*Italics will be used in this chapter for Tiffany's dream.

Tiffany’s POV

“You know what to do,” a stone-cold voice ordered.

“Yes, sir!”

I opened my eyes to a blinding light. Squinting, I tried to figure out my surroundings. For some reason, I felt groggy as if I was completely intoxicated the day before. The only problem was that I couldn’t remember anything about yesterday or even several days before. There were empty blank spots in my mind.

Surrounding me were men dressed in white. Was I in the hospital? They were injecting me with some sort of liquid. Some of the men was holding sharp items. Could they possibly be scalpels? I couldn’t tell as my vision was heavily blurred due to the grogginess. I couldn’t move. Suddenly, I felt a sharp pain. One of the men had viciously stabbed me in the abdomen. I could feel the sharp object inside me as he began to twist the object around. I bit my lip to hold in my screams.

“Scream, . Scream!” The man yelled.

Quickly, he pulled the sharp object out of me. I yelped in response. Before I could recover from the initial attack, several more stabs were made into my body. All I could hear was the stabbing motions. Hot tears rolled down my face. “Save me…Somebody, please.” I whimpered, hoping that someone would save me from this nightmare

One of the men slapped me in the face. “Shut up! No one will save you. As punishment, I’ll take one of your eyes.” The man turned over to his colleagues. “She’ll heal fast enough, right?” The others nodded. Turning his disgusting head toward me, he slowly lifted up the sharp object above my right eye…

*BANG*

“Wake up, Tiffany! Wake up!” The somewhat familiar voice woke me up from my nightmare. Slowly opening my eyes, I saw three familiar faces.

“Jessica, Sunny, Yoona? W-Where am I?” I asked. All of their faces were wet with tears. Suddenly, they all jumped toward me, wrapping me in a warm hug. “Hey! What’s wrong with you guys? Why are you crying like I died and came back to life?”

Jessica stared at me. “Are you stupid? You were k-”

Before I could hear what Jessica was going to say, Sunny had placed her hand over Jessica’s mouth. “Oh! Nothing at all, Tiffany. We just haven’t seen you in such a long time.” A forced smile appeared on Sunny’s face.

“Mhm. Sure. But I’m still glad to see you guys. I feel like I haven’t seen you in ages.” I smiled. All three of them stared at me with wide eyes. “What? Did you miss my eye-smile that much?”

Yoona quickly took her compact mirror out of her pocket and shoved it in front of my face. “Take a look yourself,” she said.

I grabbed the mirror and stared at my reflection. Instead of my usual chocolate brown eyes, dark pink eyes were staring back at me. “W-what is this?” I was confused. How could this have happened? Suddenly my eyes began to turn into a dark blue color. “What’s happening to me?” My eyes began turning into a grey color. The sudden color changes of my eyes forced me to remember yesterday's events. My hands trembled as I began to remember what happened to me. The nightmare I had was real. My bones began to ache as I relived the horror of the laboratory.

I was kidnapped. I was tortured. I was a human test subject. I was…no longer a normal human being. I let out a sharp cry as I wrapped my arms around my knees trying to escape the cruelty of reality. Jessica crawled over to me, sobbing, and tightly hugged me. She comforted in me and said in between sobs, “I’ll protect you. It’s all my fault.”

After what seemed like hours of crying, all four of us finally separated from each other. A mess of thoughts were flowing through my head. How long was I missing? Why couldn’t I remember anything about the kidnapping besides yesterday? Suddenly, I remembered about my father, who was probably dying of worry by now.

“My dad!” I yelled. “I have to tell him I’m safe!” I ran towards the door but Yoona had already ran towards the door and prevented me from going any further. “Hey! What are you doing? My dad needs to know that I’m safe!”

With an apologetic face, Yoona shook her head. I grabbed her by the shoulders, “Why? Why won’t you let me see him? Why won’t you let me see my daddy? He’s probably worried to death about me.”

“You can’t see him anymore. You can’t go back home.” I turned my head to look behind me to see Sunny, her head low, screaming,

“What? Why? Why wouldn’t he want to see me? Stop talking nonsense!”

"It’s too risky! Who knows when they’ll try to kidnap you again? These guys aren’t ordinary kidnappers! They’re going to go after you again. Right now, some guys are probably lurking around your house. You can’t go back and your dad knows this too.”

