Lost Carnival

An awkward silence filled the car as they traveled slowly down that backcountry road. The rear wheels kicked up so much dirt that all they could see behind them was a dusty fog, which seemed as gray as the overcast sky. Seohyun stared out the window, watching the rolling hills and fields pass by and disappear into that dusty fog while Seungri shifted in his seat and gripped the steering wheel tightly, trying to think of something to say. It was only their second date and they weren’t quite comfortable with each other yet. Had they been closer, they might have been able to enjoy the silence and not feel the need to pad it with constant conversation. But instead, because they were just getting acquainted, each second that ticked by without the other talking made them feel as though there was this distance building between them.

It had been Seungri’s idea to take the drive through the countryside. He had thought that getting out of Seoul and spending some time in the car together, experiencing new sights, would make them closer. But when they this secluded dirt road, the GPS screen suddenly got distorted and eventually froze. Afraid of getting lost, Seungri had turned around to drive back the way they had come in hopes of returning to the highway, but the road back seemed different than before, as if it was somehow a different road entirely. The farmhouses and vegetable stands they had seen earlier were nowhere in sight now. Nothing was in sight. There seemed to only be this road, which stretched endlessly to the horizon.

Seungri gestured toward the GPS mounted to the windshield. “Want to see if you can get that working again?” he asked.

“Okay,” Seohyun quietly said. She carefully leaned forward in her seat, detached the GPS from its mount, and tried swiping her finger across the screen, but the pixelated map, which rendered the road names illegible, didn’t move. Not knowing what else to do, she tried holding down the power button, hoping to restart it, but still there was nothing. “I think it’s dead,” she said, as she remounted it to the windshield. “Do you have a map? Like a real map?”

Seungri shook his head no.

Seohyun wanted to tell him that he should always keep a map in his car in case of times like this, but chose to say nothing instead. She knew that her righteous manner was sometimes off-putting and she didn’t want to come across as preachy. Decisions like these – determining how to act and what to say – had always been difficult for her. She still felt new to the world in a lot of ways, as she was naïve in most matters, having experienced more of life in books than in real world encounters, and because of this, she didn’t exude a natural personality. Everything she did and said was a careful choice rather than innate behavior.   

In a way, this was why she was drawn to Seungri. He seemed completely comfortable with himself, unafraid to act silly and to make mistakes. He didn’t always abide by the rules like she did; in fact, he rarely abided by the rules. It had taken ten minutes for her just to convince him to wear his seatbelt when they had first left on this drive.

As they sat quietly in the car now, she thought about how badly she needed someone like Seungri in her life, but at the same time, she couldn’t help but think that guys as outgoing as Seungri seemed better suited for similarly outgoing girls, like her unni, Taeyeon, for instance. If that was true, though, then what did that mean for her? That she was best suited for a guy as weirdly pure as her? Even if such a guy did exist, she didn’t want that boring life. She wanted surprises and excitement. She wanted to feel alive. 

With this in mind, she leaned over and gently placed her hand on Seungri’s arm. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’re lost, but it’s okay. We’re having an adventure.”

“Some adventure,” Seungri said, shaking his head. He pointed to the deserted road ahead. “There’s nothing out here. I don’t understand it. This is the same road we took before but now it’s like, there’s just nothing.” He sighed and looked over at her. “I’m sorry for getting us into this.”

“Don’t be,” she said. “It’s kind of fun.”

At that moment, they noticed a shabby wooden sign off the road ahead. It was stuck in the grass at an angle, as if it would fall over any minute. They both leaned forward in their seats and read the word “Carnival” painted carelessly in white paint, which dripped down and made it appear as if the word was melting. Next to the word was an arrow pointing left. Seungri slowed down and peered at the left side of the road, abruptly stopping when he caught sight of the narrow side path leading through the overgrown grassy field.

“We should go there,” he said. “It’s the first sign – literally – of any life around here.”

“A carnival would be so much fun,” Seohyun said, clasping her hands together and smiling widely.

Seungri had just planned on stopping there and asking directions back to the highway. He had felt like a failure all this time for getting them lost and hadn’t quite believed that Seohyun was really having a good time. He had thought that she was just being nice. But her happiness at the possibility of attending a carnival seemed genuine, and this allowed Seungri to relax a bit. Perhaps this was a fun adventure after all, he thought, and that everything had worked out for the best.

