Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter 1: First Impressions

Sunoo

I shouldn’t be here.

The bass thrums loudly through the walls of the house - some off-campus rental that probably violates about fifteen different occupancy codes if I had to guess. Bodies are packed like sardines in every viable space, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder, moving in that particular way that only drunk college students can.

The air is thick and hot, reeking of cheap beer, cheaper vodka, and too much fucking cologne that fails to mask the hints of sweat from every exposed body in this place.

Half-empty cups litter every free surface. Someone’s playlist blares through speakers that cost more than my textbooks - a mix of 2016’s trap and EDM that’s too loud to talk over but apparently not loud enough. Perfect strangers grind up against one another in what used to be the living room, creating a mess of a dance floor.

I’m the most social out of any one of my friends.

But I hate parties like this.

”You need to loosen up!” Jake shouts directly into my ear, as if yelling louder than the music playing would make a difference. His breath smells like whatever punch someone had just mixed in the kitchen. He’s my best friend, has been since freshman orientation when we bonded over our shared hatred of icebreakers. 

Right now, though, I’m reconsidering that friendship.

“I’m loose,” I lie.

Jake laughs, loud and uninhibited in the way only drunk people seem to laugh. “You’re standing in the corner like someone’s holding you hostage here,” he says, tossing back another shot of amber liquid I can’t name. “Come on, Min’s over there, and I think she brought her hot roommates with her this time.”

I watch as he gestures vaguely toward the kitchen where our friend Minji is indeed standing, red-faced and giggling uncontrollably, talking to a girl I don’t recognize. Min’s got her dark hair pulled up into a high pony tail, loose strands falling around her flushed cheeks perfectly. She’s leaning back against the edge of the counter, one propping her up at the slightest angle while the other waves animatedly as she talks. She’s wearing one of her favorite oversized knit sweaters - a cream-colored one that falls off her shoulders, barely hanging on by shreds of loose fabric - and she looks completely at ease in a way that I could never imagine myself. 

My eyes flicker between Min and Jake for a second longer, before finally resting on Jake’s flushed cheeks. “I’m good here,” I say.

“Sun-”

“I’m good, really.”

I knew exactly what he wanted to say, but I wasn’t willing to give him the space to finish that thought. Not today, and not right now. 

Jake sighs dramatically, the long-suffering sigh of someone who’s tried and failed to get me to “have fun” at approximately thirty different social events this week alone. Because there is only so much of myself I can exert, and only so much I can handle in return - although Jake isn’t the most outgoing, he doesn’t have an “off” switch like the rest of us and it shows at times like these.

“Fine, but if you leave without telling me again, I’m never inviting you anywhere.”

“Promise?” I mutter as a cheeky smile graces my lips, but he’s already spun on his heels, heading off into the dense crowd in front of us. 

I lean back against the wall and survey the chaos as it unfolds in front of me. I don’t even know whose party this is, let alone whose house we’re at. Jake had been vague about the details when he texted me earlier in the day - just said it was some upperclassmen thing, that we were invited, and that it would be “epic”.

Epic, right.

The house itself is nice - much nicer than most campus locations - I’ll give it that. Hardwood floors in every room, high ceilings, and furniture that looks expensive beneath layers of spilled drinks and abandoned layers of clothing. Floor-to-ceiling windows line most of the walls on the first floor, currently covered by half-drawn curtains that do nothing to contain the noise the house emits. 

Whoever lives here has money, or at least several roommates pooling in the money. Or, deals drugs. Possibly all three, if I had to bet money on it. 

I lift the cup caressed between my fingers, letting its rim sit along my bottom lip, before tossing it back and taking in a drink. I feel the liquid burn as it runs down the back of my throat - it’s the perfect sensation to keep me awake while simultaneously keeping me distracted from the other voices inside my head. 

I slip out my phone from my back pocket, palming it up until it illuminates my face in that familiar white glow. It’s only 11:47PM, but it feels like I’ve spent at least 8 hours here already. I let out a huff before sliding it back into the same pocket. 

It’s too early for me to make a run for it, but it’s late enough that no one would notice if I slipped out for some fresh air. 

I scan the room for Jake - he’s in the middle of the makeshift dancefloor, arms thrown around two people I vaguely recognize from our building, all three of them laughing at something that probably isn’t as funny as they think it is. He’s too distracted to notice if I step out for a few minutes, and with that I decide now is my perfect opportunity.

I push off the wall and weave through the crowd, making sure to keep a low profile as I bob between bodies, this time heading for the back of the house. I pass through makeshift drinking tables and games - plastic balls bouncing about, people cheering wildly, and more alcohol being spilled than consumed. I sidestep a girl who’s teetering on heels too high for her level of intoxication, dodge a guy who’s gesturing wildly while telling some story, and finally reach the kitchen where Min had been earlier. 

It’s somehow more packed here than in the living room. The counter is covered in bottles - some empty, some just opened. Someone’s attempting to make cocktails in a blender, the sound briefly cutting through the music thumping from across the hall. The air in here is sticky with a hint of sweetness, smelling like fruit punch and a whole lot of regret. 

I spot the back door on the far side, propped open with a brick to let in fresh air from outside. Probably a fire hazard of some sort, but right now it looks like the closest thing to salvation I’m going to get.

I slip through without anyone stopping me, without anyone even noticing.

The night air hits my face fast, but the cool and crispness of it feels like a blessing. It carries the smell of freshly cut grass and autumn leaves, just as the season begins to change here. The noise from the party immediately spills out from the door but dulls to a manageable roar behind me. 

I can finally breathe without feeling like I’m inhaling someone else’s processed air. 

I stand on the back porch - weathered wood planks that creak with each subtle movement, a railing with chipped paint, and a few beers someone left behind on the steps. The porch light is off, leaving me in a comfortable semi-dark state. Only the spill of light from inside and the distant glow of streetlamps illuminate the yard ahead.

I lean against the railing and let my eyes close for a mere moment. Just breathe. In, out. Remember why I let Jake drag me here in the first place - because he’s my friend, because he worries I don’t “get out enough”, because sometimes it’s easier to say yes than to explain why I’d rather be doing literally anything else.

The breeze rustles through the trees lining the property, carrying the faint scent of someone’s cigarette smoke from somewhere nearby. Above, the sky is surprisingly clear - the stars are visible tonight despite the light pollution from campus.  

My heart rate finally starts to slow and the tension in my shoulders eases just the slightest. With each breath I take, I feel the anxiety in my body slowly bleed out, leaving me calmer than before. 

Maybe I can survive another hour. Maybe I can -

Movement catches my eye.

A dark figure, crossing the lawn off in the distance, closer to where the trees are lined up. Walking in the opposite direction of the house with deliberate steps, not the stumbling gait of someone drunk or the casual pace of someone just wandering around. They’re moving with a purpose, quickly, like they’re heading somewhere specific. 

Like they aren’t trying to be seen.

I straighten, my dark eyes watching as they cross through the tree line and over the quad toward the cluster of buildings on the east side of campus. They’re heading toward the far edge of campus, where the buildings gradually thin out and the streetlights get sparse until there’s nothing but darkness. 

I don’t know why I notice. It’s not like me to pick up on small details like this - that’s usually what Jake is around for. I get to pretend to be lightweight and carefree while Jake acts as my eyes and ears - but tonight is different, for obvious reasons, and the roles have been reversed.

And tonight, I am painfully aware of my surroundings. 

But there’s something about the way the figure moves that snags my attention and refuses to let go. I watch as they disappear around the corner of a building. The recreation center, maybe? I’m not too sure, but I know it should be closed at this hour. Everything’s closed except the library, and even that closes at midnight on Fridays. 

Curiosity pricks at the base of my skull, and itching feeling I can’t seem to scratch enough of. 

What the hell are they doing?

I should let it go, because it’s just another stranger I’ve found myself near. I should find Jake, make my whines and excuses to go back home, back to where it's quiet and I can actually hear myself think for once. 

But my feet begin moving before I can stop myself.

I take a good look around me, swiping my head from left to right to scan for anyone nearby - most of the crowd that were lingering outside when I stepped out have already spilled back inside, leaving me alone with the midnight breeze. Stepping off the porch steps, I pull the hood of my jacket down over my face and slip my hands deep into the front pockets, a weak attempt to keep a low profile.

The grass is damp beneath my shoes and each step leaves a dark footprint that fades to nothing almost immediately. 

I keep my distance, staying in the shadows between streetlights as I wander off in the direction of the figure. The campus is mostly empty at this hour - just a few stragglers heading home from the library or from their evening shifts, their heads down, earbuds in, lost in their own worlds. No one would pay attention to me, and no one ever does.

Unless I want them to.

The figure moves fast, purposefully, and I realize I have to quicken my pace or I’ll lose them. My breath comes in faster, my heart rate picking up as I lift my knees higher and higher. My eyes are merely slits, but they’re laser-focused on the target in front of me as I move. There’s something almost thrilling about this moment - the secrecy, the unknown, the fact that I’m doing something on my own for once. 

I round the same corner I watched the figure take and the recreation center comes into focus, dark and imposing. It’s constructed with all concrete and glass, sharp angles and modern architecture that looks more similar to a corporate office building than a campus gym. The windows that scale the walls reflect nothing, just black squares against empty walls.

What the hell are they doing? I ask myself again. It’s none of my business, and I should turn back around, find Jake, and leave. 

But I don’t.

Instead, I continue forward in the same direction.

The need to focus on something other than the suffocating atmosphere of that party propels me forward. Or maybe, it’s something else entirely - some instinct I can’t name that pulls me in their direction.

My eyes track the figure’s movement until they disappear between a set of glass doors, disappearing into the darkness of the recreation center as if being swallowed alive. It only takes a few extra seconds for me to arrive at the same place, but I stand still with my hands deep in my pockets, staring at the glass doors before me. The doors were locked prior, now propped open with the smallest of wedges seemingly picked up from the lawn.

A sign posted on the left-most door reads the center’s hours - OPEN 6AM - 10PM DAILY.

It’s nearly midnight.

I scrunch my face together as I stare down at the words. I should leave. This is stupid. I followed a random stranger across campus for no reason other than my own aching curiosity, and now I find myself standing outside a closed building in the middle of the night.

I draw in a deep breath and try to reason with the little devil sitting on my shoulder. I’ve already come all this way, and there’s no harm done since the door is already propped open - it’s not like I’m actually breaking and entering. And besides, what else would I be doing?

Tossing a few quick glances over my shoulder - the quad is still empty, just distant streams of light from the streetlamps and the muted warm glow of dorm windows - I reach out and rug at one of the metal door handles. The metal is cold against the inside of my palm. I pull it open just enough for me to slip inside, the hinges giving a soft creak that sounds too loud against the quiet evening outside. 

The recreation center swallows me whole.

Darkness presses in from all directions as the door clicks shut behind me, cutting off the small sliver of light from outside. I step further inside before coming to a halt, letting my eyes adjust, but there’s nothing to adjust to. It’s pitch black.

I pull out my phone and turn on the flashlight. The beam cuts through the dark, illuminating the dull gray walls and tiles that line the corridor floors up ahead. Signs plaster the walls near the entrance, pointing to different areas of the complex: GYMNASIUM. WEIGHT ROOM. POOL.

I glance down each of the three corridors before me - one off to each side and one straight ahead. Each one is an endless length of darkness with only slivers of light penetrating under doors. I didn’t see which direction the figure went, and honestly it didn’t matter at this point, so I picked the one on the far right and began to cautiously walk in that direction.

Each step I took echoed too loudly down the empty corridor, every sound amplified beyond belief - the soft squeak of my shoes against the polished floor tiles, my erratic breathing, and the gentle rustle of my jacket with each movement. The beam from my phone dances across the walls, covered in motivational posters and safety guidelines I was sure no one actually followed in college.

I walk for maybe half a minute before the hallway opens up before me, displaying the entrance of the pool complex. It’s massive, much larger than I had anticipated. An Olympic-sized pool sits in the center, surrounded by metal bleachers on one side and floor-to-ceiling windows on the other. Diving boards of various heights line the far end, lifeguard stands like skeletal sentries at the other. The water is perfectly still, apart from the occasional ripple at the surface from a draft somewhere, but it too reflects nothing back at me.

I take a few cautious steps inside, my eyes scanning the entirety of the complex, looking for any subtle signs of life. The air smells like chlorine and something else I can’t name - dampness, maybe. The scent of a space that’s meant to be occupied but currently isn’t. 

Something feels off, wrong even, but I can’t place it. 

I sweep my phone light across the floor tiles. “Hello?” My voice echoes, bouncing off the walls and water, but no response comes.

Just as I expected. 

Where did they go?

I walk along the edge of the pool, the beam of light catching the lane dividers floating on the surface of the water. My heart thumps in my chest with each step, and there’s a prickle of unease settling just beneath the surface of my skin. It was there during the walk over, and it’s only grown since stepping inside the building.

I know I should leave, but I keep walking, drawn forward by something I can’t explain. I walk past the diving boards, past the lifeguard stands, and toward the far end where a door marked EQUIPMENT ROOM sits slightly ajar. 

With another deep breath, I flash my light toward the door and reach for the handle.

A hand clamps over my mouth from behind.

The world tilts violently to one side, my vision going black as I squeeze my eyes shut as tightly as I can. 

Large fingers press against my lips, my jaw, spanning half my face with a bruising pressure. The scream that fights to rip from the back of my throat dies before it can form, crushed back down into my chest where it burns like battery acid.

