Songs:

¬ Black Magic

Siyeon’s hand hadn’t been removed from over Bora’s mouth. They were both trying not to breathe, nor move, nor make any type of sound that would alert the man about their position. Still, both of their heartbeats were sensible to each other because of their proximity and silence; you could hear the dropping of a pin. Heartbeats, breathing, and the slow footsteps of the man that was outside announcing impending doom… the perfect blend for nervous overcharge. His eyes lingered on the closet doors, on the small horizontal openings, for some seconds to try to make up figures dissimilar to clothing, but it was in vain. Given that it didn’t look suspicious enough and that he heard nothing, he retreated and went out to the living room. Minji continued talking to him about how ‘Bora moved away some time ago’ and asked him about why he was looking for her. He just kept silent, and later answered every question by deeming it as classified. Upon hearing the closing of the door, Bora stuck out her tongue and Siyeon’s hand, making the latter remove it and pass it over her shirt to dry it.

    “What’s wrong with you?” Siyeon whispered with a slightly angry tone, which made the other laugh with a sound similar to ‘k’. They both looked away at the same time in search of any type of distraction. “You know, the man saw your messy bed.”

    “Okay, your point?”

    “He knows Minji’s lying then.”

    “This could’ve been her room.”

    Before Siyeon could respond, Minji entered the room and opened the closet door. “He’s gone.” They all went out and sat on the sofa, thinking; the murky atmosphere clouded everyone’s minds as they tried to envisage the possible reasons for that man’s visit. After a silent thought process, Minji stood up with a sigh and focused her attention on Siyeon. “Can you call your friend? The one that has been texting you.”

    “I don’t know, why?” Siyeon took out her phone and looked for Yoohyeon’s chat.

    “She knew this man would come by. She has some answers, probably.” Siyeon asked Yoohyeon about what Minji just suggested, and after some seconds an agreeing message came on the screen. Meanwhile, the paramedic put her hands on her hips as she looked down with rapidly moving eyes, indicating an intent of making everything make sense. She stopped and looked at Bora, and said; “Are you a criminal?” emphasizing the ‘you’. Bora’s eyebrows almost touched in response to her suspicion, but in that instant Siyeon’s phone started ringing. 

“Hello?”

    “Can you put it on speaker?” Minji said. Siyeon took the phone out of her ear and did as she asked.

    “Hello. You’re on speaker now.”

    “Oh, hi. Who else is there? Is it you Gahyeon?? Why haven’t you been responding to my messages huh?”

    Siyeon’s face morphed from the initial delight of hearing her friend’s voice again into utter guilt and regret. “No… Gahyeon isn't here right now. Minji and Bora are. Minji took care of me these days.” After finishing her sentence, Bora looked at her with both joking and true betrayal, but she didn’t look back at the dancer.

    “Ah. Well, when she’s with you again, tell her to stop ignoring me! I miss her. I miss you both, actually, a lot. Also tell this Minji thanks for taking care of you.”

    She tried to ignore the first part so she wouldn’t get overly emotional. “She heard you, it’s on speaker Yooh.” She looked over at Minji, who was slightly smiling. “This is her.” She put her phone closer to the paramedic, whose face shifted partly into shock.

    “Uh… hello!” Minji blurted out.

    “Hello! I’m looking forward to meeting you then, Minji.” Yoohyeon chuckled, and Minji did too. “Hey why did you want to call me? The people that pick up garbage are looking at me weird again and I may have to hang up soon.”

    “A man with a briefcase came by just now. How did you know he would come?”

    Yoohyeon sighed. “He came for me yesterday, to take me back. He’s from The House. They’ve been at it since I ran away. He collects people. As soon as I got in contact with you I knew they would start looking for you too, so I wanted to meet up and explain everything I know, but he ruined my plans. You need to be on the lookout now ‘cause once they’ve located you they won't stop wandering around.”

    “But he didn’t ask for me when he came.” Siyeon stated. “He was looking for Bora.”

