PENDULUM ▸ BTS

five

but what mainly disturbed me was the idea that it had perceptibly descended. 

distance between pendulum and ground: thirty feet

j i m i n

"that was good," taehyung said, with a contented sigh, as he sat back.

"yeah," jin agreed, swallowing the last of the meat that had been laid out for the seven of them.

"i wonder who left it," jimin said, causing yoongi to emit a loud snort.

"whoever the hell put us here in the first place left it, jimin," the blonde-haired man said, rolling his eyes. "who did you think left it, you idiot? the tooth fairy?"

"you never know," jimin mumbled, averting his eyes.

"i'm really thirsty now," hoseok whined.

"yeah, the meat was really salty," jimin agreed, wincing at the burning, stinging sensation that remained in his mouth as a result of the highly salted meat. "and they didn't give us any water."

"maybe that's the point," namjoon said, causing them all to look at him curiously. "whoever put us here is obviously trying to kill us. maybe feeding us this salty food is meant to dehydrate us."

"it's called optimism, namjoon," yoongi said with another roll of his eyes. "you might want to try it sometime."

"it's not like you're ever optimistic," namjoon retorted.

"guys, stop fighting," hoseok interjected. "we can't afford to waste time."

"i agree," jin said. "we should try to find a way out of here as soon as possible."

they sat in silence for a brief moment, when all of a sudden, yoongi let out a strangled cry.

"what?" they all asked, turning to him. the blonde-haired man's brows were furrowed, and he seemed to be concentrating very hard on something.

"do any of you guys... remember anything?" he asked slowly, peering at all of them expectantly.

"what do you mean?" hoseok asked.

"like, do you remember anything that happened before you woke up here."

jimin racked his brain, trying to conjure up a memory from his past. but, to his surprise, he could not. whenever he tried to think back, he always confronted a sort of wall as soon as he got as far back as when he had first woken up in this dungeon. no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't remember anything from before then.

he looked back up at the yoongi and the five others, and found that they all seemed to have come to very same realization.

"what happened to our memories?" hoseok squeaked, rubbing his head as if someone had physically wrenched them out of his skull.

"no one remembers anything?" namjoon asked, looking between all of them.

"no," they all chorused.

"hmm," namjoon said thoughtfully, seeming more intrigued than frightened.

"this is fucking weird," yoongi muttered. "how did this happen?"

"maybe we just forgot our memories?" jimin piped up hopefully.

yoongi gave him an exasperated look. "yeah, of course we did, jimin," he said, with a roll of his eyes. "we just forgot everything that's ever happened in our entire motherfucking lives. of course."

"or maybe we all just hit our heads on rocks and lost our memory," taehyung offered.

"that seems unlikely," namjoon said.

"why didn't we realize this before?" jin asked.

"maybe we were just too preoccupied with finding our ways around our new surroundings," jungkook said.

"interesting..." namjoon said, stroking his chin.

"dude, this isn't 'interesting,'" yoongi snapped. "it's creepy as fuck. why can't we remember anything?"

jimin sighed, the sounds of yoongi and namjoon bickering yet again filling his ears. the fact that he had lost most of his memory creeped him out to say the least, but then again, wasn't everything about this place creepy?

it felt weird not to have his memories--as if someone had taken away one of his legs or arms. what happened? he thought, trying to think back to see if he could remember. but of course, he couldn't.

as the others joined in on yoongi and namjoon's argument, jimin sat back, resting his weight on his palms, and leaned back, looking up at the ceiling for the first time since they had first noticed the pendulum about half an hour before. as he gazed up at the swinging pendulum, his heart suddenly leapt with another horrible realization.

"umm, guys?" he whimpered, pointing up at the pendulum. the other six men stopped bickering and followed his gaze and stared up at the ceiling too. "doesn't it seem like the pendulum has... gotten lower?"

before they had started eating, the razor-sharp pendulum had been hanging from the very top of the ceiling, crossing  over the entire length from one wall to another. but since the walls all met at the ceiling, the very top of the ceiling was narrower than the rest of it, with the walls slowly fanning out as they grew closer to the ground, making the distance from wall to wall wider as one went down.

now, the pendulum swung across the entire length of a section of wall about ten feet below where they had originally seen it, the eerie grey light of the room glinting off of it's shining, sharpened edge. 

"holy shit," namjoon breathed. "you're right."

"it lowered by like ten feet," hoseok added, confirming jimin's earlier suspicion.

"now we don't have our memories and the fucking pendulum has gotten lower?" yoongi groaned. "this place sucks."

"what does this mean?" jungkook asked, watching the swinging pendulum with a mixture of terror and fascination.

"well, the pendulum isn't as wide as the entire room," namjoon said, which they all agreed was correct. from what they could tell, the pendulum was about a sixth the width of the room they were in. "so if it isn't as wide as the room, then even if it reached all the way to the floor at some point, as long as we avoided the very center of the room--where it would hit--we would be fine."

"right," jimin said, feeling slightly relieved. "so as long as we don't jump into the pit, or stand at the center of the room when the pendulum reaches the ground, we'll be perfectly fine."

"yeah," taehyung squeaked. "perfectly fine."

"so what do we do now?" yoongi asked. "just sit here and wait for a fucking swinging razorblade to reach the ground?"

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