The Bloodhouse was horrible. Woohyun paused every so often throughout his day to admire his luck—why would Himchan just have happened to assign him with the Slicers right after Daehyun’s death?

Woohyun cowered in the corner, watching Jinki and Sunggyu drag in a struggling, full-grown pig for dinner, and Dongwoo bringing down the blade…

Then again, Junhong had to clean the Bloodhouse after each slaughter.

Woohyun looked around; seemed like Myungsoo was still out… Burying Daehyun? Woohyun shuddered a little at the thought of the Deadheads, with his “near-death” experience with the victim of a Griever sting.

What was the purpose of Grievers if they only came out at night and the doors to the Maze closed at sundown? They killed, but how many kills would they be able to get in?

Woohyun looked up, hearing someone sigh as they sat down beside him, stretching his back.

Myungsoo didn’t look at him. Woohyun sat there, wondering whether or not he should talk to break the ‘awkward tension’—plus, he wanted to know about Daehyun.

“So,” he said quietly at last, clearing his throat. “Did you… uh… about Daehyun…”

Myungsoo still didn’t bother looking at him, and Woohyun wondered if he’d fallen asleep until he noticed the boy give a stiff nod.

Woohyun didn’t know why Myungsoo took so long to answer, but he eventually moved his lips. “Basically just had to bury a few pieces of his tank.”

“Oh… okay.” He said, growing quiet again. “Was he… was he the previous keeper?”

Myungsoo nodded again, Woohyun wondering if the boy’s nature was like that.

“He was probably the best keeper you could ask for.”

Woohyun’s head whipped in his direction.

“Before he got stung.”

Woohyun nodded.

Myungsoo sighed a bit, running a hand over his face.

“It doesn’t feel right that Daehyun physically isn’t here anymore.”

Woohyun stared, shamelessly, waiting for him to elaborate. What was it that was in Griever stings and the Changing to have such a horrendous impact? Why did you emerge so different?

“Would you, if you could have, prevented his banishing?” Woohyun asked quietly, knowing it was ironic for him to say so.

But Myungsoo didn’t take it to heart. “I don’t know. He broke the rules.”

Woohyun scoffed, a little. Why were the guys here so uptight with the rules thing? It was ridiculous—with how tightly Yongguk hugged the rules too.

“He was completely different after the Changing anyway—there was nothing much to lose,” Myungsoo sighed. He turned slightly, raising a brow at the disbelief strung across Woohyun’s face. “It’s well-known fact that if rules aren’t adhered to, regulations would be lost and chaos would ensue, you know? It’s happened before—that’s why Yongguk’s so persistent.”

“Fair enough,” Woohyun muttered, “but what’s with the Changing? You emerge a whole different person—why?”

“The serum,” Myungsoo said simply, his voice soft.

“What is it?”

“It’s sent up in the Box every month, along with our supplies. It took Yongguk and the rest a while to figure out that it could prevent Griever stings from being lethal, but the result is the victim would then go through the Changing, and as the name suggests, emerges a whole new person inside the same face.”

Oh.

“You know Hoya?”

Woohyun rolled his eyes. “Does anyone not know Hoya?”

Myungsoo ignored that. “Hoya used to be Howon.”

“….What?”

“Hoya, after he woke up from the Changing, refused to acknowledge his real name, Howon. Instead, he was certain his name was Hoya, and that’s what everyone continued calling him. He thinks Howon’s a long-dead Glader that we keep comparing him to.”

Oh.

“How did he get stung?” All of a sudden, with the recurring image of Daehyun’s writhing body in his sickbed, Woohyun felt an ounce of pity for him. “What was he like before?”

“Was he always like that??”

“Oh, no.”

This is what Himchan meant, wasn’t it?

“I don’t know, Woohyun—you’ve gotta ask Yongguk that. When I arrived, he was just going through the last stage of his Changing. They told me his name was Howon, but one day he woke up and said he was Hoya.” Myungsoo shrugged. “As of Daehyun… he was really fun. No matter how shuck your day went, he’d somehow make you crack up.”

