Songs:

¬ On The Wire

¬ In My Mind

¬ Shakin' Off The Rust

Trigger Warning:

Mentioning of car accidents in Minji's story.

“Where are you taking us?” Siyeon asked after the doors of the now descending elevator closed. She had initially thought Bora was going to take her to the rooftop again, to lose themselves in the line of horizon and the shapes the maze of buildings formed now that it was bright enough to visualize them. Her hands’ loose grip over her crutches’ handles allowed her to move her palms against it to feel the material; maybe to distract herself from stress, maybe because it simply felt new.

    “It’s a surprise.” The dancer’s gut revolted, a sensation not at all evident in the tone of her voice. She knew what her actions entailed; she knew that she was putting them both in serious danger as soon as they set foot outside the building, she knew that Minji would probably kill her when she comes back if she ends up finding out about what she’s doing. But another part of her, her chest perhaps, reprimanded her gut’s transmission. She needs to see this, at least, she thought, it’s unfair. It has been six days since Siyeon had encountered this seemingly new world, three days since they’ve both been stuck inside the apartment, and all she was truly able to see was the sky. The stars, the sun, the clouds, the blue, the black, the white, the yellow... nothing else. Of course, she thought it was the most amazing thing, but that was just because she hadn’t seen absolutely nothing else, she thought, that was the reason, right? Bora’s mind wandered in the same path it took when she was staring at the stars three days ago, exploring the possible impossibilities that lingered in Siyeon’s mental penumbra. She looked over and saw her looking at the floor while caressing the handles of her crutches, with a face of cognitive aerobics. A breath got caught in her lungs thanks to a cloudscape of nosy regret, but she blew it away with a quick exhale before poking Siyeon’s arm. “I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.”

    Siyeon instantly looked at the other woman as she felt the poke. “I…”, her eyes traveled to her wounded leg for a second, “won’t let anything happen to you either?” She laughed, shortly, her eyes almost closing with a smile. 

Bora couldn’t help but do the exact same, although her laugh was slightly louder and longer. The taller one remained smiling at her, and the gaze made her stop making any type of sound, look forward and tuck a strand of hair behind her ear. That wasn’t even that funny, and that laugh sounded absurd, she thought. Silence took over, momentarily broken by the announcement of the arrival on the building’s lobby. 

As they stepped outside, Siyeon went blank, invaded by the outside’s sensorial feast that greatly contrasted with the drowned noises heard within the walls of the apartment. The street was busy, full of movement and interaction thanks to the start of most of the people’s release from work. There was some congestion in the two laned roads, which provoked a mixture of car honks to interrupt the atmosphere of chatter. Still, the peatonal paths were not impossible to walk through; not many people were out in leisure, they just wanted to get back to their houses as soon as possible. Her eyes bounced from pairs to groups to loners who looked like they were not in a hurry, briefly studying their actions to try to uncover their purpose. An anomaly, she thought, some of them didn’t seem to have one. Most of them didn’t seem to have a solid reason to be on the street, walking, or sitting on the dusty ground eating instant ramen, or looking into the stores without going inside. 

As she kept walking next to the dancer, she focused on two people sitting on the floor with their backs pressed against a doorless and windowless space of wall. They were close, one had their arm over the other’s shoulder, their heads were pressed against each other, and they talked. They talked and smiled sometimes, and Siyeon furrowed her eyebrows; it was an uncomfortable position, their clothes were getting dirty, there was even a small puddle of rainwater close to them, or that’s what it seemed like, she thought. Her distraction didn’t let her notice that she went in a direction that would make her bump into someone, so the next thing she felt was Bora pulling her by the waist to prevent it. She initially lost her balance since she tried not to put all her weight on her wounded leg, making the dancer’s grip tighten. Alike almost everything she had experienced in the past days, what she felt was new. Still, it felt different for such a simple stimulus, but before she could decode the reaction Bora removed her hand.

“Be careful, you’re gonna bruise someone with that metal.” Bora joked, and a short laugh of mockery followed.

