not what it seems
➳ You’ve signed up for a VR company’s beta testing for their new innovation, but you would have never thought that you and Jay - the son of the CEO - would be the two testers who actually get stuck inside the game.
➳ Characters: rich boy!Jay x reader/you
➳ Genre: experiment au, game au, kind of futuristic au, biotech au, action, comedy
➳ Words: 10.1k
➳ A/N: The levels are inspired by the settings in the Enhypen MVs in order, namely Given-Taken, Let Me In, Drunk-Dazed, Fever and Tamed-Dashed. Merry Christmas @dat-town! I love you more than words could explain! 💖
➳ A/N: Click here to be added to the TAGLIST and to let me know about your fic preferences. 💖
➳ Check out: my Enhypen masterlist
Belift Lab is one of the most popular VR companies in the world, and surely the most well-known in South Korea as of now. It doesn’t produce only excellent VR games that have won numerous awards, but it also helps furniture and fashion companies with VR-based customer experiences (you can place your product inside your room through your phone or try on a dress virtually to decide whether it would fit you), it assists automotive companies with the designs for new cars and aids racers to try themselves out in new fields without even being there personally. With such cutting-edge technology, rising prices on the stock market and an immaculate reputation, it’s no wonder Belift Lab is looking for its next big thing.
Turns out you just got yourself into it when you walk into the building of the given address, and find yourself being surrounded by Belift Lab employees, telling you all about the experiment you have previously signed up for.
The thing is: you saw the ad with the opportunity to take part in an experiment that pays well (like reeeaally well, a month’s worth of salary, to be precise), and given your broken college student state (already feeling the burden of your college debt), you’ve decided that it wouldn’t do you any harm to apply. Later on, you were contacted by someone who asked you questions, and when they asked if you’ve ever played a VR game, you thought that you would be doomed saying no. Yet, you didn’t want to lie, so you told them the truth. Actually, it was really the right thing to do because they were also looking for people with no experience in VR games (not just ones who did have experience) because they were testing out a new innovation, and they wanted to see if it would do well with people who have zero experience (like you).
So you were given a date and an address to come by for the experiment, instructions on what to look out for and what were the possible complications (headaches, nightmares, dizziness and such… though you had no idea at that time what the actual experiment would include), but you would have never thought that it would be Belift Lab out of all companies. Yet, here you are, already signing a confidentiality contract that you wouldn’t tell anyone about the details about today’s experiment, and they’ve also promised to take responsibility for any additional complications.
That’s when they tell you that they are testing pills that make you feel like you’re inside a VR game when in reality, you are just lying in an excellently built capsule, and the pill has this effect on your brain waves. There are scientists and doctors on the site in case something goes wrong, so even though it seems a bit scary, the amount of people who are there to help reassure you that they aren’t going to kill you right then and there.
“Beta tester number 25, please, come forward!” A woman with rounded glasses calls for you, and you walk from the lobby through the corridor beside her, fingers playing with the hem of your comfy sweater. The woman’s high heels echo through the corridor as you’re making your way to another room. Then, another. And then, another.
When you arrive at the final one, you can see the capsules lined up beside the wall. They are huge, and look like rocket ships (not that you’ve ever seen one in real life or been in one before), and they look really expensive. You can already tell that a lot of money and technological advances have gone into those capsules.
“Please, make yourself comfortable in the capsule beside Mr. Kim!” The woman instructs you as she points at a friendly-looking 30-something man by the first capsule on your left. You nod, thanking the woman for her assistance and walk to the said man who immediately introduces himself as Kim Seokjin, then motions you to look at the table beside him.
On the table, there are a few pills, a glass and a jug of water. The pills look tiny enough to swallow easily, so you’re hopeful that you wouldn’t choke on it, ruining your impression as a beta tester.
“What you have to do is to swallow the pill, then lay down in the capsule,” Mr. Kim starts in a professional, patient tone. “The pill will make you feel sleepy, and you may feel like dreaming, but what you will feel and experience won’t be real, so remember that! You won’t get hurt no matter what happens in the game. Your body may have physical reactions to the virtual images projected into your brain, but we’ll monitor you throughout the experience, so you don’t need to worry.”
The way he says it makes it so easy to trust him, and obviously, Belift Lab knows what it’s doing, no wonder it’s so well-known and high-praised. Everyone here has seemed so professional and helpful so far, and they’ve given you multiple chances to turn down the experiment and bail out, and they have made sure that you knew about all the possible complications that have happened during the previous beta testing rounds, so you’re well-informed, there’s no need to worry.
“The pill’s effect aka the whole game should last for an hour, but we’re already at the fifth prototype, so it may differ a bit due to the modifications we did after the last round of beta testing. Another additional part of this round of beta testing is the pair you’ll get. He will arrive soon, and join you inside the game. Together, you might be able to solve the problems faster, and help each other throughout the different levels. There are altogether 5 levels, but due to the time limit, you will most probably not be able to get through all of them. However, if you lose in a round, you can try until you succeed or until the time is up, so you don’t need to worry about getting eliminated quickly,” he explains and lets out a chuckle by the end that just makes him even friendlier in your eyes.
“Well, I guess I won’t get through them all since I haven’t been in a game like this before,” you admit, letting out a chuckle yourself. The young man’s smile doesn’t fade as he reassures you:
“Don’t worry! It’s going to be a thrilling game, so you will probably enjoy it even if you haven’t tried anything like this before. Or so the previous beta testers have said so.”
