Supernerd! MARK

33 | pen to a gunfight

Pain spreads all over my face as I receive another blow to my cheek, a stinging numbness bringing tears to my eyes. I know it has barely even been five minutes since Kun's call with Mark, but it feels like it's been forever.

I hear his evil cackle resonate around the room as Nakamoto Yuta raises another fist, but the swing never comes when the door to the shipping container opens with a loud rumble.

"Tsk." The new presence walks in, the soles of his boots thumping against the hollow metal. "Aren't you thought not to hit a woman, Yuta?"

The Japanese man rolls his eyes, but takes a step back, letting me take in a ragged breath. I know whoever it is that had walked in isn't Mark, but ironically, he is the one to save me first.

My vision is blurry, unable to make out the face of the man who squats in front of me, nothing but a flash of red hair and the glimmer of the silver chain that rests on his collarbones."

"You never called me." Lee Taeyong tilts his head to the side, bringing up his long fingers to caress my bleeding temple. He sighs, returning to his full height. "Got me waiting."

"You cannot possibly believe that I wanted to," I scoff, to which he laughs dryly.

"'Course not. Frantic eyes, awkward movements. Thanks to you, it brought us to Spider-Man— or should I say, Mark Lee?" Taeyong clasps his hand, grinning widely.

I try not to dwell on the fact that all of this could have been avoided if I had just been more convincing, but I know that there had always been a chance of our plan being doomed to fail from the very beginning.

Now Mark's identity is exposed, and it's all my fault.

I am momentarily rid of my thoughts when a loud bang suddenly resonates from somewhere outside the container, and I freeze.

Taeyong sighs in annoyance, taking a step back as he takes out a gun I failed to notice prior from the waistband of his slacks. "That better not be one of your lackies playing Russian Roulette again," he says almost boredly.

Kun nods. "I'll go check it out."

Yuta remains at the corner of the room, eyes sharp on me while Kun stalks towards the metal double doors. I find myself holding my breath when he throws them open with no hesitation, only to be met with nothingness.

Still, that doesn't do much to ease the thundering of my heart.

Silence doesn't always mean good— especially not under the circumstance I'm in.

The sky is an inky black canvas blanketed with a sheet of stars, and I begin to wonder just how long I've been out cold. With no hints of the sun rising any time soon, I assume if couldn't have been more than a couple of hours.

Even with the ropes that bind my wrists together tightly behind the back of my chair, I find myself clenching my fists even tighter than before, my nails digging into my palms hard enough to draw blood. The stinging sensation doesn't really bother me, my attention rather set on the eerie silence that surrounds us.

Kun takes a step forward, his hand secure on the barrel of his pistol, and that's when I see the familiar flash of red and blue falling from above, landing square on his shoulders.

It all happened within a moment, and the next thing I know, Kun is on the ground. Taeyong is the first to react, pointing out his gun as he swiftly pulls the trigger, but Mark beats him to it as he shoots out a web in the gang leader's direction, the gun whizzing right past my ear before eventually being pinned to the metal wall behind me.