Chapter Text
“If you stay quiet, I can get you out quicker.”
Amal’s eyes scanned the surrounding areas, peering past the brick wall. She motioned for a young boy—thirteen at most—to come behind her. The boy hurried over, his light footsteps barely making a sound. Amal again checked it the coast was clear before leading him to a door in the far corner of the building. She opened it, ushering him inside then closing it as quietly as possible. She squatted down to his level, her dark green eyes running over the young boy’s form.
“When we go out there, you’re going to have to be a brave boy, okay? I won’t be with you anymore,” she explained in a hushed tone.
The boy looked up at her with timid hazelnut eyes. His name was Rahmid, something Amal promised herself she’d never forget. He reminded her too much of another she knew before, someone she wasn’t able to save. Rahmid nodded quietly at her words, his warm blonde curls moving along with his head. The corners of Amal’s lips pointed into a weary smile and her hands lightly rubbed against his shoulders. She frowned at a purple bruise on the boy’s forearm.
“Why can’t you come with me?” he asked in a small tone, his gaze casted on the oak floor. His Kycian accent was still strong, and Amal worried if it was too recognizable.
She let out a heavy sigh and her expression dropped. She hated having to explain to the naïve the reason why she never went, not to mention why she had to sneak them around like this in the first place.
“I have to help everyone else. If I leave, no others will be able to go back to their homes,” Amal said, stretching the truth as far as she could.
Rahmid seemed to accept the response and glumly looked down. Amal stood back and patted his back gently, motioning for him to follow her again. The pair walked down a dilapidated hallway until they reached a metal door. Amal fumbled around in her pocket until she found a ring of keys. She shuffled between the lot til she obtained the correct one, shoving it into the keyhole of the door. It clicked in place and she twisted the doorknob open, only to be met with the face of a man.
Akuji.
Amal cursed herself silently, her eyes widening slightly as she stood face to face with him. Lord Akuji was a large man, tall like a tree and built like a river dam. His short blond hair and beard meshed together with his scarred skin, almost as if they were the same color. Akuji’s dark monochrome outfit exuded both power and a hidden threat from him, which sent shivers down Amal’s spine. The lord commanded respect at all times, especially so from Amal, whom he somehow trusted much more compared to the rest of the lot that worked in his establishments. Amal should’ve known never to get on his bad side, but she had been pushing her luck for far too long now.
“You’re a bit late. Almost didn’t think you’d show up there, huh?” he flashed a set of sharp pearly whites, authentic gold crests around his canines acting as an example of his wealth. “I didn’t want to believe it was you, y’know, people have said I’ve gone soft.”
Amal instinctively shielded Rahmid with her body, still holding a strong front in front of him. Her hand shifted so that the keys she held were much more concealable in her palm. Her olive eyes held a pleading look in them as she stared at Akuji.
“I—he’s just a boy.”
Her voice was smaller, the mere presence of the lord reducing her to this. Amal looked at him warily and her gaze flickered from Akuji to the floor, trying to make herself seem less scheming than she actually was. The man glared at her for a while, the three of them standing in silence. Finally, after what seemed like a millennium, Akuji spoke: “Let him go.”
Amal’s expression shifted into one of her shock, her dark features raking over the lord in search for any deceit. After seeing what appeared to be none—or at least none in store for Rahmid—she bent down to face him.
“You remember the path right? Keep going until you get to the city, and who do you ask for?” she questioned, keeping her voice relatively soft.
“Mister Arwyn in the artistry shops,” Rahmid answers back in a similar tone.
Amal ruffled the boy’s pale wiry hair before hesitantly standing up. She urged him to do along out the door, past Lord Akuji, waiting until she finally saw his small form getting smaller and smaller as he ran far enough away from the building disappeared into the woods to let out the breath she’d been holding.
It seemed spontaneous.
Amal wasn’t able to react when she saw Akuji pull out his gun. She couldn’t move when the loud bang echoed in her ears, followed by Rahmid’s small body dropping to the ground. She gasped, but a sharp crack to the cheek caused her to immediately fall to the floor. Her raven curls sprawled out over her reddening skin and Amal held up a hand to her mouth to cover her appalled expression. She didn’t need to look up to know whose threatening footsteps walked until it reached her barley concealed legs. Amal cried out and keeled over in pain once a stabbing kick made contact with her ribs.
