| Chapter 2 |

Xiumin started pacing around the room. The white walls and white colored furniture helped calm him down a bit. But just a little bit. His companion, Suho, was sitting down on a white wooden chair, his fingers continuously tapping the table.

“How long have we been in here?” Xiumin groaned, stopping in front of a painting of a unicorn. Suho didn’t answer. He was lost in thought again. Xiumin sighed and touched the painting. It felt cold on his fingertips. He gazed up, like countless times before, and saw the ten mirrors attached to the ceiling. He thought it was very odd to have mirrors on the ceiling. He also thought it was very odd to have a room made without a door. Xiumin had explored every nook and cranny of the room with Suho’s help but they didn’t find anything that could help them. No secret passage ways, no trap doors, nothing. It was a very curious room indeed, Xiumin thought. Maybe it belonged to a very eccentric billionaire. The only thing stopping them from panicking was the fact that they got inside, meaning there was a way in, which also means there's a way out. They just needed to find it somehow.

Suho continued his finger tapping, speeding up the rhythm as the minutes ticked by. He gazed into the small mirror sitting atop the table. His reflection gazed back at him, like a watery shadow.

Water, he thought. He remembered how the water from the sink just started dancing in the air, flowing around him in midair. He remembered Kai appearing in front of him and then disappearing in a cloud of smoke like some sort of specter. Then there was the darkness. Xiumin had said that something of the same nature happened to him and his friends. Something told him that he and Kai weren’t the only ones who experienced these super natural events. His other friends; Chanyeol, Baekhyun, Sehun and D.O also did.

Xiumin began tracing the frame of the painting with a finger, absent-mindedly feeling the smoothness of the wood. Then he felt something, an irregularity on the wooden surface. He removed his finger, remembering the spot on the frame, and tried to take a look at it. It was too high for him, so he tiptoed but his height still proved to be lacking.

“Suho,” he said, taking hold of the chair Suho was using. “I need to look at something. Hurry!” He was shaking the chair to show his urgency. This woke Suho up from his daze. He stood up with a puzzled look. He watched as Xiumin positioned the chair in front of the painting and began climbing it. He bent down a little to be on eye level with the frame. Xiumin saw that there were two small symbols on the surface.

A snowflake and a teardrop.

Ice and water, Xiumin thought. He turned to Suho and urged him to take a look at the symbols for a second opinion. Suho took his place. He gazed at the small carvings on the frame. A snowflake and a teardrop. He traced the symbols with his finger.

“A snowflake and a teardrop! That’s ice and water!” Xiumin said, hope evident in his tone. “That’s you and me! Maybe this is some kind of clue!”

It was obvious to Suho that these symbols have something to do with them, or to the phenomenon that happened to them, at least, without Xiumin pointing it out to him. But what are these symbols and what are they supposed to do?

“Ice…” Suho whispered to himself as he ran his finger over the snowflake symbol, thinking about how these symbols could help them. His finger moved on to the teardrop. “And water…” As soon as the words were out of his mouth, the symbol started to glow under his finger.

Lay noticed it first. A faint glow caught his eye. He immediately checked to see what it was but it was gone as quickly as it appeared. Baekhyun followed close behind him. Something on the frame of the table mirror had glowed. Lay peered closer and saw that it was the symbol engraved on to the frame, the one that looked like a teardrop.

“Why, what happened?” Baekhyun said from behind him. Lay stared at the symbol again, hoping that something would happen, to prove that it wasn’t his mind playing tricks on him.

“Maybe it was just my imagination.” Lay said with a sigh and removed himself from the mirror.

“No, it wasn’t. Look!” Baekhyun pointed at the mirror and they saw the other symbol, the snowflake, glow. “What do you think that means?”

“I don’t know. But I think we’re about to find out.” Lay said. Slowly, their reflections in the mirror dissolved and they were now looking at a different scene. It was Suho and Xiumin.

“That’s Suho!” Baekhyun exclaimed in shock.

“And that’s Xiumin…” Lay said in addition.

The other two boys were in a room that looked exactly like the one they were in. The white walls, the white furniture, the table, the mirror, the unicorn painting; everything was the same, completely identical.

