prelude: immortal longings

the hallway is silent but for the incessant hum of the air conditioning—despite the heat of the summer sun beating down outside, sooyoung shivers—and the cautious squeaking of her shoes against the freshly waxed linoleum tiles. she looks down at the floor after nearly slipping, her reflection mirrored back to her in the dim lighting in a distorted sort of hazy blob (she remembers a story she had read about the mirror world, a world everything like our own in a way you can't shake or really put a finger on it but know that it is somehow just not.)

she counts the offices as she passes, repeating the number sehun had told her over and over in her head. when she reaches lab office 112, she stops and takes a deep breath. she isn’t trespassing, she tells herself: the building was open, the hall lights were on, she has the decency to knock (even though she knows no one will answer). just as she had been promised, the door is unlocked.

quietly, she pushes the door open and peeks inside. the office is fully lit, with not a soul in sight. sooyoung peers around, lifting papers from the desk to get a better look—the content ranges from sloppily handwritten notes that seem like esoteric ramblings than anything slightly resembling science to spreadsheets of formulas that drag on in neverending sequences of symbols and numbers, none of which makes any sort of sense.

just as sooyoung sets down a lab brief in frustration, the lights cut off. she freezes, her heart pounding in her ears as her mind whirrs desperately trying to decide her next course of action.

go. she needs to go.

she makes a mental note to yell at sehun for leading her into another dead end and begin