✮NIGHT HAS COME✮

✮Prologue✮

"Please, please don't do this," Yoonseo begged as Mr. Park, Se-eun's dad guided her back to the chair, back to the game, the suffering. Her breaths had become ragged and short, her mind fogging up, feeling as if she were to throw up any second.

"You'll get sick if you keep resisting," Mr. Park said warily as he gently pushed Yoonseo on the chair and put the sensors back on her head.

Yoonseo shook her head violently. "It's fine. I don't care about any of that. Just please let the others go," she begged him, grasping the sleeve of his shirt. "If someone needs to take responsibility, let it be me."

Mr. Park's gaze softened and shifted to something close to pity. The more rounds of the mafia game they forced them to play, the more hesitant he's become to send them back there again. Maybe Se-eun wouldn't have wanted this either.

The girl was still muttering pleas and begs, although her speech had become incoherent. She would pass out any second now.

Mr. park looked around the basement that had now become a futuristic-like prison for all these kids. Their resting, peaceful faces, something they definitely wouldn't be able to know again, if they were to be trapped in that deadly game forever.

If.

His eyes fell back on the girl, Se-eun's former best friend. If she were to see right now what her parents were putting her through, what would she think of them? Would she find pleasure in watching them having to go through the same pain she did, or would that hate be directed towards them, her parents, instead? As far as Mr. Park knew, Yoonseo and the other boy- Junhee- were the only ones who ever made an effort of being nice to her.

And yet here Yoonseo was, pleading him to let the others go, even if she were to be stuck in this deadly world that was born from something Se-eun herself created, forever.

The man looked back at his wife, an unreadable expression on her face. Mrs. Park was the one who pushed him into doing this, and, judging by the look of her eyes, didn't want to stop it.

But Mr. Park was also willingly a part of this. He needed to stop blaming her for it all.

"She's finally asleep," Mrs. Park states expressionlessly as Mr. Park joins her at the computer and many, many screens, broadcasting live on what was going on in the kids' heads. His gaze fell on a particular brown haired kid- his name was Kyungjun, if he remembered correctly. He was, to put it simply, a horrible person. Or, at least, the worst of them all. Having killed one of his fellow teammate for little to no reason in the last game, and brutally tortured another. Not to mention him also having the reputation of being a bully. It was easy for Mr. Park to sometimes fall into the thought of out of everyone here, he deserved to be trapped here the most.

But then again, they were trapped in a deadly game of survival. Mr. Park was sure if driven far enough, anyone would've done the same as him.

At the end of the day, he was still a kid who just wanted to survive.

"Are you even listening to me right now?" Mr. park snapped out of his trance when he noticed his wife waving her hand in front of his face.

"Right, um, what did you say again?"

Mrs. park sighed and replied with a sour tone. "I said, we haven't eaten anything yet, and it's getting late. I'll go get us something, you go ahead and start the next game."

He nodded hesitantly, half-listening to her as she descended down the short flight of steps and out of the basement.

He turned back to the computer. With the press of just a few buttons, he would be sending them back to that godforsaken youth center. He still remembered that day they kidnapped the kids as if it were yesterday. It was the day the kids were going on an actual field trip, the bus driver had taken a break before they started moving. He had pretended to be that bus driver, putting a gas sedative in the air conditioners, and drove them back to their house, where his wife was waiting.

News pages had been flooded with the students' mysterious disappearance, today marking the third day they've been down here. But what could he say, never would the police guess to look through the parents of a former students' basement.

Thinking about what the kids would have to go through all over again, and having to watch it, Mr. Park's hands hovered hesitantly above the keys of the keyboard. Instead, he typed in a new code, his fingers knowing what to do.

He opened up the game designs' codes, coming across what he was looking for.

"The game will always end with Oh Jungwon being the last one standing."

There wasn't much Mr. park could do without his wife knowing, so he spent quite a lot of time thinking what to change about the code. But, knowing he couldn't afford wasting any time, he quickly typed up a new code.

"The game itself will end completely and the kids will wake up once On Jungwon dies."

He changed the setting on the sensors on the students' heads too to match the new code. Making sure he didn't forget anything, his index finger hovered over the 'start game' button, unsure. Finally, he pressed it, looking back at her, Se-eun's best friend, who still had the bracelet he remembered the two of them matching.

"I trust you will be able to save your classmates, Lee Yoonseo."