At this time, a black-haired guy appears by the door, but he’s far from you, so you can’t see him properly. From afar, you can only see that he’s tall and slender, and has a rather confident, chic aura about him - it’s in the way he carries himself, and he doesn’t try to seem small, he rather puffs his chest out and straightens his back. You can only guess that he would be your pair in the game since he’s led to the first capsule on the right-hand side of the room, but you can’t dwell on it long either since Mr. Kim asks if you have any questions.
“No, I don’t think so,” you tell him with a smile, and he reassures you again that if there’s anything wrong with your brain waves and body signals (for instance, your blood pressure levels), they can tell because they will monitor you through the capsules, so you don’t need to worry.
Taking that as a final word, you reach for the jug of water and pour yourself a glass, then reach for the pill to place it on your tongue. Thanks to its size and the liquid, it slips down easily, and there’s no odd aftertaste, so you get inside the capsule with a light heart.
“Good luck!” Mr. Kim wishes beamingly before closing the lid of the capsule. As you’re laying there, you can see the ceiling of the room through the glass of the lid, and it’s the last thing you see before you feel like you’re drifting into sleep.
When you get inside the game, you find yourself in a rather vintage-looking room with wooden chairs and tables, a flower-patterned armchair, a worn rug, a chandelier, an old, loudly ticking clock on the wall and even a teddy bear. It seems like a living room, and there’s a dining table behind the sofa you sit on, so that must be the dining room behind you. There’s also a kitchen attached to the dining room with all kinds of cutleries and cupboards.
However, as you look around, your eyes settle on the jetblack-haired boy who’s just regained his consciousness in the chair beside the sofa, and your eyes widen in bewilderment. He must be the same boy from before, but now you can recognise who he is.
“What are you doing here?”
The words come out harsher than you would have intended, but the boy beside you seems more amused than hurt, so he casually shrugs his shoulders and says:
“Why can’t I be here?”
“I mean…” You try to pull yourself together, not wanting to seem like a gossipy person, but anyone who has ever heard of Belift Lab has heard of the son of its CEO: Park Jongseong, also known as Jay. He’s there with his father at all major events, and with his good looks, he always stands out. His fashion choices are always the talk of the town, but it’s no wonder that he knows how to combine colours and styles since he’s said to be a fashion designer college major, and with his build, he can pull off literally anything. And yes, you don’t live under a rock, so you know these about him just by scrolling through social media, and reading some news sites. “Don’t you already know what the games are about?”
Hearing that, Jay lets out a bit of a snicker, then looks straight into your eyes, and there’s something cold about his gaze. Something that you can’t quite put your finger on.
“No, I don’t. I’m here as an ordinary beta tester just like you,” he explains dryly, almost coolly, and you need to remind yourself that despite what you know about him, you don’t actually know anything about him, so you might as well just accept that he’s speaking the truth.
You don’t have more time to dwell on such thoughts anyways because in the next moment, a door opens and a few guys enter the room. At first, you think that they might be beta testers just like you, but then you catch sight of their outfit - much like a uniform for boys at a boys’ school, but like in the previous decade: plain white shirts tucked into their black cotton pants that reach until their ankles, black socks and uniform dark shoes. They all have matching black ties that are loose around their necks, one boy even has a vest, but there’s also one thing that catches your eyes when you look at them: they all look sickly pale.
Then, as the light from outside shines onto one of their faces, something flashes when the nearest boy smiles at you, and you and Jay look at each other at the same time.
“They have fangs!” You shriek, horrified, because it wasn’t the kind of theme you’ve expected when Mr. Kim has told you that it would be a thrilling game. You know it’s just the first level, but you’ve expected something light, not vampires.
However, your survival instincts kick in at the sight of the newly arrived creatures, and your eyes scan the room for possible escape routes. There seems to be only one door, and that’s behind the boys, so you have to get there somehow (while not getting bitten by them).
“We gotta go!” Jay exclaims, still composed, as he bolts from his seat, but you’re already making your way towards the kitchen. “What are you doing there? You can’t hide from vampires in a cupboard!”
“I’m looking for weapons, you dumbass!” You reason harshly because just as much as you know that this game isn’t real, hence you can’t possibly get hurt, you don’t intend on having a close encounter with a vampire. And no, you aren’t an empty-headed, screaming girl like in horror movies, you have functioning brain cells, so you open cupboard after cupboard, looking for knives and even frying pans (getting hit by a frying pan must hurt, right?).
Seemingly, Jay doesn’t have a better idea either, so he quickly runs towards you, and you lend him a longer cutting knife without sparing him a glance. He could think whatever he wants about you, but when he doesn’t thank you, you know that you’re going to have a difficult time being his partner for the game because he doesn’t really have the best first impression on you (neither do you on him probably by asking him what he is doing here… fair enough, you guess).
You get yourself a frying pan and a knife, and look back at the vampire boys who are closing on you two. You’re pretty much in the corner of the kitchen at this point, so there’s really no other way than to get through them and hopefully escape. Whatever this level is about, you are sure that you would find out only after getting rid of the vampires or getting out of their sight.
So not waiting for Jay to say anything or to make a move, you try to gather all your strength as you hit the nearest vampire in the face with the frying pan. Thankfully, the boy backs away and loses his balance, so you can continue punching the vampires in their faces with that brilliant frying pan or stabbing the knife in their side. Thank god you aren’t scared of blood because there is sure a lot of blood, and everything seems so real that you get a bit dizzy at the sight of those suffering bodies by your side.
