Sasaeng Sister [In big roles: Sunghoon, Lee Know, skz, Ateez, Jungkook]

Chapter 39

My body felt wrong, like a dead weight against a hard surface. I couldn't lift my arms or move my legs even an inch.

There was only darkness around me.

I blinked to fix my sight, but it didn't work.

While waiting for my eyes to adjust, I forced my hands to move slightly, pressing my palms against the hard surface. I glided my fingers on the material, feeling smooth cold tiles like on a bathroom floor. Some kind of metal bracelets encircled my wrists, scraping the tiles as I moved. They didn't feel like handcuffs, though, more like wide wristwatches.

Cold sweat trickled down my forehead as I strained to shift my position.

"Help. Is anyone here?" I wanted to say, but my attempts at speech manifested as feeble gasps.

With my heart pounding like crazy, I turned my head to the side so that I could at least see the shape of my right arm in the dark.

The sleeve of my hoodie looked strange.

I realized that everything felt heavier than usual, except my clothes. They were light and made no sound even when I managed to bend my knees, and my thighs rubbed together. The pants hugged me softly, which was weird because I had worn thick jeans when we followed Hari into the cottage.

Then it hit me—I was in hospital garments. Not just any disposable gown but the kind of comfortable clothes people wore during extended stays in a facility. Like in a mental hospital...

The kidnappers wouldn't have dressed me in soft cotton. Right?

Had I been unconscious for a long time?

Had Hari twisted the truth again to make me look crazy?

I knew a girl from back home with multiple personality disorder. She had explained how terrifying it was to suddenly be somewhere with no recollection of how she got there and how much time had passed without her noticing.

Had something so traumatic happened to me that I had dissociated from reality? Maybe I had become someone else for a while, someone who needed to be locked up in a mental hospital.

Or was this a nightmare?

The suffocating atmosphere was as in my recent dreams, but lying there felt more real than anything I had experienced in the last few months. Getting a brother and a dreadful sister and starting to date Sunghoon felt unreal. The thought made me anxious because it suggested that waiting paralyzed in the darkness might be real and everything before could have been a dream. Was this who I really was? A person locked in a mental health facility? Had I fantasized about meeting famous people I had seen on TV?

Before I could decide whether to believe that theory, I drifted off.

When I woke up the next time, I could move better and think clearly. The bracelets around my wrists didn't seem to restrict me anymore if they ever had. I suppose what had halted my movements was a drug, nothing else.

I turned on my side, and my arm hit something warm, another person.

"Hey, are you awake?" I whispered, grabbing their arm.

The other person wore similar garments as me. They swung their arm away from me, then back toward me so that their elbow hit me.

"Don't fucking touch me," she hissed.

Hari...

Why was I lying on a bathroom floor wearing hospital clothes with Hari?

Just as I was about to ask her what she knew about the situation, bright spotlights shot their shaft at us, blinding me for a second.