    “Is that so? Bora, Bora…” She tried searching for the name in her memory. “...Kim Bora??” 

    “Yes that’s her. You remember her too? Did you see the files? I tried asking her about The House but she doesn’t remember anything.”

    “No, no, no… She hasn’t been there. She was next. She was going to replace my roommate…”

    The three simultaneously looked up, and Siyeon and Minji looked at Bora. The paramedic’s mouth was noticeably agape. She didn’t really understand what they were talking about, but what Yoohyeon just said sounded inherently bad. Considering the circumstances in which she met Siyeon, in the physical and emotional state that she found her, she started to deeply worry about her roommate. She needed answers. “When can we meet? When can we settle this?” Minji let out like she was holding her breath.

    “I might not be able to meet for a few days, but I’ll let you know… they’re keeping an eye on me. I can’t move recklessly. For now, I’d say you, Siyeon and Bora I mean, should look for a new place to stay since they have your house spotted already.”

    “Where are you staying?” Siyeon asked, ignoring the weird feeling she got when she heard that she had to move away with Bora.

    “Probably very far from you but I don’t want you to worry about me. Now I really have to go so byeee tell Gahyeon to answer my messages! And that I miss her. Bye Minji and Bora.” And the phone call was cut, and then silence.

    Siyeon loudly sighed as she threw her head back into the back of the sofa and crossed her arms on her chest. “I need to go back for her.”

    “With that leg you aren’t going anywhere.” Minji responded, then went into the kitchen to look for an ice pack. “Now what you need to be thinking about is where you’re going to stay.” She came back, lifted Siyeon’s leg, put it on the coffee table and put the ice pack over the wound. “Hold this.”

    Siyeon held the ice pack in place, but her posture got uncomfortable so she put it on the coffee table and rested her leg on top of it. “I know nothing about this place so…” She closed her eyes while leaning back and her hands started wandering in her usual nonexistent plane in the air.

Bora was surprisingly silent throughout the conversation; she was left perplexed after the call with Yoohyeon. She had an amalgam of confusions, worries, thoughts, and irrationalities in her brain; first and foremost, why her? Yes, she kind of believed she outshined some people in this world, she wasn’t a wallflower at all, and her presence was always noticed. Deep inside though, she always wondered what exactly was special. Second of all, what was she chosen for? The nature of The House was mysterious and not understandable at all to her, and to anyone really. Even though she was beginning to tap into Siyeon’s version of reality, she still had endless doubts about the stranger’s claims and behavior in general. Bora laid back on the sofa and pondered over the essence of her own persona, and her eyebrows had a dance battle of their own. She didn’t behave like Siyeon, she thought, but after a few more twists of reasoning, she realized that she didn’t really know her either. It also seemed like the stranger didn’t even know herself. She looked over to her and noticed how her hands were tracing forms in the air. Her eyes lingered for a few seconds in the movement and noticed it was actually coherent. She looked up to Siyeon’s face and saw that it was so peaceful, and even a slight smile was visible; she was somewhere else now. She wasn’t aware of it, but Bora’s face mindlessly mimicked Siyeon’s, with a close to invisible side smile creeping up.

    Minji cleared . “Did you hear what I said?”

    “Huh?” Bora rapidly shook her head and directed her vision towards her roommate, who was looking at her with traces of teasing in her face. “Ah, yes, of course!” She sat up with her back straightened and nodded.

    “What did you say?” Siyeon spoke up.

    Minji raised one eyebrow towards Bora. “I said, you should stay at Handong and Yubin’s from now on. I’m gonna call them.”

    “But Handong doesn’t like me!” Siyeon exclaimed.

    “Oh come on, she’s get over it.” Minji laughed and started dialing Handong’s phone number.

🝰🝰🝰

“So you aren’t going to push me to enter the apartment this time?” Handong asked after she opened the door and the first person she saw was Siyeon. No one understood, so no one laughed. “Why’re you guys so bitter?”

