#code zero

So she tried to keep her thoughts at bay and focus on the current task at hand: getting out of the building safe and sound before history repeated itself and they ended up in a cage with no air or worse, with some poisonous gas filling their lungs without them noticing. Some could have said that she was paranoid but she couldn’t help her own mind. Once the first dose of hope had rushed through her, there was nothing left but memories, vivid pictures of Wendy’s lifeless body on the restaurant’s floor, the silent cry of Joohyun that no one had paid attention to and Namjoon laying on the ground in pieces. Gosh, she truly needed to stop reminiscing or else she could have gone crazy in any minute.

Seulgi’s breath hitched when Yoongi squeezed her wrist, his thumb caressing her scarred skin before he slid his fingers lower and took her hand without taking his eyes off the metal door at the end of the corridor. He made the whole situation so natural that instead of pushing her buttons in a wrong way, the light touch actually soothed the girl’s jittery nerves. And Seulgi was honestly grateful for the boy, for all his efforts and everything he had done for the team from the moment when all hell had broken loose.

When they had reached the door however, she pulled away because her palm felt sweaty and it made her feel a tad bit embarrassed but her flustered emotions didn’t hold her back from remaining close, their shoulders occasionally brushing to each other while they walked down the stairs. Their steps echoed in the silence hence Seulgi cleared her throat and mustered up her courage to speak up, sharing her concerns with the rest of the team instead of pondering over them all by herself. She had learned her lesson by now so she knew that her silence could be just as deadly as Choego itself.

‘There’s a big chance that we won’t be able to use the bridge just yet as the electric fencing system of the 9th sector’s border can be still active but fortunately the port near it belongs to the 23th sector which means, we can get the hell out of here in a boat,’ she said and looked at the youngsters from above her shoulder when Yerim let out a surprised hum.

‘What if we can’t find any?’ she asked and her question was followed by silence as if none of them had dared to voice out the obvious until Yoongi cleared his throat and forced the words though his chapped lips dryly.

‘Then we will have to wait a bit longer to make sure that we won’t end up dead the way Jimin did when he had crossed that invisible border Hoseok talked about,’ he reminded them all of the late boy’s unrestful report on the rich guy’s tragic end before he shifted his cold gaze from the wall to the girl, earning a resigned glance in return. The IT guy was well aware that he could have been easier on her but he wasn’t the type that threw half-truths with both hands just to make people feel at ease around him. He preferred being in silence rather than lying as it took too much out of him to keep track of his lies and only spoke up in crucial moments like the current one when he was the only person who was willing to summarize their chances. If the little girl didn’t like his raw straightforwardness, she should have learned to not ask questions that were inevitably followed by bad news.

Yerim tried her best to keep her mouth shut after their team leader turned ahead, setting a somewhat comfortable pace that she could follow without panting on Jungkook’s right. She counted the stairs to make her mind busy and watched as the boy’s steps complemented hers, filling the air with loud thuds whenever she was midstep. And the girl liked it. She liked that he was there for her even after the bravado she had pulled when she had taken a step further from him in the computer room, not being ready to comfort him the same way he had comforted her with his soft words and light touches after her brother had died and ever since then. She had been a coward when the fog had dissolved to thin air because she had feared that her heart couldn’t have borne with his sadness and that tiny pinch of clear regret in his eyes. She was still a bit afraid that Taehyung had been right when he had walked up to her in the restaurant and had outright told her that it was only guilt that kept Jungkook by her side. Yerim wasn’t ready to hear the same from the boy, to lose him therefore she couldn’t ask him about the hallucination that he had seen.

They were somewhere between the second and the first floor when she heard a loud bang and soon after her forehead bumped into a firm back, earning an annoyed tsk from Seulgi whose right foot slid from one step to another.

‘Stop right there, you scums! All of you!’ someone shouted from behind and the girl needed to tilt her head to right a little to be able to see the speaker’s face although as soon as her gaze rested upon the stranger, she wished she hadn’t been so eager to know what was going on and why were her teammates suddenly so willing to do as the intruder asked them to when they wanted nothing else but to leave this building.

Yerim’s eyes widened in fear when she noticed the gun in the man’s trembling hand and for a moment, she hoped that she was still in the computer room and it was all the chemical fog’s doing although a part of her suspected that the weapon that he aimed at Yoongi was very much real as she couldn’t have possibly been afraid of something that had never crossed her mind before. And all of their previous hallucinations had been about people and situations they had been connected to by their own fears, guilt or regrets. Hence this new turn of events made no sense to the journalist whose nails dug into Seulgi’s upper arm on instinct. She had no idea from where this man had come from and why he wanted them to stop but she was ready to comply if it had meant that they could live. She promised the Architecture major that she would survive and tell the world what had happened in Choego. She couldn’t possibly die an inch from their escape. This wasn’t why her brother had saved her life back in that damned basement.

But the journalist in her didn’t care about rationality when she cleared her throat, eyes boring deep into the madman’s, hungry for the reasons behind his sudden appearance.

‘Who… who are you? And what are…’ the question slipped through her lips and the corner of the man’s mouth twitched in annoyance before he shifted the weapon to Yerim with an uncoordinated move. There was something akin to panic in his eyes although the girl couldn’t have pinpointed what had made him act like a man in despair. Hadn’t he known yet that they had already turned off the self-destructing program on the main computer which meant, they were safe after such a long time of constant danger? Or could it have been the complete opposite that made him furious? After all, the IT major had told them that the program that had been killing them one by one had been installed from the very same room where they had been a few minutes prior. The assumption that this man might have been the culprit sent a jolt down the girl’s spine and dressed her pale skin in goosebumps.

‘Shut up! One more word and I swear, little girl, that I’ll shoot a pretty hole into your pretty head without thinking twice,’ the man said when she markedly opened her mouth again and the words burned onto the tip of Yerim’s tongue due to the threat. As she looked him in the eye, she believed him when he told her that he would have killed her if she had kept rubbing him the wrong way.

So she nodded in understanding and clenched her lips, taking a step backwards on jelly legs.

‘Everything will be fine, just stay quiet,’ Jungkook whispered into her ear when her shoulder crashed into his arm and his raspy voice felt like a soothing cream for her burn marks except that it wasn’t the strong sunlight after a long afternoon on the beach that turned the girl’s skin crimson but the closeness of the engineer who still had an intensive effect on her especially when his breath fanned over her cheek. Gosh! She must have been insane to feel intimidated by Jungkook of all people when there was a man with a loaded gun in his hand barely a meter from them.

‘Are you deaf or something?’ the man asked, clearly annoyed and he aimed at Jungkook then back at Yerim as if he couldn’t decide which one of them had dared to speak up after he had set the rules.

‘Calm down, man,’ Yoongi tried to reason and the girl had to admit that his tone was indeed composed enough to ease her worries. The way he kept the eye contact with the stranger was confident but not at all forceful and for a split second it made her believe that they were safe, that they would be saved by the computer guy once again. By now she definitely owed him her life but she was fine with such debts. Their family wasn’t overly rich or powerful but her father had a stable job at a prestigious company therefore she was sure that they would have thanked him for everything he had done for her in a generous way. Oh, how much she craved her father’s loving arms and her mother’s scolding at the dining table! And how much Yerim missed Seokjin, too.

