He tried to lower his legs further down on the floor, wanting to scream from the pain, squeezing his eyes shut gathering tears. He breathed out sharply and wincing every once in a while with the sweat sticking to his forehead. He was, yet again, trying to force himself into the splits again.
"It's not that hard. Why can't you do it but everyone else can?"
"I-I'm trying as hard as I can," he quietly whimpered under his breath. The trainer scoffed and took a hold of his shoulders, trying to force him down more, as these methods were apart of training.
He whimpered loudly and begged for the pain to stop, he felt his muscles almost tearing up and destroying his pain nerves.
Being forced into the splits was one of the many painful things you have to do to become an idol and debut into a group. This by far was physically the most painful you had to do.
It was so incredibly painful, being pushed down further to the ground when your body can't take it. Jisung finally started crying as the other trainees watched helplessly. One of the managers saw his tears and felt some kind of sorrow. Enough to actually say something about it. "Leave the boy alone, let him breathe. He's only 16..."
The trainer rolled her eyes and finally set her hands off of him and Jisung quickly but weakly fell to the ground.
He collapsed down, breathing heavily and choking on his tears. He used one arm to wrap around his face to cover his obvious tears.
"Useless," she snarled under her breath. "Everyone else here can do it, but why the hell can't you?"
He continued trying to gather his breath, coughing upon his own tears and quickly wiping his face and looking up at her.
"If you can't do this by tomorrow then you'll be kicked out. Got it?" She scoffed seeing his pained expression and gave a glare at the rest of the trainees who were helplessly standing there. She walked away into a different room, probably to work on the other trainees.
Jisung let out a large heavy sigh, again, wiping up the heavy sweat coming from his face and then weakly standing up. He looked in the mirror of the dance practice room and couldn't help but want to cry more seeing himself as a mess, in pain, and mentally ruined.
"Useless," he mumbled to himself and narrowed his eyes at the rest of the trainees who were still helplessly standing there behind him.
He weakly rubbed his thighs, making a pained face in the process and wondering when this kind of pain would leave.
⇠┅┅┅┅┅┅┅༻❁༺┅┅┅┅┅┅┅⇢
God how he hated waking up to a pounding head. His vision could never focus on time when he opens his eyes. He felt the back of his head throbbing from the lack of sleep or lack of water or even lack of food. All of them could be an option. It seems like he only got an hour of sleep again. Not a surprise considering training always is like 24-hours-a-day.
He squeezed his eyes shut, constantly rubbing his head, trying to wake himself up. It surprised him once he realized that no one else tried to wake him up. As he shared a room with two other trainees who get up at the same time as him. Two others also kept to themselves and never really showed their faces, like Jisung who always came to practice the same way.
He caressed his pounding head and sat up, then bumping his head on... something that shouldn't be there.
He groaned, feeling that it won't actually help his headache that he has. Now his head is ringing, it felt like some kind of built-up pressure from either being up in the atmosphere or in the ocean, which made him hold his other hand up close to his ear. He never slept on a bottom bunk or had any bunk beds in his dorm room. He also doesn't remember falling asleep on some kind of desk. Even his sleeping position was different. From built-up stress and lack of sleep, his position was always some kind of curl. His legs would be scrunched up to his chest, his head resting on a soft pillow or something along the lines of that.
He opened his eyes, and finally adjusted to the area he was in.
It was dark.
Very dark.
He rubbed his head from the slight pain of bumping it, but couldn't adjust to the surrounding he was in. He felt like it was very dusty and then reached for his phone but nothing was there. Nothing was actually there. He scanned all over his body, patting down his pockets, ankles, and hoodie. He felt the area around him, feeling the hard cold ground, at least he assumed, and eventually found his phone with a shattered screen. His phone was next to him, actually on, what it seemed like, a very cold and hard concrete.
His phone's screen was still cracked, but he was still able to turn it on. With the press of the button on the side, the first thing he checked for was the service bars. They were all down. He had no service. He scoffed at the soft blue light that came from it. But one of the features that he could still access with 0 service is the flashlight on his phone.
He pressed the one flashlight button, pointing it around and to his shock, he didn't see much because he was actually low down on the ground.
He really was nowhere...
Above his head was a metal bar... an actual metal bar. He made the most confused face, examining what's above him. One metal bar with rust peeling from the top. The then pointed the flashlight in front of him, seeing nothing but dust particles flying around in the air.
"H-hello," he trembled underneath his breath. His voice echoed, bouncing off of the walls where ever he was. With the anxiety he has and the echoing made his breath heavy, weighing down on his chest.
He slid away from the metal bar and couldn't believe his eyes once he shined the flashlight.
He was in a very large but enclosed room. It was far from empty, gadgets laid across countertops, cabinets, things he has never seen before. Nothing was lighting up, everything was dusty and it looked like it had been untouched for years, or even decades. The gadgets look like they've been used for something that didn't seem legal. In all the books he had read, the things he wasn't supposed to know at his age, he has never seen items and tools such as these.
He walked closely and slowly towards one of the objects across this old countertop, gently brushing his fingers across the top of the sharp metal and copper object. It didn't seem to work but there were buttons with unknown mandarin symbols printed across them. He brushed off the dust, seeing the devices numbers and codes.
This meant nothing to the area he was in. But the one thing he could read in mandarin only confused him more.
"项目：黄木"
"Project... Yellowwood," he whispered to himself. He only could translate that because of the lessons he took on... dimensions. Early spring, placebos, something along the lines of that.
He looked towards the wall with plenty of unread mandarin, things he couldn't translate but pointing his flashlight across the sorts of symbols, he could make out the sounds and gaps.