“Look who’s talking…” Yubin came from behind and moved Handong aside so she could open the door more. “Welcome.” The five of them gathered in the living room and sat down, then Yubin spoke up mid quiet laugh; “So, basically the police are finally doing something about your secret criminal activity?”

“Stop it, I’m not a criminal!” Bora sharply voiced, defensive, and Minji smiled scrunching her nose at the tone of her voice. “Anyway, on the way here I was thinking we could search for you somewhere, I don’t know, on the web possibly, since you remembered your full name.” The dancer directed at Siyeon, who had been quiet since they got out of their apartment.

“Oh you remembered?” Minji asked with a hint of shock and relief.

“Yes… Lee Siyeon.”

“Then yes, we should definitely try to search for you. Maybe it can bring back some other memories. I’m sure you have something posted on the internet.” Minji said and turned her body towards Yubin. “You’re a hacker, you can do this.”

“For the nineteenth time, I’m a computer technician.”

“Well, you know a lot about computers, come on, you’ve even tracked people before…”

“Okay… we don’t talk about that.” Yubin spoke lowly and relatively fast, for which Handong laughed. “I will try my best.”

During this conversation, and roughly since the call with Yoohyeon ended, Siyeon’s mind was swimming in a pool of uncertainty. These people were certain; certain that they would find protection in this new house, certain of safety, certain of tomorrow in existence, and most importantly, certain of the possibility that she once had a life like theirs. The thing is, though, that she didn’t really find comfort nor complete truth in their certainties, the last time she was that certain about something everything crumbled into dust. 

She was unconsciously reluctant to learn about things that would reconfigure her concept of time and reality, plus provoke the substitution of her whole life purpose. All she ever was was a worker, like her peers; she dug holes in the dirt almost every morning only for them to be refilled every now and then, she sometimes had to carry heavy rocks, or bags that contained stuff she never found out about, and sometimes she even had to put weird dust-like substances into separate containers depending on their color and so on. At the end of the day, it was tiring, but she always had time to rest at the diverse recreation areas. They distracted her pounding mind and reiterated that her exhaustion was just an exaggeration; a never ending cycle of both work and distraction. She had everything at The House, she was certain, but her sense of security was warped after Yoohyeon gave her that letter; her deeply buried doubts resurfaced. Now, these newfound people who were so notably nice presented a completely different version of reality, and not to mention this new world was filled with order and disorder, arbitrary sensorial stimulation… strange colors. Trying to ingest renegade information started to make the left side of her head burn again, sharper than ever before.

At first she tried to not evoke an audible reaction to not worry anyone, like last time with Minji and Bora. It didn’t seem to plan to stop, so she tried harder to ignore it. She felt some kind of abstract incandescence around the area of her scar, and when she closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, what she saw wasn’t black. Instead, she saw flickering dots and lines similar to what she experienced when she rubbed her eyes hard, but much more vibrant. She hadn’t rubbed her eyes, though, and the colors weren’t stopping. Too soon, the pain became unbearable, so she grabbed a handful of the hair close to the scar and groaned. 

“Oh my god, are you okay?” Minji came closer to her and Handong left the room. Siyeon just shook her head. “Is it that headache again? Do you take aspirin?” 

Yubin looked up from her computer. “I think there’s some in the bathroom cabinet.” As she finished the sentence, Handong came back with a bottle of pills and gave them to Minji.

“Look at you!” Bora smiling mockingly and dragging the letter ‘u’ which earned a glare from the chinese woman.

“Shut up.” Handong went into the kitchen and started pouring several glasses of water. She brought one to Siyeon so she could take the medicine.

