Jongin looked around to see nine other people gathered at the research venue. They look like poor uni students, he thought. It was safe to assume that all of them had the same idea. The pay wasn’t much for three days of work, but they were being paid in cash just for making things up, so what harm could there possibly be?

A man, who introduced himself as Kris, led them to a medium-sized room.

“Everybody grab a chair. We’ll sit in a circle.”

“We’re not getting paid enough to do manual labour,” somebody muttered.

A silent look from Kris shut him up. One by one they took a chair from the stack at the side of the room and formed a circle.

“Now we just have to wait for my research partner,” Kris said, frowning at his watch.

“You’re all here!”

Everybody turned to face the door. A man walked in, carrying a stack of paper.

“I’m Suho,” he said. “And you’ve met my research partner Kris. I need all of you to fill out a consent form.” He handed each of them a piece of paper before settling in his seat.

“Before we start, I should make it clear that you can’t leave this room unless it’s absolutely necessary. The bathroom’s at the back,” he said, pointing to a door. “And we have sleeping bags prepared. We’ll have food delivered to this room three times a day, and there are snacks in that cupboard if you need more. Kris and I will stay here throughout the research period as well. This is important because we need to make constant observations. If you can’t consent to this, please let us know now.”

He looked around at all the participants. Nobody said anything.

“Okay. Another thing is I can’t pay you if you don’t contribute to the research.”

“What?” somebody protested.

“What do you mean contribute?” Jongin asked.

“If you don’t say anything during discussions, or if there’s obviously nothing wrong with you and you’re well aware of it-”

A few guilty coughs sounded in the room.

“Simply put, if you’re here to waste our time thinking you’ll make easy money, you won’t,” Kris said.

“Fair enough,” Jongin said, secretly grateful he was a drama major.

Suho nodded, pleased with the murmurs of consent from the other participants.

“I’ll hand these out,” he said, taking out some blank nametags. “Please write your names on them and clip them onto your clothes to help us identify you.”

The nametags were passed around.

“Now let’s get started.” He turned to the person sitting to his left. “What’s wrong with you?”