THE LOCKER ROOM

Simply because it is only Jeonghan he can talk to at the moment, Sunyeong chooses to try the locker that belongs to his hyung. Since the lock requires four numbers, he goes with the most obvious option. He turns the wheels until they say 1004—October 4th, Jeonghan’s birthday—and presses the little button on the side. At first, nothing happens, then suddenly a loud pang sounds over the speakers and Jeonghan cries out.

“Hyung, what happened?” Sunyeong calls in fear.

“Oh my g..! One of the drawers… It exploded!”

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine, I’m across the room. It’s smoking now, but I don’t… I don’t think it’s burning.” He’s silent for a moment. “Sunyeong-ah, did you do something? You said you’d try one of the locks…”

“Yeah, why?” Sunyeong asks carefully. “Wait, you don’t think..?”

“I got this note before, it says ‘Don’t make mistakes. Every try counts’ and I thought of it now. What code did you try?”

“Your birthday, it didn’t work. It’s four numbers, I don’t know.”

Without actually trying them, they list some combinations that can be correct, including the name code numbers on the locker door, his birthday but the other way around, various parts of his phone number. They also realise that it can be just a random number too, and that’s the worst scenario.

Sunyeong hears Jeonghan move something heavy. “Sunyeong-ah, I think I can get this drawer open. The exploded one.”

“Be careful,” Sunyeong says. The sounds of Jeonghan struggling and metal screeching against metal fill the Locker Room. Sunyeong sits down on the bench and pulls his feet out of the cold water still running over the floor. Then something breaks over the speakers and Jeonghan makes a celebratory noise.

“There was another note in the exploded drawer, I can hardly see what it says…hmm… I can see ‘Seung’. You think it’s supposed to say Seungcheol?”

“Or Seungkwan,” Sunyeong adds thoughtfully.

Jeonghan takes a long while to think. Meanwhile, Sunyeong connects the dots—maybe the note is the password for the locks. It doesn’t make sense that the lockers would have someone else’s name as a code, but nothing else makes sense in here either.

“Sunyeong-ah, I think the note said Seungcheol.” Sunyeong explains his theory about the codes and looks up their oldest member’s name on the syllable list he got. 6 and 14. Jeonghan seems confident. “Try it. I’ll stand as far away from the drawers as I can.”

Sunyeong puts in the numbers, 0614, then hesitates. Holding his breath, he presses the side button. To his great relief, nothing explodes. The lock opens easily and Sunyeong looks inside the locker. It’s empty, but there’s a message scribbled across the back wall.

승철이 거의 모든 문을 열 수 있지만 승철의 문을 만 너는 열 수 있어. 
(Seungcheol can open almost any door, but only you can open Seungcheol’s door.)

Disheartened and confused, he reads the message aloud to Jeonghan. His older doesn’t understand it much better. In each their own room, they sit down and do the only thing they can—nothing. Jeonghan says that Seokmin still hasn’t moved on his screen and the countdown is on thirty-eight minutes. Sunyeong walks around the dryer areas of the floor for warmth in the chilly Locker Room. He finds the door marked 6 and 14, Seungcheol’s locker. Of course, Sunyeong was the only one who would open it, he was alone in a locked room. But then he notices something he had seen before—this lock isn’t a combination one, it requires an ordinary key. Sunyeong thinks of the key he got from his own locker and fetches it. When he does he can see that the countdown on his TV screen has reset, and is reading just under ten minutes time. He doesn’t mind that.

He’s sure that he has figured the puzzle out when he grabs the lock on Seungcheol’s door and is about to insert the key. That’s when he sees the tiny inscription on the front of the lock itself.

낭비하지마. 
(Don’t waste it.)

THE CORRIDOR

Seungcheol is finally beginning to calm down for real. He woke up about an hour ago to the bright fluorescent lights of the long hallway, alone and sitting up against a wall. He’d panicked when he felt the collar around his neck, a thick metal beam that curves around his throat and attaches to the walls on either side. The panic had been fuelled by what is in front of him—a touchpad leaned to the opposite wall, with a countdown that says nine minutes now, and messages that scroll across the screen.

고리는 폭탄있어. 친구가 널 구할 수 있어. 신뢰해. 
(The ring is a bomb. Your friends can save you. Trust them.)

It hasn’t happened once since he met them that Seungcheol didn’t trust his friends. But now he is alone, without means to contact them or any clue about what their situations look like. They could be in just as much trouble as he is. He’d tried to break the ring loose from the wall, but it’s impossible. It can’t be moved even a sliver.

Now that his heart isn’t trying to escape from his body anymore, Seungcheol can take in a few more details about his surroundings. The corridor he’s in comes to an end about three meters to one side. It stretches far in the other direction and then turns right. There’s one door in the wall he is sitting against, one far away in the corner, three on the opposite wall and one right next to him. The closest one has a sign that says ‘The Butcher Room’. The three on the other wall says ‘The Bedroom’, ‘The Boiler Room’ and ‘The Classroom’. He can’t read what the fifth and sixth doors say.

As if the random names aren’t scary enough, Seungcheol has no memory of how he got here. The ever decreasing number of minutes on the countdown doesn’t help either. Someone has to do something fast, or Seungcheol doesn’t know what will happen to him. In a fit of rage, he tries to pull free from the collar again, but it’s useless. he tries screaming again like he did when he woke up, but it only makes his throat raw and nobody hears him anyway. Every door he can see is made of reinforced steel—he doesn’t think much sound can penetrate them.

Suddenly Seungcheol’s ears react to something. He quiets down and listens carefully, and at first, he thinks he’s imagining it. But the more he listens, the more certain he becomes. He can hear breathing that isn’t his own. It sounds weird, almost as if through a phone, but it’s definitely breathing.

He can’t see it because of the angle, but there’s a small speaker on the wall above his head and a microphone. Seungcheol’s screaming has woken someone up, and now Seungcheol can hear them moving and groaning.

“Who’s there?” Seungcheol asks loudly, thinking that the noise is coming from further down the corridor. “Can you hear me?”

More groaning, almost painful, then a newly awake voice comes through the speakers. “Hello?”

Seungcheol doesn’t immediately recognise the voice, it’s too low. But he becomes excited at hearing someone else for the first time. “Hello? Who’s there?”

“Hyung, is that you? Seungcheol-hyung?” the voice says tiredly.

Now Seungcheol can hear clearly who it is. His heart skips a beat at the first sign of one of his friends. It’s Lee Chan. In all the inexplicable horrors that Seungcheol is surrounded by, he feels a little extra happy to know that at least his youngest friend is okay.

His happiness is short-lived.

“Hyung, where are you? I think I’m bleeding. Help me.”

SHOULD SUNYEONG USE HIS KEY TO OPEN SEUNGCHEOL'S LOCKER

or

SHOULD HE SAVE IT AND WAIT FOR THE COUNTDOWN TO FINISH?

(Winning option marked in bold font.)