"What kind of sadistic, psychotic goddess creates a character who has had her tongue cut out?!"
The girl held her phone away from her ear as Saeyoung shouted at her. She took a moment to allow herself to recover before placing the phone closer.
"Good evening, Luciel."
"What happened to her?! What kind of childhood did she have?!"
The girl pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed.
"And what is with her not showing any emotions or not showing whether she's in pain or not? She stepped in glass like it was nothing and I had to pull twenty-three shards from her feet!"
"Oh no, is she OK?"
"I don't think so! There was blood everywhere! It took a good long while to convince her to go to bed to keep off her feet."
Saeyoung let out a tired sigh and the girl crossed her legs, the shackles on her ankles moving with the motion with the sound echoing in the dark room.
"OK, she has no tongue, she lacks emotion and she doesn't register pain," she hummed whilst twirling a long brown lock of hair "…What's the problem exactly?"
"My problem is you!"
"Hey, vice versa here!"
Saeyoung let out a long sigh.
"What makes you think I'll fall in love with her? She doesn't open up!"
"Hey, neither do you."
"Well you know, shit childhood."
"So maybe her childhood was shit too."
"What happened?"
"Game Master's knowledge."
Saeyoung sighed irritably.
"She isn't going to open up to me, I know it."
"Luciel, she showed you that she has no tongue. That alone is very personal knowledge, she isn't going to just go around on the street with a gaping mouth to let the whole world know. Imagine how traumatic it would have been for her when it happened. It can't be a pleasant memory."
She leaned forward as Saeyoung made a disbelieving noise.
"I'm telling you this now. She is the answer to this stalemate. Just let her do her thing, let her open up in her own pace. She is interested in you, I know she is. She just finds it difficult to express herself, I know I do."
There was a pause and the girl checked the phone to check that the connection was still secure before holding it closer to her ear.
"I love you."
The girl grimaced.
"So you say."
"Is it because he's rich?"
"Hardly."
"Do I need to get my own cat?"
"An attractive notion but no."
"Is it because of the romance?"
"Luciel, I've seen you around the few girls that managed to secure your route. You're romantic enough although breaking that poor cat robot doesn't earn you any points."
"Is it because he's a kinky bastard?"
The girl's cheeks went red.
"…Luciel, that is an extremely private and intimate part of our lives so I refuse to comment on that."
"I knew it."
The girl facepalmed as Saeyoung chuckled.
"Did he have a BDSM dungeon? If you had asked for one, I bet he did…"
"This conversation has expired, wait for eight hours until your next chance to call."
She hung up swiftly with a furious blush.
Saeyoung chuckled at the tone that sounded in his phone before hanging up. He looked up at the sky. Sachiko hadn't talked to him since she showed her stump of a tongue. He shivered at the sight which he wasn't going to forget any time soon. There hadn't been anything in her medical records to mention her lack of tongue or her supposed ability to not be able to feel pain.
Ah, speaking of medical records…
Saeyoung swiped a few times on his phone to see different meters and monitors. The heart monitor displayed a slight raise in activity and he just smirked. It was cute when she got flustered.
As he stared at the numbers and data, he began realising why Jumin enjoyed controlling the environment around his women. Not that she allowed it after they got married, Saeyoung had seen through the CCTV that they got into arguments and when she had turned to the messenger, she complained. She complained about how Jumin insisted that she stayed within the building, about how she had been forbidden to eat her favourite sweets because of the nutritionist's advice and of course, this was the most ridiculous one, Jumin had thrown out her favourite shirt because apparently, he thought of it as an eyesore. She screamed at him when she found out and went off the radar for a solid twenty-four hours. That had been enough time to realise the error in his ways, find the shirt, redecorate the penthouse to a romantic setting and call Saeyoung seventy-two times in ten minute intervals.
Saeyoung remembered finding it difficult to track her because she abandoned her phone at the penthouse and it just aggravated him to see Jumin's number light up his screen despite telling him time and again that he was working his ass off to find his neglected wife. And it didn't help that Jaehee went AWOL too.
Long story short, she had grabbed the assistant, loudly announced that she was taking a day off and would compensate her for her work hours then took her for a surprise girl's outing for sixteen hours. Jaehee had left her phone behind so no-one could contact her.
Saeyoung grinned to himself as he remembered when the girls arrived back at their respective homes with freshly manicured nails, relaxed smiles and bags of clothes and in Mrs Han's case, video games and plush toys whilst Jaehee had thirteen different brands of coffee. Jumin hadn't looked so relieved to see his wife.
Saeyoung remembered hoping for an argument to push the two of them apart so they would divorce and she would eventually warm up to him. He had so many terrible thoughts whenever they broke out into a fight, it felt like he didn't deserve her, but he was beyond caring…
An icy wind encouraged him to retreat into the warm building. He made his way up and carefully let himself into Rika's apartment. It was dark with just the light of his computer screens showing the outlines of furniture.
He hadn't gone in far until he felt the hair on the back of his neck prickle. Then a dull chop hit him in the back of his neck and he fell forward. When he tried to look at his attacker, he could see a set of heels before blacking out.