Hide And Seek [Who's Next Vol.1]/ENHYPEN

1 - Count down from 20

While reading, you can listen to "Tag, You're it" by Melanie Martinez.

ANA-

"Let's play a game...how about hide and seek?" Everyone had accepted this offer with exci-tement and enthusiasm, and I was silently looking at this person, whose face I had not seen or even heard for the first time. While I frowned, he turned his face towards me, unlike me, he smiled sincerely, as if he had known me for a long time.And this time he directed the previous question to me." What do you say?"he asked in a calm tone.

"OK, let's play"

Wait a minute, why did I accept his offer? These words came out of my mouth without my control. What is really going on?It was as if something was controlling me, I had a strange feeling inside me. While I was contradicting myself, one person among them was Jungwon, whom I had known before. Had spoken.

"Then since you are the last to decide, you will count. Let's run away and find a place to hide, we have 20 seconds!"

"What? Wait a minute hey!"

Everyone ignored me and disappeared directly into the forest. I was left alone in the middle of the forest. Actually, there was no need to think much, we were just playing hide and seek. Without much questioning, I closed my eyes and started counting down the time they had given me.

After I finished counting, with my hands still on my eyes, I shouted loudly for them to hear, "I'm opening my eyes!", the moment I took my hands away from my eyes, my smile slowly started to fade...

Because the sun, which had illuminated everywhere before, suddenly disappeared. And this time, what illuminated the surroundings was the dim light of the Moon.

Why did all the events seem so irrelevant? I had just accepted the offer of someone I don't know, and they had chosen me as the person to count without giving me time to ask anyone. Now, everywhere was in darkness... I wonder if I'm going crazy? Or is this all a dream? Actually, both of them mean the same thing. 

I started to move forward with cowardly steps without thinking about any more nonsense.

"Jungwon! Wherever you are, please get out of there, I'm so scared!"

"Please!" 

"I'm not joking! - what was that?"When I heard the crunching sound coming from the back, I quickly looked in that direction. The adrenaline spreading through my body was literally going to cause my heart to explode. I immediately went on the trigger.

Due to the darkness, nothing but the terrible appearance of grass and trees could be seen from where the sound came. So what was that sound? While I was thinking, "Is my brain playing tricks on me because I was so scared?", I heard another voice, held my breath and shouted, "Who is that?!" and then started to step backwards slowly.

When I didn't hear a sound, this time instead of standing there and waiting, I turned around at full speed and started running away. I was forcing myself not to look back while running. But, it was as if something was pressuring me to turn back and check...

And so it happened. As I was running, I couldn't hold myself back anymore and turned my head for a short while and looked back... and nothing was visible. I wanted to slow down my pace with the comfort of this, but-

This couldn't prevent me from tripping over something hard and falling to the ground.

"Damn!..." I screamed in pain when something as hard as a stone hit my leg. Actually, this thing was really a stone, but it didn't even move. If it was a normal stone, wouldn't it have moved?I looked around one last time and then crawled towards what would supposedly be a water stone.