Chapter Text
The back hall of the arcade was quiet. The buzzing of the lights from the bowling alley didn’t reach this far, but the sounds of bowling balls hitting pins and falling to the ground could still be heard.
Seongje stood with his phone to his ear, his voice low. While no one was really near him, he still didn’t want others to overhear what he was about to say.
“I’ve been thinking about it for a while,” he muttered to the person on the other side of the line.
“Yeah. I’m serious.”
A pause as he listened. Meanwhile, the laughter of some of the Union’s lackeys reached him.
“No, I’m not scared of him. I just... I’m tired of doing someone else’s dirty work. I want to be away from the Union for a while.”
Another pause as he heard someone shout. Definitely in pain. Probably being beaten.
He leaned further back in his chair, pushing his glasses briefly aside so he could rub his eyes.
“I don’t owe Baekjin anything. Not anymore.”
The sound of footsteps startled him as he quickly hung up. Freezing completely as he noticed that they were coming towards him, his hand holding his phone falling limply on his leg. He doesn’t say a word. Doesn’t even turn around to face the person coming towards him. He knows those footsteps. Knows them all too well. He can only hope that he hadn’t heard anything Seongje had said.
The footsteps stopped, and a hand grabbed his right shoulder firmly.
Seongje had to stop himself from lashing out directly. Nothing good would come out of it. Even though he would rather have that grueling grip that hand has on him gone.
Baekjin's voice was calm as he spoke. Controlled like always.
“What was that?”
For a second, just a second, he thought about lying. But he quickly decided against it. Baekjin had definitely heard what he had said.
“Nothing important,” he said, but his tone must have betrayed him because the grip on his shoulder tightened impossibly more. It made him want to move away from that hand. But he knows if he does so that the rest that will surely come after would just be more painful.
The hand released him after some more time, but not before giving one final hard squeeze.
Baekjin moved from behind him, placing himself instead in Seongje’s field of view. The smile adorning his face was cold. One promising nothing good.
“You’re not scared of me?”
Seongje’s jaw locked itself tight. “You shouldn’t be here.”
Baekjin was supposed to be away for a while. Why did he just have to return right at this moment?
“I own the building,” Baekjin said calmly. “I go where I want.”
There was a long pause before Baekjin said anything again. But the scrutiny in his eyes made sure that Seongje didn’t say anything.
“Come on, say it again." Baekjin urges him on. “Say why you want to leave the Union.”
Seongje didn’t answer, didn’t dare to. Anything he would say would just end up with Baekjin getting even angrier.
Baekjin stepped forward. And if it hadn’t been for the chair Seongje was sitting in, he would definitely have had to hold himself back from walking backwards away from the man.
One hand came up, and Seongje expected to be hit. Baekjin, if he hits someone, hits hard. But he knows better than to try and block those blows. Better to take them to the face than to block and receive even more.
But the hand never hit him, instead, it reached forward slowly, cupping Seongje’s cheek. It was slow, almost gentle.
It made Seongje confused. Confused and angry.
“You think you can just walk out ? That you can just leave the Union?” Baekjin sounded almost disappointed beneath the anger that he surely felt.
Seongje glared at Baekjin as he looked right into his eyes.
“I’m not your fucking dog.”
Baekjin’s expression didn’t change as Seongje said it. Not even a tiny bit.
But the next moment, the hand that had touched his face slammed him right into the table in front of him.
Hard.
The air in Seongje’s lungs left him in a sharp grunt of pain.
“You don’t get to say that,” Baekjin hissed at him, his voice was still low, never raised even once. It sounded dangerous and made alarm bells ring in Seongje’s head. “You belong to me. Ever since you joined the Union. Which means you do owe me. Every breath you take under my roof is mine.”
Seongje was livid. Belong?! He doesn’t belong to anyone!
He tried to push back against the hand still holding his head, but that only resulted in his head getting bashed against the table even harder. His face grinding against the rough surface.
Since that didn’t work, he tried to push Baekjin away from him, even though it was difficult to do from his position. The moment he tried to shove him back, Baekjin caught his wrist and pinned it flat to the table next to his head.
“I gave you power. Gave you a deeper purpose. And you repay me with betrayal?”
