Seungmin had always been the one to find new and exciting things. Whether it was a hidden café, an interesting game, or the latest thrill, he had a way of discovering the unexpected. So, when he stumbled upon an advertisement for a new, immersive escape room, he couldn’t resist sharing it with Felix.
Felix, who loved puzzles and challenges just as much as Seungmin, had immediately agreed to join in on the adventure. The advertisement boasted an immersive experience like no other—one that would test their wits and strength. The promise of a real challenge had excited both of them.
“Seungmin, you sure about this one?” Felix asked as they entered the dimly lit lobby of the escape room building. The walls were adorned with eerie symbols, and the air had an unnatural chill to it. It felt almost too real, but Seungmin wasn’t backing down.
“It’s just an escape room, Lix-yaa. Don’t tell me you’re scared now,” Seungmin teased, nudging Felix lightly.
Felix chuckled nervously, adjusting his jacket. “Not scared. Just… I don’t know. This place gives me weird vibes.”
“You’re just overthinking,” Seungmin assured him with a grin. “It’ll be fun.”
After a brief introduction and a strange warning from the host, they were led to a room in the back, where the challenge would begin. The door locked behind them with an audible click, and the dim lighting faded to near darkness. Only a few candles flickered in the corners, casting long shadows across the walls.
A voice, mechanical and cold, came from an unseen speaker.
“Your task begins now. Escape if you can.”
Seungmin and Felix exchanged uneasy glances. They quickly turned their attention to the room. It was filled with strange objects: mirrors that seemed to distort their reflections, symbols carved into the walls, and hidden doors that looked like they might lead to somewhere... or nowhere. It felt more like a maze than an escape room.
“Okay,” Seungmin said, shaking off the uneasy feeling. “Let’s focus. We’ve done these before, we can do this.”
They began examining their surroundings, searching for clues to unlock the next part of the puzzle. But no matter what they tried, nothing seemed to work. The mirrors twisted their perspectives, the symbols on the wall seemed to shift when they weren’t looking, and the rooms didn’t follow any logical order.
Suddenly, the room started to distort. The walls closed in, narrowing the space around them. The lights flickered, and the temperature dropped. Felix’s breath became visible in the cold air, and his heart raced.
“Seungmin… What is going on?” Felix whispered, his voice trembling.
Seungmin was also starting to feel the effects. He took a deep breath, trying to stay calm. “I… I don’t know. This isn’t part of the game.”
But before they could react, a loud creaking sound echoed throughout the room, followed by a door opening on the far side. The light from the candles flickered out, and the room plunged into darkness.
Felix grabbed Seungmin’s arm, panic setting in. “Seungmin! We need to get out. This isn’t right. This isn’t just a game anymore!”
“Stay calm!” Seungmin urged, his voice barely above a whisper as he tried to make out any figures in the blackness. They both reached for the door, but as soon as they touched the handle, it disappeared, replaced by a solid wall. A soft, unnerving chuckle echoed in the distance.
The maze had become more than a game. It was a trap, one they couldn’t escape from. As they stumbled through the twisting corridors, they felt like they were walking in circles. Each time they thought they had found an exit, the walls shifted, turning the room into a labyrinth with no end in sight.
“I can’t—” Felix started, his voice choked with fear. “I can’t do this anymore…”
But Seungmin, ever the problem-solver, refused to give up. He continued searching for a way out, but the more they explored, the more the maze began to consume them. The air became thick, their breaths shallow, and the shadows seemed to follow them, whispering dark secrets they didn’t want to know.
As they rounded another corner, the world around them seemed to bend, the maze distorting further, taking on an otherworldly quality. The walls pulsated with an eerie glow, and the ground beneath their feet felt as though it was shifting. The atmosphere thickened with tension, and a low hum vibrated in the air.
Then, with a sudden shift in the space around them, everything went black.
Seungmin and Felix stood frozen for a moment. The maze, the lights, the walls—all vanished in an instant. They blinked in the darkness, trying to make sense of the new space. The eerie quiet was deafening. The cold that had once made their breath visible was now gone, replaced by an unsettling stillness. Felix reached out, but there was nothing around them to hold onto.
“Felix,” Seungmin whispered, his voice trembling despite his attempt to stay calm. He turned to look at his friend, trying to steady his own pulse. “Felix, are you okay?”
Felix stood beside him, but his eyes were wide with panic. His breath quickened. “I… I don’t know, Seungmin. Where are we? What happened?”
Seungmin couldn’t answer. He didn’t know either. This place didn’t feel real, but it didn’t feel like a dream either. The cold, hard truth was clear: they weren’t in the escape room anymore.
“Just… stay calm, okay? We’ll figure this out,” Seungmin said, although his own heart was pounding in his chest. His logical side wanted to hold it together for Felix, but it was difficult when the world around them felt like it had shifted into a strange dimension.
They stood there for a few moments, just breathing in the silence, each lost in their own thoughts.
“Seungmin… I’m scared,” Felix admitted, his voice shaking. He gripped Seungmin’s sleeve tightly, unwilling to let go.
“Hey,” Seungmin replied softly, placing a reassuring hand on Felix’s shoulder. “I’m scared too. But we’re in this together, okay?”
Felix nodded, trying to take comfort from Seungmin’s calmness, though his own fear was hard to shake off.