Woohyun tried to will away the thoughts of Daehyun fighting the pole before the doors closed, shutting him off in the maze, his ears still ringing with the echo of Daehyun’s piercing scream.

This was a place where you couldn’t buy yourself out of something just from great memories or close ties—all the boys’ connection with Daehyun ran deep yet he was tossed aside simply because he broke a rule.

“You know what Daehyun said? That I—”

“Caused everything?” Myungsoo finished. “And Hoya too, I suppose?”

Woohyun frowned. “How do you know about Hoya?”

“He’s gone through the Changing too, remember?”

“Do you have any idea what they mean?” Woohyun said quickly. Myungsoo was relatively polite and although a little on the quiet side, more than willing to answer his questions, for once.

“What, their dreams?”

Woohyun blinked. “I guess?” I guess they dream in the Changing.

“They wouldn’t speak of it.” Myungsoo shrugged before fixing Woohyun with a strangely penetrating, intense stare. He noticed Myungsoo’s eyes, how they were slightly unaligned with each other. It was hard to notice if he wasn’t looking directly into Woohyun’ eyes. “You want to get out of the Maze, right?”

“Of course,” Woohyun said. “I want to remember. I want to remember what our lives were for all these ten years before the Glade, and why the Creators sent us here.”

“Exactly. You want to go back,” Myungsoo turned back away, looking too unfazed to be watching a slaughter. “That’s probably exactly what the Changing told Hoya and Daehyun that was so bad—the world out there must be pretty messed up to be worse than this monster-ridden Maze.”

Woohyun stared at him, speechless, letting his words sink in. Myungsoo was a bagger, burying dead bodies and guarding either the slammer or the Homestead when he wasn’t killing livestock—just how did he come up with this?

“Psst! Myungsoo! Woohyun!” a head poked in through the door. “Oh thank heavens the pigs have been killed already—that’s one thing I would not want to have to live to see.”

Baekhyun strolled in the Bloodhouse, and despite everything he said about the killing of the pig for dinner, he didn’t seem too fazed about the blood on his track-hoe boots.

“Baekhyun,” Woohyun greeted, noticing how Myungsoo had suddenly grown quiet. If Myungsoo actually spoke up, Woohyun reckoned, he’d probably be a greater keeper than Dongwoo—even Hoya. “Why’re you here?”

“Just because I’m a wimpy track-hoe doesn’t mean I’m a vegetarian.” What? “I’m gonna hang with you cool kids for a while—Himchan’s worried his shuck in a twist again.”

Woohyun’s mind cleared, all of a sudden, and the realisation dawning on him must’ve shown on his face, for Baekhyun nodded in response.

“Yes, Yongguk and Jongin haven’t come back yet.”

“What?!” Woohyun sprung out of his seat.

By this point, all the Gladers should have known of Yongguk’s absence. Woohyun ran to the entrance of the Bloodhouse Baekhyun had just strolled in. But with sunset not too far off, when were they going to get back?

“If they aren’t gonna hurry,” Baekhyun voiced Woohyun’s own thoughts. “They’re literally dead meat.”

Woohyun looked back, catching Myungsoo’s eyes. “Do you think something happened?”

“What, though?” Myungsoo spoke up, just as quietly as the rustle of the trees of the forest on the opposite corner of the Glade. “Grievers? And since when did they come out during the day?”

Woohyun gnawed down on his bottom lip, looking back and forth from the doors of the Glade. “Isn’t it just a dead Griever? What’s taking them so long?”

Myungsoo huffed. “Dead Griever.”

Baekhyun looked at him quizzically. “Was that meant to be sarcastic, because you’ve got a long way to go, shank.”

Was Myungsoo just deaf to everything irrelevant?

“Think about it,” he sighed gently. “What would’ve killed it?”

“What if they don’t make it?” Junhong whispered.

“Well they don’t make it,” Jongup muttered back, careful not to be caught by Himchan.

