The Hanged Man/Le Pendu

The Hanged Man is similar to all of these: like Odin, he allows himself to be hung so that he can gain wisdom for the world. Like traitors of old, be sacrifices himself for a cause, and sees things from an "inverted" perspective. What is right to him is wrong to others and vice versa

Chapter 12

Le Pendu

Starvation

When I woke up, I found myself back in the classroom, magically and couldn’t ignore the stinging pain in my head. It annoyed me, being here again. I was a subject to this monstrosity. Everyone around me woke up at the same pace and realized what was happening right now. Even though we were incredibly hungry, cranky and lifeless, someone had to kick it up a notch.

The walls were painted with a red substance, all words matched the cards of our buddy system. A shiver raced down my spine. I wanted to throw up, scream that I had enough, but I couldn’t. A part of me kept digging in the past, looking for why Xiumin did this to us, but I really never spoke to him before all of this. It angered me a bit that he had broken my state of neglect. I never cared, but we were too deep in this.

All eyes were on me when hearing my phone’s ringtone. Within just a second, they circled around me, waiting for my fingers to press the green button. I had no idea what to expect and noticed that for the first time, I cared. This mattered a lot. I could die in this place, without even knowing what I did wrong. Was it because we all let Yuri bully and push him around? Was I missing out on something? I was certain of the fact that Chen knew something. That’s why he kept his mouth shut. It was written inside the notebook.

“H-hello?” Before I could say anything else, Xiumin’s scary voice took over. I remembered him as a tiny, timid boy who had trouble making friends or socializing in general. I had never expected him to be like this. Then again, this was his with vengeance drenched spirit. Maybe he had always been this evil inside. I didn’t know.

“Hello, Chanyeol. This is absolutely the first time ever that I heard something else in your voice than plain numbness. It makes me feel proud. Are you finally learning to actually care about people other than yourself?”

I didn’t answer. I could only listen to Zelo’s nervous breathing. Chen had his eyes closed, a sign that he was still traumatized by what happened earlier by the window. My stomach turned. I was hungry. We still had some water left, but after a day of fasting, things were getting tougher on us.

“Anyways, I’m calling because I had something rather important to mention to you. You can’t escape this place. It’s almost drawn by an engineer, you know. Every single one of you is going to pay. I just created this space and set some things into motion, but you guys are executing everything as planned. It’s wonderful to see. So absolutely wonderful.”

Then something completely chilly happened. Something I couldn’t define. My phone suddenly died, the screen dimmed. We all held our breath and couldn’t help but feel officially powerless, when we still heard Xiumin’s voice. I looked at my phone, but it was turned off. How can this be?

Mr. Byun shook his head in disbelief and had to calm down Yoonhye, who appeared to be losing her mind. Yuri wisely kept shut and let me do the talking.

“Whatever we did wrong, why must we pay for it this way? You’re worse than us.” I sneered and stood up, looking at the bloody walls. “I swear to God, I will bypass your stupid tricks. You won’t get me like this. I don’t even know you.”

“LAST TIME I CHECKED, I AM THE VICTIM HERE. I DIED.” His scream was louder than I ever could imagine. My ears felt like they were going to pop. Xiumin ended it with a whisper. A really, cold blooded whisper. “And now you all are going to follow me.” He laughed.

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