Due to the sudden light-headed moment of yours, you become a bit less careful, and someone immediately reaches for your wrist from behind you, twisting it in a way that doesn’t break the bone but it hurts nevertheless, and the frying pan falls from your hands. You let out a scream in agony, and turn around, only to be faced with a very much enraged and crimson-eyed boy: the first victim of your frying pan hits. Your heart skips a beat when you realise just how close he is, and the pain coming from your wrist numbs your senses, so when he leans forward, you react belatedly, and don’t push him away even though you still have your knife on you.
But someone reacts.
Jay directs a well-calculated kick into the vampire’s side that’s enough to make him lose his balance. After that, he grabs the knife out of your hands and stabs it into the vampire’s chest, a pool of blood immediately oozing out of the spot. You let out a long breath that you’ve been holding back, and catch Jay’s deep, dark eyes when they search for yours.
“Thanks,” you mumble, still in shock, and you wince when the pain coming from your wrist flares up again.
You don’t have time to tend to it though because another vampire comes from behind Jay, and you reach for the boy’s arm to pull him with you as you start making your way towards the door that you’ve noticed when you first looked around.
“There’s one coming after us,” you tell him, and he looks back, seeing the situation for himself. You two run fast enough, but the vampire isn’t slow either, and manages to grab Jay by his shoulder. While Jay and the vampire are kicking and punching each other, you notice that neither of them has a weapon anymore, so your eyes scan the room quickly, and you crouch down to the nearest vampire, pulling the knife out of the body. It’s disgusting, you know it, there’s even more blood coming out of it, but by telling yourself that it isn’t real and that you’ve seen a lot worse in horror movies, you can still keep your shit together.
With the knife in your hand, you try to position yourself behind the vampire to aim at his back, but they are constantly moving, and you can’t get a good hold of him, and you don’t want to hurt Jay. So you do what might seem silly, but it’s your only chance:
“Jay, please, stop!” You exclaim, and the boy hesitates for a moment hearing your voice, his body still. It’s enough for the vampire to launch himself onto the boy, but taking advantage of Jay’s constant spot, you can stab the vampire in the back who falls to his knees almost immediately.
Jay looks up, quite bewildered, and both of you are still panting from the intensity of the last few minutes. He brushes his midnight-black locks that stick to his forehead due to sweating so much, but even in his state, he’s annoyingly good-looking (not that you would ever tell him face-to-face).
“Thanks,” he breathes out at last, but he doesn’t look you in the eye when he says so. It’s still enough for you, and you won’t start arguing about it right then and there because you want to get out as soon as possible. He probably thinks the same way as he bobs his head in the door’s direction, and after stepping over the last vampire’s body, you follow the boy.
You don’t dare to look back as you walk towards the door, and your wrist is still hurting a lot, so you focus on not wincing constantly while Jay’s reaching for the doorknob. Only to find it closed.
He tries to open it a few more times, but it seems like you won’t just get out of the place so easily.
“I suppose we should look for a key,” you announce a bit wearily because you’ve thought that you were over the most intense part of this level by fighting off those vampires.
“I guess so,” Jay agrees, giving you a brief nod before turning back and looking around. “I’ll start in the kitchen,” he decides after a few moments of silence, and doesn’t even wait for your approval. Hence, you go for the living room, looking into all of the drawers, looking behind the shelves, even looking under the rug.
It takes a bit more time for you to investigate because you don’t want to use your pained right hand, and you’re right-handed, so you’re a bit clumsier with your other hand. You feel like giving up when the minutes pass by unfruitful, but then you notice that there’s something in the neck of the teddy bear that you’ve disregarded, and when you look closer, you can take out the shape of a key.
“I’ve found it!” You tell Jay who’s currently looking into the cupboards in the kitchen for the third time. The boy’s eyes light up when you take the necklace off of the teddy bear, the key right in the middle of it.
“Who would have thought that it would be on the teddy bear?” Jay mumbles, but you just shrug your shoulders. If he doesn’t know the kind of games and the tricks in them that his father is making, then you wouldn’t know either.
With the key in your hand, you now walk confidently to the door, and when it finally budges, you let out a sigh in relief. That’s the last thing you can do before you get swept off of your feet as the door opens and darkness engulfs you.
It’s just a moment, similar to when you stand up too quickly and can’t see for a second, and then you find yourself inside a forest. The air is heavy, humid, almost as if you were in a rainforest. There are trees and bushes everywhere, even birds chirping, but something is very odd about the otherwise pretty scene, and you only notice it when you look up: there’s no sky. It’s pitch black above you. As you look around further, you can see the same darkness around you two, and you have no idea what it is, but you know that you’ll only get to the end of it if you start exploring this forest.
“We should probably look around, and try to find something that doesn’t seem fitting to the scene. Like the teddy bear last time,” you speak up after you take in your surroundings, and when you avert your eyes to Jay, he merely shrugs his shoulders.
“I guess so,” he agrees flatly, and you quirk an eyebrow challengingly.
“If you don’t agree, you can say so. I’ve never played VR games, so I have no idea what to expect from this pill-innovation. I’m just trying to come up with something logical,” you reason thoroughly, trying to find something in his jetblack orbs that might give him away. He looks away though, so you can’t even try to read his expression.
“I’ve never played one either,” he admits as he kicks into a branch under his feet, much like a sulky kid. He doesn’t seem like he wants to talk, and based on his words, you have a feeling that his lack of experience in VR games and his presence at the beta testing site might have to do something with his father, but not in the way you would have thought so.
