Motorbikes and Bonfires [1.1]

PREVIOUSLY:

"We'll make you up to look as if we killed you and that we killed Min Suga when he tried to stop us. We'll send the photos to your ex and collect the reward money, which you and Suga will get a one-quarter share each. After that we will give you the documents with whole new identities and histories and pasts. You only need to get used to your new names, okay? You don't have to do anything else but let the Nie's do our stuff."

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Kim Mitzuki's P.O.V.

"Seokjin and I have already organized most of your new paperwork and documents, including some receipts going back a few years for believability. Please, Mitz, trust me and Seok. Trust that we're going to do what we do best to keep you alive. Trust my cuz with your heart and I promise he will look after you, Yoongi's loved you since we were in high school Mitz, he won't break your heart because if he did then it would be like breaking his own."

My heart fluttered at the confession I wasn't supposed to hear, my head spinning so fast it made me dizzy and my brain couldn't catch up with how many things I was having to absorb all at once. Amongst the noises and chattering in my head I heard an email notification go off, it seemed like it was louder than bombs in a silent forest, I watched as Suga pulled out his mobile phone from his jacket pocket and checked the recipient, as he handed the phone over to Seokjin and Namjun to look at the attachments I caught a glimpse of a ghost from my past...

The kind of ghost which gives you night terrors and day-mares, the kind that goes bump in the night and makes you scream until you can't catch your breath and you lay paralyzed in your bed drowning in a cold sweat gasping like a dying man trying to draw one last breath.

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Nie Namjun's P.O.V.

I knew the moment my best friend saw the images Lan Wuxian had emailed Yoongi through the encrypted dark web. He started shaking like a chihuahua when they're excited. I squeezed his hand firmly to reassure him that we weren't going to judge him (ever) and tried to let him know that he was in a safe space right now.

I caught his gaze and held it for easily a minute to try tell him without saying anything aloud. I turned my attention back to the photographs and I was not at all prepared for what I was about to see. The full colour photographs showed everything that had happened to him, no room to spare for dignity, pride or ego.

The first images showed a dirty person with torn and bloody clothing hanging on their frame like they were a wire coat hanger. Their hair could have been about shoulder length but the colour was indiscernible because of the patches of clotted blood, dirt and mud caking it. Dead eyes stared blankly at the camera as if the person in the photograph no longer lived in their mind, the eyes that used to be a lively rich brown were like the dull reflection of mud.

The second lot of images showed the person, now identified as a younger male, with only tattered underwear and his body language showed complete lack of, well, everything. The males body was severely emancipated; every rib seen perfectly, the skeletal frame was exposed and the skin holding him together was a sickly jaundiced colour. I could tell from the uncomfortable way his arm was being held that the male had a dislocated shoulder, at least two broken fingers and a damaged forearm, maybe it had been broken and healed wrong.

There were many, many wounds on this sickly thin male and a lot of them looked still relatively fresh and the ones that weren't had festered from not being cleaned; some becoming so badly infected to the point that red blood-poisoning lines were beginning to leech outwards from the initial wound, there was a sickly greenish-yellow puss oozing from some of the deeper gashes and lacerations, unnaturally coloured fluids seeping from inflamed deeper scars showing the toxicity of the infection so horrific I was sure I could smell the stench through the device.

Looking at these images I felt my stomach turn uncomfortably, which was rare for me.

After studying some of the wounds I realized it wasn't just a mass of scar tissue; there were words carved into the skin, stab wounds, lesions, bruises and contusions, burn marks from cigarettes or cigars and probably a small welding torch, burns from what could have been electric shock therapy and what looked to be... Naughts and crosses? What the actual fuck?!

All of this went from collarbone to just above his wrists and down to his ankles. Anywhere that clothing would cover was where his body was marked up.

In the next set of photographs the boy had been cleaned and became marginally recognizable to me. Kim Mitzuki. His hair was grown out but it was the half apricot & half pastel pink he'd often talked about when we were in school, however it had been hacked so badly and had grown out considerably.

Being clean only made the wounds look worse. Each and every scar could be seen, the faded bruises ranging from a mild purple on his shoulder to the gross fading yellow as it faded away. What we saw on Mitzuki tonight was barely anything compared to the multitude of scars and forever reminders of what my friend had lived through.

My stomach churned violently as I scrambled to the door.

I almost made it to the edge of the yard where I emptied my guts on the grass...

Almost.