Thinking of her family wasn’t a wise idea because their precious smile and constant support turned the girl’s vision blurry and before she could have realized, a sorrowful sob escaped her throat the moment the man took a step towards Yoongi.

‘Hah! You are just like those narcissist scientists. You don’t take me seriously. But I’ll teach you not to make the same mistake ever again,’ he spat every word with big hand gestures like a maniac then pulled the trigger.

It was warm at first like the water under the shower head when it touched her still dry, naked limbs. And her body wanted to jerk away from it, a soundless scream escaping her throat as it usually did before she grabbed the tap and changed the jet’s unbearable temperature. But this time she wasn’t in the shower cabin and she couldn’t shake off the feeling that was followed by pain.

Yerim’s gaze loitered over the man’s worn figure before it settled on her tee. There was blood on its fine material near her stomach and her eyes widened at the sight.

She felt out of place when a dreadful scream reached her ears. At first, she thought that it was her own voice that she heard from under heavy layers of water but then she realized that her throat was too dry to give out such horrendous noises. It must have been Seulgi, the girl who stood right in front of her. The same girl who had been her only shield a trivial minute before. Funny but for a split second, the only thing she could think about was that she shouldn’t have taken that unsure step backwards. She had been so stupid.

Before her knees gave out, the world was nothing but white noise. But the collision between her body and the stairs didn’t hurt as much as she had previously assumed. In fact, the edges of the stairs were rather soft like a pillow or a pile of blankets.

‘Hey, look at me, Yerim! Do you hear me?’ a familiar voice called out for her and only then when her blurry gaze settled on a firm chest she realized that she wasn’t lying on the ground but was held in Jungkook’s arms. He must have caught her before she could have fallen and it made her crack a silly, lifeless smile. He smelled like smoke and medicine but she liked even that and hummed as a response to his worried question. Of course, she heard him. His voice was the only thing that filled her mind other than the irritating, buzzing sound in her ears.

Yerim’s body moved slowly even during the smallest movements but eventually she managed to look at the boy whose gaze was fixated on something ahead of them, most probably on the madman who was still very much unstable with a very much loaded gun in his hand. It made the girl wonder what she would have seen if she had turned her head a bit sideway but a part of her didn’t want to know. She just wanted to feel the warmth of Jungkook’s body and fall asleep quietly because her heavy eyelids were killing her. Maybe if she had done so, she could have woken up from this nightmare, too, and then she could have met her brother who would have scolded her for sleeping in on such an important day. Yerim could easily imagine Wendy following him inside and giving him a disapproving glance for trespassing the girls’ area and she would have apologized on Seokjin’s behalf at least a dozen times while she would have put on casual clothes, shoving her pyjama into her bag. The blurry picture made her smile.

‘Guys, she’s bleeding. I… I can’t make it stop. Guys!’ Jungkook cried out as his gaze shifted to Yerim then back to the others. There was something in his voice that bothered the younger but she couldn’t possibly call him out on not being quite himself because she didn’t know the real Jungkook in the first place. Came to think of it, they had barely exchanged a few words since they had first met and people in crisis situations were acting out of character anyway. So she might have fallen for a guy who had only existed in Choego.

But the girl didn’t mind it since they were still in the artificial city and the boy was rocking her back and forth as if he had wanted her to dream about something nice and she longed for the same. Yerim wished to dream about them meeting under different circumstances and him holding her hand even in the most unforgiving cold, shoving their intertwined fingers into his pocket. She wanted to share a milkshake with him with two straws in the delicious drink and plenty of other romantic stuff she had seen in her favourite dramas.

With another wave of pain however she needed to realize that getting shot by a maniac and finding peace in your crush’s arms weren’t as wonderful as it looked on TV which reminded her of Park Min Young in City Hunter and then the first ever role she had seen the actress in, the fearless journalist woman in Healer who had revealed the wrongdoings of the rich and powerful against all the odds.

She looked at her pale hand in her lap and lifted it to her jeans’ pocket.

‘I… you need to…’ she said weakly in a raspy voice but it was hard to form the words. Thus she kept her eyes on her slim fingers instead and started to scratch the hem of her pocket so that the boy could understand that it was too tight for her in this position to fish out the paper she had hid inside of it when they were waiting for the main computer to turn the program off. ‘I wrote an… article about this,’ she explained while her arms slowly turned numb. It felt just like when she had slept on one of them for too long without moving an inch. It felt like a piece of raw meat attached to her shoulder uselessly. It scared her to death but she tried not to show it, hiding the horror behind a smile.

But Jungkook shook his head and refused to take the handwritten report. His eyes looked like diamonds, Yerim realized faintly, although gems weren’t made of water nor his warm tears worthed millions to anyone other than the girl.

‘I’ll call the ambulance. The program is shut down, so there must be a signal in this sector already. Everything will be fine I… just don’t give up, okay? We made it, Yerim! We made it, so please,’ he begged and every single word of his felt like a dagger aimed at the girl’s heart. She really wanted to be strong for him. She wanted to wipe his salty tears off his cheeks with her thumbs but no matter how hard she gritted her teeth, she couldn’t made her arms move.

It took her a while actually, to give up on her pathetic attempts but once the realization settled in her, she bit into her lips and tried to brush aside her building up anxiety. She was going to die soon. She wondered whether her brother had been just as afraid as she felt. Could it have been that he had put on an act for her to try to ease her sorrow? Shedding bloody tears might have been as painful as bleeding out on the floor, soft flesh torn by metal. Suddenly, she felt apologetic towards Seokjin for playing the victim, acting selfish and not considering his pain beside her own wrecked heart.

‘Tell my parents that we… that we both loved them,’ she asked the boy with teary eyes and a fake smile in the corner of her mouth. She wanted to see her parents one more time, dozens of times. She didn’t want to die without saying goodbye but she knew it wasn’t up to her. There was no one who could decide when their time would come.

Jungkook shook his head again, this time with a sobbing, broken sound, but the girl was sure that he would have granted her final wish nevertheless once he accepted the same thing that a part of her refused to. That it was over for her regardless of the signal or the ambulance car that couldn’t have crossed the bridge in time. She didn’t believe in childish tales of the power of human kindness and love anymore. Choego was too wicked for such magic to exist. Funny that this city should have been the bridge to a better future.

‘I’m so sorry, Yerim. I’m so sorry… for your brother and you, too. If only I had shut up and hadn’t triggered him. If I had pulled you out of that lab,’ the boy cried out, rocking her body back and forth desperately as if it could have shaken a little sparkle back to Yerim’s lifeless limbs. She wanted to tell Jungkook that it was alright, that she wasn’t angry with him and that no matter what the chemical fog had made him see, Seokjin wouldn’t have been mad either as he had been unable to hold grudges for more than ten minutes. But when she wanted to open her mouth, all she could manage was a faint smile before she died, eyes being unfocused as a few teardrops ran down her pale skin.

Jungkook’s sobbing made Seulgi terrified. She didn’t want to die in this rotten town so close to the way out but being kept in hostage and not seeing anything but death and the pure panic in Yoongi’s eyes, she was kind of certain that she had been too hopeful too soon.

