THE RECORDING STUDIO

Junhui is afraid that if he tries to shake his head at Minghao again, the kidnappers will notice him and shoot at him. But the discreet, pleading stares don't cut it—Minghao drags himself closer to the edge of the platform anyway, then uses the grips of a climbing wall to stand up on shaky legs.

Hanryuk’s monologue continues unendingly. He’s starting to sound like a pure maniac, someone who couldn’t possibly have come up with this advanced game by himself, as he goes on about how all Kpop fans will overthrow him with requests about putting other groups in the game. Most of the boys have stopped listening, but there’s little more they can do than listen. Chan is still at gunpoint, Hansol standing too far away to help in any way. The rest of them are sitting or standing around Jeonghan, who is sitting with Seungcheol’s head in his lap. They haven’t processed it yet, but their leader took his last breath several minutes ago.

That’s the view the kidnappers are so crazily focused on right now—not the slender figure looming over their heads, positioning himself as close to the gun-wielding Yeongdong as he can. Junhui can see what Minghao is planning, and it makes his heart contract.

“So,” Hanryuk says suddenly, in a much calmer tone than he’s used so far. “I think that’s enough bad guy’s exposition for this time. Let’s clean up this mess.”

He nods to Yeongdong. Minghao throws himself from the platform. A gunshot echoes through the studio, but the mixed commotion makes it unclear of where it hits. Minghao crashes straight onto Yeongdong and takes them both down to the floor, making the gun slip from the man’s hand and slide across the floor. Kangho jumps for it, but Hansol is quicker. He manages to stand up and aim the gun, holding it confidently enough to convince Kangho that the boy knows how to use it, although he’s never held a weapon in his life. Hansol backs away so that Kangho can’t swat the gun from his hands, then aims it at Hanryuk instead.

The older man only smiles. “You won’t use that.”

The tension in Hansol’s body mixed with hatred for these men makes him pull the trigger, landing a shot into the floor close enough to Hanryuk’s feet to spray plastic splinters onto his pants. Now Hanryuk raises his hands slowly, Kangho too, and when Yeongdong manages to throw Minghao off of him he stands up on his knees and raises his hands too.

The cameraman assesses the situation in a split second, seeing the gun, the boy lying next to him and the older boy rushing towards him. He decides that it’s not over yet, and pulls Minghao back up and towards him. Positioning the thin boy between him and Hansol, he makes sure that Hansol’s new aim stops him from firing, then he wraps his arm tightly around Minghao’s throat.

“Let him go!” Hansol cries out, waving the gun. Junhui, the boy who ran towards them, has frozen in place.

Yeongdong tightens his hold, closing Minghao’s windpipe. The boy squirms against the hold, makes choked screams, but he’s still much to weak to fight the hold.

“Let him go!” Hansol screams again, so loud his voice cracks.

Yeongdong only smiles creepily, almost possessed, and chokes Minghao even harder. Junhui can’t stand there and do nothing. He hears footsteps behind him, Sunyeong’s footsteps, and rushes into action. There’s nothing Yeongdong can do to stop them, and when Kangho attempts to rush in and help, Hansol’s aims the gun at him again.

Yeongdong is strong, and he holds on to the boy with everything he’s got. Minghao sees stars flying by his blurring vision, feels consciousness leave him like liquid from an upside down bottle. He’s locked in place as Junhui and Sunyeong wrestle with Yeongdong, tearing at his arms to let go. Minghao manages to draw a struggled breath, but it’s not fast enough. Just as the hold on his throat releases and he is pulled away from the wrestling match by someone—Mingyu?—the darkness closes in around him and everything is blocked out. Sight blurs to nothing, sound becomes too distant to distinguish, and touch fades from his spectrum. It doesn’t feel like he’s dying, but it scares him none the less. He never truly falls asleep, which makes the nightmare feel so much more real.

He spends what feels like an eternity in that state of nothingness, between sleep and wake, life and death. Then, slowly, sound and sight and touch start to become clear again, and as he realizes this, the process becomes faster.

