#m. reply

tw: torture, blackmail

“Not until you do as I’ve asked you to,” Jongsuk replies easily, tilting his head as he observes the hacker, observes the way that the blood as left the other man’s face, how his breaths are faster as panic pushes his pulse rabbit quick. Just a little more pressure and the Columba hacker would surely give in. 

Jongsuk presses the muzzle of the gun in his hand to the temple of the boy bound to the chair between them. He’s no one-- a random civilian picked off the streets to use as leverage to make the Columba hacker cooperate. So far, he’s doing an excellent job of motivating the other man. The civilian sits blooded between them, eye already swollen in its socket from being pistol whipped as a result of the hacker’s obstinance. 

“Now,” Jongsuk continues conversationally, the mask he wears still hiding most of his features from view, “I want everything that Columba has on our dear congressman. We can’t have any scandals hitting the media right before an election-- you understand.” His smile is hidden, but evident in his tone all the same. 

When the hacker still hesitates, Jongsuk clicks the safety off of the gun in his hand. The sound is deafening in the otherwise quiet room. 

↪ Honesty Hour | Closed

“My what?” Jongsuk answers with a frown, gaze reluctantly dragging from the man he’s watching through the cafe window only to find a young girl standing across from him and staring, awaiting her answer. The girl couldn’t have been older than nine. Instinctively, Jongsuk’s gaze sweeps the cafe around them in search of her parents. Surely the child belongs to someone, right?

“Your hogwarts house,” she repeats, voice tinged with what Jongsuk believes might actually be annoyance that he hadn’t been listening to her in the first place, “What is it?” 

The girl folds her arms and puffs up her chest in something that might be pride. “I’m a Gryffindor,” she adds, as if that will somehow help nudge a proper answer from Jongsuk. 

“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I’m a bit busy right now.” Jongsuk finally answers, eyes returning to the man he’s watching outside only to discover that the man’s no longer anywhere in sight. With a swear, Jongsuk surges to his feet and sidesteps the child in his haste to leave the coffee shop, leaving his untouched cup of coffee on the table and the little girl staring after him in disgust. 

Before he reaches the door, he hears the little girl scoff at his back, “Definitely a Slytherin.” 

Jongsuk doesn’t stop to acknowledge her distaste, too busy chasing after the arms dealer that’s just given him the slip– but if he had, he might’ve actually felt compelled to correct her.

tw: kidnapping, mention of torture

“Is that what you want to hear?” 

Jongsuk’s grin causes the split in his lip to tear anew. He can taste the fresh blood on the tip of his tongue as it stains his teeth. He looks absolutely feral where he sits bound to the chair, his dark eyes tracking Shadow’s every move as the other man paces restlessly before him. 

“You want me to apologize for what I did to your little boyfriend?” he continues, cocking his head to the side as he leans forward as far as his bindings will allow. The rope binding his wrists digs into already raw flesh where Jongsuk has been subtly testing his bindings since he came to a while ago. It’s impossible to tell exactly how long it’s been since he woke, but he’d hazard a guess that it’s been a couple of hours, easy. 

He doesn’t miss the way that his captor’s eyes narrow at the taunt, and it draws a low laugh from Jongsuk. 

He settles back against the chair, making a show of making himself comfortable where he sits, as if it were a throne and not an old, rickety chair. 

tw: torture, blood

“Of course we were,” Jongsuk agrees easily, his sharp smile hidden behind the black face mask he wears. He approaches the bound girl slowly, steps almost leisurely as he considers his trapped prey. The woman’s wrists are bound and held above her head by the meat hook that she dangles from. The hook hangs just high enough that it forces her to strain on tiptoe to keep her footing– but after hours of being left to dangle, her strength has left her and she now hangs limp from her bindings. 

He fists a hand in Lyra’s hair and tugs, lifting her head so that they’re eye to eye. 

“Convenient that you’ve lost your memory, isn’t it?” he muses, tapping his cheek with the blade of the knife held in his hand. The sharpened edge catches the dim lighting coming from the single filthy bulb that hangs in the room. “Convenient for you, at least. Not so convenient for Hydrus.” 

He releases his grip on her hair with a little shove. The force of it is enough to make her body sway from where she dangles. The tips of her bare toes leave little tracks in the heavy dust that coats the floor. 