Siyeon returned the laugh as they passed the people she got distracted with, though she turned her head for one last look and saw how one of them took the hand of the other in theirs and loosely interlaced their fingers, smiling with the mild contact. Her eyes instantly jumped to the free hand of the woman walking next to her, which was swinging with every step, before her neck went into the standard position to look forward. 

They continued walking and her curiosity pushed her to keep scoping her surroundings; deep brown trees bristling through ground circles carved in the pavement and its roots tracing veins of destruction in the cement while they claimed dominance in some parts, car tires causing the remnants of the morning’s rainwater to spike up, and a sight that made her expressions of wonder rejig into conflictive and misunderstanding ones. It was a needle, a long one, being inserted in the top of the arm of a smiling woman. Was that fun in any way? She thought, her mind traveling to a time when she and Gahyeon were working in the laboratory and the younger one jokingly poked her with one of those, unknowing of the pain it inflicted. She remembered the sensation and shook her head while still looking at the image displayed on the wall of a building; “What is that?”

“What’s what? The ad?”

“Yes.”

“They’re announcing the new Hepatitis C vaccine.”

“Why is she smiling?”

“I don’t know, to make you want to go and get it? It was released some months ago and people are telling everyone to get vaccinated.”

And Siyeon didn’t ask any more questions. They walked past Bora’s university and the shorter woman informed her about what the institution was all about. She listened with eagerness, elated at the thought of a place dedicated mainly to the exploring of things, of surroundings, of both materialized and abstract things; it was what she did every day. Suddenly, Bora made a turn to get into an alley that looked like the back of an abandoned building, which led to a smaller road with zero transit and movement. She went left, then right, forward, until she stopped in front of an even smaller alleyway that looked like only two people could fit if they stood next to each other. “You ready?” The dancer turned around smiling.

Siyeon nodded, and with the affirmation Bora entered the narrow alley. After a few steps, she focused on the brightness coming from the end of the passage, and how traces of laughter and lively conversation embellished the past quiet and dark auditory atmosphere. The staccato of a violin and a chuckle blown into a piccolo, the accompaniment of percussive strikes coming from turned over plastic paint containers, the chorus effect of voices coming together in jokes and loose singing along to the texture of worn out dreadnought phosphor bronze strings; all of it amplified at the same pace as the widening of the foreign prism light her dilating pupils picked up.

When they stepped inside the crystal roofed space, Siyeon was stunned, and the corners of raised along with the panoramic view the turning of her head created. There were more people here compared to the streets, and she noticed how each one’s movements and voices and expressions differed from each other. Still, they created such harmony that you would think they all came from the same place despite looking like the materialized version of a spectrum. Some had devices that produced sound, some hit surfaces with sticks, some danced, some just decorated the melodies with their laughs, and some swinged cans of liquid to splash parts of the walls with an explosion of tints. The most entrancing thing for her, though, was that for the first time the walls were a conglomerate of color richer and merrier than the one she could find in clothes. She also thought of the sky, and didn’t hesitate to envision the colors she was then amazed at flow in diverse hues in a part of the wall she could cover with the palm of her hand. Stoked, her feet stepped forward, meek and careful, as she thought about the capability of the encapsulation of such a mix of colors that were once part of the dome she admired every night and day. Her smile continued to invade her expression throughout the process. 

When she reached the wall she was subconsciously dragged to, she placed her hand over the consonance of color she previously got lost in; it felt like she was covering the entirety of dawn. Her fingers pressed against the pigmented surface and followed the lines, the dark lines of outline, mimicking the movement of the hands that once traveled over that same space to configure proof of their soul synapse. Bliss was quick to emblaze her expression as she stepped away and continued to walk parallel to the wall, visually digesting as much of the sight as she could. But then she encountered a familiar orange, an iridescent orange figure contused by scalding red, crisp black fibers and yellow edges that invaded the insides; they conjured the solid liquid of lava that moved inside the form of an octopus. 

