​A Fall of Red Roses | The Garbage girl

- 7:00 PM -

The routine of the house took over with a clinical, detached efficiency. Silent servants dressed me in a pristine, doll-like uniform, completely covering the heavy bandages wrapping my torso and limbs. When a servant reached out to lift me from the chair, Sunha sharply intervened, shoving the worker aside to carry me himself. His grip was fierce, bruising, and intensely possessive-driven by a rigid, greedy ownership that refused to let anyone else touch his property. But my broken heart drank in the rough gesture as if it were pure, protective devotion.

He carried me down the grand stairwell and into the massive, high-ceilinged dining room.

In the center of the hall sat a grand dining table, its dark wood covered in intricate carvings of mythical predators. Sitting around the table were five men. None of them were Sunha's school peers; they carried themselves with the heavy, quiet authority of individuals seasoned in a dark, underground empire.

Strangely, Sunha's parents were nowhere to be seen.

Sunha placed me into a high-backed chair directly beside his own. The moment I was seated, his behavior toward me changed drastically into one of absolute, freezing indifference. He didn't look at me, nor did he offer a single word, sitting rigidly beside me like a stranger.

As I sat there, my mind continued to fray. The candlelight flickered violently, and in the reflections of the silver tableware, I didn't see my reflection-I saw Min-seo's face laughing at me, her mouth stretching unnaturally wide until it split into a dark void. I had to grip the edge of the table to keep from screaming, my chest tight as a quiet panic attack thrummed beneath my skin. Is his coldness because of what he discovered? Does he know I'm Min-ji? Or is he just hiding his new, precious prize from the world?

The servants began to lay out the feast, but my stomach twisted into a tight knot of nausea as the silver dome covers were lifted.

Resting on the pristine porcelain platters were elaborate, deeply disturbing delicacies-birds roasted whole with their wings pinned back in artificial, desperate flight, and delicate sugar sculptures shaped like weeping human faces that melted slowly, dripping like wax under the heat of the flickering black candles.

The scent of roasted meat mixed with the cloying, sweet smell of melting sugar and the faint, lingering metallic tang of my own blood. It didn't feel like a meal; it felt like an altar of quiet, localized threats.

Beside me, Sunha sat like a statue carved from winter ice. He just stared straight ahead into the empty air, his jaw locked so tightly the muscle beneath his pale skin twitched rhythmically.

The men at the table didn't look at Sunha. Their attention was entirely, ruthlessly fixed on me.

To my far left, a man with hollow, sunken cheeks and fingers permanently stained with dark, synthetic ink idly slid a heavy silver fork across the polished mahogany. The metal prongs whined against the wood before coming to a sudden halt, lightly tapping against the edge of my bandaged wrist. His eyes were wide, unblinking, and entirely dead, tracking the erratic rhythm of my pulse against the gauze. He didn't see a person; he looked at me with the clinical, detached curiosity of a butcher evaluating a rare, fragile specimen brought in from the gutters.

Next to him, two other figures sat in low, murmuring compliance. They spoke in hushed, heavy baritones about dark operations, shifting territories, and nameless clean-up missions, their voices completely devoid of human warmth. Every few seconds, their conversation would stall, and their glances would drift toward me like vultures circling a fresh wreck. They were mapping out my fractures, dissecting the bandages that covered my uniform, silently measuring exactly how much pressure it would take to make me shatter completely.

Sunha didn't even blink at the intrusion. He remained perfectly rigid, completely ignoring the way their eyes dragged across my skin.

Yet, beneath the tabletop, out of sight of the others, his hand remained tightly, brutally clamped over the wooden frame of my chair, his knuckles white from the pressure. He wouldn't speak for me, he wouldn't defend me from their lingering, predatory stares, but his possessive, iron grip made one thing abundantly clear-I was still his property to dominate. He was letting them look at his new toy, but he would never let them touch the reins.