“At least let me talk to him.” My lips began to shake as the weight of Sunny’s words collapsed on me.

Sunny shook her head. “Too risky. The phones could be tapped.”

She walked over to me and wrapped her arms around me tightly. “It’s okay. We’ll take care of you. You won’t ever have to experience anything like that again.”

“So I can never see him again?”

“No! I’ll try to find any way for you to contact your dad,” said Jessica. “For now, you can just stay at our dorm.”

“Dorm? As in college dorm?”

“Well, technically it’s a university-”

“Let’s not be overly technical, Yoona,” interjected Sunny. She turned toward me. “This is our dorm. It’s kind of small and cramped thanks to all of Jessica’s stuff but it works.”

This earned a glare from Jessica. I giggled, enjoying the comfort of being surrounded by my best friends. I noticed a calendar on the wall. Surprised by what the date was, I ran toward to it and asked, “September? It’s September? But it was early August just a few days ago. “

The three girls stared at me as if I was going insane. “What are you talking about, Tiffany? It was August a month ago,” said Jessica.

I was confused. “How long was I missing?”

“About a month,” Jessica solemnly replied.

“What? A whole month? B-but I can’t remember anything.” I grabbed my head as if I could shake any kind of information out of my brain. “It’s just a whole blank.”

“Maybe you’re just tired, Tiffany,” suggested Sunny. “It’s already so late. We should get some sleep.”

Jessica happily grabbed my hand. “Tiffany, you can sleep with me! Tomorrow, we’re going to check out the university and get you some new clothes.”

I looked at myself. I was dressed in a dirty white gown dotted with holes and dry blood. Taking a closer look at myself, my arms and legs were covered with bandages. “What’s with all these bandages?” I carefully unwrapped the bandages. There were no bruises or any sort of injury. "What's with the bandages? I'm not even hurt anywhere!"

Shocked, Jessica said, “But I swore you had wounds when I-” She cut off, shook her head, and said, “Never mind. Let’s just go to sleep.” Still holding my hand, she led me towards three beds all lying next to each other.

________________________________________________________________________

The Next Day. Morning. In Front Of A Prestigious University.

Tightly grabbing Jessica’s hand, I walked in front of the large, opened gates separating me and the school. Taken from Jessica’s large wardrobe, I wore a white T-shirt with a black hooded vest over it. The hood covered my whole head and along with the sunglasses, made my face unrecognizable. I wore tight, blue jeans and finished my outfit with comfortable, pink tennis shoes. I was happy that I could at least wear some pink as the other girls protested against me wearing any bright colors to lower the chances of being noticed.

This morning, we had received a phone call to meet the head principal of the University of Sonata, the best school for artistically and musically inclined students. Before going to the meeting, we had gone shopping to get myself new clothes as I could no longer go back home and retrieve my old belongings. Using my loaded wallet that Jessica had stolen before I had gone missing, I had bought several necessities which included pink. Besides clothes, I had also bought dark, brown contacts to solve my color changing eyes. My long hair had been cut shorter up to my shoulders to become less noticeable to any future kidnappers looking for a Stephanie Hwang. After placing the bags back at the dorm, we hurried over to the school. 

From this position, I could already see just how amazing this place was. In front of me, a few meters ahead, was a large fountain. Dragging Jessica with me, I ran toward the fountain. Upon closer inspection, I could see that in the center of the fountain, there were five human statues in a complete circle with their backs facing each other. The statues seemed to be musicians who all played a different wind instruments. Water was flowing out of the sculpted wind instruments dropping down to the bottom of the fountain. It was almost like that the water itself was making music.

Yoona snapped me back into reality. “Come on, Tiffany. There’ll be time to admire the fountain later. We have to find the principal’s office.” She peeked over at the map Sunny was holding, who was trying to figure out our position on the map.

“It’ll take the whole day to find it,” I whined to Jessica. This place was huge. Beyond the fountain were several large buildings dedicated to their own departments. The closest to us was the building with the words “Fine Art” on the wall over the entrance of the building.

“I know," agreed Jessica. Both of us sat down on the fountain while Yoona and Sunny were still figuring out how to read the map.

Frustrated, Sunny threw the map on the ground. “I give up! The principal couldn’t have just come here and us, could he? This place is too confusing!” Sunny groaned.

“Come on, Sunny. You give up way too easily,” said Yoona. She picked up the map, stared at it, and sighed.

