In the midst of the busy morning, Haneul stood in front of her office window, looking down at the early traffic with a piece of paper in her hands. Her expression complex as she read through the content repeatedly before letting out a deep sigh. Her moment of stress was briefly interrupted as the door cracked open with a tired Hyunwoo.
"What do you want? Why'd you call me in so early," Hyunwoo yawned excessively.
"Well, we have a problem. Do you remember the tail from a few weeks ago?"
"Yeah, what about him?"
"Mii went through his phone after he left as a security check and there was a few messages about Kang Seojun."
"But he said he was instructed to follow Yuu."
"…He might've been, but that's because Yuu was with Seojun."
"Why would his target be Kang Seojun? He just joined."
"That's exactly why, Kang Seojun isn't as integrated into the system as the rest of you..."She murmured. Suddenly a look of distress fell on her face, "Hyunwoo, when's the last time you spoke to Seojun?"
"Last night. Well I messaged him this morning but he hasn't even seen it yet," he frowned.
"Does he usually reply by now?"
"Yeah, why?"
"…You need to go look for him. He might be in danger."
"I'll get Kei—"
"No," Haneul quickly interrupted, "you can't. We don't have time if it's him."
"What are you talking about?"
She looked away and bit her lips, hesitant to reply.
"Who is it?"
"…It's the researcher. So you can't take Kei with y—"
Before she could even finish, he was already out the door, complete distrust in the time the elevator would take with his heartbeat and anxiety drowning out the pain in his palm from forcing the fire escape door open. The stairs growing seemingly endless the further down he went, as if he's heading through an abyss designed just for him.
"Lu," Haneul called.
"Yes?"
"Go with him, I'll get Mii to track Seojun's phone and access the cameras around his house to see if we can find him on our end. Knowing that guy.. he would've hid himself in a stupid place."
"Yes boss."
He didn't know how long it took for him to gain consciousness again but when his eyes adjusted, Seojun was faced with a hazy vision of a man stood on the other side of the room and constraints on his wrists. With long black hair sat tucked into the white lab coat that drooped over his short body, there was a peculiar smell coming from him; something that hit the nose as clean at first, but left an unpleasant lingering aftertaste. If that wasn't distinguishable enough, he also had a scar slashed across his left eye. Though it didn't seem like the kind left by a knife.
"Hm.. let's see here, oh, here you are. Kang Seojun, right?" A grating voice was paired with his thin lips that moved as he stopped swiping on a tablet.
"No." Seojun replied calmly.
The guy looked up from the screen, his face scrunching up as he scoffed. A condescending tone carried his reply of boredom, "do you think you're in a place to joke?"
He shook his head, "no, but you've got the wrong person."
The researcher dropped down to his eye level and shoved the screen in his face. "Right, wrong person. Sure. Do you think I'm dumb?"
Well, I guess we'll see.
"I get what you're thinking but I'm really not him. I get mistaken as other people a lot because of how ordinary I look."
"Ordinary.." He muttered then gritted his teeth and whispered in an abnormally low voice. "Those eyes are anything but ordinary."
He abruptly stood up and dropped the tablet on the floor, far enough Seojun couldn't reach it. The guy walked back a few steps, towards where a few test tubes sat in their rack on a worn down wooden table, each containing a white cloudy liquid. Whilst his back was turned, Seojun quickly scanned around the room, looking for a distraction, a way out or something he could use to untie himself, just anything that can help. But there was nothing, quite literally. The room was as empty as it can be like it was almost fake. The only thing that might do something were the test tubes. Unfortunately, he couldn't tell what it was that was in them just on appearance alone, and striking a conversation to figure it out would be too obvious of a move. Then his eyes shifted as the guy turned around, the tip of the object he's holding reflecting the one light on the ceiling; a syringe. Seojun felt a sense of comfortlessness creep up on him. The needle looked like it was 1.5 inches long, enough to ensure an intramuscular injection. In the syringe itself contained a pale red liquid, which he didn't know the origin of.
…I'm starting to think I should pay more attention in my lectures.
In such a situation, funnily enough, that was the only thing that came to mind to calm him. As footsteps slowly approached him, he decided trying the textbook definition of stalling someone would be better than to just freeze up and show this kind of person you're scared.
"Did you kidnap me to run some sort of experiment?"
He paused, "yeah. So what?"
"Cliché... Why?"
"Because why not?"
"No, I mean why me? I saw my profile on the tablet, if you know that much about me then can you tell me the specific reason that made you kidnap me?"
Please… someone… Hurry up.
The guy looked at him funny then laughed sarcastically, "oh I see, you're trying to stall me. But it's useless. No one will find this place, it doesn't even really exist." He gave the needle a small flick, staring at it with uncontrollable excitement, "you want a reason I took you? Because you're a weak link. I wanted him but that was impossible…" He grinded his teeth together, the look of eagerness fading from his eyes instantly. "So I had to settle. But that's fine, if this can work on you, I'm sure I can get it to work on him eventually."
Seojun narrowed his eyes, "who's him?"
"Ha! As if I'd tell you! But I am willing to tell you what this will do, after all, you're a med student, so I'm sure you're curious."
Who would want to be explained how they'll die?
Despite cursing out a storm in his head, Seojun kept a poker face on and didn't give in to the researcher's tactic, but that only seem to have made him madder.
"Fuck! Don't you want to know!?" In the sudden outburst of anger, he dropped the syringe on the floor, completely forgetting it was in his grasps to start with as he hastily bit his nails and muttered, "fuck, fuck… No one ever cares about my discoveries…" Then his eyes sharply turned to Seojun, he stopped what he was doing and bent down to pick the syringe up again, remembering his goal just as quickly as he'd lost it. "No.. If I get this to work, I can finally beat him…"
Uh oh…
The footsteps rapidly moved towards him this time, echoing peculiarly loud as they hit the hard concrete floor. Though he didn't want to, Seojun kept his eyes on the man, making full eye contact all whilst attempting to stay calm.
It's fine... Panicking will just get him more eager…
He didn't know why but anxiety took over the other again. With the needle still in his hands, he grabbed a handful of his own hair and started pulling at them, pure horrifying desperation on his face as he yelled at Seojun, "stop it! Stop looking at me with those eyes! Why aren't you scared? You should be scared! You're just like him.. Fuck! Stop!"
God, talk about unstable– ah.
The tip of the needle was right in front of him, blocking the entirety of his right visual field.
"Fuck.. where is he..."
Hyunwoo glanced around nervously, his grip on the phone in his hand tightening like he's scared it'll slip from his grasp. Despite the gps showing signals for Kang Seojun's phone in the spot he's stood, there was nothing there. The fear of losing something growing stronger the more he stood there helplessly.
"Mister Hyunwoo."
His head shot in the direction of Lu's voice who had appeared behind him in no time or effort, but there was no room in his mind to think about anything other than Seojun right now, and that, may have been what was slowing him down.
"Please look up there," he pointed to a small white cube floating in the air way above them that stood out from the grey-ish skies. Soon after, his ability activated consecutively as he teleported up in the air and seized the surprisingly heavy object.
With the quick glow of red in Hyunwoo's eyes as confirmation of life inside, they both looked at each other in contemplation before Lu decided to drop it on the ground.
"Hey, careful--"
A black light wrapped around them as it collided against the earth, by the time either of them could see again, they were faced with the dark corridor that held the unseen passageway to Kang Seojun.