“Or maybe it isn’t so fortunate for you after all,” he continues, lifting the blade in his hand to ghost the tip over the woman’s pale cheek. “Because now I get to help jog that memory of yours so we can find out what you’ve been up to since you pulled your little disappearing act.” 

He increases the pressure on the blade, just enough to draw the first prick of blood from Lyra’s neck. 

tw: blood

“Well,” Jongsuk begins with a strained laugh, the sound jagged like broken glass. The hand that he keeps pressed to his stomach is doing a shit job of slowing the rate that blood is spreading and staining his shirt but he still tries to apply pressure to the gunshot wound. Judging by the way that his vision is already beginning to get a little fuzzy, it’s safe to assume that he’s not doing a very good job of it. “What can I say? I like to look for a little humor in a situation.” 

It’s an out and out lie, of course. Jongsuk’s sense of humor is too dry for his own good most days, but the irony that a Corvus medic is trying to tend to his wounds as he bleeds out in the street is just too much for even Jongsuk to overlook. 

He shifts with the woman’s help until his back rests against the wall of the nearest building. The brick behind him is really all that keeps him upright as Jongsuk lets his head fall back, his eyes close as he feels unfamiliar hands lift his shirt and begin assessing the severity of his wound. 

↪ Honesty Hour | Closed

“Well that’s rather forward of you, isn’t it?” Jongsuk chuckles, swirling the scotch in his glass before taking a measured sip. He takes his time, letting the alcohol linger on his tongue before swallowing, enjoying the burn as it goes down. He eyes his companion over the rim of his glass. 

The woman is likely in her early thirties judging by the ever so faint lines at the corner of her eyes, her lips. The tight-fitting dress that she wears is meant to show off its designer label just as much as her shape. Rather than well-fitted, the dress is worn so tight that its borderline obscene and leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination-- which Jongsuk figures is quite the point. He makes little attempt to disguise his distaste when the woman folds her arms in an attempt to draw even more attention to her breasts, as if the push up bra and deep neckline of her dress weren’t already doing enough. 

tw: torture, blood

“You fucker,” she hissed at him, throwing him a baleful look over her shoulder as she continued to try and limp away from him, leaving a trail of blood behind her.

It had been fun for awhile, watching her run blindly through the maze of a warehouse, hearing her curse as she reached yet another dead end only to backtrack all over again.  That is, until she’d found a long abandoned wrench and attempted to surprise him with it.

He’d dealt with her easily enough, shooting out her knee as she took her last ditch swing at him.  

She wouldn’t die from her wound, not that she knew any better as her pained cries echoed all around them.

“You get off on this,”  she accused, defiance clear in her eyes as she turned around to face him, finally reaching the end of the stack.

He simply smirked at her outrage, sidestepping a puddle of her blood as he stood a few feet away from her.

"You sick fuck, you like leaving a mess behind don't you," she stumbled back a step as she continued to hurl her accusations, back literally pressed to the wall behind her.

Still Jongsuk said nothing, appraising her quietly as she slid down to the floor, clutching her bloodied knee.

“Are you gonna give me a cheshire smile too, Hoon?,” she taunted, playing her last card as she stared up at him.

But all it took was one glance up at him before that fearless smiles of hers faltered, catching sight of Jongsuk’s expression -- all emotion ebbing away from his features until all that was left was the cold, piercing gaze that rooted her to the floor.

↪ Honesty Hour | Closed

Independence. Jongsuk longs for complete autonomy, the right to have the ultimate authority over his life. Though Hydrus has given him a sense of freedom that he never had growing up, at the end of the day he still ranks too low on the food chain for him to have any true sense of independence. He still reports to someone who then reports to the second in command, who then reports to the boss. 

The only place that he truly feels in control is The Elysian. The hotel gives him a sense of security and authority. In particular, the nightclub Luxe located within the hotel is his favorite place to be. When he first purchased the hotel in Yeongi, there was a stuffy old spa located in the place Luxe now occupies. It was miserably outdated and in need of repairs, and rather than sink money into reviving the old spa, he decided the space was better served in other ways. He built Luxe from the ground up and now it’s one of the islands most popular nightclubs. It’s a feat that Jongsuk takes great pride in.