Songs:

¬ Freeze Me

¬ Munich

Trigger Warning:

The beginning of the chapter contains a scene of a graphic, forceful and not consented medical procedure. If you feel like it may be a trigger for you, please, please skip the first two paragraphs and start reading in the first dialogues. It's detailed that way for a reason, but I don't want to cause any harm to anyone. Thank you.

Heavy breathing broke the cold air and with each exhale a whiter flow colored the initially hidden state of matter. Agitation was evident in the sound of it, and her lungs spasmed harshly in response to her heart’s high oxygen demand; in hopes of calming the bitter taste in the start of her esophagus, the neverending marathon of her muscles that trembled to keep her warm, or the nauseating dread of the uninvited invasion of her brain. She was held forcibly against a white hospital bed before getting both of her arms and legs tied to it by three masked people. Every single one of her limbs were tensing and raising at maximum effort to prevent it, even though she already knew that it was in vain. Her last resort was to start yelling, wishing someone, at least one, in that basement would hear her desperation and give into the pathos request. No one came, no one else heard, she was still alone, and was covered by the hand of one of the three strangers. With strength, she managed to move her head to look at the other two; one had an empty syringe and the other had a thick tube that ended in a sharp edged ellipse. She could already feel her future sore throat, so shutting her eyes tight was the only thing that could grant her a smidge of peace. And so she thought of Siyeon, and Yoohyeon, and all the times she got lucky to spend with them. In the dark, she thought about the taller woman’s clumsiness, and about the older one’s sarcasm that, even though it was slightly annoying at first, she missed with her whole being. She missed them, and these past days, thanks to their absence, were a little heavier on her existence; a few salty drops started to scurry through the fissures of her rigidly closed eyes, running down the sides of her face with a trail of sorrow. Security was keeping a close eye on her despite also treating her like nothing had happened, if that makes any sense. Her new roommate was quiet and didn’t follow the melodies and rhymes she came up with on the spot like Siyeon and Yoohyeon did, and she didn’t talk to her that much to know if she had the same worries as herself. 

Her thought flow was blocked by the feeling of the silicone sharp edged ellipse tool trying to breach her lips and enter , which made her press them into a flat line. One of the three strangers soundly exhaled, irritated with the empty syringe in hand, and proceeded to grab her jaw to try and open . She struggled to keep it closed, but eventually gave up; she was getting a headache as an exhaustion warning from her jaw muscles. The stranger took her relaxing face as an opportunity, as they proceeded to open and, without delicacy, inserted the laryngeal mask airway. If she had eaten anything in the day, she would’ve thrown up. But she hadn’t. Instead, she started coughing and moving her head sideways in hopes of getting the foreign object out, but someone held her head still. The stranger with the syringe attached it to the valve and pushed the end with her thumb, making the airway settle inside the back of Gahyeon’s mouth. She forcefully closed her eyes again, tensed her eyebrows, and tried to ignore the sensation with all her will while they started blowing the anaesthesia through the tube. In a matter of seconds, she started to feel her energies lowering, and then she was unable to open her eyes anymore. Before she turned off completely, though, she heard the strangers talking.

“Do we really need to skip the general anaesthesia?”

“I have no time. Plus, this is the third time she tries to do something like that. I don’t care anymore.” The one that shoved in the airway said before standing up.

The sound of metal tools hitting each other as they were tossed on a wheeled table was heard. Gahyeon made one last effort to open her eyes and followed the sound, only to catch a glimpse of the light reflected from a shining silver scalpel.

“I don’t know… I could’ve come earlier to inject some general.”

“She wouldn’t have let you. Come on, this is the third time for her. We’re doing something wrong. The last and only time this happened was with that Kim.”

And then Gahyeon was gone, dissolved into black insensibility.