After the madman had shot Yerim and that painful cry had escaped her mouth, the IT guy had tried to use the chaos to their advantage and take the gun out of the maniac’s hand but things had gotten pretty nasty when getting in the way, the man had shaken the younger off his body and had grabbed her by the arm, using her as some kind of human-sized shield to get to the computer room in one piece, so that he could restart the self-destruction mode that had killed almost everyone in the city. Chest bouncing heavily and breathing uneven, Seulgi had never wanted to smoke so desperately before. 

The girl saw Yoongi’s fingers twitch in frustration when she mouthed a silent “don’t” to him but he attacked the man anyway, pulling her out of his arms with a sudden thug then pushing her on the ground. The all too familiar sound of a gunshot made Seulgi’s limbs froze within a heartbeat. Staring at her hands with her parted lips and blurry eyes, she didn’t dare to look at the two men lying a few centimetres from her seemingly unmoving but then, when she had finally mustered up her courage, the crazy man’s shoulder made a sudden jerk and she acted on impulse. She hit his head hard with the first object that she grabbed - the fire extinguisher from the wall - and rushed to Yoongi, pulling on his sleeve and punching his chest with such intensity as if her life had depended on it.

‘Open your eyes, please! Don’t die on me, you can’t die on me,’ she cried out while her warm tears ran down her cheeks and meeting at the bottom of her chin, they all fell on the boy’s tee in unison. The girl couldn’t have believed that this was how it all ended: with both Yerim and Yoongi dying in their arms and a crazy and desperate, middle aged man lying between their bodies, hopefully unconscious.

Seulgi could hear the engineer boy’s wrecked voice while he talked to someone on his phone but thinking about the possible help being on the way felt too absurd to be true. Why would have anyone come to rescue them now? They were all human lab rats, waiting for this city to send them after their teammates in a rather merciful way. After all, everyone else had been gone already. What was so special in her and Jungkook that they survived? She had always been in the way. If only, she had been more careful and the madman hadn’t grabbed her, then maybe Yoongi would have told them what to do next instead of crying their eyes out.

‘Could you please stop punching my chest?’ a wrecked voice broke the tragic melody of their sobbing and Seulgi snapped her head at the boy’s flustered face, eyes growing twice as big as they usually were. For a moment, she forgot to breathe while she was observing his chapped lips and half closed eyes. Just when he shifted his gaze to her fist and opened his mouth to repeat his request, did the girl realize that she was still holding onto his clothes desperately.

‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she mumbled under her nose after she took her hand off him and pulled a bit away to give him enough space to even his breathing. ‘Are you okay?’ she asked when he sat up and the worry sounded ridiculous in her voice when Yoongi almost lost his balance due to his trembling left arm.

Truth to tell, Yoongi didn’t seem quite alright. His warm blood had already soaked his tee around his left shoulder and the color was slowly draining from his face. Yet, when he looked the girl in the eyes, his pale lips were in a firm line and he was determined. He even smiled at her to brush aside her worrisome questions.

‘Yeah, don’t worry too much,’ he said when Seulgi opened her mouth nevertheless and she was about to point out that she had a very good reason to be concerned when the IT guy turned his head towards the stairs, watching Jungkook who was still rocking Yerim back and forth, begging her to hold on just a bit longer. ‘How is Yerim?’ he asked but the girl couldn’t find the right words. Instead, she shook her head.

There was a painful sigh escaping from Yoongi’s throat before he leaned his forehead on the Architecture major’s shoulder and closed his eyes. They both knew that someone should have treated his wound but none of them had the willpower to risk taking the stray bullet out of his flesh so they waited in silence, hoping that the ambulance car was indeed on the way.

They were in the same position when the first responder arrived with two policemen. While the officers put a handcuff on the unconscious criminal and took care of the loaded gun that was still unlocked, the man took the bullet out of the IT guy’s shoulder and put a pressure bandage on the wound. Only when the non-emergency attendant arrived did they start the patient transportation.

The ride back to Seoul was a blur of highlighted emotions. It could have taken ten minutes or two entire hours, Seulgi couldn’t have told because she was fixated on holding onto Yoongi’s hand who had fallen asleep due to the painkiller he had gotten. The girl was taken aback how peaceful his face looked like while he was blacked out. She honestly doubted she would have ever found tranquillity in her dreams again after the massacre they had witnessed. Hence she was a tad bit afraid when they eventually arrived and the doctors took the wounded guy away, leaving her and Jungkook on the hallway with the dull blankets around their figures. Since they weren’t injured, people didn’t know what to do with them and they had no idea either. A faint voice in Seulgi’s head told her that she should have called her mom but she wasn’t ready for their usual, pity fights therefore she decided to wait for Yoongi on an empty bench instead and seemingly Jungkook came to a similar conclusion.

‘What’s that?’ Seulgi asked when they sat down next to each other, her gaze settled on the bloody piece of paper in the younger’s hand, but the boy didn’t seem to notice that she was talking to him and the girl didn’t want to push him. It had obviously belonged to Yerim and her death was too fresh and painful.

Eventually, the two university students fell asleep on one another - the girl’s head leaning against the boy’s upper arm and the boy’s atop the girl’s - and they were both dreaming about blood and broken screams. Even though they had escaped, a part of them was still trapped in that horror, in their dreadful memories as if deep down they knew that none of them would be able to rest until the Cheongsan Group stopped their project of developing artificial cities once and for all. Or maybe until the day they died.

She felt conflicted because a part of her - that was always looking for the good in people - had failed to take this much hatred in from one minute to another. In one moment, she found herself staring at the boy with suspicion in her eyes, waiting for him to make a mistake. A few seconds later, her brain immediately started to come up with some excuses as it tried to convince her that Joohyun had slipped because of her diabetes which was utterly ridiculous. Medically speaking, she had been healthy enough to walk this much in the dark without much trouble. Although, considering that the girl had tended to have mild panic attacks, maybe the darkness had indeed had an extremely negative effect on her body. She could have fallen because her limbs had been trembling or simply due to phantom anoxia. Yet, as she thought it through over and over again, the med student couldn’t help but look for flaws in Taehyung’s story.

Not that she could have accused him with murder in front of everyone. That would have been outright stupid on her part because she couldn’t be sure that any of them except for Namjoon would have agreed with her about the grumpy boy being the bad guy. Sure, he was extremely annoying and mostly a real pain in the ass but a murderer? That felt a bit too extreme to voice out loud even under the absurd circumstances they needed to bear with. People were freaking dying around them without any further assistance so why would have anyone taken a mental burden that heavy on purpose by killing one of their teammates? Shifting her gaze from the Marketing major to her remained allies, Wendy honestly doubted that any of them would have signed a contract willingly after this even if the company had offered them one in the first place. After all, it would have been truly careless of the researchers to open the gate of Choego for the public after everything that had happened with them during the last few hours. They wouldn’t have done such thing, right?

‘Is everything alright?’ her boyfriend’s worried question only registered in her mind after his second attempt when his words were followed by a light squeeze on her fingers. She hadn’t even noticed that Namjoon had been holding her hand until the tender pressure that he had applied on her skin.

