Chapter Text
They left work together, the way they always did—shoulders brushing, steps unconsciously matched. The city was loud but familiar, the wet streets gleaming under the fading afternoon sky. Shiu was already checking his phone, skimming tomorrow’s schedule with half an eye, half a mind.
“Smokes,” Sero said, patting his pockets. He clicked his tongue. “I’ll grab them from the corner store.”
Shiu glanced up. “Don’t take forever.”
“I won’t.” Sero smiled, quick and easy, already backing away. “Two minutes.”
Shiu watched him go for a second longer than necessary, then turned toward home.
The corner shop was only half a block away. Sero cut through the quieter side street instead—faster, technically. The alley smelled faintly of damp concrete and old trash, but it wasn’t unsafe. Not here. Not this close.
That was when he heard it.
A small, sharp sound. High-pitched. Insistent.
“…hey,” Sero murmured automatically, head turning.
A cat crouched near a stack of crates by the back entrance of a closed café. Skinny, mottled, tail flicking. It looked at him with wide, luminous eyes and let out another meow—thin, almost pleading.
Sero sighed, already doomed.
“Where did you come from?” He crouched, slow, hands open. “Did someone abandon you here?”
The cat didn’t run. It leaned into his fingers when he reached out, vibrating faintly with a purr. Sero smiled despite himself, thumb brushing gently over its head.
“Cute little thing,” he whispered.
The world ended behind him.
The impact came sudden and wrong—an explosion of white pain at the back of his skull. His teeth clicked together hard enough to hurt. For a split second, nothing made sense: the alley lurched, the ground tilted, sound warped into a distant ringing.
“What—” The word didn’t make it out right.
His knees buckled. He tried to turn, tried to push himself up, but his arms wouldn’t cooperate. The pain bloomed hotter, sharper, dragging nausea with it. His vision fractured at the edges, the cat blurring into a smear of gray and light.
I didn’t—
Someone—
Another sensation—hands, maybe, or pressure—registered too slowly to place. The ringing grew louder, drowning out everything else. The concrete rushed up to meet him.
Sero hit the ground hard.
The last thing he was aware of was the cold seeping through his cheek, and the distant, fading echo of a cat’s meow—before the dark closed over him completely.
——
Shiu opened the refrigerator, scanning its contents as he tried to decide what to make for dinner, when both his daughters tugged at his legs for attention. He glanced down at Nero and Leu, who were looking up at him with wide, expectant eyes.
“Papa,” Nero said, voice small but urgent. “Where is Daddy Sero? I want to show him the drawing I made at school.”
“I want to play board games with him,” Leu added immediately.
Shiu hummed, feigning offense. “Is Papa not your favorite anymore?” he drawled.
The girls gasped in unison. “Of course you are!” they insisted, voices overlapping.
Shiu smiled faintly and patted their heads.
As he straightened, a quiet, unwelcome thought surfaced. Sero was taking longer than he should have. He was just buying smokes after all—the corner store wasn’t that far.
“He should be here soon,” Shiu reassured them. The girls nodded before bolting off toward the living area to play before dinner.
He shut the refrigerator door and leaned casually against the wall, picking up his phone. His thumb hovered over the screen before he tapped out a message to his husband:
“What is taking so long?”
Shiu expected a quick reply. Sero was usually fast—unless he was in the middle of a session, torturing some poor bastard. Shiu, on the other hand, could let a message sit unread for days without guilt.
A beat later. Nothing. Minutes later. Still nothing.
Shiu narrowed his eyes at the screen, as if staring harder could will a reply into existence. Maybe his dumbass got distracted by something cute again, he thought, exhaling sharply. He decided to trust Sero—that he’d waltz through the door any second with that stupid grin of his, spouting some ridiculous story about an animal he saw and wanted to adopt.
Shoving the unease to the back of his mind, Shiu turned back to the task at hand. He chopped vegetables with methodical precision: tender green beans, sweet red peppers, and earthy mushrooms. A pan sizzled on the stove as he seared chicken seasoned with garlic, black pepper, and a hint of chili—just enough to make it exciting but not overpowering. Steam curled in lazy spirals, carrying the smell of home into the apartment.
As the rice cooker hummed softly, he stirred the sauce, tasting carefully, adjusting the salt and acidity, immersing himself in the rhythm. Stir, taste, adjust. Slice, sear, simmer. Every movement familiar, grounding. It was enough to push away the nagging feeling at the back of his mind—for now.
But even as the meal took shape, a small, stubborn corner of his thoughts refused to quiet: Something’s off. He should’ve been back already.
——
Sero’s eyes fluttered open. Darkness. Thick, absolute.
Pain shot through the back of his head, splitting and relentless. His body screamed at him when he tried to move. Wrist restrained so tightly it felt like the skin itself was being carved. His legs and chest were also bound to the chair, every movement punished by the harsh pull of rope and straps. He bit back a hiss, tasting blood.