She got stuck looking at it, and it wasn’t unpleasant but her face of delight had faded away as soon as she laid her eyes on the animal. It transported her back to The House’s cafeteria. She heard Gahyeon asking what she was doing, her voice echoing in her head; thinking, thinking, thinking, blank, full, none, mix… a small twinge of pain appeared in the background of her spacing out. Progressive, increasing, it was ignored until her eyes recognized the symbol she had drawn with the plum marker on the lower right corner; two circles, diagonal lines in the same direction. Then, the pain she had forgotten took over the left side of her head before traveling down the roots of her nerves, like a lightning strike that ignites the wax of leaves before scurrying into the nooks of every wood cell to disfigure and blacken everything with the smell of death. She felt as if she just got electrocuted for a set of milliseconds, anticipating the expanding discomfort that lingered inside her brain. Her head lowered and rested against the wall, one of her hands grasped the side of it, and she tried to suppress any noise of distress. Deep but shallow breaths moved through clenched teeth, creating a sound Bora was instantly worried about.

The dancer watched as Siyeon’s aura of wonder transfigured into discomfort, so she immediately came closer to assist. “Hey, hey, what’s wrong?” She noticed how the taller one’s body started to sheathe without answering her. “Oh my god, can you talk?” Her worries were starting to tamper with her gut’s reactions; was this a ? She thought, and, even though she was too worked up to blame herself for the situation, she felt as if she was absorbing a smidge of the other woman’s pain. Seeing how Siyeon wasn’t saying anything, just making low noises with her breathing, she put one of her arms over her shoulder and helped her walk to a nearby bench. “Didn’t you take the aspirin today?”

Siyeon shook her head slightly, finally letting out a groan as she sat down. She closed her eyes and it seemed to lessen the pain, so she focused on deep breaths until the discomfort became mild. “This is horrible.” She leaned forward, placed her elbows on her knees and buried her face in her hands.

Bora’s concern was evident in the stiffness of her eyebrows. She was lost, she didn’t know what to say, and was currently searching for the cause of the recent event. However, all that dissipated as her ears picked up an infuriating timbre.

“What’s wrong with your friend?” Instant vex.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Utter annoyance substituted worry in Bora’s tiresome voice tone, who stood up abruptly after a few seconds of paralysis from shock upon hearing that voice. She pierced his pupils with her narrow irk tainted eyes; not only he, completely toxic material, was probably going to interact with the one she refused to let anyone near, but he was also in this place he wasn’t supposed to be in, let alone know about. Maybe the nature of the anger she displayed relayed in a reactive formation; she probably didn’t realize she was on edge thanks to panic. “Do you plan to answer?” She spat out when she noticed he didn’t show signs of responding.

“Cool place. I’ve never been here before. Never would've thought this was hidden behind that dump out there. So this is where you all hide?” He ignored Bora’s gaze and looked around.

“Yeah, and I wanna know how you got here.” She got in front of Siyeon, crossing her arms over her chest and subconsciously blocking his view of her.

“I saw you walking past campus and got curious. I didn’t recognize your friend.”

Her jaw muscles tightened. “Didn’t I tell you to not follow me some days ago?”

    “And I didn’t follow you when you asked, chill out.” He smiled wide and got closer, trying to look past her. “Seriously, is your friend okay?”

    “She is, she just has a headache.” She put her hand over Siyeon’s shoulder while moving to continue blocking his view.

    “Why are you being like this? I just want to meet her.” He walked over to kneel in front of the bench. “Hey, I’m Bora’s friend, Henry.”

🝰🝰🝰

    The sound of dirt being crushed by Yoohyeon’s boots dominated the atmosphere; heavy, desperate, anticipating the sight of that relentless white building. Her mind worked to review every step, every corner to take, every possible obstacle that would turn her plan upside down, over and over until she was sure her memory wouldn’t fail her when it was time to let adrenaline take over. Step, step, breath, breath, step, step, breath, breath; it was a pattern. She didn’t let her mind wander so far away that she lost track of her objective, of her traced trajectory. Her thoughts were only allowed to knit strings of possible future events in a linear fashion; they arrived and found Gahyeon working in the garden, they arrived and found Gahyeon working in the laboratory, they arrived and everything went according to plan, they could get out safely… they arrived and encountered no signs of the woman, they arrived and got caught by security, they arrived and someone pointed out they were out of place… She shook her head at the intrusive thoughts and exhaled harder through her nose. 