“You fucking whore. What is your problem, huh? Are you jealous, is that it? Jealous that you’re getting replaced? Because I can’t find any good reason as to why you’d decide to fuck up my entire business!” Akuji roared, punctuating his words with a kick, resulting in Amal delving into a coughing fit.
She opened her mouth to speak, but Akuji dragged her from the doorway by her hair, instead inciting shrieks of agony. He kicked it shut before jerking her towards the hallway. She kicked and screamed as the lord proceeded to pull her closer and closer to her room, a few other workers standing back in silence. Amal’s hands hopelessly clawed at his skin, desperate for any relief from the pain coursing through her body. He all but threw her inside, Amal’s lanky body slamming into a wooden bed leg. She coughed as she slowly righted herself on her hands and knees. Tears poured down her face and Amal tried to regain some level of control of her own body.
“I’m shipping you out to Haev. Pathetic piece of shit,” Akuji spat, walking over her to start yanking clothing out of the dresser. Amal’s eyes widened and she scrambled to her feet hurriedly, leaning against the mattress to support her weight.
Haev was the capital city of Rayaanr and close to the coastal border, which was about an eight hour drive from Ékar, the place Amal currently resided in. The rumors Amal heard from others who’d been sent there due to being “disruptive” in Akuji’s eyes—just another way to say you had a target on your back—haunted her. Constant broken bones, bruises, even occasional dislocated pelvic bones. A girl there died from strangulation, and the owner had just sent Akuji an invoice for a new one.
She hadn’t had good experiences with some of the people who came here—only the gods know how truly fucked up they made her feel—but Haev? The laws were extremely relaxed and the cops seemed to do nothing about the alarming rise in tea shops, despite being so near the Imperial Citadel. It was a complete hellhole.
“Sir, wait—no, my Lord, listen to me. I wasn’t trying to hurt you, I was just—please!” she pleaded, Amal’s chest rising and falling quickly in a panic.
Akuji threw the few pairs of shoes she had, along with a slightly stained maeve colored duffel bag, into the pile of clothes left on the floor. He turned to glare at her, his eyes holding a coldness Amal hadn’t been accustomed to. It was obvious the man’s mind wasn’t planning on changing anytime soon.
“Pack your shit in there and I’ll have you out by morning. You are nothing to me, do you fucking understand?” he grasped her jaw viciously with a heavy glare. “Be glad I’m not sending you tonight,” he hissed before walking through the door and slamming it shut.
All Amal could do now was stare at the heap on the ground with tears in her eyes.
—————
A 5:00 A.M. alarm screeched in Tarak’s ears as he was jolted awake. He sat up in his bed and quickly shut up the annoying beep beep beep before rubbing his eyes exhaustedly. He almost flinched when he saw the girl in his bed, a shocked expression appearing on his face. Tarak shifted himself out of the bed as quickly and quietly as he could, then realized he was naked as well. He looked around for his pants and hurriedly pulled them on.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” he muttered to himself, walking to his closet to find a basic button down and slacks to throw on.
He didn’t bother showering as he didn’t have enough time if he wanted to leave before this fling woke up and disrupted his morning. Tarak eventually went to the bathroom to brush his teeth and somewhat pull the blond strands sticking to the dried saliva along his cheek. He ran his face under the faucet then wet his hands to run through his hair. Tarak fumbled around with it for a minute before deciding it looked decent enough to wear to work. He came out of his bathroom—luckily the girl hadn’t awakened yet—and shoved all the scattered work papers on his counter into the black leather briefcase he always took with him. Tarak left a blank sheet of paper and quickly wrote a few instructions on it, leaving the paper on the coffee table for the girl to see. He grabbed a coat hanging near the door and finally left his apartment. There was the ring of Tarak dialing a number as he brought up the phone to his ear.
