A small, quavering 10-year-old girl was lying down on the dirty ground, her hands and feet were tied up, she was beautiful like a fairy with pure white skin, pink hair, and she was even wearing a pink dress, which now looked dirty from being in contact with the slightly muddy, damp ground.
Tears were coming out of her eyes, and her mouth was taped, unable to shout, see or cry for help. Despite being in such a bad state, the little girl looked extremely pitiful and helpless, but no one was there to help her, to save her.
Four men stood slightly apart, looking menacing. The place was a damp, underground space, the bottom floor of an abandoned factory. It was pretty wide, and there were small windows from which rays of light came in. Making the place somewhat illuminated, but one might have to squint their eyes at first after entering.
The four men were all looking at the quavering girl on the ground. One of the skinny men could not help but say while licking his lips, "Tsk, tsk, if this chick grows up, I can’t imagine what kind of devastating beauty this thing will turn out to be."
Another one of the men frowned, "Stop your lecherous thoughts, she’s a kid."
One more chimed in with a sneer, "And you helped kidnap that very little kid, don’t act like a saint, fucking hypocrite."
The man wanted to rebuke, but was unable to find the right words to respond, so he remained quiet. It was at this moment that the group’s leader spoke, a muscular, well-built man. He had the eyes of a killer, unlike the three of them.
"Our job is only to deliver the girl to the right party after the successful kidnapping. So, the hard part is already over, considering whose daughter she is. Now we need to hand her over."
One of them asked him, "Who was the one who hired us? Boss?"
The boss let out a visible sigh, "We don’t know, they’re too careful about it. I only think that it was one of the rival companies of the girls’ parents. But that’s not the important part; rather, it’s the fact that they will pay us much more because they didn’t show their identity to us. A million dollars in total."
Another one uttered with lingering hesitation, "What will they do with her?"
The boss gave the guy a death glare, "That’s none of our damn business."
Then he paused for a moment, considering something, and eventually he revealed with lingering hesitation,
"Besides, I don’t have a good feeling about this girl, yes, the little girl is beautiful, lovely looking to the point that it feels almost...unnatural, and those red eyes, they feel like they don’t belong to a human. It just feels wrong."
There was a moment of heavy silence between the four members. They could not believe their ears; their boss, who was rumoured to have killed people with his very own hands, was now saying that he felt something was wrong with this girl? And why did it seem like he was almost...scared?
But of course, none of them dared to point it out aloud, even in the case that their boss was actually scared, or maybe even the man himself did not realise it, that a tone of fear had escaped his lips. However, they could not deny that the girl’s red eyes indeed looked extremely unnerving, especially the first time they saw them; there was an alienated wrongness in those eyes.
But the careless one among them still said it aloud with a laugh, "Boss, why does it feel like you’re almost scared of the girl’s red eyes or something?"
The boss looked at the guy with a death glare, and the one who commented shrank back in his seat in fear. After that, a quietness took over the place; only the muffled noise of the crying from the pink-haired girl could be heard in the utter silence of that abandoned place.
One of them asked the boss again, not liking the utter silence, "So, they will send a location where we will give the girl to their people, and they will hand over the money to us?"
The boss looked at the man in annoyance, "Do you have memory loss or something? We already discussed everything to the last detail. Why are you asking the obvious again?"
The man winced back at the admonishing tone of the boss and shut his mouth, saying nothing more. Another moment of silence descended upon the place, and the murmuring cries of the pink-haired girl also stopped by now, but suddenly something happened.
They could hear shouting from the outside, as all four instantly became alert. But when they listened intently, they realised that it was the voice of a little boy. The boy seemed to be shouting for help, again and again, as if something was chasing him, and the sound grew closer and closer.
The boss arched his eyebrows and thought to himself for a moment. There was a dense jungle right behind the abandoned factory, and a little farther away was a small children’s park. Some kid could have lost their way and been chased by wild dogs. As for the possibility that this was a trick to lure them out by the little girl’s parents or the ones who hired them, the boss didn’t even think about it.
He was a man who had done this kind of job many times. They all had untraceable cells with them, and were meticulous throughout the whole process of it; almost 2 weeks of thorough observation and planning went into this kidnapping. He had prepared for this particular kidnapping more than he had for any other in his life.
But of course, he wouldn’t ignore the possibility entirely that someone had indeed found them. So, out of caution, he sent the kind one among the group forward. And instructed him to appear as if he were a drunkard with a cigarette in his mouth. Finding a drunkard in an abandoned place was quite normal. The boss ordered the other two to go through the back door and observe if there was indeed anyone else out there observing from afar or not.
While he himself remained in there, making sure that no third party came in to take away the girl lying on the ground, escaping their clutches. For a moment, he thought whether he should tie up the girl with a column just in case, but then disregarded that thought.
If some authorities did find them, they would need to run away carrying the girl. So, that might even backfire.
As the somewhat soft-natured one among them walked forward towards the door, the light continued to brighten, eventually, and he started to exit the darkness of the factory building with a cigarette lit in his mouth and a drunken look on his face.
However, his eyes did not appear to be those of a drunken man. The crying voice grew louder and louder. The moment he fully exited the doorway, he saw a small boy of almost the same height as the little girl they kidnapped, crying while sitting on the ground. But he was more astonished by something else: the eye colour of the little boy. They were beautiful, with an otherworldly ocean blue hue, the exact opposite of the pink-haired girl.