The dry amber grass was high on both sides of that narrow path, nearly as tall as the car, which made seeing anything other than what was directly in front of them somewhat impossible. The path winded a bit and the tires continued kicking up dirt and skidding occasionally around those turns. After what seemed like five or ten minutes with no carnival yet in sight, Seungri began to get worried, especially when he realized that there was nowhere to turn around, not unless he wanted to veer off the road and into that tall grass to try to back up.

But soon, that tall grass parted and exposed a gravel clearing bordered at the back by a rusty iron fence. Just beyond, in the field, was the small carnival, which looked abandoned.

“Is it closed?” Seohyun asked.

Seungri pulled up into the gravel clearing and parked in front of the iron fence. “I don’t know,” he said, peering through the windshield toward the fairgrounds on the other side of the fence. He could see only weathered circus-like tents and the ghostly outline of a ferris wheel, which seemed frozen in place. The carnival appeared to be as desolate as the road that had led them there, made drearier by the dark overcast sky above.

“Let’s get out and see,” Seohyun said.

They walked past the gate and onto the fairgrounds, feeling an immediate chill in the air. The tents inside the entrance looked like they had once been rainbow-colored, but all that remained now of that color were varying shades of gray. They stayed on the gravel path, trying to glance inside the tents that they passed, but seeing nothing but blackness. Down the way a bit, the tents made way for some old-timey carnival games. They stopped at the first one, a small shooting gallery where a patron would aim the gun into the clown’s mouth to win one of the stuffed animal prizes. Those prizes, discolored and moldy, were nailed to the wall like science dissections, the stuffing pouring out of the rips in their fabric.

Seohyun looked around them to the other carnival games, all of which were just as empty and creepy. She was scared but tried not be, believing that her fear was just another weakness of hers. Remembering the advice she had gleaned from the last self-help book she had read, she knew that she needed to be brave when faced with new situations and was trying hard to do that now. But at that moment, from behind her, a hand appeared on her shoulder and she shrieked. Seungri, who had been facing the other way, felt his heart jump when he heard her scream and instantly turned around to see the short gray-haired ahjumma who still had her hand on Seohyun’s shoulder. Seohyun slowly backed away until the ahjumma’s hand fell from her shoulder.

The ahjumma’s face was covered in wrinkles so deep and dirty, like thick ridges across her face, that her eyes, mere slivers, could barely be seen. She raised that same hand again, which was stippled with age spots and lined with veins that protruded like cloudy blue worms. “So young,” she said, her voice hoarse and cracking as she reached out to them. “Such beautiful fresh faces.”

Seohyun, who had been covering in fright, felt such shame for the way she had reacted and decided to apologize. While she bowed, the ahjumma reached up to touch Seohyun’s face. Seohyun tried not to cringe at the touch of that woman’s rough hand upon her cheek.

“So soft,” the ahjumma said. “Such soft skin.”

“Thank you,” Seohyun quietly said as she slowly backed away from the ahjumma’s hand again.

“Do you know how to get back to the main road?” Seungri asked, just wanting to get out of there.

The ahjumma stared at him with those slivers of eyes but didn’t say a word. She just stared and stared. The silence was unbearable for Seungri, who then grabbed Seohyun’s arm and bowed slightly toward the woman as he turned around only to stop abruptly at the sight of another ahjumma who had been standing behind them.

“Come with me,” the second ahjumma said, cracking a smile that exposed her brown, broken teeth. “No need to pay. The rides are free today.”

“That’s okay,” Seungri said. “We just wanted directions back to the highway.”

“I’ll help you find your way,” the ahjumma said, smiling that crooked smile again. “But first, you follow me.”

Seungri didn’t want to go anywhere with that woman. Something about her – and this place – was wrong, but he wasn’t getting any signal from Seohyun that she shared these fears. In fact, he was sensing the opposite from her, that she was seemingly fine with following the woman. Seungri didn’t understand why Seohyun wasn’t scared to enter into such an odd situation. He didn’t know, of course, that she was nearly daring herself to do so in an attempt to break out of her shell. All he knew was that the young girl he had just started dating appeared to be braver than him, and that hurt his pride. Going against his instinct, he decided to do what the ahjumma said.