The silence in the room grew so heavy it felt as though the oxygen was actively being drained from the corners.

Finally, the man sitting at the absolute head of the table leaned forward. His sharp, custom-tailored suit contrasted sharply with the jagged, faint scar that cut across his jawline. He idly swirled the dark, blood-red liquid in his crystal glass, the ice clinking like a countdown timer in the dead quiet. He looked past Sunha, his piercing, dominant gaze locking directly onto my trembling form, holding my purple eyes hostage with an intense, mocking weight that instantly silenced the entire room.

"So this is the piece you brought home from the school courtyard," the man hummed, his deep voice dripping with a cold, absolute authority that made the air feel instantly smaller. "A fragile thing. Tell me, Sunha... does your new doll know how easily porcelain shatters when the real game begins?"

The question hung in the air, thick and cloying, mixing with the scent of melted sugar and iron.

Sunha didn't answer immediately. He raised his wine glass, the dark liquid catching the candlelight, his expression remaining completely flat. The silence was agonizing, a heavy weight pressing down on my chest until my lungs burned.

The man with the scarred jaw-Seo, Sunha's eldest brother-snickered, a dry, grating sound that cut through the quiet. He leaned back, adjusting his heavy gold cufflinks with a slow, practiced indifference. His lips peeled back over his teeth in a cold, terrible smirk that didn't reach his eyes. "Silent, Sunha? Or are you just realizing that the neighborhood stray you picked up doesn't look quite right under proper lighting?"

A soft, collective murmur of amusement rippled down the left side of the table from the other brothers. The expressions surrounding me twisted into a synchronized, horrifying display; their mouths curved into wide, lifeless arcs of pure derision, stretching unnaturally as if they were wearing masks made of human skin. Their gazes crawled over me like cold, wet insects, completely devoid of any sibling warmth, completely sick with malice. It was a suffocating pressure, the horrific weight of their scrutiny peeling away whatever pretense of safety I had left.

"She really is a downgrade from the last one," the man with the ink-stained fingers chimed in, his mouth twisting into a jagged, cruel slit that oozed casual, devastating boredom. He didn't even look at me as he spoke, idly tracing the rim of his glass with a skeletal finger. "What was her name? Chaerin? At least that one had the decency to look expensive before you broke her. This one... look at those dull, vacant eyes. The bone structure is entirely uninspired. She looks like a shivering, washed-out rabbit you dragged out from a gutter after a rainstorm. Look at how that expensive uniform just hangs off her gaunt frame. It's almost pitiful. She doesn't belong at a table like this; she belongs in a charity ward."

A downgrade. An eyesore. A child's garbage.

The words slammed into my ears like physical blows, sparking a sharp, blinding static behind my eyes. My vision began to warp again. The intricate carvings of predators on the table seemed to stretch their jaws, their wooden teeth snapping silently at my hands.

In my reflection on the silver platter, my skin looked gray, decaying, pieces of my face peeling away like wet wallpaper to reveal a hollow skull underneath.

But they were wrong. They had to be wrong. They just didn't see what he saw. A sudden wave of protective certainty flooded my chest, drowning out the venomous words. They're just jealous because Sunha brought me here, into the inner circle. He didn't keep Chaerin in his private room. He didn't clean her himself. He hates them for talking about me like this. He's furious because I am his secret, precious thing.

Driven by a sudden, desperate urge to make them see the truth, I swallowed hard and leaned forward. My voice came out as a soft, trembling whisper, completely lacking any dignity or weight, trying to defend the boy who held me captive.

"S-Sunha... he didn't drag me..." I stammered, my fingers weakly gripping the edge of the mahogany table. I looked around at the men, trying to offer a small, placating smile that only made my pale face look more pathetic and desperate. "He cares for me. He washed the blood away... he took care of me because I'm... I'm different. I'm the only one who truly understands him. Please don't speak of him like that..."