For the first time since she had first met the boy - and that spring afternoon had already been history -, Wendy didn’t have a good enough answer so she just stared at him, eyes that were soaked in confusion boring deep into those warm, chocolate-like orbs. A rational part of her, that knew from first-hand experience that secrets had never done anything good, wanted to tell him everything. That she felt uneasy, that she wanted to be as far from the lilac haired guy as it was humanly possible because his self-obsessed attitude freaked her out and that she had this eerie feeling in her chest that somehow, in some way, Taehyung had had something to do with Joohyun’s accident. The clumsy confession was actually on the tip of her tongue, her throat feeling itchy due to the dissolving lump, when the boy let out a resigned sigh and shot an apologetic smile at her, squeezing her hand once again.

‘It was a stupid question. Sorry,’ he mumbled quietly and a tad bit ashamed as if he had been afraid that he might have made Wendy upset with his inconsiderate question. But he hadn’t. It was rather this whole day that had been long and tiring already without an end to be seen.

To ease her boyfriend’s worries, the med student leaned her head against the boy’s upper arm and grazed her nose along his bare skin underneath the short sleeve of his shirt. The couple kept walking towards the gate hand in hand, steps still a little uncertain as they tried to find comfort in each other’s presence. On one hand, the girl was grateful that she wasn’t alone in this living hell even if the situation wasn’t easier on them just because they were together. On the other hand, she wished she shouldn’t have had to worry about one more person, thinking of Seokjin who had bleeded out in front of his sister’s eyes. What good their bond had done to Yerim? It’d just left the poor soul more broken.

The Sun was blinding when Yoongi climbed up on the metal ladder and opened the trapdoor at the end of the tunnel but it was definitely nice to finally feel the warmth of its rays after all that wandering in the dark. As soon as her feet touched the ground above, Wendy took a look around, not quite believing that a park that beautiful and calming could really exist at a place like the monstrous city that threatened their lives. From the marble fountain on her right to the realistic, green grass, everything seemed astonishing as if it had been a piece of paradise. Only the melodic chirp of birds were missing. The unnatural silence sent an unpleasant shiver down Wendy’s spine.

Therefore the med student was actually relieved when she noticed the unmistaken sound of Namjoon’s growling stomach. It helped her focus on something other than the ethereal beauty of their teammates’ graveyard. Putting her hand atop the boy’s shoulder, she forced a smile onto her lips then turned towards Seulgi who was standing on the IT guy’s right. Like a child seeking protection, she hadn’t left Yoongi’s side ever since he had spoken up in her defence when Taehyung had been about to question her motives.

‘Are you one hundred percent sure, that we’re safe now?’ Wendy asked, gaining everyone’s attention with her straightforward question. Hah. It seemed that the accuracy of the voiceless girl’s knowledge might have been something that deep down each one of them was curious about after all.

However, old habits die hard as people said hence the desired answer remained unspoken when Seulgi bit into her lower lip, slowly, tentatively shifting her gaze from her dirty shoes to the boy whose icy gaze somehow seemed warmer than the cold and bleak world around them. When Yoongi nodded, his slim eyebrows sliding upwards in an encouraging manner, the girl took a deep breath and mimicked the movement of they boy’s head with a firm hum. 

‘Yes. Until four, the 22th district is one of the safest places in the city,’ she said after a quick calculation, sticking strictly to the bare minimum regarding the shared information. It made the whole decision making process a matter of faith kind of twisted game but lack of any scientific or a simple but well-detailed explanation, Wendy chose to trust in her own medical knowledge. As far as it seemed, Seulgi had photographic memory which meant that she could have indeed remembered the map that she had seen beforehand. Considering that she was also an architecture major, the possibility that she was right about the district was relatively high. It made her their best chance to survive. If only they had paid attention to the signs a bit more. They could have realized that she had been more than a liability and then maybe a few of the dead would have been still alive. It was wishful thinking, she knew, but it still made the med student regret that she had been so careless.

‘Okay, it means that we have a few hours here before the main computer shuts down the electricity, right?’ Wendy asked, keeping her eyes on the IT guy while she was waiting for his confirmation. Out of all people, he seemed to understand the system that kept them inside the most. It made his words just as important as the girl’s who was anxiously nibbling on her lip with her fists in tiny, slightly trembling balls by her sides. When Yoongi nodded, Wendy let out a relieved sigh and clapped her hands. ‘Then we need to find something to eat,’ she stated before she rubbed her palms together.

Although her eagerness was soon interrupted by a mocking snort, coming from behind her boyfriend’s back. The irritating sound of Taehyung’s painfully slow clapping dressed her skin in goosebumps. She didn’t like the shit-eating grin on his face.

‘Fantastic idea! Why not throw a picnic in the middle of this lovely park, waiting for death to take us all?’ the Marketing major spoke up even though his malicious words didn’t have that much of an effect on the crowd this time as his stomach chose the worst moment possible to demand some food. The med student swallowed back a nasty laughter that was scratching her throat to find its way to the surface. This guy was truly ridiculous.

Namjoon put his palm on the girl’s shoulder and drew a few undecipherable patterns onto the soft skin in the crook of her neck, trying to calm her nerves down before she could have said something that she would have regretted right away. Like that time back in September when they had visited the boy’s parents for the holidays and she had made an impulsive comment on his mother’s fashion sense. She hadn’t been able to stop apologizing during dinner. It was a strange thing to see her that insecure and uncomposed again.

Taking a deep breath, the girl turned towards the others and tried her best to shut Taehyung’s unsatisfied mumbling out.

‘What’s your opinion on a lunch? I won’t force my idea on you but honestly, at this point, we can never know when will be the next time we need energy to run out of a building that tries to kill us all,’ she scratched her nape, an awkward giggle escaping her mouth. Her reasoning sounded so shameful and partly manipulative even though she was telling the truth. Even if they couldn’t think about eating after all those horrible things that had happened, medically speaking, their bodies needed some food to keep up with the energy loss that the constant fear, that they lived in, produced. Hence a lunch would have been in their favour, too.

‘I could eat,’ a small voice came from her left. It was Yerim whose willingness automatically forced Jungkook to agree with the idea, too. Though, his clumsy nod looked pretty uncertain as if he couldn’t have believed what he was doing.

Wendy waited patiently, her fingers tapping a familiar melody on Namjoon’s arm when after a few exchanged glances and reassuring words, both Yoongi and Seulgi gave in, joining the bigger part of their embattled team. 

‘Any idea where to start looking for food? Are there any convenience stores nearby?’ she asked Seulgi, hoping that the researchers might have marked a few facilities on any of their maps that the Architecture major could have taken a glance at. It was hopelessly naive of her to think so highly of that certain piece of paper considering how little information they had received on their first day but hope was the only thing they had. And she didn’t intend to give up so easily.

‘There is a restaurant two corners from here,’ the answer slipped through Seulgi’s lips sooner than it had done last time although her voice was still fragile and whisper-like. She then lifted her arm and pointed at the direction that was opposite of the fountain’s and brushed a mop of hair behind her ear with her other hand when it fell back to her side. She didn’t say a word about those hungry architects who had talked about the fine taste of grilled samgyeopsal in the 22th district when she had taken the elevator to the meeting room on their first day, nor that they had been the ones who had created the structure of the building with the unique, needle-shaped roof that was visible from the spot where they stood.