An arm wraps around my torso, its grip iron-clad and unbreakable, pinning my arms uselessly to my sides in one go. I’m yanked backward with such an unruly force that my feet abandon the ground completely as I am suspended in the air for one terrifying moment before I’m slammed against something cold and solid. 

Wall, door, concrete. I don’t have a clue. Everything is pitch black, and my eyes can barely make sense of my surroundings.

The impact is brutal against my bones. Stars explode behind my eyes. The air is knocked from my lungs in one swift rush, leaving me gasping uselessly against the hand covering my mouth. My phone flies from my grip, clattering across the tile floor and out of my reach. The light spins wildly before it skitters away into the darkness.

I can’t see. I can’t breathe. And I can’t fucking move.

Panic detonates deep inside my chest like a bomb - its explosion is blinding, spreading through my veins like a wildfire that can’t be contained. My heart slams against my ribs so hard that I think they might actually crack inside of me. Adrenaline floods my system, and I realize there’s nothing I can do to regain control.

This is when my fight-or-flight instincts kick in. I thrash wildly, desperately, twisting and turning my body in their hold with every ounce of strength I have left. I kick backwards, trying to connect with any body part - a shin, a knee, something - but my feet only meet air. Whoever has me in their grasp is stronger, much stronger, and anticipated I would fight.

I mean, who wouldn’t fight back?

Their grip doesn’t budge with all my thrashing - if anything, I feel like their grip only tightens around me. They pull me backwards, dragging me away from the outlines of the pool and away from the faint glow of the emergency exit signs, deeper into the pits of darkness. My shoes scrape uselessly against the floor, trying to find a stake to claim, but it doesn’t work.

As a last resort, I try to bite down on the hand covering my mouth - if I can just sink my teeth deep enough into their flesh and draw blood, maybe they’ll let go - but they anticipate my very move. Their grip immediately adjusts, fingers digging into my skin harder, pressing against my lips until an explosion of metallic covers my mouth. 

My vision swims in a variation of illusions that would immediately send me to the psych ward if anyone heard about it. Black spots dance at the edges of my vision even though there’s nothing else to see, and I can feel my body going slack from the lack of oxygen.

Then they stop.

I can’t tell where we are, but it’s somewhere much darker than before - if that was even possible. The scent of chlorine is fainter here, replaced by something mustier and dated. Storage closet, maybe? Somewhere that no one would ever hear me scream?

Their body presses up against my back and they hold me there, solid and completely unyielding. I can feel the subtle rise and fall of their chest against my shoulders - each breath is controlled and calm, in complete contrast with my own ragged and out-of-sync breathing. They’re not even winded, despite all the struggle I put up. 

I feel the figure behind me lean closer, their breath ghosting the column of my neck with a delicacy that any sane individual would envy. Their voice is low, calm, almost amused - like this is pure entertainment for them. Like my terror is something to be savored as the seconds tick by. 

“You shouldn’t be here.”

The words are quiet, barely above a whisper, but I hear them loud and clear. But there’s something just beneath the surface of their syllables, something dark and mysterious that makes every hair on my body stand to attention. 

The voice feels familiar, like I’ve heard it a million times before - in my dreams or in passing on the street, maybe. But their touch feels foreign against my skin. It’s a sensation that feels both welcomed and dismissed at the same time, my body caught between leaning into the warmth of another person and recoiling from the threat that they present me with. The contradiction caused my body to fail in understanding how to react, muscles twitching uselessly between fight and flight, and something else completely.

My chest heaves wildly as I try to calm myself down, try to slow down the frantic beating of my heart. But the slickness of their words - smooth as silk and as dangerous as a blade - do nothing to calm my racing pulse. If anything, they know they’re making it worse. 

Who are you? I want to scream, but I know it’ll only get me in trouble.

But I can’t speak, I can’t move. I can only stand there, trapped in the darkness, held against a body that feels like stone and fire all at once. 

Chapter Text

Chapter 2: Intrusion

Sunghoon

I knew someone was following me the second I stepped outside. 

Call it instinct, call it paranoia. Call it the result of years looking over my shoulder, hyper-aware of every shadow, every sound, and every person who lingers slightly too long in my periphery. 

I’d felt eyes on me as I slipped out the back door - I had sensed a shift in attention, one that prickles the little hairs on the back of my neck, which meant I was being watched. Most people at the party were either too drunk or too distracted to notice me leaving my own event. If I didn’t care, no one else should either.

But someone did. 

I’d moved quickly across the quad, keeping my pace steady yet purposeful as I navigated. I walked like I had somewhere important to be, the kind of walk that makes people’s eyes slide right past you because you look like you belong.

You look normal.

I’d glanced back once, just once, as I rounded the corner of one of the buildings. A figure stood on the back porch of the house, silhouetted against the spill of light and noise from inside the house. Too far away to make out any significant details, but close enough to confirm what I already knew. 

Someone was curious.

Someone was following my every move. 

Fuck.

I’d sped up after that, taking the familiar route across campus toward the recreation center. My heart rate had kicked up noticeably - not from exertion, but from the cold calculation running through my mind a million miles an hour. Who was it? What did they see? And why were they so curious? The questions were endless. 

The recreation center loomed ahead, dark and imposing with its modernist appeal. I’d propped the door open earlier with a small stone from the nearby landscaping, in case I needed to come back here. It was my usual method - I make a quick stop right after closing to prepare everything, then I would return some odd hours later to finish what I needed to do. In and out, no one the wiser. I’d done this a dozen times over the past few months, at least, using the same routine and same precautions.

But I hadn’t anticipated for someone to break that pattern tonight.

I slipped inside and moved immediately to the right,  pressing myself against the wall beside the door. I waited, counting my heartbeats in the darkness - one, two, three, four - listening for signs of presence and footsteps.

Thirty seconds passed. Then a minute. 

Maybe they’d turned back. Maybe they’d lost interest in following me here. Maybe - 

That’s when I heard the door creak open. 

My jaw clenched and my breathing came to a full stop. Of course they’d hadn’t turned back - nothing was stronger than an innocent human’s curiosity.

I pushed myself further down the corridor, further into the depths of the darkness, as the figure stepped inside. They were backlit for just a moment by the ambient glow from the streetlamps outside before the door clicked shut behind them. They stood there idly, adjusting to the overwhelming sense of darkness, and I held myself perfectly still.

Then their phone clicked on.  

The beam swept across the corridor tile floors, and I got my real first look at them as the illumination back-casted. Small frame. Delicate features. Dark hair falling across their forehead. A hooded jacket that looked two sizes too large, drowning their limbs. 

Young. Probably a student. Definitely not security.

A small sense of relief swept over me, enough for me to draw in a breath, before I reminded myself that I was still not alone here, like I had planned. I watched as the figure hesitated at the junction of the hallways, the beam of light dancing between three different directions, before choosing the one that led to the pool complex.

In my direction. 

Of course they’d choose that one. 

Before they reached too far down the corridor, I pushed myself off the wall and slinked further into the darkness, escaping into the pool complex as quickly as possible without making a sound. Instead of hiding in plain sight, I opted to hide inside the equipment room at the far end of the complex.

I swung the metal door open and hid just on the other side, leaving just enough space to peek through. The figure reached the pool complex and stepped inside shortly after me, and I watched from the doorway as they swept their light across the entirety of the space. 

I watched them walk along the pool’s edge, watched them move past the diving boards and the lifeguard stands, watched them inch toward the equipment room where I kept a safe haven. 

Toward exactly where they shouldn’t go.

My hands curled into fists at my sides, and I felt another rush of adrenaline course through my body. This was bad, this was really fucking bad. 

I’d been so careful, so meticulous. Every detail planned down to the wire, every contingency accounted for without a hitch. I’d chosen the recreation center specifically because it was so isolated at night, because the pool complex was in the back corner, far away from the main entrance. Because no one had any reason to be here after hours, anyway. 

I drew in a hesitant breath and stilled myself completely, every muscle in my body locked and ready. Through the crack in the door, I watched them inch closer and closer, their phone light bobbing with each step forward they took. 

Their hand reached out, fingers extending toward the metal door handle, ready to pull it open and get a good look at what hides on the other side of the door. 

That’s when I struck.

My hands shot through the dark before they could notice, one clamping over their mouth before they could make a sound while the other wrapped around their torso to pin their arms down at their sides. They were smaller than I had thought - light and much easier to control. I yanked them further into the darkness with me, away from the door, and slammed them against the wall beside it.

The impact was harder than I had intended, but I couldn’t control myself. Their phone clattered onto the ground, the light beam spinning wildly before going dark. 

They thrashed against my hold immediately - a wild, desperate struggle for freedom that I anticipated. Their instincts kicked in - fight or flight. Most people chose flight when push came to shove, but when you couldn’t run, you had no other choice but to fight. 

I tightened my grip against them, adjusting my hold when they tried to bite my hand. I couldn’t help but release a subtle chuckle at the attempt - the effort was child-like, but I had almost missed it by a mere second. I could feel their heart hammering against my forearm. Their breathing came in short, desperate gasps through their nose, trying to get any air past my flattened palm.

Holding them in my arms, feeling the frantic beating of their pulse against my own. For a moment, I felt something twist deep inside my chest. Guilt, maybe, though I wasn’t sure. 

But I shoved it down immediately. I couldn’t afford to feel those types of emotions right now, and I certainly couldn’t afford to go soft at a moment like this. 

I pulled them backward, deeper into the equipment room, away from the door and any sliver of chance that they might be able to make a run for it. The space was beyond cramped and cluttered - stacks of water kickboards, lane dividers pooling out of boxes, shelves packed with obsolete pool supplies. 

Their back hit the wall behind one of the tall metal shelves and I pressed myself closer in, using my body to keep them pinned in place. I leaned in close, my mouth ghosting the crest of their earlobe, and kept my voice as low and hushed as possible.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

The words came out smoother than I felt, but I was desperate to remain calm and in control. My tone was almost amused, like I was playing some kind of game. As if I wasn't currently holding a terrified stranger against a wall in a pitch-black storage closet. 

But I needed them scared. I needed them to understand that this wasn’t a joke, that this isn’t a safe space. I needed them to learn that they shouldn’t be following strangers through the dark. 

Their body went slack against mine for just a moment - not relaxed, but frozen, like they were trying to assess and process their surroundings as quickly as possible. I could feel their chest rise and fall against the skin of my arm, their pulse still racing just beneath my fingertips. 

I kept my hand firmly over their mouth, my grip unyielding, and tried to think. I tried to calculate my next move. What did I do now? I couldn’t just let them go - they’d followed me here, and I jumped at the chance to scare them. But I couldn’t hurt them either - that wasn’t who I was. 

The silence stretched between us, heavy and suffocating. I could feel every point where our bodies connected - my hand pressed against their face, my arm resting across their chest, the front of my body buried into the curvatures of their back. I could even feel the exact moment they stopped struggling against my hold and just … waited. 

They were trying to figure me out the same way, at the same time, I was trying to figure them out. 

I remained close, my lips just inches away from the crest of their ear. “I’m going to move my hand,” I whispered. “And you are not going to scream. Because if you scream, this gets a lot more complicated for both of us. Do you understand?”

Heartbeats passed by before I felt them nod in the slightest. It was a small, jerky movement, but it was there. Slowly, carefully, I eased my hand away from their mouth, ready to clamp it back down if they tried anything. 

But they remained silent, apart from the subtle ragged breaths of air they desperately took. 

They just stood there, breathing heavily in front of me, waiting for whatever came next. They were waiting for the next utterance of a command to come before they dared to move.

Smart.

“Who are you?” I asked, keeping my voice low and steady. “And why the fuck are you following me?”

The silence seemed to stretch further in every direction after my question - even the air felt heavier, thicker, as if every word that passed from my lips was a delicate balance of pressure. 

I could feel  the stranger’s breath against my arm, shallow and fast, but they didn’t respond right away. They seemed to be weighing their options, deciding whether to speak or to remain silent. That brief hesitation lingered longer than I was comfortable with, and I could feel my own patience fraying at the edges. 

Finally, their voice broke the silence. “I… wasn’t following you,” they stammered. “I was just -” They cut themselves off, perhaps realizing how weak their own defense sounded. 

“Bullshit,” I said, my tone sharp enough to cut through the utter darkness we were surrounded by. “You followed me across campus, through multiple turns, all the way to a closed building in the middle of the night.” I drew in a sharp breath before pressing my lips close to their ear. “Try again.”

I felt them tense against me, their body as firm as a wooden slab. A few seconds passed before they dared to utter another word, and when they did, their voice was much quieter. 

“I saw you leave the area of the party,” they admitted softly. “You looked… suspicious. Like you were trying not to be seen. And… I don’t know, I was curious.”

“Curious” I repeated, letting the word hang in the air between us. “So you decided to stalk a stranger through the dark because you were curious?”

“I wasn’t stalking -”

“That’s exactly what you were doing,” I interrupted, unwilling to hear another word spew out of their mouth. “Do you have any idea how stupid that is?” I asked, dropping my voice lower and lower. I didn’t want to hurt the poor kid, but part of me wants to instill a sense of fear in their body - a fear so suffocating, that they’d have no other choice but to think twice about every decision they make from that point on. 

When they didn’t respond back, I took that as a small victory - I had done and said just enough for them to feel lost, and that was enough for me. I pulled myself back, straightening to stand. I could feel myself towering over them, their slender frame no match for someone of my size. Slowly, I released my arm from around them and stepped backward, further into the darkness, to create space between our bodies. 