🝰🝰🝰

Eyes open, white surrounded them. She was back in her desolate room, laying in her bed while trying to reboot her uncontrollable floating system. Unlike the material world, her mind whispered and shouted and spoke and yelled without any space in between, overlapping, layers and layers of dissatisfaction and intranquility shadowed her conscience. In between all of it, the image of her two friends, Siyeon and Yoohyeon, persisted, and after moments of dwelling it made her sit up in an instant. She locked her eyes on the bed on the other side of the room, Siyeon’s bed, and without a thought process her teeth started clenching, nose scrunching, eyebrows almost touching each other, breathing getting heavier and shallower… this time was different. Ever since she got stuck in that fence and was unable to follow Siyeon, she had been feeling like the waterless side of a cracking dam; dry, thirsty, lifeless. Physically, she wasn’t alone, but no one else could lower the revolutions of her thoughts, or stay awake with her to elaborate a new beat after she tapped it against the walls, or follow the journeys of melodies she came up with, or play abstract tennis with rhymes and verses, or simply get into whatever spaceship of thoughts she was getting into. This time was different, because all those things made her sad; deep grey sadness tainted by phlegmatic essence. This time was different, because now she was no longer sad, or at least it didn’t feel that way. She was angry. Not at Siyeon, nor Yoohyeon; it seemed to have no source. Maybe it was a rotten version of sadness, she thought. Maybe sadness got tired of constancy. Maybe her emotions got tired of themselves.

One of her hands grasped the front of her neck and caressed it, making a face of discomfort upon feeling the ghost of yesterday’s events. As she heard the strangers say, it was her third time going through the procedure, and in no way she was getting used to it. She was left to wonder what was the real purpose of it, since she didn’t feel any different each time she woke up again in her bed after the experience. Security and all the personnel treated her like it was her first time in The House again, and, of course, she played along, but didn’t really understand. Do they think that them acting that way was going to reset something in her brain? She thought, still with her hand on her neck, feeling the vibrations of the air traveling up and down her trachea. It was a distraction; she felt how the rhythm juxtaposed against all her wonders, and eventually the sense of touch won over her inner monologue. Then her vocal chords came to life, creating grave notes to intensify the vibrations against the palm of her hand, notes that varied as trombone played with highs and lows inside the same key. Before she knew she was already composing a new melodic hook that somehow leaked from her limbic depths, transforming electricity into stringed sound waves. Without warning, her flow was interrupted by a subtle knock on the door, and then a woman dressed in blue entered the room with a rolling cart.

“Hello Gahyeon, welcome to The House. We’re happy to witness the start of your existence. You may feel out of place, but this is exactly where you’re supposed to be. You can ask me any question you have right now.” The woman spoke with too much eagerness and enthusiasm, which made Gahyeon’s irritation flare back up.

Not this again, she thought. She wasn’t in the mood to play a role, so she pointed at her neck and shook her head.

“Oh you can’t talk?” The woman looked through the cart and took out a set of pills. “This may help. I assume your throat hurts?”

It took great effort from Gahyeon to maintain her monotonous face expression, when she was imagining how her fist would feel like clashing against the woman’s face. She stopped herself, shook her head, what was she thinking? She had never imagined such a thing, and now that it was appearing it made her feel disturbed. Concentrating on the sound of the moving air inside her neck this time, slow, she took the pills from the smiling woman and a glass of water, and swallowed them along with her invasive aggressive fumes. Her gaze got stuck on the white sheets for a moment.

“Are you alright?”

No, and with the monosyllable all that she buried a second ago resurfaced. “I’m okay.” She smiled back at the woman with dissymmetry; and eyes each conveyed contrasting messages. “I’m tired.” And it was true, but maybe what the woman in blue was thinking about when she heard Gahyeon say that was erroneous.

“I bet.” Another irritating smile. “Just rest. You’ll be integrated to the others later. Relax for a while.”

And she left the room, leaving Gahyeon sitting on the bed with her legs crossed, fists progressively closing. She was going to get integrated, soon, sure, she thought. Relax for a while, relax for a while, relax for a while, she mocked the woman’s tone in her head repeatedly, and her eyes flooded more and more each time until the barriers couldn’t contain anything anymore. Then, she felt pathetic, foolish, guilty of the mere misunderstood expression that wet parts of her face with something she felt bigger than her authority. It couldn’t be that way. She buried everything again as she hurriedly got rid of the traces of salty liquid on her face, before finally getting out of bed and changing into a cleaner set of white clothes. All she would get if she tried to relax was overwhelming stress so she might as well numb everything with repetitious work, she thought.