They began walking, unsure of where to go but needing to move, to do something to break the paralyzing uncertainty. The ground beneath their feet felt solid but slightly uneven, like walking on a surface that might crack at any moment.
After what felt like an eternity of aimless wandering, a strange sensation washed over them. The space around them flickered—like a TV screen with bad reception, the image distorting, then snapping back into place. The sudden change made them both jump, and they froze in place, staring at the flickering scene before them.
"Did you see that?" Felix whispered, his eyes wide, glancing at Seungmin for confirmation.
Seungmin nodded, gripping Felix’s arm tightly. “Yeah, something’s definitely off here. This isn’t just... random.”
The world around them continued to flicker, flashing in and out of focus. For a split second, everything was perfectly still—then, with a harsh flicker, it all changed again. The landscape shifted, showing a long, dimly lit road stretching out into the distance. It felt as though they were looking through a distorted lens, and they could barely make out shapes in the distance.
For a moment, there was nothing. Just flickering, strange static.
Then, suddenly, they saw figures. Three of them, far off in the distance. They were moving—shadows against the backdrop of the distorted space. Seungmin squinted, trying to make out who they were. Felix’s breath caught in his throat as he looked towards them.
“Seungmin... are those... are those people?” Felix asked, his voice barely above a whisper.
“I think so,” Seungmin replied, the anxiety creeping into his voice. “But I can’t tell who they are.”
They watched the figures for a moment longer as the flickering intensified. The figures seemed to shift in and out of focus, and the road stretched even further, making it seem like they would never reach them.
Seungmin felt his heart race as he took a step forward. “We have to go. They might be able to help us.”
Felix nodded, swallowing his fear, and they started running. The flickering became more intense with each step they took, the world warping even more. As they neared the figures, their faces became clearer—but still not quite right. The distorted flicker made it difficult to tell exactly who they were.
Then, in a split second, the figures stopped moving. It was as if they had noticed Seungmin and Felix coming toward them. The space around them seemed to freeze for a moment.
Felix’s voice wavered as he called out, “Hey! We’re over here!”
But the figures didn’t respond immediately. The distortion made it hard for them to be sure.
“Are those… Hyunjin, Bangchan Hyung… and Seo Changbin?” Seungmin asked, his voice filled with disbelief. It was hard to be sure when everything around them kept shifting.
As they got closer, the figures slowly became clearer. The distorted flicker faded slightly, revealing the familiar faces of Hyunjin, Bangchan, and the unconscious Changbin lying at their feet.
“Seungmin... Felix...” Hyunjin’s voice was faint, almost as if he, too, was struggling to make sense of the situation. His hand reached out toward them, but the flickering had made everything so hard to process.
“They really are them,” Felix murmured in relief, running faster towards Hyunjin and Bangchan. “Hyunjin! Chan Hyung!”
The moment they crossed the last stretch of road, the space flickered again, almost as if to remind them that they weren’t out of danger yet. They stopped a few steps away from Hyunjin and Bangchan, now sure that the figures in front of them were the people they knew.
But even as Seungmin and Felix stood in front of them, Hyunjin and Bangchan were frozen, staring back with wide eyes, still unsure of what to make of their presence.
"Felix? Seungmin?" Bangchan's voice was filled with disbelief as he slowly stood up, his gaze flickering between the two new arrivals and the unconscious Changbin.
“What happened?” Felix asked, his voice soft but full of urgency. “Where are we?”
Hyunjin shook his head, visibly shaken. “I don’t know. This place... it’s... it’s not real, is it?”
Seungmin looked around, his eyes scanning the empty, flickering space. “No, I don’t think so. This… This is something else.”
As the flickers grew more intense, the air thickened with tension. Every movement felt sluggish, like they were being pulled in multiple directions at once. The uncertainty was suffocating.
“We need to get out of here,” Seungmin said, gripping Felix’s arm tightly. “We don’t belong here.”
But before they could make a plan, the space flickered again—this time, longer and more violently. The world around them became a distorted blur, their thoughts disjointed.
***
As the flickering light overwhelmed them, everything went black again.
Changbin's eyes snapped open. The familiar weight of his body felt strange, and his surroundings were disorienting. He could barely comprehend what was happening as he struggled to sit up. His head throbbed, and his vision swam as if the world was made of smoke and shadows.
He blinked rapidly, trying to make sense of the scene in front of him.
Felix, Bangchan, Hyunjin, and Seungmin were lying unconscious on the ground around him. Their faces were pale, their bodies unmoving. Changbin’s breath caught in his throat as panic rose in his chest.
“What—what happened?!” His voice was barely a whisper, but the fear in it was unmistakable. He tried to move, but his limbs felt heavy, sluggish, as if the air around him had thickened.
He reached out, trying to shake Seungmin awake, but the flickering light around them only made everything harder to see, harder to touch.
“Wake up! Please, wake up!” Changbin’s voice cracked with desperation.
But no one stirred.
His panic reached a peak, and he frantically looked around, hoping for some sign, anything to explain this nightmare. But the only thing that greeted him was the eerie, ever-changing flicker of the space around them, the strange, oppressive silence that seemed to close in.
With no time to waste, Changbin moved from one friend to the next, trying to find a way to help them, to wake them up. The sense of dread in his chest grew, and he didn’t know how much longer they could survive in this place, or what it even was.
As he tried to rouse them again, the space flickered violently, and the world around them seemed to distort even further, growing darker, more chaotic.
Everything went black once more.
Aksara