The absence of contact felt strange after those few intense moments - like severing a connection I hadn’t realized I felt. My body was no longer buzzing with adrenaline, and the heat they provided had dissipated into thin air, leaving me barren and cold. I could hear them stumble slightly as I released my hold before catching themselves against one of the metal shelves off to the side. 

“Your phone’s out by the pool,” I said softly, keeping my voice level. “I suggest you get it and leave.”

They didn’t move immediately. I could sense them trying to orient themselves in the darkness without my hold grounding them in place. Their breathing was still rapid, panicked, even without my body pressed up against theirs. Perhaps they were just the anxious type around others. 

“Go,” I said, my voice firm.

Finally, they moved. Handles outstretched, fumbling in the darkness, they found the door and pushed it back open. The faint emergency lighting from the pool complex spilled into the space, providing just enough light to find their way back out. With cautious steps, they wandered toward that light, stepping back out into the complex, before throwing one glance over their shoulder - wide eyes that were trying to peer back into the darkness where I stood, trying to see the person that stood behind them.

But I’d already stepped further into the shadows.

And with that, I watched them take one more step out the door before scurrying away, the door swinging on its hinges in their wake. 

I stayed where I was, listening for their footsteps, just in case they decided to regretfully creep back in my direction. But it was only a matter of seconds that I heard them scrambling for their lost phone, picking it up, and the echo of their footsteps as they ran back out from where they had entered minutes before. 

I let out a breath I didn’t realize I had been holding in and leaned back against the far wall. My heart was still thrumming to an uneven rhythm, the adrenaline seeping through my body causing my hands to shake slightly. That was too close… way too fucking close for my comfort. 

I waited another five minutes in the dark, counting down the seconds, making absolutely sure they were gone and weren’t coming back for any counter attack. When I was certain I was alone, I pulled out my phone from the back pocket of my jeans and stepped out into the light, out into the complex of the pool. 

But instead of heading toward the main entrance of the building, I turned down a different corridor. This one was narrower and much older, part of the building’s original structure - most people didn’t even know it existed. 

At the end of the hallway was a door marked MAINTENANCE - AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY. I pulled the metal door open, letting it swing on its hinges, and descended down the concrete stairs that welcomed me. 

The temperature dropped immediately, the air cooler and damper down there than outside. Fluorescent lights flickered overhead as I worked my way down each step, casting everything in a harsh industrial glow. The basement was a maze of storage rooms, old equipment no one wanted to throw out, and mechanical systems that barely kept the building operational. 

But in the far corner, past the boilers and water heaters, was another door. Unlike the others, this one was unmarked and easy to miss if you didn’t know what you were looking for. That’s how I liked to keep things.

I could already hear the hush tones of voices as I approached. Muffled laugher, the low thrum of bass music playing from someone’s portal speaker, and the shuffle of feet against the concrete floors. I positioned myself right outside the door, my hand hovering over the handle, but remained still.

Someone was definitely going to ask me why I was late and what I was up to, but I didn’t have an answer worth giving back. I drew in a breath and released a heavy sigh, cracked my neck from one side to the other, before pushing down on the handle and stepping inside. 

The room had been converted into something almost livable - an old staff break room that had been abandoned right before the renovations to the building. Along the walls lined mismatched furniture, a couple of beat-up couches, and string lights that hung from the ceiling someone had put up to make it look a little less depressing. It smelled like mold and concrete with a faint lingering scent of cigarette smoke that I would never get over. 

Four faces immediately turned toward me as I entered.

“There he is,” Kai said, grinning wildly from ear to ear as he sat sprawled across one of the couches. “Thought you bailed on us.”

“Got held up with something,” I muttered, closing the metal door behind me. 

“Party getting boring?” Mina asked from her spot on the floor, though she didn’t look up from the open sketch pad in her lap. 

“Something like that.”

Jay looked up from his laptop, who sat on one of the other distressed couches, one eyebrow raised in suspicion. “You’re wound tight. What happened?”

I ran a hand through my loose strands of hair, letting them fall haphazardly across my face as I dropped onto an empty cushion on the couch. “Just an unexpected complication.”

“What kind of complication?” Kai asked, throwing back the amber liquid that lined the bottom of his glass.

“Someone followed me here.”

The entire room went quiet. Four pairs of eyes locked onto me, some with absolute shock while the others were daring me to speak again. 

“What?” Jay sat up straight, abandoning his laptop to the floor. Both Kia and Mina positioned themselves in front of me, giving me their undivided attention that I hadn’t asked for. “What do you mean someone followed you?”

“Exactly what I said. Someone saw me leave the party and decided to play detective. Followed me all the way into the recreation center.”

“Did they see you come down here?” Mina’s voice piped up, but I could hear the carefully considered concern buried in her voice. 

“No, I caught them upstairs by the pool. Scared them enough that they left.”

“Scared them how?” Jay asked.

I shrugged, throwing myself back into the cushions. “What is this, twenty questions?” I asked jokingly under my breath, though I knew better than to lead them on like this. “I displayed the dangers of following strangers into dark places, that's all.”

Silence swept over the four of us once again, and I was thankful for it this time. It had been the first time I was able to hear myself think, or form any coherent thoughts, since before arriving at the party, which had been hours ago at this point. I closed my eyes, letting my body sink into the distressed couch cushions as if they could swallow me whole. 

“Do you know who it was?” I heard Mina ask softly.

“No.” The word came out sharper than I intended, but it was the truth. There was little light the entire trek over here, and hardly a chance for me to get a good look at the kid who decided to blindly follow a stranger at night. As much as I was curious, I wasn’t willing to go to the same lengths to figure out who it was. 

With another sigh, I opened my eyes - the feeling of their attention burning holes into my face was less than optimal. “I’ll handle it.”

“How?” Kai asked, a slight perk to his voice as he set his glass down onto the floor next to him. If I could rely on anyone in this room, it would be Kai - he was willing to go to extreme lengths to defend and protect the people he cared about, even if it just meant roughing up a few kids to make a point. 

“I don’t know yet, but I’ll figure it out.”

I had to.

Because this space, and these people - they were the only things I had close to me that mattered. This was the only place I didn’t have to pretend to be someone that I wasn’t, and the only place where my secrets were sealed tight, locked away far, far from curious eyes. 

I couldn’t let anything come between me and the two things that meant the most to me. And if that meant standing my ground to ensure my secrets stayed buried, then I would do whatever it took.

Chapter Text

Chapter 3: The Come Down

Sunoo

I don’t remember how I made it out of the recreation center.

One moment I was stumbling through the equipment room door, gasping for air like I had been starved for years or worse, held underwater. The next, I was running like hell across the pool deck, my feet slapping against the damp tiles, the sound echoing through the space like mere gunshots. 

Through the pool complex, down the narrow corridor, past the junction where I’d made the regretful decision to go right instead of turning back. My breathing came in quick successions of ragged gasps that burned in my chest, my lungs screaming for air I couldn’t seem to get enough of. 

The exit was right there and I slammed into it with my full body weight, the crash into the glass pane giving way with a metallic clang that seemed to reverberate through my entire body. The metal door swung wide open, and the cool night air hit my face with a slap - a reality check that was much needed. 

I didn’t stop running.

I ran across the quad, past the darkened academic buildings, through clusters of streetlamps that suddenly felt too dim and too far apart. My hood fell back as I ran, but I didn’t bother pulling it back up this time. I just ran, my sneakers pounding against the pavement and then the damp grass.

I didn’t bother going back to the party - Jake would understand come tomorrow morning. And if he didn’t, then it wasn’t my problem. 

I didn’t stop running until I reached my dorm building. The car reader at the front entrance beeped as I frantically swiped my ID with trembling hands - once, twice, three times before it finally flashed green and let me inside. I stumbled through the door and into the lobby, letting it slam shut behind me with a sense of finality that did little to calm my nerves.

I knew he wasn’t behind me - I knew he wasn’t going to follow me out of that recreation center, but something told me I needed to get out of there as quickly as possible. The fluorescent lights from above were too bright after all the darkness I had been swallowed by - they made my eyes stings and water, everything becoming too sharp for me to handle. 

I took the stairs instead of the elevator - I didn’t want to put myself in the small chance of being trapped in a space like that, and I didn’t want to stand still long enough for my thoughts to catch up to me. My legs burned as I took each step, but I welcomed the pain for once. It was a physical pain I could handle, a physical pain that made sense. 

My room was at the end of the hall. Home, though it rarely felt like one.

I fumbled with my keys, dropping them one too many times before finally managing to get the right one jammed into the lock. The door swung open, welcoming me inside with open arms. 

There was a small lamp in the corner of the room, sitting on top of my wooden desk, barely lighting the room - thankfully I remembered to switch it on before I left earlier, or the darkness of my own space would feel too overwhelming for me now. 

Jake wasn’t back yet, but I didn’t expect him to be. He was still at the party, probably, still drunk and having fun with complete strangers. Without a care in the world.

I locked the door behind me and leaned against it, sliding down until my butt touched the carpeted floor. I pulled my aching knees into my chest and rested my head on top, before finally allowing myself to sit in silence. 

I could feel the adrenaline begin to wear off, seeping out of my pores faster than it had entered, leaving my body to shake in its wake. My whole body shook like I was stuck inside a deep freezer, despite how warm the room usually is. 

What the fuck?

What was I thinking?

I hadn’t been thinking - that was the problem. I’d seen him leave the party - seen the way he’d slipped out like he purposely didn’t want to be noticed - and something in my brain just… latched onto it. The curiosity burned from the inside out, until I couldn’t ignore it any longer. 

My phone buzzed from inside my pocket, drawing me back to reality. I reached for it, sliding it out and looking at the illuminated screen. My heart began to race one more, half expecting some type of threat to appear on my screen from the unknown figure.

But it was just Jake.

[Where are you????? Thought you were right behind me]

I stared at the text for a long moment, my thumbs hovering just over the surface of the screen. What was I meant to say? Sorry, I got held up against a wall, trapped inside a storage closet by a stranger in a dark building?

I’d keel over laughing if Jake sent me a message like that.

[Headed back early, not feeling great.]

I hit send before I could overthink it again and tossed the phone off to the side. The room  was too quiet now. I could hear everything - the hum of the mini fridge in the corner, the muffled bass from someone else’s music down the hall, and my own breathing that still hadn’t quite evened out. 

I wrapped my arms around my knees, hugging them as close to my chest as possible. 

He let me go.

That was the part that continued to loop in my mind, over and over again. He’d lured me in, grabbed me, terrified and threatened me - but then he let me go. Told me to leave, and didn’t chase after me when I ran. 

There was something about the way he said it: You shouldn’t be here. He didn’t sound angry or scared that he’d been caught by a random bypasser. No, he sounded more thrilled or amused, like a mouse had been caught in the trap he carefully laid. I couldn’t understand, and it rattled my brain trying to figure it out. 

My phone buzzed again, the vibration trailing across the carpet over to me. I reached out and palmed my phone once more, seeing a new text from Jake light up the screen. 

[Feel better - party was insane btw. So many people showed up. Sunghoon’s parties are always legendary.]

The name meant nothing to me, but I assumed Jake knew who he was talking about. Afterall, it was just another person in Jake’s orbit that I’d never bothered to pay attention to, because there wasn’t a reason for me to.

I read the text without sending back a response, tossing it back onto the floor in front of me.

Sleep didn’t come.

I laid there for hours, staring at the dark spots on my ceiling, my body exhausted but my mind racing in endless circles that I couldn’t keep up with. Every creak of the building made me jump in my skin, every footstep in the hallway a threat to my safety. 

I woke up to my alarm blaring at seven-thirty, feeling like I had been hit by a truck and ran over a few extra times for good measure. Jake’s bed across from me was occupied - he must have come back at some point in the middle of the night. I watched him for a moment, how peacefully he looked as he laid there with one arm draped over the side of the bed frame while the other was laid across his face.

I helplessly dragged myself out of bed and into the shower, standing under the water as hot as I could stand it, trying to wash away any lingering thoughts or feelings of the night before. No matter how hard I scrubbed at my skin or how hot I turned the water, it didn’t help.

By the time I hauled myself out and got dressed, Jake was beginning to stir from his slumber. He ran a hand through his disheveled hair, pushing himself up off the mattress with the other hand while I managed to pull on my sweater. 

“Morning,” he mumbled, his voice rough at the edges with the remnants of sleep and, most likely, a hangover. “You feeling any better?”

“Yeah,” I lied, reaching for my bag. “Just needed to sleep it off, you know?”

He rubbed his eyes once before squinting back at me as if he had seen a ghost. His dark eyes studied me for a moment longer, before finally breaking the silence. “You look like shit.”

Slipping on my sneakers, I threw back a scoff over my shoulder and fastened the strap of my bag over my shoulder. “I still look better than you most days,” I shot back at him before I pulled open the dorm room door and stepped out into the hall, letting the door close behind me a little harder than necessary.

The campus was already wide awake despite how early it was. Students rushed past me with half-empty coffee cups and backpacks overflowing, heading to their eight-fifteen classes with varying degrees of consciousness. The morning air was crisp and cool against my cheeks, carrying a smell of autumn leaves and someone’s second-hand cigarette smoke.

I kept my hood up and my head down as I shuffled along the pavement towards the buildings, weaving in and out of the crowd on autopilot. Normally, I would engage with anyone that made eye contact with me, but this morning felt different - I felt less inclined to put on my mask and parade myself around with other students. 

Introduction to Philosophy was held in one of the humanities buildings on the other end of campus, a sprawling structure of glass and concrete that always felt too cold and too sterile - much like Philosophy majors. I climbed the stairs to the third floor and slipped into the lecture hall just as the professor was starting to close the door. 