He’s wide awake before he knows it, screaming at the top of his lungs and thrashing. He stares upwards but can’t see anything, and when he tries to sit up he hits his head and falls back down. Confused and still jumpy, he feels with his hands above him.

Concrete.

He’s back where he started.

THE SMALL ROOM

“No! No, no, no!”

He’s wild now, refuses to believe that they went through all that torment and struggle just to end up back here. Where are his friends? Are they still alive? Has the game been turned back on and the traps activated to teach them a lesson?

Minghao is so lost in his own drugged hallucinations and thoughts that he barely notices when the ceiling is pulled away and four pairs of hands reach inside and grab him. When he does notice he fights them, tooth and nail, desperate to save himself from further harm.

“Calm down, son!”

“We’re trying to help, but you have to cooperate!”

“He’s not listening to us. Quick, get the medics in here!”

“Has anyone found the others yet? There’s supposed to be thirteen missing!”

“I know this one, my daughter really likes him.”

“Is this really the time and place for that!?”

“Sorry.”

“Chief, I think we’ve found a way in!”

Minghao barely registers any of this. He’s too busy trying to get away from this new threat. But their hold is too strong and well planned—he can’t get anywhere on his own. Just as he’s about to give up, something like a needle is inserted into his arm and a calmness comes over him. Then the world is pulled away from underneath his feet, and he falls. Deeper and deeper until he’s asleep.

•

•

•

A HOSPITAL ROOM

The next time Minghao wakes up he’s much calmer about it. He doesn’t know if it’s because he’s lying on something comfortable thing time, if it’s the buzzing of familiar voices around him or if he’s been drugged with some sedative as to not rip someone to shreds the second consciousness returns to him. Either way, he opens his eyes slowly and just looks around sleepily. Everything he sees is off, very off, but in the best way possible.

The small, white hospital room is crammed with people all standing around his bed. His friends, not all of them, but many—Jeonghan on a chair by his side holding his hand, Chan and Seungkwan standing behind him, Seungcheol by the foot of the bed and Sunyeong and Mingyu on the other side.

“Hey...” Minghao wheezes.

“How’re you feeling?” Seungcheol asks, a tired smile on his face.

“Like my head’s been smashed between two rocks,” Minghao replies. Which, according to the nature of the Small Room, wasn’t that far off.

His friends laugh at his dark joke.

Jeonghan squeezes his hand lightly. “The police will want to know that you’re awake so that they can get a statement, but we’ll stay in here a little while longer so you can rest. Is that alright?”

“They got us out,” Minghao notes simply.

“Yes. They got us all out of that horrible place.”

Minghao smiles and leans back on the soft, fluffy pillow. Finally, he can relax. But then the memories start to come back, slowly unblurring before his inner eye, and his smile fades. He opens his eyes again, looks at Seungcheol.

“Are you okay?” he asks.

“I’m fine,” Seungcheol replies. “A little sore around the neck but otherwise I’m okay. My room wasn’t all that bad compared to many of the others.”

Minghao is confused. “But they shot you...”

“Shot me? Why’d you say that? I was never shot.”

Minghao has all the pieces to put the answer together, but the images in his mind are too vivid. He panics instead.

“But they did, I saw you bleed. The recording studio, and you, Chan, I think they shot you too... Jisoo-hyung... and Wonwoo-hyung! They killed them! They said that they had killed them!”

Three pairs of hands are on him the second he tries to sit up, and the collective calmness of his friends’ voices make him lay back down.

“Easy now, Minghao-ya,” Sunyeong says. “I don’t know what they told you but we’re fine, all of us.”

Jeonghan squeezes his hand again, a comfortable warmth. “It was a little touch-and-go for Jisoo and Wonwoo but they will make it. Jisoo was so dehydrated and Wonwoo was locked in a freezer, but the doctors said they’ll be perfectly okay in a couple of days. Hansol got a cut on his stomach, they’re just checking that it didn’t get infected because the blade was so dirty and rusty.”

