"Okay, is everyone ready?"

Seungwan shuffles her feet as she tries her best to stand with her back straight, she can't mess up again, not after all the other times. Taeyeon paces past her, scanning her card to enable the machine. It's time to go inside.

Taeyeon is in charge of their group, so she said when they first got assigned to their quarters. They're under an organization, SM Inc. and they conduct tests. Simulations. Anything that the people at the top want them to do, Taeyeon has them do it. Only if it's assigned to their squad, of course.

Today is a special day. Five people from one of SM's partners, JYP Corp. have come to join Seungwan's squad. Park Jihyo, Kim Dahyun, Myoi Mina, and Hirai Momo, to be exact. Seungwan has heard of them before, they seem to be the best trainees in JYP, which is most likely why they were chosen to join Seungwan's squad on this mission. She doesn't know why her squad was chosen for this, they barely got any missions, most of them would go to the male trainees under the company. Everyone was excited to hear the news that they'd finally be getting a mission.

Part of the reason Seungwan thinks they haven't gotten a mission in a while is because of her. She seems to be the one that constantly messes something up. Back in their first mission, she knew it was acceptable, it was their first after all, but then it kept reoccurring. She would be the one to forget something crucial like a key, have to go to the bathroom in the middle of it and disconnect, things like these that make her sure that her squad despises her.

Everyone except Joohyun, of course. She doesn't think Joohyun hates her. She hopes she doesn't hate her. That would be horrible for Seungwan, because Seungwan may have the biggest crush on her squad member.

When they were first told that they would be in a squad together, she was mesmerized by Joohyun, holding her breath until her gaze had focused on something else, watching her complete simple tasks like eating a cookie or simply brushing her hair is all it takes for Seungwan to feel better for the rest of the day.

Her crush on Joohyun was also part of the reason she messes up during missions, and the rest of the members know that, too. Especially Yerim. Yerim wouldn't shut up about her crush if she was offered money. She is also the most annoyed when it comes to failed missions caused by Seungwan.

Sooyoung is about the same as Yerim, but less bad. Nicer. Seungwan can see herself being friends with Sooyoung if she wasn't always with Yerim. There are the few times where she is alone, and Sooyoung comes to talk to Seungwan in those times once in a while. She enjoys talking to Sooyoung, ignoring all the teasing, she makes a good friend.

Seungwan would consider Seulgi the best candidate to be a friend out of the squad. She comforts Seungwan after her mistakes, assuring her that the group does not hate her and is thankful for her being around. She often spends her time practicing skills with Seungwan or eating with her during lunch hours.

Seungwan knows nothing of the other four's personalities. She only hopes that they won't hate her if she makes a mistake during today's simulation.

They are playing some sort of game to test their detective skills. She doesn't know why it needs to be tested, but if the company wants it she will do it. Taeyeon enables the machines for the other nine members. "You can go in now. Remember, do not share your roles."

Seungwan walks inside of the machine, frowning. She's never liked being inside of such a closeted space. The good thing was that when she put on the helmet it made her feel like she was out in the open, not in some tiny machine that could explode with her inside of it. She puts on the pieces of equipment that help with the nerves, they make it feel like she can feel everything that is happening in the simulation. If she gets punched, she will feel it outside of the simulation.

She puts on her helmet to hear the voice of the AI. "Son Seungwan, Squad 5. Are you ready to commence the simulation 'Among Us'?"

"Yes."

She feels herself warp into a new place, a new time. She sees herself in a room with white walls. She feels herself floating. They must be in space. She is wearing a blue spacesuit with different mechanics. In her sleeve is something named the taskbar. On her helmet, it says "tasks" without anything under it. And at the bottom of her helmet, it says that the simulation will commence in a few moments while everyone loads in.

Joohyun is already in the room with her, she's wearing a pink spacesuit. She must be trying to figure out all the different mechanics, too. Seungwan likes being alone with Joohyun, even if they aren't directly speaking to each other, the feeling of it is nice. "Have you found any instructions?" Joohyun asks, taking Seungwan by surprise.

