Taken • Choi San •

The Dark

*Warning - This COULD be a very triggering chapter, it contains quite dark themes related to suicide, self harm and general darkening thoughts. If you're easily overwhelmed by these kinds of things, please please don't read it. You'd be better not reading the entire thing to be truthful, I will write less darkly themed stories in the future.*

She'd never felt it before.

The total and inescapable lack of hope.

But watching San be dragged from her... It felt like there was no longer any light left.

"Eat."

How many days now, had it been since she'd last seen San?

There had been a total of nine meals bought to her little prison since he'd begged her with his eyes to stay down on the ground while he was taken away.

So most likely three days if they were trying to bring her three a day.

She didn't want to think about if it had been more than that.

She didn't want to think at all, ever again.

"Eat."

He was growing more impatient every time he spoke to her, she knew.

She didn't care.

Just like she didn't care that pain clawed her from inside out every time she rejected the tray of surprisingly delicious looking food.

She didn't care that her mouth felt dryer than a desert or that her throat screamed every time she dragged a breath of air in or out of it.

The only thing that she cared about was San.

Was he still alive?

She might have asked Youngmin, her only constant companion aside from the heavy darkness, if he weren't the one who tried to keep her alive when all she wanted was to die.

"If you don't eat, you'll die." It wasn't Youngmin this time and she didn't even bother pushing the tray away, instead rolling away from it herself.

She didn't have the energy to do much more now.

She'd contemplated using the utensils on the tray to end things, to save herself for whatever further hell they could have planned for her.

But by the time she'd worked up the courage, or lost enough reason to stay alive, they'd been smart enough to remove anything she could actually use.

On the day of the 21st meal that she'd refused, a week that San had been gone, rough hands grabbed her aching shoulders, sitting her upright.

"We didn't go through hell to get you here just for you to take the easy way out." Youngmin again.

She didn't have enough strength to open her eyes let alone stop him from pouring something wet and ridiculously satisfying cold down her throat.

In the back of her mind she ached to push him away, but her wrists felt weighted with lead and hard as she tried she couldn't lift them to knock his hand.

After the water bottle left her dry and cracked lips, another liquid, this time warm, was tipped from the dip of a spoon down her throat.

It hit the bottom of her fully empty stomach unpleasantly, the heat flowing through her and she spluttered around the fourth mouthful, feeling it rise back up her already burning throat.

Was he feeding her poison?

Or was her body just so unused to eating that it was rejecting everything now?