Dreams of Arcadia

47

"Why is there a huge clown's face painted on the house? It puts me off a bit..." Jin said skeptically as we followed Han. This didn't look like a usual funhouse, normally, it was a kind of parkour that stretched over several floors, but on a kind of balcony scaffolding attached to a fake building... Here it was an actual building, almost a hall. It reminded me more of an indoor playground. Once we were through the door, I knew why it was a funhouse. There was actually a huge indoor playground set up in the middle, I saw some bouncy castles that apparently some of our friends who hadn't been on the other ride were already doing gymnastics on, there were trampolines built into the floor, slides, climbing frames.... I didn't see everything, but it was very tempting from here. There was a moat-like pool around the playground and the entire outer area was a maze consisting of the aforementioned parkour. Right in front of the entrance were three corridors, one straight ahead and the others off to the right and left.

"The corridors look pretty narrow, maybe we should split up," Sunmi suggested.

"I'll go with Han and Sunmi Noona." Mingi informed us directly and took one hand of each of the two I mentioned. San looked at me hopefully and I nodded, whereupon Jin joined us.

"You four go together, we'll take this corridor." Jin simply determined and left Jungkook, Taehyung, Yeosang and Wooyoung standing there while he walked into the right corridor and stopped a few meters away to look at us promptly.

"See you later..." San said goodbye to the others and followed Jin after taking my arm and hooking it under him. After a short time, the corridor became a kind of tunnel and we could no longer see the rest of the hall. There was only dim light, blue LED strips attached to the wall on each side were the only source of light. We noticed that the floor we were walking on was getting a bit wobbly and Jin and San kept leaning on the wall as we walked, while I clutched San's arm to keep from falling.

"What..." Jin exclaimed in surprise as the tunnel became round and began to turn sideways as we walked through. There were big holes in the wall all over the place, windows that rotated with us and we had to dodge them to avoid falling through. When you looked through, there was nothing but blackness, which made the whole thing even less tempting. San carefully tried to guide me through, but the tunnel got faster and faster and running together was no longer an option, we had to go through one after the other. Jin made it to the other side first and San pushed me from behind on the solid ground when his hand suddenly disappeared from me and all I heard was a strangled cry. He had fallen through it...

"Jin... We have to go after him..." I demanded, but Jin shook his head.

"We can't even see what's down there. Let's keep going, he'll be fine." he tried to convince me, but I shook my head stubbornly.

"Then you go on alone, I'll go and see where San went." I said and waited until the opening was pointing downwards again. then I held on to the edge, slid through and got stuck for a moment before I found the courage to let myself fall. As soon as I touched the ground, I was thrown up again and landed on a platform outside the tunnel. I wobbled to a halt and just managed to keep my balance, trying to get my bearings. When I was no longer dizzy, I looked around. The floor that had thrown me back was a trampoline that, as far as I could see, filled the whole room, which was quite big in itself, more like a small hall. There were unstable platforms like this everywhere and I saw San standing on one a few meters away. Above me, just within reach, there were poles attached for me to hang from, so I clung to them and moved forward with quick grips. I was more than happy that we didn't have the same level of fitness here in the afterlife as we did in life, because I was so unathletic... but you didn't notice that now.

"Careful!" shouted San, who had spotted me and I could already feel it... Balls as big as a soccer, but soft, apparently made of foam, bounced off me, shot from invisible cannons. Apparently, my weight on the bars had started a mechanism that caused the balls to shoot out. I wouldn't be able to withstand this bombardment for long, so I hurried even more to get to San's platform. He held out his hand and I reached for it when a ball hit me on the other hand I was holding on to. I let go in shock, but San had the presence of mind to grab me. It all happened so fast, before I realized it, I was in his arms on the platform...