The chains scraped over the ground with high-pitched sounds. It was creepy in the otherwise complete silence of the area. It was so insulated that they had added a speaker to let static run to avoid the person in the cell possibly going mad from the lack of sounds at night.
The guard felt the hair on his arm rise the closer he stepped forward.
An island in the middle of an ocean. A castle on the island with walls towering higher than a skyscraper. And below the castle, layers of cells.
This far underground was depressing despite the high ceiling, bright walls and bright lamps. The guard hated it, but someone had to get food to that guy.
But god, was he creepy.
The figure inside the cell moved leisurely from lying on the bed to sitting. Although the door was locked, it didn’t look particularly strong and quietly clicked when the lock was opened.
The guard pressed down his feelings of nervosity.
Eighteen. The kid was fucking eighteen.
Two guards, two innocent bystanders, his parents and three siblings. That was his headcount. A goddamned kid of eighteen.
The young man sat up upon seeing someone enter, leaning on his arms with a look of relaxed nonchalance.
“Jing Ci, breakfast is ready”, the guard tensely said. When he had first heard the name, he had thought it would be a woman.
Jing Ci did not react to the name. He stretched, the chains rattling.
Nowadays, you did not chain up prisoners but this way had proven to be very useful for certain people. They would never be able to free themselves and if the guards got hurt, it was their own fault.
The chains were embedded deep into the wall, allowing just enough to walk through the cell and into the bathroom. People down here were not expected to ever go free and were not allowed out of their cells, so the owner had gotten permission for a… special way of binding them.
The other end of the chains weren’t wrapped around his wrists. They were staked through them.
We’re sorry for MTLers or people who like using reading mode, but our translations keep getting stolen by aggregators so we’re going to bring back the copy protection. If you need to MTL please retype the gibberish parts.
It was a complicated operation. The hole would be drilled through the thicker end of the radius, one of the bones reaching from elbow to wrist. Through this, the stake was inserted. The bone would then heal around it.
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Jing Ci had looked unappreciatively bored through all of it. He seemed to like his little cell.
The guard set down the plate of food, glancing at the tablet that the young man had on his bed. Out of pure fascination, they had given him one. He read a lot and watched movies all day if he wasn’t training or sleeping.
“Jing Ci”, the guard grumpily called again, expecting an answer and not getting one.
He was ignored. The other only stroked his left arm and did not look up.
It was scarred. Jing Ci himself had taken up a needle and red string, then slowly embroidered the pattern on his arm like a madman. Pulled the strings tight and only accepted medicine once there was a slight infection that was bound to leave scars.
The scars formed a word.
The guard did not know for what reasons he had done this but one way or another, Jing Ci had written Aspen. Since he had done that, he did not react to being called any other way.
The guard groaned mentally. “Aspen.”
Jing Ci finally graced him with his attention, his soft chocolate coloured eyes peeking out from his unkempt reddish-brown hair.
He would have looked innocent if not for that abnormal look in his eyes.
Otherwise, you might also think that this was a captive boytoy. What kind of prisoner had headphones, a tablet, a separate e-book reader, and all kinds of other electronic appliances? He was living better than people outside.
If you ignored his captivity.
The main reason for this was how tame he was when he got what he wanted. Since then, they never had problems with him attacking his guards again. It was a small price.
Jing Ci reached out for his breakfast – bread and cheese along with milk – and began eating.
He pulled over his tablet and the guard, sighing, left.
Jing Ci truly did not care much about being kept captive. The people here mostly left him alone, which suited his tastes very much. He only wanted his comfortable silence right now.
He had known from young age that he was abnormal. He was a reticent child that made few friends and hardly talked while hiding dead frogs in his room.
They were loud and he hated that, so he killed them to make them quiet. After that, it was pure curiosity and fascination. Death was very quiet and very still. It was the same body, but now it was only an object.
You could turn living things into objects. You only needed to hit or stab the right spot.
He endured his family until that Christmas two years ago. Because one sister had broken up with her boyfriend, she cried loudly. Because the other sister was annoyed, she shouted. Because he was scared, his little brother wailed. Because they wanted to be heard, his parents were screaming.
He had been reading the book he got.
They disturbed him, so he went to the kitchen and took a knife. Now he wasn’t disturbed anymore and his family had become objects.
Fascinating, wasn’t it?
He had gone to get a frog and cat, then cut them all open.
All so similar inside. He felt it was no different than robots whose batteries you had pulled out.
That thought had made him laugh loudly.
The police reached his place not too long later because someone had seen him all bloody outside. They looked different from ordinary people but broke down just the same.
How ridiculous all of it was. You were allowed to turn off a computer with a running software or pull a robot’s energy source. Why did everyone flip out if you did it for a human? Wasn’t it all a matter of not knowing how to turn it back on yet?
He had been kept alive because some man had said he was interesting and that he wanted to observe. He hadn’t met the guy but he liked the mindset the man had.
The shackles didn’t hurt anymore with his body having adjusted, unless he pulled at them. He had his quiet room with the camera on the ceiling and a private bathroom.
He had been meek and silent but recently, his obsession had become the dreams that everyone talked about online.
He had woken up in one once, two weeks ago. It was far more interesting than the world here.
As for the name, it had been the one on his arm and he had simply taken a liking to it. Now it was his.
That world had been different from anything he knew. He hadn’t cared for anyone else and simply explored until the time was up. He knew that the shadows treated the visitors like ghosts and wouldn’t be able to see them, so they freaked out if you moved something in front of them. He had stopped playing around with that when one of them began to distort and show signs of aggression.
Other than that, he found the repeats terribly interesting.
They were perfectly timed, after twelve hours and the chime, and then everything would repeat again. At the last chimes, the whole area slowly collapsed into nothingness, forcing him to retreat into the room he had woken up in.
The door had opened. He walked through it without much of a thought. For a couple of seconds he was in absolute darkness, falling. The feeling of danger intensified with each of it and then vanished when he opened his eyes in his cell.
“I want to go back there”, Jing Ci whispered to himself, his voice lazy. Even going back to sleep hadn’t brought him back.
So now, all he could do was wait for those special days where he might be drawn into the dreams again.
Author’s Note
Man, I love insane characters. They’re so fun to write!
Our “main” MC is Tian Zhu (River) but especially the between-game intermissions will also show things from Jing Ci’s (Aspen’s) perspective
Ooohh interesting (o′┏▽┓｀o)
Thnx ya for the chappiiee~ (￣y▽,￣)╭
A crazy ML 😆
Is tain Zhu gong? I guess so….or my guess is wrong? Writer-sama???
Yep he is! It’s hardly important in the main story as smut only happens in the extras, but yes, River/Tian Zhu is the top 🙂
Welp it’s my first story where MC is top? Cause I usually prefer shou as mc but it’s okay I’ll try this new stuff cause im already hooked 🚶♀️😩
I mean, it won’t matter too much in the main story 😀 Their dynamic isn’t decided by it, either~
This is so good 😍
OH I WAS SO CONFUSED LMAO
like my memory sucks and I was desperately tryna remember if there was ever a character like this and I just forgot something
thank you for the chapter :3
When I read his thoughts that human are like robots. I thought, he made a point. But what’s terrifying is that, how simple he made it to be.
I hope jing ci kill the mc family
its a great day to be named aspen 🤭