The words were so soft, so painfully naive and out of place in this cold room, that a suffocating wave of secondhand embarrassment instantly flooded the space.

Along the perimeter of the dining hall, the silent maids instantly looked down at the floor. A few of them subtly shifted their weight, looking away in deep, collective discomfort, completely embarrassed on my behalf. They stepped further back into the shadows of the room, wishing they could disappear entirely rather than witness a broken girl humiliate herself so entirely in front of this family.

For a second, the table went dead silent. Then, a brutal explosion of mocking laughter erupted from the brothers, a chorus of jagged, twisted sounds that made my skin crawl.

"Oh, sweet Jesus," another heavy man at the end of the table roared, his mouth widening into a terrifying gash as he spit a bit of his drink onto his plate, his chest heaving with genuine, malicious amusement. Their faces clustered together in my vision, a ring of cruel, wide-open mouths that looked less like human expressions and more like predatory entry wounds, completely mocking my existence. "Listen to it! The little gutter bunny thinks she's a saint. She thinks she's his savior!"

"How utterly pathetic," Seo laughed, his voice full of sharp, unbridled mock as he shook his head, his cold eyes fixed on Sunha while his mouth pulled into an expression of deep, sickening derision-as if the boy had brought a mangled circus freak to a royal court. "Look at what you've brought to our table, Sunha. A shivering little peasant who doesn't even know she's a corpse walking. You really are a fool. Is this what the Baek legacy has devolved into? A boy who keeps a broken, brainless pet because he's too weak to handle a real asset?"

The laughter grew louder, more piercing, a deafening chorus of cruelty that stripped away every ounce of my dignity, leaving me exposed as a complete, embarrassing joke to everyone in the room. They weren't an organized front; they were a pack of vicious predators, entirely incapable of getting along, each trying to sound more powerful, sick, and ruthless than the next.

"Please, he can't even handle basic personal things without making a public spectacle in a school courtyard," the heavy brother scoffed, leaning forward to sneer across the table at Seo, his lips curling back in a grotesque display of dominance. "If Father had left the eastern shipments to me instead of your incompetent tech crew, Seo, the people in the capital wouldn't be questioning our leverage. And we certainly wouldn't be sitting here bickering over Sunha's pathetic little charity cases."

"Watch your mouth," Seo snapped, his calculated calm finally cracking as he glared across the table, his smile turning into a razor-sharp grimace. "My accounts handle double the volume your pathetic transit lines move. If anyone is a liability to our father's name, it's you."

Yet, even as they snarled over shipping lanes and asset management, they effortlessly weaponized their insults right back toward us, their cruel mouths working in rapid, venomous tandem to outdo each other in mocking Sunha's complete lack of competence. To them, Sunha was just a mere puppy, lower than them in the food chain, the most stupid little boy throwing a tantrum with a stolen doll because he couldn't handle real responsibilities.

*Thud*

The sound of Sunha's palms slamming against the mahogany table was loud enough to crack the wood.

The sudden, violent movement cut the air like a knife. Sunha stood up, his tall frame towering over the table, his chair scraping backward against the marble with a harsh, screeching wail. The lazy, indifferent facade was completely gone, shattered by a blinding, humiliating rage. His face was twisted into a dark, volatile snarl, his chest heaving as the mockery of the older men pushed him completely over the edge.

"SHUT UP! ALL OF YOU, SHUT THE HELL UP!" Sunha roared, his voice exploding through the high-ceilinged room with a dangerous, snapping anger that rattled the crystal chandelier and made the silver plates vibrate.

He wasn't defending me; he was furious that he was being laughed at, furious that his property had made him look like a total laughingstock in front of his superior brothers.

He kicked his own chair back, sending it crashing violently against the stone floor, completely shattering the silent order of the room into absolute, terrifying chaos.

The reactions around the table were instantaneous, and utterly cruel.

