cult.

TWO: one

renjun glanced back at the sheet of paper that sat at the edge of his bed. for the past fifteen minutes, he tried decoding the text written in blue ink. after all that time contemplating what it could possibly mean, he came up with the most logical answer: due to it being labeled "P," he figured it may just be a password.

a password to what type of account? that's what he would have to find out instead of finishing his homework that night.
he leaned over to his nightstand, carefully gripping onto his laptop which he then set right in front of his criss crossed legs. after entering his password and opening his browser, he recalled every social media account that he knew mark had. he started with his email-- although it's not really considered a social media account-- and opened the login screen.

but as soon as he submitted the password, he greeted with bright red letters which indicated he was wrong.
so, he tried another social media account: instagram.
he typed the password in again, only to be greeted once more with those red letters.

minutes go by but to renjun, it feels like hours. and yet, he hasn't found a single account that would have this apparent password. he still had one more account to go through, which was messaging app he the rest of the group used from time to time.
he pulled up the browser extension of the app, logging out of his won before typing in mark's username and his password (well, he hoped it would be his password). as soon as he clicked the login screen, his heart practically skipped a beat when he was granted access.

however, the result was a bit underwhelming. renjun was just greeted with the group chat he himself was a part of and that was pretty much all there is to it. he scrolled down further to see if there was anything else. but to his dismay, there was nothing left. so, he opened the taskbar to log out.

but before doing so, he noticed a small profile icon next to mark's usual one. the mouse once hovering over the log out button was now gravitating towards that ominous icon before fully clicking on it.

the message home page opened up once more but the usernames were ones he didn't recognize in the slightest. for one, mark's other username was extremely cryptic (he tried to understand why he'd put his display name as "RAM"). renjun didn't even know that he had a second account.

the users in mark's messages were all foreign to him. he saw names such as "EAGLE" and "TIGER'S EYE." he also saw other names like "OWL," "CROW," and "MOTH." renjun noticed their names put together in a group chat, their last message sent on friday.

his stomach dropped, thinking maybe these unknown people had something to do with all of this. he went into the group chat, seeing the last message sent that night:

6:10 PM
    EAGLE: are you sure this is a possible alternative?
    RAM: yes, we'll be able to do this.
    CROW: but what do we do after this?? whos gonna lead us when you're gone??
TIGER'S EYE: who wants to vote ;)
    EAGLE: if you think we're gonna vote for you ur wrong
    RAM: i've already decided who's gonna take my place.
    RAM: if anything it should be an owl.
    TIGER'S EYE: dang....
    MOTH: he really thought that he'd be the leader?? I have to laugh.
    OWL: im honored ram. Thank you.
    RAM: 7pm
    RAM: we all meet at my house as usual.

renjun's growing suspicion of those group of people had reached an all-time high. as he looked through more of their conversations, he had been fully convinced they knew what happened to mark. his fingers hovered over the keyboard contemplating on what to say:

    RAM: do any of you know what happened to mark?

he stared at the screen nervously, waiting for a response. he waited for someone to just read the message. he so eagerly wanted to know the truth.

soon enough, one by one, he sees that they all read the text. he sees the user, CROW typing for a few seconds but those three dots vanish. he goes to type something else, but a message popped up on the screen:

    YOU CAN NO LONGER SEND MESSAGES TO THIS GROUP

with a defeated sigh, he fell back on his bed. he stared at the ceiling, feeling that he's hit a dead end. this seemed like such a perfect way to find the truth and he felt that he just blew.
still, he didn't want to give up. he had to find mark -- he needed to find him.