Escape
The moment Jeong Tae-ui opened his eyes, he knew something was wrong. He heard a kind of commotion and, upon opening his eyes, saw that it was still dark outside.
At first, he thought he might have been mistaken. After blinking a few times to clear the sleep from his eyes, Jeong Tae-ui tried to close his eyes again. But this time, he definitely heard a sound. It was coming from a distance — people chattering and moving around noisily far off.
Jeong Tae-ui opened his eyes again. He reached for the clock beside his bed. It was just a little past 3 a.m.
Outside, the bustling noise continued. Jeong Tae-ui got out of bed and went outside.
The corridor of the annex was quiet. The courtyard, the inner garden, and other rooms in the building were all eerily silent, with not a sound to be heard. The noise was coming from beyond the walls of the annex, from other buildings on the property. Occasionally, he heard indistinct shouts and someone running about beyond the nearby wall. The voices, which sounded like they were waking up the sleeping, came from both afar and near.
It seemed that the only quiet place was the annex itself. The space on this side, separated by a single door, remained as isolated and different from the other side as usual.
"...What's going on at this hour...?"
Jeong Tae-ui muttered as he brushed his disheveled hair. He checked the clock again, unsure if he had misread it, but only a few minutes had passed since he last checked.
The commotion was abnormal.
At this hour, beyond the wall, countless people — perhaps everyone staying at the annex — were awake and moving about restlessly. It was as if everyone was preparing to go somewhere together.
Jeong Tae-ui stood idly in front of the courtyard, then suddenly shifted his gaze toward the corridor still shrouded in cold, pitch-black darkness before dawn. The door at the far end of the west corridor, always guarded by someone, even in the middle of the night, should have had at least one person there, but no one was in sight.
Jeong Tae-ui widened his eyes and strode toward it. He tried pushing the door a few times but clicked his tongue in frustration. The door was firmly locked from the outside.
"What is this? If there's a fire outside, we'd all be trapped and die."
Even though no one was guarding the door, there was no way to get out. There was no way to release the lock from the outside, and without proper tools, the door wasn't weak enough to be easily broken.
But still, what could it be?
If so many people were up and moving at such an hour, it must be something serious.
Jeong Tae-ui rubbed his chin for a moment and looked back. Unlike the outside, the detached building he was in was wrapped in stillness, with nothing moving. It felt as though he was the only one left inside.
Jeong Tae-ui suddenly felt as though he truly was all alone and began walking toward Jeong Jae-ui's bedroom. However, just as he was about to cross the courtyard diagonally and reach Jeong Jae-ui's bedroom, Jeong Jae-ui appeared from inside.
Jeong Jae-ui, looking as if he had just woken up, was slightly disheveled but showed no signs of sleepiness on his face as he stepped out into the courtyard. He stood still, listening to the noise outside.
"...How long have you been up, Tae-ui?"
"I just woke up too. It started getting noisy, so I got up. It doesn't seem like the commotion has been going on for too long."