Room 304. Same one from the first week of classes, when I mistakenly thought this gen-ed requirement would be an easy A. 

I took my usual seat - one of the middle rows, the last seat closest to the windows. It wasn’t too close to the front where the professors loved to pick on students, and it wasn’t too far in the back where it looked like I wasn’t paying any attention. It was the perfect compromise, and it worked for me every year. 

Minji suddenly slid into the empty seat next to me, slightly out of breath as she slung her canvas bag onto the table in front of us. 

“Made it,” she whispered, grinning. She looked surprisingly well put-together for someone who had been just as drunk as Jake the night before. “How are you feeling?” she asked, turning her attention to me. “Jake said you left early.”

“Fine, just a bit tired.”

She studied me for a second, her eyes scanning the entirety of my face, that permanent smile of hers fading slightly. “You sure? You look a bit…”

“Promise,” I said, giving her a half smile, hoping it would appease her long enough before she found something else to divert her attention to. 

Minji raised her hands up in the air in surrender, laughing to herself. “Okay, okay. Just doing my job.”

Professor Kim cleared her throat at the front of the lecture hall, tugging on everyone’s strings of attention. “Good morning, everyone. I hope you all had a restful weekend, because today we’re discussing Descartes and the nature of certainty. Please take out last week’s lecture notes on the Meditations.”

A collective groan rippled through the class as half the students scrambled for their books while the other half pretended they had done the reading beforehand. The last thing any of us wanted to do was use an ounce of our brain power for any critical thinking, but we all knew we wouldn’t make it out of this class without it. 

I tried to focus. Really, I did. I opened my notebook, uncapped my pen, and even wrote down the date at the top of a fresh page. But the words that spewed from Professor Kim’s mouth flew into one ear and out the other, meaningless sounds that refused to stick in my brain.

My gaze drifted to the window beside me throughout the entirety of the lecture. The view overlooked the campus quad, where many of the academic buildings met one another. Trees with scattered leaves turning from shades of green to shades of gold and orange. Students walking to class aimlessly, as if they had somewhere better to be than here. Most of the time, they did. 

My eyes lingered along the same pavement I had taken just the night before, scanning the fallen leaves that cluttered the concrete steps. I let my eyes drag me from one building to another, before lifting to catch a glance at some of the students that passed by. 

And then I saw him.

My heart nearly stopped, the loud thundering in my chest now entirely too dull.

Leaning against one of the trees at the edge of the quad, partially hidden by the shadows cast down from the branches above, was a figure I immediately recognized even though I’d barely seen him in the light. Imposing height that towered over most individuals. Hair darker than the night. Sharp features that acted as a threat on their own. He wore all black - a fitted t-shirt and ripped jeans that somehow looked more expensive than anything in my own closet. 

A cigarette dangled from in between his fingers, the smoke curling up into the morning air before dissipating into nothingness. His eyes were mere slits, staring back at me as if he had been watching me the entire time. Like he’d known exactly where I’d be, exactly which classroom, exactly which seat. 

He didn’t move an inch when our eyes connected through the glass. He didn’t smile, nor did he acknowledge my gaze in any way except for that unwavering stare of his. He just watched me with an expression I couldn’t read - something dark and intense that made my pulse pick up a notch and my hands go clammy. 

Then, slowly, he brought the cigarette up to his face, pressing the butt in between his lips, and took a deep drag. The ember flared bright orange, crackling as smoke obscured his face for a brief moment. 

When it cleared, his gaze still reflected back at me - stronger than before. 

I couldn’t ignore the blatant message he was sending, without any words leaving his lips.

I know who you are. I know where you are. I’m watching.

My eyes grew wider by the second as I felt something inside me snap.

The fear that had been paralyzing me all morning suddenly transformed into something entirely different - anger, frustration, a desperate need to take back some semblance of control. I needed to know what he was doing standing outside, staring back at me like this, and I needed to know what he was doing last night, too.

Fuck that.

Before I could second-guess myself, I shoved my notebook into my bag hastily and stood up from my seat, the sound of the metal legs scratching against the floor causing various heads to turn in my direction. 

“Sunoo?” I heard Minji whisper, clearly confused at my sudden reaction. “Where are you -”

But before I could offer her a response, I shouldered my bag and moved towards the aisle, weaving between seats and backpacks, ignoring the flood of curious looks that came from other students. 

I heard Professor Kim pause mid-sentence, directing her attention towards my outburst. “Sunoo, is everything alright?”

“Bathroom,” I shot back over my shoulder, not bothering with looking back as I continued climbing the stairs toward the exit door. “Sorry.”

I didn’t wait for permission, nor a rebuttal of any kind. I pushed myself through the door at the back of the lecture hall and out into the still crowded hallway, my heart pounding in my ears. The stairs seemed to take forever to descend - third floor to ground level, my feet pounding against the steps with every hurried movement. 

I burst through the main doors and out into the quad, more frantic than I’d like to admit. The morning air hit my face again like a slap, carrying the smell of wet grass and fallen autumn leaves. The quad was moderately busy still, students too busy with their faces buried in their phones to notice me. 

My eyes darted to the line of trees, to where I last saw him standing, but the space was empty. I scanned the area - left, right, and further in each direction. Groups of students, but none of them were him. There was no tall figure drenched in black, no lingering cigarette smoke, and no one paying any attention to me. 

He was gone.

Of course he was gone. He probably dipped the moment I looked away, as soon as he made his point loud and clear. But something inside me refused to accept that.

I started walking, scanning every face I passed by, looking for that familiar build. I checked behind trees, near building entrances, I even ran out to the parking lot to see if I could spot him leaving campus. My heart hammered with each turn I made, half-expecting to see him standing there, waiting for me. 

I let out an exasperated sigh, my shoulders slumping as I shuffled back toward the humanities building, my shoes scraping along the pavement. I felt entirely too stupid for running after a stranger, and yet I somehow managed to do it two days in a row. 

I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket - a text I assumed to be Mindi, who looked beyond worried as I ran out from the lecture hall. I slid the phone out of my pocket and palmed it up to my face. 

[Be careful.]

My brows scrunched together, confusion washing over my face as I read those two little words. I didn’t recognize the number it came from, but the words felt like a warning regardless.

Be careful of what? Of who?

I stared at the screen, my thumb hovering over the keyboard. Should I respond? Ask who this was? I felt any question asked would be a waste of breath.

But before I could decide, a hand wrapped around my throat from behind and another clamped down over my mouth, just like last night. The force wasn’t tight enough to choke me out, but it was firm enough to dictate control - enough to send a jolt of pure terror through my entire body.

I was yanked backward, off the main pavement I had been chasing, pulled between two buildings into a narrow alley I hadn’t even noticed before. My phone clattered to the ground, the screen going dark - with the amount of times I had dropped it recently, I was destined to need a new one soon. My back hit the brick wall, the force knocking the air right out from inside my lungs.

I gasped, my eyes growing wide.

It was him.

I knew it before I even saw his face. I knew it from the height, the strength in his palms, and the way his body pressed against mine with an odd sense of familiarity that should have been terrifying.

“Let’s play a game, Sunoo.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 4: The Invitation

Sunghoon

I kept my hand wrapped around his throat, just enough to remind him I was in control - I wanted him to feel like I could snap him into pieces within a matter of seconds, if I really wanted to.

I didn’t enjoy hurting others, but I wasn’t above doing what needed to be done.

”Let’s play a game, Sunoo,” I whispered, my lips ghosting the shell of his ear. 

I could feel the way his body trembled in my grasp, the way his limbs shifted uncomfortably beneath my hold. He was nervous - scared, even - but he wasn’t fighting back against me for some reason. I didn’t peg him for the type to lay down in the face of danger, so my gut told me he was waiting for an optimal opportunity.

One I wouldn’t give him.

He tried to speak, but my hand over his mouth muffled his words. I took the hint and slowly pulled away, hovering just an inch above the crest of his lips, giving him enough room to breathe. 

“A game?” His voice came out shaky and unsure, barely above a whisper. 

“Don’t you remember? Curiosity killed the cat,” I replied as a smile creeped across my face, though he couldn’t see it from behind. “But if you’re this curious, here’s your chance to earn some insight.”

”How?” The word was breathless, his breathing ragged and sporadic. 

So he’s naive.

Good, that makes things easier.

”You follow my rules,” I said, keeping my voice low and controlled. “Do exactly what I tell you. No questions, no running to your friends.” I paused for a breath, letting my words sink in. “If you can manage that, I’ll tell you anything you want to know.”

I could hear him scoff out of shock or disbelief, before muttering, “That’s insane.”

“Is it?” I asked, tightening my grasp around the column of his throat in the slightest. “You’re the one who followed a stranger into a dark building. I’d say you’ve already crossed the line into insanity.”

He had no response back, as expected, but his body still twitched beneath my hold. I couldn’t hold back the smile that formed between my cheeks, and I couldn’t suppress the rush of adrenaline that waved through me. There was something so addictive about possession and control over another individual that I couldn’t quite get enough of.

But I had to pull myself together, otherwise I’d lose before I even started.

”What do you want to know, Sunoo?” I asked, keeping my tone as low as possible, but I couldn’t pull back the tease I felt with my words. “What was I doing at the recreation center? Why was I entering a locked building alone? Why does it matter that you saw me there? Am I hiding something?”

I felt him nod his head - it was subtle, but I could tell his curiosity was eating him alive. If he was curious enough, he would blindly lead himself into a situation he had no control over, leaving him with no other choice than to listen. That’s all this was.

“Then you’ll play the game,” I said. It wasn’t a question.

I slowly released my hold on him, my arms retreating back to my sides as I stepped back one, putting some space in between our bodies. He immediately stumbled forward, catching himself before he tumbled face-first into the pavement below. One hand rubbed at the flesh on his throat where my hand had been.

The afternoon light pierced through the cracks of the alley, cascading us in unnecessary sunlight. I could see him properly now, though my expectations were about the same - he was shorter than me by a few inches, dark wide eyes that swirled with confusion and fear, and flushed cheeks with a hint of pink. He looked younger in the daylight, more vulnerable than he had seemed in the dark. 

Whether he really was that vulnerable or not, it was too early to tell.

”You’ll receive a text from an unknown number with a time and location,” I started, sliding my hands deep into the front of my pockets, watching him try to recollect himself in a hurry. “Don’t be late.”

As he lifted his eyes from the pavement to meet my gaze, I took that as my chance to turn in the other direction - he didn’t need another excuse to see me completely. I spun on my heels and began toward the other end of the alley, heading away from the central quad.

Through the panting and shuffling of his feet, I heard him say, “What the fuck?” To himself. He was confused, and rightly so, but I wasn’t going to give him any more information than he needed. “Wait!”

But I was already walking away, disappearing into the shadows where I often retreated. I could feel his eyes burning holes into my back, and I could practically hear the thoughts racing through his mind. Good, let him wonder - that curiosity will drive him into a corner.

That was part of the game, too.

I didn’t head back to the recreation center where I had planned on going. Instead, I took a round-about way - past the library building, through the entrance of the science quad, doubling back around once to make sure he hadn’t tried to follow me again.

The kid was persistent, but I didn’t take him for being stupid enough to try it a third time.

Probably.

By the time I reached back to the recreation center, my heart rate had bottomed out, returning to normal levels. The adrenaline rush from the unexpected confrontation had faded, leaving behind a strange mix of anticipation and desire seeping out from my skin.

Wandering through the corridors of the center, I avoided any random stragglers, keeping my head low and as out of sight as possible. The door to the basement was still propped open with a stone, the one I had used earlier in the day when I had left. Everyone was too busy with their routines and scheduled to notice, and even if they had, most would assume the maintenance team just forgot their keys.

I slip myself inside, descending down the steps into the familiar darkness, letting the cool air wash over me. I could hear voices growing louder and louder, and by the time I reached the bottom step, I couldn’t filter them out anymore.

“I already told you, he has eyes for someone else - you basically don’t exist in his line of sight,” I heard Jay say, assuming he was speaking to Mina about the guy she had been helplessly chasing after for years. She only offered back a low grumble, signaling Jay had gotten under her skin enough to shut her up.

I rounded the corner, into their field of vision, and plopped myself down on an empty couch cushion, sitting myself as deep as I could. 

“Finally,” Kai said from his spot on the other couch. “We were about to send out a search party.”

I let out a forced sigh, tossing my head back on the top of the cushion, letting my eyes drift to the speckled ceiling that loomed above. They knew I could handle myself, regardless of the situation, but part of me had hoped that they’d actually come looking for me. 

“Anyway, back to party planning,” Mina interjected, shuffling through a stack of papers she had laid out in front of her on the floor. She was the most put-together out of the four of us - anything we needed that required using our brains over half capacity, Mina was the one for the job. She was the brains behind the beauty, a trump card most people didn’t expect us to have stashed up our sleeves. It was also a benefit that she handled things with a touch of care and consideration that the guys just didn’t possess.

”We’re going to use the Magdalena for Friday” Jay said casually. “It’s currently being renovated so there won’t be anyone lingering around late at night,” he explained, though his face was buried in his own handful of papers. 

The Magdalena was a run-down cathedral on the opposite end of town. It hadn’t been used for over a decade, but the community still felt the need to put it through renovations due to complaints of “staining property value”. 

I had only been there once before, after it had already shut its doors to the parish. If they hadn’t made much progress with the renovations to the building, that meant it would still be as hollow as it was before, making it the perfect place for the type of event we were hosting.

Mina looked up at me as if searching for some kind of input or approval. “That work for you?”

