Songs:

¬ Estranged

¬ Oh No

¬ No Color

The day was colder, drier and quieter, and Siyeon felt as if the roof was close to crushing her. She laid on the bed still and straight like a centuries old mummified body, having not moved an inch in a while because of her bullet thoughts. The open envelope and letter Yoohyeon gave them was right next to her, upwards, like it was looking at the ceiling too. Her thoughts were interrupted by hope, so after getting up her eyes laid on her phone and stared, wishing the ever expected message would disrupt her vehement worry. Her phone made no sound, though. Frustrated, she picked up the letter and read it again.

“I do not know where I will be tomorrow, and I have been feeling like I do not have much time left. For this reason I need you to widen your minds and make space for what I need you to understand and do. The reason why i never disappeared was because i was never qualified for it, like the single crop that refused to harvest. I do not have time to explain what I mean by that, but with the maps I provided you will be able to see with your own eyes. I hope. I do not know if it will be my fate, but you two deserve to see what is beyond the limits of The House. Follow my plan, I wrote a description behind the map. Thank you for accompanying me since you appeared here. Thank you for making my life lighter on my feet. I do not know if we will ever meet again, but just imagine I am hugging you right now and everything should be fine.”

    The second day after week reset was Siyeon and Gahyeon’s free day of the week, hence they decided to spend it honoring their friend’s wishes. They both sat on the floor with the two big papers unrolled and flattened next to each other, not worried they might get caught because they were usually granted some privacy during workless days. The first paper portrayed a blueprint with circles and lines that limned a path to a place they had no memory recollection of, but they did identify it was The House. The second one was a map of something they had truly never seen before; The House was drawn in a corner, but there was another structure, one unknown, on the opposite corner. They were separated by a pool of visual white noise, which neither Gahyeon nor Siyeon could decipher what it really was.

    “Okay, I assume this one goes first.” Gahyeon picked up the blueprint. “This line takes us all the way down to a door in the back of the cafeteria. Can we even get in there?”

    “Of course we cannot, why do you think we’ve never heard of this…”

    “Jeez thank you for answering in such a friendly way!” Her voice was coated with parodic vivacity.

    “Gahyeon let’s take this seriously.”

    “But I am! You’re the one making it gloomier than it should be, gosh. I’m just trying to brighten the mood for you since you clearly didn’t sleep last night.” She looked at Siyeon, who was looking at her with quasi-racoon eyes and an emotionless face expression. “Wow you look terrible…”

    Siyeon chose to ignore her and turn her attention to the blueprint instead. “Let’s do this now. The cafeteria is supposed to be closed right now so we might find it empty. Maybe we can get in now.”

    “Wait hold on you’re actually going to try to enter after ten minutes of looking at Yoohyeon’s instructions?”

    The other girl sighed as she stood up. “Yeah, whatever.”

    They got out of their room and the halls were empty. Everyone was either working or resembling a hermit crab inside their rooms. When they arrived at the cafeteria, they were greeted by a big closed metal door.

    “Uh… what now?” Gahyeon voiced.

    “Shh.” Siyeon’s hands started lining on a nonexistent plane in the air, nodding when she stopped. “This way.” She pointed to a small corridor somewhat close to the metal door. After making some unusual turns, they encountered security personnel talking to each other inside a soundproof glass booth a few feet away from a labeless door. “That’s the one. They’re facing the other direction, we should enter like right now.” Before Gahyeon could deliver her protest, Siyeon grabbed her hand and pulled her towards the door.

    “Siyeon what the hell!” She whispered with an angry tone. “This door doesn’t even have a lock or whatever this can’t be it!”

    But the other didn’t listen, she had already opened the door and was pulling her to the other side. That part wasn’t white like the rest of the building; it had dark grey walls with glass doors, and there were some stairs at the end of the hall. They started walking and as they passed one of the doors, they looked inside the dimly lit room and saw a messy hospital bed.

    “What is that red liquid on the floor, is that blood?” Gahyeon whispered in confusion.

    “Seriously can you stop with the questions I already told you I don’t know any-” Her angry whisper was cut short by the sound of chatter and steps coming from the stairs. Her eyes widened and her instincts made her push Gahyeon into the room in front of the one they were looking at. This one was filled with files.

    “Oh my lord, we are so screwed why did I listen to you we are so screwed we are going to disappear goodness gracious…” Gahyeon said after hiding behind a desk and peeking at the door, seeing two inspectors she recognized walking outside the door.

    “To be honest this was easier than I thought.” Siyeon spoke while looking through some files on top of the desk. Her hands froze when she held a picture of a highly familiar face. “Stand up. Look at this.”

    “Yooh…”

    “Yes. This bunch of files might be people that disappeared. Look,” she picked up another photo, “this was her roommate.” She moved to another bunch, but she didn’t recognize anyone from that one. “These may be people who disappeared before we even got here.” She picked up Yoohyeon’s file again and started reading out loud; “noncompliant,” she laughed, Gahyeon too. “Of course she was.” She continued reading; “apparent resistance to surgery… wait what surgery, Yoohyeon never mentioned this.” 

