paranoia / gyuricky

14: rewind

Sitting in a cafe across from Gyuvin and Ricky was Zhang Hao, the one they found who survived the witch's curse. He looked to be in his late twenties, which Gyuvin wasn't expecting, but supposed it made sense due to the timeline of events.

"So," Hao starts, taking a sip from his steaming mug of coffee. "You wanna know what happened to me, right?"

Gyuvin nodded, already thrilled by the presence of the Zhang Hao in front of him. "Yes please," he said, beaming. "How'd you manage to survive the witch?"

"Well, I'll tell you now, it wasn't easy at all."

— 2011 , Camp Planet Massacre

"Nurse Jang just fucking attacked Yunseo!"

Hao turns around in surprise, locking eyes with Seungeon, whose hair was stuck to his sweaty forehead as if he had been running, the cabin door wide open behind him. "What?" he asked, concern written all over his face. "Is he okay?"

Seungeon nodded, shutting the door behind him before plopping down on the bed closest to him. "Yeah, he managed to fight her off for the most part, but he's still being treated by Nurse Lee."

"Holy fuck," Keita chimed in, poking his head out from the top bunk, causing Seungeon to let out a laugh. "Isn't Nurse Jang the witch girlie's mom?"

"Who? Jang Eunbi?" asked Junhyeon, rapidly sitting up from how he'd been lying on the hardwood floor. "Really?"

Sighing in response, Seungeon ran a hand through his hair, leaning on a nearby wall to catch his breath. "Can you guys stop with all the witch shit?"

"That's what I'm saying," Hao agreed with a nod. "You've been talking about her ever since we got here."

Keita frowned, biting his lip. "But why else would she attack Yunseo? She's a fucking nurse."

"Oh!" Junhyeon exclaimed, leaping to his feet. "Let's go look for evidence!"

Seungeon raised an eyebrow. "Where?"

"Her office!"

Hao suddenly felt uneasy, his stomach churning at the idea. While it was true that he didn't believe in the witch, there was still something inside him that told him not to get involved with anything that was said to be paranormal. "We shouldn't be doing that," Hao said. "That's her personal space."

Despite his protests, Hao found himself standing in the middle of Nurse Jang's infirmary, sifting through her things. He comes across a journal or diary of some sort, and he curiously opens it to have a look.

The contents inside might've given Hao a heart attack if he was any older.

Keita, peering over Hao's shoulder, got a good look at the pages of the diary. "Holy shit," he exclaimed under his breath. "She actually was possessed by the fucking witch."

The diary depicted countless nonsensical sentences paired with poorly drawn illustrations that seemed to tell the story of Jo Hayoon, who made a deal with the devil by cutting her hand off on Satan's stone, thereby earning eternal life.

With the diary now in Junhyeon's hands, he quickly looked through the pages, eventually landing on what looked like a map. "No way," he gasps. "It leads to her house," Junhyeon said, looking up at his friends with wide eyes.

"Nope," Seungeon immediately says. "I'm not going to a damn witch's house. It's dark outside."

"Why do you suddenly believe in the witch?" Hao questioned, raising an eyebrow at how apprehensive Seungeon became.

"I don't," he clarified, "but imagine how old and worn-down that place is. We could be attacked by a hobo or an animal with rabies."

Seungeon's words seemed to strike fear into Junhyeon, as the latter now also appeared to be fairly terrified. "Or a hobo with rabies!" he adds, clinging to Seungeon's arm.

"Or a hobo with rabies," Seungeon echoed quietly with a sigh of annoyance.

A walk back to the cabin to grab essentials ensued, however, a sudden noise had Hao stopping, grabbing Keita's shoulder to get him to stop as well. "Do you hear that?"

Everyone else stopped in their tracks, silence taking over. The sound of shuffling in the grass had been growing louder, seemingly approaching the group. Keita, with his extremely small phone, faced the screen toward where he thought the sound was coming from.

"Oh my god," exclaimed Junhyeon once his eyes finally met Yunseo's and not the ones of a witch. "What the fuck are you doing?"

Yunseo fearfully stared at the group with wide eyes, his gaze eventually softening once he realized it was only his friends. "Nurse Lee just let me go. What are you doing?"

"We're going to a witch's house or whatever because apparently Nurse Jang was possessed when she attacked you," Hao explained, a tinge of annoyance lingering in the back of his throat.

Yunseo barely had time to process what was happening before he was suddenly dragged along on the walk to Jo Hayoon's house. It wasn't far by any means, however, its location did have to make the group pass the camp's boundaries.

At first, Hao had no intention of walking over any boundaries, but there wasn't exactly a choice. He either had to walk back to camp by himself in the middle of the night, or continue the painful walk to Jo Hayoon's house.

Hao obviously chose the latter, as he found himself standing in complete awe in front of the house; he found it miraculous that it managed to stay up for over three hundred years.

Clearly, the house was extremely old; the conditions were not up to par with Hao's germaphobic personality. He stood in the corner, watching with awe how his friends did not seem to mind the thick layers of dust coating every corner of the house—he wanted to throw up.

The door slams open, with Junhyeon appearing, clearly frightened by whatever he might've seen. He had taken it upon himself to explore the outside of the house alone, ignoring the protests from Hao and a majority of their friend group. "You guys will not believe what I fucking saw!"

"If you're hiding a rat or—whatever—behind the door, I'm going to beat the shit out of you with it," Seungeon threatened, extremely annoyed by the excursion he never wanted to go on to begin with.

"No!" Junhyeon denied, sticking his hands up in defence, showing that he hadn't picked anything up despite the amount of dirt that seemed to cover them at that point. "I'm being serious, man. Just come look!"

And so, Hao was standing outside Jo Hayoon's house, staring at... many, many holes in the ground. A normal person (which he liked to think was him, and only him; maybe Yunseo on occasion) would brush this off as holes created by a raccoon or something similar, but of course, Junhyeon was anything but ordinary.

"Boy, this is the work of a gopher," Yunseo suggested with a sigh, taking Hao's thoughts right out of his head.

Frowning, Junhyeon shook his head. "These are graves guys! Graves! Can you not tell?" He wiped his hands on his pants to get rid of the dirt.

As much as Hao didn't want to believe that it was anything but an animal, he couldn't deny the fact that every hole had a headstone right by it.

"So like..." Keita started, peering into one of the holes. "Where are the bodies?"

Albeit hesitant, Hao followed, slowly approaching Keita and staring directly into one of the graves. "Are all of them like that?"

"Every single one," Junhyeon replied, shrugging his shoulders. "If you don't think that's suspicious, then I don't know what to tell you."

"I know what to tell you," Seungeon said, crossing his arms. "I say we get the fuck out of here. Who knows what's lurking around?"

Hao nodded enthusiastically in agreement. "I support this statement," he said. "We never should've come here in the first place. I—"

"Look out!" was the last thing Hao heard before he was abruptly pushed to the ground.