Seo didn't flinch. He didn't even stop swirling his drink. A small, cold smile tugged at the corner of his scarred mouth, his eyes dancing with a calculated, sick satisfaction. He had wanted the reaction. He had poked the beast just to see if it still had teeth, viewing Sunha's explosive, shouting rage as nothing more than a predictable, childish temper tantrum. The heavy brother simply continued to laugh out loud, a boisterous, mocking sound, while the ink-stained man just sighed, leaning back and looking thoroughly bored by the drama, as if watching a petulant toddler stamp his feet.

Suddenly, the heavy double doors of the dining hall slid open with a synchronized, agonizing creak.

A lone maid stepped into the room. She wasn't dressed like the others; her uniform was stark, entirely black, devoid of any lace or pretense, and her face was a mask of absolute, unmoving porcelain. She didn't look at the shattered glass, nor did she acknowledge the volatile rage radiating from Sunha. She simply stopped at the edge of the carpet, her voice cutting through the chaotic shouting with a freezing, professional authority.

"The Madame is awake," she said softly, yet the words carried an eerie, unnatural weight that instantly sucked the air out of the room.

"The Madame is highly displeased by the noise coming from downstairs. She requires absolute peace for her rest.

The silence that followed was instantaneous. It was absolute.

The shouting stopped. The laughter died. Seo froze mid-sentence, his jaw tightening into a rigid line. Even Sunha, whose chest was still heaving with murderous intent, instantly lowered his gaze, his fists clenching so tightly at his sides that I could hear his knuckles pop in the dead quiet. The mere mention of the lady of the house-their mother, the mysterious Madame who pulled the strings from the shadows-was enough to instantly paralyze every single brother in the room with an unspoken, deep-seated terror.

I sat frozen, a strange, toxic knot of jealousy twisting tightly in my gut alongside the fear. Why did he stop? A sick resentment flared against the invisible matriarch upstairs. He's supposed to only listen to me. I'm his doll. I'm the one he's breaking his world for. Why does he bow his head for her? The realization that I wasn't his only master clawed at me, but the heavy, mysterious dread radiating from the ceiling made it clear-the power dynamic in this house was something I couldn't comprehend, and it threatened to crush me before I could even figure it out.

The maid gave a stiff, clinical bow and receded back into the shadows. The brothers remained silent, refusing to look at one another, the bitter rivalry buried beneath a heavy layer of submission.

Without a single word, Sunha reached down. His hand didn't slide gently over my arm; his fingers clamped around my upper wrist like an iron band, squeezing until the bones shifted painfully beneath my skin. With a brutal, unyielding yank, he dragged me out of the high-backed chair.

"Ah-!" A ragged wince escaped my lips as my feet hit the floor. The violent movement sent a white-hot spike of agony straight up my injured leg, my buckled knees immediately giving out. I stumbled forward, my body crashing heavily against the edge of the mahogany table, knocking over a silver gravy boat that spilled dark fluid across the white linen like a fresh wound.

From around the table, a collective, mocking titter rose up to encircle me. The brothers half-covered their mouths with pale, twitching fingers, their eyes wide and glittering with an intensely cruel amusement as they watched me struggle to stand. Their expressions warped into a horrific ring of silent, bared teeth, circulating their heavy, predatory gazes over my pathetic, clumsy display. I could feel those eyes boring into the back of my neck, tracing the outline of my bandages, stripping away the last shreds of my dignity until I felt entirely naked and exposed. I was a total embarrassment, a broken, limping joke under their intense, sadistic scrutiny.

Sunha's jaw twitched. Realizing I couldn't walk, and entirely humiliated by the lingering, mocking stares of his brothers, his face twisted into a dark, volatile scowl. Before I could even gasp for air, he scooped me up into his arms.