I gave a slow, subtle nod of the head in her direction, fastening my arms behind my head, my fingers laced together. “It’s isolated enough. No noise complaints, no nosy neighbors, no people who shouldn’t be there.”

“Exactly,” Jay echoed, a hint of satisfaction curling at the edge of his grin as he leaned back in his chair, spinning a pen between his fingers. “We’ll keep the lights minimal. Just the glow from the stained-glass windows, maybe a few candles scattered around for the atmosphere.”

“Atmosphere?” Kai repeated with a wild smirk on his face, the work thick with a taint of mockery in his tone. “You mean intimidation? Don’t sugarcoat it.”

“Semantics.”

The both responded with a soft chuckle which seemed to bounce off the cement walls of the basement. They were both so unbothered by their own tactics by this point, they got more of a laugh out of dry jokes that revolved around what they were “capable” of. 

I watched Mina roll her eyes as she continued shuffling through her papers, seeming to look for something specific that she couldn’t locate. “You talk like we’re hosting a séance or something.”

Kai only shrugged his shoulders, shifting his body to lay down the entire length of the couch, the ends of his legs hanging off the cushions. “Not too far off.”

The faint hum of the old fluorescent light bulbs from above filled the silence that followed. The basement smelled of a lethal mixture of rust and dust, but it didn’t matter because this was our place. We’d made it that way over time: stolen couches from other academic buildings, mismatched lamps we picked up on the curb, and a random display of posters, decorations, and stringed lights. Every corner reeked of a story we hadn’t been willing to talk about, but we all collectively decided we needed a space of our own to escape to - what we were escaping from was a different story. 

Mina spread out several papers of pacers across the floor, as if placing them on display for us to see. Each page revealed a series of scribbles of her neat handwriting. “I’ve compiled the preliminary list of guests for Friday. Mostly from the university - people who won’t be missed if they slip out.”

Jay leaned forward, pressing his elbows to his knees, taking a look over Min’s shoulder. “You’ve outdone yourself,” he said softly, his eyes scanning the names with the satisfaction of a wolf assessing an upcoming herd. “Half of them have already been shit posting about wanting to ‘get away’ or whatever. Easy bait.”

Kai let out a low whistle, drumming his fingers wildly on the back of his shaved head. “You’re telling me we’re not just handpicking this time? We’re casting a net?”

“That’s the idea,” Mina said, pushing a strand of her blackened hair from her face, tucking it delicately behind her ear. “We’ll make it sound like an exclusive underground party - something spontaneous and edgy. The kind of thing they can’t resist bragging about later.”

“If they get a later,” Kai muttered under his breath, but everyone in the room caught it.

My eyes flickered in his direction, catching his gaze. I exchanged a sharp look with him, one that silenced the joke in the air before it got legs. There were rules, even among us. And one of those rules was knowing when to stop talking before it's too late. 

Jay was too busy in his own world to notice the occasional bickering from Kai and I. It felt more like arguing with a younger brother than anything else, but he still knew how to get under my skin the best. Sometimes I let him, just to give him a taste of what it’s like to come out on top. Other times, I had to offer him a painful reminder of who really pulled the strings. 

Mina noticed the exchange but didn’t comment. She rarely did. “Invitations were sent out last week,” she continued, sliding one of her burner phones across the floor in my direction. I let the device brush up against the top of my boots before leaning over to retrieve it. “Encrypted links, temporary profiles, everything’s scrubbed afterward. They won’t be able to trace anything, even if they wanted to.”

Jay nodded in understanding, typing away at his own phone. “And the cathedral’s access?”

“Already cleared,” I finally interjected, leaning forward. My elbows were placed on the tops of my knees while my head rested on top of my clasped hands. “I checked it myself. The west doors are loose, and the security cameras haven't been reinstalled yet. It’s open ground.”

“Perfect,” Kai said, his grin only growing more sinister by the minute. “So, what's the plan for the actual event? Are we going full-scale hunt, or are we keeping it small like last time?”

His tone was light, amusement flickering across his face as he spoke, but his eyes were as sharp as daggers - there was a sense of anticipation lingering beneath his skin. He was always so eager for the rush that came along with events like this, and it was almost impossible to keep him calm the days leading up. 

No one in the room answered him immediately, all of us carefully considering our positions before speaking up. Instead, I let the question hang in the stale air for a beat longer before parting my lips. “We’ll decide once we see how many show up,” I said finally. “Too few and it’s not worth the effort. Too many and we risk exposure and loose ends.”

By this point, Jay had finally set his device back down, his eyes flickering between each of ours across the room. Mina was leaning back on the palms of her hands, her tanned legs outstretched in front of her, while Kai was bouncing on his cushion with excitement. 

“So… we let the herd come to us, and then we cull.”

“Something like that,” I muttered back. 

Mina let out a quiet sigh, her eyes rolling to one side of her face. “You make it sound so crude when you say it like that.”

“It is crude. That’s the point,” Kai snorted.

And with that, Jay pushed himself up to stand from his chair, his hands sliding deep into the pockets of his pressed linen. He wasn’t much shorter than me, but his presence seemed to tower over everyone else in the room at all times, including myself. “Try not to scare them off before we start,” he muttered, before stepping through the center of the room toward the basement door. In a matter of seconds, he disappeared through the entryway, ascending back up to the main level of the recreation center. 

Jay’s exit left the three of us in silence. We didn’t bother engaging in useless conversation - we all knew where we stood with one another and we left it at that. My dark eyes studied Mina as she directed her attention back to the scribbled papers sprawled out on the floor in front of her, neatly tidying them into a pile to be picked up and sorted later. I flickered to my other side, watching as Kai’s legs bounced uncontrollably on the couch while he busied himself with his phone.

I stuck a hand into my pocket, fishing out my own phone. My fingers hovered over the illuminated keyboard as I opened a new text to Sunoo’s number - he had zero inclination that I had his number, nor would he ever know it was me texting him. 

Min had set up a whole process for sending out invitations to the select few participants, making sure we used burner phones to avoid being traced later. But I didn’t mind bending her procedures a little for my own satisfaction. I knew Sunoo wasn’t on the original participant’s list she had compiled, but the group had zero reason to reject an additional - after all, more bodies meant more possibilities. 

Finally, my fingers got to work, typing away.

[Friday. 11:00PM. Magdalena’s Cathedral. Come alone.]

Without giving it a second thought, my thumb hit the Send button and off the message went. It was simple, direct. Mysterious enough to pique his curiosity, but he would come regardless. 

The trap had been laid and preparations were underway. All that was left was to wait and see if he’d willingly take the bait. 

Chapter Text

Chapter 5: What Lurks at Night

Sunoo

The afternoon light filtered through my dorm window, casting long shadows across the floor that seemed to dance to an unknown rhythm. It was already Friday afternoon, days since I had last engaged with that strange man in the alley, days since I received a text with crystal clear instructions, days of me jumping at every shadow that lurked behind tight corners.

I sat on my bed, my legs tucked into my chest as tight as I could get them, staring down at my phone for what felt like the hundredth time this hour. The message was still there, still as cryptic as it was when I first opened the text. 

[Friday. 11:00PM. Magdalena Cathedral. Come alone.]

Jake knocked on the wall beside my bed with the tops of his knuckles, trying to get my attention. I must have been zoned out, off in my own little world, that I hadn’t noticed how long he had been standing there next to me. 

“Dude, are you coming to this thing tonight or what? Minji texted me like five times asking if you’re coming, and I don’t know what else to tell her.” His voice trailed off as I lifted my head, my eyes reflecting back at him. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I muttered automatically, locking my phone and setting face-down next to me on the blanket. I could tell my face was warped and twisted with an unusual expression, one Jake wasn’t expecting - I hadn’t been able to wear the same happy-go-lucky mask I usually wore when others were around, and Jake was most likely catching on to that. 

“That’s your ‘something is definitely wrong’ face.” Jake dropped onto his bed across the room from me, a concerned look taped across his face. “You’ve been weird all week, and I’m not letting this drag out any longer than needed. What’s going on?”

Nothing.

Everything.

I didn’t even know where to start, because I didn’t understand what was happening.

“Just stressed about midterms,” I lied. 

“Midterms ended last week.”

Shit.

Jake scrunched his face inward, his eyes bearing into me with an intensity I couldn’t escape from fast enough. He sat there for a long moment, perplexed about whatever lie I was creating in my mind, but then his expression shifted to something more serious.

I usually preferred when Jake wasn’t serious at all.

“Does this have anything to do with why you bailed early from Sunghoon’s party last week?”

My stomach twisted uncomfortably as I shifted myself on the bed. I leaned my back up against the wall behind me and pushed my legs out, stretching them on top of the wrinkled bedding. It was the second time Jake mentioned that name - Sunghoon - as if I were supposed to know who it was. “I don’t know who that is, but no.”

“Sunghoon. You know, the guy who threw the party? The owner of the house we were at? You left super early and then you’ve been acting strange ever since.” Jake leaned forward, his eyes narrowing to mere slits. “Did something happen at the party?”

“I just wasn’t feeling well,” I said, keeping my voice as steady as I could. I pulled my eyes away from Jake’s, directing my attention to anything else in the room before Jake could notice the lie bubbling behind my glazed eyes. “I told you that -”

“Sunoo.” Jake said firmly, his head cocking to one side. 

“I’m fine, really.” I forced a smile, letting it crack across my face. “What thing were you talking about earlier? What did Minji text you about?”

Jake hesitated, letting out a deep sigh, before he pushed himself backward onto his bed. His palms laid flat against the bedding, propping up his body as his legs kicked childishly beneath him. I could tell he wasn’t buying my deflection based on the snarl that crested his lips, but he never pushed further than necessary - I appreciated that about him. 

“Some people are getting together tonight. Minji said it’s like an exclusive thing, very hush-hush. She got invitations for both of us, but she doesn’t want to go unless you’re going.”

“What kind of thing is this?”

“I don’t know, some underground party type of thing I guess,” Jake muttered as he fished inside his pockets for his phone. His fingers swiped across the illuminated screen for a few seconds before he twisted the phone around and stuck it out, showing me a text. “She was super vague about it, but it looks like it’s at that old cathedral on the far side of town. Supposed to be really cool.”

My own eyes narrowed as I read the text on his screen. It was an invitation to an event at the Magdalena, though the text only listed the location and the time in which to show up. Apparently the fewer the details, the harder it was for unwanted guests to figure out what was going on. 

The Magdalena.

The same place listed in the text I received from the unknown number. 

It couldn’t be a simple coincidence, but I wasn’t naive enough to believe the world was this small. 

“Are you going?” I asked, my eyes scanning back and forth over the text, as if expecting more information to populate on demand. 

“Yeah, probably. Minji said it’s going to be epic. You should come with.” I casted a quick glance back up at Jake, who was now grinning wildly back at me. “Maybe it’ll help snap you out of whatever funk you’re in.”

I stared at the phone for a moment longer, before leaning back to my place along the wall. Jake had been invited by Minji, and Minji received the invitations from some other source. I, too, received an invitation that I could only assume to be the same event, but I had no other context to run with. 

Were they actually the same event? Or were there two different things happening tonight at the same location?

And why did I receive a separate invite from that stranger from the recreation center? 

“I don’t know,” I said slowly, folding my arms across my chest. “What time?”

“Minji said to be there by eleven.”

11:00PM. The exact same time from the text I received from that unknown number several days ago. 

“Maybe,” I said noncommittally, shrugging my shoulders in the slightest. “I’ll think about it and let you know.”

Jake shrugged back, letting his eyes wash over me before directing his attention down to his phone. I could feel him still watching me with concern, his eyes glancing up every few minutes as if he might catch a glimpse of whatever was bothering me. 

Magdalena Cathedral.

The search results were sparse and offered little to the imagination. An old church on the far east end of town, closed for over a decade. Some local urban exploration blogs with photos posted of the deteriorating interiors - broken stained glass, rotting wooden pews, and cobwebs lining every available corner. One article mentioned it was supposedly undergoing renovations, but the photos suggested that was more of an aspiration than the reality. 

Why would anyone host an event there?

Or better yet, what event would anyone host there?

By 10:30PM, Jake was getting ready to leave the dorm to head out to the cathedral location.

“You sure you don’t want to come?” he asked, pulling on one of his black denim jackets. “Minji said it’s going to be really cool. Plus, you’ve been cooped up all week.”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I said, forcing my voice to sound tired and disinterested. If I could play my cards right, Jake wouldn’t ask a second time and take the hint. “I’m just going to stay in tonight. I’m not feeling that great.”

Jake stood in front of the full-length mirror that leaned up against one of the walls, his smile dipping into something more of a frown as it reflected back at me. “You haven’t been feeling well for days now. Maybe you should go to health services or something.”

“I will. Monday.” Another lie that spewed out from between my lips. “You go ahead. Have fun.”

Jake and I exchanged looks and nodded, solidifying each of our decisions for the night. I watched as he finished getting himself together - he ran a hand through his disheveled hair, flashing himself a few glances into the mirror before strutting himself toward the door. The moment the door closed behind him, I waited. I held my breath, counted to sixty, then scurried to the doorway to peek out into the hallway to make sure he was really gone. 

Empty.

With that, I quickly grabbed my own jacket - dark grey hoodie with the hood up over my head - and my phone, slipping it into my back pocket. I checked the rest of my pockets twice, patting my hands violently against each pocket to ensure I had everything. Keys. ID. Phone charger, though I wasn’t quite sure why that felt important to bring.

