THE CORRIDOR

As Seungcheol does his best to try and get some information out of Chan and keep him calm, the older is also battling his own growing anxiety. The countdown on the touchpad in front of him won’t stop ticking—seven minutes, six minutes, five. Some deep down part of him has already accepted that he can’t get out of the collar, so he does the only thing that makes any sense, which is talking to Chan. So far it’s been nearly fruitless. His younger is in a large, dark bunker-like place, filled with metal tables, chains and hooks, knives and hatches. It doesn’t take Seungcheol long to figure out that Chan must be in the Butcher Room behind him, like the door on his right says. But the worst part is that Chan’s leg is injured, and from his description of the wound it seems bad.

“It there anything in there you can use as bandages?” Seungcheol continues. “Maybe you can rip your own shirt.”

“Maybe,” Chan replies. His voice is still weak, almost drugged. Makes sense that they would be drugged—how else did the maniac who locked them up transport them all here without them waking up?

Fabric is tearing and Chan grunts with the struggle. Seungcheol swallows as the countdown hits three minutes. Does he have that little time left to live? He fights against the collar again, to no avail. He hasn’t told Chan about the countdown yet, and he doesn’t plan to. What use would it be apart from scaring his younger? None.

“It might stop the bleeding for a little while,” Chan sighs. “I’mma try to get to the door.”

“No!” Seungcheol calls before he can stop himself. “Keep away from that wall, go to the other side, as far away as you can.”

“Why? Hyung?”

“Just listen to me.” One minute left. A single minute. “Quickly.”

“Okay, okay, but what’s going on?”

Seungcheol swallows hard. Thirty seconds. If he wants to say something, this might be his last chance to do so. “Channie, if I stop talking in a few seconds, just keep pressure on your wound and focus on not bleeding out. Someone will come along and help you, alright?”

“Wait, what? What’s going on? Hyung!” He has scared the younger now like he knew he would. He swears inward.

Eight, seven, six. Seungcheol closes his eyes, prepares for the worst. Five, four, three. Chan keeps screaming, desperate to hear his hyung call back. Two, one, zero.

THE MIRROR ROOM

It’s the bright lights that eventually wake Seungkwan up. He blinks hard until his eyes adjust, then slowly starts to register different things with his other senses—the lack of clothes on his body, the stickiness of bare skin on a parquet floor, a familiar smell he can’t place.

The second he realises that he’s somewhere he should be, Seungkwan flies up on his feet and looks around. Shivers go up his spine, sends his mind into overdrive. Everywhere he looks he can only see his own body and frightened face. Mirrors. Every single wall in the large room is covered in mirrors. The ceiling too, he quickly figures out. He hurries to cover himself, but there’s nobody else in the room.

“Hello? Anyone here?” he asks into thin air. No answer.

There’s a door, strangely reinforced and strong, that won’t open when he pulls on it or pushes. There’s no doorknob either.

Confused and scared out of his wits, he looks around again. There’s a table standing at the far end of the room, and there’s a row of something shiny on top of it. Seungkwan walks over to see what it is and-

Boom! He walks straight into something invisible. The glass is so spotless that he can’t see it even when he knows it’s there. It cuts the room in half perfectly, and it confuses Seungkwan even more. When he looks at the table he can now see that there’s a row of empty wine glasses on it, and tiny notes in front of each one. It’s hard to read because it’s so small, but he can do it. Each note has the name of one of his friends on it, twelve in total.

There’s also a sign standing underneath the table, a little bigger with thicker text on it. A single word.

소리쳐.
(Scream.)

Seungkwan has never felt this hopeless in his life.

THE CORRIDOR

The countdown freezes on four zeros then flashes and disappears. When nothing happens, Seungcheol opens his eyes again, heart beating so loud he could have sworn it lives inside his ears. A new text covers the touch pad briefly before it goes black.

너의 신뢰가 잘못 놓여 있었어.
(Your trust was misplaced.)

Seungcheol waits for the now empty, black screen to do something else, but it doesn’t. Was he just mock executed? The collar is still on, and impossible to get out of. When Chan starts screaming his name again, he snaps back to reality.

“I’m still here, Chan. I’m okay.”

“What was that? What did you do?” Seungcheol explained, and Chan’s voice rose at least an octave. “How could you not tell me that!?”

“I’m sorry, I didn’t want to scare you.”

Seungcheol is so busy breathing and feeling alive that he hardly notices the screen has come alive again. Three lines of text flash by, but Seungcheol manages to catch them all.

친구들이 대신 널 신뢰해야 할 때있어. 찬이 친구 중 하나를 저장할 수 있어. 결정해.
(It’s time for your friends to trust you instead. Chan can save one of them. Decide.)

He barely has time to register shock at what he reads before the screen switches to a split image view, with two different cameras playing what looks like live footage to him. One is of a place that looks like a changing room, and there’s a person walking around with water splashing around their feet. The second is an almost still image of a bare room, empty of all but a bathtub with what looks like a person lying inside. Seungcheol squints at the two video feeds—he’s pretty sure it’s Sunyeong running around the changing room, and the person in the bathtub looks like…

Is that Jun? he thinks. It must be. Seungcheol’s heart aches at the sight of his two friends. What kind of crazy person would do this? Is he supposed to choose between them? And what will happen to the one he doesn’t decide to save?

‘Decide’ flashes across the screen again, then back to the live feed. This time there’s a new countdown at the bottom of the screen, starting from ten minutes. At first, Seungcheol only freezes, both mind and body. Then he sees that something is happening on Sunyeong’s side—something like a waterfall has started to come down from the ceiling, and Sunyeong runs around it in panic. Seungcheol’s heart contracts. Is the room filling with water? He looks over to Jun’s side, and the threat is confirmed. The tap at the head of the bathtub is running, very slowly filling the bathtub with water.

If Jun doesn’t wake up, he’ll drown. Seungcheol realises that Sunyeong can likely drown too if the room fills up completely. Seungcheol’s panic begins anew, and he does his best to keep it at bay. Almost on instinct, his voice becomes loud and clear.

“Chan, listen very carefully to me. Whoever put us here has given me some instructions. I need you to help me. What can you see more than what you’ve told me? Is there nothing on the tables or the walls?”

Chan moves, dragging his injured leg behind him with much effort. Seungcheol hears his shuffling, biting down on his tongue in concentration while watching the two live feeds on the touchpad.

“I found something,” Chan says. “It’s… it’s a skull, hyung. A human skull.”

“Uhm, okay. Anything else?”

“There’s a key too, like, made from clay or something. It’s very fragile. Hold on…”

“What?” Seungcheol doesn’t like the tone Chan is having.

“I didn’t see it at first. There’s a note here, on the wall… ‘Sunyeong needs his Head to survive. Smash the head to save the Heart. The key goes to Junhui’s Heart. Smash the Heart to save the Head.’ What does that mean, hyung?”

Instructions. The touchpad said Chan can save one of them. This is how he was going to do it, by smashing one object to save the other. And Seungcheol is supposed to tell him which one to spare.

The countdown reads five minutes. Seungcheol can clearly see water starting to close in on an unconscious Jun’s face in the bathtub, and Sunyeong is standing on one of the locker benches with water up to his knees.

Seungcheol swallows so hard his Adam's apple scrapes against the metal collar. He has to think fast—it doesn’t feel like the situation is fake this time.

SHOULD CHAN SMASH THE SKULL?

or

SHOULD HE SMASH THE KEY?

(Winning option marked in bold font.)