He blinks at the gloomy brown wood that almost touches the tip of his nose. Exhaling softly, the male turns to face the Storage room.
To his surprise, it looks exactly like one should.
Towers made of boxes lie around the corners, the only table has scattered sheets of paper with various handwritings on them and an empty chalkboard. To his left stands a closet with many more maps and a calendar, that's attached to the side of the brown furniture.
Mingi takes a step further, the chilly air coming from somewhere but not the window in front. It's closed and has no handle.
The male looks around again.
He thought that a teacher or at least a sheet of exam paper would greet him. Perhaps he should ask Hongjoong while the male is close by.
The red head goes to the doors and places his palm on the door handle, pushing it down. The wood doesn't budge. Pressing his shoulder against the door, the male tries to open the door.
Mingi huffs, letting go of the golden handle that hasn't given even a slight opening.
He's trapped in the room.
The male wonders if this is some escape room type of situation. He has never understood the thrill of wanting to be locked inside somewhere and play a smartass detective. Glancing at the walls, there are no obvious cameras in sight so no one will even know if he manages to finish all the missions.
What even is Mingi's task here?
"Oh, for fucks sake. So much for not wanting to think." he says and soon after hears how weird his own voice sounds in the quietness.
He lets the bag slip down his shoulder, landing on the floor as he goes to the table. His fingers grab the paper on top and his brown eyes run over the words.
The fire warms my chest so to speak. I have a slight headache from all their jumping and running around. I keep wondering how they do not get tired of it. The soil is wet, and I keep my eyes open, not able to wait when all of them will go to sleep so I can finally come out. Today is the shortest night of the year. They just keep dancing; it gets louder, and it annoys me. The sound almost pierces me whole. When will they stop dancing?
Mingi puts the paper down with a frown on his face. He is not sure what he has just read and what the writer is talking about.
"Now I'm the one with the headache." he announces to the room like it listens in on every word.
It feels a bit better to hear a voice even if it is his own.
The male steps away from the table and looks at the chalkboard.
It has six identical boxes drawn with white chalk.
He almost screams, jumping back and clenching a fist over his heart.
That wasn't there before, no it was not.
The board was empty when he first laid eyes on it.
"I want a normal exam!" his voice sounds high pitched even to him.
Calming the beating organ in his chest, Mingi steps closer.
Nothing other than six same sized boxes with empty middles. He counts them again, not believing his sight that well but in the end confirms that they are six.
"So...six numbers or letters." he tells himself now much more aware how grounding it is.
And weird.
"Six numbers for what though?"
He didn't stumble upon any locked box or lock except from the locked Storage room's door, yet it doesn't need a code.
"Alright..." he sighs, rubbing his nape with his fingers.
The male tries to turn the chalkboard and see maybe it just flipped somehow, hiding the clean side. That thought turns out to be false as the green board doesn't budge.
"I should work out more." Mingi grumbles, at first staring at the chalkboard and then at the wooden door.
He returns to the messy table, picking up another sheet of paper.
I already had one on Monday, he brought more in an even number until it piled up and we didn't have to worry for a week. He took from the pile every day until I told him to stop on Friday as now, we had less than a half. He listened; I knew he would.
He was always such a good boy.
The male doesn't know whether to let out a sniffle or a groan. Reading some nonsense does him no good.
"What were they piling up?"
It isn't like he expects an answer yet not getting one plays on his nerves.
"He took every day until on Friday they had less than a half..."
Mingi is still looking at the paper, which begins to look more and more like a maths problem the teachers enjoyed giving him back in the day.
Placing the paper down, the male walks on the other side of the table. The boxes are covered with a layer of dust as everything else.
Thankfully no spiders were in sight or he would scream like a dying cow.
He goes to inspect the calendar hanging against a closet's side.
The sunflower field picture on it looks worn out as he glances at the month. June, last year's edition.
What did the poor paper go through to be left in such a state just in one year's time?
Mingi doesn't know where to look anymore since the only apparent things are the anonymous letters.
He returns to them, accepting his fate as he seemingly will have to read them all. His brown eyes flash towards the chalkboard and the six boxes drawn on it before slipping down on the table.
The key number is six in this case.
The male notices that the two letters he read just now were truly old judging by the yellowish paper, which stands out among the white sheets.
"One, two, three, four..." he starts to quietly count the papers in the darker shade, pushing the white ones away.
Finally, he finds a fifth piece of paper in the same yellow tone with a few lines on it.
"The chalkboard boxes are connected to the letters!" he informs the silence around him.
Mingi feels hyped up as he rounds the table to step closer to the green board. Maybe people go to escape rooms for this kind of moment when suddenly something becomes clear?
