Her eyes slowly flickered open. Her head felt heavy as it dropped back down to the pillow. She brought her hands to press on either side of the temples to help reduce the unfamiliar sore feeling. She blinked hard a few times and shook her head lightly before turning lazily to her right, trying to find a more comfortable position on the soft bed. Somehow her mind felt empty and out of place.

She brought her wrist closer to her face to check the time. It was way passed lunch time and dinner should be ready soon. Weird. She didn’t remember having any lunch yet. And her stomach was rumbling as if it hasn’t been fed in the longest time. She tried to remember…

Min Hee’s body jolted upwards suddenly. An unexpected creepy feeling crawled through her insides, sending cold shivers to her skin.


*FLASHBACK*

“C-Chang… Changmin. Please…” I begged hoarsely, my strength was starting to fail me. My struggles were fainter, and so was my consciousness. My arms limped beside me when all the energy has left my body. It was only a matter of seconds before the blur will turn into a complete darkness. And right before I was completely unconscious, I felt him loosening his grip and backed away, his face bear shock.

*END FLASHBACK*


She hoped that she didn’t have to believe. Half of her wanted the figure to be just another man who looked a lot like Changmin and nothing more. She needed something to convince her that the man who’s currently taking care of her is a good man. A decent husband…

But the memory crashed all her hopes and effortlessly proved that the monster was indeed the Shim Changmin she knew. She was, again, confused.

She recalled what happened a bit earlier, when she was roaming around the basement. There was a room full of captures from her past, a room that has somehow resurfaced a tinge of hope and love from deep within her heart. The safest room she ever felt being in. But why does everything seemed to contradict with the visions she had been receiving?

With these two particular memories side by side, she was torn between her needs and desire. How she longed for all her memories to come back so that she can fill the hole in between and make sense of the broken puzzle.

Min Hee’s eyes roamed carelessly around the room. She felt so lost and undecided. Slowly, she pulled herself away from the bed-covers and sat at the edge of the bed. She ran her slender fingers through her hair to smoothen it out. She sighed, trying to convince her heart the she was strong and that everything will be fine. She tried to remind herself that InKyung told her Changmin has changed. She’ll keep on to that word. Lots of bad people changed and enjoyed being good for the rest of their lives afterwards. Changmin couldn’t be much worse than those bank robbers, road gangsters and violent rapists, right?

After she was done convincing her heart and inhaled a good amount of oxygen into her lungs, she left the bed and made way towards the bathroom to wash her face. She closed the door behind her and went to look at the sink’s mirror. There stood a pretty girl in her early 20s, face pale and sad. Her long eye-lashes shadowed her eyes, adding to the gloomy expression. She stared blankly at the reflection before she noticed something at the walls behind her.

She turned around curiously and went closer to examine the odd gap between the tiles. She didn’t know that her bathroom walls could split into two. She put her little finger inside the gap, ready to pull in back in case the walls decided to squeeze that bit of flesh because of her intrusion. Nothing happened. She pushed the finger deeper. This didn’t look like a wall crack at all. The insides were smooth and were made of metal, telling her that it was purposely built. But for what?

She pulled her finger back and searched for something that could pull the wall open. Bingo! She found a few metal bars on the said wall that tried pulling it towards her. It wouldn’t budge. She pushed it instead. The wall stayed, mocking at her stupidity. Though, she was sure that there might be something like a secret passage-way behind this wall. She wasn’t going to give up. She thought about it for a while.

Her eye-brows raised as she finally thought of an idea. She slid the door to the left, hard. A sudden cold air brushed her face as the wall opened and revealed a huge room Min Hee never knew existed.

“Min Hee Onnie? Where are you?” The bathroom door suddenly opened and revealed the concerned face of InKyung. “Onnie, what are you doing in here? Dinn--”

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