GAME RULES ━ ATEEZ

07.

A/N: this chapter is YUCK beware squeamish friends 

Jongho peeled his dry eyes open in a place that was not Fairblood Manor. 

The room he was in smelled moldy, only illuminated by light coming in streams around a single door. 

When Jongho stumbled to his feet, he nearly toppled right over again, tripping on something in front of him. He knelt to feel out what it was and made out--stiff leather, polyester string, hard rubber--a pair of shoes? He held them up to the meager light emanating from the doorway. 

Cream and yellow, Nike, size 10. There were Mingi's favorite shoes. 

On the left--checkered Vans, size 8. The shoes Yunho was wearing when he disappeared.

In between Yunho and Mingi--a pair of black converse, size 7, which he recognized as Seonghwa's. Finally--his own? 

He stumbled over to the pair of stiff leather boots, size 7, with his name carved into the sole. He did that three days ago. 

Yunho disappeared yesterday morning. Jongho disappeared this morning. Yunho's shoes were first, his were last--

They were down here. They were all taken, brought to wherever this was. 

Jongho felt a pang in his chest. Wooyoung, San, and Yeosang, probably searching high and low for the four of them. Hongjoong, scared and missing Seonghwa and blaming himself, thinking they were dead. 

Maybe they were. Jongho didn't know. 

What he did know, however, was he was going to find Seonghwa, and Mingi, and Yunho, and he was going to find a way to get the hell out of here. He would fight, tooth and nail. 

This was his game now, and he was going to win. 

——

Seonghwa woke up in a room that stank of metal. 

It was tangy and burned his nostrils. He could barely see, the only light was a weak brightness emanating from the two doorways in front of him. 

Seonghwa was curled against the far wall, opposite the doorway. His clothes were dry, but he was missing his shoes. His socks were soaked where they were pressed against the cement floor. 

Seonghwa used the wall to pull himself to a standing position. He could feel liquid squelching beneath his feet, soaking his cotton socks and sticking between his toes. It was too thick and dark to be water. 

As he got closer to the center of the room, the smell got stronger. Seonghwa had to hold his nose to keep himself from retching. He was too caught up in the awful odor to watch where he was going.

He tripped over something long and denim-clad. He landed on top of something else with a crunch. 

His face landed into something cottony and soaked to the bone. The smell was putrid now, malodorous, and right in front of his face. He could feel bile pooling in his throat. 

He coughed and rolled off of whatever he had landed on. He was soaked in the thick, foul liquid. He felt himself gag heavily, blood rushing to his head, and he landed heavily on his side. 

He was now face-to-face with two pairs of socked feet. 

Feet. Just feet? That's odd. 

The pair on the right were clad in black cotton, a white Nike logo stark against its dark surroundings. The other pair were light grey, with three stripes across the calf.

He had seen those socks before. He saw the grey pair last night, sticking out from a white comforter, right next to a pair of dark denim jeans. That was when he stuck his head into Mingi's doorway and said good night, receiving silence in return. Seonghwa remembered closing the door before going downstairs, deciding to check on his friend in the morning. 

The black pair he last saw yesterday morning. He couldn't remember where.

Oh, that's right. He remembered seeing them, stark against the cream-colored carpet in the jacuzzi room. He remembered watching them disappear into frothing, navy and black water, right behind a head of mint hair. 

He had seen those socks before. He knew who they belonged to. Which means Seonghwa, soaked in thick liquid, had landed on--

The realization hit him like a wall. No. No, no, no, no--

Seonghwa was going to be sick. He was sick. He puked up everything inside him in the doorway. 

And even when bile stopped coming, when his mouth burned acridly, he continued to dry heave, hyperventilate. He was paralyzed. He couldn't move. 

Seonghwa couldn't move. He couldn't make himself stand up. He was too dizzy. He crawled and stumbled as fast as he could to the far side of the room, urgency filling his bones--he couldn't inhale; his lungs were too heavy with dread, skin heavy with this thick, sticky liquid--

Tears were streaming down his face. He was hiccuping. He could feel the non-existent bile coming up again as he ran his fingers across--

A face. Two faces. Linked hands. Mint hair, soaked in red. Blood pooling from holes in two abdomens. 

The sound that erupted from Seonghwa's chest was vile, loud, paralyzing. Seonghwa felt his blood curdle in his veins as he fell onto his side, pressing his hands to his ears, knees to his chest. His shrieks wouldn't stop until suddenly they got stuck in his throat, and then he was just hiccuping, scraping sounds coming from the back of his throat. 

He lay there, between the two dead bodies of his best friends, and prayed to the universe that he would be next.