"N-No," Seungwan stutters, searching through her suit to try and find a button or something that would indicate instructions. She's going to find these instructions for Joohyun if it's the last thing she'd do. "Instructions..." she mumbles to herself, only to be met with a popup on her helmet screen. "Oh. I found them."

"Where?" Joohyun asks.

"Just say instructions," Seungwan says quietly. She hopes Joohyun can hear her, she doesn't want to repeat herself only to be quieter. Joohyun nods and smiles as a thank-you, making Seungwan want to melt. Joohyun smiled at her! This was going great so far.

Soon enough, the others make their way into the lobby which reminds Seungwan to read through the instructions. There are two roles; crewmate and impostor. The crewmate's job is to go around the spaceship to do tasks to make sure they don't die in space. The tasks wouldn't matter, though, because the impostor's job is to eliminate everyone on the ship except for the other impostor. If the crewmates finish all their tasks before the impostor kills them, though, then they win. Emergency meetings can be called throughout the game or are automatically triggered every time a dead body is found, and if they correctly vote the impostor out they win. Confirmed ejects are off for this simulation. "Sounds easy enough," Seungwan says to herself.

Jihyo is talking to Joohyun about something Seungwan is too tired to try and figure out, but she doesn't like the fact that she seems to be enjoying herself. If she is the impostor, Jihyo will be the first to go. Yerim is with Sooyoung as always, while Seulgi is making friends with the trainees from JYP, which is very like her. She is the most social out of everyone in their squad. Seungwan, on the other hand, is standing in the middle of the room without anywhere to go. She wants the game to start to get this over with.

Finally, the screen fades into black. The game is starting. It's a while before her role is revealed to her, she sees big red letters spelling out "Impostor." There's someone else with her, someone in a purple spacesuit - it's Yerim. Of course it's Yerim. She can't have a moment to relax with Yerim. She must feel the same way, because she rolls her eyes once she sees Seungwan. "Really? I'm with you, of all people. You're going to mess us up."

"I'm not," Seungwan counters. "I'll be fine. We should just do our own things, okay? Don't throw me under the bus either, cause if they vote me out I'll scream your name as my last words."

"As long as you don't let your dumb crush on Joohyun get in the way of our win," Yerim hisses.

Seungwan shoots her a look as the blackness around them fades away, turning into the surrounding of a spaceship. The tasks area on her helmet screen is now filled, they are fake tasks and she can't actually complete them, but it's good to lay low. There is a new button on her left sleeve, a map button. She presses it to see a map of the entire spaceship. There are things she can sabotage to try and end the game quicker, she might do that later. Yerim glares at her and points to the weapons area, suggesting she's going there for a fake task. Seungwan, on the other hand, acts confused. Not hard for her to do. She acts like she doesn't know how her suit works while she waits for everyone to leave the cafeteria so she can come up with a plan.

"Seungwan, do you not know how your suit works?" Seulgi asks.

"Uh, I'm still figuring it out, yeah," Seungwan lies.

"I can help you, if you'd like."

"There's no need, go do your tasks, I can figure this out on my own," Seungwan says. She sees Jihyo watching her with Dahyun. She's suspicious of her. After a while, everyone leaves the cafeteria, fed up with Seungwan and her confusion. She smiles to herself. Now she can track someone down and kill them.

The first place she wants to go is to security. She can watch people on the cameras there, see if Yerim's doing anything for her to go off of. She doesn't pass anyone on the way there, everyone else must be on the other side of the ship. She takes this time to relax as she's all alone without anyone trying to talk to her. This is what she's been wanting for a while.

Suddenly then, the lights go out. She can't see a thing. It must be Yerim's doing, sabotaging the lights. Brushing it off, she figures this is a good time to find and kill someone. She hears a scream. Seungwan dashes down to the end of the long hallway to find Joohyun - squished against the wall, her hands covering her eyes. She's terrified of the dark. She looks so scared. Seungwan wants to help her.