“They will make it!” Too late. “They will—they must’ve run into Minho and Zitao,” the blonde was muttering, almost just trying to find comfort in those words despite their emptiness. “Maybe the runners then took Yongguk around the different areas…”

Jongup turned to Junhong and gave a tiny shake of his head.

“But Himchan,” a soft voice said from somewhere towards the side. Himchan turned his head in dread, finding Zitao standing a few metres from him. “Minho and I came back a while ago—and no trace of the two of them.”

Himchan cursed, hands half-heartedly tugging at his long, blonde hair.

“What if they don’t make it though?” Jonghyun repeated from somewhere behind the front line standing at the East door.

“Then…” came Minseok’s voice, the boy standing on his tip toes in hopes that the two would turn up last minute. A look at the sky and everyone knew—the doors were going to close any moment. “That’ll be two Leaders gone in two months.”

“No!” Himchan shouted, everyone falling a deadly silent. “Do you have no faith in your Leader?” he turned back to staring fixedly at the doors Yongguk and Jongin jogged into just that morning. “They will come back. Believe it.”

It didn’t sound like Himchan was trying to convince everyone else to believe in their leader and the keeper—it sounded more like Himchan was trying to convince himself.

“Wouldn’t Himchan be Leader?” Sunggyu whispered somewhere towards the back, Sungjong murmuring in agreement. “If Yongguk doesn’t return?”

“Shut up, shanks,” Hoya spat and the two fell silent.

A sudden rush of a wind and everyone looked up at the echoing of a deafening crunch.

On all four sides of the Glade, the doors were closing.

Himchan looked like he was trying to appear emotionless after on lemon juice.

“THERE!”

Woohyun’s head snapped up, hearing Jongdae’s scream, following his finger pointing in the gloom of the tunnel beyond the closing walls. And there, if he squinted hard enough, he could make out two figures, slowly rounding the corner, approaching the closing doors.

“THAT’S THEM!” Jongdae was shouting, and before long, everyone joined in.

“YONGGUK!” Himchan screamed, before everyone took a closer look and noticed how the Leader’s entire body was draped fully over Jongin, the keeper struggling to run with the dead weight on his shoulders.

“JONGIN, RUN!” someone shouted, the doors closing in. Either Jongin didn’t hear over the sliding of the doors or he refused to leave Yongguk in the Maze alone, unconscious. But when everyone joined in all of a sudden and the boy still had no intentions on ditching his Leader, the panic within every Glader’s chests began rising.

The doors were too close to closing, leaving too little time for both Yongguk and a struggling Jongin to make it before they close. Either Jongin had to make a run for it and sacrifice Yongguk or the two of them stayed out there together, because they weren’t going to make it out together—alive.

So Woohyun ran.

He ran straight past the closing doors, slipping past Jongdae’s fingers that lunged out to grab onto him and through the doors, Himchan and Jongdae and Baekhyun and Chanyeol and Dongwoo and everyone else’s screams for him to stop flying past his head and completely disregarded.

That is, until he found himself directly infront of an anguished Jongin, Yongguk’s still body, with the doors tightly shut behind his back.

He turned around, taking in the doors in all its glory, tall and shut.

“YOU IDIOT!”

Jongin was slumped against the wall, breathing ragged and heavy, regarding Woohyun with furrowed brows and narrowed eyes.

“What did you bloody do that for?” he hissed.

“You weren’t going to make it,” Woohyun defended weakly.

“Well now, you aren’t either!” Jongin shouted, his voice eerily echoing through the ever-darkening stone walls with the promise of night.

“Why’re you acting like there isn’t a chance?” Woohyun frowned. “Maybe—”

“Shank, what I think you need is to get your shuck head around the fact that in this bloody hell hole, chances don’t exist.” Jongin snarled, intense gaze never leaving Woohyun’s jittery expression. “We’re as dead as Daehyun—it’s just a matter of time before we’re pet food.”

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A/N

I was going to upload this sooner but I was out all day and then fell asleep like as soon as I got home -_-

Anyway, scaaaary night in the maze next.

Or just a whole bunch of 'shuck' and 'shank'. I haven't read through it yet so I don't know

~Unicorn