Amnesia

XVIII.

He'd done that to get them away from their kidnappers. Taehyung had taken a damn bullet to the chest to stand up for his friend. And if none of this was real, then those things meant nothing in the long run.

Seokjin's face went pale, and he lowered his head, brushing his hands through his increasingly greasy hair. "Sorry."

"S'all right," Remy said. "The house is different. I think all of us are somehow contributing to this illusion."

"What do you mean?" Taehyung asked. He still sounded pained but didn't sound delirious. Which was a weird improvement.

"You say it's the same as your grandmother's house. The wedding ducks upstairs are the same ones Joon's sister had for her wedding. There was a toy tea set, just like what I had when I was a child."

"The truck in front of the house is my uncle's," Yoongi said quietly. "I thought I recognized it somehow. My uncle used to have an old truck that looked just like that."

The silence after that was long and uncomfortable. Then Remy went to the drawer where the gun had been and found the photograph of the boy. He looked so happy. She sighed and gave the photo to Taehyung before backing away. "Is this you?"

He looked at it for a long moment before shaking his head. "No. It's my cousin."

Hoseok let out all the air in his lungs in a long exhale. The house creaked around them, the old wood smelling of pine and cedar, in a place where pine and cedar couldn't be found.

"So that's it?" Seokjin asked. "We just need to get shot and wake up?"

Remy made a whining noise in the back of her throat. "Why shooting? Of all the ways to die, why shooting?"

"You have a gun," Yoongi pointed out.

"Even still, it only has four bullets left. There's still seven of us here."

For some reason, this statement was what made Namjoon snap out of his daze and he looked up, blinking. Remy almost felt bad about it. He looked like he had just seen a ghost. Or had seen his friend get shot. You know, just a regular day to be alive. Or in a dream. Or in a living dream where absolutely nothing was real except your emotions and pain. The shirt that Namjoon was wearing was thin and almost translucent now with moisture. When he turned to look at Taehyung behind him, Remy noticed a strange mark on his back, right near his shoulder. For a second, she was concerned that it was an injury. It was red, after all. But upon closer inspection, she realized it was too small and perfect to be an injury. It was a tattoo.

"Could stab ourselves with steak knives or something," Taehyung suggested.

"I am not stabbing myself with a steak knife," Remy said.

"I could stab myself with a steak knife," Taehyung said.

"You are not stabbing yourself with a steak knife," Seokjin said.

"If you all don't shut up about steak knives, I will stab you with a steak knife," Yoongi said.

"That would work," Taehyung said.

"Shut up!" Hoseok yelled.

"What do you think happened to Jeongguk?" Remy asked. "Or, is happening, I mean."

That quieted the steak knife discussion. Jeongguk was out there somewhere in the real world by himself. Probably with their kidnappers. Or even worse-

"What if we've already been sold to those people?"

The question hung in the air heavily.

"What do you mean?" Jimin asked.