The contact was violent. He shoved his forearm under my knees and hauled my upper body against his chest with a terrifying, rough intensity. There was no tenderness in the gesture, no comfort. His chest was as rigid as a stone wall, his breathing a rapid, burning hiss against my temple. His fingers dug deeply into the soft flesh of my thigh and back, bruising me through the pristine uniform fabric, his grip driven by a dark, possessive anger that threatened to snap my spine just from the sheer tension of his hold. He was carrying me like a shameful piece of baggage he needed to hide away from the world.

He marched out of the dining room, his heavy boots thudding against the cold marble floor with a rhythmic, funeral cadence.

As he carried me away from the council, the sheer scale of the estate began to unfold before my eyes, heavy and suffocating. He carried me down endless, vaulted corridors where the air grew progressively darker and thicker, passing rows of heavy, dark wooden doors that remained locked and silent like tombs. I looked at the walls, my purple eyes wide as I searched for any sign of a normal home, but the house was completely devoid of family history. There were no pictures of Sunha as a boy, no portraits of his mother or his father. Instead, the ornate gold frames held strange, unrecognizable faces-cold, severe men in antique clothing, or portraits of the servants themselves, captured in stiff, clinical poses that felt deeply unnatural. Every room door we passed looked identical, monolithic, and dead, like cells in a luxurious prison.

The deeper we went, the colder the house felt. The stone walls seemed to radiate a freezing, artificial winter, entirely cut off from the beautiful warmth of the Sunday outside. I pressed myself closer to his chest, but there was no warmth to be found there either-only the rigid, vibrating anger of a boy who had been made to look small.

Then, Sunha pushed open a massive, iron-wrought glass door at the end of the wing, and the world suddenly inverted.

We stepped out into the grand garden. The contrast was staggering, a violent assault on my senses. It was a beautiful, warm Sunday afternoon outside, and the garden looked entirely angelic-an Eden hidden away inside a fortress of malice. Towering white marble arches were draped in vibrant, blooming wisteria that spilled down like violet waterfalls, and hedges of pristine white roses lined the winding stone pathways. The air out here was thick with the sweet, intoxicating scent of honey and fresh earth, the golden sunlight washing over my pale, bruised skin with a warmth I hadn't felt in days.

It was a paradise. A flawless, beautiful sanctuary. Yet, as Sunha gripped my waist tightly, his dark, furious shadow completely blocking out the sun and painting the white roses black, the angelic beauty of the garden only made the heavy darkness bleeding through my mind feel infinitely more terrifying.

The transition from the freezing, sterile mansion to the blinding heat of the sunlit garden did nothing to thaw the air between us. If anything, the golden afternoon light only made Sunha's shadow stretch longer, darker, and more suffocating across the white stone pathway as the sky slowly began its long, agonizing bleed into a bruised orange.

He didn't carry me out here to enjoy the paradise. He moved with a clinical, aggressive stride, his heavy boots crunching ruthlessly over fallen wisteria blossoms until he reached a secluded, high-backed stone bench nestled deep within the suffocating maze of white roses.

Without a single word of warning, Sunha loosened his grip and shoved me down.

"Ah-!" My battered body collided heavily with the freezing, unyielding stone. The violent impact sent a sickening shockwave straight up my spine, directly striking the surgical site at the base of my skull where the tracker lay embedded. My vision flashed a brilliant, blinding white. The fragile, newly formed clots in my thigh and core ruptured instantly under the force of the drop, and I could feel the warm, wet sensation of fresh blood beginning to soak into the heavy gauze beneath my uniform. I curled inward, trembling violently, my fingers clawing at the cold stone edge just to keep from sliding onto the dirt.

Sunha didn't offer a hand. He didn't even look down to witness the damage he had caused.

Instead, he stepped back, his tall frame blocking out the sun as he stood beside the bench like a rigid, monolithic statue. His chest heaved with a quiet, vibrating fury-the lingering toxic residue of his brothers' humiliating mockery still coursing violently through his veins. He was a boy pushed completely to his psychological limit, a predator whose pride had been utterly mangled in front of his pack, and the sheer, volatile tension radiating from his body made the surrounding air feel thick and combustible.

