PROMPT:
You wake up in a jail cell, crusted blood covering your hands. You have no idea how you got there. The cell door clangs open, and an officer walks you to an interrogation room where two detectives wait to question you.
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AGAINST THE WORLD
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The truth is, Mark's life begins to fall apart even before he meets Donghyuck.
He realizes this when he wakes up, face pressed against the ice-cold, concrete floor of a prison cell; when the guards drag his uncooperative, limp body into an interrogation room; when he's face-to-face with Detective Jeong Jaehyun, handcuffed to a cold, metal table. The handcuffs dig into the flesh of his wrists, but he only fights them once and gives up as soon as he realizes they won't give in. He just wants to thumb away the crusted blood staining his cheek, and pick out the flakes under his nails.
The room is foreign to him. It's what he's seen in movies and read in books, but he has never fathomed the idea of being in one himself. There's a two-way glass that Mark aimlessly stares at as he wonders who's listening in on the other side. It doesn't faze him, however, because he just feels numb and hollow. The emptiness makes Mark feel less like a human and more like a vessel.
He can't figure out just how he ended up in the situation. Everything is smooth in his memory up until his supposed arrest—a tear in the fabric of his recollection. He digs his palms into his temples, and then presses against the soft flesh under his eyes, frustrated by the stunted gears in his head. As much as he begs them to click and start spinning, they remain rusted in place.
But he can't ask the brooding man standing over him. He can't look up into his cold, unforgiving eyes.
"There's no use in lying, Mark," Detective Jeong Jaehyun says gruffly, gaze like steel, "the prints match."
Mark doesn't know what to say. First of all, he can't fucking remember what he's doing in the prison house. He's sure that everything was finally going right in his life, so where did it all go wrong? Where the hell is Donghyuck?
He drums his fingers against the table—a habit that's rooted in his anxiety. Mark's fingers are stained and pruned like roses, and as much as he tries to paint the table red, they only flake off. He's sure his heartbeat is faster than the drumming of his fingers, his mind perhaps speeding off twice as fast.
His stomach twists. If Hyuck is imprisoned, it's all over. There's a limit to how much the boy can take; being thrown in the slammer would be intolerable for him. Mark knows he needs to get to him immediately because Hyuck is the boy who feels too much and too little at the same time, who looks for the part of him that ran away, who self-destructs when he feels the world closing in on him.
Mark works up the courage to look at Detective Jeong in the eye, which makes the bigger man stiffen up, biceps flexing under his white button-up. One could argue that his body was sculpted by God himself with his dimples carved in so meticulously and his shoulders so square and broad.
There's so much pain in Mark's voice as he asks, "Where's Donghyuck?"
Detective Jeong's lips press into a thin, grim line, dimples cutting into his pale cheeks. Mark decides that can't be a good reaction.
Mark continues, "He didn't do anything, I swear. He was just there. He didn't do anything."
"We don't know where he is," Detective Jeong informs him, "and we need your help to find him, Mark. Will you cooperate?"
