You Can Paint Me

Chapter 42 (Part 3)

Not a second passed, after Chan connected the purple cable to the spot F2, and the flickering lights turned completely off.

"Ah, great. Does this person, who created this escape room, have a fetish with keeping the lights off or what?" a small groan escaped my lips as I burried my face in my hands in frustration. Chan sighed tiredly, seemingly agreeing with my statement. We have had enough of darkness in the previous rooms, couldn't they have chosen a different punishement than this?

"I mean, this is better than a ghost appearing out of the blue, right?" the boy next to me tried to be optimistic. "Could you turn on the flashlight on your phone, though?" he asked and I nodded, only to realise right after, that he couldn't see me due to the lack of lighting. Nevertrheless, I grabbed my phone from the pocket of my jeans and did as he requested. Squinting our eyes to adjust at the sudden source of light, we fixated our attention to the ticking box, yet again. "I'll plug the red one in the F2." he said, but my brows furrowed.

"Why? We have plugged the purple one there." I couldn't understand his point. He shrugged his shoulders and took the red cable in his hands. "Because that's what I originally wanted to do, before you told be to switch it with the purple one. I don't know. I just have a feeling." he explained, but still, he wasn't making any sense. I just shrugged my shoulders and went with the flow. It wasn't like we had a better option. Unless we have a manual, we can experiment with everything, I guess. 

And so, Chan cautiously unplugged the purple cable and placed the red one in its place, looking around the dark room for the outcome. Indeed, a small light bulb, with green colour and the word 'Exit' on it, lit up from across the room. It wasn't much of a help, but nonetheless, it wasn't a punishent either. However, the victorious smile on Chan's lips, was enough for me to inaudibly groan. Seems like his sixth sense was right... Now he's not going to stop bragging about it. "See, shortcake?" he teased, proudly straightening his back as if he had acomplished an inhuman task.

"Yeah, I see... Gotta make red my favourite colour, then." I said monotonously and Chan lightly giggled. I couldn't believe that his little intuition actually came true. Let's just hope that he's not going to brag about it for the rest of his life. "Now, I'll plug the green one to the spot A6." he searched approval in my eyes, but I just shrugged my shoulders, this time not stating my opinion. I've hurt my pride enough, when I told him to do as I said and things didn't turn out well. So, I think it's better if I just stay silent and let him do whatever he pleases. "Don't you have any suggestions?" the boy questioned, once he noticed that I wasn't going to complain about his choice of actions.

"No, I trust you." I shook my head with a bored expression. It was more like, I wasn't trusting myself with this task, but you could say that I was actually starting to trust him more. It was obvious, that the smuggest little smile streched on Chan's plump lips, smiling to himself like a little kid. "You trust me?" he giggled to himself, but when he saw me glaring at him, he awkwardly cleared his throat. "I mean, we had to come under the circumastances of a ticking bomb for you to trust me, but that's great." he gave me a thumbs up and I tried my best not to laugh, because I knew he was right about that. Seems like, I had to be in a life or death situation to trust him after all, since it's not easy to depend yourself on a person that loves to tease and annoy the life out of you.

"Yeah, yeah. Whatever. Plug the cable now, so we can get it over with." I shoved his smiling face away from mine, so he could focus on the task rather than me. It wasn't like I didn't like this attention he was giving me, but I'd rather have him teasing me on a broad daylight than this dump and dark hole we were in. This room was way too uncomortable for my own good and I was dying to escape as soon as possible. My hair was getting all frizzy from the humidity and I was also starting to feel a little cold too. While I was occupied criticising the awful atmosphere we were in, Chan had already started to get in to action. I wasn't really paying attention to what he was doing, but then a loud, petrifying scream echoed in the whole room out of the blue and it was enough to snap me out of my thoughts.