With fluid, practiced movements that contrasted sharply with the chaotic rage in his eyes, he pulled a sleek silver case from his pocket. A sharp flick of his lighter cut through the quiet of the garden, and a moment later, a thick, acrid cloud of gray smoke billowed from his lips.

The wind carried the heavy, chemical smoke directly into my face.

"*Cough*-! Kha-" I choked, my chest seizing violently. Each ragged cough tore at the raw, strained muscles of my abdomen, sending spikes of agony through my torso. I tried to turn my head away to find clean oxygen, but the heavy, intoxicating scent of the wisteria mixed with the burning tobacco, creating a suffocating trap.

Sunha didn't move the cigarette. He didn't care. He simply stood there, watching the smoke drift across my pale, sweating face with a pair of dead, unblinking eyes. He tapped the ash onto the pristine white petals of a nearby rose bush, his jaw locking so tightly that the bone looked as though it might burst through his skin.

He stared at me for a long, agonizing minute, the silence stretching until it felt like a wire wrapping around my throat. When he finally spoke, his voice was deceptively low, cutting through the rustle of the leaves like a cold blade.

"You've been remarkably quiet lately," he murmured, his eyes tracking the way my hands clenched against my knees. "At school. In the hallways. It's almost like you're trying to disappear into the background."

"I... I just don't want to cause trouble for you, Sunha," I whispered, my voice trembling as I looked up at him through the hazy gray cloud.

He took another slow, deliberate drag of his cigarette, his gaze locking directly onto mine with an unreadable, intense focus. "Is that what it is? Because I remember a time when you couldn't stop talking about your classes. Tell me about your desk. Who sits next to you this term?"

My mind spun, trying to grasp at the details through a thick fog of pain. "My desk...? It's... it's just the same as always. By the window. There's no one next to me."

"No one?" Sunha tilted his head, his eyes narrowing slightly as he exhaled a stream of smoke that obscured his features. His expression was a terrifying, rigid mask, his brothers' insults clearly eating away at his remaining restraint. "That's strange. I could have sworn there was a girl who used to sit to your right. A loud girl. What was her name again?"

"I... I don't remember," I stammered, a sudden spike of panic thrumming beneath my ribs. Why was he asking this? Why did his eyes look so cold, so entirely sick and twisted as he stared down at me? "There's no one there now. I only look at the board. I only wait for the bell so I can see you."

Sunha didn't answer right away. He stepped closer, the heavy leather of his boot pressing against the hem of my dress, pinning it to the dirt. The intensity in his posture was growing, a slow, suffocating pressure that made the angelic garden feel like an execution chamber.

"And your notebooks," he continued, his voice dropping an octave, becoming dangerously demanding. "Where are they? The ones with the blue covers you used to carry everywhere. I didn't see them in your bag when I brought you here."

"I lost them," I cried softly, my purple eyes filling with desperate tears as I tried to find a sliver of the devotion I thought he held for me. "I must have dropped them in the courtyard... when you took me. Sunha, please, my head hurts so much..."

"You lost them," he repeated, his tone turning into a harsh, mocking mimicry. A volatile, manic grin flashed across his face, entirely unhinged. He was flexing his fingers, his knuckles popping in the quiet air. "You lost the notebooks you claimed held your entire life? How careless. Or maybe you just forgot what was inside them?"

"No! I didn't forget!" I pulled my knees to my chest, hyperventilating as his shadows completely swallowed me whole. The conversation was moving like a trap, every word he uttered twisting into a dark, questionable riddle that I couldn't solve. He was hovering over me, intimidating me with a glare so full of burning, misplaced hatred that my mental stability began to fracture completely.

The sky above us was changing now, the brilliant gold completely dissolving into a deep, bloody orange that cast long, monstrous shadows across the white marble arches. The longer the interrogation continued, the more intense and suffocating his presence became.