Words, her maps were words; she wrote a detailed composition of the path so she wouldn’t get lost, and it had worked until this day. It was how she finally found the door that led to the building’s basement, writing, after two years of trial and error, after countless invasions of her left temporal lobe. Words, they were her sketches. Ever since she woke up inside The House she had been imprinting a journal in the abstraction of her grey matter since every time she tried to conjoin letters on the surface of paper it was taken away. She always thought it was strange, because other people were allowed to have notebooks and pens and paper, but everytime she got a hold of them she was reprimanded. 

One time she got sent into the surgery room because they found a stack of tiny papers where she had written the names and some information about the people that went missing. Another time she started writing detailed descriptions about the sound of the birds she wasn’t able to see when morning visited her, and about how the branches of trees were sewn by growan ellipses, and how some days the streaks of grass blew out petrichor while decorated by mildew, only to get these papers burned. She had a tendency to translate her vision, including the imaginary one, into the invisibility of language. Though, after getting into trouble so many times, she had trained her brain to function as a notebook so she could keep writing and writing and writing without having everything snatched away every now and then.

Her aura teased borderline mechanics. She felt she was suppressing something and that her actions were plagued with stiffness or dullness, or maybe she was actually expressing some type of message through body language but there was no outsider available to decode it. Minji walked behind her, following the trail of her steps, but the older woman wasn’t paying attention to anything else other than the vivid imagery in her mind.

    The paramedic was still as lost as she was back when they finished discussing the plan at the apartment. In fact, she had been in the same trance for a while now. Her mind lost its grip ever since something altered her state of being a few days ago, because of a mistake that unleashed an unpredictable series of events that completely destroyed Minji’s recent slope of growth and achievement. She was aware that, especially, in her field mistakes and tragedies are bound to happen one way or another considering the circumstances in which she provides service; it’s almost always a matter of life and death. Still, none of the courses, seminars, speeches, encouraging from people, counseling, anything... none of it could really prepare her for when she would encounter the situation in real life. 

The memory of that woman’s eyes was tattooed in the back of her eyes at this point, being that she wasn’t able to get rid of it ever since she saw the life being out of those fearful chestnut irises. If only she would have driven the ambulance faster, or been able to push the woman away from the speeding car, or been quicker with her cpr response, or anything that would have prevented mortality. She had lost several patients before, and even though it always crushed her emotions for a few days, this time was heavier taking into account the fact that the woman was begging her to help her keep her life. Most of the patients she had lost before were unconscious, but this one wasn’t. In between low energy cries she kept begging Minji with a sound coming so deep from the throat that it drilled a sense of responsibility into her brain, which would later cause her whole emotional being to breakdown. After arriving at the hospital and seeing the lifeless body being carried out the ambulance, something shifted, she lost control of her senses. Her partner constantly told her that the woman was already long gone when they arrived at the scene, but she was determined that she would do her justice, that she would work even harder to prevent any type of mistakes. She forcefully suppressed the guilt and negativity that came from the belief that she was negligent, and continued working with the same warm aura. And then Siyeon appeared.

    The stranger reminded her of the woman she lost in that ambulance. Putting aside the evident physical similarities, like the black long hair and that distinctive face of helplessness, her buried sense of responsibility got called back out when she caught a glimpse of Siyeon’s teary eyes and the mess of her bleeding limb. She didn’t understand anything that came out of , she seemed to be in shock and continued saying nonsense, but this unspoken force from within kept telling her that if something happened to her, it would have been her fault, too. She ignored everything else the wounded woman said, perhaps unintentionally, or it was her subconscious protecting her wellbeing, and fixated on the plan of making her feel better; the plan of protecting her life.

