The High-Tiers // Monsta X

Chapter 22

Jooheon

I turned off my computer, relieved that my workday was finally over. The desk clock next to my monitor told me the disheartening news that I have been working overtime for two hours. My body began to protest the instant I stood up, and I walked out of the office with a growling stomach and aching shoulders.

My work might have been done, but my mind wouldn't let me rest. As I waited for the elevator to take me down, thoughts about breaking into VALER filled my head and twisted my empty stomach into knots.

We weren't just playing heroes anymore. This was real. I, a measly nobody librarian, along with a group of friends and two more people I barely knew, was going up against the country's largest technology and research organisation. And not by boring legal battles. But by breaking into their company building. Things that I thought only occurred in TV shows were happening right now, in real life. In my life.

And I was pretty sure I wasn't feeling anywhere near how the protagonists felt in the shows before their big mission. Nervous, yes. Doubtful, sure. Realistic characters had to have natural human emotions. But I wasn't just nervous or just doubtful. I was frightened beyond belief, which clashed aggressively with my determination to do something right. These two feelings didn't go well together, the conflict pulling me both ways so equally in strength that I was stuck immobilised in the middle.

Until someone pushed me from behind and we all charged forward, me following the group, right into VALER's doorstep.

I let my thoughts go for a minute and stared at the elevator doors, which hadn't opened even though I pressed the call button a while ago. Then I realised the button wasn't even lit, and it finally came to me that the elevators didn't operate at night. I hadn't had a night shift in a while and I was so out of it that it had slipped my mind.

With a sigh, I headed for the stairs round the corner of the hallway. I typed a message to Minhyuk as I walked to let him know I was returning home; a chore he made me do since the incident at the convention.

With my phone in one hand, I pushed open the door to the stairwell and entered the windowless vertical passage, fully expecting the sensors to detect my movement and switch on the lights. Instead, the door closed behind me and I plunged into darkness.

I waved my hands in the air arbitrarily in hopes that I would catch a working sensor amongst the old, rundown, unreliable bunch. Nothing happened. Squinting in the darkness, I realised I would have lost my feet on the narrow landing and rolled down the first flight of stairs if it wasn't for the faint bluish glow from my phone screen.

Feeling suddenly exhausted, I swiped on my phone to turn on the flashlight. It buzzed in my hands right then, a notification banner appearing on the top with a preview of Minhyuk's message.

Wait there. I'm coming to pick you up. It's very late.

I tapped onto the banner, forgetting about the flashlight so I could respond to Minhyuk and stop him before he could treat me like a five year old.

The keyboard clicks resounded in the narrow stairwell, the echoes making them sound eerily loud in my ears.

I'm not a child! Stay home and make me food instead.

Right before I hit send, I heard a soft ruffling, then a looming presence pressing up rapidly from behind.

There was no time for me to turn around. I felt something hard come in contact with the back of my brain, then I was plunged into darkness again. Except this time, it was a complete darkness that not only filled up my vision, but also took over my mind and senses.