‘Good,’ Yoongi said with a small nod, satisfied that they didn’t need to take an enormous detour. That would have been inconvenient and annoying considering that they had five hours left to get out of this killing machine. Having a lunch seemed so insignificant beside survival. ‘Then hurry up and eat something first but after that, we need to find the main computer,’ he stated, reminding each one of his teammates of their goal. Not that he would have assumed that they had suddenly forgotten what was at risk. He was sure that neither of them would have been able to erase their fallen mates’ faces from their heads.

When everyone gave him some signs of understanding, he turned towards Seulgi to ask one more extremely important question. He needed to know whether she had a guess about that, too or they would need more time to look for the building that hid the computer somewhere in this asylum.

‘Do you know where it is?’ Once the words fell off his lips, Yoongi and a few other around them, for example Jungkook, held back their breaths, the killing anticipation dancing on their nerves.

The sudden attention made the girl’s throat go dry but she mustered up her courage and held her chin up, looking straight into the IT guy’s cold eyes that now were glinting with curiosity and maybe with a pinch of hope. Unfortunately, the girl couldn’t give him the answer that he had wanted to hear.

‘If you’re right and it’s located in the last district then I know where to start searching,’ she admitted but she couldn’t have been one hundred percent sure because her instructions would have been based on the guy’s believes and not on certain facts. She knew how many districts Choego had. She also knew where they had built up the last. But if the main computer hadn’t been in the mentioned area’s main building then she was out of options. Even her knowledge had its limits.

Taehyung must have noticed the uncertainty in her voice because hearing upon her answer, he let out a snort-like chuckle that was heavy with malice. 

‘Are you all idiots? You really want to enter another useless building just to eat when people can survive for weeks without food? The main computer should be our top priority!’ he said angrily, literally shouting at everyone yet no one in particular. His burning gaze slid from one person to another, desperately searching for someone who could have taken his side but with Joohyun being gone, he had nobody. It made the corner of his mouth twitch in annoyance.

Wendy shook her head, disappointed but not at all surprised. Honestly, it was obvious that their mental well-being for example didn’t even occur to him when he complained about the change in their plans. He didn’t dwell on Yerim’s unhealthy coping mechanism and that huge amount of grief she had needed to be pushed aside to not become a dead weight. But anyone who paid attention could have noticed the compulsive twitches of her fingers and the uneasy drumming of her feet whenever she stopped walking. She was on the verge of another massive mental breakdown and Taehyung didn’t give a damn about her state. 

‘We need a little time to take a breath, you asshole. But if you’re so clever then go and find the main computer on your own. As I said, I won’t force my idea on anyone including you,’ she said aggressively, spitting the words through her gritted teeth. She had enough. She truly couldn’t and didn’t intend to tolerate the Marketing major’s comments an ephemeral moment longer. Damn it. How could someone be such a jerk all the time, rubbing her on the wrong side so frequently as if it had been his newest hobby?

‘So much about teamwork,’ he retorted and rolled his eyes, earning a few deadly glances with his hypocritical attitude. If Namjoon hadn’t held his fuming girlfriend back, taking her balled up fist in his hand, Wendy would have punched Taehyung in the face without doubt or shame. Even though she preferred to think of herself as someone who gave a helping hand to anyone regardless of their gender, age, race or financial background, for the first time in her life, she wanted to take the phrase “beat some sense into someone” quite literally.

When Namjoon pulled Wendy towards the rest of the group, they started walking in the said direction in silence, only the loud growls of their stomachs filling the air beside the tension. This time, there wasn’t a single soul who stayed behind on purpose, keeping Taehyung’s pace steady with lifting a bit of weight off his swollen ankle. With every minute, the distance between him and the rest of the team grew bigger.

The restaurant was built of coloured metal and tinted glass. It looked like an upside down blooming cherry tree even from up close but once they crossed its threshold, it was empty, bleak and artificial from the inside. On the left, there was a corridor with a changing room for the staff and four toilets, one for each gender, one for the employees and one for the disabled. The reception desk was on the right and across the entrance, the double door of the kitchen. The grey smoke exhausters that hung from the ceiling looked eerie without customers leaning over the sizzling meat in the middle of the tables. 

Lack of a better idea, the group of six headed to the kitchen and decided to make something easy but delicious from the basic ingredients that they found in the enormous fridge and those four useful wall cabinets that contained food. Under Namjoon’s guidance, they divided into three smaller groups, working on the chicken, the noodle and the vegetables separately. As the yummy smell of the boiling soup started to fill the air, their mood got better as well, even though the shadow of their dead teammates still followed them everywhere. But at least, they were talking and didn’t let the frustrating silence choke them anymore.

‘Look at you! I didn’t even know that you can cook,’ Wendy spoke up teasingly when her boyfriend seasoned the meal with salt and soy sauce. Most of the time, it was the girl who prepared the food in their household and when she was too tired to do so, they ordered pizza, jjajangmyeon or a box of fried chicken with beer. She wondered what else she didn’t know about the boy. Was he good at cleaning in secret as well? That would have been amazing. ‘Do we have to experience life or death situations for you to cook something delicious for me?’ she went on, brushing her shoulder against his upper arm playfully. ‘You should have told me in advance and then I might have jumped off a bridge or something so that…’

But she couldn’t finish the joke because it touched a sore spot and Namjoon cut her sentence off midway with an unsatisfied snort. He turned towards the girl with a stern look on his face and shook his head. It was a relatively slow movement but the disappointment that it held in itself was big. The whole kitchen fell silent because of it.

‘Could you stop it already? You’re not funny,’ he spoke up and it might have been easy to say something in return if he had shouted in her face. But Namjoon’s voice was calm and quiet, a little bit desperate maybe. He was overwhelmed, it was obvious by the way he looked at her, begging for her understanding with tear-like stars in his eyes. Of course. How could have she not thought about it earlier? He was just as worried about her as she was about him. Hence it was extremely rude and inconsiderate of her to talk about her own death so lightly. Even if she had meant it as a joke.

‘I…’

‘I need some air,’ Namjoon claimed as he ran his trembling fingers through his messy, peach locks and stormed out of the room. His sudden absence sucked the temporary good mood out of the air and left everyone with nothing but the suffocating awkwardness. No one dared to look at Wendy who cut the spring onions into small pieces in quiet before she added them to the soup.

When the knife slid out of her shaking hand and it collided with the kitchen counter, she took a deep breath and looked at the others. There were tears brimming in the corner of her eyes when she spoke up.

‘I’ll go and find him,’ she said and not waiting for any kind of response, she wiped her hands into a kitchen cloth and walked out of the door.

Since Namjoon had talked about fresh air, she assumed that he was on his way back to the park where they had gotten to the surface therefore she didn’t waste her time to look around in the restaurant properly but rather rushed towards the exit on the other side of the building. Eyes strictly kept on the rose tinted glass, the firm chest that bumped into her shoulder less than a metre from the door almost kicked her off her feet. She needed to hold onto the first stable thing that she could reach which happened to be the body that had invaded her personal space. 