    She felt a certain attachment that kind of made every word that came out of the stranger’s mouth feel as if fixing it was also her responsibility. At first, she didn’t give it importance and tried to continue her life normally, but after the name of her roommate got thrown in the mix things got serious. Was it a cult, a gang, a paramilitary division from the government, a psych ward? Her conscience got clouded by the search of reasons, causes, possibilities. Leaving the variable of Bora out of the hypothesis, at one time she came to the conclusion that Siyeon wasn’t mentally stable, and that made her even more curious about this ‘house’ she kept talking about in a fearful manner. It must be a hospital of some sort, she had thought. Her mental gymnastics initially seemed harmless, until its effects started showing in her work performance. She began slipping in simple tasks that caused severe repercussions, like a time she mistook the bag she needed to attach to a serum and caused adverse effects, and they only got progressively worse. She began having worse sleeping problems than before and it caused her to fall asleep several times in the emergency room bathroom after crying over another fallen victim. Everything and anything worsened, until one day, when she was in charge of driving again, her merge of anger and panic made her crash the ambulance straight into a commuter’s car because they wouldn’t move despite hearing the siren.

    She lied to Yoohyeon when she told her this day was her free day; she got suspended indefinitely. At this point, the only responsibility she carried was the one she had tried to bury a week ago. She was on the verge of getting fired, she had damaged an official hospital vehicle, she felt the weight of her mistakes starting from the day that woman died, she was lost… and she couldn’t find a way to tell anyone about it. She had ambiguously told Handong she had problems at work, but that was it. She was stuck in a loop of hiding and burying everything, and not being able to release her troubles verbally made her brain hungry for a peak experience. She needed distractions, or occupation, and hearing Yoohyeon’s leap into apparent danger made her neurons perk. She was lost, and in her judgement nothing about it was irrational. She thought about the mental hospital she had in mind and concluded both of the strangers were either exaggerating or moved by altered states of conscience, until the sight of a white building surrounded by a tall black fence came into view. Then, she froze.

    “Okay here we are, give me your bag.” Yoohyeon turned around and noticed the unmoving woman, who had her eyes locked on the sight of a group of people digging. “What’s wrong?”

    “I…” She didn’t have words for her. Her eyes focused on the rhythm of the shovels making dirt fly and her lungs started to inflate until it felt like they were at their limit.

    Yoohyeon’s determination crumbled down after seeing the paramedic’s insecurities leak out of her facial expression. “What’s wrong?” She repeated with a softer tone, getting closer to her with concern. Minji’s eyes met hers for a brief moment before jumping to the earth and then back to the people with the shovels, and during all that her harsh breathing pattern was noticeable if you paid enough attention.

    “Hm…” Minji nodded while widening her eyes. “This is real.”

    “It is real, what do you mean?” 

The innocence in Yoohyeon’s tone made her gain control over her lungs again, and the sight of her genuine worry visible throughout her whole face made her exhale into a short chuckle. “Nothing.” She shook her head and forced her mind to forget everything that her memory recollection had taken out; Yoohyeon didn’t deserve to get her state of mind corrupted by things she could easily keep to herself, she thought, it’s not important, it doesn’t affect anything here. She got rid of the sudden urge to tell her everything by reminding herself she had just met her.

“Ah, no! Tell me, you worried me!”

Minji slightly smiled at the other woman’s frustration as her eyes lingered in her face for a few seconds, before deciding to say something that almost always worked to deflect the focus from her in situations like this; “It’s that I can’t believe you’re real, like, standing right in front of me, oh my.” She exaggerated a bemused tone and put a hand over her chest dramatically.

“Oh, shut up!” Yoohyeon laughed and hit her shoulder as Minji scrunched her nose and opened to smile, and then proceeded to hide their bags under a bush. “Thank you for being so lame, now are you ready?”

She took a deep breath and hummed. She wasn’t ready at all. Her heart felt like it wanted to burst open her sternum, but after looking at Yoohyeon’s smile she nodded faster than she could register and followed her to the fence.

