Hearts Awakened, Live Alive

Wooyoung: Are You Good?

Wooyoung sat at a steel desk in a steel chair, his hands cuffed to a bar in front of him. The metal rubbed harshly against his raw wrists, a side effect from wearing the bindings for entirely too long. The room was painfully white, not a speck of dirt or anything unsightly to be seen. The floor was made of the same white, spotless linoleum tile his cell's floor had been and directly below Wooyoung's chair was a drain. He didn't even want to imagine what that was for. He wanted to think, at least for a little longer, that he was going to make it out of this interrogation alive.

His injuries had been taken care of yesterday as per Seonghwa's orders. His arm—thankfully not severely broken but still fractured—had been bound. Any cracked ribs had been set properly and his chest bandaged as well. The dislocation of his nose had been put back into place and all the blood had been cleaned off him. All cuts, bruises, and scrapes had also been cared for with the utmost care. No one else had talked to him. He saw no other agents besides the doctors that had treated him and the same woman from his initial interrogation yesterday who now brought him his meals and made sure he was staying properly hydrated. He still felt like shit; every limb, every muscle, every joint ached whenever he so much as moved a centimeter, but he wasn't going to let it show. He wasn't going to give his interrogator any more of a leg up than he already had over him.

He had sat alone in this interrogation room for a very long time. He wasn't entirely sure how long, seeing as he didn't have a watch or his phone and there wasn't a clock anywhere in the room, but if he had to guess, he'd say it'd been about two hours. He knew this tactic. It was meant to make him anxious, more fearful of what was to come and more willing to share information to avoid whatever ill-conceived fears he may have come up within his solitude. It wasn't going to work on him, though—and it hadn't, he'd taken a short nap instead of worrying himself silly. But now, his interrogator had finally graced him with his presence. True to his word, Seonghwa sat across from him. His black clothes were a stark contrast to the white around them. He wasn't wearing his mask. An interesting choice, Wooyoung thought. Seonghwa had to be aware of what Wooyoung's specialty was. He had to know he was incredibly good at reading people and manipulating a conversation to go the way he wanted. Seeing Seonghwa's face put them on equal footing. He was unsure of how to take that. Was he so confident that Wooyoung would not be able to gain the upper hand in this conversation? Or was he just woefully inexperienced? After seeing the way he had taken out those two agents yesterday, he highly doubted it was the latter option. He decided to tread carefully whatever the reason because at least one thing was obvious: Seonghwa was trying to convey something to him by not wearing a mask; whether his intentions were nefarious or not, it didn't matter.

Since his face was on full display, Wooyoung had taken the opportunity to get a good look at the man for the first time up close. Unsurprisingly, he showed no emotion outwardly on his handsome face but Wooyoung did notice something amiss. On his left eye, poorly covered up by a layer of concealer, was a large bruise. The untrained eye wouldn't have noticed the makeup covering the man's face; fortunately for Wooyoung however, he had a trained eye. Taking a closer look, he also noticed a split on his lower lip.

"Have you been treated properly since I last saw you?" Seonghwa asked, breaking the silence that had plagued the room since Wooyoung had first been put there.

He couldn't resist the urge. Without thinking, he responded:

"Have you?"

An eyebrow rose slightly at the question and only for a second before Seonghwa schooled his reaction back into neutrality. Seonghwa was probably surprised Wooyoung had noticed the cover-up. A miscalculation on his part. Not a whole lot got past Wooyoung. When Seonghwa didn't say anything in response for a few beats, Wooyoung continued on.