    A loud thud was heard coming from below. Another one, and it picked up a pace, like a hammer. In the midst of it, a slam. The two put down all they had in their hands out of panic and rushed to the door.

    “That sound is freaking me out so let’s get the hell out of here or I will beat you up, I swear!” Gahyeon whispered with an angry tone again.

    With both of their sympathetic systems completely activated, their legs carried them quickly back to their room, hoping they weren’t seen by anyone. However, when they shut their room’s door, a loud announcement was heard over the intercom; “Attention. Everyone please remain exactly where you are right now. An emergency inspection will be conducted be-”

    “Okay they definitely saw us, we gotta get out of here. Fast!” Siyeon picked up the white noise map and studied it for a few seconds, memorizing the directions of the arrows. “Okay, up, up, up, right.”

    Everything was quiet, everything but their minds. They never had ran inside these halls, but at the moment it wasn’t even a question. Turned right, in a line, turned left, another curve, in a line... the halls never seemed that long until that instant. Both of their lungs were burning in need of oxygen but their lactic acid saturated muscles refused to stop. In a matter of seconds, an array of boot stomps were heard not that far from them.

    “Siyeon I’m freaking scared!” Gahyeon yelled between sharp inhales.

    “We will make it!” She didn’t stop running. Didn’t stop until they got out of the building and encountered an immensely tall fence, but only for a few seconds before adrenaline kicked in again and made them start climbing. Siyeon got to the top, starting to descend as she managed to get her whole body on the other side of the fence. She stopped going down abruptly when she encountered Gahyeon’s struggling face in front of hers. “What are you doing?! Go faster!!”

    “I can’t…” She sounded in pain.

    “Gahyeon please!” Siyeon started to climb again, to see if she could pull Gahyeon up. The latter grabbed her leg harshly through the fence and started pulling her down, stopping her. “What the hell?!”

    “You need to go!” Gahyeon pulled her so hard that she fell from the fence. “Come back for me please!” Her voice sounded desperate and splashed with intense fear, but she couldn’t say anything else since two men grabbed her and dragged her away. Siyeon watched in horror before panic made her get into flight mode, her feet slipping a few times on the dirt before taking off into the dense forest. She tried to picture the map’s arrows again, and in between breathless breaths she started saying them out loud.

    “Up, up, up, right, up, big rock, up, huge tree…,” she passed the two, “...up, tunnel, right-”

    “Shoot to kill!” A man shouted, interrupting Siyeon’s type of mantra.

    “AH! Up, up, up, right, up, big rock…” She started to speak faster and louder. Her whole body was exhausted, but she wasn’t going to disappear, not now. She passed the tunnel, and as soon as she turned right she started seeing a different scenery; buildings, some white, some red, and black floor in between. It was a lot to take in, but she didn’t stop to admire anything. When she got into the city, she started climbing some stairs until she reached the roof of the building. There, she stopped to catch her breath, then to inspect her new surroundings. Calmness didn’t last that long, since she could hear several people rushing up the stairs. “Damnit!” She searched for a possible escape; the other building’s roof. She didn’t think about it that much; her legs ran mindlessly towards the edge and jumped. She kept running in the air as if she could actually move and moved her arms frantically like wings, all for nothing because all she did was clash against the other roof’s cement. With her last energies, she got up and headed for the stairs, but before she could reach a man on the other roof pulled the trigger. Right after the loud sound she felt the bullet hit her leg, making her fall with a grunt. Her hand found its way to the wound as she continued walking with a limp, getting inside the building earlier that the men could jump over. She went down the stairs quickly, fighting an excruciating pain, and started knocking desperately on the first door she found.

    “I bet you know what patience is, person!” A muffled woman’s voice was heard, audibly annoyed. When she opened the door, Siyeon pushed her to get in, went into the kitchen and fell on the floor with a loud thud. She got her hand away from the wound and bit her fingers trying to distract herself from the bleeding wound. “What… the white rug Yubin! Get her out of there! Who are you?!”

    Yubin, who was sitting in the living room tinkering with a dismantled computer, tossed the screwdriver she held after witnessing the scene and rushed to the kitchen. When she reached Siyeon, who was breathing heavily and had her eyes shut forcibly, she didn’t know what to do. “There’s a woman bleeding Handong forget the damn rug!”

    As Handong was about to close the entrance, a hand came in between to obstruct.

    “Excuse me, have you seen a black haired woman with all white clothes, potentially wounded, running around here?” A man dressed in black asked monotonously. He didn’t open the door nor looked into the apartment, just asked from afar without removing his hand from the doorframe.

