"What's with the alternate circles too?" Sooyoung's head popped in between us and the light were , temporarily blinding us as our eyes took some time to adjust to the glaring lights.

As the crowd rushed in, we bided our time and took turns to blend in with the crowd without being too conspicuous. We got out of the cafeteria and headed towards our familar hiding spot, the curly wurly stairway. This was Jessica's first time out after the first two blackouts and her puzzled face made it obvious that there were thousands of questions she would be shooting out from .

"Wha..." She attempted to speak before being silenced by my stern look.

Jessica rolled her eyes in protest and strutted after us relunctantly.

Once we got behind the closed door, I proceeded to explain everything to Jessica and she was pretty calm about the whole thing, surprisingly.

"So the next thing we have to do is to decipher this message," she stated nonchalantly.

"Yes, this is a secret code Tiffany and I used to play when we were in high school," I replied.

"Cool, so how does it work?"

Everyone gathered around me, eager to see the hidden message behind these numbers and circles.

"Alright... First, we would need two strips of paper," I showed them the two strips of paper I managed to save from the scrap receipt. Luckily, I bought many things from the grocery store and the receipt was quite long. I wrote the numericals 1 to 36 on the first strip and all the alphabets on the second strips beforeplacing  the second one neatly under the first one.

The message was written as '7 9 (32)(18)(12)(15)(8)(23) (51)(4)(22)(23) (61)(4)(22)(14)'.

"The first number 7..." I began explaining as I shifted the bottom piece to the right, "represents 'D' would be in the 7th position."

They all mouthed an 'O' and continued watching intently, subtle gestures indicating for me to go on.

"The second number 9 is an odd number which means the following number of the position would be written in the reverse order. 32 would actually be 23 and so..."

I slid my finger across the second paper and announced, "the first letter would be 'T'!"

"Okay, the second digit of '32' is '2' which is an even number. So the following number of the position would be written in the correct order. 18 would remain as 18 which is an 'O'."

"Oooooooo.." They all chimed.

"Let me try! Let me try!" Sooyoung looked really excited but Yoona already had her hands on the papers.

I smiled and motioned for Sooyoung who was trying to hide her pout, to come over, "You can try next."

"Sooooo, '8' is an even number... correct order... '12'," she mumbled to herself as her eyes searched across the paper and her finger stopped at the letter 'I'.

"TOI, am I right?" She looked up from the paper and I nodded my head.

"MY TURN!" Sooyoung roared impatiently while the rest giggled.

Everyone seems to be treating this as a game. Haven't they forgotten where we were?

I chuckled to myself silently.

At least it would be better than having them all freaked out.

It didn't take long to finish the first word and we ended up with even more questions

'TOILET?'

What could that mean?

What were they trying to tell us?

To meet at the toilet?

The secret is at the toilet?

But we have been there and there were nothing.

Maybe the next few numbers would give us a better clue...