Ny rolled his eyes. It wasn’t worth arguing. So he didn’t bother to answer with more than a half-hearted shrug before he started to scarf down his food as quickly as possible.

There was a lengthy sigh of annoyance from the silver-haired man. He shook his head and returned to his desk. “Eat that and get out,” he said coldly.

“Yessir,” he replied, hiding his sarcasm behind a general air of obnoxious enthusiasm.

The man let out another long-suffering sigh.

“You know that you’re letting out a bit of your soul every time you sigh, right?” Ny surprised himself by saying it. It was a silly superstition he’d been told as a boy, and looking at his captor, he couldn’t help but remember it. This was why sobriety was the worst. It meant you remembered all sorts of ridiculous nonsense.

“I’ll make an effort not to then,” the man replied stiffly. He got the distinct impression that he’d gotten under his skin with that last comment. What a strange thing to react negatively to.

“Nah, that’s not the secret to getting your soul back,” he said easily. He decided that he didn’t care about controlling his talkative nature when he was too sober. The food was quite good too. It was a simple meal, but that was all the better for his battered stomach. He wondered if it was a coincidence or if the food had been selected with consideration for his condition.

“Then what’s the secret?” the man asked, absolutely no curiosity in his tone. He was clearly replying out of courtesy, which was funny. The kidnapper had all the power in this situation; he could tell him to shut up or kick him out, but instead he chose to indulge in a conversation that he hated.

What a funny bastard.

Ny’s lip quirked upward. “When you talk about your problems, you eat up the bits of your soul that you lost.”

That was what he’d believed as a child when he heard the superstition. A small thing. A silly thing. It didn’t mean anything deep, and it was ridiculous enough to cause most people to scoff.

For some reason, it caused this man to look at him with the strangest expression of puzzled intrigue he’d ever seen. The gaze made him feel awkward, which was a feat for a shameless man like himself, and he shifted uncomfortably in his spot.

“…That’s an interesting way to look at it,” he said finally, turning back to his work. “Where’d you hear that nugget of wisdom?”

To his surprise, the man did actually sound curious this time.

Ny decided that honesty wasn’t in his best interest. “Common phrase. My mum told me when I was young. Something about not telling lies, I think. Pointless now.” He shrugged and thought to himself that he didn’t wind up following that bit of “wisdom” when he’d lost bits of his soul.

Instead, he’d drank as much as he could to fill the hole that had been left behind.

What a ridiculous and cruel moment to be reminded of how much he had changed over the years. It was enough to make him crave the bottle more than ever. Before, he’d wanted to drink because he hated being sober. Now, he needed to drink in order to endure continuing to exist.

“I’m still sober,” he complained, hopeful that he could persuade his kidnapper to provide a drink.

“You can drink yourself to death on your own,” the man said. “I’m not helping with that. The door is over there.”

Hm. Well, it looked like whatever this crazy bastard wanted him for was outside that door. He might as well go without complaint. He was clean, well rested, and well-fed. It was a good time to die.

With a careless shrug, he slumped off of the bed and headed to the door. He was prepared for any number of strange things to happen. Mostly, he expected this to be some creepy role-play where the pervert wanted him to try to escape first.

He also thought that outside the door might be a problem that having a nameless bum that no one would miss would solve. Perhaps his organs would be sold by some criminal organization.

He really did have a tendency to come up with paranoid and exceptionally detailed possibilities for the actions of others. That was perhaps why he wasn’t prepared for something as simple as a knife.

He looked down at his stomach and back up to the stranger who had stabbed him the moment he opened the door.

“…This is a weird kink,” he said with a wry sort of acceptance. He really wished he was drunk. It would not only numb the pain but also make it easier for him to lie down and accept his fate.

To be honest, he’d never been good at accepting things. He just liked to pretend he was. He liked to imagine that he was the sort of man who rolled with the punches but in reality, he was the man who headbutted the fist.

It was really troublesome.

His attacker had a momentary lapse due to surprise. Either from his words or some other miscellaneous reason, but it was enough to stop him from getting gutted. He twisted the wrist holding the knife so that he would be forced to let go before using a push kick to send the bastard backwards, stumbling and nearly falling over. The idiot didn’t have time to collect himself before he got a crushing elbow to the face.

The assailant slumped against the door.

He’d beaten up his attacker in three swift movements but there was still the problem of the knife in his stomach. Was this how he died? And what exactly was the purpose here?

The door behind him opened and he stumbled backward into his kidnapper, whose eyes widened in surprise at the scene. He probably expected his toy to be dead. Well too bad, asshole.

“What happened…?” He looked toward the attacker and his face hardened, pulling the drunkard inside the room and locking the door behind him. “Are you okay?”

“Yep. I like knives to the gut. They feel good,” he replied, rolling his eyes. Was this the game? Did the freak want to patch up someone who was injured? Some excuse to feel like a good person?

He was guided back to the bed and instructed to lie down. He closed his eyes.

An injury like this and he really might just die. He didn’t have the money for treatment. Even if he lived through the blood loss or all of his organs were miraculously undamaged, his life on the street would ensure an infection that would probably take his life.

Well, this was a pointless way to die. Whatever. There were worse ways to go.