    And so she did. She joined her roommate, who worked outside digging and digging and digging, and whom she really knew nothing about. All she knew was that she was removed from her room and put in Siyeon’s place because she got caught ripping and transforming the white clothes into new shapes, and sprinkling them with juices and the mush of fruits she and her previous roommate stole from the cafeteria. They both morphed white long pants into a red long sleeve shirt, and white button up shirts into a yellow skirt, or at least that’s what her roommate told her. She, Yerim was her name, said that her past roommate understood her, and wanted to ruin clothes to make new ones just as much as she did. That made Gahyeon think about her friends, and how they also matched her energy sometimes. But then she thought about the bunch of times she spent wondering about what was in their heads after witnessing their strange antics, and gave up on the thought journey. After grabbing the shovel, her red sclera started whitening again and her body went into autopilot through her whole daytime agenda, and soreness didn’t bother her as much anymore.

🝰🝰🝰

    “What do you mean you still can’t contact them?” Handong held her phone close to her ear as she dragged her feet in a line parallel to the ceiling tall windows of her apartment. “Are you sure you have the correct names? Kim Saeron. Kim Yerim. Yes. I think they knew each other too. Kim Yerim.” She closed her eyes, inhaled deep and the palm of her hand pressed against one side of her face before her fingers ended on her temple. Her eyes widened in frustration; she stopped walking and stared at the floor to try and calm herself down. “Okay. Keep trying. If you stop, you’ll have a problem with me. Keep me informed... Okay, goodbye.” 

    Siyeon watched as Handong took the phone away from her ear, walked towards one of the sofas and sat down, combing the roots of her hair with her rigid fingers. “Why are you stressed?” She asked genuinely.

“Why am I stressed?” Handong smiled sarcastically. “The most requested pieces in my stores belong to the two designers that have been missing for weeks. People are getting impatient, and I’m running out of excuses. And this jerk is not doing his job properly. I might need to take these matters into my own hands.”

“What jerk?”

“The jerk that is my assistant. To be honest I’m thinking about replacing him.”

“Is he that bad at his job?”

“Not really… but he isn’t doing what I’m asking him to do and that’s unacceptable.”

“I don’t understand. Why would you want to replace him then?”

Gall nuanced Handong’s deep single breath. “Listen I don’t know. Yes, I’m stressed. This is irritating.”

“I know you kinda hate me, but I’m trying to help you calm down. It was stressing me out seeing you stressed. Sorry for trying then.” Siyeon’s voice got lower in response to the painfully familiar reaction. She didn’t flinch physically, but what was left of her memory storage made it their responsibility to bring up the similarities between the saleswoman’s response energy and her own; she had addressed Gahyeon the same way, multiple times… part of the last times she talked to her before the disruption of their contact. She lowered her gaze.

“I don’t hate you. I’m still annoyed about my white moroccan rug…”, she looked away for a second, “...but that isn’t enough for me to hate you.”

Her curiosity was spiked; Siyeon’s eyes fell on Handong’s face again in search of any information she could subtract. She didn’t think the woman was a bad person, not at all, but she certainly was a temperamental one. Flighty and volatile, to be exact. From all the interactions she has had with her, she had seen her smile almost once or twice. Everything else was constant cutting edge remarks mixed with an almost permanently fixated face expression of annoyance with smeared lugubrious hue. “Do you hate anyone?”

Handong’s aura shifted into recoil, and her pupils made an ephemeral visit to Yubin’s face, “No, I don’t...”, then focused on her thighs before regaining her composure. “Why are you asking me this?” The sound of her voice regained the brusque tone.

“No reason, I’m sorry.” Siyeon rapidly ended the conversation to avoid further confrontation and moved her attention to the people sitting on the other sofa.

“My free days are today and tomorrow.” Minji informed the taller woman after checking the date.