“Reijui, how close are you to my apartment?” he asked as he shuffled down the metal staircase. A few minutes went by, and he winced slightly, as if getting yelled at through the phone. A short “thank you” left his mouth and Tarak slid his cellphone into his jacket pocket. He stood by the road outside of the complex. The wind blew in his face as he waited patiently, disrupting both his hair and the cigarette he was attempting to light. He eventually said fuck it and threw the cigarette in the trash, which synced up perfectly to a navy blue car pulling up in front of him. Tarak went to open the passenger side door, but not before he got an earful from the driver.
“Dude, this is the fourth tune I’ve had to pick you up. What’s going on with your damn car?” Reijui complained, a coastal accent coating his words.
“Nothing. I’ll give you the coffee money later,” Tarak replied, not bothering to elaborate on anything. He grabbed one of the coffees from the cup holder, quickly taking a heavy sip. Reijui stared at the blond for a second before rolling his eyes and starting to drive again.
Reijui Sato. What a man. Tarak had known him for a little over five years; they both worked in Tarak’s father’s police district. Reijui has been an annoying pain in the ass for someone like him, especially so when he first came to the station. Tarak became desk partners with Reijui, and he talked the newbie’s ear off so much that Tarak eventually decided to just befriend him. If he had any hopes that he’d quit, well their new friendship just stirred up the conversation. Reijui took Tarak everywhere, particularly because Tarak was a new kid to the city of Haev. Yes, Tarak had lived there his whole life, but there’s a difference between going to red light districts versus the sheltered view he grew up with. They went on any and every excursion possible together. Tarak even got a matching tattoo—embarrassingly a drunken one, but the impact still stands—to match with him, right above his hip bone. It was a stupid image of a cartoonish cat paw, while Reijui had gotten a matching dog print. Tarak was immediately sulking after he’d sobered up, but a small part inside of him didn’t mind the craziness Reijui was.
Maybe he liked disorder for once.
This morning was no different than the rest. Reijui wore a similarly styled outfit as Tarak: a plain button down, black tie, dark colored pants, boring slacks; the whole “business casual, but ready to fight bad guys”-esque look. However, Reijui had a new—
“Your hair,” Tarak commented, his eyes glancing at Reijui’s head. “You dyed it again?”
“Yeah, dude! I think the red looks hot, you know, it matches the fall vibes,” he replied enthusiastically.
Tarak paused for a moment, setting down his coffee before leaning over to touch Reijui’s hair. The silky strands felt like butter between his fingers; Reijui always had indestructible hair. “You’re so vain,” he muttered—teased? (in his own way at least)—and took out a cigarette from his pocket. He rolled down the window as he lit it, the smoke carried out by the light breeze.
“I think you’re just jealous.” Reijui smirked as he glanced over at Tarak. “Are you good? You’ve been smoking a lot lately.” his tone dropped a few notches as he focused on the road.
“Your liver is shot, I don’t want to hear it, big picture of health,” Tarak said sarcastically.
Reijui has always been a drinker. Not in the sloppy drunk dad sort of way, but he’d try to pace himself at a bar and end up drinking five shots in a couple of hours. It had been a party trick in college even, because he’d always been the fastest person to finish.
“Hey, fuck off. My drinking does not have an emotional factor to it,” he joked.
Flashing lights and the familiar sound of police sirens snapped both of their attention to the road in front of them. Tarak let out of a quiet groan as he saw multiple—maybe seven or eight—police cars speeding past them. His phone buzzed with an alert from the local news station: “Five-Car Accident Causing Total Destruction for the Busy Bisu Highway, More Details Coming Soon.”
“It’s a fucking car accident.” he grumbled, sliding his phone back under his thigh.
Reijui rolled his eyes and scoffed. Bisu was one of the biggest and busiest highways in Rayaanr. It was a decently average drive from Tarak’s apartment to the station—only about forty minutes—but traffic made things a living nightmare. Of course, his parents stuck him up in the richest part of the city, so obviously everyone who lives in a 20 mile vicinity need to travel to and from here to work. Even light traffic added twenty minutes to the commute. It was too late for Reijui and Tarak to pull off and take another route, so they were essentially stuck.
“It’s going to be a long morning.” Reijui muttered.