"Cameras? In here?" Wonho asked, frowning at the ceiling. "For real? Why?"
"So they can watch us," Kihyun said, twitching slightly. "Always watching."
"That's...like an invasion of privacy or something," Wonho said, frowning as he set himself down on the edge of his bed. "They can't do that to us. It's gotta be illegal or something-"
"Not when you parents or guardians signed a consent form," Kihyun muttered. "Or if you self-admitted and signed it. Either way, you sign off to the cameras along with everything else."
"But, I didn't, I didn't sign anything," Wonho said. "Nobody asked me to sign anything. I just woke up and was brought into the room this morning. Why-" He stopped talking to Kihyun and looked over at Hyungwon, who had remained silent throughout their entire exchange, laying on his back, arms folded behind his head, one leg straight and the other bent at the knee. "Hey. You."
Hyungwon looked over at him with unreadable eyes.
"Do you know what's going on here?"
"...Yeah."
"And? It doesn't- it doesn't bother you at all? The cameras? All of that?"
Hyungwon shrugged. "My opinion doesn't really matter, does it?"
Wonho frowned. "Why would you think that your opinion doesn't matter? Of course it does. This is serious."
Hyungwon looked over to the left wall, avoiding eye contact with Wonho. "You stopped caring about what I think a while ago."
Wonho's frown deepened at the edges. "I'm sorry, do you have me confused with someone else? I've never met you before."
"Yeah, that must be it," Hyungwon said darkly.
"Can someone just explain to me-"
"We're all patients in a mental institution," Hyungwon snapped, and Wonho startled at the harshness in his tone. After a moment, his voice softened and sounded gentler. "Me, Kihyun, Minhyuk, Shownu, Jooheon."
"And...what about me?" Wonho asked, trepidation in his voice.
Hyungwon looked over at Wonho. "...what do you want me to tell you?"
"The truth," Wonho said. "I deserve the truth, dammit."
"Then, yeah, you too."
Wonho's mouth opened and closed as he fought to say something. "Why? I'm- I'm fine, I'm normal, there's nothing wrong with me." He cut himself off a moment later, looking at Hyungwon with wide eyes as though only seeing him for the first time. "Why are you here?"
***
"Because I killed my family, right down to the dog," Hyungwon answered dryly, and Kihyun laughed, a high-pitched, nerve-wracking sound.
"Too bad they didn't get that on their damn camera," Kihyun said, and Hyungwon hesitated before laughing along with Kihyun. He'd never connected with Kihyun before because he'd always been an outsider, but now that Wonho was new (again) and seemed even more averse to their situation while Hyungwon had had time to warm up to it...
Hyungwon was in.
He was officially part of the crazy club.
"Is that a sick joke, or..." Wonho looked back and forth between them from the other side of the room, biting his lip.
Hyungwon read the fear in his eyes, fear of him, fear of Hyungwon, and something twisted inside of him, something that hurt, something that couldn't just be put back or replaced. Since when had he begun scaring people?
But he couldn't just forget the way Wonho was looking at him.
Like he was a monster.
Hyungwon didn't want to be a monster.
With eyes prickling, he turned over in his bed, drawing the blanket over his thin body to provide an additional layer of separation between him and Wonho. "Either way, you're stuck spending the night with me," he muttered, Wonho's scared eyes trapped in his vision even after he'd closed his own.
He felt like a monster.
