Paint it Another Colour

Chapter 64

The room with the blue, glowing bars that Matthew had mentioned didn't seem to make much sense to Roderich. He'd been sat, starting at them, frowning for the past hour, and still couldn't get his head round why they were necessary. Maybe it was something to do with vision, but over the course of the hour, that was the best that he could come up with for their existence. Most of the time, he couldn't even see them, just a faint outline of black, and then something else, slightly darker, somewhere else in the room where another person would shuffle, and only then, would they sometimes glow, although no one really leant against them, or even touched them, so those times were few and far between. Even so, he'd still been staring at the same spot ahead of him for a while.

About half an hour ago, his hand had happened to brush against a rock against the back, solid wall of his cell, and then, he'd lobbed it weakly at them, and watched in a confused fascination as the room lit up in blue for a split second, and faces turned to stare at the strips of light, before they faded and they were once again plunged into darkness.

"I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with... 'd'" Yong Soo shouted from wherever he was. The noise shocked Roderich, and he leapt to his feet, only realising what it was a second later and sitting himself back down. No one had spoken since they'd all woken up here, and that was at least three days ago now.

"'D'?" Kyung Soo asked from the other side of the room.

"Let me guess" Wendy said sarcastically. "Darkness, by any chance? There's nothing else here for you, or anyone else to see, so what else could it be?"

"It could be many things" Yong Soo cried, leaning against the bars so they could see him. Opposite where he was standing, Kyung Soo was lying on his back, staring up at the ceiling. Lida was curled up in a ball and Wendy was sat in precisely the center of her cell, facing the wall. They were in a small block of cells, each one only separated by the bars. "For example, darkness is a very wide spread term. It could have just been 'dark', or 'dark room', or 'dark nothing', or anything else starting with 'dark'."

Lida scoffed. "If it was 'dark' and then something after it, you would've had to say 'd-r', or 'd-n'. How can nothing be dark anyway?"

Yong Soo shrugged. "Anyway, you're wrong."

Wendy huffed, standing up and Roderich watched as she walked to the wall and slid down it. "Well then, what is it? I'm sure none of us will be able to figure out what's in your head."

"I swear to God" Kyung Soo groaned, rolling over onto his stomach to glare across at his twin. "If it's didgeridoo, I'm going to kill you."

Yong Soo winked and pointed at him. "You've got it."

"I will strangle you in your sleep" Kyung Soo said, his voice muffled as he buried his head in his arms.

"The hell?" Lida cried, outraged, jumping up again. "The whole idea of 'i-Spy', is to say something you can see, not to completely trick us all and simply say something that you can see!"

"What's the point in that?" Yong Soo grinned and sat down, the room temporarily being plunged into darkness before he leaned his head against the bars, lighting it up again. "This version is better. It requires..." he clapped his hands above his head and dragged them down either side as though drawing a rainbow in mid-air. "Imagination."

"You're stupid" Wendy snapped.

"I know!" Yong Soo laughed. "But hey, it killed ten minutes, didn't it? And we're not all now just thinking about our own self-hatred, because that's what you possibly all were doing before."

"I was not" Lida shouted.

"Well" Yong Soo said. "In this situation, you were doing very well not to be. Hell, even I was, let's not even get started on you North."

"Shut up" Kyung Soo grumbled. "I have no self-hatred."

"Really?" Yong Soo raised an eyebrow. "I find that hard to believe."

Kyung Soo felt about with his hand for the bars, found them, dragged himself up by them and reached across to grab Yong Soo's collar, yanking him down to his eye level. "Prove it."

"How are you doing?" Lida asked, glancing across at Roderich. "You're quiet."

"He misses his piano" Wendy said bluntly.

Roderich went up and down a scale with one hand, flicking the floor as though it was an imaginary set of keys. "I'm doing just fine thank you very much. I mean, obviously our accommodation isn't quite to my liking, but it'll do for the time being, I suppose."

"What if this is what we're left with?" Kyung Soo said, letting go of Yong Soo's collar and flopping to the floor. "What if we never leave? What if we're stuck here forever? What if no one comes to rescue us? What if they kill us? What if we all die? What if they downgrade us to something like you'd see in old medieval films? What if everyone's forgotten about us, or thinks we're dead so they're not going to come for us? What if this was their plan all along?"

"What if, you could stop putting a damper on everyone's spirits?" Yong Soo suggested, shuffling back from the bars in case he was grabbed again. "Then, we might all stay a little positive, instead of just sort of being down and depressed like we already are."

Kyung Soo sighed, one arm drapped against the bars, the only thing lighting the room now. "I'm just saying."

"Well, don't" Lida snapped. "As Yong Soo said, we're all down enough without you and your communist ways."

"Communism has nothing to do with it" Kyung Soo grumbled.

"It had everything to do with it" Lida huffed. "You're down, so you want us all as depressed as you."

Kyung Soo shrugged. "Whatever. If that's how you want to think, then go for it."

"And anyway" Yong Soo leapt to his feet and pressed his face against the bars. "I'm not down, and it's only communism if everyone gets it." He grinned and laughed.

"I hate you" Roderich sighed.

Wendy chipped off a bit of wall from behind her and threw it at Yong Soo, who leapt back away from it, and with Kyung Soo no longer touching the bars, the room went into darkness again.

"And then" Yong Soo whispered. "We all died, because the monster in the dark came to kill us..." No one said anything, and the silence rolled around for a while before there was a high-pitched scream. "It's got me!"

Wendy and Roderich shrieked, Lida shouting over them and Kyung Soo swearing as loud as he could. Yong Soo laughed and grabbed a bar. 

"It was just a joke guys" he grinned. "And it was funny."

"It was not" Roderich shouted.

"You scared a child" Lida hissed.

"I'm twenty-four" Wendy shouted in protest. "I'm not a child."

"I'm two-hundred and thirteen" Roderich said. "You're a child to us."

Wendy stuck out her bottom lip and went and sat in a corner.

"You, stop being stupid" Lida snapped, turning to point at Yong Soo, who stared at her like he didn't know what she was talking about. She ignored him and turned to Kyung Soo. "You, stop trying to spread communism."

"I'm not" Kyung Soo yelled, outraged.

"And please, don't argue" Roderich shook his head at them. "We've got enough on our hands without you two."

Yong Soo laughed.