I could feel the slight tremble in my hands as I stepped out of my dorm room and into the hallway, hearing the soft click of the metal behind me. I had done this a million times before - university was the time for staying out late, getting into trouble with your friends, and doing things you wouldn’t be allowed to talk about the following day.

But something felt different this time.

My skin crawled with a sense of nervousness I couldn’t contain, and my curiosity was bubbling over the edge. I was desperate to find out more, to find the missing puzzle piece of information the stranger was willing to hand me. But I couldn’t understand why - why did I care about what he did and didn’t do? What was he hiding, and why did I even care?

Campus was much quieter than usual for a Friday night. Most people were either at a party or holed up in the library studying. With autumn looming around the corner and the crisp evening breeze, I assumed there wouldn’t be as many bodies wandering around outside anyway. I kept my head down as I walked along the pavement, taking a route that avoided the main pathways where I might run into someone I knew. 

The closest bus stop was three blocks from my dorm building. I had checked the schedule on my phone before leaving - one bus ran out toward the east side this last, every hour. The next one was at 10:00PM.

Perfect timing - I’d get there just in time.

I sat on one of the metal benches under the flickering light of the bust shelter, my hood pulled up and over my head while my hands were shoved deep into my pockets. A few other people were scattered along the street, minding their own business as they ventured off to their next destination, but no one paid attention to me. 

I was thankful for that. 

The bus arrived exactly on time, its headlights cutting through the darkness as it rumbled to a halt. The doors hissed wildly as they flung open, an odd welcome to any willing participants. I climbed abroad, tapping my student ID against the reader before heading to the far back of the bus, plotting into a window seat. 

There were only a handful of other passengers riding at this time - an elderly man near the front, two girls sharing a pair of earbuds seated near the middle, and another man dressed in a suit who looked as though he had a rough day at work. 

The bus lurched and crept forward, and I watched the campus disappear behind us as we drove east. As the pavement stretched, the distance between buildings grew and the number of streetlights decreased. The neighborhood shifted in a blink of an eye from student housing to older residential areas, then to stretches of empty lots and abandoned commercial buildings. 

This side of town had been declining for years before I even knew about it. I’d heard people whisper about it in conversations - how the city kept promising revitalization that never came, how businesses had closed down one by one, how even the bus routes had been reduced because there weren’t enough inhabitants living out here. 

It was the perfect backdrop for an abandoned cathedral that nobody cared about. 

The other passengers got off the bus one by one at various stops along the way, until it was just me. The driver glanced back at me more times than I could count, making sure I wasn’t going to do anything unexpected. 

“Last stop coming up in two minutes,” the driver called back at me over the rumble of the engine. “Magdalena and Fifth.”

”Thanks,” I said quietly.

The bus eventually slowed to a stop at the intersection of two dark streets. I could only see a handful of dimly lit street lamps scattered in either direction, leaving everything else swallowed by the darkness. The doors of the bus flung open with a hydraulic hiss, marking my needed exit. 

“You sure about this stop, kid?” The driver asked, turning in his seat to look at me properly as I stood up from my seat, wobbling toward the open door. “Nothing much out here this time of night.”

I gripped the back of the seat in front of me for balance, nodding my head toward the driver who cast a worrisome look. “Yeah, I’m sure.”

Maybe this was a sign of the impending doom I was about to willingly partake in, or maybe he was just concerned about dropping off a stranger in a remote location in the middle of the night. In either case, the tone of his voice told me everything I needed to know, which only made the tremble in my hands worse.

He shrugged me off, spinning back into his seat as I proceeded to step off the bus and down onto the gravel roadway. “Be safe out there,” he called as the doors swung back closed with a definite thud. I stood there in the darkness, a small veil of light cast from the nearest streetlamp, watching the red taillights of the bus disappear back down the empty street until it was out of sight.

And then I was alone.

Turning on my heels, I spun to face the opposite direction. Off in the distance, the streets were lined with old buildings - some were boarded up or taped off, while others were just dark and near-empty. The sidewalks were cracked, overgrown weeds pushing through the concrete. A chain-link fence ran along the perimeter of one side, sections of it bent, rusted, or missing altogether. The few street lamps still functioning flickered intermittently, casting pools of sickly yellow glow that seemed to create more shadows than anything else.

The air smelled different here - stale, like decay and years of neglect. I couldn’t understand why anyone would want to be out here, let alone host any type of event.

I slid my phone out from my pocket as I continued with each hesitant step in the direction of the cathedral. 10:47PM. The cathedral should be another two blocks east, if that.

My footsteps echoed too loudly in the overwhelming silence that blanketed this side of town. Every sound made me jump - from the rustle of the wind through fallen leaves, to the distant bark of dogs. There were no cars, no lingering people. Just me, the empty streets, and the growing uncertainty that I’d put myself in a terrible situation.

But I was curious. So curious that I could feel the itch growing and growing, threatening to consume me whole. I couldn’t satisfy the hunger that it left me with, and I felt more starved as the days went on. I wanted to know, I wanted to see, and I wanted to understand.

It gave me something to focus on rather than my own mask I was forced to wear daily. And I needed that.

So I kept walking.

The cathedral came into view after a few minutes and a handful of rounded corners. It was massive - larger than I’d expected from the photos I found online. It was constructed using gothic architecture influences that probably looked much more impressive years ago, but now it just looks haunting - pointed arches and tall spires lined the walls, reaching up into the dark sky like skeletal fingers that could reach out and snatch its prey at any second. The stone that wrapped around each was dark, almost black in the dim light, stained with decades of age and weather abuse.

Most of the stained glass windows were smashed to pieces or boarded up, leaving only slivers visible. The few that remained intact were dark, reflecting nothing but the void. The front entrance was tucked behind a wrought-iron fence, the gate chained shut with a rusted padlock and a faded “NO TRESPASSING” sign.

The closer I crept, the heavier the air became. Each step forward felt like sinking deeper and deeper into the disturbing presence of the place itself. The silence that blanketed this plot of land wasn’t the still type - rather, it listened, as if waiting for something specific to come around. 

I pulled out my phone, the glow of the screen casting a faint glow across my face. 10:57PM. Three minutes until the listed time. 

And yet, there was no sign of anyone else.

No cars parked nearby. No muffled voices or music or lights from inside the cathedral. No indication that that was any kind of even happening here at all.

Where was everyone? Where was Jake - he said they were coming here, right?

The silence was suffocating.

I lingered near the entrance for a moment longer, my hand hovering above the cold metal links of the fence as I peered through the gaps inside. Somewhere deep within the walls of the building, I thought I heard something - a low hum, almost mechanical, like the faint moan of a pipe or a gust of wind being funneled through a broken organ. It was enough for my pulse to spike once more. 

“Jake?” I called out softly, my voice barely above a whisper. It felt wrong to speak too loudly here, like I might wake something that wasn’t supposed to be disturbed. 

No one answered, as expected. Just the wind curling between the cracks of the stone facade. 

I scanned the fence line until I found a section that had collapsed, the metal bent outward like fingers forced apart. The gap was just wide enough for me to squeeze through - I hesitated, then turned to the side, the sleeves of my hoodie catching as I slipped through.

The ground beneath my sneakers crunched with small bits of gravel and glass. My breath clouded the air around me, pale against the darkness. The closer I drew to the entrance, the more visible the decay became - ivy curled up the stone columns, the wooden doors bowed inward, and there was a stench in the air I couldn’t begin to describe. A rusted chain hung uselessly across the handles of the door, the padlock missing entirely.

It looked less like a barrier and more like an invitation.

I reached out and pressed my palms to the door, pushing it inward. It groaned loudly in response, the echo swelling into the caverns of the cathedral like a distant roll of thunder. That should have been the second warning, but I was never good at minding my own business.

“Hello?” I called again, louder this time. “Jake? Minji?”

No response. 

The sound of my own breathing filled the void between each thrum of my heartbeat. I tried again as I inched inside, “Is anyone here?” - though there was still no response. 

Moonlight filtered in through the few remaining shards of stained glass still attached to its frame, scattering fractured colors across the dusty floorboards. Wooden pews stretched in uneven rows ahead of me, warped and splintered, their varnish long since dulled into an ash gray. 

The cathedral loomed in its silence, the vast ceiling arched high above my head like the hollow of a ribcage. I could also hear the ghosts of old choirs here, their voices bouncing off the barren walls as if messing with my mind. 

I looked down at my phone once more - it was now 11:04PM. No one else had shown up, no other sounds except my own. 

My throat constricted, instinctively tightening as I squinted against the haze - dust particles swirled through the stagnant air like ash suspended mid-fall. “Hello?” I tried quieter this time, as if testing my own voice. It hung in the air for a second before dissolving, only silence following in its wake. 

And then - 

A sound ripped through the silence.

The sharp crack of a gunshot fractured the stillness like a strike of lightning, echoing through the nave in endless, ricocheting waves. My body reacted before my brain could catch up - I dropped to my knees in the middle of the aisle, the tops of my knees slamming against the floorboards as splinters burst out from the pew to my right. A bullet hole smoked faintly in the wood where it had struck, the scent of gunpowder cutting through the dust. 

A bullet.

“Shit!” I gasped, scrambling backward, my palms slipping against the scattered debris across the aisle floor. My pulse pounded so loudly in my ears that it drowned out everything else - the echo, the creak of the decaying furniture, even the breath that tore out of me in ragged bursts. 

I looked wildly around the cathedral, searching for any sign of movement, for a silhouette, for anything I could grasp onto. The suffocating darkness made it near impossible to see beyond the outlines of pews and the jagged colors of the glass reflected on the floor.

Somewhere during the chaos, my phone skittered away - it slipped through my hand as it hit the floorboards with a hollow clatter before vanishing into the dark, seemingly disappearing underneath the pews around me.

“Who’s there?” I shouted, my voice cracking in panic and I whipped my head from one side to the other, scouting the area. I was only greeted with a warped and distant echo - even my own voice sounded foreign here. 

I quickly crawled behind one of the nearest pews, ducking lower as I scanned the shadows. My eyes strained to adjust but my pulse raced beyond my control. 

“Jake, this isn’t fucking funny!” I shouted into the void of the darkness as I struggled to contain my ragged breathing. My palms pressed into the floorboards, splintered and reddened from the debris I crawled across. I was almost positive that I had a sliver of glass lodged in there somewhere, but I couldn’t focus on that pain.

I was greeted with nothing but silence, again. It pressed into me so tightly, so firmly, that it felt as though the life was being squeezed out of me with each second that ticked by. 

Then - just as unexpectedly as the bullet had sliced through the air - a voice rang out from somewhere off in the distance. The tone was hollow, almost lazy and unamused, as though whomever was lingering out there couldn’t be bothered with my presence. 

“You’re late.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 6: Weapon of Choice

Sunghoon

I had been at Magdalena for what felt like an eternity.

The city had already folded into silence by the time I had arrived at the east end of town - the stretch of pavement where the streetlights hummed faintly but never fully lit the ground beneath it had welcomed me with open arms. The air smelled faintly of rain that never came, heavy with a mixture of dust and kicked-up asphalt. Here, even the wind seemed to avoid creeping near the cathedral.

The Magdalena rose at the end of the street like a mausoleum that refused to stay buried beneath the rumble. Its silhouette carved into the blackened sky, its spires clawing upward through a thin sheet of clouds. Time had gnawed at it until its beauty rotted into something else entirely. The closer I got, the more it seemed like the building was just trying to breathe.

I parked several blocks away, my car tucked between obscured abandoned residential buildings, killed the headlights, and stepped out into the chill of the night. My boots pressed against the gravel, the sounds of its crunching like brittle pieces of glass as I walked. The iron fence that lined the courtyard of the cathedral’s plot of land bowed inward, as if it had tried and subsequently failed to keep something out… or in. 

The gate groaned when I forced it open - the kind of sound that carried low, echoing off the stone walls. Once inside, the air only grew thicker, stale with the scent of rotting wood and something faintly metallic. I adjusted the strap of the bag that was slung across my shoulder and moved quietly, careful not to disturb whatever presence lurked in its shadows. 

Even in the darkness, the cathedral was vast, stretching far beyond my field of vision. Pews stretched in uneven rows toward an altar that had long since been used for any holy acts, its marble surface cracked and slightly discolored. The ceiling above arched high overhead, beams of fractured moonlight streaming in from gaps in the shattered and boarded windows. Dust floated in the air like falling snow - so fragile and helpless as each piece descended to the floor.

It was the perfect silence. 

I navigated my way around the fallen pews toward the back of the nave, ascending a spiral staircase to the upper level that was hanging on for dear life. Each creak beneath my weight echoed, the sound swallowed  only when I reached the top of the loft. From there, I could see everything - the aisle below, the altar, the entrance, and all the empty pews in between.

I crouched low behind the railing, my breath steady, the cold metal pressing against the insides of my palms. For a second, I let my fingers rest on the weapon tucked inside my bag like a man checking the pulse of someone sleeping - the touch felt familiar, reliable, and completely under my control. My fingertips brushed across the chamber until they latched onto the handle with a sense of finality, sliding it out from the canvas containment of the bag.

I didn’t think in sentences, and I certainly wasn’t driven by emotions. I thought purely in measurements - distance to the nave, how the light fell across the pews, the perfect angle needed to strike an object from this vantage point. Loading the chamber was a private ritual of mine - a practiced motion that felt all too intimate and routine for me to take advantage of. The round slipped inside with a sound that was too small for the movement and result it promised, a soft click that seemed comically too dramatic for the cathedral’s blanket of silence. 

It was an automated process that didn’t require any unnecessary thoughts, and that’s what I craved the most.

