Lookism: What Am I Even Doing?

Chapter Sixty-One

4. An Expression of Loyalty

(2 hours until)

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How long have I been laying here?

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It's been awhile since the lights have turned off.

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It's been awhile since they've put needles into my skin. They said they would make me feel better but all they did was take part of the pain away. Everything else feels just as horrible. Yet, I can't help myself to move from my broken position.

Chin-hae took less time than I hoped to recover from the shock. He had me pinned down in a matter of seconds and I really thought I was going to die. The sword was at my throat yet its master told him to stop.

I saw him...Chin-hae, struggling to let his anger go but Jong-su is a scary man and a dog knows when to bite its tail. He simply let me go and I fell to my side, too tired to even will myself to fall onto my back.

I felt filthy.

Skin pushed underneath my nails. Blood crusted along my lips and drooled off my chin. There was also flesh embedded into my front teeth. I don't even remember biting him but I guess I did and I took a piece of him with me. Below my lungs, I could feel my ribs weirdly push against my skin every time I breathed. It would hurt. It would hurt a lot. But the pain felt weird. It was like...I was experiencing it through someone else.

Blurred. Or was that shock?

A good thing, I don't think my ribs were broken...completely at least. Earlier I had panicked when I started coughing up blood but it seems that when he punched me, bit down hard against my cheek. So I was thankfully not bleeding internally through any major organs.

"Oh my god! Ila!"
Whose voice was that? They sounded so far away.

"Richard, go get Doc! Her head is bleeding!"
A silent pause.

"Haruki...you know we cannot do that."

"What do you mean we can't! Richard! Look at her! We can't take her like this!"

"Then what do you suppose we do? If we don't follow orders do you think we'll be the only ones to suffer? I'm thinking of her too."

Warm and gentle hands brushed my hair away from my face. No matter how hard I tried, I could move to look up at his face. Haruki placed a hand on my shoulder then pressed his eyes closed. He was struggling with himself. He let out mumbled words in what sounded like Japanese before easing his arms underneath my body.

My mind screamed as he gently rested me in his arms. His body pressing against the dozens of wounds carried around my body. Yet I stayed silent. We moved past corridors and up the staircase to the second floor until we reached the elevator. After that, I'm not sure where they took me but it seemed to be someone's room.

Richard opened the door to the bathroom for Haruki. Fear blared through my chest and I think Haruki could feel it...my nervous heart. He mumbled continuous apologies as he held me up so that Richard could peel me away from my clothes.

"I'm sorry."

"I'm so sorry."

In moments I was left naked in front of the two men. Everything in my brain told me to scream, to run away, to fight against them as they exposed me to them. In reality, all I could do was silently cry to myself. Tears fell silently as they placed me into a tub of warm water.