THE MIRROR ROOM

With head spinning and heart beating unevenly in his chest, Jihun nods to his younger, who with a hard swallow drags his finger across the screen to pull the lever. The app makes sounds like a slot machine and plays music, before all three of the turn wheels slow down and land on the same option.

Boiler Room.

Jihun and Hansol can’t believe what they’re seeing. Was it all just a trick, or were they really that unlucky? Then they remember that the unlucky ones aren’t them, safe in the Mirror Room...

“Mingyu! Wonwoo! It’s your room, be careful!” Hansol screams.

He hasn’t even finished the sentence before a sound like a dozen gunshots echo through the speakers, followed inevitably by the panicked cries of their two friends in the Boiler Room.

THE BOILER ROOM

Mingyu ducks away even before Hansol’s warning cry, somehow recalling a word he read in a note from the Classroom concerning the traps—pressurized. He’s not fast enough though. When the pressurized nuts and bolts from the boiler tanks themselves start flying like bullets, he takes a hit to the arm before he drops to the floor. He slides behind a pipeline and covers his head on instinct. Through the gap between his arms he spots Wonwoo, who is moving, but not in any logical direction. He kneels, slowly and then limply.

The spray of bolts only takes a few seconds, then the room falls into silence. Mingyu rushes out of his corner and skids up in front of Wonwoo, whose blank expression faces the floor.

“Hyung? You okay?” He examines his friend in search of injuries. There’s a scratch on his cheek and a rip in his shirt on the shoulder. “Wo-“

And there’s a bleeding hole in his chest. Wonwoo has his hand covering the wound, but it falls away. Mingyu only glances it before his friend collapses forward and he has to grab him to stop the fall. He ends up with Wonwoo’s head in his lap, teary eyes looking at him and mouth unable to form words.

“Wonwoo-hyung! Wonwoo-ya!” He keeps pressure on the wound, but there’s not much he can do like this.

Wonwoo loses strength fast. “My friend... it hurts...”

“I know, I know,” Mingyu stutters, ignoring the cascade of voices from the other rooms. “Focus on breathing. Okay? Don’t leave.”

“I won’t...” Wonwoo whispers. “I’m fine...”

The countdown hits zero on the touchpad screen that Mingyu brought with him, as well as everyone else’s screen. The ‘Statistics’ page appears, and the last strike under Wonwoo’s name vanishes, replaced by the text ‘eliminated’. Mingyu looks down at his hyung in panic, but Wonwoo’s still alive. Another message flashes by, one line at the time, and Mingyu reads carefully not to miss anything.

단서 없음. 대상 없음. 게임에서 앞으로 건너 뛰는 것에 대한 처벌있어. 다시 시작해. 
(No clues. No grand prize. This is your punishment for skipping forward in the game. Start over.)

Mingyu doesn’t know what to do with this information. His very soul is boiling with hatred for the game and the people who are running it. He swears loudly, bites down on his tongue in frustration, then focuses his panicking mind on Wonwoo. His friend is doing what he’s told—breathing—as blood stains his shirt and Mingyu’s hands.

“Just stay with me, hyung. I won’t let you go. Ever.”

“Okay,” Wonwoo answers.

THE MIRROR ROOM

Now they don’t even care about protecting each other or being careful about the glass—Jihun and Hansol are breaking every single mirror they can until there’s not a single one left. They hope against hope that there’s something that will help them save Wonwoo, or at least open the doors again so that they can get to him.

What they do find is another message that refers to the Freezer Room, completely irrelevant now. Other than that, there’s nothing that could help Wonwoo and nothing about any ‘answers’ that Seungkwan could have had when he was locked in there.

“Have you tried the ceiling?” Seungkwan says then. Jihun and Hansol look at each other—no, they haven’t.

Using the table that the glasses stood on, the two of them work together to try and fling the thing into the mirrored ceiling. After a few tiring tries, they succeed, and a large portion of it drops down on them. They escape with a few cuts and bruises and look up to find the fruit of their struggles.

A map. They realize that it depicts the house they’re in, with each of the six rooms they are currently in marked with red dots. The dots don’t look randomly placed, though. A few are on the walls, one is in the centre of a room and one is somewhere in a corner.

“Guys, I need you to listen carefully and follow my instructions,” Jihun says. “I think there’s something in all of our rooms that we need to find. Seungcheol, you first.”

Jihun guides Seungcheol to a part of the Control Room and has him search the area. It doesn’t take him long to find a red blotch of paint on the floor under a set of drawers.

“It’s a syllable,” he explains. “It says 북 (buk).”

