“W-where am I?” Yifan muttered, waking up to a room with the walls covered in beige.

Suddenly, the door opened to reveal Mr Park and a woman, both wearing masks. He sighed. “He’s the first to be up because of the lack of vitamins, isn’t he?”

She nodded, walking towards the scared boy. He backed up, but he could only go until the walls prevented any more movement. Back plastered to the wall, he stared at them with wide eyes.

“Don’t move, I’m just going to take your temperature.” The nurse took out her thermometer and placed it at his temple.

“And because of the lack of vitamins, it’s going to hurt a lot,” Mr Park spoke up from the doorway. “The pain will be excruciating.”

“E-excruciating?”

“Ah, I forgot,” the man sighed. “You’re just a child. You don’t even know what the word ‘excruciating’ means.”

Although Yifan didn’t know what the word meant, he could tell that it wasn’t anything good. Mr Park looked especially sinister with his mask and gloves, and that was enough to make him tremble in his feet. The nurse scribbled something onto her clipboard before giving a curt nod towards the man. She tugged on Yifan’s arm to bring him out of the room.

He shook his head vehemently. “I don’t want to follow you!”

“Silly boy,” Mr Park growled, beginning to get impatient. “Do you think you have a choice?! I paid your mother hundreds of thousands to get you here. You must listen to what I say.”

“No! Junmyeon! JUNMYEON!”

“So you’ve been influencing my nephew too, haven’t you? Filled up his head with nonsense about whatever I’m going to do. No worries, he’ll be next.”

“JUNMYEON!”

“Um, excuse me sir,” the nurse suddenly spoke, glancing at her clipboard. “I think the boy might not be able to handle the serum. There’s a forty percent chance that the lack of vitamins might kill him.”

Yifan barely understood what she was saying, but he managed to make out a few words from the conversation. Tears started to pool and he tried to shake his arm off even harder.

“I don’t care. I paid too much money for that boy to go to waste. In fact, let’s make him the first to go. Wait for the others to wake up first. I want to show them what happens if they ever go against me.”

“Alright sir.”

The two adults left the room as abruptly as they entered. This left Yifan to himself, scared out of his wits of what was to come. They were speaking with lots of complicated words which he didn’t know the meanings to.

Yifan didn’t dare call out for anyone’s help, in fear of what else Mr Park would do. The amount of indifference he showed towards hurting his own nephew was more than enough evidence that he wasn’t a good man.

So, the tall boy sat in a corner all by himself, feeling very small.

-

Yifan was surprised to find himself bored after an hour or so passed by. There was nothing he could do in there other than stare at the beige walls around him.

Suddenly, there was a shrill cry resounding from the room beside his. “HELP! SOMEONE PLEASE HELP!”

The voice was unmistakably Luhan’s, coming from the left. Yifan hurried over to that direction, pressing his lips up against the wall. “Luhan!”

“Y-yifan? Where are we?!”

Before he could answer, there was a shout from his right. This time, it was his best friend. “Yifan? Luhan?”

“Junmyeon!” he shouted back.

Their shouting became the start of more kids waking up and pleading for help themselves. After more moments of loudness, a deep voice boomed over the noise. “Good afternoon, everyone. I’m Mr Park Jumin.”

“Appa?” Chanyeol called out from one of the cells.

“Lift the barriers,” he continued, without any sign of hearing his son.

One of the beige walls was lifted up, though it didn’t grant them freedom as there were still bars which looked like they belonged to jail cells. Yifan rushed forward, as did his other friends, and it appeared that all of their cells were arranged in such a way that it was all combined to form a circle.

Yifan twisted his head to turn to look at Junmyeon on his right. The younger boy was sweating till it dripped off his hair with a look of anxiety on his face, but was relatively normal otherwise.

In the middle of the room, there was a large white table with a smaller one beside it, effectively blocking Yifan from the view of his friends opposite from him. He could only see a glimpse of Jongin and Sehun.

Chanyeol spoke up. “Where’s appa?”

He was right. The person with the loud, booming voice was nowhere to be found in the room. There was a crackle from the speakers.

“All of you might have been feeling very sick for the past few days, right? It’s alright, children. You know why? You’re all going to have superpowers!”

“Superpowers?” All the children started to mumble in confusion about the prospect.

“How?” asked Minseok, the oldest one at nine. “How does this make us superheroes?”

“You see, children,” Mr Park chuckled. “Your parents sent you here because I told them that I was going to make you have superpowers. Let me list them down for you, okay? Minseok will have the power of frost, Luhan with telekinesis, Yifan with flight, Junmyeon with water, Yixing with healing, Baekhyun with light, Jongdae with lightning, Chanyeol with fire, Kyungsoo with strength, Zitao with clairvoyance, Jongin with teleportation, and Sehun with wind.”

He first thing that popped into Yifan’s mind was ‘Cool! I can fly!’, but he remembered Mr Park scolding him for not taking his vitamins. So, did it mean that Mr Park had actually good intentions?

“Psst, Yifan,” Junmyeon whispered. “Look up there.”

He nodded towards a very high section of the walls. There was a window there, but they couldn’t see through it. This only meant that someone was watching them from the other side. Yifan felt a shiver creep up his spine.

“Mr Park told me something bad would happen if I didn’t take my vitamins. What am I going