Midnight

❀◗ 　◇Chapter 3 -: ✧ :-゜・．

.・゜-: ✧ :-　　{ ​12:47 AM }

​Midnight had stretched out until the streets felt entirely empty and hollow. I walked with a slow, dragging stride down the middle of the cracked asphalt.

​The neighborhood was dead. The streetlamps were spaced too far apart, casting long, skeletal shadows that swallowed me whole the moment I stepped into the dark gaps between them. A bitter, damp wind sliced straight through my clothes. I pulled the oversized hoodie tighter around myself. I’d stolen it a few hours ago from a dingy convenience store on the edge of the neighborhood, acting on pure survival instinct just to stop the shivering. The cashier had been asleep behind the counter, making it easy to slip the dark fabric off the rack and walk out into the freeze. It hung heavily off my shoulders, but it was the only shield I had.

​Every step was pure, throbbing agony.

​My body was still raw, covered in deep contusions from the fall. My bones ached with a deep, sickening sharpness—the kind of pain that made me want to scream, or just claw at my own skin until the nerves went numb.

​Yet, my mind wouldn't shut down. It kept spinning over the same desperate questions.

​Why does nobody see me? Why does nobody notice the real Min-ji?

​I pulled the hood lower, staring hard at the scuffed toes of my shoes. I had looked directly into the expressionless eyes of the school nurse. I had looked into the eyes of the students who stood in that mocking circle in the courtyard, watching me bleed into the dirt after Sunha threw me from the second-story window.

​Even the mirror offered no help. Staring back at me from the glass had been those striking, deep purple eyes. The long, flawless black hair. The elegant jawline that belonged exclusively to my deceased sister, Min-seo.

​Beneath that face, I was screaming. My soul was clawing at the inside of those purple eyes, begging for someone—anyone—to look past Min-seo’s reflection and see the victim shivering in the dark.

​I am Min-ji. Why was I trapped in this skin? Why was I the one taking the blame for her reputation, her cruelty, and the absolute chaos she left behind? It made no sense.

​And yet, my thoughts kept violently snapping back to Sunha. My heart hammered against my ribs at the mere memory of his name, a strange, toxic warmth blooming in my chest despite the chill.

​Sunha is different.

​It was a delusional, desperate thought, but I clung to it like a drowning person grabbing a razor blade. He had beaten me. He had broken my bones. He had stood by while I was choked. But when he looked at me, his eyes weren't empty like the others.

​He cares, I whispered to myself, my lips trembling. He wouldn't hurt me this badly if I didn't matter to him. The slaps, the window... it’s just how he holds onto things. He knows I’m the one.

​I was so lost in the spiral that I lost track of the street. I didn't hear the scuff of shoes on the pavement behind me. I didn't notice the nearest streetlamp flicker out.

​The realization of danger came a fraction of a second too late.

*​CRACK*

​A blinding explosion of white pain erupted at the base of my skull. A wooden baseball bat connected brutally with the back of my head. I didn't even have time to scream. The world tilted violently into a smear of black. My knees buckled, sending my cheek scraping hard against the rough asphalt. The metallic taste of blood flooded my mouth, and then the dark rushed in, heavy and total.

​Waking up was a physical shock.

​My eyes snapped open to an oppressive, blinding glare from above. A ragged breath tore through my throat, burning a raw, scratching path down my windpipe. I tried to lift my hands to shield my eyes, but my limbs wouldn't move.

​A heavy, binding weight pulled hard against my wrists and shoulders. As the spots cleared from my vision, the horror of the room took shape.

​I wasn't on the street anymore.

​I was suspended upright, pinned tightly to a massive wooden post that ran from the floor up into the darkness of a vaulted ceiling. My arms were stretched wide, my wrists bound securely to a crossbeam with coarse hemp rope that bit deep enough to turn my hands a bruised, sickly purple. My feet were tied together at the base.

​I hung there like a display piece.

​The room was massive, built on the terrifying, grand scale of an old cathedral. The air was thick, carrying a suffocating smell of copper and stale sweat. As I forced my head to turn, my eyes widened at the stone walls.

​They were covered in photographs. Hundreds of them.