"If you're at the hesitation, roads are not taken, two are the same. A new path ahead awaits, two roads diverged in a Yellowwood. Traveling both routes will lead to mistakes, wishing upon a new path is now valid," he read out loud.
This connects to the poem's he used to read when he was a kid it seemed like. Maybe it was all just a joke but with the readings, the numbers, the strange gadgets laid across the countertops, a poem like this could have come to life.
"1932," he read out loud again, as a date imprinted on the wall read.
The way the unfinished bricks are scattered across the floor, the rusted metal bars that climbed across, up, and down to new unexplored floors, the untouched old gadgets, the mandarin symbols imprinted along the walls and tools, the Yellowwood references, everything that was as old as time itself indicated that this place has been untouched since 1932. There were too much dust and the scent of old wood and a disgusting smell of rust was intoxicating the air far down below where he was.
This place was truly left abanded since 1932.
He took one look at the bars and saw that they lead in two directions as ladders. One that climbed up. One that climbed down.
Jisung wanted to leave, the place gave him the strangest vibes. He felt as if it was contaminated or unsafe. The only option to him was up.
He took a couple of steps closer to the metal bars before looking down. Going down, he saw multiple floors. Floors that led down even further underground. He imagined the sort of pressure his ears would feel if he went even down lower underground.
But curiosity got the best of him again. The thought of items, places, lights, and gadgets that have been untouched since 1932 drew him closer than ever. There could have been so many new discoveries and secrets that they have been hiding from the public.
He took a look at the time on his phone... 3:58 a.m...
He made a pained face, thinking he was kidnapped or something. It was way too early in the morning for this. But he had time...
Instead of going up, his hands grabbed a hold of the rusted bars, and he slid down. Far down, paying no attention to the other floors, holding his phone in his mouth. He couldn't help the rust on the ladder and fell to the last floor.
He felt no fear whatsoever, feeling the pressure build up more in his ears. Curiosity was overcoming his fears of the dark, being alone, something that shouldn't be here is here. As those were his main fears. Never in a million years, he would think he would be kidnapped and left in some underground facility. But that wasn't the concern of his right now.
A normal person would have looked for clues of how he had gotten kidnapped or even who his kidnapper was. Or where his location was. For some reason that was the least of his concerns right now.
He felt urges to go down and explore more. All of this here was just flashbacks to his childhood and it only lured him in more. There were no danger signs or at least signs that he could read. And even if there was danger signs or something felt off, he felt the urge to just continue on. Which is something he could never do in all his years.
He reached to grab another limb of the large metal bars but to his mistakes he missed it. Therefore he fell down, mistaking a metal bar for a ladder (lmao why is he so clumsy-)
Lucky or not, he did not fall far and ended up landing on both of his feet, in shock with his mouth open and his heart skipping beats. He felt his breath getting shorter and his ears pressure building up. He didn't know how far down he was into the ground but he assumed it was at the lowest point a human could go without losing oxygen.
And to his surprise, it was a very very small space. There seemed to be no other way to enter the area, but strangely he didn't need his flashlight. The room was already lit up. There was no sign of natural light coming from anywhere or any other man-made light.
It was so strange, not even Jisung could explain the area around him.
There were dust particles flying around, old eroding bricks stacked up and light coming from behind what it seemed like an elevator or something along the lines of that. He noticed lamps or lights that are actually lit up in one of them seem to be openings or other small entrances but they led to nothing. Strangely the lights were turned on. For a place that was supposed to be abanded since 1932, these lights shouldn't be on. Especially the one in the elevator. Someone was here not too long ago... and the thought of that sent shivers down his spine. But that wasn't his main concern right now.
He examined the elevator closely, scanning it up and down.
"Why in the hell," he mumbled to himself. Maybe he was wrong about being able to go further into the ground because there was an elevator in front of him. Definitely, one that was made a long time ago. There was a light right above it, shining above a sign and exposing the white letters on the sign in English.
"Elevator," he read out loud to himself.
The old style of the elevator and the way the the metal bars were aligned in a perfectly symmetrical diamond pattern, the rust that was slowly climbing it's way up the bars, the dusted rug below the vintage hanging lights, exposing a maze of buttons along the sides of them with dull lights shining behind the numbers.
One particular button interested him the most.
"Hell." That's what the button said. And that's the only button that he could make out besides the mandarin.
The amount of little force it would take to just dress that button was so little, it was so compelling him, dragging him and his mind closer to trailing his finger over the dull plastic. With nothing but the English word "hell."
The was the last thing he could remember that very early morning. Nothing but curiousity and pain from the deep undergrounds.
Only if he hadn't pressed that compelling button, he wouldn't have fallen to the ground in cold sweat, just dropping like a useless corpse.
His eyes shut completely, his mind went blank, and nothing then could wake him up. Nothing was working to force himself up but he didn't move a centimeter.
And for a good reason as well. The power of a button just knocked him out, fearlessly.
"Han Jisung, a 16-year-old boy has gone reportedly missing..."
┊ ┊ ┊ ┊ ┊ ┊
┊ ┊ ┊ ┊˚✩ ⋆｡˚ ✩
┊ ┊ ┊ ✫
┊ ┊ ☪⋆
┊ ⊹ ┊
✯ ⋆ . ˚
˚✩
AUTHORS NOTE: yall this is the most boring chapter of the book, please stick with it and accept the fact that Jisung may have died from pressing a damn button lmao
Anyway, make sure to read, vote, and comment (I'm legit so sorry that it's so long, next chapter will be shorter I promise)