They followed the woman further into the carnival, past the games and toward the rides, none of which seemed to be working. The spinning seats on the teacups ride and the tilt-a-whirl served no purpose other than to collect dust and pollen in their slow decay from the elements. The faded horses on the carousel looked dead-eyed and lost with no music to guide them and no children to ride them. And the ferris wheel, which extended high in the sky, seemed just as forgotten with its passenger cars that creakily rocked in the whistling wind. The only signs of life in that small carnival were the few old people they passed along the way, all of whom stared at Seungri and Seohyun with open mouths and curious eyes.

The path through the carnival ended at the haunted house, a wooden structure with boarded-up windows and a rickety fence. Unlike the other rides, this one was lit up and resounded with music – its eaves twinkled with red bulbs while a spooky organ played. An animatronic skeleton stood at the entrance, waving to those who entered. Standing near the skeleton was an ahjussi with short white hair and leathery cheeks that were sunken in due to his lack of teeth. He looked at Seungri and Seohyun, tilting his head as he studied their faces, and then nodded toward the ahjumma as he gestured the young couple inside.

Seungri pulled Seohyun aside. “Do you really want to go in there?” he quietly asked.

Seohyun glanced up at the dark entrance to the haunted house and then back at Seungri. She breathed in deeply, trying to assure herself that even though the carnival was a bit odd, there was nothing to be scared of. One of her favorite self-help books talked about empowerment and overcoming cowardice. She wanted to be a strong confident person, the type of girl that Seungri would like, perhaps even fall in love with. “I’ve been in a haunted house before,” she said.

“Like this one?” Seungri asked. He didn’t know quite what he was asking. This haunted house seemed no different from any other he had been to. It was everything else that was creepy – the rusty unmoving rides, the old people that stared at them as they walked by, the fact that this carnival was in the middle of nowhere off a road that they had somehow gotten lost on despite never having turned off it.

“It wasn’t like this, not really,” she said. “It was in a normal amusement park.”

“Right, that’s what I’m saying.” Seungri looked behind him and saw the ahjumma and ahjussi watching them. Turning back to Seohyun, he said, “It’s this place. It’s not normal.”

Seohyun glanced again at the haunted house and shrugged. “There’s nothing to be scared of,” she said, trying to convince herself just as much as she was trying to convince him. “When I went in a haunted house once with Yonghwa, he was more scared than me. He hid behind me the whole time.”

“You went out with Yonghwa?” he asked, feeling suddenly jealous, but then he remembered that it was just for the show We Got Married. “Oh, right. I forgot,” he said. “Well, when we go in, you stay behind me, okay?” He didn’t want to hide behind her. He wanted her to think of him as a man, someone strong that she could depend on.

“Okay,” she said.

“And after this, we’re getting out of here,” he added. “We’ll go on a real date. Somewhere nice.”

Seohyun smiled. “I’d like that.”

Seungri smiled, too. He hadn’t been sure how Seohyun felt about him. They had initially bonded because they were both the maknaes of their groups, but things between them since had seemed more friendly than romantic. Trying to get closer to her and to lift their relationship to a more intimate level, he reached for her hand, holding it tightly, and lightly kissed her on the cheek.

Seohyun blushed and covered .

The ahjussi interrupted them at that moment as he pointed ahead to the entrance. “See you on the other side,” he said, his words coming out of his toothless mouth like a whistle.

Seungri and Seohyun began walking past the rickety fence and toward the dark doorway leading into the haunted house. Before entering, Seungri tightened his grip on Seohyun’s hand and led the way, keeping her at arm’s length behind him.

It was dark inside. They moved further in, unable to see. Tiny red lights on the floor guided their way through the blackness. Suddenly, they heard maniacal laughter, some sort of staticky sound effect that boomed out of a nearby speaker. Seohyun jumped a bit and grabbed onto the back of Seungri. He smiled, enjoying having her so close to him and feeling like he had been silly for thinking that there was something sinister about this carnival.

They moved more quickly now, jumping back from the animatronic clowns that popped out of nowhere, shrieking with delight at the bloody axe that swung down beside them, and laughing as they tried to traverse the tottery bridge that led them to the final room in the house.

The final room was enclosed in mirrors. At first, they clung to each other, awaiting whatever would pop out next, but when nothing happened, they loosened their grip on each other and began looking curiously around at the mirrors surrounding them, but they weren’t the funhouse mirrors that distorted reflections; they just seemed like normal mirrors.

“Is something supposed to happen?” Seohyun asked.

