Chapter 2: Brown hair

Sunlight filters in through silver-white curtains that hang just low enough to cover the windows. It lights up the room and heats up my face.

It’s morning.

Something at the back of my mind tells me that this isn’t my bed, but I feel Penguin in my arms and I relax. He feels different against the bare skin of my neck, though. As though he’s more worn out.

But that’s impossible.

I turn to my side. Hair tickles my face.

That’s odd, because I don’t remember my hair being that long. I resist the urge to sneeze and scrunch up my nose.

There’s suddenly someone at the door, shouting at me.

“Yah, Lee Taemin, wake up! We’re leaving in twenty.”

The voice is harsh, deep. It vaguely reminds me of Kibum, but that isn’t possible.

Key never shouts at me. At least not as roughly.

I groan, hopping that the person will go away and leave me alone. I’m tired. I don’t want to get up. It feels as though I’ve only slept for a minute.

The person at the door sighs exasperatedly, and loudly, too, since I can hear him from where I lie. That person is sounding more and more like Kibum. The air shifts, and I can feel him moving towards me.

Something semi-soft hits me in the face, followed by one more, deafeningly loud shout to get me to wake up. I clutch the object that assaulted me. It’s a pillow.

The person storms out of the room noisily, as though it’ll improve his mood.

I open my eyes, sitting up so my world is upright.

This room is different.

It’s smaller, and its walls are cream instead of baby blue. It only has one more bed though, opposite mine. That’s where the person attained the pillow. The bed is made neatly, but I can see dust gathering on it.

I sleep with all the hyungs, normally. The five of us share one room.

Maybe they put me in our spare room; the one manager-hyung sleeps in from time to time. I sniff the pillow, and then glare at it, since I don’t smell any of my hyungs on it. In fact, it doesn’t even have a smell. It only smells clean; like detergent, or soap.

It smells unused.

Somehow, that scares me.

I look down, at the only non-living thing that can comfort me. My plan backfires, and I just get even more scared.

Penguin isn’t a handsome, fluffy black anymore. He’s a dark grey. As though the colour faded.

Maybe it’s because my brain isn’t fully awake.

I decide that the reason is just that, so I leave Penguin on my own pillow, patting him on the head so that he’ll stay well behaved when I’m gone, and I trudge outside my room to head to the bathroom.

The floor plan to the dorm looks relatively the same, though some things look different. Like how the floor is different, and the doors are made of a different kind of wood.

I could blame it on alcohol, but I’m under aged and we’re not allowed to drink.

The last thing I remember from last night is Key umma tucking me in. Our schedules were incredibly packed so all of us were wiped by the end of the day.

Shuffling into the bathroom, I close the door behind me.

We never lock the doors. The locks are faulty, so Jinki hyung made it a rule that we were to knock before we entered, instead. It was an easier alternative to getting stuck in the toilet.

I move to the sink to brush my teeth, and I squeeze out a plop of toothpaste onto the toothbrush that’s labelled as mine. The toothbrush is different, too. Maybe the hyungs changed it last night when I was sleeping.

I look up, and come face to face with a girl.

It takes a while, but I realise that the person in the mirror is actually me, and not some ghost.

It’s me. My reflection.

The toothbrush slips out of my hand and clatters into the sink. Was this some kind of prank the hyungs were playing on me?

I raised my hand and touch my cheek, softly. Then I tug at my hair. There’s no makeup on my face. My hair isn’t a wig.

This was real.

I have long, brown hair. I look taller, thinner. Most of all, I look older.

All of a sudden, I can’t feel my legs, and my brain is numb from the shock.

Who? How?

A loud scream pierces through the cool morning air.

It takes a few seconds for me to realise that the scream belongs to me.

A/N: An update! On Christmas Eve :] Merry Christmas guys!

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