"What are you doing? Kill her, it's the perfect chance!" she can hear Yerim scream at her even though she's nowhere near. And she's right. This is the perfect chance for her to kill Joohyun. Joohyun can't see her with the lights out, she wouldn't even know.

But she can't. She doesn't want to. She can't kill Joohyun, who is helplessly against the wall, scared of the dark, wanting the lights to turn on again. Gathering her courage, Seungwan steps forwards and places her hand on Joohyun's shoulder. "Joohyun, are you all right?"

"Who are you?" Joohyun screams, shutting her eyes harder. "Don't kill me!"

"It's me, Seungwan," Seungwan tries to calm her down. "Don't worry, I'm not an impostor. Why are you curled up on the wall?"

Joohyun removes her hands from her helmet, staring into Seungwan's eyes. Seungwan's heart begins to pace, she hasn't kept eye contact with Joohyun for this long before. Joohyun lets out a sigh of relief and pulls her close, pressing her helmet into Seungwan's shoulder. "Oh, thank goodness, it's only you."

Seungwan feels as if she's going to explode. Joohyun is hugging her. Yes, they were close, but they'd never hugged before. Joohyun must be terrified. "You see, uh, I'm scared of the dark. I know, it's stupid, but I just can't stand it. It terrifies me."

"It's not stupid, everyone gets scared sometimes," Seungwan squeaks, patting Joohyun's helmet. She lets go of her and steps back. "We could head to uh, electrical and fix the lights?"

"I can't see anything, so you'll have to guide me," Joohyun nods, taking hold of Seungwan's hand. What is Joohyun doing? Seungwan begins feeling warmer, she starts to sweat and wishes that the spacesuit had some sort of air conditioning with it. She sighs in an attempt to catch her breath, she has to keep her cool. She opens up the map and leads Joohyun to electrical. Nobody else is in electrical, nobody seems to care about the loss of their vision, it seems.

Joohyun walks up to the electrical box and stares. "We have to flick some switches. I don't know how to do this, do you?"

Seungwan joins her and studies the machine. If she flicks a switch, the light underneath becomes green. "I think we have to get all the lights to be green."

"Oh, I should have figured that out, I'm so stupid," Joohyun says, beginning to flick the switches.

"No you're not," Seungwan says. "It's difficult at first. They're meant to make you think."

Joohyun giggles. "You're such a nice person, Seungwan. I know you sometimes think that we don't want you around, but it's not true. All of us love you very much, so don't think like that again. And stand up for yourself when Yerim teases you. I don't want to see Yerim yelling at you after this mission, understood?"

"Yeah," Seungwan mumbles. She can't believe what's happening. She must be dreaming. This must be part of the simulation - maybe this is a disguise and the true simulation is to find out each member's weak spots. And hers is Joohyun.

There's a blaring red light with a loud siren noise. A dead body has been found. Frightened, Joohyun jumps onto Seungwan, holding her shoulder. Seungwan gasps softly. She flicks the last switch, turning on the lights, and then manages to get Joohyun off of her. "We have to go back to the cafeteria."

They are the last two to arrive in the cafeteria - not suspicious at all. Everyone is here except Momo and Mina. Yeri must have killed them. The light stops blaring and the alarm fades out as everyone has made it to their meeting spot. Joohyun wastes no time to clear her and Seungwan's innocence. "I was with Seungwan the entire game, we were fixing the lights in electrical, so it can't be me or her."

"Well, what if it's the both of you?" Seulgi inquires.

"I saw Seungwan in the cafeteria for a while, it was a little bit suspicious," Jihyo adds on.

Oh no. They were suspecting her. She was going to get voted out on the first round.

"It's not Seungwan, she had every chance to kill me yet she didn't," Joohyun argues, her hand sliding into Seungwan's. Panicking, Seungwan lets go. Joohyun looks at her, raising her eyebrow.

"I can confirm it's not them," Yerim chimes, "I was on my way to fix lights and I saw them in the entrance. I doubt it's either of them."

