Snapshot | Renmin

Chapter 9

Renjun fought a rising panic as the room turned silent, and as Renjun looked up to glance at Jaemin he knew that the other man wasn't lying.

He would be pressing down onto the trigger if Renjun refused his offer.

Jaemin's eyes were dead set on Renjun's face, reading the growing fear on his face, and somewhere in the back of his head Renjun knew that Jaemin was enjoying the panic slowly setting onto his face. But looking up at the gun pointed to his head didn't help him refrain from the terrifying feeling rising up from the pit of his stomach.

Renjun could easily tell that the other man was basically drinking up his fear.

His heart hammered against his chest as Renjun thought of what would happen if he even dared to say no to Jaemin's offer.

Renjun had told himself that he didn't care if he died anymore. That no one would even remember him if he was gone from this world, but as he was faced with the reality of dying, the fear twisted in his gut and clawed up his throat.

He would be dead with a gunshot wound through his forehead, in an abandoned warehouse for someone to find him tied to a chair. Renjun couldn't help but shiver at the thought of his lifeless body sitting there for some clueless person to stumble upon.

And as he sat there with his hands clammy and the air around him getting way too cold for his liking, Renjun's mind raced with different scenarios and questions.

He wondered about what Jaemin meant when he said to work for him.

Would he have to start killing people with no mercy, become someone he never imagined himself to become? Why would Jaemin even want someone like him in the first place?

It seemed that he was taking too long for Jaemin's liking because a small tick of annoyance from Jaemin makes Renjun snap back into reality, "I'll give you ten seconds to make your choice, or I'll decide for you."

The barrel of the pistol is pressed harder against his forehead, as if Jaemin was reminding him that this was real, that he was serious about what he had just said.

Renjun's body completely freezes as he tries to make up his mind, the seriousness of what was happening to him catching up to him. Even though it seemed impossible, his heart beat continued to beat loudly against his chest, drowning out any of his previous thoughts.

His brain was blindly telling him to survive, to live on even with nothing to live for, that he wanted to survive and do something with his stupid life. It didn't matter if Renjun had no one to return to, no one to go to, no one to even talk to, as long as he survived it would be alright.

The sounds around him seemed to be louder than they actually were as Renjun was stuck in thought.

The sound of the flickering lights behind him, or the rare sound of the scurrying of mice on the concrete broke his thinking at times before he would go back into deep thought.

As Renjun tried to make up his mind, yet again all of Renjun's past thoughts raced through his mind. How he had told himself that he didn't care what happened to him, that he wouldn't care if he got caught, that it would be okay if he died.

But none of it was true.

Renjun wouldn't even have the confidence to kill himself, so how would he even have the confidence to tell Jaemin to kill him right now. Even with his own life in his fingertips, with just a few words he could die with a press of a trigger.

Although it would be so easy to let Jaemin kill him right now, the words were stuck in his throat. It was as if the words were strangling him, forcing him to keep it inside.