Seungri shrugged. “Maybe we’re just supposed to keep walking,” he said, but as he lifted his leg to take a step forward, he realized that he was stuck. He tried moving his other leg but that one was stuck, too. Getting a bit angry, he tried more forcefully to move and then realized that his feet were numb. He couldn’t feel them anymore. “Seohyun-ssi, can you move?” he asked, somewhat desperately.

Seohyun glanced at him, unsure as to what he was talking about, but when she went to walk over to him, she realized that she, too, couldn’t move. “I… I feel paralyzed,” she said.

A bluish glow lit up the room at that moment, and with it came a loud chant in a language they didn’t understand, which seemed to echo throughout that small space.

“What is that?” Seohyun asked, trying to hold back her tears.

The blue light got brighter, tinting the mirrors, which no longer reflected the room but instead showed the faces of the old people as they continued to chant in that collective of operative voices, seemingly reciting some ritual.

Seohyun cried out and began flailing her arms, trying to free herself, but quickly fell down, the numbness now spreading up her legs.

Seungri saw her there and yelled for her to crawl. He got down on his knees to do the same and managed to drag his legs behind him somewhat. “Crawl! Hurry!” he yelled.

She couldn’t. It wasn’t the paralysis. It was her fear. She was overwhelmed by it. Squeezing her eyes closed, she thought about all that she had read, trying to find some sage advice to guide her through this, but only one quote resonated more loudly than the haunting chant that filled her head. “People with good hearts are the ultimate winners,” she hurriedly said. It was her life motto, the one thing she believed in more than anything else. “People with good hearts are the ultimate winners. People with good heart are the ultimate winners.”

Seungri looked back, seeing her there on the floor holding her legs and repeating that line over and over again. “Come on!” he yelled.

“People with good hearts are the ultimate winners,” she said, more calmly this time as she breathed in deeply. She didn’t know how or why, but her feet seemed to regain some feeling. She was able to stand.

Seungri was shocked and tried to do the same, but couldn’t. “Seohyun, help me!” he yelled.

Seohyun ran over to him and, with all the strength she could muster, began dragging him across the floor. The bluish light began flickering and the reflection of the old people in the mirrors began fading. Seohyun managed one last heave and, as Seungri’s feet were released from the floor, the two fell out of the room, crashing through the exit door that led outside. Seungri had landed atop her and quickly scurried to his feet now, holding his hand out to help her up.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Did I hurt you?” But he didn’t wait for an answer. They were outside the haunted house and all he wanted to do was make sure that they got out of that carnival alive. Grabbing her hand, he began running back down the path they had come.  

Seohyun screamed.

Seungri turned to see what she was screaming at and saw the ahjussi from earlier, but the man’s face was different, more corpse-like with grayish, fading skin. He looked like a ghost. And then ahead of him, he saw the ahjumma with the brown broken teeth. She was fluttering above the ground, zooming toward them. Seungri yanked Seohyun out of the ghost’s way and ran even faster through that carnival, so fast that he could barely breathe.

Seohyun kept up, trying not to look at the ghosts around her and focus only on the iron fence ahead. The gate was slowly creaking closed. The two maknaes, in a last dash, dove through the ajar gate, feeling instant warmth on the other side as they landed on the gravel outside of the fairgrounds. They lifted themselves up from the gravel, their elbows and knees bloody with scrapes and those small pebbles embedded in their skin, and then lurched toward the car.

As Seungri dug into his pocket for his keys, he glanced back at the fairgrounds, but the carnival wasn’t there anymore. Instead, past that iron fence, he saw nothing but graves. It was a cemetery. Stunned, the keys fell from his hand, clanking against the gravel lot. Seohyun saw it too, her eyes widening at the sight.

Seungri snapped out of his shock, reached down for the keys, and quickly unlocked their doors. They collapsed inside the car, trying to catch their breaths as their eyes darted across the gray stone tombstones and white crosses beyond that fence. Seohyun, still staring ahead, reached over to hold Seungri’s hand. He brought their clasped hands up to his lips, kissed her hand, and then looked over at her. She turned to look at him, too. They didn’t say anything. They didn’t need to. They sat there in that silence, knowing that they had experienced something together that they didn’t understand, something that no one else would understand either. They were connected now through this experience, and as they drove off, away from that gravel lot, down that windy path, and back on that dirt road, they sat comfortably in their silence, feeling a sense of closeness that few couples ever feel.