“Oh, and Seokmin’s still unconscious,” Chan adds. “He was poisoned, but the doctors found an antidote easily. He’ll be okay too.”

Minghao is still confused. Why does none of the images in his head fit their story? He looks around again, at each of his friends in turn. He sees Sunyeong’s wrists, where there should be scars and bandages from having pulled out of the handcuffs. There isn’t a single mark on him.

“Jun-hyung... and Jihun-hyung...” Minghao stammers carefully.

“They went out to get us some coffee,” Seungkwan reveals. “Do you want anything? I’ll call them and ask.”

Seungkwan has barely reached for his phone when the door opens and Jihun and Junhui walk in with trays of coffee and sandwiches.

“You’re awake,” Jihun says happily, with a wide smile.

Junhui comes over, gives the tray to Jeonghan and takes his place on the chair next to the younger.

“Hey, little brother,” he says in soft Chinese. “You feeling any better?”

“It doesn’t make any sense, Jun-gē,” Minghao replies after a while of thinking. “What happened to us?”

“You don’t remember? Our house was stormed, you know the vacation house we were supposed to stay in? They came in with stun darts or something and knocked us all out. The next thing I know the police wakes me up in a bathtub in some concrete room. They told us we were kidnapped and put into some kind of sick game show, like survive-and-escape, but with each of us in a different room. It’s all so crazy.”

“You should see the hospital,” Jihun says to no one in particular. “It’s crawling with police to try and keep the reporters out. Manager-nim even had to ask our lovely Carats to leave because there were too many of them. There’s a whole room with flowers from them, and it’s in the parking lot too.”

Minghao thought about it. Slowly but surely the images in his head were fading, like how a dream slowly disappears after you wake up. “So... nobody... died?”

“What? No!” Seungkwan says.

“I don’t know if we could have died, but no, we’re all still here,” Mingyu finishes.

With those words, the last of Minghao’s worries go away. He lays back down, closes his eyes and lets out a long sigh. He must have imagined the whole thing when he was in the Small Room, drugged and hallucinating. He was so happy that it wasn’t true. And to the soft voices of his friends sharing coffee and eating, he fell asleep again.

This time he was safe. For real.

AFTERMATH

The hardest thing to come was the trial against Lee Hanryuk, Kook Kangho and Kim Yeongdong, who were found suspected of and guilty to kidnapping, imprisonment, attempted murder, threat, physiological and physical torture. Each of the thirteen members testified for their experiences in the Game House, as well as the hosts from their vacation home, and the witnesses who had led the police to the House in time.

It was a life sentence for all three of them. The members of the Performance Unit still can’t believe that all of this happened because they refused to record that old and dangerous game show two years ago.

As soon as everyone had been released from the hospital and recovered, they were sent away again. Some went home to their families to rest, others went on new vacations in groups. They kept their adoring and worried fans updated through social media and promised that they’d be back soon.

They kept their promise. Two months after the ordeal, the first fan meet with all thirteen members was set up. It was at this time, in the changing room before the meet was supposed to begin, that Minghao told his friends his story.

It moved them to tears, both the idea of how bad it could have been and that Minghao has been carrying this illusion with him alone all this time. Jisoo and Wonwoo gave him a warm, long hug, promising that they’d never ever leave without his permission. Seungcheol made an uplifting joke about an old childhood scar on his stomach, and how that might have been from the bullet he’s been shot within Minghao’s nightmares.

The producer called for them to get ready, they lined up backstage, and they gathered in a circle. With hands and rings together, they yelled their fighting chant and walked out into the bright spotlight of the stage.

Thousands of Carats greeted them with powerful voices and love. The thirteen members took their seats, the meet began, and Minghao smiled.

A few minutes later was the first time in a long time that he forgot completely about the kidnapping and the Rooms. And he was happy.

They beat the game.