Kaoru clawed at the man's meaty fingers as they tightened around his throat, but his struggles quickly diminished as his body weakened, instinctively conserving oxygen. It wasn't until he started turning blue and his eyes began to drift closed that the man released Kaoru and left him to cough and gasp on the floor.
"Your mother demoted my wife to work on a production line." The man growled, his fist connecting with the side of Kaoru's face with the last word. "She was the CEO of her company!" another punch and Kaoru felt the skin over his cheekbone rip open as blood dripped from somewhere in his mouth. "Now she works in a sweatshop!" The room spun and Kaoru saw his own blood splattering on the floor as the man continued beating on him, screaming about what his mother had done to ruin the man's family, about how hard they'd had to work to regain their status.
Kaoru left himself, a technique he'd quickly mastered when he'd been brought to his prison. He concentrated on tuning the man's anger out and pictured a sea of black, broken only by Hikaru's face. And suddenly, he wasn't in pain anymore. He was with Hikaru, sitting on a bench somewhere, watching the sunset. He stayed in his own world, barely feeling the pain of what the man was doing to him as he leaned on his brother's shoulder.
As he was being dragged back to his cell, unable to walk on his own after three hours of the man's rage, Kaoru folded up his vision and stored it in the back of his mind, saving it for the next time he would need it. He wanted more than anything to stay and be with his brother, but he knew that if he didn't come out of that world, he would eventually be unable to return to the real one.
Kaoru came to as he was being shackled to the wall in his cell, and he was able to feel every new bruise, cut, and scrape that had been left on his body. The guards left and Kaoru stared at the wall, not even able to cry. He felt nothing. Absolutely nothing. No malice, no fear, not even sadness. It was as if his emotions were attached to a light switch and someone had flipped it off.
Sometime later, Kaoru heard his door open and a familiar face came in.
"Geez, he did a number on you, huh?" Mikami, the man who delivered food, crouched down next to Kaoru and pulled the thin blanket that was laying at the end of the mattress over him. He then cracked open the water bottle he was carrying and set it next to the mattress, hoping Kaoru would be able to move enough to drink it. "I'm so sorry." Mikami whispered.
"Why do you do it?" Kaoru suddenly asked, not knowing where his curiosity or energy had come from. "Why do you work here?"
Mikami hung his head and rose, leaving without a response. He was the only employee who wasn't a complete asshole, which made Kaoru glad that he'd decided to befriend him.
Kaoru forced himself to sit up, wincing and hissing with every movement. He reached for the water, groaning as his freshly sliced back stretched and bled. The man had carved a large 'X' into Kaoru's back, running from each shoulder to the opposite hip. The cuts were deeper than previous instances of branding, and were still bleeding. The bruises around Kaoru's throat made it nearly impossible to swallow even tiny mouthfuls of water, but Kaoru forced himself to choke half of it down before giving up. No matter how nice he was, Mikami still followed Shuko's orders, and Kaoru didn't blame him. He clearly didn't want to be in this place, something was keeping him here, and Kaoru intended to find out what that something was.
When Mikami came back to retrieve the empty water bottle, he spent a moment searching for and replacing the cap and whispered. "I was told it was a prison. My mother is sick and I need money to pay for her treatments. It's the only way."
With that, Mikami left, not looking back or allowing Kaoru time to respond.
As soon as Kaoru had found a somewhat comfortable position to lay in, Shuko came sauntering through the door.
"My, my," he shook his head, "look was Fuyuki has done to you." Shuko crouched and grasped Kaoru's jaw, forcing his head to the other side so he could inspect the bruising while Kaoru held back a hiss of pain. "Mikami told me I should have a look at you, he mentioned your back as well, let's have a look." He roughly grabbed Kaoru's arm and yanked him into a sitting position. Kaoru couldn't hold back his quiet cry of pain at such rough handling. "Tsk, tsk." Shuko shook his head and snapped his fingers, calling the men in from where they were waiting outside. They undid Kaoru's shackles and hauled him off the floor, assuming he couldn't walk, and dragged him between them.
"This will simply not do…" Shuko mumbled as he led the way into a hall Kaoru hadn't seen before. "Fuyuki needs to learn the rules." The group came to a stop in front of a door labelled 'infirmary," Kaoru didn't bother trying to get his feet under him, he was too tired and well beyond the point of caring.
"Hello, Aiko!" Shuko greeted the female nurse who wore black scrubs as they came through the door. "Kaoru here has some wounds that need stitching."
Kaoru was thrown down on a cold metal table, face first, and restrained at the wrists, shoulders, knees, and ankles. His bruised body screamed at every movement, but he couldn't be bothered to scream.
"I see…" Aiko mumbled as she poked and prodded at Kaoru's back, making him twitch. "How long has he been bleeding?"
"About an hour." Shuko responded. Had that been it? Was it only sixty minutes? It had felt like an eternity.
"Alright, I'll get him fixed up." Aiko nodded to Shuko.
"Thank you, Aiko!" Shuko called over his shoulder. "Oh, and one more thing!" he paused in the doorway. "There's no need to freeze him."
Kaoru groaned at the thought of going through cleaning and stitching with no anesthetic, but figured there was nothing he could do other than try to take it with a brave face.
"Sorry, sweetie." Aiko began collecting bottles and kits from around the small, sterile smelling room. "Boss's orders."
Aiko first took to cleaning the blood away from Kaoru's back, gently dabbing and wiping his skin with a warm, wet cloth. It wasn't so bad, but Kaoru knew the worst was definitely yet to come. When the antiseptic was applied, Kaoru flinched and yelped at the stinging sizzle it caused in his crudely carved brand.
"I know it hurts, hon, but I've gotta do it." Aiko whispered, continuing to clean out the deep lacerations. Her heart broke slightly for the boy, who was lying in a puddle of his own tears before she was even a quarter done cleaning up his back. "If this gets infected you're in big trouble."
She cursed Shuko every time he ordered her not to use anesthetic. Most of the people she tended to were children, and they'd been through so much before they came to her, so why couldn't she give them a break?
"I'm almost done." She assured as she neared the end of the cleaning process Kaoru had blacked out twice, which she could tell by his breath evening out for a few moments. "This is going to be worse." She warned as she threw out the last of her bloody cotton and pulled out a sterile needle and thread, preparing to stitch him up. "Deep breaths."
Kaoru whimpered as the needle pierced his skin and tugged at the rough edges of his brand, letting the silent tears to flow freely as his body tried to pull away from the pain. He decided that he could fade away for a few minutes, and brought his little world forward from the back of his mind. He and Hikaru sat on that bench, staring at the same sunset, never changing, never speaking, only comforting each other. Kaoru found himself snuggling deeper into Hikaru's shoulder, and his brother held him tighter. He could still feel the tugging of the needle and thread lacing his skin back together, but it felt more like he was getting stitches with anesthetic, more annoying than anything else.
When Kaoru felt as if he was being pulled away from Hikaru, he folded up his escape and returned to the reality of being dragged down the halls with a back full of stitches. Once he was re-shackled, Shuko came back into his room.
"Looking like that, you can't take customers for a couple of days." Shuko sneered. "But that means you'll simply have to take two a day to make up for the days you miss."
Kaoru didn't show any sign of hearing Shuko, and continued staring that the wall until he got up and left.
"Two a day?" he thought to himself. "I can barely handle one…"