He won't deny, the feeling is a bit exciting.
The red head calms down a bit and starts to search for the sixth letter but it seems like it's not anywhere.
So, there is no connection after all?
The male takes a chair, firstly transferring the two boxes on top of it to the floor and only then sitting down.
He places the two already read letters on one of the boxes next to him and starts reading the third one, not focusing on the gnawing feeling inside of him for now.
I like to have company, so they talk to me. She told me her cat just gave birth to four kittens, a colourful bunch at that. He told me I better keep my promise and go fishing with him next week, yet the weather seems to not like our plans and is pouring water as if from buckets.
He told me his daughter ran away from home, but I didn't get it, so I told him he probably scared her away, which only made him more furious.
She asked me to keep one in her memory when she is no longer here.
They told me h has lost his peak and likes to hang a mirror above himself.
He told me he would also kick me out of his house, and I left.
She told me thank you when I returned and left as well.
I just wanted some company, so I keep telling myself that Snowstorm is the best that ever happened to me.
Mingi lets go of the paper sheet, letting it slowly float down as he rubs his eyes.
The male sighs loudly. He promises to read all of it till the end before trying to dive in deeper.
His hand grabs the fallen paper and puts it on the box that has become his makeshift table. He takes the next letter, not looking forward to it as much.
I'm scared scared scared
scared scared scared scared
scared scared scared scared scared scared
scared
scared
scared scared scared scared
scared scared scared
scared scared
all starts in the blackness
B
Mingi puts down the letter without saying anything and takes the last one. He makes a mental note to look for any letters or numbers below other sheets even though he is pretty sure he would have noticed them before if there were any.
I ordered them to go away and leave me alone. They obeyed. I was left alone to sink just like a captain with his ship. I didn't mind.
The bloodied sun stared down without mercy as they marched in my haven, destroying everything they touched. I held all of it dear to myself and kept wondering, if I didn't, would it have hurt less?
Would anyone, whoever is out there, punish someone else because of their evil deeds or just for the sake of it? Looking at myself, I can only say that heavy the head that bears the crown.
And heavy the screams for saviour that I can no longer fulfil.
all ends in daylight
D
The red head blankly stares as the words lose focus in front of his eyes.
"What were we?" a hiss-like wind blows on his nape.
Mingi abruptly turns around. He's still the only one in the room but the chill down his spine was real.
The male slides his fingers against the back of his neck, trying to calm his heart that's about to jump out of his mouth.
"That was...uncomfortable." he whispers, halfway waiting for a movement or a voice.
Shivering, Mingi calms down. It was probably just the wind and his mind, trying to scare him after all those letters he has read.
Right, letters.
He collects all of them in his hands, turning back to sit on the chair normally.
Six empty boxes to be filled and only five letters.
The man examines all of them yet finds that only the last two contain letters at the end, just as he thought they would.
Taking the first letter, he reads it again, now trying to figure it out.
"Fire...someone's running, jumping, dancing. Probably dancing. Soil is wet...so it rained not long ago. They go to sleep and only then he can come out. Why? Is he hiding? Is it a riddle? What comes out when everyone has gone to sleep? The moon? No, it comes when it comes, an animal? A forest animal maybe or indeed a person. Shortest night of the year. Solstice, right? Shortest night so not December, winter but summer, June. June, June." the male murmurs, the cogwheels in his head turning and turning.
His eyes grow bigger for a second before he has already jumped up and gone to the calendar.
It has stopped in June with its sunflowers even though today September keeps twirling around the leaves outside.
He drags his finger along the dates until he finds the number twenty-one in red, showcasing that day as the summer solstice.
Mingi spins around, coming to a halt next to the chalkboard. He finds a white piece of chalk resting on the wooden edge below the green surface and picks it up, writing the two digits below the boxes.
"The numbers are in the letters' contents." Mingi comments, sounding ashamed of not picking up on anything before yet in his defence, the words made no sense, still doesn't.
Regardless, the red head picks up the third letter, deciding to leave the maths problem for later. Murmuring along the lines, his confusion only grows.
"Snowstorm, huh."
He sighs and reads again.
"I like to have company, so they talk to me. Sentences could make sense if given a context, most of them."
The male chooses a sentence that confuses him the most.
"They told me h has lost his peak and likes to hang a mirror above himself. Maybe he forgot the letter e? He has lost his peak...his peak."
Mingi puts pressure on his fingers, feeling the chalk still between them.
He writes the letter h on the board and stares at it.
"Lost his peak..." the male slightly tilts his head as his finger goes to rub the tall straight line holding the letter together on the board.
It becomes an n.
"Okay, now I have an n." he says, searching for the continuation on the paper in his left hand.
