I slammed open the door to Room 2. Everyone inside looked at me with wide-eyes.

“Takuya!” Yongseok stood up.

I ran into the room with the chain tightly clenched in between my fingers.

“Guys, I made a really bad mistake.”

“Did you hypnotize her?” Casper asked.

“Well, yes, but…I told her to sleep afterwards. But I didn’t tell her when to wake up.” I slowly rubbed my face.

There was a wind of silence.

“…So she’s asleep forever?” Sangmin asked quietly.

“You killed her!?” Casper’s mouth dropped.

“I-I got careless at the end…and I was thinking about so many things to tell her…I’m so sorry…” My head dropped even more.

“No problem.” Seyoung’s voice sounded from my left.

I looked at him slowly. He was in his usual spot drawing little red circles on the wall.

Everyone else looked at him too.

“She’s not dead. Just deeply asleep. You can still wake her up.” He said nonchalantly.

My expression rose a bit. “How?”

Seyoung shrugged. “Whatever way is strong enough to jerk someone out of a hypnotic-induced sleep.”

I sighed a little, annoyed at his vague answers. But then I remember how much pain he was in confessing more specific things about hypnosis and immediately threw away my annoyed look.

I turned back to Sangmin, Yongseok, and Casper.

“Alright, let’s look around the room. We’re in an insane asylum, so there must be a lot of things here to wake people up.”

We traveled around the room, looking in cupboards and drawers and avoiding the drawers with the stuffed-in security guards. Seyoung picked up a blue crayon and continued drawing small circles over the red ones.

I opened a drawer and moved some of the stuff around. There were Band-Aids, bandage gauzes, and some empty injection needles. I closed it and opened the drawer next to it.

“Takuya, over here!”

I turned around. Sangmin was holding up a small metal box with two wires hanging from it.

“What is that?” I walked over to him.

“I think it’s a machine that shocks people.”

My eyes widened. “That’s brilliant! You can wake anyone up with an electric shock, right?”

“Yeah!” Sangmin nodded enthusiastically.

“I found these too.” Yongseok said from behind me.

I turned around to see what he found. He was holding a bag of white powder.

“It says ‘Smelling Salts’ on the bag.” Yongseok held it out.

“Perfect!” I nodded and gave him a thumbs up.

“Can we use this too?”

I turned to see what Casper had found.

He was holding a medium-sized metal hammer.

I blinked. “Um…”

“Come on, I really want to use this.”

“O-okay, yeah. Sure.” I eyed Casper a little nervously.

“I’ll use it if the other two things don’t work.”

“Right…” I nodded slowly and turned to Seyoung.

“Seyoung, aren’t you going to help us? Don’t you want to get out of this place too?”

Seyoung didn’t turn around. “I’ll stay.”

I blinked at him. “You want to stay here?”

He nodded and continued drawing circles.

I stared at him for several seconds and realized this must be his aware-hypnotized mind talking and slowly shrugged it off.

“Alright…well once we wake the nurse up, your mind will probably change.”

Seyoung didn’t respond.

“Okay, let’s go.” I nodded at Sangmin, Yongseok, and Casper and we headed toward the door.

“This is gonna be so much fun.” Casper grinned as I opened the door.

Then all of our breaths caught in our throats.

There was another guy standing with his hand raised in a fist as if he was about to knock on the door. He was wearing a pink formal suit and neatly styled dark hair.

“Oh! Hello.” He nodded.

We all stared at him wide-eyed.

“…W-who are you?” I asked quietly.

“I am Leah’s boyfriend. I came in to visit.” He glanced around the room. “Do you know where she is?”

We all stared at him as if he was an alien from another planet.

I couldn’t get the first thing he said out of my head.

I am Leah’s boyfriend.

…Huh?

“…um, why are you holding those things?” He glanced at the equipment in our arms.

I really couldn’t say anything. So many emotions were running through my head.

“…is there any staff I can talk to?” He was clearly starting to look nervous and glanced down either side of the hallway.

I tried to find my voice.

“S-sorry…uh, everyone’s on break.”

“Oh…alright, well can you tell me where Leah is?”

“She’s…um…resting.” I tried to stop my legs from shaking.

“She’s on break?”

“…Yes. But she told us she wanted to be alone!” I said quickly.

The man blinked in confusion. “But I called her five minutes ago to say I was on my way.”

 “Are you aware that you’re hypnotized?” Casper asked suddenly.

The man glanced at him. “E-excuse me?”

I quickly jabbed Casper in the side with my elbow.

“S-sorry, um…the four of us…we’ve had a long day, and…”

The man slowly nodded. “Don’t worry about it. Leah’s told me a lot about her patients. I promise I won’t judge you or treat you differently.”

“Are you really her boyfriend?” Sangmin stared at him wide-eyed.

“Well yes… we have been dating for quite a while now.”

There was a long second of silence from all of us.

“You idiot.” Casper muttered.

The man looked at him surprised. “Excuse me?”

I jabbed Casper in the side again and gave him a hard look.

“S-sorry. It’s just really hard for us to believe…”

“Why is that?”

I shrugged a little too overdramatically. “I have no idea.”

“I see…well, if you don’t know where she is, I’ll just look for her myself.” He shifted his feet to walk away.

“You can’t!” I quickly grabbed his arm.

He looked back at me surprised. “Why not?”

“I told you: she said she wanted to be alone while she rests.”

“That’s not what she told me.”

“She told me right after she finished talking to you.”

“Why would she tell you something different?”

“Maybe she has a split-personality, I don’t know! But you can’t see her right now!”

He backed away from my sudden raised voice.

“Okay, okay…” He held his hands up defensively. “Do you know when her rest time ends?”

“Not for a long time.”

“How long?”

I was getting more and more frustrated and nervous. “I don’t know, maybe thirty minutes? An hour? Not anytime soon.”

He nodded slowly. “Alright, calm down, okay? I didn’t mean to make you feel like this. If I have to wait that long, I will.”

I nodded slowly as well. “Good. That’s a good idea.”

“I’ll just wait in the lobby.” He backed away slowly.

I nodded again. “You do that.”

He turned around and walked rather quickly down the dimly-lit hallway.

“Holy crap…” Yongseok looked at me.

“That…was too close.” I dropped my head, trying to slow down my racing heart.

“I changed my mind. I want to use this first.” Casper grasped the hammer in his hands and started walking toward the treatment room.

“Can we use all of them at the same time?” Sangmin looked at me as we followed behind Casper.

My heart was filled with nothing but pain and betrayal.