They had been discussing Yoohyeon’s plan of going back to The House. She had the vastest knowledge of the facility, given the quantity of time she spent in it, and was able to identify holes and weaknesses in their security grid; it was the way she managed to run away unnoticed, without causing a revolt like Siyeon did. The place had no cameras, strangely, so surveillance was limited to the eyes of the personnel. One of the key factors was to memorize the movement of each one of them, which she did, and wait for openings to come up when some of them took breaks or got distracted with each other. This was common with the people that guarded the forbidden basement part of the facility, ironically, probably because they all thought a simple white clothed person wouldn’t even find the door to begin with. She had drawn the maps she gave Siyeon and Gahyeon free handed, by spatial and photographic memories obtained by not so pleasant situations; there was a reason she was famous not only around the white clothed, but also amongst the personnel. Upon realizing Siyeon had joined the conversation, she took the chance to ask her about the schedule of her room so she could adapt the timing to it. “In what days did you have individual free time in the afternoon?”

“Impairs.”

“It could be tomorrow then…” Yoohyeon got lost in thought while Minji looked at them, doing the same for an entirely different reason; Yoohyeon’s head was spiraling with ideas, Minji was just lost.

Siyeon hummed in response and disconnected from the conversation. Her eyes instinctively fell on the kitchen, on the woman currently pouring a certain amount of simmered vegetables into separate plates. She admired her for a while, guiltless and without ulterior motives. The thoughts of The House and her short past pulverized as she slightly tilted her head; they got replaced by the image in front of her, causing her to keep staring like it was second nature. To her it was kind of amusing and odd, the fact that a person could drag and tie up her gaze constantly only by existing. Her inner chuckle translated into a side smile, until Bora’s gaze, initially focused on the food, raised and struck directly into her irises. Her initial impulse was to look away, but she didn’t.

On the other hand, Bora wasn’t amused, nor smiling, nor able to shamelessly hold eye contact. She broke it for a second, feeling an unwelcome current of vulnerability flowing all over her body. For an instant, she felt disappointed with her reaction and started fighting with herself, unbelieving of the fact that she was feeling fidgety all of the sudden. She never felt this, she was bold, she was the brave one here, she thought before looking back up to find Siyeon’s eyes again. They were still unmoving, striking. Another second passed and she felt warm liquid rolling down the side of her calf. Her face instantly transformed into a mix of confusion and disgust, and she looked down only to find the remnants of oil trespassing the borders of the skillet thanks to her hand’s weakening grip. “Agh what the…”  She said loudly and tossed the pan to the kitchen island, attracting the attention of everyone. Minji laughed, and Siyeon did too after witnessing every stage of the accident.

“Kim Bora don’t destroy my kitchen!” Handong stood up and walked towards her.

“Whatever, dinner is served.” Bora whined, and, after cleaning the oily mess up, took one of the plates and sat at the dinner table. She ate silently, embarrassed, drawn back, while everyone else engrossed in their own matters again.

Siyeon looked at her with the tail of her eye while seemingly focusing on Minji and Yoohyeon’s conversation. She wondered about the woman’s actions; the way her clumsiness had slightly increased and how her boldness was indirectly proportional from the time she first saw her. She was slowly changing.

    🝰🝰🝰

Everyone ended up staying the night at the apartment. Minji and Bora managed to convince Yubin to let them sleep in her room since Handong was reluctant to the idea of anyone sleeping with her. Siyeon and Yoohyeon agreed to sleep on the sofas. Instead of sleeping, they spent the night talking. Both looking at the ceiling, they talked and talked and talked to the honesty point of spilling absolutely anything that came to their minds, like Siyeon’s amazement for the sweet taste of hot chocolate, or stories of the place Yoohyeon stayed in before appearing at the apartment, and so on. 