"Hang a mirror above himself. N likes to hang a mirror. Is it mirrored writing? Is it?" Mingi shoots up from his seat again.
His chocolate eyes scan his surroundings, but he sees no mirror, not even a shard of glass. He goes to his bag that is still lying on the floor close to the entrance. He looks inside, seeing only some documents, papers to write on and other stationery things. There is a phone and house keys in a smaller pocket of the bag.
Mingi takes the black phone out, tilting it slowly and watching how the screen has a dark reflection of his surroundings.
This will have to do.
Returning to the chalkboard that has become his main detective tool, the male doesn't waste time as he places the phone next to the white letter. The n then resembles a wave but that's pretty much it.
He sighs.
The phone screen lights up, showing time and his wallpaper with one anime character on it. The red head shuts it off after seeing the clock.
He has spent two hours in this Storage room fifteen and he is pretty sure the exam he is going to take is the letters and empty boxes drawn with chalk he is working with now.
That or Hongjoong accidentally mixed-up rooms, he went into a different one and wind shut the doors, jamming them and now he has spent two hours just reading some letters left behind, which will probably be used as firewood for the cold winter days that are yet to come.
"What were we?"
Mingi freezes up, not daring to turn around as the whisper comes again.
He slowly peeks over his shoulder.
Nothing has changed. No one is standing with an axe behind him or an open mouth with a row full of shark-like teeth.
He just wants to get out of here faster.
Mingi returns to the letter in his hand.
"Likes to hang a mirror above himself." he says, moving the phone above the letter on the chalkboard. He must lean closer to see it on the obscure screen.
The n takes a different form yet the male furrows his eyebrows.
"I give up."
The letter gets slammed down on top of the others while Mingi presses the chalk down harshly, leaving two big letters; B and D.
"21, n, B, D. Just wonderful." he spits out, anger radiating off him.
He takes the first letter he can get his hands at, reading it with furrowed brows.
It turns out to be the maths problem, which he gladly starts to attempt to solve.
"Alright, so I have one...let's say rock on Monday. My friend brings an even number. Two, four, six, eight. I have one rock, he brings four. We didn't have to worry about it for a week, but he takes a rock each day, leaving less than half, so two rocks are left if we had five on Monday. On Friday it has already become two. No, in that case none would be left if it's five rocks from Monday to Friday. We didn't have to worry for a week...week, I have one, he brings even numbers, he brings six. One, two, three, four till Thursday and we have three left when I say to him on Friday that we have less than half, so he has already taken four and we're left with three. I have three rocks!"
Mingi looks at the unorganised train of thoughts he drew on the chalkboard to understand the letter. Trying to wipe the drawings and numbers, he hastily writes a 3 further away to not confuse the many numbers.
There is nothing to clean the board with, so the male opts to use his shirt, pulling the black material down and rubbing the newly made sweater paw against the writings.
"3, 21, n, B, D."
He now has five somethings in front of him. His eyes flicker at the empty boxes higher up the board.
"So, it's not twenty-one but two and one." he concludes, separating the numbers so they all have a box.
"3, 2, 1, n, B, D."
Half of them are numbers and the other half are letters. He just must get the order right and wait for something to magically happen after that.
The only window from the room gives no light anymore as it has become dark outside. The male only pulls something hanging near the green chalkboard, turning on a small light above. After that, he continues sitting as the shadows of the night grow bigger around him.
Mingi turns to the letters once more, reading through them.
"All starts in the blackness, B."
"All ends in daylight, D."
He moves the letters around.
"B, 3, 2, 1, n, D."
Suddenly a thought occurs to him. He reads the first two as B E not B 3 yet the 2 following suit doesn't turn into any letter.
"What if I just have to turn them?" Mingi wonders loudly while his eyes are glued to the board.
"What were we?"
The whisper has no control over the red head as he is too immersed in the puzzle before him.
He keeps tilting his head left and right until eventually he stops.
The chalk scraps against the board again.
The numbers now are staring at him upside down.
B stays the same, 3 is now an e indeed, the 2 flipped looks like a handwritten r and he decides to just go with it, he erases the small line sticking out from the 1, leaving only a I, n becomes a u, much to Mingi's mental happiness and D ends the whole chain of letters.
"B, E, R, I, U, D." he reads aloud.
"What were we?" the voice whispers once again.
A gasp leaves Mingi's mouth as if the plates from a closet in someone's kitchen just fell and shattered over the floor.
The red head gets up, turning to the darkness behind him.
"Buried. You were buried!" he yells because despite everything he feels like all the fragments are lying around him but he himself feels light as a feather.
The door to his left opens, revealing a dim light coming from the hallway.