‘Are you blind? Get out of my way!’ Taehyung, who came from the bathrooms’ direction, spat through gritted teeth as he grabbed the girl’s wrist and peeled Wendy’s hand off his tee with more force than it would have been necessary. His fingertips left ugly, red patches on the med student’s alabaster skin.

The boy didn’t intend to pay special attention to the tiny girl who barely reached his lips with the top of her head but when he turned his back on Wendy to walk into the kitchen instead of apologizing, his nonchalant attitude triggered something in the redhead. She looked down on her slightly bruised wrist and clenched her lips, unable to swallow down her spiteful words. Without her boyfriend constantly being there for her to calm her down, she couldn’t tolerate the insolent guy’s disrespectful and insensitive behaviour any further. The way he had pushed her away and had told her off was unacceptable.

‘Or what? Will you get rid of me too?’ so she asked, hoping that she would be able to force him out of his comfort zone. She wanted to see his true nature, the one that might have been able to betray the only person who had been foolish enough to trust him. She wanted to know whether she was right about him or rather delusional, her judgement being clouded by hatred and the endless fear that rested upon her chest. She needed answers to put her mind at ease before she would have gone crazy due to all those conspiracy theories that circulated in her mind. She needed to know whether Taehyung was a cold-blooded murderer or just a boy with an especially unbearable attitude.

As the boy’s steps came to a halt, his shoulders tensed up after he took a few ragged breaths. He could feel his fingers twitch in anticipation and he didn’t like the reaction that his body had performed. He knew that the slightest mistake could have given his crime away and then the redhead would have destroyed everything he had been fighting for with her eagerness to reveal the truth. She had been such a pain in the boy’s ass ever since they had left the tunnel behind. As if the fresh air had fucked up her mind.

‘I don’t know what you are talking about but I don’t like the suggesting tone of your voice, ginger head,’ Taehyung said with a raised eyebrow when he turned back towards the girl and made the distance between their bodies disappear. By the time the last word fell from his lips, he towered over Wendy, pushing the girl closer to the wall without laying a single finger on her strained body. It would have been a lie to say that he didn’t feel satisfaction rushing over his veins when he noticed the slight tremble of the med student’s long lashes when she looked up at him after a forced gulp. 

‘Do you really think, any of us believed that Joohyun fell off the bridge just like that? I might not have any evidence just yet but I will find a way to make you pay for it once we’re out,’ she said pseudo-confidently, making the Marketing major laugh at her pathetic attempt of a threat. Although, once the morbid sound of his chuckle died, Taehyung had to admit that the girl had guts. If he had been in her shoes, he would have never gone against someone as ruthless as he was with nothing but a wild guess up in her sleeves. She would have needed at least a dozen of aces to beat him in his own game.

‘Oh, really? I want to see you try,’ he said with one of his characteristic, shit-eating grins before he took another step forwards, forcing the girl to take one back.

Wendy’s heels collided with the threshold of the restaurant’s entrance although she managed to keep her balance. She steeled her heart and shot a cold smile at the boy in return, holding his burning gaze.

‘I cannot wait to see you behind those bars. They say, people like you get beaten up at least three times a week,’ she said with her chin held up high and she even let out a mocking giggle to show the boy that she wasn’t a fragile little girl whom he could have scared. ‘Oh, and you should avoid the shower when others are there, too. You can never know…’

Wendy couldn’t finish the sentence as her last words froze onto the tip of her tongue at the moment, Taehyung grabbed her hair and smashed her head against the door frame. The metal turned ruby red where her temple had touched it and so as the floor where her lifeless body had landed once the boy let go of her messy locks.

People rushed out of the kitchen to check what had been the noise that they had heard and the culprit was smiling, hiding behind the bathroom’s door when the boy with the coldest eyes stated that even though she was still warm under his touch, Wendy had died.

After his short-lived conversation with Yerim that had failed to put his restless heart at ease, his mind started throwing bittersweet flashbacks at the engineer, memories of them fighting over the last piece of toast, him drinking straight from the carton of milk, Wendy complaining about his lame choice of presents for her birthday and Christmas and suddenly he regretted that he had always forgotten Valentine’s Day. Reminiscing about his girlfriend, lipstick stains on the edge of his favourite mug, even their most irritating fights and habits seemed nice thus he wished he hadn’t rushed out of the kitchen so hastily. He should have stayed there and borne with her teasing because deep down he had known very well that it had been her way to cope with the suffocating death lingering around them. If only she hadn’t run after him and rather stayed with the rest of the team, peeling the ingredients, she would have been still alive. But she had chosen him over her pride and it all had been his fault. The thought alone truly drove Namjoon crazy, transparent hands choking him with every breath he took.

Wandering in the dark pit of self-blame, still angry due to the newfound information about the researchers’ decision to keep going with such a dangerous project, he was only pulled back to reality when Taehyung pushed him against the wall of the air-drain and that was when he also realized that it was hard to breathe. Maybe his chest wasn’t heavy solely because of his grief after all but also due to the gas that filled the pipes. Another splendid feature that had been made by the creators. One more way they could have killed them. And funnily, the boy didn’t care about dying anymore let it happen in an abandoned building amongst people or all alone at home while sleeping at the age of eighty.

He could hear the echo of Yoongi’s panting and thinking of Wendy, Namjoon turned to their leader and helped him with the slow crawling forwards. He tore a small piece off of his tee to lift it in front of the guy’s face then reminded him of the importance of breathing through his nose even though it might have been annoying with the cloth touching his eyes and mouth whenever they made a move. They were merely in an arm’s length distance from Jungkook’s dirty shoes when they snapped their heads towards the little girl ahead, her silent cry echoing in the small area. She buried her face into the crook of the young boy’s shoulder, shaking and if anything then it proved that something terrible had happened.

Truth to be told, Namjoon was jealous of them having each other but he tried not to think too much into their close proximity because every single member of the team knew that the boy didn’t like the girl. It was merely the aftereffect of the shock that they all felt due to the death of their former acquaintances. It wasn’t real love. He shouldn’t have envied such a fake bubble of nonexistent affection. But he did nevertheless, yearning for the soft skin of his girlfriend’s palm on his cheek.

The boy didn’t even realize that Taehyung was missing until Yoongi’s loud cough beside him remained unnoticed, silence embracing them instead of the familiar mocking tone of the lilac haired guy. After the initial confusion that was clearly written on his face, Namjoon decided to follow the front of the queue regardless of his dislike of letting someone as dangerous as Seulgi take the lead once again. She was unworthy of his trust, her words were imprecise and her knowledge was markedly limited. They moved towards the computer room as one, trying not to stare too much when they passed the hole where the Marketing guy escaped from the gas and they threw Jungkook’s left shoe down at the next exit point to check whether it was safe. They didn’t want to make the same mistake, Taehyung had made, jumping into the arms of death out of carelessness and fear. So far the gas seemed to be harmless, only making them cough although they couldn’t be sure that it wouldn’t have had negative side effects on their bodies later on. But that later felt out of reach taken that they could have died in any minute. They would have been utterly stupid to care about cancer or such although Wendy must have disagreed. Such a silly thought.

The group stared at the lonely shoe for long minutes before Yoongi climbed down and the others followed, their feet touching the ground one by one. When even Yerim got out of the pipes safely, her trembling hand holding onto Jungkook, they looked around silently in the enormous room with a dozen of computers in it. No one dared to speak about Taehyung’s selfish death hence the buzzing sound of the electronic devices slowly drove them nuts. They were finally inside the killing machine. Yet their limbs were frozen.