However, you know better than to ask an almost stranger about his family issues, so you shut up, and start walking around instead. As you’re trying to walk over a giant fallen trunk (or more like crawl over), you realise that your wrist isn’t hurting anymore, so you can easily assist yourself in the process. Jay behind you, on the other hand, isn’t that careful, and he slips off the tree in a rather clumsy way, almost falling head-on. He lets out a curse, and you watch him tentatively, trying to figure him out. How can someone so charismatic and chic be so hurt and careless?
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t I be? I don’t have anything else to do with my life anyways than to beta test my father’s new innovation,” he grunts, dusting off his black sweatpants and oversized jumper. It seems like you two find yourselves in your original clothes and original state whenever you get to a new level because neither of you have blood on your clothes from the fight with the vampires and your wrist isn’t hurting anymore. It’s interesting.
What’s more interesting is the implication behind his words. When you first wondered why he was there in the game with you, and he said that he was an ordinary beta tester like you, you assumed that he was there of his own free will. On the other hand, his slight outburst makes you think otherwise. You’re in no place to ask questions though since you don’t know him and you will probably never see him again after this, so you try with a friendly smile and say:
“Let’s try to go around quickly, so we can be done with this whole game as soon as possible!” You suggest quite frankly because you don’t want to drag this further either. The first level was scary enough for you to think twice about signing up for such experiments in the future no matter the money.
Jay does look up at you after your words, and something akin to gratitude flashes across the dark sky of his eyes. Just as deep and cold as his orbs seem, they are also enigmatic, but in a beautiful way. He’s the kind of mystery you wish to solve, but the thought alone is enough to make you shake your head and turn back, so that you could look ahead of yourself. Yet, it’s too late.
You manage to walk into a small pond at that moment, and once your feet touch the water, it feels like something literally grabs your legs and drags you inside. You fall onto your back with a loud thud, and then the next thing you see and feel is the water weighing you down.
You have no idea what’s inside the water, but you have to try extra hard to fight off whatever that is holding you down. You kick a few times with all your might, but you’re too scared and shocked to look behind you in the water, you’re concentrating on coming up for air instead. However, those seconds above the water aren’t enough to make up for all the water you manage to gulp down and the strength with which that mysterious something is holding onto you.
You’re literally drowning and suffocated, and your eyes can’t get adjusted to the dirty water and its saltiness around you, and it gets extremely hard to see and feel anything other than undefeatable power. Your silent screams are just a useless cry in the whirlwind, and you wonder whether it feels similar to dying because your lungs are on fire, your eyes are burning, and your heart is beating as if it would break through your ribcage. Everything is dark and salty and futile, and you’re ready to accept your fate, so you close your eyes, letting the water carry your body instead of fighting against it.
And then darkness.
You faintly register when someone carries your body onto the slippery grass, but the moment you can breathe again, you start coughing up water and your eyes bolt open. You’re alive. You didn’t die. Or at least, not on this level, not in this game.
“It’s okay, it’s over now,” Jay tells you surprisingly gently, his familiar voice being the kind of anchor you would have never thought you would be thankful for, but after the events behind you, you are. You can feel his hands on your back as he helps you sit up and pat your back, so that you could cough up more water if needed.
“What happened?” You ask between two coughs, blinking at the boy in confusion. He looks just as startled and shaken up as you do, and the sight kind of warms your heart because this is the first time you can see some care behind his chic boy interior (and it’s because of you).
“I don’t exactly know.” Jay shakes his head, quite bewildered. There are a few jetblack locks that fall into his eyes as he speaks, but he doesn’t bother pushing them away as his hands are still on your back. “It seemed like some kind of a creature that just grabbed you and pulled you inside the water. I had no idea what to do, but there was this blue glow coming from behind one of the trees, and I ran to see what it was, and found this glass of blue liquid, and I’ve tried my luck and poured it inside the pond. Then, there was this big glow again, and I don’t know why, but your body came up to the surface, and I could go into the water, and get you out without having to encounter that creature.”
The way he says it as if he himself wouldn’t believe what just happened tells you just how shocking it was to him, and you aren’t any different, to be honest. You wouldn’t even be any different if you were in his shoes because you really have no idea what to expect from this whole experiment. The vampires were surprising enough, but this? Even more so.
Just as much as you know that none of this is real, and what you see and feel is actually the combination of the pill and the technology built inside the capsule, your crazily beating heart doesn’t care that it’s just an experiment. It only knows just how scary it was to be dragged by that unknown creature and to fight for your life. No wonder the same words from before roll off your tongue so easily:
“Thank you,” you breathe out when you can finally stop coughing. “It was so frightening. I didn’t even see what I was fighting against.”
“No worries. You would have done the same,” Jay reassures you in a rather kind way, and despite what you’ve felt during the beginning of your acquaintanceship, you’re actually thankful that he’s been beside you now, and you could rely on his help. Sure, you could have just lost this round and tried again, but it feels good that he actually looks out for you (just like you’ve done for him).
After you pull yourself together and squeeze out as much water from your clothes as possible, you continue looking around the forest with the boy, being extra careful this time. You brainstorm about why the sky could be pitch-black, and what you should be looking for, but you only realise the purpose of this whole level when Jay literally walks into something.
You’ve thought that you would see the rest of the forest ahead of you, it’s just dark like the sky above you, but no, there’s no more forest once Jay walks into what seems like the end of it. Because you’re actually stuck inside a glass cube which means that the darkness above you means that there’s actually nothing above you except the glass.