He was pacing back and forth in front of the bench like a caged beast, his breathing a rapid, burning hiss, completely unable to control the humiliation and rage his family had inflicted on him.

"What about your family?" Sunha suddenly snapped, stopping dead in his tracks. He leaned down, his face inches from mine, his eyes wide and bloodshot. "Your brother. You haven't mentioned him once since you woke up in my room. Not a single tear for him. Why is that?"

"My... my brother?" I whispered, my heart freezing solid. The tangled, thorny web of memories in my brain screeched in protest. Luciano. The name flickered in my mind, but the pain was too loud, too devastating. "He... he doesn't matter. Only you matter, Sunha. I don't care about anyone else. Please, believe me..."

"You're lying to me," he snarled, his voice finally exploding into a dark, violent roar that shattered the quiet of the afternoon.

The physical reality of my torture finally caught up to me all at once. I hadn't eaten a single bite of food ever since the terrifying moment he had dragged me from the school courtyard. Days of complete starvation, combined with the continuous, catastrophic blood loss from my injuries, had left my body completely hollowed out.

The angelic garden violently decomposed before my eyes. The vibrant wisteria above turned into long, hanging masses of rotting flesh, dripping black fluid onto the stones. My vision blurred into a chaotic, splitting smear of orange and black. A sudden, intense pressure built up behind my eyes, and a second later, a thick, hot stream of dark blood began to leak rapidly from my nose, running down my lip and staining the pristine white collar of my uniform.

"You think you can sit there and play these pathetic games with me?!" Sunha shrieked, completely blinded by his own toxic mixture of embarrassment and mania. He needed to break me just to prove he still had power.

Before I could even gasp for air, his hand shot out with terrifying speed. He didn't grab my arm; his large, heavy hand clamped violently into the hair at the side of my head, twisting his fingers into the strands with a brutal, white-knuckle grip.

"Stop, please! It hurts!" I cried out, the sound sharp and broken.

He yanked upward. My head snapped back, forcing my gaze into his bloodshot eyes. His fingers didn't just twist into my hair-his nails dug ruthlessly into the side of my face, catching the delicate cartilage of my left ear.

There was a sharp, wet rip, followed instantly by the hot, heavy rush of fresh blood overflowing from my earlobe and spilling down my neck, mixing with the dark stream pouring from my nose to stain the white uniform fabric.

"They laughed at me downstairs!" Sunha shouted into my face, his jaw twisting into a sickening, twisted grimace as he shook my head by the roots. "They called you a piece of garbage! A downgrade! And you sit here stuttering, giving me these vacant, uninspired answers! Look at me! Look at what you're doing to me!"

The world was spinning, an agonizing kaleidoscope of pain, starvation, and hallucinations.

But as I lay there, my head yanked back, my nose and ear pouring blood onto his hands, my eyes involuntarily drifted past his rigid, shaking shoulder.

My breath hitched, freezing solid in my throat.

High above us, on the third floor of that nightmare mansion, one of the massive, dark arched windows stood slightly open. The heavy velvet curtains were parted by a mere fraction of an inch.

And there, buried deep within the absolute pitch-black void of the room, stood a shape.

It wasn't his brothers. It wasn't the clinical, porcelain-faced maids. It was a completely different presence-a heavy, ancient, and utterly malevolent shadow that remained perfectly still, looking down into the garden.

The stare felt like a physical weight dropping from the sky, pressing down on my chest with a freezing, calculated interest. It was an observing, silent shadow that watched Sunha's violent outburst and my pathetic, bloody writhing with a terrifying, unmoving focus that was entirely different from anyone else in the house.

The overwhelming dread of that mansion, combined with the scent of blood, tobacco, and rotting flowers, completely broke what little remained of my sanity, and the bloody orange world finally dissolved into an absolute, pitch-black void.