#cnxchangwook

[cnxtaemin-blog]

‘savagery’

@cnxchangwook

you'd think with the master of the house dead that taemin wouldn't feel the need anymore to be so damn finicky about cleaning this mansion. for the last year, he's been hating the housework that is forced on him, he's always been so frustrated by it and dragged his feet to do it. he never understood why they had so many chores when there was only three people in the whole building. yang never had any visitors up until a few days ago, but yet he insisted the place always look immaculate.

and now that he's dead, taemin should feel more... freedom. he should be kicking his feet up, relaxing, waiting for the snow to melt, maybe having sex with soojung in the backroom like usual. or the front room. or any room. ding, dong, the witch is dead-- taemin should feel elated.

instead he is nervous, pacing the hallways at night and clinging onto his butler duties as though they are the only things worth doing anymore. he has definitely gotten snider and angrier since yang's death, suspicious of everyone, even his own shadow, but if anything he's been working harder to clean and tidy things. perhaps it's the year spent under yang's tutelage, or perhaps he's subconsciously looking for those diamonds, but either way he can't seem to stop.

he goes into the gallery despite the fact that it is his least favorite room to be in. it's creepy, there's a lot of faces and paintings hanging up on the walls, lots of dog paintings for no reason. the dogs ones freak him out the worst, they look dead inside. it gives him shivers.

but he does his best to ignore it and focus on just setting things right inside the room, picking up any sort of clutter he sees and wiping off the tables. it's a good long minute before he turns and sees one of the guests sitting in a chair, and he jumps right out of his skin. "holy shit!" he curses, his nerves all on edge. he hadn't seen him there before, hadn't even realized anyone was in here, and he has to take a moment to calm his heart rate down before looking back again at the guest (what is his name again?).

"I'm um... i'm sorry sir, i didn't see you. i thought this room was empty..." why in the world would anyone want to come in here to chill anyway? "I didn't mean to bother you, mister.....?" he honestly can't remember this guy's name.

[cnxtaekwoon-blog]

an unexpected guest. | peach & stone

@cnxchangwook​

ah, the buddy system. of course.

it is only natural that no one was to be left alone, for a depraved crime had just been committed in this very household, and among all those fingers pointed were their twelve owners, all of which were deemed equally suspect.

it was always much harder to prove innocence than guilt, wouldn’t you agree?

even then, there was something terribly sinister about the context of the arrangement. it was, to some degree, what you would call a randomized controlled trial - mixing and matching innocents with the guilty in hopes of finding a particular reaction (namely, another murder) that reveals their presence. in other words, it was a strategy to determine who the killer was, was it not?

nevertheless, he is not particularly surprised at the declaration; more so the assignments. 

ji changwook. a charity organizer.

there was something about running a business that was akin to making it a rumor mill, and no matter how vehemently he would deny participating in any form of gossip, for gossip was always an antecedent to drama - the petty, relationship-ruining little thing it was - what has been heard cannot be unheard.

he did not sound like a bad man, yet those who did not sound like bad men were rarely good men; in fact, yang had sounded like a good man, but here he was, a cold corpse lying in a cold mansion teeming with people who had enough reason to do more than just hurt him.

and who knew about the rumors that had reached the man that were about taekwoon himself?

(not that he cared for them - or ever would - of course.) 

there is a guarded way to his actions, and as he opens the bedroom door, maybe expecting to be held at gunpoint just a little, he is instead met with a calm man on the other side of the room and a -

what the hell?

there is a small ball of fur making the smallest indent on the sheets of what he would assume was his bed. its tail is tucked in neatly, and its back rises and falls at a leisurely pace, as if taking a comfortable nap.

the unfazed expression on the other male’s face is enough to get him to briefly wonder if he might actually have to compete with the creature for a mattress that was probably meant for him in the first place, and he lets out a quiet huff, perplexed. he wasn’t disgusted, per say; it was actually quite cute and rather cleanly looking, but it was literally right in the middle of the entire bed, and looked as if it could drown within the layers of blankets it laid on top of.

so he raises his voice just the slightest (his indoor voice, he found, was more of a library voice than anything else), and speaks with caution as to not wake the small animal up.

“um.” once he catches the man’s attention, he gestures at it, as if trying to make a point.

is it yours?