28; Heart-to-heart

There was nothing but a blank, inky canvas beneath his feet. In fact, the canvas was all around him; his being wrapped within a meek void surrounded by wisps of cosmic smoke and stardust.

Jimin was floating. Being enclosed in an inky vacuum was an otherwise alarming state to be in. Yet panic was the last thing he’d felt then. Instead, he felt light. Weightless. Oddly contented as he hung like a portrait in the dark air, taking in the breathtakingly obscure space he was in. However, the bliss he slowly grew conscious of was suddenly interrupted by the blinding light of a star in the distance.

He squinted – his vision attacked by the extraordinary glow – and raised a hand to protect his eyes… or at least he tried to.

Frowning in confusion, Jimin turned to his side; his body awfully stiff and a dull pain blooming to life somewhere in his back; and noted, puzzlingly, that his wrists were bound together behind him. Suddenly, the thought of having his hands tied together at his back while floating in space didn’t seem that appealing. Instead, all he felt was a deep, piercing sense of peril. The young man panicked, parted his lips to say something, but instead only felt a prickly sensation – much like his aching spine – ease into his left cheek.

Jimin’s eyelids felt heavier than mounds of concrete as he eased into consciousness. The first thing that occurred to him when he did was how similarly his surroundings were to the floating space he was in just moments prior; a cloak of darkness veiling his slumped form. However, there was a glaring beam of light that settled upon his face. The uncomfortably bright glow giving rise to a pained combination of curled lips, squinting eyes, and the instinctive desire to look away.

Jimin turned – or at least that was what he intended to do – when he felt something cold and leathery slap his cheek with little to no hostile intent. In fact, the action couldn’t even be called a slap considering it reminded him; for a brief instant; of a young child being forced to dip their fingers into something unthinkable, like the remains of sandy ice cream.

‘Wake up…!’ a voice accompanied the action, to the officer’s disoriented state.

‘Boss, I think…’

‘Oh, shut it, will you?’ the voice closest to him snapped, followed by yet another series of horribly conflicted, child-like pats on the cheek when Jimin felt the pieces of his conscience gradually converge.

‘Now come on, wake up. We haven’t got all night to waste here watching people sleep.’

Eyes adjusting to the invading light, Jimin raised his head to get a glimpse of the offender… only to realize two seconds too late that doing so was a rather bad idea. Almost immediately upon lifting his chin, he felt something similarly to a heavy object shift to the back of his cranium, followed by the most excruciating headache he’d ever experienced. The officer winced instinctively, quickly dipping his head again to reach for the horribly pulsating area to perhaps appease it, yet the moment his hands twitched in the slightest, he felt something thin – wiry almost – cut into his wrists, restricting them behind his back firmly.

Despite the gruelling pain that lingered in his skull, Jimin immediately felt a sense of alarm. Not quite registering the true nature of his predicament considering he’d just regained consciousness, the officer yanked his hands away violently this time, only to receive yet another sharp, cutting sensation that painfully squeezed into the skin of his wrists.

‘What…’ Jimin began; confusion and unease coming to life on his puffy face; when a voice cut him short.

‘Well it’s about time!’

The voice – recognizably male – cried with what the officer could only decipher was relief. ‘It took you long enough to wake up, Van Choi… or should I say Officer Park?’

Jimin suddenly realized – as he attempted shifting in position – that he was in a chair. Or more accurately, tied to one. He budged again, however his efforts were to no avail. His jittering elicited a low chuckle from ahead, and following the wicked laughter, he looked up, coming face to face with a shadowy entity that stood against the blinding backlighting of a small, square room it seemed.

The officer’s eyes widened at the sight of the shadow they’d befallen. It was a relatively bulky form; each limb taking on the appearance of that of an orc’s. The frightening girth of the individual allowed for Jimin’s imagination to run amok, and the hook-like appendage protruding from his left instead of a hand didn’t help his rising panic. The only thing the officer could assume was that it was a weapon, and that thought alone put his mind into overdrive. Somehow the thought of being in the presence of a creature from the deep – albeit one with mechanized body parts, it seemed – was a lot more menacing than one would imagine.

‘Who are you…?’

Jimin rasped; his voice thick, course, and sounding foreign to even his own ears. However, such details at this point were irrelevant. He could feel the pounding in his head intensify with seemingly every probe each question prompted in his mind, which only gave rise to more dubious aspects. What on earth did he do to earn such a gruelling headache? How did he even land himself in such a shady predicament? And why were his hands tied together behind him, and his body strapped to a chair of all things? Twisting his snared wrists impatiently to no avail, a more pressing set of questions surfaced in the officer’s mind.