    🝰🝰🝰

    Gahyeon was back in the hallway that led to the basement’s door. Her steps were not shy, not insecure; she had memorized the patterns of vigilance, too. This was the time the guard of the shift either went into the cafeteria to monitor the premises before a group was brought in to eat, or socialized with other personnel; she had recurred these hallways three times now so they were familiar. When she approached the door and opened it she was met by an expected wall of coldness that caused her to stop and shiver, but she still went in. Last time she was here she was caught rummaging through a room full of dust and liquid filled mason jars, and the time before that it was in the file room. She had gone to the file room twice; once with Siyeon and one last time after she underwent surgery for the first time because she thought she would have found useful information in the forbidden room. She didn’t know how to make sense of her findings so she decided to move to another room, and this time she was determined to go down the stairs to witness why so many people came from there.

    Already on the first step down, she made sure her shoes made close to minimal sound, and she kept her developed auditory sense open to any kind of stimulation that would alert her to get away. As she gradually descended she noticed the coldness became dry and the scarce amount of sounds you could hear were opaque and muffled. It was noticeably quieter than the usually silent first floor, and uncannier, too. She continued walking almost with the tip of her toes, but stopped when she registered a relatively slow and low beeping sound coming from a room surrounded by tinted glass. Her eyes narrowed in an intent of looking inside, but all she saw was the silhouette of figures that could be recognized as a hospital bed next to a set of tubes and wires. Driven by curiosity, she started walking closer and, before she got to her destination, she noticed she passed through similar rooms without tinted glass. They all had empty but messy beds and medical equipment that exhibited ghosts of use. One even had a broken serum tube and the spilling orange liquid met red stains in the pillow.

    The beeping sound got clearer, and before she knew she stood right in front of the door of the room, opening it to reveal Yoohyeon’s last roommate laying in the bed with her eyes closed. “Oh my god…” She rushed to the sleeping woman and examined her state; pale with a yellow undertone, fading bruises in her forearms, the corners of her nostrils were tinted with a little bit of scarlet… “What the hell…” She looked around the room and saw monitors filled with models of body systems, and they were animated like they represented real-time functions. Regret, it was all regret, what she felt. She would’ve been better off with ignorance, she thought.

    “She’s back here.” A voice interrupted her inner monologue. She instantly turned around and locked eyes with a man with blue clothing and a white coat, holding a phone close to his mouth. She was screwed, she was going back to the surgery room, she thought, but went blank when she saw two figures behind him. White clothed, like her, and one of them hooked their arm around the man’s neck, causing his face to disfigure into shock. He was unable to breathe, and before he could pull the arm away the other person forcefully held his hands still. She shook her head in response to the sight; it was Yoohyeon, and a person she didn’t recognize. The man’s energy drained out as the unknown woman laid his body on the floor carefully, and Gahyeon looked up to the taller one’s eyes, returning the smile she was shooting at her.

    “Hurry, he alerted the door guard.” Yoohyeon spoke after giving her friend a tight hug.

    They all ran in a way it didn’t make too much noise, though it still contrasted greatly against the soundless atmosphere of the gelid basement. Arriving at the door didn’t present any problems, until they opened the door and encountered the guard standing outside, looking straight at them. The three of them felt a rush of coldness throughout their bodies, unmatched to the temperature of the place they just got out of. But the aggressive pique of the guard’s face surrendered to the vanquish of a softer tone when she locked her eyes with Yoohyeon’s. Vacillation painted a confusing look in her features before inhaling deep, lowering her gaze and stepping aside. All of them, Yoohyeon specifically, got showered by perplexity, but started running nevertheless. The guard didn’t move, still looking at the floor while her arms hugged her torso, and, before taking the corner away from the hallway, Yoohyeon focused her eyes on her one last time.

Hello, again. First of all, enjoy the suayeon and jiyoo crumbs until the plot settles hahah. Second of all, university is tightening and I may or may not be able to update every single week diligently, as I've stated before, 'cause I do want to deliver quality content. I don't wanna rush anything and end up ruining the characters' development or any other thing. Note, I read Frankenstein last week and loved it, and I think I'm picking up on Shelley's tendency to overshare with the characters, tell me if it was mediocre lol. Hm, also, MINJI, darling, poor soul, I finally revealed the contents of her mind. At least a little, maybe with that amount you can understand more of her. Is Minji's character entirely rational? The answer is no. But what human is, really? Anyways, enjoy this 5k word mess and give me some feedback if you want!