I didn’t need more than one bullet, but having extra wasn’t a bad thing, either.

After that, the world rescinded into a routine rhythm. The slow tick of my watch, the groan of the old timbers, and the whistling of the breeze from between the cracks of the stone. Time felt distorted here - slow, viscous, and completely untrustworthy - but maybe that’s why I sought out a location like this. I no longer had to rely on outside factors to do what I needed - what I wanted. 

I waited in the darkness until waiting became its own kind of trance state. 

Then - footsteps.

They were soft, cautious and hesitant with each step forward.

He was here.

I couldn’t hold back the slick smile that formed across my lips, the corners of my mouth twitching with uncontained excitement. Through the dust and shadows below, I saw him slip through the fence just outside the entrance. The glow of his phone screen carved the outline of his face against the darkness - his features pale, though his eyes were alert, darting toward every small sound. He moved carefully forward, inching his way inside the cathedral, though I could sense the fear dripping off the seams of his hoodie.

He wouldn’t normally do this, but curiosity was eating him alive. 

The door moaned as he pushed it open, the sound rolling through the cathedral like the sound of thunder just before a storm approaches. 

“Hello?” His voice broke through the silence and vanished into the rafters before it could reflect back at him.

I listened carefully, my ears intercepting the smallest of sounds as he made his way deeper into the pits of the cathedral’s graces. He kept calling out for Jake, for Minji, for anyone, but was only returned with the disappointment of silence. 

He had no idea I was here, hiding within the very shadows he crept through, let alone watching his every move, and he had no reason to. For all he knew, I had given him a false location - there wasn’t another soul in the vicinity of the cathedral that would know of his whereabouts.

Except for me.

I took a deep breath as he turned his back toward me, seemingly to investigate his surroundings further. One. Two. Three, I counted to myself, my eyes closing to mere slits as I stared at the hoodie draped over his back.

Then I pulled the trigger.

The bullet tore through the air at lightning speed, deafening in its immediacy. The echo bounced between stone pillars and fallen pews, rattling fragments of shattered glass. Down below, splinters exploded from the pew beside him as he dropped hard to the floor, his arms thrown up instinctively to shield his head. 

Smoke drifted lazily from the barrel, curling and twisting upward in slow, serpentine ribbons before dissipating into nothingness. The scent of gunpowder clung to the air, sharp and metallic, mingling with the remnants of dust left behind.

He was gasping now, scrambling backward, his palms slipping on chunks of debris scarred across the floorboards. His phone clattered against the floor before spinning out into the dark, disappearing under a nearby pew. 

I stayed perfectly still.

He called out the names of his friends and each one echoed uselessly through the nave. His voice trembled, trying to sound braver than he actually felt. I watched him from above, frantically trying to protect himself from whatever was lurking in the dark, while I remained a quiet figure hidden in the rafters.

It was almost cruel to watch him unravel.

When I heard his voice break again, I couldn’t help myself. A quiet laugh escaped between my lips as I stepped closer to the railing’s edge.

“You’re late,” I said, letting the two little words fall cleanly from my lips.

He froze in place after whipping his head in the direction of my voice. It only took him a matter of seconds to squint through the haze to spot me, but the look on his face was one of shock, as if he was expecting anyone other than me.

“Let’s play a game, Sunoo,” I said, my voice carrying a tone of amusement as I looked over the edge of the balcony. I slipped the gun into the back pocket of my jeans to free up both hands, and wrapped them around the metal railing, holding myself in place. The game I had in mind didn’t call for any further use of the gun, but it didn’t hurt to keep it around for fear value - I couldn’t risk him fleeing.

I watched his wide eyes flicker across the cathedral wildly, assessing every inch of his surroundings at lightning speed, as if half-expecting something else to jump out at him. Lucky for him, the only thing he needed to worry about here was me. 

But he didn’t know that. 

“Would you like to know the rules?” I asked, leaning forward onto my elbows as they propped up against the tops of the cool metal, my forearms dangling loosely in front of it. 

“What are you talking about?” I heard him huff out, trying to catch his breath. “Why did you shoot at me?”

I offered back a sigh, a subtle roll of my eyes that I knew he couldn’t see from here. “I asked you a question,” I started, cocking my head to one side. “Besides, I wasn’t aiming at you. If I wanted to hit you, I would have.”

I could hear him swallow, the panic rewiring his entire face into something unreadable. The way his face contorted reminded me of the way he looked that night at the recreation center - creeping through the darkness, unsure of what lay ahead of him, driven on nothing but complete curiosity. It made me wonder what he looked like when he was pretending to be in control, when he disguised himself with a different mask. 

I pushed myself away from the railing and headed toward the worn stairs, my boots scraping at the rubble as I descended. I slipped my hands into the pockets of my jeans, straightening my posture as I worked my way down. I towered over the kid as it was, but my height was almost always the first thing others noticed about my appearance - the greater the height difference, the most imposing I could be. 

“You’ll play by my rules,” I said. “One, you follow my every direction. Two, stay where you can see me. Three, don’t make a sound unless I tell you to.”

By the time I reached the bottom floor, the sound of his ragged breathing was the only thing I could hear. His eyes still shot in all directions, but by now I had to assume he was measuring his options on escape, just like prey always do. 

I kept my hands shoved deep into my pockets and let my shoulders do the talking. When I moved, my boots scuffed the aisle with slow, economical steps. I wanted him to see the way I commanded the space, how I occupied it without an apology. He lowered himself onto a pew’s edge, his fingers digging into the splintered wood. God, he looked so small in front of me.

“I don’t want to play,” he muttered softly, lowering his gaze to the debris around his shoes. I came to a stop a few feet in front of him, my head held eyes as I cast a downward stare in his direction. 

“You’re already here, and it’ll be fun,” I said firmly. “Besides, you don’t have a choice now.”

I could sense he didn’t like that answer, simply by the way his brows dipped deep between his wide eyes. There was an overwhelming sense of fear that warped around him, like a dark cloud of thunder just waiting to strike. His eyes flickered once more to either side of him, cautiously, before reflecting my gaze. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I don’t take orders from you.”

Oh?

How interesting.

Slowly, my eyes closed to mere slits as I stared down at him, my face stone-cold and expressionless. “You will if you want to make it out of here alive.”

Footsteps from behind me cut through the air - Kai and Jay dropped down from the second-level loft, throwing their bodies carelessly over the railing’s edge, landing onto the scattered debris with a loud thud. Mina descended down the staircase with a relaxed elegance, of someone who always has a plan - after all, she’d been the one to write the lists, to scrub all of the data trails, to make sure no one in the nearby areas would notice our little event. 

“Enough theatrics,” Jay said, his voice low as it boomed throughout the desolate nave. When he finally decided to speak up, Jay had the type of voice that finds all of the corners and crevasses of a space and claims them as his own. He rose from the floor slowly, the remaining shards of stained-glass throwing corrupted beams of light across his face. 

Jay was by far the more terrifying, physically, out of the four of us. 

Mina stepped down from the last stair and navigated over to us, carefully navigating around the clutter. In her hands, she clasped a clipboard tightly - a lethal object to be had in a woman’s grip. “Rules are simple,” she said. Her voice cut through the nave and collected attention without having to speak louder than her normal conversational tone - there was something truly magical about her that commanded a room. “You’ve been invited by yours truly -” she paused to gesture a hand in my direction, “and tonight is a relay. Everyone is in teams of two - a main player and their invitee. Main players run the show, and invitees come in blind - no tools, no control, no protection.”

From the corner of my periphery, I watched as she lifted her gaze to wash over Sunoo, who was still seated like a child in timeout. I knew she didn’t think much of him, but something about the way her eyes naturally glistened in his direction, even in such a dark space, made my stomach twitch. 

I hope she wasn’t reconsidering her own pair.

“Main players have the privilege to select one item from the supply cabinets to defend themselves should they need it. No other weapons are permitted.” She let her words hang in the air, leaving just enough room for speculation and questions to arise, though I knew she wouldn’t go into further detail. 

I had already selected my weapon of choice, long before Sunoo ever crossed the cathedral’s threshold. My hands remembered the weight I preferred - the cold, blunt assurance of a revolver cupped in one palm. There is a particular clarity that comes with metal pressed flat against heated skin. If I was confident in any one of my abilities, it was that of hitting a moving target with a single shot of a bullet.

Kai favored his own body as a weapon - fists and knees and a willingness to get close enough that the fight becomes personal. He wore that preference like an armor in and of itself: loose sleeves, a sleazy grin, and the kind of swagger that hid his brutal competence. Jay’s cruelty lived in edges and riddles; he would rather unsettle an opponent into making a mistake on their own, but when the mind games failed him he’d sling small, lethal blades from the darkness. 

Mina moved differently. Her hands belonged to the distant things: strings, shafts, and the long physics of a bow. She selected and aimed her arrows the way other people picked words - carefully, with an eye on trajectory and pure instinct. In the night, she could hit a moving target by the whisper of its step and split the space between two breaths without batting a lash. 

We each had our rituals and poisons. I liked the revolver’s click, Kai enjoyed the impact of skin on bone, Jay liked the theatrics of a blade, and Mina preferred the hush and precision of her arrows.

I watched as Sunoo flinched at Mina’s words. The invitation she had crafted and sent out to the other invitees made the event sound like some sort of college party - lots of alcohol, thumping music, and a world we could escape to free of judgment. Though, I had purposely left Sunoo’s invitation as vague as possible - he didn’t need to know any of the details. 

“Each pair starts at the back of the cathedral,” Jay continued, picking up flawlessly from where Mina had left off. “Objective: move through the woods behind the building and reach the clearing on the other side without being caught. If you’re caught by another team, you’re eliminated.” He smiled like the implication of the word ‘eliminated’ was obvious and final, though we never explicitly discussed what that meant for everyone else. 

It was much more thrilling to leave it up to the imagination. 

“We’ll stagger departures so it’s not a free-for-all. The whole run takes roughly an hour if you know the trails. If you don’t -” Jay paused, casting a glance over to the timid Sunoo cornering himself on the pew, “then you could be out there for a while.”

By the time Jay had finished running through the rules and regulations for our culling, we all halted in our movements, forming a small semi-circle around Sunoo. He curled inward on the pew, the light from above painting bruises across his cheekbones. I watched the quick, animalistic movements of his hands - the way his fingers flexed against the splintered wood, the impatient, useless calculations of an unarmed person who was slowly coming to terms with his predicament. 

“You said there were invitees,” he stammered, glancing from one face to another, searching for something he couldn’t quite find. “Where is everyone else?”

“Holding area,” Kai drawled, his tone lazy but laced with pure amusement. He leaned back against the nearest pillar, folding his arms looking across his chest. “We’ve already picked our pairs. You were invited last, and therefore were last to pair up.”

Sunoo blinked rapidly, seemingly confused. “Pair up?” he echoed, shaking his head slowly. “I didn’t pair up with anyone. I just got here.”

A slow, serpentine smile spread across each one of our faces, mirrored in the subtle glint that passed between each of us in understanding. The air grew thick with anticipation as none of us moved to respond to Sunoo’s confusion - rather, we all seemed to enjoy dwelling in his tang of fear a moment longer. 

“I picked you,” I announced finally before anyone else could. 

Sunoo’s expression flickered rapidly - shades of confusion, disbelief, and then perhaps something closer to dread. His lips parted to protest, but no sound escaped. He looked as though the floor had dropped out from under him, and in a way, it had. The wood beneath his feet groaned in protest, brittle as it rot, the kind of surface that could give way if you stepped too hard. 

“Consider yourself lucky,” Kai called as he pushed himself off the pillar, turning his attention toward the altar bathed in illumination pouring in from the shattered windows. “You ended up with the biggest game-player in the room.”

Sunoo’s eyes darted between the others, looking for any trace of humor, something to ground himself in - but none came. I could sense Kai’s smirk even with his back turned. Mina had her arms crossed with the clipboard dangling from one hand, unimpressed with our antics but clearly entertained. Jay only offered the faintest of shrugs, as if to say it’s already been decided.

Sunoo sank further into the wooden pew, seemingly trying his best to disappear despite his futile attempts. “What - what happens now?”

I couldn’t help but let the corner of my mouth twitch upward. “Now,” I said, sliding one hand out from my pockets and into the back of my jeans where the cold metal of the revolver pressed against the skin of my back, “we start the game.”

Chapter Text

Chapter 7: The Beginning of the Hunt

Sunoo

I was in over my head, and I was starting to regret following the instructions from an unknown number.

I had every right, and desire, to say no, to run in the opposite direction, to pretend none of this was happening. I didn’t have to be here, and no one was technically holding me against my will… that I knew of. And yet, I stayed. 

I couldn’t fight the burning and aching sensations that filled my insides, the way my curiosity bubbled over the rim of my consciousness every chance it got. I didn’t have to stay here, but every ounce of me wanted to.

For reasons I couldn’t understand yet.

We spilled out of the cathedral like strangers exiting a funeral procession. The stone throat of the building closed behind us with a soft, reverberating finality, and the world immediately felt different to me: the air was much thinner, my senses were working overtime, and my vision cut through the treeline ahead of me. Trees waited beyond the broken glass of the stained windows, their trunks black, leaving whispering secrets only they could hear.

We emerged in a cluster, two of the guys in front of me while the one I was familiar with hung behind me with the woman, most likely in case I decided to make a run for it. Moonlight skimmed the shoulders of the four people as we moved through the darkness. It was only then that I realized I didn’t know their names. Names felt too ordinary for a night like this, though, and they hadn’t  given me a cause to learn them properly anyway.