🝰🝰🝰

“What I’m getting so far is that you’re a severely private person Lee Siyeon. I have found absolutely nothing about you.” Yubin announced as she grabbed her laptop from the top of her crossed legs and put it on the coffee table for everyone to have a better view of the screen. She started scrolling and everyone’s eyes were scanning for a possible positive identifier, but they didn’t find any. Handong questioned about how she had a smartphone but was apparently invisible online, so she suggested a search through it. Siyeon agreed and gave Minji her phone, in which they found only factory applications; messages, camera, gallery, phone, clock… and she happened to open clock. What was found was tons of alarms dividing the light blue part of the day in strict one point five hour intervals; 6:30, wake up, 7:00 shovels, 8:30 food, 10:00 laboratory, 11:30 gymnasium… and the activities alternated every day, meaning that the number of alarms rose high. Minji had so many questions, but finally decided to keep quiet and continue browsing in the phone.

The gallery was full of photos of her two friends at the cafeteria, nothing else, and the only contacts in the phone app were only them. Basically, the phone was essentially empty and somewhat local considering what Minji was looking for.

“This can’t be right…” Minji scratched the back of her head.

“Seriously, what is going on?” Bora asked.

“Well what is going on is that I’ve been telling the truth all the time, don’t you think?” Siyeon responded with absent aggressiveness in her tone, but it hurt the dancer nevertheless. 

Bora’s intentions were never to offend her, but her inner honesty assured her that at first she, indeed, found the stranger’s claims absurd and a little bit crazy. Now she was left with a relatively hostile person whom she was supposed to live with for indefinite time and the guilt of not taking her seriously. Ultimately, everything encrypted in that phone validated every single word Siyeon had said to her; she wasn’t lying, neither was in an altered nor alternate state of mind. “Okay, I’m sorry!”

“Anyways…” Yubin dragged the first ‘a’. “Tried looking for emails, any type of social media, even myspace, and nothing. Next step would be medical records and legal papers. If that doesn’t work… either you were raised by wolves, or this place you say you come from created you in a laboratory.”

“I can help with the legal stuff, I know a lawyer.” Bora raised her arm. “And you with the medical stuff of course.” She turned her body to Minji, whose eyes were threatening to close but fully opened upon hearing ‘medical’. “Damn, go to sleep, your shift starts in a couple of hours.”

“It’s okay, it’s okay, I can handle it.” Minji shifted in the sofa.

She could not handle it. The next time Bora was about to address her she had shut down. After a few hours of web surfing and eating, everyone had shifted their attention into something else.

“Okay then that’s settled. Nothing else to do anymore right?” Handong clapped her hands and stood up. “Now for sleeping arrangements. No offense to anyone but… I don’t wanna sleep with any of you.”

“Well I’m not sleeping on the sofa. It feels like a rock. I don’t understand why you had to waste so much money on uncomfortable furniture.” Yubin closed her laptop and also stood up to face Handong.

“Hey, respect Bozzoli’s stuff. I didn’t ‘waste’ any money. I invested. Beauty is expensive.”

“Yeah, Bozzoli’s non-functional abstract beauty apparently.”

“Lee Yubin! I’ve never said anything about your stupid machines and the hell of a mess you always have on my appartment.”

“Oh it’s ‘your’ apartment now? I didn’t know you had removed my name from the lease.”

“I’m actually thinking about it now that you mention it.”

“Hey hey we just want to know where we’re gonna sleep for the next few days…?” Bora interrupted their gradually escalating banter, waking Minji in the process.

“What did I miss?” The paramedic rubbed her eyes and looked at the hour on her phone; it was almost time to be at the hospital so she needed to go back to her apartment to prepare. She said her goodbyes and headed out the door, and, before she closed the door, said: “Stay safe. Oh and Handong will kill Siyeon in her sleep, Bora also, probably. I think the less likely to die is Yubin, you know?” A sly smile was the last thing everyone else saw before the door closed.

“Everyone heard her, it’s settled then! I’m also heading out, so, see you again late in the night.” Bora stood up and picked up her backpack. 

As she was nearing the door, Siyeon tried to quickly grab the crutches to go after her. “You shouldn’t leave, that’s why we’re here.”

“It’s gonna be fine. I’m not missing my presentation, if you thought I even considered it you were very mistaken.” The dancer closed the door with a slam, leaving Siyeon standing dumbfounded, and purposeless, in a way.