“What are they doing? Do you think they can see us?” Baekhyun asked, waving frantically at the mirror. “Hey, SUHO!” he shouted.

“I don’t think they can hear us.” Lay said. “What are they doing?” They watched as Xiumin climbed down the chair. The round-faced boy had used it to look at the painting. Lay left the mirror and immediately grabbed their own chair, positioning it in front of the painting the way he saw Xiumin did.

“What’re you doing?” Baekhyun asked, puzzled by what his new friend was up to.

“They must have found something here,” Lay said as he climbed the chair. “Something we missed.” Baekhyun returned to watching the mirror. What he saw surprised him a second time.

“Hey. Suho’s…,” he stuttered. “Suho! And the water!” His eyes widened in shock.

Lay took a quick glance at the mirror. Suho was materializing water from thin air and controlling it.

Water, Lay thought. His hand was groping every inch of the painting. Then he felt it. The symbols on the frame. One looked liked the head of a unicorn and the other a star. Then he felt an ominous and literal chill in the air.

“Baekhyun…?” Lay said in his usual airy tone. “You said you emitted light from your hands before you got stuck in this room right?” Baekhyun turned to look at Lay. “And I healed Chen’s wound… Unicorn blood has healing properties, right? I read about it in a book once.”

Baekhyun raised his eyebrow, not quite sure what Lay was getting at.

“Well, there are these symbols on the frame. Kind of like the ones on the mirror... but different. Xiumin and your friend must have found…” He was cut off by Baekhyun’s voice which was way louder than his own.

“They must have the found the same ones and that’s how Suho’s controlling water!” Baekhyun finished Lay’s sentence, bounded towards the chair, helped Lay down, and took his place to look at the symbols. “If Kai can teleport, and Suho can control water, and you can heal wounds, then I must have my own power!” Baekhyun felt the symbols with his finger. “Mine must have something to do with light!”

As soon at the words were out of his mouth, the star symbol glowed. He reflexively removed his finger from the frame.

“Lay, get up here! Look!” He jumped off the chair and helped Lay up. “Did you see that? It glowed when I said light!”

“That means the unicorn symbol,” Lay said, touching the symbol. “Must be for healing.” The unicorn symbol imitated what the other symbol did. “It glowed! Now what?” Fog came out of his mouth when he talked. The temperature was getting lower and lower by the minute.

“W-what’s happening?” Baekhyun said, his teeth chattering from the cold. He walked towards the mirror and saw that Xiumin had frozen the water Suho was controlling and that the walls had started to freeze over.

“T-this same thing h-happened back at Kris’ l-l-living room.” Lay came down from the chair and looked at the walls. Frost started to creep over the white paint. The mirrors on the ceiling started to fog and crack. The orchids on the table had already wilted from the cold.

“W-we have to g-get out of here,” Baekhyun said. “Or we’ll freeze to death!”

Just then, something happened. The unicorn on the painting moved.

“Xiumin, how do you stop this!?” Suho was shivering uncontrollably. The temperature was dropping at a very fast pace. “I c-c-can’t take it… anym-more…” Suho’s lips were turning blue and he felt faint.

“I don’t know!” Xiumin, apparently, wasn’t affected by the cold. He closed his eyes and began concentrating very hard. Stop, stop, stop. He opened his eyes but nothing happened. The mirrors started breaking and glass started raining down on them like tiny icicles.

Then they heard a sound. A neigh. Xiumin looked at the painting. The unicorn was moving. It rode away into its own painted horizon. Then the painting vanished, leaving behind the frame and revealing a tunnel.

“A way out…” Xiumin whispered. “Suho, there’s our way out! Hurry! Climb up!”

Suho willed his legs to move. It was beginning to be difficult to do but he forged his way up the chair and into the tunnel with Xiumin’s help.

“Baekhyun, get inside! H-hurry!” Their painting had also vanished and Baekhyun was the first to get in. Lay moved towards the chair, brushing against the wilted orchids on his way. He climbed up into the tunnel and began following Baekhyun.

The room they left behind was a frozen ruin. The freezing had stopped. But the orchids were back in full bloom. As if the deadly touch of the extreme cold never affected them to begin with.

| White Box |