He tried to lift his head. Failed. Every movement brought white-hot agony that radiated down his neck and shoulders. The blindfold pressed against his face, a suffocating weight over his eyes.
He swallowed hard. He couldn’t see. He couldn’t move. And the quiet… the quiet was worse. Not the absence of sound, but the subtle too-perfect stillness. No traffic. No hum of a fridge. No city.
Just him. And whoever had done this.
Panic began to claw at him. His mind raced.
How long until the first blow, the first threat, the first cut?
It was different from what he knew, though. Too unpredictable. He could feel it in the tension in his body—the way the restraints bit, the way his muscles screamed at even the slightest movement. Whoever had done this didn’t know the boundaries. Didn’t know how far he could go before breaking.
Sero swallowed, forcing his breath steady. He had no way to anticipate what would come next. This wasn’t the controlled, sanctioned kind of pain he knew. No protocols. No safeguards. Just chaos, testing him without mercy.
A faint shuffle echoed through the room. Something—someone—was close.
And suddenly, the full weight of it hit him: he had no idea how long he’d been here. Or how long he’d last.
“Aren’t you going to introduce yourself? It’s only polite, after all, to tell me why I was kidnapped and why you’re doing this…” Sero said, trying to bait information from the unknown figure in front of him.
“Ha!” The other spat out a harsh, sharp laugh, almost a growl. “Why the hell would I play by your rules?”
Sero’s senses sharpened immediately. The voice—raw, ragged with anger, trembling slightly on the edges—belonged to a man around thirty. Not a professional calm, but a barely contained fury, ready to explode. He could smell strong alcohol on the man’s clothes, sharp and overpowering enough to cling to him from a distance, mixed with a faint sting of tobacco smoke that lingered in the air.
Footsteps hit the floor with erratic thuds, too heavy, too quick in places, dragging in others. The man was pacing, but not methodically—jerky, impatient, fueled by rage. The subtle clink of a belt buckle, a cuff, or perhaps a weapon; Sero couldn’t see, but he noted it instantly.
Every breath the man took carried tension and heat. This wasn’t careful. This wasn’t measured. Whoever this was, he wanted to hurt him, and there were no rules to stop him. Sero’s chest tightened.
It was chaos. Unfamiliar, dangerous, and completely outside anything he’d ever faced. Sero had spent years orchestrating pain, reading people, and controlling outcomes—but now he was the one in someone else’s hands, blind, bound, and at the mercy of someone who clearly wanted to make him suffer. The unpredictability, the raw anger radiating from the man, made every second sharper, every sound more threatening.
“You seem super angry,” Sero said, his voice steady despite the tremor curling in his stomach. “I must have done something to really piss you off. Don’t you want me to know what I did to offend you and punish me for it? Otherwise… isn’t this all kind of pointless?”
A low, feral growl answered him.
Then hands closed around his throat.
They were thick and calloused, grip brutal and uneven, thumbs digging into the soft hollow beneath his jaw. Air vanished in an instant. His breath hit a hard stop, his next inhale scraping uselessly against crushed windpipe. Heat flared immediately—an ugly, burning pressure that spread from his neck up into his head.
“Listen here, you fucker!”
The world narrowed. His pulse thundered loud in his ears, each heartbeat sluggish and wrong. Pins and needles exploded behind his eyes as his body instinctively fought, muscles jerking uselessly against restraints that only bit deeper into his wrists. His vision—what little light leaked through the blindfold—sparked and swam.
“I am going to make you pay tenfold for what you made my younger brother go through!”
The grip tightened. Not precise. Not controlled. Rage-driven. Sero’s throat burned like it was on fire, saliva thick and impossible to swallow. His lungs screamed, reflexively spasming, chest straining for air that wasn’t coming. Panic clawed up his spine—not the sharp, clean kind, but the animal terror of suffocation.
Ah, his mind supplied faintly, distantly. Of course.
Revenge.
Of course. Typical.
The burning in his throat intensified, vision swimming at the edges, when something—sharp, piercing—cut through the haze.
A phone.
The ringtone was unmistakable.
That specific tone…
Even through the blindfold, even through the fog of panic and pain, his body recognized it instantly. Shiu. His chest tightened, a mix of hope and fear twisting through him. He wanted to scream, to call out, but his lungs were still gasping for that first full breath.
The man’s grip faltered just as the sound hit. Calloused hands slid away from Sero’s throat, and he sucked in a ragged, trembling breath, chest heaving, the fire in his windpipe replaced by the ache of relief. His mind clawed at the sound, letting it anchor him, giving him something familiar in the chaos.
The ringtone continued, relentless, echoing off the walls. Sero’s head spun, heart hammering at the thought that Shiu could be calling, looking for him, trying to reach him. Please…
The man moved. Sero could hear it clearly—the scrape of boots against concrete, the faint swish of clothing as he crossed the room. The phone’s shrill tone stopped abruptly, swallowed into silence.
A small, hollow sense of dread replaced the relief, sharp and immediate. He couldn’t see, didn’t know if the call had been answered—or worse, shut off.
