THE BATHROOM

“Jun! Jun-ah! Jun-ah!”

There is water, confinement, a struggle. He is pretty sure that the last thing he clearly remembers is hopping in the shower. But he also remembers being dragged out of there, getting hit and kicked. But then why is he still breathing water?

“Jun-ah, get up!”

It’s Minghao that’s calling on him, scared but determined. He’s sure of it. The lack of honorifics doesn’t strike him until he’s almost at the surface of consciousness, and the voice of Minghao from his memories starts fading into the true sounds of whoever’s yelling his name now.

“Jun-ah, please get up!”

Junhui isn’t even fully awake when his body spasms to life and moves on instinct. He takes a desperate breath as he sits up, then immediately starts coughing the water from his lungs. The water in the bathtub splashes onto the floor, and the tap stops running before he can notice.

“Oh my god, Jun, are you okay?” It’s Jeonghan’s voice, and Junhui is confused. “Talk to me!”

Junhui finds himself alone in a small, dim lit room with a steel door, no windows and a single light bulb hanging over the bathtub. Jeonghan is nowhere in sight. But when his hyung talks again, the quality of the sound reveals the use of speakers.

“You scared us, Jun. You okay?”

“What’s going on, hyung?” This time it is Sunyeong’s voice.

“He’s alive, just wait a moment,” Jeonghan replies.

It takes more than a moment for Junhui to finish coughing and regain his senses. When he finally does, the first thing he reacts to isn’t even close to what Jeonghan expects.

“Why am I wearing clothes? I guess it’s pretty awkward to kidnap a person...”

Jeonghan can’t stop himself from giving a relieved laugh. Junhui smiles with water dripping from his fringe, thankful to be alive. Then he slowly realizes the situation they’re in, and his smile and heart sink.

“Hyung, what happened to us?”

Jeonghan explains, and Sunyeong cuts in where it is helpful. Their rooms, the screens and keys and locker codes, the unconscious Seokmin, Seungcheol’s choice, Junhui’s near drowning. Junhui almost wants to tell them to shut up, it’s too much to process. He gets out of the bathtub and tries his door.

“My door is locked too,” he tells his friends. “Do you think there might be someone else on the other side?”

“Hyung and I have adjacent rooms,” Sunyeong says. Junhui tries banging on the door and calls out, but nobody answers him. “By the way, Jun, is there anything else in there with you? Like notes, codes... a key?”

“A key..?” The instant he says it, Junhui realizes that there’s something hanging around his neck. A chain, with an old-looking key attached to it. “Found it. There’s something engraved on it, wait... okay? It says ‘Wonwoo’ on it.”

Sunyeong sounds excited when he asks if Junhui is sure. “Wait,” he says, then fumbles with something metallic. “Brace yourselves... yes! It worked!”

“What?” Junhui asks.

“The lockers in here need our names, but in numbers, to unlock and everyone has their own name and... never mind, your code was ‘Wonwoo’. Let’s see here... well, this gets more and more confusing by the second.”

THE LOCKER ROOM

Sunyeong doesn’t know how to describe what’s in Junhui’s locker other than like a thermostat. There’s a display that tells the temperature, which is currently at 10 degrees Celsius, and a few buttons to control it. There’s also a note that he reads aloud to Jeonghan and Junhui.

조금 가열하자. 
(Let’s heat things up a little.)

“What do you think it means, guys?” Sunyeong asks. His heart feels heavy, still a little guilty about what happened with Junhui earlier.

“I don’t know,” Jeonghan replies with a sigh. “But I have a bad feeling about it. I can’t get my note out of my head.”

Neither can Sunyeong. ‘Don’t make mistakes’. He wonders if the mistake here is to ignore the command or to follow it.

THE BOILER ROOM

Jisoo has never been sweating this much in his entire life. Through years of workouts and dancing—never like this. It pours down his back, soaks his hair and his T-shirt. His hands stick to the stone floor. Ironically, while his outsides are wet, his mouth and throat are bone dry.

He’s starting to accept that the heat might kill him if he can’t escape. But the door is locked and too hot to touch, and there’s no water to quench his thirst. The only thing that calms him down is the fact that he’s not alone—well, technically he is, but he’s not in a position to complain.

“How’re you doing, Wonwoo-ya?”

Wonwoo takes a long while to answer. Jisoo is used to it by now. It scares the living hell out of him, but it’s highly likely that Wonwoo will die before him. When Wonwoo’s voice comes through the speakers, it’s weak and shivering.

“I’m still here... It’s so cold... so cold...”

“You wanna switch?” Jisoo jokes for the second time. Wonwoo’s laugh is barely audible, and Jisoo’s is dry and raspy. “I’d do anything for some ice right now.”

His humour is only a mask at this point. They’re both too tired, too spent. It’s just a matter of time before one of them falls asleep and doesn’t wake up again. Jisoo looks with hateful eyes at the key on the floor further away, and the note attached to it. The note that says that the only way to save himself is to kill Wonwoo. Jisoo has torn the note in half.

He lays down and closes his eyes. Just for a little while. There’s nothing more he can do in here. It’s a large room filled with big, steaming hot boiler tanks, dozens of pipes and locked power boxes. If his only chance of survival is killing his friend, he’ll gladly die first. But as more time passes, the chances grow that Wonwoo might die anyway.

Jisoo is determined not to let that happen. “Do you think the others are okay? Or are they struggling like us?”

No reply. Unsurprising.

“I hope they’re okay...” Jisoo draws a heavy, dry breath. “If they are, they better be working their asses off to get us out of here.”

Still no answer. First Jisoo starts to worry, but the pure panic hits him so fast it practically knocks him backwards.

“Wonwoo? Wonwoo!”

He screams for several minutes, but his friend doesn’t answer. Eventually, he just can’t anymore. There’s not enough water in his body to cry either. He collapses on the floor, the heat stealing life from him by the second. He wonders how long it’ll be before he joins Wonwoo in death and if there ever was a chance for either of them to live in the first place.

SHOULD SUNYEONG RAISE THE TEMPERATURE

or

SHOULD HE LEAVE IT BE?

(Winning option marked in bold font.)