radiant | jung hoseok | ✓

chapter fourteen | hot chocolate

I yelp as my body hits the gravel ground. My hands are still tied behind my back, the rope is rubbing raw against my wrists. My rain-drenched hair falls in front of my face and sticks to my skin, obscuring some of my vision. I moan quietly as the pain moves through my body.

The man standing inside the train car kicks my shattered phone out as well. It disappears when it hits the ground, I can hardly see a thing out there. It's pouring too much to see through the already pitch-black trainyard.

He jumps down, his feet crunching the gravel when he hits the ground, and walks towards me. He leers down at my bound body and prods my side with his boot. "Did you think you could get away with that?" he challenges.

I say nothing in return, hoping the silent treatment will stall long enough for Hobi to arrive. My tears continue to slip down my face but now they blend with the falling rain. My body is shaking from both wasted adrenaline and the freezing night air.

Out of all the outcomes for tonight, being kidnapped was not on the list.

I still don't understand why they kidnapped me in the first place. If it wasn't so terrifying, I would have thought it dumb. Yet another plot hole in the story we call life. Yet here I am with my hands tied together, my phone smashed, in the ungodly hours of the morning, facing off with a kidnapper in a trainyard.

These dark events happen, you just never expect them to happen to you.

"If he were on time, you would already be gutted right now," the man sneers, breathing up through his nose as he speaks.

An age-old warning echoes in my mind. "You don't live past the second location."

My stomach twists with panic as my eyes flick to the man. He's is going to kill me. He is really going to kill me.

He looks up and down my body in a slow motion that makes me sick to my stomach. Lightning flashes above us causing his body to be silhouetted with darkness. My heart sinks realizing he is larger than I thought. I can't fight a man of this size, and I am beginning to doubt his patience.

He will kill me if I upset him.

The man leans down, squatting beside me, and reaches out with a dirty finger to touch my cheekbone. I grimace at his touch, trying to pull away from him and do everything I can to block out the dark hunger in his eyes. "A couple of bites won't hurt anybody," he muses and his voice turns into a soft trilling, almost like purring. "I'll be so careful... all he wants is your..." He lays his hand flat on my lower stomach with his thumb nudging down. "I just want..." He slides his hand up my stomach and his fingers hit the base of my bra wire.

He flashes me a dark grin, "You wouldn't mind, would you?"

I stare at him, horror-stricken. "I--," I shake my head violently, "I don't want to, don't, please don't do this."

His grin slips off his face. "It was a rhetorical question." His fingers dig into my ribs and curl around the base of my bra, pinching the skin.

I suck in a sharp breath and fight to roll backward. My back pressed into a wet track and I felt the water seep through my clothes, causing goosebumps to rise on my skin. My wrists are squished behind me and I feel my shoulders ache as I try to pull my arms apart. "No, leave me alone!" I shout, rearing my legs to kick him away. I shoot my legs out but my legs swing out and move through empty air.

I freeze in place and blink in shock.

The man is gone.

Another rumble of thunder causes the sky above to tremble, threatening to burst open at the seams.