“But wait… If there’s glass around us and above us, how come there’s a pond? There should be glass under us, but there’s a pond, and it seems pretty deep, so can it be the way we can get out? Maybe there’s something at the bottom of it?” Jay muses out loud after you come to the conclusion that you’re trapped inside a glass cube.
You ponder over his words, trying to understand the logic of this game. On the first level, you were still just trying to get used to the game itself, so you didn’t even pay attention to the door the vampires entered through, but it was what turned out to be the escape you were looking for.
“It would make sense since last time we had to fight through vampires who were the obstacle towards the door. Here, it seems like the obstacle was the creature you managed to get rid of with the help of that blue liquid, and it would make sense that it was guarding the pond just like the vampires didn’t let us get to the door. The question is: do we need to find a key this time, too?” You wonder out loud because you’re sure at this point that it would do you good if you worked together and started putting together your ideas.
“I mean, we could try getting into the pond again to see if there’s something at the bottom. We can’t get any wetter than we are now,” Jay points out very much reasonably, and it’s in the way he says it so coolly and casually that actually makes you crack a smile because he’s right, but you wouldn’t have thought that he would back up his idea by saying that you’ve already been drenched anyways, so why not go for it?
So you give in to his idea, and start walking towards the pond again. Even though you don’t have the fondest memories with it, you don’t have a better idea to try and find your escape because it seems obvious by now that both levels are a kind of ‘how to get out of this place’ themed. Not to mention that this time, you’re prepared to go into the water, so you can mentally and physically prepare yourself for getting underwater and holding your breath.
You and Jay both swim to the bottom of the pond, and even though it seems like there’s no bottom or it’s so deep that you can’t see it, eventually, something flashes there, and you exchange a gaze with Jay when you realise what it is: an actual door. So pushing yourself forward with your legs, you make your way to the door, and Jay rips it open easily, and that’s the last thing you see before you feel like all the air is punched out of your lungs.
Just like last time, you find yourself in a new place with your original clothes in their original state. However, this time, there’s no eerie silence like on the first level, not even birds chirping like in the next second one, there’s actually loud music busting from speakers, and you don’t need a lot of time to put together where you are: a party.
“Really?” You quirk an eyebrow, a bit taken aback by how ordinary the setting is compared to the ones before.
“Don’t jinx it! You might walk into an ordinary-looking pond and get attacked by something,” Jay points it out with a half-careful, half-playful tone. You roll your eyes at him, but you know that he’s right. There’s always been something extraordinary in the levels even though you couldn’t see it at first, so you have to be careful.
As you scan the area around you, it seems too ordinary though. There are drinks and food on a table nearby, the disco lights are dressing up the room in vibrant colours, there’s a darts board and a foosball table for entertainment, music is played from big hi-fi towers on two sides of a tv, and there are cushions scattered around the room. It looks like a living room but a fancy one; it’s so big, it’s more like a lecture hall at your university. There are twenty-something guys and girls chatting in smaller groups, seemingly occupied with their own stuff (well, as much as they could be considering that it’s not actually real, it’s just a game).
“Found anything suspicious?” You turn to Jay after you look around a bit, but he seems just as clueless as you are, shaking his head alongside his answer.
“No. It seems like an ordinary college party.”
“Speaking from experience?” You quirk an eyebrow playfully, but you can’t not imagine him as the popular college guy who’s invited to every college party, who’s surrounded by girls who have a crush on him, and who seems to be the life of the party wherever he goes.
Jay, on the other hand, lets a lazy, almost smug grin invade his thin lips.
“I’m sorry to break it down to you, but no. I haven’t been to a single college party in my life,” he admits casually, shrugging his shoulders. You have to admit that you’re a bit taken aback, but he doesn’t let you muse over it too much. “Attending my father’s events is enough socializing for me, I don’t crave loud music and sweaty bodies on top of that.”
Your earlier smile fades away as another piece of the puzzle fits the assumption that you’ve been building ever since you first talked to him, and asked why he was there with you in the game. He certainly doesn’t have the best relationship with his father, and it seems like his rather chic outfits at formal events and his good looks hide something way deeper, way more hurt.
You’re about to open your mouth when the boy cuts you off, averting his eyes back to you after looking around once more.
“I think the two guys in the corner behind me are staring at us,” he breaks it down to you as he points in the said direction. Your eyes follow where he’s pointing at, and you can’t help but agree with him. The two guys stare right at the two of you, and when they catch your gazes, they just turn around and start walking away.
“Do you think we should follow them?”
“I don’t think we could find it out without actually following them,” Jay points out rather reasonably. You nod to his words, but there’s a knot in your throat. What could await you on this level? You’ve had vampires and water creatures, blood and water, fighting and swimming so far, so there was a possibility you would have something even worse this time.
You maneuver yourself around all those random people, but they don’t seem to notice you two even when you bump into them, so it makes you think that they won’t attack you (hopefully), they are just like those non player characters that are there in video games for aesthetic purposes (not that you play video games, but your little brother does, so you hear a thing or two from him). Jay goes first, and you follow him, hoping that the two suspicious boys could lead you to a clue that helps you figure out what this level is about.
However, when a door closes behind them and you open it, what you see is far from what you’ve expected. The door immediately closes behind you two the moment you both step into the room, and the suspicious boys are nowhere in sight. Instead of them, there’s a whole obstacle course in front of you.
You used to enjoy it as a kid at theme parks, but it seems all too real and all too dangerous now. There’s a narrow footbridge in the middle but without the rails on the sides (so it’s just the deck), deep, discoloured water under it that sizzles as if there’s some kind of acid in there, there’s fire coming out of pillars on both sides of the room, and there are different objects hanging down from the ceiling, swaying left to right, momentarily blocking the way to the end of the trail.
