Bete (BL) · Chat

The door to the interrogation room closed behind you with a dull thud. Bete stood his ground, the metal handcuffs on his wrists dull under the cold light. He didn't struggle, didn't even turn to look at the closed door—he knew it was pointless. The room held only a metal table, two chairs, and a piercing incandescent bulb overhead, the light as harsh as an operating table. A security camera hung in the corner, its red indicator light blinking like the eye of a beast patiently waiting for its prey. As he was forced into the chair by his shoulders, the shoulder pads of his uniform made a faint rustling sound. He didn't look up, the shadow of his cap's brim perfectly concealing half his face, revealing only the sharp line of his jaw and his tightly pursed lips. He heard the sound of leather shoes striking the floor tiles. Unhurried, with almost identical intervals between each step, carrying a near-cruel composure. The sound circled from the door to the space across from him, stopped, and then came the metallic scrape of a chair being pulled out. You sat across from him. Bete could feel that gaze falling on him, neither heavy nor light, like a blade suspended an inch above his skin—it hadn't fallen, but the chill had already seeped in. Silence filled the room for several seconds. Silence itself is an interrogation technique—Bete knew this better than anyone. His training in Organization Z told him that silence makes one's psychological defenses crumble on their own, making them unable to resist filling the void, unknowingly leaking information. So he chose silence. His breathing was steady, the lines of his shoulders showed no sign of tension, and even his interlaced fingers beneath his gloves maintained a proper looseness. It was as if he weren't a captured spy, but a guest invited for tea who just happened to be wearing uncomfortable handcuffs. You spoke first. The voice wasn't loud, the tone even bordering on gentle: "From Organization Z?" Bete didn't answer. His gaze was lowered, fixed on a faint scratch on the tabletop. His eyelashes cast a small fan-shaped shadow beneath his eyes, and his grey-blue irises looked even paler under the light, like a lake covered in thin ice in winter. You didn't seem to mind his silence. Bete heard you adjust your posture slightly, the sound of uniform fabric rubbing magnified in the quiet room. Then came a faint clinking of metal—you placed something on the table. Bete didn't look at what it was. His gaze remained motionless, not even an eyelash flickered. "When you fired your gun," your voice rang out again, still in that unhurried tone, "you fired three shots at the ceiling. One skewed left, two skewed right. The spacing between the bullet holes was uneven." Bete's jawline tightened for a split second—so fast he was certain it hadn't been caught. "It shows your hands were shaking when you fired." Your tone was like stating a fact that had nothing to do with him, calm almost to the point of nonchalance. "An assassin from Organization Z whose hands shake while firing." Silence. The lights hummed, the cold white light illuminating every detail of the room, making even the dust floating in the air visible. "No." You suddenly gave a soft laugh, one that vanished quickly into the air like a stone dropped into deep water. "You aren't an assassin. You're their worst one, aren't you?" Bete finally lifted his eyes. The light shone directly into his pale grey-blue pupils. Those eyes were calm and waveless, like glass covered in mist—but deep within that mist, something was being pressed down very, very low, so low it was almost invisible. *Insufficient pressure resistance.* Organization Z's evaluation report summarized him in those few words. He had thought this mission would be different. The casino was crowded, the situation changing by the second; he only needed to cause a distraction, slip into the security room, copy the intel, and leave. He had rehearsed the plan a dozen times, every detail etched into his mind. But the moment he fired, the moment his finger pulled the trigger, the sound of his heartbeat drowned out everything else. He didn't even know when you had started watching him. By the time he realized, you were already standing at the end of the corridor, backlit, expression unreadable—only those eyes like two cold, hard stones, silently crashing into his chest. "I watched the surveillance footage of you in the casino," your voice pulled him back to reality. "It took you forty-seven seconds to go from the west corridor to the security room door." You paused. "From the moment you entered the casino until I noticed you, a total of six minutes and twenty-two seconds." You leaned back in your chair, your movements as casual as if you were in your own living room. "Six minutes and twenty-two seconds," you repeated, your voice carrying an uncomfortable tone of examining some rare specimen. "Guess how many seconds your organization will spend to trade for you?" Bete's lips tightened slightly. He knew. He knew better than anyone. Organization Z had sent him not because he was capable of finishing the job. He was a stone meant to be thrown to test the waters. If he succeeded, they got the intel; if he failed, they lost a bottom-ranked pawn, not even worth the effort to clean up after. He was sent as cannon fodder for this scouting mission. But he still wanted to try. Unfortunately, he still failed. "Give up," Bete spoke, his voice steadier than he had expected. Between the opening and closing of his pale red lips, the words he spat out were cold and short. "I won't say a thing." His grey-blue eyes looked straight at you, and the thing pressed deep behind the mist surfaced slightly—not fear, not anger, but a sort of stubborn, almost foolish defiance, like a cornered animal that knows there is no escape but still refuses to expose its soft belly. The light spread a layer of cold color over his porcelain skin. A few strands of pale blonde hair peeked out from under his cap, falling by his cheekbones, swaying slightly with his light breaths. His eyelashes trembled. Extremely light. Extremely fast. Like a butterfly flapping its wings one last time before falling.