‘Where am I? What’s…’

‘Patience, Jim boy,’ the voice cut him off; the statement only giving rise to more questions in the officer’s mind.

‘You weren’t that shabby for undercover cops, I’ll admit,’ the figure mused, amusedly; the hooked hand rising to the officer’s pounding heart and head. ‘However, what gave you away was—’

Following a loud click, the room was suddenly flooded with light. Jimin shut his eyes almost immediately upon the room filling with a bright, fluorescent glow, but with the visual stimuli from the backlighting earlier, his sight quickly recovered. And what greeted him elicited a gasp from the redhead.

Kim Junmyeon lingered less than three feet from the officer; his attire consisting of a large, bulky black coat that made him look twice as big as he truly was, exposing a small portion of his meticulous suit from underneath. The terrifying hook for a hand – as the latter’s imagination conjured – was in fact an unwrapped candy cane that floated not far from the headmaster’s smacking lips; an indication he was in the process of it.

Despite the stark contrast of the man’s appearance however, the otherwise prestigious principal assumed a look of pure exasperation.

‘Wow, are you kidding me?’ he threw both hands in the air, sighing loudly as he twisted his waist to stare behind him where Jimin noted one more presence at the door.

‘I said to put the lights on when I give you the sign, the sign!’

The man – dressed in a black jumper and baseball cap, similarly to Mister K’s janitorial attire – frowned in response, looking terribly confused by the former’s words; a single hand rising to his lips in a demonstration, of sorts.

‘But I thought this was…’

‘Forget it!’ the headmaster snapped, turning back to the red-haired officer whose face dawned with recognition almost instantly under the exposition of the overhead lights.

‘You…!’ Jimin cried, instinctively throwing a finger in his direction, but only managed a wince instead at the reminder of his snared hands.

The reaction triggered a witch-like cackle from the older man; his eyes curving into delighted crescents as he smacked his lips once again, holding the officer’s heated glare with a challenging one of his own.

‘I bet you didn’t expect it, did you?’

Jimin growled. ‘You sneaky little…’

‘Uh-uh-uh, son,’ the headmaster cut him short, throwing his free hand in the air for good measure, wagging a finger in the latter’s face dramatically. ‘That language is going to land you in detention… then again, I suppose you’re already in it.’

The principal’s words almost immediately gave rise to a sudden awareness of his surroundings. The room had been incredibly dark since Jimin stirred awake, but now that it was filled with light – every nook and cranny uncovered under his scrutiny – he realized the area was totally unfamiliar. The room was exceptionally bare save for the ridiculous number of boxes that seemingly piled over one another like pillars at every wall; the ivory paint hardly noticeable with the sheer quantity of cardboard squares decorating every angle of the room his eyes managed to take in. But paired with the throbbing in his mind and in his lower back, Jimin knew his observational skills at this point were horribly lacking.

If only Kyungja was here, he thought, confident that her aptitude for these things would be put to the greatest use they ever had now in their current predicament. And thinking about his partner, the redhead couldn’t help but feel a rising concern within him; his thoughts suddenly taking a lurch into the safety of the said woman. Yet before he could fall into a maddening whirlpool of panic imagining all the worst case scenarios his partner was currently in, a voice ahead of him nabbed his attention.

‘I must say, I’m surprised you two made it this far.’

Jimin’s eyes snapped up in the direction of the principal whose form lingered at the right corner of the room; his free hand rummaging through one of the numerous boxes to the officer’s growing wariness.

‘I should have plucked your schemes straight from the roots the moment you so as snuck into the bathrooms the first time, or when you were hanging out in the chemistry lab scheming, or ruined my carefully-planned kidnapping… wait, I’m missing one more,’ he paused to consider his thoughts for a moment.

‘Oh yes! Or even when you and that sneaky janitor pulled off a mini Olympics game after school. I must say, your endurance is impressive.’

The officer’s eyes widened and a shaky breath left his parted lips at what reached his ears. ‘H-how do you…?’

There was no explanation in Jimin’s mind for how the principal had knowledge of such fine details. He and Kyungja had been so cautious, so careful, so critical of everything they did within the school grounds that he couldn’t wrap his head around how it was possible that the headmaster was aware of their every move up until this point. Jimin didn’t know what was more winding: the fact that they were being secretly observed like lab specimens the entire time, or that their covert operation had been in the mercy of the headmaster since the beginning.

Jimin’s chair suddenly creaked, startling him at the sensation of another weight lingering close by. He wasn’t quite sure how he hadn’t noticed the presence of a third entity in the room – let alone one so close – however he could only reason his dull senses with the combined effects of the pressing situation he was in and the pain coursing through his body. Nevertheless, every cell in his body tingled with alarm at the unexpected movement in his blind spot.