There’s a ladder that leads to the beginning of the footbridge, and there’s no other way to go around the course because the giant glass under the bridge that holds the water from spilling out is built into the room from wall to wall. No matter who did this part of the experiment, they made sure that the players knew that they had no choice but to go through it.
“So… uhm… I think we should follow each other closely in case one of us has trouble at some point, but that footbridge-like thing isn’t wide enough for the two of us to start at the same time,” you try to pull yourself together at the sight of the flames and the suspicious looking water and all those objects swaying left to right, probably heavy enough to push any person into the water without a problem.
“I’ll start first then,” Jay volunteers confidently, and you try to thank him with a reassuring smile, but it probably seems a bit too forced. “It’ll be okay, just take it easy. There’s no need to rush,” he adds oddly gently, yet you guess your fear is written all over your face, so there’s no way he couldn’t have guessed how scared you are.
“Thanks,” you mumble out, your voice shaking a bit. He smiles back at you before he walks to the ladder, taking one step after another. You follow him after a few seconds, but the moment you place your feet on the ladder, a timer appears on the ceiling, and it starts counting back.
04:59… 04:58…
“Oh jesus! Are we supposed to do it under 5 minutes?” You shriek out in horror, but quicken your steps nevertheless, making it to the top of the ladder in no time.
“That’s it for taking our time,” Jay mimics your surprise in a rather ironic tone, and you don’t know what’s worse: knowing that this is not real and your heart still feels like it’ll jump out of your ribcage, or seeing the always confident Jay waver in front of you. “I’ll go first nevertheless. You can follow me, and I’ll try to help whenever I can. Okay?”
The way he looks at you makes you shiver a bit. There’s no sign of the cool, chic boy anymore, he seems more determined than ever. He seems like a real fighter, and maybe it’s because he handles the thought of it not being real better, but he seems so much more composed than you yourself are, so you try to pull yourself together for his sake (and for your sake, of course).
You nod, and watch as he takes the first step on the bridge. If the whole situation isn’t bad enough, the boy tells you that the deck is slippery, so you have to be careful. When he gets near the first object that’s swaying above the bridge yet low enough to throw anyone off, he crouches down and starts crawling, his back avoiding the object only by a bit. While you’re watching him, you look up at the timer, and then look back at the bridge, then look up again.
“The fire is coming out every 5 seconds. They go off at the same time as far as I can see,” you notify him of your observation, and help him with the counting when he walks through the first zone with the fire pillars.
You can feel your heart beat in an erratic rhythm, but you gulp down your nervousness as you take the first step onto the bridge. There’s no time to waste, 35 seconds already passed by, and Jay passed only the first two trials, there’s plenty more left, so you try to be quick yet careful. You mimic Jay when you get to the first swaying object, and you practically lay down onto the cold metal, then push yourself up when it’s getting further from you. Then, you wait for the fire to go off first, so you can start counting, and run through the first fire zone when it’s time.
After you’ve overcome the second fire zone, you catch sight of Jay miscalculating his steps and almost getting burned by the fire that goes off at the next zone. He stumbles backwards, momentarily forgetting about anything else and is about to take a step forward when you exclaim:
“Jay, on your right!” You warn him about the object swaying right in his direction, and he doesn’t have time to crouch down, so he hastily takes two steps backwards, almost crashing into you, yet successfully avoiding the object.
You automatically grab his sweater from the back to minimise the chances of bumping into each other, but the boy’s surprise is evident when he turns his head towards you, and his eyes widen. As he’s turning around, he almost slips, and you grab onto him harder to steady him. That’s how you find yourself looking right into his eyes from up-close, examining the different dark shades that collide in his orbs, one of your hands on his back and the other on his chest, your faces only a few centimetres away. Your breath hitches in your throat, and you go speechless, the chaotic sounds around you going numb for a second.
“Thanks,” Jay’s whisper is the only thing you can hear and that fills up your senses before the world goes crazy again.
Before an alarm goes off.
You both look up at the timer, and it signals half-time. 2 minutes and 30 seconds left. You probably aren’t even halfway to the end, you realise as your eyes dart to the rest of the footbridge and its challenges.
“Let’s try going through the trials right after each other! 5 seconds should be enough for both of us to go through them,” the boy suggests hastily, and no matter how crazy it sounds, you’re willing to risk it. What could you lose though? If it’s game over, then it’s game over, but you might as well try until that, there’s no other way anyway to survive this in time.
So you nod, and yank your hands away from him, but Jay grabs your left wrist as he’s turning back, pulling you with him. This way, when the objects sway to either side of the room, he can pull you with him, and after the fire goes off, you can both run through the zones before they go off again. Everything seems to go smoothly until the very end of the bridge when water shoots from underneath you, and you nearly get splashed with the sizzling liquid. That comes so out of the blue that you nearly trip as you take a step forward, and you literally crush into Jay this time.
Yet, you have no time to waste, the clock is ticking, it’s close to 20 seconds now, and the ladder is close at the end of the bridge, so when Jay’s hold is tighter around your wrist than before, you don’t ask questions, you just follow him until the very end, and note with a relieved sigh when the water doesn’t shoot at you again, and you can go down the ladder one by one.
Another alarm goes off when the countdown is up, and you’re running towards the door at the end of the room when you realise what the countdown was for: the glass holding the water starts cracking, making worrying noises as if it couldn’t handle the weight of the water anymore, and as you grab the doorknob and throw the door open, the water starts flooding the room, and you can barely close the door before it would get there and wash you away with it.