——
Shiu prided himself on keeping a calm, collected demeanor—but this was pushing it. He had already finished cooking their dinner and was busy plating and setting the table when Sero still hadn’t returned.
He found himself tapping his fingers anxiously on the counter, glancing over at his daughters playing in the living area. The unease in his chest wouldn’t let up.
Fuck it, he thought, snatching up the phone. He dialed Sero’s number, holding it to his ear, waiting.
The line rang once, twice, three times. Each ring tightened the grip on his chest. He imagined Sero’s voice answering, casual and cheeky, “Hey, Old Man—” in that familiar, teasing tone that always made him exhale a little of his worry.
But then:
“The person you are trying to reach cannot answer the phone right now. Please leave your name and message after the beep.”
Shiu’s brow furrowed, irritation and fear mingling. He dialed again, over and over, hoping for a different result, until at last he heard it—a soft click.
The line went silent. Shiu didn’t wait for a greeting before letting his worry erupt.
“Why weren’t you answering, you little shit?! Where are you!? Do you know what time it is, idiot!?”
No response. Just silence, stretching half a beat too long.
Then a voice, low and dangerous:
“You want to know where your precious husband is?”
Shiu froze. That wasn’t Sero. That wasn’t his voice. His chest tightened, a spike of ice racing through him. Who the hell has his husband’s phone? What the hell situation was this?
“Who are you?! Why do you have his phone?!” he barked, panic and fury breaking over him in equal measure.
“Wouldn’t you like to know?” the man let out a low, sinister snicker.
“Don’t you fucking play with me!” Shiu snapped, losing his composure. His voice carried—too sharp, too loud—and he immediately felt it when he caught movement in his peripheral vision.
Nero and Leu had paused their game, staring at him with wide, startled eyes.
Shiu sucked in a breath, forcing his face into something passable. “It’s nothing,” he said, waving a hand dismissively. “Continue playing.” They hesitated, but obeyed.
“SHIU—!”
The sound tore through the line—strained, hoarse, unmistakable.
Shiu’s blood ran cold.
“Shut your mouth, you piece of shit!” the man barked, sharp and violent, cutting Sero off mid-syllable.
Shiu’s eyes went dark. This wasn’t a prank. This wasn’t a bluff. That was Sero—alive, terrified, and very real.
“I swear,” Shiu said quietly, deadly calm replacing the panic in an instant, “if you hurt him, I will kill you.”
A laugh—slow, ugly, amused. “That’s rich, coming from you. Considering what he did to my younger brother.”
Shiu’s grip tightened around the phone.
“Well,” the man continued, voice almost conversational, “maybe if he’s a good boy, I’ll send him back to you in one piece.” A pause. Deliberate. Cruel. “If he isn’t… I can’t promise anything.”
The line went dead.
Shiu’s heart seemed to collapse in on itself. His knees gave out, and he sank to the floor as the plate slipped from his hand, shattering loudly against the tile. Food splattered everywhere, unnoticed.
“Papa!”
Nero and Leu came running, eyes wide with fear. They skidded to a stop in front of him, taking in the sight—broken ceramic, spilled dinner, their father on the floor, shaking.
“Papa? Papa!” they cried, voices trembling.
Shiu didn’t respond.
He stared at the dark screen of his phone, chest tight, breath shallow—already replaying the voice in his head, already planning, already terrified.
——
The silence lingered—
Then he heard it—Shiu’s voice.
The sound was enough to make him lose control. His pulse spiked, hope clawing violently at his chest as he strained against the restraints. The anger and fear in Shiu’s voice—raw, unfiltered—cut through the haze of pain like a blade.
“SHIU—!” he screamed, ragged and desperate.
The response was immediate.
A fist slammed into his stomach, driving the air from his lungs in a violent whoosh. Pain detonated through his ribs and gut, sharp and blinding. The captor leaned close, breath hot against his ear.
“Shut your mouth, you piece of shit!”
Sero folded forward in the chair, body seizing, the blindfold swimming with stars. Every breath burned like it was being dragged through glass. He fought for air, fought to stay conscious—
—and listened.
Through the ringing in his ears, through the pain, he caught fragments of the conversation. Words slipping through like knives.
…maybe if he’s a good boy, I’ll send him back to you in one piece.
If he isn’t… I can’t promise anything.
The meaning hit harder than the punch.
Good boy.
Something cold settled deep in Sero’s chest, heavier than fear—an understanding, ugly and suffocating. This wasn’t about information. This wasn’t leverage. This was about humiliation. About ownership. About breaking him until there was nothing left but compliance.
Then came a sound that made his stomach drop.
A sharp crack. Plastic and glass shattering. A boot grinding down.
The phone.
The sound echoed in the room, final and merciless, like a door slamming shut.
Sero sagged in the chair, chest heaving, throat tight. The last tether he had—to Shiu, to the outside world—was gone.
And with it came the terrible, sinking certainty:
No one can hear me now.