(I know I said I wasn't gonna write a lot of author's notes, but I just wanted to say thank you for reading and reviewing!
Hope you like the new chapter.)

Chapter 2

"Phew! Man, it stinks in here," a voice exclaimed rather amusedly. His Japanese had a strange accent Takaba had never heard before. The photographer was suddenly acutely aware that a string of puke was slowly drying on his chin. Humiliation seared in his stomach. Footsteps from more than one pair of shoes entered the room and circled the photographer, from the sound of it. One pair stopped right next to Takaba's head, and their owner crouched down to remove his blindfold.

The sharp light made his suddenly exposed eyes start to tear up and Takaba blinked furiously. He thought he could see the blurry outlines of at least four large men. After a few seconds his sight had adjusted well enough for the face belonging to the man closest to him to emerge. He was a foreigner, probably European or American, judging by his light brown hair and greyish eyes. His features were quite handsome in a brutish kind of way, and his body was larger than that of Asami's biggest bodyguard.

With his lips curved into a cruel smirk the man grabbed ahold of Takaba's bangs and forced his head up. Tears started to well up in Takaba's eyes once again, this time from the pain of getting his hair pulled. In an attempt to relieve some of the pain he raised his upper body from the floor slightly.

Inspecting his prey the man started to snicker quietly.

"They told me you were Asami's hooker, but no one told me you were such a looker."

He laughed heartily at his own semantic cleverness, as did the men behind him. Against his will Takaba felt his cheeks growing red hot. What a freaking asshole.

"Wh – who are 'they'?" he stuttered, trying to hide his feelings of being shamed but failing. "Who are you? Why did you bring me here?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" the man smiled. He released his grip on Takaba's hair and the boy fell to the floor again, scraping his shoulder on a surface that, free of his blindfold, he now saw looked like concrete. The whole room looked like it was made of concrete, or possibly dry walls. It was empty, cold, grey and unfriendly. Well, empty except from the five gigantic men laughing at him.

"Actually yes, I really would like to know that," he continued fearlessly. He refused to let the strangers win. "Who are you and what did you do to my friends? If you hurt them I'll kill you assholes!"

"Spunky, isn't he?" someone in the background whispered to his neighbor loud enough for the whole room to hear. Takaba half expected the man crouching next to him to punish his subordinate for his insolence but to his surprise the man didn't seem to mind at all.

"Indeed he is, just like they said," he simply stated.

"Where are my friends?" Takaba relented. If nothing else he at least wanted an answer to that. The man's face suddenly turned serious, as if he'd gotten tired of the charade. He locked his grey eyes on Takaba's brown ones for a moment before getting to his feet.

"I can't focus in this stench."

He promptly turned on his heel and marched out of the room, shouting orders in a language that Takaba thought made him sound like he was singing. He couldn't make out a single word he understood, but it didn't sound like English.

Two of the men followed their boss, chatting with each other in that same language. The other two lifted the struggling Takaba from the floor – one of them holding his legs and the other one grabbing him under his armpits – and carried him out of the room and into a corridor lit with fluorescent lamps. A metal staircase was right next to the room where Takaba had been held. That combined with the lack of windows led him to think he was in some kind of a basement. Okay, so screaming probably wouldn't get him very far.

That didn't stop him from trying, though.

"HEELP ME! CAN SOMEONE HEAR ME? PLEASE HELP!"

The men carrying him made no attempt to muffle his voice. Apparently they were confident no one would hear him anyway. Crap, he was really in trouble this time. This was worse than being brought to Hong Kong against his will, worse than being drugged by the girl he was looking for and tied to a lifting crane in a warehouse, because as much as both of those episodes of his life had sucked ass, at least he had known who had done those things to him and why. This time he was completely clueless and he had no idea how to get himself out of this mess. Or what had gotten him into it in the first place.

Fuck fuck fuck. Am I really going to die this time? He desperately kept shouting at the top of his lungs, knowing it would probably do him no good, while the men came to a halt outside a metal door at the other end of the corridor. The guy carrying Takaba's feet let him down carefully, if not gently, and opened the door, revealing a square room with tiled floor and walls, a foldable metal chair in the middle of the floor and a rubber garden hose connected to a pipe that crawled along one of the walls. The pipe was equipped with several taps and under the chair was a floor drain. A single light bulb hanging from the roof lit up the room.

The men sat Takaba down on the chair and tied a rope several loops around his torso and the back of the chair. They then released his legs temporarily, only to secure them to the chair's legs with duct tape before Takaba even had the chance to start kicking.

"Let me go you bastards! What are you going to do to me? Where are my friends?"

The men looked at each other, then shrugged and stepped away from the photographer, who could not have been any more unable to move from the chair. He felt his pulse rise from fear by the minute, and his shoulder joints were beginning to hurt from having his arms tied behind his back for so long. Also, he needed to pee really bad.

The man who had held on to Takaba's legs earlier lifted the hose from the floor. His hair was so blond it was almost white while the other was completely bald (although he did sport a magnificent black beard), other than that Takaba had trouble distinguishing the men from each other.

I guess I'll just call them Blondie and Beardie, he decided. Giving his captors nicknames somehow made the gravity of his situation seem less real.

Blondie pointed the hose at Takaba while Beardie started to loosen one of the taps.

Oh shit, I see where this is going, was Takaba's last thought before he was suddenly covered in a hard spray of icy cold water which soaked his hair, t-shirt and his jeans. Hell, probably his underwear too. The shower stopped and, gasping from the sudden coldness, he tried to blink the water from his eyes and shake it out of his ears. From what sounded like miles away he heard footsteps removing themselves and the door closing. A key turned in the lock.

He was alone again. For now.