“Is there a problem?” A sweet, quiet voice asked. An innocent looking girl who stood taller than Yoona had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.

Looking like she just saw an angel, Yoona stuttered, “Oh yeah. We need help finding the principal’s office.”

“Oh, I was just there,” answered the girl.

As the girl was giving directions to Yoona, four more girls appeared. The tallest girl of the group yelled, “Hey, Seohyun. What are you doing?”

The girl named Seohyun answered, “I was just giving directions.”

A darker skinned girl suggested, “Let’s just them there.” The girl turned over to our direction. “Annyeong, Jessica.”

Surprised, Jessica said, “Oh. Hi…Yuri”

Tugging on her white blouse, I whispered, “You know this girl?”

“I guess. She kind of helped me with…stuff.” Stuff. That was very helpful, Jessica. She was definitely hiding something from me. In fact, Sunny and Yoona were probably keeping secrets too considering the faces they were making to these girls. Whatever ‘stuff’ these strangers helped them with, it must have been something really important for them to stare as if they just met their saviors.

Before I knew it, I was suddenly in front of a building. We were already inside the building before I could figure how long I was spacing out for. “Just go up one floor and you should see the principal’s office somewhere,” instructed Seohyun.

“Thank you so much,” said Yoona. “I don’t know what we would have done if you guys weren’t here.”

“It was no problem at all!” A short, dorky looking girl answered.

An even shorter girl scoffed, “Like you even did anything, Taeyeon.”

“What? You didn’t do anything either, Hyoyeon.”

The tallest girl said in an all-knowing manner, “You guys never do anything useful.” The two shorter girls glared at her. “What? You wanna fight about it? You’re on!”

“Alright! Stop fighting,” ordered Yuri. Apologetically, she said, “Sorry about these idiots. We’ll be leaving now. Later.” The five girls walked out of the building.Three of them still bickering.

Later? I honestly hoped we wouldn’t have to see them again. Although they seemed nice, I still couldn’t trust them. Especially that Taeyeon, she was looking at me suspiciously. Who knows? Maybe she was the kidnapper. Quickly, I shook the idea out of my head pushing the past kidnapping incident into the back of my head. I didn’t want to remember. “Just forget about it. It never happened,” I reminded myself.

Walking through the empty hallway, we finally reached the principal’s office. Opening the door, I saw a familiar picture. A giant office desk and behind it, a serious man staring back at me. Reminded of my father, I grabbed Jessica’s hand tighter as we walked toward the chairs seated in front of the desk.

“Hello. It’s nice to meet you,” the man greeted. “As you know, I am the principal. I can assume that you are Sunny, Jessica, Yoona, and Stephanie?” We nodded. “Great. Stephanie, I received word from your father-”

“My dad?” I jumped up from my chair.

“Yes, your dad. He has requested me to stick all four of you in the same classes. Moreover, he has already afforded a large dorm for all of you to live in. Also, your name will be changed at this school for safety concerns of whatever reason.”

“Does he want to destroy any connection I have left with him?” My eyes were beginning to water.

“As I said before, it’s for your safety. Please. Choose a name.”

“Tiffany…” I stared at my best friends. “Jung.” Surprised, Jessica stared at me. Sunny and Yoona smiled. They knew that Jessica and I had the strongest bond.

“Alright. Also, before I forget. Your father asked me to send you this message.” The principal took out a small card and offered it to me.

Shaking, I took the card in my hands and read it.

To Tiffany,

Stay safe. I’ll always protect you. I won’t break this promise. I love you.

                                                                                                                       Dad

After reading the note, I was disappointed yet happy at the same time. I knew that this letter was written with care. The ink was smudged on some words as if someone was crying while writing it. But I was angry that he couldn’t write anymore than this. I knew he was always cold to me, but that was because he had extreme difficulty with expressing his feelings. I knew that he loved me. I knew that he was shy in terms of love. Yet, I still expected more. Was this all he could write to his daughter that he would probably never see again? The only definite thing I knew was that his letter revived the pain of never seeing my father again.

Confused and crying, I ran out of the room. Running a few meters from the office, I slid down the wall, hugged my knees and sobbed. I was lost and I had no hope of ever finding my way again in this world.

Suddenly, I felt a hand gently pat my head. Through my sunglasses, I saw the girl named Taeyeon looking worriedly at me. “You ok?”