Then darkness.
Usually, when a new level comes, the first thing you can feel is the shift in the atmosphere. This time, it’s more than just the atmosphere. This time, it’s the temperature.
“God, isn’t it hot in here?” Jay voices out his disapproval first, drops of sweat already forming on his face. He starts fanning himself with his hands as he’s looking around, but for now, the most burning question is definitely the boy’s: why is it so hot?
“It’s like someone left the heater on for way too long,” you agree with a snicker, glad that you’ve thought of putting your hair up in a high ponytail before this whole experiment started because you would be annoyed by your hair sticking to your temple if you didn’t.
It’s not only hot, it’s also humid in the room which surprisingly seems like a private bath house. Or not? Well, you have no idea what kind of a concept it is, but you two are standing in front of a giant pool that’s surrounded by sun loungers and a bench, and there are majestic rose windows that let the light in from outside (which is probably fake and there’s nothing outside, or you have to find the way outside, that much you could already expect from this game).
“I doubt we’ll have to dip in the pool and wait for something to pop out from behind a door,” Jay muses out loud, and you instantly nod to his words. It seems just way too easy. Suspiciously easy.
On the other hand, the water is very much tempting since you can already feel buckets of sweat dripping down your body and it hasn’t even been long since you arrived. Jay must feel the same way because he starts undressing, and you are so shocked that you immediately turn around, all words dying on your lips. You don’t know what to expect, the only thing you know is that your heartbeat picks up its pace, and you’re already hot, so your burning cheeks don’t help the situation either.
A few seconds later, the boy lets out a wholehearted laughter, and says:
“Chill! I’ve only gotten rid of my sweater. I have a T-shirt underneath,” he breaks it down to you casually. You close your eyes for a moment, trying to deal with the embarrassment internally, but you reckon that your awkwardness shows big time even when you turn around and look at the boy.
“Well, thanks for the info,” you mumble out, trying to act nonchalant yet failing terribly.
“You can get rid of your sweater, too.”
“I only have a bra underneath,” you tell him straightforwardly, and now it’s his turn to get all awkward and blushing. He visibly gulps down, averting his eyes to the pool instead, and even though you know it’s not fair to smile at his antics, you do anyways. He’s kinda cute when he gets shy.
Anyways, after overcoming the awkwardness of the little undressing session, you try to come up with a plan. It’s difficult to think of anything when you feel dizzy and light-headed, and the room around you seems somewhat distant, but having no better idea, you start looking around because you’re lacking any hint of what you should be looking for. The pool seems like an ordinary one, there aren’t any extraordinary objects under the chair or around the bench either, and there aren’t creatures coming out from the rooms attached to the pool area either. There’s a simple bedroom with all too ordinary things and a bathroom with a shower cubicle, a mirror and a sink. Everything looks so ordinary, yet there’s no sight of any heater or whatsoever that could be causing this unbearable heat, so you are clueless.
Retreating back to the pool area, you let yourself and your dizzy self rest on one of the sun loungers, your body getting heavier and heavier as the heat doesn’t lessen. Feeling a bit feverish, you find yourself blurting out an apology.
“I’m sorry.”
It was long overdue, but since you two are in a game that’s constantly bombarding you with deadly creatures and challenges, there’s not much time to talk apart from coming up with plans. So you never really had the time or the right chance to apologise for asking such questions about his family, but now that you have no idea what to do and a vampire doesn’t want to suck your blood either, you find yourself wanting to come clean.
“For what?” Jay raises an eyebrow as he follows your example, and takes a seat in the sun lounger next to yours. You roll onto your right side to be able to look at him when you answer him.
“For jumping to stupid assumptions about you. That was very shallow of me.”
When it’s out, it doesn’t seem that daunting anymore, but maybe it’s also because you feel so light-headed that nothing seems too real or too difficult anymore. You kind of just float in this dizzy state without much purpose or direction.
“Ah, no, it’s okay. That’s not something you should apologise for.” The boy shakes his head immediately, a flicker of surprise splashing through his orbs when he hears your explanation. “It would have been shallow if you had started telling me to be grateful for what I have and if you had pretended that you knew better how I should live my life than I do.”
“Do people really do that?” You furrow your eyebrows in question because it would be such nonsense.
“Yep.”
“That’s messed up. No one should tell you how to feel. We see only just a fraction of other people’s lives, we have no right to tell them how they should feel,” you mumble out, and at this point, you’re not sure that anything you say makes sense. You really feel like you’re having a fever, and you know that feeling well when you’re sweating, your body is aching, your mind is foggy, yet you keep talking to someone because it’s better than focusing on the pain.
“I guess not everyone’s thinking that way,” Jay lets you know with a bittersweet smile. That’s so in contrast to the chic, cold-looking boy he appeared to be at first, and your heart aches for him even though you don’t really know him. Or at least, you know some facts about him and what you’ve been through in the past levels, but not more.
However, the boy must be feeling the same way as you do, and not having anything to challenge or a clue about this level, you somehow end up talking about trivial stuff on those sun loungers, getting to know each other under the facade. You two talk about your majors, and what drove you to them, about your favourite movies and clichés in Korean dramas (you agree that Vincenzo was one of the best Korean dramas ever), you share your love for odd things (him for anything with corn and you for mint chocolate), you discuss why you don’t play video games and reminiscence about the levels behind you as if it has been so long since you participated in them. You also agree that it’s odd that you’re still playing the game because the given 1-hour must be up by now, especially with you two only talking for sometime now, but you’re still there, and nothing happens.