‘Oh, finally,’ the principal sighed dramatically, throwing a conspicuous look over Jimin’s shoulder. ‘Geez, why’s it so hard to wake you two up? We didn’t knock you out that hard.’

A low, drone-like groan sounded from behind the officer – a form shuffling, albeit very slowly – and it suddenly dawned on Jimin just who the person behind him was.

‘Kyungja…?’

He croaked; his heart leaping up his throat the moment the name left his lips. The redhead twisted in his seat; the muscles in his neck straining under the exertion required to assert his suspicions; but despite his futile attempts, he heard a short, laboured sigh brush past the shell of his ear.

‘Where…’ she started, followed by a wince that had Jimin’s mind lurching into all sorts of panic.

‘Kyungja? Kyungja, are you hurt?’

‘Park,’ she mumbled; her voice equally as raspy as his, laced with a similar painstaking exertion it seemed.

She was about to say something – the redhead’s ears straining for anything out of at this point – however, her words were abruptly cut off by a loud, droning groan that sounded ahead.

‘People, this isn’t a drama! You can save that for later when I feed you to my pet sharks or something,’ the headmaster rolled his eyes. ‘But it’s good you’re both finally conscious… because you can now bear witness to just how powerless you are.’

With the candy cane having disappeared into his coat, Kim Junmyeon pulled a single hand out of the box he had been hovering over for the past minute, producing a pair of stuffed animals. Jimin’s eyes widened and his eyebrows furrowed in confusion at the sight; a sight most familiar, but one he couldn’t for the life of him fathom since the start of their midnight expedition into the school.

‘Confused, aren’t you?’ the principal – noting the officer’s perplexed features – chuckled, dangling the bloated rabbit and tiger in a gloved hand as he waked in a semi-circle around Jimin, assuming a more fitting position in the room to address them both.

‘Good. Because that’s what they’ve been doing to your little minds for some few odd years already.’

The man’s words only contributed to the pulsing headache and whirlwind of questions in the officer’s mind. Yet before the queries could escape him, his eyes fell on the headmaster’s hands that suddenly began tearing into one of the stuffed animals from behind; his gloved fingers twisting and mangling the contents of the fluffy innards as if he were in search of something within. And just when Jimin imagined that perhaps the principal was in fact some sort of escaped psychiatric patient tearing up the stuffed animal as viciously as he did, he suddenly produced an alabaster white package that; under the glaring florescence; took on the semblance of a small glass object.

Upon further inspection, however, Jimin noticed almost instantly that it was in fact the opposite of what he imagined was an object of substantial weight. The principal tossed it about in his hands as if it were still the stuffed animal that now lay mangled at their feet, and with a sinister smile, he spoke again.

'Ah, look at what we have here,' he breathed, lightly tossing the object in his palm. 'An old friend of the force, am I right?'

The moment Woon Kyungja's eyes fluttered open, she was unsure of her current whereabouts. And much like her partner, the officer's head span with a handsome number of questions pertaining to how she'd gotten here, why she couldn't seem to move, and why such immense pain nestled at the back of her skull.

But now that she was conscious and faced with the headmaster's treachery, the truth of just how grim his secrets were were winding. Because the moment Kyungja's eyes settled on the meagre object in his hand – her vision a little less acute than she would have liked, courtesy of having awoken so abruptly – she felt almost every sleeping cell in her body jolt to life with familiarity. Yet it was a sensation undeniably accompanied by horror.

'It can't...' she began, however her confidence betrayed her; twitching with unspoken words, and turning dry as she stared at the white package in such disbelief, she was certain she never felt such powerlessness and confusion in her life up until this point.

'That's not possible.'

'What?' Jimin's voice held an unusually distinct scratchiness it; something he could only imagine was the product of his growing panic and confusion.

'What is it?'

'Coke,' the principal answered in his partner's stead to their surprise; his dark form pacing the room as if he were addressing a classroom of students in the claustrophobic space.

'Tons of it. And there probably would have been more if not for you blasted cops snooping around my workers' headquarters in those derelict homes.'

The unexpected magnitude of the situation suddenly dawned on Jimin like a looming tsunami. ? He recalled several expectations he built in regard to the headmaster's nabbing of students or suspicious activity with shipments, but just how grave, how truly treacherous a case it had become threw the officer off completely. He didn't expect this. And realizing the pressing degree of their circumstances, he could only assume the very same response his partner had; stunned silence; as Kim Junmyeon continued, now with the addition of animated hand gestures.

'Oh, you were onto us for a long time. Much longer than I had anticipated anyway,' he said in a nonchalant, sing-song way despite th