"Yeah, well, Joohyun could be the impostor and she must have just decided not to kill Seungwan because she's too nice," Sooyoung says. "And Seungwan could be the impostor but she decided not to kill Joohyun because she's got a-"

Seungwan clears . "I don't think we have any proper proof. We should just skip this round of voting."

"I trust Joohyun and Seungwan," Dahyun says. "I'll skip."

Nobody gets voted off. Seungwan is in the clear for now. Letting out a sigh of relief, she begins to walk away towards navigation to see if she can find someone else to kill. She feels someone tug on her arm, though. It's Joohyun. "Wait, stay with me. Something else might happen, and I might break down again."

"Oh - s-sure," Seungwan stutters, she can't say no to Joohyun. Not with her big glassy eyes, pleading for her to stay a little longer. Her heat's beating faster than it was when she found her in the dark now. "Where to?"

Seungwan has been following Joohyun, watching her complete her tasks for the whole game. There have been multiple emergency meetings, Yerim seems to be killing off the ones she doesn't know, now it's only the members of her squad left. After each meeting, Yerim drags her somewhere and asks her what in the world she's doing, and Seungwan keeps reassuring her with lies. Joohyun has two more tasks left. Her current one is the scan in medbay.

Seungwan is surprised that Joohyun hasn't noticed that Seungwan hasn't done any of her tasks because she doesn't have any tasks to do - well, apart from killing everyone.

Joohyun is standing in front of Seungwan, her brow furrowed for some reason. "This map is too confusing for me." She looks up to find Seungwan smiling lovingly and staring at her, lost in her thoughts. "Why are you smiling? Is it really that easy to read, am I just being stupid?"

Seungwan snaps back into reality, shaking her head furiously. "N-No reason! You're not stupid! Come on, medbay is this way!" She links her hand with Joohyun's and begins quickly walking towards to room. She doesn't know how she got so confident as to grab her hand without Joohyun doing it first, but she doesn't mind it. They are on the other side of the ship, so the walk to medbay is long and quiet, filled with the sounds of their boots hitting the floor.

They reach medbay, but something is wrong. Seungwan gestures for Joohyun to stay outside as she peeks her head into the room only to see Yerim climb out of a vent in medbay. She's just killed someone, hasn't she? Yerim eyes Seungwan and mouths something, but she doesn't understand what she means. When Seungwan fails to understand fo the third time, Yerim just shakes her head and goes on to pretend to do a task.

"What are you looking for?" Joohyun whispers far too close to Seungwan's ear.

Seungwan jumps, turns around. "N-Nothing, it's safe. I thought I saw someone." Joohyun lets go of Seungwan's hand and walks inside. When Yerim notices that Joohyun is still with Seungwan, alive and well, she scowls. Of course she's angry, she's the only one who's doing her job. "Oh, hi, Yerim. You're not the impostor, are you?"

"No," Yerim lies easily. Seungwan wonders whether she should be scared of that or not. "This and weapons are my last task."

Joohyun nods like Yerim's been cleared and steps on the scanner. Yerim's "task" is supposed to take sixty seconds, so she backs away and pulls Seungwan with her. "You better kill her, Seungwan. One more and we win."

"Why don't you go and kill someone else?" Seugnwan whispers.

"I'm on cooldown," Yerim argues, "and besides, you haven't killed anyone all game. I don't want to be the one doing all the work here." Seungwan's eyes trail back to Joohyun, who is almost done scanning. She looks like an excited puppy as the laser passes her eyes. She looks back at Yerim. "At her next task. Kill her."

Yerim leaves Seungwan with Joohyun, probably off to watch them from afar. With Seungwan's help, Joohyun steps off the pad and checks her tasks. She has one more left. "My last one's in the launchpad."

"Oh, it's probably that diagnostic test thingy," Seungwan says, tilting her head enough that it bumps on Joohyun's helmet. Flushed, she staggered away. "S-Sorry, I didn't hurt you, did I?"

