Photographer ✰Hwang Hyunjin✰

n i n e

When we entered, everything was way darker than I expected.

You could barely see anything, there were a couple of red lamps on the ceiling, but they were barely even illuminating anything.

Hyunjin was a couple of meters ahead of me "Don't leave me" I whined as I ran to catch up with him, I definitely didn't want to stay alone in there

We were slowly walking side by side towards a big red door, one of the few things that were actually illuminated.

As we got closer, we began to hear a really faint melody playing from behind the door.

We reached the red door and I carefully put my hand on the round doorknob, I twisted it and the door opened. In front of us, there was a long hallway with numerous wooden doors on both sides. At the end of the hallway, however, we spotted tiny blue door, which probably was the exit. Nothing seemed out of place, but there was definitely something off.

Regardless, we slowly walked past the door and, all of a sudden, a clown came out from on of the wooden doors and began running towards us.

Hyunjin and I instantly started running back to the red door. When we reached it, we got back to the previous dark room and closed the red door behind us, preventing the clown from opening it by sitting against the door itself.

We were breathing heavily and I was extremely scared. I looked at Hyunjin, he also seemed scared but a lot less than I was.

"How do we get out of here?" I asked him, beginning to panick "This red door is the only way to get to the exit"

"We need to go back in the hallway if we want to escape" he replied, taking big breaths to calm down "We must get past the clown and whoever comes out of the other wooden doors"

"I don't want to go back. The clown could've killed us!" I shouted

"No he couldn't, this is still an amusement park" he said "Even small kids come in here after all"

"That doesn't make me feel better and definitely not less scared"

"In any case, if you want to get out of here, we need to face the clown" he stated

He then got up and I copied him.

He grabbed my hand and held it delicately in his "You know, I've heard that holding hands can make you feel less scared. Is it working?"

I blushed a little at our contact, it made me feel safe, protected.

I nodded and he smiled softly at me.

"Shall we go?" He asked, putting his hand on the doorknob "Remember that they can't harm you"

"Yes, let's go" I replied

He twisted it and the red door was now opened.

The clown wasn't behind the red door he had probably got back to where he was before.

"Let's get out of here" Hyunjin looked at me before he began to run towards the end of the hallway.

As we moved forward, the wooden doors all opened, revealing all kinds of scary monsters: clowns, ghosts, vampires...

Hyunjin and I swiftly zigzagged between them and we were progressively getting closer to the tiny blue door.

We held each other's hand tightly and never let go.

We were just a couple of meters away from the exit when a giant zombie came out of the last wooden door, blocking our way.

The zombie was really big, almost a meter taller than Hyunjin and larger than both Hyunjin and I combined.

We first ran to the left, the zombie did the same, we then went to the right, the zombie copying us again but his movements were slower because of how big the costume was.

We kept going left and right until the zombie couldn't keep up with us anymore and that's when we sprinted forward towards the blue door.

The zombie tried to catch us, but we were already out of his reach.

Hyunjin and I finally got to blue door. We crouched down and opened it. It was the exit. I left first, he followed me a few seconds later.

We were now outside the haunted house, the rest of Stray Kids standing a couple of meters away from us.

"You two finally made it!" Minho said "Took you quite a while"

"Come on we didn't take that much time" Hyunjin replied

"You've been in there for almost half an hour" Changbin told us "The people that were waiting in the line to get inside got pretty tired of waiting"

Both Hyunjin and I looked down, slightly embarrassed.

"Anyways" I said, trying to change the topic "Are you guys hungry?"

Everyone nodded "I saw a cotton candy stand before, we could go there" Felix suggested

We all agreed and followed the boy to the cotton candy stand.

"Are they still holding hands?" Chan whispered to himself

The two had, in fact, never let go of each other's hand since they escaped the haunted house.