I didn’t know what was coming next, but I knew I didn’t want to be identified by anyone else. I pulled the hood up and over my head, tugging at the strings to tighten it around my face as best I could. This was the only thing keeping me safe, and I needed to cling to it if I had any chance of going home. 

So I kept them as traits in my mind: Loose Sleeves, with the easy grin and the shoulders of a fighter; Voice, who seemed to make the rules sound like scripture; Clipboard, the woman who moved like she had planned and rehearsed everything to perfection; and Tall One, who’d lured me here and subsequently shot at me.

Tall One was only a few steps behind me, close enough that I could see the heat of his aura in my peripheral vision. He moved with the kind of ease that made even the woods seem like a stage he had played on many times before. I was picking up on his methods - he never spoke unless he needed to, and when he did, his voice always remained level and controlled, like a hand being placed firmly on one’s shoulder. It was unnerving how calm he remained while the rest of my head hammered violently.

Loose Sleeves ambled up ahead, alongside Voice, cracking his knuckles as if to test their durability. He smelled faintly of sweat and something sharp - a cheap cologne with a bite. Every so often, he would cast a glance over his shoulder and his grin would split wider at the sight of me. I couldn’t help but notice he had the type of physique that made proximity feel dangerous - if whatever we were doing turned physical, he’d be the sort to close the distance in the blink of an eye. 

The path ahead of us swallowed the remaining light that spilled out from the cathedral, the darkness closing in like curtains. The air smelled of wet leaves, dirt, and something mustier that I couldn’t name, but it didn’t sit right with my senses. My heart beat thumped loudly in my chest, setting a cadence that continued to disrupt my racing thoughts. 

Tall One leaned closer, his breath ghosting across the side of my face, but he didn’t touch me. “Stay within ten feet of me,” he murmured softly. “If I tell you to drop, you drop. If I tell you to run, run toward me.”

By the time we reached the clearing at the edge of the woods, behind the cathedral’s plot of land, I could see a group of darkened figures standing about lazily - this must be what Loose Sleeves meant by “holding area”.

The clearing was larger than I had expected - an uneven stretch of ground bordered by skeletal trees and wild overgrowth. What used to be a garden, perhaps, long before the cathedral fell into chaos. Now it looked more like an open grave site.

Dozens of small lights hung from the low branches, their weak yellow glow doing little to push back against the emerging shadows. They lit the faces of others - many of which I didn’t recognize - standing in loose, anxious circles. They must be the “invitees”. They looked just like me - unsure, scared, and trying their best to put on their brave faces.

A few of them, though, chirped and chatted amongst themselves, boasting their excitement. I could hear soft murmurs along the lines of, “I can’t wait to get started,” and “this is going to be nuts,” and I couldn’t help but wish I felt the same.

I couldn’t fight the sinking feeling that overwhelmed my insides.

I squinted as I scanned their faces. Jake and Minji said they’d be here tonight, but I couldn’t make out which one they were. Some of the individuals were wearing masks, hats, or hoods just like me, doing their best to obscure their facial features to avoid any recognition, I’m sure. 

I knew they were here, I could feel it.

I had just hoped they didn’t recognize me. 

Once we approached, I watched cautiously as everyone except Tall One dispersed, seemingly locating the individuals they each chose as pairs. A soft hum rippled through the group as pairs moved, boots scraping against the stone and moss between us. Clipboard stood near the center of the clearing, her pair trailing closely behind her.

“Main players, verify your partners. Invitees, remain where you are.”

A few people shifted, uncertain, but none of them dared move too far from where they stood. The clearing fell quiet again, the only sound coming from the wind sliding through the branches and the sporadic inhales of fearful participants. 

I could feel Tall One’s presence looming closely behind me, his eyes burning holes into the back of my head as I stood as still as possible, keeping to myself.

“Sunghoon,” he whispered into my ear, brushing against the side of my shoulder. “Call me Sunghoon. The one holding the clipboard is Mina, the rough-looking one is Kai, and the quiet one is Jay,” he explained as he pointed at each of their figures, one by one, with lazy fingers.

Sunghoon.

Mina.

Kai.

Jay.

I repeated their names silently in my head, trying to match them with their movements. The names made them feel more real, and somehow that made everything a little bit worse.

Sunghoon didn’t move away from me when he finished speaking. His proximity carried a kind of quiet warning - I could sense it in the way the air seemed to warp slightly between us. It wasn’t  an outward threat, not exactly. More like a reminder that I was already in his orbit, and leaving wasn’t on the table.

Mina lifted her chin, scanning the dozens of individuals in the clearing. Her voice carried easily, smooth and unwavering as black strands of hair flew across her face. “Once your pair is confirmed, step to the outer tree line. Do not engage until the signal.”

The crowd began to split up. Groups of two formed along the tree line, murmuring amongst themselves, adjusting their positioning. Some nervously tugged at their belongings, while others jumped in place, channeling their adrenaline before the start of the event. The main players of each pair began pulling out their weapons of choice - many seemed to prefer sharper blades and close combat methods, while there were a few others like Mina and Sunghoon who preferred hitting their targets from a distance. 

I stood there, rooted to the earth beneath my sneakers. 

Sunghoon placed a steady hand on my shoulder, nudging me forward to the tree line. “There’s nothing you need to do,” he muttered, his voice low enough to be swallowed by the wind. He slipped the revolver out from his pocket and turned it over in his palm. The weak light from the moon caught the dull gleam of the metal - it was scuffed, years of wear, but well-kept. His thumb traced along the spine of the barrel, like he was re-acquainting himself with an old friend rather than a deadly weapon. “Just follow my lead,” he added, “and don’t stop running.”

I couldn’t tell if his words were meant to reassure me or warn me. Maybe both. Either way, it had the opposite effect - a cold rush of adrenaline flooded my veins, sharper than before. I could feel my stomach twist and turn, an unsettling feeling washing over me. 

I spotted Mina’s lingering eyes from across the crowd. For a second, her gaze was fixed on Sunghoon’s hand still resting on my shoulder, and something unreadable flickered across her face before her expression went flat, giving us her back. 

Jay was the one to break the silence this time, his tone sharp and commanding. “All pairs accounted for?”

A ripple of confirmation followed - a few people nodded, while others offered verbal affirmations, some even laughing too casually to themselves. 

“Then you know what comes next,” Jay continued, a slow grin crawling across his face. He tilted his head toward the line of trees looming in front of him. “Stay on the path until it disappears. After that, you’re on your own.”

The last of his words dissolved into the air, carried off by the breeze that shuffled through the trees. For a moment, the entire clearing seemed to hold its breath - as though the forest itself was listening. 

Before I could process Jay’s words, a deafening crack split the air above.

I flinched hard - instinctively ducking, just like I had in the cathedral - my pulse spiking as the echo thundered through the clearing. The sound seemed to roll through my ribs like a tremor. For a moment, I couldn’t tell where the sound had come from… until I turned.

Sunghoon stood beside me, his arm raised high into the sky, his revolver aimed up at the moon. Smoke curled lazily from the barrel, glowing faintly against the dark background. The sharp tang of gunpowder bit the back of my throat, but I didn’t have time to process. 

He didn’t say a single word.

The moment his arm dropped, he was already moving - fast. His boots kicked up moss and dirt as he sprinted into the line of trees without so much as a glance back, his dark jacket snapping behind him like a shadow had come alive. 

“Wait-!” The word tore out of me, half-choked, lost in the chaos that erupted from the clearing. Others were moving too now, sprinting into the mass of trees in front of us - running, shouting, scattering in every direction. The clearing exploded into motion, all order disintegrating in a single breath. The invitees took off as if their lives depended on it.

And maybe they did.

By the time I pushed through the first line of trees, Sunghoon was already several strides ahead, darting between the trunks with inhuman speed and precision. Branches clawed at my hoodie as I passed through, each breath burning a hole into my chest as I pumped faster. The subtle lights from the cathedral and the moonlight quickly faded, leaving us draped in overwhelming darkness. The only sound that guided me forward was the rhythmic crash of his footsteps and the fading echo of that single gunshot into the sky, still ringing in my ears.

Branches lashed at my arms and face as I stumbled through the darkness as quickly as I could, trying to keep up with the sound of Sunghoon’s boots ahead of me. Every few seconds, I caught a glimpse of him jumping between trees - the glint of the revolver in his hand, the pale flash of his face, and the unhurried way he moved through the chaos. 

There was a subtle difference between us at that exact moment. While I was running for my life, he was choosing where to go. 

The woods thickened quickly - the deeper we went, the louder every small crunch of leaves or the snap of a twig became. My breath came in rushed bursts, the back of my throat burning as I pumped my arms and legs harder just to keep within reach.

But the further into the woods I ran, the more I started feeling the presence of someone else running alongside me. I knew Sunghoon was up ahead of me - every few seconds, I could spot the shine of the revolver as he passed between trees and fallen branches. But I hadn’t caught sight of anyone else in the near vicinity of us.

Not yet, at least.

Something - or someone - was following me. 

At first, I thought maybe my mind was just playing tricks on me - after all, I was exerting a tremendous amount of adrenaline and slightly delirious from the way the night had unfolded - but the rhythm of those steps was too deliberate, too in sync with my own. Every time I slowed, their movements slowed too.

“Sunghoon,” I hissed through gritted teeth, casting glances on either side of me, but the darkness was too thick and I couldn’t see more than a foot in front of me. “There’s someone -”

Before I could choke out the last bit of my words, a rough hand clamped over my mouth, and my back collided roughly against the trunk of a tree. The impact knocked the air out of my lungs, a muffled groan escaping before it was swallowed up by the hand’s palm. 

Sunghoon.

He pressed in close, the weight of his body holding me in place against the tree. The cold and rugged bark pushed through the fabric of my hoodie, into my spine, and the faint smell of gunpowder and cigarettes filled my nostrils. His breath brushed the side of my face when he leaned in closer, his voice low and enough to blend in with a gust of wind. 

“Don’t move,” he whispered, the words barely audible against the crest of my ear. 

The revolver was already raised in his free hand, angled at the side of my temple towards the shadowed bushes beyond where I stood. I could feel the subtle shift of his muscles beneath his jacket as he steadied his aim, his heartbeat a quiet, unhurried rhythm against my chest. 

My heartbeat thrummed so loudly, I was convinced it was going to explode at any second. The pressure from his body up against my own left no room to think - too close, too firm, and far too purposeful. His warmth seeped through the thin barrier of my clothing, suffocating me as if my lungs were being crushed by his own two hands. 

A rational part of me screamed to pull away, to shove him off so I could breathe properly - but another part of me, a much smaller and curious part, couldn’t help but register the way he fit against me. The steady rhythm of his heartbeat thudded against my chest offered me some sense of grounding, while the ghost of his breath prickled the side of my neck and sent a pool of heat deep into my stomach. 

It wasn’t comfortable - not exactly, at least. 

His looming presence offered something far more dangerous than just ‘protection’ in that moment. It was the kind of closeness that blurred the lines between an outside threat and an internal one. 

That’s when I heard it - the sound that had caught both of our attention.

Footsteps, slow and measured. Crunching over dead leaves and gravel, their strides in deliberate pace. The kind of walk that belonged to someone who knew exactly what they were doing - a hunter by nature. 

Sunghoon’s hand tightened slightly over my parted lips, blocking any chance of fresh air I would be able to inhale, while his body turned stone cold and rigid. Through the darkness, I could see his gaze cut through the line of trees stationed behind me, the faint glint of his eyes betraying the calculation behind them. 

I could hear the steps growing louder and louder, until they suddenly stopped cold in their tracks. 

Seconds stretched until they no longer felt like seconds at all. 

And I couldn’t fight back against the heat swelling inside my body, a direct result of Sunghoon’s continued pressure against me. Despite how desperately I wanted to run far, far away from this game, this area, and this person, my curiosity was blazing inside of me to the point where it started to sizzle, burning me from the inside out. 

The silence was cut short yet again by a crack of a branch, the sound coming from the opposite direction. Sunghoon didn’t hesitate, not even for a breath. His grip tightened on me for a fleeting moment before he twisted at the waist, swinging his arm around and firing a shot into the darkness. 

The gunshot tore through the quiet like a scream. I jolted violently in his hold, the sound and the flash disorienting me so completely that I felt my knees buckle beneath my weight. His hand never left my mouth, catching the sharp gasp that tried to escape between the cracks of his fingers. The echo rippled through the trees, birds bursting from their perches overhead, and I instinctively squeezed my eyes shut tight to block out the world in front of me. 

My pulse was out of control, working overtime out of its own will. His lower body stayed pressed firmly against mine, holding me steady as the scent of gunpowder thickened in the air. My ear rang, and for a second I could only feel him - the solid press of the chest against mine, the measured rise and fall of his calm breathing, a sense of calmness I have never seen before in my life. 

“Easy,” he murmured as he twisted back to face me directly, leaning closer and closer. “We wouldn’t want to get caught by someone else, now would we, Sunoo?”

I didn’t need to look at him to know that his smile had grown, a malicious one slicing across his face wholly. But it was the way my name continued to roll off the tip of his tongue so naturally, as if it were the only name his lips were capable of uttering. 

I swallowed the thick lump forming at the back of my throat and inhaled through my nose before cracking open my eyes, just enough to peer up at Sunghoon’s face. His dark eyes bore down into me, as if looking beyond the disguise I so cleverly wore - or at least I had thought. Despite the darkness that surrounded him did little to hide the glisten that reflected back at me.

He was excited, for a reason I couldn’t fathom. 

We were hunting and being hunted by people he called his friends, and he was excited.