Instead of getting mad, Joohyun just laughs, so hard that she ends up falling into Seungwan's arms. Seungwan declares that Joohyun laughing is her new favourite sound in the universe - and the feeling of her arms around her is her new favourite feeling. Once Joohyun stops laughing, her hand somehow ends up in Seungwan's once more as they walk together to the launchpad. Her task will take 60 seconds. That's 60 seconds to kill her and win the game.

Yerim sneakily follows them from behind as Seungwan instructs Joohyun how to work the task. "Just press the button and wait a minute for the results to come. Then select the anomaly."

Yerim decides to wander off and do something else. Probably to kill someone else if Seungwan can't keep her end of the deal. Both of them are alone in the launchpad now, it's the perfect time to get this over with and make the kill. She could use the vent as an escape, too. Everything was laid out perfectly for them, but she couldn't. She can't do it. Even if it means getting removed from her squad, she can't do it.

Seungwan stares at the timer on the machine. It's counting down. 45, 44, 43...

Joohyun turns her head to face Seungwan. She's figured it out, hasn't she? "Seungwan..."

Seungwan's eyes begin to water. She's going to start crying any moment now, and Yerim is going to yell at her once they leave the simulations. Joohyun tugs on her arm. "It's you, isn't it? You're an impostor."

"H-How-" Seungwan chokes. She can't get anything else out.

"The taskbar is almost full even though I haven't seen you do any of your tasks," Joohyun looks at the task meter in her right sleeve. She's figured Seungwan out. She can't take it anymore. The tears start coming down her face. Joohyun doesn't notice the tears at first, but it's evident when Seungwan begins to squeak. Eyes wide, Joohyun places her hand on Seungwan's helmet. "Seungwan, why are you crying?"

"I don't want to kill you," Seungwan cries. Joohyun hugs her, hoping it will calm Seungwan down. It does, but in a way, it also makes her tenser. Seungwan doesn't want to leave Joohyun's arms. Just then, Seungwan catches a glimpse of Yerim coming out of the vent behind Joohyun. She quickly steps in front of her, shielding her from Yerim.

Yerim drops her knife on the ground, "Seungwan, you're serious? We're impostors! Move out of the way and let me kill her."

"I won't let you," Seungwan says confidently. She's not letting Yerim past her, nothing will persuade her to. While behind her, Joohyun manages to finish her task and wraps her arms around Seungwan for a second before they hear a ping and the world around them transforms into a black background with the words "defeat" on the screen.

Seungwan hasn't even exited the simulation but she can hear Yerim cursing from her machine. "Exit," she stutters, and the machine turns off. She takes off her equipment and hangs it back up where it's supposed to be, exiting small space. She can finally breathe. Taeyeon and the rest of the JYP members are standing outside, Dahyun and Mina are smiling at her while Momo and Jihyo look upset with her actions. She's messed up their win again, as always. Taeyeon doesn't seem so angry with Seungwan as she expected, though.

Yerim, on the other hand, is fuming. She immediately runs over to Seungwan, pushing her against the wall, a threatening look on her face. "What the hell is wrong with you, Seungwan?" The others are running over to help her, as always. Joohyun fends Yerim off of her, she and Seulgi hold her back while Sooyoung just watches, snickering. "I can't believe you lost us the game because of your stupid crush on Joohyun!"

"Crush?" Joohyun asks, shifting her gaze to Seungwan.

Yerim seems to realize that she's made a mistake, too, because she covers . "Oops." She looks at Sooyoung, who grabs her arm and runs off with her. Seulgi figures she should go, too. Seungwan feels like she's going to start crying again. Joohyun knows now. She's going to want to move to a different squad because being with Seungwan will be too weird, especially after everything that happened during the Among Us playthrough.

"I - I don't know what she's talking about," Seungwan laughs. Her attempt to cover her feelings up wasn't working in the slightest.

Joohyun only smiles. She leans in and plants a kiss on Seungwan's cheek - her lips stayed there for far too long, but far too little at the same time. Seungwan's face reddened to the point where she could be mistaken for a tomato. Joohyun then whispers into Seungwan's ear, "If we ever play that game again and I'm impostor, I'll protect you, too."