‘So… is this it? The main computer that can help us get out?’ Yerim asked in a small voice, her arms besides her sides. She took a step towards the biggest screen and looked up at it with her big doe eyes so innocent as if she was begging them to agree.

‘I think, yeah,’ Namjoon told her not one hundred percent sure of himself but at least he tried unlike their leader who walked next to the girl quietly then passed her by without a word to take a good look at the computer, he was so addicted to, from a different angle.

It was white, a warm blanket as thick as fog, the familiar scenery getting blurry and the IT guy’s limbs froze, legs unable to move. Yoongi snapped his head towards the corner where Seulgi should have been but the room was empty and he had suddenly found himself utterly alone. He furrowed his brows in confusion and lifted his hand in front of his right eye to rub it as if he could have magically gotten everyone back. It felt like a nightmare especially because his palms also became sweaty when he realized that his precious laptop bag had disappeared as well.

‘You ungrateful child! I asked you, I begged you not to go but you needed to prove yourself, hah? Aish. Look where your precious IT major has gotten you! You should have listened to me when you still had a chance. And now you’ll die without me being able to say goodbye. You’re such a cruel boy, Min Yoongi. You have never been easy on my heart!’ a sorrowful plea came from out of nowhere, blaming the prodigal son and begging him at the very same time, yearning for something quite impossible.

The always so rational boy shook his head, hands sliding onto her ears and knees trembling a little as he sat on his heels to find his balance. A tiny part of his sanity was aware of the fact that his mother couldn’t possibly be in Choego as the whole city was locked down and not to mention that she hated public transportation so much that she had barely left Daegu. Yet, his heart churned at the thought that she was close and that he could have talked with her one more time. He wanted to tell her a hella lot of things alongside his useless apologies. More than anything, he wanted her to know that he was grateful for everything she had done for him through the years, that he loved her regardless of their debates and that he felt truly sorry. He hadn’t made it easy for her either as he was ever so stubborn, lacking the ability of letting his emotions be shown without feeling overly anxious.

‘Mom? What are you…’ he spoke up with warm tears piercing his eyes and it was stupid, he knew but he couldn’t help it. It was so freaking realistic, he wanted to smash something or cry out helplessly. He was tired of this whole situation, of acting as if he had been truly hopeful when in reality he craved for reassurance just as much as the others. Under the cold exterior, he was just another human being who freaked out when he saw dead bodies and blood. He definitely hadn’t signed up for being a part of an impossible survivor show, a new generation Battle Royal with a smart city being their biggest enemy besides time.

There was a moment when his mother’s voice became so loud, his doubting thoughts melted into nothingness and he truly believed that it was over. That he would follow Seokjin and the others and die like a rat. It was a frightening thought.

He felt a stinging pain in his shoulder but he decided to not care about it too much until a small palm slapped him and his eyes opened wide. It was Yerim kneeling in front of him, face so close to his own that the boy could see the barely there moles on her nose regardless of the fog. She looked scared yet very much determined as she pulled away and mumbled a quiet sorry. Yoongi shook his head.

‘It’s fi—’

‘It’s a hallucination. Guys, it’s a hallucination. They’re not real!’ Yerim’s pitched voice echoed in the air once she stood up, running towards Jungkook so fast as if she felt guilty for not choosing him first. The memory of the younger’s teary eyes froze the IT guy’s limbs because even though it was only a wild guess on the boy’s part, he thought that those tears might have been brimming in her eyes because of her brother who had died in the basement of the local hospital. Just like in his case with his mom, they couldn’t have said goodbye to each other either. That must have been still hard on her. And Yoongi was sure that it would remain the same for the rest of her life, let there be one more hour or year ahead of the girl.

Just like Yerim, Jungkook hallucinated about Seokjin as well but while the eldest had seemed sad in his sister’s dreams, he was quite furious in the boy’s. He blamed him for his own death and screamed into his face, yearning for revenge.

‘You killed me! You killed both of us!’ he shouted and Jungkook didn’t even need to think hard to know whom he was referring to. The elder was talking about Gangnam Girl whose name had been so insignificant back then that the boy couldn’t even recall it. Seeing her begging for help, he had run towards the exit like a selfish child and had refused to mention to the others where she had been exactly or that he had seen her stuck behind the glass door.

The boy was aware of the fact that they were all responsible for themselves at first and only then came the others. He also knew that back then neither of them had known that the city would murder them one by one with its fucked up security system. So maybe others would have done the same as he had done. It didn’t make him a cold-blooded killer, it only showed how desperate he was to get a contract so that he could take care of his poor family. He was a good person, a good person. He was good. Seokjin knew nothing about him and his motives. Otherwise he wouldn’t have been so unfairly judging.

‘I’m sorry… I didn’t…’ he tried to reason but his tongue felt sore and he failed to form the words that mingled up in his mind. There was a helpless teardrop running down his cheek when two tiny palms slid onto his cheeks and his heart could finally rested in a warm embrace. He kept murmuring under his nose though, looking for an excuse that could have cleared his self-conscious. He did feel guilty for both the rich girl and Seokjin’s death.

Yerim didn’t leave Jungkook’s side and watching them, Yoongi pushed himself onto his feet and walked towards Seulgi who was indeed in one of the corners of the room where he had previously assumed. A few locks of her messy hair fell into her face, hands shielding her ears from whoever who was talking to her in her head. Her eyes were teary just like Yerim’s and it made the boy feel uneasy as he slowly made the distance between their bodies disappear.

‘If only, you would have been braver. You could have saved a lot more. But no, you needed to make it worse with that accident in the researcher building, didn’t you? I told you, smoking will kill you one day.’ It was her mother’s raspy voice but she was facing herself as if she had looked into a mirror. She couldn’t bear the sight.

There were lots of people throughout the years who had told Seulgi that she had reminded them of her mother but she had always shushed them away with a small wave of her hand. In her opinion, they couldn’t have been more different from each other as they had never once agreed on any topic let them talking about food or TV programmes that they could have watched during dinner. They had different taste in music, in actors, in holiday destination and in future plans. She preferred to stay in South Korea to build new and better houses on the countryside that could keep the poor warm while the woman wanted her to leave, to move to America and became just as wealthy as the chaebols she hated. Only later she had realized that when she had been in her age, her mother had had a twin sister who had died due to a robbery in that petrol station where she had bought her cigarettes most of the time. But regardless of this newfound information, she still couldn’t make herself quit smoking. She was an addict and life was too stressful.

A shiver ran down her spine when something warm wrapped around her wrists, peeling her hands off her ears with force. Even though she hated the feel of the touch, she was too weak to set herself free. She was stuck in her mind.

‘It’s not real. Snap out of it, Seulgi! You hear me? I’m the one who is real, not them. It’s me,’ a familiar voice addressed her but it was fairly quiet as if it had come from under heavy layers of icy water. So instead of listening to it or asking back who was talking to her, Seulgi kept her gaze on her reflection, on the voice that was blaming her, mocking her with wearing her own face.