“It’s not betrayal,” Seongje spat from where his head is still pinned down, his eyes glaring menacingly at Baekjin as best as he could. “It’s freedom.”
The hand holding his head snapped around his neck instead, not choking, not completely. But mostly to hold him even more in place.
“You lost the right to freedom the day you joined the Union,” Baekjin whispered lowly. Then, colder, he added: “You want to leave the Union?”
He stepped closer, his breath hot against Seongje’s ear. “Fine. But you leave it bruised. You leave it bleeding.”
He slammed Seongje’s head once...twice more against the table with enough might to make him dizzy and his sight blurry.
“This is your punishment,” Baekjin said in a monotone voice. “For forgetting who you belong to.”
Seongje slumped forwards, his breath ragged, his forehead throbbing where Baekjin had slammed him into the table. It had made his mouth fill slightly with blood, probably a split lip or something else. He normally liked the taste of copper, since it meant he was fighting, but he didn’t like it right now.
Baekjin let go of his neck and wrist with a jerk, and for a moment, only silence filled the room. Then, fingers tangled themselves in Seongje’s collar, dragging him upright like he weighed nothing. As if he wouldn’t be able to stand up by himself. He wouldn’t.
Baekjin didn’t bother to look at him as he pulled him away from the table.
He didn’t have to drag him far, because the office door slammed shut behind them not long after.
Once inside, Baekjin let go of his collar, letting him fall unceremoniously to the floor as if he were some dirty rag. Seongje, still with a bad headache and blurry vision, didn’t even have the time to break his fall properly.
Baekjin locked the door with a soft click and took off his coat and rolled up his sleeves.
Seongje didn’t know what to think anymore as he tried to push himself up weakly. He knew he would get beaten. That was a given. Baekjin had said so himself. But why hadn’t he done it right there by the table where everyone would be able to see it?
Once he stood back up completely on shaky legs, he glanced in Baekjin's direction. The blurry shape of the man circled him almost like a predator stalking its prey.
“You want out?” Baekjin asked quietly, standing right in front of Seongje. “You want to pretend that you don’t belong to the Union?”
Seongje didn’t answer him. Didn’t know how to answer him without aggravating the man further.
Baekjin hit him. Fast enough that he almost didn’t see it coming. Hard enough that the straight punch to his ribs had knocked the air out of his lungs.
It made Seongje drop to one knee, coughing and gasping for breath that wouldn’t enter properly.
(The fight he had right before this all apparently didn’t do him any good either.)
Baekjin grabbed him by the collar and yanked him back up. His face was only a couple of inches from his own. It only made him see the blank expression on the other's face even better.
“No more words,” Baekjin said. Another punch, this time to the face, made blood fall onto the floor.
A headache, blurry vision, and now surely a split lip. It almost seemed as if Baekjin was mostly focusing on his face.
“You don’t get to talk about leaving,” Baekjin snarled, slamming him into the nearest wall. “You don’t get to think about it.”
Seongje did the only thing he could think of, he lashed out, a desperate elbow that barely grazed Baekjin’s jaw. The only thing it did was make Baekjin smile.
“Good,” he said. “Fight me. So I know how deep I need to dig. How far I have to make you fall.”
He slammed Seongje to the ground, straddling him, and the next second, fists rained down on his body.
Not too fast, so he can still see them. Not too wild, no, instead, they were precise. Almost as if they were personal.
Every hit landed with precision. On his cheekbone, jaw, stomach, and side. They kept coming until he couldn’t even lift his arms anymore.
“You belonged to nothing before me,” Baekjin said, half still straddling him, half crouching above him. Blood covered his knuckles. And even though Seongje found it hard to keep focusing, it wasn’t that hard to deduce that the blood on Baekjin’s hands was his.
“And you’ll belong to nothing after me.”
Seongje coughed hard, blood leaking from his mouth as he tried to speak.
Baekjin grabbed his hair and yanked his head up.
“You’ll stay here,” he said in a cold voice. “Until you remember what you are.”
Baekjin didn’t say anything after that. Only bashed his head once more on the hard floor.
In the end, it didn’t take long for him to fall unconscious.