One by one, the others find the red dots in their rooms, each one a different syllable—쪽, 룸, 벽 (ra, jjok, rum, bjeok). Hansol finds the Mirror Room one behind one of the mirrors they shattered, reading 라 (ra). Mingyu even leaves Wonwoo for a second to find the last syllable in his room, which is 커 (keo).

It’s not long before Jeonghan figures the message out.

“I think it’s supposed to be 라커룸 북쪽 벽 (Locker Room North Wall),” he says. “It’s the only thing that makes sense. Jun-ah, is there anything in there along that wall?”

THE BOILER ROOM

Mingyu holds Wonwoo’s hand in one of his own now, the other still pressed to the wound in his chest but not too hard, because it makes it hard for Wonwoo to breathe. He is feeling the dread, the coldness of his heart even though the room is hot like an oven. He knows that his mind is preparing for the inevitable even though he doesn’t want to acknowledge it. He can see it in the colour of his friend’s face, the laboured breaths, the red pools on the floor.

He hardly hears what the others are talking about.

“There’s nothing here, I swear,” Junhui says. “It’s just a white concrete wall.”

“I don’t remember seeing anything there either,” Sunyeong agrees. “You think there could be something behind it? We need to hurry, for Wonwoo’s sake.”

A tear rolls down Mingyu’s cheek. He doesn’t notice that he’s crying until Wonwoo squeezes his hand lightly.

“Mingyu-ya... I don’t think... I’m gonna make it...”

“No, no, no, no, you can’t talk like that. Don’t say that. I’m here. You’ll be fine, we’ll get out of here and we’ll get you some help. You’ll be okay.”

“No, I won’t...”

Who is Mingyu trying to kid? Himself? He can hear it in Wonwoo’s voice, feel it on his skin. Life is leaving him, and Mingyu is helpless to stop it.

“I want them... to listen to me...” Wonwoo whispers.

It takes all of Mingyu’s power of will to work through his heartbreak and nod. With the tears streaming and his voice shaky, he gets the attention of their other fiends.

“Guys, I... I need you to stop and listen to what Wonwoo has to say.”

“Wonwoo-hyung, you shouldn’t speak,” Chan counters worriedly. “Save your energy-”

“No, listen to him!” Mingyu exclaims. This is followed by complete silence, apart from Mingyu’s ugly, choked-down sobs and quiet crying from the other rooms. “I don’t... I don’t think we’ll get another chance.”

Respectfully, the entire group stays silent and listens. Wonwoo’s voice is low and weak even as he struggles to speak loud enough for everyone to hear.

“My friends... I... I want you to know that... I mean, I know... that you know... that I love you all... I love you, my brothers... my Hyung-nims... my dongsaengs... And I know that you can get out of here and that you can go on... you can live on... and me and Jisoo-hyung, we will... we will stay with you... forever...”

By the end of the speech, his voice is so low that only Mingyu can hear it. Mingyu does his best not to let the sorrow and despair get a hold on him, but it’s just too much to bear. When Wonwoo’s eyes fall shut for the last time and his chest stops moving, Mingyu still does not dare to make noise.

“Wonwoo-ya,” he breathes. No reply. “Wonwoo-ya...?”

Wonwoo can’t hear him.

THE SMALL ROOM

In periods of time that Minghao can’t keep track of, he shifts between being brave and patiently waiting for an opportunity to escape or be rescued, and absolute and utter panic. Right now, after a fit of screams and kicking uselessly against the walls and ceiling, he is in panic. He thinks about his friends, locked in rooms somewhere outside his own little prison, fighting against who knows what kind of dangerous situations. Minghao knows the stakes that their kidnappers put up, and that they won’t hold back on taking a life if they think their sick game requires it.

He thinks about his Hyungs. Will they be able to keep both themselves and their youngers safe? What kind of pressure is Seungcheol under? Is Junhui okay? Can Wonwoo and Sunyeong and Jeonghan make the right choices? He thinks about Hansol and Seungkwan, Seokmin and Mingyu—his brothers who could be in danger. He thinks about Chan, his only younger friend, and if he’s even still alive.

And he thinks about the pill and the message on his ceiling. An invitation to join the game. He could be a part of it too, or he could continue to be a bait for his friends to desperately follow.

This is his chance to affect the game. The question is how. The only thing he has is a pill and a note that tells him to eat it.

This is it.

The 8th dilemma.

SHOULD MINGHAO EAT THE PILL

or

SHOULD HE DESTROY IT?

(Winning option marked in bold font.)