to their hideout. You would probably never return to this place, but that was something they didn't care about.

During the entire drive, your eyes stayed closed and you were still asleep, probably caused by the heavy doses of chloroform that had spread itself through your nose. The laughter of the two guys in the front of the car was unheard, the silence after their leader Taeyong had called was eery but not to you. You were out for the rest of the short night.