𝕘𝕚𝕧𝕖𝕟-𝕥𝕒𝕜𝕖𝕟 | ᴇɴ-

𝟗

For a few moments, the only sound in the room is the flap flap flap of clothes. The laundry room is humid and hot at this time of the day and we're tired. The sun illuminates everything through the small windows as the sky turns orange. Sweat gathers at my forehead, giving me an unnerving sense of déjà vu.

"What did the Mistress tell you the other day at breakfast?" Rui asks me.

I glance over at Heeseung-hyung at the other side of the room. It's just us three and another small boy. We come here every day near dusk for our duties.

"Not much. She was asking about our hyung's headache."

"Oh, are you alright?" he asks him now.

"Yeah, I'm feeling much better," Heeseung-hyung tells him. I read his face to try to figure out if he's lying, but I don't think he is.

"Sorry if I'm intruding. It's just that she asked us to look after you when you arrived."

"She talked to you when we got here?" I ask him.

"Yup! She summons us to her office sometimes. Usually when something big happens."

"I thought her office was off limits."

"It usually is," the other boy says, speaking for the first time. He hangs a towel on the clothesline. "But anyone can see what goes on in there."

He and Rui share a look.

"So long as you don't get caught," adds the latter mischievously.

"What do mean?" Heeseung-hyung asks. He has a pair of pants on his hands that he's supposed to be washing.

"All the boys here know," the small boy says casually with a shrug. "If you walk down the hallway and lean in the right way, you can hear what goes on inside the office. Her schedules are always the same, too, so it's easy to tell when the office will be unguarded. And picking locks isn't hard to do."

"But don't tell any of the maids. They don't know we sometimes eavesdrop on their conversations," Rui warns us.

"What do they say?" I ask, intrigued now.

"Most of the time it's boring stuff about supplies and the week's menu, but sometimes there is talk about more interesting things."

"Yeah, like when they took away the other boy."

"There was another boy?" I almost drop the bottle of soap I'm carrying.

"Yes, it was huge deal," Rui tells us. "The Mistress even summoned us to her office to talk to us about it. She told us that he had been very sick and was taken to another place where he would be better taken care of. It made sense because he had been locked up in one of the individual rooms for some days due to a fever or something."

I flinch when he says that. A fever. Could it be...? I tell myself not to overthink it.

"But she lied," the other boy says. "We heard when she talked to the maids. The boy wasn't taken away to be cured, he was expelled."

"Can they do that?" Heeseung-hyung puts down the pants in his hand, giving up on the task. "Force someone out of here?"

"It had never happened before," Rui answers. "I don't think the Mistress would send someone away without a good reason. I mean, she is strict with us and keeps a close eye on all of us, but it's for our own good, she says. She would never treat one of the boys unfairly."

I put the bottle of soap back in its shelf before asking, "Do you know why the boy was expelled?"

The small boy hesitates for a moment, taking his time to fix the towels hanging from the clothesline.

"I'm not sure, but one of the boys did hear something odd. Something about the boy being a lost cause, but not exactly because of an illness. I think her words were: 'there was no saving the boy from it'."

There is silence after that, and once again the sound is of clothes and our own breathing. Not much can be said after such a thing. After what it implies.

We focus on our duties while deep in thought. The Mistress lied to these boys, and got one expelled. If I am objective about it, I would say she did it to protect them. After all, she has been entrusted with the lives of young boys and it's her duty to care for them. That leads to complicated decisions sometimes. But something about it doesn't sit well with me. People lie because they don't like what the truth sounds like, so what was she hiding?

The boy was a lost cause.

There was no saving him from it.

Would that mean that the Mistress got rid of him? Why? What will she do if she learns about us? Or was she actually trying to help the boy but realised that he was beyond saving? Could it be the boy was never actually sick? And what is it?

My head spins. I don't have answers to any of these questions. Besides, I have more pressing matters than what happened years ago. Something dark is coming back for the seven of us, and the maids may be in on it. I need to find out what they know first. With what these boys have told me, there may be means to get what I want without getting caught.

"Hey, by the way," Rui walks next to me while the others are busy with their different duties, "how is Jake-hyung?"

I stare at him. "He's alright, why?"

"Oh, just," he waves his hand dismissively. "I was a bit worried when he passed out in the courtyard the other day, even though he claimed he was fine."

"He— what?!"

Heeseung-hyung and the other boy turn to us at my outburst.

"I thought he told you," he tells me and Heeseung-hyung.

"Tell us what?" our hyung asks him.

"Jake fainted," I answer him. We look at each other for a few moments and I try to communicate what I'm thinking without rising more suspicions about us. We can't speak with the other boys listening. Not now that I know they're keeping an eye on us for the Mistress.

We turn back to our separate work but the thought keeps circling in my head: if Sunghoon and Jake are keeping secrets, nothing stops the rest from doing it too.