Birch Forest
When Jeong Tae-ui thought about it, this was the first time he had ever been kidnapped. There had been a few close calls when he was younger, but he had never actually been kidnapped. His older brother had been kidnapped before, though he always returned quickly. So when he was young — when he was still at risk of being kidnapped — he thought, 'Being kidnapped must be scary. The kidnappers will definitely starve me and beat me,' and he had been afraid. But as he grew older, became more mature, and outgrew the possibility of being kidnapped, those thoughts faded.
"I never imagined I'd be kidnapped at this age..."
Jeong Tae-ui muttered absentmindedly.
Once, during high school, he had gone on a solo backpacking trip during vacation and experienced a bus hijacking. Although it could be considered a form of kidnapping, he wasn't specifically targeted back then. He wasn't an important person at the time, and he wasn't alone, but now, he had been singled out and kidnapped.
Looking back, he thought his life had been rather eventful — bus hijacking, kidnapping. Yet, despite all this, he remained unscathed, so perhaps he had been lucky in life. Additionally, if he had to insist on another stroke of luck, it was that, contrary to the fears he had as a child, his first kidnapper didn't starve or beat him. He was locked up, but he was given food at regular intervals, and the kidnapper didn't act particularly harshly. However, it couldn't be said that the kidnapper was entirely gentle either; if the room got noisy, the kidnapper would bang on the door and shout.
Jeong Tae-ui, who had fallen asleep amidst headaches and dizziness, woke up again after quite some time had passed. When he asked someone else, they said he had probably slept for about three or four hours. Without a watch, he couldn't know the exact time, but from what people were saying, it seemed he had slept for somewhere between two to four hours, so he assumed he had slept for about three hours. But since he didn't know when he had first fallen asleep, the exact time remained unknown.
There was a window, but it had been boarded up from the outside, preventing him from looking out. However, at the very top, the boards were slightly too short, leaving a gap of about two inches through which light seeped in.
"Maybe it's around 7 or 8 o'clock... or perhaps even later?"
Jeong Tae-ui tilted his head. The sky visible through the two-inch gap was a deep navy blue, faintly tinged with a reddish glow. It was the time when the sun had set, and night was deepening.
While still groggy from sleep, Jeong Tae-ui picked up the bread the kidnapper had tossed into the room and began to chew it, looking around. The others were chatting idly about various worldly matters, with no particular sense of tension. Jeong Tae-ui found this somewhat strange. In a kidnapping scenario, the important hostages usually don't die. Typically, those who die first are the unimportant ones. So, if anyone were to die first in a worst-case scenario, it would probably be Jeong Tae-ui himself... Still, it was odd to see such a lack of tension, even though cases where kidnapped people eventually lose their lives are reported so frequently.
Jeong Tae-ui observed them for a moment before chuckling softly. However, this atmosphere wasn't bad.
Some of them seemed to know each other, while others did not. But in a situation where they were all locked up in the same room, it didn't make much difference whether they were acquaintances or strangers, and there were only five of them anyway. Jeong Tae-ui occasionally chimed in during their conversation and, when the talk paused for a moment, suddenly asked,
"But is everyone okay? I'm a bit scared. We don't know who those people outside are or what's going to happen. I mean, it's unlikely that anything serious will happen, but still..."