You don’t actually mind because Jay turns out to be so much more than just the chic boy you’ve known from the news. He’s caring and extremely loyal to those close to him, he’s hard-working and an avid rule-follower, he can be judgemental and honest, but tries not to hurt people with his words, and he can also be funny, not the hilarious type but the subtle one, and his jokes make you crack a smile. He’s handsome, too, you can’t deny that; the way he ruffles his pitch-black locks or the way he stares into the distance, it all seems so effortless on his part, but he’s handsome even more so because he’s not aware that your eyes are on him while he’s doing so.
You don’t know how much time passes when Jay has enough and decides to go into the pool to cool himself, risking the possibility that something might come at him or the water might contain something that harms him. As he’s slipping into the water, his T-shirt slips a bit and shows a part of a tattoo around his temple. You can’t see what exactly it is because he’s far enough for that, but the fact that he has a tattoo is enough to render you speechless, yet you tell yourself that it’s because of the situation itself and that he might be getting hurt (which doesn’t happen, by the way).
“I think there’s something under the water,” the boy lets you know, his voice full of suspicion. “It looks like some kind of an object, but I don’t know what it is,” he adds before you could ask whether it’s some kind of a creature that might come at him (or the two of you). You stand up from the sun lounger to walk closer to the edge of the pool, but you can’t tell either what it could be.
“I mean, I guess the only possibility for us getting to the end of this level is by examining anything that might seem suspicious, and that’s the first thing that seems suspicious,” you reason as you also sink into the pool, letting the cold water cool your body.
Thankfully, there’s no awkwardness this time even though your clothes are sticking to your body, and you two go underwater to look at the said object that seems like a metal box from up-close. You blink at each other underwater, neither of you knowing what to expect, but you both reach for the box nevertheless. After all, you’re paired together for this game, you two should probably do something together with it, too.
When you two touch the box, the ground slips from under your feet, and darkness engulfs you for a few seconds.
The next thing you can see is the familiar ceiling from the beta testing site through the capsule you’ve been put inside. You’re so relieved that it’s over that you barely register when the capsule opens up and a worried Mr. Kim shows up.
“Oh my gosh, we thought you two would never find the box! I swear that you two were the only ones who haven’t gone inside the water first things first and found the box. Although I must admit you were one out of three pairs who have actually gotten to the 4th level. But also it’s because you got a bit stuck inside the game, this prototype is clearly not the closest one to the one-hour time frame.”
He just blabbers and blabbers, and you feel like you’ve just woken up from a really long and deep yet exhausting sleep, so you can barely comprehend what he’s saying. When you finally pull yourself together and you’re also taken into another room to get some check-up tests on your physical state, they finally tell you that something must have gone wrong with the pill because you were inside the game for about 100 minutes, and the pill’s effect usually wears off as soon as the 60-minute threshold arrives, but it wasn’t the same this time. To put simply: you two were stuck inside the game for another 30-minutes(ish), and it seemed like your brain could only let you come to consciousness if you found the key to the next level. Which, obviously, you didn’t get to because you were already over the time limit, but it was fascinating, as they said, how your and Jay’s brain kept you working until you got to the metal box.
Speaking of which, the doctors and researchers could monitor what was projected into your brain through this brand new technology they’ve come up with, so they could ask specific questions about your experience. Truth to tell, when they told you prior to the game that you two would be monitored, you didn’t think that they would listen to all of your conversations and know what you’ve been through but well… It’s too late to take back what you’ve said of only wearing a bra underneath or Jay telling you about his family or fangirling over Vincenzo.
Plus, speaking of whom, you can’t wait to finish with the post-experiment interview because you want to talk to Jay about the new findings. Yet, the boy is nowhere to be found, and when you ask the lady who called your name when you arrived about the boy’s whereabouts, she says that he has already left. Which is a bit sad, but honestly, you shouldn’t have gotten your hopes up high. He might not have felt the need to talk to you or to keep in touch with you, and that’s okay.
Or so you think until a few days later, you get a mysterious message on your phone, saying:
“Hey! You’re up for a non-feverish conversation at a café or something?”
“Who are you?” You ask back even though you have a hunch about who it could be, yet you can’t be sure.
“Sorry, it’s Jay.” You squeal a little inside when you see his name on the screen, but you try to play the hard-to-get girl a bit before letting him know about your answer to his question.
“How did you get my number?”
“I’ve gotten it from the beta tester database.”
“Hah, and I’ve thought that was strictly confidential information…” You tease him a bit, and you can’t help but smile down at your phone, imagining Jay’s subtle smile to your words.
“Sorry? They made an exception with me.”
“Well, if you were that keen on getting my number… why not?”
“Cool. Then, that’s a date.” Your heart literally skips a beat when you see the word ‘date’ written down like that, yet before you could respond in any way, another message arrives. “I mean, a deal. Stupid autocorrect.”
You let out a wholehearted laughter that makes the woman beside you on the metro furrow her eyebrows, but you couldn’t care less. You save Jay’s number in your phone right immediately, and you two pick up where you left off: the day of the experiment with Jay roasting his father’s company regarding the mistake they made with the pill you’ve been given. Truthfully, you’re actually thankful that it happened this way because you may not talk to him like this if it weren’t for the feverish conversation beside the pool, but who knows?
Life is a game, and sometimes, you can have the best possible outcome only if you get a bit off track.