Snowy Night | a BTS Horror Story

Chapter 11: Illusion

3:30 AM (3 ½ Hours Till Sunrise)

Stiff-upper lip, Taehyung, Tae thinks, then aloud he says, "Okay. Gomabseubnida, hyung. You've been very helpful to me."

"You're welcome, Tae," Jin replies.

Taehyung turns away from Jin, letting the light of his dying phone shine all over the room. The attic is narrow and long, like the house, and reveals the steep incline of the roof. Along one side, Taehyung sees a vent protruding through the floor. He walks over and quietly tugs the grille off it, then turns back once to look at Jin, who watches in silence, before lowering himself into the vent without a word.

With every inch he travels, Taehyung struggles with the imagery of J-Hope grinning ghoulishly almost as though he died wearing that expression. Each time Taehyung nears a turn, he pictures J-Hope waiting just on the other side. Or maybe J-Hope is just behind him, about to grab his foot again. The paranoia is just about as much as Taehyung can bear.

"Okay phone," Taehyung whispers, tapping the screen a few times. "This is where we part ways. You've worked hard. With luck, I can work just as hard and find my way back through the dark. I tried to memorize all the turns, but, well, we'll see. Farewell." He sets up a timer on the phone, puts it down, and then crawls backward until he reaches a cross-section where he can turn around and continue on.

After about a minute of crawling, music starts playing, carried all over the second floor through the vents. The sound is tinny from here, but upbeat and chipper: My Copycat.

Just then Taehyung reaches the vent-grille positioned above the stairs. For once, perfect timing. He wraps two fingers around one of the bars and dislodges the grille gently. He quickly lowers both feet onto the railing and then drops down onto the stairs from there. The lights are on, but the moment his feet touch the stairs, the lights flicker off.

Bolting down to the first floor, Taehyung runs across the common room toward the back hall, vaulting over the couch entirely, when a force like a freight train hits him in the back of the head.

Taehyung crashes into the ground hard, a splash of red color flaring up where his sight used to be. Gritting his teeth against the tremendous, thundering pain, Taehyung curls up into a ball and waits for another strike, or for his vision to clear, or something.

Priceless seconds tick away into eternity; Taehyung's pain drains away, and his vision quickly returns, but nothing else changes. Sitting up, he can still hear My Copycat playing through the vents upstairs. Taehyung struggles to his feet and continues with his plan, stumbling onward to the basement door. Yanking it open, he practically flies down the stairs, plunging straight into oppressive darkness.

The only way for Taehyung to tell that he's reached the bottom of the stairs is by feel- the terrain flattens out, and the handrail ends.

"Annyeonghaseyo?" Taehyung calls. "Is anyone there?"

"V hyung?"

"Jungkook, is that you?"

"Hyung!"

"Stay there," Taehyung says. "I'll find you. Just keep talking to me. Are you okay?"

"Ne," Jungkook says. "I mean, I started bleeding again when I first got dragged down here. But I think it's stopped since then."

"Okay, that's good," Taehyung says, shuffling toward the sound of Jungkook's voice slowly. "Tell me what happened."

"Well, we were in the computer room," Kookie starts. "When the walls started to drip, like, from the ceiling. It was that rancid, fish paste stuff that my backpack was full of before at the restaurant. It practically exploded through the walls then, like a waterfall. We had to open the door or risk drowning. Of course, we considered whether or not it might be a hallucination like yours in the hallway, hyung. But hallucination or not, in the end we opened the door."

"What happened then?"

"Then the some of the sunbaenims and Hobi hyung dragged us out and beat us up until we couldn't fight back anymore. And then they took us down here."

"Do you know how the others are doing?"

"Suga hyung, Rap Mon hyung, Baekhyun sunbaenim, Kyung soo sunbaenim, Jongin sunbaenim, Taemin sunbaenim, and Xiumin sunbaenim are all unconscious, and Jimin hyung woke up for a little bit, but he passed out again quickly."

"Do you know where your cat plushie is?"

"It wasn't in my room?"

"Ani," Taehyung says harshly. "Where else could it be?"

"I-I don't know, hyung," Jungkook says, sounding hurt.

"One last question: what did I bring you when I came back from the kitchen and who was I with?"

"Uh, um," Jungkook fumbles. "I think you were with sunbaenims Chanyeol and Kyung soo. And you brought water bottles, and the emergency kit. But you took the matchbox out of the kit to burn my plushie, right?"

"Right," Taehyung says, his voice breaking with relief. "Right, right. You got everything right." He walks to Jungkook and sinks down to the ground to sit beside him.

"Hyung?" Jungkook starts as Taehyung pulls him into a hug.

"This is better than I could've hoped, Jungkookie," Taehyung says. "Everyone's alive. We can do this. Let's... let's just try and think of a way to get out of here."

"Ne."

"Oh, I left my phone behind," Taehyung says. "Do you happen to, by any chance..."

"Ne," Jungkook replies. "We started charging our phones in the computer room once you left. I grabbed one when I realized we would have to run. Do you want it?" Jungkook presses the phone into Taehyung's hand as he talks. Taehyung closes his hand around it and thanks him.

"So, hyung, what's our plan?"

"We need a nearly foolproof way to completely distract the cat until morning. Can you think of anything? We don't have any more silk, so..." Taehyung turns on the phone as he talks, and the light of the screen lights up both his face and Jungkook's.

"Hmm," Jungkook ponders. "We could all sneak out while you distract the cat with music like you did before."

"The others aren't conscious Jungkook. How could they..." Taehyung pauses, a tight feeling in his throat. "Um, say that again, Jungkook?" He meets Jungkook's eyes.

"I said, we could all sneak out while you distract the cat with music like you did before."

Taehyung blinks back tears of exhaustion. "Game over, freak." He stands up, and sneers "How long have you been lying?"

Jungkook smiles sweetly and says "I just wanted to see how far I could push this illusion." Then his smile widens into a toothy, green and pink grin.

Taehyung's vision begins to spiral to the side nauseatingly, the world a swirling jumble, until he suddenly finds himself face-down on the floor back in the common room- right in the spot where he fell when he took that blow to the head. Jongin and Taemin hold him in a tight, uncomfortable pin, both arms pulled far behind his back.

The lights are still off, but now they flicker on. In front of the back hall is Jin, and beside him, floating in midair, is a grinning mouth as big as a car tire.

"I never lost control, Kim Taehyung," Jin says. "You did. You barely got past the stairs let alone escaped my grasp entirely. Did you honestly think your friends were still alive? Those whom you do not see here in this room, I have devoured. This, is the end. This, is 'game over'. For you anyway."