The Broken Dancer

The Quiet Extraction

Morning begins like a held breath. The blinds rise on their own at six-thirty sharp, spilling a dull, pale light across the room. Jimin blinks against it, though he's already awake. He's always awake before the light now - before the house stirs, before the footsteps start.

Breakfast comes on a tray, delivered by one of the house staff who doesn't meet his eyes. A glass of water, a bowl of congee, one folded napkin. No variation. No speech. The spoon clinks once against porcelain before silence swallows it again.

The day unfolds by the clock. Ten minutes to wash. Twenty minutes to read in the sitting room, under quiet observation. Half an hour in the study, supervised by Mr. Han. Every segment marked, measured, contained.

It's not the confinement itself that suffocates - it's the precision. The awareness that his time no longer belongs to him. The rhythm feels less like routine and more like conditioning.

He doesn't see Mr. Song much anymore. That almost makes it worse. Before, there had been the illusion of proximity - the sharp eyes, the questions, the soft-spoken menace that filled space like smoke. Now, Song's presence comes through cameras, unseen but felt. Jimin knows where the lenses sit: one above the window, one disguised in the corner lamp, another hidden in the decorative molding near the wardrobe. The air hums faintly when the feed clicks on, a sound only he seems to notice.

The silence in between feels designed. Curated. Like Song is testing how much emptiness Jimin can endure before he cracks.

He keeps his movements slow, predictable - turning pages, sipping water, pacing once across the rug. Nothing suspicous, nothing new. When he passes the wardrobe, he lets his finger drift briefly across the hanging coats until they brush the inner pocket of the old jacket pressed against the back wall.

The phone rests there - a thin, weightless thing that somehow feels heavier than the whole house.

He never turns it on unless he must. The act itself feels dangerous now, as though light could spill through the fabric and betray him. Still, he touches it daily, a ritual of reassurance. Proof that something beyond these walls still exists - that there's a pulse waiting for him out there.

At night, the world contracts even further.

His father insists he return to the club each evening, but not to perform - not anymore. Instead, he is seated in the private upper balcony, forced to watch. The auctions have resumed, smaller, sharper, more selective. He sits beside his father as the dancers move below - each movement choreographed to a price, each smile rehearsed to conceal exhaustion.

He watches the bids rise. Watches the faces in the crowd. He is not for sale, but the reprieve feels hollow. It's worse, somehow - to sit untouched yet implicated, forced to bear witness. To see himself mirrored in the eyes of those still trapped on the floor.

His father calls it education. "Perspective," he says, sipping his drink, not looking at Jimin. "You should know what happens when people lose their value."

So Jimin learns to school his face into calm indifference while his stomach turns. Every night he watches the bodies become commodities again, and every night he leaves feeling less like a person himself.

When he returns home, Song is never waiting in the hallway anymore - only the faint red light of a camera watching him pass. The house sleeps under surveillance, silent and sterile.

He lies down without undressing, staring at the ceiling. Somewhere behind the wall, a soft mechanical whir begins - the sound of the cameras resetting, lenses shifting. He imagines Song in a dark room somewhere, watching the footage, rewinding it frame by frame.