​I felt a sickening lurch in my stomach as I recognized my own face. The camera had captured me in my worst, most degraded moments—bruised, crying, taken through hidden lenses in the school hallways and the infirmary. Directly opposite me, a massive television screen flickered to life with a sharp static hum, displaying a stark image of me trembling while a grotesque pig mask was forced over my head.

​"No..." I croaked, my voice a pathetic whisper.

"Please..."

​A synchronized movement from the shadows answered me.

​From the spaces between the stone pillars, figures stepped forward, forming a wide, silent circle around the post. There were dozens of them, all clad in heavy, midnight-black robes that dragged along the floor. But it was their faces that made my breath catch.

​They were all wearing distorted, nightmarish masks.

​Directly in front of me stood someone in a pale human mask, its mouth stretched open into a permanent, silent scream. To my left loomed a massive, matte-black crow mask, complete with jagged demon horns curling from the temples and trails of artificial blood painted down the feathers. Another wore a fleshy pig mask covered in slimy, iridescent fish scales that caught the harsh light. Next to it was an oversized baby mask with a detached jaw, revealing rows of rusted iron teeth.

​The floor beneath them was a dark, reflective pool of blood, mirroring the harsh spotlights above. I was completely trapped. A rabbit surrounded by predators.

​“Hahaha... Hahahahaha!”

​The manic, booming laughter shattered the silence, echoing off the stone pillars and vibrating straight through the wood against my back.

​My head snapped up. Enclosing the room at the second-story level was a grand, circular balcony. Leaning over the iron railing with a lazy, dominant posture was Baek Sunha.

​He had discarded his school uniform jacket. His white shirt was unbuttoned at the collar, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. In his right hand, he casually swirled a crystal glass filled with dark red wine. On his face was that familiar, crooked, sadistic grin.

​"Look at you," Sunha called down, his voice dripping with an agonizingly playful cruelty. "You look perfect up there, Min-seo. A pathetic little martyr."

​"Sunha..." I cried out, my voice cracking as I strained against the ropes. My fractured mind didn't see the monster who had ordered my kidnapping; it saw the only anchor I had left in the world. "Sunha, please! Help me! What is this?"

​Sunha didn't answer. Instead, his grin sharpened. He threw his head back and laughed again, a sound so loud and unhinged it filled the vast room. He stepped away from the railing, throwing his arms out to embrace the grotesque display below.

​"Why would I help you? You’re so much more beautiful when you’re broken," he shouted down, his dark eyes locking onto me with terrifying intensity. "Look around. You think death is an escape from me? I’ll break you and put you back together as many times as I want. Worshipping me is the only thing keeping you alive."

​The sheer weight of his absolute certainty was terrifying. But to my warped, starving psyche, it felt like validation. He wasn't ignoring me. He was claiming me.

​He loves me, my mind screamed through the horror. He thinks I'm his.

​Suddenly, Sunha’s expression shifted from manic grandeur to sharp, volatile fury. With a violent snap of his wrist, he hurled the crystal glass straight at my head.

​"Pay attention to me!" he roared.

​I flinched, closing my eyes and bracing for the impact.

*​SMASH*

​The glass missed my skull, shattering brutally against the wooden post just inches from my ear. Shards of glittering crystal rained down onto my shoulders and into the pool of blood below.

​Sunha didn't care that he missed. The violence seemed to fuel him. He began to pace and move along the balcony, his body swaying to some erratic, broken rhythm in his head, completely lost in his own sick amusement as he watched me tremble.

​Below, the figures in the black robes began to move.

​They raised their long sleeves, swaying in unison as a low, discordant chant rose from the circle. Their voices blended into a deep, guttural hum that sounded entirely devoid of human warmth.

​"In the garden of the blind, the rabbit learns to bleed..." they droned through the masks. "The master carves the skin, the creature begs to feed..."

​The melody grated against my mind, sending a violent shiver down my spine. It was a funeral dirge for my sanity. But high above, Sunha was completely enthralled. He moved along the railing, looking down at me through the gaps in his fingers, his eyes locked onto my shivering form.

​I hung from the post, my body broken, my mind entirely shattered, suspended above a lake of blood while a god danced on the balcony above. And as the horrifying music grew louder, filling my ears until I couldn't breathe, a terrifying, absolute certainty washed over me.

​I was completely, utterly in love with the monster who had built this hell just for me.

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