She didn’t even realize that she was holding her breath back until insecure fingers started to play with her hair, whispering the same words into her ear over and over again. ‘I’m the one who is real. It’s me. I’m here.’

Namjoon stood in the middle of a room full of people and it was worse than being completely alone because they markedly didn’t want to listen no matter how loudly he screamed at them. They remained still, talking to each other, laughing on ridiculously nonsense jokes and acted as if he hadn’t been there in the first place. He couldn’t decide whom he should have walked up to first to shake a little sense into the emotionless bunch so he closed his eyes and pointed at someone blindly, taking a few unsure steps towards the chosen direction before the blood froze in his veins. He snapped his head at the door on his right, the little girl who had been his target a mere second ago, long forgotten.

‘Namjoon! Namjoon please help! I can’t breathe,’ Wendy said along with a cough that both scared the hell out of the boy and lifted those heavy weights off his chest that made it hard for him to breathe as well. Because his girlfriend was still alive and at that moment, nothing else mattered. Sadly, not even the fear in her voice. Namjoon’s mind shut it out entirely until the girl spoke up again, this time a little weaker after a more painful cough. ‘Something is wrong with the air, it’s suffocating as if the whole building was on fire. Help me!’

There was a loud thud and then silence.

‘Wendy?’ her name, as a question, fell from the boy’s lips while he ran to the door, trying to tear it open. But there was no handle, he could have grabbed.

He slid down along the metal and hit the object with his fist until it became numb and sore. It hurt as it was bleeding on his knuckles but he couldn’t give a damn about the physical pain. The thought of losing Wendy again was much worse because this time it would have indeed been all his fault. It would have been him who couldn’t save her.

‘Namjoon, please. I don’t want to die, not yet. Please,’ she begged him but her voice came from another direction this time that forced the boy’s eyebrows to the middle of his forehead. He looked around in confusion, his gaze observing the crowd but as he paid close attention to the mass of people, he noticed that they had no faces nor ears. They looked like a bunch of lifeless dolls, one could have seen in shop windows. It didn’t make any sense. A few minutes prior he had heard them laugh so hard, he wanted to punch them in the face.

His legs were wobbly when he stood up and turned towards the metal door that changed into a transparent wall. Now, Namjoon could see the hallway in front of the room but the corridor was empty and the air looked fresh.

‘Where are you, babe? Wendy, where are you?’ he asked in despair turning around multiple times, running from one puppet to the other. He pushed a few on the ground carelessly, not bearing the thought of wasting his time while his girlfriend was in danger. He wouldn’t let this shapeshifting building take her away from him now that he got her back.

His heartbeats were so loud that he needed to stop for a minute and calm down otherwise it could have been possible that he would go totally deaf before he could have deciphered the instructions that the girl gave him. So after his short-lived rampage, his movements came to a halt and he closed his eyes to be able to focus more effectively, repeating his question over and over again until he finally got an answer so weak, it churned his heart. It sounded as if it came from a ghost.

‘It’s so dark, I can’t see,’ she claimed and the first thing that came to the boy’s mind was that they had buried her under pretty flowers. Was she calling for him from her coffin? Could she had been still alive underneath, waiting for him to get her out of that stupid hole? Was this freaking city developed enough to heal major wounds, to save lives even when people failed? It seemed so impossible and yet Namjoon found himself believing in his childish ideas. He wanted to believe that somehow Wendy had survived the blood loss, that miracles existed in Choego.

But then came a faint knock from behind his back and this time it echoed on the surface of a wooden door that had a handle.

‘I… I love you. I… I wanted to have a family with you. I… I’m so sorry,’ the girl confessed quietly and it was so out of the character from her, apologizing when she didn’t do anything wrong. Because regardless of their stupid debate that had been started with her comment on his cooking skills, he couldn’t put the blame on her without feeling bitter. He could have also chosen to stay and eat the lunch they had been about to prepare. No one had forced him to run away.

He had wanted to have a family with her too but Wendy had been always adamant when the topic had come up between them at home. She had worked super hard to become an excellent doctor and settling down and having children together would have ruined everything for her. She had wanted to have a stable career before she would have gotten pregnant. Namjoon had usually understood her reasoning and he had loved her so much, he could have waited for her to be ready, but the fact that she had been so against the idea had hurt him nevertheless. So now when he could hear the sincerity in her faint voice, the whole wide world turned into something worthless and insignificant in his eyes. The core of his existence was Wendy and the medic girl alone who had never failed to take care of him when he had caught the cold.

‘I’m coming. Please hold on for a little while. I’m coming,’ he said but the door got further and further away with every step he took.

‘I’m so scared, Joon-ah,’ she admitted and the boy could imagine how hard it could have been for her to show him her vulnerable side. Out of the two of them, it had been always Wendy who had been the stronger.

He brushed the hand off his shoulder when someone touched him then snapped at the intruder harshly for stealing some of his precious time. Yet, the doll didn’t back off, not even when he pushed her onto the ground. No. It stared at him horrified as it put on a familiar face. It looked at him with Yerim’s big doe eyes, unshed tears shining in them like restless stars on the cloudy sky.

‘Namjoon, stop! It’s not Wendy! It’s a hallucination, the fog’s doing,’ Seulgi tried to reason, touching his upper arm tentatively but even for the lightest touch, the boy snapped. He slid his angry gaze to the other girl and gritted his teeth. Seulgi was the last person he had wanted to encounter with now that he was on his way to his girlfriend. The same girl whom he had lost due to the Architecture major’s incompetence. 

‘Let go of me!’ he pushed her further as well, and it was only because of Yoongi that she didn’t lose her balance the same way as Yerim had done. Namjoon was much stronger when he was angry than any of them would have guessed. They simply couldn’t stop him marching towards the door. ‘She needs me. She’s waiting for me. I can’t leave her alone,’ he told them before he speeded up and grabbed the handle.

‘Snap out of it, man!’ Jungkook shouted after him, voice trembling at the end of his sentence. He couldn’t believe what was about to happen in front of his eyes, in front of all of them.

Because one thing was inevitable once Namjoon opened the door and crossed the threshold to step out to the hallway where Taehyung’s body laid. The laser cut him into pieces before he could have screamed. He smelled like roasted meat, falling onto the ground in five different directions.

Jungkook grabbed Yerim’s elbow and pulled her into his embrace on instinct so that he could cover the dreadful sight of the lifeless body parts and the flood of blood on the tiles. Then he also buried his face into the girl’s hair as if it could have functioned as a curtain between the world and them. It couldn’t.

Seulgi kept her eyes on Yoongi and the IT guy just stared at the still figure, dumbfounded. It took him long minutes to collect himself and walk back to the main computer, looking for the control panel of the aircon that could have helped them suck the fog out of the air. As they didn’t need the door to make the air clearer, Seulgi closed it, trying not to glance at the bodies before she leaned her forehead against the door and made an attempt to even her breathing in vain. Even if one of them was Taehyung, it was definitely too much to handle.

The silence that was broken only by the buzzing sound of the computers was suffocating, Jungkook thought, while he fondled Yerim’s hair. This time she didn’t cry like the boy had expected from her. Her shoulders didn’t shake, not even a little. And her stillness was more frightening than her tears had ever been before.