    After looking at the agonizing woman on the floor, Handong opened the door a little and caught a glimpse of the firearm the man was holding. “Uh no, I was just looking for my cat and I didn’t see anyone, at least on this floor.” The man nodded and proceeded to descend the stairs with his team to continue the search. The door was closed and Handong let out a loud exhale. “You better be a good one ‘cause I just put my and my precious cat’s life at risk.”

    “Screw Lee Yubin, thank you so much.” Yubin spoke as she pressed a bunch of napkins against the heavily bleeding wound. “Uh, should I call an ambulance or…?”

    “We don’t even know if she can afford it, I’ll call Minji instead.” Handong got out her phone and searched for her friend’s contact. “Hey Minji there’s a kind of extraordinary emergency at my home right now, very urgent… No, Yubin and I are fine, it’s just… yeah just come here, hurry.”

🝰🝰🝰

Minji was walking to her car in the hospital’s parking lot at the end of her shift when Handong called her. She was exhausted and in desperate need of food and sleep considering her twelve hour shift ended a few minutes ago. Still, she couldn’t ignore Handong’s request.

She sped up a little too much to get to Handong’s apartment fast, thinking she was back in the ambulance. When she got to the building, she rushed to the elevator and pushed the button several times as if it would make it go down sooner. “Ugh why do you have to live on the top floor, see, you pay more for that beautiful penthouse plus the decrease of emergency response speed…” The doors opened, closed... silence. Minji’s head was in a trance as the elevator went up, and she definitely didn’t know what she would encounter in Handong’s apartment. Even though she didn’t have any expectations, she surely didn’t expect to see a bleeding woman on the floor, Handong pulling a stained rug away from her and Yubin trying calm the two down. Her instincts kicked in before she could evoke a vocal response; she ripped the lower part of her shirt. “Okay I’m not even gonna ask…” She said as she grabbed a decorative bamboo stick from the coffee table, surrounded it with the piece of cloth and tied the opposite side around the wounded leg. She turned the bamboo like a clock to tighten the improvised tourniquet, which made Siyeon groan. Minji picked her up and ran to the elevator with both Yubin and Handong trailing behind. “What’s your name?”

“Siyeon.”

Yubin got in the driver’s seat, Handong in the passenger’s and Minji in the back with Siyeon. “And your surname?”

“What’s that?”

Minji furrowed her eyebrows. “She must be in shock… Who did this to you?”

“Security…”

“What security? From where?”

“The House. The only security. Where am I?” Siyeon spoke slowly and with low energy, looking around with narrowed eyes. The three others were puzzled.

“Alright she must be in shock or she’s having a-”

“Gahyeon, I need to go back!” Siyeon tried standing up but as soon as she moved her wounded leg a little her torso fell back on the seat as she groaned.

“Who’s Gahyeon? Is she your relative?”

“What are you talking about...”

Minji decided to stop asking questions since the answers were just complicating the situation more. She noticed a phone threatening to fall from the stranger’s white clothes, so she grabbed it and put it aside.

When they arrived at the hospital, Minji picked Siyeon up and brought her to the emergency room asking for help on the way. Several nurses came with a stretcher, undid the tourniquet and one of the started asking the same questions. Minji caught on and lied. She didn’t know why, but she did it anyways; “she’s my sister, she’s my sister!”

🝰🝰🝰

“It’s been two days and you still haven’t told me where I am.” Siyeon stated while almost inmobile on the hospital bed.

“I don’t know what else to tell you. You’re in a hospital, in the city, and in half an hour you will be at my apartment so get up.” Minji gave her crutches and helped her to stand up.

Silence became familiar and comfortable in the trip to Minji’s apartment. Siyeon took the chance to finally admire the new scenery; her eyes were pleased to see so many colors at once without having to look at an electronic screen. She observed the people walking outside, the other cars, the birds, the trees… the lack of white. Speechless, that was what she was.

They arrived at the destination and quickly went into the apartment. Siyeon sat in the living room’s couch as Minji went into the kitchen to prepare something for her. She came back with a mug that seemed like it was too hot and gave it to the wounded woman, whose face morphed into comedic shock after taking a sip.

“You like hot chocolate that much?” Minji brightly smiled.

“I’ve never had anything like this in my life!” She took a big sip that burned her tongue, so the shocked face became one of confusion. She took out her tongue and touched it with her finger. This amused Minji, but instead of laughing like she usually would she got up and looked for an ice cube. As she was walking into the kitchen, the door burst open.

“MINJI!!! Guess who got congratulated by the city’s most respected contemporary dancer?!” A  woman came into the apartment talking too fast and too loud while making caricaturesque body movements. Her loudness startled Siyeon, who shook a little in response to the noise. When she finally looked at the woman who entered, her eyes widened. She stared, and stared... until her presence was acknowledged. “Kim Minji did you bring another girl home without telling me? It’s too early for this!” She looked away but then fixated her eyes back on the small woman. “Okay this one’s weird…”

“It’s you.” Siyeon finally managed to say it.

“Huh? Yes it’s me, Kim Bora. Who are you?”

“How are you out here? How did you get out?"