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na jaemin's pov
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"Can I leave now?" I asked Doyoung stubbornly for what seemed like the hundredth time. "I want to go."
"No, you can't," Doyoung spat angrily. "Okay, listen, rookie. You might not remember much, but you are not trusted among these grounds. You remember that you're a detective for the Sanguis Police Force, right?"
I nodded.
"Well, we don't trust the police! We don't need the police here, so we're keeping you here until we leave tomorrow." He was arranging some tools on the counter.
"Leave...?"
"We're going to Aurum tomorrow. Right at dawn. You're coming with us along with the other prisoners. I'm not sure why Taeyong doesn't want them killed right now, but we have to follow his directions otherwise."
"Wait, are you talking about Narae and Jisung and Chenle? They're still in there! What am I going to do?" Guilt and worry plastered my face like tape.
"What are you going to do?" Doyoung smirked. "You're nothing right now, rookie. Nothing. The lowest rank. There's nothing you can do about a few prisoners. We let them to rot in the cells if we're not going to finish them off right away. They can die extra slowly."
I slammed my fist. "What the hell? Are you good? Are you a psycho? They're my friends!"
"Does it look like I care? So what if they're your friends? They're prisoners. They're inmates. I'm not going to have mercy on them." Doyoung shrugged as if what he was talking about was absolutely nothing to him. It was as if he didn't care that people were dying because of him and the 1:27.
Anger fueled me like gasoline to a car. "They did nothing to you! They're regular people!"
Doyoung looked at me straight in the eye. His glare was colder than ice and his demeanour was intimidating and prickly. "Shut. The fuck. Up. I don't care. I've been taught these things for my entire time while stuck here in the 1:27. Your heart hardens. Your emotions fade away. You soon realize there really is no point in living. Everyone is a sinner. We're all supposed to die anyway, why don't we let the useless ones wither away first?"
I gritted my teeth, seething. "I'm going to find a way to end you all. With Narae. I'm going to finish you all off and watch you pay for what you've done."
Doyoung laughed. "Aw, how cute. You see, rookie, lots of us didn't even want to be here in the first place. Lots of us. Including me. Yuta. Taeil. Sicheng. Ten. Xiaojun. Hendery. Yangyang. Many others. And oh, of course your little friends. Mark and Donghyuck included, is that right? Lots of us didn't want to stay. We wanted to go home. But no. We were driven away to this wretched place, our parents thinking that we were on our way to a private academy that they thought they signed us up for. It was a trick," He sharpened one of our knives, the screeching sound echoing throughout the room, biting the insides of my ears. I grimaced. "Our parents never got us back. It was the start of a different life. I was only like, sixteen. Mark was barely thirteen, not even in high school," He looked at me straight in the eye. "So, you see, rookie, look how quickly your life can change. One little mistake made by your parents, then-boom!-your normal life is sucked away from you and your little heart of flesh is hardened into a heart of stone."
"Then what about Taeyong? Was he the one who started it all?" I asked him curiously, anger still pulsing through my veins.
Doyoung shook his head. "When this entire thing was being born, Taeyong wasn't even legal. He was one of the first ones to be dragged into this mess, yes. There was a former captain. No one knows his name. He was dangerous, that's for sure, but he appointed Taeyong as a new leader. Taeyong was always hardworking, but he was too naïve. He thought that learning how to shoot a gun was to help defend yourself and learning how to break bones was to help your survive in the wilderness. Little did he know..." He trailed off, examining the engraved designs of the sword's hilt. "Taeyong was kind of weird, though. He was strange. He acted differently. His eyes were lost. They looked like the eyes of a prisoner. Someone who saw all the evil in the world, someone who has no hope left in them. He was quiet. He looked out of the window often and whispered weird things about his family under his breath."
I furrowed my eyebrows in confusion. "I swear, I saw him in my vision. I feel like I've known him before."
Doyoung sighed. "It's complicated. You better know who you're messing with before you play any tricks, though, rookie." He tossed the knife into the air and caught it in his other hand.