The sun had risen again and, thanks to the lack of window coverage, it got rid of the shadows of the entire living room. Yoohyeon was somehow still asleep, but Siyeon was wide awake, sitting on the sofa while admiring the effect of the glare of the yellow star. She looked  over at her sleeping friend and sighed into a smile. Seeing her again made her happy, but then her inner conversation made the trace of positivity on fade away. Aside from being glad she could finally talk to her again, hearing her voice made Siyeon’s conscience get tainted with a bitter taste. It was bittersweet, because she was aware that her friend was soon going to distance herself from the newfound safety and go back into the place that kept her in danger in the first place. Then the guilt of the responsibility of Gahyeon being left behind brawled with her initial worries; it was her fault, she’s going back into danger because of her carelessness, she has no right to be worried about her, it was her fault, she thought, and slowly but steadily got into a paralyzing web of rumination. “Aghh.” Her hands grabbed the sides of her head. Her scar wasn’t hurting, nothing physical, but the way the soundless words bounced off and against the limits of her grey matter made her feel like something punctured her head and left the incisor there; a sensation definitely impossible to ignore, persistent, annoyingly anchored. Frustration made her make small noises of irritation, which were probably louder that she perceived them as since at one point she felt Yoohyeon’s hand on her shoulder.

“Siyeon are you okay?”

Without hesitation, she nodded. “Sorry for waking you up.”

After some minutes Yubin came out of her room scratching her head and yawning. She went into the kitchen and served herself some cereal. When she sat on the table, she looked up and saw Siyeon and Yoohyeon staring at her. She momentarily forgot about their presence, were they even real? She thought. Her heavy and slightly narrowed eyes lingered for some seconds trying to test reality, until Siyeon pressed her lips into a smile. “...good morning?” Yoohyeon mimicked Siyeon’s smile and slightly waved her hand, and the occurrence amused the computer technician. “Uh… want some food?”

“Yes, please.” Yoohyeon spoke, but neither of them stood up.

“Then go to the kitchen, make yourselves at home.”

They did, they went to the kitchen even if they didn’t really understand the last part of the sentence. Following breakfast, morning went by relatively fast. Handong ate and prepared herself in a hurry before heading out to work, barely interacting with anyone. Dissimilarly, Minji took her time rummaging through the kitchen cabinets and preparing a heavy breakfast with eggs and even waffles; truly a contrast with the cereal everyone opted with. Bora was the last one to wake up, called out by the smell of her roommate’s cooking. It was already afternoon when Minji and Yoohyeon were preparing themselves to go out; the taller one went by the things to remember for the fourth time so Minji’s inexperience wouldn’t obstaculize the journey, and, much more importantly, put her own life in jeopardy. Always follow her steps, don’t make eye contact with anyone that isn’t wearing white clothing, don’t interact with anyone if possible, answer every question with the least words possible… Yoohyeon’s directions echoed in the paramedic’s head, repeating, engraving themselves in her memory. Both of them said goodbye to the rest, and whether they were aware of it or not, the farewell had the tone of the possibility of not seeing them ever again. Minji grabbed her backpack and started walking towards the door with Yoohyeon trailing behind. Before she shut the door, she waved her hand one last time.

    Siyeon sat still in one of the kitchen island’s stools, and she noticed Bora walking into the room and coming out dressed differently. She turned her whole body to face her, who was now standing directly in front of her.

    “Come on.” Bora made a gesture with her hand, indicating Siyeon to follow her to the door.

    “What are you doing?” She got down from the stool and grabbed her crutches.

    “I wanna show you something. I think you’ll like it.” The dancer opened the door and left a space for her to go outside first.

    She looked around, including Yubin, uneasy. “You know we’re not supposed to go out.”

    “It will be fine,” Bora assured her, and then looked at the computer technician, “and don’t snitch!”

    Yubin raised her hands in surrender before the two went outside the apartment. The sound of the closing door preceded complete silence, tarnished by a deep breath from the remaining person inside.

I don't normally put notes in the end of chapters but I feel like this one needs it. Alright, it was a ride! Hahah, I feel like a lot happened in this one and holy cow, I had to split the chapter in two because it was so long... I tried a new writing strategy in this one and it caused the narrative to stretch. Also, I was dying to tap into the psyche of Gahyeon's character for so long!! If you didn't enjoy that (or the focus I gave this entire chapter), please tell, I'll try not to do it again (I will still keep doing it, but on a much lower scale hehe). Can you tell I'm fascinated with every character's mind??!? Anyways, I always appreciate some feedback (positive or negative are equally valuable), and this time it's important cause I'm trying new stuff(?) in my writing process. Hope you enjoyed the chapter!